1333: Chris Kolbe | Is Your Gym Shirt Slowly Poisoning You?

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

“Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.”

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

“Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.”

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category.

Now the "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. The "Chisit" category is a new "Chisit" category. If you're new to the show or want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our starter packs. These are collections of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation,

psychology and geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, Crime and Colts and more. It'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show. Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, most of us have spent the last decade trying to clean up everything that goes in or on our bodies.

We're buying organic food, filtering water like we're prepping for some kind of apocalypse bunker, interrogating our cookware, side-eyeing fragrances, reading skincare labels like we're defusing a bomb and yet every day, we wrap ourselves in mystery fabric from the global petrochemical confetti cannon and go, "Yeah, this seems fine. Your gym shirt, your underwear, your socks, your leggings, your golf polo.

All that stuff pressed against your skin for hours while you sweat, move over heat, marinade, and pretend that moisture-wicking doesn't sound like something. A wizard says before poisoning an entire village. Today, we're asking how much of the modern wardrobe is smart performance engineering, how much is marketing sorcery, and how much is just plastic with a better publicist.

To be clear, this is not a burn your closet, move into a year and start weaving hemp underwear under a full moon kind of episode. This is about what's real, what's hype, what brands should be proving, and what normal people

can actually do without taking out a second mortgage to replace the freaking socks.

Here to help us sort the science from Scamsist Chris Colby, who spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which means he's not some wellness influence or yelling at polyester from a cold plunge. He's helped build this world, and now he's asking whether the industry solved performance while creating a whole new set of problems.

So today we're getting into forever chemicals, synthetics, sweat, microfibers, greenwashing, biomaterials, jade, crab shells. Yes, apparently the future of clothing may involve jewelry and seafood scraps. And the five-minute closet audit that will help you make smarter choices without panic buying $400 underpants from a guy named River.

This episode is brought to you in part by hypernatural clothing, the founder of which I'm speaking with here today on the show. Here we go with Chris Colby. So Chris you spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which is like a whole last career, I would say.

What's something sitting in the average person's closet that you now look at in a completely

different way? One of the things I'm always really amazed to find is when I talk to people

“and I ask them, like, do you wear polyester nylon spandex?”

And everyone's like, yeah, I think so. Whatever workout thing. And I realize that when you ask them, do you wear plastic on your body? And they're like, no. They look at their hands, I'm like, yeah.

I'm wearing spoiler alert, your shirt, and then I think only plastic pants. So there's some kind of jogger, which when they get wet, it runs off immediately. And I'm like, oh, these moisture wicking, I don't even know. They're waterproof-ish and breathable. There's no way that they're not plastic, basically.

I think is what I'm saying. And so when you ask people, do you realize polyester is plastic? And plastic is coated in chemicals to give it certain performance characteristics. The overwhelming population does not know is not aware. And then you ask them, again, like, do you realize that these things on your body have adverse effects

when you're wearing them, particularly if you're sweating in them? And they're horrified to know that it actually leaches into their body. And so most people respond with, I know plastic and polyester is bad for the environment,

Yeah, so I looked this up and you might have to correct me because I did it with Jackie B.T. So that's the caveat. That's the asterisk by me having said I looked this up. I ran some of the studies he sent through the machine as well, and I want to clarify something. So the plastic itself, it doesn't look like that leaches. It looks like the chemicals they spray all over the plastic.

“That's what I guess leaches are goes into your skin.”

But the plastic itself, the fibers, they're pretty durable. Well, they do start to break down, but it seems like the stuff worth freaking out about, at least in the short term, is that they spray all kinds of stuff like you said on it to make it waterproof to make it more durable to make it, I don't know, softer or shinier. Whatever the heck those things do, that stuff is when it heats up and gets wet from sweat,

starts to stick around.

The answer is, it's both.

Plastic is petrochemicals. To make plastic soft and pliable requires chemicals that have like the elites in them, which are hormone disruptors. And that's just to make it soft, right? And then there's all these other chemicals that go along with plastic.

“That's what they really do to make it soft, because those are in shampoo and stuff too.”

Yeah, it's in a whole lot of things. And so just inherently plastic in a peril requires chemicals. And then when we market that as a quick dry or wrinkle-free or water-resistant, those are topical chemicals that are applied to the surface of the plastic. And those things come off first.

I see. And so you're getting, I would call it like a layered cake of chemicals. Yeah, and then we activate them in different things we do when it's on our body. And so that's where people don't entirely understand that we've been sold over the last 30 years that it takes plastic to have performance. Yes, I want to get into that in a little bit.

It's funny you mentioned the failets, because Dr. Shannon Swan, who you probably never heard

over no, that was episode 658, she was fascinating. And I never had so many emails from people, my friend, in fact, one of my friends here in New York, said, I replayed that episode like 50 times, because we threw away everything in the house that had these, and I was like, gosh, I hope she's right about this. Because she went through his every bathroom, and they're trying to have kids. So he's like, I'm getting rid of every hormone

endocrine disrupting thing that I have, and he showed me essentially a laundry basket full of shampoo bottles, cosmetics, because they're in everything. If you don't buy the one that doesn't have that in there, and the other thing that I love about her was, she said the words "gooch"

“and taint on my show. Even though she's 90 years old, did you see her not flicks special?”

I haven't yet. I think you, or someone in your camp, sent me the link to that, and I had a bookmark to watch. Yeah, it looks really good. There's some really good information that's come out more recently, and this would be one of them is the plastic detox, a Netflix, which is about China. It's one. She's great. And I'm still 12 years old and mentally, so I laughed at her references there. Yeah, you start talking about the genitals and the elite syndrome. Yeah, it was

some sort of syndrome or something. Yeah, there's a Thalates syndrome, which it shows up in hormone disruption in the womb. It actually stuns the develop of male genitalia. So these are the thing with Thalates. It's in almost anything synthetic, and it's both the plastic and the things that are being put on top of it to turn it color, to make it perform, to make it soft, all of those things. And so with all of that, this is getting into our body, and it's causing all kinds of havoc.

The industry is kind of solved for performance, but then created a much worse problem than, oh my gosh, I have a cotton shirt on at the gym. Yeah, so I think if I was a sort of over my arc of my career, like in the 1990s, what I found is cotton was still the dominant fiber in the market. It was still the majority of what we were purchasing consuming, and it was roughly over 55 to 60 percent of the market. In 2026, polyester is the dominant fiber. And polyester nylon aesthetics

in total is like 69 percent of the market now. This is shifted over 35 years to such a significance

that natural fibers are really becoming the minority of what we wear. My closets, there's a leather jackets, there's cotton t-shirts that have, I don't know, stretchy stuff in it, which I assume is plastic, and then almost all of my pants are these comfy, like at leisure, plastic, sheeting, joggers, I guess, before we demonize synthetic fabrics, what did they genuinely solve for customers? Because there's a reason they became popular, and there's a reason my closet

is full of different colors of this exact same pair of pants. So what happened is, really, the mid-2000s, we started being sold really that performance was technical, like fabrics, like polyester nylon, the sheen, the durability, the wicking, all these things became common knowledge, and they became a real way to market the products as performance. And so everybody says, I need this for wicking, I need this, it was being applied to everything, and it was both

the synthetic materials, but also the chemicals that were being applied to everything,

became like a marketing growth vehicle for a pair of companies. It worked very well. You think about

your doctor's pants and your wrinkle-free dress shirts and all these things, just chemicals being put on top of whatever the fabric might be. And the mid-2000s, if you remember, under armor had

“the campaign that came out cotton is in the enemy. Yeah, I don't remember that, but I've read”

about that when I was prepping this episode, and I remember under armor, right? I remember, I have these white hains t-shirts that I wore all the time. I was like, I'm replacing all of these with, I don't know, Nike dry fit or whatever the competitor was. And yeah, and then I walked around the gym with a t-shirt three sizes, two small for the next five years. We didn't have demonizing natural fabrics, and we kept putting more, more performance chemicals and things on and marketing that

way. To the point where the athlete's your broom that came over the last 20 years, you think about

yoga, running, high rocks, crossfit, all these things that really exploded all required performance materials and products. And the big brands that were known for their athletic process and health and wellness became synonymous with these fabrics. And it pushed it to a point where the consumer would believe that is the only thing I can work out in. And it is the only thing that works, it is what makes me higher-performing athlete. And a lot of that is just marketing.

