Ep 620 - In Defense of Sunlight (feat. Rowan Jacobsen)

- Hey, welcome to Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast.

I'm here today with Ron Jacobson. - What's up, man? How are you doing? - I'm doing great. - I'm not going to be here.

- I've been a wait in this, I, if you guys don't know, I have a little book in service that, you know, throw me guest ideas, I saw the sunlight book and I was like, I gotta talk to you. I happen to be deep in, what is it called?

Helio Therapy, you call it, just getting the sunlight. Yeah, I'm a big sunlight guy right now, as you can see my nose. I'm like, I have, I'm bad with it though, I have, this is like three days of sunburn on sunburn.

So I just keep going deeper and deeper into it and I'll be fine, but yeah, I'm a huge proponent of sunlight man, it's the best. So I was telling you, I grew up on the East Coast, Northeast. And just those winners would crush me man.

When I read the beginning of your book when you're saying how you're just like, you know, you're in Vermont and you're just like, no matter what you do in the winner up there, you literally don't feel the sun and touch your skin

and then it just makes me like, I like, I really do get like, oh, I'm thinking about it. And yeah, ever since I've been down here these hot summers, I'm like, still having complaint. Like people like us too hot.

I'm like, you have no idea what the lack of light feels like, man, it's horrible.

“I think about it 'cause yeah, like you say,”

those winners, they're crushing. Especially after a while. And yeah, down here, you're like, wow, you could just be cruising around in shirts and charts in a t-shirt, like most of the year,

essentially, right? Yeah. So that makes huge difference. All year round, if you're a fat white guy up here, fat white guys, or a teenager.

(laughing) Even in Vermont, you see the teenagers weigh in the bus stop. It's like 10 degrees below zero in their shorts. Really? That is, yeah, that is kind of weird.

Or are they, I notice with teenagers, they're either, it's that shorts when it's freezing or it's like a hoodie when it's hot. And you're like, exactly. What's it for?

What do you guys, tell you guys doing, but, you know, I guess, so they do. So yeah, how long, so okay, give me the whole thing like you, what is your background?

I've watched interviews with you. I would say you're Dr. Smart. You sound Dr. Smart, but I don't see the M.D. or P.E., so what is your background? I'm, yeah, no, I'm a, I'm like a word guy.

I've been, like, made my living as a writer. Okay.

“Yeah, like, 25, 30 years, like certain book publishing”

and I did a little bit of ghost writing. And then at some point, I was like, I'm sick of this. I don't want to fix other people's words. I just may as well just give you my own words.

Yeah, how did, how did, I feel like ghost writings dasturly, it's like, I'm a big co-author guy. Someone's going to help you with your book. Yeah, hit him with the co-author. There's no shame.

I, I would feel so weird, which is funny, 'cause I would, like, in school, cheat on all my tests, but like writing a book, the ghost writing thing freaks me out. I don't like it, man.

It's like, just, just give that person credit if they ghost write or hire them as an editor, something, but the ghost write a thing is, I get the PBGBs around that. Yeah, totally.

And sometimes I did get credit at it as a co-author. That's sometimes, sometimes they didn't want my name anywhere on there. Right. We all named names.

I can't name those names. J-K-Roll, no. (laughing) You wrote the Harry Potter stuff. I wrote 'em all, actually.

Like, now the world knows.

“But no, yeah, so that seems like that would be frustrating”

where you're like, "Damn, I did the thing." It was actually, you know, like, as of like beginning writer,

it was actually the perfect first step

because your ego was not in it. Like, yeah, you were not gonna get recognized as a thing. So in terms of just like practicing your writing, it was like playing. That sounds, yeah.

So, in retrospect, I realized that was a good way to start. 'Cause I was like, oh, this is fun. That Dada, no one's gonna know whether I screwed up or get it right. True.

But then at some point, after a while, you're like, I think I know how to do this. I just want to do it for myself. Yeah, that's cool. So in that story, what was your, like,

so it was more so just the writing? What did you naturally gravitate towards initially in terms of like, you know? Subject, yeah. Yeah, so there's almost random, I was living in Vermont.

And I happened to get a gig as an editor for this like, cult-foodi magazine called The Art of Eating. This was like, early 2000s. And it was like, it was like this, a one-man show by this one guy,

who is this like super personicity gourmet. And he was doing this really in-depth food writing. So I worked for the magazine, started writing for the magazine. Then I got an idea out of that to do a book about oysters.

It was like, I saw that you wrote a book on oysters. Dude, can you please just break it down? What do you know about it? I was a producer, one of the, one of the experts on oysters for sure.

So I wrote the first book that kind of helped trigger

that oyster revolution in the early 2000s. Texas is coming on really strong with oysters. Dude, yeah, I just had oysters the other night. I love them. Yeah, me too.

I mean, yeah. So how did you, that's such a sick thing to write a book about, 'cause I don't even know what they are. Like, I know they're like a little weird little man. I'm still not sure what they are.

But when he years later. So what's like, can you just blow my mind with a couple of oyster facts? - No, not to put you on the spot, but I would just love stuff to bust out

next time I crack into some oyster. - Well, I mean, they're live when you eat them. - No, dude. - Like, they don't what are you talking about? Are they really?

- Yeah, so if an oyster is holding its shell shut,

And it's like holding on.

Shell clamped down, it's like, you know, like,

“I hope this goes better than I think it's gonna go.”

It's just like waiting to get back in the water, whatever. So then you shut it, right? When you are overcoming the oyster's resistance, like its muscles are pulling that thing close and you're cutting through its muscle

to take off that shell. And so you just heard it, and it's, you know, it can, it's gone through the tunnel. It can see the light, but it's gone in the light. - Yeah, so the tunnels are just your mouth.

- Yeah, yeah, exactly. Turns out it's wrong tunnel, but no. If you, I like, guys who are really good shuckers, you'll see, like, you know, they're like, surgeons almost, and they don't hurt the oyster too much

as they take off that shell, you can see the oyster's heart beating. And as it goes down. - What? - Yeah.

- Hold on, so oysters, okay, so even when they're out of water, so they're not like a fish, where they can only breathe underwater, like-- - They are, but they can hang on for a really long time, like a super long time.

- What? (laughs) - And they have to be pretty fresh to eat. - They have to be. Yeah, you don't want to eat a dead oyster, for sure. I mean, this is cooked, if you just cook to the vine.

- No, no, I want that thing, I want to see it hard, but I'm gonna try to feel it on my tongue next time. - Well, I do think that's part of the pleasure in it, like you see people, you know, you know, like a pile of oysters appears on the table

and people go nuts. - Oh yeah. - And I think it's partly because they didn't realize it, but it's because they're eating, they're getting this like live cheese, you know?

And it's like, ooh, let's get into my little excited. - It's like the poor man's a dreamy crown. (laughs) I would say I'll permit a class working. (laughs)

- He used to be the poor man. - Yeah, I know, so what's the oysters? - Yeah, the oysters were just like, there's a little, they started in prison. - Right, and the prisoners complained.

- I know. - Well, they were picking a lot of dead ones, they were in tossing them in there. - I'm sure it wasn't very good lobster. - That's, okay, so they're okay, sorry.

“I mean, that's what an over-deliver on an oyster fact.”

- That's, that was my best-- - I don't know if they were alive. - I thought they were long dead. - No, they're still okay. And if they die, if their shells open,

you don't want to-- - No, go. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. - Oh, wow. - Well, yeah, that's, wow.

