LISTEN:

We appreciate all feedback, and questions for Q&A shows, emailed to podcast@bradventures.com. If you have a moment, please share an episode you like with a quick text message, or leave a review on your podcast app. Thank you!

Check out each of these companies because they are absolutely awesome or they wouldn’t occupy this revered space. Seriously, I won’t promote anything that I don’t absolutely love and use in daily life:

• B.rad Nutrition: Premium quality, all-natural supplements for peak performance, recovery, and longevity; including the world’s highest quality whey protein!
• Peluva: Comfortable, functional, stylish five-toe minimalist shoe to reawaken optimal foot function. Use code BRADPODCAST for 15% off!
• Ketone-IQ Save 30% off your first subscription order & receive a free six-pack of Ketone-IQ!
• Get Stride: Advanced DNA, methylation profile, microbiome & blood at-home testing. Hit your stride the right way, with cutting-edge technology and customized programming. Save 10% with the code BRAD
• Mito Red Light: Photobiomodulation light panels to enhance cellular energy production, improve recovery, and optimize circadian rhythm. Use code BRAD for 5% discount!
• GAINSWave: Enhance sexual function with high frequency shockwave therapy. Buy 6 and get one treatment free with code BRAD
• Online educational courses: Numerous great offerings for an immersive home-study educational experience
• Primal Fitness Expert Certification: The most comprehensive online course on all aspects of traditional fitness programming and a total immersion fitness lifestyle. Save 25% on tuition with code BRAD
• Male Optimization Formula with Organs (MOFO): Optimize testosterone naturally with 100% grass-fed animal organ supplement

Brad’s Favorites on Amazon

I have a newly organized shopping experience at BradKearns.com/Shop. Visit here and you can navigate to my B.rad Nutrition products (for direct order or Amazon order), my library of online multimedia educational courses, great discounts from my affiliate favorites, and my recommended health&fitness products on Amazon.

TRANSCRIPT:

Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life without taking ourselves too seriously. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, former number three world ranked professional triathlete and Guinness World Record Masters athlete. I connect with experts in diet, fitness, and personal growth, and deliver short breather shows where you get simple actionable tips to improve your life right away. Let’s explore beyond the hype hacks, shortcuts, and science talk to laugh, have fun and appreciate the journey. It’s time to B.rad.

Alex (00:38):
The Explorer’s Gene I is not, it’s not like a a five step process to go and explore more, or even a claim that you should explore more. It is, it’s a recognition of like, what are these parts within yourself? Where do they fit into your

Brad (00:54):
Hi listeners. It is a privilege to welcome again to the show bestselling author and leading sports science journalists, Alex Hutchinson, and we talk on the grand occasion of a new book release. The title is The Explorer’s Gene, Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and Blank Spots on the Map. And this comes on the heels of his 2018 New York Times bestseller titled Endure. And we had a great show talking about his amazing performance breakthroughs as a middle distance runner and the Power of the Mind. And Explores Gene kind of picks up where he left off with Endure, but goes to the source and tries to answer that powerful question, why, why do we have this compelling drive to explore? And in our conversation he definitely hits on that, uh, question that we might have about the individual differences in our penchant for exploring. And we’re not just talking about climbing the mountains and exploring the forest, but also those of us who, uh, like to try new meals and new ice cream flavors and listen to new songs rather than stay with our previous playlist from, from our earlier years.

Brad (02:14):
So, really fascinating conversation, touching on a lot of interesting topics. He talks about this scientific term called the Free Energy Principles, which kind of drives the creative energy of all living things on earth. He talks about the influence of modern technology on our deep seated hardwired drive to explore and be creative, and how creativity has dropped precipitously in modern life per research studies on intelligence and creativity. Intelligence is going, intelligence is going up, creativity is going down. Wow, that’s pretty heavy. I think you’re gonna love this talk and I really encourage you to connect with Alex by visiting AlexHutchinson.net and going to your favorite bookseller and ordering a copy of The Explorer’s Gene, one of the best writers and researchers out there, especially as it relates to Human Peak performance. He’s a national magazine, award-winning science journalist and outside magazine’s, longtime Sweat Science columnist.

Brad (03:16):
So please, go to Outside Magazine online and, uh, look up Sweat Science and you will be regaled with a whole bunch. He, he writes something once a week for years of the sports science and sports journalism. And as I said, he was an elite long middle distance runner for Canada, still running, still competing as he approaches the big five oh mark. So he’s a, a wonder of athletic peak performance and great writing. Here we go with Alex Hutchinson.

Brad (03:49):
Alex Hutchinson, such an honor to connect with you again all the way across the continent to snowy Canada. And, we have some important matters to discuss. One of ’em is the momentous occasion of you releasing another book.

Alex (04:04):
Yeah. Thanks for having me, Brad, from the depths of my igloo here up in Canada, I, I, I send greetings to, uh, the warm parts of the world. And, uh, yeah, it’s, it’s awesome to be back. And I’m excited to talk about, uh, the, the new book coming up.

Brad (04:17):
So at our last interview, we talked about your book, endure, and we had that focus on the incredible breakthrough that you had as an athlete in middle distance running and how that related to mindset and, uh, belief systems and all that. And now this new book, the Explorer’s Gene, why we seek Big Challenges, new Flavors, and blank Spots on the Map. We’re gonna get into the, the details on the premise there, but I think the first thing I wanna know is talk about this process where you’ve written these two books, uh, over a long time span. Unlike, I guess, you know, James Patterson puts out one book every seven months, and he’s the most prolific author of all time. He has a lot of people helping him and slapping his name on the cover of, maybe it’s one book a month. I don’t know these days, but how, how has that worked for the last, oh, over a decade since you’ve been deeply immersed into these very distinct projects?

