The Best Moments Of Modern Wisdom (2024)

Chris Williamson 0:00 Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the show. 2024 is nearly over, so I decided to put together a compilation of some of my favorite moments from the show over the last year. It was going to be a top 10, uh, but I couldn't choose, so it's 11, 11 favorite moments. Expect to learn Andrew Huberman's best advice on how to become a morning person, why Oliver Burkeman thinks you should stop trying to control your life, the reason Eric Weinstein believes more young men are becoming right wing, Dr. Mike Israels' most important advice for choosing muscle-building exercises, Alex Hormozi's advice on why everything worth doing is hard, and much more. I appreciate all of you. This year has been insane and tough and beautiful, uh, and all of the things, and if you haven't done your end-of-year review yet, you can go to chriswillx.com/review. It's a free annual review template that helps you to reflect on lessons from last year and plan what you want to get done next year. It's the exact template that I use and I updated it. I updated it from last year to this year, so there's tons in there. Uh, it's so cool getting to revisit these old episodes. Uh, a lot of stuff that aren't just the biggest moments from the biggest episodes, but underground clips and sections, 10, 15 minutes, that, uh, maybe you missed, and perhaps there is something that you forgot that you wish that you hadn't. And anyway, I'll stop talking. We can get into it. Happy

Chris Williamson 1:20 New Year. Have you seen the data showing the movement of teenage boys politically to the right? Have you been looking at this?

Eric Weinstein 1:27 Well, where else are they gonna go?

Chris Williamson 1:29 That's a good question.

Eric Weinstein 1:30 I mean, I- I had a teenage boy. I still have one, but he's 18 now. And I watched them be pushed farther and farther right by their schools. "You suck. All of your instincts are bad. These girls are amazing. Look at you, you're pathetic. Be less masculine and more attractive." You're just barking at them constantly. They're not moving right, they're moving out of your stupid way. You've given them what? Nothing. Nothing. One of my son's friends died recently by his own hand. And I don't know what kind of pressures he was put under, but I watched those kids go through this pressure cooker created by this crazy parasitized left-wing educational movement. Get away from our sons. Get away from our daughters. Get away from our sons and away from our daught- it's not left or right. I don't have a Republican bone in my body. Get the crazy people who do not understand human development away from our children. Stop giving our daughters terrible life advice.

Chris Williamson 2:56 What, like...

Eric Weinstein 3:01 Um... That's one of these Milgram questions, what am I supposed to say? Um, let me speak abstractly so we don't get distracted with stupid stuff. Gender is about reproduction. And it's paired and there's nothing you're gonna do that's as good as the male-female pairing that produces families. Yes, there's a ton of problems with it. There's a ton of problems with traditional femininity, with traditional masculinity. I actually believe that toxic masculinity used to mean something before it meant nothing. Right now, we are allowing our children to be parented by people who should be n- nowhere close to a child, because development for humans is different. We're not like wildebeests where you come out with programming where you can walk on day one. We're basically not blank slates, but self-assembling computers. And what you put into a developing mind, um, you know, what normal child trying to figure out gender identity, um, does not go through a process trying to figure out, "Oh, I like that dress. Do I want to marry somebody who's wearing it, or do I wanna wear it myself?" That's a normal process that you go through in development. And if a parent hears that, they usually, you know, try to guide natural gender identity. Now, what happens when an administrator says, "Oh, he said he wanted to wear a dress. He's a girl. Everybody respect his choice." You're thinking, "W- w- wait, w- what? You took a moment that happens in every boy's life, and you turned it into a trans affirmation moment, and then you tried to, like, (laughs) freeze it in and... Y- let me guess, you really just wanna protect something, which is great." Some people wanna protect trans kids. Trans kids exist. They have life very hard on them. Okay, let's ask how many trans kids got manufactured by this DEI movement, versus how many would occur naturally? And you have type one and type two error. You have a trans kid who was always going to be a trans kid that wasn't properly treated. That's terrible. I agree with the DEI people about that. You have another collection, huge collection of normal kids who are never going to be trans, and you push them towards this.

Chris Williamson 5:46 I had J. Michael Bailey on the show, who his paper on ROGD, rapid onset gender dysphoria-

Eric Weinstein 5:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:55 ... uh, was pulled. Very, very rare that this happens.

Eric Weinstein 6:00 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 6:00 Uh, and-I learned, during my research for that, about the left-handedness argument for both gay and transsexual people, so in the Middle Ages it was seen as being a mark of witchcraft or being touched by the devil that you were left-handed, which meant that people who were, hid their left-handedness.

Eric Weinstein 6:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:23 I think about 12%, maybe, of the population is left-handed, something like that. But during the Middle Ages, uh, it was significantly less. The, uh, sealing gets released and people are free to be their true left-handed selves, and more people become left-handed. I- I- I can now-

Eric Weinstein 6:38 Right.

Chris Williamson 6:38 ... fully manifest that forward. And that is an argument that gets put forward a lot, for, well, now that we have released the lid on the pressure cooker that was tamping down people's natural trans or gay proclivities or whatever, uh, they're now free to be themselves. But that doesn't explain why gender dysphoria appears to occur in clumps. It's not evenly distributed across all scores, it's-

Eric Weinstein 7:00 So you, you linked two things that I think have to be unlinked. We are fighting the last war because we got male homosexuality wrong. I'm old enough to remember when it was a lifestyle choice. Right? And, and I had gay friends in college who, "It's not a choice." (laughs) You know, it's like a quiet...

Chris Williamson 7:28 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 7:28 "I didn't choose this."

Chris Williamson 7:29 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 7:30 Um... we're lumping a bunch of stuff together. I don't think male homosexuality has almost anything to do with female homosexuality. I think that calling them both homosexuality is very confusing. There's something that seems much more obligate about male homosexuality. It's highly conserved. I don't think it's unnatural. I think it's, it's part of the design of humans and we haven't quite figured out why it's there.

Chris Williamson 7:55 I don't disagree, but I think the left-handedness argument makes sense-

Eric Weinstein 7:58 No-

Chris Williamson 7:58 ... when it comes to homosexuality, but not when it comes to the trans issue.

Eric Weinstein 8:02 No, it makes sense in both, but the size of the effect is the problem.

Chris Williamson 8:08 Yeah. Yep.

Eric Weinstein 8:08 You're claiming... I have no doubt that there were some people who had transgendered brains who were closeted, uh, you know, transvestites and, and that had, they had a closet somewhere in the basement where they got to be their- their true selves. No question that that exists. The issue is that you created an enormous amount of, like, type II error so that you could go after a much smaller amount of type I error. You created all sorts of negative stuff by not balancing type I and type II, and that's unforgivable. You're not actually the defender you think you are. You're somebody who's destroying some lives to privilege others, and why have you made that decision? I completely agreed with you. Like, I- I won't say there are only two genders, you know?

Chris Williamson 9:00 Why?

Eric Weinstein 9:03 (sighs) Because it's not true.

Chris Williamson 9:08 In humans?

Eric Weinstein 9:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 9:10 Two genders or two sexes?

Eric Weinstein 9:12 Well, first of all, the gender and sex used to be largely synonymous before we decided that one was, in some sense, obligate, uh, biological, and the other was software programming.

Chris Williamson 9:22 Well, that was a lexical game that was played to try and-

Eric Weinstein 9:24 I believe in the 1950s.

Chris Williamson 9:25 ... that was played to try and-

Eric Weinstein 9:26 Yeah, but you-

Chris Williamson 9:26 ... bifurcate the two.

Eric Weinstein 9:27 Yeah, but you can, you can make a, an argument that you need a term. I don't think the gender should be purposed for that, but you can make a, an argument that just, like, abstracting male and female into top and bottom had some utility. Right?

Chris Williamson 9:40 Okay, so what do you mean when you talk about...

Eric Weinstein 9:42 That... intersex is a really important category to me. I know people who are intersex, and they're, they're screwed. They were screwed because our society had no way of dealing with them. The gender binary is so strong that somebody, through zero fault of anybody, is born with ambiguity in their genitalia, in their chromosome, something. So yes, there are two intended sexes or genders, but nature isn't good enough to hit that mark all the time, and those are, those are human beings. Those are souls. And, and the sloppy right wing thing, which is to find the Schelling point, where you just sit there and you say, "There are only two sexes and two genders." I understand why you're doing it. You're trying to stop this crazy conversation that's taken off. So it's not like I don't have sympathies with why you're saying that, but when I bring up... You know, my favorite example is persistent Müllerian duct syndrome, where somebody goes into their doctor having trouble having a kid and it's like, "Well, you have twigs and berries, but you've also got a uterus. You're, you're female on the inside."

Chris Williamson 10:53 But does that, does that person produce both sperm and eggs?

Eric Weinstein 10:58 No, I don't think so.

