Biggest Health Hacks From Thousands of Experiments - Bryan Johnson (4K)

Bryan Johnson is the founder of Braintree, Kernel, a futurist, biohacker and an author. Is it possible for humans to never die? In recent years, Bryan Johnson has drawn global attention for the extreme experiments he’s running on his own body in pursuit of radical longevity. So what does the latest science actually say about his quest to live forever, and how close are we really to immortality? Expect to learn why it is our human obligation to fight against death, the most life-changing pivots Bryan made that helped him the most, how to get perfect sleep, what it takes to build an anti-fragile routine, the most important treatments that help increase your changes of living longer, how to improve your vascular health, how Bryan deals with complex emotions like grief, Bryan’s strange prediction on how he might die and much more… - 0:00 Is Morning Wood the Ultimate Sleep Score? 11:14 How Will AI Change Longevity Science? 17:11 Are We Entering a New Moral Framework? 29:13 Why Longevity Fails Without Behaviour Change 35:46 How to Stop Optimisation Becoming Self-Sabotage 41:48 Is Existence the Highest Moral Virtue? 56:18 The Tool Bryan Refuses to Live Without 01:05:11 Does HBOT Actually Work? 01:20:32 Bryan’s Top Longevity Tips 01:26:12 Why We Need to Focus on Testosterone 01:30:08 Does a 15-Second Call Strengthen Relationships? 01:38:59 Does Bryan Wish He Started Earlier? 01:48:26 What’s Next For Bryan? - Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom New pricing since recording: Function is now just $365, plus get $25 off at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get up to $350 off the Pod 5 at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

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

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  Good news, I'm going back on tour with a brand new live show in Australia, New Zealand and Bali. If you are interested in learning how to overcome imposter syndrome, reach your goals while not missing your entire life, my perspective on where true confidence comes from, everything I've ever discovered about discipline, plus brand new insights that I've never spoken about on the podcast, then join me on stage as I explore all of these topics with you. And you can get involved during an extensive Q and A where we work through the biggest questions that you have right now. Perth and Brisbane are completely sold out, but there are still tickets available for Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Christchurch, Auckland and Bali. And you can get yours right now by going to the link in the description below or heading to chriswilliamson.live.

• 0:42Chris Williamson?

  Sorry to report, I have a new boner record, three hours, 49 minutes. The Fellowship of the Ring is three hours, 48 minutes.

• 0:52Speaker 01

  Is that a good thing?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess. From whose perspective?

• 1:00Chris Williamson?

  Pick. Yeah, your perspective. Is it good for you?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's substantially better than an elite 18 year old.

• 1:08Chris Williamson?

  What would an elite boner 18 year old be?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Around two hours and 45 minutes ish.

• 1:13Chris Williamson?

  What refers to elite? Like vasodilation, like?

• 1:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, like take an 18 year old in peak condition.

• 1:20Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  And let's say, what would their nighttime erections be? They'd probably hover somewhere around like high two, nearly three hours. That'd be elite level. And so it just crushes that level. So yeah, I mean, from a like a pure biological capacity, yeah, it's pretty, it's pretty good.

• 1:38Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:40Chris Williamson?

  What were you doing with it? Three hours and 49 minutes?

• 1:42Speaker 01

  So this is, it's kind of like it's news to people as I've been sharing this that, I mean, people, men are generally familiar with the idea that when you are 12, 13, 14, you start having boners and they happen a lot, you know, like in class. You don't even ask for it.

• 1:59Chris Williamson?

  Gust of wind.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, you got something like literally anything and you can't do anything about it.

• 2:03Chris Williamson?

  Hey, whoa.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, do you remember like I would walk in between classes and it's like, you got a boner.

• 2:08Chris Williamson?

  Where's it gonna go?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Where you gonna go?

• 2:09Chris Williamson?

  Tuck it into the waistband.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Exactly, pull it up, you exactly, put a little book cover in front of it, but like you can't control it and you can't really stop it. And then as you age, those things naturally go down. So people kind of forget about it as a phenomenon. But men and women have arousal cycles every night, three to five erections every night. Men get erect, women have their clitoris engorged. And so it's this natural process, the body says like, I want to keep my sexual function alive and vibrant and it pulses every night. And so it depends upon your quality of sleep, your metabolic health, your cardiovascular health, your physiological health and your hormone health. And so if those things are not in place, it doesn't happen. And so if someone's bragging about four hours of sleep a night, like they feel fine, they're doing great, they have no boners.

• 2:53Chris Williamson?

  Ah.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  And so this is.

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  You might have survived with the sleep, but your erection wasn't there.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  This is why I started talking about these things. You know, we were like measuring a whole bunch of stuff, but I was really, right now, sleep deprivation is high status. Right? If you can basically flex and say, I only sleep four hours a night, I'm amazing, I work 18 hours a day. People are like, oh my God, what an amazing person. We admire you so much. And so it has this really weird high status. So this frame of the boners makes sleep deprivation low status, right? It's like, sure, you can brag about that thing, but also your body has shut down its sexual function and you can no longer get boners. And so it's really like, that was one angle. The other one is like, the erections really are a, one of the most representative biomarkers of overall health.

• 3:42Speaker 01

  That you can have big muscles and you can have great skin, but if your boners are not there, then you know. It's not, your body's not in good shape.

• 3:50Chris Williamson?

  Are you saying that nighttime erections are like the weather vane or the canary in the coal mine that's an aggregate of a ton of other shit that's going on?

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Yeah. It basically is a representative marker and you can't do anything about it. Like you can't, you can't go to the gym and like work out your boners, right? You can't pump iron. You go to sleep, it either happens or it doesn't. You have no control over it. So it's this really great marker.

• 4:12Chris Williamson?

  What you mean is you have no control over making it happen at the time, but you do have control over your health, which is going to be indicative of whether or not that does happen in future. Cause you could go to the gym and do a ton of zone two, which I imagine improves cardiovascular health and then make it some more bonus.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Yeah. But otherwise, when you lay down and you close your eyes, it's just like, you say a prayer, it's like, I hope they happen.

• 4:34Chris Williamson?

  You can think of Lord of Rings all of you want, but it's not gonna happen, it's not gonna-

• 4:38Speaker 01

  I mean, like the company that does this, that makes this device, they've got a 20,000 nights dataset and my scores just like trounce everybody in the dataset.

• 4:50Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  And so we've worked very hard, like-

• 4:52Chris Williamson?

  Is that the thing you're most proud of?

• 4:53Speaker 01

  You know, it really is. I know it's like a, in our society, people hear that and they blush, like, oh my God, that's so, you know, like, why are you talking about that? But like, it's like a biological function. Everybody has them. Like we as a species, our primary biological objective is to reproduce. It's like, it's on point with what our DNA is meant to do. And it also is like the most counterculture thing you can be doing because we have this culture that has high status relative to sleep deprivation and having a shitty lifestyle, drinking a lot, doing addictive things, nicotine, vaping. So it really is like a counter to all those things. Trying to say those are actually low status. This

• 5:36Speaker 01

  is high status. So let's try to change the moral narrative on like, what do you aspire to and what really is a flex?

• 5:42Chris Williamson?

  Great point. It's a weird, trades like that. I think most people understand if you're smoking, particularly cigarettes, if you're drinking very regularly, if you're overweight, these are-

• 5:58Chris Williamson?

  There are visual markers right now that also suggest you're probably going to be pretty fucked down the line. Yeah. Sleep deprivation is one of these weird inversions of that where you're rewarded for the sleep deprivation in the moment. And the costs are pushed further down the line. Uh, I guess it would be like, um, a birth rate decline. Like you don't see it because the population can be getting bigger, even while the birth rate is getting smaller because people live longer. And then this thing drops off a cliff. Or, uh, climate change. Yeah. You can continue to do it and continue to do it and continue to do it until you reach some point where you can no longer handle it. It's like going bankrupt gradually and subtly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're, you're right to call out the fact that there's this sort of pedestalization of it.

• 6:43Chris Williamson?

  I think about, um, especially watching you, who is now the tip of the spear of sort of, like you're the canonical example in basically no time at all. You know, it would have been back in the day like a Ben Greenfield and then it would have been a tier or a Huberman. And I guess these guys all have their own pockets, right? Your like hard longevity now moving into culture with like, um, limited balance on, I'm just doing what it takes to be as healthy as possible. Yeah. Anyway, everyone's got their own little pockets. You've become the canonical example. What I've seen is this sort of, the spiral is getting tighter and tighter and tighter of movement, counter movement, counter, counter movement, counter, counter, counter.

• 7:26Chris Williamson?

  So, um, we don't know that sleep's important. Matthew Walker comes out and says, you should watch how much you sleep. That was the first time I ever learned about it. Right. And I think he would be right to say he was close to this sort of front modern push of that. Then that lasts for a good while and we get back to, well, you know, like the hustle and grind culture can come back in and take over. And then you get back to, no, this is really, really, really fucking important and it'll improve your performance right now. And now we've already gone back to like the next iteration of the hustle and grind culture, which is much more of a, uh, pushback against over optimization. So there was, this is important. Fuck off. No, it's not hustle and grind. Yeah.

• 8:06Chris Williamson?

  You will perform better if you do sleep well and also you should consider your sleep, which is an elevated version of the first one. Yeah.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  Fuck off, you're over optimizing like we can just do it ourselves. Do you know what I mean? It's like this ping pong. Yeah, it gets tighter and tighter and tighter. Yeah, it's like also, I mean, I'm waging memetic warfare. Right, and so like, this is the classical thing that has always been done throughout history is you take a given moral value in society. If you don't like that, that thing has power, you invert it. Right, so this is like Christianity would say the meek inherit the earth. Right, so this is like a counter to the rich and powerful have the ability to push everyone around and do as they please. And so you can't really combat that. So if you can't compete on strength, you compete on virtue. So you invert that.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Right, and so this has been done through religions, it's been done through all kinds of cultural norms. And so this is, I'm trying to basically do the same thing to death culture. And so death culture is, you know, we power, wealth and status are the primary objectives of our society. We will do anything for power, wealth and status, including killing ourselves. And killing yourself for power, wealth and status is actually a virtue. Right, like you're, you're a hero, you're on the hero's journey if you do this thing. And so to combat that, you have to take that, which is high status and make it low status. And so the way you punch away at that is you do the thing where it's like, if you get four hours of sleep a night, you have no boners, right? If you don't have a boner, are you a man? Right, and the same thing for women, you know, like same cycle.

• 9:40Speaker 01

  Then you could also say, if you're not well rested, if you don't have good nourishment, if you're not exercising, you have functional IQ 10 to 12 points lower. Nearly a full standard deviation. So it's actually making you dumb, right? And like, what, what do people care about more in that high status place than their intellect? Right, their ability to, to actually- Maybe only after that would be their erections. Exactly, yeah, exactly. I mean, like, it's so primal, it's like, how smart am I? And like, how sexually formidable am I as a person? Right, like, that's, that's who we are as these animals. And so I'm trying to take those high status things, bump them down to low status and invert the arc. Because otherwise, when you make these like-

• 10:24Speaker 01

  Good natured like sleep because it's good for you. No one gives a fuck. You have to hit the heart of power because unless you speak to power, wealth and status directly, nobody's going to change anything because they're locked in on the goal they've been taught to pursue, which is like, I care about my status in the tribe. I don't want to be ostracized. I want a high status, a high respect, I want a high power as much as I can get.

• 10:43Chris Williamson?

  Which is, talk to me about power, wealth and status. Is there a hierarchy to you? Is the one which is most seductive than the rest? Is there a sequence that people seem to move through on their evolution to wipe themselves, rid themselves of the slime?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, you can just jump into groups and just see it so cleanly. Like, for example, I spent some time in DC recently. They're, they're not after wealth. I mean, you can get wealthy being in DC, but that's not the primary objective. You're really after connections and power and status within that community. Whereas in Silicon Valley, it's really about wealth creation, right? Like, that's like the ultimate objective. And so different communities have different levers. I'm impartial to whatever they are. Like, ultimately, people are trying to, people playing this game are trying to superimpose their view on the world, right? They're trying to muscle in and reorganize the world to somehow be trained by their mental models of existence.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  And whether that's done through a product or their philosophy or their presence or their personality, but everyone's trying to wrestle like their memetic essence onto the world.

• 11:56Chris Williamson?

  What do you make of the Harvard longevity study? I'm sure that you've become familiar with this.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:03Chris Williamson?

  The world's longest running study on adult life and happiness. And it does have some sort of longevity lifespan, health span predictions in there. Given that that's been going already for such a long time and has had a huge data set, right? I think it's like 80,000, maybe even more.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  What's your perspective on that, given what you're interested in? I mean, there's probably some truisms on like, humans respond favorably to having robust relationships. Like, that's true long ago, it's true now. Humans respond favorably to exercise. There's a lot of truisms, like, we know this shit's really, you know, the case. But I think it's like, what may be interesting about this is, that is a good retrospective study. I'm not sure all of it's going to carry over into the future. So in the, in the coming years, if we figure out some of these new therapies to rejuvenate ourselves in ways we couldn't before, it may be an entirely different environment in which we look at long-lived species. And it may be less about those things and more about other things. Now, this is not to say that relationships are going away. It's

• 13:08Speaker 01

  not to say that fundamentals of like, being active are going away. But I do think we're at a moment in time where, in, if you have that study going on, and we were talking in 1960s, we'd be like, yep, good data, let's carry on. But being in 2025, where AI is now starting to make novel discoveries, I think the landscape's going to be very different. What are the specific differences that are going to have the most leaver behind them? I mean, we, there's an open question, like, what is AI in our lives? Like, is AI a relationship or not? Do we have human relationships? Like, what are the contours of those things? What do longevity therapies do for us? If we start playing around with gene therapies, what is it also? I mean, for example, you look at Ozempic, you know, like, these GLP-1s, you, you put a, you take a shot, it alters your experience with hunger.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Like, it changes a fundamental part of being human. And so if we have the ability to change something so, like, fundamental to our essence, and we get really good at drug design, like, what else are we going to change? So I'm talking about this on like, a 10, 15, 20-year timescale. This is not like, next two or three years. But still, like, we are in this open frontier, where there may be some things that continue as universalisms, that just as a biological species, they're true. Also, it's like a radical change and I'm more interested in like what is going to be different than what has been.