The idea of working out in cotton pants shorts and a regular shirt in my mind due to marketing akin to, I have to go to the gym, but the only shoes I have with these pattern leather shoes that I used to wear at my law firm, but working out in those, right? It's weird and you would go there and your feet would sweat and you think, oh, these are not

“ideal, but at least I'm in the gym. That's how I would feel about wearing cotton pants at the gym”

because how dare you. You can't afford to go to Lulu Lemon and get some, I don't know, what are the Kung Fu pants to work out in? Yeah, so there's a little bit of like you're not legitimate if you don't have what to blow. But the thing is, it's as much a look as it is a real tangible performance. So you ask what synthetics can do well. There are things that there are known for, right, compression, strength, thing about sports, pros, leggings. These are things that

synthetic materials do well because they are strong and durable. They can pull you in, suck you up, do all these things that natural things don't do. And they also, they make your butt look good. So there's vanity in all this. And I think we were sold really hard on this to a fall. And so what I see is we've lost the plot because what we're thinking we're doing hot yoga, running clubs, gym workouts, sleep health, underwear, honor bodies to make ourselves better.

It's actually making us worse. And so there's a real negative downside to all of this that is not talked about. And there's a real trade-off for what we think is performance in terms of our health. So the chemicals that are sprayed on there are the main trade-offs.

“Also, there's environmental trade-offs. I assume it's easier to, what is it called life cycle analysis?”

What you have a cotton t-shirt is probably way less of a pollutant probably biodegrade's way faster than a pair of plastic joggers like I'm wearing right now. Yeah. Anything that's made

from plastic is worse. It's going to be around till the end of time, basically. And it's not just

to see an ability. It's just worse across the board. And generally, if it's bad for you, it's bad for the environment. I mean, vice versa. And so I got into this project that I'm in today called hypernatural because there are better biobased ways to make performance. There's safer ways to make sustainable materials remarkable. You can actually give the tangible benefits. And when I discovered this, later in my career, I realized it's as much a marketing problem

as it is a product problem. And so there's a real opportunity to show people that actually going back to nature isn't a trade-off. It's actually better for you. Yeah. So that was kind of late. Next set of questions is okay. So what am I giving up if I don't wear plastic shirts anymore? I actually've been wearing this hypernatural shirt. I thankfully managed to remember to wear to this interview. In my mind, there's no difference between wearing this and wearing what I usually would

wear to the gym or around during the day. I think the main difference is this looks like a normal shirt, but actually is also performance-esque. Whereas the other stuff, like I said, it's three, you know, just sort of you on compression. I mean, that's all you get with those things. Yeah. You hit on the truth, which is it looks. Yeah, it looks normal. I swear it's normal. Now, when nobody thinks I'm going to the gym after this because of the shirt. Right. Which could

be seen as a negative for someone who thinks they're getting performance. Yeah, sure. But it also could be seen as smart. By someone says, I could actually wear this today. Tonight, work out in it, and wear tomorrow. Yeah. This is exactly what I've been doing. This probably is TMI, but I'm not a wash-miclos every day. Kind of person. I wash them when they're dirty. Yeah. I wear it during the day. Maybe I go out again at night or I change at night and then I wear this the next night. And then I

work out it and then it goes in the laundry. I don't just wear it for 10 minutes or go to dinner

what that we don't admit, which is smell the armpits instead of you can wear it again. This has

done a pretty damn good job. This is up there with what is that marino wool, where it just doesn't

“really smell that bad unless you really take it to desk. The thing is, you're speaking to I think”

what is going to be the future of our industry, which is people are going to start buying things that are better quality, have more versatility, but they can actually last longer. I hope you're right, man, because the fast-fashioned thing I've done shows about this, it's depressing. You go to these stores. I don't want to mention any names or brands. But the ones that sell stuff, they have 8,000 skews a year or whatever, when you look at the environmental damage from

these things and you look at people who love shopping and they buy hundreds of things per year for eight dollars, right? I would love to think that people are going to spend more on something that just lasts a really long time. I like to do that, but right now you walk into a department store, fancy European department store with red font. You buy 10 things and then you just, I don't know, you wear them during your trip and you go, all right, half of these are unraveling already. Donate.

Yeah, and I think we've gone through a high disposable cycle when it comes to peril since 1990. And that's a big part of why synthetics have grown the way they have because they're cheap. They're easy to produce. You don't have to grow them, right? You don't have to work with a farmer. You don't have to deal with cotton prices and all these things. Oil is fairly stable until recently, but the idea that it's just cheap, economical and it's really profitable to sell these things.

And so you can sell like the sheans of the world have built their businesses on just selling the cheapest, most dirty things at a really attractive aesthetic and just train them through and then they go into the landfill. And so what I realize really on and starting my business is that sustainability actually doesn't sell. You're going to say, hey, this shirt costs four times as much as this other shirt, but it's going to last maybe five or even 10 times longer and look better and

perform better. Some people just go, yeah, but I want three different colors. So nothing's usually comes down to just cost or like no way that's expensive and then they buy five items that cost way more in last half the time, but they're not doing the math. I'm not doing the math either. Most of the time, I don't care. Most people don't. What's happening with sustainability and you're starting to see this week, Everlane was sold to Sheen. I don't know if you saw them. Really?

Oh, that's kind of a bummer. Yeah. So radical transparency goes into radical no transparency. It's one of those things where the machine doing a dirty G is a better business bottle today. The businesses that set up to run a more ethical business, more transparent sustainable model are suffering because of inflation, costing increases and they're making it a very difficult

“to be profitable. And the only way you can really get things of quality to scale is that you”

got to make it commercial. That's disappointing. Since you mentioned that brand, they used to sponsor my show a few years ago. My closet drawer is full of Everlane t-shirts and I thought they're whole thing was we care about the life cycle of this. And I remember those were in some ways similar, right? They were like high performance, but looked nice enough to wear out. And I guess you're right, it's just there's more money in creating something that has a huge

margin, but is actually crap. Or it's soon to be garbage the second and arrives at your doorstep.

People don't realize that companies like Sheen and the big fast fashion companies, even like the do brands that are copying high-end designer and bringing it in in a cheaper price. A lot of these are factory direct models. And so what happens is they were able to import goods with no duty straight from the factory to the consumer. And that made Sheen and other people really, really successful my last five years. Now, the problem with that is when you send a direct from the factory,

you have no idea what's on it. There's very little quality control. The factories get to decide what chemical finishes it uses. And a lot of them are just using recycled finishing from down the road from other minds. What does that, what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? They're using recycled chemicals. And you can buy it on a secondary market and you can apply it to your products to give it wrinkle-free or have it travel safe. But when you open up those packages

coming into factories, often there's a smell. Oh, I was going to ask about the smell. So I always

joke about this with my wife. I go, hey, I should open this outside because this is full of Chinese factory air. And sometimes you do smell it. It's like a car exhaust was in the bag.

“I don't know if that's what's really in the Chinese factory. But I assume that when you spray”

something and it sits in a box for a month, when your luggage comes off the plane and it kind of vaguely smells like jet fuel, that's what I feel like I'm opening and I kitchen when I open a package from some of these places. Yeah. So that's a huge warning sound. I'm not only just washing it isn't the answer, but you have to understand that there's very little oversight on these products coming in the United States. And in general, the textile fashion industry is one of the most opaque

but food is way more regulated than textiles. I remember there was a big thing about Xinjiang

“cotton. So cotton from Western China, which they thought might have been farmed with forced labor,”

and so they banned it, but it's just basically impossible to find out where your cotton comes

from unless you're going to spend money on some sort of private detective consulting firm to, I don't know, walk your cotton from one farm to the factory to the United States. So when these businesses like ever lane come out, they talk about transparency and traceability, they just cost more. And so you're already a premium brand by just doing that. Think about Patagonia. These brands pay more to do it clean and do it transparent. That is not a good business

model for a lot of people. And so it's much easier to do cheap and dirty and opaque. And that's what the majority of the industry do. So when you smell things that smell, don't smell right, listen to your body. If you're wearing things and you start to get rashes, listen to your body. You know what? Actually, I know people that's happened to you, although I don't know if we blamed the clothing, but that's probably the first place we should have

looked. So in my 30 years in the industry, what I didn't think a lot about until maybe five years ago is what's actually in the products we were making. When the average shopper sees, I don't know, moisture, wicking or anti odor, what's going on under the hood? You say chemicals, but some people are going everything's a chemical Jordan. Even you've said that on your show, which is technically true. But we're talking about industrial chemicals. I want to close the loop here. You said the

chemicals are sometimes recycled. What are they recycled from? Because that also sounds like it could be kind of gross. Yeah, it could be from any industry. So it could come from the mining industry. It could come from other textile off shoots from industrial bases. But these are all industrial manufacturing supplies. So a lot of them are sharing sources, right? And so it isn't necessarily someone that there's inspecting these things to make sure that they're chemically safe for your body.