- So I'll say the rest of the oyster book, that's amazing. - They're fucking alive, I didn't know that. - And they are delicious, and they taste different from everybody at water,

because they're basically concentrating that body of water. - Oh, well, okay, and then there's the Afrodisiac component. I've heard that as well. That's just because you're eating a living thing

and nothing's hotter than that, so. - You're also pounding the booze with that. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I've always thought that was probably part of the kitchen.

- Yeah, sure. - God, I can't wait to tell them, I'm gonna let her eat it next time and say, "You know, things are alive." - This episode is brought to you by PricePix.

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Yes, $50 when you play your first five. Visit the PricePix Promo's board for more info. PricePix, America's number one sportspix app. - That's amazing. - So, back to the sunlight.

Okay, so that makes sense. You're more so following curiosities around the natural world. - Well, so after that I got reputation as a food writer.

So then all the magazines were coming to me.

- It always happens that way.

I've talked to a decent amount of people who were like, oh, I was just kind of like doing my thing. And a lot of writers, especially like, they'll do a history book now, like, people are like, oh, you're a historian.

Like, yeah, sure, or whatever. - So you're talking to a surgeon? - So you're talking to a surgeon? - Yeah, like, if you're gonna give me a pigeon hole, that was a pretty good one.

- Stop that, actually. - Yeah, better than being the proctorology writer. - Yeah, yeah. - But, so I did it for a long time, but I was always folding a lot of science

into my food writing, 'cause I was interested in, you know, what is this thing that you're eating,

“where does it come from and what makes it taste good?”

So then at some point, I started doing more straight-up science writing. - Okay, and that's how you,

you talking, you just started noticing.

And this is how I guess you got interested in the whole sunlight as, like, a medicine thing, you're just feeling a little, just like, slack and down in those East Coast. - For sure, like, middle age, you start,

like, you know, when you're younger, you can sort of, like, you don't know as anything. - Yeah, I'm 40, I'm 40. My oyster shell is being ripped open by time right now, as we speak. (laughing)

- But yeah, I know what you mean. - So yeah, I started definitely noticing summer's good, winter's bad. And I live in Vermont, so long, long hard winters. And then, yeah, I was actually doing a science fellowship

at MIT, this was like 2017, 2018. And this, like, study came out. I came across the study, they had realized that when sun hits skin, it actually triggers a release of endorphins in the brain, like natural opiates in the brain.

“And that's why people kind of get addicted to sunlight.”

That's why it feels good.

And, like, the dermatologists who did the study were like, this is why people are addicted, this is the problem that people love it so much, that's why we came break them with their sun habits. And, you know, they're like, we should treat this

as a, there's like a drug addiction, sunlight. I was like, or it means that if our bodies are rewarding us for sunlight, there's a reason in evolutionary terms that that came to be, right? - Yeah.

- Like, we were, people were seeking out sunlight and did well in some way. - Yeah, and that's the funniest thing about the whole sunlight as like, you know, a thing to be avoided. And it really does get back to the dermatologist.

It's very funny to see, like dermatologists, they do kind of get crushed in the sun debate 'cause they have been making a whole living out of, being like, don't let that stuff touch your skin. - They do.

And to their credit, like, their job is to prevent skin cancers. So if that's your only thing you're trying to do, tell people to stay out of the sun. - Yeah, and also it covers your ass. - Yeah, you know, I'm nothing against dermatologists.

You know, when I have a weird rash, you know, I'm glad they're there to freeze it off me or whatever. - Yeah, I tell you. - I will say, what they're, what they're, I would say kind of sneaky about is,

you don't think when you go to dermatologists that there's any chance they're gonna see you naked

and there's basically a 100% chance they're gonna see you.

When you go to dermatologists, they'll be like, you get a warden, like you want a full body scan. I'm like, it sounds good, and I'm like, oh yeah, my skin's all over my full body, and I'm like, it's just, I didn't know, whatever, anyway.

But the, yeah, I mean, it is, luckily for me, I don't know if this is a good or bad, but a lot of stuff, I remember hearing like, oh, they gotta stay out of the sun. I remember just my whole life being like,

it sounds dumb, like I'm not, yeah. - I would, that's crazy, 'cause I know too, if I'm in the sun, I'm getting sunlight. I have like weird food allergies, that stuff kind of lessons, like my whole body functions,

thousand percent better. - That's interesting, that's great. - So one of the big things sunlight does is it just tells your immune system to relax a little bit and chill out.

So all those things that are like the immune system overreacting, like, which is what allergies are, they get chilled out by sunlight. - Yeah, 'cause I noticed that, you know, where I was like, even like, if I get to hang over

in the middle of winter, it's like so brutal. Whereas if I'm like kind of in a sun-drenched environment, it's like, if I, I don't really drink that much, but if I do, I've noticed like the hangovers, like short and there, I just, I just,

if I feel I need less sleep, I eat less, it's like, yeah.

“That's why I was like, dude, I'm like, whatever,”

especially with, I didn't really skin cancer. Like, it's 98% of them, or 98% of the time, it's pretty harmless. - Yeah, so there's good at different kinds. There's melanoma and then there's what they call

the BCCs and the SCCs, which is squamous cell carcinoma and basal cell carcinoma. And yeah, like 98% are those, the BCCs and the SCCs. That's why everyone you know tends to get and they just get cut off.

- Yeah. - They don't tend to have long-term health benefits. I mean, health effects, if you cut 'em off relatively soon. Melanoma's the bad one, but it's really uncommon. - Yeah, it's one of those. - Yeah, it's one of those.

- What does a common one do? - Melanoma can get invasive and then you get, that's when you get a cancer that spreads to one of your, turn organs, that's the bad one. But that one's not associated with regular doses

of sunlight, actually. It's associated with burns, and especially burns in childhood, which means we're all screwed. - Yeah, fine, that's the bad news. - Wait, how do they associate that?

Who hasn't been burnt by the sun in childhood? - I know, right? Well, people with darker skin for one, true. - And they have almost no risk for Melanoma. - See, I've heard that people with darker skin

do have a risk, not Melanoma, maybe it's a lesser skin cancer. - They very low rates of all those skin cancer. They can still get them.

“So I think what dermatologists are trying to do”

is like some people who have dark skin, I think they can't get skin cancer, and so then something pops up and they don't get it checked. So when they do get it checked, it tends to be at a later stage because of the sense that I don't have to worry about it.

- True, true. - So they've tried really hard to make sure that even people with dark skin do worry about it,

And they, it's the rates are like 100 times lower. - Okay, so it's really lower. - What about, I mean, is there a world in which dermatologists

“can start isolating Melanon and just give everyone Melanon?”

(laughs) Just a little bit, no, I wouldn't pick out, but just like, you know, Melanon's good, Melan's awesome.

- I know, I was reading the amazing molecule.

- I know, I was reading the book and I was like, yeah, David, man, I'm trying to activate mine right now. This is the first time I've ever been. - So that's what I was gonna say. - Like, you know, 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day,

you will start to make a little more Melanon, and also it'll move, like, from the bottom of your skin, it'll move up to the top to be, you know, they're supposed to be, like, little, like, sun, oh, it's there to kind of, like, all right, if it gets to here, I'll step in.

- It's the parasol at the beach. - Wow. - That was the one thing from the book that kind of blew my mind when you're talking about a little, there's, like, little microbes all of your skin that kind of just, like,

eat sunlight and just kind of get powered off at that, like, and then if you get a lot of sunlight, you make more of these microbes, 'cause I guess it's, like, better conditions for them? - No, I had no idea about that.

