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Beat Your Genes Podcast & More

Living Wisdom Library Q&A
2021-01-01
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foreign hey there hi don't see your video yet I think I accidentally just clicked uh allowed a talk for you I didn't actually promote you to panelists so I'm trying to figure out if I can if I can now do that got it I'm gonna it says I'm talking yeah I can't see you um let me disable the talking and try to repromote you got it shh there you are that good yeah I think it's probably functionally pretty much the same but now you get to call yourself a panelist so that's yeah so yeah fantastic Jen oh likewise happy New Year happy New Year fantastic yay we're out of the the dregs yeah coming down the mountain now yeah yeah hopefully well although I don't know how how far we want to stretch that like I don't remember how that song ends or you know it's maybe we should be careful but yeah yeah it's good it's nice it's always actually one of our first questions is whether um you and I have New Year's resolutions and if so what they are uh and then if we have have any advice about making good your good New Year's resolutions so we can we can get into that if folks want it looks like we're at 1201 so it's fair game at this point so do you have any resolutions um just a little bit which is that um my my resolution is to pay attention to a couple of things of my own advice uh one of which is that to to keep keep attention to the notion that structural changes in your environment are probably going to be more profitable than trying to sum it up personality change and so thinking through I was telling people on on Chef AJ's thing yesterday which is really great by the way people should watch that if they haven't already because you do a really good job of of explaining all of this in a really compassionate way yeah I don't know what was I don't know what was wrong with me yesterday like something got into you you must have been on your period or something because you were really sweet foreign [Laughter] yeah I think that that uh sort of keeping in mind that the the surges of uh desire to make major changes in your existence those are natural because what those are is those are essentially deep algorithms in your brain or noticing a difference between your performance and your potential and they're reminding you that with some effort and energy you could close the distance between your performance uh for what you're doing now and what you could do and so the problem with that though is that the the reason why your your behavior in any domain tends to be extremely repetitive is because you don't change and if your environment doesn't change your brain keeps running the same cost benefit analysis and we wind up a groundhog day in other words we we at this uh a great example of this is Ben Franklin who took careful copious notes on on his life for his whole life and it's it's entertaining to read some of them because he keeps going he keeps intending to make the same personal improvements and he never does like he just keeps running into exactly the same cost benefit analysis and it's with consternation he notices oh my God I'm going to go through this whole life and I never will have changed this one area of My Life by 15 and so the question is we see people make radical changes we see that it's possible that the radical changes are coming from environmental circumstances dramatically changing so that's the story of Rocky story of Rocky is this guy has tremendous potential but it wasn't realized and then finally he gets forced into it by you know ridiculous circumstances and and he has to he has no choice he's backed into a corner and he must the only thing he can do is to do his absolute best and uh and so that's the riveting story of Rocky that we know that story sits inside of people all over the place and we hear it you know we'll find out that some major Achievers some skier who went from nothing to something happened because of some bizarre set of circumstances changed in their existence and then suddenly uh things changed and so if yeah uh a phrase from Jim Rohn that is a lovely phrase and I understand what uh I understand what he's saying but it could be misleading which is that for things to change for you you've got to change the truth of the matter is you ain't changing for things to change for you you have to think through how to change your circumstances that's not as pithy okay and and it's not as flattering okay in other words the truth is you do have a lot of potential in you in all likelihood where your performance is in important areas for you might be substantially better but they're not going to be better unless we change something about the cost benefit in the circumstances the I.E the divorce diet nothing like getting people in shape without the face of the market the uh and so this is uh so that that's what I would say so I'm paying attention uh to myself that's one of the reasons Jen and I wanted to spend the year on white and it turns out life with its inevitable chaos has has put one obstacle out to the next in front of our progress uh not that we haven't made some but we haven't done as well and the book that we want so we we have a New Year's resolution which is to continue to focus on making sure that we put environmental circumstances loaded as best we can in an area that will facilitate our best effort and that's that's what I'm paying attention to yeah no that's that's really good and it's a it's a great follow-up on everything that you were saying on AJ yesterday so yeah that's all very that's it's very lofty that's really like high-minded wave like my minor I have some just practical like I am very uh redoubling to my down on my um no social media uh promises to myself or to minimize it at absolutely as much as I can um so you know the the the last dominoes to fall or Twitter and Instagram for me I've been sort of off Facebook Facebook was easy to quit you know Facebook was not that addictive at least not for the last couple of years because I've been sort of phasing out but Twitter you know as I've talked about I've talked about in my in my group last week with moments of Zen and we've talked about um elsewhere is just if you're at all politically minded and you're you're um interested in sort of feedback from the village with people who are a similar intellectual caliber and are like having important conversations that suck you in and make you feel very urgent about everything Twitter's really really really a nightmare so I have very happily not logged into Twitter for several weeks now and my life is a lot calmer it's really really good so um I am full stop just quitting Twitter for for the new year and then you know Instagram is still my my like methadone drip um and so I'll still post occasional photos of dogs and food but it's that's it's just down to that which is pretty good so yes um this is all part of my general scheme to kind of clean up my data analytics life and to give less information to the all these um AI overlords who are trying to mobilize Us in ways that we're not entirely giving our consent to um and and it's like a two-way street where it's you know they are monetizing your attention and trying to get you to shift your attention just in these very slight ways that serve their advertisers um but it's also having a real cost on your life and your attention economy and um you're spending a lot of time worked up about things that you can't actually have any influence on because they're very aware of the ways in which the Stone Age circuitry traps Us in that so so my my anti-social media stance