Making $100 Million A Year Eating Raw Liver: Liver King

The Liver King is an illusive internet sensation who says the secret to a healthy and happy life is to eat raw meat every day. An advocate of what he calls an 'ancestral lifestyle', we have to return to the lifestyle our hunter-gatherer forebears. Returning to this way of living is most consistent with our DNA and what we're genetically coded to want according to the Liver King. A controversial figure, his advocating of this diet is disputed by many nutritionists, but the Liver King says it has transformed his life, that of his family, and his followers who take up his suggestion. In this raw interview the Liver King opens up on criticism and his sometimes crippling anxieties for the first time, as well as how his ancestral lifestyle shapes his bond with his wife, the Liver Queen. It isn't always easy to be the king. Liver King: Instagram - https://g2ul0.app.link/PPY0tPb3Gsb Twitter - https://g2ul0.app.link/LRMyYMe3Gsb Youtube channel - https://g2ul0.app.link/EzKvK2h3Gsb Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It was like a living fucking hell. And I got the shit kicked out of me every single day. And all I wanted to do was just be different.

• 0:06Steven Bartlett?

  This is Liver King. What up, Primals?

• 0:08Speaker 00

  This is what we evolved with. Cheap and testicle lungs. You are not replacing these nutrients with fucking vegetables. Seventy pound kettlebells in each air. Seventy pounds in a backpack. It's 120 pounds on top of a sled and you go one mile. I made my son do it when he turned 15.

• 0:23Steven Bartlett?

  That sounds like toxic parenting.

• 0:24Speaker 00

  You know what? There's nothing toxic about this.

• 0:27Steven Bartlett?

  Joe Rogan criticized you, alluded that you're on steroids. The Liver King thing drives me nuts because that guy's on steroids.

• 0:33Speaker 00

  All I ask is for the opportunity to have the conversation with him face to face. Most people are suffering with something. 50% on prescription medication, 20% can't have babies, 70% overweight. The six tribes that I've gone and visited with seems nonexistent.

• 0:46Steven Bartlett?

  You're making over 100 million dollars a year from your businesses. True or false?

• 0:50Speaker 00

  True. I own 10 or 12 companies right now where every single company is based on taking this ancestral message mainstream. The world's really hurting.

• 0:59Steven Bartlett?

  What is the hardest moment of your adult life, Ben?

• 1:04Speaker 00

  The hardest moment was when my, my son Rad got sick. We thought, we thought we were losing him.

• 1:11Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 1:11Speaker 00

  Oh God, don't make me do this again.

• 1:15Speaker 00

  Part of the reason why I never wanted to publicly come out as the Liver King is because.

• 1:22Steven Bartlett?

  Without further ado, I'm Stephen Butler and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:36Steven Bartlett?

  Liver King, I am, I'm going to start where I always start, but for you, I'm particularly interested in this. Can you tell me the context I would need to know about your earliest years? That went into shaping the man that you went on to become? I'm talking before 10 years old. What is that context?

• 1:57Speaker 00

  Well, before 10 years old.

• 2:01Speaker 00

  I grew up with a brother and with a mom that was mom and dad. I have no memory of my dad when I was two or three years old. He died. He was serving in the air force and he died. And so my mom was really tough on us, really tough on us. What I mean by that is it seemed like, you know, brothers together are always raising hell, getting in trouble. And she seemed to just beat the shit out of us. It's just normal. It's just normal. And then sometimes she would drop us off at her parents' house in California and they would do the same thing. And later on, I realized my mom got it from her dad and they're just doing the best, right? They're doing the best that they can. And so I'll say my mom was really, really tough on me growing up.

• 2:43Speaker 00

  She had us enrolled in all the typical sports, all the traditional sports. And I just wanted to be just like my brother. He's a year and a half older than me. I just wanted to be exactly like my brother. And here's the thing, we had two friends up the street, best friends, Chris and Aaron. And they were everything, you know, going to play sports, going to hang out with these guys, going skateboarding. It just seemed like every day was full of activity. And you said, describe it up to 10. That was about 10. It's interesting that you said, describe it up to 10 because I would say just to about 10, life was incredible. It was like perfect, everything. I mean, just like every day was full of laughter, no responsibility, you know, falling off the skateboard,

• 3:26Speaker 00

  getting banged up, you know, and back then, you know, you could, you could take your skateboard anywhere. You know, my mom would let us go to the movies, you know, on the skateboard. And so, growing up, I just remember, these were just, up to about 10, it was just filled with so much joy. Yeah.

• 3:43Steven Bartlett?

  And then after 10?

• 3:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it's almost like it all switched overnight. So the friends that we had up the street, they moved to another town. And then I went from middle, I went from elementary school to middle school. And I would say this is when my first rite of passage really took place. It was like a living fucking hell. I was the only one of my kind in middle school. I was undersized, I was tiny, I was just a little guy. I knew I looked funny and I got the shit kicked out of me every single day. I remember I would come home and I would look in the mirror, I would look at the clothes that I had. I had absolutely no concept of self-worth. I was totally embarrassed, I was humiliated of this kid that I had become. And all I wanted to do was just be different.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  I was like, why couldn't I have been born different? Why couldn't I look like these guys look? And so I remember coming back from school the first day, tears coming out of my eyes, you know? And I told my mom, I'm never going back. And my mom, she looked at me with such certainty that she wasn't gonna have any part of this conversation. And it was the first time she really did this. It was, I'll say my mom, prior to that, like, we could talk about anything. But the minute I brought this up, she was so stern about it. I knew that this was off limits. And so I never went back to her about any issue I had in middle school. But middle school, think about this, my friends are gone from up the street. I had no one to talk to about this stuff.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  I didn't have a dad to mentor me. My brother, that's a year and a half older, is now hanging out with his older friends. And then he goes off to high school. So I'm not able to talk to him about it. And it's just, man, I just, I couldn't wait for these years to be over. And I remember keeping a list of people, that, like a hit list, I would write down the names. If I could get revenge on these people, these are the five or six guys, you know? That every fucking day, they would bully me, they would, I mean, I would be blindsided out of nowhere. You know, sometimes somebody would punch me and I would wake up. Just with my book back, the bell had already rang. And going to middle school was was just a living hell. I had to figure out a way out of that hellhole. I had started lifting weights just prior to ten.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  For no really good reason. One of my mom's boyfriend, Michael Michael Glidens, he was a pharmacist. He said, hey, I got this old bench in in my garage. You want this bench? And I was like, sure, I'll take it. And I was just drawn to it. You know, I was just drawn to it. And then something happened where I realized like this is the only place I could really control the outcomes in my life. And so I was drawn to it more and more and more. And eventually I got strong and I looked strong and I figured out a way out of this hellhole. I figured out how to kind of blend in. I figured out how to get some respect. I'm about fourteen at this point. And and at this point, I got both my ears pierced twice. I got my hair slicked back. I'm wearing the baggy jeans. I got the bomber jacket on. I'm like, I'm kind of fitted in a little bit. I kind of figured that out.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  And my mom moved me. She moved us because the high school that the middle school fed to was more of the same, actually even worse, even worse. And so she moved me to predominantly Caucasian place that was more like me. But I had I had just figured out how to fit in with a different demographic. And I'm thinking, I go to I go to high school and I'm like, oh, my God, not not all over again. You know, everyone's wearing tight pants now. Nobody has their hair slicked back. Nobody has an earring in in their ear. But you know what? Like, I I had known, I figured this out before, you know, and and I'll figure this out again. And this time I figured out a lot faster. And I had already learned some self-worth. I'd already learned some respect.

• 7:24Speaker 00

  And and so that's kind of how my life was my earlier years.

• 7:29Steven Bartlett?

  That that kid between ten and fourteen years old that went through that. What would you say to him? How do you feel about him? What would you say to him if you could speak to him now?

• 7:39Speaker 00

  I do speak to him now. Those are my boys now, you know? I mean, they're not going through what I went through, but stand up for yourself. You you got something to do. I don't I I I tell my boys this all the time. I'd rather you look stupid. I'd rather you look like an asshole than look like a pussy. You know, you've got to stand up for yourself. I never stood up for myself. I I mean, every every day, something would happen and I never stood up for myself. I never pushed back. I never punched back. And there's this one time in the courtyard. A new kid had come to school Chuck. He looked like me. He's getting in fights every day, but he's punching back. So, once a week, he's leaving with a bloody face. And I'm thinking, oh, God, I don't want to look like that. I don't want anything to do with that. Eventually, I start to make friends with this guy Chuck.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  But Chuck now gets accepted because Chuck is pushing back and Chuck is fighting back. Meanwhile, in parallel, I'm kind of making friends with him. And then somebody tells him something about me. And then he approaches me in the courtyard and he starts pushing me in the courtyard. Now, we got a group of, I don't know, fifty, sixty, seventy people circling around us. He's just pushing me back and pushing me back. And I'm just going back, going back. And eventually, I trip over a planter. But right before that, I say, hey, man, you don't want to fight me. You don't want to fight me. I'm a pussy. That's what I said to him. You know, and for the longest time, I wouldn't tell that story to anybody. I wouldn't tell it to my own kids. I was so embarrassed to tell that story. I'm proud to tell that story now. You know, because what forged me are those days, right?

• 9:08Speaker 00

  And so, if I had the opportunity, what I would have said is, push back. Fight. You know, you need to stand up for yourself right now and for the rest of your life. This is what you need to do. And everything's going to be okay. You know, it's okay to get bloody. It's okay to fight. You need to fight. We evolved fighting, right? Somewhere along the way, you know, I just, I didn't know that was okay. And I was just scared out of my mind that the kind of fights that I saw every day, you know, there's so much blood. And the teachers would never break up these fights. Because if a teacher broke up this fight, that teacher's getting it that day. So, the fights lasted so long, they would wait for the gym coaches to come all the way over to the fight to break up those fights.

• 9:53Speaker 00

  I wanted no part of that. So, I wish I had somebody tell me, you know, I don't give a shit about you getting suspended. I don't care what happens to your face. You've got to stand up for yourself and you've got to push back and you've got to fight.

• 10:06Steven Bartlett?

  If I could give you an eraser and you could apply that eraser to those four years in your life from ten to fourteen and you could make it different, you could make it rosy and idyllic and picturesque, would you now use the razor and erase those four years of your life?

• 10:21Speaker 00

  You know, the answer is no. You know, I mean, I couldn't be more grateful, you know, for those four years. This was my first rite of passage. This forged me into the unrelenting evolutionary hunter that I am today. I mean, I figured that shit out on my own. You know, this is probably a gift I didn't have a dad. You know, this is probably a gift I didn't have somebody to put their arms, because you figure that shit out on your own, you cross this chasm, right? I always think about going through these four years and I think I would never allow my kids to do this, but my kids need this too, right? They need the equivalent of this rite of passage. So, no, I would never take it. And I think everyone, you know, who is self-made has various rites of passage at different stages and phases of their life. This was my first rite of passage. So, I didn't tell you how grateful I am for it. I'm incredibly grateful.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  I figured that shit out. And then I figured out the next one and the next one. And then eventually you're like, you know what? When people tell you how you really can do anything, you start to realize, oh my God, I really can do anything.

• 11:16Steven Bartlett?

  But what about if I said your son, who I just met, you've got two lovely, lovely sons that are upstairs, what if I said your sons had to go through those four years to figure it out? Would you, and there's a button here that you can press, they get bullied, beat up every day for four years and feel how you felt at ten years old, would you press the button and put your two sons through it?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  I would put them through it. I hesitated because a lot of people didn't make it out of that shit. You know, a lot of people do show up with a gun.

• 11:44Steven Bartlett?

  So would you risk it?

• 11:44Speaker 00

  Am I their dad at the same time?

• 11:48Steven Bartlett?

  Today, they're gonna go through it for the next four years?

• 11:50Speaker 00

  Hundred percent, especially with my guidance. Absolutely, I would. You know, a lot of the kids that I went to middle school with did die. You know, a lot of them, you know, are in jail. And, and so this is what I know a lot of people that are in a similar situation, they just don't make it out. You know, something happens to them. With, with a little bit of guidance, and I wouldn't give them even a lot of guidance. You know, I, I think they would kick ass. So absolutely, I, I would, I want them to go through something similar.

