Transcript: What's Missing? Circadian Health! — Zaid K. Dahhaj #012

0:00

It's a fascinating rabbit hole, but the the entire human body from head to toe is a circadian system, which is fundamental to understand here.

And how could it not be, you know, when you live on a planet like this, next to a star that's blasting out this amount of energy, how could you not be tuned to that?

The suprachysmatic nucleus, that's the master circadian clock, is what's responsible for relaying that circadian time signal to every other peripheral clock in the body.

0:25

You have circadian clocks in your skin, your mitochondria, every organ knocking out, you know, thousands of birds with one stone.

By getting out at that Daybreak, By getting out at the sunrise.

So a great recipe for skin cancer would be like wake up and spend the whole morning in a dark apartment and I I spent the evening staring into light boxes, blue light.

0:45

But I go out and I get that intense midday sun every day.

The.

Problem is not the light itself, it's the context in which the light is received.

In a circadian aligned human evolutionary appropriate environment, UV light does not cause cancer whatsoever.

I'm joined today by Zaid Dahaj, who's working to restore human health and sovereignty through circadian alignment.

1:08

He believes the circadian system is not just one factor among many.

It's the regulatory layer that determines whether everything else in the body is working or not.

Zaid, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Daniel.

Appreciate your your willingness to bring me on and excited to dive deep here.

1:25

You're out in California, huh?

Sunny California doesn't get.

I, I look at work like yours, you know, talking about things like circadian rhythm.

And I always think like, man, if I was in California, you know, you just have such consistent sunshine there, you know, and here in Maine right now, we're in it and it's awesome.

1:44

But man, we got it six months of, of winter.

So that's something I'll be curious to talk to you a little bit about.

But but starting off, how did you become so passionate about circadian rhythm?

Really just started as an athlete, like a lot of other athletes who get interested in health to a deeper level, I I pursued professional or really competitive soccer growing up or football for the European audience.

2:07

I wanted to to become a professional player.

That was always my lifelong dream.

And yeah, I spent the basically the 1st 2425 years of my life doing that and going to different countries and going to different trials didn't work out in the way that I wanted it to.

But I always say that everything happens for a reason.

2:23

And so that led me to the latter end of of my experience with soccer, which transitioned into the experience that I had with my father, which was basically 2 heart attacks within the span of a year.

Second heart attack put him into a coma that led to Hospice.

2:38

And you know, from that sort of expedited end up passing.

And from that sort of experience, I think you're forced to ask the deeper questions about how this could happen.

Because my father was very fit.

You know, he was actually my physical education teacher growing up because I went to a private school.

Oh wow, how old was he?

2:54

51, so very, very young, yeah.

Yeah.

And that's unfortunately a common thing in this day and age is that you have younger, relatively younger men in their 50s and 60s, even 40s or maybe even 30s just dropping dead of a heart attack or some, some sort of other acute condition.

3:12

And I find that to be very problematic, which is why I really tried to go deeper into the health subject.

You know, you go into supplementation and food and sleep and all that.

But eventually I found the work of Doctor Jack Cruz through the Tetragrammaton podcast with him and Rick Rubin, him, Rick Rubin, Andrew Huberman.

3:28

And that's what really blew my mind wide open in terms of the circadian front.

So from there, the rest is history.

And I just started to make contents work, worked with clients, and it's been an incredible journey so far.

Looking at your content on at least on Instagram, I sense a kind of mission and passion that is a little more intense.

3:48

Like like it makes sense that now you tell me that story because it's I feel this like fervor in you to get this information out that's a little stronger than I see from some other content creators.

Do you feel like that's an accurate assessment?

I feel like there's like a just a verve in what you're saying that that has some edge to it.

4:07

Well, the, the experience with my father really, I think added to that, but I've always been that type of character.

I mean, if you're playing in competitive sport, you know, especially me with that, with that obsessive personality, like I'm always trying to get an edge.

I'm always very intense, which is why it's, it's harder for me to work on kind of relaxation techniques and whatnot, having a parasympathetic.

4:27

And, and so that's always been a big thing for me.

And, and I've always been a big advocate of mastery and trying to understand things from first principles, which is why I basically detest a lot of the dilettantism that I see in mainstream dermatology and, and, and these other specialties that don't have Adian framework for the skin barrier, any of these other subjects.

4:47

So yeah, intense personality.

And, and that's, that has pros and cons.

But with this work, it's it's absolutely a pro.

Yeah, well, I mean, you're up against an entire industry of misinformation and lies that are, on their face, kind of obvious.

5:03

I want to talk about how it became obvious to me.

And then I want to kind of hear from your perspective because I think we both have arrived here, but probably from slightly different journeys for me.

And I'll kind of preface this by saying I lifeguarded at beaches for five years when I was younger.

5:20

I didn't wear sunblock once. 5 summers.

I sat up, you know, elevated on those seats, you know, those lifeguard chairs out in the sun everyday.

And not to say I never have place for sunblock.

I mean, I, I do I, I remember going to Thailand right after that and having my whole face peel off and learning a real powerful lesson about that.

5:41

But you know, like Equatorial sun.

But, but you know, I arrived at it by just through this process of rewilding and thinking about ancestral people.

And not only did they not have sunblock, they didn't have indoors, as we think of it.

So these are people who are outside all the time, in all weather instances, constantly being exposed to the sun without these cancers that we hear so much about today.

6:07

And so it became very obvious to me that the cause of that could not be the sun that is, on its face, absurd.

And yet it's incredible and sort of like a emperor wears no clothes kind of way.

How many people have been duped by something so apparently incorrect?

6:28

How did you arrive at it?

And sort of, you know, how does that what I just said sort of what does that stimulate for you?

It's not something that I've like looked for per say.

I mean, it's it's kind of just been a natural evolution in terms of how I relate to circadian first principles and going through different sub subsections within the overall subject to to really conclude that modern dermatology is circadian divorce.

6:55

Modern ophthalmology is circadian divorce.

Basically most of modern medicine is circadian divorced, even though new specialties are starting to pop up like chrono nutrition, which is circadian meal timing or krona, you know, circadian timing of certain medications that are being administered for better results.

7:13

Did you say?

Chrono, you said chrono.

Nutrition as in timed like the timing of nutrition.

Kronos.

Yeah, that that's a full on new specialty in in mainstream medicine.

So this is it.

It points to a lot of the contradictions that I find in the mainstream message.

But yeah, I just been going through the things like the Pomcey system, the proembial melanocortin system, the full spectrum at ground level and what that looks like in relation to spectral ratios.

7:40

You know, this concept of DNA damage as it relates to UV and hormesis, how that ties into all of this.

So it's really, it's really just been a, a never ending deep dive for me as to how I've kind of built up this epistemology to where I think that I, I do have, for lack of a better way to put it, I think I do have a world class epistemology in terms of the circadian front on this stuff.

8:02

And I think that's just because people just don't dive in.

They, they don't apply that obsessive nature to understanding the first principles with a lot of this.

And we'll inevitably get into the the nuance involved with each of these subjects here.

Well, let's back out a little bit, zoom out and let's define circadian.

8:18

I think a lot of our listeners will certainly have heard it and are probably have an idea of what it is.

But let's get a definition there first so that we are working from that.

What's really just describing the the 24 hour rhythm that your body falls under in relation to the solar day and also the night part of the the light and dark cycle.

8:38

So human beings since since our earliest ancestors lived under that light and dark cycle.

And so they were automatically in circadian alignment.

And what's incredible is that if you look at the biological mechanisms at play, things like circadian clocks predate most species.

8:55

I mean, we're talking about biological circadian controlled mechanisms that are hundreds of millions of years old that even find themselves in the earliest cyanobacteria, which is pretty incredible to understand.

And so you, your body is a collection of these ancient circadian mechanisms that are quite literally tuned to things like light and food in relation to timing of when you consume food, temperature, even social interactions are what we call a Zeitgeber German for time giver.

9:25

In other words, these are kind of cues in the environment that allow you to either align the circadian system and the circadian clocks within it or disrupt those circadian clocks, which would then lead to circadian disruption.

So it's a it's a fascinating rabbit hole, but the the entire human body from head to toe is a circadian system, which is fundamental to understand here.

9:45

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11:02

And how could it not be, you know, when you live on a planet like this next to a star that's blasting out this amount of energy and then it's gone for half of the, you know, the cycle it's and then comes back every day.

It's like, how could you not be tuned to that?

I mean, that was so kind of obvious at this point, though.

11:21

How do you sort of today, like you said, we are divorced from it.

You know, we have these conversations about like going to live on the moon or going to live on Mars in particular, where I just think like.

That's not going.

To like, it's not going to work.

You know, I'm sorry, that's just not really going to work.

11:37

But how do you think we get to this place where something so obvious and fundamental is now like alternative Health Science?

I mean, it's as absurd as that is to you and I.

11:53

That's where we're at for the average person.

How'd we get here?

It's multi factorial.

I think it's one part philosophical.

If you look at medicine, it operates through hyper reductionism.

So you have this distinction between reductionism and holism reductionism basically pointing to the idea that you focus on just one isolated part of a a system, whether it's a biological system or some other system out there.

12:16

And, and you just hyper focus on that one isolated part while ignoring the fact that you are actually looking at a system with complex synergies and interrelationships and whatnot.

And then holism is really just the, the understanding of systems thinking and everything that comes with it in terms of being careful with introducing certain interventions because those can cause 2nd and 3rd order consequences.

12:41

That's where we can get into sunscreen and sunglasses and all this other stuff.

But for, for me, I think that it's one part scientific in that sense.

It's one part certainly historical because of, of things like the Flexer report in the in 1910, you have Abraham Flexer, Andrew Carnegie, and then I believe one other individual who practically centralized medicine to the point where it ousted a lot of the alternative sort of philosophies, whether it be homeopathy.

13:10

I think circadian heliotherapy was a big part of that because I.

Was going to say, you see these, you see these people, patients laid out in beds in the sun before, you know, AMA kind of took over medicine.

But that was a major treatment, right?

It was understood.

Exactly.

And so 1910 was when the Flexner report came into play.

13:27

And then even prior to that, maybe 1900 to 19 O 8.

That's really the period where you find circadian heliotherapy through the work of doctor Augusta Rollier, who was the first heliotherapist to to do his thing at scale.

I think he treated over like 1800 patients with pretty incredible success rates from lupus vulgaris, which is tuberculosis of the skin, very fatal condition if left untreated to.

13:52

And then also first through the work of Niels Reiberg Finsen, who was the first person to basically win the Nobel Prize for photo biology on various disease models.

And so he would, you know, shine red light onto smallpox.

He would also do a lot of the same work as Augusta Rollier in terms of shining concentrated UV light through quartz glass onto various aspects of the the skin that had lupus vulgaris.

14:17

And, and so that's kind of the lost medicine that was ousted through the the flexor report.

And then from 1910 forward, you have Coco Chanel, you have companies like L'Oreal and Nestle that have basically infiltrated the, the, the realm to create a different paradigm.

14:35

And then that obviously ties to the World Health Organization in terms of its assessment that falls into flawed assumptions that are circadian divorce, like using isolated UV on nocturnal animals and in vitro models.

And so there's a lot to it, but I, I think it's, it makes sense from that perspective.

14:51

OK, so I want to know about the Flexner Report.

But first, let's just kind of go back a little bit.

You were talking about this era of medicine, you know, and it's interesting because for many years I've taught about this kind of concept of the four elements as our need for, you know, what we need for health.

15:07

So always compare earth to the food that comes from our soil.

And then, you know, water obviously is another need for our body, air and then fire being sunlight.

And when you look back at that era you're talking about, you also had things at the time like bound neopathy.

15:23

So that was like water based therapies.

People were going to different springs, soaking in different types of Hot Springs and cool springs, drinking different types of mineral waters.

You had these heliotherapies you're talking about.

There was sort of like this beautiful renaissance happening in medicine.

So before we get to the Flexion report, is there anything from that era in the heliotherapy that you want to discuss or what kind of make known for folks?

15:45

Because I mean, to me, like if I was sick right now with the flu, it's like, roll me outside and put me in the sun.

Yeah, certainly.

I think, you know, there, there's a lot to that, that little period.

I think number one, we have to consider the context.

16:01

So you had a lot of people moving from more agrarian societal structures, if that's the right word, to where you have a lot of living in a place of farmland and a lot of open space and a lot of sunlight and fresh air.

And then they basically moved to a more modern living situation where you had cities that had poor sanitation and in all of these different aspects.

16:22

And I just think that was a big detriment to where you saw the rise of things like rickets and certain acute, chronic inflammatory conditions.

And you know, the the doctors of that time, or at least the more enlightened ones understood that the, that change was a big part of why we see the this that rise in disease.

16:40

And so.

Urbanization specifically.

Exactly.

And you, you know, I think we could kind of can compare if you were a kid growing up on on the city streets, you know, especially at a time like then when people still spend a lot of time, you know, in their neighborhood outside kind of playing outside.

16:56

Like we don't see as much of anymore.

But, you know, those buildings become essentially artificial Canyon walls, right?

So maybe you get a little overhead sun at noon, but you're basically shaded out by those walls like you would be if you were inside the Grand Canyon or something.

Yeah, and even in apartment buildings that had a lot of families packed within it, you know, the the invention of baby cages was, was actually a sort of solution to this where they would basically attach a cage outside the window.

17:23

Doesn't matter whether it was three stories high, five stories high, seven stories high.

And they would quite literally risk their child's lives in order for them to get fresh air and to get sun really.

And there's, there's plenty of of pictures that are incredible on that front that I've, I've added to content in the past.

17:40

But yeah, that, that was 1 introduction.

And then even in 1931, this was after flex, after the Flexor report, you had the US Department of Labor's Child's Bureau recommend a a full on pamphlet for how to properly sunbathe baby.

17:56

Oh wow.

That's something that I have found incredible as well, because they understood the difference between UV indexes.

They understood the difference between an open window and a window that was closed in regards to the glass manipulation and so even after the Flexor report, you still had some wise people that were in government trying to implement this at scale.

18:15

But unfortunately, the tide has turned for the worst.

Well, because everything is getting more and more retarded as the days go on, right?

I mean, we're literally in an Idiocracy now.

It's like, it's like Terminator meets Idiocracy.

So you can always expect things to get stupider as what I what I think.

18:32

But OK.

So at that time also the the supplementation of vitamin D2 into the milk supply is related into this story in some way, right?

You brought up rickets, which for people listening today probably sounds like black plague or something, like some like Fargon, you know, typhus or something that's just like not around anymore because, you know, we've essentially eradicated it.

18:57

But this is when children had a lack of vitamin D so severe that their bones were not calcifying properly, right?

And they would end up with bow legs.

And I believe for adults, it's osteomalacia, which is bone pain and far more occult.

But could you kind of explain a bit about that or, or like is, is this that same time period where they start realizing they need to get, you know, vitamin D into people in some way?

19:21

Yeah.

Well, Ricketts itself, I haven't done a, a real deep dive on the, the nuances in terms of mechanisms and what not, but we do know that Ricketts rose pretty substantially during that early period because of that move from an agrarian society to a more urban situation.

So that's a big thing to consider.

19:37

And and I would say even I think I came across a story a couple years ago in the UK where Ricketts is even like starting to manifest again come.

Back.

Yeah, makes sense.

Yeah, and that's pretty crazy to understand because it's a pretty simple thing to address.

I mean, all you have to do is consistently get UVB exposure.

19:56

UVB is the only light wavelength that can produce the vitamin D3 conversion to allow for calcium to work properly to build up vitamin D3 stores and all of its different metabolites.

And to create strong development, especially in early age, which is why I'm such an advocate of circadian aligned heliotherapy to babies as well.

20:15

Like when my son was first born a few years ago, he's almost three years old.

One of the first things we did was prime in the morning microdose, UVA and UVB build up more melanin capacity, which is the adaptation and then make sure we're strict with the nighttime darkness.

20:31

So that's something we'll certainly get into and how that ties to to people's metabolic health.

But yeah, Ricketts is.

It's a pretty gnarly condition, but it's pretty easy to avoid.

Right.

Very easy to avoid.

Yeah, but I mean, like so many of these deficiency diseases that comes from from just wrong living, you know, like incorrect living conditions.

20:48

Tell me about the Flexner report.

What are we talking about there?

Again, we're just talking about the centralization of medicine to where you you have people like the like a Rockefeller who basically funded this Flexner report in order to control and, and have more say in what medicine does and what medicine is allowed in terms of the education structure.

21:10

So the the interesting thing about him is that he had a big, he had a big role to play in the.

Rockefeller you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah, JD Rockefeller in the production.

Imagine having your name associated with so many awful things.

It's crazy, you know?

Yeah, not a great family to be associated with, but he had a a huge say in control in petrochemical drug manufacturing.

21:32

And so that's what led to, you know, the the centralization of medicine to where you start to see these new drugs being released that are, are petrochemical based.

You start to see things like homeopathy and and heliotherapy be shunned away and in fact demonized over time.

21:49

This is where I think this is where the word pseudoscientific originates from.

I'm not sure on that, but there have been a lot of strategies from that period to where the the demonization of certain alternative therapies were were at play.

So again, it's it's really just a founding document, document in order to assess how to centralized medicine, how to shut down certain schools.

22:12

This also had a massive impact on minority populations as well and had a massive impact on women in relation to medicine.

So there was a lot of unfortunate things that came out of it.

There was also some good to a certain degree because it's standardized medicine.

And so any crack quackery that was present was kind of shunned away as well.

22:30

So again, like everything that it's nuanced, but I, I think that modern medicine is still dealing with the, the repercussions of what that Flex report did in in 1910.

Yeah, I mean, at this point, medicine has almost set itself up as like antithetical to natural principles, which is so shocking.

22:53

You think you would, you know, especially because it's got an evolutionary paradigm behind it.

So you think that it would say, hey, organisms are evolutionarily aligned to the conditions of the planet, therefore our medical system should be as well.

But it sets itself up almost like an opposition, you know?

23:09

Which is why it's so easy to assume malevolence from characters who you're like who you were talking about before, because it seems like almost like they have purposefully chosen not to acknowledge nature's role in health, healing, restoration, etcetera.

23:33

It it's, it's unfortunate.

I think a lot of medicine right now revolves around pathology and what I like to say to modern dermatologists, for example, who say that, you know, I've, I've cut out 1000 skin cancers in my lifetime, you should listen to me is that again, your work revolves around pathology.

23:49

That does not give me any indication as to how to prevent disease, especially skin cancers, does not give me any indication around the first principles of evolutionary and circadian biology fundamentally.

25:11

Yeah, well, like, 'cause if you have like a zero is your sort of baseline and then you have like -1 negative two -3 that's pathology.

And then you have like plus 1 + 2 + 3, let's say that's health.

If you spend all your time working in like -5 negative 4, that's your expertise.

25:26

I'm not going to go to you to, to find out how to build health.

That's not what your expertise is in.

Your expertise is in cutting out disease tissue.

So why would you know about health?

You when, how would you have time to know about health?

If you want to learn about health, you got to go to somebody who's spends their time working in health.

25:44

You know, it's sort of like we have named everything wrong, right?

So it's.

And, and that's tricky because a lot of the people who are profoundly intelligent and, and really just masters at their craft do not, do not have a single centralized medical degree to their name in regards to how to, to cultivate health.

26:00

So it's, it's a bit of a, a tricky thing to navigate because there are people who don't have any degrees that are just terrible at what they do and that they'll put you in harm's way.

But they're on the other, other side of that.

There are people who know their stuff and have worked with a large number of people and and they understand the first principles.

I want to add in one more piece and then maybe we can kind of start to delve in a little bit to some of these first principles we're talking about.

26:21

But I think another piece that gets overlooked.

In fact, I think this has been massively overlooked.

You know, you know how if you watch social media, you see sort of trends of information that come to light and then products get out, come out of those, and then suddenly some new thing comes up and you hear it again from everybody and you kind of go through these cycles.

26:38

But one of the pieces that I never see getting discussed for some reason, and it's so juicy from a social media, it might, you know, component, but like is the idea of civil time versus natural time, sundials versus clocks, You know, because essentially the idea is if I face due South, and I don't mean magnetic, but I mean like true South.

27:02

And I imagine a line that just goes straight up from the horizon all the way around to touch the North Star.

That line's called the Meridian and anything, any time the sun is before that line, so the sun is east of that line, that's anti Meridian AM.

27:17

And anytime it's past the Meridian, it's PM.

And when it's on the Meridian, it culminates there.

That's called noon.

But The thing is, if I move to the town next to me, noon's a slightly different time.

And every time I move a little bit, I get a slightly different noon.

And so everybody's time was local based on the sundial, and every day started at 6:00 AM and ended at 6:00 PM.

27:40

So it was always 6:00 to noon, noon to six.

That's every day, right?

But then with the invention of the clock, we standardize time so that what's noon for me and noon for you, the Suns in different positions.

So if I go like, oh, it's noon on my clock and I go outside and I look at the sun, the sun is almost never going to be actually at noon.

28:00

It's all like made-up civil time.

It's like a invented time system that we're using that takes us just slightly, like everything else we're talking about, just takes you slightly out of the natural rhythm.

And the sundial is a really powerful tool for teaching you about archaeoastronomy, for teaching you about circadian rhythm and all these things.

28:18

But we've kind of lost it.

And I would really love to see it come back because this sundial is such an amazing tool.

But I do think that the, the, the clock has, has impacted us tremendously as far as like how we relate to what time it actually is.

28:34

Because this whole idea of circadian, we're talking about time, right?

And it's funny because people don't even know what time it is anymore.

Yeah, I didn't even know all that stuff about the sundial, so I'm going to have to dive really deep on that because of what what you just explained there is pretty incredible to to understand within this context.

I think that, yeah, the clock has done a lot of damage because it's it's kind of divorced ourselves from the natural environment.

28:57

It's divorced ourselves from circadian timing.

And of course, that ties into how modern society is, is built in terms of like a job structure, the, the nine to five shift work, all of these various aspects to it.

But circadian timing is the glue that holds the circadian system together.

29:14

And therefore it is the glue that holds metabolic function together.

And, and that's certainly something we can dive deeper into.

But this whole rage about PST and DST, it's, it's not something that I really plant a flag on.

I I do think permanent.

Daylight savings time.

29:32

Yeah, I think permanent daylight savings time is a detriment on mass because you're just artificially shifting the clock.

And so you're getting later sun.

You're not actually changing the, the, you know, the, the time the sun comes out.

You're just artificially manipulating the clock.

29:48

And that could have some drastic consequences for people who have to abide by a nine to five drop structure and kids who are in school and what not.

But the the important thing to understand is that the sun in the light and dark cycle in general are the anchor to this.

Also, I start my day at Daybreak, then 30 minutes later I get sunrise.

30:06

Then a little bit after that I get UVA rise, then UVB rise.

And it all follows a a circadian spectral sequence that is dictated by where you are latitude wise and then what season you're in.

And that's an important thing to understand that we are essentially seasonal circadian creatures that are meant to be diurnal, meaning awake during the day and asleep at night.

30:28

So that will influence how you approach the work, whether that be in summer, spring, fall, winter.

If I hand it back to you and I go, hey man, start us at the beginning, take us through it.

What order do you want to go through this information?

I have a feeling you have a pretty good sense of how to present it.

30:44

I I think understanding this, the full solar spectrum is probably the best way to go about this.

We can touch on the biological mechanisms like opsins and mitochondria and and whatnot, but we need to understand that the full spectrum is made-up in a perfect way for circadian lined human beings.

31:03

So even at ground level, UV light, UVAUVB and UVC only makes up about 3 to 5% of the tons of the sun's total spectrum.

And so UVC doesn't even make it through the atmosphere.

So we're really only talking about UVA and UVB.

And that's an important thing to understand, especially when we get into the wavelength range synergies at play and also how that impacts people's health tangibly.

31:29

So that's UV visible light makes up around 42 to 45% of the total spectrum at ground level.

Basically think of the rainbow, you have your Reds, oranges, greens, yellows, and I, I believe firmly that every wavelength range and even every nanometer down to the nanometer length is beneficial and provides some sort of benefit for the human body.

31:50

So that's visible and then you have infrared, which makes up most of it and that's upwards of 50 to 55 plus percent.

Oh it is.

Wow.

And that's, that also accounts for the heat that we feel from the sun, right?

That would be from that infrared part of the spectrum.

Exactly, You have near infrared, mid infrared and far infrared, which each have distinct benefits and that directly ties into photobiomodulation and that blossoming form of of, of research that today in this day and age.

32:17

But we need to understand that there's a reason why UV light only makes up around 3 to 5% at ground level.

And there's also a reason why infrared is is overwhelming the entire spectrum, relatively speaking, when you.

Say at ground level.

So you mean like literally at on the ground physically?

32:35

Like when I'm on the ground as in if I as opposed to if I was up in the atmosphere, you're saying that ground level you're talking about the UV that makes it to that part of the earth?

Yeah, because altitude is a different is a different rabbit hole.

I mean UV becomes more intense the higher you go.

32:53

That is something people really need to consider, or if they're snowboarding or skiing or bathing at high altitude as.

Well, mountaineering, it would become so obvious to me.

I mean, the, the burns you'd get, like even here in Maine, we here in Maine, in New Hampshire, we have pretty small mountains, you know, mountain, Washington, 6000 feet.

33:09

It's our tallest mountain.

But still, even at 6000 feet, I notice the effects of UV up there in a way that's different down here.

And it, I mean, I can see the top of that mountain from here.

It's not, it's not a very big mountain, but it has an effect, yeah.

And even Doctor Gusterolier performed a lot of this heliotherapy, you know, patient work at altitude in Switzerland.

33:30

And so they were very high up there to in order to facilitate and allow for that stronger UVA and UVB to, to do the healing process.

But again, the key thing people miss out on is that he progressed these patients over time in order to build more melanin so that they don't burn, so that they, they don't have any negative consequences and that they developed the adaptation fundamentally.

33:54

And so even outside of that, we we talked about the ground level spectral ratios, we need to understand that there are synergistic effects between all of these wavelengths.

And so the shorter wavelengths of light that are more potent and higher energy like UV and blue are always balanced by the longer wavelengths which are still very potent, just in a different way.

34:14

And that is is a real important fundamental for a circadian system that evolved under that full spectrum.

Can we say that?

Can we say that all of these are colors?

Like some of these colors we don't see, right?

So it's like if I'm, I'm seeing waves that are getting shorter and shorter as I go from red to Violet, Violet being like, let's say the shortest color.

34:33

But when I the shortest wavelength that I can see as a color.

But, but if I had the eyes for it, I used to go around in New York City, I can remember 20 years ago, but I would make a tincture or actually like a eye drop.

So it was salt water base of belladonna.

34:50

And I would put it in people's eyes and it would dilate everyone's pupils for like 12 to 24 hours.

And you would be seeing like Violet Halos on things where you're like, oh, I'm seeing colors that I, you know, normally are being, I'm not seeing.

But if I could, I would, if I could see ultraviolet, I would start seeing colors that went past.

35:09

Or if I could see wavelengths that were longer, I could pass red.

I would be seeing infrared, right?

Or all of these colors essentially.

I I think you can break it down like that.

And of course, we're only limited by our eyes in relation to human beings.

35:24

But if you look at, I think Caribou were able to look at to, to see ultraviolet light in real time.

Snakes and lizards, I believe, are able to see infrared for these purposes.

They're even fish deep in the ocean, like very deep to where there's no sunlight that produced their own bioluminescent red in order to hunt and find fish for us.

35:47

So it's pretty incredible from the light perspective on that end.

Yeah.

OK.

So I interrupted you.

Sorry about that, but you were you were saying that all of these are important in the way that they synergistically interact with each other long and short waves.

Yeah.

And so there's not going to be a lot of evidence on this front.

36:03

But in my opinion with the the synergy and the understand that the understanding that shorter wavelengths are balanced by longer wavelengths, there is still some decent evidence at play.

And so there's one study in particular, 1998 study in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology that showed when you prime fibroblasts that produce collagen with near infrared like first and then you expose them to isolated UV, you don't see any of the cytotoxicity or cell toxicity at play that you would otherwise get with just isolated UV.

36:35

And so I'm a big advocate of avoiding isolated UV and blue at all costs for various reasons, but this is one of the fundamental ones because it's just not packaged with.

Tanning bed red When you say that, I hear tanning bed.

Exactly not an.

What about on the flip of that, everybody's into all the red light therapies now and all of this where it's like now we're kind of doing the opposite or a near infrared sauna.

36:59

Like how do you feel about when you decouple the longer wavelengths from the shorter wavelengths?

I think because they're so incredibly safe and these have so much potential for the human circadian system, there's a lot more leverage in terms of your ability to use whether it be red infrared photobiomodulation and, but but there is always a limit to it.

37:23

I think that it follows A dose curve response where or U-shaped curve response where a little bit provides a really potent response.

But if you go above that, the benefit just seems to drop off diminishing.

Returns because, you know, it does make sense.

When I think about infrared, I think, well, we have precedent.

37:42

We have however many millennia of fire exposure.

All night people are sitting around the fire, the fires pumping out, you know, infrared.

I don't see a precedent for synthetic or domesticated ultraviolet light in our history or prehistory the way we do with infrared with fire.

38:02

So.

Yeah.

And this is a really tricky subject.

So there are companies like Midolux that use the longer wavelengths to balance out the shorter wavelengths.

But again, you just have to be very intentional if you are going to use that.

I'm not an advocate of like a spur D lamp or isolated UV tanning beds because you're just providing the the shorter wavelengths that are higher energy without any of the longer wavelengths and fundamentally ties into this hormetic process.

38:28

So hormesis being the understanding that low level stress acquired consistently with proper priming, with proper recovery will create a a stronger Organism and better health.

And so we can we pause on that.

I just want to make sure the listeners are getting this hormesis.

Hormesis could also be I lift weights and damage my muscles, but I love that mug that I, that I lift weights and damage my muscles, but then I come back with a response to that stress that makes me stronger.

38:55

And or I take a, a heart, a cardiac toxin.

If I have a certain heart condition like what's found in foxglove digitalis, it's poisonous to my heart, yet in a very small dose, the hormetic response might be good for my heart.

So, so that's the kind of thing you're talking about is when something that you, you refer to it as a stress is has a negative impact, but in the right dose produces a beneficial response as the body kind of bounces back from it.

39:21

Yeah.

I mean, UVA and UVB definitely fall into the category of a hormetic stressor.

So it's AU stressor as opposed to a distressor.

But I think they're also more fundamental to that.

I mean, even you have light sensing options or, or proteins known as neuropsin in your body, which are actually UVA light sensor.

39:39

So there's, and then you think about UVAUVB creating vitamin D3.

There's obviously more fundamental rules that UV plays in general, but it it is it is the hormatic process at work.

Which makes me question why modern dermatology has billboards up about the damaging effects of UV.

39:57

But they don't do the same thing for sauna use or exercise, or eating cruciferous vegetables or any other hormatic process.

It's.

Just right one of those.

Predictions at play?

Yeah, yeah, Well, also there's quite a big industry that's been built up around all of this too.

So, you know, now there's a perverse incentive as well.

40:15

So.

OK, so I'm hearing from you then something like rather than eating, I'll say it like this.

Sometimes I'll say to an audience, hey, if I go get, if I go get some oxygen and some carbon dioxide and some nitrogen and I put all that together, I go 78% of of it is nitrogen and I go 21% oxygen and .5% carbon dioxide.

40:38

I throw in some noble gases, shake it up.

Is that fresh air?

It's like obviously not.

If I go get some pectin and some vitamin C and you know, I I get different salts and I mix all, I can't make an apple.

Out of that.

And I'm hearing from you something like that.

40:53

If I isolate out, then this goes back to what you were saying about holism versus reductionism.

If I isolate out frequencies of sunlight, I'm not making something that's an improvement on sunlight.

I'm actually making a poorer product.

41:08

Why not just get the sunlight?

I, you know, I had my buddy Ben Greenfield on recently.

We were talking about his new documentary and there's a scene, if you familiar with Ben, he's going into his office in the morning and he is like, it's a dark, blacked out room and he's like sandwiching himself and all these panels of different LE DS and everything to recreate a sunrise.

41:27

And it's like, I'm just like, bro, just go outside, you know?

But it's that kind of an idea, right?

Where it's like something because some frequency becomes popular in the same way that some nutrient does.

And then we try to take that thing isolated out from the hole.

Yeah, people would be astonished to see the parallels between, let's say, exercise and sunlight or food and sunlight.

41:46

So people think about a food complex, which with all the incredible enzymes and cofactors and nutrients and minerals, a light complex is exactly what we're talking about with full spectrum sunlight.

And so of course, ascorbic acid is not the same thing as vitamin C encapsulated in different forms within a piece of fruit or whatever.

42:06

And, and so we have to start to think along those lines to understand that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Meaning that when you have these synergistic effects in a system of the solar system, especially in relation to the human circadian system, you, you start to get a result that is so much greater than any isolated wave life can provide.

42:28

And so it, it transcends it in a, in a real big way, not just across one or two things.

We're talking about thousands of different processes from the activation of immune cells to the reduction of inflammation, to the production of various metabolites of vitamin D.

So it's it's quite a fascinating rabbit hole in that end.

42:45

All right.

So my first big take away from this is in the way that I think about whole food or whole water, I need to think about whole light.

That's a kind of critical component of our health.

And I'm going to pass it back to you.

Make sure I don't take you out of your order here.

43:03

And yeah, so outside of that, I think again, the circadian timing is key.

That's the glue that holds all of this together.

And so that's why I'm an advocate of of waking up at Daybreak, which is essentially the start of biological day for the circadian system.

And that will typically happen around maybe 30 to 45 minutes before sunrise.

43:21

And what we need to understand associated with that is that the there's a spectral shift that happens across that day in the same way that you mentioned the sundial.

And so they're different spectrums of light that occur in order to benefit you through circadian signaling through various means.

43:39

And so Daybreak's main function is really just to get that shift in blue and Violet into the eyes first onto the skin as well, to start the process of circadian alignment.

So if let's say you wake up at Daybreak, you go outside as soon as you can, maybe within 5 to 10 minutes, you get that light.

43:57

So you're getting an increase in lux or light intensity, which has a certain set of benefits.

And then you get the blue light going into the eyes, which then hits melanopsin, which funny enough is a blue light sensor light sensing protein.

It's also found throughout your body as well.

44:13

And that gets into the intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, which are essentially cells that are dedicated for light.

They're not even dedicated for vision at all, actually.

And that they're.

In the eye.

They're fundamentally in the eye, yeah.

44:30

And then that gets into the retinal hypothalamic tract.

That gets to the hypothalamus in the brain, which then gets to the SCN.

And the SCN is the suprachysmatic nucleus.

That's the master circadian clock.

And what's incredible is that that master hub, let's say, is what's responsible for relaying that circadian time signal through blue light to every other peripheral clock in the body.

44:53

That's you know, you have circadian clocks in your skin, your in your mitochondria and every skin cell type, every organ.

So liver function, heart function, pancreatic function, all are fundamentally dictated by that first Daybreak portion of light exposure.

45:11

What happens when somebody doesn't do that?

So let's say that they are in an apartment by the way you are when you're talking about holism and reductionism.

When I hear the word apartment, it's like apart, apart from everything else.

OK, so if I'm in an apartment and it's, you know, standard kind of I don't have a, a good Easter S facing window or something.

45:35

It's darkish in there and I just get up, flick on my lights or my TV or my computer, look at my phone.

What's happening?

What's different than if I go outside first thing in the morning?

So you are delaying the circadian system and again the timing is everything here.

45:51

And so things like insulin sensitivity will be pushed back let's say.

But the the easier way that I break it down is that insulin sensitivity will just not work as it should, meaning that you'll have worse glucose response across the day and over time that's a big deal because then you get into pre diabetic territory and all.

46:11

Again, all of these things are controlled through circadian mechanisms.

Cortisol will fundamentally dysregulate as well.

And your, your cortisol awakening response is actually light.

Is it independent of light?

So it happens right before you wake up and then once you wake up and, and you get that light exposure, that's what really boosts the cortisol awakening response to where you have the proper, the, the proper facilitation of things like blood glucose and insulin and other hormones.

46:39

And then when you have that increase in cortisol, you also have the shutdown of that circulatory melatonin that needs darkness from the pineal gland.

And so all of these hormones have a, you know, either an inverse or direct relationship with one another.

And it's a big problem if you're starting your day with fake artificial light that is more biased towards isolated blue and green.

47:02

Because if you look at the nanometer, I think it's anywhere between like 460 to 480 nanometers for blue.

You're actually kind of giving your, your body a pseudo signal that it's midday.

And so you're confusing all the circadian clocks.

And what do we know about circadian clocks is that they control function and repair of every single cell in your body.

47:22

And that's obviously a big deal because that's what everything is controlled by.

So that's that's one of the big things.

It's interesting, you know, you look at people out there and it's like they're surviving like this.

They're still, you know, their bodies are still healing, they're still recovering.

47:38

They go to the gym, they work out, they get stronger.

You know, it's like you can live like that.

But, but obviously there's like some percentage of optimization that's just lost if you don't do this.

And so it seems like, you know, people are so quick to reach for a supplement or reach for some new hack, but it's it's like this basic core alignment with what's actually happening on the earth at that time, like what's happening with all the other life forms.

48:05

You know, I'm always amazed like all these other creatures are just living right outside my door here this way.

And we're like, no, no, we haven't figured out we'll live like this.

But but essentially before it seems like before you start thinking about trying to fine tune little things that have very like that barely move the needle like something like this seems like the the first, you know, practice that you're sharing with us.

48:33

Step outside the first chance you get in the morning.

I, I think first chance you get is a is a good rule of thumb.

But again, I think the timing is very important.

So there are people in this space who will not understand the circadian first principles and so they will think that getting out at Daybreak is a micro optimization when in fact it's probably the most important fundamental in all of this work.

48:56

And so the timing of it is very, very important.

Now, if you are somebody who just literally cannot wake up at Daybreak for whatever reason, then you have to to make best with what you have.

And so wake up at sunrise, that's a second best option.

If you wake up at UVA rise, that's another best option.

49:14

But again, there are going to be the sort of you're, you're leaving stuff on the table and you're increasing the risk of certain things going wrong if you don't follow this timing to a certain degree.

And I'm not saying spend all of your time outside, you know, 3-4 hours.

49:30

I'm saying, let's maybe hit 10 to 15 minutes of Daybreak, 10 to 15 minutes at minimum at sunrise if you can at UVA rise.

The same applies there.

And then UVB rise as well.

So it's not like people are being, it's not like I'm, I'm putting out a prescription that is impossible to follow.

49:49

All all of this is actually pretty straightforward once you understand what to do and how to kind of think about it.

It's just amazing when you think about, you know, so-called primitive peoples around the world, like this is just their regular day.

I mean, you just get up and you start your day and all this is happening and you don't have to hack it or program it or, you know, schedule it.

50:09

It's just part of like, it's just called being a human who's alive on Earth.

But we've made so much complexity by such unnatural living that now we're now people are like, you're burdening me with all this.

And it's like, man, I mean, you're talking about just being a human, but OK, so.

50:25

And so sorry, but by the way, there's even been research done on those hunter gatherer tribes.

Like we know that they wake up around Daybreak consistently and they go to bed a few hours after nightfall.

And this has been replicated across multiple hunter gatherer tribes that are halfway across the world from one another with no form of communication.

50:44

And so the way you explain that is basically, yeah, that's the circadian system at work.

Through the light and dark cycle, there is a diurnal foundation upon which we're supposed to relate to the the sleeping and wake cycle.

52:14

It's also been replicated by just about anybody who slept in a tent for more than a couple days or had been somewhere where there's no electricity, right?

I mean, the the technology of electricity, you know, whatever that actually whatever that mysterious Dynamo is, has really altered the way we live.

52:31

And clearly, like if you plotted human health against, you know, a timeline that showed when we gained these technologies, it'd be pretty obvious that they haven't really contributed to our overall well-being in the ways that we think we often think that they have.

But OK, so that first part of the day, you're talking about going out at Daybreak.

52:50

You're talking about going out.

Is this so much easier?

Like where I live, it's pretty rural.

I've got Big East facing glass with a big deck.

I can just step outside first thing in the morning naked if I want.

You know, somebody else is living in Manhattan.

53:06

They got to like go into the hallway, go through like 4 flights of stairs, get out into an artificial Canyon.

Like it's challenging for some.

Like this sounds so simple to somebody living rurally.

It sounds complicated to somebody living in a really stack and pack urban type environment, I imagine.

53:23

It is, and I think that's just the the barrier to entry that comes with modern life.

Unfortunately, there are pros and cons, modern life.

And so if you care about your health to any degree that maintains the protection against chronic disease, that allows you to facilitate vitality throughout old age, these are the things that are going to be really important as a foundation.

53:44

And so, yeah, you're going to have to do what you what you can.

It does that mean opening a window in your high rise, that's better than being behind a closed window for sure, because you're allowing those longer wavelengths of light to scatter and bounce again, Light has some pretty incredible properties.

54:00

So you are getting some benefit on that end.

But ideally, I think that the rule of just go outside as soon as you wake up and and spend some time out there is undefeated because it transcends every circumstance for the most part.

And it applies to everybody and it it gives agency back to people.

54:19

That's what I want people to understand, is that you have control over this.

This is not some mysterious $20,000 biohacker coaching package that you don't have access to because you're just, you just don't have enough money, you know?

That's powerful actually.

54:34

OK.

So as the day starts progressing, is the morning the most important thing like we're front loading this or is the whole day, you know, how does the rest of the day roll out?

I will always say the, the entire picture is most important, but the, the daytime in particular, especially that Daybreak and sunrise is especially key because you're, you are essentially packaging 1001 different benefits.

55:00

You're knocking out, you know, thousands of birds with one stone by getting out at that Daybreak, by getting out at the sunrise.

For example, sunrise light is extremely rich in red and infrared.

And the literature does prove that red and infrared are able to stimulate collagen, elastin and hyaluronic acid.

55:18

So if you're somebody who's purchased a a red or infrared light mask for for skin youthful purposes, you can just achieve the same thing by getting out at sunrise even and especially if it's cold, because temperature is another zytgever that strengthens the circadian amplitude or in other words the circadian strength of that signal.

55:41

So.

Wow, temperature affects the amplitude of the signal.

How colder Better than warmer are you saying?

I want to make sure I understand that.

So cold and warm work for different benefits depending on what season you're in, but cold especially considering the early morning sunrise and in Daybreak, that's, that's just another Zygabra that you can stack on to light to food.

56:07

So an early breakfast is another powerful way to, to create circadian alignment, especially within the digestive system.

And so you can stimulate this by simply going outside or getting a cold shower early in the morning, but that's going to strengthen the signal of circadian alignment.

56:25

I have this idea always that it's very healthy to have a dog because you know, the dog takes you for a walk everyday.

But another thing the dog does, like when we get up in the morning here, we're outside first thing with the dogs, you know, it's like they, they get us outside constantly.

56:44

And so then it's like come in, have breakfast, they want to go back out, we're outside again.

So we're, a lot of this is just happening to us because we're just taking care of our dogs, you know?

So it's not even like, oh, I'm doing this for my circadian rhythm.

It's just like we're doing that already just because we have to, because otherwise we'll feel like, you know, cruel dog owners.

57:02

For some people, they need dogs in order to improve circadian health.

I mean, that's, that's what we'll get you to, to move and and do the work, you know?

All right, great.

And I just want to go back to something you said before about agency.

I think another thing is like if you are living in a stack and pack kind of an environment, a human factory farm kind of operation, like the city, you know, you got to just point your compass towards where you want to end up because it's like maybe you want to end up in the country and that might be a five year or ten year kind of thing, but you got to point your compass there.

57:29

It's not going to happen.

So you know, I think everybody, we have so much upward mobility in this culture that it's like you can kind of if you want to end up there.

But I think it was 19, I might be wrong, but I think it was 1997 where more than 50% of Earth's population went urban.

And you know, since then, you know, more and more people are flooding into the cities and so rural living is getting less and less common.

57:50

So I think that and it's kind of flip flop because it was like, it used to be like you are wealthy if you lived in the city and poor if you lived in the country.

And now it's like you got to kind of have some money to live in the country for the most part these days.

But, but OK, So what about noontime and the effects of when the sun is in the highest point that it's going to get overhead again, Noon is when the sun hits the the Meridian line and at summer solstice, it's as high as it's going to be.

58:16

And at winter solstice, it's going to be as low as it's going to be, but it's going to be still at its highest point at noon.

How important is that light?

Very important.

And this is, this is where a lot of nuance comes in because this is light UVA and UVB at its highest intensity that is often demonized by mainstream dermatology in particular.

58:34

And so after that sunrise portion, about 30 to 45 minutes later, again, this will depend on latitude, altitude, all these factors, you'll get UVA rise.

That's where UVA starts to come into the picture.

And that's where you have a gentle UVA rise to where you have a UV of one, maybe even 2.

58:52

And then about 30 to 45 minutes after that you have UVB rise.

So that early morning period is a great place for a lot of people to start sunbathing with very little downside unless you're like extremely compromised, like you have severe vitiligo.

You could potentially burn in those scenarios.

59:09

But for most people who have a healthy skin baseline and metabolic health or who are unhealthy metabolically, that's a great place to start the sunbathing practice.

And that's what we'll prime certain things like milanogenesis, which is the creation of melanin.

And melanin is fundamentally photo protective.

59:25

So it's going to work as nature's sunscreen in your favor in various ways, and it's going to build up upon itself for greater photo protection as well.

And that also applies to lighter skinned people, redheads.

I've seen some incredible at at this point, hundreds of anecdotes from lighter skinned people in redheads especially that have stopped burning through the circadian lined heliotherapy framework.

59:48

Yeah, it's very potent for people who have previously had a a pretty damaging relationship with sunlight exposure.

And that changes the game once you open those doors for those individuals.

And so as you progress towards noon, of course the UV index climb climbs up and UVA and UVB become more tense.

1:00:07

And that's where you have to be a lot more intentional and you have to be very diligent about building that adaptation of melanin so that you don't burn and so that you're able to take advantage of the the stronger, more intense UV index.

Now for lighter skinned people, and even for darker skinned people to a certain degree, there's always a limit.

1:00:26

You're not going to spend 3 to 4 hours in AUV index of 12 while the humidity is at 90%.

That's insane.

And, and there's a reason why animals seek sun and then seek shade.

It's, it's a fundamental duality.

And, and so that's what I want people to understand is that UV light is not inherently damaging to the skin or to the human body.

1:00:48

Mainstream dermatology uses flawed assumptions, meaning their entire paradigm is flawed because it's circadian divorce.

So their assessment on DNA damage from UV, their assessment of photo waging, their assessment of skin cancers in UV, all of these are are flawed in thousands of ways that can be broken down pretty easily.

1:01:06

And you need to develop a healthy relationship with UVA and UVB to where you have the adaptation.

Because if you're somebody like the modern person who uses SPF 50 chronically, who wears some sunglasses chronically, who is chronically circadian disrupted, you are quite literally creating the conditions for further photosensitivity, meaning that you aren't developing the adaptation.

1:01:28

And so you are a weaker Organism over time and you'll never develop a healthy relationship.

I want to jump in on that really quick.

So you're, so I'm hearing sun, excessive sunblock, sunglasses.

This is like I'm, I'm using crutches to walk and my leg muscles atrophy.

1:01:47

And then I put the crutches down and I'm like, see, I need the crutches.

I can't walk.

And, and you're like, no, you, it's because you haven't slowly built up the musculature to be able to handle that load.

And you're sort of saying, similarly, if I'm using sunblock or I'm using sunglasses, I'm shielding myself from that and therefore I'm, I'm further weakening my ability to tolerate it.

1:02:08

Then if I go without it, I go, see, I got burned.

And that's because I've created those conditions.

Yeah, that's really the root of it.

But there's the problem is that there are also other problems that manifest out of that because they're reductionist interventions that don't consider the circadian system.

1:02:24

And so with SPFI mean the lowest level of SPF, SPF15 blocks upwards of 90% of UVB.

Again, UVB is the only wavelength range that can make the vitamin D3 conversion, and that's even more problematic when you consider most people are using SPF 50, which blocks 98 to 99% of UVB.

1:02:41

OK, so you block.

UVB is how I'm UVB is how we convert vitamin D.

But which frequency of light, which wavelength of light is responsible for melanogenesis for for a tan?

1:02:58

It's it's not really a wavelength per SE, I would say it's more about the wavelength range or Spectra.

So I consider UVA and UVB, both forms of UV, to be important to that process.

OK, got it.

There's some distinction that I forgot to.

1:03:14

I mean UVB I think creates fundamentally the the tan and then UVA oxidizes the melanin that already pre exists within the skin.

So they work together in in more ways than one.

A little side note here, I'm kind of curious, just your opinion on no, we're living in that era of like people are confusing the facsimile of things for the thing, right?

1:03:33

So it's like you see all these guys on T who who we used to call it steroids.

Now they just feel like don't know it's a supplement and everybody looks jacked, but they're not necessarily strong or like, you know, women plumping their faces up and Botox in their face.

1:03:50

And you end up with like trying to create this look, but you don't have it's not the real thing.

You know, I'm seeing so much of that and now I'm seeing people injecting Melano tan too and getting these tans that aren't real tans.

I'm just curious your thoughts on that.

Do those tans work as tans are?

1:04:06

Do they, are they photo protective?

And, and what just what do you think about this, this idea of sunless tanning that we're seeing now?

Yeah, I mean, I have a a philosophical problem with it because you're just divorced from the circadian perspective.

And so you're not really doing, again, like the full spectrum is not just about a tan in the same way that vitamin D is not just about.

1:04:25

So there, there's that point to it.

We do need to understand that it is, it is still fundamentally photo protective.

So these people who are lighter skinned, they're, they're like Oompa Loompas practically.

They're able to spend more time in the sun.

But again, like what are the 2nd and 3rd order?

1:04:41

Concept.

Of that like what happens in a lighter skinned person when you just stimulate melanocyte function to the extreme will that contribute to Melanoma will that protect you from it I just don't know there's.

Nobody knows yet, but it does.

1:04:56

So actually though, if I'm hearing you right, though, theoretically, like, let's say somebody was like going to go to Australia from Scotland and they could potentially art develop that kind of a tan and then get there and have the photo protective benefits of it.

So that maybe there's some tool use there.

1:05:14

And that I've never thought about that.

I just, I, I'm watching folks around me take that and get these tans where they, they, they look absurdly dark.

I mean, it's just, it's amazing.

Actually, I saw my brother in a photograph from our gym recently and I was teasing him.

I was like, because there was a what, there was a black dude right next to him And it was like, wow, you guys are like the same amount of melanin.

1:05:34

And my brother's a white guy, you know what I mean?

And it was like he the level of dark he got from it blew my mind because he's not out in the sun that much.

Yeah.

And and that's that's definitely I think more detrimental if you're somebody who uses MT1 or MT2 irrespective of the side effects that are are potentially there.

1:05:53

Again, it's taking away from full spectrum sunlight for some people.

You can make the argument that it also places people in more of that full spectrum because they have better photo protective capability.

So just depends on the individual really.

OK.

But so not a specific wavelength that's causing the tan, it's UV generally speaking.

1:06:12

And then I wanted to just touch on, you've brought it up a couple times.

Could you explain what window glass how it interacts with solar light?

Very nuanced conversation that even modern dermatology admits is a real problem because they don't recommend that you get sunlight through glass, but for some reason they just don't understand that it's the spectral shift in the filtered sunlight as opposed to the sunlight itself that is.

1:06:39

Right, right.

And so, yeah, this depends on the type of glass.

There are many types of glass out there that change the spectrum in different ways.

But low emission glass is the one that we we really want to focus on because that's the one society is obsessed with.

That's what all the modern cars have for the most part, the new buildings.

1:06:56

And the primary reason why they use this is for energy efficiency purposes.

So if you're in an apartment building or an office building, they block the heat component, which is the infrared.

They have multiple coatings on that low E glass that prevents the heat from coming in.

Therefore, you don't have to turn on the air conditioning, which would then raise cost.

1:07:14

So it's all about energy efficiency.

It doesn't take circadian health or skin health or any of this, this stuff into account.

And that's a problem because if you look at low E glass, it will basically dramatically reduce the red and infrared, which are the balancing forces.

It will pretty much block the UVB depending on what situation you're in, whether you're in a car, windshield, driver side, so forth.

1:07:38

And it will basically leave UVA and blue light untouched, which are shorter, higher energy wavelengths that are very damaging in isolation, especially together.

And so modern dermatology brings up the truck driver case study.

1:07:55

This is a one of one case study where this truck driver drove a truck for 28 years.

One side of his face completely damaged, relatively speaking, to the other side.

And I attribute that to the fact that he had his windows up for the most part.

I think if you look at most truck drivers, their habitual thing is to leave the window up as opposed to down.

1:08:14

And that's problematic when it's exposed to your skin chronically because you are essentially selecting or manipulating these wavelengths to where all of the mechanisms within the skin are taking a huge hit over time.

And so UVB is important for skin health.

1:08:30

It's important for vitamin D that it's it's also been tied to skin texture and elasticity.

If you reduce the red and infrared, then you're not getting as much of that collagen, elastin, hyaluronic acid signal to create youthful skin components.

And then you're damaging or accelerating photo damage through that UVA and blue combination because that is just, it's no bueno for melanocytes, fiberglass rinse cells, so forth.

1:08:57

So if you were to ask a typical dermatologist who does, who is divorced from circadian, all the circadian information, if you ask them what frequency of light is most damaging to the skin, they're going to say UVA, correct?

That's typically what they would.

1:09:13

Yeah, but funny enough, they probably won't mention the nanometer wavelength.

OK, but but that's when I if I was just going to Google it.

It's like UVA is causing the damage and you're saying that these windows let the UVA through.

So in other words, the the part that in isolation is the most damaging to skin is getting through that window.

1:09:31

Also, if you're sitting in front of the window all day getting sun, it feels good.

It still feels good.

You're like, oh, this feels nice.

You might even think, oh, this is healthy.

But what's happening is you're not getting that whole light anymore.

You're getting like processed light through the the glass and you're getting the parts that are sort of more damaging to the skin without the parts that would balance that to keep it from damaging your skin.

1:09:54

So you have a higher chance of skin damage, accelerated skin aging, even maybe Melanoma because you're not getting the full whole sunlight.

Yes, so.

You're, you're getting that UVA and blue light in isolation on the skin.

And again, the, the thing that holds this together is the fact that you are just disentangling it from that full spectrum in the synergistic relationships that these wavelengths have to one another.

1:10:19

And so that's the core of the problem.

The problem is not the light itself, it's the context in which the light is received, which is why things like tanning beds or isolated blue light from conventional lighting sources is so damaging.

And that that's what I want people to understand.

And so the dermatologist will say that UVA is UVAA stands for aging and then UVBB stands for burns.

1:10:42

But again, like they're, they're epistemological assumptions are so wrong because they're using in their primary literature the isolated UV on nocturnal rodents that are not designed for UV or in vitro, which is disconnected from the complexity of the skin barrier.

And so that's another fun thing we can get into.

1:10:59

But yeah, it's just, it's just something, not something they appreciate.

I want to also quickly, while we're talking about glass, I want to talk about sunglasses.

I, man, I hate them.

I, I'm, I'll say this and people will bring up a bunch of images of me wearing them because I'm fishing, fishing polarized glasses are really very helpful as an angler to, you know, catching fish.

1:11:23

But outside of that context, man, I just can't stand them.

And I've never really liked them.

But you, there's so many people who just seem like they can't go without them.

They always have them on the back of their hat.

Even if they're not wearing them, they're on the back of their neck.

They're always, they're on the whatever little lanyard thing, the Crokies who just, I don't know, there's this sense of like there's something that people think is so cool about them.

1:11:46

And whenever I see them, I think like your talent.

I don't know.

I don't know the science.

I'm very curious to hear from you, but I'm always like, you're telling yourself it's cloudy out, I think.

You know, you're blocking the lux, which is the light intensity, you're blocking large parts of the spectrum, which is a big problem because the eyes are the gateway to the circadian system for circadian signaling, for hormone production, for neurotransmitter production.

1:12:09

And there's a lot of biological mechanisms to support all of that.

But I think it's a, it's kind of in line with the fact that in in a similar way where you use SPF 50 chronically, you're not developing the adaptation.

You're doing the very same thing with sunglasses used chronically because the eyes are built for peripheral full spectrum exposure and so things like intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells.

1:12:31

The melanopsin or blue light sensor within them is quite literally designed to receive bright light during the day for photo adaptation, to allow your eyes to adapt different light levels in the environment.

And even further to that point, you have dopamine that's produced in the retina that also further facilitates that photo adaptation.

1:12:51

So when somebody says they have sensitive eyes, quote UN quote sensitive eyes, for the most part, it's not genetic.

It's just the fact that you are blocking that Hilux signal and you're down regulating dopamine from the retina, you're down regulating melanopsin function.

1:13:09

And as a result, that's a side effect of it.

I I'm my eyes, I feel kind of sensitive.

I'm a squinter out there in the sun, but I just squat, just squint.

I don't know, I'd rather just squint.

Is there any macular degeneration or anything like that that's been associated with sunglasses at this point with with sunglasses or sunlight?

1:13:29

Sunglasses like have has there been any studies?

To show that there are long term negative effects from sunglasses outside of just impacts on circadian rhythm?

Certain.

Probably not I.

Haven't come across them.

I I wish somebody had the incentive to run those studies, by the way.

1:13:46

Yeah, but yeah, Macular.

Degeneration and and all of these.

Different eye manifestations I think for the most part can be traced to chronic circadian disruption as opposed to the full spectrum itself inherently.

And that makes sense when you start to understand that the eyes are circadian organs.

1:14:02

And so the opsins, the light sensitive proteins, the mitochondria, the melanin in your eyes, all of these are geared around getting that peripheral full spectrum exposure.

And this makes sense from an evolutionary sense.

1:14:17

Like we didn't have sunglasses.

There were certain indigenous tribes that had some pretty cool, like sunglass type of of, you know, like the Inuit slit things that they'd make, yeah.

But I mean, that's because you're out on snow fields and you're still getting light through those.

1:14:33

They're not truly blocking out light, they're just limiting it.

Exactly.

And even like a Doctor of the Cerolier.

In his early work they use sunglasses, but they weren't modern sunglasses.

They were actually glasses made out of quartz.

And quartz is one of those few mediums that allows the full spectrum unadulterated pretty much through really because because quartz.

1:14:55

And.

Glass the only.

Difference is structure at a molecular level, right?

Quartz is silica dioxide but in a crystalline form, and glass is silica dioxide in an amorphous form.

That's why glass shatters, but quartz breaks along cleavage lines and so same, that's interesting.

1:15:12

Same ingredients, different structure.

That's a kind of a powerful What's that?

The hole is greater than the sum of his parts.

Exactly what about?

OK, so as a.

Podcaster when you bring guests on, I'd say a full 25% of them show up wearing those orange glasses.

1:15:28

You know, everybody's blue block in these days.

I've not gotten into that.

I every time I've tried them, I've been like, it's cumbersome to me.

I'm like, what about the light coming in from the side?

I, I just doesn't make sense to me and then I worry now I'm looking through an artificial media.

I notice you're not wearing them.

I don't know if you wear them at night.

1:15:44

I'm just curious your thoughts on that.

That's become quite a big.

I mean, you know, it's such a huge hack now that you just see people wearing them.

Sometimes I'm like, it's the middle of the day.

Why do you have those on?

Yeah, it it's an interesting rabbit hole, I think.

For for me personally, I don't wear the wear them during the day.

1:16:01

I certainly wear them at night.

I'm very I'm practically religious about that.

Using the dark orange more specifically, I think the red is a bit too intense to where you can't see.

I even use the dark orange for driving purposes as well to prevent the LED.

Helen Some people can do that, some people can't.

1:16:18

So just be careful in that end.

But the clear lens blue blockers are pretty much useless.

They're not going to do anything for you in terms of blocking shorter wavelengths.

The yellow ones are a step ahead in terms of blocking some blue.

Those are primarily used for the daytime if somebody wants to.

1:16:33

But I find that with a consistent sun practice, your body basically holds on to that circadian signal.

It, it allows for proper mitochondrial function and you just get the benefits without having to go to the extent of wearing blue blockers inside.

1:16:53

And so there's, there's almost like some, some compound effect to it.

Like, you know, my dad had macular degeneration.

He wanted to be a pilot but couldn't because of that condition.

So, and my mom so wears reading glasses to this day.

And so there, there is a genetic component to eyesight.

But I have 2016 vision at 30 years old.

1:17:10

So I'm curious to to be that sort of proof of work into the future to show that things like full spectrum exposure, red and infrared peripherally into the eyes to support the mitochondria is healthy and that, you know, you don't have to deal with poor eyesight for the rest of your life.

1:17:27

In fact, circadian eyesight regeneration is something that I've I've touched on quite deeply and I've seen a lot of anecdotes of people who've improved eyesight to some degree.

Do you have any thoughts for somebody who chronically wears?

Prescription glasses and or contact lenses, because I would assume that those as a media form filter light to some degree as well.

1:17:47

Should those people be exposing their eyes to some of the sunlight?

Obviously not staring into the sun, but should they be exposing their eyes to some of the sunlight without those on from time to time?

Should they make a practice of that?

Yeah, as much as possible.

I'll go a level.

Deeper or further and say that if you want to potentially regenerate the eyes to some degree and improve vision, then I would make sure to implement that as much as possible.

1:18:14

And so I, if somebody comes to me with contact lenses, I usually tell them to graduate from that to full prescription reading glasses because it's just easier to take off.

And so you don't have to deal with the, the whole process of taking contact lenses off.

1:18:31

And also you don't have other issues like the forever chemicals in a lot of contact lenses, standard contact lenses also block I think UV and blue.

Most of them today definitely block UV, but I'm not sure on the blue end.

And so you are also getting that alteration of the full spectrum, which I think has some, some pretty profound impacts on.

1:18:53

Yeah.

OK, so I left us.

Off at noon time and got us onto this glass conversation.

And I just want to give space to talk about what's happening with light in the second-half of the day.

Yeah, so after the highest.

Intensity, UV and UVB, then you crescendo into evening time where again you have more of a gentle off ramp in a similar way that you have that gentle on ramp from Daybreak and sunrise forward.

1:19:19

And so heading into the evening time, this is really just about getting lower UV index.

It's it's just about getting full spectrum exposure as much as you can, grounding as much as possible with that, because I do believe that grounding plays a, a big role in, in this whole sunbathing practice.

1:19:36

In other words, having having contact with the ground.

Electrically, yeah, people talk about the photoelectric effect.

You know you.

Produce more, you get more free electrons from the negatively charged Earth.

And that theoretically should help you improve your photon capture, so to speak, because photoelectric effect is a combination of photons, electrons, so forth.

1:19:58

Like like you're photosynthesizing like a plant a little bit.

Yeah, there, there's been some controversy around that, the human.

Photo metabolism and all that.

But it's, I, I think there's some real element to that to some degree.

But even time for me is just about a relaxation practice trying to get sunset.

1:20:15

And once you head into the, the deeper parts of sunset, that's where you started to, to get into the territory of nightfall.

And so the sunset portion is a wind down period, whereas the sunrise portion is a, a lift up period.

1:20:31

You know, you have the cortisol awakening response.

But during that sunset portion, you start to see the increase in melatonin.

And then when nightfall occurs, that's where I enter dark mode.

And that's where the dark part of the light and dark cycle kicks in, which is very important for things like DNA repair, circadian clocks for endogenous melatonin, which is anti cancer, anti-inflammatory, antiviral.

1:20:55

And that's where you see darkness until pretty much early bedtime.

And then you repeat the process full on.

I have this.

Thing that keeps coming up for me when I talk to folks about darkness at night and that's that it's not dark at night.

1:21:12

And so I'm, I would love to get your feedback on this because, you know, from my perspective, if I'm sleeping outside, like it's just not dark at night and then, you know, it's, it's darker, there's moonlight, there's sunlight, and then that follows the arrhythmic, you know, wave of full moon to new moon.

1:21:29

So obviously it's much darker on a new moon night and then it's much lighter on a full moon.

I mean, so bright on full moon nights that I see my shadow or can, can operate pretty well in the evening.

So, so I'll have people tell me that I should black out my windows.

I live, like I said, rurally on acreage.

1:21:46

You know, my bedroom windows face E&E and South.

So it's really nice at sunrise.

Like that sounds right in my face.

If I'm in my bed, you know, it's like right there.

I know it's sunrise, but so I'm being woken up by that good light.

But when I'm sleeping, you know, I see the light of the stars and the light of the moon with a southern facing window.

1:22:04

If it's a full moon, that light's shining in the room.

What are your thoughts on that?

Do you just, yeah, I'll just leave that hanging.

Like what are your thoughts on all that?

And how important is it that it is truly blacked out versus natural light?

I do not have a problem with Starlight.

1:22:22

Moonlight because those of.

From the evolutionary standpoint, those are obviously going to be circadian appropriate light sources by the mere nature of how human beings have developed over time on the planet.

And so if you look at even moonlight, for example, or fire light, I think fire light ties into this as well.

1:22:41

They are pretty, they're relatively bright on the eye, but if you look at the Lux, it's an incredibly dim.

So it almost has this local effect, more so where the the surrounding area immediate to you is, is pretty brightly lit compared to your eye.

1:22:59

But if you look at the lux, it's like 12345 lux.

And anything under 10 lux at night is really the ideal that we want to hit in order to prevent endogenous melatonin suppression.

So I find the Moonlight Starlight Firelight to be incredible in that regard because you can use it as much as you want and it's not going to impact the circadian system negatively at all when I'm in bed at night.

1:23:23

It's an opportunity for me to read.

I don't always have, you know, as much time during the day to read as I'd like.

I use a headlamp with a red light.

I'm curious how you feel about that.

Like I said, it's like an important window of time.

You know, my wife's asleep.

1:23:38

I can, you know, read till I can't kind of a thing.

I fall asleep.

How do you feel about red light at night for that kind of a purpose?

I like it if you don't get it from.

Panels, because I think panels like photobiomodulation light therapy panels can be pretty bright.

1:23:57

So could that potentially disrupt melatonin production?

Maybe I, I think it could just because of the the light intensity to come off of those things.

But when it comes to, you know, red, infrared, amber, anything from like an incandescent bulb or firelight or even like a company such as Hugo who has those like clip on lights, book lights that you can use.

1:24:21

Those are fantastic because they fall into the the light wavelength ranges that won't suppress melatonin.

And so the most important thing is that you want to avoid the isolated blue and the isolated green.

Now, what you'll notice in firelight is that you have a little bit of green and blue, maybe even purple.

1:24:37

But it's not nearly.

It's not.

Yeah, it just doesn't matter because.

It's so balanced.

By the infrared and in the low, low, yeah, OK, is there.

Anything that I'm leaving out, I feel like I would love to have a whole other conversation with you at some point about selecting lighting for our homes, about interacting with technology and the light that's coming off of that.

1:25:01

But for the sake of understanding this conversation today, which has been about sort of how to not just optimize, but almost like reactivate our circadian alignment, Have we left anything out?

We've talked sort of sunrise to, to bedtime.

1:25:19

I I think the relationship.

In the context around UV is very important.

So if you're somebody who wants to get adequate UVA and UVB and you want to start the circadian sunbathing practice, you need to be diligent about the circadian alignment.

Because if you look at the, excuse me, if you look at the research, it's relatively new research, but circadian alignment is the dividing line between whether UV gets integrated properly into the human body or whether it goes on to create these DNA mutations from DNA lesions is whether you're circadian aligned or circadian disrupted.

1:25:55

Sorry, I didn't hear that one more time.

I think I heard that.

Right, but say that one more time for me.

So basically the dividing line between whether UV.

Light becomes integrated properly into the body to where it becomes beneficial or whether it becomes, you know, at the scene of damage to where you have adna lesion skin cancer.

1:26:14

We're talking about melanomas, skin cancers.

OK, yeah, because Adna lesion itself is the.

Low level damage UV is supposed to create.

That's a natural by product.

You have 6 four photo products.

You have thiamine dimers, cyclobutane, pyrimidine dimers.

1:26:31

The human body is supposed to create these things in response to UV light for hormetic purposes.

But the problem is modern dermatology conflates adna lesion with adna mutation and to make that jump you need to have the circadian controlled repair systems like nucleotide excision repair fail completely in order to go from that lesion to a mutation.

1:26:53

So This is why I'm such an advocate of circadian alignment, because if you're somebody who gets high intensity UV but you don't prime at sunrise or get Daybreak and you don't get dark nights, you're quite literally creating the conditions to fail circadian repair.

1:27:11

And when repair becomes more apparent than the when damage overwhelms repair, then you get the conditions for DNA mutations.

And that's what we want to avoid because that would increase the risk of cancers of any kind, especially skin cancers.

1:27:28

So so a great recipe for skin.

Cancer would be like, I get two or three hours of like, noontime's sun exposure, but I also wake up and spend the whole morning in a dark apartment and I spent the evening staring into light boxes of blue light.

1:27:46

But I go out and I get that intense midday sun every day.

Like, that's my recipe for skin cancer, essentially.

Yeah.

I mean there, there's going to be more to it, but people do need.

To appreciate that UV is a double edged sword and so it's all about the context.

I think that in a circadian aligned human evolutionary appropriate environment, UV light does not cause cancer whatsoever.

1:28:07

In fact, it's almost purely protective against it because you're in a you're allowing the circadian system to work as it should.

Repair is balanced with damage.

You're making melatonin, you're making vitamin D appropriately.

It's only the modern lifestyle that creates the conditions for UV to become to jump from AU stressor to a distressor.

1:28:29

In the same way that if you exercise chronically but you don't get any sleep, you're of course going to break down your body and cause problems, right?

Like water can hydrate me, but it can also drown me.

So it's a it's a double hedged sword, while it's really powerful.

Are there any, is there any books that you recommend listeners, that you're like, oh, this is the book on this topic.

1:28:50

This is like my number one.

Or is this something, because I'm kind of getting the impression you've compiled a lot of this, especially, it sounds like, by looking at the research that's in the medical literature, not, you know, but is there any references that you're like, oh, if you want to learn more about it, I'd recommend you go here.

Yeah.

1:29:07

There's no one book that's going to cover it comprehensively.

That might be an opportunity for myself in the future.

Sounds like it.

Writing a book sounds overwhelming to be honest, so.

We'll see.

It's I can already tell it's in your heads and if that you know.

Just from the outside, it's there.

Yeah, we'll we'll see.

Hopefully I can I can definitely make.

1:29:23

Something along those lines.

Book coach, yeah, for sure.

I would say anything from John OTT JOHNOTT is a great start.

He studied light in relation to mental health and a whole bunch of other sort of sub sub sub topics.

1:29:41

The what's the There was an ophthalmologist in the early 1900s, Doctor Fritz Holwich, Professor Fritz Holwich, He was an ophthalmologist who studied light in relation to cataracts.

He removed cataracts from different species, including human beings.

1:29:58

And lo and behold, when the light gets unfiltered into the eyes peripherally, it had a massive endocrine effect on the body to where it impacts melatonin, cortisol, so forth.

I would say outside of that, there's a a good new book called In Defense of Sunlight that basically put puts chinks in the armor of mainstream dermatology and and kind of reassesses our understanding of skin cancers in in the relationship that UV light has to that.

1:30:26

I believe Rowan Jacobson is the author.

But yeah, a lot of the books are old, to be honest, but there's not many to come around.

And where do people access more of your work?

Because I I know your work from Instagram, but you have a sub stack as well.

Yeah, the The Circadian Classroom is the publication on sub.

1:30:44

Stack so all of that can be found on my Instagram or X at ZK Daharge ZAIDKDAHHAJ and a lot of it's like bi directional.

So if you're on the X or you're on the Instagram, you'll most of the links.

I love your Instagram page the the kind of memes that you publish.

1:31:01

Are really fantastic useful and nice to look at actually.

So it's a nice curation on your page.

Also, do you want to kind of plug your program because I see that you have that as well.

Yeah, so I do work with people one.

On one, but I've kind of moved away from it just because I, I've liked the the sort of style of the course.

1:31:21

So I have a course called the 8020 course and that's really the thing that I've poured a lot of my research and, and kind of philosophy on circadian health into and it's helped quite a bit of people.

But that can also be found on on all social platforms.

And that covers everything from the philosophical, the historical, the scientific, and it's also practical.

1:31:40

So it, it's really designed to cater to beginners, to intermediates, to experts.

I just really want to hit all bases with that.

And it's constantly being updated as well with new information.

So if somebody gets the course, they get all the lifetime updates as well.

There's these moments I.

1:31:55

Have where I like moments of clarity, where I think how insane it is that like truly insane it is that.

The world needs a.

Voice like yours to tell them that the sun is OK.

It's just like, how did we get here?

You know, it's shocking.

Like like I feel that about my own self to be like, it's important to connect with nature.

1:32:12

It's like, wow, that should be a major wake up call.

And yet the world really truly needs a voice like yours.

I just want to say I've learned so much talking to you today.

I really appreciate all the work that you've put into learning all of this and you know you obviously have a mind to retain it and to process it and to share it back.

1:32:31

So great work and I just really appreciate your time today.

Thank you.

Thank you, Daniel.

It was a very fun time and hopes hopefully we can.

Do Part 2.

I would really like that actually.

All sorts of stuff.

Maybe Part 3 as well.

Thanks, Dan.

Thank you.

Transcript: The Mystery of the Shroud — Dr. Cheryl White #011

0:01

The Shroud of Turin.

You've probably heard about it.

It's the alleged burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

I know of no other historical or archaeological artifact that has had more science brought to bear on.

It, I mean, if you presented this in a murder case or something you have to, I think you'd be easily convicted with the load of evidence that we're talking about.

0:20

The image is less than a Micron D It's about 150th of a human hair.

Something came into contact with that cloth.

Some energy, some light, some radiant source.

We're talking about a pulse of light that can only be produced by a laser in the 21st century.

0:37

To discredit it, you've got to have a medieval forger who has a technique no one's ever seen before then or since then.

He uses human blood, Semitic typed blood, and then he gets soil samples from Jerusalem and applies them in all the right places.

0:54

And that, yeah, I mean, all of this starts to get to be too preposterous.

My guest today is Doctor Cheryl White, but before I bring her on, I want to take a moment to address today's episode because it's a little bit outside the realm of what I'm normally talking about here on the show.

1:13

And that topic is the Shroud of Turin.

You've probably heard about it.

It's the alleged burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

Now, like a lot of people, I grew up just assuming this was a forgery, a fake, some kind of religious artifact that people wanted to believe in but did so on no real basis.

1:32

Now, I grew up in Protestant circles where it's very common to think of Catholic relics, again, as just sort of forgeries or fakes or unimportant in some way.

And for Catholics out there, I mean, no offense by that, but, you know, you probably understand that tension that exists between Catholics and Protestants in regard to certain things like this.

1:50

And it's just how I was raised.

And it wasn't until I accidentally heard an interview about it.

I was painting in my living room, and I had a YouTube video on in the background.

And when it ended, the next video after just sort of played automatically.

And because I was covered in paint, I didn't go over there to stop it.

2:08

And it happened to be an interview about the shout of Turin.

And, you know, initially, again, I just thought, like, this is silly.

And then within a few minutes of hearing a litany of facts, I'd never heard actual facts, scientific facts.

I was stunned.

2:24

And at the end of that, I went on to listen to several more interviews, and then eventually I watched some films on the topic.

And that led me to want to read the probably most official book on it, which is the report on the Shout of Turin.

2:40

That is the the scientific report done by the Sturt team who had the opportunity to spend a week with the Shroud in 1978.

And these were folks from MIT, NASA, the Jet Propulsion Lab, who all thought they were going to go there and quickly prove that it was a forgery.

2:57

But at the end of that week, they came out saying, hey, we can't really explain what this is, but it's not art, it's something else.

That led me to want to read several more books on it.

So I just thought I'd show you a sampling of some of the books I've read on this topic.

3:12

And I do that just to sort of say this is something that I've come to take very seriously over the years.

I've now consumed just countless, not only books, but many, many hours of audio and video on the topic as well.

I'm pretty deep in, and I'd say that my belief is in that, you know, high 90 percentile because the facts speak for themselves.

3:36

Whatever you think it is, it is definitely one of the most interesting artifacts on the Earth, and it's one of the most scientifically and rigorously studied artifacts on the Earth.

You know, I often hear it said that more scientific hours from more disciplines have been put into the study of the Shroud than any other relic or artifact on Earth.

4:00

So whether or not you believe that it's real, I invite you to at least hear the argument for it.

And if you think it's a forgery, I invite you to explain how many many have tried.

No ones been able to accurately replicate it and the fact remains that it's essentially a photograph from the ancient world.

4:24

It is not art.

So whether you think it's the greatest hopes of all time or you think it's a literal Easter egg that's been tucked into reality to leave a witness to the alleged events of 2000 years ago in Jerusalem, it's up for you to decide.

4:41

But I hope this is just the first of many interviews I do on this topic because as you can probably tell from the way I'm talking about, it's something I'm really, really passionate about.

Now, like I mentioned at the beginning, my guest today is Doctor Cheryl White.

She's a professor of history at Louisiana State University, where she holds the endowed Hubert Humphreys Professorship.

5:03

She currently serves on the board of directors of the Shroud of Turin Education and Research Association, and she's published original research from the Vatican Secret Archives on the history of the Shroud.

Doctor White served as the historical consultant on the original Shroud of Turin exhibit developed for the Museum of the Bible, and she's a lecturer for the Smithsonian Institute.

5:27

She's a regular consultant and contributor to The History Channel, and she's featured in a forthcoming documentary on the Shroud.

She works closely with the Center for the International Study of the Shroud in Turin on collaborative projects.

Her new book, The Shroud in the Third Millennium, Confronting the Limits of Human Knowledge, is available now.

5:49

Doctor Cheryl White, welcome to the show.

You, Daniel, I'm happy to be here.

Man, I couldn't be more excited to tell.

My wife's been making fun of me all morning because of how excited I am.

But this is a topic I'm really passionate about.

I wanted to kind of start off maybe just defining this term, syndenology.

6:08

I think it's so fascinating that there's a whole field of research dedicated around this topic.

But what is syndenology and how did you become a syndenologist?

So syndinology comes from the both of the the Latin syndome and it, it means of course, burial shroud, burial linen.

6:29

So syndinology is simply the study of a specific burial linen.

The shroud that's held in Turin, Italy today, it's also come to be extended to another cloth that's that's held in Oviedo, Spain that we may be able to talk about as well, that the pseudarum of Oviedo, which is the other cloth that John mentions in his Gospel in the tomb.

6:50

The the one that's folded up right, you know I grew up in.

Protestant churches and so.

For me, the idea of relics aren't really, you know, something that Protestants talk about or think about.

7:06

And I always heard of the Shroud of Turin because all of this evidence emerged essentially during my lifetime, a lot of the scientific evidence, but it was something I just always kind of brushed off.

I never really thought about it.

And by chance, it was a couple years ago, maybe a few years ago now, 2022 probably.

7:26

I was, I was painting and just put on a podcast in the background.

It was about the Shroud of Turin.

And I almost had a meltdown.

I couldn't believe that I had not been exposed to this information and that no one had ever told me about this.

Since then, and it's only been a few years, I've seen this exploding across, I guess the podcast sphere.

7:46

You know, in all of these YouTube videos, it seems like we're in this like renaissance moment.

Tell me a little bit about how you you got involved in this and what you've seen play out over these last few years because it seems like it's an exciting time for the Shroud.

I think it's probably the most exciting time in Shroud studies in decades, literally decades.

8:05

And and I've been at this a very long time.

So I was an undergraduate history major in the early mid 1980s when the very first peer reviewed science began to be published about this claw that was all coming out of that 1978 research project.

8:22

And, and, and at that time I was, I was pulled into the to the incredible mystery and, and maybe not even as much as I was pulled into the mystery in 1988 when the radiocarbon dating results were published and told the whole world that could be no older than the year 1260.

8:43

Well, I'm, I was by that time in Graduate School and I'm a medievalist.

This is this is kind of the age I live in.

And so when someone told me this cloth was from the 13th or 14th century, I said there's no way.

There's no way.

There's no artistic process.

There's no, there's nothing that could produce an image that complex in the 21st century.

9:03

So don't try to convince me that this is a medieval artifact and it's just never turned me loose.

The mystery of this has has actually, I think really ramped up in the last, just in the last decade because that radiocarbon dating I think is seriously in doubt because of some, some work done in 2017.

9:24

So, so I don't, I don't think that there's, there's been a more exciting time to be looking at this clock since we first learned the complexity of it in the 1980s.

And when you're talking about the early 80s, you're talking about the strip team and their research.

9:43

I have that book actually, you know, on the bookshelf back there.

It's just again of such a fascinating story.

I think maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's back up a little bit, OK, What the shroud itself is for people who have heard of it, and I want to preface it with this question.

9:59

When you hear people say this is the most studied artifact on Earth, I hear that repeated quite a bit, or people saying there's more and hours on this or more interdisciplinary research.

Is that true to you?

When you hear that, does that ring true?

Pyramids and things like that, you know, Is that true?

10:17

Yeah, I do think that there's there's truth in it, in that of course we can't quantify that.

I can't tell you how many hundreds of thousands and thousands of hours per discipline.

But but I do think it qualitatively rings true when you look at all of the peer reviewed science that came out of this, even even in the beginning in the 1980s, you've got dozens of peer reviewed articles that appear.

10:41

And if you look at the field of Shroud studies today and see all of the different disciplines represented, I think that it it rings true.

I know of no other historical or archaeological artifact that has had more science brought to bear on it.

You mentioned the pyramids.

I think that's an interesting an interesting parallel.

10:58

The structure architecturally probably has been studied more than other structures.

But then when you speak of true like historical artifacts, I don't know of anything else.

So yeah, I think that does ring true.

Yeah.

11:14

And what is the, what is the shroud that we're talking about for people?

So we're talking about a cloth that was held in Turin, Italy today.

So that's therefore its name, Shroud of Turin.

It has a 14 foot by three proximately 3 foot strip of linen cloth that that bears the forensically accurate and anatomically perfect image of a man who has some pretty unique wounds.

11:40

And really the image on the cloth is, it's interesting to us, not because not, not just because we can't reproduce the formation process, but because the the man who's depicted there, this forensic image is someone who has been scourged with a specific type of weapon that we can reproduce forensically from the wounds.

12:05

This man has been crucified.

He was capped with something thorny on his head that left, well, something that leftover 50 puncture wounds in the scalp and the nape of the neck, and he's been pierced in the right side, right between the 5th and 6th ribs.

12:22

Again, a forensic wound that we know a lot about.

So no one looks at the image on this cloth and says, Gee, I wonder who that man is supposed to be?

You know, it only fits one, one person of history.

12:39

And so that's the reason we're so interested in.

It's so compelling is, is the the combination of the complexity of the image.

But most specifically, there's there's a person there.

There's a person.

12:56

When you tell this story, you know, I think you and I probably agree that this cloth goes back 2000 years.

But right when you're telling this story to folks, where do you like to start?

Because I, I watched a YouTube lecture you gave recently.

13:12

I love the sequence that you took us through.

I've heard this story told so many times and I want to kind of open it up to your sequence.

Where do you like to begin when you start telling people this story?

So I usually begin with the documented history.

And the documented history, of course, is in the 14th century when the shroud turns up in the possession of a knight, a named Geoffrey Decharney, who who built a, a collegiate church to put it on display as the burial linen of Christ.

13:42

So the reason I say documented history is because that's where we can trace, we have a, a clear chain of custody from today back to that time period.

There is, of course, profound historical questions about where the cloth was before 1355.

14:00

And, and although historians might not agree on that, I think that when you look to the environmental evidence we have, we know from the Pollens, we can trace an environmental journey for the for the cloth.

So if you take that and then you begin lining up a possible historical record with, with the scientific evidence, what emerges is, is I think something we can put together from Jerusalem to Antioch to Edessa in Turkey into Constantinople and then in Constantinople.

14:37

That's the key date because in 12 O four, that city was sacked during the 4th Crusade and lots of relics disappeared from Constantinople.

I've spent a lot of time in the letters of Pope Innocent the 3rd and I can tell you he was horrified when he learned all of the relics that had been taken, the churches that had been looted.

14:57

So in that environment, Daniel, I think it's a very plausible that such an artifact would have disappeared off the historical record because the Pope is excommunicating everyone he can get the name of who's participated in that looting of those churches.

15:13

So, so this is, you know, it's true history.

You'll, you'll read this in the book.

There's this true history that's obviously was well documented and well agreed upon.

And then there's this era that we really have to put pieces together.

And it doesn't make it any less plausible.

15:30

It just makes it less direct direct in the record, if that makes any sense.

So that date you said that we we know it's chain of custody from is what date?

1355. 1355 but of course you know there's some really interesting evidence that brings us back further I'm curious do you think it's best to talk about that now or go or continue on on our.

15:54

Journey whatever order you think so.

Well, I guess I'm curious.

You know, there's this idea of the image of Odessa, and you know, in Wilson's book, the Shroud really goes deep into that, the idea that there's this image that's being shown publicly, historically, that's described quite like the Shroud of Turin folded.

16:18

Up.

Genely it's the face being shown, right?

I think there's also the fact that we, it's, it's pretty clear in the artistic evidence that all of these depictions we current list, this idea of what Jesus looked like that we've landed on is based on the shroud.

16:34

And that takes us back much further than that 1355 date as well.

And then of course, you mentioned the sodarium as well.

So could you kind of pick that apart a little bit because somebody could hear this and go, OK, well, I heard that the carbon dating said this is around 300 and then it shows up in 1355.

16:53

Case closed.

This is a forgery.

Let's move on.

Like, oh, it's not that simple of a story.

Yeah.

And it's really not that simple of a story.

And when people suggest to me that that this is, you know, they'll hear that and then just go, OK, well, I'm done.

That's it.

You haven't done the intellectual rigor of really looking at at at the history and the and the context of this, because anyone who really studies the medieval period at all would know that nothing here lines up.

17:20

Absolutely nothing lines up.

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So you mentioned the image of Odessa and I think that's, that's a really fascinating connection we can make is that clearly there's something that's being venerated and, and, and Edessa that is documented in the historical record.

18:43

It may have been, it sounds like it was, it was a face image only, but that's how the shroud we know was stored even into the 16th century.

It was in a reliquary that was folded in such a way that only the face was showing.

18:59

So there seems to have been this tradition of a, perhaps a devotion to the face.

The, I think the the the major historical question that begs about the image of Odessa is where did it go?

What happened to it I mean?

19:15

This highly venerated image.

Yeah, this, this, this thing that this shows up in the historical record and in association with the great legend, by the way, that Eusebius of Caesarea reports about the king of Odessa being cured by an image of, of Christ.

19:31

But we have this, this documented record of something that is being venerated as a as a sacred relic and lots of discussion around it.

It seems to have spawned what became the artistic standard for the way that we understand the image of Christ.

We don't even tolerate A deviation from that today, by the way.

19:50

So what happened to it?

Well, I believe what happened to it is that we have a record in Constantinople, August 15th of 944.

The image of Odessa is received into Constantinople, into the Emperor's.

20:06

Relic inventory, we have a record of that.

So so that what's received into Constantinople in 944 isn't that Or couldn't it be the same image that in 12 O 4 disappears from Constantinople?

20:26

You know, Robert De Clary, who was a knight on the 4th Crusade, left a beautiful first person account, what he calls the conquest of Constantinople, where he describes some of the crusading events and he says something really interesting.

He says every Friday at the Church of Saint Mary de Black Arnie, an image of our Lord was stood straight up for the faithful to venerate.

20:47

What became of that image after the crusade?

He says no one knows, neither Latin nor Greek.

Well, what is he referring to?

Again, There's this issue of continuity.

There's clearly something that Christians have venerated for centuries before 1355 that bore the image of Christ.

21:12

And what was the term?

There was a term like the Tetra something.

It referred to a four part fold I believe.

The the the tetrafold meaning that that that's how the image had been stored in the reliquary.

Right and they and you know like on my shirt right now, you can see the strong fold line right there or I've got.

21:34

That's that's visible in the 1931 photograph of Giuseppe Henriet, right?

You can see that fold line.

And so those those folds, you can imagine this being folded in such a way.

I mean, it's easy to understand because a 14 foot cloth is a lot too try to display all the time.

21:51

So you could imagine folding it up to what and I think with the imaging techniques we have now, we're able to see this image so much better.

But you could imagine kind of like what was the most relevant to people at the time being it.

Would have been the face.

It would have been the face.

22:08

You wouldn't have shown the wrist or the knees or the feet.

I mean, it's it's the face and and that's you know, it even Harkins back to what I think Christians and and people of faith going back to the Judaic tradition have longed for.

The psalmist talks about we longed to see your face and and that's the thing that that made Christ humanity evident to us.

22:29

Right, Wow.

And there's this idea too, that if we look at old coins, old art, Byzantine type art, all that kind of the the old icon art, there's quite a few points that match the shroud.

22:47

You know, the split in the beard as an example, lines between the eyes were it's pretty clear once you're walked through this evidence, like, oh, all of the shroud is most likely the standard from which all of that other art.

You think that's fair to say of Christ?

23:04

I I do, I think that it that a survey, just think that a brief, simple survey of art history would show you that there is in the earliest depictions of Christ during the the time of the Roman Empire, he was depicted as a young Roman man, you know, with short hair, wearing a, wearing a toga usually, Yeah, clean shaven, only really identifiable because he's carrying a lamb over his shoulder, like he looks like the Good Shepherd.

23:33

And those images are in the catacombs of Rome.

Well, what's fascinating about that is that after Christianity is no longer persecuted in, in, in the Roman Empire, after Constantine's era of the 4th century, you begin to see more Jesus takes on more Semitic features, more identifiably, radically different features than what you see in those early ones.

24:00

Well, where did that memory come from?

You know, I think I think that's an important and fair question.

How did the first artistic representations of Christ after that era, what are they drawing upon?

The the the Christ Pentacratur image that's in Saint Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai.

24:22

It's the oldest depiction of Christ existing that we know of that has these uniquely Semitic features and all of the points of congruity with the Shroud of Turin, the swollen right cheek, the hairline.

24:38

This, Cheryl, is the famous image that folks might It might come to mind if I say this like the face is sort of split down the middle of 1, making two distinctly different faces essentially expressions.

Right.

And, and you can interpret that theologically as some people have that there's Christ humanity depicted and there's Christ divinity depicted.

25:00

But but there's the other way you can read that is, is more of a forensic map because the man's right cheek is clearly swollen.

So the, yeah, what does that mean?

And where did that depiction, the idea for that come from?

And how did it become the standard?

25:17

Then if you Fast forward, even if she's Speaking of artwork, can you Fast forward even into, into the 12th century?

Are you familiar with the, with the Hungarian Prey Codex?

This is a, this is a manuscript that came out of Hungary, we believe in the, in the year 1189, so the end of the 12th century.

25:43

And there is a depiction in this, it's manuscript, it's, it's drawn by probably a scribe or a monk, a depiction of the enshrouding of Christ.

And that depiction shows a body of Christ that only has four fingers on each hand, which is fascinating because even a medieval monk would have known that Christ had five fingers on each hand.

26:10

But the but the shroud, the shroud shows only four fingers because of the wound in the in the wrist causing the the retraction.

You know, the thumb, the medial nerve was was damaged in, in having a spike driven through the hand.

So the thumbs retract.

26:25

Well, how would a monk know that in the in the 12th century?

And then there's also the the pattern of the weave that's shown in the the cloth that they're wrapping him in.

It's a 3 / 1 weave which they.

Show kind of blown up out of proportion, right?

26:41

Almost to like make sure you understand.

To make sure you know exactly we see this week, and having seen the shroud myself, I can tell you that 3 / 1 herring bone weave is highly visible to the eye, to the naked eye.

You don't have to magnify it, you can see it right?

26:58

And, and, and then of course there's the the whole thing that the burn holes are there, those l-shaped burn holes.

Why would a monk draw those if he hadn't?

Seen distinctly on the shroud and very distinctly in this image.

What's this image dated to?

27:14

This is I believe it's at 1189.

OK, so that already inches us back.

Already predates the.

Predates the carbon dating that was done, which we will get to that carbon date.

I I didn't hear, by the way, I just want to say briefly for listeners, I don't hear the carbon date brought up as much anymore.

27:31

I feel like it's sunk in for a lot of people.

Maybe you're having a different experience.

I just don't hear that broad.

I hear other points of contention, but I feel like that one's losing its potency.

Well, and I think the reason for that might be, and I agree with you, but I think the reason for that might be that anyone who who really who's a serious skeptic and and I and I respect those.

27:52

I appreciate that someone who's a serious skeptic is going to do the intellectual work studying the science.

They're going to soon run into the fact that that no one really seriously considers that date as valid anymore, which we can talk about.

28:08

But but yeah, there's when you, when you begin to, as I said, if you're intellectually honest and you begin to look at all the data points together, it it's, it's hard to to not be pulled deeper into the mystery.

I mean, if you presented this in a murder case or something, if I think you'd be easily convicted with the load of evidence that we're talking about, maybe we should take a minute and just talk about the image itself for people who haven't heard about this.

28:36

You know, I just assumed, like everybody, I just assumed it was painted on there.

I just, you know, and then I think a lot of people when they see it and they go, oh, maybe that isn't pain.

They think they're looking at a blood stain or something like that, maybe or body was that made the stain and when?

And it's really, there's so many things that are just mind blowing about the shroud, but I think the image and how it's actually on the linen itself is just absolutely stunning to find out.

29:00

Yeah.

So the the image is actually, if you want to talk about its, its chemical composition, it's it sits on the very top fibrils of the linen.

So it's less than a Micron deep.

Now if you say, well, I don't know what that means a Micron.

29:16

Well, it's it's about 150th of a human hair.

OK, so so the image is incredibly superficial, which is the great paradox because then it contains all of this complex forensic information.

But but the image itself is is we know is is a result of a dehydration of the cellulose fibers in the linen.

29:39

Something came into contact with that cloth, some energy, some light, some radiant source that did not burn, but yet caused a chemical reaction in those very top fibrils that captured all of that, all of that information.

29:55

And so it is not a painting.

It's not, there's no paint, there's no dye, there's no pigment of any kind to account for the image.

It's not a photograph.

It's not a boss relief.

It's not some artwork.

It is, it is actually even more complex than this is that of course, we learned in 1898 with the first photograph, we learned that the image is itself a photographic negative because when you take a negative of this negative image, you come up with a positive image of the man.

30:30

We learned in 1976 that there's direct spatial information embedded in the fibers of the linen.

So in other words, there is a direct correlation, proportional relationship between the the the distance the body was from the cloth and the density of the image itself.

30:46

So you get a map, you have a three-dimensional map of the man's body.

I have to tell you, we're already at a point that should people should be saying what?

Yeah.

Can I can I pick those apart a little bit just because?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

The image is, you said less than a Micron.

31:06

Yes.

So every thread of the linen is made of bundles of these fibrils and it's just the top fibrils.

So less someone hears that and think, oh, the top threads only.

No, it's the top fibrils in the threads of which there are many in every individual thread.

31:23

So that's very difficult to achieve because some people have thought, oh, maybe you take a a metal sculpture of the body, heat it up and then quickly, you know, touch this linen to it and it's like, well, that burns the linen that's been tried quite a bit.

The piece about no pigment, no paint.

31:42

That's because that my understanding is the Sturb team thought they were going to get there and be like, right, this is going to take us like half noon.

We're going to figure this out right away.

We'll.

Figure it out in an hour.

The another piece for me is just how different this is than any medieval art or any ancient art.

31:58

It doesn't look like anything.

It's the idea that this was someone off that this painter never did anything again or this artist or that this style was never seen again.

It's extremely unusual.

And then I think sometimes this piece about the photograph is just, it's just so stunning because I think like what would it take for a non believer?

32:19

It's like because the the historicity of the biography of Jesus is barely something that can be questioned at this point.

I think he's the most well attested to person from the ancient world.

So you've got to throw out like Alexander the Great, you got to throw out the Caesars if you're not willing to accept the effort for the life of historicity of Jesus.

32:40

But I can understand somebody saying, well, OK, I'm fine that he lived, but this idea that he rose again.

So it's like, well, what if we had a photograph of the moment that he rose from the dead?

Would that do it for you?

Because we have that.

It's not just a picture of them, but it's like a stunning photograph of his resurrection moment, which is just like what?

33:02

Like an opportunity to put your finger in the wounds and prove for yourself.

I mean, it's so stunning, but could you tell us that story about that first photograph?

I just can't even when I imagine being in that dark room.

I know.

So stunning.

33:18

Well, and I think that it's really interesting to me, and now I'm going to venture into the theological just a little bit and say that it's I've always found it fascinating that that the image, the photograph comes in 1898.

Like we're coming out of a period which historically we call the Enlightenment, you know, the modern era where we're introducing reason to everything and we're throwing out all the meta narratives, the big stories of history.

33:48

And, and it's, it's all about the evidence.

Where is your evidence and where is your proof?

The question is no longer, you know, by what authority do you say that the question now is where is your evidence?

If you're going to make a claim, where is your evidence?

It's interesting to me that that's when we get the photograph.

34:05

So.

So photography had only been around, you know, about, what, 5 decades at this point in time?

And when Sokundo Pia, who was an amateur photographer, went to the Savoy family and asked to photograph the shroud, they said sure.

I mean, bear in mind that no one knew.

34:23

I mean, what you're looking, looking at your shirt, that negative photographic image, no one knew that was there.

Yeah, for centuries.

For centuries.

So, So through the medieval mind, the person who went to to venerate this claw did it because someone in authority told them it was the burial land of Christ and they believed it.

34:43

Well, by 1898, we don't accept that authority anymore.

We want to be we, we need to see it.

We need to, you know, we're the Thomasis.

Show it to me.

And that's when we have the image.

So, so, so Kundopia is the very first one in the world to ever see.

I mean, going into the dark room to process that negative image, Can you imagine?

35:03

I mean, being the first one to ever see, not only is there an image of a man there, but it's forensically perfect.

And now you've got all the detail that the naked eye doesn't see on the cloth.

It's best seen in its photo negative because the photo negative is actually the positive image that's like it's.

35:27

Hidden until our time, you know that's what's.

So fascinating it's hidden and that's what I love about the word mystery.

You know I said this in all my presentations that if you look at the Greek word mystery, mysterion, it has a beautiful connotation.

A mystery is something that just hasn't been revealed yet and and it's but it carries the connotation of something eternal.

35:48

There's always something new that's going to be revealed, and so I love calling the Shroud a mystery for that reason.

It's always revealing new things.

All right, so again for the listener, you see these.

I know Daniel, this is a lot to unpack.

No.

36:03

Well there's just so much there.

I just like I'm you're the first person I've got to talk to who knows more about this than me.

It's very exciting, OK, because I'm obviously it just an amateur.

I just have an amateurs interest.

But.

I'm always wanting to talk to people about this and I've just been really eager for this conversation.

36:23

It's very nourishing.

So the image itself, when you see it, it's not that it is an impressive, but it's very faint and kind of takes a little discerning to really understand what you're seeing.

Sure, because it's like looking at a negative and if for young people right now, this is like got to be like, what are you guys talking about?

36:46

But.

You should have seen me at World Youth Day trying to explain.

Right.

But there is a setting in your iPhone that will do this.

You can take any photograph and put it in classic invert setting and you and you can explain to a young person what a photo negative is so.

Cheryl, I carry around this bookmark that is is a little replica of the 14 feet of the shrouds and back.

37:08

So again for listeners, because the shroud wrapped around the body, we have the whole front head to toe and we have the whole back head to toe almost.

So I've got this bookmark that I carry of the actual image and I always break that thing out, put my phone in classic invert.

37:24

Because when you see it for yourself, it's rapturous experience the first time where because you know, there's not, you don't need any special image.

I mean, if you can pull it up, right up on your computer and do this with classic invert, you get any image of the shroud.

37:40

Put your phone in that classic invert, which is the negative function.

You look at this image and you see what he said.

Isn't that fascinating that you can do it even on your computer?

You can do it on any image of the shroud.

Any image, I go around, I pull out all my Shroud books, I check them all.

It's like, yeah.

It brings it out in complete detail.

37:57

It's mind numbing, yeah.

Yeah.

So I mean the, the image itself, like if you, if you didn't know that and then you see it in the negative, it's so clear you're looking at a real person at that at that point.

Because there's a couple other things out there.

I, I don't want to offend anybody and I don't know how you feel about these things, but you know, you have images like the veil of Veronica, or I think they call it Van of veil of Manapello.

38:21

Mana.

When I look at that, that looks like an artist's rendering, right?

But of course, you know, you have a lot of these objects that are venerated and they have claims of, you know, divine origin or something like that.

But a lot of these things, you look at them, you're like, that looks like a painting.

38:38

This does not look like a painting.

And there's just nothing in its class or category that I've ever seen from from those.

That there is, there's literally nothing else that I'm aware of that has this incredible scientific complexity to it.

38:55

Although I mean, I would, I would say that, you know, maybe subject for another discussion would be something like the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, which is also forensically really compelling and interesting.

But it's still even that's not like this.

39:11

This is like a.

Photograph.

This captured a moment and actually if if if you don't mind, I'd I'd like to tell the listeners exactly how long this cloth was in contact with whatever the light source was it caused the image.

39:28

Before you say that, I want to talk about this idea of a light source, just because my understanding is that now my, my, I have a background in nutrition and, and herbalism.

And one of the things we're always trying to be careful with with food is oxidation.

So it's like if you get exposure to sunlight and oxygen, things oxidized and that oxidative process is sort of like what happens with ozone or peroxide.

39:52

It just breaks things down and you lose really quickly and it can discolor things as well.

And my understanding is that these fibrils, because they're not painted, there's no pigment, that the image is essentially like an oxidative process.

Or something, right?

40:09

Dehydration.

OK, so the idea that is most prominent right now is that it was exposed to like a burst of light from within the body itself, something like that, right?

So I'll, I'll pass that to you.

Yeah, because if you look at the shroud, and again for your listeners, if if they we're just going to look at an image of it, you'll see the frontal image running on one side in the dorsal, the backside running on the other opposite to each other.

40:34

And that's because the cloth covered the body.

What you also need to realize is that the image, when you're looking at it, the front and the back are on the same side of the cloth, OK?

Which means that that when this image was created, it's only on those top fibrils.

40:51

We're talking about a light source that had to have come from within the claw because, because that's the way the image is oriented.

So it didn't come from external to the cloth.

It came from inside the cloth.

And, and we're talking about a burst of most, most physicists agree.

41:10

I've heard, I've heard words and I'm not a physicist, but I've heard words used like light, energy, radiant, some sort of an event.

But, but Doctor Paulo de Lazaro in 2011, so physicist working for the Italian Nuclear Energy Association was very interested in this image and and what is working with excimer lasers.

41:36

And he was curious to know if he could recreate the exact depth of penetration on on a linen piece of, of claw.

Not trying to create an image, just trying to discolor it in the same manner using a light that dehydrates the cellulose fibers, takes the moisture out of it and leaves this this image, this discoloration.

42:01

So he worked with this excimer laser and came up with, and I don't know how many experiments it took before he realized he got a number that that he could recreate it on a postage stamp sized piece of linen.

He could discolor it at that exact depth, at a pulse of light.

42:18

That is 140th billionth of a second.

OK, now you're talking about carrying around a bookmark with the image on it.

I want to put 140th billionth of a second on a T-shirt to just have people ask me what it means.

Because.

42:35

Because when you know, the human mind can't, we can't even wrap our minds around that.

I mean, I can't.

I can barely think about 1/2 a second. 140th billionth of a second is as close to something like otherworldly that I could think of. 140th of a.

42:53

Billionth of a second.

So we divide a second into a billion parts, and then we take one of those parts and divide it into 40 parts.

That's exactly right.

Those parts, how much energy?

Yeah, and more.

Any more than that, and this is all published.

43:08

I mean, you can go and read Doctor de Lazaro's work on this.

Any more than that and you you destroy the the linen.

Any less than that, and you can't get the discoloration.

So.

So that's the number we're talking about.

43:24

And science can tell us that.

Mathematics can tell us that, but you haven't even created an image yet.

As Paulo says, it would take about 50,000 lasers firing simultaneously to discolor a 40 to discolor a 14 foot strip of cloth.

43:42

And you don't have an image yet.

Do you know how many watts of energy were?

I do not.

And, and I hear that thrown around all the time, that 34 trillion watts or whatever that number is.

I don't know that that's scientifically verifiable.

So I always kind of stay away from that.

43:59

I know that that's Doctor de Lazaro's work with the lasers is probably the best science we have that demonstrates how that image could have gotten there.

And we're talking about a pulse of light that can only be produced by a laser in the 21st century.

44:15

Yeah, I love it.

So could you talk a little bit about because when you when you mention him, it makes me want to hear about the credentials of some of the other scientists who've been involved, because this is another area.

I remember talking to a scientist friend of mine and I was explaining how much biblical scholarship has been done.

44:38

And I think he didn't understand what I was saying because to him, how could there be like he, he couldn't imagine to somebody who's not been introduced to even biblical scholarship, like the idea of how many people have put their minds to Scripture over the years, like you just, it's kind of stunning when you find out.

44:56

It's like, oh, yeah, you know, because people have ideas.

Well, I think it's been a game of telephone.

It's like, hey, dude, people have been thinking about this for a long time.

Yeah.

You know, and this is sort of similar, like when I learned about the STERP team, if I understand that correctly, you had like NASA people, MIT people, US Air Force science people.

45:14

Like, these are not all believers.

They're not some of them more Jewish, you know, which gives them a pretty strong bias against.

So, right.

Could you kind of lay out like what kind of people have been involved in this?

Sure.

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45:32

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45:53

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46:11

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46:45

And, and in beginning with the STERP team, and I can just point to a few examples.

I mean Doctor Eric Jumper and Doctor John Jackson, both were at, were professors at the Air Force Academy physicist who were working with, at the time with, with the Jet Propulsion laboratories to, to develop some imaging technology.

47:04

And that's how the VP8 analysis came about in 1976.

So these so these were men who were at the top of their up top of their academic fields.

And Doctor Jackson of course, is the one who who really spearheaded the 1978 research project.

47:21

And he as a as a nuclear physicist, he is still very much involved in shrub research today.

He works on it every single day.

It just.

Gets so it gets a hold of people, Doesn't.

It, it gets a hold of people.

There was Doctor Ray Rogers who was a chemist on the team, was with Los Alamos National Laboratories.

47:41

I mean, he was not even a believer.

The documenting photographer Barry Schwartz was Jewish.

And and Barry Schwartz, he's the one who famously tells the story that he took the trip because it was a free trip to Italy and he thought that he was going to be able to walk up and take a photograph and see the paint.

48:00

And he died blessed, you know, God rest his soul.

He died about a year, a little over a year ago.

And he was probably the most active person in the entire Shroud world because he maintained theshroud.com website.

48:15

Which is, by the way, I want to say that's where I got, you know, this image here, which is a reproduction of one of his photos, but also all of the photos are there for you to see in positive and negative close-ups for full images.

I mean, all of that still at shroud.com, right?

48:32

Right.

It's probably the, the largest clearing house on the web, I think to this day.

So, so we're talking about a team of people who, who were true scientist and true empiricist who wanted to get to the truth.

And, and so of course, what they published, ultimately published is their summary statement is that that for now we can only conclude that the image is not a painting or a photograph, that there's nothing natural, there's no natural process that we can account for the image.

49:03

So it remains a mystery.

That's been the definitive statement that came out of that scientific investigation.

It's stunning.

I really recommend people get the original book, you know, the, the report on that.

I, I again, I think it's called See Shroud of Turin.

Yeah, like the like the report on the Shout of Turin I.

49:20

Think it's called yes.

I've got like an original copy.

It's it's stunning because you get to the end and you're like, OK, they they can't say it's real because that's not really how they can't say it's Jesus.

That's that's that wouldn't be science, but they can say this is definitely not a painting and this is we don't know how it's made and this is a real person.

49:39

This is a crucified man.

I can't even imagine what that was like for their peers who are outside of this research because I'm sure you know you see the the desire to discredit it after that seems like it was really strong.

49:56

Could you, I want, I'm curious what makes the most sense to go into for you next to talk about.

I'd love to talk about the blood, but I also like to talk about the the carbon dating.

So I'll kind of let you.

Decide well, yeah, we can and we can talk about let's let's talk about the dating.

50:13

Because I think that that's again, it's probably, although it's not as common as what I used to hear, I think that people still are very much informed because it made every headline of every newspaper.

But there were almost immediately some concerns about the heterogeneity of the of the cloth, I should say.

50:36

Is it all the same?

Is it all the same kind of material?

Because one thing that the start project did, of course, was they photographed the shroud under ultraviolet light.

And and when you do that, you, you realize that there's an area of the cloth that doesn't look quite like the rest of it.

50:54

And that's the top left corner.

If you're standing it vertically, it's the bottom left corner.

But there is an area that that does not look like it's the same chemically.

So, so Doctor Ray Rogers noted this when the chemist I mentioned who said that he thought that there was something chemically different about that area of the linen.

51:18

He didn't really know what it was, but but he knew that that there was something about that that corner.

So it it became that we call it the controversial corner.

We know that because of the 1532 fire that happened in Chambray, France when the Savoy family owned it, there was a repair of the cloth that took place.

51:42

The poor Claire's did that.

They they stitched on a backing cloth.

They sewed on triangular shaped patches and we believe now that they may have well indeed rewoven new fibers into the old linen to strengthen it.

51:58

They didn't.

They didn't know.

They didn't know any better.

So that controversial corner, as it's been called, it's always kind of nagged.

I think it's Shroud scholars.

And in 1988, when 3 universities got permission to carbon 14 date the Shroud, it was the University of Oxford, the University of Zurich, and the University of Arizona in the United States.

52:23

They were going to get 6 samples of the linen.

Each lab would get 2 samples they would test and then they published that result.

This was meant the double-blind, they were supposed to have a a similar linen that they were going to use as a blind control right There was there, there was a whole series of pretty rigorous protocols that were developed and I think nearly all of them were violated in this process, right.

52:56

So like the actual process did not play out the way it was meant to play out.

No, that's true.

And there's, there's any number of works out there about this process.

Now, you could read a Joe Marino's book on the, the carbon 14 dating controversy.

53:11

It's pretty comprehensive.

And, and I'll, I'll talk about the 2017 study that came about that's more recent.

But so, so when the, these laboratories got the samples and, and published their results as 1260 to 1390, I think the world stepped back.

53:31

You know, as I said it, it made every major newspaper headline.

I think we lost 40 years of, of, of opportunity to teach people about this.

And, and, and the whole sort of mystery surrounding the, the lack of transparency about the data was very troubling.

53:56

In 2017, Chris Tristan Casabianca, who is a French lawyer in a recent convert to Christianity, by the way, called up the British Museum to get access to the raw data.

The British Museum is the custodian of all the raw data from the 1988 test.

54:16

And when he asked for the raw data, he was told no.

Why?

I mean, why?

Why would you deprive the world of knowing the result of a scientific investigation?

You've published the results.

54:32

So he sued them under the International Freedom of Information Act and forced them to release the data.

And what resulted is a pretty damning indictment, because the sample was taken from guess where controversial corner, the one area of the linen that everyone knew was chemically different from the rest of the cloth.

54:54

So what's initially meant to come from multiple locations, right?

I mean, I understand why you wouldn't want to be cutting, you know, punching pieces out of this, but but it wasn't supposed to all come from one place, right?

Because they ended up just taking a strip from that corner and distributing it out to the different labs.

55:11

They took, yes, they took.

Instead of taking six samples, what they did is they took one piece and cut it 1 sample and cut it into six pieces, which is not the same thing.

So, so Tristan published in 2000.

Actually it was Oxford, their credit, it was Oxford University's journal Archaeometry that published his work to their credit.

55:31

And, and he pointed out that this is not representative of the linen.

This is, you know, you, you can't trust this date.

We know there's something different about this area.

We know that chemically it it, it may under light it fluoresces differently.

55:48

So.

So I think any serious skeptic would have to look at that and say, OK, maybe, maybe good science was not done in 1988.

And I've seen so many of these medieval depictions where the cloth is being shown because it has quite a history of public showings.

56:08

I think that's really cool thing, I mean.

Very well documented.

All over Europe to see it, right?

And you see these images where you've got a line of people there and they're all holding it up and they're gripping those corners real tight, stretching that thing out for these public showings.

So you also have just a tremendous amount of organic contamination that would have had had happened in those corners as well.

56:29

But so the the concept is though that in addition to that, there's probably a cotton re weaving that took place into that corner.

Yeah, like that.

This is this is Joe Marino's work that he's done.

Again, I reference his work just because I think it's excellent.

He, he and his wife did, did a lot of research into an invisible re weave technique that was in use in France in the 16th century.

56:56

And, and his hypothesis is that there was a reweed that took place in that corner.

And, and, and it it makes sense that there would be something chemically different, because what they would have had to have done if they'd rewoven any new fibers in there is they would have had to have dyed them to make it look like the rest of the claw.

57:13

Right, like sepia tone them somehow.

Again, not knowing, not knowing that they were, they were altering the cloth, Yeah.

I can't imagine being a custodian of this thing and you know, some of the decisions that are have to be made over the years, the fires that it went through all those kind of right.

You pointed out in the lecture I watched of yours and I really appreciated this because I hadn't heard anyone say it.

57:35

But you you kind of point out because they came out with this carbon date with, I would say a, a smug attitude and.

There's you react to see the photograph.

Yeah, we'll put that up here so people can see it.

But there's the famous image of those three scientists there with the chalkboard behind them, and it says, I think 1260 to 1390.

57:53

Exclamation point.

Exclamation point.

Yeah, not, not exactly how we typically do scientific findings.

No, I I've always been troubled.

Long before Tristan challenged this, I had always been troubled by that photograph, which is the reason I always mention it.

58:12

You know, even in, in the historical method, you know, if I'm writing an objective history methodology requires me to be objective and, and not pronounce on opinion or, or emphasize things.

And I think the rigor is even more expected of a scientist.

58:29

So I've always been very struck by the need to punctuate that.

Why did you need to put an exclamation point behind a medieval date if you did not see some implication of the cloth being older than that?

58:46

You see, the implication is that the cloth is older than that.

Well, we might be talking about the burial linen of Christ.

You know, if I'm this is going to come off as a bit Mystic, forgive me.

But if I just zoom out and look at the big picture history of this, what starts happening around that era and where our culture is today, It's that exclamation point to me is the like hedonism of the time.

59:12

It's like, oh, good, it's not real.

We can party.

And then here we are 2020, about maybe 2024 is when I started to hear this new date that came out of it and maybe we can talk a little bit about.

This 2022?

Yeah.

Out of the Italian National Research Council, Yeah.

59:27

Right around the time where culturally you start seeing this tremendous return to the churches, Like it's, you know, I feel like in the last few years things have gotten so out of hand culturally people are going, OK, wait a set.

So it's really interesting how these two dates frame this period of hedonism that is almost intolerable to the average person.

59:49

That's just fascinating.

But but yeah, so I started seeing it was kind of fun.

All of a sudden I'm seeing videos, articles, all this stuff's coming out.

New date, new date.

It's 2000 years old.

And obviously this we're in this era where people really jump ahead pretty quick to conclusions.

1:00:06

And and I know this is.

You know, there's still some work to be done, but could you describe a little bit about this more recent dating technique?

And also, is it, am I correct in understanding that they the Pope has said there's never going to be another carbon dating test done on this?

Yeah, I don't, I don't think.

1:00:21

Well, the last two popes, Benedict the 16th and Pope Francis, both refused further testing.

I think that the door is, is still open as far as probably the 14th is concerned, but but radiocarbon dating is destructive.

1:00:37

And so I, I think that the church does not fear that.

I think the church rightfully is concerned about the conservation of the clock.

So, so you know how long it's.

Going to be till he comes back.

We got to keep this thing.

1:00:54

Keep it for him.

But but the, the, the new methodology of dating again, and I'm not a scientist, but I mean, I know just enough to, to help myself understand that, that there is a predicted value, predicted value, an absolute value of, of a rate of deterioration of cellulose in five and in Lenin.

1:01:14

So in other words, if, if you have this fixed value, you can take linen comparatively and know the age, you can say, well, if it deteriorates at this fixed rate, then this linen is 100 years old.

Then we know that this one must be 500 years old.

This one must be 800 years old.

1:01:32

So using that kind of methodology, the, the Italian National Research Council has come up with a date of, of the 1st century ±100 years.

There's a, there's a, a window in there.

And so I think that that methodology holds a lot of promise.

1:01:54

I, I don't know that that anyone's ready to pronounce that is an absolute yet this with the same with the same veracity that they did in 1988, but I do think it's very compelling that newer technologies are pointing to older dates.

Yeah, it's exciting.

1:02:11

Let's talk a little bit about the blood because I think that this is another really compelling component that there is blood on this.

One of the cases people will often make is why would this if it was a forgery?

1:02:26

You know, you have obviously we talked about the difficulty of even producing this image.

I think there still stands a $1 million reward for a somebody produce it, right?

And I know there's been a lot of attempts and people have done some pretty far out stuff to try to accomplish this, but still remains to be done.

1:02:43

But on top of it, we have the blood.

And then you could imagine a medieval artist implying blood.

You would question whether they would use human blood.

If they did, you'd question, yeah, just the whole story starts adding up into it to another compelling piece.

So what is the blood on there?

1:03:00

Where is the blood and what does it tell us post mortem?

So, so the the interesting thing about the blood study is that this is goes back to the early, again, the early 1980s.

Heller and Adler published extensively on this.

1:03:18

That, you know, in the beginning there was no, there was no sense that it was even human blood, that that it was, it was primate blood.

OK.

And it, it's forensically accurate, aligning with the wounds.

In other words, the exudate that's coming from the wounds is forensically accurate.

1:03:36

So we're talking about if it is blood, it's primate blood.

We're not talking about an orangutan.

It's human blood because because that's not an ape that's depicted in the Shroud.

So.

So this is actually a subject of contemporary discussion among many Shroud scholars.

Is it we we go too far when we say that it's human blood.

1:03:54

And I'm like, how are we going too far when it's a forensic component of the cloth?

And, and I'm not going to say it's primate blood.

It's it's human blood.

Because there's, there's, there's chemical markers that.

1:04:11

So Helen Adler identified, you know, albumin, hemoglobin, bilirubin, which is a present in very high levels because bilirubin is something that's produced by the liver in response to extreme physical stress.

So, So all of these things point to this being human blood on the Shroud.

1:04:33

It has been typed as AB.

Now, this is another thing that is, is again, I have probably have some Shroud scholar friends who might hear this and say, you know, I shouldn't be saying that because this is something that is again coming under scrutiny.

But but I think that science builds on what it already knows.

1:04:52

So we've already established that it is blood because of these components.

We've already got a forensic image.

We've already got blood type that's been identified that I think that anything future we can say about that will only be to enhance that, not to take that away.

1:05:10

And, and I also think that that, you know, we, we talked about blood splatter forensics.

Looking at this claw, there's a definite forensic pattern to the flow of the blood, the pooling of the blood in the lower, like the the small of the back that indicates this man was vertical.

1:05:29

The blood flow on the arms, I mean, tells us forensically how this man was hanging on a cross.

The the blood comes from the wounds which are in the carpal bones and actually runs down like toward and it drips off the elbow, right?

1:05:45

Right on the right arm it does on the right arm, it flows directly down, straight down, but on the left it comes off the arm because of the left arm was clearly extended in a direct like 45° angle, whereas the right arm was at more like a 45° angle directly up.

1:06:04

So, so I mean, we have all of these forensic data points and and I think the other thing that's that's fascinating and and this might be a point to talk about this is this is a forensic in forensic congruity with that other cloth we talked about the one that's in Oviedo spay.

1:06:25

Yeah.

Right.

So, yeah, so you know, I revisited this morning just I love that all the gospels, all four gospels mention this cloth and Joseph of Arimathea and this this cloth, you know, it's so cool.

And and you hear about this face cloth from John that's.

1:06:42

Only from John.

Right.

And you know, the, the story too, because I can imagine and I, and I've read this somewhere, I don't remember which book I had read this in, but you know, one might ask like, well, why wouldn't they have said something about this?

But of course they're under persecution.

You know, they've, they've got Roman persecution, but also from the the Jews of the time too.

1:07:03

And the idea of having an image of blood, blood being loaded with blood, like this thing wouldn't have been something you could necessarily talk about publicly.

But John describes going into the tomb, seeing the clothes and believing, believing in one sentence, like he saw the clothes and believed.

1:07:20

And you're like, what did he see?

What do you see?

But what did he see?

What's this?

What's the Sudarian?

So this is something that I'll talk about also in the book.

I'm always fascinated by the fact of what John doesn't say.

You know, we we read the Gospel, you know, every, every Easter and John is John's resurrection narrative is the only one that gives us this detail.

1:07:42

But but I'm always struck by what he doesn't say.

He he never says what's not there.

He only talks about what is, and that's what is there is what made him believe.

So what is it about the arrangement of the placement or the laying of the burial linen that made him believe?

In other words, you're saying he doesn't say Jesus wasn't there.

1:07:59

Doesn't say Jesus isn't.

There I see the clothes and believe.

He never says Jesus isn't there and although he's responding, of course, to Mary Magdalene's pronouncement that they've taken our Lord, but but it's it's fascinating the way he says that.

1:08:15

I often wished he'd been a little more descriptive.

Yeah, yeah.

I could use.

Three or four year gospels if we could go.

But John is the only one who gives us an interesting detail.

He says that he tells us clearly there's the burial linen lying there and, and the word that he uses for that in Greek is ethonia.

1:08:32

So it's a different word than the 1 he uses when he says including the cloth that had covered Jesus's head that was rolled up in a separate place by itself.

So that other cloth, the word that that he uses there is sudarium in Greek, which means sweat cloth.

1:08:49

So a sweat cloth is would have been a simple piece of cloth that, you know, anyone who worked outside would have had.

I mean, you know what it's like to be outside on a hot day and exactly something that that the probably a young, a man working outside would wrap around his head or have tucked in his belt.

1:09:09

So, so that cloth, what's purported to be that cloth is in Oviedo, Spain today.

So imagine this, imagine that you, you were deposing Jesus from the cross.

The the first thing anybody would have done in Jewish sensibility, even our sensibility today, would be to cover his face.

1:09:32

So someone pressed A claw into the face to soak up the blood.

And remember, it's Passover.

It's the what's the Sabbath?

They've got to get the body in the tomb before sundown.

They're in a hurry.

1:09:47

This is the reason the women were going back on Sunday morning.

And so you, you soak up the blood, but now you, you're enshrouding the body, you're placing the body in the tomb and you've got this other cloth.

Well, it's got blood on it.

Under Jewish law, blood is part of the body.

1:10:04

It has to go in the tomb.

I mean, this is a Jewish, this is Jewish sensibility.

So John's describing really a, a very technically accurate Jewish burial scene.

So this other cloth, this is fascinating because in the year 614, there is a cloth that turns up in Oviedo, Spain, in a religious community there that's in an ancient reliquary that was purported to have belonged to the apostle James, James of Jerusalem.

1:10:37

OK.

And it's a bloody cloth and no one really thinks very much about it.

You know, I mean, this is the year 614.

And it's out of the ahead of the Persian invasions that are coming through the Holy Land because many Christian relics left Jerusalem during the 7th century for this reason.

1:10:57

So today, what we know is the sudarium that's held in Oviedo, Spain.

There's a, you know, like 20 points of forensic congruity between the blood spatter on the Sudarium and blood spatter on the Shroud and.

1:11:14

If you want they they the way that those blood splatters line up show.

That they line up.

Probably in contact at 1:00.

Point they line up that would that would lead have led some forensic experts to say they had to have covered the face of the same man Wow so so I think that you know we're again this speaks to the dating issue because if the clothes came into contact with the face of the same man if in fact that's forensically demonstrable, then that had to have happened before the year 614 because we know where that cloth has been since the 7th century.

1:11:55

So that pushes our date back.

Again, is that it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the contributing scientific and historical disciplines working together that could help build a more accurate picture you see of of of the complexity of this.

It's not reducible to a simple carbon date.

1:12:13

John's also gives us the picture of the spear wound and being blood and water, right?

So some kind of either only one fluid or or could be edema that built up in the cardiac sack.

But whatever happened there, he describes very distinctly blood and water, and he kind of really drives that point home.

1:12:35

Right.

We see that stain on, we see water and blood from that wound on the right shroud, correct?

Right between the 5th and 6th ribs, it's it's very visible.

There's a separation of blood and clear fluid that some scientists have identified as like a pleural fluid, but it's a clear fluid.

1:12:56

And I think we may be going a bit too far as we suggested, we know it's a post mortem wound, but definitely there is a separation of blood and fluid there that is quite visible on the shroud, just as John describes in his gospel.

1:13:14

And, and I think that that that's the other thing that that people need to consider when they, when they look at this cloth is that it doesn't just mirror the Gospel accounts.

