17 POWERFUL Moments From The Rich Roll Podcast 2024 | BEST OF Part 2

all of the best stuff in life is on the other side of our comfort zone the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's H you can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow or not or not the only person that can truly take care of me is me what is the thing that's drawn your heart like what is it like take a step in that direction what is not so servicing you you got to let it go when you change your perceptions the next thing that changes is

your thoughts then your feelings your emotions change your stress responses change and then your life changes hey everybody Welcome to part two of our best of 2024 series if you missed it in part one we explored groundbreaking medical research inspiring personal transformations and strategies for mind body wellness and today's lineup is equally profound featuring raw conversations about resilience of purpose and human Potential from a 73-year-old fitness icon to your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man these conversations offer wisdom for navigating our rapidly changing world let's begin with Chef babet Davis this is a woman who at 73 defies

every perception of Aging capturing hearts and Minds across the world as a viral Fitness and mindset sensation her philosophy of self-love and resilience made this one of 2024's most energizing conversations the only person that can truly take care of me is me I am responsible for me I'm responsible for my health well let's talk a little bit more about this idea of your responsibility to yourself that's not unrelated to this idea of self-love and you always talk about putting yourself first better talked about that a little bit last time but maybe we can go a

little bit deeper into that so what do you mean when you say that basically I I I view life as an amazing gift a a beautiful Human Experience and um for me the only way that I can show how appreciative I am of this gift is to practice self-love and self-care and that includes my thoughts the people that I surround myself with um how I nourish myself um just how am I caring for this human body so that I can I can live at my purpose and I feel right now I figured out what my

purpose is and it's sharing my journey because it's so inspiring to so many you know I can't imagine that you were always this way it feels like you were always this way no I wasn't I wasn't always this way but I I I've come to realize that this Human Experience is full of a lot of bumps and knocks and you know it's it's a beautiful thing to be able to get through all of that and then still be high enough that you're willing to share you with the masses and that's what I do every day

and that is what I'm embracing and I love so much about my journey right now so that rather than being angry about the journey I accepted the journey and now I just decided was going to be full of love going forward and I understand that that is a lot stronger than hating and I think I mentioned that in our other interview what does being angry get me just a grumpy old lady being angry right I'm full of life right now I'm happy I'm all that stuff is back then yes I am who I am today

because I went through all of that but man I'm so much better than I was my daughter said to me um I think it was yesterday I was talking to her she's everybody goes do whatever it is they go through and she said to me I'm just so stressed right now I am so stressed at this moment right now it's got a lot going on with family in the whole nine yards and I said what can you do about anything that you're stressed over right this moment what can you do about any of that she

said nothing I said so why don't you just take advantage of right now and let's just make each other laugh and just move past that and I found some silly um something on uh YouTube that was really stupid and I sent it to her and we had the best laugh ever it's just reminding yourself there's absolutely nothing I can do about any of that right this moment but I don't have to let this moment go I can Embrace this moment and give thanks for this moment and be happy in this moment because I control my

thoughts I control my heart and all of that stuff it's not real it's not real [Music] Rich speaking of transformation through self-love Michael chernow's journey of sobriety and personal growth reads like a Hollywood screenplay through his commitment to daily habits and morning routines this celebrated restaurant tour turn Nutrition Fitness and lifestyle entrepreneur delivers an absolute master class on personal transformation it was a Monday and I had been up for days and the two guys that I was with kind of called it quits and I remember very clearly being in my apartment not wanting to stop

what I had in my pocket and in the booze that I had and for whatever reason I caught a um I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I stopped and I and I looked over there and I said I hate you like legit I hate you and uh you should die like you should just do it you've been playing around with the idea for so long you should just you should do it you know and two weeks prior I had overdosed on heroin mhm and I could not I just couldn't figure out

how to stop I wanted to stop desperately I did I really did I remember walking from that apartment that I overdosed in I was walking West on 13th Street and I was like that's it man no more done how have you let yourself go get to this place and um that night I was back at it and so for those two weeks I kind of had made a commitment in the opposite direction and said all right dude well you're not going to figure out how to end this in a in a positive way you might

as well push as hard as you can till it's over you know like till you're dead basically because you almost died can't figure it out you're so close I really wanted to to end it that that morning but I didn't I blacked out and I came to 16 hours later I'd slept through work for theth time my boss I called my boss and I you know said I'm so sorry man I he's like Mikey that's it sorry like I love you MH you're a great person but you're dying everybody knows around you you're dying I'm

not going to allow that to happen on my watch you you're done you're fired and man I loved my job I really did I L I loved where I worked and I said Frank please please give me another shot man please I will get sober and he said there's no chance you're bartending or running you know bar managing this restaurant in your condition just no chance but if you show to the show up at the restaurant at 8:00 in the morning for the next 30 days I'll consider giving you your job back but you have

to get sober and um I said whatever whatever you want me to do so I began that journey and uh that was like kind of like a kick in the ass that I needed I don't know what really was different that day than you know all the other times that I'd slept through work and wanted to kill myself and you know felt like my life was useless or uh hopeless but I made a phone call to an old friend who was kind of like an older sister to me when I was running around the streets

you know without a home I knew that she was dating a sober guy and I think she was sober at the time as well and I said I I'm done I need help I'm I'm desperate I need help and so she introduced me to this guy Marcus he basically said wake up as early as you can get out of bed brush your teeth wash your face put on your contact lenses that for me in those days was like a massive ask you know that was like a big ask right brush my teeth I mean I

don't even know like did I ever brush I don't know you know wash my face never happens never never happened I never washed my face outside of being in the shower you know so brush my teeth wash my face take a piss and then drop down on my knees and pray and I was like huh like what they were like don't ask questions just drop down on your knees and ask God for help because you need help and you have no idea how to ask for it so if you ask for help in the morning

on your knees the chances of you asking for help later on in the day will just be greater we don't give a [ __ ] if you believe in God we don't care what you talk to or who you pray to just do it and I was like okay so they said get on your knees and pray put on a pair of sneakers and go out for a walk or a run that could be a walk around the block that could be a run around the block that could be 9 miles that could be whatever

you want it to be just get out and move your body right away right away and I said okay and then they said as soon as you get back make a bowl of oatmeal a big huge bowl of oatmeal add whatever you want to it but we're telling you to eat oatmeal because it's cheap it's relatively healthy it's inexpensive and we need you to start putting healthy [ __ ] into your body right as soon as you're done with that oatmeal go to this meeting at 10:00 a.m. get your hand up and say who you

are and what you are and who you are is Michael turn now and what you are is an alcoholic and I was like okay and then they said right after that meeting come down to the Muay Thai gym and we're going to kick your [ __ ] ass and we're going to teach you how to be at that time you know could be controversial to say today but we're going to teach you how to be a man and we're going to teach you about integrity we're going to teach you about honesty we're going to teach

you how to get back up which honestly in my opinion is probably the greatest lesson I've learned to date the only thing I think we have to do perfectly in life is get get back up and I learned that there with those guys cuz they really did knock me down physically all the time constantly I got my you know ass handed to me every single day in the in the in the rings of Muay Tha and the one thing I prided myself on was always getting back up and then they said right after you we're

done training we're going to train here for two two and a half hours you're going to eat chicken and broccoli you're going to take a nap and you're going to go to work you're going to eat chicken and broccoli as early as you can for dinner and you're going to go to bed as early as you can and just going to be a rinse and repl and before you go to bed you're going to drop down on your knees and you're just going to say thanks and that's it that's all you got to do and

I was like I mean it's you know I just did it I did it I don't know if I'd want to go through it again but I wouldn't change any of it because I really do believe that every moment of it has made me the guy I am today and I can honestly say looking at you today that I love my life I [ __ ] love my life I'm so blessed and grateful for my life what do you make of that what do you want people to understand about that and how it applies to

their own lives very simple you can allow your past to predict your present or future you certainly can all day long you can be a [ __ ] victim and you can allow what happened in your life to completely dictate what happens today or tomorrow or not or not and I've chose to not allow what happened in my past to dictate what I do think say or how I conduct in my life today I just don't anyone can change at any time it's never too late you're never too far gone you might think you are

you might not believe that with every ounce of of of life in you that it's too late it's too far gone I'm too old I'm on skid R there's no way it's just I got it I got to throw in the towel and it's just not true it's just not true while Michael found his path through discipline author Ryan holiday returns to explore the critical role the stoic virtues play in personal and societal growth drawing from his latest book Ryan offers fresh insights on applying an wisdom to contemporary ethical [Music] dilemas when I started this

series I I guess I wasn't fully aware of how Inseparable the virtues were but each time you try to look at one specifically looking courage or discipline or Justice or wisdom you you go oh but it's you're kind of writing the same thing yeah and the same people doing the same things and you can how you choose to talk about each one it's really just a choice you putting in this bucket or this bucket but you're illustrating the same thing over and over and over again right because if you're pursuing Justice without wisdom or or

