Trauma can make us better.

I know how this sounds. Trauma, after all, is traditionally seen as entirely negative. But stay with me.

Research shows that intense experiences—traumatic ones included—rewrite our identity, mindset, and how we navigate life. Sometimes the rewrite is harmful. Sometimes we recover. But sometimes we grow.

That idea can help us understand the value of doing hard things—why they break us down so they can build us back better.

I started thinking about this last week, after talking to two very different people: a trauma psychiatrist, and Mike Rowe, of Dirty Jobs fame.

The psychiatrist told me that his work involves getting people who’ve been suffering from PTSD to reframe the events in a different light. The goal is to reshape their story around the traumatic event—to help them see that the event doesn’t have to be the whole story of who they are.

The next day, I went on The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe. He asked me about Misogi and why it matters.

Misogi, for those who are new here, is an epic challenge we take on once a year to grow. The rules are simple:

1. Make it really hard. We define this as a 50/50 chance of success.

2. Don’t die. Pretty self-explanatory. Be safe.

As I drove back to Las Vegas, I noticed a connection between the two conversations.

The trauma psychiatrist was talking about how reframing events can lead to new stories about ourselves. Mike was asking about why voluntarily doing hard things can teach us something important about ourselves.

It occurred to me that Misogi—and the other hard things we choose to take on in life—is almost a form of “chosen trauma,” or “positive trauma.” It’s an experience so intense that it opens up new ways of seeing ourselves, uncovering powers and potential we didn’t know were there.

This post is me thinking through that idea. I hope you’ll weigh in with your own thoughts in the comments.

Today’s post covers:

• How psychology traditionally sees trauma, and what that misses.

• A new way to think of trauma and the three possible outcomes of trauma (one of which helps us grow).

• The five critical life domains that trauma can improve, and what posttraumatic growth research leaves out.

• How to engineer voluntary trauma to expand your capabilities and improve the five life domains.

Quick housekeeping before we begin

• 🚨 Scarcity Brain ebook is just $1.99 right now. Get it here.

• In case you missed it:

  • Wednesday’s post explained why I banned “dopamine” on Two Percent. Once we stop worrying about and blaming our brain chemistry, we can focus on what actually leads to improvements.

  • Friday’s Burn the Ships workout: The Legs Feed the Wolf.

  • Tuesday’s podcast featured , a top psychologist and performance coach who explained why you should stop trying to fix your weaknesses, the possible downsides of Stoicism, and more. Thursday’s podcast covered how to leverage the physical and mental health benefits of the heat this summer.

• Shoutout to our partners

  • 🏃‍♀️ Janji makes my favorite endurance apparel—comfortable, durable, unique. I wore Janji on a (very) hot trail run yesterday. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—the best kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is a classic. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

  • 🧪 Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. The info can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

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Traditional Definition of Trauma: All Bad All the Time

Psychology has traditionally seen trauma like this: A highly stressful event happened, and it left you worse off in the long run.

For example, SAMHSA1, the federal substance abuse agency, had a board of psychologists define trauma. They say it:

“[results] from an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”

Trauma generally involves three “E’s.” The event, experience, and its effect. Trauma comes from how the person experienced the event and what effect it had afterward.

Another Way to Think of Trauma: Deep Learning

The problem: When we think of trauma and stressful events as entirely negative, we miss a much more expansive and useful way of thinking.

Broadly speaking, intensely stressful events like trauma are powerful learning events: Things were normal. Something intense and unordinary happened. That experience changed how you saw yourself and how you behaved afterward.

Our brains, for obvious reasons, don’t store all of our experiences equally. Intense events with elements of stress and risk get flagged as being more important for future survival and encoded differently. The learning is deeper, more generalized, and more identity-shaping. If we didn’t have this, we’d do a lot more dumb stuff.

E.g., if a kid who touches the stove doesn’t learn—deeply—that a red stove can burn, he’d end up getting burned throughout life. That learning is useful.

Not All Trauma Is Bad

If we think about traumatic stress as deep learning after a trying event, the aperture opens. Yes, some events are more likely to lead us to learn things that make our lives worse afterward. But some events might lead to positive insights.

The research shows that when a highly-stressful event happens, learning can happen a few ways:

1. Negative Trauma: A stressful thing happened. It impacted us in a harmful way. I.e., we started at 1, the stressful thing happened, and we were brought down to 0 and stayed there.

2. Resilience: A stressful thing happened, but we bounced back to normal. I.e., we go from 1, down to 0 immediately during/after the event, but eventually return to one.

3. Posttraumatic Growth …

Posttraumatic growth is different than resilience. It’s when the stressful event happens, and we take a momentary hit, but we learn something along the way that makes us come out better and stronger.

I.e., In postraumatic growth, we go from 1 down to 0 immediately during/after the event, but then, because of the event, we go up to a 2. The event changes us in ways that make us better.

This idea first hit academic circles in the 1990s. Two researchers, Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun, noticed that people sometimes emerge from stressful events better than they were before. They called the idea “Posttraumatic Growth” and explained2:

[Posttraumatic growth] is manifested in a variety of ways, including an increased appreciation for life in general, more meaningful interpersonal relationships, an increased sense of personal strength, changed priorities, and a richer existential and spiritual life.

They found five “life domains” that posttraumatic growth can improve:

1. Improved relationships with others: People report being empathetic and compassionate to others. Important relationships became deeper, while trivial ones mattered less.

2. New possibilities for life: They said adversity freed people from a life they were sleepwalking through. They often changed careers or moved.

3. Greater appreciation of life: They said ordinary life became more vivid. Everyday experienced became richer and more appreciated.

4. Greater sense of personal strength: People said they realized they were more capable—they found a new gear that helped them do and tolerate more afterward.

5. New perspectives on spiritual and existential issues: People reported deeper engagement with questions around meaning, mortality, and what actually matters.

The Missing Factor in Posttraumatic Growth

But here’s the thing: The posttraumatic growth literature looked at people who didn’t choose their stressful event.

My question: if stressful events can alter us for the better, why do they have to be involuntary?

The more open definition of trauma, plus knowing how humans learn from intense experiences, suggests it doesn’t matter if we did or didn’t choose the event.

What matters is the event’s intensity, stress level, and the lessons it gives us afterward.

A Case for “Chosen Trauma”

I think we can get many of the benefits of posttraumatic growth on our own terms. By voluntarily doing something big and hard. I.e., something “traumatic,” if we think of trauma as a stressful event that changes us.

I’ve seen it in myself, after big trips to wild places. And I’ve seen it in thousands of people who’ve gone out and done something beyond what they thought was possible, and reported that it changed their normal life.

This idea isn’t unique or new. People have been doing this for a very long time. The posttraumatic growth researchers note3:

The idea that human beings, when forced to struggle with major life crises and serious challenges, can be transformed in highly positive ways is ancient. There are myths, stories, religious texts, and literary works that reflect this perspective.

Consider rites of passage. A person chooses to exit normalcy and enter an unknown, highly challenging world, and the experience changes them. They return better off, having demonstrated capabilities and learned things they couldn’t in their normal, less stressful life.

It’s also why many ancient myths feature people who undertake grand, challenging adventures and return better off. In the myths, people were often sought an item (e.g., the Holy Grail), but it was only a symbolic representation of the psychic change they’d undergo during their quest.

Rites of passage were a regular practice in most cultures. But we lost them somewhere in time.

How to use it

Don’t sit on the sidelines and wait for stress you didn’t choose to change you.

Go out and find yourself some positive trauma, voluntary adversity that borrows the upsides of posttraumatic growth.

Enter Misogi.

Explore your edges—because once you get out to the edge, you don’t fall off of it. The edge expands, and you grow to meet the terrain. Then you walk back to normalcy with a different mindset that makes you better.

The beauty of Misogi is that it’s 50/50. My 50% is different from yours, which is different from someone else’s. That framework ensures the stress will be high enough to lead us to dig deep and learn.

Afterward, reflect and ask yourself what you learned. The posttraumatic growth research consistently found that reflecting on the event is key to having it help us. And we also see it in rites of passage—after the person returned, there’d usually be a long debrief with wise community members.

The psychiatrist I mentioned at the start helps people rewrite their story around events they didn’t choose. Misogi lets you write a new chapter on your own terms.

Have fun, make it hard, don’t die, debrief afterward,

Michael

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It’s the first Friday of the month—which means it’s time to Burn the Ships.

On the first Friday of every month, we publish a new Burn the Ships workout for Members only.

If Two Percent is a cult, these Burn the Ships workouts are our Kool-Aid.

Burn the Ships workouts are hard, safe, and effective. They improve your strength, cardio, movement quality, and mindset—and, in turn, your life.

Members of the Two Percent community do the workout every weekend—a bunch of us satellites, spread out across the world, all sweating and improving together as one extended network.

For each workout, we give scaled versions and exercise swaps, so anyone and everyone can do them. That is to say, you.

Subscribe now

Burn the Ships: June 2026

My Las Vegas Golden Knights are once again in the Stanley Cup Finals. The team has reached the finals 33% of the seasons since their inception. Not bad odds for Las Vegas.

One of the greatest truths in hockey—and also in fitness and health—came from Herb Brooks, the 1980 Miracle on Ice Team USA Coach.

His team wasn’t the best. But he made them the fittest. And that helped them beat the Goliath Soviet team.

Brooks put them through relentless conditioning, primarily focused on building their leg strength and endurance.

As they reached the edge during training, he’d say, “The legs feed the wolf.” The line was immortalized in the movie Miracle (which Cousin Tanner, famous for getting lost, watched so many times the DVD stopped working).