- Yeah, the skin microbiomes, really important. And, you know, like, we've heard about the gut microbes that are, can be good for us or bad depending on

which ones we have, but the skin ones on the gut ones

are, like, talking to each other every day. - Really? - Yeah. - And they're, like, you know, they're running more of the agenda than you would think.

- I know. - I know, I mean, that's definitely, you know, if you're a paranoid about that kind of stuff, it's not good news, you're covered in tiny little bugs, although the fact that they're,

- No, they're good. - They're mostly good. - They're good. They're eating sunlight and fucking protect me. That's pretty cool, there's it.

- Yeah. - There's tanning injections that you can get. - Yeah, but is it gonna give me, I want the real stuff, I don't want it. - I don't make you darker, but it increases

your chances of getting skin cancer. - Yeah, yeah. - Really? - Yeah. - Yeah, so, yeah.

- That makes sense actually.

“That's what you got to what you get, honestly.”

- That's crazy. - Right, the same people who are staying out of the sun for their health are then, like, plugging themselves. - Oh, why? - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- iconic vibes, some best in price. Wow, get with you, Fourier in the drutter stuff. - A pair after the high school. - Right, I don't think that's what I wanted. - Stream up to the 13th April, parallel to U.S. start.

- Really, I want a new episode. - That's the problem. - And you're talking with the devil. There's no way back. - I want to go outside on Friday night

like House of the Dragon and Wicked. All of it's only two hours and 90 minutes. Streaming, but not so, wow. - Ha, I've heard the whole, like, like, genuinely, where I get it, I can.

I'm pretty fair-skinned. So I can't have that much sunlight. And I kind of over-indulge a little bit, but the whole thing of, like, stay out of it all together gives me the creeps, man.

I've seen, and I actually, like, I'm sure you know Brian Johnson, right? - Mm-hm. - Health guy. I like his stuff.

I like that he shares all the things. I can't get with him on sunlight, man. I'd hold, like, carry him, umbrella, like, genuinely, vampire, stay out of the sun as much as you can. It's like, it's, like, sickly, I don't know.

It's really weird. - Yeah, it's funny. He had a post last week where, you know, he listed, like, here's, you know, for life, here's my 50 things or whatever.

And one of them was that, exactly. - Yeah. - And all the experts I know in the sun field were like, can you work on Brian Johnson? He's like, he's not up to speed on this one.

- Yeah, I mean, it does seem like he's open to following research, which is cool, but he's, like, really, really anti-sunt, so. - He is, and he's because he's getting the wrong information, like, he's relying on, like, the dermatologists of the world

to supply him. If he, you know, if he put Chad G.P.T on the job, he could solve that. - Sure. (laughs) - I mean, seriously, those, right now,

“we're in this, like, weird little stage, I think,”

where those AIs, they haven't been bought yet. I feel like, by any company, they'll give you the straight dope, and they've read, friggin' everything. So, just put, you can put them on the job on this stuff.

And they'll, like, call up, like, the key papers for him. - Yeah, no, I, that is kinda cool. They, I use them for stuff when I'm, like, I'll just get an idea where I'm, like, I'm pretty sure this is how it goes, and I'm, like, let me double check,

'cause I, I'm, like, sensitive to caffeine, so I tried it for some reason, I don't know, this was out of spite. I try to prove that, like, coffee's actually bad for you. So, I'm, like, really feed me things, like,

- Come on, come on. - Come on, are you, man? - And it was just, like, no, it's actually good for you. - See, right now, they're pretty solid. But yeah, you gotta feel, like, money will eventually

be able to buy this. - I thought about that before, I'm, like, this is not gonna last very long. - It's just, like, the early days of the internet, it was, it truly was, like, this, like, like, wild west

where you could just, you know, there weren't companies that were sort of managing and all for you. - Yeah, no, yeah, I was even, like, well, you know, I was trying to point to the whole thing where alcohol was like, remember when it was like, drink it, have a drink a day,

and it's good for you, and it's like, complete, not true, not true whatsoever. I was, like, a lot of studies on coffee are probably done

and it was just, like, yeah, not really bad.

“Like, some are for sure, but there's a lot of independent”

science on coffee, and I was like, damn, it's actually just good for you. So, I tried to ruin it for the billions of people who had joined coffee. (laughing) But it turns out it's actually great, so, yeah, so I'm, me.

So, yeah, where do we stand now in terms of, like, just a quick run-through of, like, some of the science of sunlight being good for you? How to get it, actually, all that stuff?

- So, basically what happened is, like,

10, 15 years ago, researchers started noticing that people who were naturally exposed to more sunlight had better life spans and lower rates of, like, all the classic chronic diseases. So, cancers other than skin cancer, heart attack strokes,

all the big stuff, with lower in people who were getting more sunlight, and they didn't know why, but now they've looked into that, and they're starting to get a sense of why that is. And I kind of put it into, like, three buckets.

So, one is stuff we make with the energy from sunlight, like vitamin D, and nitric oxide, which is another chemical made in the skin,

“with sunlight that lowers blood pressure.”

And blood pressure, huge killer, five blood pressure. So, if you're lowering blood pressure, a few points, like, globally, that's gonna be huge. - Yeah, that's huge. - Yeah, nitric oxide, these to sell to G&C,

'cause you would take it, and it would make your veins, - It got like blood vessel. - Yeah, yeah. - Viagra is based on nitric oxide. - Pretty safe.

- So, the sun, you know, it might be Nage's Viagra to a little bit. But, definitely. - There's definitely, it's not gonna test it out. - Well, there, so there was a crazy study.

They, shown light on mice, and then track their sexual behavior. The mice had got the sunlight, had bigger balls, and got, were considered sexier by the other mice. - Really? (laughs)

- Which they measure in terms of, like, squeaking and sniffing. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - But anyway, so, yeah, there is actually some, like, a little hint that sunlight might actually make

you a little sexier. - Well, there's this stuff about, I, again, I just get all my stuff off, like, the inner, I get Instagram and stuff, but I have heard that if you, like, the sun hits your chest

for whatever, you know, however many minutes a day, you produce more testosterone, all this stuff. - But that's interesting. - I haven't, I haven't seen, but it could be. - It's probably true.

- The vitamin D apparently is a big precursor for the production of testosterone, so... - Well, they, then, for sure. - Yeah, so that makes sense. - That's pretty crazy, but that's,

so that's, it just started with people noticing little things, and then... - Anti-inflammation is the other huge one.

I could, like, basically, the sun,

when it hits your skin, it triggers a little bit of inflammation, like, redness, right? Like, because it is, it's like a challenge to the body. It's, like, the body has to deal with it. So the body produces all these different repair compounds,

anti-inflammatory compounds, fixes all the damage, and then, basically, it sends signals to the immune system, saying, don't freak out, we got this. This is just normal, you know, daily life. You know, on the Savannah planes of Africa or whatever.

And so the, basically, that, the response to the slight challenge of sunlight triggers a strong, like, healing response by the body, which goes beyond the skin, and actually keeps everything else kind of calm and running smooth.

- I make sense, I go check on the other things, while they're out, they're like, all right, let's go. - Yeah, it's like, you can all the fire department. - Yeah, you know, like, let's go look around.

“- Yeah, right, like what else can we fix while we're here?”

- Nice, and then, and the funny thing, too, that I, or something I noticed from the book was, this was like kind of accepted as, of, like, this is kind of what you did back with during, what is it?

