You are listening to the Darren Wilson Show, I'm Darren, I spent the last 20 years devoted to improving health, protecting the environment and finding ways to live a more sustainable life. In this podcast, I have honest conversations with people that inspire me. I hope that through their knowledge and unique perspectives, they'll inspire you to. We talk about all kinds of topics from amping up your diets and improving your well-being to the mind blowing stories behind the human experience and the people that are striving to save us and our incredible planet.

We've investigated some of the life's fatal conveniences. You know, those things that we are told might be good for us, but totally aren't. So here's to making better choices and the small tweaks in your life that amount to big changes for you and the people around you and the planet. Let's do this. This is my show, The Darren Olean Show. Welcome, everybody, welcome to the show, The Daily Show. The crowd goes wild, they just want to say, hey, man, we had a million downloads in a very short amount of time of launching.

I am beyond excited. My team's excited. I want to give a special shout out to the amplified team for just kicking ass and being professional and great and making making these conversations even better by just their professionalism and keeping me on track because I can definitely go off on tangents. So I'm grateful for that. Grateful for you because it's you that's listening. It's you that's resonating. It's you that's generating the reason I'm doing this. So thank you for you and thank you for tuning in.

I am stoked. So thank you for for all of that. Yeah. And also, I'm curating a lot of things to help the movement, the mission of supporting and realizing that we have a whole bunch of people in the world that are inspired and touched and want to do something and know where to go in order to take action to make this a better place. My philosophy is take care of yourself, take care of your health and take care of your spirit.

Learn about who you are, what you are and what you want to create in the world. And then that team, that mission is infinitely more powerful. So my next guest is a powerhouse, amazing guy, and threw a lot of conscious conversations with him. I have just grown to respect and love what this guy is up to. He is a bright, smart dude who has dedicated his life to trying to unpack the best way to health. I mean, you know, he's a bio hacker researcher, experimenter extraordinaire.

He loves our verrucas. He loves making great recipes. He's got this kickass cheesecake recipe with our verrucas that is to die for and we dive into his back story. So many of you may not know who Ben Greenfield is and some of you do. He's out and around. He's been on Rogan. He's done had many accomplishments in terms of the athletic performances, worked with everyone under the Sun, done a lot of public speaking. And it's just pushing the envelope on many levels, from longevity to health to brain hacking to stem cells, which we always nerd out on.

And this conversation, it's different. This conversation, we dive and unpack. I'm going to keep a few of those secrets, but we dive and unpack how he was home schooled before home school was a thing and how he's curating that learning and curiosity in his own kids, in his own family, making it fun, adventurous. We actually had two conversation. The first conversation, it did record. It's like podcasters nightmare. And we spent two hours and it didn't record.

And he came back the next day because he was in town and we did it again. And I think it was even better. So you got the best version. So everyone, please enjoy Ben Greenfield, this conversation and what this guy is up to. And the one caveat, the asterisk, then I won't put put on here. I'm plant based. He's not he eats a lot of meat. He does it from a hunting perspective. Obviously, in that area.

We don't agree. That's OK. That's OK, because probably ninety nine percent of everything else we do agree on. So we don't need to debate and beat try to beat each other up on whether we should eat meat or all of that stuff. It's irrelevant in this case because we want to come together, we want to collaborate, we want to share from that perspective. So just understand that I have a different philosophy on that. He has a different philosophy, but there's mutual respect here.

And I do respect Ben and I do respect what he's doing. And an incredible book, Boundless. You want to check out. It's got more information than you can possibly imagine. So really sit back or while you're driving or while you're walking, make sure to subscribe. Make sure to tell your friends we love the support because that generates more and more inspiration for me and in the team to gather more and more fun. Amazing guests for you. So sit back, enjoy, walk, exercise and enjoy my conversation with the great band.

Great. Welcome back. Well, thank you. Thank you. So this is our second attempt. I was going to say we open the kimono for folks and tell them that this is going to be an amazing show because we pre scripted the whole thing. This is all going to sound super fake because I have recorded a whole podcast together. So the last time we did this podcast, I think we went for like an hour or so hour and.

Yeah, and I looked twice and it was in there and looked down and the recorder was off and we were like monkeys for about 15 minutes, gathered around the MacBook.

And we can try to is try to make it right. Right. Slapping the keyboard with rocks and then it's got to be there. And then I was like, oh man, we had such a great conversation, but I got to go home. And then I had something that I was supposed to go record music today. And this is this is like the where the universe takes you. You just follow sometimes, you know, and you I have this saying that you wake up and you just do the very best job you can that morning with whatever God has put on your plate.

And, of course, attention you. There's a certain amount of pleasure. I mean, you know, trust God put on your seatbelt, you got to plan some shit out. But at the same time, you know, I woke up today and I had that text at the studio was the power was off at the studio. And so I texted you came back up here, snorted some Amazonian hopei. I have this doctor who who managed to get help from this physician who's embedded in the Amazon.

And this doc, Dr. John Lawrence. I interviewed him on my show. He's crazy. He makes high dose melatonin suppositories and he extracts hopeI and puts it in essential oils and sends it out as like a nasal spray. So I stopped off at Sunlife and had had a lairds superfood coffee, snorted some Amazonian herbs up my nose, and I gave him like like set the tone because I have been around this before.

But in the jungle next to the last time I saw and did it and saw someone do it, they were having exactly the same reaction as you doing. All right. You smoked a cigarette up your nostril. You can have a little bit of a journey. Your head goes clears up, which is why it's often administered prior to plant medicine, because it'll take something, you know, let's say ayahuasca, for example, and you become a little bit more clear, agentic during a journey.

