#110 — The Change Artist
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Summary
A.J. Jacobs is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, including The Know It All, The Year of Living Biblically, The Guinea Pig Diaries, and Most Recently, It s All Relative. He s the editor-at-large of Esquire Magazine, also a contributor to NPR, and he's written for The New York TIMES, The Washington Post, and other journals. And we talk about many of the topics he s touched over his career, including his full-immersion approach to journalism, the way he performs elaborate experiments on himself, and his recent adventures in human genealogy. And now, without further delay, I bring you A.J.'s interview with Sam Harris, in which they discuss: What is a guilty pleasure? Why does it fall in the pleasure index? And how did it make him feel about being a writer and a human being? What s the best thing he s ever read? All of which he talks about in this episode of The Making Sense Podcast, hosted by Sam Harris. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers. We don t run ads on the podcast, but we do make good stuff, and we do our best to support the products we mention in the ad copy is great, too. We appreciate the support we get from you, we really appreciate it. We really do. Thank you for listening and supporting the podcast. - Sam Harris - The Best Week Ever - Sincerely, Your Support is Amazingly Good, Thank You, Myself, And I'll See You, Too, Thank Me, By So Much So Much, I'll Make It So Much More Than That's A Good Thing, I Can Say That I Can See That I'll Say That So Much By That I Say It, Too I'll Send It So It's At At At That And I Can Do It So I'll Also Say It So At That By It's A Lot By That And So Much And I Do That And That's Not Really A Good Repay It And A Good Place By So I Say That And A Really Can Say It And I Will Also Say So And A Lot And A Thank You So Much That I Do It In A Big Thank You And A Few More So I Can Also Say That In A Few Times And A Little More So Much In A Verb And A More So ...
Transcript
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Today I'm speaking with the writer and journalist A.J. Jacobs.
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A.J. is the author of several New York Times bestsellers, The Know-It-All, The Year of Living
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Biblically, The Guinea Pig Diaries, and most recently, It's All Relative.
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He's the editor-at-large of Esquire Magazine, also a contributor to NPR, and he's written
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for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other journals.
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And we talk about many of the topics he's touched over his career.
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We talk about his full-immersion approach to journalism, the way he performs elaborate
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We talk about religion, gossip, polyamory, health advice, how to think about one's past
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and future selves, the ethics of honesty and what's been called radical honesty, his recent
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adventures in human genealogy in his new book, its connection to tribalism, and many other
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And now, without further delay, I bring you A.J. Jacobs.
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I mean, I'm sure there are other people who take a similar approach, but I can't name them
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You go into each book and to some of your articles more or less determined to perform
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a very elaborate and sometimes painful psychological experiment on yourself and presumably everyone
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We're going to run through some of these topics you've touched, but first, just summarize
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your approach here and describe your background as a writer.
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Yeah, as you said, I am a writer and a journalist, and what I like to do is I immerse myself in
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an idea or lifestyle and then report back what I've learned.
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So, for instance, I spent a couple of years trying to be the healthiest person alive.
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I spent another trying to follow all the rules of the Bible as literally as possible.
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For my new book, I wanted to help build the World Family Tree, which is a family tree with
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millions of people all connected, and hopefully soon will be all seven and a half billion people
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So, yeah, that's my—people call it experiential journalism, immersion journalism, whatever.
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I think we should go through each of these because they're quite different and they're
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My first was where I decided I was woefully ignorant, so I tried to remedy it by reading
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the encyclopedia from A to Z, Encyclopedia Britannica, when it still existed in print form.
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I don't want to, you know, spoilers, but yes, I did get to Z.
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I got to—the last word is Ziviecz, a town in south-central Poland.
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That took over a year and a half of reading about six or seven hours a day.
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Was that a painful ordeal mostly, or was it an incredibly enriching, guilty pleasure
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that you were just amazed that you could get paid to do?
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At times, it was incredibly painful, including for my wife, who started to—she fined me
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$1 for every irrelevant fact I inserted into conversation, so she made a lot of money.