Chris Williamson 10:58 Right, so, but surely that's the definition. That is the, that is the line in the ground around male and female, large gametes-

Eric Weinstein 11:05 Yeah, but sorry, the, the, the gentleman who goes into his doctor and to find out that he's got a uterus, who is he? If he wants to be male, I understand why he wants to be male. If he wants to be able to talk about the fact that he got handed some very strange cards by, uh, by the Creator in her infinite wisdom, um, I want him or her, however that person conceives of self, to be... That's a, that's a soul to me, and I don't like the energy of saying there are only two sexes and two genders and that's it. It's like, I get it. I understand what you're trying to do. You're trying to say that there are two intended sexes and genders. It's reproductive. It's nature. I get it.

Chris Williamson 11:48 It depends on how we're going to define sex, because if it comes down to gamete size, that's, that is binary.

Eric Weinstein 11:55 Sure. Okay, but what do you do about the edge cate- the edge case?

Chris Williamson 11:59 But no one's producing both, so there are none.

Eric Weinstein 12:02 I don't know that nobody's producing both. Maybe that's a fact. You know, u- u- usually the issue is, is that you have this h- this list of homologues, right?So that the clitoris maps to the penile shaft and the labia majora map to the testicles. And what you're doing is, you're taking a common female template, I believe, and you're treating it through the SRY cascade, uh, differently during development so that the default is female, but you also have this ability, uh, through this one protein to create a cascade that creates male out of female. Okay? That doesn't always work out. Now you've got an ambiguous situation, and you've got a- a culture that basically can't think in ambiguities. That's where a lot of this frustration with the gender binary comes from, is that you- you know somebody in this c- in a category where they're not really one thing or the other at a hardware level. I- I believe that beyond that, there's also a software level. There are people with male brains in female bodies and- and conversely. I don't understand this stuff, but I believe that that's true. If you ever have the opportunity to interview Deirdre McCloskey, who used to be, I think, Dennis McCloskey, a very famous economist, I had the pleasure of speaking with her a while back, and, um... You know, one of the things that she said was that she wasn't doing this to be hotsy-totsy. She was gonna... She wanted to die a- an old lady, not an old man. I mean, it wasn't- it wasn't a sex thing. It was just the fact that she'd been uncomfortable in a male body her whole life. So I'm using the term "her." Do I have to use the term n- no, I could use the term "him" or "his," but why would you do that? Don't- don't you have enough compassion that somebody ruined their family life and went through hell in- in public because it was so painful to be in the wrong body? I get it. Okay, now that you have that compassion, in how many lives are you gonna ruin over that? How many lives are you gonna ruin pretending that this is an enormous cohort? So, to the extent that I have a slogan, and I basically never speak about trans, my slogan is, "Make trans accepted and rare." Make it rare means use the developmental environment... In order to give good coaching about male strategies and female strategies for life. Don't relitigate the fact that we screwed up male homosexuality. Just take your lumps. We screwed it up. It's a part of the human condition. It's never gonna go away. It's different from female homosexuality, almost certainly. We don't exactly know why it- it's here. We've been blessed with untold riches, uh, particularly in the mimetic realm from male homosexuals. It is what it is. And now we're gonna re-fight this over trans? Where... No, I think you have tremendous opportunities through development to assign behaviors. Is the skirt a female object? No. The lungi in South Asia is a skirt. Men wear it. I have a lungi. It's like telling a Scottish person that he's a... Uh, he's- he's cross-dressing. What are you, an idiot? You ever- you ever dealt with a Scotsman? You do not wanna make that mistake. (laughs) They will let you know very quickly who they are. Um... We're out of our minds. We're out of our minds. We're creating so much misery for these young men and young girls. And I, and it, you know, it just, it makes me upset because we don't love our children enough. We- we don't love our children enough to tell these teachers, "Hands off my kids. Go work out your weird stuff." I get it. But get away from our children.

Chris Williamson 16:24 You're going

Chris Williamson 16:25 to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to-do list. You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for years. This is what hard feels like, and that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard, and the more worth doing it is, the harder it is. The greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you.

Alex Hormozi 16:55 I think a lot of entrepreneurship and even personal growth is training yourself on how you respond to hard. Because in the early days, hard was, "Ooh, stop. This isn't good. I should- I should... This is a warning sign. This is a red flag. I should slow down, or I should sto- you know, I should pivot." But the more I think about it as a competitive landscape, as I'm clear on what this path is supposed to look like, and these rocks and these dragons are things that I'm gonna have to slay along the way to get the princess or get the treasure, I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow.

Chris Williamson 17:31 It's a selection effect.

Alex Hormozi 17:34 And I think if you can- if you can shift from, "This is hard," to, "No one else will be able to do this," then it- it's- it flips from being this thing that you're like, "Oh, poor me," to, "Oh, poor everyone else who's gonna have to fucking try."

Chris Williamson 17:45 Yeah.

Alex Hormozi 17:45 And I think that is so much more motivating as a frame for the exact same circumstance.

Chris Williamson 17:50 Yeah, that's awesome. I was thinking a lot about the lonely chapter that we talked about the last time. That was the best, most powerful idea, I think, that we came up with. And if you see there basically being no shortcuts toward getting the thing that you want, there are ways to be more and less efficient, and there are ways to do things with more and less of a positive disposition, which can actually make the journey feel an awful lot easier.But ultimately, if you assume that largely everyone needs to go through the same challenges that you're going through, every single difficult thing that you do is kind of like a massive wall that you need to get over and you go, "Wow, fuck. I'm so glad that I've got over that wall and... uh, think about how many people are going to be selected out..." It's like the Hunger Games, you know? Think about how many other people are going to fall at that wall there.

Alex Hormozi 18:45 People only root for people who don't need it. Like, the amount of times when I was on my lonely path, where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with, that's when, that's when you want people to root for you. That's when you want people to support you. Once you've already won, people are like, "He's amazing. He's so good." But like, that's the time when you need it the least. And so, you always have to be the person who roots for you before everybody else does and it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you. Um, and that visual, I think, is one that you can kind of take because it is... People struggle to do things alone and the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people. And rather than fighting that or bemoaning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path because if everyone else were cheering you on, then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you wanna be.

Chris Williamson 20:11 It's an interesting paradox that the energy it requires to start doing something is way more than the energy required to continue doing the thing and that the beginning of doing anything results in the lowest amount of reward, both internal and external, than when you've been doing it for ages. So I think about this a lot with the show, that there was this stat that Spotify told us, 85% of the listeners of this show found us in 2023.

Alex Hormozi 20:42 (laughs) Right.

Chris Williamson 20:43 And I thought at the end of 2022, remembering at that point I'd been on Rogan, we were at like 650K, we've got, you know, we've been doing s-

Alex Hormozi 20:50 (laughs) Amazing.

Chris Williamson 20:50 ... 550, 600 episodes deep.

Alex Hormozi 20:52 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 20:53 Like, I- I'm- I've got it. I've done the thing. Like this is, this is me doing... If this isn't fucking doing the thing, I'm moving to Austin, Texas. I've got an O-1 visa, I've got like the- all the rest of the stuff. Jordan Peterson's been on twice, you've been on. And yet, the... What? Everything up until that point is-

Alex Hormozi 21:14 Two months of growth.

Chris Williamson 21:16 F- yeah. I mean, we made, we made more money for- just from a revenue perspective, we made more money and more subs in one month, December of last year, than we did in the entire first three and a half years of the show. So it's this odd paradox and one of the things that you need to ensure... I've had this idea about protect your passion at all costs because if you, if you begin to hate the thing that you do, you negatively change your trajectory. And that means that at the time when you can benefit the most by every single unit of work, which is the later that you go, presuming that you continue to hit that upward trajectory-

Alex Hormozi 21:50 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 21:50 ... if you've completely killed any passion or desire to do the work in the early stages because you've, you've not protected it appropriately, that can be by focusing on the wrong things, by not rewarding yourself, by not building it with people that care about you, by, you know, just not- s- not celebrating when you hit milestones, all of the things that actually help to keep you going-

Alex Hormozi 22:09 Like being a character.

Chris Williamson 22:11 ... by the time that you get to the stage where each unit of effort allows you to gain a thousand or a million of each of the things that it would have done at the very beginning, you've inverted the, uh, like the passion, uh, e- equation. Takes way more energy to start a thing than to continue doing a thing, and yet in the beginning the rewards are way lower than they are at the end. But if you don't protect your passion, your motivation is at its lowest when you are at your highest amount of efficiency in terms of returning your time put in.

