Saving Villages in the African Jungle, Animal Psychology & Much More with Justin Wren.

Well, hey, man, thank you for being here. I really appreciate your time on the podcast. But, man, earlier today, that was good.

Thank you for not throwing up on me.

Yeah, Amy, this was the first time I carried a trash can. Add on it. I carried it around with me like the different. There's two trash cans.

Oh, because you thought you were going to throw up.

Yeah, because Ben was working me.

Good job, cardio.

And it was great.

I don't like to eat before I work out in the morning. Morning.

I made the mistake. You. You see what I walked out the door with?

And he had a bunch of sausages.

Yes.

And it was, it was, it was so concerning to me that he had the trash can. And I am kind of an asshole. Like, it wasn't. I wasn't gonna stop the workout or say, okay, well, let's go do some crunches instead of burpees and everything else. And. And so I was a little bit concerned seeing him. There was a trash can. And then I made a joke and I was like, at least you didn't have any spicy sausage today. And he looks at me, he's like.

I said, can you smell it?

No, I have a break. Can you smell it?

Can you smell it?

And then my heart sunk and I was like, oh, no, he actually did have spicy sausage. And I'm just destroying us with this cardiovascularly demanding workout.

We were on the rower, the aerodyne bikes in the skierg.

Yeah, that's sled. It's my. Okay, so if I'm traveling and I just want to squeeze a lot in in a short period of time, usually I'll mix cardio and strength. But then if you're at a gym that you're unfamiliar with and you don't know who's going to be using what equip. And it's just a very, very basic and simple equation. You choose any piece of cardio and you do two minutes as hard as you can on it. And then you choose some kind of a functional movement like kettlebell swing or a bent row or a pull up or a Spiderman push up or whatever. And you just go back and forth from the cardio to the one exercise. And so what Justin I did today was we did the airdyne to.

To Spider man push ups. And then we did the concept two upright ski erg thing to kettlebell swings. And then we did rowing machine to sled pushes, and then we did bent rows to reverse hypers. And then for dessert, we finished with two minutes as hard as possible on the rowing machine to 20 burpees to the Concept 2.

So we did workout four rounds of.

Each thing and we don't stop. It's no rest. It's an hour with no rest.

Oh, so four rounds. Like when you say aerodynamic kettlebells, it's like four rounds.

Yeah. And so I get, I find at least, especially maybe as I age, this might be a factor. But I don't do well with heavy weights. I just, I'll go for a few months and I'll just tweak something, you know, back squatting or you know, pull the back deadlifting. I find though that like the high intensity body weight stuff, long amounts of time under tension, high reps, I can roll with that for months on end and feel great. So.

Yeah.

Well, how old are you?

I'm 40.

Okay. He's 40. Looks younger than me. Acted younger than me in the gym today, that's for sure. I mean I did have like 12 hour days on the motorcycle two days in a row. And in between it I was eating barbecue and Mexican food and all that. And I think I probably would have changed. We were in these little country towns, there wasn't anything else to. But I probably would have packed my own food or something if I knew I was going to work out with Ben today. Yeah, that's for sure. And not eaten the spicy Italian sausage or turkey sausage.

I don't know. I know you pretty well. I think you might have just done it.

Anyway, it's funny, I was listening to him and Rogan in the. Just prepping today and they were talking about salt intake and I'm like, what do we have that's salty? There was really nothing in the fridge because we'd been out of town and that was what was there. And so I decided to eat the sausage for salt to try, which is good.

And Justin saw that I travel everywhere with a bag of salt. Like I just always have a bag of salt in my bag. And I've done that for years. And the reason for that is I feel really good. High salt, like 6 grams plus of salt per day. I just saw everything very heavily. And when I was racing in all these Ironman triathlons, we used to have a physiologist who would come and test the athletes and they tested what's called your sweat sodium analysis. Like the amount of sodium that you lose in your sweat. And the levels that I was losing was like two or three times higher than the other people on the team. That's just like a genetic thing, right? I just lose a Lot of salt in my sweat. And so I just started sweating or salting all my food pretty heavily after I got the results of that test. And I like, I started sleeping better and I couldn't hear my blood kind of like pounding in my ears. You know, when you lay down, like your blood pounding in your ears especially, you've been training heavy, like, that went away. Dizziness from like sitting down or laying down and then going to a standing position, that went away. And I feel great. And of course my blood pressure is great. It's fantastic. So the issue with the salt is if it's isolated sodium chloride, such as you would find in table salt, that's what you want to be careful with. But if salt's balanced out, like in a really good salt, like a Florida cells, or we were doing like a Colema salt today, or some of these electrolyte blends that are full spectrum minerals, not just isolated sodium chloride, you feel amazing.

I think, I think I'm that way too, where I just lose a lot. I mean, at a wrestling practice, I can lose 13 pounds of water weight.

Yeah.

So I got to put the salt back in. But tell Amy what you did with your smoothie today. It was a PB cup, so peanut butter cup. And he just took it off and dumped salt into it. I did it in mine and it was excellent. It was great. But she loves peanut butter, so I.

Thought, I like it salted too.

Yeah. The other thing that I do a lot of times is when I'm traveling. Right. Because sometimes when you're traveling, your food options are limited. But salt can take just about. Salt can take kind of a cheap ass airport salad and make it taste halfway decent. And then you throw olive oil into the mix. Right. Like, and so I usually will have like a little bottle, like really good, spicy, pungent, extra virgin olive oil. So I know if I wind up at a restaurant where things aren't that great, I could order the fricking roasted vegetables and put some salt and olive oil on there and be good to go.

I think we're going to have to get your cookbook Boundless, right?

Is it Boundless Cookbook?

I think that'd be really good. What was Boundless the book about?

Well, Boundless have an idea, but I originally wanted to write a book on anti aging and longevity. Things like stem cell mobilization and staving off cognitive decline with age and staving off some of the loss of the T cells and immune function as you age. And some of these peptide therapies that people are doing and the regenerative medicine therapies. And I started to write it and I realized that there's so many physiological mechanisms that are with the process of aging that you really can't write a book that thoroughly addresses longevity and anti aging without kind of addressing every aspect of the human body like cognitive function and muscle maintenance and fat loss and mitochondrial density and the immune system and the gut. And then, oh, you start to look at the blue zones where there's old cigarette smoking, gin chugging grandmas who are healthy and they're not doing any of the peptides and the stem cells and stu and they just have love and relationships or an Okinawa old men and old women who don't lift weights at all and don't do peptide injections, but they have a really strong ikigai or life purpose in addition to whatever, eating purple potatoes and fish. So then you have the whole spiritual dynamic. And ultimately the book wound up being just kind of more of a manual to just life optimization and health optimization than just anti aging and longevity and just kind of took on a life of its, its own. But yeah, the original idea was going to be anti aging and longevity and then was just like, all right, well this is the whole human blueprint.

Yeah, well, I thought, I thought it had stem cells and peptides in there. I've had some great. Yeah, I've had some great results. I. I broke my knee, the tibia plateau, six weeks before I was supposed to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I was doing that with Chris Long who won the super bowl like two weeks before. And we were doing it for charity, for water boys and fight for the forgotten. And we're raising funds for it. I break my tibia plateau and they say I have to be non weight bearing for six full weeks. And we had just raised over $200,000 for the climb. And we're going to drill a bunch of water wells after that.

So you hired somebody to push you up Mount Kilimanjaro?

Yeah, no, actually I got stem cells at two weeks. I had the. Is it mesenchymal or mesenchymal?

Yeah, mesenchymal. The MSCs, they call them mesenchymal stem cells.

Yeah, they got it from my bone marrow.

Yeah.

And then they.

Which by or for people listening in the mscs, that's usually kind of like the more potent version of the stem cell that can differentiate into other tissue and you got a really low MSC count. Typically if the stem cells are non autologous, meaning they come from a tissue Other than your own. And then if you take your own marrow or your own fat and concentrate that you get a higher level of the MSCs, which sounds like what you did.

Yeah. And I've had that twice. And the one in my knee, I got at two weeks and they took enough to where they could do it again in two weeks after that because I wanted to go on the climb still. And so I got it at two weeks. At four weeks and then five weeks, I wasn't able to train for the. The climb. I was training MMA and stuff, so I was in pretty good shape. But at five weeks, I was at the top of Mount Elbert and the NFL films were following me, doing a little bit of a documentary on the whole climb, but talking about the struggle there. And I got to the top of Albert, which is the tallest fourteener in Colorado. And it was in the winter, it was like January. So I'm snowshoeing up.

Oh, wow.

And then at six weeks, I was at the top of Kilimanjaro and I was supposed to be non weight bearing for six full weeks and virtually pain free. And I don't have any problems in anymore. Then PRP helped me in my bicep. But I was young. I was before the Ultimate Fighter finale and I tore my bicep like a camel's back. Tore right in the middle.

Oh, you could actually see it curl up.

Yeah, yeah, it was. It was bad. It was two. Two humps. And they put PRP and something else in there. I think it might have been prp. And like the regenerakine or regeneracan. And I fought three weeks later. And so I'm a big proponent of. Of regenerative medicine. I just had some in my shoulder. That was the bone marrow. And then.

What else have I done? I've done stem cells in my neck, my knees. And those were from the like. What is it? The umbilical cord and the placental stem cells. And those seem to help a lot too.

The only thing that's left for you to do now is to get the wolverine claws embedded in your knuckles. Yeah.

From the bpc. Isn't that what they call that?

We need their steak cut. I heard of them on top of that.

Absolutely. So it's been great. I'm really impressed by the results of.

General medicine is very cool. Yeah. What you can do now in a minimally invasive manner. And Tony Robbins and Peter Diamandis, they just wrote a new book called Life Force that gets into a lot of these cool, cutting edge Modalities.

You can grow new organs and you can lay down stem cell scaffolding almost like a spray into different joints. Cartilaginous resurfacing. They're getting to the point now where they can print custom. They can take a measurement of your joint, make a custom covering of it for a joint replacement.

That is wild.

All this stuff is fascinating because when I graduated from college, I wanted to be a doctor and I didn't get accepted to the medical schools that I wanted to get accepted to. And so I took a year off and sold hip and KN. Surgical equipment, like did hip and knee surgical sales for a company called Biomet. And actually during that time realized I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't enjoy the medical system at all. Like all the doctors I was around there like, dude, don't be a doctor. But I saw a lot of these hips and knees get installed. And apparently how far hip and knee joint replacement has come since that time is just staggering as far as the ability to be able to hyper customize a joint replacement. Yeah.

I'm trying to think about this question because it's almost. I don't want to sound bad, but it's almost like you've been, how did you get into all this? And then it. Not that you've been a lab rat, but you've been an experiment, like where you're just like going and seeking all these things and allowing these breakthrough procedures on. On yourself and seeing the benefits of it.

Yeah.

Where did that interest and that quest for knowledge come from?

Oh, well, you know, I don't have a sexy little wounded healer story or anything like that. I've just always been into physical culture and the outdoors and, you know, healthy living. And so I grew up just out in the sticks in North Idaho, you know, homeschooled me and my four siblings and we'd spend a lot of, you know, homeschooling for us at least. You know, I'd get up and I'd read my books and do my schoolwork and I'd typically done with school by like 11am and I'd just be outdoors, you know, playing and soaking up the sunshine and hanging out outside. And I also, since I was homeschooled, I was kind of a nerd and I played the violin. I was in the chess club.

And I. I think you might be the toughest after making me throw up almost. I think you're the toughest homeschool kid I've met.