just gets re recommitted um with a nice little New Year's resolution context but that's I guess that counts as uh you know working on my environment as well so yeah yeah and as part of that I mean it's just general you and I have talked recently about uh just how easy it is to lose time to connect an online connectedness in general and how how little of that is having a real impact on the hundred thousand hours that we would want to spend and how we would want to spend that time so so easy to just get you know you get this these little notifications and oh I have more email I have to respond I have to do it I have to get in like it's like this constant if you don't very consciously step out of that and draw some really sharp boundaries in ways that are going to upset people and and cause cause issues and know why aren't you you know like you're supposed to be responsive to me immediately but it's like you've got us you gotta stand in defense of your own they own hours of your own life because nobody else is going to do it for you so yeah that's my that's my big soap box for 2021 at least at least for now they're probably gonna be be more yeah I've done I've experimented this past couple of weeks with a few just totally offline days you know just like the phone goes in a cabinet you know the the Wi-Fi gets shut off um and uh you know you pick up a book you actually like pick up a book and read and and go for a walk and it's really quite miraculous so I highly recommend that what else do we have we got oh my gosh we have all kinds of stuff coming in um okay so this one this one was submitted by email too so and it's in the chat um so I'll go ahead and ask it would love to hear your thoughts on Suggestions by companies like genoplate which can suggest proportions of macronutrients based on your ability to metabolize carbs versus fats Etc um should we trust them uh I I would I would quickly answer no and then I'll let I'll let Doug spin out I'm gonna go um I'm gonna let you talk and I'm gonna plug in my ethernet speaking of Internet because my my connection's a little shaky so I'm gonna go find the cable okay but but take Take the Wheel um yeah I wouldn't be worried about any of that sort of thing and I I don't I don't know enough about it to be super definitive other than the following and that is that uh when people do more or less what uh what we would tell them to do they do well so the notion is just keep your your diet should be centered the the scent the the gravitational Center of your diet should be wet starches around that is going to be other whole natural food and and uh some some people may not be vegans we don't I mean Jen and I are vegans but that doesn't mean that that doesn't mean you can't have a healthy diet that includes animal food you could but the app is the center of that diet should be wet starches and the uh and so I don't worry about abortions you know you you may discover that if you're you're carrying more weight than you want then maybe your calorie density is a little too high and you're gonna need to look at that the um but other than that I'm not worried about proportions of anything uh believe me your ancestors didn't they just whatever was available that's what they got and so that's more or less what you need to do is you know shorten the list of things down to what would have been uh reasonably available in a in a stone age context and that doesn't include Fritos and you know scooter pies or whatever a scoot what is a scooter pie my guy's a kid he's little they were they were really cool but they were like their little chocolate dipped two cookies on the side with marshmallow in the middle you know oh wow we're going back to the 1960s and 70s here yeah yeah we had some version of those but we didn't we didn't have that name for them but maybe that's like a cultural Regional you know soda versus pop kind of thing yeah yeah um people are asking in the comments what what is a wet starch so I started calling them with clients instead of wet starch I call them steamy starches because I think that gets to the like what that what about it's less confusing um so if it's steaming when you take it out of the you know out of the microwave or or you've steamed it like if it's a steamy starch that's probably something that you want to focus around um so anything that has the water content intact so you know if you if you bake a bunch of potato wedges they're not going to be steaming in the same way that that a baked potato will um it's like a there's more there's more of the the sort of the the moisture is more intact so you just have to use your best judgment and and keep it as close to how it would have been prepared by your Stone Age ancestors as reasonable and you're going to be mostly on the right track I think there may be you know we we may discover in the next 10 or 20 years as we get better at these kinds of you know analytics and these these tests that there are little individual differences that some people might you know be do a lot better because the most recent 10 000 years of their personal Evolution it centers around a slightly different diet than than somebody else in the same species but I don't think that testing is at a level right now anywhere near where you can trust it and invest any kind of real money in it they are they are throwing spaghetti at the wall and kind of kind of getting it half right half the time I I subscribe to um it's not a nutrition specific one but it's kind of like a general we're going to tell you something about your traits like based on your raw data from 23andMe or whatever it is and we're gonna we're gonna tell you how likely it is that you're extroverted or How likely it is that you're a good Sprinter versus a distance Runner and all these things and it gets it right sometimes you know sometimes it'll tell me something about myself that is you know something I perceive to be more or less accurate but these things are based on one one Lab at the you know the State University of New York with a couple of grad students who are trying to isolate and find some correlation between a certain genotype and a certain trait and it's like these are just not it's not good data so there's suggestive data and usually it's one or two studies um and they're they're trying to tell you something but you cannot you just can't take this information to the bank it is just suggestive I think of it just purely as entertainment um it told me I had no no alcohol Gene it told me I would be way better at math than language you know it's like it's gotten things like completely wrong and it's fun when it gets it right it's like oh yeah it did kind of type my big five more or less accurately but there's more you know there's more suggestive data around that so with nutrition I think they're it they're in the Dark Ages still they've barely started to put this together so but I would expect in in a decade or two it's going to get really well refined so save your money until then is what I would say yeah oh well this is a fun one someone is asking I I have commented in various contexts that um you know we talk a lot about mate choice and the and male female Dynamics this is a recurring issue that we talk about on the podcast and elsewhere and I've made the point a couple of times that you know to some degree this is all very nice conversation but in the Stone Age things were actually quite a bit like female choice we may be emphasizing the role of female Choice a little bit because there was a lot of sexual coercion there was a lot of like uh you know women were not always entirely in charge of of who they were going to be mating with the this this questionnaire