Temperance yeah it's not going to come out well or is keeping your word doing what you say honoring your commitments is that the virtue of Justice or is that the virtue of discipline is doing your best realizing your potential as a person sure this is very obviously a matter of discipline uh and willpower but to not give your best is to cheat someone right to uh not realize your potential is to deprive the world of something and so they're all very very related I am fully convinced that justice has to be the virtue that the

others Orient themselves around because yeah courage in pursuit of an evil end what's the point uh and hardly admirable and then um there is this idea of course is that like because you're doing the right thing uh the world will just greet you with red light with green lights and and Tailwinds and they won't right so you need the discipline to to sort of bring that into fruition and then like wisdom is obviously the thing that helps you sure figure them all out obviously there's all these big things that are happening in the world but

what's cool about having a podcast or you know you have a little compy we it's possible to like for individual ual to do things that previously only like countries did or previously only like massive corporations did but now you as an individual are faced not with hey do you fudge the math on your taxes or not but like do you work with this supplier or that supplier how do you treat your employees like these sort of questions that we get to instead of there was an impotence in US sort of going well how do we

want those people far away who are in the positions of power influence how do we want them to make decisions there's also a sort of Return of a lot of agency to the individual in this sort of global interconnected we're like we actually get to make decisions of some consequence it's not the same as Nike deciding or apple deciding where their Factory is going to be but you get to decide are you buying from this supplier or that supplier and that's of no small consequence at least for the people directly affected by the thing they're

making my favorite part of the entire book is the afterward where you address this directly I really you know was thirsty for and enjoyed like your own perspective of how these principles have applied in your life or how you're striving to apply them and where you've needed to apply them in order to address like failures and weaknesses and you're you're very specific with persec of what you just shared like where do the coins come from the you know the daily Stoke coins and who is manufacturing the leatherbound you know covers to to the books and

all that sort of stuff are decisions as a business owner that you have to make that have ethical you know considerations in terms of how they measure up with virtue and your own personal Integrity or just like a even like more mundane one like I don't know about you but I would always read about like Black Friday sales and people like lining up for you know like to buy like a plasma TV like the day after Christmas or Thanksgiving or whatever and I was like this is gross like why are you doing this right is

this what we want to be as a society and then you know you start a business and you sell things and then someone comes to you on your team goes so are we going to do like a cyber monday email and suddenly you're you're faced with the decision that it becomes very real the CEO of insert you know department store was also faced with and you have to go oh okay so I think these things are gross but they make a lot of money do I want to do that and then you you have to

decide and you know and so like for daily St we don't do Cyber Monday or Black Friday I just I was like this isn't what I like so we do like a a food drive every year and it's been cool it's but like how do you I'm saying that not to Pat myself on the back but to this idea of like justice not this abstract theoretical thing but justice as something that results from the decisions that you make in your life in the sphere in which you happen to operate so some of us are the

CEO or the founder of Patagonia and we make a decision that can impact tens of thousands of employees and then some of us own a little bookstore in Texas and we go hey do I want to give my employees the day off to be with their family of course it seems awesome but the cost of that is this number are you okay with that mhm like justice is that it's wrestling with that I don't want to hold myself up as someone who's like always making these great moral decisions but the idea of of principles being

a thing that cost you money or things that challenge you or that you are allowed to do and in fact may even be like an industry practice but whether you should do them whether it's the kind of person you want to be is an entirely separate question taking Philosophy from Theory to practice film director Tom shadia walked away from the summit of Mount Hollywood to climb a different Mountain one that's about purpose it's about meaning and service to something greater than the self through his work with Memphis rocks the indoor climbing Community he created in

an underserved Memphis neighborhood Tom demonstrates how embracing interconnectedness can heal societal divides this idea that everything is separate this idea that you all don't affect each other that the Ripple the science of the Ripple sends a ripple out into Infinity it just goes right and until we recognize that um we will continue to create these issues and put all our attentions on symptoms the symptom which we need to do we need to find healthier diets healthier outcomes and we need to find healthier structures and organizations but what is causing all this stuff like what is

it what story U all Harari is now like really on the on the march with His Brilliant take on History which is these are stories the question is is is is it true or how's it working out for you how's the story working out for you yeah the kind of intractable problem of of overidentification with self is such a difficult one to unang untangle when you know all the incentives of our culture kind of Drive our Behavior towards that and we can listen to podcasts and read books and we can be you know informed that

this is not the way to happiness and meaning and purpose and yet we'll still think yeah yeah yeah I know but like if I can just get around the bend and get that other thing then like my problems will go away and I'll be happy um and I won't have to deal with whatever I'm dealing with right now and it's really hard to kind of disabuse yourself of that delusion I would say keep going see how works out for you you'll get that thing you'll be flying privately and the Jet will be empty like you'll

have a mansion and there'll be no no community in that in that in that mansion and again I have no judgment about any of this stuff just do that thing and then maybe if you if you feel like it one day um come to Memphis rocks and just meet some kids you might never have met before and see how that feels and and climb with a kid and maybe then you know take him to our juice bar it's called juice Almighty by the way after Bruce Almighty they named it brilliant Zack Rogers named it and

see how that feels and build your life around those things that feel awesome it build your life around those things that feel awesome I'm here to say that like this feels awesome and like you said it's really hard and I wouldn't want it any other way what great thing has ever happened but just like oh this is so easy like like so easy like I mean look at the way a butterfly is born man that is some painful [ __ ] like look at the way human is born like you know there's a reason it's

in like blood and muck and mess and like it's tough but it's so without look man it's the way it works right the depth of of the Valley and the height of the peak are they they're hand in hand so if you don't have those things that the shadow you you have no you have no light and so it's just in the whole freaking design like Yeah The Shadow can become the superpower when you develop the capacity to claw your way out of it I look at Shadow as something to be loved like like you

know we have this thing called Shadow Boxing I don't want to box with my shadow I want to like dance with it like I want to love it up like like yeah I hear you like here you are there you are ego again I just I'm going to walk on hopefully a movie set really soon like there I am again like I am the most important person here and I can say to my shadow oh I I oh you're you're still here aren't you yeah okay and now you miss me yeah yeah yeah yeah well

look let's come on come on come with me we're going to do this together but you know i' I've I've got a little bit of a different attitude stay on my shoulder but but uh I still love you but I actually think all these people are as important as I am on this on this movie Set beautiful when someone comes to you as I'm sure they do and and say to you you know I love your message Tom I hear these you know things about meaning and purpose and happiness and you know I just don't

know how to connect the dots like my life's okay but I know that it could be better I could live you know with more gratitude and more love and more Community like how do you how do you counsel that person to connect more with these things that that are are so fundamental to you know feeling self-actualized well the first thing that I do and it's really hard for me I see some podcasts and other um shows do like questions from people they'll write in questions and then you give an answer I can't do that like

I I just I there's too many questions I have for that person you know if I ever do this podcast I the segment I want to do is called questions and antlers because antlers are something we shed you know I'll give you a perspective um and then maybe we'll shed it in a year because you'll have gone through something and all have gone through something but I need to ask that person a lot about their life before I go ahead and shooting on them you know like so that's one thing but overall the first thing

I would want to tell a person is um first of all the fact that you're asking me that question means I have zero worries about you I am not concerned about you at all the fact that you're asking that question means as the poet said that where you are right now God circled on a map just for you you're already open you're aware that maybe there's a fuller way for you to experience life and to use your talents fantastic take the pressure off to do that don't look for your purpose I think this is a

great Poison by the way Danny Thomas said something and I'm so inspired by him but I don't necessarily agree with what he said which is um when he did found a St Jude he said now I know why I was born now I know my purpose and I'm like oh so you weren't born to birth the beautiful producer Tony Thomas your son um who's done so much good in the world in his own you weren't here to birth Marlo and you weren't here to inspire a young Lebanese um who had no idea that there was

a path for an Arab American in CHS no it's all like it's all like greeting your staff today like that is no lesser purpose than me doing the next big film um so um just go go gentle with yourself and then um what is the thing that's drawing your heart like what is it like take a step in that direction this idea of healing through connection is actually a powerful reminder that not all problems can be solved with the intellect true wisdom is the domain of another brain one we too often Overlook and that brain

is the heart brain meet Kimberly Snider so what science is showing now is that there's this way of creating more clarity and more focus more energy more Vitality hormonal balance gut health from actually going in and accessing your heart and to your point it can heighten into truition um this is something that's been talked about in ancient Traditions around the world from the Babylonians to the Greeks um the Egyptians didn't take the heart out of the mummy and spiritual traditions and only in the recent let's say hundred years or so has there been such an

emphasis on just Brain Brain Brain linear linear linear so the research that is in this book that we've even done our own study shows that all the things that we want that Clarity the more success the material things the greater Health actually comes from starting to syn up this power center it's not sentimental this is really practical what we're talking about yeah it's uh you know on the one hand there are all of the ancient traditions and and the Traditions that are shared across a multiple a multiplicity of of of faiths and um practices over

Millennia of course and I want to get into all of that but what I didn't expect in your book is to see all these graphs you know like uh sort of heart rhythm graphs and and you know science and studies on the actual impact of what certain practices to bring you into greater coherence between heart and brain can do to you physiologically emotionally um and Etc all all the way down the line so I was researching my last book which came out in um 2021 and I came a across this really interesting piece of research

about the heart brain that I I've been working in Wellness nage for close to 15 years and I didn't know this and I was like what is going on how come I don't know this why doesn't everyone know this and so I started going down this rabbit hole with the science and at the same time I was reading this book the holy science which was you know yoga nand is the one who brought yoga to the west and I've always been interested in spirituality worldwide um and in this book he talks about these five states

of the human heart that are from the ancient Vic texts and I was as I was going into the science I was like whoa these heart stages line up with the science so basically the dark heart scientifically means the heart and brain aren't communicating so that's where we start to feel like Push Pull life is really uous I'm so confused all the way to what's known as heart brain Harmony or the clear heart where we're just moving from this deep place of flow and harmony with life so yes to to you know comment on that

there is this spirituality which I love is where it starts to really line up with this science you don't have to be spiritual to really benefit from this heartb brain information and to learn how to awaken the heartb brain there's so much science but there is also an intersection that's really fascinating so what is your main thesis before we dig deeper into this idea of heart brain communication so the book is called the hidden power of the five Hearts so this hidden power rich is I want everyone to know because it's affected my life so

much that there is this power center inside of us it's this anchor that when we start to waken it gives us the clarity the energy the greater Health the deeper relationships the access to more intuition that we're looking for and it's not outside it's not needing the attachment of this relationship or all the biohacking devices or all the specific Foods those can be great too and I've you know gone down that rabbit hole and I live a really healthy life and I sleep well and I use non-toxic products but when I started accessing this power