And so what I've discovered and I'm not one of those guys who's on my 30th Ayahuasca retreat and it's super geek out on KLEMET, I think that can be kind of an escape in a way that a lot of people keep doing it of. Mine was twenty, twenty two years ago. Yeah. And it told me the very first time the plant, the mother, like she was like, thanks for being here. You never have to do this again.

That was my instruction. I don't listen because I did it two or three other times and got the shit kicked out of me. Yeah. Because intention is everything. If you don't mess around with mother. Yeah. Not that plant. Yeah. At those plants. Absolutely. Absolutely. In this this hopei it will get you a little bit more. Clara, Jarnac and I might do a plant medicine ceremony maybe two or three times a year. And these days only with my wife because you know, back back to, to parenting.

I witnessed my father kind of in mid-life. He he got into the Eastern Orthodox religion and, you know, he he actually went on his own path to enlightenment. You know, some guys will buy a nice car and some will find a new woman. And, you know, he found religion or at least a different religion that he was steeped in at the time and wound up, you know, getting immersed in iconography. And, you know, it just set up his office with candles burning and, you know, photos of Mother Mary on the wall and all these church leaders and kind of grew a little bit distant from the rest of the family on his path to enlightenment.

And when I began to use plant medicine, which for me was thirty one years old, and prior to that time, I smoked a joint a couple of times. And, you know, my idea of plant medicine was coffee. Right? Right, exactly. And I would drink wine sometimes at night to relax and discover the first couple of times that I learned that my wife had no relation to or understanding of what I was experiencing. Although my clarity for business, for relationships from my path in life became clearer.

And I, I had some wonderful personal breakthroughs and dissolution of ego. I found myself realizing that, oh, I'm kind of on the same path as my father. If I keep on embarking upon this route to enlightenment and discovery of self on my own without. My family being along for the ride, so now if I do any type of plant medicine, it is with my wife and we are on the same page and we're both together and we're typically journaling and walking afterwards and integrating what we've discovered and learned about ourselves into our family's life.

So it's it's it's something that you need to be cautious with if you have a partner and when you're doing plant medicine. And I think it's prudent to to make them a part of the process if they're if they're interested or willing and they're called to it. I think that's a huge point. Yeah. So my father, he moved to well, he didn't move. He literally just kind of closed his eyes and stuck his finger on a map of the U.S. and opened his eyes and it was UNIDO because he just wanted to get out.

So he drove all the way up to Idaho where he envisioned himself becoming a farmer, which is kind of funny because now he actually has a little farm outside Moscow, Idaho, and he he actually instead wound up being a firefighter. And then after that, a serial entrepreneur who I witnessed move from everything from telecommunications company to a bagel franchise to a coffee roasting business. You know, when I was growing up, we'd have giant trucks pull into the driveway full of beans from Guatemala and Costa Rica.

And he had a fancy coffee roaster from Sandpoint, Idaho. And then I'd wake up to the smell of green coffee roasting. And so he was a coffee roaster. And I was pretty much impervious to the effects of espresso by the time I was 13 and a half, because he repaired espresso machines and he he had me working at some of his coffee shops that he began to open. So when I was bored at the coffee shops, I would just make up drinks.

I would make up smoothies like barista. I would take the espresso shots that were too short or too long and just throw them back. So who knows how tall I'd be if I hadn't inhibited my bone density and stunted my growth as much with that amount of espresso consumed daily as a young man.

And so he moved from Miami and my mom went through kind of a similar series of relatively traumatic incidents in Detroit. They split. So eventually. Yeah, yeah.

So my mom moved from Detroit out to live with her sister in Idaho, and my mom and my dad met in Idaho. And because of where they'd come from, they had a desire for their children to live a little bit more of a, you know, in a safe, loving, protected environment. So they home schooled us. And I grew up out in the countryside and outside Lewiston, Idaho, north Idaho, and called the panhandle of Idaho, right on the border of Washington, and was home schooled K through 12, you know, and and like you mentioned, I kind of finished all of my my high school studies when I was I was fourteen and a half 15 and I was playing tennis for the local high school team and college tennis coaches watching some of the matches.

And he offered me a position on the on the team. And so I walked on to the to the college tennis team at fifteen. Yeah. And played tennis for a couple of years in college and had these aspirations that maybe I'd be a professional tennis player because I was super freaked out on tennis. And instead after getting my ass waxed, you know, big time by all these, you know, Swedish and Malaysian and Australian players who were just, you know, European and international Hot Shots, I realized I didn't have a tennis racquet in my hands when I was like three years old to be able to keep up with these guys or at least devote myself pretty intensively to the game.

So I pivoted and went on to study exercise physiology and biomechanics and medicine and then, you know, went on to to do a lot of what I do now. But, yeah, it was interesting being being homeschooled, which I don't really do with my kids, you know, home schooling. Traditionally, you order a bunch of books from from a curriculum source and then, you know, stereotypical environment. You're sitting there with mom and dad at the kitchen table and, you know, going through your books.

And, you know, it's like traditional schooling. But, you know, at the kitchen table at home with my boys, we do what is now known as unschooling, meaning that specific term, it is not a specific term. I don't know if I'm in love with that term. It's it's it's really more experiential based education. You're learning through life experiences. So they're mathematics curriculum. Last year was they wanted to build a tree fort. So we got a contractor to come and work with them a few times a week and learn geometry and angles and woodworking skills and and of course, so much math and.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And in the state of Washington, in many states are like this. If you're going to unschool or home school, you must demonstrate to the state that your children are young truants, that they're not just at home, you know, running around out in the backyard or. Playing video games, and so there are 12 core subjects in the state of Washington that my boys must demonstrate proficiency in or that we must show records that they've studied reading, writing, math, social studies, chemistry, so on and so forth, which is honestly not that hard to do if you're creative.