saying uh Dr Hawk you've called the Stone Age rapey I think I mean I I we have some suggestive evidence about this Randy thornhill's book comes to mind a natural history of rape um and uh but I think this is one of these things I don't know if David Buss has talked too much about that uh I think it's one of these things it's kind of a third rail an evolutionary psychology where people don't talk about it too much but it's mostly just a general inference on my part uh looking at General human nature and human behavior and cost benefit analyzes under different incentives and constraints and and what men can get away with being bigger and stronger and I I think there's a a much larger element of that kind of activity in societies that don't have good institutional protections against it so that's that's generally what I'm trying to get at with that which fortunately is not the case in the modern environment at least in the developed world and so we can talk about male female Dynamics in a different way in this context um but that is not necessarily where where the species has always been I mean look at look at chimps you know yeah yeah there's uh and also female mid choices also probably been driven and is driven partially by um uh looking at particularly upper body male strength the reason is is that they're trying to get them so if you're going to meet with somebody you might as well mate with somebody who can give you some protection against the guys who are going to try to force themselves so that's why the if you if you picture in your mind's eye idealized uh physiques of males and females you're going to see that the the male is triangular idealized from the shoulders down to the waist that that that's literally the musculature that's needed to protect the female eggs and so that's uh so you can see that that didn't happen by accident in other words that the female eye was picking up on those characteristics and making that a feature of her choice along with other things how testosterized can I get and have him still not force me but be tough enough to make sure that everybody else leaves me alone so the the coerce of this that's a very very fine line let's see it's percolating in the back of human mating Dynamics huh yeah no it's really it's a very uh I think most women can kind of relate to that it's sort of the you know there's a very fine line between you know how how sort of uh tough is he and therefore you know has some kind of masculine attractiveness to him but not enough that I don't feel safe alone with them like you know it's sort of you you want the you know just in the middle of the bell curve wise and this is always we always have to give this caveat because of course some women have different preferences but middle of the bell curve you're yeah you're looking for the guy who's gonna beat the crap out of everybody else except you his princess you know like like you were the special one who is not subject to his rage essentially to keep you defended from all of the other terrible men in the village and this is you know as somebody who has ghost written a lot of of romance novels in my day and and sort of used to do a lot of that the uh that's that's at the heart of that Trope you know the sort of if you really look at uh the structure of most romance novels which are written of course for women not for men the The Narrative revolves around this kind of unstable bad boy who who you know he's uh it's it's he's he can't be tamed except by the purity of the one female that he identifies and chooses out of the out of the rubble um and so because she's she's so compelling and he has to protect her he's sort of you know he's he's transformed but he's still defends her against the Barbarian so this is deep in psychology so great with so much fun about listening to Jen is that as she's starting to say something and I'm getting the concept and then my mind starts reaching for some kind of a way to say it it just comes out of your mouth it's so beautiful it's seven seconds ahead of wherever I could get to beautiful it's it's less uh yes you're so I was just saying this the other day that in some other context where you're you're we are very classic examples of sort of middle of the bell curve male versus female thinking and communication where you're so systematic you know you you're like you're never gonna jump straight to Z uh without going all the way through and and backing the camera up which if we had a if we had a living wisdom Library drinking game it would definitely take a drink every time Dr Lyle says back the camera but it's like I I just kind of I I have you know I just I think very relationally as the female brain tends to and so I just go straight there it's like what's the example what's the relevance what's the Practical thing and so if you ask me to how did you get there then I'm like oh [ __ ] I don't know like let me think about that that's good a minute yeah somewhere it's just yeah can't you see it it's like those those old um those old paintings the uh that were very popular in the 90s that yeah where you kind of had to change your focus to see the picture emerge it's kind of that's that's how I go through life so yeah gosh well we have oh my gosh we have so many we have a lot of people here today more than more than usual um so I want to make sure we get to a couple of the questions that were asked ahead of time so we tried to go back and forth between live chats we don't have a set rule like AJ does where she prioritizes questions that are asked ahead we try to get a balance of sort of what's asked here what's what's a response to something thing we said and then people who have asked ahead of time um somebody somebody asked um uh something that I answered on a fairly recent q a so I just wanted to direct them to that just within the last couple of weeks I I answered this so about uh getting sober um from alcohol specifically and sort of how long that takes and what that process is like so I just talked about that it was within the last two or three q a so if you go back and watch those I get into that but um in general I will say it does get easier over time that's what you're asking saying day day 15 is way easier than day three that is true um but it's not a linear process so so you you're on you know what they call a 12-step the pink Cloud right now where it feels like oh this I can totally do this this is no big deal like I'm starting to really get a get a hold of this and you're going to have this sort of like up and down um exp most likely depending on what your history looks like and what it's been for you but um there's you know your your nervous system is not going to give up on those associations with that kind of pleasure that quickly so it's it may be a little quiet now but it's it's likely to Surge and you're likely to have stronger relapse thoughts as you go forward into this process than you than you did even at the beginning um and then the overall trend Fades to almost nothing over time um so these days seven years in I hardly ever think about alcohol but I think about it sometimes and sometimes I think about it a lot like you know if I'm going through a difficult time and I'm sort of like confronted with a lot of cues in one in one place at one time that are hammering my nervous system I I it's like I'm I'm just in my first week again where it's like oh holy crap like this is my brain has not given this fight up it's never gonna totally close the door on this so sobriety is very much about just knowing that you're in for that and and that it's uh it's it will get better in general but it never totally goes away so that sucks I'm sorry that's the