Speaker 1: I get a team, welcome to another installing the U projects.
Speaker 1: Sadly for David Gillespie, Tiffany and Cook is not here
Speaker 1: for any reason. He fronts up one's a Fortnite is
Speaker 1: for her, It's not for me, And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I know. I could hear the disappointment
Speaker 2: in your voice.
Speaker 1: People say, why don't you see the disappointment in his face,
Speaker 1: because he's just a black screen when we chat, which
Speaker 1: I reckon if it if you turned on your camera
Speaker 1: after two years of no camera, it would freak me out.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't know what to do. So keep that off.
Speaker 2: I find it.
Speaker 1: I actually was interviewing someone the other day and nearly
Speaker 1: everyone has their camera on, but this who is an
Speaker 1: academic from the States, and he wanted to have his
Speaker 1: camera off.
Speaker 2: So we're in.
Speaker 1: We're about forty minutes into what turned out to be
Speaker 1: a sixty minute conversation, and then without any warning, he
Speaker 1: turned on his camera. And then it kind of threw
Speaker 1: me because I was so used to anyway, how have
Speaker 1: you been, mate? What's News's news on planet? You?
Speaker 3: Not a lot?
Speaker 4: I'm just at the moment too busy to write, which
Speaker 4: is irritating me. So I've just got a lot on.
Speaker 4: So I find that frustrating when I, you know, look
Speaker 4: at a look at something that I'm working on and
Speaker 4: it's and I look at the date that it's been
Speaker 4: last edited and it's.
Speaker 3: Like three or four weeks ago. That really irritates me.
Speaker 2: So what keeps you?
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I know this is a dumb question,
Speaker 1: but from my listeners who go who think that this
Speaker 1: is your main job, which clearly it is, what keeps
Speaker 1: you busy?
Speaker 2: Like, what what do you do?
Speaker 4: Mostly, you know, it's not my work. My day job
Speaker 4: as a lawyer is pretty neatly confined to work hours
Speaker 4: because I work for the government. So it's mostly my
Speaker 4: time consuming hobby of running a handball of European handball.
Speaker 3: So I have, that's right, I have.
Speaker 4: I have four children who play European handball and.
Speaker 3: We run well.
Speaker 4: I'm the president of the biggest probably the biggest club
Speaker 4: in Australia and sometimes when there's a lot on that
Speaker 4: can that can take up a lot of time. And
Speaker 4: over the last couple of weeks we've had a couple
Speaker 4: of teams touring in Italy and that has taken a
Speaker 4: lot of out of ours time. You know, because they're
Speaker 4: in the opposite time zones.
Speaker 1: To us, you are the gift that keeps on giving.
Speaker 1: Like you are hilarious. I remember, I remember when you
Speaker 1: one day, after knowing you for a couple of years
Speaker 1: or a year and a half, you just wheeled out
Speaker 1: free schools dot org. Yes, if you don't know anything
Speaker 1: about that, we don't have time everyone, but free schools
Speaker 1: one word dot org.
Speaker 2: Go check it out.
Speaker 1: David and a bunch of other inspirational and amazing people
Speaker 1: have built this phenomenal thing that's just a gift to
Speaker 1: the world. But have a look at that. But then,
Speaker 1: after I don't know how long I've known you, maybe three,
Speaker 1: is you go. I'm the president of the biggest European
Speaker 1: hand club in Australia, and we've got what this was.
Speaker 1: We'll probably go where we spoke about going, but fuck
Speaker 1: who knows? Tell Like I kind of know what it
Speaker 1: is because of my sporting background, but if I'd probably
Speaker 1: fuck some of it up, Tell our listeners what it is.
Speaker 4: So European handball is probably the second biggest sport in
Speaker 4: Europe after soccer. It's their sort of off season to
Speaker 4: soccer sport, so it's the one they play indoors. It's
Speaker 4: played on a futsal sized court, so twenty meters by
Speaker 4: forty meters.
Speaker 3: With footsal sized goals.
Speaker 4: And the difference between it and futsal is that you
Speaker 4: throw the ball rather than kick it, and so it's
Speaker 4: a smaller size. It's still a soccer ball, but it's
Speaker 4: a smaller size so you can hold it in your hand.
Speaker 4: Very exciting sport, Unlike soccer, lots and lots of goals scored,
Speaker 4: you know, so in a typical game, each side will
Speaker 4: score thirty goals, so very very high speed, and they're
Speaker 4: running like it's like basketball in the sense that it's
Speaker 4: played at either end of the court, so there's a
Speaker 4: lot of running forty meters in very very short bursts.