• 12:17Steven Bartlett?

  Those moments and the moments in my life that were the most difficult are clearly the moments that created my...

• 12:25Steven Bartlett?

  Best qualities, and I say best qualities because usually these are best qualities in the eyes of the external world. So my success or, you know, all of these things probably came from some kind of hardship, some insecurity, some shit I went through. It's like, you know, I was poked in a really aggressive way and then at the other end, you know, determination comes out, right? I realize that my insecurity created my brilliance.

• 12:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:48Steven Bartlett?

  But with that, always comes a dark side. When you become an extreme person in any respect, there's nearly always a dark side. There's always another cost to that. Everyone claps and goes, ah, standout person, outstanding, different. But what's the dark side in your case?

• 13:05Speaker 00

  I became obsessive about this, about controlling outcomes in my life. You know, I stopped really leaning on other people. You know, things have changed, you know? Now, I would say that I really have a truly interdependent and synergistic culture, you know? And I'm sure that you know that culture and chemistry is where it's at, you can do anything. People say this all the time, the cliche, but it's true, you know? You wanna go fast, go alone. If you wanna go far, go as a team, you know? And it took a while to put that stuff together. I think that a big part of the dark side is I'm so obsessive about controlling certain outcomes in my life. That's why I spend three or four hours in the gym every day, every day, you know? And a lot of people are like, hey, man, you just, don't you have other things? And I'm like, you know what? No, this is what I have to do. I have to do this.

• 13:50Steven Bartlett?

  Why do you have to do it?

• 13:51Speaker 00

  Cause I do.

• 13:52Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  You know, it's, I start with the hardest thing I'm gonna do all day. So I put myself through that. I'm like, if I can do this now, everything's gonna be a little bit easier. And I've tried taking some time off, you know? A lot of, usually I'm so overtrained that the brain isn't even thinking, right? And so when I take a little bit of time off, I do a five day fast once a quarter. When I take, and so I don't work out when I do a five day fast. And my brain is like on another level.

• 14:16Steven Bartlett?

  Is there not an element of the fact that the gym is what saved you from the bullies?

• 14:20Speaker 00

  I'm sure it is.

• 14:21Steven Bartlett?

  So it's a, it's a survival mechanism, that place?

• 14:25Speaker 00

  I'm sure it is, and so much of my message today is that, that strength is an alpha virtue across time and space. And. And so the fact that I can get in there and I can control that and I can get stronger and I can look stronger and that work, you know, that's not something that you can just buy at the mall at a credit card, right, on a credit card. This is something that you have to forge day in, day out, you know, and it's not just the gym, but I'm sure that that has something to do with like, this is what saved me. This is where, you know, if I'm not in the gym, the pain of not being in the gym far exceeds the pain of three or four hours of working out.

• 15:02Steven Bartlett?

  Was there a catalyst moment in terms of you transitioning from being Brian, a name, a person you don't even recognize now here, to being Liver King? Was there a catalyst? I read there was illness and allergies within your kids.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:14Steven Bartlett?

  Was that the catalyst?

• 15:16Speaker 00

  It happened something sometime around there.

• 15:19Steven Bartlett?

  Because you used to wear T-shirts, you used to be called Brian, and now you don't even really resonate with that.

• 15:26Speaker 00

  Right, you know, so this is the message. I think when I've really fully let this barbarian out, so I believe everybody's born a primal, right, wild and free, undomesticated, right, before we domesticated ourselves, before we were mindlessly compliant, right, everyone is wild and free, we're this primal version. And then through social norms and being nice and, you know, then we start to conform to something other than our primal self. And with enough time, I think because of my upbringing and a fight situation, a life and death situation, this guy comes out of the cage. When you train really, really hard in the gym and you're going for PRs and you're doing a 500-pound back squat, if you screw that up, there's real danger involved. And I believe if that guy comes out enough, every single time he

• 16:09Speaker 00

  comes out, he gets a taste for it, he gets a little bit stronger. And I believe one day that guy broke out Liver King. And I always say this, he ate Brian Johnson, he ate his predecessor. That guy's gone. Because when that guy comes out, it's your truest, most authentic form, right? And that's why I said I think we're going to be, you know, dynamic here today, because if this is about being real and raw, a true primal is the most authentic, truest, you know, to him. And when you can be that uninhibited, it's freeing. It's completely freeing. And I was like, when you can be like that, life's like a party. Why would you ever want to go back? I call I call Brian Johnson the corporate, you know, Brian? Like, why would you ever want to go back to that? You know, to being nice and to saying things that you don't actually mean? You know?

• 16:55Steven Bartlett?

  When you say being nice, what's wrong with being nice?

• 16:58Speaker 00

  Well.

• 16:58Steven Bartlett?

  Because you're a very nice guy.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  Thank you for saying so. I asked my kids on the way over here, you know, to explain to me how you would describe me. And and one of them said badass. Another said like a king because you dominate your environment. And then he said, because sometimes you're also a dick. And I said, let's talk about that, right? Because because public accountability is a big deal to me. And again, what we do is far more important than what we say. And if somebody's making excuses in front of my kids, I say, hey, man, what you're doing is making excuses. What you need to do is own what you did, because I don't want to hear excuses. You need to have enough insight. Somebody needs to tell you. And the thing is, if I don't do it right now, number one, it's not a good example for my kids. Number two, because of time, I might not ever see this person again.

• 17:44Speaker 00

  And so I take the time to do it, and I'm sure that person thinks I'm a dick. And everyone kind of thinks I'm a dick, you know, I could have done it privately, but if I think like that, it probably would never happen. So thank you for saying that you believe I'm a nice guy. I believe I'm a nice guy, too. But I believe in accountability, you know? I could give you some examples. On the way to the airport, our driver was supposed to be here 15 minutes early. He's supposed to have my car picked up. I got an F 450 duly truck. It's supposed to be in the shade 15 minutes early. And and it's not, he showed up really just on time. He showed up just on time. And we get in the car, it's hot as shit, we're all sweating, you know? And again, I'm good with all that stuff. I'm good with, but you know what? I sweat for four or five hours a day.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  You know, I'm like, I'm ready to get in the car. I'm ready to be, right now, I'm ready to be comfortable. And I said, hey, Adam, what happened? And he said, well, I just got back from Mexico. I was driving somebody, you know, in an RV, yada, yada, yada. I got it. And I said, Adam, all those are excuses. What I want to hear you just say is, I showed up late. This is my fault. This won't. Happen again. And so he starts going into all and I said, oh, man, don't make me do this not in front of my kids. Right. Because I can't allow you to do this. I can't allow this to be any. So I let him have it. I say, man, I just want you to own it. I want you to say that you messed up. Here's how you're gonna get better. Here's how you're gonna fix it. And he proceeds to still defend. He felt like he needed to defend himself a little bit more. And and so he did apologize. You know what I ended up saying is, you know, primitive culture tribes.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Don't really have a word for I'm sorry. You know, it's I'll get better. You know, they first have to have the insight to, hey, I fucked up and I'm gonna get better. And that's all I want to hear. Yeah. So, you know, in that time, I'm sure, and it happens all the time, you know, hey, how was your food? You know, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you how, in fact, I'll probably tell you how it was before you asked. You know, and I'm very compliment. When the food is great, this is the best eating experience I could have. If the food's not great and we missed here, I'm gonna let you know how that happened. So I think because of that, you know, sometimes, uh, um, you know, I can be perceived as not being a nice guy.

• 19:50Steven Bartlett?

  Why is that responsibility and accountability so important? Why is it so important? What's the, what's the cost to ourselves, our lives, our society if we don't? Take responsibility and we aren't accountable and we resort to blame and excuses.

• 20:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, so the name is Liver King for a couple of different reasons, but I believe everybody has the same primal potential to become anything. And when you can become anything, you realize that you're a true king, you're a self-made king. And that's all about what I, what I believe I model, teach and preach is is taking extreme ownership, leadership, responsibility. Over the life that you shape and create, right? This is the opposite. Of the guy sitting on the couch, making reaction videos, making excuses for his life. Right? You have to have that insight. You have to be held accountable either by someone else and or to hold yourself accountable. To one day move along the continuum from being dependent to finally independent to interdependent, right? Somewhere along that maturity continuum, I believe it's unacceptable for us to allow people to continue to do that.

• 20:48Steven Bartlett?

  Have we lost ourselves a little bit there? Have we gone a bit soft? Have we, have we gone a little bit too far in the direction of? Uh, lack of accountability, blame and, uh, yeah, lack of personal responsibility?

• 20:58Speaker 00

  I believe so. I believe a hundred percent we have, you know, and, um, something's happened where.

• 21:05Speaker 00

  People really watch what they have to say today. You know, we're nice to each other. You know, I say there's something that's happened where men have become pussies today. You know, and of course, there's exceptions to this, right? But I believe hard times make strong men. And there's no requirement for hard times in the modern world. And if you look at our ancestral past, the kind of things we had to do just for food, right, for shelter in perpetuity. If you wanted sex, the kind of things you had to do as our early ancestors required real work, hard work, hard times to make strong men. And today, there's no requirement for any of that. There's an app for it. You can outsource it. And when you go and you do, you know, these types of things, let's say you miss, nobody's really holding you accountable to that miss. It's become acceptable today.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  And then I think what a result of this is you have 80% of peace. The world's really suffering, right? The world's really hurting. And there's these modern day conditions that don't exist in modern day primitive culture tribes, you know? So the six tribes that I've gone and visited with, I've tried to assess and figure out, is there depression? Is there anxiety? Is there infertility? Are there autoimmune conditions in these tribes? And it seems nonexistent. But today, we're really hurting with these things. And so I think that we have missed something. I think we have missed. And I think that we need to hold each other accountable to a higher standard. I say one way or another, you're gonna suffer. You can actively suffer and put in the work to grow and to get better, or you can passively suffer with these conditions that you have to.

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Most people are suffering with something passively, and their life could be so much better. So I do think that we've missed. I think we've become very soft. And I think we need more people. I think there's something to this. We can be nice and generous. We can be fucking honest and candid with one another. What this guy needs over here is not for the next 20 people to say, oh, I accept that excuse. What this guy needs is people to say, hey, man, you're better than this. This is the reality of it. You're in control of these outcomes. And for him to realize, oh, my God, I am in control. I can shape and create the life that I want to live in. So I do believe that we've gotten soft today, and I believe there's something we need to do about it.

• 23:12Steven Bartlett?

  That suffering, you talked about that passive suffering and that mental suffering that society is quite clearly going through.

• 23:23Steven Bartlett?

  What is the cause of that suffering? Let's just focus on the mental suffering. We're talking about mental ailments in your view. So anxiety, depression, these kinds of things. Depending on who you ask and depending which research you look at and factoring that there's an increase in awareness, so there's an increase in labeling and diagnosis. What is your view on why these mental health predicaments have become so prevalent in society?

• 23:48Speaker 00

  I believe it's really multifactorial. I believe it's all nine ancestral tenets, every single one of them. I'll say them real quickly. It's sleep, eat, move, shield, connect, cold, sun, fight and bond. All nine of these have an impact on our hormones, on our neurochemistry, every single one of them. You go without sleep a couple of days, how much you want to bet you show up in a horrific mood?

• 24:09Steven Bartlett?

  That's why I'm wearing this. I know you probably don't agree with the technology, but for me, it's, I actually put it on yesterday, but it's to help my sleep. So I woke up this morning and it says, you got eight hours sleep, you got six hours of random sleep, you did a good job. I'll probably take it off at some point, but I just need to get it somewhere.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  You use it for a while to figure out those things, right? I see people wearing those watches and I say subprimal, right? Because the fourth ancestral tenet is shield and these are non-native signals that we've never been in contact with before. And we have enough of them, right? Most people keep their cellphone next to their dick and balls. This is unacceptable, right? You don't have to have it there. So if you sleep like shit, you're going to show up not the way that you want to show up. If you eat horrifically, this is the same thing. If you don't move, if you don't exercise, it's all nine ancestral tenets. The last one is bond. You know the importance. So all of them shape, you know, how we look, feel, function, what we express epigenetically, from a hormonal standpoint, from an endocrine standpoint, from a neurochemistry standpoint, all of them matter.