Like I mentioned, building a Trefort can be mathematics. It can be art, it can be art and architecture can be social studies to a certain extent. And they have a cooking podcast. Right. And then so they're constantly plant foraging and interviewing chefs and doing restaurant tours and learning new ingredients and cooking methods. So that's, you know, it's chemistry and that's math. And if they're studying, you know, a cuisine like Japanese or Spanish, it'll be it'll be social science.

And and I love that because I could eat like a king every Monday when they record their podcasts and make some crazy new food, lot less. Last one they made was they harvested wild metal from out in the forest and they made a wild metal ravioli, which was just absolutely fantastic with like a Himalayan Tartary buckwheat that they got from, you know, far upstate New York. And they know they find these crazy ingredients and make amazing meals. I remember the first one they did was they got dry, organic roasted crickets, you know, because insects actually are pretty sustainable mineral.

They're probably they're probably the most sustainable meat on the planet by far. Yeah, exactly. If you account for a biomass, I believe that the largest amount of protein crawling the surface of this planet is insects. So they took dry roasted crickets and they love Thai food. And they made they made a cricket pad Thai. But rather than chicken or shrimp, they used, of course, crickets. And for their noodle, they used a Japanese yam noodle.

They they they have these noodles that they make out of these Japanese yams that are kind of low carbohydrate, low calorie. And so they made this Japanese yam noodle cricket, bat Thai. So these are the kind of meals I get to eat when they record their little podcast.

So.

So, yeah.

So they're homeschooled, which, you know, I didn't really define that, but it essentially means you you pay attention to and even have conversations with. We do this over a family dinner every week. What your child's passions, interests are, what it is that they're they're truly excited about learning. And how do you, you know, sitting around talking about this one thing, how do you exercise that? How do they find that?

Right. And then what you do. Well, well, well, they find that is just life. You know, when when you're out of the restaurant, they see some new recipe on the menu that they want to learn more about. Or you're at the science museum and they're they're playing around with the laser lights, reflecting off the mirrors, and all of a sudden they're like, well, I want to learn a little bit more about light and mirrors and how they reflect and, you know, how photons interact with one another.

And they always have these little things that they discover. So you guys illuminate that and let them run. Right. And then we surround them with as many toys and games and even online learning's museum memberships, books, teachers, tutors, everything, documentaries, anything that they would need to fuel that passion or that interest.

And then you let them just engage in creative free play with what you've surrounded them with. Now, there are certain things that a kid doesn't know is going to serve them later on in life that you need to make sure that that they get exposed to. What I mean by that is, you know, say one wants to be a physician or an engineer going to law and they did not get a chance to get exposed to, let's say, rhetoric or they didn't learn computer programming at an early age, even though they didn't express interest in something like that.

I don't want them to grow up and, you know, turn 17, decide they want to be a doctor and have none of the qualifications necessary for a collegiate entrance exam or for further success in young cats or anything like that.

So there are, in my opinion, five core curriculum that kids should get exposed to that's going to set them up for success no matter what career they go, no matter what. Right. And that would be reading, being able to assimilate information and do so at a decent pace. And for example, what I do once a week is I go down to our bookshelf in the basement with them and I have all these books and we prize books in our household.

If there's if my boys want to get a Lego sets or they want a new Nerf gun or something like that, they can use their their hard earned money to buy that. But books I don't blink and eye, I will buy them any book they want. And when there's downtime in our house usually. You're holding musical instrument or you're reading a book, there's very little video games or screen time just because it's not our that's not our fallback when it arrives down at our house.

Many of you who follow me know I've spent most of my life searching for the healthiest foods on the planet. If you look hard enough, there are a few unknown, extraordinary foods around the world that people still don't know about. And a few years ago, I came across my favorite superfood discovery of all time verrucas nuts. When I first tasted them, my eyes lit up. The taste alone just absolutely blew me away. But after sending them to the lab, which I do and getting all the tests, I realized they're the healthiest nuts on the planet like no other nut even compares.

They have like an unusually high amount of fiber and they're off the charts in super high antioxidants and have fewer calories than any other nut. Like it's jam packed with micronutrients. But they're not just good for you. They're really good for the planet. Most other nuts require millions of gallons of irrigated water. But Maruca trees require no artificial irrigation. Brewskis are truly good for you, good for the planet. And good for the world community. It's a win all the way around, I really think you'll love them.

So I'm giving all of my listeners 15 percent off by going to Barracas Dotcom backslash, Daryn. That's B A, are you K.S. Dotcom backslash, Daryn. D, A, are I. And I know you will enjoy. You see so much of that were where parents kind of like throw their hands up in the air because the kid is just constantly going to the screen, you just never set that up that way. Your culture in your house, right.

That up that way. But also and I'll get back to the five core curriculum eventually in that story about the bookshelves. But we say when mom and I have downtime, the kids will pay attention to what the parents do. And if I'm pulling out my phone at the dinner table or, you know, Mom is off watching Netflix or playing a video game, then that's what the kids are going to assume that a human being does when there's time on your hands.

And for us, you know, reading books, sometimes painting, you know, cooking, playing musical instruments. So they've just grown up with normalcy, not involving, you know, a lot of hefty screen time or activities that that might be a relative waste of time, depending on how you use them. And there's no rules in our house. You know, there is no screen time limit. There's no you can't have gluten. There's really very few rules.

We just educate them about the consequences of any decision that they might make and then let them live with the consequences. So if they want to get on their aid touches or their computers at night and just, you know, dick around in their bedrooms on those for a while, I tell them, hey, you're not going to sleep well, you probably don't have a crappy day tomorrow. You know, there's a reason, Dad, if I am on my computer, I'm at least wearing blue light blocking glasses and have screen software like like Iris installed on the computer to to keep it from pressing my melatonin as I'm going to sleep.