honest answer yeah that also I want to point out to people that's not because there's anything wrong with you it's because of an incredibly deep evolutionary device to see to it that you don't starve it up so if you think of this uh think of Farmer John coming out of this Barn hitting the chickens at 6 A.M so that means every morning those chickens are clucking around screeching for it and then one day he comes out after a thousand days in a row and doesn't feed them well for several days they're going to be pretty upset about this and then finally they're gonna the the cost benefit they're going to put less energy into it but and then after he doesn't do it for a year they they barely notice him coming out of there okay but but they're never going to forget for as long as they live and so even three years later uh if you were a little chick that for the first year of your life Farmer John came out of there at 6am you're not going to totally forget that and you may even glance over or if you happen to be there at 6 a.m and he happens to come out of their thing you're he's got your full attention for a few seconds and you're you're thinking about going over there and clucking at them so that's it's because uh that it's a reward and you should never forget a word even if even though in this case it's one that's uh devastating and counterproductive it doesn't matter now in fact it's devastatingly counterproductive because it's a super normal stimuli if there's a normal stimuli it would be that bad it's super normal so therefore it's remembered longer with greater tenacity to ever forget so that's not anything wrong with you it's what's right with you it's what makes it hard yeah very very true I like I always use when I'm talking to folks the an analogy I got from you which is about the the bird flying over to the riverbank for the worms um which is you know it has this warm Bonanza and it feasts on the worms and it's so great and so you know it's it's it's going to take some time for it to change its CB and going back and checking to see if those worms are there um but it's once in a while it's going to have a little thought when the sun is at a certain point in the sky oh you know maybe they came back I'm just gonna go check on it just you know it would be a terrible mistake not to because there's some likelihood that the worms have have returned so that is exactly what it's like with alcohol and particularly as you encounter as yet undiscovered cues in the environment you know for me movies are huge and I've heard this from other other people too um you know if there's a scene of people sitting around drinking you know certain kind of wine and socializing and having that lightness and that ease of conversation everything that can be very triggering to me it's very like that's like oh man I missed that you know know it's sort of tough um and also the it's it's very um especially if you're trying to clean up your diet as well you have finite amounts of willpower to get through your day so so what I've experienced in the last couple of months with the holiday season is you're saying no no no no no no no like I'm not gonna eat the crap I'm not gonna eat that crap I'm not gonna get that crap and then my brain just like Roots around in there and it's like oh you keep saying no well how about alcohol have you thought about that recently it's very interesting to watch it so you know my resistance has been lowered by sort of pushing away all this pleasure trap throughout the day um and and it's like oh our defenses are super down like we've had the battering ram at the door all day so this is the time like go for it so it's very this is this is the process you're you're just you're you're in it for life if you're if you're committed so it's actually not easy if you think about that Jen um you can think about how the the self is essentially uh facing it knows what it needs to do and it knows what it should do and the internal audience is watching the battle and the internal audience is you can see the cell finally starting to negotiate with the internal audience like look at the all of this I've been so good wouldn't it be reasonable for me to get an exception absolutely and the internal audience is a facsimile for normal human observation and negotiation and so it's reasonable that it would say okay you've got a point and it would lower its Garden and that's uh that's the I can completely see how that would work that way very dangerous I think that was I remember we we talked about this at some point just when uh you're you're sort of going through difficult circumstances in life and there's you know you're facing some sort of Big Challenge and um you know uh you're you're going through sort of a um something that would be reasonably recognized by The Village as a tragedy or um you know something something out of the norm and it's very sort of like well of course you know this is completely expected that you would if you were gonna have a slip like we're gonna give you a pass on this one that is part of the calculus that goes on so yes um yeah you're you're you're uh your brain is gonna try to bargain with you and all kinds it's going to throw every tool it's got because this was such a great prize so it's it's going to plead it's going to get angry It's Gonna Get You know it's gonna play nice it's gonna get mean it's gonna just kind of cycle through everything and see what works so um you have to be very very vigilant I came up with an analogy talking about this with a person last week and a very very fit athlete and I said imagine that you're in you're in a wrestling match and the guy on the other side is 30 pounds heavier than you he's just he's he's built like you except he's 30 pounds bigger that's your instincts they are super good they never get tired they're all okay and then I thought I sorry about this Jen really sorry no oh no foreign it's you know the the most famous prize fight I believe in history and it's it's because George Foreman by all accounts was not vehicle and we find out later when he's an old man he can walk into the ring and take the heavyweight title at 44 it's not even [ __ ] so you can imagine what George Foreman was like at 26. Beast he murdered Joe Frazier in no time and so Ali his past is prime going in to the ring and he is only his only uh defense was he he said we're gonna go to the dance he everybody thought that Ali was gonna run for 15 rounds and unbelievably did rope-a-dope is like the in gene is his manager was going crazy in the corner like you're out of your mind okay he knew what he was doing and so this was uh this was outsmarting the thing that is bigger and stronger and tougher and better than you okay that's what do you get you know that's why it's the most famous fight in history he outsmarted he did The Impossible that's what happened and that's that's what this is like you gotta outsmart it now you got it it's it's good it's really good it's ready it knows how are we gonna make sure we don't starve to death the answer pay attention to every damn cue and follow it with bigger that's how you're going to do it so to beat this yeah you're gonna have to use every brain you got yeah and it's very it's um you know I've been talking a lot about this just with a pleasure trap with food but I mean it's applicable to alcohol too that it's there's a reason that a 12-step focuses so much on one day at a time you know and and even one day at a time being one hour at a time because so much of what you're doing is you're just waiting it out you're waiting out the wave of this intense craving that is trying to get you to take this very urgent very essential action right now