Dr. Mark Hyman: To Live Longer You Need...

Close friends are the best thing for your health. Friendship, it turns out, is one of life’s best medicines. If you don’t believe me, believe Dr. Mark Hyman. Mark is one of the leading voices in the functional medicine movement, which is all about taking a holistic approach to our health for natural healing and preventing disease. The smallest changes in our daily lifestyle habits, or what we eat and drink, or our positive social interactions can have huge impacts on our long-term health. I sat down with Mark to talk about my most recent obsession – friendship. I was eager to get a physician’s perspective on all the ways friendship is beneficial for our health. In this conversation, we discuss the biological benefits of talking to a good friend and why you’re only as healthy as your five closest friends. This…is A Bit of Optimism For more on Mark Hyman and his work, check out: The Doctor’s Farmacy podcast Function Health drhyman.com

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Loneliness is as big a killer as anything else. Some have said it's equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. There's a huge biology to it.

• 0:08Simon Sinek?

  Why aren't doctors prescribing to spend more time with friends?

• 0:11Speaker 00

  I do.

• 0:16Simon Sinek?

  We are what we eat, or so the adage goes. But it turns out that statement is actually medically true. Dr. Mark Hyman is one of the leading voices in the field of functional medicine, which basically means that if we feed our bodies the nutrients it needs, not only does it help us prevent illness, but we can actually supercharge our immune systems to heal us when we get sick. So I wanted to talk to him about something we need in our lives as much as we need food. Friendship. World leaders ask Mark for health advice. He's the author of 15 books, many of them New York Times bestsellers, and the host of the podcast The Doctor's Farmacy. So I really wanted to get his take. And it turns out, if we give our friendships the same attention as we give our diets,

• 1:00Simon Sinek?

  it benefits our minds, our spirits, and our bodies. This is a bit of optimism.

• 1:09Simon Sinek?

  Mark, thanks so much for coming today. It was such a treat to sit down with you. There's so much I want to talk to you about. My big thing right now is I'm writing about friendship.

• 1:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17Simon Sinek?

  Sort of mildly obsessed with it.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  It's a good thing to be obsessed with.

• 1:21Simon Sinek?

  It's a good thing to be obsessed with. So I want to go down the path of the connection between health and community, and health and friendship. You made a comment that you can't be a good friend if you're not healthy.

• 1:30Speaker 00

  If you feel like shit, you know, you can't show up and be present and engage. And be there. And yeah, just even be present to have a conversation. If you're foggy and fatigued and you feel like crap and you're dealing with all kinds of issues, it's hard to really be present. And that's what you need to do to be a friend. Except paradox, because you need mental health to be a good friend.

• 1:51Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  But if you don't have friends, it's hard to have good mental health.

• 1:55Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 1:55Speaker 00

  We have such a crisis of mental illness in this country. And part of it's because of loneliness, isolation, disconnection, social media, all the things that you're thinking about and actually writing about, hopefully with your new book on friendship.

• 2:09Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  But from my lens, when I look at people's mental health, I look at it through the lens of biology. Because we now understand that the brain... Is obviously connected to the body, which has not actually been part of medicine.

• 2:25Simon Sinek?

  Isn't that a weird thing that that's a discovery that the brain is actually a part of the body?

• 2:28Speaker 00

  I mean, the old joke in medicine is psychiatrists pay no attention to the brain and neurologists pay no attention to the mind, right? But now psychiatrists are paying attention to the brain and they're finding that brain dysfunction, brain inflammation is actually driving much of mental illness. Everything from depression to anxiety to OCD to bipolar to schizophrenia to autism. All these things are connected to brain dysfunction. And yes, it can be caused by an external stressor like a spouse dying or trauma or things that are external, but it also can be caused by nutritional deficiencies and your microbiome and environmental toxins and things that actually are treatable and measurable. There's a very famous trial in Australia called the smiles trial. They come up with all these great names for studies.

• 3:12Simon Sinek?

  But it's Dr. Smiles?

• 3:13Speaker 00

  No, they essentially, no, I forgot the acronym, but it was essentially they swapped out, you know, did a randomized controlled trial of giving people healthy whole foods and then versus processed food. And there was a huge improvement in mental health by eating whole foods on a depressed population. They've done studies, for example, in juvenile detention centers where there's a lot of mental illness and these kids by swapping out the crap for healthy food had a 97% reduction in violence. In 75% reduction in use of restraints, 100% reduction in suicide rates, which is the third leading cause of death in teenage boys. Profound in prisons is the same thing. You get prisoners healthy food compared to crap, 56% reduction.

• 3:54Simon Sinek?

  And it's not like you're putting them on, like you, they eat the food you give them. It's not like they're going to the fridge and choosing.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 3:59Simon Sinek?

  So it's a great, it's a great space for a controlled study.

• 4:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, it is, it is, right?

• 4:03Simon Sinek?

  Because there's no, there's no choice involved.

• 4:04Speaker 00

  Right, it is, yeah.

• 4:05Simon Sinek?

  And so it's not like they have a mindset of health.

• 4:07Speaker 00

  No.

• 4:08Simon Sinek?

  They're just eating whatever they're given.

• 4:10Speaker 00

  And then they, you know, they've violent crime goes down 56% in prisons. If you add a multivitamin, it goes down to 80%. And with function health, we're finding huge amounts of nutritional deficiencies. I just had a friend who's a vegan and he was severely omega-3 deficient, very depressed. And he's piling on omega-3s and his mood's completely different. And we know that omega-3s play a huge role in mood. We know that. Folate and B vitamins play a huge role. And we know that many people are deficient in these nutrients. And we can measure those biomarkers with testing that wasn't available before for people. Now it's accessible to anybody.

• 4:40Simon Sinek?

  Do you know what I think is really significant about this little insight? Especially as we're relating it to friendship and having the mental capacity to be there for someone, to having the strength of mind to be present for someone else as they're dealing with happiness or sadness, whatever they're dealing with, just being there to be a friend. So often when we talk about nutrition, we talk about eating right, we talk about you. We talk about so that you can be healthy, so that you can live longer, so that you don't suffer from chronic disease. And most of us, let's be honest, it's the same reason we don't save money. Eh, you know, if it doesn't have an immediate impact.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:10Simon Sinek?

  It's a slow boiling frog.

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:12Simon Sinek?

  You know, ah, you know, nobody plans to get diabetes.

• 5:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:16Simon Sinek?

  It just kind of, it kind of just shows up after years of being like, I'll deal with this tomorrow. In other words, we're crap at doing things for ourselves, even though the data is overwhelming. But if you just exercise, sleep and eat right, you'll be fine and healthier. But to think about eating well as an act of service.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, to others, yeah.

• 5:34Simon Sinek?

  That I choose to eat well, not for me, though I may get benefits from it. You know, as an unintended byproduct.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:42Simon Sinek?