Alex (05:13):
Yeah, it, it’s interesting. So, I mean, I can say one version of the story is that there’s great continuity. Like Endear was about what defines our limits, how we push the limits of endurance. And then I wanted to move organically and smoothly into why we push our limits, which is sort of the under the subtext of this topic of exploring why, why do we do these hard things? Why do we push on, you know, why don’t we just stay comfortable? Um, that I, I like that version of the story, but it’s not really true, in the sense that it wasn’t an organic process. It was actually a very, um, you know, I wrote about Endurance and Endure came after 10 years of reporting steadily on the science of endurance. So it was the culmination of a very long process. And then I was kind of a drift after end.

Alex (06:02):
Endear came out, I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. And, and it was outta that uncertainty that, that sort of thinking about what do I, why do I wanna do something different? Why don’t I just write in Endure two? Because that would be the <laugh>, you know, the smart thing to do. But I, I was really drawn to try, you know, to explore different horizons. And that ended up being the topic of the book, why do we, why are we drawn to explore different horizons? And that came with rewards and it also came with challenges. It’s very hard to, to sort of relaunch into a new field where I, you know, where I wasn’t as as familiar with the literature or with people and so on.

Brad (06:36):
But you described there’s some continuity jumping from Endure to the Explorers Gene.

Alex (06:44):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I <laugh> this is my, my desperate attempt to reassure readers of endear. There is, there is something for you there too. Yeah, no, I, they ended up being, I think, really connected in, in, in strong ways, in, in the sense that, well, first of all, the, I mean, the approach and that what, what I’m interested in is, uh, is looking at the science of these kind of amorphous concepts like endurance and exploration. And so the, you know, there’s a long history of great books about exploration, right? Like explorers journals and tales, like, you know, Shackleton in the Antarctic, the, these are, these are great stories, and I try to tell some of these stories, but what I’m trying to do that’s a little different, I think is, is interrogate, you know, the, the science. What’s the, the, the anthropology, the biology, the neuroscience, what’s driving us, and how do we make these decisions? How are our brains functioning? So, and that’s very much the, the approach I took in endear. So I think they’re, they’re, they’re very similar books in that sense. It,

Brad (07:47):
It seems like if you lined up the top 50 ranked Explorers on Earth now, the winner of the Iditarod and then the of your deep intensive scientifically, uh, supported questions. Like they, they can’t even describe it. And so it’s up to you as the journalist to go and, uh, gather interview content and then try, try to dig for, dig for answers. But really, how do you kind of blend the science and the practical examples of these people that it’s sort of like, you know, asking Michael Jordan, what, what’s his, you know, thought process when he’s, the clock’s counting down. He’s like win the game. And that’s about all he has. Or one of my favorites, Brad Faxon, long regard is, uh, the top putter in professional golf. He was a great player. He had, I think, you know, some, some big titles, but he was mainly known for his putting, and they asked him, um, what are you thinking about when you, when you line up to the putt? And he, he, he says, I wanna make the putt. And that’s his sole thought right there, <laugh>. So anyway, there’s my question.

Alex (08:57):
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, and I would think, I think not only does understanding the science is not a prerequisite for being the best of the best of the best, and there’s, you know, David Epstein, the author of the Sports Gene and Range, he had a quote, I dunno, 10 years ago when he was writing for Sports Illustrated that struck with, stuck with me, which was, just because you’re an ornith, just, uh, just because you’re a bird doesn’t mean you’re an ornithologist like <laugh>. you don’t interview a, a sparrow to find out the aerodynamics of, of, of flight. And that’s, I don’t mean that in a belittling way, uh, just that the two things are, are separate and, and in, I would almost say in conflict with each other, that to, to great achievement doesn’t necessarily come from staring at your belly button all the time.

Alex (09:45):
And so, I, I, one of my favorite reviews of Endear, um, after it came out was in the Atlantic. They did a, a joint review of endear and, uh, and Scott Jurek’s book, I think it was North, the one about the Appalachian Trail, and the reviewer was contrasting as like, here’s Hutchinson who’s like, just, you know, tying himself in knots, trying to understand the deeper metaphysical underpinnings of why we push our endurance. And here’s Jurrek who’s like, yeah, I ate a lot, and then I, you know, I, I’m I’m Par Yeah, yeah. Turing here. But, you know, yeah, he is not getting lost in introspection about what it’s all about. He’s doing it. He’s, and, and so I think it’s possible to do both these things, but I, I think it’s, as you said, it’s, it’s not necessarily, they’re not doing it and thinking about it are not the same.

Alex (10:33):
It’s just that if you’re interested in think in, in doing it, you often then are also interested in thinking about it as a separate thing, not, not so Endure wasn’t a training manual. It wasn’t, it didn’t tell you how to become a great endurance athlete. And the Explorer’s Gene is not, it’s not like a five step process to go and explore more, or even a claim that you should explore more. It’s, it’s a recognition of like, what are these parts within yourself? Where do they fit into your broader life? Why, why is your brain telling you or not telling you to do these things? So, sorry, that’s a, that’s a, a convoluted answer, but, but to to agree with your main point that that understanding these things is different than doing them.

Brad (11:17):
Yeah, I don’t, I wonder if it’s, you know, I, I don’t think it’s a mark against one who has an analytical process and, and so forth. And, you know, you talked about being stuck at, uh, not being able to break four minutes and then having these tremendous breakthroughs through accessing whattever portal as you described deeply. And I, I remember being kind of a analytical type of triathlete where I was always detailing, uh, you know, technique breakdown and training principles, and talking to everyone and learning what the other athletes do, and possibly getting in my head too much. And then we had these compare contrasting examples, like Scott Juriek Hoofing It on the Trail, or I just interviewed Shelby Houlahan on the occasion of her wonderful comeback after her suspension. And, um, one of the pull quotes from the interview was, well, I don’t really know that much about running <laugh>, and so I trust my coach to gimme the workouts.