The toughest homeschool kid. Yeah. Yeah. I'M not as good at crocheting as some of the other homeschool boys. But yeah, homeschooling is interesting. Yeah, it is. You go to prom by yourself and you know, you risk getting accused of incense. If you like your classmate or teacher, your teacher sleeps. Your teacher sleeps with the principal. It's a weird PPE is dragging all your siblings cloth diapers up and down the stairs. But anyways, the thing with homeschooling is I had a real appreciation for academics. I was very academic. But then I also loved all this physical culture stuff. And I originally actually wanted to be a computer programmer. I like to design video games and play video games. And I was one of the first guys who played the online World of Warcraft and then World of Starcraft. That was like my world. I'd love to do that and create first person shooter video games. And my parents had hired me like a private computer programmer tutor and lined me up with this job with this guy who had retired from Microsoft to work for him. And what happened was I started playing tennis, like a lot of tennis, and got super into tennis, like four or five hours a day and got really good and played high school and played club tennis.

Seems like you had a good frame for it too.

Yeah, yeah. Kind of long and lanky and low like, but big enough to be kind of explosive. So I taught tennis lessons. That was my job. That's how I was saving up for college. I literally built a tennis court in our backyard and I painted all the lines in it. And I would plaster posters up around the neighborhood to get people to come over for tennis lessons. And I would email all my parents friends to see if their kids would sign up for tennis lessons. I actually did pretty good. I would teach tennis lessons for four or five hours a day from the time I was 14 until I was 16 years old to save up for college, and then went to college, started playing tennis. And at that point, just because I was so into, oh, how could I eat to be a better tennis player? And what do I do with these dumbbells to get stronger serving the tennis ball?

And what are the supplements and the electrolytes, things that people use for tennis. And so I just got so into it that I thought, gosh, this is amazing. I want to study more about how to get a lot out of the human body, the human brain, athletic performance, sports performance, things like that. And I also had a couple of friends. One who was the Washington state powerlifting champion, Rafael Escamilla. And then another guy named Barry who was A professional bodybuilder. And Barry and Raphael, they would take me to the gym and teach me stuff. And I just thought it was super cool. Get to hang out with the big bodybuilders and power lifters and learn stuff from them. So I went to college and I decided I wanted to study exercise. So I studied exercise physiology and biomechanics. And then I got interested in medicine, did pre med and really thought I wanted to be a doctor, like a sports medicine physician, orthopedic surgeon, and wound up not doing that. But I, I got my master's degree in physiology and biomechanics. And then after that little stint in surgical sales and realizing I didn't want to go on into medicine, I just jumped straight back into fitness. And all through college, I was working as a personal trainer and as a nutritionist and teaching sports camps. And so it just fit for me. And I've literally, since I was like 14 years old, pretty much like 80% of all I've done is just study the human body and performance optimization and health and now anti aging and longevity and things like that. So.

Yeah. So what is for people that don't know what the necessarily the definition is, what do you, what do you think biohacking is? How do you explain that?

Oh, biohacking?

Yeah.

It's just putting butter in your coffee. Everybody knows that. Yeah, you're a professional biohacker. You wake up and you put some.

Because I've heard people say there is no hack for this. And then, and then. But there's a lot of people that, that swear by it.

Yeah, Biohacking is just the, the concept of, of using some form of technology or science or external tool to either get the body to do something more efficiently than it normally would be able to, or to get the body to get to a level that it wouldn't have been able to get to in the absence of that technology or tool. And so the original biohackers, they were called grinders and they called their body wetware and things that they would put on their body or into their body, the hardware. And so you'd have guys like Kevin Warrick, who was the original human cyborg who had magnetic implants in his fingertips to be able to interact with technology, kind of like Tom Cruise did in Minority Report with screens and things like that. And then there was another guy who got chlorophyll injected into his eyeballs for night vision. And you could get a compass that was installed in the skin on your chest that would vibrate when you'd face true north. All these crazy things. And so that was the original biohacking and now biohacking has become more of this kind of idea that you just use technology to enhance the body without necessarily having to get an implant or a surgery or wolverine cloth. Yeah, your knuckles or something like that. And so.

The way I like to think about it is.

Let'S use a few examples, like let's say light, infrared light, which is a very popular thing now. This concept of using what's called photobiomodul modulation and shining light on the skin to do something like increase the mitochondrial production of ATP or improve your collagen or elastin health or this thing in the news right now. A lot of guys will shine the red light on their balls to increase their testosterone or on the thyroid.

Does that work?

Thyroid hormone production anecdotally and based on a few small rodent studies, there is some evidence that 600 to 800 nanometers of light shown on the gonads increases the mitochondrial chondrile activity in the testes and could potentially increase testosterone. Okay, I don't. It could also be just like standing naked in front of a red light for 20 minutes. I, I don't know. Yeah, but, but you, you look at practice like that and really you could go out into the sunlight and get full spectrum infrared light and UVA and uvb and all the benefits that you'd be looking for from a red light panel by being out in the sun. Sun. But let's say you can't get out in the sun. Or you're like me and your house is in the forest on a north facing slope. So you only get sunlight from 10 to 2. Or you got to be at work and you aren't able to get out in the sunlight that day. Or it's just a dark and gray and cloudy day. Or you don't have a lot of time to be out in the sunlight. Well, just basically standing in front of one of these red light panels for like 20 minutes gives you all the benefits you'd be looking for from the sunlight, but in a very short concentrated period of time. Hence I would consider that to be like a bio hack. Like you're using light to hack your physiology to get what you'd normally be getting from sunlight, but more efficiently or more quickly. Another example would be like a lot of people will do the grounding or the earthing, go outside barefoot or hug a tree or climb rocks or whatever to get all the anti inflammatory benefits that are derived from the natural electrical conductivity on the surface of the planet. Like, these electromagnetic signals that the planet puts out are helpful. EMFs. Like, we always hear about how bad EMFs are for you, your cell phone, your wi fi route. But.

The planet Earth makes EMFs. Rocks and trees have electromagnetic properties, and they're actually beneficial for you. So you can go outside barefoot and you can lay down on your back and meditate in the backyard. But again, let's say that kind of like sunlight, you aren't able to do that. That. One other example of a popular biohack is people sleep on these grounding mats or have a grounding mat that you stand on when you're at work. Or some people will use more concentrated pulsed forms of this electromagnetic energy called pemf, Pulsed electromagnetic fields. And these are used for injuries and for healing and for cellular function and for blood flow. And so that would be an example of taking a natural activity like earthing or grounding and turning it into a biohack, or using technology and science to help your body to be able to experience that more efficiently or more quickly, especially if you can't get outdoors and be barefoot. So what I'm getting at is it's a pretty broad term, biohacking. I think you can apply it to a lot of stuff now, and it's almost like a way to make some things that normally people would just do for health sound sexy. I kind of joke about the butter in your coffee, but technically, I mean, that's because a lot of biohackers will do that. They'll blend their butter in the coffee. That's not really bio. That's just like cooking. It's not biohacking. It's literally just like putting butter in their coffee. But then you can say that you're a biohacker and it sounds good.

Yeah, well, on the earthing grounding, you reminded me.

I.

For the first month or two, I lived in the Congo and I was in the rainforest. So under the canopy I was wearing, I brought these big clunky boots, But I didn't think about how incredibly hot and humid it is there, and then how wet my feet would get and sweat inside these boots. And no one in the village wore shoes at all, hardly. And if they did, they were. They called them apapas, which are just flip flops. And so I just went shoeless for. Unless I was on the well drilling site where something heavy could just drop on my feet. One of my favorite things in the morning was just go outside, put my feet on the ground. And I didn't even know about grounding earthing at that time. And so. But yeah, I mean going on hikes through the forest, hour, two hour hike and just being with the tribe and the pygmy people, just being barefoot out there and going across logs and walking through rivers and all sorts of stuff. Like it was just, just, it was absolutely.

Have you ever done it after you've gotten off an airplane? Like after. Oh my goodness. Like it's. I think it's one of the best ways to beat jet lag. So when you're in a body of water, like a natural body of water, especially one that has a high amount of salinity, like an ocean that is that, that is like grounding on steroids. It's like 20x the amount of electrical conductivity that you get absorbed into your body that's basically anti inflammatory. If you're swimming six like in the ocean, you know. And, and so if I'm traveling and I'm crossing a lot of time zones, one of the first things I do is get outside barefoot or just go like lay on my back outside the hotel. If the hotel has like one of those little grassy places or do some yoga, you know, we're down dog where both your hands and your feet are touching the ground. But then like, even better than that, if you, if you're jet lagged and wherever you've traveled happens to have like an outside body of water or like a lake or an ocean or something like that, it's one of the best ways to feel really good when you travel. I wish more people knew about it.

Yeah, motorcycling. Yesterday we went through Kerrville and we rode along the Guadalupe River. We're on the bikes all day. We're sweaty like crazy. Went on these twists and turns, 200 turns and we did it twice. And then we were. The sun came out, we went and jumped in the Guadalupe river and we went swimming. And it was, it was epic. It was so refreshing and it's spring fed, so it's like natural clear water and it was just, it was the way to top off the trip.

Yeah.

Just jumping in the lake or the river.

Yeah. It's amazing. It's interesting the whole idea with travel because I know you travel a lot and I actually, I think you should tell a little bit more about what you're doing over in Africa that you were telling me when we were in the cold pool.

Sure.

It sounds just fascinating, but it's really interesting how many things can help you feel better. When you travel.

It'S part of the whole biohacking thing is, well, you're crossing multiple time zones, you're fighting this battle. This what would be called an evolutionary mismatch in a post industrial era. We've got all these evolutionary mismatches. We live in boxes and we have overhead bright LED fluorescent lighting and all these signals emanating from our WiFi router that are these standard square waveforms when the body's more used to random waveforms and it can't really deal with that type of hertz frequency quite as well. And then we've got these things are breathing in household cleaning chemicals and personal care products. I'm not saying this to make people think they should live in a bubble or something like that, but you got to do a lot these days, it seems like to actually feel good because there's so many things that aren't natural for the human body or that we haven't really grown accustomed to be able to deal with. And of course, flying 40,000ft above the surface of the earth in a metal tube is one of those things people just feel kind of shitty after they fly. And so, yeah, getting outside barefoot and grounding is one thing. But then like I have a little stack that I take when I fly because you look at radiative damage and you look at, in response to all these little like cell phone signals and WI fi routers and everything in that little metal tube that you're flying through, sometimes for hours on end, you get a high amount of calcium influx into the cell which causes this electrochemical gradient that's a positive charge inside the cell when it's supposed to be negative charge inside the cell. And then you also get some of the DNA damage that can occur in response to the radiation. So I thought, well, you can regulate some of the inflammatory pathways and satiate the appetite so you don't have to eat crappy airplane food or airport food if you use ketones. So I put a low bottle of these ketones, just a little Ziploc bag and take with me on the flight low bottle these ketone esters, these drinkable liquid ketones. And then the next thing to offset the calcium influx is you take some magnesium capsules, just like what I, whatever magnesium product that you like. And then for the DNA damage you take a little bit of nad, which is really, really great for helping to repair and protect DNA. And so it's nad, magnesium and ketones. And I'll just take a little bit of that when I'm on the Flight and then, dude, like grounding or earthing. Right. When you get to where you're going and you feel pretty good. Yeah. And then the only other one is like a ton of melatonin. The first night I get to where I'm going tonight down at like 200 to 600 milligrams of melatonin. Really, really high dose. But just for the first day. It's like a melatonin sledgehammer. Resets everything and then you feel good.

Really? I didn't know you could take that much.

You can take a lot. Melatonin's interesting. It's anti inflammatory, it's cellular, it's got a lot of protective activities for the cell.

And a lot of people think if you take a whole bunch, your body's not going to make its own. Which probably, like, theoretically cr, chronic high dose melatonin use for a really long period of time could cause that. But just doing like a huge bolus of melatonin. Right. When you get to where you are traveling just to reset the circadian rhythm, I mean, whenever I do international travel, I do it and you sleep like a baby the first night and then you're just good to go.

That's interesting. Amy is a sleep freak. Self proclaimed sleep freak. Right. And so what, what is, how important is sleep for the body, body recovery? And then what is. If you had one or two things that are an absolute non negotiable must for sleep, getting better sleep, what would you say?