  I choose to eat well so that I can be a better friend to you. I choose to eat well so that I can be a better parent to my kids. So I'm less grumpy and less agitated.

• 5:49Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 5:50Simon Sinek?

  And to think of that, I think, as a, as an act of service.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's right.

• 5:55Simon Sinek?

  Right?

• 5:55Speaker 00

  Well, illness, illness starts with I, wellness starts with we.

• 5:59Simon Sinek?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Isn't that true? And so, and so I think the correlation, and this is the thing that it drives me nuts. When we think about things like innovation or health, is we make it a very I thing. You have to get healthy, you have to take a multivitamin, you have to exercise, you have to sleep.

• 6:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:17Simon Sinek?

  But we don't make it about a we.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Right.

• 6:19Simon Sinek?

  And, and you know, the data better than I do, that when, you know, there's a group of people who are overweight and one of them decides to go on a diet, the disproportionately high number of them will decide to go on a diet.

• 6:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:28Simon Sinek?

  If there's a group of smokers and one of them says, I'm going to stop smoking disproportionately high number.

• 6:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, getting healthy is a team sport.

• 6:33Simon Sinek?

  Getting healthy is a team sport and, and we are absolutely influenced by our friends.

• 6:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're only as healthy as your five closest friends.

• 6:40Simon Sinek?

  So it raises, right, so it raises the question.

• 6:45Simon Sinek?

  Because clearly, we're failing as a people, as a nation, at doing all the things you recommend. Because most of the things you recommend, at the high level, what you recommend is a lot of work, right?

• 6:55Speaker 00

  It can be or not, it's just what you set up for yourself.

• 6:58Simon Sinek?

  But at a functional level, a lot of the stuff that you recommend is not difficult, not expensive, and pretty basic.

• 7:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's kind of silly, but it is.

• 7:08Simon Sinek?

  Right? And yet, for not any more money, I mean, you can buy broccoli cheaper than you can buy McDonald's, you know? For not more money, a little bit of effort, but not complicated things, we can all live much healthier lives, and yet, we're not. And so it raises the question, you know, are we banging against, our heads against the wall? We're repeating the same behavior, expecting a different result? That maybe the drumbeat from the health establishment of change the way you eat, get more sleep, maybe work out. Like, we're all exhausted, we all know that. It's not like, it's not like, it's not like you're...

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I think a lot of us know it, but there's a whole subset of our population that doesn't know what it means to eat well.

• 7:54Simon Sinek?

  Different problem.

• 7:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:56Simon Sinek?

  Different problem, completely agree.

• 7:57Speaker 00

  It's shocking to me, but it's true even in the... And it's because the food industry has been so good at manipulating the public to think that certain foods are healthy that are not. And they put health claims on labels of stuff that's the worst possible food.

• 8:11Simon Sinek?

  All natural, which means nothing.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  My basic rule is if it has a health claim on the label, it's bad for you, don't eat it.

• 8:17Simon Sinek?

  If it has a health claim on the label...

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, because it's trying to hide something, it's trying to hide something.

• 8:21Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  It's like low fat, low sugar, sugar-free. Like, what else is going on in there?

• 8:26Simon Sinek?

  It's like, it's like my, like I love my...

• 8:29Speaker 00

  High fiber, you know?

• 8:29Simon Sinek?

  My favorite ones are new and improved formula. Like, what was in the old one?

• 8:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:34Simon Sinek?

  Like, uh-oh.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  So you were, you were kind of going in the trap of, we know what to do, why don't we do it?

• 8:39Simon Sinek?

  Why don't we do it? And I'm asking the question, maybe if we refocused our attention in a different place? Let's call it friendship. With the rising rates of anxiety and depression and mental fitness challenges and inability to cope with stress, and then the worst case, suicide. Even the obsession with longevity, I'll go and I'll throw that one in as well. Friendship is the ultimate biohack.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  It is.

• 8:59Simon Sinek?

  Friendship literally fixes all of those things.

• 9:01Speaker 00

  It is.

• 9:01Simon Sinek?

  We know the data that people who have close relationships live longer. People who have close relationships are happier. And you look at Dan Buettner's work.

• 9:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:08Simon Sinek?

  And the Blue Zones.

• 9:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:09Simon Sinek?

  And so much attention is put to them walking to the house and to the, and so much attention is put into what they're eating and how they're eating.

• 9:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:18Simon Sinek?

  But not enough attention is put into the fact that they're eating with their friends every single day.

• 9:23Speaker 00

  You're so right, Simon. I actually, I spent a lot of time in Sardinia and in Ikaria or Akaria, however you pronounce it. It was just stunning to see the level of community and connection, even if someone, for example, like this woman Julia was 100. And she was, I'm 103 months, like, you know, like I'm five and three quarters, I'm 103 months.

• 9:39Simon Sinek?

  I think when you're very young and you're very old.

• 9:42Speaker 00

  Every month.

• 9:42Simon Sinek?

  The half, the quarter count, yeah.

• 9:45Speaker 00

  And now she didn't have kids, but she lived with her niece and nephew. And there were no nursing homes. People just took care of each other. And it was really remarkable. And there was this guy Carmine, who basically had this huge farm that he had his whole life and his family had. And he was 86 years old and he was raising animals and had fruit trees and gardens. And he, you know, he was feeding his whole community and family had meaning and purpose. And he would live with his kids and his wife had died. But it was all this incredible sense of connection and community. And it's so essential. And I learned this lesson when I went to Haiti after the earthquake. And I was the first medical team on the ground at the main hospital, the general hospital in Port-au-Prince. And it was, it was a disaster. I mean, you can't imagine the scope. It was 300,000 people injured and 300,000 people dead.

• 10:30Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 10:31Speaker 00

  It was an unbelievable massacre that was a natural occurrence, but it was, it was horrible. And so we got there and there were people helping, everybody was helping. There was a sense of community and service and connection. And I got to meet Paul Farmer, who was a hero of mine. He was a doctor who went to Haiti and decided that even though the whole world had neglected. This community of people who are suffering from TB and AIDS because they were poor, they didn't have sanitation, they didn't have clean water, they didn't have watches, they couldn't take the drugs, since it's complicated at that point to take the drug regimens for multi-resistant, drug-resistant TB or for AIDS. And he realized it wasn't a medical problem, it was a social problem. He called it structural violence, what are the social, economic and political

• 11:15Speaker 00

  conditions that drive disease? And it wasn't that we needed better drugs or surgery, we knew how to solve it. But the entire public health community given up on them. So he started to help by building a network of community health workers, neighbors helping neighbors, friends helping friends. And he called it accompaniment. And it was French, but I'm not good at pronouncing French, so I'm gonna skip that.

• 11:36Simon Sinek?