Alex Hormozi 22:40 I think a hopeful message that anyone can think about who's about- who's in that hard period or in that start period is that it won't get harder. Like, this is the hardest part. And so if you can just make it through this, everything else is downhill. It's not that the things that you're- the dragons you're gonna slay aren't gonna get bigger. They are. But you become so much more equipped to slay them back and you have so many more allies. You have people in the stands cheering for you. You have the audience. You have all of these other things that are behind you. But in the beginning, it's just you with a stick against a bear. And arguably, that fight is a harder fight to win than beating a dragon when you have a nuclear bomb and six nations behind you. And so it's not even like the, the size of the hardship, it's just also the resources and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning is literally burning the one thing you have, which is time, because you have no leverage. You don't have the money to pay other people to help you. You don't have the resources to go like get someone to- to... The- y- no one can learn it for you. It's like there's... A lot of the things that, that we care about a lot, like no one can work out for you. Doesn't matter how much money you have. No one can learn skills for you. And so in the early days, like it feels so painful 'cause you're like you look around to see who can help you and then you're like, "Fuck, it's me again." And I think getting comfortable with the idea that each of these things, kind of like Slumdog Millionaire if you've seen that movie where he... I'll give you the TL;DR. He goes through his entire life of randomness and then he gets on the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire version in India and has 12 questions to make a million dollars. Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 24:15 And from only 12 random experiences in his life that seemed meaningless at the time was he able to answer all of the questions and then ultimately win.

Alex Hormozi 24:22 ... the skills that you develop along the way, like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy that then became Apple fonts, that, you know, transformed how we type. Those early days, that little trench winning in the weeds oftentimes gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more context than anyone else. And so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it, remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver that you're gonna be using to slay the future bigger dragons. And so... Expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is.

Chris Williamson 25:01 I've always loved earning my stripes with the things that I've done, whether it was with Nightlife or running the podcast or doing whatever. And I think there's like a degree of nobility to it but functionally that's kind of, that's just like a, it's a nothing. Like what- what's the, where does the, what's the nobility? But I think the reason that you can feel noble about it and the reason that it gives you a positive reward is you know that you understand every single inch of the things and that if you want to hold a conversation... W- we went out for dinner with our new CFO and, and accounts people on Saturday and they said, "You ask a lot of questions."

Alex Hormozi 25:42 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 25:42 "Most people don't ask very many questions." And I also don't care at all about accounts really. Like I'm not doing this for money, but they said, "You ask a lot of questions." It's like, well, I don't ever really want to walk into a room and not be able to hold my own, at least just competently if it's to do with something that I care about. And the same thing goes for this. Like I under- I started to learn about focal lengths and frame rates and negative fill, reverse contrast lighting, and then sure enough two years after we started doing it a bunch of different... I sent you the Instagram thing, like this really awesome film Instagram that I've been following for ages picked us up for what we were doing and gave us props independent of the talky thing, which is fundamentally what we're here for, and we created this entire new industry of like cinematic podcasting which was recognized by, as far as I'm aware, like the best cinematic... it's called Film Lights, @filmlights, people can go and see it on Instagram, like the best decoder and analyzer of cinematography. And two years ago when we started I remember thinking, "Fuck, like I love the way that they've broken down what happens in Ad Astra. Oh my God, the whole thing was shot on 35 mil, each different scene's got two pairings of colors," and stuff like that. And then... But the reason that we were able to get there, at least in some part, is I can have a conversation with people. So each of the things that you do when you not only win in the weeds but live in the weeds then allows you downstream from that to see the things that other people aren't seeing.

Alex Hormozi 27:14 There's a quote that I love from Dr. Cash, I'll probably butcher it, but experts have more ways to win than beginners do. And so if an expert goes into any setting that they're expert in, they have so many faster feedback loops that reward them in the moment before the ultimate outcome. So if you're a master video editor there's so many things that you can do that while editing you make one change and then it looks right, you have a positive feedback loop. And so I think when you're on the start path you can't look at the outcome as the only positive because you will never make it. And so the positive frame that I've always used is, sure you can have the external ones of like I like thinking about my first videos had like 13 views and I'm like, "Well, if I had a- an audience of 13 people," I used to spend years pitching, you know, weight loss stuff to rooms of 13 and that was fine. And so thinking about it that way was helpful but the, the most helpful frame was thinking about who I was becoming as the asset that I was building so in real time whenever I finished a long day's work I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for five years without reward, and that would be part of the story I would someday tell. And some, some of the biggest reinforcers I've had in my life has been future casting the story that I would tell about the shitty period that I was in. Like I remember when I was sleeping on the floor at my gym because I didn't have m- enough money for two rents and I was like, "I will fucking tell this story." And when I lost everything for the first time I s- like I have the screenshot of the bank app, like when I show it people are like, "Oh look, there's that thing," but they forget that there was a person who screenshotted it to be like, "This won't fucking happen again." And I think having a larger narrative of where you're ultimately going, one, gives you the vision of where your, like the... ro- like knows where he's going, but it allows the dragons that you have to slay along the way, the hard things that you have to overcome to feed into the larger narrative of who, of the story that you'll someday tell. And so like no one ever tells stories about the hero who made it all happen immediately and had no hardships. No one cares. We're like, "Okay, you were born to a billionaire. Is there a story there?" Not really but everyone loves the story because we can see ourselves in the character and how much we hope to be like them. And it's the being like them, not the having what they have that we usually like. And so reframing ourselves as the hero of that narrative in my harder times was what really got me through that and thinking "I will tell this story someday."

Chris Williamson 29:47 Have you heard Rogan talk about the be the hero of your own story thing?

Alex Hormozi 29:50 Mm-mm.

Chris Williamson 29:51 Oh dude, this is old now. I think this is maybe, maybe even 10 years old.

Alex Hormozi 29:54 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 29:54 Maybe 10 years old. Um, and he's in one of his old, he's in the LA podcast studio and he says, "Imagine that you're in a movie and imagine the movie begins now and you're the hero of the movie."

Alex Hormozi 30:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:09 What would that guy do?

Alex Hormozi 30:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:12 What would that guy do right now?

Alex Hormozi 30:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 30:15 Because you are.

Alex Hormozi 30:18 I just got in a business, um, so actually I just made an investment in the school, um, and I was talking to Sam, the founder, and I said-

Chris Williamson 30:27 Sim.

Alex Hormozi 30:27 What?

Chris Williamson 30:28 Sim.

Alex Hormozi 30:29 Sam?

Chris Williamson 30:29 Sim.

Alex Hormozi 30:30 What's Sim?

Chris Williamson 30:31 Sim, that's the way he says his last name.

Alex Hormozi 30:32 Oh, (laughs) yeah. Um, and I was, and I was talking to him, and I said, "I want to give you the single easiest razor to predict my behavior." And I said, "Whatever will be the most epic story is the thing that I will most likely do." And so, oftentimes, the most epic story is not the shortest outcome to victory. It's the long saga that results in this big thing later, eventually. And I was like, "If you ever want to know, if you're like, 'I'm not sure what he's going to do in this situation,' just wonder what the most epic story to tell would be, and that's usually what I will do." And I don't know if that's self-aggrandizing, but that's, that's genuinely my razor for even making the dec- like, the big decisions about, okay, I'm gonna sell Gym Launch, I'm gonna, I'm gonna marry Layla, I'm gonna slum it and live at the gym, I'm going to fly around and do turnarounds, I'm gonna start this whole idea of a media company that just gives exclusively. Like, how do I, like, how do I put all this together? It's like, well, what would be the most epic story? And I thought of this idea of just, like, when I think about who that story I want to tell is, is this billionaire that documented the entire thing the whole way and just gave. Because I always thought, I was like, I wish that Elon Musk and, and Warren Buffett and all these guys would've like, and Jeff Bezos, like, would have just like, I would love to have seen 1997 Amazon content. And a lot of the content in terms of like, it, it's getting five views. It's like, it's okay because when we make it, they're gonna come back and watch this. So, I don't need them to watch it today. I want them to know that it's here when I do. And I think that ha- got me out of this, the loop of it, "I have to win right now," and then every one of them is just dropping, uh, a kernel or a breadcrumb for future me to refer back to.

Chris Williamson 32:21 One of the first places that people are going to go to, and I'm gonna guess one of the most common questions that you get asked, "What exercises do I need to be doing?"

Dr. Mike Israetel 32:28 Yeah. All of them, bro. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 32:30 Right, yeah.

Dr. Mike Israetel 32:31 That's it, and then they just walk away, and they're like, "Wow, that guy's supposed to be smart or something like that, huh?" But then they see the back of my very shiny head and it makes them happy.

Chris Williamson 32:38 Yes, okay.

