It's no longer news that I love books. Everyone who follows this channel knows that by now. What many may not know is that biographies are by far my favourite books and this is because reading the stories of how some of the most successful people in the world achieved what they achieved is by far the best way to get inspiration that can propel you to achieve greatness in life. In today's video I'll be sharing with you the top 10 lessons I learned from reading biographies of some of the most successful people in the world. If you're new here, consider subscribing so you won't miss other exciting videos like this. 1. Goalposts make soccer matches interesting About 12 years ago, when I announced to my family that I was not going to continue with schooling, my elder brother invited me to his house and asked me an unexpected question. Okay, what do you want to do with your life? My answer was straight forward. I want to build a company and teach Africans how to do the same. That simple answer is what my entire life has concentrated on over the last 12 years. The second great lesson I've learned from studying the lives of the most successful people is that every single individual who achieved great success were not in doubt regarding where they were going in life. As a little boy, Steve Jobs was asked by his angry parents, what do you want to do with your life? The 15-year-old Jobs answered, I want to compete with IBM. That's what Steve did with his entire life. Can you define your life in a single sentence? Do you, in specific terms, know precisely where your life is heading? Just imagine a soccer match without goal posts. What are the players aiming at and how can such a match be interesting? If your life doesn't have specific goal posts, your life will be boring and will end nowhere. 2. Geniuses aren't that smart I have seen this again and again from my personal life and studying the lives of the most successful people in the world. Geniuses are not as smart as most people assume. After reading biographies and stories of tens of successful people and seeing how I achieved everything I've achieved in life, I can confidently tell you that most people who become great successes are not extraordinary and you don't have to be extraordinary either. This is what happens. Most successful people simply hang in there. There's no complex formula to achieving success in life. It's mostly about hanging in there. Do you want to build a successful company? All you have to do is to be willing to start and never look back. Do you want to be a successful scientist? All you have to do is to have a sleeping mat in the laboratory. It's simple but not easy. Just hang in there and never look back. Your luck will come and you'll become successful. 3. Success requires arrogance I came from an impoverished family and grew up in a village where nobody ever made $10,000 a year.  After studying the lives of most successful people, I can tell you that arrogance is one of the ingredients of success because if you're not arrogant, you wouldn't think you can do the impossible. Most things are often called impossible until they are done. Flying in the sky was believed to be impossible. It took some crazy arrogant men to believe they could figure it out. Transmitting human voice or images from one location to another was also found to be impossible. The guys who dared to figure it out were arrogant or else they wouldn't try. Often when you look at your life circumstances, you'll see that what you want to achieve is impossible and that's the reason you need some dose of arrogance to believe that you can do the impossible. 4.  He didn't like to be what he ended up becoming. Many times he rejected the possibility of him leading the civil rights movement until the day he became convinced he was born for the purpose of that movement. Mark Twain said, The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. Great people in the past, people like Napoleon Bonaparte, often made themselves believe they were descendants of gods or something like that. This belief made them arrogant and gave them faith in themselves. You don't have to go to such extremes, but you have to figure out your reason for existence because if you don't, your life would be boring. After Martin Luther King, Jr. was convinced that his life's purpose was to fight for African-American rights, death or difficulties no longer have the power to stop him. Similar things happen to most people who succeed in life. They just get to a point where their goals seems more important than their lives. 5. Seek to know what no one does Charles T. Munger said, In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time, none. Zero. Munger is a billionaire entrepreneur, and if you don't take his words seriously, you won't take mine, so let me repeat what he said. In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time, none. Zero. Six. You must get used to falling. The right words for success is failure outcome. Because success is nothing but the outcome of massive failures. I have studied the lives of the most successful people in the world, and I can tell you something. They failed more than they succeeded. I'm 33 at the time of making this video, and I can tell you that only a few 33-year-olds have gone through half of the difficulties that I've been through in my life, and that's probably the reason why only a few people of my age have the kind of success that I have. You have to get used to trying new things. This will often mean you'll make mistakes and sometimes fail, but as long as you keep on trying, you'll win. Seven. Just try. John F. Kennedy said, A single person can make the difference, and all of us should try. People who become successful don't necessarily have the assurance that they will become successful. Yes, I said earlier that these people believe in themselves. Don't also forget that I said that they are often arrogant. While I believed strongly that I would build a company of my own when I started nearly 12 years ago, I had no certainty and nobody ever had any certainty. The difference between those who achieve greatness and the rest of the world is that successful people just try and keep on trying. They understand the risk and dangers.  Eight. Think like messiah. There are two kinds of people in the world, those who think they are victims and those who think they are messiahs. Most people I know think like victims. They think life happens to them. They think they have zero control. They think they are just one irrelevant, powerless object in the changing world. Successful people think the opposite of this. They think they are the messiah. They think they are capable of solving some of the world's problems. They think they can influence the world and make change happen. Nine. Learn to use people. Okay, I simply wanted to say learn to live and work with people. Almost every successful person I studied knows how to get what they want from other humans. This is very important because you won't go far except other humans like you and are willing to make sacrifices for you. Ten. Stop looking for a success formula. The other day I talked about Albert Einstein and Elon Musk, and right there in the comment section someone pointed out a significant mindset of Einstein which is directly opposite of what Musk believes. Well, there's no specific formula for greatness. There are only lessons, and that's what this video is all about. If you compare the lives of Bill Gates to that of Steve Jobs, you'll see some extreme opposites even though they are both successful entrepreneurs. If you compare the lives of Winston Churchill to that of Abraham Lincoln, you'll notice some contradictions, even though they were both successful politicians. There is more than one road that leads to the market, and knowing this will make you choose what you learn from individuals. These are the summary of what I've shared with you so far. Goal posts are what make a soccer match interesting. If your life doesn't have specific goals, it will be boring. Geniuses aren't that smart. They just keep on trying. Success requires some arrogance. You have to believe that you can do the impossible. Life starts when you know what you can die for. You must know why you're living, to be able to remain dedicated to your life's goals. Get used to failing. It's inevitable. Seek to know what no one does. Learn always. Just try, even if you fail. Think like a messiah. Don't think like a victim. Learn to use people. You must know how to make other people want to help you. Stop looking for a specific formula to success. Just learn. We love you.


Hey y'all, welcome to the vlog. Today is Tuesday, April 30th, and I am three days away from graduation. It honestly has not hit me yet, and I don't think it's going to for a very long time.  Or really, that's not the case. Um, I haven't really started packing.  So I've given a lot to Play-Dohs. I went to both Play-Dohs, and I got $50 from each. And then, um, I need to put some stuff at Goodwill, and then I also need to sell, like, a lot of home decor to other sisters that are gonna be living in the Surrey House next year. So I need to do that today, and I'm also gonna get boxes after this, and start actually packing, which is gonna be so sad. My roommate Tiffany already started taking off her decor, off the walls and everything, and it looks so depressing. Like, we both woke up and were like, where are we? Like, it just, it's sad, you know? I wanted to wait as long as I could because I know I would just feel, like, more depressed if I was in an empty room that looked like a jail cell. So I'm trying to wait, but I also need to, like, sell most of my stuff. So I need to, like, see what I need to sell, if that makes sense. It's currently 10 a.m. I had a grad shoot this morning, and I have two later on tonight. So I'm really excited because I've been getting, like, a lot of people booking me more than I ever have before. I feel really honored when people pick me and, like, choose my work over other people.  