Chris Hemsworth reveals his Pepsi Zero Sugar preference over Coke’s, backed by a 2023 blind taste test where 66% favored it. His Limitless documentary—especially A Road Trip to Remember—highlighted Alzheimer’s reminiscence therapy and the power of social bonds in longevity, inspired by global "blue zones" like Okinawa. Facing his own APOE4 gene risk, he found deeper meaning in connection than cures. In Crime 101, a morally complex LA heist thriller, he explores broken families and systemic neglect through characters like his jewelry thief, while critiquing public education’s stagnation. Balancing privilege with outdoor parenting in Australia, he prioritizes experiential learning over traditional schooling, proving that purpose often emerges from vulnerability—not control. [Automatically generated summary]
Hey everybody, it's Theo Vaughn here, and I got a question.
When it comes to soda, are you really picking a zero sugar cola that you actually prefer?
Or are you just settling for what you've always had?
That's the question.
And I'll say this, when it comes to taste, I find that nothing beats Pepsi Zero Sugar.
But you don't just have to take my word for it.
That would be ridiculous.
Pepsi has been doing blind taste tests for years.
No labels, no brand names, just taste.
And last year, they brought back the Pepsi challenge, and the results were clear.
66% of people agreed and said that Pepsi Zero Sugar tastes better than Coca-Cola Zero Sugar.
In fact, Pepsi Zero Sugar won in every market they tested.
So if you're grabbing a zero sugar soda, go with the one people keep choosing when taste is the only thing that matters.
Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar today.
Let your taste decide.
Just a reminder that you can watch video versions of our episodes now on Spotify as well.
Today's guest is an actor.
He's a producer.
Aussie Life Adventures00:11:41
He's a life explorer, if you will.
He has a new film out that's called Crime 101.
It's in theaters right now.
You can go check it out.
I had a good time getting to know this Australian gentleman.
Today's guest is Mr. Chris Hemsworth.
Australians, I feel like they're more risque with their lives.
Yeah, there is a lack of, well, it's risk-averse due to either the lack of fear or the extra amount of stupidity at times.
Yeah.
It fluctuates.
It's a beautiful bravery, though, that they have, you know?
Yeah.
And even like when you travel, like one thing I remember from just traveling a lot was just seeing Australians everywhere.
They pop up in anything, any, you know, like you turn on a tap in another country.
Like, you know, you, you're pouring a beer and a couple of Australians just come out on surfboard.
It's kind of a boogie boy.
As an Australian, that's always problematic.
It's like you go to the country to get away from Australia and have a different cultural experience.
And it's, oh, good day, mate.
Yeah, I know you.
And the next minute, you're all at the bar together doing what you did back home.
Yeah.
Yeah, I could totally see that, man.
What does that nature come from in Australians to go?
Is that like a, because I mean, it's a serious thing that I think everyone would say is that you go anywhere and there's Australians there.
I think it's, you know, we're quite isolated where we are, you know, and for such a, we're a young country as far as the, you know, the white settlement being there, you know, in the last sort of 200 and so years.
And there's been always a sense of adventure either across the country itself or just the need to get out and explore.
Because again, it's not like, you know, if you're in Europe, you're, you know, jumping from France to Italy to London and you can have, you know, you know, different cultural experiences within, you know, a two-hour train ride.
For us, it's a big adventure, you know, pack a backpack and you're on several flights and buses and trains and boats and whatever.
And so there is an adventurous spirit, but I think all the guys I grew up with, it was like finish high school and go backpacking around the world.
So that's like a big thing where people are like, when they finish, so like when they finish high school, it's like, I'm going to get out of here.
I'm going to go experience something.
Is it almost taboo if you don't in a way that if you don't have like a?
No, I think it just comes from not having figured out what you want to do next.
You know?
And I like, I had probably 50-50 with my group of friends who knew what they were doing.
were going to, you know, a couple of them went into a trade and a couple of them went to university and then a couple of them were like, I've got no idea and maybe I'll find it in, you know, Peru or wherever I'm going to go backpacking and, you know, cross paths with folks that might inspire something else in me.
But yeah.
Did you do something like that?
I know you grew up like partially in the Outback and partially in Melbourne, right?
Yeah.
Grew up in Melbourne, then lived in Northern Territory in an Aboriginal community about four hours southeast of Catherine and like in the middle of nowhere.
And it was, that was my earliest, most vivid memories.
But that were there in the bush kind of?
Yeah, like there's an Aboriginal community, a bunch of Aboriginal communities in the region we lived in.
And I mean, all out through all across Northern Territory, but where we were, the proximity, there were sort of three or four communities that my dad worked, ran like a cattle station and then ran like a community center.
And I went up there when I was five or six and then came back to Melbourne.
And then again, when I was like seven, eight, nine, you know, so a couple of different times.
But as far as the backpacking thing, I started working when I was 18.
I ended up on a soap opera and then that kind of took me, you know, straight into what I'm doing now.
But I kind of missed that.
And I do look back and I was especially speaking to a lot of friends of mine that had this sort of crazy adventure prior also to being famous and prior to being recognized.
And you could just kind of get into a bunch of trouble and explore the world and, you know, make all those mistakes and hopefully learn something from them.
I feel like that period, I do, there's a romanticism that I sort of, or a nostalgia that I long for, that I wish I had done that prior to sort of, you know, jumping into the working world.
Yeah, it's one thing.
It's the downside of celebrity or popularity is that, yeah, there's things you can't kind of go do like in a, like, yeah, like sometimes I'll romanticize as well, like being like, oh, I'd like to go there or go there.
But then I'm like, it would be more uncomfortable now or it would be some type of way.
And did you do it after school?
Did you ever get a chance to travel?
Yeah, yeah.
I had a girlfriend.
We went over there and that was like a seven country fight we went on.
Oh man, I fought in so many territories.
Like, oh, man, I thought I was like working with Napoleon or something over there.
It was a lot of, oh, yeah, I should get a medal for that.
And so should she.
I'm going to say that.
What was the drama?
What was it coming from?
Just, I think you don't know how you are when it's like stressful out there when you're on trains and you're moving your bags all the time.
And we booked too many places to go see.
Like we should have done four days in each spot.
And we tried to do like two days, nine spots instead of do like four spots, five days.
And so you're just constantly on the go and you just, I would be sneaking off and just drinking wine by myself.
And then one night I took, I went off to the grocery bar myself and somebody had like a hit of LSD or something.
It was like probably a pretty, you know, nouveau grocery, I guess.
And because I mean, it wasn't on the shelves, but it was available in the parking lot, you know, which I consider an extension of the grocery.
But yeah, so then I came back there and I was like, I thought it would like boost my spirits.
And then it was just a long, that was horrible.
And that time we were like in a camping sort of environment where there were outhouses and stuff.
And so in what country?
That was outside of Venice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, but it was great, but it was just like, that was just a lot, you know.
Too much in.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But yeah, like going on that, doing something like that now, it would just feel like it would feel tougher.
And I'm sure, yeah, it's like you're Chris Hemsworth now.
So it's like, there's, you know, that name is bigger than you.
And so it's like.
It's interesting because I sort of at a point in my life where, I don't know if you find this, but every few years you're kind of, you know, what was the goal at one point quickly becomes a norm and then you're on to something else.
And then it's the sort of reassess of like what my purpose is around all the why as to doing this thing.
And I'm chasing it for one reason, then it for something else.
And I'm at that sort of point where I'd love to sort of step away on one hand and do a little sort of soul searching and dig a little deeper and sort of get a little more solitude and time for yourself.
But I think, what would that look like?
But does the idea that's romantic, that feels like in the reality, it's hard to like say, well, would I be okay in that flip?
Yeah, like I'm not going backpacking at 42 and not that I'm, you know, I've got three kids and then that's not my kind of full of all three of them.
But it was, but more just the kind of how do you, the way you see the world through when you are famous and recognized versus when you're not, you know, different things.
People interact differently to you, you know, for good and bad, but also the opportunities that sort of present themselves and the places you can kind of inhabit become a little limited, you know, in that sense.