Well, I mean, sleep is important. Everybody knows that. And everybody knows, I think at this point that things like appetite dysregulation and weight gain and poor mood and poor immune function, all these things happen when you don't sleep properly. And a lot of people also are aware, I think, thanks to people like Matt Walker. He wrote the book why We. Was it called why We Slee? And there's a lot of other really great sleep researchers out there. I've had a few of them on my podcast before. There's another really great guy, Dr. Nick Littlehales and Dr. Michael Bruce. There's some pretty good sleep researchers and sleep books out there. And so now a lot of people are aware of the basics of sleep hygiene, which would basically be you sleep in a cold environment on a cold surface, preferably you sleep in a dark environment without a lot of external light input from a phone or lights or anything else. You sleep in a safe place, meaning that the bed is not a place where you do a lot of business and thinking and working. It's a Place for relaxation, for sleeping, or for sex. That's basically what the bedroom should be for. And then you want a quiet place that doesn't have a lot of audio distractions, unless it's, like, soothing sounds like white noise generators or the sounds of whales or whatever else people listen to these days to help them to sleep. Even though I never understood the idea of the whale.

Large sea mammals that relaxing. But then you look at the subtle nuances. I think that's where people stumble. It's like, okay, so I heard that cold is important, but a lot of people, they're just like, okay, so I'm not gonna sleep in a sweatsuit. But no, I mean, like, you can do a lot of things. Like, have you guys seen this chili pad before that people sleep on?

I had a chili pad.

Yeah. Yeah. So chili pad I don't have anymore.

But I had it in a. I loved it.

Yeah, it's great. Circulates the cold water. A lot of companies, like, there's a company called Essentia, there's a company called Intellibed. They make these mattresses that naturally stay more cool. They don't collect as much body heat. You know, we always turn off the heat in our house. If you sleep with wool socks on, that helps to cool the rest of the body.

Really?

Paradoxically. Yeah. It cools the core when you keep the feet warm. Same thing for the hands. You have these things called arteriovenous anastomoses in your hands and your feet and your forehead, that if you keep those warm, the rest of the body stays of cool, which is kind of interesting. So a hack is you can sleep with the wool socks on. You could take a lukewarm shower before bed. If I'm traveling. Okay, so this is what I'm doing while I'm here in Austin. So I'm traveling. I don't have my chilipad. I don't have my special mattress that doesn't collect as much heat. So I take a lukewarm shower before bed because it doesn't have to be super cold. And the problem if it's too cold is you get this sympathetic response. If you've done cold plunges, you know about this. You have a bunch of energy afterwards, which you don't want before you go to bed. So it's lukewarm. Shower, shower, and then pull socks on, preferably wearing little else except socks. And you get into bed, and you actually stay pretty cool with that strategy. So the temperature is one thing.

The light, like I mentioned, a lot of people know, okay, don't look at your cell phone in bed, don't watch a TV in the bedroom. But there's so many other things. Like your circadian rhythm starts, it begins in the morning. So most people who have sleep problems are not getting a lot of bright light, specifically sunlight or full spectrum light in the morning. Morning you should be getting within an hour of waking up about 20 minutes or so. Like bright light exposure. If you can't get outside into the sunlight, then that's where the, where the biohacking comes in. Right? This is the case. In my office, I have the red lights that I flip on when I get into my office in the morning. But then in addition to that, I have the blue lights. And everybody thinks, oh, the blue lights are bad for you. I hear people wear the blue light blockers and you're not supposed to see blue light. But the thing is, that's it at night, in the daytime, in the morning, blue light's actually wonderful. It's fantastic because it gets your circadian rhythm jump started. I mean, even if you do like that high dose melatonin that I was talking about, well, a lot of people will say, wait, I'm going to be groggy in the morning if I take a bunch of melatonin. The best way to get a bunch of melatonin out of what's called the suprachiasmatic nucleus in the brain is to get exposed to light. So even if you do that melatonin sledgehammer, if you're traveling, you're like, oh, I'm so groggy, I don't know what to do. Literally, you stare at the sun for like 10 minutes or get out in the bright light and you just feel like a new person. Like, the grogginess is totally gone. And so what I'm getting at here is a bunch of bright light in the morning is really good. Whether it's getting it in the sunlight or flipping on infrared lights in a room in your house and then pairing that with staring at a screen that's emanating blue light, or even using one of those seasonal affective disorder boxes that produces blue light. That's a really good combo because you got the blue light plus the infrared light light. You blast yourself with that in the morning. And then in the evening, you just get rid of as much external light as possible. Okay, so that's when the phone goes into night mode function and all the computers. I have a program called Iris that's installed on all the computers and that gets rid of all the blue light on the computer screen. And then you can wear the blue light blocking glasses. And then what my wife and I did in our house is we replaced all the bulbs in the areas of the house where you'd want to sleep or be relaxed. We replaced all those bulbs with red incandescent lighting, which is like this really soft orangish red spectrum that doesn't block melatonin production and doesn't keep you awake at night. And so if I get up at night to pee and I flip on the bathroom light, it's just like red, right? It doesn't jolt me awake and I get back to sleep really well. And so it's the presence of ton of light in the morning and like really going out of your way for absence of light. Like you should just be thinking at night, how can I turn the room and technically, preferably even the house into a cold, dark cave with the only type of light in that cave being what my ancestors would have perceived as torchlight or firelight, which is why red incandescent bulbs are the way to go. They're a little bit more of an energy hog, but they're just like torchlight. And then.

The temperature and the light is really important. But like I mentioned, the other two would be business and busyness in bed being something you should avoid and then the sound. And for the former, I used to be that guy who would check into a hotel room and like the laptop, you slap down the bed and jump onto the bed in your stomach, start banging out emails. Or maybe if you're hanging around at night in the room, maybe you're working on a few things or you have a business book next to bed. I have nothing like that now in my life. As far as the bed being associated with anything except sleep or sex. Like you just basically no TV in the bedroom, no computers in the bedroom, no business books in the bedroom that make you think about business. You just want the bed to be a super safe place. And for people who don't feel safe in bed, have like high nighttime cortisol and things like that. What works really well is a gravity blanket. You've seen these before?

Yeah, yeah. Weighted blankets.

Yeah. It makes you feel safe. Like it actually induces a. That's, that's why it works. It's like this protective mechanism. You feel like you're in armor when you have this giant gravity blanket on top of you. And there's even companies like that chili pad company that I talked about, they make a gravity blanket that circulates cold water through the blanket so it doesn't heat you up as much. It was kind of cool. And then the last part, the sound, I actually think that not enough people know about how much sound can help you to sleep. And so what I do is I play this app called Brain S fm. And it's these special sounds that induce your body into a state of relaxation that don't necessarily have to be played through headphones. So I can just play them without wearing headphones. And then if I wake up at 2am or 3am or I get up to pee and get back to sleep or whatever, then I have this other program called nucalm. Nucalm. And I'll literally put in headphones and they even make soft headphones for side sleepers like me. They're called sleep phones. Like a headband that goes around your ears and I'll play the new New Calm tracks through that. And those things just lull you back into a deep status. Like, I have to be careful because if I wake up at like 5 and I'm like, I'm just gonna lay in bed a few more minutes, I put on the new Calm. I'll sometimes wake up at 7:30, like, whoa, what. What just happened? So those are the basics. I think those are the important things for sleep.

It's really important. I see Amy over there taking notes.

I just jotted that down.

Yeah, yeah. Or just drink a bottle of wine. No.

So I. I can relate so much of this to my time in Africa because I was in a twigleaf hut that was only 4 or 5 foot tall and the dirt was my bed and the fire was my blanket for the most part. And I wouldn't think that those are conditions where I had to learn to sleep there the first couple weeks. But after that I slept like a baby because everybody woke up as the sun was coming up, just naturally, no alarm clocks. And you fall asleep. I mean, you start getting sleepy when the sun goes down. You're in the rainforest, so it goes down even earlier. Right, right. So then they'll sit around the fire, we'll share stories, we'll sing, we'll dance, we'll eat. And then after that, everyone just goes back in and it's just conked out and you're going to the sleep or to the. You're going to sleep to the sound of the jungle, the rainforest. And it's never quiet. So there's birds chirping, monkeys. I mean, just it's.

But there's not whales in the rainforest.

No whales. No whales. But hippos. All right, you can sometimes. And that was. That was somewhere where I didn't feel like I now had so much purpose, but me in my life, in my journey. Like, I've. I've. I've struggled with depression, with addiction, with different stuff, but when I was there, there was so much purpose and so much community and there wasn't so many distractions. I mean, I didn't have any cell service at all, so my phone was just like a camera. And I think that having all those factors where you're not fighting the light, you're not doing work at night, like you're just with each other.

Yeah.

And you can't be drilling wells in the dark, so you gotta. We did once, just because we had to go through the collapsing zone and we had a fire next to it, so we could drill by firelight, basically. But, man, that right. There was a time that I felt like I connected back to, like, I guess our original man or our ancestors. Right. Because they're still hunter gatherers. And it was so cool, like dining. They would come back in like a king after or, I mean, just a celebration. Whenever they brought home a wild hog or a monkey or an antelope and. Or honey, like, they would risk their lives to go climb trees and African bees or killer bees, and so they're climbing up 100, sometimes over 100ft in the air to get this honey down. And they're sitting it down in a basket and there's smoke going up, but the smoke really doesn't take out the bees. Like, they're getting stung like crazy. All their neighboring tribes don't understand how they can do it.

The killer bees, though, killer bees. Are they dying when they get stung?

No, no. Some reason. Some reason. The Mbuti Pygmy people in the Batwa.

Pygmy, they have some kind of a.

Some kind of thing that probably from generations and generations, generations, they can get stung by them. But anybody else, I mean, I would naturally immune. I would welt up. Like I got like a little shotgun almost just from one sting. I would have all these whelps all around. And their neighbors too. Like, their neighbors would say, we will die if we try to do that. Wow. But they don't.

Wow, that's nuts. Do you get. I guess maybe you don't anymore, but when you first started showing up over there, was it. Was it weird for the of kind? Cause you're like a big hairy white dude.

Was it weird for them? Were they interested in just the fact that you're just so much different than them.

Yeah. So I lived in a. Probably, I would say I lived in six villages, but we have helped drill wells in 80. And so I would spend time and a bunch of others as well. But the first time I came to one of the pygmy village villages, they ran and hid behind trees when they saw me come.

They ran from you?

Ran from me.

Oh, wow.

And they had bows and arrows drawn. They had spears.

Did you think they were going to shoot you?

I had learned a Swahili saying, nefika hapa kuwapinda.

Rafiki yongo. Like, I'm your friend. I'm only here to love you.

And they're like, that's what rafiki yongo means.

Yeah. Rafiki yongo, I'm your friend.

Okay.

And then nafika hapa kuwa penda. I'm only here to love you. And so.

Yeah, nafiki hapa ku wapinda kuwa penda.

I'm here to love you. Is that what you were saying?

Yeah. And so hands up. Like, showing them. You know what's funny is the person they picked to come up and meet me, she was pregnant, probably like seven, eight months pregnant. And she had an infant that was maybe like a year or year and a half on her side. And she came up to me and was real timid, real scared, kind of showing me like, hey, I'm. I'm pregnant, I've got a baby. Like, don't hurt me, don't kill me, that kind of thing. And then she touched me. She touched my forearm. I didn't know why. I thought it was because I have hairy arms and they don't have body hair. Like, the men don't have facial hair. And so, yeah, I've seen like one or two grandfathers that had a little bit of a stubble, a little bit of a goatee, but never a beard.

Okay.

