Adrian Grenier (4:44)

Well, you know, anytime someone would come up to me and say, oh, man.

Dan Buettner (4:48)

I love the show, you know, I.

Adrian Grenier (4:50)

Wish I could be like Vince, I would have to say, yeah, me too. You know, even though I played the role and in many ways my life attempted to emulate that character, that Persona, at the end of the day, I would hang up my hair and be me. And in real life, there are consequences. Entourage was a fantasy world in which, you know, every. You get the. To touch and taste the spoils of fame and celebrity and consumerism without any real consequences. You know, the boys will survive, and, you know, it's an uplift. At the. Every end of the episode, there's a little conflict, but at the end of the day, they come out on top. But real life isn't like that.

Dan Buettner (5:40)

So even when you were living it because you went to the best parties and women loved you and you had cool friends.

Adrian Grenier (5:51)

Thank you.

Dan Buettner (5:53)

I think.

Adrian Grenier (5:54)

So. I always attempted to keep a level head about myself, even though as time went on, I realized that I had. I had indulged a little too much in that world, that I had forgotten my true center or my North Star. Or perhaps I never really had a North Star to begin with, but I had to reorient myself with spirituality and my purpose on the planet, my Dharma, if you will. Because you start replacing your ego identity, you start replacing your drives and your ambitions with that of the industry or that with the world at large, the culture that is asking stuff of you. So you start finding ways to feed the beast, so to speak, in which you're cultivating more attention or more fame, or you're figuring out a way to get to the next rung on the ladder. And at a certain point you realize, who am I serving here? What master? I've already made all the money. Yeah, you know, I've already had all the girls. Like, what do you. What's next? Exactly.

Dan Buettner (7:08)

I would think you were. Why are you looking for another rung when it seems like you, I mean, that entourage, I think, kind of defined a generation at least. I always kind of thought of it as the male version of Sex in the City. And you've had the women and you had, you made a lot of money and, and what, what, what, what more would you want as a 30 year old male?

Adrian Grenier (7:28)

Yeah, that was the big question. Like, what's wrong with what you have? Why are you somehow dissatisfied? You know, what, what's not computing? What, like, what have you. What are you missing? And you know, you're chasing the dragon. You're tracing the peak experiences. You're trace, you know, you say all the women. I don't know what that means, except it has something to do with maybe that, that carnal experience of intense pleasure that comes quickly. Not that quickly, but, you know, it comes and it goes, let's just say. And you know, and then you're always looking for the next hit. So who's the master of your life? You're that next experience that you're finding ways to plot your day so that you're always having that, that dopamine hit. Like, I mean, I look back at my schedule and it was like, oh, wake up. Dopamine hit wake, you know, afternoon, like.

Dan Buettner (8:27)

And it was, what, what was the morning dopamine hit?

Adrian Grenier (8:29)

Well, you know, a cup of coffee, let's just say, or you know, brunch time. Like, eat something fancy and rich and beautiful and hang out with someone cool and interesting and. And then travel the world. I was traveling, you know, once a week, twice a month, at least somewhere cool and awesome and unto itself. There's nothing wrong with it. But if I trace my sort of path from all of those experience and where it was heading me, the trajectory of that. I was just going to be totally checked out, numbed out, indulged out until I died. And then what do I have to show for it? Except he was a hedonist that had all the spoils and really enjoyed his life. What have I given? What have I cultivated? Who have I served?

Dan Buettner (9:20)

You tell this great story about an experience you had on a private jet with an 85 year old oligarch. I think an experience where somebody would say, oh, yeah, this is a peak experience. You had a rather different epiphany.

Adrian Grenier (9:38)

Well, yeah, I started having existential conversations with myself, um, because there was this gnawing dread, there was something just below the surface of my awareness. I was like, something's off. I know consciously that we're not gonna live forever. I know that eventually I'm gonna meet my maker. But it didn't feel like that. I felt like I was gonna live forever. I felt like I could consume the world. I. I felt like I was big enough that if I just took enough bites, I could eat everything, I could taste everything. And it was really just this delusion of grandeur and immortality that was keeping me on this ride. But it was a sickness in the brain. Like I wasn't really in the world, in reality, in loss, in suffering, in the finite nature of life, which actually gives it meaning in depth. So I was just skating along the surface, you know, Peter Pan floating just above consequence. But there was something that was calling me forth and asking me to delve deeper. And as I started to do the deeper work and started to contemplate things that I needed to sort of change in my life while still thinking that I could continue the lifestyle, could have it both ways. I'm going to have deep revelations and be a better person and at the same time not say no to those parties or those opportunities. I was on a plane from some fancy place, I want to say, like south of France or something, to another awesome adventure in another place around the world with an awesome party and fancy people. And I needed a way to get from one place to the other. And someone says, oh, you should just hop on a plane with this oligarch. And I'm like, okay, cool. Who is he? Cool. Just call this number. And that's the way things were. They would just appear, they would just fall in your lap. And so next thing I know, I'm hopping on this private plane with this rich guy who I never met. And he was, you know, in his 80s, he was gray and older, for sure. And I was like, hey, what's your name? Nice to meet you. Hey, thanks for letting me catch a. Catch a ride. And that's just the way it goes, right? So I'm living large. I sit down and on onto the plane walks these three or four amazingly beautiful, young, you know, Russian vibed ladies. And of course I'm like, oh, okay.

Dan Buettner (12:22)

You know, great models or something.

Adrian Grenier (12:23)

Great, yeah, model types. And they are just doting over him, sitting next to him, laughing, you know, they're having champagne or whatever. And, you know, I was. I was impressed. You know, I said, wow, this guy, he's really got it going on, right? He's got a lot of money, he's got his own private plane, and he's got all these girls hanging over him. And there was just this passing thought, and it was as natural as any other thought. I said to myself, I was like, I hope I can be like him one day. Wow. Like, he's got it made. I hope that I can still be.

Dan Buettner (12:58)

You know, hanging with the girls in.