Colour, not Colour, to burglosis, to burglosis. - Totally, yeah. - And what was the other one? It was to burglosis, and there's no-- - So, the rickets, so, those two diseases got super bad

in the industrial revolution, to burglosis, because everybody was living in packed dirty cities, right? So, they were all, the germs were just spreading much easier. Rickets is caused by lack of sunlight, because lack of sunlight means lack of vitamin D,

and vitamin D is what gets calcium into your bones to make them strong. So, kids in the industrial revolution, like, when kids were on farms, they got tons of sunlight. - Yeah.

- Rickets wasn't a thing. Suddenly, rickets pops up, late 1800s, 'cause the kids are, they're working in factories or living in, like, tenement, like, blocks. - Yeah. - In, like, places like London,

they're never seeing the sun.

The cities are also choked with coal, coal smoke. So, suddenly, all the kids are getting rickets, and they figured out that sunlight could cure the rickets, and could also cure, like, the skin form of tuberculosis. So, then, it was kind of this, like, beautiful era,

and, like, the 20s and 30s, when, like, everyone was sending their kids up to the alps

- Yeah. - They've been tuberculosis. - Yeah, I heard you talking about that, even the teacher would sit out there. - That was, that's, like-- - Yeah. - There's awesome thought of it.

“It's, like, a Western Andersen festival.”

- That's really funny. - It's like, severed in their undies, chillin' gettin' light. - Yeah. - Yeah, that's, that's pretty cool. And the other thing too, that I saw, that I was, kind of, shocked by, was, like,

it's not even, like, you don't even have to be in that much direct sunlight. It's like, if you, you can be fully covered with clothes, all the lights still gonna penetrate through your clothes. If, you know, that, you're gonna get a bunch of, like,

stuff from basically just being outside.

Like, the one that really blew my mind was, like, sitting under a tree, if you're in the shade, the light hits the leaves, and you're getting now, like, green light or something. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, so there's two, yeah. So infrared, which is part of the spectrum that we can't see, it's like beyond red. So our eyes can't detect it, but it's, you know, it's photons of energy, just like all the other visible light.

It goes through clothing really easily, you know, like, like, visible light goes through glass. And it goes through tissue pretty easily too. So, so about 50% of the sunlight is infrared, and it'll go through your clothing and then into your body.

And it'll kind of like, those photons will bounce around, like, bill your balls in your body. And then eventually get absorbed. And they kind of, like, they make, they help you produce energy more efficiently

on your mitochondria. So, yeah, so when you're getting on that infrared, it's just kind of like, making your metabolism work a little better. It's, it's, it's giving you free energy.

- Yeah. - So you get a little bit less wear and tear trying to make energy from your food. And plants don't like infrared, like,

first photosynthesis, they just want blue and red light.

So they bounce green, which is why they're the green dust, and they bounce infrared. So anytime you're surrounded by plants, by green leaves or grass, that's a bunch of green photons and infrared photons.

- Bouncing off of it. - Bouncing off of it. - Yeah, bouncing off of plants and into you. So you're getting like a double dose. You're getting it from the sun, and then you're getting it from the plants.

So if you're in the shade, you're not getting too much UV because you're out of the sun, but you're getting tons of green and infrared. And green is good too, they're like doing some research at two places, Harvard and University of Arizona right now,

'cause they found out accidentally that green light released migraines and other, like, pain, what an anxiety. So yeah, you can now, like, you can buy green lights to treat your migraines now.

- That's crazy, I didn't know that. - Yeah, yeah, so that's gonna be one of the next, like, red light therapy is really big. - I've seen that stuff now. - So green is gonna be next.

- Little green. - Really, you're saying, also, it just goes out, just got inside. - Yeah, you just got inside. - I didn't think having my red light, my green light here,

and actually, fuck you, I'm getting some green light there. - You get a little green light there. - Green light, I'm getting some green light there. - Green light, what do you, have you ever looked into the whole sunny day guys who claimed to not need food,

“like it was kind of stare at the sun early morning?”

- Yeah, so there's a bunch of those dudes in Mexico at the nude beach down there. Zipelita, I think it's called. - Yeah. - So I have a friend who's like a mezcal reporter.

He's like, you gotta go hang out with these guys. - Yeah, it's awesome, actually. - With the sun either, 'cause yeah, there's these guys who are just like in the sun all day, and they're like, I haven't eaten in years,

like, I don't know if I believe them, but.

- Yeah, that's one of the ways I'm always kind of like,

I can't really prove it. So I'm not gonna hang out here for another year. - But I totally wanna find out. So I wanna find out what their deal is. I do have sort of like, when time frees up,

I wanna go check 'em out. - Go check 'em out with the sun either. - And there's just dudes that are just standing naked on the beach who claim not to have eaten. (laughs)

Fuck, that's kind of cool. I mean, I'd be impressive if you could do it for three days. That's pretty impressive. But yeah, I've heard that two a long time ago that if you look at the sun when it before it hurts your eyes.

- Right. - You kinda catch it in the morning. Catch it as it goes down. They claim they get all the energy they need. - I don't know.

- Who knows? I thought why can't we-- - It might be sun and cannabis. That's given them all the energy. - True. (laughs) So, the one thing I liked as well,

'cause I'm a big fan of like, I, 'cause this is the part where you have like a little light primer in the book. - Yeah. - Yeah.

- Whenever I get into like just the physics on photons and lights and all that stuff,

“it's honestly like the coolest, not even just cool.”

It's like, it's like beautiful when you read about that. Almost all like a spiritual level when you're like, Dan, this has been thought out. So I don't know how, personally it's like it's hard to kind of argue against kind of intelligent design

and you read about just the way it works. Like it's insane. I know, well, I'll be curious to get the again, just razzled asle me with some light facts, but the one that I have that I had recently was that,

I didn't realize sun. So there's like the, whatever, hydrogen fusion or whatever in the sun, particle fusion in the sun. - Yeah. - The light that's on Earth is trapped in the sun's core

for like a hundred, roughly a hundred thousand years. - Yeah. - And it just, just like steps down because otherwise the gamma would just destroy us. - Exactly.

- But it stepped down for anywhere from like 15,000 to 100,000 years

- It's fucks crazy, that's amazing.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't realize any of that till I got into the book either, but the light is just pure energy. The energy without matter, without mass. - I mean, for that alone, it's fucked up.

And it's like, if you really get into like, you know, what is a spirit, it's like, it's literally that it's.

“- I do think, I think, you know, you've seen,”

like so many religions basically, I've used light as a new metaphor for spirit and you do start to think it's not, maybe it's not actually a metaphor at all, right? Like maybe light is kind of like that divine force.

- Yeah. - 'Cause light, the time does not exist for light, which is, it gets really cosmic. - Really? - Yeah, so this is like Einstein, like, you know,

like if, as we speed up closer and closer to the speed of light, time slows down, right? They've established that, like the fashion move, the slower time moves for you, if you could actually make it to the speed of light,

which you never could, but time would stop.

And for light, time doesn't exist. It's everywhere at once that it has ever been. And it's only when it hits matter and gets absorbed into matter that it kind of falls into time, right?

- So fucking safe. - So it's like, yeah, so that's crazy.

“- Like, so if light can't do anything on its own, right?”

Like, it's pure energy, it doesn't really interact with anything, it doesn't, it's like the silver surfer. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, it just feels like the universe. - Then when it hits matter, then suddenly it's in time and it can have like cause and effect

and that energy can start to do stuff. So then you start to think of Earth as this sort of like experiment where light from the sun is like being captured and doing stuff. - Yeah, that's pretty wild out.

