Finding Joy, Building Community and Raising Your Own Pork – Radha Agrawal : 874
4 Nov 2021 · 74 min
This is a podcast episode titled "Finding Joy, Building Community and Raising Your Own Pork – Radha Agrawal : 874" from the series Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey, recorded in November 2021. The content features a conversation between Dave Asprey and Radha Agrawal, CEO and chief community architect of Daybreaker. They discuss topics including biohacking joy, the science and practice of collective dance as a healing modality, Radha's entrepreneurial ventures such as Thinx, the impact of COVID-19 on community events, and her experience with farming and raising animals. The episode blends personal stories, scientific insights, and practical advice on joy, community, and sustainable living.
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Usual, the live studio audience for my mentorship and membership group, the Upgrade Collective, is on board with us. So you may hear a few questions from our live audience. If you'd like to join the live audience, our upgradecollective.com is where you go along with being in the audience. You get to ask some questions here. I've got my coaching staff and me calls every week. Big, vibrant community, people who really have your back. It's one of the most fun things I've done in years. Ourofgradecollective.com now, today is going to be a lot of fun because we're going to talk about biohacking joy. And now if you're a hardcore medical science person going, I am a meat robot. What does this mean? Well, we're going to go into it and this is someone who's done some really powerful stuff and is just a joyful person in general when she's not out killing pigs. We're going to talk about that later. Oh, no, I outed her as a farmer, but we'll get there. And she's CEO and chief community architect of Daybreaker. And if you don't know about Daybreaker, you've been missing out. These crazy people, and I say this with affection, wake up in the middle of the night. It was like 5am or something. 6am and 6am okay. We have to wake up at 5 and drive there. It's like it's still dark, guys. It's dark at 5am I've only seen it once or twice when I stayed up that late, usually at Burning Man. But anyway, they wake up then and about half a million people do this and they wake up and they do the equivalent of a rave but without alcohol and all that stuff, just with coffee. And yes, when I was running Bulletproof, I would send Bulletproof coffee to Daybreaker. And Radha Agarwal is also co founded, sold and invested in lots of nine figure businesses. And of course when you do that, you write a book or two. Oh. And you become a DJ and things like that. So Radha, welcome to the show.
Oh my God, it's good to be here. Hi. Hi Dave. I love you everyone. The audience. Hello.
One of the things I wanted to talk about on the show with you today is Daybreaker plus, which is where you actually have created a Joy Practice membership group and a movement method that are tied to eight virtues of joy. Now guys, I'm pretty structured and very curated. There's thousands of people try and get on the show because it's got a quarter billion downloads and growing. So I know Radha personally and she actually lives what she talks about. She's just a joyful person. She's got like this, this kind of childlike excitement, I would say curiosity. But it's not just curiosity, it's just like it's joy. But eight types of this. You see how there's structure to what she does. It's not just random. And we're going to learn that stuff. And so Radha, I actually don't know where, where to start here, but talk about one of the companies that you co founded, Thinx. Tell me about what it was like and how successful Thinx has been so far.
Oh my gosh. So first of all, thank you for that really beautiful introduction and blushing. But yeah, I think that everything that I think about, I think things that why we are such good friends is that we are always thinking about how to, how to disrupt the status quo. And I think Thinx really was an invention that my sister and I created together with another friend to really sort of invite a new way for women to feel empowered. Thanks. Really was an invention that my sister and I created together with another friend to really sort of invite a new way for women to feel empowered. And I think during our time of the month, our periods, we often will feel disempowered. And this underwear Brand that we started was a way to not only support and protect us in these very tender times of the month, but also to support the hundred million plus girls in developing countries who are also missing school because of something as sort of simple as her periods. And so that business we launched in 2012 and I think it really just took off because tampons and pads were invented by men, which is kind of crazy. Men don't know really what's happening down there. And women, women to have to be a woman, founded business to support women. You know, women born issues was something I'm really proud of. And yeah, and so I think that sort of one of the reasons it took off is because there really wasn't a solution that was both sexy, beautiful, interesting, thoughtful. And the way we talked about it, that wasn't just a bunch of, you know, girls running in the field of daisies. It was really just a really, a different way of telling the story of menstruation and menstruation management.
And it became a pretty giant company, right? And it's very disruptive. It was environmentally better than what we have today. And it's kind of weird putting a whole bunch of chlorine byproducts and asbestos and all sorts of other weird stuff right up against a mucous membrane on your body for know, a week every month or something. Seems like a bad idea. Like, I think I can do better.
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, there's a host, basically. That's cool. But over, you know, over the course of nine years now, it became a giant, a giant company that actually changed things. Were you this joyful when you started doing that? Is this like a built in thing or is this something that you had to build? Because every time I've ever seen you, even when you're working on tough stuff, you're always, you know, you have a capacity for, you know, being pissed off or suffering or something, but you kind of, you kind of have this joy thing that you just roll with.
Is a practice, right?
And I think it's a practice. So this wasn't innate. You weren't like born that way. And you were like, you know, 12. You're like, I'm so happy. And then you were like 21. I'm so happy.
I think, I mean, I probably, I think as a, as a twin, you know, you always have someone that's laughing with you. And I have an identical twin sister who, you know, we were always each other's biggest cheerleaders. And I think that's one of the reasons Why I have been successful in my life is because when you find somebody or a community with whom shares your excitement or your joie de vivre, I think that really helps. But I also think that I've had hostile takeovers. I've had really painful breakups. I've had really difficult moments in my life that, had it not been for an orientation to Joy or having a really thoughtful joy practice, I probably would be in a really different place right now. But I do think that, yes, my orientation has always been to Joy. I think in difficult moments, you look to that toolbox to. To. To support you.
Okay, so you've had a hostile takeover thing. We've had a chance to talk about that offline and all. How long did it take you to bounce back from that? And I'll tell you guys, like it is. It is emotionally tough when you're a founder and then, you know, know a bunch of people come in and start you taking things off the wrong direction and, you know, lock you out of your own. Your own business and stuff like that. How long did it take you to bounce back from that?