Adrian Grenier (13:02)

My own play, exactly like that guy has made it. And in that moment, I guess because I was more available to something deeper in me, I shuddered because I realized, Adrian, you put your mind to something, you make it happen. You're a manifester, you build businesses, you're creating a career for yourself. You're a very powerful person. And when you think of something, you make it happen. So I had that thought, and then it scared the hell out of me because I realized, holy shit, that is going to be me. I'm on a direct path, right, to be that guy in one iteration or another. And then it all came rushing into me as I realized those girls aren't here for the right reason. I didn't feel any love. It felt like fun. But there was, you know, certainly of an exchange of value.

Dan Buettner (14:06)

The guy lost his dough.

Adrian Grenier (14:08)

You start to wonder, like, were they there for the right reason? Were they. Were there for the money? Were there for. Why was I there? I was there for the free ride, you know, And. And I didn't even know if he was even connecting with me. Real like. And I don't know who that guy is. Like, we're not friends now. So that's when I realized I was like, I do not actually. I don't want to be that guy. And then I had to ask myself, well, who do you want to be when you're 85, when you're 90, who do you want surrounding you? You know, are they going to get on the plane and off the plane and you have to go get. Yeah.

Dan Buettner (14:43)

And what did you, what, what did you conclude?

Adrian Grenier (14:46)

Well, it took me a lot longer to figure out, you know, why I'm here, like why I really came to be.

Dan Buettner (14:54)

You were, you were just. I love the phrase you're just telling us about your cosmic slap, which I think that's going to be a hashtag.

Adrian Grenier (15:01)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I had a lot of learning to do.

Dan Buettner (15:05)

I had to.

Adrian Grenier (15:06)

First of all, I had to come down to earth from the lifestyle. You know, I had to step off this sort of vapid, you know, high horse of sorts, you know, is sort of vanity and carnal pleasure and indulgence and, and it was utterly godless. I mean, I, I was agnostic at best, you know, and, and really just living a life of, of indulgence and pleasure and enjoyment and, and believing that when you die, you go to nothing. And so when I started to come down to earth and dig into the soil, and in fact, working, you know, literally in soil, in the earth, working was a huge, huge help for my growing journey, for my healing journey. And someone said to me, he said, you are utterly ungrounded. You're like flying off the planet. You need to get into the earth before you do anything. You just need to ground yourself and just the process of working the soil, planting, growing food.

Dan Buettner (16:20)

This is some years later when you.

Adrian Grenier (16:22)

I mean, it was a several year. Well, no, this is before then. The farm is a result of my ultimate recognition of why I'm here and what I'm. What I want to do while I'm here.

Dan Buettner (16:33)

Okay.

Adrian Grenier (16:34)

But just as a practice, as a meditative practice, I, I started a little. Basically a small little garden and. Good start, great start. So when I was doing sustainability stuff and you said, you know, you mentioned that I'm known for sustainability. I admittedly, you know, was doing a lot of PR for sustainability, but I wasn't living the lifestyle, really. I was in Brooklyn. I had a little garden. It was basically a planter.

Dan Buettner (17:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Adrian Grenier (17:14)

And it had some food growing in it.

Dan Buettner (17:16)

Microwave oven or something.

Adrian Grenier (17:17)

It's tiny.

Dan Buettner (17:18)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (17:20)

And I had it so that I could show people that it's possible to have a New York City apartment and be connected to the Earth. Except I never planted or harvested or worked that soil once. I spent way too much money to have someone else do it so that I would have it. So it was an extension of my vanity. It was basically a trophy piece for sustainability. But I felt like it was my duty to represent the lifestyle it was like virtue signaling to the highest extent. When I started doing the actual work, when I actually went into the soil, when I actually started to learn, then it's not that fucking easy. There's a lot of hardship and disappointment and responsibility. You have to show up. You have to be there, you know, every day or at least regularly and commit to that process. Otherwise things die. It doesn't work.

Dan Buettner (18:26)

Every year, as the holidays roll around, I tried to slow things down. You know, it's easy to get caught up in travel plans and presents. But what I've learned from studying the world's longest lived people is that the real gift is time spent together. Up in my lake home in Wisconsin, I'll light a fire, make a pot of Sardini minestrone and invite a few friends over to linger for hours. Maybe we'll even play a game of broomball on the ice covered lake. But we don't have a schedule. We don't rush. We tell stories and we laugh. And every once in a while we'll catch our laughter echoing off the frozen lake. When I'm away during the rest of the winter, I like it that other families get to experience that same sense of calm. Hosting my home on Airbnb makes that possible. It keeps the place alive with memories. And while I'm off exploring, it gives visiting family the gift of togetherness. Have you ever thought about how your home could do the same? You know, by hosting it, you can earn extra income that could go towards your next family trip. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much@airbnb.com host you know, I've spent my life exploring the world. Not chasing adrenaline, but meaning. From the blue zones of Costa Rica to the highlands of Sardinia, I've learned that adventure isn't about going further, it's about going deeper. That's why the Defender caught my attention. It's not just built for the toughest roads. It's designed for people with a purpose. A vehicle capable of great things, like the people who drive it. When I'm planning a new expedition or just heading up to my lake place, I want something that feels as durable and and capable as the journeys themselves. The Defender, whether the 2 door 90, the 110, or the 8 seat 130, gives you the confidence to explore wherever your path leads. Because adventure isn't just about conquering the landscape. It's about connecting with it. Explore the defender@land roverusa.com but what I like about this story is that your virtue signaling actually Led to virtue, living. And maybe it wasn't a direct road, but you ultimately manifested what you intended to do or what you told the world you wanted to do.

Adrian Grenier (21:03)

Yeah, I mean, I did take a little pit stop into, you know, Dante's, you know, Inferno. There was definitely the circuitous route down there.

Dan Buettner (21:15)

As you can see from my T shirt here, you get extra points for vulnerability. Can you tell us about that lowest point or one story or an example of where you were? All this fantastic fame and lifetime crashed or house of cards came down.