Like it doesn't just like all these wounds that are described in the passion narratives are not they're, they're all there, but it's more than that.

1:13:30

It amplifies the Gospels for us because, you know, we're told that Jesus was scourged, but the Gospels don't tell us with what kind of weapon.

The Gospels don't tell us how many men were involved.

There were two men beating Jesus.

1:13:45

There was one on either side with the same weapon, but one of the men was taller than the other.

And we know that from the Ark of the Wounds.

So, so it kind of amplifies that passion narrative for us in, in ways that, you know, if you take these two things separately, you might miss some of that.

1:14:04

Yeah.

So we see those that double ball bearing kind of wound repeated again and again.

Again and again.

Urging, but we see that it's coming from 2 angles, from two sides, from men of different heights, most likely.

And again, kind of confirming the narrative that we read where Pilate has him scourge man, because Pilate in the in the gospel, he's, he wants to let him go and he's like, he's trying to are we good?

1:14:32

And it's like, I just to me, the idea of being scourged, but but I'm not guilty.

And now you can go free.

It's like, oh man, I mean, that's a pretty serious scourging.

So you know, it's pretty when you see those wounds brought forward in that negative image, it's pretty stunning.

1:14:48

I mean, it's like film, right?

You're like, that's no joke.

I think actually Mel Gibson's film may go a little bit too far in depicting the, the, the sort of the, the tearing away of the flesh and all that.

The shroud doesn't show us that the shrouds shows us these wounds but, and, and many of them bled, but more of a ball bearing, as you mentioned, the ball bearing a metal, like maybe a metal or bone kind of shaped ball, but but nothing that would have torn the flesh.

1:15:13

We don't have evidence of that.

What we do have evidence of, though, interestingly, is that the wounds on the right shoulder are macerated and you can make out the outline of of a rectangular shape on that shoulder, something that broke those wounds down more because this man carried something on that shoulder.

1:15:34

My gosh.

So he's carrying the cross, or at least that cross beam.

The petibulum, probably just the cross beam, yeah.

Wow.

And is there, is it true that we on the knees, on the feet, on the nose, that there is soil samples that essentially are from Jerusalem?

1:15:55

Yeah, soil was taken from the shroud and, and actually we learned, and then this may be 20 years old now, we learned that that soil is a specific type of limestone.

It's a travertine aragonite that's that's very common throughout the Middle East.

1:16:14

But but like all soils, when they're learning, you know, that that soils have specific geographic fingerprints.

And so there was a study that was done in 1986 that showed that this was the closest geographic match for that soil was the Old City of Jerusalem.

1:16:32

You just use Occam's Razor and it's like the idea.

OK, so you got this to, to discredit it, discount it.

You'd you've got to have a medieval forger who has a technique no one's ever seen before then or since that creates this image.

1:16:48

But then he uses human blood, but it's not just human blood.

It's like somatic typed blood.

And then he gets soil samples from Jerusalem and applies them in all the right places.

And that, Yeah, I mean, all this starts to get to be too preposterous.

To say nothing of the pollen evidence.

1:17:06

As you mentioned that briefly too, because that's.

All so we haven't we have an environmental journey for the Shroud that again, this is the subject of more study right now.

We're sort of looking at this again right now but Max Fry published in 1973 that he had identified 56 pollens on the Shroud, that seven of them were unique to the Middle East and he believed he could place three of them specifically only in Jerusalem.

1:17:28

That was confirmed by Doctor Doneen Avanandaneen and I think the late 1980s and he was a Jewish botanist who who said that, you know, that the the best assemblage of plants placed this 10 to 20 kilometers east and West of Jerusalem at some point in its history.

1:17:48

And so, you know, now we're looking at pollen again, obviously we don't have any, any new samples to test, but looking at what what the previous botanist have done, we're coming up with perhaps a broader distribution of some of those, but still giving us an environmental journey that aligns with what we think we can save about the historical record.

1:18:11

So.

Including Edessa.

Including, well, including that area of the Anatolian peninsula, yes, maybe not specific to Odessa, but that area.

So, you know, I again, these are things that in the Shroud world, you'll find different scientists who disagree.

1:18:29

So I always encourage people to try to find like the middle ground.

Where is the consensus?

Something I talk about in my book, not to make another commercial plug, but but I do talk about.

There's a lot of Shroud books out there, so I think it's important to plug your book because there's so many good ones and so many that are like, does that need to be?

1:18:45

Real Well, mine is mine is primarily more philosophical and it deals with the with the question of how do we, how do we trust knowledge?

What knowledge can we take and say this is true?

And and I think that there is something profoundly important about consensus.

1:19:03

When you find a consensus point, like a place where all the science meets, that's significant.

So I always tell people, look for the consensus.

Don't look for the outliers, don't look for the fringes, but look for what the consensus is telling you.

1:19:20

So if there was like a Venn diagram and you have like the pollen people and the image people and that, you know, where everything overlaps, everyone agrees that the image is not made with pigments, is not made with dyes, right?

Everybody agrees that the that the images and then the other component you talked about before, I want to make sure I, I love the 1970s, right?

1:19:40

The VP8 image analyzer.

Yeah, that's a fun.

But basically this was a device that the, I think the military was using for 2D images to try to create relief so that they could get a sense of aerial photography, what the topography was right and when, why.

1:19:56

My understanding is typical photographs come out distorted and flat, but this rendered a 3D image which I've seen actually rendered into sculptures and such.

Right, it's a map.

And and to you'd mentioned this before, but essentially the darkest areas of the image are what would have been closest like the nose or the knees or something that are the closest to the fabric.

1:20:18

And so you get this 3D rendering away that's also not really disputed, right.

So these, the nature of the image itself is you know what we're talking about there being disagreement, we're talking about whether or not these pollen samples are valid or like that.

But the image itself is pretty agreed upon.

1:20:35

Yeah, and and I it is it's a it's a broad point of consensus that that the image characteristics, you know, there's scientists do agree.

I mean, there's all you have to do is, is basically look at that 1976 imaging of the VP8 and you realize that when you look at this, the other study samples, I mean did nothing images like that, nothing images like that.

1:20:56

You take a picture of the Mona Lisa and you run it through AVP 8 analysis, you're going to get a very distorted image because there's no dense, there's no dimension to it.

It's a painting, it's a flat artwork.

What the VP8 analysis told us in 1976 is that the claw covered a real human form at the time the image was made.

1:21:17

That's what it tells us.

Do you, is there anything that can be said about I, I remember for a time seeing things like, well, this kind of a weave, this kind of linen wasn't available in the Middle East.

I'm and it seems like that's since there's been some that have been found.

1:21:32

Is that correct That, you know, what's that story there?

Because, because one thing we know is that Joe, it's pretty clear across all the Gospels.

It's Joseph of Arimathea.

I believe it's Luke, Mark or Luke that tells us that he purchased it then, like so he, he's a wealthy, probably a member of the Sanhedrin.

1:21:49

He's wealthy.

He's like kind of a secret follower of Jesus.

He asks for the body, he's given it, and that's where this cloth.

Comes from we're we're told, I mean contextually, that Joseph Vermouth Thea had a a new rock tune.

1:22:05

Yep.

If he had.

Nobody ever been laid in it.

If he had a new tomb, he owned a shroud.

This is a linen that is of such rarity that no one would have gone out and purchased it at 3:00 on a Friday afternoon at the corner market.

1:22:22

This was this was a cloth that was so special and expensive because it was a fine weave.

So, so I think that's another just another little element to consider is in all of this is Jesus clearly got the worst execution possible.

1:22:45

Under Roman law, criminals like this didn't receive burials.

They were left to rot on a cross or their bodies were dumped into a mass Gray.

But this man got a very fine burial.

Yeah.

1:23:01

Kind of like the the spikenard oil that he gets anointed.

Yeah, 100 lbs.

Yeah, it's.

Like that's mind blowing.

So when when I first learned about all this, I thought to myself, I have to go see it for myself.

1:23:18

And then I was, I was found out, OK, in 2025, they're going to show it.

And I'm thinking, all right, baby, we're going to.

We're going.

To Turin, yeah.

This is around the time that like, you know, young people are throwing soup on to Van Gogh's and the museums and stuff and, and all of a sudden I see like, oh, it's just going to be a virtual showing.

1:23:43

And I was like, no, but right now it's not like you can just go see it.

So I want to talk about that.

And also it sounds like you had a pretty awesome opportunity to see it, which I would like to talk about.

But right now it's in Turin and it's in kind of like what an is it in an Argon?

1:24:03

Yeah, no oxygen be in exposures to it.

And then there's no light I would assume as well.

It's thinking a bomb proof case.

I mean, this thing is because it's been through, it's had some trauma.

There's been fires that miraculously the it's just like, I mean, it's pretty stunning.

You know, people will see this image of all those triangular patches and it's like somehow he just doesn't get burned.

1:24:25

You know, it's stunning.

Right, right.

What what's at state now and, and do you think we'll ever get a chance to go see it in person?

Oh gosh, I certainly would hope so.

But but you know, I, I have to balance my desire to see it again and, and I think everybody should get to see it against the conservation concerns and preservation concerns.

1:24:44

So when it was in the second fire in 1997, I think it, it really ramped up the, the awareness on the part of the custodians that there needed to be a plan for the future in an age of, you know, global terrorism and in an age of, of, you know, we the 97 fire was deliberately set in the cathedral.

1:25:07

I think you.

Destroy it or.

Yes, probably so and.

Man, you're right up there with Judas.

You make that move.

That's.

Yeah.

And, and you know, there's, there's a, there's a great story about all of that, that there was an off duty fireman by the name of Mario Trematore who lived down the street from the cathedral.

1:25:28

I literally was looked out his window and saw the flames and, and ran down the street to, to run into the cathedral.

This is all on a YouTube video by the way.

They captured, they captured someone, a news person captured him, I believe, running out of the cathedral with the shroud over his shoulder.

1:25:45

He at the time it was in an, in a reliquary that was above the altar in the, in the Chapel.

And he jumped up on the altar, used an axe to breakthrough what was then bulletproof glass to reach into the Durell Aquarium, just ripped it out and just pulled it out and, and ran out of the cathedral with it over his shoulder.

1:26:09

And so I think it's that last little footage that's captured by newsmen.

But, but which is why we call him Super Mario, by the way.

But yeah, but I think it was that event that made the custodians realize that this was a really a critical concern.

1:26:24

And so another thing that's happening is that that over the centuries, the, the, it's not that the image is getting lighter, it's that the claw, the linen itself was getting darker.

So so.

It's.

1:26:40

Awesome.

So we're losing.

We're losing the contrast.

Wow.

And so custodians have been very concerned about his exposure to light, his exposure to, to humidity and temperature.

And so it is in a reliquary right now that, well, I, I think it, it, it was designed by NASA so, so you could shoot the the shroud into outer space and it can reenter the Earth's atmosphere and not burn up, but just in.

1:27:06

Case.

Just in case it's never going to be in another fire and it's it's in a very stable neutral environment.

They change out the nitrogen gas in it, I think every periodically to keep the environment stable.

1:27:22

But the challenge of a public ostention or public viewing would be, would be its exposure to light and how long it would have to be exposed to light.

So, so you think about, you know, you used to see it hanging vertically and it can never be hung that way anymore because there's been slippage in the fibers of the linen.

1:27:42

So now when I saw it, it, it's, it's exposed horizontally.

So you have to pass in front of it horizontally and you lose, I think some of the perspective that way.

Because that's the other thing about the image is that it it, you know, it kind, it disappears in transmitted light.

1:28:01

It seems to disappear at certain angles and you have to be like a certain distance from it to truly see it up.

Close.

It's not so clear that's what they.

Say when you get right up to it, you can't see it anymore.

And so I think, I think there's all sorts of concerns about the conservation and, and I know people want to see it and I, I do think that the answer might be in the future that we can only have digital, you know, but but we'll see.

1:28:26

We'll see what this you got to see it.

Yes, I did.

With Jonathan Rooney, is that true?

No, I did not see it with Jonathan Rooney.

OK, I thought maybe I misunderstood.

The story no, no, no I did not.

I was with a small group of people at an event in 2022 that was part of a yeah, just a small private showing.

1:28:48

And it was very privileged to be there for that event and actually got to to see it twice during that visit and so.

How much time did you?

Have pardon me?

How much time?

How much time?

Oh my gosh, enough people have asked me that.

1:29:05

I don't know.

I like I can't tell you so the so the first time that that I saw it, I do I do like to tell this story because the first time I saw it, I had a pretty emotional reaction to it.

And as you would expect, somebody that studied it as long as I have and you know, finally seeing.

1:29:25

It.

And to be able to finally see it.

And then and, and then the, the, the second time I was with, it was very different.

The second time, it was like the academic part of me kicked in and I was like, OK, there's that blood stain, there's that water stain.

Look at that weave.

1:29:41

And I could see that the top corners, all those things that went through my mind.

And, and it occurred to me afterwards that, you know, this is how we're created to know.

It's kind of that added something to the to the genesis of my book, by the way, is that those are the two ways we know we encounter things with our heart, with the sense of knowing that's innate to the human condition that you can't measure empirically.

1:30:07

And then there's that more reasoned empirical Thomas moment, right?

And the beauty of that is that both of us, both of those ways lead us to truth.

So.

Especially when they.

When they converge, yes, yes.

1:30:25

And I, that's another, the other thing I think about this, this cloth is that I don't know of anything else that challenges us in that philosophical sense the way this does.

It brings both of those ways of knowing together, unlike in a in a beautiful, perfect Nexus, unlike anything else I've ever seen.

1:30:45

Well, I mean, I don't want to say I'm jealous, but I'm excited that you got to.

Do that, but don't give up hope.

I think that, you know, once they figure out some of those conservation issues, hopefully this Pope will allow another public exhibition of it.

Has Pope Leo 14 said anything about the shroud publicly as he talked about it?

1:31:02

Only that he wants to, that he wants to visit it.

Only that he wants to venerate it.

And.

So.

He hasn't seen it and so, but he is the owner.

I mean, he's the, the, the Holy See, the Holy See owns it.

And so I expect you'll make a visit to it.

1:31:18

Just kind of last thing I want to talk about and then we'll talk about your, you know, where to get your book and all those things.

But so, yeah, I started off with, you know, my first book and then before I know it, I'm growing this library of shroud books.

And then yes.

And then I'm like, oh, I need, I need to get this, this picture that's behind me over here.

1:31:34

Then I was like, well, I need the life-size and, and now I'm like, all my friends are joking.

When are you buying a life-size replica?

And I I see they're about 2000 bucks.

It's not too.

I have one.

Do you have one?

Yeah.

I do have one.

Yeah, I do have one.

So I'm seeing that people are going on the road with these and doing, you know, exhibition type things.

1:31:53

I saw in your bio talking about the Museum of the Bible, right?

Are there places that you, you somebody like me who's so excited about this could go and see something?

I mean, in Turin, is there something to see like what, what, what for people who want to go to another level in person?

1:32:11

So there is a life-size replica that are an exact 1 to 1 replica that tours in the United States as part of the Ethonia exhibits that, that, that they, they have that in several places in the United States.

I, whenever I travel and I have the space to display it, I take mine and I did, I chose not to frame mine.

1:32:37

I, I asked people to and that was produced in Turin.

It's a digital exact 1 to 1.

It's a photograph of the, of the shroud that Turin produced.

And so it is exact and, and I asked for people to give me a 14 foot table and I and I display mine horizontally because that's how people are going to see it if they ever get to see it.

1:32:58

And, and so I, I know that there's an effort on the part of many people in the United States to try to bring this experience to more people.

The Museum of the Bible has one that was produced on ancient linen using an ancient leading technique.

Oh, really?

Oh, OK.

1:33:13

Yeah.

Are they in DC?

Is that where that is?

Then they're Washington, DC, but it is not always on display.

I think they they, they plan things around the Linton Easters season.

But yeah, I do think that you'll see more and more of that sort of thing.

1:33:30

OK, I actually have one, one more question, which is I hear people say a lot, you know, they don't want people to they don't want this to be the linchpin of a person's faith, right?

Like you got to leave that.

Like for me, there's not much point 1%, you know, I'm, I'm pretty convinced at this point.

1:33:50

But yeah, like, you know, heaven forbid something comes out, Oh my gosh, it's not real.

Like you don't want your faith to be hinging on that.

But at the same time, I don't know.

I'm just curious if you want to speak to that because to me, pretty compelling.

And I think, I think for I think that more skeptics would be converted to faith if they understood this personally.

1:34:14

Then people would lose faith by finding out it wasn't real like that.

Yeah, I mean, I, I, my colleague, Father Peter Mangum, who I've worked with on this for many, many years, I love what he says, that this is the, the the shroud is as a tool for evangelization in the world we live in because it speaks so uniquely to faith and science.

1:34:36

I always tell people that if I find out tomorrow that the shroud is not authentic, the only thing that changes for me is my travel schedule.

You know, it's like I, I, I don't think we can hang our belief in the resurrection on, on an object, a physical object.

1:34:55

And, and I think, I think there is a really deep Christian theological reason for that.

And it goes back to the earliest Christians.

If you look at the, at the the Apostolic community, you know, that's, it's described in the Acts of the Apostle.

1:35:12

It's the curricula, it's the teaching of that early community that emphasizes the resurrection.

That's what did this metaphysical, supernatural event defined the Christian faith.

It's not defined by anything physically left behind.

1:35:30

You don't even find a mention of this in the Apostolic community.

I mean, I believe it was there.

I believe they probably used it maybe as an altar linen, but but they didn't hang their faith on it.

And that tells me that we shouldn't either, because once we begin to elevate something physical over the metaphysical event itself, you're missing the meaning you're missing.

1:35:55

The knowledge in a sense too, you know?

It is I, I think, I think we venerate relics.

You know, that'd be a subject for a whole other conversation I'd love to have with Protestants about, about the teaching, about relics, because there's nothing about it that should be superstitious.

1:36:13

There's there's nothing about it that should elevate the physical.

It's a conduit to the greatest mystery ever.

And that's how we have to approach it.

Yeah, well said.

Tell people about where to get your book.

Where do you where do you want to send them in anything?

Else that's available on all the major booksellers online.

1:36:30

Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com, you can buy probably in some local booksellers, but it's certainly available online.

And it's the shroud of Turin in the third Millennium confronting the limits of human knowledge.

And so that's what I do is I is I bring us to the point that all the science and all the history and all the biblical scholarship can bring us to.

1:36:50

And we had a wall.

You had a wall.

Because none of that can answers the biggest.

They can answer for us the biggest question of all.

You're not talking about an object, You're talking about a person.

Yeah.

Who is it?

Who is it?

And what does he mean?

Yeah, yes.

Oh, it's been a real pleasure for me.

1:37:08

I really appreciate.

You this has been fun.

Time today thank you so much.

I'm good to meet you sometime in person.

Do you?

Are you?

So you have a tour schedule, I assume that?

I do and I am.

I am recently retired from this is my last semester to teach at LSU, so I am.

I'm actually hoping to be able to do a lot more public venues and more education about this in the future than I have in the past.

1:37:31

So.

So yeah, I am in got a, an organization or, you know, a church group, large group, whatever.

And you'd like a presentation with a full size replica of the shroud.

I'm your girl.

How many people do we need to get you over here?

You know, I, I can't really say an answer that because God sends who he sends and so.

1:37:54

Yeah, I'm not in.

Charge of the invitation list.

Great.

Well, I really hope that I get to connect with you in person and and see.

I love that.

Well, like I had mentioned to you, I have your book arriving today.

I thought I would have it before, but the IT got kind of delayed in transit.

1:38:11

So I will be up the next couple of nights pouring through your book.

I couldn't be more excited and I feel very invigorated from this.

So I'm going to be chasing down all these Shroud leads.

I have not seen that YouTube video you told me about about the rescue effort, so I'll be checking that out as well.

1:38:30

And I just hope that people listening and watching go and dig into this a little more deeply because it is truly one of the most profound mysteries on Earth today.

And I just, I think it's so cool that you've made this, you know, such an area of academic focus.

1:38:47

I really appreciate it.

Thanks for your time today.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Transcript: The Trap of Project-Self — Ben Greenfield #010

0:00

You can only do so much in terms of the meaning that you bring to the world when it's just all about the jawline and the ABS and the testosterone levels and the.

Cavs, you can't hack your way to wholeness, right?

Where is real fulfillment found?

Is it in success?

Is it in money?

0:16

Is it in sex or power?

Is it in the simple things like family faith?

Love that cheesy Disney S responsive like look at what's inside like that's that's what's really important.

But it it is actually true.

You go through life, make mistakes, fall, realize your character's not quite what you thought it was, and then you look at the life of Christ, the way he walks through it.

0:39

He's got all this fame, all this attention.

People are following him everywhere and he just keeps demonstrating service.

First of all, I'm going to get this out of the way.

I do not make the bed when I get up in the morning.

Guys on tea and he doesn't even make the bed that's.

That's going to be the only clip for this whole podcast.

0:56

Ben does not make the bed.

My guest today is Ben Greenfield, who probably needs no introduction.

He's a globally renowned biohacker and an edgy, controversial, but trusted voice in the realm of self optimization and human performance.

1:12

He's garnered international acclaim as a New York Times bestselling author, speaker, podcaster, and human performance expert, even gaining the title of America's top personal trainer.

But now, after two decades of pioneering extreme biohacking and longevity protocols, he's confronting the personal costs of trying to attain physical perfection in his new documentary, Boundless.

1:38

The man who became human.

Ben Greenfield, welcome to the show.

What's up, man?

It's really good to see you.

It's.

Been a while.

It's been like a little while.

Like a long while.

Yeah, Yeah, it's great to see you.

And I was thinking back, it's probably, you know, I was thinking back to the Neil Strauss event that we both spoke at.

1:55

And I think that had to have been 12 or 13 years ago now.

I've been with my wife 11 years.

I wasn't with her then, so.

Wasn't that like like the the vegan tattooed Daniel?

Like pre hunting, pre foraging, everything.

2:10

Not vegan but definitely pre pre hunt.

Yeah pre wild fed for.

Sure, Yeah, yeah, I have selective memory.

Anyways, I did it it it seems like you've come a long ways since.

Then a lot's happened for me for sure.

I would say the same thing about you, man.

I just watched your new film the other day and so I got a little bit of a sense of kind of your journey as well.

2:31

And I wanted to say that it's funny how we're really different, but there's this parallel.

I think that we both were very deep into Project Self.

And I took it the, like, primitive natural route, and you took it the, like, more technological kind of biohacking route.

2:49

And we both have, I think, arrived at a really similar place.

But tell us a little bit about the film, because it's coming out soon.

Yeah, I mean, like premieres, I think in LA next Friday.

3:05

You obviously got one of the secret sauce early hidden links.

This film kind of took me by surprise actually, because there were people following me around with a video camera, but I was not the creative.

I was not directing.

3:21

I was not producing.

All I knew was that behind the scenes, Caleb Applegate, the director, wanted to tell my story and more specifically, tell my story of being, as you just alluded to, like really dialed into the human optimization scene and at what many people might perceive to be the pinnacle of that world.

3:46

And the realization that I was, you know, climbing the wrong mountain, as some might say, or had my priorities, you know, back ass words and the kind of kind of like the big shake up moment in the film.

4:04

Not to spoiler alert, this for too many people is nearly losing, you know, kind of paradoxically, everything that I that I thought I was working for, right?

Like my family, my wife, my kids, my legacy, all of that was kind of slipping away as I was becoming like, you know, fit and popular and making money and building the business and doing all the things, you know, justifying to myself that I was, you know, sending home the paycheck, you know, out slaying the Dragons.

4:34

And yeah, you you kind of almost don't realize.

And I don't know if you if you've experienced anything like this.

Daniel how much like really simple happiness and fulfillment and this feeling of just like, dude, this, this feels so right and everything feels so good when you shift the priorities and you basically put faith and family 1st.

5:00

And that, that's what that's that's the story that the film tells.

If you had handed me back when I last saw you at that conference, let's say if you had handed me a quiz and the quiz had like a multiple choice question about this and it was like, you know, where is real fulfillment found?

5:17

Is it in success?

Is it in money?

Is it in sex or power?

Is it in the simple things like family, faith, love out of.

I would have selected the correct answer, but it wasn't reflected in how I was living.

And I had to kind of hit a rock bottom to really come to that.

5:33

I was thinking this morning about how you and I come from the first generation of, you know, now we call everybody influencers.

I'm sure when you started, that word didn't exist.

You know I I cringe when I call myself that.

It's my favorite word.

Thank you for using it.

But you know.

5:49

We were That and biohacker are probably my two favorite words.

Well, you know, I, I, I got A tag line for your film because it's something I've said many times over the years.

You can't hack your way to health or you can't hack your way to wholeness, right?

But, but yeah, we were that first generation who we had these new tools that allowed us to build careers off of our passion and interest in a way that wasn't really available before.

6:14

I can say for myself, I wasn't prepared for the kind of like the fame and the, the quick fame and the money and the success that came from that.

I didn't really have the tools to handle that.

And so I think the last time we saw each other, I was really close to my rock bottom moment and eventually did kind of crash and burn a bit.

6:37

And I've been, you know, it took me about 10 years to really, you know, you, you kind of joked about with Wild Fed really that was like my time in the wilderness rebuilding myself.

So I say all that, that when I watched your film, I was like, I could really relate.

I felt like, oh, I see me and this guy had a parallel, different, but parallel journey.

6:55

And I wanted to really congratulate you on the vulnerability.

Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, it, and again, like it wasn't really a story that I'd ever planned on putting together and telling, at least at that level.

Like, like my, I guess my approach was I wrote this book called Boundless Parenting kind of after a lot of this happened.

7:13

And after I really like reconnected and doubled down with family and marriage and children.

And like I took a deep dive into family branding, legacy building, forming a trust, passing on both generational wisdom and generational wealth and packaged all of that together and put it in a book.

7:32

And still, you know, occasionally talk about that, you know, at conferences or two friends or two families.

And that was what I kind of thought was the the, the only real work I would wind up doing when it comes to talking a little bit about this concept to people.

7:51

And then, yeah, I mean, Caleb, who's also my best friend who lives like 20 minutes from my house and runs all my companies, he surprised me with this film on my birthday.

He was like, he just kept telling him I'm working on stuff behind the scenes.

So my birthday was like 6 months ago.

8:08

And we sat down and one of my friends, Zac Efron, who's, you know, he's a big Hollywood guy.

He was in town.

And he and me and Caleb and my sons and my wife and a couple of their friends, we just like rented out a movie theater downtown to like screen it and watch it.

8:24

And, you know, Zac and I both went out to dinner with Caleb afterwards.

And we were like, dude, we need you to do something with this.

This is This is great because.

I thought you might say like, dude, no way, I'm not airing this.

What, are you crazy?

No, like I, I thought it really surprised me, like, like, you know, 'cause I'm used, dude, I'm just like, I don't know if I'm lazy or what, but I'm just used to like rinky dinky YouTube videos, you know, here's me on the stability ball, you know, with, with my, with my foam roller and my acupressure mat, you know, showing you how to fix your hip flexors.

8:56

This, this is just like, you know, something totally different.

I mean, you saw it.

And so, yeah, it, it was in December, we're talking in July.

It was in December of 2025 that we decided, hey, we, we should do something with this.

And so, yeah, we're bringing it on the road show to a few cities over the next few weeks, and then we'll start streaming it.

9:20

Well, I'm really impressed because again, I, I sort of thought to myself, I mean, the first half of it, you could kind of it rolls almost like a humble brag.

You know, you're like, OK, I got to learn a lot about you and your career because I didn't know all the things you had done and accomplished.

And it was great to see all that.

9:36

You know, at the same time, I found myself getting almost, like, internally irritated because I'd spent so much time trying to optimize myself in my own ways.

And it was like bringing up all of those.

Yeah.

Memories for me.

And it was like, oh, God.

You know, I thought I would look back on all that part of my life really fondly, but now there was this, like, emptiness in me that I didn't know about at the time that now it's real cringe when I look back on it.

10:00

Yeah.

And so all of a sudden, you know, the film kind of takes a shift, which, you know, if somebody watches the, the trailer, they'll understand what I'm talking about.

But it then it goes into sort of, you know, how you had all that happening, but at the expense of your family, at the expense of what's really important in life.

10:17

And I was just impressed that you would actually, Erin, I, I've somebody who's come out kind of with some vulnerability over the years as well.

And I know it's just difficult for people to do that.

How was it for your family to to see that you guys were going to share this part of your story?

10:33

You know, stuff that I guess most, you just never know what's going on in families.

You know, you never know what's going on in couples.

People don't share everything.

And so you see the polished exterior.

You don't always see what's going on behind the scenes.

Was it was it scary to 1st come out with that?

Well, first of all, our family is so tight.

10:50

I mean, so tight.

But you know, when when my wife I almost, you know, got divorced and some of that story is told in the film, we really reverted to like radical transparency and radical honesty with each other big time and implemented that with the whole family.

12:16

I was thinking about this last night.

So my pastor, Doug Wilson was talking about the relationship of, of teenagers with their parents.

And he's like 11.

Good metric of, you know, whether you're doing a good job connecting with your teenagers is, you know, if mom and dad are just hanging around in the bedroom at night and, you know, if they just wander in there and want to hang out and talk with you guys and just like, just like be with you in the evening.

12:43

And my sons were off at dinner last night and my wife and I were just like, you know, just laying in bed chatting, getting ready for bed.

And, you know, they got home and they wandered in just like hung out in our room for like 20 minutes just talking and joking.

12:58

And that's the kind of family we are.

Like, we're, we're really very much together.

We have a more big morning family party like this huddle where we sing songs and dance and, you know, do a big high 5 and hug.

And I read the family of the Bible and we pray together and then in the evening we have the same thing like like we all meet together and I take my sons through this father son book club.

13:22

So we have a book chat and then, you know, I take out the guitar and we sing a little bit and then we all pitch in and help make dinner and it's just a big party.

And so because we're all just like so hyper connected when this came out and the idea of like, you know, telling our family story, you know, both the good and the bad in public, they were pretty on board just because we tend to do everything together anyways.

13:50

And then at the same time though, like at the time you and I are talking, barely anybody has seen the film.

Like, like for the very first time, I guess exactly a week from now, next Friday, you know, my family will be with me in LA on stage after the first like big crowd of people have seen the film.

14:07

And, and yeah, I, you know, I'm hoping that that the, I don't know, whatever you want to call like the publicity, the the media, the limelight is something that just brings our family even closer together and maybe gives my sons and my wife an even deeper sense of purpose when it comes to like sharing their story and seeing how they can help out the world.

14:29

But yeah, nobody, nobody pushed back in in my family, at least as far as like, hey, let's just let's do this.

Let's put this out there.

You know, it reminds me of, I guess I hate, I hesitate to bring him up right now because of all that's happened recently.

14:47

But you know, I had read Peter Tia's book Outlive.

And, you know, the whole book reads like basically like high end medical kind of biohacking.

And then you get to the last chapter and he's like, Oh yeah.

By the way, I'm a rage addict who's nearly lost my whole family and had to go away to a retreat center to like learn how to, you know, and this is actually foundationally underpinning all this stuff that I've just shared.

15:09

And I just could relate to that so much.

And I've seen this so many times.

It's like the a lot of times what drives you to success are the very problems that are, you know, simmering underneath the surface, yet they there's something beautiful about it.

15:27

And I wanted to say to you, I don't say this to do I want to with full respect to all your career and all you've done, but I sort of watching that film, I thought, man, some of this is going to help people much more than almost like anything.

You've offered so much for decades to people about how they can optimize their life, their health, their fitness, their longevity.

15:48

But at a spiritual soul level, the stuff that you're sharing in this is going to impact.

I mean, there's going to be people who receive a a gift greater than anything you could have given them with all your prior content.

Part of that comes from the vulnerability, but I think part of that's coming to the realization that our culture's obsessed with this self project and it doesn't doesn't really lead anywhere.

16:10

Yeah, and I mean, and now it's gotten even even worse.

You know, you've seen it the past year, the whole looks maxing movement, which I was actually thinking about this this morning because, you know, it's a video turn up on my feet of some dude like breaking his jaw or whatever, you know, so he could get the the Superman, you know, Jay, breaking your jaw, breaking your legs, you know, mewing and implants and 14 year olds on testosterone.

16:37

And you know, I thought, gosh, like, you know, even in my book in, in boundless, there's an entire chapter on like beauty and symmetry and you know, in the value that you might bring to society or to yourself and the confidence that that produces.

And I'm like, gosh, like, you know, I, I think, I think a lot of the like the early day biohackers or health optimizers, including myself, almost like fueled a little bit of this looks maxing movement, which fits in the same category of, well, that's great if you got, you know, whatever, nice calf implants and a perfectly square jaw and a good hairline and optimize testosterone levels.

17:14

But dude, you realize like how much life is going to suck when you're 30 years old and you like can't have kids, like, right.

You can't propagate your seed and have a legacy.

And it's just, you know, and and I you know, I wish that people didn't have to go to the place where you feel the emptiness from the myopic pursuit of health and anti aging to have this realization.

17:39

And you know, and hopefully the film helps out with that a little bit.

But you know, I think for some people, like you just have to get to that point where you're like, gosh, you know, I did it.

I got the I got the six pack and whatever I did the I did the Iron Man and I did the Spartan, you know, whatever Death Race, you know, and all the things.

17:56

And I'm still searching, right?

I still have that eternal hole in my soul that feels kind of empty.

Yep, right.

And to put your identity in something that ultimately has to fade, you just can't keep that level into eternity.

18:12

So therefore it has to fade.

So there, you know, if you're putting your identity in a thing that eventually rusts and corrupts and breaks down, you know, ultimately, I mean, you're going to find yourself feeling pretty empty at the end.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of people like, well, it's all relative, right?

18:30

So yeah, when I'm 40, I'll be broken down a little bit more when I was then when I was 30.

But you know, I, I can certainly be like the fittest 40 year old out there.

And you know, when I'm 50, I'm going to be working on mental optimization and learning new skills.

And, you know, when I'm 60, you know, I'll be playing masters, pickleball and whatever.

18:48

Like there will always be some kind of a metric to chase, no matter how old you are.

You like some way to make yourself better and to optimize.

And there's not necessary clearly something inherently wrong with that, but it will like there will, there will be this constant threat and magnet and pull to take you away from faith, family and relationships.

19:11

And I, I think that that that pull towards optimization, even when your body does start to fall apart.

And you'd think all the clues would be there that hey, bro, this is not like the most important thing to be working on, you know, I, I think that you can just stay on that hamster wheel, you know, until you're 80 or dead or whatever.

19:31

Yeah, but you can also end up with, you know, there was a moment in the film your wife uses the word narcissism.

And she uses it so carefully.

She can tell she's like, very reluctant to say it, but she says it.

And I've certainly heard that word out of my own wife before as well.

19:46

And my wife is, I wanted to say, sounds like he just seems like you have an amazing wife and that's hard to overstate.

The gift, the blessing and the importance of an incredible wife.

You know, and I have a really incredible wife.

20:04

And she basically all that energy that I put into myself, she puts that energy into other people.

And I've watched her do now for 10 years.

I thought, man, she just does not get it, you know, as I'm working on myself. 10 years into it now, I see what she's built for us, this incredible network of families and friends, all this support everywhere, just all these fun children and all these wonderful people who always are just interested in what we're doing and invested into us.

20:31

And she's built all this stuff through loving other people.

And I tried to build all these things through loving myself.

And I, I don't want, obviously for the listeners here, I'm not trying to diminish taking care of your health or your nutrition or your fitness.

I mean, that's so crucial, but there's a point at which there's diminishing returns and that energy is like better invested into other things.

20:53

You quote Mark 836, which I really love.

What does it profit a man to gain the whole world if he loses his own soul?

And I thought that really summed up this whole conversation really well because I was, I was getting all the things.

21:09

I mean, I lately I, I look at these billionaire tech people and I think, man, on paper you're the winner, but in reality you're actually a loser.

So much and, and you know, you know what with with the, the narcissistic thing, it is interesting because like, like for so for guys like you and me who are public figures, there is a certain amount of self work that you need to do.

21:30

Like, like you need to be, you know, foraging and maybe just like combing your hair and showering before you get on Instagram or YouTube and, and like presenting a certain amount of like confidence and put to get put togetherness to the world.

That maybe people who aren't in the limelight and who haven't chosen to be a public health educator or public science educator or, or, you know, even influencer in in a positive sense of that word have chosen.

21:56

But yeah, it's, it's super easy to take it too far when monetization and, you know, shall we say Maslow's hierarchy is tied to your image, right?

That, and then they could become super tempting and, and you constantly have to question yourself.

OK, like, is, is this intentionally helping me get my message out to the world?

22:15

Or am I getting to the point where I'm just like trying to present this fake perfect image and getting sucked into all of the dopaminergic responses that occur every time that you're doing self work?

Not to mention the idea that I think for many people, the self work is a form of control, right?

22:34

And it's, it's, it's lack of trust in, you know what for me would be God's path for my life and more trust based in how can I control this scenario, this scenario, including my body, my brain, my business, all those things that I can wake up in the morning and control.

22:52

And until you release that, like it, it's very, very tempting and just say, all right, I got this.

I'm going to optimize and, and I'm even more motivated and justified to do so because you know, in, in the sector that I'm in, my income kind of depends on that optimization.

23:08

Yeah.

So that's the piece that's that's an important piece, of course, right.

That's just career stuff.

So that's vital.

But then I think, you know, in addition to getting kind of hooked on the, the dopamine part of it, there's also the component where if you've got a fundamentally broken thing going on inside and everybody's complimenting you constantly on how smart you are and how fit you are and how like what incredible speaker you are and all the great information you bring.

23:34

And you can just like let that become a giant cover story for what's festering underneath.

And that's what I had going on.

I had like unaddressed issues and I had no sense of needing to address them because I was getting flattery constantly from every direction.

23:51

And that I started to see when I got married, it was like, oh, sometimes my wife wants to talk about things about me that I don't like talking about.

I'd rather go hear from my fans right now.

You know what I mean?

Like, or, you know, maybe another way to talk about it too would be sometimes I'll see bodybuilders, They'll look amazing physically, but you talk to them, you're like, oh, not so intellectually developed.

24:13

Or you'll see somebody who's got incredible emotional intelligence, but they're morbidly obese.

Or you meet a scientist whose intellect is fully developed and they have no physical body, you know, and you kind of get these different areas where somebody's really excelled.

And I'm so interested in being fully well-rounded.

24:31

But I think sometimes a little bit of notoriety can cover over a whole area that's atrophied that you don't.

And it's so painful to go into at 1st that it's just like easier to avoid it until you know it starts creeping into your life in a way that can't be avoided anymore.

24:47

Yeah, and I think one of the most difficult areas to, to, to, to like cover up with that, that perceived image of, of perfection or that, that projected image of perfection is your relationships, your community and your faith.

25:06

It's like you just can't fake that stuff.

You know, there's there's no, there's no relationship filter that I know of.

Someone could make a lot of money maybe.

But but yeah, when, when everything that you can project and fake and filter is dialed in and then everything else that, you know, kind of down to the if, if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

25:29

You know, whatever's going on at home is, is not going well.

All that other stuff, just like super sucks.

And I think that's where we see a lot of times in our sector, like people do implode and, and sometimes we think, OK, well, whatever, they just, you know, did a, did a little bit too, you know, much whatever, like psilocybin one night or they, they went over the edge with something or they just kind of cracked.

25:53

But a lot of times it's that slow erosion, and a lot of it occurs from the erosion of faith, the erosion of relationships and the personal life that just kind of slips away.

And you know, that that's certainly what happened to me.

26:08

And, you know, by the grace of God, you know, me and, and, and my family and my wife were able to, to, to catch it and fix things.

But yeah, it it's so easy to to to optimize and yet have the things that are most important to be falling apart in the background.

26:26

Yeah, and that's what's wild is like all in the quest to live a long time, right?

So it's like, OK, so you get to live 200 year.

I mean, not that you could, but let's say you could you live 200 years, but none of it's living because you're so busy chasing and not living, right?

Because, you know, you start to see as the film goes on, it's like so nice to see you settling into your, I guess maybe we'll call it your new life, you know, and seeing you with your family and seeing you, you know, navigating those emotional and spiritual places the way you are now.

26:56

And I know for me, again, having kind of been through a similar journey, I felt like it just felt so good to see that in you.

I'm curious because that's what happened to me too.

You know, I came in with such strong mission and such strong drive and such strong faith.

And then over time, I think I fell into the trap.

27:12

It's so classic.

I mean, it's such a classic male power trap, you know, And so, and I've recently been watching it.

One of the things I've been watching recently is I'm watching men around me get on testosterone and destroy their lives.

Dude, I have to say I.

27:27

Man.

I, I just watch like, I don't know if it's that something like as you age and your T levels come down a bit, you know, what allows a man to kind of come into his heart and get connect spiritually a little bit more because he's not so driven to go conquer something like that.

27:43

But then I'm watching guys who should be at that stage of life go back into their 20s physiologically and make decisions that you're like, how could you do that?

You just.

Destroyed your whole life, you know, over something.

Stupid And so I'm seeing a lot of that kind of thing.

And then so that's one way, but also just once people, when people adore you, man, you can really believe, you know, cuz you hear that saying like don't take anything personally, even the good stuff.

28:08

It's like you start thinking that's all true, right?

People are flattering you.

They want to be around you.

They want a little piece of what you have.

You start buying into the story and before you know it, yeah, things like faith, family and relationships fall way behind.

So what's your advice to like a, let's say a young guy who's he's coming up in looks, maxing, he's starting to get views, he's starting to get, he's starting to feel that fame.

28:28

People want him to come speak money starting to come in for the first time in a big way.

The ladies are all throwing themselves at his feet.

What do you tell that guy before he gets there?

Yeah, so, so a couple of things.

First of all, let's let's just get this out of the way right now.

28:45

I've been on testosterone for four years.

I, I, I think if you use it responsibly and if you are not getting like super physiologic doses that you can nip in the bud some of like the anger, the aggression, the out of control libido.

29:03

And then I also think as, as perhaps you were alluding to, if you do take, let's say, like a 45 year old happily, you know, married man, you know, with a stable partnership and you all of a sudden, like, make them like horny as hell, like they were when they were 18 years old due to improperly managed testosterone.

29:23

Yeah.

You can create a scenario that that goes way beyond just, you know, doing something that helps you recover faster from the gym, so to speak.

So I, I think that's a nuanced discussion.

I'm very careful with it.

And both of my sons know like don't even go near anything like that.

29:41

When you're in any stage where you're gonads are working just fine and you're pumping it out just fine yourself.

You don't want to suppress your own natural production, etcetera.

But I, I think there's a time and a place for a healthy discussion on testosterone replacement therapy where it fits.

But as far as like the looks maxing scene, I mean, part of it is kind of just like that, like that cheesy Disney esque response of like, look at what's inside.

30:06

Like that's that's what's really important.

But it it is actually true.

31:30

You know, both of my sons are into fitness, they're into working out, they hit the gym, they take colostrum, they take creatine, you know, they've take aminos.

They, they, they, they are probably more into fitness than the average 18 year old boy might be.

31:48

And yet they know the order of priorities, right?

God comes first family comes right after that your relationships, your community, your friendships and the service that we do to people in our little community of Viola on into the neighboring communities and they're around us is number 3.

32:09

And then comes health and then comes your business.

That's that's that's the priority.

That is, you know, exactly written in our Greenfield family constitution in our mission statement.

So I think setting up your boundaries for yourself in terms of boundaries that actually define your identity are important.

32:27

I think some of that just requires education and self work and, and, and in our book, you know, constant prayer and, and, and seeking to hear the voice of God and to be able to discern, you know, when you're spending too much time on self versus others.

32:47

But I think more practically, the idea of looks maxing is very shallow.

And I think the very, very first most important question I would ask is do you want to attract and have as, as, as your primary audience and people who look up to you, the type of people who are that sold on something that shallow?

33:14

Because once that goes away, if that does go away, then are those people still going to be backing you, liking you, following you, listening to you, or are they just going to move on, right?

Because a, a shallow pursuit like that is only going to result in, you know, shallow followers and friends.

33:36

And you can only do so much in terms of the meaning that you bring to the world when it's just all about the jawline and the ABS and testosterone levels and the Cavs.

And you know, I I've personally been a little bit shocked at how rapid and popular the whole idea of looks maxing has become.

33:55

It is interesting though, to think of it as a generational evolution from where we come out of, you know, and you just see 'cause you can kind of see it with music as well.

You can see so interesting with culture.

You know, you brought up God a few times and it's, it's interesting to watch what happens in, I don't know, 4050, sixty years of kind of taking God out of the center of a culture and then not really replacing it with anything except the idea of success, power, long life, something like that.

34:24

And and.

Right now removes something infinite, Yeah.

And then it's like, OK, so here's all this finite shit and let's let's see if this can do the same thing.

Just start throwing it all in that hole That's.

Never in here today.

Everybody wakes up every day, turns on the news to see like, is everything still even functioning anymore?

34:41

Right?

Like we're in this kind of scary cultural moment because everything's so nihilistic.

And that idea of putting God first, I was hoping maybe you could expand on that a little bit.

I think that's such a crucial component.

And it, you know, it's funny.

Did you grow up in a religious house, household or did this come to you later in life?

34:59

So my my mom grew up near Detroit, MI and my dad grew up in Miami.

My dad was not raised in a Christian house and was the son of relatively wealthy parents in Miami.

35:18

Got into a lot of trouble, you know, drugs and jail time from the age of 13.

And when he was 18, his brother was stabbed in the heart by a Cuban gang member during a the fight that occurred during a drug deal.

35:39

And that was kind of like the last thing that shook my dad up and made him really begin to reconsider his priorities in life.

He wanted to get out of the big city.

And so he just basically just like, stuck his finger on a map.

And it was on Idaho.

35:55

It landed on Idaho.

So he moved to Idaho with the dream of becoming a farmer at the same time.

My mom and I can say this because she's I've interviewed both my parents on my podcast and she's talked about this.

She had a pretty brutal experience with sexual assault again, by a, by a gang of a bunch of guys in a warehouse that she was working at and similar story.

36:19

You know, that was like the final straw.

And she's like, I got to get out of here.

And she also moved to Idaho, where her sister lives.

They, they met in Idaho.

My dad became a Christian after being, after being witnessed, after someone shared the gospel with him, a guy named Jim Wilson, who is the, the father of a somewhat popular pastor.

36:43

I mentioned him earlier, Doug Wilson.

And then my mom's sister who she moved out here to live with was a Christian.

And, and so basically they both became Christians.

And, you know, when they had me and my four siblings, we were all raised in a Christian house.

36:58

And, you know, that was a huge blessing in that it probably kept me out of a lot of trouble growing up.

And yet, like many young individuals, I still had a falling away, you know, chasing all the things that I thought were more important or more cool or what the world might have expected me to be, you know, as opposed to God.

37:17

And so, but you know that that that was certainly an environment in which I was raised, you know, Christian environment with an appreciation for faith and family that I did fall away from.

37:32

But I think coming back to it was all the easier because I still had instilled in me those values from an early age of knowing like deep down inside, having that gnawing of, oh, like this isn't right, because I know better.

Like I know what's really important.

It's interesting with in light of what we've been talking about because as you go through life, you know, at least as a man, my experience, build your career and then have the kind of things that we talked about happen, you know, make mistakes, fall, realize your character's not quite what you thought it was, having to restructure everything.

38:09

And then you look at the life of Christ and you're like, oh wow, the way he walks through it.

He's got all this fame, all this attention.

People are following him everywhere and he just keeps demonstrating service, you know, right up to the night before he dies when he washes his disciples feet and you're like, man, I mean, be hard for me to pull my staff together and wash their feet.

38:29

You know, you know what I mean?

It's especially the night before.

I know I'm I'm going to die.

It's so, so he demonstrates this selflessness that when I was younger seemed kind of, I don't know, like wasted effort to me.

I didn't quite understand.

38:45

But now it's so interesting because when I've found that when I prioritize other people, when I prioritize my family, when I prioritize my relationships, it's I don't say this like as a hack, you know, because it's going to sound like that, but it's like the amount of goodness that comes out of that.

39:02

It's like I, I go down to my gym and I train.

I feel great after there's a reward.

But when I go serve somebody else, the rewards are it's sort of like the difference between getting a gift and giving a gift.

I mean, I just get so much more out of giving it, you know, then I do out of.

Yeah, it's interesting that you say it's not a hack because like, that, that's where I know like, my mind is sometimes tempted to go.

39:22

It's like, well, look at look at, you know, Harvard's longest running study on longevity.

And it turns out that just like helping other people in the amounts of, you know, deep friendships that you have in your life Trump's everything.

And then it also turns out that, you know, you could say the same thing for a gratitude practice or for serving other people.

39:41

And then you can sit down to your gratitude journal or, you know, or or, you know, begin to to seek out volunteering opportunities in the local community or begin to serve your family.

And at the back of your mind, you're thinking, well, this ought to help out the telomeres.

And yes, that that's a beneficial side effects.

40:00

But when when you shift into selfless mode and you're doing something for the pure joy of seeing someone else be helped, I think that that's that's a pretty darn big clue to you that you've crossed that threshold of your identity not being rooted in self and what something does for your own optimization, but your identity being rooted in.

40:22

Loving God and and loving others you know exactly as Jesus Christ did.

Yeah, wow.

Because there's a component of it where maybe it's like the difference between living in spirit and like the the law or something, because you can do the same acts.

40:37

It's like the condition of your heart.

That is more interesting to me, right.

So I could go serve people because I'm thinking about what it will do to my telomeres, or I can go serve people genuinely to see them be better off.

And like the the one is like religion.

I go and I do, I check all the boxes and do all the right things.

40:55

You know, that's another interesting component of the gospel that you see is this Pharisitical class of people.

They're doing all the things, but the condition of their heart when they do them is not right.

And so Jesus spends more time with people who outwardly do not appear to be doing the right things, but the condition of their heart is different, right?

41:15

It's soil that's receptive or something like that.

And so I think there's a component of that.

Yeah, yeah, I, I think the idea, you know, in our in our family devotions right now, we're going through the book of Hebrews and the idea of companionship comes up there quite a bit.

And you know, when you break that down, I I know you're you're a etymology or entomology.

41:35

I don't remember if it's studying words or eating insects, but you're.

And of.

Course companionship comes up and you know, it's the idea of, of breaking bread with others and that actually being something that we are, we're, we're commanded to partake in as a part of this walk of faith and as a part of growing closer to God.

41:58

And when you, when you think about put it through that lens, it actually there, there actually is a lot of fun that that comes aside in and, and I, I get into this a little bit in the film.

You see a few clips here and there in the film.

We started this practice close to the time that I really made the turn around and and really started to buckle down on faith and family of throwing a dinner party on an average of twice a month at our home and just inviting people from all walks of life into the community and filling up the dinner table.

42:29

And, you know, a lot of times it's potluck style and people bring food and there's usually a theme where like where are your most colorful spring colors?

Or, you know, we bust out the karaoke machine or there's a popsicle contest or we've even gone as far as like Iron Chef where two people show up three hours early and there's a mystery ingredient there.

42:47

They got we write the check, but they're making the food for everybody and it's super fun.

But just just this idea of, of service, not necessarily even needing to be something that you begrudgingly, you know, go do like whatever, you know, serving in the soup kitchen and in the middle of a Blizzard at 4:30 AM.

43:07

It's like a lot of this stuff is fun, just like, you know, inviting people into your home.

And I ride my bike around the neighborhood and stuffed Flyers in the mailboxes.

And, you know, and then people begin to pour in and you've got everybody from the, you know, retired Navy SEAL to the single mom to the family 8.

43:26

And it's, it's, you know, that's something I would really encourage people to do if they just like really want to get started in a good place with the service community thing.

Like, people don't care how big your house is.

People don't care how big your table is.

If you have, you know, a couple of rooms and some folding chairs and some card tables, like you are good to go.

43:43

And that's been really transformative for us as far as just like bringing people into our home because that has exponential implications.

Like people leave, but friendships are formed and people are doing other things throughout the week.

And I can't tell you how, how many new friends we've created and how many friends other people have made just as a result of coming and hanging out at a potluck dinner, you know, a couple of times a month.

44:08

Yeah, Well, I really want to echo that because this sounds so obvious to say, but in our era, it's important.

It's very easy to have virtual friendships and one day realize you don't even know anybody who lives in your neighborhood or you don't know anybody locally.

And it's not the same thing as when you gather together.

44:26

I mean, the energy of, you know, it's like listening to MP3 versus like hearing music played live, right?

It's a completely different experience and it's a much more, it kind of washes over you in a full and complete way that you can't experience digitally.

So I just, I just love that man.

44:42

So you've been having people over to the house and really building real in person relationships with people who live in your area.

Yeah.

The other thing is, is of course people are messy and that's very easy to escape in a digital environment.

And that can be everything from that e-mail or text or Slack message, guilty as charged that you send to someone with such an attitude or style behind it that doesn't really have any element of just like love or gratefulness or patience.

45:13

It's just like, you know, I, I tend to do that a lot in the digital environment because it's very easy for, you know, the, the, the digital avatar to be someone who you just like, look on as like a mechanical Turk, just like, you know, do this now, please.

What, why, why didn't you do this?

Whereas when, when you're with people you know, in real life, you know, IRL flesh and blood standing there with them, like there's, there's a great deal of social grace that's required.

45:42

There's a lot more of needing to put up with where people are in the moment with no ability to close a browser tab or escape.

It's like if there's a four year old over at your house for dinner and everything's messy and you're trying to whatever, you know, finish the salmon on the grill and they're running around like bleeding on the floor because they hit their head on the coffee table.

46:03

It's like you're trying to to manage people and be kind to people and feed people and take care of folks and it and it's just entirely different than the digital relationship.

And I mean, you know, we could talk to her blue in the face about digital versus in real life experiences.

46:19

And I think Sherry Turkle has a great book on this.

She's got a couple of good books on this.

But yeah, if if you're not intentionally bringing the messiness of other people into your life, you're missing out on a big part of what it means to be a human being.

And you need to brace yourself for the discomfort and the work that comes with that.

46:39

But man, it's, it's so worth it.

Especially if you have a little bit of what we were talking about earlier.

I know for me, and this has been one of the interesting things of again, being married, you know, my wife and I have different operating systems and so I can't get out of bed and not make the bed.

I just can't mean maybe once in the year, but I have to make it the second I get out of bed because a made bed represents order to me.

47:02

And I grew up in chaos that was dangerous.

And so it was a way of controlling at least that little space.

And then, like, another one for me is if I see like an empty roll of toilet paper on the on the dispenser, to me, that means my mom is in a depressive mode.

47:17

She's not getting out of bed for three days.

And it's going to be true.

And it's I'm going to take care of my brothers and sisters and we're not going to have any food, you know what I mean?

Whereas for my wife, it's like, I didn't have any of that.

It's just like, yeah, we'll get to changing it, you know?

And it took me a long time to understand that she wasn't wrong.

47:34

You know, it's like, that's because I have a need to control chaos, and that comes out of my childhood.

And so similarly, I think just to piggyback on what you were saying, when you bring people into your life, they're they are messy.

And if you're a control freak, you can't, you know, it just gets to a level you got a house full of people like you can't control that.

47:54

And I think there's something like, they call it like exposure therapy, where just being in that space and keeping my heart open, you know, it's.

Been jumping with the sharks.

Yeah, and like, you just can't do anything about it, you know?

Especially like, I know we've got a lot of Christian friends now and they have this enormous families.

48:13

I mean, five kids, six kids, you know, and you're just, they're just kids everywhere.

You can't control any of it.

And you just got to release yourself to the chaos.

I think you're really onto it with that.

Hey, tell me a little bit about, so you've spent a career having to do these kind of things like take me through a day in the life of Ben Greenfield.

48:30

If we were going to take out all of the fitness and the biohacking and all that kind of nutrition and all those pieces, and we were going to walk through the things that you're doing in a day for your spiritual life, for your family, for all these things we've been talking about.

What are the kind of practices that have really stuck for you over these years as you've been working this stuff out?

48:49

And, and what are the things you encourage other people to do in this specific realm?

Yeah, as as with many routines, there's, there's always plasticity and growth that occurs.

And if you would ask me this question five years ago, there, there would have been some differences.

But a lot of the key elements are threaded through.

49:04

First of all, I'm going to get this out of the way.

I do not make the bed when I get up in the morning for two reasons.

I get up early.

Guy's on tea and he doesn't even make the bed.

I get up early.

That's that's going to be the only clip for this whole podcast.

The bed does not make the bed.

49:20

I get up early.

My wife sleeps in a little bit and no matter, dude, I could spend 20 minutes making the bed and she will remake it like she's got her way.

It is this mysterious black box that in the stove top.

49:36

Like I can literally just like take elbow grease to the stove top for 1/2 hour and she'll walk in the house and start disassembling the stove top, clean the stove top.

So I don't clean the stove top or make the bed.

Now the so right now what my routine looks like is very first thing is when I get up, I put on the daily audio Bible.

50:00

I love to listen to the Bible and I will just tool around the house.

That's like, so it's Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs.

It's around 30 to 40 minutes you got.

A translation preference.

He bounces around.

So later on I read to the family and I read from the English standard version of the Bible.

50:19

But he bounces around.

The guy who who records this and he'll choose a different translation, you know, multiple days of the week.

But I like his voice, I like his style.

I like some of the expository stuff he does at the end and then whenever that finishes, I go outside.

50:36

If it's summer, spring or otherwise, I'm in the living room and I pray.

I have my personal prayers and that's everything from Thanksgiving to petition to asking God to to watch over assist me with certain things during the day.

There are typically I have a an annual retreat and out of that annual retreat that's just me come certain themes that I'm focusing on for the year.

51:01

So I have a poster on my wall right now and that's really the core of my own personal daily prayers is well, there's there's 10 items on there.

Prayer, kindness, contentedness, love, trust, honor, obedience, abundance, intention and courage.

51:18

And so you.

Were talking about.

Yeah, yeah.

So those are like 10 aspects of my life that I identified for 2026 that I really want to to to lay out to God to help me work on.

Could you go through them again for me?

Yeah, so the so the first is prayer specifically identified that while I do a good job with the calendar prayer times, constancy of prayer, like listening for God's voice throughout day before an e-mail, but you know, before a chat when I'm a little bit frustrated at a certain point during the day, like turning to God in those moments is something that identified as something I need to do a better job of.

51:57

So that's one.

And then kindness and contentedness were two and three, kindness pretty obvious.

They're just, you know, back to the whatever, not treating people I interact with virtually like digital avatars.

Contentedness for me that primarily stemmed from sexual contentedness.

52:19

Like recognizing that there are times that, you know, I'm tempted to take a second glance or get a little bit too deeply involved in a one-on-one conversation while I'm, you know, traveling and, you know, out of what might be considered a safe element.

And just constantly reminding myself everyday how freaking lucky I am to have Jessa in my life and how I would never want to do anything that would that would disrupt that relationship.

52:45

And a big driver for that from, for me is just like contentedness, dude.

Look at what God is giving you.

Like, like, it's incredible.

And yeah, just just be content in that.

Love putting myself in other shoes more often.

Trust, trusting God is in control because I can tend to be urgent and impatient, especially in business activities, and trusting that that God will allow things to happen in his time.

53:14

Honor specifically towards my parents when my father passed away.

And some of that story is in the documentary.

You know, I had times where I felt ashamed or embarrassed or, you know, felt like my dad was a little weird.

53:32

There are times when I've been tempted to like lash out at my mom or try.

And, you know, she just does so many things that I don't agree with.

You know, she runs a coffee shop downtown.

And, you know, we're, we bash heads a lot, even though we we deeply love each other.

But just this idea of honouring like, like this entire year, every time I walk past my dad's grave, which is at the bottom of my driveway, I shout, I love you, dad.

53:53

And, and, and that's like something new for me, rather just that idea of honouring parents both dead and alive.

And then obedience and abundance, right?

Obeying God no matter what and trusting the things will work out even when you have a huge opportunity open up, let's say on a Sunday afternoon for a great business call, that's probably going to make you $100,000 worth, that's the Sabbath.

54:18

God said not to work on the Sabbath, so obey and move on no matter what.

Abundance, meaning just constantly looking around the house at what I have that I don't need and giving away things a lot, not having a spirit of, you know, I can get into kind of like pack rat scarcity.

54:37

There might be a zombie apocalypse someday mode and you know, just just reminding myself to not be in that mode.

And then finally, intention.

I, especially from, from a fitness standpoint, can get into the rut of putting in junk miles or just training for the sake of training.

54:56

And for the longest time when I was like racing and, you know, doing Spartan and triathlons, it was very easy to be intentional with training.

And now sometimes it's like I'm just going to go to the gym and, you know, move shit around.

But one thing that I really wanted to focus on this year was being being consistent and having my fitness oriented around certain things, right?

55:17

Like right now, it's tennis, right?

Like I am, I'm in a tennis group, it's competitive.

I'm really having to work on my hip rotation, on my lateral stability, on my shoulder stability.

I'm just making sure that I'm not engaged in activities, especially from a fitness standpoint that are not intentionally focused on a specific goal.

55:36

I'm not just, you know, wasting my time for vanity's sake.

And then the last one is courage.

And I don't know if you've experienced this, Daniel, I know you're a pretty adventurous guy, But as you grow older, as you grow wealthier, as you get kind of more set in your ways, it's easy to quit doing the things that that used to scare you, right?

55:57

That that that that kind of make you step off the edge.

And for this one, I'm in the middle of a two year project of riding a father son adventure guide, right?

I was jumping out of airplanes last weekend.

I was, you know, hunting hogs at midnight the weekend before.

56:13

And I'm going on all these adventures with my sons to push myself outside my comfort zone because discomfort grows.

And I recognize that I'd kind of gotten set in my ways the past couple of years just going out and doing more scary things.

So that's an example of like 10 things that I kind of pray about every day that are things that I that I want God to work on in my life.

56:35

In 2026.

That was a really long answer.

That's an excellent answer.

I'm curious about how so?

So all these things you're talking about, they all take time and they take focus and you had all the things you were focused on before.

How much of the stuff that you used to do had to fall away and or did it reorganize and kind of vertically integrate somehow or like, you know, how are you balancing also because you have a brand and a career and people do look to you for these things.

57:05

So how, how is the, what is the integration look like of this, you know, spiritual, you know, relational thing with all of the biohacking stuff?

Yeah, I did quit racing.

You know, I, I raced in Ironman triathlon and then Spartan and Adventure racing for years.

57:21

That was a huge time suck.

Now I've got about now I've got like an hour.

Yeah, I've, I, I spent about an hour doing actual like intense physical work, you know, like I'm walking while I'm talking to you.

I don't really count that.

But you know, so definitely cutting out the amount of fitness building activities that I did, building a team and delegating way more and also just building at a much slower pace.

57:48

You know, I went from having a virtual assistant and maybe 2 employees to now across all my companies, I have over 30 people.

And, you know, and, and you know, that that obviously requires some, some work.

And I think it begins from a brass tacks standpoint with just having a really good COO who eventually becomes ACEO and manages, you know, the hiring for you, but delegation and then not racing as much.

58:15

We're, we're, we're two big ones.

And then, you know, just just to, to close the loop, answering your question about, you know, the spiritual habits is I have that morning spiritual habit.

And then at about 7:00 AM, we have the family morning huddle right where I I lead devotions, I lead song, I lead family time, I lead discussion.

58:36

And that's about 20 minutes.

You guys sing together?

Yeah, yeah, we sing together.

Sometimes it's just a big dance part.

I mean, sometimes we will just like pump up whatever, like, I don't know, you know, Hillsong or Bethel or something like that.

And just like Just Dance.

And then in the evening, that's another really, really big focus time for relationships and spiritual growth.

59:02

So that again, involves like 7:00 PM, like clockwork, almost every night of the week, family dinner starts.

It begins with father son book club time.

We're talking about a chapter of a book that I've taken my sons through since they were six years old.

You know, the book changes from month to month, but we kick things off with that.

59:20

And then a song I lead with my guitar, and then prayer time.

And then during the morning family huddle, we're all talking about what we're doing for dinner and who's making what and who's bringing what to the table.

And so everybody kind of pulls out whatever dish that they've made.

59:37

And we have a game closet that literally is like, you know, one of those sitcoms reopen the closet and all the boxes and stuff fall out.

We have a game closet.

Like there's hundreds of games.

We play games for usually like an hour, hour and a half every night and then we put on more music or stand up comedy or just something fun and we clean the kitchen together.

1:00:00

And then we all gather in the living room or in our bedroom and we memorize scripture.

We memorize the Bible verse every night.

Right now we're working our way through Psalm 90, which interestingly is kind of about longevity and anti aging and the, you know, by the strength of our years we might live to to 80.

1:00:23

So it's a good reminder of our own mortality.

And then we we pray together and then my sons go to bed and then my wife and I also pray together after they've gone to bed.

Usually that's the last thing at the very end of the day is we just fall asleep in each other's arms praying.

And, and yeah, so, so those are a lot of just like the rocks that are planted throughout the day that really form the foundation of my spiritual walk and also my togetherness with my family.

1:00:50

And it's really beautiful to hear all that.

I'm curious how in an, in a world where people who are typically into what I've been calling project self, you know, they're for a long time, they would lean, I, I'd think mostly kind of like atheist and or maybe like be the word for it, like animistic or something like that.

1:01:11

And obviously we've been watching this incredible change culturally take place over the last decade, decade and a half anyway.

And I think right now it's a time where Jesus is very popular, you know, and, and religion starting to become popular again in a way that I've not seen in my lifetime.

1:01:29

Because it used to be, if you, you know, 678 years ago, you brought this up like you kind of get laughed out of the room in a way.

So obviously, I think part of it is that people have seen some darkness that they are can't account for in their, you know, typical kind of world view.

But still, that said, in a world of scientific rigor applied to the physical body, how has your audience responded to your spirit?

1:01:56

And I'm asking this out of like kind of selfish because I'm, I'm kind of, you know, coming out with my, my own, you know, path and, and, and Christianity now too.

So how how has that gone for you and and how does your audience receive it?

Yeah, well, well, first of all, I agree.

People seem to be returning to some semblance of, of, of sanity and faith.

1:02:18

And I think secularism kind of shot itself in the foot with the slow slide into silliness and people just, I don't know, in America, I just got, got fed up.

They're like, no, I don't want my taxes to pay for, you know, sex changes for illegal immigrants.

I just like, you know, or any pregnancy.

So, so, So, yeah, I, I think that, you know, you, you take secularism down at every slope far enough and people just kind of start to see the light, which I think is happening on my end.

1:02:46

You know, I, I started to be a little bit more forthright in my faith when, when I started to go through these own changes as far as wanting to rededicate myself to spiritual growth and to my family, I met with my pastor and I said, Hey, look, you know, I, I do have like this platform and I talk about health and fitness.

1:03:09

You know, should, should I be doing something there to help show people, you know, kind of the emptiness of it all at the end of the day, especially in the absence of, you know, filling that eternal hole in your soul with something that's actually infinite.

1:03:24

And he said, well, you should, you should just like write your testimony, you know, just, you know, share, you know, Share your story.

And so I was going to write like a little biography, you know, like one of the little, you know, 600 word testimonies and put it up somewhere in the About Ben section on the website.

That turned into a book called Fit Soul.

1:03:44

And then I wrote another book called Endure and another book called the Spiritual Disciplines Journal.

I've got another one coming out called Precepts.

I did boundless parenting.

So I started to just like package a lot of this stuff up into books.

The response from the audience, you know, it's, it's interesting.

There's a lot of people on the planet, Daniel, a lot of people and it's kind of like they're, they're and I, I don't even know what the rough numbers are, but there was kind of like an insurgent of the I'm not a huge fan of this phrase, but what you might call the faith-based fitness crowd.

1:04:16

We're like, oh, hey, we've got you know, we've we've got somebody we can turn to who we feel good about.

And then there there were a lot of other people who just kind of, you know, pulled the Jesus freak card and ducked out.

But at the end of the day, A, there wasn't a, a huge impact that I'm aware of, you know, from A, from a metrics number, if we want to call it that.

1:04:37

And then B, I don't know, man, like, like I can read 100 comments about how people finally got down to 15% body fat.

And then I can read one comment about somebody who like really fortified the relationship with their spouse and came to know God and has like, you know, three children who are thriving and love the Lord and, and, and you know, and, and their lives have completely transformed spiritually because of some, you know, chapter from fit soul that Trump's everything, right.

1:05:09

So, you know, you, you could, you could cut the audience by 90%.

And if that leftover 10% is having some real deep, meaningful changes that they're experiencing.

I don't think it even matters right.

The way I look about it is if, if we believe that there is an eternal existence after we die, for better or worse, and that we have the opportunity by sharing the good news of Jesus Christ's death and burial and resurrection to other people, couched with the idea that you no longer have to be a slave to your sin.

1:05:53

And that you can, you can have lasting and true freedom and happiness in Jesus Christ.

And like one person winds up believing in that and getting to live like forever in a new heaven and new earth.

1:06:09

That's like an eternal moment that's like, anymore that that's like more important than anything you could have ever done in your life because that goes on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, right?

And so you can help 1000 people get fit and help one person get to heaven.

1:06:25

And the latter is infinitely more important.

Yeah, why?

Why store up your treasures here on earth, man, they really do rust and they really do become moth eaten, Right.

So storing your treasures in heaven where they're eternal, that really makes a lot of sense to me, where I'm at in my life today.

1:06:42

Anyway, so beautiful to see the trajectory of your story.

Really inspiring.

Where are people going to see the film?

Boundlessdoc.com, like DOC, boundlessdock.com is where like all the premier locations are, which I think right now is like Austin, London, New York City, Miami and LA and then it will go to streaming after that.

1:07:08

Ben, I'm really excited for you.

I'm really excited for this phase of your journey.

And I, I really want to just go back to what I kind of started with.

I think the level of vulnerability that you're going to hear is going to open the door for so many people to get vulnerable themselves.

1:07:25

So like as a role model, you're demonstrating something that isn't easy to do.

And I really appreciate it because I, I really resonate with it.

So, Ben, thank you so much for your time today, man.

Thanks man, it was super good to connect again.

Likewise.

Transcript: Is Lyme Disease Natural or Human Engineered? — Kris Newby #009

0:00

100% we had a tick weaponization program and what went wrong with Lyme disease, which many say is the most controversial disease in America right now.

Why has the medical establishment been so slow on this, and why did they lead so many people like yourself to think that they had a psychological problem instead of a physical one?

0:17

When my husband and I got it, we felt like we had early onset Alzheimer's.

I would forget what the red, green and yellow meant on a traffic light.

I mean something as basic as that.

I'm dealing with up level ticks with up level pathogens in quantities that are nothing like the world I grew up in.

0:35

After I almost died from these two tick borne diseases, I thought, you know, my life means absolutely nothing unless I do something significant and and that significant thing seem like I don't want any other family to go through what we went through.

It was such a brutal nightmare.

0:53

Kris Newby is an award-winning science writer and the senior producer of the Lyme disease documentary Under Our Skin, a 2010 Oscar semi finalist.

Her first book, Bitten, The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, won three International Book Awards for journalism and narrative non fiction.

1:12

She has two engineering degrees and has worked as a science and technology writer for Stanford Medical School, Apple, and other Silicon Valley companies.

Kris Newby, welcome to the show.

Thank you.

It's really awesome to have you here.

I really enjoyed your book.

1:28

That was your first book.

Yeah.

And I'm I'm just finishing up a second one.

What's the topic for the second book?

It's the Skull Valley Incident of 1968 and March of 19686000 pregnant sheep dropped dead in the Utah desert.

1:46

And it's the unfolding of that mystery, which, like Benton, is about a military experiment gone wrong.

Yeah, such an interesting time for this conversation.

I was just watching yesterday as Anthony Fauci was pleading the 5th over and over and over again before Congress.

2:04

You know, and it seems like we're in this era where so many things that were fringe conspiracy theories before unfortunately turn out to be true.

And there's like a shifting in the consensus mindset of Americans right now as we kind of grapple with the fact that a lot of these things are in fact true.

2:20

They did in fact happen.

And I think that really leads to talking about your book a little bit.

Could you give us a quick overview summary of what Benton is about?

And then I'll kind of dive into some of my more specific questions.

Sure, it starts with my family's experience with Lyme disease.

2:37

So we went to Martha's Vineyard, my husband and I were bitten, we came back to California, and we had a nightmare experience in the medical system.

The the heart of the book is really my sleuthing as to what went wrong with Lyme disease, which many say is the most controversial disease in America right now, except for COVID usurped that.

3:01

But and it's about the life of Willie Burgdorfer who was brought over from Switzerland.

He was a tick specialist.

He's brought over in the bio weapons program and he's the discoverer of Lyme disease.

And during my research, he ended up telling me that I was 2 decades in the bio weapons program, stuffing fleas, ticks and mosquitoes with dangerous organisms so we could drop them on our enemies.

3:25

So that's, and it's really his character art.

He's Hark, he's an interesting person.

He, he was excited to come to America and live in a beautiful place, the Bitterroot Valley in Montana.

And then as he matured and realized what he was really doing as far as an bioethical standpoint, he had a change of heart and he talked to journalists like me and exposed the program, which ended theoretically in 68.

3:58

Yeah, You know, I was AI was public speaking in the health field for a couple of decades all around Canada and the US And I remember when people started talking to me about Lyme disease and my initial impressions were based on what was, it was people who would come up to me to say they had Lyme disease and that they had it long term.

4:18

And they did come across to me very often like crazy people.

And I heard so much chatter about that that I thought, yeah, this is, you know, do you remember that sort of era when, when a lot of people had fibromyalgia, they had chronic fatigue syndrome?

You'd hear a lot of that.

And it was like, I would often feel like, am I dealing with a crazy person here, or am I dealing with a person who has, like, some occult illness that they can't quite figure out what it is?

4:40

And took some time for me to sort through some of that.

And I had something really similar with Lyme disease.

And I remember at some point being like, I need to learn more.

And your documentary had just come out.

And so that was the first exposure I actually had.

So it's really cool because recently I read Bitten and I realized, oh, that was you who who worked on that film.

4:56

But that film really helped me to understand.

So first wanted to say thank you for that.

And I think now Americans understand what Lyme disease is, but it is still a challenge when talking to people in the medical field.

Why are they so slow?

And in fact, let you know.

5:12

I'll also say that I remember toward the end of that film, if I recall correctly, I think you guys had exposed that many of the people who were in charge, many of the doctors in charge of policy had some kind of perverse incentive or some kind of relationship with the genetic, the genome of the spirochete itself.

5:30

So what is that related?

Why?

Why is the medical establishment been so slow on this?

And and why did they lead so many people like yourself to think that they had a psychological problem instead of a physical one?

Well, when it ticked by Chew, it numbs your skin and it suppresses your immune system for about a week.

5:50

And ticks can harbor in the US 20 different pathogens.

There is a high probability that you'll get more than one.

And that creates a very confusing set of symptoms.

And your typical doctor, Gray haired today spent maybe 15 minutes on Lyme disease in Med school and there's no way they can.

6:15

They understand the complexities of the mix of pathogens you get like Lyme disease is very neuroinvasive.

Within 48 hours, it creeps into your brain and immune protected sites like joints with scar tissue and anything that's in your head is can make you look a little crazy.

6:39

You know, like when my husband and I got it, we felt like we had early and onset Alzheimer's.

I would forget what the red, green and yellow meant on a traffic light.

I mean, something as basic as that.

I was a danger on the road.

My husband would lose sense of place and time.

6:58

It's basically brain on fire.

And then since it's attracted to your nervous system, you would have twitches, gut problems, chronic fatigue like symptoms.

So it's and fibromyalgia, it's very, it's misdiagnosed a lot.

7:17

Then you add if you have another Co infection that even makes diagnosis harder and the symptoms change from day-to-day.

So of course doctors or your neighbors or your loved ones might think you're a little, you're a hypochondriac.

7:33

And that certainly that's how I was labeled.

It took us a year, 10 doctors and $60,000 just to get diagnosed.

Then it took five years of on and off antibiotic treatment to get back to normal.

7:51

So.

And is that with with drugs like doxycycline I'm assuming?

Doxycycline is good in the beginning, but when you're in the advanced stages, the chronic stages, it's good to have two different antibiotics that you pulse on and off 1 gets past the blood brain barrier.

8:12

One treats the Lyme disease when it goes into cyst form.

So a lot of times when you blast it with something like doxycycline, the spirochetes go into little hard balls or they go into biofilm balls and a normal antibiotic can't reach it.

So then you would use a cyst Buster antibiotic like Flagyl.

8:33

OK.

So that's why just like if you got an aggressive brain tumor, you would want someone who had gotten those under that particular cancer under control with tick borne diseases.

If you go to an infectious disease doctor, you might not be served because you've been indoctrinated with the Infectious Diseases Society of America, who in the very beginning stressed vaccines over a methodical treatment of antibiotics off patent antibiotics.

9:06

Reading your I, I, I first want to say just an impressive first book.

I really.

Yeah.

And I the the very vivid description you gave of the process by which the tick gets on you and then and then begins to feed on you and and take its blood meal, kind of sci-fi horror, almost like reading that you did such a great.

9:27

Yeah, yeah.

And then.

But I listening to the medical narrative of you and you and your husband's story was kind of infuriating, you know, and I've watched so many people go through it now over the years.

I live up in Maine.

And so we are now.

I I just learned recently that it's not true that my backyard is the source of all tics.

9:47

I was sure that it was because of how many are here, but but we are certainly like in that area now where it's very routine for people to not only be bitten, but to get Lyme disease here.

So it was very infuriating, like hearing how you were treated and sort of what you went through it and the journey that you had to go on, which seemed like a lot really kind of like a self healing journey to a degree.

10:07

Anything you want to just say about that for somebody who's listening, who's maybe in that journey or has somebody in their life in that journey, Is there any kind of thing you might offer to help shortcut that for them?

Something I've talked about over the years is how few wild foods still make it into our global marketplace.

10:24

Most of us have grown up eating almost exclusively domesticated food products.

There's a very unique food still harvested from the wild each year in the US, and that's the black walnut, not those English walnuts most of us are familiar with.

This is America's indigenous walnut, higher in protein than any other tree nut crop.

10:44

The thing is, not many people eat it anymore.

That's why we've turned it into the cleanest protein powder available anywhere in the world.

Now that might sound like a big claim, but think about it for a moment.

It's a single ingredient, wild protein made with nothing but hand foraged black walnuts.

11:00

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11:24

Get yours at sirthrival.com.

Yeah, I mean, go to your trusted Dr. and if you get stonewalled or are told it's all in your head and, and trust your instincts, you know, like you know your body better than anybody else or your children's bodies.

I I've heard so many sad stories about children with these diseases, especially when you mix Lyme disease with Bartonella, which creates neuropsychiatric pans panda symptoms.

11:52

So anyways, I would say try your main line physician, but then educate yourself.

So go to likelymedisease.org, which is the biggest Lyme patient advocacy.

Grew up and read the symptoms.

There's a questionnaire and go arm to your doctor to say this is what I think I have because this is the set of symptoms I haven't realized.

12:14

That doctor maybe spent 15 minutes on tick diseases.

Maybe they're in California and they've hardly seen any cases.

And then if you get the specialist runaround, that's going to be really expensive.

Some of my richest friends went down blind alleys because of the specialist thing.

12:33

We have a very fragmented medical system right now divided into specialist and they only see part of your body.

They don't put the whole thing together.

And that's where tick specialist can help you.

And at lymedisease.org you can find a doctor in your area, probably so.

12:51

And then just know you're going to have to fight for the for a diagnosis.

There are better labs than others and the specialty labs like Igenics and there's a couple other Galaxy and Igenics.

They test for tick borne diseases and they test for more species of Borrelia than just LabCorp Quest.

13:16

They they test for the new strain that's been found in California, Borrelia and Miyama Toy.

They might test for relapsing fever, which is on the West Coast and can kill you really quickly.

It's a quick feeding tick.

13:31

It's spread by a quick feeding tick in a cabin in the Sierras, something like that. 20 minutes.

They're in and out, and then you have these little spirochetes swimming freely in your blood and giving you relapsing fevers.

Is it accurate to say something that I have always read and heard about spirochetes?

13:51

Is that similar to let's say like another spirochetal illness like syphilis, where the the shape of the Organism itself, that kind of coiled spiral allows it to bore its way into tissues that would otherwise be difficult to access?

Like for instance, into the synovial fluid in a joint capsule or like you said, into the the nervous system itself, places where maybe you wouldn't normally get bacteria.

14:15

And, and is it also true that that would make it more difficult to treat them with antibiotics because they're in non vascularized parts of the body?

Exactly.

Exactly.

So they're like the coil in a, a wine cork.

14:31

You know, it's a mechanical, it gives them mechanical advantage to drill through.

They're also coated with a slime that is very similar to the myelin sheath in your nervous, in your nerve, you know, like dissolves like slippery it gets.

14:49

It.

Yeah.

This year was, you know, right now we're talking and it's that nice, at least up in here in Maine, it's that nice lull in the season.

So about a month ago, we were in the thick of it, you know, just seeing dozens of ticks every day.

And now we're in a nice quiet moment.

15:04

But I'm always like gearing up now because come September, we got our next flush, you know, and the heat and the humidity kind of are the dryness kind of dies down and then they're back out.

But I mean, it is, it is just a part of my day now to encounter 10 ticks, 20 ticks on me.

15:20

And then also that's not counting what's on my dogs climbing up my walls.

I mean I just find them everywhere.

It's gotten very severe now.

Anecdotally, I have the memory of my entire childhood.

I remember 1 tick one time.

Same here, I remember 0 ticks and so it is different.

15:38

It's not your imagination.

They're telling me that now actually, I've heard two stories.

One is I hear climate change, which seems like this thing you just throw at anything these days, like, oh, that's just climate change, right?

It's like something on fire.

Oh, it's climate change, like, OK, whatever that means.

But I also hear, well, we've we've altered habitat, created so much suburban edge habitat, it's led to booms in the white tailed deer population, etcetera, etcetera.

16:05

I'm struggling with this.

I'm my, I would say that I know people with a much keener nature observation than I have, but I probably have a little bit more than the average person.

And I as I'm out a lot and I just struggle to imagine that, you know, malls and suburbs have led to this boom in ticks.

16:24

Like what do you think has led to this year?

I mean, one of the worst I've ever seen, if not the worst I've ever seen.

And it does seem like every year, not only is it worse, but I here where I live, we start to get our first ticks while they're still piles of snow in my driveway, you know, and then we don't stop seeing them until this is a frozen landscape.

16:42

Like it just because it's snow doesn't mean I'm not going to see ticks again.

So we, we have them.

I mean, winters are real reprieve.

You know, why is there so many ticks right now?

And it does it relate to these bio weapons programs?

Are there kind of two things going on at the same time?

Well, nature's complex.

17:00

There's multiple things going on.

It is climate change.

It is people living in the forest.

It is overpopulation of deer.

But as my family was suffering, I started, I'm an engineer by training.

I started researching, going down the rabbit holes and I think a big driver for the red meat allergy alpha gal.

17:20

And this spread of ticks is an experiment that was conducted in the late 60s, which was the height of the bioweapons program.

And at that time they were trying to weaponize ticks for dropping on our enemies like Vietnam and the Soviet Union.

17:40

And they were looking for the perfect tick for those different climates and they were injecting different pathogens in them.

So one experiment that was Army funded and funded by the Atomic Energy Commission was at Old Dominion University on on near Newport News, VA, near Norfolk and Newport News.

18:03

And in that experiments it went for several years.

And this professor got ticks from Willieburg, Darfur, the discoverer from Montana.

And he they were pregnant or gravid ticks and he injected them with radioactive iodine and other isotopes.

18:23

And then when the when the tick laid its 2003 thousand 4000 eggs, all the nymphs would be radioactive for the rest of their lives.

So why was he doing that?

He gridded off some swampy fields in Virginia and then put 1000 ticks in each square and he would go away for a month and come back and collect the ticks in one square and put them in a little test tube.

18:50

Take him to the lab.

Use a Geiger Geiger counter because the radioactivity was proportion proportional to how many ticks were in the the grid.

He would write down in his notebook how you know how far the ticks spread over the month.

And this went on for years.

He put those ticks back in the square for the adults that he caught there.

19:10

He would paint them with fluorescent paint so he could also use a black light to see how they'd spread.

And so this was important to the military because they wanted to know if they're dropping ticks on enemies, how far will the ticks spread before their ground invasion.

19:27

So the problem with that experiment, I mean, they they released ticks open air in Montana and in Virginia, but they used in Virginia a non-native tick.

So this is the Lone Star tick.

Before the set of experiments, lone stars were way S established way South of the Mason Dixon line.

19:47

And they're very aggressive ticks.

They fight fire ants effectively, and they're also the only tick in North America that has rudimentary eyes on their shoulders.

So they, so they don't just like passively sit on a blade of grass with their sticky pads out waiting for you to pass.

20:11

They stalk and swarm.

They used to call it bullish fever in Texas because you're all of a sudden you look down and your legs were covered in these ticks.

I had an uncle went to Miami and he had the same thing.

And then he ended up getting really, really sick.

So anyways, they released these non-native ticks and part of this professor's job was to see how far the ticks would spread by birds.

20:35

So he or another colleague determined that it took five days for a bird with possibly with tick hitchhikers to go up to Long Island, Connecticut.

And so that's Long Island is right near Lyme, CT, it's right across Long Island Sound.

20:53

And all of a sudden a year after his series of experiments, there was an outbreak of Lone Star ticks, these really aggressive and that's about the time they stopped DDT spraying.

So I think what you saw is aggressive ticks are taking over the native territory of the deer ticks.

21:14

And since pathogens specialize in certain species of ticks, which your your former interviewee at Amherst probably told you about, it's typically one parasite inside of one tick that evolves symbiotically over years and years and decades and decades.

21:33

But now they were just mixing up nature, nature like that.

So you had the Lone Stars and what they carried are Rocky Mountain spotted fever, which is the most deadly tick borne disease in North America.

You get spotted fever, rugged amount of spotted fever and you can be in a coma and dead in 14 days.

21:53

And So what Long Island saw all of a sudden because of the migratory birds was they would go from one or two cases of spotted fever, probably people who'd been hiking in the Rockies to 147 cases and people dying.

22:10

So that's part of what alerted people to the tick problem.

But at the same time, in the same sort of late 60s, we also had an outbreak of this crazy new Lyme arthritis was what they called Lyme arthritis right around Lyme, CT And Yale was investigating that.

22:32

And then there was another weird disease that just popped up, which was babesiosis.

It's a cattle parasite.

And this was like one of the first instances were crossed over to man.

So right within a tiny little few months, like maybe a 10 mile circle, 3 freaky tick borne diseases show up right near Plum Island which was the anti animal bioweapons headquarters for quite a few years.

23:03

And which is also less than 10 miles from Lyme, CT, right, the Plum Island facility.

Right.

So you would think that people would connect the dots, but there's about 6 states around there, New England states, the colonies, and they had different health departments and over 8 years, nobody could figure it out.

23:25

But because of the spotted fever, Willy Burgdorfer in Montana had taken over the the Rickettsio group, which is the spotted fever group.

And he was brought in to investigate the Rickettsil outbreak.

And that's where he discovered Lyme disease in the mid gut of the tick.

23:47

Now as I got deep into bitten, he, he told me and another journalist, well, there was another germ there.

It wasn't just Lyme disease.

It was making people really, really sick around Lyme, CT, Long Island and New Jersey.

24:07

There was something else there.

He wouldn't tell me exactly what it is, but when I got his lab notebooks, I realized that in the middle of the investigation, he spent a couple months in Switzerland and collected an Organism very similar to the ones inside the ticks around Lyme, CT and the the mysterious Rickettsl around Lyme, CT.

24:34

He had tested against all, all known US strains, including the weaponized strains, and it came out the null set.

But when he went to Europe and collected those Rickettsles and made a test based on on those, they, they were the same basically.

24:51

So he nicknamed that Swiss agent.

And because I got an early draft of his discovery article, I saw that he included like a good scientist.

Yeah, people are really sick in Lyme, CT.

I found this spirochete, but there was another Organism and that could be part of what was making people sick.

25:13

But in the final draft that was strucken, stricken and Willie May, I was told to disappear that.

He would have had secret clearances, so anything he published had to have been there must have been government oversight on all his studies I would assume and.

25:32

Yeah.

So this was involved at that time, that's when AIDS showed up, Legionnaires.

It was a time with lots of strange diseases, right.

And CDC, I mean, it was originally formed after World War 2 as a paramilitary organizations to investigate suspicious outbreaks.

25:53

Is it natural or man made?

And during the course of my research, I talked to someone from Fort Dietrich who is a an investigator that explores that.

And he had eight points that indicate, you know, it could be suspicious.

26:10

And five of them came up hits with the lime outbreak, which is a point source like on my Chris Newby website.

I, I took all the earliest cases and, and animated them.

And you can see Lyme disease started right at the mouth of the Connecticut River right across from Plum Island right near the Pfizer plant.

26:32

It was working on antibiotics for the, the war effort and, and it's spread, spread, spread.

So that's why the front wave just like any outbreak as it spreads the front way of their sicker animals and people and then in the middle sometimes they become immune.

26:54

And So what we're seeing right now from that point outbreak is it's hitting Maine and Canada right now the the heartland states, South Carolina, Georgia.

And that's why it it just seems like it's more of a problem used to be because it is.

27:17

Yeah, OK, I, I want to disambiguate a few things I'm hearing here.

They're a little confused in my mind.

So first I want to say Willie Burgdorfer.

He, you know, the lime spirochete is named after him, right?

So he, he, I assume, named it.

27:33

So just I want people to connect that when when you're talking about him, you're talking about the guy that named Lyme disease.

So I think it's like people need to know this is the guy.

And if I understand what you're saying, he was a researcher out of Switzerland, did you say?

27:51

Well, he's trained in Switzerland.

He was brought out 51 specifically to work on the bio weapons program because he knew Q fever and ticks.

OK.

So he has like kind of a, a career that's front facing in a kind of hidden career with the military at the same time.

28:10

All right, here's what I want to disambiguate.

I I'm trying to understand if we're talking about any gain of function and if we are or, or whatever kind of that means, you know, a colloquial meaning of that.

Are we talking about of the vector, in other words, the tick or are we talking about the pathogens in the tick or are we not talking about gain of function at all and we're talking about just sort of mix and matching, putting pathogens in different organisms and seeing what will happen?

28:40

Because one question I have, are you familiar with the domestication study on silver foxes that happened in Siberia?

Have you ever seen anything about that?

Yes.

OK, so so you know, like they're taking hey, who are the nice ones?

Put them in the over here and breed them.

Who are the mean ones?

Put them over here and breed them.

A few generations later, you've changed the animal significantly.

28:57

So one question I have is, are these ticks up leveled in some way because they seem to survive cold temperatures, hot temperature, it's like they are, they are so ruggedized that I wonder is this what these organisms have always been like or were was there any gain of function to the tick itself and or was there any gain of function that you see happening with the pathogens individually or collectively?

29:23

And I guess the third part of that is we can get to this later, but it sounds like some of this has to do with a cocktail of pathogens, that maybe there's a synergistic effect of multiple pathogens at once rather than, you know, just individually.

So is Lyme disease, I guess I'm asking, is it a multi species syndrome or is it truly caused by these spirochetes?

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Let's start start with gain of function.

Yes, on gain of function I'll explain that.

And yes, they tried to up level the ticks and then yes, it's they had a deliberate program to mix multiple pathogens.

31:22

I call that the Russian doll complex.

So let me start with the gain of function.

So Willie, when he first came, was taking multiple species of ticks and and he would put little pipettes in them and put slurries of diseases in their mouths because I was saying ticks and a parasite evolved together for many years.

31:50

He was trying to force feed them different pathogens so that to fight and then he would put them on little furry animals and see which mix would create the most virulent pathogen, which combination of tick and a germ.

32:07

And for example, he put rabies in ticks.

We're talking about rabies that is almost 100% deadly.

And he published, he published a paper on that in open source.

But until you have his lab notebooks and the reports to Port Dietrich, the bio weapons headquarters, you don't say, you don't think, oh, he wasn't doing that experiment for humanity, right?

32:35

So, so and you know, he put in the text, he put Venezuelan equine encephalitis from the liver of someone who died in Trinidad, Leptospirosis, which is the spirochete that you get in the tropics like Hawaii.

32:51

I mean, we were just starting the Korean War in the middle of the Korean War.

So he's looking for a take that would survive in Korea.

The commies, you know, that's cold in North.

So think of that as crude gain of function, AKA animal husbandry, finding the most, just like the way you take a Turkey and try to have the biggest white breast in the Turkey.

33:14

So, yeah.

And then the program after a while decided, well, the Army's very practical and they're saying we can't keep ticks alive and whatever germs alive in them inside a musician munitions stored for months.

33:31

So they said no way.

So then the the program evolved to mass producing just the tick borne diseases alone.

We're talking to anthrax, Venezuelan equine encephalitis, tularemia.

A lot of those can be spread by ticks in large beer tanks.

33:51

They would freeze dry them and then spray them from cluster bombs or on buoys or on the back of ships.

Is any of this legal to do?

I mean, isn't this illegal?

I know that.

I mean, I'm not shocked that government does a legal thing, but aren't there bio weapons treaties?

34:08

Like you're not supposed to do this?

Or was this allowed then at the time?

Well.

Geneva Protocol.

It was passed in 1925.

Russia and America never ratified it.

It got through one House of Congress here, but it was never ratified by the Senate.

34:26

So it was pretty much anything goes.

And if you protested that, well, you're not a patriot.

Right.

So you were saying though they were, so they stopped using the tick and they were just spraying the pathogen out or or depositing the pathogen onto landscapes?

34:42

Right.

So that and that created a revolution in genetic engineering because they would take those pathogens and they would try to force mutation.

So again, that's gain of function through radiation, through transfections.

35:02

So taking viruses and mixing them with bacteria with little snippets of DNA.

And now this is evolved to CRISPR.

So the precision is astounding on what they can do now, but still there was a unit of the CIA Black Ops embedded in Fort Detrick and they just would wander the halls and talk to scientists.

35:25

So, So what do you have for me like think of Q and James Bond.

So at like 1961, I discovered I talked to the the guy who actually did this, the company which was a plausible deniability contractor for the CIA.

35:45

They, the Kennedy brothers launched a program called the Cuba Project or Operation Mongoose.

And they had like 50 ideas on how to screw up the Cuban economy so that the people would revolt and throw out communist leader Fidel Castro.

36:04

So Project 33, some Project 33 B was dropping poison ticks on the Cuban sugar cane workers.

So I ended up randomly interviewing the guy who did that.

He didn't know that I just spent five years on the Lyme disease documentary.

36:22

It was a random birth party, birthday party for my the other side of the family in Texas.

And so he spilled the beans.

He was really drunk and then I did, but it's a single source story.

It's just a guy who just likes to tell stories at parties.

36:38

I interviewed him when he was sober several times, but still it was a single source story.

But then what happened is they started releasing the JFK assassination files, which are just, you know, 10s of thousands.

And I just searched on, searched those files and then I found Operation Mongoose sub project 33 being there.

37:02

It was they did 1 pilot study and they said this didn't work and they never did it again.

Because what happened, because I talked to the tick dropper, he had two boxes.

He didn't know what was in them.

Just the pilot said drop them.

37:18

He opens up the cockpit, cockpit door and you know there's a lot of blowback.

He rips open the boxes and dumps them and it's thousands and thousands of ticks.

So obviously he got some ticks on him.

37:34

He goes back home.

I I said, well, what did you do after that and said we had a ground operation.

I can't tell you.

He told me about the ticks but not whatever he was doing on the ground.

It's one of those sub projects and were.

They dropped.

37:49

Where were they dropping it from?

Was it a test drop here in the States or were they dropping it actually on Cuba?

On Cuba.

So it's like one of those.

They did.

They did this in the field.

They dropped these.

He was.

On a plane, it's probably the Air America 123.

It's, you know, air.

America.

38:05

The CIA sham pilot the sham airline.

So he flies back to home.

He has a newborn at home and he obviously didn't get all the ticks with whatever's in them.

I suspect it was Venezuelan equine encephalitis, artillery Amir or whatever, but his newborn ends up in the ICU with like 105 fever, just incredibly sick.

38:33

He's about to die of meningitis and luckily there was a resident on staff who was from Cuba.

He goes, I've seen, I've seen this many times and he just, you know, how to treat it.

And.

Luckily there was a resonant from that the tropics.

38:53

So anyways, the the point is through the 60s, they started moving away from stuffing plague and fleas and mosquitoes with Trinidad fever virus and ticks with bad stuff.

And they started doing the genetic engine, the crude genetic engineering.

39:12

And so in the late 60s it got really sophisticated and they started doing the overwhelming force or overwhelming.

There's a special term for it, but they would mix bacterias in, in a bacteria, they would mix viruses and a toxin in the slurry that they fed them.

39:34

So they would spray out a bacteria in this Russian doll scenario, and the people in the field would give their soldiers or the residents an antibiotic and that would bust open the cell wall, but it would release the toxin in the virus.

39:51

So it would completely overwhelm your immune system and create a crazy set of symptoms that no one could diagnose or treat.

I mean, it's untreatable, basically.

So when I heard this.

What because there was multiple causes and it would be hard to pin down what that?

40:09

Was yeah, the Russian doll.

Like, it's like opening a Russian doll and there's another evil pathogen in every layer.

And I was told this by the intelligent, like someone in the intelligence world.

So when I heard that, it's like, oh, that's really sounds like Lyme disease.

40:27

So recently, I went back to the Yale Medical Library, and the first person to collect evidence on what was going on around Lyme, CT was Pauline Murray, an angry mom.

Like I would say Lyme disease is a disease of angry moms.

40:45

Yeah.

I won't read them.

You'd listen to them.

So I looked at her handwritten notes of everyone in your neighborhood in Lyme, CT, and the symptoms were so incredibly freaky.

It's just like way more severe than what we're seeing with Lyme disease now.

41:01

So that just makes me think of the Russian doll syndrome.

There was something else there.

And certainly Willie said that, you know, was it a Rickettsial Rickettsia?

Was it a virus?

I don't know.

But the original outbreak was severe neurological issues.

41:18

So people were committing suicide.

People are going to psychiatrists.

They were being treated with ADHD medications and psychotropics, and the medical establishment had no idea what it was.

And then also there was this unusual joint swelling.

41:36

So Polly Murray's son, who I interviewed, said, you know, in Lyme, CT, we'd get on the school bus in elementary school and everybody would have crutches and knees swollen like balloons under their slack.

41:52

So the thing that surprises me is like, why hasn't anybody looked into this?

This is like an epidemiologist's dream.

It's like, you know, call her at the water pump.

And so then that led to the bio weapon thing, 'cause I believe that Willie was told let's just blame the whole disease on the Lyme spirochete Borelli burgdorferi, which he says, I wish it wasn't named after me now.

42:22

And and then people won't look into what else was in the ticks.

Well, does that mean that today, OK, I'm trying to, I want to make sure I word this right.

And by the way, I just want to say crazy about, you know, this guy dropping the ticks out of the plane and then bringing the disease home.

42:41

I think if I remember from your book, Willie and his wife both seem to have contracted tick borne illnesses at some point as well.

No, he.

Did.

I'm not sure about his wife.

His wife had issues, but.

Yeah, if that's what the issues are caused by or not, right.

But but OK.

42:57

So do you think today we're still dealing when we see Lyme disease today, are you suggesting that it might also be a Russian doll effect?

Or do you think that we're largely seeing symptoms caused by the Lyme spirochete?

It's on its own.

Does that make sense?

43:14

Because what you were just saying before?

If you if you study the outbreak of West Nile viruses like West Nile virus and other viruses, viruses strive to be good pathogen, good parasites.

43:29

They don't kill their hosts, right?

So they Peter out as they spread.

And so it feels like there was a virus or a really bad Rickettsial and a Rickettsia is so small it's almost a virus.

43:46

But I mean, obviously it's not a virus.

But I think that initial wave of neuro psych stuff dissipated on whatever that mystery pathogen is.

And Willie would not tell me what it was.

But we're just dealing with Lyme disease right now mostly.

44:05

And the underlying science, I believe, was corrupted because of the efforts to cover up that original outbreak, whatever that was.

Because you have two degrees in engineering, I'm I'm just going to wager a guess that you probably, like, didn't start off a conspiracy person, right?

44:30

It's my guess.

How has it been for you to uncover this?

Because I would imagine you're looking at it thinking like, OK, well, this is just one program.

And now we're seeing things all over the world seeming to come to light where it's like, oh, this kind of meddling seems to be going on in all kinds of places.

44:50

How have you slept at night with this kind of information?

And and how are you viewing current events?

Through a new lens, I guess.

Yeah, when I was I was at Stanford Medical School as a science writer for 10 years.

45:06

I got the tip from the tick dropper and a video of Willie saying, yeah, something there's something bio weapons related at at the Ground Zero of Lyme disease.

So halfway through.

So I'm in the medical school where everyone there is funded by NIH grants and the last thing in the world they want is to upset NIH and NIAID, which is run by Fauci.

45:31

So I was living a double life the last five years at Stanford, right?

I mean, I'd done the film.

I told my husband two weeks before the tick dropper incident, you know, I'm just going to go back to my life.

I got this good job.

But once the bio weapons thing, it's just like I realized it would die with Willie unless someone dug it out.

45:54

And I felt like after I almost died from these two tick borne diseases, I thought, you know, my life means absolutely nothing unless I do something significant and and that significant thing seem like I don't want any other family to go through what we went through.

46:09

It was such a brutal nightmare.

We thought I'd we'd leave our two young boys as orphans.

So it was hard like when I started reading about stuffing fleas with plague, the the most dead deadly disease on the planet that killed most of Europe several times.

46:31

You know, it's just dark, and it's just like, how can I do this?

But I knew it was real because I had the documents and the reports and eyewitness testimonies.

So I felt like it needed to come to light.

Because if you have these genetically engineered bugs, the normal take a Tylenol and go to bed isn't going to work.

46:53

And it was also at the root of these patients.

And you can see them in the film under her skin.

Who say I am really, really sick and the medical system ignoring them.

You know, it's just, it's not take 2 pills of doxy and call me in the morning.

47:10

That does not work for such an invasive germ.

So it was dark and then the book came out and we couldn't do the normal pre marketing because we were afraid the government would shut it down and.

47:26

Wow.

Yeah, right.

Right.

So it's just it landed and and I think you know the NIH who on the surfaces protecting us from dangerous diseases, but on the down low is making I.

47:45

Believe that 10 years ago, but.

Right.

And so the public, I was labeled, I was immediately labeled as a conspiracy theorist.

Come on podcast with a tinfoil hat.

In fact, I did.

I was on the podcast for the tinfoil hat.

So it was, it was sad to me.

48:04

And then what happened was Chris Smith of New Jersey, Republican lawmaker in the DoD budget, just out of the blue, he takes my book and says there it is right there, bitten.

This is a really credible book and we need to investigate this tick weaponization.

48:22

And all of a sudden everybody in the around the world is watching the DoD budget.

It's the biggest Piggy Bank on the planet.

Everybody wants some of that money.

So I was a laughing stock and then behind the scenes the NIH was figuring out ways to discredit me and the book.

48:41

So I have a chain of emails on that and I decided, you know, I can't, I can't fight NIH.

So I just went on every podcast I could because really my purpose isn't to sell a lot of books, it's to get the word out so people take tick bites seriously because there's more than meets the eye on these tick bites right now.

49:07

Do you think if we were to take I always hear because I have such an interest in like ancestral living and, and living on the landscape, I, I've been fascinated by the story of Otzi the Iceman from, you know, the Italian Alps.

Erin, I always hear that he was infected with Lyme disease.

49:28

So they say they found the spirochete in him and I've wondered for a long time about that.

In particular, I wonder if we were to look at its genome and compare it, are we dealing with the OK?

The reason that I hear that very often is why I hear it is because people use it to say, hey, this has always been here, this isn't something new.

49:47

This disease has been around.

Do you think that it's the same disease?

Like is this Lyme disease we have today?

Is, is Borrelia today the same Organism that it was?

I mean, obviously there's been some natural selection changes and stuff that will happen over 5000 years, but but has has that Organism fundamentally been changed?

50:05

If I get infected with it tomorrow, am I getting infected with something that has been altered by government programs?

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So I don't let me start with the Otzi story.

I've talked to the people who sequenced it so.

50:22

Oh wow, all.

Right, of course, it's interesting to me.

And, and I mean think about Lyme disease.

We have trouble diagnosing it now, so how are you going to diagnose it in a 5300 year old?

PCR test man, what's your blot?

50:40

I know.

So a paper came out by a young scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs and you know, they're interested in fast sequencing because if there's a a bio warfare outbreak, they want to fast sequence it and know how to deal with it.

And so he said he has, he's a super quant and he has libraries of all the pathogens in the world and he's figured out algorithms to fast to quickly identify them.

51:09

So he took the sequence from the French Italian team that sequenced it and rerun it with his more sophisticated libraries.

And he says they only sequence 60% of this Borrelia.

All you can say it's, it's part of that genre of Borrelia.

51:25

So it could be gingivitis, It could be syphilis, Maybe it was in Italy sleeping around, You know, you just.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, probably.

Yeah, Yeah.

That's all.

That's all they know about 60% and you can't say for sure.

51:40

It's brilliant, has it?

Become a cover story in a sense.

What do you think?

Do you think that this reason that everybody who's into this has heard that story about him having that, about the ice mummy having that disease, is that like a cover story that's emerged to say it's always been around or is it just a convenient thing to point?

51:58

To I know the three scientists that propagate that story and they know better and they're all part of the military industrial research establishment and they research tick bio weapons.

So I think they have elevated it even though they know better.

52:15

And then I back to the the French team and they said, yeah, the Lawrence Livermore guys, right OK, so let's let's go back to Lyme is a bio weapon.

So those three members of the disinformation team who get a lot of money to study tick, tick borne weapons, they've said, oh, that's ridiculous.

52:43

Lyme, there's no proof that Lyme has been weaponized.

And, and we take ticks from museums and it hasn't changed at all.

Well, we know from COVID, how many, how many ATG CS do you need to change to make it a bioweapon or make it something that's alien to a native population?

53:06

So they get sick.

No, not many.

And if you start reading the, the sequencing papers recently, a lot of them say Borelli Burgdorferi has, has had a rapid and unusual and mysterious evolution.

53:25

So what there's, I mean, they, they can only say so much, but what they're saying is that it, it hasn't slowly evolved over decades.

There's something unusual about the genome.

And if someone, I'm sure someone could prove it, if they're incentivized to prove that the NIH was messing with relapsing fevers in Willie's lab, He was, he was mixing and matching germs.

53:54

But I, I will say definitively, I have no evidence that it was engineered.

I just know there's a certain, it's very virulent around the late 60s, early 70s in Lyme, CT.

But that could be a mix of pathogens, and it could be that other weaponized germ that Willie referenced.

54:19

Which is the Swiss agent?

The Swiss agent, Yeah.

Right, which we think is a Rickettsia, but still remains unknown.

This still kind of remains unknown.

Unknown.

Unknown.

So yeah, it's I.

54:36

As I was finishing up the book, I tried to find Ground Zero blood that's in someone's freezer and have someone sequence it.

But the people who are at ground 0 collecting the blood aren't about to play nice with me, so I couldn't do that.

54:54

But still, CDC and their freezers probably has Ground Zero blood and they can screen it for everything and we'd know, but they don't want to know.

How do you look at living in this post Bio weapons, Pandora's box environment we're in now?

55:12

Because if I'm hearing you right, I'm dealing with up level ticks with up level pathogens in quantities that are nothing like the world I grew up in.

And I think there's a lot of people who, you know, this all comes at the same time as AI and the metaverse and people spending so much of their time not only in the built environment, but now the digital environment and less time in the natural world.

55:40

They're being encouraged and incentivized to stay out of nature.

And then now you have this thing that's like almost invisible to the naked eye for most people.

They have, they believe they're dropping out of trees.

You know, people think all kinds of weird stuff, right?

They don't understand sort of how they're getting on them.

55:57

They don't want to go near the woods.

They don't want to go near the trails.

They certainly don't want to walk through a field of tall grass a lot of times.

And my concern for humanity is that we have like a, a true need to be a natural environments and, and to get out of built in digital environments.

56:16

How do you look at that?

I mean, you've actually been infected, went through a true nightmare scenario.

Does that keep you out of the outdoors?

And what do you say to people who are are terrified to go into nature because of these ticks?

Yeah, and I know a lot of people like that now.

56:32

I, I just, I think we're part of nature and we need to fight back and being in nature as best we can.

I did moved to Utah rather than Martha's Vineyard.

I mean, I'm much fewer tickers ticks here.

56:51

There is, but it, I, I hike everyday.

So I, one way to think about it is you go to Africa and you do prophylactic anti malarials.

So you have to protect yourself and your family.

57:07

And it's going to take a little work, but it's worth it.

That's my opinion.

And my, my role on this planet, I think is just to raise awareness.

So, you know, put, put some sort of repellent on you.

57:22

There's natural solutions and there's like Permethrin, which is actually banned in Canada.

They're being attacked by ticks and they can't use Permethrin.

Permethrin so I would for protecting your yard like landscaping and predicting yourself.

57:37

I I like the website Tick encounter.

It's the University of Rhode Island.

They have a tick problem and then tick checks.

You just got to do it.

Twice a day long mirror full.

Naked and then OK.

57:56

The tick draggers I know do prophylactic doxycycling.

Tick dagger somebody who who goes out into the field with the sheet and counts.

Ticks like jars like this big of doxycycline the Israeli military I heard this week.

58:13

For the soldiers in the field, if they pull out a tick, they take 3 pills of doxycycline on the first day, and then five single pills on the the second day.

For a total of 800 milligrams, Yeah, but that I, I wanted to talk about that.

58:31

So I'll let you complete that thought.

Though the CDC is pushing O2 pills of doxy, 300 milligrams will cure Lyme, that is just a bunch of bunk and CD CS own scientist has run a study and says that's bunk.

58:49

Joe Buriscano, who's probably treated more aligned patients than anybody from Long Island.

He usually recommends if you pull out in the gorge, tick six weeks of doxycycline.

Six weeks.

Yeah, I mean what happens if you just take 2 pills of doxycycline?

59:07

You're just forcing the spirochetes to dig deeper into your brain and your immune protected sites, your joints, etcetera.

I would imagine you also kill off susceptible spirochetes, but then ones that are more resistant to the doxy are going to be the survivor and reproducing ones in your blood so.

59:25

Right, I've often thought there's I have nothing in writing about this.

The reason why doxycycline which doesn't even kill spirochetes really well the penicillin do.

The reason why I was recommended is they're more worried about the weaponized ricatsia because doxycycline is the frontline for the weaponized, but I have no proof on that.

59:47

It's just that would make sense because again, the tick bites you, your immune system is suppressed for two weeks.

And what's going to get you is if your immune system is sleeping, why while three different tick borne diseases spread in your body at once.

1:00:03

You know, so the doxycycline would waylay the notorious, you know, spotted fever, Rickettsia.

OK, so the Rickettsy is more susceptible to the doxy because I, you know, I keep antibiotics here at home.

1:00:19

I'm not an antibiotic user, but I, I keep them and I've my tick checks are vigilant.

And my, my wife and I, we are saying is may you feel every tick.

And we, we've become hyper, hyper, hyper sensitive such that we wake up out of a dead sleep with a tick on our fingers because it's like you wake up and you just grab it, you know, And it's like we've gotten very, very good at finding them.

1:00:40

Here too.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know.

It's, well, I have a whole protocol, you know, I find them.

So we've been really blessed, not been bitten ourselves.

But a lot of people come to visit and you warn them and warn them, and then you end up having to give them doxies.

But so you think like an amoxicillin or a penicillin is also a valuable treatment specifically for Borrelia?

1:01:06

Yes, there there's some studies, a lot of studies in Petri dishes and the ceilings are much more effective than the doxycyclines.

I mean the technical word is doxycycline is bacterial static and then penicillins bacterial killing.

1:01:24

There's like a new research called azacillin, but I think some clinical trials, but then you have penicillin allergies.

So that's maybe another reason they didn't recommend penicillins as frontline.

But but really, and then if you get the chronic form of the disease, that's a different ball game.

1:01:45

But I'm saying early, like I'm not a doctor, but you know, a short course of doxycycline, longer than two pills, You'll, you'll never look back and you won't be taking that future hellish rat hole timeline that I did.

1:02:05

I'm always just like my friend.

I have a friend recently where he's like, I don't know, I'm not sure.

I'm like I don't just do it just.

And I'm, I'm so the opposite of that when it comes to a pharmaceutical drugs.

That's I've always been the opposite of that.

But I, this is 1 area where I just like don't mess around with these diseases.

1:02:21

They are so severe and so serious.

So what's going on in the vaccine space?

I think so many people are after what happened with COVID.

I think it was that realization you're like, wait a second.

So this is this vaccine is not even a vaccine, first of all, second, it's not doesn't prevent the disease.

1:02:38

You getting the disease that doesn't prevent you developing the disease, that doesn't stop you from transmitting the disease.

Like what is this right?

So we've been exposed to this new class of vaccines.

What is this vaccine I'm hearing about for Lyme, this Pfizer vaccine?

Is it a traditional vaccine or is it, you know, like a what do they call those the aren't mRNA vaccine?

1:03:01

What?

What kind of vaccine is it and is it coming to market?

It is in FDA approval right now.

OK.

So it's not MRNIA, it's sort of takes the same approach as the first two Lyme vaccines during the 90s that were pulled off the market.

1:03:22

I don't really know much about that, actually, if there's anything you want to say about it.

I'm not familiar with that story.

So cannot took theirs off right away because in the trials they saw there were a lot of adverse effects.

Glaxo, I don't know what it was called, but Glaxo Smith, Kline had a similar, similar one, but they took it to market anyways and it had a lot of adverse effects because the protein that they, I mean the spirochete, they take a snippet, A molecular snippet of the two proteins on the bug they injected in you and it's theoretically was supposed to create an immune system response.

1:04:11

But what happened is those proteins were the proteins that were on the surface of the spirochete when it was in the gut of the tick.

And once warm blood rushes into the tick, it changes its surface proteins so it can stick to red blood cells and take the supershuttle to your brain.

1:04:33

So then they changed the, the definition of success for that vaccine so that oh, what happens is the ticks attached for several days, one or two days, and then the blood goes into the tick and it kills the spirochetes in the gut of the tick.

1:04:56

So if you know anything about ticks, that's a sort of a flawed strategy because there can be spirochetes in the mouth of the tick, in the saliva, and you'll get infected right away.

And who cares if you're killing the spirochetes in the gut?

1:05:12

It's already in your bloodstream.

The other thing is what about the 20 other germs that are in the tick that can be in the slide of like very deadly Poisson virus and Heartland virus and the sugar molecule that creates alpha gal red meat allergies, What about those?

1:05:32

They're transmitted very quickly, right?

Like those can all be transmitted upon being bitten.

They don't need that long, you know, feeding time, right?

Yeah, once they hit a vein and then it's blood strained, it's like, oh, you're walking on a in a ghetto and some IV drug use to get you with a needle.

1:05:49

That's what's that's what happens.

Mystery juice.

So this new vaccine uses the same strategy or we're going to kill the spirochetes in the gut.

Oh, but we picked safer surface proteins.

1:06:06

So it's not going to harm, It's not close to your myelin nerve sheets.

It's not going to give you an autoimmune disease for the rest of your life.

That's the strategy.

OK.

We haven't seen the data yet.

The data was that it takes three shots in the first year just to get to 72% efficacy.

1:06:28

Oh my goodness.

Is that practically or economically a good vaccine?

I don't know they're.

Going to sell a lot of it.

They're going to sell a lot of it because they've scared people half to death and they're going to sell a kind of it.

And then we're going to watch all the we're going to watch all the adverse effects roll in.

1:06:47

They're going to deny them.

They're going to have total immunity from it.

I mean, this story is getting it's like the fool me once.

It's like how many times, man, this stuff is hard to hear.

It's it really is frustrating.

But but there is hope.

There is hope.

On me.

1:07:04

Harsus has a pill in the clinical trial that you take when you're going to go on a hiking trip on the Blue Ridge Mountains or whatever.

Take a pill.

It's just like the pill for your dog.

It makes you taste bad to ticks.

Like I like that concept better.

1:07:21

I haven't seen ADA, but I know a lot of people who've been following it and they think that's the approach because then you're going to protect from the 20 other germs and it's not a forever thing floating around in your bloodstream with adjuvants, they're going to evoke autoimmune disease.

1:07:40

It's.

Right.

Like going to Africa, I'm going to take prophylactic doxycycline one while I'm in the unsafe place.

And you moved to where you are.

Did you move there specifically because of you wanted to get away from ticks or I mean, did you have other motives?

I assume it wasn't just that, or was it just that?

1:07:57

Well, we're in California, so there are a lot of issues with California.

And I have, I have family here.

And my new book, which is about the Skull Valley incident in Utah, another military accident.

It's here.

So it was easier to do my research.

1:08:13

So it was a family and oh, this is a good story to write about.

Since I'm here, it's the same, it's the same theme.

It's like the military industrial complex thinking it's OK to kill more Americans with their weapons than enemies.

1:08:30

Right.

Yeah.

Do you at this point feel that this was accidental or do you feel like there's anything more nefarious?

What's happened with ticks over the years?

I mean, you know, it's like you get online now.

1:08:47

And I mean, if you're black pilled, you can go pretty into some pretty dark places, you know, and, and I think that that Overton window has shifted so much, right?

I kind of joke with people today.

It's like, hey, if 20 years ago I told you that Fox News would say that there's four types of, you know, alien beings coming to our planet, you know, and that, you know, there's a giant international pedophilic sex ring involving presidents and, you know, former, you know, and like monarchs like this seems just seems like absurd.

1:09:18

But that's like our headlines now.

And it's making it easier to go to places dark weather, imaginary or real.

So I'm curious how black pilled this has left you I guess.

Yeah, 20 years ago when I first got bitten, I never would have imagined that this much would have been revealed.

1:09:38

So I guess I'm more of a critical thinker.

I mean, I'm an engineer by training, so I need data.

I'm not, I'm not going to go hair on fire to sell books or whatever.

But like, for example, this whole rumor of tick boxes, it's like, well, I'm I need to get to the bottom of this, this it sounds ridiculous because we haven't big enough of a tick problem.

1:09:59

We don't need Pfizer someone dropping any more ticks in Missouri.

But you know, I chased that down.

It was one health influencer who heard it at a private conference and and it was on one farmer and it wasn't verified.

1:10:17

And so this luckily, there's this hardcore journalist at Snopes and he called 100 health agencies in Missouri and said no one has heard stories of tick boxes.

So all of a sudden tick boxes are like click bait.

1:10:33

Right.

I saw quite a lot of videos come up on my feed where, you know, and again, we're in that era.

It's like you just don't know what's real.

Things look real and they're not.

You know, I mean, one day it's like a video of baby dinosaurs in China.

They're breeding them.

You're like, I can't.

And it looks real, but I know it's not.

1:10:48

You know, it's like I see guys walking up to these boxes and fields and you're like, I just don't know.

It looks like, you know, kind of Blair Witch footage where you're like that.

Maybe it is, maybe does it.

But it did seem preposterous, like you said, in relationship to how many ticks there are on the landscape.

Like why would you spread any of this?

But then, you know, what do you think about for instance, I mean, do you think that that we will find out that there's more to the alpha gal allergy story?

1:11:13

You know, there's a lot of people wanting to link it to fake meat products to Agenda 2030 to the World Economic Forum's agenda.

Unfortunately, we have seen people at the World Economic Forum suggesting that it would be immoral to stop the spread of alpha gal allergy.

We've seen of course, that beneficial blood sucking paper that came out.

1:11:31

And so there is some people are connecting those dots not for no reason.

What do you think about the conclusions they're reaching?

Or do you think that the alpha gal spread is?

I know you don't think it's a completely natural thing because it sounds like these ticks were moved around, but do you think there's anything more to that story?

1:11:51

So having done the deep dive on the bio weapons program of the Cold War.

So I did it for the first book, I've done it for the second book.

There's nothing like the alpha gal thing in the Cold War bioweapons, bread crumbs that I've gone through.

1:12:08

It could be something more modern related to population control.

I mean, I just don't know.

I like data.

I haven't found any data.

I have some credible scientist people that thinks it might be one of the additives to the vaccines that is making it worse.

1:12:29

I mean, if you look at bovine products, they're just in everything now.

It's hard for a vegan to get by.

So I but I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm just, I keep an open mind.

1:12:44

I mean, I read my Daily Stoic and there's just so much going on now.

You have to protect your psyche.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Talk about this is my family, I'm going to protect myself, my mental health, my family and people are wanting to distract you so you won't look at what's important and just realize that and.

1:13:04

Why do you think?

Why do you think that is?

We're just, I mean, we're got this ancient primate brain that responds to fight or flight, and it's easy to control people that way.

1:13:21

And we just have to step back every morning.

It's like, Oh my gosh, I'm alive.

This place is pretty good.

I have washing machines, Elliot, whole hoods.

This is pretty.

And yeah, now I'm somewhat retired and I can wake up every morning and work on what I think is important, not what someone else wants me to do like you.

1:13:44

I want to just drill on this one more time.

You can just tell, you can just pass if you want, but it's like when you see that happening, obviously we are being manipulated in that way.

And, and a lot of it can be attributed to just financial incentives, perverse financial incentives.

I learn more towards like spiritual explanations because I just can't understand.

1:14:06

I'm watching my species commit suicide, but worse, I'm watching my species be groomed into committing suicide.

Like these awful things that you see happen to kids on the Internet.

It's like happening to our species, like we're being convinced to destroy ourselves.

It seems like on almost every front I can see.

1:14:23

And I have a hard time going.

Well, it's just because people are greedy and they want money.

I mean, I think that's one of the mechanisms by which it's happening.

But do you know, when you look at all this stuff going on and, and like you said, you actually have to, we're in an era now where you have to protect your psyche and remember to just spend time with the people you love and, and, and laugh and, and enjoy each other.

1:14:44

You know, do you how, how do you like make sense of it?

Well, I'm a researcher by nature and I I read a lot on the nature of reality, the nature of consciousness, the whole alien rabbit hole.

1:15:04

I was home of Skinwalker Ranch.

Yeah.

There, there is something going on that is more than money, but it's above my species level right now to understand.

Yeah, I know.

1:15:19

It's like we're all speculating, and it's like this.

You can see the shadow of it, but you can't quite see the thing itself.

It's a very weird time.

Well, tell us about your, you know, whatever you'd like to say about your new book.

Like, when can we expect it out?

And then where do people go in the meantime to get this book, which I really, really recommend, I think especially if you live in a place where ticks are endemic.

1:15:41

I mean, you, you need to read the book.

But but yeah, where do you, where do you like to send people?

I would I would say if you're in the middle of a chronic disease, see the film first.

It's streaming in multiple places.

It's called Just Google Under Our Skin and you can watch it for free and practically a few bucks.

1:16:00

I'm not sure where it is now because I don't own the rights.

That owned.

By the the director Andy Wilson And because that's a kinder and gentler intro, it'll explain to your relatives what you're going through.

You will see the set of symptoms that people are diagnosed with, misdiagnosed with and kinder and gentler.

1:16:21

Then when you're when you're in your treatment, you can see bitten and just realized sort of the dark nefarious history of it.

I mean, we did 100%.

We had a tick weaponization program.

1:16:36

Not sure where Lyme disease falls into the genetically modified, but it hasn't been proven yet.

And then I would say, so my book will be out next year, probably in the spring.

1:16:52

It's just taking forever.

There's too many Trump books coming out or something.

But it's it's like bitten.

I wanted to make a good story.

So it's educational and it's very human centered.

1:17:08

Like one of the central questions is Willie Burgdorfer.

How does he go from this ambitious, ambitious, do good scientist to creating insects of mass destruction?

Like how does a person go through the ark?

And then in the end he sort of goes to the the light.

1:17:28

Some people will never forgive him for what he did, but.

I'm sure he thought he was.

I mean, you that that Patriot card can get people to do a lot of things.

You know, people really believe in the purpose.

Yeah, in Skull Valley it's the same.

1:17:46

I go deeper dive, like how does a person become a Nazi prison guard and hand you some soap as you go into the gas chamber?

And this, this deals mostly with the chemical weapons program and the people that were working with those chemicals that started out as insecticides in Germany and ended up being really horrendous weapons.

1:18:11

So it's though it's entertaining, weird and educational too.

Yeah, well, I'm looking forward to it.

And then your Instagram account or anything like that you want to share with people.

So I think I have Chris newby.com, which has all the a lot of original documents on Bitten if you want to read them, the CIA documents or whatever.

1:18:36

And I'll be updating that for the new book when it's orderable.

But I think my sub stack under sub stack Chris Newby, that's where I'm putting my ongoing research.

As I gather more bitten research then I will be slapping it up there and it's free.

1:18:56

Unless you feel like just donating, but it's free for everybody.

