Todd Sampson - Bodyhacking Mastermind

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G'day, humans! Welcome to the show that doesn't deal in absolutes, that doesn't deal in blacks and whites.
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So many shows, so many politicians, so many commentators, so much of your social media feed,
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expects either your agreement or disagreement, either your furious love or your furious anger.
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I do not. I ask only that we give each other the benefit of the doubt, that we wrestle with ideas,
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we reject, as well as those we think are right. Let's escape the dogmas, a conventional wisdom,
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let's have conversations that straddle the cultural divide, and make us all just a little uncomfortable.
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Today on the show, a brilliant man well known to Australians, and one of the most elusive
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guests of this podcast ever. He's only ever appeared on three podcasts in his life,
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despite being requested as a guest many, many, many times. He doesn't like talking about himself,
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in fact, when I invited him on the show, and I had invited him on several times on different
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incarnations of various shows that I've done, he said, I'll only talk to you if we can talk
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strictly about the project that I'm promoting, and not about me, which I thought was quite
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endearing. Don't worry, we talk about him anyway, because obviously I'm not going to take instructions
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from my guests about what I can ask them. But Todd Samson is something of a national treasure.
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He's originally Canadian. He's really a documentarian. I sort of was trying to wrestle with how you
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would describe Todd to people who don't know him, and you'll hear me try to explain who he is to him.
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With limited success, I suppose. But he first came to prominence in Australia as a panelist on
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one of Australia's most popular panel shows, which is called Gruen. And the panel show, it sounds
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a bit odd if you don't know it, but it's basically all about advertising. It's about breaking down
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how advertisers and marketers manipulate us. But through that prism, it ends up talking about all
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of the big things that Australia and the world are grappling with. So Todd, although he is on
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the panel as a sort of token expert marketing former ad man providing his insights,
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becomes a sort of whimsical and insightful philosophical voice of sanity to Australians about
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all of the things that we're dealing with. And this has been running for more than a decade now,
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and he's become a household name as a result. And as an offshoot of his celebrity slash notoriety,
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he has embarked upon a number of documentaries that he's made. He writes them himself. He produces
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them himself. He essentially is interested in the brain, the body, psychology, sociology,
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all of the things that make us who we are. And his latest incarnation of this is a big two-part
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special, which is about to go to where on Channel 10 in Australia called Mirror Mirror. It's getting
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a ton of advertising in Australia. It's a big special event that they want all Australians
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to sit down and to talk about and to watch and to wrestle with. It's about body image and the way
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that we judge ourselves and the way that we are derailing our psychology with self-judgment
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about our own physicality. I wanted to talk to Todd not just about that, but about his extraordinary
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life. He climbed Mount Everest. He's one of those guys, you know. He did went all over the world
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embedding himself in the most bizarre, different subcultures as part of his television show Body
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Hack, which has been, you know, nominated for all kinds of awards that I won't go into. I won't
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preface this conversation any further by simply saying if you don't know Todd Simpson, you should go
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and seek out some of these documentaries online. If you do know him, you will know it out and
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enjoy his conversation with me and the one and only Todd Simpson.
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I try to stay out of the media until I sort of need to be in the media and once I'm in I'm all in.
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Why is that when so many people at the moment have such a passion to be observed?
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I'm primarily interested in creating contents with some sort of meaning or some sort of challenge
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or and I'm less interested in being a sort of another voice of the cacophony of voices
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that are often underqualified on a range of topics that should be left to the professionals.
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So I stay out because I haven't worked in the advertising industry for seven years so there's
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no need for me to comment on that. There's people far more qualified than me and more relevant than
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me in that space. And so when I'm making a documentary which I dedicate my entire life to for that
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time period, that's something I'm happy to talk about. That's refreshing. Given how we're all
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expected to have an opinion about everything on social media at the moment and given that also,
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like my life is the exact opposite of that where I'm expected to have a range of insights into a
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large variety of different things as a broadcaster and it is refreshing to encounter people who are like,
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you know what, I'll do my thing and I'll let it speak for itself and I'm not going to have to,
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it's not my job to break down lots of complicated different things in ways that everybody's
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going to understand. Like that is my job, it's not your job and it's good that you don't take it on.
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Yeah, I think it is a kinder, softer shade of fake news and I've done it. You know, I did a,
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I remember I once did I did a documentary called Life on the Line. Life on the Line was a
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series about the laws of physics and how they impact us and how they're, you know,
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they never changed regardless of your point of view and I did a series of experiments and I had
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a, you know, swinging ball come at me. I bungee jumped only using phone books attached to
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bungee cords and I did lots of things and I remember at the end of that series, I thought to myself,
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that is a really good, interesting series that should have been hosted by someone else.
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Oh man, I've been there. I have definitely been there. Yep, I've had whole television shows in
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the States where I'm like, I'm not right for this. Why have they got me here? And this is not,
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this is not me. I don't know why we even threw, I even threw my hat in the ring here.
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That's something that only comes with age, I think. I think when you're young, you don't
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know yourself well enough to necessarily know what you're good at and what you're not good at.
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So you try everything and gradually as you get a bit more mature, you understand what you should
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be doing and what you shouldn't be doing, hopefully. Yeah, and I remember when I first started on
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Groon 12 years ago and the lure and the gravitational pull of the ego and being on television,
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people recognizing you and in the street and and in the first year, it is, it's incredibly charming
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and luring. But by that stage, I had already achieved a lot of the things I wanted to achieve in my
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life. I'd already had a career that I had decided to change and like, I had already, I wasn't my
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40s, you know, I didn't grow up with that spotlight on me. It's a good time to get famous,
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your 40s. But still, I can understand what it must be like for, you know, for someone who's
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spent their entire childhood or, you know, the majority of their early adulthood in this spotlight.
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Yeah, you mentioned Groon that for people who aren't in Australia is a very, very popular panel show
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that you're best known for, or I suppose was the first place that brought you to Australia's attention.
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The reason why you said that we can talk about anything is because we had privately said that
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you don't want to talk about yourself. You just want to talk about your show that is about to happen.
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And I thought that was that was quite sweet because I identified with it as well. I often find
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myself in conversations with cousins or family members and I just pause and go, can we not talk
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about me? I'm so bored of me. I live with me all the time. In isolation, I feel like I have an
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overabundance of me. I'd be much more interested in talking about something else either you or something
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completely abstract, like the nature of the cosmos and how big things are. So give people, this is
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all I will ask of you in terms of putting yourself in context for people who don't know you. But since
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almost half of my listeners are in the US, I was trying to think of how to explain you to them. I
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would take maybe a bit of Tim Ferriss and a bit of John Oliver, maybe and a bit of, there is no
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real, a bit of Ariana Huffington. I don't know. Who are you in an American context?
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How to describe myself, not certain. How others have described me being in the public eye. I'm
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fairly clear about that. So I remember one review, which I thought was interesting and slightly
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obscure, but if Bear Grills had a child with Brian Cox, that would be me. Now, I liked that on a
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number of levels. I liked the fact that Brian Cox would have figured out how he could have a child
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and he would have unwillingly had it with Bear Grills. And the two shows being, you know, there are two
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programs that they're doing being completely sort of opposite of each other. And in many ways,
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that's the type of television shows I try to make. I have a super inquisitive mind as a child
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and I kept that child like inquisitiveness and I'd always had an interest in science because I saw
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science as a language that explained the world that I could actually understand. And then on the other
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side, I had been a super adventurous kid and always trying to sort of get away from my home and
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explore and all I wanted to do growing up on a small island on the East Coast Canada was escape.
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And so I smashed those two realities together to kind of create this. What I'd like to think is
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often adventurous smart television. Yeah. And if Americans don't know Brian Cox, then they can
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substitute Bill and I, the science guy probably. That's good. I like Bear Grills meets Bill and I
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or Brian Cox. So where did advertising come in? That was the result of my insecurity and fear
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of living without money. I grew up in a family that didn't have money. It's a fairly typical story
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in many ways. My mom was a check out girl at KFC and my dad worked on the factory floor of Coca-Cola
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and neither of them had any formal education. And I, at a very young age, were you again, Todd?
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I was in, I was on Cape Breton Island. It's the arc of life. I was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia,
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get out. So Nova Scotia, so that all of my images of Nova Scotia, correct me if I'm wrong,
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wild, windswept, cold, hearty, communal. Yeah. A lot of people have this idea in their mind when
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I say that East Coast Canada of a red-haired, freckled, kid, frolicing in the rolling hills.
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The end of being able to use the stemson land. Ammy would die in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
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The ending of Nova Scotia is a former coal mining town that's under snow for six months of the year.
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It's a tough but beautiful place, but you know, ammy would die there for sure.
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Okay. So young Todd escapes and you say advertising was a backup plan or
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I went to university. I studied a general degree and a general arts degree and then I didn't know
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what to do with my life. So what do you do when you don't know what to do with your life? You do an
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MBA. So I ended up doing an MBA and then one day the marketing lecturer, who I actually really
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enjoyed, she fell down a set of stairs and broke her back. And the result of that was they had to
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get a guest lecture to lecture on her behalf. So I showed up at the guest lecture and it was a
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creative director from an advertising agency and he spoke about imagination and creativity and how,
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you know, one idea could have an enormous impact both commercially but also socially. It had the
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ability to make change. He also clarified that arguably advertising is investment banking for
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creative people. It is the one industry where creative people could make a lot of money. And so
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I got really excited when I heard him talk and I remember I walked down and to the bottom where
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the where he was lecturing and I nervously walked up to him and I reached out to shake his hand.