• 14:23Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Yeah. Morgan Housel's book Same As Ever is an interesting one that people try to predict the future, but what is easier is to work out the stuff that's not going to change.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:34Chris Williamson?

  Moving forward.

• 14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:35Chris Williamson?

  Because the future is as yet undetermined, but working out what from the past can be predictive.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:39Chris Williamson?

  It's quite nice. There is this sense, right? Everybody's had this sense that our generation, we are the one, it's the inflection point, it's the precipice, it's right now, it's always right now, because it always does feel like that, right?

• 14:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:52Chris Williamson?

  If you look at a hockey curve, that graph at each point, it was the highest, most rapidly ascending, biggest, quickest moving point ever. And then you just pull it along a little bit and then it zooms out and you go, oh, that was nothing.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Chris Williamson?

  But now, now, and then you zoom out and you're going to go, but now.

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sure.

• 15:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, like we, I read, I just finished 1929, about the stock market crash, also Tripping on Utopia, and also History of Western Thought. I finished those three books last week. And like the, the theme that comes through is that humans replay the same actual play every generation. It's the same cast of characters. It's the same archetypes, it's the same arguments, and they just roll through different ideological spaces, but it's the same dynamics. And so we experience this moment, like you're saying, like we think it's novel and unique and we imagine we're something that's pivotal, but really like it's just the same thing. It's really very humbling because then it goes

• 15:55Speaker 01

  back to like, how much of your lived experience is NPC and how much is truly novel? And like, I have to concede probably 99% of my lived experience as NPC. I probably have one shot at a novel thought or like, it's just, it's just the state of play and it's very hard to get outside of that. But once you realize that it's some way, it's somehow relieving that that's the case, but also challenging. So you have to figure like, how do I pull myself out and try to find moments of sobriety to see what this moment is?

• 16:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Again, speaking of the Christian piece, the, the meek, the sort of humility, the you're less special than you think you are. It's grounding in that way. I don't think British people need more of that. Maybe Americans do. We're already going.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  God, I love the Brits. I, I love how.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  I love how honorary they are and brutally honest and acrimonious. And I find, I do, I find those personality traits to be so charming.

• 16:53Chris Williamson?

  Well, I think everybody misses what they don't have, right?

• 16:58Chris Williamson?

  Americans would probably quite like a little bit more piss taking and being brought back down to earth. And British people want a little bit more enthusiasm and encouragement. That's why I came over here and I was, oh my God, it's like being, you know, taking a drink and not knowing I was thirsty. I was so nourished by this. And then for you, it's like, I've always wanted someone to tell me I'm a prick. Like, you know, finally, these people will say it to me straight. I'm interested, you know, sort of relating to the Harvard longevity thing. From the outside, a lot of what you're focused on seems to be kind of the raw physiological. But there's a huge emotional piece to longevity, regardless of how much AI is going to change things.

• 17:39Chris Williamson?

  And some of that will manifest in like sympathetic stress, chronic stress, blood pressure, sleep, blah, blah, blah. More than that as well is what is your moment to moment experience of life like too? So I'm interested in how you are thinking about the emotional and spiritual piece of longevity and health. When you've got all of this focus on the physical piece. So are you, are you and how are you looking at those two elements? Do you even conceive of them within your MAP framework?

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, first, I don't really feel emotions. So no, joking. I mean, people that so the, that's a very common perspective. What people don't realize is that the entirety of my endeavor is

• 18:30Speaker 01

  is about AI and how we as a human race survive this moment, like full stop. That is the only reason I'm doing this.

• 18:38Chris Williamson?

  Was it like that when you first started?

• 18:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:40Chris Williamson?

  Really? So you saw the writing on the wall with regards to AI before normies like me did?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  In 2016, I, I gave this talk and I was like, look, if we look at this graph, very clear, it's up and to the right. And it's big.

• 18:54Chris Williamson?

  What was the graph?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  AI. Whatever it is, it's going to be big. And so I didn't care to get into prediction game of like what, when it's going to arrive and what it's going to be and all that, just that this is a moment. And I was trying to poke around, like, given this, it really does feel like this is like very much like a feeling intuition. It feels big and it feels consequential. And it feels like we probably want to be sober to get this thing right. And so what I've been trying to do more than anything is to say, we need a new moral philosophy that enables us to survive this moment. That basically the philosophy we have now that drives everything is, is one built on death. We are inherently a die species.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  We seek death for the glory of immortality through our various games. And the new moral philosophy I'm trying to create is don't die. That is like when you give birth to superintelligence, existence itself is the highest virtue. And so that back to this book of the history of Western thought, Plato, Aristotle, medieval, Christianity, medieval times, Renaissance, Enlightenment, modern day scientific era, like big chunks of time for these big ideologies, we're due for a brand new moral philosophy. And it will be induced by AI. And so it, the opening is right now. And it's not just like some small tweak. It's a really big opening. And that's what I'm really angling for.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  And so health is a vector to basically talk about it to say like, here's how you understand philosophy through these very practical actions. But that's really what I'm trying to do. And so above all, it's a health is a, is a language to communicate a new moral philosophy on what do we do as a species in this moment?

• 20:39Chris Williamson?

  Before we continue, if your sleep's been off, taking ages to fall asleep, waking up at random times or feeling groggy in the morning, Momentous's sleep packs are here to help. They're not your typical knock you out supplement, just overloaded with melatonin. It's just the most evidence-based ingredients, at perfect doses to help you fall asleep more quickly, stay asleep throughout the night, wake up feeling more rested and revitalized in the morning. That's why I take these things every single night and why I trust Momentous with my life or the very least my sleep. They make the highest quality supplements on the planet. What you read on the label, it's what's in the product, absolutely nothing else. And if you're still unsure, they've got a 30 day money back guarantee. So you can buy it totally risk free, use it. And if you do not like it for any reason, they will give you your money back. That's how confident they are that you'll love it. Plus they ship internationally.

• 21:23Chris Williamson?

  Right now you can get 35% off your first subscription and that 30 day money back guarantee. By going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com slash modern wisdom. That's livemomentous.com slash modern wisdom.

• 21:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I've got a miniature essay from you. People are confused by me and my intentions. I'm called a narcissist, a tech bro, vampire, grifter and health freak. Let me be clear about what I'm doing. My goal is to build the world's next major moral framework. An ideology that bridges human and machine, biology and intelligence, the ancient and the emergent. The coming psychosis, a real possibility in the coming years, is that society becomes dangerously psychotic. Yes, we are already psychotic, addicted, fragmented and self destructive. But I mean clinically psychotic and on a civilizational scale. We are already showing precursor symptoms, record antidepressant use, rising suicide rates, rampant addiction and global increases in loneliness and anxiety disorders.

• 22:26Chris Williamson?

  These are all biomarkers of a species whose cognitive environment has outpaced its biology. Human cognition evolved under conditions of slow change. Our nervous systems and social architectures were shaped for a world that changed near imperceptibly over millennia. When things change faster than our native capacity, we lose coherence. The hippocampus binds the present to memory and the prefrontal cortex constructs a coherent future. Does that mean?

• 22:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:53Speaker 01

  It means that we are going to struggle to keep up. And it's going to be so unnerving to us that.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Things might get chaotic and psychotic and it might just like have the bottom drop out. Like for example, when I reading this book, 1929 about the stock market crash. The focus was financial gain, you know, invest in the stock market, get credit to invest more, like lever yourself up. And then when that burst, it created all kinds of destruction in the economy and it took us a long time to recover from that. I think the equivalent right now would be hope, that you have hope for the future, right? Like you have imagination of what you want to be, become, what you want to achieve. Everyone has that. And as society progresses, when AI starts doing various things, it's not that they're bad, it's just that change happens and that creates uncertainty for humans.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  Like what am I gonna do? Who am I? What's my identity? How do I feel secure? All these basic questions, if we can't answer those as fast as people feel insecure about it, then you kind of teeter on this psychosis where like, can you keep your shit together? And so people focus a lot on AI, like is AI a threat? Should we pause it? Like all these different questions. There's an equal and opposite concern of what happens to human society when all this change is happening so quickly. And we can't respond fast enough. Like is humanity, is the bottom falling out the real risk of, you know, then humans do human stuff, right? Like we- What's the bottom falling out in this scenario?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  It's the sturdiness of law and order, of hope that I, my son, you know, my 20 year old son, he can go to school, he can get a degree, he can get a job, he can make money, he can find his own apartment, he can get married, you know, if he wants to have kids, like the natural life progression. If he can't quite see that structure anymore, who is he? Or you take like my dad, who's like now is early 70s, he's on the other side, he's in the legal profession, the tools are getting so good, like he just can't hang, like it's hard for him to hang. And he's like- What do I do? Like, I'm now out of the game and I don't feel any worse. Like, I don't have any identities. He's really, really struggling. And so you take any person at any stage in their life,

• 25:11Speaker 01

  you've got really serious existential challenges. And this is not guaranteed. It's just like a thought experiment of like, what could happen? And so what don't die could be is like this, this sturdiness beneath us to say, it's okay. Like, our identities are not tied up in our profession. They're not tied up in our status in the community. It's, it's like actually tied up by this, this virtue of existence that we're going to fight this new game as a species that don't die. And so it's trying to create sturdiness of identity, sturdiness of community, sturdiness of like, we've got this, we have a purpose, we have a mission, we're here for a reason.

• 25:46Chris Williamson?

  If the mission of being alive is simply mortality, does that not drop down much of the complexity that people find beauty in? It's like simply being alive. Like, there's two parts to this that I see in my mind. One is one which is very whole. It's about enoughness. It's about being okay as you are.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:06Chris Williamson?

  But that's not how humans are wired. You know, there's

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Chris Williamson?

  Like, power, status, money. Like, we are going to try. And even if it's just, I play pickleball on a week, weekend with my friends. I want to become better at pickleball next week. If I'm not better at pickleball, there is this sense of lack that comes through.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:24Chris Williamson?

  But on one side, there is sort of enoughness. But when you get down to a more sort of raw, objective ledger, like, your job is to be alive tomorrow.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:37Chris Williamson?

  So, fucking hell, really?

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:40Chris Williamson?

  Like, maybe if we were in a time of war, or there was a lot of pressure, or there's a pandemic, like, ooh, that'll imbue me because I'm, there's resistance. But like, really? Like, the, the peak of my contribution is to not expire by tomorrow.

• 26:55Chris Williamson?

  Permanently until, you know, it does happen. Do you understand what I mean? How inspiring is that as a vision versus?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, so to make a parallel example, think of capitalism as an objective function. So you say making money is your goal, right? When you wake up, that's what you do. And now you see the entire world is engaged in that goal in some capacity. Everyone. Don't Die is a similar game where you say our goal as a species is to end death, not just for ourselves, for us collectively and the planet. And so you're basically taking on the biggest challenge you could ever take on in this part of the universe. You're trying to solve for entropy. Like, let's just like list out a few things we could work on. How would you go about building a global biological immune system?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  So let's say, we say a pandemic like COVID is not good for us. Like, we don't want those anymore. We don't want the plague. We don't want somebody in a lab, you know, cooking up smallpox again. Great. So how could we build out a global biological immune system where we have sensors around the world, where it automatically detects any kind of pathogen that is threatening to our life? That's a pretty cool scientific project. Now, let's say we care about the oceans and the ocean health and the coral reef is burning up right now. That's bad for our environment. How do we stop that from happening and rebuild coral reef? And so you just start like ticking down the projects of how could you as a species solve for entropy, like solve for death? The list is endless. Like, it's like you have more to do than you ever could in capitalism.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  It's a bigger game than capitalism.

• 28:32Chris Williamson?

  Can you flex it in the same way?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Sure. I mean, you have the same rules, right? Like, anyone who does something has high status in the community. Like, if I'm solving, if I'm making a contribution, like, for example, I started to, again, like, my entire game is to make death-related things that are high status, make them low status, right? That's my whole thing. And so in this case, you could start.

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Scoring companies that do something that actually kill you, right? So that could be scrolling, endless scroll, inducing you to endless scroll. It could be alcohol, it could be vaping, it could be porn, it could be toxins, like, right? All those things. Companies that introduce that into the world, you would quantify it and they would get a die score. Any fast food company represents death, right? They're actively introducing molecules into people's body that induce death versus more, you know, healthy ingredients. So like, that's an example where you start assigning a quantitative measure on what an entity, individual or company is doing into society.

• 29:34Chris Williamson?

