Healthy Eating & Fitness For Kids, How Unschooling Works, Top Book Recommendations, Common Kitchen Mistakes & Much More: Ben Greenfield Puts His Sons In The Hot-Seat (The Official River & Terran Greenfield Interview).

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, you really never stop learning. Sometimes it's true, you do learn something new every day.

Even though it might not be something that you wake up out of bed super duper interested in, it is important to just learn some of these things that will serve you later on in life.

It just gives you a better grasp of what is around you. Oh, that species is poisonous. I should probably not touch that.

I'm just super grateful for you guys.

I'm grateful for you.

No, I'm grateful for you. No, I'm more grateful.

How about we're okay, we're equal.

Equal help, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. Well, folks, I might be biased, but I think that on today's podcast, I have interviewed my two favorite guests of all time, namely my twin 12 year old sons. We talk about healthy eating and fitness for kids, how unschooling works, their top book recommendations, common kitchen mistakes, a whole lot more. We just delve deep into the life of being Greenfield. A son of me. I don't know if that sounded right, but a son of me. My kids are amazing. They're unschooled, they're hyper, creative. They can survive in the wilderness with a knife and a backpack and a wool blanket. They know more kitchen and cooking tricks than most adults I know, and they're generally crushing life. So I figured I'd get them on the show. And this might be a good one for you to listen to with your own kids, if you have kids. Because if I don't say so myself, they've got some interesting things to share. So I hope that you enjoy this episode. The show notes for everything that we talk about on the show today you can find@BenGreenfieldFitness.com GoGreenFields you can. You can also find their podcast, which is a cooking podcast, @gogreenfields.com all right, let's see. Do you guys have a good morning, by the way?

Yep.

Get some breakfast down the hatch, because we've got a super duper enormous amount of cognitive lifting to do right now. So did you have breakfast?

No.

You didn't have breakfast?

Not yet.

Do you guys not have breakfast a lot?

Sometimes we have breakfast sometimes, but I don't know. I'm not as hungry in the morning.

We're recording, by the way. Now. I know like a, like a go to, like crush the day for a really good day of school or adventure for you that you would have for breakfast.

Definitely some fresh baked bread with some jam and butter and then like bacon and eggs and. Yeah, bacon and eggs too. Mostly eggs though.

So bacon, eggs, and then sourdough bread.

Yep.

That's a pretty good breakfast.

It is really good.

How come you guys don't do smoothies like dad does?

I like different textures of food a little bit more.

Yeah.

I also like the different flavors in different, like different foods. Not all kind of blended up in one.

Didn't you guys do an episode on smoothies, though?

No, I don't. Yes, we did. We was organifi smoothies and we made like one that was red and white and green.

Yeah, I remember you did a lot of layers and a lot of toppings. It is kind of interesting because I know that you guys and mom sometimes get mad at me after dinner when I'm cleaning up and I just put everything into one pot. Like, I'll take the steak and the leftover rice and leftover salad and I'll be like, you know what, it's all going to wind up in the stomach anyways and I'll just put it in one pot and put it in the fridge. You guys kind of get annoyed by that, don't you?

Well, it was funny because everything just sticks together. So one time you got us meringues from Florida, Sal's, which is. We had a podcast on that.

Yeah. Amazing French restaurant, of all places, north Idaho. And it's actually like when I first went there. Sorry to take you off track. But when I first went there, I thought it was going to be like, no offense to Idahoans, but like people from north Idaho trying to do fancy French cooking. And it's actually like legitimately good. People travel from all over the place to go to this restaurant on a golf course called Florida sells fancy French restaurant, but they make good macaroons. What did I do with the macaroons?

You mix them with the duck. I think mom got a pasta and we had like soggy macaroon cravings.

That's right. They handed me my duck confit because I didn't finish my duck confit, which is an amazing dish of. Of duck cooked in duck fat. And I think I just dropped your macaroons right on top of that.

Yeah. So little soggy, but still really good.

So maybe it's. Maybe it's my fault for destroying your guys perception of what a good smoothie is by just taking wonderful food and mixing it all together into go boxes. The thing I wanted to ask you before we get too far into today's podcast is how do people generally tell you apart? Like, especially when they're just listening to you via audio. Like, how would you say people could best tell who's who?

Well, we tried to say, like, river, and then, like, say what?

But that's your talking right now, river.

What do you like about this dish? Or something like that? And then he says, well, so it's kind of.

You mean like when you're doing your podcast, their names.

Yeah, yeah. Each other's names.

Yeah.

And then in person, I feel like after, like, the first month or so, you just kind of get used to it. Yeah.

Is it. Is it ever kind of odd when you're a twin, as far as people sometimes mistaking you for your twin? I mean, case in point, even when we were just setting up to record this podcast, I'm sitting there tooling them with the microphone, and one of my sons is standing beside me. I'm like, taren, Taren, Taran. And he's like, dad, I'm right here because I was trying to call Tara to come down to record. Is that ever weird for you guys? Have you just gotten used to it?

I'm pretty used to it by now, so I don't really mind at all. Because it's not. Yeah, it doesn't. Because if they're looking at you, you can kind of tell that they're talking to you, not Taryn, who's not in the same room. So.

Yeah. Okay, well, let's get into some interesting things for. For folks. And they'll just have to, I guess, try to differentiate between you guys if you ever. If you. Every once in a while, to establish your own independence, want to say who you are when you're talking. Okay, this is Tara. This is what I think you guys can. Even though I don't think that might not matter that much as long as we're putting out good information. Just hear what you have to say. So the first thing I want to ask you, just kind of an easy question. Although I guess I already kind of asked you what you like to have for breakfast. Books. You guys read a lot. Everybody in our house reads, except maybe mom, because mom is not as into books, but even she listens to books a lot. And since. In the 18 years since mom and I have been married, she has started to read a lot more than she did when we were first married, just because she grew up dyslexic and hating reading and not a fan of books. But she's reading more. I read a ton, obviously, and you guys like, your book library is almost as big as mine in my office. So I'm curious because you guys do read a lot, from fiction to nonfiction to personal development to health. What would be some of your top go to books that you've read so far this year that you think more people should know about? Particularly?

We really like graphic novel stories, like of mini stories, inside of a graphic novel.

How would you describe a graphic novel to people who.

It's basically a comic book, but like, it's a book basically with pictures in it. So, yeah, it's like a book movie, but it's. It's not like a picture book, but it's kind of more complex and there's more art.

What would be an example of a good graphic novel?

Calvin and Hobbes is a really classic one, but that's a lot of smart humor. That's a comic, though.

Yeah, yeah. What's the difference between a comic book and a graphic novel?

Comics are short little stories that are like three panels or sometimes like 12 panels long.

Right. Conducive to say, like the Sunday newspaper or something like that.

But then graphic novels is like a. It's like a comic, like a hundred or more or so pages, like panels.

It's a. It's a full. A full book. Yeah, that is. That is illustrated in comic book style.

Yeah.

In terms of the. The text bubbles or the speech bubbles and, and the graphic imagery. But it's. But it's an entire book.

Yeah. So I kind of like graphic novels a lot because it mixes my art interest with my reading interest in a way, which is really fun.

What would be some of the better graphic novels that you think people should check out?

I think Wings of Fire, which is a chapter book series, they started making out graphic novels, which are pretty good. It's about dragons and stuff. And then we recently just got into a new one called Asterix, which is an older one.

Yeah, I remember Asterix.

Yeah. Yeah, that's an older one.

Have you ever heard of the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman?

No.

It's supposed to be extremely good. You know, a lot of Neil Gaiman's books are good, but Tim Ferriss first turned me on to Neil Gaiman and recommended his audio version of the Graveyard Book. And when I looked into it, it turns out that there's a graphic novel version of the Graveyard Book that's supposed to be fantastic. I don't know if you guys have read it yet, have you?

No, not yet.