Speaker 4: And look, everyone's going to get a chance to see it,
Speaker 4: you know, as they do in Australia once every four
Speaker 4: years in the Olympics in the next couple of weeks,
Speaker 4: and I'd really recommend you seek it out and take
Speaker 4: a look at at It is a very exciting sport.
Speaker 4: And as I said, we've currently got two teams competing
Speaker 4: at a competition in Italy and the girls team just
Speaker 4: won overnight and the boys team came.
Speaker 3: In second, so wow, pleased with that. Yeah, So it's.
Speaker 4: It's a rare, rarefied sport here in Australia, so it
Speaker 4: makes it pretty easy for kids here to get into
Speaker 4: the Australian team. But it's an exciting sport. And you know,
Speaker 4: I've never played it, but I love watching it and
Speaker 4: I love seeing the kids play it.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: What is the the duration of the Is it quarters
Speaker 1: or just two hards?
Speaker 4: Two halves, two half hour halves? A team of seven
Speaker 4: players on court and unlimited constant player rotation often between
Speaker 4: plays you need. So each team really usually has fourteen
Speaker 4: to sixteen players in it and they're just constantly going
Speaker 4: on and off court because that much running you need
Speaker 4: to be able to take people off courts. So the
Speaker 4: average average professional player, like a male, will throw the
Speaker 4: ball at about somewhere between one hundred and twenty one
Speaker 4: hundred and forty kilometers an hour at a goalie where
Speaker 4: they as theoretically as close as they can get a
Speaker 4: six meters away because that's the goal circle.
Speaker 3: But they're allowed to throw it from anywhere if they're
Speaker 3: in the air and no part of their bodies touching
Speaker 3: the floor.
Speaker 4: So obviously a lot of people jump a long way
Speaker 4: into the air to get those shots.
Speaker 3: Into the goalie.
Speaker 4: So it's look like I said, I recommend if you
Speaker 4: don't know what it is, take a look at it
Speaker 4: in the Olympics.
Speaker 3: It's a pretty exciting sport.
Speaker 4: And if you've got kids who want to play it
Speaker 4: then you're in Brisbane, then send them along to Brisbane
Speaker 4: Handball Club, which is the club I run.
Speaker 1: Have we ever had a team in the Olympics playing handball?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, we did in the Sydney Olympics, and of
Speaker 4: course they came dead last. You know, there's thirty million
Speaker 4: people playing this game in Europe. We've got they've got
Speaker 4: a bit of a head start on us. But you know,
Speaker 4: we're doing our best as we can to develop local
Speaker 4: talent and those kids that we're training today, hopefully by
Speaker 4: twenty thirty two will be good enough to be competitive
Speaker 4: in the Olympics. Has an Australian ever gone overseas and
Speaker 4: not necessarily become a superstar, but just you know, played at.
Speaker 3: A yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. No.
Speaker 4: One boy from our club's just returned from doing semi
Speaker 4: pro in a German club. It happens, happens every few years,
Speaker 4: you know, a particularly talented individual go over and play
Speaker 4: in Germany, France somewhere like that.
Speaker 1: This wasn't where we were going to go. But fuck,
Speaker 1: and I'm just thinking about it. When when you like,
Speaker 1: because you work with or you you know, you built
Speaker 1: this amazing aforementioned resource for kids for students, and you
Speaker 1: work with athletes, and you work with a lot of
Speaker 1: different people. When we think about people who and your son,
Speaker 1: is it James that I spoke with? Yeah, James, yep, James,
Speaker 1: who's a fucking superstar as well, who's built an amazing
Speaker 1: resource for people?
Speaker 2: What what do you think are the variables other than
Speaker 2: talent and intelligence that make people succeed or that makes
Speaker 2: people persistence.
Speaker 4: It's not giving up, you know, the difference between people
Speaker 4: who succeed and people who don't, you know, the people
Speaker 4: who don't give up just before they do. You know,
Speaker 4: that's and it's hard. Look, it's really hard in my
Speaker 4: experience to be to stand alone and keep going right,
Speaker 4: And I think you've probably I think we've talked about
Speaker 4: this before with you. You know that's you you do
Speaker 4: something like start this podcast and and have three dogs,
Speaker 4: you know, and their next door neighbor listening to it
Speaker 4: and everyone telling you you're a bloody idiot. Well that's
Speaker 4: that's the way it is at the start of everything.
Speaker 4: And it's persistence that you know, persistence and an eye
Speaker 4: on quality, no compromise, do it the way you want
Speaker 4: to do it, you know, and and persist in that way,
Speaker 4: having the confidence that you you know what you're doing
Speaker 4: and you're onto something that that'd be my rule of
Speaker 4: some no guarantees, of course.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, I mean, yeah, it's like I
Speaker 1: could be persistent forever, but I'm never going to run
Speaker 1: one hundred meters in nine and a half seconds or
Speaker 1: sing on brod.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you've got to. You've got to.
