The Becoming Superhuman Podcast

Today, we are joined by Dr. Sharad Paul, who is many, many, many, many things. He's a skin cancer surgeon, a family physician, an academic skin care expert, an evolutionary biologist, a storyteller, and a social entrepreneur, as well as an adjunct professor at Auckland University of Technology. He was originally born in England, with a childhood in India. He's a global citizen who now lives in New Zealand. And in 2008, he was featured in international editions of TIME Magazine. He's also been awarded the prestigious Ko Awatea International Excellence Award for leading health improvement on the global scale. I also discovered that he was an advisor to UNESCO, that he has written books in the fiction and nonfiction, scientific and nonscientific spheres, and has a skin care line among many many other ventures. In the episode, we talk about genetics and his interest in how we can alter our genetics and genetic expression. We talk about how we can optimize our health through understanding our own individualized ge

Today, we are joined by Jenny Blake, and I have to tell you: she and I really really hit it off. We really had a great time chatting. She's an author, a speaker, a career coach, business strategist, and much much more. She wears a lot of different hats. But she's mainly the author of Pivot: The only move that matters is your next. It's a great book about life path, deciding what's right for you, being happy, and being satisfied in your career. She also hosts the pivot podcast and she has a private momentum community. On top of all of that, Jenny trains coaches all over the world. She's been featured on CNBC, New York Times, Sunday Times in the UK... Basically she is an awesome super woman, and she shares a lot of my passions for entrepreneurship, lifestyle design, and as I found out kind of surprisingly, we both geek out on productivity, productivity tools, and how to hack your workflow so that you can get more done. She and I both shared that in the last few years, we have worked less than ever before and ea

Today we are going to talk about creativity, and to do that, we are inviting someone on the show who really has helped thousands and thousands of people become more creative in a way that might surprise you. His name is Grant Faulkner, and he is the executive director of National Novel Writing Month and he's the co-founder of a 100 Word Story. Now you've seen his stories in Tin House, Southwest Review, Green Mountains Review, all kinds of different places, and you've seen his essays in the New York Times, Poets and Writers Digest, and The Writer. Grant recently published a collection of 100 word stories, Figures and what he does is help people become more creative. He's written a book called Pep Talks for Writers, and he has a new book coming out in October. I wanted to have Grant on the show because he has helped so many people do something that maybe they didn't think they could do: be creative and write. But in the course of the conversation we go a lot deeper and we talk about why writing and creativity a

Today we are joined by Drew Logan. You've probably heard of him - he's a renowned fitness expert, celebrity trainer, and a television star. But actually, we go through something much more kind of interesting and rare in the beginning of the episode, which is that Drew died. Three times. He is the only known survivor of three consecutive sudden cardiac arrests. Doctors don't know why it happened. They don't know if it'll happen again. And living with that has given drew a really unique mindset and really unique approach to life. Drew is known for his fitness approach, 25 days, which deals a lot with habit and mindset. And in this episode, we talk about how all that works and how he has created a proven program to rewire your brain, stop weight gain, and finally crush the habits you hate forever. His book will be coming out in September, which if you're listening to this at release, is probably right now. And he sure has a lot of really valuable stuff to offer.

On today's episode, we are joined by Akshay Nanavati. He is an author, public speaker, and just all around really impressive guy. He has overcome drug addiction, PTSD, from fighting in Iraq with the Marines, and alcoholism that pushed him to the brink of suicide. He's explored some of the most hostile environments on the planet and he has come up with a methodology. It is the same methodology that shares the title with his book, FearVana, which the Dalai Lama himself said "inspires us to look beyond our own agonizing experiences and find the positive side of our lives." Akshay and I had a really incredible conversation. He is also very much interested in neuroscience and the science of memory and learning, and so we attack it from that angle. We start talking about fear, and how we can break the patterns of fear, but more importantly, how we can use fear, and how fear can be a good thing in our lives to create improvement and push us forward. It's a very unique and interesting perspective, and I think you're

Today we are joined by Ryan Stewman. Now, about his bio. Honestly, you can't make this kind of stuff up. Ryan started out life with a very, very challenging upbringing. He was adopted got into all kinds of trouble. He got arrested for selling drugs. He got out.... but got arrested again, and spent a pretty good amount of time in prison. But today, fast forward, and he is a millionaire entrepreneur. He runs six different businesses. He's published four different books. He has three healthy children and a loving wife... He has really cleaned up his life, and has become an expert in sales and entrepreneurship. Now you might be asking yourself at this point: "I mean, his workload sounds pretty superhuman. His time management sounds pretty superhuman. But what exactly is superhuman about this guy?" Well, first of, we do get into all of that: The entrepreneurship that he learned throughout his struggles. We get into what you can learn from such a challenging and trying experience, and how you can learn something li

