Fatherhood, Motherhood, Parenting, Home Schooling, Religion, Muscle Gain, Sourdough Bread & Much More With The Mind Pump Guys & Jessa Greenfield.

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield Fitness Podcast, it's up to you whether or not you want to waste your life or squander your education versus applying yourself and doing what it is that's going to make you a better person in the moment. But my one request is that I.

Got my Corvette and, you know, I get to bang hot chicks all the time, and that sucks that you have to, you know, do that kind of stuff. It's crazy that we don't prize that.

And it's very easy for me to let her wear the pants in the family, to let her be the leader, and so I can be a little boy, you know, off, you know, pulling on a speedo to go swim in Hawaii in a triathlon. Help performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Hey. So today is a pretty fun podcast episode. My wife and I got a chance to travel down to San Jose and. And we sat down with the wonderful, wonderful fellows at Mind Pump, Sal, Adam, and Justin. And if you haven't heard any of my previous podcasts with the guys at Mind Pump, you are missing out. And I will link to them in the show notes to this episode. They've interviewed me multiple times. I've interviewed them multiple times, and they're just some really cool cats. This time, though, my wife came along for the fun and we talked fatherhood, parenting, homeschooling, religion, muscle maintenance, her sourdough bread recipe, a whole lot more. And so what I'm going to do is I've got pretty rough, robust show notes for you that you can find@bengreenfieldfitness.com pump parenting. That's BenGreenfieldFitness.com pump parenting as in Mind Pump Parenting. Although we talk about a lot more than just parenting in this particular episode, the folks at Mind Pump also have put together some amazing fitness programs, including some that really help you to stay fit at home, perhaps during a pandemic. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. And so that also I will all put over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com pump parenting.

I asked you this off air. Ben, I want to ask you again because the last time I saw you, you were like a good 15 pounds of lean body mass. Smaller.

Yeah, Sal sizes, everybody.

At least you look jacked right now.

I think it's the shirt.

No, it's not, dude. It's not. You know, I'm sure. Get out of here. You put on some serious muscle recently. What are you doing differently?

What's Going on duck at home for maps Anabolic. I did. I did the. The Russian kettlebell start. So I spent the first half of COVID training for that. So a ton of kettlebells. How'd you like that? A ton of overhead farmers walks and snatches, Turkish getups. And I would just keep ordering heavier and heavier kettlebells. That was. I love it. And I want to do RKC2, but they keep moving it with the. With the pandemic farther in the future. So every time I get excited about the snatch test again, it just gets thrown a little bit farther down the road. And then I did a lot of BFR training. A lot of BFR training, like, three times a week. Two failure full body BFR training. We. Well, my kids actually got a lot of really good meat sponsors for their podcast, like Bel Campo and Butcherbox. And then this guy named Ty Lopez, who partnered up with Joel Salatin. He's got a farm now, so they're sending my podcast meat for that. And so we. We have a ton of meat. We have a ton of organ meats. I started doing about 12 of those ancestral supplements, organ capsules like liver, kidney. What else? They got lung, they got brain. So a ton of liver and. Yeah, liver organ meats, kettlebells, BFR training. And then I'm still doing a lot of BPC and TB 500 in between. Yeah, Diana Ball.

Exactly.

Did you.

Did it. Does it feel like your body was, like, craving to grow? Because it seemed like you just put it on? Do you feel like you were holding it back and then, you know. And do you feel better with more muscle mass?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I was telling Adam, especially going into the winter, when you don't want to be cold and frail, weak, I don't want to be the first one that the wolves or the bears get. But in all seriousness, I like to maintain a little bit of extra muscle, but all the guys in my family are so lean. It's hard. Like, you do have to eat a lot, really. And for me, probably with my one weak link, if I have one weak link, it's gut. I have to be careful when I'm eating a lot to really select my foods. You know, like we were talking about, I'm doing no fodmaps, no legumes, no prebiotic fibers, very few probiotics. So I'm pretty much doing, like, meat tubers, fish bone broth, organ meats, you know, some berries. Still doing a little bit of, like, a good, clean protein powder with some colostrum and Things like that in the mornings. But yeah, just a lot of nutrient dense, super clean food. But it is hard to eat a lot.

I imagine you're similar, I mean you have a similar bone structure, similar height. I would think that you have to be north of 4,500 calories to maintain or.

Yeah, I think 4,500 for me right now would be tops. I think I'm going like 3,500 to 4,500. Well, 35 is not bad.

I found once I start getting over.

This little lady next next to me right here, she just keeps shoving food my face and I just, I ate it like a good boy.

Well, you're both obviously a picture of health. I think you guys represent what you talk about pretty, pretty darn well. So that's, that's, that's pretty cool. Do you notice any changes in performance? Because with more muscle mass? Because you are, you know. Well, you know, most of the time I know I've known you, you, you like to really do things like obstacle course racing, hanging off things and, and is it make it more challenging because you're heavy or does the strength offset that?

Well, we were talking with the doctor this morning because we're going over to a clinic after this to get just some, some work done. And the doctor asked me what, what hurts? And I paused him, said nothing, like I, I feel great because. And you hit on something there. I'm not racing anymore. And that's probably a big part of that, That's a big part of the weight gain too is I went from running, you know, sometimes 20, 30 miles I'm running. So my running right now is when I go check the mail, I sometimes run up from the mailbox. So I'm running like a mile a week right now. And then we play a little bit of family tennis. We do family tennis usually a couple of nights a week. And so a lot less chronic cardio, a lot less running. I was even turned for a triathlon last year. So a lot less swimming, a lot less cycling, and just basically a lot of kettlebell and a lot of bfr.

Yeah. The thing about resistance training that I like so much, and one of the reasons why I think it's the perfect exercise prescription for the modern, for modern life, is that it's pro tissue. Whereas lots of cardiovascular activity tends to be, you know, anti tissue as your body tries to become more efficient and become better at this kind of long duration, high oxidative stress type of activity. Resistance training done properly just for longevity. Not saying you shouldn't do any cardiovascular activity but resistance training just, it's better for longevity. You just feel better.

It's a totally different feeling I think. I think honestly the as simple and non complex as it sounds, I think lifting heavy weights, walking a shit ton and then playing some sport that forces you to sprint every once in a while is just like that's, that's the perfect match I would think. I think that that's. It just hits just about everything from a physiological standpoint.

I would 100% agree. Back to the gut health thing. I've read studies that show that athletes and hard training individuals suffer from gut health issues at a much higher rate than the average person. Which kind of sounds contradictory, right? If you're a hard training person, you work out a lot, you're probably very health conscious.

Really, you think it is.

This is what the studies show.

I can tell you what I think it is. And it's paradoxical because they have found I believe it's the pharmacoyte to bacteroid ratio in elite athletes tends to be more favorably oriented towards metabolic efficiency, towards harnessing energy from carbohydrates more efficiently. And there was even an outside magazine article, I think it was last year about whether or not people would start getting fecal microbiota transplants from elite athletes like get the same gut biota as an athlete. But the biome aside, we know and we've known for a long time in exercise physiology that gut permeability increases when blood flow is directed away from the gut. All the more so during high intensity interval training. All the more so during high intensity interval training or exercise in general in the heat. Right. And this is why even like back when I was racing Ironman years ago, I would always use colostrum. I would load with colostrum for a couple of weeks going into a race. Just because of the research that also shows that that limits that amount of gut permeability onset to seal those junctions. Furthermore, I would not go near ibuprofen or Advil or any NSAID during a race or after. Because when you combine that increased gut permeability with something that's mildly toxic to the liver and the kidneys, it's a recipe. You essentially simulate rhabdo with that type.

Of and then you combine that with probably toxic shock. Different eating behaviors too, right? When you're an athlete you tend to like get down on meals on a whole nother level than somebody who's just a sedentary.

Sometimes you're eating when you still have blood flow directed to your extremities always.

I mean, you're encouraged to eat right after a workout and if you're, you've got some systemic inflammation going on, which is going to happen especially after an intense workout. And then on top of it, you're, you're consuming a quote unquote easily digestible food like a shake, which is, you know, you know, it's, it's, it's even more, it's probably even more likely to pass through youryour gut than solid foods. So that combination over time, I feel like is the perfect storm. I agree with yourwith your theory on that, but I didn'ti do notice that if Ibecause I'm sensitive to gut stuff, my gut issues, something I'm always kind of dealing with when my training is through the roof, is when I need to be the most careful. So it makes perfect sense.