• 25:11Speaker 00

  And so it kind of depends on where you're at, what you're doing. But I'll tell you, I rarely meet somebody who's doing all nine of these right and has a shitty life, right? Because people are really hurting and hating and suffering and struggling with modern day conditions like depression, anxiety, autoimmune, low energy, low libido and low ambition in life. There's a better life to fucking live. You got to. A great taste of this. So many people are living this kind of lifestyle. That's why I believe it's my job to model, teach and preach this way. So that our people no longer have to suffer, so that we can express our highest, most dominant form. Because this is a simple, elegant solution. Right. It's not like I came up with this way of living. Right. This is, this is your message. This is the message of our ancestors. When people start to hate on this message, you know, and maybe we'll get talking about some of the critics.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  I'm like, can you really hate on our species this much? Right. Can you hate on your ancestors? This is not a message that I've invented. This is what our early ancestors have done. This is what modern day primitive cultures do. And they're happy as fuck. They're kicking our ass at life. And they have nothing.

• 26:13Steven Bartlett?

  You've been and seen tribes that live very closely to all of these nine ancestral tenants. Tell me about what you've learned. Give me an example of tribes that you visited where you saw them doing these things and you saw some kind of, I guess, subjective evidence that you gained that it's working for them.

• 26:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, as soon as you start to meet with them, you feel it. You feel how happy, you feel how fulfilled they are. They're laughing, they're smiling. You know, a lot of these things, it's just really clear. They don't have shoes. Right. So one of the ancestral tenants is connect, they're connected to the earth 24/7/365. Right. Because of modern day shoes, elevated bed, buildings and stuff like that. We hardly ever come into contact with the actual earth anymore.

• 26:58Steven Bartlett?

  I'd like to point out.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Yes. Yes, you're probably not officially grounding right now.

• 27:04Steven Bartlett?

  No, I know.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  But, but, but let me ask you this. When's the last time you had your bare feet connected to the earth?

• 27:08Steven Bartlett?

  When my girlfriend's been living in Bali, so she will often tell me to take my shoes off so that I ground myself.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Perfect. And, and a lot of people will say, last time I was on the beach.

• 27:18Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn't happen. Of course it doesn't happen. It's if you, if I walk down the street with my shoes off. People would probably call emergency services and have me sectioned or something.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And then, so someone's like, hey, last time I was at the beach, I was like, what were you doing? They're like, oh, yeah, I was with my wife. We were holding hands. We were walking on the beach, under the sun. I'm like, how did it make you feel? Oh, it was one of the best memories. And you know, the earth has a slightly negative charge. We're electrophysical beings, right? Every single cell is electrical in nature. And so, just by default, you see all of the primitive culture tribes connecting with the earth almost 24/7/365. This is one of them, right? And so, it's sleep, eat, move, shield, connect, cold, sun, fight, bond, right? They're under the sun. You know, most of the day, they're under the sun. They're hardly wearing any clothing. They're getting plenty of sun. Bonding is required in this culture. Everybody knows the purpose. Everybody knows what their job is.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  When we go on a hunt, everybody knows who the lead hunter is. You know, they don't have to say anything. And again, the way that they organize, there's this time I tell this story every once in a while because I just love telling the story. We were on a hunt, looking for baboons. And one of the chiefs took a shot with an arrow almost straight up in the air. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, like, you took, what if that comes down near us? Anyways, it came down right next to my son and me. Ends up actually striking my cameraman, the broadside of the arrow and the torso. It doesn't pierce him, but it hits him, like, really close call. They think it's the most hilarious thing they've ever seen. They're laughing so hard at, what are you gonna do? Right? No one's yelling at anybody, you know?

• 28:54Speaker 00

  And he just said, we're not doing that again, you know? And these guys laugh so hard, you know? And when they go on a hunt, this is a matter of life and death. If they're not successful in the hunt, they don't eat, right? And they don't bring anything back to the rest of the tribe. The way that they sleep, this is just, so I always say some of the easy things you can do to sleep better is finish your last meal three to four hours before bed. Get early morning sun at the same time every day. This helps to set your bio circadian rhythm, right? So your body knows when to be alert and awake versus sleepy and sleeping. So, most people don't realize this. If you really want to set up your sleep, it starts first thing in the morning. Get early morning sun through the eyes, on the face, on the skin, first thing in the morning. So get early morning sun, finish your last meal three to four hours before bed. Take in the sunset as a final environmental cue that the day is winding down.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  And then try and block these artificial lights, you know, with blue light blocking glasses or just have firelight, candlelight, stuff like that in the house. By default, they do all these things. They already do all these things, right? The way that they eat, there's no processed foods, there's no vegetable seed oils, right? There's no liquid calories. They eat the whole animal nose to tail, right? There's usually, there can be some foraging foods as well, but this is what I see. You know, when I've gone and visited with the Machaganga, with the Maasai, what they eat is blood, milk, and meat. That's all they eat. The Maasai only eat blood, milk, and meat. And if you could see their jawline and their teeth and their smiles, you're thinking, how do I get what they have? Again, their disposition, you know, is incredible.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  The way that everyone's required to move just to go get water and then to carry the water back. You know, the way that every primitive culture tribe has shielded or protected themselves. You know, we no longer have to run away from lions, but now we're bombarded with all these non-native signals, with all these non-native chemicals. So I always tell people, get your cellphone out of your pocket. Put it in airplane mode if you're not using it, at least when you're sleeping. You don't need your phone on when you're sleeping, right? Put that in airplane mode. Turn your wifi router off when you're sleeping. There's some really basic things we can do. Stop wearing petrochemical clothing, stop wearing xenostrogen-laden perfumes, like all these foreign substances wreck havoc on our endocrine system. So all nine ancestral tenants, this is sort of an example. You asked me for an example of visiting with the tribes.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  By default, they do all of these things. They do all nine ancestral tenants.

• 31:09Steven Bartlett?

  On these ancestral tenants, the first one is sleep, right? And I read that you sleep on a wooden board. And I've seen your house. I call it a house, that's a lie. It's a estate, a mansion, what would you call it?

• 31:25Speaker 00

  I call it my cave.

• 31:26Steven Bartlett?

  Your cave, okay. Cave is slightly underselling it. But you sleep on a piece of wood. Why?

• 31:33Speaker 00

  You know, first thing I'll say is, a lot of people think that I actually don't do, I have a video that shows my bed. And anyone who comes over, I'm like, you wanna check out my bed? I sleep on one plank, check it out. I got this tiny, thin wool mat, it's about that thick, it's just made out of wool. Before, we used to just sleep on wood. And my lever queen is hardcore. She's like, we're just gonna sleep on wood. And I said, fine, let's just sleep on wood. After about a year of having bone bruises on the hip and shoulders, like, listen, I don't think my body's adapting. And we went to visit with primitive culture tribes, and they all have a little bit of cushion. Either some natural ground or some some some leaves, some little cushion. And I said, you know what, I'm gonna do that, too. I'm gonna do that, too. And I slept much better. Um, the answers are our bodies were never really meant to be in this kind of cast,

• 32:18Speaker 00

  to be in something so, think about it, you go up to modern day beds and it's a perfect height. Right? You just barely fall into it. You know, and and so there was a few things. One is that like I I gotta get down to get into my bed. Same way, so your mobility requirements are greater. You meet with these 80 and 90 year olds of these primitive culture tribes. They have no trouble sitting in a full squat position for hours on end. Every single day they're getting down here and they're getting up and down. How many people just in their 40s and 50s can't do that? If you never stop doing it, you never lose that mobility. So that's one reason. Another reason is modern day mattresses, most of them are off gassing. Right? So you've got your head, you're taking in this sort of toxic stuff like off gassing of non-native materials while you're sleeping.

• 33:01Speaker 00

  A lot of these also have springs in them, these metal springs that conduct conduct ambient EMF electricity. Right? So you need to be in the deepest parasympathetic sleep environment when you're sleeping to restore and recover and reload for the next day. Sleep is, I think, one of the most complicated ones, so I try and make it simple. Here's a few things you can do. People aren't gonna start sleeping on the ground. Right? What I said earlier is get early morning sun, finish your last meal three to four hours before bed, take in the sunset. And then after the sunset, you need to shield yourself from some of the blue lights. You can either wear the UV glasses or put some candle lights up. How much you wanna bet that's gonna improve your sleep so much? And then if you wanna go overboard and be obsessive, probably like you are and like I am, um, there's there's about six or seven other things you can do um, that will drastically improve your sleep.

• 33:46Speaker 00

  And and sleeping closer to the ground, sleeping with a much stiffer environment is gonna help you out.

• 33:51Steven Bartlett?

  You know, it's um, the reason why, I told you this before we started recording, but the reason why um, I was really, really keen to have this conversation with you is because I've seen in culture over the last 10 years, having, you know, I'm I'm a social media native, so I've seen. How conversation around mental health and mental wellbeing has evolved over the last 10, 15 years and the emergence of the conversation, the very sort of prolific conversation around mental health and the cures for much of these sort of mental ailments or our wellbeing crises that has emerged tend to be really, really complicated and they tend, and I think in part they're complicated so that we can sell people stuff. Like if it's simple, if it's as simple as you're kind of saying it is, I can't actually sell you that.

• 34:32Steven Bartlett?

  Me telling you to sleep is not something that I can necessarily sell you, but I could sell you, you know, some 17 step course to better sleep with some contraption that goes right, you know. So.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  That's what I love about my message is, you know, early, all my companies, it's the exact same message. It's all nine ancestral tenants. Somebody who comes to us with a neurocognitive condition, we start talking about getting cold, getting really fucking cold, have some egg yolks, connect with the earth, and they start asking, where do I buy this? We're not selling that, right? Or you could say we're selling it, but we're not, there's no financial exchange here.

• 35:08Steven Bartlett?

  And this is it. I think that humans took a wrong turn in our development. We, as you've said, and I wrote about this in my book, in the chapter called The Journey Back to Being a Human, we live in four white walls, we're lonelier than ever before, we order our food using glass screens, we connect using glass screens, we, if, yeah, like if I'm hungry, like I don't even have to move these days, someone will bring it to me in a tin can and come to my door and knock it and hand me my taco.

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:37Steven Bartlett?

  Or my Coca-Cola, you know what I mean?

• 35:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:39Steven Bartlett?

  So it appears to me, when you think about the things that are really helping us, like, and you look at the data around being out in nature and exercise and breathing properly and cold water, all things that our ancestors did, that's why I was so compelled by you because I do think we've overcomplicated it. And I think the simple approach of just figuring out how to be human again, turning back down that path and going back towards our ancestors is, is one to be listened to. So the second ancestral tenon is about food. When you look at how we're eating these days, what do you think we're doing wrong?

• 36:14Speaker 00

  I think we've really abandoned the ways of our ancestors, really. I mean, all primitive culture tribes, they put the animal at the center of the diet and they eat nose to tail. We no longer do that, right? Instead, we eat some muscle meat that falls off the bone, but we're eating processed foods and we're no longer eating the organs, right? Almost all primitive culture tribes go for the liver and the bone marrow first. The Maasai went for the kidney first, right? But they're all going for the organs and they leave the muscle meats for the dogs and the birds, right? They know that the value is in the organs. So I think where we've gone wrong is really just for convenience and somebody has sold us something and we're buying it, right? We're buying processed food, we're buying convenience and we're buying it to our detriment.