  Accompaniment.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Accompaniment, yeah, something like that. And he built this whole model and it scaled around the world. It was adapted by the Clinton Foundation, the Gates Foundation to help. He did this in Peru, he did this in prisons in Russia, he did this everywhere, where people were struggling in Rwanda, built hospitals. And it was an incredible model. And I realized that most of the diseases we have now in the West are not infectious diseases, they're chronic illnesses which are called non-

• 11:59Simon Sinek?

  What's the difference?

• 12:00Speaker 00

  Well infectious diseases like malaria or measles or TB, right? These are the things that all were killing us a century ago. Now they're pretty much not, except in certain parts of the world. But the, the diseases we now have are what we call non-communicable diseases. But that's a fallacy because they are very communicable. They're not infectious, but they're contagious. And chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, autoimmune diseases, these are diseases that are driven through our diet, toxins, but also through our social networks. And I realized that our social networks were more important than our genes. The social threads that connect us are more important than the genetic threads. And that you're, and the data is really clear on this. Christakis's work out of Harvard outlined this very clearly. He wrote a book called Connected about this.

• 12:45Speaker 00

  But he's published the research that showed you, for example, if your friends are overweight, you're 170% more likely to be overweight. Then if your family's overweight, you're 40% more likely to be overweight. Your social networks are driving your behaviors, for good or bad. So I realized that yes, we have a society where the default is to do the wrong thing. And that we as a society aren't supporting each other to do the right thing. And I realized that community was medicine, just like food is medicine.

• 13:12Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 00

  And that love is medicine.

• 13:13Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. And we, that's, I mean, look, that's, that's our anthropology, right? We're tribal animals that grew up historically in tribes, about 150 people, and that's how we lived.

• 13:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:21Simon Sinek?

  We lived in these relatively small, we help each other communities, communes.

• 13:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:26Simon Sinek?

  I mean, that's the history of humankind. We've only started farming 10,000 or 12,000 years ago. But for most of human history, we lived in these, in these small groups where we couldn't have populations larger than about 150.

• 13:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:36Simon Sinek?

  What's very interesting about the little statistic that you threw out, and the thought that I had, which is when our family is overweight, we're 40% more likely to be overweight. But when our friends are overweight, we're 170 times.

• 13:48Speaker 00

  Percent.

• 13:48Simon Sinek?

  I mean, more likely to be overweight. And that's, you know, the, the immediate thing that popped into my head was when you think about children, right? Children, all they want is their parents' approval. Hey, Mom, hey, Dad, watch me, watch me, watch me, watch me. Right? And they have no inhibitions in the outside world. They don't care what the world thinks about them at all.

• 14:09Speaker 00

  Just mommy, dad.

• 14:09Simon Sinek?

  I'm gonna dress like a princess, I'm gonna dress like Spider-Man.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:12Simon Sinek?

  But I want Mom and Dad to watch me jump off the step.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:14Simon Sinek?

  And I desperately want Mom and Dad's approval. Right? And that's where all of the learning about what's appropriate and what's inappropriate comes from. Strictly from our parents, nothing else.

• 14:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:24Simon Sinek?

  Until they reach about adolescence.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  That's a period.

• 14:27Simon Sinek?

  And adolescence, we convert to only needing our parents' approval, to only needing our friends' approval. Frustrating for the parents, but very, very important for social animals, because what we're doing is acculturating outside of our families, beyond our families, into the broader tribe.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:42Simon Sinek?

  And that lasts for the rest of our lives. We don't actually go back to the family. It's all friends, which is why I, I have to believe, and I'm just sort of thinking about this out loud now. I have to believe that's the reason so many of us go on Instagram and wish our parents happy birthday when our parents aren't on Instagram. Right?

• 15:02Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:02Simon Sinek?

  It's for the social approval that I'm a good kid.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:05Simon Sinek?

  And showing all the pictures of my dad, holding me when I was a baby, like scroll through all those pictures. And everybody likes that I'm a good son.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:12Simon Sinek?

  And yet, my dad's not on Instagram. Right? And so I have to wonder if that same drive, that same weird need to want social approval for being a good son.

• 15:25Simon Sinek?

  Is the same, it comes from the same root.

• 15:27Speaker 00

  I mean, a hundred percent. If your, if your friends are all drinking green juices and doing yoga.

• 15:30Simon Sinek?

  Then you're gonna drink green juice.

• 15:31Speaker 00

  Then you're gonna do the same thing if all your friends are.

• 15:33Simon Sinek?

  The amount of shit that I take, simply because my friend's like, you should do, you know what I'm saying? Because you're, because you're in the industry, I'm gonna say something that's potentially insulting to you.

• 15:41Speaker 00

  Please.

• 15:42Simon Sinek?

  This is what I like to do. I like to have, I like to, I like to talk to guests and then insult them. This is potentially insulting to you.

• 15:48Speaker 00

  We're friends, everybody, so I.

• 15:49Simon Sinek?

  So this is potentially insulting, so I need you to work this through me, with me, right? It feels like, I can't say that it is, but it feels like that the complete explosion in the supplement industry, where nothing is evaluated by the FDA.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:06Simon Sinek?

  And every influencer now has a vitamin, or a supplement, or a powder, or a drink, with all kinds of nonsense claims, maybe they're good, maybe they're bad. It feels like we're living in the dot com boom of supplements.

• 16:24Speaker 00

  Maybe, yeah.

• 16:24Simon Sinek?

  That, you know, in the dot com boom, you were like, I'm investing in this tech company.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:29Simon Sinek?

  Because my neighbor told me I had to.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:32Simon Sinek?

  And now that's been replaced with, I'm now taking these 87 pills per day.

• 16:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:37Simon Sinek?

  Because one friend told me to take these four, another friend, and just like the dot com boom.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:44Simon Sinek?

  You can't live in a bubble like that. It's gonna have repercussions and it's gonna be, it's gonna be unexpected and it's gonna be pretty violent.

• 16:51Speaker 00

  Right.

• 16:52Simon Sinek?

  So riddle me this, like, is it time for the FDA to get involved? Like, I can no longer tell the difference between a claim on a product you're selling.

• 17:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:01Simon Sinek?

  Or a claim on something that some, like, literally their only qualification is they have a following on Instagram.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Yeah. Isn't, isn't that a job, being an influencer? Where was my course in college, Influencer 101?

• 17:16Simon Sinek?

  We're living, we're living, I think we're living in a supplement boom.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, it could be.

• 17:21Simon Sinek?

  And it's gonna, and it's gonna, I don't know how it's suddenly, you know, kicks back.

• 17:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:26Simon Sinek?

  But this can't, this can't last forever.

• 17:29Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think there.

• 17:30Simon Sinek?

  And it's counted to everything you're trying to do.