  Like a carbon offset, but for longevity.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Exactly, but defined in this really granular fashion and you try, you tie. Cause right now, if you make money and you're dirty the world, doesn't matter, right? If you, if you make money and you poison people, doesn't matter. In fact, you're kind of a hero. So like to tie social status with your actual effect on life or death for the species.

• 29:56Chris Williamson?

  What have been the biggest changes in your approach or beliefs about health and longevity over the last few years? We, we, you came on the show maybe three years ago and then we got to hang out in Roatan a couple of years ago, but lots of research, lots of experimentation, self experimentation. What have been the biggest pivots?

• 30:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd say one is do less. Like most things in health and wellness and longevity don't work. And so people spend a lot of time doing stuff and I would say save your time and money and don't do a lot of stuff. Do a few number, do a few things. And then two is the biggest yield is typically doing behavioral change. So like if a person has, like everybody has their thing. Let's say somebody's thing is like, they, they love Skittles and they just, you know, can't help themselves to have a bag later night. Then that's the biggest longevity therapy for that person is to stop eating the bag of Skittles.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  And so what a person will typically do is like, if they have that, if they're locked in on that battle, they will, um, to compensate for that, they'll go to a gym, they'll go get red light therapy, they'll do a cold plunge, they'll do all this stuff.

• 31:14Chris Williamson?

  That isn't the thing.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  And but it, yeah, it's basically to compensate for the fact that they feel so powerless to stop the Skittles thing. That they'll rather do those things. So most people are doing that compensation. Even though like those things are good, they're not the higher yield thing. The higher yield thing is to stop the bad behavior. But that's the thing that most people feel very hard. And what they don't realize in doing that is like, the reason why that's hard is because they're not sleeping. Not sleeping well just destroys your willpower. And they're not sleeping well because you need like five other preceding things are the case. So I, I try to help people understand like, here's a five step process to nail your sleep. When you nail your sleep, your willpower boosts. When your willpower boosts, you can tackle Skittles. That's your therapy.

• 31:57Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So it's sleep numero uno?

• 31:59Speaker 01

  By far.

• 31:59Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Give me, after all of the experimentation, what's the 30,000 foot view on how to get perfect sleep?

• 32:06Speaker 01

  You, you want to lower your resting heart rate before bed. It's the highest value biomarker you can track on a daily basis. So you'll find that everything that increases your heart rate before bed, besides sex, is bad for you and everything that lowers your heart rate before bed is good for you. And so for example, food, timing of food is really important. So if your bedtime's at 10:00 PM, you want to have your final meal of the day at 6:00 PM. So four hours. I personally do like 10 to 12 hours. Cause I really like that digestion time. It lowers my heart rate to like 39 to 40 beats per minute. So food, four hours before, 60 minutes before bed, screens off. So that's very hard because we're all addicted to our phones, like hard cut phones off. Cause you want to avoid scrolling, texting, working, and that's very arousing for the body.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Red light, amber light in the house. So whites, blue lights are really bad for melatonin release. You want to have a like a 60 minute wind down. So when screens are off, you want to use that 60 minutes to just calm yourself down. So this is very hard because people have, we've created these habits where we're glued to our phones. And if we're not on our phones, we don't know what to do with ourselves. And so it creates this panic. So the 60 minute time window before bed is really precious in that you just need to kind of be with yourself. Now you can hang out with a friend, a family member, you can go for a walk, you can do breathwork, meditation, a hobby, like puzzle, journal, like whatever. But you just need to learn how to be with yourself without stimulation. And that will naturally allow you to calm yourself down.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  I do this process where I talk to myself. So like, I talk to my various Bryans. So like sleep Brian comes on duty at 7:30 PM, cause my bedtime's at 8:30 PM. And then all the Bryans line up and they want to talk to me.

• 33:47Chris Williamson?

  How many other?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Oh, man, there's like probably a dozen, like probably loud.

• 33:50Chris Williamson?

  It's like a Bonnie Blue meetup. Okay.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the first one's ambitious Brian. Ambitious Brian is by far the loudest. Right. He's always like, he shows up and he's like,

• 33:58Chris Williamson?

  Do more.

• 33:58Speaker 01

  I got a banger idea. Brand new idea. It's fucking amazing. And sleep Brian says, I love you ambitious Brian, right? Doing us a real solid, like doing great out there. Also, we're in sleep mode. So I'm gonna write down your idea and tomorrow we'll talk about this. And the next one is anxious Brian. He's like doing all the checks like today. Did you make any big errors? Did you like, you know,

• 34:20Chris Williamson?

  Upside anyone?

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Do anything stupid, anything, say anything you regret? And so like doing that internal reconciliation of like, do you have good self-awareness? And they all just line up, but if you don't talk to them, then when your head hits the pillow, they show up and they're like, we're here and we want to talk about our stuff. And then you go to bed, finally you wake up at 2am and they're like, we're back. And so you've got to have some kind of reconciliation process to calm those voices. So like those are the big ones, like food, light, wind down routine, screens off.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, and then caffeine. So you want to have your final caffeine around noon each day. So he has a six hour half life. Those are the real big ones. So, but what you want is like for a man, you want to like be like 50 ish heart rate. Same with the, same with the female. If you're in that zone, you're doing pretty well. If you can bump down a bit more, uh, and once you get that nighttime routine knocked down, then you can start exercising very well. Like if you sleep really well, your willpower skyrockets. If you sleep poorly, it like knocks your prefrontal cortex offline. You can't really have much more willpower. So that's like number one.

• 35:26Chris Williamson?

  Okay, lots there. A quick aside, if you have been feeling a bit sluggish, your testosterone levels might be the problem. They play a huge role in your energy, your focus and your performance. But most people have no idea where theirs are or what to do if something's off, which is why I partnered with Function because I wanted a smarter, more comprehensive way to understand what's happening inside of my body. Twice a year, they run lab tests that monitor over a hundred biomarkers and their team of expert physicians analyze the data and give you actionable advice to improve your health and lifespan. Seeing your testosterone levels and tons of other biomarkers charted. Over the course of a year with actionable insights to improve them gives you a clear path to making your life better. And unfortunately, getting your blood work drawn and analyzed like

• 36:07Chris Williamson?

  this usually costs thousands, but with Function, it's just $499 and you can get an additional $100 off, bring it down to 399 bucks. Get the exact same blood panels that I get and save 100 bucks by going to the link in the description below or heading to functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom. That's functionhealth.com/ModernWisdom. How do you avoid an optimal routine becoming a fragile superstition?

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. People, people try to, they come back, they come with that argument. That's great. Like, the body loves routine. Now, it does not mean that you have to always be in a routine, but the body is built for routine. So for example, if your bedtime is 10:00 PM, your circadian rhythm, rhythm is locked in to 10:00 PM and your body expects sleep to happen at 10:00 PM.

• 37:02Chris Williamson?

  This is what jet lag is.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And so like you have a garbage truck that rolls through your body at around 10:30 PM and it's there to pick up all the trash.

• 37:13Chris Williamson?

  What is that?

• 37:14Speaker 01

  It's your, your, basically your cleansing system of like your, your glymphatic system is cleaning all the trash from your body. And if you're not asleep at 10:30 PM and in your deep sleep mode, it's gonna, it's gonna not come. So you've got trash buildup. Like New York, you've got the trash bags all over the place. And so people think if I'm not in bed by 10, I'm gonna go to bed at 1, that's okay. I'll sleep into my morning makeup. It doesn't work that way. And so the body has very specific rhythms that it wants to be on. And so when you lock in, it's good. And so when someone makes the argument like, I'm gonna give my body some problematic stress, right? I'm like, push it to one and then I move back. The body hates it. Like inconsistent sleep is as bad as little sleep.

• 37:55Chris Williamson?

  I was gonna say, do you, when it comes to prioritization, is duration more important than regularity or are they equal?

• 38:01Speaker 01

  Regularity by far is the best one.

• 38:04Chris Williamson?

  More than duration?

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Oh, so I'm sorry. You said duration. I don't know. I'm not sure on that one.

• 38:12Chris Williamson?

  It's kind of like picking your favorite child.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because you kind of need both. Yeah, like the lesson here is because these are bad habits people have. You need to be on time. You can't make it up. You can't skip during the week and then make it up for the weekend. It doesn't work that way. So you miss a garbage truck every day. It doesn't come back like, sure, maybe the weekend, but then you're so you're so off on your circadian rhythm. That like now is the garbage truck even in service.

• 38:40Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So I understand what you mean with regards to the timing. But the 60 minute window. What if you don't get it? What if this you're out at dinner, you're doing something with friends, you're hanging out, you don't get to. You were around some bright light. I've got a great, a great story from a friend. When he was in his hyper, hyper optimizer zone, which everybody goes through where it's like. The stress of trying to be perfect kills you more quickly than you're in perfection.

• 39:10Chris Williamson?

  And he had this 60 minute wind down routine, which was blue light blockers on and the mouth tape and the nose strip. And the magnesium by glycinate and everything else. And he'd been sort of winding down for 60 minutes and his girlfriend at the time had been downstairs. And he was brushing his teeth in the dark so that he wouldn't have any light on. And she just comes like tinkering in, hits the light in the bathroom, like the lights come on. He's like, ah, he's blinded. He hasn't looked at light for, for an hour. Goes to bed and he's raging. He's like, ah, it's my entire routine's been messed up. And I laid there sort of staring at the ceiling, doesn't sleep. And she drops off within five minutes, having just come in from like, you know, scrolling Tik Tok or whatever.

• 39:51Chris Williamson?

  The example is about the fragility of reliance on that. And the fear that without it, what does that create? Oh, I mean, how am I just gonna be able to write my book today? I didn't get my, you know, like, as you said, like, what were the stupid things that I said today? That's anxious, Brian. But another type of anxiety is, oh, I didn't get my routine done, therefore I can't sleep, which becomes self fulfilling. Sleep's one of the very few things that trying harder at it makes it worse.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, people can find their happy balance. I think if you look at the various archetypes of people, some people love that kind of regimen. They love to be regimented. They like structure. They like process, procedure, order, and that's just their personality type. Other people like the girlfriend in the story. She's not. And so the, I think the thing here is for people to recognize their kind of archetype of where they naturally gravitate to where they feel good about themselves. If you're not naturally orderly and structured, like, don't be that, right? If you're, so it's just like, find your jam, but understand there are principles at play, which you can't just override, right?

• 41:02Chris Williamson?

  Regardless of whether you like structure or don't, like, if you have a three hour swing between bedtimes across a week.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, your body doesn't work in that way. Okay.

• 41:14Chris Williamson?

  What are, what are the things that people focus on for sleep that don't move the needle?

• 41:24Speaker 01

  I really, I guess I take 300 mcgs of melatonin, just like, so a third of a gram, a microgram, milligram.

• 41:33Chris Williamson?

  Yes, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause people, people fucking way, way, way overcooked.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Like one milligram, five milligrams, like.

• 41:39Chris Williamson?

  There's 30 and 50 milligrams.

• 41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I do a very tiny dose of melatonin. It's to offset the calcification that happens in my pineal gland. Like, as you age, your pineal gland calcifies, you produce less melatonin. So it's like a little offset, teeny bit.

• 41:52Chris Williamson?

  So in 10 years' time, maybe you'll take 500 mcgs.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And so it's, it's a very small touch. Otherwise, I don't take anything for sleep. And so I'd so much rather build habits. And this is the same thing like Americans, just like we are, we take more antidepressants than any country in the world.

• 42:08Chris Williamson?

  Quick fix.

• 42:09Speaker 01

  We love pills, like we love pills to solve fundamental problems and habits.

• 42:13Chris Williamson?

  Gummy or a powder.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, habits are the strongest ones. So like, that's why I focus on the, just build your sturdy habits. In the archetype you are, that's the tried and true thing that delivers the best. Now, if you want to try to amplify with whatever you take, cool, but generally speaking, it's really about habits.

• 42:30Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Give me your formula for behavior change. Behavior change is so important. Let's assume someone's taken the first red pill, which is sleep and I now have access to the amount of willpower that I'm supposed to have as opposed to however much is diminished from a shit sleep from the night before.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:50Chris Williamson?

  I've arrived. He'd look at, behold, my litany of shitty habits.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 42:57Chris Williamson?

  Like a guy in a side, side alley going, would you care to peruse my wares of shitty habits?

• 43:05Chris Williamson?

  Someone has a shitty habit. Maybe it's the Skittles. Maybe it's whatever. Pick whichever you think is a good one. Talk me through your James Clear approach to the Brian Johnson's James Clear.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Okay. So actually I'll show you mine, but I wonder if this resonates or not with people, but I had this issue where 7:00 PM I would overeat every night.

• 43:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Evening eating for me is the only time. And no, no one ever overeats in a breakfast. Oh yeah. It was just 9:00 AM and I gorged myself on Snickers.

• 43:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like maybe like in a weekend brunch where you order your pancakes. You're like, oh my God.

• 43:39Chris Williamson?

  It's a one off. Yeah. That was a bad idea. I don't want to do that again.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Awful. Yeah. So like your willpower goes down all day. It makes sense. Like 7:00 PM, like you have stress, you're worn down. Like you just want to like, whatever. So that was my issue. I overate at 7:00 PM. And so I did it every day for years and every night was the same battle, right? Like, I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it. I do it. And then like, you know, my, the top button of my pants, I can't be buttoned up. And I'm like, fucking hate myself. Like this is so tight. I'm so uncomfortable. So I tried so many things to stop that and I couldn't. And so the one thing that I did is one day I just kind of said in jest, evening, Brian, you're fired. Like you, Brian, who occupy me from 5pm to 7 to 10pm. You're an unreliable thing, like every day.