I would say my energy increased about 70% and that's because all these little ups and downs this is where the psychological becomes the physiological for instance 2 minutes of feeling irritation puts into motion 1,500 different biochemical processes that ultimately drain your energy so while my lifestyle was really clean and you know well conceived on the outside all these little triggers right our migdala stores these emotional um like the Resonance of certain things so it would be like I didn't like that email or going to stress response or here's traffic or what did that person mean

by this up and down all day so when we learn to actually create more coherence what it feels like rich is is zooming out not so up and down in daily life so I want people to know there is this way to increase your energy to reduce stress and to just increase the things that we want from inside blew me away and I want everyone to have this knowledge how many times do we hear be mindful think more positively don't get in your head love yourself I used to I love eart toly and he says

go beyond thinking but the difference with this work is that we're going to a different place to find a solution than where the challenge is and this example the challenges the thoughts we in our heads you said it yourself you're in your head a lot so we actually come down into this place and these practices which some of them so simple so powerful just by putting some of our your attention on your heart right now as we're talking research published in the American Journal of Cardiology shows that that alone starts to rewire your nervous system

this term neuroplasticity doesn't just refer to your brain wires it's between your heart and your brain as well what does this mean this means in daily life you start getting out of your old patterns why this is different your heart sends more messages to your brain so this changes your perceptions the five hearts are five stages they're also five different realities when you change your perceptions the next thing that changes is your thoughts then your feelings your emotions change your stress responses change and then your life changes so right here I could be in this

perception of oh God this is so hard I don't really want to be here or I could have this perception of you know I'm really excited about this this changes what's happening on a physiological level so it's so practical and again what blew me away was how simple some of these tools are a lot of the tools in the book are 3 to 10 seconds I use them all the time when my kids are having a tantrum or I get like an email I didn't like for work and you shift time and time again to

this different heart brain and suddenly you're not in these same triggered reactive mhm patterns MH so it's different you're going to a different place going to get in my daily ag1 this is a habit I started maybe I don't know six or seven years ago tastes great 75 vitamin and minerals packed into every scoop and it's energizing good for your body super simple super easy super convenient particularly when I'm on the road when I'm traveling when I'm moving around a lot I keep the travel packs everywhere I go so they're always within Arms Reach and

that way I know that uh I'm doing what's best for my body on The Daily so if you're looking to establish a new healthy habit this year try ag1 for yourself it's the perfect way to prioritize your Wellness that's why I've been partnering with ag1 for so long and right now ag1 is offering new subscribers a free $76 gift when you sign up you get a welcome kit a bottle of D3 K2 and five free travel packs in your first box so make sure to check out drink a1.com SLR to start your new year on

a healthier note from heart wisdom to the power of surrender master of mindfulness hakam tarai returned to the show to share his philosophy which which is sort of this blend of Street culture influence with ancient wisdom to discuss this idea of surrender surrender as a superpower for personal transformation you know one of the things that I've been really playing with and really enjoying is surrendering that concept of surrendering and it was something that was for many years it was tough for me to do and as I've gotten older and as I've learned to soften my

heart I've really learned how to surrender you know as you talk about that and and you're like yeah I don't know if I can do that how much of it is you not surrendering oh most of it all of it probably right yeah and whatever part isn't about that could probably be solved through a deeper form of surrender because if you're truly letting go then there's no space for that cackle yeah yeah but Liberation is hard it's a [ __ ] beast isn't it it really is it really is so when you say you're focusing

on surrender what is the brass tax of that practice you know the aspect of Letting Go the aspect of dismantling old habits you know for me I've really worked hard in these last few years on really letting go and dismantling and just getting rid of what doesn't service me and surrendering is that what is not servicing you you got to let it go and I think I go through modes where I'm just like I need to get rid of this I need to get rid of that whether it be physically or mentally or spiritually and

it's becoming part of my my muscle memory now because I'm realizing that it's lightening up my load in so many ways that I could even possibly imagine it's lightening up my load and it's making things a lot more easier and clearer for me the more I can let go the more and you know I said this in the last time we were here you know holding that backpack and just being able to let go but it's it's really true and in that surrender I think for so many of us and especially for men there's a

kind of they equate surrendering with weakness and to me surrender is almost like a superpower takes a lot it's also an act of Courage because it's forcing you to confront yourself in an honest way and make peace with the fact that you're not the all powerful in control being that you would like to believe that you are right you have to disabuse yourself of that delusion yeah and that's very threatening to the ego and it requires courage so it's actually the antithesis of weakness weakness is going about your way and never turning the Gaze inward

to deconstruct that illusion yeah but it's a it's a leap it's a leap for a lot of people if you tell somebody the solution to your problem is to let go that immediately gets interpreted as waving the flag of defeat when all of our instincts and every kind of input over the course of Our Lives is telling us to like push push push and if you're strong enough or you can summon the will you'll be able to solve the problem that way and that's the gift of you know having experienced a life crisis be it

existential or with substances or some form of addiction is that you're forced to confront that and and then you kind of find your way to the other side and realize the power of of surrender and how how it's very different than what you might imagine have imagined it to be for sure and you know one of which for me was a big one um was alcohol that was a big one I think I'm going on maybe two and a half two and a half years now where I haven't touched it and that was a big

one for me because I would somewhat lean on it to once I realized that I didn't need alcohol in my life anymore and just got rid of it things started becoming a lot more clearer for me and I know it sounds cliche and a lot of people like oh my God I I got rid of alcohol and I got rid of drugs and and it became more mystical and clear but something did essentially happen for me when I gave up alcohol and then being in establishments and being in areas where I saw my friends drinking

and seeing what they were doing when they drunk too much or how they would act and being in those environments that in itself was a GameChanger for me in letting go in surrendering because I had to surrender a certain type of lifestyle that I was used to for so many years and certain people that I was used to for certain years and letting that go and then you know just other little things in my life and facets where I was just like I that's not servicing me anymore this is not servicing me anymore as Hakim

Maps the path of surrender distinguish Professor Sonia Lio berski illuminates the science of Joy Sonia is an authority on the science of Happiness her work challenges conventional wisdom about well-being and reveals evidence-based strategies for lasting contentment here is a look negative emotions as an aside are very important there's evolutionary signals to us so they're important to experience as well and to process it's only when negative emotions are really chronic or acute right then they become dysfunctional and and unhealthy so one component is positive emotions but that's not enough the second component is having a sense

that your life is good that you're progressing towards your life goals in a sort of good way a sufficiently you know fast way that you're satisfied with your life I like to think about these two components as being happy in your life and being happy with your life draw a distinction between those two so in your life meaning like you're you're every day you're kind of having like I'm experiencing some happiness right now and a little bit Pride right this moment and sort of there about moments in the micro and in the macro and and

then as opposed to I review my life in general how do I feel so I might be really unhappy this week because I'm working on some project that's really you know whatever challenging but I know one of them was we thought that happy people when you compare yourself to other people that happy people compare down and unhappy people compare up right the idea is that if you're unhappy you're like oh look at all those people who are richer and smarter and more attractive than me and if you're happy you look at like oh I'm returned

smarter than other people and so we ask people who do you compare them yourself with and that was actually really fascinating so I'm a first year grad student is that when we asked that to the unhappy subjects they were like oh they told us all these stories oh yeah yeah they who they compare themselves with the happy subjects students they almost like didn't understand our question they're like what what do you mean and I mean they understood yeah you can see someone else's better off or worse off but they clearly did not spend much of

their time dwelling on social comparisons so that was our first Insight that maybe happy people just don't care that much about social comparison and then I ended up actually five years later doing my dissertation on this and I did find that happier people just I mean it's not that they don't compare but they just don't let the comparison sort of affect their self-esteem thus thus proving the axom that comparison is the thief of Joy so and we can talk about what that means but it doesn't mean that you're faded right to be happy and unhappy

but clearly when we look around us or any those of us who have more than one child know some are just happier than others right and with that what is the scope of mutability like how much range does the average person have uh in either becoming more or less happy off of that like genetic right preset I mean it's hard to answer that question precisely I I like to think of not of a happiness set point but a happiness set range is that some people set range is sort of here like from say 2 to

5 and for others it might be 5 to 8 um or you know three to six and that it's easy for us to remain in that range so we have sort of our life life's ups and downs get us sort of and sometimes we even go like higher lower than the range but then we tend to go back after the ups and downs we get back into that range but I can't really tell you like how wide that range is it's a guess right but but there's something that I that makes us sort of regress

to the mean and to our own kind of mean right so exactly exactly so and we kind of know this right that you can imagine people you know in your life who let's say someone who's sort of a typically kind of not a very happy person but they experien some successes and so they seem to be happier but then kind of eventually they sort of go back U more often it's the other way right that people humans are very resilient so you know we have adversities trauma sometimes and people it's a positive thing they tend

to revert back to to their range how important is struggle whether it's welcome or otherwise uh in terms of driving happiness or unhappiness you know I'm thinking of course about the empty experience of receiving something when you didn't actually have to work for it you know and with struggle and meeting obstacles and and you know getting to the other side of them of course we build a certain level of resilience that kind of enhances our self-esteem Etc ET so what does your research uh say about this aspect of the Human Condition I think there's a

couple ways to answer that question one is there's research on the pursuit of significant goals happy people always are pursuing something there's always something around the corner and so you can think of struggle as part of that right almost any kind of major life goal whether it's to raise healthy happy children or career goals or even like losing weight for a lot of people you know it's a lot of struggle so so that Pursuit is associated with happiness that's one way to answer that question another way is um there's a theory in Psychology called self-determination

