The Sevan Podcast - #554 - Dr. Trevor Kashey Pt. 2

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

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Starting point is 00:00:19 Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Normally I say, bam, we're live, but I'm going to switch it to quiet on the set. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:34 Action. That really just reminds me of a Chris Farley, I think, in the Adam Sandler movie. Shoot. Billy Madison or something like that. It goes, no yelling on the bus i always thought you were really really smart but since you're quoting movies and that's what athletes do all the time now i think you're really smart and an athlete at one time i could lift heavy
Starting point is 00:00:59 things over my head and now and pick them up off the ground and now uh i'd still probably do okay all right yeah do you do you have a favorite method do you have a favorite lift in the gym do you have a favorite uh well more specifically do you have a favorite uh lift from ground to overhead are you are you a sandbag strongman type or are you a Olympic lifter, a clean and jerk snatch type? At one point, at one point I had a, an amateur American log record. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 00:01:40 I had, yeah. So I've, I've hit, I hit like a. That's the strongman shit, right? That's the one where you put your hands in the holes and like. Yeah. That big crazy looking tube yeah yeah hit the mid threes i think it hit like a 347 or something like that because the weight of the log uh ground to overhead uh phd in um biochemistry did you view yourself as a laboratory or do you view yourself as a laboratory? At one point, almost exclusively, yes. And as you get older, you view yourself more as a, just a subject to sustain some, a petri dish to sustain as opposed to one to experiment on.
Starting point is 00:02:21 Excellent question. I realized quickly that when you try and run experiments on yourself, you get severely limited on how many you can run. Yeah. And what you run them for and how useful you can make them for other people. Okay. And as other people started to take higher priority in my life, experimenting on myself turned into a smaller and smaller priority. Something as simple as changing your diet would make you moody and less lovable from your wife and kids. the full gamut from staying up three days in a row to trying a bunch of drugs to doing this sort of exercise training regimen to any, any number of things, you name it. I've probably tried it
Starting point is 00:03:14 or tried to integrate it in some sort of ergonomic and or ergogenic way. In particular, I tend to shy away from stuff that makes you dumber or try to say that again ergogenic weight what's that mean the ergogenic like like increases your performance okay uh i don't want you to be surprised what i'm about to show you but there's a guy back here did you see him yes mr beaver apparently yes is C. Beaver. And if you start swinging big words around like ergogenic, he will look them up and definitions will pop up on the screen and we will get to the bottom of any squirrely shit you try to pull off. I love it. Hopefully it corrects me and I get something wrong. See, there's one right there.
Starting point is 00:03:58 Intended to enhance physical performance. I believe that's exactly what you said. Stamina and recovery. believe that's exactly what you said stamina and recovery uh uh cashy what inspired you i i did a little um i can't remember who it was if it was michelangelo or da vinci or one of those guys or maybe it was dolly but one of those guys in a previous life when i was was into drawing i think he experimented where he would sleep every 15 minutes for four hours do you do you know what i'm referencing my chance and he tried to sustain that uh so i and when you say that it sounds like hey that's no big deal until you start doing the math you're like oh shit that's only like an hour
Starting point is 00:04:36 and 15 minutes of sleep yeah i want to say that i agree with somebody like da vinci pulling off a polyphasic sleep schedule polyphasic there we go uh it is it do you remember who you were in in spot uh for da vinci's possible adoption of this process claudio stampi writes in this 1992 book why we nap one of his secrets or so it has been claimed was a unique sleep formula he would sleep 15 minutes every four hours for a daily total of 1.5 hours like fucking nuts so i could see something like that happening for like a few weeks uh like at the end of my doctoral degree when i just had a lot of stupid stuff going on at the same time i think maybe like the last six weeks i actually slept like every other day wow but not as an experiment, but out of crunch time. Yeah. Yeah. Just like I had a lot of things to grade. I had a lot of experiments to run. I had
Starting point is 00:05:34 just done America's strongest man record breakers things. So I could put training to the side and I just had a big pile of stimulants and I guess the opposite of muscled my way through until I got those things completed. I exaggerate with six weeks, probably closer to three. I actually met my now wife during that phase. She, wow. I was sleeping on a park bench and she was, she was something like that. Yes. I, I re actually, she remembers meeting me and I hardly remember meeting her at all. So it turns into a really silly story that she ends up telling. Cause like she got me on 40 plus hours of zero sleep. She, she, she saw the, the wounded gazelle. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:06:22 Hawaiian shirt, just full on bush beard. Yeah. It's valuable in two ways. He transmits information, but we live in an era where people don't know how to think logically. They don't understand things like correlation versus fact, or they don't know how to do proper risk assessment, or they don't understand – they don't put things in relativity or contextualize. And one other thing, if you go through any of these these videos they'll hit you on all these different levels so you may not care on whether smoking really does cause cancer or not but in his one of his videos he may slip in there that one percent of all the people in the world, and I'm just making this up, I don't know if I have the numbers exactly right, get lung cancer. And yet it's 2% of all the people who smoke who get lung cancer. And so all of a sudden there, you're getting a lesson on relativity and
Starting point is 00:07:37 things that are contextualized. And if you listen very carefully, you'll hear him explore the difference between absolute statistics and relative statistics or relative numbers. And so people think the doctors would tell you, well, then you have 100% more chance of getting cancer if you smoke, but that's only relative to that 1%. And they never tell you that shit. And those are the types of things that, um, Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit would talk about ad nauseum. And they're so easy. Could you pull up his YouTube page, Mr. Beaver? This is such a great website. How are you doing this, by the way? There's no way you're editing these, right? No, no. In the last few weeks, I started working with Warren Scott Simpson at Rafiti Media, and he has turned into a tremendous help with helping collate and give ideas and edit and put up and overall manage the channel that just started a couple of weeks ago in earnest in any case.
Starting point is 00:08:34 Warren Scott Simpson, he has three names. So one Scott Simpson, sorry. Rafiti Media. media. Um, it is, uh, and does he, when he makes these videos, does he tell you ahead of time? Hey, um, does he find a bit like, like the lady with her giant boobs pushed up? Does he say, does he also say, Hey, can you talk about this? Does he, does he come up with ideas on that level? Or does he, you say, Hey, I'm going to address what this lady's saying. And then you edit it, make it cool. Excellent question. So in the early days of our tenure, which I still exist in, I lean on him and his team heavily for creative ideas as far as like where do I narrow the scope of the content I make?
Starting point is 00:09:20 Because I have some deficiencies there as far as like, what do I make a video on? What matters more? And his team really does a very good job of determining like this sort of video makes the most sense at this time, given the sort of stuff you talk about. So he gives a general direction on where to go. And then he gives me constraints. And then I try and work within those constraints to maintain some level of creativity. And then we maintain some tension as I have such amateurish sort of skills right now. I lean on him a little more for the creative
Starting point is 00:09:59 part. Although as time goes on, he will have looser and looser constraints. And I will give myself more and more autonomy as far as what to make the content on. And in the context of like the boobs pushed up video, I got a generic recommendation. And then a TikTok user on my team actually scours TikTok and says, hey, why don't you look at this? scours TikTok and says, hey, why don't you look at this? So that turned into a full-blown team effort, those sorts of videos where I do commentary on other people giving advice, et cetera. Rafiti will give the suggestion of, hey, make some comments on other people giving advice. And then a person like a TikTok user on our team will then scour TikTok and find a large group of videos for me to respond to. And some of them essentially make the cut. There are a few other people who are doing that, who are really big in the field. And they are, in the gentlest terms, fucking assholes. They're like mean to people when they critique them and they've made a they've made
Starting point is 00:11:05 they have a huge following doing that yeah you don't do that is that hard to do is that hard to do like when you're like you're actually like when someone's like um yes you just eat celery for 15 days you're like you're not like hey dipshit that won't work you're like well let's talk about that and like you actually like explore what it would happen to you if you eat celery for 15 days and you're actually – you have fun with it. Did you have – is there someone like, hey, don't be a dick. That role is already taken, Dr. Cashy. So we actually had an interesting conversation about this because the sort of – I'll just call it polarizing content. It does get a little bit more attention.
Starting point is 00:11:42 Yes. The boobs work though. The only reason why – I watched a lot of your content, but I watched yes and it the boobs work though the only reason why i watched a lot of your content but i watched that one for the boobs i will tell you fair enough and i and i do get a little excited there i do like to to get excited during the videos sometimes i sing and dance and yell although i i do it and focus on more of the inane things rather than the the more pedantic. So I care more about the big picture. And I have really had very little desire to talk shit really much at all. I have generic concerns,
Starting point is 00:12:16 like if this looks dangerous, I might say this looks dangerous. Although I give due respect insofar as I assess the language and the behavior more than I assess the person. So if somebody says something concerning, I'd say this is a concern versus this person causes problems. Right. I worked at a home for disabled adults for five years. I started working there, low man on the totem pole, making $7 an hour, finished running the place with 20 people working for me, but stayed barefoot the entire five years. And that was the training I received. That was the most legitimate training I received.
Starting point is 00:12:54 Address behaviors, not the people. Yeah, yeah. And I consider it probably the defining, at least the I I define it, the defining feature of respect to me, respect, respect means separating the person from from the behavior. And so if you want to talk about self-respect, same thing, it means that I assess I assess the outcome instead of assessing the person. That's the origin of all my fights with my wife when we fight. It's because we're talking and there's miscommunication and I get mad at her instead of staying focused on the communication. Real easy to do. Some dorks might call it stimulus generalization if you want to shoot that into your Google.
Starting point is 00:13:38 And the way that that language sort of gets loaded, the the economy of language sort of dictates that we lump things together. And even though it saves energy for you right now, it ends up layering sort of irritation and problems even in the short term, although definitely in the long term. Stimulus generalization is the ability to behave in a new situation in a way that has been learned in other similar situations. The problem is how to learn which aspects of the learning situation should be generalized. Wow. I learned one the other day. I had a guy on, Dale Saran, brilliant guy. He led the class action suit against the United States military when they were forcing the brave men and women who are soldiers of the U.S. government's military to take the anthrax vaccine.
Starting point is 00:14:33 And now he's doing a class action suit to help the guys who are being forced to take the COVID vaccine. And he taught me the word edification. But I can't remember what it means. But I was saying something. He goes, oh, you're talking about edification. Do you know what that word means? Cashy? So something to the effect of like you use it to bolster something else, typically in the context of something academic, although you can make it, you can generalize it to other things as well. So if I could,
Starting point is 00:15:01 I could edify you, for instance, by – Oh, wait. I don't think that's the right word. Maybe I'm saying the word wrong. Shit. And by the way, those of you who think it's fun coming on this podcast, imagine Dr. Cashy just wakes up and I'm harassing his intellect already. 7.12 a.m. Oh, I love it.