I think nearly every athlete should be on something that's going to alter the opening of that zonulin protein, the activity of that zonulin protein that makes the gut more permeable. So whether that is colostrum or lignite or anything like that, it's going to help to keep that tight junction closed. I think that just about any athlete should be on a really good enzyme complex, especially for any fat or protein rich meals. And finally, they should have a giant slice of your sourdough bread, babe, every night with some grass fed butter, salt and honey on it. And that's, that would solve all the world's woes.

Now, I'm assuming that that's real sourdough.

It is.

The gluten is all, I guess out. Right. What happens to the process?

Somewhat out.

It basically pre digests the gluten. So gluten isn't gone, it's just gone through the starter and it eats the gluten and digests it. So when you eat it, you actually don't have to do all your stomach has to do all the hard work of breaking gluten down. It's already partially broken down.

How do you, how long.

But if you, if you have celiac disease, you're still going to pay at the back of the toilet seat if you have.

Yeah, I wouldn't.

Thank you for.

I appreciate that. No. So how long does it take to, to make real sourdough at home?

At least 24 hours.

Okay, so it's a process.

Yeah. But it's mostly just waiting.

Okay.

It's not that hard. I think the hardest thing is keeping it alive.

Yeah. Now what we talked about before you came on the show when you had told us you'd be in the area. You had suggested it would be a good idea to do a podcast on parenthood and raising children. And I think you two.

I thought I said guns, vaccines, and abortion. And abortion. Abortion and the questionable gender of track and field athletes. Yes, those are the main things we wanted to.

Yeah, let's.

Let's just jump into each of those.

Let's. Yeah, let's lose everybody.

Political affiliations.

Yeah, yeah. No, no, no, no, no. We're talking about parenthood. And I think you both are two of the most interesting people on this particular topic. We've been to your house. Justin spent the night there.

You know, I didn't, but I definitely.

Had your delicious meals, so it was great. You were both two of the most involved parents that I've ever met with your children. You just. You're involved in almost every aspect of what's going on.

You can call us helicopter parents.

No, I was just gonna say just.

Don'T want them to die.

Involved are very different.

You guys don't feel that way, do you really, though? You don't feel like your helicopter?

Oh, my gosh, no.

I was gonna say I don't feel.

Like you, if anything, anti helicopter.

Yeah, I don't think.

No, what I mean by involved is you're literally present and involved. It's, you know, your kids aren't just good, you know, you're. You're present, you're involved with the whole process. Definitely not helicopter. I see your kids having a lot of freedom to fail and to succeed kind of, you know, on their own. So I think you guys are great people to talk to. Plus, you guys homeschool, which I think is an interesting topic. I know right now homeschooling is exploding.

Oh, yeah.

It's the fastest grow.

Sounds like the best way to do it right now.

Yeah, well. And Ben grew up when it wasn't cool.

I grew up. You're ahead of your time. Wish I could hit the rewind button because that would be so cool right now. And I was homeschooled in the traditional manner. You buy curriculum. You know, back when I was homeschooled, it was the Saxon math curriculum or the Usborne books or any number of different. You know, ABECO was another very popular curriculum. And you'd order, typically, in many cases, the same books from the same organization. So you had your math, your reading, your writing, your logic, your grammar, your social studies, whatever. And you order that all from Usborne or from Abeka or from Saxon or from any of these folks who would then send all the books to your house. Kind of like when you start a semester in college and you go to the bookstore and get all your books and then you go through lesson plans with mom and sit around the kitchen table and everybody meet at the kitchen table at 8, and we go through all the books. And occasionally there's some kind of a group activity with other homeschoolers in the afternoon. Very traditional, dyed in the wool homeschooling scenario. And that is not what we do with our kids, really, at all.

I want to start there, actually. I feel like we've gotten to know each other really well in the last.

What has it been, three, almost four years. It's been four years.

It's been four years. Four years.

And, you know, I consider you a good friend of ours. And I'd say that the thing that I probably know the least amount is really your childhood and, like, your upbringing. I feel like I've gotten pieces of it through. Through the years, but I'd really like to, like, dive into that. Your relationship with your parents, what it was like when you were a kid. And that, I think, will.

Well, that has such a strong influence on how you parent. I think that's a great place to.

Influence, not only in the way you parent, but also in the way you partner. Jess and I have even been digging into this a little bit in terms of our relationship and the attachment theory, in terms of whether you were given a lot of attention when you were young, in terms of whether you were left to fend for yourself, in terms of how.

Explain the theory.

So I'm not very good at explaining attachment there, and I'm going to totally bastardize it, but essentially, some people are born and grow up with anxious attachment where they really look to other people for verification, for compliments, for words of affirmation, and for things that make them feel as though they're okay. They don't have to be anxious about anything. You know, mom and dad are giving them verbal approval and saying, good job. You know, and they grow up really digging that kind of approval and almost needing it and still needing it from a partner when, you know, they're married or they're with a partner. And then there's another one that's more of like, it's almost the opposite of attachment. It's. Do you remember what it's called, babe? It's. Or the opposite of anxiety. Avoidance. Yeah. So avoidance would be, I want to be left alone. I was maybe left to be Very independent, and I love my independence, and I want my independence, and I don't want a partner who's in my face all the time. And I'm very self sufficient and independent. And that person would not necessarily be the person who needs as many words of affirmation. And there's this whole idea of the five love languages. Words of affirmation or quality time or gifts or certain things that really mean a lot to your partner when you express those to your partner. And for example, I kind of skew a little bit towards anxiety, attachment, and Jessa kind of skews a little bit towards avoidance attachment. And so in our relationship, one thing that I found myself doing for years was I'd worry if she was okay, right? Like, when I'm making coffee in the kitchen, I look up and she's in the kitchen, and I can't quite tell if she's smiling or if she looks like she got up and she's in a good mood. I'll be, you okay, babe? And she's like, yeah, I'm okay. Sure. I can't. You sure?

You okay?

And by the end of the morning.

I want to cut you. By the end of the morning, Jess is like, I'm okay, damn it. And for me, what we've realized is that because my love language is words of affirmation. If Jessa wakes up and she says something like, gosh, I'm still thinking about how great that steak was that you cooked last night. Or, you know, that coffee smells amazing, you make such good coffee, or something like that. Like, I feel zero need to ask her if she's okay. Like, it's like, that's all me projecting me on her. So it's really interesting and so kind of a rabbit hole from what you were saying about how the way that you are raised affects the way that you parents. It also affects the way that you interact with your. With your spouse to a certain extent.

Now, how were you. How do you think the way you were raised made you skew towards that, that, that type of attachment?

You know, I was kind of noodling on this because I'm, you know, my, my mom, I really depended on her for approval. I really looked to her for, you're doing a good job. You know, you're, you're, you're good, you're great, and gosh darn it, people like you. And I think that I look to her a lot for compliments. And so I still grew up looking to women in my life, such as my wife, for those same type of compliments, yet I married someone who's very, like, tomboyish. More. More of the avoidance there. Who's. Who's. Wouldn't. Wouldn't necessarily think of. Unless we had a conversation about it. Oh, like, compliment this person. Because for her, and we were talking about this, it almost feels like you.

Feel unauthentic, like, inauthentic. And that sounds terrible, but I'm like, I just don't. Like, compliments do not come to my mind at all. I mean, it's not that I, like, I don't think it. It's just. I don't voicing. It just feels weird to me.

And plus the fact that Jess and I met. Well, we met in second grade Sunday school, but we really got to know each other well in college, and we're very competitive. We did triathlon. She raced track and field, so sand volleyball, everything. We've always been a very competitive couple. And so part of it, too, is when she compliments me, it's almost like it rubs against our inight tendency to compete with one another and to try and one up each other.

Unless she beats you, right? And she's like, you did a good job.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Like, that was your best effort.

I'm wired up. I'm wired up to be an achiever. If I take a personality profile, I'm achiever, perfectionist, and Jessa is more people pleaser, type B. And, you know, one of. One of the ways that I'll compete with her is if I see her out in the porch drinking a glass of wine, just like, you know, lounging at whatever, 6pm and I come up and it's like an hour before dinner, whatever. I see her out there, you know, I will literally say, well, I've got about an hour of work still and about 30 emails. I still got to finish. So I'll be up from the office. Office in about an hour. So I'll see you then. I'm gonna go get some work done. And, like, I'll. I'll literally, like, find myself doing that just because we're still competitive with each other. So you guys are actually the reverse.

Of Katrina and I. Very, very similar. So I could totally relate to the feeling. Authentic. To just say compliments. To say them. So I actually. And I love the five love languages. I recommend that to anybody in a relationship. I think it brought so much insight to Katrina and I and how we navigate. We've been together for 10 years, so, of course, we've learned a ton about each other. And I Can never compliment enough for her. And so I'm always trying to practice things that feel authentic and real, that provides that for her. Something that I've done that's helped, that is I just make a point. I try and do this at least once a month where I get her flowers and like write a card and if I sit down is that her.