So I'm going in there. And they've literally nicknamed me the vanilla gorilla, the albino rhino, all sorts of stuff. And my fight name, the hairy hippo. The hairy hippo. I could be a very, very hairy hippo, but they call me Effeosa Mabutimangbo. And so effeosa means the man that loves us. I love that one. And mabutimangbo means the big pygmy. And so I'm just the big pygmy, like a piave. Oh. Also is what sometimes I would say. And that's like, he's one of us. Wow. And. But yeah, at first they were Terrified. There was a video that was on YouTube that Jimmy Kimmel played in the Today show. And it was the kids touching my arm hair, my beard hair, my hair. Whenever I bent over to give them my hair, they scattered and ran and were scared I was gonna do something, I guess. But they. They came back laughing, giggling, filling my beard and everything.

Wow.

And so I'm. I'm like from another planet to them, because I was the first white guy they'd ever seen in their lives. And so very, very deep, very remote in the. Into the rainforest. But I'd heard of their suffering, and the United nations had said there was, like, 34 counts of cannibalism against their tribe. So the warring rebel groups there think that if they can hunt, kill, cook, and eat someone from the Pygmy tribe, that they will become invincible in battle, that bullets will fly right through them. And there's, like. I think at the time, there's 38. Now there's like 44, 45 warring rebel groups. These rebel groups. I've seen some of them that finally got their leader, got killed. Their gold mines either ran dry, they ran out of ammo, and so they were taken out. And I saw them walk through this forest. Like, it's not even a street street. It's like red dirt. I've never been on a concrete or tarmac road there. And they were being walked through there with their elbows tied behind their back, almost like handcuffs, where the elbows were almost touching. And their heads, their necks were basically a rope to each one of their ankles. And so they're literally walking hunched over with their head almost as low as their knees and their elbows basically touching behind their backs. And like, 40, 50 guys who committed some of the worst human atrocities.

Rape, murder, all sorts of cannibalism. This. This tribe used to be. This wasn't the copra matata, it was the Mai Mai. And they would drink from the pygmy people's skulls before they go into battle. And they would have, like, a skull or two hanging from their belt loop. And they've got, you know, all the ammo across and machine guns, and they've got skulls hanging on. On the side of them. And so in the day that that rebel group was taken out and walked, marched right by us.

Two or three days before, we were scared that we were gonna have to flee because they had attacked a village nearby.

Yeah.

And.

What was it? The. That was the first day we got a water well in there. And so, man, the celebration that night was epic because first time they had clean water. This rebel group had been taken out. They were all arrested. And we sang and dance. Three things you can't take from the pygmy people is the forest, the fire. And they're singing and dancing. So we sang and danced until the sun came up that night and I went to bed drenched in sweat. Hot, humid rainforest. So humid that you can see your breath. Almost like cold.

Wow.

But it's just so. It's like 100% humidity. I was never dry there. And so you're breathing, you're seeing that my cheeks are hurting from smiling so much and. And finally went to bed when the sun was coming up. And I just remember falling asleep smiling. And I've never done that in my life.

Just like when you're over there, are you, are you personally digging the wells?

Yeah. So I helped drill the first 13 wells and the whole goal. And it's a drill well, so there's different methods.

Okay.

We do manual drilling and we do mechanized rigs. So manual drilling is where we can't take a truck because you can't get these big drills into the rainforest or up a mountain. And these well drilling trucks can be $500,000, $750,000. And anything shiny there basically attracts trouble like those rebel groups. So. And they get so beat up on the roads because they're not even roads.

Yeah.

So it's like the maintenance on them is astronomical. Local parts aren't really accessible. So we do a lot of maintenance drilling. And the sweet spot in the rainforest is anywhere from 60 to 90ft deep. We can go 150ft deep with a manual drilling rig. But that's augers, chisels, single prong, triple prong chisels. It's rock breakers that we're using literally a caterpillar tooth. And we put it into like a 6 or 8 inch casing pipe. And then you have a tripod and it's either it's on a rope or a chain to give it a little more weight. And, and you just keep pulling that, letting it go. Pull it, let it go. And it's like a, basically a machine gun or like a bullet in a barrel hitting the earth. If you're in a, like a granite zone or something, then you have to wrestle out whatever you break up down there. It's the hardest manual labor I've, I could ever imagine. Geez, it's tough. So our well drillers there, like if I would say if I'm in jiu jitsu, like a level, I'm Like a blue or purple belt in well drilling. Probably more of a blue. But now the guys we. We've been training since 10 years ago, 11 years ago. Those guys are brown belts, black belts, they're experts, and they're training other teams.

I got a well drilled at my property in Washington state, and we actually had a well witcher come up, really, where they hold a dowel. And that dowel rotates in a certain manner when the well witcher is standing over a location. Location where apparently two different.

Waterways cross, or a place where there. Where there's like an area where there might be a collection of water underneath the surface. And I remember just being absolutely astounded when the well witcher walked around the property, reached a spot about 50ft from the front door of where we planned on building the house, and just stamped his foot and said, drill right here. And we drilled. And I. I don't know what happened. We would have drilled 10ft away or, you know, or, you know, an acre away or whatever, but that was right where we hit really good water with a flow rate that was perfect for our house.

Over there. How do they know where to drill?

So we have a. Oh, esv.

Electronic. Oh, EV Machine. Electronic vertical sound. And so we use that. And it's basically a pretty primitive tool where we've got, like, some prongs we put in the dirt, and we've got like a car battery and we got a laptop. And it basically, like, sends these sound waves down and it shows you kind of the geological layers.

Yeah.

At least what you can expect. It shows you, like, the density of the soil and kind of what to expect, because it's going to be a little.

That makes sense. I mean, that that's how people who have had their body fat tested by scales that you stand on or the handheld bioelectrical impedance monitors. Those are just pushing some kind of an electrical wave through the body that's bouncing off of fat and bone and muscle at various rates. And going back into the machine to be able to approximate your fat percentage, it sounds to me like it's something similar when you're drilling the wells. You're just literally like shooting a sound wave down in the earth. And then the rate at which that bounces back up or how it bounces back up is reflective of whether you've. Whether it's hit dirt or rock or water or what have you.

Yeah. And it's actually called a ves. I got that right now. So vertical electronic sound.

Okay.

And so we didn't have that the year I was there. And so that was like a guessing game. I wish we could have had a witcher from Washington come over because there's guys in Oklahoma that swear by it and they're like, no, this dude's legit. And yeah, he knows it every time. But we would, we would drill and normally we'd do it where their huts were set up and try to do it in the center of the village. But sometimes the earth doesn't want to cooperate with you while you're wrestling it. So we'd have to pick it up and move a football field away and then we'd hit water there. You know, one time it took, oh, we drilled for 28 days and we thought we had it and the whole thing just collapsed on us. It was very like, there was a lot of clay and like silt and we, we got through it, but it just wasn't going to be a viable option. So after 28 days of drilling, we had to pick up and move. And so the difference between mechanized drilling and manual is we can do Wells in five to 10 days with manual drilling, and then it's only like. But it can be longer. And then with the mechanized rigs, you can bust them out in a few days.

Once you get the well in the ground, are you putting like a pump system or something right there where you've drilled?

It depends on what is best and most sustainable for the, the locals there. A lot of times a hand pump serves them really well. I mean, it can serve up to a thousand people. I mean, that's, that's not putting it through a lot of stress. It's just. It takes time. It takes like two minutes to fill up a 20, 20 liter, five gallon jerry can or four gallon. I think it's five gallons. And so it takes about two minutes of a person or jerry can. So if there's a thousand people, that can take a little bit of time. You know, there can be a line. So, but we. It's basically a hand pump where the pump's just at the bottom. We have slits in the side of the casing. And then we put a gravel pack down on the side of it. And then at the top we have impermeable clay for about three meters, so nine feet. And then we have another three meters or nine feet of like a cement seal. Because the. What you don't want is groundwater going down into the well because that will. This impermeable clay. Each meter takes 100 years for surface water to go through it. And so it could take 2, 300 years to just get through that impermeable clay. So. But if you don't put that there now, it's like a highway of pathogens that can go from.

Because the groundwater carries the pathogens down into the well.

Yeah, yeah. So we have to make sure that they don't have that. And we, we for if especially for the, Actually the wells are the same, but we make sure we drill well 50, at least 50 meters away from any sort of trash site. And make sure we train the village, let them know, hey, there's no dumping trash within this radius.

That seems prudent. Don't, don't pee in this hole.

Yeah. Make sure that there's no latrines close by. Yeah. I mean, you'll, you'll see that people don't educate a lot of the locals there. And a lot of the old fashioned, even still today, traditional well drilling model or nonprofit model is there's a lot of funds and a high quota. And so they just fly in there, bust in. I call it the show up, blow up and blow out technique. So there's no locals that are trained on one how to drill the well. So that's why we train all the locals how to drill the wells. Maintenance, maintenance it, repair it. And it becomes their business. It's their livelihood.

Yeah.

And it's their buy in. And we have a local contribution for the, the village to say, hey, we want you guys to come here. We make an agreement. Then they provide like food and shelter and accommodations for our guys or even like a contribution of like 100, 200 bucks. Even though it's like a 5,000, $10,000 well. Something to say they have some skin in the game instead of just coming in and doing it for free. And then if they think it's our well, not their well, then if it breaks, then they think, oh, well, they'll come back and fix it. But a lot of the traditional models with other NGOs, like none of the local villagers have the phone number for the guy that lives in Georgia or whatever. Then he has to fly back out there, fix it again. There's over 230,000 broken wells in Africa right now, and that's billions of wasted charitable dollars. Because the locals weren't empowered, they weren't equipped with the tools, educated with the knowledge. It was like they were put on the sidelines.

But could the well still function? Yeah, you could go in and repair the pump mechanisms are broken.

Yeah. Sometimes it's just like a coupler or a coupling that it just needs to be replaced. That's like a 50 cent fix.

Yeah.

You know, or two dollar fix.

Upwards is, I mean 300 depends on what pump it is. It can be a thousand dollars, but most of it is it's locally affordable for a village to contribute and fix it themselves.

And is this the primary thing that you're doing with Fight for the Forgotten is the wells.

We do community development, so stateside we do bullying and suicide prevention in schools, but overseas where we started, we do land, water, food initiatives. Right now we're building a community hub. So we've done 80 water wells. We've gotten back over 3,000 acres of the rainforest for the pygmy people. And then also in Uganda, Uganda we have more than 50 acres that we're building. We've already built 28 homes. There's going to be 32 homes total. Because the Batwa pygmy people were kicked out of the rainforest. They were kicked out of the Similiki National Park. It was their traditional home for thousands of years. And I won't say the organization, but there's a lot of people lobbying saying we need to get them out of there. And it's corruption because they say it's for protection of wildlife, really, it's for safaris or it's really. Yeah. Or it's protection of the rainforest. And they're still going in there and cutting down trees.

Yeah.

And then so they take the indigenous people out of their environment, which they've always thrived in, and then they put them on. There's over 300 people from the Batua village of King Zito that we work with. Over 300 people put on one acre of land, one acre of land behind us, slum and, and that slums throwing out their sewage. It's by these bars and clubs. People are drunk, they come there, they assault them, rape them, all sorts of terrible things. And so we got them 50 acres a little bit away from there. It's a two hour walk. But they're wanting to go there anyways because there's their homes, they're going to have farms. So we're starting up sustainable farms. There's clean water, there's power with solar. Um, in each family, each household has a home. But that over 300 people in just a few years from sickness, disease, they dropped and even suicide, they dropped to 158 people because they were. Wow. Yeah. And the chief was like, I think we're going to go extinct. Like our people won't survive. Like we're we're just going to die off because we're not in the forest. One day we'd like to get them land back in the forest in Uganda. But, but right now they're not working with us for that. So we're building the school, they have the homes.