Brad (12:07):
And I’m like, excuse me. And then we start digging deeper into her, her training protocols, and she says, well, you know, I just get out the door every day, and I run at whatever pace I feel like, not withstanding her structured workouts from the coach, but most days she’s just heading out the door and running somewhere around eight miles at a pace that ranges from this to this. And I was so taken by like, here’s one of the greatest runners on the planet, but without this highly quantified, regimented approach where she’s carrying her, her blood meter around and pricking her finger and doing all these things that are now become the rage.

Alex (12:41):
Yeah, I mean, this is a great topic of debate and discussion. So I worked for a few years. I trained for a few years with a coach named Matt, Matt Centrowitz, who’s the father of the 2016 Olympic 1500 meter champion. And is also, um, was a American record holder in his own right. A great runner, uh, also a character, uh, put it that way. Hmm. Uh, but, but a very intuitive, um, he had a very intuitive approach to running. And so for me, I I, I, I’m cut from the same cloth as you, I’m, I’m a very analytical, uh, I wanna sort of think about breakdown, understand. And his approach was, I’ll tell you what the workout is, and, you know, you go do it, and how fast should it be? Well, how fast feels right, you know, you go do a fart, like, how, you know, how many, how many times should I surge, surge when you feel you, you need to, and <laugh> hold it for his.

Alex (13:34):
And I was like, you know, my head’s blowing up because I don’t have, I don’t have this intuitive approach. But it worked really well for him. It worked really well for some of the coaches that, or some of the athletes that he coached. But it was a reminder that there are different ways to do it. And to your point, again, I don’t think it’s a bad thing to be analytical, uh, until it is like, so you, you, it’s just people like you and me have to be careful, uh, that the, the analysis doesn’t overtake the process. And, you know, you get that sort of paralysis by analysis thing. So I know for me these days, I, you know, I run, I still compete as a master’s athlete. I don’t have a GPS watch. I don’t even keep a training diary, not because I don’t think keep, think these things are useful.

Alex (14:16):
I think they can contain, contain a lot of useful information. But because I know I then tend to obsess about the training diary and, and, you know, how much mileage I got this week and what the pace was, whether the average of my reps in my workout was better than when I did that workout six weeks ago. So for me, at this point in my life, I, I step away from it. But I think that, you know, it’s just a question of knowing yourself and, and what’s gonna get you to where you want to go.

Brad (14:41):
Well, you’re also in a unique situation similar to mine, because we have this reference point, what from when we were all in with our athletic goals, and now you have two little kids at home, you just reported and I’m still trying to compete in the master’s track and field, but, um, it’s entirely different approach from when I was, you know, deeply immersed in, in a professional career. So I think you like, you know what works and you know, the importance of this and that, and you have to kind of like, put it aside and do your best with a more, um, down downsized, uh, approach to the whole thing.

Alex (15:16):
Yeah. There, there’s no mystery, right? Like, you know, I run the, I I’m most interested these days in running cross country because I do it with a team. And, and so I have friends and it’s a, it’s a, it’s a collaborative activity. Um, and so I wanna do well for the team as well as for myself. And I know exactly what I need to do to do better is run more <laugh> mm-hmm <affirmative>. But I don’t have time to run more. So I, I do what I can within the constraints that I have. And I also, you know, to get to your point, I have very deeply ingrained templates for how a workout should go and what the splits should be. And those templates are completely useless now. ’cause you know, the numbers that I expect if I’m running a lap of the track or a kilometer, or you know, what, or a mile I, I have, you know, years and years of experience for what effort should correspond to what number. And I’m, I’m 49 right now. So those, the, the numbers that I accumulated in my twenties and even in my thirties are, are irrelevant. So it’s kind of, it’s, it’s nice to me not to be too connected to the data because the data’s confusing to me. ’cause it’s like, what, what do you mean I I pushed that hard for that time? There must be something wrong. My leg must have fallen off.

Brad (16:24):
What do you think about the effects of aging on your performance and, and our general understanding of it? Because I, I guess the mainstream society just sees it as this giant, uh, you know, this slide that you jump on and, and decline in an accelerated rate. And I’m here trying to champion the importance of maintaining a competitive edge and keeping yourself healthy and believing and dreaming that you can, you can still do things, but I do realize like, you know, things like the recovery time or the, you know, the level of, uh, you know, margin that you have these days is dramatically different from, uh, from, from decades prior. And I, I can’t really figure out why it doesn’t, doesn’t really make sense that, we should be, you know, that much different when we’re eating the same food and, and keeping ourselves fit and relatively speaking, performing to a good standard.

Alex (17:18):
Yeah. I mean, I, I’m strongly opposed to the effects of aging, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. <laugh>

Brad (17:22):
<laugh> your mind doesn’t happen.

Alex (17:24):
Yeah, no, I mean, it’s, you know, when I was 35, I imagined that I would be able to, you know, I fast forwarded in my mind, I was like, there’s no reason when I’m 40, like five years, I’m not gonna be a different person. I should be doing the same things I should be. Maybe I’ll be a few seconds slower. And then I was a lot slower ’cause I’d had a couple kids in the interim. And so it’s like, I don’t have the, the controlled experiment. The, I don’t have a control group where Alex stays as obsessively into competitive training as I was when I was 28. Hmm. Um, so how much of the decline? ’cause you know, I’ve definitely gotten slower. I, and, and you know, and like you, I, I’ve, I’ve stayed in the same event, so I can’t say I’m high jumping my best right now.

Alex (18:13):
I would be high jumping my best because I’ve never high jumped before. But, so, so I know I, I can see very clearly how much I’ve declined. How much of that is age and how much of that is, is the change in life circumstances that we’ve been just been talking about. Um, I don’t know. There was a study a couple years ago that tried to quantify that, uh, with a meta-analysis of different longitudinal studies. And the sort of back of the envelope calculation that they come up with is the, the typical decline that someone sees in their fifties and sixties. About half of that is, is unavoidable aging. And about half of that is that people become less active. They’re doing, they’re not training, they’re not, you know, whatever the, the case may be. And, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of, there’s a big uncertainty in that estimate.

