Ben Greenfield is a biohacker, podcast host, and a NYT best-selling author. In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about cooking, community building, nuanced Christianity, biblical psychedelic recipes, biohacks, life-extension, and his philosophical disposition toward heaven. Ben also shares a powerful ritual he does with his family at the beginning and end of every day that can help you discover and strengthen your purpose.  Check Out Ben Greenfield's new Cook Book |https://boundlesscookbook.com/

BEN: Cat on set. There's another cat outside.

AUBREY: No, they're both right there. I mean, I say we just fucking go with it? Alright. I don't know. What do you think? Maybe we should move them. 

BEN: I'm cool with it. I don't really care either way. 

AUBREY: All right. Fuck it. They'll just be a part of it. Yeah. and I'll play this clip if that happens. 

BEN: No, that's the way you do it from the get, 'cause I recorded my kitchen table sometimes and from the start of the podcast I'll just say, Hey, you're gonna hear FedEx, you're gonna hear UPS. Gonna hear my dogs. You're gonna hear my wife and sons coming home from yoga and juujitsu. Just roll with it, folks. You're at my house. So if you hear the cats, well, here we are cats coating whatever they're doing back there by the window show.

AUBREY: Well. Here we are. Ben Greenfield. And our cat children. Well, not our cat children. Not me and you, but me and my wife. And they're going fucking wild. 

BEN: This is purposeful. Do you do this with podcast guests just to kind of get on their nerves? Let the cats unleash in the room. 

AUBREY: Totally. Just let 'em run wild. 

BEN: Exactly. And you practiced for years, like meditating with your cats.

AUBREY: You rub yourself with salmon jerky regularly as an emulsifier moment. 

BEN: I rub myself with salmon jerky as an emulsifier. I haven't tried salmon jerky yet. Tried coffee, ground coffee. Works pretty well. Ground coffee has a lot of use– 

AUBREY: Unless you're trying to attract bears or cats. 

BEN: Have you ever used ground coffee as a meat rub? 

AUBREY: I have, it's pretty good. 

BEN: Yeah. Ground coffee and ground cacao nibs. Like if you do the cacao tea stuff. It's pretty good with little paprika. A little tiny. 

AUBREY: Well, you are now the author of a cookbook. You're kind of an authority on this shit. 

BEN: Well, no. I wasn’t. When I decided that I wanted to write a cookbook, I had total imposter syndrome. Then I wrote the cookbook because my wife's a really good cook. Like she's a rancher girl, make everything from scratch. She taught my sons from the age of four to make souffles and homemade ravioli and risotto and they do meat cooks and roast chicken, everything. And I kind of started to do a little bit of cooking 

AUBREY: I don’t know, man. We were in Hawaii. We speared a bunch of fish. You could cook the little ones. How to cook the big ones? 

BEN: Yeah. I did cook the shit outta that pair of fish stuff with the avocado and the mango and the mashed tarot with coconut oil, macadamia–

AUBREY: And then you would eat those little tiny ones we caught whole.

BEN: Yeah, those are good. Like a whole fried, like one of the few times I'll have fried food is a whole fried fish. Where you can eat the tail and you can eat the head and the whole thing's crunchy and fried. Kinda like an underground pig roast where the whole thing becomes edible. The ears, the cheeks, I just did a 150 pound underground pig roast for my wife's 40th birthday and oh my goodness. It was absolutely amazing. Not only the meat, the flavor that the meat gets after. It steams and cooks for 12 hours. Under the ground. But just the entire process of digging the pit and making the fire at 4:00 AM in the morning and burning it down to coals and then getting all these rocks, you don't get rocks in the river 'cause they explode. So we use all these rocks around the house. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Seems like a sweat lodge. 

BEN: Yeah, exactly. And so you stuff the pig with these rocks after they've heated on the fire for a couple of hours and then you stuff the pig with banana leaves and you cut little slits all over in it and stuff all that with salt, you rubbed salt into it. And then it took five of us guys to carry it over into this giant pit that I had dug. We buried the pig, but before you bury it, you cover it with burlap sacks and a canopy and put about three gallons of water in there over the fire. And the steam just comes pouring up through the canopy and then you cover that with dirt and you watch it for an hour and continue to cover up the steam holes and get it all kind of settled in bed and you walk away. I had a temperature probe in the ass and a temperature probe in the shoulder, and once it hits about 145, that's past raw pork temperature. But you wanna get up to like 185, so you got nice crunchy skin and everything's just super cooked. And so we dug up the pig. I had all the dinner guests arriving at four. We were gonna have dinner at six. And I go out there at 5:30 and it's about like 1:39, 1:40. And so I had 75 people at the party, so I called a bunch of the guys out. We dug up the pig and we just started cutting slabs off it and we finished it on the Traeger, which was actually pretty good with a bunch of Hawaiian barbecue sauce. Anyways, back to the cookbook 

AUBREY: When you ate those fish, that was one of those moments where it's one of those times where I do a lot of things that are kind of manly and then there's sometimes I meet somebody and like, oh, well that's where this person is more manly than me.

BEN: Oh, raw fish. We cook them up. 

AUBREY: I know, but you ate the whole face. I don't eat face. 

BEN: That's where the DHA is–

AUBREY: In the face? I just don’t eat face.

BEN: So, that entire pig's head is in my freezer. And when I get home, I'm gonna bake it with barbecue sauce. 

AUBREY: I bet you're, you're a face seat inside of a gun, Greenfield.

BEN: The eyes, the nose, the ears. The cats are breaking stuff over here. 

AUBREY: Playing chess.

BEN: Playing chess now. So the cookbook thing though, I wanted to go ape nuts on molecular gastronomy and biohacking food and smoothies and cocktails with ketones and pressure cookers and  smoking and combining different cooking methods. That was why I wanted to do the cookbook. It was just put all that together. And what happened was, I learned so much along the way that I freaking love to cook now. It's up there probably with my top few things to do. Like, I play tennis, not baby tennis like you, but real grown man tennis.

AUBREY: I will play you some grown man tennis. You face Seaton, motherfucker. Let’s go.

BEN: Pickle, tennis. We didn't name pickle, pickle. And then hanging out with my sons playing guitar sex and cooking, like I just absolutely–

AUBREY: It’s coming from the man who more often than not, plays a baby guitar called a ukulele. All the time. Not that I'm shitting on a ukulele. I like myself a ukulele  

BEN: You are guilty as charged up there with pickles for a baby word. 

AUBREY: Yeah. 

BEN: I put all this together. I did the cookbook and at the end of the day, I just love to cook. At the end of the day, every day at our house at the end of the day is a party. Like what I mean by that is we don't necessarily have people over, but we gather, I can't say the boys anymore. We were talking about this before the podcast. Gather my son. They've been through the rite of passage in adolescence and I'm still working the boys' word outta my vernacular, especially when I'm around them.

AUBREY: I think that's really rad, by the way, is just a side note to stay on that tangent is to make it real. Like if you go through a rite of passage, everything shouldn't be the same afterwards. Your tribe, your family, everybody should respond differently. 

BEN: Everything changes. 

AUBREY: That's huge. 

BEN: Not only do you have a ceremony, not just a cutting of the cord ceremony, but they have a giveaway feast where they invite all the family, grandpa and grandma and uncles and aunts and make a giant meal and give away gifts. And there was a ceremonial kind of fire afterwards. Actually up at Tim Corcoran's place, a previous podcast guest of yours, who's a great wilderness survival instructor and also facilitates rites of passage up there in Idaho. When they come home, just the vibe is different in terms of the chores that they're expected to do and the amount to which they're expected to pitch in to help with the house. Or even something like the family dinners I was talking about where, they're preparing a lot more, expected to do more, prep and cooking and cleanup and chopping and blending and helping dad and mom in the kitchen. Just everything is different in terms of what I expect of them. And what they expect of themselves. And there's more responsibility. But at the end of the day, we all gather and it's like, 7:00 PM work's done and we make a glorious meal together. We sit and play games for like an hour and a half at dinner. We drink wine, we taste olive oil, we try different spices. It's just like this giant feast. 