The nearest school to them now is over 2 hours away anyways. Nearest hospital is over 2 hours away anyways. And whenever they're going to the hospitals, they're being denied hospital treatment. That's why I bury that young man Andy Bo that I told you about. And when they die and they're not even treated, they're not letting them reclaim their bodies. So they're literally saying you have to, you have to pay $100 bribe. And these are people that A, either don't get paid in money or B, they might make 3,700 Ugandan shillings in a week or eight or nine days of work. That's a dollar. Now they're asking them for you to be able to bury your family member with honor. It's going to be $100.

Wow.

And then. Yeah. So we're moving them out of that now environment into a little bit more rural area where three other communities are welcoming them there. Because we're going to have a community hub with the health center, the school, excuse me. And then we're doing a business marketplace. So there's going to be like vocational training there. We're going to be working with a lot of American universities that are like skyping in. So there'll be a technology center where they'll be teaching the nurses and doctors like better best practices, better perspective procedures, things like that. And so we'll be low hanging fruit tackling malaria, waterborne disease.

Who funds all this?

So we do it through raising funds with donors. Luckily we've had over 10,000 donors from all 50 states in 60 different countries and so a lot of them are one time donors. But right now we're trying to push and get people to join our fight club which is our monthly giving club. Because of what we know, this many people are given $5 a month or $25 a month or just this amount per month. We can plan out our budget and make sure, hey, this health center is going to be built here at this time and it will have the maternity award and the pediatrics unit and the dental suite and it's going to have the ER and the triage center. And if we have this many people given a month over the next year, the school will be built by this time. And so we're really excited about it, man, but it's all been donations.

When we were driving over here, you said that you'd gotten a parasite over there and, and some pretty significant infections that, that even affected your, your, your brain. And some of these medications that you had to be on were pretty nasty as well. When, when you, when, when you go over there, when's the next time you, you're headed over?

Supposed to be going in June.

Okay. So. So June, and it's May right now, so. Pretty soon.

Yeah.

Do you get nervous thinking, gosh, I wonder what I'm gonna get this time. I wonder what I'm gonna get. Like, it's gotta be kind of harrowing just going all the way over there and just, especially as a guy who's kind of into health, like, you are, like, not knowing, gosh, what kind of crazy critters gonna wind up in my gut or in my brain this time.

Yeah. Well, I always thought it was part of it, but now that as I age and that I'm coming back to fighting, I want to be a lot smarter. Where. When I lived there for the full year and I built up two years in total, total now, I mean, there was just no way to make sure what I was eating was safe because the person that washed the knife, like, you think it was clean, but when they slice into whatever it is. So basically, if you can't boil it, if you can't cook it or peel it, like, don't eat it. But I did that rule last time, went to Uganda and I got food poisoning still. I think it was just probably some. A little bit too aged of meat, just chicken and tasted fine. But then afterwards I was just.

I just have a giant backpack full of like keto bricks or something.

Yeah, yeah. I'll probably take my food with me this next time. But it's just different, man. Going into a village when they, they want to prepare this food for you, they want to make sure that you're taken care of. And it's sitting around the fire, having those conversations, eating their food that they worked hard to prepare for you. So seeing about those. But they know me. And so now I can say, hey, I've got to protect my gut. You know, it's not been doing good and it's going to be a shorter trip this time. It's going to be like two weeks or so.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it'll be good.

Yeah.

I actually, I was just, I was just hiking with my family in the Grand Canyon and in sedona for about 10.

We met with Sedona.

Beautiful area. I think we covered like 80, 90 miles of hardcore hiking. About 10 days as a family, which, which was great, but that's actually what I was eating. Literally. There's like a couple of these a day. And that was 99% of my diet was keto bricks. They're these thousand calories. They're 1,000 calorie, 90% fat. Energy bar.

Okay, I'm probably gonna take that.

They're not really a bar. They're like a brick. And I'm serious. On a normal week, if I open a keto brick and I start to eat it on a Monday, maybe put a few little chunks of it on my smoothie or whatever, it will last me until like Friday or Saturday. Like it takes me four or five days to eat a whole bar. You know, they got flavors like peanut butter and chocolate cream, chocolate peanut butter. They're actually pretty good.

Did you take a note of that?

It just looks pure freaking fat. Yeah, that's a great idea. There's. There's a guy.

Can we show that Mike?

You probably can. There's this ketone researcher named Dominique d'. Agostino. And can you pull that picture up? He's really well known for being like one of the smart guys in keto. And I heard him talking about these. He's like, like, yeah. The only energy party is the keto brick. So I ordered a few and as advertised like that, like they're. You could. You could eat one, but it's literally like a thousand calories. Like, if I eat a whole one, I kind of feel sick. Like it's that many calories.

Well, I might take those with me. And that'd be smart. That'd be really smart. No, but I've had malaria three times. I've had dengue fever. I've had shigella, which is an intestinal.

Yeah, I've heard of that one. That's pretty nasty.

Real nasty.

Yeah.

Had a bunch of other stuff. Schistosomy, which is a parasite in the skin. Yeah, it's in. I was bathing in a creek and there's snails in the water and those.

Now do you. Do you know about oil of oregano? Using the oil of oregano, I took.

I took it with me. That's.

That's top of the totem pole for. For parasites, in my opinion.

Okay.

Yeah. And parasites are interesting because they have these life cycles in which they kind of like breed and pop out their ugly heads like, like at different times throughout a 24 hour cycle. And so the best way to. Because I've actually had a couple parasites myself. Nothing near what you've had to deal with. But these parasite eradication protocols, a lot of times you're dosing like three to five times a day just hoping that at some point when the parasite's there, like, the oregano is going to hit it. But oregano has a component in it called carvacrol. And carvacrol is just like kryptonite for parasites. And so, like, a typical protocol is like, three times a day, you put a few dropper fulls of a really good, potent, pungent oil of oregano into a glass of water and just drink it down.

Wow.

Yeah. You gotta be careful, though, because oregano's super caustic. Super caustic. Like, if you get 100, it'll burn holes, like, get blisters. A lot of people, like, order essential oil and not realize it's not diluted. So you want to make sure it's like a good diluted oil of oregano. But that stuff is. It's pretty potent for traveling, for parasites, for gut issues. It's kind of like. It's one of those things that's been in my medicine cabinet since I read this book called the Cure is in the Cupboard. And the Cure is in the Cupboard. All that whole book is about is the wonders of oil of oregano, which even in the Bible.

There's a verse in the Bible that says something like, cleanse me with hyssop and I will be white as snow. I think it's in the psalms and hyssop. H Y S S O P is oregano.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah.

Have you heard of the book where there are no doctors?

No.

So I had. It's a book that a lot of missionaries and human humanitarians that go to Africa, everyone has it with them. And I learned about it there when I was sick and I was. So what I did take was a bunch of Kind bars with me and a bunch of almonds. Took, like, pounds and pounds of almonds with me. But what I didn't know was that almond. Almonds can trigger.

Shingles.

Really?

Yeah. It can trigger shingles, herpes, cold sores, all that. If you eat too many of them and you get depleted and it can trigger herpes virus type stuff. So while I was there, I was eating pounds of almonds and I got shingles three or five times in the year that I was there. Three or five times. I've had it five times, Sol. So I think I had it three times there and the other two times, and it would be in my hairline all the way down to my ear. And it was brutal. I mean, I was in my 20s when I lived there for a year.

It says it contains the amino acid argonine.

Is that my parents?

Yeah, arginine, arginine. I mean, that's not necessarily something that, that's harmful, that amino acid. But I, I honestly I, I can't even begin to know what the mechanism of action would be. I know almonds, like high, high dose almonds, kind of like apple seeds. You can get like some amount of cyanide from them.

Oh, really?

Something like that. I mean, anything, anything's bad for if you eat enough.

Yeah, I was eating copious amounts, but they, the, this pilot and his wife opened the book and she said, take lysine. They were trying to get, give me, they're trying to give me another amino acid. Yeah. Trying to give me some sort of.

Not antibiotic, but antiviral. And they only had like small ones of them and they were old and they're like, don't take that, take lysine. And it was like the third time that I had it and I take lysine and it cleared up so fast, the shingles. So fast. Now I take lysine as a preventative to make sure I don't get shingles again.

Yeah.

And the other two times I've had shingles, I just took lysine at one. Went away real quick.

My mom takes lysine for cold sores. It's the only thing you use that for.

Yeah. So cold sores, shingles, I think herpes, they say lysine helps with. So.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Yeah. Anyways, it's crazy, random fact, but where there are no doctors, they had tons of like homeopathic or natural ways to treat things.

Yeah.

And then talking about your oregano, does your wife like it when you kiss.

Her after the oregano smell like a giant Italian pizza? No. It actually reminds me my kids are into corny dad jokes now, so you just reminded me of ones. You hear about the Italian chef who died. No, he passed away. So anyways, back to the.

I don't get it.

Oh, no, you don't get it. It's a bad joke. But I have to explain it. You'll get it eventually.

He passed away.

You think about it. He passed away. He passed away.

Oh, he passed away.

So I don't do oil. So I'll use oil, oregano, preventively, like when I travel and half the time when I trav my wife isn't with me anyway, so I don't have to worry about it. But no, it's not too. If anything, it's like. It's a little minty, you know, like peppermint. So it kind of makes. Will make your breath smell.

We have some. We have some at home.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah. All right.

I'm gonna start taking it.

But I'm careful.

My wife and I are not in the dragon breath like we do. We'll kiss each other in the morning sometimes, but each of us, like, on our respective sides of the bedside. There's this company called the Dirt, and they make breath spray. And we both have our minty breath spray that we spray in our mouths before we kiss each other in the morning just to be nice to each other. Yeah.

Well, so you have a parenting book coming out, and what. What was the motivation of that? And then also, I'd love to talk about you and your relationship with your wife. I. I told you.

How old are your kids?

Oh, they're. They're 14 years old.

My wife, twins.

My wife Jess and I have been married for 19 years. And she's. She's amazing. Oh, my goodness. Like, she's just an angel.

She's a track star.

We love each other so much. She's a. She was track and field. She ran track and field at University of Idaho. And it's kind of funny because now she plays a ton of tennis. She plays tennis, like, every day. And I don't play at all anymore. Right. So for me, teaching her how to play tennis, now she plays all the tennis. And I sit at home and. Yeah. I have been asked so many times about writing a parenting book because my sons are. They're just so cool. They're so special, and they're amazing, and I don't think I've done anything that special with them. We have certain rituals and routines and methods of parenting that we can get into if you want to. But when people have been asking me to write a parenting book, to write a family book. Cause I've been talking a lot about parenting and family because it's just my life. I mean, like, my purpose statement in life right now is to love God through prayer and worship and to love my family by preparing and providing. And the business is an afterthought. By preparing and providing, you gotta make money. But. Yeah, but the business is an afterthought. Like, I just want to be there for my family during this formative chapter of my son's life. And as. As a parent, you do have to accept the fact that if you want to really raise impactful, resilient, loved children, there are some of your own dreams and passions and desires you have to put on hold for a little while. I've accepted the fact there are certain adventures. I was going to go on a 10 day fishing and bow hunting trip up in Alaska, like a solo trip. And I thought, God, it's 10 days without my sons. There's no reason I can't do that trip. I'm 46 when they're in college or when they're out of the house. So this phase of my life realized, gosh, aside from just loving God and building my faith up, which is so fulfilling to me, I just want to be there for my sons and for my wife. And so that's my number one purpose in life right now. Over and above business and books and podcasts and speaking. All this stuff that's kind of like, Ben, Ben, Ben really is about my family. And because I've been spending so much time with my family and just really, really focused on what do good parents do and how do you raise young, impactful, resilient, brilliant children who are going to grow up to make this world a better place. And how do you stay in love with and married to your spouse? A lot of people started asking me to write a book like that. My next book should be a parenting book. And I thought, well, well, gosh, like I. My sons are only 14. Who's to say they're not going to wind up in prison when they're 16 or 17?

You're not done yet.