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And actually, one of the big takeaways was it did make my life better, and it was partly
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because reading about the full sweep of human history, it really was clear to me that the
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They were disease-ridden, violent, sexist, racist, dirty, smelly.
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So, you know, Steven Pinker's book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, I got to—I sort of saw
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And it just made me—even when I'm feeling down, even just this three-word phrase,
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surgery without anesthesia, surgery without anesthesia, that—
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So, yeah, it was overall an uplifting experience, if not for my wife.
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Do you have a sense of what it did to your mind?
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I would say I retained less than 1%, although 1% of 33,000 pages is a lot more than I was
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I wish that I could control what I retained, but I think the human brain is drawn to the
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bizarre and the—for instance, I still remember that the origin of heroin was the Bayer Aspirin
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Company invented heroin as a cough suppressant.
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And it is actually a very effective cost suppressant, but it turns out it has some other side effects,
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But they're the ones who named it heroin after heroism.
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So that's the kind of—you know, it has to do with sex and drugs.
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Irrelevant fact for which you'll get fined, $1?
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If you want me to cut a check right now, I understand.
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But I do not have to live with you on a daily basis.
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It's also often forgotten—I mean, it's amazing what Wikipedia has done to the stature of the
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Encyclopedia Britannica, but it's often forgotten that some of those articles were really well-written.
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I mean, there are famous editions of the Britannica where some of the great intellectuals of the day
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I don't know if that persisted until the final edition, but—
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Early on in the 1900s, you had Houdini writing about magic.
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So it really was—and the writing was quite literary.
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At the same time, it was also sort of a snapshot into the past because a lot of it was incredibly racist.
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And a lot of it, you know, in the first edition, they said that California was quite likely an island.
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So you do get to see all of the mistakes as well.
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Well, let's go to another book that also has some nice writing in it and some that's not so nice.
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And it has yet to be superseded fatally by Wikipedia or any other resource.
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So tell me how you hatched this plan to become the most religious person in New York City.
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Well, yeah, the plan was to follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible.
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So I had two motivations for writing this book.
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The first is that I hoped to expose the absurdity of fundamentalism by becoming the ultimate fundamentalist.
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So, as you know better than me, there are millions of people who say they take the Bible literally, that homosexuality is a sin.
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It seemed clear to me they were not taking the entire Bible literally.
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They were ignoring other parts and cherry picking.
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So I wanted to show what would it look like if you actually took the entire Bible literally without picking and choosing.
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So I followed the hundreds of rules that are often ignored.
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You know, the Bible says you can't shave the corners of your beard.
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You look like Ted Kaczynski at the height of his bomb making prowess.
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I used pebbles because I didn't want to go to jail for life.
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But basically, I followed everything and I acted like a crazy person, which is what you will do if you take the Bible literally.
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So that was motivation number one, to show that fundamentalists are deeply misguided and actually not doing what they say.
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The second motivation was a little more earnest.
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I wanted to understand the appeal of religion and see if are there any aspects of religion that can make my life better.
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I say in the book, I'm Jewish, but I'm Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is Italian.
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So you were taking just the Old Testament or did you extend it to the New Testament?
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I mostly did the Old because of my Jewish background and because that has most of the laws.
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So I did about eight months of Old, four months of New.
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So were you officially a Jew for Jesus for the last third?
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Yeah, I met with all sorts of different groups to see how they interpreted the Bible literally.
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So that was the second motivation was to see, am I missing anything?
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And one of the ways I looked at religion, which I found very helpful, were the three Bs.
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I think it was a Jewish scholar who first came up with it.
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That religion is belief, belonging, and behavior.
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So belief in God, belonging to a community, and behavior.
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So encouraging ethical behavior like no stealing or lying or going to a weekly meeting of some sort.
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And so through this project, I did see the appeal of the first of two of those three, belonging and behavior.
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Like Passover, it can be, you know, you get together with your family, eat some food.
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I mean, I think we are, as humans, we're built to belong to a community.