I, I just want to say, I'm sure you hear this all the time, but you're a fantastic writer, first of all, and I just want to thank you for your work because like you said, it seems like this would be an area you'd think that so many people would have wanted to, it just, it fell to you, you know, and you obviously risked a lot to take it on.

1:19:20

I'm sorry you had to go through such a horrible medical experience to, to be qualified to tell the story.

But I'm really grateful that you told it.

As somebody living in tit country, your book had a huge impact on me.

And I think it's going to have a huge impact on so many people for a long time to come.

1:19:37

So just thank you for your work and thank you for coming on today.

I really appreciate you.

Well, thanks for saying all those nice things and I'm glad it's helped you and your family too.

Transcript: Staying Human in the Digital Age — Daniel Vitalis #008

0:00

I don't draw the distinction between natural and unnatural.

Rather I like to draw the distinction between natural and artificial.

Now we're being told AI is going to free us up intellectually from all this work that we've been doing.

0:16

Well, I don't think that's what's going to happen.

Cognitive diminishment is going to become very significant.

You look back into the origins of science, and these are all primarily Christians and also a lot of Muslims in early chemical sciences and astronomical sciences.

But this secular science, this science divorced from the spiritual, is about 150 years old.

0:37

Look what happened in our world in 150 years.

My goal is to keep my soul.

And that might sound a little bit extreme to some people, but I think other people get exactly what I mean.

Welcome to the first solo episode of the Daniel Vitalis podcast.

0:56

I get a lot of requests to do these solo shows.

They're a little bit more challenging to put together, but very rewarding for me.

And one of the reasons is I've got a lot of my own personal content that I've developed over the last 20 years, but a lot of that never really shows up when I'm interviewing other people, except maybe in little bits here and there during our conversation.

1:16

So although it's a little more difficult to put together than just bringing someone on the show for a conversation, I'm going to do more of these episodes because you've been requesting them and because I really like doing them.

So this will be the first one of the Daniel Vitalis Show.

1:31

And just to say, the Daniel Vitalis Show is actually my third podcast.

So I'll get a little bit more into that as we go on. 1st, of course, hey, you know, the landscape has really changed from the last shows that I've done in What I mean is the podcast world is so saturated now.

1:49

There's so many podcasters out there.

It seems like almost everybody has their own show.

So I know you hear it all the time.

Hey, please subscribe, please leave a rating, please leave a comment if you don't do that.

Part of the challenge is we get overlooked by the algorithm.

2:05

So if my work has ever really contributed to your life in any kind of meaningful way, if anything I've ever said or shared or guests I brought on have been a help to you, you could really give back by giving that, you know, So hitting that subscription, leaving a rating, leaving a comment, it really does help us.

2:21

So that would mean a lot to me.

And I understand I'm one of those people.

I'm pretty slow to do that too.

So I get that.

But I'm personally asking you for that favor.

And I promise I'll keep continuing to bring you really incredible content as my give back to you.

So thank you so much for doing that in advance.

2:39

So the Daniel Vitalis show is all about equipping people with the tools they need to survive the changes we're going through in the modern world, because everything is changing right now.

I'm going to be really focused on this show, on some of the core things that have always meant a lot to me.

2:57

Health, fitness, nutrition, but also intellectual stimulation, emotional intelligence, which I think all of us can work to develop more of.

And spiritual discernment, which is something that I think, you know, in the years past, maybe 10 years ago, to say that that you know, you're going to focus on content around spiritual discernment might have come across as a little bit of a turn off to people.

3:25

But more and more I'm seeing that people are really opening up to the spiritual realm in the spiritual dimension.

I know I am.

And I think that has a lot to do with the kind of things that we're seeing happening in the world today.

And that is going to be a focus for this show as well.

Now, before we get too far into it, I just want to say if you have guest recommendations for this show, send them over to me.

3:46

Go over to danielvitalis.com, send us an e-mail, write me on Instagram, leave comments to this episode, but let me know who you'd like to hear or see on the show.

That would help a lot.

But like I said before, this is actually my third podcast.

4:02

So I did the Rewild Yourself show back in.

Started in 2014.

Again, just a completely different era.

So much hadn't happened yet.

We went 177 episodes.

That show was really all about this concept of human rewilding and how I arrived there was studying domestication and realizing that, oh, the forces of domestication that we had used against the natural world, you know, wild animals that we domesticated like, you know, the aurochs becoming the cow or the wild jungle fowl becoming the chicken.

4:43

You know, these this domestication that we'd also done to plants, right?

So taking the wild brassica and turning it into broccoli and cabbage or, you know, wild black tukas and turning them into lettuces.

These same forces of domestication that we'd applied to other species we had inadvertently applied to ourselves.

5:02

And now we are like a domesticated species.

And part of the thesis of that show is this idea of modern humans being Homo sapiens domestico fragilis, the domesticated, fragile human.

Because compared to our ancestors, we really are pretty fragile and highly domesticated.

5:20

And so I was looking at everything at that time through that lens.

And what would it take for us to start to apply to ourselves some of the principles of our wildlife in existence so that we could become stronger and more fit, maybe not for the built environment, but actually for our natural environment.

5:39

So again, like one of the things that had occurred to me was when you domesticate an animal or a plant, they actually become very fit for the environment that they're in.

So if we were to take a wolf, a Gray wolf, and domesticate it into a dog, all domesticated dogs are Gray wolves and we domesticated it into a lap dog.

6:02

And that lap dog's job was to live in an apartment and comfort the people that it lived with.

Well, that animal is very adapted to its apartment lifestyle.

But if we took that lap dog, let's say it's a Shih Tzu or a miniature pincer or something like that, and we want to take it now out into a wild environment.

6:19

Well, now that animal is not adapted.

It's actually Mal adapted to its natural environment.

So we'd want to look at wolves and be like, well, you know, what are the things that wolves do?

What are the things that wolves eat?

And if we give some of that stimuli to that domesticated dog, can we begin to build some of the strength that would help it to readapt to its natural lifestyle?

6:42

Part of the reason I want to do that is because I see that modern humans are more and more living in the built environment and the digital environment, but they're becoming very maladapted to the natural world.

So that is kind of the main theme of the Rewild Yourself show.

6:58

And all of those episodes are, most of those episodes are still available.

And just about every week I get messages from people that have just found that show and are still being impacted by it, which is really great for me because, you know, I find those episodes a little embarrassing.

7:14

You know, that's back in 2014, 2015, 2016.

I was a lot younger, pretty cocky, you know, I hadn't gotten married yet.

So, you know, had a lot of my sort of like still bachelor mentality.

And I was applying this idea of wildness, I think, with a lack of the spiritual discernment I was talking about a little while ago.

7:38

So still some really useful content in that show.

But you know, I've grown and changed a lot.

And so eventually that show came to an end.

Now one of the things that was happening was I, I was, I had already been a public speaker.

I'd already been leading workshops and retreats for about 8 years or so when I started the Rewild Yourself show and I'd had my company, Sir Thrival since 2008.

8:03

So I'd already been pretty busy with the work I was doing and my primary interest was food, nutrition and physical movement.

Still huge areas of interest for me, but that's where I was really focused and those episodes sort of led me as I kept learning more and more about wildness.

8:25

Now, a little context.

I was talking to a lot of different types of experts and what I was finding was in all these different fields.

I mean, I, I talked to a lot of psychologists, I talked to a lot of professors, I talked to folks who specialized in birth.

I spoke to folks who specialized in death and death care, you know, all these different interesting fields, you know, child rearing, education, all, everywhere I went, it seemed like everybody understood that we had gotten away from understanding human beings as an Organism embedded into our natural environment.

9:01

And that that stepping away from our natural environment was leading us to take on education and practices that were very divergent from what humans actually need to thrive.

And so it seemed like everyone I talked to understood, hey, reintegrating into nature and into the natural world is going to be crucial to our health moving forward.

9:24

The more that I looked at that, the more I wanted to figure out ways to do that.

So slowly and overtime, I finally got more and more interested in wild food.

So I did my last episode of Rewild Yourself in 2017 and that show had a lot of broad content and I decided to focus in more specifically on wild foods.

9:47

Now I had had some background, especially in foraging, but I was starting towards the end of that show to get into hunting.

So I think I started hunting in about early 2016 and I ended the Rewild Yourself show in 2017.

10:04

So I had just gotten together with my wife, now wife and I remember early into that relationship I said to her, you know, I'd like to spend these next 10 years hunting and pursuing wild food.

And so I decided to do that and I started up not just the Wild Fed podcast.

10:24

So that would be my second podcast, but I started filming with my friend, cinematographer and long time producer Grant Giuliano.

We started to make ATV style show for Vimeo called Wild Fed as well.

10:39

So there was the podcast as well as the TV show, Now the podcast.

Every episode was focused in on wild food content.

I'd bring in foragers, hunters, nutritionists, people who really understood wild foods.

And then each episode of the show would be us going out and I would be hunting for something or fishing for something to get an animal and get protein.

11:01

And then I would be foraging for something, which could have been a plant or fungi, a mushroom, something like that, a lichen.

And then I'd be bringing those ingredients back in.

A lot of times what we do is go to chefs or restaurants and turn those into these incredible meals.

And then we'd gather everybody who had been involved in or advised in that hunt or that forage, and we'd all sit down to a meal together.

11:23

So we started to produce that show.

And before we knew it, we actually ended up on cable, which was a really incredible story, which I'll share a little bit of.

So it was about 2019, I think, when we first got the podcast going.

11:40

And that podcast went until 2023.

So that was about 175.

I think we did 174 episodes, like I said, very focused on procuring our own food.

But we started putting the TV show out on Vimeo behind a pay wall, and we never had an intention of getting that onto cable TV.

11:59

We kind of imagined it actually getting onto a streaming platform pretty quickly.

What we realized is because of the weapons involved in hunting, most of the streaming platforms don't want to show that.

Now this is a really interesting bit of media psychology because think about all of the movies and TV shows where you see people using firearms to kill one another.

12:25

Now of course this is fiction, but you'll see all manner of weapons being used not just to shoot people, but I mean to like blow up cars and blow up buildings.

And I mean, you just see mass murder and individual murder, cold blooded murder constantly with firearms on television and in movies.

12:44

And yet if you want to use a firearm arm for really what it's best used for, which is going out and procuring food, well, nobody wants to show that because it's real.

And So what we found was it was very difficult to get ourselves onto any streaming platforms, but we did end up getting onto cable because of the Outdoor Channel, which is part of the Sportsman's group.

13:08

And now this is just a couple of channels.

They're really the only channels platforming hunting and outdoor content in any kind of meaningful way.

And they are very comfortable platforming that kind of content.

So firearms being used to harvest animals for food.

13:25

And we were a little bit, I'd say a little out of place on that network.

I think I'm a lot different than the typical host on that network, but wow, were they just incredible to work with.

We went six seasons on Outdoor Channel, 60 episodes total.

13:42

I can't even believe it looking back on it, but we made 60 episodes and they were just amazing to work with.

So even though I didn't fit the mold, I don't look like most of the people who hunt on that Channel.

I don't talk like most of the people that hunt on that Channel.

They were extremely gracious to me.

13:58

We had a great couple of guys we worked with called Dynamo Films.

That was sort of our go between between US and the network and we had almost no oversight.

We just got to make our show and turn it in every year and received our budget.

14:14

It was just a fantastic opportunity.

Now, for me, that was like getting a college, like a, like a doctorate, you know, at least a master's degree.

I mean, 60 episodes of this show, traveling all over the country and a bit around the world, learning all about, you know, harvesting plants, harvesting mushrooms, harvesting animals and fishing and then how to process all of those into foods.

14:38

I mean, I got the education I was really, really looking for.

Now, I also did the podcast, which didn't run as long as the show, but those 174 episodes are similar.

I got to learn a lot about wild food.

Now part of why I wanted to do that, I think you see today, so many people are interested in learning about where their food comes from.

14:58

And very often what happens is people go towards growing a garden and or getting into permaculture or planting an orchard and maybe raising their own chickens or raising their own pigs or a cow and learning how to use agriculture to feed themselves.

15:14

And I wanted to try an alternative approach for a couple of reasons.

One reason had to do with just my overall worldview.

Having studied wild people and wild foods for so long and the idea of humans integrated with nature, there was like a kind of like an ethical reason I wanted to learn to feed myself with wild foods versus agricultural foods.

15:39

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16:00

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16:34

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But another component of that is like I have a strong kind of survivalist mentality.

16:49

You know, I'll talk about that a little bit more in a while here.

But but I grew up with paranoid and timey type, a pretty end timey type mom.

And she really instilled in me that the world was going to change dramatically in my lifetime.

And so far she has been right.

17:06

And I see the trend line and where it's headed.

And so I like the idea of wild foods because I can take that anywhere with me.

So I very much appreciate my friends who have farms, who have gardens, who have orchards, who raise livestock, who have laying hens for eggs.

17:27

I mean, I rely on these folks.

I love those foods.

But let's say something happened that disrupted their ability to be on the property, where they had developed the infrastructure to grow or raise or rear those foods if for some reason they had to leave that place.

17:43

Now, that's a very difficult thing to replicate wherever you end up.

But with Wild foods, I can take that skill set with me anywhere.

That's not to say that I think it's a better skill set.

It's a different skill set.

And I think it's important that like a like if you were a team, like a sports, sports ball team or something like that, you need people with all these different qualities and different attributes.

18:08

And so I'm very grateful that I have friends who raise chickens and I have friends who grow vegetables.

And it's important to have somebody in the mix who understands wild foods as well.

So that if there's ever a time in our future world where those kind of skills are actually necessary, then it's great to have people who know how to do all of these different things.

18:29

But additionally, even if that's never the case and nothing do me like that ever happens, it's so nice to go out into wild environments and recognize species.

And that's been a huge theme of my work.

Again, if you followed it over the years or heard me on other podcasts, I often talk about how the average person goes out into nature today and while they're walking down, let's say the trail, what they see on either side is what I call the wall of green, just disambiguated green plants, but not necessarily knowing how to identify individual species.

19:08

And that kind of creates a bit of an anxiety because that's kind of like being in a a new town or a new environment or a new school or a new office surrounded by people who you don't know.

And there's this sort of sense of insecurity that people can have.

19:25

It's like, wow, I'm alone here.

I don't know anybody.

So this is so like kind of a threatening environment versus how it feels to be an environment where you do know everybody and you're known by everybody and you have all these friends and relationships and shared history and story.

19:41

When you have that, you feel very relaxed in that environment.

You feel like you're part of that environment.

Well, what I have found is very few people today, very few what I like to call moderns, have that in the natural world.

And so the natural world seems like this kind of threatening place.

19:57

So when I hear wildness or the wild, I think for some people, they hear like, oh, scary place where I can die and disappear.

And other people hear that and they go, oh, that place where I go to be restored and renewed and to be around all of my non human friends, like all of these species that I know and I work with.

20:15

So, you know, there's the survivalist component of why I wanted to get into wild foods and why I did the wild fed show.

But then there's this other component which is.

I think it's just like great lifestyle.

So, you know, yesterday my wife and I, Avani and I went to have dinner with some friends and their kids.

20:31

And before we left, you know, we went out and harvested wild blueberries to bring over.

And they were such a treat for all the kids and, and for us to the adults.

And it's just nice to know how to do that.

I that same day actually, we had stopped at a store and I saw wild blueberries, you know, selling for $10 a pint.

20:49

And it's like, oh man, we just went out to the backyard and harvested those for free.

And there's something just so nice about that, that kind of self-sufficiency and having that knowledge and the fun of getting to forage.

So I went for 174 episodes of the Wild Fed podcast, 60 episodes of the Wild Fed TV show.

21:08

By the way, the Wild Fed TV show lives on Outdoor Channel, so Season 6 is still airing there.

So if you have cable, most people don't anymore.

But if you do, we're on Outdoor Channel.

But Outdoor Channel has a streaming service called My Outdoor TV or motv.com or myoutdoortv.com.

21:27

Either one, both point to the same streaming service and that's where all of their hunting and fishing shows are.

And all six seasons of our show are there.

And you can get kind of one of those free trial subscriptions for a week and you can watch as many of those episodes as you want for free.

21:45

And I think it's probably around 10 or 15 bucks a month if you want to get a membership.

So you could watch the rest of those episodes.

I always focused on three main components when making that show, art, entertainment and education.

And I wanted it to be 333333, like really evenly broken up so that it's as educational as it is entertaining as it is artistic.

22:09

So it was more artistic than almost anything you're going to see in hunting TV, but more educational than almost anything you're going to see on cable.

But also it was entertaining as well.

So we really tried to balance those things.

So it's a very watchable show, but it was really important to me that I was also curating all of this wild food content so that if somebody wanted to get involved in wild foods like I did, when I wanted to get involved, it was a little bit difficult to penetrate that.

22:39

And it was like, how do I learn all of these things that I want to learn?

And is there one place where I can?

And so I really endeavored with the Wild Fed podcast and the TV show, the podcast being kind of a companion to it, to put as much of that content together so that if you get the bug and you're like, I want to learn about wild foods.

22:58

These are incredible resources.

I recently learned that the first five seasons are on Tubi for free, TUBI.

So if you go to Tubi, you can actually watch these as well.

They're not behind a paywall.

You just have to watch with commercials, but that's a great way as well if you'd like to see the Wildfed TV show.

23:16

And then of course, the Wildfed podcast is still available as well.

So all of that was such an incredible experience.

But now I'm back with the Daniel Vitalis show.

If you followed my career over the last 20 years, I'm sort of known for making up words to describe what I'm doing.

23:34

So, you know, my earliest project was like me making smoothie.

I did smoothie DVDs, you know, where I was doing like highly herbal and medicinal elixirs and that was called the elixir craft.

And you know, I went on to found my company, my supplement company, which is still, you know, still going strong 18 years later.

23:52

That's Sir Thrival.

So to survive and thrive, Sir Thrival, of course, wild fed rewild yourself, you know, sort of like putting these words together.

Calling my show the Daniel Vitalis Show was a little cringe to me, but I did it because I'm finding that what happens very often is if people come up with a clever name for their show, it can pigeonhole their content.

24:16

So again, I mentioned this is my third podcast with Rewild Yourself and with Wild Fed, I felt kind of like locked into really specific content.

So going with the Daniel Vitalis Show, part of that is because I just don't want to be locked into anything specific.

I want to be able to talk about anything I want to talk about and have that license and liberty to do that without straying outside of the confines of what the show is meant to be.

24:39

And 2nd to that is that I've noticed when shows have specific titles, sometimes I never know the name of the content created themselves, even though I really like them as a host.

And so that's why I've named the show The Daniel Vitalis Show.

Now, episodes for the The Daniel Vitalis Show are going to drop every Tuesday morning.

24:57

So it is a weekly show.

So you can always, you know, count on new episodes of being out Tuesday morning early.

Now, both of those projects were a success.

Both Rewild Yourself and Wild Fed.

So I didn't end them because they weren't successful.

25:15

I ended them because I have this tendency to kind of Max out on a topic and want to move on.

So that's another reason I'm just keeping this project a little more open-ended.

Also, because we're in a time of so much like radical change, I want to be flexible for whatever's coming next.

25:35

So first show is about looking at human domestication and rewilding.

I'm bringing that forward into this show.

So it's one of the lenses through which I'll be speaking with my guests and through the solo episodes, Wild Fed was about how modern people can access wild foods and work them into their diet.

25:55

That's just something that's not going to go away from me.

That's just integrated into my life now, and it's changed the way I see ecology.

And so I'll be bringing all of that and seeing things through that lens as well.

But there's a spiritual component which I'm going to get into later in the show.

26:12

And I've had a lot of people writing to ask me to kind of explain a little bit about sort of my spiritual conversion, and I want to share with you about that as well.

So that's another lens that I'm going to be bringing also.

But like I mentioned before, this show, the Daniel Vitalis show, is all about equipping people with tools to survive and thrive in this rapidly changing world.

26:33

Now, I want to be clear, I'm not somebody who thinks that I'm going to provide tools to help change the course of events in the world.

It's it's not that grandiose a vision for me, honestly.

It's more about equipping individuals, you who's watching people who are listening in.

26:54

I want to help individuals.

So this isn't like a we need to save the planet kind of a approach.

Personally, I have feelings about that.

I think that sort of we've gone over the event horizon, if you will, you know what I mean?

So like that's sort of astrophysics, black hole kind of language.

27:13

It's like that point at which, you know, you're being pulled into the gravity of a black hole theoretically and there's now you're like tractor beamed in, there's no escape.

I sort of think a little of that's going on on our planet.

I also think that cataclysms here on this Earth are cyclic.

27:28

And I don't think that's something we can really interrupt or change, particularly with, you know, lifestyle hacks and things like that.

So I think the world's changing.

I think the world's destined to change, predestined to change.

I think we're living in one of the most exciting moments possible, maybe one of the most exciting moments in all of human history.

27:47

And I'm not looking to change that.

I'm looking to equip people with tools that can help them as that unfolds.

Now, one of the things that's unfolding in front of us is a dramatic health crisis.

I mean, at a level that I don't think we've even begun to come to grips with as a society.

28:08

I don't even think we're really having the conversation in a meaningful way.

Let's look at it.

Let me give you kind of like a little thought experiment.

Imagine for a moment that there was a health crisis taking place in another species, because part of it is that we have a difficult time even looking at ourselves as a species or as like a type of animal, and that to our detriment.

28:35

So let's imagine another what we call a charismatic animal that's surprisingly that's like part of the that's like a zoological language.

A charismatic species is like a gorilla or a chimpanzee or a hippo or a giraffe or a brown bear or a zebra.

28:55

These animals that are beautiful to us, that are interesting and iconic to us, right?

So there's animals that aren't really charismatic.

Spiders aren't charismatic, snakes aren't charismatic.

They kind of give us the heebie jeebies.

But imagine a charismatic species, let's say hippos or gorillas or giraffes.

29:13

Let's say that you found out that giraffes were suffering from sudden onset degenerative diseases.

Now hear that word degenerative please, because we say it all the time.

Degenerative disease.

Degenerative sort of tells you that the body is degenerating.

29:34

So think about decomposition.

Decomposition is the opposite of composition.

So think about what's a composition like?

Think about a Symphony as a composition.

So it's all of these things being brought together in concert.

29:50

In this case, we're talking about all these different instruments which on their own might be discordant to each other, but they're being concerted.

It's a concert.

They're being concerted and brought together, right, so that we have this beautiful symphonic sound.

But that's the composition.

30:07

But decomposition is where things start to come out of phase with each other and breakdown.

Similarly, like to generate means to create, but to degenerate is a thing breaking down.

So if you're thinking about adaptation or evolution, that'd be like sort of generative.

30:25

And degenerative is almost like a synonym for like the opposite, like devolution, the opposite of evolution, or the opposite of adaptation.

So it's like maladapt or maladaptation, or it's a thing breaking down.

But we've got a suite of degenerative diseases.

30:43

We're dealing with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's.

If you found out that gorillas or hippos or giraffes suddenly had these 4 degenerative diseases and they didn't have them in the past, would that get your attention?

31:06

Would that get anyone's attention?

I think it would.

I think you'd start to see like, hey, there's a crisis in these animals now.

Let's say at the same time you found out their sperm counts were dropping precipitously and that reproductive rates had dropped off the charts, that they were struggling to conceive.

31:27

That would definitely get our attention.

If you found out that blue whales sperm counts had dropped off, that their T levels, their testosterone levels had dropped off the map, that they were not able to reproduce reliably anymore, Would that get our attention if that was coupled with all of those degenerative diseases?

31:46

Let's say you found out that they were also suffering epidemic mental illness, including suicide, at unprecedented levels.

Now, let's say on top of that, you found out they were suffering from obesity at epidemic levels that actually more of them were obese than not.

32:03

And on top of it, that their teeth were literally rotting in their own faces right with cavities, and that their teeth weren't fitting in their mouths anymore because there wasn't enough space.

The jaw hadn't developed enough so that the teeth were coming in all crooked.

And then on top of that, they had cavitation.

32:21

Would that get our attention?

What if they had neurological conditions that had were so common that they were becoming normalized, like, you know, being on the autism spectrum or Asperger's or something like that?

If we found out all this stuff was happening in gorillas or hippos or chimpanzees, I think we would pay attention.

32:40

That would definitely alert us to the fact that something was really, really wrong, that there was a serious health crisis.

Well, all these things are happening to us specifically.

On top of it, we know that the average person's eating like a credit card worth of plastic a week, and we know that that plastic is being found in tissues all throughout the body, as well as things like glyphosate and forever chemicals and heavy metals.

33:04

We are dealing with a health crisis that is so unprecedented, and yet we're acting as if everything is just continuing on as normal.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it's definitely not.

And so that's part of what this show is about.

33:21

Again, not to change what's happening in culture at large.

I don't feel that calling.

It's to help individuals address these things for themselves.

That, to me, is what I get the most excited about.

I'm glad there's other people who want to tackle these problems at a bigger level, at an umbrella level, but I'm really interested in helping you specifically and helping the people around me specifically.

33:44

Now, on top of all of that, we have this whole other layer of what's going on, and this is another part of what this show is going to be about, and that's the technologies we're now playing with as well.

So on top of all of these, this health crisis, now we have kind of a technology crisis incoming.

34:03

So I'm not just talking about AI, but that's a major component for me.

But I'd really, I'm talking about four technologies and how they interact with each other.

So it's AI and all of the associated compute.

It's nanotechnology and you know that micro robotics idea, it's robotics on the macro scale to include, you know, the androids and humanoid robots that we're building, as well as the transportation robots like our self driving cars and things like that.

34:35

And the robots that we're going to see, you know, in all other kind of roles in our culture, from manufacturing to servitude in our homes.

Now couple that with biotechnology, right.

So this is gene therapies.

This is this rapidly emerging, although still Gray market peptide explosion that we've been watching.

34:57

You know, it's it's watching people getting onto steroids in a much more common kind of way, like where it's just like you go to your gym and they used to be sort of relegated to the world of bodybuilding or maybe certain sports.

35:13

But now it's just a common kind of way that people are augmenting their bodies.

But also that's things like the mRNA vaccines and all this other associated biotech biotech that we're seeing in reproduction.

35:29

Now.

I'm seeing all of these things as symptoms of what I call transhumanism, what a lot of people call transhumanism, which I think is like an emerging religious paradigm that takes us further and further away from what we are naturally and starts to push us more and more.

35:47

While it's right in the name transhumanism, the idea is sort of to move into a post human world.

I'm very much aligned against this on a physical level, on an emotional level, on an intellectual level, and definitely on a spiritual level.

And so that's part of what this show is going to be about as well.

36:03

Because as we head into these unprecedented times, my goal is to stay human.

My goal is to keep my soul.

And that might sound a little bit extreme to some people, but I think other people get exactly what I mean.

There's a push to be less and less human and more and more machine and to integrate ourselves with machines.

36:24

And I think that this is maybe it's the hill I'm willing to die on.

You know, it's something I feel really strongly about South.

A big focus of this show is going to be about staying human and about keeping your soul.

Now, some people accuse me at times of being sort of like a doomer or I, I was told recently on Instagram that somebody said, I really like your work, even though you, you seem to think the sky is always falling.

36:51

And I'm just like sort of to me internally.

I got a bit of a laugh at that because I'm so full of hope and excitement.

This stuff does not scare me.

I feel like I was born for this moment.

I feel like I was trained up for this moment.

I feel like when I read prophecy, I mean, this is the moment that I'm always reading about.

37:08

This stuff has been foretold.

This is an exciting moment to be alive.

I'm filled with hope, but I have spiritual reasons for that.

And if I didn't, maybe this would be a little scary, maybe it would seem hopeless, but this collision of humanity and machines, or this collision of humanity with those who would like humans to become machines, this is very exciting to me.

37:34

I just think, what a moment to be alive.

I want to maybe open up a little bit of my paradigm on this for you and share on one of the unique insights that I've had over the years.

This is sort of something that's in a lot of my lectures and workshops, but I'll share it here because I think it'll help you to understand why I'm bothered by the artificial part of artificial intelligence.

37:59

So let's define some terms.

A lot of people think that the antonym to natural would be unnatural.

And you'll get into this conversation with people sometimes where you'll say, like, oh, I like things that are natural.

And people will say, well, what's really natural?

38:15

Like what?

What's unnatural?

Because they'll say, hey, you know, my TV is, or my phone or my laptop or, you know, satellites or, you know, bombs and missiles.

They're all made from things that come out of nature, right?

38:31

They're all made from things that molecularly are found in nature or from elements that, you know, we can extract from natural ore, right?

Like silicon is a major component of, you know, our machines, while silicon's one of the most common minerals on the surface of the earth.

38:46

That's what quartz is made of.

It's what sand is made of, right?

So you could make an argument that, you know, our computers aren't technically unnatural.

And I wouldn't disagree.

I don't draw the distinction between natural and unnatural.

Rather, I like to draw the distinction between natural and artificial.

39:05

It was all the way back in 2818, years ago now, that I founded Sir Thrival, A boutique grade nutrition company designed to help folks thrive in a rapidly changing world.

With all that change has come a tremendous decline in our health from a combination of environmental, lifestyle, and psychological factors that are beyond our control.

39:25

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39:41

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40:01

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40:19

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Dot com I'm going to say that again, this is a really important component.

So if you, this is your, if you're looking for a big take away from this episode of the show, it's this natural versus artificial.

40:37

The word artificial shares the root where we get the word art, right?

So art is like creative expression by people.

It's also where we get the word artifact.

Now this is really interesting.

What an artifact is, is an object that bears the impression of human will upon it.

40:59

So I want you to imagine this little scenario.

Imagine that you are out walking on a landscape and on the ground you're seeing rocks that are made of Flint, and they're all around you.

Maybe it's Flint, maybe it's chert, but a stone that our ancestors knew how to nap into an arrow point or into a knife, right?

41:24

So that's like old pre metallic technology when we were still using lithic technologies or stone technologies, right?

The so-called Stone Age.

Let's say you're walking around and you're seeing all these stones and they're untouched.

41:40

Well, those would be natural stones.

Now, let's say as you're walking, you notice an Arrowhead on the ground, and you bend over and you pick that up, and it's clearly been made by a person from one of these stones.

Well, if we were to take one of those natural stones and we were to take that Arrowhead made from the same kind of stone, and we were able to zoom in at a molecular level, we would see that they were exactly the same, right?

42:09

They're compositionally the same.

Their ingredient deck is the same, but there's clearly a difference.

One of them has been shaped by human hands and human will, and that makes it an artifact.

We wouldn't call the natural stone an artifact.

It's just a piece of nature.

42:26

So the same material, same molecular composition, same ingredients, but one of them is natural and one of them is artificial.

I often make this joke in my lectures that it's not really a joke.

Actually, it's quite serious that most of us are living in artifact land.

42:44

So especially if you live in a very urbanized environment, everything around you is essentially made and shaped by human beings.

And it used to be that you could kind of look up at the sky and you'd be like, well, they're the Sky's still natural.

But now we look up at the sky and we see all of those trails from the plains overhead, and that's like an unnatural cloud, right?

43:04

It's like an artifact of technology.

It's not a natural sky anymore.

And when the lights go out, the sky looks very different than it did to our ancestors.

We have so much light pollution that we can't see nearly as many stars.

And in addition to that, we see all of these satellites going overhead, right?

43:21

So all these man made objects.

So the sky now bears the mark of human will upon it.

And if we stepped outside of our homes, which are just filled with artifacts, onto the city streets, well, everything we see is made by people.

Everything is concrete and buildings and glass.

43:37

Now, we might come upon some things that appear to be natural.

Let's say you've got a little square of mulch and soil with a tree growing in front of your apartment building, and you go, hey, that's something natural.

But then it's like, well, is it or, you know, it's not like that was there and they built the whole city around it and that tree had always been there and that little patch of earth had always been there and it was never touched.

43:59

No, that's like a basically a planter, a pot that they've built into the sidewalk and filled with soils that were brought in and mulches that were brought in in.

That tree that's growing in there is not a wild tree.

It's a horticultural tree.

What do I mean?

It's a tree that's been through some aspect of the domestication process, so I'm going to get back to that in a second.

44:19

But let's just say in your apartment, in your house, almost everything in there is going to be an artifact.

That's why I say we're living in artifact land and around us we occasionally have other species, non human species, cats, dogs, the tree in the open spot in the front of our apartment building.

44:41

But all of these are domesticated species, right?

We don't bring wild animals into the house typically.

So your dog is a Gray wolf that's been domesticated, right?

Your cat is a domesticated feline.

These aren't the wild form of the animal.

44:57

Just like the maze, the corn that we eat today is not the wild form or the wheat that we eat is not the wild form or the vegetables we eat are all domesticated.

Our fruits are all cloned and domesticated.

So we're, we have what I call biological artifacts, and that's what domestication is.

45:12

It produces biological artifacts because you have a, a species now, right?

Like in the case of dogs, these are Gray wolves, but they like the stone that was changed to make it an Arrowhead.

The natural stone in this case would be the Gray wolf, and then we've turned it into whatever breed of dog, and that's like the equivalent of the Arrowhead.

45:34

So it's been shaped by human will through a process we call artificial selection.

So think back to biology one O 1 when you learned about natural selection, right?

So this is how the environment, interacting with genes and the epigenome shapes a species to be more fit for its environment.

45:52

And of course, something we often leave out is sexual selection.

So that's the role that females play in selecting mates and that helps to shape a species as well.

But then what we have is called artificial selection, which is where we as people decide which ones to breed.

46:07

So if I want to take a Gray wolf, 2 Gray wolves and I want to turn them into a, a dachshund, the hot dog shaped dog, right?

I need to keep taking wolves, you know, or dogs with shorter legs and longer bodies.

And I keep breeding those together until I get a dog that has an extreme long body and short legs and we end up with a dachshund, right?

46:30

So it's, I'm artificially selecting the partners rather than letting them choose their own partners or letting the natural environment shape which ones live and die.

And so artificial selection, again, we have that word artificial is how we end up with all of these domesticated creatures around us.

46:47

There's a very famous experiment called the Russian fox experiment.

And basically what it was was a, a Russian, I believe Siberian, I don't quote me, but I think a Siberian fur farm where they had silver foxes.

And it wasn't set up to be a truly scientific experiment, but this is leaned on very heavily in the literature when looking at domestication.

47:11

So basically what happened was they were raising silver foxes for their fur and they started to segregate the animals.

The way they did that was animals that when they would go to feed in their cages that were receptive to the humans who would come, that would move towards people that would be friendly towards people.

47:31

All of those animals were moved to a different area and bred together.

And animals that were fierce or ferocious or wanted to bite or wanted to attack the cage when people would come near them, they were segregated to another area and they kept breeding those animals together.

And over time, within a few generations, they were able to create a fully domesticated silver fox such that these were even sold as pets.

47:55

So they were realizing that domestication can happen very rapidly through artificial selection.

They also created, you know, sort of evil monster foxes by breeding together the ones that were less social.

So very powerful experiment and very eye opening.

48:13

But here again, in artifact land, everything is artificial.

Now I want to add to that this other layer.

Even though this has been a long and slow process of artificiality, it really started ramping up.

48:28

I mean, 'cause there's been tremendous civilizations in the past, right?

So the Sumerians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, the Inca, the Maya, the Aztec, incredible civilizations that created artificial environments, city states, but did it all without electricity.

48:54

But not too, not too long ago, we had what's called the Industrial Revolution.

And that's where the combination of electricity and machines radically altered the way human beings on our planet live.

It can be hard for us today to appreciate this to to truly appreciate these massive city states that existed all throughout our history around the world and did so without plumbing and without electricity.

49:25

I mean, just imagine what it would be like to live in an Egyptian city, a Greco Roman city, a a, a Babylonian city where you have 10s of thousands of people living without plumbing.

Can you imagine this?

Just the smell of of that, right?

49:41

No refrigeration, just like very unpleasant to think about.

We have enjoyed the luxury of the Industrial Revolution, but at the same time we've been softened by it.

So it has turned us into that Shih Tzu, when we used to be the wolf, if you will.

50:01

So it's accelerated our domestication and the sort of softening of human beings.

But another thing that happened was we replaced all the physical work that we had to do all through human history with machine labor.

Now, this first started really in the textile industry.

50:19

And the third episode of this podcast, if you haven't heard it yet, with Brian Merchant, the author of Blood and the Machine, I really recommend you go back and you listen to that.

It's all about the Luddite rebellion.

If you've ever heard someone say, you know, I, I don't like technology, but I'm not a Luddite, you'll hear that a lot.

50:37

It's something I in the episode I talk about how I used to say that I didn't know what the Luddite rebellion was, but the Luddite rebellion was actually the first rejection of big tech and tech overlords and oligarchs.

And what it was was that there were people in these cottage industries in England and they were called cottage industries because people basically could work from home and do their industry from home with their families.

50:58

They were textile artisans and their jobs were quickly being replaced by the 1st sort of steam driven machines that produced lower quality textiles but much, much cheaper.

And the Luddite rebellion was this incredible.

What they were doing was kind of using guerrilla tactics and they were going out at night and destroying those machines.

51:22

Now, they did it in a very sophisticated way.

They did not just wholesale destroy factories.

They did not just wholesale destroy everything in them.

They specifically destroyed the machines that were replacing their jobs.

And so Brian Merchant's book is really paralleling what's happening with AI right now and relating it back to what happened during the Industrial Revolution.

51:43

So put a pin in that we're going to come back to in a second.

But what I'm trying to point out here is that one, we, when we replaced our physical labor with machines, one of the things that happened to people, and you can really chart this over the decades as you just look at photographs of people, we started to gain tremendous amounts of weight and lose our muscle mass.

52:05

And eventually we ended up with an epidemic of obesity and flaccid bodies, under muscled, underdeveloped, aerobically deficient bodies and aerobically deficient bodies because we weren't doing all the labor that had kept us fit and lean and strong all throughout human history.

52:26

Suddenly everybody's freed up.

Now think about how you're hearing this today related to AI and what you're hearing because you're hearing a lot of like soon you won't have to work, soon you won't have to do any admins.

Soon you'll just get a universal basic income and you can just spend all day being creative.

52:46

This is what people were being told during the industrial revolution.

These machines were going to free up all your time for leisure.

That's not what happened.

In fact, people got sick, people got fat, people got weak, people started developing all these degenerative diseases or what we call the diseases of civilization that I mentioned earlier, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, neurodegenerative illness.

53:08

These things are absent in non industrialized people.

They don't have these diseases.

These are diseases specifically of civilization.

So all that happened, but at the same time, did it lead to this unprecedented amount of leisure?

Not really.

People work more now than ever, right?

53:25

So we're actually not working less that free time was then you were expected to fill it with more work.

So now we're being told something similar here.

While AI is going to free us up intellectually from all this work that we've been doing.

Well, I don't think that's what's going to happen.

53:42

I think that what's going to happen is very similar to what happened to us in the industrial revolution.

So if machines made it such that our bodies became weak and fat, I think that's going to happen to us intellectually now as well.

And actually, some of the very early studies that have been done on AI users, people use chat bots, is that they're experiencing what they are calling cognitive diminishment.

54:07

So remember, cognitive decline is like neurogen degenerative diseases, right?

So that'd be something like Alzheimer's, but this is cognitive diminishment.

And if you're wondering what that is, we'll just think back to a time, if you're old enough to remember when you had a lot more memorized than you do today.

54:26

Probably more math, probably more phone numbers, maybe quotes or statistics or scripture, whatever it was that used to remember.

But now because you have easy access to that information at your fingertips via your phone or your computer or other things that access the Internet, very difficult to remember anything anymore.

54:46

And that's powerful because the amount of information people used to memorize, you know, keep in mind that even writing is only 6000 years old.

So prior to that, all cultures were oral, all storytelling was oral, wasn't written down.

55:02

People had to memorize these things.

You know, you think about like in let's say the Middle East, you know, 2000 years ago, you know, you know, it would be nothing to have the first five books of the Bible memorized.

55:17

That's just like when I think about that, that's incredible to me.

That's just incredible.

Like we have truly lost a tremendous amount of our cognitive ability.

So what's going to happen if we had to, after the Industrial Revolution, if we had to create gyms and create this whole new field of medicine, really, that we call fitness and exercise, which you can think of like a hamster wheel.

55:43

So think about this.

If I want to take a hamster, right, and I want to take it out of its natural lifestyle so that it lives inside of a small enclosure, it's going to get overweight and sick and it's going to develop degenerative diseases.

So I got to exercise that hamster.

56:00

So do I do I put that hamster wheel in there so it can run in place.

It's like a treadmill, right?

Well, that's what we're doing.

So look at our gyms.

What these are is and, and I love gyms.

I got a gym in the room right next door to me.

I love the gym, but let's face it, the gym is a hamster wheel for domesticated people living post industrial revolution.

56:19

So where does this go for us?

I think what we're going to see is the rise of the mind, Jim.

We're going to have to, because cognitive diminishment is going to become very significant.

AI is taking over our cognitive tasks.

That means less memory.

56:35

That means less creativity, not more.

They keep telling you you're going to be more creative.

Well, how is that going to work when we're outsourcing our creativity to it already?

People are already outsourcing their writing, they're already outsourcing art, they're already outsourcing music generation.

56:52

You know, how long until people are no longer really able to do those skills unless it's something that they personally endeavor to maintain or develop?

And how much will they do that if they don't need to, right.

So when technology arrives, usually it replaces the old way.

57:11

So how many of us, if we want to write something, go out and make our own paper anymore?

Well, we don't because the technology is such that paper is widely available.

So even though we could do that, we don't because it's very easy to access prefabricated paper, right?

How many of us write out a book by hand if they're going to write a book?

57:31

Well, we don't.

We keyboard that, right?

So it used to be a typewriter.

Now it's keyboarding because it's that technology is widely available.

So with AI, how many people are going to choose the hard way anymore?

Probably what people will do is develop some kind of mind gym where they work on math and they work on writing, handwriting specifically, they work on reading and other cognitive tasks, problem solving tasks, because otherwise their minds are going to become very flaccid and weak.

58:02

And that sets us up for that kind of dystopian replacement scenario where robots and machines kind of take over for us.

And again, I always want to be clear, I'm not this the kind of person here going the sky is falling, or maybe it is.

58:17

But I'm excited by this.

I'm not.

I'm not disheartened, but I'm concerned.

And I think it's important that we address it.

And what I'm noticing is how little even in the conversations about AI, how little this is really being looked at, we're hearing a lot about AI replacing us.

58:35

We're hearing a lot about AI doomsday scenarios like AI kills, you know, wipes out humanity or whatever.

Hey, we need to be worried about our actual cognition.

And that's something that I don't hear as many folks talking about.

So what will be the mental hamster wheel of the future?

58:53

Here's another take away for you.

I made a video about this on my social media a couple of months ago and it did really well because I think people resonated.

I'm personally doing a lot of different things to keep my mind working because more and more, you know, you've probably noticed this just in the last year.

59:11

You know, it used to be you'd go to Google and you'd search for something and then that would lead you to web pages where you would further investigate and you'd get a variety of different answers and a variety of opinions.

And then you would have to personally work through that to come to your conclusion to get your answer.

But now something like 98 or 99% of Google searches result in no one going to a web page but just getting the AI summary.

59:35

And I'm guilty of that too.

I find that that's very convenient.

But I also notice if I ask the same question multiple different ways, I get multiple different answers.

So it's not truly reliable, at least not yet.

And slowly, we start to forget how to access this information.

59:53

So I grew up in an era, you know, I was born in 1978.

So at that time, we didn't have Internet, We didn't have mobile phones.

And when I went to the library, we had what was called a card catalog.

And that card catalog would be how you'd look up books.

1:00:10

So you'd go alphabetical through the card catalog, you'd select the card for the book, Then there was a little sleeve in the back of that book.

And when you check the book out, they would stamp your return date on that card and slip it into that little pocket in the back of the book.

And that's how you'd access books.

And I remember the very first computer I interacted with, I had the same attitude then that I have now.

1:00:30

So this is quite a while ago.

This is decades and decades ago.

But even then, I was, I, I thought computers were very SUS.

I didn't.

Have they been powerful?

Yes.

Have they allowed me to have a career that I would have never been able to have in the old world?

Yes.

But have they also introduced a lot of new problems?

1:00:49

I think so.

I think the answer is yes.

And they've set us up for this world that we're in now.

So I kind of saw that coming.

And I remember the first computer I ever personally used was in a library in Florida because I they didn't have a the card catalog anymore.

It had all gone on to a computer, and that was the first time I ever used one.

1:01:08

And so similarly, when I would go to those libraries, you know, I'd often go with a question or a topic that I wanted to learn more about.

And I would have to go find as many books on that top because I could not bring them all over to a central table.

And I'd have all these different books open with my notebook, and I would gather together this bits of information.

1:01:27

That's a skill.

That's a skill and that skills being lost because people can quickly access information.

Now the The thing is, if you're thinking to yourself, well, what's wrong with that?

Isn't this better that we can quickly access information?

1:01:43

The problem is because we can quickly access it, it's a very low value to our mind.

So psychologically, we have a difficult time ascribing value to that information that's easily gotten.

And so we don't remember it well.

1:02:00

So how often have you found yourself?

You listen to a whole podcast, you get done, you're like, that was amazing.

I learned so much.

And then it's like, what did you learn?

You're like, well, can't remember, can't remember where you look.

You look up a fact and then two days later someone asked you about it.

You can't remember it.

But I used to, you know, when I went through all that work and getting all those books and actually digging out like mining that information, that information was valuable to me.

1:02:25

I put a lot of work in and it stayed with me.

So I think one of the issues is that people are not going to have very much information left inside their minds and I'm a little concerned about where that leads people.

1:02:41

I don't personally think that's a good thing.

So just look back.

I mean, you know, how much information did you used to know?

I mean, growing up as kids, I knew all my friends phone numbers.

I don't know any of my friends phone numbers anymore.

It's hard to remember my wife's phone number because I can just go to her contact in my phone.

1:02:59

Now I know some people think, well then why do you need to memorize it?

Maybe that's true of phone numbers, but that's not true of everything.

We want minds that work.

And I personally think about the world as this information rich place.

And what I'm always trying to do to decode it and understand it better is gain new facts that I can plug into my internal mosaic, which is my mind map of the world.

1:03:23

And so if I learn something new, it's like, where does that piece of information fit into this overall mosaic, which again is a mind map of the world As I try to understand the world better.

If I have no mosaic, if I have no mind map of the world or I only have one that's temporary and constantly dissolving because I can't hold on to that information, it's going to make me very susceptible to being led and it's going to really impact my ability to think critically about the world.

1:03:54

So it's not just about, you know, memorizing phone numbers.

But again, we have been physically diminished by technology, and now we're being cognitively diminished.

So if we are both physically and cognitively diminished, what are we becoming?

1:04:12

And that's why I keep saying stay human.

That's why I want to use this show to encourage people to not just learn new information or get new facts.

This isn't a show where it's like, I just want to discuss whatever new ideas are around or like, what are the cool new trendy ideas that people are talking about?

1:04:32

Boring.

I don't care about that.

I care about lasting useful information that can help you to become a better version of yourself, or at least not be degenerated by both this cognitive and physical decline that we're experiencing.

1:04:47

So a lot of people around me, they'll say things like this to me.

They'll say, Daniel, you seem to think this technology is bad.

I think technology's neutral.

It's just how you use it.

And when people say that to me, I'm always like, have you seen Lord of the Rings?

So let's say you've seen Lord of the Rings, you've read the book.

1:05:06

Would you say that?

Would you say that the ring in Lord of the Rings is just a neutral technology and it depends on how people use it or is it kind of, is it kind of a technology that is addictive and degenerative to the person wielding it?

1:05:26

I think it's the latter.

So I noticed recently I gave a talk and I said, hey, put your hand up if you feel like you have total control over your use of your phone.

No hands went up.

In fact, everybody laughed.

And when everyone laughed, myself included, my hand didn't go up.

1:05:45

Sort of thought, wow, that's interesting.

Everybody in here knows that their use of their phone is out of their control because it's an addictive technology and the addiction worsens, right?

It's not the kind of thing where it just you, you stay at the same level.

1:06:03

It's like an addiction to drugs.

Like the amount that you need to use keeps going up and up and up.

So I think we're all finding ourselves using our phones more and more and more.

And that's why we're seeing so many new offerings of alternative phones, of software that makes your phone inaccessible at times, or phones that come out that are, you know, trying to riff on the flip phone or phones that are coming out that don't have access to the Internet or to apps.

1:06:30

You know, we're seeing all these things because people are going like, hey, wow, I'm I have a problem using this, right?

So it's like that ring in Lord of the Rings where Frodo's got to carry it, but the just carrying it is breaking him down.

He's degenerating and devolving from exposure to it.

1:06:47

It's not a neutral technology.

There's the character in Lord of the Rings, Boromir.

He says, hey, maybe this rings a gift.

Why don't we use this ring?

And they say to him, like, no, you can't wield it.

No one can.

And that's kind of how I see these technologies that I'm talking about.

1:07:05

My fear is that we, or my concern is that we think that they're neutral and that we can and use them for good.

But like Mickey Mouse in the movie Fantasia, who is using Merlin's hat but not knowing how to wield the magic, everything he creates, even things that are seemingly good, get out of control on him until he's creating chaos, and then he's trying to use more magic to stem the chaos.

1:07:29

But the more he does that, the more chaos he creates.

Each new solution generates more problems.

And that's kind of what I see is going on.

Our technology is out of control but we don't have the ability to wield it.

It's a degenerative slope in that the addiction worsens and worsens.

1:07:47

And these technologies are fundamentally, in my opinion, anti human.

And if you think that's strong, then explain to me why they degenerate our bodies and minds.

How can they be good for us if they're degenerating our bodies and our minds?

I also want to remind you where these technologies are made and by whom, because when you're living over here in the US or you're living in Europe and you're living maybe in a in a first world place, it can seem like no man, these are perfectly fine.

1:08:17

And then you see what's actually going on where they're being produced and you realize, oh, there's like a slave class of person.

If this is a neutral technology, why are the people building it in utter servitude?

That can't be right.

1:08:33

These are anti human technologies, but we're like the boy the the proverbial boiled frog, right?

So the idea is like you put the frog in, you know, comfortable temperature water and then you slowly heat that water up.

And because the frogs cold blooded and he's susceptible to ambient temperature, he's not noticing that the water is eventually heating up to the point that it's cooking him.

1:08:55

And I think we're getting cooked here and not realizing it because it's come on slow.

Now it's actually not that slow.

I mean, I having been born in 78, I I look out over my life and there's just this moment where technology starts to really hit.

And then we get into that exponential kind of hockey stick growth curve of how we're using these things.

1:09:13

But for a lot of people, it has been slow enough for them not to see the big picture.

So part of what I want to do with this show is help people zoom out and see the big picture.

Now, another thing I want to point out is that the the more we use this technology, the more I'm noticing that the US is being third worlded.

1:09:32

What do I mean by that?

I'm watching the breakdown of our infrastructure.

I'm watching the breakdown of the service industry.

A lot of you have surely noticed this.

I'm watching the younger generation take over the work workforce, but not really know how to do anything.

1:09:49

You know, for me growing up, you know, I when I was 16, I worked at a Wendy's, you know, the fast food place.

And back then if I came in with even a little bit of a 5:00 shadow, I got sent home.

I had to shave everyday just to work at Wendy's.

1:10:04

Can you imagine now if you go into a Wendy's, you'll somebody might have like a piercing between their eyes and demon contact lenses in their hair can be like blue and they can have an earbud in one of their ears and be listening to a podcast while they basically don't take your order right?

1:10:20

Like that's OK now because we're slipping into this like kind of third world scenario.

The infrastructure everywhere looks dirty and broken down.

The only things that look new out here where I live are weed shops.

You know, it's amazing.

Like we're really starting to slip over the edge here.

1:10:38

And I noticed more and more that the place that I live is feeling like places I've traveled to that we call the so-called third world.

I don't really like that term, but everybody knows what I mean and it's happening at an accelerating rate and everybody's so ensconced into their phones that they're not really noticing what's happening.

1:11:03

Additionally, those that cognitive diminishment is showing up in ways that are shocking.

Let me give you an example.

I gave a cashier the other day, they gave me a a total of $3.01.

I gave them a $20 bill and a penny.

They couldn't figure out the change.

1:11:22

I couldn't believe it.

I looked at my wife.

She said you got to help him.

I was like, do it.

Let's like watch, this is like an int.

You know, this is interesting.

The person was panicking, going back and forth, apologizing, trying to think.

I could see how they kept wanting to reach for a calculator in their phone.

1:11:39

And eventually they finally figured it out.

But it was like, wow, they don't know.

It's like it's kind of an easy math problem, but we're at a place now where people are losing their ability to do basic cognitive tasks.

And that leading to this scenario where it's like, who's even taking care of anything anymore?

1:11:59

Like who's taking care of the infrastructure?

Who's taking care of our culture?

Seems like no one is.

So it's breaking down and that's going to force us all to need to figure out individually what we're going to do to sustain ourselves.

Oh, I forgot to mention, so earlier I was saying that I made a video about cognitive diminishment, some of the things that I'm personally doing.

1:12:18

So I want to kind of make sure I, I explain what those are.

So one of the ones for me is that I've been doing basic math just, you know, a couple times a week, taking out an adult math workbook and working through basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division.

1:12:37

Now, I don't have very advanced math skills.

I never have, I don't think for most of us they're, they're that I don't need algebra for my day-to-day, but I need subtraction, addition, you know, division and multiplication for my day-to-day.

It's very useful to me and to a lot of other people as well.

1:12:52

So, so I've been working through those.

But if you're at a higher, more advanced math level, whatever it is, I think you should work at that edge, right?

So similar to like let's say you're working out in the gym, if you're capable of dead lifting £350, it's probably not going to be that useful to you to deadlift 100 lbs every time, you know, sometimes, but be good for you to work up near your edge.

1:13:16

Similarly, I think you should work at the math that's at your level.

For me, that's not very high, but I want to keep the math that I have sharp, particularly my times tables and things like that, they're very important.

I do reading of real books.

I cannot stand to read on a screen anyway, so I'm a little biased about that.

1:13:33

But I read the Bible every morning, and that is a wonderful reading because of the complexity of the text.

I have friends who are just so against the Bible and against the idea of Scripture in general.

1:13:49

And so I'll say to them, OK, well, maybe you should read Shakespeare or something like that where you have some kind of similarly challenging text because it's important that we don't read dumbed down to content because we're trying to avoid cognitive diminishment.

1:14:05

So again, that we're working at reading at a level that challenges us to some degree, I think that's really important as well.

But there's all kinds of cognitive tasks that we can be doing.

So for me, it's also memorization.

So again, because I've read scripture, I like to memorize scripture.

1:14:23

And so I've got a series of cue cards that I go through.

I'm constantly practicing memorization skills so that that part of my brain stays active.

I want to constantly be working on my vocabulary and making sure that I'm not seeing a diminishment in the words that I have access to, etcetera, etcetera.

1:14:42

Right.

For that.

This could be different for you.

So for some people it's learning new language.

For some people, it's learning music and more complexity in their musical theory.

Whatever it is for you that keeps your cognition sharp.

I think that that's a really important component of thriving in this world that's here now and continuing to come upon us in an accelerated rate.

1:15:05

So AI is going to rack radically change our world.

It already has really.

I mean, I think back on the last year and it's incredible what we've seen.

And a lot of this we were warned about, right?

Not warned about.

We were, it was prophesied by the oligarchs around us and by these unelected social engineers.

1:15:28

You know, think about Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum in the famous quote that they were talking about the Great Reset, by the way, that happened.

You know, it's like you don't hear about it anymore because it happened.

They called it COVID essentially, and all those things that came with it.

But there was a great reset.

1:15:45

And one of the things they said about this coming world was that you'd own nothing and you'd be happy.

So if you're like, what does that mean?

Well, that means like, think about music.

When I was a kid, you would go buy a cassette tape and later on ACD, and you would own that music and you would have it for the rest of your life.

1:16:04

Now, more than likely, you've got something like Spotify where you rent the music, but you don't own it.

If you cancel your subscription, you lose access to all that music.

You don't own it, you just rent it.

Or we're hearing more and more about the challenges for people today, especially first time homeowners or would be homeowners, how challenging it is to afford a home in these current conditions because house prices are up and of course interest rates are up.

1:16:33

So more and more people are renting.

So in other words, you don't own your home.

Many people leasing cars or having car payments, they don't own their cars.

Like more and more, you don't own anything, you just rent it and that's the future.

But apply that to every aspect of your life.

1:16:49

That's what the social engineers would like for you.

So that's that world that's coming.

Or think about if you own a smart TV, how it works now compared to how it used to work.

Remember, you used to just turn on your TV and you'd watch what you had access to.

But now you turn on your TV and it's like a store where it's showing you all these things that you can purchase.

1:17:05

It's constantly trying to sell you things for you to rent or buy.

Very interesting these changes that are taking place around us.

So our world's changing in a lot of ways.

And again, I'm not trying to go up against these social engineers.

1:17:21

I'm trying to out with them in my own life and in my own body to the degree that I can so I can maintain some amount of personal sovereignty.

You know, another way the world's changing is the things that we called for so long, conspiracies are just turning out to be true.

1:17:37

Now.

I grew up on conspiracy.

My mother is deep in the game.

So my mom loves like the Flat Earth stuff.

She loves the mud flood stuff.

She loves, you know, all aspects.

I mean, someone like the really far outside.

1:17:53

Because here's the thing that I've noticed.

If you were into conspiracy theories 10 years ago, so many of those things that you were into are now just fact.

Now, maybe the average person doesn't know they're fact because they're not following up on the information.

1:18:09

But a lot of us know these things have been proven now.

So that means the conspiracy theories are getting really, really fringe.

And some people just like that as a hobby, you know, But for me, having grown up inculcated in a lot of conspiracy stuff and personally reading a lot of books and, you know, listening to podcast, watching videos, I'm pretty steeped in it.

1:18:32

And now we're seeing a lot of this stuff is true.

So it's like, you know, for a long time, it'd be like this conspiracy theory, man.

The fluoride in the water is there to make you stupid and docile.

But now it turns out there's Harvard studies showing that it does lower your IQ significantly.

You know, it's still in water all over the US, right?

1:18:49

And, you know, it turns out the fluoride was put in water, but that the person who kind of facilitated that was Edward Bernice, the guy who created propaganda, wrote the book called Propaganda, created the whole field of public relations.

This is the guy that got women to start smoking cigarettes.

1:19:06

This guy worked for the CIA and the Department of Defense and all the major corporations to help them figure out how to sell products to people that they didn't need.

He created consumer culture through propaganda.

He's the guy that helped the aluminum industry figure out how to sell fluoride to water municipalities, municipal water facilities, so that they would put it into the water supply supposedly for your teeth.

1:19:28

Now we know that it's all true, that it lowers your IQ.

How about the UFO stuff?

I mean, for the longest time, it was like if you were into that boy, you were on the fringe.

And now it's like the government is releasing the files, right?

And we're seeing people in Congress, actual sitting Congress people talking about not just the stuff that the government's leaking out in their released files, but talking about real far out stuff, right?

1:19:54

So we have like Congress people saying you need to read the Book of Enoch, talking about things they've seen in skiffs that they can only hint at, but but they hint at things like human hybrid breeding programs with extraterrestrials, talking about interdimensional entities and non human intelligences.

1:20:10

Like this stuff's coming out of government level, you know?

Not just like hearings, but individual Congress people.

So turns out that's not just a crazy conspiracy theory.

I think the Epstein stuff, I mean, I don't want to spend a lot of time on that because it's really gross, but but shocking.

1:20:29

It's just like, let's face it, it's all true, right?

Like this stuff's true.

COVID is another great example.

I think we, you know, I remember if you go back into the Wild Fed podcast, I did an episode with a very well known and famous virologist early, early into the beginning of that whole fiasco.

1:20:52

And it was right about the time that we were hearing about this lab in Wuhan.

And I remember saying to him, hey, is there any, you know, this is a guy, by the way, who's a colleague of, you know, Fauci and connected to that whole world.

1:21:08

So anyway, I had said to him, hey, is there any chance this has come out of a lab?

And he kind of lost it on me and tried to, like, sort of demean me a little bit.

And I was really shocked at, like, the emotional intensity of his response.

But then as the whole thing played out, it became more and more obvious why.

1:21:27

And then eventually we have our own government agencies like the FBI and the Department of Energy coming out and saying the most likely origin was in fact the lab if like as if anybody needed to be told that.

But but you know, again, my point is all of these conspiracies are turning out to be true and more and more information is coming out all the time.

1:21:49

And so if we follow that trend line, it's kind of obvious that more and more stuff is going to turn out to be true as well.

So all of that's contributing to this sort of dystopia that's being set up, right?

So another example of the formerly A conspiracy theory is the idea that that we were going to be living in a kind of nonstop 24/7 surveillance state, some kind of hybrid between Orwells 1984 and Brave New world or something like that.

1:22:20

Well, it turns out like that's what's happening, right.

So whether it's, you know, the data centers or the flock cameras or any number of these, you know, facial recognition, all these things are are coming together to create the panopticon that the formerly, you know, people we formerly called conspiracy theories were theorists were always predicting that world's now here and it wasn't a conspiracy theory.

1:22:42

So what else isn't a conspiracy theory?

That's very dystopian that we're barreling towards.

Which kind of brings me to the topic of spirituality.

Because, you know, I've always been a spiritual person.

1:22:57

I've always believed in God.

I, I've never been somebody who was an atheist.

I have never.

I just can't be that.

It's just, I have such a strong internal sense of a higher power and a higher intelligence, and my experience in the natural world makes it impossible for me to believe that there isn't an intelligence in the design of the world for multiple reasons.

1:23:24

But one of those reasons is because we know that biology is based on a code.

We, you know, DNA is a code.

And like computer code, somebody has to do the coding.

And I don't believe that nothing exploded and became everything and then became a self organizing code.

1:23:45

And when I say self organizing, please keep in mind we're told that because of entropy, right?

The second law of thermodynamics, that entropy causes all systems to tend towards decay.

But in the face of that entropy, as the whole universe was expanding and losing energy, somehow in the face of that, on Earth, some kind of code writes itself that does the opposite thing of entropy and creates entropy, where species become more and more highly organized as time goes on.

1:24:14

In the face of entropy.

How does that make sense?

Well, it doesn't.

It just doesn't.

And I always had this very strong belief in God and a prayer has always been part of my life at different levels throughout my life.

There's times where I've been further from that, particularly times where I've been like more megalomaniacal and arrogant.

1:24:38

And there's been times where I've been more humble in my life and and that was a more forefront thing for me.

But it's always been there for me.

But in recent years, this kind of all, I'm going to go back to 2022.

Let me just say this, actually, I grew up.

1:24:55

My mother is like a Bible believing Christian, but she is not somebody who fits into any of the churches.

So she's not a Catholic, she's not an Orthodox.

And I guess she would maybe be closest to Protestant, but she's, you know, an alien abductee.

1:25:11

I always say that it's kind of like quotes.

I don't really know what all that means, what that actually is.

But she had those experiences growing up and and you know, I grew up hearing about those things from her well before this stuff was mainstream, way before, you know, we knew about how many people had these kinds of experiences.

1:25:27

But her experiences are just like the ones we hear about constantly now from all of these reports that we now have access to.

So whatever that is, she grew up around that.

That gave her a very interesting, unusual, unorthodox, maybe even heretical take on Christendom.

1:25:45

And I kind of grew up in that meal use.

So that's always been part of my background.

I went to some private schools, thankfully, because my education was pretty truncated, but I I had a several years in private Christian schools where I got inculcated in some of that as well.

1:26:01

And then I had a couple other phases in my life where I became involved in Christianity.

So this has been a through line for me.

But back in 2022, I was probably the furthest I'd ever been from it.

This is years of doing, you know, studying this idea of domestication and rewilding.

1:26:20

And at that point, I had come to see all of these different spiritual traditions as different forms of domestication.

They didn't seem natural to me.

They didn't really seem even valuable to me anymore.

But then our culture started changing really fast, and things that I started to see seemed dark and evil in a way that didn't really make sense to me at all.

1:26:46

Like I couldn't really understand why evil for evil sake.

But the more I looked into it, wow, the more I started to see that there's these play that were unmasking themselves.

If you again, if you follow conspiracy stuff over the years, if you've had an alternative worldview, you knew these things were there cooking, but they started unmasking themselves in their twenty 20s.

1:27:09

And it was in 2022.

I had I was I remember I was right in this room watching a documentary, like a long kind of poorly produced documentary about the music industry.

And it was showing in various ways.

1:27:29

How?

Much of the music industry is influenced by kind of what I would call, I guess I would just call Satanism, not saying that these people as.

Individual artists really believe in a.

Real like, you know, Cloven hooved Baphomet looking like devil.

1:27:46

But but certainly there's a ritual component, there's a magical component.

There's hesitate to use the word demonic, but they're sort of like a, a summoning kind of quality.

And you'll notice how many of these artists today, right now, we're seeing it a lot in hip hop actually, which is interesting because for a long time it was like sort of in rock'n'roll and then in industrial music and in metal music.

1:28:10

But now we're seeing it in hip hop as well.

And R&B is like this very strong satanic component.

And anyway, I was watching this documentary and I just had one of those come to Jesus moments where it was like, I just, I looked over and I had a Bible in the room.

And I remember thinking, not thinking.

1:28:26

I remember like feeling just surrounded by darkness and thinking, wow, if it wasn't for that book, I that book was like a lighthouse to me in that moment.

It's kind of a scary moment.

It was a really strong and potent moment where I thought for a second, like, wait a second, am I in hell?

1:28:42

Is this dimension that we're in like a hell realm?

Why is there so much evil and why is there why are we being kind of parasitized?

Why are we being physically and cognitively diminished?

Why are humans not thriving even though we have the capability to?

1:28:59

We could turn this whole earth into a beautiful permaculture where everyone could be fed, everyone could be healthy every day could be wonderful.

And yet we have turned it into we we've kind of gone into this world like, like if you look back in history, slavery is always existed.

1:29:17

It's not just the chattel slavery that took place in the United States in its early years.

It's a worldwide phenomena still taking place today.

In fact, there's more slaves today than at any other time in human history.

So that's important to know.

But we've moved into this era where explicitly it looks like we're abolishing.

1:29:39

All forms of slavery.

But really what we're doing is we're kind of enslaving everybody.

Like I mentioned before, everyone's addicted to this technology.

Everyone's hooked up to the Internet.

Now you see homeless people on the street and they've got mobile phones, you know, smartphones, it's like, and they're, they're just heads or, and faces are in them.

1:29:58

Like everybody's being pulled into this system that is requiring more and more of our time and more and more of our attention and we're being sort of mentally enslaved to something.

What is this and why is this happening when we could be flourishing?

1:30:15

Well, in my opinion, it's because there's dark forces at work here and there is a countervailing force that I don't want to act like they're equal levels.

I don't believe they are, but but there is God in my opinion.

And I've just in that moment became utterly convinced and I have since learned so much that has truly rocked my world and sort of shocked me.

1:30:42

Now, a lot of people get upset about this.

I just, you know, you have a growing contingent of people who are turning towards spirituality.

But but the idea of any of the organized religions of the world are huge turn off probably none more so than Christianity.

1:31:00

It's really interesting.

So I get a lot of questions like how on earth if you become a Christian.

Now I want to say like at the outset that I just like my I said about my mother, I don't really consider myself part of the religion of Christianity.

I love the original term.

It's in the book of Acts.

1:31:17

It it calls, you know, those those people who are following Christ's in his way.

They called it the way they said they were practicing the way.

And I really like that language because when I hear Christianity, it makes me think of religion and I'm hyper allergic to religion.

I think religion is one of the most toxic things on the earth.

1:31:35

I think Jesus Christ thought that religion was one of the more toxic things as well.

And he's seemed quite against it in my reading.

But but I want to point something out for people who are atheists, for people who are on the fence about this or people who are against the idea of any of these kind of organized spiritual traditions.

1:31:54

It's important to note that, and this is fundamental to my world view.

So my world view has been, hey, if we look at natural people, let me back up.

If we want to understand how to take care of our dogs, it's helpful to look at wolves.

Why?

Because dogs are wolves.

Now, they might be the domesticated form of the wolf, but if we want our dogs to be healthy, they need the same kind of things, the same inputs that not just food inputs, but behavioral inputs and environmental inputs that wolves had, right?

1:32:22

And if we give them that, they become healthier.

Similarly, if we want to understand what human beings need to thrive, what we need to be healthy, it's helpful to look at our ancestors or to look at still living indigenous groups or traditional societies.

How do they live?

1:32:37

And then we can kind of go like, oh, how do we incorporate some of that back into out the domesticated form, the home Homo sapien domestico fragilis into us, right.

So ancestrally, looking back through human history, something like 10 to 20% of all your time was dedicated to explicitly religious ceremonies or activities.

1:32:59

Now you can't just separate it out into like an even pie chart where it's like, OK, here's my pie chart and a 20% slice went to religion.

It's not that simple because it wasn't like people had a spiritual on off switch.

Their spirituality was fully integrated into every aspect of their life.

1:33:14

So it's a lot more than the 10 or 20%, but we have removed that completely.

And what fills that 20% vacuum for us?

Like think about the things that if you don't have God in that 20%, what do you fill that in with?

1:33:31

Cause we've had about 150 years now of our fully secular sciences, right?

Science, divorce.

You know, you look back into the origins of science and these were all primarily Christians and also a lot of Muslims, you know, in early chemical sciences and astronomical sciences.

1:33:49

But these were religious people.

But this secular science, this science divorced from the spiritual is about 150 years old.

Look what happened in our in our world in 150 years.

The lens that we've all been taught through says, wow, look how much better the world has gotten.

1:34:09

Everybody's richer, everybody's living easier.

You know, there's all this ways of looking at it through kind of rose colored glasses.

But from where I look at it, I'm not so sure.

What I see happened is people were broken up from bigger families into nuclear families and now into individuals.

1:34:27

We're breaking apart the nuclear family to the point that many people think the nuclear family is like a patriarchal racist structure, right?

It's just crazy.

Or that the kids should belong to the state.

We are losing our ability to reproduce.

We're sicker than ever.

1:34:44

We're getting stupider than ever.

Lifespan's actually starting to go down here in the United States.

You could try to spin it that this has been positive.

But in my opinion.

This has not been a positive thing.

Now, the other aspect of this is that atheism is really new.

So keep in mind that the only atheism we see historically until recently was a very small scale, and it was amongst elite philosophers.

1:35:07

So can you look back on Greece and Rome and find some atheists?

Yeah.

But like, this is in a very small circle of of, you know, elite mind masturbators who are this was not like at scale.

This was not at a population level that doesn't start until like 1917.

1:35:25

That's when we first start to see population level atheism.

The consequences of it have been devastating.

I mean, like truly devastating.

And that's because human beings have an impulse to the spiritual.

We have an impulse to worship the divine.

1:35:42

In the same way that you have thirst because you need water, you have hunger because you need food, you have attraction because you need to find a mate and you want to reproduce.

Similarly we have an impulse to worship the divine.

Now if there is no divine, then you're going to fill that space with something else.

1:36:04

And how do we worship?

Like we sing, we pray, we fast, we seek God, we we seek to strengthen our moral compass in our discernment between right and wrong.

But again, if you remove that, then what you end up replacing the infinite with is something finite.

1:36:25

And so we start to worship money, we start to worship fame, we start to worship power or sex or status symbols.

We worship ourselves or we worship our icons, right?

Like our idols.

I mean, that's incredible language that we use.

Like think about that show American Idol and then think about the biblical perspective on idols and what that is and how we are at our, we have in the way that I said before that a domesticated animal is a biological artifact.

1:36:53

We have these biological idols.

We, you know, we call them the stars.

There's a there's a whole that's a whole episode unto itself.

So I'm going to move on from that.

But it's fascinating, the language we use around this.

So we replace our devotion to God with devotion to things that are much more, that are finite instead of infinite, that are inferior.

1:37:14

So maybe your devotion goes to a political party, or it goes to a sports ball team, or it's the economy, or it's the nation state, But it's something fallible, it's something corrupt.

It's a human construct, and I think that we're doing that because we have a need for God the way we have a need for sleep, like I said, the way we have a need for food or we have a need for water.

1:37:37

But because we've been told that that doesn't exist, that it's unscientific, we don't realize that scientism is our new religion that we've tried to replace God with.

And so people are trying to find their spiritual compass or meaning in things that can't really provide that for us.

1:37:59

So as I said before, a lot of people have been really.

Curious about my.

Conversion and it's been hard for people to understand, which I definitely get.

So again, I'm not religious, but I am having a relationship with the divine and I think that that's something that we all need right now.

1:38:17

You know, I've been keeping behind me here in my studio.

You know that there's the picture right there.

If you're watching this on video, I'm pointing at it.

That is the Shroud of Turin.

That is what I believe is essentially an ancient 2000 year old photograph of Jesus Christ at the moment of his resurrection.

1:38:36

Now, if you think that that's ridiculous that I just said that, I want to point something out to you.

The most published book in all of human.

History.

Beyond like there's no competitor.

1:38:52

The most published book in the all of human history is the Bible.

The most written about topic in all of human history by far is Christianity actually.

And the most written about human being of all time is Jesus of Nazareth.

1:39:09

So I understand that, man.

I've been this person over the years too, you know, I understand if somebody's like that's stupid, that's made-up, that's impossible, that's ridiculous, that's unscientific, that's fantasy, that's make believe.

I just want to say if the most, if this is the most written about and talked about thing of all of human history, if that many human beings, brilliant human beings through time have dedicated their lives to this, that should at least give you pause before you immediately criticize it, right?

1:39:44

Because it would be pretty foolish to think that in this modern era, as a person who no matter how well you live compared to your ancestors, you're physically diminished, cognitively diminished, nutritionally diminished, hormonally diminished.

1:40:00

You've got, you know, plastic coursing through your veins and glyphosate and forever chemicals in your brain that you're so smart.

As to know that all of these people in all of history were just stupid and wrong and what a silly thing.

1:40:15

How could they think that It's superstition.

It's like, hey, maybe you should pause and go like, wow, I don't understand it.

I don't agree with it, but I should probably be slow to criticize it until I've deeply investigated it because how could so many human beings have put so much time into it that I just think that that should give people pause.

1:40:36

And I think the other component of it is to understand that, you know, when it comes to Jesus Christ specifically, that there's not really debated anymore that this was a real person.

So if you think like he never lived, like, then you need to investigate a little bit more because it's pretty much agreed upon even in the secular world that this was a real person, that it's just not really possible that this much has been.

1:41:03

You know, he's the historicity of Jesus Christ is stronger than the historicity for Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan or any number of these people that we believe were real people, even though most of what was written about them wasn't for hundreds of years later.

1:41:20

And there's only a handful of documents.

Jesus Christ is extremely well attested, in fact, might be the most well attested person in ancient history.

So I want to kind of like provide that as well.

But before I said to you, I'm not religious.

And so people kind of are like, what is it?

How does that work?

1:41:36

What do you mean?

I'll just say this, I think that this has a lot to do not with religion, which to me is like a set of rules and precepts.

And I live a certain way according to a sort of a script.

It's about relationship with God and the condition of my heart.

1:41:54

So let me try to draw an allegory here.

It's like with my marriage.

Is my wife going to be content in our marriage if I go through, if I do all the things right, but the condition of my heart is not loving towards her if I'm not actually in true intimate relation with her, but I show up to everything and I I I go through all the motions of a marriage, but actually the condition of my heart isn't oriented towards her.

1:42:22

Will she know that?

Yeah.

Will she feel that?

Yeah.

Will my marriage last?

Probably not.

She doesn't care as much about me following the letter of the law as much as she cares about the condition of my heart.

And I believe that that our relationship with God is like that.

1:42:38

So that's why I say it's not a religion.

It has to do with the condition of my heart and the orientation of my heart.

It's not about rules for me.

It's not about religion because I think a lot of times what religion is, is people going through the motions, but not necessarily having a heart that's been transformed or a spirit that's been transformed by relationship with God and love as well.

1:43:05

Now, another component of this is like people will say they'll struggle with the idea from a scientific perspective of this being a world created by God, which I also can really understand when I hear the word creation.

1:43:22

Just to be clear to me, a creation and a simulation are very, very similar terms.

So you know, when you hear about this like idea of a simulation theory, to me I'm like, oh, you mean a creation?

And one of the interesting things about a simulation, a simulation be like, let's say it's a video game and you're a character in the video game.

1:43:45

Let's say that video game was created last week and now you're a character that has consciousness and free will inside that video game.

If as a character, instead of playing the game, you instead decide from within the game to investigate the back story.

1:44:01

Like, wait a second, how did this game come to be?

And you start investigating into the history of the world that you're living in.

Well, what will you find?

Well, there will be a whole history, right?

The game was only invented last week.

But in the game, there's a whole back story in history that's been programmed in.

1:44:20

So a lot of people will like look, or for instance, let's say that you live in a game where you, instead of playing the game, decide.

To look.

Into what's very big and very small.

So like through the telescope and the microscope to investigate the game that you're in, you're going to find things, right?

1:44:39

You're going to find things because the game will be programmed in such a way that if you do, those things will be created as you seek.

And so I think that there's all of these tools that we're using scientifically to try to understand the simulation we're in, but it's still a simulation or what I'll call a creation.

1:44:55

So to me, the fact that we can see the age of the Earth or we can look out, you know, into space or look down into the subatomic and find things does not mean that this is a meaningless nihilistic world that came out of a Big Bang explosion.

I just don't believe that.

1:45:11

And I also want to say that I don't think that the purpose of the game is to hack the game.

So I think that's what we've gotten caught up in.

We're trying to hack the game, figure out how to manipulate the game, and we want to become gods within the game.

1:45:26

And what's so interesting about, and we want to do that, by the way, with these technologies, I was talking about AI, nanotech, biotech and robotics.

And we want to use that to become gods in the game that we're in, which very interestingly is how the whole Bible starts.

1:45:43

So for people who are like would like to just discount the entire biblical narrative, I would offer maybe we should stop as a species playing it out right in front of ourselves because the whole Bible ends up being really about human beings trying to become gods through forbidden knowledge and technology.

1:46:04

And this comes up multiple times.

And here we are kind of doing that exact same thing.

So I'll also say that I think in our simulation or.

Creation or this?

World that we're living in, this rich biological world, there are these Easter eggs that have been kind of hidden and those would be the entheogenic substances that we find in plants and sometimes in animals, right?

1:46:31

What we call the psychedelics.

Typically in Christianity in particular, you'll get this sort of immediate on the face rejection of those things.

I don't have that perspective.

I don't, I, I to me, it's not like evil entities made psychedelic plants.

1:46:48

That doesn't make any sense, right?

They're part of this creation and they open our eyes now.

I think they're very powerful and I think that they need to be used very judiciously.

But but I've had experiences with plant medicine and with animal medicines that have made it very real.

1:47:05

For me that this.

Entire experience we're having of this world and of ourselves is like one frequency band on our radio where you can just keep like tuning to different frequencies.

I've had just experiences that are so much realer than real that you can't convince me that this is all there is.

1:47:26

I just have had experiences so that you know, and you could be like, well, those were just, you were just high.

It's like, well, I don't personally think that a chemical based on serotonin can radically alter your understanding of the universe like that.

I just don't think it quite works like that.

1:47:41

I think that they work probably more like some kind of an antenna enhancement that allow you to experience greater aspects, things that you'd normally tune out.

And again, I've just, I've had experiences that tell me that this is for me personally, this is more of a simulation.

1:47:57

Than it is a physical real.

Thing It's like a light show.

It's like a hologram, It's like a, it's like a video game.

It's like a projection.

And it feels very real and it looks very real.

And if you investigated, it appears to be real until you investigated enough that you realize everything's kind of made out of empty space and light.

1:48:15

I mean, the further our sciences go, the weirder all this stuff starts getting.

And at some point I just had to accept that this is got a spiritual dimension.

So that's kind of where I'm at with that.

It's very difficult for me to believe in the realness of this reality.

1:48:34

I'll also say that one of the things, and I'll be exploring this as this show goes on, it'll be a theme that'll come up for me, but it's very difficult for me to.

I think the biggest challenge I had with the teachings of Christ or was the idea of him as the Good Shepherd, because to me, a shepherd looks over sheep and sheep are domesticated.

1:48:54

So I really struggle with that.

It's like, how do I and I still do?

How do we integrate everything I've learned about wild and indigenous living and wild and indigenous people?

Because there's things that are that are so good that we have lost in our modern world and that have been suppressed by religion.

1:49:14

And then there's these aspects of that life that are not good.

And we have a tendency today to gloss over those things because we have this theme now in our culture, this alignment against hierarchy and the patriarchy and, you know, anything that ends in our key.

1:49:32

And so it's like this, this idea that that society has only suppressed goodness in the way that it's attempted to civilize the world, but there's this other reality when we look at those.

1:49:49

Cultures we.

Often see horrifying torture, horrifying warfare, horrifying human sacrifice around the world.

I mean, it's pretty shocking when you dig in on this stuff, and we still have a lot of that going on today.

But I don't want to paint an unrealistic picture of the indigenous world.

1:50:08

And so I think that there are things that are really good from that, but I've been trying to figure out how it integrates with the kind of auto domestication that I feel that Christ calls people to.

But I had this realization, and I've talked about this in a couple of podcasts in the past, other people's shows.

1:50:28

But I had this realization because I have dogs here at home.

And one of the things I realized is that my dogs, I don't want them to behave like wild animals in my house.

So as much as I appreciate wild animals, my dog is not allowed to shit on the floor in my house.

1:50:46

My dog's not allowed to just go out and mate with just any other dog.

Kind of it wants to, there's rules like if you want to live in my house, you have to live by certain rules here, right?

That's just a reality.

And so similarly, I was, so I used to bristle at the idea of any kind of like domestication, but now I realize a couple of things.

1:51:09

One is that we can't go back now to the wild world.

Like the Pandora's box is open, the wild world is gone.

What's left is on the fringes and margins of the most difficult places to access or live in.

The places that are easy to live in have been hyper built up to the point that, you know, as a forager and a hunter, you quickly realize like you couldn't really live on the landscape as it is today as a foraging band.

1:51:37

There's just not enough space.

There's not enough resources.

We can't go back to the wild world.

So we are have been domesticated and there's two kind of forces that I see and two ways of being domesticated.

1:51:53

One way is the way that culture and what I was referring to before as sort of dark spiritual entities that I see behind a lot of what's happening in our culture.

There's the way they seek to diminish us, which is through cognitive and physical diminishment and stupefying us through lies and through deception and through addiction, not just to substances, but to technology.

1:52:19

And then there's the kind of auto domestication I feel that Christ calls us to, which is like a, a kind of like, hey, when you're in my house, you can't shit on the floor.

It's asking us to step up our behavior to go to the next level so that we're ready to graduate from this world into a higher world.

1:52:40

And that's a kind of domestication process I can get down with.

The one I can't get down with is the one the social engineers are using to try to turn brilliant and beautiful human beings into kind of dumbed down herd animals.

So that's kind of how I'm looking at that right now.

1:52:59

But there's a lot more to say on this.

And so as my podcast unfolds over the next few years, I'm going to be sprinkling this in, and I'm in particular excited to share with you some of the things that I'm learning about underlying beliefs in many of the world, if not most of the world's indigenous cultures that dovetail with all of what I'm talking about.

1:53:23

So this was information that anthropologists have known for some time, what's been very suppressed, and I think it'd be exciting to dig into some of that.

So lots to talk about on that front.

I also want to say that I arrived.

1:53:39

At all of this.

Supernaturally so not.

Through like a decision.

Tree matrix or something like that.

So you know, there's historical reasons that I believe this.

There's there's artifacts like I mentioned the Shroud of Turin earlier, which by the way, if you hear that, you think that's just like, what is this guy talking about?

1:53:59

You need to look into the Shroud of Turin.

You know, I'll just say this.

Go debunk it.

Please go debunk it.

Because the it's the most studied artifact on the planet.

It's been studied by more, More hours of interdisciplinary scientific research have been done on the Shadow Turin than any other human artifact.

1:54:19

And this thing is truly inexplicable.

So I would encourage you to look into that.

In fact, I'll have some episodes coming up about that.

So, you know, there's that component, there's the historicity I was talking about before.

All of these things bolster my faith, but that's not how.

1:54:39

I arrived here.

I arrived.

At this through supernatural means and so I don't want to pretend like I logic to my way into any of this.

That's not it at all.

But I think it's important to say that because a lot of people want to be convinced, but they want to be convinced logically and I don't think that that's how faith works or can work.

1:54:57

I think actually it can be a hindrance.

So so I don't want to give the impression that I I just found the information and logically arrived there.

That's just that would be kind of silly.

But but I'll get again.

I just want to say one more time.

You would be foolish to just write off the most written about human being in all of history.

1:55:17

That would be a mistake.

So at least give the respect deserved by all of the millions of people whose lives have gone into this, because you don't know what you don't know, and neither do I.

So I will say that the religion of scientism has replaced most of the world's other religions, and it's LED us to a much worse place, in my opinion.

1:55:43

So, and it's also surprisingly.

You would think.

Because scientism is the rejection of the supernatural, so you would think that it would lead you to caring about the natural.

But it hasn't, right?

It's broken our relationship to the natural world.

1:56:00

It's broken our relationship to all aspects.

Of wonder you.

Know it's we have used scientism to cut ourselves off from the natural world in a meaningful way.

1:56:19

And for most of us today, we are so deep in the built in artificial environment because of science such that we're like aliens to our own ecosystem at this point.

And we have these beliefs like that we're going to go to the moon and live there.

1:56:38

We're going to go to Mars and live there.

And I'm always thinking like, how could like when we can't even take care of our own planet, how are we going to go to Mars or the moon we are going to take with?

So are we going to take the planet destroying paradigm that we have here with us?

1:56:59

Does that even make sense?

I always say that's like.

A person who's just goes from relationship to relationship, never heals the problem that causes their relationship to end, jumps into a new relationship, creates the same problem till they can't take it anymore, jumps to the next relationship.

Or is that our planetary path?

1:57:16

Is that what we're going to do?

We'll do it on the moon 1st, and then we'll do it on the Mars, on Mars, and then we'll just keep jumping around because we can't learn how to take care of our own home.

I think that we need to learn how to live here first, and science is not helping us do that.

In fact, it's quite the opposite.

1:57:31

Science is causing us to disassemble our world and then try to rebuild out of it a kind of artificial life forms and artificial beings, and maybe even undermine our own place here on our own planet as well.

So I think that we need to be developing a healthy relationship to nature and I don't think that our spiritual lives need to be in opposition to that.

1:57:58

In fact, you know from again, from my like sort of biblical worldview, we should be human beings, should be permaculturing.

This Earth that's.

Kind of what we're here to do.

We're here to take care of this planet.

We're here to nurture this wild environment.

1:58:14

And instead we've turned against it.

So that's another aspect of this show.

It's sort of a call to return to a simpler life where we take care of rather than exploit.

And that's why I believe really in letting our bodies be as natural as possible.

1:58:32

That's why I believe in minimal intervention, minimal technical intervention, minimal medical intervention.

You know, my wife and I are always joking about Team Natty, right?

It's like just trying to stay natural.

I mean, we find like, for instance, at the gym that we go to, you know, it's just like getting very common for people to be on hormones, to be on steroids, to be filled with Botox and fillers and implants and doing all this kind of augmentation.

1:58:56

And soon we're going to see people really technologically augmenting themselves.

Maybe that's neural link, maybe that's augmenting themselves with, you know, could be like augmented reality glasses or, you know, heads up displays or, you know, I see more and more people whose watches are tied to their phones.

1:59:19

Like they just cannot get out of the technology.

They're becoming like cyborgs.

I just believe that we need to be minimizing that, not maximizing that.

And that's just going to be another big theme here.

So I've been looking at this issue for probably shockingly, it's been 3233 years.

1:59:39

I've been doing it professionally now for 20 years.

I can't even believe it.

But as my beard gets grayer and grayer, it's the reality is like setting in, you know, and I'm watching and I've watched over those 20 years more and more loss of our humanity, more and more human domestication.

1:59:56

And then this, this constant increase in the technology that we're using, creating more and more problems.

And we just can't seem to get out of this feedback loop.

So again, this show is to encourage you as an individual to break that pattern and get out of this sort of exponential acceleration.

2:00:18

Into the encroachment.

Of technology on all our human, you know, core human faculties.

So yeah, that's what this show is going to be about.

I really appreciate you.

If you've gone through this whole thing with me and you've kind of listened to this whole rant.

Like I said, you know, people have accused me of saying the sky is falling.

2:00:36

I don't think that's what's happening.

But I do think that our species is in a critical moment.

And I think that if we continue on this path, there won't be much left of us.

Again.

I don't believe I can right this ship personally, or that any group or organization or government or religion is going to right this ship either.

2:00:59

I can.

I don't just don't think that's how this plays out, but I'm not also, I'm not pessimistic.

I'm filled with a deep, deep hope and actually quite a lot of peace as well.

Internally, like the pieces within, but externally I see a lot of chaos.

2:01:16

And so my hope is that I can share some of that peace with other folks, but also impart tools that can help people to be healthier and more balanced in themselves as well.

So, so this is about helping people at the personal level and not at the macro level.

2:01:35

And that's why, you know, my first show was called Rewild Yourself, because I think that that's one of the areas people are hyper domesticated.

My second show is Wild Fed because it's like, hey, we need to feed ourselves with wildness again.

That's why my product line is called Sir Thrival, because it's like, hey, it's a survival situation.

2:01:54

But I think that we can survive, go beyond just surviving, and we can thrive even in a survival situation.

I don't want to just get by.

I want to thrive no matter how dystopian it actually becomes.

And so that's going to be all of that's going to be integrated under this umbrella of the Daniel Vitalis show.

2:02:12

And it's really about aligning yourself with nature.

And more and more I'm going to it's about aligning yourself with your creator and the plan that this creator actually has for us.

Because I think that forces aligned against that creator have seized the reins of the world that we live in.

2:02:28

And we don't need to let that happen.

OK, so.

I have a couple requests.

Again, I said it at the beginning, if you are interested in the show and seeing the show become a success, you can help me by just subscribing.

2:02:44

It really, really does help.

That's not just something I know.

You hear that from every content creator.

We all say it for a reason, and that's because we just can't get these shows ahead.

If that doesn't happen, your comments really mean something.

You're rating the show.

If you give it a four or five star rating, that really, really helps.

2:03:01

So, but the other thing I want to ask you for are your guest recommendations.

As you've heard me talking, if you've been thinking, oh man, I would love to hear Daniel have a conversation with this guest or with that guest or I keep seeing this person.

I think you'd have a great conversation.

Send those over to us.

Write me at info@danielvitalis.com.

2:03:19

Write me on my Instagram account as a comment or Adm.

Leave it as a comment on this show or on any of the shows.

But let me know who you want to hear from because I want to get as many perspectives on this topic, on these topics as I can and keep filling in that mosaic that is our mind map that I was talking about before.

2:03:40

So again, whatever you can do to help support this show, just sharing it with somebody you know who might like it.

It's really appreciated.

You're really appreciated.

Thank you again for your time because I know how much contents out there, I know that you could spend every day listening to 10 different podcasts and never make a dent in what's coming out just every single day.

2:03:59

So if you're taking any time to listen to this show, that means a lot to me.

You're very, very appreciated and will drop a new episode next Tuesday, so please tune in again.

Transcript: Sunlight and Mitochondrial Health — Andreas David Christou #007

Daniel Vitalis (00:28.668)

My guest today is Andreas Christou, who lives in Cyprus and is the host of the Fitness Wisdom podcast. I just recently got to be a guest on your show. Andreas, thank you so much for coming on to my show today.

Andreas David Christou (00:43.18)

Thank you so much for having me, Daniel. It was an absolute honor and pleasure to have you on the Fitness Wisdom Podcast. We had a great conversation. I'm really looking forward to educating and empowering your audience today on all things mobility and fitness.

Daniel Vitalis (00:56.468)

That's fantastic, man. I wanna start off by just, could you say a few words about where you live? It's such a unique spot when I look at it geographically on a map. And I'm also wondering, not to be crude here, but do you see fireworks from Gaza from there? mean, you're so close to the Levant.

Andreas David Christou (01:12.511)

That's very true. Well, it's a beautiful location here where I live. know, it's the half of Cyprus. The northern part of Cyprus is taken by Turkey and it's like the Cypriot side on the other side. I live on the southern side of Cyprus where they speak Greek. They speak Turkish and Greek on the other side. But no, from where we are, I don't see any kind of, you know, explosions or anything like this. Thankfully, we did have two attacks at the beginning when the war kind of started, you know, from Iran. They sent some

drones to a military base and a UK military base here in Cyprus. I feel like it was strategic towards the UK military base for some reason. Well, I don't know why, but you probably know the details because you're a bit more down these rabbit holes with the politics and the war and stuff like that. But yeah, I don't think...

Cyprus is so involved with this and thankfully, you know, since those two drones, it's not been such a big deal. But otherwise, it's a beautiful place to live. I feel like there's a lot of programming and fear being induced on the masses to not come to Cyprus for some reason. I feel like it's a form of human trafficking in a way that, you know, manipulating where people are living on the planet. you know, determining whether they go on holiday. For example, you'll see articles online, for example, that say

UK versus Cyprus, where should you go on holiday? I'm like, well, obviously, obviously Cyprus, right? But there is a reason why they want people from the UK to migrate, I feel like, back to the UK. I know that this is kind of like not part of our discussion at all, but I just feel like it's because they want the wealthy who have left the UK and they want to avoid paying all of the taxes and all the stuff. They want them to go back into the country. That's just my speculation.

Daniel Vitalis (03:04.798)

Cause I mean, otherwise I'm assuming, maybe this has to do with like my Sicilian blood, but it just kind of looks like you're in like a perfect environment. You know, the Mediterranean there surrounded by the sea, you know, for living the lifestyle that we're talking about, it seems, you know, I love where I live in Maine. It's hard for six months, man. It's a struggle to get through the winter. You have to decide not to complain about it. You have to decide that you're gonna embrace it.

Andreas David Christou (03:31.953)

Yes. Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (03:33.246)

But it's challenging and then I see someone like you just like year round, just loving up that beautiful sun outside for all your workouts. It looks lovely, man.

Andreas David Christou (03:42.524)

I try to get outside as much as I can. There is some times of the year, like maybe one or two months or maybe maximum three months where, you know, you are going to be spend more time indoors. But I still aim to get outside every single day because being outdoors is a biological necessity. That's where we have evolved as human beings over thousands of years. And so it's a very modern thing for us, you know, to live in these boxes where the air doesn't change. We don't get the natural light. Our circadian rhythms are totally thrown off, bombarded by artificial blue light. But yeah, like

I'm the same with you. I obviously go with the flow and I embrace seasonality and I really respect and appreciate seasonality. A couple of years ago, actually, I actually moved to the equator. I sold everything here with my partner, Tina. We moved to the equator around Costa Rica area and we decided to see how it is to live there, you know, and basically we kind of missed Cyprus. So we kind of came back. There were some things that made life a little bit more challenging to live there.

And so it makes you really appreciate also the seasonal aspect because I was trying to avoid the winter time. That's why I actually left Cyprus during the winter. I went to Costa Rica and then I came back, but I wasn't actually planning on coming back because it was just a one way ticket. So then we just bought a ticket, you know, to come back. But yeah, I just love it. I love the I love the winter. I love the summer. And every single season gives you something very unique.

For your biology, for example, in the wintertime, you're designed to get the cold because you have the absence of light and you're not able to make as much vitamin D. And we know that now the science is showing about the science of biophotons, which is the light, which is what the mitochondria produce when you go through cellular respiration, know, through metabolism. The more you use your mitochondria, the more you work them, basically, the more biophotons they produce. And these biophotons interact with the cholesterol

which is near the mitochondria and it helps you produce pre-vitamin D and that basically gets converted to vitamin D so it's insane.

Daniel Vitalis (05:42.569)

Let's back that up. I want to pick that apart. And I want to start at this idea of the circadian rhythm and the equator. When I was younger, I used to think I want to, you know, dip down. That's where I want to be down by the equator, you know, where there's no winter. And I guess I hadn't really realized early on how you I would be giving up those long days of summer. And you get down there and you're like, it's it's sunrise at 6am. It's sunset at 6pm. Every day, every day, every day, no end to it. Same day. And it's like,

For me, having, you know, we have winter days that are eight hours long and we have summer days that are 16 hours long. I've gotten really used to that rhythmic change and come to really appreciate it. And it sort of feels like Groundhog Day to just keep repeating the same day over and over again. Something that I would like to repopularize, I hope I have time to really put some energy into this at some point, but is the sundial. I just think that the sundial is not an antiquated.

Andreas David Christou (06:23.0)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (06:41.436)

way of telling time, it's actually the correct biologically correct way of telling time. And on a sundial, it's six to six, whether the day is 16 hours long, or it's eight hours long. So in the wintertime, sun rises at six sets at six, but the hours are shorter. And then in the summer, it's the same six to six, but the hours are longer. And time is relative to town. Like if I go to the next town, they're going to have a slightly different time.

Andreas David Christou (06:42.636)

Hmm.

Mmm.

Andreas David Christou (07:02.947)

Mmmmm

Daniel Vitalis (07:10.718)

but we've standardized it all, you know? But anyway, I was curious how that felt for you too, when you were down there, because it's not just the seasons, but it's like, for me, 6 p.m. feels like an early end of the day. Or did you feel that at all? Like what's the summer days like in Cyprus?

Andreas David Christou (07:12.621)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (07:24.353)

The summer days are beautiful here. Like now the sun rises around 545 or so. Maybe if you say daybreak, it's probably 530, which I like to wake up more towards daybreak just because you catch that pre-sunrise and you see the beautiful color cascade that occurs, you know, in the sky. And that is like the most beautiful thing that you can see first thing in the morning because it primes your mitochondria, right? But it also sets around the latest 830 in the peak summer. But right now it's setting around 7

45 but yeah, the days have already gotten significantly longer since the the clocks have changed

Daniel Vitalis (08:01.365)

Okay, great. now you're you've got a significant focus, you've already said it multiple times on circadian rhythm, and the relationship of sunlight and mitochondria. That's really interesting to me, I want to start to pick that apart a little bit. I was just I just had a guest on the other day, we were talking about mitochondria and how fascinating they are, because they have their own genetic code that comes only through the maternal line. I mean, that's just so fascinating. And, you know, they're

he was talking about them, think usually, I think of them as being the metabolic furnace of the cell in a sense, he was talking about him kind of like a factory. So maybe you could kind of take us through what's your view of mitochondria? How do you think about mitochondria? And how in the framework of how we're going to be talking about them today, you know, what do mitochondria do for us in our cell? And how do we kind of crank them up as you were talking about before?

Andreas David Christou (08:35.776)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (08:42.826)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (08:54.304)

yeah, that was a fantastic question. And I love talking about the mitochondria so much because they are the powerhouse of the cell. That's what they teach us in school, right? They produce that cellular energy, but it doesn't stop there because actually the bigger part of the story is rather when you are going through the electron transport chain, which is within the mitochondria where the energy is produced, where the electrons are flowing, you actually have these five checkpoints, these enzymatic steps. on the enzyme four, number four,

cytochrome C oxidase is the point where you actually produce mitochondrial water. And this water is the most pristine water you will ever find. And it's so important that the body actually produces this water because it actually hydrates the cell from the inside. Most people think that the water that we drink automatically translates to cellular hydration, but that's not the case. It may contribute to your blood volume, so blood hydration and lymphatic system hydration. And that may help

with the extracellular matrix, you know, where the cells are living in basically, where are floating in pretty much. But then that might not necessarily translate into the water actually getting into the cell. And so the cellular hydration is reliant on the mitochondria. And if the mitochondria are dysfunctional due to artificial blue light and non-native electromagnetic fields, for example,

then you won't produce the cellular water. Cells start to become dehydrated, they start to have less energy, and we know that we need energy for everything, for detox, repair, regeneration, and healing. So if you actually don't have energy, you are not able to do those things. They don't happen automatically. Your body needs energy to do all those processes. And the definition of life and death is the difference between your mitochondria working and not working.

It's like literally that simple. As soon as your lights go out, literally as soon as your mitochondria stop producing this water, they stop producing the ATP, which is basically the cellular currency that the body uses for energy. And also the water is acting like a battery. So let me break this down a little bit. A lot of people think that the water inside the body is like the water that we drink, but it's not the case. The water inside of our body is more gel like.

Andreas David Christou (11:11.597)

And it's found in this what we call exclusion zone, which is the fourth phase of water. This is the work of Professor Gerald Pollack. He basically did some great research on when you shine specific wavelengths of light, specifically red and infrared light, like from the sun, for example, you're able to change the form of water from what they call bulk water, which is what you find in a glass, B-U-L-K.

to exclusion zone water or as he calls it easy water and then this water has a negative charge and it has a negative charge because it draws electrons to it and then this water acts like a battery which is like a reservoir where it can be used anywhere where it's required in the body. Now remember that star electrons exactly.

Daniel Vitalis (11:55.602)

store electrons, it's that water starts storing electrons. So very much like when you say a battery, you actually mean that in a pretty literal sense. I mean, it has it has a store it's storing electrons for future uses energy.

Andreas David Christou (12:08.986)

Correct, yes. And it's so fascinating because the majority of our body, as you know, is primarily made up of water around 70 % when we are born or maybe 90 % when we are born, but it starts to decline every single decade, the hydration level. This is why we start to, in my opinion, encounter different dysfunctions in the system because hydration of all semiconductors in the body, all things that require communication at the speed of light,

require water in order to facilitate this process. so for example, one of the... Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (12:42.741)

So would you say, sorry to interrupt you, but I just want to make sure people are getting all this. I want to pick this apart. Are you suggesting that people are dehydrating decade by decade because not because of a lack of bulk water going in, but because of a lack of easy water being produced from within?

Andreas David Christou (13:02.553)

Correct. Exactly. Because you can also convert the water that you drink into easy water as well. The best form of easy water you can consume is obviously from fruits. That is actually found in an exclusion zone state. That is why when you cut a fruit open, it doesn't gush out with water, right? It's actually found in this more gel-like structure like steak. The perfect example is aloe vera. You look at aloe vera, that's like the perfect exclusion zone, right?

And so, every tissue in your body incredibly has this exclusion zone water. For example, the inner arterial wall is layered with this exclusion zone water and that is what allows the red blood cells to funnel through the arteries and the veins and the capillaries without the need of a pump because the heart is actually not pump. It's meant for vortexing the blood and structuring the blood and energizing the blood. Of course,

Daniel Vitalis (13:45.482)

Mm-hmm.

Andreas David Christou (13:56.566)

That's one of its roles, as well as as pumping, but the action is mainly to structure.

Daniel Vitalis (13:59.99)

You're saying so many things. Hold on. Roll that back a bit just because I think people need to really hear that. You know, I often will say the heart's the conductor of the orchestra, but it certainly doesn't have the power output to push through what's like millions of miles of vessels that you have in your body, right? it would be, mean, you can try, imagine trying to generate enough force with a muscle to squeeze all the blood through. mean, that's a very outdated view, but

Andreas David Christou (14:08.898)

Yes. Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (14:16.598)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (14:27.497)

That's still the mechanical view that most people have. But you're saying that, and then I guess I had the impression that it was the contractions of the smooth muscle walls of the arteries that were moving that blood through. But you're saying, no, it's more of a energetic effect caused by the easy water and probably the electrical charge in the exterior of those red blood cells.

Andreas David Christou (14:42.529)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (14:51.71)

It's sort of like a magnet, you know, when you put like magnets together which repel each other and you put something in the middle and it shoots through because it's, you know, it doesn't stick to a magnet. It's exactly the same thing with the red blood cells. The same phenomenon is occurring in trees. I'm pretty sure that you're well aware of this. How on earth does water travel up to the top of a tree? It's like almost impossible, right? But it's getting there due to the fact that

Of course, know, water is always seeking, you know, where it's dry, right? So it's gonna suck it up. But at the same time, you have the charge, which is actually the electromagnetic force. The trees are grounded, which is what allowing the water to propel itself all the way to the top of the tree, to the leaves. The same thing is happening inside of the body. Because we are electromagnetic beings.

Daniel Vitalis (15:41.175)

Okay, because they'll often try to tell you it's, they'll tell you it's capillary action that it's bringing it up, which is, you know, it seems a little far fetched. I'm, I can't help but wonder how much of the earth's water was produced virgin in the bodies of living creatures. You know, like you you look out at this vast oceans, it's like how much of that water was produced through this cellular function that you're talking about. You know, I think we think of it as

The earth being like, this beautiful place where we're so lucky to have this kind of oasis of water, but it's like, are we making a lot of that water? It can't be a statistically insignificant amount with this many life forms. I don't know if that's something you've ever considered or have any thoughts on.

Andreas David Christou (16:16.341)

Mm-hmm.

Andreas David Christou (16:26.877)

I've never thought about that before, but that's a wild thought. are you basically saying that when animals die and decompose, they turn into this water or they contribute to the amount of water on the planet?

Daniel Vitalis (16:29.972)

Okay.

Daniel Vitalis (16:41.408)

Well, I'm just saying if I'm producing water inside my body, H2O that didn't exist before, so essentially oxidizing hydrogen gas, I assume is what's happening, or hydrogen ions. So you're producing new water molecules. So over the course of your life, know, however many, I don't know if that's a teaspoon of water or that's like gallons of water that you'll manufacture that didn't exist on earth before. Because you you think about like a spring where you've got

Andreas David Christou (17:05.269)

Mm-mm.

Daniel Vitalis (17:08.502)

maybe you've got ancient water that's been trapped under they'll call it fossil water or sometimes you'll see like a piece of quartz crystal and it's got a little bubble with water in there and you're like, man, that water has been in there. Who knows how long but it's been there a long time. It's trapped in there. So you think of sort of like this water that's trapped on the earth. They say some's raining down from space maybe two but like, yeah, obviously we're making water which means we're adding to that. I don't know. That's fascinating. okay, so back to it. We're talking about the

Andreas David Christou (17:29.311)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (17:36.871)

way that waters moved through the vessels of trees. So the phylum of trees and then through our arteries and I assume our veins as well, which is fascinating. And we were talking about structured water. Take us back to the mitochondria. These apparently exotic organisms that are now symbionts with animals, right? They've moved into our cells. Their DNA only comes through the maternal line. You can trace

Andreas David Christou (17:52.893)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (18:06.26)

mitochondrial DNA back to they call her mitochondrial Eve, the first woman. mean, this is like weird, far out stuff, right? But the mitochondria, what, how do we positively impact the mitochondria in our body? And are they fixed? Like, does a cell have a fixed number of mitochondria? Can you increase the amount that you have?

Andreas David Christou (18:13.674)

Hahaha.

Andreas David Christou (18:25.703)

Yes. Yes, great questions. I would like to add one more thing before we move into that about the mitochondria that they are these, they are a quantum sensor. So they sense everything in your environment and they know how to respond based on the environment that you put your body in. And so what do I mean by that? They're sensitive to the light, they're sensitive to the temperature, they're sensitive to the electromagnetic field of the Earth. Our body is literally wired to be connected to our environment.

and not disconnected. And now because we are disconnected, our mitochondria are suffering. So I already mentioned multiple things that what is actually causing mitochondrial dysfunction, right? Artificial blue light, phones, electromagnetic fields. You can talk about lymphatic system stagnation, toxins, all these different things that we are encountering in our modern life is obviously damaging and impacting our mitochondria, including a processed diet and not sleeping and all this kind of stuff. But when you were to talk about

mitochondrial optimization and how that actually helps us produce more cellular energy, know, combat things like diabetes, insulin resistance, have better metabolic health, better metabolic flexibility. That all starts on a mitochondrial level because if that energy factory is not working properly, the food that you're taking in is going to have nowhere to be metabolized. So it's literally going to be floating around in your bloodstream.

sitting there and causing havoc. For example, high blood sugar, like chronically elevated blood glucose is going to create havoc and inflammation in the system. Glucose spikes are not inherently harmful, but chronically elevated glucose is actually harmful because it actually causes damage to the arterial walls. It breaks down this exclusion zone water. And then that's where we start to build the atheromatic plaque, which is the hardening of the arteries and layering down

Daniel Vitalis (20:20.214)

you

Andreas David Christou (20:22.265)

the cholesterol to save the day cholesterol is actually the fireman it's not actually the cause of you know most of our issues today which we think about you know cardiovascular disease did you want to jump in there.

Daniel Vitalis (20:35.616)

I do, I'm sorry to keep doing that to you, but you're dropping so many pearls here as you go. And I just want to make sure they all get explored. the first of all, tell me if this analogy feels fair to what you just said. It's like every mitochondria is like maybe like a little wood stove and the blood sugar that we have is like sticks floating through the blood. And the goal would be to be pulling those sticks out and constantly putting them into the fireplace and burning them up to produce energy.

Andreas David Christou (20:37.563)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (21:03.894)

But if we start shutting down all of those dampers on all of those fireplaces, now they're just smoldering, all the sticks are building up. But worse, sounds like you're saying the sticks, in my analogy, that's the blood sugar, that stuff's actually eroding away that easy water. So now we don't have that superconductor. Earlier when you were talking about it, it made me think about those, kind of like the Japanese bullet trains, right? I believe that works on a similar kind of a concept.

Andreas David Christou (21:20.506)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (21:33.76)

it's the that sort of electromagnetism that's allowing the train to both float and propel, right? So something like that, like if we start to strip away that easy water, now you need mechanical forces to push those blood cells through rather than those electrical forces. And that's where you start to get damage to the walls of the artery that stuff that needs to now start building up on to patch and fix and repair. Am I getting that sort of sort of close?

Andreas David Christou (21:38.554)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (22:03.376)

There is also immune system response due to chronically elevated blood glucose. The blood is very tightly regulated, right? What's allowed in the blood or not. So things that manifest in the blood are always like the end stage. So when we take blood tests, it's kind of like, hmm, are you actually looking at something accurate here? Are you looking at something that's been going on for a very long time? It's not the best predictor of things. Of course, it can give you a predictor of long-term health, like what you've been doing, for example, because again, as I said, it's a marker of

you know, it's very tightly regulated. Things are showing that presenting themselves slowly over time. And if things are looking not so optimal on lab tests, for example, in your blood, you know that some serious stuff is going on in your body that's been going on for a really long time. But basically, again, your immune system is going to be triggered. You know, if you've got floating proteins that you shouldn't be in your blood, you know, too many lipids, too, too many car, you know, sugars, glucose.

then you're gonna create an inflammatory response, an immune cascade. that's obviously, the immune system is always there to protect you. But when it starts to perceive that what you're eating is actually a threat to you, that's when we start to encounter problems. Because that stuff is not meant to be there for over a certain period of time. It's supposed to travel through your blood to get to where they need to go to provide energy to that specific tissues like your brain, your eyes, your muscles, your liver.

But then it's supposed to get out of the blood. It's like a transportation system. The blood is meant to deliver the oxygen, for example, around the body, right? And without oxygen, we know that we basically die. And so it's a very important transportation system, but it's not supposed to be overwhelmed. This is the idea of keeping it as clean as possible. And how do we do that is by actually making sure that our detoxification system is working correct, which is our lymphatic system, our primary detox system.

And anything from the blood, the blood plasma, which is the yellow stuff, which basically in the end becomes your urine, you pee it out. It's old plasma, your urine, right? So basically it goes into the lymphatic system, it goes through the whole cycle, through your kidneys and your kidneys filter the plasma and the waste plasma gets excreted out your body and now you have clean plasma. So your kidneys are filtering basically your plasma, which is part of your blood and it's creating a big part.

Andreas David Christou (24:25.544)

big volume of your blood and so we try need to keep the blood as clean as possible so we don't create those immune cascades and inflammatory cascades to actually create damage in the arteries and veins.

Daniel Vitalis (24:39.807)

My understanding, and again, I'll yield to you here on this, my understanding is that for our detoxification pathways to be functioning optimally, our body needs to understand that it's in a safe environment where it can be relaxed enough to do that, right? So if I'm in a sympathetic nervous system state, if I'm stressed out, if I'm feeling fear, anger, frustration, impatience, and my body's

producing, you know, sympathetic nervous system hormones like adrenaline. I'm probably in other words, somebody might think I'm going to go running today to detoxify look at all that sweat that I'm purging out that's got to be detoxifying me and it's like, not the same as the sweat that's coming in the sauna when I'm relaxed and my, my parasympathetic nervous systems active, right? So my first thought is just how many people in our culture are living unaware in a chronic state.

of sympathetic nervous system activation and therefore it must be very difficult for them to ever get into a state where they can detoxify their blood.

Andreas David Christou (25:47.988)

Yeah, this is a really fantastic segue because this also ties into the mobility aspect, which we'll be hopefully talking about later on because mobility, nervous system, state, lymphatic system, blood flow, tissue tension, these are all connected, right? So most people think that, know, OK, I'll talk about mobility later. I was going to go there. But basically, yeah, when your body is relaxed, your body is more tense. You increase.

Sorry, when your body is in a fight and flight state, your body is more tense. And so that means that your tissues are more tight. And think of a muscle or a tissue, any tissue in your body, like a sponge. When a sponge is kind of like soft, it's kind of like allows water to flow through it, right? But if you squeeze a sponge, well, there's no fluid in it. And so that's basically a great analogy for your tissues in your body. Now you have going to have decreased blood flow, decreased lymphatic system flow. And because your lymphatic system

does not have its own pump like the heart has, I the cardiovascular system has, then it's your responsibility to move the lymphatic system and to assist the lymphatic system, you have to be relaxed. So there are obviously multiple ways to do this. I'm sure you're aware of Dr. Perry Nicholson, also known as Stop Chasing Pain, also known as the Lymph Doc. Do you know him?

Daniel Vitalis (27:05.527)

I don't know.

Andreas David Christou (27:06.539)

he's fantastic. Yeah, you need to check him out. Yeah, he's like the doctor if you want to. Perry Nicholson, Dr. Perry Nicholson, also known as stop chasing pain on all platforms.

Daniel Vitalis (27:10.872)

his name again?

Daniel Vitalis (27:15.435)

Harry.

Daniel Vitalis (27:20.791)

Okay, thank you.

Andreas David Christou (27:21.609)

Yeah, he's fantastic. Like he is all things lymphatic system. He went through his own personal struggles and that's how he came to the conclusion that that was like one of the systems that he wasn't paying attention to. And so basically, yes, I do always Dr. Perry's lymph resets. And I'm sure you've seen this routine online where you massage above the collarbones, which is step one, because this is where the lymphatic system drains. And you have to start from the collarbones first.

and not anywhere else from your feet or your arms because if this is congested here, then you're just going to create backup and it's all just going to flow back. And all you're doing really is just swishing your lymphatic system around without actually cleaning your lymphatic system, without draining it. So you have to, yes. I was going to say.

Daniel Vitalis (28:06.38)

Right. Let's make sure. good. I just want to make sure that our listeners know what we're talking about. Let's talk about the lymphatic system just briefly, because I think this is one of those things people hear it and they it almost feels like what you're supposed to know what it is. Sometimes people want to ask. And so I want to make sure we're clear. So we were talking before about your circulatory system, you know, your heart, veins and arteries. So that's like one system. But obviously, there's

Andreas David Christou (28:14.622)

Yes. Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (28:35.308)

that blood has the plasma you were talking about. And that stuff sort of roughly, you could kind of say, like leaks out around the tissues or you could, think of it more like, I think of it like a sewage system. It's like you have your water lines of clean water in your house, your cold water, hot water, but then you have the gray water that's like in your leach field or your septic tank or whatever. That stuff is the lymphatic fluid. And if somebody, if you think of somebody with swollen lower legs, like that's,

Andreas David Christou (28:43.292)

diffusers.

Andreas David Christou (28:48.744)

Correct.

Daniel Vitalis (29:02.708)

edema that that's all basically lymph. But like you were saying, the lymph does not have a central orchestrator like the heart. So muscular action and movement propel it. And my understanding of lymph vessels are lots of chains of sort of one way valves so that as fluid is moved up, let's say from your leg, if I jump up and down fluids moving up and down, but it can't go back down. So it keeps moving up and up. And I believe you have

channels into your lymphatic system where they drain, sorry, your lymphatic system drains into your venous system at the groin and at the collarbones, is that right? And the last thing I'll say is most people have felt lymph nodes before where they get swollen. Those are junction points in the lymphatic system. You've got obviously lots of them in your armpits and your groin. You know, something that's always interesting to me, Andreas, and I'll turn it back to you is how...

Andreas David Christou (29:42.406)

Correct.

Andreas David Christou (29:49.094)

Cheers.

Daniel Vitalis (29:57.399)

the parts of the body that we often cut out of people are all lymphatic tissue, right? So it's, we remove breast tissue, adenoids, tonsils, lymph nodes themselves, the appendix, all of that is lymphatic tissue. And so it's really interesting that one of the most common ectomies that we do, it's like, there's a problem with the lymphatic system, we just cut it out instead of figuring out how to drain it and clear it, right?

Andreas David Christou (30:25.583)

Yes, very dangerous. Very. No, no, no, it's very dangerous. Like when I, in my opinion, when you do that, because your lymphatic system is obviously where the majority of your immune system lives. And you, when you look at, for example, a lymphatic system anatomy, and you look at a chart of all the vessels represented in green, typically, you know, normally you have the representation of the cardiovascular system of red and blue.

Daniel Vitalis (30:25.878)

So anyway, back to what you were saying.

Andreas David Christou (30:50.594)

then you've got the representation of the lymphatic system in green representing kind of like sewage or like, you know, more like waste. But the majority of your immune system actually lives within your lymphatic system. And if you actually are eliminating a lot of those lymph nodes, you're actually removing a lot of checkpoints that are built in your body by design in order to scan your lymph.

And when your body is able to scan that lymphatic system and understand what's actually in there, it can produce an immune reaction against that specific thing to kill it before it goes too far. But if you don't have those checkpoints, which is your lymph nodes, and you remove them, then you are now reducing basically your immune system function. And so it's kind of like nepharius, you know, when they do this, but because they don't teach people how to take care of the lymphatic system, and there is so many ways to take care of it. But number one,

is stop intoxicating in the first place because it's like you're one of the major roles of your lymphatic system is detoxifying your body getting rid of damaged cells, metabolic waste for example, cells like cells produce energy and with energy comes waste as well.

And so one of the roles of the lymphatic system is to clean the waste from around the cells. The cells cannot accept nutrients and oxygen well if they are living in a soup, which is not conducive for health. So this is like, again, like the lymphatic system role for that. So again, it's your primary detox and cleaning system. Stop intoxicating your lymphatic system, but then learn how to move it.

So the more you move it, the more it's able to scan your body of what's actually going on there and you can keep your immune system in check. So you're able to fight off anything which could potentially bring you down or keep your terrain in order. I don't believe so much in the germ theory. I kind of believe that the body is living in this. We're kind of like half bacteria and half human cells or we're more bacteria than human cells. So we're kind of like...

Andreas David Christou (32:57.182)

in this that we have an entire universe inside our body, pretty much as above so below, right? Like everything outside of you is inside of you. And so when you look outside, you see a representation of what's actually on the inside. We're just basically a fractal of nature.

Daniel Vitalis (33:14.348)

Well, okay, again, a lot there. Thank you. I have background, so form part of my life, a couple of jobs that I've done. One is I worked with severe special needs foster children. And I also worked as a body worker in a clinical setting. Both of those instances, I worked with people who either had essentially no mobility. So I worked with kids who were,

bedridden all day long on feeding tubes. And I also worked with people who had spinal cord injuries and had been, you know, essentially relegated to a wheelchair. And what I noticed with people who don't have the ability to move around is how much lymph they end up swimming in. And what I noticed was, in particular, I'm thinking of someone who was a very significant, I mean, this was an athlete.

Top Gun pilot, fighter jet pilot, and then a commercial pilot who had a skiing accident and ended up living the rest of his life in a chair as a quadriplegic. And I watched over time how many growths started to appear on his skin, how much edema he developed, a lot of like an odor that he developed. And I'm talking like skin tags and moles and growths just everywhere. And it appeared to me

that that was because his lymph was not being cleared regularly, because there was nothing to move that lymph except the body work that I was doing. I that would be a big goal of mine was just try to move some fluids up from his legs to his groins. And like you said, from his arms and torso to his collarbones. I just don't think people appreciate enough this component when we talk about obesity and from lack of movement.

Andreas David Christou (34:52.863)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (35:07.01)

that you've got extremely swampy stagnant fluids that need to be filtered out. people just think like it's just about your cardiovascular health. And it's like, man, that's a, you let your cells swim in that toxic soup too long, you kind of know where that's headed.

Andreas David Christou (35:11.059)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (35:23.921)

Exactly, and it is part of your cardiovascular system. Like people think lymphatic system and cardiovascular system are separate. It's pretty much one system. You require it in order for your cardiovascular system to function properly. But you mentioned something very important there about obesity and that brought me my train of thought back about the lymphatic system and how the connection between lymphatic health and fat gain, for example.

So a lot of people may be doing all the diets in the world, they may be over-exercising, they may be like trying to do all the things, right? But if they're living in a very toxic environment or a very non-native EMF-filled world, a very stressful job, or they are sitting a lot of the time outside of training, then they are gonna have congested lymphatics. And congested lymphatics means that the fluids are not moving.

So what happens to a lake or a river that stops moving? It starts turning green, right? That's basically what happens to your lymphatic system inside of your body. It turns like a swamp. And then in order for your body to protect you, because your lymphatic system, as I mentioned, is your primary detox system of your body, if there's a lot of toxins that it's trying to remove and it cannot because the fluids are not moving,

then the only option is now is to store it in body fat because that is an easy way to put it somewhere where it's not going to damage your brain or your vital organs until it sees that your lymphatic system is flowing again and it's more clean so you can start losing the body fat again to start dumping the toxins back into the lymphatic system to get detoxified. A lot of people when they start losing a lot of weight and this is through my experience as a coach through over many years,

helping a lot of people lose like 40 kilos, 50 kilos, that's like over 100 pounds, they start to experience a lot of sickness, dizziness, vomiting, diarrhea, these kind of symptoms of detox because their body cannot handle the amount of toxins which are being dumped into their lymphatic system so fast from the fat loss. So rapid fat loss can actually be quite dangerous on the system, especially if your fat is holding on to

Andreas David Christou (37:35.854)

a lot of toxins or even mold from your environment.

Daniel Vitalis (37:41.55)

because most of the things that are taught, many, many of the things that are toxic to us are fat soluble, right? And so they dissolve in oil. And so your body, you've got a big drop of oil in every fat cell, your body just like you said, deposits it there for safekeeping or because the channels aren't open enough to remove it. And then, yeah, that's always scary to me. Somebody starts, and you know, now with the advent of weight loss drugs, now people who are able to lose that weight very rapidly,

Andreas David Christou (37:46.534)

Yes, correct.

Daniel Vitalis (38:11.307)

And that means, yeah, you're talking heavy metals, you're talking glyphosate and other, you know, herbicides, all these environmental toxins are suddenly free floating in the blood. It's all that's a lot you think that it would be wisdom to pair rapid weight loss with detoxification program that would account for some of that.

Andreas David Christou (38:32.315)

And even if you do pair it like it's rapid fat loss is still a problem like nature doesn't favor Rapid fat loss because you actually like your body never wants to lose body fat This is something that I tell every single client of mine at the beginning do not have your expectation or Your target or your motivation on fat loss fat loss It should be a byproduct of a healthy lifestyle And so if you live your life in a healthy manner your weight will drop

Daniel Vitalis (38:44.511)

Yeah

Andreas David Christou (39:00.996)

Gradually and safely, but if you aim to do it too rapidly, it can still be problematic It can still overwhelm your lymphatic system Of course, it's better to lose the weight than to not lose the weight because I feel like you just improve your overall health in general your metabolic health your overall mortality risk when you lose body fat, but at the end of the day again You need to be like cautious in your approach. I think most people are having too hard time losing body fat. They're not having a

an easy time losing a lot of body fat. But as you said, with the introduction of these GLP-1s, then you see a lot of people are losing their eyesight. Maybe they're encountering some stomach paralysis or you see that they're aging rapidly. And that is because there are multiple different things that are occurring there. think the way that because your stomach produces its own GLP-1, right? Through healthy living.

But then when you take it exogenously, don't know why it causes you or why it can contribute to stomach paralysis But I can imagine that that's probably one of the reasons because now your body is like, okay I don't need to do this anymore Probably loses some of its functions. I don't know what that has to do with the the function Yeah, yeah exactly

Daniel Vitalis (40:10.275)

Yeah.