But, you know, it's what it is.
Yeah.
The world's your oyster, but it's like, you know, it's this opportunity, but there's a restriction.
There is such a restriction to your, how much you can really involve yourself in it.
You know, it becomes very observational.
You know, we're going to press tour and we go to like 10 different countries and it's like, God, that must be amazing.
It's like, yeah, from the hotel room, you know, you're looking out.
And then, you know, if you're, there's posters and so on around the streets of your face everywhere, then it's even more difficult.
But it's, yeah, I, I, I, and not to say you can't navigate your way around it at times.
Right.
And we're not complaining, but no, it's an interesting look and that's, it's a good thought.
Yeah.
You can only, it becomes very observational.
Yeah, which, which, look, hey, is it not a negative either at times?
It's sort of.
It's what it is.
Yeah.
It's, I think of like popularity and stuff like that.
It's just interesting to be part of an experiment.
Like, okay, this is what it's like.
Yeah.
That's kind of how I now, like, okay, there's good parts, there's bad parts.
I don't think of it as me really as much as like, okay, I'm in this setting.
Yeah.
And this is the experience.
And it's also, it's like the sort of polarity of things.
Like every time you solve one problem, life has a way of presenting another challenge.
And not even a problem.
It's like in order to be able to evolve and growth, you know, the adversity that's shifted your way.
And I think that's the sort of the misconception, I suppose, is the assuming that this, that, and the other will, I'll be void of those problems.
It'll solve it all.
And so what comes with huge benefit, you know, in, you know, being like your recognizable personality and so on and fame and all that is incredible.
And it comes with its own things, as does in any industry.
I remember talking to my mum about this years ago.
She was a high school teacher and I was like, oh man, it's really tricky at work.
You know, they're cast and they're the producer and then does the film work in this?
And she said, yes, I could kind of, you know, line those things up parallel to my experience, you know, and the students might be my audience and the principal is the producer and so on.
And it's like, that's life.
That's the experience.
And I think I've gotten much better at sort of not, you know, egoically thinking that my experience is somehow separate, different or unique.
It's like whatever industry, whatever demographic, wherever you're born, you kind of life has a way of throwing you the same sort of options, I guess, to appreciate things in its truest form rather than sort of, you know, goal seeking or accumulating or whatever.
Yeah, the game doesn't really change.
It's like you don't think of like, oh, these problems are different.
It's just like, okay, now there's new things and that's just life.
There's not really like, yeah, I don't think that popularity or celebrity is an escape from truth of things, if you're realistic.
Yeah, for sure.
And there's certainly, you know, there's a sort of we've you see countless times again and again, the sort of, I guess the, not even the purity, but the sort of the motivation behind pursuing something, if it is for the assumption of it solving all the problems, like you, you know, get ready for a rude awakening.
And it's like, oh, shit, that didn't answer all the questions I had.
Or it did momentarily.
And then, you know, there's a new set the next morning.
And so kind of surrendering to that has been, I think, I think that's the, I'd say the, the gift in, in, I think experience any form of fame or sort of celebrity or whatever is it, you get to kind of see behind the curtain and you get to have that realization that from afar, most people are always going to be living with the assumption that it might bring you.
Way better behind the curtain.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Behind The Curtain00:14:09
You get behind the curtain.
I'm on the other side again.
You're back to the, I'm back in line.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You open the curtain, you realize it's just a mirror.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Exactly that.
Exactly that.
Yeah.
Hey, Zach, I'm getting a little bit of reverb.
I don't know if it's from the audio in the other room.
Have Chris pull his mic down just a hair.
Oh, down a bit.
Perfect.
It's up my nose now, isn't it?
Yeah, we want to see your face, dude, because this is, you know what I'm saying?
That's what people want to see.
You know what I'm saying?
God, dang, dude.
Yeah, you're freaking looks maxing or whatever they call it.
You know, it's got to be crazy just being so handsome sometimes, dude.
I bet your mirror, whenever it sees you, it's like, oh, yeah.
I bet your mirror makes a positive sound, you know?
Look, man, does anyone yay at all?
Sorry.
No, no, no, just the two of us in a room alone.
It's fine.
I feel like whatever, dude.
No, I appreciate the confidence with some tips on it.
You're a handsome fella, too, mate.
I don't know, dude.
I'm side of the road handsome.
Like, if people are going by at like 50 miles an hour, they're like, hey, I think that guy was okay looking.
I'm sitting right next to you and I'm admiring what I see, mate.
I'm a hitchhiker handsome.
I'd be thankful if you were hitchhiking.
You would?
Absolutely.
Really?
You can't even hitchhike in America anymore because, like, I think either the people picking up hitchhikers were, like, killing the hitchhikers or the hitchhikers were killing the people.
Really?
That became like a real...
You say Wolf Creek?
Yes.
Some years ago?
Yeah.
I think that kind of ended hitchhiking in Australia for a good decade or two.
Yeah, dude.
Do motion pictures realize that they, just one motion picture about something ruins the ability to get somewhere across a continent?
That ruined hitchhiking and yours ruined the whole ocean experience.
Oh, God, yeah.
I had on hitchhiking.
I was in Vancouver once.
I was shooting a movie there like 15 years ago and driving back from Whistler.
And it was like seven, eight o'clock at night and picked up a hitchhiker and thought, oh, it goes so good.
And it started to get real sort of creepy and starts kind of asking me like, what are you doing?
Where are you from?
And what are you up to?
And like getting a little too sort of personal and where are you staying and whatever.
And so I immediately start kind of, you know, filling in sort of, yeah, I just do a heap of martial arts and, you know, a lot of jiu-jitsu and a big background in boxing and, you know, telling like fight stories and seeing if that's going to sort of like sway the thing.
And thankfully nothing happened, but it was that like moment where you're sizing each other up going, well, this, I don't know anything about you and you don't know anything about me.
And we could be.
How does this go?
Yeah.
Like, how does this story end?
You start thinking, yeah, how does this story end and what role am I going to play in?
Yeah.
I'll use a knife or gun or whatever.
Yeah, that is one thing that is nice I would say about picking up hitchhikers.
I've picked up a fair share over the years and it's really like, okay, let's see what God wants for me today.
Yeah, sure.
Mark Rofflo, we're at a music festival in Australia and just such a lovely human being and picked up a couple of trikers.
And then next day I spoke to him and he goes, I got back like 7 a.m. and I was like, you left at like 2.
And he's like, yeah, but I picked up these young kids and they were like, you know, 18-year-old, nine-year-old kids.
And they were like, yeah, we're going in that direction.
And I didn't have the heart to tell him I was going the other direction.
So I ended up going this like four-hour detour.
That's big-hearted.
That's a ruffle.
Yeah.
I mean, that's also insane to be driving with children that far.
That seems very different.
18-year-old, nine-year-old, from a festival.
They say kids.
They're sort of young folk.
Schoolies, they call them, eh?
Yeah.
They are schoolies.
And then the toolies are the older ones hanging around, which are the older age kind of creeps that are hanging around.
Oh, they call them toolies.
Oh, that's good.
Oh, yeah.
Because they should have a trade by that point.
They should have a job and not be hanging around 18-year-olds.
Yeah, pick up a hammer.
You know, do something.
Was there kind of a point where you started to like, I think it's interesting what you said about, you know, you get to certain moments and you kind of like, you're like, okay, what's going on now?
It's kind of like you're in life.
A lot of times it does feel like that.
And recently, I think it's been like that for me, where it's like, I feel like you're underwater for a long time.
And not in a bad way or anything.
You're just, you're in the mix of life and you're doing things.
And then you get to a point, you're like, okay, let me come up and see what's going on.
And why am I, why, like, what goals did I set?
And where am I now?
And then where do I want to be next?
Or what things are important to me now, you know, or like how I, you know, what strokes do I want to use next in my life to get me to where I want to be at the next checkpoint, sort of.
For sure.
Yeah.
And I feel.