Language is receiving a gift.

Actually, gifts aren't affirmation. It's the card that really matters. The flowers is like, yeah, the flowers is a bonus. She likes them in the house and they're pretty. The card is what means everything to her.

She.

And she would rather. And this was hard for me. When we first started dating, I was the shower with gifts, because that's my thing. So I mean, bought her all these nice clothes all the time because.

Because the way that you thought was, well, of course, of course she's going to love to get gifts. I love skit gifts. She's gotta love it. Yeah, yeah. It's really interesting. That's not the language your partner speaks.

No.

And I actually think this is like one of the biggest things where people miss in their relationship because.

And it.

And no one is really guilty because you feel like you're trying. I remember when we had that. This first, you know, paradigm shattering moment in our relationship because she had felt like I wasn't giving her that love. And I remember like going literally last week I just dropped like $500 on new Lulu outfits.

I can pull the receipts, right?

And I'm thinking to myself, like, I, you know, I stopped in my day. I thought about her, I went and bought her all this stuff and I brought it home for no reason, no holiday. Like, how is that not showing love?

But.

But it took me a while to make that connection that I could do that all day long. And she still not feel loved because I'm constantly speaking my language and not hers.

I think.

Go ahead.

One thing that comes to mind. I realize I haven't even answered your question about my childhood yet, but one thing that comes to mind regarding that whole idea of gifts as being a language of love is I also think that that can lead to a certain form of lazy parenting. Meaning that, you know, in many cases we feel as though we're doing a good job as parents if we, you know, take our kids to some expensive steakhouse and then, you know, the next day a trip to the zoo, an arcade and a movie, and we just trying to make every moment epic or every moment extremely, extremely valuable with cash, with money, when in fact I think that time and traditions trump that big time. I can tell you, if you have breakfast for dinner on Tuesday night, where dad makes eggs and waffles every Tuesday night for eight years of their childhood, they're gonna remember that more than any random trip to Vegas where you blew $1,000 on the whole family dinner at a Japanese restaurant, or if they've got every single Christmas, they're doing the 24 day advent calendar and getting a little chocolate and, you know, and doing a little bit of reading each morning, you know, for this 24 days, building and building and building to Christmas every single year. When they grow up and you ask them about Christmas, they're probably going to talk about that tradition and that memorable habit that's a part of, you know, the family, than they will. That one year they got the Huffy, you know, the shiny Huffy bike that they'd always wanted.

Oh, I found that with my kids, just building things with them was everything. Like, you know, taking them to like.

I knew my son was into tetherball.

And so we just like his gift for Christmas was all of us were gonna put this together and like, make it from scratch and everything. And then, you know, their bike ramp.

And all this just that vested time.

That everybody shares together, it makes that thing more valuable to them. It has, you know, some kind of relevance. And we all had an experience we share together.

It doesn't if that time is repeated and regularly scheduled. I think that's where you start to build families and legacies and even this concept that grandparents matter because they become part of passing on those stories, traditions. And I think that having family rituals and that's a huge part of our parenting. Like our family dinners, the song we sing before Sunday dinner, the type of journaling we do in the morning, the type of journaling we do in the evening as a family. The, you know, the bedtime music, the trips to the tennis court, the. The six different card games that we play nearly every night of the week. Like, our. Our kids find dependency and trust and safety in that. But furthermore, we're not raising our children. We're raising our grandchildren. We're not raising our children, raising our grandchildren. The type of traditions that we instill in our children now, those are the things that go on and become a special dependable part of family. No matter where, you know, if I get uproot and I got to move to a new state and get a new job or whatever, we can still play our Sunday night tennis.

Did you both get that growing up?

I got a Lot of that growing up.

She did. I've learned everything about the value of tradition from my wife because my family was very. My family was, you know, Christmas morning. What do you guys want to do for dinner tonight? Should we get some Subway sandwiches or, you know, find. Find a turkey that we forgot to pull out of the freezer or whatever because of that?

Were you. Was that just normal to you and it wasn't a big deal, or did you ever go through a phase where you had animosity towards your parents because.

Of maybe how you were raised so pleasantly agnostic? Like, I just. I didn't even know.

Right.

You're normal. Until I met Jessa, and I thought it was super.

Yeah.

Most people, she's like, oh, we've got our annual trip to the coast.

We do it at this time every single year.

I'm an annual trip. Like, you actually do that same place every year or, you know, this is the color of the plates that we use on Christmas, and these are. This is what the name tags look like for Thanksgiving. And this is the exact Easter egg hunt that we do every East. And for me, now, you push back against that. I didn't push back against it, but it was just super weird for me. Like, I never. And, oh, my goodness, like, pinch me now. I got so lucky, you know, marrying a girl who actually knew about the importance of traditions. Because our kids are, like, they're so stable at home because there's so much they can depend every day of the week. You know, predictable environments remove a lot of fear and anxiety.

So I want to hear from Justin, because when you have. When you have the difference like this, and I know Katrina and I have this, there's. There's always some sort of resistance somewhere or. What has been the greatest challenge for you with him because of the way he was raised that you guys have had to work through together.

You know, it wasn't like the Chris, like, doing the same thing at Christmas or, you know, Easter or whatever, or having those traditions around certain holidays. It was honestly more of the tradition in the daily routines.

Oh, yeah.

Because, like, I grew up in a family. My dad, he was a farmer. He raised cattle. He came home five o' clock every night. We had dinner at six o'. Clock. Everybody came together, and then we enjoyed maybe a half hour TV show with popcorn. You know, there was always tradition built into the day. And so for very, very long.

And she married me where I'm like, I'm on a plane to Abu Dhabi to raise a triathlon one week back working, you know, 10 to noon, 3 to 5, 8 to 11pm at a gym and then, you know, coming home trying to build an online business till 2am and it was just all over the map because I grew up with a dad who literally would hold the same job for like a year and then go start a new company and then sell that and like buy a franchise and then, you know, go and buy some old ambulances and start to do, you know, ambulancing. Like my dad was all over the map. So she grew up in a very dependable, traditional, consistent farmer type of environment, whereas I grew up with, with you know, a dad who was just all over the map in terms of entrepreneurship.

So that, that was a, that was a different. Because I could, I could see how the annual traditions is like where that's understandable. Yeah, Ben can be like, yeah, okay, fine, we'll do this day to day, every day. It's like, this is what we do in, this is what we do at night. I could see how that would be.

You know, it took me a long time and now like I can like the day does not feel right unless we have our family dinner with our card game with me, playing ukulele or guitar to the boys afterwards with our, you know, we do self examination and purpose at the end of the day. So at the end of the day we say in our journals, what good have I done today and what could I have done better today? So we learn from both our successes and our failures. And what is one way that I lived out my life's purpose? Because I've taught my children from a very early age to have a strong purpose statement, to have their ikigai, to have their plan de vita, the thing that rips them out of bed in the morning, that gives them a lens through which they see a lot of the boxes that they might be checking during the day. In the end, ultimately, how is this helping you to fulfill your purpose? And then in the morning, same thing. Right now we meet as a family out in the sun on the deck. We've got a five minute meditation app that we go through called Abide that walks us through like a little verse from scripture and a prayer. Then we all write down one thing we're grateful for and one person we can pray for or help that day. And all these little things, they rubbed me the wrong way at first. To me it felt like being just like an old Buddy Duddy TV show family from the 50s or whatever, leave it to Beaver. And now like is the most magical Part of the day, these little traditions. Ever request any specific songs from you now? Like some ACDC or anything?

Yeah, they know a little bit of.

The place, but they're, they're, they're really into epic movie soundtracks, which I can't play. Yeah. But I took him into the, into a recording studio for a Christmas gift for mom and they really like the Greatest Showman, which has a lot of, of really epic. We recorded a whole album for mom in a recording studio. And then they also really like, like super heartfelt like praise and worship songs because they're very into like praise and worship. So they usually like that kind of stuff or sometimes just like an old school hymn.

By the way.

It sounds, it sounds amazing. And you know, speaking to, to these, these rituals or traditions, this is how cultures are created. And one thing about humans is when you look at things that last for thousands and thousands of years, that's because we've found significant value and otherwise it wouldn't last. This is part of evolution. People who are into science, who understand evolution from a biological sense, you also need to understand evolution from a cultural and practical sense. And behaviors and practices and cultures. We often take them for granted because they've been around for thousands of years. And we tend to look at them like, well, that's stupid. Why do we have to do it that way? Everybody's been doing it so long, maybe we even view it as oppressive or whatever. But the reality is it exists because humans have found it tremendously valuable and oftentimes in ways that you don't even fully understand because it's been around for so long. But as I'm listening to this and I think again, what you guys are doing is extremely valuable. I also know that you have two 12 year old boys, they're about to become teenagers. And like all kids, I'm sure they give some pushback sometimes. I mean, I don't think there's any perfect person out there, let alone perfect kid. What do you do when your kid says I don't want to do the thing?