I don't. Yeah, I'm not done yet. They're not cooking. They're not cooking. Yeah, cake isn't out of the oven yet.

You're the process.

So I thought, well, geez, like, I could at least talk about and my wife could talk about the things that we've learned up to this point. You know, consequential based parenting and legacies and playbooks and rituals and routines and rites of passage and all the things that we've woven into our son's lives. But I thought, gosh, I should just like, make a list of the most amazing parents I know with the most amazing kids I know and then ask them all a bunch of questions about parenting. And that's what I did. Like, I developed a year ago about 32 different questions that I think are just like the best questions for parents. Like, what kept you awake at night worrying that you were messing up with your kids? Or did you Ever have imposter syndrome as a parent? Or how did you handle passing on wisdom to your children without making them feel at the same time that they were having to adults too early based on everything you were trying to teach them? And how did you carve out one on one time with your kids? And how do you engage in your own stuff self care? So I identified about 60 parents figuring out maybe get like a 40, 50% return rate on the number of parents who would actually want to contribute to the book. And I think last count I got about 28 of them parents, like really, really great parents. And they're all replying and sending me audio. So I spend half my day now just editing down audios and transcripts from all these parents and learning all sorts of cool techniques and tactics that they're using for, for just making amazing children. It's interesting. You see these common threads pop up. Like every single parent has some type of scheduled, intentional one on one time calendar with their child on at least a monthly basis. Every couple who's happy and together has like either a quarterly or a biannual. I forget a biannual is that once every two years or twice a year, I don't remember. But twice a year they'll get off and they'll go off together on like an isolated couples retreat for family planning like I was telling you about in the sauna. Justin, like me and my, my wife do. And most of them use a form of parenting that's based on consequences, right? Educating your child about the natural consequences of any decision that they might make in life and then letting them deal with the consequences of that decision rather than just telling the kid, no, don't do this, no, don't do that, just follow my orders versus yo, here's what's going to happen if you, whatever, eat gluten, do drugs, you know, watch porn, whatever. Now you go out and figure out if you want to do it. I'm just going to warn you, like here's the natural consequences, then you let them live with the consequences. Unless they're super dire, like a two year old at the edge of a cliff or something, you're obviously not going to tell them, you know, cliff might hurt a little bit, you pull them off the cliff. But I'm learning all these common threads and piecing together this parenting book and it's just amazing. I really think it's a book I wish had existed when I first became a parent because I'm just learning so much from, from all these parents and gosh, I think the biggest thing, the biggest thing I've learned that has been just the best, most magical thing for our family and for my own purpose and legacy as a parent was this idea of branding the family the same way that you would brand a business. Okay. So I hooked up with this guy named Rich Christiansen in Utah who has a company called Legato and they specialize. He used to be a business branding expert and now all he does is he helps fans families build strong families and brand their family. So we went and spent.

Does it come from the name like Legacy? Legato?

Yeah, Legato Legacy, I'm pretty sure. And so we went and spent a few days with him after I read this book called Habits of the Rockefellers and about how a lot of these wealthy, successful, impactful families have certain elements like a family trust and a family constitution, a family legacy, and a lot of kind of behind the scenes corporate structures in place that allow for the family to basically continue to accumulate wealth, to continue to, to accumulate values and traditions that get passed down from generation to generation so that you don't create an all too common rags to riches to rags scenario, which is a lot of times what you see, especially in America.

Like a set of parents are not super well off. They work really hard, nose to the grindstone, put in the work, chop wood, carry water, accumulate wealth. And then their children are raised in a wealthy family, given a silver spoon, they kind of get lazy, they slack off a little bit, they squander the family wealth, they get poor, they mess up and then their children are poor. And then you start that whole rags to riches to rag scenario again, which really ultimately never really builds up. Generational impact, generational wealth, generational health, any of those type of things that you'd ideally want in your legacy as a parent. Like, when I think about my great grandkids and my great, great grandkids, I think, gosh, I'm not just raising my, my kids, I'm raising my grandkids. I'm raising my great grandkids. Like, what I do with my sons is what they're going to do with their sons is what they're going to do with their sons and daughters. And so what we did with Rich was we developed family values, family mission statement, family crest, family rituals and routines and traditions that are playbooked. Like they're all in a book. Like, here's what we do with our kids when they're eight. Here's when we have the sex talk. Here's when we go through their rite of passage into Adam adolescence. Here's when they go through their rite of passage into adulthood. Here's when they quit getting money from mom and dad and have to make money for themselves. Here's what we do at Thanksgiving. Here's what we do at Christmas. Here's what we do at Easter. Like, it's literally. And it sounds like it sucks all the passion and sacredness and enjoyment of parenting and makes it sound, like, stale and businesslike, but it's not like that at all. Like, this is just like a playbook for our family. And I know that when my sons get married and they. They have kids, they can just take that playbook and be like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. Like, these are all the Greenfield family values. And we've got the Greenfield family logo. Like, you come up to our house, there's flags on either side of the door with the whole logo with each of our colors and symbols and spirit animals on it. We got our family crest hanging by the fireplace and the family mission statement prominently displayed in the living room. And we're drinking out of mugs in the morning with our family logo on them. And there's, like, this pride. You're Greenfield. This is what the Greenfields stand for. This is what the Greenfields look like. This is what the Greenfield logo is like.

Like.

And, gosh, I think. I think of everything that I've learned and done as a parent, this idea of, like, intentionally, like, branding the family and treating it almost like a business has just been so impactful.

What do you tell families that don't have a name? Like, my daughters each have a different last name than me, and then Justin's there. We all have different last names. So, I mean, what do you tell families that are more mixed like that about. About. We're not going to have a common name. Do we make up our own for our branding or what? What would that be?

Well, when you say you don't have a common name, what do you mean?

Well, like, my last name is Edwards, and then I have a daughter that's a weaver. I have one that's green and has a red. So, yeah, they each have different fathers that I'm divorced from. And so, you know, I love the idea of creating our own traditions and things like that and building into that. So we have a more far south spreading family on both their sides, which I respect. They do have. My last name is their middle name. But, you know, as a woman, too, I don't necessarily. I like my last name, but I don't necessarily have to brand with that.

You know, so name is just a name, right? Name is just semantics. I think it's more important to recognize, okay, well I've got this group of people, we're close, we're blood bonded, we're relatives, we're a tribe, whatever. And call whatever you want to call it. Just name yourself, call yourselves the wolf pack. I mean, but, but it's more the.

Idea.

Brand being important, but the identity being important. Right. We know about this like Seth Godin's written the book Tribe, which is a great kind of business book. It's like, oh well, you gotta have a language and you gotta have an identity and gotta have a leader and you gotta have an enemy. Right. And these are all the components of whether in business or in family or you know, in community based membership, website or whatever, you create a tribe and that's basically what you're building is a tribe with a common language and a common set of symbols and a common set of values and beliefs and preferably some type of common mission that the family's moving through.

It's like a north star. This is where we're headed. This is the mission statement. I mean we fight for the forgotten. We've got. Our vision statement is to defeat hate with love. And our mission statement is to defend the weak, love the unloved and empower the, the voiceless. And the way that we do this through community development. But the, that's been our guiding light where it's like if we just drilled water wells, you know, that would be in the mission statement if we just do this. But we do more than that. What does the community need? And through that being able to meet certain needs, we've been able to see 1651 people transition out of literal slavery into freedom. And it's like, well, this won't work in this community, but this will because this is our guiding light. Is it defeating hate with love? Is it like putting love and compassion in action? Then, then we're going to do it. If we can meet that need. Yeah. And so that's, that would be really great to have for our family.

And so it's, it's so cool. I mean, and, and honestly, like the coolest part of it in my opinion is the crest. Yeah, like we, I literally had like a metal sculpture design, this crest that's got, it's a giant shield that represents our faith and it's got all these stones on the outside with each of our family symbols carved into it. And every time that initial child or grandchild is Added to the family, their symbol gets carved into these stones along the outside. And the crest has all of our spirit animals on it and, and our, our family logo in the center of it and all sorts of little like insider family secrets all within. It hangs above the fireplace and just massive, like 200 pound piece of metal art. And when I walk in the door and look at that, I mean, like, I get the whole idea, you know, these days, especially of being flexible and nomadic and, you know, living in Airbnbs and working on your laptop from a beach in Thailand. But I'm one of those guys who's like, I won't be a king of a castle. I'm going to come, come home and you know, and, and my wife's there and she's happy and my sons are stable. I got a castle and a crest above the fireplace. That's just the kind of guy I am. Like, I just like to have, I like to come home and just have this castle and I got a crest in my castle that just represents my legacy and, and my family is so meaningful. It's so cool.

That's really great. What do you think is one of the most important parts to not just successful parenting, but successful relationships? Maybe specifically with, with, you know, your wife, your partner. Yeah, They've been married 19 years.

I know.

I hope that we're going to be married at least 19 years or more. Yeah.

Careful what you wish for. No, it's pretty amazing. And definitely our practice, like I briefly alluded to earlier, of carving out intentionally calendared retreats like, like either quarterly, minimum of two times a year, we get off and we're just on our own for two or three days, my wife and I. And the entire thing is, it's not just like, you know, go to fancy restaurants and drink wine, but you, it's, it's more like us sitting in a hotel room on two chairs, face to face, face, talking for like four or five hours. Or, you know, sometimes we will partake in some kind of a plant medicine like MDMA or some kind of a heart opener and sit with each other in that setting for the first day of the retreat and then move on and just talk and integrate and discuss everything that's been on our minds for the past few months when we're in kind of that different state, away from business, away from kids, away from family. Sometimes in a state where our egos are a little bit more dissolved and we're just together planning. That's a huge one. Of course, the daily rituals, the daily comings and goings are super important too. And what I mean by that is, for example, we meditate together as a family every morning. That's not long, especially with kids and a family and people going 10 different directions. You're not going to do 40 minutes of meditation in the morning as a family in most cases. So we meditate for 10 minutes in the morning as a family. We're all sitting cross legged on the lake living room floor at 7:30 in the morning and we're doing a gratitude and a service and tapping and breath work.

And praying and just basically coming together as a family to bookend the day. And I mean bookend because in the evening, same thing, 10 minutes in the kids bedroom. At night after I've read a story to them and played them a song, we finish up with evening meditation. And then my wife and I pray together every night. Very lasting, we do. Whether we've made love or talked or read books or whatever, when our heads hit the pillow, the very last thing that happens is we pray together. And we just basically just commit our lives to God and ask for wisdom and discernment in raising our sons and ask for health and energy for the next day and even talk about struggles that we've been having. And so we pray together every night. And then at least once a month, which doesn't sound like very often, but it's typically more often than once a month. But at least once a month we do one on one. Dates of course just go off on, which doesn't sound that frequent. But when you have kids and a whole bunch of stuff going on, believe me, it's hard to carve out those one on one time for days. But those are always calendar, they're on the schedule. And so it's a lot of intentional scheduling and calendaring, but those retreats and the nightly prayer times and the morning and the evening meditations are really crucial for us. And then I would say the last thing, the last thing thing. And this is tricky because in America.

There'S this kind of like keeping up with the Joneses type of mentality. You want to make sure that your children are force board athletes and that if all the other kids are driving to jiu jitsu in the morning and football in the evening and baseball in the afternoon and swim lessons, whatever. Like your kids just got to be in all these activities all the time because otherwise they're going to fall behind, they're not going to get a college scholarships. I mean the star quarterback like is, you know, America is very much in There what have your kids achieved and what have they achieved in comparison to your neighbors or your friends, your community? And we, we don't really focus on any of those things at all as a family. As a matter of fact, every night at our house, starting about 7pm is a giant party. Our whole family, we come together, we're singing songs, we're dancing in the kitchen, we're dancing around the table, we're making food together, we're making dessert shirts together, we're cooking, we're playing music, we drag out card games and board games, we play games and, and when I say party, I don't mean having a bunch of people over. It's literally just me and my wife and my sons and we're just having an amazing time for like two hours every single night. And that idea of like a family dinner, that's almost like a non negotiable unless there's some crazy stuff going on that day. Like we got, we got family dinners every single night. And that process of coming together, gathering together, cooking together, dining together, cleaning together, and heading up into the bedroom for story time and songs, it's just, it's, it's, it's so magical and so much more meaningful and so much, so much, so much more stabilizing for my sons than just the family being scattered to the four corners of the earth all day long and passing like ships in the night. So we're very nuclear, very bonded, very together. And that's, that's very ritualized.