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He was a bit busy packing his bag and I introduced myself and I said, you know, my name is Todd
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Samson. I want to get into advertising and he just looked up at me, glanced up at me and he said
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under his breath, good fucking luck with that. I love that story. I mean the fact that it begins with
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somebody breaking their back. It's like a it's like a flashback in a Wes Anderson movie or something
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how did you begin? Well, it all began when the actual lecture I fell down some stairs.
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Oh my god, she broke her back and then anyway, very smart. I mean, it's so interesting that
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you frame advertising that way because it makes me, I'm just remembering for the first time in
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decades an exchange that I had with John Singleton who was Australia's greatest admin and who went
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to my high school fort street and I was giving a speech at high school when I was in probably
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maybe year 10 or 11 about something or that there were, you know, fancy alum who were there
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for some dinner and Justice Kirby who was a high court justice and John Singleton who was
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the great admin were both there and at Drinky Poo's after whatever the event was there was a sort
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of a meet and greet type thing and Justice Kirby said, what would you want to do with your life
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young man? And I said, I don't know, I want to go either into journalism or entertainment or
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or advertising and he said, John come over here and he waved over John Singleton who was drunk,
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of course, as he always was and Kirby said, give us a job, John, all the private schools,
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they always look after their own, we're a public school, we have to stand up for public school,
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kids, give this boy a job. So, Singer arranged for a job interview between me and whoever his
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second in command was and they basically said, do you want to come on board as a junior copywriter?
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And I was going to say yes and then I got a job offer, this was, I guess this was two years after
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I'd given this speech and met them when I left school. When in my first year of uni I got a job
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offer from the ABC to be an assistant writer on Peter Berner's new television show, back burner
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and I moved down to Melbourne for six months and did that and that was the fork in the road between
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advertising and entertainment slash media slash journalism. So, we all end up in the same place
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through different routes. Yes, exactly. Yeah, John is a bit of a, John Singleton's a bit of a legend
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infamous in many ways when it comes to the advertising business. I'm sort of glad you took that fork
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and you took that other direction. Josh, I don't know what you would have been like traveling down
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the advertising path. Yeah, I probably, I'd probably be less fulfilled and a lot more rich.
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But let's talk about you. In fact, let's talk about the show directly and then we can
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meander back to your other other other exploits. So, Mirror Mirror, this will come out on the day
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that Mirror, Mirror debuts on the telly. What's the genesis of this? What are you trying to explore?
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Well, body image dissatisfaction is a societal crisis. It's a crisis I have been part of.
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It's a crisis I've played a role in in my advertising career, but I think the relevance obviously
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jumps forward when you become a parent and you just see the world in which your teenagers live.
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And so, I wanted to use my voice to discuss this, to start a conversation about it and I have to say,
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it is an incredibly complicated, it is a very touchy subject and no one is immune to the
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sort of impact that dissatisfaction has. And so, I thought, I'm going to make a film about it.
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I'm going to make a film about how we see ourselves and and I'm going to do it through the eyes
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and mirrors of some extraordinary people. And that really was the genesis. That's how it began.
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And how did you figure out how to do it? What format to do it in? I mean, we can get to the
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stories in a second, but I'm also interested in the mechanics and I think people are interested
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in the mechanics of how a television show gets made. Obviously, you have existing cred because
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you're a celebrity and you've made other documentaries that have done very well. But when you go to
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Channel 10, you go, I've got this idea. Or do you go to the production company first and go,
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let's flesh out how this is going to look and what we really want to explore?
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No, I produce it myself and I write it myself. So, I carry around in my phone a series,
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a number of shows that I want to make. I probably have 10 shows now that are in rough format
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sitting on my phone. And I approach them at different times and some of them feel
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right from me at certain times. And in this case, I had, as you know, I had just finished filming
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a number of years, five years of an adventurous science documentary series called
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Body Hack, where I travel around and embed in different cultures around the world, you know,
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with the, you might snipe the Iraqi snipers during the Battle of Mosul or in Palestine, in Gaza,
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in the protests. And I embed with them and try to learn from them. COVID came and there was no way,
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I wanted to have a break anyway from that series. It was a successful long series. I think we did
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19 episodes. The one episode that we didn't actually make was I was in Rio doing Samba Dance when
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COVID broke and had to be emergency evacuated. That's the only show I've ever filmed partially that
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never actually went to air. But COVID prompted change. It prompted me to rethink what's next.
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And I wanted to film in Australia, you know, I had no option, but it was my first time filming
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a documentary solely really in this country. And so that, yeah, that was that's what got me there.
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So I did, I went to 10 with the idea, 10 hurt it immediately. I could see the, the combination of
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excitement and fear in their eyes. And I thought, okay, we're onto something here. And it's two
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parts. It's two parts. Yeah, it's, it's two nineties. That's big three. It's two feature films
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basically. And it, it didn't start that way. Josh, like it started as what I thought we're going
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to be two sixties. But the problem with doing a topic like body image dissatisfaction and body
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dysmorphia and how we see ourselves in the mirror is that there's so many things that need to be
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covered for that story to at least at least have a voice, a proper voice. Now the result of that,
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of course, is you skate thin over a lot of things and don't have the opportunity to drop deep on
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everything. But in many ways, it's designed like the social media that we're talking about.
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Yeah, and I'm glad you raised social media because let's, let's just touch on that. I mean,
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I am needless to say as the father of four year old twins, somewhat ambivalent about what the
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hell is going to happen when they start wanting devices when they're seven or eight or nine. And
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I'm a fan of John Hyte and people in his circle who think that, you know, really children should
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not be comparing themselves. We should not be stoking the adolescent need for attention and need
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for peer comparison and self-judgment until kids are old enough to be able to psychologically
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handle that. And that that's probably late teens. So like at the very early as people below 16
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shouldn't be on social media. And yet, of course, I know that the imperative to do so will
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becoming much earlier than that to what extent is sort of adolescent social media a factor in
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the concerns that you have about body image. Well, first, it's worth qualifying social media because
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it's easy to blame social media for everything and the woes of society. But that's actually missing
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the point. And it's actually because we compared. So the two things that come out in the film and
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two things that we know from the science is that we have an innate desire to compare. And we also
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have an innate desire towards beauty. Now corporations, organizations have realized that we have a glitch
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in our brain that they could exploit for profit and they've done that. The problem is originally
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social media was created by sophisticated adult minds addressed at adults. But that's not what
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happened. Those sophisticated adult minds have created a matrix. Some would say a matrix of
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discontent of which our children live. And you know, in this country, when you think about social
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media, you think, okay, well, everyone's on. Yeah, everyone's on. There's 4.2 billion people
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worldwide. And in Australia alone, we spend over 40% of our waking hours online. And a big chunk
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of that is on social media. So yes, it is the water and which we swim, but it's really the water
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in which our children swim. And that's a lot of the focus of the of the documentary.
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Hmm. I mean, and how do you balance what is good about aspiring towards, I suppose, a more
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healthy body like I'm, I've just finished doing a podcast for Nova, which was called The Rush.
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And each episode we looked at it was very similar. It's funny that we're talking right now,
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because the last episode just went to last, just dropped last week. And in each episode,
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I look at a way in which our brains are attracted to and addicted to and also repulsed by various
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rushes dopamine hits that our brains can get. So one episode's about sex, one episode's about drugs,
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one episode's about sugar and fat and so on and so forth. And in that context, I, and I'm
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sort of subjecting myself to each of these experiences as we go along, which sounds familiar to you
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from, from BodyHack, but for the, for the runners high sort of adrenaline, sorry, not a adrenaline
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endorphin episode, I went to a boot camp and subsequently lost almost 40 pounds, about 15, 16,
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17 kilos off my pandemic chubby weight to being pretty lean now. And I feel fantastic and I
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look better than I have in a decade. And part of that is vanity, part of that is body image,
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part of that is pride. But I mean, a person who is against fat shaming could also say that I'm
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playing into a narrative about the way that people are supposed to look and I was probably
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perfectly healthy before anyway. So should I not be proud? Well, you should be proud, but you just
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touched on so many different topics. Before, can you hold that last one about you and in your
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own body transformation? And I just want to put a full stop or at least a question mark, a squiggly
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line up top of the full stop, around social media and teenagers brains. Yeah. So what we know,
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and I spent, as you know, I spent five years making a discovery science documentary series called
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redesign my brain. And that series was focused really on the revolutionary idea of brain plasticity.
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Metaphorically, our brain is plastic. It adapts to the stimulus and environment around us.
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It's what makes us remarkable. And it's also what can make us incredibly destructive.
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So what we know is that the brain of a young person doesn't fully develop until the mid 20s.
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So it's all there, but the front and the back or the side of the brain do not fully connect.
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So the goal for a lot of parenting is to hold back as much brain damage, especially when the brain
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is so malleable up until the age of 25. So if we can keep alcohol out of the way, if we can keep
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caffeine out of the way, if we can keep drugs out of the way, if we can keep those things away,
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it will help preserve that sort of adaptation and changing of the brain to become the person
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that we become. We should also keep social media out of the way, because what we do know is that
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social media spikes dopamine and dopamine, which historically has always been associated with,
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you know, with love and with sex and sometimes with exercise is now associated with social media.