“Because the truth is, even if they were, we don't know much about the chemicals that are in”

our textiles. We just don't add all from a science perspective. We just don't really know what they do. There's probably been since the 1950s about 100,000 synthetic chemicals created in the world. Yeah, the whole world. It's a long time. It's a lot of chemicals, but yeah. Okay. In about 10,000 of those have been mildly tested for human toxicity. Oh, they don't test all this stuff, mildly tested. As in, we tried it in the person to still alive. So you're talking about somewhere between 80

and 90 percent of the chemicals. We don't really know what the toxicity is in the product that we're

wary. Speaking of clothes with hidden chemistry, here's a quick word from the people who's chemistry with this audience keeps the lights on. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by Better Help. Everybody's got stuff. No matter where you are in life, how successful you look on paper, or how well you think you're holding it all together, challenges come for all of us. And you don't have to just wipe knuckle your way through it.

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may vary by plan. The episode is sponsored and part by AT&T. You know why I love summer? All of those plans we made, they finally make it out of the group chat. Seems like there's more time to fit everybody in. Whatever you've gotten store this summer,

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Dr. Shanna Swan said, "There's stalades in your shampoo and there are endocrine disruptors

“and the industry is kind of just like, "That's okay, just don't eat it."”

Yeah, and so the most regulations that exists in cyber products and textiles is about safe levels of exposure. Not necessarily no, but just safe level of exposure. What's that called the LD50? You can have this much gasoline per year in your cereal. So, when it gets down into the real nitty-gritty of it is, you think that the government or there'd be some body organization globally that would be tracking and managing the risks

profiles of these things like there would be in food, but there's shockingly not, there's no FDA

for clothes, basically. There's not even a label. Oh, really? So all they have to require to put in on

a label for clothing is the very basic information of what it was made with. But if it's less than 2% of the content, you don't have to put it in there. And so that could be chemicals. There's all these things that don't qualify. And so what happens is when you really look at it, the shocky thing

“to me is like the Europeans are leaders in this. They're probably the best in class as far as being”

more rigorous about sort of universal restrictions, productions. And they've banned about 1600 known chemicals on textiles. In candidates, about 400 toxic chemicals that are banned from being on textiles. And those are all allowed here in the United States. In the US, it's 12, which we restrict 1200 to 12. Maybe even less now. Because we seem to be going the other way. Wait. Okay, so if there's only 12, what are they? They must be pretty bad if everyone else has 1,600. And we're

like now these 12 though. So you're starting to hear more about, you know, like this is also part of the opaque problems. Like these are all acronyms and people don't understand chemicals or chemistry, right? But people don't pee fast, right? I've heard of that because it's the forever chemical, God knows what that means. You know, you don't want in your Teflon pants, right? Which is now banned. But you don't really know what's in your leggings. You don't know what's in your wicking. So

“PFAS is a nasty carcinogen. And it does not go. Okay. I didn't realize that I thought everyone”

was just like, it's a forever chemical. It never goes away. And I thought it's so what? I probably

have a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in my stomach that I chewed on as a kid that are still in there. But I didn't realize it was also a carcinogen and it lasts forever. It's all of those things. Since PFAS forever chemicals, we know we don't want it in our pants. We know we don't want it in our food. But it's in our leggings. And it's in anything that has quick drying, wriggle free. It's dangerous. And so BPAs, BPS, these are our things that are

microplastics. These are things that we know we don't want in our food. But they are in our clothing. And so these things are slipping through the system because we want the performance. We want soft plastic. We want the ability to die our materials a nice color. And so when you put it all together, is we just don't know what's on our body. And there's a lot of evidence and studies are showing that when these things are on your body, you create heat friction and moisture.

It literally activates these chemicals and solvents on the materials. They go into your sweat. When you say activate, you just mean it breaks down the bond between the chemical and the fabric and it just goes wherever. And so there's a term called porosity, right? Our skin is porous. And it takes in about 60-65% of what's on it. I didn't know that. I thought the whole point of skin was keeping everything out. It does until you break down your microbiome with these

chemicals and it leaves you more exposed. Yeah, it probably keeps out germs in water, but maybe not industrial chemicals that have not something you found in nature generally. We just don't know what it's actually doing to us. It's like a low dose toxicity every day. And when you sweat great heat friction and moisture, it literally activates these things to the point where they release into your sweat and then they go back into your body. So the analogy I was used with my kids is

would you heat your food in the microwave and plastic? And if you're an 80s kid, the answer is

sure, why not? What could it possibly do? But could go wrong. It's no different on your body when you write these things up. It literally causes these things to loosen and come into your body. So if you wear workout clothes, do not work out in them at all. The first thing I would say is if you wear polyester nylon or spandex in an exercise, sweat environment, stop. That's going to be a tough one, Chris. Hey, if you have all those nice workout clothes that you spent thousands of

dollars on, make sure you never work out in them at all. Just wear them to the office. In an air condition comfortable environment only. There's practical steps here. Obviously when it's 60, 70% of the market, it's in everybody's closet. But it doesn't have to be this way. And I do think it starts with education and awareness and knowing that there are certain things you do not want on your skin all day long. There's certain things that you don't want on the most

sensitive parts of your body. You think about genitalia, out of the arms, neck, these are all areas

why someplace that sweats a lot would be. But those are your cues. If you're sweating there, it's sensitive. Those are the areas I would avoid if at all possible wearing anything that's highly synthetic or branded as some level of performance. I hate being doom loopy in these episodes and I understand there's concerns with synthetic fabrics. Most people are going to slowly, either not doing anything about it for now or ever, or slowly phase them out. But do I have

to go back to wearing something, my grandmother, I don't know, made on a loom? What are we going to do about this? You mentioned before, is there a trade-off between some of these natural fibers and performance because I don't want to work out in wool pants? I don't want to necessarily have to become omish or a quaker in order to function in modern society without dying from chemical

“exposure. I think I just having been on the side of the business side of this is that you have”

to have commercial solutions that people want to wear. And sometimes perfection is the enemy of getting it right. And I think there's a lot of people in our industry that want to get it right.

They want to do well. That's good news. But it's never been harder to do it. So the reality is you

have to have things that are commercial that are economical for people to really make a change. And so I'm in of the mind that you can build businesses that are both innovative, clean, and commercial that people want to buy most of the time. And you still might want to buy some other things that maybe they're not perfect. It's kind of like food, right? There's sometimes you're going to want to have a bag of cheetos, right? But at the end of the day, you know that isn't

the right thing to do, right? And you're aware of it. Yeah, to advice. You try to make the better choices most of the time. And I think apparel is exactly the same way as food. And so the more you understand and know, the more choice you're given that are commercially viable, the more likely the market's going to shift. Because the government isn't going to fix it for you. Everything being cheaper and more readily available isn't in itself going to fix it. What's going to change

it is consumers demanding, having things that are transparent and clean, safe, but also feel good.

“Look good. They do the job that you wanted to do. And so the ability to do that is the key. And so”

there are things that exist today that can be better options than wearing plastic under body. Yeah, nobody wants to work on a burlap sack, even if that's the most sustainable option. It's not going to happen. So it does have to be consumer-led. So what is a responsible brand

need to do? Because auditing your suppliers and, I don't know, having third party testing of your

fabric, this stuff, it's so much more work than it is to just, I don't know, pump out some sludge and mold it into a pair of shoes or a shirt. Yeah, it starts with baking, real commitment to do things naturally or from a biobased perspective. So we have a biobased technology where we're taking regenerative ways from natural sources and we're repurposing it into a new fiber that has enhanced abilities above just regular cotton and has enhanced abilities

better than just marino. Can you explain that a little bit? You said you're repurposing waste.