You know, I dove right in. A daybreaker. I literally took all that suffering and all that pain. Instead of just kind of burying my head in the sand, I just focused all my energy and all my, you know, I guess, like, transmuted frustration into a community that really helped me move to Joy. And I think dance. Dance really is a gateway to Joy. I think dance is also a great way to transmute pain into sort of teachings and what I now see as these hostile takeoverers as my angels and giving me really important lessons early on in my life so that I. The rest of my life, I won't make those same mistakes again. So I do think that having had an opportunity to move that pain, though, I will say that today, even when I talk about on stage, when I'm giving talks or if I'm maybe sometimes in an interview or something like this, I might just get caught. And there are tears. And I think that with anything. These are your babies, and you love them and you give them so much of your heart. I gave five years to this company and gave this my all. And so that was really painful. But I think that these are lessons that if you learn to just, again, transmute it. And I think movement is such an important part of that, which is why I think practicing Joy is such a brain body kind of experience, not just a brain experience. I think that's sort of. That was the beginning of that journey to really understand that transmutation, right. From pain to joy and gratitude. But it was hard. Really, really hard.
You talked about a way to heal from that. And it's painful when you get victimized by someone. I don't care if they have a legal license or they're an investor or just a bad employee who accuses you of just not even existent things. And most entrepreneurs have had all three of those happen at least once. And in each of those cases, like, there's a process you go through, especially at the beginning, where it feels, you know, it feels like a personal attack. And eventually you're like, this is just business. It doesn't bother you anymore because you realize this is just a wounded person, like, acting out. And, like, we have appropriate insurance and defenses and, like, go handle that stuff. Call me if you need to depose me. Because we've done everything right, and we have all of our records in order, like, all right, I got you done it before. And that's where I am now. So it's like, it's not even about being a hard target. It's just about being a nonchalant target who's well protected. But what you did for healing. I've talked about trauma healing, emdr. I've talked about therapy, breathwork, psychedelics, but I've never on the show, talked about dance as a healing modality.
Wow.
And that was the first thing you went to. Right. And I've talked maybe about five rhythms, dancing a long time ago in passing.
Right.
And I've. I've done some actually really profound work early in my own trauma thing around some psychedelic dance. And I go to Burning Man, I'll stay up till dawn and dance. And it is healing. But when you talk about dancing for healing, you're making me think of a few stories, even like some radical, like, you know, paraplegic kind of things. Like, people have profound injuries, suddenly heal them in three months of dancing.
That's right.
What's your data or what's your take on dancing to heal?
So, first of all, thanks for asking this question, because to me, this is the new frontier of healing. I think that yoga, meditation, forest bathing, all these practices live in that space of prescribed by doctors as a healing modality. But dance continues to be the redheaded stepchild where dance actually is the original healing modality that exists on the planet. And I'm measuring it now with UC Berkeley and the Greater Good Science Center. So I partnered with Dr. Dacher Keltner, who is the principal and founder of the Greater Good Science center, the number One behavioral science lab on the science of happiness. And we are embarking on this really exciting new study together where we're going to be studying dance and collective joy. And I think one of the things about unified rhythms, which I think is so special, but it's still a very individualized kind of. You're dancing in quiet, you know, sort of like no talking allowed, no eye contact really allowed. And you're just in. In a space together, but not really in a collective, truly collective experience. Right. Which I, by the way, I love five rhythms. I think it's truly a wonderful modality. But what I think really the new frontier is this idea of collective joy, collective dance. The way Burning Man. When you go to Burning man, it's like you're there, though, you know, the substance issue can often be the sort of. It might not be supportive of your healing, right. So sometimes if you're taking all the substance that you take at a festival, you need to be sober, you need to be in collective joy sober to really experience that true euphoria on your own and to practice that. And I think that, yes, of course, there's beauty in some of the substances and the medicines that we take to feel that. But I think to really practice being the pharmacy in your own mind, to really practice unlocking your own dose, which I coined, and basically your four happy neurochemicals, your dopamine, your oxytocin, your serotonin and your endorphins. And if you can do that, if in a collective experience with music, in dance with the sun beating down your face without substances, that is actually the true antidote for loneliness, anxiety, depression. And it's also the most ancient form of celebrations, the most ancient form of human experience around just dancing around a campfire, you know, sort of being in a moment of reverence for whether it's, you know, a totem that you're worshiping or whether it's a celebration for the fall harvest. You know, we forget that dance isn't just a fun party thing, but dance is actually essential to the human experience and essential to joy, essential to many moving through pain, essential to remembering your self expression, right? To remind yourself that, oh, right, when I'm downward dogging, I'm following a teacher, I'm being told what to do. But to allow your body to move the way the music is just moving you to do so. And to be courageous enough and courage being a virtue of joy, but to be courageous enough to actually allow your body to move the way the beat takes you, that's A joy practice, and that is healing. And that takes you to presence. That takes you to a state of mindfulness, takes you to also move, takes you to creativity. It takes you to so many states of remembering who you are that no other form or modality can do or take you to, especially when you're in a collective experience.
You reminded me of Steve Aoki. So I got to go to Steve's house a while ago and interviewed him about his book, which is actually a really cool book. And Steve's another joyful guy, super famous DJ and all that sort of stuff. But you watch him go to the left, left, left, right, right, right. And he's doing the fist bump thing, and you see 200,000 people gathering, doing all of that at the same time. There's some weird primal thing that's similar to what you do. You go to, like, a sporting event and like, oh, look, our guys are winning. And everyone cheers and everyone feels good about it. I feel it more with dancing than I do. I just don't really care who wins. Sorry. On the sporting event stuff, like, I like the professionalism. So do you think there's some old biological thing we're doing? Is this, like, tapping into, like, you know, tribal something? What. What's going on there? Do you think there's some old biological thing we're doing? Is this, like, tapping into, like, you know, tribal something? What. What's going on there?
Absolutely. I think that there's something that happens, well, vocal toning, when you're chanting together, when you're screaming together, chanting for sure song, it's vocal toning, when you're actually finding the same sort of vocal sound as a population, as a collective, that actually really connects all of our systems together. And you end up feeling smarter, more joyful. Your serotonin releases. You feel a sense of, wow, this is bigger than myself. I'm part of a community. I feel a sense of belonging. And all of that is, yes, it's tribal, but there's also science to back it up. There's all this. There's all of this data now that when you sing together, when you move in unison together, which is why we're measuring with this study that we're doing, what is actually happening in your brain when you move to music in unison, what is happening to your serotonin levels? What's happening to your dopamine levels? So we're actually measuring all of this with cheek swabs, with facial recognition software. We're doing pre and post survey responses to really, actually measure what is happening to the human brain and body and our systems when we're dancing. So, yes, it's tribal, yes, it's primal, but there's also science behind it.