But I don't tell them. Yeah, you got 15 minutes. You got 30 minutes. You know, the screen time allotment, because all that does in my opinion, is set up whatever you've set a limit on as forbidden fruit for a youngster. You know, I would much rather when let's say we have a, you know, a new shipment of this fine organic biodynamic wine come into our house, you know, I'll pour the boys a little shot glass and teach them about the tastes.

And, you know, how to note the aroma of the wine and the flavor and how to sip it and, you know, and aerate it in the mouth. And I guarantee they're not going to, like, steal a bottle of wine from the pantry and go get drunk in their bedroom, because that's just, you know, it's not the relationship. It's not a forbidden fruit, literally, in that case.

So what I love about that, though, is, is you're you're empowering them. You're giving them future potential downsides. Right? You're giving them the information. You're treating them as a infinite being that they are they're just a kid, but they're still a being that has consequences to the choices. So you lay that out, it's up to you to like you're empowering them with that because they'll get that. Exactly.

And they're I mean, if you've got a one year old, they're toddling towards a hot stove. You don't say, don't touch that. You can get burned, then let them go, you know, scald on their hand, but within reason. You know, you it's I think the name of this style of parenting is love and logic. And there's a few books out about it. But yeah, it's essentially educate your child about the consequences of any decision that they may make then as much as you can while keeping them, you know, somewhat safe, allow them to make the decision and to deal with the consequences.

And I think that fosters a more responsible, free thinking, independent, resilient individual going forward and the rest of their lives. And so I'll take them down to that bookshelf, you know, back to the five things that I think a kid should know, even if even if, you know, they're not interested in the moment. And I'll let them select the book. And, you know, they'll point out different books like what's this book about Breath Dad or, you know, Benjamin Franklin.

Who was that guy? You know, should I read this biography and I'll help them select a book. And their job is to read that book within a week, which I think is reasonable for a young man or young woman to grow up being able to digest about a book a week. And and, you know, reading is like a muscle. And I've taught them how to skim the table of contents, look at how each chapter is laid out, go through with with your finger, with the pen as you scan down one page and scan down the next page.

I taught them out. The rule that I have for myself, which is that when I am reading a book, my my special rule is that I'm not allowed to turn the page backwards. Right. So whenever I'm looking at a page, I'm reading very mindfully because I think I'm not going to see this again, so I better pay attention. So, you know, I teach them some of these tricks and then they take the book. And this leads to the second skill in addition to reading, I think that a human being for success in any career that they're going to go into should be able to express their thoughts in clear written form beyond a 140 character tweet or a text message with a smiley face like actually be able to write meaningful shit.

And so their their job after they've read that book because they have or read that book that a one week. To turn in a one to two page book report that not only kind of outlines what they've read, but because I know how easy it is to read a book and then kind of, you know, copy and paste some stuff. And, you know, and here's what this book is about. Maybe grab the Amazon description and just use that, tell some personal stories, tell them tell tell how this related to you as a human being, which is also important.

And, you know, this is how I wrote my last book, Bounders is everything starts with a story because humans relate to stories. And if you tell things from your own point of view, your own time in the trenches, your own experiences, that's relatable. And it's a it's a wonderful way to teach something to someone. So reading and writing are are two of the skills that will serve them.

Well, just to make a note on that, too, you're allowing them to choose the book that's of interest to them, right? I don't know about you, but later in my life, when I was interested in something, I would devour it because I was driven by this innate desire and passion. You're not forcing a book. You're not grabbing it for them and say, do this report. You don't give a shit. There's not a meaning for it in their life, but you're allowing them again.

It's empowerment, which I love.

I'd love to meet your kids, but I will give them helpful nudges. Like, for example, a few weeks ago I did note that my mom and I just go to bed by nine, 45, 10 p.m. I mean, we got some some pretty healthy sleep cycles in our home. And, you know, I would get up and go to the bathroom, hear them listen to radio. You know, they've got this radio show they listen to called Adventures and Odyssey.

You know, it's like an old school radio show. And it was like midnight and they're still in there. And I can see the lights in the bedroom are kind of on. So the book report, I didn't choose this for them, but, you know, I kind of navigated it was a river in this case. And we were over by the sleep section of the bookshelf. And I started pulled out a couple of books like Sleep Smarter and whatever Matthew Walker's books lead.

I said, these are some pretty good books that you guys would dig this book this week, I bet. And so sometimes I'll I'll plant the seed because you realize they're messing up their sleep cycle. It's going to affect them. So you nudge them in and it's like, just learn about this, right? Not telling them you're not lecturing, you're not arguing with them. You're not scolding them. You're not screaming at them at midnight. Right.

You're again, presenting an opportunity for them to learn about something that they have been choosing for themselves. So here, take some more information then, because this is affecting you.

Right. And you know, the same thing, the same trick kind of works with a partner because, you know, we all know the shoemaker's wife wears no shoes and, you know, the person least likely to come to me to help advice or listen to any damn thing I say when it comes to dishing out advice is my wife, of course, because she has to put up with me all day long. So, you know, a few months ago, she was she was talking about how her energy levels were kind of waning at night.

And I sent her a podcast about progesterone and you say, oh, you should listen to this podcast. And I had a I think it was a list of the book about in the Flow and, you know, how women navigate through cycles of life and and you know how to adjust your macronutrients based on what time of the month that you're in and adjust your exercise and just some some hormonal things to think about. And I set that book out for her.

But the last thing I'm going to do is sit down with her for an hour at the kitchen table and explain to her, you know, how progesterone works and you know how to adjust the hormones and all that jazz. So so I'll do that with my wife as well.