“At first glance, that sounds like something you would not want to wear. It's recycled waste from”

a plant, but don't know, it's all natural. So don't worry about it. I've got some all natural ways that I wouldn't want to wear. In the spirit of sustainability, a lot of innovation is happening in this category that call cellulosex. They're coming from bamboo or you hear things coming from regenerative cotton. You think they're basically scrap waste and they're being broken down and put it to a solution within their added in other ingredients, like we use kietin, which comes

from shellfish, crab shells. We use things like Jadestone, which comes from the waste of Jade mining. And we have a technology that allows it to get down to a nano size level. So it's so small that when we put it to the solution and we turn it back into a solid fiber that they're inherently built into the fiber. Versus it being sprayed on as a chemical, they're natural ingredients built into this fiber. And then we can combine this fiber with other natural products. We use the Pima cotton

in ours, which is the best cotton in the world, strong dies well growing the United States, expensive. Yeah, because it's grown in the United States. But it's the best. Where do we grow

cotton in the United States? Arizona, California, a lot of Texas. I never thought about that. Yeah,

almost all of the Pima come to the United States. And it is literally the best. I've been using it for years when I was at lands and in other places. It's really phenomenal fiber. It's actually so strong. But in the 1940s, they used it on the sidewalls of car tires. Really, wow. What makes this as a tangent. But what makes strong cotton is it a different kind of cotton seed or is it the processing of whatever standard cotton that just makes it better? It's all genetics, right,

strands of cotton have longer fibers. And so Pima is one of the longest fibers. And so what

And so this is kind of nature's best example of how you can make high quality, high performing

“cotton naturally from breeding different kinds of cotton seeds over centuries. Yeah, it's”

sure. It's soil. It's all of those things. And so on top of that with our fiber, you're now looking fine with cotton of choice of clean cotton's better cotton, which we do. We also can combine it with wool. We can combine it with hemp. And there's all these other things we can blend it with.

You're kind of developing a third ways of where you're going just back to cotton and wool,

which is great. But this is better. And you can avoid plastic chemicals and unknown car synergians by just going natural. So better material in many ways negates the necessity for the chemical to mimic that same function. From the sound of if you have a long cotton fiber that soft and smooth, you don't need to spray that garment with something that makes it feel softer and smoother. Yeah. So you can avoid the chemical applications and your building functionality

naturally into the fiber. And so things like kaitan, which is pretty interesting, like the shellfish properties are natural biopolymers, which are antibacterial. And they're also antimicrobial. So they resist odor. So the shirt you're wearing, you could wear time and time over again because of the kaitan. Yeah. I wore it for a week without washing, just to see how long can I wear this thing before it starts to sink? It was like six days. It does work, but what's

cool is it's doing it without chemicals. And so the jadestone we put in also known in Chinese medicine for centuries as a healing antiflomerate. Yeah. I mean, that's a little woo for me. Go ahead, but that's a little bit like, okay, jadestone. Yeah. My chakras are aligned over here, but that's not what I'm going for. Well, we chose it for actually more practical reasons. Jadestone is actually thermoregulating. And so it actually has a cooling functionality to it. So you can regulate

your skin temperature up to about five degrees cooler, just naturally. And it's pulling heat away from your skin. And so you get this circulation effect without having to have, again, a chemical application to give you the performance. So these are all things where nature, if you find ways to repurpose it, you're taking waste in your creating natural performance in a whole new way. And this is

I call it the third way because most people don't know about man-made synthetics or celluloseics,

“but we know 10 cell and modell. That's what those are. We have our own version of that. It's a patent”

pending on it that has our own 88 different ingredients. We put into it, but they're all coming from natural biobase sources. See if your own fabric here on proprietary fabric. It's the lowest level it's a fiber. So the fiber we're making fiber in a way that can become a fabric and it can become a full product and we can put it with so many different things. And the idea is that because they're biobase materials is the future. How do you invent a fiber? Is that something you did or you get to hire

some serious scientists to come up with a new fiber? Yeah. So my partner is a material science expert he owns his own mill. And so we work with everyone from the cotton farms to making the fiber, to making the yarn, to making the fabrics and even the products. So we do the whole thing. And so when I say the fashion industry as it opaque supply chain, we know the farmers. We know the mill. We know where the fibers being made. We know all of these things. We know what's being put into it

exactly. And so that's how you get trust. That's how you get verification. Now we also do

“certifications because that's how you should be doing this in this industry. What does that mean?”

That's another company that's not you examines the material. Yeah. So we do everything's third

party lab test. So we've lab tested improved the cooling 99.9 percent anti-bacterial

and anti-microbial. What does that mean? It can't kill 99.9 percent of the bacteria on it. That would be like hand sanitizer. It does want it's on the fiber. So the fiber itself nullifies any and this is why you don't get odor, right? Okay. I just thought maybe my hygiene was decent. But no. Yeah. It's a proof point when people like wear it for days and weeks and they're like, yeah, it literally works. And we also test our stuff with third party for chemical safety, too.

So there's Okatex 100 which is the gold standard in textiles that would say that this is chemically safe. They test the final in product, right? So wherever it went along the whole supply chain, they test the final product to say this is chemically safe. So Okatex is one way for the consumer to know that you're getting something that's clean. We also use blue-sign dies. Basically it's a type of die stuff and process that says this has done responsibly because the dies are actually

the worst part of the chemicals that are in your clothes. Really, why is that? So there's all kinds of dies but dies is the original chemistry in our industry. It goes back to the an industrial revolution and die color was created by chemists trying to solve polio and it created a color

a virgin in the dies and the die is trying color when they created the color green, they're using arsenic and copper and it was killing people in the industrial revolution. And the people in the factories were having all these lesions. So you could just see the toxicity

right away. But over time what happened is things were basically swept under the rug,

and over time things became a little bit more regulated like they are now in Europe, but when synthetics came on the market, the toxicity in the dies required to make plastic turn of color, they use this thing they call azo dies and azo dies are the most toxic dies and they're what's needed to die plastic a color. I see. Wow, I can't believe they used arsenic in copper if the green not so lucky anymore. I guess you only find those things out the hard way

when you have factory workers that don't know spontaneously dying from preventable. Oh, gosh, yeah, people say, well, just go back to organic botanical dies. And those are also not so commercial because they fade. They don't hold up over time so people think it's bad quality. And so the thing with dies is if you go with natural fibers, the dies can be more safe. They can also be more regulated by things like dots in okatex and blue sign, but there is no safe level with synthetics.

There is no safe level for dying a polyester nylon spandex garment because these azo dies is what's required is they're just toxic and they have all the things BPA, PFAS, BPS that you don't want

in your body. It's crazy. I always have work in progress, but food you can buy or organic or whatever

you know, other healthy food skin care got cleaned up. That was kind of a thing, especially 10 years ago or so. Hey, make sure you don't have micro beads or whatever in your shower gel, cookware got scrutinized with the Teflon pans and everything. Why do you think clothing is escaped for so long? Clothing kind of got a pass until now ish. It's such a huge problem. And it's one of those things where the fashion apparel industry is like a $2 trillion economy.

It's big. And because the global supply chains and the networks that it requires to make it

“are international, it's very hard to regulate. And so I think the consumers generally”

have overlooked it in the big apparel companies have been okay with that because it's more

economic to do it the way we're currently doing it. I also think it's just emotionally harder

to detox your closet than it is a pantry. If I throw away a bunch of shampoo, I might be like, oh, man, that was kind of expensive. But if I start throwing away $200 pants, $50 or whatever, I don't know, you can tell I don't buy my own clothes. If you start throwing away a bunch of your pants and shirts, that stains when they're still in good condition, right? Or you're donating on my guess, but still it's like, oh, man, now you got a $2,000 dent in your closet if you've got

a nice amount of clothes. It's not an overnight thing and I doesn't have to be. So I think there's ways to simplify your wardrobe. Look, the things you wear most of the time. It would definitely start with the things that you sweat in, things that you sleep in, and things that you wear close to your body on your skin most of the time. Underwear, your t-shirts, also things that you sleep on, look at your sheets. And so these are things where you do it one bit at a time, just like your

food, right? You walk into all foods, right? You want to buy everything, but you still go to your regular grocery store and there's a little organic such and there and you shop that too. And so I think the ability to know where to focus is a good start finding brands that you can trust that are certified. You know who's behind the brand. Do they control their supply chain? If it's just some faceless company running an algorithm making product and shipping it directly

“from the factor, you should be worried. If you're buying things purely on some functional”

performance criteria, you should be worried. And so these are things you can eliminate right away. And God forbid, you do hot yoga in these things because I've talked to friends for hot yoga instructors and they've talked about women having red dye running down their arm. Oh my god, you might produce her on this show. He's super into hot yoga. But I've done it with them and I want to say most people in there are wearing very minimal amount of clothing because it's LA. You're getting

mud as you chill off that bud. But red dye running down your arm is, that's a gross visual. It doesn't have to be that way. We've been told that we need all of these things for performance. But if the T-shirt you're wearing can do three or four different things for you, isn't that more valuable than a five or six twenty dollar plastic T-s that last less than a year? I would love to have five shirts instead of 35 shirts. Stuff adds up over time,

“especially for me personally, every sponsor sends a bunch of stuff. So it's usually too much, right?”