AUBREY: That's awesome, man. 

BEN: And then we play music. We go up to the bedroom or up to the living room and play music and they bust out the drums and the rattles. And then we go up and we read stories for like a half hour, just everybody laying in bed reading stories, and then we go to bed. And every single night's like that. And it's like my carrot on the end of a stick. 

AUBREY: Of course, man. 

BEN: Like when you're working during the day, every night you get this grand party with your family. And it's so fun. 

AUBREY: That's epic. I mean, I remember we didn't have that much ritual and intention to do it with my family, but family dinners, I had three older brothers, three younger sisters, and family dinners were a thing. My mom always would cook. And then I would be there. I learned a bit how to cook just 'cause I was always hungry and I was just kind of hanging out watching her. And I still like to cook, but it's different when now it's just me and Vy. And I'll cook for her sometimes and I usually cook most of the meals, but it's a different type of thing, cooking for two is different than cooking for a family. Or cooking for a dinner party or something like that. 

BEN: Yeah, it's a lot more chill, because sometimes the boys and my sons there I go again, have a youth group or have something going on in the evening. And so every Monday night, my wife Jess and I have Scrabble night. And typically it's like sushi and sashimi. Because I get this sashisimi grade fish and I make little pokey bowls and sushi rolls and little sushi bites and stuff like that. And we eat sushi and play scrabble every Monday night for a couple hours, we'll play sometimes. And just go head to head on Scrabble and River and Terran get home. And they always want to know who won and how the game went. And sometimes they want us to leave the game board out so they can see what kind of words we made and how well we played. But it is a different vibe and there's always that temptation. Let's go out to eat. Let's order in from a restaurant. But with the whole family around, it's amazing. And typically every Saturday or Sunday night, we have a whole bunch of people over and do the same thing. With the exception being that we do all the sauna and ice beforehand. So I'll pile six to eight guys in the sauna and we sit in there while the girls are all upstairs drinking cocktails or wine and hanging out in the living room. And typically I've got some kind of meat on the smoker. And then, all of us guys shuffle out to the cold pool and do the cold soak. And then we all come inside famished and have this grand feast. And then same thing, we play music afterwards. Sometimes everybody squeezes into the bedroom for story time. And it's kinda like what we do every night, but we just have a bunch of people over 

AUBREY: Listening to that. Like, people probably know you as a fitness biohacking, human health kind of expert. I mean, you go real deep with all that, but there's no greater thing that you can do for the entirety of yourself, holistically than the shit you're describing. Of course, you mentioned a few things, hot, cold, blah, blah. But that type of community, that type of family time, that type of fun, the joy in doing that, it supersedes all some kind of extreme tweak on the diet where you're cutting all of this out and eliminating this and doing all this when you have love and that kind of connection, you take that a thousand times over anything else, right? 

BEN: Like, that's the thing we know. For example, one of the longest lived humans on record of late Jeanne, I think her last name is Calment from France. She lived a very long and happy life. She smoked a cigarette every day. She had a serving of scotch or whiskey or something like that. She was getting a little bit of hormesis from her alcohol and her carcinogens. She was always with people, lots of glorious family hangouts and people always in the living room. That was one thing she was known for, was relationships and love and family. I really did not have a lot of that prior to Covid. Because I was traveling, I was on an airplane. Every week I was still racing, doing Spartans and triathlons. I'd have a race once or twice a month and I was rarely home to the extent where I felt any urge at all to build community. When I'd get home. I just be by myself or with my family. I just wanted to check out and take a breath before the next big trip. There was a period of time where I had like nine solid months at home without going anywhere. The incentive to go get to know the neighbors and to build a community and to start throwing dinner parties and to have people over and to get to know my own hometown with all these restaurants and museums and parks and hikes that had been neglecting for like two decades. I mean, it's completely changed the dynamic of living in my city and my community. Like I knew my neighbor's names and rode my bike through the neighborhood several months ago and just dropped off invitations in everybody's mailbox, like a paper boy and threw this huge neighborhood party and realized, I didn't even know like three quarters of the people who lived within a mile of me. It turns out they're all like 70 years old. And so it was kind of funny because we threw this huge neighborhood party and my sons were the only kids there, the only young people there. But still the idea of community building and actually taking the reins. 'cause you assume that everybody else is like, they know it and they prioritize it and everybody else is out getting to know their neighbors. A lot of people aren't. They just don't do that. And so if everybody were to go out and get to know their neighbors and throw a neighborhood party and have community dinners, whatever, every Saturday night or every Sunday night, and not only build the family community, but build a local community. I think that's one of the blessings of Covid actually is people actually developing this amazing neighborhood and community. And it's been really special for me. And transformative in terms of the joy that you have after four hours of hanging out with your neighbors and eating food and making music and chatting. It's far more fulfilling than whatever meditation, breath work in the sauna by yourself or any of the workouts or anything like that. Like, it's just so meaningful. 

AUBREY: It's interesting to talk about neighbors because I love cultivating community. I have a deep network in many different communities. We're having some of that community over for dinner right after this podcast. But the idea of the neighborhood, it's always been like a fantasy, but not a reality that I believe in. Because I remember in college, you'd go to a dorm room, I lived in dorms for three years, little cinder block blocks. But you get to know everybody and it was amazing. I mean, it's like the least luxurious place I've ever lived in my life. But it was probably the most fun. Because it was a community like when people were ready to hang, you just leave the door open and you just cruise down and be like, you wanna play NHL 99? Yes, we're in. You wanna do this? You wanna go beer keg, jousting, or what do you wanna do? Let's do something and throw the football. Or chip a golf ball, or go hoop, or whatever else. And you just walk and you're just always around each other. And if you're eating, you don't eat alone. You just kind cruise around. See who else is in there, crew in. Eat food. And I think so many people are drawn to that again. And it's the idea that you are, you're already there, I think is a cool idea to explore. And then the other cool idea to explore is like curating that intentionally as well.

BEN: It's hard for men. At least, I think, the majority of men, it becomes harder to make friends. It becomes harder to set your ego and your habits and your safety aside to actually have other guys over and have them into your domain and begin to branch out. And now I'm playing Frisbee golf and paddle boarding and playing tennis and shooting hoops in the driveway and having guys over in the sauna and having these dinners where they're coming over with their families. And it's really cool because up until that point I thought I had a lot of guy friends. Because I'm part of all these mastermind groups Whenever I travel there's all these folks I'm hanging out with. But it's different when it's at home. And these are all people who just live a couple miles from you.

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

BEN: My neighborhood's different around the middle of the forest, really a neighbor is somebody who's like a mile and a half away minimum. But I didn't really realize the absence of strong, close geographically meaning male friends in my life until I really started branching out like that. And now it's just cool at the end of the day to know that you can pick up the phone or text somebody and have somebody meet you at the river with a paddleboard like an hour later. And a lot of times you think, oh, they're busy. They're with their family, they're doing their own thing. A lot of guys are all thinking that every other guy is busy with their family. You don't want to bother. But a lot of times you send a text and be like, yes! Let's do it. And then afterwards, everybody they'll text you and say, oh, thank you for doing that. I needed to get away. And it is really cool. 

AUBREY: For me, one of the things that's really necessary for me to bond with men is doing something that allows, like that initial bridge to be made. So that can be pickleball, that could be basketball. I made a really good new friend recently. And it was just like meeting him. Oh yeah, you play pickleball. I play pickleball. And then I always look at him like, do you really play pickleball or whatever. I was like, all right, we'll give it a go. 

