Made You Think

“Across the board, dietary advice typically focuses on what and how much to eat, with remarkably little attention paid to how farming practices influence the nutritional quality of food and whether the “right foods” pack the nutrients they once had.”

Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode, we're discussing What Your Food Ate by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Exploring the concept of "food chain reactions," the book unveils the hidden connections between our food choices and their environmental, social, and health impacts. Do you really know what you're eating?

We cover a wide range of topics including:

• The revival of physical bookstores fueled by social media
• How the health of our soil essentially corresponds to our health
• Why nutritional diversity is so important
• The relationship between our diets and overall well-being
• What are our food cravings telling us?

And much more. Please enjoy, and make sure to follow Nat, Neil, and Adil on Twitter and share your thoughts on the episode.

Links from the Episode:

Mentioned in the Show:

• Great Book Series (1:04)
• Barnes and Noble open 30 new stores (2:55)
• Reality Has a Surprising Amount of Detail (19:17)
• Mother Tongue Cooking Club (33:04)
• Force of Nature (57:55)
• Pluck (58:19)
• TrueMed (59:57)
• Rooted (1:09:26)
• Dutch Meadows Farm

Books Mentioned:

• What Your Food Ate
• The Three-Body Problem (5:00) (Nat's Book Notes)
• Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (14:59)

People Mentioned:

• Anthony Gustin (15:40)
• Wendell Berry (15:48)
• Ben Greenfield (26:57)
• Justin Mares (28:21)
• Miles Snyder (33:01)
• Calley Means (1:01:34)
• Gabe Brown (1:04:24)

Show Topics:

(1:35) The revival of Barnes and Noble along with the influence that 'Booktok' has had on physical book stores.

(5:11) How different content performs on Instagram, TikTok, and Youtube. Each platform serves a different purpose whether it's for entertainment or educational.

(12:16) Today, we’re discussing What Your Food Ate by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé! Our food is a lot less nutritionally dense than we realize because of way that the food we eat is grown.

(14:55) The co-authors' first book talks about the importance of caring for the soil, as that's the base for everything we grow. The same food can have such different nutritional values depending on how it was grown or raised.

(20:08) Why nutritional diversity is important and how eating as nutrient dense foods as possible is really important too. When it comes to food, it's best to aim for quality over quantity.

(26:13) When we take a look at the foods we're eating, it makes sense that we may need supplements to give us our essential nutrients that may be otherwise lacking in our diet.

(28:01) What does Europe do differently than the US in terms of growing their food? We also talk about glyphosate levels in the things that we eat.

(33:35) We give a brief overview of how the government has subsidized farmers in the US, which plays a role in our food supply and what we eat.

(38:44) Do our ...

Welcome back to another episode of Made You Think! In this episode we discuss The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter, and how our modern lifestyle and pursuit of ease might be making us miserable, stressed, and anxious.

We cover a wide range of topics including:

• The connection between boredom and creativity
• Misogis and how to discover what you're truly capable of
• Why you don't necessarily want "less phone"
• How rucking could be a massive exercise hack
• The proper "dose" of outdoor, tech-free time

And much more. Please enjoy, and make sure to follow Nat, Neil, and Adil on Twitter and share your thoughts on the episode.

Links from the Episode:

Mentioned in the Show:

• GORUCK (0:40)
• Raising Your Ceiling (8:28)
• Peter Attia’s Podcast episode with Michael Easter (9:01)
• Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (11:22)
• Eight Mattress (48:36)
• Tim Ferriss Podcast episode with Josh Waitzkin (54:14)

Books Mentioned:

• The Comfort Crisis
• Emergency (12:52) (Book Episode)
• Antifragile (13:47) (Book Episode)
• The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (1:11:49)
• Moonwalking with Einstein (1:15:01) (Book Episode)
• Analects of Confucius (1:33:32)

People Mentioned:

• Michael Easter
• Nassim Taleb (14:13)
• Josh Waitzkin (54:08)
• Sogyal Rinpoche (1:11:48)

Show Topics:

(0:00) Rucking as a way to make you fit overall and where on your body you should be carrying the weight when you walk.

(4:32) How your eyes and body adjust to virtual reality. In general, your eyes dilate differently when you’re using a screen vs. not using a screen.

(8:25) In today’s episode, we’re diving into The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter. The book is centered around the author’s caribou hunt in Alaska to challenge the idea of what comfort means to him.

(12:51) Good writing is more about helping explain a concept you’re beginning to think about in a way that you haven’t been able to conceptualize on your own yet rather than teaching you something brand new.

