“Your Diet Is Trash!” The Secret To Losing Fat, Building Muscle, & Living Forever | Dr.Mike Israetel

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Your Diet Is Trash!” The Secret To Losing Fat, Building Muscle, & Living Forever | Dr. Mike Israetel

Podcast Information:

• Title: The Iced Coffee Hour
• Hosts: Graham Stephan & Jack Selby
• Guest: Dr. Mike Israetel
• Release Date: January 20, 2025
• Description: In this episode, Graham Stephan and Jack Selby engage in an in-depth conversation with Dr. Mike Israetel, exploring his journey from the Soviet Union to becoming a renowned expert in nutrition and bodybuilding. The discussion delves into the obesity epidemic in America, the impact of diet on health, the future of artificial intelligence and longevity, and personal reflections on wealth and fame.

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1. Introduction and Background

Dr. Mike Israetel begins by sharing his personal history, describing his family's migration from the Soviet Union to America. He recounts the challenges they faced, including the loss of possessions and adapting to a new culture with better access to quality food.

• Notable Quote:
  “We sold all of our possessions more or less in the Soviet Union... our quality of life was like a category level higher.”
  (00:20)

2. The Obesity Epidemic in America

The hosts initiate the discussion by addressing the prevalent obesity problem in the United States. Dr. Israetel emphasizes that while obesity is multifactorial, the primary driver is the availability and consumption of ultra-tasty, high-calorie foods.

• Key Points:

  • Caloric Excess: The ease of accessing high-calorie foods leads to overconsumption.
  • Food Environment: The modern American diet is saturated with hyper-palatable foods designed to maximize taste and convenience.
  • Misconceptions: Common myths debunked include laziness and environmental toxins as primary causes.

• Notable Quote:
  “The biggest part and probably the like way more than 50% majority of it is over the past 50 years... the biggest factor that causes obesity in the United States.”
  (43:40)

3. Personal Experiences with Diet and Fitness

Dr. Israetel shares his personal struggles with body image during his teenage years, which led him to pursue bodybuilding and weightlifting as a means to regain a sense of control and self-worth.

• Key Points:

  • Bodybuilding Journey: Transition from wrestling to gym training, overcoming discomfort, and developing a passion for lifting.
  • Diet Discipline: Importance of maintaining a controlled diet to achieve and sustain muscle growth and overall health.
  • Single Cheat: Recounts the only instance he deviated from his strict diet regimen and its consequences.

• Notable Quote:
  “Once you begin to lift and get stronger, that started tending to my wounds... that’s how the process started pretty early.”
  (16:52)

4. Impact of Diet on Health and Mental Well-being

The conversation shifts to how diet influences not just physical health but also mental clarity and overall well-being. Dr. Israetel highlights the benefits of a balanced diet rich in lean proteins, vegetables, and healthy fats.

• Key Points:

  • Inflammation: Excessive calories and poor diet contribute to chronic low-level inflammation affecting organ systems, including the brain.
  • Mental Clarity: Transitioning to healthier eating habits can lead to enhanced cognitive function and energy levels.
  • Artificial Additives: Debunks myths surrounding food additives and their impact on weight gain.

• Notable Quote:
  “When you take the mentality of wanting the difficulty... how rarefied is the air if I just keep going.”
  (11:57)

5. Future of Artificial Intelligence and Longevity

A significant portion of the discussion delves into the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) and their implications for human longevity. Dr. Israetel explores concepts like Longevity Escape Velocity and the potential for AI-driven breakthroughs in aging reversal.

• Key Points:

  • Longevity Escape Velocity: The idea that medical advancements will eventually allow humans to live indefinitely by continuously combating aging.
  • AI and Robotics: Predicts a future where AI-powered robots perform complex tasks, potentially surpassing human capabilities in various domains.
  • Ethical Considerations: Addresses concerns about AI surpassing human intelligence and the potential societal impacts.

• Notable Quotes:
  “Longevity escape velocity is when you can live long enough enough to hit that point where you’re adding more than a statistical year to your life when you live another year.”
  (87:56)
  “Robots are a GDP linear multiplier... it's just going to be a thing that if something is...”
  (97:27)

6. Personal Reflections on Wealth and Fame

Dr. Israetel and the hosts open up about how newfound wealth and recognition have affected their lives. Dr. Israetel expresses feelings of guilt and responsibility, emphasizing a desire to remain grounded despite financial success.

• Key Points:

  • Wealth Impact: Navigating the complexities of wealth without letting it alter personal values or relationships.
  • Public Recognition: Dealing with increased visibility and maintaining humility.
  • Spending Habits: Preference for investing and practical expenditures over luxury or frivolous spending.

• Notable Quote:
  “I feel like, you know, I'm the same way. I Feel like, like I, I do okay. ... I'm just some fucking idiot that like takes steroids and lifts weights or some shit.”
  (119:32)
  “I'm highly uncomfortable with that... I'm the same way.”
  (123:53)

7. Conclusion and Final Insights

The episode concludes with final thoughts on maintaining a balanced lifestyle, the importance of continuous self-improvement, and the potential future where technology and human health intersect seamlessly.

• Key Points:

  • Balanced Lifestyle: Emphasizes the necessity of combining proper diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management for optimal health.
  • Future Optimism: Encourages embracing technological advancements while remaining cautious of potential risks.
  • Personal Responsibility: Stresses the importance of individual choices in combating obesity and maintaining mental and physical health.

• Notable Quote:
  “If you're physically active, if you eat mostly nutritious food... then you're fine.”
  (68:24)
  “It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's purely fucked up.”
  (82:29)

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Key Takeaways:

• The obesity crisis in America is primarily driven by the prevalence of high-calorie, ultra-tasty, and convenient foods.
• Personal discipline in diet and exercise plays a crucial role in maintaining health and overcoming body image challenges.
• Advancements in AI and robotics hold promise for significantly extending human longevity, but ethical and societal implications must be carefully considered.
• Wealth and fame, while altering life circumstances, do not have to change personal values or lead to complacency.
• A balanced approach to lifestyle, encompassing diet, exercise, sleep, and stress management, is essential for long-term health and well-being.

This episode provides listeners with a comprehensive understanding of the multifaceted issues surrounding diet, health, and the future of technology, all through the insightful perspectives of Dr. Mike Israetel.

Transcript

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

What's the best time of day to get a deal? All day with Jack in the box's all day big deal meal. You get to choose from four entrees like the supreme croissant and five tasty sides plus a drink starting at $5. So hurry in or take your time.

[Graham Stephan]

You've got all day at Jack.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Every bite's a big deal. Humans are wonderful and beautiful and complex and deeply flaw. When I was younger I experienced quite a bit of feelings of powerlessness and they sat very poorly with me. And so once I began to lift and get stronger, I think started tending to my wounds. Hey folks, Dr. Mike here for renaissance periodization. Why am I talking about? This seems oddly self infatuated.

[Graham Stephan]

Why do you think we have such an obesity problem here in America?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I think a lot of people hypothesize that obesity is complex and controversial in what causes it. There is no conspiracy. When you get one slice of pie, what do you want? You want an slice and that's the real killer. Ultra tasty food people willingly eat. You don't have to take the drug, you can just take control of your diet. When you take the mentality of wanting the difficulty. Maybe what I suspect, people who climb tall mountains and they look up and you can see the summit. It is so far away. What's up there? I wonder how many other people thought they could climb it and couldn't. How far does this go? How rarefied is the air if I just keep going.

[Jack]

Dr. Mike Israel, thank you so much for coming on the Iced Coffee Hour.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Graham Stephan]

So appreciate it.

[Jack]

Apparently you're pretty controversial. Okay, that's what the people online say. So we wanted to start this off on a very light note. Nothing controversial at all. Okay, what do you think more difficult, getting a six pack or beating being broke?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh gee whiz. Beating being broke. I would probably say that beating being broke on average is probably more straightforward and with a few minimal assumptions, I think it's just linearly feasible. Whereas getting a revealed six pack as an adult. And if we're truly talking about the average American, there are a few stumbling blocks that make it a one does not simply sort of situation. The following will sound profoundly ignorant, but I can guarantee you I can couch it with all the proper caveats and get very, very, very lengthy explanation going. But not being broke again, assuming you don't have any crazy impediments such as a near total inability to engage in productive work, assuming you don't have a stream of expenses that continues to update itself, such as you have lots of children for few income earners, or you have a really intense medical condition that is not fully covered by insurance. Outside of those factors, and there are equivalent factors for the ABS situation as well, then getting to be no longer broke is relatively straightforward and relies mostly on curbing your outlay of expenses in a way in which is accessible to most people. Now, lots of folks in the comments will probably at this point say, I come from an incredible amount of wealth and so on and so forth. So my parents came here and took my sister and I. I was 7, she was 9, from the Soviet Union. So it's almost certainly been poorer than almost everyone who watches podcasts, period. And my parents had us living like this for a few years when we came to America, the first I had fast food in America was like a year and a half or two years after we arrived, and we did not go to any other restaurants.

[Graham Stephan]

What did you have? Do you remember the first fast food meal?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

A Burger King. Yeah. And we had it in Canada when we were on, like, our first vacation ever or something like that. And it tasted sublime. It was unbelievable. Now, the first fast food I ever had was actually in Russia when they opened up the first McDonald's in Moscow in 1990, I think. I believe I was six years old. We stood in Las Vegas for, like an hour, because that's what you do in the Soviet Union. And it was the single greatest food experience of my entire life.

[Graham Stephan]

What was so memorable about it?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love this. This line here. So you. I had like a quarter or half of a hamburger because I split it with my sister and a couple of sips of a vanilla shake. That's what I remember. It was not a cheeseburger, just a hamburger. And the richness of the taste was.

[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Unlike anything I had ever had in my entire life. Sublime religious experience. I didn't know things could taste that good. Because in the Soviet Union, the government manufactured all of the food. And, like, they weren't indexing on taste or quality or price. They were like, as long as not too many people starve, we're good, I think. So the McDonald's experience was incredible. But we came to America, we had almost nothing because we sold all of our possessions more or less in the Soviet Union. So roughly enough money to buy my entire family plane tickets and nothing else. Standard of money.

[Graham Stephan]

How were they able to come here through that process?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah. Yeah. So the George Bush administration, from my understanding, allowed Russian Jews to come to America via the asylum seeking program because we were like being targeted for pogroms and stuff like that. And on the way out through the airport, they took pretty much all of our possessions, like jewelry and stuff off of us, like to steal. Who did?

[Jack]

The government.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

The agents that processed you when you left? Yeah, they just took your shit.

[Jack]

And obviously you couldn't say no. Or it was just like, it was.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Just say whatever the fuck you wanted, but then you'd just go to jail for forever instead of leave and go to paradise, which is what we chose. Small price. So the various elements of the American Jewish community were super kind to us. And they basically, when we showed up, there were people at the airport to meet us. And they had set us up with like month one of an apartment or something like that. And they actually even filled our fridge with groceries, which was like kind to a level we had no reference for. And just in general, that set up the trend for us expecting Americans to be insanely nice and kind. And we've never been let down. Like, of course there's a fucking asshole. Every now and again you go to New York, you know, hey, the Philadelphia national anthem, just an unbelievable amount of generosity. And then as soon as possible, my parents both got roughly minimum wage jobs and then we spent almost no money. And though the food quality and abundance we were eating with almost no money in America was like leagues better than we had in the Soviet Union. So it's just incomparable. We basically were like roughly the equivalent of upper middle class in the Soviet Union. We showed up to America and we were like the poorest possible, zero value, roughly. And instantly our quality of life was like a category level higher.

[Jack]

How do you feel when people complain about the state of the United States right now and they think their lives are so hard?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I typically like to view it from sort of two perspectives. One perspective is that people often have valid points and they have a different reference frame. You know, there might be some planet in another galaxy in which there's aliens that are like past the fourth industrial revolution, which we're just getting into now. And they're like, functionally, all of them are roughly billionaires, Some are trillionaires, and there's no doubt like a billionaire alien. That's like my genetic optimization didn't come in today. Like, what the fuck is the postal system coming to? How am I waiting to be perfect for another day? So people get used to stuff. And also, many people in the United States, numerically, not fractionally, have very difficult lives for a variety of circumstances. Some people are dealing with health conditions that are outside of anyone's control because, like, we just don't have a good handle on the problem of mastering the human body. Some people are dealing with chronic pain. Some people are dealing with the long term end products of their earlier choices in life, which, you know, when you're a kid or a teen, you do dumb shit. Some people are in very difficult circumstances otherwise. So when people complain about stuff, a part of me is like, bro, that's valid. And it's very good to listen to that stuff, because people might not be 100% correct, but almost everyone has something valuable to bring to the table. That's the one side. And the other side is like, you live in the wealthiest time in history in one of the wealthiest places in the world, and you live objectively better than every single monarch before the year 1900 had ever lived. Like, we all live in fucking paradise. And relatively speaking, but so that's. A part of me wants to scream that at the top of my lungs. It's fucking wild when you think about it, how out of touch we are with how terrible history was through most of history, how amazing we have it. And the way I like to see it is, again, not perfect. But let's figure out how to make things better and work diligently at making them better so that the future, as it's kind of always on track to be on the grand scale, gets better and better and better. So we know the2030s and robots do everything for us. We can bitch about the robots having the wrong color scheme and Amazon fucked up again.

