520 | Uncommon Cold

The Minimalists speak with Professor Thomas Seager about using ice baths to help minimize pain and chronic illness, uncomfortable activities that get easier over time, a slew of questions JFM has about cold plunge therapy, and much more. Discussed in this episode: How does a struggling person live a relatively productive life with chronic illness? (3:34) What's a previously uncomfortable activity that you now regularly do with ease? (32:56) Right Here, Right Now: Joshua's Top 10 Albums of 2025, Friday Afternoon Minimalist Zooms, and How to Write Better (51:35) Listener Tip: Does Kapil Gupta need a hug? (53:54) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

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

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with the less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn and joining me here at Earthing Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California is my good friend TK Coleman.

• 0:53Speaker 02

  I've got a book in my hand, I'm a happy man.

• 0:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's always the truth with him. Well, joining us here in the studio today, we have a very special guest. He is a professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering at Arizona State University. He is also the founder of Marasco Forge and is an expert in the use of cold thermogenesis for building metabolic and physiological resilience. His latest book is titled Uncommon Cold. I'll hold it up here. Please welcome to the show, our new friend, Dr. Thomas Seager. Come on, all the podcasts will give you an applause, right? Got a studio audience of like two here.

• 1:37Speaker 03

  You think my engineering students ever applaud? I'm like, that was great lecture, right?

• 1:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can tell them their grade depends on it, right?

• 1:45Speaker 03

  I'm gonna try that next semester.

• 1:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, A's all around.

• 1:49Speaker 02

  Please clap.

• 1:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We should try that at our live events, TK, where it's like, you'll be great at the end of this, based on the sound of your applause. No, no, that's a type of prison, isn't it? Like needing applause. But getting applause feels good, but as soon as I need it, it's like, oh, yuck. Well, anyway, we've got a lot to talk about today. Coming up in this episode, we're talking about living a productive life. ...of life with chronic illness, especially when you're struggling, all the struggles we deal with if we or a loved one is dealing with some sort of chronic illness or pain. We're going to talk a bit about that. Also, we're going to talk about some uncomfortable activities that get easier over time and why ice baths have become a new trend and much, much more. Plus, on page two, I personally have 15 important questions I'd like to ask

• 2:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  about cold plunge therapy for Dr. Seeger. So, quick health disclaimer, none of this should be perceived as medical advice. I'm certainly not a medical doctor, so please consult your physician, or yoga instructor, or local mechanic, or Uber driver before making any health changes on your front. But seriously, this is not medical advice, but we're going to have some observations around some things I've dealt with personally, and some of the stories that Tom has dealt with as well over the years. And so, let's get right into it. We'll start with our callers. If you have a question for our show, we'd love to hear from you. Give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839. Or you can email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Let us know

• 3:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  if you're a Patreon subscriber, so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement-free, because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck! Yes, yes. Well, our first question today is from Angie.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  Hi Joshua and TK. Angie here from Washington. I'm a Patreon subscriber. I've been following The Minimalist since about 2015, but it wasn't until recently that Joshua really opened up about his struggles with chronic illness. After hearing some of his story, I realized that we have the same condition, and it has been so comforting to know that others understand my challenges with this type of chronic pain and discomfort.

• 4:08Speaker 04

  Through my own health journey, I've experienced long periods of discomfort that left me unable to leave the house. This left me feeling quite hopeless to plan my life moving forward as far as my career, hobbies, or even spending time with friends and family. I'm curious to learn more about how Joshua navigated these feelings during his own journey, considering he was able to progress his career and continued to make plans and attend many public events for the mental moles. I would also appreciate you sharing more about what you currently do for your health, including like what your diet looks like today and what symptoms you still struggle with. I also look forward to TK's perspective

• 4:53Speaker 04

  on any topic discussed. I always take away something positive from his wisdom. He definitely has a gift. Thanks for all you do and for helping so many people on such a deep level.

• 5:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Angie, I too look forward to TK's comments on any question that is asked on this show. Tom, I'm not sure if I told you this, but about three years ago, maybe three and a half years ago now, TK joined the team. It was a common law marriage. He had been on the podcast with me and Ryan so many times. He came on, we just had this great rapport, great conversation. We invited him back and he came back again. Eventually he just started showing up and we kept him. It was just like, he was my favorite guest and then we became really good friends because he's taught me so much. And I bring that up because this question is an important question because she's like, Angie's saying, well, how'd

• 5:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  you keep all these plans and commitments and live events? And the truth is, I didn't always. I said no to a lot of things that I would have otherwise really liked to say yes to. But sometimes, given circumstances, we have to say no. I've done full episodes about what I've done with respect to struggling with chronic pain. And I've identified, and the one we did, minimizing chronic pain, we'll put a link to it in the show notes. I think that's the most comprehensive one. We also did an episode on toxic foods, toxic superfoods with Sally Norton, which I really enjoyed. The Sean Amara episode we were just talking about, I thought that was interesting as well. But the three things I often talk about, Tom, are earthing or grounding.

• 6:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Food and ice. Those are the three things that have, or just cold therapy in general. Those are the three things that have helped me with my autoimmune condition. So in 2018, I developed these three autoimmune conditions and was waking up every morning with 10 out of 10 panic level pain. It was awful. And by far, the number one thing that helped me was beginning to ground again, reconnecting with the earth. I didn't realize it at the time, but for 30 something years, I had inadvertently disconnected myself from the earth because of our built environments. And I, as a result, got away from nature. And for a long time, especially in my childhood years and throughout my twenties, I ate really poorly, not knowing that a lot of the processed food was junk food. It was garbage, right?

• 7:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, you have a line in the book, Uncommon Cold, where you talk about how the FDA food pyramid is a lie. So I'd like to talk to you about grounding. I'd like to talk to you about food first, and then we could talk about ice. And there's one other thing I would add to this. I've been doing recently, and I would just call it oxygen. Breathing obviously makes sense, but I've been doing hyperbaric oxygen therapy recently because those first three things I mentioned improved my life significantly. I think I'd be dead without grounding regularly. I was in so much pain and that helped out so much. And yet, I got to a point where I had reached a plateau. I'd improved like 80% or so. I was trying to figure out where else can I work around the edges?

• 7:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then a few friends and a doctor recommended a hyperbaric oxygen therapy. And that has helped this last 10 to 15% that has been tremendous for my own healing. So let's start by talking about earthing or grounding. We'll talk about food and then we'll talk about ice. But I know one of your taglines has to do with basically reconnecting to nature.