Theory which is actually one of my favorite theories and it talks about really three basic sort of um something that we that we all want um which is a sense of competence uh sense of connection or connectedness uh and a sense of autonomy or control and I would put um struggle as part of that sort of sense of competence and autonomy right that you when you're struggling and overcoming right it makes you just feel like you have agency and control and a sense of like right that you're accomplishing that you're competent that you're efficacious MH

the sense of agency uh I would imagine is is is pretty important I think there's a lot of people who feel like they don't have a lot of agency in their in their lives and it doesn't really matter what they do or don't do that they're sort of in a situation that's that's static and with that a sense of powerlessness yeah sense of control so important in fact when we think about like people who are living in poverty uh or just certain circumstances certain kinds of relationships abusive relationships like or children for that matter right

that they just have the sense of like helplessness right that they can't control the situation and those of us who have control over our daily lives like we kind we really take it for granted a couple of my students um looked at some data that have already been collected on like thousands of people and they wanted to see like what predicts happiness if you sort of let let's say you take like lots of people you measure everything about them and then you kind of throw it all in to some analyses and then over time also

and then sort of how happy are they and one of the big findings is that sense of control was like a huge like you know one of the biggest factors and that was not surprising speaking of human potential wasia nazarin the first Bengali and Bangladeshi to scale the seventh Summits in K2 shares her extraordinary Journey from childhood trauma to spiritual expansion through mountaineering as a mentee of the Dal Lama perspective Bridges the east in the west and her message I think you'll agree is quite profound there is no or at least how Tibetan Buddhist teach

it is like ultimately you are your own Guru yes we have a teacher Guru meaning teacher teacher student teacher student oral tradition from Buddha's time but ultimately you'd learn from us and then find your own Guru the power is within you MH every individual have like we all have our own specific Karma um you know I live in LA and often see bumper stickers that says karma is a [ __ ] but I feel like here people only talk about karma when it comes to negative stuff but this too is karma the positive the negative

the neutral Karma the word means action and all actions start like so we have body speech and mind action things we do physically things we say through our speech and then things that arise in our mind the most important is what AR because the first two depends on what arrives in the mind MH and all of it from time in Memorial since our souls have existed is being recorded in kind of like a database like iCloud or go+ whatever you use like infinite there's no unlimited capacity but the Tibetan word for mind for example is

not mine it's m Continuum because the karma is every instant I could be talking to you right now very pleasantly and have very negative thoughts about oh yeah your t-shirt looks ugly or I'm creating negative Karma even if I'm and it's moment to moment and it's constantly being recorded and when we die our root mind which remain remains in our heart chakra uh so the brain is the cognitive mind and the Soul's mind which we call the root root heart root mind is here and only that let's say it's like a chip that just like

a light chip that passes away with that information and then whichever body we go to that's that's what's passed on when I share my stories I think one of the most important thing for me is to to really make people realize that it does we're all climbing our own mountains regardless of whether we are an A-list or like we spoke about or wherever whatever circumstances we're in we are all suffering and we're all climbing our own mountains but having a purpose having honesty and really working at it there is not there's no mountain high enough

for us to climb if I could do everything that I've done from the background that I came from anything is possible it truly is it's not a cliche line uh but we got to work hard for it you know we we really got to be prepared and train ourselves for it but there is a way out and we only get one chance at this game none of us know when we're going to exit this planet the likeness of me dying on a mountain is way less than me dying in the streets of let's say taka

City or LA City I don't like Civilization I don't function well in but just to give that like we C we all come here for a very short time and we must make this a very purposeful time don't don't ruin it it's like what the Dal Lama told me in different ways in our first meeting what do you say to the person who says I don't know what my purpose is or I don't know how to find purpose or I know my life could be larger or more expansive but I don't even know where to

start start yeah that I think I mean that's how I was questioning in my mind when his Holiness gave me the purpose lecture on my first meeting um but I think we all need to go on our own journey in our own ways and really dive deep into understanding what karma is and I don't mean again karma is even though the word means action what what what is the purpose that we came in but no one else can to find it out for you we have all have to find it on on our own terms

in our own ways and that Journey will teach you so much like it did me you know I had to find my own purpose and often times you know we go through Journeys and it never makes sense but ultimately in the end it all makes sense that same Spirit of Adventure now brings us to world-renowned Adventurer Ross edley who returned to the podcast to share stories from his superhuman 510 kilm non-stop swim down the Yukon river Beyond impressive Beyond world record fting physical Feats Ross reveals how embracing uncertainty leads to profound personal growth it's like

why do I continue to do these things and I think when you look at the myth of Copus are you aware of yeah Greek mythology and Copus was was one of the the most intelligent men to ever live and he kind of outsmarted the gods and the gods are really annoyed about this so what they did is they said okay sisers what we're going to do is going to we're going to Doom you to basically roll a boulder up a hill for eternity and as soon as the boulder gets up to the top of the

hill it just rolls back down so for eternity you're just doomed to just struggle but it was Albert Camu the French philosopher who said but this is interesting because if you imagine Copus was able to outsmart the gods one more time and he was able to do this if you imagine him smiling so as he's rolling the bould or up a hill and back down he's enjoying it he's taking control over it this eternal struggle and what I love here Albert C said the struggle alone is enough to fill a man's heart and that that

really struck a cord with me and I think kind of that thread goes through philosophy and psychology Jordan Peterson you know that the meaning of life is to pick up the heaviest load you can you carry it Victor Frankle the meaning of life is to give life meaning you know so when you start looking at that for me the pursuit of a Non-Stop swim it might be impossible it might be never ending but in many ways it's my Boulder it's the struggle alone is enough to and the caring of it gives you meaning and if

you had to Define that meaning what would that look like how do you put words to what that meaning is I think it's just the Relentless pursuit of sports science so even though you're rolling the boulder you're just collecting data the whole time so I I think it's that that that when all is said and done we're probably going to end up with the most comprehensive study of ultra endurance in swimming than anywhere else and I think that would be that'll be a pretty cool Legacy to leave behind what are we supposed to learn from

you Ross what what do we take away from from these things that you've done that that that would be helpful in our own civilian lives I'm still trying to figure that out myself but I think um like I said coming back to that idea of of purpose I think that's the biggest thing and actually we were chatting to the team just earlier and I just think it's this idea of like everybody's got something that they could do and and when you look at the history of his humans the anthropology of his humans we've always been

sort of going on these journeys of self-discipline for self-discovery you know whether it's the Japanese monks going on on ugaki the Yushi monks of Japan uh whether it's aborigin going on walk about we've always been doing something and I think um you know recently I huge fan of Ned Brockman um I loved it wasn't what he did it's how he did it across Australia uh Russ equally across R cook the hardest gezer yeah my God it wasn't again it wasn't what they did it's how they did it that I just love and then Ned's going

for the record at the moment for a th000 miles yeah I think he's going to be the fastest person to run a th000 miles on a track that was it yeah but it's centrally located so that way you know people can come and join him and it can be like a participatory kind of thing I think it's amazing and when when I hear stories about that and I look at people like that I'm like yes that is we're essentially doing exactly the same there's a common theme throughout all of it that you know as a

tribe if we were sitting there there'd always be one in that tribe dating back to C vonas who would just say what's Over the Horizon like what is it that that wonderlust Gene there would be something that that that person that would go you know what we're gonna stay here we're gonna make a family but you you disappear over that mountain and I think that's it I think looking at guys like like Russ and and Ned I'm just sort of trying to do my own sort of aquatic version but anybody listening I just think it

could be anything as long as it resonates with you whether it's rowing cycling just pick a root something and uh yeah that idea of um self-discipline for self-discovery what is the weakness uh that shows up that you really need to work on in your life not in your swimming per se yeah we have your diet we talked about that I'm talking emotionally I guess where this is coming from is I hear that and I believe you and I think that's laudable and beautiful and inspirational in all the best ways but this goes back to your

relationship to all of these events and and and kind of what they mean right and I've seen too many people who use events like this to run away from certain things in their life rather than towards some greater level of self-actualization at the tippy top of maso's hierarchy of needs right so for being really honest like I can admit that it's that I can use like Endurance Sports to hide from certain things that are uncomfortable uh and be celebrated for that uh when I know when my head hits the pillow that you know maybe there's

some other things in my life that could use a little bit more attention or maybe things are out of balance a little bit and I'm just curious about like how you think about that equation I I think one of the biggest things like to to be completely honest and transparent about that I think one of the biggest things was it's become an amazing job like in reality and and I love um the Japanese uh philosophy the Ia guy so your IA guy your reason for being why you get up in the morning um your purpose

again coming back to purpose but that made up of four things what you love what you're good at what the world needs but the fourth one what you can be paid for and I think that's what's so interesting because I I know exactly what you're saying that I think sometimes talking about philanthropy and charity and various other things that's absolutely right but but you also need to be paid for it as well at the same time so to be completely honest there is a commercial aspect as well in that everything that I've done it does

work as a business a very very strange business granted but it but it is a business [Music] sure while Ross seeks Adventure through endurance author and former firefighter Caroline Paul challenges conventional wisdom about aging in her latest book tough broad her exploration of Nature's role in redefining our later decades offers a fresh perspective on life in the second half it feels like adrenaline is being replaced with this pursuit of awe is that accurate yeah I mean it kind of snuck up on me I I it really wasn't until I was writing this book that I

realized how much I had changed from that sort of I guess Daredevil youth in the past decade or so I had noticed that I was not as into sort of you know when I flew I I didn't love the fact when I hit rough air or I was more about like seeing coyotes below me or coming upon a really cool beach as I was flying and I have to say the part of me thought I was getting old quot soft soft boring and it bothered me it did bother me but it wasn't until I was

writing this book uh that I realized that it wasn't that I was getting old or soft it was that I was getting more present in my life and I was searching for awe it also feels like part of the discovery is realizing that it was awe all along and you were under the misapprehension that it was adrenaline and this is something that Dawns upon you as a result of this Wing walking experience that you have yeah I was interested so the book covers a lot of different Outdoor Adventures it can be Boogie boarding or bird