That’s what this workout is about. Feeding the wolf. Building legs that won’t die. Legs like that have upsides:

• All other things equal, people with stronger legs have a 14% lower risk of all-cause mortality. That came from a systematic review1 of about 38 studies including roughly 2 million people.

• A large Swedish study2 found that stronger legs were associated with 12 percent fewer heart attacks, while weaker legs were associated with 31 percent higher cardiovascular mortality.

• Meanwhile, people with weaker lower bodies have a 19 to 32 percent higher type 2 diabetes risk3.

• People with weaker lower bodies also had a 76% higher risk of falls4, which are a major risk for aging populations.

• Stronger legs will also help you do and feel better during summer adventures like hikes, runs, rucks, etc.

• And you’ll look better in shorts (science).

TL;DR: If you feel death and weakness creeping in, strengthen your legs and get more out of life.

The roadmap:

• First, we’ll cover the science of why one tough weekly workout is the non-negotiable sweet spot for both physical and mental health.

• Then, you’ll learn why it’s so effective when time is limited.

• Finally, I’ll give you the complete The Legs Feed the Wolf workout, with exact steps, full videos, scaled versions, and exercise and equipment swaps to get it done.

Check out our partners:

• 🚨 Momentous rarely runs site wide sales—but they’re running one now. Save up to 40% during the Momentous Anniversary Sale. Every product is heavily tested for purity. Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. I use their Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• 🏃‍♀️ Janji makes my favorite endurance apparel—comfortable, durable, unique. I wear Janji for every outdoor workout. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—the best damn kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

• ✈️ David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them the #1 option for anyone who wants protein on the go without excess sugar and fat. Visit DavidProtein.com.

The case for one tough weekly workout

• Section summary: One challenging workout per week is ideal for health and fitness.

There’s magic in pushing it once a week. First, there are the brain benefits.

Scientists at King’s College London analyzed 58 studies on intense exercise and mental health. They found that harder efforts led to:

“Improvements in mental wellbeing, depression severity, and perceived stress compared to non-active controls, and small improvements in mental wellbeing compared to active controls.”

Translation: hard exercise doesn’t just beat doing nothing (duh). It often beats doing only moderate exercise.

Intense exercise also comes with physical upsides.

It has an edge over less intense exercise for increasing VO2 max—one of the strongest predictors we have for longevity and disease resistance. A rule of thumb: the higher your VO2 max, the farther you are from death, disease, and decay.

In sum: All exercise helps. But going hard—sometimes—matters.

What’s “sometimes?”

The smartest trainers I regularly speak with suggest that one tough workout a week is the sweet spot for health and performance (info on that here).

More than that, and we tend to get burned out and beat down. Less than that, and we miss out on some health and performance upsides.

Enter Burn the Ships.

This month’s workout: The Legs Feed the Wolf

Equipment needed

• One kettlebell (or two dumbbells)

• Optional: A sandbag or ruck

Time commitment

• This workout should take you 30-60 minutes, depending on how many rounds you choose.

• I’ve also included ways to shorten the workout in the Questions and Substitutions section.

What I’m listening to as I do this workout

• The Killers, Las Vegas’ greatest band and the musical heartbeat of the Golden Knights. Also: The favorite band of the uber-wise , who shines whether or not you do.

How to do it

From here, you’ll learn:

• Exactly how to do The Legs Feed the Wolf workout.

• The full breakdown of reps and rounds for your fitness level and time.

• Substitutions and scaled versions of the workout so anyone can do it, no matter your equipment or fitness level.

The Warmup

Start with the Two Percent Warmup (or a warmup of your choice).

The Workout

Now move on to the workout. Do the exercises in the following order, moving from one to the other.

Read more

Most people will stay indoors when it’s hot this summer—continuing to live, work, and exercise at 72 degrees.

But when we never get hot, we lose something fundamental.

Humans are unique among other mammals in that we can thrive and endure in the heat. We sweat, we’re mostly hairless, and we stand upright so the sun hits less of us. The heat shaped us into who we are, and it’s still good for us today.

I brought on two guests to discuss the power of the heat.

First, I talked to Ashley Paulson. She holds the women’s course record at Badwater 135. It’s the hardest, hottest ultramarathon on Earth, held in Death Valley in July, where temperatures range from 115F to 130F. Also: Ashley didn’t start competing until her fourth kid. She’s now a grandmother setting world records.

Ashley will tell us what running through hell for 21-plus hours feels like, how she trained for the heat, why you’ve got more in the tank no matter your age, and what you can learn from the world’s hardest and hottest foot race.

Then I talked to Bill Gifford. He’s a veteran health journalist and the author of Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger.

Bill will explain the science of the heat and how to use it: what happens to your body in the heat, the heart and brain health benefits of the heat, why heat functions like a multiplier for your workouts, and his honest take on where the evidence on heat is solid versus where the internet has overstated it.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Ashley’s Instagram.

• Badwater 135 Race.

• Bill’s Book: Hotwired: How the Hidden Power of Heat Makes Us Stronger

My Biggest Takeaways From the Episode

As a reminder, this new section is for Members only. Below are 8 of the highest-impact, most actionable takeaways from the episode, including:

• How to reprogram your sweat rate and cardiovascular efficiency in under two weeks.

• The core-temperature target and timeline scientists used to trigger a lasting 40% drop in depressive symptoms.

• What running 135 miles through Death Valley in 120-degree can teach us about pacing, fueling, and knowing your edge.

Read more

I was recently talking to . She’s a Lecturer in Psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine and a practicing psychiatrist who’s worked with everyone from the upper-class in D.C. to opioid addicts in Appalachia.

We were talking about dopamine. If you’re here, dopamine is probably on your radar. It’s become part of any article, social post, book, or podcast that touches on bad habits.

We hear dopamine drives all our bad habits—addiction, scrolling, eating junk, and much more. If we can just fix our dopamine, we’re told, we’ll fix ourselves.

Satel disagrees1.

“When people bandy about ‘dopamine,’ they do so as a shorthand for pleasure—so that’s incorrect right there,” she told me. “The brain and behavior is just way too complicated to be boiled down to one neurotransmitter. Yet so many great articles and books with good, common-sense advice start dragging in dopamine, as if that adds to the gravity of a topic.”

She recently wrote a spot-on article in The Free Press about what we get wrong about dopamine and addiction. It’s worth reading.

Even lab scientists who’ve studied dopamine their entire careers disagree2 on its role. Yet people online with no scientific training are pushing dopamine protocols like they’ve cracked the habit code.

This conversation came on the heels of others I’d had with a few smart doctors and PhDs, who think the cultural obsession with dopamine has been largely incorrect and a total distraction.

Dr. Trevor Kashey, who you might remember from The Comfort Crisis, called this “neurologizing.” He said, “We use ‘neurologizing’ to explain a lot of human behavior. It sounds authoritative, but a lot of it is uncertain, and it provides zero practical solutions for helping people.”

The upshot: Once you stop worrying about and blaming your brain chemistry, you can focus on what actually moves the needle on behavior change. That’s what today’s post is about.

Today’s post covers:

• The messy truth about dopamine.

• Why top psychiatrists from Yale and neuroscientists from the University of Michigan say the cultural obsession with dopamine is inaccurate.

• What we think dopamine actually does in your body.

• How looking inward at your brain chemistry traps you in bad habits and distracts from real change.

• A counterintuitive, 5-step environmental design framework used by behavioral experts to alter bad habits without relying on willpower.

Shoutout to our partners

• 🏃‍♀️ Janji makes my favorite endurance apparel—comfortable, durable, unique. I wear Janji for every outdoor workout. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—the best damn kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

• ✈️ David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them the #1 option for anyone who wants protein on the go without excess sugar and fat. Visit DavidProtein.com.

• 🚨 Momentous rarely runs site wide sales—but they’re running one now. Save up to 40% during the Momentous Anniversary Sale. Every product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. I use their Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

Read more

Wendy Rhoades is one of the best characters on the show. She’s a psychologist and performance coach who helps billionaires get out of their heads so they can execute.

Today, we’re talking to the person the Wall Street Journal called the real-life Wendy Rhoades.

is a psychologist who works with the 0.01% to help them achieve world-class performance in fast-paced, high-pressure, extremely competitive environments.

Julie and I talked about mindset shifts that separate the very top from the merely successful. Much of her advice goes against the feel-good stuff from the self-improvement world. That’s because she cares about what actually works—and the improvements she gets are measured in millions (and billions).

I particularly loved her pushback against Stoicism, thoughts on unspoken social rules that hold the rest of us back, and why you should leverage your quirks and stop doing stuff you suck at.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• ’s Substack: . Read it. Your life will improve.

• Julie’s website.

• A few of my favorite posts on :

  • Managing your stress while pushing your limits.

  • Violent execution.

  • How to not take things personally.

• Julie’s Twitter feed (one of my favorites), with gems like this:

My Biggest Takeaways From the Episode

As a reminder, this new section is for Members only. Below are 8 of the highest-impact, most actionable takeaways from the episode, including:

• Why “be humble” is some of the worst advice you’ve ever been given

• The trait that lets the top 0.01% skip steps the rest of us grind through for years

• The negative emotion most people bury, and how the ultra-successful turn it into rocket fuel (anti-Stoicism)

• One question that dissolves the fear keeping you stuck

Read more

If you’re here, you’re probably one of the weird ones: A rare breed of human who takes the harder path. One of the 2% of people who take the stairs and apply that mindset to the rest of life, as the 98% move through life the easy way.

But, a question: Why are we like this?

The harder path clearly has health benefits. As we learned on Friday, something as basic as taking the stairs for just three minutes a week led to “15% and 13% reductions in risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality.”

But there’s something deeper to it. Turns out, the harder path is what makes life worth living. More interesting. More engaging. It gives us meaning we can’t find on life’s escalators.