Has it been like kind of a recent thing that's been going on earlier?
Definitely, definitely.
Yeah.
This book called The Middle Passage, which is, you know, a gentler term for a midlife crisis.
Yes.
Like James Hollis.
And it's Jungian psychology and it's beautiful because it talks about the sort of personification of self and this gathering of our identity as children and due to our family bonds and ties, societal expectations.
It could be religious, community, whatever.
And you go through life attempting to present what you think the world wants from you.
Some of it you may have some input in as far as what you want, but a lot of it is kind of an assembling to fit in.
And then you get to this certain point, usually around your 30s, 40s, where that mask, that personification starts to wear thin and doesn't hold up.
And there's this inner protest.
And Jung talks about from the soul of the psyche rises up and says, there's a deeper truth here and a meaning.
And what is it?
And what is my contribution?
And it usually comes around like when it or people find themselves in a place of servitude to something outside of themselves, you know, and it's like you service yourself for so long and as a sort of survival and to maintain a position in the workforce and so on.
And then all of a sudden it's like there's something deeper that I haven't answered.
And your purpose even shifts around like the why for doing things, you know, like it might purely be, you know, saying this before, but the sort of purity around your motivations and, you know, what is what is your, what is your heart saying?
What is your passion?
That's all very well, but you've got to pay the bills.
And so to be sort of financially motivated for a purity of your life and to take care of folks and family and so on, one thing.
And then, okay, that's sort of now that's in a safe place.
And what's the next thing?
And I think if you're lucky enough to find that thing that speaks to you on a sort of a deeper level, but also allows you to function and operate in the world and be sort of financially secure, then great.
But I sort of find myself bouncing around with those questions a lot more than I ever have.
And a lot more sort of indecision.
And a lot more, I had this sort of not naive, but pretty strong sort of relentless confidence and pursuit when everything I was doing and I was going to, and it was when things were as far out of reach as possible.
Same.
And that's what I had.
All of a sudden, you sort of arrive and you have these things that were going to bring you all of that fulfillment.
And they do momentarily.
And then you start to come up short.
You're like, God, what is it?
There's this other sort of burning desire or voice that requires attention.
And that is around, I think, solitude and sort of a slight separation from the busyness of sort of life and work and all the trappings to answer some of those questions.
And none of, I haven't come to any sort of finite conclusion, but I find the more I enjoy the mystery of that question and the seeking and the adventure and the path that that takes you on, then without an attachment to an outcome, I found myself a lot happier.
The better off you are.
Yeah, and a lot more at peace with the ebb and flow and things, however rapid that pendulum may be swinging.
Yeah, I want to know.
That's the thing.
Sometimes I just want to know and I want to know now and I want to know like sometimes for my own safety, it's like, yeah, because I don't want to be in limbo, you know, but yeah, I think having that space of like, yeah, what of embracing the, okay, I don't know right now.
Yeah.
And may, and that's okay.
And that is what is going on.
Yeah.
And let me enjoy this somehow.
And living in the questions, not the answers.
You know, there's sort of, I think that there's a danger in definitives.
You know, there's a sort of almost a lack of humility in that too.
And this is where all of our sort of problems arise is my voice is correct and yours is incorrect and mine versus yours.
But allowing there to be mystery questions, curiosity.
And I think then there's an abundance of opportunity to learn, the new things start to come your way.
Whereas soon as I kind of go, I've got it.
I've figured it out.
And I put it in a box or myself or other people or scenarios, the world just obliterates that immediately.
And then you're left with that disappointment.
And it's that expectation that I'm going to figure it out is I think, is I think that the trapping, you know, and so, but there takes real courage and bravery in the surrendering to that and the willingness just to go, wow, this sort of, you know, universal kind of cosmic dance or this adventure we're on is supposed to be fun.
And the sort of the most serious thing you can do is not take it serious, you know?
And I find myself, the polarity of things coming back to this all the time, going, okay, but what does that mean?
And then there's that brief sort of moment of stillness of, I don't know.
And it's just being okay with the, I don't know.
Yeah, dude.
So a lot of times, like, yeah, like when it comes to like feeling just kind of in the world and in between spaces and uncertain, it's almost like, you know, when you're a kid and you run and you want to get your foot on the base?
Yeah.
It's like, that's how I want to, I want to have my foot on a base.
I want to have something that feels like it's certain or at least like it's certain for like as a kid waiting on, like I just want to know.
I just want to know that's where I have to be.
As opposed to being like, I'm going to stand here while the third baseman and the shortstop throw the ball back and forth.
And I'm going to be the guy in the middle and I'm going to enjoy that.
Because the truth is, as a viewer, and I'm just using like baseball analogy, the best part of the viewing is you start to smile when that guy is in between the second and third baseman and they're throwing the ball and you're like, how's this going to go?
Yeah, for sure.
That's really where the most joy kind of, and that's the anticipation, the mystery, the sort of immersion in the adventure.
And it's like, you know, this is why we pick up books and we want to flick to the end.
We want to know what the end is.
And same with life.
And then you get to the end and you're like, oh, geez, actually, it was all the tropey things you've heard before that, you know, the journey, not the destination, so on.
And I think that and I wrestle with that all the time.
And then, but I've gotten better with understanding that I might have a handle on it today and I won't tomorrow.
Got it.
And that's okay, you know, as opposed to kind of just needing that definitive, like, what is it about?
But I mean, if we, if we knew, if there was, you know, the reason we, you know, that the sort of understanding of our own mortality is what allows us to appreciate and love things, you know, without a sort of conclusion at some point and an end to it, there wouldn't be.
We wouldn't even know what we wouldn't appreciate anything.
Right.
What would life be then?
Yeah, you don't know love without loss.
And so, yet we spend so much time trying to either figure out the answer or avoid suffering, yet, you know, the joy and the love and the loss is one of the same thing.
And without this, you know, and dang, dude.
But it's kind of, I do riddles with myself around it.
And I don't know about you, but I was a kid at nighttime that would kind of be sitting there going, what does the end of life look like?
And if it's just blackness, if it's nothing, can I still think in the nothing or is it like nothing, nothing?
Am I, you know, that's sort of.
Yeah, do I have any toys in the nothing?
Am I able to like talk to someone still or is it just like is there a lunchable?
You know, like, yeah, like, tell me, just tell me that the nothing is lunchable, dude.
Yeah.
Dude, that's crazy, bro.
I'm realizing that you're like a smart guy stuck in a good-looking guy.
You're not like a good-looking guy that's just like, you know, sorry.
And that's a judgment, dude.
No, you know, sorry.
That was just a good judgment.
I love questions.
Yeah, that's a good way to be, man.
I just, yeah, sometimes I want to be at the end of the sentence so I feel safe, you know.
Yeah.
I just want to like, uh, it gets scary.
I was just talking with, we just had Kevin James on, and we were talking about like, even like, like, if especially if I'm in a relationship or like with women or even just sometimes with buddy and stuff, I will, if there's quiet downtime, if it's silent, I'll just start being like, what else is going on?
Like, I'll have to fill it in.
You know, it's like I won't, I, it's hard for me to leave the opportunity for something different to bloom.
But then I crave there to be like whimsy and unique experiences and stuff like that.
So I think this conversation is neat just to even have a thought about that because I think even just talking about this will be a reminder of like next time I'm in some of those moments, like, let me just see what happens here.
Yeah.
You know, yeah.
Do you ever read anything about Ellen Watts?
I hear a lot of his like audio and stuff.
My mom always sends it to me.
It's this beautiful thing about love and about the idea of like falling in love, the absurdity of falling.
Moon Pay and Longevity00:02:47
And he said it's, you know, people say, oh, it's crazy to fall in love, but how, but, but the act of falling is a risk in itself and a surrender.
You don't say rising to love.
And so anything that's worth pursuing, that has, you know, that brings comfort and love and joy and whatever, there is an act of surrender that occurs at some point.
And that, again, in the sort of being okay with the unknown, that gives me sort of comfort.
That's something.
That's a good point, dude.