Okay. That's one we may have to add to the list. What are some other books that would go outside the realm of graphic novels that, that you found? You know, whether books. So, so here's the deal. Just so people know, every week dad will get a book from my bookshelf, sometimes a few books, so that you guys have a choice and you have the assignment as part of your unschooling and we'll get into unschooling later to write a two page report on that book, to, to read it typically from. From a Sunday to a Sunday over the course of a week, and then to write a report on it. With the idea being that not only does it allow dad to kind of open you guys up to a lot of the interesting things that I'm reading, you know, seeing where I folded over pages and what I've highlighted, but it also very similar to how dad assigns you your week worth of workouts on a Sunday night. It's a way of training the reading muscle, a way of at a young age. And this is one of the reasons that dad wanted to begin giving you those weekly book report assignments. That idea that, oh, I can read a book a week. I mean, dad got to the point where I was reading, you know, a book a week when I was a kid and I got up to a book a day, which I, you know, a habit which I continued for like 20 years. And so, you know, I wanted you guys to really realize that not only is writing a muscle, that if you do it regularly you become very proficient at, but reading is also a muscle. I mean, the more you read, the better you get at comprehending information and getting through information at a relatively rapid yet efficient pace in which you understand the information. And so you do these weekly book reports, although sometimes we'll, we'll do like a document or like you guys just did Christ review. I like that one documentary. But in terms of those book reports particularly, you know, you've done Jordan Peterson and Naval Rabicant and you know, a whole host of different books. But what would be any that come to mind is particularly interesting for you?

Well, my first book report I really liked on the Hero's Journey or the Writer's Journey. I just like reading because I like writing. So it was just really cool to see like all the scenes that go into writing and you can basically pick a book off the shelf and find all the steps that are made into a book.

Right? You're right. The Writer's Journey. I think that was formative for me, particularly when I got into writing fiction. Like when I wrote that Fiction book, the Forest. It's a book by Christopher Vogler. And a lot of people might be familiar with the Hero's Journey, right. Where someone's living in an ordinary world and they have a call to adventure and they cross the threshold and they meet with mentors and friends and eventually enemies, and then they have some kind of an ordeal in which they defeat the enemy. Sometimes they're killed and resurrected, then they return with the elixir. And it's this pattern, this predictable pattern that is something you'll find in almost all of the most successful movies out. You know, like, all the most successful Disney and Pixar films are all the Hero's Journey, if you look at them carefully, the Story of Jesus Christ. Right. It's like the classic hero's journey, but the writer's journey is how to take that same concept and make a book out of those steps that resonate so deeply with people. And if you wanted, like a skeleton to write a successful book, or in your guys's case, because I know you're working on a comic book right now, if you were to have your main character go through those steps of the Hero's Journey, it really appeals to people. And so that book that you read, river the Writer's Journey, was one that you enjoyed.

That was a longer report. Yeah, so I liked it a lot. That was like three pages, five pages.

Yeah, it's. It's interesting. Have you found that for either of you guys, in the comic books and graphic novels that you're working on, have you been able to weave in some elements of the hero's journey or the writer's journey into those? Or do you think about that?

Yeah, usually when I'm reading the book, sometimes it just comes to mind, I'm like, well, this is kind of the scene of the hero's journey, like the elixir or something like that or. Right, yeah.

What about these comic books and graphic novels and then we'll get back to books. Appeals to you so much because, I mean, you guys are working on these things almost every day. You know, one of you kind of like Captain Underpants, you know, river does a lot of the writing. Taren does a lot of the illustrating.

I read those a lot, too.

Yeah. So what is it about comic books and graphic novels that intrigue you so much?

Well, there's always a different style, which is kind of interesting because.

Artistic style.

Yeah. And if there's more artists working on it, sometimes you can see where, like. Or a different day they started working on it, because with Words, you can't really tell that. But, like, in a comic book, you can see on one page, they might have worked that the day before, but on the next page, the style is just, like, maybe the tiniest bit of difference, which kind of is interesting. And I just think that it's cool to look at the pictures and differentiate what you think it would look like with what the artist thought it would look like. And at the same time, also, like, know the story.

Yeah. It is interesting because you'd think something different would happen mentally when you're reading a graphic novel versus a regular book. Because, say, if I read Lord of the Rings, I'm forced to imagine and create all those characters inside of my own head in almost a sort of, like, dreamlike imagery.

Yeah.

And with graphic novels, you know, very similar to a movie, the imaging is done for you by the producer or by the author, and it's kind of interesting. I'd love to see what happens to the brain, particularly when reading a graphic novel versus a book. Because there's a very interesting book that I just read called the Lost Language of Plants. And it gets into this idea of how television destroyed dreaming. Television destroyed dreaming. And what that book highlights is the fact that when we are parked in front of a box that for thousands of years of human development, humans never would have experienced this box that has all the images, all the sounds in very real life, very similar to what we would have experienced during a dream. But now the dreaming is sort of done for us by a screen. And this book, the Lost Language of Plants, actually gets into some evidence that humans are dreaming less. We're dreaming in less. Less lucidity, less colors, less of all that memory consolidation and neuronal growth that occurs during a normal dream cycle. Because in people who watch television quite a bit, which fortunately we don't do, but people who are watching television every night before they go to bed, it's almost like the dreams are done for them. And it kind of makes me wonder how the brain responds to graphics. Novel versus real book. Do you guys feel like your brains work differently with a real book versus a novel?

Well, I really like reading the book. I always like reading the book, the chapter book, before I read the graphic novel sometimes, because then it's kind of cool to have your imagination and then look at what the artist thought of what the book looked like. Yeah, that's always kind of fun.

Yeah. Sometimes it bites you in the butt, though, when you read a really, really good book and you establish these wonderful characters and. And landscapes in your mind and then you see the movie and it's entirely different than what you would have imagined, like how Bilbo Baggins might have looked or how Gandalf might have looked if it were Lord of the Rings, for example. And you know, for me personally, I watched the first Lord of the Rings and you guys watched all of them, didn't you? Yeah, yeah, I watched the first one and I was like, I'm not watching the other ones because it almost destroyed the book for me. And so I just decided, you know what? I'm happy as a clam with these images sitting inside my head the way I would have imagined them now. Writer's journey, that's one that, and I do think that's excellent for anybody listening in. I think that's a great, great book for producers of books or producers of movies, shows, anything like that in general. Taran, how about you?

I liked the Almanac of Novel Ravikant. That was really interesting. And there was a lot of like, ideas and different ways to do things and it was very, it was an easier read, but at the same time was kind of complex, which was kind of cool.

Yeah, Naval Ravikant is. He's kind of a modern day philosopher thinker. He's a friend of mine and he has a wonderful Twitter feed where he kind of has these short, pithy statements that are also full of deep wisdom when you look at them and kind of ponder a little bit more, integrate more what he has to say. I read that book when it came out and it was like a dollar on Kindle. And I breezed through it pretty quickly, but at the same time took so much interesting information out of it. I thought, man, you guys would really love some of this wisdom. Like there was, there was a guy I used to read called Charlie Munger. Charlie is the business associate of one of the richest men on the face of the planet and one of arguably the most successful investors who has ever lived, Warren Buffett. And his right hand man who helps him out a lot with his decision making is Charlie Munger. And there's this book that I really enjoyed growing up. I read it, I think three times in college called the Almanac of Charlie Munger. And this book is very similar. You know, all, all of the, the wisdom in the sayings of Naval Ravikant very similar to the wisdom in the sayings of Charlie Munger kind of all rolled into one.

Yeah.

And you know, was there anything in particular that you took out of that book, Taran, that you can recall?

I was really Amazed how many books he recommended in the back of his book. It was really big and was almost like the same size of the actual book.

Right? He reads a lot.

Yeah, there was a lot of books in there. But I also liked how the book was, like, played out where he. They put down the quote that would be like, in the chapter. So then it was almost like they would break down that quote for like an entire chapter, maybe two quotes.

Right?

Just really amazing.