Today’s post explores why. And it gives two concrete ways to leverage the power of one of psychology’s most interesting findings.

Quick housekeeping

• In case you missed it:

  • On Wednesday, we covered how people under 50 should view longevity. It’s important, and not what gets the attention.

  • On Friday, we covered 3 quick travel workouts you can do anywhere. Research shows they work just as well as the longer stuff.

  • Podcast: Tuesday, two guests explored why you should GTFOutside and find an adventure. Thursday, Andy Galpin explained what he found while studying my physiology during my 850-mile hike. (Listen here; watch it here).

• Shoutout to our partners:

  • 🚨 Momentous rarely runs site wide sales—but they’re running one now. Save up to 40% during the Momentous Anniversary Sale. Every product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. I use their Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

  • 🏃‍♀️ Janji makes the best endurance apparel—comfortable, durable, different. I wear Janji every outdoor workout. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

  • ✈️ David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them the #1 option for anyone who wants protein on the go without excess sugar and fat. Visit DavidProtein.com.

Why friction matters (and why Leah screamed “that’s right motherf*ckers” and C-walked over the weekend)

To understand why we’re wired to need hard things, let’s start with this wacky anecdote pulled from a study:

When instant cake mixes were introduced in the 1950’s as part of a broader trend to simplify the life of the American housewife by minimizing manual labor, housewives were initially resistant: The mixes made cooking too easy, making their labor and skill seem undervalued. As a result, manufacturers changed the recipe to require adding an egg; while there are likely several reasons why this change led to greater subsequent adoption, infusing the task with labor appeared to be a crucial ingredient.

Consider that. People wouldn’t buy a cake mix that was too easy to prepare. It made the cake less valuable to the baker and the people who ate it.

These women instinctively felt that something was wrong with the frictionless option—even though the end product tasted exactly the same.

The feeling was right. Researchers from Harvard, Duke, and UC San Diego call it “The Ikea Effect.”

It tells us this: We value things far more when we have to put effort into getting them.

I thought of this over the weekend. We’d been having issues with some outdoor lighting. The landscapers had shown up twice. Told us they’d fixed it. Still, it wasn’t working.

“F*ck that,” Leah said and headed outside to the fuse box.

Twenty minutes later, in walks Leah, C-Walking like Ice Cube and shouting, “That’s right motherf*ckers. I fixed it.”

It took her time, effort, and a lot of head scratching. But she figured it out. And she was thrilled.

The result of her work—lights turning on and off when we want—is an everyday occurrence. But the fact she had to figure it out herself made it something bigger—far more powerful. Way more powerful than it would have been if the landscapers had fixed it.

The Ikea Effect

The researchers analyzed psychological work going back to the 1950s on a phenomenon called “effort justification.” They described1 it like this: “The more effort people put into some pursuit, the more they come to value it.”

It’s been proven across domains as different as psychotherapy and brainwashing. Even animals get a thrill from things that took more effort. As far back as 1957, scientists observed that “rats and starlings prefer sources of food which require effort to obtain.”2

But this new group of researchers added a critical point: Your labor actually has to be successful. If you work hard and fail, it sucks. Only when your effort pays off does it matter.

To land on this discovery, they ran two experiments3:

• In experiment one, people either built a piece of Ikea furniture or were given a pre-built one. Then they were asked to name a price for it. The people who built it themselves valued it 63% more, even though it was the same furniture. This isn’t surprising. We figured that out in the 1950s.

• In experiment two, another group built Ikea furniture. But the researchers stopped half of them from finishing, with just two more steps of building left. The people who were allowed to finish their build valued it 150% more. Even though the incomplete group had all the pieces and only needed to add about 30 more seconds of work to finish.

The conclusion: Finishing the hard task is essential.

Why we value what took work

Before we explain how to use this, a question: Why do we value what took effort so much more than an equivalent thing that took no effort?

While reporting Scarcity Brain, I spoke with the psychologist Thomas Zentall4. The guy is a legend—started his research in 1968, has discovered many breakthroughs, and still spends 60 hours in the lab in his 80s.

He pointed out that humans and other animals evolved searching the land for food every day. Sometimes the food was easy to find. Other times not.

Yet we evolved to value the hardest-to-find food far more than the easier-to-find, “even if it’s the exact same food,” Zentall said.

The reason: “That extra psychological value of the harder-to-find food encourages persistence and energizes us to keep looking in the future,” he said. If that food weren’t more rewarding, we’d be less likely to keep pushing and looking in the future—and starve.

“I think that is translated in the modern world in which humans value things they had to work longer and harder to get,” said Zentall.

Zentall gave me examples: It’s why the first real meal we have after, say, a backpacking trip or half-marathon tastes that much better. Why that first big promotion we received after years of hard work earning low income feels much more satisfying.

Or why, Zentall said, “My students who get an A in their most difficult class get much more excited about it than the A they get in the class they felt competent in. These two grades are worth the exact same for their grade point average, but they value the grades that were harder to get.”

How to Use It

1. Lean into friction

As I wrote in The Comfort Crisis, the world has become increasingly frictionless. We don’t physically work for food. We can take the escalator. We can use AI instead of actually reading a book or study. We can (insert thousands of other examples).

But the more we offload the struggle, the less we value the result. We learn less, grow less, and care less about what we’re doing. And the more malaise creeps in.

Apply that thinking to the fact that we don’t have to struggle to get most things anymore, and you can see why there’s a rising tide of meaninglessness sweeping across the country, despite us living in what is the most comfortable period in human history.

2. Don’t quit until the magic happens

The Ikea study advanced 60 years of research by finding that we have to complete what we put effort into for it to matter. If we quit, we don’t return to baseline—we often leave worse off.

When you’re working at something, don’t stop. Keep at it. Use all the tools at your disposal.

A CIA friend of mine told me that what separates agents who survive danger from those who don’t is the “every last bullet” mindset. If a CIA Operative gets ambushed or kidnapped and has to escape, those who force the enemy to use every last bullet because they fought like hell are more likely to escape and survive.

Apply the “every last bullet” mindset to the struggles in your own life. If you start a workout, finish it. If you take on a project and it gets hard, keep pushing. If you’ve got relationship problems, work them out.

The point isn’t to finish the workout or project or fix the problem. It’s to become the person who finishes stuff, because therein lies the treasure—and what makes life worth living.

In closing

Collectively, this study—and the 60 years of research leading up to it—is a reminder of why we do hard things.

Yes, we might be the weird ones. The staircases of life are lonely.

But when we get to the top, we find ourselves happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. Meanwhile, the 98% move up life’s escalators. Easily, comfortably, and viewing us as oddballs—all while wondering why their lives are so mid.

Put in the work. Use every last bullet. It’s the only good fight left.

Have fun, don’t die,

-Michael

Fridays are reserved for our signature posts.

• The first Friday of the month is our epic Burn the Ships workout.

• The second Friday of the month is Gear Not Stuff.

• Third Friday: The Expedition (my favorite to write because it nourishes my ADD brain).

• Fourth Friday: Q&As.

But when a month sneaks in a fifth Friday, we run our All Killer, No Filler posts.

These posts feature something that’s improved my life lately. They’re quick, practical, and potent.

This fifth Friday, we’re featuring three one-exercise workouts that pack a lot of punch in a little time.

A Month of Quick Workouts

I was traveling for two talks all of last week—I spoke at the Ramsey Entreleadership Summit in Orlando (an incredible event), then traveled to another city to speak with the greatest NFL team on Earth. The week before that, I was traveling as well.

Travel throws my type-A exercise programming out the window. I have to balance my regular work with giving a talk—all while dealing with time changes and plenty of flights and driving.

In those situations, I might have only 15-20 minutes to exercise in my hotel room or the hotel gym.

But I’m fine. Better than fine.

That’s because I’ve found a few very simple, highly effective workouts. They each contain just one exercise. But magic lies in that simplicity: I don’t have to think and plan, and I can do a lot of work into my limited time.

I didn’t just make these workouts up—they’re based on three different studies.

In one of these studies, for example, athletes followed a specific protocol that included just one exercise for 12 minutes total (including rest breaks). They did it just twice a week. That’s 24 total minutes in the gym per week.

After six weeks, the athletes:

• Improved their squat strength by 11 percent.

• Improved their jump height by 15 percent.

• Improved their explosive strength by 19 percent.

Those are wild improvements for such little exercise in a group of people who were already fit.

Use these workouts when you’re traveling. Use them when life gets hectic. Use them to kill excuses. The research suggests they can work just as well as the more complicated, longer stuff.

Today, you’ll learn:

• Three specific, dead-simple workouts you can do in a hotel room or at home to improve your VO2 max and strength.

• A 12-minute, single-exercise workout that boosted explosive strength by 19%.

• A 10-minute hotel room interval routine that scientifically matches the benefits of a 45-minute run.

• The 3-minute bodyweight workout that matched the benefits of a 60-minute military PT routine.

Shoutout to our partners:

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

The three workouts

Read more

Before I left for an 850-mile hike last year, I emailed Dr. Andy Galpin for advice on training. He’s arguably the world’s foremost performance scientist.

Andy ignored my request entirely. Instead, he turned me into a lab rat. “I know exactly what happens to normal athletes before, during, and after competition,” he said. “But I have no idea what’s going to happen to you doing something that extreme. I want to find out.”

Twenty-four hours before I hit the trail, a lab tech showed up to my house and took many of my bodily fluids: copious amounts of blood, saliva, urine, etc.

Then, nearly two months later, she returned 24 hours after I’d finished the trail and took the same measurements. Then she came back 45 days later.

The results were, in Andy’s words, “mind-blowing.” Some of what happened surprised even him.