• 8:20Speaker 03

  The next best thing to nature. That's the idea behind the Morosco Ice Bath. That's behind everything that we do at Morosco is nature is the best way to do it. But I live in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. I'm surrounded by civil engineering infrastructure, and I don't mind. I'm a civil engineer. But I'm on the 32nd floor. You think I'm connected to the earth? I've got no palm tree. Is not a shady forest. This is not where I'm meant to be. And so now I invent machines that will reconnect me with the nature that I'm disconnected from because I live in this urban environment. Otherwise, I'd be entirely dysregulated. So all these things that you're talking about, I want to add one. We have to talk about vitamin D and light when it

• 9:03Speaker 03

  comes to autoimmune disorders. So we'll, we can work through everything that you've got on your mind. And then I'm going to say, okay, Joshua, here's the other thing that maybe you haven't been thinking about or that you should be asking.

• 9:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. And light, both indoor light and outdoor light, you know, avoiding, you know, bright lights, the LED, especially flickering LED lights when you're inside. We're fortunate here because it's the only time I really stand under bright lights. And these are non flicker because we're in a studio. But flickering lights, especially fluorescents, would give me terrible headaches back in my corporate days. And but then also getting light in the mornings and throughout the day, spending time outside whenever possible. If I have phone calls to make, I live up in Ojai. And so like, I'm just walking through the forest, basically.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  That's the way to do it.

• 9:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Making phone calls, right? And so it seems to me that anything to do with health, it's a should be free or relatively inexpensive. There is at least an option when we get into nature, whether it is sunlight, which is free, or grounding, which is absolutely free, or cold exposure, which can be free, depending on where you are. So where do we start with these things? Tell me some of your insights that might help Angie.

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Let's talk first about, you mentioned autoimmune disorders, and then you had three of them. Every autoimmune disorder is associated with some dysregulation in vitamin D metabolism. My son's autoimmune disorder is type one diabetes. He was diagnosed when he was six years old. And it wasn't until after his diagnosis that I read this study coming out of Finland. They tracked mothers and infants for like 25 years. And they said, where does this type one diabetes come from? It originates in a vitamin D deficiency in the first year of life of the infant. Vitamin D is essential to the development and the function of the immune system. And a baby Is not born with a mature immune system. So in that first year of life, you got to have good vitamin D to get your immune system normal.

• 10:59Speaker 03

  Those who don't have it are at greater risk of type one diabetes. It turns out multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, every single autoimmune disorder is associated with dysregulated vitamin D metabolism. So how are you going to fix this? Some people will say, well, take a bunch of supplements. Take your vitamin D and your K2. And if you're in a serious like deficiency or insufficiency arrangement or situation, some supplements can help. Now, I'm not a physician. I'm a, you know, professor of engineering, so I'm not giving medical advice. But in this next best thing to nature ethic, the last thing you want is to be getting your nature in a pill.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  Get your sunshine, so this would be UVB. A lot of people will have tanning lamps or they'll have a UVB lamp that they use year round. And I don't do this. I don't do it anymore because what I realized is you make light inside your body. Your mitochondria, they're responsible for the redox reaction. So these are the electron transfers that fuel your body. When they're creating heat, that is cold thermogenesis, is your body's response to the cold so that your mitochondria are now going to produce heat instead of ATP. Heat is light. It's several thousands nanometers in wavelength, but you know that the infrared spectrum can be expressed as heat. That's not the only light they make.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  They might light across the spectrum, including UVB. So you activate your mitochondria in the cold. They're now making UV light inside your body. Some of that UV light will intersect a cholesterol molecule inside your brown fat cell and convert it into pre vitamin D. So I put this article out saying, hey, look at these mechanisms of the bio photons, a lot of skepticism. But a few months ago, there's a study in Poland. They took two groups of women. One group, no MS. The other group had multiple sclerosis. They put them in cryotherapy chambers. And then they measured their blood serum levels of vitamin D. In the group without multiple sclerosis, no increase in the blood serum. And so people would come after me on Twitter and say,

• 13:11Speaker 03

  "How can you say this about, you know, light inside the body and vitamin D if the blood serum levels aren't increasing?" And I'd say, "Vitamin D is lipophilic. It's stored in your fat cells. When you make it inside a fat cell, it doesn't have to enter your bloodstream. When you make it in the skin, it's got to be transported throughout the body. Almost every single cell of your body has vitamin D receptors. And so the women who are making it in their brown fat cells just stays right there and their bodies don't need it. But in the cohort with multiple sclerosis, they got a spike in blood serum levels of vitamin D. Why would that be? Because when you have multiple sclerosis, you have a vitamin D disorder. Their bodies need it right away. This is the first clinical trial that points to cold exposure

• 13:56Speaker 03

  as a source of light inside your body that can make vitamin D. This changes our understanding of the cold in relation to autoimmune disorders. It's not just taking the inflammation down, which is wonderful. It's also correcting your vitamin D metabolism in the winter when the sunshine, at least at the northern latitudes, isn't available to you. It's also fixing the people in Phoenix. You'd think they get plenty of sunshine. You'd think they got lots of vitamin D. But nobody goes outside in Phoenix in the summertime. It's like 120 degrees Fahrenheit, you know? And they're like, "No, no, I want to stay in my air-conditioned, you know, environment." And they wind up vitamin D deficient because they're not getting sunshine and they're not getting cold. So when it comes to the autoimmune disorder,