Right? Exactly. Like the ability to be able to take one saying, you know, such as, as a man thinketh and really get into how that influences one's entire life. You know, this idea of manifestation and thought and planning. And one of the things that I really like about Naval is he has this essay that I'll link to in the show notes. By the way, everything that river and Taryn and I talk about, like, all the books we mentioned, their own cooking show, their podcast, they have a podcast. We'll get more into that in a little bit. I'm going to keep all the show notes. If you guys are listening in, go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com GoGreenfields that's BenGreenfieldFitness.com go greenfields. And I'll link to all the books and everything else that we discuss, including this essay that I read by Naval Ravikant that says that no matter what you're going to do in life, like, no matter what career that you're going to engage in, whether it is medicine or engineering, or whether you're going to be an astronaut or an author or a lawyer or whatever, there are five key core subjects that if you are proficient in those, you will succeed in just about anything in life from a career standpoint. Number one is reading or being able to digest information at an efficient, somewhat. Somewhat rapid pace and understand it, you know, Hence, for example, you know, one of the reasons that you guys do, you guys read a book a week, and you read a lot more than a book a week. But as far as the books that data science to you, you read a book a week. The second is writing. The ability to be able to express one's thoughts in writing clearly and to be able to communicate in written form, preferably long form. Written form. You guys know what I mean when.

I say long form, like more than one page or more than, like, a.

Paragraph, more than like a tweet. Right? It seems like people's attention spans are getting shorter and shorter as we communicate with, like, very short Instagram posts or short tweets. And the Kind of the history of doing longer essays, longer, more meaningful, deeper dive books that people really engage with in a deeper, more meaningful way. We've kind of lost some of that in a culture that has become more tuned to, like, short pieces of information. And accompanied along with that, all the notifications from Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and your friend, everything else, it's really shortened attention spans and allowed us to get distracted easily. But this idea of being able to write and read and be able to write and read in kind of like a deep and engaged way, those are two of the things that Naval says are going to really allow you to succeed just about anywhere that you go in life. And then the other three are logic and. Or computer programming. Would you guys be able to describe what you would think logic or computer programming would be?

Oh, you go first. Logic would be being able to think logically and. Well, I guess that's not a very good explanation, but just being able to think of ways to fix problems if they come up quickly.

Or being able to reason in a rational manner, such as A equals B, B equals C, therefore A equals C. Right. Or to be able to say something like, all dogs are brown. That animal is brown, therefore that animal is a dog. Would that be logically accurate? No, no, it's a logical fallacy. Because there might be other animals that are also brown, and that's a very simple example. But being able to form thoughts like that in your head, really, that is what computer programming is. Computer programming is just a whole bunch of if this, then that, or if this occurs, then I want the computer program to draw a line across the screen in this manner, or if that occurs, I want for that line to be blue. And so really, in an era in which knowing how to interact with computers, with apps, with technology in a logical manner, because all machines operate on logic, actually serves you quite well in life. It also serves you quite well on being able to argue, being able to form thoughts, being able to understand if something is correct and accurate that you're reading versus a logical fallacy. And so logic, computer programming is a third. And then the fourth is arithmetic, or being able to do figures. Right? Being able to mathematically calculate. And you guys do. What would you say are the core elements for you right now in terms of the way in which you're learning arithmetic or math? And then we'll get back to.

Well, we do online classes with something called Math Nasium.

What is Math Nasium?

It's just like an online course where there's different problems and then like different sheets. It's almost like a really big worksheets, but there's like lots of them. You just keep doing that. And if you have like questions and you ask them, they tell you how to do it and you review a lot. And then there's like a workout book which is like longer and bigger problems that take more or a while longer to figure out. And that's kind of what that is. And then we also. Cooking is a little bit because there's all the measurements.

Measurements, volumes, building a tree for it. You guys learned a lot of math doing that.

Yeah. That was fun.

Yeah. Do you think that from, from your perspective, you know, having gone to a traditional school, traditional private school from second through fifth grade, and now learning through unschooling. Right. Experiential based education that has some elements of formal education, like math nasium. Right. You are learning from an instructor, but then you are surrounded by a lot of activities that dad gives you, whether it's calculating the tip at a restaurant or building a tree fort, or cooking in the kitchen and doing volumetric, you know, and calculations in the kitchen. What, what would you say to you leap out is the advantages of that type of experiential based approach?

Well, it gives you more comprehension of what's going to happen in life. Like, in life you're going to, if you're going to a restaurant, you're going to need to calculate a tip if you. It just gives you a better grasp of what's going to happen in life. Because if you go to a private school, they teach you math, but they're not, they don't really teach you what that's gonna apply to like, in life.

Right. What do I do with this random thing that I'm memorizing? Right. Or what do I do with the idea that I can calculate this story problem? But how does this apply to real life? And I think that that's a really, really important component of unschooling because you can take tests and you can learn and you can memorize all day long, but we don't live in an era anymore where that serves one that well. Like that. That's an educational model that was really good when people were working in factories. Right. And needed to do the same thing over and over again, the same rote memorization task over and over again. Or when people needed to memorize how to get from point A to point B, or, you know, what, how, how far away, you know, the sun is from the planet Earth. But it's kind of odd. We Live in a, in an era now in which computers carry most of that information for us, right? You can Google a lot of that stuff pretty easily. You can have a computer do a lot of those rote repetitive calculations for you. And arguably that frees up human beings to engage in more creative tasks. Like, you know, New York taxi cab drivers. They've even noted that their brains are changing, right? That the part of the brains that used to be responsible for wayfinding and direction finding have changed because now GPS and Google Maps or Waze or, or the iPhone built in map setting will do that for you. But at the same time, you might think that's bad because humans are getting bad at wayfinding or bad at memorizing. Yet when you replace something like that with something that a computer can do, it frees up the human brain to do something more creative. So maybe that physician, that surgeon whose job has been replaced by a robot who could do that surgery even better and in a more precise manner at a more kind of like repetitive, predictable rate that allows for fewer medical errors or fewer medical problems during the surgery. Well, someone might say that surgeon, now they're going to be out of a job. That's horrible. But that surgeon might be freed up to go find the cure for cancer, right? Or to be able to go invent some new form of surgery. That's even better. And so I think the advantages of some of the automation and some of what artificial intelligence and computers or robots can do for us outweigh the cons of human beings not being able to do this kind of like rote memorization, repetitive tasks, test taking. That is what the modern schooling system is built upon. And by learning experientially, learning through unschooling, learning through life based experiences, you actually create a more resilient, free thinking and creative individual who's able to almost create a job for themselves. Themselves, even if a computer replaces the job that they currently have. Kind of a long rabbit hole from Naval Ravikant. But, but that's the idea of logic and computer programming being like the fourth element in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic that I think serves one well in life. And then do you know what the last one is? Speech. I'm pretty sure, yes. Rhetoric. Yes, rhetoric. Persuasion. Right. Being able to actually make a case for a point that you want to make or being able to argue a position that you have usually in some type of a public forum. Right. And there's a lot of ways to do that, whether it's speech and debates or acting or theater, but tell people about what we found.

So we got. So there was this game that we got on the phone. We don't really like being on the phones during dinner because we play games during dinner. And so we did some digging and we found this really fun game called Rhetoric, which is basically where you roll a dice, draw a card, and you have one minute to make a speech of something that's on that card.

Yeah, yeah. It's a ton of fun.

And there's like, tell a story and then like. Or like, call to action. And there's lots of different things.

Right. So you roll the dice and the die might put you on the red square, and the red square forces you to draw a red card. And that card might say, tell a story.

Yeah.

And then the other members of the game get to decide what topic you're going to tell a story. Like, let's say orange juice. Let's say ye. Orange juice. And then you roll another die and it tells you whether that speech that you are going to make is going to be like the pros and cons of orange juice or the past, present, future of orange juice, or the top three things about orange juice. And then, boom, you have no time to prepare and you give a 1. Depending on the style of the game, you're playing a one to a two minute speech on that topic. And it's a wonderful way to learn how to speak. And have you guys found this to be helpful for your own kind of like speaking chops A little bit, actually.

Yeah. I like the blue card, which basically is like a challenge card where it tells you what you have to talk on, but then you have to, like. It's just, you got. You got to talk on it so you can do anything almost to it.

Right.

Which is. I think it's fun.

And what's dad always telling you during that game?

Start your speech by saying what you're gonna say. End your speech by saying what you're gonna say. Yeah.

Tell them what you're gonna tell them.

Then tell them what you've told them.