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And there are studies on how people who go to church live longer.
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And I don't think it's because God likes them better.
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So I thought the, I understood more about two of the three.
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And I think I was actually a little too easy on supernatural belief in my book.
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If I were going to write it again, I would come down harder on the dangers of supernatural belief.
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And that that is, that the good of religion, because I do think sometimes religion can do good,
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like the civil rights movement or anti-slavery.
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But I think the good of religion can be outweighed by the bad because of these supernatural beliefs
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My argument there is always that religion gives people reasons to be good,
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but it gives them bad reasons where good reasons are actually available.
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And so it's like, obviously, it's great that some people are inspired to do legitimately good things
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on the basis of their religious beliefs, but it's just, it's a failure of a wider ethical
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culture and conversation that they have those reasons as opposed to the truly unimpeachable
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reasons one could have for a civil rights movement or anything else that we would agree is good.
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And I think the danger is you can take the Bible and then interpret it in a hundred different
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So it was used not just by abolitionists, but it was used by people in favor of slavery and
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say it's in the Bible and that, you know, Cain's offspring are the, are meant to be slaves.
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So yeah, I, I think that that is very dangerous in that sense.
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Uh, but again, the, I, I do like the belonging and behavior.
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So I am one of those who believes some sort of secular, uh, church, some sort of secular
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So I see how you got the behavior and we should probably talk about specifically what you did
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But the belonging part, I would imagine that because the roots of your, this experiment
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were so obvious that you're, you're basically, you're, it's not a sincere conversion experience.
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You're just trying it on for size and trying it on for the purpose of this, this writing
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project, these communities that you interacted with, how did people treat you?
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Were you pretending to be totally sincere for your interactions with them or, or how did,
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Well, I would say that in terms of sincerity, I, I do think that I was insincere in trying
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And also it got very murky because even if you start something as a lark, if you, um, fully
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commit to the behavior, then your mind eventually starts to turn.
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Uh, so that was, uh, you know, it's basic cognitive behavioral therapy and cognitive dissonance.
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I was acting as a religious person all the time.
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It, it faded after I stopped, but I've actually found that it, that can be a very useful tool.
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Uh, there's a great quote, uh, by the founder of Habitat for Humanity that says, it's easier
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to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.
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So I would, I would force myself, uh, to visit friends in the hospital.
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And I would say, uh, again, even though I hated going to the hospital and my mind would, would
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And you do that enough and you start to become a little bit better.
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You hadn't put any of these friends in the hospital by stoning them for working on the
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Although I did stone one astrologer as well as an adulterer.
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But yes, there, um, so I would say there, there was an earnestness as well as of the,
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It was sort of those two prongs and, uh, it was interesting to see, I went spent a lot
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of time with, uh, very religious people who were open to me, um, because, uh, I was going
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in there to try to learn their point of view, even if I disagreed with it.
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And one of my most interesting trips was going to the creation museum.
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And, uh, and as you know, that's the museum devoted to the idea that young earth creationism,
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the world of 6,000 years, beautifully done museum, by the way, millions of dollars.
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They have, uh, you know, beautiful statues of Eve and Adam, although you can't see any
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of their private parts because, you know, that would be, uh, that would be sinful.
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But, um, what struck me there is how intelligent the, how basically how amazing it is that very
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intelligent people can believe very foolish ideas and, and the amount of mental energy
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and mental gymnastics that these creationists used to justify their beliefs was astonishing.
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They had a whole book in their library about the feasibility of Noah's Ark.
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And it, it, it was so detailed and well-researched about how, uh, the ventilation system would
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And, um, it, it, it was a, it was an impressive work, but, uh, in my opinion, it was just, uh,
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an exercise in, in, it was just a crazy use of mental energy, but they were very smart.
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You actually don't have to be irrational across the board to be a religious maniac.
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You just have to have an initial down payment of irrationality on the, on the basic premise
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that say this single book was dictated by the creator of the universe.