They'll go, oh, what size are you? Medium. And then I end up with 15 workout shirts that are,

have the product five years later. So I've got drawers full of stuff. I've started donating it

obviously because, but I bet you I have 50 shirts, 45 of which I did not purchase. And yeah, they're all red dye run down the arm at some point. So I think the vision for the future is if you so fly your wardrobe and you have that one drawer you open up and you know everything in there is clean. It can do 80% of what you need it to do. You just simplify your life. And then you just

“kind of find ways to iterate on it. And the truth is, for most people over the age of 40,”

you've already got your uniform. I was going to say, man, this is like dad mode. A couple pairs of pants and a couple shirts you wear them every day. Yeah, so those heavy rotation items, those things you're really loyal to just scrutinize those, make sure that they're

clean, their natural based. And then with hypernatural what we're trying to do is show you that

you can still have performance and have it safe. You can still have cooling and breathability and antimicrobial and still have it safe. These are the things that you want on your body. And we're just getting started. But as we get this patent pending, we're going to work with other brands too because the best way to get this to more places is to partner with people that are already heavily synthetic. And offer them, hey, we have a platform in our technology can even

put form of grade zinc oxide into the fiber to give you sun protection. Oh, that's cool. If you didn't have to put chemicals on, yeah, if you're getting it into the fiber, again, most of these chemicals, because the quality's not great. The only last 30 washes and where's it all go out into the water, into the oceans, the forever chemicals in all your clothes are washing

“into everything else too. And so the best way to do this is just go back and start from what you”

were most the time, get good quality, have it last, have it do a lot of different things. And then if you need a range shell to go on a hike, just recognize that thing has PFAS in it. And it probably is going to run off into the environment. This is why even like ski resources stuff have a PFAS problem because a lot of the stuff is running into the environment because there's such a concentration of these types of products. And so you can get PFAS free things from Patagonia now.

But that's newer. That's more recent. And so there's just so much of this stuff that goes into the environment, whether it be the microplastics or the chemicals, they just don't go away. And so that includes your body. I have really thought about that with the ski resorts and everything that completely makes sense. I'm curious what the most misleading words are on clothing tags and labels. Because you said if there's less than was it 1% or 2%, you don't even have to write it on there.

Imagine if that was the case with a food ingredient and it's like, oh, this is just all juice. Except for 1.9% is motor oil, but we don't have to put that on a label. That would be horrific

and never past mustard. But on clothes, that's fine. So we don't have a really rigorous labeling

requirement much like food wood. And so you just put very basic information on there. And so there's something on your label today. If you ask people what they're wearing, most people would turn around, look at their label because they don't know. So if there's things on your label that say polyester nylon, spandex, poly made, acrylic, microfiber, anything that you don't really recognize, just probably synthetic and it's probably petrochemical based. So that's a warning

sign. But you don't really know what's inside those things. And that's the level down that most people will never know, right? Unless you take it to a lab but have it tested. And so you look for certifications that say it's oktax or blue sign and things like that, just to know that okay this is at least it's tested to be safe. But if you see things like cotton, wool, discos, hemp, those are biobased natural things. If you see rayon, that is also biobased. Rayon is

a cellulose material. It's very soft and silky, but it does come from original biobased plants and ingredients. So these are things where if you look at your clothing like you do your food, you'll start to see it differently. And you'll start to understand that when you stop wearing these things, these plastic things around your body and about a month goes by if you keep wearing that t-shirt, you're gonna put on something plastic and your body is gonna have a reaction to it.

And you're gonna know without looking at the label that this isn't natural, it isn't biobased. And so your skin will adapt to not wearing these things because these synthetics, they're causing

“your skin distress. How do you measure something like that? I think for me that's almost like”

is that science? How are you measuring whether my skin is stressed by wearing something? Usually your skin tells you because it breaks out in a rash. People have psoriasis. People have autoimmune disease. These are all reactions from your external environment. And a lot of them they can't pinpoint, but there's a lot of correlation and cause associated with textiles on your body. We'll be right back after I check whether my socks are PFAS-free or just

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a yes. Limited availability on select routes, more routes coming soon. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what other smart and consider listeners do. Take a moment and support

our amazing sponsors. They make the show possible. All of the deals discount codes in ways to

support the podcast or searchable and clickable over at jordanharbinger.com/deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code email as [email protected]. Somebody here have dig it up for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Chris Colby. I definitely have seen this on Instagram where someone's like, "I got this new thing and look at this, so there's red lines all over the place."

I see one of my wife is scrolling Instagram. There's a lot of female influencers that do

“stuff like this. Guys don't usually talk about rashes in clothing, but I think women are”

ovaries wearing sports bras and stuff and they're tight and they are made of god knows what and then yeah, you get a rash on your back from that thing. So synthetic plastic materials, they deplete your natural biome on your skin that protects you. Why is that? Because the chemicals kill. Great statically tricity and it's even been test work guys where like a synthetic sling for a period of time and it causes that sling. Tell me more about this. There's no

euphemisms. You know, it would be grape smugglers, whatever you want to call them, around the male testicles, yeah, causes infertility. And then there's been studies for this and then when you go back to natural, they become fertile again. At some point, I got to look at that. That's one of those citation needed. That's so crazy. I can't believe it. It's actually not a new, it's it's was done probably over 10 years ago, but it was they were doing it from the perspective of

birth control and the idea that this statically tricity and the things in the synthetic for actually causing male sperm cancer drop. And so if you look right now, where guys are really interested in this subject is where infertility and hormone disruption is happening and so people are switching their underwear because it's having a lot of effect on their ability to static electricity. That's crazy to me that that makes any sort of difference. Because they're static everywhere, but I guess

it's not always flowing through your clothing that is touching your body. Our bodies naturally

want natural fibers on them. That's with over the human evolution we've grown accustomed to. So wearing these synthetic center body is not natural. The chemicals coming off them are not natural. The off-gassing that's coming off them, not natural. It's causing all of these chronic diseases and the health effects that we can't entirely identify. But I have people on my team who have psoriasis that only wear our stuff to sweat in and they have no problems. What is psoriasis

it can just dry patch of skin. Yeah, it's skin irritation, dry, redness of skin. But if you have autoimmune disease and you go to your toxicologist, you try to understand like what's causing this, the first thing they'll tell you is quit wearing polyester, nylon, and spandex. Geez, I've only talked to toxicologist a few times. This is a tangent, but I got blood worked

it's alarming. And he said, "Oh, do you eat sushi?" Yes. Oh, then don't worry about it. Why not? Is the mercury from sushi better for you? And he goes, "Well, if you didn't eat sushi in your mercury level was this high, then we'd really have something to worry about because you're probably getting it from your house or something. But if you just eat fish, then you're going to

have this level of mercury. And I'm like, but it's red. It's like a 10 out of 10. And basically,

as long as you can explain why that is and you don't do it all the time, I guess it's quote unquote fine-ish, but I don't know. I didn't love that answer. It's crazy to me that they would tell you to stop wearing those types of fabrics. But I guess if you're having high mercury high-ish mercury in your blood, it's not the end of the world, but if you're breaking out with dry skin patches all over the place all the time and they're uncomfortable and

“possibly getting infected, that's a real problem. Yeah, I think everybody has different reactions to”

things. Roughly one out of five have chemical sensitivities out there. We don't realize the low dose and we're taking. And there's just a lot of trust we put in the system that it's not

giving us a high level of toxicity. And one of the biggest misnomers is that somehow low dose

is okay in certain things, but with these stalades, PFAS and BPA and BPS, all these stalades, there's no such thing as a safe level. Yeah, so Dr. Swan, I think one of the things she mentioned that I still find hard to wrap my mind around is a lower dose of some Thalade chemicals is actually worse for you than a higher dose. And I believe she explained it in the episode and I can't remember exactly why, but it had to do with your body getting a low dose. It changes

a bunch of things, but if your body gets a high dose, I don't know, maybe it somehow recognizes it's an unnaturally high dose and the reaction is different. I just found that really disconcerting. Because you think, oh, it's only a little bit high. That's worse than having it a lot high somehow. Yeah. And so this is why if you have hormone disruption concerns or you have infertility concerns or you have autoimmune sensitivities, we are living in the age of chronic disease. We all know it.