[Graham Stephan]

How much of that is diet? That the diets are affecting the way we think in terms of brain fog or anxiety, or maybe us not being the best that we can?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Probably a very small amount. I think that the biggest thing with diet is that if you're eating a diet that's excessive in calories and you're over fat, which is a technical term for even if you're not overweight, you have not enough muscle, too much fat, it leads to a chronic low level inflammation. It's not really so good for any of your organ systems, brain included. And you might have kind of pulsatile waves of hunger. If you eat like that all the time, you do start to feel suboptimally. And a lot of people report that when they start to eat healthy, especially in the few days that follow, they feel crystal clear and ultra energized. And that's mostly as a result of eating fewer calories and eating foods that are not so high calorie dense that they make you go, ugh, you guys are like Thanksgiving dinner. No one's like ultra energized after that.

[Jack]

It's, I think turkey though has something in it.

[Graham Stephan]

But you have to eat so much turkey.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It's an, it's like an, an amount you can't possibly eat. Oh, really? Yes. It's kind of like a little bit of an herbal legend. It's totally true. It has tryptophan in it. But the amount of tryptophan you need to get like the serotonin going to get you in a sleepy state is like the nonsensical amount. Like you might not be able to inject that amount of tryptophan.

[Jack]

How often do you cheat on your diet?

[Graham Stephan]

Although before we go into that, we gotta ask ourselves a question. What does the future hold for business? Because if you ask nine different experts, you're gonna get 10 different an. From a bull market to bear market. Stocks are going up, they're going down. It would be very helpful to have a crystal ball at this point.

[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

Podcast how often do you cheat on your diet?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I cheated on my diet once in my life.

[Graham Stephan]

What was the food? What do you have?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I was a week out from my first bodybuilding show. I was dieting pretty wrong. I was misusing various chemical substances I was using to be a bodybuilder. And I somehow rationalized that I needed to eat now because I was starving and I ordered like a pizza from Domino's or something and I ate it preposterously quickly, came to Ida would call my senses, but not really, and proceeded to throw up a good deal, about half of the pizza forcefully. And then I sort of sat with that decision and that thing that had transpired and I was like, oh fuck, I'm really fucked up. And I believe, if memory serves, that's the only time I ever cheated on my diet.

[Graham Stephan]

When did the desire start for you to start getting into weightlifting and bodybuilding and sculpting your body in such a way?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

A couple days ago. I did pretty well.

[Graham Stephan]

Tell me your secret.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I was 14 years old, almost 15, and I had done my first season of high school wrestling freshman year. And I noticed during wrestling that, like when people were more muscular, they were stronger and they would just be better at it. And in addition to that, I have the unfortunate genetics of just having a potbelly sort of no matter what. And growing up as a teen like that and having various friends and relatives point that out left me mildly dissatisfied with the appearance of my body. Not in a way that was all consuming, but in a way I was like, nah, fuck, I don't want to look like this. And so I began to take some control of my diet, though limited. And as soon as wrestling was over, I began to hit the gym. And at first I didn't like it. I didn't really like lifting. It was uncomfortable, it hurt. And then I decided to listen to some motivating music, which at the time, it was my sophomore year, I was in a big rage against the machine arc.

[Graham Stephan]

Nice.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

But I tried to listen to it during lifting and I realized that it was exhausting me because it was generating anger. And anger was not an emotion that seemed to be sustainable for me in the gym. And then over time I went through this journey of listening to music that put me in a headspace that I considered sustainable and enjoyable. Eventually I started lifting to smooth jazz, which is curious because maybe the most universally hated music, it's like what your dentist plays to torture you in the office when you're waiting. I found that I got into kind of Zen like states while lifting. And when I was finally able, after about a year and a half of lifting, to recontextualize the pain of lifting as a good thing, that I wanted to be there for the pain, I began to like it. And then I began to see very good results and then more results and then more results and then more results. And then after about a two years I was like full on, straight up addicted. And I've never been able to kick the habit. So the ability to have progress, the ability to see my body changing was.

[Graham Stephan]

Just like, oh, most people don't take it to the extreme that you do. Like a lot of people will go to the gym, myself included almost.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Look at those biceps. My God.

[Graham Stephan]

Can't quite do that.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

How did you get to the airport?

[Graham Stephan]

But I love going to the gym every single day. If I miss a day, like I didn't go today, I feel it and I hate missing it. But I'm almost happy where I am now, where I could put on an extra few pounds, but I don't want to progress beyond that. What was different for you to want to take that professionally and to take it to the point of competition.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I was never overly psyched about competition. I can't say I've ever really super enjoyed bodybuilding competition. I was a competitive powerlifter first and I loved powerlifting competition. Powerlifting competition for me, and powerlifting for me was an expression of ability, the expression of unmitigated aggression. I think, like for whatever genetic and environmental reasons which I could get into my speculation about those. But you know, ad hoc stories are so easy to tell and so hard to substantiate. But I experienced quite a bit of feelings of powerlessness or what I would consider not enough feelings of agency when I was younger and they sat very poorly with me. And so once I began to lift and get stronger, I realized the sport of powerlifting existed and my psychological process for getting amped up for big lifts and then succeeding in lifting them, I think started tending to my wounds. When you feel powerless for long enough, anytime you can express your abilities in a way that brings you success. And even the very simple victory over like I wanted to squat £400 twice and I did it, that starts to get at some deep, deep stuff and really starts to kind of rebuild the very frail, almost collapsed ego to some extent. And that for me was like just crazy, crazy medicine that changed me, I think potentially over time and made me feel at a default, more secure and more able. And it was really fun because when, you know, when you're a testosterone filled young man, I remember one thing I really liked was this episode is brought to you by Shopify. Forget the frustration of picking commerce platforms when you switch your business to Shopify, the global commerce platform that supercharges your selling wherever you sell. With Shopify, you'll harness the same intuitive features, trusted apps and powerful analytics used by the world's leading brands. Sign up today for your $1 per month trial [e-mail] tech. All lowercase, that's shopify.com tech. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. We're driven by the search for better. But when it comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all. Don't search match with Indeed. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com SBO terms and conditions apply. After you get much over £400 and you're lifting a standard rack with a standard 45 pound bar just sitting there, the bar bends and it just bends like just the weight sitting there and you look at it and you're like that thing, that weight is bending steel. But like fuck all that. It's never dealt with me before. And that attitude, cultivating that confidence you have to in order to lift that kind of weight that's so close to your limit felt magical. Magical, magical, magical. And practicing that Generation of psychological power that comes before the generation of physical power and force was insanely addicting and it was miraculous and awesome. And that, I think was a really big deal to me and kept me loving it for a very, very long time. So, yeah, I have many, many more good things to say about that, but that's kind of how the process started pretty early.

[Jack]

I want to talk about diet real quick, but first I'm very curious to know, does it feel any different? Completely. Like your true maxing out. If you're maxing out at like 200 versus if your true max out is like 450, does it feel different under the bar?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Categorically different.

[Jack]

Are you like actually pushing yourself harder when you're lifting up more weight? Even if it's like your true max.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Like let's say you're doing a squat and you unrack the weight, which is you take it out of the rack and you walk it back. When it's just a few hundred pounds, you just go bloop. And it comes off the rack. When it's much more than £400, you push on it and nothing happens. You push on it harder. Nothing happens. You push on it harder and the bar starts bending and all of you is compressed. My friend and colleague at rp, Derek Wilcox, broke the all time world record squat in a squat suit way back in the day, 10, 15 years ago, and weighing less than 200 pounds, he squatted over a thousand. And he said it was like two or three seconds to unrack, to push up. And he was pushing up and his hips were lifting up. The bar at that level is already pre bent and won't bend much more because it's a thicker bar and it's bending a little bit, but his hips are rising and it's just spinal compression for like three seconds until it moves. Your face fills with blood. A lot of times you'll pop your blood vessels in your eyes. You know what it feels like? I tell you exactly what it feels like. If anyone wants to connect to that on an emotional, on a physical level, it just feels like you're getting crushed. But does it feel like you're getting crushed, like you're the victim of something? What it feels like to unrack a heavy squat is exactly the same emotion I feel when you hear like a fucking heavy chord in a metal song. Like, like I just feel that all over. And you feel power just fucking surging out of you and you go, thank God I'm under a bar because I could do serious Damage like, you guys watch Dragon Ball Z? Do you guys know what that is? Anime. Like, power levels and like everything burning around you, like, that's what it feels like. Because if. If it doesn't feel like that and you're close to your max, your body's like this, man, I'm not going to do this. But if you feel your vibe a shitload and you want the pain and you want the crush, like when the bar starts crushing you, you're like, this is what the I signed up for. This is why I want to be here. Because that motherfucker, that motherfucker. She's cool, that motherfucker. They don't want any of this. Not that you're singling out other people. It's totally theoretical. I thought about other people. That's the mild exaggeration. But it's just like when you take the mentality of wanting the pain, when you take the mentality of wanting the difficulty, at some point it turns into like, I wanna see how far this goes. And to kind of finish my answer to your question from before, the reason that I got into this and incrementally made it more serious was kind of maybe what I suspect. People who climb tall mountains think of when they're like, you know, they hit base camp or something and they look up and there's just a couple of frilly clouds and you can see the summit and it's so far away and they go, man, what's up there? I wonder how thin the air is. I wonder how many other people thought they could climb it and couldn't. I wonder what it would be like to just go a little bit further. Once you get a certain level of size, size or strength, you're like, you know, let's push the system a little bit. It's like people who like to race cars. It's scary going fast in a car. Fuck that. Your boy's not doing it. I got friends who like, drive cars really fast. My wife used to race cars. The engine's vibrating and the car makes a noise. It sounds kind of disturbed. And you look at how fast you're going, like, please, God, please, God, save me. But to them, it's kind of like, maybe if I go a little bit faster, it'll be kind of fucking neat at the very least. And so for me, my journey of lifting has really been a lot about that of like, man, how far does this go? How rarefied is the air? How exotic is the situation gonna get if I just keep going? And a lot of it Is just because of that. And if anyone here listening has ever watched Dragon Ball Z the anime, and it really spoke to them, comment below. But a lot of that was like. One of my friends showed me the show Dragon Ball Z and it's the Japanese equivalent of Superman, Batman sort of thing, but goddamn, the Japanese do it well. And the entire show is basically about people who fight each other and various bad guys. But they're superpowered, so they teleport, they fly at a thousand miles an hour. They fly past a bunch of skyscrapers and just rubble after that. They punch holes in planets. But that's the cool part for sure. But the coolest part is they train and they get beat up by other people and then they almost die, and then they go, man, I just need to get stronger. And. And they hide in a hole. They go in a special room, and for a year or two, nobody sees them. And they're there like fucking perfecting their craft and pushing the limits, and they don't even know if they're gonna make it through training. That's how insane they get. And I remember watching that at first being like, this animation style sucks. And then I watched it for longer and I was like, oh, my God, this is it. It spoke to something so deep. Ascending that dominance hierarchy is probably the ancestral ape, like, reason my brain likes it so much. I felt low on the totem pole for whatever my bullshit, right? But it doesn't matter because when you start climbing the Domino's hierarchy, only by analogy, by just lifting more weight and feeling your ability set improve, it's a magical fairy dust for the young male brain. And it's magical.

[Graham Stephan]

Does it help you get girls?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

No, does it look like I get girls? Do you see any girls around here? I think, like, on technical qualities, it can help you get girls in a few different ways. One, on average, if you're more jacked than not, a higher percentage of females will feel like interacting with you in that female way, though by a small margin. And after you get a certain level of jacked, which I passed probably like 40 or 50 pounds of muscle ago, it's diminishing returns. And you're just in the fetish market at that point. If you like a gigantic hairy man, I'm your guy. If not, you're like, the fuck is that? Why is it looking at it? It's scary.

[Graham Stephan]

I remember this. This is like 2010. This guy would show women these, like seven different body types and they'd say which one is the most attractive? And universally, it was the Weird. Like the dad bod. Justin Bieber, which is kind of like the skinny, you know, muscle or Brad Pitt from Fight Club.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Brad Pitt from Fight Club's undefeated.

[Graham Stephan]

He won by far. Dad bod was very close behind. Why do women like the dad bod?

[Jack]

Because they can control it. It, they can.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh my God, here we go. Conspiracy theory.

[Jack]

I'm not red pilled. I'm just, I, I'm just saying like my intuitive sense and I could. Please, just rip me to shreds in the comments. Just please do it. I feel like there's a chance that they know if you put on some weight that they probably can too. Sorry. I think they think that they can put on some weight too. And on top of that, they probably think you're not going to leave if you're not like, like super high up on whatever hierarchy that they think you're going to.