Yeah, it's falling.
It's like you don't rise to love, you fall to love.
I think it's a beautiful quote.
And if you fall pretty far, you'll end up in some weird space.
And you've also fallen some pretty tragic faces.
And climb into some other ones.
You're in Amsterdam suddenly, you know.
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Trade responsibly.
When you get to places where you are trying to find more time for peace, I know you had the documentary you did called Limitless.
Yeah.
And I know you have your new movie Crime 101, and we'll want to talk about some of that.
Stress and Blue Zones00:13:35
I watched it last night.
Oh, cool.
But yeah, was there stuff that you learned?
Because Limitless is about you kind of experiencing different things to challenge yourself.
Is that a good thing to say?
Yeah, I've done two seasons of it, and then I did an individual episode with my dad, but it was a show about longevity and the science of longevity.
In the first season, I was very much the guinea pig in the name of science.
And I would be thrown into, you know, like an episode on cold water exposure.
Let's show the benefits.
And you can swim in the Arctic, you know, for five minutes and, you know, try and survive.
Or you can, you know, the benefits of muscle mass for the brain.
And we'll do a strength episode.
So climb a 200-meter damn wall.
And so it was all these kind of, you know, pretty extreme examples of representing the science we were talking about.
The second season, I had a bit more agency with, and it was great.
And I was less of a guinea pig, and I had a bit more of a sort of educated opinion around each topic.
But I wouldn't say I set out to do it for, I didn't know.
It just sort of came my way and sounded like a fun thing to do.
Yeah, it seems really interesting to go through those moments and just like almost have a buffet of things.
You're like, I'm going to try these and see what it's like.
What was one of your biggest takeaways from it, like as a practice for yourself?
If there were any, or was there enough of an experience there even to have a like was it too much of a production to take off?
Oh, no, there was a lot.
A profound effect on me, especially this second season.
The first season without me realizing what was occurring.
Like there was all the obvious things about, you know, strength training and, you know, cognitive health and cold water, hot exposure, you know, fasting and so on.
But the episode I did with my dad called A Road Trip to Remember was the most profound one because he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's about four or five years ago.
And he was genetically predisposed to it, right?
Yeah.
Me and your mum.
Yeah, and that's how we found out because I did my blood work on that show and found out that I had two copies of the APOE4 gene, which is you get a copy from your mum, a copy from your dad, either a two or three.
Did they both give you a copy?
They both gave me a copy, but they both gave me the worst copy, which was before, which meant I was a 4-4, which is like one in, I think, a thousand people have.
But they, so I remember being with my dad and telling him about it and going, oh, I don't know if this is a kind of a, you know, it's not a death sentence.
It's not a predeterministic gene, but it's like a big warning sign.
And he said, oh, don't worry, mate.
We'll figure it out.
Yeah.
And how many times am I going to have to tell him about it if he's supposed to allow me to do it?
But we didn't know he was.
And then five years later, he got diagnosed.
And I remember sitting there telling him, don't worry, dad, we'll figure it out.
And so we went on this journey, it's called a road trip to remember.
It's this thing called reminiscence therapy where you go back into your past, stimulate memories and experiences to stimulate the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that dementia is attacking.
Oh, dang, your dad's Joe Biden.
Crazy, dude.
But we're spending time with him.
It was kind of a love letter to him.
And it's not, you know, I was kind of hoping for a silver bullet to fix it, but it became more about connection.
It became more about the things I got to say to him and ask him about his concerns and fears around the disease.
I probably wouldn't have asked him otherwise.
And so it forced this kind of really beautiful, intimate series of conversations and gave him some agency, I think, because they begin to feel like they're a patient or they're a burden, you know, and all of a sudden this was about him.
And I did.
I watched the shift and the big one being social connection.
The most important thing I took away from both of those seasons was support group friendships and connection.
And the people in blue zones, you know, where people live over 100 or the most centurions in the population within regions around the world, the commonality is having a wonderful sense of community and a wonderful support network.
And then whether or not they drank alcohol or smoked or whatever, it was like the lack of or the reduction in stress due to support networks and friendships.
Well, yeah, they say that in recovery too, I'm in a lot of recovery communities and they say that connection is the opposite of addiction.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
The connection.
It's like, I mean, I was in a meeting this morning, like a Zoom meeting, and it's like, yeah, I'm sitting there just listening to guys share what's going on with them that's real.
And some of them say things that I've always wanted to say and I didn't know I could, but I couldn't make the words.
And then they made the words for me.
And so there's a part of me that like starts to feel like, okay, that's not a crazy pieces of a thought that you've had.
That's a real thing and somebody else has put it together for you.
But yeah, just being able to connect, they say, is the opposite of addiction.
Bring that back up the blue zones.
I've never heard of this.
It's where there's the most amount of people who have lived to be 100, yeah.
And I think there's like Japan, somewhere in Italy.
Yeah, we got Okinawa, Japan.
Yeah.
Icaria, Greece, Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, and that's Costa Rica.
And Loma Linda.
But hold on, there's none over by Australia.
You guys didn't get one?
Yeah, I don't know if they skipped us.
Probably because of the dangerous species.
All the things are trying to kill us.
Yeah.
Or we're too busy backpacking to the places you do.
You guys are too busy over there making people happy in those places, probably.
Blue zones are regions of the world where people have unusually long and healthy lives.
The many residents reaching age 90 to 100 while staying relatively free of major chronic disease researchers use blue zone to describe geographically limited areas where rates of centenarians are far higher than expected and older adults remain active and independent.
That's a huge thing, that they remain active and independent.
Still working as well, like still having some form of purpose.
Right.
Purpose is huge.
We talk about that all the time in here.
Yeah.
That if people lose their purpose, then what do we have?
Do you ever read Man's Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl?
I have read that.
That's, you know, the purposeful suffering, he calls it, but watching people in, you know, when he was in the prison camp in Auswich, how, because he was a psychoanalyst or a therapist, and he went in and people all under the same horrific circumstances, environment, and why some people's body would give up and others wouldn't.
And it was often when they found out that a loved one or family had been killed or died, they then their spirit, their soul, their body gave up.
And so he produced logotherapy, which is about sort of giving a purpose behind whatever adversity you're facing and giving a sense of meaning to whatever the suffering is you're going through.
But again, with the centurions, people who not retiring, basically.
And that doesn't mean work yourself in.
There's a difference between working yourself into the grave, but also, you know, the work could be you have a garden to maintain.
Yeah, you have grandchildren to keep tabs on.
You have a trip to plan.
You're helping with one of your children's activities.
Yeah, I think that a lot with my own mom.
As she gets older, it's like, you know, I want her to be free of things.
If she doesn't want to work, she likes to work.
She delivers for Amazon and stuff.
She just loves it.
She's like, you know, I'll call her and she's like, oh, I'm just sitting in the lot, or she'll deliver for like Whole Foods, different just kind of chain places or something.
She's like, I'm just sitting here in the lot just waiting for a route or whatever.
And I just, I just pitch her in her van.
She's just sitting there.
She's 70-something and she's just waiting to deliver a catalytic converter to some guy across town.
Thank you for bringing this up.
This is so fascinating.
I want to list off some of these just so we can that people know some of the things from these blue zones.
Despite very different cultures, blue zones share several recurring features.
Natural movement, lots of walking, gardening, and manual chores built into daily life.
Plant-based diet, high in vegetables, beans, and whole grains.
Strong social ties, like we were talking about, multi-generational living.
So probably having your family members around you.
Tara Swart was in.
She's a neuroscientist.
She's an author.
She's a fascinating lady.
And she was saying that when you feel the best, a lot of people that feel the best, when you have the best feeling at home is when there's a lot of people in the home.
When there's just like multi-generations, and that those families often get the best sleep because it's just like there's a connectivity going on.
Low chronic stress, just a few more of these blue zone common lifestyle patterns.
A clear sense of purpose and generally optimistic, engaged attitudes.
In light, regular alcohol or none.
In some places, people drink small amounts of wine.