• 14:41Speaker 03

  the thing that nowhere near enough people are talking about is its relationship to vitamin D and how you fix the light environment outside your body. You mentioned some good things. Get up in the morning, get a little light. There's no UVB, but it's good for your circadian rhythm. And then fix the light inside your body by using some cold exposure, especially. Actually, in the wintertime.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Quick practical question about the sunlight. Suppose there is someone who spends all day in an office. They have a life on the 32nd floor, working all day. And they said, I'm gonna have to make it a deliberate practice, like going to the gym to get some sunlight. How much is enough? What's the bare minimum? If you just go outside and just stand there for 10 minutes, whatever it may be.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  That's a great question. I don't know the minimum effective dose, but TK, I can tell you that it's different for you than it is for me. For those people who are not subscribed to the video, you might not know this, but TK has a dark complexion. And that means that he needs a lot more sunlight to create the same amount of vitamin D in your skin compared to me. I'm fairly light skinned. My ancestors, they come from the North Sea. So the minimum effective dose depends upon what's called your Fitzpatrick type, your skin tone. And it depends upon what time of year it is. In LA and in Phoenix, we're almost the shortest day of the year right now in December. There's still enough UVB in the middle of the day where you can make a little bit of vitamin D.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  So I can't tell you, I'll get out there for 20 minutes because I don't know your skin type and I don't know what time of year and I don't know what latitude you're at. I don't really trust the blood serum levels of vitamin D. I trust them to indicate that you're low. I trust them to indicate that you're on the verge of rickets. But I don't trust them to indicate when you've really optimized your vitamin D levels. And so I don't really have an answer for your question. On the other hand, you get into the cold and you do this for two weeks every day. You will recruit new brown fat into your body. This is some pretty good animal models, some pretty good human trials on this. Every day for two weeks is enough for you to produce the brown fat. What's in the brown fat? Mitochondria.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  It is the brown fat that are responsible for the cold thermogenesis. White fat is where you store energy. Brown fat is where you burn it. And most people in LA, in Phoenix, they don't have any brown fat because they're not getting cold. I mean, what was it today? I don't know, 60 degrees out. And the people in Montana are laughing at us for. Putting on hats and coats and it's like it's chilly out. If it were 50 in Montana, they'd be playing frisbee in the snow because they're already cold acclimated. So it's a great question. And what I want to say is you can track this with an app called D Minder, you know, download it on your phone and it'll help keep you qualitatively in touch with, am I a little

• 17:34Speaker 03

  low? Did I skip a few days? Do I need to get out there and take a walk for lunch, which is a good thing for you to do anyway?

• 17:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's super helpful. We have a question on page two about eating. So we'll save the food conversation. I want to get into the cold side of things because this is your area of expertise. I've been ice bathing before it was cool. 2011 was the first time I did it and I wasn't cold acclimated at all. I remember the first time I got into an ice bath, it was actually right down the street from here. Ryan and I were on our very first tour, a book tour, and it was December of 2011. And the first time I got into that ice bath, and it wasn't even a particularly cold one, it might have been 45, 50 degrees, but it was pure panic. What, who the hell does this? Why would you do this? And by the way, I'm glad you're here because you can explain a lot of the

• 18:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  benefits to me. And when I was reading your book, I was like, oh, that's why I feel better. That's why it works. Because the subtitle of your book, I thought was spot on. It's the science and the experience of cold plunge therapy. For me, the experience is so much more important than the science in one sense. It's that like, if all the science says that if I were to pat my head and rub my tummy and jump up and down on one leg, and that would help me, but then if it doesn't help me, then it doesn't really matter with my own experience. The opposite of that is, if for some reason, even if it's placebo, patting my head and rubbing my tummy helps with my ailment, even if it's placebo, then my N equals one experience, which you talk about here. And so

• 19:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  for Angie, maybe you could start by talking to her a bit about N equals one for her chronic illness. But then let's talk a bit about what is most compelling about, well, ice bath therapy.

• 19:18Speaker 03

  I'm gonna take a detour. That you'll never turn into a soundbite. So people are gonna have to subscribe if they wanna hear this part. Because when I listened to Angie's voice, it brought me back to a time in my life that I haven't written about and I rarely talk about. It was shortly after I moved to Arizona State. They made me an offer that I felt like I couldn't refuse. And so here I am, I'm an associate professor and I'm teaching my engineering classes and I'm getting my grants. But my life sucked. I suffered from an acute social anxiety. I didn't have a problem in the classroom teaching, but I couldn't travel. I couldn't get on a plane and go to a different country. I turned down all these offers to go speak or participate in a conference or something like that.

• 20:02Speaker 03

  And I couldn't explain the anxiety. I didn't know where it was coming from, but it was crippling my career. I talked to a mentor and he said, "Well, you can't do that." Like, for you to take the next step. You ever wanna become a full professor, you're gonna have to accept these invitations. I promised him that I would take the next one. And these were coming from my friends in the Army Corps. There was these NATO things, you know, in the Azores and Iceland and these beautiful places, right? The next one came in, it was Guatemalan. And now I gotta go to Guatemala, like in the middle of the frickin' jungle for this workshop because I made a commitment to my mentor. And I had to think, what is the pain protecting me from? Pain exists in the body for a reason.

• 20:46Speaker 03

  We are like evolutionarily, you know, physiologically wired. That pain is meant to send us a signal to protect us and keep us safe. What the hell am I trying to keep myself safe from? You think I had to cognitively override? I'm a middle-aged, you know, white professor traveling on an American passport. What really bad thing is gonna happen to me? I didn't process that until I was in Rome because there were a series of these invitations that I had to accept. One of my graduate students who went to Guatemala with me, she grew up in Colombia. And she grew up in Colombia during the time of like the drug civil wars, you know? She, her parents took her and her sister to Canada just to escape the violence.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  When we were landing in Rome, we're going through the thunderstorms, you know? And the whole plane is bouncing, people are getting upset, and I feel like I'm gonna puke. And I'm like, what did I do? And I turned and I looked at her, she had her eyes closed, and she was smiling. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna give this smile a shot, you know? Because what I'm doing isn't working, so I'm gonna try smiling. And I'm grinning like an idiot until we land. I had to process that. If she can go through the Colombian civil wars, get finished high school in a foreign language, in a foreign country, get herself a tennis scholarship to a historically black university in Mississippi that she's never visited and she's not even black. What am I worried about a little thunderstorm for?

• 22:14Speaker 03

  I realized the pain was protecting me from fears I had in childhood. I grew up, it's 1970s, it's inner city, it's violent schools, it's like the whole white flight thing and forced busing and stuff. I grew up in Pittsburgh, and Pittsburgh is a very parochial neighborhood oriented kind of town. If you're in the wrong neighborhood with the wrong people at the wrong time for a kid, that's an existential crisis. It was in Rome that I figured out, I was eight, that that pain wasn't protecting me anymore, it was protecting some little eight-year-old that I was still carrying around inside me. So I said to my eight-year-old, I got you, you stick with me. We're gonna go through this life together.

• 22:57Speaker 03

  We're gonna hold hands through the conference or the, whatever it is. Now, I get on a plane, I fly to LA, it's no big deal, I'm gonna meet Joshua, I'm gonna make friends with TK. The question that came to my mind when Angie was talking, and I don't know her, and I don't know if this is gonna help her, but what is the pain protecting you from? Because maybe it's obsolete, maybe it's the vestige of something that happened to you when it was really useful, it was really adaptive. And now, there's some part of you that you're not aware of that is holding on to it, and it needs to get released.