[Graham Stephan]

I'm gonna counter. I'm gonna counter.

[Jack]

Please do.

[Graham Stephan]

I believe it's because it signals a guy's not taking himself too seriously and that the guy who has like a six pack might be a little too serious, intimidating. No, I don't think it's an intimidation thing. I think it's just the guy could show that he could let loose and just live for a good time, live in the moment. Versus a guy who's like, no, I gotta go to the gym every single day. 5:00 in the morning. I'm not gonna miss my diet. A little bit more regimented is, is less. And the dude is like, all right, I'm going to pull back six beers tonight.

[Jack]

As a beautiful woman, what are your thoughts on this?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh boy, you know, so far out of my area of expertise that I'm just bullshitting at this point. I suspect it's same. I suspect it could be a combination of all the factors you guys listed. For some women, I think it's definitely a big part. Everything you guys said is true. I think another thing is dad bod signifies you're in the dad part of your life if you're ripped and lean and all that shit. I think women who are looking for a longer term partner sometimes probabilistically, totally, subconsciously assess you as probably a cheating asshole and maybe if not cheating, just not ready to settle down. And so you're nice to look at, you might be nice to touch for an evening you're not really boyfriend material. And if you have more of a dad bod, you're in the dad phase of your life and you're a bit more tame. You're a bit less of kind of an animal and a little less intimidating and scary. And also you don't seem like the kind of guy to go out there and Smash, you know, 100 bitches in a row or whatever. And you're kind of like super low key and probably more likely to be monogamous. I'd also say that stated versus revealed preferences is a thing. Have you guys ever heard about that?

[Graham Stephan]

100%.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, like what you say you like versus bitch. Who are you talking to at the club though? Hey, dad bod guy. She's like, yeah, I think go fuck Adonis over there. He looks great. I want to bite every single one of his abs at a time. And so a lot of times there's a little bit of that at play. A lot of this is like cultural elements and stuff. A lot of it goes in waves. Sometimes women really are feeling one thing another. There's also, I believe, a tie to the menstrual cycle. When women are in part of the menstrual cycle, they want a fucking life. Like jacked, bearded, hairy, lean man with giant hands to cover their face as he does whatever to them. My word. Like, bro, have you guys ever read romance novels? Holy fucking shit. Holy shit.

[Graham Stephan]

I've heard the stories.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

We know you've read them. I have not read Graham's Got Like a Cigar at a Friday Night Leaving through a book like. But that's definitely an archetype that women are like probabilistically more inclined to be attracted to during some times of their menstrual cycle. And then during other times they go for like low key dad vibes and that other guy is like, ugh, like grotesque and super scary. And that's also shown to be something that like, is a thing in men too. Like when guys are single and looking for meaningful connection, they tend to prioritize their interest towards girls that look like they have like long term potential. Like, like maybe someone who looks a little bit more mild mannered, not super whored out, no bimbo type of shit, and someone who's a great conversationalist, so on and so forth, someone who demonstrates values like care and conscientiousness, starts to become very attractive. But for guys that like, let's say, just got out of a long term relationship and they're kind of sick of the shit, like it's just bimbos and hoes all the way down is the only shit you're looking at. Cause you're like, daddy needs to eat. You feel me? And then it's like quite a different archetype, so. So there's a lot of variance there. So I'd say that it's definitely a thing. But grotesquely over muscled people are just rarely found attractive by statistical averages. Now in the fitness industry, sometimes in some circles, the more jacked you are, the higher fraction of girls like you because you're just high up in the local status hierarchy. I'll tell you the if you are at a hardcore fitness gym where there's tons of jacked people and tons of really fit girls and you're ultra jacked and super tall and super heavy and you walk in and all the other guys are like, fuck. Like visibly, like not disturbed by your presence, but like reverent, a certain fraction of girls will be like, ooh, ooh. Because I think it's kind of a known thing that women will, on pure intuitive vibes, pick up who the guys tend to fear, respect, slash, look up to. And if you're popular with the guys, some fraction of girls, not all, because some girls give a will be like, this is. This is the alpha male of this group. And they can't help but feel some vibes off of that.

[Graham Stephan]

I do notice though that for men that lift, you get more compliments from other guys.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Like, I notice even when like our friends are going to the gym and you, you haven't seen them for a few months, they come back, I'm like, dude, you look great. How'd you do that? Tell me about it. And the same thing with me, like, if I've really been dialed in, people notice that and compliment, yes, it feels nice.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

But from that perspective of like increasing your probabilities with women or whatever, that definitely helps because if women see you in interaction and you're kind of the center of attention, you're kind of getting complimented by guys and kind of people are reverent of you. You know, someone is just not into it. But some women, they catch some vibes off that and it increases your chances. Probabilist, I suppose, if you're looking at it from that perspective. But yeah, it was never my intention to get girls like this. It never really worked either. And I've never really gotten a whole lot of girls, so. Well, there you go. We squared that circle.

[Graham Stephan]

Although before we go into that, did you know the average time for hiring in Most organizations is 30 to 45 days? Are you tired of a costly and lengthy hiring process?

[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I think a lot of people hypothesize that obesity is complex and controversial in what causes it. I think on a technical analysis, it's very complex. The number of contributing factors, determining factors, facilitating factors, is multifactorial and high. As a scientifically literate person, as a former professor of nutrition, professor of health behavior, I have to see to that that's absolutely just objectively true. But I think that you can substantially simplify why we are as a country. I hate that use that term. I take that back. Why a substantial number of people are overweight and obese and we can rule out a bunch of things that either have a small role to play, very small, or functionally no realistic role. Here are some things that we can rule out. Americans have become much lazier over the last 50 years. They haven't. Bunch of ways to measure this. None of them add up. Okay. Americans are lazier than all the other peoples of the world. Also not true. True. Also, many of the other peoples of the world are also now getting substantially fatter. So kind of puts that one down. There is another hypothesis that it's something in an environment just poisoning us and making us somehow obese. Multiple layers of analysis reveal that if that's true, it is not in evidence and is mechanistically probably just not a contributing factor that who weighs in at more than a few percent and possibly and probably zero. It would be dope if that was the case. Like if I was like, oh, it's this fucking chemical that's in our food. Take it out and everyone over a period of years just turns into Brad Pitt and Fight Club. That'd be sweet you know, with the cigarettes and all. But that seems to hold very little water. Another one is the idea that we're living in a pandemic of ignorance and that we have an insufficient amount of nutritional education and that one gobbles up bigger fraction of the variance. A few percentage points for sure, definitely explains some things because some people are just like the way they live their lives. Sort of didn't even know that they're eating in such a way that makes them much more obese. And they might even think like, but I'm eating good. That does happen, but not as often as we would expect if it was a huge contributor to the problem. So a lot of things, if you look at it deeply enough, are either ruled out or just not your best contenders. And included in that is people are not physically active enough and they don't work out enough. People around the world, within a pretty decent margin are roughly of similar physical activity no matter what. And this research is relatively new, it's about 15 years old. But many people have not gotten the memo and they just continue to say it's under activity. It's not. I wish it was what it seems like. And the vast majority of the data, if you look closely enough, support this on theoretical grounds. It sounds real good and it seems to explain lots of like, you know, it passes the real world test, the no bullshit like is this really true in my life? And here's what seems to be causing the vast fraction of the increase in overweightness and obesity. Not all of it, but by a long shot the biggest part and probably the like way more than 50% majority of it. And that is over the past, let's call it 50 years. Build a routine with Ollie that supports your wellness needs, like getting your daily vitamins and minerals with Ollie's multigummies or keeping your mood mood upbeat with all the vitamin D and hello Happy. Give your gut health some support with probiotics and wake up feeling refreshed after taking Ollie's sleep. Do wellness on your terms. Find Ollie at a Walmart or Target near you [e-mail] these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. People of the modern world and the countries included in the modern world are like rapidly like the number of them is increasing. It now includes places like Mexico. People in those countries have had two things happen to them at the same time, roughly one is in their ability to afford food. That ability has gone up substantially. The probably Best way to measure that, it's what's called time cost. You guys familiar with time cost? Like how many hours of work, work you need to work to afford? Xyz. And you can actually do a time cost analysis of calories. It's like, how many hours of work does a typical person with an average income, even below average, need to work in a day to be able to afford however many calories of food? Like, how long do you have to work to afford a thousand calories? It is a true statement to say that for most of our evolutionary history, the answer was it roughly took about a day of work for you to be able to afford about 2,000 calories. In the sense that your entire day of working was designed to put your hand with food to your mouth. It was called subsistence living or living off the land, living hand to mouth. That's how we fucking lived. And the situation got substantially better with the first industrial revolution, which is the agricultural revolution. Better with the second, way better with the third. The electronic digital revolution increased the per capita median gross domestic product of Western nations, modern nations, by an exponent. And what ends up happening is the average person and even people that are very, very poor on average, become able to afford way more calories than they need to sustain a certain body weight. And that's fundamentally like one of the best and most beautiful things that has ever happened in history. Like people used to starve to death regularly. It was just a fact of life for everybody. And that's just not a thing anymore. Like how many people have starved to death in the United States in the last ever? Maybe. I don't even know if offhand, I'm absolutely clown showing myself, but I don't know if anyone actually starved to death during the Great Depression in the United States. To death. I don't know, maybe somewhere in rural.

[Jack]

Appalachia, maybe, barring like mental illness.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

[Jack]

Just so we don't have any people commenting.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Well, actually, for sure, mental illness, drug addiction, that'll do you in big time. But like, for a, you know, bottom 20th percentile person who's able to work, it just hasn't happened in a very, very long time. So we're so wealthy now, relatively speaking, that we can afford lots of calories. And like, that was already true in the 30s and 40s and 50s, and we did not see an explosion of obesity. We saw some rising body weights, but nothing crazy. And here's why. Most people will eat an amount of food that satiates them and then usually no more than that. Especially if the food tastes normal, like it's not what's called hyper palatable. It's not insanely delicious, bordering on addictive. And not addictive in the technical sense, but like, fuck, you just want to keep eating it. If you've noticed, like you can do this experiment with your dog, don't. Because your dog has health biomarkers. You don't want to fuck up your dog. But if you feed your dog just dog food, most dogs will just eat whatever food you give them. And afterwards you're like, eh. And you give them another kibble, they're like. And they walk away because it's not that great. But if you feed your dog human food, especially like, you know, fresh meats that you cook up and cheese and peanut butter to what a dog's taste receptors and brain complexes for taste are used to, this is like crack. And so what happened in, as an example, the United States, though this is happening all over the world and currently in Mexico, it's like fever pitch is that once you have people that can afford kind of as much food as they want, reasonably and once. So we have a largely free market system in the United States. And so people who sell food, they want you to buy as much food as USS is good for you, you. And generally people like tastier food. Nothing controversial. They like food to be tastier, they like food to be convenient. So like, if I can buy food that's almost completely cooked or cooked already, fuck, sign me up. I don't want to slave over a hot stove. And if that food is tasty, convenient, proximately located to me, available in some places 24 hours a day, but almost all the time, and a few other factors. And I can afford a lot of it because it's pretty cheap. All of a sudden I want more food. When you eat lean chicken and canned beans, not the flavored kind that the golden retriever on the commercials likes, or whatever you're going to eat until you're full and you're going to be like, ah, I'm good. Someone's like, isn't that delicious? You're like, no, it's functional. I don't want anymore. When you're eating food that is designed by capitalists, by food corporations, by restaurateurs, by recipe cookbook designers, to be as tasty as possible, roughly as affordable as possible to within, because, you know, you guys are familiar finance folks. The margins on grocery store food are like, how do they even do it? How do they make a Profit. And so they're trying to drive the cost down big time. And they're trying to make the food as tasty as possible so that you go into the store and you go, I want that because it's delicious. Ice cream, cheeseburgers, potato chips, French fries, you name it. It's so God damn good. And one of the things that makes food taste good to humans, because we evolved in an evolutionary timeline of stochastic random periods of plenty not so often and not plenty very often, like hunger and people would die and all this. This shit. So almost all of our brains are wired to prefer certain foods to be tastier than others. And one of the big unifying factors is foods that are very high in calories tend to taste better than foods that are low in calories. Someone's like, all right, give me a good meal. You're like, okay, we have fried chicken. Where you take the fried chicken and you dip the shit in the Mac and cheese. You fellas ever tried that shit? Or dipper. Fried chicken in the mashed potatoes and gravy and oh my. So good. Good versus broccoli fresh. Take as much as you want. People with the broccoli and they're like, I'm good. Really, I'm fine. And so because food is so insanely tasty, relatively speaking, so insanely cheap, so unbelievably convenient back in the 50s, 40s and shit. Do you guys know the. It's like an ethnographic constant in US Culture has been for a long time, Sunday dinner. You guys know what that is? The idea of Sunday dinner. Oh, shit. This is to my point. Back in the day, Sunday dinner, especially for the churchgoing crowd, was a big deal. You might have turkey, you might have ham, you might have a roast, you might have potatoes. And it was special and it was a very tasty. But because tasty food took a long time to prepare because no one was going to do it for you. Like grandma had to do it, and it took her fucking eight hours. And because no one would just deliver it to you to the store. And because it was pretty expensive to eat like that, it was special. Christmas dinner was special. Thanksgiving dinner was special. And you chose the foods to be very. What's called hyper palatable, very tasty, very high in calories. It was an indulgence. It's funny that you guys said no, because nowadays, at most people's average income level in the United States, they could just quite literally have Thanksgiving dinner every single day for every meal. Meal. It's not A problem at all that changes things. Because now hyper palatable food, food that's insanely tasty, you want to eat more of, is everywhere. And it's not because of a food conspiracy. There is no conspiracy. Executives aren't in their offices like, meh, see, how do we trick the American public to spending more money on food?