Adrian Grenier (21:33)

Yeah, it was the katabasis, dark night of the soul. This was, you know, a descent into the underbelly of the psyche. And it's, it's. It's dark and ugly and scary and lonely.

Dan Buettner (21:47)

Well, what happened?

Adrian Grenier (21:49)

Well, and a lot of people hit rock bottom, you know, you'll.

Dan Buettner (21:55)

And stay there.

Adrian Grenier (21:56)

Well, you know, you don't know how close you are to rock bottom until you're there. Oh, shit. I was closer than I thought because I got away with it for so long, you know, But I lost. She didn't die, but she left me. My girlfriend left me and I was in my 40s at this point and I thought we were gonna get married and I thought we were gonna start having kids and she left me. And I was so confused because, I.

Dan Buettner (22:22)

Mean, look at me, I'm still a good looking guy. Look at me, I'm, you know, bits and chase. I've got that swagger even walking down the streets of Austin, Texas.

Adrian Grenier (22:31)

And I have all the things. I got the house, I got the money, I got the. And you're gonna leave me. It just did not compute. Like really. I just thought she must be crazy, right? And you just do that. You dismiss it like, oh, she doesn't know what she's doing onto the next. But she knew me like no one else. And so I knew that there was more to the story, that it wasn't just that she was crazy or that.

Dan Buettner (22:57)

But were you partying too much? Did you realize that your vanity was getting you nowhere? Was, did your career fail you? Or did you realize that what you're doing in life doesn't line up with who you are? What was it that your girlfriend probably dumped you because you were doing something? I'm guessing it wasn't the dumping. The dumping was a symptom of what you were doing with your life. Am I wrong?

Adrian Grenier (23:24)

Yeah, I was not fully devoting myself to healthy, healthy things. I mean, I was choosing the escape patterns, the drinking patterns, the late night patterns, the, you know, the Carnal pleasures, you know, it was all just about me and finding the comfort. It was numbing myself. I was, I was narked out essentially. And I think she saw, she saw me most honestly. She saw that I had more to offer that I wasn't. And, and look, a woman is going to want you to fully show up in your fullest potential. So she wasn't going to sit around and wait and like, take, take, you know, a diminished version of me. She wanted, she wanted all of me.

Dan Buettner (24:21)

So why, if you could have almost any woman you wanted or a lot of really desirable women, why not just go on to the next beautiful woman? I mean, why does one breakup so rock bottom?

Adrian Grenier (24:37)

Well, even though I'm married, I don't see her as a possession of mine. I don't have her. So what, what I do have now after this whole process, I have myself, which I didn't have. So I had to first get to know myself. And, and I knew, I knew that if I were to move on to another woman that I would end up just repeating the same patterns and that they were hurtful patterns and they were destructive patterns and they were selfish patterns. And so it wasn't even necessarily her. I needed to get right with myself so that I wouldn't repeat these.

Dan Buettner (25:21)

So just so I'm understanding, the rock bottom was just more about this sort of hedonistic treadmill of constantly going after dopamine buzzes and carnal pleasures. It wasn't anything really deep or dark. It was just this pursuit of happiness or pleasure on an ever receding horizon.

Adrian Grenier (25:44)

So luckily my rock bottom was a simple heartbreak that I was, you know, and I would say more, it's just that I broke her heart. And when I looked in her eyes.

Dan Buettner (25:54)

Because you disappointed her. I hurt her.

Adrian Grenier (25:56)

I hurt her. I, you know, I was lying and I was deceiving and I was. And I thought that I was doing the right thing too. I didn't even know it, but when I saw the tears in her eyes, when I saw how much pain I'd caused.

Dan Buettner (26:10)

How did you break her heart?

Adrian Grenier (26:11)

I was not honest with her and I let her down. A love affair. And we were, you know, we, we were in love. And I betrayed that trust and I betrayed her sense of safety and trust in me and, and what's possible and you know, confirmed in her, in her heart that, you know, I'm just another douchebag, you know, and that she can't trust men, like whatever the psychology is, all those things. And I knew that I didn't Want. I didn't want to be the one that was causing that kind of suffering with people I love. And again, there was that gnawing dread. I didn't know what it was. I still felt self righteous, so I was still rationalizing all my behavior, but I knew that there was something I was missing. So my rock bottom essentially was self imposed on some level. Yeah, yeah, she left me that hurt. That could have been a rock bottom. But I said I gotta go deeper. So I made an active choice to step away from all the things that I'd been indulging in, the patterns, and remove myself from all those temptations. That's when I moved to Austin and I isolated myself in a little camper. You know, everybody has those cute little campers in town, like our Airstreams. So I had a little camper in the, in the back of a house on the east side. And that's when I started the work. And, and I, and I, and I walked myself deeper and deeper into, into myself. And I had to confront a lot of the pain and the traumas that had sparked the drive for escape in the first place.

Dan Buettner (28:07)

Yeah, you knew they were in there. It just took a galvanizing event to make you find them and confront them. And did meditation or psychedelics or a mentor help?

Adrian Grenier (28:19)

All of the above? All of the above, yes.

Dan Buettner (28:22)

So, you know, I try to. This podcast, we try to give people something they can actually do. I mean, you're not alone. You're an extreme version because you've had, I think, what extreme version of people dream about, and you had a sort of commensurate, I would say, fall from that. But for people who realize they haven't been honest with themselves, for people who realize that chasing status or money or fame is an empty pursuit. What do you Advise? Ayahuasca or 10 day meditation or what really works in general, do you think?

Adrian Grenier (29:06)

Well, I'm going to come from a male perspective. I think there's an energetics in terms of what it means to be a man that is particular. And what was true for me is that I had to be a man of integrity. So I had to find out what that meant and I had to, I had to make choices.

Dan Buettner (29:26)

You didn't exactly have male role models.