• 36:57Speaker 00

  Because we don't feel good and we're not doing good, right? And we know that we're meant for more and we know that we want to feel better, but there's a lack of information out there. And, and you see, like I said, how happy these people are. Or this is where we started with, with my own kids. My, my own kids were sick, you know? My own kids were taking ambulance rides to the hospital. They couldn't breathe, they needed an EpiPen. They wouldn't be released from the hospital because they couldn't fucking, they didn't recover their breathing. And so, you know, at some point you say enough is enough. And so we took matters into our own hands. We started researching. Every doctor just gave more EpiPen, more Benadryl, stuff like that. And for me, the easiest thing to do was to implement a, a, a diet change. We threw out all the processed food, the seed oils, the liquid calories.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  We brought in nose to tail, wild caught, organic foods, cheaply nose to tail stuff like liver and bone marrow and bone soups. Within about a week, our kids did a 180. I mean, they're, they're no longer having, I mean, they, they just couldn't even sit here and have a conversation without wheezing. They couldn't breathe, right? We take this for granted, breathing. They couldn't even breathe, right? With that kind of freedom. And so when we did this, it's like the light bulb came on, the personalities, their true personalities came through. I don't, I don't know what would have happened if we sort of subsisted like that for 15, 20 years. Like what kind of humans would they evolve to become? And within the space of almost a week, this is what happened. So I think what's, what's, what's gone wrong is, you know, out of convenience, because you can get cheap food, right? You, you're still going to pay for this, right?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  Some other way, because you feel like shit, your joints hurt, you know? You're, you're, you're not able to do nearly a fraction, express your, your potential. So that's where I think we went wrong is we're, we're eating stuff out of convenience and, and because the price point is so low today.

• 38:36Steven Bartlett?

  You're the first guest I've ever had on this show that's actually brought their family with them. And your family, I got to meet them lovely family before we started recording. One of your tenants, number, I guess you could say number nine, but also I guess number five is a little bit more about the earth. But number nine about bonding. When I, when I was writing and looking at the topic of loneliness, one of the stats that was really alarming to me was that the medium answer to the question for Americans these days, how many people have you got that you could turn to in a time of crisis? Has dropped over the last decade from three people I could turn to, to, to zero. And in the UK, Theresa May was the first prime minister to appoint a loneliness czar. Someone in charge of loneliness because it's reached pandemic levels. Why is it so important?

• 39:21Steven Bartlett?

  And what have we done wrong in terms of that ninth tenant, which is bonding? Because I, I thought it was really awesome that your family are here and that you travel with them. But we are getting lonelier and there's a cost to that.

• 39:33Speaker 00

  Thank you for saying so. I like, I shared with you, I don't go anywhere without them. You know, I, I take them everywhere I go. I need them, you know, and I need them to, to feel fulfilled. You know, my most important job is as a dad and, um, you know, so, uh, what, what, where I think we went wrong is, um, you know, people are, are on this thing today that we call a phone and they're on there nonstop. They're on there on some kind of screen, you know, uh, when I've talked to enough people, most people that I talk to, they hate their jobs. They come home to a life that they don't love and they sedate themselves enough with screen time, with Netflix, with a phone, with medication to feel better, to get hard, call it a day, call it a week, call it their lives. And, and they're sedating themselves just enough on this thing. And we've allowed this to happen, right?

• 40:16Speaker 00

  My kids get 40 minutes a day on the screen time if they earn it, right? And here's what happens when you put down that damn phone and you have these kinds of conversations and you get in a little group, you know, of people doing the same thing. Again, you, you get this electricity, the chemistry, the culture that can only happen, these intangible things happen. When you connect, when you look someone in the eye and you feel them heart to heart, right? When you're that authentic, when you're true, when you're primal, you know, that, that this is, uh, you see this with every primitive culture. They don't have phones. They don't have any screens, you know, they want to have fun. They're, they're sitting around a fire and they're just talking, they're laughing, you know? And so today it's just so pervasive and no one's saying anything about it. No one's doing anything about it, right? And so I, I do think a lot more awareness needs to come here.

• 41:01Speaker 00

  And again, it's all nine ancestral tenants, but, but this one bonding, you know, we've always needed each other. And we still do, right? There's nothing more primal than purpose itself. Like, we used to know that our role was to protect the perimeter. We used to know that that building and shelter making and wise traditions, this concept of bonding, we needed each other to do these things to pass down the information so that we could survive and thrive. And somewhere along the way, we've started buying screen time, these distractions. And it's to our detriment. You know, once again, like you talk to people, very few people love what they do for a living and then come home to a life that they love too. And I can't tell you how many people that I talk to, I'm out there in the street and I'm talking with people, how much TV do you watch?

• 41:44Speaker 00

  And almost everyone is watching hours of TV and they're on their phone hours at a time. So, yeah, there's something going on there. And what we really need to do is put down that goddamn phone, you know, and have some conversations. When I was in New York City, I was in the subway, every single person, every single one of them. You know, and you go and you talk to someone and they almost can't believe, what are you doing? You know, how my kids approach people, you know, I'm trying to show them how to pick up girls. And I'm also trying to show them just to have, how to have, and so many people are freaked out. My kids are going up to them saying, hey, how's it going? What's your name? What are you doing here? They're like, whoa, what's going on? You know, is there an ulterior motive? We've lost that touch just to have a conversation, right? We need to bring that back.

• 42:28Speaker 00

  So, so again, I feel like this is my job to model, teach and preach this. Right, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do as much of this stuff as I can on social media. Cause I know when somebody puts down the phone and they have this kind of conversation, you end up, it fills you up.

• 42:40Steven Bartlett?

  Are you optimistic?

• 42:42Speaker 00

  I would say I'm optimistic.

• 42:43Steven Bartlett?

  You look at the world, you know that we're, we're, we're heading in one direction. If you look at the last 10 years of our trajectory towards living in the metaverse and the digitalization and social media usage, where the world is flying in that direction. So are you optimistic that we're going to be able to go back to? A more ancestral way of living.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  That's my job. That's 100% my job. You know, it's to take this message mainstream. So that what I know is people know that they're missing something and that they're meant for more. And they don't want to suffer like this. And so I gotta look you in the eye and tell you not only am I optimistic about this is my job. Right. And I just got on social media recently. And if you look at the followership that we have, like I've struck in a chord. I've struck in a nerve with people again, because they know that there's been a problem. And people that have started implementing just some basic things. The name is Liver King because I want everyone to start with liver. If you start eating liver, this is the easiest lever to a trajectory to a better life. And I could get into some of the background why, but but I just say, hey, start doing this. Go to a farmer's market, go to your butcher, go get some liver, start eating a little bit of liver every single day.

• 43:45Speaker 00

  And you know how many people start feeling profoundly better. Right. And so, so am I optimistic about it? Hell, yeah, I'm optimistic about it. We gotta make this happen.

• 43:55Steven Bartlett?

  Your success on social media, you touched on it there. How many followers you got? Something six million, I saw, just looking at two channels. I probably missed a couple of them. How many followers has he got? Do you know?

• 44:06Speaker 00

  1.6 on Instagram.

• 44:08Steven Bartlett?

  3.5.

• 44:08Speaker 00

  2.5 on TikTok. He doesn't know.

• 44:11Steven Bartlett?

  He doesn't know. Let's just call it five. Okay. 5 million followers. If you, if I had your message.

• 44:18Steven Bartlett?

  And I was a scientist looking guy with a shirt on and a tie on. And I was had old gray hair and I was kind of monotone. You know, I'd have three followers with the exact same message. So you must understand the role that your presentation is playing in that message, right? You understand there's a brand there.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  What I know is I never had an intention of going to doing social media. People would come over to my house and say, Liver King, you gotta get on social media. The way that you guys live, which you don't even have to change anything about your life. Do what you do, put that, all you gotta do is record what you do every day. And, and I was really reluctant to this because prior to social media, I was rich and anonymous. And now I'm still rich, but I'm no longer anonymous. And there's a lot of stuff that comes with not being anonymous that are not favorable things. Right. Oh, like anytime I'm out with my kids and people want to talk to Liver King and now there's a line of people that want to talk and, and, and, and take pictures and my kids are right here. Right. And I'm here to hang out with my kids and Liver Queen. Right. And now, and, and I want them to know, hey, here's how we're going to interact.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  We're going to talk. I want to try to get you guys involved too. Um, but a lot of, I mean, we're, we got to the hotel, the first thing that the driver did is he wanted to take a picture. Before we unloaded, before we did anything, you know, of course we're going to take a picture. You know, um, to me, this is validation that the message is getting out. Um, but, um, about social media and, and, and doing this thing. I didn't wear a shirt before social media. I didn't shave before social media. I don't brush my teeth. Before social, I still don't. Right. And so it, it wasn't like, hey, let's develop this personal brand for social media. It's, man, you know what? I love my life so much. I love the roles and goals that I have. I believe that I figured out how to achieve. I figured out how to do this in harmony with the true art of fulfillment.

• 46:07Speaker 00

  Um, and it's almost effortless. When you do these nine ancestral tenants. You know, like I said, the hardest thing I do every day is a workout. Right. And then, then the, the tough conversations that you have with people, this is easy. You know, everything else is easy. I love the food that I get to eat. I love the relationships, the bonds that I have. My most important meeting of the day is my CEO meeting with my family. I call that the board meeting. I prepare for that the most. You know, to have these conversations with, with my kids. So prior to social media, this is how I lived after social media. This is how, and I said, fuck it, we'll do it. We'll, we'll, we'll put myself out there. We'll do this thing. We'll see how the world responds to it. And I mean, every day, the kind of messages that we get, you know, blow me away, you know, messages from kiddos. Um, that say, I wish you were my dad. Right. Because I've grown up to hate myself.

• 46:50Speaker 00

  And I would rather hate my dad than hate myself because my dad made me do hard shit. You know, because because I get endless hours of video games, the the kind of messages I get from kids. You know, the kind of messages I get from moms, it's like, well, this is why we do this every single day. And so I'm gonna try my best, you know, it's like, okay, I didn't I didn't sign up for this, but anytime that you take on more responsibility in life, you know, I feel like this leads to progress. And I feel like progress and happiness are really one in the same. So this is this has been a challenge to get out and and to and to do some of these things. But I wouldn't, this is my fight, this is what I exist for now.

• 47:26Steven Bartlett?

  With that also comes criticism. You alluded to some of it earlier on. You said that there's a lot of critics and stuff like that, and people that are, you know, resisting the message. And everybody's got their own agendas when they're resisting messages and their own skepticism. And we can all understand that, I guess. Joe Rogan criticized you, which you which I know you know about because I've heard you talk about that before. Joe Rogan's a big person in terms of his platform. How did that feel when he said he alluded that you're on steroids or something like that?

• 47:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:54Steven Bartlett?

  How did how did that feel?

• 47:55Speaker 00

  Oh, Cloud Nine.

• 47:56Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 47:56Speaker 00

  I've entered his ecosystem. Joe Rogan is talking about Liver King. You know, you know how obscure I was to most of his audience before he's talking about me? You know, and so I love it, you know? And now I have the opportunity to engage deeper with this idea. I think it's dangerous when somebody points the finger and has a self limiting belief about themselves or somebody else or or any anything for that matter. Like, it was impossible to sell a podcast for $200 million until you did it, right? It's impossible to defend the world champion title five times until you do it, you know? And I guarantee you, nobody has done what I've done for this many decades on. And this kind of work, this kind of depth, this kind of suffer, you know, nobody lives the way that I live.

• 48:38Speaker 00

  And so what what I want is the opportunity to correct that. I want the opportunity to go on a show, talk to him face to face. You know, at the end of the day, there is a lot of hate and and there's a lot of criticism. But when I say a lot, it's probably about 5% of the vocal minority. And and I tell my kids this all the time, you know, when we talk to each other, right? These are just words, right? And these words are vibrating. That go into our ears, right? And then our brain assigns meaning to it. So nobody can really offend you, right? You're assigning meaning to whatever they're saying. And so when Joe Rogan's talking about me, what I'm saying is, fuck you. I mean, I, I, I went and ran to my wife and I told her, oh, my God, can you believe this? Joe Rogan is talking about me, you know? And he's done it more than once. And so all I ask is for the opportunity to have the conversation with him face to face,

• 49:23Speaker 00

  because all nine ancestral tenants allow us to express something that was otherwise impossible. Right? We all have the same potential. It's not just this physical potential, right? And, and I always say, at the end of the day, cheating doesn't scale. It's not sustainable and it doesn't scale, right? And what I've achieved from a financial standpoint, from a family standpoint, you know, from a true fulfillment standpoint, you know, I say, how you do anything is how you do everything, right? This is not just, you know, my, my physical, you know, expression. I, I think that when you really get to know me, what I hope at the end of the day, you say, your physique is the least impressive thing about you. You know, because at, at the end of the day, that, that this is not what I'm about. I've never told anybody, start eating liver and you're going to look like Liver King. Right? What, what I do is I say, if you start doing these things, start every day by getting early morning sun.