• 17:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, what I want people to do. Is do the right thing. It's what I've I've spent my whole life trying to do is help people understand how to create health. And part of the the new company I co-founded Function Health is really empowering people with their own health data to make choices that are personalized that aren't just random because somebody said do this or do that. And so that's what I I love about that. I had a, for example, a friend the other day who showed me her results from Function and she was low in zinc, she was low in iron, she was low in vitamin D, she was low in omega-3 fats. I'm like, oh, that's why you feel like crap. You know, you need to take these things and here's what to choose. But most people don't have a way of navigating this sort of morass of products that have, again, no regulations in terms of quality or efficacy. Now, because people aren't protected in the sense that they don't know if the product they're taking has the

• 18:17Speaker 00

  exact ingredient it says, if the dose is what it says on the label, if there's any contaminants in it, if there's any fillers or products that kind of may be harmful to you. So it's kind of a shit show. And so as a physician, I've spent a lot of time investigating which companies are using pharmaceutical manufacturing practices, which do testing before and after their products. So they know that the purity and potency is exactly right. And they throw the product out if it isn't. So there are good companies that are doing that. But it's like

• 18:47Simon Sinek?

  I didn't know.

• 18:48Speaker 00

  You can't unless you unless you know what to ask.

• 18:50Simon Sinek?

  I did a thing a while ago where

• 18:53Speaker 00

  There's a way to learn about it.

• 18:54Simon Sinek?

  Where they took my blood and they evaluated all of everything in my blood from, I mean, you name it. All the minerals and everything I'm supposed to get and have.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:05Simon Sinek?

  And then they made

• 19:06Speaker 00

  A personalized cocktail.

• 19:07Simon Sinek?

  A personalized smoothie.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:10Simon Sinek?

  That replaced all my things and I'm supposed to come back every six months.

• 19:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:13Simon Sinek?

  And it was really interesting. And they introduced, then I talked to a doctor who walked me through my results.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:18Simon Sinek?

  And then they give me my smoothie and the only choice I get is what flavor. And and it sounded good. Until I was like, I don't even know if this is bullshit.

• 19:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:29Simon Sinek?

  If they're just like, I don't actually.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  Well, that's the problem. If someone's, if someone's selling you something off of something else, that can be a problem. It's not always a problem, but if you're saying,

• 19:37Simon Sinek?

  I've done all of the things for a little bit. Like, I took AG1 for a few months and I, I, I mean, I do all these things. I feel the same. Like, like I've, I've done AG1, I've done Clustrom, I've done, I mean, I've, you know, and again, all because somebody's like, you should try it. And there are people who I trust. That's why I did it.

• 19:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:55Simon Sinek?

  And, you know, they like, you take these things like it boosts your immune system.

• 19:59Speaker 00

  How do you measure that?

• 20:00Simon Sinek?

  I, exactly. I, I got a cold. So does it work or does it not work? Well, you would have been worse if you, I mean, like, I don't know. And I, you know, you, I start, I get very cynical. Sometimes I'm all in and sometimes I'm very cynical. I'm in a very cynical mode right now.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  I hear that. And I think it's fair and you're right to be cynical. And I think there's a lot of, of garbage out there and a lot of people pushing stuff. And there's a lot of companies, for example, doing tests and then selling you products on the backend. I think there's a problem with that.

• 20:23Simon Sinek?

  Okay.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Uh, for example, Function Health, we don't do that at all. We just say, okay, for example, you, you have these things that you found that you need to fix that are affecting your health and wellbeing, and here's how to make a decision. For example, we have a 30-page guide on how to choose the right supplements.

• 20:36Simon Sinek?

  And you don't take.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  We don't sell anything.

• 20:38Simon Sinek?

  And you don't take kickbacks from the products that you recommend?

• 20:40Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no kickbacks. No, we don't, no, no. We're completely agnostic. We don't have any.

• 20:45Simon Sinek?

  Do whatever you want. You just need this.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  No, but not only do I want, but if you're going to, if you need something, here's how to choose the right product. And here's how to investigate the company. And here's the questions to ask. And here's what to look for. And here's how to make a good decision. So we're teaching how to fish, not giving you a fish.

• 20:58Simon Sinek?

  I, I like that you're doing this, but I, I'm, remember I'm in a cynical mode.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  What else is new?

• 21:09Simon Sinek?

  Which is when there's, when there's a good business model, even if it's for the, for the greater good, because money is fuel and that's totally fine. That means you'll have competition and other people will start doing similar things. And then we're back at square one, which is all of these companies are going to be funded by VC. And you and I know too well, unfortunately, the way VC and PE works, which is they all are wonderful.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  On return.

• 21:33Simon Sinek?

  They're all fantastic in the beginning and they're so behind you and your vision at the beginning. And just wait three to five to seven years and all of a sudden the pressures start to show up. And the growth, we want growth because that's our business model, not your business model.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:47Simon Sinek?

  And then all of a sudden, especially if you've given up controlling interests, you will have built up this beautiful brand. You get fired from your own company. I mean, the number of companies that have like the brand of Vada, Burt's Bees, Kashi, Amy's. These were.

• 22:03Speaker 00

  Well, they got bought by Kraft.

• 22:04Simon Sinek?

  You know, they were all great brands.

• 22:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:06Simon Sinek?

  That built their brands based on natural ingredients. And we believed it because the founders were true. And then they sold.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:14Simon Sinek?

  To Kraft and.

• 22:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:16Simon Sinek?

  L'Oreal and whoever buys these companies. They strip the beautiful things out, put the shit in because they can increase margin.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:23Simon Sinek?

  But we're none the wiser. We don't know.

• 22:26Speaker 00

  It's a made us still made out.

• 22:27Simon Sinek?

  Fired from beautiful companies. We don't know that these companies are owned by large conglomerates that are driven by shareholder value.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  That's true.

• 22:34Simon Sinek?

  And then we end up suffering for these products that we were told were good and they were good until they weren't good.

• 22:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true.

• 22:40Simon Sinek?

  And we're back at square one.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's true.

• 22:42Simon Sinek?

  So I think we should just have friends and.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Well, let's get back to the conversation about friendship because I think, I think that, that, you know, the, the, the fundamental thing is.

• 22:51Simon Sinek?

  We should, we should garden and farm with our friends.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 22:55Simon Sinek?

  And then eat our own food.

• 22:56Speaker 00

  Well, we can't live, you know, I mean, when you look, when you look at the, the problem.

• 22:59Simon Sinek?

  Subsistence farming, that's, that's.

• 23:01Speaker 00

  I, I think that's right. I mean, I think, you know, community gardens are amazing. I think they're a great service for people. And I, I think that what we're finding is that loneliness is as big a killer as anything else. Some have said it's equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. And how many, especially men, don't have someone who's a good friend?

• 23:22Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 23:23Speaker 00

  How many people don't have somebody to call?