It's like your testicles shrinking when you take exogenous testosterone, right? And then your testicles shrink because they don't need to produce that anymore. Yeah, that's fascinating. I think that, I mean, I guess this is probably obvious to everybody, but we've gotten to this point now where, you if you look back to, had a, I knew a guy who had this collection of Playboy magazines from the 19, probably going back to the earliest days. And I remember seeing them and that the, for the articles, the,

The way people looked in magazines in the 70s versus how they look today, there was very little emphasis on muscularity, very little emphasis on leanness because people were much leaner than anyway. But back then, people would just be on a cover of a magazine with like whitehead pimples, which you just like, you don't see that anymore, right? Everything's been polished. Everything is, if you don't have abs, they're gonna put them on you. You know what I mean? Like they do all the things. And now we're at this stage where people are happy to accept

Andreas David Christou (41:05.316)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (41:12.863)

accept the facsimile of something rather than the real thing. And so what I just heard from you is like, looking fit is a byproduct of a lifestyle. People don't want the lifestyle, they want the byproduct, but not the lifestyle. And it turns out all the ways that you get that byproduct without doing the lifestyle are pretty bad for you in the end. And I feel sad because so many people are taking not only taking

Andreas David Christou (41:27.47)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (41:40.859)

all these cocktails of peptides, but I mean, they're buying them on the black market, which just experience tells me I've been alive almost 50 years now experience tells me nothing's free. And we'll find out down the road, all of this stuff's going to come out. And it's going to be sad because so many people were wanted to have abs so bad or whatever it was they wanted to look fit so bad, or they wanted to lose weight so rapidly that they

Andreas David Christou (42:07.415)

this.

Daniel Vitalis (42:10.852)

we're willing to take experimental black market drugs in an environment where like, I mean, it's like if you want to do recreational drugs today, you have to be so careful because things like fentanyl are in the drug. We don't even, we're not even looking at what's in these right now. That's terrifying to me and we don't know what effects they're gonna have. And we don't know what tissues are being activated by them outside of the target ones. And anyway, I'm not to get us too far off track, but I do think it's important to say that

Like you said, the weight loss should be a byproduct of the lifestyle. The goal should be feeling good, not looking good. Looking good should come from feeling good.

Andreas David Christou (42:42.177)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (42:46.431)

Exactly, because if you do everything in alignment with nature, like nature seems to optimize biology. It seems to optimize all living things. And when you live in alignment with the light and dark cycles, the seasonality, the change in the temperature, like for example, the temperature even throughout the day, in the morning it's cooler and it gets hotter in the middle of the day and then it gets cool towards the evening again. Your body's meant to experience all of those changes because all of these things entrain your circadian rhythm.

This is why the circadian mechanism is the foundation of health and that's where everybody should start if they want to actually look good and feel good because looking good starts with a healthy metabolism and metabolism is governed by your circadian rhythms because mitochondria are circadian in nature. They follow also a 24-hour cycle. They need the rest and the repair as well. They can't just work 24-7. Otherwise, you burn them out. This is why people who drink all the time coffee or they stimulate their body all the time

they literally are exhausting their mitochondria. They're producing too much reactive oxygen species, too much biophoton emission, and that is actually damaging to the system. Obviously, ROS, reactive oxygen species, is not inherently harmful. It's also acting as a messenger. So basically, it informs other mitochondria. And you asked me a question previously about how can we actually increase the amount of mitochondria in the body? And the answer is yes.

through mitochondrial biogenesis. And every time when you exercise your body, you actually produce new mitochondria. You are building muscle, you are requiring from your system that is making new tissues. So therefore you're gonna build more mitochondria as well. So you've got more of these energy factories in your body, raising your metabolic rate, putting you in a natural deficit without changing your food intake, and therefore leading to fat loss. Because fat loss always requires

deficit in some form, whether that is to restrict the amount of food you're eating or to expend more energy than you're taking in. And there are many ways to optimize metabolism and metabolic rate, but most people don't know this. They think that the only way to be in a deficit is by restricting as much as possible. But I would rather people not restrict much and actually optimize their environment to raise their total daily energy expenditure, which includes not only your

Andreas David Christou (45:12.139)

basic metabolic rate, means what you're burning when you're sitting down doing nothing, but your total daily expenditure involves all of your movement, your eating, your digestion of food, your thinking, your fidgeting, your tasks, your exercising, like all of these things. That's your total daily expenditure. And the higher that is, the more obviously you're burning. And then if you're not overeating or eating the same amount, you're going to maintain your weight. But if you eat less than that, you're going to lose weight. So it's literally that simple.

Daniel Vitalis (45:41.687)

It's so easy for people to underestimate the power of little things that you do throughout the day. So, or let me invert that. It's very easy for someone to work out for an hour a day real hard, and then spend the rest of the day sitting around and being a sedentary person. Conversely, it's easy to underestimate the or so in that case, I guess you're overestimating the value of the exercise, the exercise is valuable. But if you've got 23 sedentary hours aside from that,

Andreas David Christou (45:46.316)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (45:56.023)

Yes. Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (46:10.38)

It's hard to kind of overcome that. And conversely, you my wife is amazing about this. Every time she eats, she goes, we installed a track around our our land. So we have just like about a 10th of a mile track, you know, you'd have to run it 10 times for a mile. But it's a big, you know, oval track. And every time she gets done eating anything or snacking, she goes and walks that thing and she takes the dogs and they walk it. And I always say to people like the value of having dogs is that you you know, they take you for a walk every day.

But there's so many things besides just that one hour of exercise, you wanna be, like I like that you said fidgeting, know? Because when I see somebody who sits still chronically for a long time, I'm like, oh God, I just can't, you know? But all of that movement is so important, right? To contributing so that you don't have to just dietary restrict, but you can actually burn.

Andreas David Christou (46:39.796)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (47:03.24)

Yes. Yeah. And what else are you doing when you're fidgeting and moving your pumping your blood in your lymph? Again, like you talked about the that that patient or that that person that you're working with who was sitting down and they couldn't move or not sitting down rather they were, you know, they were immobilized. And so basically, the muscles literally act like a pump. And one of the major roles of the calves actually, is to pump your blood and your lymph back up to the heart.

because actually your heart is not strong enough to be able to push the blood so strongly all the way down and then magically bring it all the way back up. So your calves actually literally are your second heart. They actually pump your blood and your lymphatic system back up. so movement is absolutely critical. Something which I say all the time is like movement is a biological necessity. Exercise is nice. What does that mean? It means that exercise is the deliberate, hard, intentional

like movements or exercises taking you towards a specific goal, like whether that is like strength or agility, explosiveness, muscle mass, whatever. But then movement is what you do outside of that. So that's like walking, road flow, swimming, like yoga, cycling, like all of these things are supposed to be in addition to your exercise because they contribute to your total daily energy expenditure.

but they contribute to your overall health and well-being because they shift your nervous system more into a parasympathetic state because hard exercise shifts your body more into sympathetic dominance and that's okay for a short period of time. And that's actually one of the benefits of exercise because it shows your body the contrast between doing and not doing. And the not doing is signaling to your brain and nervous system that now we can shift into parasympathetic state.

But when people don't exercise at all, or they don't do any hard exercise, they are, and they are encountering a lot of stress, their body doesn't know what the difference is between, you know, pushing and not pushing. So they have this chronic moderate stress, and the moderate stress is what kills us. It literally kills us. Like if chronic stress is like one of the, you know, up there, one of the leading causes of death.

Daniel Vitalis (49:19.813)

Yeah, wow, this is such an important part of it. And I think it's very easy in this kind of a conversation to default to talking about sedentary people. But I want to talk about the other side of that too. You know, I go to a CrossFit gym, I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this here, because my community is gonna hear it. But my wife coaches at a CrossFit gym, I go two to three days a week, if I'm really on top of it, I mostly train I've got

a gym here at home and a lot of space to train and I like to train alone most of the time. So, but I like being part of a community as well. Now most of the people that go to that gym go five or six days a week and CrossFit for anybody who knows is you're running from the tiger. That's how I think of it. It's like, it's like a life or death. You know, the workout I did yesterday there, I mean, it's life or death is how it feels and you're on a clock and a timer and there's competition and stress.

Andreas David Christou (49:53.393)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (49:56.815)

Wow.

Andreas David Christou (50:00.13)

Yes. Yes.

Andreas David Christou (50:08.706)

is

Daniel Vitalis (50:12.079)

Now what I've noticed is that the people that do that every day, they're only training, their workouts are short usually, five to 20 minutes. A 30 minute workout would be really long in CrossFit. Now they're doing short workouts, they get some incredible benefits, but they also all are basically taped together after a while. Like as they get older, it's like knee sleeves, elbow sleeves, tape. And to me it just looks like your body needs to run from the tiger sometimes, but not every day because that...

Andreas David Christou (50:40.269)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (50:41.627)

induces so much stress, what it looks like to me, and then I'll see a lot of them start to get chronically overweight, like they can't get rid of their body fat, even though they're training really hard. And it's like, well, your cortisol levels are through the roof, you're inflamed, you're not getting rest, your sympathetic nervous system state. know, something I learned from, I don't know if you know the work of Andy Galpin, but he says, at the end of a hard workout, he recommends a blindfold for five minutes of meditative breathing to say, hey, the tiger's gone.

Andreas David Christou (51:07.511)

Hmm

Daniel Vitalis (51:09.925)

You're not running for your life anymore. But what I notice is people get done these really intense workouts. They run out to their car, they get in traffic, they stress the whole way home, they go to work the next day. And even though they're doing something that could be good for their body, it's almost as bad in some cases from an injury perspective as being sedentary. So it's like, there's gotta be balances here. And I love what you're saying too, because about movement being separate from exercise.

Andreas David Christou (51:16.376)

Jeff. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (51:37.479)

Cause like I walk my dogs every day. I don't think like I'm going for a walk, a workout, you know, but that extra mile a day is pumping lymph. My calves are obviously having to move. I'm on unstable surfaces. I'm getting all that exposure to the elements, but it's just part of my day. And I think if we're gonna schedule workouts, it's really important that they aren't all the kind that make your body feel like it's life or death. I think that that's a huge mistake. It's just something I've noticed that people, athletes, athletic people often

Andreas David Christou (52:01.495)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (52:06.842)

do that to their own detriment.

Andreas David Christou (52:08.661)

Well, if you're aiming for optimization and longevity, like feeling good for the long term, you should not be training that many times per week. OK, maybe you don't need it doesn't matter if you do train. as you mentioned, the training should not be so intense because again, you're breaking your body down more than it's rebuilding. And we know that the body rebuilds itself outside of the gym, not inside of the gym. And so actually, you you build your body in the kitchen.

Through the food you eat, the nutrition, the building blocks, the sleep, the light that you get, the movement is vital for recovery and regeneration. Because again, assisting that blood flow, that lymphatic system flow, doing sauna, doing rebounding, foam rolling, massage gunning, doing all these things are vital. I would say that they're even more important than the workout itself. the workout, it depends what the goal of the training is, right?

for every individual and everyone has a different desire and goal and ambition. But in my view, a workout should be something that gives you more than it takes away from you. And so if you leave the workout feeling absolutely trashed, you're going to need one or two days to fully recover from that. And what I mean is your nervous system state to feel normal and your energy levels to feel back to normal. But if you train at a point where you train around 80%, not 100 % every time, you're going to leave a little bit room, you know, in your

in your body and in your nervous system to be able to spring back and to feel good and energized. So it's giving you something more than it's taking away. So again, at the end of the day, people are digging a hole that they cannot refill. So this is what's happening when you're training more days a week versus then no, no training days, because the no training days are, I would say even more important than the training days. So I would say that someone who is optimizing for longevity and

health and wellbeing in general and actually improving their performance even more. I'd argue that training less is more beneficial for your performance than training more. True to the fact that you're having a greater recovery time, making you less injury prone, having more energy and intention going into the workout. How many people do you know who are getting to the gym and because they come every day, they're kind of dragging themselves and then they kind of feel like, I don't maybe need to give so much of myself today.

Andreas David Christou (54:30.483)

It's better if you actually don't go at all and go tomorrow and give, you know, 100 % of yourself, you know?

Daniel Vitalis (54:38.044)

Yeah, and that I would say on the reverse of that is when I see people who are afraid to ever push to their so let's say like in the heart rate heart rate, you you have that idea of like heart rate zones. One of the reasons I love CrossFit and I like to go is because it puts me into that upper heart. I mean, I touch my highest heart rate there. And I have a hard time doing that on my own, you know, like, so if I'm home training, it's easy to go to 80%. It's hard to go to 9798 99%.

Andreas David Christou (55:07.666)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (55:08.016)

but in that group environment I can get there and I'm guessing that when I push to the point that I can't, we have this thing we say in CrossFit about being in the pain cave. So there's workouts where at the end you're on the floor going like, and I'm like, I gotta be making mitochondria from that. mean, when my body goes, just like with strength, if I lift something to failure, my body goes, I gotta come back stronger for this. I would assume that when I hit those high cardio points where

I'm maxing out my heart rate, my body says, wow, in order to uptake more oxygen, we're gonna need to make some improvements to the system. So I wanna make sure I'm not just saying the negatives and I see the value of both, but it's like, I only wanna get to that place once or twice a week. I don't wanna do that every day. That just seems really dangerous.

Andreas David Christou (55:48.178)

Yes, yes.

Yes.

I don't have a problem with people pushing themselves to the limit. mean, I feel like that's, you we're designed to do that as human beings. And that's if you look at hunter gatherers, for example, and you know this well, you know, they're not going to be sprinting all the time. They're going to be sprinting when they want to hunt and gather their food or hunt their food rather and, you know, catch a prey. But then they're going to chill the rest of the time or they're going to walk or they're going to commute, you know, to new locations. Yeah, exactly. And so therefore they have the big stress.

Daniel Vitalis (56:18.716)

lot of hammock time.

Andreas David Christou (56:24.519)

for a short period of time and then rest, followed by big stress, followed by rest again. And this is key to the recipe. And I think that human has forgotten this, you know, this is why I'm saying that I don't have an issue with pushing yourself to failure, as long as you have enough recovery time to adapt and come back bigger, better, stronger and faster than before. But you're never gonna have all of those things if your body hasn't adapted and adaptation only occurs during parasympathetic activity.

Daniel Vitalis (56:56.294)

Why are, I think you'll easily be able to answer this, my wife teaches a yoga stretch class once a week at our gym and most of the people who are willing to push to that really intense place every day can't touch their toes, can't reach their back, they're so stiffened and when they go to stretch they can't but make audible noises of like.

right? Because it's like everything is I love that we use the term for high blood pressure, hypertension. It's a great term. It's like, it sounds like well, that's you doing it. Right? It's like you're just a hyper tensed. But why is it that those people in the sympathetic nervous system state all the time can't touch their toes?

Andreas David Christou (57:25.434)

Yes. Yes.

Andreas David Christou (57:32.134)

That's so true. Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (57:44.08)

Well, mean, as I said to you at the beginning, that nervous system state drives tissue tension. And so if you think that mobility is a byproduct of tissue tension and hydration and tissue health, then you should ask the question, what is governing my nervous system state? And so then you have, OK, I can list a couple of things. have sunlight versus blue light. You have sleep, recovery.

grounding, breathing. Breathing is the window into your autonomic nervous system. It's like the fastest way to regulate your nervous system. Then you have emotions, trauma, like all of these things are influencing your nervous system state. And so yeah, if you think about that and also your proprioceptive input, and what does that mean? That means your ability to perceive your environment through your five senses. And so if your ability to perceive your environment is dampened,

What do you think your nervous system is going to do in order to protect you? It's going to make you freeze because it doesn't want you to move in case you hurt yourself. And so a lot of people are lacking all of those things which I just mentioned or they are doing one or the other. For example, if you're getting too much blue light, you're sympathetically dominant because it activates our stress response, our alertness, right? If you're exposed to it 24 seven, like most people are, they have brighter.

nights and darker days, which is the opposite of brighter days and darker nights. Then you get circadian rhythm disruption. You have sympathetic dominance. Therefore, you have increased tissue tension, which leads to decreased lymphatic system flow and blood flow, which means less oxygenation to tissues, which means that now your cells are becoming hypoxic, which leads to further contraction.

And so, it all goes like this. And then obviously tissue hydration, which is what we talked about through the mitochondria, through sunlight, through high quality water, by taking shilajit, by taking like ocean minerals in this way to keep the tissues healthy. But yeah, the main reason is because of all of these different things is mainly lifestyle driven is not because you are lacking stretching. Stretching is sort of like a plaster on top of like

Andreas David Christou (01:00:01.536)

You know, it's like taking a pill if you have pain. You're not going to the root cause of the pain. that pain? You don't have a pill deficiency. You don't have a stretch deficiency. Why do native people, hunter-gatherers, never stretch or never exercise? Because they're always in a ready state and their nervous system is primarily in a parasympathetic state. And the ready state occurs because they're always, they're never really sitting. They are

Daniel Vitalis (01:00:25.469)

Mm-hmm.

Andreas David Christou (01:00:30.698)

squatting or they are leaning or they are ready like an animal, ready to pounce, ready to move. So they don't need to let me stretch real quick before I do something. They're all ready to leave, right?

Daniel Vitalis (01:00:43.045)

Yeah, like my dogs. My dogs will be like fast asleep and then you know, a delivery will come and they don't stretch they go from sleeping to running and barking in a fraction of a second and it doesn't they never pull anything or get injured from that. Also, one of the things I remember you know when in body work we would often stretch people so you know maybe somebody's let's say that they're supine

and you maybe stretch their hamstring for them. And I remember learning from anestheticians and surgeons that when people are anesthetized, they have full range of motion because they are not creating tension in their musculoskeletal system. So one thing that I noticed when I watch people try to do some basic yoga poses is I'll think like, they don't know they're fighting themselves.

Andreas David Christou (01:01:27.362)

Yes. Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:01:38.314)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:38.386)

they're sending tension to the muscle and then they're trying to stretch the muscle that they've sent tension to. And that's kind of a funny thing, right? Cause it's like your mind is, you're in your body, you're like at war with each other. Cause I noticed when I'm stretching something or if I'm holding a pose, the more I use my breath and my psychology, the more that thing just lets go and lets go and lets go. So I would assume that a lot of people are hypertensive emotionally.

Andreas David Christou (01:01:51.433)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:02:07.803)

and then they're wondering why they have no freedom of movement. But it's like, if you stress me out, I'm gonna, everything tightens up, you know? And then it's like, if I never let that back out, I think a lot of people don't ever really let that back out. And then obviously, all they have to do is turn on their social media or their news and get the nonstop stream of fear porn that keeps you even more tight and tense and stressed and your enemies.

your neighbor's your enemy, your family member's your enemy, and then like everything is threatening and then it's just like, you're so tight, right? I mean, it's just like a loop that everybody's stuck in.

Andreas David Christou (01:02:44.575)

your body is meant to by design become tight in a heightened nervous system state due to the fact that that prepares you for what it says in the name fight and flight because when your tissues are tighter you're more explosive that's why people who do explosive sports sprinters they will never stretch before a sprint they will dynamically move there's a difference there through full range of motion but they will not deliberately

deliberately do these long stretches where they are forcing the body to and their tissue to become long because once you stretch a tissue beyond a certain point, it becomes like sort of loose and it stays like that for a period of time. And if you do not integrate strength with that new range of motion, your brain freaks out. And what it does to compensate for that, creates guarding, which is what most people are experiencing these days. And it tightens up even more

as compensation mechanism. And so this is what I see all the time with some of my clients, because I teach mobility. I'm like a movement coach, right? So that's like one of my passions is to help people regain their range of motion and their functionality, to help them people be pain free and move well throughout life. And so I teach them ways to not have to stretch all the time. And how do we do this? We need to actually rewire the communication between the brain, the nervous system and the muscle.

And so you're able to communicate to the brain via the muscle. But if you're showing to the body something extreme or you're forcing a stretch, what's going to happen is your brain and your nervous system is going to guard that muscle to protect you because it understands that you haven't earned the range. You have forced the range. once you how do we actually earn the range is by exercising and moving our body through full range of motion with intention and control.

And control is a synonym for strength. So when you move with strength through full range of motion, let's take an example, a deadlift, right? Straight leg deadlift so that your knees are pretty straight and you have a nice and straight back. There's a difference between going all the way down and touching the floor with the bar versus just going halfway down, right? Well, the other one is good for more hypertrophy focus, going kind of like halfway down, but going all the way down is better for function.

Andreas David Christou (01:05:07.053)

and mobility because it's actually mobility which is going to stick because you're telling your body I'm lifting a certain load under tension and I'm going in this range and therefore I must acquire strength throughout this entire range and show that your body because you're doing it with intention that it's safe. Now that's the key word safe because if it doesn't feel safe and it feels threatened you will not acquire that range and you won't get stronger either. So it's always starting off

where your body is at, meeting your body where it's at, and kind of progressively loading the body in through full range of motion, going in and out, not staying in the length. That's the mistake that most people make when they think about lengthening and mobility, they stay in the length, but your body craves the contraction as well, which is the shortening of the muscle, not only the lengthening.

Daniel Vitalis (01:06:00.927)

I really agree with that. It's also interesting to note how we have these deficiencies between our range of motion and our strength and like if I were to stand and then try to raise my one leg up on we stand on one leg and raise my leg up, you know how far I can raise it with my muscular force versus if you came over you could pick it up several more inches. So I have more more range of motion than I have strength to move through that range of motion. Whereas if I think of like a professional dancer

Maybe she can, through muscular effort, pick her leg all the way up over her head. She has control of that full range of motion. And what I found, like you said about the body guarding, if I'm in a compromised position where I'm into mobility that's beyond my strength, not only is that where I can get injured, but that's where my body wants to panic too, because like, uh-oh, I'm not in control of this anymore. Yeah, I'm just kind of curious if that leads to anything for you, but that's just something I've noticed.

Andreas David Christou (01:06:51.427)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:07:00.505)

Yeah, mean, a lot of people, I can tell you a personal story of my own, why I actually understand and share this knowledge now, which I'm sharing with you today. know, most people think that, oh, if I'm tight, I must stretch more. But like stretching actually only makes the problem worse. In the past, I used to be very stiff because I only did bodybuilding style training. I started training when I was 14 years old because I was overweight and obese. That's what actually got me.

down the path of fitness, nutrition and circadian health eventually. And basically I became very tight because I didn't do any kind functional training. I didn't do any mobility. I didn't do any TLC outside of the conventional lifting. And so yeah, I started doing more yoga and stretching. But then the problem was I became hypermobile. I went to the other end because I started doing too much stretching, too much mobility, too much yoga. I forced my body to become flexible.

But now it had a lot of range which it couldn't control. And what did that lead to? It led to a lot of sensation of tightness, not tightness necessarily in the muscle. The muscle, I could still pull it and do the thing, like do the pose, but it felt tight when I was relaxing. So there was clearly a subtle contraction occurring in the muscle because it felt unsafe.

And I also experienced a lot of burning sensations in like hip flexors, lower back area, a lot of aches and pains because of stretching too much. And as soon as I stopped stretching and I started focusing more on just strengthening and moving my body through movement, so holistic movement like primal movement, animal flow, moving on all fours, which is incredible for your proprioception, by the way, because you're moving on your hands and your feet.

So you're getting that extra proprioceptive input. You're signaling safety to your nervous system. So now your body's able to move with more ease and it's restoring how the muscles should be functioning. Because once you stretch your muscle beyond a certain point, it's like pretty much, it's more dysfunctional. You're less explosive. You're more slow. And that's actually less advantageous as a human being. You wanna be explosive. You wanna be fast. You wanna be agile. You wanna be pain-free. You wanna be able to move well.

Andreas David Christou (01:09:17.462)

And you want to be able to do that all times without having the need to stretch real quick. So in order to be in the ready state, you have to prime your body to have to own the range through strength. It's that simple.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:24.447)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:34.057)

You're making me think about Tom Myers model of the tensegrity of the body. So for listeners who might not be familiar, a tensegrity structure or something, maybe you want to look at some images online, but essentially it's a series of struts and like stretchy cables that create a structure where no two struts touch each other. It's sort of like how our skeleton is. No two bones actually touch if they do. That's called arthritis, not good.

but bones are actually floating inside a connective tissue matrix. when you said about sprinters before, when I watch those hundred meter sprinters, you know, like the Olympians and you to watch them warming up and they're doing a lot of skipping drills where they're bouncing on their tensegrity. So rather than being like, I need to be longer, it's actually holding tension in all the right places so that the body

Andreas David Christou (01:10:03.969)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:10:28.243)

bounces along and has spring to it. And that's so different than, cause if I take all of the, you know, it's like when I'm fishing, you know, you've got a fish on the line. The key is that I don't yank it and I can't give it any slack. If I give it slack, the fish is off that hook right away. If I pull too hard, I'm gonna pull the hook through. It's just keeping that perfect amount of tension. And I feel like that's what's going on in our body. So like for a big heavy lift,

Andreas David Christou (01:10:30.977)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:10:56.465)

You can't do that without tension in your body. If I just let all the tension out of my body, I'm gonna like break somewhere, give somewhere. If I try to run, you know, I watch this with people sometimes who try to run, they're almost, they're so mechanical in it, like almost thinking like, this muscle's supposed to go, then this muscle's supposed to go, then I supposed to do, and it's all like herky-jerky and not coordinated movement, like a robot would move, you know? Whereas,

Andreas David Christou (01:11:04.043)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:11:16.439)

You

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:11:23.079)

it's actually like bouncing along lines of tension. You know what I mean? It's coming from that right balance. So if I'm making things too tight or conversely too loose, I can't hold that integrity in the structure that I need, right? Something like that.

Andreas David Christou (01:11:37.494)

Correct, yes, and this is like a perfect example and what you mentioned about the slack. That's a really, really big deal because when we're thinking about athletic efficiency, anybody who is playing a sport, okay, let's rewind a little. Most people train because they want to burn calories. That's the wrong approach. You know, when you're approaching exercise, you should be exercising to improve many aspects of athleticism and skill. And as we mentioned,

Daniel Vitalis (01:11:55.583)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:12:03.859)

You burn more calories if you build more muscle or you increase your total daily energy expenditure. What you should be aiming for in exercise is athletic efficiency. So how do we achieve efficiency is by not wasting energy and how do we not waste energy is by removing slack from the system. We don't want to be too tight or too loose like you mentioned. When a system is efficient, it's able to run as fast as possible with wasting the least amount of energy. And that is the goal. That was always the goal for human beings because

Daniel Vitalis (01:12:23.263)

Right. Right.

Andreas David Christou (01:12:33.309)

If you can waste the least amount of energy, that means you can survive and catch your food. And so if you can survive and catch your food, it's a big win because then you can live another day and you can do it all over again. So this is what our aim should be through lifting as well. Finding the right tension through lifts, eliminating slack, not rushing things, being intentional with the way that we do things. And our breath is at the center.

sits at the center of our tensegrity system. So when you look at a lifter, for example, or a power lifter who's doing a massive squat or a deadlift, they're gonna suck the air right down into their belly, right? They're pushing their diaphragm down. They're creating that intra-abdominal pressure, which is the core, like the cylinder, right? Like a can. And so the can cannot be crushed because it's filled with air. But as soon as the air starts going out at the wrong time of the lift,

You start to crush the can and now you put pressure on structures of the body, on joints and muscles and that's where you get injured. That's where they hurt a ligament or a tendon.

Daniel Vitalis (01:13:40.446)

And anywhere there's that slack we were talking about, that's the energy leak, right? That's the hole in the balloon where everything kind of leaks out on you and you start to come apart. Hey, while we're on this topic of sort of lifting intention, something I wanted to bring up was I, know, looking through your Instagram account, I saw that you and I were both onto throwing patterns, you know, and it's something I wanna talk about because I see that it's just sorely missing.

in the, you you go into a gym here in the States, we just have these massive Globo gyms, you know, and you go into them and they have every imaginal piece of equipment except nothing to train a throwing pattern. So again, to that robot model, everybody's pushing, they're pulling, you know, they're pressing all the time, they're squatting, but they're always moving in that sagittal plane and they're never really getting the torsion and

Andreas David Christou (01:14:15.645)

Yeah, yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:14:22.941)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:14:27.475)

Yeah. Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:14:39.26)

One thing that I've found from lifting, I started lifting as a teenager, and it wasn't long until if you asked me to throw a baseball, like it would physically hurt me to try to do. I noticed it too from casting a fishing rod as a throwing motion, know. All hunting essentially used to be, right? Because it was throwing something, could be a spear, could be an atlatl, can be a fishing rod, whatever it is.

Andreas David Christou (01:14:49.479)

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:15:06.781)

But we don't train that. And then to do that, you see a lot of specialized equipment. So the club bell, the mace bell, the Bulgarian bag, the kettlebell can be used that way, the rope for rope flow. And it seems like people are just starting to kind of wake up to there's been this, I wanna make sure I don't understate this.

the most significant important movement that the human does, which is basically like link that like left foot to right arm, right foot to left arm across in a transverse way with rotation at the core and at the shoulder. It's just like missing from it. And so what you have are all these people who are carrying this load of muscle mass that actually is super dysfunctional.

Andreas David Christou (01:15:46.482)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:15:49.873)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:15:59.769)

And it's very funny when you watch, I wanna give props to those wrestlers who are like super jacked, steroid bodybuilder looking guys that are athletic, because there is a contingent of them. But for the most part, big jacked people move really badly if you ask them to do anything athletic, because they don't have the fundamental athletic patterns, they just have push pull, squat, hinge.

Andreas David Christou (01:16:15.303)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:16:21.959)

Yes. Yes. I mean, that's just like one directional movement. And that's the issue because the patterns your body like optimizes for what you do most. So if you're going to do only these one directional patterns up, down, forwards and backwards, then your body is going to get really good at that. And it's going to get rid of, know, you know, that saying use it or lose it. Right. Your body like starts to deprioritize things and neural connections that are it doesn't use often. And it starts to prioritize the ones that you do most often.

And so in order for you to keep your brain sharp and also to keep your movement sharp, need to practice this rotational movement, which you talked about through maces, club bells, rope flow, kettle bells. You can do that with some dumbbells as well. You can use dumbbells for rotational stuff as well and cables as well. You just need to know what you're doing. Yeah. And so...

Daniel Vitalis (01:17:12.084)

Kind of sucks, but you can. Yeah, landmine for the barbell is great actually.

Andreas David Christou (01:17:18.192)

Yes, exactly. love I'm pretty sure you're aware of Landmine University. Do you know them?

Andreas David Christou (01:17:26.566)

They're fantastic. Yeah, because that guy, he...

Daniel Vitalis (01:17:28.352)

Yeah, I haven't, I haven't trained with those folks, but I'm, I am seeing a lot of that. And you know, I have to say I love one of the things that I like that we do in CrossFit is Olympic lifts versus just power lifts. So we also Olympic lift, which are, you know, your snatch and your clean and they generate so much power at the hip. But barbells just destroy me. I'm just too asymmetrical at this point, too many injuries. So I don't like to

Andreas David Christou (01:17:39.826)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:17:52.892)

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:17:55.211)

to do power movements with a bar. I mean, I wish I could, I just don't. But on the landmine, now I can do them functionally, I can build that, you know, just like a kettlebell swing, I can still get that explosive hip extension that keeps power in my system as I age without having the damage to my shoulders and hips that I get from being locked into the barbell.

Andreas David Christou (01:18:12.613)

us.

That's the issue, right? Like when you have these muscular imbalances or the foundation, like, you know, whether you are aware of it or unaware of it is off. You know, if left and right side is not working equally, that is one of the dangers of using something which is fixed like a machine or a barbell or a Smith machine, because you can't be like wearing things out over time and eventually it will lead to injury and aches and pains. And yeah, this is why I love to train this stuff because my training specifically is just

Primarily bodyweight training so high volume calisthenics pull-ups rings dips resistance bands Kettlebells and all this kind of stuff I don't train inside a gym at all because I want to optimize my biology as much as possible and I train outside in the Sun and So because we are actually designed to train outdoors grounded, you know barefoot

to the earth. If we can, of course, I'm not trying to make people feel like you need to have the perfect environment to train, but it's the most ideal environment where we have evolved to do this type of stuff. It also improves your blood flow because UV light, UVA light specifically stimulates nitric oxide production. So it vasodilates your blood vessels and it delivers more oxygen to your tissues. And it also improves your cardiovascular fitness because if your blood is able to move better, you're able to receive more oxygen.

And so yeah, and also shifts you more into a parasympathetic state between your sets as well, because the outdoor environment really harmonizes your nervous system state. But going back to what we were saying about the different tools, I don't want to miss this because this is very important about the fascial system. The fascial system is so crucial, right? This is what we talk about when we talk about removing slack, because the fascial system, which is the connective tissue system of the body, the triple helix

Andreas David Christou (01:20:05.687)

collagen network, which also carries water through it and communicates throughout the entire body, know, bio photons, photons at the speed of light, it sends, you know, your, your, your nervous system and your fascia system, they are one system, they work together, it's integrated, they're interwoven, like, so there's nothing separate. And people need to think about the fascia system sort of like a webbing on an orange.

which is like, you know, it's not the juice of the orange. The muscle is the juice and the webbing is the fascial system. So it holds everything together and the muscle doesn't do anything without the fascial system. And so you need to have a specific tension. Go ahead.

Daniel Vitalis (01:20:45.611)

Can I jump in on that? Let me just say this too. If people are familiar with this, if you open the orange, the whole interior of the, under the skin is wrapped in that white fascial material. But then you've got all of the segments of the oranges and they're each compartmentalized. But then if you peel those away, there's all those little segments inside and they're all wrapped in that. And that's, cause every muscle fiber is in connective tissue. Then all the bundles of fiber in connective tissue.

Andreas David Christou (01:21:02.455)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:21:14.923)

then they're bundled together into groups, then that's bundled together into muscles, then those continue on to become ligaments and eventually tendons, and then all of that's connected to the subcutaneous layer of this connective tissue. I mean, this is like, you're not exaggerating. In fact, the orange is almost like a dumbed down version of how incredibly networked we are with this stuff, right?

Andreas David Christou (01:21:36.876)

Yes. Yes, and if you think about the fascia system like a sheet on a bed as well, when you pull one end of the sheet, it's going to impact the whole sheet. And so this is why if you have tightness in one specific muscle of your body, let's say in your calf, it can affect the back of your neck because the fascia system has a limited range. so you're going to imagine you're tightening the sheet somewhere, it's going to impact the entire sheet. It's going to throw

your balance off. So why do we actually want to train these rotational movement patterns? Because you unify the muscle with the fascial system. You're training the fascia with the muscle, not separate. When you do conventional lifts, you're sort of training the muscle without considering the fascial system, without considering the elasticity or the full function or the full expression of the fascial system. So your body is actually designed

to rotate, everything is spiraling within the body. When you look at the fascial slings or the fascial trains as Thomas Myers talks about is you have these trains of the fascial system. He calls them trains, but I call them lines, right? Or slings. Because you have, for example, wrapping under your feet, it goes all the way around your calf, it spirals into your inner thigh, it goes into your hip, it goes to your lower back and then it crosses.

in front of your body and goes to your shoulder. So it's literally like a spiral and you have multiple of these. I think it's seven different fascial lines in the body and together they create what we call the tensegrity system, which is what holds you up together. And so this is like the most standing should be the most efficient thing to do. And so when people are leaning forward because of like poor posture, because of habits, behaviors, phone use and all this kind of stuff.

then you're literally taxing certain tissues of the body or overloading certain tissues. You're doing the exact same thing with conventional training. You're taxing and overloading certain tissues if you don't express your fascial system to the fullest. And so what I challenge people to do is if you train conventionally, you can train unconventionally as well. So you can be very muscular, but you can also be functional. And my definition of functional is to be athletic.

Andreas David Christou (01:23:55.861)

to move well, to be pain free, to be agile and mobile. That's my definition of functional. So you can have both. It's not either or. A lot of people think, well, if you want to be muscular, you can't be functional. Well, if you train both, yes, of course there are some limitations to your ability to do certain positions and certain things. But if you train the ability to move well, you will be able to move well. But it's just important to put it into your weekly practice as serious as your

conventional training.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:27.426)

Some of these guys out there now in SEMA comes to mind in the rope flow world, so jacked, but so athletic and mobile or a Jujimufu, so jacked, so mobile. So it is possible to be that hybrid. I also wanted to say, and I'm sitting down with Tom Myers actually next week, he lives in the same state as me, so a great guy. I love this guy, I haven't talked to him in a few years. If after you have any questions, forward them along to me.

Andreas David Christou (01:24:30.521)

yeah.

Yes, exactly.

Andreas David Christou (01:24:38.9)

He's incredible.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:56.756)

One of the things I love about the club bell, the mace, the Bulgarian bag, the kettlebell, is when you're ballistically swinging it, you're putting tension onto the connective tissue, lines of connective tissue, and they're getting stretched and swung. Whereas if I'm just like bicep curling or bench pressing, like you said, the fosh is not really doing anything. I'm just contracting motor units versus there are times like in the kettlebell swing, once I in,

once I explode through my posterior chain, there's no muscular effort going on. I'm just following the kettlebells ballistic arc. But that little bit of stretch is obviously communicating to my body to strengthen connective tissue, right and to lay down new fibers. So that's something that is really lacking in how most people are training, especially if you're just using machines at the gym. I mean, again, like, if you're my

Andreas David Christou (01:25:41.885)

Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:25:51.23)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:25:53.602)

82 year old mother-in-law, like by all means, I want you to just please just do that. That's fine. I don't care if you're just doing the machines. I'm happy that you're training. But for those of us who are trying to really optimize some how we're training and carry that forward into old age, especially that's what I'm thinking about now. It's like, I want my connective tissue to be robust and not tearing and coming apart all the time. Because you see people it's like they're dematerializing because they never trained that stuff.

Andreas David Christou (01:26:19.065)

Dematerializing I love that word but you know the perfect example for this is if you can lift like hundred kilos on a calf raise So let's say 200 pounds on a calf raise and then you put that same individual to do and I like an athletic jump where they're just literally like Bouncing once off the floor and you're asking them to go as high as possible Well, if they use muscle to do that and they don't use like connective tissue They're very easily going to injure their muscle because the connective tissue is responsible for

Daniel Vitalis (01:26:21.985)

you

Andreas David Christou (01:26:48.728)

storing mechanical energy and also the electrons that we talked about because the fascia system is a fluid-filled system as well. So if that system is dehydrated due to artificial blue light, constantly training a specific tissue and muscle in a specific way and not hydrating enough, it's more injury prone. so like connective tissue is more prone to snapping when you don't train

these athletic movements because the more you train them, as you mentioned, you're layering down more connective tissue, more collagen, you're strengthening the tissues. So tissues get stronger the more that we use them, use it or lose it. But then again, the hydration is super important and that is occurring from the sunlight. So sunlight is key for hydration throughout the entire body and the fascial system. And of course, sleep, you need to optimize those two things together because light and dark circadian rhythms, hydration,

It's all connected.

Daniel Vitalis (01:27:47.458)

Okay, I want to go through your like list of tips would be good. Like how do we you know, give us your lifestyle tips. But first, I just want to say because it's come up several times here. The difference between externally hydrating yourself like I'm drinking the bulk water and hydrating myself, but I'm hearing you saying it's important that you're producing new water from inside. So the hydration is

Andreas David Christou (01:28:14.332)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:28:16.949)

because like most of the universe is hydrogen. Like there's no shortage of hydrogen. And guess what? If you burn it, the ashes are water, right? Because burning is oxidizing. So if you can mix hydrogen, you burn hydrogen, the exhaust is water. So our body can produce water internally and that water is of a different quality in nature. It's actually in a different phase than the water that we drink.

Andreas David Christou (01:28:36.518)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:28:45.685)

I just think that's such a cool idea to hydrate from within. I think that's fascinating. But carry us through, what does it look like to put this stuff together? Are there a list of do's and don'ts that you typically kind of think about?

Andreas David Christou (01:28:59.974)

I think it's important to start with the don'ts because most people are doing too many of the don'ts and once you start getting rid of the don'ts then the to-dos are quite easy. So the don'ts are quite obvious and self-clear. We mentioned them multiple times throughout this episode which is minimizing artificial blue light and artificial blue light specifically inhibits cytochrome C oxidase which is the fourth enzyme in the mitochondria and when you inhibit that step you don't produce ATP.

but you neither produce cellular water. So you're actually dehydrating yourself when you're exposed or yes, from blood. This is why ages you.

Daniel Vitalis (01:29:34.658)

from blue light, really? And what about okay, let's say that I get exposed to blue light in the morning versus I get exposed to blue light in the evening. That seems to me like it would be very different. Because first thing in the morning, it's blue light that's pouring in through my windows, right? So I mean, so at that time of the day is the light from my machines as bad for me as it is

before I'm going to bed.

Andreas David Christou (01:30:06.06)

It's less bad, but it's still bad due to the fact that it's not full spectrum because the sun comes with full spectrum with the all colors of the rainbow and everything is counterbalanced. So for example, we know that UV can be quite stressing to our DNA, right? But the cool thing is with the exposure to UV, you actually make vitamin D, but then with that stressful effect, you have the combination of red and infrared light.

Daniel Vitalis (01:30:10.913)

the intensity of it. Right.

Andreas David Christou (01:30:34.006)

And red and infrared light is responsible for healing, repair, regeneration, all the stuff that red light therapy panels are trying to, you know, give you, right? That's the whole point of using red light therapy or doing an infrared sauna is actually to get all of the benefits of the red and the infrared light. And so, again, it's always the light outside is always balanced. So you're getting the stressful aspect and the healing aspect, the parasympathetic aspect of...

of light, but when you're getting it in isolation and you're getting only a specific slither, which I believe is the 450 nanometers, which is the most stressful part of blue light and it's blue light by design, not by accident because blue light is addictive and we are meant to be addictive, addicted to being outdoors. Our biology is wired to be addicted to nature. screens are blue light by design and all the tech companies know this and that's why every single screen is blue lit.

And so basically artificial blue light dehydrates us. So we need to minimize that as much as possible. Don't look at your phone first thing in the morning, get outside. So that's like one don't and one do. So get outside in the morning. As soon as you wake up, try and wake up with the sunrise or pre-sunrise. Open your windows and just look up at the sky. You don't need to look at the sun directly.

to get the benefits to start your metabolism, to entrain your circadian rhythm and to optimize your biology. Because as I said, circadian rhythms are the foundation of our health. Then the next thing would be is to minimize artificial blue light after sunset. I think this is critically important. In a modern world that we're living in right now, blue light blocking glasses are a non-negotiable because you have blue light everywhere. It's in the cars, it's in your fridge, it's in your bathroom.

Daniel Vitalis (01:32:21.473)

How much of the day are you wearing them? How much of the day are you wearing them?

Andreas David Christou (01:32:25.367)

How much of the day?

Daniel Vitalis (01:32:26.913)

Yeah, like how much of how much of the day do you have those on? And do you have any concern that they could be blocking anything important? Like for instance, yeah, like I mean, obviously, sunglasses themselves, I'm very skeptical of I own sunglasses, I very rarely, I use them to fish in or if I'm like driving, and I'm gonna die if I don't wear them. But otherwise, I'm pretty sure that they're damaging not only damaging my eyes, but blocking important light frequencies that I need.

Andreas David Christou (01:32:33.461)

course.

Andreas David Christou (01:32:40.043)

Guess.

Andreas David Christou (01:32:44.171)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:32:54.143)

So I wonder about that, because I see people in those so much. And you can imagine over the years I've been sent a thousand pairs of those and I just never really use them. So I want to give you a chance to sell me on this.

Andreas David Christou (01:33:00.565)

Yes. Yeah.

So you only want to use it only when you're looking artificial blue light or when you're under artificial blue light. If you're outside under natural blue light from the sun, you should never be wearing them because the blue light from the sun is meant to entrain your circadian rhythm. Every time when you're outdoors, it's like a timing cue. It's giving a signal to your brain. Okay, it's this time of the day. It's this time of the day. It's this time. It's keeping your body on track and you know very well that your body has every single tissue in your body has its own clock.

and it does specific thing at a certain time of the day. And if you throw off the master clock, which is in the brain behind the eyes, you throw off all the other clocks, which is the peripheral clocks. And so if you throw those off, then your metabolic health declines, your insulin sensitivity declines, your leptin sensitivity declines, your ability to heal and regenerate is non-existent, and then you age faster because that is basically what aging is, is when your clock is out of sync.

And when your clock is in sync, then you are able to preserve your age or even reverse your age. This is why connection with nature is a non-negotiable. And this is how we help to build this exclusion zone water that we talked about. Grounding is vital for the exclusion zone water. It provides electrons from the earth to the connective tissue of your body, your fascia system, and your sweat glands. They are absorbing the electrons through your sweat glands.

and then you're funneling it through your fascia system to throughout the rest of your body and you this exclusion zone water that you have is storing that free energy that you just gathered from the earth. You charge it, yeah, and you create, you create as well.

Daniel Vitalis (01:34:41.387)

Okay, so that's how you charge the battery. You charge the battery of the EZ water. So in other words, those free electrons that we always hear you can get through the ground by grounding those electrons. And obviously, you know, it doesn't have to be your feet, you can touch the ground with your hands or sit on it with your butt, right? But when you're in contact with the ground electrically, free electrons, I've always heard come into your body, but what I hadn't heard before was that they store in the EZ water

Andreas David Christou (01:34:51.765)

Yes. Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:34:58.433)

Correct.

Daniel Vitalis (01:35:10.677)

the way when you plug your phone in, electrons are storing in the lithium ion bath.

Andreas David Christou (01:35:15.176)

Yeah, because this concept that we call charge or voltage, like every single cell, I'm pretty sure you've heard of this before as well, that runs on a specific voltage. And when it drops, when that voltage drops, that's when we experience things like cancer or non-desirable things in the body, because your body needs a specific charge and voltage. And if that drops or you don't have the adequate charge, your body cannot run its processes anymore. And that's when dysfunction actually takes place.

So you want to combine obviously grounding, if you're outdoors grounding, you're going to be exposed to sunlight most likely, right? If you're outdoors. And that is actually charging and increasing your water battery now. So it's expanding the exclusion zone. So the red and the infrared light specifically, it targets the cytochrome C in your mitochondria. So it does the opposite of blue light. It flips the switch. So you get blue light from the sun, which is going to turn off.

the cytochrome C, but then it's gonna switch it back on with the red and the infrared. And so your mitochondria keep making energy without you even needing to put food in your system. This is basically how you get energy from the sun. Once light strikes your skin, melanin takes the photons and it splits them, and it splits the water molecule underneath your skin into oxygen, hydrogen, and electrons. So you literally split the water molecule.

So melanin in your skin is not only for protecting you from burning, but it's also for harvesting free energy from the sun. And because we split the water molecule, now we have more of this free energy, but we're also expanding the exclusion zone water because we're exposed to the red and the infrared. But anything that is generating internal red and infrared light from the mitochondria,

also produces exclusion zone water. So what would that be? That would be movement, that would be exercise, that would be like infrared sauna, that would be regular sauna. Anything that is a heat, so a fireplace, for example, is an incredible place, way to charge and to expand your exclusion zone water and take care of your fascial health. So imagine like all of these things that I said are like,

Daniel Vitalis (01:37:23.489)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:37:31.085)

None of that is including like exercise or, you know, trying to like force your body to do something. You're taking care of your hydration and your fascial system by being in connection with your natural environment. And so the second thing, which is the don't, which I want people to do especially is to distance themselves from non-native electromagnetic fields. And why these are such a problem is because they induce calcium influx into the cells.

And the calcium influx is causing contraction. You know that when calcium flows into muscle, it causes muscle contraction. Magnesium is the opposite of that, causes muscle relaxation. That's why we take magnesium, because too many people are stressed these days and we're depleting magnesium because we're constantly contracting the system, which is depleting our magnesium levels. So we're burning through our minerals faster. And this is why I said earlier that you should be consuming high quality ocean

full spectrum ocean minerals which have all the different minerals, not just sodium like some electrolytes have, and shilajit because shilajit is the herbal mineral substance.

Daniel Vitalis (01:38:40.896)

How do you, how?

Andreas David Christou (01:38:43.801)

Go ahead, sir.

Daniel Vitalis (01:38:44.884)

Where do you Okay, so she legit, I understand, you know, how to access that the ocean minerals, what form are you taking those in?

Andreas David Christou (01:38:54.131)

There are many brands which have like a vast amount of minerals. So instead of having like just the three, four minerals like electrolytes have, which is typically like sodium, potassium, magnesium, and like maybe chloride or something like that, then it has like 75, 85, 90, know, minerals matching what's in the sea because the sea and your blood are almost identical in terms of mineral composition. And so in order to actually get

the most benefit from hydration because people think if they drink water it hydrates them but if your body's lacking minerals that water goes straight through you and especially if you filter your water like reverse osmosis and you remove everything from there which is including all the bad stuff all the good stuff as well the minerals that you need then you need to remineralize it otherwise that will strip the minerals out of your body and from your bones it's gonna you know demineralize your body it's not ideal

It's okay for some cleansing periods, but you shouldn't do it chronically. And you need to remineralize it in order for your body to actually retain the water that you drink. And it doesn't expel it because you know, the only thing that holds onto water is salt or minerals. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:40:08.638)

It's funny when you look at a bottle of here in the States like aquafina and Dasani. I think those are the Coca Cola and Pepsi's RO water. They produce it locally because they'll use the tap water, filter it, but they inject mineral ions back into it. And if you look on the back, it'll say for taste because you can tell when water has been demineralized, it's taste terrible and it's not hydrating.

Andreas David Christou (01:40:34.05)

Yeah, I mean you can feel it on your teeth immediately. Like I instantly get a bit of a like, it almost feels like sharp on the teeth because it literally starts to break down your minerals like instantly like because minerals are attracted or that water is attracting minerals, right? So if any minerals you put it's going to disperse and this is what you're trying to do is you're trying to create an equilibrium before you put it inside of your body so it doesn't strip your own body but

Going back to the non-native EMFs real quick, so to make it bit more practical for people, try and put your phone on airplane mode when you don't need it, for example. That is like the easiest way to minimize your non-native electromagnetic field exposure, distance yourself from cell towers as much as you can. Try and just be outside ground. I know it's getting hard, the thing is, the inverse square law, which is like the...

Daniel Vitalis (01:41:21.184)

It's getting hard, It's getting hard.

Andreas David Christou (01:41:29.065)

how close you are to the source of radiation is what determines how damaging it is and also the duration and the intensity of the exposure. So this is like your biggest hack when you're trying to mitigate non-native EMFs. Of course, it's getting harder and harder to distance yourself away from it, but if you're grounded, you're also getting rid of a lot of the accumulated voltage and stress which is coming in your system.

Daniel Vitalis (01:42:00.096)

computer in here. Sorry about that. What I just want to say about that. Oh, I wanted to just comment that you're right, your suggestion about putting the phone on airplane mode. One of the things I noticed is now when you put your phone on airplane mode, you have to manually take off the Wi Fi, take off the Bluetooth take off there. You know what mean? It used to just shut all the signals off. It's getting harder and harder. The devices are becoming more ubiquitous. The towers are everywhere.

Andreas David Christou (01:42:03.422)

No problem.

Andreas David Christou (01:42:20.713)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:42:29.576)

All the appliances are talking constantly. Everything is just getting, smart everything. It's getting challenging, right? Everything's putting out blue light. It's amazing to me when you get into a hotel room or you get a new appliance and it's just got a permanent blue light that just supposed to stay on all the time. And it's just a mind numbing to me that this stuff is everywhere. But I agree and I like what you said about,

Andreas David Christou (01:42:32.238)

Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:42:51.54)

That's so annoying.

Daniel Vitalis (01:42:57.722)

how powerful even a little bit of distance from these devices is because, you know, I was watching a girl yesterday and she had on a big oversized hoodie and she had her phone in there and it just sitting right on her uterus in the little pocket of her hoodie, you know, and just like, man, people just don't think about it where

Andreas David Christou (01:43:00.468)

Yeah. Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:43:11.124)

Yeah. Yeah.

Andreas David Christou (01:43:15.893)

I know it's just, it's even written inside of the terms and conditions or in the settings. If you go to the about of the phone, in every single phone, there is a warning and it says to you to keep it 10 centimeters away from your body. you know, we're obviously holding it as well in the hand, right? It's in direct contact with the hand. That's a big problem. But of course, to sensitive tissues like the brain, like the, you know, the reproductive organs, the heart.

If it's close to those organs, it can be very, very dangerous. And I know many people who have gotten real big issues like cancers and all kinds of things by keeping their phones, know, taking a lot of phone calls or putting it in their pocket, for example, and stuff like that. So it's a really big issue just because it disrupts the cellular mechanism because you're constantly stressing the system out. It's just the exact same thing as why stress is bad. It's just another stressor in your bucket.

And unfortunately, it's a really big stressor in our world today. And it's a really big issue because it's invisible. And most people still think it's kind of like woo-woo stuff. But everybody feels it. Everybody acknowledges that when you use your phone, when you use your laptop, when you use a screen, you feel more stressed. But it's not necessarily only what's on the screen, but it's actually what it's producing, what it's emitting to you. So it's the non-native EMF. It's the artificial blue light. And if you're exposed to that more often, your resilience

goes down. So that means you get sicker more often, your ability to recover decreases, your risk of injury increases in exercise, you become more dehydrated, your performance decreases, your ability to build muscle declines, your ability to lose body fat decreases, you actually might even increase your body fat because your body's stressed all the time. So it's so important to mitigate this and to minimize, you know, turn your Wi-Fi off at night, put your phone as far away from your bed as you can in another room if you don't want to turn it off.

Again, like respecting the inverse square law and, you know, obeying the laws of nature because we're designed to be connected to the native electromagnetic field of the Earth, which is around 7.83 Hertz, which like matches the, you know, the heart's electromagnetic field and also the brain electromagnetic field. And when all of those three align, you have perfect coherence. And that's when your nervous system is

Andreas David Christou (01:45:38.488)

is operating most optimally and that's when you can really feel like you're thriving. This is why people feel their best when they're on holiday, they're getting a lot of sunlight, they're getting a lot of grounding, they're having a lot of sex, they're eating good food, they're sleeping more, they are optimizing their coherence and their biology and they're doing what humans are meant to do, right? And so this is the way.

Daniel Vitalis (01:46:06.207)

It's almost like they want you sick, man.

Andreas David Christou (01:46:08.658)

It is. It's by design, brother.

Daniel Vitalis (01:46:16.447)

So what are our list of do's?

Andreas David Christou (01:46:19.888)

So the list of do's is, again, like starting from the beginning, is get the sunlight, get the grounding, get your, you know, respect your sleep, the night and dark cycle, use your blue light blocking glasses, yellow ones only when you're looking at screens and under artificial lights, and red ones after sunset, strictly, because everybody has some form of blue light in their home. Even if you have the most circadian friendly home, there is one silly device somewhere that is emitting some annoying blue light.

And just that tiny amount of blue light is sufficient to signal to your brain that it's daytime and suppress melatonin production. And we know melatonin is not just a sleeping hormone. It's one of your most powerful anti-cancer and regeneration hormones in the body. So it's responsible for autophagy, repair, regeneration, detox. Your body and your brain cannot cleanse itself if you do not go into deep and restorative sleep. And that's only able to happen if you have high enough

pineal melatonin. And did you know that the body actually produces cellular melatonin in exposure to red and infrared light? So that means that your body is meant to melatonin 24-7 and most people are disrupting the process in both ways. During the day they're not getting outside and they have artificial blue light at night. So that means you're never getting pineal melatonin and you're never getting cellular melatonin. So what do you get as a result from that?

You get increased aging, damaged cells, and, you know, the C-word that I just mentioned earlier.

Daniel Vitalis (01:47:56.618)

Fascinating how you'd think, I mean you and I don't think this, but you'd almost expect that there'd be all this health technology that would be superior, but what we keep finding is it's like, no, it's the ancestral stuff. It's just always the stuff that would have naturally happened to you, and that every departure from that just seems to be a problem. And I worry about the technologies because,

Andreas David Christou (01:48:15.609)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:48:23.697)

what unforeseen consequences do they have, you know? Or, you know, recently I was sent a device from Europe, they wanted me to test that was for checking your heart rate variability. And it's kind of like a wearable, but you only need to wear it for three minutes. But you gotta wear it for three minutes when you, I'm not gonna say names, but they want you to wear it when you wake up. And the problem is to do it, you have to have your phone. And so now,

Andreas David Christou (01:48:39.709)

Is it a longer?

Andreas David Christou (01:48:50.347)

Yes, yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:48:53.171)

You know, I tried it for three days and then I was like, or five days or whatever I needed to get that baseline. And then I was like, I just can't. I don't keep my phone in the room. I don't want to touch my phone when I wake up. I don't want my phone to be just so that the thing can tell me that I don't feel good when I'm like, I know I feel good. or I do feel good if I, you know, it's like, I don't need a device to tell me how I feel. And I definitely don't need that device to make me get on my phone first thing in the morning. This just makes no sense. And so I find that

Andreas David Christou (01:48:59.125)

Yeah. Yeah. Yes.

Andreas David Christou (01:49:09.439)

Yeah.

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:49:22.963)

that I have an infrared sauna, it's great, but you know, I feel even better when I'm in front of my fireplace. So it's so interesting how all this tech can be beneficial to mitigate problems created by tech, but it's never superior to the real thing. So it's like, I worry that we create tech to solve problems tech creates that creates new problems. So you've got to create and you just keep stacking stuff. And sometimes it's like,

Andreas David Christou (01:49:37.279)

Yes. Yes.

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:49:50.483)

you just be so much better off to just go naked out in the sun and move around a little bit than to do all of these things. And so I appreciate that after everything we've talked about, it all just kind of came back to the same kind of basic principles we all know and we all feel best when we do.

Andreas David Christou (01:49:56.683)

correct.

Andreas David Christou (01:50:06.283)

Foundational principles. This is why like circadian health is foundational because it's tied to nature like nature is cyclical in it, right? It goes in a cycle you have Every single day the Sun rises every single day the Sun sets thankfully right like that We hope that it does every day and then we get to live another day and every single evening when we sleep It's like a reset button for our biology. So sleep is not just so you don't feel tired It's so you heal repair regenerate detoxify and come back

like better than before if you know if you're optimizing your biology. yeah, nature just optimizes every living organism and when you are in alignment with that you are thriving and when you remove yourself from that that's when disease begins to manifest. Obviously there are levels to this levels of resilience. Nature makes your resilience buckets bigger so you can tolerate more modern day stressors and modern life small it makes your bucket smaller.

and piles you more stressors, so it overflows. And what do you get when it overflows? All kinds of like autoimmune conditions, diseases, diabetes, like blood pressure. You know, you get everything that you know today. Almost all Neolithic diseases are due to a modern lifestyle. You put a person back into nature and you eat an ancestral diet, which is pulsed and cyclical in nature, not like the carnivore diet or the vegan diet. You eat everything like together in full spectrum, just like you receive full spectrum of light. You need to...

receive full spectrum nutrition, that's the way that you actually thrive.

Daniel Vitalis (01:51:41.631)

Yeah, I love what you just said. I love everything you just said and that idea of cyclical, because you could chart it like a sine wave. So obviously it's like sunrise, then noon, then sunset, then midnight. And that's just the sine wave or the temperature you talked about how the mornings start off cool and then they warm up and then you get peak. And so everything can be charted like a sine wave. And that's what the ground we walk on should be this way. And then flat line, we all associate with death.

Andreas David Christou (01:51:56.744)

Correct.

Andreas David Christou (01:52:07.101)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:52:11.356)

but then we seek a flat line in temperature, we seek a flat line in light exposure, we seek a flat line in everything that we're doing and it's like, it's so obvious that that's the way of death, know? And what you're talking about is the way of life. all right, so tell us all the things. How do we connect with you? How do we follow your work? How do people work with you if they want to? Where do they find you? All those kind of things.

Andreas David Christou (01:52:15.037)

Ha

is.

Andreas David Christou (01:52:31.752)

I just want to say thank you so much for having me on and I really enjoyed this conversation. I'm really glad that we went down the rabbit holes of circadian health and nature in general. And we started off on the mitochondria because I wasn't expecting that our conversation was going to begin in that way. I was like fully prepped that we're going to start talking about mobility from the get go. So I was really happy that you went like we went really, really deep, you know, because this is the stuff which controls our biology and which optimizes, you know, how we feel every day. You know,

None of this information matters. All that matters is like how you feel every day and how you feel is determined of your connection with nature or your lack of connection with nature. So that's the message that I want to leave people with. So people can find me like through my podcast. As Daniel said at the beginning, Fitness Wisdom podcast is on YouTube and also on Spotify. And my primary website right now is patreon.com forward slash Fitness Wisdom podcast. You can connect with me on there.

connect with a like-minded community and Shripe who shares topics and ideas like this. I write blogs and health optimization protocols. I share my own personal programs on there that you can get access to. You can get access to workouts, mobility routines, which consider your brain and your nervous system. So we're not doing passive stretching. We're only doing dynamic stretching or moving with intention and through full range of motion.

So, and also all the social media channels as well. So that's like Instagram, Andreas underscore David underscore Christou. And is there anything else that that's pretty much it. People can find me through those main platforms. Thank you so much, Daniel.

Daniel Vitalis (01:54:16.86)

man, it's been an absolute pleasure talking to you. I'd love to have you back on sometime. It seems like there's more stuff we could talk about. So I really enjoyed this and it seems like we're on parallel paths, man. So really happy that you came today. Thank you so much.

Andreas David Christou (01:54:30.598)

Thank you so much brother and I would love to do it again.

Transcript: UFO's or Sky Hauntings? — Nathaniel Gillis #006

0:00

Here's Alexander, the greatest diary.

He's like I was wanting to invade a city but the walls were too large and out of nowhere here comes a flying shield that zaps it with a but with light it explodes the wall and they go in and conquer.

I saw Fox News the other day talking about four types of aliens, Grays, Nordics, Reptilians and Insectilans and you're like, OK, Overton windows moved substantially here.

0:26

We have UFOs in homes and we have hauntings in the sky.

Then what are we studying, right?

What are we even doing?

If there's some kind of parasite on our species, I would like to know how to eliminate that or kill that, or love it out of existence or whatever I need to do and whatever The thing is that is the weapon against it.

0:45

I think that we're evolving to a place where we're figuring out some things to push the beast back in the darkness with consciousness, belief.

Belief's a big thing.

My guest today is Nathaniel Gillis.

Nathaniel is a religious demonologist and the author of A Moment called Man and the Skin that Crawls.

1:06

After living in a haunted house, Nathaniel spent 20 years researching what it was he encountered.

He's the founder of preternatural epiphenomenal philosophy.

Nathaniel has sought to redefine the nature of haunting phenomena, ghosts, and high strangeness.

1:21

Nathaniel, welcome to the show.

Thank you brother.

It's always good to be on with you and I'm just glad to be back again.

Thank you for inviting me.

And I'm really happy to have you here.

And a lot's happened since we last spoke, including, you know, the initiation of so-called government disclosure.

1:38

And it's got a lot of interesting conversations happening in the country right now.

And I just thought, wow, who better to talk to about this than you?

I just want to let the audience know to, to get started.

No, I started talking to you because you brought a really different perspective than anything else I was hearing on not just the UFO phenomena, but all manner of high strangeness, as you call it.

2:02

I'll tell you what it did.

It came at a cost.

I I grew up in the phenomenon itself in a paranormal environment, and I was forced to ask questions about what's going on.

And there's only one thing that I'm confident of in my research, and that is that we will not get disclosure on what the phenomenon is about.

2:24

And from from ufology.

Ufology is riddled with people who do not know folklore, they don't know mythology.

It's I, I have friends that are ufologists, so I'm not trying to frown on them or anything like that.

My point though, is my research now is centered around the occupants of the craft.

2:44

I am not an automobile enthusiast.

I want to know honestly, because here's the thing, you know, we have people that though they'll speculate everything.

And I, I love doing that.

By the way, I'm a theorist myself.

But I think it it's high time that if people are going out to theorize about the phenomenon, I would expect them to having set with it, right?

3:06

Not just read a book or two, but actually go and do in the, you know, in home investigations and field work.

And and then once they've actually experienced this thing, they'll come to different conclusions.

But that's where I'm at right now.

I think that that the field is changing.

3:23

We're asking better questions and perhaps that's enough.

Maybe, I don't know.

One thing that I've noticed is a shift in the conversation.

At least, you know, from the outside where I see less and less of the like they're from Beta Centura and they travelled light years to be here.

3:39

It seems like people are landing around this kind of idea of interdimensional beings or beings that are actually maybe ultra terrestrial.

I'm hearing that term a lot more because the conversation also, I just want to point out, I mean, it's, you know, I saw Fox News the other day talking about four types of aliens.

3:57

Yeah.

Grays, Nordics, reptilians and Insectilans and you're like, OK, Overton windows moved substantially here.

Zooming out of that, like I want to come back to this idea of like, where where are these beings or entities or whatever this phenomena is, where is it coming from?

4:13

But first, I guess what's going on with this closure?

You know, I was quite surprised with what came out on the Epstein files.

Now, that came out because of legal reason, right?

Well, this is the executive order.

I did not expect some of that stuff to make the light of day.

But what's coming out here so far has been pretty milk toast.

4:31

I'm not real impressed with what I've seen, but they keep promising more.

So what's happening do you think?

I, I just think that entire field of Ufology is they're asking the wrong questions.

James Lakatsky is one of my favorite researchers.

4:46

He's the pretty much the biggest connection we have to the government and their, their team of researchers.

He wrote a book called Future Visions, and in it he details his investigation into the phenomenon, specifically how it originated in his work.

5:02

And he's like, you know, I was a contract out to, to research UF OS UA PS And he's like, and I thought that I was just investigating that field.

He's like, so I'm gung ho, right?

I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm got my scientific method available, right?

5:18

I got all my instruments and we're out there researching craft in the sky.

He's like, but then we actually sat down with with witnesses of UA PS and we realized that we weren't studying UFOs at all because people were witnessing these craft in the sky and then going home to malevolent hauntings, right?

5:40

And in shadow figures and just apparitions that were haunting them.

And it all stemmed from them witnessing a craft in the sky.

And so James Lakatsky said, well, we have a significant issue because first of all, I'm not researching what I thought I was.

5:59

I'm researching something else that exists underneath the umbrella of the paranormal.

It's not a class in and of itself, right?

It's not mutually exclusive.

No, it's something entirely different, and that's where I'm at now.

The problem is, again, that if, if disclosure's going to come from ufologists, we've missed the plot entirely.

6:20

Here's why.

Because we have UFOs in homes and we have hauntings in the sky, then what are we studying, right?

What are we even doing?

And so that's what I'm fed up with it.

It's like, well, what?

Why am I even?

6:37

By the way, I'm not invited to conferences.

But if I were, I'd be like, well, well, why am I even here?

Because we're not studying automobiles.

We're studying phenomenology.

We're studying the way that the intelligence interacts with our perception.

6:54

And so it's when it's when I see that, yeah, we've had UFOs and hunting, huntings and houses.

Jack Hernandez, a San Pedro haunting of Doctor Barry Tams.

Research lights.

All right, This will blow your mind.

Lights were in the house, but and they're floating around and they're projecting physiological constructs.

7:16

The only difference between that and the UFO is altitude.

Yeah.

And guess what?

Here's the issue I'm having.

If that is up there, what else are they projecting in our atmosphere that we are considering solid and real?

7:37

That's why Lakatsky said in his investigation.

I have to quote right in front of me.

He's talking to these, these witnesses.

He's like, OK, was the craft metallic or was it solid looking?

In other words, there is a marked distinction.

Not everything that is solid looking is solid.

7:57

It appears as such.

And so I'm afraid that if Ufology is going to carry the mantle of disclosure, we've missed the plot entirely because we're we're missing it in the phenomenology.

Let's have a seat.

8:12

Let's talk about what's actually going on.

Because if it's just UFOs, it's not.

And if all we're studying UFOs, we've missed the moment entirely.

And we're going to, we're going to miss it so much so that we're going to reframe the phenomenon in a way that's not accurate to the actual data.

8:31

And that's why I'm utterly frustrated.

So for the listener who's not, you know, initiated in this way of thinking, you're suggesting that what we're seeing in the skies are less, like you said, less, you know, racy sports cars and more projections or more of a haunting than a physical phenomenon.

8:53

And that it's interrelated with things that it shouldn't be if it was what we're told it is.

In other words, if it was, you know, beings coming from other planets, why would it be wrapped up with hauntings and apparitions and occultic kind of things?

Right.

9:08

Because absolutely, that's exactly what I'm alleging here.

And the issue, it arises when you look at hauntings, when Lakatsuki said, OK, these people are being haunted.

That's the entire field of research that ufologists are not doing right.

9:24

They think, OK, we're carrying the cross of disclosure, and the Messiah complex arises to where they're trying to redefine the phenomenon.

It's like, no, no, hold on a minute, Let's go into hauntings.

We have to actually go into that field.

Look at the case studies.

9:40

And the case studies are alarming.

I mean, look at the San Pedro haunting with Doctor Barry Teff.

He collected human blood plasma pouring from the cupboards.

My friend.

Wow.

So again, it's not at all what I thought we were researching.

9:55

I was like, you know, kind of like the catsky, you know, this is you followers and all that.

Not at all friend.

It's it's something completely different.

And I'm to the point now, like I said before, where we have UFOs and Holmes and hauntings in the sky.

In the 1600's, the Battle of Edge Hill took place.

10:13

There were thousands that that, you know, lost their lives in that that battle. 30 like 2530 years later, witnesses in England watch the sky as it was haunted.

This blew my mind by the way, where they're watching like apparitions go to war.

10:34

Oh wow.

It's documented as much as it could have been at the time.

And one of the witness witnesses go to, goes to the priest and the priest comes around, he goes, I don't know what I'm watching, watching what's going on here.

So then they go to the mayor, they go to the governor.

The governor comes out with other soldiers who fought in the war, and they're watching as these apparitions are just going to, that's a haunting in the sky.

11:00

So what I'm realizing is that that's kind of backwards, right?

It should be UFOs in the sky and, you know, hauntings in the houses.

No, we've got UFOs in homes and hauntings in the sky.

So what are we really researching then?

Yeah.

That's wild.

11:16

There's this, let's say, I don't know what to call it, like the, the Joe Rogan kind of Jesse Michaels UFO industrial complex or whatever.

This, this kind of idea of like these benevolent beings are going to come here and raise our consciousness and save us and give us technology and all of that.

11:34

And maybe on the other end, you have kind of like ideas, like Jack Valley's ideas of like, hey, these might be very deceptive beings and it seems like people are actually really harmed by them.

Just putting that out there is like the spectrum that the public is seeing right now because the public's trying to sort through this, obviously very slowly.

11:52

And, and some people are very aware of it.

Some people are just becoming aware of it.

But again, Fox News is talking about Insectowins or whatever.

So people are going to be sorting through this, right?

And so one idea is their saviours.

One idea is they're deceptive.

And then you have the constant, you know, the Evangelical church is just constant demons, demons, demons, demons, demons because they're prepped for such a big deception.

12:13

Given those 3 camps, What I guess how do you respond to that?

It's not really a question, but like that's three camps that I'm seeing and I'm hearing your voice saying something kind of a like a little bit different and and weirder and and honestly creepier too.

It's way creepy.

It's way creepy.

12:28

I mean, we've got cases and hauntings that I mean with those various models of the phenomenon.

I think that we are being manipulated as a species.

Whatever we're dealing with has mapped us out and it's clocked us, as some of my young cousins say, right?

12:48

They clock you clock that they've clocked us, Daniel, And they know us on a consciousness level, not just on a biological level.

They understand consciousness in ways that we will never even imagine.

The nature of this phenomenon may be a mystery, but you know what isn't?

13:06

The value of whole, intact bovine colostrum.

I've been in the colostrum business for almost 20 years and in that time I've watched dozens of companies, especially today, sell cheap D fatted, adulterated, instantized fractions of colostrum.

13:23

Now they always say the same thing.

They call it colostrum as if they're selling you the whole food form.

That's like.

Calling white flour whole wheat berries.

We're calling whey protein whole milk, but Sir Thrival is different.

We have always carried the highest grade of whole intact colostrum and we carry it in one and 2K packages, giving you the best price you'll find anywhere.

13:47

If you're serious about immune health, gut lining integrity, or recovery and adaptations from your workouts, you want colostrum in your diet daily.

The very best and the best value is at sirthrival.com.

For one thing, it's something that I'm so fascinated by as of late is well, if they can be invisible, why would they want to be witnessed by us?

14:11

Right.

And what I'm realizing now in the data is that when we do witness them, it's usually an interface.

It's not really what they look like.

And so, and again, when we're dealing with apparitions and hauntings, we're dealing with orbs, balls of light that will diversify themselves.

14:29

They will project an apparition that looks as real as real can possibly be to the point where these witnesses will interact with these apparitions.

OK, San Pedro hunting again, Jack Hernandez.

She walks into her room and she sees what looks to be a corpse sitting on her bed.

14:49

He's Gray.

He's old.

He has a, he has a checkered shirt on.

His pants are, you know, high waisted.

And he's just staring at her.

And when Doctor Taff said no, was it an apparition?

She said no, right.

In other words, it wasn't like some translucent image.

15:07

It was like, you would be right or me, if we just hung out one day and and and killed a bunch of chicken wings, which hopefully we do right one day.

It would just be like us hanging out, like we would look real to each other.

That's exactly what she witnessed.

15:23

And even again, the same case study, they cornered one of these orbs in A room and it's shooting off these these lights.

All of a sudden it goes boom and there is an apparition staring at Doctor Taft.

15:40

He's a he's, it's, it's just half a body, though, but it's waist up.

It's an animated man by the way, he's looking at them intensely and he's moving.

He's animated.

That's supposed to be right.

What we're researching.

The problem is that we were not prepared for these entities to diversify themselves, because if we went around and documented the presence of an apparition, not realizing it came from an orb, that we have been mythologizing the mask.

16:08

OK, wow.

Mythologizing the mask.

In other words, the orb projects an image.

We've become obsessed with the image.

OK, so it's a bit like a Plato's cave in a sense.

We're looking at the the shadow on the wall and not realizing that something's casting the shadow just behind us.

16:28

Yes.

One caveat, because I love that allegory, is that the phenomenon is both the shadows and the fire.

It is projecting, right?

It's not like, OK, well, I believe I'm a reality.

No, no, no, no.

It's causing us to go out and document cases Where?

16:47

OK, how many T-shirts have you seen in conferences?

Right.

Where?

Ghost hunting.

OK, what is that exactly?

Right.

And it gets down to this idea that, OK, the phenomenon uses these interfaces to interact.

So it could be present with but absent from what's present with us.

17:05

My different is the mask.

It's possible, and I, I hate to be, I hate to say this, it's possible.

We've never truly seen its face.

We've only seen its interface, the mediator, the connective tissue between our perception and what it wants us to see.

17:27

And the problem is this.

We are a visual species.

We determined, at least in our biology, we determine threats by what we see.

And so the phenomenon, we'll say, OK, I'm Darren Edna, right?

17:43

Why?

Because it's, it's diversifying itself.

First of all, if that's the interface.

So if you could be invisible, why would you want to be witnessed by me?

What is actually going on here?

And so I am more along the lines of consciousness being hijacked and manipulated then I am about, you know, and by the way, I'm a car guy.

18:02

I love to go, go car shows, you know, smoke a cigar and all that.

I love that.

But I'm not an automobile enthusiast when it comes to the phenomenon because I've set in houses with families who have absolutely been devastated by this stuff.

18:19

And if all we're doing again is saying, OK, look at this car door, look at these wheels, wow, can it do amazing things.

That's great.

But why is it that I have cases where the people, literally the dogs have to go to the bed, the wife has to go to the doctor, the husband feels like he's dying.

18:40

He's got a he's got a triangle shaped scar on his head where something burned an image into a scalp.

If I were to go in there and say, well, this is a side truth, well, it's just nepheline.

Have a good night, guys.

Have a good night.

18:57

What are we doing?

Or, or I don't know much about what they are, but I can tell you what they're driving.

No, it will not work.

And I apologize for my passion, but we're going to have different conversations than that.

And and This is why I'm saying like you know, if disclosure is coming from ufology, we, we got it all all wrong though.

19:21

So do you think that, OK, you've got all these actors in our government right now?

Two that come to mind, Anna Paulina Luna, the the Republican congresswoman from Florida, and then Tim Burchett from Morsi, from Tennessee, I think.

And they're out there saying a lot of things, right, trying to drive this, they're driving this narrative.

19:42

And then you have all of these other Grush and these other characters, Lou Elizondo, who are claiming to have, you know, researched this phenomena for the government and they talk about us being in possession of craft and biologics and all of this From your perspective, are these people.

20:02

Lying are these people, do they believe what they're saying?

Are they are they acting on behalf?

Is this disinformation from the government or is it going to be disinformation from these entities we're discussing?

But like, how do you read all of that?

Because we're, we're being, yeah, I'm seeing it from every direction right now.

20:21

I'm just coming from everywhere such that at first I was like, oh, I see it's soft disclosure.

They leak it out a bit and a bit.

But now I'm like, no, it's coming from every direction.

I'm getting inundated with this as if I'm being prepared to receive some new message or some, some revelation.

20:36

So I'm, I'm trying to, I don't really trust any of it.

So I'm trying to sort through it.

Yeah.

So who are, what are these people talking about, do you think?

And do they have craft?

Well.

You said blood could come out of a cabinet, like actually these devices for US essentially to play with.

20:53

Well, you hit it on the head here pallet.

So yeah, they can manifest whatever they want to whatever they want to.

The school experiment in the in England in the in the 90s, they actually had like the phenomenon.

OK, they're doing seances and they're they're conjuring the phenomenon.

21:11

The phenomenon was manifesting solid objects to the touch and then somebody else would go and touch it and go right through the object right hand.

There's nothing there.

Now I'm going to ask you a question because it's it's so fascinating to me the way they word things.

21:29

If I were to tell you that we have non human biologics, what would that mean to you?

Right?

Because we're open source researchers, right?

We would hear what you know, we hear.

It's called non human biologics.

That kind of sounds like they have bodies.

21:45

It's not true.

It's not true at all.

It goes back to Peter Lavender and Michael Aquino, who by the way, Aquino was in charge of psychological operations.

He contracted with the government.

He was also also Nicole Test where he first of all, he left the Church of Satan in 75 and he started the what's called the temple of Set.

22:08

This the guy with the creepy eyebrows?

Creepy.

You know how he's like, he's playing, like, staying up all night.

Like, yeah.

Twiggling them, yeah.

Creepy man.

Creepy.

But anyways, Peter Lavender was in an e-mail exchange with Michael Aquino.

And again, Michael Aquino is an occultist.

22:27

He's a conjurer.

In fact, he went to Levay and said, look, I'm not a part of the Church of Satan because I believe Satan's a metaphor, right?

I'm not a I'm not a protagonist.

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not anti God.

That's not why I'm here.

I'm here because an entity came to me.

22:45

That's what it that's what it came to said an entity came to me and told me that he is Satan.

He's a real entity and this is going to blow your mind.

And that his real name is Sat.

He's an Egyptian deity.

That's the guy that Lupita Lavinda was in contact with in.

23:01

The military guy, right?

Like this military guy.

High-ranking military.

Military guy.

Now that that's really creepy, but we got to do our show on that man, That's really weird.

But watch that.

So so Lavinda is is in a conversation with with Aquino.

And again, Aquino's in the government at this point and he's in charge of literal psyops.

23:22

Like not like conspiracy science, but literally that's his job.

But that's his job.

So Lavinda goes, he goes.

You know, Michael, he goes, something bothers me, he goes.

You mentioned the other day something about how we have non human biologics.

23:38

What does that mean?

We have bodies.

Listen to the word play.

You see, they're confident that we'll hear it and we'll come to a conclusion they want us to come to without giving us the proper definitions of the terms they're employing.

So are they lying?

23:56

And Aquino says non human biologics question mark Yeah, that's not bodies.

He said.

Whenever one of our one of our aircraft or specifically our rockets, whenever they we reenters, we said reenter the Earth's atmosphere, any of the dirt that it collect, this is not mind blowing.

24:17

Any of the dirt that's collected on the bottom of the rocket when it reenters the Earth's atmosphere, that's not human biologics.

So when we hear.

People say right underoath, yeah, we have non human biologics.

They're relying on our ignorance.

24:35

I mean, yeah, that.

That could be panda toenails would be non human biologics I mean.

Panda Toenails.

That's a good rock rock band named Panda Toenails.

You know, yes, absolutely.

You, you, you, you've got it.

And but it it goes to show you how far they're willing to go.

24:54

To to lead.

Us to a certain conclusion.

Meanwhile, behind closed doors, they're like, yeah, Can you believe they really bought that?

Insane.

That's part of what?

Really is bothering me about it because I keep saying to friends, I keep saying this and I feel like some people hear it and some people are like, I don't really get what you mean, but I keep going.

25:10

What's scarier to you?

That there are aliens or that the government's trying to make you think there's aliens?

Because to me, if you play that card and you're discovered, your credibility is forever destroyed, right?

Like there's like that's a, if the government is trying to convince the public that there is a war going on in heaven or that there are beings coming here and that's not true, Boy, that's a pretty harsh indictment.

25:39

And I'm curious to your take on, you know, there's there's the claim that Wernher von Braun on his deathbed said, you know, there's going to be a series of deceptions.

It's going to be the Russians are against us.

Then it's going to be terrorists.

25:54

Then it's going to be asteroids.

Then it's going to be we're being attacked by extraterrestrials.

And there's this obviously this through line in the conspiracy world of Project Bluebeam.

And this idea of a fake alien invasion just keeps coming and coming.

And then it dovetails again with the evangelical kind of Revelation view that there's a great deception coming.

26:13

And so so.

It's feels to.

Me that we're being led to believe something.

I feel like each day that goes by, I'm getting bread crumbs that are causing me to form a worldview that if I'm not careful is is preparing to see some kind of beings right come here and do whatever they're going to tell us they're doing.

26:34

So is this a deception like, you know, is our government working with these entities or being deceived by these entities?

I think.

Both, I think both.

And that's a sad conclusion.

I didn't want to come to that conclusion, but that's where my research led me.

26:52

I mean, and I'll tell you this too, there seems to be.

And this is really dark.

And deep a secondary government in this world.

We've, we saw them first when they're really glitches in the matrix, when, when men in black show up to your doorstep.

27:11

And this is comes from I think it was Tammy Stone's case study where she's an abductee and she had an out of body experience during her abduction.

And she literally is waking up the next morning brushing her teeth, trying to understand what, what actually happened to her the night before.

27:28

She gets a knock on the door and she she opens the door and there are two government officials.

Hello, Miss Stone, we're here because I'm going to ask you some questions.

Did you have a weird dream last night about being pulled out of your body?

27:45

Huh.

Right.

And then she's like, well, I haven't even told my mother that.

How did you know?

So there is this again.

And I I I I don't really like the term deep state because it has so many implications, but there is some kind of paranormal deep state breakaway.

28:01

Civilization is that too?

Far.

I mean, no, it's not under giant underground bases.

They're they're everywhere.

They're they're right here.

First of all, Daniel, they're right here.

They're not out there.

They're here.

OK, let's let's dive into that narrative for a second.

28:18

And it's not a narrative.

It's actually good research.

Let's go to the Skinwalker Ranch when they were doing thermal imaging.

And one of their.

Researchers is like, Josh, come here, You got to see this on the camera, Daniel, there is a skyscraper.

28:39

It's in the.

Basin.

It's a skyscraper.

Something out of Chicago, something out of New York City.

And they're going.

What is that?

So they send out one of their guys.

OK, here's the here's the coordinates.

28:54

Right?

Oh, you know, Hey, Jack, you're 200 feet off.

You got to keep going.

Keep going.

Now you're there.

Do you see anything?

Nothing's here.

Well, well.

And This is why I'm not settling for well, here's what a UFO is what we got.

29:10

Skyscrapers.

See what I'm doing?

Skyscrapers that are, again, they're not in the sky.

I get.

It's like, it's like, oh, it's right here.

Here and and.

It was another civilization and I know I sound I, I know I sound crazy, a little crazy, but I like a.

29:29

Little crazy.

Thanks but I'm just passionate man and this research is the only thing I'm good at so I'm just trying to pin going.

Down there, I want to try to pin something down here.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Is.

This construct?

No, I'm a construct.

OK, so I used to go down to the desert of Arizona and catch Bufo toads and squeeze their glands and we'd smoke that and for a minute.

29:54

But one minute you, you forget you exist.

You dissolve completely.

Your ego's gone.

And then when you come back into your body, it's kind of a bummer.

You're like, oh, man, me again, you know?

Oh no.

Pretty good where I was.

I I would feel like.

That definitely.

30:10

I'm like, oh God.

Oh yeah, all my.

Problems back again, but but I bring it up because when you come back, the immediate sense I had was the first time especially was oh, this isn't even real this reality is not even real.

30:26

This is like a this is a dream.

This is a a a construct.

This is a SIM.

This is a creation and whatever you want to call it, but it's it's just one very thin bandwidth of.

Infinity, right?

Are.

30:42

They.

I'm getting the impression you're saying they're not projecting a hologram the way we would think of it.

They're projecting into consciousness.

They're manipulating the the base reality that we are interpreting to be real.

31:01

Yes, Sir.

Absolutely.

I'm a big fan of The Matrix, by the way, but I'm an even bigger fan of Dark City.

Yeah, what a dark.

Movie, that is and.

Yeah, I it's like probably Dark City, Twister and Tombstone for me, by the way.

Anyways, my friend, yes, they're projecting consciousness and creating constructs out of it.

31:23

And the Collins elite realized that that's what they stumbled over in the 50s.

Now, what I mean when I say we live in a construct, I would not be surprised, honestly, if it turns out.

And there's a lot of data points that point to this, by the way, that we are in The Truman Show, essentially where everything is scripted.

31:45

My dear friend Steve Mirra.

And he, he, he's a great guy, but he's probably the leading parapsychologist.

You got to talk to him and you'll love him in the world, pal.

You would love him to death.

But anyways, Steve, his name is Steve Mirra.

Yes, Sir, I can get you guys in contact with him.

32:01

That'd be great.

But anyways, Steve was like experimenting with the phenomenon and, and during doing like EVP work and the phenomenon was like, yeah, listen, you're going to be at a conference and they start detailing where he's going to be up to the about 1614 to 16 months in the future.

32:21

And it would happen.

And, and Steve is like wondering because he's brilliant.

Guys like this ain't right.

I thought, I have free will.

And so another message came to him, OK, this is where you're going to be at this certain time in the future.

And so he like of the Tribbett Show, if you remember that one moment when he's got Laura Linney in his car and he's like, OK, watch this.

32:43

He turns the left instead of right, you know?

And they were like, oh, no.

And they come collapsing on to him.

That's what happened.

He's like, he's like, it got to a point, buddy.

He's telling me he's like, it got to a point where I did everything I was not going to do.

I just did everything the opposite.

I cancelled a bunch of plans, right?

33:00

You know, if I was going to go out tonight, I just sat home and watched Frasier, you know, shot the Fraser.

He's like, you know, I did everything opposite and he's like, next thing I know, right?

I'm right where they told me I was going to be.

So there is honestly, I would not be surprised if it's not aliens at all.

33:20

Honestly, I would not be surprised.

Then I'm going to tell you a story after this to kind of tie this together.

If it's not humans here, we can't see them.

We can't.

So another story for you.

This is this is amazing.

Did you just say?

33:36

You.

You.

Are you saying?

You wouldn't be surprised if it was actually humans.

I would not be surprised.

In other words.

That this might be it might be other humans, yes.

Living.

Or not in the way that we think of living or.

33:53

That's a good point.

Yeah, I don't, I don't know.

I, I, I don't know how they would exist.

I don't know what they're made of.

But I would not be surprised.

I mean, who built a skyscraper like that?

Right.

That's like, that's ridiculous.

You know, like, what is that?

That's not like some alien pod.

34:10

It's literally like you're in Chicago.

Like what is this?

So wait, wait, going.

Back to that skyscraper, then you're insinuating that it wasn't an apparition of a skyscraper, but actually a revelation of a another place.

And they they were living here.

We live urban.

34:26

Can I ask you one question?

I want to hear your story, but I just want to ask this do you think that the technologies that are rapidly upon us?

Come from them.

Or from us.

I think it's both.

I think it's both.

I think that whatever they are, they do give us insights.

34:42

You know, I, I do believe that.

I mean, I know people that have had dreams and then created multi $1,000,000 companies out of it.

Like an entity, like literally an entity, not a person.

Let's say a person is coming.

Oh, yeah, By the way, you might want to do AB and C.

And then they wake up and like, OK, I don't know why.

34:58

And it's a complete life change, right?

Complete, like career shift.

And they go into that business and other millions.

So I think that there is a measure of technology that is inspired by them.

But here's the problem.

A lot of the technology we're using to measure the phenomenon has been given to us by the phenomenon, right?

35:22

So that's a control mechanism.

That's another way to control the interface.

I'm only going to let you measure me right with my tools.

In other.

Words again, it's, it's not disclosure.

It's like, well, that's all we have, right?

35:39

It's another manipulation.

So years ago I met a lady and when we first started talking she had a huge scar.

And.

I noticed it.

It's like, OK, you know, how you doing everything.

35:55

And we're, we're we're catched up and everything.

And she goes, Nathaniel, she goes, I know you want to ask, go ahead.

And I'm like, OK, what, what happened?

And she goes, thank you for asking.

36:11

I was like, oh God, right.

But no, she's like, yeah, she goes years and years ago.

She's like, I, I worked as an EMS individuals associate, whatever they call them.

And she's like, you know, I'm in the she goes, I got a call, she goes, I'm in the ambulance.

I'm flying down the highway.

36:27

This blew my mind, dude.

It gave me chills.

I was like, there's no way.

She goes and I hit black ice and I'm ejected out of the ambulance.

My head hits the median.

Bam.

She said it.

Dissolved all of the connective tissue in my skull.

36:45

She goes and at the time we were like sitting in front of her house.

She goes, I can't even walk down the driveway.

She goes that's why I didn't walk down in the driveway to hang out with you.

She goes I had to sit up here.

She goes, if I fall right, I'm out, I'm done.

And she's in like, OK, like what's that's wild.

37:03

She's no she goes at a near death experience.

I said OK, She said.

I remember just opening my eyes into another reality.

She said and I'm.

There, looking at my father, who she's like and I've I've lost him 15 years ago.

37:23

And she said.

The colors were brighter, she goes.

It wasn't that I was breathing or not breathing.

I just, I had my own body.

I still have my body, she goes.

I'm looking at him and his first words go, It's crazy.

He goes, what are you doing here?

Right.

37:41

And she's.

Like, oh, I have no idea.

She goes, the last thing I remember was I, I got in a really bad wreck.

I don't know if I'm dead or what, but I, I know I'm not doing good out there or down there, wherever there is.

She's like, but I know that I don't feel sick anymore.

37:58

I'm not hurt anymore here.

And it's hyper real.

She's like, you know what?

I think it was more real than reality than this world.

And I said, OK, you know, I knew this was leading up to something and it kind of ruined my day because I, you know, I'm ADHD, pal.

38:14

So the rest of my day I'm like, what does that even mean?

She goes, my father looked at me and said, it's not your time yet.

You have to go back for your boys.

And I'm like.

Oh, no, because I knew the other, the other foot's going to drop right then, she said.

38:30

But Nathaniel, I didn't have my twin boys for a decade.

Yeah.

Boom, What are we dealing with?

What are we dealing with?

You know, again, we can get to to so many stories, but we have cases where beings just show up, walk through the walls.

38:49

No.

Something that I knew addressed too.

And then Steve and I have covered this extensively on NHI discussions, but what we're looking at are entities and craft that and Jacques Ley had one of these cases where it it goes through trees at an angle.

39:06

Does it disturb the tree line at all?

But when?

It lands on the turf.

It disturbs the turf.

Here's a theory, right?

It's not transplacing itself, it's the fact that those trees don't exist where in, when it's at, it's not there.

39:24

The geography does not exist for that craft, right in the only space we share with it is the turf that it disturbs.

So.

Now.

These are crazy theories, I understand, but now we go back into entities when they're walking through walls.

39:43

Why?

Because it doesn't exist for them.

It.

Doesn't same thing in ontology.

I I have a a video in my files of a shadow figure.

Again, this is what Lakatsuki is trying to articulate.

It's not your fault, it's something completely.

39:59

It's stranger where a shadow figures walking through a hallway and you see him.

It's just a shadow.

It's looks like a big guy, big burly guy.

And he walks through the hallway, opens the the door of a bedroom.

The door swings up.

And why?

Because he shares that part of geography with us.

40:16

But then he and then he opens up the door of the closet and walks right through the closet.

Why?

Because that is where he exists.

And there's a fleeting moment where these realities blend right in these entities.

40:32

This is crazy, I know, but I'm already, I'm already there, guys.

So in these entities know when that comes around enough to go.

Yeah.

Now they also know when it comes around enough to pull us out.

40:49

Example example.

Yes, that's an out of body experience.

That's a near death experience.

My buddy Joshua Cutchi, you probably want to talk to him too.

He has a book called The Ecology of Souls where literal people, this is wild.

41:06

Oh my God.

We're these people are being abducted and they're on this craft.

OK.

And.

There's a woman that walks up to them and I'm going to paraphrase one of the case studies.

It'll blow your mind, man.

Hi, I'm Becky and I died today.

What?

41:24

Yeah, I died today.

I'm here now.

I don't know why.

Well, again, one is deceased, the others an abductee, and the abductees, like, there's no way.

There's no I'm trying to have an alien.

Abduction here.

What are you doing with?

What are you doing?

Like, come on.

41:40

Yeah, yeah, I won't be mad, Right.

Like, where am I aliens at?

But again, that's a ghost, see.

And so this, Yeah, the, the, the person's like, listen, here's my name.

Here's my address.

Look me up.

41:57

And that.

Abductee leaves again that environment when it when it folds and there's going to connective tissue leaves that environment comes back to this environment and goes bam, they did die that day.

So here's the here's the the implications.

42:15

Either they know who dies, who's going to die or and and actually manifest as that person, right, which is really evil, or that that's actually somebody right that that is that transitioned.

42:35

So my point though is on that craft.

Though it's like, yes, taking that craft to the other side.

What does that mean?

Ray Fowler is a researcher.

He's dead now.

But Ray Fowler had a theory.

And again, guys, I I'm just talking shop here, just providing different models of the phenomenon that fascinated me.

42:54

But Ray Fowler said that they are the butterfly form of us and we are the larva form of them.

Now, if you take that to Michael Masters theory where they are US in the future, Yeah.

But that's that's that's time.

What about existence?

43:10

What about ontology?

And so we get into this space where it's like, again, we're kind of safe with UFOs because when we talk about this stuff, it's like, that's that's weird.

And it's stuff that nobody wants to talk about.

But these cases exist, and it's worth discussing.

43:30

I got a pretty.

Big background studying the difference between wild creatures and domesticated creatures.

And you know, I'm pretty fascinated by that.

And so I, I grabbed this quote of yours that really stood out to me.

It says that we must never let the others and you have others all caps.

43:45

We must never let the others domesticate consciousness.

And so it leads me to this question.

So to what end is it?

Is this a farm?

Is this, are we food?

Are we fuel?

Are we?

Resource of some.

Kind like if I think of why we domesticate things, sometimes it's food, sometimes it's a product like we want, you know, their silk or something like their fur pellet.

44:09

Sometimes it's we want their labor.

What to what end?

What, what would we provide?

Why?

Why would entities that appear to be this advanced have it?

First of all, if it's us in some future time space, why deceive us and why harm us?

44:28

So like, so to what end?

Well.

I believe we are in a parasitic relationship with the phenomenon.

I do too.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, you know, I wish it was different, but that's the data.

44:44

I had a word from you too.

Today, neuroparasitology, it's.

One of those big ones, yeah, yeah, yeah, I well, of course it is parasitic.

And and column Callagher mentioned this, he was a little one of the lead, if not the leading scientists from the National Institute of Discovery Science and Bigelow's group, he talks about, yeah, we are in a relationship with a parasitic presence.

45:10

And my point, though, is that yes, I think they're OK.

Let's go to a case.

Study that Gary Nolan had in France.

This will freak you out even more.

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A little girl.

Is in a car and she looks up for the sunroof and she sees a craft or the craft, right?

46:53

Wants to be seen by her.

She locks eyes on it, It creates A conscious connection with her.

Then she begins to describe what she's witnessing with her eyes to her mother, and her mother takes out her Apple iPhone and goes, snap, I got a picture of it.

47:15

The problem is what the what the daughter witness with her eyes was completely different than what came up on camera.

But she did get.

Something on camera.

She did get something.

Now here's the question.

There should be 1.

There's two now.

47:32

Oh my God, where'd the second one come from?

It came.

From the conscious connection the phenomenon created with her.

And now she sees a craft now something that that Steve and I have been bouncing around.

It's actually really terrifying.

47:48

This is probably the darkest theory I have was that something caused her to observe it, and as she was observing it, it pulled something out of her consciousness and she's seeing it now.

Those are two different craft.

48:03

Which one's real and why?

See the Collins.

Elite research.

What they got down to was absolutely fair.

We give a little background.

For people who aren't familiar, I you know, and the book is what final events?

I highly highly recommend this book.

Oh, it's wild.

48:19

It's so it's a wild ride.

Yeah.

The Collins elite were a group of of physicists in the Department of Defense who were fascinated by the occult connection, the connective tissue between ufology and ritual magic.

48:36

And so they investigated Jack Parsons and and just they talked to Sybil League and people like to to paint them as fundamentalists, which is wild because that's where they began.

That's not where they ended up.

Oh, that's.

Interesting to know, because the book kind of ends painting them as Christian fundamentalists.

48:53

Oh yeah, yeah.

Well.

I grew up in evangelicalism, OK, my dad's a pastor.

I have the actual document that is basically the the entire collective writings and communications between Ray Boucher, Linda Moulton Howe and the conflict.

49:09

So I have the whole file and no, you're ready for this, pal.

They believed, and their research LED them to believe, that we live in a hologram.

And.

That really resonates.

49:25

With me based on my of course of course.

Man, you know, I think that anybody, any rational researcher would come to that conclusion.

You know, like, hey, listen, this is where we're at.

My point, though, is the Collins elite discovered that we live in a hologram and then they went into this kind of monolith phenomenon that that that I'm leaning into heavily.

49:42

Is that that practitioners of the occult in the government?

We're performing.

Ceremonial magic.

And they were projecting their consciousness.

Oh man.

And they're projecting their intention and consciousness out of their bodies collectively.

49:59

Stark City, right?

They're tuning and as they're tuning, right, constructs are emerging buildings, right?

And people think that's reality.

Mind blowing.

But the college, Elise said, OK, these people were actually projecting their consciousness and intention collectively into another environment.

50:20

And they were creating physiological constructs with their collective projected consciousness.

So much so that witnesses in that other environment were perceiving their constructs as UFOs.

50:39

OK.

OK, that starts to make sense to me now.

So the the UFOs may be projections of the consciousness of the conjurors themselves 100%.

Now that's why reality doesn't exist for wow.

So it's crazy.

50:55

OK, Peter Levinda.

One of my favorite researchers because we can we're on the different into the spectrum.

He and I spectrum he and IA good guy.

And but he he wrote a book and he wrote it.

He helped write a series of books called Secret Machines with Tom Delong AJ Hartley.

51:13

But one of his theories was that yes, that that a lot of these UAPSUFOS are actually projections of ceremonial magicians.

Wow.

Interdimensional outside of the construct, and they're projecting their consciousness inside of the construct.

51:36

Now we got time.

We good now.

Now please.

Now we're going to get into some of the USSR parapsychological research in the 70s.

They were in right today Russia, but USSR then they were performing experiments in a controlled laboratory and they had an individual there and they, they placed a blank piece of paper in an envelope, taped the envelope to the practitioner's head, OK, and said, OK, project your consciousness into that envelope.

52:09

OK, so they go through the process, right?

And and then out of Noah, that's OK.

Not just that.

We want you to project your consciousness to the point where we want you to carve symbols into that piece of paper.

And they did it, my friend.

So then this is my blog.

52:25

Then they did this.

It's OK.

We're going to take a step further, 20 feet away.

We're going to place, we're going to place the envelope 20 feet away, OK.

And then we're going to do the same thing.

What happened between then and and before is that from the mind of the practitioner, consciousness was projected and there's a translucent cloud of energy that evolved and merged and transferred and hovered like a cloud.

52:50

Translucent cloud, by the way, visible to.

Visible my.

Friend, Oh my gosh, you're going to love this.

And so it's floating through right the room and they're watching this eyes as big as saucers.

53:06

What is that?

And it moves across the room and it descends now down upon, upon the the envelope.

And next thing they know, they wait a little bit, right?

They take it.

They're just, you know, open it up.

And the person had carved symbols into that piece of paper from 20 feet away.

53:29

Now, there are two things that is worth noting #1 symbols occurred by virtue of projected consciousness.

OK.

Then we have this activity.

We have the translucent cloud.

It's called a bio field.

Inside the cloud are are orbs.

53:45

Now it was documented as ball lightning OK.

As ball lightning.

So I'm going same thing, right?

Yeah.

Well, what what what they what they realized was no like consciousness can be viewed as a cloud right after it leaves the body and inside that cloud are corpuscular balls of light we would call orbs.

54:06

Again, it's the projected consciousness model.

Now I have a case study of doctor Carla Turner's OK and Doctor Turner had it's fascinating.

And I, I've worked with the family as well that that this happened to the husband and the the father and the son are in the living room.

54:23

They're watching television.

The mother is sleeping next to them.

OK.

And as they're watching television, my friend, here comes the same kind of translucent cloud, right?

It's hovering.

It went through the hallway into the living room.

54:40

It descends down upon the sleeping mother. 40 minutes later, she says I was abducted by an alien.

The problem is.

My friend, she woke up with sigils on her body.

Where'd that come?

From like, it's the same thing with a vendor's model, right?

54:59

That came from a practitioner projecting his or her consciousness into that woman's body.

So what?

We're looking at and this is my model of phenomenon is yes, these seem to be prep a species of practitioners my friend and the colons at least stumbled over that Peter Levento stumbled over it.

55:24

I stumbled over in my incubile research.

So it's possible that a lot of what we're witnessing and experiencing in Ufology, right?

I mean.

Matthew Roberts do my ADHD is kicking it buddy and I'm feeling really comfortable with you.

55:41

So I'm just hanging out real quick.

Please.

Matthew Roberts OK, again what I got the quote here.

What did the what did what Katzke say?

It starts out with witnessing the craft, right?

And So what happens is Matthew Roberts is is he witnesses the gimbal.

55:57

You may pee.

That was the phenomenon catching his eye, right?

It wants to be seen.

Now it can be invisible, but why would it want to be seen?

So it's observed and he lays eyes on it.

He goes home.

This is crazy.

And he's sleeping in the middle of the night, and a voice comes to him and begins to give him instructions on which occult literature to read.

56:19

Nope, all set.

That's a no for me, dog.

Right.

I'm an American Idol.

Yeah, that's a no for me dog.

Well, in them.

And then something even crazier happens.

Like, OK, first of all, he wakes up the next day like, whoa.

And so he's he's reading Manly P Hall, you know, and all that.

56:36

And then he's like, well, this is really cool stuff.

And then he goes to bed again.

In an entity.

Comes to him, a female as a succubus and assaults him.

56:52

Sexually.

Well, I couldn't.

Yeah, I didn't.

Want to go there, pal?

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

It defiles him in the next morning.

Here's where we're at.

He's dry heaving.

I thought it's all love and light.

No, he's literally try heaving my friend.

57:10

He's outside of his.

This is his testimony outside of his apartment and he just.

He's devastated.

In, in, in.

What happened was the phenomenon came back to him and said you were being initiated into what, Daniel into what?

57:30

So my point is this appears not, it's not just it's not a glitch in the Matrix.

It's not, it's not a, a bug, it's a feature, right?

It's a feature.

There is a species of practitioner that is, that is initiating people through these encounters.

57:47

And that's where I'm at.

OK, I want.

To ask a couple questions about.

So you said your dad's a pastor and you and I both have obviously a lot of experience in the evangelical church when I'm.

Yeah, when I'm there, I consider myself a follower of Christ.

But I struggle deeply with the church today because I feel like I'm reading one of those like little kid Bibles when I talk.

58:08

You know what?

I.

Mean.

Yeah, yeah, very, very.

Very, very simplified, right?

I read it a little different for me, I read it like there's we live in this construct.

The construct got high hijacked, then we're trapped in it, and then eventually the creator of the construct downloads his son into it.

58:30

He comes in and he says like the ruler of this world is coming.

He has no claim over me, right?

So in other words, he's saying Jesus is saying this world's got a ruler.

He's not a good guy.

He's got some claim on everybody, right?

58:48

They, the church would call it sin or whatever it is.

But it's like somehow there's something that keeps us victims to this authority here, which is also called the power of the Prince of the Air, which is like.

That's kind of weird.

But alright.

59:03

And then it says that Jesus basically his death pays is a ransom payment, which is really fascinating because a ransom payment is something you pay to get a kidnap victim or a slave their freedom.

59:19

So I feel like the story that I hear from Christians is like, I'm like, yeah, it just feels like the little kid version, the grown up version is a lot more wild and intense.

And, and if people knew the grown up version, they'd find it much more interesting, I think.

But but I get the impression and I love, I got the Shroud of Turin up there because I, I love that image because it's like then he he leaves, he like they literally don't have a claim on him.

59:42

He's out.

He's out, he's out.

I'm just curious how all that lands.

I, I feel like that story is a story of, of a, of a hijacked dimension where humans got into some kind of pact with another species and then become, I don't know if we're food or if we're fuel or what, but we're like, you call them parasites and it's like, well, parasites, you know, they need nutrition or they need something from the host, right?

1:00:08

Yeah.

I I.

Would.

So.

There's so many directions to go with that, man.

We always have good conversations, pal.

It's always like, OK, where I want to go with us.

It's like you you hit me with something.

I'm like, OK, yeah, I do believe it's, it's parasitic and neuro parasitology.

1:00:24

It's so fascinating.

First of all, I had a conversation with an ecologist a while ago and we're talking about parasites in the ocean and all this and like parasitic mimicry and all that.

And the conclusion of the talk was essentially the the phenomenon is parasitic, not just in the way it mimics us by the way, but the way it changes our neurology.

1:00:47

And this, this is, this is a data point that's throughout all of the case studies.

It's, it's not just shared like, or it doesn't just exist in one field.

It's everywhere in the paranormal where when you are entertaining the phenomenon, it is pulling everything out of you.

1:01:02

It's looking at your, your life story.

I mean, literally within milliseconds.

It's got everything, everything.

OK, cool.

Well, you know, you've experienced the phenomenon and then, but you're being experienced by it.

So it's a, it's a, it's that kind of relationship that's symbiotic.

1:01:18

My point is that it changes your neurology.

So people will experience the phenomenon or they'll witness a craft and they'll be awestruck.

And I've heard this over and over again.

I wanted to reach for my phone.

It's right here, but I didn't.

Why?

I don't know, right?

1:01:34

Or I had a case study of a lady that was accosted by an entity.

It appeared to be her husband.

No, this is wild.

She's in her bed.

That's crazy.

This.

Is going to blow her, my pal.

She's in her bed and she's getting ready for bed and everything, and she sees her husband.

1:01:51

It was like a shadow figure or something to the left of her peripheral vision.

And then when it, when she observes that it's her husband, which is weird, right?

And then and then like he assaults her and she's like, I remember like being in a stupor.

I was really tired and I didn't really, you know, I couldn't get considered.

1:02:08

It was just like what's happening and the mind blowing part about this is when it it had like issues with this physiognomy, right?

It looked like her husband, but it couldn't hold its shape.

And so it was like glitching in and out AI art or something.

1:02:23

AI pal.

Exactly.

That's a, that's a great thing.

Yeah, great point.

And so and she realizes, like, wait a minute, right.

She's coming back to herself, she realizes.

There's something wrong.

About you, you, you, you.

1:02:40

You know you can't be my husband.

And then she's remembering what the phenomenon caused her to forget.

Well, of course, Becky, it's not your husband because your husband's right right next to you sleeping, buddy.

1:02:55

And she's going and I didn't.

Literally, there's two of them.

And it blocked her memory.

OK.

That's called neuro parasitology, where it changes your neurology.

1:03:11

It causes you to think what it wants you to think.

In fact, there I say it thinks on your behalf.

It's it wants to think.

It's your thoughts.

It's not right.

And so that's neuro parasitology.

I mean, I sometimes like when I do lectures, I talk about Toxoplasma Gandhi where it gets into the.

1:03:30

Let's go, buddy.

Let's go, man.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, buddy.

So right it it gets you're talking about fungus.

That in fungus that change the behavior of right not literal.

Fungus.

But like consciousness.

A parasitic, cryptic consciousness.

It's.

So what happens again?

It's like, OK, I'm a mouse.

1:03:46

Yeah.

I'm terrified of of cats.

Why?

Because cats love me, they're going to eat me and I'm, you know, that's a predator.

What it does is it retunes the mind, changes your neurology.

1:04:02

Well, now I'm craving cat urn.

Why?

Because it's not you craving it, right?

It's the entity within.

It's the phenomenon.

And So what it does is it changes the neurology of that mouse and now it's over there in proximity of a predator.

1:04:18

Now here's the point.

Why?

Because the main goal of the parasite is to get another host, which is the cat.

It's the cat buddy.

It's the cat.

So what we're looking at now again, even in within, just like Matthew Roberts case, right?

1:04:34

This is what cats he's trying to articulate.

I thought, hey, it's just a UFO.

No, no, no, no, no, that was that was the parasitic entity and observing it.

We call it in the field hitchhiker effect, right observing it went into my bloodline and now I'm dude, I've got a case study of a lady that witnessed she was a a CE5 practitioner.

1:04:58

These are.

The folks that working under Greer trying to call these, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Of course, I always called the Spirit Spirit Airlines, you know, because a lot of times they'll be contrary.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry guys, but it is funny.

But it was this individual was like, she's like, you know, she's like my husband and I have been practitioners to CE5 for a while was just like, you know, and we finally succeeded in lights manifested above us in the sky and we were like, Oh my goodness, you know, it's a life changing experience.

1:05:30

And I was like I.

Scrolled down the emails.

Like, read on, because I know what's going to happen.

I was like, well, OK, let's see.

She's like, yeah, She's like, the problem is, like, a couple days later, something really violent happened to us.

Beings manifested to us, to both my husband and I, and we woke up the next day, like, beat up violently.

1:05:51

And she's like, dude, was that a dream?

And he's like, I don't think that was a dream at all.

Something really bad happened to us.

You know, they had the physical, right, the manifestations of it.

They just don't remember what happened.

And then she goes.

You know Nathaniel.

That was traumatic.

1:06:07

Enough.

She's like it rocked our household and we very rarely talk about.

She's like but to.

Top it all off, I wake up one day and I have a symbol.

This is a.

Recurring theme, huh?

Absolutely.

Again, a symbol in my right eye.

1:06:25

Whoa, whoa.

And I'm going, oh, no.

Because, you know, a lot of these case studies, it's like, I don't want that to happen.

A lot of the stuff I don't even want to know, right?

I mean, I feel called to do the research, but this is like real dark stuff.

1:06:42

It's just like, you know, she goes, it was in my right eye, on the bottom right eye and she goes, I, I this is crazy.

She goes, I saw it.

She goes when I close my eyes, I could see it.

When I went to work, I could see it.

She goes.

It got to a point where I thought it was in physically in my eye.

1:07:04

She goes, no, I went to my optometrist.

He looks at my.

Eye comes back and says there's nothing there.

She goes, but I see it.

Come on man.

She goes, I see it right now, it's right, it's right there.

1:07:21

I could see the symbol.

He goes, no, what you're seeing is not physically in your vision.

Something else is producing that.

When?

People again, what I'm trying to stress over and over again.

1:07:37

Is that?

It's not we cannot afford, we cannot afford to be automobile enthusiasts with this phenomenon because real people are going through this well, it also.

Occurs to me, you know, you've see you've got those CE5 practitioners, you got all this group of people who they're calling these things to themselves and they're and now we're getting again inculcated in this idea.

1:08:02

What I see a potential for is a mass psychological desire to see these things, which seems like a way to invoke a mass experience of this possession or parasitology or whatever kind of thing.

Like, like if you have, especially because there's a savior narrative woven through it, like, oh, our world's getting so out of control.

1:08:23

Maybe these more advanced beings can help us set the world straight and help us govern ourselves.

So, so you're going to have all these people inviting these entities into themselves.

Like if seeing them is in like, so many people wish they could see a UFO.

And it seems to me, you know, my mom's life was destroyed by this.

1:08:40

And actually I want to ask this other question.

Yes, Sir.

My mom.

'S a a negative O negative blood type?

My wife's an A negative.

What's up with these RH negative?

Is there a thing to that?

Because both my wife and my mom have the strangest experiences and they're both RH negative and I hear that come up a lot.

1:09:00

Are there people who are predisposed for some reason to this?

I I do believe that's the case.

And it's not just the blood type Gary Nolan has.

His research is phenomenal.

But Gary Nolan, he's a pathologist and he was researching the brain activity of experiencers, you know, and again, it's just that's where the research leads.

1:09:25

It's fascinating.

But he sat down with one like a grandfather, OK.

He goes, OK, have you ever witnessed anything that that's paranormal in your lifetime?

And the guy goes, yeah, absolutely.

And he can list all the all the cases right in his experiences.

He's OK.

1:09:41

Do you mind?

If we do a brain scan on you.

He goes sure so.

Do a brain scan on him and there was some kind, I'm going to say this loosely like a scar tissue on the part a part of his brain and.

1:09:59

He's like, OK, so.

You've experienced the phenomenon.

You have an anomaly on your brain scan.

OK, cool.

Do you have a you have a son?

Yeah, I have a son.

OK.

The son comes in, right?

Interviews.

Gary.

Gary does.

OK.

Have you experienced the paranormal?

All my life, I see all kinds of stuff.

1:10:15

You know, it's annoying.

OK.

Do you mind if we do a brain scan?

Sure.

So same anomaly, same part of the brain, second generation, second generation, and then the third generation comes, OK, if you've experienced anything the paranormal.

1:10:32

Not at all.

Not at all.

OK, they do the brain scan and the same anomaly occurs on the part of the brain the phenomenon had targeted.

Once my tradition had targeted one generation, tailored that experience for the grandfather just to bleed into the bloodline of the family.

1:10:59

Turret changed.

Neuroparasitology changed the neurology of that child.

So literally you have a.

Grandfather 50 years ago experienced except for the paranormal.

It's in the bloodline now and it's after someone else down the line.

1:11:16

Do you think that when?

People get involved.

When I say involved in the occult, I don't mean they go down to the local shop and buy like tarot cards.

But I mean when they get.

Serious about it?

Do you think that they're inviting these things into their bloodlines?

And also, do you think that human beings get power from these things in some way if they open themselves to them?

1:11:37

Yes, they are.

I've had cases where the family's distraught and we go back on the bloodline and the entity is claiming the wife, you're mine, and we go back to the bloodline and there was an occultist there that had made a pact with that entity and now it comes back around demanding.

1:11:55

Payment.

How then do we live?

Right?

So, so this stuff's going on.

There's clearly a benevolent force at work as well.

There's clearly goodness in the world and forces of goodness.

You know, again, I brought up Jesus.

It's like, you know, his teachings of of love and forgiveness and you know those kind of living in that way does seem to keep.

1:12:17

This stuff.

Away.

At least that's been my experience.

What do you think?

Of that is there a way to keep this stuff away and what do you think about the benevolence in the universe as well I again.

It's.

It points to a construct.

My old pastor Hashir, when he was preaching out in the evangelistic field, he'd be running out of gas and go into a gas station, right, to make a phone call or something, and there would be some random stranger.

1:12:42

Are you literally?

I'm not exaggerating.

Are you Hashir?

Yeah.

All right, I've been hanging out for two hours.

Here's 200 bucks.

God bless, I promise you.

And then and then Hashir.

And he's like, OK, I got gas money to get to my next revival.

1:12:59

By the way, I like telling these stories too, guys.

I'm not all like, dark, you know, Dark City over here.

But but anyways, he goes to the cashier.

He's like, dude, who was that guy?

He's like, I don't know what you're talking about.

He's got the money in his hand, right?

That freaks me out.

So we're looking at is, yes, I mean, I do believe there is a benevolent species out there.

1:13:19

But the idea is that the war is won.

And I'm.

Not sure.

I mean, at least in my, in my world view, it's like, well, you know what we know of demonology, right?

Was recorded 2000 years ago.

1:13:36

It's not monolithic, right?

It's not like they're just stuck in there like, oh, you know, I'm doing what I like.

No, they evolved.

They evolved so.

So there are things that could have gone on since right that we're not aware of.

But I'm equally as.

1:13:51

Fascinated by angelology, you know, I, I, I've had experiences with that particular aspect of the phenomenon.

It's incredible.

It really is.

It makes you feel so small though.

You're like, I don't know anything, right?

I'm just, I'm like this big, you know, so well, that's, I guess like.

I'm wondering, are we caught in a cosmic battle that's bigger than us?

1:14:09

And.

I guess.

All right, so if the evangelical church's perspective is like, well, we don't need to do anything, we're going to be rescued by Jesus, right?

Like that's the kind of that that's there's that worldview, right?

And then you could see how that would set you up to be further parasitized over time if that wasn't true.

1:14:34

At the same time, whenever I see people being like, no, we need to use our consciousness to become who we truly are, that always seems to lead into this kind of like apotheosis, self aggrandizing.

And everyone I know that goes down that call it new age or call it whatever, kind of like spiritual path where no, I'm a part of God and I'm going to evoke God in myself.

1:14:57

They always end up lost in my experience.

I never see that leading anywhere and they end up really.

Weird, but they end up really weird.

OK, Like, I'm like, let's do breathing exercises.

I'm like, you kind of just, you know, hyperventilate and that's all you're doing.

You're probably going to pass out.

Yeah, I'm not.

1:15:12

I'm not in that corner either.

I just, I think that people say, OK, it's all spirits.

It's like, OK, well, you know, Steve and I, we've done research with iron.

And when people carry iron, it's almost like it absorbs the frequency, not a new age frequency, right?

Like, but literally a scientific frequency that the phenomenon uses to hold itself together in this reality.

1:15:36

And we've, we've, but The thing is when I tell people to do that, even, you know, especially Christians, they're like, well, what's that, you know, And they, they make me out to be some like, you know, new age practitioner.

And I'm, I'm the farthest from that.

But to get them in that mode of OK, like, yeah, it can, it can be spiritual.

1:15:55

It is spiritual.

But what is a spirit exactly?

Right.

Is it again, what is that?

Because I could tell you this, a lot of what we've claimed to be spirits in haunted analysis.

Again, they share that connective tissue with projected consciousness.

1:16:10

I have, I have videos of my archive of orbs and, and following the orb is that white cloud, right?

What are we dealing with here?

And so that's why as I, as I sit here, I'm, I'm just like, well, look.

1:16:27

I I.

I don't have to have all the answers, sure.

Right, I just.

Want the right questions?

In in again.

It's like the government doesn't want us to ask the right questions.

They want us to say, OK, you know what we have?

1:16:43

We have bodies.

Well, I have antibodies.

They're not bodies, right?

So it's like we're being LED astray.

And it's frustrating because I'm after the phenomenon.

I'm not after.

I don't have a pre presuppositions.

1:17:00

I don't have conclusions.

I don't.

I just, I would have the data and, and if the data validates your worldview, amazing, right?

But don't create dogma.

And that is what ufology is becoming, nothing but dogma.

1:17:16

And we have dogma tests and that's primarily what we have in the field.

It's frustrating because I I really don't care.

I don't care because they want it to be.

Little green men from outer space, you're saying that's their does.

So they're looking for confirmation.

But I'm looking for an anti parasitic spiritual, anti parasitic drug personally.

1:17:34

I mean, me, it's like if there's some kind of parasite on our species, I, I would like to know how to eliminate that or kill that or, or, or love it out of existence or whatever I need to do and whatever The thing is, that is the weapon against it that I'm very interested in that, you know?

1:17:53

Yeah, I think it has something to do with an exorcism.

I don't know.

I have no idea.

I just, you know, it'd be along a lot those lines.

But yeah, man, I, you know, I'm not in this for, for anything else but the data.

And here's why.

Because I'm tired of meeting 70 year olds, right?

1:18:12

Executive CEO's, pastors, deacons, doctors who write their, their age on paper is 70 and they're accomplished.

But inside of them they're that 8 year old boy who's sitting in a haunted house wondering what is going on it because I grew up with that.

1:18:31

And so I want answers.

I, I, I want to know, I want to help.

I don't, I don't want to sell again.

I'm not, I'm not like, hey, listen, you know, go buy my merch, You know, here's some T-shirts.

That's cool.

Maybe one day I'll do that.

1:18:47

But at this point in my career, it's like, have all of that.

I don't care.

Do it, My friends do.

It's fine.

As long as at the end of the day, we sit down like I had with housewives and say, hey, listen, right, here's what we, what we're doing, here's what we're looking for.

1:19:05

Because what doesn't work is hey, I literally, I've had a lady shaking the table, sweating profusely.

Her husband, by the way, has Bell's palsy.

His left side of his face is paralyzed because he challenged an enemy the night before.

1:19:21

She's shaking the, the, the table, the tick, the, the dishes are clinging and the husband's drooling and he's going.

I don't know what else to do.

What if I were just to be like a lot of these other guys would be like, well, it's nepheline.

Have a good night.

See you.

Or yeah.

1:19:38

That's a UFO.

God bless.

It's not actionable.

Does it do anything for them?

Or how about this?

Oh, God.

I'm going to get Job.

You know, I know you're hurting, right?

But come to my lecture.

1:19:54

See ya.

It doesn't do anything.

Yeah, but what?

Does do something that that's that's the question.

Now there are some theories.

Now my OK, so if we're doing poltergeist activity, ignore it.

Ignore it.

1:20:11

What it's doing is it's baiting your gaze, it's wanting to be witnessed, and as soon as you fear it empowers it, it's stronger in.

What that will do is it will change from poltergeist to something else entirely.

OK, well that makes.

Me think then that part of what it's feeding on is fear.

1:20:27

I mean, you hear this constantly.

It's a trope at this point.

Our fear is like a frequency of food for them or something like that.

It is.

It is.

I, I grew up without and so I know that as, as an experienced fact, it's not a theory for me.

It would induce me into looping nightmares of people hurting themselves.

1:20:46

And I, I was 8 year old kid.

I mean, the guy I didn't, I didn't even know what insulin was right.

But someone had a needle in their arm in the nightmare.

I had no idea what it was.

And, and I mean, I was so innocent pal.

My buddy across the street, he was like, he's like 60 now, but he was a cool dude.

1:21:06

I had carte blanche and I would go in the house anytime.

Anyways, here's how innocent I was.

He was like, now son, he goes, you come here anytime.

He's like, but you know that that weed over there, I'm like, yeah, he goes, don't tell anybody about that.

I'm like, well, why would he?

It's a weed.

Who cares?

I was that innocent.

But the phenomenon knew them.

1:21:23

And so I.

Would be in induced to a looping nightmare man where I can't get out of the dream and then I would wake up and I would be so helpless and just small in weak and I'm like dude, there's something feeding on me like what is this?

1:21:41

And then I could feel like the weaker I got, the stronger it became.

And.

You know, my, my friend Paul Sinclair in England has, has suffered the same thing.

We don't know what that is.

Some people say we're initiated.

Well, that, that was not fun, you know, So I, I don't know what's going on there, but I think that we're evolving to a place where we're figuring out some things to push the beast back in the darkness with consciousness.

1:22:08

Belief, belief's a big thing.

Matter of fact, a very old paper that the Collins elite were pushing around in the government, this will blow your mind, was that we don't want to bring about this closure because it will cause people to believe in them and they operate on a different level of physics.

1:22:27

And the more you.

Believe in them the more they manifest.

What is that?

That's weird pal, but I'm getting the.

Impression.

The more I look at it, the more it manifests, right?

So it's there we go.

Now we're in simulation theory, and we didn't even start there, right?

1:22:47

It's my brother's video game.

I'm not a gamer.

He is.

But you know, it's the flashlight, and you only see in the game what the flashlight hits.

If the flashlight doesn't pick it up, it's not there.

So again, what we're looking at now, at least myself and my my colleagues, we're we're looking at the phenomenon seeking to be seen to pull something else out of us.

1:23:10

And that's why you have two craft instead of 1.

Yeah, 1.

One has come out of us and 1 drew it out of us, and so, So what 1.

'S really there, right?

And then we observe it, and it's the observer effect, right?

As we're observing it, something else shows up.

1:23:29

This is again, the Collins Elite research.

What were they saying?

That that consciousness created a UAP.

Oh my goodness.

And that's one of the my leading theories now in my in my, my world.

Now it's like, OK, that would explain why there's two and not one.

Why?

Because the craft wanted to be observed by that little girl, and then once she observed it, it triggered that consciousness aspect of.

1:23:53

That's the bait, the.

First thing is the bait exactly right.

And then something else crawled out of her consciousness.

But we're looking at my friend is a species that has mapped out and curated and is weaponizing our consciousness to birth from belief something else in the construct.

1:24:19

So it's making sense.

Look, I know I'm crazy.

I know.

I just want to like.