• 50:08Speaker 00

  Put your bare feet connected, anchored, grounded into the earth, right? I show what I'm eating for dinner every day. It's usually liver, raw liver, raw bone marrow. And I'm being nourished in the most profound way because my family is around me. It's these simple things that you do. Each of them shape how we look, feel and function. And so when I enter someone's ecosystem, like Joe Rogan, I couldn't be more excited about it. And, and I just want to have the opportunity to have a face to face conversation with him about it. Because I think at the end of the day, if you say,

• 50:39Speaker 00

  he, he's got an ass full of steroids. I think what you're invariably, some people want to look like Liver King. They want to look like me. And what you're saying is you've got to do that if you want to look like him. And number one, I don't do it. And number two, what I want you to say is, you know what? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, that guy, in fact, he did say he's in the point 000001% of genetics. If he does it naturally. But I'm, I'm here to tell you, if you do all nine ancestral tenants, you're going to look, feel and function at your best. You're going to express, will you ever look like me? You know, if you want to look like me, you've already lost, right? What you need to do is look like the best version of yourself. And, and barely, so many of us are really scratching the potential of our being. And so that's what I want. I want the opportunity to talk about that self limiting belief mindset.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  I want to encourage people, get out there and do these things. And you're going to see how much more you can become.

• 51:29Steven Bartlett?

  Hardship is part of being a human. It's almost unavoidable. It'll come out of anywhere. It could be disease or loss or grief, whatever it might be. You told me about the hardship you underwent between 10 and 14 years old. What is the hardest moment of your adult life been?

• 51:50Speaker 00

  The hardest moment was when my son Rad got sick. And we thought we were losing him. He lost his mind. You know, there's something called PANDAS. It stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neurological Disorder, something like that. And it basically is like the manifestation of like these obsessive thoughts. And you can't stop thinking about these obsessive thoughts. It just takes over you. And one day he asked if a bad guy spits on the ground. And if you see that spit, does that make you a bad person? We just thought this is the strangest question, right? Of course not. But then immediately it was like the same question, but a slight variation. If you touch the spit, you know, if you spit on the ground.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  And it was, it consumed him. And it was him asking those questions. And then one day he said, oh God, I already asked that question, didn't I? And then he realized, and it was nonstop. It was nonstop. And I remember, you know, my wife and I just, we, we were crying on each other because we thought we lost him. And when you learn about more about what PANDAS is and, you know, kids are kind of relegated to like a chemical straitjacket, they're sedated enough to where they're not in such torment. Because it's either him constantly asking these questions or he's screaming out of the top, you know, out of just top of his lungs, he's screaming. And one day he said, I wish I had a baseball bat because I would rather hit my brain

• 53:20Speaker 00

  and do damage to this brain than to live with this brain. And, and so I would say. You know, we've, this is probably the last rite of passage that I've been through, like to go through this with my family and to figure it out, you know, with him. And we figured it out. And, you know, we've already been living this lifestyle. The only thing that we really needed to fix, I don't know if you've heard of Paul Saladino, he's the carnivore M D., he's an incredible friend. And I said, hey, man, what's going on? What's going on here? And he said, oh, my God, you guys are still eating hundred percent cacao chocolate and raw honey every day. Take that out of his diet. Take that out. And that's the only thing he really wanted to eat. So we took it out.

• 54:03Speaker 00

  He didn't really want to eat for a couple of days. And then he got better like three or four days. So this is incredible to me. You know, when you think that you've lost your kid, I mean, this is when they've lost their mind like this, you know, and you read about the prognosis with kiddos with pandas. It's not good, you know? And again, it's like the best you could do is give them enough medication to sedate them enough to take that edge off. And it took a while to figure this out. I bet it took, I don't know, six weeks or so, maybe eight weeks or so to do it. But we did it. And again, like by default, he didn't want to eat anything because this is like the only thing he wanted to eat at the time. He would eat a little of the other

• 54:45Speaker 00

  stuff because we forced him to. But, you know, he, by default, he pretty much fasted for a couple of days. And then he would eat, because he got hungry enough. So he was eating the food that we would give him, you know, his nose to tail meats and stuff, and he got better. And I think this is an important thing to share. My wife and I talked about this for a long time, that we wouldn't share this publicly. I don't even know why. Maybe to protect him, you know, but I can just imagine how many kids out there that have the same thing, you know, and the parents have lost hope. And there are so many things that can be done, you know? You just need to continue to fight. And I don't know if he was allergic to something in the chocolate or the honey, but taking those things out

• 55:29Speaker 00

  and doing a strict keto carnivore diet, you know, maybe just doing a strict keto diet, you know, is it so anti-inflammatory with the brain, you know, maybe that, I don't know. But all I know is he got better and we got him back. And what we realized is he had been suffering with lighter symptoms for the last couple of years. And we looked back at some of the pictures and it's it's almost like his personality had been taken away slowly and slow and then it led up to this point. And then we got him better. And and so this is for sure the hardest thing that I that I've had to deal with over the last couple of years.

• 56:03Steven Bartlett?

  One of your tenets is is about shielding and before about shielding your family protection.

• 56:11Steven Bartlett?

  I can't, I mean, I can't imagine what it's like to have a to the feeling of helplessness. Because I've heard about that disease before. I think I've spoken to someone on this podcast who has a son that's that was going through that. What is that like in a moment where you when you read that prognosis? And you see that happening to your son and you're a man. You want to shield and protect your family. How how how does that feel?

• 56:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, there's so many different feelings. Of course, you feel totally helpless. At the same time, I always say that you're a woman and you as a man, you need to know that that you can protect in a dark alley. And I mean it literally, but really figuratively, right? Like, you got the strength and courage to do that. If that time comes, she needs to know you're going to do it. You need to know that you're capable of it. Because the financial crisis is going to come too. She needs to know that you're going to be able to protect and and fight in that financial crisis. The health crisis is going to come too. And so I think that we've been through enough together that I knew that I would never stop fighting for this until we figured this out. So on one hand, there's a totally helpless feeling. On the other hand, it's like you just keep fighting.

• 57:19Speaker 00

  You know, you just keep fighting and you keep having conversations and you keep looking and you know, there's there's no limit, there's no end, you know, that that I would have gone to until we sorted this out. So, yeah, it's it's like a helpless feeling, but of course, you're never going to stop. You're going to figure it out.

• 57:35Steven Bartlett?

  As a parent, do you do you do you fall into the temptation of guilt? Because that's your child and you and like, I remember one time when my dog got sick. My dog's upstairs. I remember my dog being sick and me running through all the things I just I'd just done and thinking, maybe I didn't walk my dog enough, or maybe I shouldn't have given him this, or maybe I shouldn't have done this. And then I remember it was actually a couple of weeks ago. I'm laying there on my back and my dog is like throwing up repeatedly and feeling that feeling of guilt, which was consuming me because, you know, I don't have children, but I my dog Pablo is basically my child, so.

• 58:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:09Speaker 00

  I don't know how much I would identify with the guilt. Sure, I'm sure there's, but you know, more than anything, it was like, how the fuck do we fix this? You know, is there something toxic in the house? You know, we have all the walls shielded with shielding paint to make sure non-native EMFs and signals don't come in. You know, could there be something toxic in that? Is he interacting with something in the house that's talk? Do we have, we had got everything tested again and again and again. We went to different environments to see if he's still, you know, for extended periods of time, did he still exhibit those symptoms in different environments? The answer was yes, you know, so I feel like, obviously, there's a sense of that. But more than anything, I'm like, I'm so goddamn driven that we're just gonna take massive action and we're gonna course correct and course correct and course correct.

• 58:53Speaker 00

  We're gonna try whatever we need to try until we figure out this thing. So guilt was definitely a part of it, but more than anything, it was like, okay, you know, we're done crying. And now we just gotta get back to work and figure this out. I mean, nothing in life means anything, you know, it's like, my companies, you know, didn't mean anything to me when this was happening. This is, this is the only thing that mattered. And so it's, yeah, this was everything and just gotta figure it out, which we did.

• 59:20Steven Bartlett?

  Have you, as a, as an adult, ever experienced your own, had your own experiences with these mental health ailments of anxiety and depression and lows and things like that?

• 59:30Speaker 00

  Well, so I would identify that I have these feelings that resonate with me, that tell me something that say, you better fucking get to work, you better fix this shit, right? And so, I, so I'll say like, if I have really low energy, if my motivation, you know, is kind of gone, you know, I'm like, okay, I gotta fix, life's too short. I gotta fix this. I do a five-day water-only fast. I'll take some kind of massive action to be like, this is not okay. I gotta fix this. If I feel anxious about something, it's like, okay, I gotta take massive, I don't sleep until I fix it. Or if I get up at one o'clock and I'm thinking about this thing, like, I gotta do this right now. So I've never experienced any of depression or anxiety long-term like that.

• 1:00:15Speaker 00

  But what I would say is I, I think that I've had some of the symptoms and I've really kind of used that as a signal, like, I better get to fucking work. I better do something because I can't, there's, there's too many important roles and goals that I have in life to allow this to consume me.

• 1:00:28Steven Bartlett?

  What about anxiety? You know what it is, I I thought I was immune to everything growing up, especially when I was like eighteen, nineteen, twenty. I kind of abandoned what it is to be a human and made myself really lonely in the pursuit of money. I got there, I made it, but there was a sacrifice. And one of the sacrifices for me was your number nine in your your list of tenants, which was bonding. I kind of made myself so lonely that I think I'd I started to exhibit some of the symptoms of like lowness. I wouldn't say it was depression, I've like, but then I also I've I also thought I was immune from anxiety. And then when my business had real crunch moments, cash flow problems, whatever, you've got thousand, you know, a thousand employees around the world, then anxiety showed up for the first time in my life. So I'm wondering if if you've ever had a moment of anxiety, even a day where you you just struggle to shake it.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Now that you say some of those examples, um, I mean, there's about a decade that my wife and I struggled in business. And and that was another rite of passage that we went through. And this was really never our fight and and we fought, you know, for about a decade. And I'm sure you probably know as a business owner, you get paid last, you know, everybody else gets paid and.

• 1:01:32Steven Bartlett?

  You're lucky.

• 1:01:33Speaker 00

  Uh huh, yeah, everyone's driving nice cars and you're down to one. And um, and so when you don't know how you're gonna make payroll, you know, um, and you you start to, you know, this hap- this happens so many times and and I I don't think that it ever gets any easier. You're freaking out, you know, they need to get paid, you know, so that they can provide for their own family. People are really depending on this level of success. So, um, you know, I never considered that anxiety before. Maybe that is anxiety, you know, but but I've definitely has lot have lost my shit, you know, trying to figure that out. And then going and asking anyone and everyone for help. I remember one time I asked Ben, our our lab technician, if he if he had any money he could loan me to help make payroll for the whole company, for twenty three people, you know, like you go and you ask everybody.

• 1:02:17Speaker 00

  You know, at some point, um, you know, everybody says no, and you still gotta figure it out, you know. So I I would say that there there's probably a lot of mixed emotions um in in that timeframe over that decade. I'm sure there's a lot of that in there, a lot of worrying, how we're gonna make payroll, a lot of losing my shit on that. And I I would say more than anything, it just it drove me, it drove me to, you gotta figure this out. All these people, all their families are counting on you, are depending on you. And so you just sacrifice your sleep, you sacrifice everything you need to sacrifice in order to make it happen.

• 1:02:49Steven Bartlett?

  Business, people don't talk about your business portfolio, your business success as much as they talk about other things. You know, you said that you were, earlier on in the conversation, you said, "I was rich before I became, in the public perception, joined social media and became Liver King." What was that business?