That's awesome. In that from 7 to 9, do you guys put, put phones down, put them away. Where do you have them?

Or they. So in our house there's no rules on screen time, there's no rules on video. There's almost no rules period. In our house, like I mentioned, we just educate on the consequences. Then mom and I set a good example. Yeah, phones are around, but nobody's using them. Like I'm, I'm, I'm of the mentality that if there's enough fun things around to do that give you an alternative to the screen, then you're going to engage in those activities.

Yeah.

So yeah, my phone said, you know, we'll be eating steak at the, at the dinner table and my phone will be over in the kitchen, it'll be, it'll be on and maybe it'll be vibrating or whatever. Like it's not like I'm gonna go do that thing where people put their phone in the freezer on ice or you know, activate the app that locks you out for two hours. I think all that stuff's gimmicky. I'm like, no, just make it. Make it fun. And. And, you know, if the phone's around, somebody want. If we're playing Scrabble and somebody wants to look up whether it's a legal word in Scrabble on Google or go for it.

And the new playlist, you gotta change, right?

Exactly. Well, if you change the playlist or whatever. But it's like, yeah, the phones are just there as a tool. But, yeah, nobody's even into them because we're just enjoying each other much more than that.

We've been having a lot of family game nights. I would say a lot. I mean, we can do it even more.

We always do it at least once a week.

Yep. Tuesday. And it's so fun.

But since they go to their dads and stuff and spend half the time, we have to prioritize it kind of in a different way, you know? Yeah, but it's important. And even tomorrow, you were saying, oh, I want to record this podcast and stuff. And I was like, Tuesday nights off, that's off limits. That's our family night. That's what we do. And they know that we know that.

It's like the best 25 bucks that we spend every month. Because I usually about once a month, I'll take my sons on a date to bar Barnes and Noble. One thing in our house is, unless it's like Captain Underpants or Diary of a Wimpy Kid or something like that, I'll buy them any book their heart desires. Books are the one thing where I'm just like, yeah, I'll buy that for you. I'll do that till I'm dead. My sons want a book, I'll buy him a book.

And I take them to Barnes and Noble, but we pick out a game. We pick out a new game. Average price of a cool new game, Chameleon or telestrations or a new form of Scrabble or Monopoly or whatever. It's like 25 bucks. And that will afford us hours upon hours of entertainment for the rest of the month as we all play this game. And the kids learn game theory, right? They learn rhetoric and logic and reasoning and argumentation and strategy.

And.

Scarcity and abundance and demand and price setting and all these things you learn from playing games. And so not only are they learning, but, man, I mean, that's like half the cost of. Of what it would take to take the entire family out to the movie theater. And we're literally, like, for 25 bucks. Having amazing fun for the entire month. And then when we kind of get tired of the game and hang it up, we go buy a new game and rinse, wash, and repeat. It's super fun. Yeah.

That's great. I. I think I might try something with you. I've never done this on the podcast. I've done it with a bunch of friends.

Arm wrestle?

Yes. Right now. No, I'm just kidding you. You. It's payback for making your arm your bad shoulder. No, but have you heard of, I think, Carl Jung?

Jung. He put a seal of approval on this or helped develop it, but it's called Animal Psychology. And it's this little quiz, but I've been taught how to do it, and I think. Amy, could you pull up a little notes. Notes app?

Yeah.

Would it be all right to do this with you?

Sure, let's do it. As long as it's legal.

It's legal. It's legal.

All right.

It's interesting. It's interesting. Interesting. So there's a reason I'm doing it, too. You. You primed it by something you said earlier.

Okay.

So there's a reason for it.

Well, now I'm pretty intrigued.

Yeah. And there's. There's. I've done this with 30 or more people, and almost all of them are like, whoa. Or I can see that. And. And someone that taught me to do it was a clinical psychologist. Really good. Renowned, and she was amazing. So we're going to take a couple of notes for you so you can remember them later. And I'm thinking you might be able to do this with your family.

Okay.

So. Because once you hear it once, you can do it with somebody else.

Cool.

All right, so think of any animal, any animal in the world, land, sea or air. Any animal.

Okay.

And with that animal, you are going to. And think about things that you admire about it, appreciate about it, things that you can relate to things, the ways that it lives its life or is in community, however it is. But animal. And three things, at least three things you appreciate about it.

You can tell us.

I'm gonna go for a wolf.

A wolf.

Gray wolf.

A gray wolf.

And the reason for that, that is because it's. It's a very independent animal associated with operating as a. As a lone survivor, like a lone wolf, and is very resilient on its own and able to function on its own and, and, and stand up on its own two feet. But yet it's also a pack animal. It realizes its interdependence and the Necessity for cooperation with its own fellow wolves. So it's kind of like this unique mashup of lone wolf independence with pack interdependence. And so in addition to that, of course, there, there's a great deal of. Of. Of bravery and courageousness and ferocity associated with the wolf. And then there's kind of like a little bit of like a noble beauty, especially if you look into the eyes. It's like this noble savage beauty. And so I would. I would say that it would be a wolf. Fucking wolf. Okay.

Okay. You got resilient on there, Is that right, Amy?

I got the list independent and the lone aspect, resilient. Then a pack interdependency aspect and ferocity and a noble beauty.

Okay.

All right, two. So.

Think of another animal, any animal in the world, land, sea or air. Three things you appreciate about it, or you can just list them out again, but things that you appreciate about it, that you relate to something that you admire.

So my second one would be the dolphin.

The dolphin.

The dolphin. It's. It's. It's highly intelligent. It's smart, but it's also fun loving, it's curious. It's kind of like relaxed and playful, yet at the same time, it's not. Like, it's stupid playful. Like, it's actually a smart animal. The dolphin or fish or mammal or whatever you'd want to categorize it as. And like the wolf, there's a certain element of, like, beauty and grace to the dolphin. If you see that thing swimming and it's sleek and shiny and fluid, and the water and just the way that it moves is, Is graceful. So it's intelligent, it's playful, it's graceful, and it's also. It's also an animal that you feel safe around. And I, I don't know if this is true or not, but from what I understand is that if you're swimming with the dolphins and a shark comes by, like, the dolphin will actually help to protect a human being against the threat of a shark, sometimes even by attacking the shark, which is really interesting. And so it's, it's. It's not only intelligent and playful and fun and graceful and beautiful, but it's also, like, protective. Like you feel safe around it. Like you're taken care of. So I'm gonna. I'm gonna say the dolphin is my second one.

Okay. Like, that's awesome. Cool.

That's awesome. And then I'm gonna tell you what these mean. But before that, one more animal.

Okay?

Any animal, land, sea, or, Or Air. And this time, think about just three things you admire, you appreciate, things that you can relate to, the way that it lives its life or lives a community, any of that stuff. Three things. Why any animal in the world, land, sea, or air.

Well, I would say the first, last one that comes to mind is, of course, the lion. The lion might be because I'm wearing a hat right now on that says lion. And one of my favorite songs right now is called lion.

But. But the reason, especially lion, is.

The lion. Roar reminds me of my own love for singing and music and vocalization and. And kind of a theme in my life of late has been to roar like a lion. But then, of course, this comes as no surprise to people similar to the wolf. The bravery and the courageousness and the ferocity of the lion is another element. But I would say above all, and related to what I alluded to earlier, the lion is the king of the prize. It's the leader of the tribe. Tribe. It's. It's again similar to the dolphin, something that you feel safe and protected around. Something like the wolf. Something that has, like a little bit of savage beauty around it. And then of course, that component of just like roaring and having a voice, unabashedly expressing one's voice and one's character in a very brave and courageous manner, it would be the lion. And of course, I also, like I mentioned growing up homeschool and. And doing a lot of reading. One of my favorite books growing up, my favorite book series growing up was the Chronicles of Narnia. And I loved Aslan. Aslan the lion, the Chronicle. I just couldn't. I couldn't read anything about Aslan without just getting a warm fuzzy in my heart. So.

Nice. Yeah. That's awesome. Were you ready to know what this means?

I suppose so, yeah.

And people should pause it and do it themselves so they can know.

Yeah, it's gonna be one of those, like, what's a dolphin with wolf. Lion look like?

That's your new crest.

Yeah, that's your new crest.

A wolf and a lion walk into a bar.

So, yeah, if. If people want to pause and do it themselves, ask yourself that question and then write down three things, if that's easier for you. Just three characteristics. Why three characteristics, attributes, three things you love about it. You can go back and do this after the. After this, where that's how you can do it to your kiddos. I think I might have first forgot to say list three attributes.

Why.

But you did great. This was awesome.

We got 3ish.

So we got this up. And the gray wolf, the dolphin, the lion.

Look at that, she's got it all written down.

The three things this means is the first one is how you want to be seen, how you want the world to perceive perceive you. How you want to show up in the world with people is like the gray wolf. To be seen as independent, a lone wolf, that you're resilient, but also you're a pack animal. Interdependency for ferocity, noble beauty.

And so does that, does that relate at all that you want to be seen as that, that you want the world to perceive you as kind of the gray wolf? That I can do it on my own, but I've got my pack, I got my family.

I can't say I think a lot about what I would want the world to think of me.

Yeah.

And the reason that I say that is because I'm very cautious about being who the world wants me to be versus who I want to be at my true authentic self. But at the same time, I would say that if someone were to see me and they were to say like, oh, Ben's like a gray wolf, I would totally be okay with that.

Yeah. Okay.

I think it's very wolf like to not, not care about what people think of.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Kind of a paradox.

So what I think you're gonna. This is going to be cool because I see some of these things. Maybe, maybe you want to show up as the gray wolf, maybe not maybe because you don't really care that much. But to the dolphin, you want to be seen as the gray wolf, but the world really sees you as the dolphin, that you're highly intelligent, you're fun loving, playful, beautiful. And Grace, I relate that to your movement today. I was like, damn, that guy can move. Grace. Fluid, protective. Though I would see that you would be a great protector, even the way that you're talking about your family and that you're safe to be around. So although some tendencies, maybe when ego flares up, something like that. I don't know. I don't even think any of these are anything bad. But you might want to be seen as the gray wolf, but really people see you as the dolphin. They see you as fun loving your wife, maybe she thinks you like to have sex for fun, like a dolphin.

But slippery.

Yeah, slippery when the. But highly, highly intelligent, fun loving, playful, graceful, fluid, protective and safe.

Okay, that's interesting.

Yeah. Did you relate to that at all?

Yeah, absolutely.

So the first one is how you want to be perceived. Second one is how you really how are perceived. But the third one is who you really are. The lion is your spirit animal. The lion is who you really are. I found this really interesting because it was roaring, singing. You like to sing, but unabashed about your voice.

I think it's interesting too, that, like, one that speaks so much to him, he chose third, you know, and I. I in mind did the same. And that's weird how our brains do that.

That's the proven psychology part of this.

Yeah, it is kind of interesting because I actually didn't know there were going to be three. Yeah. Yeah. So that's interesting.

Yeah. And so brave and courageous bravery. The king you were just talking about at your house, you like to be a king, you know, have that on your crest. Protective, safe, savage beauty. And.

Oh, Haslan.

I thought I said Asian. Asian, but Aslan.

So.