In the first 20-minutes of today’s episode, Andy and I covered what the data revealed about my hormones, red blood cells, micronutrients, metabolism, and recovery timeline—and what that can tell you about the toll of exercise.

In the rest of the episode, we covered what Andy has learned from working with MVPs, Cy Young winners, and UFC champions. He says the fundamentals that make elite performers elite are the same ones the rest of us should do.

He walked me through his complete exercise framework, explained why most sleep apnea goes undiagnosed, broke down his thoughts on where fitness/sleep trackers go wrong, and shared a strange, cheap fix for better sleep.

Whether you want to sleep better, train smarter, or just build a body that can handle whatever life throws at it, there’s something in this conversation for you.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Andy’s website.

• Andy’s health program: www.biomolecularathlete.com

• Andy’s sleep challenge with : https://www.wakingup.com/andy

• Andy’s podcast: Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin

• Andy’s Instagram

• My live recap of my hike.

My Biggest Takeaways From the Episode

As a reminder, this new section is for Members only. Below are 5 to 10 of the highest-impact, most actionable takeaways from the episode.

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The longevity market has a new customer. It used to mainly attract people who qualified for AARP. Not anymore. The biggest growth sector is people under 50.

This is good. The earlier you think about long-term health, the better.

And yet … the younger crowd has missed the biggest lever for longevity. It’s something obvious the industry doesn’t talk about—because there’s nothing to sell. It requires daily discipline, not a supplement or cancer scan.

I started thinking about this after a small, ordinary moment that most people have every day.

It sent me down a data rabbit hole. The numbers rearranged my thinking, and they run counter to the longevity noise pushed at young people.

For younger people, the real path to old age isn’t sophisticated. It’s hard in a way that doesn’t come with a product or subscription.

No one reaches 100 if they don’t reach 50 first. And the data shows that the thing standing between most of us and 50 isn’t what we’ve been told.

Today we’ll cover:

• The single most overlooked fact the $30 billion longevity industry is missing.

• What the longevity crowd misses for younger people. (It’s still very relevant to those over 50.)

• The three categories people under 50 need to watch out for.

• A data-driven, free approach that actually moves the needle for living longer.

• Why your brain is wired to fear the wrong things, and how the longevity industry exploits it.

Check out our Two Percent partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that guide better health decisions. Function helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and it was cheaper than my insurance. Visit my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

Read more

Adventure has been engineered out of modern life.

We pick the fastest route, the safest places, and the most efficient schedule. The problem is that what adventure brings—new situations, discomfort, uncertainty, the things going sideways—is exactly what makes us more resilient, and exactly what makes life interesting.

Our first guest is Jay Carson. For 25 years, Jay operated at the top of two of the most spin-heavy industries in America: politics and Hollywood. He was Bill Clinton’s communications director. He produced Netflix’s House of Cards and wrote Apple TV’s The Morning Show. Jay was even the inspiration for Ryan Gosling’s character in the 2011 political drama Ides of March.

Then COVID hit, the power went out, and Jay realized he had absolutely no idea what to do in an emergency. So he signed up for a 14-day wilderness survival course in the Utah desert with Boulder Outdoor Survival School (BOSS). It changed his life—so much that Jay is now an instructor with BOSS. And what he learned out there might inspire you to change yours.

Then we’ll hear from , a professional ski mountaineer turned photographer, filmmaker, and overlander. A few months ago, Sinhue sold his house, packed his truck, and started driving across the American West.

Adventure doesn’t have to be a long ordeal in the backcountry. It’s available almost anywhere. You just have to be willing to stop taking the most efficient route.

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Jay’s Instagram

• Boulder Outdoor Survival School (Check it out. I highly recommend it)

• Boulder Outdoor Survival School courses

• Boulder Outdoor Survival School history and philosophy

• Watch House of Cards

• Watch The Morning Show

• Watch Ides of March (Gosling’s character is based on Jay).

• Sinhue’s Instagram (an amazing feed)

• Sinhue’s Website

• ’s Substack:

Have fun, don’t die, get outside,

Michael

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It’s Memorial Day.

Before you start grilling, consider doing something hard.

Hundreds of thousands do—they follow the Memorial Day Murph workout tradition. It honors Michael Murphy, a Navy SEAL killed in Afghanistan in 2005 and posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.

Today’s post is about Michael Murphy, how the workout tradition came to be, and why you should find your own Murph today.

The standard workout is a thresher. But you don’t have to do the challenge as written.

• You can and should find your own Murph this Memorial Day.

• You can alter the workout to your ability level. People from ages 9 to 90 have done their own Murph workout.

• Or you can find a way to sacrifice for others. Volunteer. Do a favor. Be kind.

“The idea is to make (your Murph challenge) tough. It’s about the effort,” explained Dr. Josh Appel, who started the tradition of the Memorial Day Murph workout (more on that below). Just carve out a long, effortful moment where you consider sacrifice.

A pessimist would call this tradition silly. Can doing something hard really teach us about the ultimate sacrifice soldiers make for our freedom?

A few years ago, I investigated that question and found something powerful. I spoke to soldiers, gold star families, generals, and everyday Americans.

It showed me the strength of traditions. They can build us, change us, and move us forward.

I run this post every Memorial Day. Always will. Each year, I update it.

I’m publishing two things today.

• First: The never-told origin story of the Memorial Day Murph challenge.

• Second: Tips that will help anyone find their own Murph and do it better.

Housekeeping

• God bless those who served.

• ICYMI:

  • Wednesday’s post explained why you should stop chasing happiness. Surprisingly, that’s exactly how you’ll find it (which I learned while living with Benedictine Monks).

  • In Friday’s AMA, I answered 15 of your most pressing questions (a great ruck workout, my go-to meals, what I do for my mental health, what I’d change in The Comfort Crisis, and more.)

  • Last week’s podcasts:

    • How to eat healthy without going broke: Featuring Nick Norwitz and George Kamel.

    • The screenwriter Brian Koppelman (Billions, Rounders, Oceans 13) on getting fit at 57, beating anxiety, tribalism, and the logic of poker.

• Shoutout to our partners:

  • Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

  • Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

Let’s roll …

Memorial Day Weekend, 2007. Dr. Joshua Appel, M.D., then a medical resident, wanted to mark the day differently.

The holiday had become a thing of beers and barbecues and bargains on mattresses and refrigerators. All of which are great, no doubt.

But Dr. Appel wanted to do something to remind himself and a few willing others of the day’s purpose. A way to contemplate with mind and body those who’d laid down their lives for us.

He’d recently begun training at CrossFit Albany. “And I heard about this hero workout of the day called Murph,” he said.

Hero workouts are dedicated to the memory of a military member or first responder killed in the line of duty.

“And I was like, ‘I wonder if that’s the same Murph …’”

It was one of CrossFit’s hardest workouts. It went like this: run one mile; do 100 pullups, 200 pushups, and 300 squats; then run one more mile. All as fast as possible. All while wearing a weight vest or body armor.

Dr. Appel wasn’t a typical medical resident. He’d been in the military since 1994 as an Air Force pararescueman, which is a combat search-and-rescue specialist trained to retrieve wounded service members.

He enrolled in med school in 2001 and graduated on May 11, 2005. He was on a plane to serve in Afghanistan two days later. “Then on June 28,” he said, “we got the call that a Chinook [helicopter] had been shot down and a Navy SEAL team was missing.”

Operation Red Wings went as tragically as a mission can.

Early on the morning of the 28th, the military dropped four SEALs—Lieutenant Michael Murphy and Petty Officers Danny Dietz, Matthew Axelson, and Marcus Luttrell—about 10,000 feet high in the Hindu Kush Mountains. The team was tasked with providing reconnaissance for an impending action against guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah.

The plan fell apart when some goat herders caught the team’s position.

Within hours, the SEALs were taking fire on three sides by a force of more than 50 anti-coalition militiamen. The SEALs, all wounded, were pinned against cliffs, which blocked the signal they needed to make a distress call.

Understanding his team’s deathly predicament, Murphy, according to the U.S. Navy:

“unhesitatingly and with complete disregard for his own life moved into the open, where he could gain a better position to transmit a call to get help for his men.... This deliberate and heroic act deprived him of cover and made him a target for the enemy … He was shot in the back, causing him to drop the transmitter. Murphy picked it back up, completed the call and continued firing at the enemy who was closing in.”

Murphy, Dietz, and Axelson died on that mountainside. As did the 16 Special Forces service members whose helicopter was shot down while racing in to extract the four SEALs. Luttrell escaped.

“I was the pararescue team leader that rescued Marcus Luttrell and recovered Michael Murphy and Danny Dietz,” Dr. Appel said.

He kept the body armor he wore when he recovered Murphy’s body.

After he’d started CrossFit, Dr. Appel suggested that his gym “get everyone together and do a hero workout on Memorial Day.”

He proposed Murph. “We had 13, maybe 15 people. I thought it would be cool if everybody did Murph, so everyone has the same goal and is working towards the same thing.” Dr. Appel wore his body armor.

“It was very unifying and brought all kinds of people together,” he said. “It wasn’t a race. It was just going out and suffering together for Memorial Day and thinking about the people who have sacrificed everything. Just imagine how the people storming the beaches of Normandy, or hiking the jungles of Vietnam, or liberating Iraq felt like. It sounds kind of corny, but it drives and motivates you.”

Dr. Appel wondered, could it be bigger? “I thought this should be a national thing.”

Michael P. Murphy

“When Michael  was two years old,” Dan Murphy, Michael’s father and a Vietnam vet, told me, “he saw our neighbor’s pool. He ran up to it, didn’t even look, and just jumped in. So I run and toss my wallet and keys to jump in and save him. And Michael just swam to the other side and popped up with this big smile on his face.”