Speaker 4: You've got a temper the persistence with realism. I guess
Speaker 4: I've been watching over the last few weeks because one
Speaker 4: of my sons suggested I at a show that completely
Speaker 4: passed me by in the early naughties called Friday Night Lights.
Speaker 4: I don't know if you've ever seen it.
Speaker 2: Is that about the college football kids or.
Speaker 3: High school football kids.
Speaker 4: So it was a five series thing that in sort
Speaker 4: of two thousand and six through twenty eleven, and I
Speaker 4: find it really interesting for a number of reasons. One
Speaker 4: of them is just some of the sayings that come
Speaker 4: out of the coach's mouth, because it sort of focuses
Speaker 4: on the coach of this football team who's repeatedly successful,
Speaker 4: and he focuses on, you know, the idea that the
Speaker 4: team is always greater than the sum of the parts,
Speaker 4: which is something a theme I pick up in in
Speaker 4: one of my psychopath books.
Speaker 3: Because it's an important thing. We can talk about that
Speaker 3: some other day.
Speaker 4: But one of the things he said, one of the
Speaker 4: sayings he said this really caught my ear, was you know,
Speaker 4: success is not the goal, it's a byproduct.
Speaker 3: And I think that really captures it.
Speaker 4: You know, if you set out with the aim of
Speaker 4: succeeding at whatever it is, and that's where you're driving
Speaker 4: the whole time, then you probably will fail. If you
Speaker 4: set out with the aim of doing everything the way
Speaker 4: you want to do it, in the way you think
Speaker 4: it should be done, in the way no one else
Speaker 4: is doing it, then success will be a byproduct. And yeah,
Speaker 4: that was just one of the things coming out. The
Speaker 4: other reason I find that showed really interesting is because
Speaker 4: it's about high schools in America between two thousand and
Speaker 4: six and twenty eleven, which they wouldn't have known it
Speaker 4: at the time, but is really really a shocking view
Speaker 4: for someone from today. A high school student looking at
Speaker 4: that show today would not recognize it. Not a single
Speaker 4: person has a mobile phone, and if they do, it
Speaker 4: is a you know, it's a flip phone where the
Speaker 4: most sophisticated thing you can do on it is you know,
Speaker 4: type of text using the nine numbers in the correct order.
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting insight into the way the social
Speaker 4: dynamics of that high school work. Where there are no phones,
Speaker 4: where no one is an addict, where.
Speaker 3: You know, no one is anxious and depressed.
Speaker 4: It's for a show that covered lots of social themes
Speaker 4: at its time, that can cover teen pregnancy and violence
Speaker 4: and gang warfare and drugs and alcohol and all that
Speaker 4: stuff all covered in that show. Not a single thing
Speaker 4: about the vice addiction, not a single thing about anxiety
Speaker 4: and depression.
Speaker 3: It's a real insight.
Speaker 1: It's like a time capsule, isn't it That.
Speaker 4: Absolutely and at a critical time, like just before the
Speaker 4: iPad was was released into the market, and towards the
Speaker 4: end of the show in the fifth series, which was
Speaker 4: filmed in twenty eleven, a few of the kids are
Speaker 4: starting to have Apple phones, and you see the effect
Speaker 4: of them taking photographs of things as starts to become
Speaker 4: a theme in the show.
Speaker 3: But it's just the start. And when you compare it to today.
Speaker 4: One of the things you notice about lots of extraordinary
Speaker 4: things happening in this show that normally were happening today
Speaker 4: every kid would have their phone out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What do you think is the relationship between the idea
Speaker 1: of success? You know, people like a lot of people,
Speaker 1: especially that I've worked with over the years, Like, one
Speaker 1: thing that everybody has in common when they come to
Speaker 1: a gym, or they come to a trainer, or they
Speaker 1: come to talk to someone like me, is that they
Speaker 1: want to create some kind of change, you know, thinking, habits, behaviors, outcomes,
Speaker 1: and they you know, so we talk about what they
Speaker 1: want to do be create change, We talk about what
Speaker 1: their version of success is. And for me, an observation
Speaker 1: and an experienced hundreds of times is I helped people
Speaker 1: get where they wanted to go, only for them to
Speaker 1: discover that that wasn't really where they needed to be.
Speaker 1: Right In other words, very few people got to their
Speaker 1: ideal weight or size, or shape or bank balance or position,
Speaker 1: and when I'm content, very few people.