• 1:03:08Speaker 00

  So I own, I would say 10 or 12 companies right now. They're all ancestral related. We do have some real estate stuff from, from back in the day. But some of the companies are dietary supplement companies, like Ancestral Supplements, Strong Jaw, there's The Fittest. So there's a whole bunch of them, including Heart and Soil. These are all companies, I want to have 100 of these in every different category, right? And just remember, every single company is based on, on taking this ancestral message mainstream. So if somebody has a dental issue, recurrent or chronic decay, they can't figure it out, they're brushing, they're flossing. I always say, "Our early ancestors didn't brush, didn't floss, didn't get cavities." Right? But today we say, "Hey, go brush, go floss," is this hygiene hypothesis. I haven't brushed in a decade.

• 1:03:50Steven Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 1:03:51Speaker 00

  And if I needed a dentist, I wouldn't have to go far because my wife is a retired dentist. Every once in a while, I'll be like, "Hey, just take a look, I just want to know, I just want to know." And so she'll take a look and she's like, "You got some plaque in there, but everything looks great, everything looks great." And, and so if somebody has a dental issue, they're going to their respective expert that they believe is a dentist, looking for help, right? And so, so what we try to do is create a, a company in every category to still spread this message, right? You still need sunlight, you still need a bond, if you're not sleeping, you're not going to heal anything, right? It's all nine ancestral tenants. It's this kind of nourishment from the inside out that's going to get us healthy. And so I always say that, that an evolutionary hunter leaves the comfort of the cave, right? To do something different for the, for the betterment of humanity.

• 1:04:34Speaker 00

  So all my companies are based on getting out this ancestral message so that it goes mainstream. A lot of the companies are dietary supplement companies. And then I'm involved also with the supply chain upstream and downstream.

• 1:04:45Steven Bartlett?

  A little birdie told me these companies are doing very well.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  You know, once again, they are. They're doing great. And I can't take credit because I'm not CEOing any of these companies anymore. I moved over to CEO the ancestral lifestyle. And, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, do you have the right people in the right positions, doing the right things for the right reasons? You know, and the other day I gave a talk about advice to entrepreneurs. And I would say, number one, you got to figure out how to let that primal guy out. Because how the fuck are you going to scale and lead a team if you can't do that yourself? You know, I see so many young guys that are so incredibly immature. And I don't see them really focusing on themselves, scaling and leading themselves to do that with a team. So I say, figure that out. And if you need help on figuring that out, go learn the barbarian. This is a workout that I created. It's the hardest thing.

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  It's a rite of passage, a modern day rite of passage. Learn the barbarian, train the barbarian, become the barbarian, and then renew that rite of passage often and frequently. You do this. You're going to figure out how to scale and lead yourself. You're going to know true strength. And you're going to figure out how to scale and lead a company.

• 1:05:45Steven Bartlett?

  The barbarian, I think you should just pause and explain.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  What the barbarian is?

• 1:05:49Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, because I heard your son, you made your son do the barbarian against Liver Queen's wishes.

• 1:05:53Speaker 00

  That's right. This is true. Once again, it's tough to say, hey, you're going to go through four years of this living hell. So I know I need to create some rite of passage for my kids. And when I figured this out with my kids, I also want to bring this mainstream. So adults and young people today will also have a rite of passage. Every primitive culture tribe has had a rite of passage. You know, the Spartans at seven years old leave for the next 13 years to become warriors, to become men. You have the Aztec at 13, they go, they have to capture a neighboring tribe and bring them back for sacrifice. That's the rite of passage, right? There's a lot of modern day tribes, you'll leave for three months, go on a vision quest, you may or may not come back, right? There's, everyone's had a rite of passage. We've lost this rite of passage.

• 1:06:38Speaker 00

  When people turn 16 today, you know what we do for them? Buy my car. You buy my car, you might have a sweet 16 party. Yeah. There's no effort, there's no rite of passage, there's no leave, cross this chasm, and now you know what you're capable of. There's none of that anymore. So that's why I created the Barbarian, is I wanted something like that. And I remember the first day, I did it, it's 70 pound kettlebells in each hand. It's 70 pounds in a backpack. It's 120 pounds on top of a sled, 20 pound ankle weights, and you go one mile. You go one mile. And I remember I left the house like this, and I remember it scared the shit out of me. Because I didn't know if I could complete it. And I know, you and I can talk about this, like, hey, you could just put the weights down, you could come back. Not in my mind.

• 1:07:22Speaker 00

  In my mind, I had to go through the whole circle. I had to complete the one mile. And it scared the shit out of me, and it took me several hours to complete. And I came back and I said, oh, that's it. That's the rite of passage. I'm gonna bring this forward, and I'm gonna share this with my friends. And I've shared this with my friends. Some people can do it quickly, some people it takes six or eight hours. A lot of people won't be able to complete it, period. But that's what the Barbarian is. And so this is a rite of passage, you know, that anyone can do today. You made your son do it? I made my son do it. When he turned 15, we had him do the Barbarian, and then we took him, I took him, on a sacred hunt. But I like how you said against Liver Queen's wishes, because nobody thought he could do it. I mean, he's grown up tall, and he's not a real muscular guy yet. He's adding muscle.

• 1:08:07Speaker 00

  I mean, he's added a lot of muscle recently, but everyone just thought, oh, first of all, he can't do it. Secondly, if he attempts to do it, he's gonna get hurt. His own CrossFit coach said, he doesn't need to do this. I remember at dinner, she said the same thing, oh, this, you know, this is dangerous. And I just, I put the fucking hammer down. I said, there's no way anyone's talking us out of it. He's doing it, he's gonna train for it, and when he does it, he's gonna show all you guys what you thought was impossible is possible, and he's gonna know what he's capable of. This is his rite of passage. Don't take that from him. What if he'd failed? There is no, I don't, so this is what I believe. He gets halfway, he falls every, says that, I don't wanna do this, I wanna go back? He knows that's not an option. What I told him before starting is, I don't care how many days it takes you.

• 1:08:49Speaker 00

  If you need to fall down on the side of the road, if you sprained your ankle, if you've broken something, you're gonna take a rest on the side of the road. I'll bring you a fucking blanket if I need to bring you a blanket. You're gonna sleep here until you go out, you complete this, you come back, you're changed forever. And it's the hardest thing people will do. There's a point in time. Where it's like your soul leaves your body. It's the hardest thing you've done physically. You have nothing physical left in you. And so now something else takes over and has to move through the rest of that rite of passage. And when you complete that, when you do that, you're changed. It's the.

• 1:09:23Steven Bartlett?

  Would you say to people that say that's that sounds like toxic parenting? That's that's too much that's, you know?

• 1:09:29Speaker 00

  Yeah. You know, I've heard this toxic masculinity, right? I'm like, you know what? There's nothing toxic about masculinity. Number one. Number two, we live in a society today that's a soft. We have a soft manicured man problem, right? We need to do more hard shit like this. And I put this hard thing in front of my boy, right? And I was gonna make sure that he got it done. Liver, I remember when he took off, Liver Queen says, I'm gonna go check on him. I said, no fucking way. You're gonna check on him? Cause I know she made eye contact with him in that moment of suffer. You know, she would let him know, hey, I'm here to protect you. I wanna, I'll bring you in. And if he can feel that for a second, you know what that does, you know, to the being? And so I said, there's no way you can check.

• 1:10:13Speaker 00

  His brother can drive the Ranger way out, you know, front to make sure he's not passed out or something. But you're not going to check on him. So you know, you know what I would say today is we've got a soft manicured man problem. Where a lot of men today hate the person that they've become. And we gotta do something. We gotta move men along this continuum so that they know hard times, so that they know what they're capable of. So that they can believe in themselves. So yeah, every once in a while, somebody tells me something like that. And I'm like, you know, we've lost this kind of value. You know, our own forefathers were offered more value in perpetuity than we do today. Right? Had more strength, courage, mastery and honor than we do today. We gotta take that back, you know? And people like, oh, you know, where's the scientific proof? Sometimes I hear that. I'm like, you know, if you just look at these statistics, look at the statistics.

• 1:10:57Speaker 00

  And I don't know if we talked about this earlier, but 80% of people are struggling living paycheck to paycheck. We have 70% that are overweight, 50% on prescription medication. We have 20% that can't have babies, right? That wanna be healthy enough to be fertile enough to propagate our species and they can't have kids. And one, 40% have cancer, will get kids. We got some major, major stuff going on today. And so this isn't the silver bullet to it, but this is part of it. You know, is getting out there and knowing what this true strength feels like. Again, this isn't just about. Physical strength, you come back and you'll know physical strength. But again, the real strength is, holy shit, I did this thing.

• 1:11:40Speaker 00

  It took active suffering and struggling and discipline and I practiced this thing. And look at what I'm capable of. And now I'm capable of doing this in a business, in a relationship. You're capable of doing, pointing this process at anything. So that you can take extreme ownership and create the life that you want to live in. And those, and those statistics that I talk, talk about start to fall away.

• 1:12:01Steven Bartlett?

  I agree with all of that. Um, I think, you know, when I said your businesses are doing really well, I mean, really, really well. I read online, little birdie told me that you're, you're making over a hundred million dollars a year from your businesses. True or false?

• 1:12:14Speaker 00

  True.

• 1:12:14Steven Bartlett?

  True. That's, that's a pretty staggering, staggering accomplishment. What role does money play in your life now? Like, when you think about the relationship with money, obviously this is, money isn't a thing that is ancestral. I mean, you, you could, you could make, I guess, through lines to status in tribes, I guess. Because money in our society is, is often associated with status or status. I don't know what the American pronunciation is. But what role does money play in your ancestral being, if I've even said that correctly?

• 1:12:43Speaker 00

  Not much. I mean, I, I have Liver King Ranch, we have plenty of acreage, we have all of our food out there. You know, we're, we're here in the UK, we, we, we decided a couple of days ago, hey, let's go to the UK. It's so easy to get on the plane, to go to the UK, to check out a badass fight, to build a podcast with you today. So I, I would say that, um, money just amplifies more of what you are. Right? And I don't know who coined this, who, who first said it. But if you're an asshole before you had money, now you get money, you're more of an asshole. Right? If, if you're a generous person, you know, and you get, you're, it amplifies your ability to be generous. Every once in a while, we go wakeboarding or I'll, I'll give you this example. When I was growing up, I snowboarded a lot.

• 1:13:27Speaker 00

  When I was in college, I would take off snowboarding after college, I would take off snowboarding. And I went by myself all the time. But immediately I would seek out somebody to bond with, to go snowboarding with. And so I was always, you know, hanging out with people and, uh, and that's what made it special. Right, I talked to my friend Paul Saladino, I'm like, hey, imagine going wakesurfing by yourself. You just got like a driver out here, you're wakesurfing back here. Nobody's back here cheering for you. You know, it's not about our ability to get, it's about our ability to give and to share and have these altruistic goals personally and professionally. You know, the role that it's played now in our personal lives. You know, a lot of people say, hey, you know, you can do all these things because you have money.

• 1:14:08Speaker 00

  You know, and it's like, if you look at actually the amount of money that we spend to have Liver King Ranch, you know, it's self-sufficient. You know, in fact, we make money from selling meat from Liver King Ranch. And so, you know, I don't know if that answers your question, but I would say it hasn't really changed a whole lot other than creating a vehicle to be able to go and to deepen the experiences and say, hey, let's go to the Abu Dhabi fight. Let's go to the UK fight, let's go do those things as a family and let's go on some adventures.

• 1:14:40Steven Bartlett?

  One thing you say has changed things for you is Liver Queen.

• 1:14:46Steven Bartlett?

  Barbara.

• 1:14:48Steven Bartlett?

  She goes by Liver Queen because she introduced, I met her earlier on and she introduced herself as Liver Queen. So, how did that change you, meeting her?