watching but it also entailed scuba diving with an 80-year-old and Wing walking so they it went sort of in terms of adrenaline I guess it ran the Spectrum so I someone sent me a video of this bip plane flying and this gray-haired woman was in the front seat and all of a sudden in the middle of the flight she gets up from the cockpit and climbs up on the wing and I realized I had to talk to this woman uh what she was doing this L called Wing walking which comes is not a thing we

do these days I'm just going to say but it is from the barnstorming days in the 1920s where didn't the FAA ban it recently yeah but it's not low-l flight like barnstorming was lowlevel flight where they had Wing Walkers transferring from one plane to another in midair or going from a moving car to a moving plane so when Cynthia uh Hicks was 71 when she did this and she um she went to a place called Mason Wing walking the only place in the country that teaches this and yes they did recently recently ban it but

not when I was writing this book um and I wanted to talk to Cynthia because I was interested in what a one-time sort of exciting Adventure would do for our sense of self and our neural situation like you know when people go skydiving and it sort of changes their perspective on things so I wanted to talk to her and she said yeah I mean you wouldn't believe the courage you get when you climb up on that wing and I thought oh well I guess I have to go do it so I went to Mason wing

to do Wing walking class and what I expected well first of all I was not happy about it cuz I'm a pilot so I don't want to get out of a perfectly good cockpit onto the wing of a flying plane but we practiced all morning these sort of five moves and I asked like but what's it like a 3,000 feet when you do it and um Marilyn Mason who was our instructor and also 55 years old which was or yeah she was about 50 something years old which was cool she said oh don't worry like

it's your muscle memory will take over when you're up there you don't have to worry about it being 3,000 ft in the air I was like okay so fear really didn't come into it that much it was just a weird muscle memory and you're just sort of and so I walk along the wing the way we were taught and then tie myself into the king post which is his post in the middle of the wing and um yeah there cover on the cover of the book like I'm just like you have to you climb up

onto the top that's just terrifying I don't know how that works anyway I interrupted you keep going no that's okay I don't know how it works either it just suddenly I find myself there and we we snap the seat belt to the king post and the pilot starts to do loops hammerheads and barrel rolls and I got to tell you rich I went from the most thly wing walker to static and after I we landed I I knew adrenaline had been part of it but there was something else and I I didn't know what it

was and it turned out that that what it was was awe I had been jettisoned into awe so awe is the feeling that we get in the face of something is sort of bigger than us mysterious it's a feeling of Wonder and fear and dread a little dread and and it's really been associated with religious experiences they did a study at UCSF where they took people between the ages of 60 and 80 and their goal was to cultivate awe so the way they defined it is the feeling you get when you look at something with

childlike Wonder or fresh childlike eyes I think was the instruction that they asked each of these volunteers to do when they went on these 15minute walks it was for an 8-week period so they were to amble with childlike fresh childlike eyes and then they sent a control group out that goes out walks like most of us you know worrying about our day looking at our phones and after that 8we period first of all the the all Walkers began to self-report that they had less depression less anxiety and also other Studies have shown that you have

more compassion so that's the intri goodness part the other thing they did which really blew my mind is that almost as an afterthought they said to the all Walkers hey could you take a selfie during the walk and initially those selfies look like selfies usually do the face right in the middle but as the walks progressed those selfies changed and the person got smaller and the background got bigger which suggested to the scientists that the all Walkers were becoming without even them themselves knowing more curious about the world around them and sort of had a

more a healthier understanding of their place in the world in The Wider World they call this the small self perspective where you understand yourself in relation to basically the universe yeah it turns out that we live in a world of anti-a devices so our phone our computer all of it is narrowing our Focus making us the center of it and making us feel powerful and in control and turns out that's bad for us yeah nobody's diet is absolutely perfectly dialed every single day without fail which is why I believe in smart sound science back supplementation

and my go-to source for all my supplement needs is momentus because everything they make is sourced from the highest quality ingredients and rigorously tested by third part to ensure optimal efficacy you want to do a little showand tell let me show you some of my favorites here's where I keep all of my supply of momentous supplements this is for sleep this is on the daily or things that I rotate in and out of uh but for post-workout all you need is the momentous 100% plant-based protein a scoop and a half is 30 G I put

it in my morning smoothie every day supplemented also by moment's creatine just one scoop which is 5 G of creatine and when you're on the go just grab a few of these travel packs I have a couple in my car so I always have my protein needs met listen there's a lot of BS in the supplement World which is why I trust momentus is industry-leading quality standards here's what you're going to do you're going to try momentus for yourself by immediately right in this moment going to Liv mous.com roll or click the link in the

description below where you you will be rewarded with a full 20% off all their top-of-the-line products moving from physical courage we now turn to emotional bravery and we're going to do it with Kimberly Shannon Murphy Hollywood's Premier stuntwoman who offers a powerful glimpse into her journey of surviving traumatic childhood abuse and ultimately becoming a top performer in high stakes highrisk environments Kimberly's exploration of healing through unconventional means provides tremendous hope for survivors everywhere I think the attachment that we have to our parents is always going to be there and I think that's why it's such

a struggle right because you can sit outside of it and say exactly what you're saying like I I know why my dad couldn't show up for me because he didn't have a great childhood and then he went to Vietnam at 18 and watched his friends get blown up in front of him and then he got married young all the things right to bring him where he was and I could look at my mom and say she was abused from she had the same life probably worse than I did in the sense of it was her

father and so all of these things and I can I can see that for what it is and I can have compassion for them but it doesn't take away the pain and I don't think anything will ever fully take away the pain of what happened to me and them being part of that so what do healing look like then I think it looks like being able to recognize that two things can be true that my parents failed me but they were also really damaged and really traumatized people that were raising children and they raised traumatized

children I mean those are two very true things and I can have compassion for them and for everybody else in my family and I can also know that they all really [ __ ] up and it wasn't okay and I I can have both of those things in my life and in my space and that's okay because if I don't have both of those things then I'm not really being honest with myself about what my journey has been you know if I go to a place where I'm just like well they were just traumatized it's

okay it's not okay I'm not at peace with any of it but I can see that side and I can have compassion for that side and I can also have compassion for me and be able to take care of my little girl inside of me and say yeah we know that they were traumatized but I'm going to protect you now and this is what me protecting you looks like there's a healing perspective that's you know kind of more in the the spiritual realm uh that goes something like this part of becoming whole is recognizing Ing

and owning that on some level like from a multi-dimensional or perhaps past life perspective that you chose this experience for the purpose of your own growth and evolution and healing and all of these things had to happen so that you could be the person you are today to show up for your daughter to interrupt this cycle of generational trauma and be this voice this ad that is healing for other people I completely agree with that and so with that perspective it it it softens the blow of what happened to you and and I think it

does open up it cracks the door open a little bit for perhaps more compassion than uh feels natural you know for for the people that harmed you I do believe that we choose our life like you're saying if we're talking on a spiritual that we do choose our life and that this is the life that I did choose and that my mother was a vessel for me to come into this world and if all of these things didn't happen like you're saying I wouldn't be speaking out obviously I'd have a very different life and if

I could go back and choose again I'd choose exactly the same that's beautiful actually that you can that you can say that after everything that has happened yeah because I wouldn't want to be anyone but me yeah when somebody emails you or you get a DM on Instagram and it's a young person who says I read your book or or I heard you speak or I watched this video that you were in this happened to me I don't know what to do you know where should I go or who should I talk to like what

is the advice that you give in a general sense yeah for how someone might begin this journey for themselves well first I'll say I haven't gotten any of those messages the messages I get are thank you so much for writing your book thank you so much for speaking out I've never felt so seen in my life I didn't even realize how painful this you know keeping it in has been or you gave me the strength to tell my husband I've been married for 20 years and he had no idea that I was abused by my

father I've gotten a lot of those like maybe not that exact scenario but similar so no one's ever asked me like what can I do it's just thanking me for you know I'm I've watched every single one of your interviews and you're you've saved my life like just feeling seen and validated right so what do you say to somebody who's reticent to you know unlock that chest and start looking in because it is so scary and so threatening M I literally have it tattooed on my arm yeah what does that say says the only way

out is through so if somebody's hearing that and they're thinking yeah but what does that mean it means you can't go around the trauma you can't jump over it or under it you have to go through it you have to live through it you have to you have to tap into those memories as hard as that is like if you don't do that you don't have an understanding of what happened to you and you can't move through it and I tell this story a lot so my daughter is like this I was telling you magical

being so she loves plants and she's like you know never wants to wear shoes and she's just so foreign to me you know and I've always hated indoor plants never understood them I've always like why do we bring dirt inside I don't get it like aren't we trying to bring the dirt outside and when I met my husband he had quite a few and I got rid of all of them and she said to me a few years back she said Mommy I want a plant in my room and I was like absolutely not and

it just came out of my mouth and I was like oh my God Kim like why would you she wants a plant she's not asking for like you know like a dart board or something and it was coming up to me doing a journey sorry I keep bringing up the journey thing don't apologize and I was like I need to like investigate like where where is this coming from like why am I having such a reaction about this because I have the power in this moment to make my daughter feel like what's important to her

doesn't matter to me or I have this moment to give her what is going to make her happy which is a plant so you know so I went into my journey kind of with one of that being my intention like if there's something around and and I always go into my journey saying anything my inner child would like to show me I am here to see it like anything you need to get out anything you want to show me and it was pretty immediate in when I started like feeling the medicine where I was like

in my grandparents house and I was on the top of the stairs which is where we played a lot and my grandparents had this like massive cactus in the corner and my grandfather was coming down the stairs and he like pushed me into it and I actually remembered always having cactus in my body but I never remembered what happened and how it got there and my grandfather was the person who he was very meticulous he like used to put model airplanes together and just sit there for hours and do that and so he was the