Or what is it that they give?

Yeah, like how do you handle that?

Well, first of all, and I think maybe it was when we recorded in Tahoe, we talked a little bit about on one of the previous podcasts that we recorded together about this idea of love and logic style parenting, educating your children on the consequences of their decision. Then as much as possible, allowing them to make the decision. Am I going to eat gluten? Am I going to look at pornography? Am I going to smoke a cigarette? Any of these things. You teach your children about the impact on the brain, the impact on the body, the potential societal implications, and then you let them make the decision and deal with the consequences, Right? Maybe poor performance at school the next day because they punished three cupcakes at their friend's birthday party. I'd rather them learn that way than me say, no cupcakes, and then feel.

Like I actually took a whole course. They have a free course right now online, Love and Logic. And one of the things that they say on there that's so powerful, so they give the example. Here's an easy example. You're going out somewhere, it's cold, and you tell your kid, hey, make sure you grab your jacket. I don't want to wear a jacket, right? So the old school way would be like, get your jacket, put it on, you're gonna. The Love and Logic way would be like, okay, don't worry. Then when you go out in the freezing and there's, oh, my God, it's cold. You empathize with them, like, yeah, that really sucks, or whatever. And they learn from that. And the way that they sell it, which I think is brilliant, is if they learn those lessons now, then they don't learn. They don't have to learn the hard way later on when it's like getting drunk, driving, or, you know, things that have real serious consequences. So, yeah, and take the course. I really think it's valuable.

It is. And there are two other considerations here with this style of parenting. A, it only works if you're a really good example, right? You can't tell your kids, oh, you can use the phone and the television and the video game platform as much as you'd like, you know, might hurt your eyes a little bit. You might not sleep that well tonight. But if you say that and then every night after work, you're plopped in front of Netflix for two hours, then that's what your kids are going to have as a good. Like in the Greenfield house, if there's downtime, 90 of the time, I'm holding a musical instrument or have a book in my face, right? I am not on my phone. I'm not playing a video game. I'm not parked in front of a screen. So when my kids have downtime, like, their go to thought pattern is not where's my eye touch? Or I'm gonna go go hunt down some YouTube on the MacBook. Then the other thing, and this is new for me, is that I think that sometimes that style of parenting can lead almost too Much to you wanting your kids to like you. Or as Jordan Peterson would say, don't do things that would make your kids dislike you or don't do things that would make your kids hate you. Sometimes I think we can take that in too far the opposite direction. I don't want my child to ever feel as though they were deprived or as though I told them they had to do something because we use this whole love and logic, don't ever make your kids angry type of approach. But for example, I have decided that even though for the longest time I've been riding out little workouts for river and Taren to do. So you guys got to do 60 pound pet sandbag one time around the obstacle course. And you do this three times this week. Or your workout today is five goblet squats, five push ups, dead hang. For max time, you're gonna do five rounds of that. I was not being a good father. I was not being a good leader. I was not being a good king in terms of basically me almost parenting through checkboxes and giving my kids little assignments that they could or could not do. But great if you've done it versus me literally bringing them out with me and sacrificing my podcast time or audiobook time or my favorite Spotify artist time to just go inside my own head for a workout. Instead, take them with me and have them suffer in a way that they kind of sort of don't want to suffer. You can tell along with me because, let's face it, I think a 5am paper route like I had when I was a kid, like, if my parents would have told me that, oh, you could or could not do, that's up to you. But because they said you need a job and we have a paper job, so go work, make money. I think that's character building. And so I think that you sometimes have to get to a point where you are telling, you're putting your foot down, you're saying, yo, this is gonna be good for you. Let's go out to the garage. We're gonna sweat for a half hour. It's not. It's not. Do you want to come with me? It's, we're going out. Well.

And also it's just coming alongside your kid and doing something with them rather than telling.

Yeah.

Versus telling them because it's not. You're sacrificing your time, which is a display of love towards that person. And so really, I think in all of this, love has to be seen in everything that you do. For your child because they won't have trust for you if you aren't displaying that to them regularly. And that's in putting them to bed and not just saying, good night, see you in the morning. It's putting them to bed, making sure they have everything they need. Maybe they need that prayer or that song or that ritual.

Oh, my gosh.

It's literally just like taking your time and giving to them.

I 100% agree. So what do you do when your kid, like, do you have an example of time when your boys was like, I don't want to do that journaling today. I'm not going to do it, or, I don't care about that right now, or whatever.

I don't feel like I've ever. And this sounds crazy to poly people. We don't receive a lot of pushback from our boys in that way. I haven't seen that.

No, we don't.

I mean, they're not perfect, like. Like, you know, because they are. They're unschooling. They each have their own little MacBook. And sometimes they'll have, you know, like, they. They take one course called Math Nasium, where they have an online math tutor, and sometimes they've got little homework assignments. And. And I was finding, with increasing frequency, I walk into them and you could tell they were switching browser windows really fast to show that they were on task. And where my mind goes is I can tell them, hey, you're hiding something from dad and taking your computer away from a week. You're grounded. But what I said to both of them in two separate conversations, because sometimes you want to be careful not to embarrass one kid in front of the other or to make one feel like they're wrong. So I took them aside and I said, look, I'm not stupid. I can tell when I walk into the room, when you're on your computer and you're quickly switching browser windows that you're doing something that you feel might not be the best use of your time or that I might disapprove of. I told them, look, I don't care. It's your time. It's your life. It's up to you whether or not you want to waste your life or squander your education or spend time on some silly cartoon website versus applying yourself and doing what it is that's going to make you a better person in the moment. But my one request is that you not hide it from me. You don't have to be embarrassed if. If you have a certain Website. You're visiting, you want to visit, Go for it. Do it. Just don't feel like you have to hide it from me because you're not gonna get in trouble. All you're doing is you're ruining your own life, and that's up to you. Just please don't hide it from me. So those are the type of conversations. Cartoon Network is ruining my life.

Well, so. So here's the other thing too, that sometimes I worry about. My son is about to turn 15. My daughter's 10, so, you know, kind of close in age to your boys. And obviously I'm a fitness and health person, right? And I've seen this before. I've seen this before where I had a family member whose dad was an herbalist and super into health and whatnot. And the kids had to eat, everything was healthy. They didn't get all the processed foods that everybody got. And you food know, when it was their birthday, they didn't get the normal cake. They got the, you know, the super crunchy, you know, whatever cake with no sugar. And what ended up happening to both of them is the second they got out of the house, they went super far.

Cracking up. Right now just thinking about, like, sound like a rye cracker for their birthday.

Yeah, they went super far in the opposite direction. And so sometimes I get. Or I've also seen where parents are super into fitness to where the kid maybe feels like it's a bit tyrannical. And so they have this bad relationship with fitness. And then when they get out of the house and they're on their own, I never want to work out type of deal. What do you do to ensure that either that doesn't happen or if it does happen, that they end up coming back to, you know, the right thing?

Well, I don't know. Here's my feelings on that is my own personal journey myself is my parents didn't force fitness or food or anything on me really. And I was allowed to come to that in my own time. Now I think my parents instilled in me, like an understanding of, this is good for you, this is not good for you. You should maybe be active and not sedentary. You know, they instilled those virtues in me, but they didn't force them upon me. And so I call it, we're not raising dogs, we're raising spiritual beings. You know, you're not raising your kids to do this and obey and this and that. You're reasoning them to make. To have a spirit and be able to make a decision. And have virtue. And so to me, I really feel that if you are teaching your kid anything, if it's not done in the heart of London, they don't understand that you love them and that's why you're teaching this to them, is because you care about them, then it's going to have, it's going to kind of hit 10 and just bounce off.