Starting point is 00:15:22 Thank you so much for having me on, by the way. Dude, you're awesome you are you are a uh an incredible resource uh for humanity and and it's only it's only growing that means a lot man that means a lot i when i saw the the title you had for this video i saw it maybe like a week ago i think i busted a tear uh i think you labeled it like a damn good friend or something like that. It caught me at the right moment because I think maybe you saw the Instagram video I put up where I talk about it. I was just yelling at Caleb yesterday. Dude, what the fuck? How about putting a little creativity into the fucking titles of these videos? Now he heard that and it throws everything I said out the door because he came up with that title well okay i was yelling at him for shitty titles and now fucking 10 hours later you're saying what a great title well it affected it affected me on a personal level whether it affected anybody else i think you can determine using other tools although it got me
Starting point is 00:16:21 at the right time and you know a couple of days after I made some other video, getting essentially getting sick of all the little, well, strong word, just seeing a lot of just negativity and trash talking. And these five things will make you depressed. These five things are like, how about we talk about what it looks like to have a damn good friend? Oh, I like that. So it actually, so I, he may have referenced a short video I had made discussing the topic. You made a video on what it means to be a good friend?
Starting point is 00:16:49 Yeah. I haven't seen that one. I put an Instagram short up. I'll throw something out there. Sure. Setting your friend free. Letting your friend be free in the relationship. Meaning you and I have a date to go get a cup of coffee
Starting point is 00:17:11 and you call me and say, hey, I can't make it. And I give you no guilt trip. Oh, no problem, dude. I'm always here for you. Set them free. But no pressure on the relationship. Do you ask or tell? About? Well, tell me why you said that. But no stress, no pressure on the relationship. Do you ask or tell?
Starting point is 00:17:26 About? Well, tell me why you said that. Tell you why I said what? Yeah. Why did you bring up the set your friend free in the relationship thing? Oh, I was just thinking of five things. So when you said when you said you made a video about five things that make a good friend, I have this friend, Adrian Bosman, and I always loved his friendship because it was so free. It was like there was never there's never any pressure. It's like. I show up late, I show up early, I show up to his house, it's just honest, there's just integrity in it, there's there's never any like you can cancel.
Starting point is 00:18:00 There's it's never like there's no pressure. cancel there's it's never like there's no pressure understood understood and and that and that definitely classifies that sort of friend so give me give me a second here and now that i found the maybe miss maybe mr beaver can find it is it it's on your instagram yes yeah yes let me see here. Where do you live, Dr. Cashier? Are you in Palm Springs? Negative.
Starting point is 00:18:29 I live in Bee Cave. Let's see. I'll put this here. I think that does it. I live in Bee Cave. So I have an Austin zip code. So I pay all the taxes and get none of the benefits. Bee Cave is a town outside of Austin?
Starting point is 00:18:48 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I think I stuck the video in the chat. When did you move to Austin? Oh, gosh. I want to say like 2019 maybe. Okay okay so you were there last time we talked yes sir yeah wow you got out early and where were you in california before no no where were you
Starting point is 00:19:17 i lived in ohio a few years before that then florida a few years before that then azerbaijan a while before that right Right. And then Arizona. You were working with the wrestling team, the Olympic wrestling team in Azerbaijan, right? Yeah, quite a few fight sports there, although they most certainly care about wrestlers the most, in my experience. Right. Okay, sorry, Beaver. Let's see. Let's see if this is going to be good.
Starting point is 00:19:38 I have a video of yours I can't wait to show everybody. Oh, dear. It's so good. I've ways to know. You you got a damn good friend their way to say good things about you behind your back period two opposite to that they stab you in the front you got something fishy going on they bring it up and they do it because they care three they for you to get better other people cheer you on but a good friend brings it on when you meet up you had better bring something new to the table because they people cheer you on, but a good friend brings it on. When you meet up, you had better bring something new to the table because they did. Four, you can talk to them about
Starting point is 00:20:10 anything and you talk about what you've learned, how to win from it, and where to aim next. Five, when you succeed, they back you. And to them, it's like a win in its own way. Good friends get you some. Dr. Cash is here with five ways to know you got uh stab you in the front uh say good things behind your back yeah you can talk to him about anything oh now i'm out of order uh they bring it every when they come to the conversation they bring bring it, bring something new, bring something fresh. I really liked that. What was five? What was five?
Starting point is 00:20:52 Five. When, when you do well, they also feel good because you do well. Yes. Your books are number one seller and they're happy for you. They're not jealous. Correct. Yes. Yes yes yes yeah having friends that inspire you is cool yes so i take a i take more of like a samuel johnson style approach to friendship you know slightly more slightly more aristotelian more in the samuel johnson area where he like he he says something to the effect of uh a friendship should be in a constant state of repair. You know, Gandhi said that you shouldn't have friends because what friends really are are people who cause you to compromise your morality. So funny, funny you say that.
Starting point is 00:21:43 Through loyalty. And I'm guilty as fuck of that. Yeah. Funny you say that. loyalty and and i'm guilty as fuck of that yeah funny you say that i typically give that label to family right some great videos on that some great videos on that yeah just people that that have a license to to treat you poorly and you feel okay with it because family because blood whatever so the the terminological issue matters of if if you define friend in this way well then yes friends would definitely hurt you more than help you. And if you define friend insofar as they make you better, you have aligned goals, they call you out when you do something silly and they want you to get better. Those sorts of things, if a person effectively forces you to compromise your morality, then that might put them outside of the realm of friend, although you might have a friendly relationship with them.
Starting point is 00:22:31 Right. There was – before I was married – it's funny how everything changes when you get married. Yeah. I didn't even – I never wanted to to get married i never wanted to have kids and then and then i had a kid and the only the only time i ever thought about getting married is one time i was in a plane and there was crazy turbulence and i heard this voice in my head basically say hey you should have married hayley that was my girlfriend at the time of like 20 years who's now my wife and then finally we had we had a kid and then and then when she got
Starting point is 00:23:04 pregnant the second time with twins i was like hey we should get married in case one of us dies, that all of our shit just easily goes to the other person. Okay. But after we were married, I was so glad we got married. Something changed and intangible. I can't explain it. We went and got married in a courthouse uh and and i'm so freaking happy we got married yes if this this may have particularly large effects on i guess entrepreneurial types because entrepreneurs tend to have issues with commitment where i use commitment in a more
Starting point is 00:23:40 technical way i have serious issues with commitment i feel trapped by it yeah always have since i've been a little kid. Basically, when you actually commit yourself to your wife, for instance, look at all the other options in your life that just vanish and how much now free energy, cognitive load, whatever you want to call it,
Starting point is 00:23:55 you have to apply. I like load in there. I freed up some loads. Yes, correct. Yes, yes. Absolutely. And I can tell you that for me personally, like, you know how much energy I freed up when like I could just start ignoring other women?
Starting point is 00:24:10 Yes. Among other things. Yes. God, I wish you wouldn't have said that. That's almost too much for me to handle. You're so right. Just one of the many benefits of marriage, ignoring women. Yes.
Starting point is 00:24:23 And he doesn't mean ignoring them as people. He means ignoring, ignoring women. Yes. And he doesn't mean like ignoring them as people. He means ignoring them as women. Yeah. So the, you can almost address them more as people, not kind of, you can. So I can tell you, I have zero fear of asking for a woman's phone number now. Right. I just did it yesterday and she just gave it right up and I went, shit, I should have got married way earlier. Wow. I never thought of it like that. So then I get married, and I'm ecstatic. Yeah, I'm ecstatic, and I'm free.
Starting point is 00:24:58 And in that relationship, I'm swerving off course here. This wasn't where I was going. What course do we have here, Siobhan? Thank you. She spent the last, I don't know. Eight weeks ago, she stopped drinking coffee, and 30 days ago, she abstained from alcohol for 30 days. And those are the kinds of relationships I want to be in. I want to be – it's number three.
Starting point is 00:25:19 She's bringing it. She's bringing something new to the table that's uh and whether it's she's she's experimenting and it's a good um she's not asking me to do it but it's a great uh what's that call when you have good one uh example for me yeah insane example yes yes and and with this person so close to you their their attention affection approval matters and we learn very early on that sort of doing the sorts of things that if we want attention, affection, approval from people doing the things that they do tends to raise the probability of that occurring. And so she ends up turning into a model sort of on purpose and by accident. And it ends up working out really well when you have a friend or a relationship that you want their attention, affection, and approval, and you get that by
Starting point is 00:26:04 emulating them. And it just so happens they do healthy, affection, and approval, and you get that by emulating them, and it just so happens they do healthy, useful, productive things for you to emulate. And thoughtful, too. It goes the other way, too. I can remember being younger 20 years ago and her wanting to have a cigarette, and she would go outside and have it and not tell me
Starting point is 00:26:21 so that she wouldn't be like, hey, you want to have a cigarette with me? She knew it's not good for you. And she wouldn't, you know, she wouldn't selfishly. Yeah. Yeah. It does go both ways. There is a video, Caleb, I put it in the, um, in the private chat. There is a video where you put a stick in the gears there is a video where you put a stick in the gears and uh this is a amazing video because i think it's really advanced this is this is so advanced basically you're teaching people in this video how to meditate or maybe people who already know how to meditate see that you're pointing to meditation okay meditation is the any any form of observation okay so it's it's being present of me
Starting point is 00:27:11 i'm staring at the computer screen then being present of me staring at my headphones over there and then as you cultivate more and more um observation you start becoming aware of awareness and then and but but it can go the it can go the other way also i can be aware of awareness and then, but, but it can go, it can go the other way. Also, I can be aware of my noisy brain. Sure, sure. I'll take it. So we, we, I use different terms, although we agree in principle. Okay. Yes. Can you play the video, Caleb? But there's something you talk about in here that I think probably goes over so
Starting point is 00:27:41 many people's heads, but you, you point to the domicile, never use that word. I'm trying to show off but you you point to the domicile never use that word i'm trying to show off you point to god's domicile okay in this and uh and it's it's a it's a very tricky place to point to but please uh play mr beaver i talk about expanding the space between stimulus and response when you push the pause button on your thoughts, when you're upset about it, you can't understand how extreme the thoughts are. It is clear you are aroused or stimulated. These are the types of conversations that happen in you before you respond, right? So there's a stimulus, and then this conversation happens however fast before the response. This is the time in the spokes of that cognitive grinder, you inject
Starting point is 00:28:26 logic and reason, have a resilient response and foster a learnable moment, generally positive outcome. There it is. Sorry. I know it's breaking up. That stick is God. Okay. And by that, I mean, I drive by, you cut me off and I give you the middle finger. And if you respond without awareness with the finger back, you have now closed the opportunity to stare into the domicile of – Okay, understood. Of infinity, of the unknown. Call it whatever you want. It sounds like you referenced the opportunity cost of impulsive behavior.