The first year I went to Burning man was 2011, and in the camp next to us, there was a leading neuroscientist for the military who was a top expert on substances. And we looked at a group of people dancing and he looked and he said, that one's on ecstasy, that one had acid, that one had mushrooms. And he could literally tell by the way they were dancing and moving. And I validated that with my wife, who's a drug and alcohol addiction emergency medicine doctor by training. She said, oh, yeah, you can spot movement differences, but he's really good. So I'm thinking your AI software that's looking at faces, you could probably look at how people dance and pick out what substances they're on and then you'd have great data.
Absolutely. Well, so there's several things and it's brand new software, it's just now being approved for use in this lab setting. But essentially we're going to put sort of, essentially videos all around the dance floor and we're going to be able to sort of track what's happening to facial expressions, from states of sort of like, you know, stasis or sadness or kind of confusion or insecurity or anxiety to states of joy, elation and states of euphoria. So it's a really interesting software that Dacher actually just made me aware of. Dr. Keltner at Greater Good Science Center. He actually also does all of the consulting for Pixar, for Inside out and For Soul, and he did all of that. He essentially really supported the storyline and the design thinking for these movies because so much of it is connected to the brain and what's happening in your mind. So he's a really interesting pioneer. He's writing a book on awe right now and it's just to have someone like him supporting comprehensive study, the first comprehensive study on collective joy and dance is extremely exciting and we'll have hopefully data by mid next year.
So, really excited, I'm excited to see that because there's joy, there's awe. And one of the reasons I tell.
People, right, to prescribe to then to prescribe joy, to have doctors prescribe not only joy, but to prescribe collective dance, express experience. Like, could you imagine a doctor prescribing Burning man or Daybreaker or, you know, some community dance experience as. Or ecstatic dance or, you know, other dance experiences. Collective Dance experiences as a antidote to loneliness, depression, anxiety, you know, any type of sort of mental ailment to be able to not just turn to quiet forest, bathing suit, sitting in a seat, quietly closing your eyes, meditating, tapping. All of these beautiful practices that are internal are so, so important. State of I'm traumatized to. I'm okay now, but the real delta, the real opportunity that I'm seeing. So I think there's so many epic humans in the space of from trauma to okayness. I'm now no longer in trauma. I'm now feeling good. But we need more people in that delta of okay, now I'm good, but now what? Where do I, how do I make friends? I'm no longer in my just myopic, like, how do I get through my trauma? But now I'm. Now I'm okay. I want to see the world now. How to make friends, how to find joy. You know, how do I actually like do the ecstasy, the euphoria of life thing without having to take substances to get there? And I think that's, that's where joy practice comes in. That's what Daybreaker plus comes in. That's where this platform that we brought together to curate sort of a space for those who are like, okay, I'm good, now what? Now how do I learn how to be my own pharmacist? How do I learn to unlock my happy neurochemicals? How do I learn to biohack joy? Right? And that's the exciting opportunity right now.
So do you think that is it Merck or Pfizer who would buy Daybreaker once you prove all this stuff?
Oh my God. You know, we've had a million investors knocking down our doors over the years and we've never taken one investor. Because Daybreaker is for the people, by the people. And I'm really proud of that because I've raised money for many, many businesses in the past, but this is one project that I feel so protective of that so often when you start a business, the investor and the founder have the same interests, but over time there's divergent interests. The founder has continued interest in supporting the cause issue that they care about to continue scaling that sort of need. But then the investor over time, unless they're purpose driven investors, but most investors are still sort of the diversion need of when are we going to sell? What's the exit strategy? Where's the revenue, where's the, where's the exponential growth stick charts? So I think that's really what I've seen Over the years is just like, you know, initially it's a, it's a giant love fest. And then, and then there's divergent sort of interests over time. And so I was like, fuck that. Pardon the French. I'm not doing that anymore. And we're just going to. This is going to be for the people, by the people. And so we.
I love that.
Thousand people around the world. We're in 30 cities around the world. We, you know, are, you know, very, very big, you know, business now. But, but it's. The buck stops with me. And so whatever we want to do with bulletproof, anything we want to do with anyone in the world, it comes through me and I vet them for authenticity and whether they're. I can, I can now smell shit afar. So far away. Having.
That's what you get from having had investors like that.
I've seen it.
BS detectors through the roof. I love that.
I can tell. I can tell. And it's an easy yes if it's not a fuck yes to fuck no.
I love that. You guys listening. That is really good advice for everything in your life. Your body always knows you've done some really interesting stuff because I have my biohacking conference and Covid sort of put all live events through a thing and here you are, 2020, you're touring with just Oprah, you know, whoa, hey, congratulations. That's amazing. And their, their brand that was called Weight Watchers. So what happened in the. When Covid. Well, I'll say it. When, when the government response to Covid hit.
Yeah, so, you know, yeah, we just finished this 9 stadium sold out arena tour with Oprah or Daybreaker where I was on stage, the first voice on, you know, it was like a wild 30 minute party that we threw in nine stadiums before the queen came on. And then Covid happened and it was just like truly the wildest whiplash from going from, you know, like Aladdin, it's like great big world to like speedy living space like in the lamp, you know. And it's really what it felt like. It was just like us in these like giant arenas into sort of our home. And we were in our, in our home and all of a sudden I started getting phone calls. We were, we were, you know, three days in and I started getting phone calls from our community wondering like, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? And to the, you know, to the, you know, real courage of our, of our team, like my Eli and Tim and our whole team, they were just like Radha like, let's do this. And we were like, all right, what are we going to do? So we figured out how to really design an experience for the 2D environment. And I think that when you experience. When as an experienced Designer for the 3D environment, for the 5D environment, right. We're always thinking about our neurochemicals. You know, we sort of reverse engineer our experience, design through our brains. We biohack our brains to design experience experiences. Right. And. And. And when we had to actually go back to the lab to really think about how do we actually create an environment where people feel a sense of belonging, where we, again, biohack that joy, make them feel that sense of connection, feeling that they're there, but in a very, you know, sort of limited 2D environment when they're also at home and not feeling the inertia, the energy of collective joy. So it was a really interesting design challenge for us to really. It wasn't just like, let me just take my yoga studio or whatever and just point and shoot a camera, which is what most people did. It was like, let me just shoot a thing and then do my yoga class regularly without any thinking that, wait, the 2D environment is a totally different experience than a 3D environment, than a sensorial environment. Right. So we really spent a lot of time understanding all of our tech, the tech that was. That existed out there, what we. So we spent hundreds of hours on Zooms, on YouTube videos, on tutorials, on just whatever we can get our hands on to figure out how we can cut me out of a green screen and put me in front of a friend so I can dance with them in their living room. But it felt like we were dancing together. But really I was in my room and they were in theirs. And where we could really kind of reimagine an experience for people in their homes, where they. But they felt. Felt like they were part of a connected community. And I think that level of thought and design thinking is why we were so successful during COVID And we grew our community from 30 cities to 1500 cities around the world. And we served over 200,000 people during COVID And we had incredible artists. We had Boyz II Men singing End of the Road as a closing performance. They were stuck at home. They were like, I have nothing to do. So they came on and sang End of the Road. We had Gloria Gaynor singing I Will Survive. Very apropos for Covid. During we had Gloria Estefan singing. We had Los Del Rio during the Macarena. We had the Village People singing, ymca. We got so many epic kind of heritage artists coming online to party with us. And it was, it was really, it was really cool to sort of think about, yeah, how people could feel in our Internet promoter score during that time was, you know, it was like 80, 90%. And it was so cool because, you know, if you looked online, everything was so 1.0. Just sort of like a sad camera in a room pointing at something, someone doing, doing a class of sorts, you know, and. And I just think that we're constantly pushing ourselves to give people an experience that really, really, again, you know, unlocks biohacks, your dopamine, your oxytocin, your serotonin, your endorphins, and everything that we design a daybreaker, everything that we design.