“We can see it people in their 30s getting cancer. And so you have to take clothing”

seriously. And so it is a huge blind spot. And if we thought about clothing like we did our food in our beauty, we would actually change a lot faster. And so we're here to kind of say that there's no safe levels of dyes on plastic performance products. There's no safe levels for quick dry and rickle-free. If it says rickle-free and it's cotton, that's just as bad. That's dangerous. So really pay attention to the labels and the marketing and who you're buying from. If you really

want to avoid this environmental exposure, when it comes to our clothing, because the simple attitude is what's on our body is in our body. It's just like, you know, what we eat. And people are not taking it seriously in a way that they're actually changing how their wardrobe is being built. And so we're here to say that it's not a huge sacrifice. You can actually make better products using nature and working with nature. Our approach is it shouldn't be a trade-off.

There should be this simpler, better, more versatile ways to do this. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of just, oh, it's natural, so it's automatically better, because it's a kind of an appeal to nature fallacy. But as long as you don't have the same sort of trade-offs, where would you still recommend synthetic performance fabrics, if anywhere? It'd be areas that you need high durability. Okay. So if you need a tent, I would definitely go with, oh, yeah.

That is right. Yeah. If you want something that has high, you know, abrasion like you don't want the knees to wear out or things like that, you do need synthetic because they are usually more durable. And so industrial type of things. But if it's touching your skin all day long, I don't think you need it.

“I think everything from wool to cotton, hypernatural materials can be legitimate alternatives.”

And you may not get the perfect weight, or you may not get the perfect water protection in certain cases,

but it's way better than taking in the stuff. And I think, to me, it's like we're always looking

for perfect and cheap. And I think there's no such thing. What's the difference between biobase, which I've heard you say a couple times, in biodegradable? They're different. Yeah, they're definitely different. I think brands kind of abuse the terms, though. So I'm curious with the actual definitions here. So biobase visit comes from nature. In some shape or form, it can be repurposed. Like we're doing, repurposing it into something new. But the origins are biobase, or it's almost like a version of

plant-based, right? But while though, a lot of times, it's minerals or other things that are natural. Biodegradable just means that is going to break down over time in the ground and different fibers and fabrics have different biodegradability. Like, leather takes a while. What we make with hypercooljade breaks down when like three to four months in the ground. So it's like biodegradable quick. Polyester plastic, five, six, seven hundred years, something like that, because these things

mother or pearl buttons on our shirts because those come from nature, right? So that I would say that's

natural or biobase. Our fiber comes from scrap cotton, jade stone, and other minerals. That is biobase because it comes from nature. It's more likely to break down. Now, some things, biobase plastics that exist you think about your straws, right? Those do break down, but they take a little bit longer, right? They're engineered to last to certain lengths. So where you see durability and things that are meant to last, they also last longer in the ground. This is a really creepy reference

debatable, whether I should leave it in, but I went to Cambodia and I went to the killing fields

“on a rainy day. There's bones and stuff still. Like, I remember stepping on something and it was”

stuck in my sandal and I pulled out a jawbone with teeth and it because it had washed up and

stuck in my sandal horror movie level, surprised with that kind of thing. And you can see

there's fabric from people's clothes sticking out of the ground and it's, I remember thinking, it's just this weird juxtaposition of, wow, that fabric really made it a long time in the dirt and the rain and this moist environment, because all that's left of that person is like the bone and then their clothes is still there. We were bearing some of my shirts in my backyard as a test just to, I want to see like, thank you for changing the subject a little bit by the time.

And it worked. The worms took care of it. Over a year, we had it in there. I live in Wisconsin, so it's a little cold. Yeah, in the winter. But it did work and I do think one of these things is originally we wanted to make the most sustainable product remarkable. Could we make the best possible

“product at the least amount of impact? And then we realized sustainability is really the same thing”

as health and wellness. And so health and wellness is about giving people something that's

clean, natural on their body that actually works with it, not against it. And so the idea is that the way we really move sustainability forward is we're using wellness you can wear. And we can start to do health supportive things with natural things in your body that are not only health negative, but they can actually potentially be health supportive. And so we're moving down this path of how do we build things? Not only of quality, but they have this sort of biobased technology,

but they're also in line with our bodies. We get that J to get your chief chakra, chief energy going in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah, actually I brought you some J songs. I was just out at Sedona and we were like doing all the crystals and all that stuff, you know, and we were in the vortexes and it was really fun. That's funny. But the cool thing is we all intuitively understand that when we get back to nature, it's good for us. Camping makes you feel good. A lot of that's

probably not having your fricking phone in your pocket all the time. But yeah, there's all these things that we're not natural to us. And when we get further away from it, we do feel different. And so the same thing goes with where any things in your body every time. It does feel different. I wear our shirts literally every day, I have worn for two years. I go back and put on my favorite team jersey. And I dislike, I can't make it an hour. And so what you realize is your body does adapt for better or worse

to what it's worth. Are you sure that's not some psychological reaction that you're having to your clothes? Like, oh, I'm wearing a plastic shirt now. I don't mean to make funny here, but I might just do it a little bit. There's these guys that say, like, I'm bulletproof. I do bulletproof this bulletproof that bulletproof coffee. And then it's like they smell gluten and they have a breakout reaction. I'm like, how bulletproof are you? Where you can't even smell McDonald's before you

have to, I don't know, get an IV bag out of the trunk. To me, again, it's not about perfection. It's about doing what intuitively makes sense in going in a natural direction. But just be understand that we've been marketed to for 25, 30 years to believe that we need all of these things to perform. And it's not entirely true. And there's ways to do it better for you. And if you really care about your food, the way you're fasting, then you do it all these things for your bodies

“to optimize, then you should really pay attention to what's on your body most of the time. And if you”

really tuned in, you're going to realize you're probably even healthier and better performing by going with natural solutions versus trying to force yourself into thinking that this looks technical. Ideas to golf in because this is what a golf shirt should look like. Not true. Golf shirts in the mid 90s were cotton. Look at Tiger Woods early days. He's wearing cotton. Now look at us today. We all look like we're going to some sort of European disco. The fashion

is was dictating the desire. The marketing is that we need these things for performance. And the real truth is when you pull out of that and you put something on more natural and you do it for a month or two, you start to see like, you know what, I don't really need these things. Yeah, it reminds me of when they used to play football and they had those leather helmet or no helmet or you look even like 70s NBA, right? The little tiny shorts and the cotton socks up

cotton. Nobody cared. They still played. Now it's all moisture wicking or whatever. I'll tell you a quick really funny story on performance. So I didn't know that our stuff could actually really perform for like an elite athlete. And so one of the creative directors on my team is the Iron Man triathlete. Oh yeah, okay. Yeah, he's running six, seven miles a day every day growing swimming, you know, 10 miles. Those guys are built different for sure. Yeah. And this guy's

legitimate took our t-shirt on your wearing and last summer wore it every day on a six mile run

the whole summer never washed it. Oh, I was going to say never washed it. Oh, I was going to

joke about that. He really never washed it. He swears that he's never washed it. Oh, man. But he said what was really interesting is that when I'm wearing this on the top half of my body, I can feel the temperature being cooler. I felt more breathable. And then my synthetic leggings that I'm wearing on the bottom felt completely different. It was warmer, not like suffocating. And so the contrast was really noticeable to him. And so he's like, if we could make things that had the compression

and the durability, which is something we're working on, because there is biobase synthetics coming that are derived from corn and sugar that can start to give us some of those functionality that we need. And so one of these high end athletes are really in tune to their bodies. And so

when someone who's an Iron Man triathlete tells you that this works and I legitimately had put it

through the paces, it makes you realize that there is a lot more we can do with what we consider to be performance beyond just plastic. Speaking of plastic performance, let's hear from our sponsors because even the cleanest closet won't save you from the filthy economics of podcasting. We'll be right back. Also, y'all we have a subreddit for the show. If you're a editor, you can talk about episodes of the show or anything you'd like over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now for the rest of my conversation

with Chris Colby. Most of us, well, I don't need compression, right? I don't need it. I want

“breathability and comfort and that's why I choose most of the things that I choose. And yeah, I've”

got some stuff that I've had to get rid of over time. I remember the leggings, craze, get the leggings and then put shorts over them and I just remember thinking like these are the most uncomfortable things. I'm not doing anything that requires compression for a long period of time, statistically ridiculous. So I think part of that, like you said, is just marketing. It's just trendiness. Oh, I just want to look athletic today. It's a little silly. That's the fashion business.