Dr. Mike Israetel 32:39 Which exercises? So, there is a lot to say about it, but you can start with the supposition that it's whatever exercise nominally targets the muscle you want to grow. So, if you want bigger biceps, you know, some variation of doing this is probably good. And then to be honest, that's maybe 80% of the answer. So, if, uh, a lot of people... Here's why I'm saying that. A lot of people will look at, let's say for quads. They'll look at hack squats, they'll look at leg presses, they'll look at lunges, and they'll look at regular high bar squats. And they'll vex themselves infinitely over the question of which one of these is superior, which is kind of like asking, you know, "I need to get to Austin, Texas in a, in, uh, in two days. Which airline should I take?" Like, you, you ask someone who works at the airport, like, "H- w- which airline's like really the one I should be taking?" And they're like, (laughs) "Well, I mean, I don't know. All of them really get you there." There are subtle differences, but at least make sure the ticket says Austin, Texas. So, if the exercise hits that muscle, then you're good to go. Now, there are ways of seeing which exercises hit the target muscle that you want. Uh, a couple of what we are p- at are being called proxies for stimulus. So, this is something like tension. The perception of a lot of tension generated or exposed in that muscle. So, if you're doing chest flies, and you feel a crap load of stretch and pulling in the chest, uh, that's probably good. If you're doing what you think is a chest fly, but you misread the machine's instruction thing, and you feel a ton of tension in your biceps or your forearms or your shoulders, but you don't really honestly feel anything in the chest, on a just pure physics perspective, because of the mechanics of the movement, your chest has to be getting some exposure. But maybe you could be doing better by actually doing the exercise in a way or picking an exercise that really you feel some tension off of. Another clue to if you're stimulating the muscle properly is the burn, and that's seen in a medical context when people don't wear proper protection. I know that resonates with you personally 'cause the conversation we had right before this.

Chris Williamson 34:42 (laughs)

Dr. Mike Israetel 34:42 I don't mean to expose you, but, but Chris, you could just be making better choices is what I'm trying to say. All theoretical, I've never been with a woman, as everyone who watches our YouTube knows. But on a serious note, the burn is, in especially higher rep sets, when you start feeling the accumulation of metabolic byproducts in the target muscle, so the chest fly analogy. If you're doing high rep pec flies, and at the end of that set, your pecs are burning, hey, that's probably good. You're probably getting a good stimulus there. On the other hand, if it's just your biceps that are burning, but your pecs don't really feel much, are you getting a stimulus in that exercise? Huh, yeah, sure. Is it guaranteed to be a really robust, really good stimulus? Probably not, 'cause you should be feeling some combination of tension and burn, and then also there's pump. Again, none of these are mandatory, but together they're kind of like puzzle pieces that take what could be a C+ exercise for you and make it an A+ exercise if you're getting all the feelings right on this. So, another one is pump. Uh, how much after several sets of the workout or of the exercise, how filled with fluid is your target muscle? So, if you're doing pec flies, and after a couple of, of sets, you know, a girl walks by and you're like, "What's up?" And she's like, "Oh, my God." (laughs) And she runs away. Uh, I guess that's good even though she ran away, but she ran away in a way that she obviously respected your pec size, which is the whole point of the gym. But if you do a bunch of sets of something, um, let's say you're doing pec flies, your shoulders are pumped, your biceps are pumped, even your forearms look more veiny, but do- you can't honestly say your chest has changed in any visible or palpable way. I- no doubt, still trains your pecs, but maybe not that great. Another one is perturbation, uh, which kind of presents itself in two forms. One is, is that target muscle feeling really weak? So, let's say you do a few pec exercises and you think they're for the chest, and then you try to push yourself, uh, into your car, like push off your steering wheel, and you feel like a profound weakness in that...... pack, you're like, "Oh, my God." Um, and a really good example is if you try to walk down stairs after you hit quads.

Chris Williamson 36:41 Yep. Yep.

Dr. Mike Israetel 36:42 If you think you hit quads but you really hit glutes and adductors, you can hop-skip down the stairs, no fucking problem. Are we allowed to swear in here or is that not a good idea?

Chris Williamson 36:48 Of course.

Dr. Mike Israetel 36:48 All right, sweet. Um-

Chris Williamson 36:49 Whereas if you're doing this on the handrail.

Dr. Mike Israetel 36:51 Yes, like desperately clinging for dear life and-

Chris Williamson 36:53 Yep.

Dr. Mike Israetel 36:53 ... and- and your legs are shaky. Uh, another thing with perturbation is crampy. None of this is required, but if your chest cramps hard when you're trying to pose after a few sets of whatever you're doing, then whatever you're doing absolutely hit your chest. The other thing is weakness too. So if I tell you, "Hey, this mega pec workout, what's your best bench?" And you're like, "Well, it's like, you know, 200 pounds for a set of 10." And I take you through a mega pec workout. After that, if we put 200 pounds on there, if you bench it for anything close to 10, your pecs never got very fatigued, which almost certainly means they never got very stimulated. So you should see a pretty big repetition strength drop-off. If you can barely do a pushup after a chest workout, oh shit, something happened to your pecs, for sure.

Chris Williamson 37:31 Hmm.

Dr. Mike Israetel 37:31 Especially if you feel like your chest is the kind of onus of weakness in that movement. So those are all ways to kind of proxy that, and I would say another one, again, not a huge deal, not the deal, but a good little additive to the mix is, do you feel any kind of weakness or soreness that persists for hours or days after? So for example, if you do some kind of new, uh, quad machine at your gym, and, uh- uh, two days later, your inner thighs are sore, your glutes are physically sore, your quads aren't, uh, either the way you did it, which I'm sure we'll get to technique, or just the exercise itself, it says quads but it's really not quads. Maybe it is to some extent, but you would expect if you had a novel stimulus to feel some kind of soreness. But if you did something that says quads on it and then a day later you can barely walk and you- you're sore to the touch, then you know, you have to have stimulated your quads. There is no alternative. So all those things are in the plus side category, and any exercise that hits a bunch of those check marks for you, man, that's a good exercise for you. And we're all different, so some people respond better to a pec fly machine, some people to dumbbells, some people to cables, some people to something in between. Whatever exercise checks those boxes for you really well, uh, it's probably a good exercise for you, at least for the time being.

Chris Williamson 38:41 We're here in a spooky field with a- a car on fire and a full moon and a weird house over the far side.

Dr. Mike Israetel 38:47 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 38:48 Have you got any stories that fit this environment?

Gwenda Blair 38:51 I do, I do. I have a really good one, uh, from, uh, out in Utah in the 1970s. We don't have the names of the people involved so I'm gonna call them a man and a woman, but you know, they... This is every bit their story, we just don't use their names. I think they actually didn't want their names used. That's what I recall. So back in the 1970s there was this- this- this young guy and young girl, they were the main characters of the story, and they, I think they met in college, and they go out on this first date. Uh, they go to a restaurant, a diner, and they got along fine but there wasn't any magic. It was, you know, kind of a nothing date that they both kind of instinctively knew that this was likely not gonna go anywhere beyond this first date. There's no chemistry. However, they both kind of intuitively noticed it and the- the guy towards the end of the date when it's kind of like, "Okay, time to wrap things up now," he decided to take a chance. He figured, "What's- what's- what's the worst that can happen? I already can tell this isn't going anywhere." And he says to the- to his date, and he says, you know, "Do you wanna do something kinda unexpected? Do you wanna, like, go do something kinda crazy with me right now?" And the girl was actually, like, kinda taken aback. She's like, "Okay, what- what- what? What do you wanna do?" And he's like, "Well, I- I oftentimes go for walks out in Provo Canyon, this beautiful canyon that's not near, it's nearby, it's got this amazing trail, it brings you out to this overlook with this incredible view of the stars. Like, it's a really cool spot and I go there, you know, later in the day and no one's there and it's- it's pretty cool. But it's, you know, we're- we're hiking in the woods in the middle of the night, you know what I mean?" And she's like, "Okay, let's do it." You know? It's like suddenly the date went from going nowhere to it's kind of exciting. And so now there's- there's chemistry, it's like they're going into the unknown together. And so they- they quickly leave the diner, they hop in his car and it's a short drive over to the parking lot where Provo Canyon is. You know, he pulls into the spot, there's nobody there, they get out, and- and now there really is. They're- they're getting along, they're kind of laughing, telling jokes, they're holding hands, and they walk right from the parking lot onto this paved trail that goes right into the forest. And so it's- it's nighttime, you know, just a very, it's a, this is a- this is a well- this is a well-used trail, this is not some goat trail in the middle of nowhere, this is a well-used trail. And so they start walking into the- through the forest and, uh, after a while, and this is something they would say after the fact but we know this is what was happening. As they were walking, their- the- the- the feel, the vibe of the night really changed as soon as they got into the woods. You know, they're- they're excited, the state's suddenly become exciting and then they get into the forest, they're on the trail, they're holding hands, they're walking, and both of them began feeling this really intense dread as they're walking in. But they don't know each other, they just, this is their first date, they don't have the- the background of a relationship to begin touching on something that's hard to point out. You know, th- neither of them turned to the other and said, "I feel uncomfortable." Instead they just kept their mouths shut and- and thought, "Okay, I'll just keep on going." So they stop talking, they begin walking faster out of this kind of nervous energy they have now, they're holding hands and th- and they're just walking through this trail, 'cause they're trying to get to this overlook, basically get it out of the way and come on back. But it's all unspoken. They haven't said, "Boy, this is anxious." They're just, they're feeling that way. And so they're walking on this trail, again, surrounded by trees, there's nobody else out there, and it's pretty dark, they don't have a flashlight, and as they're basically speed walking at this point in silence, at some point, they hear a rustling sound kind of off to the side and at the exact same time the guy steps on something that he described as being soft. And he stepped on it and he has no idea what he's stepping on. No clue. It's something soft. And he's heard this rustling sound and they're feeling anxious and he immediately stops 'cause he stepped on something, and the girl, she's sensing, "Okay, what's going on here?" And without any communication, they turned and walked out. Didn't even look down, they didn't, they have no idea what's going on. It was like they both knew...... let's get the fuck out of here. (laughs) I don't know what's going on out here. And they practically ran back to their car, totally safe. They get in their car, and now that they're in the safety of their car, they kind of begin laughing about it, like, "Gee, I wonder what that was? I stepped on something out there. I don't know. Something moving around, maybe it's a big animal, I don't know." But that was it. It was just, that was the whole date. And actually, they wound up getting married because this date was, like, this kind of amazing thing, but they bonded over the fear of being in this, this forest. And so they get married, and 10 years later, they're at home and the TV is on. It's, it's tuned to, to, like, a, a Dateline type of show, like a, a true crime show. And neither of them are really watching. But an in- an interview comes on, and it's, it's a journalist talking to a death row inmate. And it's a very famous death row inmate, and he's very near his execution date, and he's giving this kind of full-blown interview about, you know, what he did. And at some point, the journalist asks him, "Was there ever a time that you almost got caught before you got caught?" And the serial killer is like, "Yeah. There was a time. I was out in Provo Canyon, and I just killed a girl, and I was trying to dispose of her body. And I dragged her across the trail, and this young couple comes turning around the corner, and they stepped on the body. And I was maybe a foot away, holding her, looking up at them in the darkness, waiting to see what they were gonna do. But for some reason, the couple didn't look down, they didn't look around, they just turned and left. And so that was it. That was the, (laughs) that was the time I almost got caught." And so it would turn out, the guy, or where, they had come in contact with Ted Bundy, like one of the most infamous serial killers of all time, who effectively said had he investigated, he would've had to kill the couple. (laughs) It's great, so they got... Their first date was running into Ted Bundy.