Today, we are joined by Tee Major. Now, I have to admit: I didn't know about Tee before his publicist reached out, and I'm kind of sad that I didn't, because he's an amazing guy and you guys are about to find out why. He's not only one of Jillian Michaels top Fit Fusion trainers on the web, he's a member of the ACE group and a specialist in fitness and nutrition, too... But he is also a tactical fitness instructor who served the military, and was their trainer in Iraq and Kyrgyzstan, during  Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He's worked with the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marines, but as I found out, there's actually even more to him! He's an entrepreneur, a successful business owner, a nomad traveling the world, an adventurer, and really just someone who has so much to share. Throughout the episode, we get into a lot. Obviously, we talk about fitness and leadership and nutrition, but then we also go into entrepreneurship. We go into freedom and even get into these pretty difficult chi

Today we are joined by Dr. Marilyn Glenville. If you haven't heard of Marilyn, well, you probably don't live in the UK, because she is the U.K.'s leading nutritionist and she specializes in women's health. But she's an inspiring public speaker, she's very easy to listen to, and very practical in her approach. She's also the former president of the Food and Health Forum at the Royal Society of Medicine... and she's written over 20 books. In the episode, we talk about nutrition, we talk about all the various aspects, the ins and outs, we discover some interesting stuff we discover some interesting ways that ancestral health or a Mediterranean diet can improve maladies that you might not know it can improve. And, in general, we give some great homework for you to play around with and see how you can optimize and improve your diet. I know you guys are going to enjoy this episode, so I don't have to say I hope!

Today we are joined by Dr. John Day. He is a cardiologist from Salt Lake City, Utah, who spent a significant portion of his life in Asia. He is fluent in Mandarin and he was trained at Stanford University. Here's where it gets interesting: He did some work some research with a little known village in China known as "Longevity Village." And there, he discovered a people who live, on average, to be 100 years old or older. Over the process of getting to know them, working with them, speaking their language, Dr. Dre was able to figure out the secret. He was able to determine exactly what they do... and how it's so different from what we do. I don't know if you guys know the statistics, but most people in most western countries... Well, we do not live to be 100 years old. We live to be significantly less. And so I think there's a lot of really interesting value here. Some of it will come as a surprise... But most of it won't. Most of it is a reinforcement of a lot of the stuff that we talk about every week, maybe

If you've been listening to the show for any amount of time you know that I'm a big fan of leveraging my time, and you know that I'm all about "outsourcing," "delegating," finding ways to do things in a more efficient way, by hiring people bringing people on... so on and so forth. And today, I wanted to talk with someone who is an expert in that field. Specifically, his name is Mike Grogan, and he's a best selling author, sought after speaker, and an internationally recognized expert on habet creation, change management, and leadership development. Mike is an Irish national who's traveled all over the world, spoken to over 100,000 people in the U.S., Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. His online videos have reach over 15 million people. But we didn't even get into a lot of that stuff, because what Mike does today is that he actually lives in the Philippines, where he is the co-founder of The Rise of the Pinoy, an advocacy group with a mission of empowering Filipinos to create a First World Philippines

Today we are joined by Darius Foroux. He is a serial entrepreneur a blogger and the podcaster behind The Practical Podcast. You may have also heard of his book, Win Your Inner Battles, or his program, Procrastinate Zero, which is a high achievement training program, or his various blogs about productivity, life lessons, and various different ways to have more energy and motivation. We originally heard about Darius from Hugo in Spain, so thank you for the recommendation! As you know, I love talking productivity and I'm a total productivity geek, and I'll take any opportunity I can to learn some new tips and tricks. In this episode, I definitely did that. We talk productivity, we talk tools, tips, strategies, and different ways that you can have more energy and get more done... And I don't think anyone out there would object to that.  I'm sure you guys will enjoy the episode!

Welcome to this week's episode. Today we are going to explore a topic that really we haven't explored enough, and that is learning about music. We all know that music is so good for our brains, and we know that there are so many benefits to learning a musical instrument besides looking cool at parties. But how do we do it? And more importantly, how can we do it faster and more effectively? Well today we are joined by Josh Turknett. He is the author of The Migraine Miracle. We talk a little bit about that, but more importantly, he's a neurologist and he's the author medical editor for The Journal of Evolution and Health. And, on top of all that, he's a musician and instrumentalist. He's the founder of Brainjo, which is a system of musical instruction that really incorporates the Science of Learning and Neuroplasticity. And he's just all around a pretty interesting guy. In this episode, we talk about learning, we talk about migraines a little bit, and then we go into and kind of geek out on the learning behind

Today, I have a guest for you that I totally hit it off with. Her name is Amy E. Smith, and she is a life coach who specializes in helping you have the hard conversations. She helps you say no without looking like a total jerk. And she coaches people and speaks all over the world all over the country through her brand The Joy Junkie, and she uses her roles as coach, writer, podcaster, and speaker to help individuals really empower themselves get to a point of self-love and confidence, where they can communicate authentically, openly, and honestly. You might ask: what's superhuman about that? But honestly, I think it is one of the skills that has helped me really grow as an individual. And... just the morning of recording this podcast, I was having this exact debate with someone very close in my life. So we recorded an episode on it, and I was very lucky that Amy happened to be on the docket for this week's episode. In it, we talk about a lot of very very interesting stuff from emotions, responsibility, emotio