We're all about selling the way things look and making them feel good. And the way we do it isn't entirely healthy. I mentioned what I say something before about the sunscreen thing. I hate putting sunscreen on. I don't know. I mean, people say, oh, it's got chemicals in it or whatever. I'll be honest. It's just the way that it feels like crazy feeling and even the non-greasy stuff. I hate it. We're going to get to my eyes. My eyes are to feel really not even dry. There's

just this weird feeling that you get from having whatever that is in your eye. So I just wear

sun protective clothing instead. And I know that you can't always get it over your face, but I've got,

you know, shemog, looking thing. And it's just way better. You look at SPF and it goes, oh,

“you need to reapply this every hour every 90 minutes. If you get wet or sweating more, you got to”

do it even more often. And then my friend who sells a bunch of outdoor performance clothing, I said, what about UPF on a shirt? If it gets wet, does it change? If it gets pulled on or whatever, does it change? And he's like, no, it's just always UPF 50 until it breaks down, 100 years. Like he said. But, of course, that's still a chemical. This one is just the way the fabric is woven. Is that possible? Or is that not possible? It is possible, but UPF 50's got to be a pretty heavy fabric

to do. Oh, really? This is not. It's very light. So if this has a chemical in it, dang, that's disappointing. It just be very skeptical of anything promising performance that you can't trace back to a natural benefit, say like marina wall or something like that. If it's really lightweight, it's lightweight and it's not natural. It's like, yeah, I love stretchy. I need to tell you that's probably got a chemical crap. I got to ask him about that because he didn't say that it didn't have chemicals in it.

I just assumed it was because, oh, it's really tightly woven. You might not know. This guy knows so much about clothes. I'd be shocked if he doesn't know. The question I would ask them is, like, how is it achieving that functionality? Is it topical? Or is it inherent in the fabric? Because if it's inherent, that it could be built into the weave and the construction. But the most part, the way we're doing it is we're putting literally farm grades in dioxide into the fiber. So it's

inherently in the fiber and that gives you added sun protection versus it being applied on top.

“Yeah. And so I think we're going to do all kinds of things that we're adding,”

magnesium into it to help you sleep. And I got to look up the science on that because magnesium on your clothes tell you to sleep. That's up there with Jade getting my chakras aligned Chris. I got to tell you. So this is where we build it and then we let people try it and test it. And that's

I can advice to give anybody is just supply your wardrobe by natural biobased fibers materials.

“Your body will respond differently. What claim or claims do you avoid making because the”

evidence is not there yet? So a lot of the biofunctional claims require higher level testing. And so those are just really expensive. And so those are things that we're going to do next in our next round of investment. We've done independent lab testing on cooling and antibacterial and it's in verifying the chemical safety of everything. So that's where we've invested our money initially. But like any startup company, you got to pick your spots. We started by marketing things

that people want. Cooling antibacterial antimicrobial. The biofunctional we think is the future. And so you can start to build things that just works with your body. The idea is that this is better on your body versus things that are not natural to it. That's our future. That's our technology that allows us to inherently build these in. And then we'll test into this with more biofunctional medical testing. Third party testing. But that's a pretty big investment. What's the

most scanny version of this category that listeners should watch out for? Where do you see people making claims that are just ridiculous and untrue? Mostly the polyester plastics and that I really yeah. But that does all that stuff. It just may be not good for you. There's a lot of marketing that goes on without a lot of testing. And that's the truth of the fashion industries. It's about the way things look not what they actually do. What claim would someone see on marketing that you go?

Yeah, that literally can never be the case. Maybe it's on production. It's on production. Interesting.

Yeah. I would say there's a lot of people talking about wicking, quick dry, all these kinds of things. Things quick dry when they're plastic. And then the other thing is like how they achieve in it. Right. So I think you want to understand in any functional performance claim is inherent in the ingredients that it's being made with. Is it marino? Naturally. It's hydrophilic, naturally anti-embacterial, which it is, or is it being achieved through

some sort of artificial means of chemicals that may or may not have been proven. Right. And so again, because you don't have to put these on labels. Yeah. You don't have to really know there's a trust the marketing kind of aspect of it. And so I would argue that a lot of this is marketing

“and sometimes it's hard to understand the performance. And that's why I like natural things because”

you do know that natural things do these things inherently well for thousands of years. What we're

doing with the third way is we're testing it more because it is new. But we're also really focused

on safety and focused on making sure people know the origins of these things. We're not claiming cotton that is Supima unless it can be traced. And so verification and reliability is really important right now because most people are cheating. Even your organic cotton's good chances are not really organic. If you really saw the way things are being done at the lowest levels, you know that a lot of swapping is switching goes on and then they sticker it and they say it's this. And so with Supima

you can literally genetically trace it back to the farm it came from, which is why we chose Supima. We know it's American, it's traceable. It leaves you know what you have. You get a sequence the genome of your t-shirt. Yeah. Crazy. You can. But a lot of things claim to be organic and if

“they come from certain countries which I won't name. Yeah. But if they are you should not entirely”

trust that is what it says in it. Why won't you name the countries? Because we do business all over the world. I don't like stickering people in that way. But it's also unfair right because if you get non-organic cotton from China you also get a lot of the other good stuff that's just fine from China. Yeah. You can't get cotton from China. You can't get any cotton from China. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Like Lily at the cotton the Ching Jong cotton band in the US is entirely

anything from China I'd say. Oh, I didn't realize that you couldn't get any cotton. I just thought it was from that one place but maybe that's the only place they grow cotton in China. So it's actually a band on Chinese cotton, not a band on Xinjiang cotton only. Yeah. And so while there's good reason for that but it also drives market prices up and it creates less supply and it creates a lot more cheating. And so every time there's more incentive to self-nonsense cotton because the price is higher.

Or it's easier to claim something that's not and make more money but when supplies reduced, cheating goes up. Huh. Okay. In closing I want to do like a five minute closet audit. You mentioned

anything that goes on your skin so stuff you work out in. What's the first item you would tell

a normal person to examine leggings or shirts or what? Yeah. Yeah. I will look at the thing you wear almost every day so it's probably a t-shirt or polo or leggings. Those are things that I would start with and really question if they're polyester nylon or spandex. Okay. And then so yeah daily golf polo's workout shirts. I want to stain version of this because no one's going to go. I'm throwing away every gym shirt, socks, polo that I have in my closet when you can wear them all. Yeah. And then look at

these things that are most sensitive parts of your body. So you're underwear, your bras,

start with. Okay. Sleep naked. That's the moral of this story. Sleep naked on organic cotton sheets. Got nothing from trying it. So underwear socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, bedding, my kids, pajama, my kids stuff. Geez. Okay. And the formula is what skin contact plus heat plus sweat plus hours worn. I don't know. A little flow chart here. So start with things that you wear the most on your body hours a day. So if you're wearing it 23 and a half hours a day, start there. Okay. Yeah.

Then ask yourself, if it's an unremotive sensitive parts of your body, is it something you're sweating in? Think microwave plastic, microwave plastic. Yeah. Okay. If your kids are wearing these things, I would absolutely start there because they're the most sensitive and exposed because their bodies are still developing their skin layers are not as thick. And every sort of team sport you get or every sort of free t-shirt that's given away, they're all plastic. Yeah. Because they're cheap.

But I always ask people like, do we have to have disposable plastic t-shirts as the giveaway?

“Yeah. That's a good point. You have to work really hard to find something that doesn't have”

plastic in it. Yesterday I walked through the flat iron and went through every store, you know, that we all know our favorites, right? Sure. Every store I went into and I asked him, "Can I get something that doesn't have polyester nylon or spandex in it?" And 100%. We're like, sorry, we don't have anything like that. Wow. And these are like $70, $80 t-shirts, right? Yeah, it's New York. Yeah, exactly. But it's not even like a haul cotton and it's still fairly

expensive. And so what happens is there's just a lot of opportunities to sort of ward these things off from your wardrobe and then start to ask yourself, like, "What can I buy that isn't have these things in it?" And is it a good enough quality where I could wear it for a period of time? What should people not worry about replacing immediately? Your rain shell, for example, right? Stuff that you wear only rarely and occasionally and that needs to be, I don't know,

“super-performance, like a raincoat. Yeah, like, probably not going to replace your ski pants, right?”