Unfortunately, I'm moving away from Orlando, so I'm gonna have to find someone else to do my eyebrows, to do my facials, like, literally everything. Like, I'm gonna have to find new places, and that should just take so much time. Like, you kinda, like, test out different places, and it just, ugh, I just wish I could just take all my people, like, wherever I go. My friends actually got me a Spa Bar gift card for my birthday in November, and I'm just not using it. So shout out to my friends because they're just so thoughtful, and that's really smart. Like, obviously, I love facials, and I'm using it today. I got so dark because, literally, for all these grad shoots, I'm just out in the sun for, like, four, no, more than four hours, because each shoe is, like, an hour and a half, and sometimes I have four a day. So yeah, I'm getting really dark, but I kinda like it, kinda embracing it. Um, it's very different for me because usually I'm kinda pale. I just got out of my facial. I did a microderm abrasion. I get so excited when estheticians say my skin is good because then I really know it's good. Um, she just asked me if I have been in the sun a lot, and I was like, mmm, yeah, and she was like, do you put on sunscreen? I was like, mmm, no. So I need to be doing that because I literally bought the Super Goop sunscreen from Sephora, and it's not, like, white or anything. It's, like, really good, like, silicone kind of primer, sunscreen kind of thing. Um, and I need to start wearing that, but I always forget. So I need to do that tonight and tomorrow and the next day. Um, but I'm at Walmart right now, and I'm gonna get boxes. I really don't wanna do this because then this just means it's, like, closer to actually moving out, but, you know, there's just some things in life you just gotta do. So she's gonna be the first one that takes it off the wall. Go ahead, Hannah. You, you go, girl. It's a, it's a sentimental moment. Oh my gosh. I came in here, contacted the buyer. I know you did. Have fun with those things. Amazing. Oh, it's getting just depressing. And we have decided to go on the UCF rock climbing wall. Have you done it before? No. Okay, I've never done it. It's been my first and last time. Yeah. There, we have, like, a whole senior bucket list, and this was definitely one of the things that we're on it. So we're finally doing it. We're taking line bikes over to the gym because I've just been out so much in this hot, hot sun that I just can't deal with any more time. Everyone's moving out. And there's Charlotte just trying to get a line bike. One over there.  Try, try. Oh, do you type it in? Yeah. Yeah, I haven't done this in a while. Yeah, the scanning never works. That's probably why. It's been closed. Wait a minute. We're sweating like this. Charlotte said we've earned $120. Anything. I'm sweaty. I'm tired, honestly. Me too. Let's go. First and last time at the gym this semester. God shoots later this afternoon. But I'm done now. I have two more to go for the whole season, which I'm really excited about just because like, I don't know, it gets kind of repetitive, honestly.  But we're getting ready because we're going out for the last time ever. I'm so sad. It's the last time ever, but... Well, yeah, you get what I mean. The last time of our college, our undergrad. Yeah, not that I'm going to graduate school, but... But we are going out. We're gonna go to pub. We're probably gonna go to lib. It's gonna get crazy tonight, and it'll be fun, and I'm excited. We are ready. We're going out for our last time ever. So sad. That is not even phased. I'm so sad. I really shoulda been here on the way here. It's Diego actually saw it. It's t-shirt Tuesday, y'all. We're all in our t-shirts except for Tiff. Is this really a thing? No, it's not. Smelly's making this whole thing up. I literally said t-shirt Tuesday like 500 times. Yeah, I know, but it feels like you said a thing. No, we're not saying this. It's the muscle t-shirt. Muscle t-shirt, you gotta show them gains, you know? All right, we're going to lib. Pub, lib, whatever. Wherever life takes us, you know? Last night out. T-shirt Tuesday. Good day, guys. Officially. Officially packing. And yeah, it's kind of crazy up in here. It's depressing. And we have like one of the biggest rooms. So like, God bless everyone else. I don't know how they're doing it. Yeah, because I can barely walk. Yeah, but barely. Okay. I am starting to pull the stuff out from my bathroom, get all my makeup stuff out, kind of just get the ball rolling. I have like about like an hour before it got chute, so I'm trying to get as much as I can get done today. So this is the situation we have right now. Everything's, I mean, the walls are really empty, but everything's like on the ground, which is horrible. Can barely walk anywhere. And then I actually just pulled out everything from my drawer in the bathroom. It's all out on the counter what I want to keep for like the month of May, because, I don't know, it's complicated. I'm pretty much going to be living out of my car in a suitcase for the month of May. So this is probably what I want to take for that. And then I just put like all the other stuff in this plastic bag. And then, yeah, it's just a crazy mess. This is my shelf right here. So I still have like a lot of other stuff to go through. And then that's trash. So we shall see. So all my suitemates and my roommate is gone, so I thought I would take the moment to kind of give you like an update on my life and like where I'm at right now. Basically, I'm obviously so stressed. This past month has been really, really stressful because I should probably just take these out. My AirPods always fall out of my ears, so that's why I'm always like adjusting them to put them back in. I don't know why, but I think I just have like really small ears. Which is not normal, but whatever. So like I was saying, this month has been really stressful because I've had so many graduation shoots, which is so amazing.  And it makes me so excited that people look at my work and want to book me. Like that just makes me feel obviously so good. And so that's been happening. I have up to four shoots a day. So I started at 7.30, and then I have a slot open at 9.30, and then one at 4 p.m. and then another one at 6 p.m.  So that is so exhausting. And as you can tell, I'm super dark because I've been out in the sun for more than four hours a day. My body is hating me right now, but I know it's going to be worth it.  Like graduation pictures are like a big thing. Like that's when you announce you're graduating and stuff. So another thing that I've been really busy with this past month is doing the recruitment video for my chapter for the last time ever. It was definitely bittersweet. I won't lie because I feel like last year I put all my eggs in one basket and like I cranked out like my best video ideas ever. And because I didn't know I was going to be doing it another year. And then I ended up doing it another year.  But I think I did pretty good. And I had a little recruitment viewing party literally the other day and everyone loved it. So I'm really excited about that because that's off my shoulders and that was a very big project that I was like it's not all you have to get done before you leave from college because obviously if I needed a clip of my sisters I couldn't get it after I left. So that's checked off my list of things to do. Other things, I ended my job with UCF and ZUP. So that was really sad because I mean I've been with, well, I've worked with UCF for quite a while. I don't know if I started my junior year or sophomore year, kind of like collaborating with them on videos and then I became an intern for them my senior year. And then ZUP, I just started working with just this past semester but I mean it's such a fun job. I've been so blessed to have jobs that are not only fun but like I'm able to work with fun people. So I'm officially unemployed for now, well technically self-employed because I'm freelancing still. I've actually been wanting to announce where I'm going to end up after college and kind of do a more in-depth life update and Ryan actually came to visit early April and we filmed a whole video and I even vlogged that weekend and everything and we were doing so many fun things and it was like my last weekend to do fun things in Orlando. And guess what? The SD card like, I don't know what happened but the files were just like saying they had zero gigabytes or like kilobytes, I don't know. And they just like wouldn't open. It was just like the image of like the quick time button. Anyways, so yeah, that's all gone. So I guess we're all just going to have to wait because I definitely want to film it with Ryan since I won't give it away. But anyways, so the stress has not been relieved as you can tell by my messy ass room. This is probably like the most stressful move I've ever done. I've always moved myself out and in of places. The only time I had help with when I moved into college my freshman year for summer B, my mom helped me. But other than that, like usually I do it on my own and like honestly it's really not that bad because like I feel like if you do it yourself you know where you're going to put your stuff. Like if my mom came and helped, I may not have been able to find things when I like unpacked it. So I feel like it's just better to do it yourself because like in my mind, I only have half of a room and like how much stuff realistically can I fit in this half room? So I feel like I don't have that much stuff but it looks like I have like so much stuff. I mean compared to like if I had a house or if I had an apartment and like got furniture for it, that would have been worse because I bet in the marquee I had probably way more stuff like freshman and sophomore year I lived off campus in an apartment and it was a pretty big room and a big giant closet so I just like stuffed everything in there. But I have definitely purged a lot of my stuff gave it to a place closet. I'm going to give some stuff to Goodwill and I don't know just most of the stuff it's just hard because like I said I'm going to be living out of my car or a suitcase for like the month of May so I don't know what I'm going to need for like a whole month. Especially clothes wise. So we will see about that. But that's pretty much where I'm at right now. Tonight I have my last two grad shoots. I'm really excited to kind of just be done with grad shoot season just because like I said my body is kind of hating me right now. But also I know like once it's done I'm going to be like oh my god I want to shoot more photos of people and I want I will want to get into it more. So I don't know. Better sweet. But I'm going to get back to cleaning and packing because I have like 30 minutes more until my next shoot.