person that if I were to tell my parents like hey I fell into the cactus they would have put me in a room with him and a tweezer and so I stayed quiet the whole night oh that's interesting with that in my body with the cactus in my body and that we all know how painful that is and it was down my whole back wow and when I came out of the journey I was like oh my God now I can connect okay this is why you're having this reaction to having a plant in the

house it has nothing to do with you or her and now I can heal that wound which I did and I think the next day Capri and I were at the plant store and I like bought them out like $2,000 worth of plants deliver to my house and she's got like a like a whole Garden in her room right wow but if I was to take that away from her I'm basically spilling my trauma onto her because I'm like oh your authentic self is like I just want to plant and your mom mom's like absolutely

not because of my own stuff speaking of taking risks photographer and entrepreneur Chase Jarvis returns to make the case for why we should never play it safe and why creativity and personal growth demand choosing risk over Comfort the book is called never play it safe for a reason and I'm not just to be clear I'm not talking about seat belts and sunscreen I'm not talking about physical safety uh emotional safety all those things are really important the kind of not playing it safe that I'm talking about is that all of the best stuff in life

is on the other side of our comfort zone and so my hope is that this is a bit of a training manual that will help us get there because that's not that's not uh the experiences the inputs that we get from our friends our loved ones our culture and the organ between our ears it's not there telling us to to take risks and that all the best stuff is on the other side of our fear quite the opposite so my goal was just to be a little bit of a a manual and it does it

trots out not just you know my own relationship with with risk and fear um but you know uh having had a podcast that's had more than a thousand guests and um just having gone through a lot of creative invention and reinvention myself um I've learned a lot about that process and so I'm trying to share it transparently and and I shared before we started recording I might as well just spill the beans here that uh I worked on this book for 18 months 5 months in active research and 13 months of writing and then I

threw it all in the trash eight weeks before my deadline to write the book that you're holding and so crazy and I did it for a reason and because that's the book that I was supposed to read I presume that the earlier version of the book was uh was one that played it safe it made it look it made everything look great to to quote uh beray Brown it had a lot of goldplated grit where you tell just a little gritty story but you get right back to the how shiny and magical everything is and

how shiny and magical you are and and that's just not real and so indeed it was the process and that's where the title actually came from was that that process of Throwing It All Away and yet it's the now I can't even think of not having had it been that way yeah so what was the impetus to write this now final version of the book because I'm thinking about how it relates to this you know Adventure that you've been on with creative live it it feels very much born out of that that struggle yeah um

not only you know the kind of you know professional challenges that it presented but how it kind of brought you to your knees and made you look Inward and and and and really reflect on like who am I and what am I doing and what how do I want to be spending my time and why was I doing this and what happened yeah um well two things I'll try and keep the audience in mind when I say this and and my own story so the story that you talked about with essentially creative live is one

of the characters in there and that is a without if people are new to that um it's an online learning platform that I started uh 15 plus years ago and it was the first one of its type it was the first live streaming we built live streaming technology from the ground up and we had many folks um who are the best in the world on the platform uh we raised you know $60 million had tens of millions of users made hundreds of millions in revenue and at some point uh along the journey I having been

the chairman and like charging you know this is where we're going we're taking the hill and had a lot of the Venture the Silicon Valley Universe like driving the thing mhm at some point they were going to drive it off a cliff and I had to come back and capture it and essentially the way I think about it is catch the ball right before it hits the ground and step into a role as the CEO running a benture back company and I'm a lifelong artist and not necessarily suited for that so I had to basically

betray myself in in a way in order to make that happen and on the hindsight you on the back end of looking backwards now that company we you know grew it again made it profitable sold it to a publicly traded company I did some time as a yet me as a publicly traded company executive dangerous um and so there's a reflection on that but to me that was a central character in the book and yet I when I looked back all of the best things in my life were when I took these big risks and

ironically even though that was a massive risk as are so many other chapters that I talk about in that book that's what made me grow I wouldn't have changed it and yet there were so many aspects of that were were tiny betrayals because I you know I I I ignored who I was to go do this thing because I thought it was going to be well received and look good and was the next career step and so the book is not about you know having a perfect beginning middle and end it's about know that we

will all betray ourselves over and over again and the goal is to just do so slightly less and return to ourselves with a little more kindness a little more awareness and get 1% better every day cuz you know what is it the person who is you know a degree off but walks 1,000 miles ends up pretty far from home right so that's that story and uh and I hope that that's you know it's it's foundation for other people to be able to see that in themselves the theme of calculated risk continues now with free solo

climbing icon Alex hell who shares fresh insights on on balancing extreme athleticism with the demands of fatherhood his evolving relationship with risk I think offers wisdom for anyone and everyone navigating life's [Music] challenges is there a support group you attend for people whose Amigas doesn't fire that's funny um no I mean the short answer no the longer answer I mean I mean it's a whole aside but you know the scene in free solo just kind of show just like oh his a migdala doesn't work he's different whatever but like the the real version of that

was that and and this was um that whole scene in free solo was because this uh science journalist wanted to write a long form like article anyway so this long ass article in a nautilus magazine you can look it up but um but the takeaway was that with enough exposure to certain you know enough exposure to certain stimulus you desensitize yourself to it and so it's kind of like it's not that my amydala doesn't fire it's that my migdal wasn't firing for that level of stimulus you know I was like I'm looking at pictures in

a totally safe space which to me I was like obviously that shouldn't be scary but but typically that will light light somebody's fear response but that's because they don't spend their whole life getting scared for their life you know it's like and so I was kind of like well yeah I've spent my whole life getting completely gripped like scared out of my mind all the time it's like obviously what I'm doing in this fmri machine is not going to be scary and so I don't know I think people see the little short version in the

film they're like oh no amigdala like there's something wrong with your brain or there some kind of like Spectrum you know aspect about your I think that really though that's people sort of projecting their own thing because people always like to see someone doing something outlandish or different and they're like well that must be because they're just fundamentally different and then I think it excuses them from having to think of the fact that they could do that too if they worked hard at it for a really long time you know cuz like I don't have

oh he can do it because his brain is different yeah exactly and I'm kind of like no I can do it because I've spent 29 years spending 5 days a week training at that thing consistently trying things that are hard for me and like pushing like literally pushing hard my whole life and you're like I don't think you can discredit that with like oh it's brain's different you're like no come on right the analogy would be like if you put you know like a uh like a somebody who's been addicted to heroin for two decades

like their hormones aren't going to fire like a normal person because they're so used to like supercharging them with drugs or whatever right so they basically train themselves to need you know an extreme amount of whatever in order to like feel something in the same way that you're putting yourself in in Risky situations and so your relationship with fear has like has has changed as a result of those experiences so you're not lighting up your brain in the same way but I would argue that I have a healthier relationship with fear as a result because

you know if you're in the fmri machine and the the battery of test they were using you look at this the selection of images that everybody looks at it's like a standardized test and the images are just black and white Q cards that like pop up in in front of you and you're laying there totally safe inside this machine surrounded by scientists you know it's all chill like why would that be scary but for the average human you know by seeing certain images it just triggers like your brain just lights up certain ways but I

would argue that's kind of silly because you you shouldn't trigger a fear response unless you're actually in danger and I think that you know with many years of climbing in dangerous places I've sort of conditioned myself to only light up to fear when I'm actually in danger actually I say that but that's not even true because I get scared all the time when when I probably shouldn't you know because climbing is just scary climbing like even when you have a rope on and you're climbing and it's all safe there's still times where you're like oh

this is kind of scary and even in watching this documentary I mean you guys are like there's there's you know you're you you're you're 100 there's 100 feet of rope right so you're looking at like 200 feet if you fall like there crazy gaps there totally so it's not safe at all like sometimes it is and and sometimes though even when you are safe it's still just scary you know you can be like a couple feet above your last piece of gear so you're only looking at a few foot fall it's totally fine it's safe

the Rope will catch you and you're still like oh I don't want to fall like this is a scary position you so even with a lot of experience like climbing is fundamentally scary cuz I often think like in a different life you know like if I hadn't found climbing like if I hadn't gone to a Climbing Gym like would I have just led a totally normal life as an engineer in a cubicle just whatever or would would you just get totally into some other path and like go hard and like push hard I don't know

but I think I'm really lucky that I found something that I love as much as climbing that I've been willing to try the hard it's a gift it's a gift it's a curse too I think it's a gift I mean honestly I think that's another one of my random thoughts about parenting is like the real goal of parenting is help your child find the one thing that they're like into that much yeah yeah yeah yeah and you can't you can't that's not something you can impose upon them or force all you can do is expose

them to tons of stuff and encourage them and figure out where what they gravitate towards and rush to support that yeah encourage them to to embrace whatever passion they have you know like cuz that's the kind of the thing if someone's into something a little niche or a little weird and you're like that's weird you shouldn't be into that then you can squash it but you never know I mean like The Human Experience is so broad you know if somebody's into something like go for it like right I mean who would have thought that you

could have built a career off of like this thing that you're yeah that you're into and you could have easily been in a situation where you were just dissuaded or somebody just said this is insane and you you kind of like took that in instead of dismissing it yeah I mean credit to my parents they were always just like you can do anything you can be good at whatever you want you know like that kind of that's a gift also yeah I mean and I don't know if they said explicitly so much but it was

sort of always the unstated yeah it's like you know whatever you want to do you can do it well yeah like cool so well maybe that's a good place to kind of wrap this up like that's a that's a good message to put out and an uplifting message to put out to the world like if somebody is in that place like it is a gift to like know at a young age like this is what I love and this is what I'm going to do and like there's just not going to be anything else except