At eight years old, Michael hit a game-winning home run and arrived at home plate to declare to his celebrating team, “If you guys hadn’t gotten on base to give me a chance to bat, I would have never been able to bat and hit a home run. We won the game as a team.”

Michael earned the nickname the Protector in junior high after he threw down on a group of bullies who were picking on a disabled student. In high school, he defended a homeless man collecting cans who was being harassed.

After college, Michael planned to join the FBI, so he applied to law school. He was also interested in enlisting, though his father—who understood the reality of war— disapproved.

But the Navy would allow Michael to channel his protector spirit, to be brave, and make a living.

He earned the SEAL Trident in July 2002 and did three tours. Went to Jordan, Qatar, and Djibouti. His fourth, in early 2005, took him to Afghanistan to support Operation Enduring Freedom.

After deciding to join the Navy, Michael began running, doing calisthenics, and climbing a rope tied to a tree in the backyard of his childhood home on the South Shore of Long Island.

Then he discovered CrossFit, his father says. “And he put together his own [CrossFit-style] workout that fit in with his job as a SEAL.” They run, push, pull, and lift.

Michael did it while wearing body armor, the 16.4-pound military-issued vest, because that’s what he wore downrange. That’s how Body Armor, as Michael called the WOD that would become Murph, was born.

The Workout Spreads

When news about Operation Red Wings began trickling out, Dan Murphy had to reckon with his son’s selfless nature.

The Navy “told us they believed that there was at least one survivor,” he says. “And I remember turning to Michael’s mom, Maureen, and saying, ‘We know the way Michael is. If there’s going to be one survivor, it’s not going to be Michael.’”

After Michael’s death, his Body Armor workout started to spread by word of mouth among the SEAL teams—to outposts in Afghanistan and Iraq and at bases and training centers in Coronado, Virginia Beach, Pearl Harbor, Monterey, and elsewhere.

That’s when Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit, got involved. “A SEAL contacted me to ask if I’d honor the death of his commanding officer with a WOD named after him,” Glassman told me.

Back then, CrossFit only had about 13 gyms, but Glassman would log on to CrossFit.com and post fitness principles and daily workouts.

His training method had gained a following among Special Forces operators and other first responders, partly for its online accessibility, but mostly because it stressed function over form, at a time when bodybuilding was the norm in the military.

SEALs stationed at the naval base in Monterey, California, would travel 40 minutes up Highway 1 to train in Santa Cruz, home of the original CrossFit gym. Other first responders joined.

“We did Body Armor wearing whatever weight-carrying apparatus we owned,” says Greg Amundson, one of the first CrossFit adopters and a former DEA agent.

Hero WODs had come before. But Body Armor felt different. “The nexus between the SEALs and the box in Santa Cruz was very pronounced,” says Amundson. “Many of the SEALs who came to train there had known Lieutenant Michael Murphy.”

Body Armor required very little equipment and could be done almost anywhere. And the grind of the workout also led to more camaraderie, team cohesion, and strategy.

“You didn’t know what your partner on your left or right was going to do to get through it,” Amundson says. “All you knew is that you started the run together and you had to end with the run. But in between that ... man, it’s like who knows what’s going to happen. It was an adventure. There was something about Body Armor that had an inherent spirit to it.”

On August 17, 2005, Glassman posted the details of the workout to CrossFit.com as the WOD and included a note:

In memory of Navy Lieutenant Michael Murphy, 29, of Patchogue, N.Y., who was killed in Afghanistan June 28th, 2005. This workout was one of Mike’s favorites and he’d named it “Body Armor.” From here on it will be referred to as “Murph” in honor of the focused warrior and great American who wanted nothing more in life than to serve this great country and the beautiful people who make it what it is .... If you’ve got a 20-pound vest or body armor, wear it.

A Wild Idea

In October 2007, Michael Murphy was awarded the Medal of Honor.

Dr. Appel had made doing Murph every year a personal Memorial Day tradition. In 2010, he contacted Dan Murphy. “I hadn’t ever talked to Dan before, but I figured if I was going to do something nationally, in his son’s name, I should probably get his approval.”

Dr. Appel wanted to start a fundraiser by building a website and asking CrossFit boxes if their members would be up for joining the challenge.

There’d be a small fee, and all proceeds would benefit military charities and the LT Michael P. Murphy Memorial Scholarship Foundation, which Dan created in 2007. “One of [Michael’s] favorite sayings was ‘Education will set you free,’” Dan says.

In 2011, around 7,800 people signed up and donated.

The problem: many people signed up but didn’t finish.

So they started calling it the Murph Challenge. “If we put the word challenge in there, it’s an alert that this isn’t a 10- or 15-minute workout,” said Mike Sauers, a former SEAL who helped Dr. Appel grow the tradition. “And we started bringing in workout programs to prepare people, and making sure there was a path for everyone to perform the Murph Challenge to the best of their ability.”

Dr. Appel puts it this way: “My saying is ‘What’s your Murph?’ You don’t have to be a Navy SEAL to do this workout. Sure, it helps. But you can scale it and anyone can do Murph. Can’t do pullups? Okay, do ring rows. Can’t run? Okay, row. Even if you’re in a wheelchair and 90 years old, we can create something for you.”

That something just has to be long and hard—maybe the longest, hardest thing you do all year—and worth the reflection.

Sauers, meanwhile, worked his connections to get the Murph Challenge to people outside the CrossFit community.

“I had helped train Chris Pratt for his role in Zero Dark Thirty and we’d remained friends,” he says. “He’s done it since 2012.”

John Krasinski did it along with The Rock in 2018. “I love that it was designed to humble us,” The Rock posted. The megawatt endorsement helped Murph go mainstream.

Today, more than 100,000 people participate.

Dave Castro of CrossFit told me that three things helped transform Murph into a bigger-than-life, iconic workout: Murphy’s story, the brutal scale of the workout, and Memorial Day as a communal anchor.

How to find your own Murph

1. Scale your Murph

Anyone can do Murph. All you have to do is modify it.

Appel’s 90-year-old father recently did a Murph workout. His dad rode one mile on a fan bike, then did wall pushups, then did a ring row squat variation and finished with another mile on the fan bike.

You can make it easier by:

1. Cutting all the reps in half or by 75 percent.

2. Substituting easier exercises.

Do pushups with your hands on a bench or wall. Do quarter squats. Do inverted rows instead of pullups—the more vertical you stand, the easier rows get. Walk or ride an exercise bike a mile instead of running it.

2. Don’t start too fast

Running the first distance too fast will exhaust you for the long slog of exercises ahead. Find a pace that’s just slightly faster than you can have a conversation at.

3. Don’t max out

Most people run into problems on the pullups or pushups.

Stay far from failure on every rep, so you don’t burn out early.

• If you can do 5 pullups and 15 pushups, don’t max out. Do sets of 1 or 2 pullups and 3 to 5 pushups.

If you start to fail, transition to easier variations like jumping pullups and pushups with your hands elevated.

4. Drop the hammer

On the final mile, lean into the suffering and go for broke. Run or bike far faster than you’re comfortable. You could end up chopping as many as two minutes from your time.

5. Not up for a crazy workout? Help others.

• Help a friend or family member.

• Volunteer. (Volunteerism rates generally go down around the holidays.)

• Donate money to a good cause.

Have fun, don’t die, find your Murph.

-Michael

We had some excellent questions submitted in the Two Percent chat.

And because I was in a hotel room in Texas with time to kill, I decided to answer them live on Substack. The audio recording is above, if you’d like to listen to it. (Note: Substack had an issue that led the video to be rather grainy, so I’m running audio only).

Of course, I also cleaned up my responses and wrote them out below for our readers.

I’ll answer the following 15 questions:

• How do you ground yourself in times of great change? -Dianne Kaplan

• How can I do hard things on a budget? The Comfort Crisis is very America-centric. How can people outside the U.S. apply it? -Adrien (I gave this question a bit of pushback).

• Box step-ups vs treadmill ruck: Are they basically the same, or does one have an edge? -DJ

• I cycle often. Should I try to meet specific strength targets in the weight room? -Scott

• How do you make the 2% food choice when you have to decide what to eat multiple times a day? -Brady Baugh

• Comfort Crisis turned 5 (congrats!). What’s one thing you wrote that you’ve changed your mind on? -John Wegman

• I’m flying to with our kids (11 and 15) soon. Any airport tips? Best options for eating? How do you make it not miserable? -Melissa

• Have you seen any strong evidence that supplementing with more than 5g of creatine meaningfully improves performance or brain health? -Nick Smoot

• What actually qualifies as recovery, and how should I approach recovery? -Emily

• My smartwatch broke two months ago and I’m enjoying the freedom. What are the real pros and cons of tracking? -KB

• What’s your air fryer tofu recipe? -Daniel Moyer

• What are your easy go-to weekday meals? -Pat Jernigan

• Beyond exercise, what do you intentionally do to protect, reinforce, and maintain your mental health? -Kate Losowsky

• As a proud member of the Two Percent cult, how can I support your work? -Bradley Bertoniere

• Why do you drink diet soda? It’s so unhealthy. It feels like a 98% choice. -Ron Jones (warning: rant incoming)

Let’s roll …

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

Read more

Brian Koppelman is on the podcast today.

I’m a longtime fan of Brian’s work: He co-wrote the films Oceans 13 and Rounders (one of my all-time favorites), as well as the television show Billions, which ran for 7 seasons … and which I binged like a junkie.

Brian and I connected after he realized, at 57, that his health was going off the rails. So he did something about it: He got obsessive about lifting and got really, really fit.