Anyways, though, so reading and writing are two and then the other three are arithmetic. Just being able to engage in basic mathematical skills. Again, they don't wake up in the morning and say, Dad, you know, I'm super interested in calculus or algebra. I just that hasn't happened yet. At least that would be I would be shocked if it did. And so they you know, every every week, a couple of times a week, they have an online course that they take called magnesium.

And they say with an instructor online for an hour and they make math fun and they have these little homework problems that they work on. And that's probably not something that they choose. But it's, again, a skill that I think will serve them later on in their life very effectively.

But you're also doing that stuff like with the treehouse thing. You're also that's integrative. That's interactive, that's still in that same right vein, because now you're starting to bridge that gap.

If if we knew I mean, let's just think of the think of geometry as it relates to plants and visitations and Solberg's work and like think of that unbelieve.

Just give us that information. Yeah. So we could understand how important mathematics are. Right. It seems like you're creating those to be relatable. It has to be tied into life experiences. And I even had a chat with their magnesium instructor and told them, look, I want part of their homework to be finding the best deal on, you know, a noodle's when they go shopping with mom at the grocery store or calculating the tip when we're out at a restaurant or, you know, they have this podcast where they're you know, they have money from sponsors coming in from the podcast, so.

How they actually calculate, you know, what you're going to put in your bank account and how much you're going to save and what are the percentages. And so I was pretty clear that I did not just want them because it's a failure of traditional school, you know, rote memorization of facts that you don't you have no clue why you're actually learning those things. You know, I want everything to be life and experience based and applicable in life. So mathematics is a third and then the last two are some semblance of logic or computer programming or just being able to understand.

A equals B, B equals C, therefore equals C, you know, as being able to calculate logically in your head. And so they've got some logic puzzles and logic books. And I'll, you know, I'll put some money out and be like, OK, five dollar. I'll choose like an advanced logic puzzle. I'll be like whoever can get this within three days. And of course, I ripped out all the answers that were at the back of the book.

And those are those are hidden in my office. But, you know, then they'll come to me. OK, Dad, I think I got to figure it out and I'll look at and if one of them gets it, then they'll get the five bucks of another and get some money off the table and both of them get it. And I've I mean, rice and beans at night. So just give away ten dollars. But but the logic and then computer programming, you know, they they have like a monthly shipment from this company called Bitz Box that teaches them how to program little apps.

And they play the what's the Mind game on the computer. Oh, mine.

Filled with the name of it. You know what I'm talking about? His son is like, yeah, yeah. I'm kind of iffy about that one because I see its potential for four to use. But this idea of just being comfortable around programming logic and, you know, of course, the fact that we live in an era. Yes. Minecraft in which being able to work your way around a computer programming and software I think is a useful skill.

That's a fourth. And then the final is rhetoric's persuasion. Right. Just being able to defend a thought, being able to argue effectively, being able to understand game theory. You know, every night we have these wonderful family dinners where we wait until the end of the day and we break all the rules about not eating late at night just because we want everything to be done when we sit down to dinner. And so we spend time all together as a family preparing a meal.

And, you know, we have a wonderful vegetable garden and we got ten acres of forest. So we'll go out and harvest nettle and mint and plantain and, you know, little rosemary in time from the garden or some fresh heirloom tomatoes. We've got chicken eggs from the chickens and we've got, you know, these wonderful Nigerian dwarf goats. And, you know, I do a lot of bow hunting. So we have a freezer full of fresh harvested meat and we'll make these wonderful family meals together and then gather round.

And we play games for like an hour, you know, Kuttler and Boggle and Scrabble and scattergories and, you know, a lot of kind of thinking, game theory type of games. And this idea of teaching them how to argue, how to persuade, how to engage in good rhetoric. Some of that actually happens at the dinner table each night. That that's kind of our tradition. That's our ah, you know, I believe that I'm not raising my children.

I'm raising my children's children. And so legacy is a big part of the way that I parent. Back to the smartphone example. If I'm pulling out my smartphone at the table, what are my kids going to be doing with their kids, you know, when they're eating dinner? And all of a sudden I've got a whole generation of fields coming after me that are dicking around on their phones at the dinner table versus if I step up as a father and as a leader and as a king of the House.

And I demonstrate responsibility. You know, the same tactics that the that are in our house. You know, I lead morning meditation with the family, morning journaling with the family, you know, evening prayer time, evening music, family dinners, you know, Wednesday and Sunday night tennis outings and, you know, Tuesday night bike rides to the farmer's market. These are all things that I would hope my kids would do with their kids. And so, you know, it's important to realize that traditions that you set up can really stick as part of your legacy.

And so reading, writing, arithmetic, rhetoric and logic are even if they're not expressing an interest in that as part of their unschooling things that I weave in regardless, I hope all parents listen to this because you can have the information, you can have the cutting edge information that can change a world. But if you can't articulate it and deliver it, then it is gone. It's literally his work is gone. Right. And holy shit. And if you're looking at and I just love this because.

If you're looking at your children's children and you truly hope people just take a pause right now and just go fuck that responsibility of literally, do you want them picking up their phone or do you want them critically thinking? And also we've talked to get into the soul part of the thing, like the connection, the emotions, the beautiful conversation we've had before, because that's that emotional, that spiritual. That, of course, is part of it.

But but that's what I'm thinking of when you're young. And I mean, think about this. And it's human nature, right? People responding to pastor's message favorably. His rhetoric was was very likely a big part of that, but also the human natural response to want the shortcut to want the quick fix is part of that, too, because we're talking about triggering an innate immune response, which short term can be effective.

But but to the neglect of the adaptive humoral response, which takes longer training, repeated exposure, being outside with animals and, you know, eating produce grown in a garden that might have a little bit of dirt on it. And you're not excessively using antibiotics and doing all these things that gradually, slowly allow the body to become stronger in. You know, you could say the same thing for people wanting the fast track to fitness or nutrition, getting a gastric bypass instead of gradually reducing calories and accepting the fact that if you spent time from the age of 15 to 40 becoming overweight, you are not going to lose all that in a year.