it's trying to persuade you that if you don't do it now you're you're It's All Is Lost forever yeah on the ropes and he's throwing stuff that you can't believe and you gotta survive it that is exactly what it is and so so much of the game is just waiting letting him Tire himself out you know just sort of like just sitting there and waiting and and just somehow however you can get through that 15 minutes that 45 minutes that two hours it's not going to be as over overwhelming as it is right now two hours later it's just not it might still be there it might still be talking to you but you really the whole you're in the business of trying to get yourself some time that's the main thing that you need to do so whatever is is easiest for you to do that and this is why you like all the cliches go for a walk take a bath spend time with a loved one watch a movie you know do do something to distract yourself um with the with with food it can also be helpful to just like you know eat something else eat something compliant especially something very starchy very satiating um you know whole giant plate of potatoes and gravy you know that just sort of like cut the edge off of that of that demand that's being made on you so so yeah it's not uh it's it's simple but not easy as they say in 12 steps so um and yeah I just I just want to give that questioner I mean congratulations on 15 days because that's no small thing that's when when you're starting out like you know that's a big deal so and if you're a sports fan then you should watch the documentary when we were kids oh yeah even if you're not I mean it's I can I can I can say even as somebody who doesn't particularly care it's still it's a as a human story it's pretty compelling yeah yeah all right what do we got all right uh just I'm inspired now yeah this is very New Year's day-ish yes well here let's ask a completely uh other kind of question I want to include this one because it was it was uh submitted like like a dozen times in various forms like with great urgency so um oh and just you know just kind of a housekeeping matter I know people complain about the Q a form and that the Q a form is is bad um on the website and as I've said in other contexts like I have had this discussion with our web Guru several times and he he insists to me that we basically the site undergoes several hundred attacks a day if people try Russians trying to hack it just like any kind of membership site would so we have to have these invisible security measures that are essentially like uh detecting how suspicious you are so they're looking at all of these things and I think the biggest culprit that people are having is they have extensions on their browser so you have little plugins to do different things on your browser and that can not play nicely with how he has that set up so I'm really sorry if you have trouble both with the login verification the Q a form anything that the site is giving you issues about could be your browser it could be your IP address could be your extensions could be any number of things I have no way of knowing what it is you can always just email me directly the question and I will get it into the queue but uh you know what happens is sometimes people get frustrated by the Q a form it actually does go through so I get like five copies of the question and then I get like five copies of emails to all of my different email addresses and then I lose track because I have hundreds of emails a day that are coming in so I'm I I try to get to everything but it can be uh it can be a little much so this one was uh however this was submitted it came through many many times so uh they're just asking what we feed our pets both of us um and if dogs and or cats can be vegan and be okay and then bonus question to that won't they poop a lot they're for dogs and cats um yeah at least according to my research on this so one of the things about like you know can pets be vegan or not is this is not a field of research that is subject to a lot of really high quality experimental level peer-reviewed data like we just don't have good information about this because nobody has the funding or the motivation to look into this in a really systematically properly scientifically informed way um at least as far as I'm aware so I've I've really looked into it I've tried to kind of get as much good information as I can and I've come up against a lot of suggestive studies a lot of anecdotes and a lot of just kind of Common Sense thinking so so my where I have settled with my dogs is that I feed them vegan kibble so I do I do feed them vegan kibble um mostly just because most dog food is horrendous like like the additives and the um the ingredients in most commercial dog food uh you just once you start researching into it it's really truly appalling um I won't even get into the details right now because it'll turn everyone's stomach but I just I have no interest in giving them some of the things that constitute filler in in um typical dog food and most even high-end commercial animal Animal product dog food has some pretty nasty stuff in it um and so I feed them vegan kibble uh I'm not the Super high-end stuff because I'm not independently wealthy I feed them it's a kind of cheap vegan kibble but I do a lot of supplementing so I supplement with with again vegan food that I have around so they get a lot of sweet potato to get a lot of sweet potatoes they're sweet potato addicts um blueberries greens broccoli uh any any kind of fruit and vegetable I have around that is okay for dogs they get a lot of that and then if they happen to get into some animal based treats so my mom for example her Christmas present to them every year is a giant bag of these really disgusting salmon based treats called yummy chummies which are just horrifying but they love them and so I have I have no problem giving that to them I'm not I'm not imposing sort of an ethical structure on them I'm just trying to give them what I think is probably closest to a pretty optimal diet in a way that I can afford and and provide them consistently consistently I mean in principle if I could afford to get them raw ruminant meat you know and and feed that raw organic wild ranging ruminant meat and feed that to them maybe that would be in principle better for them but I I am pretty convinced that the vegan kibble supplemented with other Whole Foods is better than commercial animal-based kibble um so and and for me that's those are kind of my only choices for my my situation and my circumstances the fact that they're two 70 pound dogs who go through vast amounts of food every week so you kind of just have to look at your own parameters and see what makes sense as far as dogs go it looks like dogs do fine on a vegan diet for the most part the longest live dogs like in the Guinness Book of World Records or whatever happen to be vegan dogs um and uh you know it seems like a lot of what they're they ate ancestorly was very just opportunistic and and they're very omnivorous and so they can do well on a wide variety of diets um that is the kind of where I've landed with them uh subject to I may update that at some point if I get better information but I think the story is different with cats I think cats are pretty much obligate carnivores and and do need animal food but I will let Doug tackle that because he's the cat person in this relationship they can actually they can eat a vegan diet but it has to be a doctor vegan diet so my cats eat vegan kibble but they eat regular fancy cat food so um I I have no children yeah who are therefore they they eat like royalty so I get the most expensive stuff because I'm assuming that it's the best