In.
In the world of experience, we think through our neurochemicals, we think through how. How is some. How is, how is someone going to, going to unlock and release each of them at a given event, right? So most events, you might get your dopamine to listen to music, you might get your dopamine from, you know, getting there and buying a ticket, you might get your endorphins from dancing, but you're not going to get necessarily your oxytocin from. Maybe no one's giving you hugs or touch. Maybe you're not getting your serotonin because it's a dark, dingy club and not outdoors. There's so many ways we're not thinking about reverse engineering anyway, so that's sort of, I think, why we were successful.
During COVID So you were hacking people's neurotransmitters and they didn't know it, which is pretty cool. I would like to point out too, you have joyblueprint.daybreaker.com you have a whole survey that basically is predictive of these things. And if for people who have been listening to the show for a long time, I had Dr. Love on the show and I know Radha, you know about Dr. Paul Zak. This is going back like five, six years. And he spoke at one of the conferences that I put on and he was talking about how you could use a survey to be predictive. As predictive as lab data, like from your blood of your oxytocin levels. And I know the science has progressed a little bit. And so you guys put together a pretty neat, like a JOY quiz to figure it out. When people do the JOY blueprint, what are they going to get? Like, what's the. What does it tell them?
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When people do the joy blueprint, what are they going to get? Like what's the right. So what does it tell them?
Yeah, it's a 40 quiz. That's really cool, by the way, but it's a 40 quiz. I want to meet her. But it's a 40 quiz. It's a free joy quiz that anyone can do. And essentially you can by answering the 40 questions. We work on this with UC Berkeley and the Greater Good Science center to really to get it right. But essentially once you answer these 40 questions, the blueprint, you'll basically get your joy blueprint spit out to you, which essentially analyzes your neurochemical needs. So you'll say, okay Dave, you're three parts dopamine, two parts oxytocin, four parts part serotonin, one part endorphins. And based on your prescription of parts, those are the number of classes that you're prescribed to take every single month. So let's say you're four parts dopamine. You're invited to take four dopamine classes on the Daybreaker plus platform to basically fulfill your prescription of dopamine classes for that month. If you have two parts off and then you can sort and organize the classes on the platform by neurochemical. And we also organized it by color, so dopamine. And each one we did a lot of research again on color and experience design for the 2D environment again for classes and for teaching classes. Each of our dopamine classes are set against nature because Nature is a joy. Practice walking in nature. So they're all set against nature. The color of dopamine is a turquoise, which is all about kind of like moving things. It's a color of money in some ways. It's getting things done. And so that class series is a certain color with a certain palette behind it. Oxytocin is pink because it's all about gooey intimacy, love. And so it's a nature scene with pink behind you. Serotonin is yellow because serotonin is your mood stabilizer and yellow is a color of joy. And then endorphins is purple. It's all about euphoria and vitality and all the color the classes are. The green screen background is nature, purple background filter. And so they're all really fun to do because they're also art forward as well in their design. Let me just plug my phone in. I mean, my computer. And it just. It's dying.
And I realize, let's not run out of power. Yeah, it's off brand. Supposed to be dancing. You know, we're supposed to be talking about upgrading your energy. And.
I know, well, maybe we should get up at the end and do a little one song, one song dance party with everybody.
We could totally do that. Now, I ran into a bit of a challenge when I was doing my Joy blueprint because I identify as a certain age that's different than my biological age because it's important that my cells understand that I'm really only 28 and. And that just isn't going to change whatsoever. But it didn't give me the option to do that, and I don't think that was fair.
Well, listen, I can look and see if we can add a line and run it by the Greater Good Science Center.
I think we need to do that because I refuse to be locked into my biological age. I do not identify as that, and it is not my true self.
I agree with it. I totally agree with that.
There we go. So it's about freedom.
Why don't you just put in your, you know, your.
Yeah, I just. I don't want to be ageist towards myself because could you imagine how terrible that would be?
Well, you're living in 200, right? Is that the idea?
I want the wisdom of age and the youth of biologically. Because I think that's. That's the. That's the thing. So I'm going to deceive myself into believing that I'm that age until I'm exceptionally old and my body's like, oh, Dawn. I didn't notice. I'm like, I win, I win. That's my whole goal, actually is a true part of my anti aging strategy is that I think of myself in the age that I want to be.
I think you're also.
There's science to back that up.
A farmer and a joyful farmer and a fun human and all the things.
Oh, thank you. Well, let's talk about. Well, you talk about community and connections. It's a big part of what you do in J Breakers in Daybreakers. But you have gotten into farming recently. I remember we talked when you were first buying the farm. Right. And we're in, I think, our seventh year of being a small family farmer. By the way, guys, you want pictures of chickens and sheep? Go to Asprey Farms. Is my handle on Instagram for that. What did you do? Tell me the story of starting a farm. And are you doing animals, vegetables? Let's walk through that a little bit.
Yeah. So I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I wrote a book called Belong and it's about belonging and community and all of that. And I think for me it was just like when I thought about belonging as I became a mother and as I have a two year old daughter as well. And what does belonging really mean? And yes, the book is about belonging to one another and how to make friends and build community, but also what does it mean to belong to your ecosystem? What does it mean to belong to the land, the soil, to the food that you eat? The cycle of life.
And.