I was doing the, you know, I have little kids so I'm constantly doing like that. What color does this make, if you mix this? And it was, it seemed so dumb, but I was like genuinely mind blown when I was like, what color does it green make?

And I was like, I don't know red and yellow. Or no blue and yellow. And I was like damn, sunlight and water, makes green for plants. And I was like, oh my gosh, give me a second.

This is actually kind of cool. But yeah, the light stuff is really amazing when you get into the physics, the photons just like packets of energy, just moving faster than we can even conceive.

It's totally moving faster than time, which is like, faster than time, that's a good way of putting it. - It's crazy. And then you get, you know, it just goes into your skin, your body's nice and, you know, it's, for me that kind of stuff

“really, I think buttresses, a, you know,”

spiritual world view is opposed to one where it's like, just all meaningless photons, bounce, or whatever, particles, and I just, I'm allergic to that world view, so. - Café in a best form, with the new Cuba One Capsule Machine von Chiebeau.

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After by plants, and then either, we got it directly from the plant, or we got it from the thing that got it from the plant. Yeah. But it's all sunlight, like, passing through, you know? It's fucking awesome.

And so in this book, you know, you're basically, I guess, trying to balance out the pervasive fear of sunlight. I see it a lot too, and again, but I like about this, isn't like, because there's the opposite thing where it's like, just go outside and just bake in the sun. Twenty foot, which I've tried, and it's just, that's not the move.

I, again, my face hurts if I put anything on it, it's still burning. But it's like, the message really is, like, sunlight's not bad for you. Don't pig out on it, but also, like, if you're just outside,

even, you know, protected or never, you're still absorbing its benefits.

You know, you don't have to have it, like, kind of radiating, kind of right into your skin all the time. Totally.

Or anyone, even if you are wearing sunblock, like, you just get, you're going to get too many, too much energy, too many photons of energy that your molecules can't handle. Yeah. It makes a lot of free radicals in the body. But yeah, the daily doses, really good, and basically hiding indoors all the time,

clearly, really bad. The science is, like, very clear. So that's, that was kind of where it started for me, is because we had sort of gotten to

this extreme place where the recommendations are never led, unprotected sun touch your body.

Use sunblock 365 days a year, even if you're indoors, even if you're, you know, it's mid-winter. Like, that's crazy. That's the same. It's genuinely insane. I feel like if you're not getting burnt, you're good.

That's like in the winter, I'm not getting sunburned. I don't need sunscreen. Yeah.

“And that's what a bunch of the experts have said to me.”

And I kind of, you know, tend to say like, and make sure you don't get anywhere near burnt, because it's easy to think, you know, I'm good. And then the end of the day, you're like, "Ooh, yeah, I'm a little pink." Yeah, that's trust me, that's every single day. But it's nice to know now that if I wear, you know, one of those long-sleeved lightweight

shirts, I'm still out getting my daily dose, that was my big thing. I was like, man, out. There's something about me. I always feel defeated. If I see people with a pool, it's like the long-sleeved pool shirt, big, brim hat, and

I'm just kind of like, pussy. pussy. But now I know. You still get all the benefits. That or some of the benefits.

Not the UV, but the rest. Yeah. But how much do you see you're saying? If I got like 10 minutes of UV a day, I'm good. In Texas?

Yeah, I'd say. I mean, y'all are blessed with some good photons. Yeah. So that's what I need. Just 10 minutes.

Dude, I had to complete. I've been overdoing it like crazy. I've been doing like an hour in winter and hours probably good. It's like summer. Summer.

Summer. Summer. Summer. Summer. Yeah.

Yeah. So you only really need. And that's the timing seems to be a thing.

“I mean, people have heard this before, but it's like, you have to go out.”

Morning is like the best time while as it's like the sun's kind of coming up. Yeah, especially for somewhere like here that you've got a lot of light to work with. Yeah. Like an hour midday.

We'd probably be too much this time here. But an hour in the morning is just right. Okay. Nice. Because I have a garden in my backyard and a lot of times it'll be like, these plants are

full sun and I put them out in my backyard.

It's like, I've learned that full sun doesn't always mean Texas.

Full sun. It'll will. Some of like plants that say to be sun lovers and you know, so yeah. Yeah. So that's pretty.

So what do you do personally? How is like writing and researching all this stuff kind of affected you or were you kind of on the sun path before that? I was, you know, instinctively I was like, I definitely feel better like on a cellular level when I'm getting a fair amount of light in my day.

But then what's that, unfortunately, I was writing a lot of this book in winter in Vermont and I was kind of like, oh, God. She was all in fun. I'm destroying myself. I'm stuck in my office.

So I'm trying to figure that part of it out right now, like summer, perfect where I live. In winter, I'm not going to be able to get the UV that I need for sure. So I do, I head south. Yeah. There's also these, I think there's a new sort of like a generation of light devices coming

out that are designed to give you those of UV safely. And I think that's going to be part of the solution for a lot of people who just like, you know, go to the Caribbean all winter. Yeah, just stand out of that thing for 10 minutes or whatever. Yeah, in 10 minutes, it's even less than that.

But yeah, they're FDA cleared, first ones are just coming out now. So yeah, I think honestly, like people are going to think about their light diet the way they think about their food diet now in some ways. They're going to be a little more intentional about what they surround themselves with.

Well, that's what I'm always again.

For me, it's always about like, what's the quickest and easiest and like, freest thing you can do? Because there's so many gadgets and gizmos and, you know, people are always looking for something, you know, people feel like, I don't feel good. What do I, you just pull up your phone, you're like, you know, you know, whatever this

“powder and whatever, but the, yeah, that's why I like the, I like the sun stuff so much”

because it like it really, really works. Like I can personally attest to it. And it's free. It's free for everybody. It's widely widely abundant and free.

I, um, yesterday talked to, it was actually the opposite. This is kind of a fire and ice week. I talked to an ice swimmer. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I, uh, Chris Ballard wrote the book, wrote a book on ice swimming and all that stuff.

Yeah. Yeah. It's like, one of the, it's just like, again, cold water, pretty easy to come across.

And it's like those two things alone.

It's like, they really set you up like, you know, they, they, and then just walk around and you're kind of good. But it's actually the same thing, like all that stuff, um, you know, Hormesus is the term that is like the exercise, the bro's use. Yeah.

But any, any of those things that are, you know, attest for the body, the doable test, the word the body is like, oh, I got to, I got to raise my game a little bit. Yeah. That's really good long term. Like, I kind of think probably what makes for really good long-term aging has

more to do with how good your body is at dealing with, like, little bit to damage and fixing it than, like, any particular, like, new trainer supplement in your body. Yeah. I think so too, man. I, you know, just again, for me, the big thing is just getting outside, being active.

Yeah. Just at least for 30, 40 minutes a day, like, I, I, I've, because I've done both. I've done it where I've been an indoor creature for, like, 90% of the day. And I, I feel wretched, like, mentally, I feel horrible. And then, you know, so that, that's been my big thing of like, trying to avoid becoming, like,

human-veal. That's like, that's where it's like, oh, I might steal that for you. Yeah. Yeah. That's where it's like.

This episode is brought to you by better help. Summer is a lot of fun, but it can be a lot. Summer's fun, but it can be a lot. Matt, or. Can be a lot.

Matt. Well, Matt, tell me, what's one thing, uh, this summer that you have a lot going on, and what did you do?

“Uh, did you enjoy being that busy or did you prefer more?”