All right. Good morning cyber traders.  Good to see you all everybody in YouTube. Welcome back Good to see you Raymond. Deborah. Everyone I hear a lot and clear perfect. All right. Let's get started So I'm gonna have a pretty good day looks like markets up around 387 points already Can a couple of decent moves some of you guys remember big we did really well with that stock in the past I think we're from 250 to about $5. We traded about last week looks like she's moving again We're gonna keep an eye on it looks like some of the stocks That took some really big hits are starting to make a little bit of a comeback. So Well, you know, we got some good movement in the market. Let me tell you these this week though It has been one hell of a roller coaster.  We were down almost no thousand We came back. I mean, this is just like this is what day trading is all about and this was a week When you really want to focus on it I mean like it was like short in the morning and it was long in the afternoon It was short in the morning. It was long in the afternoon So a lot of really good volatility, which is very rare because like in days like today this week You don't really like we rarely trade brand name stocks and like they like what we had going on this past week This is one we only would ever trade brand name stocks. So Yeah, there's a lot of green today Patrick in the market, but listen, I don't be fooled. Okay We've seen what's happening. What's what's going on with Russia? You know people will nervous about that a lot of people still talking about what the Fed's gonna do Remember they're meeting this week. They're talking about the The raising the rates if it's four, it's not bad if they say six They might you know, then it's a problem if they do quarter upticks It's not the end of the world if they just hit hard and do a half You know, then you could see an issue. So a lot of good stuff going on and we got to keep an eye on it All right in the meantime Well, we had that that was going on yesterday, but before I get started, let me just remind everybody Josh is doing Lesson three and four today. So don't not forget that He's gonna be focusing on the best and worst times to trade and he's gonna focus on news So if you're a bronze silver and gold student, you have access to it If you're in the cyber group room, you want to know a little bit more about it And want to because remember you got to learn before you can earn remember you see what's going on here on Sunday football Oh my god, it's Monday football That was great last week, but you saw what's going on, but you know every day is not Sunday You know, we have to go out there and learn during the week and that's what trading is about So you want to keep an eye on that but it's a don't miss class today, right? So it's very very important and if you do have to miss it remember It's gonna be on your dashboard couple of stocks that we traded yesterday and we'll talk a little bit about it So you got the Fed mean it's going on today. You want to look at that couple of stocks? Oh, you know that made some big moves We had BBBY That had a little bit of good pop yesterday.  Some of you traded this SR SRA had a nice pop early in the morning 20 to 25 back down to 22 had a last-minute pop right in the clothes You know, there was some really good volatility. I think it was got the pretty big yesterday actually But but you know, I can go down the list. I mean, there was a lot of the stocks I mean you can look at some of the brand name stocks You could see how they all came back a Disney, you know Facebook and you know, we don't really trade these stocks But like when you have a day like yesterday and a day like today, you know You will get these gap upstairs. So if there is a stock that you will that you favor that you like This is basically maybe what you're looking for. All right now on as going on with what's going on this morning I went through the watch list this morning. It's not that big, you know, I mean, it looks a lot of stops have gapped up Boil is doing pretty well. You know as a fan of that stock that stock was a hundred dollars You could see it took a very very big hit due to the crash We've been having that one's good looking pretty good back on the list I sold it. I'm really ticked off.  He came back down It went all the way down to 26 should have bought it back down there would hit 26 25 But um, you can see how it kind of came back a little bit. So that one's not doing too bad Uh What else we have here? So you got a couple of the stocks that are also moving you could see a lot of a lot of them that really got beat up Draft King is doing pretty well right here. I bought a little draft King right here I'm up like 50 bucks that ended a world. I bought in pre-market, but um, that stock took a big hit So that one's doing pretty good What else you got like I said, you got the BB IG that one's got a nice little gap up right there. You got JK ass That's moving pretty nicely too that one been taken a very big hit Probably one of the leaders in the solar industry that stocks up by 15% VC and X I found this morning good volume Good to your sizes, but I know she clicks. She's kind of dying out right here She dropped down to a buck 20. So I'm not really seeing that much I know Kevin. I mean listen the list of it go on riot Nice little pop right there. The stock was at $45. You can see crypto made a little bit of a comeback a little bit Little bit buying a little uptick there even a coin That one you could see that one 375 all the way down to about a buck 50. Damn that thing is volatile Mara to a lot of them are making comeback. So for some of you don't have access to Trading crypto stocks. I mean we would always trade the block chains that one does work pretty well Normans is nasty shake on that VC NX steady away from stay away from it. Yeah, I would stay away from do why'd you buy it Norman? it got a little shaken out because I'll be the first thing I would probably That's what I would probably say myself but Yeah, I took it a loss from it. There you go. I knew it That's okay. I rather you admit to it was a very nasty shake and you know what? We'll see how she opens up. There was a couple of stocks that took really big hits right here Which one was it? There was one that's taking a very very big hit You have a lot of these stocks that's that are coming down pretty hard is CRTX breaking all-time lows Could you believe the stock was literally a hundred and twenty dollars back in September talking about a catastrophe? We saw the stock. I thought it was gonna make a little bit of comeback.  You know when I talk about the story is about to know overnight rules This is what we're talking about right there, you know consistency overnight that low low lows wake up next morning boom stock gets crushed and Not showing any signs of coming back. There's another stock that took a big hit right here at five That one's look like you make a little bit come back, but it's expensive This was the other one I saw this morning. That's really taking a big hit GATL. Look at that one Big big big hit right there big hit right there So a couple stocks that look like we had some good shorts I hope everyone had a good time because we did do a lot of shorting this past couple of days And I know people get nervous, but like you think you think being nervous a trade do a short my god Options is like five times more riskier. So don't be scared to short. You know, I know it's not the trading Fatality you never think of hoping things to go down, but you know what options are just as risky Which actually there are a lot more riskier. So but I know live you guys did well with it and that was awesome and Yeah, the DWAC is also moving pretty well too that one what a great volatile stock that that one was Michael says Ford's got a little bit of a pop Yeah, Ford I mean listen Ford took a very very big hit a lot of support levels right around 20 Looks like it's starting to be a little bit of a Hit some major support levels back in November December You know this stock is not this stock is obviously pretty easy to trade I mean we look at the Leisberg orders on level four that one worked out great. So yeah, that one looks pretty good All right, any stocks. I'm missing I did not call out Anything else that we're missing Josh called out Gato. Yeah on the short on that one Gato Yeah, that one like I said Right around eight o'clock 550 sorry down at buck. I mean, it's a lot in pre-market. That is a lot, you know, so that one looks at that one I like So there is there's a lot to choose from so a day like today. Just give everyone the heads up the way I would trade it.  We saw this yesterday We had a rebound the stock market came down had a rebound it came back down So I'll just bring up the down and show you what I'm talking about right here. Let me bring up a two-day chart So, you know, the whole idea is we are looking like we're having a little consistency trying to come back I mean we would down literally almost a thousand points.  So we got you know, we got this big resistance right around here around 1460 So a day like today, like I said, if we're going to trade brand name stocks something that you like whatever it is It has a trend. These are the days you do it other than that You know what was going to stick with the big percentage gainers and losers because less risk more reward It's easy to follow the iceberg orders, but a day like this. It's very unusual We rarely see things like this and when we do it, you know Let's try to focus on the stocks that we kind of trade together with it But uh, but listen, we got class today Bronze silver gold students, please be in there. We're gonna start at 10 30 So we're giving you a first hour to trade and then you be in class If you're watching us on youtube facebook live If you guys want to ever join us do a trial and listen yesterday We had a a ton of new trial members. We had a a bunch of them from last week from well 365 We got hundreds of new traders at uh trial members that are coming aboard. Remember we for you to move forward Please talk to education advisor because we want you to have the greatest experience to know what's going on We don't want you to come in here and kind of like be confused and know what's going on And and not to know what's happening and just keep in mind. This is a trading room. It's not a teaching room You're only there to watch. All right, so cyber traders. Let's go have a good fun this morning Let's start commentating in about 15 minutes. So let's go fill up some coffee. It may hit the restrooms Everybody else. We'll see you back here at 2 30. All right. Happy trading everyone