So I think, you know, for me, during COVID it became really apparent. Just feeling, just feeling the energy of the planet. Just all of us in prison, in our homes, and all of us feeling so isolated and alone. It just felt even more stark, you know, like what life would be on Mars. Like you know, if Elon and all the friends, like live on Mars, like, good luck, you know, there's nothing there. Let's, you know, work on saving our own planet. Let's work on really understanding and really saving our own planet. Because Mars is. Is gross. And it's just like a giant bleak.
Like, you know, Mars is gross.
It's just like, it's a bleak. Like there's nothing there for us, you know, except us living in what would be like these Covid pods of like loneliness, depression, isolation. And. And so I just really felt like. I felt like we were on stranded asteroids somewhere and. And I just. That's what it felt like. And I, and I just said, you know what? Like to really belong to Earth and to the planet and to the human experience. We could be in these pods anywhere, but actually, planet Earth is fucking beautiful. It's amazing. It's. It's got everything. It's utopia. It's magic. You know, it's like you go to space and there's nothing to see. You know, you come to Earth and there's flowers and there's gardens and there's fruit and there's food, and there's an incredible, just bountiful ecosystem, and yet we're spending billions of dollars going to the moon. Anyway. I digress. But so I think, you know, for me, buying the farm was very much a, you know, a moment of reconnecting to the planet, of what it means to be human, to belong to each other, to give my daughter and our community a place to go. It's a 13 acre farm. We have 40 animals on the farm that we are homesteading. And we grew our own pigs, we grew our own lambs. We grow on chickens, egg laying chickens. We have geese, gooseling egg lynch geese. We have pheasants. We have anyway, all kinds of maple trees and bees and a whole big garden. And.
And you live there full time?
No, no, we. We go. I always say we like to live between nature and culture. So nature in Rhinebeck and then culture in Brooklyn. New York. I'm a New Yorker forever. I love New York. I'm a soldier for the city. New York is. Is the best city in the entire world, in my opinion. And the belly button of the world, I think, for culture, for just anybody being whoever they want to be. They can be trans, they can be whatever. They can be anything they want to be. And New York's like, I don't care what you are, just come and be here and be you. And I love New York for that. And New York is always on the cutting edge of the coolest shit. But yes, I'm between New York and Rhinebeck, New York, which is. Is a really cool corridor of New Yorkers who go upstate. And there's Omega Institute right nearby. Within 10 minutes, we have 100-year-old neurodiverse children's summer camp right next to us that we're also partnered with for their husbandry program. So they bring all their kids up to the farm and we show them. They help hang out with our animals. They, you know, they really support in taking care of the animals. And it's been a really cool partnership and we're. We're throwing a daybreaker for them next year. So it's been really Fun to get to know. Yeah. This community.
So then I'm picturing how cool it'd be to be able to be in New York where like you said, you know, you can be whatever you want and just no one cares as long as you don't get in their face. You don't want to do that in New York. York, right.
Nicest people in the world, I'm telling you.
Yeah, but it's the ultimate you do you kind of place. Right, right. Which I, I've always liked that about New York, but it's, it'd be cool to have that and then be able to go out, to be able to go out to the farm. But that means you're not managing it. So how many people are managing your farm for you?
Actually, we have our next door neighbors that we, that we work with and we basically share half the yield of the meat from the harvest. So over the weekend, one of the hardest weekends actually of my life, we just, this last weekend we harvested, AKA killed. Harvested is such a chic way of saying we murdered our pigs. But anyway, I, I, you know.
Murdered. No farmer says murdered.
You knew you were. I don't know. I felt that way.
It's not what it is.
I know, I know it felt that, it really felt that way, honestly. Anyway, but, but, but we, we, you know, I raised them since they were little babies and it was one of the hardest I've ever done to like raise them, feed them. I sing to them every time I'm with them or we take them for walks actually. And I know you said not to, but we do. And they, they walk with us every day. The last, you know, few weeks that they were, they were alive and, and they were just our, our little buddies. And then, and then the day came and, and Hans the Butcher, who's a 70, you know, 60 year old veteran in his 80s, butcher and 40 year old teacher at the Culinary Institute of America, head of butchering, he came over to our house and he taught us the entire process and you know, we, you know, we took the pigs, you know, and then we, you know, hung them up by one of our trees and it was super primitive and we wanted to do it really.
You hung them up after you killed them? Yeah, just to be really. There's a bunch of like vegans out there going, ah, you know.
No, we did, we did, we did kill. It was very quick, but it was.
How'd you kill him?
With. Well, we, you know, we're just learning. But according to the butcher, Hans, who's Done this for, again, 60 years. We just took his lead, and he said we should do it with a bullet, you know, so. But we've learned since that maybe a knife would be. You know, we just were learning. So it was a really difficult thing, and. Yeah, it was. I cried all weekend while, you know, while I was packing the meat and I was part of the skinning process, and we literally, like, were on our feet for 12 hours each day, processing, packing, organizing the meat into all the different. All the different coolers and all the different, you know, sort of types of meat and labeling. It was just a. It was a whole process that we were there from the very beginning to the very, very end. And Eli even stuffed all the sausages himself. Like, figured out how, you know, learned how to do that on YouTube.
If you're stuffing your own sausages, you're hardcore. I found a sausage guy, and we bring him the meat, and we bring him all the herbs from our farm and our recipe, but it's just a lot of work. Okay.
Yeah, yeah, we did all herbs ourselves and cut and did every single thing ourselves. And we buried their heads and did a whole.
You didn't eat them?
No, we buried. Well, with the kids, the jowls and stuff. We harvested as much as we could, but we then buried their heads into a ceremony and the whole thing and chanted and, you know, and it was. It was. It was. It was a. And we invited, actually, eight friends to be there with us at the farm to really learn from the experience. So we had, you know, eight friends from the city and from Philadelphia join us to experience the process. And honestly, we were all changed by the experience of, like, being closer to our food. I'll never eat bacon or anything, I mean, anywhere outside of, you know, our own farm ever again, first of all. And I don't even know if I will, you know, I took a couple bites of, you know, of our. Of our pigs, and it was. I couldn't. I couldn't do it, Dave. I couldn't do it. Yeah.
Goes like this, from my experience, which is a little bit more farming, just more years on it then you have. The first time you have animals. There's a lot of that. And so what I did before we got animals, I went to a local butcher and actually an abattoir where they. They slaughter the animals and you prepare them and they can go off to butcher or they will butcher them there for you. And I said, well, I want to make sure that I'm. I'm okay doing this and. Okay. Doing this is actually that when you slaughter the animal that you do it from a state of peace and love and gratitude instead of a sense of horror or shame or something, which are all programmed.