• 44:25Chris Williamson?

  Stuart.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, Stuart. Like you basically come up with these rationalizations like tonight's the last night. Tomorrow morning, we're going to exercise really hard. It's one bite, like whatever your specific entry point is. You always convince me to do it.

• 44:40Chris Williamson?

  You're a slippery motherfucker.

• 44:41Speaker 01

  Exactly. And you basically make morning Brian miserable. You make dad Brian less good, less good dad. Like ambitious Brian is hurting because of you. And so I said, you're fired. And so that means from 5pm to 10pm, you do not have authority to eat food, no matter what. Like, I don't care what's happening. You cannot eat food because you're so shifty. And so I just made that rule. And so I gave him a name. I wrote down his arguments. And so he would come into my mind and be like, hey, I'm here. And I'm like, hey, evening, Brian. Like, how you doing, man?

• 45:13Chris Williamson?

  Fuck you.

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. And like, oh, you're going to use the we're going to work out hard tomorrow morning argument. Or like, tonight's last night, like I see you and I know what that is. And I've done this a hundred times. I've never in my entire life felt satisfied with myself after doing this ever. I've never felt proud of myself. I've never felt good.

• 45:30Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, you're selling yourself a lie about how you're going to feel after doing.

• 45:32Speaker 01

  Exactly. And so, yeah, that was just, it was just a rule. And so I guess the rule is something like none is better than some. That we do like to rationalize that, oh, just like every once in a while is fine. Moderation is a principle of life I want to play by. We have all these very clever catchphrases to justify our inability to actually do what we want. And so, yeah, that was a really clean hook for me.

• 45:58Chris Williamson?

  That's cool. And the reason that I like it is because of this most recent iteration of, ah, the over optimizing. Can we not just fucking like, eh, how lame, how like, you know? The stress of trying to be perfect is killing you more quickly than your imperfections. Moderation, man. And there is a kernel of truth in it. And this is why like a slower, more gentle approach to, I see you. I think there's something there. The, I see you. I think there's something there is. Hey, man, um, your focus on these habits is a kind of fragility.

• 46:35Chris Williamson?

  And it is destroying the enjoyment of life by obsessing over how you live it.

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Chris Williamson?

  So I get the angle on that. The problem is that nobody scrutinizes the just live by vibes, man. Approach.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:50Chris Williamson?

  With the same like level of uh resolution. Because by design, they're living by fucking vibes, so nothing's being tracked.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 46:58Chris Williamson?

  But you've, I've never even thought of it before, but you fucking nailed it, which is um the I just live by moderation, dude. Is not living by moderation, it's living by extremis.

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:09Chris Williamson?

  Like you end up, the moderation, you you put, I always use this example because I like biscuits, cookies. I like biscuits. If you tell me pack of Oreos, there's one outside, uh, you can eat none of them or you can eat all of them. I'm like, yeah, done.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  Exactly, right?

• 47:23Chris Williamson?

  But you can eat two of them.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:26Chris Williamson?

  Wow, I'm fucking Superman.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:28Chris Williamson?

  No, I can't eat two of them.

• 47:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:29Chris Williamson?

  No, you give me a start, maybe, I don't know, maybe some people aren't like this.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:33Chris Williamson?

  I'm, I'm a eat all of them or none of them kind of guy.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:36Chris Williamson?

  So you're what on the surface, like first order looks like. The very bureaucratic dictatorial Nazi policy, like, how can you do this to yourself? Like, ah, you're not balancing life, like it would be much better if you just allowed yourself to treat like every so often. It's okay, show me how every so often your every so often is.

• 47:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 47:56Chris Williamson?

  It's not that every so often.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:58Chris Williamson?

  It's actually most of the time.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:01Chris Williamson?

  You know, I just like, I'm a bit more flexible with my sleep, you know? Sometimes I let myself sleep in, sometimes I give myself, I go to bed a little bit later, like it's like, okay. Let, just look at when you're going to bed, it just keeps on shifting later and later. And there is no trend over time. It's just, and sometimes it's getting wider.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:19Chris Williamson?

  So, yeah, I think I've never thought of it before, but the um, everything in moderation is not done in moderation.

• 48:25Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Yeah, so this is like, again, a medic moral philosophy warfare. So the person who's arguing for moderation is attempting to take uh a, a drive towards health. And uh make that low status and make their moderation high status. So this, if you, if you, if you look at the world through this lens, you realize everybody at all times is trying to take their position. And they're assessing the battlefield and they're saying, anything that makes me feel low status, I'm going to invert and make that high status thing low status and my thing high status, because I inherently want to feel superior to people at all times. And that is like literally everything that's happening at any moment in society.

• 49:10Chris Williamson?

  Ever.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  It's just like, humans want to feel superior and high status.

• 49:14Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Do you know the inner citadel idea by Isaiah Berlin?

• 49:19Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 49:19Chris Williamson?

  Allow me to teach you. I think this may be useful to you.

• 49:24Chris Williamson?

  Isaiah Berlin says, "When the natural road to one human fulfillment is blocked, human beings retreat into themselves, become involved in themselves and try to create inwardly that world which some evil fate has denied them externally. If you cannot obtain from the world that which you really desire, you must teach yourself not to want it. If you cannot get what you want, you must teach yourself to want what you can get. This is a very frequent form of spiritual retreat in depth into a kind of inner citadel in which you try to lock yourself up against all the fearful ills of the world. The different way to look at it is if your leg is wounded, you can try to treat the leg. And if you can't, then you cut off the leg and announce that the desire for legs is misguided and must be subdued."

• 50:04Speaker 01

  That's right. Yeah. I mean, that's it. I mean, basically, that's the exact articulation of what we've been discussing. Yep. It's the medic and moral philosophy of warfare to feel superiority.

• 50:14Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Because nobody wants to feel inferior.

• 50:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:16Chris Williamson?

  It's like, you looked at Adlerian stuff much?

• 50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:19Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And a lot of that is driven by this, I can't be inferior.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:23Chris Williamson?

  This is why getting into a relationship with too much of a power imbalance.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:28Chris Williamson?

  One person is significantly busier than the other. One person is significantly better looking than the other. One person has significantly more attention than the other. The power imbalance is so great that unless the second person is happy to only ever sing harmony and never sing lead, and is there like in service and the service becomes their reward. If you have two people, you can't have two people singing lead.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:49Chris Williamson?

  Like one person has to sing harmony.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:51Chris Williamson?

  And if you're lead singing and they're lead singing and there's this fucking way ahead or yours is way ahead, there's going to be tension. And I think about, um,

• 51:00Chris Williamson?

  I think about those bridges that you see during earthquakes and they sort of do this. They like flex like that. And I think about that kind of visual. It's this sort of flexing intention. It's not even necessarily a pulling apart. It's I'm going this way and you're going that way. And

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, exactly right. Yeah, I mean, like 100% like what, what is society? I mean, I guess like there's two macro games happening in society. Like in that tension is what is, what is high status? And then within that game of who is high status?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Right, that's it. And then you've got everyone else playing to try to take the high status, make it low status. But like right now, the highest status game is wealth. Right, capitalism. And this came from Adam Smith, a couple hundred years. So I'm saying like, we look

• 51:49Chris Williamson?

  Is the highest status game raw wealth? What about a renowned popularity recognition? Because you look at, uh, at somebody who already has lots of wealth. And a lot of the time, they continue to pursue status. I spoke about this with Naval and his, I, I, I think this is true. You're interested to get your perspective. Money is evolutionarily novel. And yet it's a proxy for status and it gives you things that status can't. But we should have raw status for status's sake, prestige, dominance, access. It's like a recognition. That should be more deeply rooted and therefore less easy to satiate than money.

• 52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:30Chris Williamson?

  Because money is more novel.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Chris Williamson?

  And money is not direct access to the thing that you need. Right? Money without status can make you live, but and status without money can make you fucking miserable and kind of on the street in a way.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:41Chris Williamson?

  But it seems like people who get lots of status rarely continue to pursue money. Whereas people who get the fucking infinity money do always continue to pursue status. Do you see an asymmetry here? I'm interested with your perspective on money and status.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  Absolutely right. I mean, I think basically, I think that's correct. I think, uh, money has more raw power.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Just from a

• 53:08Chris Williamson?

  Transactional.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Just, just raw power, like the ability to, to do things in the world, to take, to move the world, money is, in this current context. Now, behind that, so again, like you remember two games. One is what is high status? And then two is who's winning within status? And so my con, my comment on money is that that is within context of that is high status. But if you look at broader status of what is high status, um, right? Like religion has played status, right? Like you look at Christianity where Jesus is like, look, guys, um, I've got a new status game for you and it's not what you're being told. Like I'm going to tell you a whole new rule set. And so any religion's done that. And so this is the game I'm trying to play.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  I'm trying to basically say like, right now capitalism is status. Like it is, if we said like, this is the thing. And I'm trying to say, this is the thing that might lead us to make a terrible error in judgment on what we do in this moment. And that the, the flip is existence itself is high status.

• 54:15Chris Williamson?

  Interesting.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  And never to the exchange of anything else. It never, is never worth trading existence for anything else. Wealth, power, or status. Existence itself is the highest virtue.

• 54:28Chris Williamson?

  In other news, if you're feeling tired, you might not need more sleep. You might not need more caffeine. You might just be dehydrated and proper hydration is not just about drinking enough water. It's about having sufficient electrolytes to allow your body to properly absorb those fluids. Element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio, sodium, potassium and magnesium with no color, no sugar, no artificial ingredients or any other BS. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue. It optimizes brain health, regulates your appetite, helps curb cravings. And that's why it's used by everyone from Dr. Andrew Huberman to Olympic athletes and FBI sniper teams. This lemon.

• 55:06Chris Williamson?

  Lemonade flavor, Nicole glass of water is how I've started my morning every single week for years now. They've got no questions asked refund policy, so you can return it and they won't even ask you to send the box back. Plus you can get a free sample pack of their favorite flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklmnt.com/modernd wisdom. There's no code.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  I usually care about the box more than that. Drink L M N T dot com slash modern wisdom.

• 55:41Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I do understand, and I think what I like is that you are not trying to upend the game of status itself.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:49Chris Williamson?

  That's locked in.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 55:51Chris Williamson?

  It's like saying, well, you know, rather than trying to work out a more efficient rocket to get us off this launch pad, we can just defeat gravity.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:59Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:00Chris Williamson?

  There are physics within this system, and one of the physics is, one of the physical laws is status.

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so really the master game in society, like the ultimate game is determining what is status, like what is highest status. And then, of course, you have billions and billions of humans will play within the game. They'll just be like, oh, this is the, this is the game and the function and the reward system, like I'm playing. They won't think about it, then they don't realize that the game's been set up for them. They'll just play it.

• 56:26Chris Williamson?

  That's interesting. Yeah, so rather than trying to convince people not to play the game, you just change what the game is pointing at.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Exactly, and they'll play, they'll have the same fundamentals they'll apply to the new game. So when you, when you say existence is the highest virtue, the same human behaviors that are stamped out throughout time, same archetypes, same players, same stuff every single time, just get the game right. And that's what I'm saying, like, if this moment is so simple, just get the objective function correct.

• 56:54Chris Williamson?

  It's like, I don't know, some sort of judo throw that uses your opponent's momentum against them.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 56:59Chris Williamson?

  So to speak.

• 56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 57:00Chris Williamson?

  Okay, tell me about your sauna experiments.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:03Chris Williamson?

  I was watching those unfold with intrigue.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  So we really, we discovered quite a few things that, I shouldn't say discovered. We found out a lot of quite, quite a few things. So one is, for those who are new to sauna, dry sauna has the most evidence because you're trying to get your core body temperature up, and so infrared does not get hot enough, and wet sauna will basically burn you at the temperatures you need. So dry sauna is the right.

• 57:30Chris Williamson?

  Traditional dry sauna.

• 57:31Speaker 01

  Yep. 20 minutes a day at 200 degrees Fahrenheit, 83, is that 83 Celsius, 93 Celsius, all right, 200 Fahrenheit. So three things we found. One is, I was in LA during the LA wildfires when like 20.

• 57:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that'll pay you up if you go close to them.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  So yeah, so I was measuring my toxins in my body when before the fires happened and then after the fires happened and I was absolutely baked in toxins. So I was in like the 99th percentile, as I'm sure other people in LA were too, of toxins. You could like go down the list and be like, this chemical is used in PVC pipe for housing. This, this chemical is like a countertop. This chemical is, you could like, you could like, you literally see the burned houses and cars.

• 58:15Chris Williamson?

  Breathing in Teflon and whatever else.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  And you could like, down the list, you could look at the industrial solvent.

• 58:20Chris Williamson?

  As a Kia Sorento.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. So my body was full of all these houses and cars that were burnt and the sauna annihilated the toxins. It was remarkable. So that was cool. Two is we have been trying to get my microplastics down because microplastics live in the body and the brain and we were measuring microplastics in my blood and also my semen. And so, microplastics hang out in the testicles and that has all sorts of negative effects on testosterone, on fertility. You just don't want them hanging out there. So I have over a 90% reduction in my blood and my semen of microplastics. And that was a first in world demonstration of, no one had ever done that before.

• 59:03Chris Williamson?