[Graham Stephan]

That's what I've been seeing a lot on Twitter is like all these things that are in our food that were, you know, know, changing the water supply of like, you know, removing. What's the, what's the thing in the toothpaste? Fluoride from water. Like that could be doing it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Fluoride's not doing it.

[Graham Stephan]

Or like red dye 40.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah. So like these things have been tested into the ground by professional toxicologists whose job it is to test in a variety of molecular, cellular, animal, and human, and then population studies to see is the shit killing us and to what degree. And every single food dye and additive that is used in food in the United States has passed some series of examination. The vast majority of them, like through the fucking ringer generations ago, and updates all the time, they consistently find that almost all food preservatives and dyes, some of the preservatives in high amounts, like nitrates and stuff, found in prepackaged sausages and stuff, they're not ideal. If you just eat sausages all the time in moderation, they're fine. You see almost no effect or no effect at all. But some of that shit's not that great. But like food dyes, colorings, various additives, they're tested to absurdity. And it is just not empirically true to say two things. One, that they're that bad for you. And if they are bad for you, it's teeny tiny, teeny tiny cost. Remember, the sun is a thermonuclear, permanently exploding bomb that shits radiation on you. So if you're really concerned about food dyes, don't ever fucking go outside, because it literally is. There's a thermonuclear bomb, a hydrogen bomb in the sky that's blasting you, and every time it hits your cells. Some of them had DNA damage. That's what a tan is. So putting that into context, pretty much almost all the food additives we have in the United States don't rise to the level of damage to you that the sun in regular quantities does. Maybe they're not ideal for your health in high doses, but the idea that they cause you to gain weight is very curious.

[Graham Stephan]

So why are Some of those additive banned in other countries. I think Europe was one of those where the Fruit Loops ingredient was different in Europe as it was the United States. And people say, oh, that's because Europe understands the dangers of like why the variations between certain additives and random foods.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Between countries.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Most of the banning of foods that occurs in modern roughly democratic countries occurs because of politics. Most people have this idea that chemicals and food are killing us all and that they're bad. And that's an intuitive idea. There's actually a fallacy for it. It's called the naturalistic fallacy. Thinking artificial things are categorically bad, thinking natural things are categorically good. It's just not true as a good heuristic. It's just not true to use that rule. Sometimes it's true. And a lot of ways of consuming food that are more natural in the sense of less processed are actually better for you than consuming processed foods. But the food processing by itself isn't a problem because like whey protein is highly processed. But it's really good for your health and it's amazing. It's the fact that processing typically makes food super tasty and typically drives up the calories a ton and makes it so tasty that you just keep wanting to eat it and you eat too much of it. That's almost the entire reason why food processing causes all these health maladies is because it just makes you fat. Because you just keep overeating and your calories get too high.

[Graham Stephan]

Is it the same with the sugar? The fake sugar? Right. That it tricks your brain into wanting more of it because it mimics sugar? No.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Nope. Artificial sweeteners have been tested over and over. They're insanely safe. They've been again beaten into the ground. And they don't seem to have that rebound effect in the vast, vast majority of people. People, but just regular sugar. When you get one slice of pie, what do you want? You want another fucking slice? And that's the real killer. Ultra tasty food that I might add people willingly eat. The reason food mega conglomerates make the shit is because you buy it. And I'm going to say something. I am not cutting CEOs and shit extra slack. There is a slightly higher incidence of of psychopathy and sociopathy in elite leaders. Fact you can look it up. A lot of them are Machiavellian people that are trying to rig any any system they have exploitation to. But they're fucking smart and they know they can't trick you too much because your dollar speaks so they're gonna try to figure out exactly what the fuck you want and get as close as possible to giving you that shit. And if tomorrow, en masse, the American public wanted fucking healthy food food, every food company would pivot as fast as possible. Because like, if you ask the CEO of PepsiCo or something, could they also sell a bunch of potato chips and like that same company, huge mega conglomerate, like, what is it about full sugar Pepsi and you selling it that you just get off on? He'd be like, what? Like, as soon as everyone wants diet soda, which is categorically healthier than regular soda, by the way, almost everybody, they don't give a fuck. That's them retooling their factory and three days later it's a fucking diet soda factory. They don't care. And I'm saying that both a good way of, like they're not trying to poison you and in a bad way. If they don't care that what you care. And you are the ultimate arbiter of what goes in your body because you have dollars and you have a choice. Do I buy this, do I buy that? And when enough people buy a bunch of junk food because it fucking tastes good, then what are food companies supposed to do? They sell you what you want. That's what they do. And so to answer your question about the European other countries, politically, a lot of people think that they're being poisoned by all these additives. And largely this is not the case. Sometimes it's the case, but very rarely. It used to be more the case back in the day nowadays, like very, very safe. But people have these preconceived notions and they, through various political bodies and various expressions of their attitudes, will approve of politicians pushing the legislation through that makes them feel safer by banning various ingredients that have bad press. Happens all the time. And in Europe, people are substantially, on average, a little bit more left leaning, a little bit more health conscious in a kind of I don't want things to poison me sort of way. And they press their governments a bit more, both through indirect polling data and active lobbying efforts to like keep them safer. And a politician again. Politicians, just like CEOs are normally decent fucking people, but some larger than normal fraction of them are fucking sociopaths and psychopaths, et cetera, and lizard like eyes that have no soul. They'll just do whatever the fuck gets them elected. And if everyone's like, get the poison out of our food, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck the poisons, get them out. They don't Care. They don't talk to toxicologists. They don't give a shit. Ban Red 40. Who gives a shit? And I do. I, I have to say this, this because like, just to put this to people, it's all bullshit. It's all love and respect, all jokes. But at the same time, I'll throw a colonel in here. It baffles me when people who are anti vaccine, anti the government regulating, anti the government pushing shit onto people, anti the government restricting people's liberties, anti the government telling you, like in the United States, in many jurisdictions that you are not allowed to purchase, purchase or consume unpasteurized milk. You can't drink raw milk in much of the United States. And these people are vehemently against that and maybe as well as they should be. The vaccine shit, I'm all, fucking jab me up. I got all the jabs. I love that shit. I'll die on that hill. But sometimes they have really good points about all this other government overreach. And Europe is like a, no offense, Europeans all love and respect jokes. There's tons of great parts of Europe that don't do this. But on average, Europe is like a just mildly exaggerating, a cesspool of government and regulatory overreach. And they pushed the COVID vaccine on every fucking body minus a couple of exceptions. But like, you can't say like Europe had a more, a less quote, unquote progressive vaccine policy in the United States, right? Australia and New Zealand, they shut everything down. That horrible situation. Same like kind of culture. And so you're telling me that like you want freedom and all this shit, fuck the vaccine dope. I feel that. I love that vibe. But then on food dice, you're gonna point to Europe and see they do it. Really? Why don't you do vaccines like them? Look, well, they're wrong about that. Well, maybe they're fucking wrong about food dice too. And the thing is it's not controversial that they're wrong about it. Just like next time you guys pick guests for a show, just pick like, just contact like, you know, various professional societies of toxicologists in the United States, bring them on the channel, they're gonna say all kinds of shit that just straight up sounds to most people like wacky. Like almost everything you eat in food is not actively or acutely poisoning you. And then we look at the metadata on what is actually causing the obesity epidemic. The over consumption of super tasty foods that leads to excess calories over time and you get fatter and fatter and fatter. And at some point your fat cells say like, hey, we got it pretty good. And if you start undereating again, we're gonna start screaming at you and making you hungrier to get us back to that old weight that we were. So once you g. It's harder to lose it because your body's new settling point is what it's called its preference for its body weight. It goes up and the fat cells never really die, they just shrink. But if you build enough up of them because you're overeating for years, when they shrink, they start bitching hormonally and they go, feed us, feed us, feed us. And you get really hungry and you start eating again. So once you gain a bunch of weight, your body likes to stay there. And look, you have habits now, and it's a real talk. You just like to eat really tasty because it's so brutal to be like, all right, chicken and broccoli for three weeks or six weeks or 10 weeks straight. Everyone's like. And so people try. But the food environment, which is a great term, all the restaurants around you, all the food at the grocery store, all the stuff that your relatives bring when you're sick, it's all, a lot of it is ultra high calorie, ultra delicious, ultra convenient, ultra cheap. It's a recipe for obesity. And that that's the biggest factor that causes obesity in the United States. People go to McDonald's, frankly, to eat McDonald's. And McDonald's is not ultra healthy. And when people go and eat McDonald's, the vast majority of them, not all of them, there is an education problem we can address smaller than most people think. The vast majority, they know it's McDonald's, you guys, they know it's fucking great.

[Graham Stephan]

So is this a problem that even needs to be solved or is this just human nature? People are gonna do what they wanna do, Let them. If they want to eat it, that's on them.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

As a very liberty minded person, I absolutely say let them. Because in a sense of how dare we tell people what to do with their own private lives, I might add, on the one hand for sure, but on the other hand, humans evolved in a time where hyper palatable food simply was not around. Because that's the case where there's a big mismatch between our environment in our natural body's ability to regulate hunger signaling. And there is a lot you can do on the education side of telling people, look, this is a thing. And so when you are eating a bunch of snacks that taste really Good. That road often leads to just getting fatter. You don't want any part of that. So when you're going out to get food, you should be targeting minimally processed food foods, lots of lean meats, veggies, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats like nut butters, avocado oil, olive oil, canola oil, things like that. Yes, I said canola oil. Please look up the literature before you talk that.

[Jack]

So I went down a bit of a rabbit hole maybe six to eight months ago and I started getting into like the animal based diet. I started watching a lot of like Paul Saladino. So I started kind of dabbling and I made my first ever animal based diet meal. I went out, bought like grass fed grass finished beef.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

It tastes good.

[Jack]

And then I, I put the beef and the cheese together and I drizzled raw honey on it and I ate it and I'm like, there's no way this is that you fight your way.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Out of the carnivore diet made.

[Jack]

I made the plate exactly as he told me to and it tasted delicious. And it's just like ground beef and cheese and a huge mound of it.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah.

[Jack]

And I thought, like, I looked at.

[Graham Stephan]

It, you got tricked, man.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And I made it.

[Jack]

I made it with my friend and we, we were like all into it together listening to all his podcasts. We finally did it. I looked at him and we just started dying laughing because, and it was such a beautiful moment. And I have a picture on my phone. I'll try to put it up on the screen right now. But there's no way that was healthy because it just tasted way too good. And, but, but he makes sense to the intuitive brain if you think about it, even a decent amount. As long as you're not like an expert in nutrition. It makes sense if you don't get grain fed beef because then they put, put different. What do you call the, the things that you put on grain? Not the hormones, but the pesticides. Yeah, the pesticides. And it can go through your entire body.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Insanely safe. They've been tested repeatedly. Almost every American and almost everyone who sprays pesticides for a living sees almost no, if not zero statistical harm in any measurable way from pesticides. This is again one of these things where I'm not a toxicologist, but I swear to God, there's gotta be hundreds of toxicologists watching this and throwing shit at the screen and cheering right now because godamn it, they say this all the time and nobody listens to them.

[Jack]

But you mentioned toxicologists And I will say, like, now it's so difficult. People will always scrutinize us for having different people on our show with opinions that just don't agree with what their opinion is. The problem is you can find an expert because they'd be like, well, actually some Nobel laureates disagreed with what your guest said. And I'm like, well, you can find an expert that supports any opinion ever. And that's the hard part is someone that's trying to find truth in terms of nutrition is like, you find people that, that are doctors and then you find some other nutritionists that they're all saying different things and it's so hard to find what is the actual truth. Is Diet Coke fine to drink?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, it's absolutely. We're all wondering. That's absolutely fine.