So much gratitude.
Yeah, yeah, because it's not supposed to be traumatizing. The animal picks up on you. And there's a sacred connection between farm animals and people where there's an agreement between that species and our species, that we take care of them and they take care of us.
I know.
To be clear, no farm animals would exist on the planet without humans. They would, they'd be eaten in about six weeks by predators. Right. And that's just how it works. And by the way, all of our dogs would get eaten by wolves and, and cougars as well. Like, they are not wild animals. They're. They're part of the, the system, the network of who we are as humans. And so it's an agreement. And you take good care of your animals. We do the same thing. You know, we stay up late. You guys see my videos at night where we're birthing sheep and there's one stuck and you put, you put so much energy to them that it would be a shame to waste some of the animal, which is why you don't. Right. Even the little guts or whatever stuff that we can't use those feed the wild animals. We have a part of the property where we toss it out. And then the wild animals are all like birds of prey. So then we have vultures coming in and hawks and eagles and all that stuff. And we had a couple lambs that were still born. Like, well, the vultures are going to be happy. So we had six of these giant vultures, had a really good day, and what was left was basically two little, two little skulls, perfectly clean and nothing else. Mother nature did everything right.
Yeah, I know. It's. I mean, Eli, you know, Eli, we fed the pigs. I mean, we. It's like he's been part of the process also from the very beginning. And he has a very different philosophy too than me, I think just being a mom too. I just, I'm just getting, getting, you know, just accustomed to the, this whole. It's my first. I'm a city mouse from New York City for 20 years. I just celebrated 20 years in New York City. So this is my first year. We just celebrated actually this past weekend was our one year anniversary of owning and homesteading a farm. And so, so it was a big, it was a big moment. And, and so that moment and we were there. I don't Know if you were there. Actually I wanted to be there to. When the shooting, when the, you know, when we shot the animals. Like, I actually wanted to be there and watch because I want to know how it, how it felt and I.
Should be there the first time.
Yeah, right.
If you're a farmer, I think it's necessary. You have to do it.
Yeah. And I think it's a responsible thing. I mean, for me it felt the responsible thing to do as the parents of the animals too. But, you know, and I actually recorded it too. I watched and I recorded it because I wanted to, you know, I want to share it. I want to tell the story of the whole farming experience so that, you know, more of our community can know about it. And so, yeah, I'm putting it together now and just if anyone wants to watch it, you know, I'm happy to share it. But it was hard.
It takes some serious resilience in order to do what you're doing. Because there are a small number of animal rights terrorists. They're known as PETA and that's what they are. Most of the leadership of PETA. Like these are the kind of people who have blown up labs for doing research on eggs, right? And here's the deal. They have funded propaganda to say that it's wrong to treat a farm animal with love and care and respect and to allow it to live and defeat it properly and to give it a good death. And that it's somehow right to eat a plant based diet that makes you sick because it doesn't have enough fat and it doesn't have enough protein and it has the wrong kinds of fat in it. Right. And to somehow make it a moral thing. It's a moral thing if you torture an animal. But no animals were tortured in what you did. What you did was natural and healthy and wholesome and good. And it is the cycle of life. So kudos to you a for doing it because it's a lot of work and it's hard the first time you do it. And kudos to you for talking about it because this is how life on the planet works. And if there is going to be life on the planet 100 years from now that looks like us anyway, there'll always be life here. That's not a problem.
Right.
It just might look like alligators or something. So if it's going to look like us, we need soil. And you can't have soil without what you're doing. And so we must have distributed farms and we must return those animals. We need to take them from the industrial manufacturing places and start treating them well and put them in our ecosystem again. So we have soil and flowers and grass and all that kind of stuff. And if people who are influential like you don't stand up and say I'm doing this, we will lose that sacred connection to the animals and to the soil and to the planet. And then everyone will die. So let's not go there and screw you PETA off there. Sorry, I had to say it.
I definitely had a few people unfollow me, whatever. I don't mean like, you know, and shared some sort of indicting messages. You know, when I shared that I was harvesting, you know, our pigs, but and I wrote them back and I just said, you know, this is my first time doing it. I want to be close to my food. If I can't do it, I don't, I won't eat it. But if I can do it, that's the, this is the responsible way to do it. And if this is a responsible way to do it, this is the more humane way. This is a more humane loving way to do it. And so yeah, it's discourse. It's the beginning of the.
You have integrity. You talked about an integrity filter. What you're doing is the highest integrity filter. The other guy who has great integrity around this is Rich Roll, well known vegan triathlete and he did a big post saying guys, here's how many squirrels and groundhogs. I think it was groundhogs. We have to kill for your vegan diet on my farm. I didn't know till I ran a farm farm. So it's not like eating plants doesn't result in huge amounts of habitat destruction. I'll just tell you my pasture is host for more life forms than my cows. And my cows don't kill anything unless they accidentally step on it. So like deaths per calorie of what you're doing is exceptionally good and deaths per calorie on soybeans is exceptionally bad.
And the meat that we actually harvested from two pigs will last our families, both neighbors and like for two full years. And this is with like an eight person dinner twice a week for the next two years. Right. And so two pigs is result is resulting in hundreds and hundreds of meals. And so that also was interesting to learn having now. You know, we were, I personally packed every single one of, of the, and organized every single one of the meat. The meat cuts into its respective coolers and we counted and we saw that it was meat for two years. For two families and hosting eight people once or twice a week. So it's a lot of food.
It's so much work. People will never know until they do it. And one of the reasons I have a restaurant, the Upgrade Cafe in Victoria, we grow the meat and the vegetables for the restaurant. Not all the veggies. We do our best and not all the meat, but most of it, man. It's a whole ecosystem. But when people say, oh, you can't do this, I'm just going to go eat my whatever, it doesn't work like that. So I just, I have great respect for you because as an influential person, you probably have some beacons who follow you. Look, that whole New York thing you do, you, yeah, you and me, we can make soil and help to save the planet and have a sacred connection with animals that we support, who then support us in our community. And that's us being us. And that's okay. So that's right. I, I, I really, really appreciate that you also, that you butchered your own animals, that you did the work and like you, you faced the emotional side of it, which is real. So, so much more respect than I had before even, and even just for being willing to talk about, to talk about it.
Thanks, Dave.
Has it changed your meditation practice having a farm?