• 23:25Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  When shit goes down?

• 23:28Simon Sinek?

  I go back to the work that I did some years ago when I was writing Leaders Eat Last with Alcoholics Anonymous. If you want to overcome alcoholism as a 12-step program, most of us are familiar with the first step. You know, admit you have a problem.

• 23:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:42Simon Sinek?

  Okay, let's say I'm depressed or I'm lonely. Let's admit that's the problem, right? But it's the 12th step that people don't talk about.

• 23:49Speaker 00

  Right.

• 23:50Simon Sinek?

  And Alcoholics Anonymous knows, exactly. Alcoholics Anonymous knows that you can master 11 steps and not the 12th, and you also come to the disease. And it's the, exactly, to help another alcoholic. It's service.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:01Simon Sinek?

  And so I think the people who are the most lonely are the ones who have to go first. Because the way to solve your problem is to help your friend who's suffering from the same problem. If you're an alcoholic, you help another alcoholic. If you're lonely, help a friend who's lonely. And I think that the therapeutic benefits of helping someone who's struggling with the same thing that you're struggling with, rather than worrying about yourself, goes right back to the gym.

• 24:27Speaker 00

  There's a huge biology to it, dude. I don't know if you know, but there's a whole field of socio-genomics, which is how our social interactions affect our gene expression.

• 24:35Simon Sinek?

  Say more.

• 24:36Speaker 00

  So if you're in a conflictual relationship with someone, your inflammatory genes are turned on. Literally, not just your emotions are inflamed, but your biology turns on the inflammation system.

• 24:48Simon Sinek?

  Like fight or flight kind of stuff?

• 24:49Speaker 00

  Not fight or flight, just if you're like in a shitty relationship or if you're fighting with someone or you have a conflict, you turn on inflammatory genes that then increase expression of cytokines that cause inflammation and that cause disease. And all chronic disease, from depression to heart disease to diabetes to obesity to Alzheimer's, are all inflammatory diseases. Conversely, if you have a connected, loving relationship with somebody, it turns on anti-inflammatory genes.

• 25:16Simon Sinek?

  And inflammation is the core of like everything.

• 25:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And maybe the study with entrainment, you know, where you have, where if you sit with someone and you have an authentic connection, that you can put EEG and EKGs on, basically brainwaves and heartwaves. You can see the heartbeat of someone you're having a deep-connected relationship with in your brainwaves. It's wild. So it's not just a feel-good thing on an emotional level. It's a physiological response that happens of being in connection. If you take animals and put them in cages and separate animals and feed them exactly the same thing and have everything else the same, the one that's isolated versus the ones that are connected will shrivel and die and get sick. Right? And so humans are the same way.

• 26:02Speaker 00

  And we've gotten in a situation where friendship and connection is sort of like.

• 26:08Simon Sinek?

  Okay, so why aren't doctors prescribing to spend more time with friends?

• 26:13Speaker 00

  I do.

• 26:14Simon Sinek?

  Like, "Doctor, I'm suffering from X, Y, and Z."

• 26:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:17Simon Sinek?

  Okay, I'd like you to try and get an extra hour of sleep, go to bed a little earlier. I'd like you to stop eating before, you know, eat no, don't eat past eight o'clock at night. And I want you to spend at least three hours a week with a friend. How come that's not on a prescription?

• 26:30Speaker 00

  It should be. It should be. I mean, I prescribe it. In fact, based on this work that I did in Haiti, I met a pastor after Rick Warren, who wrote The Purist Driven Life and had a church with 30,000 members. And I met him, he came to my office and we started talking. And I said, "Hey, you know, Rick, tell me about your church." Because I'm a Jewish doctor from New York. I don't know much about evangelical Christian churches. Like, "Yeah, we got 30,000 people." Like, "Wow, that's a lot of megachurches." He's like, "Yeah, we got 5,000 groups that meet every week, small groups in the church, to help each other live better lives." I'm like, "Oh, this isn't a megachurch. This is thousands of mini churches."

• 27:04Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  And I had that lightbulb moment. I'm like, well, I just come back from Haiti. I said, "Why don't we put a healthy living program into the groups and see what happens?" He says, "Great idea, because I was baptizing my church last week." And after about the 800th person, I'm like, "Man, we're a fat church and I'm fat and we gotta do something about it." And so we put a program together through the small groups where people were just helping each other. There was no doctor, nutritionist, health coach, nobody. There was just a curriculum. We had a big rally, sort of a big event where we. Talked about and Rick talked about the biblical rationale for why God wants us to be healthy. I gave a bunch of speeches and talked about how, you know, God lives in you. Why are you feeding him crap and things like that?

• 27:41Simon Sinek?

  I mean.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  You know, if Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him? You know, big mac fries and a Coke and they got it.

• 27:46Simon Sinek?

  Ain't that the truth? Ain't that the truth?

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:49Simon Sinek?

  If Jesus came to dinner, what would you feed him?

• 27:52Speaker 00

  Exactly. So they got it. I said, you know, if you feel like crap, how are you going to serve God? How are you going to serve each other? You've got to take care of your body. And so they got it and they did this together in community was jogging for Jesus and they all these incredible.

• 28:03Simon Sinek?

  It's great.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  It was incredible and they lost together a quarter million pounds in the first year and they did it together. And then I took that same model and I applied it at Cleveland Clinic where we created small groups where people helped each other. We did research on us and published it. There were three times better health outcomes on validated metrics of health outcomes compared to one-on-one visits for the same condition with the same doctors. So the doctors at our clinic could see them in one-on-one or they support them in a group.

• 28:31Simon Sinek?

  Right.

• 28:32Speaker 00

  The group was three times as good as seeing the doctor one-on-one in terms of

• 28:36Simon Sinek?

  So why, but why aren't these things then being implemented across the medical field?

• 28:40Speaker 00

  I'm trying.

• 28:41Simon Sinek?

  Why aren't, why aren't we, why aren't we going to the doctor with our friends?

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:46Simon Sinek?

  To dealing with similar issues? Why aren't we like, everything's so

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:51Simon Sinek?

  siloed.

• 28:52Speaker 00

  It is essential. I mean, I think, you know, the models of support, whether it's coaching, whether it's one-on-one coaching or support, whether it's group models, that they have to be the thing that's going to change because we get healthy together or we get sick together. What did Benjamin Franklin say? We must all hang together or surely we'll all hang separately.

• 29:12Simon Sinek?

  I mean.

• 29:12Speaker 00

  And I think that's kind of where we're at in society.

• 29:14Simon Sinek?

  That's kind of where we are. Yeah. One of the problems we have in our society is community things, you know, bowling leagues don't exist anymore. Church attendance is down.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:23Simon Sinek?

  And church attendance and faith are not the same thing. You know, you can have faith and not go to church and you can go to church and not have faith.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 29:29Simon Sinek?