BEN: Visiting Instagram, looking through his story and his videos. Where's the shot of this guy play? I got a stock for a little while–

AUBREY: But he comes over and he plays a good game. And then we start talking in between games as other people are playing. But that thing of like competing together is a real key part of kind of branching out. So there's like the basketball squad now, the pickleball squad. And then there's a shooting squad and the tactical shooting squad. And then there's the Onnit squad, the Onnit workout squad. There's all of these different groups and we have a men's group and it's pretty fucking cool to feel that starting to come together in all those ways. But for those people listening. And just from my own advice, and maybe you're like me, if you're a guy, like an activity, building it around that activity has been the thing that makes it so much easier.

BEN: For men especially. And I read this in a book recently. I don't recall the name of the book, but men form friendships around activities and women often form friendships in just a social gathering setting. Not necessarily playing pickup basketball or pickleball or Frisbee or whatever, but just sitting around at a restaurant or in a living room or whatever the case may be. Men tend to form close friendships and bonding friendships around either doing hard things or doing adventures or just going out and playing together. And it's kind of funny because that happens to me sometimes, like I'll invite somebody out for Frisbee golf. And the nature of Frisbee golf is such that you don't do a lot of talking. Like you're often in two different directions throwing your Frisbee. You meet up at the hole and you chat, and then you throw a game. And off you go. But there's like this invisible bond that gets formed. As you're just doing that same thing together, I think men especially tend to develop good friendships around. 

AUBREY: And for women, I think that it's not like it's not available there, but maybe the inclination isn't, I don't know. I feel like it's almost like a technology for community building that is underutilized by women. Because it’s not that it doesn't work, 'cause it absolutely does, but it's just using the same kind of ideas to get around that. Because what I've seen a lot of times is women will hang on to friends. Because it's not activity based. It's like, oh, I'm gonna go see so and so. But they're not really excited to see so and so. It's just like they've seen so and so for 20 years. They're totally different people now. But this is a habitual thing. But because there's no activity that keeps it fresh and makes it like, all right, this is something interesting that we're doing and if you can't keep up, well you might not get invited to that activity. We'll find something else. But it keeps this thing like a river that's just the water that is circulating, or a healthy pond where there's always fresh water going in. 

BEN: And let's face it, like women in general are just naturally, for the most part, stronger social creatures. I don't think they need much built in technology and trickery as us guys do to make friends. Like my wife, just walking to a party and have six friends. And I'll be standing there in the corner waiting for somebody to throw me a football or something so I can make a friend.

AUBREY: That’s very fair. Community being probably the most important thing that we have, and we've talked about a lot of the other simple stuff. When you start to analyze someone, like let's say you go in a blank slate, you're looking at somebody and you start addressing some of the other big things that you see people missing that you find really valuable things that aren't inherently obvious, but where do you start looking?

BEN: I think that one thing that you and I both know a lot about that you can identify pretty quickly in someone is their connectivity to breath, like just the way that someone is breathing, watching everything from nasal breathing to how they breathe in response to stress, to how they carry their breath when they're exercising or when they're speaking with you. That's one thing that I think should be built into the core educational curriculum of every young human on the face of the planet, is the ability to be able to have an intimate understanding of the best dial that we have built into our physiology for amping up or amping down our nervous system. And so I think that breath and relationship with one's own breath is one thing that says a lot about a person. Just how they breathe. So that'd be one that I think a lot of people are missing out on. 

AUBREY: Everybody listening is breathing way better right now after hearing that.

BEN: Yeah. They're like, uh oh, people are now judging me based on how I'm breathing. 

AUBREY: Yeah, for sure. 

BEN: Gotta make sure my belly button's visibly moving through my shirt. I think that there are certain core practices, again, apart from exercise or biohacking or eating healthy that are just built into my core now. For example, our morning and evening meditations that we do as a family, they're something that we now all do when we're traveling, when we're apart, we hold each other accountable. We gather every single morning on the porch. And typically, these days I get up about 3:45 or 4:00 AM and I work for like three or four hours. Not just work, but I do all my stretching and having my coffee and doing my red light, and sometimes hitting the sauna or doing the cold pool. I like to have a lot of my day done by about 8:00 AM, in terms of having eaten the frog and getting my body ready and feeling like, if nothing else happens, that's productive. The whole rest of the day, I've actually made a really good dent in things. And I always just thought it was absolutely crazy when I would see guys like, Jocko or whatever, show their 4:00 AM clock. And I had lots of fears about that. Like, I'm gonna be tired in the afternoon. I'm not gonna be able to make love with my wife because we're on different schedules now and she likes to sleep till seven and I'm in bed now at like nine, and we're like ships passing in the night. And that didn't happen. The afternoon tiredness I found is easily solved. Like even if you're sleeping six hours with like 10 to 30 minutes of a really good nap. It seems to replace a good 90 minute sleep cycle. And once I found that out, it was like one to two extra hours every single day.

AUBREY: That's the biggest thing for me. And that was, I think you might have turned me onto his book, Nick Littlehales’ book, which guided a lot of those principles. 

BEN: And a lot of people know about Nick, they talk more about Matthew Walker or Michael Bruce–

AUBREY: I love Nick's philosophy. I really feel it, like somatically I feel it to be true. That 20 to 30 minute nap is just as good as an extra hour and a half.

BEN: And it can be, something like Dr. Andrew Huberman talks about like a yoga cycle. sleep I like to use the deep breast protocol. I like to use the new calm. That's typically what I'll do. And I'll put on some kind of device to shift me into that state even more quickly. Like an Apollo for the vibration therapy or the HAP is another one I really like. 

AUBREY: I just got that one, haven’t tried that yet.

BEN: Theobromine or caffeine or MDMA or CBD or melatonin or adenosine, it’ll just stimulate any of those. I like the CBD. 

AUBREY: I'm gonna put that on side. 

BEN: That's what they do. And they just added bromine. I didn't even try it. 

AUBREY: So, you plug in MDMA protocol. 

BEN: Yeah. That might be the social one. There's another one that's alcohol.  I actually put it on my son Terran one night at dinner, just to see. And he got all loopy and goofy. And when I put the alcohol one on, the best way I can describe it is that I feel like I've had like three cocktails when I've had like half a glass of wine.

AUBREY: So, wait. How does this thing work? It's like a halo that goes around your head.

BEN: Exactly. It goes around your head or around your neck. It's a magnetic signal that's imprinted with the same frequency as whatever molecule that they're trying to simulate. And it causes the same electrical reaction within the cell. But the cool thing is as soon as you flip it off, that molecule is no longer hanging around in your bloodstream. So I can have it on caffeine. As soon as I turn it off. It's not as though I'm up for four hours with disrupted sleep. It's like as soon as you turn it off, the alertness goes away.

AUBREY: So how do you measure the frequency of chemical like MDMA or alcohol?

BEN: Giant underground silo, built deep within the ground, protected from all other frequencies that you then isolate that molecule in and measure the magnetic–

AUBREY: Wait, you're not kidding. 

BEN: Frequency. And the reason this sounds silly is because it sounds like I'm kidding. And then I talk to their scientist who does all this, and that's basically what they have. 