Welcome to Ancestral Health Today, evolutionary insights into modern health. Have you struggled to maintain a healthy weight despite making great efforts? You're not alone. Since around 1970, the rates of overweight and obesity have skyrocketed in the US and other industrialized nations. Why is this happening and why is it so hard to lose weight? A good part of the explanation might lie in how the brain controls appetite and regulates weight. If we better understand how evolution has shaped the brain's response to food, we can look at how the modern food environment induces us to eat too much and figure out what we could do to change that. We'll be discussing these topics and more on this episode of Ancestral Health Today, a podcast providing evolutionary insights into modern health. I'm Todd Becker. We're talking today with Stefan Guine. Stefan is a neuroscientist who studied what drives many of us to overeat and become overweight, focusing on the role of brain circuits and how they respond to the food environment. He did his PhD in neurobiology at the University of Washington and he's spoken several times at the Ancestral Health Symposium. He's written a highly acclaimed book about this called The Hungry Brain. It's a great read and recently it got rave reviews in the New York Times. Welcome to the podcast, Stefan. Thanks for having me, Todd. So in today's episode, Stefan, we'd like to have you help us deconstruct the role that our brains play in eating and in overeating. And I'd like to start out by asking you to tell our audience what got you interested in studying neuroscience and the inner workings of the brain. Yeah, I've been interested in neuroscience from a very young age. It's one of the last remaining great scientific frontiers and it's the organ that more than any other makes us who we are as a species and as individuals. So I've always been fascinated in the brain. And studying the role of the brain in obesity has been also a great interest of mine. First of all, because obesity is a problem that affects so many people. It's so impactful. And also because it's something that I think the role of the brain in obesity is not necessarily intuitively obvious to people. So it presents a good opportunity for science communication. Yeah, it's a really fascinating area. And maybe before we get into the details around the brain, just reflect on the situation we're in today where if you go back and you studied hunter-gatherer type of societies and pre-industrial societies like the Katowins and even more recently our ancestors were not generally fat or overweight but now maybe what, more than a third of Americans are obese. So what do you think happened? Yeah, so first of all, let me give you the latest figures from the CDC. 43% of U.S. adults have obesity. So not just overweight, obesity. The lifetime risk of having obesity is over 50% now. So more than half of Americans are expected to have obesity at some point in their lives. Because if you think about the 43% statistic, that includes 18-year-olds, right?  Even children, right, are starting to evidence more obesity. Oh yeah, I mean that's been going on for a long time. Yeah, I mean the childhood obesity rate, it depends on what age group you look at but something like 17% have obesity. And yeah, so if you think about how that sets someone up for life, it's pretty concerning. And yeah, so if you look back historically, you see that obesity rates tended to be lower both in the United States, just 40 years ago there was a lot less obesity and then if you go back further than that there was even less to where it was actually pretty uncommon about 120 years ago in the U.S. And then if you look at non-industrialized societies, you see that typically there's very little obesity. I mean, I'm not going to say that it's non-existent but in most of the societies that I've seen evidence on, it's pretty uncommon to have even a single individual with obesity. Like you look at the Hadza hunter-gatherers in Tanzania, there's no, as far as I know, there's no traditionally living Hadza person who has obesity. You look on the island of Katava, there's no traditionally living Katavan who was studied by Stoff and Lindeberg that has obesity. Not even a single one that had overweight, in fact, or maybe there were a couple that were slightly over the threshold for overweight. So it's not that no one, it's not that everyone, you know, ancestrally had what we would consider an ideal body proportions today. It's not like they were all supermodels and bodybuilders but in terms of obesity, in terms of having a large amount of excess body fat mass, that was not the typical human condition historically as far as we can tell. And even in American society or Western society up until 60s, 70s, right, it wasn't outrageously prevalent. So what happened in the 70s and 80s? Why did the curve start to move up? And before you answer, you know, within this ancestral community, there's a lot of theories, right? There's many different theories. One of them is based on macronutrients, we're eating too many carbohydrates or refined carbohydrates or saturated fat or one of the latest is seed oils. That could be a mismatch, right? Because you could say those weren't around during these long periods of human and pre-human evolution. But do you buy that idea? Is that a valid source of mismatch or do you think it's something else? Yeah, so let me just say a couple of framing things first. The first thing I want to say is that we don't have randomized trials where we rerun U.S. history with the variables different. So a lot of what we're doing is guesswork based on bodies of evidence that we're kind of trying to indirectly apply to this situation. So there's a lot of uncertainty about this and anything that we say about it is going to be necessarily somewhat speculative, including what I'm going to say. And this is me doing my best to put the pieces together, but I don't want people to think this is like the gospel coming down from heaven and the concrete truth. This is just my best attempt to explain what happened. And then the other point I want to make is that a lot of these explanations are not mutually exclusive. So, you know, just on a pure logic level, many things could be true at once, right? So you could have, you know, it could be somewhat due to carbs and chemical contaminant and a virus. And like there could be 10 different things and that would be logically possible. And so I just want to acknowledge that it doesn't have to be just one thing necessarily. I'm glad you say that because there's a lot of folks out there who are sure that it's one thing, right? It's got to be seed oil, so it's got to be sugar. Yeah. But you're right. It could be it's most likely multifactorial, but still there's this inflection point, right? Yeah. How do you explain that? Yeah. So I think that essentially what we've seen is over time there has been a gradual but profound change in how we interact with food. And the big picture is that we have outsourced the preparation of food to restaurants and the food industry. And you see this in the data, we're spending way more of our money on food eaten outside the home than we used to. And that I think even underestimates the change because a lot of the food that we're eating at home today is processed food, whereas it would have been cooked from scratch 50, 100 years ago. And so that's kind of like the longer term context. And if you look at what happened in the kind of like late 70s, early 80s, what you see is proliferation of kind of between meal eating options, like processed food that people are eating between meals as snacks. And that includes sugar, sweetened beverages, by the way, which is kind of its own thing. And what you see is that people are eating a lot more snacks. And these tend to be processed, you know, sweet and savory foods and sweetened beverages. And then you see that calorie intake goes up at that time. And so I think, you know, one explanation for the increase in calories that I think is compelling is we're having more eating occasions, we're eating more processed foods, we're kind of swimming in this more abundant food environment with food options at all times a day that weren't necessarily available or socially sanctioned prior to that. And our calorie intake goes up. And that, you know, some people have pointed to the macronutrient composition. It is true that carbohydrate went up more than the other macronutrients. So it was primarily carbohydrate, calories went up. But, you know, if we're asking like, was it the carbohydrate specifically? Did that play a special role? I think that is kind of hard to square with the historical evidence because the amount of carbohydrate that we eat right now is not historically unprecedented. If you go back 100 years, we were eating about the same amount of carbohydrate and I think actually somewhat more. And it wasn't whole grains either. It was white flour mostly. And essentially what happened was in the mid 1800s, there were a series of technological advances that made the production and refining of wheat much, much more efficient. So things like advances in plow technology, the advent of tractors, mechanical tractors. The advances in milling technology, advances in transportation, like the railway system that allowed wheat to be transported from long distances.  But it was still viewed as a luxury item. That was like what rich people ate. And so people were glad to shift their diets to this luxurious, delicious food and they were eating a ton of white flour, a lot more than we eat today actually. It peaked around 1900 and the amount of sugar they were eating was actually pretty substantial too. Not quite as much as today, but it had already increased most of the way that it was going to increase by that time. So people were eating this really carb-heavy refined carb diet at that time and it wasn't good for them by the way. They had nutritional deficiencies, their teeth were falling out. This was prior to fortification. So it wasn't healthy, but there wasn't an obesity epidemic either. And so I think that the idea that it's just about the carbs or just about the refined carbs is pretty hard to square with historical evidence. That said, I do think that carbs are part of the reason why we grow fat. So I don't think that it's nothing. I just think that they don't necessarily play an outside role relative to dietary fat. So you mentioned refining of carbohydrates. There's also refining of oils and seed oils and some have pointed to that and the uptick in Omega-6 as a driver. Do you think that's significant? Yeah, I think this is another one that's kind of complicated because this is another one where, like with carbohydrate, it can impact body fatness. So carbohydrate, we know low-carb diets can cause weight loss, so obviously it can impact body fatness and it's the same way with seed oils, at least in animal studies. If you reduce linoleic acid, the primary Omega-6 polyunsaturated fat in seed oils, you reduce it to a low level, like 1% or below in the diet of rodents. It does attenuate their fat gain on a fattening diet. So it's one of these things where there are biological effects. It's not like there's nothing at all to the story. But at the same time, there's this kind of narrative that has emerged that, by the way, I contributed to a decade ago that we evolved in this ancestral context with a really low linoleic acid intake and that now we're eating a lot and that is the driver of our health problems and obesity. And I think that that narrative just doesn't really hold up because there are ancestral populations that have a relatively high intake of linoleic acid. And if you look at, for example, the Kung San foragers of Botswana, that's one of the best characterized hunter-gatherer populations. One of the main articles of their diet was mongongo nut and you look up mongongo nut and it's got a lot of linoleic acid in it. And then you look up, there were populations, I don't know as much about these populations' health, but there were populations that ate a lot of pine nuts in the United States or in what currently is the United States in North America. There were Native American populations who relied heavily on pine nuts. Those are also high in linoleic acid. So this narrative that, ancestrally, we had this consistently low linoleic acid diet that we're adapted to, I think is pretty hard to square with the evidence. I think we just had a variety of different diets and sometimes it was high, sometimes it was low. And you pointed out the odds I had high carbohydrate diet, right? It was maybe less processed and they had to work for it. So let's get to, I think, something that comes up in your book, The Hungry Brain, which is a key factor here, which is that we didn't just all of a sudden just decide to choose to, well, let's just start eating more, right? Or let's eat more snacks. There was something driving this and you point to this idea of food cravings and that there's something about the food itself that's driving those cravings. Can you see more about that? And first of all, what is a craving? How does it different than generalized hunger and what's driving those cravings? Yeah, so I'm going to dive into this and tie it into some of the previous stuff we've been discussing here, because if it's not the linoleic acid, then what is it about seed oils that might be driving our intake? And I think basically it's that fats in general, including seed oils are brought together in delectable combinations that really stimulate the motivational circuits in our brains. So if you, at a really simple fundamental level, if you just ask the question, what makes a rodent overeat? Well, like how can you get a rodent to overeat as much as possible? And the answer is calorie dense, tasty human food. You just go to the grocery store, you buy tasty human food like cookies and salami and French fries and stuff like that.  