Speaker 2: What do you think that's about? That success?
Speaker 1: Idea of success and the experience of contentment or satisfaction.
Speaker 4: Because you can never be the top of the tree
Speaker 4: no matter what in this world. If I were to
Speaker 4: say to you, Craig, I'm just going to drop a
Speaker 4: billion dollars into your account, you know, as I would,
Speaker 4: because I like you. Do you think that would make
Speaker 4: you happy? I think what it would do is make
Speaker 4: you start, make you start comparing yourself to people who
Speaker 4: have two billion dollars in their bank account. And if
Speaker 4: you had two billion dollars, as you might start comparing
Speaker 4: yourself to people who have three billion dollars. It's a
Speaker 4: natural human thing, and this is not a bad thing.
Speaker 4: But humans have ambition. Humans always want to be better
Speaker 4: than they are, And even when they get to the
Speaker 4: place where they think they are better, there's always someone
Speaker 4: better than them. There's always someone richer than them, there's
Speaker 4: always someone better built than them, there's always someone younger
Speaker 4: than them. You know, there's always someone better looking than them.
Speaker 4: It doesn't matter what you do. If you're on that
Speaker 4: treadmill of the only thing motivating you is to be
Speaker 4: better than the guy next to you. There'll always be
Speaker 4: a better guy than the guy next to you that
Speaker 4: you've got to aim for. And it's a self defeating
Speaker 4: way of approaching life, you know. It's I don't know
Speaker 4: how to do it. I know I have done it,
Speaker 4: I know, and I don't know that I could give
Speaker 4: a guidebook on how to achieve it. But I know
Speaker 4: that I'm very zin about stuff like that. I don't
Speaker 4: look at other people's cars, phones, bank balances, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever it is, and I find it a very peaceful
Speaker 4: way to live, if you like.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, well, comparison is the thief of joy or
Speaker 1: whatever they say.
Speaker 2: But I remember, I don't want to bore my listeners,
Speaker 2: but just quickly.
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever told you this, but I
Speaker 1: kind of woke up metaphorically when I was in my
Speaker 1: mid thirties and I had all these businesses and one
Speaker 1: hundred staff, and things were going great, and all my
Speaker 1: businesses were making money, and I was writing for the
Speaker 1: Herald Son in Melbourne, I was working on radio, and
Speaker 1: it was maybe the most miserable time in my life.
Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that all of those things caused
Speaker 1: the misery, but it was such an interesting place for
Speaker 1: me to be, and I remember having an epiphany thinking essentially,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 4: Yeah, look, I wish I wish I could explain. You know,
Speaker 4: maybe I'd have to study some psychology or something. It's
Speaker 4: a bit, but there's definitely some power in the I
Speaker 4: guess the Zen notion of not comparing yourself to others.
Speaker 4: Compare yourself to yourself by all means. I would say,
Speaker 4: always compare yourself to yourself. Always be better but in
Speaker 4: everything than you were yesterday. But but that'd be the
Speaker 4: limit of comparison in my view.
Speaker 2: Are you ambitious?
Speaker 1: Not necessarily in a money grabbing, fucking megla maniacal kind
Speaker 1: of way. There's a word I don't use that often,
Speaker 1: but are you ambitious?
Speaker 3: I like growing things. I like.
Speaker 4: If I look back over my life, when I've always
Speaker 4: been happiest is when I'm starting at the bottom of
Speaker 4: something and making it bigger than it was the day before.
Speaker 4: So with the handball club, the thing I like about
Speaker 4: that is growing it, growing it from nothing and making
Speaker 4: it bigger. With free schools, it's growing that, you know,
Speaker 4: with the books and the message is there it's about
Speaker 4: spreading that word and getting as many people on board
Speaker 4: with it as I possibly can. So I guess my
Speaker 4: motivation is growing things. Yeah, I guess so in that way. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I am ambitious.
Speaker 1: What's your Sorry to interrupt, but as you're talking about
Speaker 1: all these awesome things that you've built, it occurs to
Speaker 1: me that none of those, other than maybe the books,
Speaker 1: made you any dough. Although I know you're not going
Speaker 1: broke anytime soon. But this is a weird question. But
Speaker 1: what is I was going to say, what's your relationship
Speaker 1: with money? Or how do you you not not as
Speaker 1: a construct for everyone, but how do you view money?
Speaker 4: As long as I am making enough to not have
Speaker 4: it limit what I want to do, yeah, then that's enough.
Speaker 4: That's my view of it. So you know, it's not
Speaker 4: about having a giant pile of money. It's about making
Speaker 4: sure that if my kids, I don't know, I want
Speaker 4: to do X, Y or Z. You know, we're getting
Speaker 4: beyond the point that of that with these kids. Now
Speaker 4: they're all, you know, adults and can look after themselves.