When Brian started lifting, he couldn’t deadlift an empty 45-pound barbell. And, right around his 60th birthday, he deadlifted 300 pounds. Change is always available—if you work for it.

We talked about his late-50s health transformation, his approach to exercise, how he gets creative ideas, his writing practice, what taking money off Harvard guys in poker taught him about life, his partnership with his longtime co-writer David Levien, meditation, overcoming anxiety, managing ADHD, how he’s the guy who discovered Tracy Chapman (seriously), and why your life will change when you realize you can just do stuff.

This episode has a ton of wisdom for anyone who has a body, creative work, or both.

Brian is also a lifelong, diehard Knicks fan, so please send prayers his way.

Subscribe now

Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Brian’s Instagram (full of exercise and writing wisdom)

• Brian’s IMDB page

• Watch Billions (you’ll get hooked)

• Watch Ocean’s 13 (a movie Leah quotes often. Specifically, this line.)

• Watch Rounders (and remember “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”

• Transcendental Meditation

• Tracy Chapman’s Apple Music Page

• David Levien

• Turkish Getup exercise

Have fun, don’t die, start now,

Michael

In Monday’s post, I mentioned how I lived with Benedictine monks at a monastery in New Mexico for my book Scarcity Brain. The chapter that came from that experience is probably the best thing I’ve ever written, and I’m sharing a truncated and actionable version of it here.

I was at the monastery to learn about happiness. Despite the world being safer and more comfortable than ever, each American generation is unhappier than the one before it. Global unhappiness hit a record high recently. Meanwhile, the happiness industrial complex—of books, apps, podcasts, courses, and “happiness labs”— keeps growing … right in step with misery.

First things first: We all want to be happy forever. But that’s a grand delusion.

We’re working against millions of years of evolution designed to make happiness fleeting. University of Michigan researchers found1 that the brain evolved to treat happy feelings like bananas—they’re golden for a moment, but they rot away quickly, so we’ll move on to the next thing that we think will satisfy us.

This helped our ancestors survive. The scientists explained, “a state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.”

Yet these monks are happy, despite owning nothing, waking up at 3:45 a.m., living in silence, being celibate, and rarely leaving the monastery grounds.

Before I arrived at Our Lady of Guadalupe Monastery, I spoke to Alex Bishop, a professor at Oklahoma State University who has studied Benedictine monks and nuns extensively.

“The Benedictines have very high life satisfaction scores,” he said. “They have higher sense of purpose and meaning. They’re far higher than the general public. And you see this in other studies on them too. They’re pleasantly, well, happy.”

But how they lived and found “simple contentment,” as one of their holy books put it, was at odds with what most modern happiness research tells us to do.

“And I think that’s where these Benedictine communities become interesting,” Bishop told me. “It’s a rather austere lifestyle.”

I was about to find out just how austere it was, and what it could tell me—and now, so are you.

Shoutout to our partners:

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. The information can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. And Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and Maui Nui just launched a new flavor with chila pepa, the Hawaiian chili pepper. Chefs kiss. Get a deal on the new flavor here.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

From here you’ll learn:

• The biggest flaw in modern happiness research and what it can tell us.

• Five lessons from Benedictine monks, one of the happiest populations on earth, who got that way by accident.

• Exactly how to use these lessons to increase your happiness.

• Never-before-seen videos from my time at the monastery.

What the monks do differently

It was black on the edge of the Gila wilderness. I’d been driving a serpentine dirt mountain road edged by dark pines for nearly half an hour and was beginning to suspect I was lost.

Then my high beams caught two twenty-foot stucco pillars flanking the road. A cross topped each. The pillar to the right held decorative tiles showing an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe and square blue letters spelling out:

MONASTERIO

DE NUESTRA SENORA

SANTA MARIA DE GUADALUPE

The next morning, I asked a few of the monks about happiness.

They looked at me as if I’d asked them to solve for X. Happiness, it turns out, is not something they really think about. In all twenty thousand words of the Rule of Saint Benedict—the 6th-century document that governs their entire lives—the word “happy” doesn’t appear once.

And yet here they are, consistently scoring higher on life satisfaction than the general public—all by accident.

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Today’s episode is about food:

• A superfood basically no one gets enough of.

• How to afford healthy food when prices are skyrocketing.

We start with —PhD from Oxford, MD from Harvard—who writes the Substack and recently ate only sardines for a month.

That’s 1,000 sardines in 30 days. The results were wild: Nick’s omega-3 levels hit numbers usually seen only in dolphins, his body fat dropped below 7%, and he developed intense resistance to the cold. Nick explains how to use his findings without copying the diet, and a fascinating scientific case for eating more fish, based on a new study in the Cell.

Then we pivot to the financial expert George Kamel with the Ramsey Network to talk about how to actually afford eating healthy.

Food prices are up 20% since 2022. I feel it. You feel it. We all feel it.

George and I broke down how to save more than 20% on health food. That translates to $100 to $250 in savings for the average American family each month. The advice might be the single best thing you can do for both your health and budget.

I also asked George the best ways to get out of debt and avoid common money traps so you don’t sweat every grocery bill. He closed the episode with the best off-the-cuff answer I’ve heard on the podcast yet.

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Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Nick’s Substack:

• Nick’s posts on sardines:

  • I Ate 1000 Sardines for Science

  • Sardine Fasting. The Ultimate Health Hack

  • The Sardine Superpower (New Science)

• Nick’s YouTube channel.

• George’s YouTube channel (one of my favorites—George is hilarious and delivers advice that works).

• George’s book: Breaking Free from Broke: The Ultimate Guide to More Money and Less Stress. (You will get out of debt if you read it and follow its advice).

• George’s Instagram, where you can find many great personal finance tips.

• George’s jacket is from Bradley Mountain Outdoors. He wore it just for me.

Have fun, don’t die, eat fish you bought at Costco,

-Michael

The space of health, performance, and wellness can be a broken radio. There is endless noise—hacks, secrets, protocols, 31 flavors—and increasingly little signal.

It’s always been this way; just look at the patent medicines of the 1800s, wacky diet books of the early 1900s, or the fitness and lifestyle magazines from ‘80s and ‘90.

The problem today is, the broken radio is now louder and has more channels. Social media and AI have intensified the noise.

Which brings us to today’s post.

I was recently texting with , and we’d both observed that our work often gets mentioned together. Brad’s book, The Way of Excellence, came out earlier this year, and The Comfort Crisis over five years ago. But the books are very much in conversation, or so we’re told by readers. Brad had received a few messages:

• Dude, The Way of Excellence is great! It goes perfectly with the Comfort Crisis!

• I love these books because they are essentially guides for living well in a crazy world.

• The Way of Excellence and The Comfort Crisis belong next to each other on every bookshelf.

• I told my team Excellence and CC are required reading!

These are actual quotes from readers over just the past few weeks.

We were talking about this on Saturday, and I mentioned that we should do a joint Substack post. The idea was to lift that conversation off the page and tackle, together, some of the questions we’re most commonly asked.

What follows is that conversation, edited slightly for length and clarity.

Michael: P.S. Check out Brad’s Substack here.

Brad: And check out Michael’s Substack here.

10 Questions on Performance, Motivation, and Hard Things

What’s the Biggest Trap Most People Run Into with General Life Performance?

Brad: A lack of consistency. It’s never been easier to source information and ideas and habits and practices and protocols and on and on and on. As a result, it’s never been harder to stay consistent. When there are endless options for complexity and switching things up all the time, it becomes a shield against plain and simple accountability. It’s much more powerful to pick a few fundamentals and nail them day in and day out for a year than it is to chase the latest bright and shiny objects. The actual secret to greatness: Pick a thing. Pick a good system for your thing. Surround yourself with people who support you doing your thing. Do your thing for a decade.

Michael: Also—and this answer might be predictable, but it’s my best one—avoiding discomfort and quitting when things get hard. Anything that truly improves your life is going to be difficult—difficulty is the price of admission. If you avoid it, nothing changes. Humans are great at adapting to their surroundings. The problem is that we’ve built a world designed to make us the most comfortable species that has ever existed, and we’ve adapted to it completely. This has lowered our threshold for what counts as “hard” to the point that the slightest discomfort feels like an emergency. The good news: adaptation works both ways. Start doing hard things, and your threshold for what is hard and uncomfortable changes—and you change in the process.

What Do People Get Wrong About Doing Hard Things?

Brad: Two things. The first is that suffering for the sake of suffering is somehow valuable. It’s not! It’s actually quite dumb. What you want in your life is meaningful struggle. These are challenges that align with your values and goals and the person you want to become. Sure, for some people it’s a cold plunge. But for others, it’s training for a marathon. Or starting a company. Or adopting a dog. Or having a child. Don’t mimic other people. Find hard things that align with the qualities you want to develop. The second is that you can’t have fun, that you must be angry all the time. That’s nonsense! Having fun is one of the greatest competitive advantages there is. Intensity and joy can coexist, and in the best performers, they almost always do. I actually think the key to excellence could be boiled down to having fun while taking on meaningful challenges with good people.

Michael: Along those same lines, we assume hard things are always physical. They aren’t. The mental side can be even more impactful1. Ironically, we can get very comfortable in the hard things we like to do—so comfortable that they become a way to escape the real problem. For example, I know people who could run 100 miles without stopping, but they’d freak out if I asked them to sit alone with their thoughts for 10 minutes. Blaise Pascal said, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” The takeaway, for me, has been to notice what I’m really avoiding. That’s usually the mental game—and in that space lies some of the most productive work.

What’s Your Take on Motivation?