  So because the microplastics test is actually kind of hard to do, right?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Exactly. The test is hard and no one had done semen before. No one had repaired blood and semen.

• 59:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And just hold, because this is fascinating, but you know why kitchen detergent, say 99, kills 99.999% of bacteria?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Why?

• 59:22Chris Williamson?

  It's not because they don't, they're unable to kill more bacteria. It's that the testing tolerance only goes.

• 59:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 59:28Chris Williamson?

  Then this kind of feels like not too dissimilar of the same.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  So one is we showed that sauna is a really efficacious detox protocol. Number two is we showed, well, we think. Sana was the reason why my microplastics went down so dramatically. Relatively controlled across everything else. Exactly. It was very controlled. Like, we didn't do any therapies in that timeframe that were meaningful. And then three is I had really great changes, improvements in my vascular markers. So it actually improved, even though I'm in really good health, it still had a measurable increase in my vascular markers. It increased my VEGF. This is like, you want VEGF in your body because it helps produce more capillaries and blood vessels. Like, you want a higher level. It increased it by 400%, which was amazing.

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  I had a dramatic drop of PTOW, which is a protein in the brain that leads to Alzheimer's. So that dropped dramatically.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  We also, I did a test on looking at, when you're in that kind of environment, you want to put ice packs on your testicles because otherwise it annihilates your fertility markers. It'll take down your count, your morphology, all the above. And even men who say like, "I don't care. I'm not trying to have a baby", there's really negative feedback loops. So if you have smashed fertility markers, then it has negative effects on your health overall. So I did three weeks with ice, then I went two weeks without ice. In that two-week window, I got smashed. So my fertility markers went down by 50%. The prices that you pay to uncover this stuff for the rest of us mere mortals. So I went back on ice, and I've been back on ice for six weeks now, and I got these results on my drive here. Okay, cool. Tell us.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  So I'm gonna go by memory. So it's the highest sperm count I've had ever. It's the highest motility count I've ever had. It's the highest morphology I've ever had. So like, they bounced, not only did they bounce back, it's the highest I've ever been. If you look at, these are like off-the-chart numbers, like six to 10 times the level of normal fertility. So. What do you think's going on there? Is that just straight vascular changes? We're not sure. I need to. What do you think's going on? Come on, ballpark the mechanism for me. Have a play around. Yeah, I mean.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  I really need to deep dive into this more. Yeah, I, I don't know. It's, it's a really big jump and I've been doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy. We've been doing the sauna.

• 1:01:58Speaker 01

  We haven't done really any other meaningful therapy that could boost it.

• 1:02:02Chris Williamson?

  Okay. So let's go through the protocol for the sauna. You said 200 degrees.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Dry.

• 1:02:07Chris Williamson?

  20 minutes.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:08Chris Williamson?

  Dry, the traditional sauna, ice pack on the balls.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:13Chris Williamson?

  Does time of day matter?

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:02:16Chris Williamson?

  Does, what did you go for as a solution for ice pack on the balls?

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you can buy these from Amazon. They're like eight bucks, BPA free, no toxins, reusable. So yeah, they're blue. You get a pack of like four and then you want them on the balls in the sauna. So put on cotton underwear and then cotton shorts and then slide them underneath the shorts.

• 1:02:41Chris Williamson?

  In between the two.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. And then like, so just have two of them in there. But yeah, if you keep them chilled, like I, we wonder whether the chilling actually has an improved, like we, we can't.

• 1:02:52Chris Williamson?

  That could be so interesting. It's got nothing to do with the sauna. Should you put an ice pack on your balls for 20 minutes?

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  We know sauna destroys, but we wonder like, is, is the icing, cause we saw.

• 1:03:01Chris Williamson?

  Get out of the sauna, put the ice pack on.

• 1:03:02Speaker 01

  So like, yeah, if you, if you're working now, like, so we actually were going to do another experiment after this completed. I was going to start icing the testicles during the day, like just when I work. Like, because we saw a, like a 30% jump in my fertility markers in the first three weeks of doing ice. And we were trying to figure out like, why did the sauna increase it? And then the ice just protect the, protected the increase? Or, so we're still trying to figure out what the cause is.

• 1:03:25Chris Williamson?

  Collaboration of the two. Okay. What else have I got to ask? Are you taking any binders like a charcoal, a colistyramine, a, a NAC flush type scenario? Something to capture the heavy metals that are coming out of you?

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  None.

• 1:03:41Chris Williamson?

  Right?

• 1:03:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:03:42Chris Williamson?

  So it was just two pairs of cotton shorts, an ice pack.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:03:45Chris Williamson?

  At a sauna.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  And like a cotton towel, wipe yourself off, you know, as you're sweating, jump in the shower.

• 1:03:50Chris Williamson?

  Why do you wipe yourself off?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  I'll just, if, if the, if the toxins are being excreted via sweat, just snag it when it's like hanging out your skin. So it doesn't dry.

• 1:03:59Chris Williamson?

  Shower straight after?

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:02Chris Williamson?

  That's it. The entirety of the protocol.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yep, cool.

• 1:04:05Chris Williamson?

  I'm going to guess you were doing that seven days.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, every day.

• 1:04:08Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:04:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, they do it after working out. So I go work out for an hour. I immediately jump into the sauna and so I'm already really warmed up.

• 1:04:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, as opposed to spending the first seven minutes getting up to

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:19Chris Williamson?

  Temperature. Also, this seems to be from Rhonda Patrick, there seems to be some pretty good evidence about, well, you're kind of extending the session's benefits somewhat. So you're stacking a few things together.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 1:04:30Chris Williamson?

  But I do like the idea of, we were talking about behavior change earlier on, stacking habits.

• 1:04:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:04:36Chris Williamson?

  It's very strong.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:38Chris Williamson?

  It's like, look, if I'm going to train and I know that when I get home from training, my training session is an hour, but I'm actually going to book an hour and 40 in and that gives me 10 minutes to get home. And then I'm going to get in the sauna for 20 minutes or wherever I'm going to go to, maybe the sauna, the gym or whatever. And then it's going to give me 10 minutes for my shower and then I'm done. And I've done both of these things and I've done them in the right order.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Chris Williamson?

  I've done them like together.

• 1:04:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:59Chris Williamson?

  In that format. Anything else on sauna?

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Initially, I did sauna in the morning. So in the first like two weeks, it absolutely wrecked my sleep. I destroyed it.

• 1:05:11Chris Williamson?

  And I'm doing it in the morning?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Well, I think just doing it period. Like it's, it's like 200 degrees is a lot. Like it's really, really warm. I had never done sauna before. So I think it was just the adaptation time period. I'm fine now, but just like note that there's initially an adaptation time period. And then two is I tried at night initially it wrecked my sleep. But then I tried it after I had the adaptation period and it boosted my sleep. So I found that there is some virtue in doing it before bed. So you just have to run the experiment. You have to see for you if it's going to improve sleep or not.

• 1:05:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, that also means that you're going to have to be training later in the day, which is not always necessary.

• 1:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. If you pair those two things exactly, because you don't want to exercise within four hours before bedtime.

• 1:05:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, Hbot, talk to me about that. I was messaging you the day that I started my Hbot.

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Chris Williamson?

  Was the day that you put your video out and I'm in there and you were like, I can't remember what the fuck you replied with.

• 1:06:06Chris Williamson?

  20 and 5.

• 1:06:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:10Chris Williamson?

  83% with natural blah, blah, blah. Just because I'm in this big fucking metal dildo and the guy that's there, Vance from Beam Hyperbarracks in Austin. If anyone wants to go to a great hyperbarracks place, it's fucking sick. You can book it by the hour. Vance is great. And I'm like. Knocking on the little, this tiny little portal out of my submarine and he comes in and I just showed my phone. I'm like, I couldn't be bothered to use the radio to get outside. I'm like, is Brian, Brian messaged, are we doing this? And he sort of went.

• 1:06:41Speaker 01

  That's so funny.

• 1:06:42Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, put his thumb up like that. So.

• 1:06:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:45Chris Williamson?

  Hyperbaric.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  I mean, so I was, when you messaged me, I was worried about you because like a week before, somebody had blown up in Arizona. So, yeah.

• 1:06:55Chris Williamson?

  What did that look like?

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Well, so in, in hyperbaric, the idea is you pressurize. So you're actually, so at atmosphere, at sea level, we're about 15 pounds per square inch of, of concentration of oxygen. At two atmospheres, you're at 30. So you, you pressurize and some hyperbaric chambers, they pressurize and then they just push 100% oxygen into the chamber. So you're just hanging out and breathing the oxygen. But if you're doing that, you're sitting in a pressurized chamber and you're basically a flammable.

• 1:07:31Chris Williamson?

  You're a candle wa.

• 1:07:32Speaker 01

  Like you're, you're bomb. Like, so if something, if, if there's a spark of any type, you just blow up.

• 1:07:37Chris Williamson?

  Your phone or some device that you've got with you or whatever the fuck. Okay.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:07:42Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, no, no. I would, this was, I was not, I was, I had the, I was breathing the mask. I was doing stuff.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  Great. Okay, cool. Yeah. So, um, yes, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, uh, I think to date, it's fair to say has been the single best performing therapy we've ever done. And the, this is both good news and bad news because bad news is that it's expensive, it's inaccessible, it's time consuming.

• 1:08:07Chris Williamson?

  Super inconvenient.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  So it sucks because I hate sharing this because people, it's very exciting, but then it sucks because people can't do it. Like.

• 1:08:14Chris Williamson?

  I mean, if you're already to say, I've got to find a sauna to use and most people don't have a sauna in the house. Oh God, now you're telling me I need to produce my own oxygen. This thing weighs fucking two tons. I don't, where does it fit?

• 1:08:27Speaker 01

  Totally. Yeah. And like, who has 90 minutes in a day to go do this thing? So I would just say for, for people who have a serious condition.

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  And there's a variety of conditions that this could address, like even cognitive decline or wounds for diabetes.

• 1:08:45Chris Williamson?

  What would be on the list?

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  Like, so there's a lot of emerging evidence for cognitive decline, that if you're entering the latter parts of your life and you're really struggling, this could have a meaningful impact on that. It is used for diabetics who can't heal very well. It's used for healing, so people who've had surgeries to accelerate the healing process. If you have some kind of injury you're really trying to overcome, that can be great. So like, there are some-

• 1:09:08Chris Williamson?

  You're telling me that some athletes post-surgery are in 90 minutes, three times a day?

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:09:13Chris Williamson?

  They're trying to get, they're trying to hit that 90 session number within weeks.

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Yes. So like, there are some specialized applications where, and people where it makes sense for the person to do, but I just want to be very sensitive. I understand, like, it sucks to hear something that's really efficacious and you can't get out of it.

• 1:09:28Chris Williamson?

  Exclusionary.

• 1:09:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense. So, like, but yeah, we basically, like we do with all things, we measure, we have this, we cast this really wide net. We measured everything we could, my brain, my microbiome, a full blood panel, saliva stool, metabolomics, proteomics, like you name it, we measured it. And we just found improvements across the board. It was really, because most therapies will improve like this particular marker or that marker, but rarely do they have this broad spectrum improvement. So we saw like the cognitive decline marker PTAL 217 drop, we saw my microbiome, I had zero dysbiosis in my microbiome, like no signatures at all of dysbiosis.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  We saw I had no detectable inflammation in my body, so like, when my HSCRp came back, zero.

• 1:10:14Chris Williamson?

  The 99.99, like he's beaten the test.

• 1:10:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. It was really remarkable across the board. And so it was really efficacious. I did 60 sessions over 90 days, and I've continued to do it. I've now done something like- 200 sessions over the past year or something like that. So I just have it as part of my routine. I do it. You want to be careful not to do it too much because you'll have oxygen toxicity.

• 1:10:38Chris Williamson?

  Yes.

• 1:10:38Speaker 01

  You want to have some.

• 1:10:39Chris Williamson?

  But that's why the five minute break is so important, right?

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I also take like a week long break. I'll do a sprint, then a week long break. So you just need to be careful because you can overdo it and cause harm.

• 1:10:48Chris Williamson?

  If you struggle to stay asleep because your body gets too hot or too cold, this is going to help. Eight Sleep just released their brand new Pod 5 Ultra, which includes the world's first temperature regulating duvet. Pair it with their smart mattress cover, which cools or warms each side of your duvet by up to 20 degrees. And you've got a climate controlled cocoon built for deep uninterrupted rest. The new base even comes with a built in speaker. So you can fall asleep to white noise or stay awake listening to me. And it's got upgraded biometric sensors that are running health checks every night, spotting stuff like abnormal heartbeats and changes in HRV. It even starts warming or cooling your bed an hour before you get into it, which is why Eight Sleep has been clinically proven to increase total sleep by up to one hour every night. Best of all, there's a 30 day sleep trial. So you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights.

• 1:11:33Chris Williamson?

  And if you don't like it, they will give you your money back plus they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to $350 off the Pod 5 Ultra by going to the link in the description below or heading to eightsleep.com/modernd wisdom and using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's E I G H T sleep.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom at checkout. What was the protocol of mask on, mask off?

• 1:11:56Speaker 01

  20 minutes on, five minutes off.

• 1:11:58Chris Williamson?

  Cool. Yeah, I was doing that. That what the one super fucking annoying thing there is it's very relaxing to be in. It can be very relaxing to, once you've pressurized. But you can't sleep.

• 1:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:11Chris Williamson?