Speaker 4: But when they were kids, if they wanted to do something,
Speaker 4: I never wanted to be the answer. I can't let
Speaker 4: you do that because I don't have the money for it.
Speaker 4: So I always worked to have enough money that that
Speaker 4: was never the case, and that if that man having
Speaker 4: three jobs at meant having three jobs, you know, which
Speaker 4: I've done.
Speaker 3: So it's you know, but that's the motivator.
Speaker 2: Are you work aholic?
Speaker 4: I don't like not working. I find I find I
Speaker 4: get bored really really really quickly if I'm not got
Speaker 4: something to do. So if that's a workaholic, then yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess I am.
Speaker 1: But I think also you and I probably similar in
Speaker 1: that I'm well, very different obviously in many ways, but
Speaker 1: similar in that, like I don't, I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but for me, nearly everything that I do, that that is,
Speaker 1: you know, falls under the banner of work or career
Speaker 1: or income or whatever.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. And I know this is cheesy, but it's
Speaker 2: just true. For me. It doesn't feel like work.
Speaker 1: Like I've had jobs when I was young, like real
Speaker 1: jobs that were just like the whole purpose was too.
Speaker 3: Oh. Yeah, I agree with you. Look, I absolutely agree
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 4: I've definitely had many jobs, particularly when I was young.
Speaker 4: You know, when I was doing two or three jobs,
Speaker 4: one of them was working in a night out, and
Speaker 4: you know that felt like work. Its entire purpose was
Speaker 4: to earn money, you know, and nothing I.
Speaker 3: Do today feels like work. You know. The things I'm
Speaker 3: doing today are things that I don't mind doing. Some
Speaker 3: of them I prefer to others. And if I have
Speaker 3: a choice, I'd do some things more than others.
Speaker 1: Well, you and I were chatting before we went live,
Speaker 1: and I'm a sixty three baby, I'm still sixty I'm
Speaker 1: sixty one later in the year, and you're a sixty
Speaker 1: six baby.
Speaker 2: As you get older, how.
Speaker 1: How do you manage your Maybe you don't think about this,
Speaker 1: but I don't mean mental health in I really mean
Speaker 1: more mind health.
Speaker 2: And cognitive function.
Speaker 1: Like, do you consciously do things to keep your mind
Speaker 1: and your brain.
Speaker 2: High performance?
Speaker 1: Or is that just a byproduct of constantly creating, you know, working, learning, evolving?
Speaker 2: Is that just an outcome or is that something that
Speaker 2: you think about.
Speaker 4: I don't think about it until you just asked me.
Speaker 4: But now that you have asked me, I am thinking
Speaker 4: about it, don't I don't intentionally do anything other than sleep.
Speaker 4: Sleep is vitally important to brain function, right, absolutely vitally
Speaker 4: important to cognitive function. By the end of the day,
Speaker 4: you're basically drunk in terms of your capacity of your
Speaker 4: brain to function.
Speaker 3: And that's the way.
Speaker 4: That's just a byproduct of the way our brain works,
Speaker 4: which is it burns poly unsaturated fats to work. You know,
Speaker 4: That's why it takes twenty five percent of our energy.
Speaker 4: You know. It's like also, I don't know if you
Speaker 4: know this, but how our eyes work is the first
Speaker 4: time I discovered the way our eyes work, I was
Speaker 4: amazed at the system which is essentially to burn poly
Speaker 4: unsaturated fats for them to work at all. And we
Speaker 4: have all these complex systems in our eyes to sweep
Speaker 4: away the garbage. And interesting thing, by the way, is
Speaker 4: because we've significantly increased the amount of amiga six fat
Speaker 4: in our diet and evolution designed our eyes to work
Speaker 4: on a balance between Amga three and amega six fats.
Speaker 4: The systems designed to sweep away the garbage don't work
Speaker 4: on the garbage from amiga six fats, which means that
Speaker 4: that garbage builds up in our eyes, which is why
Speaker 4: macular degeneration is such a major problem in Australian society
Speaker 4: today because the outcome of consuming too much amiga six fat,
Speaker 4: which is in seed oils, which we've talked about ad
Speaker 4: nauseum is that your eyes don't work because they can't
Speaker 4: be cleared of the garbage. A similar thing occurs in
Speaker 4: your brain, by the way, So having a diet relatively
Speaker 4: low in a Mega six fat, which means keeping seed
Speaker 4: oil out of your diet, improves cognitive function because the
Speaker 4: systems designed to clear your brain built by evolution on
Speaker 4: the assumption that you're going to have about the same.