  The church would rather that they're overlapping, but, but the idea of doing things in commune, in community, this is why I love things like Comic-Con or Burning Man or whatever your, you know.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Now, you've never been to Burning Man.

• 29:42Simon Sinek?

  I have been to Burning.

• 29:43Speaker 00

  You have?

• 29:43Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 29:44Simon Sinek?

  And Sturgis, the motorcycle thing.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  Hells Angels.

• 29:48Simon Sinek?

  Like all of these things, doing things in community with people who have common interests. And one of the questions I'm getting since I've started talking about friendship, it's amazing how many people are coming up to me who are of all ages, of all income levels, who are saying to me, I don't know how to make friends.

• 30:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:08Simon Sinek?

  I struggle to make friends.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Cause they're afraid to be authentic. I mean, that's the hard part, right? It's not.

• 30:13Simon Sinek?

  Have you ever struggled to make friends?

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Uh, when I was a kid, I didn't have any. I was a weird kid. I just was in my head, read a lot of books, was a little weird and, uh, you know, kind of a nerd. I just, I was living in Toronto in the seventies. It was spiritual wasteland and in fact, I actually, my first real friend I met on the top of a mountain in the Canadian Rockies. We were backpacking and it was a week out in the middle of nowhere by myself and he was a week out and we crossed over on Badger Pass in Banff National Park and we just had this kind of moment of connection and we both found out we're going to be at Cornell in the fall. He was in Ithaca College, I was at Cornell. We got back and we got together and, you know, we didn't know if we were going to be friends or not, but we became like brothers and.

• 31:00Simon Sinek?

  Still friends today?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  He's my best friend. Yeah. We've forty, forty-six years later.

• 31:04Simon Sinek?

  Wow.

• 31:05Speaker 00

  Yeah. Forty-six years later, we do mountain bike trips all over. We, we're very close and, um, you know, we help each other and when one's down, the other picks one up and I'm down, he picks me up. When he's down, I pick him up and we've had this really sustained, deep, authentic, intimate relationship for forty-five years.

• 31:22Simon Sinek?

  That's amazing.

• 31:23Speaker 00

  And we love each other, we hug each other, we cry together, we laugh together. And it, you know, it was a place where, where I could say and be and do anything. And it was, it was, it was a remarkable experience for me to actually feel seen and loved. It was like the first person who loved me who didn't actually have to love me like my parents.

• 31:42Simon Sinek?

  Here, here's something I discovered about close friendships, right? Which is we always talk about close friends as the person you would call when you're in need, when you need help, the person you can cry with, the person when you're in pain. And I actually think that's true. That's a level of close friendship that you can call that person in a time of struggle or need. But I think there's even a closer level of friendship, which is when you can call somebody when something amazing happened.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  And they're not jealous.

• 32:09Simon Sinek?

  And there's no jealousy and you can call them and what you're doing is bragging, but not really. You just need to tell someone about this amazing thing that you accomplished.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:17Simon Sinek?

  Or that was given to you or that you won or that, you know, whatever it is. And if you were told anybody else, they'd be like, they think you were bragging.

• 32:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:25Simon Sinek?

  But to that friend, they have unbridled joy with you and for you. And what I've learned is the number of people I would call with good news is actually smaller than the number of people I would call with bad news.

• 32:37Speaker 00

  That's interesting. Well, you can call me with good news.

• 32:39Simon Sinek?

  Oh, thank you.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  I'll celebrate you.

• 32:41Simon Sinek?

  But you know what I mean?

• 32:42Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it is. It's important to take in the inventory of your life and your friends. And, and if you don't have good friends, it's really important to cultivate them, to invest in them, to find them. And there's ways to do that. I mean, there's ways to put yourself in environments and situations. And I don't, you probably saw those articles in New York Times about men and friendships. And it was just, it was just so heartbreaking. And when COVID happened, you know, we're all isolated, we're all alone. And September 2020, my wife and I split up. I had just had back surgery. I was alone. It was COVID. And what did I do? I sent an email to my closest men friends, six other men, who I, you know, done men's work with, done men retreats with, done medicine journeys

• 33:25Speaker 00

  with. And I said, hey, guys, like, can we start a little Zoom once a week for an hour, maybe? And they're like, how about we do two hours every week? You know? And we've been going for, it's plus four years now. And it's remarkable to have this container. And what's been interesting to watch is that even though these, these were all my close friends for 40 years, 30 years, that the depth of our friendship has gotten more profound, the more vulnerable we've gotten, the more we open our hearts, the more we share our fears, the more we share our successes, the more we share, whatever is going on in our life doesn't matter. There's always something with one of us. And to me, it's like an anchor.

• 34:09Simon Sinek?

  Another friend of mine is struggling with one of her friends. And she asked herself, if I was in a marriage or just a romantic relationship, a long-term romantic relationship and the relationship was struggling, we wouldn't just break up, we would get help, we would seek therapy, couples counseling.

• 34:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:25Simon Sinek?

  And so she went to her friend and said, this tension has been going over too long. We're gonna go to therapy together.

• 34:31Speaker 00

  That's great.

• 34:32Simon Sinek?

  Friends therapy.

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:33Simon Sinek?

  And again, why, why do we instinctively understand that if a marriage or a relationship is struggling, that we expect people to at least try, to at least try the couples' therapy before you call the whole thing quits? And yet we don't do that with friendships. When we have tension with friendships, we're quicker to end the friendship or sit in weird tension or avoid the person than to go to the therapy with the person to try and work through the struggles. We may still end up breaking up.

• 35:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:01Simon Sinek?

  But let's at least put in the effort

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:03Simon Sinek?

  to rescue this friendship that we claim we care about.

• 35:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:07Simon Sinek?

  I love the idea of friendship counseling.

• 35:10Speaker 00

  And it speaks to that same point about like not just co-living in a sense of just doing things together.

• 35:16Simon Sinek?

  Existing together.

• 35:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:17Simon Sinek?

  Going to movies together and having fun together, but rather.

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, just superficial dinners.

• 35:21Simon Sinek?

  And by the way, I will stress that I don't believe all friendships need to be at this level. Like, it is perfectly fine to have friends.

• 35:27Speaker 00

  At least a couple, two or three.

• 35:29Simon Sinek?

  You need at least a handful, some have more, some have fewer, you need, but having friends where they're not deep bonds of vulnerability, you just have fun together, totally fine.

• 35:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:39Simon Sinek?

  Adventure partners or activity partners, totally fine. And I think that's one of the problems we have in our country, if not the world. I don't know about other languages, I only know about English. But like, one of the problems, I think, is language. So for example, if you have stage four liver cancer or you have a mild melanoma, the problem is both of those things are called cancer. But they are clearly not the same thing. But we use the same word.