Chris Williamson 44:22 Wow.

Gwenda Blair 44:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:24 Oh my God.

Gwenda Blair 44:26 And actually, I, there, if you're, if you're interested, there's several other close calls with Ted Bundy, that if you Google close calls with Ted Bundy, he, he came close to killing people several times. And it's, like, I, I don't have those-

Chris Williamson 44:38 Wasn't one with the VW Beetle? It was something with the VW Beetle?

Gwenda Blair 44:41 I forget what it wa- unfortunately, I don't remember all of the anecdotes-

Chris Williamson 44:44 Mm-hmm.

Gwenda Blair 44:44 ... but there's quite a few that are... Th- that one is the most startling because it's so, like, visceral what happened. But the others were, you know, this girl who almost went on a date with Ted Bundy, but then ha- got a bad feeling about it and canceled, and it, like, the day later, he gets arrested for being Ted Bundy. Um, stuff like... Or one person who Ted Bundy randomly befriended this, this woman, and, uh, I think they were dating for a while, and he was very close with her child, and it was... I mean, he's, like, in their family while he's killing other people at the same time, and then he just broke up with her and moved on. Like, he didn't do anything to her or her family while he's actively killing all these women. But they're, for some reason, he just had this normal family, happy, wholesome relationship with this girl for, like, a year. And she would find out (laughs) after he was executed that she was actively dating a serial killer. So it's just, Ted Bundy had all these weird interactions with people that have been documented, but that one, to me, is the most startling.

Chris Williamson 45:36 How can people become a morning person, or learn to get up early more easily, um, more regularly?

Andrew Huberman 45:43 Yeah. Um, three days of pain, the rest is easy. So, it takes about three days to shift the biological mechanisms to, um, make you a morning person. Now, if you are a v- very strongly genetically sh- determined night owl-

Chris Williamson 45:58 That's a thing?

Andrew Huberman 45:59 That's a thing. So there are genetic mutations, they call them polymorphisms, that make some people night owls. They feel best, psychologically and physically, going to sleep at about 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00 AM and waking up somewhere around, you know, 10:00, 11:00 AM or noon.

Chris Williamson 46:15 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:15 That exists, not just during development or teen years, but that exists, and not just for social reasons. Other people are true morning people, they feel absolutely best going to sleep around 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM. 10:00 PM will be late for them. And they feel great waking up at 4:00, 5:00, or 6:00 AM, okay? Most people feel best going to sleep somewhere between 10:00 and midnight, and waking up somewhere between 6:00 AM and 8:00 AM or so, maybe 5:30 to 8:00 AM. Okay. So, those are three bins of the night owl, the morning person, and then the more typical schedule, but it's heavily weighted toward that typical schedule if you look at the general population. So, if somebody wants to get up earlier, you need to stack the four primary what are called zeitgebers or time keepers, so named because some of the early chronobiologists that discovered this stuff and the underlying mechanisms were German, as it were. So, the number one zeitgeber, the number one way to shift your circadian clock, which is this cluster of neurons that sits a few centimeters above the roof of your mouth, is to view bright light at a time when you want to be awake, AKA the morning, okay? So, that's why I say get outside, look at the sun, toward the sun. Don't force yourself to stare at it. Don't damage your eyes. Blink as needed. No sunglasses. Eye glasses, corrective lenses, and contacts are absolutely fine, even if they have UV protection. Okay. However, if you combine that with another zeitgeber, the second most powerful zeitgeber is exercise or movement. So if you do some jumping jacks, you skip some rope, or even just-

Chris Williamson 47:49 In the morning?

Andrew Huberman 47:49 ... take a walk while facing the sun, now you're starting to stack different zeitgebers. And I'll explain the mechanisms in a moment. If you then also add caffeine, now this spits in the face a little bit of what I said a few minutes ago, but if you were to add caffeine, you can entrain, as it's called, the circadian clock to be alert at that time a bit more. And I'll be honest, if I'm gonna exercise first thing in the morning, I need caffeine. I can't wait that 60 to 90 minutes. If I need to jump right into exercise, I find it's easiest for me to do 30 minutes after waking, three hours after waking, or 11 hours after waking, and a lot of people find that the same. But of course, exercise when you can because it's that important, but if you want to, quote unquote, "optimize your energy levels for exercise," typically people will notice that has to do with your temperature rhythm. Okay, so we've got sunlight, we've got exercise or movement of any kind. It could be jumping jacks, could be walking. You don't have to do a full workout. And then caffeine and, in some cases, food.I'm not big on eating first thing in the morning. I don't like to eat until 11:00 AM or noon, that's when my first meal arrives. For me, just naturally, that's when I get hungry. It's all caffeine and hydration prior to that. But if you were to eat something first thing in the morning, you... That's part of the way you entrain your circadian clock to wake up, to essentially wake you up earlier. And then the fourth one is a social rhythm. If you're interacting with other people, you're going to entrain your clock to that, as well. So-

Chris Williamson 49:12 No way.

Andrew Huberman 49:12 Yes. So there's a socially, there's a social component to it, circadian entrainment. Now, the pathways for these are from the eye, in the case of viewing light, to the circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus. In the case of caffeine, it's more general. In the case of exercise, there's literally a brain stem to circadian clock connection, a big, a superhighway of neuronal connections, that then, so-called entrains your circadian clock. Remember, your circadian clock generates an intrinsic 24-hour rhythm, such that if we put you into constant dark or constant light, you would still sleep for a given bout and then be alert for a given bout with a little bit of a nap. It just is what we'd call free run. It would drift a little later each day. This is what happens when you go to Vegas, this is what happens when you're in an environment without a lot of cues about the day, uh, the sunlight, uh, rising and setting cycle.