Alex (18:55):
So it may be 80%, 80 20 for one person and 20 80 for another person. But, um, I I, it’s one of those things, it’s just kinda like the, the, the limits of endurance. Like, we don’t know our limits, but it doesn’t really matter that we don’t know our limits. ’cause no one ever gets to the limits. And so in terms of how much am I, is aging affecting me? It doesn’t really matter because I know that what’s affecting me more is that I’m not training as hard as I used to be. So if I feel like I’m get, I’m declining more quickly than I want, I know what I need to do. I need to run more. Yeah. I need to lift more, I need to be more active. I need to not sit at my, my desk as much. There’s all these things that I, I, you know, the practical, the real life practical limits are much more immediate than the theoretical limits of what aging might or might not be doing.

Brad (19:37):
Yeah. That’s a good way to put it. Even even with a random 50 50 characterization. And what comes to mind to me, are these amazing shining examples of the top people in the master’s divisions. So we go look up the 49-year-old guy running 1500. The times are mind blowing. Uh, my friend Sue McDonald, who’s been on my podcast, she’s broken 15 masters world records in the last year and a half in the female 60 plus division and running, she, she runs her age in the 400 meters, Alex. So she, she’s running a 61 at age 61. Wow. So that shows what’s possible. And, you know, no human has ever gone there before, but she’s highly dedicated to her training and, and doing everything right in the same realm as a NCAA athlete in their, in their prime right now. And in fact, she enters the meets and lines up against the NCAA athletes. ’cause that’s a competitive time. So yeah, I guess when you take, switch that over to, I’m doing 90% of what I did when I was an elite runner running for Team Canada, then we could see, you know, maybe a more age related decline in performance, which wouldn’t be that significant compared to layering in the kids bringing home a virus from preschool and things like that, that you’re dealing with now.

Alex (20:51):
Yeah, for sure. I mean, and it’s, I mean, there’s a lot of reasons that top masters athletes tend a, a lot of them tend to come from outside the sport, right? That, that they discover the sport at 35 or 45 or 55. One of my training partners is a amazing runner. He, he, and he started running when he was 39 or something like that. And on the one hand it’s like, that’s, you know, that’s no fair. Like I put in 20 years of training, does that count for nothing? Why? Like, shouldn’t that help me stay out of him? Um, but on the other hand, he’s got fresh legs, fresh enthusiasm, fresh, all sorts of, uh, fresh things. So it’s hard to maintain. And, you know, maybe this is, this is my cutting segue back into the topic of exploring it is it’s hard to maintain the same level of focus, uh, and enthusiasm and motivation if you’re doing the same thing over and over and over, um, you know, over, over the course of decades. And so I think these, if you’re tracking some the same outcome over 40 years, right? Like let’s say you’re tracking my 5K time, it’s like, it’s not just physical, right? It’s also, it’s like I’ve run a lot of five Ks. Maybe I’m less interested in that than in trying a different challenge at this point.

Brad (22:04):
Yeah. I mean, um, there’s, there’s this odometer concept that relates to the physical part alone, like in the NBA since Kobe Bryant started playing at 17, and so did LeBron James. They have more mileage on there. And I wonder what you think of just that physical part. Like in Shelby’s case, she was four years away from the circuit and the travel and, and the, the, you know, the incredible draining of the energy and, and emotions that you come when you’re walking into the big stadiums for championship meets. And so did she basically pause her competitive clock because of that? Um, purely from that, uh, that, that standpoint of the, uh, the physical odometer?

Alex (22:47):
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. I mean, I think

Alex (22:52):
It, look, if I, if I was 27 years old and someone said, Hey Alex, do you want to take a four year break from com competition? We’ll save some, save your legs. I would say, no, no, no. I’ll take 20 I’ll compete now while I’m, while I’m in, in my prime for sure. And that’s, and that’s, that’s to do with the physiological stuff. I just feel like mm-hmm <affirmative>. It’s better to be 28 than it is to be 32 as, as harsh as that sounds. Um, but I do think the, you know, I, I do think the odometer is running and, you know, there are 20 different odometers that are running, right, that are clocking up different, different kinds of stress, right? Yeah. And it’s like, and they’re different for different people. They manifest in different ways, whether it’s, I mean, just the, the emotional, like getting up for competition.

Alex (23:38):
I really feel like that’s what actually ran out for me first is that I was still, I did, I did some pretty good training in my early thirties. I’d kind of stepped away from serious track, but then ended up just, you know, moving back to Toronto where I was from and hooking up with my old friends. And that’s a social thing to do, is I’m gonna go out and, and train. And all of a sudden I was running as much as I ever was. And so I had, I, in my early thirties, having this mystery of, of, and trying to understand, looking at my training log. It’s like I’m doing as much mileage as I ever did. I’m doing workouts with the boys. I’m, you know, working out with the university team. I’m working out as hard as, as I was. I’m pretty, I’m pretty fit.

Alex (24:22):
I made, I made a World Cross Country Championships team in my early thirties. Like, but I was not as fit as I, I could not race as fast as I could five, six years earlier. And, but what what really struck me is that I couldn’t turn myself inside out in the way that I used to be able to. So I would, at, at 32, I would train hard for a race. I would go to that championship and I would care, and I would really wanna do well, and I would do the best I could, and I would cross the line and put my hands on my knees for 10 seconds, say, you know, that was a hard race. And then I’d walk away. Whereas in, in college, or, you know, in my early twenties, I would run a, run a race like that, and I would finish and I would stagger off, you know, there were races where I, you know, staggered off to the side, lay down and vomited for 45 minutes oof. And then was up all night, you know, with a headache. Just like I could really push myself. And it, it be, I don’t know why, like, I, I just, I, I no longer could, could access that, that deep zone. And I think for me, the clock had run out on, you know, being a, being able to really, really go to a dark place. I did that from maybe when I was 15 to 25, 26, and then I just couldn’t, couldn’t go there.