Adrian Grenier (29:28)

No, I had terror. And not only that, I had male role models that were destructive or taught me bad behavior or misbehaving or getting away with things. You know, I'll teach you how to hide. And don't tell your mama, you know, don't. Like I had Boyfriends of my mother who would like, teach me how to hide things from my mother. Right? I mean, that's damaging, like conditioning. But I had to choose. I had to be discerning and I had to learn how to choose. That's one thing is like, I would not choose anything. I would always just. I wanted the buffet all the time. I wanted options forever. But I had to learn how to create the structure of choice in which I was discerning between right and wrong. And look, you can, you can decide what you think is right or wrong, but you have to be the one to choose what that means. So I had to first get my, my values in order. Like, what do I believe in? What, what, what's important to me? What are my ethics? Where do those stem from? So I had to make the first and most consequential choice of my life, which was to step away from all the bad behaviors. And that was the hardest choice because there's so many things wanting to pull me back into those ways of being. And the way I did it was, I, I left New York, I left la. I had, I had a pattern that I had set up for myself. I had the house, I had the friends, I had the, you know, the, I had the, you know, little ownership stakes in different bars and restaurants. You know, you go to the, they treat you well. And so I just totally left all of that and I, and I stripped myself away so that I would just be sitting with myself. I made a commitment to celibacy. So I took that away from, you know, I wasn't drinking. And I even took it one step further. I was practicing semen retention. So I was removing the drug of pleasure from the equation. And when you're sitting with, and you talk about meditation, meditation is a process of removing the chatter from the mind, stripping away, you know, that endless chaos and noise of the brain to see what's underneath, whereas the eye that is witnessing. And so imagine all the distraction of, of masturbation, you know, or porn or, or that party or the FOMO or the.

Dan Buettner (32:28)

I've never heard the term semen retention. All my longevity research. But it sounds like, is it a thing?

Adrian Grenier (32:36)

It's a. Not a thing. It's more of a lack of a thing.

Dan Buettner (32:43)

And how long can you make that go or not go or not go?

Adrian Grenier (32:49)

So I took a six month vow. And at first I thought it was just not masturbating and being. And you start sweating, you're like, what do I do? And then I realized there's a tantric element to it in which you're not holding the energy, you're not repressing the energy, you're not stopping it. You're allowing that energy to move elsewhere. Elsewhere, yeah. So you're bringing that energy, that sexual energy into your heart.

Dan Buettner (33:29)

That's so interesting. And it worked.

Adrian Grenier (33:32)

When I figured out that it wasn't just about not doing it, but it was actually about learning to place that energy. That is. That is, miss. That is because for so long I was all head and cock. Like, frankly.

Dan Buettner (33:46)

I'm conjuring up an image of that. It was sort of a cartoon.

Adrian Grenier (33:52)

I was all intellectual rationalization. And when you're in the mind, it's abstracted. It's not even in the world. It's sort of hovering in interpretation or projection of the world. I would argue that the carnal sexual realm is more of a real exchange in the real world. But it's a different kind of drive. It's not, you know, it's pretty straightforward, but it has no nuance, no subtlety. But I was disconnected from my heart and my intuition. And that's for reasons of my upbringing and my. The traumas that I experienced. I had to cut off my heart because it was just too painful. There's too much suffering that I was experiencing from my childhood that I was offline in here. So I was making all decisions based on, like, me get that, you know, like a carnal motivation or like something that I was intellectually wanting to aspire to or gain or, you know, status or something like that. So when I shut those things off and I had to feel and start to connect with other parts of my body, when I was moving the sexual energy up into my heart and into my intuition, suddenly things were coming online that I was not used to, that I had to get to know, that I had to understand. And I was like, oh, that doesn't feel good. Where's that coming from? Or, oh, my God. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of anxiety or. So it gave me permission to start becoming more integrated on multiple levels.

Dan Buettner (35:38)

So if we think we want fame and status and wealth and sex, what are the more authentic substitutes for those? The more lasting ones that maybe you found or that you think is just.

Adrian Grenier (35:56)

Universal love, safety, connection, deeper connection, a sense of place in the world, home. I think those are the things we crave. And I realized that I have some established neuroses, if you will, from when my dad left. Abandonment wounds. And I realized no amount of fame or attention was ever going to fill that. I still, like, never felt loved enough, or I'd always do the dance so that, you know, people would like me and I'd, you know, hey, I'm performing.

Dan Buettner (36:41)

Don't you want me?

Adrian Grenier (36:42)

Don't you love me? And as much as people applauded or hugged me or wanted to, like, sleep with me or, you know, be with me or whatever, it just never was enough because there's that. That deep. That deep, deep childhood longing.

Dan Buettner (37:00)

It's like a spaghetti strainer. You can pour water in it all day long and it's gonna leak. Yeah, I just. I actually met your lovely wife, who's not only beautiful, but she's smart and thoughtful and clearly loves you as an acupuncturist. And your little baby, who is one of the most likable little creatures I've ever seen, who smiles and coos and giggles and does it all over again. Have they plugged the holes? Are you feeling.

Adrian Grenier (37:35)

I don't know if that will ever be fully healed. I think that's something that I have a. An awareness of. You know, that abandonment thing.

Dan Buettner (37:46)

Right.

Adrian Grenier (37:48)

And it doesn't have to. Maybe it doesn't need to be healed. You know, it's something that's part of me.

Dan Buettner (37:55)

It's a teacher.

Adrian Grenier (37:56)

The teacher, potentially. Yeah. But it's not subconsciously driving my decisions, and. And it's something that I have to watch out for. You know, it's like a. If you have one leg, you know, it doesn't mean you're going to always. That you're not able to move through the world. It's that you just have to recognize it's going to be a little bit. You have to adjust for that.