(15:19) Boredom is another theme talked about in the book. We tend to favor a highly comfortable life full of entertainment, and we get uncomfortable when we’re bored. However, making your life more comfortable isn’t necessarily going to improve it in the long term.

(17:59) We live in a world where there is always something you can do so you never have to sit in boredom when you’re waiting. Because of this constant need to entertain ourselves, we’re losing time that we could be spending processing and crafting new ideas. The more that we can train ourselves to be comfortable in boredom, the more we regain our ability to not be so hyper-anxious and reactive all the time.

(20:56) The connection between boredom and creativity is similar to the idea of rest recovery for working out. You wouldn’t work out the same muscle every day without a rest day. We’re essentially contracting the attention muscle all day long when we’re on our phones all the time and not giving it the recovery time it desperately needs.

(23:00) So what’s the solution? Let yourself get bored. Rather than thinking “less phone” think “more boredom”. Making space for your thoughts and resetting the baseline.

(30:58) What’s a sustainable way to get your brain rested regularly and how much outdoors time is recommended each month?

(33:13) Misogis are challenges that allow you to reframe your perception of what you’re capable of achieving. Each year, it’s encouraged that you take on a challenge, one that’s really hard and one that is unique where you can’t compare yourself to others.

(39:42) From Spartan Races, to pushup challenges, to training in the heat of a Texas summer, Nat, Neil, and Adil reflect on some of the harder things that they’ve experienced. As a species, we’re very capable of doing hard things t...

In today’s episode, Nat Neil and Adil discuss the Tao Te Ching by Laozi. We each picked a few of our favorite chapters from the book to read and discuss, resulting in a wide-ranging discussion of work, happiness, ambition, finance, philosophy, and all our usual favorite subjects.

Some of the topics we covered were:

• The importance of not over-extending yourself, being moderate and patient
• What does it mean to prioritize “inaction”?
• The balance between short and long-term productivity
• Which parts of the Tao do we each struggle with the most
• What it means to seek a “middle path.”
• Plus lots of tangents around fitness, entrepreneurship, work, other books, and more.

Be sure to stick around for the end, where Nat and Neil discuss our new plans for the show and where it’s going in 2023.

Remember to subscribe if you haven’t, and leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify if you liked the episode!

(1:10) - How different drugs created different financial crashes & philosophies

(3:22) - Background on the Tao Te Ching

(11:15) - Variations in the translations of the Tao Te Ching

(17:00) - What is the “real” version of old texts?

(21:20) - The theme of finding the middle ground, and inaction. Chapter 64. “If you rush into action, you will fail. If you hold on too tight, you will loose your grip. Therefore the Master lets things take their course and thus never fails.”

(27:00) - The importance of doing nothing. Chapter 48. “He who conquers the world often does so by doing nothing. When one is compelled to do something, The world is already beyond his conquering.”

(33:50) - The difference between short-term and long-term productivity. Sometimes doing nothing in the short term is the best strategy for the long term.

(42:00) - Chapters 68, 24. The importance of being balanced, avoiding going to extremes. Avoiding the consequences of intense competition. “He who stands on tiptoe does not stand firm.”

(51:00) - What’s something you’re doing that’s incongruous with the advice in the Tao? Neils: Shiny object syndrome.

(54:00) - Nat’s: Impatience with professional success.

(1:05:00) - Adil’s: Shiny object syndrome.

(1:07:00) - The problem with the practical vs. the ideal, giving and receiving advice.

(1:15:00) - Unintuitive advice in fitness.

(1:21:00) - Aiming at a specific goal vs. aiming in abstract.

(1:24:00) - The power of having a good adversary for bringing out your best.

(1:28:00) - Wrapup: Upcoming books, plans for the podcast

• Byrne Hobart (on Lunar Society) (1:10)
• Analects of Confucius (two episodes from now) (4:51)
• Tao in You Website (11:15)
• ChatGPT (14:00)
• Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle (25:00)
• The Alchemy of Finance by George Soros (29:05)
• Tyler Cowen (31:50)
• Cal Newport on Sam Harris (33:40)
• John McPhee (34:00)
• Children of Time, Adrian Tzchaicovsky (Nat got the age wrong, he was 46) (56:00)
• Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter. Episode link (1:04:00)
• Antifragile, Nassim Taleb. Episode link (1:12:00)
• The Gibraltar skull (1:14:00)
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Episode link. (1:15:00)
• Finite and Infinite Games. Episode link. (1:22:00)
• The Inner Game of Tennis. Episode link. (1:23:00)
• Robert Nozick (1:24:00)
• John Rawls (1:24:00)
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