I think the independence that comes with adolescence, which we're of course increasingly going to experience as our kids grow into teenagerhood, dictates that a child will want to do the opposite of what their parent is doing to assert their own independence. That's just the way that things are. And so I fully expect, and I'm fully prepared for river and Terran to be the anti gym rat or the person who prides himself upon maybe having a little bit of pooch and being a member of the chess club and playing a lot of piano just because dad is so into fitness. And I want to, like, that's not cool. Not that I'm saying that adolescence, I think sometimes it's used as a crutch for or an excuse to go into full rebel rebellion. But I think some amount of asserting one's independence and sometimes asserting one's independence by trying to do the opposite of what their parent may have done is understandable. But for me personally, like, I think that you always kind of experience that prodigal son esque moment where, where you, where you come back and you realize the value. Like my dad used to give me books that I absolutely did not want to read. I mean like Christian apologetics and sermons by C.S. lewis. Just all this stuff. I was just like, why do I want to read this? Just like the way I think about, I was a teenager, Jesus freak drivel and just this random religious philosophy like I want to be reading about. I loved fantasy fiction and I love space fiction. That's the kind of stuff I wanted to read. But now coming full circle, when I've got downtime and I feel like I really want to feed my spirit and feed my soul and challenge myself intellectually, I mean, that's what I'm reading. I'm reading John Piper and C.S. lewis and Doug Wilson and all these, these deep, logical philosophical books on religious, on, on religion or on apologetics. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh geez, I'm doing exactly what my dad did. It took me, took me 30 years to see the value in that. But you know, all of a sudden I'm like, oh, I'm actually I'm growing my spiritual muscles now. I understand what dad was about. Yeah. But I came to that place, so I think, think you show your kids what's important and then at a certain point you just, you know, you trust God that, that they're going to. If you've, if you've exposed them to the right type of things, eventually make the right decisions, even though they'll probably go in through that independence.

Got to be the hardest thing to do as a parent. That's got to be the hardest thing because you, you know what they're going to do, you see the pitfalls, and you just got to let them do it. That is really, really hard.

Yeah.

But you know what's really cool is I've seen my parents go through that and see their daughter take really hard nose dives and do really stupid crap.

How did you rebel, Jesse?

Rebel?

I wasn't really. I. I can't. I like to teeter on the edge, but I never fully plunged.

She rebelled by marrying me.

Yeah, I basically did.

Did any of your guys.

Now, did any of your guys have siblings that rebelled or went the complete opposite? Like, did you guys.

Yeah, I think I would imagine everybody's got a little bit of a black sheep.

There's a black sheep in every family. Absolutely. But what I was saying is I'm like, I got to witness my parents walk through that and go through the fire of that. I lived through that with them. And so to see how they reacted to that and how they walked through that, it was just honestly, with a lot of faith and a lot of prayer, and that's all you can do at that point, because they are their own person. And at some point you do have to let them. You gotta let them go and just, you know.

Yeah, you gotta let him go.

Rest in promises, basically.

Here's what I think, and here's why I think that idea. Like, like whatever they say, 99% of the time you're going to spend with your child is done with by the time they're 18. So you better just make every minute count and live every moment with your kid as if you were going to be in your deathbed that night. And everything, everything has to be epic. And, you know, I think that it's based on a flawed theory. If you have built up traditions, if you have built up rituals, if you have built up an environment where parents are honored and grandparents are honored and children are honored, then you create a scenario where when your kids are 18, they want to keep coming back for more. When They've flown the nest, they've started their own family. They still want to keep coming back to their original family or including their parents and their extended family and their rituals and routines and traditions, because the entire family is built upon these deep rooted traditions. And so I think that even though a lot of kids are going to have times when they go their own way, our job as parents is to create this safe nest full of traditions and habits and rituals and routines and dependency and trust that just makes them want to keep coming back for more as they age and then take you when you're old as a parent into their home. Because I think that's another big issue with parenting, with the value of parents and with the honor of being a father and a mother right now in culture is a. We hide away old people. We hide away old people because we don't want to care for them. We don't want to give them the time, we don't want to give the attention. And then, and I mean, this is probably. This probably delves into the politics that I know you guys love to talk about so much. We kill a whole bunch of little people, like 40 million of them. And so when we say, okay, we care about babies, but, you know, there's several tens of millions that we're willing to kill for convenience's sake each year. And then we care about parents, but when they get old and it's inconvenient, you gotta, like, change their diaper and they stink a little bit. We're gonna hide them away. Right? So I think on both ends of the spectrum, there are some issues that cause us to a certain extent to devalue parents, devalue children.

Well, there's one. I'll move away from the third rail there a little bit, but I'll move to one that's a little bit. Much less of a third rail, but sometimes is also, I think is a big one, is that I think fatherhood has been totally devalued in modern societies.

We just had this conversation.

Watch TV shows and how they display the father.

Modern family, right?

He's an idiot. He's a bumbling whatever. He doesn't really do much. He has no value.

He's like the jester. He. He's. He's a clown. And. Yep. And so. So here's what I think the problem is. And we run into a lot of this, like in the health space, anti aging, longevity, Peter Pan syndrome, right? I'm going to be a boy and have fun and go to, you know, like, for me I'm going to go to Spartan races and triathlons and get the, the stem cell injections in my dick and do all this like, cowboy Peter Pan, I'm gonna be a boy forever type of shit. When in fact, living like that, having all the biohacking toys, having the workouts, being the buddy because you really want your kids to like you and the clown and the jester. Not that there can't be some light, playful aspect of being a father, but I think too many dads are not freaking kings. True leaders, fathers, strong rocks that the family can depend upon. And you know, another part of that too is, is just, you know, welfare parenting, right. So many single parent households with mothers, government steps in and takes the role of father. So dads, a lot of times, they don't even need to be a dad, right, because somebody else is gonna care for them.

A lot of boys running around.

Yeah. And a lot in a lot of the old, you know, cultures. I talked earlier about how things exist for thousands of years oftentimes because we find lots of value. When you go to a lot of these old cultures, it's a, it's almost like a way to brag when you're a father with a lot of kids. Like when men talk to each other, say, how many kids you have? I have three kids. Well, I have four. Like, wow, you know, that's awesome. Whatever. It's the opposite in our culture. If you are, you know, you tell a guy, a buddy of yours that you have three kids and they'll, they'll respond with like, oh, God, that sucks. Yeah, well, well, I'm gonna, you know, I got my, my Corvette and you know, I get to bang hot ch. Chicks all the time. And that sucks that you have to do that kind of stuff. And they laugh about or whatever. It's crazy that we don't prize that anymore. And by the way, you can disagree all you want. The statistics are clear. They're crystal clear. Children raised without fathers are many, many times more likely to end up in all the terrible situations, everything from prison to drug abuse to suicide. We are in a, it's like a pandemic of fatherless societies. It's really, really sad.

And this comes because you were asking about my childhood. My father was somewhat absent, meaning he was not a very high quality time, you know, lots of hugs type of dad. He was off running businesses, starting businesses. He's naturally quiet, naturally introspective, naturally good at being an introvert and kind of off doing his own thing. Like, I tend to be pulled towards his father was the same way. Always locked away in the office, always working or using work as an escape. So coming down to me and this idea of you're not raising your children, you're raising your grandchildren, I have come to the realization, very strong way over the past year or so that if I don't break that cycle, if I continue to, you know, parent through check boxes, whatever, you know, river and Terry, here's your workout is this, is that dad's headed out to LA for eight days. I'll be back and check in on you guys and make sure everything's, you know, going well. And if I am, if I am not a fully present father, if I am not a leader, if I'm not the king of my household, then it's going to show my children the example of the father that a Greenfield father is. And then they go forth and do probably something very similar to what I did. Marry a really strong woman. Because Jess is an amazingly strong woman. She's super independent, self sufficient, even a little bit of that avoidance syndrome versus the attachment syndrome that I have. So she can operate on her own just fine. And it's very easy for me to let her wear the pants in the family, to let her be the leader so I can be a little boy. I'll off pulling on a speedo to go swim in Hawaii in a triathlon. Well, she's at home holding down the fort. And the question I've increasingly been asking myself is, is that what a Greenfield father should be known for? Should a Greenfield father be known for being a playful little boy off having great adventures, married to a really strong woman so the kids are taken care of at home? Or should a Greenfield father be a leader, be a king, be someone who really takes their children under their wings and trains them and spends quality time with them and, and sometimes has them suffer along with him and really, really teaches them how to be a man? And I would say that I think the latter is far more valuable than your kids liking you because you're just like the clown around the house.

That's a very powerful realization. Now, have you found moments recently where you were about to take off and go do something and then you stopped yourself and you go canceled your flight or canceled your trip and said, I'm staying home? I mean, have you had moments like that in this last year where, because you're right, when you have something so deep that it's generations, your father, your grandfather, that that shit's so deeply rooted that that's always Going to be default for you.

It's hard to be aware of.

And I'm. I have the same similar type of thing is to go bury myself into work. And so I have to always kind of check back in. Like, is this me kind of running away without even realizing I'm running away and you know, can I pass on this?