this most people most people don't have that like they're they're bouncing around like yeah I kind of like what I do but I haven't found that though to be fair that makes it sound like I always knew that climbing was my calling but realistically you know I thought I was going to college I went to college I didn't love it then I thought I was just going to climb for a little bit then I thought I'd probably have to become a mountain guide or become you know do some outdoor I don't like be a camp

counselor or something you know because there's no money in climbing and you couldn't be a professional climber and then eventually I started to make some money through climbing and I was kind of like well I may as well do this as long as I can to see what I can do for myself cuz I love climbing and so now you know 20 years later it looks like it was an obvious path but it was it's definitely not an obvious path you know the whole time you're like is this a thing like can I be a

climber you know and I think that's where having the real passion for it I think has helped to to sustain that for for so long you know yeah I mean I think it's good to hear that because it is it is easy to form the wrong idea that I don't want people to be daunted by like because nobody knows that they're on the right path while they're while they're doing it you know it's only in retrospect that you look back and you're like oh obviously yeah but I mean did you ever think like I'm going

to be a podcast it's like absolutely ridiculous yeah you can't you don't get to see when you were graduating I think that is that's a big um impediment to people kind of taking that first step because as human beings we our brains like we want to know like well if I decide I want to do this like where is it going to lead me where is it going to go and it's like you don't get to have that but that that's what I think was the gift for me with climbing is that I love taking

each step as a climber you know like like I don't know where the path is going I don't know anything about the path but every day I'm like like I love going climbing I love going climbing so the destination doesn't matter yeah and then years later you're just like you know I've been walking down this path of climbing forever and it's it's great yeah and you're going to keep walking it hopefully yeah doing my best while Alex Masters physical risks Tom Holland navigates personal challenges the Spider-Man star came to the podcast Studio to open up

about his journey toward sobriety and his subsequent foray into the non-alcoholic beverage industry Tom's candid Reflections on Fame and staying grounded offer a really refreshing perspective on what it means to maintain groundedness and authenticity in the spotlight yeah I think it's like you know when Surfers talk about when they crash or get hit by a big wave the worst thing you can do is like tense up you just have to kind of roll with the punches and like let it happen I always find that if I go out in public and I try and resist

the request for photos I end up having a worse day so if I just sort of go you know it's part of the job lucky to be doing it happy to take the pictures I always have a better day and I think that for me is just an example of like rolling with the punches rather than trying to fight back it's like swimming Upstream like you're never going to be able to convince everyone to be nice about it and to say please or whatever it is you're looking for but yeah it's just part of the

job I guess yeah it's uh that's what they're paying you for to have to like deal with all that [ __ ] right and to kind of be in a place of surrender and peace with it rather than like uh confrontational Alec Baldwin VI yeah but after you know Decades of that you know maybe it just gets under your skin I mean how could it not yeah and I think as well like I mean I don't know where Alec is from but I know being a Londoner in London if anyone speaks to you on the

street as a Londoner the first thought in your mind is like why are you talking to me if someone asks you the time it's like why do you want to know the time London is so antisocial when it comes to like stranger to stranger so I think as a true Londoner growing up and then becoming famous it took me a really long time to adjust to being approached on the street I've got used to it now it's like part of my life now but when people used to ask me for photos really early on especially

after Spider-Man 1 had come out I still couldn't quite understand why people wanted to take pictures with me I used to find it really odd and my reaction was like no I don't want to take a picture with you but now I've like I've ironed that crease out a little bit well well the interesting kind of Ripple to that is that you didn't have you know a normal childhood or a maturation period where you could kind of figure out who you are and what's important in advance of all of that like this is this has

been your experience you know since you were a young kid so you had to learn how to deal with this before before your brain was fully was fully formed you know what I mean still ain't fully formed I'll tell you that much for free yeah uh you and me both my friend I was really lucky that like my life changed slowly like I I started when I was really young and then I had about 10 years before the Spider-Man thing happened uhhuh the Spider-Man of it all was the that was the big turning point of

where like everything changed and I was lucky that I had those formative years to sort of grow up make mistakes learn about set life learn about the world of movie making and then Spider-Man happened um but it definitely was a steep learning curve for sure but you seem like first of all you seem like a happy person you strike me as somebody who's who's really grounded who understands what's important who doesn't get caught up in a lot of the nonsense maybe part of that is keeping in arms length with you know Hollywood quote unquote Hollywood

and you know living in the UK and having this strong family unit and surrounding yourself with friends but it seems to have kept you sane do you still live in a house with like all your buddies I do yeah I do and um that is changing my brother and my best friend are in a transitional period of moving out uhuh we're sort of at that stage in our 20s now where we're like we should all live by ourselves it might be time yeah but it's been great my best friend Harrison who I live with I

really admire he set up this fantastic Rum company called Hammer that he's been promoting and working on and stuff and seeing him kind of build that from the ground up in the house has been such a pleasure cuz he's so driven and he's up every morning he's out selling it he's doing all this great stuff um and he's been a real you know inspiration for me for what we'll talk about later with with buero so yeah so I love living with them and they're really great guys to live with they're very tidy they keep the

house nice cuz I'm away a lot it's nice to have people in the house it's like a reverse Entourage narrative right you guys are like healthy eating eating well we will go to the gym supporting each other yeah yeah yeah it would it would make for a very different HBO series very boring TV show yeah like wow they're so productive but yeah I like living with my with Harry and Harrison is great because they are so productive and the thing with acting that I've always found quite difficult is that it's either 100% or nothing so

like if you're on set you're working flat out you're exhausted and if you're not working you really don't have anything to do I think sometimes with acting being very authentic is something that comes natural to people and I've always been a very genuine person when I went to my first audition I was by far the worst answer in the room but I was the last kid there they would like cull kids so we would be there for 5 hours and every hour they'd say like if you're between between numbers five and 25 you can go

home everyone else gets to stay and I was the last kid there I did no singing no dancing just acting stuff with the director so maybe he just thought that I was very honest and was quite open and emotionally ready the dancing and that sort of stuff came later and I think I've always been very driven and if you put the work in front of me I'm really good at getting it done I'm not very good at putting the work in front of me myself I need someone to help me do that whereas my brother

Harry or Harrison with what he's done with hammer like the way he's built his little company and driven it from the ground up and he gets up and does it every day is amazing I couldn't do that you're a team player I'm I'm like tell me what you need me to do and I'll do it but don't ask me to like come up with the strategy to do it transitioning now from Individual Journeys to a collective future please meet renowned historian yall Noah Harari who came on the podcast to explore ai's profound impact on society

through his unique historical perspective along with crucial and grounded guidance to help all of us navigate a future that uh is looking more and more uncertain so the key question is ultimately political and ethical if they have Consciousness if they can feel pain and pleasure and love and hate this means that they are ethical and political subjects they have rights that uh you should not inflict pain on an AI the same way you should not inflict pain on a human being that what they like what they love might be as important as what human beings

desire so they should also vote in elections and they could be the majority because you know you can have a country a 100 million humans and 500 million AIS so do they choose the government in this situation now you know in the United States interestingly enough there is actually an open legal path for AIS to gain rights it's one of the only countries in the world where this is the case because in the United States corporations are recognized as legal persons with rights until today this was a kind of legal fiction like according to US

law Google is a person it's not just a it's a person and as person it also have freedom of speech this is the Supreme Court ruling for 2010 of Citizen United now until today this was just legal fiction because every decision made by Google was actually made by some human being an executive a lawyer an accountant Google could not make a decision independent of the humans but now you have AIS so imagine the situation when you incorporate an AI now this AI is a corporation and as a corporation US law recognizes it at a as

a person with certain rights like freedom of speech now it can earn money it can go online for instance and offer its services to people and earn money then it can open a bank account and invest its money in the stock exchange and if it's very smart and very intelligent it could become the mo the richest person in the US now imagine the richest person in the US is not a human it's an AI and according to US law one of the rights of this person is to make political contributions donations this was the main

reason behind citizen United in in 2010 so this AI now makes billions of dollars of contributions to politicians in exchange for expanding AI rights so and the legal path is in the US is completely open you don't need any new law to make this happen uhhuh that's like a that's a plot of a movie uh yeah when you know we the lay yeah I mean wow that's so wild to contemplate what are the differences in the ways in which the Advent of this powerful technology is impacting Democratic systems and authoritarian systems so both systems have

a lot to gain and have a lot to lose again the AI it's it's the most powerful technology ever created it's not a tool it's an agent so you have millions and billions of new agents are very intelligent very capable that can be used to create the best healthc care system in the world but also the most lethal army in the world or the worst secret police in the world if you think about authoritarian regimes so throughout history they always wanted to monitor their citizens around the clock but this was technically impossible even in the

Soviet Union you know you have 200 million Soviet citizens you can't follow them uh all the time because the the KGB didn't have 200 million agents and even if the KGB somehow got 200 100 million agents that's not enough because you know in in the Soviet Union it's still basically paper bureaucracy the secret police if a secret agent followed you around 24 hours a day at the end of the day they write a paper report about you and send it to KGB headquarters in Moscow so imagine every day KGB headquarters is flooded with 200 million

paper reports now to be useful for anything somebody needs to read and analyze them they can't do it they don't have the analysts therefore even in the Soviet Union some level of privacy was still the default for most people uh for technical reasons now for the first time in history it is technically possible to annihilate privacy a totalitarian regime today doesn't need need millions of human agents if he wants to follow everybody around you have the smartphones and cameras and drones and microphones everywhere and you don't need millions of human analysts to analyze this ocean

of information you have ai and this is already beginning to happen this is not a future prediction in many places around the world you begin to see the formation of this totalitarian surveillance regime it's happening in in my country in Israel Israel is building this kind of surve regime in the occupied Palestinian territories to follow everybody around all the time and also in our region in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979 they had the hijab laws which says that every woman when she goes out walking or even driving in her private car she must

wear the hijab the head carve and until today the regime had difficulty enforcing the hijab laws because they didn't have you know millions of police officers that you can place on every street a police officer if a woman drives without a headscarf immediately she's arrested and fine or whatever in the last few years they switched to relying on an AI system Iran Is Now crisscrossed by uh surveillance cameras with facial recognition software which recognizes automatically if in the car that just passed by the camera the facial recognition software can identify that this is a woman

not a man and she's not wearing the hijab and identify her identity find her phone number and within half a second they send her an SMS message saying you broke the hijab law your car is impounded your car is confiscated stop the car and by the side of the world this is daily occurrence today in Teran and isan and other parts of Iran and uh this is based on AI and it's not like the there is a report that goes to the court and some human judge goes over the data and decides what to do

the AI like immediately decides okay the car is confiscated and this can happen in more and more places around around the world like even in the US from technological Evolution to Spiritual Awakening modern Mystic Julie Patt came on the PO to share her alchemical journey from physical trauma to Spiritual Awakening and in this episode shared stories from her recent pilgrimage to return her parents ashes in Alaska our other siblings were not able to make it so it was Vicky and me and then Tyler um came with and my brother Stewart and we traveled up to