It's probably going to be a good five to 10 years of healthy eating and living in a healthy way in order to restore your body composition back to where you wanted to be. That's a painful message for people. People want the innate immune response triggered to not have to worry about doing all the hard work on the back and preventively. You know, people want the the pharmaceutical instead of the lifestyle change, the gastric bypass instead of the dietary change. And I get it and I like it.

I get tempted towards towards the quick acute fix all the time. But when it comes to building character, when it comes to developing a long term, stable foundation for whatever it is you're going after in life, usually it's not fraught with shortcuts.

It's hard work. It's sweat, sometimes sweat, blood and tears, but patience and sticking to things long term pays off. And what we're seeing now in the modern medical industry is the complete opposite of that. People depending on a quick fix, physicians being unwilling to give out, for the large part, good preventive medical care advice. And as a result, we have a lot of people who who are not getting the medical solutions that they need.

So for years, maybe all most of my life, people have been asking me what kind of foods you eat, what kind of exercises do you do, what kind of water should I drink, all of these things and so much more we put into a 21 day program. So that can take you through a theme every day of knowledge, action, and then eating this delicious meals, working out, getting support, anchoring in these new habits. So you can do what?

So that you can kick ass. So you have the energy, the vitality to live the kind of life that you really want. That's what it's all about. So all in this app, we have grocery lists, we have education about real hydration and what greater oxygenation and the balance of organization. All of these things we are diving into as you're heading down this hero's journey of implementation into a new life to give you the kind of life that you actually want.

So join my tribe. All you have to do is go to one to one tribe, dotcom, sign up and you get three free days. Join me on this hero's journey. Join the tribe. And largely, you know, a third to the half of the Americans are running around a very, very compromised state. Yeah, so so the adaptive qualities in the toilet at that point wake up.

And that person is 20, 30 years down the road and have a just a huge amount of these triggers.

And of course, you're in pain. You can't sleep, you're overweight.

You want that shit to go away because you're you're just not right.

And man, to go, OK, but you really just need to change these foundational principles and it will get there. It may not be tomorrow or next week, but it absolutely is.

And I just like I can't you know, it's even like the parenting idea you're taking into a next generation. You take it very you are. And when you look at epigenetics, you literally are. I mean, not only can intergenerational trauma be released, you know, whether it's, you know, sexual trauma that occurred in a grandparent or great grandparent, you know, we have stories now of people releasing much of that trauma with something like, you know, plant medicine, for example, down to epigenetic changes from a from a family, a legacy of cigarette smokers that you can reverse through a lot of these, you know, kind of antiangiogenic strategies that, you know, a guy like Dr.

William Li talks about in his fantastic book, To Beat Disease, you know, wonderful book. But you sometimes you can think about things in this way. Yeah, I'm a little bit messed up biologically from something that my parents did or nutritional decisions that I made as a young man or young woman. But my kids don't have to suffer the same way. And my kids kids are going to be even healthier because of that. I mean, I personally grew up on twenty nine cent hamburger and thirty nine cent cheeseburger day and salad in our house was iceberg lettuce just drowned and ranch dressing and take and bake pizzas and and you know, through college.

One of my favorite snacks was dogs out of the refrigerator or dipped in peanut butter. And that, that was my protein. That'll stick to your ribs. You'll be, you know, shitting out a straw for days. But, you know, that was how I grew up and now became the witness. My kids, you know, eating wild plants from the forest and big nutritious meals and taking care of their guts and eating slowly to activate digestive enzymes and having a family blessing and family breastwork before the meal to put them into a parasympathetic state.

I don't think they're going to grow up with the same type of gut issues that I've had to deal with, the same type of sleep disruption that I've had to deal with learning all these lessons the hard way. And so every generation can become healthier. And sometimes you need to think that way. Like, you know, the human tendency, again, is to think I screwed up, messed up. So I might I might as well just keep on going pizza and beer the rest of my life because I've just messed it up at this point.

So, you know, why even consider, you know, you know, eating healthy organic vegetables and taking care of my body and getting good sleep? Well, the reason why if you if you have children is like you're going to change future generations. And yeah, you might not be perfect when you finally get to your deathbed, but your kids are going to be that much better. Your grandkids give me that much better. And so, you know, you have to engage in a certain amount of future thinking as well.

It's such a huge point. It's almost like, you know, we've got this body, we've got this interaction with reality. We've got this 3D world that's very seductive. You know, it wants us to be distracted. And so to develop that inner world, that understanding of you, that that that purpose, it's almost like when you figure that out, it's it's like a prayer in action. Right. And and that fuels and it's like every morning we've talked about our morning rituals, how it's just no compromise, right?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, and that that morning ritual in the evening ritual, those are the bookends on your day. And I can't emphasize highly enough the importance of having those rituals. You know, even my my my team, you know, I own a supplements company and I've got my speaking career and podcast and blog and all this stuff.

But my team knows, you know, unless it's some phone call in Dubai that I have to take early in the morning, nothing gets scheduled until about nine thirty a.m. when I wake up at five or five thirty, I'm using that time for quiet time prayer, listening to something spiritual or devotional or uplifting as a mountain to walk in the sunshine, you know, easing into the day, caring for my body, journaling and then. You know, we have this practice at the beginning of each day, we all gather as a family out on the front doorstep if it's the summer, you know, with the rays of sun, you know, hitting the patio or in the in the winter, it'll be in front of a roaring fireplace in the living room.