Dan Buettner (38:17)

Well, you know, as I listen to your story, when I think about blue zones, and I think maybe you saw a little bit of it when you were in Sardinia. Here are populations who manifestly live 10 years longer than we do. And they don't have fancy drugs or ozempic or stem cells or superfoods. But what you see is they live in strong families. They have a sense of purpose. They live in. They're part of a social network that requires responsibility. The word ikigai or kuleana, which is another one of our blue zones. Purpose is always mixed with responsibility. And these are the things that are absolutely correlated with longevity. There's just no question, probably worth eight years of life expectancy having a sense of purpose. But ultimately, in a very counterintuitive way, when you compare them to sex and fame and status, they also make the journey worth living. They make the journey wonderful. And it sounds to me like you've had this sort of a hero's journey yourself, of having gone out into the world and fought demons and dragons.

Adrian Grenier (39:32)

So there's a book that was extremely important for my healing. It's a classic book called Iron John on the Hero's Journey of a Male Man.

Dan Buettner (39:48)

Yeah, I remember that. He's a Minnesotan, actually.

Adrian Grenier (39:50)

Oh, yeah, Robert Bly.

Dan Buettner (39:51)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (39:51)

So Robert Bly wrote Iron John, and that was a book that was very important, and it has been for. For men seeking a richer, more. More divine, you know, masculine expression. And one of the aspects that was so important in my mind was when the boy is learning to become a man, he's working, he has to go down into the bellows and he's shoveling coal for a long time. And as he does this work, his hair becomes gold. But he has to keep it covered, and he can't until he's fully realized, he can't show his hair. He can't reveal it, otherwise he'll have to go back to an earlier stage or whatever. And that was something that I had a hard time with because I would do a little work and I'd be a little developed and I'd have a couple of words and some language to describe my healing journey. And then I wanted to just flaunt it.

Dan Buettner (40:49)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (40:50)

I wanted to get laid because of it.

Dan Buettner (40:52)

Do an interview.

Adrian Grenier (40:53)

Right. And. And I. And I. And I had to sustain it without the acknowledgement, without the accolades, without the approval, without mommy saying, you did a good job, son. The young boy's looking for relief. The young boy's looking to Mommy to hold him. The prince is looking for immediate satisfaction and gratification. The adult in the room, the king energy, is holding the line and doing which is hard for the sake of his family and the community and in service to the larger society. And so if you're not, you don't develop a relationship with that discomfort. If you're willing to just immediately give up because you. It's too hard or too difficult or you're seeking pleasure, then you're not able to do the things which are important for the world. And so there's a reason I like ice baths. If it's not really good for the health of the body or maybe it's innocuous, maybe it doesn't do anything. I do it for the mental. And when I sit in that cold bath and I want to get up and I want to leave and I want to Just run to and seek immediacy. I hold the line because I know when things get hard out in the real world and there's a real world moment in which I have to have that fortitude and I have to push through the discomfort, I'll have that practice.

Dan Buettner (42:27)

Yeah, I guess it's cold Plunge is kind of a discipline burpee. You know, it's a good exercise. But just to fill out the rest of the story for the listeners that you ended up getting back with your girlfriend, a good friend of ours, Matt o', Hara, was there when you in Morocco. Impromptu. Let's get married.

Adrian Grenier (42:45)

Yep, yep, yep, yep.

Dan Buettner (42:46)

Have two children now. Beautiful children.

Adrian Grenier (42:49)

Amazing. Yeah.

Dan Buettner (42:50)

And live on a farm. And I'm wondering if you could tell a little bit what, what is a. How does a typical day unfold for you today? And are you really happier than you were when you were on the top of the famed pyramid?

Adrian Grenier (43:08)

Yeah, I mean, I'm infinitely happier. And it's such a bittersweet thing because I feel so much more. It's not just about happy, like the uplift of not like just having joy or a good day or, you know, or not feeling disease, you know, it's really the depths of my love for my family and my children means I'm sort of connected to that ultimate loss, I guess, my mortality, the fleeting nature of life. To live most fully and to be most connected in love is not just a fun thing. Whereas before I was only having fun, you know, I was not connected to the reality that things die, things move on. I don't want to bring this conversation down, but when you ask me am I happier, I would say that in my past life I was much happier because I was only happy if you're like, you know, partitioning out how much happy.

Dan Buettner (44:22)

There's actually two kinds of. I wrote a book about happiness, actually two kinds of happiness. One is life satisfaction, which is how you evaluate your life. Scale 1 to 10, how happy are you? You think back your whole life and you give it a six or seven or eight. And then there's something called positive affect, which is how much did you smile, feel joy, feel stress, feel worry or feel anger today? And that's a 24 hour recall. So when you talk about the I was happier in the past, I would bet, I'm not going to pretend to answer for you exactly. But I would bet that we're talking about the positive affect you were feeling, the positive emotions every day or the positive feelings. But when it comes to this, when this life satisfaction, when you think about your life as a whole. Am I making a contribution? Am I taking care of the people around me who matter? Am I doing what's good for my body? Am I living up to the expectations of my community? I would argue that your life satisfaction is probably much higher now. Maybe you're positive after that.

Adrian Grenier (45:31)

I was up five or six times yesterday because my son kept waking up, so I didn't get as much sleep. You might say, oh, I could interpret that as like, oh, I'm tired, I'm miserable, I'm not as well rested, but I'll do it anytime, all the time, whatever he needs, I'll be there. And that is the positive affect that is just. Is grounded. It's real, it's meaningful, it's important. And that's why I'm here. I'm here to be in service to those kids so that they can have a life that I would hope for them and that I would hope for anybody, but that I never had a chance to because all the men in my life were too busy thinking about themselves and what they wanted and not enough about me.

Dan Buettner (46:22)

I want to unpack this a little bit because the Adrienne that I first was acquainted with was Vincent Chase, the white hot center of the LA party scene. Beautiful women, top of fame. Adrian Granier is sitting in front of me right now. How does a typical day unfold when you wake up in your farm? At your farm?

Adrian Grenier (46:44)

Yeah.

Dan Buettner (46:45)

What, what, what does morning, noon and night look like for you?

Adrian Grenier (46:49)

Oh, in general, it's a real hoot. It's a lot of fun. I mean, never, there's never a dull moment. It's.