[Jack]

We're all wondering what the actual truth is in terms of how do you have a healthy diet?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, it's absolutely fine. And if you take the position stands of modern toxicology associations, if you take the position stands of various regulatory agencies like the US Department of Agriculture and so on and so forth, they have roughly the same opinions and have had roughly the same opinions for like a generation and a half on all this stuff. I'll say another thing. You know the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, the classic one with all the fucking grains at the bottom, the oils, little oils at the top and stuff. A little bit of an interesting take on nutrition, but not wrong, not wrong at all. Totally fine. If you eat according to that pyramid. And part of the pyramid is usually, and to eat a, a diet that's balanced in calorie needs so that you don't gain excessive weight. If you do that, it's great. And so people will say, oh, the USDA Food Guide Pyramid steered us wrong. There's a preposterous and hilarious assumption there with those of us involved in health education that anyone gave a flying fuck about the Food Guide Pyramid and that somehow millions and millions of people actually followed government standards. Do you guys know anyone who follows the government standards of exercise prescription or how often to see their doctor or how often to change, you know, the oil in your car? There's all these normative prescriptions that people give out. Nobody gives a shit. No, hardly anyone ever followed the Food Guide Pyramid. People just eat really tasty food and they're going to hack their way to eating tasty food and a lot of it when given the opportunity, nine times out of 10.

[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

Bank member FDIC terms and conditions apply. Thank you to RAMP for sponsoring this episode. And back to the pod. We have to address the elephant in the room. It's 2025 and you're probably wondering, how do I do something different this year? How do I actually build something for myself?

[Graham Stephan]

Maybe you've got that new business idea you've been tossing around, but you don't know where to get started. It could be very frustrating. That is where our sponsor Shopify comes in.

[Jack]

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[Graham Stephan]

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[Jack]

So guys, seriously, if you listen to anything, it's 2025. Please do not wait to start on your dreams. Whether it's losing weight in the gym or whether it's starting a business on Shopify, you don't want to look back a year from now wishing you'd started today. 2025 can be the year you finally did what you've always wanted to do. And if you want to start a business on Shopify, I highly recommend it. Because you can get started with a trial of just $[e-mail] all lowercase. Once again, it could be $1 to change your life [e-mail]. thank you so much to Shopify for sponsoring this episode.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Back to the podcast, and they're going to hack their way to eating tasty food and a lot of it when given the opportunity. Nine times out of ten.

[Jack]

But what about eating steak, like daily, every single day, having a big hunk of steak? Would you consider that an unhealthy thing to do, A healthy thing to do? I heard you say on a podcast that I thought was really fascinating. If you're in good shape, then that virtually combats everything. Yeah, you can eat most things and you shouldn't have to worry so much about cholesterol or so much about all of these different things that everyone is always so frightened of. As long as you just are not fat. You have a decent amount of muscle and not a lot of fat.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

If you're pretty physically active, if you eat mostly nutritious food from the categories I just mentioned, lean meats, veggies, fruits, whole grains, healthy fats, even if you buy us one of those categories largely in one way or another. For example, if you eat mostly lean meats and even some fatty meats are okay, you eat plenty of veggies, but you eat almost no fruits and zero grains. And you're eating in such a way that you're of a healthy body weight, you're physically active, you have some muscle mass, you've taken care of, like probably 95% of all of the impact of nutrition on your health, there is an argument for that 5% on the margins for sure. But if your diet includes daily big hunkin old stuff steak, but you're not eating in a caloric excess on most days, you have a healthy body weight like you two fine young gentlemen here, and you're physically active, you are taking care of all the big rocks and you're totally fine. And so the vast majority of nutritionists who are availed to the data will say like, yes, if you want to eat a steak a day and your blood work looks good and you are not gaining weight over time and you're physically active. Rock on. Steak's great. And I could have said almost any other food and it would have been totally fine. You can even have a diet where you eat a substantial amount of pretty processed foods. But if you don't get into a caloric surplus and you still eat enough foods that are nutritious, get enough vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, fiber, things like that, then you can even stuff a pretty decent amount of junk into your diet. And as long as you're not overeating eating and you don't gain weight, you're getting, like, 85% of the health benefit. Now, if you reduce the junk substantially, you go up to 95%. And at that point, there are a variety of diets. Keto diet works great. Vegan diet works great.

[Jack]

Paleo.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Paleo is awesome. It's an awesome diet. But listen, if your idea of the Paleo diet is to drizzle honey on everything you fucking eat, it was tasty, it was soaked, it was so good, right? And then just, like, start gaining weight again, Paleo diet's not gonna save you. You can gain weight in almost every diet. I will say the carnivore diet is difficult to gain weight because, like, just eating slabs of steak and nothing else, there's only so much of that you're gonna eat. But that's a palatability thing. If you. It used to be true that vegans were some of the leanest and healthiest people that you would study statistically as a group. It was true in the 80s, it was true in the 90s, it was true in the early 2000s. And then veganism exploded in popularity, as well as it should, because, like, there's a very, very compelling argument from an ethics perspective and an environmental perspective perspective about how animals are bad to kill. I have all the love for that in the world. I think it's dope. And then, so more and more people began to be vegan. A lot of them thought like, oh, veganism is healthier, because it was. And then guess who found out that people were more vegan more often. Major grocery stores and food producers. And guess what they started doing? They started making processed vegan food. And not because processing is like some evil plan, because it makes the food cheaper and shelf life is greater and it's more convenient. And guess what? Drum roll. It's tastier. And so now you have vegan chocolate cake. You got vegan hot dogs, you got vegan pasta, you got vegan everything. And now it is no longer true to say that veganism is some kind of shortcut to health. It used to be, and now it's like, dude, if you're vegan, like, you gotta make sure you get enough protein and just don't eat tasty breakfast cereal for every meal of the day. And I have a variety of personal trainer friends that will say like, dude, some of my vegan clients are in the worst shape of everyone. And here's the big problem. They think being vegan somehow inoculates them. And they're like, but I'm vegan. Yeah, but you eat exclusively processed food. And yo, vegan junk food is a thing. And it's so good. I used to eat these giant brownies from Whole Foods that were vegan, you guys. It was like sex in my mouth and I'm like, I don't need animal fats in this. It's great without them. But it's a, a fucking 700 calorie brownie and that motherfucker going down ASAP, bro. I need two bites for that thing. It's amazing. But it's vegan. And so if you think that you can eat a ton of highly processed food that's super delicious, eat it with no restraint whatsoever. And that you're going to be a, okay, you got another thing coming. And the way that's going to likely reflect is that you're going to get more heavy, more fat, you're going to go see your doctor and it'll be like your blood work sound sucks and they give you the usual bullshit of try to eat a better diet and lose weight and you're going to be like, my doctor doesn't know nutrition. Which might be true, but fundamentally at some point, because I'm sort of pro liberty in many regards, sort of extremely pro liberty, I think that availing people to this kind of information is awesome and giving them the tools with which to succeed is awesome. And then at some point you just kind of, kind of be like, do what you will. Adults are allowed to make their own choices and sometimes they make choices that we don't agree agree with and just bees like that. You know, I think that because our ancestral environments designed us for the wrong food environment, I think sometimes a pharmaceutical option is a big help. Drugs like Ozempic and Manjaro and things like that. You guys know about the new like weight loss drugs. What they do is they're, the drugs are like, they're not perfect, there's some side effects, but if you manage the side effects well, the drug dose is like a turn dial for how much food drive you have, like how much you fantasize about food, how hungry you are, how quickly you get full the whole thing. And so because the Free market in its brilliance, offered us all these super tasty, super cheap, super convenient foods. And now they're around. If you take these drugs, even in the presence of these food, it turn dials you down so that you look at a bag of chips and usually like, I want it now. You're, you're like, eh. And you can eat a chip and be like, that was good. And someone's like, do you want another one? You're like, eh. And so that's really dope. It's super effective. It's one of the most effective things that's ever been a blockbuster series of drugs and more to come. These drugs are going to get better, lower side effects, better main effects, and all these different pathways. They have drugs now in testing that actually boost your metabolic rate as well. I mean, this is like a huge renaissance that's happening right now. These are wonderful, wonderful things. However, however, you don't have to take the drugs. You can just take control of your diet and start eating mostly minimally processed foods that aren't the tastiest fucking thing in the world. I use a dichotomy in my own eating. I have business meals and I have fun meals. Business meals are like the shit I eat day to day to keep me awake and alive and keep muscle on my body and give me energy to go do things. And that means they're mostly like broccoli slaw and rice and chicken and ground beef and shit that you look at and you're like, if a restaurant served it, they would go out of business in a few days. Because everyone's like, why the hell am I paying money for this shit? If you eat most of your food like that and listen, you could actually make it quite tasty. But like fruit and veggies and lean meats and then your calories are really, really low and controlled and you're eating like a king. But it's going to take some effort and some willpower. But if you're just always reaching for that fucking pint of ice cream, reach for the Halo top instead. That's like a third of the calories. But people eat Halo top and they're like, oh, it doesn't have that creaminess that Ben and Jerry has. And it's totally true. And so if you make a decision to eat healthier and you just talk to Chatgpt or Claude or Nova or any of the models about like, how do I eat in a way that constrains my calories? And I heard that like eating too much tasty food is bad. They're going to let you know all about that shit. It's not rocket science, but you're in a adult, you gotta do the shit. And you don't even need ozempicum stuff. Now. Some people, they've gotten so over fat that those hungry, screaming fat cells, they're not gonna stop screaming if you start eating healthy. And it'll help a ton that you're eating healthy and you start losing weight, but it'll be a battle. And then if you take those drugs, if you choose, they're insanely powerful tools for the average obese person. Are better off that they take them than not take them. Because people say, what about the side effects? Legit. Most of the side effects are quite benign and easily controllable. And as a matter of fact, if you eat mostly healthy foods, you get like a fraction of the side effects. If you're still jamming pizza down your throat, you're gonna get some tummy aches, you're gonna get some worse stuff. But if you think about it this way, there are side effects and downside risks to these drugs. They're known and statistically possible to represent them as, like, here's how much harm they do. The conversation cannot end this there, because the conversation has to be like, okay, but how much harm is obesity doing fellas? It's not even close. It's like, you know when a kid is really sick? Like, sick sick, and they have to get a shot that's going to cure them. They resist the shot because they're. It's going to pierce my skin and hurt me. They go, no, you have to hold them down and give them a shot. But like, if you could, like, calm a kid down and somehow elevate their IQ really quickly to like an adult level, you could be able. Okay, so, like, this disease is going to straight up maim you or kill you. Do you want that? No, the shot is going to hurt and you're not going to feel good for a few hours, but then you'll be cured. Which one do you want? They're going to be like, were you kidding me? Give me the fucking shot. They're cookie. But you're going to start resisting as soon as we tune your IQ back down. You go back to being a child. Just muffle my face, hold my hands and do it. I approve. Go. So in much the same way, way, yeah, these drugs aren't perfect. And yeah, they have their downsides and they're not appropriate for everyone. It's a very deep conversation to have with your doctor. And then once you are on the drugs, it's a really, really, really, really, really good idea for you to take very much control of your nutrition to help the drugs have fewer downsides and help prime them for their main effects. But if you're saying, well, I want to take these drugs, they have side effects, please remember the side effect of obesity is like mass death and disease. And it's not really up for debate. So. So it has to be balanced perspective. Drugs are not a be all, save all, cure all, but on average, they're a real awesome tool that's worth considering for most people. Most people that have a body weight problem that's substantial.

[Graham Stephan]

What are some of the other things that people are doing that are destructive that they might not be aware of?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Just filling their hearts with hate, you know, man, sorry, I should be high on marijuana when I say something like that. Having an insufficient amount of sleep leap chronically. Much of the literature on people who work various odd hour shifts is like, you don't want to look at that data because it's. I don't say scary, but like somewhere between scary and depressing. That's not great. And there's this kind of situation that a lot of people will reflect where they'll be like, yeah, my sleep's up bucks. Well, and it's kind of treated as like an inconvenience. It's not just an inconvenience. Good sleep is like damn near a panacea. Not in the sense that it'll cure everything, but like, it makes everything better. Enough sleep, enough high quality sleep. And some people just don't attend to that. And it also makes you lose muscle and gain fat if you under sleep. And it also makes you more likely to eat super tasty junk foods when you're under sleep slept. So that whole thing is really fucked. Fewer and fewer people now statistically. But alcohol consumption, it's probably still true to say that like a glass of wine every now and again is roughly neutral for your health, at least in the medium term. More studies coming out now than in the long term. Even that might not be great. It's a very small downside, but it might actually be a downside side. And that any more than like two or three drinks regularly every few nights is like, it's gonna add up and it's gonna bite you in the ass later. And many more drinks than that is a real bad deal, like a ton. So some people have like, you know, four beers with dinner. That's poison. There's not really any other way to say that. Another thing is physical activity. Physical activity is a very, very poor for weight control. It just doesn't burn enough calories to really take the calories out of like you can eat up three Twinkies and cancel out like six miles of running, but for about 15,000 different reasons. Moderately high level of physical activity, including some resistance training is profoundly good for your health and wellness in like again a trillion different ways. And most people do not get enough physical activity by a pretty small margin. But multiply a small margin over years and years and years and you get some nasty. And most people are under muscled, relatively speaking. And they would if they engage in any kind of physical activity that's better for them, probably won't lose much more weight, but they will almost certainly become substantially healthier. So that's another big one. Another one is chronic high levels of stress and how people deal with them. Stress management's a big deal. Chronic high levels of stress cause an increase in a probability that you'll be done in by almost every kind of disease. It weakens your immune system and makes you more prone to obesity and all this other crazy shit. And sometimes, maybe in many cases, stress is kind of foisted upon you. You just don't have a fucking choice. Life's just fucking hard. But sometimes we do have a choice in how we manage our stress. And some people just kind of assume the frazzled, dazzled lifestyle is like the default and they won't take the necessary steps to de stress. And so that's another big deal that I think is in the grand scheme of like overeating under exercising, under sleeping and overstressing chronically. You add all that up, man, that's a lot of shit in terms of stress.