You know, I think actually the actual, the experience of owning a farm and you know, picking up the feed every morning and going to feed them or taking, you know, long walks in the park or in the, in the, in the woods, you know, that's, that's changed my meditation practice from a sort of a seated one into a walking meditation and actually a joy practice that we, I lead, I have seven joy practices on a platform, but I lead people through forest bathing and it's called Shinrin Yoku and it's Japanese forest bathing. It's meditation through slow meandering walking under a canopy of trees in the woods. And that can be an even more potent form of meditation than just sitting in quiet. So if you just slowly, hands behind your back, find nature and walk without a destination. You're not hiking, you're just slowly walking and just taking deep inhales and exhales in your. The trees give off phytoncides which are these cancer fighting sort of antioxidants and it really literally helps your body fight cancer. So the trees are as you're taking these meditative walks, deep breathing in the woods, slowly again, hands behind your back, aimlessly. You're also giving your body more than you would sitting in a Air conditioned room in your house. And so if you can find nature to really go and do that joy practice of meditation while walking. Dacher from Greater Good calls it an awe walk, where you walk around in awe and find awe in nature around you. And that can be an even more potent form of meditation than seated meditation. So, yeah, my meditation has changed from a more sedentary seated one to a slow moving one, which by the way, as we've learned and as we are continuing to learn, your brain body connection, your body in motion is where the healing happens. Your body in movement is where the creativity comes. And so and the big aha moments, you know, when you're in the shower, when there's moving water, right. It's like it's, it's that there's something moving in the space. That energy is actually what inspires these aha moments. Or for me, all my best ideas, my biggest inventions, all my biggest campaign ideas for big marketing campaigns, for whatever I've been doing, all came in motion, not in stillness. And so I think meditation is great for some people in a seated form. And I think that in a slow movement form can be just as, if not more potent.
The forest bathing with a walk there is powerful. And I came across a study a while ago. It was from my aging book and it was about, from memory, Hinoki spruce or hiroki. I might have the middle letter wrong, but it was a specific kind of essential oil, the one that you would breathe, the terpenes you breathe when you're in a forest. But that one had a massive effect on stem cell production.
That's right.
You can actually use essential oils from the forest. If you can't get into a forest, and that is one thing, then there's the microbiome that you get from a farm or a forest, which is really cool. So if you spend time with your animals, you pick up all sorts of different bacteria that are good for you, which is something just from breathing it. You get it not even from licking the ground where your animals were, which I don't highly recommend. You're a pretty cool biohacker because you've got the farm thing going on. You've created this large community, but you just wrote your book called Belong and you're looking at community as a biohack. And then in my teachings, there's the four F words. You know, there's fear, food, fucking. And you know, those are the three biological. But the fourth F word is friend, right? Which is community. Like we serve our community and all but I think you focus on the community aspects more than almost anyone else that I've come across as ways to increase personal wellness. And just how we show up. What. How do you suggest that people are listening to the show? How do you suggest that we consciously add community to our lives? Because it's hard to do right now with all the masks and whatever else.
So just take a quick step back. So you know Maslow, who wrote his hierarchy of needs in 1943, right. Which is well before technology, well before sort of current civilization, he put belonging on the third rung of his pyramid, right. But now all this research has been done. Harvard came out with a longitudinal study that shared that. The key, you know, they studied a thousand people and they came. Their big revelation at the end of the study was the key to a happy and healthy life was meaningful relationships. Right. And so with all these new studies that are coming out, I rewrote Matthew's Hierarchy of needs. It's in my book, actually. And I moved belonging from the third rung, actually, to the basic human need. Because it turns out if you don't have belonging, if you are isolated, your cells are not as healthy, you don't live as long, you're more prone to anxiety, depression, more prone to sickness. Right? Like, you know this and. Okay, so go ahead.
You just. You cued me on something. Finish up your point. I want to interrupt you and I'm going to share something about. About how. What you've tapped into there. But it's cool.
And so to really actually think of belonging as a basic human need, as important as food, water and shelter, it is. It is part of the human experience. Without it, we cannot survive, we cannot thrive, we are not healthy, and we are not wealthy. Right? So. So to really move belonging as like, okay, once I have everything else ready to go, once I have my money, once I. I have my romance, once I. Everything, I'm gonna. I'm gonna now find friends. But actually, friendships are the first thing that you think about before you even think about your profession, before you even think about romance. If you focus on community first, which is what I actually changed from my 20s to my 30s. My 20s was like chasing money, chasing career, chasing tail. I mean, chasing, you know, male tail, you know, and it was just like. Right.
And. And it was that. Is that what you call Eli? He probably likes it. It's all right.
But. But, you know, 20s were just, like, totally, like, wrong priorities. And then 30 years old, I look myself in the mirror, and I want to get to your point too. And I, I hear a download feeling coming. But, but at 30, I look myself in the mirror, Dave, and I realize, oh shit, I don't belong. Like I spent my 20s sleep walking through life and I feel empty. And so that was the beginning of this totally kind of change and shift, which is the beginning of my book, which is like when I turned 30, I realized I didn't belong was the first sentence of my book. And it was just like I changed. I reprioritized community. I started doing exercises for myself which are all in the book of like, what are the qualities I'm looking for in a friend? What don't I want? We never do this for friendship. We, we do this for romantic relationship. We do this for a professional career. We never actually think about and write down what are the qualities I'm looking for in a friend. What do I not want in a friend, what do I need to embody in order to attract the friends that I want? Right. So to really think about being more intentional about not just stumbling into friend groups because they sit next to me in the cubicle or their lockers next to me, I happen to like meet them at a thing, but to really come from a place of deep intentionality so that you're attracting friends from all over the place that end up being your tribe, that end up feeding you, that end up helping you build your career of your dreams, end up helping you find the husband of your dreams. And that's what happened to me. Right.
And so anyway, Dave, that is, it's so cool choosing your community. I used to do one on one coaching with a few select clients and I haven't done it in a little while because I have six companies I'm working with now. So any spare time goes family and my exec teams. But this is a guy who is exceptionally successful, has invented technology that many people have heard of, never has to worry about money again sort of things. And got to a point in his life where he, he said, okay, you know, the kids have moved out and had a change in relationships, you know, went through a divorce. And he said, I'm happier than I've ever been because for the first time in my adult life I get to choose who I spend time with and who my friends are.
That's right.
So a lot of times with kids it's like your, your friends are whoever the parents of your playgroup are, you know, whether or not things like that. So the intentionality that you have is so much better.