More relaxed. Uh, I, I enjoy the business a little bit, but I would like some more relaxed. You need to relax more. Yeah.

That's what I always say about you.

Yeah. People ask me, they say, what's it like living with the mayor? I said, God, which is the guy would fucking relax. Too much of a busy body. Yeah.

I guess so much going up here. You do. It's true. The police radio never turns off. True.

Yeah. We do have to get you a scanner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, though. You go to crimes and progress. What?

You may fear it in the city. The criminals, the bad guys go shit. It's a mayor. Yeah. This is the leverage.

She's coming. He's getting a get. The leverage. You get low on them. Fire.

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Guys, real quick. Oh my god. 626-627. I'll be the star dome comedy club, Birmingham, Alabama. That's huge.

That's major. Please come. That is June 26, 27th, the weekend after this weekend. After Father's Day, I'll be in Birmingham, Alabama. And then August 7th, I'll be in August 7th, August 8th, San Jose, California.

The San Jose Improv, August 7th, August 8th, and then 813, 814, that's August 13th, 14th. I'll be the Spokane Comedy Club, Spokane Washington.

“I'll be back for, I believe, the second or third time.”

Yeah. Yes, come, please come, see me, I'm going to be in Virginia next week. Alexandria, Virginia, 24th, Charlottesville, Virginia, 25th, Kaosies, Kyber Club, Newport, New York, 28th, and on the 27th, I'll be in Columbia, South Carolina. So please come out to know shows.

And you know where I'll be on June 23rd? I'll do not this. Yes, here. And Austin Tech said the Creek in the Cave. Yeah.

Pain is in the mouth. It's a rule. Yeah. But yeah, that I've gotten to that point many times in my life, and it's just God, I feel terrible.

And there's just something about, you know, especially when you're structuring your time and day and like, what am I doing, why am I doing it? It's like there is, especially the older I get. It's like just getting outside every day is it's like important. Like you really, really need to do it.

Otherwise you get kind of cut off from like what the world actually is. Yeah. You're talking to like the internet in your house and you know, all your bullshit and it's like it kind of, I get freaked out about how real I should say or how to say this. The internet is like a substitute for actual physical reality.

I feel like it's getting more and more kind of pervasive or reporting more importance on the internet. And it's like just the world basically outside. Yeah.

“This is the thing I think about all the time.”

Yeah. Kind of freaks me out. Yeah. We're transforming into something different thing. We used to be.

You know, I get hard wake up, I get hard wake up calls with it all the time. Because like, you know, I'm all in line. I do a lot of stuff online.

I'm always promoting stuff.

you're going.

What are people think about me and you go?

Okay, mostly negative fuck. And then like, so you're like really pulling in, you're like, you know, some like, I find myself trying to like mitigate this playing this like game layered on top of my actual life. And it just gets like, so stressful with the whole point is every now and again, I'll be like,

oh, yeah, it doesn't matter. Like, yeah, stuff genuinely doesn't matter in terms of like, you know, I have a family. And I, you know, there's like real physical beings around me, but you're like, clouded by this kind of just, you know, digital kind of thing and it's just, man, I, the more the less I kind of engage with it, the Jenny, like the better I feel and it helps to be like,

I'm just going to go outside and do that and it's like, it's like a spider web. You, I mean, I mean, not a little trappy. Yeah. It's very bad man. I don't know.

It's very bad. Like, the internet gives you almost like, it almost puts everybody, how do I say this? Like before, like, you know, if you were in the 80s and 70s and you were, you know, construction worker, there was no part of you that even considered that you could one day be famous for something.

“It was just wasn't your like no, I'll never, that's not a thing, you have to be an entertainer.”

The internet, I feel like it's thrown every single person into the game where it's like,

hey, man, yeah, you know, man, you could. And I just, I do feel like it has totally not good effects because I have funny, um, that just in the past 12 hours, funny experience with all that, um, so my book came out yesterday. It's nice.

Huge wave of media attention, like suddenly, like interview requests are pouring down on me. So I had said to my friend of mine, I was just like pretty website savvy, I was like, can you tweak, like, one website looks a little crappy right now. Can you just tweak it for me and make it look a little better?

She's like, sure, um, at 1 a.m. last night, I got a, a text from her, she's like, I broke your website. It was like, I can't fix it. I'm so sorry. It's down apparently, like some recovery link went to some administrator email.

I don't know. We don't know who it so I was like, okay, like the day that my website's going to get the most hits ever, it's down. Fuck. This was like yesterday, this was the day at the 1 a.m. like a few hours ago.

Oh, man. Okay. Like, this is a good test of your Zen ability. It is. Man, that's the, you say, Zen ability?

Yeah. Zen ability is a highly overrated skill, man. You really needed to be like, well, fuck. Yeah. All right.

What do we got to do now? I'm not there. There is this part of your mind. That's like, it's almost like delicious when you're like, yeah, I get the fucking

“freak out right now and you're like, you have to be like, not even going down that path.”

Yeah. It's like, okay, maybe it wasn't that important after all, you know? Yeah. So what did you get to fix? No.

It's down. I'm just ignoring. I can't do anything about it. That's the thing, man. Yeah.

You really can't. It's like, shit. I mean, shit. Yeah. That must have been really stressful.

I was like, one a.m. Okay. There comes the sleeve for the name. Well, fuck, I'm sorry to hear that. But again, it's one of those things where I don't know, it'll get fixed and then it

is what it is. I did my last comedy special. I had two shows on Friday, two shows Saturday and I was going to just, you know, see which was the best show at all four.

You have a lot of chances to get it right basically.

So I had four chances to do it. First night, shows were good, but I was like, I didn't feel like that was the one. Saturday. I'm a guy. I got two more chances.

Feeling good about it. That morning. Yeah. Was that morning of the show, Saturday, had to film something for the intro. So I had to wear this kind of like camera rig thing on me, it was like a POV.

And I leaned forward too fast and it took the camera to put it like literally cut my head. It was bleeding for hours. But then the problem was now I couldn't splice if I had a great, if I had a good take from one. So those two others were rendered mute where I was like, I can't use these.

“And now I remember there was just like a bunch of people there just putting on makeup”

on my head, camera different light and they went back and forth maybe 15 times. It was like a collective freak out for an hour and a half right before I was about to go on. And I just remember being like, guys, you stop. It's okay.

I appreciate you working hard, but like it is what it is. It's like we're just going to deal with it and figure it out. There's let's all just stop freaking out and just move on. Because you can really get caught in that like anxiety freak out live. We could have stayed in it up until the minute I walked down on stage.

I remember just being like fucking guys, let's just do it. You can win. Yeah. Who cares? Yeah.

And it went great. It was fine. I remember it almost for me was kind of freeing to be like, it's just like I was like, whenever I try to take anything remotely serious, I tend to get reminders just from like circumstance where it's just kind of like dude shut up, just go do your thing.

So. Now that was a, I remember just kind of laughing and being like, of course I fucking smacked my head on a camera today. This is kind of more, this is just what I do. Yeah, friend of mine who's a photographer for the New York Times.

So he's had a pretty good career, but at some point he's kind of like, this is who cares, right?

So he just he has this thing. I remember anything comes up. He's like, just remember we are animals and we made this all up. [laughter] That's a great. It comes in handy.

It comes really dumb. [laughter] Damn, that's amazing. Actually, that's really good. How many of you said in my wife?

[laughter] Right. So you can backfire on you. So you know what you freak out about. We are just animals for making it all up.