• 23:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Kelly Starrett, he was on this podcast and he said that pain is a request for change. And if I were to amend that at all, I would say, pain is a request for healing. And that's what you're talking about. Sometimes it's physical healing, like, oh, my ankle, I rolled it and so it's painful and there it's healing. But then sometimes there's the emotional or psychological kind of healing. It's like, I have this pain. My body's trying to ask me that it needs something different in order to heal.

• 23:55Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, maybe we could talk a bit about, because we'll get into the ice bit in a moment. In fact, on page two, I have those 15 questions for Dr. Seeger. So maybe we'll get really dive deep into, we'll plunge into the ice, so to speak. Because it's been really beneficial for me. I do it every day now, unless I'm traveling. And even then, I'll often find ways to do it when I'm traveling. I know you did the same when, when you were here today. And it has been a way for me to sort of deal with the pain, but also to reset my bodies in ways I didn't know was possible. So I want to talk to you about some of the science on that. But for Angie, a couple of the things that have been helpful for me. You did mention smiling, which is like a form of stress management in a way.

• 24:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And TK, I'd love to talk about like the metaphor of smiling. And it's not just being Pollyanna or being overly optimistic. It has something to do with changing your physiology. And then maybe we could talk about that. And then I've got some other things with respect to stress management as well.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Sure, we can look at smiling as performance, or we can look at it as practice. When smiling is a performance, it's your way of saying, hey, even though I feel the complete opposite of this, I either have to do this to keep my job, or I have to do this to make sure you don't know what's going on underneath the surface. That is sometimes necessary. If you're a bartender and you're a server, you owe your customers to smile. It's part of your responsibility. Sometimes that can be unhealthy if in relationships you're smiling and what you ought to be doing is having difficult conversations about how you're hurting or how what someone is doing needs to change. But smiling as a practice is a way of saying, I have some measure of agency in any and every situation.

• 25:39Speaker 02

  And even if that agency is reducible to something like lifting my pinky finger, it is good for me to do that to remind myself and to signal to my world that I have causative power. And that's that changes your mentality when you live that way. And when you practice it with the little things, it begins to expand to bigger things that you previously couldn't imagine. And smiling is one way of doing that. I don't feel great right now. I am struggling and hurting on the inside. And I'm not going to smile because I want to fool you. I'm going to smile because I'm telling myself, this is how I aim to feel. And so I'm going to take this leap of faith and move my body in the way that I want to feel, because this

• 26:22Speaker 02

  is how I want to move through the world. And my feelings will eventually catch up with me. I lead with intention, not with emotion, and I bring my emotion into cooperation with sustained intention.

• 26:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about smiling as I used to say, like, what makes me smile? But now I think about it differently. What brings out my smile?

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Knowing that it's intrinsic, that happiness or joy is already there. And sometimes there's something that can trigger that emotion that is in me. It's like, I've got this glass of water here, and it's filled with water. And if I were to spill it, well, water's going to come out. There's a smile in me. What's going to spill the smile out of me? Sometimes it's music. In fact, on page three, we're talking about, every year I do this list of my 10 favorite albums of the year. And my number one album this year, it's been on in the house all the time. And me and my 12 year old daughter, my wife, we're dancing all every morning. I'm waking her up to it. And she's tired, but then she sees me dancing in her face. And all of a sudden, that smile is already there. It brings it out from from within her. It's already there. You're uncovering it. You're not finding it. The smile isn't

• 27:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  somewhere out there. And the other thing I'll say about stress management that has been really helpful for me is noise reduction. We're in the noisiest time ever, especially if you live in a big city, whether it's Phoenix, or New York, or Los Angeles, or even if you live in a small town today, that you have all of the modern conveniences in your pocket. That's noise. It's and so you never hear me when I'm talking about, what do I do to to deal? With my my struggles, my chronic pain, well, I just tune into the news media. You know what really helps me MSNBC and Fox News? I've never said that, right? Because media does not rhyme with peace. Media does not rhyme with wellness. Media does not rhyme with healing. Oh, you could tweet that, Professor Sean.

• 28:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that that we're often looking for something out there to soothe us, some sort of analgesic. But the problem with that is is it's just covering up the pain. So in the moment, noise can cover up the pain, but that doesn't actually address the root cause.

• 28:27Speaker 03

  You led me to something else that I don't know if it's come up on the podcast, but I started thinking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Is this some, okay, civil engineers work at the bottom, you know, shelter, the food, basic infrastructure stuff. I'm not satisfied with that. I was working on disaster resilience, especially after Katrina. My career as a civil engineering researcher changed. How do we recover from the disasters? Figured out it's not in the concrete and it's not on the steel. It's not in the structures. It's in the human ingenuity. It's in the response. So I had to go back to Maslow and think about the whole pyramid. And I think a lot of people misunderstood this. Maslow published a hierarchy of human motivations in like 1943.

• 29:13Speaker 03

  At that time, Viktor Frankl was rotting in a Nazi death camp. They'd stolen his manuscript, right? And he's trying to figure out how people survive. They don't have anything at the bottom of the pyramid. They have no food. They have no shelter. They have no safety. They have no self esteem. Maslow wrote this book called Man's Search for Meaning. And you reminded me of, oh, sorry, Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning. When he was released, when he was liberated from the death camps, he had the manuscript in his mind. He wrote it all out. And at the beginning of your podcast, you talk about a meaningful life. The meaningful life doesn't exist in the things at the bottom. It exists like way beyond the top of what Maslow called self actualization.

• 29:58Speaker 03

  The pyramid doesn't. Have to be satisfied from the bottom up to the top. Frankl taught us that man can suffer almost any material deprivation if they have a reason why. Now, we're going to relate that back to the ice bath later because I'm supposed to talk about ice baths. But so many things are coming up in response to Angie's question that have been other parts of what I've read and what I've written for myself that I don't think I can let them go.

• 30:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, before we exit her question, one other thing that that helps me is, and I rarely talk about it on here because it feels so prescriptive, it almost feels pious, is I meditate every day. That's one way that I I deal with the noise. First thing in the morning, even like this morning, I got up at 3:40 and I just get up and I'll meditate for 15 minutes and I'll do 15 minutes at night. So it's not some elaborate practice and and how do I know that it's working? It's I fail at it every single day, right? Like, and so I don't have an expectation of winning meditation.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  I suck at meditation.