Brad (25:34):
Well, you say you don’t know why, but I think the listeners can make a few guesses why, and probably your sensibility and your intelligence level is, you know, deep down, and I think we are working on that segue. You mentioned explorer at some point a few minutes ago, and we’re trying, people we’re trying, but I think this is kind of an interesting way to, uh, to segue because that stuff that drove you from at those young ages and then became moderated, whatever, um, this goes to some deep internal wiring that, you know, compelled you to do it. It wasn’t for, well, I mean, um, they interviewed all the top milers at a Runner’s World banquet years ago, and they asked each one all from history, you know, Jim Ryan and Peter Snell, and Hai Melgar Rouge ?? and everyone, and they said, why did you run? And I think, um, one of them, Jim Ryan, I think he said, I wanted to get attention from the girls in high school. And I’m like, there’s my guy. That was the reason we did it anyway. For sure.

Brad (26:29):
So let’s go talk about the Explorer’s Gene, and, you know, what is, what is this thing inside that’s this mysterious calling to go and put you into your hands and knees vomiting after these fun races in Canada?

Alex (26:45):
So, so <laugh>, let, let me give you the, the, the sort of narrow answer and then the, the broader answer. So the narrow answer is one of the scientists I interviewed for the Explorers Gene, uh, asking them like, why, you know, who studies, how people decide when to stick with the known versus go to the unknown. And I was asking him about like, you know, my form of exploring these days is I like going on backpacking trips into the unknown. And I like when I’m there, you know, the fewer people there are, the better. The more I feel like I’m off the beaten track and what, and know, I, I push myself pretty hard on these trips. I like to really get out and feel like I’m at the limit. Why is that? You know, why don’t I just, like, why is it less, it’s not about the view, right?

Alex (27:26):
Because I could, there’s lots of beautiful places where you can drive to the scenic vista and, and take a snapshot. Why do I need to go out there and push myself? And he was saying, well, one of the forms of uncertainty you’re trying to resolve, one of the things you’re trying to discover is your own ca capabilities. We’re not born knowing what we’re capable of. We find out what we’re capable of by, by going to the limit and seeing, so back to in the narrow example of running, it’s like, I saw the, you know, and it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel, but I saw that actually the brick wall at the end of the tunnel. I know, I know where my limits were because I, I, I was lucky enough, or, or, or, you know, not to pat myself on the back, but brave enough to sometimes encounter those limits in ways that it was like, where I knew that there was nothing more in the tank, because I literally was, you know, unable to move for, for 45 minutes afterwards that I’d given everything in a race.

Alex (28:15):
And so once you’ve discovered that there, you know, you can’t, you can’t discover the same continent twice, or at least, maybe you can twice, but you can’t discover it like 10 times before. Because like, I, I’ve been here before and it sucks. It, it’s really hard to be here. So at a certain point, like you said, maybe my smarter nature was like, okay, you know what it’s like to be five seconds faster and it’s not worth it. So don’t, don’t do it. So, so that’s the running part. The more, the general question, the more general thing is like, what, why are we, why are we drawn to discover things like what our limits are or what’s over the next horizon? And there’s a lot of ways to answer that. But one that I’ve, one interesting way of thinking about it comes from this idea in neuroscience that’s very popular these days, which is called the free energy principles.

Alex (29:03):
And it’s, and and basically what it posits is that our brains are fundamentally wired to minimize surprise. That is what to, to be alive is, is to stay alive. What we need to do is be able to understand what’s going on in the world around us to, to not be caught by surprise. And so there’s not to go too far down, um, the alleyways of this, this topic, ’cause it’s a big one, but you might say the best way to minimize surprise is to head into your closet, turn out the lights, and shut the door. Because then you’re gonna have no surprise. You’re gonna know what’s happening next. It’s nothing. And this is in, in philosophy, in neuroscience, this is called the dark room problem. It’s like, hang on, we’ve got this great neuroscience theory that says we’re trying to minimize surprise. Why don’t, why, why don’t we all just sort of curl up in a cocoon?

Alex (29:54):
And the answer is that we’re not just trying to minimize surprise at this instant, but we’re trying to minimize surprise as we go through life. So, so we wanna know what comes next, not just what’s happening right now, and to figure out what comes next. You need to learn about the world. You need to know, you need to find out about the parts you don’t know about. So we have this fundamental drive to go out in the world, and not just to learn about the world, but to, to pursue, to move towards the areas we know the least about. To, to say, alright, I already know what’s behind door number one and door number two, I have no idea what’s behind door number three. And so I’m gonna be attracted to door number three. I’m gonna say, I want to know what’s behind door number three. And ultimately this, whether you’re a single cell amoeba or a human, that impulse serves you well because you’re trying to, then, you know what’s behind door number number three. So you’re not gonna get surprised when a monstering upsell from behind door number three, you’re learning about the world.

Brad (30:49):
It’s like pursuit of those basic fundamental human drives, like safety, security, and so forth. So instead of just resting on our laurels, we’re going to try to go see what’s over the next mountain.

Alex (31:03):
Yeah. And so in this theory, which, which is a very like, broad description of all living things, in theory, it’s, it’s, it’s a need that underlies all these things like food and safety and, and you know, shelter. But it’s like, learn about the world, find out what’s out there and that, and that’s going to, you know, that’s gonna underlie your desire to learn about where food is and, and how to build the best shelter. And what’s coming is, but the, the prime directive is, is to be learning about the world.