• 36:03Speaker 00

  Right, I have a skin cancer.

• 36:04Simon Sinek?

  Right, exactly. I was like, you're fine, you know?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:06Simon Sinek?

  What did Larry David say? It's the good cancer. And I think we do, I think we have very few tax. We have very few words for friends. And so I've started using.

• 36:17Speaker 00

  Best friend, friend.

• 36:19Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, that's pretty much it. And even then, best friend is sometimes a little overused. When somebody says, hey, aren't you friends with them? I go, I'm friendly with them. Or somebody says, aren't you close with them? I'm like, no, they're an acquaintance. Or they're a work friend.

• 36:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:34Simon Sinek?

  You know, and so I've actually started to use the language for my own clarity and for other people's clarity. Not everybody I know is my friend that I'm gonna like.

• 36:43Speaker 00

  You can't have an infinite number.

• 36:44Simon Sinek?

  I can't have an infinite number.

• 36:45Speaker 00

  It takes, it takes time.

• 36:46Simon Sinek?

  It takes time. And investment is a real thing.

• 36:49Speaker 00

  This is a central part of happiness, of joy, of longevity, of health.

• 36:56Simon Sinek?

  By the way, go back to that longevity thing. You're in that space and you know more of them, but I know some of the folks who are sort of like the longevity folks. And I find a lot of them are very unhappy people.

• 37:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. Joy, right? Where's the joy?

• 37:10Simon Sinek?

  These guys, mostly men, who are obsessed with longevity. And they're taking all of the measurements and they're taking all their vitamins and supplements and they're doing all the exercises. And they're doing all the things and everything's scheduled and highlighted. And I find them not very happy people.

• 37:27Speaker 00

  No, no.

• 37:28Simon Sinek?

  You know?

• 37:28Speaker 00

  Find the joy.

• 37:29Simon Sinek?

  Find where, like, where, like, maybe work out a little less. Don't worry about if you miss the supplement and maybe just hang with friends, I bet. I mean, the data will prove it out. Like, we have to wait a bunch of years because the longevity obsessives, the only way we'll know if it works or not is when they die.

• 37:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:50Simon Sinek?

  And if they will be happy and healthy in old age. Because nobody wants to live a long time and be decrepit.

• 37:55Speaker 00

  No.

• 37:55Simon Sinek?

  You know, and so we have.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  That's why, like, I, most of my, most of my friends are in their thirties and forties now because, like, you know, a lot of my older friends have just sort of checked out.

• 38:05Simon Sinek?

  But, but, but we have to, we have to redo this podcast in 40 years and see if all the longevity, all the longevity obsessives, if they're still around or if they're dead. I'm gonna do a Vegas betting pool here, which is I would bet that the people who are healthy-ish, like, they don't, they're not unhealthy, but they're not obsessively healthy.

• 38:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:24Simon Sinek?

  Right? Like, yes, they get enough sleep. Yes, they eat mostly well, you know, like, good.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  They do the basics.

• 38:29Simon Sinek?

  They do the basics. They're not unhealthy.

• 38:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:32Simon Sinek?

  Is the way I would define them. But they're, spend a ton of time with friends and they have a fantastic sense of humor. And they love to laugh. I will bet money. That those people will live longer than all of the folks who are measuring and

• 38:47Speaker 00

  I agree.

• 38:47Simon Sinek?

  powdering and

• 38:49Speaker 00

  I mean, it's evolutionary. I mean, I don't know if you know, Ian Wilson wrote a book called The Social Conquest of the Earth about from ants to humans, how we have to work together to survive.

• 38:58Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 38:58Speaker 00

  And in fact, altruism is a built in phenomenon and that it activates the same neural circuits as heroin or cocaine or sugar in terms of the nucleus accumbens and the pleasure. And I remember this, it sounds kind of weird to say, but when I was in Haiti and I was sleeping four hours a night and I was working, helping people all day.

• 39:18Simon Sinek?

  You were happy.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  Barely eating anything, probably dehydrated in the hot sun. I felt like this sense of happiness and joy like I'd never felt. And it was weird because I was in the middle of this disaster with people with limbs amputated and dead people everywhere. But something was happening in me where I was in service of others. I wasn't thinking about myself. And it's sort of, why do what I do? I mean, I'm happiest when I'm serving others.

• 39:41Simon Sinek?

  There's a book called Survival of the Friendliest.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  That's good.

• 39:44Simon Sinek?

  And it makes, it makes an argument that we've completely misunderstood Darwin. That the idea of survival of the fittest, we have always attributed to brute strength.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:55Simon Sinek?

  And so if you can overpower someone, you're more likely to survive. And they make an argument for social animals and mammals that that's actually completely incorrect. That what he meant by fittest was most fit to create community and take care of each other. And survival of the fittest is actually nothing to do with brute strength.

• 40:11Speaker 00

  Fascinating.

• 40:12Simon Sinek?

  But it's actually to do with the ones who were better at taking care of each other.

• 40:15Speaker 00

  So as you started thinking about this book, Simon, and I can't wait to read it, even though you haven't written it yet.

• 40:21Simon Sinek?

  That's a good sign. I should put it up on Amazon. Drive those pre-sales before.

• 40:27Speaker 00

  Pre-order.

• 40:28Simon Sinek?

  Cover to come, title to come, yet untitled book.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  And you know, as I think about it, I don't, I don't, I can't think of a lot of books on friendship.

• 40:37Simon Sinek?

  Well, this is, this is the reason my friend Will and I decided, my friend Will Gader and I decided to write this. Cause it seems to make sense that you should write a book about friendship with a friend.

• 40:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:45Simon Sinek?

  Writing a book about friendship by yourself doesn't make sense. So Will and I decided to write it together and we came to the realization that there's an entire industry to help us be better leaders, an entire industry to help us be better parents, an entire industry to help us. You know, thrive in our relationships, how to eat better, how to exercise better, how to live longer, and yet precious little.

• 41:04Speaker 00

  I've written many of those books.

• 41:05Simon Sinek?

  And yet, you've written all those books, and yet precious little, yet precious little on how to be a friend.

• 41:12Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 41:13Simon Sinek?

  And when you look at all the challenges, as we said, in the world of depression and anxiety and all of the, all these epidemics that doctors and well-intended folks are talking about, no one is talking about friendship as the antidote.

• 41:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:25Simon Sinek?

  And I think that friendship is the ultimate biohack. I think if you can master friendship, a lot of those other things correct themselves.

• 41:32Speaker 00

  It's true. It's true. People listening, I imagine, are thinking, oh, this is great. I feel this. I know this is important. And I feel the disconnection.

• 41:40Simon Sinek?

  Yeah.

• 41:41Speaker 00

  But I don't know how to make friends. I don't know how to, where to start. I don't know how to take the friends I have and make them better or find new friends. I don't know how to make friendship the medicine that I need in my life.