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But once you believe that, then you can put all of your remaining rationality to work, trying
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to make sense of the text and getting it to square with all the inconvenient facts that
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come your way from the wider world, then you can have people who are, go and get PhDs in
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biochemistry and view everything they're learning through the lens of how to square it with the
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And that is one of the people I met there was fascinating.
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He was an astrophysicist and he has spent all his time doing just that.
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He did believe that the, the universe was billions of light years across.
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So how did he square that with the fact that the world was only 6,000, the universe was only
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6,000 years old and he had all these complicated theories involving time travel and, uh, but it
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I will say that one thing that, that, that made me more that, uh, I don't know if it's softened
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my heart, but it made me understand a little more of that, why they were so passionate about
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it is one of the creationists told me if evolution is true, we all, uh, evolve from pond scum.
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And how can you have a dig, how can you have human dignity if we all are just pond scum?
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And of course I do believe we evolve from pond scum and I believe that you can have, I actually
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think it's inspiring that we've come so far from pond scum.
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But, but not only that, we have a fair amount of pond scum, you know, still, if you just
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look at the, you know, every person's microbiome, the ratio of bacterial cells to human cells
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It's just a crazy, I mean, it's a crazy place to try to hang your human dignity on some sort
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of fundamental material difference between our species and the rest of nature.
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I think that they really want to separate humans from everyone else.
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There's a lot in religion that's about separation, uh, like, you know, even kosher, just separating
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milk and meat, separating ourselves from the Philistines.
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And that is, I view life as more of a, uh, a spectrum.
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And so I'm okay with having us be on the same spectrum as animals, but, but they, uh, they
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So the challenge is to try to convince them, you know what, this is, you can still have human
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Was it mostly ultra-Orthodox Jews, or did you, you split your time evenly across a dozen
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And, and I can imagine that even among the Orthodox Jews you spoke with, your orientation
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wasn't exactly what they would recommend, or was it?
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I spoke, I tried to spread myself around to at least a dozen.
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So, um, the evangelical Christians and, uh, uh, the Jehovah's Witnesses, I, by the way,
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uh, I might be the only person who, who boarded Jehovah's Witness, who out Bible talked to Jehovah's
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He came to my house and after three hours, he was like, all right, I've had enough.
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But yeah, and then the Hasidic Jews, but I also had more progressive rabbis and ministers
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And, uh, yeah, you're right about the, the Hasidic Jews don't actually follow the Bible literally.
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And as you know, they have, uh, the oral law, which is the Talmud.
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And so something in the Bible, like for instance, it says that you should, in Leviticus, you should
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So if you're taking the Bible literally, I just had to avoid boiling a baby goat in its mother's
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Um, but very Orthodox Jews have, it's been interpreted over the years and, and widen and widen to mean
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So it is actually not, it's an offshoot of Judaism called Karaite Judaism does try to
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follow the Bible literally, but they are seen as, uh, as sort of, um, uh, heretics.
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What was the most surprising or a few of the most surprising changes in your outlook born
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Well, I would say, uh, yeah, I did become a slightly more compassionate.
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One thing that was, I tried to, um, avoid gossiping and, uh, that can be defined in various
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ways, but I just tried to cut out any negative talk about anyone.
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And it was actually a remarkable experience because I did feel a little bit better about
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humanity and the way I think it might've happened is my brain would, I would start to form a negative
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thought about someone and my brain would, would sort of kick in and say, you know what, this
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Let's not even follow through on it because it's a waste of energy.
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So I, I had fewer negative thoughts and it made my, I, it, it made my life better.
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I will say, I mean, I'm still, I still gossip all the time because I'm human, but I do think
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And there's a, a similar rule in Buddhism, the whole doctrine of right speech and gossip
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is one of the forms of speech that is considered just not useful for building a mind and a life
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But I'm sensitive to the character of my own gossip and I'm kind of two minds about gossip
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because on one level you, you can feel what's wrong with it.