In other places, they avoid it entirely.
Like in Sardini, Italy, you'll see a dang six-year-old out there drinking.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I mean, that's the thing.
It's a lot like a, it's like, Oh, I'll have a Chardonnay and some Peppa Pig, you know?
It's like, you'll see a five-year-old on his tablet ordering a damn Cabernet.
I know.
It's like, it can't all be bad.
Yeah.
Well, I think this is just proof that there's ways to do it, right?
And that this is document.
This is like data that shows that there's ways to have a life that's the most comfortable if you can.
Because it's sort of, it's like these sort of, you know, stress being the biggest killer and, you know, the cause of chronic disease and so on.
Stress, I find like the amount of stress involved in the idea of achieving perfection or doing things perfectly, you know?
And I get asked all the time about like, you know, you must, you know, never eat sugar or never drink alcohol or train seven days a week and so on.
And it's like, oh, periods where I've gone into the extreme realm, but they're not when I've been my happiest or my healthiest.
Like, what do you do when a birthday cake comes?
Smash it.
I love a birthday.
What are you supposed to be that weirdo?
Yeah, no, yeah.
What kind of life is that?
You're not going to enjoy all the sort of, you know, the.
Yeah, what do you do when a freaking, like, yeah, because I'll do low sugar, you know, I don't do no sugar, really.
But sometimes if a birthday cake comes, dude, what are you going to be?
Some guy just over there just calving up a cucumber.
Who am I going to, you know what I'm saying?
Some dude over there just sneaking a carrot out of his pocket.
Just a little crude d'ete in the corner.
A little bit of icing.
And that's not creepier to the kids at the people at the party is you're over there.
Do you tell me that guy's not stressed?
That's a huge amount of stress involved and just smuggling that carrot into the party and then having to explain it.
Yeah.
Showing up at his birthday party with a couple carrots in your pocket is way more stressful.
And you're right, dude.
And there's a different stress of being the person who's sneakily eating crude, as you called it, as other people are enjoying a birthday cake.
That is a different type of life.
How many people do you meet who are, you know, it's often with your grandparents and they smoked cigarettes and drank alcohol and ate steak and eggs every day and they're living to 90, 100.
But again, just, and again, I'm not saying any of that is the, you know, here's my top 10 tips to live longer.
But I think that that was in a time when you did have more family members in the house.
If you just said, like grandparents, cousins, everyone lived in these sort of smaller communities.
And we're also spread out now.
And I don't know about you, but like the, in the last sort of five, 10 years, worked really hard to bring my family kind of closer and closer.
And we all live in the same area for that reason, because it's, I think a lot of us grew up, or definitely through history, we grew up with bigger households with, you know, shared responsibility.
And now you have these little secular sort of, you know, houses where you don't even know your neighbors and your grandparents live somewhere else.
It feels good when your family's around in a way.
You know what?
There's layers to life then, I think, when they're around.
Like there's nothing better than when you're feeling horrible and sad about yourself to be able to look across the room and look in one of your parents' eyes and be like, this is your fault.
Yeah.
And you can't do that if you're at home by yourself.
You can't blame anyone if you're sitting there looking in the mirror, you know, and then you're like, your fault.
That doesn't work.
Yeah.
And I think maybe we're going to be getting back towards that.
And we may not have a choice just because of like the cost of living and things like that.
But my niece just moved in back in with my sister.
Like, I don't know, and things like that, I think it's kind of nice.
Like there is something that's fun about not about feeling like a part of something, even if you're like kind of a curmudgeon about it.
Like, oh, I live back at home, but good for you.
Good for you.
Absolutely.
There's plenty of time to sort of live on your own.
Good for you.
And to get to see your stepdad's nuts hanging out of his freaking under shorts once a year.
Once a year or once a week even, what a joy.
Yeah, dude.
The fucking Lord's mistletoe.
That's the best, brother.
With your father, how is he doing today?
He's good.
Look, compared to there are a couple of other family members and close by folks that were going through or had the same diagnosis around the same time who were in a sort of catatonic vegetable state.
He's, you know, you could sit here with us and talk to us and you might not even know, you know, and you spend enough time and it's the short-term memories.
And then it's the wrong kind of stress that then is really evident, you know?
Like stress for him training in the gym and so on and solving a crossword puzzle, great.
Algorithms And Memory Loss00:16:09
But like not finding his keys and then, you know, losing things and then beating himself up about it.
Oh, yeah.
Then they'll watch his memory go really bad.
Wow.
So stress is such a big activator.
Oh, it's huge.
Yeah.
He went down there.
He rides motorbikes and used to race motorbikes and went down to put some gas in the petrol tank and then it wouldn't start.
And so mum came, picked him up, went back home, he got home and he said, yeah, I needed the key.
And she's like, no, no, no, I just didn't start.
And, you know, he got the spare key, went back down, didn't start again.
He's like, and he did that three times through the day.
By the time I was at work, I got home and I went and I said, look, I'll just come pick him up, pick the bike up.
I put the bike on the back of the car and he was like, all right, we're going to your place to get my car, aren't we?
And I said, no, they were taking your bike home.
And he's like, what bike?
And he had like twice in this 10-minute drive, turn around and see the bike in the back of the truck.
And that was as strong as I've seen it and as sort of confronting as it's been.
But then the next day, once that problem had been solved, he could sort of, there was a calm and it was better.
But he's doing good, man.
What's his name?
Yeah, Craig.
Hey, Craig.
What's up, Craig?
Yeah.
Cheers from the U.S., mate.
Yeah, he's a legend.
Good day, sir.
And what's his trade been his life?
He was a cattleman.
Well, no, he worked for he worked in child protection for most of his career.
And then when we went to Northern Territory and he mustered cattle, that was just for just a window.
Trying something different.
Trying something different.
Mad family up there who were doing it.
And in the documentary, we end up back in the Aboriginal community we lived in.
And the couple of the guys, they called him, he's a Chuck Norris looking motherfucker because he had this long ponytail and he would like, you know, pull cattle down by the tail and tie them up.
I love a male Rapunzel.
There's nothing I love more, brother.
Oh, that's beautiful, dude.
And child protection, what exactly is that?
Yeah, he would children who were, you know, neglect, family violence, abuse, go into the home and basically have to, you know, assess the situation, present evidence to a court, talk to the police department and work out, you know, what should happen and is this child in a safe position?
Oh, wow.
And huge responsibility.
And, you know, watch the toll that took on him over the years when he just couldn't.
There were certain things we wasn't able to fix, you know, and it was, and you do one, you solve one thing and feel like you have momentum.
And then the next day there's, you know, a big pile of other cases on the desk.
But very much in service to others and has always been fiercely protective of kids.
There's this sort of angelic sort of quality to his integrity.
He's ready and willing.
Look, I bet we could get him 30% of the vote right now in America to be our next president.
If we have somebody that's protective of children here, we'll take it, man.
And thank you for your service, Craig.
I think that stuff like that is so important.
You know, thinking about the well-being of children, I think there's nothing that's more, it's like the purest thing that exists in the world.
Absolutely.
And so thank you for your service.
We appreciate that.
They just had a ban for social media, was it?
Or cell phones in Australia?
Yeah, I think we're the first country in the world that has had kids from 16 and under.
Yeah, Australia has banned social media for kids under 16.
How does it work?
Under 16s in Australia have been banned from using major social media services, including TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat, and Threads.
Thread sucks.
They cannot set up new accounts and their existing profiles were deactivated.
Wow.
I wonder if they all had like a D-Day when they were all like gathered around a fire.
Something are they all now like re-entering different ages?
I mean, I don't know to what, I mean, I think it's a fantastic thing.
And the idea of it seems perfect.
Yeah.
And its execution, I hope there's, you know, there's a positive sort of navigation through it because I'm sure, you know, my kids, I change a passcode in the phone or whatever, and they figure out shit in seconds.
They're like little genius hackers with all of it.
But we try and keep them off it as much as possible.
Yeah, but also your passcode is often like handsome guy 4,000.