AUBREY: Whoa. I thought you were talking about super–

BEN: They've licensed this technology from some FDA, medically cleared wearable that was originally designed for something like epileptic seizures or something like that, I forgot. But they've done that same thing and I didn't really believe it until I started to use it. And it actually works remarkably well. Remarkably well. But anyways, I put the CBD on for the nap and back to the reason that I do that is because about 7:30 after I've kind of done all my morning stuff, I gather the family on the porch and we all sit across late in the sunshine. Or if it's the winter, we're in the living room by the fireplace and we basically all have a journal. And we close our eyes for one minute and just connect to our body. Just breathe and connect to our body. And then I have this little ding that goes on on the Insight timer app on my phone. I just have a programme for seven minutes. After the first minute, then it dings. And for the next two minutes, all we do is gratitude. And we have our journal there that we can stop to write what it is we're grateful for. But those two minutes, just all gratitude, breathing the gratitude into your heart center and writing down what you're grateful for. And then the next two minutes are dwelling upon who it is you wanna send positive emotions to that day, who you wanna pray for, who you wanna serve, who you want to help. And you write down that one person and you're just on them with laser focus the entire day, whether it be just positive emotions you send their way, whether it's prayers, whether it's phone call, text, if they're someone local, doing something nice for them, whether it's delivering dinner or just going up and knocking on their doors if they need help with anything. And then the final two minutes are just reconnecting to self and then we finish with tapping. So when we're in that state, at the very end of the seven minutes, we'll tap over our heart center over our wrist to create an anchor for that same feeling of peace that we developed after those seven minutes that we can then return to during times of stress the rest of the day. With that anchor that we've set just by tapping in that same location. And so we then all get up and we do a giant family hug together and just hold each other for like a minute after we've done that meditation. 

AUBREY: So the whole thing is eight minutes long. 

BEN: It lasts about seven. Well, with the hug and everything. It's about eight minutes. And then I'll just ask about everybody's day and that takes like two minutes. Okay. What's everybody doing today? Where are you gonna be here? And that way we can plan like, when's dinner gonna start, when we're all gonna meet. Then everybody's just like off to the races the rest of the day. I work from home. So we see each other and we cross paths throughout the day. And then at the end of the evening, like right before we go to bed, we return back to those journals. We all close our eyes. In the morning, it's like a six count in six count out breath work. In the evening we go with a longer exhale. We'll do like a four, eight breath work. You close your eyes and you watch yourself like a movie character through the whole day. Like, how did I wake up? What did I do? What did I read in the morning? How did I spend my morning? What did I have for breakfast? What did I do between breakfast and lunch? What did I eat for lunch? How did I spend my afternoon? How did I spend my evening? And the entire time you're watching yourself like a movie character in your mind. In the third person you're asking yourself, what good did I do this day? Meaning, what was I proud of that character about? Where was I rooting for them? Where did I know that they were making the right decision? What could I have done better this day? Meaning, where'd that character fail? Where do I feel like they were more the villain than the hero? Where was I not rooting for them? Where do I wish I could have leapt through that screen and told them to make a different decision? That's not the right decision. And as we're visualizing that. You have permission to take pauses and write down in your journal what you're discovering. And then finally the last question we write down in the journals is, where is I most connected to my life's purpose? Where is I most purpose filled today? Because what happens is sequentially as you go through that every single day, you not only identify even if you don't have a purpose statement, even though we all do. And I think it's important. You can almost reverse engineer your purpose statement when you're doing this practice by identifying as you go through, okay, this is where I was in the zone, smile on my face. Time was flying by, as though I had no awareness of time, I felt as though this was coming easy to me. I felt like I was using a unique skill I was born with or doing something I was really good at when I was a kid. Something that makes me happy and fills me with joy now, but you write down what it was that was the most purpose-filled activity of your day. And it stacks because if there's something you failed at, like for me, I was writing down for like a week. I didn't play my guitar today. Didn't play my manly guitar, not my pickle ukulele, but the full on big Boy guitar. 

AUBREY: You caught me right before I was about to, 

BEN: I got through like a week of that and like for a while we would share. We would actually say what good I do, but we decided to start keeping it private. And if you wanna share, you can. But it actually not only kind of, well–

AUBREY: It might make it performative almost to a certain. Because you think about sharing it–

BEN: You think about it. And sometimes it'll be something super embarrassing. You just don't wanna share it. Like, you just want to keep it to yourself and dwell with that and work on it yourself. But one night, this was like three months ago, I go, we finish it all up and then afterwards we'll say a prayer and then we all just go to bed. Like, that's after story time, that's after dinner, it's after everything. I finished writing. I'm like, I am never gonna write this down again. For the past week, I've written that I wanted. So now like even if it's just two minutes, right? Yeah. I'll take out, even if it's one song, even it's like the GDC easiest song on the face of the planet. I take out my guitar and I at least strum it. So I never have to be watching that movie character in my mind wondering why they're not doing that. One thing they know brings them joy. They know they love, they know, just connects them to the frequency of music and the joy that they get from it. But they're skipping it every day. And so these things stack or I was most purpose filled when I was writing today. Oh hell, maybe God made me to be an author. Maybe that's actually something that I'm gonna be happy doing until I'm 90.

AUBREY: Or at least for now. 

BEN: Right, exactly. Like this is the chapter in my life where that's what I need to be doing. Because that's what was most purpose filled. Back to your question. I think that that's another thing in addition to community building and breath work, this idea of beginning your day and ending your day book, ending the day with a practice like that, that is palatable in terms of time investments, where you're gonna keep doing it every day. Because I've tried the two times, 20 minutes a day, I just can't do it. But seven minutes in the morning, four to five minutes in the evening with the family, and having that accountability with the family and knowing that even the young men in our house, they can handle that and they can sit with that amount of time. It's pretty meaningful. So that's another big win for us. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Really. Listening to you say that, I mean, the cost benefit of what you just described is so wildly in favor of doing it. Like there's very few things that I've ever heard that have a more favorable cost benefit than what you just described.

BEN: And you know it's a win too. Because there's a lot of stuff. Noodles I've thrown at the wall to see if they stick for home practices. Whether or not we would share what we'd written in our journals or the amount of 'cause we all read scripture every morning. Like how much are you gonna read? Like, is it a section, is it a chapter, is it a verse? What I've discovered is, for example, with journaling practice. I do it when I travel, whether or not any family's around or not. Because it's something that just fricking works. That's one metric for me is if I keep doing it, even when nobody's around and nobody's watching, it's something that I know is really valuable.

AUBREY: Yeah. So when you have a lot of these possibilities, a lot of these interests, a lot of these different things, and giving yourself permission to, and actually structuring how you allot time to all of these various things, this is something that, I personally find it challenging because I have so many things that I love to do. And I have so many things that I can be productive in. And so many things, like if I have an extra hour, how I spend that hour could be. So many different options that I could offer. I could create some piece of content I could write, I could mastermind this new product that we're coming out with. Or I could practice pool, or I could play music or I could learn how to dj, which I'm endeavoring to do, but there's so many fucking things. That it's like I'll do something. But everything feels like it's on such a long loop that sometimes it'll be like, fuck, it's been 25 days since I played my flute, but I have been doing other stuff, but I feel like it's preventing me from real progress in anything.

BEN: Yes. It feels like horizontal shallow living because of the number of opportunities that are presented as a result of the connectivity that we have that enables us to dip our toes into just about any hobby or interest or book or food or skill on the face of the planet that for thousands of years we just never would've known about. Like we wouldn't have known that the sport of underwater torpedo existed. 

AUBREY: Dude, underwater torpedo league, are you in one? I wouldn’t get in.

BEN: I haven't played yet. No. I'm up in Washington state and it's not California, but yeah, it's on my radar or the 10 packages that show up at lunchtime every day at my house right before I'm about to take my relaxing lunch and it's like three devices that I have to plug in and figure out and download the app. And I feel guilty if it sits in the corner, neglected. 'cause I know I have to get to it someday. 'cause it's part of my “job” to test these things out and let the world know about whether the magnetic device that they hide underneath the silo deep in the underground works or not. And then there's the two different musical instruments, the banjo and the little miniature hammer doer and the tiny dig do box so you can learn circular breathing. But really, you'd be happy with just the guitar. And so it's hard also when you are in the position of being an influencer who's highly accessible by all these companies, who are exposing you to lots of things.

AUBREY: Companies and people. 