So let's do it animals, do babe. How about we forget about that. [laughter] So what's the next for you, Mandy?

“Are you sure you're on the big, you're on the book tour?”

Moving around. What do you got on the horizon? What are you thinking about doing? So I am a couple of things. I'm trying to decide which way to go.

I'm waiting for a sign, right? So one of them is kind of what we were talking about. Like, the more you think about, like, then you start to think about energy. And you start thinking about us as, you're rather than just like piles of molecules.

We're basically like this flow of energy.

Like, like a standing wave of energy. Yeah. And does have, like, the spiritual aspect to it. And there's some really interesting new science coming out around that. It's like hard science.

But I think there could be a really fun, just, like, easy mainstream book about that concept. So you're going quantum, you're thinking? Exactly. Yeah. Now's the time.

I was thinking the title could be, could be quantum me. Right? And I think it's a cool experiment. Self-experiment. I mean, I'm, I'm no stranger to, like, the, uh, just a lot of different spiritual

outie books and stuff. And a lot of them tend to just dabble. A lot of them, they borrow from quantum elements to be like, hey, you know. Not me. You can be two places at once, you know, and you're like, what the fuck is this? Totally.

The entanglement stuff. Yeah. Yeah. You can apply that to so many different things in life. So you've been sneakily researching quantum, basically just quantum problems.

Yeah. Quantumers, it more just like, your body has a non-physical, or energy. It is, it's all quantum mechanics. Because, like, down at that basic subatomic level, it's all about electrons and photons interacting.

Mm-hmm. And, you know, for the physicists, they figured this out a hundred years ago that, like, will energy and matter are, like, two sides of the same coin. Biologists, like, learned this yesterday. It seems like they missed it for a hundred years.

But now they're like, oh, we need to think about magnetism and energy and how all these things, like, change the stuff that we are. Yeah.

“It's hard stuff, but it's, um, but that's why I think there's, like, the light version”

of it would be, could make a really good book. That is cool. Yeah. But then the other thing, when you're, you know, a bit of a contrarian, you write a contrarian book, and everyone's like, you're an idiot.

You're so wrong. And you're like, it might be wrong, but it might not be wrong. Yeah. And then you try to figure out, how do I know if I'm wrong or not? So anyway, I think we'll be really fun to write a book.

And this would be, I think, 99% audience would be dudes. It would be the title of the-- You're the right place, right? Yeah. This is a very dude that he--

When you are, when you are right, and everyone else is wrong, right? That would be the title. That's great. I think a field guide to unrecognized genius. My perfect tongue and cheek.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's how to know if you are genius or if you're just entirely wrong. How would you, how would you summarize that thing? Because there's a lot of people who have been right that a lot of other people, you don't-- like a lot of the events, like germ theories, the biggest one.

Or one of the biggest ones. So that's one of the best examples. The guy died in the St.us Island. So many of them, they got it right. No one ever recognized them.

So yeah. And they even just kill themselves. Shit on them.

“Like actively shit on them to the point where they end up killing themselves.”

The guy who's the guy, girdle, the mathematician. Stard himself, the death. Yeah.

He apparently-- and I still, I've tried to read about it a million times,

but he proved that the axioms, mathematics were founded upon, contradicted the mathematics himself, which just like-- they wanted math to be this concrete physical reality that, like, wanted to take it almost away from like-- they didn't want anything kind of like, airy about it.

Like, no, this is hard physical science. And he kind of out of nowhere. I was like, yeah, no, it's not improved. He's using their own axioms. And then they were like, fuck you dude.

And he just started himself with it. Yeah, but apparently everyone was like, yeah, fuck, he was right. It sucks to be the guy who's right, but totally ostracized for it. Like, yeah. Couldn't be worse.

But anyway, so yeah. So part of it would be looking at all those examples through history. And like some can we recognize a pattern so we can start getting better and recognizing these people. Yeah.

And then on the flip side would be like, how do we-- how do we tell when you're full of shit? How do you tell when you're full of shit? Well, the fun flip side is just going through the-- I mean, there's got to be no shortage of people who are like,

I got this. And then it just turned out they're one million percent-- All of really fl--

Yeah, we're almost always wrong.

So that's the thing. How do you? So if there are better or faster way of figuring out-- Figure it out you're wrong. Yeah.

Except for that one time when you actually did get it right. Yeah. And then the problem too is that because I've seen-- I forget where I was watching, but I was watching--

People were just like talking to one of those YouTube videos. Where they kind of reference that whole thing about how-- Look, everything we know now will be wrong for the most part.

“And how do we kind of accelerate that or factor that in?”

It's like you really can't. You just have to like wait to definitely know you're wrong. So that's why I'm wondering. Is there a better algorithm? Yeah.

Also, it'd just be fun.

You know, your uncle is certain that he's always always right.

Yeah. It's good gift for the uncle. Yeah. That would be that actually just a title alone. They'll probably be like, yep.

Put it down. It's basically a beach read for dudes, right? Yeah, I remember it's slightly related. But I grew up doing construction. Like, a lot of family construction businesses.

And I remember my job this one time was like, I had to run a tamper and compact dirt and gravel. I think he was like a 97% compaction rate. That's what I needed. So I'm going over like 93, 92, 95.

And my-- a lot of my uncles are just, you know, a dark construction for a long time. So like, there's a thing with construction workers and engineers. We're construction workers and engineers. We're construction workers.

We'll be like, you don't know shit, man. They do it every time. Yeah. It's fucking-- you don't know. You-- you couldn't possibly use your book's march to like,

you know, your blueprints are wrong.

There's like, there's always going back and forth.

So this is just this young kid. He was the engineer probably interned. And he's just-- he had every time I would compact it, he had a stick that's probed down into it and measure the compaction rate.

“I remember my uncle just stood over from the whole time and be like,”

"So dumb, what are you doing?" It was kind of just like going back and forth. And eventually, I remember him. He'd be like, "You never going to get 97." He was like, "I know for a fact, you never any 97." And then I remember I ran the tamper like backwards across the thing.

And then we ended up getting 97. He was just like, "That thing's dumb." But the point is that, yeah, as you get older, there's a-- I would say almost sexual pleasure and being right.

I'm telling you, dude, all of my-- my dad's-- if you talk to my dad's or any of my uncles, huge chance they're going to hit you with a story about a time they were right. And the other guy was wrong.

And it's just a five-minute story where in the end, like, "Yeah, so yeah, I was fucking right." So-- Absolutely, it's a guy thing. It is.

It's awesome. Telling a story about a time you were right. It's a fucking-- it's such that you didn't say in premise. Right, right. But yeah, so yeah, you just-- you want to be the one

who bucked all the idiots and got proven, like instinctually right somehow. But it's-- those people are rare, then. You had to be alive for it. That's the thing that kills me.

I always read about these guys.

Like, I always think of Emerson. He was out in the woods just writing about stuff. Emerson was like, "What a fucking dumb ass." Like, this is the worst guy ever. And then it just-- just 200 years later,

or whatever, they're like, "That's the guy's genius." And almost all the geniuses are told they're wrong. So it's like, how can we spot those guys faster? I don't think you can. Because I feel like once you even start looking for it,

you're like, yeah, we're-- it'll just be more-- it'll just be more group-think, and then it would be a fake genius. So group-think. Basically, it's like, like, a hate group-think.

Yeah. I've actually fucking hate it. And you see it everywhere. You see scientific institutions, or something like the worst examples of group-think.