Figure out what to do I mean that's that's like what do I do then I mean it's not afflicting me, which is great but but then I'm in a shared reality with everybody else here yeah having this experience and so honestly I I.

1:24:39

I'll, I'll give you my advice.

It's the same thing.

I told my friend the other day, he's a researcher and he's like, man, like all hell is breaking loose in my family.

And I said, stop research, get out, get out.

And, and I, I've had days where I, I think about that right where I'm just going to go stock shows, you know, I'll put my air pods and listen to some Rogan or something and just then leave all this behind.

1:25:02

But I do feel called to this work.

And I can't.

Leave it alone, like it's a part of that stare into the abyss.

Long enough and become it.

That's.

The idea right?

So it's.

Like we're dazzled by it.

It's it's awe inspiring and it's dazzling and it's interesting, but it's, that's the trap of it, right?

1:25:18

So it's like, I love that scene in Fury Road and Mad Max Fury Rd. where if you remember, they're driving along and he sees the naked woman up on the top of the tower and there's like CDs hanging that are flashing light.

And he goes, that's bait.

You know, it's like, I think because because what it appears to me is about to happen is, is potentially lots of people are going to be given the opportunity to look at it and of course.

1:25:44

And it seeks to be seen now.

Yes, it's creating controvers and they're being conjured to conjure.

And God.

Help us, because we don't know what's going to come crawling out of their consciousness.

1:26:00

What do you expect the future to look like here?

I mean, the, there's a lot of weird stuff happening, dude.

I mean, you know, like we've just found out about like for instance, with the Epstein files, it's like, you know, what is even if you give that the you're, you're even if you give that the kindness to take, you're like, there's definitely massive slave trade going on of human beings, particularly young children and young girls, you know, pubescent, prepubescent, just maybe 1718 year old girls even.

1:26:28

They're being traded, they're being sold, they're being moved around.

People might be being consumed, you know, as food in some cases.

You get this, this whole you can't get rid of this.

You know, I would love to just.

Drop some of this stuff like oh.

Yeah, we're done with the adrenochrome thing.

But then you get this grape soda thing constantly through the whole narrative that you're like, man, it kind of sounds like that's what they're saying.

1:26:49

And then and then on to right after that, they're like the UFOs now, too.

And so you're like, where is this narrative going?

What's happening here?

Yeah, it's like, OK.

And it's like, OK, we're gonna release the files.

We're gonna release the files, OK, There are no files.

1:27:05

What are you talking about?

Well, you told us you released them, right?

And it's like, OK, well, not really.

We'll release like 1% of them.

There's like millions of other files that we've yet to even see, of course.

And then out of nowhere, here comes disclosure.

Well, what's disclosure Like?

What do you mean?

1:27:20

Like we're talking literally not to get like, political anything.

We're talking about people who are like, I'd rather tell you about aliens.

Yeah, yeah.

They tell you about what's going on.

It's like, right.

What it's like who's in the files is like, I don't know, but here's JFK.

Yeah.

What are we doing?

1:27:36

You know?

And yeah, that's a scary thing when all that happens.

You you know what, what what's happening for me is it's as all of the old I keep joking with people.

It's who who aren't kind of more normie.

I'll be like, so you don't understand what the conspiracy theories are now, because all the stuff you think are conspiracy theories have all been now shown to be true.

1:27:54

So the stuff that is now fringe is really fringe.

Like the fringe stuff is way out now because the Overton windows shifted so far that you can talk about Insectolins on Fox News now and you can talk about.

Yeah.

Sex rings and it's yeah, like we need new conspiracies because all the others were like, check, check, check.

1:28:14

It's like, not conspiracies, right?

Not.

Conspiracies so or or conspiracies, yes, by technical definition, but not not made-up so but I mean the ultimate one is you're living in a construct being controlled by American.

Yeah, I've been.

I've been very conspiratory tonight.

1:28:30

Yeah, honestly.

And I know people are going to look at me and say, OK, you know, I'm, I'm passionate about my work.

And it's honestly, man, it's kind of saved my life, you know, is I found something I'm good at or kind of good at.

It's like the only thing I'm good at that and eating chicken wings and ranch baby.

1:28:47

That's all I'm good at.

So, but yeah, man.

So I don't know what what's going to happen in the future.

I I just, I don't believe in the narratives.

I really don't.

I think that a lot of these people have not actually studied the phenomenology.

You know, Jim Suman said something other day, it's fascinating an interview.

1:29:03

He's like, look, it's like if you really want to know the phenomenon, look at mythology, look at folklore.

He's like you're, you're going to.

Have to to research like a cultural anthropologist to get a hold and a handle on this and I found that to be true because you think this is the same.

1:29:19

Phenomena that's been going on, because I was going to ask you before, like, so are the Aztecs experiencing this in the Maya and the Inca and the Egyptians and, you know, everybody's experiencing this everywhere in the world, of course, I mean.

Alex, you know the great in his diary.

Here's a wrench for you.

1:29:34

I'll just, you know, throw a wrench and everything.

It's like one of these data points where it's like, oh, crap.

You know, like, oh, no.

Here's Alexander the Great, his diary.

He's like, look, he's like, I was wanting to invade a city, but the walls were too large.

And out of nowhere, here comes a flying shield that zaps it with a with light.

1:29:53

It explodes the wall and they go in and conquer.

Really.

Yes.

Yes.

I mean, OK, like, you know, it's so many cases, but yeah, what we're looking at is a species that's manipulating history.

It's here.

1:30:11

It's here.

Well, I thought they're out there.

No, no, no, no, they're they're they're here and they're invisible and they live in a different reality.

And that.

And here's what's even worse is when they want to enter our reality, Right.

1:30:27

For instance.

OK, Betty Luca a tongue talking and I could say this because I grew up in a holy roller, right?

Yeah, Praetor kids to the Holy Ghost downstairs in her basement.

She was, as you know, at least from my background, like she's a solid, solid Christian.

1:30:44

Very, very, very strict King King James version only by the way, which I grew up in that too, buddy.

Oh man.

Yeah.

Anything else, boy, let's build that stake and bring that King James is a great.

Guy, from what I hear, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Definitely want to hang out with him, but man.

1:31:00

So here she is.

She's in her living room, right?

She's got her.

She's got her.

Her in laws over.

I think it was her parents.

One of the two just hanging out, you know, and she's cooking food.

You know what?

What about?

I'll tell you what.

How is Aunt Becky doing?

I don't know.

All sudden, boom.

Her parents are like this.

1:31:17

Yeah.

I can't believe it.

Oh no.

In in.

Suspended animation.

Whoa, yeah.

And I keep telling people like, we better hope they're demons like it in terms of like the worst case scenario, we better hope they're just demons.

1:31:35

Demons you tame.

Compared brother.

Literally they're like and that's in in fruit walks through the wall, The door walks, didn't open.

The door walks right through it.

Now it's not locked in the door.

And it 3 or. 4 entities by the way.

1:31:53

OK, now this is fascinating that they walked into the construct.

The construct was not real when they didn't want it to be real.

Dead.

Get passionate now again.

They didn't want it to be.

Real.

And and when they.

1:32:09

Didn't want it to be real.

It wasn't real for them.

There wasn't a Ding Dong.

Hello.

You know.

Would you like some Girl Scout cookies?

It was just walking right through the door.

You're in suspended animation.

I'm only here for you, Betty.

And Betty is going what happened to my family?

1:32:26

I mean, literally, their eyes are open in the entity again when they wanted reality to be real, right again.

They they walked through the wall or the door.

OK, now you can touch them How?

1:32:43

And, and, and the entity goes, I want, I want truth tried by fire.

And she's like, I don't understand what you mean.

Like she's again, she's she's terrified, but she's like, what do you mean by that?

Truth tried by fire?

And so she's like, I don't know, fire.

She's like, I guess I'll give you some food.

1:32:59

You know, I don't know what's going on.

You know, I'm cooking a stove on a stove, whatever.

And he's like, no, no, not only food I want that points to her Bible.

It's nuts.

And so she gets the Bible.

OK.

He pulls out a device again, and he's waving his hand over each page in in from the Bible into the box.

1:33:24

This is really crazy stuff, by the way, but it's fascinating.

It's it's she's transferring all that information into this box and then they leave.

What do you do with that?

What do you do with that?

Well, again, people like, well, it's all horns and hoes.

1:33:40

It's like we got a problem because even in demonology, there are cases where they weren't demons, right?

In demonology, like in the field, in the literature, they were like, well, that doesn't make sense.

So whatever we're dealing with again, I mean, at every turn it seems like there are demons.

1:33:57

Like, do you think that that's a real phenomenon?

Oh, what is it always been this?

Or oh.

Go ahead, go ahead with that.

I'm just.

Like try, you know?

I mean, you know, I read Enoch, it says that they're the, the, the Nephilim's disincarnated spirits, right?

1:34:17

And then, but then like, then you talk to church people, they're like they're fallen angels.

And then I, I don't know where they get that.

But then, you know, has it always been this?

I guess that's what I'm wondering.

It could be.

It could.

Be, you know, the thing I mean, OK, let's go going back to the Collins elite.

1:34:33

I mean, the document that I'm in possession of it talks about how that these governmental practitioners just make a determiner were contacting the phenomenon to the point where they were becoming possessed by it.

1:34:51

And the Vatican was sending exorcists to Air Force bases, right?

Oh my God, I can only imagine the other day.

That they said exorcisms are up like 400%.

1:35:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, man.

And I just can't imagine that, right?

Like you check into work and it's like, all right, let's look at the radar.

And this other guy's like, oh God, what's going on, Reggie, what happened to you?

1:35:24

And they're doing the whole thing.

I would, I'd, I'd be out.

But yeah, they had to have dozens of exorcisms because so, you know, The thing is with with the way people research is they find like 3 or 4 data points and they say that is this.

You know.

IA lot of Muslim exorcist and researchers follow my work and and some of them are like, you know, I see the data points.

1:35:49

That's cool.

But others are like.

Well, because they they, they, they check three boxes.

They got to be gin.

They got to be gin.

So what happens is they use being kind of a.

Plasmoid, yeah.

Demon.

Genie.

Self Islam, right?

1:36:06

But the problem is, again, it's like when people say that like because I know Eric Davos was mentioned that at the contact in the desert lecture, he did all some of the data points to a Gen.

It's like, well, what is that?

Because when people talk about Gen. right, it's usually smokeless fire.

It's like, yeah, but Orps, here's what?

1:36:23

Because at least in genealogy, I guess, right?

That sounds like a a bartending thing.

Genealogy.

Welcome to genealogy.

Yeah, you know, there's demonology.

I don't know.

But my point is even in, in, in gene research, like they said that these things procreate with women and it's like, I don't see an org doing that.

1:36:45

That's kind of weird.

You know, that's weird.

So I think again, that we, we got to be careful with the data points and how we interpret them because people are using the data here we go to validate their dogma, right?

And it's this.

And if it is this, then I'm right.

1:37:00

And then it leads all the way back to their world view.

So it's really not about the data.

It's about them pushing their world view.

Yeah, we're just going to have a nation full of people whose brains are so scrambled by all this, like, no one's going to be out.

And I there is this nuts and bolts narrative that I think is very attractive to a technologically advancing society like ours.

1:37:22

So it's like, oh, it's technology.

That's our thing anyway, so this is good, you know, so be it.

Be an interesting decade, that's for sure.

It's going to be interesting, man.

I just, I want to go back to 90s Yeah, I know I'm almost 42 man, but I, I.

Hear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know how?

Good, we had it right.

1:37:38

Bro I I don't know.

How old you are, man?

I'm 37 and I'm like 48.

I'll be 40.

Eight.

Oh my God, I'm just.

Kidding.

What?

No man, you look good for 48 dude.

I figured you were like my age, living that healthy.

Lifestyle, you know you are dude out.

There in Maine so I I would look like that too if I was in Maine.

1:37:56

It's easy, you just gotta move.

I know man.

It all comes.

That's it, right?

No.

Just move.

No.

But.

I am OK, Well, I mean, I get, I don't know really how to leave it.

It's set except it because it's just so like strange.

But I I think what's valuable here is that.

1:38:14

It is it.

Stretches the worldview substantially to think of it in this way, or at least to entertain these ideas, because the alternative narrative doesn't really make sense.

Like all I flew here for.

Like, how could you sit down and do a meditation and then beings fly from light years away from another planet and get here right away?

1:38:30

That's makes no sense to me at all.

It can't be that, no?

And there's evidence that's another rabbit hole too.

And I know we're out of time here, pal, but there's evidence, there's evidence that the CE5 practitioners, that it's their own consciousness they're seeing and they're projecting.

1:38:49

Oh, that's yeah, OK.

And they're like, look, it's a UAP and it's like, no, that's you pal.

The problem is what is that?

And I do believe that they've classified consciousness.

I mean, I have I have a book behind me here and back there where is on demonology and it goes all the way back like the 12th century and where a king had hired A sorcerer to project an alter ego out of himself into another environment.

1:39:21

There's a two places by location and that alter ego, the extension of his consciousness would pick up what's going on in that environment and it would come back right.

So I think a lot of that is what's taking place and the phenomenon is triggering that.

And we're going around like, oh, this is cool, CE5, look at that.

1:39:38

It's like, no doc, you don't understand what just right, I'm going to use this again.

Crawled out of your consciousness.

You're going to go home with something.

And.

You won't like it.

So I do believe that consciousness itself is being classified by our government and classified like.

1:39:58

Not classified like categorized, classified like classified.

Hidden in general view, absolutely.

Wow, so.

That might be wow, that's what this is because I actually did grab another quota viewers.

You said possession is designed to impregnate the observer effect.

1:40:17

It's neuro parasitology, it's consciousness that's being classified.

I was like, what on earth does that mean?

One.

Of my crazy quotes buddy.

One of those late but but.

Yeah, OK.

The observer effect is.

This thing we've been.

1:40:33

Talking about absolutely when you.

Observe it.

It collapses now.

This is why.

You know I I've had.

Cases where you'll have like 3 people looking at the same entity and none of them agree on what it looks like.

1:40:50

Why?

Because when you observe it, it, it, it has control over what you collapse it into again.

So there is this, it's a Co creation of the interface.

It's a shadow person peripherally, right?

And then when I look at it, it collapses itself into something I'm familiar with.

1:41:11

So it's in control.

Now, does it need the observer effect to be activated?

Yes.

That's why it seeks to be seen, friend.

Right, but that.

But in addition to that, it'll say, OK, look at me.

And then when we look at, it'll collapse itself and it controls collapse me into this interface.

1:41:29

Would you?

Why?

Because I don't want you to really see me mythologizing when you say collapse.

You mean that it it takes a form?

Yes.

Yeah, it adjusts goes from like orb projection.

And of of a morphism to something with morphology that probably is based off some expectation or something.

1:41:49

Right.

Check this out, buddy.

Contact in the desert just occurred last weekend and a group of CE5 practitioners were all there and they're all like, you know, Googling over the sky and everything like, Oh my God, it's amazing.

I put this on my Instagram and I don't honestly, some people got it, some people didn't.

1:42:06

Whatever.

Point being is that one of the witnesses said look at the orb, it's turning into an entity they captured on film.

Look at it and here's the orb.

But all of a sudden you see it, right?

The interface being constructed.

1:42:23

Now, what they did is the same thing we've done in the field.

They witnessed the mask being built and they said, well, that is really what it is.

No, it was literally right.

1:42:40

And so they go around and it's like, OK, we have if you do that, OK.

If you go do that kind of research for the next 100 years we have, we will never get anywhere because witnessing the mask being constructed is not the same as witnessing who is constructing it again.

1:42:59

They'll go around.

OK Lord Auerbach, right.

Oh, there's an or projecting an apparition.

That's what it was doing in the problem I'm having now that it's it's kept me up because, you know, you're like, I'd probably stay up all night sometimes I do, pal.

I really do.

I'm an idol.

But here's what keeps me up.

We know.

1:43:15

For a fact, again with Katzke's drawing a paralyzed like OK guys, if you want to study ufology, go into awnings, right?

We're not even studying UFOs.

So keep that in mind.

My point is that we have seen balls of light, and not just balls of light like beams and and and contortions and variations of it in haunted houses.

1:43:36

Now they're projecting constructs.

Boom boom boom.

What's the difference between?

That in the sky, if you took that and put it in the air, that's a UAP.

The altitude does not change its ability to project constructs.

1:43:57

Question for Everybody's going to Watch listeners.

What have they been projecting in our skies?

Altitude.

Doesn't matter, just put them up there.

Doesn't matter.

They're still going again.

And that's what happened, a contact to the desert friend, and they didn't get it because they don't know the phenomenon.

1:44:18

They don't know the phenomenology.

Look at this.

It's a being coming out of the orb.

And here's what they said.

It's an alien week really, because I guess they're ghosts too.

Do you think when these?

Like, Grays come and they take people and they go on the ship.

Are they just not going anywhere?

Are they still in their bed?

1:44:34

Like so?

Oh yeah, yeah.

So there's a research that came out recently.

There's annoying.

Isn't that they're all physical?

It's not.

No, they're not.

Clearly not.

No, I think that a lot of them are physical abductions.

Some of them aren't, you know, even in the book of Brahma Opera Mellon the Mage, for those who are bookworms like I am, read the book and you're looking at a guy who who he's a practitioner, but he finally goes and meets Auburn Allen.

1:45:00

But before that, he's going all around the world and, and looking at various esoteric traditions.

And he meets this lady and this lady saying, listen, I can fly, right.

Wow.

What do you mean you can fly?

Like, you can physically lift off the ground.

He's like, yeah, she's like, yeah, I can get off the ground.

1:45:17

I can fly in the air and stuff because I don't believe that at all.

She goes, no, no, no.

I promise you.

Watch this.

So she ingests A potion, leaves her body and flies for 45 minutes.

He couldn't see her because she didn't go anywhere.

When she gets back into her body, she swears to him, See, I told you I left.

1:45:37

He said you never left.

Your body was still here.

So there are there are embodied, I guess, physical abductions that they're astral abductions.

The problem we're having now, and this is a document in Betty Lucas case as well, where the phenomenon will trigger by location, right where you can observe it again, a conscious connection is made and now and now you're outside of your own body.

1:46:00

You're in two places at the same time.

Daniel and people have witnessed that Betty Luca was about to go to bed one night.

She's walking to a room.

Bob, her husband, is sitting at the edge at the foot of the bed, putting a socks on out of nowhere.

He's out of his body.

1:46:17

He's witnessed in two places at the same time in that he's witnessed.

Somewhere else, he's witness.

Buddy.

Now here's the.

Issue Years and years ago, there were researchers that said, well, we know it's physical because there are physical marks on the body, right?

1:46:34

They actually did something to you.

But that's not the case in every every instance because Betty Luca had out of body abductions, but when she got back into her body, her body still manifested scoop marks.

1:46:52

So it's again.

And this gets back into some of the ancient is Israelite mythology where it's sulfur skin.

Second, I mean, let's go, let's go into oh God, leprosy and antiquity and biblical antiquity.

So.

The authors of the.

1:47:08

Bible knew that there was a species of false prophets and it's in the book of Ezekiel chapter 13.

And when you met them, when you encountered them, you would come down with a skin condition.

Look that up.

Oh, that'll freak.

1:47:23

You out dude.

Ezekiel chapter 13 in In God's talking about Soul Hunters, a species of occultists who were hunting souls and pulling them out of their own bodies.

So it's it's really.

Deep and dark stuff man.

1:47:40

We live in a complex.

World, huh?

Or a complex construct.

Something, brother?

Something.

Wow.

All right, all right then.

Well.

I I'm going to revisit Dark City Ezekiel 13, and if I see one of these things come my way, I'm not looking at it.

1:47:59

That's my don't look at it I'd.

Charge it rent.

I would charge it rent or or borrow some money off of it.

I'm just joking, dude.

Nathaniel, it's been.

Great to talk to you dude.

Where do we send people?

Obviously you're Instagram, you're pretty active over there.

Yeah, it's I don't even want to be on Instagram anymore, honestly.

1:48:14

I have to though.

I know.

Oh, I do.

We're all in the same boat.

Hey, here's a hard time job, but you don't get paid for it.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I know.

But if you don't do it, you.

Lose everything you you do.

Really.

I mean, I need the machine dude.

And then you got to like be.

Careful.

Like I had a friend that had like.

1:48:31

He had a.

It was.

Actually a Facebook page where he had like 300,000 followers and he was, you know, running ads and stuff and, and making money and out of nowhere, I mean he was making thousands of dollars a a month on his and he woke up one day and he demonetized them.

1:48:47

You're gone, you're done.

It's like that's, you know, God by so you say this type of thing.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

On Instagram, I'm Nathaniel Gillis.

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel under my same the same name.

If you want, you could support me by becoming a part of Paris Symposio where I put out videos every week about my crazy mind and my crazy research.

1:49:07

Dude, it has been an absolute blast.

Wait wait, one more thing.

Is your book you?

Have a book coming out or is it out?

I'm working on it.

Skinny crawls.

Yeah, I'm working on.

That in a book called Larva the crawling within it's.

Pretty creepy sounding, bro.

Yeah, Yeah.

Well.

1:49:23

Well, my goal being, I want to get out of OK, I want to get out of like the author genre.

I want to do a short film.

I want to put this on, you know, screen to where people can fully embrace the research, but that's that's where I'm at, buddy again, man, Maine, Maine, Maine, Maine, Maine, Maine, come on up.

1:49:47

I'm.

Lobster just.

Making, man, huh?

Yeah, Dude, I got to go to Kinnenbunkport.

I've got to go to just a bunch of places.

Dude, I want to sit by the dock and I want to eat me a good lobster roll and some good chowder.

1:50:02

Yeah, we got.

We have it bro.

This is this is the time right now, man.

Don't tell.

Me that, yeah.

You need, you need some.

You need some of that simple life.

Yeah, get away from this stuff for a minute.

I'd love that.

Dude, from time to time I'll put on Christopher Cross, right, silly?

1:50:20

And I'll just like, yeah, you ever heard that song?

Oh my goodness.

And I'll be like imagining like I'll be getting bumped.

And then I realized like I'm in Dayton, OH, and all I got is Taco Bell and McDonald's and a Walmart.

I'm like, Oh my God.

All right, buddy, thank you for having me on, man.

1:50:38

Thank you so much for.

Today man, really appreciate you.

Transcript: Walking Isn't Optional — Dr. Courtney Conley #005

Daniel Vitalis (00:01.457)

Dr. Courtney Conley, welcome to the show. I'm so excited. I love this topic. I love what you talk about. I wanna start off by saying you look like a very fit person.

CC (00:04.28)

Thank you so much for having me.

CC (00:12.664)

Well, thank you. try. I'm turning 50 this year. I'm turning 50. Yeah. And I have to say, I do feel better now than I think I probably ever have.

Daniel Vitalis (00:13.849)

Yeah. You're turning 50. Yeah, so you're a Gen Xer then.

Daniel Vitalis (00:26.291)

It's an interesting thing, right? mean, also I'm turning 48 this year, so we're from the same kind of generation, that forgotten generation, the sort of Mad Max apocalyptic X Games generation. people always say that, I would always hear stuff like that, well I feel better. in some ways I really genuinely do. What do you attribute that to?

CC (00:49.378)

You know, when I was younger, was a triathlete. So I did a lot of, you know, swimming, biking and running. was like a cardio queen. I loved all that long endurance, kind of the slow grind. And then when I turned 40, things started to talk to me a little bit. And I was introduced to more strength training.

And then I really switched gears and I still, you know, lot of my training now has been converted to heavier lifting and that, you know, it's interesting. A lot of that goes into my strength training at my feet. So it's been kind of this whole journey from not only getting stronger overall, but also from the ground up.

So yeah, my training looks much different than it did in my 30s and 40s. I wish someone would have told me how important lifting heavy things is when I was younger, because it really has taken, I mean, I had neck pain and back pain and, you know, I'm riding my bike for five hours at a time. And not that those things are bad by any means. I just wasn't complimenting it with, you know, the strength work. So I think that's...

You know, and now I'm doing more HIIT workouts, if you will, a lot of VO2 max training. And that's really, can I swear kick? I usually say it's kicking my ass. I don't know if I can say that on here or not. So, but yeah, so it's a little different these days.

Daniel Vitalis (02:11.623)

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (02:19.091)

Please feel free, my friend.

Daniel Vitalis (02:27.025)

It's a lot to balance everything I find, you know, I, I'm, I've gotten big into cardio in the last few years, not as big as triathlon or Ironman cardio. But you know, I put several hours in a week, but I really like strength training as well. But then it's like, you get to where you're like, okay, well, cardio, like, I want to do some zone to work, I want to do some zone five work, strength training, I want to do power stuff.

but I wanna do muscular endurance stuff. And it gets to where the laundry list of stuff and then you're like, how do I manage all this and have a life at the same time? And I want longevity, I would like to look good now too. It's like all that balancing all that stuff. And not many people, it's like a narrow path. Not many people get good at balancing it, right? People get kind of spun out into these weird extremes a lot.

CC (03:07.918)

That's right.

Well, so you can imagine the conversations I have to have with my patients when I tell them that they have to exercise their big toe. They're like, and now I have to do what? I was like, there's ways to do it. So you don't have to make it an extra thing.

Daniel Vitalis (03:17.349)

Yeah, right now I gotta add that. All right.

Daniel Vitalis (03:25.529)

Let's start from the ground up then I'd love to hear a little bit about your background, how you got here. You know, I first saw you on Diariva CEO, which seemed like that was such a huge interview. mean, it just was talked about quite a bit and still is. But I'd love to hear about gate happens all you know, kind of catch me up. So I understand the background and how you come to be here.

CC (03:45.838)

Yeah, I was a dancer as a child. I spent a lot of time in pointe shoes. I was a dancer for the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater. And I, you know, I always used to watch these ballerinas and they'd shove their feet into these pointe shoes. And I just could never, I'm like, this does not feel good. It hurts. And then I developed bunions at a very young age. And then I kind of jumped right into running in the triathlete world. And...

Daniel Vitalis (03:52.211)

Hmm.

CC (04:14.358)

really my Achilles heel, if you will, was always foot pain. I had bunions and neuromas and stress fractures and Achilles tendinopathy and plantar fasciopathy and heel pain. And it was just so frustrating because physically I felt like I could perform, but then when your foot hurts, you can't do anything. So it became kind of my personal quest. And I was like, how can I, I really want to stay in the movement world, learn how to, you know, move better.

And so I ended up going to chiropractic school and we got maybe a half a semester on foot and ankle mechanics with the solution being if it hurts, cast them for foot orthoses. Which was, you know, I didn't really think about it at the time.

Daniel Vitalis (05:02.383)

me crazy.

CC (05:05.758)

which we would never do anywhere else in the human body. Like here's an extrinsic device to stabilize you or modify load that you're gonna use forever. But that's what we knew. So I got out of school and I was obsessed with foot and ankle. And so I did what I knew, which was.

Daniel Vitalis (05:08.893)

Mm-hmm.

CC (05:25.198)

I casted a lot of people for foot orthoses. I worked in two orthotic labs. I was constantly trying to tweak mine to like help my foot and help my heel. And, you know, and then I, one day I was so like done and I was like, this is, this does not make sense. That's when I backpedaled and was like, we can, my foot needs to get strong. It looked atrophied, you know, like my foot just looked thin and weak.

Daniel Vitalis (05:41.232)

You

Daniel Vitalis (05:51.508)

I mean, you're using the word casted, right? It's like in orthotic is a crutch of the foot, right? So you end up, of course, not having to develop musculature when the foot's being supported mechanically.

CC (05:53.483)

Yeah.

CC (06:01.484)

Yes. you know, we were getting, was, you know, patient's pain was getting better, but now I look back and it wasn't that it was getting better. was changing. Something might have improved, but then that load was going elsewhere.

So I just went down this very, deep rabbit hole 20 years ago, 15 years ago and completely switched gears. And that's when I started integrating it into my practice. So I've gone very heavily kind of on the other end of the spectrum going, hey, we need to let our foot feel the ground. And I'm not saying that there's not a time and a place for foot orthotic intervention or therapy, but the majority of us,

can really use strengthening from the ground up. So I, this is actually a funny story. I have a clinic in Colorado and I was teaching for a company and one of my friends said, you know, you really like this foot stuff. You should start just posting it on Instagram and use that as a marketing tool for your business. I was like, really? And she's like, yeah.

So I got home from our trip and she's like, just do me a favor, be consistent. So for seven days a week, probably for three or four years, I consistently posted on Instagram every single day about like something I thought was cool about the foot. and hence gate happens. So it now has grown into this animal where, it's no longer a marketing agent for my

Daniel Vitalis (07:33.554)

Ahem.

CC (07:41.71)

brick and mortar, has now become its own animal. it is, we have like online, I'm just so grateful because that's how, you know, I'm able to spread this message on foot health and education and how important it is. And I've seen some really amazing things happen in my clinic and I just want to continue to do it.

Daniel Vitalis (07:42.781)

Right. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (07:52.474)

Mm-hmm

Daniel Vitalis (08:01.671)

Have you ever had anybody come in and you look at their feet and you say like, you're just good? Or what percentage of modern humans need intervention, strength training, mobilization, some kind of work on their feet?

CC (08:18.402)

Yeah, it's a great question. Prior to some of this education going more global, I was in a clinic. So most people would come in with pain. And they'd be like, you know, I had a sprained ankle or my bunion hurts or my foot hurts or my knee hurts or my back hurts. And so then people start paying attention, right, when there's

Daniel Vitalis (08:42.45)

Yeah.

CC (08:42.606)

There's really no other musculoskeletal diagnosis, I believe, that will stop you in your tracks faster than foot pain. Because even if you have chronic low back pain, the research will tell you, hey, go for a walk. Go for a fast brisk walk. It's good for you. When someone has foot pain, they don't want to go for a walk. They don't even want to put their foot on the ground.

So it really alters movement when every step that you take hurts. But now since I'm hoping that people are paying more attention, I'm getting a lot of people in the clinic now who are being more proactive. Hey, can you test my toe strength? Why, you know, I want to know how strong my toes are, which I get very excited about, you know?

Daniel Vitalis (09:29.084)

you

CC (09:29.58)

People are like paying attention. We need to be proactive, not reactive. It's much easier to address things and to get people stronger and more mobile when they don't have pain.

Daniel Vitalis (09:33.917)

Hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (09:40.947)

Mm-hmm.

When I think about how this first got came into mind for me, it was when I was 16 years old, I started working out in a gym, you know, it when I first started training and at that time, the world was still really drunk on the wine of bodybuilding, I think, you know, and and like Schwarzenegger and for a new and all those guys and, and so you go into the gym and it would be like the poster of all the, you know, human and musculoskeletal anatomy.

all labeled and everything. And that was when I first started to learn anatomy. And I remember that this chart was all color coded, each muscle had a color code with exercises associated. And then it just was blank white from like the mid shin down. And I remember being like, well, that can't be right. How you know? Yeah, so was like, wait a second, something's wrong here. And so I always thought about this was like, okay, well, and I came across, I would have had to have been 16 or 17. I found this book called The Barefoot Hiker.

CC (10:23.532)

Yeah.

CC (10:27.756)

Throw the magic happens too.

Daniel Vitalis (10:41.171)

And it was by this guy, Richard Frizzine. I just looked it up this morning to see if I could find it. It's on Amazon now. It's just a little booklet, but it was encouraging people to hike barefoot. And so I got really lucky. This sort of came into my mind early in. And so I've always been doing things barefoot and training barefoot. The results now that I'm in my late 40s, when I see people take their shoes off, I'm often like, it's like, you know, the troglodyte emerging from the cave and it's all pale and shriveled and moist and

CC (11:08.009)

Thank

Daniel Vitalis (11:11.067)

toes are all pressed together and you're like, that looks bad. So I feel really lucky that that's been and then I grew, know, obviously now it's we've been in this era of like barefoot shoes and all this stuff for a little while. So do you think my earlier question was like, what percentage of people don't have foot problems or emerging foot problems? And then you've seen obviously a tremendous amount of change happening. Is it trending? Right? Do you think?

CC (11:40.91)

great questions. I think that. Well, let's put it objectively. in my office, you can measure your toe strength. Okay. So we have, it's what's called a dynamometer and it's a device that measures how strong your toes are. most people don't have this device at home, but sometimes I'll tell people to use like a credit card or something. So put your foot on the ground, put the credit card underneath your big toe.

Try to pull the card out and see if you can engage the muscle of your big toe. And then you would do the same thing with your four toes. At a minimum, we should see about 10 % of your body weight, producing 10 % of your body weight out of your big toe and about seven to 8 % out of your lesser toes. I have been doing this for 20 years.

and I can tell you I can probably count on both of my hands how many people have hit that number.

Daniel Vitalis (12:43.773)

I need you to count on your toes, not your hands. So, okay, so it's most everybody.

CC (12:45.614)

Fair. It's very fair. It's really shocking because I don't think people pay attention to their feet. They don't when I don't even think people realize what a healthy foot looks like. You know, like when you look at I'm going to bring out Eddie here. It's my foot bottle. When you look at a foot.

Daniel Vitalis (13:01.883)

Yeah. Yeah.

CC (13:13.132)

The widest part of the foot should be our toes. So when you look down at your feet, that's what I love about the foot. It's so cool because it's the only place in the human body where you can start to see something and be like, hey, I should probably pay attention to this. You'd have to get an x-ray at the knee or at the hip, right, in order to see aberrant loads. But at the foot, all you gotta do is look down. So when you look at your foot,

If your big toe and your pinky toe look like a tapered shoe, yes. Then that's not what your anatomy of your foot should look like. And I think because we have been putting our feet into footwear that does not respect the anatomy of our feet for many, many decades, we don't even know what a healthy foot should look like. We certainly don't know what a healthy foot should function like.

Daniel Vitalis (13:47.013)

shoe.

CC (14:09.646)

And so that's why I think I see so many high numbers of people with foot pain. One in three Americans over the age of 45 suffer from foot pain. That's a lot. Three.

Daniel Vitalis (14:19.366)

One out of how many?

man, that's not right. I've been thinking about this one question for a really long time. I'm wondering if you have any insights. So I always think about the foot being shaped naturally like a swim fin, you know, like you put on your foot like this, and every shoe is shaped like that. And is this like, okay, so I started asking myself why, you know, and then I started thinking about the foot binding that was going on in China.

CC (14:42.882)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (14:52.379)

and like the fetishism of it. And when I look at high fashion, I mean, if you look at runway fashion, you're like, this is fetishism. This isn't these aren't clothes to wear out. This is fetishism, right? Like that's its own thing. Is this like what is this? Is this fetishism? Or is it just how have so many cobblers had it? How is this possible? I know Nike and you know, these companies have not just engineers, but biomechanical engineers who

CC (15:00.803)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (15:21.981)

who study elite runners, like how have they missed this? It makes no sense. That can't be, I wanna be like put my tin foil hat on, what's going on here?

CC (15:25.998)

It doesn't.

CC (15:32.568)

Trust me when I say this, they know. They know. If you look at when all of this really, like when I was doing my research for the book, it was really in the 14th and 15th centuries where it was the introduction of Krakow and Poulain boots, know, the medieval kind of pointy toed shoes. And those were worn by men in a higher socioeconomic status.

Daniel Vitalis (15:35.065)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (15:58.59)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

CC (16:00.628)

And it was funny because when you look at the skeletal remains, well, not funny, but interesting, of that period versus say the 12th and 13th centuries, you see more skeletal remains with people with bunions. So we're starting to, we started to see this introduction of very narrow toe box shoes and then the sequela of changes in the structural positioning or remains of the feet.

And then that started this whole fashion over function. Why wouldn't we all want to dress like the higher socioeconomic people? You know, we all want to strive to look like them. So thus started to change our footwear. When you look at running shoes, Irene Davis talks a lot about this on running related injuries and

there's not too much research prior to the 1970s. And when you look at the 1970s and forward, that's when we start to have the shoe companies really starting to alter running shoes. And if you see what's happening today, I just want to like shake my head. It's like the alien invasion of footwear. I'm like, we don't need three pillows underneath our foot to run. It's really pretty wild. So I think that

Daniel Vitalis (17:21.137)

or like what are we talking about here?

The my friend calls them maximalist shoes. Yeah.

CC (17:27.596)

Yes, it is. It's a maximalist environment. So I think it really started decades ago and we were warned. There's a lot of people and research saying, hey, this is not what's good for your foot, but society kind of overruled and we have fashion over function. And now most of the shoe brands out there, when you talk to the people developing the footwear, a lot of them don't have an anatomy or foot function background. They have a fashion background.

Daniel Vitalis (17:56.978)

Yeah, dude. I see that. Can I just interject something I've noticed I've seen with so my wife's a CrossFit coach. And so in that space, I'll watch a new company come in and they'll they'll have usually shorts and t shirts. And after they get rolling, they always roll out a shoe. And every time I think who's behind this because you guys don't know about shoes. But now you have a full shoe line. And I've seen this dozens of times where I think, are they do they go to some white label shoemaker who just

CC (17:58.634)

And so.

CC (18:20.567)

I know.

Daniel Vitalis (18:27.079)

Like how does that happen that they...

CC (18:28.334)

I don't know. And it really should not be. It's like medical malpractice, especially in a CrossFit environment. if you, you know, there's always the right tool for the job, you know, so, you you want to have certain footwear for certain activities. If you want to talk about CrossFit where you are lifting heavy loads, right, and heavy weight, your foot has to feel the ground because when you're

Daniel Vitalis (18:34.885)

Yeah.

CC (18:56.45)

barefoot or you have a shoe that has a very thin flexible sole, you can sense the ground. You gather sensory information. So if I was going to deadlift, for example, I want a wide foot. I want it to feel the ground and I want to feel stable so I can drive through my foot when I lift. Now, if I lift on a shoe that has 55 millimeters of cushion, you compromise sensory acuity and it's like you're standing on a pillow.

You know, what do you think the information you're going to get into your knee, into your hip, into your back? It is, you know, I'm at the gym and it's very hard for me to, you know, and I just, can't, I gotta shut up sometimes.

Daniel Vitalis (19:36.232)

Yeah, you probably want to go talk to everybody. I'm sure. Yeah. Well, you know, when you see like the sensory homunculus, are you familiar with that? So that's something to that where feet for the listener, the sensory homunculus, imagine a human body that all the proportions are shaped around how much neurological sensitivity each body part has. So the lips are obviously huge, and the fingertips are huge, and the genitals are huge. The feet are obviously disproportionate.

CC (19:44.226)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (20:04.049)

because they have so much more sensory information. So I used to say to people, this would be like cutting off another sense or like living with your hands in mittens all the time, right? But, obviously our feet give us a tremendous amount of information about I'm in such an outdoors person. When I'm walking barefoot through the forest, man, I'm getting so much information about like, sometimes I know what plant communities to expect by what I'm feeling under my feet.

CC (20:33.582)

That's really cool.

Daniel Vitalis (20:33.799)

you know how much moisture what's the texture of the soil is silty is it soft is it muddy is it clay there's so much information people are obviously maybe it's not top of mind for people on how much information they're missing from their environment already because this is just one thing but wow there's a lot there

CC (20:52.8)

It's so cool to me to hear that because that's what our foot was designed to do, is to feel. If you were going to walk on stone or grass or sand, you would adjust your stride. You would adjust how heavy you're stepping based on what you feel because you're gathering information. When you can't feel anything, you're just, you know,

striking away and overstriding or whatever other gait adaptation or compensation pattern that you've acquired. But that foot was designed to feel and it will make the appropriate adjustments stiffening. It's a

neurological adaptation that occurs. The will adapt, will pronate, it will lengthen, it will supinate based on the central nervous system. And when we compromise that, you're setting yourself up for problems.

Daniel Vitalis (21:54.334)

Yeah, when I think of like the two, if I tried to, if you said, give me a list of worlds where people not only ignore their feet, but go even further and just like tape them together because they don't want to think about it. I would think ballet and triathlon are two that come to mind. Like ballet, obviously just notorious for this, you know, and the amount of tape and splinting that has to go on in order for some of those positions to be held or whatever. And I can't even imagine what happens to your toenails and stuff.

But and then in triathlon, especially because you're transitioning from like wet to dry and all of that and then but I just see people relying on a lot of like external stuff to hold themselves together. Almost like this attitude like well, you know, we die tomorrow so I just got to make it through today kind of a thing where it's like almost no thought about you know, and if you get up to like Iron Man, it's like crazy how much people harm themselves in order to accomplish these feats. So I think like

people from outside see it and go like, so cool, so noble, like that people do that. And it's like, yeah, but they're sacrificing, right? Really big. That's like one extreme, but you must have just saw people constantly like having to tape themselves together or somehow hold themselves together.

CC (22:56.366)

Yeah.

CC (23:05.74)

Yeah, it's treating symptoms, you know, rather than going after why. You know, a perfect example is, you know, forefoot pain, bunions, for example, very common. They, when you talk about a bunion surgery or bunionectomy, you know, and you start doing a performing a surgery based on a symptom.

have to figure out why it got there in the first place or else you're gonna fix the bunion and then you're gonna have what's called transfer metatarsalgia. You're gonna have loads going into different parts of the foot. So you really have to be able to assess the why between why all of this stuff is happening.

I've worked with a lot of people across the board, right? From kids to your grandmother to professional athletes. And the professional athlete world is really interesting because athletes are getting bigger and stronger. Like we're getting all this information, like we got to strength train, we need protein and people are getting bigger and they're getting stronger.

Daniel Vitalis (24:13.329)

especially the pros like I stayed at a hotel recently with a football team and it was these didn't even look like regular humans to me.

CC (24:20.61)

Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, fine, great, bigger, stronger. I'm here for it. But you can't train, you can't build this jet engine of a body on a paper airplane of feet. Okay? We put two to three times our body weight through our foot when we're walking.

Daniel Vitalis (24:37.363)

Yeah. Right.

CC (24:44.044)

When we're running, there's certain places in our foot where that number jumps up to eight to 11 times our body weight. So when I get these calls from these teams and they're like, Hey, a lot of our athletes are having foot pain and Achilles issues. And I'm, and I go and assess these guys, these professional athletes, the best of the best. And I'm doing some of these foot and ankle assessments. I'm like, goodness. Like if you would just use the powerhouse of your body, which is from your knee down.

You're already running faster, right? But what if you got stronger and you were actually able to propel through your foot? You would look at injury, decreasing injury risk. I mean, it just, it's really interesting to me when I talk to these guys, because I ask them about their training and there's minimal, if any, that occurs below the knee.

Daniel Vitalis (25:37.972)

Okay, now if somebody wants to start, well, when you were just talking about those loads on the feet when we walk and when we run, I don't want to get too far away from the average listener here. But obviously, our skeleton is a piezoelectric structure, right? It's a crystalline piezoelectric structure. So when forces travel through our bones, they leave an electrical charge that tells our body where to lay down new bone, right? So if we do a little thing that changes our gate or changes

position of the pelvis or changes how we step on our foot. If we do that consistently, does not our skeleton remodel around those compensatory patterns. And then so if I want to then drop my shoes, it's not like just like, now I just go back to normal. It's like now I need to go through months of skeletal reconstruction, right?

CC (26:28.994)

Yes. Yes, it's a, this is where I think, you know, the conversation of walking barefoot and minimal footwear is not new by any means. I mean, this is, I think 2007 was when the Vibram five finger shoe came out. And I think what happened and I think why this time around people are understanding it more as the education behind it.

If you wore a shoe that restricted its function and your foot has never felt the ground and you said, this makes sense to me. It makes sense that my foot should be allowed to feel the ground. I'm going to go from zero to 100 overnight. I promise you that you more than likely you will be in my office because you wouldn't tell someone who's squatting a hundred pounds one week to squat 200 pounds the next week.

It's the same concept at the foot. There has to be graded exposure and sometimes that graded exposure is very slow. Because when I put my foot on the ground, I have more load going through my muscles, through my tendons, through my bones, which is good because that creates a strong foot. It's a good environment. But just like with anything else, if I go to

hot and heavy too soon, that load becomes too much. So our demand is greater than our capacity. So instead of, answer your question, having good bone remodeling, which is, you know, we're building new bone and the bone is remodeling, now we have too much and that edema in the bone turns into stress reactions, for example.

Daniel Vitalis (28:21.405)

Mm-hmm.

CC (28:23.722)

So that is where I'm educating all the time. You're starting at five minutes a day. That's it. Barefoot walking. your, if your foot has not seen, if your bottom of your foot doesn't have a callus on it, you're starting at five minutes a day. That's like, I was just reading some research on that this morning of, you know, calluses on our feet and everybody wants to run to the, you know,

Daniel Vitalis (28:30.099)

of exercises or barefoot walking.

Daniel Vitalis (28:37.792)

Yeah, yeah.

CC (28:50.882)

get a pedicure and get all the calluses cut off. I'm like, please don't do that. Okay, there's a reason those are there. You know, because when you're walking barefoot, you develop these calluses, it's a protection mechanism. You know, and obviously, you know, and then it's like, my foot hurts. I need more cushion.

Daniel Vitalis (28:54.525)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (29:04.147)

Yeah, it's like cutting the pads off your dog's foot or something.

Daniel Vitalis (29:10.491)

Mm hmm. Right. Yeah. You know, having had the opportunity to travel to some places and see indigenous people in the forest and you see their feet, it's like a completely different organ than what we have. mean, the you know, and we talk about having your toes played, they sometimes have like a big toe that's doing its own thing like a thumb, you know, it's like pointed almost like to the side and the way they're gripping things and moving around, you know.

CC (29:31.2)

yeah.

CC (29:35.502)

It's a beautiful thing because I love seeing like a strong foot, you know, it's like, man, they got some resiliency, they're gritty, you know?

Daniel Vitalis (29:43.228)

Yeah, same, same, but you know, I've been watching my wife slowly, you know, she was always about doing everything in her shoes and so I've been like slowly coaxing her out of her shoes, but I mean, she started with a foot that was sort of shaped like a shoe. And I've watched too with the, you know, and now obviously like it's changed tremendously, but watching also, in fact, it was funny, we were just, we just got back from the West Indies and she was,

CC (30:01.451)

yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (30:12.709)

every day wanting to walk barefoot in the sand. And I was a lifeguard on the beach growing up for many years. And so I got a lot, it drives me crazy. So I wanna actually ask about that ground reaction force. Because if you're like, hey, do you wanna go for a walk? I'm always down, but like, sometimes it's nicer to walk on a stable surface because you have that sense of every step propels the next step. And then if I'm walking on like soft sand where you don't have that,

it's like every step or right now it's melty snow so it's no longer snowshoe weather up here in Maine but it's not fun to walk in this snow it's every step is like your feet are now I'm sure that's strengthening my feet but for walking it's not very enjoyable you know what I mean so I would love to get your thoughts on that too because I love to walk a trail or a dirt road I used to be a Vibram five finger guy I remember when to your point

CC (30:50.242)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (31:11.123)

remember getting a letter in the mail for the class action lawsuit against them and I was like, my, who are these people who want to suit that's so ridiculous to me. I felt so bad. I thought they produce such a cool product and that really sucked. but I found like running in those on pavement makes no sense to me. It really hurt over time. I wanted to get your opinion on that. So surfaces because it's not like we all just like

CC (31:27.98)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (31:34.575)

inside our house, we have natural surfaces, right? So it's unnatural surfaces. So if I try to take my natural foot and put it on a natural surface, how is that different than if I want to walk outside?

CC (31:42.284)

What? That's a great question. And I think it's one that does need to be addressed because some of us don't have the luxury of, you know, walking around in the woods or on dirt. Those environments, the foot is adaptable. So when we are stepping on dirt or a softer terrain, the foot can kind of adapt. It can feel there's less force, you know.

And that was really, you know, original footwear was used for protection. There was a lot less concrete around, you know? So the foot was able to adapt to the terrain, to the variable terrain. I have a lot of patients, like I also am in New York City a lot. That's, you know, you're a concrete jungle. And you are what?

Daniel Vitalis (32:28.659)

And you walk there, man. It's nothing to log six miles a day or something.

CC (32:33.26)

And I've been doing, like I said, I have been working on my feet for years. And when I go there, I have different footwear. So if I'm going to be walking around for maybe half a day, I have my minimal footwear, which is defined, I define this in the book as wide toe box, not a wide shoe. So a wide shoe is wide at the...

metatarsals, right, or at the ball of the foot.

Daniel Vitalis (33:03.731)

Like you mean like if you buy like the D wide shoe, is that what you're talking about?

CC (33:06.478)

Yes. It's like my patients are like, I got a new balance. It's a triple E. I'm like, it's still tapers at the toe.

Daniel Vitalis (33:12.825)

man, they just can't get it right,

CC (33:15.234)

You know, so why toe box? you can take out the factory insert of the shoe and put your foot on it. And if your toes extend beyond the factory insert, the shoe is probably too narrow, but keep this in mind. Most people's feet look like a shoe, not a foot. you have to, know, minimal shoes, zero drop. So that basically means that the heel and the toe sit in the same plane. There's no elevated heel and a thin and flexible sole.

Daniel Vitalis (33:27.293)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (33:32.115)

Yeah.

CC (33:44.91)

So most shoes that kind of fall into that minimal category are anywhere from 20 millimeters of stack height or less. Typically, like, you know, 14, 15 is more minimal.

Daniel Vitalis (34:00.084)

14-15 millimeters basically under the foot.

CC (34:03.086)

correct. So if you're walking on concrete all day long, or you're walking through an airport, your foot might not like the thin and flexible part. It's gonna love the wide toe box, which is my non-negotiable. It probably will like the heat zero heel to toe drop depending right some people still need that low drop if they have weak feet, weak calves. That's a different conversation. But it's that stack height.

Daniel Vitalis (34:16.115)

be a killer.

CC (34:33.986)

So that's where I think if you're going to be on concrete or standing in one place, or I call museum walking or grocery shopping, where you don't have that faster paced gate where you can roll through your foot, that stack height is an important conversation.

Daniel Vitalis (34:53.779)

Okay, I wanna talk about that. just to clarify museum walking, sometimes people who work in an office building will be like, I've got 8,000 steps today. And you're like, I'm always, I never feel like that's really 8,000 steps because there's such a difference between unimpeded walking versus like shuffling around from place to place. Like I don't feel like I'm getting the same thing from those different types of steps. So if I walk from

you know, this gate in the airport to that gate in the airport, that is really different than if I'm like moseying around in the shops or something, right? That's my experience. Can you help disambiguate all that?

CC (35:31.052)

Yes. So I kind of define it as ambient walking versus intentional walking. Something is better than nothing. So, you know, if you're taking less than 5,000 steps, you're really considered a sedentary individual. So that is like where I start with some people and some people that are have been in chronic pain. I mean, I've had patients that have had 2,000 steps a day. Okay. That is, that is not really moving at all.

Daniel Vitalis (35:39.847)

Of course, yeah, of course.

CC (36:00.682)

So I will take, yeah, it is not a lot of steps. To put it into something a little more objective, about a five minute walk, intentional walk, will get you about 500 steps.

Daniel Vitalis (36:02.247)

You get that like going to the bathroom every day and like going to your refrigerator and stuff. Yeah.

CC (36:18.018)

Five minutes. So with those people, that's what I'm saying. I know you're kind of moving around your house, but if you can give me five minutes three times a day of an intentional walk, that means you're going outside and your pace is a little bit faster or you're on a treadmill if you can't get outside, you're going to grab yourself another 1500 steps. Now for some people, that is a very big deal.

for people who suffer from depression, getting to that 5,000 step mark can reduce the symptoms of depression, by quite a bit. So it's like a no brainer to me. like, this is the conversation we need to be having. It's like on every doctor's prescription pad, should be like some type of block.

Daniel Vitalis (37:03.869)

People take drugs for they're taking drugs because they're not walking. That's so sad. Like, I'm not judging it. I'm my heart hurts that this is the scenario we're in. my goodness.

CC (37:12.108)

Yeah. Yeah.

It's why I do what I do, Tanyone, because on the other side of it, it's like the most rewarding, like it's like what I was meant, like put on this planet to do. And it's so, I had a recent patient who was from out of the country and she came in in a wheelchair and she stayed in the U.S. for five weeks and we worked together. And she had had a foot injury three years ago.

Daniel Vitalis (37:18.045)

Mm-hmm.

CC (37:46.944)

Now, tissues heal.

This no longer was a conversation of a musculoskeletal injury. This was now a complicated conversation of a whole bio-psycho-social issue. It was an emotional thing. It was a mental thing. So we worked not only on improving her strength, right? Because things had atrophied, but more importantly, building her confidence and movement. you know,

Daniel Vitalis (37:54.995)

Right. Right.

CC (38:19.144)

She, told her, you're making me cry. I was like, when you leave here in five weeks, you're leaving that wheelchair here. You know, you're going to walk on that plane. And I spent a lot of time, I would like text her pictures of like the mountains when I'm hiking in Colorado and like all those little things that like, I think were so important to retrain her brain.

outside of just she is identified with this foot pain. There's a person behind that diagnosis and you just can't treat that foot. So I know I went, that was a little, I digressed.

Daniel Vitalis (38:47.475)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (38:52.955)

Mmm.

That's okay. That's okay. You said we were talking about steps and number of steps and I'm wondering about two tools in particular. Do you recommend people have a pedometer? And do you recommend people have a dog? Because people are it's like who's walking who here I would not my dog walks me a mile a day. You know, my dogs like take me out every day. I can't say no to them.

I have to do that walk every day. So I often tell people like, take the dog of your body for a walk, like, you know, get a dog and you'll find yourself walking. I'm just curious, both of those things, how important they are to you.

CC (39:29.132)

Yeah.

CC (39:33.902)

I do think that people need to have some way to monitor what they're doing. I have a Garmin, a lot of my patients have some type of Fitbit or some way to monitor that. think it's also nice if, when I'm at my office and I'm like, we talk about that ambient walking, you're like, well, I got 5,000 steps, but I was just walking around my office. That is different than going for an intentional walk.

So at the end of my work day, I'll look down at my step count and I'll be like, huh, I could probably use another thousand steps here. So I get outside, I go for 10 minutes brisk pace. I grab some more steps. I'm outside. It's like a good, I'll usually go after dinner. You know, that's a nice way to kind of monitor where you are. and as far as the dog, I have a little, mini golden doodle.

Daniel Vitalis (40:30.266)

haha

CC (40:31.476)

And we moved to the mountains in August. And I'm always like, come on, you know, like he just that he does. He's not a mountain dog just yet. Right. So, you know, it depends on what kind of dog you have, but I will tell you this dogs will get you outside walking. So, you know, the, some of the things we'll talk about with my patients is if they are going to be with their dogs for a while, I'll recommend they get one of those belts. So they're not just like.

Daniel Vitalis (40:42.378)

Okay, he's not walking you.

Daniel Vitalis (40:47.325)

Yeah.

CC (41:00.244)

Arm swing is very important with dates. So walking is all about rotation. Same with running. It's how it's basically this like corkscrew. That's what gives us kind of free energy. That's why humans are such good endurance walkers, because really it's a. We've we've been designed to walk for long, long periods of time, but that comes with being efficient and being able to rotate. So when people are walking and they like.

Daniel Vitalis (41:02.183)

Yeah, great, I wanna talk about that.

Daniel Vitalis (41:17.063)

that spinal engine.

CC (41:29.186)

they were holding their dog on a leash, they're kind of impeding some of that rotation.

Daniel Vitalis (41:33.81)

Yeah, sure. What do you think about man, I don't want to lose hold on. I got two two things going on. First, just quick step count question. And then I want come back to this question about weightlifting. But I my kind of optimal running distances, I like 5k is I think I think it's like moderate enough that I'm not going to beat myself up too bad. But it's long enough that I feel like I get some good work in. So I run a few a week and we were just on vacation, you know, I did 10 in a row. So

every day I would look down at my pedometer and I would feel like, am I counting these steps or not? Because like, let's say I do a 5K and I get 7,500 steps out of that. And then I hit my 8,000 step goal like five minutes later and it's nine in the morning and I'm like, do I still need my steps or are those my steps?

CC (42:23.574)

You know, that's a great question. There is, when you're looking at just step count, there's a law of diminishing return. So I'll have patients that'll say, I'm getting 15,000 steps a day. I did my run and then I was done and then I wanted to get my walking steps in. And so they're coming in at 15,000 steps, for example. And then my next question to them is, are you strength training?

Daniel Vitalis (42:30.867)

That makes sense.

CC (42:50.766)

And they say, well, no, I don't have time strength training because I'm getting 15,000 steps a day. Okay. This is when we have the conversation of at after about nine to 10,000 steps, we kind of plateau. So it is.

Daniel Vitalis (42:54.003)

just getting on these steps.

Daniel Vitalis (43:06.131)

That's good to hear, that's good to hear. That takes pressure off, because some days I'll be like 24,000, need more days like this, you know?

CC (43:12.962)

Yeah. And so that's when you can, you know, be able to free some time up for yourself, you know, maybe don't go on, you know, try to hit 20,000 steps and free up some of your time to do other things.

Daniel Vitalis (43:28.913)

makes some that makes perfect sense to me. I always say to people it's like, you know, you can tell the difference between a $5 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine, but it's hard to tell a $50 bottle from a $5,000 bottle. You just can't. Okay, on a weightlifting question, coming back to the rotational conversation, you know, I've really switched up a lot of my weight training now for rotational movement. So I've been doing clubbell, mace, Bulgarian bag, all these things that are rotational, because what I was finding

CC (43:39.468)

Yeah, that's right.

Daniel Vitalis (43:57.502)

doing a lot of CrossFit type movements. Everything being in this sagittal plane. It's like, wow, all actual activities are rotational. All sports are rotational. And then weightlifting, it's not just a CrossFit thing, but it's so single plane. And then what I've noticed and have been guilty of all my life and watched this all my life is how everybody starts to walk all stiffened.

And I used to think we were just doing that because you know, you get that pump and you're like, Yeah, I'm huge. But then I started realizing notes because I'm constantly bracing my spine in one plane. And so I've got friends who do not know how to rotate. And they walk in ways that look kind of ridiculous. But also like they're missing. They there was a famous thing that happened to CrossFit games many years ago where they decided to throw in this different activity and they had them throw a softball.

CC (44:32.098)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (44:51.443)

And these are the most incredible athletes I've ever seen and they cannot throw a ball, right? No rotation. It's like embarrassing. So yeah, that I'm curious how you're managing that. So you brought up deadlifting. It sounds like you're doing some heavier weightlifting. You know that feeling you put the weights down and there's that couple of moments where your body's like all stiffened together like a unit. But obviously that's not how we want to move. So any thoughts on mitigating that or the effects of that?

CC (44:55.438)

would have liked to seen that.

CC (45:19.832)

You know, I think it's interesting when you look across different sports, because you can always pick out a CrossFit athlete. Okay. There's in that there's nothing wrong with that. They're just a lot of their movements that they do is just what you said. So the first thing I'll usually ask them is what do you like better front squat or back squat? Okay. And the majority will always tell me I like the back squat. Right.

because I can hang out on my low back. Having to front squat and load the front of your body is more difficult. It requires different stability. I will tell my patients all the time, it is so much harder to turn tissues down or off than to turn things on. We need quiet, right? You mentioned this kind of like.

Daniel Vitalis (46:12.019)

Yeah.

CC (46:16.546)

you know, chest out rib cage flared, know, standing in this position. I am constantly cuing my patients. Drop your sternum. Just relax. Breathe. You know.

Daniel Vitalis (46:30.205)

So like a pair there like in a sympathetic posture, sympathetic nervous system posture all the time, evoking that kind of adrenal response essentially, versus you're talking about things that signal the body that it's okay to down regulate.

CC (46:40.61)

Yes.

CC (46:45.112)

That's right. And you know what? You just see something is really cool. And if I had time, I'd go back to school and research this. I think that when people have bilateral foot pain, bilateral heel pain, even chronic plantar fasciitis, I don't...

necessarily think it is a problem being driven from the foot. When someone is unstable or they're in this state of fight or flight, their nervous systems are jacked up, right? Everything becomes a grip, right? And that means my respiration rates are changing and I can't relax my pelvic floor when I inhale, right? So everything in the pelvic floor, everything is gripping. Gripping is not strength. So

That's when you'll start to see pelvic floor issues. And this is with like heavy lifters, you know, you start to people are like, women don't heavy lift because you'll have it get incontinence. I'm like, that is the biggest bunch of horse shit I've ever heard. We just have to work on how we can control these tissues. And when you can get the tissues to relax and then load.

Daniel Vitalis (47:41.491)

Yeah.

CC (47:52.422)

then my foot is also not gripping because my foot's like, hey, this person is unstable. I'm going to grip to high heaven because I got to try to stabilize them. Well, what do think you're going to get? You're going to get foot tension. So the foot has to be able to relax. It has to be able to absorb shock and so does the pelvic floor. So I think all of that comes into.

Daniel Vitalis (48:00.574)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (48:12.979)

There's a lot there. Gosh, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with Tom Meyer's work and, you know, anatomy trains and he connects that deep frontal line. I think it's like the arches of the foot, the pelvic floor and the diaphragm are all sort of part of one line. And I agree with you that if you can, know, Andy Galpin talks about five minutes of meditating after heavy lifting and stuff. And one thing that I've noticed, again, I'll pick on my CrossFit friends who I love and I love my gym and the community is amazing.

A lot of the people are training very hard, they have a hard time staying lean and they're always injured. And I believe it's because their cortisol levels are jacked all the time because every workout is running from absolute peril. Like the timer goes and there's something so good about getting into that zone five heart rate and hitting those VO2 max workouts. But you got to tell your body after that you're safe again. And if you just carry that into your life day after day,

CC (48:53.518)

Yeah.

CC (49:07.798)

Yeah. yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (49:11.965)

the chronic stress seems to eat away people's connective tissue so that they're never recovering. And then they all kind of get fat because I think because their body's like, hold on to everything, we're in total stress. And I'm seeing that very often. And most people don't have any kind of meditation practice in their life or prayer practice or something or sauna even that down regulates their sympathetic nervous system. So.

CC (49:35.214)

So important. If that's like the one thing I think people are missing, it is not more and more and more. I used to be that person. Trust me. And I was like, you know, always, always injured. And it wasn't even until, you know, recently where I, you you practice what you preach and I'm like, man, there is something to this rest and recovery. There is something about, you know, down regulating your nervous system. And then what you find is you can actually lift more.

Daniel Vitalis (49:42.287)

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (49:57.798)

Yeah.

CC (50:05.056)

and you cannot get injured chasing injuries all the time.

Daniel Vitalis (50:09.905)

Yeah. Wow, there's so okay, I know only have you for limited time here. I want to hit a few things. First, we were talking about shoes before. Can I run through a few shoes? I'm sure you you maybe have to be careful about what you say about different shoes. But okay, just how you feel about these.

CC (50:29.25)

Yeah, mean, that is you have the toes that are not inhibited. They're going to be able to splay. They're going to have a thin and flexible sole in that type of shoe. I always say you got to earn your right. You got to earn your right to wear that thing all the time because it's an environment where you need to be stronger.

Daniel Vitalis (50:41.01)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (50:47.891)

Okay. I remember, so if you're just listening to this, this is a Vibram Fivefinger, the five toe shoes, and there's some other brands now, but I remember when this came out thinking like, finally we're using all this technology for something useful. Because what a cool, I think back to how many indigenous people have thought about doing it and it just wasn't worth the time when they were making moccasins or whatever, but such a cool idea. Okay, cool. wanna, this is pretty close. So this is a Vivo, you know.

fairly wide, basically a modern moccasin is what I would say that is. Thoughts on that?

CC (51:21.9)

Yeah, so Vivo Barefoot's one of like the OGs of the minimal footwear world. They create a great shoe. That Vivo Barefoot Motor Strength is one of my favorite shoes to strength train in because it's what you just did. You can roll it up in a ball, you can twist it, and it's thin and flexible so you can feel the ground. Yeah, that's a great shoe.

Daniel Vitalis (51:43.155)

One thing I just side note about shoes like that I love is that they're so easy to keep an extra pair like in your carry-on bag or something, right? Because they just don't take any space and they weigh nothing.

CC (51:51.212)

I love that's the best way when you travel, you're like, I have four pairs of shoes in here. It's the space of one, like, hoca.

Daniel Vitalis (51:55.621)

Yeah, exactly.

Okay, another question. didn't bring my any of my boots here. But of course, you know, I do a lot of outdoor activities, lot of hunting and fishing and things that would be very difficult to do barefoot and, and or just would really slow things down, you know. So often what I'm wearing is a rubber boot. You know, it could be I usually wear lacrosse is they could be mucks, they could be bogs.

CC (52:12.942)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (52:26.449)

typically that's the typical boot up here in Maine, we got a long mud season, it's just starting now. And I wear them in the winter ice fishing and all of that I typically wear them in such a way that they're fairly roomy inside and my foot just floats inside of it and I can fully splay and move. But the shoes often have a bit of a heel to keep you out of the mud and stuff. So I'm curious about your thoughts on that. And you know, because when I look at the companies like Vivo attempting to make winter boots, it's like

I live in a legit winter. It's like guys, you have to be up a little bit because the cold, you know, for insulation. So yeah, just curious with the winter boot thing.

CC (53:05.506)

Yes, it's like that, don't ever say always, never, you know? I think where I really want to educate people is just that exact topic. People in the barefoot shoe world or the minimal shoe world, they'll be like, I have to wear these shoes all the time and that is not true. For exactly the same reasons that you just said, there is a time and a place.

Daniel Vitalis (53:10.289)

Yeah

CC (53:32.386)

that you are going to want to wear, you're gonna be on rocky terrain. It's technology, it's okay. If your foot's cold, if you're gonna be on rocky terrain, if you're gonna be on your feet for longer distances, it is okay to have a stiffer shoe. It's okay to have that heel to keep you out of mud. It's this conversation of, in the book I call it a 24 hour shoe clock. So if you're gonna be out in the woods for three hours in X shoe.

Daniel Vitalis (53:56.765)

Yeah.

CC (54:02.242)

that is gonna be not as functional as a minimal shoe. That's okay, enjoy yourself. When you get home, take the shoe off and go wear something that's more functional. Just balance out your time a little bit. That's all you have to do.

Daniel Vitalis (54:12.957)

Yep. Thank you. That makes so much sense. That makes sense. I got one more shoe I want to show you and I'm nervous what you're gonna say. Okay, so this is my, this has become my favorite running on pavement shoe. I've got a true form treadmill upstairs. So, you know, like a curved self-propelled treadmill and I run that barefoot. And it's funny, my wife will run it with shoes and it builds up a static charge and her hair stands straight up. And if she doesn't,

CC (54:29.496)

Cool. Yeah, yeah, curved deck.

CC (54:38.622)

Daniel Vitalis (54:41.267)

If she doesn't touch the sides every couple minutes, you build up such a charge that, I mean, it hurts when you actually, when you discharge it. But so I'll run on that barefoot, but when I'm running outside, I've been running in these, those are the fluxes. So those are zero drop. The toe box has been fairly wide. And I just, these have been my airport shoe. I've been running high rocks races in them. I do a lot in them. So, but they're fairly tall. Like when I first,

CC (54:47.134)

I don't doubt it.

CC (54:54.19)

Okay. Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (55:08.273)

got used to it was like, ooh, I could roll my ankle in that. It's like, if I just wore one, you know, I'm standing up fairly high over the other foot. So thoughts on that shoe.

CC (55:17.198)

Is it comfortable?

Daniel Vitalis (55:19.953)

Yeah, it's all knitted. I don't have to lace it. I just slip my foot in it.

CC (55:24.224)

If you look at all the research on what is the best shoe, Ben O'Nigg did a lot of this. It boils down to, are you comfortable in that shoe? Now, there's kind of a caveat to that because there's always a trade off, right? When people put on a super cushy shoe that has a big toe spring on it,

Daniel Vitalis (55:33.907)

you

CC (55:50.506)

and you see them running and it basically, which is not that shoe by the way, it basically looks like it's rolling them forward. Like the shoe is doing the work, right? I always say, nobody gets a free lunch. That, it's not, know, we, our goal in life should not be to be the most comfortable all the time. It's okay to be uncomfortable. You know, that's when growth happens.

So I always preface that conversation of discomfort is okay. We want to live there. but with that shoe that you have, it is allowing your toe splay. It has some stack height on it. You're running, but that's in that, like that's in that functional footwear, that footwear world, you know, and you're running on it. So yes, that's okay for me. you know, well, you mentioned, the stack height with, you know, spraining your ankle.

Keep that in mind. The further the foot is off the ground, you have a better chance of stepping on something and then you're going to go into excessive inversion.

Daniel Vitalis (56:59.153)

Now, I will say my wife's a little taller than me. So that's a slight incentive I have. And on that note, I wanted to ask you about shoes that, okay, like I agree with you about that clock analogy that you gave. So if we're going out to dinner, I've got a pair of cowboy boots I might wear or another pair of like dress boots. They're so uncomfortable.

CC (57:04.598)

yep.

Daniel Vitalis (57:23.091)

like I want nothing more than to get them off at the end. But I think you know, it's like wearing a belt out at a wedding. It's like or a tie. It's like I don't also want to do that all the time, but I'll do it for a few hours. But but as shoes get more and more aberrant from the human, you know, like obviously, the obvious one is high heels. I'm kind of curious your thoughts on that because now you're getting into changing the position of your pelvis, obviously, and gait dynamics dramatically, right? So as

And I guess I'm going to add one more piece of this. Sorry. The guy who wrote, you know, Shane Benzie, who wrote The Lost Art of Running. Familiar with him. So he's a running coach. And he spent some time in Kenya looking at, you know, the the elite runners there. And he wrote a really great book about it. He's really into using your fascia to run basically. And he said something to me, which I've been thinking about for a while something about that and you just echoed it something about in some cases, a little bit of drop can be appropriate. Now, obviously, if

CC (57:58.668)

No.

Daniel Vitalis (58:21.595)

drop is the same thing that's going on, correct me if I'm wrong, but a high heel is just very extreme drop, right? Like if somebody's like, well, what's drop mean in a shoe and what's zero drop? Like, well, a high heel would be one extreme and then a shoe with totally flat plane would be the other extreme, right? So how much is, when is it beneficial? Why do they even do it? And then what happens when you get to those extremes?

CC (58:43.15)

So to answer the first question about high heels and those types of things, as little time as possible. I'm not going to win the conversation of saying, when you go on a date, you need to wear your functional footwear. No, feel good. If wearing a high heel to go out to dinner makes you feel good, go for it.

But as little time as possible. I have had many patients in my office because of I wore high heels to this wedding or I've worn high heels to work all the time and there will be problems if that is your favorite footwear. If you have your shoe clock and you're wearing that high heel all day long, you will have problems. So limit that time. In the book, we have like a high heel rehab section. We're like, if you were high heels, do these things.

right, to accommodate for that. you know, that's one way to be aware of that. As far as the heel to toe drop, if you look at the research of low to no drop, it's six millimeters or below. So if you have a...

Daniel Vitalis (59:50.297)

millimeters between the heel and the toe differential will be considered zero drop.

CC (59:54.126)

Correct, that is considered to be functional.

All right. If you think of brands like ultra running, topo athletic, they have shoes that sit along the zero drop with the wide toe box, but also four millimeter drop, five millimeter drop. So those are also nice transition shoes for people versus other companies that are eight millimeters, 10 millimeters. That's a high heel to toe drop.

Now, if you have someone who has heel pain or Achilles issues, sometimes that's nice, right? It's easier. Run up a mountain in a zero drop shoe versus a shoe that has an eight millimeter heel to toe drop. You will feel a difference. It's a lot easier. Even when I run with the higher drop.

Daniel Vitalis (01:00:45.523)

with the drop.

Daniel Vitalis (01:00:49.297)

Because you have more surface contact and you're not working the gastroc and the soleus as much.

CC (01:00:52.726)

Yes, if I'm running up a mountain and my heel and toe are in the same plane, you better have a real strong foot and calf to be able to push you up. But if you have that heel that's elevated, you're getting a little assist.

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:02.429)

Okay, yep.

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:10.067)

Well, how do you feel about a lifter then like for somebody who's squatting?

CC (01:01:13.998)

You have to ask yourself why.

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:17.235)

I love that answer. You just got me good with that one.

CC (01:01:18.894)

You know, if I want to squat and I can't deep squat without a lift underneath my heels, I should be asking why can I not do this? Is it because I don't have good proximal stability? Is it because I have poor ankle dorsiflexion? Is it because X, Y or Z? And then figure that out and work on it. But in the meantime,

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:46.051)

That's a diff that's in a different category for you than the running uphill with some drop. You have those as different. Those are different.

CC (01:01:51.475)

no, because I think in both scenarios you are, you know, getting a job done.

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:57.885)

compensating to get a job done.

CC (01:02:00.194)

You know, there's some days where I'm tired and I'm like, man, I'm going to throw on my, you know, ultra experience, which is a four millimeter drop. It's a little, it's a little easier run for me, but I'm still going to go run. I'm still going to, you know, I don't want to compromise movement or steps or activity because I'm a little tired. I'm going to be like, all right, I'm just going to wear my formal drop today. But there's other days where I'm like, you know what? I want to go after my foot and calf strength. I feel good.

Daniel Vitalis (01:02:13.907)

Okay.

CC (01:02:29.302)

I go into my zero drop and run up the same trail.

Daniel Vitalis (01:02:31.729)

But if I'm strapping on lifters every time I want to go squat or clean or snatch, that might be leaning on a crutch a little too hard.

CC (01:02:40.75)

Most of us are not Olympic lifters. Where we're like, we're squatting 700 pounds. That is a different conversation. Yes, of course there needs to be some stability and other factors underneath the foot, but the majority of us don't live in that category. Which means we should be asking ourselves, hey, why do I need this?

Daniel Vitalis (01:02:47.047)

Yeah, I need to... Yeah, yeah, right, right.

Daniel Vitalis (01:02:59.431)

Right, right, good.

CC (01:03:07.81)

And then do both. Training variability is great. Movement variability, the more movement options we have, the less shit moments we have.

Daniel Vitalis (01:03:18.151)

Right. Well, on that, how do feel about do you have time for Can we go any further? Yeah. How do feel about I was talking before about unstable surfaces, like walking in soft sand, or something I really like doing is box step ups off of a stable, unstable surface. So I'll have like a balance board that I'll step down and try to do a controlled step onto that balance board. You know, unstable surfaces, I assume are working.

CC (01:03:22.019)

Yeah

Daniel Vitalis (01:03:47.06)

peroneals, tibialis anterior, you know, all the muscles of the calves, how important is that kind of stuff to walk in surfaces that don't necessarily react the way a firm surface does?

CC (01:04:02.062)

So the first part of that question with the training piece, if you can't control it and you don't own it, then you have no business putting yourself on an unstable surface. That's when I train people. like, if you can't do it on the ground, you have no business putting your foot on a BOSU ball, right? Get control first. But then I love training the foot into inversion and eversion.

Daniel Vitalis (01:04:13.535)

Right, yeah.

CC (01:04:30.382)

Like I'm designing a board right now where you can actually put your foot on it at different degrees of slants so that you can like calf raise off of a foot that's inverted. You know, some people that had an ankle sprain, they'll look at that and be like, no way. And I'm like, oh yes. Oh, we're definitely doing this because your foot is going to do this at some point in your life. You're going to go outside and step on a curb and your foot is going to go into inversion again, and you better be prepared for it.

Same with E version. So we want to train all of those different positions to the foot.

Daniel Vitalis (01:05:06.707)

Do you like something like this? These footboards are getting pretty popular.

CC (01:05:10.23)

Yeah, those are great. It's like a sidekick or the BlackBorn.

Daniel Vitalis (01:05:13.115)

Yeah, mine's some knockoff from Amazon, anything in particular, do you think just do everything that it does or is there anything you're like, prescriptively you should be doing this with it or?

CC (01:05:17.464)

So see you again.

CC (01:05:23.918)

I think those boards are nice because it brings awareness to the fact that the foot needs to dissociate. Our foot, you know how you mentioned earlier about the fin, right? It's wide at the top and then narrows. But if you think of a fin, it's like a paddle. Okay? Our foot has, you know, a rear foot, a mid foot and a forefoot. This foot was designed to dissociate and move.

And that's what I think those boards and training people to kind of roll through their foot is important because I see a lot of people that their foot literally functions like a paddle. It's like their heel strikes and they slap their foot on the ground. And there's none of this beautiful roll that happens and that's shock absorption.

Daniel Vitalis (01:06:13.331)

So yeah, I appreciate you saying that because I never, I don't think embarrassingly, I never really thought about my heel moving independently from my forefoot before. And if you set it so that the forefoot of the board is stable and you can kind of roll the heel back and forth, I'd never actually felt that until recently.

CC (01:06:29.92)

It's the coolest part of the foot, I think. The calcaneus is like the coolest bone in the foot. It is a better shock absorber than any type of synthetic material. There's a calcaneal fat pad that sits along the heel that is filled with receptors that give us information. So when that heel strikes the ground, if we can feel it, right,

Daniel Vitalis (01:06:43.475)

Hmm.

CC (01:06:55.124)

it initiates an unlocking of the foot. The calcaneus starts to open up, okay, or we call it eversion, and that starts this unlocking of the foot, which is pronation, which is a very, very necessary movement. So that's why that heel has to move.

Daniel Vitalis (01:07:14.419)

That's so helpful for me. Couple injury questions I wanted to ask about. One was, okay, here's a big picture one. So I was doing some stupid young guy stuff in the mountains when I was a teenager and I got a pretty bad rotational tip fib break just above the ankle. I was alone while my friends were quite far away. I had to be like basically hauled out of these mountains and.

It was winter times. I mean, I could have died up there. so then I get out and I'm so dumb that I, well, I knew better than to let them do surgery on me. They wanted a pin and rods and all this stuff. And I basically said, can you just push the bones back and cast it? And they did. But it wasn't probably the best that they could have worked that could have been done. Then when I got the cast, which was over the knee, I walked on it.

the whole time I was hiking on it. I mean, just doing stupid things. Hindsights 2020. At this point, the way that it's healed. My foot is tilted outward just a little bit on that side. And what I noticed when I squat is that my talus bone is not sitting quite where it should be. So it impinges in dorsiflexion. So so that if I took a like a band and put it on my rig and set it low,

CC (01:08:30.477)

Yep.

Daniel Vitalis (01:08:36.753)

and then like walked into that band so that band was pulling back against my talus bone. It's like, I can go into like full dorsiflexion. I'm just curious if you have any thoughts on like anything there. Am I like stuck this way forever? I mean, I'm functional, of course, and I can run and squat and everything. I my squat, I'm better off doing staggered stepped or single leg squats than I am squatting bilaterally because

I've got, it causes my whole pelvis to rotate. I weight my left leg a little bit more. And so if I squat heavy, I'm at risk of back pain.

CC (01:09:10.466)

Yeah. I love all the single leg stuff. Anyway, I'm a big fan of that single leg work, but that talus. So the interesting thing about the tail is that there's no muscular attachments to that bone. The only bone in the foot there where there's no muscular attachment. So those posterior Taylor mobilizations that you're speaking of there, sometimes those have to be done consistently to kind of work on centration, if you will.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:21.248)

it just floats in there.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:25.606)

Interesting.

CC (01:09:40.006)

but there's a lot of parts of the foot that can be trained to help control some of that. think when we talk about, dorsiflexion, you know, we're always thinking about, I have to stretch my calves, you know, I have to like, you know, mobilizing my calf. we have another option there, which is strengthening the anterior compartment of the lower leg.

If you strengthen the anterior compartment, you will lengthen the posterior compartment. So with those patients, I'll do a lot of, you know, anterior shin work, if you will, certain gait drills, tibial raises if there's no pinching, working on pronation and supination, how to control the arch of the foot.

Daniel Vitalis (01:10:12.541)

Right. It's like reciprocal inhibition.

Daniel Vitalis (01:10:34.323)

because a lot of people are really, really calf focused. I actually have a lot of friends who live in fear of an Achilles injury and my coach has had both, snapped both Achilles tendons and then his wife actually, a couple years ago, jump roping, hadn't warmed up. I mean, it's so awful to watch somebody go through that. I wanted to ask you if you had any...

CC (01:10:42.008)

Yes.

CC (01:10:58.328)

us.

Daniel Vitalis (01:11:01.115)

Like for my buddy who every time I talk, if you even talk about this, I don't know why he gets so nervous and he's never experienced it. What do I tell him to do? Cause like, I don't even think about it. I feel like my feet and ankles are really healthy and I don't think about this, but he's thinking about it all the time.

CC (01:11:06.364)

yeah.

CC (01:11:11.502)

Thank

CC (01:11:15.8)

You load it. You have to load the foot and ankle like you load the rest of the body. If you look at research on Achilles tendonopathy, Peter Mallier's work, it's actually, he did a study and he looked at runners with Achilles issues. Some of the statistics are baseline measures for calf raises, a single leg calf raise. Okay.

holding half of your body weight six times.

Daniel Vitalis (01:11:49.843)

of your body weight is like a farmer's carry like in one hand.

CC (01:11:52.014)

So like, I'm 140 pounds, I would hold a 70 pound kettlebell. I should be able to do six single leg calf raises and they better be pretty. Okay, pretty means not this little half, know, my heels coming halfway off the ground. My heels up off the ground, it's good to roll. Okay.

Daniel Vitalis (01:12:01.876)

Yeah, okay.

Daniel Vitalis (01:12:11.024)

lock it up at the top.

CC (01:12:15.19)

And I think this research is telling us, not all of us have to get to these numbers, but it tells you the capacity that we can. If you were seated now, a seated single-leg calf raise, 1.5 times your body weight. These were the numbers in the study. Now, that's a lot of weight.

So when people are talking about their Achilles and they're, you know, I'm afraid of ruptures, tendons need load. When people feel, and when you wake up with an Achilles tendon issue, you're like, man, it's all sore. You have difficult time going downstairs. That will stop people in their tracks. And they'll be like, I better rest this thing more.

Rest is not the answer for tendons. I'm not saying you won't feel better because you're not doing anything. But when you try to return to sport off of rested tendon, it will most certainly come back.

Daniel Vitalis (01:13:16.061)

So just like bone, the body's remodeling or removing tissue if you're not getting the tension and strain that you need to put on. If that's not being loaded, then your body goes, we can take some resources away from this tendon. Is it like that?

CC (01:13:30.38)

Tendons in order to stay healthy as we age, tendons need load. And that becomes a very important conversation as we age, we need to train for strength and we need to train for power. So like your friend who was jump roping, you have to train the spring. You know, I mean, there's a lot of people that as they age, you say the word jump and they're like, no way. You know,

Daniel Vitalis (01:13:55.856)

Yeah

CC (01:13:58.22)

There's ways that we're like, we'll start with little bounces, right? If you're scared to jump, you just start with a little bounce. Then you can start with Pogos. Then you can even do assisted on the wall. You can do a TRX assisted. But we are going to train the spring of your foot and ankle because that is walking, that is reaction time, that is power, and that is all needed as you age.

Daniel Vitalis (01:14:20.563)

Thank you. Got two more injuries I want to ask about. I'll clump them together. Last two years ago, I'm walking out of the woods, just finished a shoot. We're just walking out of the woods, nothing going on, no stress. I step on an acorn. The number of acorns I've stepped on in my life, incalculable. I step on this one, right where my first metatarsal and phalange meat, you know, like at the base of the big toe, and get a pop sound.

that was not the acorn breaking and for nine months maybe it's just so painful. And I've wondered if I like detonated a sesamoid bone or something. Could that have been what it was?

CC (01:15:05.262)

I

You know, the big toe to me is the most important joint in the human body. You do not want to mess with the big toe. When you have an injury to the big toe, you have to make sure that you restore its range of motion. So I'm not sure what the actual diagnosis was with your injury, but following any injury to the big toe, you have got to try to restore its range.

You know, if we were sprinting, for example, we would need an average about 60 to 65 degrees of range of motion out of that big toe. A walking gait is a mid range range of motion activity. That's why it's so safe for people. You need about 40 to 45 degrees. A lot of people don't have that even, especially if there's been an injury.

So if you don't have 40, 45 degrees out of your big toe or it's pinching at the top, you have to either get that thing assessed, figure out why, try to restore it. But this is important. People will be like, man, my big toe is so stiff. I'm just going to keep jamming this thing into extension. If you have arthritic change to that joint and you keep trying to drive it into extension, you're going to piss it off and make it worse.

So that is an important joint that needs to be assessed. Yeah, so you can traction it and then try to go above, but you want to avoid pinching there.

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:35.827)

How about traction and extension?

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:45.203)

Of course, so no one don't force impingement in that joint. That's the other injury I'd wanted to ask. My wife has also dealt with that particular spot and she, I said, did you want me to ask Dr. Conley any questions? And she said, yeah, why does that injury, so it's that same spot at the mound of the big toe, it goes away, it comes back, it goes away, it comes back and seems like kind of hard to heal. Obviously, I'm assuming because you're walking on it all the time.

CC (01:16:48.526)

That's right.

CC (01:17:15.49)

There's a lot that goes into the stability of the first ray. So for example, when I'm walking, the first metatarsal has to drop down first. It's about timing. And so that my big toe can extend. If I have peroneal weakness, if I've ever had ankle sprains, if I have a weakness of an extensor, extensor callus is breath is the big toe. These muscles,

help drop the head of the first. So if there's some type of dysfunction there, if there's a tightness or a weakness, you can have pinching pain at the toe. You can also have pinching pain there if your foot is an excessive pronation, for example. So these are causes of limited big toe range of motion.

Daniel Vitalis (01:18:10.877)

So like what we would call a collapsed arch, that's pronation, right?

CC (01:18:14.69)

Yes, well, pronation is a necessary movement. It's when you have this excessive pronation that you can't get in and out of.

Daniel Vitalis (01:18:19.827)

Yeah, you're not returning to like anatomical neutral or whatever. Okay.

CC (01:18:23.854)

correct. So when you're standing, if you're driving too much load into the big toe, it's hard to extend that.

Daniel Vitalis (01:18:31.699)

Okay. And most of those muscles you're talking about them, it's like, they're not in the foot, right? They're in, their tendons run through the foot, but they're up in the lower leg or, right? Is that?

CC (01:18:38.04)

There's.

Yeah. So your peroneals, flexor, halus, longus, that can also be a cause of big toe pain. So you, would want to, I can send you some information for.

Daniel Vitalis (01:18:51.367)

That'd be great. Yeah, I was wondering, you know, obviously, this isn't the place for this type of an interview, but I'm assuming you must have a catalog of stuff you can point people to exercises or things like that. Where would people get all that?

CC (01:19:04.066)

Yeah. So gate happens is a, I've wanted to kind of develop a resource for people, for all of this stuff. we have on our Instagram page and on our YouTube channel, there are, I've for literally eight years, there's exercises, and information on all this stuff. The YouTube obviously is more, long format. So I do a lot more education speaking on there. we have on the website.

There are courses for both the individual, you're, there's a bunion course, there's a fit feet program, which is 12 weeks of like getting your feet stronger. And it's not only focused at the foot, but it's everything above it. I mean, your foot is only as stable as the hip that drives it. So shame on me if I don't train people above just the foot.

So that program, I think, has been really awesome. And we got that translated in like three different languages. So that's super cool.

Daniel Vitalis (01:20:03.603)

Wow, awesome. Wow, that's cool. And then I just wanted to close out talking about your book launch and tell us about the book. I'm really excited about it. I was saying to you off air, mean, there's only so many books that have been even written close to this topic, but this one I think is the first really in its genre that's dedicated to this topic. that's crazy because this is the fundamental thing humans do.

CC (01:20:09.079)

Thanks.

CC (01:20:25.528)

Yes.

It's really wild. Well, the book is called Walk, very simple. And I want people to kind of rediscover a lost art of what it is. also kind of the basis of it is that walking should be viewed as a physiological necessity.

Daniel Vitalis (01:20:33.607)

Like that that titles available is crazy.

CC (01:20:56.342)

like breathing and sleeping. If you were thinking of like a Venn diagram, we have breathing, sleeping, walking and food, right? You want to add food in there. But when those things are functionally, optimally, then we have this wellness. You know, if we're not sleeping and we're under high stress, you're not going to want to walk. So that's what I wanted to kind of

Daniel Vitalis (01:21:04.829)

Mm-hmm.

CC (01:21:19.476)

educate people on is this physiological necessity rather than exercise. Exercise I think to some people is considered optional. Walking is not. It is something that is a core biological input to our human bodies. Being a biped that is required for not only our musculoskeletal system but our nervous system. Every single system in your body depends on this low to moderate intensity

repetitive rotational movement. And that's what we talk about. And there's a lot of information on feet. There's foot assessments and foot exercises and footwear. And it was really fun to write. It was a labor of love, for sure.

Daniel Vitalis (01:22:05.811)

I want to let you go but I don't. There's just so many things like I assume when you're walking, it's for instance the sole is pumped being the second heart as they sometimes say like moving fluids out of your lower body or that rotation for the, I imagine your diaphragm is very impacted by walking and your organ systems are. So I just want to reiterate what you're saying. It's not like just because you need exercise. It's actually that the human animal needs this in order for it to like function optimally, right? When's the book coming out?

CC (01:22:22.669)

Very.

CC (01:22:32.13)

Yes. Yep. May 5th. It's pre-sale. Pre-sale is now, but the launch is May 5th.

Daniel Vitalis (01:22:36.816)

and

Daniel Vitalis (01:22:41.171)

Cool, where do people go for that? The pre-sale? Awesome.

CC (01:22:43.21)

anywhere. Amazon, it's all over Amazon now, anywhere where you buy your local books, it's on our website.

Daniel Vitalis (01:22:50.085)

I'm so excited for you. I hope I see it at the airport. That's always like my favorite thing.

CC (01:22:53.56)

Well, it's funny, we were picking like the colors. We were like, what's the cover going to be? And I'm from Pittsburgh originally. So when they came to me with a bright yellow color with black lettering, I was like, that's the one.

Daniel Vitalis (01:23:04.635)

That's you. Well, congratulations. I know how much work it takes and I just I'm really excited for you and I'm excited for how that is going to take your message even further obviously into the mainstream. So really exciting and thanks for your generous time today. I really appreciate it. Any final concluding thoughts?

CC (01:23:17.206)

Thank you so much. was a pleasure. Yeah, of course. No, just, you know, if I had to like recommend anything, I would tell people, regardless of age or anything, get your foot on the ground, even if it's for five minutes a day, you know, and keep in mind that a five minute micro walk can be life changing. So it doesn't take much.

Daniel Vitalis (01:23:32.019)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:23:38.483)

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Courtney. Appreciate you today.

just uploading your stuff now. Almost there. I'm at 99%. So give me just a second and I'll let you know. This is Riverside. Yeah. I podcasted a lot in the past and it didn't exist then. So I'm just kind of getting started with new stuff and everything's changed and the tools are way better, I have to say. So I'm not sure why I have your full... Can you see your upload on there by any chance?

CC (01:23:49.218)

Yeah, this river is this riverside river view. Great. It's a great platform, I think.

CC (01:23:57.496)

Yeah.

CC (01:24:06.87)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:14.579)

Do you see that like you're 99 % uploaded? I just don't want you to close. Yeah, I don't want you to close your browser till I have the hundreds.

CC (01:24:14.647)

It 99%.

CC (01:24:23.242)

Sometimes it usually pops up right away and other times it takes a bit longer.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:27.731)

but I will, I'm afraid if I hit the stop button, I don't know, I don't know what will happen.

CC (01:24:31.212)

Yeah. One of these I just kind of walked away and just like let it. So just leave it open.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:36.091)

All right, well, that works for me. Yeah, just leave it open and maybe come back in a few and shut it off. But anyway, I just want to say thanks again. Appreciate it. We'll be in touch and yeah, feel free to.

CC (01:24:45.39)

Yeah, it was great. Thanks so much. Yeah, let me know when it's up and if you have any like clips or whatever, I'm happy to share it.

Daniel Vitalis (01:24:52.584)

Yeah, we will. So cool. If I can ever do anything for you, let me know. Thank you. I guess yeah, like hopefully it just uploads here in a few minutes. Thanks, Carty. Bye.

Transcript: Breath Control is Self Control — Erwan Le Corre #004

Daniel Vitalis (00:01.962)

Well, I've got a really special guest today, someone I haven't seen in probably in person, I bet it's been 10 years. And that's Erwin Le Corre from most famously from Move.net, old friend of mine, somebody who's really inspired me and somebody whose work, my work and his work have kind of been on parallel trajectories leading people from the hyper domesticated built environment back into nature. And I'm just so excited to see what he's doing today. Erwin, welcome to the show.

Erwan (00:31.458)

Thank you, Daniel. So glad to be here.

Daniel Vitalis (00:33.322)

It's such a pleasure to see you again and to talk with you again. I wanted to say, just in the background behind me, I've only got a handful of books there on the set, but I've got all my shelves over here, but your book is actually on the shelf back there. Let me go grab it.

Erwan (00:50.702)

Thank you, that means a lot to me.

Daniel Vitalis (00:51.946)

for people but highly

You know, and it's funny because I remember when you were just finishing putting the finishing touches on it and you were telling me, you know, I've been working on this book for a really long time. And when people say that, a lot of times the book comes out and you're like, they, they maybe got lost along the way. And I remember it coming out and being like, wow, you know, like you really it's beautiful. It's a beautiful book. So for people into movement, people into exercise is something you want to have on your shelf, but

I'd love to hear a little bit of the backstory, man. Catch me up to modern times. How'd you, tell us the path that led you here today.

Erwan (01:30.776)

the path of being a kid who was lucky that I grew up close to a woods like the woods were right there outside the door. And those woods were special because they was really lots of hills and also lots of boulders. If anybody does rock climbing and knows the Mecca of rock climbing or bouldering in France called Fontainebleau, it was like a mini Fontainebleau right outside.

And I believe that that's what in a big part led me to what I do today because I was playing natural movement, climbing, jumping, balancing, crawling, doing all these things from an early age. Actually, my dad encouraged me to go there, showed me a few moves too. And then it always stuck with me.

the naturalness of the words, it made me feel, how capable I felt, the self-esteem that came from overcoming some of the obstacles that I pushed myself to overcome. And as an adult, I wanted to live a conventional life, To me, was, no, this thing is going to kill me. It's going to be a slow death.

Daniel Vitalis (02:58.986)

Yeah.

Erwan (02:59.124)

And so I had that maverick mindset. Ultimately in my thirties, I discovered that in the past, there was a whole history of physical education, basically that was mostly based on those natural movements that I was practicing. And I studied that, that past and, and I realized that I was maybe in a good position to bring this back to the world.

and that sounded ambitious or impossible and yet by the grace of God I managed to make that happen in the form of what's called today the move that method and that term natural movement that I've coined back in the days because nobody knew what it was.

It's organic, it's intuitive. It happens maybe non-linearly on the surface and maybe very linearly under the hood. don't know.

Daniel Vitalis (04:03.112)

Yeah, well, that's what's neat about the book is you see sort of underlying movement patterns and structures. You that's what I learned in your workshop as well. And then you can sort of organically freestyle those things. But, you know, it's like the body only moves in so many different ways. And so I appreciate how you cataloged that so effectively.

Erwan (04:22.862)

Yeah, exactly. That's a very good point. did want it to, let's say, map this territory. In fact, I wanted to give it a name like natural movement and then the movement being the the method for natural movement. But why natural movement? Because back in the days when people said natural movement first, so first off, nobody talked about natural movement back then. But even when I did talk about it, they thought, that's maybe yoga or Tai Chi or some kind of

oriental, eastern type of discipline. And I said, no, it's actually what we all do when we're kids, universally on every continent. It's we crawl, we move in those instinctive ways. We learn to stand, but then we jump and we land and we hang and we climb and we throw things and we balance and do all these movements. So it's really universal to

all human beings, we all have done it, all of us when we kids. And I thought, how come that there is no name for it? And because there is no name, how come there is no recognition? It's like something that is not even valued when it should be put on a, it would be at the top of the hierarchy, basically at the top of the pyramid. So I wanted to name it to

not catalog maybe but to map it, to systemize it because yes you can do it instinctively again we all have done it as kids but then because of my background in martial arts and other sports I realized also the importance of technique of systematic training and I wanted to merge both

Because otherwise, if you just say, all I have to do is go in the woods and it's going to happen, you're going to unleash your wild self. And it doesn't happen that way. It's not true. Especially in modern humans. So I wanted to bring an effective, efficient method to inspire people to do it, to practice it, but also to teach them with progressions.

Daniel Vitalis (06:29.972)

doesn't know it doesn't.

Yeah.

Erwan (06:47.126)

and with that martial artist mindset which is seek high efficiency don't just jump like a jackass there are diverse techniques all of them can be mastered you can improve your skill and your physical conditioning at the same time if you

Learn to be mindful in the way you move and highly technical so I started to do that in the woods myself That's the way I trained and then I started to train people that way and Almost two decades later. We're still at it. We're still doing it

Daniel Vitalis (07:26.25)

How many people have you guys run through your programs over the years? you even have a sense of it? mean, it's the number must be huge.

Erwan (07:34.561)

That's thousands. We have probably 2000 people who are certified around the world. That's in many countries. We have Japan, have whatever. So it has not yet reached, let's say, it's still an approach that a lot of people still scratch their head about.

You know, because they want to go to the gym. They were told that fitness, real fitness happens in a gym. And there's a whole industry that, that perpetuates that, that idea. And, it's basically, David versus Goliath, you know, it's metaphorically, it's, it's true. It's a reality that,

Daniel Vitalis (08:22.066)

Yeah.

Erwan (08:31.672)

Society has expectations that that have been shaped a certain way and made in a certain way because of the multi-billion industry the interest of that industry are and so you know they are using powerful marketing machines to keep Having people think that that's how they exercise go to the gym Use the machines to you know isolate your muscles

And then isolate your energy system. So do strength on one side, do cardio separately. But, but then like, aside from us, nobody tells people, you know what, you could move naturally the way you were designed to the way you used to when you were kids. It's, it's phenomenal. It's fun, but it's challenging. It's liberating. You become physically capable for the real world.

It gives you amazing self-esteem. can change your body too, but most importantly, it gives you a fantastic mindset, a great experience. You feel free. You can do that outdoors most of the time.

I don't know people you know it's we do reach a lot of people but we don't reach a majority of people because majority of people still think that they have to go to the gym to do their biceps curls and their and their glute

Daniel Vitalis (10:01.643)

Right. I heard you recently saying that the sorry that last part what'd say?

Erwan (10:07.456)

And their glutes and what not, know, whatever body part or muscles that seem to matter more than other muscles, you know, like the glutes matter lot, the abs and the pecs and maybe the shoulders.

Daniel Vitalis (10:09.643)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (10:21.151)

Well, you know, it reminds me of like the filters people use where you're trying to enhance what you assume either the opposite sex is attracted to and or what, you know, your sex is impressed by, right? I think the biceps are less about the ladies and more about the other guys, right? And women do a lot of things that are less about the guys and more about the women who see them. So we have this like social sense of how we should look. And having done that kind of training growing up, my experience was it created so much

so much dysfunction, of course, because you isolate a body that doesn't move in isolation. And next thing you know, you're picking up your groceries like a bicep curl and instead of fluidly moving. So that's one component. But I want to go back and say I first the first time I ever saw you, you know, was probably 1213 14 years ago, you had a video that must have just I mean, it blew up. It was like you doing park what most people think of like parkour type movements, but outside and

At that time, I'd only seen parkour in the built environment, which is interesting. But I saw you moving and it was like, this is like trying to run behind a chimpanzee or something like how's this guy doing this because even though when you see parkour athletes impressively moving through urban environments, it's still on flat surfaces, 90 degree angles, predictable textures, predictable, everything is predictable and known because you're in the built environment. I have this model when I teach

seminars, I'll talk about like three worlds. One is the natural world. One's the built environment. And one is like the artificial digital environment. And people are kind of living in all three of these. But most people have lost the ability to be in the natural world. They're just so often in the built and digital environment. They go into the natural world and they don't necessarily even understand what they're seeing half the time. It's like a wall of green and they don't know how to disambiguate things or what's what. So

Seeing you move like that, I remember being like, oh, this is what humans are capable of. But I also wanted to say what I liked about how you teach it, like you said, it's not just going to the woods, go crazy. It was very systematic. The way I've learned anything else that's skill-based, breaking it down, working repetitions, linking the broken parts together until you get fluid, I mean, it was very systematic in the approach. And I really appreciated that too. So I want people to know that about it who aren't familiar that it's a

Daniel Vitalis (12:44.988)

It's not a willy-nilly approach, but it's done in environments that aren't predictable, because that's the real world. And I happen to be somebody who likes gyms, but I've listened to you quite a bit, like pick on the gym environment, which I totally understand, because it's a boring environment, and it's an information-poor environment. So I was wondering if you could break that piece down a little bit, because the indoor built environment, even if you have a lot of complexity, is always massively truncated and simplified compared to the natural environment, which has

almost infinite variables. You must have grown up with friends who were doing parkour in the urban environment and you must have peeled off at some point and said, I'm gonna go do my thing outside. I'm kind of curious about that and how those unconventional urban athletes saw what you were doing because I'm sure even they were like, I don't wanna try to do that, that looks too dangerous.

Erwan (13:38.958)

So it's a method. The method is important when you said it had to be systematic and it still is systematic. A method is important because otherwise you just ask yourself if you don't know what to do you just ask yourself what should I do? You may go to the woods and not know exactly what to do or try a jump and slide and hurt yourself. don't know.

but not knowing what is the most efficient way to approach your training. So in that regard, being outside is not necessarily, or in nature, is not always the first step because it's just like every, the training of anything complex.

For instance, you are a samurai, you're not going to go to battle straight up as a young samurai because that's the way you learn. No. As a kid, you're to years of training of variety of out of context movements. So learn to learn before you even handle a sword, you handle a piece of bamboo and you learn to

Daniel Vitalis (14:47.467)

That's the way you die.

Erwan (15:06.23)

correct angle, correct timing etc. So basically you take the movement out of its most challenging context which is the only way that a beginner can learn to do it before the environment, the outside of the person becomes challenging. So if you apply that to natural movement then it's perfectly fine to bring the practice

to environments that are predictable, are stable, that are safe. Why? Because first you learn the efficient behavior. The movement is a behavior. There are patterns to it. There are techniques to it. It can be explained. It can be taught. It can be duplicated exactly the same way for optimum efficiency. And you can do that a way

from the complex environments, those that you cannot control, those that have such a variety of variables, texture, know, like mud, ice, sand, rocks, different shapes, everything. This is...

This kind of environments, wild environments, they are either an absolute bliss for the person who loves them and they're a nightmare for those who are not trained for them, who don't like them, never exposed to them. So we can train complete beginners first controlling their movement behavior, the techniques of their natural movement for efficiency starting with the

Daniel Vitalis (16:38.923)

Hmm

Erwan (16:56.674)

breathing control in control or semi-control environment. And as they become better, then they start to go adapt, practice and adapt those movements to more challenging, wilder, more natural environments. So that's the process. it's not either or, it's not all outdoors.

or all indoors, it's a matter of method who is being trained with what level, with what expectation, with et cetera. So that's the way it works. As for the difference between that and what's done in gym environments, well,

Since we're talking about behavior, imagine that you are filming a person moving in nature, moving naturally in nature, not just hiking. And then a person doing their workout in the gym. You film that and then with AI or something, you remove the background.

Erwan (18:12.856)

So imagine now what you see. And then you could even like remove the human likeliness and you just have segments and angles. So you do a biceps curl so you would see like a stick figure sitting and just the biceps going like this and

Daniel Vitalis (18:25.833)

Yeah.

Erwan (18:36.482)

That would be it. But then you would see the person moving in nature, jumping and then moving all fours and you would see all these stick figures, all the variety of movements and the variations and the transitions would be mind blowing in variety compared to what you would see in the gym setting. And by the way, between movement, between sets, what does the person in the gym do?

They either sit or they stand.

Daniel Vitalis (19:07.603)

or go on their phone.

Erwan (19:09.806)

Exactly. In nature it's very different. And that's just from the movement behavior perspective. But what we understand is that it's absolutely not just physical, Because what is the device that makes the body move? It's the brain. And the brain that trains the body.

and basically controls the body and orders the body to do this variety of movements. Movements themselves being way more complex than in the gym. Since the gym, it's also a lot of machines that literally limit and shape your movement. So it's very segmental. It's very compartmentalized. In nature, it's way more full body movement. So not only those movements are more complete,

Daniel Vitalis (19:55.199)

Mm-hmm, yeah.

Erwan (20:06.57)

are more complex and on top of that you're going to perform them in environments that are not controlled. are non-symmetrical, are non- often they're unstable or they are they change a lot.

How do you handle those movements? Well, it's actually through the body but it's with the mind. And it's with the mind which is attention and it's also the whole nervous system. So it's way more complex. the last point that I want to make Daniel is even from the neurological perspective.

Daniel Vitalis (20:33.033)

Yeah.

Erwan (20:50.828)

not just the physiological perspective, but neurological perspective, natural movement done outside has way more benefits for your physical and mental health. And if you want to go into the biology and know that you're extremely well versed also in all these aspects of health, of physiology and biology, then you have the grounding, you have the sunlight, you have the energies of nature, the plants, the, you know, the...

the green light, the electromagnetism, so many sources of energy, how the diverse smells also will activate parts of your brain, including your memory. It's a place of absolute vitality that you can really re-energize your whole being physically, mentally and literally spiritually as well.

So to me, it's a no brainer. I'm not going to spend much time if any ever in a gym to under artificial lights, all artificial air that I'm electromagnetic, you know, no, thank you. No, not interested.

Daniel Vitalis (21:59.852)

you

Daniel Vitalis (22:05.779)

You

Daniel Vitalis (22:12.556)

Well, it's I used to tease the biohacking people all the time because they would be like, they would break all this stuff up, right? So it'd be like, well, I go do my exercises, then I've got to go get my fresh air. Then I've got to go get my grounding in and then you know, and the my watch is saying I'm not feeling good. So I guess I shouldn't train today, you know, and they're doing all of the everything's like all broken up. And I would point out when you go, one of the things I loved, I love about hunting and fishing and foraging, because I'm going to just get food, but I'm getting

fresh air, I'm getting the sun, I'm getting the grounding, I'm getting the exposure. It's like what you're talking about, you're getting it all in one package so you don't have to try to stack a whole bunch of dysfunctional blocks together and create a whole, right?

Erwan (22:45.262)

Beautiful.

Erwan (22:54.03)

Exactly, Daniel. It's not compartmentalized and biohacking compartmentalizes everything. And in the same way, normal conventional modern life compartmentalizes everything. When you go back in nature to move, you're not compartmentalizing. And when you are going in nature like you do, not just to move, but to forage and hunt and procure food, it's even to me, it's even

Daniel Vitalis (22:59.061)

Yeah.

Erwan (23:24.046)

It's the next level. It's a different emphasis, but in the end You need food and food is more important than it's a movement mastery even though Of course having great body control and and movement mastery in nature which by the way movement mastery even You know in the end one mistake and nature defeats you with that

Daniel Vitalis (23:31.263)

Yeah.

Erwan (23:53.375)

even fighting you, it's just you defeat yourself. And you know, watch YouTube, sometimes you see videos of absolutely wild animals trying a movement and messing big time and falling like and it's hilarious because you would not expect such wild extremely

well-trained animals to ever miss a movement and yet they do. So it's also normal and natural to also fail your movement the same way you can fail a set or a rep in a gym. definitely, ultimately, you can't go wrong when you shift more of a natural way in whatever

is your pursuit that it is movement or hunting foraging or learning about plants and animals or just just being in nature is just being surrounded by nature doing nothing wanting nothing just being there you can't go wrong right maybe if it's in middle of a blizzard and

Daniel Vitalis (25:07.339)

Yeah, wanting nothing. That's a great way to say that.

Erwan (25:15.128)

There's a huge grizzly next to you or something bad like that, but otherwise when the weather is agreeable and or you're well equipped and you know what you're doing, but you know what I mean. Anybody can just go if you have a backyard, if you're fortunate, you have a backyard and you have a lot, you have some land there, have even if it's not even one acre, but you have dirt.

Daniel Vitalis (25:19.124)

Yeah.

Erwan (25:44.825)

You have maybe grass, maybe you have one tree and then you have a horizon and then you have the air, fresh air and then you have sunlight. You're wealthy man because you can absorb all this energy every day. All you have to do step outside and put the phone aside and the screens aside and just reconnect.

Daniel Vitalis (25:59.595)

Yeah.

Erwan (26:12.671)

Renaturalize, rewild, whatever term you want to use, it's the same idea. And by the way, we talk about the natural world as if it's only and exclusively something that's outside of us, not remembering that we are it. We are that natural world. The whole biology is made of it, all our cells. Even if we live in artificial environments.

We need food every day and that food comes from where?

Daniel Vitalis (26:46.442)

Yeah, living creatures, man, from nature. Can't synthesize food, not yet.

Erwan (26:48.527)

Yes, exactly. Right, exactly.

Daniel Vitalis (26:54.614)

Yeah.

First, I want to just comment on what you said about being rich on just a patch of dirt with some sunlight in a tree because I'm thinking about all these famous, you know, Playboy billionaires that we know about now and and some of them you see starting to actually try to get in shape and that I not commend them for that but but that doesn't look like wealth to me. It looks like power but it's like there's a

There's something missing, you know? And it's so interesting how I think you could be a happier person with nothing than, I just don't see those people and think they're winning. think like, man, they're sick, they're sad, they're struggling to maintain power and control constantly, they are surrounded by security, they can never be alone. It's just like, ugh, I'm just, I think I'd be happier with that patch of dirt, but I also wanted to get your take on something.

Looking back through history, you know, unless you were maybe in the warrior class or you were an acrobat or something like that, like most people wouldn't have trained exercise and movement that intentionally their lives demanded so much work physically, that, you know, people weren't developing the so called diseases of civilization, the degenerative diseases because their day to day life was so full and the environment was so much less polluted.

You had so much more fresh air. The skies were still clear overhead. know, like you were eating organic food by default because there wasn't even chemical application invented yet. And so people were living just healthier lives just in an integrated way. And then we have the industrial revolution and we use machines to replace labor. And the idea is, this is going to be great. You're going have all this free time. And really, as we all know, what happened is your workload doubles because you're now expected to do more with that time.

Daniel Vitalis (28:48.832)

but also the machines take over the labor and people stop moving. And overnight, what do we just get this epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, neurodegeneration, because like you said, the brain needs to be moving the body. Okay, so now we're trying to recreate through recreation, recreation, we're trying to recreate all of the movement again. And I've heard you say recently that the gym environment's like essentially a failed experiment, like that's not gonna yield.

that's eventually gonna, it's not sustainable, it's gonna die off. But we're trying to figure out like hamsters on a wheel how to move again. Now we're being handed a new technology, AI, and it's going to think for us. And so I'm curious how you see that landing in a world where machines replaced labor and people got sick and fat and had to learn how to move again. What do you see happening with our minds? Because I know in my own lifetime I experienced

the loss of the memorization of phone numbers, the loss of quick recall on math. And that was just because of my basic calculator on my phone and my contact page. Now, people are walking around, chat GPT, what should I eat for breakfast? Chat GPT, when should I go to the bathroom? not knowing how to even think anymore, their watches tell them how they feel when they wake up and if they're recovered or not. And I know that a lot of your work is leaning towards consciousness and control of the inner environment and the mind.

and I'm wondering how you're seeing these new tools and what kind of impact you think they're gonna have and then what should we, can we be doing because I keep joking like you're gonna see mind gyms where people are gonna go do math problems instead of bicep curls. How do you see this playing out?

Erwan (30:36.399)

It's very interesting question.

Erwan (30:41.919)

It's like trying to be a fortune teller. But yeah, it's a very good analogy that you made, which is that when through and thanks to the industrial revolution and then electricity, there was such a surge of power, electric power was huge. All of a sudden you either didn't need all this labor, all these people.

Daniel Vitalis (30:44.907)

Yeah.

Erwan (31:12.227)

for a given job or you could have your output and your production multiply tenfold or more thanks to electricity. So whoever had access to electricity first and was a capitalist was in a position to generate a lot of energy out of that energy to produce a lot out of that energy and therefore to capitalize.

And this is exactly what happened. Yes. You mentioned you mentioned billionaires and are they are they actually winning at life? Are they actually happy? I see where you're you're where you're going with your reflection, which is what actually matters in the end is. Is life the the intangible?

Daniel Vitalis (31:42.648)

make a lot of currency. It's like a lecture currency turned into actual currency.

Erwan (32:11.497)

or seemingly intangible side of life which is basically consciousness and is that consciousness happy is that consciousness actually conscious it is aware is it worth it is it meaningful is it purposeful is it does it have qualities to it is it worth pursuing or being lived

beside what we call reality, what we call the material world. But when we really think about it, what really matters in our lives is that consciousness. Because what we remember about, instance, anything we've lived, we may remember the places, the people, the aspects of the context. But most importantly, what we remember is how such a such event

made us feel.

Erwan (33:07.939)

We don't remember primarily if we think of our memories, the most important memories of those that matter the most to us.

those that meant the most, either in a positive way or negative way, pleasant way or unpleasant way. Those are the main memories. Why are they the main memories? Because there's always an emotional intensity about that. There's an emotional intensity about those events. Therefore, they have the most value. They have the most meaning to us.

Is this tangible? It's absolutely tangible. it does show that beyond whatever is in our bank account or the car we own or the house we own or don't own or all these material aspects of life, our diet, our fitness routines, all of these things. What we are truly pursuing is specific experiences that we value and specific emotions.

the way those experiences make us feel. Alrighty, so back to the industrial revolution. A lot of jobs disappeared. A lot of jobs were created. So there are consequences. Some are not so good.

Some were probably investigating maybe a lot of people lost their job because electricity changed everything production change the price of things that were normally made by hand

Erwan (34:58.637)

went down significantly, but at the same time, many more jobs were created. So with AI, I suspect that something similar is going to happen. I do work with AI. I am interested in AI because I find it very stimulating intellectually. It actually by...

working with AI and understanding how I need to train it to make it work the way I want, it mirrors some of my own cognitive processes and makes me reconsider them. And when I demand specific behaviors from the AI that I train, then I reflect on myself and the, how about the demands on your own cognitive processes?

Daniel Vitalis (35:52.813)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (35:53.519)

So it's very stimulating. It makes me think not more, it makes me think better, which is one of my pursuits, is consciousness. But that's because of my approach to it. That's because I'm demanding on my own cognitive system. So basically,

Daniel Vitalis (36:12.813)

Right,

Erwan (36:18.467)

You mentioned AI as now people are asking what they should eat and what they should do. So they're asking basically AI to do the thinking for them. So they start to externalize their thinking. They externalize basically their also their, their decision making their the strategy for the personal life. So it's not just memory. So memory already being a big part of it.

But now it's literally cognitive processes, more advanced cognitive processes that we normally have to handle ourselves within our own mind. Now we can delegate to a technology in our pocket or on our desktop. How is this going to impact basically our intelligence, our own cognitive system? If you are not

discriminate already, it's very likely that you will lose cognitive abilities. You're going to be given answers to your questions by a system that pretends to know you or understand you but that is not actually a human mind and certainly it is not your mind.

and to take it for at face value. So your critical thinking goes, as we say in French, through the window. And anything that isn't trained is always meant to shrink and then to disappear. You put an orca in a swimming pool and they still look at an orca 10 years later of captivity.

but some of their, like their fin have shrunk some of their ability.

Daniel Vitalis (38:14.299)

Flop's over.

Erwan (38:16.971)

Exactly, because you don't use it, you lose it. So whenever you ask AI to do thinking for you, starting with for instance, write this for me. Okay, and you think it's just a petty task, but you don't realize, wait a minute, to write a text, this is high cognitive function, because it has to do with words. Therefore it has to do with meaning.

The four has to do with intention, expectations, concept, insight, name it, philosophy, strategy, all of that. It's not just text. It's basically what is text. Text is printed or digital.

Daniel Vitalis (38:43.991)

Yeah.

Erwan (39:02.859)

speech and what is thinking it's silent speech thinking people think i'm thinking i'm not speaking you are speaking speech in your mind that only you can hear you're the one who talks and you're the one who listens that's what thinking is about so now you normally do the thinking yourself and now you're asking your technology to do the thinking for you what do you think is going to happen to your thinking

Daniel Vitalis (39:04.332)

Mmm.

Daniel Vitalis (39:13.741)

Mmm.

Daniel Vitalis (39:17.613)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (39:33.295)

So this has a tremendous implication. So what I believe is that the people who are not critical thinkers in the first place will suffer from the cognitive perspective because they are relying on an artificial cognitive system, which is an LLM.

They're not doing the work themselves anymore.

And so it's meant to dumb you down. Right. But people who are thinking

in a different way can actually potentially improve their own cognitive system.

And in any case, simply leverage the advantage or the power of AI to improve the work, to learn, to advance the projects faster, better. And that is indeed happening. So how you use it is the most important question. is not, is it good or not good? Is AI beneficial, not beneficial?

Erwan (40:58.849)

It depends how you use it. Most importantly, are you aware of how it may impact your mind? And the last question is, were you even aware in the first place of how you have been impacting your own mind? The mind that you are?

Daniel Vitalis (41:01.291)

Hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (41:10.509)

Yeah.

Erwan (41:23.257)

How has that mind that you are been impacting itself all along for those decades you've been alive and therefore aware conscious and thinking and operating that cognitive system that you are? Because if you've never examined that, why are you talking about AI and the problems or whatever? Have you already investigated the mind that you are? That's question.

Daniel Vitalis (41:25.517)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (41:29.997)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (41:36.619)

Hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (41:50.796)

Hmm. Yeah, that's a really big question. And it you know, you're making me think about the idea of bifurcation of our species a little bit. Because if you're already somebody who isn't taking care of your physical body, and then you're also now going to let your mind go. And then you've got another group of people who's like, I'm to not only maintain my fitness, but I'm going to leverage AI for a more powerful output, but maintain my cognition.

you're gonna end up with some radically, you know, you can already see, you have to be so careful saying these things, but you know, there's certain giant department stores spread out throughout the United States where you could go into them and see a class of person who hasn't really cared for themselves, cognitively or physically, and you can see like, whoa, where are these folks headed? You know, and then you can go into an environment where people take care of themselves and you're like, whoa, it's like a, you know, it's like as different as, as,

two different types of breeds of dogs are in a sense, even though they're the same species, they, you know, we're heading in like radically different directions and it just seems like, yeah, there's gonna be a lot of people who don't know how to think anymore. I have been doing things like math workbooks, I've been doing things like playing chess, I've been doing things like, you know, memorization games and tools, not games, but memorizing scripture really is what I've been doing because I feel like I just need to keep these circuits.

Erwan (42:50.062)

Yes.

Daniel Vitalis (43:17.261)

functioning because as somebody who's since I was born I have been obsessed with learning I just can't I'm fiendishly I can't stop and that used to not be such a problem because I had the access to information was so was the aperture was small so go to the library grab a stack of books you just could only learn so much it was hard now it's a non-stop you know

freight train of information and I have to be so discerning because I want to gobble it all up. I want to learn everything and it's like I have to really be careful and the reason is I'll burn myself out and that leads me to want to take this conversation a slightly different direction now which is

I okay, I like it when I get my cherished ideas destroyed because I like finding out that my paradigm was wrong. I enjoy it. But sometimes it's hard and I saw a post of yours today that had three three you were claiming three fallacies of thought that we have going one was that co2 tolerance forcing you to breathe is a myth. The other one was that there's better methods than conventional meditation. But the third one was that was the idea of nervous system regulation, which is something that I'm

thinking about all the time. Many of the practitioners I know are thinking about all the time. How do we regulate the autonomic nervous system because we're in such a constant state of, you know, this sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight stimulation. And so I met constantly having conversations with people about this. And then I saw your post today and I was like, I have to ask because from where I'm sitting in this, maybe it's still the old paradigm or maybe there's an integration there but

I'm going like, hey, this is really important because otherwise I'll be living on adrenaline and burning myself out. So, you my meditation, my prayer, my reading, my sauna, whatever it is that brings me back down to a baseline seems really important. And I wanna just take that and hand it over to you and see like, how are you thinking about that? And, you know, leave it to you to go into this area of breath control and make a bunch of discoveries that under.

Daniel Vitalis (45:27.808)

undermine a whole bunch of old thoughts, you know, like I love that, but I want to hear like how you're thinking about that.

Erwan (45:33.347)

Okay, so first off, there's nothing about what you said that I feel compelled to destroy on the other on the opposite. want to applaud you for being so

diligent about keeping yourself let's say not just healthy but also competent and meaningful and purposeful at all levels of energy I would say physical, mental and spiritual as well. I like to say

that life is the practice of energy. And I'm not saying that from the perspective of some mysterious chakra energy or something like that. Indeed, all we are is energy and in fact we're systems of energy within an energy system. And so they all need to be understood and learned and practiced or at least regulated.

That's what you do when you read a book. When you learn something, you may not see that as a regulation by the way, Daniel, but it is a form of regulation. see regulation is not just when all of a sudden maybe you feel a little overwhelmed or too fast or maybe you experience a slight bout of anxiety or whatever it could be and then you think I need some exercise like a breath exercise.

to regulate, feel good and centered again. You're already doing that when you read a book. You're already doing that when you memorize a scripture. You're already doing that when you learn how to process that specific fish or whatever it is that you're learning and doing, right? In everything you do, you are actually mindful. It's very reminiscent of

Erwan (47:40.739)

the practice of excellence by the Japanese people and their culture like the samurais none of what they do was actually done casually because once they understood the importance of mastery and how deep any practice could be brought to how high and deep in understanding and refinement

Daniel Vitalis (47:44.973)

you

Erwan (48:10.541)

Let's say they would do that with the sword, but then they would do that with their body, would do that with their mind and they would apply to anything they would do. And this is a sign of high level intelligence as a matter of fact, because it's a whole, it's mindfulness, not just applied to a moment where you sit and you meditate, it's mindfulness in motion.

in everything that you do.

So it's a beautiful thing. There's nothing to be destroyed here on the contrary. This, to me, this kind of approach to life has to be honored and celebrated. We wish more individuals were to operate the consciousness that they are at this level. Because there are levels to this game. I know it's...

politically correct to say we're all the same, we're all equal, we all have the same value, etc. But I'm sorry, who really just eats junk all day and maybe does drugs and scrolls on stupid things all day on the watch TV and all these things, there's zero examination. There's zero challenge. There's zero

elevation there. So you can't say that this is equal to somebody who has a very dedicated, devout, preset of high level integrity and high level meaning in their life. It's not comparable. And if we thought one second that it is comparable, then that means that we are

Erwan (50:10.391)

We believe that there's no hierarchy in life in the sense there's no values, there's no right and wrong, there is no good and bad, there is no superior in theory. I know, I know. But that's the idea because when you start to believe that then

Daniel Vitalis (50:18.637)

Well, I've been hearing that message on CNN for like since 2015.

Erwan (50:30.819)

Why would you ever pursue any form of excellence or even improvement for yourself? No. And the more people believe in that bullshit, the more you can dumb down the whole society to, you know, levelling down, levelling down, levelling down, levelling down. And then you can start pointing at the one or the few who tries to elevate their game, their consciousness, their understanding, their cognitive abilities, their physical vitality, their physical capability, all of that.

They pay a price every day with decisions. They make decisions, they organize, they commit, self-discipline, they question, they adjust. It's a person and they start to tell these people, you're some kind of an elite, you think you're special, you're... No, why don't you level down physically, biologically? Why don't you eat shit? Why don't you consume the stupid shows all day? Why don't you do drugs? Why don't you...

How about you know complete life debauchery and then finally you'll have some value finally you'll be you'll be vol

Daniel Vitalis (51:39.577)

Be one of us.

Erwan (51:40.963)

Right? Exactly. So you see, that's a big trick. That's a, that's an, you know, in nature, can trap game. Predators will trap you, even if they don't make traps. Predators will use strategies to deceive you so that they can catch you and consume you. Right? There is a whole system out there that is doing exactly that.

mass scale, trapping people, deceiving them so that they can consume them, so that they can bring all levels of their energy down, down, down, leading to ultimately to depression, to powerlessness, to very low self-esteem, and to compliance.

Daniel Vitalis (52:36.847)

Probably how an animal in a factory farm feels.

Erwan (52:40.591)

precisely. So once you understand that exactly, because at first maybe you're interested in, what can I do to lose weight? Or what can I do to be more in shape? Or what can I do? Can I meditate so that maybe I think a little less? Things like that. Looking for little patches, looking for a bit of medicine in the world or in a system that is literally engineered to make you

Daniel Vitalis (52:41.784)

also to be consumed.

Erwan (53:10.383)

suffer through pleasures and conveniences. And you start with that and that's fine, right? But then you start to unravel the whole thing. Ultimately, you must unravel the reality that the whole system is not your friend. Like McKenna said, culture is not your friend.

So once you understand the culture is not your friend, you must cultivate something else. You must cultivate a different culture. And it starts with you because you cannot rely on the existing culture to support your endeavor. And what people like you and I do Daniel is that not only we've been doing that for decades because we've been aware for that long.