whether or not it is or not they it turns out that the little creatures all seem to have very delicate palettes so there's a few people the better stuff they don't want the stuff that's not as fancy except Mellie yeah not really anything now they will surely eat anything she would prefer the fancier food but um she yeah she'll eat anything yeah well yeah and if my dogs were the same weight as your cats and you know eight similar quantities I would I would probably give them much fancier food but I just don't want to bankrupt myself enormous hungry although we we have a we have a cat who lives here who has who has adopted us here in Hawaii who eats insane amounts of food like we can't figure out what's going on with this kid it's a three and a half pound cat that's that that cat out eats every cat I've got funny little slip of a thing and she seriously like just just to try to like be like specific about this I mean at least four cups of food like like of high calorie like like in like giant piles of kibble I will give her a giant Pile in the morning and then she'll come yelling five hours later for more it's like we don't know where she's putting it how she lives and she she hisses in gratitude whenever we yes her name is Hissy she's uh yeah she's and she comes around even even she has no fear of the dogs like it's it's hilarious so all right so moving on from that one we get that question a lot too people are always asking about what we feed the animals um and it's it's complicated um all right another just kind of this is just kind of a theoretically short question but who knows where we'll go from from here I'm I'm a 19 year old girl from Spain I would like to know your thoughts on the hormone pill for regulating my period I have very irregular Cycles my doctors are telling me I should just take the pill however I'm very healthy I eat mostly vegan Whole Foods I don't have any health issues at all my friends are also healthy and strong taking the pill but I just don't feel comfortable taking it what are our thoughts on that I have a thought yeah you're healthy strong uh Etc you should consider if you can um you should consider maybe going at least three days on water uh we have many times in the center over the last 30 years we have seen women with highly irregular periods that come in and post water fasting everything is like like a Swiss watch that is a super common uh outcome so it's not atypical for during the fast to like you know maybe not have the period or I don't even know what happens but very typically after water fast there's a very heavy period that's a that's a common result and then the next period after that suddenly everything is regulated like it's supposed to be so keep that in mind I would definitely aim at something like that and I would before I would ever use any hormone that's how I would do it yeah yeah I uh I would say there are a lot of different things that you could experiment with like including fasting before you resort to the birth control pill because birth control pill is um you know like like we always say any any kind of drug that has an effect has side effects um and the birth control has is pretty serious side effects and can be uh you know it's a it's a strange bird because it's linked to um putting you at significantly higher risk for certain cancers uh lower risk for others so it's like we we we're just kind of starting to figure out everything that's going on there um but this is very you know I put on my natural hygiene hat when it comes to something like this and and say you know there's no reason if you're otherwise healthy that your cycle should be seriously out of whack so let's look at your weight let's look at you know whether you're getting enough good fat in your diet let's make sure that your um big deal for me I had an irregular period for years and when I started getting sunshine on a regular basis like like this is kind of anecdotal that it made a huge difference for my my regularity I had just kind of accepted that I was all over the place but I moved to California and the Sunshine big doses of sunshine every day just just put like whips me right into shape so um that combined with a very healthy diet with no Dairy I think Dairy if even if you've only got a little bit the hormones and dairy can can confuse you and and cause all kinds of strange issues so if you're underweight if you're eating any dairy if you're not getting outside very often if your sleep schedule is all screwed up any kind of hormonal signaling that's going on is gonna wreak havoc on your regularity so I would want to address all of that before even thinking about the birth control pill because birth control pill is not um that's a that's a very last ditch measure especially for something that is uh you know you're using kind of off Market essentially so so yeah that's my my two cents I I I I I I I sort of regret my years on it it also it just like it just a little chick talk to make Doug uncomfortable here but it it gets you out of touch with your own cycle in a way that is um a little a little odd and a little disruptive and so I my experience kind of going off of it and and having you know you're experiencing the the natural hormonal cycle throughout the month and maybe a little moodier and having all of those sort of you know vicissitudes and so it's sort of surprising to realize that there's actually a lot of turbulence that goes along with those hormonal changes over the over the month and it's a little strange to suppress those um and so once you've once you've sort of experienced the kind of the the fullness of your emotional experience related to your hormonal shifts um I I'm very loath to mess with those in any kind of Pharmacy suitable way um yeah so and for birth control in you know obviously I I would I would direct people more toward um the the non-hormonal IUD um uh vasectomies condoms like things that are not interfering with your hormonal well-being so all right apparently the second yeah [Laughter] it's on the table myself and heart attack and cancer risk I'm sure everything else hi guys all right what else we got goddamn patriarchy just just raining down on women as always speaking of the patriarchy yes so I am a middle-aged female who's been in a stable marriage for 20 years so why am I so crazy about anti-aging I still work out a lot and I use injectables lasers Etc on my face I am 100 disgusted by the aging process and I am fighting it hard as the years go by and the more things change it causes me more frustration it actually makes me angry it seems that other women are more accepting of these changes is there any hope for me I still want to fight the aging process but I would like to have some level of acceptance do I just want to fight so hard because I've always had a fit body and my face is probably at least 80 symmetrical is this some kind of pleasure trap or is it all because I'm just very highly conscientious thank you for your okay did you give me the first sentence um she's happily married and has been for 20 years and so she's wondering why then she would be so concerned about her appearance because in principle she's not in competition for a mate it is how I how I interpret that so yeah why why am I so crazy about anti-aging and she sounds like she's into all of the all the strategies yeah I mean it sounds like we've got a highly conscientious nervous system with with a few Speckles of disagreeable so it's it's feeling unfair um I think all of us uh no I I remember a uh our one day we're gonna have to have Larry on here just so that I seriously we have to I almost asked am I zoomed with them last night for New Year's and I was like oh we