Starting point is 00:29:09 Opportunity. Yes. Yes. Don't you think that when you make that video, that's a little advanced? Like people don't even – I've never heard it even explained the way you explained it. It's usually – you explain it so practically. I always hear it more like explained like as um from my god's domicile yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah show me god's domicile so i can use it to help like so agreed so although i i very much appreciate the god's domicile metaphor how in the ever-loving hell does that help anyone
Starting point is 00:29:43 right right Other than the fact that we agree. Right. And so the, the, the fact that we agree actually distracts from understanding, which I think contributes to a lot of the problems of making these sorts of tools practical. I don't think that most people even know how to, I think that people are just – most people are just being controlled by their thoughts anyway. They don't realize that they have options. Sure. They don't realize they don't have to flip the person off. They can separate – they can be aware of that as an option for a response.
Starting point is 00:30:24 Yes, and to your point, people only do what they get taught to do. of that as an option for a response. Yes. And to your point, people only do what they get taught to do. And sometimes they learn things by accident. Sometimes they learn things on purpose. Uh-oh, he froze. Did he freeze for you, Caleb? He did freeze for you. Okay.
Starting point is 00:30:45 His picture has been great up until then. They don't want us talking about mindfulness. Ice 392, mindfulness. Sorry, Dr. Cashew, you froze. So if you're talking and I'm talking over you, I apologize. Did he freeze for you guys or did I freeze? Who froze? You decide. Testing one, two. Testing. freeze for you guys or did i freeze who froze you decide testing one two testing
Starting point is 00:31:09 he may dr cashew you may have to log off and log back in because you have frozen i've never seen anyone freeze for this long in 500 shows. Have you, Caleb? He froze. It almost looks like a joke. Oh. This is so clear. I thought he was kidding. He froze. Thank you.
Starting point is 00:31:36 We have you. Thank you. Thank you. He froze. Yes. Ah, he's coming back now. He's sweating like a pig. No, I have no goo in my hair.
Starting point is 00:31:48 My hair is getting longer. I'm in Newport. I've shaved my face. I'm here with the family. I'm here for two weeks. Pretty pumped. There's rumors that Andrew Hiller is also coming to Newport. There's rumors that Matt Souza is also coming to Newport.
Starting point is 00:32:04 There's no rumors that Caleb also coming to Newport. There's rumors that Matt Sousa is also in Newport. There's no rumors that Caleb's coming to Newport. Maybe you never know. You're right. I never know. Incoming battleship. Luscious seven on locks. I don't know about that, but my hair is going to get pretty long.
Starting point is 00:32:20 I think, I think I'm going to, I'm going to let it grow for another, uh, no, I am not three deep. Not yet. It's's early here it's only 7 29 i was actually i was actually pretty um i i was actually pretty nervous about talking to him for two reasons one he um when people honor a second time it's hard for me to remember the stuff that i learned from them the first time oh he's texting me and so i the stuff that I learned from them the first time.
Starting point is 00:32:45 Oh, he's texting me. And so I don't want him to, if I, if I, if I'm redundant and ask the same questions twice, I don't want him to like, think that like I wasn't listening to the first time,
Starting point is 00:32:52 but I, but it's so hard to remember all this shit that I know from all the guests, all the stuff I've learned. Are you coming back today? Oh, he said, I'm coming back. I'll put today question.
Starting point is 00:33:02 Oh, darn it. There is. There will be no more God talk on this channel. Good grief, yeah. Smited as we spoke. The power actually went out. So how are you – and then it came back on? Yes, I had to start. It went out for like two and a half seconds, just enough to make all the clocks go back to zero. Do you – are you a religious man do you believe in god
Starting point is 00:33:28 good question uh i and i know we haven't even defined what god is so i apologize yeah so that if actually great point you can take a sort of like spinosian approach wherein god equals the universe etc yeah i like that uh i do i do appreciate the sort of and and the fact that a lot of you know sort of contemporary religious values come from ancient greek philosophy and so i i like to think i i like to i like the those sorts of um philosophies of living and so i think maybe think maybe Jordan Peterson said something to the effect of like, whether God exists or not, it's still kind of makes sense to behave as if,
Starting point is 00:34:10 as if God does as far as like, just how do I govern my behavior to have some sort of compass, especially when starting out. I consider myself rather, rather empirical insofar as like, I consider myself rather rather empirical insofar as like. Do I consider it provable to my understanding? No, although I can still appreciate it and respect the people that do.
Starting point is 00:34:37 Well, right. Well, I let it, you know, and really from like a modern sort of psychotherapeutic standpoint, I maintain that it it creates a lot of the sort of modern day, a lot of modern day anxiety, perfectionism, et cetera, that like a man, you know, so we talked about the Hawthorne effect the last time we spoke where, you know, somebody's behavior will change when, when they think they get, they, somebody watches them. And so now when you sort of apply that sort of phenomena, like this whole pie in the sky, omnipotent being sees everything you do or else, that actually generates a lot of sort of anxious stress, perfectionistic style, gnarly behavior that gets people pretty miserable. standpoint, I tend to have some problems. And beyond that, I do appreciate the sort of Spinozian approach that we just have things we have, like things that we know nothing about, and we can assign it to something else until we do. How old were you? When did you come to this understanding or position that you even though you don't necessarily believe in God from the empirical point, you respect those people that do that last part?
Starting point is 00:35:55 When did you learn to respect those people? Because I just learned that. Oh, that's it. And I'm 50. Understandable. So I had a rather like the classical, like militant sort of atheistic demeanor as a younger kid. So I think you knew that like I got really heavily formally educated, very young and I just combat boot wearing Mohawk, Mohawk sporting 22 year old Ph.D. in biochemistry. Like, OK, there is no God. Everybody's dying. Like you want to fight me? Why bother? I'll swab your doorknob, you know, sort of, you could see it in my face. I just.
Starting point is 00:36:34 Cock swab it, cock swab it. Oh, so I used to make this half serious joke because I, like I had, I had an imposing physical presence that I have since practiced a lot to try and dampen. And with what I wore, you know, basically you go to a bar, someone picks on you sometimes, right? And I just, why would I bother fighting you when I could swab your doorknob? So I would make these half-hearted threats, like just start washing your hands, oh i like it yeah uh and how tall are you um how tall are you uh six like on the dot six feet yeah i don't know what that's like i'm five five on on the dot caleb six, so there. Yeah, he beats us all.
Starting point is 00:37:27 He beats us all. Okay, so how old were you? Then what happened? Did you have a mentor that was like, hey, man, we need people who believe in God? Or how did this giant brain of yours start to understand that those people are worth respecting? Oh, man, it happened by exclusion. So in my younger years, especially as a minor, I hung out with a lot of people involved in,
Starting point is 00:37:54 I'll just call it organized crime who aligned themselves with a couple of organizations that you've probably heard of. And because of the background I had and my status as a minor, I had some use to them. And I sort of had a YOLO sort of, I suppose, disposition. Very few people know this, although I'll tell you and then the people that listen by extension. I actually suicided at 15 and got revived. And from that point to like age 22, I just like very easy for me to take risks because what's the worst that can happen? I die. Right, right, right. So that actually opened up a lot of, you know, entrepreneurial windows for me, so to speak. And it, I would say in my early to mid twenties, I, I studied depression a lot because I thought I had
Starting point is 00:38:47 depression and sort of put my, my biochemistry brain into this. And it ended up sort of directing me into behavior at large in the long run. But really after I dug through a lot of research and actually found a couple of people that, that's, that specialize in some stuff I had interested in, I'll just leave it in that actually found out I had anger problems. So the, they look very similar unless you know how to discriminate what you do, when you do it and why. And, and a lot of these things can coexist.
Starting point is 00:39:23 So I think people might call it comorbidities, like you can have depression, anger, anxiety, all that stuff at the same time. And anger gets kind of kicked to the side as far as a treatable sort of behavioral psychological condition, almost all of the energy gets put into anxiety and depression, with anger is seen as some sort of temporary, sort of compulsive behavioral issue rather than rather than a a protracted attitude that causes long-term problems like something like depression or anxiety and i found somebody that specialized in at least had the takes a position of of of anger as, as a disorder, just like anxiety or, or, uh, depression as a disorder. And it turned out that I had upon like looking through the work that he did, I had almost exclusive sort of anger issues. And then when I started assessing my behavior, the environments I hung around in the people I hung around in with the, the sort of reinforcement I got for the things I did. It turns out that I had effectively just taught myself to feel angry all the time. And before the power went out, this actually gets,
Starting point is 00:40:35 gets into an interesting point about like the road rage driving sort of stuff, and the i realized how much time energy and resources and lost sleep and relationships etc that i had i i say lost or ruined or whatever just by virtue of feeling angry all the time and so when i when i saw the cost of anger, essentially, yes, yes. And so that loops us back to the sort of the correlation causation and looking at data that you brought up earlier, that people confuse cause and causal factors, that a lot of different things can contribute. Like, do I think smoking causes cancer? Actually, no, I think it exists as a causal factor to cancer. If smoking caused cancer, then when you smoke, you would get cancer. Just like beheading someone causes death.
Starting point is 00:41:41 If you cut someone's head off, they die 100% of the time. Therefore you cut someone's head off they die 100 of the time therefore cutting someone's head off causes death so so it does smoking for sure their head comes off yes absolutely for sure their head comes off 100 off even if they live for a few seconds like you could point to like that split second one so i'm like no dr cashew look he's still alive yes agreed so then you can get rid of it, etc. So yes, you bring up a good point. And for the sake of analysis, you draw semi-arbitrary lines and then set up your experimental boundaries based off of those cutoffs. Yes. You can go into a spiraling regression and say, well, if that guy's mom hadn't given birth to him, he wouldn't cut your head off, blah, blah, blah. And then say that this guy's mom actually caused your head to fall off.
Starting point is 00:42:36 And all of those things, depending on the frame, you could argue as some level of true. And so I just arbitrarily decided to set the boundary there of losing your head causes death. Right. And in that case, I would consider it a single cause rather than something that has a lot of contributors making them causal factors. Right. Well explained. Thank you. That's good.
Starting point is 00:42:55 Cool. So it only causes it if it adds up to 100%. Right. I just like, I have that philosophy of science or philosophy of living, as it were. Now, I tend to combine them for obvious reasons. So to the to the point about anger and sort of teaching yourself and you talk about nobody knows how to sort of sit back and observe or meditate or stay mindful or aware or whatever, whatever sort of synonym we want to use. whatever sort of synonym we want to use that the whole road rage concept of flipping someone off, actually I would consider a superstitious behavior. And I'll tell you why superstitious behavior, the way I look at it arises from the, the outcome having nothing to do with the stimulus.
Starting point is 00:43:47 So I like to use the rain dance as a great example. Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, for instance, if you dance and it rains and you need rain, well, then the rain has now made an association with with with um excuse me dancing wet ground yep okay yep yep so now going back to our road rage idea that if if you flip someone off and when you drive when you drive in a, you have quite a bit of influence over how close or how far you get from any given thing.