Brad (31:36):
So lately we’re there more and more popularity with, you know, getting deeply analyzing our, our personality attributes and taking our quizzes and finding out that we’re the rebel or the obliger or the upholder with Gretchen Rubin’s examples and all the other stuff. I wonder if there’s, you know, some disparity, first of all between the sexes and then between the individuals in terms of how, how brightly burning that explorer’s gene is, and also kind of the overlay of the comfort, convenience, safety, and security in modern life. Are we switching off some of these dials that might be just latent, but they’ve never been explored because all we care about is punching the clock and, and you know, staying in the, staying in the traffic lanes.

Alex (32:24):
Yeah. So to the, to the first question, like the individual differences is is a complicated question. And if you write a book about the science of exploring as I have done, you will find yourself mentioning this in cocktail parties conversations. And you will encounter a lot of people who are like, yeah, maybe you think there’s an explorer’s gene, but I hate exploring and I hate you. Well, not quite, but <laugh>, excuse me. But yeah, people have strong opinions about their own level of desire to explore. And there there is definitely some evidence that, um, the trait varies from person to person and across populations. There’s, evidence of, I’m sure, I’m sure, I’m sure there are many, many genes that contribute. One of the ones that’s been studied is a gene that in, it’s involved in how dopamine is processed in the brain.

Alex (33:14):
And, and what’s interesting is this, this gene is has also been associated with ADHD. So you can think of in some ways ADHD as being on the far end of a spectrum of not satisfied to stick around doing the same thing over and over again, needing to go out and, uh, explore the world, find out about things. And you can think about that as, as something that was very adaptive in some ways for hunter-gatherers to have people who were always wanting to know what’s around the next horizon. And always eager to, to, to check it out. So, um, there are variations within the population from person to person. It’s probably a good thing for human societies as a whole that you have some people who are more into pushing the limits and some people who are more into keeping the, the home fires burning.

Alex (34:05):
And there’s, there’s evidence that, um, within given populations, um, there there’ll be, it’s, so it’s like, it’s one of those traits where it’s benefit where evolution isn’t pushing us to, to always explore or to never explore. It’s pushing us to having a, a mix of behaviors. But I think the key caveat that I would add to that is that we all have the same wiring. We all have the same dopamine genes and things like that. There’s variations into, in, you know, who, who may be feeling that push more than than others, but we’re all wired in different ways. And so whether one person is like, sign me up for the mission to Mars, or I want to go to the ski, to the Antarctic and or another person isn’t, that has also a lot to do with risk tolerance and physical background and things like that.

Alex (34:59):
But I would say I would, I would bet that most people can think of some aspects of their lives in which they’re eager to explore, whether it’s, they like to cook different meals, they like to order different things in restaurants. They like to listen to new music rather than just listen to, most of us tend to get stuck in the, the music we hear between about 17 and 22. That’s what we want to hear for the rest of our lives. <laugh>, uh, there’s a British, you know, we, we find the songs we like and we, we settle in. But some people are still, you know, late in their lives just as eager to find new music or to read new books and to find experimental fiction or whatever. So exploring can mean a lot of different things that he, I’m not just talking about Christopher Columbus here. I’m talking about the desire to, to, uh, you know, do or think or taste something different than what you did yesterday.

Brad (35:50):
Yeah, that’s a great point. I love the clever subtitle, why we seek big challenges, new flavors and blank spots on the map. And then the picture of the cover, you can find it on Amazon now and pre-order it people is a gnarly dude out in the wilderness looking at a crevasse and going in snow capped peaks. But I think it is an important point where we need to reflect on what really lights us up. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be grueling physical challenge, hands and knees vomiting for 45 minutes after might be that you’re the person who’s, uh, constantly making new playlists. And it’s the, it’s, you know, it’s just as legit as, I guess is what I’m saying or asking.

Alex (36:30):
Yeah. And, and that reminds me, I didn’t ask answer the second part of your previous question, which is about the modern world. What, how, how does exploring fit into the modern world? Because, you know, most of us, like I I consider myself a pretty outdoorsy guy. I like to do a lot of backpacking and canoeing, but I’m not going anywhere that, you know, thousands of people haven’t been before <laugh> and

Brad (36:48):
All Trails you’re reading the reviews first kind of diminish a

Alex (36:53):
Bit. I’m checking the blog posts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the, it’s hard to find surpri. You know, I work pretty hard to try and find surprises in the natural world because it’s, it’s very, you know, I don’t wanna be stupid. So I prepare for these trips and then when, by preparing for them, I’m like, oh, I just read a, a blog of the, with pictures of the entire place. I didn’t even need to go. So, so, you know, back to this idea of the what is exploring in the modern world. To me it’s the big issue is not so much about, oh, there’s no more blank spots on the map, or there’s no more wilderness for me to discover. The issue is to what extent, we explore actively versus passively. And so I think, you know, it’s easy to beat up on social media these days, but I would say the, the role of social media and technology more generally personal technology is the sort of continuation of a trend where our feeling of exploring the, the exploring circuitry in our brains is getting tickled without us having to do anything.

Alex (37:50):
So we’re sitting there, we’re not deciding what we, you know, what’s interesting to us and what path we should follow in order to learn more about the world. We’re sitting there and letting the algorithm spoonfeed us <laugh> things that make us think, oh, yeah, that, that is a, I’ve never seen that funny video of a cat before. Yeah. Um, and, and you know, gosh, every time I log into social media, it’s like, it’s a fight because I realize, oh, that’s interesting, that’s interesting. And I start scrolling and it’s, and then after, you know, 10 minutes, I’m like, what am I doing? Like I didn’t have any active desire to do this. This was very passive and so active exploring doesn’t necessarily mean active in the sense that you’re climbing Mount Everest, but it’s active in that you have autonomy, you’re, you’re following your own interests.