Dan Buettner (46:57)

What, do you go out and milk cows or.

Adrian Grenier (46:58)

We don't have cows, but the llamas, we, we do, you know, we feed the animals, of course. And you know, we're not. Okay, I'm not going to pretend like we're in a working farm in which we eat or don't based on, like, us being able to grow and create productivity. What we're building is an. As a community of homes, sort of a homestead residence community in a farm environment. So there's so much that we haven't built yet and created and the systems we haven't implemented yet. So we've been. We just put in a quarter of an acre syntropic agroforest, which is basically high, dense density planting.

Dan Buettner (47:45)

So it's a chop, like in a greenhouse or something?

Adrian Grenier (47:48)

No, it's just out in the field. Right. So it's a, it's a chop and drop system in which you, you create a forest, like a natural forest system with understory and like taller growth and you have your target species of fruit tree or food, food type. And then you have a lot of dense planting around it so that you can chop and drop that. The other stuff that it becomes compost right on site. So instead of creating compost in a compost pile, turning it every day and then bringing it to you cut down the underbrush every year, like periodically. So you're continuously feeding back into the soil. Continuously, continuously right on site.

Dan Buettner (48:30)

That's real sustainable. You've come a long way from your microwave oven size garden in, in Brooklyn.

Adrian Grenier (48:36)

Well, when I had the revelation, I was like, I'm doing land, that's what I'm doing. I didn't know what that meant, but I was committing to stewarding land and learning how, learning the primitive skills that you know, no one taught me or we we've forgotten or we've relegated to a few farmers and then we expect them to actually survive when we don't want to actually pay for the food. So how do we, not only for the sake of our family, so that I know where my children's food is coming from, but just for the halo effect of that kind of work. But do you actually do the work?

Dan Buettner (49:13)

Do you get dirt under your fingernails?

Adrian Grenier (49:15)

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, typical day, I mean I get up, I do this. Countless things to do. Feeding the animals is one thing. Then animals get sick or you know, we had the donkeys and they were starting to gnaw off the bark of some of our peach trees. And so we have to then address that lime wash on the peach trees and then make sure that they can't get in there. So now you're fixing fence lines, there's predation. The chickens, you know, you want to get, you want them to be free range, but also at the same time you got to make sure that the, the bobcat doesn't eat them or the birds prey. So there's just a laundry list of. And also I'm on a learning curve. So I'm constantly just trying to figure out how to do the next thing and learn how to do it. Which is one of the reasons why we've created a network of learning opportunities so that we bring on experts onto the land and we create courses and classes.

Dan Buettner (50:18)

I love it.

Adrian Grenier (50:18)

Not only so that I can continue my learning process, but also we can bring others within the neighborhood to learn how to do this stuff. We do a five day Immersive retreat. You come and this time we're going to learn how to do a market garden. So it's more traditional row planting, not like the syntropic design, but it's what you would imagine a garden market.

Dan Buettner (50:44)

How do people find out about this?

Adrian Grenier (50:46)

Kintsugiranch.com Spell that. K I N T S U G I. Kintsugi is the Japanese practice of mending broken pottery with gold.

Dan Buettner (50:57)

Oh yeah. Making it more precious.

Adrian Grenier (50:59)

Right. So it's honoring the cracks, honoring the brokenness. It's a healing, renewal, reunification story. And, and so, yeah, I mean, we're learning how to become reconnected with the land, reconnected with ourselves and our own bodies and how we're reconnected to community and what that looks like again.

Dan Buettner (51:21)

You know, the best trip I took in recent memory was a Duvine trip. I gathered up 10 of my best friends and we took a trip to the blue zone with Duvine. They took of everything. And as a cyclist who likes to have a bike that's working, who likes to eat good meals, and who likes to know what I'm seeing as I go, I could not have asked for a better experience than with Divine. And not only that, it turns out that cycling is one of the best activities for longevity. It's one of the top three. Why? It's easy on the joints. You get regular low intensity physical activity. It's not boring. It requires some balance, something you can do for the long run. You know, Dubai believes cycling is for everyone. So they design trips for all levels of experience. And they'll take you anywhere from easygoing bike paths and how into epic climbs in France. Plus they offer E bikes to make the trip accessible to everybody. And this. And the support van is always with you for not only emergency repairs or water or snacks or to carry your extra gear. So whether you're a seasoned cyclist or a total beginner, if you're ready to give it a try, our listeners get $150 off per person. When you book your first Divine tour, head to divine.com livebetterlonger to book now. We were talking before the podcast about the Dunbar number.

Adrian Grenier (52:49)

Yeah.

Dan Buettner (52:49)

The ideal number or the sort of maximum number of people you can hold in your sphere of affection. And you're building what kind of sounded like or envisioning anyway, a blue zones type community there. Yeah. On the ranch very much.

Adrian Grenier (53:03)

Yeah.

Dan Buettner (53:03)

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Adrian Grenier (53:05)

Yeah, it's an agrihood, an agriculture neighborhood.

Dan Buettner (53:08)

I've never heard that.

Adrian Grenier (53:09)

Yeah, it's A micro community of, you know, we're targeting the Dunbar number. We think that there has to be, we have to keep 150, about 150, keep it small enough to be effective, but then cap it out so that it doesn't get so big that it, you know, you look at these, these neighborhoods, and I grew up in New York City, right. That's a big neighborhood.

Dan Buettner (53:31)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (53:31)

And there's so many strangers that you, you learn to be disconnected, you learn to just isolate. Even on the subway, you know, you're just in your own little bubble. And I would argue even my neighbors, you know, I never really connected much with my neighbors. So this is the idea that. And you know, the dumber number comes from studies of bonobos or chimpanzees, actually.