Chris Williamson 50:00 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 50:02 Sunlight, exercise, caffeine and eating, and social interactions bring your circadian clock into alignment with all of those zeitgebers. So, when I said it takes three days, if tomorrow you wanna start beginning the process of becoming an early riser, you'd set your alarm for 5:00 AM. No matter what time you went to sleep the night before, you gonna get up and you're gonna do the four things that I described. Maybe leave out food if you don't wanna eat. Maybe leave out caffeine if you wanna delay by 90 minutes. It's gonna hurt. And then by the early afternoon, you'll be dragging a bit. And you just have to be careful to not overindulge in caffeine, which will then cause you to fall asleep later. Then you wanna go to sleep at your now naturally slightly earlier sleep time. The next day, you'll notice, you'll f-... It'll be a little bit easier to do the morning routine I just described. And by the third day, you ought to be waking up with or before the alarm by a few minutes or moments. Because your circadian clock has phase shifted, okay? It's phase advanced, as we say. Your circadian clock intrinsic to you generates a 24.2 or a 24.3-hour rhythm. It's not perfectly 24 hours. And that, we believe, we don't know, but the just-so story is that it's, that it's such that, that you're able to then shift that clock in, in one or the other direction. You can phase advance, so you wake up earlier and go to sleep earlier. You can phase delay. How do you phase delay? Well, you're probably doing this already. Everyone nowadays, pretty much, qualifies as a shift worker by the strict and not-so-strict criteria of shift work, which is are you doing any kind of cognitive activity after 9:00 PM? Are you viewing any kind of bright lights after 9:30 PM? Most people would say yes. So, the, the diabolical thing about the circadian timing system is that it requires a lot of bright light, ideally from sunlight, but a lot of bright light early in the day to make you a morning and daytime person.

Chris Williamson 51:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 51:56 But it requires just a little bit of bright light, even from an artificial source, after the hours of about 9:30 PM till 4:00 AM to quash your melatonin and make it difficult to sleep, or if you sleep, to make that sleep not as effective. There's a simple remedy, however, which is... And this is a beautiful study published in Science Reports in 2022. If you view sunlight in the afternoon, even for five minutes or so, could be late afternoon, could be sunset, take off your sunglasses, look in the direction of the sun, so now looking west. You adjust the sensitivity of your retina, the neurons in the back of your eye, such that bright light later at night doesn't have quite as much effect to suppress melatonin. It reduces the melatonin-suppressive effects by about 50%, or offsets those. So I think of this afternoon viewing as, well, first of all, it's nice to look at a sunset. If you're indoors in an environment like this, even if there are bright lights on, get outside for a few minutes before the sun sets. This is especially important in winter. Even if you can't see the sun as an object, get some sunlight in your eyes and that will at least partially offset the effects of bright light in your eyes at night. Partially. And I refer to this more or less as your Netflix inoculation so that that night you can be on your phone or watching Netflix and it's not going to disrupt your sleep as much, but it will still disrupt your sleep somewhat. But let's... You know, unless... Like, Rick Rubin's very diligent about wearing the, uh, red lens glasses. I've started doing that as well. Um, but if you don't do that, you g-... Well, I'm guessing he also sees the sunset in the evening.

Chris Williamson 53:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 53:30 Um, he's very attached, for good, scientific reasons, uh, to the, the sunlight thing. But these are little things that take just moments, right? They're essentially zero cost. They can really improve your sleep. But that's how you become a morning person. If you wanna become a night person, you do the opposite. You view bright light between the hours of 4:00 PM and 10:00 PM and there, then you will phase delay or phase shift-

Chris Williamson 53:54 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 53:54 ... in a delayed way your circadian clock, making you want to wake up later the next morning.

Chris Williamson 53:59 I wonder if dogs count as a social interaction.

Andrew Huberman 54:05 Absolutely. And they have all of the same mechanisms we just described.

Chris Williamson 54:09 So I'm just thinking-

Andrew Huberman 54:09 They have s- uh- uh-

Chris Williamson 54:10 How can we stack that everything first thing in the morning, morning walk.

Andrew Huberman 54:14 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 54:14 You, i- i- if you're in a place that's not Iceland or somewhere that's super high north.

Andrew Huberman 54:18 Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Chris Williamson 54:19 Dog.

Andrew Huberman 54:20 Yep.

Chris Williamson 54:20 Social interaction. Mo- moving around and then caffeine, if you do or if you don't, if you don't want it. But, uh...

Andrew Huberman 54:27 If you have a dog that likes to run, you're even better off 'cause it'll force you to run.

Chris Williamson 54:30 You're gonna have to chase after it.

Andrew Huberman 54:31 If you have a bul-... If you have an English bulldog like I did, you'd be lucky if you get out of bed by 10:00.

Chris Williamson 54:35 A little bit. Yeah, you're in tier one.

Andrew Huberman 54:36 Yeah. Their eyes are droopy, uh, they don't... And, um, uh, they don't like to move. But it is the case that dogs will naturally orient toward the sun.You know, and people always ask, you know, "Do dogs have the same mechanisms?" Absolutely. The intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells, the one that project to the clock and carry all of this, um, thing about circadian entrainment to sunlight, are present, as far as we know, in every extant mammalian species, every mammalian species that's, that's alive today. Um, and, you know, th- this is a system that evolved from bacteria that's m- very similar to the opsins, the light-absorbing molecules that are in the insect eye. It's a very primordial system. It's organized very differently anatomically in the retina, and to me, it's actually one of the more beautiful systems in, in all of us. In fact, the one thing that no one can seem to defeat, you're never gonna biohack away, is circadian biology. This, this, you know, fluctu- 24-hour fluctuation in energy and focus. You know, y- some people require less sleep, but we're, we're all, um, more or less a slave to these mechanisms. And, uh, you know, it's a good thing that we are because it forces us to rest, neuroplasticity occurs during sleep, we push down adenosine. You know, it takes us through these natural ebbs and cycles of cognition. I'm obsessed by the idea that in sleep, you know, the conscious mind obviously is not in control. The unconscious mind can geyser up thoughts. The brain is organizing things more in terms of symbols. Time and space are very, uh, very ... organized very differently in dreams, and there's a lot of information to be gleaned from dreams. It's just that we don't yet understand what the symbols mean. The kind of classic Freudian/Jungian, um, interpretations are certainly not gonna be complete, but, you know, I, I, I'm so grateful that we get this thing called sleep. And I think thanks to the great Matt Walker, we now understand that the whole thing about "sleep when I'm dead" is a really dumb mindset. And, you know, eh, my team at the Huberman Lab Podcast, we sometimes joke that we win by sleeping. You know, when we're in the peak of things, we all encourage each other to, like, get rest, you know, get rest. Like, we really prioritize sleep. It's so essential.

Chris Williamson 56:40 How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head, to be, to be kinder if things go badly? You're smiling. (laughs)

John Vervaeke 56:53 I like me. I like me. Um, I would buy me a drink. I look at me now, and I, and I see all the warts, okay? I see all the negatives more than anybody else does. I see the positives. And over the whole balance of stuff, I like me. And I can give myself the same grace. If you and I were friends, I can give myself the same grace I can give you because I like me. I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything. But, you know, all in all, I'm a pretty good dude. And, uh, man, you, you gotta get to that point, outside of arrogance. Arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance. All right? That, that's the definition of arrogance. I'm not talking arrogance. I'm talking about, look, as a human being, I've failed at this, I've succeeded at that, I've wrecked this, but I've built that. And all in all, you know, I've tried. And, uh ... but I like me, so I'm gonna give me some grace. And it's as simple as that. I would buy me a cigar.

Chris Williamson 58:11 I wonder how many men can say that.

John Vervaeke 58:14 Not as many as should. And it's a shame.

Chris Williamson 58:18 I wonder how many people can say that, how many people say, "I like me." They would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else-

John Vervaeke 58:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:31 ... than themselves.

John Vervaeke 58:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 58:32 There's a, a statistic around, I think, on average, the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself-

John Vervaeke 58:41 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 58:41 ... is about 50%.

John Vervaeke 58:42 Right.

Chris Williamson 58:42 The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%.

John Vervaeke 58:45 Yes. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 58:46 So, we're literally capable of caring for a pet-

John Vervaeke 58:50 Right.

Chris Williamson 58:50 ... nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet.

John Vervaeke 58:57 Right.

Chris Williamson 58:57 So, in an odd, roundabout way, serving yourself and f- serving others from a cup which overflows around your own-

John Vervaeke 59:05 Right.

Chris Williamson 59:05 ... uh, or the saucer that sits around your cup is, is important. Uh, without, and again, this sort of tension between being self-serving, being narcissistic, being egotistical, being self-centered-

John Vervaeke 59:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:17 ... but not meaning that.

John Vervaeke 59:19 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 59:19 It's this delicate balance.

John Vervaeke 59:20 It-

Chris Williamson 59:20 And this is what comes with growing up.

John Vervaeke 59:22 Right.

Chris Williamson 59:22 And I think this is why one-size-fits-all flaming sword advice seems to die away as people get a little older.

John Vervaeke 59:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:33 You listen to a Joe Rogan, and a lot of what he's saying is hedged in some regard. It's caveated. It's, you know, it's, it's, "This is what worked for me."

John Vervaeke 59:43 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 59:43 Not, "This is how everybody should do it."

John Vervaeke 59:44 Right.

Chris Williamson 59:45 And, uh, yeah, there's a humility that comes with age.

John Vervaeke 59:48 Right. Right. M- because there's ... I- if you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars, you know? I mean, you, you can't, you can't ... The only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to the day. That I, you know, that's the only way.