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If you're at all sensitive to this, you can immediately feel what's wrong with it because
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if you're talking about people behind their back, one, if you, if you're sort of trading
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in, in negative stories about them, especially for their entertainment value, you can see how
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you're just sort of just kind of dining out on the, on the misfortunes of others.
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And also you're introducing into the conversation with the people you're gossiping with this
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rarely acknowledged fact, which is you are showing yourself to be the kind of person who will
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talk about his or her friends in their absence.
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This can be as stark as, you know, one friend getting up from the table to go to the bathroom
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and the remaining friends talking about him or her in his or her absence in a way that
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wouldn't survive that person's company without some problem.
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And so, and so everyone is drawing from that experience, the message again, almost never
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acknowledged that you're the sorts of friends who will dish about one another, you know, in
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And it just creates a fundamental lack of trust, often unacknowledged.
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The rule I've set for myself is not really, it's not a non-gossip rule, but I, I really
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try to be aware of how I'm talking about other people.
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And I make every effort to only speak about them in a way that I would be comfortable with
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I tend never to say something about a person that I wouldn't say to his or her face.
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And in many cases that I haven't said to his or her face.
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And again, it's hard to be perfect here because you sometimes you're caught up in, in the moment
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where you're, you're in dialogue with other people who are not at all following that kind
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And you're, it's kind of pushing your orientation around, but it's very useful to look at because
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we'll talk about dishonesty too, because I know you've, you've touched that topic, but
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Although I guess that the flip side of it is, and this is where I don't totally align
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with the, the Buddhist view that gossip is just bad.
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It does serve a social function in the need that everyone feels to manage their reputation.
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If reputation management were not a problem, the door to hell is sort of kicked open in the
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sense that you now have totally shameless people willing to do more or less anything because
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they, they just have no concern about their reputations.
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And on some level we have a, a new president who fits that mold.
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I guess he thinks he cares about his reputation, but he's someone who on some level just wants
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And it's probably better for society that people can still be humiliated or, or embarrassed
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There's, I think you do need some gossip, but it has to be the right kind of gossip.
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You know, if there's a publisher I know, and you're, you're in talks with him, but I know
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that, uh, that, uh, that, that publisher is a horrible person who lies and cheats and doesn't
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That's the kind of gossip that I think is, uh, is instructive.
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But a lot of gossip is just, uh, as you say, like a Roman holiday, uh, just, uh, pure joy
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I actually just learned, this is a little sideline, um, but I learned of a, for one of
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my books, I spent some time with the polyamory community.
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I'm not polyamorous myself, but they had, uh, an interesting emotion that they call compersion.
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Polyamory is an open relationship or polyamory is also conveys some implication of bisexuality.
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But, um, I did talk to, during my year of living biblically, the head of the, um, polygamy
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association of America, who is very religious and had just this argument that in the old
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And he actually had, like I said, it's an interesting idea.
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He said, I should go out, marry the second woman, come back to my wife and, and tell her
00:28:56.740
it's a fait accompli, and then it's more likely that she'll accept it.
00:29:07.540
I think, uh, your editor at Esquire might've signed off on that one.
00:29:11.020
Yeah, it would have been a good article, the end of my marriage, but, uh, yeah, um, if I
00:29:15.680
were committed, but they talk about compersion, which is happiness at other people's happiness.
00:29:22.200
So being joyful when your partner has sexual relations with another person.
00:29:31.260
I cannot imagine experiencing compersion whenever I think about my wife with another guy.
00:29:37.280
Is this a neologism of their, the polyamory community, or, or is this a word that I haven't
00:29:45.880
So I, I think it might be, but maybe there's, there's some precedent for it.
00:29:50.500
Uh, but I thought it was a really interesting idea and they, their argument is like, just
00:29:56.040
try to think about if you are, if you love someone and your wife goes out and has a really
00:30:01.520
great meal at a restaurant, you would be happy for it, even if you're not there.
00:30:06.140
And you take that to the extreme and you should be happy if she has a vibrant sex life with
00:30:14.060
I cannot do it myself, but maybe the world would be better if you could.