Do you. I didn't have to cancel anything because God bless Covid. That did it all for me. But what I have done, one big change I have made is, and this has been really remarkable in the way it's just transformed my whole week. My approach to work, my approach to productivity, my approach to procrastination, my approach to prioritization is Sundays are full on family Day. Me no calls, no, no work, no, oh, you know, we missed a call on Monday. Let's just shove this one into Sunday. You got time this weekend? I'll ping you this week. And I would find myself sometimes on Sunday, you know, three or four phone calls, playing some catch up work, you know, just getting things done now knowing that Sunday is coming and that's a full on family day. It, it really gives me hyper focus every other day of the week. And then when Sundays roll around, not that I'm not spending quality time with my kids every day, but that's been transformative to have that one day where it is nothing but family and faith focused.

I love, I love that now you've mentioned spirituality and faith a few times and, and I've been on my own and I've been public about my own recent spiritual journey. I used to be very atheist and then I became agnostic. And more recently now I've been pulled to the Christian religion quite a bit and I've learned quite a bit of it. And there was a moment that Justin, Adam, myself and Doug were invited to listen to Bishop Barron and Arthur Brooks speak. And it was one of the most. Arthur Brooks is a very. I don't know if you know who Arthur Brooks is.

A House speaker.

Very, very powerful, effective. Actually one of the most genuine, nice people I've ever met in my entire life. He's one of those people you meet every once in a while that you immediately feel their energy and you want to give them a hug. Just a great guy. And he said something so powerful that literally Justin, Adam and myself and Doug looked at, looked at each other and looked away quickly because all of us were emotional. We were all on the verge of tears. I love that he said something very powerful. And he said about the power of going to Church with your children as a father. And he said something I'll never forget. He said, here you are. If you're a good father. I'm paraphrasing. He says it much better, but here you are a good father. Your children see you as the most powerful person in the world. If you do a good job and you're a good parent, your children look at you as the ultimate role model. And it's not totally. Not unusual for a kid, especially a young kid, to think that their dad.

You're the strongest person ever.

He's the strongest, most powerful, most whatever, which is not a bad thing. You're the protector of the family, you know, so they think. And I remember thinking that about my dad. And he says, to go to church to see the most powerful man in your life, bend a knee and praise and give great. And give, you know, to someone else, basically saying, I am this one thing's servant or this God's servant. He said, what a powerful message. All of us sat there like. Like, yeah, what a very. What a powerful thing to show your child. You know, the.

The perfect. The. The perfect example of a father and a son is God and Jesus. And a perfect example of. Of something that fathers can aspire to is to be as great a father as God. And so when. When you are a good father or you're a powerful father, you're a leader in your home, you're absolutely right. And you show your kids that you still get down on bended knee, that there's still something that you fear, there's still something you honor, there's still something you have a great deal of reverence around. And it is this creator, this greater power, this absolute truth. I think that that also shows kids that there's even a greater rock, there's even a greater foundation. And honestly, I just think the whole idea that there is an absolute truth, that there is absolute morality, in my opinion, that's part of the strong fabric that knits cultures together. And that, well, your foundation is solid, Keeps morality from unraveling.

You're not shakeable.

You have to. You have to have that. The very idea of this country, when it started, there was a period of time when anybody could come here. It didn't matter who you were, where you came from, you could come, you were welcome them. And you think to yourself, how did that work? You got all these different people. And I've heard people say, oh, they're all Europeans. They're all the same. Stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Because they've been at two world wars with each other. They were very different. Germans, Italians, Irish, you know, they were all very, very, very different. They all came here. How did they all get along? They all had a underlying appreciation, respect and belief in liberty and freedom. So this is how they all got along. So that when you say this absolute morality, the only way different people can ever work together and still be very different is if they have one. They have this common thread of something. And that's what this absolute morality. This is why when morality is subjective and not objective, you run into a lot of different problems. But the question I want to ask you, Ben, you're very spiritual, you've mentioned Jesus and God, so obviously very strong Christian. But you're also very analytical, objective, scientific minded individual. So aside from the specifics that you find in Christianity and in your religion, from an objective scientific standpoint, what are the values of having a spiritual practice or a belief system? Are there values? Because these days it seems like that there's constantly. People are saying there's no value in that. It's silly, it's make believe. Why do we even do it? Obviously it's existed in every culture relative. Yeah, every culture forever has had some kind of a strong belief system. So there's obviously value. But what from that standpoint, what are the value. Like, why is that important to have?

Right. Well, well, there, there's two things to consider here. The first is when, when you're talking about science and reducing everything to scientism, if you want to call it, everything must be proven, there must be a reason for everything. If you trace everything back to its ultimate origin, everything must be explainable. And it's very difficult to be a respected authority in a field of something like fitness or nutrition, as kind of like shallow science, as those fields might be considered to be, and to make statements that you want to be respected for when at the same time you have admitted that there comes a certain point, or when you've traced something back from tissue to cell to atom to molecule, to quark, to proton to electron and stripped everything down to its tiniest, tiniest component, the tiniest little thread of existence, you will get to a point where you can either say, well, we're going to keep on digging because, because we're going to figure out what came before this and what came before this and what came before this, we can eventually explain away everything via science. Or you get to a certain point where you throw up your hands and you say, I don't know, it's Magic, something made, like some higher power that I don't understand made this. And I'm just going to have the faith that that happened and resist even the mild arrogance that I might be able to explain away everything in the universe. And that's tricky to be involved in a field that depends upon science at the same time. Essentially say the equivalent of, yeah, I believe in unicorns and fairies and fairy tales and magic, but I'd rather live in a world of magic where there's deep hope that there's a story written for your life, that there's a big guy upstairs watching out for a buddy, that, that this entire universe around us and all the, the wonder of it from, you know, from, from smoked clams and cannabis to sourdough bread and a good red wine, to psilocybin and dumbbells and everything, these are all wonderful, wonderful works of creation that we can simply enjoy and not necessarily feel that there's an extreme need to have to explain away via science. And so that's one part of really the difficulties getting to the point where you just say, yeah, I believe in faith, I believe in magic, so, so, you know, so you know, judge me for it. And then the other part of it, when it comes to the value of this, you know, we know that there's a lot of data out there about how people who, who are churchgoers tend to have reduced all cause risk of mortality. You know, maybe that's the community, maybe it's the tiny thimbleful glass of hermetic inducing red wine every Sunday, who knows? But we know that for a fact. We know that gratitude lowers blood pressure, improves sleep, increases empathy, increases self control. We know that this self examination practice increases the amount of actual productivity and impact that you make with your life. We know that having a purpose statement actually is associated with higher profile of mood state scores and greater happiness. When you go down the list of all these spiritual disciplines and you read wonderful books by guys like Richard Foster and David Wallace on all the spiritual disciplines, Gratitude, service, community worship, solitude, purpose in life, silence, abstinence. Yeah, that's a big absence. Everything you wind up with this list of things that ultimately have deep physical and physiological and psychological which these people can't face, right?

It's not because they had a scientific.

Right, Even fasting, right? Fasting did not originate from science, it originated from religion.

And it was a spiritual for spiritual health, not for physical health, right? That's what it was for, you know, it's fun. So for me, what kind of got me you know, to move in this direction was a few different things, but. Well, one of them were some of the ideas that seemed to work so well are not obvious. For example, the idea that. And this comes from religion. The idea that all people have. Are born with inalienable rights, which is, you know, it's in our founding. What a weird, radical, crazy idea. Totally not obvious. For most of human history, there were kings and queens and peasants and slaves and nobody who would come up with such an insane thing from a reasonable, logical standpoint. You can look around at people and observe and obviously that's not true. We're all so different. Some people are born this way. So where did that come from? And it came from religion. So that was one of the things that helped me move in that direction.

That is the gospel, right? God sent his son to die so that the burden and all the shame and all the sin and all the shocking that we are born with and that we create and that we live with every single day could be taken upon the back of the extreme suffering and pain. Literally, a God from the sky came down to take on. And it says very clearly in the Bible, which I consider to be a source of absolute truth, that that was not just done for, like the Jews, not just done for the Gentiles, not just done for the Asians, not just done for the South Americans. Every. Every single person, right? The grocer, the slave, the free person, you name it. Everybody is on equal ground when it comes to all of us.

And it's entirely not obvious and reasonable to think that anybody would come up with that. Especially anybody with any kind of power. Why would you give away.

Right?

So it's very interesting to me.

The ultimate act of humility.

Yeah. Now, I understand that it is improved that there's a supernatural God. I get that. But, boy, the. The pragmatic. How pragmatic it is, how effective it is at helping create, you know, societies that we value. Boy, is that crazy. The other part is this, is that, you know, let's talk about science for a second.

Quantum physics is magic.

Yeah, let's talk about that.