• 30:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah, that's how I know it's working, right? And and yet it's not about fixing me or transcending anything. It's about presence. It's about bringing myself into the moment. When I talked about the noise, the noise takes us out of the moment. It takes us out of these conversations like this. It takes us out of awareness. And it's just a way to check back in. And if I'm doing that regularly, every morning and every night, even for five minutes is how I started. It was just checking in with awareness and I found myself checking in to be more aware throughout the day as I'm walking into the studio. And every time I walk in here, I say, yes. And but it's like this moment of, oh, yeah, here I am, is what I'm really saying. I'm right here, right now.

• 31:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And recognizing that I'm not somewhere over there, my happiness isn't somewhere over there. And we on this podcast, we often talk about consumerism, minimalism applies to things, right? And it's because we're trying to consume something to complete us. And that happens with the media. It happens with a lot of externalities, relationships, careers, status games. All of these things that we think are going to make us better, but they end up making us miserable or chronically stressed, which then leads to a lot of these. Chronic illnesses. We have several more questions here I want to dive into. Before we get back to our callers, it is time for the lightning rounds where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week. And we attempt to answer with a

• 32:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  short, shareable, minimal maxim. And we put these maxims in the show notes over at theminimalists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. Don't worry, you can wander on as much as you want. TK and I obviously do. We try to wrap it up with a little pithy bow at the end. By the way, if you sign up for our email newsletter over at theminimalists.e-mail, we'll send you a newsletter every week. It's called the Simple Newsletter. And in there, we have seven new minimal maxims. Absolutely free, no spam, no junk, no advertisements. But we do start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, the question of the week this week. Oh, this is a good one. What's a previously uncomfortable activity

• 33:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that you now regularly do with ease? Well, you can see why we're asking this question, Tom. That first time I got into that ice bath, it was not just uncomfortable, it was fight or flight, it was panic, it was, oh, my God, I'm going to die. And so tell me about that immediate response. And then we'll check into what some of our listeners had to say as well.

• 33:26Speaker 03

  Well, congratulations. You're a human being. It's a very human reaction. It doesn't matter 40, 45 degrees. If you're just starting out a new program of ice baths or cold plunge therapy, go cold enough to gasp. If it's 60 degrees and you feel that gas reflex, you have activated the sympathetic division of your central nervous system. That's the fight or flight. You saying it was like, I'm gonna die, your mind will begin catastrophizing your own death. You won't remember why you got in there in the first place. And some part of you is gonna like, I'm being an idiot. I'm so stupid. And the worst part about it is not what's happening now, but what you imagine might happen next. The ice bath has

• 34:10Speaker 03

  a different relationship to stress and time than anything else you've done. You get on the treadmill and you're like, oh, that's not so bad. And then five minutes later, you're like, this is hard. And then 10 minutes later, you feel like you're gonna die. You get into the sauna and you're like, hey, this is pretty good. This feels good. And then 20 minutes later, you're like, I gotta get out of here. Right. With the ice bath, it's the opposite. The worst part is probably the first 15 seconds Absolutely. Before you even get in the ice bath. And then you're just, you're living in anticipatory anxiety, which is a Viktor Frankl term. Then that's first 30 seconds of abject panic. It feels like your heart is racing. Your liver has released gluc- or glycogen into your bloodstream to raise your glucose level in case your muscles need it to fight or run, you know?

• 34:53Speaker 03

  30 seconds later, 45 seconds later. Now the dopamine and the norepinephrine and everything else has taken over and your brain is starting to feel good about it. The dive reflex takes over from the gasp reflex. The dive reflex is the parasympathetic division of your central nervous system. This is the rest and digest. After a minute, when you're doing this right, you're going, what was I even worried about? Yes. Why was I so upset? I could stay in here another couple of minutes. If you're just starting out, you can get out as soon as you feel the urge to shiver. And it doesn't matter if it's 30 seconds or 15 seconds or five minutes. Cold enough to gasp, long enough to shiver. But for me, you know, I do this every day.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  I do it 33 degrees with chunks of ice floating in my morosko. I just do two, three minutes. There's no reason for me to do anything more. And then I'm like, geez, I don't have all day to sit around in my ice bath. I got things to do and I'll get out and I'll feel like Superman. There's nothing that can bother me the rest of the day because I've already trained my nervous system to deal with all of the catastrophes in my imagination that I will invent for myself that, okay, I've processed them and I don't have to worry about them anymore.

• 36:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, there's one area I have to disagree with Tom here is the hardest part is not the first 15 seconds. It is actually before the first 15 seconds for me.

• 36:18Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 36:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I recognize this finally with my daughter who's 12, but the first time she got into, we have a Morozko as well, and I don't get a free one from Tom or anything like that. Like I'm a paying customer, but I brought him here not because he runs a great company, makes these great ice baths, because I for a decade was doing it without a at-home ice bath system. I had a bathtub and I would go grab 70 to 100 pounds of ice from my local convenience store. And there was one place I lived where my refrigerator would make enough ice where I could just set it aside and I was making my own. So I was ice bathing for free. And so I had no excuse, except there's this wall of resistance. And I noticed it

• 37:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with my daughter the very first time she wanted to get into it. And the reason she wanted to get into it, I said, hey, I'll do your homework for you today if you do two minutes in the ice bath. And she, because I'm trying to teach her to do difficult things,

• 37:13Speaker 03

  right? I hope you didn't promise her a grade.

• 37:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, she's unschooled, so I'm the grader as well. And so she was like, okay, I'll do it. And then before she even stepped in, it was like there was this wall she couldn't get through. And as soon as I saw that, and I think this is a metaphor TK, for any resistance we have in our lives, there's always going to be this wall. It's sitting down to write the book you've always wanted to write, which for me is actually the answer to this question here, a previously uncomfortable activity that you now regularly do with ease. Besides ice, it's writing and reading. I'm really dyslexic. And so I just thought reading was really difficult. I don't know how people do this all the time. And so like I didn't want to do it. I had the resistance. And with writing, it was the same thing. I aspired

• 37:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  to write every day, but I didn't do it because this wall of resistance. And so I showed my daughter Ella. You just have to step through that wall. You look at the wall like it's right there and you step through it. And then the second most difficult part is those first 15 seconds, because it's that, that shock. And the first time she got in, 14 seconds was all she could do.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  It's great.