And then even like, you know, and you know, and it's like, if you pick my book or not, doesn't matter, but it's like draw three circles and draw a Venn diagram. What are your values today? What are your interests today? And what are your abilities today, right? And so your values change every few years. So for me, as I value different things as a new mom, you know, as. As a woman, you know, who's. Who's interested in different things. In my 40s, whatever, right? So my values to really change, take some time every year to write down what are my values today, right? What do I value? What do I want? I want more community. I want more belonging. I want more, you know, whatever. More. What are those values? I'm more family. So what are your interests today? You know, what are you. What are you interested in exploring? I'm interested in biohacking. Interested in festival culture. I'm interested in dance. Interested in farming. What are all those things and what are you? And then my abilities, like, what am I getting good at? Not like I'm good at building teams and building businesses, but what am I good at through the lens of what can I. How I show up for my community, right? So what am I a good cook? Am I good at gathering? Am I good at taking out the trash? Am I good at bringing. I have a girlfriend who brings lights in her purse wherever she goes because she hates overhead lighting. So she. She shows up to any dinner party and she turns off all the lights. She's like, it makes everyone look old. And then she puts like candles and like beautiful lights everywhere.
I want her to be my friend. The one who turns off nasty overhead lights is my friend automatically.
Another friend who brings instruments, a bag of instruments, wherever he goes. We know it to all of our parties. So that whenever he comes, I'm like, yes. So what are your ability, what can you show up with that you're not just taking, but participating, right? And I think that's why Burning man or Daybreaker or like all things that you're doing in the world of biohacking is so special and important because there's a participatory element to it. There's a. There's not just a receiving. I'm just learning from you, you know, all knowing. But there's. There's like a beautiful kind of participatory sort of collaborative experience happening, right? I'm dressing up in costume. I am learning from. You know, there's. There's breakout groups, there's. There's so many aspects of participation that make life so much more Fun and belonging feel more easy. You know.
I absolutely love what you're saying and I'm looking at the comments here from the Upgrade collective and people are saying this is awesome. I already don't feel lonely just hearing that there are people who are like this out there, which is cool. So if you're listening to this going, what the heck? There are tons of people who are probably more like you and you're way less alone than you feel like. I know that you have a flight that you're going to catch. Do you have time for one or two more questions or do you need to run?
Let's do it.
All right. I have seen countless communities, including burning man camps where it's only a few hundred people schools, they get rot, they get collectivism, conformity. They kick out people who are different. And it happens even in the most woke of circles or the most anti woke or whatever the heck that is of, of circles. It doesn't seem to be like there's no political or social ideology. It's just communities form rot. Why?
You know, I think it's all around again trauma, right? So I think what happens is people's, every single person on this call listening, you know, has a backpack full of their own hysteria. So we all carry around this invisible backpack with all of our history in it. And you know, at the beginning of a relationship and friendship, you're sort of at the, you're just zipping up, open the backpack. There's really, no one's really getting inside. So community is really easy when it's not tender. Right. And I think as soon as you get deep into someone's backpack and you start kind of pulling out. My father died in an accident or this happened or, or I got betrayed by this person or, you know, all of a sudden there's, you know, there's a depth of tenderness. I mean, here's a wild stat for you. 50% of first time incarcerations are from family, friends or neighbors. 50%. Which means. So the more you know someone, the more you love someone, the more you're likely to shoot them, the more likely you're about, you're gonna, you're gonna hurt them. Because there's a depth of care that happens when you dig into someone's invisible backpack of their shit, you know, and so well said. So I, I think that's, that's it. And, and it's for us as individuals to recognize that our backpacks are tender and when someone's putting their hand in, it's from a place of of wanting to know you more. And I think we live in such a canceled culture now, especially with. And social media and crazy media in general, that we forget the virtue of forgiveness. And forgiveness is such an important part of the human experience. And when we're just like, oh, canceling you, canceling. You said one bad thing to me. And maybe you're having a bad day, maybe you broke up with your boyfriend that day and you had a bad meeting. It's like there's so many things that can happen in our life and cancel culture and sort of this polarized kind of political world that we live in is just creating. And even the vaccine is just like. I mean, it's like it becomes so political. It doesn't have to be. It's just like, hey guys, let's all hold hands and close our eyes and jump in the deep end together and let's fucking see if we can make it out of this thing together or not. That's sort of why I did it because. Because in my mind I'm like, there's no other way really way out. So let me just. I mean, I don't know, I just feel like at some point community task gets and, you know, we have to sort of take on the feeling of the ecosystem of like, let's all hold hands, close eyes and jump in the deep end together. And it doesn't have to be a political thing. And I just think so much of everything is politicized and so polarized and so canceled, including comedians, you know, like.
Including, you know, how do you cancel a comedian? That's the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
The craziest thing. It's like his entire raison d' etre is to make fun and. Or, you know, is to be. Is to. Is to show the seriousness of life in a comedic way anyway. So I just think that we live in a weird world right now and it's up to us as all those listening to really remind ourselves of the importance of forgiveness and the importance of the virtue of forgiveness and that our.
Background tender, you know, well said. So tenderness. And I'm going to extend that to mean including kindness, which is an aspect of tenderness and forgiveness to keep communities healthy. That's one of the reasons that the, the core step at 40 years of Zen, the core reset process, is around a technical definition of forgiveness that you can measure with your brain to see if you actually did it versus convincing yourself that you did it. So I, I love that because it's very hard to keep communities together. And one of the most impressive things you've done is build daybreakers as big as you have without having it fracture and go sideways. And even most churches have giant fractures. And so you're getting up to half a million people and it's like, wow, super, well done. And I think anyone listening can tell. Well, you have a unique energy, unique kind of sense of joy and curiosity that's there along with your sister. You're holding things together and just serving your community. So I appreciate you very much. I'm looking forward to hanging out at a Burning man, dancing way too late in the middle of the night until the next morning when daybreaker starts, and just getting a chance to hang out in person and talk about pigs.
Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I'm coming to visit you. I'm coming anytime, honestly. Yeah. But Dave, thank you for reflecting that. And right back at you. It just, it's. You're such a breath of fresh air, always with your idea. Just, you're such a forward thinker and I think everyone who's listening and who's, you know, who follows follows you. There's a reason for it. So you're a joy and a light, too.
Much appreciated, guys. You can go to the quiz we referenced earlier and you can read Radha's book, which is called Belong. You want to know more about community as one of the nutrients you need? Well, she's your pro. Radha, enjoy your flight today. I'll see you soon.
Thank you, days. Thank you, everyone. Nice to meet you.
You're listening. The Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
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