In fact, can you just give us a little bit of insight into this observation that I think it was Anthony Sclafini had where he was trying to get rats to become obese on some kind of rat chow and failing. And he had this chance discovery. Can you say, you know, what happened there? Yeah. So in the 1970s, this was kind of a landmark discovery in obesity research. In the 1970s, at that time, you know, there was obesity. It was less prevalent than today, but it was still, you know, a health problem that existed in society and researchers were trying to study it. And they were trying to do it in various ways. A common way was you would add fat to their normal chow. And that the animals would gain weight, but it was slower and less reliable of a method of weight gain than they wanted. You know, if you have these experimental models, you want them to get, if you're studying obesity, you want them to get really fat, really fast. Otherwise, it's inefficient, you know. And they weren't able to do that, right? They were having problems getting the rats. And so, yeah. And so one day, Anthony Sclafini was in the lab. This was back in the day when rats were just kind of around in the lab instead of locked in these intense facilities. And there was a rat on the lab bench. And there was also a bowl of fruit loops that I guess another graduate student must have been eating. And so fruit loops for anyone who doesn't know, it's like this sugary breakfast cereal that has a kind of like fruity flavor. And the rat walked over to the fruit loops and started eating it voraciously. And this was really a strange, unexpected observation because usually rats have this thing called neophobia where they are really wary of new foods. They'll need a little bit, see if it makes them sick. And then if it doesn't, then they'll go back and eat more. But the rat was just chowing down on these fruit loops. And it occurred to Sclafini that maybe a way to make these animals fat would be to go to the grocery store and buy a variety of tasty human foods, things that humans like to eat and put it in their cages. And that's what he did. And the results were spectacular. So their calorie intake went way up. Their body fatness increased rapidly. And you could give them an enriched environment with lots of toys and stuff and cool things to do. That didn't stop the obesity. You could put a running wheel in their cage so they would exercise. And that made them gain less fat, but they still got quite fat. Was there any difference in the macronutrient composition of the fruit loops or any of these other supermarket foods? Or was there something else about those foods? Yeah. So this is a key question. And so for this, you have to look at other experiments where there's one in particular that I like where they actually manipulated. They compared side by side in mice, the cafeteria diet, which is what I just described, versus a diet that's high in fat versus a diet that's high in sugar. And what they found was that the animals gained weight on the high fat refined diet and the high sugar refined diet, but not nearly as much as on the cafeteria diet. And calorie intake was also not as high. So basically, there is nothing you can do to a rodent pellet that makes it as fattening as tasty human food. There's no macronutrient combination. There's no amount of sugar. There's no amount or type of fat that you can put into a rodent pellet that makes it as fattening as a variety of highly palatable calorie dense human foods. Okay. So what is it about these calorie dense human foods from the supermarket or from the cafeteria that makes rats and presumably humans want to eat them more than the same macronutrients synthetically put together? Yeah. So first, let me acknowledge that I don't want to say that manipulating the nutrients in the food doesn't have any effect. I don't want people to come away with that. I'm just trying to emphasize that it is not as fattening as human highly palatable calorie dense food. So there's something that can't, there is a portion of the effect that cannot be explained by just the nutrient composition of the food. And it's a pretty substantial portion actually. Yeah. So I think essentially what you see is their calorie intake goes up. So the question is what is causing them to have increased eating drive relative to these processed pellets? And I think there are a few different answers to that. One of them that you were kind of hinting at earlier is this heightened reward drive. So certain types of foods, certain combinations of nutrients stimulate dopamine release in the brain more than others. And basically highly processed taste of human foods are optimized to increase dopamine release. Not explicitly, but just by selection for what is successful on the shelves. The things that sell are the things that reinforce purchase and consumption behavior, which almost by definition are the things that stimulate our dopamine. And so you have these foods that are very stimulating to food reward circuits in the brain, motivational circuits that increase our eating drive independent of energy needs. And that is one of the things that stimulates, that I think probably stimulates these animals to over consume. And then another thing is sensory specific satiety. So this is a term that I think was coined by Barbara Rolls nutrition researcher. And essentially it's the concept that we can get full on foods that have a certain sensory profile, like a certain taste, but not full on foods that don't have that sensory profile. So for example, if you have a meal of steak and potatoes and salad, you can eat until you're full on those things. And then if somebody brings out another steak, you're not going to eat more steak. But if they bring out ice cream or a brownie or cookies, you're prepared to eat that different type of food. On the other hand, I call that the second stomach, right? Yeah. It's almost like you have a different thing you can fill. So why is that? Why do you fill up on the steak and then you still have room for the dessert? Yeah. So I mean, I think there's basically two explanations. One of them is sensory specific satiety. So we experience satiety or fullness relative to specific sensory properties of food.  And so that's something that drives us to overeat a lot at buffet is because there are foods that have a variety of sensory properties.  And so you don't hit sensory satiety for sensory specific satiety for a long time and you end up over consuming. And you see in rodent studies, the variety per se when you do controlled experiments does impact their calorie intake and body fatness. And it's pretty substantial. So if you had just one calorie dense, palatable human food in the cage, you're not going to get the same effect as if you have a variety of calorie dense, palatable foods. Palatable foods. In terms of, yeah, the fattening effect in rodents. Stefan, you're using this term palatability, suggesting there's something about the food itself, right? So what is it about foods that make them palatable? Is this an innate thing? Is it learned? And if it's learned, can it vary between cultures and people? Or is there an inherent property of these foods that innately appeals to us humans? Yeah, it's both. And let me take a little step back and talk about palatability and what it means and what its importance is. Palatability is just how good a food tastes. And I use that term a lot because it's a term that people understand. But the real concept that I think is more important is our motivational drive to eat. And that is something that is correlated usually with palatability, but it's not perfectly correlated. But that's really what I am interested in mostly is that dopamine release and the motivational drive and the learning, eating behaviors and habits that it causes. So I use palatability again just kind of for its communication value. But what I'm really talking about is that motivational drive that's distinct from the conscious experience of pleasure, which is what palatability means, although they usually operate together. So having explained that, essentially there are specific food properties that the brain is hardwired to be motivated by and to release dopamine in response to. And the ones that are either known or strongly suspected are carbohydrate, including starch and sugar, fat and protein and salt and umami glutamate, which is that umami meaty flavor in soy sauce and cooked meats and things. So those are things that the brain innately responds to everyone or almost anyone from any culture will enjoy those food properties. But through the process of conditioning, Pavlovian conditioning to be precise, we learn to prefer, we learn to like things that are associated with those properties. So if you eat, let's say, strong cheeses, let's say you grow up eating strong cheeses, let's say you grow up in France.   So even the aroma before you've put it in your mouth, the aroma of the cinnamon bun or even the appearance of the cheese can all of a sudden start those circuits firing up. Exactly. Yeah. So what happens is the dopamine release, initially it happens when you consume the food, but over time the dopamine release comes to be associated with those sensory cues. And so when you see the cheese or you smell it or you smell the brownies coming out of the oven or you're in a situation where you would normally have pizza with your colleagues or a beer or something like that, that's when the dopamine starts firing and that's when your motivation gets triggered and you experience the craving for that item. So it's the dopamine response gets transferred onto the sensory predictors, the predictors of those nutrients. And that's kind of how the brain works and that's how cravings work. So eventually the things that predict the receipt of those nutrients are the things that stimulate your motivational drive and cause you to experience a craving. So going back to evolution, obviously this is not a malfunction. This is a feature, not a bug, right? Obviously our ancestors, hunter-gatherers, it was useful to pick up cues that there might be gained there or berries there. So it's not a defect, but how is it then coming back to the modern mismatch? What's gone wrong in that cue signaling that's driven cravings to the point where people overeat? Because it existed already in our ancestors, right? Yeah, and it existed long before humans existed. These brain structures that regulate this go all the way back to lamprey as before the evolution of most of the types of fish that we know today. So this is extremely deep. And as you said, it's not a malfunction. It's how our brains are designed to operate. This is the process that happens even when we eat healthy foods. But the problem is that the system gets overstimulated with modern, highly processed foods. And essentially what we have done over the course of history through the progress of technology and affluence, we have become better and better at extracting and recombining the, quote, active ingredients, the active dopamine releasing ingredients in food. So it's more concentrated now. Yeah. So, you know, it used to be that humans would get salt from whole foods or maybe sometimes from sea water or from blood. And now we have 100% pure salt in unlimited quantities to add to anything we want. Sugar is the same way. You used to be able to get it from fruit or honey. Honey is pretty concentrated. But now we have it in 100% concentrated form to add to anything we want. You know, glutamate. That's another one that umami flavor. Processed food is full of that stuff. And usually it won't say monosodium glutamate. It'll say like yeast extract or some other thing. Hydro-hydrolyzed vegetable protein. Yeah, yeah. Same thing. It'll be something where it's the same thing, but it's not something you would recognize in the ingredients list. But it's still, you know, the same compound doing the same thing to your brain. And so, yeah, so everywhere you look, essentially we have mastered the active ingredients, quote, unquote, in food and recombine them to maximally stimulate our own palate. And so we are surrounded by food that is simply more tempting than what our ancestors would have experienced. And that's not to say that they never ate anything tasty. Sometimes they did, you know, like there was honey, there were fruit, there was meat. Sometimes the meat was fatty, so it's not like there were never anything that tasted good at all. But it just wasn't available in this concentrated form, right? Yeah. So there was no way to, yeah. Yeah. And you think about the meat, for example, which is probably one of the tastier things they would eat. Most of these cultures didn't have salt. So you're not salting it, you're not putting herbs all over it. You're cooking it the best you can over an open fire, and some parts are burned, some parts are raw.  