  Because.

• 1:12:11Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah, you're busy.

• 1:12:12Chris Williamson?

  Got to put this, take this thing on and off. One of the things that I really enjoyed doing was HRV resonance breathing.

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:20Chris Williamson?

  While I was in there.

• 1:12:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:12:21Chris Williamson?

  Have you got into resonance breathing yet? Have you been doing it in the H box?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:24Chris Williamson?

  So much fun.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is.

• 1:12:25Chris Williamson?

  So much fun. There's a product that I got sent. I think I'm the first person outside of the company to have got it. It's this little lamp. I wouldn't be able to take it in. It would all fucking hell would break loose. But it's basically a resonance breathing.

• 1:12:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Chris Williamson?

  A stone.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:40Chris Williamson?

  And you pick it up and it's got an FDA approved thing in it. And the lamp goes up and down and you put it back and it's done. So you don't need your phone, you don't need anything else. That's brilliant. But Elite HRV is what I was using with the strap. I'm going to guess you'll have seen. One thing that I noticed about that niche, niche issue.

• 1:12:56Chris Williamson?

  The strap that came with the Elite HRV thing, which you put on so that it can detect like real high fidelity, high hertz heart rate thing.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:05Chris Williamson?

  The button that you use to press to turn it on has a tiny little air pocket around it. So I got into the fucking H-Bot and by the time I'd pressurized to get down there, the button had been smashed and I couldn't press, there was no air to press the button.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:21Chris Williamson?

  And then I was like trying to press it and it's just.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:24Chris Williamson?

  It's like SpongeBob when he gets outside of the water.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:27Chris Williamson?

  So anyway, H-Bot, so I mean, a couple of questions on this.

• 1:13:33Chris Williamson?

  60 sessions as quickly as possible, basically.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:36Chris Williamson?

  With, to start to accumulate. It's not like a one and done type of thing.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:43Chris Williamson?

  I think I asked you this at the time. I'm interested if there's any more information. Going from state change to trait change, like is this the sort of thing that locks in? I'm aware you haven't then tested coming off and seeing what the tale of this is. But the same thing goes for sauna.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:01Chris Williamson?

  Are you just fighting entropy with this? Is it something that you just need to do? Or is there any, because I think there's a, I certainly know in me, if I look at a therapy or a modality or whatever, I find that there's no carryover.

• 1:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:18Chris Williamson?

  I feel despondent.

• 1:14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:14:19Chris Williamson?

  And I'm like, fucking hell, like I've just found this new thing. Here's another, another thing I have to do. Does that make sense?

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's because both you and I are on the other side of the entropy curve. You know, like the deal you want is youth, right? Like when you're 12, you just keep on getting better. But once you cross over into your.

• 1:14:39Chris Williamson?

  Slow down.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. Like they just, every day they get up and like shit's just better. You know, so like, but yeah, you and I are both on the other side where it, we're on this irreversible decline. And so, yes, you've got to keep it up. But like one thing people are not aware of with H-Bot is it's the best skin rejuvenation therapy in the world. So a lot of people.

• 1:14:57Chris Williamson?

  Better than red light, better than microneedling.

• 1:14:59Speaker 01

  Everything, like better than the vampire facial, better than any laser. It is because if you look at the data on the biopsies of rebuilding collagen, elastin and reducing senescent cell, it basically remodels your entire skin. It's not just face, like every layer of skin you're remodeling is really remarkable. Like if you look at people, like if I see people now, I can tell a signature of H-Bot skin. It's very, it's very, very clear to me what it looks like. And so it just, it happens. So yeah, that's the other thing is like a lot of, a lot of women, you know, who are really care a lot about skin, H-Bot. Getting the fucking H-Bot. Yeah. I mean, then you, if you pair, like the, the best banger protocol is to, if you're

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  first skin is to pair the best devices with H-Bot. So you basically, you do like a surface level, like a 15, 50 nanometer to resurface the skin for, for like spots, wrinkles, stuff like that. Then you do H-Bot and you can accelerate the healing. Is that microneedling? Is that what you're referring? No, it's just a laser. I guess 15, 50 nanometer laser where it's like, uh, it's a very, uh, very benign laser. Uh, if you do it right, it has lower risk of like pigmentation issues. Um, for wrinkles, spots, uh, just like for texture. Yep. And then you can do a deeper device, like a soft wave, S O F W A V. Yeah. Where it's ultrasound, where it's 1.5 millimeters below, millimeters below the dermis. Yep. So you hit top layer and underneath the dermis. So you're rebuilding collagen. Yep. And yeah, the entire scaffolding, the skin. Yep.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  And then you do H-Bot and then you accelerate the healing. So you basically do more sessions in this. Yeah. So that's like. You're doing a cute like skin rejuvenation thing and then fuck up. That's the best. McCann, are you still here?

• 1:16:39Chris Williamson?

  She's outside. I think I did soft wave because I went to your dermatologist in LA.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:16:44Chris Williamson?

  Uh, fuck, I can't remember the lady's name. It was in, that was why I had a mustache. I grew a mustache because I needed to get rid of my facial hair because they needed to do that.

• 1:16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:52Chris Williamson?

  In order to be able to, I'm pretty, I'm almost certain it was soft wave that I was doing.

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Was it like, um, it felt like a.

• 1:16:58Chris Williamson?

  Cigarette burn that never actually got to a bone.

• 1:17:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Yeah. Like you're, like you're being singed by like a hot metal iron.

• 1:17:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. But it never actually peaks to the.

• 1:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:09Chris Williamson?

  It was a really interesting lesson in, uh, and they're.

• 1:17:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:13Chris Williamson?

  Blowing the cold shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:17Chris Williamson?

  It was a really interesting lesson in pain that because what you realize is you ride this crescendo for the people that haven't seen it, it's literally as if someone was to put something really hot out on you. And when that happens, there is a swelling, there is a crescendo, but it usually peaks at, you can almost hear it, right? If you have alcohol in an open wound, that yeah, like goes like that. But it doesn't ever get above a six or so.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  So if she did, if she set the settings to 3.5 joules, which is the lowest setting, then it gets pretty tolerable. If she goes to 4.2 top end, because basically it's a total energy per area.

• 1:17:57Chris Williamson?

  I think I had it at around about three point, I think she had it at 3.6, 3.7. So I was being a weenie.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. So if you have the 4.2, where it's basically like it cuts down the number of pulses by 30%. If you want to like zip through it, god damn that, that is so painful. Oh man, it does. It just feels like a red hot iron.

• 1:18:16Chris Williamson?

  I'm all right.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Sinister face.

• 1:18:18Chris Williamson?

  No more, thank you. You've mentioned there about sort of vascular health and blood flow. Obviously we started talking off about erectile, nighttime erectile stuff for guys to improve blood pressure, vascular health, and then I guess downstream from that, the impact on erections, erectile dysfunction, beyond like nighttime stuff. What have you come to learn about that? What's the, what's the protocol for a guy to improve that?

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Yes. I guess like I would say to people listening, like maybe the thing I, that's most interesting is when I started this, when I was 42, I was pretty beat up. Like I had eaten sugar cereal as a kid, soda, like, you know, downed 70 grams of sugar, like daily, canned foods. I was, I did the entrepreneurial grind, right? Didn't sleep. I was depressed for 10 years. I was overweight. Like I did all the

• 1:19:13Chris Williamson?

  Starting behind the eight ball.

• 1:19:14Speaker 01

  Like all the bad things, right? And so I'm 42, I'm pretty beat up. My, my aches hurt, losing my hair. And so I didn't really know what could be done. I'm I'm really shocked by how efficacious this entire thing has been. Like, I'm just really stunned that the body really has this capacity to bounce back, no matter how bad things are. It's like, one, for anyone listening to like, who needs hope in their life, it really, like, the body is-

• 1:19:44Chris Williamson?

  Too far gone.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  Totally. Like, I just, like, don't give up. The smallest of things can have the biggest yields. And so have hope. And then two is I've been jamming on this for, you know, five years now. My markers keep on getting better. And so we still, like, I've aged, you know, a past five years in time, but I'm still hitting new record highs. And in like nighttime erections, in fertility markers, in my speed of aging, in my DNA, in my T, in my telomeres. Like, all these things are improving as age, as time is passing.

• 1:20:15Chris Williamson?

  Doesn't seem to be a ceiling.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  So like, I mean, on the grand scale of things, I suspect these are like, I'm, this is not going to get me to 200 years, right? Like, it's not on that kind of scale, but still, like, in how I feel as a person, like, I do feel extremely energetic, I feel very clear-headed. I feel my mood is very stable. I don't get irritated. Like, I'm just kind of cool with existence, which is like, for me, that's the marker of health. You know, like, that, so, one, hope. Two is, uh, it's, I think it's really worth the investment of this stuff, like, just paying your, your, like, paying the discipline to do it consistently. And then that, that last thing is, you don't need to do what I do. Like, you don't need to chase these expensive therapies. You don't need to do H-Bot.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Uh, like, the basic stuff has the dividends. And so I don't want, I want people to feel hope and not discouraged. I want them to feel empowered, not like, damn it, that's out of reach. Because it really is, like, it's within people's reach and I hope they-

• 1:21:10Chris Williamson?

  Intimidated.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope they walk away feeling like, damn it, I can do that. Like, I'm gonna do it, I can do that.

• 1:21:15Chris Williamson?

  What are the big move, we've already said, sleep, and you've given a good breakdown there. If there was a top three, top five, however many you need for, okay. The Pareto, eighty percent of the results come from these things, one of those things.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'd, first, I would frame this in a moral philosophy. So I'd say, if-

• 1:21:36Chris Williamson?

  Believe.

• 1:21:38Speaker 01

  Yes, first, like, um, your most prized possession is agency.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  Nothing values more than your agency. And right now, most people's agency is compromised. That they are not the architects of their life because they compulsively scroll. They compulsively eat fast food. They compulsively do all these addictive behaviors. And then when pressed on it, they rationalize it as virtue because they're trapped. And so I would challenge everyone here to say like reclaim yourself. Don't do anything you don't want to do. And that the enemy is the motherfucker who's trying to get you to do something that is not in your best interest. Fuck them. That is the enemy. And so like that gives you real moral power. Don't be puppeted.

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  Now, once you have that principle, like I'm going to set my bedtime. I'm not going to doom scroll. I'm not going to eat that fucking bag of Skittles, right? Like, I'm not going to eat the fast food. That's it's poison. They're going to trick me into thinking it's a treat or something you're like, but like, that's, I think, for me, the boundary conditions of like, how you create the kind of energy state of like, I can do this and I have a moral will to do it. Not just because of self-help, but I'm fighting an enemy. I'm overcoming adversity. I'm a man standing on my agency or woman. Like that, to me, gives it the juice to like, I have the willpower to do it. Okay. Now that we've got the moral framework, what are the tactical things? Yeah. So you, once you have agency, you want to reclaim your willpower.

• 1:23:15Speaker 01

  You need to have juice in the tank to say like, I can make decisions that I can do it. So one is you want to master sleep. You want to build your entire life around sleep. That is very counterintuitive, but you want to plan when you go to bed, when your window team is, you want to set strict rules. You want to plan your lighting. Like, again, like you can choose your archetype, whether you're really regimented, whether you're like more flexible, like whatever your thing is. But just build your entire life around sleep. And if you need justification, realize those not doing that are 10 to 12 points stupider than you. Like they're actually dumb. So they're, they're like a retardation exercise for them. You're actually going to be smart. Once you do that exercise, because that also is going to boost your willpower. So boost it with sleep, boost it with exercise. And then once you get those. Two down, then tackle food because food is the most complicated.

• 1:23:59Speaker 01

  Food is where we go to soothe ourselves, to do like the self therapy. So only tackle then try to start just having a bit more good things for you and a few less bad things. Like slowly walk your way into it. Radical change is hard for a lot of people, but it's like slow walk into. And then if you again have that in the back of your mind, like a rule, you will never ever eat fast food ever again. Like none is better than some. So there's no moderation, there's no once a day, like the cheat, the idea of a cheat meal is the worst idea in history. Like, don't do cheat days, don't do cheat meals, don't do cheat weeks, don't do cheat anything, don't cheat.

• 1:24:35Chris Williamson?

  When it comes to exercise, well, for longevity, most people are already doing. Almost everybody that's listening is going to have some sort of training regime, I would imagine.

• 1:24:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Chris Williamson?

  The vast majority of them are going to be something like a push pull leg split. And maybe other people are runner boys and runner girls.

• 1:24:58Chris Williamson?

  If you were to design the minimum effective dose, this is where I think the blind spots are for people. What would you say, exercise wise?

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I, because everyone's got their jam, well, there's Pilates, weights, whatever, just do it. Like just be active for roughly an hour a day. Do cardio to strength to balance to flexibility. Everyone's got their own preferences, but I think I don't go after the details here because there's like endless material to go after. Just be active and commit to be active.

• 1:25:28Chris Williamson?

  So some people like chicken, some people like salmon, some people like kale, some people like spinach.

• 1:25:32Speaker 01

  Exactly, like just, and then I same thing with food, like I don't get into the game of carnivore versus vegan versus paleo versus whatever. They're abstractions which are irrelevant. Eat what you want, measure your body, make sure you're good and then fine tune yourself. Like I have a don't diet food guide, we tried to look through all the scientific evidence and say, what are the very best foods in existence, the highest value evidence that you can put into your body? So we just said by a power law perspective, here's what I'd put on, so I can share that as a plate. Outside of that, like do your thing, like just eat what you want, just measure your body, make sure you're good.