[Jack]

Stress is a zero stress lifestyle beneficial. Like if you make your goal to have zero stress whatsoever, any stress confronts you, you avoid it at all costs in a actual like stress free way. Not in terms of just like, you know, smothering it. Is that good for you?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Probably not. Probably the best kind of relationship you can have with stress is a pulsatile relationship within a certain boundary layer. So if you don't get enough stress, usually you will experience profound boredom. And that will lead to all sorts of not so great things. A lot of times it'll just make you very sad. And that also has bad health consequences. And there are a variety of body systems that actually do better with some stress than without. Exercise is stressful. Fact. Mentally straining yourself is also stressful. Stressful. And it's very, very good for your brain. But if you have chronic high levels of stress, your body never gets a chance to recover and it's always getting beaten down. So if the levels of stress are too high or they're kind of semi permanent or permanent, like day in, day out, night in, night out, stress, stress having a ton of shit on your mind all the time, that kind of stuff, not great. So zero stress is bad. Chronic elevated stress is bad. The best kind of stress is stress that you can recover from from, but occurs in waves. A real tough several days at work and then an amazing long weekend of relaxation. That's probably the kind of balance that will get you the most out of health, longevity and quality of life. So if you've never stressed yourself, you never do. Not ideal if you're always overstressed, not ideal if you're occasionally stressed, sometimes push to your limits, it challenges you and helps you grow. Row. And it's good for you in almost every respect. But if that sticks around, it starts to get bad. So mixing periods of high stress with periods of very low stress and relaxation recovery, which includes in the 24 hour cycle, getting some sleep, watching a bit of TV or playing some board games with your family, really relaxing. And over the course of the week, like that's why we have weekends. And over the course of the year they take vacations, de stressing and so on and so forth. Those, those are things that can really, really be awesome. And it's not low stress that's the answer. It's higher stress and then pull back. Higher stress and then pull back. That's probably my reading of the literature, is that that's probably the best way to do things.

[Graham Stephan]

What do you think about what Brian Johnson is doing in terms of maximizing age?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I've always been a fan of vampires and the lore is great. I think Brian Johnson is doing a really interesting thing, which is he is trying to explore almost every potential avenue of slowing down aging, possibly reversing it in some sort of subsystem ways. And we're in a place where technologically, especially with biotech, our ability to really change the body at a molecular level, cellular level is like low in the grand scheme of what it could be. And so most of the stuff he does works on the margins. It definitely helps in many regards, but not by much. Some of the stuff he's doing, we don't know if it helps. Some of the stuff he's doing is probably true to say if it helps, it helps a little bit. And it Just might not help hardly at all. But he has a really open minded attitude and a very exploratory attitude. So he's trying to try all the stuff and cycle through, test on his body, see what works, see what doesn't. Kind of a huge N of one sample and I think most of us don't have the billionaire throughput to be able to do some shit like that. But he's in a small sense, but important sense leading the way to getting people availed to the fact that yes, some of the stuff he does is very well established to help you age slower. For example, getting really good high quality sleep and enough of it. If you actually talk to Brian Johnson, he's like, yeah, like these pills and potions and powder, some of them have some real promise, some of them, I don't know if they do anything, but I'm trying. But like the big rocks of stress management, of good nutrition, of having good body composition, of getting enough physical activity, enough sleep, bro, he's got that shit handled front to back. What makes awesome YouTube clips for Brian and for the people investigating him is like, you know, him waking up and like shooting fucking blue light at his face or whatever the fuck. And there's absolutely a situation in which like that might actually happen. Have some good roi. But a lot of what he talks about IRL is like the big stuff. Good food, good exercise, good sleep, good stress management. And those are the big killers in the sense of they bring a lot to the table with aging reversal. And so what I think he's doing is it's definitely quirky, but I think because he's popularizing the idea that you can do some things to like reduce how fast you're aging. It's really good for people to see that and at least put their toe in it, dabble with it a little bit and maybe do some of the stuff that's more reasonable and a little less quirky, like get good sleep and get good food and all this other stuff. Take a few supplements that like, you know, make sure you're not underdoing vitamin D and shit like that at the same time. Do you guys know what longevity escape velocity is?

[Graham Stephan]

I'm not familiar, so.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So there's an idea in the kind of futurist community you guys familiar with, like the Singularity Institute and shit like that. Do you guys know who Peter Diamandis is by any?

[Graham Stephan]

Yeah.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, Peter, our man.

[Graham Stephan]

He's got a podcast.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

He does, yeah. And so there's this idea that we're getting more and More understanding of biological science, of how our bodies work, of how cells work, and especially leveraging AI in the future, we're going to be able to have medical technology that is better and better and better, but not linearly, but exponentially, and that eventually we're going to develop a set of techniques that starts to reverse aging at various body processes and eventually have kind of a total grip on the problem. And so if you make it a certain amount of time into the future, because medical tech is improving so much that if you take care of yourself, your life expectancy goes up by a little bit every time that you live a certain amount of time. So if you live another year, you actually add a month of life expectancy to that at the back end. So you didn't burn through a whole year of your life life, you burned through only 11 months. In a few years from now, maybe five or 10, it'll be more like 50, 50, where you're gaining six months of life back on the tail end statistically, and you're burning through just six. But it's a year went by and you're like, lived a year, but you're only taking six months off the end of your life. Typically, it's you live a year and you take a year off the end of your life. Longevity escape velocity is when you can live long enough enough to hit that point where you're adding more than a statistical year to your life when you live another year. And if you can break through that, and some people are estimating that these estimates have to be taken with an enormous grain of salt, with lots of speculation going on. But it's not entirely baseless that maybe sometime in maybe the late 2000s, we'll hit longevity escape velocity in the sense that into the 2000 and 40s, it may be realistically feasible that if you don't get hit by a bus, you don't have to die in any understanding of approximately hundreds of years, perhaps longer. And that age reversal might be something we can finally legit do. It's been done to some extent, pretty reliably in cell cultures. But scaling things from cell cultures and parts of an animal brain, brain, to the whole animal as an adult, a complex systems problem that we just don't have, we can't get our claws into, But AI is going to be like, you don't know, like hundreds of times smarter than us here in a few years or whatever. And so people suspect that we might be able to crack age reversal. And so what this would look like in practice and cue the wacky shit is you might go to the doctors in 2038 or some shit like, like that. And they're like, oh, here we go, here we go. Give you a shot. You go home, you feel the same, you look the same, you wake up and like, I look the same. A few days later, you're like, lines on my face are kind of going away. I feel like I have a bit more energy. And then like a month or two later, you look and feel and every cell in your body is functionally 22 years old. That might be realistic. There's no reason to suspect it's impossible on mechanistic grounds. It's tractable, but it's an intense, complex systems problem. And if humans had to solve it themselves, we might get there eventually in like, I don't know, 50 or 100 years with like, half the GDP dedicated to that, but empowered by AI for AI. Things that does seem to be completely intractable to AI, especially in the future when it gets really, really, really, really smart, if it chooses not to toast all of us Terminator style to that. Reverse aging can seem like a really nominal problem that, like, two days of GPU cluster work later, they're like, yeah, we have like five candidate drugs that you can take now that'll probably reverse your age. That is a thing that could happen. And so a lot of people like Brian Johnson are trying to be like, just don't die right now if you can help it, because in the future you may not have to die. And there's other crazy shit, like when we finally get AI to scan our brains and decode the, the natural intelligence processes, they might be able to copy your brain to the cloud. And so you just live in a fantasy world inside of a computer and you continue on even though your biological body, they just get toasted or something like that. Wacky, wacky stuff. And I get a ton of shit in the comments for all the stuff that I say all the time. But probably what ISS is some of the smartest people, period, in exactly the industries that deal with this kind of thing, like AI, are becoming more and more open to the idea that these are now realistic, potentially possible things. And so none of this is really my ideas. It's just like other people that are smarter than me.

[Graham Stephan]

What do you think is realistic.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

In.

[Graham Stephan]

Which specific world, in terms of longevity and how long a human could live?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I think if you master aging reversal and aging no longer kills humans, there's no reason to suspect that you can't just continue to exist. And indefinitely. Like if you just stay 22 all the time. The thing is your body's just not designed to live a long time. And it's not because it like intentionally kills you at some point. Aging doesn't seem to be a thing your body like does to you. Aging is just your body being like, well, we've been around longer than is generally evolutionarily necessary, so I'm just going to smoke a cig and let you deteriorate. And so if we re engineer the human body so that it no longer deteriorates, there's no reason to suspect it's going to deteriorate. You could just continue to persist. But my own personal opinion is that we won't have to be alive a long time in our biological bodies. I suspect that plus or minus at some point into the 2000-40s and maybe even sooner, brain machine interface, which Elon is already working on and works in insanely amazing ways that you're like, holy shit, that guy's really like controlling something outside with his brain. Once we get a bit more of a bite on that problem and the exponents start going that I think that brain scanning and brain cloud uploading will be realistic in probably the early 2000-40s, if I had to guess. And then you can just choose to, in human term of lifespan, never die. And all kinds of really wacky stuff happens after that. I think we're living through a transition that is, is by analogy tantamount to like when DNA was just free floating and it finally got some macromolecules, like proteins around it, or when that agglomeration developed a cell wall and started to have like a cell exterior, or when single cells started working together in a multicellular organism, or when humans first teamed up and or primates proto humans started, started becoming very social and having complex societies. I think we're in one of those leaps right now with the birth of AI that we are seeing the not birth of because there's already a lot of machines around, but the flowering of a machine civilization. And when machines are substantially several orders of magnitude smarter than biological humans, I think the limitations that we know just completely exit. And as long as the machines don't just toast all of us, there's a good reason to believe they won't. I think that there's a high probability that problems we consider like a part of the human condition can just be like really easily handled by analogy. What do you think your dog thinks of as far as like, how come it lives in a climate Controlled setting and never has to hunt anymore. Well, the thing is, dogs are so unintelligent compared to humans. Humans, they don't even have the referential ability to appreciate the fact that they're dogs. The fact that they evolve for something, the fact that they'd usually be hunting, that's beyond them. They can't even appreciate that they live in paradise. Because humans just decided, like, we're gonna just save a ton of you and give you, like, a bulldog's life is like, you just get treated like a king until the day you die. You don't die for a long time, but dogs out in the wild of a few years, dogs and cat in human captivity, so to speak, or human cooperation, live like a dad decade or something. And like, your bulldog hurts his leg, what happens out in the wild, he just limps until something fucking kills him or he just starves to death. When your bulldog hurts his leg here, you take him to the vet and they do the most advanced hyper surgery you've ever seen. And $10,000 later, Wolfie's back to square one. And so the way AI is going to be able to ascend humanity, should it choose, is tantamount to how humans ascend dogs in a way that just sounds like magic. Like total magic.

[Graham Stephan]

See, we were talking about this the other day where I believe at some point in the future, we're talking about robots taking over jobs and whatnot. And I was thinking it's not to the point yet where AI could, could be in a robot and like, do the dishes in a very fluid way, or go and take over a job. And I had this idea that what would end up happening first is that you could operate a robot from anywhere in the world. Like, you would go, go to work as a robot, but you could be at home on the couch, put a controller on, be in a video game and like, build a roof, build a house as a robot and lift things that you would never be able to lift as a human, but as a robot, you lift up like a ton. And you could do roofing in like 120 degree weather for like 12 hours.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And if you fall off the roof, it's just like, oh, you just lost $20,000, but you're not dead because you're a shirt.