That's it.
So it's the obvious one, you know?
So exceptionally gorge male, seven.
Aren't I lucky?
You're special too.
Yeah, I mean, hopefully this takes off around the world.
I don't know.
I'm going to see what this says here.
Australia's government said the ban would reduce the negative impact of social media's design features that encourage young people to spend more time on screens while also serving up content that can harm their health and well-being.
I don't know any human that would disagree with that.
A study it commissioned in 2025 found that 96% of children ages 10 to 15 use social media and that seven out of 10 of them had been exposed to harmful content.
This includes misogynistic and violent material as well as content promoting eating disorders and suicide.
Yeah, I'm curious.
What, yeah, can you look up on, and this is perplexity that we use to look things up?
Large studies of more than 100,000 young adults find that each year of smartphone ownership before age 13 is associated with higher rates of depression-like symptoms, suicidal thoughts, aggression, and detachment.
Detachment for sure.
I mean, and to feel detached when you're already like in a place where you're growing and it's like your footing is uncertain.
Girls show particularly big drops in emotional resilience and self-esteem.
Cyberbullying and harassment, phones and apps mean bullying, can follow kids home, which raises risks of depression, anxiety, and self-harm.
Sleep disruption, big one.
Yeah, sleep disruption and body image and comparison.
Man, well, cheers to you guys for like leading the charger.
I think Spain just followed suit.
Is that right?
Oh, really?
It's where my wife's from.
Oh, is it?
Yeah.
Spanish lady, huh?
Yep.
Yep.
Fiery.
Fiery is your wife's name.
Fiery.
No, I said fiery.
She's fiery.
She's fiery energy.
Oh, yeah.
Elsa is her name.
Yeah.
Elsa, like the movie.
Yeah, frozen.
As of February 26th, Spain has announced to ban social media access for children under 16.
I don't know if we would ever do it here because I think we look at our children more as okay to be victims of marketing and capitalism, whereas in other countries, they maybe they don't.
I'm glad that Australia is doing this.
Do you feel like it would take some getting used to?
There will be this group that has to be the one that loses it.
And then there will have to be the younger siblings of them that are like, oh, I wish we had it.
But if you could get it to go for like a generation, I think it would really play into something beautiful.
100%.
It's even like, you know, we were probably, I don't know, like maybe when the phone first came on, like, how old are you?
I'm 45.
45.
So I'm going to have diet.
We were kind of the guinea pigs for it in a way.
You know, like, I remember getting the phone and it wasn't.
For social media, yeah.
Yeah, just and all of it.
And then you look at, and so you, but we had enough awareness of what came before.
Like coming up now and only knowing that that's, that, that exists.
And every time I try and tell my kids, like, that's science around it, they're like, oh, shut up.
You know, and there's, there's just no, there's no comparison for them, you know, whereas we knew the comparison.
We knew the comparison.
We knew the possibility.
And we're still doing it.
And we're still ending up depressed.
And, you know, I don't know about you, but I've been off of TikTok for a while.
Yeah.
And I'm feeling better, man.
Yeah.
And the algorithm.
Oh, yeah.
There should be a, I've always thought there should be able to be like legal recourse against an algorithm because you're creating a system like a vitro for me to then go, and now it's just my responsibility.
I'm nine minutes on, I hate a group, and now I'm just back out into the world.
But also, that algorithm is created off a question.
It's not created off an opinion.
It's, I might have curiosity or ask a question about this particular thing, and it goes, oh, that's it.
And now you're on that down that lane.
And that's the danger is it's it's making up your conclusion.
You know, there's giving you the definitive sort of this is how you now should vote or this is why you should be opinionated or this is who you should like or dislike based upon human curiosity.
You know, you like you might not be, you know, one political party supported, but you're having a look at it.
Next minute, that's all you're seeing.
Yeah, you know, you're fully on board.
It takes you from curious to conviction.
And it takes you there.
You're right.
In the beginning, I'm just like, oh, I'm curious about this.
But then suddenly four of your next seven videos are about it.
And you're like, now I have some sort of a conviction.
Complete biased opinion about it.
And they can even serve.
It's almost like, here's the next stair step.
Here's the next stair step.
Like they can do, you know.
You're right, though.
There should be like at bare minimum, they're not allowed to create an algorithm that encourages one thing.
It should be, you have to continue to put that search in the search engine as opposed to it going, this is all we're feeding you now.
Because it's all perspective.
It's like your version of, you know, one thing or my version of that is all around what I've been exposed to.
There's no kind of right and wrong in it.
It's like whatever education that I've been fed by, this fucking machine in my hand.
And on X, they have people killing each other.
That's insane.
No, I mean, my kids were talking about certain horrific events and so on.
I was like, where the hell did you see that?
And there's nothing to stop it.
Oh, dude.
Well, the craziest part is the other night I wake up.
For some reason, I'm like, you know, I'm obviously lonesome or whatever, but so I'm like on X or whatever.
It's like 3.15 in the morning.
I don't even know why I'm on there.
I see two people get shot outside of a Wendy's, right?
And they don't even show you if people, if EMTs come, they don't show you that part.
It's just two people shot outside of a Wendy's, right?
And then the next thing is an advertisement for Wendy's.
And I'm like, now I'm hungry.
I don't even care about the, it's like, I forgot.
Yeah.
Oh, it's fucking, it's insane.
And I'm like, well, do I need two bags of platelets and an EMT or a bacon hater?
Yeah, the complete sort of desensitization to something and then the immediately sort of bait and hooked into the product being sold.
It's like.
And that you get taken from something that's so serious into something that's so trivial that it's like it starts to like deteriorate the part of you that takes something very serious, serious.
Yeah, for sure.
And for these kids, now you got to walk over there and look this girl in the eyes and see that she might not be interested in you, which is the genre that we grew up in, brother.
If you want to call somebody fat, you got to walk across town.
You got to say it to them.
And then you got to see their big fat fist come and hit you right in your smug face.
No, there's no accountability.
That's the other thing.
It's like the amount of like smart alec, sarcastic sort of, you know, sentiment and tone I hear from sort of my kids and their mates based upon the lack of consequence.
Like you said that shit in high school or school and you felt it immediately and went, well, a lesson to note yourself.
Don't say that again.
Whereas now you're like plugging all sorts of things on your comment boards or you're commenting on what other people have done with, you know, very little, if any, consequence or any repercussion.
Let me see what this says.
Instagram rolls out algorithm control option to all English speaking users.
Oh, wow.
After launching it in early testing with a limited number of users in October last year, Instagram has today announced that all English speaking users globally will now be able to access its your algorithm manual control option, giving you another way to define your Reels experience.
I thought it already did that though.
Because I remember meeting someone who said, this is like eight years ago, said, no, no, no, like, you know, you've said, you know, you've talked about, you know, puppy dogs for a while, and then all of a sudden puppy dogs are all over your real.
And they said, no, no, no, they're listening to individual words.
And I was like, the individual words, bullshit.
It's fucking the entire sentence.
But now there seems to be a sort of, oh, that's an option, but I'm pretty sure it's been plenty of time.
I'm pretty sure this has always been an option, and it's never been effective.
Yeah.
As you can see in this overview, you can access the your algorithm controls by tapping on the top.
What does it do, though?
So I've been using it and I changed my feed completely.
I put on like editing tutorials, film lighting, and like my feed is like all educational now.
It's helped a lot.
Yeah, it's pretty awesome.
And I think more people should know about it.
Because I think sometimes my fear is that I'm trapped in this algorithm of times that maybe weren't my best self or like times where I just, or just what they fed you.
Yeah, for sure.
You know, and you get fed Braziers and this and that.
And it's all targets big response.
You know, big, it triggers big emotions.
It's all outrage mostly.
Right.
It's like dopamine or what's going to potentially testosterone.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, Nick, you feel like it has been effective?
100%.
And then, but if I do see something, I'm like, I don't want that.
Then you just do see like the three dots and see less of, and it's really transformed it.
I feel like I'm getting educated when I go on a lot.