Yep. Tell them, then tell them what you've told them. Yeah, yep. And then also kind of like, you know, our former President Trump was actually very good at the hands, right? Like moving the hands, having the hands visible, using body language to make a point versus having the body be doing its own passive thing while your mouth is moving. You know, And I think that game's fabulous at teaching a lot of really good rhetoric concepts, but really, I mean, game theory in general, you know, we'll tell people what we do every single night.

Pretty much every single night other than sometimes at Christmas we watch Christmas movies, but pretty much every night we play some form of game, right? Board game.

Yeah, board game, card game. What are some of your. Some of your favorite go to's.

There's one called Quiddler, which is like Scrabble just with cards and it's like, it's a little different. You can like go out, but then everybody, even if they have a bad hand, has to lay down what they have.

Right.

And make a word out of it. We got this new one which is really fun, called Web of Spies.

Web of Spies.

That was really strategic and it takes a little while longer, but it's a lot like Risk or chess in a way almost. And then we got this fun art one called Telestrations, like a Pictionary version of telephone.

You know, what we have for people listening in. I think this is important for any families who want to adopt kind of like what we do and just have these fabulous, glorious, long dinner game nights nearly every night of the week. Is some of the games are fun. Some of the games are like, everybody's tired, let's go play exploding kittens or unstable unicorns or one of these kind of silly games that has a little bit of strategy and luck, but, you know, is mostly just fun.

Yeah.

Or the other thing we have are word games, right? Boggle. Yeah, Scrabble, Quiddler, like more, more kind of like grammatical or word based games. And then we've got game theory games, right? Like Web of Spies or Gubs or something that involves, you know, or risks or Ego or Monopoly or even too many poops. And so this idea of having a wide variety of games and playing them regularly, you know, when you get down to logic, rhetoric and game theory in general. And there's another guy I've had on my podcast before named James. I'm blanking on his names on his name now. Anyways, I'll remember it. He's a guy who has whole articles about how to win at every game that exists. And I feel dumb now that I can't remember his name, but he's super into game theory. Like basically playing games regularly in order to make you better at just about any aspect of life. His name is James. Gosh, James Altucher. I don't know why I forgot his name. James Altucher. He's got these wonderful articles and podcasts about game theory and how playing games regularly, you know, chess, checkers, cards and beyond, makes you better at Just about anything in life. And when you look at a lot of the games we play, they're weaving in, you know, reading, writing, arithmetic, logic and rhetoric. And so, yeah, I think it's a really, really great part of just our education in general.

And it's fun.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, a lot of people might be curious, you know, when it comes to unschooling. And then I want to talk about health and fitness and cooking, too, because that's a big part of our lives. What would it not? There is a really super typical day, but what would, I guess, your best description of an average day look like for you?

Usually we get up, feed our animals and eat breakfast. And then we start a school day. We check our inbox on our computers to see if Nessa, our teacher, has given us anything. And if not, we just go downstairs, do some art or play a game, do piano do. Work out the times that we don't really have anything to do. If we're done with the things that we could do alone, then we basically play outside and do art, but. Or make something up to do. Yeah. But usually for free time, we do the piano workout and shooting those, like, the three that we can just do.

Shooting your bow.

Yeah. And then usually Nessa is here by, like, nine or ten. So then she kind of has, like, the list of what we should do.

Nessa is our assistant who lives with us during the day, who helps out a ton with your guys's education, your schooling. So we kind of have, in addition to mom and dad, you know, Nessa, who helps kind of like plan each day out for you guys and give you a good mix of the extracurriculars that you're interested in, like passions you might have, whether it's, you know, shooting or exercise or art or whatever else you happen to be interested in in the moment, along with the things that are just kind of like part of the core part of your curriculum, like mathnasium or Spanish. Or Spanish or some of these things that are kind of like, I guess, more formally scheduled elements of the curriculum. And then all the play, all the creative free play and just pursuing your own passions and interests are kind of woven in throughout the day. And then how late into the day are you doing these type of things?

Around 3 to 5 is around when we end. Sometimes we go a little late if we have to do something, like, by the next day has to be done. But around three to five is when we usually end. Yeah.

What do you think about this idea that, like, life is school, that there is no actual end. Like you might finish, let's say Jiu Jitsu in Spanish by five, but then you're making dinner in the kitchen and that's more chemistry. And maybe if it's an ethnic cuisine, social sciences and you know, if there's a lot of measuring math, like, what are your thoughts on that whole idea that life is education?

Well, you really never stop learning. I feel like sometimes it's true. You do learn something new every day. Yeah, like making dinner. That's kind of school for us because we're doing chemistry and we're doing. Mom usually makes the podcast and stuff like that.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about. It's like, well, is life school or is school life? And I actually like to think that it's the former, that all of life is just one big long educational process. And sure, especially when you're young, sometimes the education is a little bit more formalized, meaning that there are certain things that are going to serve you later on in life that you might not just wake up in the morning and be like, well, my entire body just really wants to go study math. And yet, you know, that later in life, you know, especially if you wanted to be, let's say, like a surgeon or an engineer or an astronaut or someone for whom math is a day to day part of your routine, it's going to serve you. And it's actually really interesting because, you know, I have a podcast on unschooling that I'll link to in the show notes. And again, those are going to be@BenGreenfieldFitness.com GoGreenFields this idea that you learn through life. And yet, for example, in the state of Washington, there are 12 core subjects that we're required at the end of the year to demonstrate that you guys have been studying reading, writing, social studies, chemistry, etc. And so we keep logs. Right. Like you guys have a, you guys have a diary, right. A journal.

Yeah.

And so you journal each day about what you do.

Yeah.

And then you give that to Nessa, she'll categorize it. Like she'll categorize, you know, building the tree fort or working on the tree fort as math.

Well, actually we put down the subject, then the category, what it is and how long we did it for. And then we upload them to Google Drive and then Darcy just sends them all.

Yeah, so we do keep records, which, which is actually important just because, you know, you can get audited and you know, and I think it is smart that we, that we make sure that you guys are actually learning, you know, a wide range of subjects that are going to serve you later in life versus you. Just. It'd be cool if you could get up every single day and just work on your comic book or just work on a graphic novel. Yeah. You know, you might turn 18 and be like, you know what? I feel called to be a doctor and then turn around, be like, dad, I don't have, like, I can't get into any medical school because all I did my entire youth was was work on comic books, you know. And so I try to, to at least allow you guys to engage in the subjects that are going to serve you later on in life should you decide that there are other things that you want to do, you know, Because I don't want you guys to turn 18 and be like, dad, why you even tell me I needed to be good at math? You know, because even though it might not be something that you wake up at of bed super duper interested in, it is important to just learn some of these things that will serve you later on in life. And I know many successful, particularly homeschoolers or unschoolers who will be like, let's say like 15, 16 years old and they'll have studied a wide range of topics for the previous 10 to 12 years of their life and they'll just start a YouTube channel. And the YouTube channel is all music and singing and songwriting and production. And all of a sudden that is what they're doing the whole day. And then they're, you know, and you see this a lot, especially with musicians. You know, all of a sudden they're 17 years old and they're a singer, songwriter, and that's their career. And that it just kind of gradually happens that as you get older, you begin to specialize a little bit more deeply in the topics that you might feel called to from a career standpoint.

Yeah.

Do you guys want to go to college? Have you thought about that much at all?

Sometimes, yeah, sometimes. And then like sometimes not because I've heard good things and bad things.

Well, one thing we've talked about quite a bit is liberal arts, like just like a well rounded. Because I know both of you guys are interested in like living in Moscow, Idaho.

Yeah, yeah.