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So we need to be careful. But my personal opinion is that prohibition that didn't then well
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is not the way to go. And that the best way to help manage kids online is set some parameters
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and guidelines and jump in with them, because we are not going back. There is no reverse utopia
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that we're all traveling to. This is the world in which we live now.
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I mean, I take your point that we're not going back, but you know, when cigarettes first became
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widespread, one could easily have said, well, we're not going back to an era without cigarettes.
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No, but we are going to go to an era where we understand their use and their harms better,
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and we understand that there are contexts in which they happen. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised
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if in 20 or 30 years we look back at the way that we use devices today where any time we're
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feeling remotely bored, we pull them out of our pockets and we just start plunging our psyche
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into other people's comments and judgments and arguments. We may regard that a bit like we now
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regard smoking on an airplane. Like I can't believe that they didn't understand that there was a
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time and a place for that stuff. I'm not certain, Josh. I'm not certain that that will ever happen.
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I mean, I'm not certain we can equate. I mean, I like to. We can equate the behavioral change
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that smoking specifically had with the behavioral change that social media or arguably the internet
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or the mobility has had. It will be different in the future, but I think the progression is not
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going backwards. It's going to go forwards into new areas of connectivity, new areas of us
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reaching out with each other and weaving our worlds together. I wish it would go back to a
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meditative state where we would all be more centered, but I'm not certain that's going to happen.
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I mean, I'm very excited by the possibilities of the future in which we are all sort of
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nearly linked and there are much more efficacious ways of interacting with each other and we've got
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our augmented reality going on and I can tap the side of my head and I can bring up a conversation
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with you or with anyone else. I just mean that I think that we will have ways of prioritising
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our conversations that aren't reliant exclusively on grabbing our attention the way that the
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imperatives of social media currently are so that there will be hopefully other values that we will
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that we will elevate. In this analogy with cigarettes, it's not about maybe cigarettes is an
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imperfect analogy every analogy is, but it's not about winding the clock back. It's just realizing
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that an aeroplane is not a place for smoking and maybe sitting on the toilet doing a shit is
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not a place to get to parachute your brain into an argument that's taking place on the other side
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of the world about something that you have no relationship to, but that's not that's not
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lutter. That's not anti-tech. Maybe sitting on the toilet is a moment to engage with the great
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meditation that's going on amongst all people who are sitting on the toilet or something. Maybe
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there are other ways, other more sophisticated ways that we're going to be able to plug in. So I'm
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not pro plug in or anti plug in. I'm anti the way that we are currently allowing 22-year-old
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Silicon Valley software designers with skateboards in Menlo Park to be the sole arbiters of how we
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engage with tech. Yes, and that Josh is a big motivation for making the film that I just made.
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Because I think when you have awareness of the matrix in which we live,
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it allows you to better use the matrix. The point I was making is believing it's going to go away
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or artificially taking it away, thinking that you're able to protect yourself from the thing you
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live in. I think that's not the way to do it, especially with kids today. I think the way is,
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I think it's through understanding. I think it's through understanding conversations and being
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in it, not being outside thinking. I hope the future will be better because we see it through our
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own frame and we didn't have it. When I was young, my phone was attached to the wall, but my dad
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is 80 years old and he's on social media and I contact him every day because of that. And it's
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brilliant. But I see it going forward and not backwards, but I agree that it will be different
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as well. I guess it's the, I guess I just don't, I'm not as optimistic, perhaps as you are,
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that we have the capacity to stand up to the forces of the algorithms that are tugging at us
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without having an absolute timeout. Maybe not a total prohibition, but I mean, certainly,
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well, we would both agree that there's a prohibition at a certain age, right? You don't give a five-year-old
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an Instagram account. So at some point, you know, but unfortunately, Josh, many give them phones
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because phones is considered by many a modern-day dummy. So I see so many kids poke in phones and
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I even remember my own girls and we held out as long as we could, but we we fell to the onslaught.
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But I do remember the first time that Coco, my oldest daughter, when she was really young,
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tried to swipe our TV. Oh my goodness. And she just couldn't believe that it didn't move.
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You know, she was like, really frustrated. And when we were younger, you could see the
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swaparks across the TV, often try what we weren't home or, you know, what we weren't looking.
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I saw that with a magazine tide. I mean, it's like a cliché. It's like something out of a
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dystopian, you know, black mirror episode or something. But in a cafe before the pandemic,
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I saw a toddler with a magazine in front of her trying to swipe, trying to pinch
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to zoom in on the magazine and being confused about why the magazine didn't zoom.
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So what is your thinking then while we're on adolescents and kids in social media about how to do
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it? Because I mean, my understanding of 14-year-old girls is that they will continue to inhabit
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a space of self-judgment and peer comparison as much as they are able to. And therefore,
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if they have a device in their pocket that connects them to their bullies, their peers, their friends,
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their sources of gossip and sources of self-criticism, that will supersede whatever else is going on
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in their life if it's if it's available to them. How do you counter that? With difficulty.
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So a couple of things. One is setting, I think I mentioned it before, but setting some realistic
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non-lodied parameters around usage. Well, first of all, delaying usage for as long as you can.
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If you can do that, and you're able to do that, and the schools indirectly are not enabling by
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making them use their iPads, making them use their iPhone. But if you can do that, delay as long
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as you can, because the brain doesn't fully develop until the mid-20s. The longer we can protect
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it during that period, that's sensitive, adaptive period, the better. So delay as long as you can.
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If you get to the point where delaying is no longer realistic, then setting some guidelines
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and parameters, and one parameter we put on the girls is around time online. We try to limit the
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window, allow them to have the window, but specifically, we limit the window when the child's brain
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is most at risk. And here's what we know from the science. We know that when nighttime comes,
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and we know this as adults, we often feel more blue. We often feel a bit more sad or serious
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as nighttime comes. Well, in the child's brain, they basically switch off their prefrontal cortex
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towards the nighttime and live from metaphorically their amygdala, which is the emotional center of
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the brain. So they move from the rational prefrontal cortex to the amygdala, the emotional center,
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and this makes them really vulnerable emotionally, and it makes them vulnerable to bullying,
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it makes them vulnerable to comparison. And so we try to close that window as best we can.
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And then the other thing that I specifically try and do with my girls, my teenagers, is I jump
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into their world. So I'm with them often online. I watch what they're doing. I want to see
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their videos. I want to see their TikTok. I want to see who they're following. And I don't judge
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them. I ask them why. And hopefully over time with education, they will see the fallee in some
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of the things and some of the people they're following. Because the other thing we know is what we see
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on some level neurologically determines who we are and who we become. So curating a healthy
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environment around the kids in terms of what they see online is important. How old are your kids now?
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13 and 15. Right in the thick of it. Yeah, they're right in the thick of it. They were consultants on
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the film. It was really what bassy shocking. Two different things. Yes, of course they got a
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thing. They don't do anything for free at that age. Excellent. And so let's get back to body image
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then and how you think about the interface between social media and tech and the problems of
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of body image. So the body dissatisfaction, what we know is that the longer time we spend on social
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media, the more discontent we become, the more and happier we are. And the main reason is comparison.
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And the problem with comparison these days is back in my day, back in my day. Back in my day,
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you might compare to people on television. They might be sport stars or you might compare
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to people in magazines that you saw every once in a while that you got or you searched out.
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Today, our kids carry around that multimedia television in their pocket and they're constantly
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being bombarded on it. So they are comparing now more than ever. And the problem with that
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comparison, there's two issues. One, they're comparing to these people called influencers.
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And influencers are more relatable to people online because you think they're like you because
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they're not superstars. They're not. But often these influencers are the most augmented.
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They have not just with surgery, which is hugely popular, but also with filters. And you rarely see
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people for who they are now. So again, it is an education. It's just like teaching people that
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Photoshop exists in advertising. It's teaching people that most of what they see online is not real.
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I think when people hear that, they think well, yeah, duh. Like we've had this conversation.
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We know like people, I hear this a lot like, you know, you're underestimating how sophisticated
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media consumers are, especially younger people. Like, we're old, fatty studies. We're like,
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well, everything online must be real. But if you're 16, of course, you know that people are
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brushed and photoshopped. And you're playing with the media in this quite sophisticated and nuanced
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and meta and ironic way. Do you think that's true? I think there's one thing to know. And there's
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another thing for it to have any impact on your decision making. And that's through education.
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So there was a study in Germany where they actually put underneath, underneath all the print ads
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that this image had been altered. It was photoshopped. But the results, the levels of dissatisfaction
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still skyrocketed. Right. Because there's one, rationally, it's one thing to understand. It is,
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you know, obviously people are changing their photos. But what we really need to understand is
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what is that impact on our kids and on us? You probably know this, Josh. One of the reasons that
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Grun was, you know, so successful, this television show on the ABC was so successful is because it
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lived at the curtain on the world, on the matrix of which we live. But the people that are most
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susceptible to advertising are the ones that believe they're not. Like all levels of propaganda,
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if you think you're above it, you drop your defenses to it. And just because on a rational level,
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we think we understand how that world works. That doesn't change the impact that it's having.