BEN: Plus, all the things that everybody else gets exposed to just on social media and the internet in terms of cool, new things to learn and to do, and the FOMO that you get with that. What's really helped me out with that in addition to just knowing what really satisfies your purpose in life and actually analyzing that at the end of the day and playing your day like a movie in your mind to see what minutes and what hours are wasted on things that maybe weren't that fulfilling is the idea, which I suppose I would say is more of a belief that I'm going to live forever. I'm going to live forever, and I believe that there will be a new heaven and a new Earth, and that heaven is not gonna be a bunch of us sitting on a cloud, on a fluffy white cloud with angel wings bored out of our minds playing a harp neither do I think that heaven is gonna be some amazing blissed out DMT infused journey where you're just floating and you have that sensation, you don't have a care in the world and just laid out on one giant blanket with colors going through your head, and you feel as though you could just lay there forever. And as anybody who's gone through any type of significant journey, has experienced that one spot during a journey where you're just like, I can be here forever. This is amazing. I could just live with this forever. Just pure peace. Just leave me here. Just leave all these molecules in my bloodstream. I'm good. I'm not guilty about not accomplishing anything in life. This is just a perfect place. I don't think heaven will be like that either. I think that heaven will just be exactly Earth as it is now, but Perfect. Where we can still create and we can still build and we can still draw and color and take baths and play music and make love and be with our pets and do everything that I really think that we are intended to do in the first place, but in a pure and clean and toxin-free and sin free environment where everything's just perfect. And so because of that, when an opportunity gets presented to me or a new skill or a new instrument or watercolor versus oil versus scratch board versus sculpting versus glass blowing, I think to myself, you know what? I have infinity. I have infinity to be able to do any of this stuff because I think that that's what heaven's gonna be like. And I realize not everybody believes that, but dude, like once, that kinda like a light bulb went on in my head. That whole idea of just being guilty about not doing all the things just vanished. 

AUBREY: That's huge. I mean, obviously I have a different religious ideology and cosmology than you do, but none–

BEN: Which is why I'm going to behead you after this podcast. Take your bones home to my family. I'm gonna paint a little mark on my chest of another one I took. 

AUBREY: I'm here huckleberry. Let's go. We'll play big tennis and then Highlander. There can be only one afterwards. But first we play big tennis. But ultimately the idea that 'cause there is some value to the stoic belief, memento more. Remember, you're gonna die because it gives precious to the preciousness of the moments we have. But it can also, if you twist it just slightly off and miss the point. It can put you in a rush. And I feel that I'm in a hurry way too much. But when you're talking, the idea of live like you're gonna live forever. There's something like my whole body just went, ah, yeah, that feels good, right? Like, that feels really good. 

BEN: Let’s say you're not gonna live forever, or let's say it's mental trickery. It's pretty damn good. Mental trickery. 

AUBREY: I agree.

BEN: And it works. And you do have to, as you've just alluded to, strike a balance. Like that doesn't mean you lay in a hammock all day 'cause you're gonna live forever. So it doesn't matter. I mean, there's a great book called Don't Waste Your Life by an author I really like named John Piper. And he gets into this idea like, he never wants to be 70 years old with his wife driving golf carts around a beach and fishing for hours on him. Like he wants to help people and love others. Like if you were gonna live forever and if you knew that you were gonna experience immense joy and the ability to do anything, everything pleasurable on a perfect earth for the rest of all times–

AUBREY: I don’t even need a perfect Earth. I'll take this earth. This earth is pretty right. 

BEN: Yeah. This earth is amazing, 

AUBREY: And I think this is a choice to make it at least close to heaven. We have that choice available. 

BEN: My belief is that the world's getting better. I don't believe in the coming apocalypse or anything. I think the world is getting better and better. We've got speed bumps along the way, but technically you'd call me a post-millennial Christian. And what that means is that I believe that all the talk in the Bible in revelations about dragons and apocalypse and people think the Chinese black helicopters and the beast is Bill Gates and whatever. I believe all that was just prophesying the destruction of the holy city of Jerusalem. And that everything you read about took place between about 60 and 80 AD and that. From that point on, the world gets better and better and better, and we're not going to hell in a hand basket. And yeah, we have little things that happen along the way, but my belief is that this earth is just gradually becoming more and more perfect. And so I have a very positive mindset when it comes to that. But back to that mind game, if you did believe that you were gonna live forever and it was gonna be that good and you did have all this time on your hands, what would be the number one thing that you would do? And the conclusion that I've come to is the number one thing that you would do is you would go tell everybody, “Hey, look, we, you're gonna live forever.” You guys that like, slow down. You can enjoy life. You can save your family and build community and not be grasping, rushing and stressing. And so basically that comes down to some semblance of the golden rule. If you were gonna live forever, what's the number one thing you would do? You would love others. Because by loving others, you're spreading that wealth, you're spreading that message–

AUBREY: And love the earth too, because obviously, if we make a hell out of our environment 

BEN: By loving the earth you are loving others. And that's definitely not, I mean, that's another thing that I'm not ashamed of when it comes to being a Christian, but it's certainly something that I think is sad. This idea of what is called in Christianity, the dominion mandate. God made the planet and handed it over to human beings and told them, take dominion over this earth. It is yours. And so we build factories and strip oil from the ground and we over fish in some cases over hunt and we eat Doritos and Cheetos and monocrop, soy and weed at the church, potlucks and the Dominion mandate was a call to be a gardener to care tenderly for this planet that we've been placed upon. And to foster, animal husbandry and taking care of the soil and learning all the plants and knowing the sacred intelligence of all the herbs and growing things that were placed around us. And instead, this post reformation scientism logic, rationalism based Christianity has resulted in the complete loss of a connection to the sacred intelligence of the planet and caring for it because, God forbid we be all woo woo like the pagan shamans and be whatever, talking to Divines. And so yeah, there's this total disconnect that I think is kind of sad to a certain extent because–

AUBREY: Well, that can evolve.

BEN: Well, we live in a magical world. 

AUBREY: A conversation like this is probably helping push that evolution is, the thing is, is that people think because the Bible is fixed and no new passages are there that a religion like Christianity isn't evolving? Well, bullshit. I mean, look at the Christianity of the 1700’s, 1600’s, 1400’s inquisition. Look at it now. Look at it from the eighties when people were still promoting hell, fire and brimstone and gays were all going to hell. And now you look at that and the whole thing is evolving, it is far more living than people realize. And that gives me actually a lot of, I like that. I like when things are flexible and things can be replenished and refreshed with, and reevaluated. 

BEN: Even something as simple as plant medicines, which are often vilified, especially in Christianity because they're considered to be the equivalent of a lack of sobriety or drunkenness, which is warned against in the Bible for what I think would be sound societal reasons. You don't want a bunch of drunk people walking the streets, throwing bottles at windows and getting in fights and whatever. Like that makes sense, right? It's just built in societal stability. But when you go back and you look at even something like the Bible and you look at two different forms of cinnamon, ceylon and cassia. Asian cinnamon that technically are acting as cytochrome enzyme inhibitors and allowing for other molecules to stay active in the bloodstream for longer periods of time. And those are combined with, for example myrrh and frankincense and even some forms of cannabis. And there's actually a tree that's very much like Ayahuasca. I'm blanking on the title. 

AUBREY: Acacia?

BEN: Yes. The acacia tree. There's lots of examples, especially among early Jewish practices of these type of things being used. We read about in the Song of Solomon, these crazy mixes that when you look at them and you analyze them chemically or technically very strong aphrodisiacs–

AUBREY: Have you ever tried to make one?

BEN: No, I haven’t. It’s actually in my list of things to do. I’m gonna live forever.

AUBREY: You never tried to get high on the effect of Myrrh or Cinnamon?

BEN: No. So I sometimes vaporize organic tobacco with a little bit of cannabis with essential oils like Blue Lotus or Nutmeg or Myrrh or frankincense. I haven't done the exact recipes that are in the Bible, yet. Because there's two different things that are used amongst. 