Alex (38:33):
And so there’s two things about that. One is that if, if the underlying goal of exploration is that you’re learning about the world following your own interests, guides you towards the things you know least about, if you, your, your sense of curiosity, interest is the best gauge we have of like, where if, if, if you know everything about something, it’s not interesting. If you know nothing about something, it’s also not interesting. It’s like, you know, if, if you gave me a book in Swedish, it’s like, that’s, there’s a ton of unknown there. I don’t know what the book’s about. I don’t even know what its title means. I don’t even know what some of these letters are, but that’s not interesting ’cause I can’t decipher it. So you want this sweet spot of intermediate uncertainty and curiosity. Your, your, your active pursuit of what’s interesting to you is the best way of finding that sweet spot of where you can learn the most about the world.

Alex (39:23):
And there’s some pretty interesting, like neuroscience evidence that when you are actively deciding where to focus your attention or where you know what your decisions are, you learn things differently. You assimilate the information and encode it differently than if you’re shown exactly the same information. So if you have like one person choosing what to look at, and the other person being shown the same thing as the person who’s making the choices, the person who’s active learns more than the person who’s passive, even though they’re being fed the same information.

Brad (39:50):
Do you think that is now getting muted and, you know, suppressed because of the bombarding of digital stimulation and custom curated digital stimulation to boot?

Alex (40:05):
Yeah, I mean, I think that’s I definitely think that’s having an effect. I, I think maybe the most dangerous thing is that we may not feel that there’s a problem because we’re still being titillated by the stream of information. But if you look at, you know, there’s, there’s this well known effect, the Flynn effect where people’s, IQ scores, the scores have been gradually increasing for the last century or so. And there’s lots of debate over why that is, but what’s less known? There’s are a similar standardized test of creativity. And if you look at those tests, their scores start declining in the nineties Ooh. And for kids, and they crash, start crashing in. So circa, I think there was a recalibration of the test in around 2012, and they’ve gone dramatically down since then.

Alex (40:52):
So creativity is going down in creativity tests. And then if you look at, you can do analyses of like big data analysis of millions of patents or millions of scientific papers. And you can ask like, how many of these millions of papers are like breakthrough papers where they totally changed the network of knowledge where all of a sudden subsequent papers are gonna cite this paper ’cause it actually changed something. And the number of breakthrough papers and breakthrough patents and innovative patents is also decreasing over time. And, you know, this is complicated stuff. You could say, well, maybe we already know everything. But the same is actually kind of true when you look at stuff like at social science fields like history and political science where it’s less like, okay, it’s not that we know everything about history at this point, it, but it’s just like, there seems to be less innovation when you look at these big data sets.

Brad (41:41):
That’s pretty heavy. Um, I’m thinking of a joke. You ready?

Alex (41:46):
All right.

Brad (41:47):
Can you tell us why creativity is going down these days? I can’t think of any reasons. Yeah,

Alex (41:52):
I don’t know. Mercy. Let me look it up on, on, uh, TikTok.

Brad (41:55):
Yeah. Let, let’s, uh, ask Chat GPT why creativity is going down in modern life.

Alex (41:59):
Oh gosh, that’s,

Brad (41:59):
Oh, mercy,

Alex (42:00):
That’s a can of worms.

Brad (42:01):
Yeah. I’m also reflecting on that, you know, the dopamine driven human compelled to, you know, explore new continents. And now, uh, don’t we get the same payoff just from, uh, consuming digital stimulation and or announcing one’s intentions? Like, I’m gonna post on social media that it, it is my intention to write a new book. Um, after, uh, after reading Alex’s wonderful book, I’m gonna write a book about exploration as well, and it should be out in 2028. And so I, I send the post and I get the dopamine response from not only me announcing to the world, but getting all the feedback. You go, Brad, you got this man. And then the whole thing resolves without any book being submitted to the agent or publisher. That seems like, you know, a phenomenon these days.

Alex (42:57):
I think it is. I think it’s probably, uh, I, I have the feeling that that is an age old human problem that we’re more aware of. ’cause now, now people’s pronounce right now people’s announcements are more, are, uh, now

Brad (43:08):
We see thing, the big talker at the barber shop is saying that he’s gonna open up his own shop across the street, and he hasn’t yet. Yeah, yeah,

Alex (43:14):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, who, it would be interesting to know if that the trend has increased, but I feel like that’s a, that’s a human archetype. And, and it, it’s like a, it’s a danger. It’s so much fun to talk about something that, and then you get all the, like you said, you get the satisfaction. Um, and I certainly, I’m conscious of this danger in my own endeavors. I try to, I try to be careful about it because it, you know, I, and I mean, the reason I’m, the reason I’m sort of smiling about this is ’cause I, I’m talking with a friend about a possible book project and you’re doing what, I’ve been chatting with a friend about a possible book project, which is far in the future, but it’s like we’re having so much fun talking about it that it’s like, oh yeah, we actually need to sit down and get some words on paper. Like, it’s, it’s, it’s not, even though it’s fun to talk about it, it’ll be so much more fun if we do it.

Brad (44:06):
Yeah. Back to the writing process before we have another segue coming up people for Born to Walk. But, um, I find it’s so, uh, efficient these days to do research on the book and accumulating links and, and reading the studies and then, you know, preparing, pouring yourself another cup of coffee. And I find that lure or, or a trap, uh, being a writer like yourself where I’m not typing and cranking out this many thousands of words a day because I’m too immersed in research for my book that someday I’m gonna write after all this titillating research, you know, the smoke clears. And, uh, I feel like a lot of times I just back my way into it where I’ll write something just for the hell of it and then go look at research to see if what I’m saying makes sense. I don’t know if that resonates with you, probably not since you’re at the highest level of, of scrutiny and scientific rigor. But I just wonder how that process flows for you sometimes.