Alaska we rented the Alaska heritage center it's a native Heritage Center which my dad helped build and when my dad took me there he had taken me to this athabaskan ceremonial house um that is one of the most beautiful it's got a a totem pole in the front that's not carved but there's a portal hole like an oval hole that you crawl through and then you're inside their Community Gathering space there's a fire pit there's different totem poles on all four directions and we were able to rent a cabin at my dad's special place and

uh you know my sister ran the obituary we were like eight years late you know my mom passed away in December but it was not in touch with very many people and you know I was like Vicki like no one's coming like no one's around anymore but what happened is we gathered about 30 super special people really really dear dear relationship ships of my parents of my sister of mine of my brothers and we had a memorial there for them um and uh I had Shu cheeseboards along with smoked salmon um which was donated by

one of the guests there and we then walked um through the um cultural center and we crawled through this portal in the athabaskan house and we sang for my parents and uh it was perfect like like incredibly incredibly beautiful um Stuart and uh Kelly Money Maker um who was Stuart's wife for eight years when they were in their 20s um she was up there and she's been doing incredible work with the natives um she's doing documentaries and um really working with the cultures up there and bringing awareness to climate change and how it's affecting their

tribes and clans I I I learned when I was up there I was invited to a shaman meeting that Kelly arranged with four women that were from different Alaska tribe lineages and it was to introduce dominer to them and shimu to them um and what I learned is that in Alaska there are 32 microclimates and there are 200 dialects so they didn't like me using the name Clan or even tribe because they said that that's a colonialized term that's been placed on them but I had told this beautiful woman her English name is Jackie um

that I wanted to wait until I had my ritual name from dominer which was blue whale balot Aura before I came to meet her and when I told her that that was my ritual name she said to me in my language my name means the one who summons the whale you told me yeah so it was just it was incredible and four times during the meeting I completely lost my orientation which usually that doesn't happen to me but um it was a very beautiful meeting of of energies of the way of life um they also

live in dream time um they live much they live a very spiritual connection connected Life To Nature and I'm looking forward to all the relationships that that is opening up to me and to Kelly and shimu and Jackie and and Ma also and um some of the others Amelia um so uh I'm inviting uh some of them are coming to Domin her with me which is really great um but anyway to have been able to be in the native Heritage Center and honor my parents in that way was one of the most extraordinary experiences and

my sister made an amazing uh slideshow of my parents life and she had reminded me that I interviewed my mom on my podcast for the life of me uh many years ago maybe 2017 and so uh Vicki said it would be great if we played like a piece of the podcast and everyone could hear mom's voice and so we just randomly chose a section of the podcast and it was the section of the podcast where mom is talking about the song Moon River and about how Moon River had become the song of our family um

and she tells the story of Stuart opening for Jewel uh the recording artist and uh him coming out on stage and I think it was at the Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas and he says I'd like to dedicate the song to my parents and he sang Moon River to them that that night so we we listened to the whole song because the Stuart song was recorded on on the episode so the song then played and then when we went to the ceremonial Hut and first Stuart and Kelly played then Tyler and Stewart played then Tyler

and I sang 500 miles and then at the and Tyler played and sang Moon River and so it seemed as if we had planned the whole sequence of events but we hadn't planned anything and it's just the way that it all landed um in addition I had this desire I was going to take some of my parents ashes and I was going to Charter a helicopter and go up on a glacier and release their ashes on this Glacier I've done it before if you travel to Alaska it's really a a shame to not go up

in a helicopter or a plane because you can't understand where you are unless you go up and so I had this booked I had paid for it um and Tyler was going to come with me and Tyler went to dinner with one of my brother's friends and he shared with him that there had been three fatal helicopter crashes in July in Alaska in this particular helicopter that I was to go up in so I pivoted and uh chartered a boat and we went out on Prince William sound which is in this fishing Village which has

a lot of um Nostalgia for my childhood and so we uh drove our car through the longest tunnel in the United States and arrived at this fishing Village and much to my uh wonder and awe this abandoned building called The Buckner building where I explored as a child was still there abandoned I took one of the best pictures of my life then and then we went out on the boat the captain was this beautiful girl from lagona the the sound was glass we saw eagles a bear sea lion sea otter and multiple glaciers and we

arrived at this waterfall the waterfall must be called Angel waterfall it looks like an angel and to the left of it was this great Elder face in the rocks and it really looked like Easter Island and my mom is from Chile so it it looked like it was their spot and so my brother and I um deposited their ashes in in honor of the five children in all that they gave to us and it was beautiful like pristine beautiful amazing we Clos with psychotherapist Ester Perell whose groundbreaking work on Modern modern relationships challenges our assumptions

about love and connection through her uniquely focused lens estera reveals how our increasingly atomized World impacts intimacy and desire and what we can all do about it I would start actually with highlighting what I think is a very important change that occurred around the realm of relationships per period for most of History relationships are organized and and when I say for most of History it's in comparison to hear for most of history and still today in many parts of the world and as I say in my audience and probably a lot of you sitting right

here relationships are organized around loyalty and Community around Duty and obligation there's a lot of structure there's hierarchy key that describes to you what are the roles the expectations the gender roles and there's a lot of certainty and very little freedom and very little personal expression and relationships are tight nuts from which you don't extricate yourself very easily and we move to a model where structure is replaced by Network and the relationships become loose threats that you can fluidly go in and out of and we have unpr precedented choices and options and now at the

heart of relationship is the individual and this individual is in search of community previously they was in search of personal freedom and at the heart of this individual are his are their feelings and the dominant feeling is the feeling of authenticity and authenticity is being true to myself and in the aim of being true to myself today we forgo relationships to not betray me I will leave you and we have never been more free and we have never been more alone and we have never had more uncertainty and more self-doubt so that's the ground yeah

yeah of Modern Love does that make you reflect on past paradigms of relationships with a sort of rose-colored glasses like was it better like I mean obviously we're talking about to drill down on it it's like okay in the past relationships were about class structure they were about power and security arranged marriages Etc you know they were political and the furthest thing from you know kind of freely chosen or about romance and love right well romance love existed passion has always existed but took get married but no I don't at all I think I certainly

wouldn't want to go back to the situation of my grandmother so that is it's very simple no I think we have when I say unprecedented choices I cherish them I value them but I'm also aware that they come with a set of consequences modern love exists against a backdrop of emotional capitalism where we are constantly urged to maximize and optimize our choices where we end up sometimes evaluating ourselves as products where we have to deal with comparison as the thief of joy and where we partake in a frenzy of romantic consumerism where we sometimes are

afraid to commit to the good for fear of missing out on the perfect and we want to find a soulmate on an app this is Modern Love and this Soulmate by the way which has always meant God until now is now a person and with this person I want to experience whole and belonging and meaning and ecstasy and Transcendence all stuff that we used to look for in the realm of the Divine and all of this is changing the definition of modern intimacy modern intimacy is no longer about I come to you with my diary

and my her modern intimacy is I come to me with my interior life and I'm going to communicate with you it's a communicative experience and I'm going to open up and share with you my fear my vulnerabilities my aspirations and you are going to reflect back and validate me and momentarily help me transcend my existential aloneness so modern intimacy is into me see a lot yeah it's a lot the degree of difficulty is insanely High and the level of pressure uh that is shouldered by not only the Seeker but you know the S is equally

insane and this is all set against a backdrop in which our culture is increasingly secular we don't have our religious Traditions to look for the Divine anymore so we look for it in other individuals and you know particularly or acutely individuals and psychedelics yes that's a newer thing there's something acutely American also about the individual like sort of reigning Supreme right it's all about me what I need what my needs are and and my individual happiness and there's a lot that gets then projected on the sort of romantic candidate to fulfill a number of categories

to be kind of worthy of playing that role want the list yeah let's hear it yeah so I want all the things that I have always wanted in that we have always wanted in traditional relationships companionship economic support Family Life Social Status but I want you to also be my best friend my trusted Confidant my intellectual equal my efficient co-parent my fitness Budd my professional coach and my personal development Guru and on top of all of that I want you to be my passionate lover to boot right for the long Hole by the way and

that long hole keeps on getting longer it's amazing that any relationship survives this you know list of requirements many of them are crumbling under the weights of the expectations I mean this is an overburdened system with an underresourced re it since the traditional support systems are not in place and this is one of the challenges of Modern Love and there you have it folks thus concludes our best of 2024 series highs lows wisdom challenges triumphs it's all in there I hope you found it helpful I hope you found it inspiring and instructive once again I'm

genuinely grateful for each and every guest who took the time to share their insights and of course I'm most grateful to all of you the listeners the viewers without whom this show simply would not be possible I am in your debt and as always at your service that's it happy Holidays happy New Year and I will catch you on the flip side in 2025 peace plans h [Music]