• 41:51Simon Sinek?

  Yep. So I think starting with common interests. Sign up for a ceramics class and go by yourself. Or if you're too nervous to go by yourself, go with a friend, but talk to the person you're sitting next to. Because the great thing about doing a thing with common interests is the icebreaker is really, really easy. You just have to say, is this your first time here? Have you done this before? And it pretty much starts the conversation. You don't have to form a deep, meaningful relationship out of it, but I think starting to do hobby things, and I think having hobbies, and we've seen a decline in hobbies even.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:22Simon Sinek?

  You know, and doing hobbies with people. That's why I say.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  Join a club.

• 42:25Simon Sinek?

  Yeah. That's why I said, go play chess, you know, in a, in a park, you know? That's why I've said, I think things like Comic Con and things like that are spectacular. Because when you find a group of people who, when people laugh at your hobby, and you find a group of people who we've all been laughed at, but now we're the, we're the norm here, it's incredibly easy to make friends. I've been to Comic Con many, many times. And you know, it's it's nerd Vana.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  What is Comic Con?

• 42:54Simon Sinek?

  You don't know what Comic Con is?

• 42:55Speaker 00

  No, vaguely.

• 42:57Simon Sinek?

  It's a well, it's changed over the years, but basically it's a comic book convention.

• 43:02Speaker 00

  That's what I thought it was.

• 43:03Simon Sinek?

  That's the that's the history, but it but these days comic books are only a part of it. It's also science fiction and hero movies, you know, Marvel stories and Star Wars and, you know, DC and all of that. And it's all that nerdy kind of pop culture stuff. People will dress up as their favorite cartoon character or superhero or, you know, some obscure character and some of them are super creative and some and it's and, you know, some people are there for the the content of the convention and some people are there just to walk around in costume and have fun. And what's so wonderful about it is it's an incredibly polite group of people. So if you are in a great costume where you see someone who's in a great costume and you want to have a picture with them or they want a picture with you, everybody asks. Everybody goes, can I have a picture with you, please? Or, hey, may I have a picture with you, please? And so there's a lot of interaction.

• 43:48Simon Sinek?

  You can go up to somebody and say, I love your costume and they will be friendly back. There's not a lot of cynicism. I met one of my ex-girlfriends there. I literally went up to her and said, you look amazing. Can I have a picture with you? And she goes, absolutely. We took a picture together because I just loved her costume. I don't remember how the conversation started, but we ended up talking a little bit for just a few minutes. I don't know how we got to it, but we ended up trading phone numbers. And then we ended up having sort of a really great relationship. And the best part about that is I still have the photograph, not from our first date. I had the photograph from the moment we met.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  That's amazing.

• 44:24Simon Sinek?

  Which doesn't happen in relationships. You don't say, nice to meet you, let's take a selfie just in case.

• 44:29Speaker 00

  Right.

• 44:29Simon Sinek?

  You know, but I have the photograph of the time that we the minute we met.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:33Simon Sinek?

  And I think when you go to places where people like the things you like, it's going to increase the odds. And it's not that you increase the odds that you'll find a deep, meaningful relationships, but it makes it easier to break the ice.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  To just get started.

• 44:46Simon Sinek?

  To get started.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  So what's what's your what's your goal with your book? What's the sort of aim you're you're targeting?

• 44:53Simon Sinek?

  You know, I'm somebody who has had very few long-term relationships in my life. And the world criticizes me for that. I'm seen as unhealthy, or I've been judged as having commitment issues.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  You mean love relationships or just friendships?

• 45:03Simon Sinek?

  Love relationships.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:05Simon Sinek?

  You know, I've never been married. I don't have a 10-year romantic relationship. I haven't had it. And even some of the women I've dated, they're like, what's wrong with you?

• 45:12Speaker 00

  Me neither. I've been divorced four, five, three times.

• 45:14Simon Sinek?

  What's wrong with you is what I hear a lot.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Right.

• 45:17Simon Sinek?

  And I have a, I have a friend who was in a 16-year relationship, an unhealthy relationship.

• 45:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:22Simon Sinek?

  For 16 years. She freely admits that she should have stayed in that relationship for one year.

• 45:28Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 45:28Simon Sinek?

  And yet, society looks at her and says, she got it right and I got it wrong.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:32Simon Sinek?

  Which is twisted. And if you look at the quality of my friendships, like, I have a lot of really, really good friends. And I am fulfilled in almost every aspect of my life.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 45:43Simon Sinek?

  But just not necessarily all from one person.

• 45:46Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 45:46Simon Sinek?

  And, look, I, I like relationships and I love being in a relationship and I love being a partner to someone. And, you know, people say, well, why, why haven't you, why haven't you been married? I'm like, isn't it obvious? I haven't met the right person yet. That's such a stupid question. But I found comfort in recognizing that by fostering friendship, I don't have to feel guilty or bad or explain myself why I haven't had a, a marriage or a 10-year romantic relationship.

• 46:11Speaker 00

  And friendships outlast relationships.

• 46:12Simon Sinek?

  And friendships outlast, and friendships are there to help you through relationships. And if you don't have good friendships, you'll struggle in your relationships because you have to have somebody to ask advice or vent to. You can't always go to one person. It won't work. And so I think we don't give enough credit to friendship. We don't give enough credit to friendship, and we don't give credit to people who are good at friendship. We give credit to people who stay in relationships, even if those relationships are unhealthy. And I think we just need to reevaluate how we're managing relationship in general in our lives. I want to be a part of the friendship movement.

• 46:43Speaker 00

  I love that. I mean, that's, it's, it's interesting that one of the chapters of our book around how to get healthy is friends. One of the five Fs.

• 46:50Simon Sinek?

  Yeah, exactly. Amen. Mark, I so appreciate you coming in to get a physician's perspective, especially the work that you do. Because your work is so different than traditional medicine where we treat illness. Where your work is really about staying healthy and living healthy, and you'll never get ill. Or your body will know how to fix itself.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 47:10Simon Sinek?

  That friendship is a core part of staying healthy and helping the body fix itself and prevent itself from getting ill.

• 47:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, the biology of friendship.

• 47:17Simon Sinek?

  And, and on that note, my friend. Thank you so much for having this conversation with me. This has been great, Simon. So good, so fun.

• 47:31Simon Sinek?

  If you enjoyed this podcast and would like to hear more, please subscribe wherever you like to listen to podcasts. And if you'd like even more optimism, check out my website, simoncinek.com, for classes, videos, and more. Until then, take care of yourself, take care of each other. A Bit of Optimism is a production of The Optimism Company. It's produced and edited by Lindsay Garbenius, David Ja, and Devin Johnson. Our executive producers are Henrietta Conrad and Greg Rudeschad.