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Funny, isn't it? Even when you, there's some political science research into the fact that you
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can't debunk a claim without reinforcing the claim that actually in many respects, you're better
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off not addressing an untruth at all because the mere repetition of the untruth in the process
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of debunking, it actually cements it more in people's minds. And that reminds me a little bit of
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that that what we consciously know and what we subconsciously or emotionally are drawn to or
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repelled from are two very different things. And I'm still confused about why people have different
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00:39:19.440 --> 00:39:29.440
levels of focus on beauty and themselves. Like my partner Sean, he will notice a person's
377
00:39:29.440 --> 00:39:35.680
eyebrows being off. He will notice the crookedness of his own nose. He will notice like the most
378
00:39:35.680 --> 00:39:40.240
bizarre things, the bizarre to me, I mean perfectly normal to him. He thinks I'm a complete
379
00:39:40.240 --> 00:39:45.280
doofus for not noticing anything. Like he asks, we're talking about someone who we know whose name
380
00:39:45.280 --> 00:39:50.320
I can't remember and he asks me what color their hair is. I have no idea. I mean, it just I would not,
381
00:39:50.320 --> 00:39:56.080
I can't, I can't tell you what color, you know, my sister-in-law's hair is because it's just not
382
00:39:56.080 --> 00:40:03.760
something that lands for me. I'm just not hardwired in such a way that physicality is at a premium
383
00:40:03.760 --> 00:40:07.920
in the things that I'm valuing or noticing. But for some people it is. Do you think there's
384
00:40:07.920 --> 00:40:13.840
anything innate about that or is it that we've been raised differently or what? Both. So one
385
00:40:13.840 --> 00:40:17.200
of the scientists on my journey said something to me which really stuck in my mind. He said,
386
00:40:17.200 --> 00:40:23.040
genetics loads the gun, but environment pulls the trigger. And I think that is an interesting
387
00:40:23.040 --> 00:40:28.880
thought. You know, when we we all have these cracks and obviously we're all built differently.
388
00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:35.360
And for some reason, for some reason, environment can trigger things in some and not in others.
389
00:40:35.360 --> 00:40:43.360
And the slippery slope and you'll see it in the film, this all leads to high levels of mental
390
00:40:43.360 --> 00:40:48.240
illness. And, you know, in the film there's this young man who I'm not going to say he sounds
391
00:40:48.320 --> 00:40:54.720
like your partner, but there's an incredible focus on detail. He could remember everything about
392
00:40:54.720 --> 00:41:01.360
faces and he saw everything through this kind of a feature processing. And what we do know is with
393
00:41:02.160 --> 00:41:08.720
BDD or our body dysmorphic disorder, these people are stuck in feature processing, which means they
394
00:41:08.720 --> 00:41:13.840
see features, they struggle to see the big picture. And others see the big picture and have no
395
00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:19.440
problem coming in and out of those. Now, you may have that, but it never becomes something harsh in
396
00:41:19.440 --> 00:41:25.600
your life, but your environment, your social media environment, your advertising environment,
397
00:41:25.600 --> 00:41:30.880
your television environment could trigger that and make that into something much, much bigger and
398
00:41:30.880 --> 00:41:36.800
snowball that eventually into some form of disorder. That's fascinating. But many people, Josh,
399
00:41:36.800 --> 00:41:43.520
many people, it sounds like you're one of them, do not have. So we all have body image issues
400
00:41:43.520 --> 00:41:49.440
and levels of dissatisfaction. No one is exempt from that. But the level of which we how we deal
401
00:41:49.440 --> 00:41:55.040
with them and the action that we take, it varies. There's an interesting conversation that I try to
402
00:41:55.040 --> 00:42:02.240
have with my partner and I certainly try to have with my kids that usually doesn't work. And I'm
403
00:42:02.240 --> 00:42:08.880
not sure why not, which is along the lines of nobody else cares about this thing that you're
404
00:42:08.880 --> 00:42:12.880
concerned about in the way that you look or like nobody else is noticing it or nobody else is
405
00:42:12.880 --> 00:42:18.880
paying attention. And when I say that, I get pushback from people who are more concerned than I am
406
00:42:18.880 --> 00:42:25.440
about other people's opinions of them. And we reach an impasse at which I realize that I'm not
407
00:42:25.440 --> 00:42:31.520
actually articulating myself very well. What I mean is not that there's nobody who is paying attention
408
00:42:31.600 --> 00:42:37.120
to your own, the own foibles of your own appearance. What I mean is that if they are, you shouldn't
409
00:42:37.120 --> 00:42:43.840
care. And your life will be much happier if you choose to believe that nobody is looking at
410
00:42:43.840 --> 00:42:50.400
what's wrong with you. And I can't quite find a way to make that land because the person who is
411
00:42:50.400 --> 00:42:54.480
self-conscious about some aspect of their physical appearance is always going to be able to point
412
00:42:54.480 --> 00:42:59.360
to some example of other people who are also fixated on it or fixated on it in others or who might
413
00:42:59.360 --> 00:43:05.200
notice it in them. Do you have any solution to what that impasse is?
414
00:43:06.560 --> 00:43:14.720
You mean, you're, are you saying you're impasse to am I the first someone who is dealing with
415
00:43:14.720 --> 00:43:18.960
enormous insecurities that were probably triggered, that were probably innate,
416
00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:25.680
then were triggered probably by parents or by some level of trauma that they had in their
417
00:43:25.680 --> 00:43:32.640
lives and that manifests itself in kind of a self-awareness that is more acute than someone like
418
00:43:32.640 --> 00:43:36.960
you would have. And yes, I mean, I guess I'm not understanding what's not landing about the
419
00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:44.560
desirability of pretending that nobody's paying attention. But for them, people are paying attention
420
00:43:44.560 --> 00:43:50.880
and the person who's paying attention the most is them. And this is my point, and isn't that my
421
00:43:51.680 --> 00:43:57.840
nobody gives a shit about your bad eyebrows as much as you do. So just like nobody cares.
422
00:43:57.840 --> 00:44:02.080
But then they say, but people do care. I mean, otherwise I'll just walk around looking like I'm
423
00:44:02.080 --> 00:44:08.160
unkempt and people will judge me. Yeah, so I think it's happening on both levels, right?
424
00:44:08.160 --> 00:44:13.440
I think that the person who cares the most is them and they're projecting it that everybody cares.
425
00:44:13.440 --> 00:44:18.800
And so what I've, one of the things that I found in making this film with a number of the
426
00:44:18.800 --> 00:44:24.400
characters is that deep down there was some level of trauma. So if you imagine genetics is loading
427
00:44:24.400 --> 00:44:30.800
up the gun, some thing may happen in upbringing with parents or the way parenting happened, not the
428
00:44:30.800 --> 00:44:36.480
point the finger totally at parents alone. And then they enter school and then something. But almost
429
00:44:36.480 --> 00:44:43.280
everyone had some level of trauma. So the level of logic that you're talking about is in many ways
430
00:44:43.280 --> 00:44:49.600
beyond them because they don't see it. They see it through almost an irrational point of view.
431
00:44:49.600 --> 00:44:56.880
So when you put out the road, the clear path as to why A goes to B, they're going, I just don't
432
00:44:56.880 --> 00:45:03.760
see that because the issue they're dealing with is emotional. I'm not saying you're not emotional,
433
00:45:03.760 --> 00:45:08.240
Josh. I know you're emotional. No, you absolutely can say that. And you would have a lot of people
434
00:45:08.240 --> 00:45:15.760
agree with you that I'm a brain and a vat incapable of my robot. My robot brain doesn't understand
435
00:45:15.760 --> 00:45:23.760
human foibles. And then this gets us also into gender because this is something that is I think
436
00:45:23.760 --> 00:45:30.800
a self awareness of how one looks is one of the many characteristics of the gay community that I
437
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:38.000
have never experienced myself despite being part of it. I'm the unkempt daddy of the,
438
00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:44.240
there's nothing remotely manicured or twinkie about my gayness. And in the same way,
439
00:45:44.240 --> 00:45:51.120
I wonder whether or not there's a gender divide here where the conventionally masculine bloke
440
00:45:51.120 --> 00:45:58.160
doesn't care about self image, but perhaps the preening metrosexual does and perhaps women do.
441
00:45:58.160 --> 00:46:04.240
Is there such a divide? Historically there was an even bigger divide than there is today.
442
00:46:04.880 --> 00:46:11.840
So the the fastest growing area of cosmetics now is male cosmetics. And surgery among men
443
00:46:11.840 --> 00:46:18.400
is skyrocketing. And what we do know is that there is without making a sweeping generalization,
444
00:46:18.400 --> 00:46:23.440
the research does say does confirm what you just said, Josh, which is there is a disproportionate
445
00:46:23.440 --> 00:46:31.040
amount of focus and body dissatisfaction within the gay community. I know that's no big surprise.
446
00:46:31.040 --> 00:46:39.200
But and it's interesting that we filmed a young woman named Tara. It's in the first episode
447
00:46:39.200 --> 00:46:46.880
and she's transgender. And her story was incredible because she talked about as she described it
448
00:46:46.880 --> 00:46:53.600
both sides of the fence. So as a male, she didn't fit in. She was slightly overweight on camp.