AUBREY: Dude, you gotta put out the bible bag recipe.

BEN: I'm gonna live forever and trust me.

AUBREY: We got a bible bag, volcano, knife, everybody. 

BEN: I have an Evernote document that's full of things to make, things to do and both, these are on the anointing oil and the incense used in early tabernacle worship. If you look at the ingredient list of those, you're looking at a bunch of cytochrome enzyme inhibitors and topical ingredients that when applied transdermally–

AUBREY: What is a cytochrome enzyme inhibitor?

BEN: It basically allows any molecule that is co-ingested or co-applied along with it to stay active in the bloodstream for a longer period of time. Similar concept as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor right? Very similar concept. Same enzyme pathways, everything. But when you look at, for example, the anointing oil of myrrh and frankincense and cinnamon and cannabis and these different extracts that were applied as an ointment. And then you look at what was burnt as an incense, again, frankincense, myrrh, cannabis, things that would arguably be considered psychoactive substances that were burned in essentially like a four layer thick small room. This tiny called the Holy of Holies, inside the tabernacle, which is not to blaspheme or make this sound the wrong way, but essentially almost like a tiny hot box. And the priest literally had a chain around his ankles. People could track, whether or not he passed out in there from this, this heavy incense in the air. That was a highly psychedelic substance. And to be able to intentionally interact with the divine in that environment and for the exact instructions and recipes for those to be given out in the Bible. And then for guys like Brian Moroz wrote the immortality key recently showed that very similar entheogens may have been used in things like the Eucharist, in terms of the spices that were mixed with the wines. And he has a massive book about that. When you put all this together, what you come down to is the fact that to disconnect ourselves, especially in Christianity from that sacred intelligence and from those types of blends that were used to enhance a spiritual experience or to connect more deeply with the divine. I think it's a little bit sad. And I, in no way, would argue that therefore these types of things should be unleashed upon the planet. And everybody at church on Sunday morning should be drinking a Eucharist based wine spice with frankincense and myrrh and cannabis, because I also believe that certain people are called and certain people are not sure. The role of a priest or a shaman or anyone in that position traditionally, has typically been to go to that place on behalf of the people and to come back like an oracle with the message. 

AUBREY: It depends on the culture. Like one of the cultures that I'm very familiar with, which was Don Howard's lineage with Chavin, and so the priests in Chavin would offer Wachuma, which eventually the church renamed San Pedro. Because it was the gateway to heaven, so that's why they call it San Pedro Cactus. It's an incredibly hard, open, masculine derived experience. But in Chavin, which flourished for about 800 years, and during that 800 years is marked by the fact that there was no sign of warfare amongst neighboring tribes and communities. One of the reasons why is that they would offer Wachuma to all pilgrims who came through. Didn't have to pay for it, whatever. They often brought gifts, but they would just offer Wachuma to anyone who wanted to come. Big, massive ceremonies of Wachuma and that medicine in particular, I think Is well suited for that.

And obviously I'm sure they had great technology about how to manage such a situation. But then they also had Vilca, which is a combination of 5-MeO-DMT and NDMT and Bufotenin. And they didn't give that to everybody. That was just for the priests down in the catacombs in the black. And they would snort that and that was their medicine and then they offered it for everybody. So there's so many different ways to look at this. And I'm not saying that any medicine could be for everybody.

BEN: I think it depends on the substance like kenbane for example. Which is very similar to what the Viking Berserker would use. That's another molecule that you can find in ayahuasca. I mean if you look at the flower, Levite priest's headdress, it is the Henbane flower. It's not Anamita, but that molecule is found in ayahuasca. I don't know if it sounds like Anamita. I don’t know if there's Henbane and Anamita or not. But is that nicotine by the way that you just popped?

AUBREY: It is. You want some?

BEN: I have a piece of nicotine gum in my pocket. And I'm just gonna pop that right now. 

AUBREY: Yeah, let's go. 

BEN: I mean, if we're both gonna be on the same substance here. But an example of what you've just alluded to would be like manna that came down from heaven.

Which most likely was an ergo based fungus. Technically like an LSA than an LSD, but a fungus-like substance that falls from heaven that spoils overnight that must be therefore baked and cooked and prepared properly. But it's very likely that's what manna was. Technically you would have all the Israelites wandering around the desert who actually had this total feel good chemical from ergot, from manna in their bloodstream. And then that would be an example. And at the risk of 8,000 pastors calling down, hell, fire and brimstone on me for blaspheming right now, I'm not saying that there is concrete evidence that the Israelites were wandering around the desert on LSD, but what I am saying is that there is a great deal of evidence that plant medicines in many different formats were an enormous part of the entire Judeo-Christian religion that post reformation scientism and radical logical thought and this idea of sobriety, has kind of beaten out of us. And I think that there are more cons to that than pros. 

AUBREY: A lot of people who've had issues with addiction in their family or something, they will equate doing plant medicine with drunkenness. or addiction. And I think in my conversations with Luke Storey, who came from that, and when I met him, he was in his sobriety for 15 years or something like that. And classic sobriety. AA sobriety. Nothing on nothing. The conversations that we've had, and in my own experience, even though I've never had addiction issues, but a lot of times these medicines are what Don Howard would call Claritin, and it almost creates a hyper sobriety in which you're more sober than you are in your daily life when you're addicted to your drama. You're addicted to your own thought patterns. You're addicted to the conditioning of the world around you and all of these other endogenous chemicals that are keeping you locked in a certain prison of perception and all of a sudden you break three and you're like, oh shit. I'm awake and aware for the first time.

BEN: It's not an escape. Altered state of consciousness. Which many people who have not been in that state simply do not understand. And they say, well, that's just like you had two bottles of wine and it's nothing. Nothing at all like that. It's like your brain has become a 20 x supercomputer with merging of the left and right hemispheric activity and the ability to be able to creatively solve problems or to have an enhanced spiritual experience. And so yeah, it's entirely different. But back to the Bible, there are firm instructions in that book that say. If this is causing your brother or sister to stumble, just leave it at the door when you're hanging out with them. Like if wine is something that someone has a previous history of abuse with or addiction to, or their parents were alcoholics or there's some sort of negative association for them with it that would make it very uncomfortable for them, or tempting for them, or problematic for them if you were to consume that in your presence. And that could be meat, it could be vegetables, it could be plant medicines, it could be wine best to just leave it alone. I think it is sound advice. So, yeah, you do need to be careful about someone's previous history course and their association. 

AUBREY: And people can abuse plant medicines and I've even seen one example at least, of someone who is using ayahuasca as an escape. And ultimately that's not the use for it. And that takes the roots that come from the feet of being on the earth and sweating and living normal life. And he just kind of went off into the air for quite a while. And that's like the risk of using these things as an escapism. So a lot of it is intention. Absolutely. For sure. 

BEN: It's the fruits too. The fruits that it produces are pretty self-explanatory. And if someone has massively transformed their relationships in a very positive way in, their life and their productivity and their clarity, and their vision and their purpose, those are pretty darn good fruits, in my opinion. 

AUBREY: Wasn't there a saying? Like, you will know them by their fruits. 

BEN: You'll know them by their fruits in many cases, Jesus in the Bible, he would actually curse a tree that had bad fruits, that had bad vine that didn't produce. There's even a book, I think it's called The Vine that gets into this idea of stepping back and analyzing. This is another reason I like that evening process of self-examination, analyzing which activities are producing which fruits so that you're aware. And you can certainly tell back to the abuse of plant medicines, how when they're producing good fruits in someone and when they're not. I think that's something else to pay a lot of attention to for anything in life really. 