00:30:21.940
I mean, the, the, the, the Buddhist term for that attitude, it's, it's rarely thought of
00:30:27.640
in the context of extramarital sex, but the name for the mental state of being happy, being
00:30:33.680
made happy by the joy of others is sympathetic joy.
00:30:39.040
It's more or less the way love feels in the presence of, of another person's joy.
00:30:44.100
When you're, when you're in the presence of another person's suffering, you feel compassion,
00:30:47.420
but to be made happy by the smile of, of someone you love is obviously an experience we all
00:30:53.900
And then to extend that to all possible reasons why she could be smiling seems like a fairly
00:31:00.420
heroic act given the level of jealousy many people feel.
00:31:03.820
I mean, I think it is the level, cause I do think Schadenfreude is one of the worst emotions
00:31:09.040
Have you been able to cultivate this sympathetic compassion in yourself?
00:31:15.340
But it's just, there are conditions where it comes up against something else you seem to
00:31:20.300
really care about, like something like monogamy.
00:31:22.680
But yeah, no, I, I can understand it even in that context.
00:31:26.260
I mean, just imagine if you're, you know, if you had some terminal diagnosis, right.
00:31:29.820
And just what sort of person would you be if you, you found out you had six months to
00:31:34.480
live and now you're having to envision your, your wife's life going on for decades after
00:31:44.060
So you have, you're picturing your wife and your children living long lives after you're
00:31:53.880
Do you hope that she meets some man who she's happy with and who, who's a great stepfather
00:32:03.240
And obviously I don't want to think about that happening.
00:32:06.060
I mean, I wouldn't be made happy by this happening, but it's pretty obvious to me that
00:32:10.500
should I find myself in that situation, the only rational and, and decent ethical commitment
00:32:19.060
is to want my wife and children to be as happy as possible going forward and not be made needlessly
00:32:28.440
Well, I, I think that is one, uh, one advantage of not believing in an afterlife or, or a soul
00:32:35.580
is that I really, since I believe that when the lights are out, the lights are out, what
00:32:41.780
happens after that has absolutely no impact on my, my joy or pain.
00:32:46.920
So I've actually given some thought to this and I, I told my wife, I, at my funeral, it's
00:32:55.820
Even better crowdsource it, ask what people would want.
00:33:01.020
Do they want, uh, just, just drink whatever they want, whatever would give them the most
00:33:10.820
Well, we need not take this in a morbid direction.
00:33:13.640
And presumably you and I are both healthy enough for the moment to be jealous husbands.
00:33:18.940
And on the topic of health, I, I, if there's more to say about the, the biblical experiment,
00:33:23.320
I want to say it, but I, I do want to touch your, your experiments in health as well, because
00:33:28.700
obviously that's of interest to, to every person who does not want to die.
00:33:34.940
So that one came about because I did not want to die, as you say, uh, and I, I was pretty
00:33:43.180
I, I sort of saw my body as a way to carry my brain around.
00:33:54.240
So I, I, my body looked like sort of a snake that swallowed a goat.
00:33:58.440
Um, but I wanted to, uh, I, I think there's a lot to, uh, being healthy and the, the links
00:34:10.080
So even if I was just doing it for, uh, a better mental state, uh, it was important.
00:34:16.400
So I decided to do a similar project to the Bible where I wrote down hundreds of pieces
00:34:23.000
of health advice and I, um, I tried to follow them all.
00:34:27.800
So I revamped every part of my life, my exercise regimen, my, my diet, uh, the way I slept, my
00:34:38.820
There is, uh, you know, the, the, the whole idea that, that our paleolithic for parents
00:34:51.320
Uh, it was supposed to be a year, but I was so out of shape.
00:34:54.600
And it was a really interesting, uh, experiment and it did change my life somewhat.
00:35:05.200
Did you, did you measure the change in, in terms of body fat and blood work and all that?