Speaker 3: Amount of Amiga six and am a Mega iie fats
Speaker 3: in your diet.
Speaker 4: And so when a modern Australian with about twenty five
Speaker 4: times as much amigas as they have a Mega three
Speaker 4: tries to operate a brain on that fuel mixture, bad
Speaker 4: things happen. And the bad things I'm talking about are
Speaker 4: Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Yeah, so, and that's why we're seeing
Speaker 4: those things accelerate at epidemic proportions. So I guess the
Speaker 4: shorter answer to your thing is, if you're looking at
Speaker 4: day to day cognitive function, sleep is vitally important because
Speaker 4: it's the only time your brain gets to clean out
Speaker 4: all the garbage. If you're looking at longer term cognitive function,
Speaker 4: get a Mega six out of your diet.
Speaker 1: And also we know, i mean, your brain's whatever it is,
Speaker 1: eighty percent or ninety percent water, So being dehydrated fucks
Speaker 1: up cognitive function. Booze as you alluded to sleep of course.
Speaker 4: Well, it's not so much the dehydration from booze as
Speaker 4: the aldehyde. So alcohol is very effectively turned into a
Speaker 4: really dangerous aldehyde in our bloodstream, and we've got systems
Speaker 4: designed by evolution to deal with that in relatively low quantities,
Speaker 4: the kind of quantities you might get from showering down
Speaker 4: on fermented fruit. But at the kind of quantities you're
Speaker 4: consuming when you binge drink, you're really overloading that system
Speaker 4: to the point where you really are doing serious aldehyde damage. Now,
Speaker 4: the interesting thing is that aldehydes are bad for us
Speaker 4: wherever they come from. So we get them from smoking
Speaker 4: or inhaling any kind of anything that's burned. So that's acroleine,
Speaker 4: which is an aldehyde. We get a settle aldehyde from alcohol,
Speaker 4: and we get four hne the deadliest of them, all
Speaker 4: from consuming seed oils, and all of them screw up
Speaker 4: our brain. So it's not people when they talk about
Speaker 4: it alcohol and say why it's bad for you.
Speaker 3: The dehydration often comes up, but that's not really the point.
Speaker 3: It's the aldehyde really screwing up our brain and killing
Speaker 3: off brain cells at really stupendous volumes.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know what else is bad for our brain,
Speaker 2: Stress and anxiety, isn't it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, Yeah, not as bad as aldehydes, but yeah, you
Speaker 4: put yourself in a high dopamine state, which is what
Speaker 4: stress and anxiety is. And yeah, that's not a good
Speaker 4: thing for your brain either.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and what about an addiction.
Speaker 1: By the way, Yeah, I feel like in it. I
Speaker 1: use this term before we went live, and I use
Speaker 1: it with some trepidation around you.
Speaker 2: But it's essentially the psychology of aging. And by that
Speaker 2: all I mean is, you know.
Speaker 1: How people think about aging and how people talk about
Speaker 1: their possibilities and potential at a given age, which is
Speaker 1: almost like this cultural programming of oh, well, you know,
Speaker 1: he's in the golden years now, or like I take
Speaker 1: my dad to the months a week, he trains with
Speaker 1: the next those physiologist another time, and he goes once
Speaker 1: by himself and he's eighty five and you know his
Speaker 1: you know, he's not running one hundred meters in ten
Speaker 1: seconds or a marathon in three hours, but his level
Speaker 1: of physiological function and strength and balance and coordination, and
Speaker 1: I would think all of that is similar to someone
Speaker 1: who's maybe sixty five to seventy what we would loosely
Speaker 1: call biological age. And I don't know, I just feel
Speaker 1: like there's a mentality that people get, or a point
Speaker 1: at time, point of time where people get where they
Speaker 1: essentially go, Well, you know, father time or mother time
Speaker 1: or whatever has caught up with me.
Speaker 2: What do you think about that?
Speaker 4: Well, they're probably right. I mean, your sort of muscle
Speaker 4: mass is declining after thirty as a consequence of normal.
Speaker 2: Aging with it without an intervention.
Speaker 3: Without an intervention.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and bone mass, you know, is you know, on
Speaker 4: a similar trajectory, and there's probably not a lot you
Speaker 4: can do about bone mass.
Speaker 3: But the.
Speaker 4: I guess there's a reality there that people have to accept,
Speaker 4: which is that there are two ways of doing life.
Speaker 4: The dominant form of it on this planet is what
Speaker 4: I would call it. You know, I think we've talked
Speaker 4: about this before, the big Vira approach, which is, if
Speaker 4: you were the you know, the ultimate I guess pen
Speaker 4: maker in the sky and you had to decide how
Speaker 4: you're going to invest your resources. If you wanted to
Speaker 4: ensure that there were pens around on your planet.