Starting point is 00:44:28 And so if you flip someone off and speed away or flip someone off and slow down, or they flip you off and drive away, all of those outcomes actually relieve the stress that you feel. So does flipping someone off in this case, relieve stress? No, right. However, them speeding off or you slowing down or speeding away and getting away from So does flipping someone off in this case relieve stress? No. Right. However, them speeding off or you slowing down or speeding away and getting away from them does. And that actually reinforces the road rage, creating a superstitious behavior. Because now whenever I flip someone off and I speed off, that stress goes away.
Starting point is 00:44:59 It actually reinforces using that as a cue. Right. And so then you learn to flip someone off wow that's some twisted shit just like i i smell bacon my wife must be cooking bacon i wonder if i'll think of you now whenever i i if we time it correctly so i also like to talk to what i'm gonna do podcast with dr cash yeah i also love to give the joke of um oh man i get worked up talking about this that the power of words so to speak we'll maybe get to that some other time but if i hold up i'm hugely i'm a daoist to heart the power of words i believe we're all sorcerers here and whoever has the biggest vocabulary is conducting reality
Starting point is 00:45:41 we agree so maybe maybe we spoke about this last time but if i hold up ahead of broccoli okay if i hold up ahead of broccoli and and i punch you in the face repeatedly what happens i hate broccoli you hate broccoli exactly so the look people are getting it mistel is getting it yes exactly so pavlov's dog this brings up respondent conditioning although this also includes operant conditioning all sorts of other learning pathways i have the same sort of basic underlying i guess you could call it neurology if you want to bring out the n-word here that another one of my favorite words one of my favorite words to talk about now the the the punching has connected broccoli and fear so So a person might say that,
Starting point is 00:46:27 that Savan made the association, but really the punching made the association. And, and so that actually takes the agency of the acquiring of the behavior and puts it into an external source. That ties back to another theme that we brought up, that it's not about the person, it's the behavior. Correct. And so can you change a person? I think you ask a ridiculous question. I think you can change behavior and that a person equals their behavior over time. So insofar as can you change? Absolutely. If you learn things, strictly speaking, the way I see the world, you have changed if you have learned something and you have learned something when you do something different in similar conditions, draw the line there as having learned something. Ladies and gentlemen, those of you who are paying close attention, Dr. Cashy opened up a thousand doors and I took notes on at least 10 of them.
Starting point is 00:47:17 And I promise you, I will go back and open those doors. Let's go back. So we still need to, we still need to get to how you learned to respect those but but but but before before before we get there um uh what was your method for um uh and trying to end your life at the age of 15 what what was your uh exsanguination what's that what's that stop breathing bleeding bleeding out oh and and um so you cut yourself somewhere yeah with a knife yeah and if you did you fail do you think um because you didn't really want to do it or you're just lazy or bad tactics or any thoughts on that? Well, I could have done it. I could have severed a limb or I could have done something more violent, I suppose.
Starting point is 00:48:10 You can also, if you want to differentiate me, me wanting to die may have or did outweigh the desire to kill myself, which I consider two things. Yes, yes. Because I really wanted to die yeah but there was no fucking way i was going to kill myself and so i i i there was a mathematician named pd auspensky from the turn of the century do you know who that is have you heard of him he was part of the madame blavsky it's it's probably uh too uh esoteric for a man of your empirical nature.
Starting point is 00:48:45 Do you know who Krishnamurti is out of Ojai, California? Anyway, he basically said we're just a bunch of I statements, and if you deny those I statements that you will become – you will see the ultimate I am. So then I thought, oh, and I've talked about this on the shows, but I'll kill myself. I'll just lay perfectly still and just let myself die because i don't want to kill myself so i'll just let myself die and i took that journey inward but that's it i've never heard anyone say i never was able to articulate the way you just did there's a difference between wanting to die and killing stuff because you didn't want i mean it takes some it takes some fucking i don't even understand wanting to how you could hurt the body that's what
Starting point is 00:49:23 i didn't want to do i was like fuck, fuck, I can't hurt this thing. Uh, that, that also turns into one of those sort of superstitious behaviors, right? Like it, it turns into something you learn to do. And, um, and you, and you were capable of hurting other people. Yeah. Although very, like I would say 99.9 out of a hundred times, I would just hurt myself instead. Right.
Starting point is 00:49:47 Did you used to have a, were you a hair plucker? No, I cut myself. Are you sure? There's evidence that says otherwise. Right, exactly. Yeah. A lot of electricity, fire. I'd like to put matches out on myself and stuff.
Starting point is 00:50:03 Wow, electricity. Yeah, pretty. Yeah. Pretty trippy. Um, did you have a train set? Did you do it with a train set? No. Do you know what I'm talking about? Uh, no, actually.
Starting point is 00:50:14 Oh, I had a train set and it had a throttle. Okay. And it had, but I took it off and would just electrocute shit. Like I was like, fuck the train. I'm gonna electrocute myself. I'm gonna electrocute shit like i was like fuck the train i'm gonna electrocute myself i'm gonna electrocute shit in the house bugs the dog anything i'm gonna fucking electrocute it just turn the throttle up on it was just crazy while your parents are asleep on saturday mornings at 5 a.m and you're up with your train set yeah yeah how and highly stimulating, highly stimulating. So the mostly stuck to mostly stuck to,
Starting point is 00:50:48 to cutting myself. A lot of my body hair actually covers it, but if you want, I can send you a, I can send you a closeup sometime later. If you have some curiosity, um, um,
Starting point is 00:50:58 any, anything that you did yourself that's longterm, uh, phrase the question again, chop your penis off no oh good all right well you're good to go no i wish you i could see caleb in the back laughing yeah no this isn't funny i figured that that reminds me of the the guy who actually contributed the most amount of entries to the oxford english dictionary kind of a big deal uh and a guy who lived in an insane
Starting point is 00:51:21 asylum he he killed someone and got one i think one of the first people in that range that got like a life sentence in an insane asylum versus just getting straight up capital punishment. And a brilliant guy. but he he got a hold of some magazine article and then started sending in entries of words and submitted like some crazy high five digit a number of entries to the oed anyway he ended up going crazy and chopping off body parts his penis one of them oh and this really like sort of i'll just yeah i'll just leave it there he he blamed he blamed uh morality on it I'll just leave it there. He blamed morality on it. Yes.
Starting point is 00:52:07 Yes, thank you. Wow. Incredible, Caleb. Impressive. William Chester Minor. Yeah, a physician of some sort who ended up going a little bit crazy from what I recall. He blamed it on the sort of, how do I say this? He essentially had to torture people that ran away from camps during war and then also keep them alive. So he would like brand people and stuff.
Starting point is 00:52:37 Like if a soldier ran away and they got caught, he would brand them and then treat the wound. And so he did a lot of that stuff. Damn. Screwing with them quite a bit. Yeah, yeah. And then he ended up getting paranoid because I guess he did it to a ton of, I think, Irish people. And he started getting paranoid about Irish people.
Starting point is 00:52:55 And then he ended up killing an Irish person out of like a fit of paranoia, from what I recall. And that ended up getting him sent to the insane asylum, where he also had proficiencies for language, et cetera. So he got, he lived in many other places,
Starting point is 00:53:08 but he cut off his own penis and auto pendectomy to prevent such actions. He used a knife. He otherwise used to work on the dictionary. Yeah. Literally cut and paste, right? So they allowed him tools because he stayed relatively benign and he would literally cut and paste entries old school and then send them in because one of the requirements for entering stuff into the OED, I decide your source. Although when, when determining
Starting point is 00:53:34 the definition of a word you use, you, you appeal to common use. And I love the OED. One of my favorite subscriptions, by the way, you can, you can look up a word and it tells you the use of the word throughout the centuries with the first recorded use. And it shows you how the definition changes over time and the different ways people used the word. Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah. And then at some point in your life – so for me, it was the influence of Greg Glassman. And I'm extremely pro-choice. When I look over at the people who are pro-life, their logic seems profoundly sane to me. And the people on my side who are pro-choice seem fucking complete maniacs that they can't understand why those people don't want kids to be killed in the womb. And at that point, I'm like, well, I like these God people, even though I don't, I like their thinking.
Starting point is 00:54:53 You know what I mean? And so that's kind of through Greg Glassman's influence and things like that. There's probably a dozen examples where I'm like, wow, I like that thinking. That makes sense to me. Mine doesn't make sense to me. A lot of people make a strong argument about those sorts of values, which has now really gotten blown out as far as stoicism getting popular, the appealing to Christianity, Catholicism,
Starting point is 00:55:21 other various, conservatism, whatever ism you choose, okay? They have values associated with them that help direct behavior. And having a set of rules to live by simplifies you and keeps you sane, in a matter of speaking, because when a situation presents itself, you can appeal to those values, and they help make a lot of the decisions for you. appeal to those values and they help make a lot of the decisions for you. And so aside from the metaphysical sort of the metaphysical void of, you know, heaven, hell, God, et cetera, et cetera, a lot of people do adhere to a set of values that they got externally. And as they age, they kind of adapt them to their own agenda, which, you know, welcome to learning.
Starting point is 00:56:02 And you can learn to appreciate that those sorts of values sort of give you a skeleton of a philosophy of living. And if you have a philosophy of living, you can maintain your sanity because you know how to behave in a wider variety of situations by proxy. Is that why it seems like that so many, what, what, what if you don't, what, sorry, if you were still going. Or as one of my guests said, I really am not sorry because I interrupt so much. I had a guest on the other day, and he said – he talked about something called objective morality. And I said, what's that?
Starting point is 00:56:38 And he said, it's – you don't want to be killed, do you? And I said, no. And he goes, so you don't kill other people, right? And he goes, yeah, so that's part of your moral code. And, do you? And I said, no. And he goes, so you don't kill other people, right? And he goes, yeah. So that's part of your moral code. And I was like, oh, I kind of bought that. I was like, okay, I like that. So I don't want anyone raping my mom.
Starting point is 00:56:54 So I don't rape anyone's mom. Fair enough. So basically from a behavior standpoint, you find it aversive and you avoid it. Yeah, I guess. But based on what I don't want done to me, is there such thing as objective morality? Do you have any thoughts on objective morality? I can tell you that we just assign causes and then agree with limited, if any, understanding of actual causation. Give me an example. For instance, you use because a lot. Because means cause.
Starting point is 00:57:31 because a lot okay because means cause okay it happens because of these things and often we have limited if any understanding of any cause right i'm just making a presupposition there to loop things without really giving it some thought and that makes because one of probably the most influential words in in english at least and when say that, do you feel like go improve it every time I say it? No, no, no. I appreciate its use. And I appreciate the use in sort of colloquial conversation. And in more technical conversations, I pointed out more. Really, if you talk to yourself or other people and you throw out because a lot, you train yourself as much as you train anybody else. You can really believe that this causes that when really what evidence do we have this causes that? A million and one to the 10 things ended up causing that.