Michael: I used to think motivation was some magical feeling that arrived spontaneously. So I’d wait around until I felt motivated—which got me exactly where I was. Then I talked to one of the world’s foremost behavioral scientists. He told me motivation isn’t a feeling. It’s the probability that you’ll take a certain action based on how much you value the result. For example, we become highly motivated to eat when we’re starving because food is extremely valuable at that moment. On the other hand, motivation to eat plummets after we leave a buffet because food has lost its value. So instead of waiting for the mystical feeling of motivation to arrive, a more useful question is, “How can I make this thing I’m trying to do more valuable?” His advice was to pair something you value with a habit that you struggle to do consistently. For example, I know that riding the spin bike gives me cardio without pounding my joints, which will help me trail better and longer. Yet I hate the spin bike—it holds zero appeal. But I do value watching Golden Knights hockey games. So I put a TV in my garage gym. When the Knights play, I watch while riding. The result: more spin bike workouts, better cardio, better joints. You can apply this to anything. Pair something you like with something you don’t. That raises the probability that you’ll do it. For example, listening to your favorite podcast only when walking, rewarding yourself with coffee only after you meditate, whatever.

Brad: I think that’s right. The phrase I’ve heard for what Michael is describing is “temptation bundling,” which I believe originated with the behavioral scientist Katy Milkman. I’ve also come to view motivation no different than any other emotion. It comes and goes. Sometimes this is a result of things within our control—the people with whom we surround ourselves; the books we read; the music we listen to—but other times it ebbs and flows on its own accord. When motivation is there, it’s incredible! Ride those waves. But when it’s not, don’t freak out. Just name it: Motivation is low today—that’s okay, let me get started and see what happens. So much research shows that we think action follows motivation but it’s actually the other way around; motivation follows action. I have pretty low motivation most mornings, to be honest. But once I get started on writing or my workout, I feel motivation returning. I call it activation energy. Some days I need more, some days I need less. Just get started and give yourself a chance.

Why Do You Think So Many People Read Your Books Together?

Brad: They circle around similar topics—essentially, how to live a good, high-performing, and perhaps even flourishing life—in a crazy and chaotic world that often feels rigged against us. We approach that topic from slightly different angles, but ultimately, the books are in conversation with each other trying to answer that question. I also think we both write (or at least we try) with a refreshing honesty. Something I’ve always appreciated about Michael is he is guided by the truth: not what is trendy, not what way the political winds are blowing, but what is true. I aspire to do the same in my work.

Michael: My guess is that Brad and I both appeal to readers with strong bullshit detectors. The self-help and performance space is built on books that make things easy and comfortable: three-step protocols, one-phrase rules, “the secret.” That approach can sell a lot of books, but life doesn’t work like that. Brad and I both do deep research and try to be honest about genuinely complicated topics. We’d rather give people answers that work—even if the reader has to work a bit to apply the answers in their life—rather than an easy quip that fails long-term. This is probably why Brad’s book The Way of Excellence is being read by a lot of professional sports teams.

What Do You Tell Someone Who Wants to Become More Confident?

Michael: Do something that scares you. Decades of research on exposure therapy show the best way to fix a specific anxiety is to face it. Avoiding it, on the other hand, makes it stronger. This is why I think the Misogi concept is so valuable. In Misogi, you take on one epic challenge a year, with a ~50/50 chance of finishing. That constraint forces you out of the safe zone. The task is legitimately hard enough to push you well out of your comfort zone, but not so hard that you blow up and fail miserably (which can actually backfire). You get out to your edge and realize you didn’t fall off it. Instead, the edge expands, and you grow to meet the terrain and change in the process. Humans have been doing some version of this for thousands of years—we used to call them rites of passage.

Brad: Yes! And give yourself the evidence! Self-belief only works if you have reason to believe it. Confidence comes from evidence. If you want to gain confidence about something you need to practice, accumulate the reps, and put in the work. It doesn’t mean you won’t still have some doubt (you will) but on the starting line—be it actual or metaphorical—you can remind yourself of your training. And then tell yourself to trust that training. This is true with a very particular task, such as running a marathon or writing a book or public speaking, but it’s also true for life as a whole. It’s the value of challenging yourself physically, intellectually, socially. You build a generalized sense of confidence, or what researchers call self-efficacy, across the board.

There’s All This Talk About the “Crisis of Masculinity.” What’s Your Take?

Brad: On average, men have more of the hormone testosterone than women. This is simply a fact. People think testosterone is associated with sex and aggression, but it’s actually most strongly associated with a drive for status. There are two broad paths to gain status: the first is via competence, respect, contribution, and belonging. The second is via rote power and domination. If men don’t see role models for the former, they become easy prey for grifters who sell them the latter. I think that explains a lot of what is happening. Men (and really, everyone!) need sources of mastery and mattering in our lives. We need to do real things in the real world with real people. We need to aspire toward intrinsic excellence. You can get mastery and mattering in work, in leisure, in volunteer coaching, in the gym—so many places. But where you don’t get mastery and mattering is watching some loser stream on the internet all day. So we need to show men (and again, everyone) a wide range of examples for how to attain mastery and mattering in their lives.

Michael: I’ll tread carefully here, because this topic has a way of inciting online mobs. I do think many men feel like something is missing. The world no longer requires many of the things that historically built male identity, like physical competence, navigating risk, and protecting and providing for others in a way that was real. There’s a vacuum, and a lot of bullshit has flooded in to fill it. Men searching for masculinity often find it through weird online groups telling them masculinity is found in their bank account, muscles, or a lifted truck or gun collection. It’s all symbolic—and it often doesn’t require the real work that builds competence and toughness. The most competent and toughest people I know earn it and don’t advertise it. The Special Forces guys who did the gnarliest missions are kind, thoughtful, and helpful. The outdoors people who’ve done the most extreme expeditions are goofy hippy dirtbags who don’t post online. In the past, you couldn’t fake competence and toughness. Everyone wore the same clothes, lived together, and knew what you’d actually done. Did you or did you not kill that tiger? We all knew, because you dragged its corpse back to camp. Today, you can fake it through online posts and purchases. That’s easier, but it can lead to misery. The answer is simple: Dudes need to go out and do real things—ideally things that help others—rather than display symbols of real things.

What Does Excellence Mean To You?

Michael: When I lived in a monastery with Benedictine Monks for my book Scarcity Brain, I came across a book written in the 1800s by an unnamed monk who lived in a cave alone for decades. One line hit me like a hammer: “You risk so much hesitating to fling yourself into the abyss.” To me, excellence is exactly that. Being willing to fling yourself into the abyss—entering the unknown and trying new things even when you feel unprepared, know you might look bad, and know you’ll stumble. And trusting that you’ll figure it out along the way. Today, it’s easier than ever to stand on the comfortable edge of the abyss and say no, wondering why nothing in life is changing.

Brad: Yeah, that’s exactly it. You have to be willing to step into the arena and actually care about something—it’s a prerequisite to excellence. It means throwing yourself into worthwhile projects and pursuits that align with your values and goals, and doing this in a way where you don’t just work on the goal but the goal also works on you, it shapes your character, the person you are becoming. The result is a sense of mastery and mattering in your life. Results absolutely matter; don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. But it’s also true that there is no greater trap than thinking the accomplishment of some goal will change your inner life. What will change your inner life is the person you become along the way. Excellence is a philosophy of life that encompasses all of this.

The Comfort Crisis Has Been Out for 5 Years—What Do You Make of it Now?

Brad: Michael was right about everything and he was way ahead of his time? Haha! I’m not sure what else to say! I think we live in a bifurcated friction economy. Some people’s entire lives are full of needless friction—working three bullshit jobs just to get by, filling out forms for Medicaid all day, and so on. Their lives have very little comfort, but all the discomfort is useless and unnecessary. But there is also the other segment of the bifurcated friction economy: these are people whose days are characterized by ease and convenience. Order food, date, sell cars, buy cars, gamble, do everything with the click of a button. These people’s lives have little to no friction at all. As a result, life feels dull and empty. Michael saw this coming five years ago, and it’s only gotten worse since.

Michael: You are too kind, Brad. But, yeah, the book is probably more relevant now than when I published it. All technology is designed to make our lives easier—less physical work, less discomfort, less thinking. And technology only evolves, never devolves—so it’s ramped up significantly since 2021 (e.g., ChatGPT wasn’t around when I wrote that book). The Comfort Crisis is really about a mismatch between our evolutionary wiring and our technological environment. Humans evolved to seek comfort. We instinctually default to safety, shelter, warmth, extra food, and minimal effort. For all of history, that drive kept us alive in a genuinely hard world. Our common problem today is that our environment has changed, but our wiring hasn’t. Constantly seeking comfort in a comfortable world leads us to sit too much, eat too much, let a machine do our thinking for us, and avoid the experiences that make us healthiest and happiest.

“Agency” is Becoming a Buzzword. How Does Someone Exert It?

Michael: Agency is basically just the ability to act and see that your actions change things. For most of human history, it would have been absurd to ask whether someone exerted agency. We all lived in small groups and had roles where we could see, immediately, that our actions affected our environment and outcomes. Think: Finding food, keeping kids alive, etc. But today, agency isn’t so clear. Lots of jobs provide no clear outcome for employees—work goes into a black box for a corporation. We can also offload tasks to machines, so we don’t get evidence of our own capability. Many people also spend enormous energy engaging with problems they can’t solve: global politics, the economy, or other people’s behavior. That’s a reliable path to feeling helpless. The fastest way to build agency is to engage with problems you can solve, even small ones. When I spoke with researcher Leidy Klotz on my podcast, he pointed me to a nursing home study where residents given control over their rooms—like where to hang a photo, which plant to keep—were half as likely to be dead 18 months later compared to residents who couldn’t change their rooms. This suggests: 1. Agency is important; 2. We need to do more things where our actions have quick outcomes, and we see change. That could be growing a garden, exercise, building something, volunteering, whatever.