• 38:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And she gets out and she's like, is that okay? I'm like, it's fine. I'm not gonna do your homework for you, but it's great that you tried it. Good job. And she's like, but can you do some of it? I'll do all of it if you get back in there for two minutes. So she's like, okay. And then she gets in there and she stays in for a full two minutes because it's 90% psychological. And when she gets out, you know what she said to me? She looks up and she goes, oh my God, I feel so alive. And that was the moment I realized like, that's how I feel when I get out. I'm a hoop and a holler. My, my, my neighbors are like, what the hell is wrong with this guy? But it's all because that wall of resistance. TK, maybe you can talk a little bit about resistance in this context.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  The ice bath revival.

• 39:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'm baptized every morning.

• 39:07Speaker 02

  You're making me think of, of Steven Pressfield's observation, resistance with the capital R, where he says, the more related something is to your life calling or your spiritual evolution, the greater amount of resistance you will feel. Reminds me of the old saying, another level, another devil, right? So if you just want to sit around and do nothing, no challenges whatsoever. If you just want to drown yourself in superficiality, you've got all the time in the world, the whole universe supports you, but make up your mind you're gonna read, make up your mind you're gonna start writing, make up your mind you're gonna do something hard, then all of a sudden you can think of everything else that you need to do. Oh, I guess I better call Aunt Suzie. It's been two months. You didn't care about Aunt Suzie until you have something that you need to do. Now she's all

• 39:49Speaker 02

  important, right? And so when you learn to see that resistance, you know, and through a, through a kind of metaphorical lens, there's this excellent little book called Uncle Ramsey's Little Book of Demons. And the premise of the book is that one of the reasons why our brains have evolved to become so complex is not because we're tool-using creatures, but rather because we, we see things in terms of relationships and relationships. Relationships are so complex, they demand more of our minds. And he says that ancient cultures had an advantage when they saw everything in terms of like, the fire is alive, the water is alive, there's a spirit behind every rock. There's some usefulness to seeing things that way. And I think it can be useful to personify our problems in certain ways.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  When you see that resistance, think of that as a demon that knows how beautiful and brilliant you're going to become on the other side of doing that hard thing. And it's scared as hell and it wants to stop you. So it will feed you any lie it thinks it can get you to believe because it knows that it's doomed if you become yourself.

• 40:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I'll talk about some of the lies that I feel with the resistance. Some of them seem real, like I'm going to die, right? But then it's just that I said out loud, like, I know I'm not going to die. I've done this before, right? The other lie is I'll get to it later or I'll just do twice as long tomorrow, right? And, and so no matter, and that can be with writing. It's like, oh, I didn't write today. I want to write for an hour a day. I'll just do two hours tomorrow. Ah, you know what? Instead of doing a three minute ice bath, I'll do six minutes tomorrow. And it's like, okay, I, it's a, it's a little micro lie. It's this type of procrastination that says, right now isn't good enough. And that's a fascinating lie, which actually ties into some of the answers from our audience here.

• 41:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What's a previously uncomfortable activity that you now regularly do with ease? TK, before we get to our pithy answers, let's hear what Bethany, Alexis, Janie, and several others had to say, this is specifically Bethany here, but a bunch of people said, public speaking. That's a big one, right? Naturally, I'm a shy person, Bethany says, but with a lot of practice and passion for what I'm saying, I enjoy it and it's become a big part of my career. I know that I make a joke whenever, we've done 11 tours now and there are three things I hate. It's crowds, travel and public speaking. And yet-

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Sounds like a career.

• 42:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It's like, well, what do I keep doing? I don't actually hate it. I feel that resistance with those things. It's not naturally pulling me in, just like the ice bath doesn't naturally pull me in, but the reward is on the other side of that drudgery.

• 42:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Christina says, embracing the quiet. I'm extremely extroverted and felt uncomfortable with awkward silence. Once I stopped trying to fill the silence, I actually felt peace. Yeah, I think the peace is buried underneath the clutter. Sometimes that's physical clutter. Sometimes it's mental or emotional clutter. Sometimes it's spiritual clutter, health clutter, whatever kind of clutter you want to call it. There is peace that's already there. It's pre-existing. It's sort of the default state. Tom, where do you find peace?

• 42:56Speaker 03

  The ice bath is what works for me because nothing brings me to my present moment like the cold water.

• 43:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 43:03Speaker 03

  I have the regrets or the shame from the past. I have the anxieties about the future. And I might be at a point where I'm like, well, that's it. This whole ice bath thing, it's never going to work. I'll get into the ice bath. I'll spend my two, three minutes and I'll come out with six new ideas. And I'll say, you know, I'm probably going to quit this whole ice bath business. But before I do, I'm just going to try this one thing over here. And maybe I'll try that one thing over there and we'll just see how this works out. Every single, I shouldn't say every day. I have good days and I have dark moments. Every single dark moment, I now know I got to get in the ice bath. I have to reset my thinking. My brain is like preoccupied with the wrong things, these things that aren't going to help me.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  And I think it's again, sometimes we're not aware of the things we do to defend ourselves. It's not pithy and I'm going to indulge you with another anecdote. I was doing this workshop of sustainable engineering faculty and we all are talking about, you know, the environment and we're talking about education and how important these things are. And I sensed the resistance in the workshop because the faculty weren't making specific commitments to what they were going to do. And I said, well, hang on. Here's what I want to know. What is so important to you that you would be willing to risk public humiliation for it? We went around in a circle and they all said, nothing. They didn't care. You know, they cared about the environment. They cared about scholarship.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  They cared about teaching, but not one of them said, I will go to Washington DC. I will meet with my elected official. I will do whatever the thing was that was sort of on the chalkboard. I will risk public humiliation for this thing that I care so much about. What a powerful question. Public humiliation is this idea of public speaking. And we were talking about writing. I think a lot of people, public speaking is way up at the top, but a lot of people hesitate before they will write anything because they feel like they're going to be graded. It's a permanent record. Somebody's going to read it. And so fear is, this is a quote of somebody, "Fear is at the heart of all bad writing." And that's probably Stephen King or somebody who said that. I didn't make it up.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  When we go to write, we're afraid that we'll be judged and humiliated for the things that we put out there. This is why some people can write to themselves, but they can't publish it. You've got to have this attitude. Or here's what works for me. Whatever I write is wrong. Whatever I say is wrong. My goal is to be less wrong. Now, I explain this to my students and it's too frightening. But I got that from Elon Musk. This is like a startup kind of entrepreneurship mentality. We're all wrong and wrong in the sense that people are going to attack us for whatever they feel like. Someone's going to come after me on Twitter and they're just going to say whatever they want. If I adopt this mentality that it's all wrong and I just want to make it incrementally less wrong along the way, then that gets me a little bit through that resistance

• 45:59Speaker 03

  and that fear of humiliation says, "The hell with it. I'm going to put it out there. I don't feel proud of it in this moment, but I'm never going to be less wrong about it if I don't get the practice of publishing, reflecting. I'm going to listen to this podcast and I'm going to hate 80% of everything that I said. And then the next one, I only hate 75."