AUBREY: I just had a really powerful sober encounter with, at least maybe it was perhaps my own imagination of Christ. Perhaps it was Christ. I always say whatever, if I encounter an entity of being. It might be my own projection of them or whatever. But I was going through and I was tapping into a lot of my own fear about certain things in life. And my stress, the fear is always behind the stress and where that was coming from and what I'm afraid of. And there was also shame associated with that fear. And fear of fully stepping into my purpose in life, fully accepting what I believe I'm here to do. And there was the shame about stepping into it. And there's a fear of what might happen. I was being kind of facilitated by a great kind of body worker who guides you through this meditation. And I think she helped open that conduit, Jesus came through and she really encouraged me to go into that fear and go into that shame and really feel it and then get help. And Jesus is kind of who I called and who came to help. And Jesus came in the most loving way and he saw me in my fear and he saw me in my shame. And he just looked at me and he said, me too. And that was one of the most profound moments that I've had. And again, this is sober, but it was this beautiful thing of, I think we sometimes think of Jesus as only the perfect being. Not ever having had these doubts, these fears, this not feeling pain, just being unbelievably courageous throughout but when he looked and said, yeah, me too, I was like, oh man, thank God. Like, Oh wow, you too. All right. I guess I'm doing okay. 

BEN: Me too, a freaking deity. Who had to take on a broken human fleshly body and have to be born and shit is diaper and get zits and get cuts and scars and have to work all day in the hot weather, as a carpenter. And then eventually, the worst curse ever imagined, nailed to a tree. Tortured, beaten. And then at that point, like basically none of the pain or the shame had even started because then he had to take on all the shame and sin and suffering that anybody ever had experienced for all like the Holocaust and Genghis Khan and World War I, World War II, and every rape and every murder. He had to live through all of that in order to actually take on the sin of the world. So when you saw Jesus. Jesus said, me too. I mean, he really meant it.

AUBREY: I fucking felt it.

BEN: There is nothing shameful or horrific or painful that has happened to anyone, like the deepest, most shameful thing that he did not experience himself, and that's why you can actually leave all that shame behind because he took on all of that. So yeah, the ‘me too’ isn't just like, yeah, whatever. I got cut up too and fell and bruised my knee when I was a kid and I had to deal with pure prejudice. No, it's like every last torture that you can ever imagine, every last piece of flesh being ripped off your body, like all of that. 

AUBREY: Yeah. And I had also, in meditation he gave me a cross, and on the cross was inscribed ‘me too’ as a reminder. It was like something because there was a message like, I need to remember this. So when I get lost in my own self reproach, my own self judgment to remember as all of us. Because if you embrace the totality of everything like Christ consciousness is, it's the all it's the divine. And of course, I'm putting in some of my own beliefs in here. We'd have slightly different beliefs, but that's why– 

BEN: We're gonna battle after this. 

AUBREY: Yeah. That's why we Highlander when we're done. But fundamentally, and that was like a beautiful reminder to me. Like, all right, me too. And so it removed all that judgment. But then the cross itself was a really powerful symbol that I haven't really connected with because I've almost taken it as just a signifier of your belief in Christianity. But I understood that there was that moment before when he knew he was going to be crucified and he still said yes, but he was going through it that night. I mean, you read about it, God, why have you forsaken me? There was this feeling of abandonment, why is this my path?

BEN: Crying bloody tears. 

AUBREY: Yeah. Right. But he still said yes. And there was this amazing courage. And so to me, that cross was reframed in my own mind at least, is holy shit, that is a fucking symbol of ultimate courage to say yes to no matter what life throws at you. And just be like, okay. 

BEN: Is a symbol of courage. And up to a certain point it would basically be, if you were to get a cross tattooed on you, the equivalent of getting like an electric chair or a noose tattooed on you, it's like, why the hell would you do that? Like, it's a freaking curse. It's a sign of murder. It's a sign of death. And not only that, it's a sign of the worst that the worst criminal would be given. I believe it was Cicero who wrote how it was the most horrific death imaginable, like a crucifixion. Why would anybody want to get something like that tattooed or put on the door of a church or something like that. Now, it no longer means that, now it means victory. Now it means courage. Now it means complete setting aside of shame. Now it means a new heaven and a new Earth. And it's like this symbol that went from being a curse to being a blessing, that went from being the most thing imaginable to being the most glorious promise available. So, the cross is something different now than I think it was before Jesus. And yeah, I think it's a super powerful symbol now. 

AUBREY: As we go through this conversation we're starting to make a lot of different categories of things once they're fulfilled, you'd live this rich life. I mean, we've talked about community and we've talked about these meditative practices and connection to nature, and then the rituals, the rites of passage that your children run through then. Everything that you're about, but also this kind of belief, this deep belief that you have and everybody's belief doesn't have to be the same. But really walking the walk of that belief, not just kind of intellectually kind of believing it, but like really living in your belief and that's deeply fulfilling. And then having your belief and then your purpose, and then everything woven together and guiding principles like live, like you're gonna live forever. You've painted this beautiful picture in this show of really kind of a formula for living a life that's as rich as can possibly be lived and giving the opportunity to turn this life into heaven. I was on Tim Ferriss' show and he said, if you were gonna make a billboard and put one thing onto the billboard, what would it be? And I was like, well, it'd be “welcome to heaven population, everyone.” Like here we are, everybody. We got it. Are we gonna make it that or are we not? This is a choice we have. 

BEN: Right. And it does really come back down to that foundational principle that that was pretty much the essence of Jesus. And that was love other people, love other people. And it sounds so simple, but once you start to frame everything that you do in the day, including the way that you build your business, right? Like, how many lives are you gonna touch? How many people are you gonna love? At the end of the day, the budget does have to be attended to, but will take care of itself. If the bottom line is, how many people can we reach? How many people can we help? How many people can we love? And it's the same with our personal lives too, like just this idea of not living selfishly, not grasping at straws because you have that confidence that you're gonna live forever. And then knowing that with that life, like the very best thing you can do is just go out and love other people. And loving other people means loving the planet. It means loving God. It means loving yourself. But it’s all framed– 

AUBREY: Because minds are a lot more blurry between all those things. When we try to pretend, we think, oh, this is me and this is my house, and then this is my neighbor's. It's like we make separations between this or my mind and my body and my spirit. Everything is so much more blurry than we realize. Like we're interacting with each other's field constantly. And that which we cast aside and cast judgment on it cannot escape from casting judgment upon ourselves because we're connected. That thing that we do that's bad to somebody else, that hurts somebody else hurts us. Even if we pretend that it doesn't, this is the unblinding when we really start to see that. 

BEN: And one thing I guess this would be my last comment on the living forever part is. Many people will say, well, Jesus was like Mother Theresa, to a certain extent. Like you just live in poverty, like he said to the rich young ruler in the Bible, just leave everything and follow me. So are we supposed to just forsake our houses, forsake our wealth, forsake our families, forsake our nice clothes, and just waltz off into the sunset in the desert in our sandals to go out and just serve other people the rest of our lives. But that is, I think, almost like a guilt producing version of Christianity and in some cases, other religions. This idea that therefore our best calling is to forsake everything, including ourselves, our wealth, our success to serve and love other people. I think there's certain people that are certainly called to that. So there's a divine being and a God, and I believe that there is. He made us, and I believe that he did. Why'd he make us? Like why did he just like, throw this rock down here with a bunch of greenery and an ocean and a moon and a sun and some stars, and then throw a bunch of people on it. And it's because if I'm at home and I have this a home that I've built and this property that I've created and this life that I've given to my sons and my wife and I look out my office window and I see them like playing cornhole in the backyard and eating a popsicle and my wife's sitting there in the hammock and drinking a glass of wine and maybe scrolling through some cool stuff on this magical little box, that's got Instagram on it. And it's actually kind of a cool creation. And then the sun's shining and the grass is green. And I look out at all that and I'm super proud and really happy about what I made for my family. This is really cool. I could just stand here and take immense joy out of just seeing them savor this tiny creation that I've helped to build. And when I think about God, he makes this magical planet that we kind of fucked up a little bit, but hopefully we're gonna get on track. And I think that we are on track. It's this amazing creation that he made just 'cause it's pleasurable to watch all this cool thing. All these human beings and these people and life and the breadth of life. And now they've enjoying all this stuff and the amazing steaks and food and wine and pickleball and ukulele. And sitting around and talking and hearing the sound frequency of each other's voices. And after this, our taste buds will be entertained with some amazing food and then will sleep bliss and have crazy dreams and visions and wake up and have an adventure that brings a lot of joy to the creator. And so I also describe myself as basically like a hedonistic Christian in the fact that I believe that one of the things that we can do that makes God the happiest is to savor his creation and actually own nice things and drive a cool car fast on the highway and have a comfortable house. And yes, like don't live so far beyond your means that you aren't able to love others and still have that philosophy and that approach to spreading the wealth and loving other people. But don't forget to savor God's creation too. Like we do kind of live in a fun little or big circle. And it's nice to also be able to savor that. So I think that you need some amount of balance between loving others, loving yourself, savoring God's creation, but also sacrificing yourself to others. And I think it's a balancing act.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's a balance between working to save the world and savor the world.