Speaker 3: You could.
Speaker 4: You could take the approach of saying, you know what
Speaker 4: I'm going to do. I'm going to spend thousands of
Speaker 4: dollars per pen. I'm going to make a mont Blanc
Speaker 4: pen that never wears out. It's going to be absolutely fabulous,
Speaker 4: this thing it is. You know, it'll last one thousand years,
Speaker 4: there's no trouble whatsoever. Or I'm going to take the
Speaker 4: same amount of money and I'm going to and I'm
Speaker 4: going to churn out ten thousand big biros. Well, for
Speaker 4: most forms of life on this planet, evolution chose the
Speaker 4: big Biro approach, which is shit happens. You're going to
Speaker 4: lose some big biros, but it doesn't matter because we're
Speaker 4: producing ten thousand a minute, right, So yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: And they all get there in the end.
Speaker 4: You know, either way, stuff gets written and so it's
Speaker 4: perfectly viable. By the way, and I've read books about this.
Speaker 4: The mathematics is viable, and in fact, I think I
Speaker 4: can't name them off the top of my head, but
Speaker 4: there are life forms that pursue this approach where you
Speaker 4: do go the mont Blanc pen approach, which is this
Speaker 4: thing it never dies, right, it just continuously regenerates. It's
Speaker 4: enormously resource intensive, it has to be fed the entire time,
Speaker 4: takes a lot of endge, but it lasts forever. Trouble is,
Speaker 4: if a truck runs over it, it's just as dead
Speaker 4: as the as the big biro is or you know. So,
Speaker 4: evolution has taken the approach that numbers win every time.
Speaker 4: So if you're going to produce a ten thousand things
Speaker 4: a minute, that means, unfortunately, that we go the less
Speaker 4: intended energy intense route of these things age. So once
Speaker 4: you hit reproductive the end of reproductive usefulness, which is
Speaker 4: about forty, which by the way is a significant extension
Speaker 4: on what evolution programmed into us anyway, which is about thirty,
Speaker 4: there's really no point keeping you alive as far as
Speaker 4: evolution is concerned, as long as you're capable of producing
Speaker 4: the next generation. So everything after that is a bonus,
Speaker 4: and your body is in system decline at that point
Speaker 4: where you know there's no real need from an evolutionary
Speaker 4: perspective for you to stay alive, but you know you can't.
Speaker 1: Oh god, if you're feeling flat, everybody right, But you're not.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you if you're my age, you're definitely
Speaker 1: not needed.
Speaker 2: Same with absolutely you just dead. Wait, No, we're just kidden.
Speaker 2: We're just kidding.
Speaker 1: So, I mean, we talk a lot. We'll just we'll
Speaker 1: wrap up in a few minutes. But we talk a
Speaker 1: lot about, for one a better term or a more
Speaker 1: specific term, the relationship that we have with technology in
Speaker 1: the potential impact of the way that we individually use technology.
Speaker 1: We talk a lot about young people. You're kind of
Speaker 1: you're intertwined with tech. What's your relationship with technology? Do
Speaker 1: you ever get Do you ever do like doom scrolling
Speaker 1: where you wake up and you've been looking at bullshit
Speaker 1: for an hour?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 4: No, I used to do it with Twitter, and I
Speaker 4: was doing it when I started writing I think teen
Speaker 4: brain and when I understood what was going on there.
Speaker 2: But you were trying to get a teen brain so
Speaker 2: that you could understand it.
Speaker 4: No, No, I was using I'd been using Twitter since
Speaker 4: it started, and I'd always found it a fairly interesting
Speaker 4: and real time access to news makers, and that's what
Speaker 4: it was at the start, and so I'd used it
Speaker 4: a fair bit and I had definitely noticed when I
Speaker 4: was starting to write in Tin Brain about the tools
Speaker 4: the programers were using to addict us to things like that,
Speaker 4: and the way the doom scroll worked, and the psychology
Speaker 4: that it was based on, and the experiments it was
Speaker 4: based on, which is the uncertainty principle, which essentially doubles
Speaker 4: the dopamine hit, where you don't always get the thing
Speaker 4: you want to see, You get a bunch of things
Speaker 4: you don't want to see, then something you do want
Speaker 4: to see, then some things that you don't want to see,
Speaker 4: And that uncertainty is how a doom scroll works and
Speaker 4: makes the app addictive. When I sort of was sanding
Speaker 4: back and looking at myself and saying, you know what,
Speaker 4: this is working on you. This is actually working on you.