Starting point is 00:58:16 We can say that we can tell a convenient story and we agree on it and then we will behave in accordance with that story, which I define belief as such. I just define believe as behave as if this is the case. And so if you believe that, well, then great. Does that mean it caused it? No. Right. As far as its effect on your behavior, I consider it the same. So do I bother trying to correct this sort of stuff?
Starting point is 00:58:39 No, I still do it. I just stay more aware of it because I know the sort of effect it can have on a person's behavior. Most importantly, my own, when I start assigning cause, right. I just define morality as a set of rules. Like, do you think that there's an objective morality? Uh, I, same thing as asking if there's a god maybe well i guess that depends who you ask do i think so you you talked a little bit earlier about like we are a set of i statements okay and i i reject that because because okay i reject that i have a belief that a set of i statements depends on language and we acquire language. Nobody comes out.
Starting point is 00:59:26 Nobody comes out of the womb with language. We learn it from scratch every fucking time. And so that we consist of I statements now depends on something we acquire after birth, which I have a conceptual problem with big time. OK, yeah, yeah yeah yeah on a side note not literally we are i statements but that that in that regard the context of it i agree with you but the context of it is if you as a as a tool to to to if you deconstruct to deconstruct the person you have to if the person was built and at the top of the at the top there was language to deconstruct the person you have to, if the person was built and at the top of the, at the top there was language to deconstruct you, you, you,
Starting point is 01:00:14 you use this simple tool. I am statements to undo it. But, but I, but I agree. I'm with you. Do I agree that that unstructed that language has, has luxuries of description? Sure. And that by and large, pulling my understanding of the I statement phenomena, whatever you want to call it, we exist as a set of rules, which we give ourselves either on purpose or by accident. Yes, I should do this. I need to do that. I do these things. Sensations even, right? I have an itch. I feel this emotions. So do those, those act as ways to, to affect another person's behavior. So if, if, if you say I have a headache to me, I may change the way I behave around you because of it, whether you act
Starting point is 01:01:03 different or not, or you can lean over your desk and grab your head and moan, et cetera. And so these have these generalize. OK, so do you have to do you have to lean over and scream in pain and grab your knee for for me to know your knee hurts? No, you can just say your knee hurts and then I can I can abstract the rest. One of the one of the conveniences of language. I can, I can abstract the rest. One of the, one of the conveniences of language, it just, it makes it difficult to take a private, a private experience. Only, only you can observe your knee pain. Only you can. And you can only describe it in a way that somebody would, would understand externally. And this, this goes into a whole other a whole other monster we're actually where
Starting point is 01:01:46 actually did we come from for this well i can tell you this right and i am still curious about how you went through how someone changes their perspective from being fuck the religious people they're crazy to appreciating uh with their mohawk to there's no proof of it to I see the value in it. Like what what happened to you in your life that allowed you to have this broader perspective, seeing the value of a guy who's holding a wrench versus a guy who's holding a hammer? I see the value in both. Understood. So in my in my later adult years, really, I credit a lot of it.
Starting point is 01:02:23 I credit a lot of it towards Albert Ellis and his rational emotive theory, which you can consider like a sort of predecessor to modern day CBT. And we spoke a little bit about it, or at least my own version of it the last time we spoke, where I talked about demandingness and despairing and downing and dramatizing, and downing and dramatizing, et cetera, where I have taken a lot of Ellis's philosophies and I have made it a little more contemporary and fit it to my own agenda. I changed it too much to give him credit because that would insult him. I'll just leave it there. Okay. I do maintain that he gave a lot of structure to the language patterns that I think cause or contribute to the typical American English speakers distress. Setting rules for yourself must should need have to dramatizing,
Starting point is 01:03:16 insulting, why bother, etc. Now, I realized globally that like, I spend a lot of time acting mad at people I have never met. Like if you if you hang around people in the in the A, B, I'll just leave it there where they have a problem, people problem with people that have colored skin. They sit around acting mad about it. Like they literally sit around and act mad and then they work themselves up and then they do dumb stuff and i saw this happen i saw this happen to somebody else as an outsider and realize i do this to myself with a variety of things where i would i would get mad over something that really had nothing to do with me and i would i would potentiate it and perpetuate it until i got they got to the point to where i had a compulsion to do something silly. I would give myself permission.
Starting point is 01:04:08 So I would work myself up. I'd get all these emotions. And then I would give myself permission to do something silly to alleviate it. Another superstition of this, I really hate the hydraulic theory of emotion, this idea that people can just, they build up all of this pressure and then they have to let it out somewhere. It really bugs the crap out of me from a conceptual standpoint, the idea of feelings building up and that they have to release pressure, just absurd. In any case, I realized that I made myself feel bad a lot. And just by realizing I made myself feel bad a lot, that actually helped just sort of jumpstart the process of, well, did I make myself mad?
Starting point is 01:04:50 And if yes, then like, okay, like now I know that doesn't make sense for me to behave this way. So from a practical standpoint, this was all practical. I describe it in a practical way. I think as a young man or even a child, it gets more difficult to describe how I felt then compared to how I do now. I give you a discreet sort of accounting that makes more sense for me to you. Did I experience that exactly? No. I can tell you that I realized I did make myself mad. And when I did realize that, I started noticing more and more situations where I did make myself mad, which then gave me some tools by default of like, do I want to put myself in the situation again? Did the way I behave help me? What did I get out of it?
Starting point is 01:05:39 And so those sort of basic, I suppose people would call them like self-reflection, ended up helping me a lot. And developing the tools on my own, so to speak, like discovering it on my own, it takes a long time. And would I have believed anybody else if they put it upon me? No. So fast forward when I go to Azerbaijan. So this actually ended up, now I go to Azerbaijan. So this actually ended up now I feel getting worked up about this. When I see like the, just the, the blatant difference in, in living situations that people have, where you have just thousands and thousands of people living in hundreds and hundreds of boxes, right? Giant buildings literally cracked down the center.
Starting point is 01:06:24 And, you know, when you see the cameras, when you look at videos and see the cameras, they just show the Ritz Carlton equivalents. And then when you go in there and you see that, like, I could like I could like knock this whole building over. They build it with popsicle sticks. You got these three foot big tiles. And like, I slipped more than once because they have adhered none of the tiles to the ground. And like I slipped more than once because they have adhered none of the tiles to the ground. And the big difference in living conditions between the I'll just call it the typical population there, even compared to like the athletes or the higher up classes like you, you had you essentially had rich people and servants. And seeing how a vast majority of people live there also gave me a ton of perspective like what sort of problems do i have people people over the united states arguing about how many point how many milligrams of protein to consume after your third set of leg extensions in the fucking vernal equinox like those sorts of like just it all it all kind of amounted to nothing when i saw like i can like I actually have nutrition influence here like where nutrition actually matters and you know especially with the athletes
Starting point is 01:07:31 etc and that helped bring a lot of perspective insofar as the classical what we would consider a disaster they just live as their every day and that that helped me a lot. And I also put myself in the position where I, the government actually offered me a very nice, the equivalent of like the penthouse on the top of a fancy building, very nice of them. And I still opted to live with the athletes. And so I did live with them and they lived in a barracks. They lived in like a repurposed motel and learned a lot watching them, seeing how they behave and walking outside of, I think the building translated to cage in English, by the way, leaving the cage, you know, within a few kilometers, any given direction to see how people behave and live really just by, by most standards here in a typical suburban household, they would just
Starting point is 01:08:26 like, they would, they would have a big problem with it. Right. Okay. And that helped me a lot. And then moving, moving to Florida from there, I got to, I made a very good friend, Mark McCain, and I got an opportunity, a pediatrician, I got an opportunity to work with some kids. And that also really just changed my life for the better. The ability to work with kids with the sort of background that I have in particular, especially seeing how important the relationship, the parental relationship makes a difference with the kid
Starting point is 01:09:04 and giving me perspective on like, how much, how much influence your environment has on how you behave. And when you have even just the fundamental understanding of, of learning mechanics, you know, reinforcement, punishment, generalization, just basic set of maybe six or seven terms, you see very, very fast that we assign agency to ourselves when really the external environment plays a massive role in the way we behave. And that actually stabilized my emotions more than anything else. Say that last part again about the external environment? So basically when people act in ways that used to upset me, I realized that it has very little to do with me and it has more to do with the fact that they
Starting point is 01:09:53 learned to behave that way. They learned it and knowing a little bit, I'll just say a little bit, knowing a little bit about how learning works. If you learned one way, you can also learn another. Right. And knowing the, a lot of the contributing factors to learning and behavior and how it changes over time, it allowed me to facilitate what I call respect because this person just made a face noise or moved their body in a way that made sense for them sometime in the past. Like lying, for instance, I used to have a real big problem with lying until I realized this person learned to lie to avoid conflict. What I used to label as this just moral sort of, what do I like, just what sort of term do i want to use like just sort of scum of the earth style moralistic nastiness that like you now deserve x y z element
Starting point is 01:10:54 op because you lied i realized this person for whatever reason they learn to do this to avoid things to avoid things right and so now when I encounter it and I know that the person lies, I just know that they've avoided something that, that they have, they essentially have decided will lead to something bad. And looking at it from that sort of more like mechanical perspective really helped me to stabilize, to stabilize my emotions because it has very less to do with like this person wants to hurt me. Maybe what they do hurts me as, as a side effect of what they do. Uh, it just looking at, looking at what they do and the sort of consequence that, that occurred because of what
Starting point is 01:11:37 they did helps me to separate from, helps me to separate from judging the person. You cheat on a test because you want to avoid the discomfort of getting the f your sophomore year in high school in biology right it's not that like you're not trying to do you're just avoiding discomfort yeah yes a very good very good example and we can super rant on the typical education process almost exclusively depending on punishment and and even still negative selection. I argue that the typical schooling system actually teaches people very little. It more selects for people that can teach themselves, especially with how you learn from feedback, my friend.
Starting point is 01:12:19 And so if you take a test and you get feedback the next day and then you get an F, would you get to take the test again? No, you move on to that. So like really it only selects for people that can teach themselves in between. And then the assessment. Do you know about Kumon? I know. The Japanese guy who developed Kumon for kids. I know.
Starting point is 01:12:44 I know the business chain. I know the little smiley face. I know. So I know that has to do with math, et cetera. Yeah, math. And that, my kids do that at home, and you get to keep retaking. Yes. And it's so cool.
Starting point is 01:12:58 It's so cool. Yeah. So in my magic world, everybody gets 100% in every class. Yeah, yeah. I want to go back to this thing. This is totally off subject, but you mentioned about people living in different living conditions. Yeah. And this is one of the things that changed for me also.