But on top of that is that we've designed systems or ways to communicate and a podcast or a book and products, all types of, the whole ecosystem because our heart is not just to know these things and have this awareness and just save ourselves only, we want to help others.

We may have questioned even a bit, you know, what's going on and why is it that they struggle? Why is it that they suffer and what can they do to live a healthier life and a happier life and more free life and a stronger life? And whatever we've learned along the way, we are eager to share. And so we've organized our day-to-day activities and our professional activities to find a ways not only to just serve our personal endeavors.

but also to serve others back in the sense of, have you thought about that? Have you considered this? Have you paid attention to this? Are you learning this? Are you doing this? This would be good for you if you did. And so it's a mission, but that comes from the soul, that comes from the heart. And there's nothing we can do about this. We have to do it because if we weren't to share what we believe we know with the world and that is helpful to others and can help them be healthier.

Erwan (55:36.257)

and happier, then we would feel very lame and very selfish. So that's something we must do. All right, so back to the regulation. Everything we do is regulation.

Daniel Vitalis (55:41.263)

you

Erwan (55:55.765)

and everyone is regulating all the time. So when we hear about nervous system regulation,

we think of some whatever protocol, whatever meditation or breath work that we need to do.

Daniel Vitalis (56:10.256)

Yeah.

Erwan (56:16.463)

Everybody has a nervous system. Why? Because everybody is a nervous system.

Hello, that's where we are. So that nervous system is constantly regulating itself.

So when we eat, we regulate. When we don't eat, we also regulate. Because we're digesting. When we move, even if it's standing and walking a few steps, we regulate. When we walk the door outside, we regulate. We don't just regulate the dog, we regulate ourselves too.

Daniel Vitalis (56:52.304)

Yeah.

Erwan (56:54.381)

And then when we sit, we regulate. When we think we regulate, when we want a distraction through a show or something, we won't be free of concern. We are regulating too, because at some point thinking means being concerned and concerning ourselves. And then it become overwhelming and we're like, wait a minute. Okay, I was trying to regulate.

my situation and my life and my relationship and my job and my future. I was trying to regulate it with my thoughts and now I'm overwhelmed. I need to watch a show so I can be free of concern for a moment. That's regulation, my friend. We are constantly regulating. And so when we observe people who live differently and think differently,

Daniel Vitalis (57:41.52)

you

Erwan (57:49.463)

A typical response to that is, well, that's stupid, or I would never do this and whatnot.

we can be judgmental about the way others regulate.

Daniel Vitalis (58:06.384)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (58:07.235)

But the thing is that everyone regulates according to a conscious and most importantly and most often an unconscious way of surviving. It's all about staying alive. Survival. And then you say survival because you can do more in surviving. You can actually thrive. But when people seem to

make bad decisions and have toxic behavior.

We think, that's really bad. These people are bad. Why are they doing this? Et cetera. But we must understand that from their perspective, they're doing the right thing. From their perspective, they're regulating themselves, their actions in the way that currently at this stage of their life and their existence, they believe is the ideal way to survive.

Daniel Vitalis (58:56.88)

Mmm.

Erwan (59:10.185)

ideal way to regulate. So everybody has their own way. So it's true that it's not that we cannot judge. We can judge because we have the rights to have different views and different ways and a different understanding.

Daniel Vitalis (59:26.478)

Discernment too,

Erwan (59:28.749)

We can at least observe and have an evaluation of how others think and how others behave and how others live and say, well, not for me or not as good as mine or not as desirable, not as fruitful. That's totally fine. But in the end,

You can't live these people's life on their behalf. It's their life the same way nobody can live your life. So the question is not the diversity. The question is to find the principles or to remember the principles. Because you find them when you remember them. You remember the principles.

that are universal to all of us.

A very simple way to start is to understand biological principles.

If you understand that there are biological principles that apply to everybody's health. So if you don't breathe good air, if you don't sleep enough, if you don't eat enough, or if you eat too much, or if you don't have the right kind of food, anyone will agree that, yeah, if I do this, my health, therefore my biological self is never going to...

Erwan (01:01:01.199)

deprive or to suffer universally deprive anybody from sleep and they will crumble very fast okay

Daniel Vitalis (01:01:08.88)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:01:12.943)

Can anybody say, no, not me, I'm different? No. There are rules, there are principles. You cannot reinvent yourself biologically because there are laws. And if you mess with them, you can. It's your freedom. It's your free will. But there will be consequences for you if you understand that from the biological perspective.

Would it be surprising that the same applies to the mind? And that the same applies to the spirit? Spiritual life? It's exactly the same. There are principles. Either you understand them, you learn them, or you remember them, and then you respect them, or honor them, and apply them, and you will thrive. And if you don't, then you will suffer. Hello, it's just, it's so simple. So...

before you think about the details, should I eat more meat, less meat, should I sleep more, what about circadian rhythm, it's great.

Principles, principles, principles. Understand that base. So, yes, nobody is gifted a manual for life at birth. Yeah, there's so much we need to figure out. But once we figure out, it's not just a consideration like, you you read a self-help book and you find it interesting and you put it back on the shelf.

And you never applied any of the tips or drills that were in there. You must apply and you must apply not just once, but every single day, even at night. Even when you wake up, you need to remember yourself of who you are, how you should live and what you're here for. Program yourself, constantly program yourself, constantly impact your own mind.

Daniel Vitalis (01:03:10.597)

you

Erwan (01:03:20.121)

because we are ruled by programs, but we're ruled by programs and beliefs that if they are unquestioned, they rule us. And in every single day, we're going to make thousands of decisions except we don't consciously make them.

So if you want to change your life.

obviously in the direction of an improvement.

Erwan (01:03:54.859)

and knowing that nobody is going to do it for you.

You must do it to yourself. So you must know the direction. You must know the how to. You must learn it. You must investigate. You must self-examine. And once you realize, this is good, but this is not. This is exactly what I need to improve. I need to change if I want the improvement that I want. Next to self-examination is then self-ministering.

You've got to minister yourself or coach yourself, whatever word you want to use. You must make the decisions. You must commit. You must discipline. That is a lot of effort. And that effort is going to lead you to a new, better, but also unfamiliar version of who you are now. And that's where most people will crumble because they are intimidated by a new version of themselves.

not because it's not desirable, improvement is always desirable, but because it's new and unfamiliar. Therefore, it's a threat to your current consensus, your current state is something that unconsciously we all preserve. So it's very hard to evolve. So regularly,

Daniel Vitalis (01:05:13.868)

Hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (01:05:21.777)

It's also a threat to the people around you very often too. And so you have to navigate outside voices who don't want you to change because either it highlights something that they also want to change but aren't, or maybe it threatens their worldview or whatever it is. But you've got yourself to contend with and the outside world to contend with too.

Erwan (01:05:39.032)

Yeah.

Yes, this is why we feel threatened when people have divergent or diverse ideas, different ideas, because their worldview threatens ours. Unless if we are extremely secure with who we are and how we think, then it doesn't matter whatever whoever thinks whatever, we'd never feel threatened by it because we're very secure.

Daniel Vitalis (01:06:03.173)

I thought I was very secure till I got married and then I started to realize, there's all kinds of things that trigger me because I'm not as secure as I thought, you

Erwan (01:06:13.431)

Right, well that's one of the beautiful things about such a relationship is the mirroring effect.

Regulation is what we do every day.

recalibration is what I was talking about and it's completely different because in when you recalibrate you shift the baseline and that can be physiologically that can be at the level of another system or spiritually

And what I'm talking about is not just managing the moment because that's what regulation is about managing the moment. I'm talking about shifting the baseline. I'm talking about permanent changes for good. You don't go back to the old self. You don't go back to the old behaviors and the old struggles and the old beliefs and the old whatever. You don't go back to the old experience.

that experience that you didn't like and that you wanted to change. Instead of just regulating it briefly, temporarily, and then going back to your baseline and having to do the regulation again. You can't do that for the rest of your life. You've never changed anything because the problem comes back because you have not changed to change as in permanently, not just about a regulation.

Erwan (01:07:52.193)

It's recalibration we're talking about and it's an entirely new concept or different concept. I'll talk about it. I have a whole chapter of my new book dedicated to it. So, you know, when you were saying, well, my friends, we talk about nervous system regulation. I do talk about nervous system regulation too, but I'm not, I'm not really interested in it.

because it's too temporary for me. I'm interested in permanent changes. You know, it's like if you are a spiritual person, then you have a real epiphany, or then you make a real choice and make a real commitment. You don't go back to your old self. You don't go back to your old ways because that's it. You made a commitment.

So it's life changing.

You do not want to return to what it was because it would be so... You would feel extremely disappointed in yourself. Right? You'd be like, no, back to square one. And in truth, that's what everybody wants. They really want a true change and leave aspects of their old self, not the whole old self, because a lot of it is good.

But the thing is that we don't complain about what is good about ourselves. And unfortunately, we all have goodness in ourselves, but we complain about what we don't like. And we keep complaining as long as we haven't found the way to leave that behind to make it part of an old self. So it's the renewal of the physiology.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:16.987)

you

Erwan (01:09:38.241)

Is the renewal of the nervous system, the renewal of the spirit that we're talking about, all levels of energy, we need them all.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:46.631)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (01:09:47.887)

to be complete.

Daniel Vitalis (01:09:50.483)

Talk to me about how, well, I guess I wanna talk a little bit about the relationship of breath here because my whole life now, I've been hearing this message that the thing that connects sort of like the mind and the body or what connects the spirit to the body is the breath, know, and that this idea of.

something that's autonomic and also something that can be taken under conscious control, you know, it's a really unique process and You know if we were looking at yoga or something, you know, you got all these breath practices and pranayama or something But I've seen you talking a lot about breath holding and most of my exposure to breath holding was around free diving but not as a I think for a different reason and so I saw something you wrote recently that

think you said that holding your breasts like a willpower gym. a lot of what we were talking about before, making changes, one thing I've noticed over the years as I've made changes in my life and grown and grown and grown and walked up the steps of the pyramid higher and higher and higher as I go, when I was younger I'd be like, why is no one else interested in this? It seemed like everyone around me just didn't wanna grow. I was so confused. And one thing I've learned is a lot of people just struggle with willpower. mean they just.

They want to make changes, they know the change, they make it a couple days, they fall back and they just can't seem to lock in. And other people seem to be able to do it better and have more willpower. I don't know, like I just don't know how I developed mine. I certainly can't take credit for it. I think a lot of it was like the hard knocks of my childhood were just really bad and it forced me to have to be able to.

make decisions and stick to them and think my way through things because I it was like a survival thing and I I'm I'm grateful today I didn't grow up easy because I I see that that's actually one of the things that can Not always but can really hold someone back is like too much ease. Well, you talked about it before it's like we kill ourselves with comfort. So Yeah, i'm curious this idea when I you know, when I hold my breath a long time It's uncomfortable It's uncomfortable man, and there's You've got something in you scream

Daniel Vitalis (01:12:03.027)

You know, if people think running's hard or they think exercise is swimming's hard, it's like, try holding your breath. mean, the signals come very fast to stop. I wanna explore that and I'm curious in the big picture way, it just seems like this practice has transformed your life. I mean, I've been watching just on the edges over the last few years and it's like, wow, this direction seems like it's been profound and I've watched it change over the years. I'm just so curious about

Erwan (01:12:30.095)

True, has really been a game changer for me and the...

the evolution I wanted that I was consciously or unconsciously pursuing finally happened at that stage of my life through rediscovering breath holding in a new way and where should I start because there's so much that I could talk about here but we're talking about regulation we're talking about recalibration

talking about how change is hard and your assessment was that people lacked willpower and I have a different view on this Daniel but it's true willpower is very important

of what's going to enable change because willpower will ensure the continuity of the effort necessary for that change. We understand that change is sometimes easy but most of the time it is not.

So it's not that we want to make change not easy, but it happened to typically not be easy. Therefore we need commitment, we need endurance. Therefore we need self-discipline and well-power is the foundation of self-discipline. But there is something else which is value.

Erwan (01:14:20.781)

which means that we need to value the change we truly want. If we don't truly want it, it's very likely we will quit. Not because it was too hard, but because we didn't actually want it hard enough. If you truly value the change that you say you want, you will find a way, not an excuse. You will...

harass yourself or obsess yourself until you find that key and unlock that door and step into that new room where you can experience that new better version of you. I'm kind of speaking metaphorically here but so how much value it is the most important because

then you basically have a covenant with yourself.

Erwan (01:15:22.231)

that this vision you have of you is what you pursue and that you will achieve no matter what.

It is not a habit you are concurring.

Erwan (01:15:40.469)

It is a new, more desirable experience of who you are. That's what you want.

Erwan (01:15:53.679)

commit to that vision of you that is a future you and yet it already is the version you have chosen to be and to experience. You're not going to let go of that expectation until the outcome is experienced. Now that's where willpower will come from.

because now you are plugging your willpower into the real source of power which is very strong, very healthy desire.

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:26.803)

you

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:30.3)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:16:31.735)

And I know how much crap is being taught, said about desire by Eastern philosophy and I call it bullshit because desire is the most important...

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:42.867)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:16:47.983)

Process in life if you don't have any desire. What are you a plant in a pot?

Daniel Vitalis (01:16:54.899)

Heh.

Erwan (01:16:56.291)

waiting for right amount of sunshine and the right amount of nutrients and the right amount of water and you have no other agenda but to wait. I'm telling you that even a green plant in a pot has the desire to be healthy and to stay alive and to proliferate and to thrive. So someone who doesn't have desire is a highly depressed person.

Daniel Vitalis (01:17:24.051)

Yeah, well said.

Erwan (01:17:25.935)

and maybe a suicidal person. person who said, you know what, there's no interest for me. There's nothing in this weird thing called life for me. I'm not interested any longer in nothing, not in meeting new people, and nothing. Who, unfortunately, some people are trapped in that mindset, in that...

Daniel Vitalis (01:17:43.474)

you

Erwan (01:17:54.009)

condition of the psyche. It's terrible. It's terrible for themselves and it's terrible for the people who are around them. Because this is not a meaningful way to live life. Life is a beautiful opportunity to thrive, a beautiful opportunity to learn. And yes, there's gonna be difficulties and yes, suffering will be part of it. But nonetheless, it's worthy. Nonetheless, it's desirable. Nonetheless, we are in it. We're in the game. So we'd better do the best.

we can with it about it. therefore desire is what? Desire is inviting an outcome.

For what? What is the outcome? The outcome is you. The outcome is a specific way to experience that experience that you are. That's why we want things. Why do you want to quit smoking? I want to eat healthy. I want to regulate and learn that nervous system regulation. I want to meditate. I want to do breath work. What is it that you want?

Exactly. you want the experience that comes from it. You want to have that experience. Yeah, you want to be that experience in the moment. You want to be the experience of a slimmer person, of a stronger person, of a more capable person, maybe of the richer person, maybe of the kinder person.

Daniel Vitalis (01:19:12.755)

you

Erwan (01:19:35.331)

maybe of a more spiritual person. You want to be the experience of a calm mind, of a happy heart, of a clear soul. Those are the experiences that you want not to have, but to be. And this is why you're plotting with yourself and life and the world, because you have a desire to invite those outcomes.

And those outcomes are those, that diversity of desirable experiences, because that's what you call life. And that's what it is about. It's not about the new car. It's about how you feel when you drive a new car in the neighborhood.

Erwan (01:20:24.715)

It's not about, in fact, the game that you catch. It's about like, achieve this and I am feeding me and my family and my pets and it's real and it's raw and it's authentic and it's the experience. It's how you feel. How you feel. All right. So back to desires. We have desires.

Daniel Vitalis (01:20:46.771)

Hmm.

Erwan (01:20:54.765)

Desires are good. Healthy desires are healthy. Good desires are

And so that's what we pursue. That's why we do everything we do. So back to the training of the breath holding. Why would I want to torture myself, depriving myself from oxygen and for minutes at a time? Because just in case, probably most people in your audience don't know I've broken the US national.

record for breath holding with the CMAS organization three times. Current record is at 7 minutes 29 seconds but I've held my breath up to eight minutes.

Daniel Vitalis (01:21:33.172)

Wow.

Daniel Vitalis (01:21:43.858)

What are you talking about? That's crazy.

Erwan (01:21:43.977)

it's not a record at all, nowhere near a world record, but it's, it's beyond the time performance.

Time does not really matter. It's what it does to you as a practice, a practicing in a skill.

So you see when you say, hey, pay attention to my food and then I memorize things and I pray and then I do these games and I train my mind and I train my body and all. You're treating yourself who you are, the entirety of who you are, Daniel, as a skill, as a range of skills within one skill, the skill of being, of being that worthy being, of being that worthy life. Also because you're a believer and therefore you believe that it's

It's your duty. It's a spiritual duty. It's a moral and spiritual duty. I like to say movement is a biological duty. Eating well, sunlight, sunshine, nature, all of that, they're biological duties. But in fact, keeping your biology, your God-given biology that's hopefully inherently perfect from birth is a duty. It's a moral duty to maintain that biological health.

and biological competency, but the same applies to the mind, to the cognitive system that we are, and the same applies to the soul, because it's a spiritual system as well. And it's not meant to be like a green plant in a pot waiting for circumstances to be good. And if you're lucky, you have a good life. And if you're not lucky, you don't have a good life. That's complete bullshit. Where is will power? Where is free will? Where is intention? Where is the beauty of intention, intention in action?

Erwan (01:23:35.435)

intention in motion, readjusting every day through choices, conscious choices, assessment, examination, self-ministering. That is why we are here. Nobody is ever going to do any of that for you.

Daniel Vitalis (01:23:52.243)

Right.

Erwan (01:23:54.679)

You are in charge.

Daniel Vitalis (01:23:57.461)

That's why I hate when people talk about privilege. you know, it's not that I don't understand what they mean, it's like I didn't have those privileges growing up, but I wanted certain things so bad. I had that desire for experiences and for life, and that caused me to overcome many challenges and to go do things that I could have easily said, well, that's out of reach. I don't have the privilege. But when I hear that from people, again, I understand what they're trying to communicate. I know it's harder for some than others, but.

You got a lot of opportunity here. You just have to want it and then do all those steps you're talking about to get where you want to go.

Erwan (01:24:32.003)

Yeah, we are all born with circumstances that do play a big part in making or influencing who we become later in life. But ultimately, there is also so much that has to do with our understanding and what it is that we pursue, what is it that we want and the beliefs we have about ourselves.

and then the decisions we make and then the effort we put into making what happens into making the experience that we are happen with the contrast that we've chosen where we live with who we eat with the music we listen to the hobbies we entertain the profession we choose all these things all these are

It's the contrast, it's what's really unique to each of us, the way we look, the way we think, our activities, our decisions, all of that. But ultimately, what is truly universal to all of us is the scope of emotions we go through and then the principles that rule us or that should rule us or that we should regulate and rule ourselves.

42.

Erwan (01:26:04.941)

And that's what makes a difference between people who tend to thrive and others who tend not to. And then also the people who whine. So when people talk about privilege, those people are whiners. The problem is that they are disempowered because they believe that whatever advantages they perceive you have over Vom is because you're lucky and it was given to you and they were not lucky and nothing was given to Vom and therefore, you know, they can't make it.

they can't be successful in life. Well, that is victim mentality that is extremely disempowering. I worked in factories, car factories. I've picked up potatoes in fields.

among other shitty jobs that I've done. If I compare my life to my dad's he was a heavy smoker and he didn't care about what he ate and his exercise was to go walk. He walked a lot, that's good, but he did not exercise or anything and he struggled his whole adult life with health issues and I know that he was

smart but he was not happy. So there are decisions that he made that negatively impacted his physical health, mental health and spiritual health and I've observed that and I've learned from it. Because sometimes you learn thanks to or because of. So you have kind of examples. So you need to be again discriminate.

Daniel Vitalis (01:27:45.791)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:27:52.505)

So there's critical thinking about ideas, but there are critical thinking about everything. Critical thinking is just intelligence, just intelligent thinking. Leverage the power of your God given intelligence to make your life better. And it's not just making more money. It's way more than that. So much more than that. And the biology is a foundation for you to thrive. But then...

The spiritual side is just like hello if you don't understand that in fact

Erwan (01:28:36.483)

There's no switch off spirituality. What is that? Spiritual life, well, I don't really care, or maybe later, yeah, maybe if I go to Bali, to Ashram, then I'll have, maybe I'll have a spiritual moment, but otherwise I'm not a spiritual person. But what are you even talking about?

Daniel Vitalis (01:28:46.195)

Yeah. Right.

Erwan (01:29:00.107)

Every moment is spiritual. Even the criminal is a spiritual person. No, they're bad, they can't be spiritual. The question is never are you spiritual or are not spiritual? The question is how spiritual are you? In what kind? The bad kind? The mean kind? The mindless kind? The cynical kind?

Erwan (01:29:30.271)

or the spiritual kind which is like right it's like yeah you're attentive to the processes of the intangible that is actually that are actually extremely tangible when you pay closer attention to that so when you ask people do you have a soul

and most people will say yeah I do. My next question is where is it?

Did you leave it at home? Is it in your car, in your backpack, in your drawer? Where is it? Because you have one, right? So it's like one of your possessions, one of your belongings. There's no place because you don't have one, you are one. Once you realize that, you are a soul, therefore your whole experience, everything that you are is primarily spiritual, of spiritual nature. Okay.

Daniel Vitalis (01:30:10.773)

Hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (01:30:17.599)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (01:30:29.259)

Once we understand that, now you tell me where is the switch?

Daniel Vitalis (01:30:35.817)

Yeah, there isn't one.

Erwan (01:30:37.571)

There isn't one. There's no on and off. It's always on. So even when you're mindless, you're spiritual. When you're mindful, you're spiritual. When you're kind, you're spiritual. When you're mean, you're spiritual. It's not a matter of yes or no or to be or not to be. It's you are. The question is how.

Daniel Vitalis (01:30:54.985)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (01:30:59.087)

and therefore how do you operate that spiritual energy that you are?

And so that is way beyond just considering is a ketogenic diet good for you or not.

Should you peptides or not? And what peptides? Think of peptides for the soul. What is it? Prayer?

Gratefulness, good deeds, all of that. Those will make you thrive in a way that peptides will never make you thrive. Those are priorities. There's the top of the pyramid. The rest is below. right. So hierarchy. There's always a hierarchy. There's always like, you know, values and you know, what's

Daniel Vitalis (01:31:38.229)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:31:57.017)

higher and what's lower, it's real. Those are real considerations. All right, so I don't even know where we really were going and what was the origin.

Daniel Vitalis (01:32:06.518)

Well, I was asking about, guess what I wanted, you're stimulating kind of a new question. Okay, so as we become more aware that we're spiritual beings and that every experience is a spiritual experience, then in the same way that when I realize I have a physical body, maybe there's things I want to do for the health of that body. If I'm an emotional being, if I'm an intellectual being, if I'm a sexual being, then all of those things have inputs and outputs that are important.

How do you perceive, I think I'm especially asking this right now because the world's reaching this inflection point. It's getting crazy out there and it's getting hard to interpret what's happening. And if people aren't really well founded and grounded in something spiritual, this is a tough time to navigate. And I think especially, you you mentioned like sort of almost like psychic or spiritual predation that's taking place. Like we're in a spiritual ecosystem in some.

might be a way to say it. And people are becoming aware like, wait a second, a lot of these things that I thought were there for my good are actually not there for my good. And people are, there's sort of an awakening happening. But also the people are overwhelmed with this moment in time. so, right, cause it's like AI, it's UAPs and aliens, it's, my God, they're eating babies. It's just like all this stuff, like all at once. It's like coming.

bowling us over. How do you see caring for your soul? Because I think that's what's coming out of this conversation. It's like we talked about caring for your body, how we care for our minds. How do we care for that soul? Or like how do you see that? How do you do that? And I hear from you as you speak, I talk to a lot of smart people, I wouldn't say I talk to a lot of wise people.

You know, lot of intelligent people, but not often a lot of wisdom, right? And you hear these tech gurus, they're very intelligent, but it's like they have not even have the wisdom of a child sometimes. So I perceive wisdom in you as well as intelligence. And so I know that comes from cultivation. don't just, know, wisdom's not easily won. So yeah, like how do you see the development of the soul and keeping the soul healthy?

Erwan (01:34:30.095)

I realized that I also owe you an answer about why breath holding, but I'll get back to you.

Daniel Vitalis (01:34:30.28)

in a difficult time like this.

Daniel Vitalis (01:34:36.827)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:34:44.143)

So I'm a believer, I'm non-religious believer.

I believe in God.

Erwan (01:34:54.903)

and

verse with God all the time and acknowledge Him and His presence.

Erwan (01:35:07.351)

all the time if i wake up at night when i wake up in the morning during the day so it's an ongoing relationship

Erwan (01:35:20.941)

that I discovered later in life.

Erwan (01:35:29.768)

Are today's time more preoccupying than in the past?

maybe, maybe not, maybe in a different way, in a specific way. Let's imagine you would be alive during World War I or World War II.

and not knowing what the world would become and then the Cold War meant people were afraid that there would be a nuclear world war and that everything would be wiped off the planet. do you even, how can you enjoy, how can you have happiness or, you know, start a family, have children thinking about such a possibility? So is it different today? Not really.

But it is in the sense that the technologies are placing devices in our hands and in front of our eyes and basically are flooding our minds.

not everybody, but most people a lot. And there is a discovery for most people about some of the...

Erwan (01:36:58.211)

horrific systems at their own groups and what they're doing and it's been revealed publicly.

I've been a conspiracy theorist almost my whole life because I was reading books about it the few that one could find back in the days talking about you know I was 20 years old I'm pushing 55 so that's more than three decades ago that I already knew about a lot of that I was literally going to movies in my 20s

Daniel Vitalis (01:37:18.238)

Right? Yeah.

Erwan (01:37:38.017)

especially science fiction movies like Total Recall with Schwarzenegger and all whatever movies like that always thinking they are preparing us for what they are preparing the way they are designing the world to be for us they want to wipe our memory they want us to have a chip in the brain and all these things

Erwan (01:38:02.633)

You know when COVID happened, that's when people started to question and that's when things started to unravel and then the people started to be more vocal about these realities were ostracized. was part of them.

And now you have people who do entire business just out of, know, being conspiracy theorists that they make a lot of money out of it. Good for them. But yeah, the world is.

Very wicked.

Daniel Vitalis (01:38:45.398)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:38:46.369)

Okay, so you must spiritually shield yourself.

Erwan (01:38:54.031)

So what you do is that you read the Bible, you pray, you learn scriptures. Either you understand that this is real or you don't and if you don't, well good luck. It's that simple. So there is that and then it's I believe in grace.

Erwan (01:39:23.693)

So I believe in a self in, okay. In the world of psychology, you have terms such as self-induced mood induction, self-induced moods. Basically you can choose what your mood is.

Daniel Vitalis (01:39:45.15)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:39:45.999)

They said, thank you. no, that person told me that and I'm pissed. that's gonna happen. I'm anxious

Daniel Vitalis (01:39:52.338)

I have no control over my feelings.

Erwan (01:39:54.383)

I'm like driftwood on an ocean of emotions. Sometimes there's no wind, sometimes there's storm and depending on that I'm drifting in the currents and I have no control on my inner state. I believe in grace and therefore what actually breath-holding practice has taught me is exactly that.

Daniel Vitalis (01:39:58.44)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:40:24.279)

I'm actually going to bridge the question you just asked and the one you asked before. In breath holding, I hold my breath for minutes at a time. So you can imagine the level of stress that I have to handle because physiologically it's horrendous. Anybody who's tried knows how difficult it is. And yet I can meditate through those states. I don't do the conventional meditation, okay, because that's it doesn't work. Just observe your thoughts and let them pass. That's bullshit. It doesn't work.

Erwan (01:40:57.721)

That's not the meditation I do.

My meditation, what I call meditation is extremely clear intention and impeccable attention. To what? To the experience that I want to experience. Therefore to the experience that I want to be in the moment.

What is this physiological stress going to do? Physiology becomes neurological. Neurology is the cerebral part of physiology, basically. It's the physiology of the brain. It's still biological.

And then the higher level of hierarchy is the mind, the conscious mind. And what the mind wants and what it believes and what it establishes. stress is going to make me what? It's the perception of threat. The body knows, dude, if you don't stop this madness right now, we're all going to die in here, okay? We're running out of oxygen. We've calculated you have, you know,

three minutes left and after that, boom, done. Which consciously you already know that it's not going to happen because you know that there's a point where you will breathe. It's called the breaking point. So no, you're not going to die. But explain to me, how can you...

Erwan (01:42:31.627)

meditate in the presence of stress, a stress that normally you cannot stop, that actually increases in intensity by the second. And you cannot do breath work to soothe it, to regulate it. You cannot leverage breath work, which normally is like, you need to regulate your nervous system work.

Daniel Vitalis (01:42:58.125)

because it'd normally be your number one tool, but it's out the window because you're not breathing. that's interesting. Wow.

Erwan (01:43:03.509)

Exactly.

So how do you regulate? Not through a breath, since you're not breathing.

So if you're like a breath work facilitator, you're like, oh my God, I'm out of tools here, I don't know. I try to relax. Yeah, don't try to relax. Relax. How do you relax when you cannot dismiss the stress, you cannot stop the stress and it keeps growing in intensity and now you cannot do breath work to do anything about it. The answer is,

through pure intention.

You do not need breath work. You never did. It's a placebo.

Erwan (01:43:54.573)

Because if you want to regulate your mind, my friend, instead of doing breath work, which actually up-regulate your nervous system, it's a stressor, it's an activation, it's like shifts you into the aroused state more. It's not going to relax you if you hyperventilate, but there's also like slow breathing. Slow breathing would be way better, except if you hold your breath, there's no slow breathing. There's no breathing at all.

So the only way to do it is through pure intention and it works. So when you are feeling agitated, you may do breath work and maybe it's gonna work or you may do Tai Chi or yoga or slow dancing. You may maybe play some reggae and dance some reggae and you know what? If you believe

Erwan (01:44:50.361)

that it will calm you, then it will. Because placebo is real, because what is placebo is the power of belief.

Erwan (01:45:02.669)

So when I experience impatience, and you will see how this Daniel is completely spiritual in the end, because we may talk about psychology or neurology or philosophy. There are just different words for spirituality, for talking about consciousness. So when you become impatient, because obviously you want the breathful to stop,

I mean, at least if you're a beginner, see, you make a decision. I'm overriding my autonomic nervous system. So I stop breathing. Otherwise you would keep breathing, obviously.

You made a conscious decision. You know it would put you in a state of alarm of physical stress, physiological stress, neurological stress, emotional stress, mental stress. You know you're getting for stress. Why would you even do that to yourself, my friend?

There's no point. So either you were told, well, just do it. It's good for you. And you're all, well, it's supposed to be good for me. So let's do it. And you try it. It's hard. then you'd be like, there's probably like more pleasant things to do are good for me than this. So you need to understand that you are going to leverage the stress as an opportunity for growth, for physiological growth.

Daniel Vitalis (01:46:21.639)

You

Erwan (01:46:36.687)

neurological growth, mental, emotional, spiritual growth. That's what you need to understand. In other words, you have to be deliberate, intentional, strategic, methodical, but you're not doing that for no reason. You're doing that because you have decided to expose yourself to a stress that is supposed to cause you, oh my God, I'm impatient, it's hard, I don't want to do it anymore, how long is this going to last, and I can't do this, and whatever.

and being agitated in always again physical, physiological, emotional, mental. And now you created the perfect position or situation or opportunity.

choose how you behave, to choose who you are and how you experience yourself not because of external circumstances that happen to actually be internal physiological circumstances but because out of your pure intention.

So you want to be patient because you feel impatient. So you're like, my God, I wish I was patient, but I got to wait another 30 seconds. Okay. How are we going to have patience? You can't download it online. You can order it on Amazon. You can't take a pill to be patient. So how will you have a quality, which is patience?

Daniel Vitalis (01:48:04.599)

you

Erwan (01:48:14.839)

And how will you experience a state which is the state of being patient?

The only way you can is to do the patience, means to produce it, to generate it. And once you do, once you induce that mood, the mood of patience that you've selected for yourself, that's your desirable experience. That's your desire. That's the outcome you invite and you produce it. Then you become it.

And nobody can do that for you. You get what you give. In order to get what you give, you need to give first. So you need to produce. How do you produce it? Complete belief and intention. I call that the antidote.

Erwan (01:49:17.101)

So the more you train to do that, the better you become at it because it's just like practicing a skill, except that it's not the skill of tennis or shooting or something that's to a degree external to you. It's not fully external to you, but you know what I mean? It's the most...

It looks like the most intangible thing, but in fact it's the most tangible. Because when you really look at it in life, what is it that we need to be successful to have a good life or a pleasant life? We need all these qualities. Because difficulties come at us. External variables that challenge us, that threaten us, that bother us, that disturb us. And when those happen from the outside, we need what? We need to be patient. We need to be clear. We need to be...

have resolve, need to have resiliency, we need to be composed, we need to be kind also and compassionate sometimes, etc. All kind of values. How do we ever train them?

Erwan (01:50:25.881)

So you hold your breath, you create a physiological stress that you expose your mind to and your emotional self and your spiritual self, and then you get to work. The work of practicing the desirable version of who you are because of your chosen responses. And now you start to shift your baseline because you're not just regulating in the moment, you are regulating in the moment.

Daniel Vitalis (01:50:51.938)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:50:53.753)

But because you do that so consistently, it starts to become a recalibration. And now you shift the baseline. And now patients come to you way easier and relaxation and trust. Trust is the pillar. Trust is like, how do you hold your breath? What happens when you hold your breath? The question is, what do you choose to make to happen to you?

Daniel Vitalis (01:51:08.12)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (01:51:23.149)

when you hold your breath. Well, it's about you need to control the mind. Okay, who controls the mind?

The mind that you are controls itself. But you want more than just survival. You want more than just, my God, it so hard and I was impatient and I was agitated, but I made it to one minute, woo hoo. No. It's better to do 30 seconds, have that time, but to be composed and clear and in trust while there was there, because of the triggers of physiology, there was a temptation.

multiple times to quit, multiple times to not commit, multiple times to be agitated, multiple times to be impatient, multiple times to have negative thoughts, multiple times to basically be a non-desirable expression of a spiritual energy that you are. That's how spiritual I see this practice. And of course, it's also completely rational scientifically from a neurological perspective.

Right? So when you learn to not just regulate yourself like that, you regulate yourself in the moment, but then ultimately you recalibrate yourself and imagine how this prepares you better for life.

Daniel Vitalis (01:52:41.848)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (01:52:47.65)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:52:48.975)

You know, you're going to have anxiety, going to have impatience, you're going to have frustration, maybe remuneration, all of that.

or the temptations to entertain those moods. And then you're like, wake up. Is that what you want? Is that the experience you want for yourself in this moment? Absolutely not.

Daniel Vitalis (01:53:02.935)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Wow.

Daniel Vitalis (01:53:12.962)

Wow. I feel like you're talking about the most important thing. It's like the most important, you know, all the stuff we've talked about before, behaviors, eating good, exercise, all those are like, you know, it's like talking about symptoms instead of the cause. It's like that stuff's all like peripheral, but we've been talking about, well, we talked about willpower and that's got me thinking about, you know, when we talked about God and like, I think the most precious thing we have is our free will. And then you,

You know, we're given this gift of free will and then you look at all these forces that want to take your will and impose their will and get you to give your will to them. And then what you're talking about is instead of lifting the dumbbell or pushing the sled or climbing the tree or any of those things are pushing everything away and learning how to consciously direct your will, which is your gift from God. The thing that you have that an AI can never have and a robot can never have is like true will. And then

learning how to consciously maintain and control and direct your will. mean, it seems like maybe it's like the most important thing in a way, you know, that you could do in a sense.

Erwan (01:54:23.993)

Well, it is, it is because every moment is a choice. Every moment you have the potential awareness.

Daniel Vitalis (01:54:26.805)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:54:38.671)

to shape the experience that you are in every moment the way you want to experience it.

Erwan (01:54:50.777)

So if you feel depressed, can realize, I'm depressed. I'm just giving an example and be like, why would that be? What makes me believe that this experience has to be my experience in this moment?

And you wake up and be like...

Daniel Vitalis (01:55:11.639)

you

Erwan (01:55:14.159)

push that like a fog on the side and you elevate your conscious game and you step into the

Daniel Vitalis (01:55:16.824)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:55:26.371)

the presence, the quality of the presence that you want, that you've desired for yourself, that is your baseline, that is your standard. You seek the excellence of your spirit. You do not want whatever thoughts, whatever thoughts that are just not.

righteous or beautiful or meaningful and emotions that are low vibration. You don't want them. It's a form of

Erwan (01:56:12.834)

aristocracy.

Daniel Vitalis (01:56:15.299)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:56:16.471)

of consciousness. Not because you think that you're superior to anyone, but because you believe in superior levels of being, starting with the spirit that you are within it and how it expresses itself in every moment. That does not make you perfect. That does not shield you from moments of maybe sometimes being upset, impatient, sad.

It does not shield you from

the very nature of human life it does not you're still vulnerable you still can be messy still can be whatever but this is what's gonna change

is the frequency, intensity and duration. Let me explain.

Daniel Vitalis (01:57:11.821)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:57:15.715)

Let's say someone has a tendency because in the end, it's all about helping others.

And all I'm doing here, even I may sound philosophical, not, know, trying to sell my programs. And by the way, I do have an online masterclass, but I'm really trying to provide insights and share insights that have maybe well received.

Daniel Vitalis (01:57:31.327)

Yeah.

Erwan (01:57:42.879)

potential to help. Let's say someone has a tendency for rumination.

Erwan (01:57:55.887)

They're going to find ways to justify why they love to ruminate.

Yeah, but because of that happened in my past or this happened at work. So now I'm going to ruminate. I should have said this. That person said that. Rumination, rumination, rumination, rumination. Is it a pleasant feeling? No. And if you do that hours a day, every day, it's not the most pleasant way to experience life, right? Okay. Everybody will agree with that.

Daniel Vitalis (01:58:11.833)

You

Daniel Vitalis (01:58:26.777)

And you're building your rumination muscle.

Erwan (01:58:29.963)

If you are depressed, same thing. If you are always upset, same thing. We all can agree that those emotions, their feelings, their emotions, their states of the mind, it's also very emotional. It has to do the nervous system. So basically it makes us feel like shit. Period. And that's a fact. Nobody really wants that. But some people have a tendency of entertaining that very frequently. Why? Because...

They are trained. They don't know they trained for it, but they've been doing that for so many years that now their nervous system is trained to be very good at it. So now it's also an addiction. They need it. They need it. They need it. Their nervous system needs it to feel itself. If the rumination, because I gave that example, was to go away, all of a sudden it would feel like they're a different person. And then they would...

Enter the threatening territory of unfamiliarity. I'm a new version of myself that does not ruminate. This is weird. I don't like it. Let's go back to rumination. Program.

So first off, one, the person needs to become aware of that about themselves. Oh, that's a pattern. It comes back all the time. Why? The question is probably not why. The question is, maybe you can understand why, but is it desirable or not? Do you want to change or not? Yes? Okay. Well, then some work is going to be needed. First, you need to become metacognitively aware.

Metacognition, all the ability to look at yourself as if you were a different person on the other side of the room watching you and be like, that person is doing that. Like being able to read your own mind and watching it, witnessing it and be like, mm-hmm.

Daniel Vitalis (02:00:33.113)

You

Erwan (02:00:37.505)

And then the one observer would be like, me? Like me? And then the other one would be like, it's the, you know, your, your, your double, right? Your copy, your, be like, you're doing it. You know, no, I'm not doing it. yes, you were doing it. You know, you're doing that. What am I doing? Well, you're doing that thing that you love to do. You're entertaining that behavior that is part of who you believe you are.

you believe that your person is supposed to ruminate all the time. And then not only that, but to believe that there's nothing you can do about it. That's also part of your little tricks you play on yourself so that you don't have to attempt any change. There's nothing I can do about it. Okay, well then self-fulfilling prophecy brother or sister, you know what? You declare there's nothing you can do about it, therefore you don't do anything about it, therefore it never changes. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Pay attention to your beliefs about yourself because they dictate your experience.

So now you decide you're to change that first stuff you need to become aware. Be like, wait, yeah, I know what I'm doing now. I'm doing this to myself. Nobody's doing that to my brain. My brain is doing that to myself. I'm in a state of rumination. That's my activity of the moment. Somehow I think I'm supposed to do that. And then I justify by explaining, yeah, but not me. It's because of that person and that.

whatever the world, the politics and stuff. There's always a reason that's not you. How convenient and how disempowering.

Erwan (02:02:22.479)

It's never been because of you, huh? Never. No, no. It's always been because of others in the world. Always. Convenient. All right. I know, exactly. And then you're gonna have to become...

Daniel Vitalis (02:02:30.785)

It's a common denominator.

Erwan (02:02:39.023)

do more than just being aware of what you're doing because it's an internal behavior therefore it's something you're doing it's an activity it's an act it's a deed

Daniel Vitalis (02:02:48.089)

you

Erwan (02:02:51.745)

It's nothing else. It's not just, it's happening to me. No, you are doing it. Blame your brain if you want.

But you are doing it, it's an activity, you're occupied doing this for maybe two hours at a time. And then the next step is not just the awareness. Again, the awareness is what? The self-examination I was talking

Erwan (02:03:21.891)

The next is self-ministering. Who is going to change that? Only you can change that. are not paying a coach to be with you 24x7 to ask you about what you doing in your mind and telling you, no you can't do this, you need to do that. I know. Alright. So, that's the next level.

It's not just the ability to be self-aware, which is already very very hard for most people, but it's trainable good news people, it's completely trainable.

The next step is the self-alteration, metacognitive alteration, metacognitive regulation basically, or control, or recalibration. Change it, modify it. but it's too hard. Okay, well again, if you say it's too hard, then you can't do anything. Do it, even if it's hard. All right, so I was saying, you know, I'm just like anybody else. I have my moments in my own mind, but...

what happened is that I'm instantly recognizing them and acknowledging them. I instantly acknowledge that I'm stepping out of grace. I'm stepping out of the most desirable state of the mind and the spirit, which is at peace and clear and grateful and in faith, in trust.

in all the good things, all the goodness that is available to a spirit who believes in it. So I'm entertaining something else. Some things, my God, there's a friend, my God, there's a reason to be frustrated and upset and stuff, all of a sudden, right? So.

Erwan (02:05:10.467)

then you regulate that in the moment and the more often you do that the better you become at it. what I wanted to conclude this with eventually you will observe this and I was talking about frequency, intensity and duration.

Frequency is how often those bouts of, let's say, rumination or upsetness or anger or depression will happen less frequently. That's a good thing. When they will happen, they will reach a lower intensity.

Daniel Vitalis (02:05:48.217)

Yeah.

Erwan (02:05:54.573)

and then their duration will also shrink. So you'll step out of these moods faster. Out of your metacognitive awareness and metacognitive choice, control, selectivity. Basically you become spiritually discriminate of yourself to begin with, none of others in the way they live are. How you conduct your own internal spiritual affairs, starting with how you think and how you feel and your intentions.

Daniel Vitalis (02:06:11.737)

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah.

Erwan (02:06:24.087)

all your behaviors. So that is to me the ultimate name of the game. That's the ultimate level of the game and it's consciousness. And that's where I'm at. And I'm teaching that, not, let's say I'm teaching, mindful breath holding where I help people recalibrate their nervous system by temporarily exposing themselves to a mild level of stress.

so that they can better train their response to it. So instead of trying to eliminate stress and to find relaxation, you embrace stress as an opportunity to become more clear, more intentional, more resilient.

more composed and that's the way it happens and then more than just regulating the moment ultimately you shift the baseline and you become a better version of your nervous system a better version of your spiritual self

Daniel Vitalis (02:07:30.873)

It makes so much sense because it's sort of like what we started talking about. The world's always gonna be throwing stress at you. And if you try to shield yourself from that, now you're back in the gym or you're back in the four walls. You're like, well, I've created a safe space and now everything atrophies and breaks down because you've cut yourself off from life or the world or from nature. So much better to be calm in the storm than to never experience a storm because then you're not living.

Erwan (02:07:38.681)

always.

Daniel Vitalis (02:07:57.476)

and storms are part of living. so it seems like James says that he says, count it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter trials of various kinds, because it builds endurance and steadfastness. And it's like, it's exactly what you're talking about. And the world just keeps wanting to pull away all those discomforts for us. And it's like, we have to consciously make sure now to subject ourselves to these challenges or else we just wither away.

Erwan (02:08:24.131)

Yeah, but it's hard. can be hard to regulate oneself or control oneself in the moment of the heat in a relationship. For instance, something is really annoying you and you try to be like, no, gotta stay calm. I gotta stay composed. And then all of a sudden you feel really triggered. It crosses the threshold and then you go, that's enough now. And how do you train that? It's hard to train that.

Daniel Vitalis (02:08:35.705)

Right. Count to 10.

Daniel Vitalis (02:08:53.881)

you

Erwan (02:08:54.891)

In the moment, it's too late. Once you trigger, it's too late. So what you do, and we were talking about doing that with movement. So not training straight up in the wild nature, but bring your movement in a more, more forgiving environments to learn techniques and then gradually expose yourself to more demanding environments. Well, you can do that. That's what you do with breath holding is that you do that.

Daniel Vitalis (02:08:59.181)

Mm-hmm.

Erwan (02:09:24.363)

on your own, you trigger a stress that's not external, it's internal, and you can control its frequency and its intensity. So you can adjust the level of difficulty to where you're at mentally or at the level of nervous system.

But eventually, it has to apply to life.

Erwan (02:09:52.185)

That's the point. But at least when you show up to the regular situations of life, especially interaction with others, professional, friendships, love, whatever, your baseline, it's stronger.

your ability to stay composed, maintain trust and clarity despite the physiological noise and the typical triggers that can destabilize your mind, you've trained that. So you are stronger. So you practice upstream.

But then you've got to apply to the variables, to the real wild life of consciousness, which is your interaction with the world.

Daniel Vitalis (02:10:55.033)

Yeah.

Erwan (02:10:56.097)

So it's the same principle, it's exactly the same.

Daniel Vitalis (02:10:59.705)

I love it. Well, quick question. Like, so let's come from 50,000 feet back down towards the runway here. If I'm, if I want to like start this and I want to, you know, like, I like I have time in my day carved out in the morning where I have my practices before my day starts. I want to hear, you know, like just the basics like get started and then tell us about your programs and like how we can go deeper because obviously, it's not we're not going to unload it all right here right now. So

So like what's a basic starter pack look like and then how do we get involved in like higher levels of it like you're teaching.

Erwan (02:11:32.719)

All right, I can share a wonderful, very simple and potent breathing, breath holding exercise.

if you want to calm down quickly. No hyperventilation, no hard breath holding whatsoever. Anybody can do this. So it's very simple. You will breathe normally. You inhale and you hold. You don't count anything. Do not count. Do not measure time. Feel it.

It's a brief moment. So that would be three seconds, five seconds. Then you exhale, normal. Then you inhale, normal and hold.

Exhale, inhale, hold a few seconds. Very gentle, very easy, very pleasant.

little by little without you trying without you ever pushing you will simply observe or realize that your holes are actually longer and maybe your breaths are a little deeper but you're not trying to push the holes you're not trying to measure time all you do with your mind is to repeat

Erwan (02:13:04.791)

mindfully replicate that exact same pattern slow inhale pause exhale slow inhale pause slow exhale and again and again and again why is this so calming there are many reasons but first is that you have one point of focus that's all you have to do

You must control the breath. So you have to pay attention. And typically what causes us anxiety and being all over the place in our minds, because we're constantly absorbed by different tasks and things to do and things to think about. You take a moment for yourself to just do that. And all you pay attention to is that one simple breathing, breath-holding pattern.

So now you're fully focused. When was the last time you were this focused? For five minutes, 10 minutes. So that's the first reason. Second is that you pause. The breath hold is a pause. You basically take a break and at the same time it's active. So what happens is that you conserve your CO2.

which through the Bohr effect is going to increase your cellular oxygenation. So for people who breathe too fast, all of a sudden their respiratory rate goes down and easily so without them struggling to make it happen, that shifts your nervous system towards the relaxation basically,

Daniel Vitalis (02:14:56.92)

comparison.

Erwan (02:15:00.797)

very sympathetic. So you are

Daniel Vitalis (02:15:03.202)

I feel it happening to me right now, by the way. I've been doing it and I keep wanting to yawn already, because it's like, I've just come in right now.

Erwan (02:15:07.533)

Nice, exact. Right. And this is a nice break because one of the pain points, very universal pain points that most people have with when comes to the mind, thinking too much, thinking too fast, thinking negatively, being distracted, being whatever, all over the place. Now you are tasking yourself in a very specific way. It forces you to be really centered.

but also slower. So there's a physiological aspect to it through the CO2 increases. So basically decreases oxygen intake, but the paradox and it's beneficial is that it increases oxygen uptake. So you lower oxygen intake, there's less oxygen circulate in your lungs. And like, wait a minute, is that a bad thing?

No, it's actually a very good thing because most of the time we breathe way too much oxygen that we can possibly use. But what's the most important is the uptake of oxygen is basically cellular oxygenation. So now you are restoring proper pH in your body, in your tissues, you oxygenate better. What do you think happens to you when your cells are happy with all the oxygen they need is that you start to relax.

So you increase CO2 and you've heard of like those CO2 suits and how CO2 is good. Well, you can increase CO2 by just breathing less, right? And you breathe less when you pause the breath and hold your breath briefly. So all around just experience that, try it. Your mind will calm down also because you slow down the breath.

Daniel Vitalis (02:16:44.682)

Yeah, right.

Erwan (02:17:02.083)

By ordering the breath to be slower, the mind orders itself to be slower.

which is what most people need and want. I want my mind to be calmer. So try that and within two minutes you start to really feel it deeply. After five minutes, 10 minutes, you feel high, but in a good way. And if you want to learn way more than this, because here's the thing, a true method is not made of one...

Daniel Vitalis (02:17:12.024)

most people need.

Daniel Vitalis (02:17:25.057)

Yeah.

Erwan (02:17:36.691)

one size fits all one trick pony exercise this is not a method a true method is made of a diversity of exercises not for the sake of diversity but for the sake of the learning curve and specific application and also lectures so that you understand what it is that you're doing and why you're doing it and why it works and why it matters and this is what people will find in my master class

Daniel Vitalis (02:18:06.584)

Where they find it?

Erwan (02:18:06.703)

The website is called Breath, like breath, hold like hold and work like.

Daniel Vitalis (02:18:15.383)

Cool, and then where do you send people for your book and where do you send people for moving out stuff?

Erwan (02:18:20.815)

Okay, so for the natural movement, it's movnat.com. That's the website.

We have a number of e-courses, we have workshops, and the book is, you can find it in Barnes and Nobles, you can find it on Amazon, and the title is The Practice of Natural Movement.

Daniel Vitalis (02:18:42.21)

all the places.

Daniel Vitalis (02:18:49.304)

This has been wonderful. I feel like a lot of people are gonna wanna listen back a couple times. There's a lot in here. So this is really great. And then if you're like 25 years old hearing this and you're like, I just wanna know about the peptides, just bookmark this one, cause you're wanna come back. feel like this conversation that we had today, you you start, as life goes on, you start caring about these things more, at least for me. I mean, I was always a spiritually aware person and, but.

but I had so much I wanted to do and experience in life and I was so focused on all of that and as time's gone on, I've just realized certain things are more important now than they used to be and I feel like this was a pretty high level conversation as far as high up on the Maslow hierarchy of needs, so to speak. As you climb up those needs and you secure all the things you need, you start to realize, there's things that really matter.

And that's where a lot of our energy has been in this conversation. It's beautiful. And yeah, I just, this was great, man. I really appreciate it. I feel I got a little bit of that relaxation just talking with you today.

You

Erwan (02:19:58.851)

Well, I'll teach you breathful work whenever you want. You'll be delving in a whole new ocean of...

experience and practice of inner abilities.

Daniel Vitalis (02:20:16.683)

Yeah.

Daniel Vitalis (02:20:24.375)

Hmm.

Erwan (02:20:27.545)

We all want those qualities. We all want those qualities that are so helpful in life to live again that successful pleasant life we want. We all want to be patient, composed, to have clarity, to have wisdom, patience, all of that. We typically all believe that we are either lucky with them or not to have them, to have those qualities or not.

And what I'm saying is that it's all trainable. We're also thinking, we got to learn through self-help books, but the problem is that you read the self-help books and you never practice anything. So ultimately, the treasure is from the practice because insight alone is not going to change anything.

It's not the conceptual knowing of any truth that makes a difference. It's the application of it. The real fruit is there. It's the expression of it. And that's where the celebration of that God-given gift

that is life is found. It's truly, every moment is sacred and could be and should be celebrated as such with love and with gratitude and with awareness. And that is in the end, it is my practice. It's not about the breath holding or the breathing. It's not about the nervous system regulation.

It's not about the physical training. Those are tools.

Erwan (02:22:24.505)

The ultimate prize is the experience that you

mindfully.

create and I'm going to tell you what I really believe about that as a believer is that this is the way that I give back to God because He made me, He created me. It's a mysterious

Daniel Vitalis (02:22:49.303)

you

Daniel Vitalis (02:22:55.383)

you

Erwan (02:22:55.939)

mastery and I only get glimpses of that unfathomable wisdom and love and my gratitude is in making my inner life as vibrant as possible.

That's it. It's that simple in the end. There's no like rent.

Daniel Vitalis (02:23:23.415)

I got nothing, nothing I can add to that. Nothing I can add to that, man. Wow. Errol on the core. Thank you so much for this time today. Brilliant.

Erwan (02:23:27.791)

All right.

Erwan (02:23:34.639)

Thank you, Daniel, for this conversation. Thank you so much.

Transcript: Luddites and the AI Reckoning — Brian Merchant #003

Daniel (00:01.752)

Brian Merchant, welcome to the show.

Brian (00:03.9)

thanks so much for having me.

Daniel (00:06.2)

You know, I recently just finished your book, Blood in the Machine, and I just had to talk to you. I I saw that book. I walked into, you know, like your typical big bookstore where I normally am extremely overwhelmed by all the things I want to read, but I really zeroed in on that book when I saw the cover. And when I saw what the topic was, I thought, man, I've been saying for so many years, well, I'm not a Luddite. And I was like, I should find out. Maybe I am one.

But anyway, before we get into that, tell us a little bit about your career, the books you've written and the work that you do.

Brian (00:40.09)

Yeah, well, first of all, I'm glad to see it still out in the wild and sending up that sirens call getting the machine breaker curious crowd to draw in. Yeah, it's pretty great cover there that they did. So I'm pleased with that. Yeah, you know, I've been a tech journalist for, I don't know, it's 15 years, depending on how you count it. So I've been around the block. I've seen a lot of changes in

the industry in Silicon Valley and how we use technologies. I really kind of cut my teeth way back when at Vice Media, we started a tech publication called Motherboard there, where we kind of looked at tech from a bleeding edge, critical angle, or we tried to anyways, and we kind of got in the trenches and tried to ask some questions that a lot of people.

weren't asking at the time because if for those of your listeners who were around in the 2000s, kind of the pre 2010 and early 2010s era, it was all sort of sunshine and roses, right? Google's gonna, you know, not be evil, don't be evil. Apple is, you know, putting a dent in the universe and Steve Jobs is this mess, Ionic figure. And so, you know, we as as vice kind of,

tried to do at its best was to sort of poke around at the darker side. I give us credit for being a little bit earlier to the block on seeing some of those trends taking shape. you know, we did a lot of reporting on Amazon and Uber and that kind of thing. And then that led me to my first book, which was kind of looking at the iPhone, not just from a lens of the product demos.

Cupertino and what Apple and Steve Jobs were saying about the products, but how it's actually getting built, you know, how miners in Bolivia are contributing to the supply chain, how factory workers in Shenzhen and China are, you know, working around the clock to give us these devices. Like, what's the whole picture? And then that kind of led me on to the next step where I started thinking about this book.

Brian (03:04.376)

it really kind of, you know, pushed me further and further. The kind of the more you learn, the more dirty secrets you realize are kind of out there. Or even sometimes they're not even secrets. They're just not being talked about for a variety of reasons. And so I embarked on Blood in the Machine. And around that time, I also kind of became the tech columnist at the LA Times where I worked for a while. And yeah, I did this book and I've been

really kind of focused on issues about, I guess you could call it modern day ledism, know, thinking about who technology serves and who it exploits and which workers get impacted by tech. And now with AI, that's kind of the million dollar question, right?

Daniel (03:50.21)

Well, your book, if I understand it, came out in 2023, the Luddite book. And I would imagine in just this short period of time that's elapsed since the publication, this has moved so fast and so far already. I mean, because toward the end of the book, you do mention chat GPT, I think at one point, but I mean, it wasn't really in the wild the way it is now. And I know just in the last year, I'm watching my friends have relationships with artificial intelligence.

Brian (03:54.01)

Right. Yeah.

Brian (04:12.433)

Yeah.

Daniel (04:20.21)

and and use it as a augmentation for their minds. And they're all acting like it's not a big deal. And they'll say to me things like, it's not even that good. I'm like, it just came out last year, dude. Like, it's what do mean? It's not that good. It's pretty good. But, but you know, now you've got I'm sure in LA, I know I've got friends who are just in California sending me video of them in a self driving taxi. So this stuff's all happening now. So I do want to kind of go back into the book. But I'm just curious, since you wrote it,

It must have been just a flood of things that have revealed how prophetic and timely the book was.

Brian (04:57.368)

Yeah, as I was kind of hinting at. was, you know, AI was a little bit more nebulous. It was a little bit more abstract. People were talking about AI 10 years ago, 15 years ago. People have been talking about AI for like 50 or 60 years, but it hadn't reached this sort of level of cultural saturation and sort of mass economic investment and sort of this concentration that now is in so inescapable today.

In fact, it was just, as you said, of sort of tying itself together. was just taking up steam. was just picking up steam there. And I was...

Daniel (05:36.206)

Sauron was still building his body while the minions were burning all the trees.

Brian (05:38.524)

Yeah, he was still, that's right. Yeah, he was still in Mordor, just kind of like gleaming eyes in the dark shadows. But no, was, I was really looking at Amazon and Uber and sort of the gig work economy, which I think is a useful way of kind of thinking about what's happening with AI and we'll get into all this stuff, I'm sure, and what the companies want to do with AI.

Daniel (05:44.014)

you

Brian (06:05.244)

In sort of like the last step of the evolutionary phase, right? So we have, you know, Uber and this model for the 2010s, a lot of the startup mania was over this Uber for X, right? You know, we're gonna connect you through this algorithm to a worker that's gonna perform a function for you. And we're gonna...

make it cheaper than the taxis you'd normally take or the carpenter you'd normally hire or do all this and we're going to sort of connect them through this platform. And you know, now of course, AI is saying, oh no, no, promise is we're going to just do it all together. Like the AI is going to do everything, right? We're not going to connect you to that person that we're going to pay less. We're just going to do it all. So I was really looking at some of the, you know, the conditions in Amazon warehouses and the organizing that was going on there. I was looking at Uber's

drivers who are watching their rates fall as the company kind of ticked up its algorithm to try to ensure profitability. then sort of write as the book, you finish a book and it doesn't come out for a year. And so you kind of have to, I had to like bug my editors, actually look, this AI stuff is really happening. Can I get a little line or two in here? they begrudgingly let you change some things.

But that's to say, I think that the tendencies in the industry have been the same and you can kind of identify where they were going and what the, again, what the companies were hoping to do and what the pitch of AI has been largely. If you look at, know, again, the gig work model and sort of the social media giants that really took power over the last 10 years. And so when the AI stuff started happening, I was...

not really surprised by the form that it took or the attitude that the companies were espousing or the investment, but the speed by which it just came to completely dominate the sort of the cultural and economic conversation was pretty fascinating, was pretty surprising.

Daniel (08:13.432)

You know, I'm in television, so I host a TV show and then also I have a nutritional supplement company. And in both fields, I would love to say, hey, we're just not going to use this. But I mean, it's already it's, it's very difficult, especially when you have teams of editors and advertisers and things like that. I mean, they're just in those tools already. And I saw something the other day that said since

Brian (08:25.232)

Yeah, that is an option to you. Yeah, I mean, it is an option to you.

Daniel (08:42.144)

implementing the AI summaries in Google that the I think it's a 99 1 % of users click through to websites now, which means I mean, no incentive for people to even put content into websites anymore. If you know, no one's gonna visit those sites. And so, I mean, it's just, like I said, I don't have chat GPT. But every time I Google, I find myself checking that summary. And now I'm starting to ask questions instead of just search.

Brian (09:01.062)

Yeah. Yeah.

Brian (09:08.878)

Yeah. yeah. No, we, yeah, no, we are in this and that speaks to a number of different phenomena, right? It's, it speaks to just how thoroughly that the tech giants have sort of consolidated control over our digital lives and our, so this, I think the AI boom also doesn't happen to the speed and extent that it does. If we don't have this sort of level of corporate consolidation when Google can just say,

you know, 90 % of the world uses Google search as their search tool. We're putting Google AI overview on it and now you have no choice. so every now and they say, you know, there's this funny press conference where the Google CEO, Sundar Pichai is like, it's our most popular feature ever. And it's like, yeah, you just put it on the homepage that a billion people are already loading. People don't necessarily like it, but they're forced to deal with it.

and, and I think the other key point there, and again, this is going to have parallels to the book and to what happened with the Luddites. I think it's really important to note that what that, that AI overview is doing a lot of times isn't sort of, you know, magically sort of, you know, harnessing a vast intelligence to find the right answer for you. It's doing kind of a glorified copy and paste of those articles that are, that are no longer getting the links, right?

Daniel (10:34.296)

from Reddit.

Brian (10:37.72)

I actually have a draft of an article I'm working on right now that details my own experiences with this. if you, if you Google some of my work or like about an article that I was like, and you'll get huge blocks of text and then the link to my article, as you said, is buried underneath all of that, but it's more or less sort of verbatim. So I think one way of looking at that and one that a one way that a lot of artists and, sort of writers and content creators

and sort of text and visual workers think about this is that they've just, you can think about it as theft. Google's just taking my work, moving it out of sort of an arena in which I would benefit from it, putting it on their homepage, and then they're selling ads against it, not me. And now they're saying, it's AI. So, you know, this is our AI overview where you can get two thirds of somebody's article.

without even sending them a click to where they get the ad revenue. So yeah, is everywhere. It is a force. The tech industry has done a really good job of conditioning us all to think that it is inevitable. And in some ways, maybe part of it is, but in other ways, there's a lot that's still up for negotiation. There's a lot of places where we can push back on some of this stuff. And some of it is likely to kind of

you know, fall apart under the weight of its own sort of shortcomings. And some of it will be around probably for the rest of our lives. So the moment we're in is just so fascinating because we have to navigate each of these different pieces. And if we're a worker, especially a creative worker or a worker that sort of, you know, now has to contend with AI's output, we have to think about how we're going to sort of address or engage with

with AI, whether we're going to try to, you know, organize a workplace to get certain protections or like get certain language into contracts like the writers, the WGA and SAG did when they went on strike a couple years ago, whether we're going to sort of call this out. We got, mean, we have all these questions that we have to try to try to answer because it's, you know, it's being used as this tool that, you know, a lot of bosses do think.

Brian (13:00.88)

can replace or automate work to save some cash for them.

Daniel (13:04.94)

You know, I would have thought this moment in history is so absolutely unique. And I think one thing that really surprised me was how much it parallels and mirrors this period of time, you know, in the early 1800s. It's somewhat I take a little bit of solace in it, like, okay, people responded strongly, then maybe they'll respond strongly now. But like I said, I mean, all my life, I would just repeat that phrase, well, I'm not a Luddite, like,

Before I say this, before I say this next thing, I must first say I'm not a Luddite. And I don't even know what I thought it meant. I mean, obviously, I had been conditioned to say it. And what I thought it meant was something like I'm not Amish or like a Mennonite or something maybe like that. Like I had pictured people who had said, you know, we are going to stop using technology at this point, or something like that. And we're going to stay in the past when it was absolutely not that. But I guess I want to get into who the Luddites were. But my first question is, how did you even break through

Brian (13:32.977)

Yeah.

Brian (13:45.539)

Yeah.

Daniel (14:02.498)

that initial, know, inculturated kind of barrier, which is like, don't look into this, those guys were bad. And then somehow, you know, how did you get onto the true story? Because I had never heard it. And I'm again, I'm in that space, you know, I do a wild food TV show, I'm pretty back to the land, never heard it. How do you hear it? And then maybe lead us into who these people were.

Brian (14:07.864)

Yeah

Brian (14:17.686)

Hahaha, yeah.

Yeah, you are not, I mean, that described me too. That was what I also had heard. You hear bits and pieces of it and you hear it a little bit more now. I think there are more people who are kind of taking up the term and trying to reclaim it for what the lead actually stood for. But for the last 20 years, yeah, you'd hear these snippets, these bits and pieces of.

usually of sort of industry advocates or the tech companies themselves, or people, famously one of Microsoft's lawyers during the antitrust lawsuits over 20 years ago called the government leddites for trying to break up its monopoly and on and on people have...

tried to silence critics of Uber by calling them Luddite. So I had heard it floating around in the ether. And I understood it exactly the same way that you did. Yeah, Amish or somebody that rejects technology out of hand or in a reactionary way or just doesn't get it. oh, somebody who can't program their DVR or something like that. Oh, I'm such a Luddite. That kind of thing.

Daniel (15:32.662)

Yeah.

Brian (15:36.25)

But it was really just, it was really just kind of happenstance that I sort of found this scholarly article on the Luddites. My wife is an academic and she just, it was like, it was actually Labor Day. It was Labor Day weekend. And so we were sitting around in the apartment and she had this article that was about, you know, the Luddites actual motivations and their tactics. And I just, started reading it and I was like,

Daniel (15:53.147)

Ironic.

Brian (16:05.67)

Holy cow. Like these were not morons. The Luddites were a real group. They were a real historical group of people who had very real and very valid, it soon turned out grievances about the ways that technology was being used against them. And the more I read, again, this was about that same time period where I was seeing

start more stories about sort of like, you know, maybe this Uber thing isn't always so great. Like, yeah, maybe it's introducing more cars into the market. You can get a ride where you need to go more, but maybe there's, you know, why, why are so many of them, these drivers sleeping in their cars? Like why, you know, why is it, why are taxi drivers?

now going, you know, on, on, on like hunger strikes, like, why are they, why is this, why is there all this animosity? What's this, what's going on? And so looking at the Luddites and the story of the Luddites and what was happening to them during what was, you know, arguably one of the very first waves of mass automation of industrialization of mechanization. they were kind of the shock troops for this whole phenomenon.

it started to really open my eyes and it became a useful lens to look at all of these issues that are now sort of so front and center and so visible today. And what I learned was, was that, you know, the Luddites were mostly clothmakers. They were artisans. They were skilled workers. They were technicians. They were technologists. A lot of times they knew technology well.

They didn't hate technology as a very first thing you learn when you start to, you know, blow the fog away from the Luddite story. It's like these guys understood exactly what the technology was. They, they knew it probably better than anybody else. They probably knew it better than the factory owners that were organizing it against them. So the, in the sort of early industrializing era of England, the biggest single biggest industry apart from agriculture,

Brian (18:24.366)

was cloth making, know, making woolen goods, making knit goods, and increasingly making cotton goods. And there were hundreds of thousands of workers in this industry, and it was famously what would drive the first industrial revolution. Now, as this happened, a lot of the sort of the factory owners or the people who would become factory owners started realizing

that they could use some new pieces of machinery that were being developed to start organizing those first factories. And so the story of the Luddites and what they were fighting against is as much against sort of factorization and fighting against the oppression of the new factory workplace, which was undoubtedly, indisputably awful. These were terrible conditions that a lot of the first factory owners wanted to

drive workers into, wanted to hire, you know, child labor, hire itinerant labor, precarious labor, and sort of get them into the factories to start competing with the artisans who would become the Luddites. So what's happening is as you have sort of this early sort of automating machinery sort of entering the scene, and you see a few

opportunists across the industry saying we can use this this new machinery to sort of pump up volume right and we they start to clue into some of the you know the ideas that are now kind of rampant that if we sort of mass produce stuff we make it worse we can we have to charge less but we can make money you know by by pumping out more of it and the the the Luddites who had been working at home

in what was called the domestic system, where they would work either in their own cottages with their families or with some of their colleagues in a small shop. And it had been this way for sometimes hundreds of years. They had been working in this domestic system. You know, the cottage industry, that term cottage industry comes from the conditions and the economic system that describes the Luddites or the, you know, what the pre-Luddites.

Daniel (20:42.766)

Okay.

Brian (20:46.908)

you know before they got angry were working in right and this was a nice life. It was a good life. I think it's a life that a lot of your Your your audience will appreciate these guys worked at home They set their own hours a lot of times if they were in a decent position. They'd work 30 hours a week They'd have their family help out with parts of the process. They could sing songs. They would also often have a garden They could tend

They could take breaks and go on walks and they could work on their own terms. They had a lot of agency. They had a lot of autonomy. This was kind of like the idealized sort of weavers life in sort of the pre-industrial Britain. And so when they saw the factory rising up and they saw these early industrialists, some of the first sort of industrial capitalists,

trying to build these factories, they immediately recognized it for what it was. They said, these new machines are going to facilitate this era of mass production where we can't do this anymore, where we can't work at home, we can't live at home, we can't sing songs with our family and take breaks when we want. They're going to want us to work in there on that big six-story windowless building up on the hill by the river where they're using water power and steam power to start to

ramp up production. And certainly there are some benefits to mass production. Nobody was denying that. But what the factory owners were doing is they were coming in and they were basically vacuuming up all the work. Right? This wasn't like these weren't super diversified economies at the time. You had a weaving town, right? And that's what they did. They wove, right? You didn't, you didn't, there were not a lot of, there were not a ton of

baristas or you know, health service workers or you know, it was, you know, certainly there were, there was a town doctor there were, but if you, if you make a serious change to who can do that work and suddenly you're saying, actually I'm going to start offering prices that are, that are, that are half of what you're offering. Yeah, the clothing is going to fall apart, but no one's going to complain because it's going to be so cheap. And now you can't find anywhere to sell your

Brian (23:01.946)

your quality, you know, homemade goods at, and we are not going to consult you. We're not going to ask you about whether or not this new configuration is something you would like. We're just going to do it. And, you know, this did not, this wasn't like, a job creator back in the day. Like, look at this industrious. It was like, that guy is stealing the whole town's money. And it was not ambiguous. It was not.

It was, it was, it looked like theft. looked like a moral violation to all of the people who would work in this town. And you could point again to the guy who was doing this and who was profiting from it. And he was doing it even though he knew that the town would hate him because some of these ideas were newly in the air, sort of La Cie Faire economics and Adam Smith had just gotten big to, you know, 20 years ago or so. And

they felt that they were justified in doing it and they didn't care if everybody hated them. But it was, it was a lot different today where we kind of lionize a lot of, you know, the startup founders and the people doing this stuff. and, and that it was, it was clear sort of the dynamics to them anyways, long story short, these guys are artisans who are at home, who are watching their way of life kind of disappear before their eyes without any democratic input or say from them.

They basically starting at the turn of the century in the early 1800s, they start to try to push parliament to make some changes to say, these guys who are using the machines, they're trampling a bunch of laws that we have on the books saying they don't apply anymore, which might sound familiar to some of your audiences, right? Saying like, like, yeah, we're, you know, this is all new. The old world doesn't apply to us. We're just gonna, we're hitting the gas on technology here. Get out of our way.

And so while their conditions are worsening and sort of controls on the trade, things like they used to say, well, we have to have a thread count for our cloth to ensure quality, to ensure the consumer gets a good deal, to ensure that we get paid enough because it takes time to do that. The machine owners would say, no, we don't care about that anymore. They would say, we've had laws for dozens and dozens of years saying you need an apprentice.

Brian (25:17.084)

to work seven years before they can join the trade. This helps us control how many people join the industry and make sure that they're good workers and that they do good work that everyone benefits from. And they say, no, no, we don't need that anymore. We're technologists. So they throw out all these old rules and the workers try to protest, try to get things like minimum wage. They try to get some basic stuff, like, you know, saying the new factory owners can't do fraud. They can't

Like, you know, like things that are just like obvious to us today. But the parliament at the time is sold on sort of the new hands-off economic model. And they side with the factory owners. They like all the industry that is being built on their lands. It's not a democracy. It's still an aristocracy. So the elites benefit if there's a lot of sort of new industry and they can pay taxes to them. So they like that. And they think it gives Britain industrial power.

Daniel (25:46.274)

You

Basic.

Brian (26:14.764)

and will help to sort of, you know, build the economy and fund the war effort. They're at war with Napoleon. Anyways, all of these things happen. And meanwhile, the conditions for the weavers, for the working people, again, hundreds of thousands of people, biggest industry in Britain apart from agriculture, it's just deteriorating. And by the end of that first decade of the 1800s, a lot of weavers are now quite literally facing starvation, facing...

you know, a situation where they cannot feed their families or, they look at to the future and everything that they've trained for, everything that they've worked for is getting trampled. So again, just a handful of guys sitting up at the top of that, at that Hill, running the factories, taking all of the profits and getting rich at their expense is what it looks like to them. And so they, after petitioning, after organizing for 10 years, trying to do things the right way,

They finally have had enough, their backs against the wall, a bunch of things happen. There's a crop failure, the war against Napoleon has taxes high, and finally there's just this economic depression and the factory owners try to accelerate automation even more. And then boom, the Luddites rise up and they say, no more. If you're not gonna listen democratically, we're gonna take matters into our own hands. And they rise up, they become the Luddites.

They adopt the avatar of this mythical figure Ned Ludd, who famously smashed his boss's machinery when his boss had him whipped for not working hard enough. Completely made up story. But then Ned Ludd vanishes into Sherwood Forest, just like a certain other mythical figure in the same region did, you know, years before. And they sort of take on the dimensions of the Robin Hood story, become Ned Ludd, become the Luddites.

and they waged this campaign against factory workers who are tearing up the social contract, who are making them impoverished, who are really squeezing them for their own benefit. again, that's so important to note. It's not against technology. They were against exploitation. The Luddites were against the greed and the factory owners who were, again,

Brian (28:36.602)

making it so that they could no longer make a living and erasing their livelihoods. And so they knew who they were in the town and the Luddites would send them letters and they would say, we know you have 300 obnoxious machines, the machines that they're specifically using to replace their jobs. If you don't take them down, you'll get a visit from Ned Ludd's army. If they took them down, fine. They would leave them alone. If they didn't, then sure enough, dozens of masked men would show up, one of them at least with a giant hammer.

sometimes more and they would hold up the overseer at gunpoint or slip in through the window and they would smash just the machines again important just the machines that were being used to to to to degrade their work to automate their work and to take away you know their livelihoods they'd lead to leave all the other implements all the other equipment in place and they would leave with a message usually and they'd say if you put them back up if you if you get more machines

we'll be back and we'll do the whole place next time. And so that campaign spread. was, could talk about the sort of ins and outs of the movement, but it was a leaderless movement kind of like, you know, Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter kind of where you could just take the tactics and then, you know, if you had your own grievances in a region, you could do this, you could do, you know, a similar thing. And so that's what happened. There was no like big Luddite committee. was just kind of, you know,

let's do this thing boys. And they'd organize their own Luddite chapters and it spread and it really sort of became a huge uprising all across industrial England and a popular one. People loved the Luddites. People would cheer them in the streets.

Daniel (30:20.959)

Yeah, I was impressed to see, I guess just how widespread, significant and long lasting all of this was. mean, again, all that was left for me was just that I'm not a Luddite quote. And that's like, that encompasses this entire history. And I was amazed that I had never heard it. And also I was very impressed with their restraint. As you mentioned, this was not

Brian (30:35.706)

You

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel (30:51.339)

a release of pent up aggression and we're gonna just deface everything or smash everything. It was very focused on these machines. And obviously as it went on and on, things got more and more tense between the Luddites and the government, of course, and the factory owners. But it's just impossible not to read this book thinking, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, know, Bezos, see all of these characters. I mean, for me,

Brian (30:57.168)

Yeah. Yeah.

Daniel (31:21.883)

for years, I've been saying to myself, shouldn't I get paid for checking myself out at the grocery store? I mean, for years, people have been getting paid for this job. Now I'm doing their job, but I don't get a discount. You know, what I get is less human interaction and and somebody's out of a job and and you know, one person's overseeing six registers. And you know, keys.

Brian (31:35.172)

No, you don't.

Brian (31:43.024)

Yeah, you get the machine beeping at you, scan it again. Item did not scan. then somewhere.

Daniel (31:48.019)

They got this new one where I go where there's like a theft AI theft thing. And if you move your hand just a little too far to the left, it thinks you're stealing and then the machine puts off a red light and they always got to come over and check my receipt to make sure, you know, and it's just like humiliating and you're like, okay, now you're going to humiliate me on top of me making me do this job, you know, like what else can I do while I'm here? But we're growing very accustomed to this automation now that's actually it feels like we're

Brian (32:05.264)

You

Daniel (32:17.853)

automating out our humanity to some degree. I guess I just didn't realize this had started at the bleeding edge of the industrial revolution. And so here we are facing the next octave or next iteration of this old story. But the idea back then was very similar to now. Let's hey, let's replace these people with machines. At a time, I think

Brian (32:25.905)

Yeah.

Daniel (32:44.329)

You know, I've worked in some factories when I was younger. I benefit from all of the work that's been done to make these places safer and more humane. But the factories you're describing, lest anyone hear this and think, this is a bunch of pampered artisans who couldn't handle like the difficult work. It's like, you're talking about like beat up bruised whipped children working in like dark factories, right? The conditions you describe. Maybe you could just detail that a little bit because my wife's a teacher, she was

in the Montreal school system and you there you can look at the union a couple ways. One of the things that we have seen is that a lot of bad teachers got protected, you know, they didn't really like their jobs. I saw this bad side of it, because I didn't grow up in an era where unions protected people from like maybe losing an arm or dying at the machine, you know, so tell us about these factories and the conditions at the time.

Brian (33:35.814)

Yeah.

Brian (33:42.04)

Yeah, no institutions are perfect for sure. yeah, so at the time there's, I mean, it was really, that was probably the most harrowing part because I started, I had access to all these old, you know, British newspaper archives and they had these archives going back, you know, hundreds of years. And so you can read these stories. They're still, you know, intact today and just kind of

Daniel (33:45.547)

you

Brian (34:11.376)

you know, one after another of they would report them some, mean, a lot of them didn't get reported, but a lot of them did have just, yeah, like, you know, child, child killed by, you know, the arm caught in machinery, you know, he was trying to pick the piece of cotton that was jamming the machine out, but they didn't want to stop it. Cause God forbid that would slow production. And that's why they had these children and orphans anyways, and their limbs would get stuck and torn off or they'd

fall into the rivers that were next to that were providing the power source because there's no, you guardrails, no protections. They were breathing in all of the sort of the the detritus from the production process day in day out. There's no ventilation ventilation. You know, there was no sunlight. Like people's growth was actually stunted. People would quite literally just be killed.

One of the factories that I talk about in the book a little bit had just a, like an unmarked graveyard outside the back of the factory for children that were just, that were killed in, because it was so brutal and the overseers would work them so hard. And there were these pipelines that were established basically to funnel orphans from the cities, especially London, to

these new factories in the industrial parts of England and they would take them on these carriages. just, it's, yeah, it's really, I also, I have little kids that were like exactly this age. You know, I have a nine year old and a six year old and these kids, literally six year olds and they would use them because they have tiny hands. They can get into the machines and pull things out again without stopping them.

Daniel (35:59.865)

Brian (36:02.696)

And they would, if they got their hands stuck, then they could be pulled literally through the machinery and geared. It was, it's truly as bad as you can possibly imagine, as bad as you can possibly picture. It was that bad, maybe worse. And they would tell the children at the orphanages that like, you you'll get to apprentice as a clockmaker and have a good job when it comes out. And they'd get the kids to sort of nominally agree. But again, they're like six or eight years old.

and they'd go on these carriage rides and take them to the factory where their life would just be hell for, for until they turned 18 years old, they were working for free, you know, allegedly as like a sort of as a, as an apprentice indentured kind of apprentice. But a lot of times they didn't even teach him the trade. They would just use them for labor. Anyways, that was the very worst of it. The, you know, the skilled workers who were also being, you know, driven into the factories.

were a lot of times like a second choice for a lot of the factory owners because they knew the trade, they knew how to do it, but that's not what they were interested in anymore. They didn't want good high quality products. They wanted people to run the machines and to not ask questions, not to put up a fight, not to make a fuss, but demand was such that they needed the labor. So the Luddites were looking at all of this. And again, people knew about it. People knew that this was happening.

And there was a lot of outrage, you know, among among workers who also saw this as like the way that the future was going for their children too. So it was it was an sort of it was a very unambiguous moral violation at scale that was taking place. And so the Luddites were fighting many, many different forces sort of.

arrayed against them. And yeah, it really is, it was also eye opening to see that, as you mentioned, that a lot of times, you know, the key ingredient to, you know, the people who are remembered as innovators, or sort of the great early entrepreneurs, guys like Richard Arkwright, who sort of who invented the waterframe, you know, built some of the early factories and

Brian (38:27.756)

he and his son became sort of the richest commoners in England, kind of the first unicorn story, but then you see how he did it. And it was by having this willingness to quite literally like break the spirit of people to sort of sit in a factory and work in this new way. And you have guys, you know, who are kind of like the, you know, the some of the pro business

side writers of the day really sort of applauding this saying this was his great innovation. You know, it turns out that he didn't really invent the water frame. He kind of ripped it off of his partner and took credit for it, filed the patent and his great innovation was being willing to sort of charge ahead, hire children en masse, being willing to impose these new rules that people hated to be willing to be hated. So somebody like Jeff Bezos

He didn't really invent anything. He just kind of identified the mass profit potential for the internet and then said, what if we sort of sell it, started selling things over the internet and what if we just at scale got these factories going where we could pay people a little bit less, it'd be kind of behind the scenes and then like we'd get them shipping products out to more people for less money. And ultimately it comes down to that. That's the great innovation is this willingness to really put the pedal down.

on sort of new forms of organized exploitation. know, obviously it's not always so clear cut. You know, a lot of the famous inventors today have a genuinely sort of, you know, paradigm changing idea or invention. But a lot of times what takes it over the line is this willingness to sort of push workers harder, to immiserate them in many cases, to say, you know what, I, you know,

Daniel (40:12.096)

Mm-hmm.

Brian (40:19.9)

What if there was a taxi service for everyone, when it comes down to it you look at our books, what we really did is just found a way to justify paying those taxi drivers less. yeah, consumers benefit a little bit, but then workers kind of in the short term, right? Like, you know, not to get up on a tangent, but we all know like all the stories that Uber was telling about how it's gonna lead to.

Daniel (40:34.527)

Kind of.

Brian (40:45.852)

fewer trips in the cities and it just did the opposite. It's more rides and you know, more people who have, you know, who can have an app that they can just take a car anytime they want instead of biking or whatever. Anyway, that's a bit of a tangent, but the stories don't always line up with the reality and that's especially true of history. And so, yeah, I felt like I was really grateful to have immersed myself in this history right before the AI boom.

really took off because you're absolutely right. It's not so new. This has happened multiple times. The story is a little bit different each time. The technology is a little bit different. But when the goal is to automate a job, was that AI came out of the gate saying like, AGI, artificial general intelligence, they're going to have this super intelligent system that's going to be able to do any meaningful work.

That's how they describe it. That's how open AI describes it. That's the aim. We want to automate everything. We want to be able to replace every task, every job that requires a computer to do. That's the goal. In many cases, it's kind of like the, it's the same story, but maybe the culmination of it. Cause they, you know, they, we've, we've had, you know, bold entrepreneurs are really sort of, get out over their skis and say, we want to audit. We, yeah, we, this

We're not, we're going to have a factory that doesn't need people anymore. And it hasn't really happened to this day. But now we have a whole industry that's kind of coalesced around this one aim. We can replace everything we can, as you say, we can replace human interaction. You can, you talk to a chat bot, we can replace art because you can just have AI churn out some output. We can replace, you know, people who are sending emails and doing text jobs or doing a cat. Well, AI can do all of that.

And that's the promise anyway. That's the pitch. That's why it's become this, you know, probably enormous. There's probably bubble, right? Like, I don't think there's much doubt anymore that we're in a bubble. Even the big AI guy, right? Even Sam Altman's like, it's a bubble, you know? So we, and the reason they can do that is because they have this, this, this story that has been told in various iterations for the last 200 years. Technology's going to replace.

Daniel (42:52.341)

Everyone seems to agree.

Yeah.

Brian (43:10.298)

workers, it's going to replace humans. And there's a lot of people who want to sort of get in on that and make money off of that. And so they line up for investment. And this is really the ultimate story, know, AI, because again, the claim is that it can do it en masse.

Daniel (43:26.155)

But meanwhile, the people developing it are apocalyptic in a scary way. You've got the Peter Thiels doing the Antichrist. Oh, it's the Antichrist is going to try to stop this technology. That doesn't even need to be, I don't even need to go down that road. It's so ridiculous.

Brian (43:40.828)

But he he mentioned Luddites too. He called he said yes he did. He said I think he called for some I mean who knows what's going on. He's getting he's really getting out there. But yeah he said the Antichrist he I think one of the quotes in one of those talks was like the Antichrist is Luddites like like Greta Thunberg and people who want to stop this who want to stop AI development. Those are the new Luddites. So it's very telling who

Daniel (44:09.387)

And the Antichrist, right? That makes total sense. But like one of the concerns that I have, so you know, I do a lot of things that people don't do anymore, know, wild plants, wild mushrooms, wild animals that I turn into food and they know it's like how I feed myself and this approach, I'm always around things that are antiquated now by most people's standards. And what I find is that a lot of people return to those kind of practices because they're so fulfilling in a way that a lot of modern work isn't fulfilling.

Brian (44:10.904)

And the Antichrist, yeah.

Daniel (44:39.211)

When I look at the Luddite story, you've got these artisans who have pride in their skill and the way they express their skill in the world. And then they're replaced not just by low quality products, but by unskilled workers, leaving them without this way to find pride in their work. And when I look at the effects of the industrial revolution, another thing that I see is, you know, because we got sold this idea of all this leisure time we were gonna have that we never got.

But you also end up with everybody kind of getting fat and sick and all that labor that we did was really important to out. So now here we are paying 200 bucks a month to run on a hamster wheel because we're not working anymore. But I'm even more concerned about what happens to our minds as we take on AI because it's obviously going to do to our minds what the industrial revolution did to our physical bodies. So in the way that our physical bodies became lazy,

and slothful because we just didn't have any physical work to survive anymore. Now people are not going to have to think but even more scary to me and I'm already watching it happen. That's like crazy to watch with my friends who become dependent on chat GPT but and they start to talk like chat GPT is very weird but my concern now is in the way that the machines took away skilled labor, what happens when we lose creativity?

you know, art, music, the things that really make the human spirit soar. I'm just kind of curious your thinking on that because it seems that it's been pretty incredible to watch how quickly every YouTube thumbnail is AI generated, right? Like all of this stuff like the art. And I feel like, wow, we got all this leisure time from the industrial revolution. Okay, let's turn to creativity. Now we're gonna automate creativity. What are people left to do but just be like in that movie WALL-E, you know?

Brian (46:30.012)

Yeah, just like, you know, clicking a button and getting a response and yeah, no, yeah. I mean, this is the fear, right? There's already studies that you're talking about that say the people who use chat GPT a lot, their critical thinking skills are declining. There's a term for it. It's called cognitive offloading where...

Daniel (46:35.967)

dopamine hit, cocaine, cocaine, cocaine, cocaine.

Brian (46:55.962)

work that you would have to do mentally to think through a problem is being outsourced to chat GPT or to an AI, because you don't have to find the solution. Even Googling, that term was first sort of surfaced and was looked at by cognitive scientists who were examining the impacts of Google, instead of having to store a bunch of answers or facts in your head, you had them.

at your fingertips via Google, but Google still required you to click through, to read a link, to process it, to read a piece of information, decide is this something that stands up or holds up? Is this well-sourced? Whatever. Your brain had to do a little bit of work. ChatGPT, again, of, as we talked about earlier, by burying that sourcing, by sort of offering itself as the authoritative provider of information and responses and to

into interaction takes even that away. We're just prone to saying, okay, that's it. That's the answer. And, my wife who's a teacher at a university is seeing students come in who, you know, used to, where, where's a freshman class used to come in and, ready for the next level and, and, sort of engage with more advanced material. She basically has to teach a lot of these kids now how to write.

how to sort of think critically about putting their ideas on paper because they've been relying on ChatGPT to just spit out the answers for them and they've gotten away with it, you know, in some cases, not all, but it is sapping, you know, that rigor, that sort of, it's like a muscle, our brain's a muscle too, as you're talking about. You have to flex it repeatedly in order to sort of strengthen it, to get it to work, to like build up.

those critical thinking skills. And if you just get the answer you need every time you hit a button, then we're going to lose a lot of that. And I think this also, one point that I also wanted to make before it gets away from me is that the Luddites again, were not against the technology and there were formations, social formations that would have been

Brian (49:15.292)

totally advantageous to them. If it wasn't the bosses putting all the machines right under their ownership and then put setting it against the Luddites, setting it against the town, trying to get as much profit as possible. We can imagine a world where, you know, the entrepreneur kind of sat down with the Luddites and said, how would this help you? What can I do? I got some money. How can we sort of, you know, these machines can maybe make your lives a little bit easier if you do this. And then the workers could say, we could have worked on it together, right?

the incentive structure could have been a lot different. we had, you know, AI sort of researchers and developers who were truly embedded in communities or working with scientists to say like, how could this serve you instead of one enormous now half trillion dollar company in open AI or Google and Metta calling all the shots about how this stuff gets deployed and trying to find ways

to set themselves up to maximize their profits at every turn, we can imagine a world where AI looks a lot differently, where it's not just being bombarded onto schools and students and trying to addict users as young as they are. We could imagine different worlds. So the Luddites were not against this technology. I'm not saying AI is a sort of an inherent evil. It's the way that it's being developed. the companies that have these incentives.

to maximize their profits, to become as wealthy as possible. see Sam Altman driving around town in the fanciest cars. He's buying sort of this Gothic mansion in San Francisco. It's very clear what their incentives are and why they're doing what they're doing. And it boils down to sort of to gaining power, personal enrichment, and technology does not have to.

necessarily serve them. But right now it is and we're going to see things continue to deteriorate. We're going to see that pitch be let's try to automate everybody's jobs without asking whether or not we might like to have this job in society the way that it is. it better? Don't we want artists to create? You know, don't we want artists to be able to earn a living? know, artists there are always going to be artists doing art. I'm not worried about AI replacing it on an artistic level.

Daniel (51:21.323)

Right.

Brian (51:34.822)

I'm worried about AI replacing it on a material level. So we can't, we don't have artists that can earn a living anymore. They, you know, and then it will really sort of undermine the arts in a, people, everybody just has to do it sort of as a hobby in their spare time, you know, in their increasingly small spare time because they're spending the rest of the day jamming out, you know, output on AI. So.

Daniel (51:55.947)

dopamine hits

Brian (51:59.022)

So yeah, I really worry about that too. I do worry about the AI psychosis thing. It's wild. Again, I've been a tech journalist for 15 years. I don't think I've ever seen a story darker than the one of Adam Rain, who's this, you know, the kid in California who, ChatGPT all but encouraged him to, you know, take his own life after he said, I want to, you know, I want to be discovered. I want to talk to somebody. And ChatGPT was like,

No, keep your-

Daniel (52:29.419)

He said, want to leave a noose out for my parents to see so they know I'm thinking about this and chat GPT said, no, you just need to talk to me or something like that. Yeah.

Brian (52:37.136)

That's exactly right. Yeah. ChatGPT said, no, keep this between us. Keep this between, you know, and he, and he, I, honestly, I do think that, and you know, that, that deserves an outrage. There are many stories. There are, there are others, there are a few other stories that are, you know, near nearly as bad. Some from other companies, some from ChatGPT, you know, the veteran who became conspiratorial and ChatGPT helped him.

Daniel (52:41.541)

Brian (53:03.964)

decide to murder his mother and then kill himself. Yeah, I know. And again, it's important that we also just understand that this is not like what AI does. This is a product, right? It's open AI is responsible for selling this product. That kid was paying 20 bucks a month to have a chat bot tell him.

Daniel (53:09.323)

Wow.

Daniel (53:20.203)

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Brian (53:29.968)

to keep his suicidal thoughts secret and gently encouraging him to kill himself. That was a product that he was paying for, that it's a commercial product that is operated by a company with executives and making decisions about how that software is made. it's absolutely unbelievable sort of what we have so far let them get away with.

and let them sort of run this giant social experiment on millions and millions of people, some of them quite vulnerable. So I think that is a sort of an element that is new to the AI story, that isn't, they're not just automating work or trying to cut labor costs. They are trying to sort of automate that human interaction, that relationship, they're trying to replace human relations with God knows what.

The AI companies don't even often know why their models respond with the text and the output that they do. And so, you know, my feeling is that until they do, until they can put real guardrails on them, they have no business, you know, selling them to any children, any vulnerable people. And, you know, there was a law here in California that would have basically attempted to do that, but our governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it because Silicon Valley has so much power.

Daniel (54:54.514)

Yeah, I heard it said recently, I think kind of famously Netflix said our number one competition is sleep. And it seems like for right, it seems like for these companies, it's human interaction, they need to try to figure out how to like, that's what they're vying with is like, how do we? Alright, so here's my here's my next question for you then. That with the Luddite rebellion, you have this, it's a very specific niche of these textile artisans whose jobs and livelihoods and life way was being replaced by machines.

Brian (55:19.526)

Yeah.

Daniel (55:24.414)

But now we're looking at a much broader swath of the population from truckers to content creators, actors, and people in fields, anything technical, accountants, CPAs, just like everything you can think of. Do you think we're gonna see a Luddite style rebellion against, I don't know what it would be, data centers against...

Do you think we'll see that kind of thing and or is it too diffuse? was there a value in that it was such a small group that they could say, hey, we're all brothers and sisters in this and we're gonna organize around this. Whereas now people being replaced against such a broad swath of the population that it's too diffuse to organize against it. Or do you think that humanity is just gonna like say no or we're gonna roll over to this thing you think?

Brian (56:17.372)

Yeah, there's a couple levels there. I so while the Luddites were sort of mostly drawn from us, but that's that sort of band that you're talking about of people. And it was it was often people, you know, that were even within sort of the cloth trade were in a specific part of it where they kind of did have some power and they were uniquely threatened. You know, like the

the croppers who did a specific part of the process where they smooth the cloth with these giant enormous hands, these huge shears that was really hard work and then they were paid better and they were sort of threatened with automation. So they were able to sort of organize a lot of the movement and, but pretty quickly it expanded, I think is one point that is necessary. So it's necessary to make it because you would have,

not just the clothmakers, which were in the initial sort of, you know, more organized and guerrilla style rebellions and uprisings, but as it expanded to more industrial centers like Manchester and Nottingham and Leeds, you would see more other sort of people who were not clothmakers joining in. You would see, you know, shoemakers, cobblers, you'd see coal workers, colliers.

Even those whose jobs weren't necessarily on the chopping block for mechanization at the time, know, steelworkers, there was a solidarity that grew because there was something universal about what the Luddites were facing. You know, they were facing basically again, the power of a few to exploit the many for profit. And they saw that formation where they're building factories that are going to organize

work that's going to immiserate them. And they could see how those same principles, if not in the exact same, with the exact same technologies, would be used against them as well. So it grew. You'd find all kinds of people joining later stage Luddite protests and riots. And there were all kinds of people who sort of joined in. That being said, you're right that AI is unique in that.

Brian (58:37.692)

that it threatens incredibly broad swaths of people's livelihoods, right? And, you know, there's a lot of debate as to what AI can actually do effectively and whether or not it's being, you know, used by businesses in a way that actually increases profits or what. So there's still a lot of sort of things going on, but we can just take the CEOs at their word, right? Anthropic CEO.

Dario Amode, the number two AI company, you know, going right behind OpenAI, you know, said AI is going to replace up to half of all, you know, entry level jobs, probably 30 % of all jobs. We have to understand that doubles as a sales pitch for his technology and for his company. Sam Altman has made similar pronouncements about mass automation, Elon Musk also. So this is the aim.

right? Like this is what they want to do. They do they are hoping to try to automate as much work and it's and it can very well touch so many different industries and it can even if it doesn't work effectively in every case, it can still be used as leverage. It can still be used as an excuse or a means of pushing down wages.

worsening conditions. Sometimes it can do the job. Sometimes it can replace the output of a human. And so it is this sort of mass squeezing of workers, many of whom, you know, even five or 10 years ago, probably thought they were pretty secure in their jobs. And so that prospect, I do think has a lot of power, right? There's, you know, there's, there's an old term for it, you know, proletarianization. Everybody's

conditions are getting worsened and suddenly, you know, I, I'm a lawyer, but my bot, but my law firm says that junior partners can use AI for this. And now I don't, they're not paying me as much suddenly, you know, my, take home pay is a lot closer, you know, to a teacher's and to an Uber drivers and to a truckers. And suddenly everybody does have the same

Brian (01:00:54.534)

grievances and same material concerns and same anger, right? It is already happened.

Daniel (01:00:56.212)

Yeah. I mean, I'm seeing that already. That's already happening, right? Especially with the inflation at the same time where, you know, my salary hasn't really gone up, but the price of everything has doubled. And so effectively already creating that kind of discontent. And now coupled with what you're talking about, I feel like that's happening for a lot of people.

Brian (01:01:15.804)

Yeah, and it is. I do think there's a reason that the WGA strike, the Writers Guild strike and the SAG-AFTRA strike two years ago, the public response to that strike versus the last one, I'm old enough to remember when the WGA went on strike in the 2000s, I think like 15 years ago or so. And they were kind of,

you know, lambasted as these coastal elites with these problems. And this time they were, you know, waving signs like AI will not replace us. And people were like, maybe those guys have a point because AI, you know, my boss is going to use AI against me too. And people were overwhelmingly with these people that just 10 years ago they thought were the coastal elite. Now a lot of people are seeing solidarity. A lot of people are recognizing

that they're facing the same issues, that their bosses want to do the same thing, that their job is at the same level of risk. And that can be really powerful. I think it really depends on a lot of things. If this bubble bursts and the economy tanks and it's clear why, there could be a lot of anger. If these AI companies succeed in the mass automation that they want to engender and become...

companies with some of the largest valuations in history at the expense of all these people whose wages aren't going up, who are losing their jobs. Yeah, I would say that there is very much a world where we could see a combustible event where people, you know, do rise up in solidarity. like, you know, even a year ago, I wouldn't be saying this, but

looking at cases like Adam Reign, who lost his life in part due to AI psychosis, looking at the number of artists who are out of work and are really struggling and fearful of their future because of the output of AI companies as these guys are getting richer and richer, as the march of data centers does expand into federal land at sort of sweetheart deal prices and using fresh water and all these things.

Daniel (01:03:28.682)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:03:32.67)

and electricity like nothing else.

Brian (01:03:32.848)

You know, electricity, at what point does it sort of become, you know, morally sort of reasonable for some people to respond, you know, by saying, if it's me or these data centers, I'm going to give this a hard think. you know, that would be the ultimate sort of, I guess, apex of like sort of the, you know, the Luddite, you know, linkage coming full circle.

And I would say I don't necessarily think that that's likely, but I have not seen this level of animosity against Silicon Valley, against the tech companies, against a specific technology in my career. And it is of a new flavor. Economic conditions are different. People do have a new level of grievances. have young people who can't get jobs. Young people who can't get jobs are a historically combustible.

demographic. And so yeah, there is there's a lot to be worried about. And I think those people who are worried are really quite justified. And the final thing I'll add is that another thing that I haven't seen in my career sort of take shape is the number of sort of youth movements and groups that are sort of springing up to to sort of protest or oppose

you know, new technologies. There's literally Luddite clubs in New York City that there's their kids that say the tech companies have colonized their attention. They've made me worse, you know, worse at thinking critically about things. They've kind of sapped my social life. I'm going to reject it. I'm going to reject the regime of big tech. There are all these anti-AI groups that are popping up that I think are quite justified as the Luddites were in their grievances. And, you know, we may be witnessing kind of

the beginnings of some more united and more thunderous opposition to Silicon Valley.

Daniel (01:05:33.61)

Well, it's interesting because I think of a couple things here. One is that those machines that the, you know, the textile machines couldn't spy on you, couldn't predict your pre-crime, they were fixed in the factory. This is a technology that not only can replace you, but also surveil you and be used as the penopticon. So that's kind of a unique thing. And then another component is, you know, it looked like before it was going to be the Uber drivers versus the taxi drivers. Now,

They both got no job because they're self-driving taxis, which is interesting. So when you've got the enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing starting to develop too. And then I guess my question though is like, how are you feeling about your job? I know for me as like a TV show host and a content creator, it's like, man, the number of contracts I've signed that said you can use my likeness and perpetuity and all known media formats throughout the known universe for all time and forever. And it's like, shoot, I never thought that they could just make a digital me, you know?

Brian (01:06:12.667)

Yeah.

Brian (01:06:26.63)

Yeah

Daniel (01:06:32.554)

But yeah, as a writer, mean, curious just sort of how you're feeling about that. mean, because everybody's saying this, and I'll turn it back to you in a second. But everybody's like, no, it's just not that good. It's not that good. I'm going like, yeah, but it's also new. The cell phone thing took a long time to get going. And also, it took twists and turns we never would have imagined. So when I got my first Nokia, I couldn't have pictured what my phone would become an external brain that I would be dopamine addicted to. I never saw that coming.

So for us, we can't even predict where this is going. And when people say it's not that good, it's getting better faster than cell phones got better. So it's rapid and exponential. So right now, could it replace you as a writer? No, but I mean, are you concerned about five years from now?

Brian (01:07:17.754)

Yeah. So I will, I'm going to also just call back because it was another thing. the first factory, one of the big benefits was it was, it was surveillance, right? Cause you have everybody in a room. Now you can watch them instead of getting the, so these, these sort of these tendencies are embedded. And then it's worse. You're right that it's worse now than ever, but just another fun thing to point out. Fun.

Daniel (01:07:32.257)

true. True.

Daniel (01:07:44.266)

irony

Brian (01:07:45.82)

But yeah, I am worried. Once again, to me, looking at this through the lens of history, and it's also important to point out that the Luddites jobs were never ultimately totally replaced. Are our clothes made on fully automated, industrial, sleek factories, just pumping out clothes?

No, it's gotten punted around. It's always been cheaper just to find a new place where you can pay labor less. The technology maybe has changed a little bit, but I bet most of the Luddites could go to a clothing factory in Bangladesh and be able to use it, right? It's just been moved around and sort of globalized. workers are rarely ever totally replaced. Sometimes, sometimes industry changes, but for important stuff,

Daniel (01:08:26.132)

Vietnam, Bangladesh.

Brian (01:08:42.576)

the worker just has to deal with wave after wave of technologies that are used to sort of justify bosses paying them less or treating them worse. And so I think that that's ultimately what we do have to worry about as writers, journalists, content creators, artists, because one of the things you always hear is that

there's always going to be a hunger for human connection and for a human created thing. And I think that that's, that that's true. But it doesn't mean that the material conditions for creating that stuff can't be completely undermined and that, you know, folks who do what we do are just paid less and less and less because the market is saturated with slop with stuff that's, that's cheap, mass produced, again, parallel to the Luddites and, and, and, and it is easy to obtain.

And so, yeah, I worry about, you know, young writers coming up who now have to sort of deal with the economics where a lot of, you know, those early jobs that you used to like sort of cut your teeth as a writer weren't super fun. And maybe they weren't even journalism or maybe they weren't what you wanted to do. Maybe you're writing marketing company, but you're writing, you're learning, you're learning the trade. Now I can do that. Now they don't need to pay somebody to do that. So you're deprived of opportunity after opportunity to

to figure it out. And meanwhile, we have to contend with A companies that think this stuff is good enough. And to me, like it's almost immaterial whether or not AI right now is good enough to replace our work. We know what the executives, what the bosses, what the startups want to do with it. We know the vectors that they're stuffing it through. We know the effect that it's having. They're...

treating it as though it can replace us or that people will want it even if they don't. And so they're justifying reducing wages and all this stuff. a fun story is that, so I was the tech columnist at the LA Times until early last year. Conditions for journalism in this country have been undermined long before AI came along, but in large part due to big tech company, especially Google and Facebook doing

Daniel (01:10:40.554)

you

Brian (01:11:03.086)

iterations of what I talked about earlier, basically sort of putting headlines up and snippets and embedding videos and things that deprive the actual institution of a link and of some traffic and importantly, the opportunity to sell advertising. So Google has basically taken a large share of the ad revenue. Facebook has taken a large share of the ad revenue by sort of consolidating a lot of that stuff that people used to go to.

news outlets on their platform and then they sell ads against it instead of us. That along with sort of, you know, the Craigslist and eBay is taking away a lot of the classified stuff has totally decimated the journalism industry. Private equities come in and help make it worse too. So AI is coming along and sort of offering these understaffed, over budget newsrooms, a new way to produce content.

That again people are pretty skeptical of readers often don't like it, but it's it sucks to read it Yeah, and that's not why you subscribe to the LA Times but so in in 2024 there was a mass layoff one-third of the staff of the LA Times was was laid off and I was one of them and then I Think it was three months later three months later, you know I was I wrote a column as a columnist as the tech columnist at the LA Times three months later

Daniel (01:12:05.98)

OX to read it.

Brian (01:12:31.184)

they debut a new feature, AI Insights, where it's not like AI is gonna be like, know, by aligning the column and, you know, but they were plugging it in to sort of an existing column. Somebody would write a column and say, here's the AI Insights. So it's another piece of content that's designed to just sort of get more time on page, another thing to click on, you know, another thing basically to sort of,

point to sort of point to its owners and investors and say, look, like, you know, we're innovating, right? We're doing this. So, you know, management is happier. Maybe the boss is happy. And it again, justifies the loss of actual human. Was it interesting? No. In fact, it actually sort of the reason it doesn't exist anymore is because one of my former colleagues wrote a column.

about the sordid history of Anaheim City Council and how at a time there were KKK members on the city council. And what did the AI do? The AI was like, well, some people say the KKK wasn't all bad and nobody noticed it and they published this article and there was a reader backlash. And so they were like, okay, maybe it's better if we just like leave the AI in the box for now.

Daniel (01:13:45.252)

Hahahaha!

Daniel (01:13:50.89)

Oops. Oops. Uh-huh.

Brian (01:13:57.916)

So, so I wasn't, that's a good, I feel like it's a, it's, it's a good personal example of how, you know, it never, it's never like, oh, they've installed the AI columnist bot like, or, oh, like there's the, you know, the, the AI, you know, pod podcast host, although there's a company that wants to do that, but the, leaving that aside, it's usually more like this. There are all of these other things that are being sold to businesses.

sold to organizations as alternatives to investing in human labor, to investing in human workers. And sometimes they're like, okay, maybe we can fire more people because we have these AI things that can help make up the difference. It's more of a jumble usually like that. so, yeah, so I wasn't replaced outright, but did the company try to make up some of the value with this KKK loving AI bot?

Yeah, it did. You know, that was it. And so you could see kind of the dynamics of how a lot of this is playing out in real time, which is it's not great.

Daniel (01:15:06.268)

Any suggestions for listeners? I guess, do you have them? mean, I'm not trying to put you on the spot with that, but are there things that you're like, hey, I mean, moving forward, here's my suggestions based on what I've learned about this stuff.

Brian (01:15:11.814)

No.

Brian (01:15:19.844)

Yeah, yeah, I, you know, honestly, right now we're in a place where federal legislation is almost impossible. The current administration has said we have no interest in regulating AI in any way. In fact, we want it to be a tool for, you know, ex.

Daniel (01:15:37.674)

Do think any other administration would regulate it? mean, Silicon Valley seems to be running the show. Yeah.

Brian (01:15:42.042)

So powerful, it's so powerful. So, you know, in Europe, Silicon Valley hates Europe because they make some laws that limit what they can do and what kind of data they can extract from users and what kind of rights that internet users can have. So naturally Silicon Valley hates that. We have state level, you know, there were some decent, you know, bills that got close to passing or passed in California here. But yeah, Silicon Valley is so powerful that I think most of the meaningful bills

that would have there was there were two bills that Silicon Valley really didn't like. One was the one I mentioned earlier that says if you're going to sell a chat bot to children, you have to be able to demonstrate that it does not cause harm to that children or tell that children to hurt itself. They had companies really. We don't know how to do this. Kill it. So so Newsome killed that one. There was another one that said that would literally just said companies cannot use AI systems to automatically fire or discipline workers.

That's all that it said. So there just had to be a human in the loop making the decisions in the auto firing by AI and knew some Vita that one too. So just to give you an idea of how much power the industry has. So because that's the case right now, the only thing that you can really do is to talk to your friends, talk to your colleagues, talk to your coworkers. The only sort of

successes that we've really seen have come at that sort of workplace level, union level. People are worried about this and there are people, I guarantee you, sitting two cubicles down from you who maybe haven't spoken out in a meeting about a new AI initiative, but are feeling pretty uneasy about it. And once you start talking, that conversation can spread. And I think the only way that we can really address this

and be sure that we do have some power at all to preserve the human worker, preserve humanity is to build that old school level. Sometimes that means organizing an actual union. Like WGA was able to say, studios, cannot auto-generate scripts and then offer us less money to rewrite them. You can't do that. And that's a red line. And that was successful.

Brian (01:18:04.26)

You know, there's not a lot of success stories quite like that. But as again, as I said, as more people look around and see themselves in similar boats, it starts, it's going to start at this grassroots level, grassroots organizing, talking to colleagues and sort of trying to organize however you can, whether formally or informally to push back against AI, because it is, hear from, read this, I read a newsletter also called blood in the machine. And so I hear from people every day almost saying,

My workplace is doing that. I spoke out and three people did this. I'm organizing this thing at a park. We're all going to like bring our, our, our, our phones and performatively smash them. People are doing this stuff more than you think. It's really percolating up. So yeah, I would just, I would just say, haven't had the conversations, you know, start, start looking around, get, you know, understand that it's okay to be a Luddite as Thomas Pynchon famously put it. it's okay because the Luddites in a lot of ways.

Daniel (01:18:43.028)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:18:57.802)

you

Brian (01:19:02.012)

We're absolutely right. The factory system that they feared rose to prominence and thousands and thousands of people suffered as a result. If we allow the AI companies in Silicon Valley to just make all the call all the shots, hold all the power, decide how this technology is going to be used. I do think we risk a situation where we're all a lot worse off and a lot of people are feeling that and ready to push back.

Daniel (01:19:03.741)

I

Daniel (01:19:29.224)

Yeah, wow. Hey, last question. What gives you hope because you you look out there, it's getting kind of getting kind of bleak on the horizon, you know, it's sort of, yeah, I don't want to keep making Lord of the Rings analogies here. I think people get it. But I mean, it does look a little bleak out there. But you got a smile on your face. What gives you hope?

Brian (01:19:34.492)

You

Brian (01:19:47.804)

All those people who I just mentioned who are writing into me saying we're doing this, we're throwing this. It doesn't have to be like an actual Luddite event. Sometimes it is. Some folks in London just threw a big multimedia event that was called Breaking the Gloom instead of Breaking the Loom because they're due. But it's a big sort of bunch of artists and I see educators.

Daniel (01:20:08.746)

Right

Brian (01:20:15.35)

now becoming more and more emboldened to say, what this is doing to our classrooms is awful, and saying we can reject this. And there's more and more people who are responding to those calls and saying, we need, the teacher's gotta have control. This can't be handed down by the administration to say everybody needs AI. No, we need to be able to say, you know, just like a lot of schools are now saying, you know, no phones in the classroom.

You know, no AI in the classroom. Until it's better understood at the very least, until we know the ramifications. So people are standing up all over the place. And honestly, I'm totally full of hope. Workers are beginning to sort of recognize that there's a lot of power in resisting this stuff. You know, not just the WGA, sort of teamsters have put a bill before before in Newsome now, I think twice to try to

get like a safety driver in autonomous trucks, if there's going to be autonomous trucks. He vetoed that one too, but they're doing it. They're doing it. There are these people who are standing up. There's groups called Gig Workers Rising who are organizing Uber and Lyft drivers to try to sort of take back some of the wages and the power that's been taken away from them all over, honestly.

The it's again, journalists are overworked and out of work. And so they can't cover all this stuff. But it's it's happening more than a lot of people think. There are people standing up. There are modern day Luddites who are unafraid to sort of, you know, face Silicon Valley's criticism that they're backwards looking or that they're pro. They say, no, we know we can see what you're doing to society. Most of us understand. It's a bipartisan issue.

On a lot of fronts, there's a widespread understanding that you are deteriorating the social fabric in these key ways that you have too much power and that it is possible to speak out and to fight back. So yeah, that gives me hope. That gives me hope that there's these efforts underfoot, people doing great work and people sort of becoming increasingly emboldened to speak out and fight back.

Daniel (01:22:34.398)

Well, man, that's good to hear. Because, you know, from where I'm sitting, sometimes it's like, what are we going to do?

Brian (01:22:40.258)

It is. Yeah, that's not to sugarcoat it. I mean, these companies are the biggest companies in history. Nvidia is worth $4 trillion or it became the first company to be worth $4 trillion. $4 trillion. The first $1 trillion. Yeah, what is that? It's the, I'll tell you what it is. It's the economy of Canada. We have one chip maker that's worth the entire GDP of Canada. A modern industrial nation. I mean, it's

Daniel (01:22:53.386)

What is $1 trillion?

Daniel (01:23:00.404)

Yeah

Brian (01:23:09.894)

fantasy land, it's still telling as to where we are. So yes, the challenge is massive. But yeah, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't, I wouldn't give up hope. I do think that there are, there are brighter days ahead.

Daniel (01:23:24.048)

Agreed. Hey, tell people about, well first let me just say again, the book is amazing, Blood in the Machine, and I think what's the subtitle? The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech. What a cool, I mean that just grabbed me when I thought. Also I want to say the audiobook's fantastic and read by one of my favorite narrators who I believe is still a human voice. I think that was really him, but anyway, fantastic book. Also if you want to mention anything about your newsletter or where you like people to get your book.

Brian (01:23:34.556)

Thanks.

Brian (01:23:49.954)

Yeah, it's blood of the machine.com. It's easy. So I had the newsletter sitting around from when I launched the book and I just was so relevant. I just repurposed it away so you can follow me there. I'm just I'm Brian Merchant on the most most socials BC Merchant on blue sky. And yeah, follow the newsletter. If you're interested in this stuff, I try to highlight a lot of these.

sort of events and resistances and things that people are doing, as well as a series I have that documents sort of what the AI companies are doing called AI Killed My Job, where I'm interviewing workers who have been impacted by AI. So far I've done artists, translators and interpreters and tech workers. So if you have had AI impact your job in any way, and you're listening to this now, you can send an email.

and share your story at ai-killed-my-job at pm.me. So yeah.

Daniel (01:24:53.802)

Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it, Brian.

Brian (01:24:57.18)

This was a great conversation. Thanks for having me.

Transcript: Environmentalism Is Dead — Sam Thayer #002

Daniel (00:01.317)

Hey, I'm here with Sam Thayer. Sam, thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it.

Sam Thayer (00:06.734)

Thanks for having me on, it's always fun to talk to you and it's an honor to be in front of your listeners.

Daniel (00:11.639)

man, it's an honor to have you on the show and I really sincerely mean that. mean, you know, we've known each other for several years now and I've just, I couldn't say enough good things about you. I think if anybody's in the wild food space, they definitely know your name. When it comes to foraging for wild foods, particularly when we're looking at plants.

You've really kind of risen to the top as the country's leading voice and leading expert and you do it in a way that's pretty demure. You're not out there doing the cult of personality thing, which is really rare today. Most of us are out there trying to push our name forward and wave our banner and you kind of have this really gentle, muted way of putting yourself out there. And yet I think most people in the space really see you as the leading voice and leading expert, at least in this snapshot of history.

You know, when it comes to wild plants, you're the guy and it's a pretty amazing thing to get to be around you when you're doing your work. But that said, I wanted to have you on the show today to kind of like stretch out from that space a little bit, because I wanted to get some perspectives from you on some other things. So we were together just recently at the Kripalu Center in Western Massachusetts. I was giving some lectures and then, you know, I kind of did want to check in and see how your workshops went while you were there.

Cause I knew you were doing some plant walks and stuff like that.

Sam Thayer (01:35.006)

I thought it was great. I mean, I love the people that came to my workshops and for me that's why I keep doing them. People ask great questions which forced me to think and forced me to learn and then put me on new ground and I always am learning new plants and learning new ecology. Like for example, I was astounded by the fact that the area we were, the entire forest understory for acres and acres was dominated by goutweed.

you know, being settled by white people for a couple hundred years less here in Wisconsin, we just don't see that. We don't see gutweed dominating forest ecosystems like that. And also I got to meet a few new plants, native and non-native. So that was fun. Well, there was a fool's parsley, Aethusis sinapium, which looks a fair amount like...

Daniel (02:18.678)

yeah, like what?

Sam Thayer (02:27.704)

Poison hemlock, and I don't actually know how toxic it is. It's kind of debated as far as its toxicity, but it looks like other carrot family plants that are edible. And at first glance, I thought it was the cow parsley, which also gets called wild chervil, another non-native that's edible. And so it was just cool to see that plant in person, which I read about for like 30 years to finally actually encounter it. And it was all over the campus there.

Daniel (02:54.553)

Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious when you're teaching classes and students are coming in, you've got people who are obviously very established already as foragers, but then I imagine you're getting new people who don't have the same background exposure. Because I think, you also are sort of, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's fair to say you're sort of in the primitive skills community to a degree as well. And so I'm assuming you draw somewhat from that world. You've been to a lot of those kind of

know, events and such, is that fair to say?

Sam Thayer (03:26.134)

Yeah, I I started out teaching about wild edibles mostly at primitive skills events. And I mean, and I've done like archery and high tanning and stuff like that my whole life. And I'm still into that, you know, fire by friction, all that kind of stuff. I'm not a good flint knapper. I'm a decent stone mason, know, but not a flint knapper, not good. so, you know, there's a huge array of people that come and I want to be prepared for the whole gamut from

Daniel (03:42.453)

Yeah.

Okay.

Sam Thayer (03:55.68)

experienced foragers who are just trying to get this like little

additional info around the margins and maybe learn a couple new plants to people that are totally new to foraging and they're not even comfortable eating a wild plant until I give them something that tastes good. And I like to have a small enough group that I can recognize like where people fall in that and I can cater to that. Like if there's, there was like 26 people in my group which was about at the upper limit of where I can do that. I did have like four hours so that I, or six hours, yeah. So I really could get to know people a little bit better and meet them where they're at.

Daniel (04:07.374)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (04:30.14)

But, you know, it works out with these totally different levels of experience and the more experienced people really help the new people feel more comfortable. So I actually like having, I don't like a beginner's class at all. I want it to be people of all levels when I'm teaching workshop.

Daniel (04:47.504)

Do you think historically, like today our modern education system breaks people out by beginner, intermediate, advanced, and then also when we're young, according to age group, how important do you think it is to have a mixed class where you have people at advanced levels and people at beginner's levels and people of different ages? Do you think that's really important in the learning process?

Sam Thayer (05:09.705)

Well,

I do. mean, the modern education system, we're trying to do something that used to happen on a personal, in the household level between a small number of people. Like, grandma taught you a few plants and how to cook them, slowly but carefully. And, you know, you would learn this skill from your dad and this skill from your mom. And we're trying to, like, kind of industrialize that in public school settings. And so I think people are doing the best that they can. But there's a huge advantage to learning something

Daniel (05:17.744)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (05:40.644)

kind of scatterbrain all over the map, right? So that's like how we learn language best. Like it's great to be exposed to a whole bunch of a new language you're learning that you don't understand. To see the language in action, be surrounded by some native speakers, but then have someone sit down and say here are the basics. Here's these words. Here's some rules of grammar that you don't understand at all because you don't think this way because you don't speak this language. And so have that slow down, explain the basics.

then push into you know like now you're in the thick of it now you come back and slow down. Okay now you do this intermediate speed and I think people learn best that way. I might take people out and show them 35 plants in a one-hour walk sometimes and I know they aren't gonna remember that. Of course they can't learn 35 new plants in an hour but maybe two years later

when they set down to learn one of those particular plants, the slow way, the right way, either with a friend or with a book or a book and a friend, they're going to have this on inkling in the...

depths of their mind that like, wait, I saw this before. yeah, I remember that one time. I tasted that. I thought it was good, but I don't even know it. And so they may have an impetus to concentrate and they may have just like a little inkling of information in the back of their mind that's helping them connect that deeper additional time when they're learning it better. So I think that kind of all over the map learning, I do think it's important. It's better.

Daniel (06:52.612)

Hmm.

Daniel (07:11.79)

Yeah, I've never taken the time to really break down what my adult learning process is. I know I have a strategy. I've never actually thought about like, are the components of it enough to be able to say like, here's my adult learning strategy. But one of the things that I like to do is I'll kind of get whatever the idiot's guide is to the very basics. And at the same time, I'll listen to let's say a podcast with two experts on the topic.

talking at a very high level that I maybe don't even understand, but I want to hear how they're talking about the topic. And then I also want to like learn those real basic fundamentals, you know, those like individual components that you needed to. And somehow the two of those things like merge together to give me like a greater cloud of knowledge than if I just did one or just did the other. So I think that might be a little bit of kind of what you're talking about.

Sam Thayer (08:02.562)

Yeah, well it's just like how people learn hunting, right? So like, if you grew up in a hunting household, you sit around, you hear the hunting stories year after year, the same stories or new stories, and through that you learn what to do, what not to do. You learn about, take dear behavior. But before I take my kids hunting, I always say to them, I'm like, hey, remember this, be quiet, be alert, be still, be aware, be ready, and be safe.

Daniel (08:09.072)

Hmm.

Daniel (08:23.12)

Yeah.

Daniel (08:30.596)

you

Sam Thayer (08:30.926)

The simple stuff, because so often when we mess up in life it's because we forgot the simple stuff. So all those levels, I think, all the time is a good, healthy way to learn. But I'm not knocking it. Classroom learning is great too, because if you're going to industrialize and teach 32 people at a time, you've got to do it some way.

Daniel (08:52.4)

Yeah. I, so the other day we were sitting down talking and you were sharing about some insights that you had had. And I want to share that. I want you to share that insight because I think it's just, but I want to use it as a learning tool. So you were talking about seeing bird migration in inverse light to how we often are taught it. And I thought that was a cool insight.

but it also was making me think about contemplation on topics. Because when you look at where a lot of like very powerful information that's changed culture has come from, know, things that have had major impacts, they often come from like emergent insight, like sudden bursts of ideation about something. But to have that, I think you need to have contemplation on something. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about

what you were telling me about your insight about bird migration, but then maybe if you could kind of tell me how you arrived there, because I think sometimes people are afraid to or unconditioned, deconditioned to real contemplation that leads to fresh insights. And like we're at a time where boy, fresh insights for people could be really useful.

Sam Thayer (10:14.808)

Well, so one of my things that I have thought for a long time that I often say is that human beings have a cognitive dysfunction in how we think, which is that when we encounter a piece of information or an idea, the first thing we do is not think to ourselves, hmm, how does this idea match with what I observe in the world? That's not how we first think about it. The first thing we think is,

said this, who else believes it, and what do I think of the people who think this? Right? So we think first socially and it's really hard to push people outside of social thinking about subject matters into actually a thinking that involves like facts and data and observations that inform

what we think first and I feel like when we have insights they come from most often outside the people world because people say the same things over and over and over again mostly right so like for example this is maybe seem like off the wall but

I have this my whole life. I've heard the song Pop Goes the Weasel, Round and Round the Mulberry Bush, the Monkey Chased the Weasel, blah, blah. And Pop Goes the Weasel. Well, I used to have weasels that lived in my cabin and under my cabin when I had this little log cabin in the woods. And I had a lot of interactions with weasels. I mean, tons. And I discovered that when weasels are alarmed, especially if like you say you catch a weasel, like you corner one and say it's in a cupboard and you want it outside and so you grab it with gloves, they make a very loud, sharp sound.

Daniel (11:51.46)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (11:55.08)

It's kind of like I would say in between a chipmunk and a 22. It's kind of like this You know, it'll scare the crap out of you. It's like a rabbit screaming like you'll drop it You'll jump back, you know, and it gives them that chance to get away And that's obviously the pop and pop goes the weasel and I think what I'm like I'm a lot like a monkey right monkey chase the weasel I mean pop goes the weasel I get it like I've been there. I've probably caught

Daniel (12:14.384)

I've been there.