So basically we've just like through all of the methods, cooking methods and extracting ingredients and, you know, absolutely abundant availability of everything, we've just kind of like optimized the entertainment of our own palates. So we're getting an abnormal secretion of dopamine in response to these hyper-palatable foods. And you've mentioned dopamine now several times here. In the popular press, the word dopamine is thrown around, you know, all the time. You know, all addictions come down to dopamine, whether it's smartphones or sex or gambling or anything else. But, you know, what is dopamine? Can you say more about that and how does that work in the brain? Is dopamine about pleasure? You've used the term reward, you know?  So say more about dopamine. What is it and how does it work in our brain? Yeah, so dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is involved in motivation and learning. And it is often associated with pleasure in the popular press, but that's not well supported by the evidence. So dopamine is really a learning and motivation chemical. And it does absolutely play a critical central role in those processes. And particularly that kind of like visceral, craving level motivation. I'm not talking about the kind of motivation where you're like, man, I should really put my shoes on and go for a jog right now. And I'm going to force myself to do it. That's not the kind of motivation I'm talking about. I'm talking about the kind where you have to force yourself not to do it.  That's the kind of motivation we're talking about. More of a visceral, craving level. So the dopamine happens before you acquire the object of your desire or it happens after. When does dopamine go up? Yeah, so it's an incredibly elegant system. And to walk you through that because there's not a yes or no answer to that. So to walk you through that, I'll take you through a hypothetical example. Let's go through Ivan Pavlov's experiment because I think that really can illustrate this well. And Pavlov did his research before. We knew what dopamine was. But now we know what role dopamine plays in this sort of thing. So what Pavlov did is he noticed that when he would come in to feed the dogs that he would do his experiments with, they would start salivating like crazy. So they would start drooling. And so they were experiencing behavioral and physiological activation in preparation for ingestion of that food. And that food is what's called an unconditioned stimulus. So that means they innately have a motivational response to that food. Now what he showed subsequently was if he just rang a bell, it was a meaningless stimulus if he just rang a bell. And the dogs didn't really respond to it, meaningless stimulus. However, if he started ringing the bell at the same time that he gave them food, eventually the dogs would come to salivate and have that anticipatory behavioral and physiological response in response to the bell itself. They made the association with me. Yeah, okay. And so what happens there is initially the dopamine is associated with the food. It's getting released with the food. But as that association forms, as the brain comes to understand that the bell is a reliable predictor of the food, the dopamine signal transfers over to the bell. And so it's no longer being released with the food, it's being released with the bell. And so essentially, and it gets a little bit more complicated than that because dopamine essentially, it tunes your brain to the value of the item that it's responding to. So if you ring the bell, then they get the dopamine response and then you bring the food out. But if that food is not as good as it usually is, if the food is not as rewarding as usual, there will actually be a negative dopamine response as they eat the food. A disappointment. The dopamine will actually drop. Right. Yeah, exactly. And if the food is better than usual, there'll be a bump in the dopamine as they eat the food. And that retunes for next time, retunes how intense their motivational drive should be when they hear that bell. And so maybe if the food is consistently bad after the bell, then maybe they won't salivate as much, won't get as excited about it over time, they'll tune the strength of their association. But if the food is always the same, then there's no tuning that happens when they actually receive the food and there's no change in dopamine. And they just get this bump when the bell rings. Okay. So you form this association and the more you then experience this cue, the bell or the aroma of the bun or whatever, that dopamine comes back and it keeps getting reinforced. Once you've consumed the food, it goes away. So is it really just the buildup that teaches you to pursue the food or does do you get a lingering pleasure afterward and the dopamine stays high? Well, initially, if you're eating a new food that you've never had before, then, and it has a lot of, let's say, fat and carbohydrate together, which seems to stimulate a particularly powerful dopamine response. If you're having that for the first time, then you're going to get a big dopamine burst when you consume that food. And that is teaching your brain that that's a really valuable food. But over time, when you have that multiple times, that dopamine is going to transfer onto the sensory cues, like the smell of it, the appearance of it, things that predict it. But at that point, it's already been stamped into your brain that that's a highly valuable motivating food. And the only thing that's going to change that is if you then consume that food again and it's either better or worse than your expectation. And then dopamine will retune your motivation level at the time of consumption. So you can... Does that make sense? Yes. Or also if you... How about if you don't experience the cue for a long time, will there be a fading or extinction effect too? Yes. Or will it just stay there? No, there is a fading that happens. And I don't know... I would guess that that does relate to lower dopamine response over time. I don't know whether research, probably research has been done on that. I haven't looked into it. But certainly on a behavioral and motivational level, yes, there is a forgetting that happens. And those motivational circuits will weaken over time. Just to give an analogy that I think is helpful that most people will have at least some familiarity with. If someone is addicted to cigarettes and they're trying to quit, they're having a strong... Those cigarettes have been strongly dopamine reinforced. And so they have this strong behavioral drive and craving to smoke cigarettes. When they stop smoking cigarettes, initially they're going to have really strong cravings to continue smoking cigarettes. But if you don't smoke for a week, the cravings are going to diminish. And if you don't smoke for a month, they're going to diminish even more. And then by the time you haven't smoked for a year, you probably won't even want to smoke at all. You probably think it's gross. And so there is this process of forgetting that happens with these dopamine-reinforced stimuli. And that happens with food as well. So can we use this to... So you've said that these sort of supernormal stimuli in our current diet ramp up the reinforcement, ramp up the dopamine. Can we use this knowledge to decondition or to extinguish this by avoiding these foods and eating, I think you've used the term bland, a blander or less palatable food. It doesn't have to be boring. But can we actually get on a different path by understanding this? Yeah. And I think there are a variety of different ways of doing this. And I think most popular weight loss diets actually are already leveraging this to some degree. Because one of the key killer elements for stimulating dopamine is combining carbs and fat together. That really gets the circuits going. And what we see is that people who go on low carb or low fat diets tend to eat less and lose weight as a result without having to necessarily deliberately restrict their calorie intake. Their appetites just naturally diminish and they lose weight. And if obesity were all about one macronutrient, then you would expect to see one of those diets making people gain weight and the other people losing weight. And really what seems to be the case is eating both abundantly is super fattening and taking out either one is slimming. And I think the most obvious explanation for that is the food reward idea that it's really the combination that is the problem because it stimulates our motivational circuits to eat.  So that's separating out the individual ingredients, but there's also the component of flavor too. So less palatable can be just dialing down the flavor itself. And going back to these observations from Sclifani, breaking that flavor calorie association, you probably remember Seth Roberts who was active in ancestral health society. And he had this funny diet called Shangri-La diet. Just eat calories with very little flavor or a flavor with very little calories. And it actually, I tried it, it does work. I don't know how sustainable it is. But generalizing that a little bit more, making sure that you don't have a flavor bomb in combination with the calories. Does that make some sense to you? Or is it just about the calorie combination? I mean, ultimately it comes down to how many calories you're eating, I think. But what's the most sustainable path to that, I think, is the question. And I think you can envision different ways of controlling your calorie intake that are either trying to work with these non-conscious brain systems or are pitting different brain systems against one another. So the calorie counting approach is kind of taking your conscious rational brain and pitting it against your appetite circuits and other non-conscious circuits that are trying to get you to eat more. So I would say that working on lowering the reward value of your diet is more trying to recruit those non-conscious circuits to support your conscious goals. So I think that controlling or limiting the reward value of the diet is one lever that you can use. It's not the only lever that you can use to control appetite, but it is a lever. And I think it's something that people can experiment with. I think different people are going to respond better or worse to it. But I think it's a tool in the toolbox. I'll put it that way. Yeah. So looking at diets then and applying this, do you have a favored diet? Do you have an opinion about paleo, keto, or low-fat, or vegan, or Mediterranean? Do you think any of them could, in principle, work or is there one that you gravitate toward based on that? In terms of weight control? And also this understanding of appetite? Yeah. So I think, you know, I'm also very kind of pragmatic and empirical about this stuff. There have been a lot of studies that have been done on weight loss diets, and there are a lot of data we can look at. So part of it is just what does the evidence say about what diets cause weight loss and how sustainable are they in the average person? And I think that, you know, the first thing to acknowledge is that weight loss diets are not super effective in the average person. So the average person is not going from having obesity to being lean with these diets. It's more like, you know, 10 pounds of weight loss at the one-year mark. Usually people will lose more around the six-month, and then they'll regain some of it, and maybe they're 10 pounds down on average. And part of that's just adherence. Like people generally have a hard time sticking to any diet for more than a few months. You know, they just go back to their old preferences and habits, and they might be struggling against appetite issues as well. So, but if you look at the evidence that's been published, I mean, basically you can use a wide variety of different diets and lose weight. Low carb diets are some of the most effective. Higher protein diets are effective.  