And we all have our journals and we sit and we meditate for about five to ten minutes. We meditate with breath, work, and we open our journals and we all write down in the morning what it is, one thing we're grateful for, and then one person who we can pray for or help or serve that day to begin each day with gratitude and with service. And then at the end of the day, after that glorious family dinner, we go upstairs and the kids crawl into bed and, you know, get ready to put on the radio show or take out their book.

And we return to the journals and we share with each other what it is that we were grateful for and who it is that that we wrote down to to pray or help or serve that day, because there is a little bit of accountability.

Some day sometimes dad will say, OK, so so, you know, what did you do for for Grandma when you wrote her down? And you did you call her on the phone to say a nice prayer for to you and you go help her out with something? And then we we also engage in self-examination and a return to our purpose statement at the end of each day. So at the end of each day in that same journal, we write down, what good have I done this day?

What could I have done better this day, those two classical self-examination questions, so you know how you rose to the occasion and you identify it and you say, OK, that was a good thing, that's going to stick. That's something I might do the next day. And why did I fail? What lessons did I learn when I failed, you know?

River was making risotto the other night and he burnt his risotto. And during our journalling, at the end of the day, he said, what could I have done better? You know, I burnt the risotto data could have made better risotto. And it always leads to these interesting discussions because I'll dig a little bit and we'll say, well, what was it related to to focus? Was you being distracted? Was it you perhaps one needing to be more more mindful as you're in the kitchen cooking, working with these wonderful ingredients that we've harvested so that you're careful not to waste them?

And, you know, he said, yeah, I need to I need to be more mindful when I'm cooking and maybe slow down my breath rate and focus a little bit more and not get caught up with a book in the living room. So he learns that lesson and identifying what it is that you failed at each evening can seem like it'd be a kind of a self-defeating negative mentality to get into it at night. But I've only found it to help myself and my family grow dramatically.

And so we have the self-examination in the evening, the gratitude and the purpose in the morning or the gratitude in the service in the morning. And then the other thing that we do in the evening is a return to the purpose statement. Each member of our family has their purpose statement. They can say in one single succinct sentence. And that last question we answer is what is one way that I lived out my purpose statement today? What is one way that I lived out my purpose statement today?

So, for example, you know, Terrones purpose is he wants to create art that elicits positive emotions in people. Right. So he might say, well, you know, I worked on a new painting that I'm developing or I storyboarded this little graphic book that I want to make. And he's very into painting and art and graphics. But, you know, if we get to the end of the day and you're really struggling to think of, you know, what's one way that I serve my life's purpose today, then it means that maybe you're not living out your life in a self actualized manner and it makes you think a little bit about how you're going to return to your purpose the next day.

And so so, you know, that's an example of that morning ritual and that evening ritual and the importance of it, not just because it's this built in habit, a routine that keeps you sane each day, but because it helps you grow every single day. You become a better person because the morning ritual equips you to go out into the world for those, whatever, 10, 12 hours until the evening ritual and make as big of a difference as you can with the spirit of service as you're doing so and a spirit of gratitude for each moment, for each breath, for each interaction.

And in the evening you revisit the purpose you self examine, and that means you're going to wake up out of bed the next morning with a whole bunch of lessons from the previous day. And that stacks and stacks and tiny little incremental improvements. And you become a better person each day, each week, each month, each year as you engage in those rituals.

I mean, that's cool. And I think the other thing that the underlying theme of this whole thing is you're doing it, your wife is doing it like it's shared, you're being vulnerable. You're expressing yourself so that you're not sitting there going, hey, tell me about what. Absolutely.

We all have matchbooks and we have this little this little browser window tab that's always open on the Mac books. It's called Habibti. And on Habitrail, there are there are certain things meditation, journaling, prayer, Bible reading, all these things that are pretty easy to skip when when life gets going, like go read Proverbs or whatever. And I got an important meeting and, you know, I got to lunch.

But what we have on there is been just a river. Terryn each thing listed each day and you check the boxes and if we go a few days and somebody boxes are not getting checked, usually this happens in the morning when we gather, you know, one of my kids will speak up and be like, Mom, you haven't checked the box since Friday or you all say Teran, how come? You know, journalling wasn't wasn't checkbox for the past few days.

And and it's powerful to do it as a family and to have some kind of accountability woven in as well, which sounds gimmicky, to have to have to have like a browser with a tab window open to keep everybody on their morning rituals. But it is helpful. It is helpful to have that accountability built. And it's fun to check something to attack and to have a witness, something very powerful. By the way, we can live our lives very isolated and not share those things with ourselves.

But if you have someone who's mindful enough to keep that space and to be able to have that, it takes one friend. Yeah. And someone could do that. It takes one part of the one person in the family, even if the whole family didn't want to do it. And then that's the thing. Right. I love the fact. Just going back a little. I love the fact that you've included because I listen, I'm here with my dog so I can go into my rituals really easy.

Zero distractions. And all of that stuff, and and you could spend the first four hours, you could still do that. Spend the first four hours, no one else is up. And you're doing it all yourself and you're doing your thing. But you've included. And I just there's a theme here to your family life, which is such such a I've never heard you talk about this. So I'm excited that people get to hear this. But but the inclusive nature and the teachable nature.

But you're also in that, too. You're a part of it.

And it's it's hard, especially for a guy like me who's who's very into self-improvement. And I'm also kind of into like I'm super like the way that you live up here and you're by yourself. I would be so happy. Like, I'm I'm totally cool off by myself. I'll go camping. I'll go hunting. I don't need a companion. You give me a maybe a good book or something to listen to and a few things to do. And I will be I don't need a people fix very often.

Yeah. Yeah exactly. But but you get it like some people are just wired up that way and. You know, if I have let's say I work out with my kids because I've decided that it's more important that my kids get to learn how to move a kettlebell mindfully and how to do a triangle butt squat to open up their hips and you know, how to relax their jaw and relax their hands when they're out running than it is for me to get a really good killer workout in with my headphones in because I've got nothing distracting me.