And that was one of your favorite books growing up with Narnia. Yeah, basically. First one, Gray Wolf. That's how you want to be seen. Dolphin is how people do see you. But really, you're the. You're the lion, my man.

Wow. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

You're a lion.

Is that a. Is that. Is that like a. Like a thing, this animal psychology? If someone were to look that up, you know, Google it, or I'm gonna check it out right now, or dumb duck, go it. Do you find psychology resources? Because I. I've never heard of this before.

Yeah. So you want to know how I did this and found it? I was at treatment for rehab for substance use disorder, and there was a speaker there and a therapist that was. I guess everyone else kind of claimed her as one of the top 10 substance abuse therapists or doctors in the country. And so she came in one day with 30 clients, and she just gave us a piece of paper, had us write these down, and 32 of us were just like, jaw dropped. And because we all knew each other really well, we had been there for 90 days, stuff like that. We could see everybody's. Oh, yeah, he wants to be seen as this, but I see him as that. Oh, but this is who he really is. So then afterward, we able to have these breakout sessions and talk about it and say, okay, if this is kind of a little bit of the shadow, well, what could be part of the shadow of this? Yeah, well, this is how people are seeing us. Is there any good bad pros, cons? But this is who I really am. How can I move more towards this? Because this is who I want to Be on the inside. And this is how. Who I really am. So how can I match that up with how I show up and how people see me? And, I mean, it's great that people see you as playful, safe, protector, all that other stuff. But, like, now hearing the king and just spending the day with you, I'm like, the way that dude was working out was like a king.

It's super interesting. Yeah. Like, part of me, like. Like this, the skeptic part of me wants to say, well, gosh, like, what if I'd named three of their ant? Like, what if I named a spider and a dragon and.

A hippo? Right. Would we be able to take those same three? Be like, oh, yeah, Ben, that's definitely.

But then at the same time, it's like, yeah, like, it really resonates. Right? What comes up there. Yes, it's interesting. I guess it doesn't matter if it's accurate. It's accurate.

Yeah. I think it's the way that they prep them. And I might have forgot the part, the three attributes. But you did great because you gave even more than that. And I think what was really cool about this, one thing that really helped me was that I was able to take that into meditation and basically pray and basically ask God and Source Creator, like, hey, what do these three things mean? And how can I become more like who I really am? And so my three animals, just real quick, were. First one I picked was an okapi. An okapi. Can you pull that up? An okapi lives.

I seen it pulled up. Everybody knows an okapi is.

Do you know what it is?

I have no clue. Okay.

It's like three. Three animals. It's like three animals in one.

Oh, like a lion.

It's kind of. It's. It's got the head of a giraffe, the butt of a zebra, and the body of, like, an antelope or deer. And they're really rare. They're 100 species.

You kind of cheated choosing three animals. Yeah. Well, yeah.

This is the mythical.

No, it's one more time, Mike, so.

You can see One more time.

So it's the only animal in a giraffe a day family that isn't extinct with the giraffes. And there's only 100 or 200 of them left in the world. And I got to see them in the Congo. They live right there.

Well, A, I've never seen or heard of that animal before, and that's absolutely intriguing. And B, when I see an animal like that kind of like a platypus. I think God has a sense of humor. Like, God is a. God is a creative guy with a sense of humor. Holy cow.

What do I do with these three parts? Let's just put them all together.

So you got okapi.

Okapi, Okapi. O, K A P I. Others call them okapi, depending on where you are. And the reason I picked that was I said they're like three things in one. And I said, like, they're a majestic creature. And the third one was that the pygmy people love them. That's an animal they revere. And I thought, that's weird. That's maybe how I want to be seen or something. But then the second one, and I just love that animal. And second was a couple Tommy Corso, an Italian mastiff, a big, gentle giant that has unconditional love and that's a protector.

The Italian mastiff dog.

Yeah.

I mean. Yeah, okay, I know what that is.

The Italian mastiff dog. They're big. They look like pills on steroids. They used to be the Roman war dogs that they would take into the.

Coliseum and they show their prowess, the myostatin knockout gene. Like the ultra muscular big dogs.

Yeah, yeah. And they would take them in there with a gladiator and a light lion and the dog and a soldier would show their military prowess at the Coliseum with a Connie Corso. And so I picked that gentle giant, unconditional love and protector. And then third was a bison. And I picked a bison because.

What were the three reasons? But the first one was that they run through the storm. Have you heard that the bison. Buffalo in the. Be a buffalo, not a bull. Be a buffalo, not a bull. So a bull run away from a storm. When a big dark storm cloud comes in, thunder clouds, they run away and they get caught. This is real. They get caught in it longer, and they get beaten down in it, and they're in the storm longer. But a bison and a herd of bison will turn towards a storm and they'll walk towards it slowly, confidently, waiting for the rain to come. And then when it comes, they barrel through the darkness.

I like that.

And so they get through the storm quicker. Yeah. And so I can.

Facing their fears. Yeah, yeah.

So I can relate to that. Almost like this podcast. Overcome. Like, head towards it, move through it.

Right.

Like, you'll. You'll get through it faster and you'll be able to help others through it. So the bison at the front, swallow.

The soft chunks and just keep going. Yeah, yeah.

But they'll provide a wake for the. The smaller or the calves of the bison and stuff.

Yeah.

To. So they provide a path. And when I said their hide provides shelter.

Yeah.

And so their skin, even after they're gone, they. They provide a home or shelter. I was thinking about, like, Native Americans. I was like, I hope that my life can. Can provide a shelter or, you know, can go beyond my lifetime. Can still help people. Yeah. And so. Yeah, so that was just like, whoa. And everybody else, like, it was. It was. It was mind blowing. So anyways, you can do this with your kids.

Dang it. I got animal envy now. Your animals are cool.

No, you got a lion. You got a lion.

They're more fringe. They're more fringe than mine.

Oh, yeah.

I got. I got to step up my zoology. I don't know.

I just looked mine up too, and.

I'm like, I don't.

I think mine need to be better.

What are yours?

Well, I had a phoenix first, which I kind of like. Pretty cool. And then I had a leopard.

Yeah.

And then I had a butterfly, which is actually accurate for me, so.

Yeah.

Because her podcast is all about personal transformation.

Yeah.

Butterfly.

It's kind of funny too, because, like, the phoenix is like you and. You and me, Justin, we had, like, kind of a blend of yin and yang animals like the dolphin, the lion, and the wolf. And. And the first thing that you said, the okapi. The okapi seems like it's like, a little bit more like, possibly of a yin ish animal compared to the bison and the mastiff and then the phoenix and the butterfly and the leopard. Those seem like very. And I might be stereotyping, but seem like very kind of, like effeminate, beautiful type of female quad. Yeah. Yeah, they do. Definitely. Yeah. That's so interesting. All right, I'm gonna have to do this with my wife and my kids. Yeah, do it, because this will be our day dinner time game. Okay.

Awesome.

Yeah. You'll save me 25 bucks at Barnes and Noble.

Yeah, you're welcome.

You're welcome.

I'm so grateful you were here and on the show, and thank you for sharing this with your audience.

Well, thank you too. It was awesome to meet you, to work out with you, to ride in your tiny red car over in the studio, the red sled dressed up as Santa Claus. And I'm just super stoked for my audience to be able to get introduced to you too.

Oh, well, thank you. If they happen to want to. Want to support, it's at Fight forthe forgotten.org.

Cool.

You join the fight club and then how can people find you?

Well, I'll link to that in the show notes, the fight for the forgotten.org on my end, and then people can just find me@bengreenfieldlife.com okay. Yep.

That's awesome. I'm really grateful for you, brother. Thank you for being here with us.

Likewise, man.

Yeah.

Thanks, you guys.

Thank you.

Hello, listeners of the Ben Greenfield Life Podcast. Hope you enjoyed that show with Ben Greenfield himself on my show, Overcome with Justin Ren. I'm so grateful here he decided to share this with you guys on his platform. But honestly, I'm just so grateful for Ben. I've been a fan of his for a long time. I've listened to his podcast, his own shows, and Tim on Rogan's and all the other podcasts he's been on. Amy, my producer of my show Overcome with Justin Ren, but also the woman I hope to marry. We were introduced to his podcast or she was introduced to Ben's podcast with his Jamie Wheel episode. And she was so lit up. If you haven't heard that, go back and listen. She was so lit up, she brought it home and made sure she shared it with me. We. I listened to it on my own. We listened to it together. It was just incredibly interesting. But I'm grateful for the man that Ben is and the stories that he shared, and he's a wealth of knowledge. But I think what I really took away from this episode is like, how to live as a family unit. I think Amy and I both have been and will be continuing to talk about of, like, how we can do that, like the personal mission statement for our family and having that intention of what direction do I want my life to go and our lives together to go, to have that blueprint or something that playbook, like Ben said, always to be able to look back on. I hope you enjoy the animal psychology. And really this is just to book in the podcast podcast and say thank you for tuning in. Thank you, Ben, for having this on your platform. And also you can tune into more of my shows on Overcome with Justin Rin. We've had some very just incredible guests that all have a story of overcoming, and we're all in the process of overcoming. But the purpose of the show is to remind us that you, me, we have overcome 100% of our darkest days, and now it's our opportunity, our. Our privilege, our joy, our pleasure to shine our light or share our love with the world. And how can we put love and compassion in Action. How can we live a purposeful, purpose filled life? Because me being an MMA fighter, it's usually the person with the most reasons that wins. The person with most reasons usually wins. And so life is a fight. I'm a two time suicide survivor. I've been to treatment twice for addiction. I grew up being bullied from 8 years old to 13 years old, relentlessly. And I have a score of a 7 or 8 out of a 10, which if you have 4 out of a 10, you are 15 times more likely to attempt suicide in your Life. You're like 80 times more likely to suffer with substance use disorder or addiction. And so this podcast really is hopefully to serve the world, serve you, and give us those tips, tricks drilled down deep into the tactics of what it takes to rise up and overcome. And so thank you, Ben for sharing this with your listeners. I just wanted to make a little bookend and some say thank you. Thank you, Ben. Thank you to the listeners and you are more than welcome to come check out some of our shows. And I would honestly love a review not just to help the show grow, but also to hear what you liked about this episode, specifically with Ben, what I could have done better. And some of the other episodes I think you'd really love in the health and wellness space. Aaron Alexander from a line podcast. Or Rafael Lovato Jr. World champion, undefeated MMA fighter and 1212 time world medalist in Jiu Jitsu. Like a six time world champion, one of the best Americans to ever do the sport. Or Zach Bitter, the ultra marathon runner, hundred miles, five time world record holder, and he's about to run across America from the Brooklyn Bridge to the Golden Gate Bridge or actually reverse that, the Golden Gate Bridge to the Brooklyn Bridge. Trying to hit 70 to 80 miles a day, setting a new world record for the fastest person to ever go across America on foot. And so that I was talking to Ben about that in the sauna after he almost made me puke at on it. And I'm just so grateful for him. What a beast. I did not expect that. Maybe that's why I ate a little bit of those Italian breakfast sausages that were spicy that definitely wanted to come up during our workout. I don't know if we hit it in the podcast, but man, he was having me do the nasal breathing and I'm just learning about that. But to do nasal breathing, breathing during the workout at the fourth round, that was very unique experience for me because I guess I'm more of a mouth breather whenever I'm doing cardio at the end. And so that's something I'm going to take into my training for my comeback fight in Bellator mma UFC veteran. If you guys don't know who I am and coming back to the sport, fighting for a purpose, fighting for the nonprofit I started, Fight for the Forgotten. And anyways, I'm just so grateful to be able to have been on my show and that he is sharing this on his platform. So if you'd like to follow more, please follow on Spotify or Apple or YouTube. We have a channel there and it's just overcome with Justin, Ren. And again, Ben, thank you much love. Many blessings over you, over Jessa, over the twins and that family crest that you guys have in the the castle. Thank you, brother. I appreciate you allowing me to share this with your audience.