Starting point is 01:13:14 But I would like to point out that the man driving the Honda Civic today, brand new, is driving a nicer, than the most expensive car in 1986. It's safer, it's faster and it's nicer. And although the discrepancy of wealth may be broadening the actual quality of life for everyone who wants to take advantage of it, especially in the United States has dramatically increased. And I think it's a huge flaw to, to focus on discrepancy without serious equal or more so uh look at um opportunity that's
Starting point is 01:13:51 that that's that's here and it's people complain about um uh and rich people doing stuff all the time like bezos and and whoever going to um uh outer space but like fuck it let them going to outer space, but like, fuck it, let them go to outer space. Why are you, it's one of the rules we talked about in the beginning about being a good friend, be a good friend to them and fucking congratulate them from getting to space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and really just this, I just kept it relative to myself as most humans do. Like I realized,
Starting point is 01:14:24 look at all this stuff I got mad at right that really just any of them would it would count as a luxury which really easy to say right and until you until it punches you in the gut in this case literally when you get a parasite that just the stuff that they live with every day and i got to experience some of that right i helped help stabilize my behavior and my emoting, you know, for very, very long time and still affects me now that that's sort of like that. And I had another experience with my good friend, Brian Chung, a surgeon. When he came over from Canada to visit me when I lived in Ohio, this big, big turning point for me. Uh, he was a Canadian surgeon. Yes. Yes. He came over to visit me when I lived in Ohio, this big, big turning point for me. Uh, he was a Canadian surgeon. Yes. Yes. He came over to visit me and we went to go train at the local, the local big
Starting point is 01:15:12 box gym. And they wanted to give him the work around like, Hey, like, because I just wanted to give him like buy him, buy the guy a day pass so we could train. Right. And, and they wanted to take him through the rigmarole of like trying to get him to sign up. And I'm like, dude, he lives how many thousands of miles away? He's here for four days. Can we just, and he's like, it's okay, man, nobody's dying. And, and from any other person, I would have been like, okay. And then like from him as a surgeon, like that spends all his time in the hospital, it just like, okay. That affected me quite a bit. It's because I got, I got upset because I valued his time so much. And like, I felt okay paying to actually circumvent this whole process. And he just went, you know what?
Starting point is 01:15:54 Nobody's dying. And it like, that really, that really kicked me in the gut personally. So that, that gives two, like sort of big, and then, then working with a child, which we can talk about some other time, those three big experiences in my life really helped stabilize me as far as getting perspective. And then just actively developing a philosophy of living that helps me, helps me stabilize my behavior in real time to go back to your comments about people don't even know what to do. They do it without realizing it, et cetera. There's, um, there's a, there's a uh a scene did you did
Starting point is 01:16:27 you see the movie terminator yeah and there's a scene where the terminator has like these five options pop up in his head of how he can react to a situation and at that moment you that that's um that's in that in that video that we showed of of yours, that's one of the byproducts of putting that stick in there and becoming present. You won't see all five options at once, but life gives you – if you don't react, life will give you another option. So if someone flips you off and you want to flip them back and you see that instead of doing it, you see it, life will give you another option. It will be to wave. It will give you another option. It'll be to wave. It'll give you another option to ignore them. It'll give you another option to stop at the McDonald's and get a hamburger.
Starting point is 01:17:11 And next thing you know, and I feel like each option you pass, now I know this isn't true and there's no way I can prove this, but each option you pass, the God that I don't believe in will give you a better option. So the more stillness, it's a game option okay so the more stillness it's a game i play the more stillness oh yeah look at yeah yeah yeah yeah and he went with fuck you asshole yep right do you remember that yes thank you wow caleb that's a fucking incredible i remember the the sound of the ui if i make you asshole like just so awesome. Yes.
Starting point is 01:17:48 What about eating raw meat? You are a proponent of cooking. Cooking could be a little harsh, but of processing food. And another fucking – anyone who thinks BMI is bullshit or that processed food is bullshit, if you want to hear clear thinking and someone who knows how to define words, go watch Dr. Kashi's video on these things. To say that BMI is bullshit, I mean it's such a good fucking video. Hey, dude, it's just a fucking tool and a core that we use to try to fucking save people's lives. Like chill the fuck out. But anyway, I come from the CrossFit community where everyone's got fucking at 40 extra 40 pounds of muscle on them so they want to fucking poo poo bmi it's like yo chill chill but what about cooking i i um befriended uh the liver king
Starting point is 01:18:36 and um and so i've been eating a lot of uh i've been taking a pound of ground beef and blending it with a third of a stick of butter. My wife does it. And three dates. All right. And then I sprinkle some salt on it and I just eat it. Okay. Do you have concerns or are you like, Seve, stop that shit. You're going to fucking be shitting worms in a minute.
Starting point is 01:19:03 Well, I think you probably would have already i know but every am i am i am i am i am i testing fate with each pound i i i i feel comfortable saying that you have a lower risk of contracting a pathological bug if you if if your food reaches an internal temperature of 160 plus fahrenheit okay anything else you're good you roll the dice you know so and and i also take the position you make that number up or is that a true thing 160 uh you can reference it i guess okay okay um i i think i i think i made it a little bit higher to account for all types of meat, right? Thank you. Uh, and internal temperature specifically. So that means the external temperature gets pretty damn hot unless you stick it in a sous vide. Are you annoyed by him at all? No, no, no, no, no, no. I, are you, is there any, do you see value in people like the liver king presenting?
Starting point is 01:20:05 So insofar as he we have a we have a very strong personality that draws attention to a topic more people could use education in. And whether I will actually leave it there. I think he will reach a broader audience or a different audience than any other personality would. And even some percentage of his audience will agree. Some percentage of his audience will consider him crazy and watch him for entertainment. And,
Starting point is 01:20:39 and a percentage of both of those audiences will then go, will then go take it upon themselves to study nutrition in a greater degree. And I seldom believe that somebody would watch The Liver King or me or you or Glassman and say, I will only ever listen to this person for nutrition advice ever. And I might even go look at what other people have to say, read other books, and then try and make decisions for myself. have to say, read other books and then try and make decisions for myself. So to me, like the academic correctness aside, I more care that, that people have now, frankly, taken more time and energy to try and make themselves better in some way. And he, you know, he, he acts as a personality and he generates an income from it, which more power to him. Do I work myself up over the sort of academic pedantic clinical faux pas? Actually, no. And that gives me a little bit of flexibility too,
Starting point is 01:21:35 because I have this belief that if I have started obsessing over the technical correctness of everything I say, which I still want to get over. It creates a lot of performance anxiety for me when I just want to have a conversation and get the point across. And if I want you to know some technically oriented research result, well, then we could just pull up the paper, man. And a big, big part of my life watching Sean Connery in the third in the third Indiana Jones movie where where Indy goes, Dad, why didn't you remember any of this? Because they went to like, oh, the holy find the holy. Yes, because I wrote it down. So I didn't have to remember. Yes.
Starting point is 01:22:18 Like eight year old team. Like, oh, dude, you have a little bit of Sean Connery in you. I see it. I'll take it yeah you should probably one of the single most influential like five seconds of my life because i wrote it down so i don't have to so i didn't have to remember something like that and even like down to my doctoral defense i walked in that room with a stack of papers this high and i took some shit for it and i said well do you have a rule that nobody can bring notes in?
Starting point is 01:22:46 And they said, no. And I said, well, I would rather have the information if you want it. Right. Just, I guess, a different approach than what they normally had because people wanted to, because people wanted to memorize, memorize a whole field of biochemistry
Starting point is 01:22:58 before talking to six elite, even one Nobel Prize winning person that they could somehow impress them. Like, no, I came to this room to present the data. I know very limited amount. And if you ask me something I know very little about, then I will, I will procure my references and get you the answer. And I've, what was your paper on? What was your PhD on? Um, I studied, I studied this sort of evolutionarily in between bacteria called Heliobacterium modesta caldum. I actually spent a lot of time studying photosynthesis and the biophysics of photosynthesis, which ended up people kind of look at me sideways about it.
Starting point is 01:23:35 However, when you realize a lot of our food comes from plants, a lot of the education translates. I studied the biophysics of photosynthesis and the really the energy transfer i studied energy transfer essentially um i there's a book written by sam apple about uh otto warburg it's called ravenous okay and auto do you are you familiar i think otto warburg is the godfather of photosynthesis i i do recognize the name Otto Warburg. I think he won the Nobel Prize. I cannot suggest that book any greater than I can any other book. You will love this book.
Starting point is 01:24:18 It's such a fun, easy read. It's called Ravenous, and the author's name is Sam Apple. I had him on the show. And Otto Warburg is such a trip. It will – so he's a gay Jew, and he's like the only one that Hitler didn't kill. He's the only fucking Jew Hitler didn't kill, and it's fucking crazy. Interesting. It's because Hitler was paranoid about cancer. And this dude pivoted from photosynthesis to cancer research.
Starting point is 01:24:42 Okay, cool. He actually won the nobel prize twice the second time hitler wouldn't let him get it but uh he's the one that basically his first nobel prize was discovering that cancer cells consume 10 times the amount of sugar as yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah dude you will love it it's a it's it's an indiana jones type um adventure this book just how he survives you know what i mean he's got two dings gay and jew it's like he's fucked but but somehow he lives it happens um uh raw we talked about raw meat i wanted to make sure i brought up at least one superficial item with
Starting point is 01:25:20 you okay the last show last time you were on i we were talking about the difference we ended the show i think i think on this talking about the difference between um thoughts and reality okay yeah and um and and you and i you gave me we talked about it but i just wasn't happy with it i I need to win this conversation. I feel like you won. I want to win. Gender is imagination. Okay.
Starting point is 01:25:53 And sex is real. And so if you were to look – if you were to put your hands between your legs, you would feel your cock and balls. And because you have cock and balls, we have given the signifier because. Darn it. You better not have given me that sickness. You better, and I swear that you better not have given me that. Interesting, right? You have cock and balls, and therefore, we call cock and balls man. We can point to something that's real outside of us. And gender is on the on the inside.
Starting point is 01:26:30 Do we agree on that? So you bring up an interesting point that in the last, I don't know, two or three decades, gender and sex have turned synonymous with each other, which I do. I can't stand that. I fucking hate that. with each other which i do yeah i can't stand that i fucking hate that so uh having worked with other creatures and animals i can tell you that working you know with some of the laboratory work i did if you've heard of chlamydomonus uh is that a venereal disease no an algae reinhardt i have a problem pronouncing the other one. We just call it clammy. Anyway, clammy has sexual reproduction. Algae. Pretty cool. Although
Starting point is 01:27:11 we would call it mating type positive and mating type negative. Because some would have the genes that would create the sex pillus, also known as a penis, to transfer genes. And some could receive it. then then you could actually you could change the dna on purpose by engineering what genes got transferred during sex okay pretty cool those that that thing you just showed us that caleb just showed us that thing can bone like some of them have a penis and some have a vagina so more like think think more like having having Google's PILUS. Yeah. So the the it does inject DNA into into another chlamydomonas cell and then it recombines into the genome.