And so I include my kids in my workouts. You know, we all go out in the garage at five thirty six in the afternoon at some point before dinner. And, you know, I ride out a workout and we do the workout together and I don't really want to do that, that like I, I would rather like crush it on my own with a good podcast's or some music on my earbuds. But instead I have to stop halfway through my squats and go over to river and adjust his hips or, you know, make sure Taryn doesn't drop the kettlebell on himself or, you know, she'll one of them how to snap their hips properly during a swing.

And then when I'm out running, I want to go a little faster because they're a little 12 year old legs can't keep up, but. Including your family and training and get you, we all get to that point in our lives where if we have a family, if we have children, there will be some sacrifice, like there will be some times when there isn't enough time in the day for you to get in what you want to get in because you got to whatever driving to jujitsu or soccer practice or, you know, you know, you have a ton of shit to do and you're kind of stressed out because family dinner has arrived and you just shut everything down and go into family dinner and there is some sacrifice.

But the thing that I found is that the more you grow in love for each other, the more sacrifice doesn't feel like sacrifice. It feels like love. And if you think of it not as sacrifice but as an opportunity to love someone, then it helps take a little bit of the burden off the fact that, oh, man, I don't want to do this. I'll have the time. And I run into that all the time.

I mean, I even wake up, you know, nearly every day with that pit in my stomach, that gnawing feeling that I'm not a good enough father, that that I'm you know, I don't know what I'm doing. I'm making things up as I go.

And what if my kids get super messed up and I wound up in prison when they're 20 because I've, you know, taught them the wrong things and, you know, maybe they're developing talk. This is the last time, like an unhealthy relationship with food, you know, because we're so into healthy eating and, you know, and I'm constantly, constantly second guessing myself.

But, you know, you you learn as you go and you know, the understanding in our home, whether it's a little argument with between my wife and I about who drank all the coffee or, you know, one of the kids has has made a mistake and, you know, maybe they've told a lie or anything like that is love covers all love covers on you. You give them a hug, you give her a hug, and you say, you know, the pot of coffee being gone is not a big enough issue for us to ruin our day over.

I love you. Let's forget this happened. I forgive you. Let's put it all behind us. And I think that when you with love and a spirit of service and some amount of sacrifice into that, that family routine and ritual, it just makes things, at least for our family, more and more magical every day. That's amazing. And I'm because I love all of these different ways. You're raising your family, not just kids, because you're you're raising yourself in every the family's all.

Yeah. Levitating together in this beautiful way. So, like, I'm curious, like when there is maybe your wife or your children are having some emotional upset or they're they're angry or pissed off or or in pain, like, what's your approach there when you know like you don't know you don't know what the issue is. How do you like what how do you cultivate that emotional kind of almost recapitulation kind of.

Yeah I that yeah. OK, yeah.

I wish I could give you a book, a program, a course, a strategy, a guru. But but yeah. But for us.

For us it's.

Parana, the free form that's inside each and every one of us that's so few people have learned how to tap into that, I think is one of the most integral parts of being human that exists. And it still shocks me that this is not taught to kids in school and that we do not grow up with an intimate relationship with our breath, our prana, our life, our key. It's it's built into each one of us. And with a single breath or a single minute of a certain style of breath, you can activate yourself and be ready to go to battle and, you know, rip 400 pounds off the ground with a barbell deadlifting, you know, using a, you know, Russian system style breath work or, you know, some of the things that that, you know, a lot of a lot of Eastern European powerlifting teams actually utilize, you know, like sympathetically activated breath work when you just got to go to battle and make every hair on your skin stand up.

And similarly, you can within a minute activate the parasympathetic system, you know, blow off some steam, have a long exhale, or do some carbon dioxide retention or alternate left right nostril breathing or box breathing. My my boys have done a lot of breath work. You know, I took them through to six weeks at one point. This is actually during the the coronavirus, you know, lockin we were in the sauna every night for 20 to 60 Minutes.

And I've taught them as many tactics as I know. You know, they've they've been deep in the hall entropic and they've made their own DMT and, you know, gotten high on their own supply, whatever you want to call it. But they have a really intimate connection to their breath. And so that's probably the top thing that we do at our house when there's there's some kind of a stress or a disagreement or turmoil. Yeah. I mean, we you know, we are Christians and will pray and we'll read the Bible and we'll bring things to God.

But when it comes to, you know, just like the acute built in human ability to be able to to, you know, spin the dials one way or the other, for us, breath work is is big. And, you know, even my even my wife and I have, you know, really found, you know, the things like tantric breath work and movement of energy from the root chakra to the crown chakra, being able to, you know, during lovemaking, get close to an orgasm and then be able to just breathe the energy from the root up to the crown, drop it there, get all the sensation of an orgasm.

And then, you know, when you are ready for the for the fireworks, you know, and then you breathe everything down to your root and it's a choice and yeah, just. Yeah. And it's amazing during everything from love, making the weight lifting to be able to use your breath in a really mindful way. I wish it was, it was just like somehow woven into the curriculum of every human being to learn breath because it's so magical and so many people are just disconnected from their own frickin breath, which is just shocking.

Dude, thank you, man. I believe we could probably sit here for hours. We kind of did. If you count, we kind of did that to our hours once.

Okay, everyone, just so you know, this one knows better what a fantastic episode. So tell me, what is one thing you got out of today's conversation? If this episode struck a chord with you and you want to dive a little deeper into my other conversations with incredible guests, you can head over to my website, Derrinallum Dotcom, for more episodes and in-depth articles. Keep diving, my friends. Keep diving. This episode is produced by my team at Must Amplify, an audio marketing company that specializes in giving a voice to a brand and making sure the right people hear it.

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