449
00:46:53.600 --> 00:47:00.080
She just she just didn't she didn't fit into the male world let alone gender dysphoria. So she
450
00:47:00.080 --> 00:47:09.840
didn't did she knew that even as a man, she there was a struggle for her. And and then you add,
451
00:47:09.840 --> 00:47:15.600
as she said to me in the film, gender dysphoria. And then you're like, whoa, okay. And then she as
452
00:47:15.600 --> 00:47:22.240
she says jumps the other side. And she goes the judgment on the other side was even harsher.
453
00:47:23.120 --> 00:47:29.520
Like it was it was she had her feet in both worlds and both were really harsh.
454
00:47:30.400 --> 00:47:35.680
That's fascinating. And I mean, my goodness. Can you imagine how difficult it must be if you are
455
00:47:35.680 --> 00:47:42.000
trans to try to get, you know, it's funny. There's a I was talking to a trans person a few years
456
00:47:42.000 --> 00:47:49.280
ago about the the Caitlyn Jenna coming out. And she was expressing concern about the extent to which
457
00:47:49.280 --> 00:47:55.440
the narrative around trans people in the mass media was even when they're trying to be supportive
458
00:47:55.440 --> 00:48:00.160
of trans people. It's always like, oh, look at isn't Caitlyn beautiful? Caitlyn's so beautiful.
459
00:48:00.160 --> 00:48:05.680
And also the trans woman in oranges is the new black whose name escapes me. She was on the cover
460
00:48:05.680 --> 00:48:10.480
of magazines. She's so beautiful. She's so beautiful. And this trans person was saying. She was
461
00:48:10.480 --> 00:48:17.120
saying, look, I've never passed very well as a woman. You know, I have always felt like I'm kind
462
00:48:17.120 --> 00:48:24.400
of an ugly woman. And I still look a bit masculine. And therefore it's a bit offensive to me to see
463
00:48:24.400 --> 00:48:30.640
all the celebration of trans people being framed around how well they're passing and how sexy they
464
00:48:30.640 --> 00:48:38.560
are as women. Can't we find our validity as as trans people and also as human beings outside of
465
00:48:38.560 --> 00:48:43.760
whether or not we happen to look like the gender that we feel we are. And I thought that was an
466
00:48:44.560 --> 00:48:50.400
interesting take. It opened my eyes to how stressful it must be to be constantly focused on
467
00:48:50.400 --> 00:48:58.000
your appearance when you have gender issues. And this was what you just said. There's an
468
00:48:58.000 --> 00:49:02.080
excellent documentary called Disclosure, which was an inspiration for me around trans exactly
469
00:49:02.080 --> 00:49:06.960
what you're talking about. But what you just explained was the reason I decided in the end to include
470
00:49:06.960 --> 00:49:15.920
her story. And her story's included not because she's trans, but because of this concept of passing.
471
00:49:15.920 --> 00:49:23.280
Yeah. Because some view. So there's two sides to that, right? Some view passing as nothing more than
472
00:49:23.280 --> 00:49:29.840
conformity to a beauty ideal that has been created by corporations and organizations to justify
473
00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:34.480
the need to have only two genders to sell huge amounts of products and services.
474
00:49:35.120 --> 00:49:42.800
Yep. And other people like Tara, they just, well, Tara's explanation, I just want to fit in.
475
00:49:43.520 --> 00:49:51.840
Yeah. And and it's an extraordinary story because you go, whoa, okay. So the beauty ideal is so
476
00:49:51.840 --> 00:49:58.640
powerful that this sort of this thing that we have created in advertising and media and you know
477
00:49:58.640 --> 00:50:03.520
this thing which I take from what you said. And some ways you consciously or unconsciously rebel
478
00:50:03.520 --> 00:50:10.960
against is so powerful that it pushed, it pushed Tara into getting facial feminization surgery,
479
00:50:11.680 --> 00:50:17.520
which is a nine hour surgery that we filmed, a nine hour surgery that costs $30,000 that's not
480
00:50:17.520 --> 00:50:25.360
covered by Medicare. Wow. It's an extraordinary story. It's a story I'm super proud to tell. And I
481
00:50:25.360 --> 00:50:31.680
know there'll be huge controversy around it. I know that. And and but it's a voice that I want
482
00:50:31.680 --> 00:50:36.560
it to have in the film because I thought that it's an important voice and a voice we're listening to.
483
00:50:36.560 --> 00:50:42.160
What do you make of the of the state that the gender is in in flux at the moment as the father of
484
00:50:42.160 --> 00:50:48.560
of teenage girls and as someone who through your work on body hack and elsewhere has sort of
485
00:50:48.560 --> 00:50:54.720
dialed up your own masculinity. These very conventionally masculine experiences that you've had,
486
00:50:54.720 --> 00:51:00.480
like you mentioned, you know, being embedded in Iraq and and so on. And yet we're at a moment where
487
00:51:01.040 --> 00:51:07.520
the gender binary is being disputed, you know, questions about gender being a spectrum, a certain
488
00:51:07.520 --> 00:51:13.200
anxiety and loss of and sort of ruthlessness of masculinity, you know, conversations about
489
00:51:13.760 --> 00:51:18.800
sexual picadillos in Canberra, well more than picadillos, sexual assault and even rape in
490
00:51:18.800 --> 00:51:24.640
parliament house. And the crisis of, you know, young boys not knowing exactly, you know, post me
491
00:51:24.640 --> 00:51:28.640
to world, how to deal with gender. I mean, there's a lot there, but do you want to start teasing
492
00:51:28.720 --> 00:51:36.080
open that crack? I think on some level, it's a huge question, Josh. I think on some level
493
00:51:37.440 --> 00:51:44.080
on a I'm going to say, I don't want to say superficial, but by the nature of a two hour film,
494
00:51:44.080 --> 00:51:49.680
it is superficial. We try to tease it apart in this documentary. And we do it to the framework
495
00:51:49.680 --> 00:51:56.880
of the beauty ideal, which is an ideal that is often fabricated and created and curated by
496
00:51:56.880 --> 00:52:02.160
corporations to make people feel insecure so they can sell them products. And that beauty ideal
497
00:52:02.160 --> 00:52:08.640
becomes a stereotype for the genders. And in some people, like Tara, do not fit that stereotype.
498
00:52:08.640 --> 00:52:15.120
And therefore struggle, often a lot of times with mental illness and often a huge amount of
499
00:52:15.120 --> 00:52:19.520
depression and sadness, you know, that comes from just not fitting into that. That has now been
500
00:52:19.600 --> 00:52:27.920
challenged. And I think it is being challenged more and more. And it's not as binary as, you know,
501
00:52:27.920 --> 00:52:34.080
pardon the public, not as it was in the past. But that doesn't, it's still the lag effect of
502
00:52:34.080 --> 00:52:41.920
corporations and structures in society, the lag effect to catching up to this. It's huge.
503
00:52:41.920 --> 00:52:45.200
And a lot of people are left in the wake, you know, of that change.
504
00:52:46.160 --> 00:52:51.520
I mean, it's a double edged sword. I mean, on the one hand, the lag effect is huge and corporations
505
00:52:52.160 --> 00:52:58.560
are slow. On the other hand, it's very easy for corporations who get spooked by online Twitter
506
00:52:58.560 --> 00:53:05.680
mobs and public shaming to jump all the way into whatever the latest fad is and start declaring
507
00:53:05.680 --> 00:53:12.000
things about, you know, trans women or women or, you know, there is no gender binary or whatever
508
00:53:12.080 --> 00:53:16.720
that hips. Yeah, I mean, I remember, I remember we covered it on groom, pink is profitable.
509
00:53:17.280 --> 00:53:22.560
Right. And I remember pink being used in everything, you know, at one stage in the marketing,
510
00:53:22.560 --> 00:53:27.680
because it was pink, pink wrapping, you know, or pink washing or whatever. Yes. So
511
00:53:29.120 --> 00:53:34.080
corporations are always sitting on the edge. Some of them with triple bottom lines that
512
00:53:34.080 --> 00:53:38.960
concerned about society, but they're built to make money. They're built to find the, the
513
00:53:38.960 --> 00:53:45.440
kinks. They're built to find the weaknesses that allow them to exploit, uh, often our mental
514
00:53:45.440 --> 00:53:50.240
states to sell us things, because what we do know is an insecure customer is a more profitable one
515
00:53:50.240 --> 00:53:55.680
for the reason that they think they need something to complete themselves. But when you talk about the,
516
00:53:57.520 --> 00:54:02.720
me, I'm best to speak for my own life and not on behalf of, you know, this massive, massive issue.