This week is a special episode for a couple different reasons. For one, we are continuing my format of coming a little bit less prepared to the interviews and just seeing where it takes me, and I think you guys will agree that the interviews tend to come out a little bit more interesting, a little bit more engaging, when I just roll with the punches and explore my curiosity. The second reason that this episode is special is because we're covering a topic that's actually pretty close to my heart and politically close to my journey of becoming superhuman, and that is the quest to stop drinking alcohol.   We are joined today by Ruari Fairbairns. He's an entrepreneur, he's a speaker, he's an oil broker of all things, and he's a father of two girls. He and his partner founded One Year No Beer, which is basically a challenge to help people get alcohol free and focus on fitness in a more communal and a little bit more modern approach than some of the other ways that people quit alcohol. They have tens of thousands o

Greetings, SuperFriends, and welcome to another special episode. This week, I want to elucidate an idea or framework that I’ve been developing and pondering on for quite some time. It’s an idea I have for a certain type of people. A group that I like to call “Iceberg People.” And in this episode, I’ll not only explain to you who they are, but also why (and how) to become one.

In this episode, we sat down with Mark Aramli. Mark is the inventor and principal engineer for the patented BedJet CCS. Mark's first engineering role was at United Technologies, builder of the space suit for NASA. His engineering responsibilities included the space suit primary life support system (PLSS), specifically elements relating to heating, cooling and climactic comfort of the interior space suit environment for the astronauts. But he's also worked on some other VERY interesting projects, as we learn in the episode. My goal in the episode was to dive deeper on sleep than we have on previous episodes. Specifically, I wanted to learn about temperature, and how it effects our sleep. And, as always...Can we hack it? It's a great episode, and I know you're going to love it.

Today, we’re joined by Caroline Miller, author, public speaker, coach, and expert on “grit.” For almost three decades Caroline has been a pioneer with her ground-breaking work in the areas of goal setting/accomplishment, grit, happiness and success. She is recognized as one of the world’s leading positive psychology experts on this research and how it can be applied to one’s life for maximum transformation and growth. In 2015 she was named “one of the ten Positive Psychology coaches to follow.” Caroline has also been featured in hundreds of magazines, newspapers and other media around the world for several decades, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, US News and World Report, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR and CNN. She’s even published an impressive 6 books, including Creating Your Best Life, Positively Caroline, and Getting Grit. In this interview, I wanted to dive into a topic we haven’t covered much at all on the show: grit, or, as I understand it, tenacity and perserverance. What is it? What

Greetings, SuperFriends, to a very special episode of The Becoming SuperHuman Podcast! Typically, on the show, I interview world class athletes, memory champions, coaches, and more to help you guys understand the skills, strategies, and tools they use to overcome the impossible and achieve superhuman performance in a variety of fields. Today's episode, however, is quite different. In it, I talk about one of the more important rites of passage I've experienced in my own journey towards Becoming SuperHuman. But it's not one you would expect. If previous "special" episodes have taught me anything, it's that you guys love hearing about my own experiences, and enjoy deviating out from the standard format to learn about new and unusual things. Well, this episode will definitely offer that, and what's more, I want to give you guys a heads up that I'll be slowly experimenting with and changing the format of many future episodes to be a bit less formal, a bit less scripted, and hopefully, a bit more fun for my guests

Today we are joined by Cedric Bertelli, an expert in a little-known but interesting practice called Tipi. Tipi is an emotional regulation technique that helps people overcome fear and emotional trauma. It deals with sensory memory, or unconscious body memory. To be quite honest, I didn’t know anything about Tipi at all before this interview, and for that reason, I was excited to invite Cedric onto the show to explain it to us. In this episode, we talk about an interesting and shockingly simple method for overcoming emotional trauma. We learn about “Tipi” and how it works, why and how the method was developed. We discuss the body and the brain, and it’s natural ability to heal itself from literally anything. Cedric doesn’t hold anything back, and shares with you exactly how the method works, so that you can experiment with it at home. Though the method does go against so much of what we think we know about psychological trauma and healing, I encourage you guys to keep an open mind. As I point out in the interv

Today, we’re joined by Christopher Kelly, software engineer and pro cross country mountain biker by day, and host of the Nourish Balance Thrive podcast, certified Functional Diagnostic Nutrition practitioner, health coach, and all around fitness buff by night. Recently, I had the opportunity to appear on Chris’ show, and I so enjoyed chatting with him that we agreed to do a follow up conversation here on our show. I wanted to learn how Chris became so interested in nutrition, what he learned through his certification, and hear some of the best stuff he’s learned by doing over 150 episodes. In this episode, we talk about a LOT of different things, from autoimmune isolation diets, to health optimization, to immunity, to accelerated learning, blood glucose, diabetes, cold exposure, and a heck of a lot more. Christopher has so much knowledge to share that I couldn’t help but jump around and cover a lot of ground - so I do apologize if it feels a bit like I’m all over the place. All in all, It’s a phenomenally int