Alex (45:01):
Yeah. Well, not very well is the short answer. It does not flow. This, this book was a real struggle for me. Hmm. And, and part of it was because exploring is a big topic, right? Like you can, you can connect it to any number of other big topics, societal like topics about society, the decline of creativity talks about, you know, topics about personal development. And so the more I research, as you said, you know, you can, you can, I can call out papers from around the world at the, at the click of a, a button. Um, you know, every, every morning I’d wake up and be like, oh, that’s a cool line of research, man. I need to read, you know, 50 years of research on, you know, this, this particular subtopic. And so, look, it’s, it will have been seven years between Endure and the Explorer’s Gene, and the Explorer’s Gene did not, I mean, the Explorer’s Gene was, my draft was more than a year late to my publisher based on the, you know, the agreed upon deadline.

Alex (46:03):
And I didn’t end up submitting it. ’cause I was like, okay, thank God, I’ve, I’ve now read everything there is to know about the science of exploration, and I’ve now got all the answers. I finally had to just sort of realize, you know what, I need to write the book. Like, it’s, it’s not, it, it doesn’t answer all of humanity’s questions in the way that I hoped it would. And I hope this won’t dissuade anyone from buying it. But I’ve got some interesting things to say and I need to say them, because otherwise I’ll, you know, 10 years will pass and I’ll still be like, wait, there’s a little bit more. So, and this is a, this is a problem that would, you know, I wasn’t a writer 30 years ago, but, um, if I had to go to the library every time I wanted to read a new paper, I would probably be a lot more selective about how many papers I read, or especially if they had to be mailed by inter-library loan from Stockholm or something like that.

Alex (46:49):
So it’s a And, and, and you, to your point about sometimes you need to just sit down and write it. Yeah. My, my version of that is, um, when I’m caught in this loop, I will sit down and just sort of start typing with no capital letters. That’s my, that’s my signal to myself. Don’t worry, this isn’t gonna be published. This is not for, for anyone’s others’ consumption, just then to just see how things flow when you sit down and write. And often I’ll have been sitting for like four hours trying to write the first paragraph, and I’ll say, okay, turn off the capital letters. I’ll write a thousand words in, you know, 20 minutes. And then I’ll go back and turn it into, you know, like, as you said, double fact check, get, make sure that everything is coming out the way it’s supposed to be.

Alex (47:37):
And it’s amazing how little editing I sometimes do that. I, I’m going back, I’m adding capital letters and I’m fixing a little bit, but it’s like, it was all there in my head. It was just blocked. And so sometimes you need that. For me, the mental cue is no capital letters, then I’m not, I’m not sort of stressing that people are gonna not think this word choice was great, because I’ll fix the word choice later, but as it happens, I don’t need to, the word choice was fine once I, once you sit down and write it.

Brad (48:00):
That’s a hot tip, man. I love that

Alex (48:02):
Hot tip. Yeah. That’s gonna be my, my next bestseller, a one page on how to write <laugh>.

Brad (48:08):
Now it also makes me think of this recent phenomenon of how ai, uh, Chat GPT is going to take over and replace all the writers of the future. And I don’t engage with that very much. I’m not, I probably should, but I wonder how, this influences your life and also your thoughts on whether you would be replaced potentially as you, as you deliver this master work to the world. Um, will, will technology ever replace that magic touch That is what makes your book special and, and everyone else who, you know, prepares a, a popular book.

Alex (48:47):
Yeah. It’s a big, big, big, big topic with a lot of, um, you know, ethical, moral, and legal dimensions. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. I would say from a personal perspective, you know, when chat GPT came out, I down, you know, I went to the website and played around with a bit, and I thought, wow, it really does write good poems. But, and I have, I have some very tech forward friends who are constantly sharing with me ideas about, man, you need to try Google LLM, here’s, you know, here’s how it can consolidate your research and do this and do that. And I, I’ve tried to get interested, but I’m just not interested. And I, you know, I’ve done some introspection about it, and I, I just find my, you know, what I find interesting is not having written a book, I find I, I find it interesting, even as painful as the process of writing a book is I, I like doing the writing and the thinking and the synthesizing.

Alex (49:35):
That’s, that’s what I, that’s what I want to do. And will, will AI replace that some point down the road? I don’t know. Maybe. But until then, I just, my, my goal is not to be more productive. I, I don’t wanna write twice as many books, um, with half as much creativity or of my, of myself, go into them I’d rather, I’m able to have the luxury of, of sitting here writing books. And so that’s a pure that, you know, the reader may not care. I’m, I’m talking about what makes me happy and what makes me happy is reading these papers and just, and discovering like one paper leads to another, leads to some other research leads to in a book. And you’re like, oh, I never would’ve thought I would’ve ended up there if I just type typed in a prompt to AI.

Alex (50:23):
And so that process of discovery of exploration is, is what I enjoy. But there’s a lot of like, you know, should authors license their books to be training for, like, if, if, if an AI trains on the Explorer’s gene, well then it just be able to synthesize the key points in a way that’s even more digestible and no one will wanna read the book. That’s, I don’t have answers to that, but I’m hoping that it all happens slowly enough that I, that I’m long gone before it’s a, it’s a real worry, which is probably a overly optimistic view.

Brad (50:55):
Yeah, I mean, I guess it’s kind of comparable to the Cliff notes from the old days in college where they would, you know, just pull out the most important points that you might be examined on, and then you lose all the richness of reading the entire book as it as it came from you and your, your circuitous road and your, your research and putting the, putting the pieces together. So I guess that’s a good answer for now, <laugh>.

Alex (51:21):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, let me, let me be more cl state more clearly that I like to think that there is something uniquely human about being a human. Yeah. Um, but who knows? Who knows?

Brad (51:33):
We’ll see. Thank you so much for a great show. Thanks for listening and watching ,everybody. Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.