517
00:54:02.720 --> 00:54:07.520
But, you know, you mentioned about me doing these kind of manly things and going in the war zones
518
00:54:07.520 --> 00:54:13.520
and things. But, but my girls don't live, don't see me like that. Right. So in my house, it is a
519
00:54:13.520 --> 00:54:20.960
bit of a reversal or Naomi, uh, is the, is the, is the kind of dominant character. She is the,
520
00:54:20.960 --> 00:54:28.160
she, she is the alpha female. She's the alpha in the house. And, and I'm not. Uh, so I'm much
521
00:54:28.160 --> 00:54:35.040
softer. I'm much more with the girls and, and I'm into jet, jet likes makeup and, uh, I'm down
522
00:54:35.040 --> 00:54:38.720
with that. I'm like, okay, well, I, I want to understand your world as well. And I want to
523
00:54:38.720 --> 00:54:42.720
be a part of that and if I can help and if I can do things with you, then I'll do that. Where
524
00:54:42.720 --> 00:54:49.120
Naomi is no makeup, um, you know, she's not into how she looks. She doesn't buy brands. She doesn't,
525
00:54:49.120 --> 00:54:55.360
you know, she's, she's the opposite. So in my household, uh, I think a lot of people would be
526
00:54:55.360 --> 00:55:00.400
surprised thinking that I'm off doing all of these adventure things. But in reality, the hero of
527
00:55:00.400 --> 00:55:06.960
my household is Naomi. Mm. Mm. But do you feel a certain sensitive side that's coming out in
528
00:55:06.960 --> 00:55:14.160
your family life that is in contrast to or conflict with or compliment with the, uh, aggressive
529
00:55:14.160 --> 00:55:19.760
masculine side that's coming out when you're on the road? I've never felt that I fit into that
530
00:55:19.760 --> 00:55:25.440
aggressive masculine side. I've never felt that that's an ideal that I never wanted to live up to
531
00:55:25.440 --> 00:55:30.400
or, or, or be or, um, I'd never, well, why do you spend so much time exploring it?
532
00:55:31.200 --> 00:55:35.520
What was exploring which though? I suppose you're masculine side. I mean, a lot of body
533
00:55:35.520 --> 00:55:41.360
hack is about tapping into these extreme experiences of physicality, which are traditionally associated
534
00:55:41.360 --> 00:55:47.280
with masculinity. I don't know. I've never associated them with masculinity. I've never really,
535
00:55:47.280 --> 00:55:52.880
I saw a body hack as, uh, there are extraordinary cultures out there that exist and there's lots
536
00:55:52.880 --> 00:55:57.040
we can learn from them. So I'm going to just drop myself in the middle and and see how I go.
537
00:55:57.040 --> 00:56:01.600
And if you enter those cultures, as you know, as someone who does this as well, if you enter
538
00:56:01.600 --> 00:56:08.080
those cultures wrapped in your masculine cloak or you're overcompensating, you know, masculine
539
00:56:09.120 --> 00:56:14.800
mask, you're going to get nowhere because they're not, you know, they don't open. Most people don't
540
00:56:14.800 --> 00:56:23.280
open to that. They close to that. So, uh, yeah, as to the underlying question as to why I like to
541
00:56:23.280 --> 00:56:30.800
test myself in different areas, that completely comes down to my, my own insecurity.
542
00:56:32.400 --> 00:56:38.480
What is that insecurity? This is a combination of many things. When I was young, I always thought
543
00:56:38.480 --> 00:56:45.280
that I needed to, uh, to, to prove myself, you know, and start it with money. When I was really young,
544
00:56:45.280 --> 00:56:49.280
I, I just was so scared of not having money because I didn't have it in my family that that's all I
545
00:56:49.280 --> 00:56:55.840
wanted was money. I carried this insecurity around of being poor. Then, you know, I, I had success
546
00:56:55.840 --> 00:57:01.520
in my life and then I, I carried this insecurity around. I'm not good enough, you know, that it's,
547
00:57:01.520 --> 00:57:08.880
it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's temporary. And I, I remember, I remember I had spent my
548
00:57:10.000 --> 00:57:16.720
young adult life climbing, mountaineering. It was my passion. I did so much of it. And it's,
549
00:57:16.720 --> 00:57:22.720
I just, I loved the suffering and the extreme nature of it and the physicality of it and being in
550
00:57:22.720 --> 00:57:29.440
nature, all of that. And then I, I eventually decided to climb, you know, I guess, decided to
551
00:57:29.440 --> 00:57:35.040
climb a cliche in search of an epiphany. I, I, I decided to climb Everest, you know, when I was,
552
00:57:35.040 --> 00:57:43.200
my mid 20s. And, uh, and I did it. And I remember I stood on the top, you know, 8,850 meters. I had
553
00:57:43.200 --> 00:57:49.600
lost 15 kilos. The site in my left eye, I had an eaten in who I can't even remember how long,
554
00:57:49.600 --> 00:57:54.880
but I think I had a Mars bar for a week or something and I had very little to drink. I was totally,
555
00:57:54.880 --> 00:58:01.280
totally finished on the summit. And I stood there and I was lucky. I was by myself and I could see
556
00:58:01.280 --> 00:58:07.520
the curvature of the earth off the Tibetan plane and it was amazing. And then I remember distinctly
557
00:58:07.520 --> 00:58:19.520
thinking, what the fuck am I doing here? And the answer to that is fear. Is my own fear that I've
558
00:58:19.520 --> 00:58:24.640
been dealing with my whole life, you know, I mentioned some of them to you. And, and, and, and then
559
00:58:24.640 --> 00:58:32.160
facing those fears, I felt better. I felt better. But that moment in my mid 20s changed my view of,
560
00:58:33.280 --> 00:58:40.800
you know, of fear many ways. I started chasing it less overtly with physical things, although
561
00:58:40.800 --> 00:58:47.360
body hack did unfold like that. But it's only because of my own experiences. But I started inwardly
562
00:58:47.360 --> 00:58:52.400
trying to face my fears through meditation and through under frameworks of understanding like
563
00:58:52.400 --> 00:58:57.760
different religions or whatever that might be. I changed it from a physical pursuit to a mental
564
00:58:57.760 --> 00:59:02.160
pursuit and it's a pursuit I'm still on. Was it anti-climactic climbing male Everest?
565
00:59:08.800 --> 00:59:12.800
No, it wasn't. I stood. You had to think about that.
566
00:59:13.760 --> 00:59:20.160
Yeah, because it's because it is the highest point on earth, right? So there is, there is going to be
567
00:59:20.160 --> 00:59:26.960
an element of, you know, I've done it. You know, now there is an element of that. But when you're at eight,
568
00:59:26.960 --> 00:59:32.320
when you're at 8,000, almost nine, you know, nine vertical kilometers in the air,
569
00:59:33.840 --> 00:59:40.880
your ego is sort of pushed aside in the spirit of survival because you are a third of the oxygen
570
00:59:40.880 --> 00:59:44.560
of sea level. So you're dying every second. You're up there. I mean, you are not, you're not
571
00:59:44.560 --> 00:59:50.000
like adapting. You're dying. You know, one adapts above 8,000 meters. It's a physiological impossible.
572
00:59:50.000 --> 00:59:55.920
So everyone dies equally up there. So you're thinking survival. You're not, you don't really,
573
00:59:56.960 --> 01:00:02.080
you don't really realize what you're doing until you start trekking out and then they start laying
574
01:00:02.080 --> 01:00:07.680
things over your head in every village and making you chug a beer and then you realize. But that
575
01:00:07.680 --> 01:00:13.280
stage you're so pissed, you don't even know where you are. And did you, when you talk about
576
01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:20.400
reaching those, those heights of physical endurance, was, when you now reflect back with the lens
577
01:00:20.400 --> 01:00:26.640
of body image, have you been through periods where you were too fixated on your body?
578
01:00:27.280 --> 01:00:40.880
Yes, often on. I've always had a functional lens to my body because I was adventuring as a kid.
579
01:00:40.880 --> 01:00:46.480
You know, I was climbing sometimes three times a year around the world. So I always had a
580
01:00:47.440 --> 01:00:52.720
viewed my body not so much from the aesthetic, although nice to have, but from the function,
581
01:00:52.800 --> 01:00:58.800
because it became a tool for me. So I obsessed about that tool. Yes, I would train hard and even
582
01:00:58.800 --> 01:01:06.960
for body hack, what I would do is I would adapt my training for the adventure. So if I was
583
01:01:06.960 --> 01:01:14.080
embedding with the Iraqi snipers in Mosul, I knew that we would be moving low to the ground
584
01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:21.280
and carrying packs. So I trained myself in a safe environment at home to do that. And so, yes,
585
01:01:21.280 --> 01:01:27.120
I did become obsessed with the functionality of adventure. And the thing with adventure is it
586
01:01:27.120 --> 01:01:35.200
is a great mirror. You know, it is a great mirror. And because it can be harsh, it can be beautiful,
587
01:01:35.200 --> 01:01:43.120
it can be ego driven, or it can be, you know, sad in its reflection. I mean, the reflections of
588
01:01:43.120 --> 01:01:50.160
adventure and the the anticlimactic or otherwise nature of climbing Mount Everest, these kinds of
589
01:01:50.160 --> 01:01:56.880
things bring us to another aspect of social media, which I'd love your thoughts on, which is the
590
01:01:57.600 --> 01:02:02.800
what it's doing to our head to constantly be trying to curate our own existence.
591
01:02:03.600 --> 01:02:09.920
Yes. I remember I was backpacking around India not that long ago, not when I was a kid, but
592
01:02:09.920 --> 01:02:17.280
but once I was a grown-up with a couple of Aussie mates and we were in like cashmere in like a
593
01:02:17.280 --> 01:02:24.480
remote part of India and we were at this monastery on a hill which would climb up to before sunrise,
594
01:02:24.480 --> 01:02:31.440
where you could go and hang out. And I spent the most transcendental sunrise listening to the
595
01:02:31.440 --> 01:02:38.000
monks chant and looking out over the Himalayas. And I mean, it sounds like such a cliche that,
596
01:02:38.000 --> 01:02:43.040
you know, the middle class white guy going in the and finding spiritual fulfillment there.