should bring them on tomorrow but I just too much of a Pandora's Box when Larry hit about 60 he uh he he said something to me just uh and he's he's repeated it numerous times which is that there's just no upside to getting on hahaha and so the uh yeah I mean your you we have to deal with it and and obviously people people are remarkably different in how how uh how how determined they are to mitigate loss and how determined they are to uh to you know manage things like that and so some people this is kind of the kind of the equivalent I mean so I'm pinning this on personality all the way the uh that there are there are people who they can be too bad Jen it's Sports it's Sports seriously like it's a big world there are a lot of different examples there are uh there are people that that uh I saw somebody say there was upsides yeah Larry started talking about how you could get discounts for the senior coupons like the uh the there are people that you can you can be in a tremendously contested match at the end of that match you hug each other and you shake hands and even if you lost you're just honored to be in the process and then there's people that can't stand it they are bitter and angry and they just they they are just so intensively competitive but they can't stand the fact that they're lost okay those are the differences in people that's just who they are and it doesn't make you a better person or a worse person uh uh Michael Jordan was a ferocious competitor who absolutely hated to lose and wasn't up for giving anybody any credit okay he that doesn't make him a bad person that just makes him just an unbelievable Warrior where there are other people that that are are extraordinarily competitive but they are not going to have that reaction and so that's personality and so you know what it is what it is sorry about that yeah yeah I I to me it's just almost this feeling of you know if you're getting a massage just like you just gotta let go whatever enjoy the experience you know be uh the truth is that that's is hundred thousand hours make the most of it you know I think about this in some of the same ways that I'm also thinking about your issue with the screen time that the screens have gotten so addictive in the last five years for example that that um I I catch myself realizing you know wait a second are you going to look back 20 years from now and say well I S you know that's what I did with my time I I stared at screens and looking at process stimulation for a huge amount of my existence and the answer is no no I'm not going to do that I I am going to just essentially fight that seduction and I'm not going to do it in the same way you you could look at this process of fighting the aging and say really I'm going to spend the next 20 years obsessing and fighting over every wrinkle the answer is you know what careful uh I had one person that the right move for them was to get every mirror out of the house don't don't have one yeah this is that I mean that's where I was gonna go with this is that okay how can we look at the environment like you you've got a personality that's making you very you know touchy around this but what what is your information environment look like so I'm I'm in a very different place with my aging process depending on what kind of what I'm consuming you know what what am I watching who am I spending time with how much am I like devoting attention to this and and basically like fueling the fire of my own self-loathing with some kind of information environment that's actually not doing me any favors so I'm in a very different place if I'm out you know camping in Alaska with good friends and dogs and having you know coffee and just going on beautiful hikes and being immersed in the moment I'm not thinking about wrinkles in that kind of context but I am if I'm watching a lot of videos about evolutionary psychology and beauty and mate value and you know how all the fertility signals are declining after menopause blah blah like it starts to make you crazy so you know I'm not saying don't listen to us and don't watch our content but I'm saying you have to if you are being tortured around these issues I have a video called don't let evolutionary psychology ruin your life that gets to some of this um it's about more weight issues than than aging but covers both of these things and so like don't uh you know I think women who are living in LA are are having a very different experience of this than women who are living in Olympia Washington you know it's just you're you're in your environment of information matters a huge amount to your well-being yes yeah yeah and mirrors mirrors are part of that yeah and and comparing yourself to like watching too many movies with beautiful people and spending too much time on Instagram so this is something I see a lot with especially younger clients who are comparing themselves to these hyper hyper curated Instagram feeds of you know already nines and tens who are photoshopping themselves into Oblivion with all their best angles and choosing among 300 photos to find the most attractive one and you're like oh God I can never look like that well of course you couldn't look like that like you don't have her publicist you know they don't look like that there's actually there's a there is an Instagram feed I forget what it's called but it has side by sides where they've gone through and found sort of candid photos taken of these uh these influencers and these celebrities that are very similar in body language and and clothing to the highly photoshopped very posed photo um and you can I mean you see all the cellulite you see all the bad angles you see all the asymmetry you see everything um and that's not what you're going to see when you're consuming this information so if you are a nervous system that is like really agitated you've got to start looking at how like what what are you plug it into the system and and how can you maybe do something about that yeah right on freaking patriarchy making money off of your self-loathing all right one more we got one more dig one out speaking of making money off of self-love or well just making money off of outrage basically people are asking about whether we've changed our tune on our trust in governmental institutions given the sort of January 6th scenario um I have I have great trust in this government the the uh obviously I unders I can hear the the Wailing from every corner uh as a Libertarian I have been I've been a Libertarian since I was about probably about 19 or 20 uh maybe right in there we're probably about maybe a little right right about that time yeah I can tell you the books that I read that were that influenced me uh looking out for number one by Robert ringer and then how icon's been around three World by Harry Brown and then pretty soon in economics economics in one Lesson by uh Haslet um and the I read parts of the road to Surf them by fa Hayek uh I read uh some of a sample Professor economic Professor Murray rothbard I can't remember what his book was but in other words I I read these things and let me tell you oh certainly Rand okay and let me tell you what the plot theme was it's all going to hell we're we're going to run into it's going to be a communist you know disaster look at all the places where all the freedom is being curtailed you know Atlas Shrugged is the great novel of America the trends you know don't change it's all going to be you know Soviet United States okay yeah well I'm 40 years older and what have I seen uh I I've seen a magnificent country uh becoming vastly more prosperous I have seen an extension and increase of social welfare uh that the Libertarians would ring their