Dan Buettner (53:57)

That and also ancient tribes, even Neanderthals. And Dunbar with the anthropologists found that when tribes got to be more than 150 people, they broke up into separate tribes. So if you got to 200, all of a sudden it was two tribes of 100. The idea being we can only care about so many people. And that's why, I mean, it's often said that Scandinavia is happier because they're smaller communities and it's easier to sort of take care or care about people who are like you. And when you get to a big place like America with 350 million people, it's hard to really care about that person who lives three blocks away. And skin is a different color than mine and has a different background. And so I like the idea of attracting, and I think you're set up for huge success by creating a community where you're attracting like minded people in an environment that's healthy in the first place, small enough that they can get to know each other on a first name basis. I'll just kind of drop in a really interesting factoid too. Gel just did a study that found that one of the biggest, quickest indicator of how happy you are is how many people you can say hi to on any given day and know their first name. And the ideal number is six. You want to be able to say hi to six people whose name you know, six of them every day. And so having a community like the one you're envisioning sounds like the right direction.

Adrian Grenier (55:26)

And we as a species, as a civilization, are becoming more and more isolated from each other and even ourselves. I mean, with AI and the digital life that people are boxed in, wrong direction, totally wrong direction. So the first impulse was, well, let's get back to the land, right let's start, let's start engaging with nature. And how does that inform our lifestyle and our quality of life? I mean, just putting my son in the dirt, he's getting all that biologic data, that wisdom of, of the soil that he's taken into his microbiome, and he's becoming a healthier kid just by him playing.

Dan Buettner (56:09)

Right.

Adrian Grenier (56:09)

So we've already won in that respect. And there's so much that nature is doing on a, on a subtle psychological, emotional, nervous system level that we're not, that we don't, you can't account for.

Dan Buettner (56:25)

I think people may be tempted to gloss over what you said about your son playing in the dirt. You showed me a picture of him literally wallowing in the dirt. But they don't realize that getting a little bit of that dirt in their mouth and down in their microbiome is a real probiotic. It increases the bacterial diversity. That's a healthy gut, a diverse species of bacteria in your gut. And in these sterile environments, kids are way more likely to come up with an autoimmune disease or an allergy to things like peanuts. So back, literally back to the soil is one of the best things we can do for our kids.

Adrian Grenier (57:05)

Well, and I really believe we need to do it on a community level. We need to do on a neighborhood wide collective effort because we're more conditioned to go to Whole Foods or some other store and buy a plastic bottle of probiotics or something.

Dan Buettner (57:20)

Yep.

Adrian Grenier (57:21)

Right. That's what we're programmed to do. And so we have to outsource all of this stuff into pill form or from some big pharmaceutical whatever never is good for us. Whereas if we just learn how to live together and learn how to steward land together, forget about the nervous system benefits on our psychology and our sense of well being, but we'll know exactly where our food's coming from. And as we learn how to create better soil by chopping and dropping, creating that compost, nice spongy mycelium, you know, actually building soil so that the microbes can really come alive.

Dan Buettner (57:59)

That's a good feeling. Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (58:01)

Then it's right. You don't go to the store, you just go pick up a clump of dirt.

Dan Buettner (58:05)

It tastes better.

Adrian Grenier (58:06)

It's right there. But we don't know how to do these things. And in fact, it's hard. And I'm right. Now, as we're building the business model, we want to justify how we actually steward this land as a community. How do we inspire people to come live there? Even just asking people hey, do you want to, do you want to buy in and buy a little home site in our community? People start thinking, well, you know, how much is it going to cost? Of course, price. And then what do I get? What if I want to sell out? What if I don't like my neighbors? Like all the things that we're conditioned. We're so conditioned to have the fences and have the isolation and to hide away from each other because it's so hard to be with other humans. And so what I realized is not only am I learning how to create healthy natural ecosystems and grow food, but we're learning how to create community ecosystems, like of human beings.

Dan Buettner (59:06)

I wrote a cover story for National Geographic in 2018 about the happiest places on Earth and it was completely data backed. And I drilled down to co housing in denmark. There's about 100 of them. They all have about 30 people, 30 families, which is getting very close to your Dunbar number. They live in, for lack of a better term, a crescent or an oval of townhouses. They're always close to a city. Like you're close to Austin, Texas, so that, you know, kids can go to school and you can get your, you know, do your shopping in. But there's only one area where people do laundry together. There's only one community garden. There's a communal house where people eat a dinner together. Every night. They eat dinner. There's actually a model for this. And it turns out that when it comes to social interaction, even introverts are happier when they're with people than they are when they're alone. Just not as happy and for not as long as extroverts. But people need, especially now as we implode into our devices and AI comes online and we increasingly are getting in our cars for transportation that we need a nudge. We need an environment that nudges us into interacting with our neighbors. Otherwise we end up with loneliness. 40% of Americans are lonely. Loneliness shaves eight years off your life expectancy. You're not living a happy life if you're not socially connected with at least three people that you can count on. The best way to do it is to join a community is to join a community where you're nudged into eating together, nudged into growing food together, nudged into socializing together. And it's just the right idea.

Adrian Grenier (60:58)

Well, and there's such a thing as nature deficit disorder. That too, in which you're disconnected from the things that are so much natural. They're so natural to us and to our.

Dan Buettner (61:08)

How we evolve that's right.

Adrian Grenier (61:09)

And I learned. I didn't learn that till later, but I realized later. I grew up in New York City. I was utterly isolated from nature. And here I was an environmentalist. How does that work? You know, I have these abstract ideas of how things should be and, and then you get out in the farm and you're like, oh, I knew nothing about why farmers turn to glyphosate or they turn to chemical fertilizers. Now I'm like, now I have compassion and an understanding for why you don't do it though. No. Well, I get the luxury of trying to reinvent and figure out regenerative, healthy, organic, whatever ways of doing things, but it's hard. I mean, we have invasive species of grass, we have, you know, predation, we have, you know, insects, all the things that want to eat the food that we're. Yeah, we're growing.

Dan Buettner (62:00)

The answer is spray glyphosate. But it's so much harder to, you.