The new St. Andrews is a liberal arts institution down there that, you know, and the idea of studying a wide range of topics, books, philosophers, great thinkers, and a wide range of subject matter, you know, for two to four years, that then allows you to go forth into the world and, and kind of crush Just about any career you might want to go into, I think, is, you know, unless you were going to college to be really specialized, like engineer or astronaut or physician or something like that, I think it actually is a really good way to get kind of a good, well rounded education that's kind of like the icing on the cake of something like an unschooling or homeschooling process leading up to that point. Yeah, let's pivot a little bit because lots of my listeners are into health and fitness. And we briefly touched on the fact that dad writes workouts for you guys. Every Sunday. I sit down and I create a special workout. Usually there's two to four workouts, from breath work to sandbags to vibration platform, Turkish getups, all sorts of things that you guys kind of weave in throughout the week. Typically, like 15 to 20 minute brief workouts that you do in addition to pomodoro breaks that you kind of take during the school day. But in terms of what you guys kind of think about the way that kids should move or kids should exercise, what are some of the favorite things that you do from a fitness, like, from a fitness and workout standpoint particularly? And how do you think kids should exercise in general?

Well, I really like. I like when you tell us to make up our own workouts and then we have to. To do it. And I also like doing it with you because it kind of pushes us a little bit more.

Yeah, yeah. Workouts with dad tend to be slightly more miserable in terms of the miserable factor.

Only slight. Only a little bit. And then also I feel like just going outside and playing. I feel like that's easy with river because we're twins, so there's two of us, so we can do more games than like a single kid.

Right. And when you say playing, you mean like sledding?

Yeah.

Hiking.

Like building ramps.

Yeah. Just. Just natural free play that counts as exercise versus just like a formal workout in the gym.

Yeah, I think that's always good. Yeah. Because there's a wide range of different exercises that you could do. There could be, like, walking outside for a little while to get, like, sunshine. Especially when there's your legs that's always hard to walk or snowball fights. Like.

Yeah, well, that, that was. I mean, when we were growing up, I don't know if you guys remember this, but pretty much all the activity we did as a family is we'd go on walks and do animal movements. Like, all you guys would do is just follow dad. And when I'd crawl like a Bear. You'd crawl like a bear. Or I'd get on my belly and crawl like an alligator. Crawl like an alligator. When I'd crab crawl backwards, you'd crab crawl backwards. Or when I jump up on a stump, you'd jump up on the stump and we'd just play these, like, follow the leader. There's a guy named Darrell Edwards, and he has this book called Animal. I think it's called Animal Movements or something like that. There's another guy named Irwin LaCour whose entire fitness program is just based around, like, moving through nature like an animal. And we did a ton of that with you guys growing up, and now we do a lot more. Kind of like sandbags, kettlebells, you know, things like that. But in terms of exercise, I think it's important even for adults to understand that, you know, exercise isn't just getting up in the morning, going to the CrossFit gym or something like that. It's. It's weaving movement into your entire day. Right?

Yeah. Like our pomodoro breaks that we do. It's just like every 30 minutes, you just do something active.

Yeah. Like jumping jacks up suburban. You guys see dad doing that as well?

Yeah.

Now, what about the. The idea of things that go beyond what people might consider to be formal exercise but yet are still good for your health? Let's. Let's say like breath work, for example. Tell people about breathwork and your views on that.

Well, it's a little. It depends if you're in the sauna. In the sauna, I think it's a little bit harder. It is. But then I also think it's kind of cool because you can, like you. If you're in something cold, you can like, maybe calm your body or make it. Or think about the hot things and do like, quicker and like, shorter breaths. And that makes you warmer. Right.

To amp up the body, you can activate your sympathetic fight or flight nervous system with more rigorous breath work. Whereas we've done some breath work sessions before bed. Like four count in, eight count out. That kind of cool the body down and activate the more parasympathetic rest and digest part of the nervous system. And we did. Remember the breathwork course that we did? It was kind of when the COVID pandemic started that we did every single day.

Yeah.

Can you guys tell people a little bit more about that particular flavor of breathwork?

So I think that was a two week or. I think it was three weeks, I think it was that we started.

It was actually five.

Five weeks. Okay, well, we started out like three weeks. For like the first two weeks we just did like 20 minutes. But then like the end weeks we did like lots of 40 minutes. We got up to an hour.

We worked our way up to an hour and it was really like holotropic. Holotropic esque breath work. I have a friend named Niraj Najeek and he's been on the podcast. He goes by the moniker the Renegade Pharmacist. And we kind of like took elements of his breathwork course and then we wove in some wim hof and some ice tub work. And we did most of our breath work in the sauna. So we were doing a lot of heat at the same time that we were doing the breath work. And then we did some bedtime relaxation breathwork sessions. Do you guys feel as though, especially for young people, that learning some elements of breathwork is important?

I think it just makes your body feel good after you do it, even if you're in the sauna. Just like breathing and just like hot air and then going to the cold air, it just makes your body feel great. I also feel as though if you're stressed later on with like work or other things, then just breathing is really helpful to just calm down.

It's a natural, free way to be able to control stress versus like popping some pill or you know, taking some anti anxiety medication or something like that. Like your breath is free and you can play with it to, to excite yourself or to relax yourself. And it's something that just so many, so many kids don't learn how to have that deep, intimate relationship with their breath. And I'll link in the show notes if people want to the to the exact breathwork course that we went through because I wrote a whole article on it. But yeah, I think breath work is important. What else do you guys do beyond exercise and breath work that you would say help you to become healthier people?

I think we have some supplements that we do just like fish oil and glutathione and we have this really cool bottle called Restore, which just heals your gut. But we just play outside a lot. We have fun. We try not to be on the computer at all. And I also think just eating healthy is also a big part. Not like having, let's just say bread and potatoes like for every meal or something or just like lots of carbs or.

How would you describe your diet to people?

Breakfast is usually more eggs and more meat, but like natural eggs that we got the day of. Yeah, and then lunch is normally. If mom has sourdough, it's almost always sandwiches.

What would you put on a typical sandwich?

We do primal kitchen mayonnaise. Sometimes we do like a sardine or a tuna fish. Yeah. If you don't have leftover meat, then we do wild. Wild planet. Wild planet fish and then some sort of green and then that's it.

What kind of greens do you like to include in a sandwich?

We like pickles, lettuce and arugula probably. Sometimes there's like carrots or celery, but.

Yeah. And what about snacks? You guys snack much?

When I'm. When I have. When I don't have breakfast or something like that. Yeah. Or if we're a little hungry sometimes when we go outside and come back in, we'll just kind of like, grab a. Sometimes.

What are your favorite? Go to snack foods?

Walnuts and raisins. Yeah, raisins and nuts and raisins is. One of our favorites is put raisins and nuts in a bowl and just mix it up and eat those. Those are always good. And then we have rice crackers. So there's like a sesame seed rice cracker, which is always good. We take five of those and just kind of crunch on those and then that's about it. We don't really snack a ton. We don't snack.

What about beverages?

Usually it's mostly water, sometimes sparkling water, or Halo, which is really good. But. Yeah. And then birthday parties are for, like, fun parties. We.

Halo is like a stevia flav electrolyte drink.

It's actually pretty good.

They started sponsoring dad's podcast. We have, like, a whole pantry full of, like, hundreds of bottles of Halo.

We have a lot of Halo.

It's pretty good, though. It's like, high. You know, not. Not to turn this into a commercial, but it's, like, high in magnesium and electrolytes. But. But it doesn't have all the crap that Gatorade has. I like those.

I think it tastes good, too.

I usually make cocktails at night. Like, I'll take the lemon one and put a little. Little gin in there over some ice.

I dig them. Yeah. And then whenever we go to restaurants, we like mocktails. And we always kind of like the bar choose. But right when there's certain restaurants with mocktails that we like, we always order.

Right.

Like wandering table.

Yeah, we usually. We usually. When we go out because. Because it's a treat when the family goes out, like, we always have a cocktail and you guys have a mocktail. And usually we'll tell the bartender, bring us something not super sweet kind of bitters forward, you know, no alcohol and just surprise us. And they always have these amazing, like, ginger with bitters and some pomegranate or.

They had like a mango ginger one or like mango lime, and it was really good.

Yeah.

And then parties or when just like a fun time, we. There's like, it's like a fruit drink. It's called like an Izzy. And we like those for parties when some.

Because it's like a sparkling drink with a fruit essence.

Yeah, yeah. And then Grandma's coffee shop. I really like their chai tea. I just drink the coconut.