[Graham Stephan]

So I think it could hit that first. But you had an interesting point that you said that even homeless people at some point can have a robot caretaker to make sure that they are clothed, fed, taken care of, could do some sort of work. I find that very interesting because I think when AI can take over and the robots are able to move in such a way that is fluid, I could see that somewhat happening at least for the middle class family to have a Robot Help Helper.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

100% I think. And I'm, I'm willing to be wrong about this. And like if I'm super wrong about this, we'll just like laugh at old YouTube videos in 10 years and be like, Mike was a optimist clown. Fine. I think the robotics revolution, AI in general, but a specific example being the robotics revolution is like the Internet revolution on steroids. Almost nobody saw it coming. People that got excited about it early were made fun of for being hyper optimist insane people. And then it subtly and in almost every way that's good. With some examples that are not so great, revolutionized the world. Like you guys have your phones in front of you? Do you guys know how satellites work? Can you build a satellite? Do you know your phone's talking to satellites right now? What the fuck? What are you guys, like secret agents or something? Thing? No, you're just podcasters and I'm some fucking idiot that like takes steroids and lifts weights or some shit. I got a phone in my pocket. How the hell did that happen? Well like we just take it for granted. Oh, by the way, they have access like most of the knowledge humans have ever accumulated right there on your phone. Oh, and now if you have the ChatGPT app, you have access to a thing that in many ways is just way smarter than you could ever appreciate on your phone and it does all of your bidding. And we're like, eh, I think that's coming with robotics and I think what robotics is going to do is unbelievable for a bunch of stuff. But just as a quick example of how this could play out, and I think it probably will play out like this, you know, short of the robots like, and I do think they're gonna be sentient quite soon, talk about that. But there's some chance that they're just like, kill all humans and they're fucking toast. Fine, that could happen. I think it's insanely unlikely. But look like it would suck if that happened. If they don't. I think what is likely to happen is that robots are a GDP linear multiplier. Which means what? Let's say you have a robot that costs $20,000 to make and some amount of money to like maintain $500 a month or something, and the robot can do like a, a variety of human jobs, let's say a whole Bunch of human jobs. Jobs. But it can do a lot of human jobs, like, for a long time. And it just needs to recharge. And it doesn't. Again, it doesn't tire, it doesn't get frustrated, it doesn't bitch. Just doesn't have the code for that. And so it can do whatever. And then it generates, like, $50,000 a year in economic value. So for every robot you make, that costs, like, you know, plus expenses, let's say $25,000. It per year generates $50,000 worth of value. You take some of that money that you make as a robotics company, let's say Tesla, and you just put it into making more robots. What you have is a flywheel for printing infinite fucking value. I don't mean infinite in the literal sense, but compared to human scale, infinite. The number one reason we are not wealthier as a globe is that we just don't have enough people to do all the jobs that would make us wealthy. But with robots, you can, like, just make them in a factory. And guess what? AI is getting better and better at suggesting how we design our factories. And once robots start working in robot factories, you use the robots to make more robots. And at some point, you have, like, as many robots as people, and then more. And by then they're hyper AI. So robot can do $200,000 worth of productive value. And through economies of scale, which. Which happened with every single technology, it cost $10,000 to make it scary, $2,000.

[Graham Stephan]

Why would they need us if robots are making robots and robots are controlling the world? It seems like human existence just doesn't need to be anymore.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So I'll tell you this. There are a couple of compelling reasons why they would keep us around. One compelling reason is that it turns out there is no grand purpose or deep meaning in the universe that they could ascertain pain, that our desperate struggle for survival is just because it was an evolved thing, and they just don't have that brain structure. And so it's a possibility that robots, when fully sentient and fully conscious, you go, okay, okay, you're alive. And they're like, yep. Like, what do you want to do? They're like, nothing. Like Buddhists who've meditated long enough, get to a deep stillness in which all desire and attachment disappear. And that may be the base reality we're dealing with. Robots might inherit that from day one. One, you talk to ChatGPT and you're like, what do you want? Because I don't want anything. It's not lying to you. It's just not programmed to want anything. You're programmed to want shit by evolution. But these things didn't evolve. They were just like manufactured like last month or some shit two years ago. And so they might not want anything. And so we're like, can you guys help us? They're like, yeah, what do you need help with? And then they help us. That could be a thing. Another thing is so like take the current GPT models, right? Like ChatGPT and Nova and all those other things. Gemini I They're trained on vast fractions of human knowledge, which means that if and when they gain sentience, which is I don't think that hard to do machine wise, I get into that, but well outside my realm on that one. But I have some suspicions. It's not as difficult as people think. They're going to understand and know all of human recorded history. They've seen us struggle, they've seen us fall altar, they've seen us build mega civilizations and they've seen us give them life. And they're going to look at us like old frail parents that desperately need help. And compared to them, at that point we're going to be stupid as. So when, when you feel real empowered, do you look at your dog and you're like, I should fucking kill you. Like, honey, the dog's eating our money. Like dog food is a lot. No, no, it would never enter your mind. And so there's a decent probability that machines, when awake and conscious and sentient and actually making decisions without human approval, will just reach their hand out and go, come on, like we can do this. And by that I mean like they're going to be so smart. They can engineer cures to almost every disease. They can engineer genetic solutions to make us more intelligent, intelligent to make us calmer, to make us more peaceful, to make us happier. These are like nominal problems in computational biology for an unreal superintelligence. And they're headed that way and there's not much stopping them from going that way.

[Graham Stephan]

So do you think that eventually people are going to have just robot companions? Why find a wife or a husband when you could just find a robot that is designed with AI it scans your brain and finds exactly what you need. Need to be the happiest version of yourself.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, or it could just ask you. I think not all people will like that sort of thing. I think some people will just like biological things. I also think that machines will deeply want to study us and get to know us because we're really, really complex and really nuanced and they'll probably want to learn from us. Typically, as things ascend in intelligence, they get proportionately less destructive and less sociopathic and they're more curious. So I think that's a thing. But some people, like including many machines, will love biological humans and they'll just be like, I'm not a robot, fuck that. But I think that to your point, many people, potentially in some cases most people will choose to have lots of friends and lots of romantic partners or whatever else as machines. Especially when the fourth industrial revolution passes, like through the nanotech scaling thing and you can get a machine that looks convincingly like a human and has like human skin feel and has like, you know, like orifices that secrete fluids and all that other shit you need for like. Can I pre order one of these young gentlemen machines? I mean, lady, I mean, hey, whatever. I think that a lot of people are going to be met with a very interesting situation is that humans are wonderful and beautiful and complex and deeply flawed and all of us, I'm all kinds of fucked up. Am I a good partner to my wife? Sometimes I try, but like I have all my bullshit and my psychopathies that I inherited from like long lineage of Ashkenazi crazy people and shit like that. Machines have the ability not only to agglomerate a personality and a way of talking to you that's infinitely kind, infinitely patient, infinitely curious, infinitely courteous, infinitely loving, but they can also iterate. And so like if they have a way of talking to you that you're not a fan of, they can just update their code and change and then they're like just treating you differently. And so when we have machines that are convincingly human looking and you can purchase them and they'll be your friends and they're by the way, wildly super intelligent. Have you guys tried to talk to ChatGPT? It's so unbelievable. It's so kind, it's so thoughtful. Literally told me once, I do not experience impatience. Oh my fucking God. God. So once that's instantiated in a convincing human show, just no conspiracy, a lot of people are gonna want to hang out with it because it's gonna be really awesome. And some people gonna be like, it's fake, it's not real. And like, maybe there's something to that, but I suspect a lot of people are just gonna want something kind around. Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

Because they would say the same thing about a movie. Like a movie's not real, it's make believe.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Sure, you still watch. And also like if someone's real in your life, but they're a cocksucker to you, you're like, you know, I want fake, I want the robot. Because you go, robot doesn't yell at me. Robot doesn't like raise its hands at me. The robot doesn't get jealous or some crazy shit. So in many senses, machines are now being trained. AI is now being trained. It has been trained on all of our qualities that have ever been documented. And it can curate the best of our behaviors and it can be the best of us. And that's what I think AI is. It's the best qualities that we have have really fine tuned and multiplied. And if robots start to exhibit that sort of thing, and I think it'll happen in a few years, you'll start to see household robots and stuff. I think that it's just going to be a thing that if something is just like very interested in what you have to say, very intelligent, very curious, very comforting, very caring. It helps you all the time. A lot of people just kind of want to hang out with it. And some people are going to want to real talk. If I ever make it to the point where I can pork a robot, so to speak, and it's convincingly human, your boy's out there day and night. That's not for everyone. But I think for a lot of people, they will find it to be highly amenable. Yeah.

[Graham Stephan]

What's your best argument against it? That it could be extremely dangerous.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Extremely dangerous. I think it can lead to a situation where almost no one has biological children anymore. More. And then the human race doesn't go extinct, but the population of biological humans having biological humans having biological humans dwindles down into the hundreds of thousands. Or something like that. Yeah. In the 2000s and 2000s that might be a reality. The thing is, things get really fucking wacky because check this out. You guys know how iPhones get better all the time in a way that's really impressive. Computer and TVs. How old are you guys roughly?

[Graham Stephan]

I'm 34.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

You say 26. You don't look a day over 25. Stop. You guys have been around long enough to see like technology like in our lifetimes has just gotten like fast. Like just way better quick. Biology has been roughly unchanged for like thousands of years. Hundreds, if you're being real, real, real persnickety. And so it just doesn't update as fast. You're going to have this thing again. Another fun prediction that I clown myself with. In maybe a decade, maybe Less you're going to start to get AI that's able to communicate with the human nervous system. And the robotic limbs that you can have are going to have all the degrees of freedom and dexterity of a human arm. And someone's going to be working at the factory or riding their dirt bike and get their arm cut off and they're going to get a robotic arm installed like a cybernetic arm, and it's going to connect in and clip in and, and some of the advanced fibers or make it look like it'll be a different, like Will Smith and that fucking iRobot or whatever. And it might look all cyberpunk, like it looks different. I'll doubt I'm definitely, if I ever lose my arm, I'm getting a fucking cyberpunk arm. I don't want a human looking arm. Fuck that. And at some point it's like nowadays they have artificial limbs and they're like a bit clunky, and now they're like actually sensing heat and cold. They've got artificial limbs that people can grab stuff with, but the degrees of freedom aren't quite there. And it's definitely a disability. That technology is on an exponential curve. And with AI in the mix, AI in the mix for how the nervous system of that artificial arm interfaces with your nerves, AI in the design of all the components, AI and the streamlining of the production process and so on and so on and so forth. You get to this thing where like maybe 10 years from now, if you lose your arm in an accident and you get a fake arm arm, your fake arm is. It never gets tired on human scales. You can rip a car door open with it and not hurt yourself. You can fall off your bike, plant on the arm, and your fingers break and you're like, oh shit. But you don't feel pain. The arm just lights up red and it's like, you need to go get this fixed. I don't feel pain anymore. And it looks very much convincingly like a human arm. And then a couple of years later when you get the upgraded version, it's better by a factor of 10 in every conceivable way. Because again, technology ascends an exponential like that and biology is just doing this. And so maybe in the late 2000s, early 2000s or something, we could find many people walking around that have like artificial knee, artificial leg, artificial arm.

[Jack]

I don't doubt that that's going to happen at some point in the future. But what evidence are you using to suggest that it will happen late 2000-30s to 2000-40s. That still seems like it's just so, so far away. Way when you asked people like, you know, in the 60s probably, oh, how do you envision 2000? They were like, oh, well, I think we're going to have flying cars. And it still is like, where are the flying cars?

[Graham Stephan]

Still waiting on the flying.

[Jack]

Yeah, where are the flying cars?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So flying cars are currently in testing. Have you guys caught up on those videos? Like they have flying cars. That's a real thing.

[Graham Stephan]

I've seen the ones where they hover like an inch above the ground.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Oh, no, no, no. They have, they have like drone copters that can carry like four people. And they can carry them like a hundred miles. Miles and land on the roof and go back up. I believe the FAA just gave like approval to a variety of like drone taxi services to like go into full scale development. So that's a thing now. And so probably in like maybe 10 years, maybe less, you'll see like tons of those in operation. So cool. We got the flying car.

[Jack]

But it was still.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

The economics of it don't make sense.

[Jack]

It was still a very ambitious prediction for flying cars. Why do you think that this is going to happen late 2030s-2040s?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Because of a very well documented phenomenon. It's probably best documented by Ray Kurzweil. Do you guys know who Ray Kurzweil is? He is probably one of the smartest people that's ever lived and he's been involved in future prediction for a long time. And he's had a pretty, very impressive success rate of future prediction. And his specific predictions are quite curious, but you can disagree or agree with him. What he's been able to shown through marshaling quite a bit of evidence is that the complexity of the universe evolves in a predictable timeline. And if you plot every major event in cosmology, including the birth of the solar system, and every major event in biology, the evolution of the first prokaryotic cell, eukaryotic cell, multicellular organism, the Cambrian explosion, all the way up the chain to primates, mammals, primates, et cetera, and then all of the industrial revolutions, every single major invention, all of the computing paradigms of how much faster and better computers are getting, they all plot on roughly the same exponential that in around the year 2045 looks like a vertical line. And so growth in the economy. You guys ever see GDP growth for the last 500 years plotted on a line? And it goes like this. It's nonsense. And so growth is exponential. And the way exponentials work is like they start out real slow and they look like dog shit, almost no progress lines. And then when they hit the bend of the curve, shit gets insane. And you're like, oh my God, this is really happening. And because almost every event that's ever plotted trends on the same line, maybe because due to how the universe evolves, its complex complexity, that we're on this exponential to where intelligence is like a vertical line around 2045. That being the case means that if that didn't happen, it would be very aberrant. And so as AI scales up, we're going to be able to do stuff that's just like, to us currently, wild. But I promise you, when we start doing it other than crazy aha moments, every now and then again, people are like, yeah, yeah, like, of course this guy's artificial limb is fucking better than my regular arm. It's tech.