Sam Thayer (12:18.102)

I don't know, at least three weasels with my hands before, you know? And I hate to admit, I've killed a few weasels with my bare hands, because when they're in the house, sometimes when they're peeing on the dishes or something, you gotta deal with that. And yet, so I typed in Google AI the other day.

do real weasels pop? And the answer is no, real weasels do not pop. And then it gives me all this information about weasels not popping and how all the hypotheses for where that nursery rhyme comes from. And it leads me to some YouTube videos that are full of crap, you know, and they're telling me that it has to do with this spinning yarn spinning tool called a weasel. And you know what? You know, that tool may pop, but.

Pop Goes the Weasel in that song clearly refers to a behavior of weasel that exactly fits what's being described in the song, right? And I got that information not from a book, because I've never seen it in a book, not from online, not from a video, not from somebody else. I know I got it from a weasel. I got it from interacting directly with weasels. so, and I feel like people need to, people need to step outside the human world to come to those intuitions.

And we don't do that enough. Now that we're ever connected, it's like, I try to tell my kids, put the phone down and just like observe the real world. It's slower. But what information it gives you is infallible. It's never trying to trick you. It's never selling you something. Never. It's never trying to get you to vote for anybody. It's nature. Look at it and it will tell you things. And it's hard to get the information out. But when you get it, it's real. It's there. And it's...

Daniel (13:39.098)

See?

Sam Thayer (13:54.656)

It's unequivocal. You might interpret it wrong, but that's your fault. That's not because there's some trickery going on. So I feel like that's where at least my more meaningful intuitions come from. So to get back to your bird migration thing, I mean, I've been an avid birder my whole life. And, you know, like most birders, I love my warblers in the spring. And I always thought of like the warblers as and other insect eating birds as traveling south to the tropical forest.

for the winter because our winters were just too cold for them. And I realized through a sort of convoluted set of thoughts one day, like, wait a second, that's totally the opposite. These are itinerant birds. They spend almost their entire life moving and they do go to the tropical forests for a little bit. But mostly they're moving and their entire life revolves around

coming to the northern part of North America to take advantage of our spring and early summer. So at our latitudes, because we're pretty close, that's from like May 15th to July 15th. There are so many insects during that period of time that they, like there is nowhere else in the world with that concentration of insects in space and time. So those birds can survive anywhere.

for a while and they can survive. But there's not the surplus that they need to reproduce. They come up here for that spring and early summer surplus. They are not leaving here to flee our winter. They don't have to be here at all. They are coming here to take advantage of this incredible resource that we take for granted because we're swatting mosquitoes and black flies and we're like, wait a second, that's why these birds are coming here. And...

Daniel (15:45.418)

Right, right.

Sam Thayer (15:49.09)

Part of what led me to that was the experience I had with you of trying to take you out to catch bullfrogs on August, I think it was 10th or 9th, and I've always known that bullfrogs go into hibernation in August, and I usually catch bullfrogs in May and June, and I wasn't paying real acute attention to when the adult bullfrogs in northern Wisconsin go into hibernation until about then. We couldn't find a single adult bullfrog. And so in the two years since then, it's been right about August 5th.

and it's not related to weather. We always want to relate things to weather. The bullfrogs are like, it's really cold, I better go hibernate. No, there's no more insects. Virtually all the aquatic, no, not in that specific instance, But virtually all of the large aquatic insect hatches are done by early August and the bullfrogs are like, this isn't worth it. The risk reward ratio, and because they're cold blooded,

Daniel (16:28.494)

So it's also not photo period.

Daniel (16:33.349)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (16:46.35)

they can hibernate really easily. They can fatten up and they're not in danger of starving like say a wood chuck which has to produce its own heat and it's harder for the endotherms to slow down their metabolism and hibernate. But even for things like black bears, mean they hibernate in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia about the same amount of time, maybe just like two months less or a month and a half less than they do in northern Wisconsin. I mean they're out here now eating deer carcasses even though it's 15 degrees this morning.

It's going to be high of 22 and they're eating deer carcasses and acorns. They're not going to hibernate until the food runs out. It's not about the temperature, it's about the food. So that's part of the process that brought me to that conclusion. And also I was thinking about the difference between tropical and temperate soils, which growing up in the North, you're taught to think of the tropics as like a paradise. And the growing season is longer, but the growing season is much less lush and less productive.

And that's something that if you go to tropical countries people see and have trouble processing that but you can also just watch. Now there's videos of everything. Like just watch a video on gardening in Togo, you know, and look at how poor the soil is and you know look at how vegetation grows. It's slow and it is, you know, not very lush and that kind of reverberates through everything about tropical economics and tropical ecology. Plants...

have trouble getting resources and they hold them very carefully and they produce a lot of toxins in their tissues and that's why there are fewer insects. There's high biomass but that biomass is not as edible to insects and so there's not as much food for birds and so they're like, hey dude, this is the time we can go up north and we can get lots of books and have babies. So there's the process.

Daniel (18:32.24)

Yeah.

Daniel (18:36.112)

I love that. guess there's a couple things I want to draw out of that. Let me first say I went very naively to the tropics a couple times when I was young. So right around when I was 20 thinking I wanted to escape modernity. I wanted to go live off the grid and just eat fruits and live naturally and do yoga in the sun or whatever. And I remember going to, so I tried it in Florida, South Florida, tried it in Maui. And I remember just being like, oh, it doesn't work like that down here.

Like you said, the soil is really poor. And while you can grow horticulturally amazing tropical fruits, the foraging can be pretty poor. You know, I foraged in the Amazon, I foraged in Hawaii, I've foraged in New Zealand, I've foraged in Florida. The foraging is better up here for the most part, or at least the diversity and the abundance of edible foods during our growing season do seem a lot better up here. that's just an interesting, you know, thing that I learned from like

naivety and actually trying it. But I also want to say how so that was a fail for me and I learned from that and I just think it's interesting that the bullfrog fail that we had led to those insights. And I'll tie that into this. When we were talking the other day, so I'm a I'm an apocalyptic alarmist, you're kind of the opposite. And okay, but you have a great temper to it. I appreciate that.

Sam Thayer (19:56.513)

I'm with you more than you might know.

Sam Thayer (20:01.774)

tried to.

Daniel (20:01.892)

So we were lot of conversation happening right now, of course, about AI that's in the zeitgeist, right? We're all watching it like sort of filter into our world. My feeling is I think it's moving faster than mobile phones. And I think if when I go back to my first mobile phone, I had no idea what was coming. I couldn't imagine what that technology was about to turn into, but it took 20 years or something for it to mature to where it is today. But I'm watching AI mature more quickly and

I'm worried that the cognitive impacts are gonna be far more extreme than they've been with phones. So I'm really worried about what's gonna happen with people. And one of the first things that I'm seeing, you know, I was really disturbed to read this statistic recently that only 1 % of Google users click through to any links now because they get the AI insights. There's no reason to go to any websites. Now that's got a couple of, a couple problems emerge from that. One is,

who's gonna create content for websites because if you're not getting any traffic to your website, then you are disincentivized financially to put content on your website. So that means that we might be reaching like sort of the functional end of new content being put onto websites, which is kind of a bummer. But second to that, well actually not, more important to that is that I'm watching how people get information changed really, really fast.

And so my concern is that people are not going to contemplate, observe and contemplate because it's faster to just go get the information, even when the information's wrong, because you and I both witnessed over our life, people have no problem holding onto wrong information. In fact, I mean, in a lot of cases that they almost seem to prefer it. So I was curious to hear from you because the perspective that I was hearing from you around the dinner table that night was,

like, guys, think this AI, we're in a hype cycle right now. Like, okay, it sounds like it's gonna have all these massive ramifications, but I think it's probably gonna reach a crescendo and level out. So that was sort of what you were saying. I would love for you to expand on that, share your perspective on it and how you think and feel it's going to affect human cognition. Because I'm looking for positives and I see some, but way more outweighed by negatives right now.

Sam Thayer (22:25.996)

Well, I don't want to seem like I'm much of a prognosticator about technology, right? So, I mean, who am I to say? I mean, I didn't get a cell phone six years ago.

Daniel (22:32.964)

Well, can I give a little perspective on who you are to say? mean, first of all, you have a deeper ecological knowledge and connection than 99.9 % of modern people living in the modern life way. So that's one reason. You pump your own water at your house by hand. I mean, you're living with a foot in both worlds and most people are all in to modernity. So I think you have a perspective

you you gather a significant amount of your calories out of wild places from species that you have relationships with. I mean, that alone puts you in a pretty unique position to comment on it because you're less touched by it. So I think a lot of us, you know, it's like if somebody's in abusive relationship and you're like, tell me about your husband, you know, versus like you're watching it from the outside, watching that person get beat up and be like, let me tell you about your husband. You know, like you you're less of

You have less Stockholm syndrome to our culture. So I think that your perspectives matter and are really important.

Sam Thayer (23:37.998)

Okay, well I agree with you there but I still am nervous about prognosticating about the future. it seems like the history of technology is when a technology first comes out there's a prediction that it's going to have this, there will be like a rapid increase in its utility and in its functionality and there's a prediction that that's going to just perpetually increase at that rate but eventually

Daniel (23:45.178)

We all should be.

Sam Thayer (24:07.886)

there's a leveling off, but at the same time that technology goes somewhere that we didn't imagine it was going to go.

Sam Thayer (24:22.912)

I feel like, I guess one is maybe it's just rosy thinking, but really rapidly. Well, say for example, electrification of homes and lighting, right? When that came out, it just really rapidly spread, like in one human lifetime from like virtually nobody having it to virtually everybody having it. And, but.

it didn't change a lot then in the next human lifetime. And I know that lighting is a simple technology, right? But when you look at firearms, right? So there's been a few major improvements in firearms since they were invented. And then there's been a leveling off and there hasn't been really huge increases in the functionality of firearms for now for a human lifetime, right? And so those are much simpler technologies and it's maybe easier to predict, but...

It seems like something like that happened both with cell phone use and with AI use, but I don't know where the end point is, and I don't know what the unexpected permutation is going to be. I was talking with my kids about this, how today people can't imagine living without a cell phone. And I remember when I was my son's age, when I was 14 and I was first exposed to the idea of cell phones, and I first saw people with cell phones and they were like these giant things, and I'm like.

Who needs that? Who wants a stupid phone you have to carry all the time? I don't want people to be able to call me all the time. I don't want my mom to be able to call me when I'm fishing. You know, like I don't need to talk to my friends when I'm out in the woods. If they're with me, that's cool, but I don't want to talk to them otherwise, you know? And like now it's an absolute necessity. So an absurdity became a necessity. So what absurdity today will be a necessity in 25 or 30 years? I don't know. I was trying to be optimistic, but I'm terrified.

Daniel (25:53.782)

Right. Right. Right.

Daniel (26:16.272)

Okay, all right, all right good we're on the same page.

Sam Thayer (26:16.77)

in the same way that you are. Yeah, we're on the same page. I'm terrified. was just, I felt like, I don't know, I felt like you were so worried about it that I wanted to like, I wanted to throw a wrench into the machinations of your worry, right? I was like, hey, there could be light at the end of tunnel. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's just a train coming, but there could be light at the end of that tunnel, you know? And so I'm really not disagreeing with you in any fundamental way about that.

Daniel (26:38.37)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (26:46.658)

kind of tempering it, because maybe I need to do that for myself too.

Daniel (26:47.578)

Yeah, balancing it out, I appreciate that. I often will do the same. I guess, you know, when we started off talking today, I was asking you about who comes in as new students. And I'm wondering, so I felt for a long time that the work that we do with Wild Foods matters more than a lot of other hobbies. You know, there's lots of things people can do for hobbies that are really fun and really cool. You could be a kite surfing or

paragliding or you know any roller skating or like there's all kinds of hobbies a person can have but this one is the one that people needed to survive since there was people and so it has a unique place it's not just like a hobby like forging is my hobby it's like much deeper than that and it gives people the ability I mean

pray we never need it, but it gives us the ability to restart and reset after calamity if you have this knowledge. And it can disaster proof you against famine or collapse of crops or, or any number of things that could happen. It just gives you that firm foundation. It connects you to ecology. I think there's like a fundamental deep loneliness that human beings are going through because they don't know any other species. And so it's like,

Humans, cats, and dogs, a pretty lonely world to live in when there's as many species as there are to know. I'm sure you've seen some of that research that was done that showed that the average elementary school kid knew more animals from Africa's savanna than they did from their own environment. So you have all that kind of going on. And now with what's happening with AI, you see people kind of moving more and more into the digital space and almost like abandoning the natural world. So they're spending all their time in the built environment.

and now more and more in the digital environment. And so I'm wondering if there's gonna be sort of like a natural exodus of people who are like divergent in their thinking that are like, wait, no, I need to like go back in the other direction. So I'm wondering if you're seeing any of that. I'm wondering if...

Daniel (28:59.96)

If you think that it's possible where people are getting too far out on a limb and any of these skills could be necessary, or do you think that for generations to come, this remains like a hobby of ours? You know what I mean? Because it could just be like it just remains a hobby. We just keep passing it on to the next generation, or it could be like, wow, man, mean, you you can't buy or sell unless you have a chip in your brain. So good to know how to get some eats. You know what I mean?

Sam Thayer (29:27.854)

I think it should be both things and I think it will be both things. I think it will be part of the resistance to control of us. You know, it's like the book Brave New World. I know if you read that, you know. know, people, I do think in times and places people will simply separate themselves from the greater society in order to have some autonomy and freedom and to do that they will have to have certain skills. It also, however, I mean,

Daniel (29:39.738)

yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (29:57.678)

We, as in the government, the corporate media, I say the clergy of GDP, the people that worship GDP as if that's a measurement of vitality and life and happiness and that's all that's good. GDP has replaced the church from Western European civilization in the Middle Ages. The church was the everything that society was like built for and moved.

Daniel (30:07.962)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (30:25.442)

towards and in unison with and under the tutelage and control of, that was the church, right? The quasi-religious state. And today it's GDP. GDP is this like, God we worship. And...

Daniel (30:40.688)

For people listening, to say it, you're talking about gross domestic product, talking about our economy.

Sam Thayer (30:43.022)

Gross domestic product, like it's the sacred number that if a politician was to doubt the sacred number, they would never have a political career after that. Just like you would have been excommunicated and perhaps, you know, assassinated in the middle ages if you doubted the church's validity, right? And so, on this tangent, I'm losing my train of a little bit, but the people, the,

Daniel (31:07.408)

I'm pushing you into a new territory here with this conversation.

Sam Thayer (31:13.364)

Like, so the people that control our thoughts and everything, they don't control us just by giving us things that we need. They now control us by giving us things that we become addicted to. And maybe it's been that way for a long time. There's people that hypothesize that a big part of the origin of agriculture itself was beer. But the...

What they're doing is they're giving people addictive substances. I mean, if you go into a gas station, it's like, you're surrounded by addictive substances. know, sugar, caffeine, nicotine. I mean, it's just, you alcohol. And then people are carrying around these addictive objects, these phones, that have addictive information because it's...

cognitively, psychologically addictive and you can watch that especially in children. You can just watch them with the addiction and you see children and adults too but it's really obvious in children because they've learned a little bit less restraint. They go through withdrawal symptoms if they are taken away from that addictive object, addictive information and I didn't really suspect

powerful like that's maybe a new insight for me like in the last eight or ten years and I'm struggling with how people will get past that addiction but just like your addiction to sugar is I think best cured by a healthy diet it's not that easy right but if you can cut yourself off of sugar and eat healthy food I think the psychological addiction that we get and the substance addictions together compounded as like kind of like a

They call the military industrial complex. It's like the physical, psychological, addictive complex that we are fed to keep us in line. We can break from that through foraging. And that's why I think that by being in touch with nature, we can help ourselves think on our own, but also eat on our own and understand what healthy thought feels like and what healthy food feels like.

Daniel (33:21.146)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (33:23.968)

and what a healthy lifestyle feels like. So I think that besides being this fallback skill in case times get really bad, and if we look at human history, times periodically get really bad, and those skills really matter, and of course it's going to happen again, and it's happening multiple places in the world right now. But also I think it's a hobby that we should curate as our birthright.

and pass down and teach to our children and participate in that and not in the sense of kids you need to do this because it's good for you and they're like kids let's do this it's awesome it's great you know and it has its own addictive element it's know forging is the original video game you know like the original video game you know all these things you know fishing has that same reward you know endorphin rush and all that the anticipation

Daniel (34:10.96)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (34:22.894)

And you know, I don't know how important it has to be to provide that function in our psychological and physical lives, but I think it needs to be part of our lives. I think we need to think of it not as a fringe thing. I think we need to think of it as like tooth brushing. Right? It's like a thing, I mean, know some people that don't believe in brushing teeth, but like in general, okay, like hygiene, right? Like if you're ignoring your hygiene, you know, that's a problem.

I feel like if foraging or some meaningful connection to nature isn't part of your life, you're missing some psychological hygiene. And I don't think it's replaceable with any other activity. Like I think bird watching is great and it's very not tangentially related to foraging, right? The desire to watch birds. It's like, you know, if I was a cat and there was a window and there's birds outside, I'm gonna watch those birds, right? I mean, humans, we watch wildlife because it's part of what we are, you know?

And the curiosity is general whether we're eat the thing or not. We're curious about life and how life unfolds So I think that that foraging is part of our psychological birthright and I I do think it's hard without connecting nature in this like fundamental ways for us to be psychologically healthy and To be able to think well and we see this in

are when people get their information from screens or from each other or from newspapers or books or televisions, whatever it is, instead of directly from nature, then we are prone to being manipulated because somebody is controlling that information that's given to you and they have a motive. Nature provides a constant stream of information with no motive. It's just there.

for you to pull from it what it can teach you and then you can in the clarity of the absence of noise, nature is not noise, it's information, right? In the absence of that noise, you can analyze the information and come up with insights that are valuable to you. mean, you know, that's why Jesus would go up and pray for 40 days and 40 nights, right? Like,

Sam Thayer (36:47.916)

like whatever you want to call it. mean, that's communing with the divine. But it doesn't have to be 40 days and 40 nights. It could be 15 minutes in the morning before breakfast or whatever it is. mean, you know.

Daniel (36:56.944)

Yeah.

Daniel (37:01.24)

It's interesting, know, just because you just said that I'll bring up the metaphor. Something that's fascinated me from very early on is how what the symbol on the back of the phone is for most of us, you know, because it's it's the apple with the bite taken out of it, right? So that's the knowledge of good and evil, right? That's the forbidden fruit, obviously with the bite. If it was just an apple, you'd be like, well, it's just an apple, but it's got the bite taken out. And that was sort of like the idea that what corrupted mankind

was instead of that communion with the divine, it was going after this false teaching, right? So that's like the sort of biblical metaphor. And here we are now where we're all addicted to this device that gives us this information, but it's like often very corrupted information. It's not that observational information or those insights that come direct, you know? And what's challenging about it, so something I've been doing lately is I keep my phone on black and white because I notice that all those bright light colors,

When I was a kid, remember, do you remember the toy Light Bright? Yeah, and you could like turn off the lights, right? So if you're a Gen Z kid or something, a millennial, you don't remember this toy. I it was basically a light box with all these little perforations in it, and you'd stick a black piece of paper over it that would cover the light. And then you had these little translucent little posts, little pokey posts. Yeah, and you'd stick them in and there would be a pre-

Sam Thayer (38:02.936)

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (38:23.318)

Yeah, I totally forgot about this, but yeah.

Daniel (38:27.534)

designed pattern on there and you'd put them in and the light would come through those translucencies and it would light up and glow. Well, before the digital age, that kind of color was like looking at fireworks or something or the Aurora. It just was very enticing. But now we have that in our. Yeah, right by the exactly I got to erase this thing. That's still a pretty cool toy, actually. Anyway, my point is now we have that in our pocket and those bright lights.

Sam Thayer (38:42.498)

That was on the shelf right by the Etch-A-Sketch.

Daniel (38:55.054)

It's like when you walk into the convenience store full of all the addictive things you were talking about and they're all brightly colored, little juicy, sweet, sugary, but it's like all this like hyper stimulating color. You know, when you're looking at your phone and then you look up at the natural world, it's like the natural world can look a little dull at first till you reacclimate to it. And that's what I see so hard for kids is like, it takes a little while to where you start to see nature as bright and exciting.

when you're used to all of those bright colors, you know? So I'm kind of curious your thoughts on that. You were talking about the 40 days in the wilderness or the 15 minutes of gathering insight. Any thoughts on how to, or maybe on how you manage that or how your kids are managing that? Making that break from, because obviously you're having to interact with these technologies, you're doing it right now with me. So have you found challenges in breaking away from it to,

Re-acclimating to the natural world. Like how are you managing that?

Sam Thayer (39:56.386)

It's hard, but.

One thing I would say is, is nature's, the signals can be subdued and they can be diffused, right? But those bright colors in nature, they are information, important information, like a bright red fruit. It's there, it's bright to attract your attention to it. This might be food. A bright red caterpillar, a bright yellow caterpillar, or a coral snake. These are signals that nature is giving that there's something you need to pay attention to here. But.

Now, if you can give kids a turtle, right? Like, you have a screen, right? Like, you give them a real turtle, all of a sudden, they forget about that screen for a while, right? Because the screen is not nearly as exciting as the turtle, right? The turtle's not addictive in the way that the screen is. So, that doesn't answer all of it, right? Because that turtle's not gonna be there forever and eventually they're gonna go tired of the turtle. But for 20 minutes...

Daniel (40:31.61)

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (40:56.438)

I might, the whole world might be the turtle, right? Or the bullfrogs. Or a snake. I mean, you add fear or excitement, you know? I find a big bull snake or a fox snake and I can show some kids. I mean, everything disappears. They're probably gonna pull their phone out and try to take a picture of it. But for the most part, it now centered on the real world. And so part of hooking kids

Daniel (41:16.856)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (41:26.088)

or anyone, say kids, people, adults also, into nature and overcoming that addictive power is finding those most powerful elements of nature, the very things that we're trying to imitate the relationship to, like the excitement, like catching a fish for a kid is still super excited if you can get them past the boredom of not catching a fish until you catch one. Or same thing with hunting or whatever.

So I try to look for those situations where I can show somebody something really exciting that's like right away that they can experience like a fruit or berry or hazelnuts smell them you can't smell anything on your phone you know like like like not now now taste the sour juice in the husk of that hazelnuts just bite it I'll tell you bite the hazelnuts smell it like you'll never forget that smell now bite it and the juice comes out it's like sour astringent but lemony

juice and you're like I had no idea that hazelnut tastes like that. I I can just close my eyes at any time and imagine that hazelnut smell you know and I smell that hazelnut husk smell and I taste the juice of the husk I can taste the nut inside and then rip it open and crack a few and get kids to taste them and it's like magic it's a real physical object but yeah it is a constant battle to pull people away from the addictive thing and that's why the addiction is so powerful.

I think we need to call it out by name and call it what it is. And this technology is so new that we are not used to describing it for what it is. Like we know that alcohol is addictive and we've watched it ruin people's lives. And we've seen it taken out of its original context, cultural context, now just destroying people's lives because it's cheapened.

Daniel (42:57.488)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (43:19.214)

We have not developed a set of like social norms and ideas and teaching points and talking points among ourselves, each other and our children to deal with this digital technology. You know, there's research coming out that it's like we can't even keep up with it. Like by the time I read what I'm supposed to have done with my kids 40 years ago, it's too late, you know? So it's real, but nature is also powerfully.

Daniel (43:39.812)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (43:46.478)

I would say addictive, in a healthy way, in the same way that food is addictive, right? Like friendship is addictive. Like if you have a good friend, then not having a friend in your life all of a sudden feels like you're really messing out on something. It's supposed to be that.

Daniel (43:51.887)

Yeah.

Daniel (43:59.601)

addictive but non destructive. Yeah, well, okay, I don't

Sam Thayer (44:01.381)

Right, right.

Daniel (44:07.524)

When we were at that lecture, doing our workshops there at Kripalu, Sephora made a joke about me being real doomy and that she said that, you know Daniel's message, it's too late to be pessimistic, she was saying, which I thought was really funny. But at the risk of being that way, I guess I'm just that way, one thing that's happening is that as these technologies rise, concurrently with it, the natural world,

is being altered very dramatically, very quickly. So lest somebody who doesn't have experience in the natural world thinks that, you know, there's all this wild, this wild world, and then there's just these pockets of civilization and the rest of that's been left intact. Like if it's not built up, it's intact. Like that's not true, right? I mean, we've dramatically changed landscapes, moved species, altered distributions, and then added

a lot of chemistry to the environment. I saw I want to talk about that too, because it's not like us as foragers and hunters, we just step out into some pristine like Eden where it's like still untouched by civilization. And then I want to add to that this piece about everybody knows it, everybody knows the natural world's in a bad state, because we haven't been tending to it. And instead, we've been exploiting it. So we've created this

myth about, it's almost like a religious myth about our climate. It seems like, I feel like five years ago I would have been very hesitant to say that. I would have spoken much more carefully because boy, people would just attack you for it. Now I feel like people are kind of realizing, it's not that the climate isn't changing, the climate's a verb, it's always changing. But this story we have about the climate,

isn't necessarily the whole story. Like the problem with our ecology is a lot more of the things we're doing to it. And I was wondering if you could speak to that because it's like people just think, it's just, it's what I'm exhaling is the problem. And it's like, man, that's actually not really the problem.

Sam Thayer (46:20.024)

Well, can I speak to it? It's like more like, can I shut up? So first I want to give you like a look at human history in a way that distills in a way that not many people have thought about it. Right? If we look at the long scope of human history, you could say at some point in the past, I don't know how long ago, and it may have never happened with the species Homo sapiens. Let's say we were living off of

Daniel (46:21.904)

Please. Yeah, okay, let's see, got some time.

Sam Thayer (46:50.018)

natural environments and we were taking natural as an unaffected by humans, right? And we were just taking a surplus food out of that system and eating it. And that's why our numbers were at a low density, right? And that may have never been part of our species history. Probably wasn't.

Daniel (47:07.386)

For listeners, you're saying that might have been another species of Homo before Homo sapien?

Sam Thayer (47:12.462)

Yeah, so maybe Homo erectus lived that way or maybe Homo heidelbergensis lived that way maybe Neanderthals lived that way But I think you know people act like that's an outlandish statement I'm like hey look beavers have been around a long time and they create their own environment. They raise their own food essentially They don't they don't farm the way humans farm, but they create their own food environment

Daniel (47:34.404)

Landscape Engineers.

Sam Thayer (47:36.066)

Exactly. Pocket gophers do a similar thing. It's not as well known, but they create the disturbance that promotes the plants that produce roots that are good for pocket gophers, you know, by their mounds and so they kind of create their own disturbance that creates their own food supply. So I think human beings probably have always been that way. We had fire before we were homo sapiens. However, at some point...

We've grown gradually more organized and systematic and how we manage the landscape. So the first big tool for doing that was fire. Now fire in general on many landscapes promotes the production of food. Now don't need to get into all the detailed theories about this, but when you add fire to a landscape, fire generally increases the amount of food for human beings on the landscape for a number of reasons. Fire keeps the biomass closer to the ground so it's more edible to large

herbivores that makes more meat for people to eat. It increases the amount of nuts and small seeded, herbaceous plants with edible seeds and fire increases the quantity of fruit on the landscape and root vegetables. I mean, that's basically the gamut of human foods right there. All of them are generally benefited by fire. So people learned a long, long time ago, certainly by 30,000 years ago, virtually every hunter-gatherer

group in the world knew at least some places fire was a way to affect the landscape. Now fire is like, it kills some plants but not all plants. You you burn a landscape, it favors some plants over others. And the next big thing that people figured out or started doing to control the landscape was the plow. Plows, unlike fires, kill everything. So you clear land, you kill all the native vegetation, and then you make sure it all stays dead.

except for the one or two things you want to plant. That's a plow. And the plow went through, first it was human operated, then it was pulled by draft animals, then the plow was pulled by machines, and they each made it more labor efficient and more land could be put under the plow. And this was a great destructive process. So fires changed the ecology of the world, but they made the world...

Sam Thayer (49:46.126)

It was still natural, was still vibrant and full of life and you could argue that maybe it made the world, quote, better, but it made it better for people, right, and certain species. Other species didn't benefit as much, but, you know, the plow was different, right? With each step of mechanizing the plow,

First, the plow was confined to really good soils and really small areas and the food was really precious. It was produced. When you added animals, you could do bigger areas and then when you added machinery, internal combustion engines, all of a sudden plows could be applied to humongous areas and zip, there goes the 20 % of the Earth's land surface that is the most ecologically productive is gone. It is ecologically dead. It is not much better than a parking lot ecologically, right? And then,

We are now coming to this great new, the next revolution in control of the biosphere, the way to kill plants is now chemical, right? And some people think I'm exaggerating that, like, but this is just as big as the invention of the plow. So we can go back to, you know, there were very expensive general herbicides.

available for a long time like when the Romans defeated Carthage, Scipio spread salt on Carthaginian fields so they couldn't grow crops, right? That was an herbicide, but a very expensive one. And you know, then we had things like copper sulfate, very expensive, kills everything, borate, know, things that are... It's with World War II that we come up with cheap potent herbicides.

And that was as big of an invention in terms of its impact on world ecology as the invention of agriculture itself.

Daniel (51:35.546)

Can I pause you there and ask this question? Do you think it's fair to say that the weapons of war were converted into pesticides essentially? Like these were munitions, right? And we're talking about nitrogen, which still can be used to make explosives. Were these weapons technologies that we converted to agricultural purposes essentially?

Sam Thayer (51:59.598)

Some of them were, and certainly the capital was repurposed, right? So there was this massive investment in chemical producing capital, and then that was repurposed for agricultural chemicals. even if, you know, the war may have made these things happen a little quicker, but it was going to happen anyway. Yeah, we were strongly trending there. But as has happened so often in human history, conflict is a major push toward innovation, right? So we maybe got there a generation earlier, but...

Daniel (52:15.376)

We were trending there.

Sam Thayer (52:28.726)

Now we have, you know, 2,4-D and glyphosate and all these different chemicals that are usually selective. But what they allow us to do that even plows, even mechanically driven plows couldn't do is they allow us to control the vegetation on steep rugged landscapes where we cannot easily operate machinery. And also on landscapes where the biotic production potential is low.

And so we're already seeing this in Europe. Most of the forests of Northern Europe, or most of Europe in general, is actually tree plantations. It's not forest anymore. so the biggest threat to forests in the world today is the replacement of forests with tree plantations. And this is insidious, right? So we had like a few years ago, maybe 2020, I forget what it's called, I think I wrote it down, the...

the name of this organization. yeah, the World Economic Forum. have their one, yeah, yeah, by the way, World Economic Forum, GDP worshipers as organized as they can be, right? And so we have people like, you know, they have the Trillion Tree Initiative. Donald Trump's on board. Emmanuel Macron is on board. You know, everyone's on board. Well, you know what they're doing? They are,

Daniel (53:35.203)

yeah, lovely fellas over there. I love those folks.

Sam Thayer (53:57.4)

cutting down real forests and replacing them with tree plantations. And they are constantly using the rhetoric of carbon sequestration to reduce global warming as part of the excuse for this ecologically egregious act. I got to actually go in France to these places while they were actively cutting ancient native beach forests.

mostly beech, some oak, some elm, but mostly beech, and replacing them with Douglas fir plantations established in rows and maintained with herbicide. That is what herbicide is allowing us to do. So you take rugged landscapes. So all the nature left in the world, it's either too wet, it's too rugged, or it's too unproductive for agriculture. So we have the vast boreal forests. It's soil-less.

glacier scraped rock of the Canadian shield and in northern Europe, you know, we have these vast boreal forests, biggest forest in the world, right? And then we have the second biggest forest area in the world. We've got the tropical rainforests. We've got the Congo, we have, you know, Borneo and parts of Southeast Asia. And then we have the Amazon rainforest, super infertile. You know, people don't realize that that's the least fertile soil in the world. That's like made of small part.

Daniel (55:21.422)

All the nutrients are in the forest itself, but not in the soil there, right? Essentially the soil is a very thin layer and all those nutrients are in the canopy, right? Something like that.

Sam Thayer (55:31.266)

Yes, but what's also happened is that areas around the equator that have not been disturbed by mountain upheaval or glaciers, the soil layers have not mixed. There's no new rock. So the soluble minerals have been removed for, in most of those places, more than 100 million years of rain has leached the soluble minerals out of the soil. So even what is in the system is very, very sparse and low.

Daniel (55:57.092)

needs like a catastrophic renewal event.

Sam Thayer (55:59.884)

Yeah, exactly. I that's what glaciers were. That is why temperate regions that are glaciated or mountainous regions is where all of the high densities of people in the world are, and it's where people are most prosperous because it creates fertile soils. So anyways, the tropical rainforests are also, right now, I guarantee you, there's a whole bunch of airplanes flying over the Amazon, spraying herbicide down to defoliate, and then people are, I mean, this is, people can research this. This is going on huge scale.

but we're not in the Amazon looking at that. And when we're looking at our smartphones, it's not popping up, right? So these massive change in world ecology is happening like under our noses, but we're not even sniffing it, you know? We're not even looking at it. So, you know, the Mesquite country in Texas, it used to be...

that these areas of Texas were prairie and mesquite was usually confined to steep ravines and washes and long streams and it was scattered on the uplands but fires would burn the prairies of Texas and they would push back the mesquite and it's a natural native plant. It's a great plant in a lot of ways. It's great for wildlife but ranchers don't like it and when they remove fire from the landscape and you add the disturbance of cattle droppings and cattle trampling and grazing the mesquite goes crazy and has been managed instead of

through fire, mostly through chainsaw. But when you cut just mesquite with a chainsaw, you're just cutting mesquite. Now, mesquite's managed with herbicide. There is roughly 50 to 55 million acres of mesquite rangeland in Texas. That is about one and a half times the size of the state of Wisconsin. It's about 1.7 times the size of the state of Maine. It's ridiculous, right? And almost all of that, very comfortable saying an area the size of the entire state of Wisconsin.

the state of New York or the state of Maine. That much area is being nuked eerily with herbicide in the state of Texas. Just in Texas, as its normal form of management. When they do this, it doesn't kill this mesquite, it kills two thirds to three quarters of the native flora is obliterated by the spraying. And no one's talking about it.

Daniel (58:12.9)

What is this glyphosate or are we talking about other pesticides too?

Sam Thayer (58:17.454)

I'm actually not sure what pesticides are being used, but I've been there on the ground, walked through the sprayed areas, watched the regenerating vegetation. Texas is a big state. There's a lot of hours you can drive through this. I mean, there are literally chunks of like 20,000 acres of mesquite skeletons with non-native invasive weeds and grasses and some native ones mixed in growing up between those mesquites. And this is one example, right?

Daniel (58:44.376)

Can I, a couple things are emerging here for me as you say this. One is, and this part is like really shocking and insidious. A lot of the people who are involved in this kind of work consider themselves as environmentalists. They're doing this work for the environment in their minds, right? Like I know a lot of what's happening here with the spraying of roadsides with pesticide is to eliminate invasive species. They think they're actually doing useful work.

for native species, right? So the people perpetrating it think they're doing it for good. So that's like one component. Second thing I wanna say is so many people think that the reason that we're genetically modifying food crops is to make them more productive when in reality it's just to make them resistant to the glyphosate that allows us to now instead of spot apply, aerial spray it and the plants that were growing that means that.

They're resistant, so that means they can be covered in it, which is not good for us, because we're gonna eat them. But also, these aren't more productive varieties of plants. They're just resistant to the poison that we couldn't spray on them before. So that's like another component. And then the third part of this I wanna say is that this is what's happening while we're all talking about carbon, right? So we're talking about CO2. Meanwhile, we're wholesale poisoning our soils and

Sam Thayer (01:00:02.072)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (01:00:10.042)

defoliating denuding our landscape at the same time. All those things true.

Sam Thayer (01:00:15.374)

Absolutely. you know, and I'm not saying that human cause global warming is not real. It's real and it's a problem and we need to address it. And look, like I live off grid, you know, I have a house that I built out of logs that I cut and carried on my shoulders on my property, know, like locally cut wood. I heat with wood. You know, like I said, I pump my own water. Like I have tried to live by those

Daniel (01:00:21.68)

Mm-hmm. Sure. Yep.

Sam Thayer (01:00:44.246)

values, know, off-grid photovoltaic, solar electric, etc. But that's not going to solve this climate issue, you know. And we can't try to solve the climate issue and ignore the things. I mean, this herbicide thing is a way bigger deal ecologically. I mean, while we sit and argue about carbon footprints and about, you know, carbon sequestration and what's the best way to lower

our carbon footprint and all that. All of the things that we are worried about global warming doing, we are doing actively with herbicide at a far faster rate than global warming would ever do them. And each time there's an issue, we're talking about that issue, framing it in a way that ignores the ecology and just focuses on the global warming part. I'll give you two examples. We talk about monarchs disappearing on the Great Plains.

and all the other thousands of insects that are disappearing. Like as much as the monarchs are declining, there's like, it's not like monarchs are declining way more than other things. There's tons of plants and animals declining just like monarchs. And that is almost 100 % caused by herbicide. And people will talk like 60 % of the discussion of it is like revolves around, maybe it's only 40%, but it revolves around, you know, global warming.

Daniel (01:02:07.044)

You

Sam Thayer (01:02:10.744)

Global warming is not harming the monarchs. It's the herbicide. And you can just compound that over, say, maybe 7,000 native species just in North America. And we're not talking about the herbicide is that problem. And I had another.

Daniel (01:02:25.232)

We'll almost talk about everything else. mean, you'll hear it's the cell phone towers, it's the 5G, it's the, you know, everything, but you don't hear. the thing about the insects is I've witnessed it in my lifetime. I witness it because it's so simple and people who've listened to me for years will have heard this, but it used to be if you drove from the North Maine woods down to where I live in Southern Maine in the summertime, your car would absolutely be caked in dead insects. And you can do that drive now.

and there's barely any. And I mean, just have watched it year after year. It's just less insects. I mean, considerably.

Sam Thayer (01:03:01.294)

and less birds and less snakes and less lizards and I mean you almost all these species across the board and you know so other and you know the environmental movement has a history of doing this right so I'll give you an example like in from like 1920 to like say 2000 2010 almost a century there there was this focus on deforestation

Daniel (01:03:04.292)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (01:03:31.052)

Right? And let's look here at the United States. During that period, our amount of forest was dramatically increasing during that period. And yet we have this smoky the bear ethic, right? And smoky the bear was a tool created by industry and government in lockstep to trick people about forest ecology and trick them into allowing us to manage forests for timber rather than for nature.

Right? And so we eliminated fire from our forest management and then we create this horrible fire problem that is in the western states, all over the country, but especially California. Right? And that is partly due to global warming, the serious fire problems we've had recently, but it is mostly caused by this smokey the bear mentality of managing forests for industry rather than ecologically sound. And for that century, we were ignoring

We were ignoring all the species, which is roughly 40 % of the species in North America, which are fire dependent, because virtually all of our forests and all of our prairies are fire dependent or fire was an important part of modulating those ecosystems over time. While all sorts of plants and animals just disappeared steadily for years in the 30s, 40s, 50s, it was like exponential, like each decade there was like, you know,

only 40 % at the end of the decade, what there was in the beginning. And I got to see it even in my lifetime. I go to southern Wisconsin and the prairie relics that I visited in the 80s and early 90s, they're all gone. They're buckthorn and brush and forest. And we were losing our prairies and all of our grasslands and all of our fire dependent communities, even though we scientifically knew we were losing them, because the media and industry and government was focused on industrializing

our forests. And so we lost our forests and our grasslands because of this warped quasi-environmental thing that was happening in our heads. And it's happening now with climate change in that, you know, I used to wonder, I used to see, like when I was a teenager, I used to see like the political right as like the enemy of environmentalism. And I was like, you know, I was in a birds and snakes and, you know, and like I was a nature conservative volunteer when I was

Sam Thayer (01:05:51.31)

14 at the age of 17 I became I got the certification to be a nature Conservancy spokesperson so I could go like a to like a DNR meeting and say like as a representative of the nature Conservancy I think blah blah blah right and like and and and I just I Really love what the nature Conservancy did but you know I used to one I used to think that our enemies were on the political right well those people just they admit that they don't give a crap about nature right on the left you have this like I don't know this like he's like

pencil pushing office urban people that think that they care about nature but don't know a damn thing about it and don't actually care. They just think it's good to sound like they care. And so those people

have they control the rhetoric now so that we just aren't talking about all these other issues. Environmentalism is dead. Environmentalism was killed by the left not the right. The right never supported it. I mean a little bit right but the right didn't really care about the environment and they admitted that. The left pretended they cared and in that insidious

Daniel (01:06:58.032)

Well, on the right they call it conservation and the interest is really in antlers.

Sam Thayer (01:07:04.588)

Well, some, yeah, but I mean, there's all, if you go back to like the 50s, you know, there was more legitimate concern, like on the political right. But by the 80s and 90s, it had mostly dissipated, right? So to say within my lifetime. But actually, if we talk about the real issues, it's easier to get the political right interested because there are a lot of people.

Daniel (01:07:31.192)

Now, present, we're talking about.

Sam Thayer (01:07:31.766)

I live, yeah, I live around them. They vote for Trump and they are very right leaning. But if I talk about a bird disappearing, they care because it's concrete and they have birds in their yard, right? But if I talk about an abstract thing about climate change that they sense, they smell bullshit and they want to push it away and they are right in what they smell, right? And I'm not saying like, and a lot of these people, they aren't

Some of them are really silly and pretending that there's no climate change happening. But most of them, it's more complicated view than that. And the Nature Conservancy, when I volunteered for them, we had a very distinct mission of preserving land and managing habitats for rare and declining species, et cetera. Most of the Nature Conservancy's mission statement now is about climate change.

The nature conservancy has been absorbed, subsumed, superseded by climatism. Whatever permutation of environmentalism, whether it's just regular old environmentalism or the deep ecology movement from the 80s and 90s that I felt that I was part of, or whether it's conservation, which is like the wise use, but use of natural resources. And I'm there too, right?

I'm all for forestry. It's the most sustainable industry we have. We need to do it right, but we should be cutting our public forests and getting timber from them, because if we don't, we're going to be getting it from tree farms. Right? So I'm there. I'm in the conservation sphere too. But climatism has just replaced all that. We don't talk about biodiversity. We don't talk realistically about any of the environmental issues anymore. And meanwhile, like climate thing is important. It's important. But you know what?

biggest ecological thing facing the world today is not climate change. It's herbicide and we are completely ignoring that. And I've had people just attack me, jump down my throat for saying that, but I'm not getting my information from any talking head anywhere. Not from even somebody on a podcast like this. I'm getting that information from going outside and watching, watching people kill nature with herbicide.

Sam Thayer (01:09:50.048)

And it's so much faster and so much more drastic and so much more severe than any potential climate change scenario that we're talking about. And I'm terrified of what's happening to nature before my eyes. And I'm terrified that there isn't even an environmental movement to talk about it anymore because climate change has swallowed us.

Daniel (01:10:13.616)

It does seem to like the what the climate change narrative is going to lead to from my perspective, at least is climate management. know, so you're seeing now the patents are coming out for, you know, geoengineering, the atmosphere for experiments in the ionosphere, reflective particles, you know, things like that. there's this it's going to lead to, we need to now become managers of weather systems.

which is like, it's so, you know, like not letting any natural processes take place anymore. You know, I feel like that's kind of the desire is to be engineers of everything, right? Like we want to engineer biology. We want to engineer psychology. We want to engineer human beings. We want to engineer ecosystems. Now we want to engineer weather. And I just feel like human beings are not mature enough to manage any of those things.

Sam Thayer (01:11:07.406)

I agree, you know, at some point we need to say we're good enough, our earth is good enough, and we have enough stuff. Like that's about GDP being sacred, right? We don't need to raise that number. We have enough stuff. Like if I go on a walk with you and you and I go pick some persimmons and eat them, there's no GDP value in that. But man, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to go fishing? Like we could just walk down to a stream somewhere

catch some brook trout and bring them home and cook them for dinner with some vegetables from the garden and some wild rice that I got last year. Like there's no GDP in that, right? But man, wouldn't that be nice? I mean, we need to stop pretending that GDP is quality of life. The earth is good enough, nature is good enough, human beings are good enough, and we have enough stuff. And let's start acting like it. Let's be responsible for once. I agree with you 100%. I mean, about what...

where you, I believe it's going the path that you're talking about going because people don't want to make changes or sacrifices. Like I have green energy in my house, I've off-grid solar, but you know what? We've achieved what we've achieved mostly because we use 8 % of the national average electricity use of a family our size. Well guess what? You don't need solar panels on your roof to cut your electricity use down by 80%. Anyone can cut their fossil fuel use, their carbon footprint, you can cut it by 80%.

without buying any single piece of technology. But what we want is we want to buy a Prius and then put solar panels on the roof so that we can advertise who we are. So it's not about the value, it's about signaling the value we have to the public and saying what group of people we belong to. We need to grow up and stop doing that. We need to make responsible decisions regardless of whether or not we get overt social credit for them.

Daniel (01:12:48.772)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:13:05.345)

And that's why I think people need to stay in contact with nature because when you keep putting your hands in nature and you keep eating nature, that gratitude cycle keeps happening and it keeps causing you to think in a framework of gratitude. And the framework of gratitude makes you ask for less, need less, it makes you be more satisfied and more happy. yeah, and you know, the other thing is

climate change, carbon sequestration, all the... this is all being used to support extraordinarily egregiously anti-environmental things. Okay, so I give the example of replacing, you know, forests, native forests with tree farms and sometimes under the guise that, well yeah but Douglas fir grows more cubic feet of wood per acre or more, you know, biomass volume of wood per acre, blah blah blah. That's just baloney.

that's just messing with numbers, messing with people's heads to support something that's good for industry, not good for nature. But we're seeing that in all these like, even like with solar farms, right? I mean, are we, say as a nature conservancy person, and I look on their website and they have a picture of a gigantic solar farm, right? Like, so you put the solar farm, you are displacing cropland or natural land.

Daniel (01:14:28.748)

So bad.

Sam Thayer (01:14:34.432)

If you're displacing crop land that increases the value of the crops and some other natural land will be displaced somewhere to make up for that crop production. So whether you put it on crop land or natural ecosystems, by putting out solar farms, you're going to be destroying natural ecosystems. Now, we would need, I don't know what the total is. I hear different numbers. Is it 1%, 5%, somewhere in that range? Of the surface area of this country would have to be devoted to solar farms in order to meet our electric needs, right?

It's not happening without massive ecological destruction. And then invariably, herbicide is used, except in desert regions, herbicide is used between the panels to control the vegetation. And so, again, climate change is being used as an excuse to destroy nature. We need solutions to climate change, but they have to consider the actual ecology and nature as if it mattered. And if all the decisions are made by urban office pencil pushers,

and people that are not actively engaged and viscerally connected to nature through direct experience, through eating it, through sleeping in it, through touching it, then the decisions are going to be ill-conceived even if those people have the best intentions. And I do believe that some of those people have the best intentions. There is an infiltration of people with bad intentions and the people with bad intentions have an easy time

Daniel (01:15:52.005)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (01:16:02.156)

convincing people with good intentions to make dumb ecological decisions in name of climate change because their benchmark is the social world around them which contains a very limited amount of information whereas nature contains all the information about itself which is more than human beings can even conceive of.

Daniel (01:16:06.309)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:16:22.892)

And there's a lot in those last few sentences you just said there. I think people could take some time unpacking that.

Sam Thayer (01:16:25.762)

We need to keep going back to nature, keep touching it so we love it and keep observing it so we understand what's going on. that's just, environmental movement is not promoting that.

Daniel (01:16:32.58)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:16:36.4)

You know, to conclude, I wanna ask you, okay, it might take me a second to frame the question, so bear with me, and if it's too far out for you, just be like, hey man, that's outside my wheelhouse. But I've never asked you about this. Okay, good, all right. Your pump house. All right. When I look at all this, it.

Sam Thayer (01:16:49.166)

I don't have a wheelhouse, so it's OK.

Daniel (01:16:59.48)

It's like watching somebody descend into suicidal ideation. That's kind of what it looks like watching us culturally. But almost even worse because part of it looks like Lord of the Rings where it's like Sauron's trying to build himself a body. where it's literally an all-seeing eye that knows every thought you think, everything you buy, everywhere you go, it's tracking everything you do. It's got a...

GPS and gyroscope in it. It knows all your movements. It knows when it's in your pocket. It knows when it's out. It knows who all your friends are because it's geolocating itself. We've got these devices everywhere. There's this all-seeing eye. And we're building its brain. And we're building its body for some reason. And it's very anti-human. That's how it looks to me. Then it looks like we're suiciding ourselves at the genetic level and at the fertility level. mean, the sperm counts are tanked. Fertility is tanked.

People are developing a lot of new diseases that are caused by essentially our poor nutrition and our gluttony. We are catastrophically destroying our ecosystem, the whole womb that supports us.

When I look at a company like we're talking about glyphosate, so you kind of can't talk about glyphosate without sort of alluding to Monsanto and companies like that. These corporate bodies, right? They aren't a physical body, they're a corporate body. Now, if we went back 300 years and a bunch of people got together in a room, sat in a circle and tried to summon an entity, that would be like sorcery. But today it's called a board meeting and they summon this corporate, corporal, that means body, right? So they summon this non-

physical body that makes decisions that no human could make because they're so anti-human and they're so anti-ecological, right? So we have all of these corporate entities that all seem hell-bent on destroying the earth itself. We're destroying ourselves and then we're bringing in, it's like we're trying at least to bring in artificial beings, silica-based beings to replace ourselves. know, when you zoom out of it, it's like,

Daniel (01:19:13.838)

Wait, what the hell is going on here? My question is, is do you, when you look at this personally, is this a physical phenomena with emergent properties from all of the hive mind? Or is this a spiritual problem? Do you think this is a physical thing? Do you think this is a spiritual thing or a metaphysical thing? Or do you think it just, it's purely, is it purely just greed for individuals who want yachts and

sex parties or is it like, is there like a spiritual component? Like how do you reconcile that we're doing this to ourselves because squirrels don't do this and lions don't do this and you know birds don't do, like no animals doing this to itself except us and we're not just doing it to ourselves, we're doing it to all the species that are here and we're doing it in such a scorched earth way that it's almost like we want there to never be anything that can live again.

right, if we were to carry this out to its conclusion.

Sam Thayer (01:20:14.998)

So I feel like that's right in my wheelhouse, but it's also like, you know, it's like the elephant in the wheelhouse or I don't know what it's. I feel like I don't I don't separate the physical and the spiritual realms. So I think it's both. It's physical and spiritual. I also don't separate the corporate and the individual. When I say the corporate, I mean like this

Daniel (01:20:20.282)

good.

Sam Thayer (01:20:44.024)

this gigantic amalgamation of human wills, not in terms of a corporation. But sometimes, know, collective will takes on its own thing. And that makes sense. It takes on its own power, in the same way that our bodies are a collection of cells, each of which is rather powerless, but they...

together can do things that the individual cells could have never imagined doing if they weren't incorporated into this body, right? Mitochondria probably could have done a heck of a lot if it didn't get into our cells and all of a sudden, know, mitochondria, you know, that's kind of a cool thought, right? But a terrifying thought. And I don't know where it's gonna go and I don't want it to go where it seems like it might. And so, did people want...

Daniel (01:21:20.906)

Yeah, right.

Well said, yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:21:38.51)

Yachts and sex parties and people want that for sure. There's people that want that and some people You know their view is narrow enough that that's just where they're and then that's what they're pushing towards but I don't know what the total body is going to do, but I do I do feel like Human intelligence was a sort of idiosyncratic thing sort of like beavers managing their environment the way they do it was like

not really another animal that does that the way beavers do at least. And sort of like an elephant's trunk. mean, there's no other, I don't know, there's no other big animal with a fifth limb, you know? But our unique thing is this intellect. And it was really useful, but it gave us a burden. And that burden is the fear of our death. And so this is where, in my mind, the physical and the spiritual are connected.

so much of human psychology is spent assuaging our fear of death. And I want people to know that if you really connect with nature, maybe it's just me, but I don't think it's just me. I've talked to lot of people. That fear mostly disappears. Like hunter-gatherer people mostly were not afraid of death the way the modern people are because they spent their whole life alive and engaged in life. And people want to be connected to something that's

bigger than us that lasts forever. It predated us and it will outlast us and we are part of it. We are part of the big forever. And you know, if you look at Yuval Harari's book, Homo Deus, it's all about, and Sapiens, it's all about this idea that human beings are smart and now we're gonna build something bigger than us that will last forever and it will rule the universe with, know, humans and technology together will rule the universe and will become God. Humans will become God. That's what we want.

And that's what we want because we crave. That's like the craving for sugar that we keep eating the sugar and it keeps wrecking our bodies, right? But we keep eating it because it tastes so damn good. That is like what we are doing spiritually to nature, to the earth, because we're afraid of death. And we're afraid of death because we aren't connected to life. I think everybody should watch a deer's eyes as it dies for them to eat.

Sam Thayer (01:23:59.744)

and come to terms with that so they can understand that they will die just like that one day and it will be okay. It's okay that that deer died and it's okay that you will die. And when you dig up a plant, that plant dies, it's okay. It's like, death is life and life is death. You cannot have one without the other and if we try to have life without death, we will not have life. That's what this push towards AI is. It's to push us towards not having life.

Like, if we want to live forever, we won't have life at all. Life and death must be synonymous. They must exchange and interchange. It's yin and yang. And it is morally wrong because it's physically wrong. It's physically nonsensical, so therefore it's morally wrong for us to pursue infinite life. Like, I'm not supposed to live forever. I'm afraid of death. Of course I'm afraid of death. We're instinctively afraid of death. But...

I have a peace with death, I'm gonna die. And it's gonna be okay. I'm supposed to. mean, think about this. Human beings particularly, we are among the set of organisms that is born to die, right? So if you take certain plants, they actually do not have programmed to death. They simply live until a calamity kills them. It could be a disease, it could be a tree falls on them, it could be something digs them up. But a milkweed plant, a blueberry bush, a spring beauty plant.

Those things live forever until something kills them. They have no life span. They have no pre-programmed life span. So a spring beauty tuber could be 1,750 years old. It could conceivably be 35,000 years old. And I bet you somewhere in the Appalachians, in the southern Appalachians, there's a spring beauty plant that's more than 10,000 years old. They just keep living. But humans, we're not like that. We live like 70 to 100 years and then we die. We're supposed to. And anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

We're supposed to die. We're not supposed to live forever. We're meat. We're flesh. We're also spirit, right? And we're supposed to die and if we can accept that then we can stop wrecking the world in a futile Infantile desire to live forever. We can grow up and mature Accept our death and say the world is good enough. I am good enough nature is good enough. I have enough stuff I'm gonna try to live well now not longer not more not better, but just well, you know

Daniel (01:25:58.542)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:26:27.694)

That's how I see it. And maybe we won't get there. Maybe that message is not powerful enough to change anything. I don't know, I guess, but that's how I spent my life working towards for me and trying to share with people. And when I write books about foraging, it's to try to share with them this miracle of just, yes, living. Like foraging is living. Gathering food is living. Hunting and fishing and gathering, that's living. But also the psychological miracle of realizing that you're part of this

thing that is the most amazing thing ever conceived of. mean, nature is the most amazing thing and that's good enough for me. Like, I will die and my blood will soak into the soil and I will become plants that deer will eat and turkeys will eat and insects will eat and frogs will eat those insects. That's good enough for me. I don't need fairy tales. That's good enough for me because I got to experience it and I'll be...

I won't be experiencing it in this consciousness, but I will go on I will be that and that's okay So that's right. That's where I stand on that. I think it's it's all connected

Daniel (01:27:36.305)

It's so interesting how, man, first I just wanna say I really appreciate all that you just shared. I hope you write about that sometime. It's interesting because you're like, well then what do we do? And it's like chop wood, carry water. It's just like so simple. It's just like these things we're talking about, hunting, foraging, whatever your experience in nature. It's kind of like chop wood, carry water. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Because it's just like, okay, all that.

And then it's like, what do you do? Well, you just gotta wake up tomorrow and like feed yourself. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:28:09.292)

Yeah, chop wood, carry water, watch birds, make love, eat apples. mean, life is good enough.

Daniel (01:28:16.728)

Yeah. Wow, Sam. I really appreciate these insights, man. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for kind of going into this unusual territory with me. think that what I'm most interested in, and it's like, I just feel like the pragmatic and the existential are like, they have to come together now because the situation's getting so dire. And I feel like...

Sam Thayer (01:28:26.818)

Thanks for pulling me there.

Sam Thayer (01:28:40.75)

Thank you.

Daniel (01:28:41.988)

I don't want to be like the village crier like, the sky's falling, but I kind of do want to be like that because I feel like the sky is falling in a sense. And it's not the natural sky that's falling. It's just that people are doing it. And we're all contributing and we're all caught up in it. And I feel like I just got to say something. So anyway, I feel like a lot of this stuff's burning in our hearts and we're not always talking about it together. And I think it's important that we have these conversations. So yeah, thanks for going there with me today.

Sam Thayer (01:29:08.654)

Hey, no problem. And you know, when I teach foraging, I don't always say these words. Sometimes it comes out, you But by bringing people out in nature and giving them that physical connection to the land and to nature, it doesn't need to be words. Even if people never formulate words, anything like what I said, that happens inside them. The gratitude, the peace, that's the two things. It's acceptance and the peace that comes with acceptance and the gratitude for life. The acceptance of life.

and the peace and gratitude of life. And you get that through visceral physical experience of nature and no other way.

Daniel (01:29:49.909)

It feels almost sacrilegious to do it, but I wanna make sure people know about what you do, because you're not, I guess you're on TikTok now actually, aren't you? But I don't think of you as like a social media guy. Okay, cool. So yeah, you're, you know, a lot of times I feel like I get down to podcasts and people go, oh Daniel, where can people find you? And I think like, oh, this is this weird formality we do because everybody knows they can just.

Sam Thayer (01:30:00.212)

Yeah, well, I've done maybe three. I've done maybe three videos in the last year, so.

Daniel (01:30:15.512)

search for you and find you, you're a little bit more, like if people wanna get into your workshops, it's a little bit like, this is real in-person stuff, And you sell your books, not through a publisher, but you self-publish and sell your books on your own website and everything. So I just wanna give you the space to talk about that, because your books are really incredible. Your series, the Forger's Harvest series, but also the Field Guide that you did, which is what a magnum opus, man, I love that book.

and your in-person stuff is just incredible. like, you know, how do people get in that funnel to work with you?

Sam Thayer (01:30:50.424)

Sure, so my books, I still feel like it's a great way to reach people. And the books are easy to access. mean, any online book seller.

Daniel (01:30:55.492)

Yeah, those books are important to have. Those are important to have. if somebody's building their like seed vault, whatever, even if you're not gonna read them right now, you're just like, need to have the, like you want these books in your, all four of those books should be in everybody's library in my opinion. Sorry, go ahead.

Sam Thayer (01:31:15.36)

And no, that's fine, that's fine. The praise makes me feel good, you know. I won't lie. So I started my own publishing company, which was the best financial decision I ever made, although it stressed my life out a little bit. the books are pretty easy to access, whatever books to sell you find convenient. I don't sell them individually on my website anymore. You can also go to my website, foragersharvest.com and I will have my workshops.

Daniel (01:31:18.704)

It's warranted.

Daniel (01:31:37.581)

Okay.

Sam Thayer (01:31:44.244)

and speaking appearances for the year posted on there. I'll be doing a few more this year because I built the classroom kitchen building on my property. It's being built as we speak. So that'll be in service next spring for the first time. It'll make it a lot more convenient to have classes here. But I do a limited number of in-person classes, but I love to meet other foragers and to show people directly, physically, nature.

Daniel (01:31:54.603)

yeah? cool.

Sam Thayer (01:32:13.036)

You know, I do occasional videos. I keep thinking I'm going to do some YouTube videos, but I just... There's a lot of alone time in my world. I don't have someone to film me. And so it gets hard. And I want to be doing this stuff so that I have something to write about.

Daniel (01:32:21.732)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Daniel (01:32:29.572)

Yeah, well, you're one of these people who've had tremendous impact with sort of minimal input into those systems. I'm amazed by it because it's very difficult now if you're not on Instagram, YouTube, whatever, pick your thing. But you've had an incredible impact. I think sort of like when you started and then like as your expertise built, those systems weren't as relevant for you. But man, it's incredible because...

because everybody out there in the space knows your work. mean, when somebody writes, it doesn't matter if somebody writes me from China or Argentina and they're like, how do I start foraging? I recommend your books because I feel like even if, I think if you live almost anywhere in the United States, there's plants in your books that are where people are. So that's really helpful. But essentially what you teach is important.

whether it's that suite of plants or not. find that really, that techniques and the ideas and the essays that are in those books, they're useful to everybody who wants to get into the space. So I think that's really powerful. But one thing I like about being with you in person, you share on many levels. You share educationally, you share in presence, you share in song, you share in fun, and those are things that you don't get from videos and everything.

I really want to encourage people to go to one of your in-person workshops because I think if you're in this space, we have a tremendous opportunity and resource in Sam here and, you know, avail yourself of that while you can. So just got to put that out there. I don't say that about everybody, Sam. I really, really appreciate what you do. And I think being with you in person is really an important part of that. So I hope you do more videos and all of that. But yeah, if people can go work with you, man, I think that's a really big opportunity.

Sam Thayer (01:34:15.208)

Well thank you. I'm honored and I'm honored that anyone and for everybody that feels like it's worth spending time with me and I'm glad my books have worked for you and other people because that's the only reason I wrote them.

Daniel (01:34:16.271)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (01:34:30.081)

Yeah, no, they really do. yeah, so if you're looking to get into the forging space, particularly get Sam's books, but cool. Any final thoughts you have? Anything you want to share before we go?

Sam Thayer (01:34:41.036)

Yeah, well in the absence of access to me, just go out in nature. Like, go out, go out. And thank you all the listeners, viewers. Thank you, Daniel, so much for what you do and for bringing me on.

Daniel (01:34:44.826)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right on.

Daniel (01:34:54.64)

Thank you, Sam.

Daniel (01:35:00.145)

Okay, ending that session, but uploading you.

Daniel (00:01.317)

Hey, I'm here with Sam Thayer. Sam, thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it.

Sam Thayer (00:06.734)

Thanks for having me on, it's always fun to talk to you and it's an honor to be in front of your listeners.

Daniel (00:11.639)

man, it's an honor to have you on the show and I really sincerely mean that. mean, you know, we've known each other for several years now and I've just, I couldn't say enough good things about you. I think if anybody's in the wild food space, they definitely know your name. When it comes to foraging for wild foods, particularly when we're looking at plants.

You've really kind of risen to the top as the country's leading voice and leading expert and you do it in a way that's pretty demure. You're not out there doing the cult of personality thing, which is really rare today. Most of us are out there trying to push our name forward and wave our banner and you kind of have this really gentle, muted way of putting yourself out there. And yet I think most people in the space really see you as the leading voice and leading expert, at least in this snapshot of history.

You know, when it comes to wild plants, you're the guy and it's a pretty amazing thing to get to be around you when you're doing your work. But that said, I wanted to have you on the show today to kind of like stretch out from that space a little bit, because I wanted to get some perspectives from you on some other things. So we were together just recently at the Kripalu Center in Western Massachusetts. I was giving some lectures and then, you know, I kind of did want to check in and see how your workshops went while you were there.

Cause I knew you were doing some plant walks and stuff like that.

Sam Thayer (01:35.006)

I thought it was great. I mean, I love the people that came to my workshops and for me that's why I keep doing them. People ask great questions which forced me to think and forced me to learn and then put me on new ground and I always am learning new plants and learning new ecology. Like for example, I was astounded by the fact that the area we were, the entire forest understory for acres and acres was dominated by goutweed.

you know, being settled by white people for a couple hundred years less here in Wisconsin, we just don't see that. We don't see gutweed dominating forest ecosystems like that. And also I got to meet a few new plants, native and non-native. So that was fun. Well, there was a fool's parsley, Aethusis sinapium, which looks a fair amount like...

Daniel (02:18.678)

yeah, like what?

Sam Thayer (02:27.704)

Poison hemlock, and I don't actually know how toxic it is. It's kind of debated as far as its toxicity, but it looks like other carrot family plants that are edible. And at first glance, I thought it was the cow parsley, which also gets called wild chervil, another non-native that's edible. And so it was just cool to see that plant in person, which I read about for like 30 years to finally actually encounter it. And it was all over the campus there.

Daniel (02:54.553)

Yeah. Yeah, I'm curious when you're teaching classes and students are coming in, you've got people who are obviously very established already as foragers, but then I imagine you're getting new people who don't have the same background exposure. Because I think, you also are sort of, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's fair to say you're sort of in the primitive skills community to a degree as well. And so I'm assuming you draw somewhat from that world. You've been to a lot of those kind of

know, events and such, is that fair to say?

Sam Thayer (03:26.134)

Yeah, I I started out teaching about wild edibles mostly at primitive skills events. And I mean, and I've done like archery and high tanning and stuff like that my whole life. And I'm still into that, you know, fire by friction, all that kind of stuff. I'm not a good flint knapper. I'm a decent stone mason, know, but not a flint knapper, not good. so, you know, there's a huge array of people that come and I want to be prepared for the whole gamut from

Daniel (03:42.453)

Yeah.

Okay.

Sam Thayer (03:55.68)

experienced foragers who are just trying to get this like little

additional info around the margins and maybe learn a couple new plants to people that are totally new to foraging and they're not even comfortable eating a wild plant until I give them something that tastes good. And I like to have a small enough group that I can recognize like where people fall in that and I can cater to that. Like if there's, there was like 26 people in my group which was about at the upper limit of where I can do that. I did have like four hours so that I, or six hours, yeah. So I really could get to know people a little bit better and meet them where they're at.

Daniel (04:07.374)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (04:30.14)

But, you know, it works out with these totally different levels of experience and the more experienced people really help the new people feel more comfortable. So I actually like having, I don't like a beginner's class at all. I want it to be people of all levels when I'm teaching workshop.

Daniel (04:47.504)

Do you think historically, like today our modern education system breaks people out by beginner, intermediate, advanced, and then also when we're young, according to age group, how important do you think it is to have a mixed class where you have people at advanced levels and people at beginner's levels and people of different ages? Do you think that's really important in the learning process?

Sam Thayer (05:09.705)

Well,

I do. mean, the modern education system, we're trying to do something that used to happen on a personal, in the household level between a small number of people. Like, grandma taught you a few plants and how to cook them, slowly but carefully. And, you know, you would learn this skill from your dad and this skill from your mom. And we're trying to, like, kind of industrialize that in public school settings. And so I think people are doing the best that they can. But there's a huge advantage to learning something

Daniel (05:17.744)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (05:40.644)

kind of scatterbrain all over the map, right? So that's like how we learn language best. Like it's great to be exposed to a whole bunch of a new language you're learning that you don't understand. To see the language in action, be surrounded by some native speakers, but then have someone sit down and say here are the basics. Here's these words. Here's some rules of grammar that you don't understand at all because you don't think this way because you don't speak this language. And so have that slow down, explain the basics.

then push into you know like now you're in the thick of it now you come back and slow down. Okay now you do this intermediate speed and I think people learn best that way. I might take people out and show them 35 plants in a one-hour walk sometimes and I know they aren't gonna remember that. Of course they can't learn 35 new plants in an hour but maybe two years later

when they set down to learn one of those particular plants, the slow way, the right way, either with a friend or with a book or a book and a friend, they're going to have this on inkling in the...

depths of their mind that like, wait, I saw this before. yeah, I remember that one time. I tasted that. I thought it was good, but I don't even know it. And so they may have an impetus to concentrate and they may have just like a little inkling of information in the back of their mind that's helping them connect that deeper additional time when they're learning it better. So I think that kind of all over the map learning, I do think it's important. It's better.

Daniel (06:52.612)

Hmm.

Daniel (07:11.79)

Yeah, I've never taken the time to really break down what my adult learning process is. I know I have a strategy. I've never actually thought about like, are the components of it enough to be able to say like, here's my adult learning strategy. But one of the things that I like to do is I'll kind of get whatever the idiot's guide is to the very basics. And at the same time, I'll listen to let's say a podcast with two experts on the topic.

talking at a very high level that I maybe don't even understand, but I want to hear how they're talking about the topic. And then I also want to like learn those real basic fundamentals, you know, those like individual components that you needed to. And somehow the two of those things like merge together to give me like a greater cloud of knowledge than if I just did one or just did the other. So I think that might be a little bit of kind of what you're talking about.

Sam Thayer (08:02.562)

Yeah, well it's just like how people learn hunting, right? So like, if you grew up in a hunting household, you sit around, you hear the hunting stories year after year, the same stories or new stories, and through that you learn what to do, what not to do. You learn about, take dear behavior. But before I take my kids hunting, I always say to them, I'm like, hey, remember this, be quiet, be alert, be still, be aware, be ready, and be safe.

Daniel (08:09.072)

Hmm.

Daniel (08:23.12)

Yeah.

Daniel (08:30.596)

you

Sam Thayer (08:30.926)

The simple stuff, because so often when we mess up in life it's because we forgot the simple stuff. So all those levels, I think, all the time is a good, healthy way to learn. But I'm not knocking it. Classroom learning is great too, because if you're going to industrialize and teach 32 people at a time, you've got to do it some way.

Daniel (08:52.4)

Yeah. I, so the other day we were sitting down talking and you were sharing about some insights that you had had. And I want to share that. I want you to share that insight because I think it's just, but I want to use it as a learning tool. So you were talking about seeing bird migration in inverse light to how we often are taught it. And I thought that was a cool insight.

but it also was making me think about contemplation on topics. Because when you look at where a lot of like very powerful information that's changed culture has come from, know, things that have had major impacts, they often come from like emergent insight, like sudden bursts of ideation about something. But to have that, I think you need to have contemplation on something. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about

what you were telling me about your insight about bird migration, but then maybe if you could kind of tell me how you arrived there, because I think sometimes people are afraid to or unconditioned, deconditioned to real contemplation that leads to fresh insights. And like we're at a time where boy, fresh insights for people could be really useful.

Sam Thayer (10:14.808)

Well, so one of my things that I have thought for a long time that I often say is that human beings have a cognitive dysfunction in how we think, which is that when we encounter a piece of information or an idea, the first thing we do is not think to ourselves, hmm, how does this idea match with what I observe in the world? That's not how we first think about it. The first thing we think is,

said this, who else believes it, and what do I think of the people who think this? Right? So we think first socially and it's really hard to push people outside of social thinking about subject matters into actually a thinking that involves like facts and data and observations that inform

what we think first and I feel like when we have insights they come from most often outside the people world because people say the same things over and over and over again mostly right so like for example this is maybe seem like off the wall but

I have this my whole life. I've heard the song Pop Goes the Weasel, Round and Round the Mulberry Bush, the Monkey Chased the Weasel, blah, blah. And Pop Goes the Weasel. Well, I used to have weasels that lived in my cabin and under my cabin when I had this little log cabin in the woods. And I had a lot of interactions with weasels. I mean, tons. And I discovered that when weasels are alarmed, especially if like you say you catch a weasel, like you corner one and say it's in a cupboard and you want it outside and so you grab it with gloves, they make a very loud, sharp sound.

Daniel (11:51.46)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (11:55.08)

It's kind of like I would say in between a chipmunk and a 22. It's kind of like this You know, it'll scare the crap out of you. It's like a rabbit screaming like you'll drop it You'll jump back, you know, and it gives them that chance to get away And that's obviously the pop and pop goes the weasel and I think what I'm like I'm a lot like a monkey right monkey chase the weasel I mean pop goes the weasel I get it like I've been there. I've probably caught

Daniel (12:14.384)

I've been there.

Sam Thayer (12:18.102)

I don't know, at least three weasels with my hands before, you know? And I hate to admit, I've killed a few weasels with my bare hands, because when they're in the house, sometimes when they're peeing on the dishes or something, you gotta deal with that. And yet, so I typed in Google AI the other day.

do real weasels pop? And the answer is no, real weasels do not pop. And then it gives me all this information about weasels not popping and how all the hypotheses for where that nursery rhyme comes from. And it leads me to some YouTube videos that are full of crap, you know, and they're telling me that it has to do with this spinning yarn spinning tool called a weasel. And you know what? You know, that tool may pop, but.

Pop Goes the Weasel in that song clearly refers to a behavior of weasel that exactly fits what's being described in the song, right? And I got that information not from a book, because I've never seen it in a book, not from online, not from a video, not from somebody else. I know I got it from a weasel. I got it from interacting directly with weasels. so, and I feel like people need to, people need to step outside the human world to come to those intuitions.

And we don't do that enough. Now that we're ever connected, it's like, I try to tell my kids, put the phone down and just like observe the real world. It's slower. But what information it gives you is infallible. It's never trying to trick you. It's never selling you something. Never. It's never trying to get you to vote for anybody. It's nature. Look at it and it will tell you things. And it's hard to get the information out. But when you get it, it's real. It's there. And it's...

Daniel (13:39.098)

See?

Sam Thayer (13:54.656)

It's unequivocal. You might interpret it wrong, but that's your fault. That's not because there's some trickery going on. So I feel like that's where at least my more meaningful intuitions come from. So to get back to your bird migration thing, I mean, I've been an avid birder my whole life. And, you know, like most birders, I love my warblers in the spring. And I always thought of like the warblers as and other insect eating birds as traveling south to the tropical forest.

for the winter because our winters were just too cold for them. And I realized through a sort of convoluted set of thoughts one day, like, wait a second, that's totally the opposite. These are itinerant birds. They spend almost their entire life moving and they do go to the tropical forests for a little bit. But mostly they're moving and their entire life revolves around

coming to the northern part of North America to take advantage of our spring and early summer. So at our latitudes, because we're pretty close, that's from like May 15th to July 15th. There are so many insects during that period of time that they, like there is nowhere else in the world with that concentration of insects in space and time. So those birds can survive anywhere.

for a while and they can survive. But there's not the surplus that they need to reproduce. They come up here for that spring and early summer surplus. They are not leaving here to flee our winter. They don't have to be here at all. They are coming here to take advantage of this incredible resource that we take for granted because we're swatting mosquitoes and black flies and we're like, wait a second, that's why these birds are coming here. And...

Daniel (15:45.418)

Right, right.

Sam Thayer (15:49.09)

Part of what led me to that was the experience I had with you of trying to take you out to catch bullfrogs on August, I think it was 10th or 9th, and I've always known that bullfrogs go into hibernation in August, and I usually catch bullfrogs in May and June, and I wasn't paying real acute attention to when the adult bullfrogs in northern Wisconsin go into hibernation until about then. We couldn't find a single adult bullfrog. And so in the two years since then, it's been right about August 5th.

and it's not related to weather. We always want to relate things to weather. The bullfrogs are like, it's really cold, I better go hibernate. No, there's no more insects. Virtually all the aquatic, no, not in that specific instance, But virtually all of the large aquatic insect hatches are done by early August and the bullfrogs are like, this isn't worth it. The risk reward ratio, and because they're cold blooded,

Daniel (16:28.494)

So it's also not photo period.

Daniel (16:33.349)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (16:46.35)

they can hibernate really easily. They can fatten up and they're not in danger of starving like say a wood chuck which has to produce its own heat and it's harder for the endotherms to slow down their metabolism and hibernate. But even for things like black bears, mean they hibernate in the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia about the same amount of time, maybe just like two months less or a month and a half less than they do in northern Wisconsin. I mean they're out here now eating deer carcasses even though it's 15 degrees this morning.

It's going to be high of 22 and they're eating deer carcasses and acorns. They're not going to hibernate until the food runs out. It's not about the temperature, it's about the food. So that's part of the process that brought me to that conclusion. And also I was thinking about the difference between tropical and temperate soils, which growing up in the North, you're taught to think of the tropics as like a paradise. And the growing season is longer, but the growing season is much less lush and less productive.

And that's something that if you go to tropical countries people see and have trouble processing that but you can also just watch. Now there's videos of everything. Like just watch a video on gardening in Togo, you know, and look at how poor the soil is and you know look at how vegetation grows. It's slow and it is, you know, not very lush and that kind of reverberates through everything about tropical economics and tropical ecology. Plants...

have trouble getting resources and they hold them very carefully and they produce a lot of toxins in their tissues and that's why there are fewer insects. There's high biomass but that biomass is not as edible to insects and so there's not as much food for birds and so they're like, hey dude, this is the time we can go up north and we can get lots of books and have babies. So there's the process.

Daniel (18:32.24)

Yeah.

Daniel (18:36.112)

I love that. guess there's a couple things I want to draw out of that. Let me first say I went very naively to the tropics a couple times when I was young. So right around when I was 20 thinking I wanted to escape modernity. I wanted to go live off the grid and just eat fruits and live naturally and do yoga in the sun or whatever. And I remember going to, so I tried it in Florida, South Florida, tried it in Maui. And I remember just being like, oh, it doesn't work like that down here.

Like you said, the soil is really poor. And while you can grow horticulturally amazing tropical fruits, the foraging can be pretty poor. You know, I foraged in the Amazon, I foraged in Hawaii, I've foraged in New Zealand, I've foraged in Florida. The foraging is better up here for the most part, or at least the diversity and the abundance of edible foods during our growing season do seem a lot better up here. that's just an interesting, you know, thing that I learned from like

naivety and actually trying it. But I also want to say how so that was a fail for me and I learned from that and I just think it's interesting that the bullfrog fail that we had led to those insights. And I'll tie that into this. When we were talking the other day, so I'm a I'm an apocalyptic alarmist, you're kind of the opposite. And okay, but you have a great temper to it. I appreciate that.

Sam Thayer (19:56.513)

I'm with you more than you might know.

Sam Thayer (20:01.774)

tried to.

Daniel (20:01.892)

So we were lot of conversation happening right now, of course, about AI that's in the zeitgeist, right? We're all watching it like sort of filter into our world. My feeling is I think it's moving faster than mobile phones. And I think if when I go back to my first mobile phone, I had no idea what was coming. I couldn't imagine what that technology was about to turn into, but it took 20 years or something for it to mature to where it is today. But I'm watching AI mature more quickly and

I'm worried that the cognitive impacts are gonna be far more extreme than they've been with phones. So I'm really worried about what's gonna happen with people. And one of the first things that I'm seeing, you know, I was really disturbed to read this statistic recently that only 1 % of Google users click through to any links now because they get the AI insights. There's no reason to go to any websites. Now that's got a couple of, a couple problems emerge from that. One is,

who's gonna create content for websites because if you're not getting any traffic to your website, then you are disincentivized financially to put content on your website. So that means that we might be reaching like sort of the functional end of new content being put onto websites, which is kind of a bummer. But second to that, well actually not, more important to that is that I'm watching how people get information changed really, really fast.

And so my concern is that people are not going to contemplate, observe and contemplate because it's faster to just go get the information, even when the information's wrong, because you and I both witnessed over our life, people have no problem holding onto wrong information. In fact, I mean, in a lot of cases that they almost seem to prefer it. So I was curious to hear from you because the perspective that I was hearing from you around the dinner table that night was,

like, guys, think this AI, we're in a hype cycle right now. Like, okay, it sounds like it's gonna have all these massive ramifications, but I think it's probably gonna reach a crescendo and level out. So that was sort of what you were saying. I would love for you to expand on that, share your perspective on it and how you think and feel it's going to affect human cognition. Because I'm looking for positives and I see some, but way more outweighed by negatives right now.

Sam Thayer (22:25.996)

Well, I don't want to seem like I'm much of a prognosticator about technology, right? So, I mean, who am I to say? I mean, I didn't get a cell phone six years ago.

Daniel (22:32.964)

Well, can I give a little perspective on who you are to say? mean, first of all, you have a deeper ecological knowledge and connection than 99.9 % of modern people living in the modern life way. So that's one reason. You pump your own water at your house by hand. I mean, you're living with a foot in both worlds and most people are all in to modernity. So I think you have a perspective

you you gather a significant amount of your calories out of wild places from species that you have relationships with. I mean, that alone puts you in a pretty unique position to comment on it because you're less touched by it. So I think a lot of us, you know, it's like if somebody's in abusive relationship and you're like, tell me about your husband, you know, versus like you're watching it from the outside, watching that person get beat up and be like, let me tell you about your husband. You know, like you you're less of

You have less Stockholm syndrome to our culture. So I think that your perspectives matter and are really important.

Sam Thayer (23:37.998)

Okay, well I agree with you there but I still am nervous about prognosticating about the future. it seems like the history of technology is when a technology first comes out there's a prediction that it's going to have this, there will be like a rapid increase in its utility and in its functionality and there's a prediction that that's going to just perpetually increase at that rate but eventually

Daniel (23:45.178)

We all should be.

Sam Thayer (24:07.886)

there's a leveling off, but at the same time that technology goes somewhere that we didn't imagine it was going to go.

Sam Thayer (24:22.912)

I feel like, I guess one is maybe it's just rosy thinking, but really rapidly. Well, say for example, electrification of homes and lighting, right? When that came out, it just really rapidly spread, like in one human lifetime from like virtually nobody having it to virtually everybody having it. And, but.

it didn't change a lot then in the next human lifetime. And I know that lighting is a simple technology, right? But when you look at firearms, right? So there's been a few major improvements in firearms since they were invented. And then there's been a leveling off and there hasn't been really huge increases in the functionality of firearms for now for a human lifetime, right? And so those are much simpler technologies and it's maybe easier to predict, but...

It seems like something like that happened both with cell phone use and with AI use, but I don't know where the end point is, and I don't know what the unexpected permutation is going to be. I was talking with my kids about this, how today people can't imagine living without a cell phone. And I remember when I was my son's age, when I was 14 and I was first exposed to the idea of cell phones, and I first saw people with cell phones and they were like these giant things, and I'm like.

Who needs that? Who wants a stupid phone you have to carry all the time? I don't want people to be able to call me all the time. I don't want my mom to be able to call me when I'm fishing. You know, like I don't need to talk to my friends when I'm out in the woods. If they're with me, that's cool, but I don't want to talk to them otherwise, you know? And like now it's an absolute necessity. So an absurdity became a necessity. So what absurdity today will be a necessity in 25 or 30 years? I don't know. I was trying to be optimistic, but I'm terrified.

Daniel (25:53.782)

Right. Right. Right.

Daniel (26:16.272)

Okay, all right, all right good we're on the same page.

Sam Thayer (26:16.77)

in the same way that you are. Yeah, we're on the same page. I'm terrified. was just, I felt like, I don't know, I felt like you were so worried about it that I wanted to like, I wanted to throw a wrench into the machinations of your worry, right? I was like, hey, there could be light at the end of tunnel. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it's just a train coming, but there could be light at the end of that tunnel, you know? And so I'm really not disagreeing with you in any fundamental way about that.

Daniel (26:38.37)

Yeah. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (26:46.658)

kind of tempering it, because maybe I need to do that for myself too.

Daniel (26:47.578)

Yeah, balancing it out, I appreciate that. I often will do the same. I guess, you know, when we started off talking today, I was asking you about who comes in as new students. And I'm wondering, so I felt for a long time that the work that we do with Wild Foods matters more than a lot of other hobbies. You know, there's lots of things people can do for hobbies that are really fun and really cool. You could be a kite surfing or

paragliding or you know any roller skating or like there's all kinds of hobbies a person can have but this one is the one that people needed to survive since there was people and so it has a unique place it's not just like a hobby like forging is my hobby it's like much deeper than that and it gives people the ability I mean

pray we never need it, but it gives us the ability to restart and reset after calamity if you have this knowledge. And it can disaster proof you against famine or collapse of crops or, or any number of things that could happen. It just gives you that firm foundation. It connects you to ecology. I think there's like a fundamental deep loneliness that human beings are going through because they don't know any other species. And so it's like,

Humans, cats, and dogs, a pretty lonely world to live in when there's as many species as there are to know. I'm sure you've seen some of that research that was done that showed that the average elementary school kid knew more animals from Africa's savanna than they did from their own environment. So you have all that kind of going on. And now with what's happening with AI, you see people kind of moving more and more into the digital space and almost like abandoning the natural world. So they're spending all their time in the built environment.

and now more and more in the digital environment. And so I'm wondering if there's gonna be sort of like a natural exodus of people who are like divergent in their thinking that are like, wait, no, I need to like go back in the other direction. So I'm wondering if you're seeing any of that. I'm wondering if...

Daniel (28:59.96)

If you think that it's possible where people are getting too far out on a limb and any of these skills could be necessary, or do you think that for generations to come, this remains like a hobby of ours? You know what I mean? Because it could just be like it just remains a hobby. We just keep passing it on to the next generation, or it could be like, wow, man, mean, you you can't buy or sell unless you have a chip in your brain. So good to know how to get some eats. You know what I mean?

Sam Thayer (29:27.854)

I think it should be both things and I think it will be both things. I think it will be part of the resistance to control of us. You know, it's like the book Brave New World. I know if you read that, you know. know, people, I do think in times and places people will simply separate themselves from the greater society in order to have some autonomy and freedom and to do that they will have to have certain skills. It also, however, I mean,

Daniel (29:39.738)

yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (29:57.678)

We, as in the government, the corporate media, I say the clergy of GDP, the people that worship GDP as if that's a measurement of vitality and life and happiness and that's all that's good. GDP has replaced the church from Western European civilization in the Middle Ages. The church was the everything that society was like built for and moved.

Daniel (30:07.962)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (30:25.442)

towards and in unison with and under the tutelage and control of, that was the church, right? The quasi-religious state. And today it's GDP. GDP is this like, God we worship. And...

Daniel (30:40.688)

For people listening, to say it, you're talking about gross domestic product, talking about our economy.

Sam Thayer (30:43.022)

Gross domestic product, like it's the sacred number that if a politician was to doubt the sacred number, they would never have a political career after that. Just like you would have been excommunicated and perhaps, you know, assassinated in the middle ages if you doubted the church's validity, right? And so, on this tangent, I'm losing my train of a little bit, but the people, the,

Daniel (31:07.408)

I'm pushing you into a new territory here with this conversation.

Sam Thayer (31:13.364)

Like, so the people that control our thoughts and everything, they don't control us just by giving us things that we need. They now control us by giving us things that we become addicted to. And maybe it's been that way for a long time. There's people that hypothesize that a big part of the origin of agriculture itself was beer. But the...

What they're doing is they're giving people addictive substances. I mean, if you go into a gas station, it's like, you're surrounded by addictive substances. know, sugar, caffeine, nicotine. I mean, it's just, you alcohol. And then people are carrying around these addictive objects, these phones, that have addictive information because it's...

cognitively, psychologically addictive and you can watch that especially in children. You can just watch them with the addiction and you see children and adults too but it's really obvious in children because they've learned a little bit less restraint. They go through withdrawal symptoms if they are taken away from that addictive object, addictive information and I didn't really suspect

powerful like that's maybe a new insight for me like in the last eight or ten years and I'm struggling with how people will get past that addiction but just like your addiction to sugar is I think best cured by a healthy diet it's not that easy right but if you can cut yourself off of sugar and eat healthy food I think the psychological addiction that we get and the substance addictions together compounded as like kind of like a

They call the military industrial complex. It's like the physical, psychological, addictive complex that we are fed to keep us in line. We can break from that through foraging. And that's why I think that by being in touch with nature, we can help ourselves think on our own, but also eat on our own and understand what healthy thought feels like and what healthy food feels like.

Daniel (33:21.146)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (33:23.968)

and what a healthy lifestyle feels like. So I think that besides being this fallback skill in case times get really bad, and if we look at human history, times periodically get really bad, and those skills really matter, and of course it's going to happen again, and it's happening multiple places in the world right now. But also I think it's a hobby that we should curate as our birthright.

and pass down and teach to our children and participate in that and not in the sense of kids you need to do this because it's good for you and they're like kids let's do this it's awesome it's great you know and it has its own addictive element it's know forging is the original video game you know like the original video game you know all these things you know fishing has that same reward you know endorphin rush and all that the anticipation

Daniel (34:10.96)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (34:22.894)

And you know, I don't know how important it has to be to provide that function in our psychological and physical lives, but I think it needs to be part of our lives. I think we need to think of it not as a fringe thing. I think we need to think of it as like tooth brushing. Right? It's like a thing, I mean, know some people that don't believe in brushing teeth, but like in general, okay, like hygiene, right? Like if you're ignoring your hygiene, you know, that's a problem.

I feel like if foraging or some meaningful connection to nature isn't part of your life, you're missing some psychological hygiene. And I don't think it's replaceable with any other activity. Like I think bird watching is great and it's very not tangentially related to foraging, right? The desire to watch birds. It's like, you know, if I was a cat and there was a window and there's birds outside, I'm gonna watch those birds, right? I mean, humans, we watch wildlife because it's part of what we are, you know?

And the curiosity is general whether we're eat the thing or not. We're curious about life and how life unfolds So I think that that foraging is part of our psychological birthright and I I do think it's hard without connecting nature in this like fundamental ways for us to be psychologically healthy and To be able to think well and we see this in

are when people get their information from screens or from each other or from newspapers or books or televisions, whatever it is, instead of directly from nature, then we are prone to being manipulated because somebody is controlling that information that's given to you and they have a motive. Nature provides a constant stream of information with no motive. It's just there.

for you to pull from it what it can teach you and then you can in the clarity of the absence of noise, nature is not noise, it's information, right? In the absence of that noise, you can analyze the information and come up with insights that are valuable to you. mean, you know, that's why Jesus would go up and pray for 40 days and 40 nights, right? Like,

Sam Thayer (36:47.916)

like whatever you want to call it. mean, that's communing with the divine. But it doesn't have to be 40 days and 40 nights. It could be 15 minutes in the morning before breakfast or whatever it is. mean, you know.

Daniel (36:56.944)

Yeah.

Daniel (37:01.24)

It's interesting, know, just because you just said that I'll bring up the metaphor. Something that's fascinated me from very early on is how what the symbol on the back of the phone is for most of us, you know, because it's it's the apple with the bite taken out of it, right? So that's the knowledge of good and evil, right? That's the forbidden fruit, obviously with the bite. If it was just an apple, you'd be like, well, it's just an apple, but it's got the bite taken out. And that was sort of like the idea that what corrupted mankind

was instead of that communion with the divine, it was going after this false teaching, right? So that's like the sort of biblical metaphor. And here we are now where we're all addicted to this device that gives us this information, but it's like often very corrupted information. It's not that observational information or those insights that come direct, you know? And what's challenging about it, so something I've been doing lately is I keep my phone on black and white because I notice that all those bright light colors,

When I was a kid, remember, do you remember the toy Light Bright? Yeah, and you could like turn off the lights, right? So if you're a Gen Z kid or something, a millennial, you don't remember this toy. I it was basically a light box with all these little perforations in it, and you'd stick a black piece of paper over it that would cover the light. And then you had these little translucent little posts, little pokey posts. Yeah, and you'd stick them in and there would be a pre-

Sam Thayer (38:02.936)

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (38:23.318)

Yeah, I totally forgot about this, but yeah.

Daniel (38:27.534)

designed pattern on there and you'd put them in and the light would come through those translucencies and it would light up and glow. Well, before the digital age, that kind of color was like looking at fireworks or something or the Aurora. It just was very enticing. But now we have that in our. Yeah, right by the exactly I got to erase this thing. That's still a pretty cool toy, actually. Anyway, my point is now we have that in our pocket and those bright lights.

Sam Thayer (38:42.498)

That was on the shelf right by the Etch-A-Sketch.

Daniel (38:55.054)

It's like when you walk into the convenience store full of all the addictive things you were talking about and they're all brightly colored, little juicy, sweet, sugary, but it's like all this like hyper stimulating color. You know, when you're looking at your phone and then you look up at the natural world, it's like the natural world can look a little dull at first till you reacclimate to it. And that's what I see so hard for kids is like, it takes a little while to where you start to see nature as bright and exciting.

when you're used to all of those bright colors, you know? So I'm kind of curious your thoughts on that. You were talking about the 40 days in the wilderness or the 15 minutes of gathering insight. Any thoughts on how to, or maybe on how you manage that or how your kids are managing that? Making that break from, because obviously you're having to interact with these technologies, you're doing it right now with me. So have you found challenges in breaking away from it to,

Re-acclimating to the natural world. Like how are you managing that?

Sam Thayer (39:56.386)

It's hard, but.

One thing I would say is, is nature's, the signals can be subdued and they can be diffused, right? But those bright colors in nature, they are information, important information, like a bright red fruit. It's there, it's bright to attract your attention to it. This might be food. A bright red caterpillar, a bright yellow caterpillar, or a coral snake. These are signals that nature is giving that there's something you need to pay attention to here. But.

Now, if you can give kids a turtle, right? Like, you have a screen, right? Like, you give them a real turtle, all of a sudden, they forget about that screen for a while, right? Because the screen is not nearly as exciting as the turtle, right? The turtle's not addictive in the way that the screen is. So, that doesn't answer all of it, right? Because that turtle's not gonna be there forever and eventually they're gonna go tired of the turtle. But for 20 minutes...

Daniel (40:31.61)

Yeah, yeah.

Sam Thayer (40:56.438)

I might, the whole world might be the turtle, right? Or the bullfrogs. Or a snake. I mean, you add fear or excitement, you know? I find a big bull snake or a fox snake and I can show some kids. I mean, everything disappears. They're probably gonna pull their phone out and try to take a picture of it. But for the most part, it now centered on the real world. And so part of hooking kids

Daniel (41:16.856)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (41:26.088)

or anyone, say kids, people, adults also, into nature and overcoming that addictive power is finding those most powerful elements of nature, the very things that we're trying to imitate the relationship to, like the excitement, like catching a fish for a kid is still super excited if you can get them past the boredom of not catching a fish until you catch one. Or same thing with hunting or whatever.

So I try to look for those situations where I can show somebody something really exciting that's like right away that they can experience like a fruit or berry or hazelnuts smell them you can't smell anything on your phone you know like like like not now now taste the sour juice in the husk of that hazelnuts just bite it I'll tell you bite the hazelnuts smell it like you'll never forget that smell now bite it and the juice comes out it's like sour astringent but lemony

juice and you're like I had no idea that hazelnut tastes like that. I I can just close my eyes at any time and imagine that hazelnut smell you know and I smell that hazelnut husk smell and I taste the juice of the husk I can taste the nut inside and then rip it open and crack a few and get kids to taste them and it's like magic it's a real physical object but yeah it is a constant battle to pull people away from the addictive thing and that's why the addiction is so powerful.

I think we need to call it out by name and call it what it is. And this technology is so new that we are not used to describing it for what it is. Like we know that alcohol is addictive and we've watched it ruin people's lives. And we've seen it taken out of its original context, cultural context, now just destroying people's lives because it's cheapened.

Daniel (42:57.488)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (43:19.214)

We have not developed a set of like social norms and ideas and teaching points and talking points among ourselves, each other and our children to deal with this digital technology. You know, there's research coming out that it's like we can't even keep up with it. Like by the time I read what I'm supposed to have done with my kids 40 years ago, it's too late, you know? So it's real, but nature is also powerfully.

Daniel (43:39.812)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (43:46.478)

I would say addictive, in a healthy way, in the same way that food is addictive, right? Like friendship is addictive. Like if you have a good friend, then not having a friend in your life all of a sudden feels like you're really messing out on something. It's supposed to be that.

Daniel (43:51.887)

Yeah.

Daniel (43:59.601)

addictive but non destructive. Yeah, well, okay, I don't

Sam Thayer (44:01.381)

Right, right.

Daniel (44:07.524)

When we were at that lecture, doing our workshops there at Kripalu, Sephora made a joke about me being real doomy and that she said that, you know Daniel's message, it's too late to be pessimistic, she was saying, which I thought was really funny. But at the risk of being that way, I guess I'm just that way, one thing that's happening is that as these technologies rise, concurrently with it, the natural world,

is being altered very dramatically, very quickly. So lest somebody who doesn't have experience in the natural world thinks that, you know, there's all this wild, this wild world, and then there's just these pockets of civilization and the rest of that's been left intact. Like if it's not built up, it's intact. Like that's not true, right? I mean, we've dramatically changed landscapes, moved species, altered distributions, and then added

a lot of chemistry to the environment. I saw I want to talk about that too, because it's not like us as foragers and hunters, we just step out into some pristine like Eden where it's like still untouched by civilization. And then I want to add to that this piece about everybody knows it, everybody knows the natural world's in a bad state, because we haven't been tending to it. And instead, we've been exploiting it. So we've created this

myth about, it's almost like a religious myth about our climate. It seems like, I feel like five years ago I would have been very hesitant to say that. I would have spoken much more carefully because boy, people would just attack you for it. Now I feel like people are kind of realizing, it's not that the climate isn't changing, the climate's a verb, it's always changing. But this story we have about the climate,

isn't necessarily the whole story. Like the problem with our ecology is a lot more of the things we're doing to it. And I was wondering if you could speak to that because it's like people just think, it's just, it's what I'm exhaling is the problem. And it's like, man, that's actually not really the problem.

Sam Thayer (46:20.024)

Well, can I speak to it? It's like more like, can I shut up? So first I want to give you like a look at human history in a way that distills in a way that not many people have thought about it. Right? If we look at the long scope of human history, you could say at some point in the past, I don't know how long ago, and it may have never happened with the species Homo sapiens. Let's say we were living off of

Daniel (46:21.904)

Please. Yeah, okay, let's see, got some time.

Sam Thayer (46:50.018)

natural environments and we were taking natural as an unaffected by humans, right? And we were just taking a surplus food out of that system and eating it. And that's why our numbers were at a low density, right? And that may have never been part of our species history. Probably wasn't.

Daniel (47:07.386)

For listeners, you're saying that might have been another species of Homo before Homo sapien?

Sam Thayer (47:12.462)

Yeah, so maybe Homo erectus lived that way or maybe Homo heidelbergensis lived that way maybe Neanderthals lived that way But I think you know people act like that's an outlandish statement I'm like hey look beavers have been around a long time and they create their own environment. They raise their own food essentially They don't they don't farm the way humans farm, but they create their own food environment

Daniel (47:34.404)

Landscape Engineers.

Sam Thayer (47:36.066)

Exactly. Pocket gophers do a similar thing. It's not as well known, but they create the disturbance that promotes the plants that produce roots that are good for pocket gophers, you know, by their mounds and so they kind of create their own disturbance that creates their own food supply. So I think human beings probably have always been that way. We had fire before we were homo sapiens. However, at some point...

We've grown gradually more organized and systematic and how we manage the landscape. So the first big tool for doing that was fire. Now fire in general on many landscapes promotes the production of food. Now don't need to get into all the detailed theories about this, but when you add fire to a landscape, fire generally increases the amount of food for human beings on the landscape for a number of reasons. Fire keeps the biomass closer to the ground so it's more edible to large

herbivores that makes more meat for people to eat. It increases the amount of nuts and small seeded, herbaceous plants with edible seeds and fire increases the quantity of fruit on the landscape and root vegetables. I mean, that's basically the gamut of human foods right there. All of them are generally benefited by fire. So people learned a long, long time ago, certainly by 30,000 years ago, virtually every hunter-gatherer

group in the world knew at least some places fire was a way to affect the landscape. Now fire is like, it kills some plants but not all plants. You you burn a landscape, it favors some plants over others. And the next big thing that people figured out or started doing to control the landscape was the plow. Plows, unlike fires, kill everything. So you clear land, you kill all the native vegetation, and then you make sure it all stays dead.

except for the one or two things you want to plant. That's a plow. And the plow went through, first it was human operated, then it was pulled by draft animals, then the plow was pulled by machines, and they each made it more labor efficient and more land could be put under the plow. And this was a great destructive process. So fires changed the ecology of the world, but they made the world...

Sam Thayer (49:46.126)

It was still natural, was still vibrant and full of life and you could argue that maybe it made the world, quote, better, but it made it better for people, right, and certain species. Other species didn't benefit as much, but, you know, the plow was different, right? With each step of mechanizing the plow,

First, the plow was confined to really good soils and really small areas and the food was really precious. It was produced. When you added animals, you could do bigger areas and then when you added machinery, internal combustion engines, all of a sudden plows could be applied to humongous areas and zip, there goes the 20 % of the Earth's land surface that is the most ecologically productive is gone. It is ecologically dead. It is not much better than a parking lot ecologically, right? And then,

We are now coming to this great new, the next revolution in control of the biosphere, the way to kill plants is now chemical, right? And some people think I'm exaggerating that, like, but this is just as big as the invention of the plow. So we can go back to, you know, there were very expensive general herbicides.

available for a long time like when the Romans defeated Carthage, Scipio spread salt on Carthaginian fields so they couldn't grow crops, right? That was an herbicide, but a very expensive one. And you know, then we had things like copper sulfate, very expensive, kills everything, borate, know, things that are... It's with World War II that we come up with cheap potent herbicides.

And that was as big of an invention in terms of its impact on world ecology as the invention of agriculture itself.

Daniel (51:35.546)

Can I pause you there and ask this question? Do you think it's fair to say that the weapons of war were converted into pesticides essentially? Like these were munitions, right? And we're talking about nitrogen, which still can be used to make explosives. Were these weapons technologies that we converted to agricultural purposes essentially?

Sam Thayer (51:59.598)

Some of them were, and certainly the capital was repurposed, right? So there was this massive investment in chemical producing capital, and then that was repurposed for agricultural chemicals. even if, you know, the war may have made these things happen a little quicker, but it was going to happen anyway. Yeah, we were strongly trending there. But as has happened so often in human history, conflict is a major push toward innovation, right? So we maybe got there a generation earlier, but...

Daniel (52:15.376)

We were trending there.

Sam Thayer (52:28.726)

Now we have, you know, 2,4-D and glyphosate and all these different chemicals that are usually selective. But what they allow us to do that even plows, even mechanically driven plows couldn't do is they allow us to control the vegetation on steep rugged landscapes where we cannot easily operate machinery. And also on landscapes where the biotic production potential is low.

And so we're already seeing this in Europe. Most of the forests of Northern Europe, or most of Europe in general, is actually tree plantations. It's not forest anymore. so the biggest threat to forests in the world today is the replacement of forests with tree plantations. And this is insidious, right? So we had like a few years ago, maybe 2020, I forget what it's called, I think I wrote it down, the...

the name of this organization. yeah, the World Economic Forum. have their one, yeah, yeah, by the way, World Economic Forum, GDP worshipers as organized as they can be, right? And so we have people like, you know, they have the Trillion Tree Initiative. Donald Trump's on board. Emmanuel Macron is on board. You know, everyone's on board. Well, you know what they're doing? They are,

Daniel (53:35.203)

yeah, lovely fellas over there. I love those folks.

Sam Thayer (53:57.4)

cutting down real forests and replacing them with tree plantations. And they are constantly using the rhetoric of carbon sequestration to reduce global warming as part of the excuse for this ecologically egregious act. I got to actually go in France to these places while they were actively cutting ancient native beach forests.

mostly beech, some oak, some elm, but mostly beech, and replacing them with Douglas fir plantations established in rows and maintained with herbicide. That is what herbicide is allowing us to do. So you take rugged landscapes. So all the nature left in the world, it's either too wet, it's too rugged, or it's too unproductive for agriculture. So we have the vast boreal forests. It's soil-less.

glacier scraped rock of the Canadian shield and in northern Europe, you know, we have these vast boreal forests, biggest forest in the world, right? And then we have the second biggest forest area in the world. We've got the tropical rainforests. We've got the Congo, we have, you know, Borneo and parts of Southeast Asia. And then we have the Amazon rainforest, super infertile. You know, people don't realize that that's the least fertile soil in the world. That's like made of small part.

Daniel (55:21.422)

All the nutrients are in the forest itself, but not in the soil there, right? Essentially the soil is a very thin layer and all those nutrients are in the canopy, right? Something like that.

Sam Thayer (55:31.266)

Yes, but what's also happened is that areas around the equator that have not been disturbed by mountain upheaval or glaciers, the soil layers have not mixed. There's no new rock. So the soluble minerals have been removed for, in most of those places, more than 100 million years of rain has leached the soluble minerals out of the soil. So even what is in the system is very, very sparse and low.

Daniel (55:57.092)

needs like a catastrophic renewal event.

Sam Thayer (55:59.884)

Yeah, exactly. I that's what glaciers were. That is why temperate regions that are glaciated or mountainous regions is where all of the high densities of people in the world are, and it's where people are most prosperous because it creates fertile soils. So anyways, the tropical rainforests are also, right now, I guarantee you, there's a whole bunch of airplanes flying over the Amazon, spraying herbicide down to defoliate, and then people are, I mean, this is, people can research this. This is going on huge scale.

but we're not in the Amazon looking at that. And when we're looking at our smartphones, it's not popping up, right? So these massive change in world ecology is happening like under our noses, but we're not even sniffing it, you know? We're not even looking at it. So, you know, the Mesquite country in Texas, it used to be...

that these areas of Texas were prairie and mesquite was usually confined to steep ravines and washes and long streams and it was scattered on the uplands but fires would burn the prairies of Texas and they would push back the mesquite and it's a natural native plant. It's a great plant in a lot of ways. It's great for wildlife but ranchers don't like it and when they remove fire from the landscape and you add the disturbance of cattle droppings and cattle trampling and grazing the mesquite goes crazy and has been managed instead of

through fire, mostly through chainsaw. But when you cut just mesquite with a chainsaw, you're just cutting mesquite. Now, mesquite's managed with herbicide. There is roughly 50 to 55 million acres of mesquite rangeland in Texas. That is about one and a half times the size of the state of Wisconsin. It's about 1.7 times the size of the state of Maine. It's ridiculous, right? And almost all of that, very comfortable saying an area the size of the entire state of Wisconsin.

the state of New York or the state of Maine. That much area is being nuked eerily with herbicide in the state of Texas. Just in Texas, as its normal form of management. When they do this, it doesn't kill this mesquite, it kills two thirds to three quarters of the native flora is obliterated by the spraying. And no one's talking about it.

Daniel (58:12.9)

What is this glyphosate or are we talking about other pesticides too?

Sam Thayer (58:17.454)

I'm actually not sure what pesticides are being used, but I've been there on the ground, walked through the sprayed areas, watched the regenerating vegetation. Texas is a big state. There's a lot of hours you can drive through this. I mean, there are literally chunks of like 20,000 acres of mesquite skeletons with non-native invasive weeds and grasses and some native ones mixed in growing up between those mesquites. And this is one example, right?

Daniel (58:44.376)

Can I, a couple things are emerging here for me as you say this. One is, and this part is like really shocking and insidious. A lot of the people who are involved in this kind of work consider themselves as environmentalists. They're doing this work for the environment in their minds, right? Like I know a lot of what's happening here with the spraying of roadsides with pesticide is to eliminate invasive species. They think they're actually doing useful work.

for native species, right? So the people perpetrating it think they're doing it for good. So that's like one component. Second thing I wanna say is so many people think that the reason that we're genetically modifying food crops is to make them more productive when in reality it's just to make them resistant to the glyphosate that allows us to now instead of spot apply, aerial spray it and the plants that were growing that means that.

They're resistant, so that means they can be covered in it, which is not good for us, because we're gonna eat them. But also, these aren't more productive varieties of plants. They're just resistant to the poison that we couldn't spray on them before. So that's like another component. And then the third part of this I wanna say is that this is what's happening while we're all talking about carbon, right? So we're talking about CO2. Meanwhile, we're wholesale poisoning our soils and

Sam Thayer (01:00:02.072)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (01:00:10.042)

defoliating denuding our landscape at the same time. All those things true.

Sam Thayer (01:00:15.374)

Absolutely. you know, and I'm not saying that human cause global warming is not real. It's real and it's a problem and we need to address it. And look, like I live off grid, you know, I have a house that I built out of logs that I cut and carried on my shoulders on my property, know, like locally cut wood. I heat with wood. You know, like I said, I pump my own water. Like I have tried to live by those

Daniel (01:00:21.68)

Mm-hmm. Sure. Yep.

Sam Thayer (01:00:44.246)

values, know, off-grid photovoltaic, solar electric, etc. But that's not going to solve this climate issue, you know. And we can't try to solve the climate issue and ignore the things. I mean, this herbicide thing is a way bigger deal ecologically. I mean, while we sit and argue about carbon footprints and about, you know, carbon sequestration and what's the best way to lower

our carbon footprint and all that. All of the things that we are worried about global warming doing, we are doing actively with herbicide at a far faster rate than global warming would ever do them. And each time there's an issue, we're talking about that issue, framing it in a way that ignores the ecology and just focuses on the global warming part. I'll give you two examples. We talk about monarchs disappearing on the Great Plains.

and all the other thousands of insects that are disappearing. Like as much as the monarchs are declining, there's like, it's not like monarchs are declining way more than other things. There's tons of plants and animals declining just like monarchs. And that is almost 100 % caused by herbicide. And people will talk like 60 % of the discussion of it is like revolves around, maybe it's only 40%, but it revolves around, you know, global warming.

Daniel (01:02:07.044)

You

Sam Thayer (01:02:10.744)

Global warming is not harming the monarchs. It's the herbicide. And you can just compound that over, say, maybe 7,000 native species just in North America. And we're not talking about the herbicide is that problem. And I had another.

Daniel (01:02:25.232)

We'll almost talk about everything else. mean, you'll hear it's the cell phone towers, it's the 5G, it's the, you know, everything, but you don't hear. the thing about the insects is I've witnessed it in my lifetime. I witness it because it's so simple and people who've listened to me for years will have heard this, but it used to be if you drove from the North Maine woods down to where I live in Southern Maine in the summertime, your car would absolutely be caked in dead insects. And you can do that drive now.

and there's barely any. And I mean, just have watched it year after year. It's just less insects. I mean, considerably.

Sam Thayer (01:03:01.294)

and less birds and less snakes and less lizards and I mean you almost all these species across the board and you know so other and you know the environmental movement has a history of doing this right so I'll give you an example like in from like 1920 to like say 2000 2010 almost a century there there was this focus on deforestation

Daniel (01:03:04.292)

Hmm.

Sam Thayer (01:03:31.052)

Right? And let's look here at the United States. During that period, our amount of forest was dramatically increasing during that period. And yet we have this smoky the bear ethic, right? And smoky the bear was a tool created by industry and government in lockstep to trick people about forest ecology and trick them into allowing us to manage forests for timber rather than for nature.

Right? And so we eliminated fire from our forest management and then we create this horrible fire problem that is in the western states, all over the country, but especially California. Right? And that is partly due to global warming, the serious fire problems we've had recently, but it is mostly caused by this smokey the bear mentality of managing forests for industry rather than ecologically sound. And for that century, we were ignoring

We were ignoring all the species, which is roughly 40 % of the species in North America, which are fire dependent, because virtually all of our forests and all of our prairies are fire dependent or fire was an important part of modulating those ecosystems over time. While all sorts of plants and animals just disappeared steadily for years in the 30s, 40s, 50s, it was like exponential, like each decade there was like, you know,

only 40 % at the end of the decade, what there was in the beginning. And I got to see it even in my lifetime. I go to southern Wisconsin and the prairie relics that I visited in the 80s and early 90s, they're all gone. They're buckthorn and brush and forest. And we were losing our prairies and all of our grasslands and all of our fire dependent communities, even though we scientifically knew we were losing them, because the media and industry and government was focused on industrializing

our forests. And so we lost our forests and our grasslands because of this warped quasi-environmental thing that was happening in our heads. And it's happening now with climate change in that, you know, I used to wonder, I used to see, like when I was a teenager, I used to see like the political right as like the enemy of environmentalism. And I was like, you know, I was in a birds and snakes and, you know, and like I was a nature conservative volunteer when I was

Sam Thayer (01:05:51.31)

14 at the age of 17 I became I got the certification to be a nature Conservancy spokesperson so I could go like a to like a DNR meeting and say like as a representative of the nature Conservancy I think blah blah blah right and like and and and I just I Really love what the nature Conservancy did but you know I used to one I used to think that our enemies were on the political right well those people just they admit that they don't give a crap about nature right on the left you have this like I don't know this like he's like

pencil pushing office urban people that think that they care about nature but don't know a damn thing about it and don't actually care. They just think it's good to sound like they care. And so those people

have they control the rhetoric now so that we just aren't talking about all these other issues. Environmentalism is dead. Environmentalism was killed by the left not the right. The right never supported it. I mean a little bit right but the right didn't really care about the environment and they admitted that. The left pretended they cared and in that insidious

Daniel (01:06:58.032)

Well, on the right they call it conservation and the interest is really in antlers.

Sam Thayer (01:07:04.588)

Well, some, yeah, but I mean, there's all, if you go back to like the 50s, you know, there was more legitimate concern, like on the political right. But by the 80s and 90s, it had mostly dissipated, right? So to say within my lifetime. But actually, if we talk about the real issues, it's easier to get the political right interested because there are a lot of people.

Daniel (01:07:31.192)

Now, present, we're talking about.

Sam Thayer (01:07:31.766)

I live, yeah, I live around them. They vote for Trump and they are very right leaning. But if I talk about a bird disappearing, they care because it's concrete and they have birds in their yard, right? But if I talk about an abstract thing about climate change that they sense, they smell bullshit and they want to push it away and they are right in what they smell, right? And I'm not saying like, and a lot of these people, they aren't

Some of them are really silly and pretending that there's no climate change happening. But most of them, it's more complicated view than that. And the Nature Conservancy, when I volunteered for them, we had a very distinct mission of preserving land and managing habitats for rare and declining species, et cetera. Most of the Nature Conservancy's mission statement now is about climate change.

The nature conservancy has been absorbed, subsumed, superseded by climatism. Whatever permutation of environmentalism, whether it's just regular old environmentalism or the deep ecology movement from the 80s and 90s that I felt that I was part of, or whether it's conservation, which is like the wise use, but use of natural resources. And I'm there too, right?

I'm all for forestry. It's the most sustainable industry we have. We need to do it right, but we should be cutting our public forests and getting timber from them, because if we don't, we're going to be getting it from tree farms. Right? So I'm there. I'm in the conservation sphere too. But climatism has just replaced all that. We don't talk about biodiversity. We don't talk realistically about any of the environmental issues anymore. And meanwhile, like climate thing is important. It's important. But you know what?

biggest ecological thing facing the world today is not climate change. It's herbicide and we are completely ignoring that. And I've had people just attack me, jump down my throat for saying that, but I'm not getting my information from any talking head anywhere. Not from even somebody on a podcast like this. I'm getting that information from going outside and watching, watching people kill nature with herbicide.

Sam Thayer (01:09:50.048)

And it's so much faster and so much more drastic and so much more severe than any potential climate change scenario that we're talking about. And I'm terrified of what's happening to nature before my eyes. And I'm terrified that there isn't even an environmental movement to talk about it anymore because climate change has swallowed us.

Daniel (01:10:13.616)

It does seem to like the what the climate change narrative is going to lead to from my perspective, at least is climate management. know, so you're seeing now the patents are coming out for, you know, geoengineering, the atmosphere for experiments in the ionosphere, reflective particles, you know, things like that. there's this it's going to lead to, we need to now become managers of weather systems.

which is like, it's so, you know, like not letting any natural processes take place anymore. You know, I feel like that's kind of the desire is to be engineers of everything, right? Like we want to engineer biology. We want to engineer psychology. We want to engineer human beings. We want to engineer ecosystems. Now we want to engineer weather. And I just feel like human beings are not mature enough to manage any of those things.

Sam Thayer (01:11:07.406)

I agree, you know, at some point we need to say we're good enough, our earth is good enough, and we have enough stuff. Like that's about GDP being sacred, right? We don't need to raise that number. We have enough stuff. Like if I go on a walk with you and you and I go pick some persimmons and eat them, there's no GDP value in that. But man, wouldn't that be nice? Wouldn't it be nice to go fishing? Like we could just walk down to a stream somewhere

catch some brook trout and bring them home and cook them for dinner with some vegetables from the garden and some wild rice that I got last year. Like there's no GDP in that, right? But man, wouldn't that be nice? I mean, we need to stop pretending that GDP is quality of life. The earth is good enough, nature is good enough, human beings are good enough, and we have enough stuff. And let's start acting like it. Let's be responsible for once. I agree with you 100%. I mean, about what...

where you, I believe it's going the path that you're talking about going because people don't want to make changes or sacrifices. Like I have green energy in my house, I've off-grid solar, but you know what? We've achieved what we've achieved mostly because we use 8 % of the national average electricity use of a family our size. Well guess what? You don't need solar panels on your roof to cut your electricity use down by 80%. Anyone can cut their fossil fuel use, their carbon footprint, you can cut it by 80%.

without buying any single piece of technology. But what we want is we want to buy a Prius and then put solar panels on the roof so that we can advertise who we are. So it's not about the value, it's about signaling the value we have to the public and saying what group of people we belong to. We need to grow up and stop doing that. We need to make responsible decisions regardless of whether or not we get overt social credit for them.

Daniel (01:12:48.772)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:13:05.345)

And that's why I think people need to stay in contact with nature because when you keep putting your hands in nature and you keep eating nature, that gratitude cycle keeps happening and it keeps causing you to think in a framework of gratitude. And the framework of gratitude makes you ask for less, need less, it makes you be more satisfied and more happy. yeah, and you know, the other thing is

climate change, carbon sequestration, all the... this is all being used to support extraordinarily egregiously anti-environmental things. Okay, so I give the example of replacing, you know, forests, native forests with tree farms and sometimes under the guise that, well yeah but Douglas fir grows more cubic feet of wood per acre or more, you know, biomass volume of wood per acre, blah blah blah. That's just baloney.

that's just messing with numbers, messing with people's heads to support something that's good for industry, not good for nature. But we're seeing that in all these like, even like with solar farms, right? I mean, are we, say as a nature conservancy person, and I look on their website and they have a picture of a gigantic solar farm, right? Like, so you put the solar farm, you are displacing cropland or natural land.

Daniel (01:14:28.748)

So bad.

Sam Thayer (01:14:34.432)

If you're displacing crop land that increases the value of the crops and some other natural land will be displaced somewhere to make up for that crop production. So whether you put it on crop land or natural ecosystems, by putting out solar farms, you're going to be destroying natural ecosystems. Now, we would need, I don't know what the total is. I hear different numbers. Is it 1%, 5%, somewhere in that range? Of the surface area of this country would have to be devoted to solar farms in order to meet our electric needs, right?

It's not happening without massive ecological destruction. And then invariably, herbicide is used, except in desert regions, herbicide is used between the panels to control the vegetation. And so, again, climate change is being used as an excuse to destroy nature. We need solutions to climate change, but they have to consider the actual ecology and nature as if it mattered. And if all the decisions are made by urban office pencil pushers,

and people that are not actively engaged and viscerally connected to nature through direct experience, through eating it, through sleeping in it, through touching it, then the decisions are going to be ill-conceived even if those people have the best intentions. And I do believe that some of those people have the best intentions. There is an infiltration of people with bad intentions and the people with bad intentions have an easy time

Daniel (01:15:52.005)

Mm-hmm.

Sam Thayer (01:16:02.156)

convincing people with good intentions to make dumb ecological decisions in name of climate change because their benchmark is the social world around them which contains a very limited amount of information whereas nature contains all the information about itself which is more than human beings can even conceive of.

Daniel (01:16:06.309)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:16:22.892)

And there's a lot in those last few sentences you just said there. I think people could take some time unpacking that.

Sam Thayer (01:16:25.762)

We need to keep going back to nature, keep touching it so we love it and keep observing it so we understand what's going on. that's just, environmental movement is not promoting that.

Daniel (01:16:32.58)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:16:36.4)

You know, to conclude, I wanna ask you, okay, it might take me a second to frame the question, so bear with me, and if it's too far out for you, just be like, hey man, that's outside my wheelhouse. But I've never asked you about this. Okay, good, all right. Your pump house. All right. When I look at all this, it.

Sam Thayer (01:16:49.166)

I don't have a wheelhouse, so it's OK.

Daniel (01:16:59.48)

It's like watching somebody descend into suicidal ideation. That's kind of what it looks like watching us culturally. But almost even worse because part of it looks like Lord of the Rings where it's like Sauron's trying to build himself a body. where it's literally an all-seeing eye that knows every thought you think, everything you buy, everywhere you go, it's tracking everything you do. It's got a...

GPS and gyroscope in it. It knows all your movements. It knows when it's in your pocket. It knows when it's out. It knows who all your friends are because it's geolocating itself. We've got these devices everywhere. There's this all-seeing eye. And we're building its brain. And we're building its body for some reason. And it's very anti-human. That's how it looks to me. Then it looks like we're suiciding ourselves at the genetic level and at the fertility level. mean, the sperm counts are tanked. Fertility is tanked.

People are developing a lot of new diseases that are caused by essentially our poor nutrition and our gluttony. We are catastrophically destroying our ecosystem, the whole womb that supports us.

When I look at a company like we're talking about glyphosate, so you kind of can't talk about glyphosate without sort of alluding to Monsanto and companies like that. These corporate bodies, right? They aren't a physical body, they're a corporate body. Now, if we went back 300 years and a bunch of people got together in a room, sat in a circle and tried to summon an entity, that would be like sorcery. But today it's called a board meeting and they summon this corporate, corporal, that means body, right? So they summon this non-

physical body that makes decisions that no human could make because they're so anti-human and they're so anti-ecological, right? So we have all of these corporate entities that all seem hell-bent on destroying the earth itself. We're destroying ourselves and then we're bringing in, it's like we're trying at least to bring in artificial beings, silica-based beings to replace ourselves. know, when you zoom out of it, it's like,

Daniel (01:19:13.838)

Wait, what the hell is going on here? My question is, is do you, when you look at this personally, is this a physical phenomena with emergent properties from all of the hive mind? Or is this a spiritual problem? Do you think this is a physical thing? Do you think this is a spiritual thing or a metaphysical thing? Or do you think it just, it's purely, is it purely just greed for individuals who want yachts and

sex parties or is it like, is there like a spiritual component? Like how do you reconcile that we're doing this to ourselves because squirrels don't do this and lions don't do this and you know birds don't do, like no animals doing this to itself except us and we're not just doing it to ourselves, we're doing it to all the species that are here and we're doing it in such a scorched earth way that it's almost like we want there to never be anything that can live again.

right, if we were to carry this out to its conclusion.

Sam Thayer (01:20:14.998)

So I feel like that's right in my wheelhouse, but it's also like, you know, it's like the elephant in the wheelhouse or I don't know what it's. I feel like I don't I don't separate the physical and the spiritual realms. So I think it's both. It's physical and spiritual. I also don't separate the corporate and the individual. When I say the corporate, I mean like this

Daniel (01:20:20.282)

good.

Sam Thayer (01:20:44.024)

this gigantic amalgamation of human wills, not in terms of a corporation. But sometimes, know, collective will takes on its own thing. And that makes sense. It takes on its own power, in the same way that our bodies are a collection of cells, each of which is rather powerless, but they...

together can do things that the individual cells could have never imagined doing if they weren't incorporated into this body, right? Mitochondria probably could have done a heck of a lot if it didn't get into our cells and all of a sudden, know, mitochondria, you know, that's kind of a cool thought, right? But a terrifying thought. And I don't know where it's gonna go and I don't want it to go where it seems like it might. And so, did people want...

Daniel (01:21:20.906)

Yeah, right.

Well said, yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:21:38.51)

Yachts and sex parties and people want that for sure. There's people that want that and some people You know their view is narrow enough that that's just where they're and then that's what they're pushing towards but I don't know what the total body is going to do, but I do I do feel like Human intelligence was a sort of idiosyncratic thing sort of like beavers managing their environment the way they do it was like

not really another animal that does that the way beavers do at least. And sort of like an elephant's trunk. mean, there's no other, I don't know, there's no other big animal with a fifth limb, you know? But our unique thing is this intellect. And it was really useful, but it gave us a burden. And that burden is the fear of our death. And so this is where, in my mind, the physical and the spiritual are connected.

so much of human psychology is spent assuaging our fear of death. And I want people to know that if you really connect with nature, maybe it's just me, but I don't think it's just me. I've talked to lot of people. That fear mostly disappears. Like hunter-gatherer people mostly were not afraid of death the way the modern people are because they spent their whole life alive and engaged in life. And people want to be connected to something that's

bigger than us that lasts forever. It predated us and it will outlast us and we are part of it. We are part of the big forever. And you know, if you look at Yuval Harari's book, Homo Deus, it's all about, and Sapiens, it's all about this idea that human beings are smart and now we're gonna build something bigger than us that will last forever and it will rule the universe with, know, humans and technology together will rule the universe and will become God. Humans will become God. That's what we want.

And that's what we want because we crave. That's like the craving for sugar that we keep eating the sugar and it keeps wrecking our bodies, right? But we keep eating it because it tastes so damn good. That is like what we are doing spiritually to nature, to the earth, because we're afraid of death. And we're afraid of death because we aren't connected to life. I think everybody should watch a deer's eyes as it dies for them to eat.

Sam Thayer (01:23:59.744)

and come to terms with that so they can understand that they will die just like that one day and it will be okay. It's okay that that deer died and it's okay that you will die. And when you dig up a plant, that plant dies, it's okay. It's like, death is life and life is death. You cannot have one without the other and if we try to have life without death, we will not have life. That's what this push towards AI is. It's to push us towards not having life.