00:35:12.100
I went, I mean, part of it was being, uh, aligned with this, uh, the quantified self
00:35:17.600
movement, uh, which, uh, Kevin Kelly, your former guest was part of.
00:35:22.340
And, uh, yeah, so I definitely, I went in all the right directions.
00:35:26.360
I did feel better, but I also discovered just the, uh, the shocking amount of bunkum, uh,
00:35:38.160
Uh, that might've been the most useful takeaway actually is, uh, is just this being able to
00:35:46.860
spot a little better this, the absurdities that are passed off as science.
00:35:55.080
So if you had to summarize your beliefs now about the best health advice, how would you
00:36:01.460
say someone should live so as to cheat death most reliably?
00:36:06.060
Well, I think one of the lessons was that I could pretty much summarize it in a, in a
00:36:12.580
Uh, they wanted me to write a health, uh, column for Esquire and I, I want, I, I was like, all
00:36:19.660
right, but, uh, it'll be the same two paragraphs pretty much every month.
00:36:23.140
I'm not sure anyone will want to pay attention, but, um, the, the basic idea is, uh, it's very
00:36:31.700
Um, and when you do eat, eat real food, I do believe that, um, that processed carbs are,
00:36:40.480
They, I think there's like a lot of evidence for that.
00:36:46.320
There's increasing evidence how important that is.
00:36:48.540
It affects everything from job performance to driving to your IQ at the day after.
00:36:54.020
Uh, and, uh, uh, don't hit yourself in the forehead with an ax.
00:37:03.120
Uh, but, uh, but there are millions of people trying to make money by selling some sort of
00:37:10.860
Uh, and you know, there's like goop is perhaps the biggest violator that comes to mind.
00:37:18.000
And, uh, Goop being Gwyneth Paltrow's company, right?
00:37:24.980
Uh, and Dr. Oz, I've actually been on his show and I like him as a person.
00:37:29.420
And I think he's, he's probably a great heart, heart doctor from all I've heard, but he kind
00:37:37.740
He ran out of real advice and he got into the, uh, the whole, uh, I don't know if he's done
00:37:46.160
Well, wasn't he, he was now, now we can get into gossip mode, but, uh, I'm pretty, I'm
00:37:50.240
pretty sure I, I won't say anything about him that I wouldn't say to him on this podcast.
00:37:54.760
Was he prosecuted for some, something he touted that turned out to be purely fictitious?
00:38:03.140
I think that there was, there was something, but yeah, he has sort of gone down the path
00:38:07.580
of recommending miracle berries or something that, that lead to fat loss or something unseemly
00:38:16.400
So what was your, as far as the dietary advice, where did your research take you on the question
00:38:21.880
of eating meat versus being a vegetarian versus being a vegan?
00:38:26.600
Well, I am actually a vegetarian, but for ethical reasons, uh, more than health, as far as I can
00:38:32.940
tell, uh, and this gets to basic epistemological, uh, uh, concerns because I think people like Gary
00:38:41.800
Taubes, who I quoted in my book are very smart and he's very much into the idea that the cholesterol
00:38:49.240
And, uh, he's sort of an advocate of the low carb movement.
00:38:54.100
So you've got Gary Taubes and the low carb movement on one end of the spectrum.
00:38:58.580
And then you've got, uh, books like the China diet on the other, which say that eating purely
00:39:08.480
So from what I can tell, it seems to me that the mostly plants does at this point have the
00:39:21.020
I know that Gary and many of his, uh, folks will disagree with that, but one thing that
00:39:28.080
they both agree on is that processed carbs are terrible for you.
00:39:32.120
So staying away from processed carbs and just eating real food, even if they both agree that
00:39:40.960
So whether that's real meat or real vegetables, but it basically got to the idea.
00:39:45.520
I did not have the time to spend three years like Gary investigating whether the cholesterol
00:39:55.960
Uh, and I think he's very smart, but for me in terms of health, I like to think of it
00:40:02.100
as almost like the, the rotten tomatoes model for deciding what's healthy.