• 1:14:56Speaker 00

  So, I've said this before, but I believe because of the rites of passage we've talked about, I figured out how to be a man, right? I figured out how to be strong and courageous and develop mastery level skills and be honorable to an honor system of other men and accountability with other men. So I think I had figured that out, I was pretty good at that, but I wasn't really a good man. And so, when I met her, I met her snowboarding. I met her snowboarding. She was already on the mountain, she was strapping into her snowboard, getting ready to take off. I'm coming off a chairlift, I'm with, at the time, my best friend Jeff Parchman. And I said, hey man, this is his first time, snowboarding. I said, hey, I gotta go, I see a girl, I'm gonna go and see if I can talk with her. I ended up talking with her and I said, hey, I caught her down at the next lift line.

• 1:15:41Speaker 00

  And I said, hey, I know this mountain pretty well, can I show you around? And she said, yeah, and I tell my kids this all the time, like, this is why we have to get good at interacting with people, right? This stuff doesn't happen over an app or a text message, right? We've got to interact with people. We've got to feel that chemistry and that electricity. And it may take you going up to a hundred or a thousand individuals to find your soulmate, but I found my soulmate. And I knew immediately, and she knew immediately, and we moved a million miles an hour. And I knew immediately that if I didn't rise to the occasion, that she would see right through me. And I knew I could become anything. I'd done enough things in my life to where I know I have the discipline. And I immediately knew from a character ethic standpoint, I had to be better. And she would see right

• 1:16:23Speaker 00

  through me if I wasn't. And I made a decision, I'm gonna be better now. For the rest of my life, I'm gonna be better. So she really challenged me to do that. And so, you know, I would say, there's a couple little examples, like some white lies, you know, that I would tell here and there. And she, and I remember she, and she caught me. She's like, hey, that's a white lie. I was like, yeah, this is a white lie. You know how many people do white lies, right? I grew up with white lies, you know. And she goes, no, like, not a single white lie ever again. And this is not easy. And maybe this is why I come off as a dick sometimes, because I've tried to not sugarcoat things. And so, there's so many little things like that, you know, generosity, you know, what was a big thing. And I believe that

• 1:17:07Speaker 00

  we became so generous at one point, that it was to our detriment. This was through that 10 year stint of us failing in business. And other people were doing pretty well, but we weren't doing very well. And I was like, you know, we got to take that back. But I would say more than anything, you know, she's shown me what it's like to be a family man. And I grew up having TV dinners, you know, mom might put some food out, and just you help yourself to it. You know, as soon as I met her, it's like, we sit down every day. Oh, my God, we sit down every day. And then with the kids, we sit down every single day from the beginning, you know. And then we go and we have dinner with her parents once a week, and everyone sits around there. And this is the staple every single day. Yeah. So she's really taught me how to be a family man. And there's a lot of incredible qualities that I would attribute to her.

• 1:17:53Steven Bartlett?

  You referred to her as your soulmate, which is a beautiful thing to say. In my mind, the question became, and this is, it came into my mind, because it's something that I've been trying to understand from studying our sort of prehistoric foundations is, is monogamy part of the ancestral way of living?

• 1:18:15Speaker 00

  So you get various responses. When I visit with primitive culture tribes, half are monogamous, half are not. And so I don't know how far back you'd have to go, how many different tribes you'd have to study. This is my way. You know, I think that it confers parental investment advantages. I think it confers our ability to pass on wisdom. You know, and so I do believe that there's some truth to that. But again, like to me, it's like, what I talk a lot about, this is crazy. A lot of, I get a lot of young kids saying, how do I get a queen? How do I get a queen? I'm like, oh, my God, you're asking me for advice on how to get. And so I started thinking about how do I serve these people? Right?

• 1:18:58Speaker 00

  And so what I share back is you attract your complementary opposite. And if you really want to be with a 10, you got to become a 10. Right? If you want to be with a queen, you got to become a king. You got to invest in yourself. You got to put yourself in the gym. You got to express your highest, most dominant form, physically, socially, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. You can do that holistically together. Something happened in society today where somebody said you can put your best foot forward to meet somebody. And then you guys meet each other and then you're comfortable. Then you gain 20 pounds. You lose 20 pounds for the wedding. You take your pictures. And then you gain another five pounds a year in perpetuity. You wake up to somebody you barely recognize. Right? You wake up to that person. You love that person, sure. But do you lust for that person? Do you want to have sex with that person? Do you have that kind of fire? That kind of intensity?

• 1:19:43Speaker 00

  That kind of passion for that person? Right? I believe if you do, you invest it. I say you owe it to your fucking self. You owe it to her too. To keep what you deem as attractive and sexy in your marriage, you got to express your highest and most dominant physical form. She'll do the same, her highest and most dominant beautiful form. Right? And then polygamy means nothing. Right? That's because imagine the ability to wake up with your soulmate that you connect with at the deepest level in all aspects. And you think there's nothing more beautiful physically? Then that physical attraction just grows more over time. So that's what I believe about that. I wouldn't have it any other way.

• 1:20:17Steven Bartlett?

  If I were to ask her, Liver Queen, if I said, what does he need to work on?

• 1:20:25Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:20:31Speaker 00

  Well, this is the thing. You know, when you are with your complementary opposite, it's, and we've been together, we just celebrated our 18th anniversary. And I do this thing, here's what Liver King's having for dinner today. Every day I record my dinners. And by the way, someone should tune into the stories because if you're confused about how to, I show it every single day on my stories. And one day I'm looking for this protein that I have. It's called the whole beast. It's gonna be called the whole feast protein. And it has all these organs in it. Liver, heart, pancreas, spleen, blood. Anyways, I'm looking for this bag, the whole feast. And we're getting ready to tape. And, and I get, I said, where the fuck is the bag? And there's a few people around.

• 1:21:13Speaker 00

  And, and, and she brings me a bag and I kind of yelled a little bit, hey, don't waste my time. And, and she whispers in my ear, it was in your office. It was in your office, you know? And she said it so nice to me. And, and so she's so, here's, here's the thing. 10 years ago, she would have let me have it. Don't you fucking talk to me that way. Don't you do, you know how embarrassing that it? And, and now the way that she handles herself. In fact, I, I, I look like a fool. I make myself look like a fool. You know, I make myself look like an ass. And the way that she handles it was such class. You know, I think what she might say is, and actually the kids told me this today. I don't have a lot of patience. I don't have a lot of patience.

• 1:21:55Speaker 00

  I feel like at some point, one, one day we were, we were doing mushrooms. We're on the top of this hill. And she said to me, when, when, when did you become a dick? When do you think you became a dick? And I was like, you know what? When I ran out of time. When I started to run out of time. You know, I used to write down some things in my journal too. You know, and I stopped when I ran out of time. I stopped being extra nice to people, saying these extra, when I ran out of time. Like, I feel like I became more honest, more primal, more authentic. You know, when, when we have to go out and achieve. So I think she might say, I should have more grace. I should have more patience. That, that would probably it. And do you agree with her? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

• 1:22:38Speaker 00

  Fuck, you're gonna keep looking at me? Okay. You know, here's the thing. I think that if anybody's the same person, you know, in three months or a year, we're catastrophic failures, right? Like, we gotta continue to grow and progress in everything that we do. My social, my relationship with her, I spend 10 hours with her every Saturday. It's part of our system. We do this together every Saturday. And then the things that we unpack, the things that we do together over that Saturday, we gotta integrate that over the next six days until we do it again. So, yeah. I think if I really think about it, I could do better.

• 1:23:14Steven Bartlett?

  I think I could do as well. And that's really why I was pressing on that point, because I was trying to learn something. Because I think I've done the same thing, where I've just, I've, my lack of time has allowed me to, I think, self-justify sometimes cutting corners on some of the things that I know are the right thing to do. So, you're right. Like, I should never really, I think as a man, let my manners be sacrificed in the name of like, time efficiency. And if I were to write down the values that I'd want my children to have, I'd write that for them. So, when we talked about learning through vicariously, through observation and how we behave being the best way to teach our kids, of course, I need to do that myself.

• 1:23:56Speaker 00

  That's eye-opening. Just yesterday, I saw Stryker lose his patience like that. And I'm like, hey, man.

• 1:24:02Steven Bartlett?

  Stryker, your son.

• 1:24:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I say, hey, man, you know when you lose your patience like that? You know, you're not thinking clearly, right? You know that you're not gonna make the right. Like, you know, I'm sure he got it from me. I'm sure he got it from me. So, I do need to do better. I need to, I think that you really just opened my eyes. Because what I wanna show the kids, what I wanna show them,

• 1:24:24Speaker 00

  I'm gonna do better.

• 1:24:26Steven Bartlett?

  What do you teach your kids about emotion? You know, one of the conversations that's really popular at the moment because of some of those statistics around male suicide is that men aren't speaking enough about how they're feeling. So, you have these, you know, the single biggest killer of men, I believe, under the age of 40 in this country is themselves, killing themselves. And I've sat here with multiple people that have talked about, you know, their best friend killed themselves out of the blue, never said anything. And a lot of the experts in this space point to the fact that men haven't learned how to express their emotions as being some of, not all, but some of the reason for that.

• 1:25:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I think that what I try and teach them is through modeling. You know, I never had, I didn't have a dad growing up and I never had a dad tell me I love you. I never had a dad, you know, affirm me the same kind of way. So part of me is like, you know what, I wish I had that. I do. And so I tell my kids, you know, every night before they go to bed, we give each other hugs. I tell them how much I love them. It's not just an exercise, it's, I need to feel your fucking heart, man. You're gonna give me a big hug, I'm gonna feel that. And, and I'm gonna tell you I love you. I want you to feel, I want you to really know that I love you. I don't know how much I've, I've really taught them vocally, you know, conceptually about emotions.

• 1:25:50Speaker 00

  They get to see me and Liver Queen argue, you know, about things. We try not to hide any of that stuff from them. They get to see us make up. You know, they get to see the affection that we have for one another. So I think, you know, earlier when I said, I think what we do is far more important than what we say. I, I, I hope that that's happening, but I know so many friends whose dad never told them that they loved them and they, and they can't say it to another guy. And, you know, and, and I'll hug one of my friends, you know, this happened just the other day and I, I tell him, hey, man, I love you and I do. And usually they'll say it back, but it's so hard, you know? Or I'm like, wow, you know, I don't know if I believe you. The way that you said it was almost like you had to say it back.

• 1:26:36Speaker 00

  I, I want my kids, you know, like when that primal, authentic, true version of you comes out, you know, to be able to share it back, if you do. And if you don't, hey, man, I don't love you back. Let's talk about that. So. What about crying? What about it? Have they ever seen you cry? They see me cry, oh God, don't make me do this again. When I talk about Rad, you know, when I talk about him going through pandas, you know, if, if this comes up, this is the thing for me, you know, is that brings me to my fucking knees, you know? And when, when I do Barbarian. That's uh, when everything else leaves me, you know, if I need the power, that's what I think about. I think I would rather do barbarian every single day of my life than have Rad

• 1:27:17Speaker 00

  live another day like that. So I get choked up, you know, when I talk about that because it's uh, it's just, I feel it. I feel how desperate, you know, I was. I feel how horrifically he was hurting. Uh, so uh, they, they see me get choked up, but I would say, yeah, probably one other time. I can't remember what, what it was about. Um, but uh, I don't, I don't cry a lot, but I've cried.

• 1:27:45Steven Bartlett?

  It's really, um, it's really interesting speaking to you for so many reasons. I mean, you know, so many of the things that you say are on one hand, they're, you know, some people might consider them to be controversial, but they're so, they're almost impossible to disagree with. And that's an interesting place to find yourself. And then I think your message is incredibly, you know, the message about living more human is incredibly important in society right now. We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest. And I'm going to, I wouldn't bullshit you because I know you'd correct me if I did. I never see the question, so I, I enjoy seeing the question with you. So the question is, um, hmm, I love this one.

• 1:28:29Steven Bartlett?

  Tell me something you have never told anyone before.

• 1:28:41Speaker 00

  There's something that comes to mind, but I, I have told my family this.

• 1:28:45Steven Bartlett?

  That's okay.