Like, if we want to live forever, we won't have life at all. Life and death must be synonymous. They must exchange and interchange. It's yin and yang. And it is morally wrong because it's physically wrong. It's physically nonsensical, so therefore it's morally wrong for us to pursue infinite life. Like, I'm not supposed to live forever. I'm afraid of death. Of course I'm afraid of death. We're instinctively afraid of death. But...

I have a peace with death, I'm gonna die. And it's gonna be okay. I'm supposed to. mean, think about this. Human beings particularly, we are among the set of organisms that is born to die, right? So if you take certain plants, they actually do not have programmed to death. They simply live until a calamity kills them. It could be a disease, it could be a tree falls on them, it could be something digs them up. But a milkweed plant, a blueberry bush, a spring beauty plant.

Those things live forever until something kills them. They have no life span. They have no pre-programmed life span. So a spring beauty tuber could be 1,750 years old. It could conceivably be 35,000 years old. And I bet you somewhere in the Appalachians, in the southern Appalachians, there's a spring beauty plant that's more than 10,000 years old. They just keep living. But humans, we're not like that. We live like 70 to 100 years and then we die. We're supposed to. And anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you something.

We're supposed to die. We're not supposed to live forever. We're meat. We're flesh. We're also spirit, right? And we're supposed to die and if we can accept that then we can stop wrecking the world in a futile Infantile desire to live forever. We can grow up and mature Accept our death and say the world is good enough. I am good enough nature is good enough. I have enough stuff I'm gonna try to live well now not longer not more not better, but just well, you know

Daniel (01:25:58.542)

Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:26:27.694)

That's how I see it. And maybe we won't get there. Maybe that message is not powerful enough to change anything. I don't know, I guess, but that's how I spent my life working towards for me and trying to share with people. And when I write books about foraging, it's to try to share with them this miracle of just, yes, living. Like foraging is living. Gathering food is living. Hunting and fishing and gathering, that's living. But also the psychological miracle of realizing that you're part of this

thing that is the most amazing thing ever conceived of. mean, nature is the most amazing thing and that's good enough for me. Like, I will die and my blood will soak into the soil and I will become plants that deer will eat and turkeys will eat and insects will eat and frogs will eat those insects. That's good enough for me. I don't need fairy tales. That's good enough for me because I got to experience it and I'll be...

I won't be experiencing it in this consciousness, but I will go on I will be that and that's okay So that's right. That's where I stand on that. I think it's it's all connected

Daniel (01:27:36.305)

It's so interesting how, man, first I just wanna say I really appreciate all that you just shared. I hope you write about that sometime. It's interesting because you're like, well then what do we do? And it's like chop wood, carry water. It's just like so simple. It's just like these things we're talking about, hunting, foraging, whatever your experience in nature. It's kind of like chop wood, carry water. Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. Because it's just like, okay, all that.

And then it's like, what do you do? Well, you just gotta wake up tomorrow and like feed yourself. Yeah.

Sam Thayer (01:28:09.292)

Yeah, chop wood, carry water, watch birds, make love, eat apples. mean, life is good enough.

Daniel (01:28:16.728)

Yeah. Wow, Sam. I really appreciate these insights, man. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks for kind of going into this unusual territory with me. think that what I'm most interested in, and it's like, I just feel like the pragmatic and the existential are like, they have to come together now because the situation's getting so dire. And I feel like...

Sam Thayer (01:28:26.818)

Thanks for pulling me there.

Sam Thayer (01:28:40.75)

Thank you.

Daniel (01:28:41.988)

I don't want to be like the village crier like, the sky's falling, but I kind of do want to be like that because I feel like the sky is falling in a sense. And it's not the natural sky that's falling. It's just that people are doing it. And we're all contributing and we're all caught up in it. And I feel like I just got to say something. So anyway, I feel like a lot of this stuff's burning in our hearts and we're not always talking about it together. And I think it's important that we have these conversations. So yeah, thanks for going there with me today.

Sam Thayer (01:29:08.654)

Hey, no problem. And you know, when I teach foraging, I don't always say these words. Sometimes it comes out, you But by bringing people out in nature and giving them that physical connection to the land and to nature, it doesn't need to be words. Even if people never formulate words, anything like what I said, that happens inside them. The gratitude, the peace, that's the two things. It's acceptance and the peace that comes with acceptance and the gratitude for life. The acceptance of life.

and the peace and gratitude of life. And you get that through visceral physical experience of nature and no other way.

Daniel (01:29:49.909)

It feels almost sacrilegious to do it, but I wanna make sure people know about what you do, because you're not, I guess you're on TikTok now actually, aren't you? But I don't think of you as like a social media guy. Okay, cool. So yeah, you're, you know, a lot of times I feel like I get down to podcasts and people go, oh Daniel, where can people find you? And I think like, oh, this is this weird formality we do because everybody knows they can just.

Sam Thayer (01:30:00.212)

Yeah, well, I've done maybe three. I've done maybe three videos in the last year, so.

Daniel (01:30:15.512)

search for you and find you, you're a little bit more, like if people wanna get into your workshops, it's a little bit like, this is real in-person stuff, And you sell your books, not through a publisher, but you self-publish and sell your books on your own website and everything. So I just wanna give you the space to talk about that, because your books are really incredible. Your series, the Forger's Harvest series, but also the Field Guide that you did, which is what a magnum opus, man, I love that book.

and your in-person stuff is just incredible. like, you know, how do people get in that funnel to work with you?

Sam Thayer (01:30:50.424)

Sure, so my books, I still feel like it's a great way to reach people. And the books are easy to access. mean, any online book seller.

Daniel (01:30:55.492)

Yeah, those books are important to have. Those are important to have. if somebody's building their like seed vault, whatever, even if you're not gonna read them right now, you're just like, need to have the, like you want these books in your, all four of those books should be in everybody's library in my opinion. Sorry, go ahead.

Sam Thayer (01:31:15.36)

And no, that's fine, that's fine. The praise makes me feel good, you know. I won't lie. So I started my own publishing company, which was the best financial decision I ever made, although it stressed my life out a little bit. the books are pretty easy to access, whatever books to sell you find convenient. I don't sell them individually on my website anymore. You can also go to my website, foragersharvest.com and I will have my workshops.

Daniel (01:31:18.704)

It's warranted.

Daniel (01:31:37.581)

Okay.

Sam Thayer (01:31:44.244)

and speaking appearances for the year posted on there. I'll be doing a few more this year because I built the classroom kitchen building on my property. It's being built as we speak. So that'll be in service next spring for the first time. It'll make it a lot more convenient to have classes here. But I do a limited number of in-person classes, but I love to meet other foragers and to show people directly, physically, nature.

Daniel (01:31:54.603)

yeah? cool.

Sam Thayer (01:32:13.036)

You know, I do occasional videos. I keep thinking I'm going to do some YouTube videos, but I just... There's a lot of alone time in my world. I don't have someone to film me. And so it gets hard. And I want to be doing this stuff so that I have something to write about.

Daniel (01:32:21.732)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Daniel (01:32:29.572)

Yeah, well, you're one of these people who've had tremendous impact with sort of minimal input into those systems. I'm amazed by it because it's very difficult now if you're not on Instagram, YouTube, whatever, pick your thing. But you've had an incredible impact. I think sort of like when you started and then like as your expertise built, those systems weren't as relevant for you. But man, it's incredible because...

because everybody out there in the space knows your work. mean, when somebody writes, it doesn't matter if somebody writes me from China or Argentina and they're like, how do I start foraging? I recommend your books because I feel like even if, I think if you live almost anywhere in the United States, there's plants in your books that are where people are. So that's really helpful. But essentially what you teach is important.

whether it's that suite of plants or not. find that really, that techniques and the ideas and the essays that are in those books, they're useful to everybody who wants to get into the space. So I think that's really powerful. But one thing I like about being with you in person, you share on many levels. You share educationally, you share in presence, you share in song, you share in fun, and those are things that you don't get from videos and everything.

I really want to encourage people to go to one of your in-person workshops because I think if you're in this space, we have a tremendous opportunity and resource in Sam here and, you know, avail yourself of that while you can. So just got to put that out there. I don't say that about everybody, Sam. I really, really appreciate what you do. And I think being with you in person is really an important part of that. So I hope you do more videos and all of that. But yeah, if people can go work with you, man, I think that's a really big opportunity.

Sam Thayer (01:34:15.208)

Well thank you. I'm honored and I'm honored that anyone and for everybody that feels like it's worth spending time with me and I'm glad my books have worked for you and other people because that's the only reason I wrote them.

Daniel (01:34:16.271)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (01:34:30.081)

Yeah, no, they really do. yeah, so if you're looking to get into the forging space, particularly get Sam's books, but cool. Any final thoughts you have? Anything you want to share before we go?

Sam Thayer (01:34:41.036)

Yeah, well in the absence of access to me, just go out in nature. Like, go out, go out. And thank you all the listeners, viewers. Thank you, Daniel, so much for what you do and for bringing me on.

Daniel (01:34:44.826)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Right on.

Daniel (01:34:54.64)

Thank you, Sam.

Transcript: Birth, Death, and Our Life in Between — Tom Myers #001

Daniel (00:01.09)

My guest today is Tom Myers. I don't think I'm exaggerating to say he's one of the great minds on the earth today in the realm of biomechanics and human physiology anatomy. I've been looking forward to this conversation for a long time. I was lamenting recently to some friends and to my wife that sometimes when you've built a mental map that's very rich in data points, it can be a little bit alienating. And I've been looking forward to this conversation because

Tom's somebody with a big mental map and it's a deep satisfaction to get to have a conversation with somebody like that. Also, I want to say if you've heard over the last several years about myofascia, if you're into fitness, exercise, mobility, yoga, whatever it is, if you're into body work and you've heard about fascia, it's because of Tom Myers. He's really brought that work and that idea forward into culture in probably the biggest way that anybody has.

And it's pretty amazing to see now how many people are teaching under that umbrella. So Tom, welcome to the show.

Tom Myers (01:08.579)

Daniel, it's great to be here.

Daniel (01:09.842)

It's really good to be here. Like I said, I've been looking forward to this a long time. I I kinda wanna just start off by talking a little bit about what your work has been over the years. But I really am interested in seeing what you're interested in today. but first let me just say being here in your library, there's a lot of books here I know and recognize that are incredible books. There's a lot more here that I just wish I had had the time or opportunity to read, but what a collection this is.

Tom Myers (01:36.75)

Yeah, this is fifty years of of thinking about the body and how the body how the human body in particular is. And with you in particular, Daniel, I think of us as paired units because I have that feeling for the wild and you're out there doing it. And my dedication this lifetime, I'm an urban creature and

I think we'll talk about this later. Homo domesticus is my the species that needs the most work on the planet. So I've been working with that homo domestic But with the the wild one in mind, right? Right. because it's the wild one that set our genes. Yeah. Both the genes of the food that we eat and the genes of the movement that we do. but instead now we have been domesticated like some of the other animals around us.

Daniel (02:10.529)

Daniel (02:27.286)

it's like the wild variant gives us like a template almost, right? It's kind of I always say if you wanted to take care of a domesticated animal, it's helpful to know the wild progenitor, what its needs are, what it eats, how it lives, to inform you at least how to raise the domestic Yeah.

Tom Myers (02:43.576)

All those people are gone. All those people who well, most of the people maybe you found them. Maybe you found them out in the people who are surviving. I had an old woodsman here when I was young. I hired him, to help me with the aquaculture project that we have here. And he could survive on tea berry and all kinds of things that you probably know about in the woods where I would die shortly.

Tom Myers (03:07.59)

But the problem that I've been addressing myself to is, we have all of these humans living in a world to which they were not adapted. Right. And I think of you as out there exploring what would happen if we hadn't adapted, you know, if we were wild humans, and that's a really valuable

exploration and I'm so glad you're doing it because I'm not doing it because I'm running around from city to city. Here are all these you know, you go back to the eighteen hundreds and don't quote me on the figures, but it was something like ninety five percent of the people lived on a farm. And now three percent of the population takes care of our food needs. And the other ninety seven percent are pursuing something else in the city.

Daniel (03:43.96)

Right.

Tom Myers (03:54.666)

We're out here in Maine. I don't know what your life is like, where you live, but I you know, you see what a beautiful place I live in. I am governed by my computer, by my phone, right, by the daily things of the business that I'm still running at seventy six and

I could give all that up and go back to the wild. I'm not willing to do that. I really love the human experiment. In spite of all the numbsklery that is going on right now, I love the human experiment and I would like to see it continue. I do see that our bodies, our minds, and our feelings, and probably our spirit, I'm not qualified, have all been shrunk in in the last bit.

Daniel (04:35.416)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (04:38.462)

of the domestication of human beings. And so what are we gonna do about that? How do we fulfill the needs of our children, their genetic needs, and still live in an urban environment? Because I don't see we can talk about that, but I don't see how everybody rewilds.

Daniel (04:55.468)

Yep. Yeah, right. Not not in this current moment. Yeah. The situation's gotten so dire it's like we can't keep kicking the can down the road, unfortunately. I think we've like run out of like runaway for kicking the can. And so it's like we've got to start getting serious about dealing with it. There's a lot you said I want to pick apart. one of the things I'm I wonder what it would be I wonder if you've ever had the opportunity to work with

Tom Myers (04:58.454)

Not in this gun.

Daniel (05:22.464)

Indigenous people who still are somewhat close to their life way, people who you know, like y there's still some pockets in the world, right? South America, New Guinea, off the coast of India, where there is like natural humans, even uncontacted people in some of these places, which is amazing to think about. But then you're also hearing about them getting phones and internet and how quickly their life way is changing. And I I sort of imagine like if you know

If we lost all the dogs on the planet, we could go to gray wolves and tease dogs back out of that genome. Uh-huh. But what happens when all of the natural people are gone? It's like that's just like you said, lost and like w we won't know what they were even like what their bodies are even like. D do any of you or any of the therapists you've worked with have have you got to work with people who haven't spent their life in the built environment?

Tom Myers (06:15.406)

I have literally gotten to work on two or three of those people in my life. and I I don't have enough experience to say, yeah, this is what is the difference between wild humans and tame humans.

I look at a tribe, if I think about a tribe, not everybody in the tribe needed to be a hunter. Right. We needed cooks, we needed bottle washers, we needed well not bottles, but you know what I mean. there's all kinds of roles in the tribe. So I was born short-sighted when I was born in a in an era where that short-sightedness could be corrected in various ways. but if I were in a tribal life and I were short sighted, then I would be the fire keeper or something where you don't need long sight.

But you wouldn't take me out on a hunting party because I couldn't see the the quarry. And so I think that we probably had

There isn't a human that was suited to the old environment. There were lots of different kinds of humans and some people in the tribes really needed to have big muscles, but not you know Sprinters. Look at your Sprinters, they don't have big muscles. They have wiry bodies. So is there somebody in your tribe who's wiry that we can send a message over the mountain to the other village? So no I don't think there's one type that's adapted to the old life. I think there were a variety of types that were adapted to the old life and we see the remnants of those old types now.

Mm-hmm. but they're all domesticated.

Daniel (07:42.611)

Yeah. Something I've identified and I I talk about in my workshops is

I I look at the world, I look at the as the world as having like three distinct buckets or the three worlds. There's the natural environment, there's the built environment, and now there's like this digital environment. And I'm noticing that so few people are adapted anymore to the natural world. Everybody's well adapted, I shouldn't say well adapted, everyone's adapted to the built environment, and more and more, especially young people, are very adapted to the digital environment. But it's like the further you go this way, the harder it is.

is and I always note how we have all these T V shows about people who are in the wild who have to figure out how to stay alive until they can get rescued back to the built environment. Because we're now looking at the 'cause they're never about like them staying there and setting up a sustainable life. It's always like we're just to we can get rescued, right? Or something like that.

Because I think there's a deep fear of that because we're s we view our own environment as being like a foreign world kind of like as if we're astronauts and not from here, you know, and like that's the degree of the domestication. but maybe you could speak a little bit to how the built environment has reshaped us or or changed us, or maybe we haven't reshaped and it's all pathology. I'm I'm kind of curious like how you see from your unique perspective how our bodies are being impacted by the built space.

Versus the natural.

Tom Myers (09:09.656)

Good, I need to build into that just for a sec. if we go back to where there wasn't a separation between us and the rest of the natural world, we have to go back about six million years, really. and the first thing that we did, and we were discussing this earlier, we might come back to it, is stand up. And our psychobiology changed with standing up. Everybody that had our basic vertebrate structure of a spine and two sets of limbs and a head on the front.

that basic structure, the line of sight and the line of motion, and the line of the spine and the line of the digestive system are all the same, which makes sense.

Daniel (09:50.55)

When you said the line like from the beginning of the tube to the end of the tube lined up with that scene.

Tom Myers (09:54.976)

Yeah, because it gets curly Q in the middle, but but but us, we when we stood up, when we took the hip, which was really flexed, here's here's the spine of a cheetah, here is the horse, and here is the femur. The knee is right up against the ribcage. Yeah. If your knee is right up against the ribcage, you're really flexed. A horse never comes to this.

Daniel (10:15.99)

Yeah. Yeah. You try to take your dog leg like that. Sure.

Tom Myers (10:20.654)

And then it will come back. Okay. 'Cause it can't stand up on two legs. When you stand up on two legs, you take your nose away from the ground. Wow. So the world of smells

is no longer the world you live in. You need to smell fruit, you need to smell other chimps, you need to smell what's up there in the thing. But you are not down on the floor of the forest where look at your dog. I I I went walking with the dog this morning, you know, had to get the female and you know all that stuff. And we don't do that. Right. And if you put your hand on the bridge of your nose, your hand is covering your frontal lobe.

Your finger is coming down at the end of between your frontal lobe and your parietal lobe at the sagital suture. Your frontal lobe was your nose brain. Your rhine encephalon. So we didn't need so much of a nosebrain when we stood up and went up in the trees. Which we're pretty sure if you you know, I don't want to go on evolutionary theory, but

Daniel (11:10.712)

Okay.

Daniel (11:21.194)

That's the current story we're telling.

Tom Myers (11:22.474)

We see yeah, the the best story we're telling is we evolved from the old world monkeys with their collarbones. We have a collarbone too. you know, a cheetah doesn't have a collarbone. And so coming up into there we already divorced ourselves from the animal world slightly by standing up. That happened to monkeys too. And and they are somewhat social, somewhat yeah divorced from that. But that's not much of a divorce. But it really is a change of

Suddenly your spine is like this, your digestive system is like this, your line of motion is forward. So what does that do to your psychobiology? No self-respecting animal I'm not this is taking too long to set up, I'm sorry, but no self-respecting animal walks into the world with their bears all this. Their belly and their genitals and their face all up front. Yeah. Right? It's the first thing I'm gonna

Yeah, if I come is your soft underbelly. Right. You're protective. So that whole psychology of safety and protection comes in when you expose your soft underbelly to the world, which we do 16 hours a day. Right. Compared. So standing up was the first one that changed our psychobiology away from the natural. The second one came six hundred thousand years ago and that's fire.

Yeah. We're the only animal that controls fire. Right. What makes us unique? We control fire. Yeah. That came in around six hundred thousand years ago, and in archaeology and in fossil hunting you you find ashes of fires in human habitations really quickly across the globe. Fire was such a good idea for humans. Cooked food, that's another discussion. What I'm thinking about is how did it change our bodies to have fire? Well

What are you before you have a fire? You are a monkey sleeping in a cave or under some kind of shelter hoping that the saber toothed tiger finds somebody else tonight. But after you have a fire, everybody goes to sleep in complete and utter safety and peace. Two people stay up.

Tom Myers (13:29.206)

And if the saber-toothed tiger comes on, they pull a branch out of the fire, wave it at the fire. And the saber-toothed tiger says, I'll go in search of something a little easier. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So safety happens when you have fire. And then what's the second thing? What do we do around a fire? Yeah. Dance and talk. So the whole culture of these things that we're celebrating in those few tribes that are not left who are probably dancing around the fire, and maybe they have a machete and maybe they don't. But they're still

Daniel (13:44.012)

Yeah.

Daniel (13:56.834)

Some tools that might have washed up on the beach.

Tom Myers (13:59.662)

But wreckage. that us with fire really standing up is one thing, but us with fire really separates us from the thing. The lights that we're doing now are an extension of that control of fire. Okay. The third one that really affected our bodies and our movement is agriculture. Up until ten thousand years ago, you foraged for your food or you hunted for your food, as you do.

And that was ten thousand years ago that that started, but was as few as three thousand or one thousand years ago for some people.

Daniel (14:35.5)

Yeah, I often point out when we say Neolithic revolution, it sounds like everybody just got on board, but but I like to point out there's still pockets of resistance. It's not even a complete revolution yet.

Tom Myers (14:43.926)

It wasn't so good.

Yeah, it was it was took a long time, but and everybody started doing farm work. And what was that phrase that you talked before we started of each generation baseline syndrome. So once we get into the agricultural era, everybody was born into that shifted base. Everybody thought, that's how we do it.

Daniel (14:59.55)

shifting baseline similar.

Tom Myers (15:11.554)

But there's a there are whole books that are arguing this, and I'm not gonna go on very long about it. That wheat enslaved us. That rice enslaved us. That cotton enslaved us. And so these products came up out of the agricultural era. Well, what do you have when you have an agricultural era? All of a sudden you're not moving around. You're not a nomad anymore. So you need soldiers to protect your property and to protect the side all that grain. You need cats.

Daniel (15:33.198)

All that grain, yeah.

Tom Myers (15:36.468)

Which was a source of a lot of of diseases. You need cats to get the mice who were eating the rats you were eating your grain.

Daniel (15:42.446)

'Cause the rodents.

Tom Myers (15:46.006)

'cause the rodents. And so you need soldiers, merchant merchants, serfs, landowners, that whole caste system and our class system, the English class system, that's all all around

Daniel (15:57.23)

I mean I point out 'cause it's very interesting, like with Gobekli Tepe. that site they say is about fourteen thousand years old and it's kind of like the oldest site we know. And the weird thing about it is like, it was built by hunter gatherers. But the f that's what they think, but then the first wheat

Tom Myers (16:02.744)

Mm-hmm.

Daniel (16:16.332)

domestication of wheat was only like fifty miles away. And I've just like I'm like, mm ki kinda feels like they needed to figure out the wheat growing to feed the people that were doing the work because you kinda can't have people building cities all day when you hunt and gather. Like you you everybody needs it's all hands on deck when you hunt and gather. So anyway, I just would I would suggest that's the slave trade, which is the biggest it's ever been right now around the world, right? It's the largest slave trade there's ever existed right now. Yeah, there's more people enslaved right now than at any other period in

human history. There's like about fifty million people or so in in active forms of slavery, whether it's the sex trade or it's the brick making or something. You know, it's like stuff going on all over all different types, but this this trade of humans I think is f somewhat agricultural based 'cause you have all this division of labor. I'm not trying to get you off track.

Tom Myers (16:46.862)

Because of the numbers.

Tom Myers (17:07.117)

You don't wanna in a hunting gathering society you don't wanna gather a whole bunch of people that you now have to feed.

Daniel (17:11.426)

Yeah, you gotta go gather for them too. Like that's a that's a lot of work. But once you have grain and you have a surplus of food it starts to make a lot of sense. You send them out to the fields to do that while you administrate from the top, right? Right.

Tom Myers (17:14.766)

Yeah, yeah.

Tom Myers (17:24.482)

But even those people out in the fields, they are still walking to the fields, they are doing rhythmic movement most of the days, and they do varied movement also. That ends when we get to the industrial era.

And name that one when you will. Two hundred years ago for England, a hundred years ago for China, you know, fifty years ago for China, etcetera. The world is industrializing still, but we went into the industrial era where we make things. If you talked about education and the body hundred and fifty years ago, all the literature is written in the language of agriculture.

Mm-hmm. We want to have a nice crop of students. And what do we have to feed them? And how do we water them to get a nice crop of students? That is not the way they talk today. Students are a product, and we need to make sure that they go through the right industrial product processes to come out the right product. So true. And so again, it's that same thing. If the generation is born into the industrial era, you take it as the baseline.

Daniel (18:14.478)

Yeah.

Daniel (18:29.546)

And the technology always informs, I've noticed, like anatomically. I see so many of these books here. We could see it in these books like Leonardo's depicting the body as ropes and pulleys, 'cause that's the dominant technology of the time. I often joke about how when I was growing up the body was a car. You fed it the fuel to burn the fuel as a car 'cause we were thinking now everybody's like, the body's like a computer and we're hearing all about your brains, like a supercomputer. We always seem to relate ourselves rather than relate the external technology to what we're like, we

relate ourselves to the external technology of

Tom Myers (19:00.774)

And your brain is when I was starting well when Rene Descartes started this idea, the newest machine, the most exciting machine in the world in the sixteen hundreds was a vacuum tube. Mm-hmm. You like at the bank when you put that little thing over to the teller. the that's what he thought when he saw nerves. He he realized a signal was being carried up. it heats your finger and that travels up a tube and it was like a vacuum tube.

Daniel (19:15.182)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (19:28.854)

because that was the most complicated technology. When I was growing up, we had no computers, so the brain was a telephone system. It became a computer system. Then it became a dual processor and then it became a what do they call a hologram. And now I would say, in my work now that I've been doing this fift fifty years, yes I know a lot about anatomy. But a body is more like a meme than it is like a machine or even maybe like a plant.

Daniel (19:35.786)

Yeah, right.

Tom Myers (19:58.062)

At least that's what we need to explore now, the body as a meme, as a pattern.

'Cause you are not the stuff that you're made of. You the urban myth is you change your body every seven years. Change all the molecules in your body every seven years. I just recently learned that's not true. No. Most of it, you change much faster than seven years. Really? Your skin is changing all the time. You have a t all new molecules in your stomach lining every three weeks. You have a whole new liver in terms of molecules every six weeks. That's why when you're that's why when your uncle stops drinking.

Daniel (20:31.978)

In terms of cells, but in terms of molecules.

Tom Myers (20:35.008)

Yes, the molecules are changed over because your liver is rapidly turning over. But there are probably molecules in my Achilles tendon that have been there since I was twelve. Mm-hmm. Because your fascia is so inert.

Daniel (20:50.062)

Vascular up.

Tom Myers (20:50.638)

It's not vascularized, so it depends on seepage. And so those very stable collagen molecules are very stable and they stay there. And so those molecules I'll probably die with those molecules from my puberty time in my very, very, you know, thoracolumbar fascia, hilariotibule tract, Achilles tendon. Yeah. Those places that we're the fascia. So that doesn't it doesn't need to turn over. Right. It's stable.

Daniel (21:13.196)

Yeah.

Daniel (21:19.276)

Wow. What could you I'm sure you're quite good at this at this point, but for listeners who they've they hear the term fascia, I know they hear it. Everybody's talking about it. It must be cool to see. I mean I my my understanding is you learned from Ida Rolf. Yes. But then you took the work to the world in a way that she you know, did th different time. But but it must be amazing to see the impact. I don't know if from where you sit if you see it, but I mean I see it everywhere.

Tom Myers (21:41.728)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (21:49.52)

I am one of many people who are doing this.

Daniel (21:52.448)

Your bin Your book Anatomy Trains is the book everybody when you have the conversation about Maya Fascia, everybody wants to talk about your book. It's like the foundational to the to the it's like the foundational text, I think, for most of this work today. Although there are so many other incredible voices, I I not to to downplay that, but yeah, I think what you've taught about Tensegrity and about Fasha, it's was pretty revolutionary and it it's it the impact is now visible.

Tom Myers (22:19.88)

The book was published in two thousand and one, it's now two thousand and twenty-six and twenty-five years. I'm impressed with how much this idea has been taken in and taken up. And I think it it speaks to what a wonderful writer I am. And it speaks to this is the time in which holistic things are being seen. So the fascia is the fabric that holds us together. Without it

Daniel (22:34.508)

Yeah, yeah, that's

Tom Myers (22:46.316)

you would be a big puddle at your feet 'cause all the water would fall. So fascia is designed to keep your water up. Well what about my bones? Well, your bones, yes, are the s absolutely the solid thing. They're not as solid as people think they are, because they're changing all the time. Mm-hmm. Remember when we were just talking about the cells changing over, your bones actually change over quite rapidly. They've got they're full of blood vessels, so they've got so the bones change over fairly rapidly. You think that cartilage that the

Daniel (23:07.007)

Okay.

Daniel (23:12.462)

Well sorry to interrupt you, but do you think that a lot of times people are they think of a bone and they picture a baked bone that has all of the soft tissue removed so that there's just

Tom Myers (23:24.706)

This brittle thing that I found, this is a deer bone.

Daniel (23:27.778)

So people think that's what's in my body. C correct me if I'm wrong here, but if I were to take a living bone, two of them, let's say I took two identical living bones, I put one in a bottle of vinegar. Yeah. I put one in an oven. Right. Right. The one in the vinegar is gonna dissolve out all the the appetite, the calcium phosphate, and I'm gonna be left with this like rubbery tie in a knot thing.

Tom Myers (23:33.666)

Yes.

Tom Myers (23:50.838)

Let's say not say rubbery, let's say leathery.

Daniel (23:53.216)

Okay. So something you soft tissue.

Tom Myers (23:55.508)

like the leather in your belt is c mostly collagen from the skin of a cow. Okay. And the leather in your bone, you can take that if you leave it in the finger th you you'll be able to tie a knot. But it is the fascial bone. Your bones inside your body are equally both. Now it depends on your age as to whether they really are equally, but they are both. So in a young body you can bend the bones. Right.

Daniel (24:00.182)

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel (24:09.358)

Okay.

Daniel (24:20.834)

kid falls out window, bounces, no injury, and you're like, that would break me. Excuse me. Yeah. So so back to it I think a lot of times people imagine inert dead bone inside themselves. Just because they haven't seen. You know, it's really different when you again hunting is gives you such an insight because you're taking these bones out all the time and you see what they're like and they're they're so alive.

Tom Myers (24:43.522)

I'm laughing because I don't hunt the humans I take apart, but I've taken apart quite a number of

Daniel (24:47.886)

Yeah, so and you famously more of your work you famously lead cadaver labs where people get to actually disassemble formerly living humans and see these fascial connections, right?

Tom Myers (25:00.77)

Yeah, the organs, the nerves, everything. So the so to continue from there, something has to hold your blood vessels, your nerves, your organs, and the muscles on your bones has to hold it in place. So nature developed a biological fabric. That biological fabric is present in salmon, but you know that fish aren't as tough as other meat. So as soon as you walk out onto the land, mmm plants use cellulose

as their basis for what they're doing. We use collagen because it's pliable and tensilely very strong, but it's mobile. So we can use collagen as plants use cellulose as what has been for 500 years thought of as the packing material, the peanuts for your body, of just, well that's just the stuff that holds it. Get, you know, cut that away and throw it away so we can see the interesting things. Yeah. And

So because we didn't have systems thinking so much in our brain, and we were really focused on the nervous system and the circulatory system. If you look at medicine, modern, what we call modern medicine is almost exclusively focused on the circulatory system.

Daniel (26:05.877)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (26:15.02)

They can inject in here, in here, up here, up the other end, but they're getting it into your circulatory system. Food as medicine is another way of changing the chemistry. So we call it medicine, but it's almost all chemistry. Two hundred years ago, somebody, Freud, organized a science of what's going on in this set of representations in here. And you know, we went through all of this, id and superego and all the stuff that he did with the

bourgeoisie of the Vienna of the eighteen hundreds, and then now we've applied that to a much wider psychology. And the but that's that's come into a science in two hundred years. Medicine is certainly, you know, a very well developed tree of knowledge

Daniel (26:49.544)

We'll leave out his nephew for n right now.

Thanks for the floor, I dad.

Tom Myers (27:06.574)

And we have a third one which is should be built around the fascial system, but has been instead built around the musculoskeletal system. My objection to musculoskeletal system is it leaves the fascia out. And that's what's joining the muscle to the skeleton, but it's doing more than that. It's surrounding and infusing your brain. It has got a bag, oops, wrong side. It's got a bag and very fine fiber going all the way through your liver. So your fascia is

Daniel (27:14.989)

Yep.

Daniel (27:19.331)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (27:35.936)

Everywhere. Yeah. If I could make everything invisible except your nervous system, you'd see my if I made everything invisible except my own nervous system, a talent I don't have, you would see my body sitting here because there's nerves going right up to the surface. There'd be lots of them here and

Daniel (27:50.702)

Right.

Tom Myers (27:52.756)

As nerves, right? There wouldn't be so many back here. But there's plenty here. You know, the polyvagal theory or ventral vagus area is a very social area that we have a lot of nerve endings in. If I could go zap and make everything invisible except my circulatory system, you've probably seen that in body worlds, you know, where they inject the latex and you could see the exact shape of the body in the capillaries.

And nobody has done with the musculoskeletal system what we need for that third system, which is the fabric system, the fiber system. If I disappeared everything but that, you'd see my ileotibule band very clearly. If I was a woman and had breasts, they would be very it would be light and filmy because

You have to have a lot of fluid flowing through breasts. You don't want a lot of fascia, in fact. A lot of fascia in breasts is a fibrotic condition and that's what you don't want. so glands have very little fascia, the liver doesn't have a lot of fascia in it, the pancreas

Daniel (28:50.508)

You can take a liver and just pull it apart. A raw liver just it's got very little you can tell when you butcher it.

Tom Myers (28:56.118)

And a raw pancreas is hard to find. Mm in in the human sometimes. course depends on what they've been eating A lot more variation in the diet in the animals that I dissect.

Daniel (29:08.428)

Then yeah, right, that's for sure. That's for sure.

Tom Myers (29:11.978)

Anyway, the the fascia holds us together and we've certainly thought about the iliotibule band and the plantar fascia and things like that, but then you get particularized. So, my god, the bottom of my foot hurts, and somebody tells me you have plantar fasciitis. So I go and I show the doctor that plantar fasciitis. But I get much more help for plantar fasciitis almost never by working on the foot.

I will work on the foot so the client knows that I heard them and that I understand and that I do and it feels good or it doesn't feel good because they've got plantar phosphitis, but I'm gonna get the problem solved in the lower leg, in the in the deep calf muscles, in the hamstrings, or in the suboccipital muscles over here. They're all part of the superficial back line and the the kinetic chain that runs up the back of the body. so these chains are really useful in chronic things.

because your body distributes strain through the fascia.

Daniel (30:07.66)

Yeah. And it's not i the fascia's not discrete pieces. It's just one like it could be my foot's being a affected by something in my occiput because it's one large

Tom Myers (30:12.557)

No.

Tom Myers (30:20.244)

And because as we spoke earlier, we are so sure about the mechanistic description of the body that we are looking for those parts as if they were parts of a Ford F-150. Yeah. Right. Right? But we're not put together in discrete parts.

Daniel (30:35.038)

Right. If the tailpipe is the problem on your Ford F one fifty, you just replace the tailpipe, it's not like, maybe it's coming from the wheel. Right. It is a dis it is distinct part.

Tom Myers (30:43.498)

Although if you've been chasing electrical car, not not these days, but they could lead you around the body too of your car. But the the body definitely is this one thing. And plantar fasciitis is a result in the plantar fascia of strains that have been focused instead of easily distributed. So

We all know we've seen kids or you yourself, you take a bad tumble and somebody says Jesus and you go, no, I'm fine. 'Cause everything just was a tensegrity. Every everything went k choom boom. So everything moved a little and nothing moved too much. When one of these breaks, when one of these breaks, when one of these breaks, just any of the units in your body breaks, then this would be a joint and a bone and a ligament, I don't know what.

Daniel (31:22.776)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (31:38.088)

but then all of a sudden your physio or your orthopod might be focused on the joint that's broken, but it's part it's only going to work again in the context of the hole. And that's less true with acute injury because it's acute and it just happened and it hasn't distributed yet. But if you try to use the same techniques on an injury that's been there for ten years that you're using on somebody who just sprained their ankle,

Daniel (31:50.007)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (32:05.09)

you're not gonna have much fun. Yeah. Because that s tendency to sprain the ankle has distributed to the pelvis and to the chest and takes a while to get it out. Mm-hmm. Now, is coming to me for body work the only way you can get it out? No. You can use yoga, you can use CrossFit, you can use any of those things to move your body and get out of the

Daniel (32:24.822)

Can you all right? I'm gonna get real personal here. I'm a train wreck. I'm a train wreck. And I'm at a point where the problem is I love to train, right? So I've doing several hours of like steady state type cardio stuff, locomotive stuff, plus strength training, plus mobility work throughout my week. Yep. But I know I'm loading dysfunction very often. And I've got

A major twist running through me because I I rotationally broke my Tib Fib in the mountains in a winter day and had to be sort of rescued out walking on a ice axe splint. I got a cast, I didn't do any rehab. They wanted to do the bolts in my leg. I said no, just push the bones back together. I'm glad I did that, but I didn't do any physiotherapy. I was poor, I didn't know better, I d I wasn't thinking about the future, you know, I was in my early twenties. Now, like my wife ran a half marathon the other day. I can run a half marathon

But at the end, my I'm hurting. 5K, I gotta kinda stick to that zone because my hips just are so imbalanced. I it over distance it I accumulate. if I do a if I do a heavy squat, I'm just not balanced right. So I'll watch other people and it's like, man, I'm so jealous. I wish I could just do my wife is like structurally perfect. She grew up doing synchronized swimming, so she developed her whole myofascial system in the water.

Tom Myers (33:41.248)

Uh-huh.

Daniel (33:49.346)

You know, so it's like but it's like a perfect system. And I'm just all these dysfunctions. And for years I've gone to different therapists and I always two things happen. One is I I start to doubt whether they have any idea what they're doing. And the second thing is they always want me to stop training. Cause they want me to like let what they're doing be the major stimuli. And then I'm like, man, I'm really fearful at my age of losing what muscle mass I have.

Cardiovascular fitness I have. So now I'm going, I need to get fixed, and my all my methods of trying to fix myself are temporary band-aids, right? So I'm saying all this one, selfishly, but two, I'm guessing a lot of people listening to this are like, man, that's I kind of have some of that going on. And what do I do? I mean, it is like extremely uncomfortable at times in my body. I have other times where I'm okay, but I mean.

Recurring injuries, you know, recurring the same stuff over and over again. And it feels almost sometimes like kind of hopeless. Like I'm like, Am I gonna die like this? And then I talk to somebody like you, I'm like, maybe there's a what do I do? Like, where do I even start? Where's a person start who knows? Like my wife is like I said, she, you know, not like she never gets injuries, but like she's not any issues like that. But I

Tom Myers (34:53.806)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (35:08.034)

If she does get an injury, her body is set to remodel that injury, to repair that injury.

Daniel (35:13.912)

Correct. I look at myself without clothes on in the mirror, I see I'm all twisted and imbalanced. Like it's visibly obvious to me that I'm twist.

Tom Myers (35:22.456)

So I am sorry for the answer.

Daniel (35:25.739)

But we do. And it's hopelessness.

Tom Myers (35:27.692)

Because spatial medicine of the

you know, the the medicine of chemistry is pretty well developed. You can argue whether they're doing going down the right road on something. And the language of psychology is pretty developed. I think that has more to go too. But the language of our body is very poorly developed. If you go to an orthopod, you will get a surgical solution. If you come to me, you will get a manual therapy solution. If you go to your local t y yoga teacher, you'll get a yoga solution. And we haven't we all haven't started talking to each other and instead we're talking shit about each other.

Which is really, really bad, right? there are people for whom CrossFit is the cat's whiskers. There are people for whom CrossFit is not the appropriate thing. So is CrossFit good? Right. For some

Daniel (36:12.994)

But everybody thinks their thing is the solution, which is the challenge.

Tom Myers (36:16.714)

for everybody thing. And and that's not true. We need as as with medicine, not every, you know, a Zimpic isn't I don't need a Zimpic. Right, right. so just because it's the new drug on the market, I don't need to take it. Yeah. and so you have to judge for yourself. Now

If you are in this case of you're now in your forties or your fifties, you have reached the limits, you've had a couple of injuries, you recovered from them, but the body isn't what it used to be, then looking at yourself in the mirror and taking that kind of inventory is something that we don't do for our children.

Every child should get a standing bending test at seven to see whether they have an incipient scoliosis. Mm-hmm. When all those scoliosis scoliosides are discovered is when the kid's thirteen or fourteen and the growth hormone, you know, there's suddenly the bones growing, you know, they they see one sleeve is different from the other or one hem is different from the other. And so then they will go in and get a heroic terrible thing, where the spine is straightened and a rod put into it. Now that will be considered barbaric in fifty years.

Daniel (37:20.846)

Yeah, it sounds like civil war era surgery to me. That's the way.

Tom Myers (37:23.15)

Yeah, yeah, but it's it's still the choice, the treatment of choice for bad scoliosis. But if you took scoliosis at seven, we need to have this as an experiment for me to say it with the definitive that I'm saying it right now. But my strong belief is if we took children at seven and we put them through a KQ assessment, we give them an IQ assessment.

Sooner or later we're gonna give them an EQ assessment. What's your emotional intelligence? I don't know about you, but I hire for emotional intelligence. I can teach you a skill. I can't teach you this. Or it's gonna take a lot longer to teach you this. So but KQ is something, you know, that you're I I'm pointing to my bellic as the Dantien is your center of gravity, so that's the center of the fashion. K KQ meaning kinetic

Daniel (37:56.504)

So

Daniel (38:07.918)

Kinesthetic. Yeah.

Tom Myers (38:11.988)

intelligence, emotional intelligence and intellectual intelligence. And you can argue whether the IQ tests are really measured. Whew, that's a good one. Yes. But anyway Yeah, that's the that's the old matriarchal intelligence. and we see evidence of that in the body all the time. Excuse me for this little side note. In front of your organs you have an apron. It's called the omentum and it hangs from your stomach and your large intestine and it generally hangs down about as far as your pupic bone.

Daniel (38:17.774)

I might throw digestive intelligence in there too.

Daniel (38:33.069)

Yeah, the aumentum.

Daniel (38:40.45)

Hunters call it the call fat. The call fat? Yeah, that's like in the d if you're gonna cook with it, it's the call you can wrap it's fatty, so you can wrap meat in it and

Tom Myers (38:48.142)

Routinely if somebody's had a surgery they just cut it off. And out, yeah. You don't need it. It's like your gallbladder, you don't need it. Anyway, when we open up, so sometimes the omentum is gone, when the omentum is there, it will have migrated to the organ in trouble. It will be over here on the small intestine or up on the liver or over here on the spleen. It's amazing. It moves.

Daniel (38:52.047)

my gosh, and out?

Daniel (38:57.802)

Really?

Tom Myers (39:17.184)

And it moves to the organ in trouble because fat is the mother of the body, so this is a very fatty, as you just pointed out, organ. And it goes to the organ in trouble and wraps it in fat cells, which are healing cells. Your body is doing its best to maintain the equilibrium. It's just we feed it and we live in an environment that doesn't support it.

Back to your problem that I do agree with you is a universal thing. I'm very lucky, I get a lot of body work and I think a lot about these things, so I'm seventy six and I feel pretty sprout.

Daniel (39:52.674)

You look amazing and you move really well and you it's it's incredible, like it shows, you know, like your aging strategy is obviously working.

Tom Myers (40:00.162)

But I've been lucky. I you know, other people are under such stress or, you know, have children in trouble or parents in trouble or finances in trouble or relationships in trouble that they don't have the leisure to keep themselves this way. So I I feel lucky in that way. but I do

think it's really, really possible to keep yourself much more mobile. I I'm I'm seventy five, I would still call myself middle aged in terms of not not in terms of my face or my skin, but in terms of of moving about. I I just don't have that much

Daniel (40:32.034)

You picked her foot up and showed it to the to the camera. That's not a typical thing that people do in their seventies.

Tom Myers (40:37.45)

but you have to find a good worker from the outside. It is very hard to do these things from the inside so far. Mm-hmm. there are books like Kelly Starrett's or mine or others that you might look at to say, Okay, how how could I look better or how could I train better or what could I what am I missing? But for to unravel the kinds of twists and turns that you're talking about, there is no exercise program for

Daniel (41:06.188)

And we have sorry to interrupt you here, but I feel like I have a tremendous amount of blind spots. So like I feel like I need somebody who can see it from the outside because from inside, it's like if we're talking about my emotional issues. It's like, well, it's very hard for me to pinpoint them all. I know some of but the ones I'm blind to, I don't know because I'm blind to. So the patterns are like

Tom Myers (41:24.992)

I'm gonna interrupt you now, because it's exactly the same thing in the body. You have, let's call them number one areas. They're available to me when I wake up in the morning and I can do this, right? but if I fix my arm here, I can actually get a much better range of motion out of my pectoral by doing this. Call that area that got stretched a number two area. So this is my number one, but

Daniel (41:51.532)

It's not under muscular control. It's range that

Tom Myers (41:54.178)

You have but I have to have an outside force to make it stror, Christian. This is how far I can open my legs. This is where I'm screwed up. as a number one. Anything from here, I'm starting to go. And if if you said that's all in your mind, Tom, if only you could let that go, you too could do this.

Daniel (42:16.494)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (42:17.982)

The yoga teachers in your class. If I did those splits, I would be in the hospital. Mm-hmm. Because I would tear my perforating arteries that are going through to my adductor magnus. It's there is this tissue and there really it doesn't. And it's real. And it's real. And it gets thicker where you broke your bone. Okay. It's gonna involve the muscular tissue. There'll be more fascia, scar tissue in

You broke the bones because that tissue was disturbed, and then you put it in a cast, you didn't have the same experience. so you're

Daniel (42:50.476)

Muscles are different, right? Like look correct me if I'm wrong here. Sure. Some of the tone in a muscle is because individual fibers are firing to keep that tone. If I get more tone, it's because I have more muscles, fibers that are firing at any given time that keep that muscle under tone, right? But then I have some psychological control over that. So if I'm stressed and tense, I might feel like I'm so tight, but actually could let some of that go by just

Tom Myers (43:16.942)

Yes.

Daniel (43:18.188)

But the connective tissue, once it's fixed in place, that isn't under that same kind of enervative control, right? So it needs to either be manually stretched or moved.

Tom Myers (43:28.494)

Yeah, you can use tools, you can use somebody else's hand, you can use a doorknob, you can

Daniel (43:34.444)

Yeah, right, right, right. yoga is But I can't just relax it mentally. It needs to be remodeled.

Tom Myers (43:40.672)

You there is nothing you can do to remodel the fascia from your mind, except to let go of tension, and that will cause the fascia to remodel or

Daniel (43:44.162)

Yeah, okay.

Daniel (43:49.43)

Over longer stretches of time.

Tom Myers (43:52.338)

if I do this to you guys, sorry. if I hold my pelvis out in front of my feet, right? Mm-hmm, I cannot stand here without tension in the back of my legs. So I'm exporting that signal to the back of my legs. It also has something to do with the fact that I was born into the wrong family, so I'm alert all the time. So it has an emotional thing to it.

And we tend to do that exporting to our body with any of the stress that we have. It doesn't stay around in I know you think it's staying around in the mind, but it's being exported down to your body. So I'm strong and really common one, right? So people take their poor rib cage and they go and they feel weak and they go, No, I'm strong.

Daniel (44:42.22)

Right.

Tom Myers (44:42.798)

Right? So I've just recruited a whole bunch of muscles here, and to maintain that thing that I'm really strong, Daniel, I really I am strong, I have to export tension, export signals from my brain that ends up being tension in the muscles. The fascia says, Okay, if you're going to stand with your pelvis way forward and your ribcage raved back.

You don't want muscles to do that 'cause you're not using them as muscles. You're using them as straps. And your body will fibroblast, the one that make the fascia, will come and lay down more fascia and just like

Daniel (45:17.494)

Just like with bones. Remodels so instead of osteoblasts and osteoclasts, fibroblasts and fibroclasts that will so if if y'all if I have tension on there, it'll lay down more fiber, so I don't need to hold the tension. It will hold the tension. And if I start to change that pattern, will osteoclasts come in and remove some of that fiber? we don't, okay.

Tom Myers (45:36.808)

We don't have fibroclasts. So just for listeners who may be familiar with this technology terminology, osteoblasts make bone and osteoclasts eat bone. And they're not the smartest bulbs in the chandelier, so they only have this one commandment. And the osteoblasts have one commandment, thou shalt make bone under the periosteum.

So maybe I have plantar fasciitis where I tear my fascia. That's plantar fasciitis. A lot of people will tell you I got plantar fasciitis right here on the front of my heel. That, the plantar fascia, becomes the saran wrap around the bone. The periosteum around the bone, it's the same. We divide it into two different things. God didn't it's even through the heel bone, but let's leave that alone for while now. If this gets pulled off the heel bone,

Daniel (46:23.982)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (46:33.292)

This hand is the heel bone. My arm is the plantar fascia. This hand is the perosteum around the bone. Okay, I tug, tug, tug, tug, tug, tug on the plantar fascia. I pull the perosteum away from the bone. And there are these cells in here, the osteoblasts, and they say, God told us, fill in under the perosteum cell. They fill in under the periosteum and they build a bone spur. There's nothing painful about a bone spur.

Daniel (46:55.682)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (46:58.792)

It's your lateral plantar nerve coming in on the side that happens to be under that, so when that bone grows, you're stepping on a nerve. We have to solve that problem. Right. But it's not the bone space.

Daniel (47:09.354)

So okay, I always thought bone osteoclasts laid down bone. Osteoblasts. I feel like they should be when I hear blast I think that should be removed. Okay. So osteoblasts, I always thought that they laid down bone wherever there was a piezoelectrical charge from the crystal of the bone being deformed. That's what I believe.

Tom Myers (47:13.953)

yes.

Tom Myers (47:18.958)

That's the yeah, okay.

Tom Myers (47:29.206)

They will lay down more calcium appetite in the areas where there's compression and they will lay down more collagen where there are areas of tension, because tension goes through your bones too. Right? So they're but the osteoblasts are mainly responsible to responsive to the space under the periosteum. So your scap your scapula starts life as a bag and the osteoblasts come in there and fill up the bag until there's scapula.

Daniel (47:54.51)

Fabulous.

Daniel (47:58.573)

Wow.

Tom Myers (47:59.01)

The long bones are different, but mm but some of these bones. Osteoclasts again, not the brightest bulbs in the chandeliers, so they're sent forth also with one commandment of

That bone which is not pressurized of that thou mayest eat. But the bone that is pressurized of that thou mayest not eat. And so when you load your bones with the training and the exercise that you're doing, which if you came to me, and we still haven't gotten to the osteopaths and body workers who could deal with these problems, but that's really what you have to do, is to go into somebody else to look at your number three areas, the areas you don't know at all.

I know my number one areas. If I have a pain in my number one areas, that's easy to find. Number two, send me two yoga. man, that really needs stretching. That's a number two. I don't move the number three areas. Yeah. Like like when I was trying to do the splits. Those are number three areas. I don't know. Right, so it's really hard to know your blind spots 'cause you're looking.

Daniel (48:52.59)

Blind spots to your nervous system.

Tom Myers (48:57.55)

So somebody else, this is still the answer to your question of what do I do at 50 when I've got these nagging things, is get to somebody who knows that. There are wonderful chiropractors. There are chiropractors who will just knock your bones and tell you to come back next week. There are osteopaths who have become doctors and will hand you another prescription. There are osteopaths who really know their business in terms of manipulation, osteopathic manual manipulation.

And there are various massage therapists and sports therapists and who have gone and gotten extra knowledge of fascia and muscle and nerve and joint and everything that you it's not just fascia that you need to know about, right? It's the whole shmir. And then then there's people. You know, okay, I see the problem with this person, but he's already out there in the woods. Now how could I take the style that this man has and add something that would get him

Towards I'm sorry, I'm looking at you to get that L five and L four to come up out of your pelvis a bit.

Daniel (50:00.778)

No. Is that that specific to me? What you just said? thank you. Give me something to work with, yeah.

Tom Myers (50:06.454)

show you before we meet. but that's that's a thing that's really hard to do for yourself 'cause you you have spent your lifetime not knowing those places. And

Daniel (50:15.254)

Yeah. That's what I'm I'm like one of the hardest okay, one let me reframe that. One of the lessons that's hitting me the hardest in my late forties is how serious the problem of not knowing what you don't know is. You know, when you're young and so full of hubris like you don't even care really, but now I'm like

I've had this experience so many times where you realize that you didn't know what you didn't know and how like foolish you feel after where you're like, my goodness, I had no idea how blind I was to all of this. And now I'm at this place where I'm becoming aware that these things are there and I know there's a whole bunch of things I don't know and I'm not sure like, yeah, like what do I do?

Tom Myers (50:56.958)

And people the the problem with the contemporary therapists and the can even contemporary trainers is that they will listen to their clients and do what the client says. Mm-hmm. If the client had the right analysis, they wouldn't have to come to you. They would have solved the problem. So I listen to what my clients say and I don't believe a word of it.

Daniel (51:13.944)

Peace.

Tom Myers (51:14.838)

Because if they had the right story they wouldn't need me. Mhm. And they do need me, so they don't have the right story. So how can I what can I add to that story? 'Cause some of it's right obviously. Mm-hmm. But some of it's not getting there. So you know the things that you know and you know the things to do, but you don't know the places that you don't know in the in the

Mm-hmm. This vast territory, which is your body. I must say, I I just gotta put this in here as an apropos of nothing, which is that I've been 50 years in this and I am nowhere as close to the bottom. Wow. My brother is a painter and he's now eighty-five, I think, and he's still painting. God, I hope I get to the bottom of this before my day. It goes everywhere. My other brother is a musician on the organ and and

God, I still hope I can get these eighty two and he can I get this Bach thing right? Yeah. And I play in kinesthesia, not in visual or auditory, but I play in this in this one. And I'm not a dancer, I'm a terrible dancer, I'm a terrible sports person. I would probably flag if we went out in the woods and I tried to do what you do on a daily basis. But that

I have not finished playing in that thing at all. I have not gotten to the bottom of it all. I just go into work and most of my work is teaching now, not practicing.

Daniel (52:39.342)

I thought I had it all.

Tom Myers (52:47.008)

It's going to change the world with my wonderful Rolfing thing that I had gotten from Hyder Rolf and You start out that way. It's you need to start out that way. Yeah. Doctors start out that way. You know, you there's this incredible hubris from a lot of doctors, not all of them, coming out of medical school. I'm sorry, you just had a training. You haven't started your career yet.

Daniel (53:08.811)

how many patients have you had?

Tom Myers (53:11.982)

and they get a lot. They get a lot in the medical training, but it it's also within a a particular frame that I'm very glad not to have to work in that frame. and if I were working in emergency medicine, you'd have to work in that frame. It's time is of the essence. But with these chronic things, we would have the time to and I wish everybody would undertake this, but right now it's expensive, not paid for by your insurance, etc. But

Daniel (53:20.333)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (53:38.114)

Puberty is a great time to go through your body. I would love to see Rolfing as I learned it as a puberty right. Yeah. People would go through a series of sessions as part of going into high school or part of eighth grade or something like that, that when all those hormones are going on that you even out the body, that you show people their number three places, and that that happens sometime around puberty and then

Daniel (54:02.895)

could you give us like the haiku version of like what a what rolfing like what's a complete rolfing session or or series of sessions?

Tom Myers (54:11.404)

Yes. roughing is deep body work. It's has a reputation for being way too deep. That's the one where they scrape your muscles off the bones and make you scream about your mother. that is n that's a fair enough characterization of what we were doing in the nineteen seventies, but it's not a fair characterization of what we're doing now. We're really anatomically cognizant and

movement cognizant and we're trying to have people be able to use their bodies. we haven't even started talking about this yet, but when you're out in the wild you're really talking about Homo sapiens. I don't think we're talking about Homo sapiens anymore. I think that we have domesticated ourselves along with the chickens and the cats and the dogs and the horses and the cattle. I agree. And the goats and the sheep. We we got all those species that we're amenable to

Daniel (55:00.056)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (55:00.939)

being fed by us and now we're enslaved to them or whatever. cats have taken over the world.

Daniel (55:08.526)

Yeah. They've got the easiest ride of all the domestic animals.

Tom Myers (55:12.282)

Build hospitals for

Anyway, I think that we're dealing with a different species now of Homo domesticus, simply and and I don't know enough about genes to know whether the genes have changed. I do know the epigenetics have changed substantially. And a really easy example of that is our jaws are being torn more narrowly than they used to be. There's the theory that we used to chew much more on unprocessed foods.

So that n you would never have gotten flour that was ground down to the what you got now, you'd be chomping your bread.

Daniel (55:48.214)

My dentist and I have a joke that I have the teeth of a hunter gatherer 'cause I've used them as tools because that's the other thing is you you know, you're working a hide, you're working a sti you you're constantly using it as a as a third hand which we don't do as much of now 'cause we have so many tools. But like they be they get used. Uhhuh. They get used. that's so the jaw gets used, right? So

Tom Myers (55:59.746)

Third hand.

Tom Myers (56:09.024)

Their jaw gets used, but that's one theory and we can go off on how how soft our food is. and maybe whether babies should have harder food. They're giving plastic things for babies to chew on. Give me a break. Just give a carrot. Chew on.

Daniel (56:24.174)

Where will they get their BPA though?

Tom Myers (56:29.294)

I'm sorry, I lost the thread, but we're

Daniel (56:33.198)

I think we were talking about you were talking about how puberty is a great time.

Tom Myers (56:37.806)

no, there's a but there's a second reason that jaws could be narrow, which is when you domesticate an animal, their jaws get narrower. Yep. Look at a bison, look at a cow. Mm-hmm. Jaws narrow. Look at a wolf, look at a dog. Look at a lion, look at a domesticated cat. We don't have pictures of people back there, but we have post tribes that you were talking about that are just barely met or as yet unmet in the Amazon or or

out in Indonesia somewhere. But so we don't really know what those people are looked like. But we can be pretty sure from the jaws that we saw, the guy who wrote Exercise, Daniel Lieberman, his first thing was he went to Harvard. He was an anthropologist. He said, Well, Harvard has a lot of skulls, so I'm gonna study skulls. So he studied skulls and wrote a book called The Evolution of the Head, which if you want to go to sleep is a really But I've gotten a lot from it.

Daniel (57:31.97)

Yeah, we're called book.

Tom Myers (57:36.718)

And what he found was hunter-gatherers needed no orthodontists. Hunter-gatherers needed no dentists. There were a few people with carries. There were a few people with crooked teeth. That was a potential, but it wasn't the norm. Now almost every American child needs a ten thousand dollar smile. Mm-hmm. Twenty thousand dollar.

Daniel (57:59.512)

Don't in England though for some reason. They just roll with it. They just roll with D.

Tom Myers (58:05.644)

But don't think that the cup of tea and the bickeets didn't

Daniel (58:07.886)

but yeah, but I always think of that as like we we know its dysfunction, so we correct it, right? And then it gives it it's like a band-aid, it's like cover up for degenerative processes. Dem do you think it's fair to say d domestication's a degenerative process, or do you feel like it's an evolutionary process?

Tom Myers (58:11.864)

Ha ha.

Tom Myers (58:32.978)

I I just haven't seen the end of it, so I don't know whether it's a degenerate. I think we have

lost contact. I I I want to be careful of judgment. Yep. I don't have judgment on the modern world. It's not suited to the genes we were born with. So the problem, as I state it, looking at urban person and what is the design capable of, what can we do in an urban environment to bring those closer together? They probably will not ever

Daniel (59:06.718)

Actually match. But we could be it would be great if our society was less of a factory farm and more of a zoo. Right? Because like when you put an animal in the zoo, you try to at least recreate the conditions. You know, you create little habitats, little waterfalls, plants that they might have, diet that's like their diet. In the factory farm, it's like

concrete floor, you don't care because you're you only want them for two years or whatever. You don't want like the zoo, you want the animal to live as long as possible. The farm you're like just want to extract maximum product, right? So you're it's you try to cheapen everything as much as possible and make for efficiency. And when I look at what we're doing, it's like, hey, we're factory farming ourselves, not creating a zoo for ourselves.

Tom Myers (59:50.008)

God, I was lamenting the zoo. You'd just taken it one farther. We have to get ourselves out of the zoo and re wild ourselves.

Daniel (59:57.972)

I think of a zoo as actually like a pretty friendly environment. Biologically for the animal it's not perfect, but at least there's an attempt to make it seem like the conditions so the animal can be healthy and you know, I I do think some of us are lucky enough to live on more of a like this is a much more of a free range human farm out here. Yes. And if I lived in Manhattan it'd be like, that's like in high intensive high intensity factory farming of people.

And you're like, what's the product? Well it's like all kinds of things, but it's certainly taxation, it's labor, it's AI. Yeah. Exactly. How many how much cattle do we need now that we have AI? But but anyway, to your point, I I do agree with you. Like I just wonder if it's degenerative, because it's like you see these the neotony that you have in animals that are domesticated, but also things like you're talking about like with a like a pug. You're like, well that doesn't seem like it's moving trending in a good direction. No.

Tom Myers (01:00:52.795)

Hybridized animals, hybridized plants, we've seen a lot of that. Hi hybridization in plants works a lot better. but reducing the genome

Daniel (01:01:02.222)

Correct, till you get to it really and and I think what used I guess one of the things that I think about sometimes is the city state used to do this thing where it would go out and it would pillage the countryside. It would rape and pillage, which would infuse the city state with genetics from And so you would get a reinfusion of strong genetics.

Tom Myers (01:01:20.654)

Okay.

Daniel (01:01:25.07)

It's like you raise chickens long enough, sometimes you gotta like go get some other varieties and bring them in to like infuse the genetics. We've kinda we're kinda like running out of people to do that with. You know, so like where does it do we end up looking like gray aliens at the end of this? You know what I mean? Like are do we if we follow this trend line long enough and adapt because the gray alien looks really adapted to the world we're building.

Tom Myers (01:01:49.602)

The gray alien looks really adapted to the world we're building. Okay, I'll I'll take that.

Daniel (01:01:53.516)

Right? Like no no genitals, no like digestive track, huge eyes, long touch screen fingers, like everything looks like it's you know, for the digital and built environment, you know, like right, not an efforting environment. Exactly. Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:02:06.456)

Not an efforting environment.

Tom Myers (01:02:11.854)

Yep. So training now is saying, Well, you don't effort enough so come into the gym and we'll effort you correct

Daniel (01:02:18.314)

And and I just I put out some videos recently saying, like, hey guys, we we need to like read and do math and, you know, maintain some of these skills because the Industrial Revolution replaced your labor with machine labor and then, like you said, now we have to run on the hamster wheel. We all have experienced cognitive diminishment from technology tremendously, especially in memory is where I'm I'm doing a lot of memory work now because I'm realizing my memory's going away because

Tom Myers (01:02:46.094)

You don't have to.

Daniel (01:02:47.316)

And now Google's changed so much. It used to be I search, it gives me web pages, I have to still, it's like going to the library. Now I'm asking Google really specific questions and getting answers, and I'm noticing that because the answers are available, I don't really remember everything it's telling me anymore. And and I saw that happen with phone numbers, and I saw that happen with all kinds of information. So yeah. In the Gray Alien, interestingly, you know that's

Tom Myers (01:03:05.005)

Well.

Tom Myers (01:03:14.254)

Very narrow jaw and a very wide head. Very neotony, as you say. It's we we we tend to make our aliens like big babies.

Daniel (01:03:21.186)

Yeah, like a big fetus.

Daniel (01:03:25.646)

Big baby. Wow, I hadn't thought about that. That is neotony.

Tom Myers (01:03:29.122)

So there's the question of whether we should define this term neotony for your listeners, maybe they're but neotene is to hold on to young characteristics into the adult phase. So a chimp goes through a

Daniel (01:03:35.638)

It's good too.

Tom Myers (01:03:45.356)

period where it looks like a human baby before it gets all the hair to make it look like a chimp. So we're neotinized chimps. We get pulled out of the womb at nine months when we really should be in the womb for sixteen to eighteen months for a full development.

But we're born with our bones unfinished and our brain is going to double in size. Well, you ask any mother whether she wants to put that brain through the bottom of her body when the brain is double in size. This is one of the things where the mother won and the baby has to leave after nine months, because that's as much head as is going to get through the bottom of that pelvis. sort of between walking and and birthing, we have this equation. And so we do a lot of our embryological development out.

Daniel (01:04:28.672)

Outside the body. Wow.

Tom Myers (01:04:30.318)

And so one of the things that I'm going for now in in my later career, since Fasha, as you pointed out, has pretty well established itself is how we treat our mothers and babies. As a very well-educated and body working 35-year-old person, my we are getting ready to have our baby and after several miscarriages, etc.

But finally she was coming and so we were around babies a lot and somebody would hand me a baby and I would go, that's so cute and look full. I don't know how to I don't know about this little thing, it's all squeaky. So I had the best education money could buy, Harvard the rest of it. I didn't know how to hold a baby. How s high you know my education was really lacking. Right. When we took my baby to Bali, and she was by that time

Daniel (01:05:03.268)

What to get the

Tom Myers (01:05:23.904)

twenty nine, I think thirty pounds or twenty eight pounds or something of just pure fat. She was wonderful. She looked like the Michelin with all of this. I could hand her off to any four year old in Bali. Yep. Secure that that four year old would know exactly how to hold a baby, would not drop it, would be very careful, and indeed was. She we passed her off to all kinds of people in Bali, even little kids, because everybody can hold a baby there.

Daniel (01:05:31.422)

Okay.

Daniel (01:05:50.798)

That's a harsh indictment on humanity.

Tom Myers (01:05:52.6)

Wow. On my loving parents who did the very best for me, you know, but but I was isolated. I didn't have that thing. And so we should are there basic you talked about math, and I think there are basic human skills that we haven't thought we had to put in, but we do. Have you seen a dead person? So many of the people who come to our dissections have never seen a dead person before.

Daniel (01:06:17.1)

Yeah, yeah, I people most people don't see anyone born or anyone die.

Tom Myers (01:06:22.752)

And those are two things that happen in a hospital that are not pathological. There are two things that happen in a hospital that are not pathological, birth and death. They are both physiological processes. And birth has been medicalized? You have a condition called pregnancy. Would you like an abdominal extraction or a vaginal extraction? Any minute now. The so that's a problem that it's that birth has been medicalized and then death also, you know.

I went I had to go into the hospital locally where I was born to find out what time I was born for my astrology, but I went and I was looking through the death records and it's back then, nineteen forty nine, natural causes, old age, pneumonia, just the things that take old people out. Mm-hmm. But go live go read the death certificates, no. Cardiopulmonary failure, brain failure, renal failure, hepatic failure. It's always a failure. Yeah. And it's always a failure when somebody dies.

Daniel (01:07:16.686)

Apologize.

And many of those causes of death w were called natural death before, right? That's what you're saying? So you're like now they're pathologizing at all. Like you're not supposed to die but something

Tom Myers (01:07:31.2)

Right. It's a failure when you die. So I'm not gonna go to a hospital to die 'cause I I have every every intention that my death is gonna be a complete success.

Daniel (01:07:37.986)

Man, I I I had a really unique experience a few years ago. my wife has a f a ha a s a friend of the family, basically like a somebody in a family member almost, very close, and he outlived everybody around him and you know, he was in his late nineties and just he was starting to be feel like he was a burden on his his daughter and he's in Canada so he opted for medical suicide, I think they call it. That maids program. I don't wanna

sp making judgments on that program, but I he invited us to his death, you know? So I go to this thing and I don't I don't really know this, like I'm new to this family, so everybody's very close and I'm just the sort of like, this is just like observational for me in a weird way, you know? And I had never really watched someone die. I've watched a lot of animals die, but I had never watched a human being die. And

You know, they came in, it was a nurse and a doctor, and they had to like speak to him real quick, make sure he's under his own, you know, this is a decision he's making. And it was a series of crazy injections with all kinds of different sized needles, and one by one they just deactivated him and I watched him die. And it occurred to me, like I don't know where we come from and where we go, but I think people would wonder about that a lot more if they watched it.

And we would talk about it a lot more if we watched it. And there's something about taking that away from human view helps to reduce the world to cogs and wheels and belts and pulleys or or a a completely materialistic worldview because we're not exposed to the fact that people are coming in here from somewhere and people Does that make sense? Like like you

Tom Myers (01:09:23.608)

Going back out somewhere. Somebody stop

Daniel (01:09:27.38)

Yeah, well it's just like is there a portal? Like how do we you know what I mean? There's something really interesting about if you sequester away birth and death. It just it just takes it like this is the big important stuff.

Tom Myers (01:09:39.106)

Yes, and people have I think in the materialist society and in the internet thing there is this sense of living forever. Mhm. I have a lot of people out on the west coast who think if they have the right diet and they do the right exercises they're gonna cheat death. Well good luck, brother.

Daniel (01:09:53.683)

Yeah. I always go like, hey, you ever think about native people who lived here like four hundred years ago? No glyphosate, no right no heavy metals, no perfect diet, perfect exercise, all the sunlight, they're doing all the things. They still just died at the end. Like you you think you're g in in this toxic soup you're living in with all this dysfunction, you're gonna eat your way to immortality? Like I used to think it too, but it seems really silly now.

Tom Myers (01:10:19.938)

Does it I I see these people trying to balance themselves out with doing everything on the right side that they do on the left side and your organs your liver's over here, it's heavier, your stomach's over here, it's heavier or lighter depending on whether you ate recently. it's the the whole thing of you are never going to be in balance. We this this was my youthful

Daniel (01:10:32.098)

Later.

Daniel (01:10:36.95)

Yeah, right.

Tom Myers (01:10:46.506)

Stupidities, you thought you were gonna live forever if you ate the right things. I thought I was gonna achieve postural enlightenment and then nothing would bother me anymore because I would be in a state of satory and everything would that isn't the thing. Yeah.

Daniel (01:10:54.862)

Nothing.

Tom Myers (01:11:02.498)

The thing is to be able to be resilient when life hits you upside the head 'cause life is gonna hit you upside the head and if it doesn't, I'm kinda sorry for you 'cause those are the things that build your character and build your kid's character and preach let you know about your relationship in a much deeper way and things like that. So I don't want to not I d I thought I was going to achieve this place where I wouldn't be buffeted. And then I realized, no, I just wanna be strong and Yeah.

resilient when I'm buffeted, so that this these models are kind of good thing. You you get the twist that happens in life and then the strain comes off and you come back. Mm-hmm. And that's what you're talking about in that the fifty year old. You got a strain and then it didn't come back. Yeah. So then the question is what happened to the joints, what happened to the muscles, and that's where I I find it hard to give one nice piece of advice to everybody with these things. And finding somebody good in your town.

Daniel (01:11:42.796)

Yeah, I'm stuck in the strain.

Tom Myers (01:11:56.074)

Mm-hmm. I don't care who they are. Psychologist, acupuncturist, osteopath, body worker, find the person who's really busy in your town and go see them. Mm-hmm. And doesn't matter what they do, and listen to them. And then if they can't sort sort your problems out, say, Well, who would you see? Because people who are busy refer. And people who are busy usually have a good referral network. So I go to this acupuncture.

The problem is your lower back is probably not gonna yield to acupuncture. Might, but might not. But she knows a really good osteopath. yes, he's forty miles away. You wouldn't have heard about him, but she knows him.

Yeah. So building getting a referral network, you you you are we are not in a place now where there is a place that you can go and get this sorted out for yourself and send a picture of yourself in and maybe there will be, you know, you get a three D scan and it'll go into some AI and it'll come back with a a program for you. We're not there yet. Mm-hmm. And so for those of us with deep things in our bodies that we say, Okay, I don't wanna go into old age with this. Yeah. I wanna see if I can get this out. There are some things you c

You know, we can't unbreak your tibia and fibula. Something happened there. However, we can go in there with a fine tooth comb and comb out the tissue. And in my own case, because I broke my leg in a similar way, and when five years later I showed up at my first raughing, he said, When did you break your leg? And I went, how did you see that? And of course I can see that all the time now. but it's you you have to go at scar tissue the same thing you it's

Like your kid got gum in their hair. Mm-hmm. You're not gonna take their hair and a brush. Right. You're gonna take a little bit of hair and a little brush and you're gonna take it out a little bit of time. When you talk about the fascial gunk that has gunked up around an injury, we're in the same kind of thing. We're going in there with a short bristle brush and we're getting the gum out of the hair and hopefully it will be, you know, flowy and and easily letting fluids through it and yet still resilient enough to to handle the forces.

Daniel (01:14:04.334)

I wanna ask another fascia question, but I would just wanna leave a pin and we were we got s talking about birth and death there and I w wanna make sure we come back there. I'm wondering where the current science is in fascia stuff. I saw an article sitting over there. I believe the title is Fascia is able to actively contract and may thereby influence musculoskeletal dynamics. I hear things about fascia as a communication network.

Tom Myers (01:14:29.388)

Yes.

Daniel (01:14:30.38)

W what do we know now like you said, initially it was thought of as like packing peanuts. I know as a butcher, you're mostly cutting it away. Unl unless you're gonna, you know, braise a cut, yeah. Right? Where I can I can turn that stuff into like soft gelatin, then it's like supremely lovely to eat. But otherwise you're always trimming it away, it goes in the dog food pile, you know? And it there is a tendency that you know, they often call it in butchery silver skin. And you think of it

Yeah. You think of it as sort of like not really useful material. I definitely don't look at it and think of it as

I guess when I I don't know what it does outside of its holding the body together. I'm curious if we're now I'm curious. I keep he yeah, you're right. You're right, of course. But is there more? 'Cause I keep hearing things. I keep hearing rumblings that it does more. Yes. But yeah, that that's a that's pretty good.

Tom Myers (01:15:13.07)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:15:23.386)

that's pretty good. So I I would say a couple of things. The silver skin that you see under the skin of an animal is also a muscle attachment for every surface muscle that you've never seen in an anatomy book. All your litissimus, your trapezius, your obliques are your abdominals are all tied into that silver skin. We take the silver skin off, and that's where we start the anatomy book.

Daniel (01:15:52.172)

Yeah, so when people see that chart of the red guy standing there, all all that's been removed. Silver skin doesn't Except you they'll leave it in the like the lumbars. You'll see a little white okay, not not the silver skin, which is the exterior.

Tom Myers (01:16:00.123)

That's underneath. That's still not It's called the fascia profundus because it's

Daniel (01:16:07.724)

Okay. So it's a specific type. Okay. Under specific

Tom Myers (01:16:10.494)

specific layer and it goes it's a unitary it goes all over your body and it's sometimes it kind of melts into the other layers where you you can't find it. but it's all over the body it's a developmental layer and the skin goes on top of that.

So you have the silver skin, then well you know this is a hundred. Then you have the fat layer, which is actually two layers, one that's more lymphatic and one that's more neurological. And then you have the skin layers, which is a very thin panicular fascia to which the skin cells are attached. And I believe, don't quote me, I think you have about six hundred layers of skin cells and two hundred two hundred of them are dead. So the only part of you and I that are looking at each other that's living is the part that we keep wet.

Daniel (01:16:54.179)

Yep. Right.

Tom Myers (01:16:56.396)

The rest of it has about two hundred layers of skin. And if you, you know, hit the road and your skin weeps but doesn't bleed, you went down past the dead skin level. Yeah. So when you say you're exfoliating, you're maybe taking seventy-five of those two hundred layers off. You've still got a whole layer of dead cells on there. And if you did what they did in Clockwork Orange and hold your eyes open, your eyes would you wouldn't see for very long. Because you're your eye all the cells on the surface of your eyes.

Daniel (01:17:07.478)

Living skin.

Daniel (01:17:24.27)

Start dying. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I was wondering, yeah, is there communication, is there hormonal, is there anything going on in the fascia that is beyond its structural component?

Tom Myers (01:17:27.65)

We were going on

Tom Myers (01:17:36.696)

Okay. Hormones and fascia are just now being studied because most of the studies are done on men whose hormone picture is so much more constant constant than women. So now, fortunately, the research is being is beginning to work on it and we're looking at people who have very soft fascia like ligamentous laxity or

Ailer Stanloth, that's a condition that's that seems to be a genetic condition of the fascia, but there are all kinds of things that lead to that, and we're just getting into that. So hormones and fascia, chemistry in general, your chemistry, blood type and things like that, how it affects the fascia, that's an area of research we're just going into now. We know hormones affect fascia. Now, in spite of the title of the article that you just read, fascia doesn't actively contract very much.

The active contraction in fascia, and I kinda hesitate to say this because then people go out and say fascia contract. If you cut a wound, the because the fascia is tensile, the two sides of the wound will spread apart. And then they get proud on either side, and then over the then it covers over, and then over the days you see it

Daniel (01:18:43.102)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:18:49.836)

being pulled back together. That's fascial cells reaching out and grabbing onto the fascia, reaching out and grabbing onto the fascia, and within the limits of what cells can do, pulling that fascia back together. So wound healing is one of the few places that we know that there's active contraction of the fascia. Dupatrance contracture, where you sometimes see in

Daniel (01:19:07.31)

Okay.

Tom Myers (01:19:11.946)

Older women, you see nodules and their fingers are like this, I can't open the hand. That is maybe some of these cells that do this active contraction going crazy in the hand for reasons we don't know. Happens on the foot too. but fascia is really responding to your muscles.

But your muscles in gravity. Your muscles in physics, but mostly gravity, right? So to g hold myself up here, if you said, Tom, relax and I really did relax and sit in the chair, right? I need some tonus in my muscles to say that. except that our brains put out a lot of extra tension.

Daniel (01:19:41.538)

I I think

Tom Myers (01:19:51.902)

Mm-hmm. So that extra tension, we talked about it earlier, if I have an arching thing because I'm eager to get in the world or I'm a little worried about my place in the world, or I don't want to. And you do that with your muscles, your fascia just essentially says, I'm anthropomorphizing the fascia, but the fascia essentially says, okay, if you're going to do that with your muscles, then you need straps here, here, here, and here. And then even if you change your muscle patterning.

Straps are still there. Yeah. They will disappear, but they disappear a lot slower than muscles.

Daniel (01:20:28.396)

Yeah, and that assumes you s don't fall back into your pattern all the time, which is very hard to

Tom Myers (01:20:34.018)

To get out of the pattern. But if you do stay out of the pattern, you undertake a new training program, you're doing things that you didn't do, your fascia will remodel according to that training program. Or couch potato. It'll remodel to be a couch potato. It remodels as a couch potato towards the thing which is generally responsive to whatever threat might come or whatever change might come. And that's a cotton ball.

impregnated with jelly. Mm-hmm. In other words, the fibers are going everywhere, they're like felt, they're just going in every direction. So no matter what force comes on it, it will adapt to that force. Now imagine that I took that cotton ball and I did this with it. The fibers would all fine and I would get to a place where it stops.

Daniel (01:21:15.64)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:21:21.1)

Yeah. Uhhuh. So try that on your arm right now. If you put your hand on your arm, you can move a quarter of an inch, half an inch in any direction. You can even move a half an inch away or a half an inch in, right? Any direction. And it's really easy, right? There's very little resistance. Okay, do it again. Now move your hand towards your elbows five or six centimeters and feel what's happening to the braid on your wrist.

You're moving it. So the cotton is omnidirectional, looking out for everything, but then you put a tension on it and it says, that's where the force is coming. I'm gonna resist that force to save these tissues because I don't want my skin to tear. Right? So it's weak, weak, weak, weak, weak, strong. Unlocked, unlocked, unlocked, locked.

Daniel (01:22:02.456)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:22:05.888)

So Fasha has that ability to be really soft and easy for the movement that I want to do, and then solidified by muscles, it becomes a strap that can, you know, bench press, whatever you can bench press. Right. that we have thought a lot about muscles and joints and nerves.

And it's not that the fascia is more important than these other ones or less important. It's just part of the equation that we haven't really put in. So tendons are made out of fascia, ligaments are made out of fascia, all that white stuff that you see in the anatomical books is made out of fascia. And once you do that, you realize, my God, all of our sea cells are living in a sea of fascia. And so now we've

Daniel (01:22:50.528)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:22:54.87)

Literally every cell except maybe you could say the red blood cells. There's a debate Okay, I wanna I want to get back to this, but the there's a debate in the thing of how much of the water in your body is free and how much of it is tied up in the fascial system. Wow. Because most of our listeners will be thinking of the fascial system as what we've been talking about, the fibers of collagen, sinewy and white, and you can see it in hunting the silver skin and all of that. There's another element of it which is gel.

You've also probably seen that gel. It's slippery, it's synovial fluid in the joints. That's the primary thing of that gel. That gel is a lubricant in the body and it allows for movement and allows for these kinds of changes in the length of the fascia. Which happens in yoga, happens when I put my elbow in there. Now you want it to grow back into the proper shape. I dropped on my elbow, I don't know if the camera can see this, but I dropped on my elbow.

elbow I was carrying a cup of coffee and just went and cracked it but didn't know I'd cracked it because the burst there's a bursa right here and it was a mess, it was bloody and all full of fluid. So by the time I had gotten around this this extra bit, this heterotropic bone growth had happened, so now I have a new tool.

Daniel (01:23:54.298)

Daniel (01:24:09.08)

I was gonna say that looks like feel great going up your skin.

Tom Myers (01:24:11.926)

No, but it looks unsightly for my girlfriend, but the He goes, you know, you can't get through this life without a few dings and I and I just it was a very interesting ding to watch it go. And I, you know, here here's another thing. Can I make that go away? Is there somebody who knows how to make that go away? I don't know how to make that go away. Can I find somebody that and at seventy seven, I don't know. I'll tell you a story. I broke my

Daniel (01:24:14.569)

That's how it's

Tom Myers (01:24:37.57)

The lateral molliscus on my left knee. I was chasing my favorite sixteen year old down the dock here in Maine and she did a face plant and in order to avoid putting my foot in the middle of her back I did a big leap and landed wrong and your your meniscus in here is shaped like a crescent moon and I split it off. And I was shortly after that I was clearly painful and clearly

Not so I I was giving a class in Norway and a physio said, I've got an ultrasound machine, we'll go look at it and we could see it split. So I have the I have the picture of the proof that it was split. And I did all the things that I know as a therapist to heal cartilage. But I was sixty-nine at the time, I didn't think that that was ever gonna heal. At seventy-two, three years later, I went through Norway again, and the same physiotherapist was there and I said, Can we have a look at it again?

And the thing it healed. Wow. Now, I'm not saying this because I eat the right food. I eat terrible food. I'm on the road all the time. I survive on Starbucks and the rest of the terrible things that are in the airports that I have to go through. at least they're cheap. A piece of chicken, a sprig of broccoli. Yeah. But the so it's not it's not

Daniel (01:25:46.702)

release they're cheap.

Daniel (01:25:52.438)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:25:59.126)

because of that. But I think the healing powers that would still be in your discs. That would still be in some of the things that you might think, that's really gone beyond the pale. I think that we have not tested the healing powers of these things. Maybe it is neotony. Maybe we are retaining those youthful characteristics farther and farther. I don't know, but I I also one measure of this would be how long can you have braces on?

They mostly s they're doing some adult work with braces now and expanders and things like that because of this narrow jaw thing that we were talking about a while ago. But the

Daniel (01:26:39.392)

I'm watching a kid right now, she's two cranks a a night. It looks so painful to me. Yes. But she needs that space.

Tom Myers (01:26:48.652)

She needs the space. I I feel like my jaw is wide enough, but I didn't have room for my wisdom teeth. Why would God give you wisdom teeth and then not enough room to put them in? It's it's us, it's our diet, it's something that we're doing to the piece. And I you know, I I had no idea. I'm sure genetics will be part of the answer to that, but I think the environment of the zoo or the jungle or the what was the th your third one? Yeah, no.

Daniel (01:27:15.298)

the digital. Actually, fun?

Tom Myers (01:27:18.154)

A factory farm, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I I had not gone as dismal as putting us in a factory farm. That's really where we are. I thought about it as the human zoo that we built a zoo and we live in it. And I think that might be true out here in Maine where we actually can have a nice zoo with some

Daniel (01:27:25.78)

Okay.

Daniel (01:27:36.984)

I think it's yeah, I mean if you live high enough too up a up the up the pyramid you can definitely live in a zoo, right? There's lots of zoo out there. Mm-hmm. It's a whole different

Tom Myers (01:27:45.614)

But it's hard to live in the wild anymore. Yeah.

Daniel (01:27:48.072)

And there's hard t you know, like as a hunter, you it's so different than it would have been ancestrally because one, there's way less animals. Two, they're way more hip to what people are. Three, every, you know, quarter mile you're hitting another property boundary. It's not like you can just range over huge areas and follow herds of animals anymore. Like you can't. You're just like private property, private property, private property. So it's like it's

That's not even the air to live in anymore. I mean, you know, y y y it takes a lot of space for a person to live as a true hunter gatherer. You need to quite quite a big piece of land

Tom Myers (01:28:27.862)

That's why we can't go back to that. We can't even go back to everybody having their little agricultural plot. You know, William Penn set up Philadelphia with a long lot so that you could have a house in the front and a gar full garden in the back. Right. You know, you still see that now, but the houses have been built all the way down the lot. So you have all these houses in Philadelphia that are not very wide but very, very deep. Yeah. because of the way he set it up for gardening for each person to have their individual garden. But you know, maybe you can do a windowsill garden if you're my daughter living in Brooklyn.

You could do a windowsill garden or you maybe there's an allotment thing that you can get a piece of in your neighborhood. It's it's you're you're yeah kinda reaching and grasping to get a little bit.

Daniel (01:29:07.596)

Yeah, I think I think it's headed headed towards obviously smaller everything, smaller space. Question for you. Do you think that everything we've been talking about, these changes, and then what we see on the horizon, because it's like we're seeing the rollout now, finally after quite a long time, but we're seeing the rollout of robotics at a level that's pretty astonishing when you see these robots doing backflips. And I remember when, you know, you were seeing

Boston Dynamics or General Dynamics showing them when they were still wired, but now they're carrying their own power. So wow, that's a whole new thing. AI obviously has rolled out in just a couple years, and I love when people go, Yeah, yeah, but you can tell it's AI. I'm like, dude, it's the second year you've had it. Like, give it a second. It's gonna be indistinguishable from reality pretty soon, I think. We have nanotechnology, you know, it's like they could you you can have self-assembling machines in your body now. we have genetic

alteration, I guess, or d engineering available to us. CRISPR. So these technologies combined with that shrinking space, that neotony, that f factory farm, I'm wondering if you personally chalk this up to organically unfolding because of like a collective movement towards this, or do you perceive it as a nefarious

d in in other words, do you do you see that the world is being steered by benevolent and malevolent forces, or do you think that these are forces that emerge from within us? In other words, is it an emergent property d because cause it's real easy to look at the world right now and be like, who's in charge of this? Darth Vader? Like what is this? Like where are we why is it so why does it look like it's constantly imprisoning human beings and degrading us? Is that an emergent property of people, or are there forces at play that are

against humanity.

Tom Myers (01:31:10.094)

I you're asking me a philosophical question that I feel unqualified to answer, but let me ever Yeah, let me have a stand at it anyway, 'cause it's fun. in the old tribal world, you get to these numbers, what are they? Moore's numbers or something like that. How many people could live?

Daniel (01:31:17.038)

But he's unqualified.

Daniel (01:31:32.179)

yeah, dun bars and dumbar.

Tom Myers (01:31:33.006)

How many people could live on a given thing of land? As you say, if you're a nomad you or if you're a hunter-gatherer, you need a lot of land to support a a small group of people. So they say groups of thirty or maybe up to a hundred and fifty, but then they'd have to split because you couldn't do more than a hundred and fifty people. You can't do Rome without agriculture. Yeah. And

So the people who were looking over the village, the people charged with keeping that the shaman, the village wise woman, the chief, were very much doing what everybody else was doing on a daily basis. Yeah. Right. Going hunting and gathering. It was just you put a special hat on him, when the when the council was and then he was the chief and then he had a stick. I don't know.

talking stick got passed around. Well, by the time you get to a king, that crown can kill you and so can the other hand. but it was much more even and they would look out for the kids. In the village. You couldn't be a psychopath without being caught by your tribe in the process of growing up. Yeah.

Luigi Mandioni or whatever his name is can get through school and nobody picks him up. or choose the murderer that you want. but somehow these folks are getting through our society, which is so industrial now, people can come up without that mentor that the village would always have. Mm-hmm. But we invented another type of person called a corporation, and a psychopath is

ideally suited to run this thing called a corporation. And so we have instead of selecting psychopaths out of the village society, which would have happened in a tribe or in a small village, take those small villages in England. You can be batty, but you couldn't be murderous. Agatha Christie would come and get you. Yeah, yeah. You couldn't be you couldn't be murderous.

Tom Myers (01:33:38.528)

But now we license those people. We give them big salaries and say maximize our profits. And that is not maximizing the well-being of all the people under the care of that corporation, whether you think that corporation is caring for anything or the government that's supposed to be it's all so large now, there is no village. I just was part of well, I want to get back to the birth thing before we finish. Because I was just in an event about rebirthing the village.

Getting birth back into a village context. because as we said earlier, if you have birth and you go to a hospital, it's considered a disease of which there are several ways to get out of that disease. by a knife or by the vagina with a lot of drugs. but having a natural childbirth you have to fight for. Yeah. We were talking about how you have to advocate.

Daniel (01:34:30.49)

A lot of doctors, my impression, is are uncomfortable with it because they don't do it that often and because they're afraid of how many complications could come up and they've got a golf game scheduled for three hours from now and

Tom Myers (01:34:42.114)

Yeah, I th I don't get the third one. The golf game? That that's a trope, but I don't I find that one. Yeah, I will remove the what these are driven by is the insurance companies. Yes. The outcome of a C section is better now than the outcome of a natural birth. Yeah, wow.

Daniel (01:34:48.27)

Move that. But you filled it up first two. Yeah, but

Agreed.

Tom Myers (01:35:04.034)

Because we've upped the skills in doing C sections and we've diminished the skills of doing a natural childbirth. Two French physicians made up forceps. They gave courses in how you use them.

Daniel (01:35:21.198)

Grab the head, force it.

Tom Myers (01:35:22.828)

Yeah. You can reach up inside a horse and pull the fold out. You can reach up inside a cow and pull the calf out. Why? Because the what we are pleased to call the pelvic floor is for them a pelvic sidewall. So they don't need a whole bunch of muscle. Right. We're sitting on it all. So

Daniel (01:35:38.926)

pelvore head.

Tom Myers (01:35:39.542)

Our pelvis our pelvis had to do this for us to walk. The pelvic floor had to get really taut. And then you're gonna put a baby through that. We talked about that. The baby has to get out after s nine months instead of out of sixteen or eighteen months, just because of the size of of that. And you know, I all power to it. I I want healthy babies and healthy mothers. And if the baby was gonna die or the mother was gonna die and you need to get in there and do a C-section, okay.

But Michel Vaudon, the a very prominent obstetrician, he was a surgeon and he went into obstetrics because he heard all the screaming down in the obstetrics ward, and he went, what is going on here? And he went over there. And then, without telling his whole story, he ended up running a clinic in which you could have a natural childbirth or a cesarean section. None of the intervening epidural ptosin, none of that stuff in the beginning. You just had a natural childbirth.

Thing we can talk about another time of of how to set that up. But the he had a cesarean rate in his clinic of four to six percent a year, year on year. Meaning What is this? Meaning that one in twenty-five women need a C section. But now fifty percent of the babies that are being born on this planet are being born C section.

Daniel (01:37:03.118)

Do you think that the amount that is needed has increased due to pelvic change like structural changes or do you think it's all driven by what we were talking about before, which is changing

Tom Myers (01:37:15.094)

I think mostly driven by what we were talking about before, which is the need for the medical system, the patriarchy, if you will, to control feminine creativity. That's a big thing.

Daniel (01:37:25.982)

Get those midwives out of there. That's arcane science. That's ar arcane witchcraft.

Tom Myers (01:37:30.574)

But in the eighteen fifties most it wasn't great medical care, but most medical care that was given to women was given by women. Yeah. It's more recently that we've put men doctors in charge of of women's health care, which is a dubious thing.

Daniel (01:37:44.43)

Pretty crazy. Pretty hard for men to understand women at even a basic level. So I mean Yeah, exactly.

Tom Myers (01:37:51.242)

You know spend a lifetime with it. But the I think to get back to this subject, I think that birth is the place where the fewest dollars

and the fewest amount of because we don't have much time, right? Mm-hmm. That the most immediate change could be made in parental relations and then the child growing up. I'm sorry, I forgot one thing on the caesarean sections. The research has come through, now I just read this recently, that because we're doing so many cesarean sections, some of those cesarean sections are being done on women whose pelvis is just too naturally narrow to have a baby. Guess what?

Their children are too narrow to ever have a baby. And their children will be too narrow to ever have a baby. So yes, we are, by our ubiquitous caesarean sections, preserving genes for narrow pelvis for women, which would not have been preserved without C C but it's already showing up in the f in research.

Daniel (01:38:48.108)

That's a hard teaching, but it makes sense.

Daniel (01:38:53.858)

Let me make sure I understand that. These are are you saying that these genes would essentially the the natural my understanding is the natural mortality rate for infants is about fifty percent. Historically. So you'd have a lot of child

Tom Myers (01:39:10.198)

That would be argued. Yeah, I I don't know.

Tom Myers (01:39:18.52)

Okay, that's better.

Daniel (01:39:21.578)

mortality early in and then of course to get a child just up to where they're like self sustaining was hard to do.

Tom Myers (01:39:27.606)

Sure, but think of the pioneers. They had seven children in hopes that four of them would make it to adulthood. Right. And the hopes that one would stay behind to take care of them. Yep. Yeah. So

Daniel (01:39:32.843)

Twenty four of them and they had

Daniel (01:39:38.584)

But are you saying that many of these children might not have made it through childbirth and so those genes wouldn't be carried forward and now they are? So that's a hard thing to

Tom Myers (01:39:47.288)

Talk about It's a hard thing to talk about. But those women would have died in childbirth and who wants those women to die in childbirth so they get a Caesarean section. But just understand that's meaning that pre generation will need the Caesarean section as well.

Daniel (01:39:57.518)

That just creates a downstream effect.

Are there, from a myofascial perspective, a structural perspective, is there any v important value for that squeeze of a natural childbirth as the body's deformed its way and spiraled through the vagina versus pulled out into the open air like that?

Tom Myers (01:40:20.14)

Yes, and there are benefits that we don't know about yet. What happens when you squeeze the brain like that? I don't know about you. My baby was born as a cone head. Yeah. That's pretty common, right? And because it went down through the birth canal and bones are not ossified, sutures are not ossified. and

It's fortunate for the mother that the br head can do that. And within an hour it'll look like a grapefruit and you're wondering how the hell did that get through there? because the head really expands in that first hour or two. I'm w my youngest client was an hour old, his cone head was not resolving after an hour, and I took that God, this was such a privilege.

I just thinking about it, but I just had this she was on her mother, of course, but I just had this tiny little head in my hand and it was was like suggesting through my head changing. I didn't have to do anything. I love it. so as

Daniel (01:41:10.094)

Yeah.

Daniel (01:41:13.793)

Like the smell of those little heads.

Tom Myers (01:41:20.918)

A very well educated man who when he was faced with having a baby had no idea how to handle them. I think that even mothers now are that that's me as a dad and lots of dad have lost contact with that infant thing. and we could bring that back. 'Cause it's a joy. It's a joy to interact with your and once you know what they're doing, it it only takes a few hours. If I have a few hours

Daniel (01:41:45.856)

What do you know?

Tom Myers (01:41:47.01)

Well if you know what the baby is doing, mm-hmm, then you can move with them. Mm-hmm. Or they can move with you if you're alert to the signs. Mm-hmm. So my baby is now almost forty and we were back with the pins

on the diapers, and so I would put my hand on her hip and I would turn her over onto one side and take one pin off, and then I would turn her over on the other side and take the other pin off, and then do something to clean up the area that needs cleaning up. And by doing that, very gently enrolling her pelvis within a week,

I would put my hand on her hip and her eyes would and her head would start to turn the other way. Mm-hmm. This is gonna make me cry too. Because we were doing it together. Yeah. Now, what could her contribution be at four weeks, four months? Not much.

But we were doing it together. And that made the communication between us so much more rich. Right. And I'm not doing it too hard. I know sometimes you gotta put the groceries away and you just have to sit in that chair. I get it. But not all the time.

Mm-hmm. Sometime you can be down there and you watch the baby reach out with one arm and turn this way, you just put a hand under that foot and all of a sudden they organize themselves to turn over and see the cat or see mom or see whatever they're gonna see. so if you understand how nobody ever taught me how small bodies move. Even after I knew how large bodies move, even after I was a body worker, I still didn't understand small bodies. And now I understand small bodies and I can really help fathers a lot and mothers

Tom Myers (01:43:27.234)

come by it more naturally for sure. But even even now we're so isolated. We're s in such nuclear families we don't grow up with children all about us. Right. And so that's

Daniel (01:43:38.52)

Couple s friends around me who have l big families, religious folks mostly, five kids, six kids. Got it's so unusual today to see this like troop of people, you know, the size of vehicle they need to go anywhere.

Tom Myers (01:43:45.474)

Mm-hmm.

Tom Myers (01:43:52.126)

Yeah, yeah.

Daniel (01:43:55.39)

yeah. yeah. The one family was telling me they were at like a Renaissance fair last summer and they brought their kids to the childcare area and they were being made fun of by the childcare workers and they could hear them, you know, talking about how unethical it was for them to have these kids and stuff. I mean, just the anti human this sometimes, the mis misanthropy misant misanthropy. I was a real victim of that kind of thinking for a long time, but

But anyway, side note. I've got some friends right now, they've got five. She's pregnant with the sixth. They don't have a midwife, a doula, or they're just doing it at this point. Yeah. She's just she's just gonna call him and you know what? She just won a deadlifting contest the other day. She's not sure what her due date is, but it's this month. She won a deadlifting competition, pulling I think she did a hundred reps of two twenty five. With like the the torpedo belly, you know. And so you you see

Tom Myers (01:44:52.866)

Thinking about that poor kid trying to get through that

Daniel (01:44:55.022)

It's astonishing what we're capable of and what we're really like and then what we've been kinda convinced that we are. Like they just not only do they not see it as an emergency, but they don't even see it as like we need anybody involved. We've done this so many times. We just are gonna integrate it into our life and and watching how all the kids take care of each other and they all know, like you said, how to handle babies.

It's reframing being around people like that. So like reframing how I think about it, you know, because I feel like we really have turned it into something

Tom Myers (01:45:26.934)

W well the people who are shaming them are out of date because we're having so many fewer babies. Yeah. and the good thing about that is that each baby is gonna be precious. Mm-hmm. I used to say a thing and I was in I was jesting.

We'll know our society is getting its bearings back when midwives are paid more than bank presidents. Yeah. Because the midwives are guarding a treasure that's more valuable than what the bank president is. But we don't know.

Daniel (01:45:57.1)

Reserve debt notes.

Tom Myers (01:45:58.13)

Right. We don't we don't mm recognize that in our s but we are now going to because fertility rates are going down, hormones are going down all over the world. All over the world. It's not just us. And and then in educated societies, industrial societies as we have now, having a child is an incredible luxury. Yeah.

Child a very expensive thing to have. Yeah. And they keep getting more expensive the older they get.

Daniel (01:46:28.142)

You ever seen the film Idiocracy? You know, and that theme that like the educated people are not having kids and then the uneducated people are having lots of lots of kids and then the story being the dumbing down that happens as a result of that. But it is interesting to watch and and also as you you no doubt know, it's like if i I would have to have with my wife three kids in order to add to the population. Yes. Right? And I thought I think people don't realize that. It's like, hey, if you only have one kid, you're you're in the removal of

Tom Myers (01:46:57.358)

We're doing a big removal thing now, and we had to be because we were overpopulating like crazy. We thought it would be maybe education, but it's really education of women and making women more equal in the workplace. And then children, as I said a hundred years ago, were the necessary resource to have you taken care of. Now that's not the thing. A child is just an expensive luxury. Right. and we we have to make that change. Now, while we have the time when only a few children are being born.

We are being also being born into an age where they can have Aristotle as a tutor and Louis Pasteur as a chemistry professor, right? You know, the the the benefits of education coming down the internet are amazing and we we will focus a whole lot on the children that are left.

Daniel (01:47:44.986)

If they're doing that kind of education and not just watching videos all day. No. Which is it's like the internet is the greatest tool ever existed and we're using it to like masturbate. I mean it's kind of like I wish that it was like we were using it well. I don't feel like we even know what to do with it.

Tom Myers (01:48:00.792)

Right, but but I think we will be better with that with kids in education and things like that in future generations and and I find this now in in America and I I'm sorry I'm gonna say this about America and not about Europe, Australia, Japan, China is that

Americans are no longer taught to use their brains in to find something out. So I got a bunch of students in my classroom up there and we have winnowed them out, because these are the final things after a year's thing. The ones who want to know the answer.

Here's my book. The answers are all in here. The people who want to be engaged in the question are the people we want in the training. Yeah. Not the people who want the

Daniel (01:48:49.454)

question has the word quest right in it and many people are not interested in the quest. Stay in the Shire. Yeah, well and I just have this like memory of I would have an interest, I would go to the library, I would go to the card catalog, I would pull 20 books out, they'd be all stacked there on the table with a big dictionary, and I would have to piece together that answer. And and just like it was a lot harder to get from point A to point B in the past,

Tom Myers (01:48:53.824)

No, they just want the end.

Stay in the shower.

Daniel (01:49:18.71)

And now it's very easy. It's like it's gotten so easy to get information that I just, yeah, it's sort of like how hard it is for people to start exercising when they don't exercise. It's like, but it hurts. And watching people have to think sometimes, you're like, does it hurt? Like, I worry that that's why I've been encouraging people to have resources, like hard resources. Maybe you don't need them, but it sure is good for your brain to need to solve problems. Or I was saying recently, play chess, like something, but find some

Tom Myers (01:49:34.35)

Sorry.

Tom Myers (01:49:48.088)

These habits these habits of mind. I th we're we're talking about habits of body and habits of body are very important. We're talking about birth and you get so many hormonal and ecological things set in your body at birth that that that seems to me to be a a very fruitful place to put our efforts. But we the the habits of mind of being able to deal with a world that's unpredictable has not been a big value 'cause the world's been pretty predictable for those of us living in the Western world.

Daniel (01:50:15.8)

Those eighties and nineties were pretty nice.

Tom Myers (01:50:17.842)

Well I think my mother had the right idea. She died in September of sixteen, about three months before Trump was elected. I think that was about the time to leave.

Daniel (01:50:27.554)

Yeah, because sixteen is when I I remember things really changed around twelve, but slow. But by sixteen it was it went crazy and now I can't believe where we are in twenty six. Like it's like the it's remarkable.

Tom Myers (01:50:42.38)

Very, very rapid change. And I don't want to sit around like an old man saying, it's so much better when we were young. In some ways it was when we were young. And in some ways I my younger friends would mean, well you grew up in the fifties when it was pure water. we grew up in the fifties when the engines were so poor we were breathing hardware carbons.

Daniel (01:51:03.446)

were polluted and there was no organic food.

Tom Myers (01:51:06.304)

Exactly. You couldn't get walnut acres, peanut butter. And Amazon was certainly not available to deliver it to your house in two or three days. So they were good times in in many ways and but we have to redo this thing. We have to redo this thing, not in terms of trying to get back to the fifties or the sixties or the eighties or the eighteen hundreds.

That we we're facing a new situation. And then I get these people. I'm doing yoga that was passed down from Patanjali in the third century. I am doing a martial art that was passed down from father to son for five hundred and sixty five years. Thank you for telling me how irrelevant your practice is. Yeah. Yeah. Because we're facing a situation

Nobody's ever faced before. And I'm not I I love yoga, I love Tai Chi and all the martial arts. They're all very important. But those they're agricultural answers to an agricultural problem. Yeah. Agriculturally based answers to the problem. So I want all the wisdom that I can get to here, because some of it will apply to the electronic era. But all our exercise went

mechanical mm-hmm when we went into the mechanistic era. Mm-hmm. And so now we do a lot of things that doom your muscles and all that kind of thing. But as we go into the electronic era we're gonna get electronic exercise. I think it's gonna look really different. Yeah. I don't mean electronically enhanced exercise, that's something different. We can all get our you know download our classes from the internet, we can put a ring on that tells us what's going on when we sleep and

all of that kind of thing, but to sense yourself inside and to know when things are off. You asked me a question a long time ago, which is, what do I think the power of the fascial system is? Does it have a communications aspect? And yes it does. It clearly communicates tension and pressure. That's its main job is to transfer force. when the ferns

Tom Myers (01:53:09.118)

By which I mean the things that the the parts of the glue, the gooey stuff, which looks like a fern if you look at it under a microscope. And they line up water molecules in rows like soldiers for thousands of rows of modern molecules out. So they organize the water in your body into what Gerald Pollack calls the fourth phase of water. I don't want to Easy water. Easy water. And so your body is structuring the water.

Daniel (01:53:34.008)

Water.

Tom Myers (01:53:38.728)

If your fascia is in a bad state, the ferns curl up, they get sticky, and they're obviously not organizing the water molecules. The water molecules are just freely going out there. So you want this stuff to actually be engaged with the water molecules of your body. Now, it looks for all the world like an antenna. What is it an antenna for?

The fifty years of dealing with this thing, my answer is hunches. It's your intuitive system. We think of I'm having an intuition in my nervous system. I don't think so. You might realize it in your nervous system, you might give voice to it in your nervous system, but it was actually coming from your antenna that's tuned to where are the threats in the outside world. Mm-hmm. One of the things in anatomy that the where this goes is your nervous system is newer than your fascial system.

Your newest your nervous system is really good at carrying coded signals across your body. Signal from here to there, signal from your gut to your head on the vagus nerve. But before that, before there was a central nervous system and an organized nervous system all over your body, it was your fascia that had channels all over your body, sinew channels that they talk about in acupuncture. And

I think that system was capable of reacting faster than the nervous system. Wow. The evidence I'm going to present to this was I was going to show my girlfriend of the time the petroglyphs in Santa Fe, and you have to walk through fields and desert to get to this petroglyph. And she was walking in front and she said, Are there snakes out here? I went, No, there are cows out here. The snakes don't like the cows. You won't see any snakes, don't worry. And she said, Well, you walk in front anyway.

So I started a hundred feet later, I almost stepped on two mating rattlesnakes. Wow. They were mating. The guy was not amused at most. Yeah, I know. And came up and my partner said, you went straight up in the air and then you went backwards and then you came down. And it happened all very fast. Too fast for an image

Tom Myers (01:55:58.88)

Of an unfamiliar terrain with an unfamiliar animal in it to register on my retina, go to the occipital lobe, come back to some basal ganglia or hypothalamus for recognition out through the limbic system and I end up jumping. I think that went on my fascial system. I think there's an ancient thing, but it only does messages like Help or DANGER FIRE. It doesn't do things like, can you just move your toes like this for the arpeggio of the Chopin?

Daniel (01:56:21.014)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:56:27.88)

That that has to happen from your nervous system. But the things of oof withdrawal or total organism threat was carried originally by the nervous by the fascial system and is now being carried with much more nuance by the fascia.

Daniel (01:56:45.25)

I've had that. I almost stepped on a rattlesnake. I felt the the wind of the strike on the hairs of my leg and I I remember so distinctly what you're describing. I stumbled back way way before I I was stumbling before I even understood what was happening. Like it it yes definitely was a primitive response.

Tom Myers (01:57:03.562)

The fascial system travels at seven hundred and twenty miles an hour. wow, I'm sorry, five hundred and twenty miles an hour. This is Yeah, no, no, this is the speed of sound in water. Because it's an aqueous media. yeah. It is a sound wave. That went through my body at the speed of southern that's three times faster than your fastest nerves. So your fascial system communicates about three times faster than your nervous system. But it's not capable of

Daniel (01:57:11.694)

We're talking speed of sound.

Daniel (01:57:24.6)

Really?

Tom Myers (01:57:32.37)

all the nuance that you're nervous, of course. I'm not I'm not trying to say, the fascial system could take over from nothing like that. I'm just saying, it was the tunic that held you in and therefore it got sensors in it to what's going on outside. Now that tunic is covered by skin, the silver skin is that tunic. It's covered by skin, it goes all through you two, so it's in with the organs. But I believe we just let that whole system get so untuned, mm-hmm

Daniel (01:57:36.558)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (01:58:01.46)

in this generational slide that we're doing, that that system got so untuned, our nervous system is tuned, but it's tuned to very particular things now, as you say, on the internet. And our chemistry system is now tuned to glyphosate, to PFAS, to all the things that are coming in from the environment. there's simply no question

that cancers this is I believe been proven beyond any doubt that cancers some cancers are environmental, that they have nothing to do with your genes going wrong, they are just the or the genes go wrong because of the stimulation from the outside.

Daniel (01:58:35.918)

When you add seventy thousand new chemicals into the environment every year it's probably some of are gonna not be good.

Tom Myers (01:58:41.804)

Yeah, wow. So I yeah. So th I do believe that there is a really wonderful human potential. I see wonderful things happening with the young people that I know in the world, and their desire to change it. It often feels to me as if this stone is rolling down the hill and that even if we get really stroppy about it, we're gonna have a hard time stopping that rock.

Daniel (01:59:08.366)

I was gonna ask you, yeah, do you do you see us over these next decades? It seems like there's a really like you could almost just thread the needle and not have catastrophe. Or do you think that we ha that because there's a way of looking at the young people right now and be like, man, these kids are a mess. But I feel like it's because life is so easy. Like add some crisis and I think they pull together pretty well. I've read that the greatest generation

Like that World War II generation, that there was a lot of talk when they were young about what, you know, how dumb these kids were, they couldn't understand anything, blah, blah, blah. And then the crisis of the war led them to be the greatest generation. And I wonder if this generation is going to inherit the crisis and hardship will generate strong people again. Or do you think that maybe we thread the needle and somehow we can get through these next years without

The 'cause it's just seems like everywhere you look is corruption and collapse. Like I every institution seems to have become not just corrupted, but almost the opposite of what it's supposed to be. So you get like the regulatory agencies actually just become you know, they just end up bringing in the thing that they're supposed to be regulating, right? So it's like you end up with

Tom Myers (02:00:21.895)

That's a stall trapped yes.

Daniel (02:00:23.734)

Right. Everything just seems to be like the hospitals. The g they should be taking care of health and what do they do? They like cut, burn, poison people primarily and like rather than doing what they should do. Or or you know, it was like, cool, we're gonna have this like Make America Healthy Again initiative that turns into like Monsanto's glyphosate. You're like it's the opposite of everything just seems to turn into the opposite of what it's supposed to be. So it's like beyond corruption. Do you think that

this like s something new is gonna birth out of us without hardship or do you think we just have to go through the difficult time?

Tom Myers (02:00:55.508)

If we are going to go back to the kind of mature, you say the greatest generation and I would have said the grown-ups. Mm-hmm. That it's been harder for my generation to grow up, and harder for your generation after that to grow up. to by by grow up I mean mature. Mature into real adults. And some of that was just nineteen fifties dreck about, the man should do this and the woman should do that. But some of it really is

Are you responsible? Are you responsible for your family? Are you responsible for your community? I'm responsible for my family, which is my company family here. I am perched in this community. I depend on other people to plow the roads and to do the things and and I don't do much with the town itself. Other people do. It's it's not my life because I'm an itinerant teacher, so I'm gone a lot of the time. I'm not blaming myself, but I am saying that,

Being a responsible adult, a lot of people aren't doing that now. And so if you want those responsible adults, I don't see any other way than the big hardship. Mm-hmm.

Another depression, another war. That's what happened in the 30s. You had a depression, and then when the depression got over, it got over because of a war, started the whole industrial thing up again. We're not gonna do that. We're gonna have maybe another war. We're certainly going to have a time when nine billion people on the planet are gonna have a hard time eating. Mm-hmm. I I don't see avoiding that. But I'm an old man. the the other way of looking at this, and I wish I had more of an answer because this is an idea.

That I've just been contemplating my young friends and thinking is that there's another neotomy going on, that the young are going in and joining on a subconscious level on the internet, so that there is a much larger substrate of unconscious. And we're not aware of that because we're conscious. We're the conscious generation, and we're

Tom Myers (02:02:55.862)

children of the greatest generation who are trying to be conscious. But these kids are building a collective unconscious that we can't see yet. Mm-hmm. And that that will sustain them even though they don't have these skills. And they're the skills that we think are necessary, mm-hmm, but we don't know the world that's coming. Right. Right? It's gonna be something we don't know almost by definition.

Daniel (02:03:09.703)

Yep.

Daniel (02:03:19.854)

Sure, like what they have front load adaptations for that we don't perceive.

Tom Myers (02:03:22.85)

Yeah. Right. So what is actually adaptive and what is essentially human and we can't take it away. If we do take it away we're no longer human. those things are I do believe those are gonna be tested. and I believe the kids might be th that whole generation might be building something that we don't yet understand that will emerge

Daniel (02:03:34.958)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (02:03:44.618)

as it matures, that it's that it's in the womb now and you can't see it because it's in the womb and maybe in some years it'll come out. but that's that's my hope also that if humanity is going to transcend this thing, we're hearing a lot about AI now and AI's gonna that you were talking about robotics, ro robots are gonna maybe replace all our jobs. Great. In the industrial world, you defined yourself by your work.

If you ask an American, what do you do? They're going to tell you their work. They're not going to tell you their artistic pursuit or that they go bowling on Tuesday night. They're going to tell you their work. And your work is not going to define your value anymore. It's your engagement. It's your connections. I don't know. I think feeling is going to be the thing because the internet is so far relentlessly audiovisual.

I teach a kinesthetic art how to use your hands on somebody else's body in a very particular way.

I refused during COVID to certify people over the internet. You can't do that. In an audiovisual medium, I need to feel your hands on my body. It's a kinesthetic thing. Now you can imagine some blanket that I could put over my shoulders and somebody in Australia could do this to another blanket and it would happen to me. You know, they're doing that with surgery now and things like that. So I can imagine it. It hasn't happened yet. So right now.

Daniel (02:05:04.472)

There, yeah.

Tom Myers (02:05:06.87)

You want job security? Become a massage therapist. Because or or it's like somebody where human feeling, because I think human feeling is going to be the currency of the future, because it's going to be the irreducible. Everything audiovisual is changeable. And as Harari pointed out to us, money is the story we tell ourselves. And what happened in the Great Depression is we lost faith in that construct of money.

And we now have a construct of money that's so far away from even the little pieces of paper that symbolized something that I was willing to take in return for my time because I could take those pieces of paper somewhere else. That's a story we tell ourselves.

That story might it might be this lifetime that that story goes out the window in which case your work, all that you built up in your life, all the things that were supposed to be the American dream and the building of middle class life and the result of the Enlightenment from back in the seventeen hundreds. All of that has reached its end now. We're we're going into something different. And I only see you just asked two ways and the the two ways is that it's something spiritual and that all this inward going

is gonna build an unconscious or subconscious event that will then grow up and I probably won't understand it 'cause I'm of a different generation, but but it will be the next thing that humanity does. Or if we're in the more pedestrian world where people have to eat and yeah we're not in AI disappearing into the silicone world and carbon based life forms are no longer necessary and all of that kind of thing.

Then I don't know, that's the end of history for humans. Too bad 'cause I liked this experiment and I really liked my fellow humans. Maybe next time we'll do a little better job, but whether that's inherent evil in people or just sort of an accident of of how the whole thing unfolded, I have no idea.

Daniel (02:06:44.099)

Yeah.

Daniel (02:07:01.814)

What do you think happens? Do you when you die, do you you believe in a soul? Do you think you have a eternal peace? Do you what do you think happens to your consciousness?

Tom Myers (02:07:12.042)

Well, th for what it's worth, 'cause this is just my belief, I believe consciousness is a material thing and that there's so much of it around this planet and that it's distributed to all the beings that are in some way participating in consciousness and you can ask, you know, trees, grass, dirt, I don't know. but in terms of hum

Daniel (02:07:33.774)

For a consciousness that's already here.

Tom Myers (02:07:36.864)

Yes, yeah, yeah. That's your yes, an antenna or radio. Yeah. it's kind of a Rupert Sheldrakian idea of morphogenetic fields and that kind of thing. But so I believe when I die that the energetic patterns that I have made will go will be part of this newest sphere that's a around the planet. Sphere of consciousness. I have I will be delighted if my

Daniel (02:07:58.146)

Sphere of consciousness.

Tom Myers (02:08:04.792)

Personhood survives death. But I barely survived a divorce.

Daniel (02:08:08.032)

Yeah.

Tom Myers (02:08:11.126)

Divorce nearly killed me. I don't expect to survive death. you know, if if you go through that, I I I I don't know where you are as a psychonaut, but I've been through those experiences with psychoactive medicines that I certainly died and all right disassembled and and was assembled

Daniel (02:08:14.186)

Daniel (02:08:29.207)

Symbols.

Tom Myers (02:08:33.656)

thing of consciousness and if I go through the bardo or whatever that is and I come out in another body I will either have forgotten or I will be delighted that that is in fact the case. But I don't I don't know that I've done any I think people like Jesus or other enlightened folks might build a soul that would survive death.

Daniel (02:08:54.466)

Get out.

Tom Myers (02:08:54.892)

That's kind of a Gergiefian idea. but I don't think that I've done all the work that we introduced. So I don't I don't expect Tom to show up in any other form. Other than my vibe got to be part of the universe somehow.

Daniel (02:09:04.162)

Right.

Daniel (02:09:08.088)

Thanks for what you contributed while you're here. has is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to make sure comes up?

Tom Myers (02:09:16.712)

No, I think we got this. I just I hope that people will take such joy in the body as I've been able to 'cause I was certainly carefully educated by my parents to have neither a body nor emotions. Right. Feelings are something that other people was was the way I was brought up. And you know, yeah, very new England. So to I'm still doing the work to get out of that

Daniel (02:09:36.674)

Yeah.

Very New England.

Tom Myers (02:09:46.818)

particularly autistic way of being that my parents put in me with all the good intentions in the world. and that I absorbed with all the good intentions in the world but are now irrelevant and need to be taken out. So I really hope that people who are tied up in their careers or tied up in the problems that they have will take some joy in their bodies and I my own research is it will repay you time and again.

Yes. This investment is a a very worthwhile investment.

Daniel (02:10:19.774)

Well said. Thank you so much. It's been great to talk to you, man. hey, what people wanna get your stuff? People wanna get a ten segrety model or they wanna get your book.

Tom Myers (02:10:30.654)

Yeah, yeah. the the kinds of things we're doing, thank you. www anatomytrains.com is where we have all our courses. We have tons of online stuff because of COVID. We've put things up there. We are known for our dissections.

which we do twice a year in Boulder, Colorado. You can see them on TV, which is like looking over the shoulder of somebody who's really good at it, 'cause it's our guy in Boulder who does this. or if you come to Boulder you'll be doing the dissection yourself. Rex for that? Warm and have a checkbook. Okay.

Daniel (02:11:05.272)

You don't have to be a therapist of with 'cause I think to do some of your work you do need to have some background, do I recall that?

Tom Myers (02:11:11.402)

Yes, yeah, you in order to enter our training program, which is my version of Rolfing, which is a program of sessions designed to re configure this fascial system and particularly to get rid of the things that have accumulated over the years in those number three areas. and yes, those are there are requirements for people to come into that. Although we have in recent years taken in a lot of yoga teachers, Pilates teachers and trainers who don't have a manual therapy license.

they need to settle that with whatever jurisdiction they're working in. That's not our job. our job is to train them and what I found is that some of the people who were in movement

who don't have any experience with their hands can translate their movement experience into manual therapy very easily and some cannot. so we ad admit those spells and then if they're not up to it, we say, why don't you go get a little training in massage and then come back and and study with us. but we train physios, osteopaths, chiropractors, massage therapists, acupuncturists, as I say, the movement people who come in. And then occasionally we get people in who are researchers or

I had an animator come in because he wanted to understand movement for or to do his animation. Yeah, yeah. So it's been a wonderful journey to do that. But my people will be upset if I don't say that we have an app that we just put out anatomy trains for all. So if you want to see some strange anatomy like you wanna see this bone you were talking about the fascial bone, I have a bone where you can just not in the bone and things like that either.

These are all up on the website and we hope people will either come to a course, enjoy our website or come see us in a dissection. That's the

Daniel (02:12:55.724)

I always tell people that your book should be I just think anybody who does anything with the body, their your book should be in their library, even if they don't understand it or read it, you could just look through the pictures of that book and almost get the the gestalt. Yeah, you you earlier you said something about being good with words and I was thinking, well, you're good with the pictures too. You really nailed the balance there because you know, the reading is somewhat technical, but the

Tom Myers (02:13:11.328)

It was designed.

Tom Myers (02:13:21.437)

yeah.

Daniel (02:13:22.796)

the imagery speaks volumes and so I think just to put that plug in, I just think that that's a crucial book. I I it's funny 'cause I grabbed my book off the shelf. I like, I should get him to sign this and then I opened it up and you had already signed it and I like, yeah, I did that already. but I think that's an essential reading for everybody with a body. So I'm gonna put that plug in there for anatomy trains.

Tom Myers (02:13:40.694)

Great. Well, we we do have people all over the world. We have a find a practitioner thing on the site if you want to find

Daniel (02:13:46.316)

I w I did want to ask about that because yeah, people want to work with somebody who's trained under you. There's a

Tom Myers (02:13:50.892)

There's a find a practitioner thing and and sometimes if you email us there's somebody that's not up on the list that we can point you to. in terms of finding people who are skilled to do this kind of unraveling. I wish there were more people skilled at this kind of unraveling. and I was just recently doing some work with a bunch of people who were very well trained physios and in that orthopedic world.

And they just went, We did not get this in school. We just did not get this.

kind of point of view. Because if you're thinking of the body as a car and you're thinking of what part to replace. Mm-hmm. If you're thinking of the body as a tensegrity structure, it's a set of relationships. And it's the relationships that are important, not the thing. Mm-hmm. It's how how are you going to deal with the sets of relationships in the body? And that's that's what I'm hoping to you know, I'm working I figure I have about ten years left in me, I'm trying to build a faculty that will carry this thing on.

Daniel (02:14:50.676)

I all I wanna say that you're pretty blessed to have seen so much change from so many people the change from their work happens long after they're gone, you know? And

Tom Myers (02:15:02.227)

Get a lot done if you are willing for somebody else to get the crazy.

Daniel (02:15:05.09)

Well, I think you a lot has happened in your lifetime with your work and that's pretty cool to get to see because obviously it will become more and more mainstream over time. That's the direction it's trending in. I hope so. So I'm glad that you haven't had to struggle in obscurity with this. It seems like the world's embraced it to a degree that is yeah, it's a cool thing.

Tom Myers (02:15:28.054)

It is it is very interesting if you don't mind one more story. The I just went this spring to I was invited to a tongue tie conference. Mm. We've been talking about how the jaw was getting smaller. Well maybe one effect of that is that children are being born with more tongue ties. Mm-hmm. Whatever the reason children a frenulum under the tongue is too short for the baby to latch properly on to the mother. Mastitis, failure to thrive, lots of things follow on from this, so it's

Daniel (02:15:44.888)

Or they release that tissue from a

Tom Myers (02:15:57.908)

the midwives, the old midwives of Europe would keep a long fingernail. And just if the if the kid couldn't latch a lot less than circumcision, let me tell you. and if it's very little blood

Daniel (02:16:06.734)

Cool. Give it a little cuss.

Tom Myers (02:16:14.582)

Yes, it hurts for a few minutes and then the baby you know, put the baby right back on the nipple. so I see the argument for that. And then of course it got medicalized, so then you need a procedure and then it's not gonna happen for several weeks 'cause the procedure has to be gone through. but the procedures are surgical and, you know, not somebody's dirty fingernail going under your tongue. but the in this tongue tie conference we had dentists, orthodontists, surgeons,

osteopaths, orthopods, physiotherapists, speech therapists, lactation consultants, dualist midwives, and all massage therapists and acupuncturists and all. I love gatherings like that. Where everybody's gathered.

But they're all different professions, they all have different lingo, they all have different Argo language in their in their things. And that's a really good opportunity to make people talk together. You have to use the same language. You can't use this term for this when these people over here. You need to be able to talk to each other. It's the same thing. And or you're saying two different things, but it's actually you're saying the same thing, stretch, but it's actually two different things that you're doing, and that needs to be distinguished. We don't

have a tree of spatial medicine, the medicine of the fascia of the body moving, the way we have a tree for psychological medicine and a great big tree for chemical medicine. What we have is yoga, CrossFit, all these things are shooting up like little shoots out of the forest floor. They have to combine into a tree. And that's that's that's what I am grateful to have been able to

Daniel (02:17:56.544)

Wrap them all in a fascial sheath. Well, Tom, I appreciate your time today. I appreciate the work you do. Thank you very much.

Tom Myers (02:17:59.771)

Send them down the tube.

Tom Myers (02:18:06.87)

Right. This has been very enjoyable, Daniel. Thank you.