• 46:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This is like the opposite of self-righteousness. This is like being self-grounded in a way. And it's not like a false sense of humility, but which is sort of the opposite of hubris, but it is just recognizing that I'm going to be wrong at some point. How about you listeners? What's a previously uncomfortable activity that you now regularly do with ease? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or over there in the Patreon community chat, which you can join the community chat for free, by the way. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. What's a previously uncomfortable activity that you now regularly do with ease?

• 47:01Speaker 02

  The hardest way isn't necessarily the healthy way. So on a previous episode, we talked about the way in which prices can be gamified. And we began with the observation that usually the more valuable something is, the more expensive it is. But you can use that fact to manipulate people by pricing something artificially high to create the appearance of value where there is none. And a similar thing can happen with difficulty. Usually, the more important a goal is, the more it's going to require some sacrifice, some trade offs, some discipline. But that can also get tricky because that can fool you into thinking that if something is hard, it's intrinsically valuable, it's worth doing. And what I find is when I work with my clutter counseling clients and there's some habit

• 47:44Speaker 02

  they want to break or some new thing that they want to do, I want to start working out, I want to eat healthier. One of the most effective ways is to find an easy starting point. What's the easiest way for us to take that first step so that we can then build some momentum and rely on the power of momentum to deal with the difficult stuff? But what often happens is there's this feeling that comes up, but if I allow myself to permission to start easy, then isn't that cheating? Isn't that disrespecting the thing I say that I'm passionate about? And there's that conditioning that we have to undo. So a corollary maxim I have for this is sometimes finding the easy way out is the best way to find, I mean, sometimes finding the easy way out is the best way to, shoot, I forgot this thought now. What is it?

• 48:31Speaker 02

  Sometimes the easy way out is the best way in. Right? It's saying, you know what? I only have to do this for 30 days. I only have to do this for 30 minutes. And knowing that I have an exit strategy before I begin gives me the power to begin. And so my difficult thing is social events. I'm so strongly introverted, I'm gasping for air within 30 seconds of being around 10 or more people. But I give myself permission, I say, I permit myself to leave in 15 minutes. And if I have to be there for an hour, I give myself the permission to take a break every 15 minutes where I go outside and be alone for two minutes and then I come back in. That's my easy way in. And by identifying that, I mean, that's my easy way out. And by identifying that easy way out. It makes it, it makes it easy for me to do something that's usually difficult to start.

• 49:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I do that bargaining with myself whenever I get into the ice bath. I'm just gonna do 60 seconds. Just one minute. And I never just do one minute, but like, it's always the bargain. And the same thing with writing is, uh, it's like the inverse version of one day at a time is like, I'll give myself permission to not do this tomorrow. And so I have to do it today, but I'll give myself permission to not do it tomorrow. But then tomorrow comes and I just pull that same rule forward.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  I love this one, where you say, instead of procrastinating, I'll do twice as much tomorrow. You say, you know what? I'm gonna take tomorrow off. But for right now, I'm really gonna get into this thing. And you, you're lying to yourself, but you're turning the lie around. And then tomorrow comes, you're like, well, yesterday wasn't so bad, you know? Maybe I'll take next month off, or whatever it is you gotta do to sit down and start creating.

• 50:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 50:03Speaker 03

  That's wonderful. I'm gonna use it.

• 50:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So it's like one day at a time, but it's tomorrow. I'll, I'll not do this tomorrow. And that's been really helpful for me, which brings me to, my pithy answer is discomfort is the cost of growth. And so sometimes in order to grow, or in order to heal even, it's uncomfortable, right? We do these uncomfortable things. Be weary of any pleasure that is unearned.

• 50:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Candy's really pleasurable, right? It's like, oh yeah, this tastes really good. There's no nutritional value to it. There's nothing wrong with a piece of candy, but if my diet consists primarily of candy, then I will get sick. But existentially, we're, we're, we're eating candy all the time on our phones. You know, scrolling is the new smoking, right? And so we're just, we're just going through it and I'm overdosing on empty calories. And spiritually, I think we're doing that as well. We're, we're opting out of the difficult things because the easy things are so enticing. They're so pleasurable, but they're unearned. My daughter yelling after two minutes when she gets out of there and says, "Oh my God, I feel so alive."

• 51:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's earned. She earned that through the discomfort. And there was a particular kind of growth there because it showed her she could do a thing that two minutes ago felt entirely impossible to her. All right, that's almost the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to. Also, I have a bunch of ice bath questions for you.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I'm here all day.

• 51:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, we have a segment called Right Here, Right Now, where we talk about one or two, or I have three things today that is going on in the life of the minimalists. So the first one is, this is the last episode of the year. Comes out on December 29th, and I already alluded to it. Every year, at the end of the year, I think this is my 15th year, I've put out my top 10 list. You can find it over at theminimalists.com/sound and tune into the very end of this episode for my favorite song from my favorite album of 2025. Also, our next fans, our Friday afternoon minimalist Zoom is this Friday, January 2nd. Ryan Nicodemus will be there. He was with us on the last one as well. How amazing was that, TK?

• 52:18Speaker 02

  So much fun. It's so good to have him. I know we miss having him around here, but this is one of the ways that we get a little bit of Nicodemus' time every single month.

• 52:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 52:28Speaker 02

  And just the camaraderie is so beautiful.

• 52:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, so join me and TK and Nicodemus. Savvy D will be there, Professor Sean as well. If you want the details, it's theminimalists.com/zoom. Have a Zoom call with the minimalist will be there for an hour. You can turn your camera on, hop on camera with us and have a conversation. Or if you just want to be a fly on the wall and watch the conversation, you can do that as well. And finally, speaking of writing, I've been teaching a writing class for 13 years now. It's called How to Write Better. I've written four bestselling books. I've written five books, but four of them were bestsellers. And I've been teaching this class with Professor Sean for, well, he's been doing it with me for over a decade now. And

• 53:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  we do it once or twice a year. And the next time I'm doing it is start your year right with learning how to write better. Develop that writing habit. You've been wanting to write that book. You've been wanting to start that blog. You've been wanting to improve your business emails. I have everyone from High school students to medical doctors take this class. I've taught thousands of people. You can find a bunch of testimonials over there. And more information about the course at howtowritebetter.org. The enrollment for this course opens on January 5th, 72 hours only. And we limit this to 100 students. It's just not sustainable beyond that. So 72 hours only, January 5th, howtowritebetter.org. If you're interested in improving, improving your writing in the new year.