00:40:07.820
Um, because you can always find an outlier who says bacon is good for you.
00:40:14.860
So there are just so many quacks with great, uh, academic pedigree who will say the craziest
00:40:22.400
So you've got to, you've got to look at the, the meta studies and the meta meta studies,
00:40:28.480
So, so for me, it's looking at what a hundred reputable scientists say and sort of taking
00:40:34.320
the middle of what they say, the, the rotten tomatoes approach.
00:40:38.740
So if 80% say that, uh, it is, uh, it mostly plants, it has the most evidence now I'm going
00:40:50.200
It's quite humbling from a scientific perspective, how little consensus there is on some very basic
00:40:57.120
So I had Gary on the podcast and it's amazing what happens when you touch this topic.
00:41:03.020
I thought I knew what it was to hit whatever third rail I hadn't yet hit as a topic of controversy,
00:41:09.540
but you know, now I get Gary's hate mail and it's, it's amazing how energized people are around.
00:41:18.820
I don't know how much, how hard it comes in the other direction.
00:41:22.120
I mean, the, the, there's a, a vegan mafia out there that will, uh, will hate you if you
00:41:27.440
dignify the claim that eating some meat is probably healthier than, than eating none.
00:41:33.600
I do want to define health because I do think there's a lot of evidence that a very low carb
00:41:39.500
diet, high protein diet will help you lose weight in a shorter period of time.
00:41:44.500
What I don't think that there's a lot of evidence on is that this will make your lifespan longer.
00:41:50.940
And since, uh, I'm, I'm married and sadly, I don't care as much about my waistline as I
00:41:57.500
I'm more interested in the life lifespan, which I know is linked to obesity, but it's not the
00:42:05.020
But it is amazing that the, I think the only totally uncontroversial statement about diet
00:42:11.140
that, that can be made now, the statement about which everyone will, uh, nod their head
00:42:19.620
in a scent is that eating less sugar is generally a good idea, right?
00:42:27.240
That no one, no one's advocating that you eat more sugar as in, you know, more food with
00:42:40.100
Um, yeah, I mean, even salt is, uh, there's no clear consensus on that.
00:42:46.320
I will say in terms of diet, uh, I am very excited for clean meat and, uh, you know, lab
00:42:56.900
Ethically, that feels like the lever that would move the world if, if we can build it and,
00:43:02.760
and pull it hard enough because just to take suffering animals out of the equation entirely.
00:43:08.440
And yet allow everyone to eat meat if they want it, that would be huge.
00:43:12.920
Although I guess there is an interesting ethical wrinkle there where if you imagine that the
00:43:18.980
lives of farm animals or some class of farm animals are better than no life at all, right?
00:43:26.900
So if you imagine that it's possible to give farm animals, you know, even raised for slaughter
00:43:31.960
or raised to produce milk, if it's possible to give them lives worth living that are, you
00:43:37.300
know, better than not existing in the first place, well then canceling this industry by
00:43:42.680
finding some technological workaround to produce meat and, and milk without animals is a net
00:43:50.940
But I would say that from what I understand, the life of the average industrial farmed animal
00:43:58.180
is not worth living, that the pain outweighs the pleasure.
00:44:02.160
So that if we are able to do cultured meat, then we can, sure, we can have a bunch of cows
00:44:09.200
having a wonderful life and outside of the factory farms.
00:44:14.780
So, um, I mean, I'm excited because it also opens up, you don't have to just eat cow meat
00:44:22.500
You can eat rhinoceros meat or any, uh, endangered species.
00:44:26.960
And I've even, uh, there's a friend of mine who wrote a book about this and there's talk
00:44:34.140
I was going to suggest your next book topic could be the cannibal diet.
00:44:39.260
If anyone wants to eat me, I'm, I'm, listen, I am pleased to offer up my cells.
00:44:44.780
If we can recover some DNA from the shards of the cross, you can, you can eat the body
00:44:52.960
So is there anything that you are doing now that you weren't doing before that book?
00:44:57.340
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