597
01:02:43.600 --> 01:02:51.280
But I did. And at the same time, my two mates were scrambling all over the mountain.
598
01:02:51.280 --> 01:02:56.240
This was, I guess, pre-instagram. So it must have been about 10 years ago. We weren't taking
599
01:02:56.240 --> 01:03:01.040
photos on our phones, at least they wouldn't have been good enough. They had proper professional
600
01:03:01.040 --> 01:03:09.040
digital cameras and were scrambling all over it taking photos of the sunrise over the Himalayas.
601
01:03:09.040 --> 01:03:13.280
When we got down to the bottom later that morning, they were spending all their time comparing
602
01:03:13.280 --> 01:03:20.800
photos on each other's phones on each other's cameras. And I did realize like something has shifted
603
01:03:20.800 --> 01:03:28.880
here in our relationship to reality that they're comparing their artifacts of an experience that
604
01:03:28.880 --> 01:03:34.960
they didn't actually have with each other. And I have nothing to show for my experience, but I
605
01:03:34.960 --> 01:03:40.560
actually had the experience that their photos will make people think that they had, but they
606
01:03:40.560 --> 01:03:46.800
didn't because they were too busy taking the photo. And I use that as a as a marker in my in my
607
01:03:46.800 --> 01:03:52.160
brain now for what we're almost all doing almost all of the time. I mean, back then it only happened
608
01:03:52.160 --> 01:03:58.880
when you were climbing up before sunrise in a to look at a cashmere sunrise. Now it's happening
609
01:03:58.960 --> 01:04:04.240
when you order brunch and you're as fixated on Instagramming it as you are and actually
610
01:04:05.040 --> 01:04:11.760
tasting it. Where's this all going? Yeah, I mean, it's a little sad, isn't it? When I climbed
611
01:04:11.760 --> 01:04:18.000
ever there were no, you know, phones. I wasn't able to do any of that. I just basically had a camera
612
01:04:18.000 --> 01:04:25.280
which I ended up losing and I do have a photo from the summit, but I just experienced it for what
613
01:04:25.280 --> 01:04:32.880
it was. But in fairness, I wrote everything because I'm a diary keeper. I keep it. I diary my dreams,
614
01:04:32.880 --> 01:04:38.560
I diary everything. I write everything down. So I did keep it, but I would not publish that.
615
01:04:40.160 --> 01:04:47.360
And I don't publish it. I tell you, moving to Australia was what I did when I was, I've been here
616
01:04:48.000 --> 01:04:54.400
in my 20s. I moved to Australia. And in some ways, this society, although it's changing,
617
01:04:55.920 --> 01:05:02.720
is really, really good for what we're talking about or better than the American world I lived in
618
01:05:02.720 --> 01:05:08.960
in Canada. Because in Canada, when you tell someone you climbed or in America, you tell somebody
619
01:05:08.960 --> 01:05:17.120
climb Mount Everest, they often will jump on that and expect some sort of heroic story
620
01:05:17.200 --> 01:05:26.560
or they see you through the lens of this achievement of climbing the tallest, the symbol of success
621
01:05:26.560 --> 01:05:31.040
where in Australia, you tell someone you climb Mount Everest, they look at you and they're under
622
01:05:31.040 --> 01:05:41.040
their breath, they're thinking, you fucking close for more on. You just see that you can just see
623
01:05:41.120 --> 01:05:47.680
in their eyes. So you don't tell anyone because it's one of the ways of really turning someone off
624
01:05:48.640 --> 01:05:52.240
because we have this sort of psychological thing around tall poppy syndrome.
625
01:05:53.200 --> 01:05:57.040
That's very interesting. I mean, I actually, I even have a teasing moment in my
626
01:05:57.040 --> 01:06:02.240
nova podcast about people who climb Mount Everest on the on the basis of like, you know, it's
627
01:06:02.240 --> 01:06:07.440
almost the most childish way to achieve something. It's like a, it's like an eight year old
628
01:06:07.440 --> 01:06:11.120
goes like, I want to do something really big by literally climbing to the tallest place
629
01:06:11.120 --> 01:06:16.960
on the on the planet. And I think there's a part of that sort of cynical attitude towards
630
01:06:16.960 --> 01:06:22.400
feats of any extreme achievement in Australia. It's definitely, it's definitely literal.
631
01:06:23.120 --> 01:06:29.680
Like, I mean, time where I happen to, I mean, it does, I have to swallow. It's not like, you know,
632
01:06:29.680 --> 01:06:34.240
it's not like climbing Mount Everest and you're just swallowing it. But for me, ever was,
633
01:06:34.960 --> 01:06:40.880
you know, it was a series of mountains of which that one was not the least interesting because
634
01:06:40.880 --> 01:06:45.280
the altitude makes it interesting from a survival perspective. But it's certainly not the most
635
01:06:45.280 --> 01:06:52.400
difficult. Yeah, right. But the point you're making is these days, it's the equivalent of taking
636
01:06:52.400 --> 01:06:58.720
your journal and then publishing it. Or as you said, not living in the moment, but capturing that
637
01:06:58.720 --> 01:07:05.360
moment and publishing it. This is one of the things I try to do with my kids is when we're on
638
01:07:05.360 --> 01:07:12.720
holiday, I try my best to get them to put down. Don't see the sunset through the phone. See it to
639
01:07:12.720 --> 01:07:22.720
your eyes. But the people that need to take accountability for that are the companies that are
640
01:07:22.720 --> 01:07:30.160
creating these social share because we know that our brain, it, it, it, it, it, lodges images,
641
01:07:30.160 --> 01:07:36.880
visual. We process them 60,000 times faster. It's in the film. We talk about this 60,000 times faster.
642
01:07:36.880 --> 01:07:41.360
We remember more of what we see than what we read or what we hear. And so these companies that
643
01:07:41.360 --> 01:07:47.600
create these platforms know that. And so they just pump us with these rewards. These sort of dopamine
644
01:07:47.680 --> 01:07:52.720
hitting rewards over and over again, which then encourages us to do more and more and put more and
645
01:07:52.720 --> 01:07:58.080
more on. And the point I was making earlier about the future is I believe these companies may come
646
01:07:58.080 --> 01:08:05.360
and go. I believe Google potentially Facebook, we will move on to other platforms. You know, we,
647
01:08:05.360 --> 01:08:11.120
but what doesn't change is the fundamental behavioral change that exists underneath them.
648
01:08:11.840 --> 01:08:14.560
The structures and brands themselves will come and go.
649
01:08:16.080 --> 01:08:19.920
That's interesting. I mean, I think what's going to have to change is the,
650
01:08:20.480 --> 01:08:25.280
the sole measure being the amount of time that we're spending on these websites, like the
651
01:08:25.280 --> 01:08:30.160
funding making, the funding model has to change because as long as they're, as long as they're
652
01:08:30.160 --> 01:08:36.240
bottom line, it's tied to how long we spend on the platform. Any, I mean, the algorithm is going
653
01:08:36.240 --> 01:08:42.000
to be maximized to try to enhance our time on site. And we are obviously going to be more engaged
654
01:08:42.000 --> 01:08:48.400
in content that extremifies our emotions that either reinforces what we already believe or demonizes
655
01:08:48.400 --> 01:08:53.200
what we don't, what we disagree with or gives us something aspirational to look at or gives us
656
01:08:53.200 --> 01:08:56.960
something that, you know, something that triggers us, something that creates a little flutter in our
657
01:08:56.960 --> 01:09:02.320
tummy or in our soul or in our mind. Those are the things that are going to keep pulling at us,
658
01:09:02.320 --> 01:09:09.360
not cold, reason, hard facts, boring reality. And as long as the incentives are misaligned like
659
01:09:09.360 --> 01:09:13.520
that, I think whatever you replace Google and Facebook, Facebook with is going to be corrosive
660
01:09:13.520 --> 01:09:20.800
to our psyches. We have to find a way of aligning what is true and what is human with what is
661
01:09:20.800 --> 01:09:25.920
capturing our attention online. I mean, I personally believe that we need to be protected from
662
01:09:25.920 --> 01:09:32.080
ourselves. And I do believe regulation in this area is as I believe in advertising, you know,
663
01:09:32.800 --> 01:09:37.040
I think we all need protection. Because as we said, right at the beginning of this conversation,
664
01:09:38.160 --> 01:09:43.200
the problem is within us. It's the innate tendencies that we have that are being exploited.