Yeah, that's the place I want to be in.
It's like, oh, just for some, you know, get me there.
But I guess it's, I have to take some action too, you know?
But that's good to know that that's effective.
Yeah.
I'll tell you this story.
So I one time I got in an argument with my girl, my ex, or whatever.
I don't know what happened to her, but we were in love or whatever.
But anyway, we got in a fight or argument on the side of the interstate.
She stabbed my tire and threw a hardware hammer off the front of my car.
Bam.
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Character Moments00:14:51
I saw Crime 101.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, dude.
It's a heist movie, right?
Safe to say?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's a character-driven crime thriller.
Somewhat of a sort of homage to the 70s, 80s, 90s, even early 2000s, like heist films that I feel like we used to see a lot more of.
And we just don't tend to make any as much so much now, where there's insane action and car chases and intensity, but that's matched by the intensity or there's a momentum and a continuity with the emotional intimate scenes as well.
And it was one of the best things I'd read in years.
It certainly wasn't the types of scripts I was being sent.
And I had an interest in doing something very different.
And this came along and it was up there with my top sort of two, three films that have done, yeah, that I've been a part of.
Was it like the personal challenge?
I mean, your character is kind of this, he's a kind of a bad guy that's questioning what's going on with himself.
For sure, yeah.
Like all of the, like, so Mark Ruffalo plays the detective.
I play jewelry thief.
Hallie Berry is an insurance broker.
And basically all that's sort of a crossroads in their life around, you know, Mark's characters facing police corruption.
And if he speaks up, he'll be sent one way.
And if he follows suit, he'll get a promotion.
And Halli Berry is facing, you know, ageism and feels like she's being passed over.
And my guy is in that same sort of that moral ambiguity and that sort of gray space of, you know, justifying his criminality.
We show the audience and present the, you know, that he has come from meagre means, difficult times, in and out of foster homes.
And again, not to excuse any of what he does, but it raises, I think, the question of how one got to that point.
But he does live by very strict code.
There's sort of non-violent, you know, violence throughout his robberies.
But he's at a point where he's seeking personal freedom and an escape from this world.
And it's presented with this one final sort of heist, which could be the exit.
And each character's sort of on a collision course for one another and all sort of interweaved to this pretty, pretty, I found pretty sort of fascinating sort of crescendo and finale.
But he's a good guy.
He's wrestling with, I think, not having, you know, in my sort of backstory with it, not having strong paternal figures or parental figures that were of, you know, held integrity or maturity for him to look to and to be, I guess, modeled behavior by.
So, you know, like a lot of guys that we were speaking to and researched guys in the criminal world came from broken homes and you seek connection and brotherhood and safety and kind of all the wrong places.
And that's why a lot of guys end up in gangs.
There's family there.
Yes, connection.
Yeah.
And then it's also they're pushing back against a system that in their eyes gave them nothing.
So it's like, well, screw you.
I'm going to, you know, what did the insurance companies or the banks or the, you know, the high-end jewelry fashion entities ever give me?
So again, none of this is my justification for a life of crime, but I think that the script does a great job at presenting deeper further layers and a deeper sort of presentation about just people, you know, and the human character.
I agree with that.
I think one thing I noticed about it is there's a bit more of the story element.
There's a bit more of like, you had the action.
You had this sort of, you know, you had this like a little bit of like, I don't know if it's like fast and the furious meets sort of like jewel thievery, you know, sort of like you have this high energy, but you have us, you have some sincere storylines about what's going on with these people and just how people get into positions maybe that they didn't even want to be in, but there they are.
And how do we still view them as people?
And then how do they then operate to the best of their ability, even in not even the best circumstance?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Did it make any sense or not?
No, it did for sure.
Yeah, we should have been the tagline.
I've been at Preston for three weeks, and I wish I had that quote.
It's been rough.
Far more succinct than the...
The past year, I haven't been able to get something out.
It's been tough, man.
No, it's true.
And it does it sort of, I think when it wrote, like, it doesn't spoon feed or jam down the audience's throat the answers and conclusions for things.
It offers up ideas.
And again, in the moral ambiguity space of right and wrong, it's like not, it's nothing, just black and white.
And we love to sort of categorize things.
It's easiest for us to understand.
But when you kind of get an insight into someone's life or into their backstory, you go, oh, shit, if I was faced with that or I'd come from that, would I make this decision?
And if I had an opportunity that was, you know, lawfully wrong or immoral on one hand, well, could I justify it through this lens?
And if it was going to pull me into personal freedom and escape this shitty position, I mean, would I do it?
And then so you're asking those questions as you're along for the ride, hopefully.
And I find that the kind of the beauty of filmmaking and storytelling is when you're not, when you're when you're given as a choose your own adventure sort of internal process that can that can occur with what your assumptions are, but also not being so quick to judge, you know?
Yeah, because there's moments you're like, oh, this guy's scared, like your character, where he's like, oh, he's kind of, he's scary, you know, he's dangerous.
He doesn't care if people die.
But then you see, oh, well, he has kind of a code of his own and how he operates within this space.
You know, what he thinks of love, what he thinks possible for him.
Yeah, it just had a deeper layer than just like sort of a smash and grabble kind of like heist movement.
Yeah, that was the goal.
You know, it had a little bit of a James Bond ask in the sense of like, you know, some of this chase scenes and stuff like that reminded me of some of that energy.
Yeah, for sure.
And just some of the music that went with it.
There were certain moments where it gave me some of that energy kind of.
You see Heat or Michael Mann and Collateral.
It was kind of like those types of films were a big sort of comp where the action, there was the real realism and a grit and authenticity to it.
But you had complex emotional sort of characters along the way as well.
So you ever steal anything good when you were young?
You guys ever steal anything?
Yeah, low dart a wallaby and sneak over there and run it out of some of these.
You got a wallaby, did you say?
Just put him down.
You think one dart would take a wallaby down or not?
It depends what kind of trank is in that dart.
You mean like a tranquilizing dart?
Something, yeah.
A dartpoard dart.
Oh, trank.
Fucking trank.
Yeah.
Yeah, they go down.
The wallabies are tiny.
The big kangaroos, I don't know.
Oh, dude, not some of the ones I've seen over there.
Yeah, whatever.
We went to that place outside of Melbourne.
There was a big kangaroo park.
Yeah.
Maybe it wasn't.
Maybe it was outside of.
No, there's a lot.
Bro, we saw the one that's jacked.
We saw the Nate Diaz one.
Ever seen that video of the guy punching on with a kangaroo?
No, no, you didn't see that.
Uh, the guy wallaby comes up to get his dog, and he literally shapes up, throws a left and a right, and pop, bang, just because it's trying.
I think the wallaby is trying to attack his dog, or it's got his dog in a headlock or something.
Um, but yeah, dude, we saw the one we were afraid to move, dude.
I was waiting for like Keith Peterson to step in, I was waiting for a UFC referee to come in and say, To your neutral corners, you know, I was waiting for Mark Goddard.
I mean, I don't know why this guy's this is this is look at this.
The Wallaby's got who is that, Luke Bryan?
He's got the dog in a headlock and watches me.
Whoop, whoop, going jab the kangaroo's like, What the is that Luke Bryan?
Oh, that's beautiful, that is beautiful, dude.
I mean, that dog should have been able to get free, though.
That's a big dog.
Oh, they're pretty strong, these things, and they got little talons, big, big old claws on them.
Oh, dude, the ones we saw the ones that were very scary, but I had such a great time, man.
In your car, how long were you there for?
We were there for probably two weeks, dude.
One of my favorite times was like, um, we got some uh, just some e-bikes, and we went during the day.
We would go up and down the Gold Coast on the you could, yeah, you could bike on the sand, like basically in the water if you want, and there would be nobody out there all day.
And we would just, dude, it was like it almost felt like we're on another planet, man.
Yeah, and then, um, I got to meet Chris Chris Lilly came out when I was in uh you ever see his shows back in the day.
Oh, yeah, hilarious.