And there's been less. So I would say if we're going from first principles, what diet is going to kind of maximize some of the properties that I think are important for a weight loss diet, I would point toward the, like, old school, cordane-style paleo as a really good contender. And can you define that a little bit more? Is that a... Yeah, I will. Yeah. And I want to say that there's not a lot of really high-quality empirical evidence on that. So I just want to acknowledge that. I think based on the principles, I would expect it to be one of the more effective diets, but we don't have really solid randomized controlled trial evidence demonstrating the long-run impacts. So, cordane-style is higher protein. It's based on unrefined omnivorous diet. It's low-ish in carbohydrate, but it's not particularly low in carbohydrate. I think it's... I don't remember exactly off the top of my head, but I think it's something like 30% carbohydrate calories. And then the fat component focusing on unrefined fats and more unsaturated fats. And so just to list also some of the things that it doesn't contain or de-emphasizes processed foods of any kind, sugar sweetened beverages, dietary salt, grains, both refined and unrefined, and legumes like beans and peas. So that's an overview of what the diet is. And the properties that I think are important in terms of weight control, the higher protein, the lower calorie density that comes from eating whole, water-rich and fiber-rich and protein-rich foods. The moderate palatability that you get from eating whole foods and not eating much salt and not eating these super-processed, craveable foods like chips and pizza and things. So I think there's a combination of factors in that diet that I think should tend to promote weight control better than your average diet, kind of on first principles. That's what I think. But again, I do wish the empirical evidence was stronger. No, good point. And it sounds like it's for a combination of reasons. Some of it is the relationship to appetite stimulation that we've talked about for most of this podcast. But there's other factors relating to the macronutrients and their interaction with our energy balance systems, hormones like leptin, insulin, things like that as well, that we haven't really discussed. So would you say it's both the impact on the reward circuitry but also other factors that also enter in? Yeah, reward and satiety, I think, are two big ones. I want to say, yeah, so just to unpack the satiety thing a little bit to make sure that people are following, I mean fullness, so how full you're feeling, particularly per calorie that you're eating. So foods differ greatly in how much satiety they cause per calorie that you're eating. And if you have lower calorie density, higher protein, higher fiber foods, you're going to get more satiety per calorie, and that will cause you to naturally terminate your meal having eaten fewer calories but still feeling satisfied. And if you look at the weight loss drugs that have been really successful, the most successful, including the ones currently that are doing so well, what you see is they generally are targeting both appetite like the hunger piece, the satiety piece, and the reward piece. So the most effective weight loss drugs are targeting both. And I tend to think that the most effective diets are also going to target both of those. Both systems, right, great. Well, Stefan, this has been a great conversation, I've learned a lot, could get into so many more aspects even within the brain. We didn't even really get into the anatomy of the brain, but we talked about some of the reward circuits. We talked about the relationship between contemporary diets and how we evolved. So it's been great. And before we end, I'd like to just give you a chance to talk about what are you working on these days and where can listeners go to learn more about your work? Yeah, in terms of science communication, a lot of what I've been working on has been related to nutrition misinformation lately. So I just published an article in Asterisk magazine about nutrition misinformation. That is kind of my attempt to wrap my own head around it and understand how common it is, how impactful it is, and communicate that to other people. So anyone who's interested in nutrition misinformation, check that out. Also related to that is I'm the director of a nonprofit called Red Pen Reviews that publishes free reviews, free expert reviews of popular nutrition books. And so we're really trying to give readers the tools they need to understand what the information quality is of the nutrition information they're consuming. So that's something else that I'm working on. And my website is SteffenGinae.com. I haven't been publishing there much lately. I'm mostly on Twitter at S-Ginae. Great. Well, thanks so much for talking with us today. And good luck with your current endeavors. It's been a pleasure. OK, thanks for having me. All right. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on this episode of Ancestral Health Today. We hope you enjoyed our discussion on how evolutionary insights can inform modern health practices. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast to catch future episodes.


Recently on this series, I talked about the dangerous role that Chinese government censorship has increasingly played on entertainment media created in America. And look, it's easy to understand that censorship is bad when we're talking about restricting speech that's critical of repressive governments like China, Venezuela, or North Korea. We can even laugh, or maybe cry, at some of the more ridiculous examples of thin-skinned despots stifling their people's creativity and access to a broader world of art and ideas. But sadly, free speech is under attack in America, too. In our case, it's not so much that our government is trying to silence people, we're fortunate enough to live in a country with fairly strong legal protections for freedom of speech, but we are facing a virulent aspect of our culture that wants to cancel people for saying anything they don't like. It's way too common now to see people trying to preemptively shut down anyone they disagree with, or even anyone they just assume they disagree with. Most of the people pushing to silence one person after the next genuinely believe that their intentions are good, so they feel completely justified in shouting down speakers, deplatforming, and even doxxing their supposed enemies online. But maintaining a strong legal and cultural environment that supports free speech is not only essential to the expression of ideas and values we all think are good, it is even more importantly the foundation for debate and criticism of the ideas and values we think are bad. Fortunately, one of the best ways to start those kinds of debates is comedy. Taika Waititi's Oscar-winning film Jojo Rabbit is one of my favorite movies of the last several years, and it's an absolutely perfect example of what I mean. With that in mind, welcome to Out of Frame. Jojo Rabbit is the story of a 10-year-old boy growing up in Germany, the peak of World War II. His father is gone, his mother is usually at work, and he doesn't have many friends.  Unfortunately, Jojo's entire life has been steeped in Nazi propaganda, and his impressionable young line bought into it all. Hitler Youth, false information about the war effort, and insane anti-Semitic rhetoric. Where's the Huns? Jojo is so convinced that everything he's been told by the government since he was born is true that he even turns Adolf Hitler into his own imaginary best friend. I thought I was your best friend. You're okay. You're my second best friend. First place to preserve for the future. The thing is, underneath the blind fanaticism, Jojo is really just a sweet kid who doesn't understand that everything he's been conditioned to believe is a lie. And anyone who might have told him the truth is either in hiding, in jail, or dead. If that all sounds like a really serious movie, well, it is. Except it's also a comedic satire, and in my opinion, one of the funniest movies of the last decade. Jojo Rabbit is an amazing mix of the most absurdist, offensive, slapstick elements of a Mel Brooks movie, combined with the innocence and sincerity of something like Roberto Bonini's Life is Beautiful. And that's precisely what makes it an excellent vehicle for criticizing Nazi ideology. Even so, it's a movie that took a long time to make. In fact, it couldn't have been made at all in a lot of countries, possibly including Germany. Filled with offensive symbolism, scenes, and dialogue that would fit most people's definition of hate speech outside of their satirical context. But laws against this kind of speech often don't, and can't make an effective distinction between comedy and serious expressions of ideology. As a result, publishers and social media companies who need to comply with those laws frequently block satirical posts and lump criticism of an idea together with support, making it harder for people to publicly discuss and debate difficult subjects. In some cases, people are being fined or arrested just for making offensive jokes, as if it were still in the 1960s. There's a level of irony to all this too. Free speech is the cornerstone of a free society, and trying to prevent the rise of authoritarian ideologies like national or international socialism by engaging in authoritarian policies of our own doesn't make any sense. But it's not just about policy, it's also about culture. As someone who has often wondered aloud if any truly great satirical movies could still be made in today's easily offended culture, Jojo Rabbit gives me a lot of hope. Cinema as an art form has a long, incredible history of using comedy to deal with tragedy and poke holes in awful ideas. From Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers to Trey Parker and the Cohen Brothers, there are so many examples to draw on. We're not even talking about money. We're talking about economics. But there's perhaps no one better at using comedy as a form of intellectual debate than Mel Brooks. Brooks' movie turn show, turn movie, The Producers, is about a charlatan and his accomplice who intentionally try to create a Broadway flop so they can cash in on oversold investments they'll never pay back. The show within the movie they come up with is called Spring Time for Hitler.  Hitler was better looking than churching. He was a better choice than churching. He had more hair.  I never realized that the first Reich meant Germany. I mean, it's drenched with historical goodies like that. And starring a buffoon literally named LSD.  And we cannot attack Germany. The main character's goal is to be so offensive that people walk out of the play and never come back.  Be a smarty. Come and join the Nazi party. Instead, the audience thinks it's hilarious and it becomes an unintentional hit. How could this happen? I was so careful. I picked the wrong play. The wrong director, the wrong cast. Where did I go right? In a lot of ways, Jojo Rabbit is Spring Time for Hitler without the framing device. It takes something deadly serious like World War Two and exposes the utter ridiculousness of Hitler's ideas and of Hitler himself. People used to say a lot of nasty things about me. Oh, this guy's a lunatic. Oh, look at that psycho. He's going to get us all killed. But to do this, Jojo Rabbit has to use the same kinds of symbolism and rhetoric that the Nazis used. This is a massively underappreciated part of why free speech is so important. How can you truly understand your own worldview if you aren't actually allowed to engage with the ideas that might contradict it? Even if something someone else says is completely absurd or offensive, it is only by hearing it and wrestling with it that we can begin to seriously defend against it. And I know some of you are going to say that there are ideas that are so bad they don't need to be debated, but that's just a cop out. Especially if you care about stopping the spread of a dangerous ideology, failing to understand and confront its arguments won't persuade anyone to give it up. There are people who believe that the Holocaust wasn't real. How do we know they're not right? Because we are free to examine the evidence, listen to the stories of survivors and talk about what that history was actually like. And we can take that knowledge and evidence and defend against the denier with truth. Confronting our opposition forces us to examine what we know and form better arguments for our own beliefs. That's a good thing. We need to be able to deal with bad ideas head on. Satire can help us do that. Mel Brooks made a 70 year career out of it. His film Blazing Saddles, co-written with Richard Pryor, might be my favorite comedy of all time. It deals with the ridiculousness of racism by giving a desperate frontier town in the wild west a smart, competent black sheriff. Blazing Saddles is a perfect counterpoint to racism precisely because it shows it for what it is as it is. Only funnier. What did you expect? Welcome, sonny. Make yourself at home. Marry my daughter. You gotta remember that these are just simple farmers. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new west. You know, morons. Jojo Rabbit does the same thing with bigotry against Jewish people. It probably features the words Heil Hitler more times than any film in history. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. Heil Hitler. It also depicts tons of realistic Nazi propaganda about Jewish people. But it does all of this not to promote anti-Semitism or national socialism, but instead to make an ironic point, challenging those ideas. This is obviously a huge distinction, but it's also a really subtle one. Human expression is complicated. The same words can mean entirely different things depending on our tone of voice or the surrounding context. Thank you very much. And thank you very much. Are the same on paper. But I bet you know that when I changed my tone, I meant the opposite of the literal meaning of the words. Stop and really consider how insane that is. Even a phrase we think of as irredeemable in any context, like Heil Hitler, could be a serious salute to a reprehensible historical figure, or it could be a sarcastic way to show disdain and disrespect. It could even just be a tasteless joke largely devoid of broader meaning. In Jojo Rabbit, the way that phrase is repeatedly used is even more complex, because it's used by characters who mean it as a genuine salute, but it's set inside a meta-context, provided both from the film itself and brought into the movie going experience by the audience. That makes it absurd. As viewers, we get that Jojo Rabbit is a comedy, and we get that the trajectory of the story is all about Johannes Betzler's enlightenment and realization that the ideas he's believed in his whole life were actually wrong. We also bring in our collected knowledge and our own view of Adolf Hitler as one of history's greatest monsters. So instead of getting angry when we see a little boy say Heil Hitler a dozen times in a row, we laugh. As filmmakers and writers, people like Tycho Atiti and Mel Brooks are constantly walking a tightrope, often using hateful rhetoric as a way of highlighting its own stupidity. The Inquisition. Let's begin. The Inquisition. Look out, Sam. We have our mission to convert the Jews. But they can only do that in a world where they're allowed to speak and write freely, using the words they need to use without fear of either arrest or cancellation. And it's not like there aren't any critics who think Jojo Rabbit shouldn't have been made. Plenty of people have totally different opinions on what kinds of speech are okay. And that's the thing. Defining what is or is not acceptable speech is incredibly difficult. But are you willing to put someone else in charge of what you're allowed to hear? I'm not. It's especially not something that I'd like to leave up to humorless, perpetually offended scolds, or worse, algorithms. Facebook and YouTube are notoriously terrible at picking up subtle differences in meaning in human communication. They can filter out bad words and phrases just fine. But what they can't do is judge the intent of the person using them, nor can they accurately understand the point those words are being used to convey. As a result, most of these kinds of automated systems, and the people who oversee them, have become blunt instruments responsible for silencing tons of people who are trying to have important, difficult conversations, in the name of shutting down a few bad people with terrible ideas. But we need to have important, difficult conversations. Safe spaces may be comfortable, but we only grow and learn new things about ourselves and the world around us by stepping outside of our comfort zone. Really deeply engaging with ideas isn't intellectually or emotionally safe. And you can't debate an idea if you're not allowed to talk about it. That's also what makes Tycho Atiti's acceptance speech at the Oscars so sad. At the end of the war, there's a very clear rule.  Now, the rules have changed a bit. If you're a Nazi, feel free to have a rally down in the town square and you can invite all your mates. So something's changed and something's not right. I know that to a lot of people, this sounds reasonable. But sending people to prison for expressing ideas you don't like doesn't stop the spread of those ideas. It only prevents people from openly debating them. The Aryans are 1,000 times more civilized and advanced than any other race.  It's time to burn some books! Yeah! The truth is, we allow Nazis freedom of speech in part because that freedom is essential for all of us to defend against Nazi ideology. Without that right, we would neither be able to openly discuss these ideas and expose them for what they are, nor use their own language and imagery to lampoon them. As a Jewish soldier who fought in World War II, Mel Brooks understands this better than anyone.  He's a great orator. But if you can make fun of him, if you can have people laugh at him, you win. And that's my job, to make terrible things entertaining. If Tycho Atiti lived in the world he vaguely proposed in his Oscar speech, he might not have even been able to make the movie at all without violating the law. Jojo Rabbit is a wonderful film, but in addition to internalizing its overt message of cultural tolerance, I think we should also be aware that there's a meta-lesson about free speech here too. In a world where even people who make brilliant satire about repressive regimes don't understand that calling for legal restrictions on speech is exactly the kind of thing that makes a regime repressive in the first place, we've got a difficult battle ahead. But it's not too late. We can all stand up for a strong culture of free speech and fight against state censorship at the same time. The next time you're offended by something someone else says, instead of hitting block or reporting them, consider just closing your browser tab or changing the channel. When you think someone else's ideas are horrible, try having a conversation with them to change their mind, instead of shouting at them, acting violently or trying to ruin their lives. And when some celebrity or politician says that the world would be a better place if no one were allowed to say the things they don't like, remind them that they don't get to decide what everyone else is allowed to hear. You decide for yourself. The more we stand up for the value of free speech in open debate, the stronger our society will become, and the easier it will be to prevent hateful authoritarian ideologies from taking over the world ever again. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. The greatest thing about free speech is how it allows everyone a chance to explore their own viewpoints and challenge each other's perspectives. The more we engage with each other, the sharper our minds and arguments get. So I'm really looking forward to mixing it up with you guys in the comments on this one. If you love this video, don't forget to give it a like, subscribe and hit that bell icon to be sure you're the first to know when a new episode comes out. And if you want to see more from Fee, we just radically updated our website at Fee.org and I think you're really going to like what you see. Lastly, be sure to follow us on all our social media at YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Thanks for watching.


All right guys, so Very good. We're gonna get started right now as you can tell my voice is hoarse, but coming to the stage is a stallion in the pickup game I'm not afraid to say that. I'm gonna welcome second year in a row all the way from California the dapper and Indiscriminative DJ Fuji give him your undivided attention give it up. You guys hear me in the back How's the mic? Good awesome. Are you guys doing? I Need a little more energy. I thought we did this last year. How are you guys doing? Outstanding all right, so today we're gonna talk, you know like yesterday last year right 2009 we talked a whole lot about fundamentals We talked about those those things that lie the foundation for everything that game is built upon and Those things that make the difference no matter who you are No matter what your skill set is no matter where you're interacting where you're charging those fundamentals are absolutely critical And so last year we covered things like the date model Okay, some of you guys will never forget that because you missed a free boot camp. Okay discipline training execution We talked about the fundamentals talked about eliminating flakes Completely eliminating the phone flakes right the the no texting back the no the no callback We talked about not ejecting pushing your comforts on why that's important and qualification So this year we're gonna change it up a little bit this year I'm gonna go from the what which is what I taught you guys last year I'll touch you guys the what and this year. I'm gonna teach you guys the how so one of the things when I went through my speech From last year and I said you know what like what am I gonna speak on this year? And I went through and I watched my whole speech again And what became very apparent to me it over the course of a year is that I taught you guys last year all of the Concepts and all of the things that are very important But I never taught you guys how to implement it how to do it and so the theme this year is action Everything about this year is going to be action So it actually instead of me lecturing to you guys what you're gonna notice is that a large part of what we're gonna talk about today Is going to be interactive? So hopefully you guys have notes because a lot of this stuff is gonna be me bringing you guys to the stage It's gonna be you guys writing things down It's gonna be you guys creating action plans because gentlemen the name of the game in all of this and being successful Whether it's in life where there's in pickup where there's in finance or anything else The name of the game is action and the men who take action are successful and the men who don't are not Okay, it's a pretty simple concept. All right So I'm gonna define and implement all of these fundamentals that we talked about last year So all those concepts that we discussed now We're gonna show how to do it and we're gonna put a date on it We're actually going to create an action plan to actually get that stuff done Okay, and what we're gonna look at is holistic growth We're gonna look at things that improve not only your game But your life in general that affect all these aspects because everything kind of is intertwined So let's move on I'm gonna move fairly quick guys because I have a lot of stuff to cover And I'm gonna try to get some time in for questions at the end Quick ground rules first things first same as last year if you guys have questions Please write those down and ask at the end Periodically, I'll pull the audience and I'll ask do you guys have any questions? Does that make sense? Okay, especially when I'm talking about something that's a kind of a complicated topic when I ask that question That's your cue to ask any questions you guys have okay second thing for the next hour and a half I want you guys to forget everything that you know about game Everything that you have read everything that you've watched on DVDs everything you've listened to everything You know from the field forget everything okay for the next hour and a half because I want you guys to keep an open mind I want you guys to absorb all this information that way when you get out in field you can apply it Participation like we said okay, this is gonna be very very interactive. So I want you guys max participation All right, this is not gonna be a one-way lecture. This is not gonna be me up here running my mouth Right, this is gonna be a two-way thing and lastly for those of you guys watching at home We're gonna be doing a lot of drills. We're gonna be doing a lot of very interactive things I don't want you guys the same as everyone else here. I don't want you guys to be passive listeners I don't want you guys to watch this as entertainment.  Does that make sense? Good, okay