BEN: Yep. Exactly. 

AUBREY: Don't get lost on either side.

BEN: Save the world and savor the world. That's a perfect way to put it. 

AUBREY: We've been talking about living forever and you actually probably know a lot about the different longevity practices technology, and you've probably talked to a lot more people than I have. I know there's some people who make this their life-work to figure out how to extend human life. If you were gonna actually put on your scientific hat, not your religious hat, and say like, all right, how long,

BEN: Flip it around. 

AUBREY: There it is. How long is a human being going to live? At what point do we have to get to arrive healthy to this start point to where we get to be 150 or we get to be 200?

BEN: Right. Well, we know based on current epidemiological data and the extent to which people have lengthened their lifespans in the past two to three decades, we've gone from like 115, 117, 121 tops. And we've kind of leveled out. We're not going much longer than about 115 to 121 right now. Now, there are a lot of people walking the face of the planet right now, and many people have predicted that the first person who's ever gonna live 250 is already alive. And that's based on medical care, that's based on technology. Everything from hyperbaric oxygen therapy to NAD, to stem cell therapy, all of these things that are the longevity hacks that people are doing now. So, theoretically we could be extending lifespan, but from yeast to rodents to fruit flies. Like there's not a lot of evidence that we can appreciably increase far past, like, about 121 where we're at right now. I would be pleased if I lived to 120 plus, but realistically, it would be pretty shocking if people started living much longer than 115 to 121 years old. But there's a capability built into mammals and even humans, if you look at the bowhead whale or the naked Mole rat, everything from carbon dioxide tolerance to the ability to be able to repair damaged proteins and DNA, that there are built-in repair mechanisms that could technically allow us to go for a longer period of time. And when you look at like, whatever, Methuselah in the Bible or some of these genealogies that go way back, people living 800, 900, years old. You also have to take that into account. And, there's a wonderful book I'm reading right now, just about this tale of a massive flood where all the waters fell from heaven. And nearly every culture on the face of the planet has this story of some massive flood that occurs that wipes out everything and changes the earth's atmosphere. Well, if there was a covering of water above the planet that had changed the gases and the atmospheric pressure and a lot of things that can influence longevity and carbon dioxide in the bloodstream and the nutrient density of plants and many other factors, and that all fell from the sky and flooded the planet and completely changed some of those gases and the atmospheric pressure and just the way that the earth operates, that the lifespan that people were able to have prior to that event is probably no longer realistic. I don't know if that's the case. But I really would be surprised if in the next few years we're seeing anything much longer than like about 121 or so. Just based on everything I've seen.

AUBREY: There are those people out there that are like, look, if you can make it relatively healthy another 10, 15 years, you got a good shot at 150. What is the argument that they're trying to make that makes sense? 

BEN: That when you stack a lot of these hacks that theoretically you could repair DNA at a fast enough rate, you could stave off immune system degradation at a fast enough rate, you could stave off the natural mutations that are built into us. Again, from a DNA repair standpoint at a fast enough rate, and you can build up carbon dioxide tolerance and you can repair tissue more quickly and things like hyperbaric chambers and use red light therapy and all these things that when you stack all of that, that theoretically you could increase lifespan.

AUBREY: Yeah. 

BEN: But it's all just like on paper right now, like I haven't seen any hard evidence that that's actually possible. I mean, like some rodents for example, they're showing like a 20 to 30% increase in lifespan. But these are like highly controlled laboratory environments with especially bred rats and mice and like this. There's a lot of confounding variables when it comes to humans, but does it matter? Like I don't think it does that. 

AUBREY: Ultimately, it hasn't. And that's why I haven't invited these particular guys on my show who are really proposing that because I get in there in the nineties, fuck, I'm stoked. 

BEN: That's a long ass life. If you're making maximum, like for me it's about impact. Like, if I can increase my health span to the point where the impact I'm making with whatever lifespan that I'm genetically programmed to have approximately, I'm super happy with that. So it's just about taking care of your body so that you can make the biggest impact that you can. 

AUBREY: And enjoy it for the longest. 

BEN: Right. Exactly. So I think we even had this discussion before, I don't wanna be one of those guys who's cold and hungry and libido less and lives an extra. Let's say I live an extra 30 years, but I'm spending 20 of those extra 30 years, in a hyperbaric chamber or a cold tank or fasting or reducing my ejaculation frequency or anything else that we know could potentially help out a little bit with longevity. Like, you gotta draw a line at some point. And so, yeah, I think especially in the health world, there are people who are kind of returning back to your idea a little while ago, like, how do I choose between all these activities? They're fritting away a lot of time just trying to live a long time. When they could just be out enjoying life and loving other people. 

AUBREY: You talk about ejaculation frequency. I heard something from Kyle that was talking about how every time you ejaculate, you're depleting magnesium and zinc through your ejaculate? Is this– 

BEN: Not very much. I don't know if you've seen the size of ejaculate. I just did my daddy kit recently to kind of store my sperm and just check up on what the count is and everything. I mean I, of course, got to witness that and the amount of minerals I'm depleting, I would imagine that by me putting some sea salt on my steak tonight and taking a little zinc tomorrow morning. That's easily like one load right there. So yeah, that whole concept is more about your jing, your Qi, your life force. It's more about that than nutrients or minerals because your body does not grow through, I would say anything more than a very small meal in terms of the amount of nutrients and minerals necessary to make semen good or sperm. So yeah. 

AUBREY: Coming every day, that's fine. I’m back to it.

BEN: I mean, this whole idea of giving your energy away. I get the whole concept, but the concept is not one of nutrient or mineral depletion. 

AUBREY: Yeah. That makes sense. Ben, this is a beautiful conversation, man.

BEN: And that was a great thing to end on too. Like how much sea salt do you need to make enough sperm? And at what point do your adrenal glands just not have enough to go around? And you're gonna be out playing pickleball out there and you're gonna cramp and you'll be like, oh shit. I came last night. I didn't take my sea salt this morning. I'm sorry guys. I gotta go in the house. 

AUBREY: That's right. I mean we gotta keep it real for people.

BEN: That's right. 

AUBREY: Talk about all different things for your health, for your heart, for love. 

BEN: Save the world. Savor the world and feed your semen.

AUBREY: Hashtag feed your semen. Tadpoles need to eat. 

BEN: That's right.

AUBREY: Anything you got going on you wanna tell people about? 

BEN: What we kind of did when we were talking about the cookbook? Cookbook? Yeah. Because like, I don't know, I think it hits Amazon like week and yeah, it's got some, some tasty shit in there, so– 

AUBREY: It's dope. I've enjoyed cruising through it. Beautiful man. Cool. Great to have you, brother. Thanks everybody for tuning in. Peace.