• 1:28:47Speaker 00

  So,

• 1:28:51Speaker 00

  part of the reason why I never wanted to publicly come out as the Liver King is because I've been completely terrified of public speaking. Just, um, in fact, I don't know if I've ever told my, my family. Uh, I'm sure Liver Queen knows that, but I mean, to the point where it's completely crippling, like words don't come out. And, um, and everybody thinks, oh, there's no way because you're so gregarious and you know, you can talk with, and, and I've led teams and I'll, I'll get, but like, you know, it starts with one person in my company and then it's two and then, and you know what? I've gotten to know you guys around the table so well. And then there's this assumption like, oh, hey, no problem. Like, you got this engagement, go do this. And I've, I've tried and words don't come out. You know,

• 1:29:35Speaker 00

  there's maybe this is the anxiety, but the, the anxiety is so extreme, it's so crippling that words actually don't come out. And I don't know what it is that I'm, you know, particularly scared of, you know, when it comes to that. Um, I, I said, I would never do a podcast. I would never do a podcast. Um, like I said, I didn't want to go on social media. Um, now we have the opportunity to make a, a TV show, which is exciting. Um, but again, it's like, I know what my job is and my job is to take this message mainstream because kids like my kids deserve a better shot at life. Um, there's this kid Saul that ran across the Brooklyn Bridge when I was doing Barbarian. He goes, hey, Liver King, Liver King, it's Saul. I'm the kid that DMs you. I lost 60 pounds because

• 1:30:20Speaker 00

  of you. I stopped drinking alcohol. I got the confidence to reconnect with life. There, there's so many stories why I do this. It's like, this message has to get out. I don't even know how the fuck I did it. You know, it's like, uh, Winston Churchill says, you know, I'm sure this is wrong, but if, if you had the danger head on, you cut the consequence in half. It's like, holy shit, you know what? Maybe that's true. Maybe we should do it. And, um, and then Logan Paul invited me on the impulse and I was like, oh my God. Um, nobody knew that I didn't sleep for the longest time leading up to that because I didn't want to tell anybody how terrified I was of this. I knew I had to do it. If I'm going to be successful getting this message out, I knew that I had to do it. Um, but I didn't dare tell my kids. I didn't tell my wife. I told nobody, you know, I, I took that

• 1:31:04Speaker 00

  shit, those waking hours of the night thinking about this. Again, I, I've tried to contemplate, what is it that I'm so terrified of? What it, and, and all I could come back with is I've tried this and it didn't work. Words don't come out. The words don't actually come out of my mouth. I mean, it's so crippling. The heart's going a million miles an hour. I can't breathe. The words just don't come out. And so I kept thinking, is that going to happen again?

• 1:31:30Steven Bartlett?

  Why didn't you tell Liver Queen, leading up to that Logan Paul podcast, one of the biggest podcasts in the world?

• 1:31:37Steven Bartlett?

  You're having sleepless nights, you've got doubts and certainties, worries. Why don't you tell anybody?

• 1:31:41Speaker 00

  I wanted all of that. I would say I wanted all of it. I almost feel like maybe I would have made it true. I almost feel like I would have manifested it.

• 1:31:56Speaker 00

  I also feel like I would have cried sharing it. And it would have been like, I would have seen back in her eyes, hey, you don't have to do this. Why are you doing this? You don't have to do this, you know? I knew that I did have to do it. I know that I have to do it, you know? Having this opportunity, the truth is, I told you earlier, hell yeah. The first thing was like, not again.

• 1:32:24Steven Bartlett?

  During this podcast?

• 1:32:25Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, it's never easy. Just the other, it was a week ago and we were at a PFL fight and the owner of the PFL said, hey, we're gonna put you on ESPN Live.

• 1:32:37Speaker 00

  And I said, yeah, you know, that's my knee jerk reaction. I tell my kids, regret what you do, not what you don't do. You'd rather regret what you do, so take massive action, do it, course correct, figure that shit out. And while I've been on a couple of podcasts, it has gotten a little bit easier. I'd never been on live TV before. And the guy next to me is trying to tell me what to say. I can't fucking process anything, you know? I can't believe I'm about to do this. I don't know what to say. I can't get two words out, you know? And, and once again, it's like, you know what? Nobody knows who I am. That's what I tell myself is nobody knows who I am, nobody knows this message. I'm not competing with anybody. Like, what I'm trying to do is get this message out and I might fuck up the whole thing. I'm already kind of thinking, how did I do today? I'll give myself an F.

• 1:33:23Speaker 00

  I'll give myself a solid F on how I did today. But you know how much better it is to give myself an F than to not show up at all? You know, again, I tell my kids this all the time. You'd rather look like an asshole, rather look like an idiot, rather look stupid than look like a pussy. You gotta show up to do your job. So, you know, I, I, I think that if I told her, I think she would have looked me back in the eye. She would have seen how crippling that fear was and that I wasn't sleeping and how it's tearing me up and how one thing might lead to another. And now I'm going to be doing a podcast a week and I can't sleep and I, I, I can't move forward in life. The truth is, you know, after we did it, I thought, oh my God, I did it. I can't believe I did it. And then I did share with the kids. I did share it, Dennis, you guys know how hard this has been.

• 1:34:07Speaker 00

  It, it wasn't right afterwards, it was after some time. Do you know how hard, how, how I thought this thing was impossible to do? But I signed up for it and I did it. And there's going to be so many opportunities, so many things like this in your life that you're going to think are impossible to do. But I want you to regret what you attempt to do as opposed to not doing it at all. And, and I see them now when, when they go to talk to girls. I see that same crippling. I don't know if it's genetic. I don't know if they, I, I, I think they got it from me, I don't know. But it's, it's so, I can see the heart, they're getting nervous, the heart's going a million miles and, and it's almost so hard. And, and, but they're getting the reps in and I think it's getting a little bit easier.

• 1:34:50Steven Bartlett?

  What's your brain telling you? What is the, cause you know, fears, fear is the consequence of a story we're telling ourselves about, usually about the worst possible outcome, about what will happen if. And then based on our own experiences, our own childhood, the consequence that we're creating can be so unbelievably crippling. Or it can be, let's do this. And so, you know, when I think about public speaking, the, the usual fear people create in their head is like, if it all goes wrong, then I'll be rejected socially from the crowd. And I, when I was, I was trying to piece together why that might be. And I, I go back to this idea of rejection.

• 1:35:34Steven Bartlett?

  I actually did a lot of reading from this professor about the idea of rejection and where it comes from. And he said, I think I'm gonna say his name's Professor John Gottman, but I think I've got that wrong.

• 1:35:45Steven Bartlett?

  He said that the reason why rejection hurts so much is because if you go back 10,000 years, being rejected from the tribe actually meant death. It actually meant death because you wouldn't be able to survive. Your brain physiologically falls into this state they call self-preservation, where you become really selfish, just your life expectancy lowers if you were kicked out of the tribe. And then you basically go into the survival mode because rejection used to mean death. It doesn't these days. Like going up to that girl, you know, if your son goes up to that girl, the reason he feels all of that is because, you know, deep within us, we were programmed to stay within the tribe.

• 1:36:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:36:22Steven Bartlett?

  And that's a moment where he's fearing rejection. So, and I think I reflect on your early years where you were socially rejected.

• 1:36:30Speaker 00

  I was socially rejected, oh absolutely, I was. And I remember meeting a group of guys that took me in. And I was probably 15, 16. That was the first time anybody really took me in. And we would practice, you know, hey, you go talk to those girls. And sometimes we would go talk to them all together, which was easier, but never went well because I think it was intimidating. And so it was less intimidating for the girls if one guy approached. And, you know, the first several times I did it and I pretended to say something and I came back and I was like, yeah, here's what happened, but nothing came out, you know. And then eventually something did come out, you know, after maybe 20, 30 times. And then it's 100 times. And then I met my wife, you know, no problem and running towards it.

• 1:37:12Speaker 00

  I knew that the same thing would happen doing this. And I'm sure it is the fear of rejection.

• 1:37:22Speaker 00

  I was rejected for a long fucking time. And, you know, I don't, I don't need to go through. That's what I thought. I'm like, do I need to go through this shit again? Like, I got a pretty good life. I love my family, you know. I feel like I live a grand life in all aspects of my life. I'm like, do I really need to do this? But I knew that if we're gonna take this message mainstream, right? Because this goal, we gotta fight this fight so that we can help other people. And I'm like, okay, I'm gonna put myself in front of the camera. We're gonna see what happens. And I think, I think we're doing it. I know I'm doing a decent job.

• 1:38:01Steven Bartlett?

  I think that is an understatement. I think you're doing a superb job and I definitely would give you an A star on today as well. And I genuinely mean that. I wouldn't bullshit you. It's one of my, it's been one of my favorite conversations for so many reasons, but you are an outstanding talker. You're in it, you know, what your ability to recite ideas is way better than mine. And I have a podcast where that's literally what I do. And I mean that's way better than mine. And your delivery, the emotion, the passion, all of it is captivating. And your story, the story that lies underneath all of that presentation is a very, very important one. So that is, you know, hearing that you struggle with that is quite frankly shocking. It's, it blows my mind because on the surface, you're the antithesis of that. On the surface, you are the, some of the, one of the best

• 1:38:43Steven Bartlett?

  guests I've ever had in terms of everything that matters to deliver a good story. So thank you for that. Thank you for coming here. You know, I didn't realize that there was a resistance to, a psychological resistance to even doing this. So that, that makes me even more honored that you, you pushed past that to be here. And thank you for what has been a truly eye opening conversation. Amazing.

• 1:39:04Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 1:39:05Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:39:05Speaker 00

  It was great to meet you. I always end the same way. If it's okay, I want to go ahead and say it right now.

• 1:39:10Steven Bartlett?

  You're gonna make me eat liver. I was like fucking terrified that you might bring-

• 1:39:14Speaker 00

  We did, we did bring some liver. We did because anywhere I go, it's like, it's my favorite thing, you know, is, is liver. And it's the best thing I know to give, to share.

• 1:39:25Steven Bartlett?

  Well, we're actually out of times. I'm joking.

• 1:39:29Speaker 00

  Would you share a piece with me?

• 1:39:30Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent. Go ahead. Oh, they're, they're actually bringing out the liver. Okay. Okay. I don't have to kill the animal. That's fine.

• 1:39:37Speaker 00

  This is great. Thank you, Kimberly.

• 1:39:39Steven Bartlett?

  Thank you, Kimberly, so much. Thank you so much, Kimberly, for this.

• 1:39:42Speaker 00

  I'm gonna take a piece and then I'm gonna throw that piece to you.

• 1:39:45Steven Bartlett?

  What is this? Raw liver?

• 1:39:46Speaker 00

  This is raw liver. And we're gonna hold it up for cheers.

• 1:39:50Steven Bartlett?

  Cheers.

• 1:39:50Speaker 00

  Down the hatch, my man.

• 1:39:57Speaker 00

  This makes you a primal.

• 1:40:01Steven Bartlett?

  It's actually good.

• 1:40:02Speaker 00

  I'm so glad you said that because a lot of people are so apprehensive about it. This is fresh.

• 1:40:06Steven Bartlett?

  Aftertaste.

• 1:40:07Speaker 00

  There's a little bit of an aftertaste. Yeah, you're right.

• 1:40:11Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, aftertaste is strong. Okay. But no, it's good.

• 1:40:16Speaker 00

  We shared some liver. You're officially a primal. You know, when you do all nine things, you know, you're a full sin primal.

• 1:40:21Steven Bartlett?

  How long have I got to wait for the muscles?

• 1:40:23Speaker 00

  You know what? You'll be amazed. I've heard you talk about this, you know, like the things you're doing, how you're tracking 81% of the time you're working out and this and that. When you start adopting more of these nine ancestral tenants, you'd be amazed at how effortless it is to maintain the body composition that you want. I get it, you know, like, like I said, I know I work out a lot, but I always worked out a lot. And when I started doing these things, the deeper that I got into it, the, the, the much more favorable my body composition, my strength, my recovery got. And so as you go further down, you know, these nine ancestral tenants, you know, the basis of them all, right? You do them better and you're gonna be like, you know what I mean? I maintain a six pack with a lot less effort and you're gonna become such a true believer. I believe that you're gonna help me spread the message as well.

• 1:41:04Steven Bartlett?

  I can't wait and I will. Thank you so much.

• 1:41:06Speaker 00

  You're welcome. Liver King out.