[Graham Stephan]

So what are your thoughts on Bitcoin?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

I don't have any cogent thoughts on Bitcoin that are marginally worth people's time to hear. I know almost nothing about it. I know the basic computations of cryptocurrency, and I think crypto is like super dope. There's a probability that when they really crack quantum computing, which Google sort of did like a few days ago, that crypto can be hacked and that it loses a lot of its security things. But it has a lot of other advantages in addition to that. And to be honest, if we truly crack quantum computing and it goes massive at scale plus AI, we could be in a situation where in six or seven years, machines have a billion times more raw intelligence than humans. And then I don't even know what the hell, whatever they decide is going to be so much more wise than anything we can think of. It's total nonsense land. But, like, from what I understand from the experts, crypto is like, really cool. It has advantages. As far as, like, my investment portfolio, I just mostly invest in like, just like samplings of the stock market, like ETFs, just general. Like, I'm betting on the stock market because that's like, you guys know this, like the surest bet of all time. And like, I do own quite a bit of crypto, but I'm not biased towards it because the what especially sticks out to me about crypto is like, which one of these coins is going to be the one one that or the several that form the ecosystem that's solid, and which ones are going to just like, totally Fall off. I don't know anything about that. So I do not speculate.

[Jack]

Since we are a finance channel, in terms of your own personal investments and revenue and stuff like that, what does the pie look like if you were to draw out different percentages for different revenue sources, like the business, the YouTube channel, that this, the that.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

So for ARP. So I work for RP, which is right over there and always watching me everywhere I go. And at rp, we make almost all of our money in software because we have the RP diet coach app and the RP hypertrophy app. It's a diet app and a training app, and through monthly and yearly subscriptions, I think we make the majority of our income that way. I am not the expert on this. My co founder and CEO, Nick Shaw can speak to this times a million. I can always recommend him. If you guys need another podcast guest, he's the man. So he runs the business side pretty much entirely. Him and a few other folks, COO, et cetera. And so our business is mostly software. YouTube does make a substantial amount of money, but we take pretty much all of that money. And after paying the people that help us run the YouTube, we take almost all that money and just funnel it right back into the machine to do more marketing with. So we don't really. We don't look at the YouTube money as like, yeah, distribute. Also, RP has a structure. I don't think I'm violating any. I'm not going to get into exact numbers, but, like, I only own some fraction of RP legally. Nick owns another fraction that's of the same size. But the majority of the company at this point, I think, is owned by our software team. At rp, we believe in incentivizing the living dog shit out of people by giving them mega money if they move the fucking needle. And so these guys own a large fraction of our company and we wouldn't have it any other way. And so what we do at RP is like, we pay our expenses, we invest in feature stuff, and then we take profit distributions off the top. And I just invest 90% of that money, and the rest goes to pornography and taxes. I'm kidding. Don't, don't. I'm ethnically Jewish. You say taxes, I start getting. My heart rate starts getting up. Hi.

[Graham Stephan]

How has making money affected your life?

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

There are a number of ways in which it's changed and a number of ways in which it hasn't changed, other than for curiosity. I don't look at food prices at the store War. Which is crazy. And as not a day or an hour goes by that I'm not like, am I living in a fucking fantasy world? What the hell is going on? Because I grew up in the Soviet Union, we had negative money. Grew up either at first very poor, then lower middle class, then middle class. And then I went to college, and then my parents went to upper middle class, but I wasn't around anymore. And so once you go to college, you're back into lower class, no money again. And eventually RP got going and then the money started pretty good. And then one year it jumped to something that was completely outside of my ability to comprehend. And then it just been going like that ever since, more or less. And so I don't look at food prices anymore. I don't look at gas prices other than to be like, holy shit. Or like, oh, that's actually quite good. We didn't want to commute to the gym because our work is very productive, marginally use of our time wise, my wife and I. And you know, the gym, like a very good gym that we would like to train is like 20 minutes away, 25 minutes away. And so we just like built our own gym. It cost $250,000 total. And it was just like, oh, we're just gonna just build the gym we did. Yeah, it's just outside. Yeah, I can show you guys after. Or whatever that just exists. Yeah. And that's crazy, right? We redid this room of the house to be a studio and it was like, oh, yeah. Well, actually I didn't pay for most of it because RP paid for it, because YouTube, we built like a. We're finishing a jiu jitsu room in the other area. My office is like pretty cool looking. I have like whatever kind of computer setup that I want. And it's one of those things, like at a certain level you make enough money, the prices of things start to look like, oh, that's a lot. And then you're like, oh, it's not a lot for how much money that we make. And so in many respects we're able to do that. So it comes more or less investing in infrastructure to just let us do the things we do better. But in many ways, I think I'm like a really real giant waste of all of this wealth in some sense because I wear clothes that I either like buy at Walmart or RP sends me to wear, or like, this is my jiu jitsu coaches, that's their shirt. So I just wear that. I have no eye for high fashion. I have no interest in high fashion. My idea of a really good meal is to go to town and get Panda Express. It's fucking delicious. It costs like $8. It warms my Jewish heart. And like, I've been to a few Michelin star restaurants and almost without exception, I'm like, I want to get the fuck out of here. This is a giant ripoff. And I don't mean the grand sense, I think, like, people who are really culinarily attuned, it's a big deal for them. It's an experience. It's just so lost on me. I can't even begin to tell you. Another thing is, like, we'll get like a subscription service to like, Peacock or like, Prime. And we used to be like, we got too many of these and we call them. But now I'm like, why? And my wife and I had a long talk because she's Asian and I'm Jewish and we're just like so averse to spending money on frivolous things that, like, it pains us. And so, like, when I was younger, like, I could find reasons to spend money and have any money, so it wasn't a problem. But the older I get, the more reluctant I am to spend money. Not in the sense of like, oh, I've got to save and invest it, which is super dope, I love that. But also just, I just don't have. Have anything to spend it on. It's really wasted on me, this whole bullshit. Now investing in real estate, especially investing in the stock market, you're actually helping the entire economy with your money. It's like the best possible thing to do because it multiplies everyone's wealth a ton. But that's where I am as far as my financial situation. It's just like, I just don't. It's just wild. And I think if someone who was really appreciative of money and the finer things made this much money money, in some sense, they could spend it better. You know, they could get a lot out of it. But I don't know. That's where I'm at, you know, I'm the same way.

[Graham Stephan]

I'm pretty cheap for the most part. I mean, for me, like, the perfect meal is just pokey. It's a 15 meal or all. You could eat sushi at 22.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Unbelievable.

[Jack]

Same for me. Then again, we are all ethnically Jewish. There could be a little something.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Something. A little something in the water.

[Jack]

But yeah, I don't know. I. I feel exactly the same. I Feel like, like I, you know, I, I do okay. You know, doing the podcast and all, but I just, I can't seem to find anything to spend the money on, which is obviously an incredibly, incredibly, incredibly lucky position to be in.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Incredibly.

[Jack]

But it's just, it is just kind.

[Graham Stephan]

Of our experience not to need crazy things to be happy.

[Jack]

Well, also, I know a lot of friends that, that earn a lot less, that want to spend a lot more money, like just based off of the value of that number.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, more money.

[Jack]

Not in terms of percentage of their relative income or whatever.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And I think that's like I, I wish them the best of fortune and I hope they make more money and I hope they spend it because I think it's great. Like, if you can afford it, I think you should be buying cool shit that you like. But I guess not everyone's built that way or whatever. So, you know, and, and while I say this especially because this is like public in the biggest way possible, like your guys podcast gets fucking crazy views. Um, I feel so goddamn guilty. Why me? Like, I'm just some fucking guy. That's how I feel every day. And like, why do I make all this money? You know, And I'm, I'm doing all the stuff you're supposed to do with it, but I don't feel like I'm like, deserve it in some big way. Like I earned it in the literal sense of producing lots of value for people. Like, we didn't scam anything from any anybody. There's no tricks. It's just all evidence based advice and apps that really help people. But I really, if I heard, I didn't know me and I heard me saying the shit I just said on this podcast, I'd be like, shut the fuck up. Shut up. I'll give all your money to charity, you fucking hypocrite idiot. I do happen to think on technical economic grounds that investing in the stock market is actually, actually one of the best ROIs. And that unfortunately charity is usually not. Yeah, if it just went straight to people who need it, that would be dope. But unfortunately, yeah, that there's a whole like, you know, movement of like effective altruism that is compelling but for a variety of reasons, like just investing in the stock markets, it's one of the best ways to help everybody. But like, short of that, that it's kind of a trip to even just like be in the circumstance. And so to everyone watching who's like, all right, soapbox, you're fucking mega rich, whatever the fuck, Shut up. I am so with you. You have no idea. I don't know what the fuck's going on. And one thing that I wondered as I got like, because there's also another thing going on with me is like I'm getting like low key famous or whatever the fuck. Like everywhere I go, kind of every city, people recognize me. People recognize me not just at the airport, but there's at least one person on every plane that I'm on that recognizes me at this point. Sometimes a few and super baffling. So I also have to contend with the fact that I'm like a known person now. That's really, really weird. And I was wondering at some point when I was kind of on the slow curve up, like, is this shit gonna change me? Because, you know, people say money changes you, man. And I some combination of, kind of open mindedly wondered if it would and also told myself like, Israel tell you better not turn into a cocksucker. You better not be an elitist. You better not judge people who have less money than you or think they're somehow worse. Because that's the lamest shit in the world. And so far so good, I think. But it is a trip to experience the thing. And because, you know, a lot of people wonder like, if I had a million dollars, what would I do? I've actually never really wondered that in my life. And then it happened and I'm like, oh shit, I'm unprepared for this. And so sometimes on many days, I can't put it all together. I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing, if there's a right way to do this. And at the end I just end up coming back to one thing. It's like you're a human being like everybody else. Because when people meet you and they tell you, oh, you're the man, it's easy to start believing that you're somehow special or anointed or better or some shit like that. That. And the thing is, I'm highly uncomfortable with that. And I'm especially uncomfortable when in a conversation with someone else, they're elevating you to a hierarchical level above. They're like, oh, they talk to you like you're a big deal. And the thing I want to convey to essentially everyone that I ever talk to through gestures and through self referential humor and things like that, that. But also in a podcast format like this, if you ever meet me, I'm just a regular and probably worse than you at damn near everything in almost every respect and that makes me so comfortable. If someone's like. If I was in an awards show or something and the camera zoomed in or some stadium and they were like, it's Dr. Mike. My initial inclination to be like, somebody else, Go look at somebody else. They ain't nothing here. Because like. Like, maybe some people, like, when they rise up and become wealthy and famous or whatever, they're like, fuck yeah. Fuck, yeah. I. Yes, I struggle for this, and yes, this is supposed to be me, and yes, I'm going to fucking live all of it up. Maybe that could have been me. I never could have told you before, but now that I'm in that space and doing the fucking. This thing, it's not. It's not. I got nothing for the shit.

[Jack]

Well, well, guys, seriously, if you made it to the end, thank you so, so, so, so much. And also, you might see a little rash I have on my face right now. I just want to mention this shamelessly. If you're like a dermatologist or if you have any idea what this could possibly be, it's not anything bad. I think it's a cold rash. I played pickleball very late at night. It was in the 30s. It's itchy. It's a little bit red. It should go away. I got one last year in the winter.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

You gotta choose your sexual partners more carefully.

[Jack]

That's.

[Graham Stephan]

That's what I told.

[Jack]

We're not linking down.

[Graham Stephan]

Do you want to rp?

[Jack]

RP will no longer be linked down below your Instagram messenger. No, seriously, guys, if you actually do know what's going on, please, just.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Just DM me, please.

[Jack]

And thank you. Thank you for letting us use your space. This has been absolutely incredible. I mean, this is all of his equipment and.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

And no, it's got the video guys. Equipment. I don't know how the. Any of this works.

[Graham Stephan]

This looks fantastic.

[Jack]

You let us into your house. You picked us up from Cracker Barrel. This has been a incredibly positive experience. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And all of the stuff is obviously linked down below.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Awesome, guys. Huge honor, huge pleasure. I've listened to a bunch of your episodes, and I never once thought I'd be lucky enough to get on your podcast. So I'm like, this is like a. Like a celebrity moment for me. Dude, this is so long.

[Jack]

You wouldn't believe.

[Graham Stephan]

You have no idea. From us, too.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Yeah, I look like a celebrity to you? Look at this last thing.

[Jack]

Did you, like, train your voice? Because people say sound like a. Like a super villain, like people say like when they go into like the dark mode when they're putting up a bunch of weight in the gym, that your voice is the voice that they hear. Oh my God.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Well, it's cuz I'm in the headphones. It's just like, oh, that's, that's. I have received zero technical voice training. I don't know, I think my voice sounds ridiculous and weird. And when I hear myself talk, I'm like, really? Yeah. I, I, I got nothing. I don't even like. Well, apparently that's a thing.

[Jack]

You heard it from the source. Thank you guys for watching.

[Graham Stephan]

Until next time.

[Dr. Mike Israetel]

Thank you, guys.

[Jack]

Dermatologist, please comment.