Grandma's Coffee Shop. Yeah. Grandma has a coffee shop in Moscow called Bootsers.

I really like the chai tea and the Italian sodas. Actually, those are my favorite. I usually drink coconut water there. Yeah, coconut water is really good too.

Yeah. Yeah. And what about desserts? Do you guys like any particular type of desserts?

My favorite dessert is probably just ice cream because there's coconut ice cream. There's so many different types of ice cream and so many different flavors and different types of ice cream, like coconut nut milk and almonds. I just feel like it's a really good cold dessert. I guess it's more of a treat because we don't really have dessert a ton. Yeah, we don't.

No, we don't. Dessert's kind of like, you know, if people want dessert, you go and figure out what you could make.

Yeah, we like cherries. Cherries.

Yeah. I know. Dad usually just like grabs some dark chocolates of frozen cherries or, you know, there's like some coconut ice cream. I'll sprinkle up like a little, like, protein bar on top of some coconut ice cream or something.

Yeah. Usually the only time we have dessert is like leftovers from a party that we had.

Yeah. Like if we have a special party and mom makes a rock cheesecake or something like that. And I want to get into some of your guys special recipes that you do on your podcast. But before we do that, there's a couple other things I want to touch on before we leave the diet. Do you think that there's, like, one perfect diet that all humans should follow?

You told us the Mediterranean diet is a pretty good one. And I also kind of agree with that, since people, lots of people basically.

Originated from the Mediterranean, the Fertile Crescent area. Yeah, it seems to agree with a lot of people from like a cardiovascular health and a mental health standpoint. To eat a lot of omega 3 fatty acids from Fish or from seeds and nuts, some amount of natural grains like millet or amaranth or quinoa. And then like lots of herbs and spices and greens and then lots of olive oil and avocados. And some people who are Mediterranean diet, they'll be like, oh, Olive Garden breadsticks. Yeah, no, not really all day long. Feta cheese. But yeah, if you look at the traditional Mediterranean diet, there's a lot of fasting.

There's a lot of olives though.

Yeah. And there's a lot of things, people, things that are characteristically healthy for any diet. Right. Eating with people, having long family dinners like we have, incorporating a lot of real recognizable foods from a wide variety of sources and different herbs and spices.

Oh, I also feel like making your food is also kind of a good thing because you made it and it just helps you appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it more.

Yeah, you develop a more intimate relationship with the ingredients, with what's in the food. A lot of people are afraid of food because they just don't understand what's in it or how to prepare it. And so they don't even know what to eat because they don't know what's in what they're eating. Or they'll get a package, you know, packaged food. Like, you know, a lot of people shop at Costco or Trader Joe's, which, which I used to think were healthy places to shop, but really all they do is bastardize food because it's just a bunch of food out of packages. It's not in its real recognizable form. And furthermore, I don't know if you guys have experienced this, but when food is in boxes and packages, it's so much easier to overeat or excessively snack. If we have in our pantry it's a bunch of glass mason jars of quinoa and beans and rice and you gotta spend two hours making a meal versus if it was just a bunch of of boxes of crackers and bars, you could just easily grab them and eat them without even thinking twice. And they're not that satiating either, but they're very palatable. Right. Like they're designed to make you come back over and over again to grab more and more. You know. River, you touched on something briefly about not spending a lot of time on computers. What are your guys views on? You know, like a lot of parents do have, you know, 30 minutes of allotted screen time per day or, you know, video gaming consoles, but, you know, you're only allowed the video games from 7pm to 8pm or you know, Some kids have phones, some don't. Like what are your guys general perceptions of screen time and where it fits into your life?

Usually our screen time we have, we do have phones but we. They don't have any games on. They're just meant for business. Like as our Go Green.

Their itouches. Yeah.

And then.

And the itouches are for things like listening to podcasts, taking photos, recording your podcast.

One of the biggest things we use it for is for audio for Go Greenfields and for video.

Right.

And uploading them.

Right. Go Greenfields being your podcast.

Yeah, Computer wise we use it mostly for school. We have like one game on it and that's it. And even that counts as cool. So that's about it. We have to do our Spanish zoom on that and then is online so you have to do it on that too. And I do like that. But the only problem with that is I feel like I don't like being on the computer at night at all. And I feel like the best time to do other things is in the daytime. So it's kind of hard for me to balance that.

Right. Yeah. And we don't have screen time rules at our house.

Yeah, we don't.

Yeah. It's just kind of, kind of the deal at our house is we just don't have a lot of video games at night. We're playing these wonderful games or playing instruments or you know, reading a ton of books and so yeah, there's no rules in our house, you know, about screen time or about, you know. Oh, you're only allowed, you know, an allotted amount of time on a video game or a phone. It's more just there's so many other useful and productive things to do that we just don't spend a lot of time. We use them intelligently, you know, for school or for, you know, for dad, for writing articles and things like that. But they aren't the. I guess they aren't the fallback for entertainment. Yeah.

Like our tv. Sometimes we watch movies, but it's only if movies that we like, we used it maybe once or maybe like zero times a month. Yeah. Not even a week. More like once or twice a month.

Yeah. Yeah. Like I watch maybe like two movies a year.

Yeah. Yeah.

Pretty rarely now in terms of back to diet because this is obviously a pretty big part of your guys life. How long have you been doing your Go Greenfields cooking podcast?

I think for about. We started when we were seven, I think eight actually. So I think it's four years now. Yeah, I think four Years, Yes.

And when did you begin to learn how to cook?

When we were three. Yeah. When we. Well, we watched Mother's Day. Yeah. When we watched mom make eggs, and we thought we could make her eggs, so he made her eggs, and they were. They were a little bit overcooked, but we still did it pretty good.

I remember when you expressed an interesting dad had. I had a book I was going through. It was the. The Four Hour Chef by Tim Ferriss. And he had, like, a couple pages in there on, like, 30 different variants of scrambled eggs, how to make Moroccan scrambled eggs, and how to make Texas style scrambled eggs, and. And all the different spices and variants that you could add to eggs to kind of like, convert them into a certain style of cuisine. And I remember I showed you guys that chart, and that was one of the first things you started doing was just like, mixing different. Different spices into your scrambled eggs.

Yeah, I think. Yeah. One of the things was we watched mom cook, and then. Yeah, we always liked taking, like, saw or garlic powder or some sort of seasoning, just mixing it all and then eating it. We used to. Oh, yeah, we used to take ketchup. That was one of the main things we used to do where we'd made ketchup and we put faces on the eggs and then.

Yeah.

Eat them.

Yeah. And honestly, I think scrambled eggs are one of the perfect entry level foods for someone to learn how to cook, because super good. They're not super expensive if you mess up. Right. Yeah. And you can learn a variety of different cooking techniques, like over easy or poaching or scrambling or, you know, omelets. And then you're learning how to incorporate different flavor profiles into the egg so that when you get your hands on a good, you know, a really good protein, like, let's say a super expensive $40, you know, bone in ribeye steak, you know, more about what to do with it and how to change the flavor profile of it. Because you've gotten to practice on, say, eggs.

Yeah, well, eggs are simple and pretty easy to buy.

Yeah. Especially for us because we have the chickens. Now. For the Go Greenfield show, you guys began to do a cooking podcast that, from what I recall, it originated with us going to restaurants and talking about the food that we were eating or even calling out the chefs and interviewing them here and there about the meals that they had prepared for us.

First was going to a pizza restaurant in, like, nearby in our community, and that was the first episode ever. I kind of want to listen to it again to see what. What it was like, and what we're at now.

But yeah, yeah, yeah, it's come a lot. How many episodes have you guys produced?

Over 50. Yeah.

And in terms of. Try not to hit the microphone too much. In terms of some of the favorite recipes that you have created that you think if people were to listen to this show and you really wanted them to know some of the coolest recipes they could find@gogreenfields.com, what would be some of your favorite recipes that you can recall to date that you've created?

We made some really good. So Magic Spoon, which is a really good cereal that we eat. We had an episode where we made Magic Spoon donuts.

We had a bunch of leftover Magic Spoon cereal.

We also made a really good episode with these really good donuts that were, like, healthy. They were like fried paleo style baked.