• 1:26:04Chris Williamson?

  Right, okay. Ethylene blue, how do you get on with that?

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  You know, I stopped it because I started 25 milligrams a day and then, oh, it was conflicting with, we started a therapy doing altitude training. So you take your, you have blood oxygenation down to 80%. We did it and the two have conflicting mechanisms of action and we realized it on day three. So we're like, we better stop methylene blue to sell the therapy. So.

• 1:26:26Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Is methylene blue? It's like nicotine derivative, right? Or it's something to do with nicotine?

• 1:26:30Speaker 01

  I mean, synthetic diet initially was built because surgeons wanted to see like where they're actually in the surgical body. But it was actually FDA approved for, um, what was it? Uh, I'm forgetting now. Yeah. It's FDA approved quite a while ago. But overall on, we don't think that's really, uh, we don't think it's worth it.

• 1:26:50Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  As a therapy. Yeah. It's more for like mitochondrial health.

• 1:26:53Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Uh, testosterone.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Chris Williamson?

  Testosterone, the fucking hormone of the 21st century.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  It is.

• 1:27:01Chris Williamson?

  What have you come to learn about testosterone?

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, so I'm in like the 700s naturally. So just by doing all the basic stuff.

• 1:27:09Chris Williamson?

  What were you, when you started? Do you know?

• 1:27:11Speaker 01

  Um, I, I guess like, hmm, when I was 42, I don't know.

• 1:27:17Chris Williamson?

  Right.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Need to look at my data. Um, yeah, but if, if, if a man is low on testosterone and the natural approaches are not addressing it, it probably makes sense to do something about it. Like being low testosterone just has really negative consequences. So yeah, good one to watch after.

• 1:27:31Chris Williamson?

  What are the ways to intervene naturally? Or what are the biggest needle movers that you've?

• 1:27:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, all the basics, right? Like sleep, like I think poor sleep, uh, four hours of sleep a night, uh, will knock you down something like 10 to 20% on testosterone. Uh, so like really big drop.

• 1:27:49Chris Williamson?

  Less of a man again.

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Again, yeah, like high cortisol status. So then sleep, exercise, nutrition, like all the basics. There's, I don't think there's a lot of proven, um, supplementation that can move a needle. I think.

• 1:28:02Chris Williamson?

  Without getting into pharmacology.

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think people have played a bunch of stuff. Uh, I don't, if I'm not mistaken, I'm not sure the clinical evidence is very strong there. I need to look at it. I guess I have never had low testosterone. So I've never had to look at supplementation as it means to do it.

• 1:28:14Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  So I guess I would be cautious in my knowledge. Is limited in terms of like the true evidence for clinical interventions.

• 1:28:21Chris Williamson?

  The thing that's interesting around sort of male hormone, I imagine it's the same for women, but I don't, I don't know anything about them. The relationship between it's such a fucking like balance beam of LHFSH, testosterone, free tea.

• 1:28:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, S H B.

• 1:28:40Chris Williamson?

  It is, there is no, it seems to me total fucking white belt. It seems to me like one intervention is not one intervention. It's, it starts to roll away into this domino effect.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Chris Williamson?

  So talking about, I want my testosterone higher. It's like, well, do you?

• 1:28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:28:56Chris Williamson?

  Do you? Maybe RFSH, I mean, people that go on enclomiphine or HCG.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:29:01Chris Williamson?

  Chronically.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:03Chris Williamson?

  What is it? So like 20% or some big percent of them talk about that inducing depression. You go, okay, so you're worried that you had low energy because of your low testosterone and you tried to take a non like exogenous solution to create that. So I'm going to kickstart my own production by using these compounds. And in the process of doing that, I've made myself have depression, which almost certainly made you a fucking low, I forget low energy, you got low mood now.

• 1:29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:29:32Chris Williamson?

  And so, yeah, be, be careful how you intervene with that, I think.

• 1:29:36Speaker 01

  That's very true. Yeah. It's like, I guess the way we thought about it is we approached this holistically. We just said,

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  our frame entirely is scientific evidence, just like what does the body of evidence say to do? And we took the most powerful molecules in the form of foods, supplements, and then lifestyle, sleep, diet, exercise, and then therapies, sauna, H bot, you know, and we just said, like, take the very best high performer ones, put it all into one package and do the entire package. And it makes sense. Like if you, if you're taking care of the entire body on every level, you have these systematic effects.

• 1:30:14Chris Williamson?

  They'll come online.

• 1:30:15Speaker 01

  Exactly. So I think people approach these things very narrowly, but like our hormones, like is a very, like you see like microplastics, right? Like microplastic in the testicles has a negative feedback loop for fertility and hormones.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  Right. The same is true with toxins. So like that's when we talk about testosterone, we don't talk about microplastic intervention, which leans back to sauna, which then leads back to. So like, we've tried to just be holistic, like, give me the whole thing, and let me build that into one daily practice. So I don't have to then try to figure out like this and that thing.

• 1:30:51Chris Williamson?

  Talking of daily practices, what's this 15 second phone call thing you're doing?

• 1:30:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, with my friends. Yeah. So a friend of mine introduced this to me. So he, I became friends with this person, and he is, he's very powerful, and he would call me, and he'd be like, Brian, like, blank statement. I say something to him, and like, all right, man, I love you. See you. That's it. And I was like, that is amazing. It is so clean. It feels so good. And we just did that through like, a couple of months. And we built this amazing friendship. And

• 1:31:26Chris Williamson?

  15 second friendship.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  And it was like, but it was like this deep. And I guess I, I imagine in my mind, like, I imagine what his day must be like. He's juggling all kinds of crazy things. He clearly does not have time for like, sit down, hang out, do this and that. But yet, he does such a great job of maintaining really meaningful, like, deep relationships. So when he says he loves you, it's like, you feel it. It's like, he's not like, just saying it. And so I appreciated his model of friendship so much, because I, before I was stuck in this idea that, hey, Chris, you want to hang out, you know?

• 1:32:00Chris Williamson?

  It's a big deal. Let's fucking Airbnb. I'll book a week off work.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like a four hour thing, right? Whereas calling you like, hey, man, like, what's up? How you doing? And like, you, you can answer, because you know, I'm not going to be on the phone for 20 minutes.

• 1:32:10Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. I mean, the, I did this series, Life Hacks, on the show when I first started, and we do one every year now at Christmas. And

• 1:32:20Chris Williamson?

  Back in the day when that was one of the big thrusts of the show, we'd often get asked, okay, what 500 or 1,000 life hacks that you'd find? Yeah. What are the highest impact ones? The first one is always sleep with your phone outside of your bedroom. Yeah. But it's an instant 10 to 15% improvement in quality of life in that one thing. So that's actually before sleep. Let's take the charging cable outside of your bedroom and put it in the kitchen. But the second one was text your friends when you think of them. Yes. And this is my equivalent of the 15 second friendship. Yeah. And it's just, hey, man, like thinking of you, hope you're well, like, whatever. Or a photo that you think about your friend and you find an old photo and you send it.

• 1:33:02Chris Williamson?

  And it really speedruns friendship. You become tighter friends with people Yeah. who you've known for less long than people that you've known longer that you don't do that with or don't do with you. Yeah. And I really loved it and it really brightened my day and it felt like I was doing something good for someone at the, at a very low cost. It was like high impact, it was high leverage friendship, right? Like very, very low investment, very, very high impact. Yeah. A little bit of a giggle and it keeps it going. Exactly. And the other thing it does, which is, I guess, a hack from my world of running nightclubs. It's an idea of assume familiarity. Yes. So assuming familiarity in this context is most people that don't know each other particularly well

• 1:33:43Chris Williamson?

  have this sense that any text has to be super verbose. Yeah. Hello, dear Brian, I hope that you and the family are well. I must congratulate you on the da, da, da, da, da, as opposed to like funny meme. Yeah. Or whatever. Hey, man, thinking of you, hope all's good. Whatever, right? Like not even, you can take it a little bit too far and it sounds a bit entitled or a bit like brusque or like sharp, expectant. But if I'm like, dude, love the YouTube video. By the way, I'm an AHB, how long am I supposed to breathe it for? Like that's, oh. Thank you for fucking consuming my shit and for the respect. By the way, here's a thing, I don't need to, we don't need foreplay.

• 1:34:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:22Chris Williamson?

  Right, let's get, let's get into it.

• 1:34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, since we hung out in Prospera, we've been doing that, right? Like, and it's.

• 1:34:29Chris Williamson?

  Bullshit, no talk for three months and then a, no talk for three months and then.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  And I feel as fluid with you as I feel with any friend I've had for any duration of time. Like, we get each other, like, we're on the same wavelength, we're just tapping into each other's lives. Like, most of my friends, I'm actually, I'm really surprised. Most of my friends who are powerful and successful and famous are lonely. Right, like, they, they work all the time, they have work relationships, but the amount of time they have to be down and hanging out is so small. And so if you don't have some mechanism to create deep friendships, and time is not your, you can't use time. You have to use something else.

• 1:35:13Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it needs to be a longer lever to be able to.

• 1:35:16Speaker 01

  Exactly, and so I've just been surprised that people have this perception that they always perceive others like they must have it all, but loneliness is a real thing. And so I guess, again, I say this for those who are listening. If you feel lonely, right, understand like your pattern is pretty similar to other people's patterns, independent of resources or position or power status.

• 1:35:37Chris Williamson?

  The people at the top of the tree are struggling with the loneliness.

• 1:35:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, and so, I mean, and this is the cool thing is like when I talk to my friends and like they'll disclose that. And like, it's a really, yes, it's a, it's a scary thing.

• 1:35:50Chris Williamson?

  Shameful thing.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is to actually disclose that, it's like, I don't have any friends. Like, I had a friend of mine connected me with a celebrity the day, like, one of the A-list celebrities in Hollywood. I said, talked to this person, I said, why don't you come over to my house? We'll do a don't die dinner, get 10 or 15 of your favorite people, come on over. And like, I'll do this whole thing and I explained it. And they said, I don't really have any friends. Yeah, it was just such a shocking moment because they are epicenter celebrity. And one is cool. They just said that. And two, I was like, amazing. So like, I will put the group together for you. Come on over. We'll have a great time. But yeah, just like, so people realize it's a very common thing in our modern society.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  So nothing to feel ashamed about or feel bad about. Like, you can make these corrective actions by doing like, small things like voice notes, quick calls.

• 1:36:39Chris Williamson?

  And also by making the bar so low, if you swing and with it, and this person doesn't actually really want to be friends.

• 1:36:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:36:49Chris Williamson?

  Whatever, doesn't think you're cool, or they're too busy, or whatever the fuck. They're not on the, they're not ready to be friends.

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:55Chris Williamson?

  You haven't invested anything.

• 1:36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:57Chris Williamson?

  You know, you sent, you tried to, you met somebody, you sent him a few texts, like, whatever, like, it doesn't matter.

• 1:37:02Chris Williamson?

  I would just loop back to that thing I said about the emotions piece before. So I understand what you mean with regards to sort of creating a philosophy. But I am still interested in what the practices are and how you look to prioritize the emotional wellbeing.

• 1:37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:21Chris Williamson?

  The social element, if there is a spiritual element to this too.

• 1:37:26Chris Williamson?

  And how you come to think about, how to say it?

• 1:37:32Chris Williamson?

  Off spreadsheet markers

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:35Chris Williamson?

  of longevity and wellbeing.

• 1:37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So in 2025, we did five Don't Die Summits. We, 1,500 people, they were all sold out. We brought people together and we did, we experimented with different formats, but we brought them together. We did education courses. We did raves, like at seven in the morning. It was amazing. We had so much fun. We did group exercises. We did group therapy stuff. So I think 2026, we learned a lot by doing this. We're going to do this in 2026, where I've been actually piloting a Don't Die fam in my neighborhood. So I've got several friends and we had this format where we get together every week. First, we take a shot of olive oil.

• 1:38:17Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:38:18Speaker 01

  Ritualistic.

• 1:38:19Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  And then we each go around and we apologize to our body for something we did that week.

• 1:38:25Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  And so it's kind of funny.

• 1:38:27Chris Williamson?

  Carelessly close to a religion here.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  It's kind of funny. It's kind of fun. And then we go around and each person talks about like what's on their mind or what they're struggling with. And so it's a very like open floor supportive.

• 1:38:38Chris Williamson?

  Alcoholics Anonymous.

• 1:38:39Speaker 01

  It's like YPO, AA. It's like, it's a very similar format. It's kind of stamped out through various organizations. But it's basically like small intimate trusted group where you can be vulnerable and there's a specific approach where you're focusing on don't die. But really it's about human connection. It's about sharing and what you're struggling with. So whether it's that or something else, we're trying to figure out how,

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  if don't die is to become the fastest growing ideology in history. Like we're trying to figure out what is the path for that to happen. And so it can happen in small clusters around the world. We could even have physical locations. We could have something like a sovereign fund. Where we have a, you know, we pool our capital and we start funding things together. So there's, we're, we're sorting on community connection, emotional, social in 2026. The past couple of years have been like, how do you create something novel? Sticky, distinct and create a structure around it. And now we're going to create the wrapper. So it's just like the next stage of where we're at.

• 1:39:39Chris Williamson?

  Very cool.

• 1:39:41Chris Williamson?