hands but I wouldn't I've worked in those systems and I've seen the the need for Intel intelligence in a system but quite frankly I can I can imagine a world that is quite a bit wealthier than the one we have now where people that are unable to help themselves very well will have a much better standard of living than they have now and so uh there's nothing in principle at all along with social welfare uh there's uh what there is is there's one that's and there's choices and there's cost benefit analysis and it all needs to be percolated the um I'm sure people on the left uh Lament The the growing Menace of of uh what do you call it Big Tech big capitalism gonna defeat you know the world that said to defeat the Free World uh I don't think so in other words uh I look back uh at at the time I had a message about the time when I was a a raging libertarian we've all got to strip this down and get it all down to personal incentive um I I went to the seminar by by a quiet hero of mine uh Mr Jim run and uh Jim Rohn told the story about business Executives that gathered around him whenever they're all talking about what's the next year going to be like and he said well I can tell you what the next year is and they all said oh my God what's the next year going to be like and he said next year is going to be an account like it's always been it's going to be adversity mixed with opportunity okay and so that that's what we're going to find uh we're uh depending upon your political perspective you're going to win some and you're going to lose some and then you're going to win some more and then you're going to lose some more and there will be the reason uh I conceptually view our political system as a is essentially a big uh grandfather clock that has it has a pendulum they could only swing so far it's constrained by its architecture and I'm well aware of the howling and the fear and the fear-mongering and the echo Chambers on either side uh actually if you want to look at three sides the left the right and the libertarian they all have their own Echo Chambers and and everybody's either rubbing their hands in excitement or their or their their panics but in no way do I believe that 2021 yeah 2021 is going to look a lot better than 2020 obviously because we're going to have a Health crisis finest the 2022 what's it going to look like it's going to have some adversity and it's going to have opportunity and it's going to have this Society becoming wealthier Freer and largely better than it ever has been before so am I going to be pissed off at the people that I disagree with politically yes but that's been going on for 40 years that will not change okay and so that that's how I see it so now I'll let our resident uh political expert uh Summit up for us what do you think well it's I'm in a strain I'm in a funny position as your resident political expert because I follow my own advice with this because if I if I were on Twitter right now and I were consuming my little Echo chamber of information about fear-mongering around January 6th I would be pretty freaked out like I would definitely I have a lot of colleagues I have a lot of you know very finely feathered political scientists a very fancy institutions around the country who are very concerned about about this particular set of Dynamics and this particular personality and these particular particular like like what could happen um and I am just not I'm very consciously not consuming this fear like there is nothing I can do about this so so worse like I'm I just have kind of down arrowed it like if I'm gonna worst case scenario it there are people at a way higher pay grade than I am way more skin in the game way higher investment in this process and this outcome duking this out as we speak so it's not like my interests are not being advocated at the highest and best possible level by the people I have elected to Advocate my interests you know they they are it's it's you know I I voted for Baidu so I'm I've been very transparent about that it's not like he's not aware of this you know the these rumors and this this plotting and it's not like he's not surrounded by a lot of people who are aware and who are doing everything they can to to work against this process so what good does my anxiety and my freak out uh accomplish in the world I'm just making myself miserable by refreshing Twitter and replying to threads that are completely freaked out about creeping authoritarianism and this like reverse coup and everything else so it's like not it's not anything that serves my hundred thousand hours so um if we find ourselves in some constitutional crisis and and you know Pence does the wrong thing from my perspective um and uh and all hell breaks loose then I will deal with that as it comes in that moment I will you know sort of revisit my civic duty and and my responsibility as a citizen at that point and kind of weigh my options in that context but I'm not going to do that until and unless that becomes necessary because right now it's a lot of uh it's a lot of Silicon Valley making a lot of money off of your outrage and your fear good job yeah all right yeah good yeah now the major key to your better future is you it's not the government right that's Jim Run Okay so but by far you know you're your life will be altered for the the better or the worst depending upon what you do about your life and what goes down in Washington or anywhere else is almost completely immaterial so it's entertaining and it's exciting and it may be nerve-wracking but it's actually not important that's my that's my view I I can't I can't how can I how can I look in any other way I've lived through so many different presidents and listened to so much angst and all I see is that I'm a free person uh with with uh all kinds of options and all kinds of opportunity and what I make what this life is is what I make of it yeah I I have a small percentage of anxiety about a massive constitutional crisis undermining our most most important institutions of a peaceful transition I have some concern about that but I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get myself into a huge tizzy about it until uh until I have to very good I'm barely aware that there's an issue but I guess yeah there's it's it's it's it's your it's your boy it all comes it all comes down to Pence and his legacy and whether he whether he does the right thing or not so we'll all be watching we'll be we'll be paying close attention I wonder what the astrology is like that day what if instance is a Gemini I think we're gonna have to investigate them I mean people don't freak out on me I'm gonna get like five emails like oh my God I can't believe you talked about astrology on a living wisdom Library oh my God all right well very good thanks everybody for coming I think I I we may have actually exceeded our we've never had more than 100 people come to one of these by far like I think the most we've ever had at one time is maybe the low 80s yeah so um I I have an email or two saying that people actually couldn't get into the zoom room so I'm just saying this for posterity for people watching the replay um I will look into that I thought our level was 500 but maybe it got ratcheted down or we didn't pay our bill or something so I will uh I will look into that and make sure that everybody can get in live next time and see what went wrong there if indeed something did so in addition to me sending out the wrong link last week which I already corrected so glad you guys found your way over here one way or another all right fantastic see everybody soon happy New Year all right bye everybody
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