That was one of my favorite recipes.

Those are actually really good, though.

Paleo style baked donuts. I think you used coconut flour, and then we had, like a cream cheese frosting and a cacao frosting. And that was one of your earlier recipes. Still one of my favorites. But you both kind of have your own unique style in the kitchen, like taren. What would be one of your favorite recipes or cooking styles?

Baking is my favorite because baking is different than cooking, and it's more like chemistry, and you have to get everything right. And I like that a lot better. And I feel like baking. There's different turnouts than cooking because cooking means like, taking meat or like seasoning it and putting it on a grill. But then baking is more like adding this component which makes this, this, and then, like, baking it, and it just kind of comes out differently with, like, heat or cooler.

What would be an example of one of your favorite things to bake, particularly something that you've done for a podcast?

We made cakes and we had to decorate them. Cake combination. And we didn't actually show how we made the cakes, but mine was like, I had to make mine taller and smaller and more, like, stiff. So I used more. I used a little more flour and a little more baking soda to make it taller. And that was really interesting because I'd.

Never make it rise.

Yeah. To make it rise more.

Now, what about souffle? You have a souffle that was just. You absolutely crushed it with the souffle. What's souffle?

It's almost like a pudding, but at the same time, it's like a pastry. It's kind of a combination, but it's basically like a. It's like a Delicate? Yeah, it's a very, like. It's almost like a runny dough. And you put it in a tin and then you bake it and you. And it basically rises, but you have to eat it, like, as soon as it comes out of the oven or it'll plop down.

Right.

And it's not as poofy. And the first time he made it, it was like. Like hot chocolate with marshmallows. Yeah, it was really good. And, yeah, it was amazing. I made it a couple. I made it a couple more times, and I failed. I failed a little bit on the side second time, but then I got kind of good at it. It takes a really long time because you have to stir the milk and without burning it, that make it really hot. And then add eggs and temper the eggs and add the chocolate, and it's really hard to do, but it's really good when it turns out.

What's your top baking tip for people who want to learn to bake?

Probably not overcook it because a lot of the times it will look like it's not done. But it is done because he's gotta look. Because I made cookies for Thanksgiving, and I had more butter in them than I expected, so. And I was used to making cookies with mom where you touch the dough when it's cooked. If it springs back up, that means it's done. But this had a lot of butter in it, so it was going to be more oily and not as hard. So when I touched it, the. It was still kind of mushy. So I overcooked them a little bit because the butter had to cool down to actually get hard. So that was one of the. So probably just pay attention to the recipe. Or once it smells done, if it's smelling a little overcooked, then it's probably time to take it out.

Baking requires a lot more attention. The ingredient ratios, too.

You can't mess those up.

Yeah, right. You need more precision. How about you, River? What you would be one of your favorite recipes or a signature recipe of yours?

Well, I think one of my favorite. My signature recipes. I really like making risotto just because it's simple. And I love the smell of cooking wine, and I love the smell of caramelizing onions. Those are both one of my favorite smells. So tasty. And it's just really fun because you can almost add anything to risotto. Like, you could do, like, squash in walnuts in the risotto, or you could do just like a simple cheese risotto with Some sausage. It's.

Yeah, almost like a carbohydrate version of scrambled eggs. You can really evolve the flavors depending on what you add. What would be your top tip for people who wants to learn to create a good risotto? What's the key?

I kind of changed mine up. My mom likes to roast the rice before I do it. I never did that, but I think just you have to keep stirring. You have to pay attention for it pretty much the whole time.

Stirring and timing.

Yeah, you can't really leave it for too long.

Care attention takes a lot of. Of attention, like mindful attention to make a risotto. That's one of the things I like about cooking, and particularly cooking more complex foods, is you do need almost like a meditative mindfulness in the kitchen and a great deal of attention paid to what it is that you're creating. You know, speaking of cooking tips, I remember I took you guys to Florida Sells, that same French restaurant a couple of weeks ago, and the chef came out and we asked him what his top tip was, and he said, anytime you get your hands on a good cut, but a good cut of meat, like a really nice, say, pork chop or steak or something like that, or like a wonderful fresh caught fish. What did he tell us?

Don't add, like, too many seasonings or anything. Keep it simple.

Keep it simple. Yeah. Like, perfect fit. Like olive oil, dill, salt. Done.

Yeah.

You know, steak, rosemary, thyme, butter.

Done.

And so that was his tip for us, was anytime you have, like, a really nice piece of protein, particularly go minimalist with it. Would you say that if kind of along those same lines, you could share with people either one kitchen mistake you think people make most often, or one kind of big cooking tip that you could share with people from what you've learned over the years of, you know, because twice a week you guys, or twice a month, you guys create a new podcast episode with a new recipe. What would be the top mistake or the top tip that you would share with people beyond what you've already shared?

Well, I know mistakes I make a lot is when you put all the ingredients and you mix everything up. And then while you're, like, mixing things or doing other things or while you're waiting for something to bake, cleaning up is really useful because it. Everything looks cluttered and sometimes it's really hard to figure out what you're using. So that's always a good one or just putting away what you got out.

Plus, it's stressful to have to sit down and Eat dinner with a crazy messy kitchen. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree. Cleaning up as you go so that you have, you know, it's the same with your workspace, like, like with a desk, with life in general. The more neat and tidy and organized your workspace is, typically the cleaner your thought patterns are.

Yeah.

Yeah. How about you, River?

I think paying attention, like, there's like a couple different ways, like paying attention to your recipe, if you don't, if you, if you skim over the recipe and then you kind of forget what to do, you might mess up. Paying attention to how long it's cooking, when it's going to cook, and just paying attention to your fingers. Yeah, I chopped the tip of my thumb off once.

I remember that. Yep, I remember that.

Yeah, I couldn't cut a root and it hurt.

Yeah, yeah. Now, in terms of the, the component that we weave in, you briefly mentioned that you bow hunt. I remember you guys did your first bow hunting adventure for, for wild pig down in Hawaii. You also do plant foraging. And I'm, I'm curious in terms of either hunting or plant foraging, if you have any tips or special stories you would like to share with folks about the experiences that you've had with regards to those.

I like going to different countries. I liked when we went to Ethiopia or I think Finland, and it was just like mushrooms and moss and it was just a really different, really different biome. And it was really cool to see all the different plants and stuff that aren't in our forest.

So you like going to new places and seeing the diversity of plant matter, which, honestly, I think that one can only appreciate that if they've done a wide variety of plant forging at home. Because here we can go outside and identify yarrow and mint and nettle and dandelion and organ grape root and plantain leaf and a wide variety of elderberries or organ grape berries or the rose hips, things like that. Yet when we travel to, let's say Switzerland or somewhere else, it's a different set of flora that you're surrounded by. Yet you see it differently when you walk or hike. You actually see foods growing from the earth, which, if you've learned to plant forage, is a very magical way to be able to experience God's planet when you're walking, just to be able to see, oh, what's that?

It just gives you a better grasp of what is around you. What you can't even, oh, that species is poisonous. I should probably not touch that.

Yeah, yeah. And how about when it comes to bow Hunting anything in particular that you've learned thus far in your bow hunting adventures?

I feel like bow hunting is almost not better than like shooting, but I feel like it's almost more ancient in a way. Natural. Yeah, it's a little more natural because I feel like shooting. You can stay 200 yards away and still like shoot a good shot and shoot down a deer, but with a bow, you have to sneak up and be really quiet or get closer because you can't go that far with an arrow. Yeah, right.

It's a little bit more physical. It requires a lot more attention to your scent, to tracking the animal, to being able to camouflage yourself to the extent where you can get somewhat close. And if you guys could project into the future when it comes to something like hunting or foraging or anything along those lines, when it comes to outdoor immersion with the foods that you might consume, what would you say you're most excited about over the next several years as far as what you can learn or what you're looking forward to getting better at?

I'm looking forward to going back to Hawaii and getting a bigger boar.

A bigger boar in Hawaii?

I'm actually kind of looking forward to get my first shot on a deer because I haven't done that yet, so.

Yeah, well, we're going out in three days.

Yeah.