Adrian Grenier (62:04)

Know, if, if my crop dies, I, I'll still get to eat. You know, farmers, their margins are razor thin. And if they lose a crop, they, you know, their family doesn't eat. Yeah.

Dan Buettner (62:16)

Or they lose their farm. Right.

Adrian Grenier (62:18)

So show some respect. Right. To the realities of what's happening as opposed to these, you know, frankly, these, you know, woke liberal college kids who come in with all the big ideas trying to tell farmers that they got to do one thing because it's bad for the environment. Well, you know, put your money where your mouth is and go out and try and solve for farming practices instead of telling the farmers who are in the, in the trenches trying to make food that you don't even want to pay whatever, for organic because it's too expensive. You know, and so I've had to again come down to earth and not only was I in Hollywood, you know, flying high, but also in the environmental space, there's this sort of lofty arrogance.

Dan Buettner (63:03)

That virtual signaling elite.

Adrian Grenier (63:05)

Yeah. I gave so many speeches about consumer demand and, you know, what the businesses should do.

Dan Buettner (63:13)

Yeah. And now you're, now you're, now you're in the dredges.

Adrian Grenier (63:15)

I don't, I don't preach anymore.

Dan Buettner (63:18)

This documentary you're doing absolutely fascinated. This birth to death journey and the role of hardship and how we run away from hardship. But it could often be our best teacher.

Adrian Grenier (63:32)

Yeah. I mean, it's, it's all connected. I mean, everything that I'm doing is on some level leading in the same direction. You know, the name of our ranch is Kintsugi I'm toying with the idea of calling the documentary Kintsugi, too. Not a bad idea, because it really is a story of rebirth and renewal, but it's also recognizing the cracks and the hardship and the struggle.

Dan Buettner (63:57)

Celebration of brokenness.

Adrian Grenier (63:59)

We are a death phobic society and we do not have grief literacy. We don't know how to meet and be with suffering without trying to fix it or trying to rebel against it or change it. Just to be in the heartbreak and the sorrow or the reality of our mortality is something that we haven't been taught or that we've forgotten or is not part of our daily ritual or our weekly or regular practice. And so it's something that we're exploring is, you know, how we can bring. Bring those practices into. Into our lives so that we're, you know, the Buddhists say, you know, it's always a good day for a good dying, and can we allow ourselves to learn how to let go?

Dan Buettner (64:57)

Can you distill it to one lesson? We always try to do this on this podcast. I mean, we're a culture that you're dying. What would your advice be to people to prepare for death?

Adrian Grenier (65:11)

Don't listen to me, man. Well, watch the film. I am interviewing a Greek chorus of elders who have very wise and pithy and beautiful poetic ways of communicating on the. On the subject. As a documentary filmmaker, that's my job and also my pleasure is to be able to explore a topic with a curious mind and ask questions so that I can. I can learn these. The very thing. What's the answer?

Dan Buettner (65:46)

I have an idea. So our producer, Pat Weiland, was telling us the other day that his mother is actually proposing. And they've had very deep conversations about it. Nothing is off limits. And they've gone so far, actually, to arrange with the funeral. Instead of having the funeral after she's dead, they're having the funeral before she's dead. They're actually having the death service where everybody can stand up and eulogize her when she could actually hear it, which I think is. Which is absolutely brilliant. And it is the consummate example of acceptance. Your funeral before you die.

Adrian Grenier (66:27)

That's beautiful. That's beautiful.

Dan Buettner (66:30)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (66:30)

And I guess if the idea is she's preparing to die, there's an awareness. Right. Which sort of.

Dan Buettner (66:37)

And she's preparing her family for her to die as well.

Adrian Grenier (66:40)

Right. Well, then I would go one step further and I would say we're all approaching and you don't know, you know, when that day is going to come. And. And God bless her that she's lived a long life and she's at a stage where it's sort of in a natural moment. But I would say you can always have these practices and these rituals. One thing that I love, love, love about being in connection with nature is I get to meet death.

Dan Buettner (67:09)

All psycho, psychical.

Adrian Grenier (67:10)

Yeah, all the time. If it's. If it's a chicken or, you know, you see, we find bones, just randomly find bones, plants. You know, you've been taking care of this plant, you know, and it's doing well. And then the night before deer come in, they just chomp it to death. We're constantly just meeting up with. Letting go.

Dan Buettner (67:33)

Yeah. It's such a great metaphor, really. Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (67:35)

And when you grow up in the city, you don't think is about.

Dan Buettner (67:38)

Yeah.

Adrian Grenier (67:38)

You know, shielding, hiding, masking, repressing, and.

Dan Buettner (67:43)

This constant stream of media that reminds you that success is fame, success is money, success is beauty, success is infinite comfort. And as your story so beautifully illustrates, it's an empty pursuit. Well, it may be fun for a while and maybe something you experience like everything else, but it's not the ultimate pursuit.

Adrian Grenier (68:07)

Well, I think it just sparked. Like, what it did not do is prepare me to let go of all the things. It kept me grasping and clasping and tugging and pulling in a sort of almost a desperate kind of way.

Dan Buettner (68:20)

And it wasn't until you quit tugging and pulling that true happiness.

Adrian Grenier (68:24)

You let go and you realize love is a process of being with that.

Dan Buettner (68:31)

Which you will lose. That's a perfect ending spot for us. Can people connect with you, or is there a way to see what you're.

Adrian Grenier (68:40)

Doing so you can follow me? Adrian Grenier on Instagram, which is basically just a carbon copy of all the things I'm doing on the other platforms. Earthspeed is my channel, basically sharing what we do on the land. So it's at earthspeed. Then there's kintsugiranch.com which will show a list of all of the events and the educational experiences and nature immersion that we're doing on the land. So you can come take a class, a course, come to one of our events, do a weekend retreat.

Dan Buettner (69:14)

Love it. And I want to do a blue zone mind meld about the community you're envisioning.

Adrian Grenier (69:18)

I love it. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you.

Dan Buettner (69:20)

Thank you.