Starting point is 01:27:56 And if you engineer the DNA correctly, you can actually target where that DNA recombines. OK. And now various other techniques, similar techniques, you know, work, work in also mammalian cells as well. One of the bigger problems with that having to do with, you know, systemic DNA recombination rather than just local, very different sort of monster. And in any case, I recognize the, the rather the conflation, I suppose, of sex and gender. And that sex has a, in my opinion, has a more strict physical measurable component to it, whether you want to go with external visual organs, or you want to go with chromosomes, or you want to, you know, any number of measurable things. And then then gender really acts more as a signifier of behavior. Yeah, and like, I don't have to participate in. So someone asked me, what religion are you?
Starting point is 01:29:00 And I say, Christian, like, I'm participating in this, this, this, this, this illusion this this illusion that's in someone's head and gender is the same way. What gender are you? Well, I don't I don't. How would I even how the fuck would I even like I don't even people like when I heard gender fluid. Of course, I'm gender fluid. How the fuck would I know? Like, do I ride a magic dragon to work or do I ride a fucking imaginary magic carpet? or do i ride a fucking imaginary magic carpet like how but if you say to me savon um uh what um what sex are you and i said i don't know how would i tell you can be like well you look down okay i look down and they'll be like is there a hole there or is there a uh and you you can so you you have mentioned what some some people call it a stipulative definition stipulative stipulative yes yes okay where you. Stipulative. Yes, yes, yes. Okay.
Starting point is 01:29:46 Where you have set up these criteria, and if you meet the criteria, then it – And we could agree on it, right? Whereas we couldn't agree on what knee pain is because that's inside the head. Yes. And does it actually exist inside the head because it – Right. Okay. So a different fun – like I have a pain in my knee.
Starting point is 01:30:04 Do you? Can you take it out of your knee? Right. No. You can take a coin out of your pocket. Yeah, I like it. I like it. If you want to get into the philosophy of neuroscience, we could do that some other time. Yeah, I like that. Yeah. A lot of it has to do with, to quote Wittgenstein, philosophy comes essentially with the mistrust of grammar. And in, in conversations like this, uh, people use these words that we all recognize and nobody, I put nobody in quotes, very few people have come to terms. So we may have spoken about this last time where we have a catalog of words or noises that we make with our face. Right. Yeah. We were wind, wind benders or something. I heard someone say one time I was like, well our face. Right. Yeah. We're wind windbenders or something. I heard
Starting point is 01:30:45 someone say one time I was like, well, I like it. Yeah. The airbender probably airbenders. Yes. Yeah. The last airbender. Really cute. So people make face noise. Now these face noises affect behavior and it affects behavior in context. And so in a colloquial conversation like ours, I would call that a term. So we have a vocabulary and a terminology. For instance, you can drop an F-bomb and you can do it a million different ways and it would mean a million different things. So fuck exists as one word and many terms. and many terms. Coming to terms, therefore, would create a sort of Socratic dialogue where, help me to understand what gender means so that I can answer your question in a way that makes sense for you. And these sorts of conversations, those sorts of questions for me go that route
Starting point is 01:31:38 almost automatically, where I can answer your question about gender. If you tell me what gender means, then I can, then I can create an answer around the sort of stipulations that you place or other, or other conceptual grounding. Somebody could use gender in many different ways, presumably where, uh, in, in, in taking it in, in and out of context, gender can practically mean the way you dress. It can practically mean how you identify yourself. It can practically mean your other sorts of sexual preferences. It can practically mean any single thing. And it can practically mean all of these things.
Starting point is 01:32:20 It can practically, so it affects behavior or rather describes a large variety of behaviors that when having a conversation with somebody, it pays to start with, I would love to answer your question. If you help me to understand what gender meant, then I can give you a straightforward answer. Which brings me to my point that there are two worlds. Okay. Boy, you're not gonna like this this is where we went sideways last time there are two there are two worlds i want to win so bad dr kashi you win um there are two worlds um so so uh i'll give you the example so so i dress my boys in girls' black tights and wife beaters, the thing cholos wear. And for me, I dress them like that because that's the way Baryshnikov used to dress. And my mom thought Baryshnikov was like the most handsome man who ever lived. And so I see that as masculine as a motherfucker.
Starting point is 01:33:20 Okay. And you know what I mean? Girls, black tights and wife beaters. And they walk around and like everyone thinks they're girls. tights and wife beaters and they walk around and like everyone thinks they're girls but i see them as like just hardcore tough ballet dancer types you know what i mean yeah fucking they do jujitsu in it you know yeah it's gray belt test last week in it anyway because gender is like bullshit okay but because it's made up in my culture gender is the girls tights and the wife, Peter.
Starting point is 01:33:45 Sure. Someone else's it might be fucking the blue jeans and the high tops converse with a skateboard on his back. Yeah. But but sex is not made up. It is is a signifier for something that all human beings, regardless of whatever. something that um all human beings regardless of whatever it's whatever it's the penis it's it is the you can see it in the outside world it truly exists it describes a phenotype and or genotype and so when you conflate we're living in a society where people are conflating imagination with reality the terms and when that happens we have fucking chaos and we have and we get really dumb people okay so i would say that that confused people people like running into walls and shit that that sounds like a more diplomatic and maybe more accurate way
Starting point is 01:34:41 of putting things really they just behave in a way that you have a problem with, which, okay, we can take that. Not that I have a problem. Well, I do have a problem with it, but communication, they're delusional. It's impossible to communicate with someone if they can't distinguish, not impossible. Communication becomes retarded in the clinical sense to communicate with someone if they can't distinguish not impossible um communication becomes retarded in the clinical sense when you speak with people who are conflating their
Starting point is 01:35:10 imagination with reality okay and and there is there is a reality an example i like to give is i plant a seed in the windowsill in a pot and the reality is normal as the plant will always grow towards the the light okay a hundred out of a million out of a million times okay so you appeal to the laws of nature i don't even know what i'm arguing but i rest my case okay so i agree that when when two people say the same word and it means different things that makes communication difficult but how about even the fact that i'm pointing to something that's here okay when they're pointing to something that's in their head they're like they're conflating this gender thing does not exist does it so i i understand that terms like gender have – and I made that up – in a lot of cases have too broad, too large of an umbrella to make useful in daily conversation. but I can't even point to it.
Starting point is 01:36:24 I'm okay with the word, by the way. I just want there to be an acknowledgement that it's not real. The same way red means stop is not real, but it has practicality so we don't fucking get in car accidents. Yeah, so in this context, you define red as a discriminating stimulus. It means we learned that...
Starting point is 01:36:48 But it doesn't mean it's real. money's the same fucking way money is not fucking the value of money is not fucking real we've just agreed upon it but male is fucking real or am i wrong so in this case the penis is real yes sir the Yes. So you have now used the term sex as a way to discriminate physiology. Yes, sir. Done two ways. Yes, sir. So in this case, we can say the penis is real, and then you use sex as an umbrella term to encompass the penis for this population. Yes. So you use sex as an economy of language.
Starting point is 01:37:24 yes so you use sex as an economy of language i i think that's the term but but i but i use it to to convey with precision so i could say dr cashy stresses me out and that's just a fucking lie because there's no way you could stress me out. I can only stress myself out because stress is imaginary. It doesn't exist in the outside world. Penises exist. And Dr. Tashi exists. But stress and gender are just bullshit on the inside. And I don't mean bullshit in a bad way.
Starting point is 01:37:55 I'm cool with stress. I'm cool with it. I'll appeal to the broccoli argument. Okay, please. Okay, so now if you say stress isn't real like you can't stress me out well if right if you have if you have broccoli and i punch you in the face repeatedly yes enough times you'll look at a supermarket you'll go walk into a supermarket look at a head of broccoli and your heart rate will go up i'll run out yeah yes in this context like people would call that respondent
Starting point is 01:38:22 learning okay we have, we have paired something neutral with something polar and the neutral thing takes on the physiological characteristics of the polar stimulus. So does broccoli cause stress? No, it does cause stress when you pair it with something that does stress you out though. And this exists as a form of learning. So, out though. And this exists as a form of learning. So, and, and me stressing you out may have generalized from something else. For instance, let's say I look like your dad and your dad beat you. Okay. That would mean if I walked into the room and you saw me, you might freak out for a second. Right. So that sort of learning does exist. It also, it also, you know, what happens at the same time with, with operant conditioning, the like,
Starting point is 01:39:08 like red means stop. We learned that separately. And those things can then coexist with red can stress me out and mean stop at the same time. Right. So do I, do I think that stress can, can have external causal factors, 100%. Do I also believe that if we describe a situation or explain a situation with stressful language, it induces a stress response? I absolutely do. Okay.
Starting point is 01:39:36 So in that vein, I do think that a lot of stress starts from an external source and we and or you perpetuate it. Are you pausing now my turn to talk? Yeah, I can slap. I could sleep. You could slap me. I would never phrase it. You could slap me with your penis. You could not slap me with your stress or your gender. your penis, you could not slap me with your stress or your gender. Okay. Understood. I'm so proud of myself. Oh, thank you for clarifying that. So stress described in many cases, a broad, a broad physiological response. Yeah. I could, and I could be aroused when you slap me with your penis or i could be stressed out by it it's up to me you can you can have you stress or de-stress yes fuck i love you so much dr crash did you ever see i'm not a fan of him anymore did you ever
Starting point is 01:40:37 see john oliver interview um snowden he went to uh moscow. It's an incredible interview. I highly recommend it. He basically talks about – they use dick pics as the metaphor to explain just how the NSA works and how it spies on you. And it's – I was so proud of Snowden and how he handled it. I think that's the guy's name. Okay, Trish, you get the last question because you sent me $4.99. Okay, Trish, you get the last question because you sent me $4.99. Why do we self-sabotage potential success? Example, drinking too much the night before a big job interview.
Starting point is 01:41:16 What is that impulse? What a great question. And this, again, this sort of description of, okay, so you say stress isn't real. However, would you say epinephrine is real? What's that? Is that the chemical that gets released in you or something? Yeah, like adrenaline. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:41:35 I think it is. They tell me it is. I mean, I imagine some little pump like squirts it out in my bloodstream and I start shaking. Something like that. So stress we use as an economy of language. We use one word as more of like a mnemonic device for depending on people in the field to, to stand for this wide array of physiology, physiology that happens at once. Oh, wow. You're me up. Okay. Got it. So to say stress doesn't exist. Well, okay. Well, stress we use as a face noise to describe glucocorticoid output, adrenaline, nervous system tone, like all sorts of, all sorts of, you know, neurological activity, etc.
Starting point is 01:42:14 Right. So we take this huge, this huge sort of gamish of physiological activity, we label as, we label as stress to keep us from reading down the entire list every time we discuss it. Right. Right. That was really good. But what about this sabotage thing? Okay. Was that your answer to that?