Yeah, we're going after a deer in three days. A whitetail.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which are really hard to. Because they're, they're really sensitive.

Yeah, they're. They're very, very alert, finicky animals. Well, you know, between bow hunting and wild plant foraging, cooking and visiting restaurants, you know, it's a very well rounded way to experience the wide variety of amazing, magical cuisines that we're surrounded by. And, you know, there's something else that I wanted to touch on in the time that we have left that we haven't really talked much about. We've talked about schooling, fitness and diet. But what about arguably one of the most important components of being a complete human being, your spiritual health. How do you guys care for yourselves spiritually?

Every morning we wake up, we read our Bible before doing everything else. Yeah. And then we after, usually before breakfast, we meditate with our family and we write down what we're grateful for and who we want to pray for or serve. And then we just go. I usually go through the day and at least once or twice just kind of like look at nature or just pray to God or something and try to just stop. Yeah. And then at the end of the night, we usually say what we did good. What we could have done better and then what we did, that was our purpose in life. Also, usually before every meal, we always pray, especially before dinner on Sundays. We sing the. Or we sing the doxology. Oh yeah. We also just listen to and sing to a lot of. And then we also have spiritual disciplines that we go over every week.

The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook.

Yeah.

Which has been an integral part of our curriculum for our spiritual fitness is each week we visit a different topic.

Like a whole year now, like last.

Week was, was chastity. This week is community. We've done everything from gratitude to meditation to presence with God to art. You know, it's a great book, the Spiritual Disciplines Handbook by Adele Calhoun. You know, and I think that that paired with, you know, morning meditation, you know, using that abide app, you know, five to ten minutes of morning meditation as a family, followed by gratitude and service, you know, writing down who you can pray for or help or serve that day, and then revisiting our journals in the evening. Right. That process of self examination, what is it about self examination that's so important?

Well, it lets you see what your day is. So what, what did you do good. So it lets you think of what if you should do that again or like it just gives you a little notion like, oh, that's something I did good at. Maybe I should try to do that or try to do the same thing tomorrow. What could you do better at? Which gives you just like, oh, maybe I should try to fix that somehow. How could I do that different? And then purpose is kind of what you want to do with your life. And then trying to figure out if you did do that that day, which basically means that you did fulfill what you wanted to do.

Right. You're able to learn from, you're able to see where you rose to the occasion and where you could have done better. So you learn from both your successes and your failures with that nightly practice of examine or self examination. And then the last part is the purpose component. What is one way that I lived out my life's purpose today?

Yeah.

What are your guys purposes in life right now?

To make the love and joy of God through my writing and art. And mine is to use my art to make people feel strong emotions.

I like those. Yeah, I like those. Yeah. I think that having that single succinct purpose statement for your life is actually something that is important because that's what gets you out of bed in the morning. Right. In Japan they call it ikigai. In Sardinia they call it the plan, Davida, like the plan for your life. This idea that when you wake up in the morning, you know what it is that you're gonna do with the life that God has given you, with the unique skills that God has given you. And you know, and your purpose changes, right, from. From month to month or year to year, you know what you feel called to do. And your general purpose statement might change, but having a purpose statement.

Yeah.

And visiting that purpose statement regularly is so, so important just to be able to contribute to the world in a meaningful and impactful way with the life that you've been blessed with. And so I absolutely love those spiritual practices that we weave in now. The other thing that I wanted to ask you about, just because we're recording this during the pandemic, during the lockdown. What do you think about this last year, like, of COVID and lockdowns and then masks and like, it's been weird. What's your guys general impression of what you've experienced, what you've learned or your take on the whole matter?

I like seeing you more. Yeah. So that's my favorite thing. Yeah. And then I think it's been a little, like, interesting to see how other people have reacted to it or how different it is with kids and adults to see how, like, it's a lot harder on the adults because they have work and a lot of people are doing their jobs. But then with the kids, it's a little more kind of like, oh, we don't. There's a little less responsibility on our minds and we can do a little. We don't have as much school or sometimes lots of things are canceled. So it frees up our day a little bit. But with a lot of people, it makes them a lot more stressful.

Mm.

So it's kind of interesting to see that. I think some of it's good. Like, you get more family and you get to see. You get to see your be with your family more and you get to have just more togetherness. And then some of it, I feel like, is just people staying home and like, just on watching TV or watching news and.

Right.

People not seeing like, their family that's farther away, like their grandma or their grandmothers not being able to interact with friends and family and people.

Yeah. Yeah. I think to a large extent, you know, what I'm hearing is it is what you make of it to a certain extent, when you're stuck at home and unable to say, go out in your local community, enjoy the things that we've loved to do in our local community, like escape rooms or restaurants or laser tag or the trampoline park, and all of a sudden we're at home. But it is what you make of it. A man is free to choose his attitude, no matter what circumstances he is given in life. And so if we choose to play instruments and play board games and buy new board games and be happy and read more books and just. Just take this time as a chapter in our lives to grow together as a family or to pursue interests that we might have been too busy or too distracted to pursue without being, say, stuck at home. You know, it is what you make of it. And I think that that's one of the. One of the. My most favorite things I've experienced the past year with you guys, because it really has been like a year that we've been kind of locked down at home, growing together as a family, reading new book, learning new things, learning new recipes, and learning what it's like to live almost a more simplistic and stoic life, yet still find happiness in that without having it. To have to be all about, you know, where we're going to travel to next, what's the next amazing adventure we're going to go to, or, you know, or where are we going to go in the city tonight? You know, it's kind of more of almost like a. Like a Little House on the Prairie kind of thing, where we're just stuck at home. But we still have had these amazing bonding experiences, which I've really enjoyed myself.

Yes, I do.

Yeah. Now, if you were going to leave our listeners, in addition to all the tips that you have@gogreenfields.com and the books and everything else we've talked about thus far that I'm going to link to@BenGreenfieldFitness.com GoGreenFields do you have any final tips, resources, favorite podcasts, favorite books, life tips? If you choose one thing that you would want to tell people, you know, even if it were, you know, some giant billboard that you'd want to, you know, put a saying on, or a book you'd want to recommend that you think everybody should read or something that you think that everybody should experience, that you've experienced, that you think is crucial for just, you know, for people to appreciate in life, what would you share with people?

I think one that we do a lot is just know your family and know what they don't like, know what they do like, and just be with them a lot. I think that's one that we really Do a lot. And that makes us a fun family.

Yeah, we're very bonded as a family. Yeah.

Kind of going a little off that. I just think being with people and just knowing your friends and knowing your family and knowing your friends. Friends and just getting to know your community and your people and just doing the fun things with them. I feel like that's a really useful tip.

I'm gonna teach you new words called piggybacking.

Oh, okay.

You piggybacked off what river said, meaning that river talked about family.

Yeah.

Then you say piggyback on Riverside. It's kind of funny because we have at Keon, every morning we have team huddles because my company is in Boulder and so a lot of us are operating virtually and it seems like nearly every single huddle because we're going around asking questions, people will say, well, piggybacking on what Bob said or what Jill said, it is kind of a funny phrase if you think about it. Piggybacking. Well, you guys, first of all, I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the show and join a dad here at the kitchen table. Second of all, I think that everybody listening in would really benefit from your guys show because if anybody does like to eat healthy food or get a glimpse into plant foraging or cooking or wilderness survival, a lot of the things that you guys delve into, we even have a chance to talk about probably 90% of what you guys do with your life. But I hope this has given people a little bit of a perspective as to who the fellows are, who the masterminds are behind. Go Greenfields. What some of your school, your exercise, your fitness, your health habits, your eating habits, the things that my audience is interested in looks like. And I'm just super grateful for you guys.

I'm grateful for you.

No, I'm grateful for you. I'm more grateful.

How about we're okay, we're equal.

Well, until next time. Yay. I'm Ben Greenfield along with River Greenfield and Taryn Greenfield.

Hello.

Signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com GoGreenFields. You can listen to these guys podcasts@gogreenfields.com you can access all the show notes at BenGreenfulFitness.com GoGreenfields. Have an amazing week.

Bye. Thank you.

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 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 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.

Sa.