  When we first ever spoke, however long ago that was, I asked you a question about,

• 1:39:50Chris Williamson?

  I didn't use this word, but the grief of not starting earlier. The potential resentment that you can place at your caregivers and your friends and your culture of this didn't happen earlier and the entropy, you, you'd started on the other side of the roller coaster, right? You're like, oh, fuck, like I'm fighting against it as opposed to improving it. You know, like I can't get younger in the same way as I could have gotten younger, or at least slowed it down or whatever.

• 1:40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:18Chris Williamson?

  I'm interested in your relationship with that dynamic now. A few years hence, more time to think what could have been, but also to think, well, I can't, by focusing on that, I'm losing the. Very time, which I'm claiming is now being more limited.

• 1:40:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:36Chris Williamson?

  It seems like a very stupid way to spend my life.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:38Chris Williamson?

  Where have you come into land with? You said before, and I think it's a really good point. You're, it's not too late, you can reverse or you slowed out like you can really, really make great progress no matter where you are. But the emotional connection to what could have been, had I have started earlier, what I've done to my body, the grief.

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:55Chris Williamson?

  That stuff. What's your relationship with that like now?

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, as you might guess, you know, I now, I view this question through the moral frameworks. Right? Like basically the premise of the question is that.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  I'm in a low status position because of these preceding events, you know, that I, I didn't. I didn't have parents that knew health and wellness when I was a kid. I didn't understand health and wellness myself in my twenties. I fell prey to cultural norms that say, that said, destroy yourself, right? And so.

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  The way I'd evaluate any person answering your question is. How skilled are they in taking a low status position and converting it to high status? Like, how do you flip the question for me to find virtue in my place? And attribute, you know, charity to what's, what's preceded. Because really it never makes sense for a person to wallow in grief. Like, yes, it makes sense to reconcile, like to be honest, like we can acknowledge that may have been a mistake. You know, we can contemplate, you know, we wish it wouldn't have happened, but really. You're, you don't want to sit in negative emotions. It's just not good for you. It's, you don't want to beat yourself up. And so you can either take a, a, a.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  A step where you say, I'm reconciled, I'm neutral. Like, I'm, I'm fine with it. Or you can say, I'm going to invert it. But that's what I've really learned. More than anything in my life, this is what I try to train my kids is. Don't be subject, don't lose your agency and be subject to pain that is self-induced. You can choose how you feel. This is kind of like Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, right? He's in the concentration camp and he's like, I'm not going to let these conditions determine my state of mind. I'm going to choose that state of mind myself, but that's really ultimate agency. And so I'd take your question and I would invert it and be like, um, this is the most interesting time in the history of four point,

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  whatever billion years that we've been on this planet. I am so fortunate to be alive right now and I'm like in my 40s where I'm still like in my prime. And I could have a meaningful impact on what happens to the human race. Like that is a possibility. So I wouldn't trade anything under any circumstance to trade the position I'm in right now. Because it's the coolest moment in the history of the human race. And so like quick conversion and now I'm like, damn, pretty cool. I'm pumped about this situation.

• 1:43:28Chris Williamson?

  My shoulders are relaxed a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I remember you tweeting a while ago, do you think you're going to die in a super ironic way?

• 1:43:36Speaker 01

  Of course, guaranteed. Yeah. How is that not possible? It's for sure. I mean, like, so this morning, when I was coming here, like I was opening a glass jar of sauerkraut, fermented sauerkraut. I popped it and it sliced my fingers in three places, bleeding all over the place. And I was like, you know, what if I die from like a glass bottle of fermented sauerkraut? Like, wouldn't that be just like beautifully ironic? So yes, like, uh, I hope it's spectacular. I hope it's really something epic and not something lame.

• 1:44:08Chris Williamson?

  Sauerkraut would be a cool way to go.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess like, uh, you tell me, what would be like an epic?

• 1:44:14Chris Williamson?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  What hits the timeline where you're like, okay, like.

• 1:44:19Chris Williamson?

  Ready to go with that. That would be cool. I mean. Sort of car action, a seventies action movie rolling down a huge cliff would be, that seems like a pretty cool way to go. Certainly not being the passenger of a plane where the pilot decides that he's sick and he just wants to crash it into a

• 1:44:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:38Chris Williamson?

  Into a mountainside. That would suck. Something, something that's just me, something that I don't want to take anybody else with me. If it's, if I'm going to go up in flames, like, you know, hit by a bus, but the bus goes on.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:48Chris Williamson?

  Like.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like caught in the action, caught in the act of adventure, right? Like, like you're, you're doing your thing, you're pushing the boundaries, you're in your happy state.

• 1:45:00Chris Williamson?

  Eating fermented foods.

• 1:45:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like I, I think of Shackleton, you know, and I think of his going through the Antarctic and their survival to that whole like, you know, they were all ready to have a noble death. Like, we wouldn't have found out about it, they would have been gone to history, but still, you know, they were, I like that kind of.

• 1:45:18Chris Williamson?

  I love those stories. There's a, a book that you may love if you like Alfred Lansing's Endurance, which is the best retelling of Shackleton's Crossing, I think. There's a wonderful one called The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart. British soldier, Scottish, captured by the Japanese, bridge over the River Kwai, forced labor, Hiroshima bomb blast.

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:39Chris Williamson?

  Like everything, everything, everything, everything. And then I read Unbroken.

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Unbroken.

• 1:45:43Chris Williamson?

  Louis Zamperini. So I only, I'd never even know, because I'm not American.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:47Chris Williamson?

  Right? So I would get Shackleton and I would get Alistair Urquhart. But I'd never get Zamperini.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:54Chris Williamson?

  I didn't even know he existed. And he like meets Hitler at the fucking Olympics and he goes through all of this stuff. So if you like Unbroken, dude, The Forgotten Highlander will take your head off.

• 1:46:04Speaker 01

  Cool. Yeah, Unbroken. That broke me. I mean, like, he's like on his raft, getting shot at from the Japanese airplanes, underneath the raft, getting eaten by sharks, back on the raft with bullet holes, like, and that's like on day 142 of not eating food, like it's.

• 1:46:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. And the dude's eating all the chocolate and you're like.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Your best mate, yes.

• 1:46:25Chris Williamson?

  The fucking chocolate. Yeah, dude. Those stories to me are wonderful. I ruptured an Achilles in 2020, playing cricket, fully British and.

• 1:46:36Chris Williamson?

  Asked a couple of friends that had been through some sort of similarly traumatic injuries, you know, big fuck off severe thing. Yeah. And they said, The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday, Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Urquhart, Ross Edgley's book, The Art of Resilience, which is about his swim around, he was the first person to swim around the UK. Oh, yeah. Six months, six hours on, six hours off. Yeah, yeah. And then Amazon Prime documentary called Resurfaced with Andy Murray. Andy Murray's tennis player, Scottish tennis player, Luda Scott. And he gets a hip replacement. That lateral movement means that hips really get tested in tennis players.

• 1:47:21Chris Williamson?

  And he's aging out a little and they try and do rehab, they try and do surgery, they try and do surgery, it's just not working. And really, the only solution, I think, is maybe a ceramic socket with a steel joint. But it's not meant for high impact sport. It's very smooth and very reliable and the outcomes are great, but not if you're pushing it to the sort of steel up against ceramic, like fucking porcelain, whatever it is, not going to blast it or maybe it's not. And it's just this journey of him going through it and he's working in his house, just obsessive, just so like unrelenting.

• 1:48:02Chris Williamson?

  And those sorts of stories, I think, are really empowering and really enlightening and very inspiring. And it's the ability, what I'm really interested in playing with now is the ability to take that kind of inspiration, be like, fuck, like, I've been kicked in the nuts a good bit this year. All right, you got this, like you can lean in, you can do this thing. And then being able to, I switch it off. That's right. I need to be able to switch it off. If I can't switch it off, then I am.

• 1:48:35Chris Williamson?

  Pressing the accelerator, driving downhill.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:37Chris Williamson?

  I'm giving myself more of the thing that I already have too much of.

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:40Chris Williamson?

  So, uh, playing with that tolerance, I like a dose dependent inspiration in that way.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:46Chris Williamson?

  That makes sense.

• 1:48:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a U shaped curve.

• 1:48:47Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like you need just in like too little, you're not doing anything.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:51Chris Williamson?

  Too much, you're wide but tired, like just about the right.

• 1:48:54Speaker 01

  It's probably the skill set society needs the most help on right now because everyone is right up to the red. Actually, in the red zone and just there constantly. It's, I think it's probably like a chronic thing of our society.

• 1:49:08Chris Williamson?

  Brian Johnson, ladies and gentlemen, dude, you're great. I really appreciate you. I appreciate your friendship. What can people expect next, however long of years, months, what's, what's coming up?

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  Well, I, this is my prediction.

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  AI is center stage already for society. It will continue to be center stage. I'm not talking about timeframe for six months or 12 months, but like over the next few years, it's going to just continually to be evolved to be the primary thing of our attention. And as that happens, we are going to want the stability to understand the world in ways that makes us feel safe, that we have meaning and purpose, that things are stable. And I think this is where Don't Die will step in. It will be a structurally sound, coherent, emotionally resident ideology and moral philosophy that actually answers the most important questions for us as a species, individually, collectively, with AI, with the planet.

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  Like we're just due for a revolution. So yeah, in the coming years, that's what I hope to bring to the world is like that we actually can find coherence in our existence and realize the spectacular nature of this moment. The most precious thing that's ever existed and it's like really ours. So we, I guess an invitation to like sober up, realize how special this is. And for us, like we, we need to prove ourselves worthy of the future. We oftentimes don't think about, like we, we want to be.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  We want to demonstrate our value to our peers, to our coworkers, to our family, to our partners. I think that same relationship exists to the future, that it really does ask us to rise up. And so I hope, above all, I hope I'm a positive influence of people's lives, that when they find themselves in moments of struggle or weakness, they've got somebody in their court saying like, you can do this. And yeah, so I'm just really excited about what's happening. I feel like I've been working my entire life for this moment, and I'm excited to play the game.

• 1:51:13Chris Williamson?

  I'm excited to see what happens, man. Just don't do the fucking, don't start wearing white robes, grow your hair out. Like, I don't want to see the cult leader pivot. But what I do think is cool is the sanguine self-awareness thing. I think that's really important to like, yeah, just read it out. You mentioned a couple of resources, like a food guide or something. Is there any, are there any cool lead magnet bits that people can snag that?

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'll give you, I'll give you the food guide.

• 1:51:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  I'm also, I'm publishing, I have a website, [email protected]. And hopefully in the next couple of weeks, I'll repost all my updated stuff. So if you wanted to see my journey and what I'm doing now and why, I'll have it there for you, so like a free guide.

• 1:51:54Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:51:55Speaker 01

  And I'm also writing a book, so. Yeah, don't die, so I'm halfway through. And it's basically going to be like, hopefully, a guide. And then, yeah, I'm trying to make this easy. I know it's a lot. And then also, I just, we just raised 60 million for Blueprint.

• 1:52:09Chris Williamson?

  And so, oh yeah, what's going on with that? What is that?

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, so basically Blueprint is don't die in action. And so, in the same way where you say, if I want to go to this destination, I put in an address, go, and it tells me what streets to go down, or where's the construction, where's the crashes. Blueprint is going to be basically like AI for your health. It's like you say, I want to be healthy. And we say, come on in, we got you. And so it will take us some time to build that, but that's what I have today with my team of doctors. Like, I just follow a practice where we measure me. We get the data, we look at evidence, and we say, do this, do this, do this, do this.

• 1:52:44Chris Williamson?

  Doing this at scale.

• 1:52:45Speaker 01

  Exactly, so I don't have to chase all these esoteric hard things. So Blueprint is basically like autonomous health for humans, where I just say like, I want to be healthy, and you get into a system, and now we just run the data, evidence, repeat again. So hopefully, like, that's like.

• 1:52:58Chris Williamson?

  Exciting times, so it feels like, I know you're going back to where you started, back into founder mode. I hope that you.

• 1:53:06Chris Williamson?

  Don't take your eye off what the ball is supposed to be with regards to that. Like the temptation man to be, oh, we could build it more. And this is time it's good. This time it's for humanity.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:16Chris Williamson?

  You go, well, yeah, the service is good, but so is looking after like serving you first.

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, like the, the one thing I care to accomplish in life, like everything else can go by the wayside. The one thing is what is high status? That's the only game I care to play. And so from specifically from the frame of from the perspective of the year 2500, when they look back at this moment and they're looking at moments to say, uh, Plato, Aristotle, Renaissance, like they'll say a new era was born of a new status seeking thing. And like that's otherwise like the entrepreneurship stuff, like I really enjoy it. It's been my jam, but that's not where my, I want this to work. I want to be successful. It's actually a practical manifestation, but I have one objective in existence is that.

• 1:54:02Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, yeah. Ryan, I appreciate you, man. Until next time, I'm looking forward to the book.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Thanks, man.

• 1:54:08Speaker 02

  Afternoon glare totally ruined my watch party for the big game. That's when my buddy recommended blinds.com.

• 1:54:15Speaker 03

  With custom window treatments made to fit your style, space and budget, customers who shop at blinds.com experienced overwhelming satisfaction. Side effects may include a fuller, deeper night's sleep and a sudden urge to host the watch party again. Blinds.com isn't a medication, but it can improve how you feel about your home. Visit blinds.com to order your free samples today.