Speaker 4: You've got to stop doing it. So I did, but
Speaker 4: it's yeah, it's there. And that's probably the closest I've
Speaker 4: come to interacting with social media in that way I've
Speaker 4: but now that I'm very aware of the techniques that
Speaker 4: are being used to do it. And look, people who've
Speaker 4: read Team Brain and Brain Reset, my books that focus
Speaker 4: on this, say the same thing. About two thirds of
Speaker 4: people who give me feedback about it, I would say
Speaker 4: say that now that they know what is going on
Speaker 4: and how they are being manipulated, they're able to stop it.
Speaker 4: About the other thirds say, don't be ridiculous. I'm not
Speaker 4: addicted to that, and I could quit any time and
Speaker 4: then proceed never to quit.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So my last question is around We've spoken a little
Speaker 1: bit about your job, my job, and your potential addiction
Speaker 1: to work or workaholicness and mind, but neither of us
Speaker 1: really experience it as work per se. With all the
Speaker 1: things that demand your attention, from kids, to family, to projects,
Speaker 1: to lawyering to hanging out with me once fortnite, how
Speaker 1: do you decide what to give your attention? Like, there's
Speaker 1: more things that you have more options of where to
Speaker 1: invest your time, focus, energy and skill than you have
Speaker 1: time to actually allocate.
Speaker 2: Same with me.
Speaker 1: I say no to about nine things for everyone that
Speaker 1: I say yes to. What's the deciding factor for you
Speaker 1: in terms of where you will invest your energy, focus
Speaker 1: and time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 4: I sort of do it automatically, so I'm not certain
Speaker 4: what the answer to that is. I'd have to say curiosity.
Speaker 2: Is.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of the reasons I keep doing this
Speaker 4: with you is because we never talk about the same thing.
Speaker 4: So you know it's interesting, you know, I believe it
Speaker 4: or not, Craig, you're an interesting bloke to.
Speaker 3: Chat to, So cut that bit out.
Speaker 2: T take that bullshit out.
Speaker 4: But you know that that's That's one of the things.
Speaker 4: If it's if it's interesting, I'm more likely to do
Speaker 4: it than not. If it's something I've done a hundred
Speaker 4: times before, then it's going to be it's going to
Speaker 4: be something that I'm going to have to force myself
Speaker 4: to do, which sometimes I might do depending on why
Speaker 4: I'm doing it. If it's I like, I like benefiting others.
Speaker 4: I like if there's something that I can do that
Speaker 4: I know it's that would help. Especially what's the word
Speaker 4: for that, It'll be leverage. If there's a simple thing
Speaker 4: that I can do that I know a lot of
Speaker 4: people will benefit from, then I'll then I'd be more
Speaker 4: likely to do that, even if it's something that I'm
Speaker 4: not really keen on doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's very magnanimous as mine.
Speaker 3: And it makes me sound like some sort of saint.
Speaker 3: No it isn't.
Speaker 1: I know, you're a prick, it's all right, but you're
Speaker 1: a prick that does good things, and it's okay.
Speaker 4: No, it's I'm not even thinking about it in that way,
Speaker 4: but it is now that I think about it, because
Speaker 4: you forced me to.
Speaker 3: I'd say, that's that's something that does motivate me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm with you. I'm of course I'm fucking with him.
Speaker 2: Everyone don't send me an email.
Speaker 1: I actually like him, But I like my version of
Speaker 1: that is having a purpose bigger than me is like
Speaker 1: doing shit where you know, I like you, I can
Speaker 1: make someone else's journey or life or a bit better,
Speaker 1: or I can help them help themselves or open a
Speaker 1: door that they can't open.
Speaker 2: And I think the stuff that.
Speaker 1: Like what I like about you is you or like
Speaker 1: you are probably more excited about the things which are
Speaker 1: philanthropics not the right word, but but where you are
Speaker 1: just giving. You know, it's like the European Handball Club.
Speaker 1: What's it called that you run the Brisbane.
Speaker 3: The Brisbane Handball Club.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, So you don't get paid anything for that.
Speaker 2: That's that's costing you definitely time.
Speaker 3: A lot of time and money.
Speaker 2: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So you know you are single handed, We'll not single handedly,
Speaker 1: but you're one of the driving forces and it's something
Speaker 1: that you don't need to do. You know, and I
Speaker 1: think that's you know, let's not start complimenting too much.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll just make everyone makes it a bit.
Speaker 1: It makes me a bit queasy, you know, maybe say
Speaker 1: goodbye affair and we'll go affair and insult each other
Speaker 1: a bit, so we feel Thanks mate, Thanks for your time, La,