Starting point is 01:42:39 No, no, no. Because I didn't get it. It went over my head. But I did like how you said that. You fucked me up, and I'm going to have to have you on a third time to try to win again i'll take it i'll take it so the the i love i love questions like this because sometimes the questions give the answer right um so it presumes that we sabotage success and and this tells a story that we can that we can sort of see into the future uh when in reality we we behave because of things that happen right now. So if you feel
Starting point is 01:43:08 stressed out, for instance, if you feel stressed out and you have your nervous system all worked up or whatever term people use these days, that you can consume alcohol as a nervous system depressant. In other words, this stressed out feeling goes away when you drink alcohol. And that you learn as a separate behavior isolated from you having a job interview. You, the royal you, we learn to flip people off when they flip us off because when they drive away,
Starting point is 01:43:42 and I say because on purpose, when they drive away, our stressed out feeling goes away, thus reinforcing the chance that we will flip someone off the next time. And so now this sort of question with drinking, she brings up Trish brings up very good points. She were the example actually means way more than the question. So why do we sabotage? Why do we self-sabotage potential success really asks something like, what makes a smaller reward in the short term higher value than a larger reward in the long term? Meaning you drank, which was the short-term reward of curing yourself of the stress, but damages the long-term value of getting a job and being able to buy more alcohol later.
Starting point is 01:44:26 Correct. And these exist at separate outcomes. And only because we have language and we can tell stories do we force the connection. So does drinking and bombing your job interview have a direct connection? With the sort of frame I use, actually no. I look at them separately. Drinking may have, to put it another way, I'll put it another way. If the hangover came first, fewer people would drink.
Starting point is 01:45:05 Oh, yeah, that's a great example. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. But if you bomb the job interview, you might drink more. Maybe so. And that asks a different question. And in that case, you do have these other negative feelings that you want to go away. And then we have this repertoire of behaviors to avoid, distract, repress, suppress, whatever psychobabble term you want to use, you terminate the negative feelings. And we have a variety of tools to do that. Alcohol is one of them. And so why do we sabotage potential success? I actually think distracts from the actual example, which Trish, I highly recommend you look at these things in context, like in the actual moment versus trying to like, why do I screw up my success? I give a silly impersonation for my
Starting point is 01:45:47 own sake because we all dramatize, right? Why do I destroy my success? Really, it makes more sense to act. Why do I drink when I feel stressed? And what conditions contribute to the stress feeling? And how does alcohol help me with that now? And then this will give you some other questions to answer. Well, really, alcohol does solve the problem. You get a benefit from it. And for that reason, you will keep doing it in the future. That makes sense. We call it learning.
Starting point is 01:46:17 Now, from an intervention perspective, you can take the approach of, well, what in the environment contributes to the stress? In this case, the environment might consist of you talking to yourself. You might start like, I must do well at this interview. I have to get the job or else, okay? Or else I fuck up everything. I'll never get a job. And that's horrible. Down to drama, right? Then we start downing. And then I'll be a homeless fucking idiot who can never do anything ever again. And then it'll go to despairing, like why? Like, why bother? Just give me the drink. So you can you can probably spot some of these language patterns insofar as like what in the environment contributes in this context. I would say that you talking to yourself, you actually give yourself directions to behave in this way more often than you would guess.
Starting point is 01:47:09 And that goes back to our question of putting the stick in the grinder. When you can sort of identify these sorts of language patterns in yourself. So when you feel this way, you will then start explaining it. I have to get away from it. I must, I need, I should, typical language pattern, which then you leverage to give yourself permission to do something that will end up sabotaging your success later, to borrow your language. So it really has less to do with why do I sabotage my success and more to do with what causal factors contribute to me avoiding stress in the moment? And when I do avoid stress, what do I choose? What behaviors do I do to avoid it? And when you have those pieces of the puzzle, you can start making substitutions. And from a step zero to step one standpoint, you can look back or even in real time, measure how
Starting point is 01:47:58 often you drink while stressed. And that gives you two very interesting pieces of information. One, how often you get stressed enough to drink. And two, how often you drink because you feel stressed. And that gives you other ways to start manipulating your behavior on purpose instead of by accident. And you can start experimenting with other ways that help in the short term manage your stress levels. In a situation like this, does the stress stay around forever? No, you only have to moderate it long enough so that you can perform. Works out different if you have a chronic stressor. So at this time, you have tools in the toolbox you can pull out. I can give
Starting point is 01:48:36 generic ones. You could run a mile as fast as you can and then jump into a tub of ice. You could run a mile as fast as you can and then jump into a tub of ice. Like you can actually overdo it a little bit and cause like the dive reflex to occur. Like you have external methods you can use that will depress your nervous system. Like drinking well, so will jumping into a tub of ice. Right, right. You look up the dive reflex. It causes a physiological response that lowers heart rate, for instance.
Starting point is 01:49:09 You can exhaust yourself with exercise. You can do something like coloring, although, man. Okay. Basically, you will have so-called healthier ways to help distract and or manage your stress in the moment. Do I think having an overall philosophy of living that lowers the probability that you stress yourself out more often makes sense. Absolutely. We still have moments where we would feel what we call overwhelmed. Although I think if you get overwhelmed, you die. But we say the word overwhelmed, which now perpetuates the stress, by the way. We dramatize, at least the way that I like to use the word when i talk with people about it and frame the situation yeah so now it turns out to comes down to well what options do we have to go
Starting point is 01:49:52 back to the car flipping off argument very few people realize they even have options and now that we talk about it in an environment like this when you feel cool you can now list out the sort of things that you like to do that do help moderate your stress and you can keep them available to you knowing that you have a job interview a week from now you can have those sorts of things sort of prepared if you want to use that term and you can teach yourself to pause and and do do do use the ui to check the options by practicing ahead of time. So a lot of people think that, well, if somebody tells me what to do, then when the time comes, I'll do it.
Starting point is 01:50:32 And learning just operates a little bit different than that. It might even make sense to do a fake interview with a friend at a similar office. Hell yeah. Okay. Now we get into things like role-playing, which sounds silly. And because it sounds silly, people avoid it. And you can, you can then use that to go back to stimulus generalization. Okay. You can do fake interviews leading up to your real interview, and that will give you opportunity to practice staying calm and also using the stress reduction
Starting point is 01:51:00 tools that you have in your arsenal before you, you, you conduct the actual interview. And in a lot of instances for people, people stress themselves out because they think they'll bomb the interview or they have problem maintaining eye contact or whatever sort of, I guess, social phobia, fear thing they may have. If you stress yourself out over it in a generalized way, like I'm a failure at life. If I bond this interview, well, then that gives you an opportunity to look at your language patterns. Like, are you a failure at life? No. Do you miss it on this job? Yes. Does that cause hassles? Yes. If I get hassled, does that make my life over? No. Okay. So it gives you some
Starting point is 01:51:41 opportunity to sort of level the playing field here. And with these sort of chronic issues, where if you go out and talk to someone and you get stressed out ahead of time, then you find yourself using external like I'll just say pharmaceuticals or or other consumptive things to help moderate your stress. You can start exposing yourself to those things on purpose and in a regulated way so that you can actually stack the deck in your favor and give yourself a damn chance to do well during game time. So a lot of people think that, well, I practice with the basketball team so that I can get my skills up and do well during the game. And really, a lot of the benefits of practicing with the team have to do with mimicking the game. And you end up getting skills as a side effect from practicing. Really, you spend time in a similar court. You spend time around similar
Starting point is 01:52:32 people. You do similar motor patterns. And those things actually prepare you to do well during game time because it, to some degree, emulates the competition. So in this situation with the interview, you can apply to 100 jobs knowing that you only want one of them and still go to the interviews. I think more people should take advantage of this and that you should as a joke. It would help a lot of people
Starting point is 01:53:00 if they took advantage of the fake interview by actually getting real ones. You can just as easily send your resume out to 100 people and you can do two or three interviews a week. And after a couple of months, you'll know exactly how to interview. It's like playing all the baseball games before you get to the world championships. Yeah, you practice. Imagine that. And then you will feel what people would call confident. You'll know what to say. You'll know how to overcome objections. You'll know what to do ahead of time.
Starting point is 01:53:27 And this will also moderate your stress on the back end. I still feel terrified going on a podcast with you doing things live. And I do these sorts of things on purpose. It helps me to feel more comfortable with it every time I do it. Yeah. Get in the reps. Me too. helps me to feel more comfortable with it every time I do it.
Starting point is 01:53:49 Yeah. Get in the reps. Me too. I even get, I even get more nervous with people that I've already had on once before, because then what if we talk about the same thing twice and they think that I wasn't listening the first time and, and you, that, that nervousness got exacerbated when you referenced our previous podcast. Really? Oh, I actually considered it at like a convenience that we have come to terms on some things and we can expand on it more. I think recapping on stuff that we've learned before helps progress the conversation. Awesome. Did you go back and watch it again?
Starting point is 01:54:17 How did, or do you just remember? I did. Oh, I did. I did like the next day. Well, I mean like before this one,
Starting point is 01:54:23 no, like a couple of days after I did the original one, I did. I did like the next day. Well, I mean, like before this one. No, like a couple of days after I did the original one, I did. Wow. We made it full circle. If you go to Dr. Trevor Cashy, you have to go to his YouTube station. If you want to. He made the video that sums up this whole podcast. So if you don't have an hour and 15 minutes to watch this whole podcast, I guess made it to this point. It doesn't matter. You want to watch the video, make better decisions by expanding the space between stimulus and response i think that was a pretty solid theme we had uh throughout uh this podcast you should also check out we didn't even talk about a specialty but we talked about it last time um trevor uh trevor cashew nutrition yes man. Man, you're doing good work for people in a time when it's,
Starting point is 01:55:09 I really do believe the collapse of civilization is happening at one bite at a time. Thank you so much, brother, for coming on. Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. And we shall chat again soon. Yes, please. As soon as I build the guts to have you on again. Very well, my friend.
Starting point is 01:55:28 Thank you. Thanks, brother. Have a good day. Yes, sir. Can I have you on? Yeah, for sure. Time to drink. Are you going to go to Bloody Mary?
Starting point is 01:55:41 No, I got to get packing for a trip. Oh. Oh, shit. Okay. uh no i gotta get packing for a trip oh oh shit okay um well i beat this am i not gonna see you for a little bit um just a couple days i don't think okay all right i'll text you will your phone still work um i don't know it's a good question. Great guest. I feel so lucky that we get people like him. Dude, he's awesome. I learn something new every time we talk. He's such a smarty pants. And he's cool about it. I always wonder, I was like, is he becoming, I never see signs of it, but I always wonder,
Starting point is 01:56:22 is he becoming impatient having to try to explain these things over and over? I don't know. I mean, it's his job, kind of, to do that. And he loved the title of your show. That was pretty cool. That was very cool. Okay. Tomorrow we have Sherman Merrick on, affiliate owner, previous guest also.
Starting point is 01:56:43 I guess this should be not Shark Week, but Guests Coming Back Week. I will see you guys tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, Mr. Beaver.

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