Brad: I think that’s all right. I also think discipline and agency go hand-in-hand. And not like a chest-thumping, machismo, look how tough I am version of discipline. But the ability to make choices that align with your goals and values and stick to them. I think so much of exerting agency comes down to choosing what is worth your time and energy and what is not, and then designing your own private little ecosystem to support those choices. What time do you go to bed? What apps do you have (and not have) on your phone? What people do you associate with? What books do you read? I guess what I’m saying is that in a world that is completely dys-evolved for flourishing, we need to create our own micro-environments that support flourishing. That’s what discipline means to me these days, and I think it’s the key to exerting agency. And there’s a reason I used the work skill above. Discipline is a muscle you build and it gets stronger with practice.

What Are The Habits That You Rely on Most, That Support Your Best Performance and Lives?

Brad: 60-90 minutes of exercise every day—which can range from a hard formal strength training session in the gym to a long walk with the dog. It all counts! Reading books—not on the internet, but actual books—for at least 30 minutes every day (usually first thing in the morning or in the evening when winding down). Setting aside an hour for deep-focus work. Not fighting evening sleepiness, which is to say, going to bed when I’m tired. Coaching my kids’ sports teams, which brings me more joy than nearly anything else. If I do those five things, I set myself up for success. Not every day is great, because of course. But it’s good enough.

Michael: Honestly? Not taking myself too damn seriously. I have a solid foundation of good habits: I write every day. I exercise and eat well. What saps my performance more than anything isn’t missing a workout or eating junk food or a bad night of sleep. It’s the stories I tell myself: Stressing about work and worrying over outcomes. As my readers know, I’m a big Deadhead. One of their singers once said: “ In eternity, nothing will be remembered of you. So why not just have fun?” I’ve found that approaching my life with that kind of lightness—treating it as something to enjoy and have fun with—has done more for my actual output and mental wellbeing than any other habit. If I miss a workout, the world keeps turning. If I misspell something in a Substackk post, life goes on. This is why I end each post with “have fun, don’t die.” It’s a reminder to me as much as it is to you.

Thanks so much for reading. If you haven’t yet, get the books. And read them! We promise they’ll help. Both are on sale.

• The Way of Excellence

• The Comfort Crisis

Have fun, don’t die,

Michael and

The Expedition is our monthly journey into thoughts, opinions, ideas, observations, studies, facts, figures, etc.

Good ones, insightful ones, interesting ones, weird ones, and ones you can use to live better and longer.

It’s a roundup of all the worthwhile stuff I’ve discovered in the last month. The Expedition is a bit of an island of misfit toys. But, hey, the greatest journeys are winding.

Check out our partners:

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on axis deer is incredible, and Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

• Run or ruck far with Janji, an independent brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

In this month’s Expedition, you’ll learn:

• Numbers on:

  • Doctors and malpractice.

  • AI e-book boom.

  • AI vs. doctors in ER cases.

  • America runs on diabetes.

  • Step counts (and step count complexities).

  • What kids want: money and stuff.

  • How many people believe in health B.S.

  • The NBA Chaos Theory.

  • Suicide rates.

  • Boring diets.

  • The greatest airport in the world.

  • A prolific hippy jam band.

• How the UK would rank in 16 categories if it were a U.S. state.

• A brief history of why teens can’t win.

• A controversy about exercise and mental health.

• Debate: Are vegan diets for rich elites?

• The most research-backed way to improve gut and digestion issues.

• Is your core strong enough? A classic test you can take right now.

• A parting quote.

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Bad habits aren’t a problem. They’re a solution.

That might sound insane, but it’ll make sense by the end of today’s episode—and you’ll have a new way to look at change.

I recently saw the band Phish at the Las Vegas Sphere with my good friend, Ryan Soave. Picture two sober dudes inside a (literal) bubble filled with stoned hippies.

After the show, we headed into the studio for the first-ever in-person Two Percent podcast.

Ryan is one of the country’s leading therapists and addiction counselors. Over two decades and more than ten thousand clinical hours, he’s worked with people navigating trauma, addiction, and the bad habit patterns that quietly run their lives.

His approach weaves together modern neuroscience, body-based therapies, and ancient wisdom traditions—all built around one uncomfortable idea: most of us confuse discomfort with threat, and spend our lives reacting to things that aren’t actually dangerous.

Ryan started in addiction. He’s since broadened his work to high performers who’ve mastered success but can’t seem to master peace.

We covered a lot of ground: the counterintuitive science of addiction, paths to sobriety, why winning at life doesn’t automatically translate to enjoying it, how to identify what triggers a bad habit, breathwork, tactics for managing day-to-day stress, and how to have a genuinely good time without substances.

We also shared what we’ve learned on our paths to sobriety (me 11 years; Ryan 18 years).

See below for some of Ryan’s free online tools that kickstart habit change.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Ryan’s Website, which offers many free and highly useful tools.

• Free course: Sign up for “How to Feel Bad (and Love Your Life)” at ryansoave.com

• Book a one-on-one consultation: ryansoave.com

• Ryan’s Instagram

• Ryan’s YouTube page

• A few of my favorite videos from Ryan:

  • 20 Minute Guided Meditation That Releases Tension, Starves Stress

  • 10 Minute Deep Relaxation Through Yoga Nidra (Guided)

  • Addiction Is Not the Problem, It’s the Solution (Here’s Why)

  • Give Me 30 Minutes and I'll Tell You What Your Therapist Won’t

• Audio from Phish’s live shows at the Sphere can be found here.

Have fun, don’t die, find a better solution,

-Michael

I was in Nashville last week for work. While in town, I went to Waffle House, because if you’re in the South, you might as well roll the dice with diabetes. And I also have a fondness for restaurants where I could get murdered at any given moment (IYKYK).

What surprised wasn’t the chaos of the place—the grizzled waitress running it like a friendly dictatorship, the methy griddle cook slinging eggs at warp speed. Those are Waffle House standards. What surprised me was the menu.

Even Waffle House is now part of the protein craze. Their new menu included various items, like a 53g Protein Bowl—which mixes grilled chicken, eggs, and lots of cheese. I also passed a Raising Cane’s advertising new meals with 80+ grams of protein. McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Arby’s, and Taco Bell all have protein-forward menus.

The narrative—now so mainstream that even Waffle House has adopted it—is that we don’t get enough protein and need to eat more. A lot more.

Researchers point to 2025 as the year protein became the #1 nutrient. We’re told eating more can help us lose fat, live longer, balance our hormones, build muscle, and offset the downsides of menopause and GLP-1 drugs.

I’ve reported on health for two decades. In my experience, when fast-food chains jump on a diet trend, it’s a reliable sign that the hype has outrun the evidence. I saw this with low-fat, low-carb, and keto.

So: Is protein just another craze? Or is it different this time around?

To find out, I reached out to the world’s foremost protein scientists. He’s spent three decades studying protein’s role in health.

The rest of this post covers what I learned from him.

From here, you’ll learn:

• What eating more protein does (and doesn’t do) for you.

• The costs and benefits of new protein-forward menus and foods.

• The cake analogy that will change your thinking about protein.

• A simple framework from researchers to prioritize muscle growth, metabolic health, fat loss, and more.

• How to know if you need more protein, and how to increase your protein intelligently and avoid four potential drawbacks.

Check out Janji

• Run or ruck far as hell with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

Read more

I f*cking love dogs. My dogs don’t just make me happy—they’ve changed how I live and see the world for the better. At one point, a dog even saved my life.

This is an ancient story. Humans domesticated dogs before we domesticated wheat. We co-evolved with them in a way few other species have, and dogs can still teach us how to live a good life in an increasingly fast and kinetic world—and even measurably improve our healthspan and lifespan.

In today’s episode, I spoke with two people who can help us understand why.

First, . Sam is a former Navy SEAL who did multiple combat tours in pre-state areas of Afghanistan, then got his master’s at Columbia University.

He writes What Then?, one of my favorite Substacks. It blends battle-tested philosophy on hardship, mindset, anthropology—and dogs. Sam says that dogs are more than pets: They’re a bridge back to the primeval world we evolved in, symbols of an ancient wisdom we’ve mostly forgotten as our lives sped up, and reminders of our humanity in an age of mass meaninglessness.

Then I spoke with Dr. Nancy Gee, the world’s foremost expert in animal-human interactions and the head of VCU’s Center for Human-Animal Interaction. Dr. Gee has studied the topic for decades.

She explains how dogs impact our health, brain function, mental health—and why they’re particularly powerful for kids and aging adults. Her research can help you interact with your dog better, and understand why dogs help us live longer, healthier lives.

Also: Duke made an on-camera appearance, so the show has that going for it, which is nice.

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Watch the episode

Listen to the episode

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Sam’s Substack, What Then? Subscribe—you won’t be disappointed.

• Sam’s writings on dogs (some of my favorite work):

  • Why we should listen to the voice of a dog

  • How to live on dog time

  • What the grey hairs of a dog teach us

  • How dogs make us human

  • How dogs make us ancient again

  • How dogs remind us of what matters in life

• Science Magazine: World’s oldest dog identified at ancient hunter-gatherer site

• Dr. Nancy Gee’s full biography.

• A few of Dr. Gee’s studies:

  • Companion animals and child/adolescent development: A systematic review of the evidence

  • Animal-assisted interventions in the classroom—A systematic review

  • A systematic review of research on pet ownership and animal interactions among older adults

  • Dogs supporting human health and well-being: A biopsychosocial approach

• Virginia Commonwealth University Center for Human-Animal Interaction

Have fun, don’t die, love dogs,

Michael