• 53:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Much more coming up, but first here is a quick minimalist tip or insight from one of our listeners.

• 54:00Speaker 05

  Hi, minimalists and fellow podcast listeners. My name is Candice, living in the United States, originally raised and spent most of my life in South Africa. I teach yoga and lead retreats and also work as a declutter coach for many, many clients in my life coaching business as well. And have been listening to your podcast for as long as I can remember. I feel that even with all the knowledge that I've had, the fortune in my life to acquire and that I share, I still learn something new from your podcast every week. I think you both have so much to offer the world and I feel that the platform that you created to share insights, knowledge, wisdom with the world and with your listeners is just absolutely phenomenal. I did want to send this message just to say that your podcast you did on nonsense with, I think it was Kapil Gupta.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  And I often hear you, both you Joshua and TK speak about how the conversations you've had around hugging. And it really, to me, as I was listening to that podcast, just sounded like he was really angry and just needed a hug from the minimalists. I'm well aware that assumption can often lead to error and mistakes. So I'm assuming based on the tone and listening, but in the many, many, many podcasts, hundreds of podcasts that I've listened to by the minimalists, I have never felt that anyone has been angry. And he sounded extremely angry. And for somebody that doesn't want to take on perhaps ideologies or anything like that in the world and is literally calling everything nonsense. It didn't come across that he believed what he was saying because he just sounded like he needed a hug. So I wanted to share that he was probably the first guest ever that I felt didn't really want to be interviewed or take part in a podcast.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  And I thought the way that both of you handled that, you Joshua and TK was, was done really well. Thank you if you ever were to to see him again. I think the medicine he needs is just a nice big hug from the minimalist. So I just wanted to share that and thank you for all that you do. I think that you, as I've said, the insights and wisdom that you share and how honest and authentic this podcast is really is medicine in itself. And I often requote and I write the minimalist and I share. I also forward your episodes to many of my own clients to WhatsApp group each week. And thank you for all that you do.

• 56:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, this is so interesting to me. I love this comment from Candace because I love Kapil. I was actually talking to him this weekend. He was helping me with something and I don't know if you know who Kapil Gupta is. He's like my favorite living philosopher. But he can come off as quite abrasive at first. I say he's like the Dao De Ching, but delivered through a solid off shotgun. And and that sort of describes who Kapil Gupta is. He's a no nonsense kind of guy. I mean, quite literally, that's the episode was about. But TK, you you've said that that was your favorite episode that you've done on the show. So I'm wondering, he didn't come off as angry to me, but I could see why someone might think that. But what did you think?

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Well, first, I think for Kapil to talk about philosophy is a kind of hug for him. I think he was getting all of the hugs he needed out of that conversation because it was clear that he wanted to be there. He was fully engaged and he even reached out to us after that episode because he had some more things that he wanted to say. When you're talking to someone who feels like, you know, they're just looking at their watch, they they're ready to get out of the room. I'm thinking to myself, oh, this is trouble. But when you're talking with someone that's fully engaged, I'm like, yeah, conversation, philosophical reflection, that is his hug. But this reminds me of a conversation we're having before the camera started rolling.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  And a very interesting insight that a professor raised here, we were talking about Jokic, the basketball player who is considered to be the best basketball player in the game by many today. He's, you know, the reigning MVP. Is he the reigning MVP?

• 57:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, but he's three out of the last five years.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, three out of the last five years and always one of the top two candidates for the MVP award. And one of the funny Things about Jokic is that he looks like basketball is just a job for him. He looks like he doesn't enjoy it, doesn't really care about the lifestyle. And that's, that's kind of funny because people that are in the NBA love being in the NBA. They, they seem like they love the lifestyle. Sometimes they get caught up in the lifestyle and it compromises their skillset.

• 58:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or they seem like they love basketball. Famously, Michael Jordan had a condition in his contract.

• 58:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That he could see a basketball game on the side of the street. And he could pull his car over and just start playing with whoever is there. You can't do that if you're a regular NBA player. But he loved to play basketball so much and it seems, it at least feels like Jokic.

• 58:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Serbian is the opposite of that.

• 58:29Speaker 02

  Seems like he's so unhappy. Uh, I remember when they, when they won the championship and they had the parade. He just looked like that thing couldn't end fast enough and he's just ready to get home to his family and back to normal life. Look, it's, it's plumbing to him. I did my job. This is how I provide for my family. And you said something interesting because we were talking about him. Like he's this eccentric individual. And what did you have to say about that?

• 58:51Speaker 03

  You and I didn't grow up in Serbia. We didn't grow up in Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, or any of those. And there is a culture that came out of, I don't know him. I've never talked to him, but uh, generally speaking. Came out of the people his age, the boys his age that grew up, that says, you cannot show emotion. That's showing weakness. That makes you vulnerable in a time of war. It may be that him at his most dispassionate, at his most stoic reflects the deepest caring. Because if he didn't care, he could joke and he could laugh and we would misinterpret this. Now again, I don't, I don't know him. But I'm saying it's possible that these cultural expectations are discordant. What he communicates as deep passion, right? We communicate as indifference.

• 59:36Speaker 03

  And his indifference might come out as what we would interpret as enthusiasm and we get it all wrong. And, and I don't know that that's a fact, but I know that different, the expression of those emotions is culturally trained. Yeah, somebody can be an extrovert or an introvert, but in one culture, that'll be way over the top. And in another culture, they might think, you know, extraversion is different than the way we would approach it in the United States.

• 1:00:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, that's so good. So, so good. If you have a comment for us, send it to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Thank you, Candace. Up next, page two and page three. We've got a lot more to talk about, but first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 1:00:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that's the first 38% of episode 520. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition with Dr. Seeger, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, how might ice baths be beneficial for women? What are your favorite simple eating tips? What is green light therapy? And how is it beneficial for people who are suffering from migraines? Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives, more than a decade, all the way back to our very first episode. Big thanks to Dr.

• 1:01:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Thomas P. Seeger for joining us today. You can check out his book, Uncommon Cold. We'll also put a link to his website, marascoforge.com, in the show notes. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D., and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Embrace the coal and touch grass.

• 1:01:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 1:01:49Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'd be fine without it.