Things you wear like maybe 10 times a year. Good point. Or you're not going to replace that heavy winter jacket that keeps you warm. So there's things that you want, but wool is great.

wool does a lot of great things and cotton is great. We've built the third way that you can

enhance both cotton and wool with hypercool jade and hypernatural, but the idea is that it doesn't have to be 100% of your closet. You can absolutely have some of these other things in it that your favorites and they do the job, but be mindful of, it's like the 80/20 rule, like what you're wearing and probably 80% of the time, what's your uniform, what's your go-to, what's the thing that you really love the most? So don't panic. Just start where exposure is the highest.

Skin sweat, heat, duration, and change one thing. I like the same version of this. The last thing I would just say is be mindful of durability. Think good quality, like buy one or two good things versus tend like just cheap crappy things. Because those things are probably better for you. They're probably going to last you longer and the actual value equation is better. You look at it from a number of wears. And so we just get caught up in like cheap on the ticket, but we don't look at

“the longer-archive things. And I think value is what you get. And I think you get a lot more with”

natural fibers and things that are going to work with your body. For me is a chronic overpacker who hates packing because I have to make decisions about my ideal closet is just a bunch of high-value items that you can use for anything. Like I'm wearing this shirt today all day. I'm going to wear it tonight. I'll probably work out in it tomorrow. I just want five of those and I can fit everything into a carry-on. Instead, I've got a closet just absolutely bursting with stuff

that one day I'm going to go to a party where I need to wear a red, shiny, velour shirt for sure some as I'll keep this thing like that's me currently. And my ideal is just that level of minimalism with high-function. I think that's where the larger zeitgeist is going. That's where post-peek stuff. Yeah, hopefully. And think we're getting a little more practical. And this is just your health and wellness has become really top of mind for everybody. So this sort of fits with

the way you're thinking about it. And I love our customers and they tell me like, you know, I packed wrong when I went to Europe and I only took one short sleep shirt and it was super hot. So I wore your shirt for 10 days on this trip and it held up, right? And so then this like true believer. And they're kind of like, if I can travel that light and I can have some of the does all these different things, it's just better. And so they don't get hung up on the price.

They get more into what it how it works. If you've got a daytime shirt and I've shared in a workout shirt, you really have three shirts. So if it costs twice as much as a regular shirt, then who cares? You're saving money at that point, essentially. And at the end of the

day, I'll tell you just being in the fashion business as long as I've been, people will always

care what it looks like. Does it look good on me? Yeah. In my tired away in the same color all the

want to do that with and you can choose how much do you really really need. And I'm always

astounded by what people consider to be new because most things out there aren't really new. Yeah. They're just variations of things. And so I do think you can feel good and look good without it being betrayed off. I wonder if you think Polyester is going to be the lead paint of clothing in 10 or 20 years. It already seems like it might be in some ways.

“I think it's like cigarettes. And then you didn't die after the first 10 or even the first”

couple years of smoking. But over time, there's an accumulative effect. And I think that's the part where if you really don't care, then just keep microwaving your food in plastic. If you don't really care, just keep smoking, right? Because it's the same thing. And I always joke to my friends who do hi yoga. It's like it's like smoking while you're doing yoga. And so people are like, what can you prove it? And so that's the problem with our industry. It's very difficult to prove

things singularly in terms of the cause and effect of a peril because you wear such a variety of a peril. It'd be hard to make somebody wear the exact same clothes for 30 years or whatever to run that kind of test, not really possible. But there's been instances where things in the uniform business say like the airline industry. I used to be the president of Lanzan. And so we used to sell uniforms to airlines. And about five years after I left, we had done the Delta uniforms

purple ones. The famous, you may be seen. Remember them? And we didn't throw it three or four other airlines. And it caused all of these health problems for the fly attendance. So bad that people had a quit working. And they're having like all of these like really disastrous effects. It was really affecting the general population that was working for Delta. And so it's one of those things where sometimes people have to wear these uniforms every day.

Sometimes for 24 hours. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah, I guess you're good around that test. And you could start to see the cause and effect. And so there was actually lawsuits on all this stuff. And even then, very hard to prove. But the direct correlation on the general population was very obvious. And so why is that? Those uniforms were made to be wrinkle free. So they looked great. Right? They held them over time. They would be a color fast. So they wouldn't lose their color.

“They could be washed many times. They were meant to be strong and durable. Right?”

It's all the things that we built in the original uniforms before that were wool. And now these were polyester. And so there's a lot of industries, whether it be medical uniform and things like that, where they could all shift more natural biobase things. And it would be good for their work population. And so at some point, we want to do FedEx uniforms. And we want to do airline uniforms. We want to do school uniforms. Right? Your school uniforms are all synthetic.

If your kids are going to uniform school. And so all of these things don't have to be polyester plastic. There are ways to create economies and do this better. But we got to make sure people understand that that's a choice. Chris Colby, thank you very much, man. Interesting. A little scary, but mostly good news is in that we are becoming aware of this and able to solve the problem, instead of just like doom and gloom. You're going to die from wearing your compression

shorts now. Let's hope not. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chest isn't just a game. You're about to hear a preview where Danny wrench shares how building chest.com put him face to face with cheaters, death threats, and they passed he had to rewrite to survive. I was born into a cult as I talked about it more and more. I've gotten better just saying that naming it for what it was. The collective itself was called the church of a

moral consciousness. My generation within a couple of years was part of the first group of kids

that were being born into the collective, which, again, at that point, it was full communism. People's finances are merged when you came to the collective. You gave up all of your material belongings. You just sort of look at it and go, this was fucked up. This was not okay. There is no excuse to be made for this. And then Western media was paying attention to chest for the first time, maybe since Bobby Fisher in the 70s, this movie had come out. And these

two kids trapped in a cult were basically under house arrest and didn't have anything else to do. And anything that Stephen Camp was fond of, everybody was into, right? He was literally in charge of every human being in the collective. I went from zero to being one of the top kids in the country. Within two years, I was already in all America. I was one of the top-rated players and that worked very hard to heal my relationship with my own abusers, not because I'm trying

to excuse their behavior, but because I really do believe that forgiveness is not rewriting the past. It's freeing yourself from it. And so with chest.com, accidental success 15 years later.

So we have 25 million games a day, 623 games finishing every second. You can have a different

“relationship with your experiences if you want to. The obstacle can be the way and you can overcome”

hardship. That was my goal with this. To share the story of how Danny wrench got on the hit list, check out episode 1289 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.

tear open your dresser, and scream that you're underwear betrayed you. The takeaway is much more useful

“than that. And frankly, less likely to get you permanently banned from target. Start where the”

exposure is highest. Direct skin contact, heat, sweat, and hours worn. Underwear, socks, bras,

leggings, gym shirts, daily t-shirts, bedding, the stuff that's basically living on your body

from multiple hours at a time. Read the label, watch for vague claims like anti odor, wrinkle-free, stain-resistant water repellent anti-microbial, clean, natural wellness, whatever. That can mean anything from third party tested to our marketing intern, Foundalief emoji. And ask brands for receipts, not vibes, not inspired by nature, not a photo of a woman standing in a field looking mildly constipated by purity, actual receipts, fiber composition, added finishes, PFAS status,

certifications, test methods, wash cycle durability, third party results. The same move here is not

“replace everything. It's upgrade one high contact item at a time. That's how you avoid turning”

a legitimate concern into another luxury panic hobby for people who already own a $900 juicer and a trauma-informed mattress. We cleaned up the kitchen, we cleaned up the water, we cleaned up skin care, maybe the closet is next. And 10 years from now, we may look back at some of what we

wore here every day and say I can't believe I spent half my adult life sweating into fossil fuel

yoga pants. All things Chris Colby will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show. All at Jordanharbinger.com/deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about six-minute networking as well over at six-minute networking.com. I'm @jordanharbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect me on LinkedIn. And hey, the show is created in the association with podcast one. My team is Jen Harbinger,

“Jason Sanderson, Robert Fogody, Tata Sidlauscus, Ian Barred, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember,”

we rise by lifting others. The fear for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in health wellness, exercise, performance, apparel, or randomly a supply chain nerd, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you will apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn and we'll see you next time.

Now, on the latest tests, the number of our viewers, the Kauf and Kasimong, upload the latest new news for us. We'll see you next time. Bye! Bye! We'll see you in the next video. Bye!