Yeah. No, it's really bad. I mean, I luckily-- it was like a cool experience. I don't know if I really did anything with it. But I got to go back to school in my 30s.

I went back. I got a master's in social work, which was like, you know, I would say save your 50 grand, whatever month. Yeah.

It's just-- I do it. I do it. Anyone-- anyone-- you can get one. Anyone can get one. You can go get a master's in social work.

It'd be basic. It's whatever.

“But I remember just as an adult going back to school”

and really seeing those dynamics at play in terms of group-think, where it's like, it'd be a question that you could literally say anything. And they'd be like, oh, I've never considered-- like, they were-- it wasn't like biology

that they were wrong. And I just-- No one would raise their hands, ever. Like, ever. And then to be like, just to--

there were certain, you know, things that, if you said, the place would spas. And like, I just watched in real time, people just be like, I'm just going to just agree and just get along.

And yeah, it's kind of terrifying when you think about it. I would say 85% of people-- it might be even 90. We'd just be like, I don't even-- don't even bother me with thinking.

I just want everyone to be cool. And I'm just going to just sit back and chill to help people dictate what's going on from now. Yeah. And the internet may--

like, it becomes harder to be an outlier. Like, it'll find the group will find you now. Yeah. It's harder to escape the group than it used to be. Yeah.

And I can see that. So did those social work skills? So, do you use those for stand-up, for interviews? Do you use those in your daily life? Was it useful that way?

You know what it was useful for? I had-- I was like about to have a kid. Um, right when I went to social work school. And I got like there while there, I got definitive proof that you're not supposed to leave your kid

in the crib to cry it out. That's like that common folk was them. Like, let them cry it out. They'll be fine. They're like, that's bad.

And just like, definitely don't hit your kids

if you can help it. And I've ever just been like, all right. Those are two actually decent facts that I have, you know, on the record. Because you hear it all the time.

They're like, they'll be fine. Let them cry it out. And you know, if I had to tap into my collective wisdom of like family and friends, they'd be like, yeah, it's totally fine.

“Then you-- I remember at school, they were like,”

no, that's just the baby giving up. And I'm like, fuck, that's so sad. That's so sad. I remember that. I remember those sleepless nights being like,

we can't let them cry it out. Same here. Like, it is hard to hear that. Like, how long? Every instinct your body is like,

go rescue that kid. Yeah. You can do like two minutes or here and there. But when they're just like, let them do it. It's just like, yeah, it's not good.

No, good thing. So I got that from me. I didn't hear that. But I didn't hear that. And then I also, for me, was just cool.

I was like, just like a personal thing where I-- I remember being like, oh, these are like, this is a master's part. I thought I was going to be around like literal geniuses. Because I was like, masters.

Like, step away from doctors and like doctors. You know? And I was-- for me, it was kind of like a peep behind the curtain where I was like, okay, academia is not the-- you know, there's a lot of smart people,

obviously in different fields doing a lot of stuff. And even in that field, I'm sure.

I never remember thinking like, oh, it's like a--

it was like a self-limiting belief kind of thing where I was like, I couldn't possibly hang around.

“You know, I was thinking it was like, I don't know.”

I just thought people would be like brilliant beyond belief. And it's like, no, a lot of these people at the top of certain things are-- there's some very, very smart people. A lot of them are just pretty normal too. And it's, you know, so for me, it was kind of like, oh,

you can kind of-- you can do anything. Yeah, I've had that experience a few times too. I kind of feel like the process of maturing adulthood is just getting each stage and going, like, oh, everyone here is just as dumb as I am, right?

I mean, as well do the stuff, 'cause it's like-- That was the-- that you just summed up my answer. It was ever-- I was like, okay, he's never was pretty fucking dumb too. That's good. I thought I was-- right.

I thought I was going to be around, like, perfect people. And then it was just like, yeah, no, this is-- This is just-- Right, yes. Yeah, every time I'm like, oh, nope.

I'm not hearing it there. It's every rock I lift. I only have a bunch of videos. More idiots, great. Yeah.

Yeah. So-- but no, man, I'm excited for you. I can't wait to-- I'm going to finish this. I cracked into it last night. And I highly recommend it in defense of sunlight.

It's-- again, I like the cold water stuff too. I'm big on the cold, and it's, you know, almost like, people can watch it online and they're, oh, more stuff about it. It's like, just try it. That's the big thing.

It's like, actually try it. It's super simple. I think to put into place. And I don't know. There's no downside.

It's like, go outside.

“Now, for me, it's like, I can be outside in the shade.”

And I'm thinking about little green photons hitting my skin. Amazing. I'm going, yeah. I am fucking peaceful now. This stuff works.

And so, I think this is a great book. I appreciate you writing it. Is there anything else you have to say? Any more razzled asle facts or insights?

I mean, there's always their shit killing me.

I can't wait. I can't wait to talk about that. Um, all right. This is a terrible thing to leave everyone with. But it's just like on a bunch of studies showing that citrus consumption

raises your risk of skin care. Okay, hold on. I saw that. So there was in the attached emails. I thought they were like talking points.

I've read it. I'm like, I can't understand the goddamn stuff. So they were saying citrus. Yeah. What?

Yeah. I skimmed it being like, he's probably to say in citrus is good for yourself. Citrus is linked to skin cancer. It's linked to skin cancer. It's linked to skin cancer.

By multiple studies. So what do you take from that? I eat fewer grape fruits these days. Really? This is what I take from it.

What? It's the combination. Yeah. If I'm going to get a bunch of sun, I won't eat like a grapefruit. I just planted a lime and lemon tree and comfort.

There's this thing called margarita burn that like, people are well known. Like people go, you know, really? They go to the traffic and pound the margaritas. And then they get extra fried the next day.

What? From all the citrus. From all citrus. Yeah. But then if you don't have this vitamin C, you get scurvy.

All right. You don't even scurvy. Okay. But you're saying, you definitely won't get scurvy. That's good.

But they're saying vitamin C can with sun can. It's not vitamin C. It's this thing called sorelands that are in the citrus. Fuck. Yeah.

That sucks. I think a little is fine. But don't pound that whole bag of oranges, maybe. I'm due to look, I'll be honest, I'm not worried about skin cancer. I'm really not.

That just doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Not many people die of skin cancer. That's what they're saying. Like you get all the other cancers or you die so much more frequently. Yeah, colon cancer, breast cancer.

Bad. Those are bad. Lung cancer the biggie. That'd be terrible. Yeah, my dad has skin cancer.

They just like blasted his face with lasers. Yeah. They were called a Michael Jackson for a while. Yeah. I mean, it's not.

It's no fun. We shouldn't. I mean, I'm going to downplay it. I'll be honest. I'm going to fucking downplay it.

I'm going to be downplaying it.

Yeah, you're not on me. I'm going to fucking downplay it.

“I get white spots on me every now and again.”

I go, yeah, photon. So it gives a shit. Let him fucking in there. I'll heal it up.

Oh, I always sell myself five times.

I need to love a cure for that. I'll be fine. I need this. We'll do it.

Hope your website gets back in order.

Yeah. I appreciate the ins. The bad thing of just this brand. That's my new mantra, so that's a mix. Well, thanks for having me.

This was great. Thank you for coming around. Really good.

“Watch new episodes of Matt and Shane's Secret Podcast on Spotify.”

Do it. Do you have any connections? No. Just like that. Wow.

And that's easy. Sure. That makes everything automatic. Suddenly I feel like I'm so relaxed. Hold it in your head.

Tie a sponge with like that.