Yeah, it kind of is. The observer effects. It's unexplainable. It's kind of magical.

But let's talk about science for a second. Science is. I can. I can easily make the argument that it's one of the most valuable, powerful. The scientific method has got to be one of the most powerful tools that we've ever come up with. But here's the problem with science. You mentioned scientism it has no morality. It's not supposed to. Science doesn't work if you apply a morality to it. It's supposed to be purely objective. But if you don't have people who have an idea of morality within themselves, here's what science turns into. It turns into not. Should I? But can I. Is this possible? Like, okay, let's hybrid humans with gorillas and see how strong they can get. Let's create. Let's have children out of the womb, because that's convenient. Let's, you know what? All these things.

Human monkey embryos.

Yeah. Oh, you know, eugenics. Eugenics is an idea. It's such a terrible idea, right, that we need to get rid of the genetically bad people to have a perfect race from a scientific standpoint and objective for the collective, it makes perfect.

Once science becomes absolute truth, you. You are on a very slippery slope towards an absence of morality because there. There is no consideration of whether something is right or wrong, just whether something is true or false. And what's really interesting is a book that I recently read. It was when we were in. Actually, it was when the boys and I were in Dubai, I think. I was reading this book on the plane and I sent you this book, Jess, and I'm forgetting. It's about how every single culture has this one great God in the sky who actually is this source of truth and is this source of right and wrong. Many, many cultures have no idea who Jesus was, a gospel, sacrifice, sin, any of that stuff. But they know there's this one God who has created a deep truth and morality that goes beyond. And it's going to drive me nuts that I can't remember. I can't remember what the name of the book is, but essentially what it comes down to is there is head knowing and there is heart knowing. Head knowing is science, right? Like, I know whether something is true or false. I can use reasoning, I can use logic. I can explain away the observer effect by maybe talking about how, like, particles would interact with the photon. And there's got to be a way to explain this. And then heart knowing is basically just. I just know, because I know, I know that I should not walk up on the street to the person holding a wonderful aromatic loaf of sourdough bread, hold a gun to their head, pull the trigger, and walk away with their bread. Because I wanted it. And that felt right to me. Right? Everybody knows in their heart, like, that's the heart knowing. You know, even you may not be able to explain, but you know deep down inside because you could Try to explain what you see. You could say, oh, you did, because that makes you happy. And. And that's. And, you know, morality comes from what makes you happy, but did it make the other person happy?

Here's an interesting thought. Experimental experiment along those lines. It's like you ask somebody, if you could go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby, would you do it? And some people might say, well, yeah, it would save lots of people. If you really think about it, he's not Hitler yet, right? He's a baby. He hasn't done anything yet. So your heart knows that would actually be wrong. Even though theoretically I could prevent all this other, you know, stuff from happening. It's wisdom.

It's also a very unrealistic scenario.

Never actually run into it, but okay, so fitness is my expertise. So I like to take things to fitness because that's where I understand the most. I would say, and there's a lot of wisdom in fitness, and I'll explain oftentimes. So we do episodes called Quas, right, Where people ask us questions and we answer those questions. And there's a question that pops up all the time, which is, if scientists invented a pill that made you fit, lean and healthy, regardless of what you ate and what you did, would that be a good thing? Now for somebody who's been, who's took this seriously, understood this study, this worked with people for well over two decades, I have developed a level of wisdom with fitness that is beyond the. You get fit, you build muscle, you burn body fat. And so when I hear that, I understand that, yeah, you'll get people who are lean, more muscle mobile and that kind of stuff. But they're not going to get the true value.

The value is empty now.

The value is in the discipline and the abstinence and the journey.

It's the journey, not the destination.

It's always the journey. And so that's something that's totally different from the reason and the logic, because the science would say the pill would solve everybody's problem. But here's another example. You have people who seem to have everything that you think that you would want from a logical standpoint. Money, money, power, sex, drugs, fame. And their suicide rate is through the roof. What does that tell you?

I would take that pill daily if it was on top of a mountain. I had to climb up the mountain every morning to get the pill. I'll take it.

Exactly. So I want to take a left turn here or whatever, turn here, and ask you a little bit about homeschooling. I know you guys are big homeschoolers.

First, let's talk about Jess's shirt. Did you watch Tiger King?

That's a great shirt.

I had to point that out.

I've only seen a couple.

Okay.

I don't even know what's hierarchy. Free Joe Exotic.

Yeah, it's Free Joe exotic.

I'm glad you don't know. It's a total waste of your time. So. So you mentioned unschooling, which is a form of homeschooling. I had friends who were big in the homeschooling world, and when I started training them, that's how I met them. And I was very skeptical when they would tell me about what they did. They were unschoolers, and I thought, oh, boy, I hope their kid doesn't turn out. Whatever. Anyway, he turned out to be one of the best young men I've ever met. I thought he would be lazy and he'd, oh, he's just gonna play video games all day. Now this kid is entrepreneur, started his own podcast. He's become a personal trainer. He's a go getter. Very, very balanced, well adjusted young man.

No friends, he's depressed.

None of that stuff, Right?

Yeah, right.

None of that stuff. Now, now there's a lot of confusion and a lot of myth around or just incorrect knowledge or information around homeschooling. And along those lines, homeschooling has exploded, not just recently because of COVID but over the last 10 years, it's exploded a lot. First off, why do you think that is? Why do you think more and more parents. And it's growing exponentially. This is real now. In fact, the public school system is actually quite worried about the fact that more and more people are homeschooling. Why do you think it's exploded so much? And then I do want to get into unschooling and what that means.

I actually, I posed this question to one of my girlfriends whose kids are in public school, and I. During all of this stuff in recent laws that have been passed in Washington, and I said to her, I was like. And I said, don't take this as offensive, but I was like, how do you feel dropping your kid off at the state every day and allowing them to pour themselves into your child rather than you pouring yourself into your child? Like, that's a really honest question. And I wasn't trying to be offensive or rude, but. And say that you're doing it wrong. I just really want to pour my values and my. My. Yeah, my values into my child rather than allowing the state to pour their values into the, into all of our children.

I think that that is, it's good that a parent would want to be with their kids more and want more quality.

It's not about being with your kids.

More or want to your value system want to be able to instill more of their family's values into their children. But I think that the human psychology of someone else being able to educate a child and you could drop them off and go to work and fulfill your noslow's hierarchy while somebody else does the work actually would make homeschooling a less popular notion. And so I think the reason that homeschooling has become more popular is multifactorial, but a big one is technology.

Yeah.

Remote working.

Yes. Like the ease of being able to find information, find teachers, find tutors, have that be scalable and affordable has made it so that you can homeschool anyone, anywhere in the world. And you can, you can, I mean compared to even what you could do 20 years ago, have an amazing, amazing education for your child. And then I think that when you pair that with a little bit of social unrest, you know, increasing school violence, increasing bullying, increasing amounts of depression and loneliness and suicidal tendencies among children who are simply in an effed up social environment, in many cases in public school or even in some cases a private school type of situation, dictates that. I think a lot of parents are aware that a school might not be the best place, a traditional school might not be the best place for their kids to be during the day. And as that awareness grows, what I've seen are, I've seen a growth of homeschooling, but I've seen this real shift towards the notion of creative free play, AKA unschooling, AKA find out what your kids passions and interests are, find out what makes them truly excited, what they really want to study, what they're truly interested in. Then surround them with as many arts and crafts and tutors and computer programs and games and activities and museum tickets and everything that they would need to be able to pursue that passion. And then step back and just lightly guide them. You know, make sure they've got a, they've got somebody to drive them to the place they want to be driven to when they've got some cooking class or make sure that they know how to log into the computer for some class they want to take online. And so lightly guide them and then just surround them. And then the other important part of unschooling, and this is very similar to that love and logic approach, right? Like use love and logic, but also discipline. So unschool. But also realize there are certain skills that your child is going to highly benefit from having experienced in life that they might not know about yet when they're 6 or 8 or 10 years old. You know, Naval Ravikant, great modern day thinker and philosopher. You know, I love a lot of the work that he does. He says there's essentially five key tools that a child needs to be able to excel in no matter what career that they go into. And those are reading, writing, right? So being able to consume information at an efficient pace. Writing, being able to express thought clearly in written form on paper or via keyboard arithmetic. Being able to just do basic figuring, whether it's geometry or building or woodworking or anything that involves basic math skills. And then finally logic or computer programming, right. Which are technically synonymous, right. Like logic slash computer programming and then rhetoric persuasion, if you can weave in sales, reading, writing, math, logic slash persuasion or logic slash computer programming and rhetoric persuasion, then your child is really going to be set for life. And so we have 12 core subjects that Washington state requires us to show that our child has checked the box for. Like they did chemistry this week. Well, yeah, sure, they learned how to make a ravioli, right. And that counts as kitchen chemistry. So we'll classify that as chemistry. But then I'm also very careful to ensure that even if they. Because there's some weeks they don't want to take their online math nasium class, they probably would not be doing logic puzzles right now if dad wasn't paying him five bucks every time they successfully completed a really hard logic puzzle in this logic book that I got for them. So there are certain little things I nudge them towards that I know they aren't super interested in in, but that are going to serve them well in life. And then everything else is weekly family meeting. What are you guys passionate about? What do you want to learn? One local assistant who helps to drive them around and get them to different activities. One virtual assistant who kind of helps us keep track of all their different passions and interests. And which block of the year are we going to kind of focus on? Whatever woodworking and which block of the year we're going to focus on building the tree fort and which block are we going to do more wilderness survival and plant foraging and we just keep, keep a running list of all the things they're interested in, then weave those in throughout the year. And it's scary because there is no model. There is no proven model. There's no one right way to do.