665
01:09:43.840 --> 01:09:52.960
But focusing on the people that are exploiting them is one thing. But it doesn't change often the
666
01:09:52.960 --> 01:09:57.520
tendencies that are getting amplified that exist within us. So in many ways, I do think we need
667
01:09:57.520 --> 01:10:02.320
protection from ourselves. Now, once you start doing that, of course, then everybody starts thinking,
668
01:10:02.320 --> 01:10:06.320
oh, are we going to be living in an anti-state? And, you know, Australians are already living in
669
01:10:06.320 --> 01:10:14.960
an anti-state. But I think left to our own devices. Lord of the flies. Let's come back then, Todd,
670
01:10:15.040 --> 01:10:25.040
and we can wrap up with this sort of element about my losing weight and my, you know, bootcamp
671
01:10:25.040 --> 01:10:31.600
challenge and my pride in the way that I look and what the healthy, like what do you make of,
672
01:10:31.600 --> 01:10:39.760
for example, the fat acceptance movement? So it is worth just caveating everything I'm about to
673
01:10:39.760 --> 01:10:48.480
say. As I am an able-bodied white thin male that doesn't get sneered at when I eat pizza in
674
01:10:48.480 --> 01:10:59.440
public and I can pretty much buy whatever I want without eyes on me. I think fat phobia is a massive
675
01:10:59.440 --> 01:11:05.840
issue in society. You see the opening of the film, we start with a series of kids in a kind of
676
01:11:05.840 --> 01:11:10.560
research format where we have two Barbie dolls. One Barbie doll is thin, the normal Barbie doll,
677
01:11:10.560 --> 01:11:17.440
the other one we made bigger. And almost bar two kids. A hundred percent of the kids
678
01:11:17.440 --> 01:11:23.120
went asked, which one do you think is bad? Which one do you think is lazy? Which one do you think is
679
01:11:23.120 --> 01:11:34.560
mean? Nearly all of the children from ages three to 11 said the bigger doll. Wow. And half of those
680
01:11:34.560 --> 01:11:45.200
kids have never been on social media. That's interesting. Yes. Is a massive issue in society.
681
01:11:45.200 --> 01:11:50.000
And it's an issue that we often don't talk about and one of the reasons that we discuss it in the
682
01:11:50.000 --> 01:11:56.560
film is that language is difficult. Obesity you need to put a disclaimer on it. Fat some people
683
01:11:56.560 --> 01:12:02.160
like and don't like. The concept of being overweight and something being inherently wrong with that
684
01:12:02.160 --> 01:12:10.400
is rarely challenged. Yeah. The medical system often views or filters its diagnosis through
685
01:12:10.400 --> 01:12:16.800
the lens of obesity, through the lens of BMI, which was created by a scientist, by a mathematician
686
01:12:16.800 --> 01:12:24.800
hundreds of years ago before computers were invented. So we live in a world that you know the part
687
01:12:24.800 --> 01:12:32.640
of that matrix is fear of being fat or fear of being bigger or or or or or fear of what that does.
688
01:12:32.640 --> 01:12:39.600
And when we that is ingrained in us from our parents from our schools, it is possible. One hundred
689
01:12:39.600 --> 01:12:47.680
percent it is possible to be bigger and healthy. Is that true or is that a politically correct thing
690
01:12:47.680 --> 01:12:52.720
that we're supposed to say? No, that's absolutely true. You can be fat and as healthy. I mean,
691
01:12:52.720 --> 01:12:57.600
obviously there's a bell curve, right? So there are going to be such as saying thin is inherently
692
01:12:57.600 --> 01:13:01.680
healthy. And we know that that's not true. Yes, that's not true. So you can be thin and
693
01:13:01.680 --> 01:13:07.200
unhealthy. I mean, so a fat person can be fat and healthy, but it matters what you are. I just
694
01:13:07.200 --> 01:13:11.360
want to make sure that we're not playing with words here. A fat person can be healthier than a
695
01:13:11.360 --> 01:13:18.320
thin person. But in aggregate, a fat person is going to be less healthy than they would be if
696
01:13:18.320 --> 01:13:24.320
they weren't fat. And every other variable was held. Okay, so what it comes, well, not
697
01:13:25.520 --> 01:13:31.520
that's not true. It is possible to be fat and healthy. It is possible. But not as healthy as you
698
01:13:31.520 --> 01:13:36.320
would be if you weren't overweight. Yeah, but so how do you measure health, right? And that's part
699
01:13:36.320 --> 01:13:40.400
of the that's what comes up in this film is it's often through the lens of BMI, which then says
700
01:13:40.400 --> 01:13:44.720
zero beast, which then you know, based on. No, but isn't it true that like heart disease and
701
01:13:44.720 --> 01:13:51.280
cancer and but you cannot, but it's important, Josh, not to confuse correlation with causation.
702
01:13:51.280 --> 01:14:00.320
Okay, so there no doubt is a correlation between being fat and certain diseases. Yes, it's
703
01:14:00.320 --> 01:14:07.680
of course, but being fat doesn't like there are plenty of bigger people that are considered fat
704
01:14:07.680 --> 01:14:13.040
based on BMI that are healthy. Yeah, I mean, people look BMI has its own problems and we don't
705
01:14:13.200 --> 01:14:17.840
need to get going to that. I mean, Arnold Schwarzenegger is obese, so according to BMI statistics,
706
01:14:17.840 --> 01:14:22.080
right? So, you know, anytime you're working out, you're the BMI is going to be off and you might,
707
01:14:22.720 --> 01:14:29.360
you know, you know, but failing I guess I'm torn between on the one hand, the desire not to fat shame
708
01:14:29.360 --> 01:14:33.920
anybody. People should be allowed to be whatever size they want to be. On the other hand,
709
01:14:33.920 --> 01:14:39.200
noticing, for example, that in the United States, there's been very little public health
710
01:14:39.280 --> 01:14:44.720
information during the pandemic about the importance of eating well and losing a bit of weight and
711
01:14:44.720 --> 01:14:50.400
something like more than 80% of COVID deaths among people under the age of 70 are people who are obese
712
01:14:50.400 --> 01:14:56.000
and it's not something that we talk about. It's considered that it bumps up against fat shaming
713
01:14:56.000 --> 01:14:59.600
and I'm just wondering if there's a needle to thread between not wanting to fat shame people,
714
01:14:59.600 --> 01:15:03.360
but also not wanting to be full of shit about the fact that ideally, if you're overweight,
715
01:15:03.360 --> 01:15:09.120
you'd probably be better off if you lost some weight. I think it's, I think the focus should be
716
01:15:09.120 --> 01:15:15.280
on functionality and health, right? So, I think that you can, I mean, look at some of these,
717
01:15:16.400 --> 01:15:22.880
I don't know, it's a great example, but I remember these, I went and embedded with the sumo
718
01:15:22.960 --> 01:15:31.760
wrestlers in Japan and by most measures, they were healthier and fitter than me,
719
01:15:33.760 --> 01:15:40.720
by most measures. But this lifestyle of overeating to that level is not going to be healthy in
720
01:15:40.720 --> 01:15:46.160
the long run, but if you measured by their physical ability or their functionality, they were much
721
01:15:46.160 --> 01:15:52.240
healthier than me. And not all of them were fat as we would see fat, some of them were just bigger,
722
01:15:52.240 --> 01:16:00.320
right? Yeah, interesting. It's a topic that I think is, again, as you mentioned, it's not
723
01:16:00.320 --> 01:16:05.120
talked about because of the risks of talking about it. And you know, one of the things that we
724
01:16:05.120 --> 01:16:10.400
talk about in this, and I know this is going to send a lot of people perplexed, is we talk about
725
01:16:10.400 --> 01:16:18.080
set point. And the controversy around set point, that the hippocampus predetermines like a thermostat
726
01:16:18.080 --> 01:16:27.360
in our brain, predetermines what our set point is, bar a few degrees on each side. And that open,
727
01:16:27.360 --> 01:16:33.520
so the dieting is basically opening a window of which your thermostat will readjust eventually
728
01:16:33.520 --> 01:16:38.160
to your set point. And that dieting does not change the set point. The only thing that changes the
729
01:16:38.160 --> 01:16:44.320
set point is someone who kind of works on the dial, a mechanical. And in that case, we looked
730
01:16:44.320 --> 01:16:51.600
at bariatric surgery. And so we explored it from both sides. That's interesting. Yeah. Okay,
731
01:16:51.600 --> 01:16:56.240
well, I'm going to let you go here, but I just want to wrap up with it with any future thoughts
732
01:16:56.240 --> 01:17:00.880
about the way that we can kind of ensure ourselves against dysfunction in how we think about ourselves,
733
01:17:00.880 --> 01:17:09.760
how we can be gentler with ourselves. Awareness? So I know it sounds obvious, but having a better
734
01:17:09.760 --> 01:17:15.360
just like understanding how advertising works, it's also understanding the details of how the
735
01:17:15.360 --> 01:17:21.440
other parts of the matrix, social media, how this all works, and teaching kids at a young age,
736
01:17:21.440 --> 01:17:26.960
one would argue that media literacy today is as important as the other disciplines we're learning
737
01:17:27.120 --> 01:17:33.200
in school because that's we need to try and make behavioral change because we know that most
738
01:17:33.200 --> 01:17:37.840
corporations are focused. They're focused on some level on making money, although I have to say
739
01:17:37.840 --> 01:17:43.040
some are becoming more responsible with triple bottom lines and trying to do their part. But we as
740
01:17:43.040 --> 01:17:49.920
parents can take it on to help educate and teach our kids about the world in which they're in.
741
01:17:49.920 --> 01:17:53.680
And I think a big part of that is getting in with them and understanding it, trying to understand
742
01:17:54.080 --> 01:18:00.640
through their eyes. Todd, it's great to talk to you. Mira Mira is on Channel 10 Wednesday night
743
01:18:00.640 --> 01:18:05.280
and then Wednesday second follow up. It's Thursday night. So they're back to back. Back to back.
744
01:18:05.280 --> 01:18:09.840
Fantastic. Come back anytime and we'll explore everything else that you've done with your life.
745
01:18:09.840 --> 01:18:21.520
We won't talk too much about you. It's a relief.