Chris Williamson 1:00:10 Because nobody's skating-

John Vervaeke 1:00:11 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:00:11 ... through it perfectly.

John Vervaeke 1:00:12 But this is what drives, this is what drives my ... and it's, it's, to m- it sounds ludicrous in my ears, but my business endeavors today, this is the core of what drives me, okay? There is no business out there that I can take on, there is no monetary endeavor that I can take on, that is worth the gamble of me losing me. It took me years of, of a lot of grief.... and pain and work to get to be who I am today (laughs) in spite of who I was. And I don't wanna lose that. I don't wanna lose myself in business, I don't wanna lose myself in trying to earn a better living, in trying to get a name, in trying to do this. It's like, I have turned down... I have turned down so much, because I've looked at it and I've asked myself, "Who's this gonna make me be? Who's this gonna turn me into, even a little bit?" And it's like, it's just not worth it. It's just not, it's not worth it. And so I'm right now trying to find the balance in undertaking something that's not going to alter me, that I'm not gonna lose myself, and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it. Which has never been an issue with me before. I've never been afraid of failure before. But now I've got something I don't wanna lose, and that's myself that I actually like. A me that I actually like. Um, I... Does that make any sense? You under-

Chris Williamson 1:02:02 100%.

John Vervaeke 1:02:03 Okay.

Chris Williamson 1:02:03 You know, the, the person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose their respect.

John Vervaeke 1:02:10 Right. Right.

Chris Williamson 1:02:13 And I think... You know, this was a lesson that I realized toward the end of my 20s where I accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should, with freedom and, and notoriety and, and, and women and, and stuff like that. And that was cool, and, and, like, to look back on, fun. Uh, but it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me-

John Vervaeke 1:02:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:02:42 ... all that much. And, well, I hadn't done anything bad, but I just felt like there was... I was built for more, I was built for different, built for something else.

John Vervaeke 1:02:52 Right, right.

Chris Williamson 1:02:53 And I realized that I wasn't keeping promises to myself.

John Vervaeke 1:02:58 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:02:59 That if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times.

John Vervaeke 1:03:04 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:03:04 If I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing, maybe it would happen, but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to, and there would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short. So imagine that you had a friend, and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all. After a while, you'd stop trusting them and stop inviting-

John Vervaeke 1:03:31 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:31 ... them out at all.

John Vervaeke 1:03:32 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:03:33 Well, you are that friend-

John Vervaeke 1:03:35 You are, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:35 ... to yourself.

John Vervaeke 1:03:35 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:36 You know, how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button?

John Vervaeke 1:03:43 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:03:44 Or you can't not cheat on your diet?

John Vervaeke 1:03:46 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:03:46 You can't not do... You know, you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day. And even if you think that nobody else is watching, and even if no one is, there's this little ticker in the back of your mind when you go to bed. You know, you were, you were gentle with yourself when you got agitated.

John Vervaeke 1:04:05 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:06 Good.

John Vervaeke 1:04:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:07 You were kind with the lady that looked like she was tired at Walmart.

John Vervaeke 1:04:12 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:04:13 You said something, uh, peaceful and, and encouraging to her. Good.

John Vervaeke 1:04:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:04:18 But you did these things.

John Vervaeke 1:04:21 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:21 You did something that makes you feel not so proud about yourself.

John Vervaeke 1:04:24 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:24 And, you know, in some ways it's a great correcting mechanism because there is no hiding from it, and-

John Vervaeke 1:04:31 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:31 ... your people turn to alcohol and distraction and aggression and, and depersonalization in order to deal with the fact that they don't like themselves.

John Vervaeke 1:04:39 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:41 But ultimately, you need to live with the decisions that you make.

John Vervaeke 1:04:44 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:44 You need to live with you, and-

John Vervaeke 1:04:45 Right.

Chris Williamson 1:04:47 ... there is this set of scales inside of your mind that's just balancing things all the time. And if it... You know. You know.

John Vervaeke 1:04:56 Yeah, uh, people, and people don't know how to like themselves. I mean, people don't know how to like themselves, but, but it's not complicated.

Chris Williamson 1:05:05 Tell me, how do you like yourself?

John Vervaeke 1:05:07 Find somebody that you like, that you genuinely like, and figure out what it is about them you like. "I like that. That's something I like. That person is, uh, they're understanding, they're gentle, they're hardworking, they're honest, they're this. This is, this is what I like about them." And incorporate that stuff into your own life. If that's the stuff you like, then incorporate that stuff into who you are, and then you like yourself. It's not rocket science, you know? With... Becau- there are things, there are things that you like as a person that wouldn't mean anything to me. There are things that you like in another person that wouldn't mean anything to me. There's things that I like in another person just 'cause of how I'm wired, and it wouldn't mean anything to you, all right? So that is what I like in a person. So if I work at taking on those attributes, it helps me become a person that I like.

Chris Williamson 1:06:15 Lots of benefits of improving VO2 max. What are... Take us through the Norwegian four by four again, and then w- what else is in there? If there was a protocol or a number of protocols you were gonna design, here's a program that you can take away today into your gym and do that will help to improve your VO2 max. What would you tell people?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:06:33 I would say the Norwegian four by four is by far the best, and you're gonna get the... If, for the people that are really, um, determined and committed, that would be it. That would be the four minutes of the exercise intensity as hard as you can go and maintain it for that entire four minutes. So obviously-

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 Just dig into that. What, what do you mean? As hard as you can go and maintain it, what does that mean?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:06:54 It means you don't wanna go, like, all out, like, like, 95% of your, your max heart rate, um, because then you can only last for, like, a minute.You know, and so- so then you're gonna go down. You're gonna, you're gonna slow down, right? So what it means is, like, you wanna go, you know, it- it might, for some people it might be like 75% max heart rate, right? So for some people it might be 80%. But you wanna go as hard as you can for the four minutes, uh, y- without, like, really slowing down. So you kind of have to pace yourself a little bit.

Chris Williamson 1:07:25 Mm-hmm.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:26 But you don't wanna go too slow, right?

Chris Williamson 1:07:27 Yeah.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:27 Like, you- you definitely can't be talking. Like, you sh- not be able to talk, for sure, when you're doing it. So it's hard enough that you just absolutely can't talk. But it's not all-out. So-

Chris Williamson 1:07:36 Four minutes?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:36 Four minutes, and then three minutes of totally light. Like, you're going all the way. This is like, you know, you're- you're like back to like zone one, if you wanna (laughs) call it something. So-

Chris Williamson 1:07:46 If your heart can come- come down quickly.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:48 If your heart can come down, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:49 (laughs)

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:49 And you're doing that for three minutes, because you wanna give your s- you wanna recover so that you can do it again. And it- and you repeat it. It's a- it's a four, it's a four-time protocol, so you do it once and then you repeat it three times. Or you just-

Chris Williamson 1:07:59 Yep.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:07:59 ... call it the 4x4. I think that's probably one of the- the best protocols to improve VO2 max. Now, uh, Dr. Martin Gibala, um, I've had him on my podcast, he's a real expert on these high-intensity interval training protocols. He does a lot of research on it at McMaster University, um, in Ontario, Canada. And he also says you- there, you know, there- there's evidence that a one-minute protocol, so like just even doing like an interval, like one-minute interval and then doing that like, you know, a few times, also can improve VO2 max. So that's a little easier, and als- it's easier, like I like, I- I do one-minute intervals. Um, I'm trying to now incorporate the 4x4 into my routine, um, which is coaches help with that. So, um, but it is-

Chris Williamson 1:08:43 I imagine it's a motivation thing, which is probably one of the biggest hurdles to get over. That just if you've got any programming for interview that isn't the Norwegian 4x4 for the day, you go, "Ah, maybe it's back and biceps," or, "Ah, maybe I'll just go for a little jog." It's like manana, manana, manana.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:00 Yeah, it is. It, but again, like I said, you do have to do s- you try to make it consistent. So-

Chris Williamson 1:09:05 Uh, frequency per week?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:07 Well, the Norwegian 4x4 would be like one time a week.

Chris Williamson 1:09:11 Oh, okay.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:11 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:11 And that's-

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:12 ... that's the dose.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:13 That's the, that's the hard day.

Chris Williamson 1:09:14 That's less, that's less miserable.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:15 That's the hard day. It is.

Chris Williamson 1:09:16 Okay.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:17 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:09:17 Uh, is there any benefit to going twice per week?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:20 Probably, yeah. (laughs) But-

Chris Williamson 1:09:23 It would've been so much better if you'd said-

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:24 But these-

Chris Williamson 1:09:24 ... "No, no, no."

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:24 But these 50-year-olds, yeah, these 50-year-olds did it one time a week for two years, and they reversed their cardiac structure aging by 20 years. Um, of course, they were, they were also doing other vigorous intensity exercise. It wasn't the torturous Norwegian 4x4.