It here and there.

And you want, you know, you almost want like a set pattern, habit or routine, because that's what we all grew up with, with schooling, once you realize it doesn't have to be that way and that kids actually learn really well through this concept of free creative play.

So that's what works really well. So essentially unschooling is no real hard structure, no curriculum. And you know, here's the thing, here's my Argum argument in support of what you're saying. I'm glad you explained it and you did it so well. Modern society is a lot of specialization. You go to work and you're probably really good at a couple things. And that's how modern society works. You don't need to know everything or lots of little things. You kind of need to be really good at one thing. And for anybody who's, I mean, anybody who has kids, you know, when your kid is into something, like when my boy was four years old, you know, he loved Thomas the train, the train set, the little trains and there's like, I don't know, 300 figurines or maybe thousands, right. And so I saw that he was really into it and he build the trains. So I bought him. He might, he had to have at least 100 and something trains. He knew every single name. Every single. At four years old, every. There were two trains that were twins. I could not tell the difference. He could. It took me days to figure out how he was doing it. And you know what it was? It was the direction of the eyebrows was slightly off on one or the other. And it's because he was into it. You know, they're like little tiny sponges.

So what are you seeing unfolding with your kids right now? What do you, what are you noticing? Are you, can you, do you guys feel like you can kind of predict what they're going to be into or what they're going to do when they get older by now?

Well, they've been saying what they want to do since they were like three or four.

They both love art and writing. They love cooking, they have a cooking podcast. And even above, like cooking and food prep, they like to create art. Both of their purpose statements are based around inspiring people to joy and adventure with their art and with their writing. River does a little bit more of the writing, Taran does a little bit more of the art. And they really want to do a lot more publishing, publishing of their own books. They want to live In Moscow, Idaho, 90 minutes from our house, where all their nieces and nephews reside. And they want to live down there and make books and kind of have, like a little coffee shop that they run during the day and then write books, you know, in the evening or in their off time. And that's what they want to do right now is, you know, be authors and own a coffee shop, which, you know, that might change a year from now. They might want to be professional tennis players. You never know. But you just. You sit back and you just let them. Them pursue their passions and resist the urge to push them towards the stuff that you really thought they were going to be good at. Because living vicariously through your children is so easy to do.

It's cruel. How are you guys teaching them finances right now?

They've got these books called the Tuttle Twin books that are a little bit more of kind of a libertarian, conservative approach to the economy and the finances. They go through each month with their. Actually, they're once a week right now with their podcast producer and manager. The financials, what they're bringing in from each affiliate, what percentage the affiliates are.

Oh, great.

They go grocery shopping with mom, with our assistant to help manage things like finding deals and finding discounts. Same thing on Amazon. They leave the tip when we go to restaurants. Remember, we're playing card games. They're in charge of keeping track of the, you know, the numbers and the digits and.

And it's great because it's all real life. I mean, this is all stuff that you're gonna have to deal with.

Yeah.

So do you guys allow them to be. Buy whatever they want freely or how does that work for them? Saving and spending.

So any pretty big savers? Yeah, they're. They're big into saving, but again, we are, too. Like, we're just not. Like, we drive a Toyota Highlander and Dodge pickup, and we don't live very fancy, flashy life, you know, flashy lifestyle. This shirt cost me 10 bucks from the thrift store. And Justin makes our furniture. And like, we. We live pretty simple. And so I think they just. They've never really grown up being spendthrifts. We don't live with the spirit of scarcity, but we also just. We're not spent. We don't spend a lot of money on random items. But the understanding in our house is that if it's related to education, especially if it's a book, no questions asked, I will buy it for them. I will provide them anything that really fuels something that they want to Learn about something they're passionate about, about if it's a Nerf gun, if it's a Lego toy, whatever. Then what they do is they send to my assistant Marge, who does a lot of our shopping, what they would like, and they have their email addresses. She finds the best deal and she comes back and tells us how much it is. Then they decide if they want to get it. If they do, she then transfers from their bank accounts where all their affiliate income from their podcast goes, where any money that they make, gifts that they get for their birthday or Christmas or whatever, and she'll do a transfer until they know that when they bought that, it gets transferred. You know, it goes. It's purchased using our Amazon account, but then the transfer occurs from their account into ours.

So they're covering and they have the freedom to. I mean, if they decide to go on a crazy addiction of Nerf guns and buy them every day, technically could. With their own money.

They. They could, they could. They could do whatever they want with their own money. But again, like, because they see mom, I mean, they. They see me spending, and this is almost too much, you know, they'll see me spending 10 minutes deliberating over for which AA batteries to get on Amazon because one pack's like $2 cheaper. So we're pretty aware of spending in our home. So I think they're pretty used to just the value of saving, investing. I haven't taken them through any investing courses or anything like that yet, but that's awesome.

One thing that I've heard from people, this one's actually quite a disturbing comment I'll get on homeschooling is they'll say things like, like, well, there's a lot of parents out there that are really bad. The kids shouldn't be, you know, the parents. A lot of parents shouldn't school their kids and they should go. And to me, this is always such a disturbing thing to hear because of course there's bad parents out there. But if you added it all up and you did the math and study, I would trust a parent raising their kid over the state, raising your kid. Mainly because parents usually care about their.

Kids or co op or collective, you know, homeschooling group, like, like there are ways that a parents can be involved in their children's education. And if they don't have the heart of a teacher or they're frankly a shitty teacher, like, there. There are ways that you can homeschool and not be. No, Jess is a wonderful teacher for arts or crafts or gardening, but she's not going to teach the kids calculus or science because she hasn't learned that stuff in college. She doesn't have a passion for it. So that's a big part is whatever your kids are interested in, you find the person that's going to do the best job teaching them that it might not be you, and that's okay.

So a little speculation.

Do you.

How do you think. What do you think is going to happen with the current education model now that formal education, the cost of it is it's been exploding for years, far faster than inflation. Schools are now either shutting down, not kids can't go there, so kids are. Are at home, or you have to go to school and you have to wear a mask and do this whole thing, which can be very anxiety inducing, I'm sure in children, they don't know what's going on. Or you have schools that are saying, hey, like Harvard, for example, said next year, all online. Oh, by the way, it's still $50,000 a year tuition. We're not changing the cost. Speculating. Moving forward, do you think that we're witnessing the beginning of the end of the way that school has been administered because of all these stresses now and then, of course, technology making it so inexpensive to transmit and receive information. What do you. What do you see moving forward with that?

I. I personally think 100 years from now, we're going to look back and laugh at about the past 60 years or so of education that we've tried to hang on to the threads of that is all based off the agricultural revolution and the design of factory workers, and it's laughable. I really don't anticipate that model sticking around much longer. And who knows, we might be in the time right now during the COVID pandemic where it's a full on light bulb moment, and people really do realize, oh, shit, I was paying $50,000 to go to Harvard. And they've just admitted that everything that I'm getting from there, I could literally be doing from a beach in Thailand while simultaneously running a surface.

Or for significantly less.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy. Well, you guys are. You're always a great guest, man, and I loved having you on Jessa.

Thank you.

Yeah, this is great. You guys are both very, very good people. I love hearing about how you guys are at home and how everything's going on, and I wish you guys continued blessings and success with, with everything.

Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks for letting us emerge from our. Our little hole in Washington State.

You see, people, well, you know you're always welcome.

All that from under our rock.

You're always welcome on our podcast.

It's like. It's like a direct flight.

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent.

We just gotta get you guys up to Spokane some time. We're due.

We're due. We haven't been there in a while, so. All right, guys. Thanks.

All right, thanks, guys. Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to. To use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.