Chris Williamson 1:09:38 Yep.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:39 You know, like-

Chris Williamson 1:09:39 So d- if Norwegian 4x4 is gold standard at the moment for improving VO2 max, what would be some examples of other vigorous exercise, uh, uh, workouts? What else is in that bucket?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:09:54 Well, people can do what they enjoy doing. So you can go for a run, like I often go for a run and, you know, I'm doing 75, 80% my max heart rate. Uh, usually it's like a 20-minute run that I do that, you know? So like as, as, as intense as you can maintain for 20 minutes, like that's what you wanna do. You wanna kinda get that, you get a feeling for that. Um, so if you like runs, because there's a lot of benefits to running, you're out in nature. Well, I guess some people do it on a treadmill. I'm not so big on treadmills. Like, I, I'll do them like when I go to a gym or something, traveling. But I like running out in nature. I think there's, there just, there's lots of benefits to doing that. Um, some people like to get on their bike and cycle. So like you can just get on your bike and do a 20 to 30 minute, uh, 75, 80% max heart rate cycle, right?

Chris Williamson 1:10:40 So what we're aiming for here is 75 to 80% max heart rate for around about 20-minute exposure?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:10:47 You can, or you can do, you could do like a high-intensity interval training. So um, so high-intensity interval training would be you're gonna, you're gonna go more than 85, 80%, right? You might go, you're gonna do like more of like a submaximal perhaps, uh, perhaps even a maximal interval. So you can go up to 90, 95% max heart rate. So that would be, I mean, obviously you can only maintain that for like so long, right? Some people might be 30-second pushes or-

Chris Williamson 1:11:12 Yeah, like a TABATA-style thing, perhaps.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:11:13 ... like a minute. TABATA, I do a lot of TABATAs as well. Um, oftentimes, I like to do something every day, um, most days of the week. And it's funny, I kind of adopted this, this routine when I was, I was kind of trying to, uh, do a little bit like Joe Rogan's Sober October, but it was like every day October I was trying to work out every day. And I noticed, I was like, "I could do this. I'm doing it for like one month." And I don't, I wasn't going as hard as like the- those guys doing Sober October where they were like competition. It was like they were just, um-

Chris Williamson 1:11:42 Air bike in the sauna.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:11:42 ... but like if you do something every, exa- do something every day, so sometimes I'll do like a 10-minute TABATA, where I get on there and I just go hard for 10 minutes to 20, you know, I, it's, most of the time I'll do a 45-second on, um, 15-second off. So it's a three-to-one ratio. I really like that one. But sometimes I'll do 20-second on, 10, uh, 10-second off.

Chris Williamson 1:12:00 Okay.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:12:00 So it's like I do both. But like even just 10 minutes, again, I time it around like li- like I got, I'm gonna go do work. I'm gonna, I wanna feel motivated, I wanna feel better, I wanna be more focused and on my game, and I just get on there for the bike for 10 minutes and do it. Um, you know, there's- there's studies out there, um, these sort of exercise snacks. Now, 10 minutes is longer than an exercise snack. But there's studies out there where, uh, people are wearing these like wearable devices, right? And so you can track their- their heart rate, and you can track how- how their heart rate's going up. And so there's large, large studies, they're called the vigorous intensity lifestyle activity, and um, m- most people are taking advantage of everyday life. Like they're, they have stairs every day to work. They sprint up 'em. They don't walk up 'em, they sprint. They get their heart rate up to like 75% max heart rate, 80% max heart rate. They're- they're- they're getting intense. And people that do this anywhere between one to three minutes a day, um, I mean, these- these guys have like a 50% lower cancer-related mortality, cardiovascular rat- related mortality. And this was even true for people that identified themselves as non-exercisers. So they aren't ... These are people that are not-... going to the gym or doing other, like, tennis or whatever. They don't have leisure time physical activity. So the benefits were also in people that identified as non-exercisers. So my point is that the vigorous intensity, these, like, even short bursts of it just consistently, like every day a little bit, like they do add up. There's additive effects, and they make a difference. So that's also, I think, really something that's very encouraging because some people, "Oh, I gotta go work out for 30 min-" It's like it- you need that motivation, right?

Chris Williamson 1:13:38 Mm-hmm.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:13:38 Like, some people don't have that motivation. And so, um, it's a lot easier to just get up and do something for two minutes. It's hard, but y- you can do it, and you can do it at your house, right?

Chris Williamson 1:13:49 What, apart from running up and down the stairs, what are some other ways that people can incorporate exercise snacks to take advantage of this?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:13:56 Body weight squats, um, are a great one. So you just, you're just, you know, doing your squats, and you do it for a minute, and then rest for whatever, 15 seconds, and then do another minute. I mean, those are hard, and they get your heart rate up. So you can do that for, like, three minutes. Uh, that's a really good one, and then you're gonna be really sore if you're not used to it. But and then there's the high knees, so you do high knees. Um, I mean, you could do chair squats. You could do plank, um, the, not planks, the, uh, burpees, those burpees. So you do, like, the, the plank thing, and then you come up and jump and... Like, those are all, I think, really great examples of just, like, easy ways to do exercise snacks, like even at your desk. And, um, just even breaking up, we're, we're talking about improving cognition, improving mood. Breaking up your work day with those, like, it makes a difference on your mood, on your cognition. Like, it- it- it helps. You're getting blood flow immediately to your brain. So, um ...

Chris Williamson 1:14:48 Yeah, you were talking, you were telling me about, um, the need for people to break up their sedentary time, that there's some very specific risks that people can encounter if they're too sedentary for too long, too frequently. What's happening there?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:15:01 Yeah, it's interesting. Um, so I never identified myself as sedentary because I've always done something, like running or jumping rope or something, like going to the gym, something, um, where I'm physically active. So it's like, "Oh, I'm in the physically active group, I'm not sedentary." Well, it turns out, um, being sedentary is like what we've been for the past couple of hours. We've been sitting here. That is sedentary. So even when you're, even if you, you know, go to the gym or you go for runs, when you are sitting at your desk for a period of hours, you are sedentary. And sedentary, being sedentary itself is an independent risk factor for disease like cancer. So now, do I think the marathon runner that, you know, also has a, you know, desk job where they sit at their desk for eight hours is gonna come down with cancer? Probably not because they're, they're- they're really putting a lot of effort in, and they're- they're physically active. But, um, I certainly am not the athlete. I am a committed exerciser, right? So I'm- I'm putting in anywhere between, you know, two to five hours of, you know, exercise in a week, depending on the week, right? So, um, for me, like, I spend a lot of time sitting. I spend a lot of time sitting. And so that, to me, was, like, a big thing where it's like, oh, that's an independent risk factor for breast cancer, um, which, you know, a- a woman's breast cancer risk and just lifetime risk is one in eight. It's incredibly high. And of course, there- of course, there's lifestyle factors that can sort of increase or decrease that. Um, and just seden- sedentarism is a independent risk factor for that. So again, it's- it's really, and so easy. So I've s- I have started incorporating exercise snacks. Um, I'll get up, and I'll start doing some- some body weight squats. I think that's my- my go-to. Uh, I also like doing, um, burpees. I've been doing some burpees and high knees, I'll do. Um ...

Chris Williamson 1:16:51 Every hour?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:16:52 Um, I think every couple of hours. I- I've also been starting to time them around my meals. Um, so that's- that's another thing. I think being aware of the postprandial glucose response and how it affects my- my cognitive function, my mood, uh, and also just knowing that it's healthier. And it's so easy to do. Like, just do, like, two or three minutes of s-

Chris Williamson 1:17:12 Pre-food?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:17:14 You can do it pre- or post-food, both.

Chris Williamson 1:17:16 Trying to do burpees post-food might be difficult.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:17:18 You can do it up to, like, an hour after.

Chris Williamson 1:17:20 Right, okay.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:17:21 Yeah, so...

Chris Williamson 1:17:22 So, one of the things that Dr. Stu McGill, number one back pain specialist on the planet, taught me about forever ago, and then Mark Bell also popularized this, 10-minute walk, 15-minute walk post-eating because insulin sensitivity, because of helping to re-, um, adjust glucose levels within the blood. Uh, also the muscles of the hips, uh, and the arms cross across the stomach, so it actually helps with digestion of food a little bit as well. Like, if you had a really big meal and all you wanna do is lie down, actually probably one of the best things that you can do to make yourself feel better is to maybe go for a- a walk. What would you say here? We've got the- the post-meal walking crowd and the post-meal burpees crowd.

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:18:04 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:18:04 Like, is there something that- that- that you're missing from one of those, or are you happy with either?

Elliot Royce (training / endurance guest – likely Norwegian 4x4 protocol expert) 1:18:09 Um, well, I don't know about the whole (sighs) arms movement aiding in digestion thing, all that. Um,