Stop looking at me, dick mom.
That's my dick, dad.
Man, he what he touched.
That's my dick, yeah.
Touching my dick, stop touching my dick, you dad.
What'd you say?
I said, I'd puck you.
I said, Puck you, yeah, it's a picture of my dick.
Yeah, it would always be his dick.
Jonah, that's his name, Jonah, bro.
And what a legend, dude.
To get to meet him, it literally felt like you were meeting something like a rare bird that showed up on a branch to talk with you for a little bit.
I uh, I remember crossing paths with him when I when I first started acting and you passed as in, like, he was a mate of mine and crossing paths and and just being he was just a what he would kind of came up with was like I want to say kind of back when the office was first came out, but that mockumentary style could play like seven or eight different characters and um yeah talented dude.
Oh, dude, Mr. G, dude, the musical musical drum, yeah, a lot of it like kind of got bad habit for drugs, dude.
So good, my god, dude.
The fact that we can say cheese room, cheese room, welcome to Mr. Cheese Room and still laugh right now is oh mate.
That is good stuff.
Yeah, that was like pre-kind of like, I think a lot of it was, you know, isn't acceptable now.
He wouldn't be able to make any of it now, but like, oh, but that was before anything, and it was I'd make it with him in a heartbeat, dude.
People now would make it easy because you could put it out yourselves.
It's like you could do it yourself and put it out.
I think he's in the sort of cancel space culture.
He kind of got I think he felt that more than it was very real.
Oh, really?
Oh, I think so.
I think the reality of people.
Yeah.
Like, I think like even like people, like, I think he was like, I don't know if he was if people thought he was making fun of Aboriginal culture or Tongan culture or what it was.
Polynesian?
Dude, those people.
I mean, I, I, it depends who you spoke to.
Yeah, that's a good point.
I had Polynesian buddies who like loved him and then other guys that were like, no, it's not cool, bro.
Oh, I see.
And, but I, yeah.
It's not cool.
Me thick, you know, but yeah, I feel you, dude.
It was crazy.
I love the way you've seen all that.
Dude, when he would do the break dancing, bro.
Oh, my God.
And what was Jermaine?
Jermaine, the uh, oh, yeah.
Oh, my God.
He's a year seven.
Seriously.
So good, dude.
Oh, fuck.
Oh, God bless him, brother.
Go watch that.
If you've never seen Summer High Tide, Summer High Tie.
You can't find it anywhere except for on YouTube.
Yeah.
I think on some distant channel, but it's out there.
Are there things where you want to, like, when you're relating with your dad, are the things you want to make sure that he knows?
And Alex, is there a responsibility that you feel as a child that it's like, okay, how do I make sure he's okay?
Yeah.
Like, does that make any sense?
Yeah, and I think from having kids as well.
And even for other people that are experiencing this, like, since you've had experience with it, like, if you could just maybe share a little bit of that.
So when I had the premiere back in Australia, I had someone come up to me afterwards.
For Crime 101?
No, sorry, for the documentary with my dad.
Okay, for limits.
A road trip to remember.
Say it again for a road trip to remember.
Got it.
And someone came up to me and he said, I was diagnosed around the same time your dad was.
And I wish my kids could see this because no one asks me how I am or what I'm afraid of or what I'm experiencing because people are nervous.
They don't know how to discuss it.
So they dance around it and pretend it's not happening.
And he goes, so you suffer in silence.
And the biggest thing I think that has helped that my dad has responded to, and I'm thankful for having gotten to this place is asking him how he's feeling about it, you know, because it's, you know, you talk to your parents about this stuff and then your parents pass away and then who do you talk to?
And it hit me that, God, he doesn't have his dad to go and have these hard conversations or these vulnerable moments with or his mum anymore.
And so trying to give him that, give him that space, but also I know there's a, I remember 15 years ago that transition of when him realizing he wasn't the authority and we knew we as we as young men now working and knew more about things and weren't seeking his advice as much.
I remember seeing that on his face and that and it not registering enough for me to do anything about it, but kind of being aware that like the changing of the guard was occurring.
And so I go to him now and I'll ask him things that I may know the answer to, you know, or just so he feels like there is still agency and he has autonomy.
And they want to see, thank you.
They want to feel like they still matter and they still have purpose.
Well, that's a good point.
You don't think about that, that when that change in the guard happens, that there's a value loss or potential like hypothesized value loss for the parent.
Oh, for sure.
And even my kids, my daughter's 13, my boys are 11.
And I'm already feeling that like, oh, I'm not cool and I'm not necessarily who they look to.
And it's like, you know, and they're young.
Because they're watching Andrew Tate or whatever.
They're watching all sorts of bullshit and have other role models.
But it's like, I think, you know, and then I'm 42, you know, but I can't imagine in the 60s, 70s when that gap becomes, you know, far greater.
And especially facing, you know, having dementia and realizing your memories are being stripped away and that vulnerability that just making sure they still feel like that they are of purpose and that they have an opinion and the opinion matters.
And so, yeah, if anyone's going through it, that would be my advice is check in with them, ask them how they're feeling, ask them what they're afraid of because no one else.
That's such a great question.
What are you afraid of?
Yeah.
Yeah, it's easy to say, hey, how are you?
Yeah.
But that's not the same thing.
And that won't bring out the answer.
Like I asked him on the show and he went, I just don't want to be a burden.
Don't Want To Be A Burden00:04:43
And it was like, oh, fuck.
And I had no idea that he'd felt that.
You know, I thought it was going to be about the kind of, you know, losing, you know, control of this and that and the other.
But it was like he was more concerned with what it was going to do to the, you know, the group.
Yeah, that's what my mom says sometimes.
I don't want to be any burden.
Yeah.
And it makes me think, like, oh, yeah, like I don't know.
And in some ways, I've always wanted my mom to be like a bird.
Like, I don't know, like the inverse of a burden, kind of whatever that is, like a positive burden, or just like, I don't know, like a beautiful responsibility, or it's, yeah, but like it, but for that to say, yeah, I don't want to be a burden.
Do you find that it gives you purpose, though?
You know, like it's like having this time with him as kind of confronting as it's been has also given me a greater sense of like what matters.
And also, it's like the roles do transfer.
And at a certain point, as an adult, you've got to realize, oh, I now need to take care of them.
Right.
And, you know, and especially men, I don't know, but in Australia, there's a real like you know, um, avoidance around that sort of vulnerability or the sort of admittance to I may be afraid of something or I need a hand.
And so offering that up rather than having to get them to come to you and say, please check in with me.
That's a huge thing.
Yeah.
What are you afraid of?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Because that's really what I want to know, probably.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The other day I was saying, like, I messaged my mom and I was like, hey, mom, is there anything that you need?
Is there any like trip that you've always wanted to take?
Is there anything?
Because, you know, now I have some finances where I could help do something, you know, if you want to do something, you know.
And or is there anything that, you know, yeah, is there anything that you want?
You know, and she's like, nothing that I can think of, you know?
Whereas you always think that it's like, oh, I'm going to get these, like, I'll have the ability to do this thing and that'll make it perfect.
But it's like, no, that's not real.
I always saw that, like, I would buy my mom things and jewelries and she was like, it's lovely, but like, I want your time, you know.
I mean, just yesterday, she was like, can I schedule in one of your meetings to just get 15 minutes just with you?
And I was like, oh, and she goes, well, I'm sort of half joking, but serious.
And you forget, like, yes, when you get busy, like, it's like, yeah, I'll get to that.
I'll get to that.
And all these other things.
At least you can put it off on one of your other good-looking brothers.
Exactly.
Yes.
Like, that's got to be nice.
Like, look, talk to the other good lookers.
I bet you didn't even have wallpaper and it was just mirrors everywhere.
Just mirrors were so excited.
Like, he's coming.
He's coming.
Sorry, dude.
This is seeming a little bit.
Whatever, bro.
Call me a Foster.
You ever drink Foster's?
I think I have.
Yeah.
It's a big can.
I like drinking.
This is what I would do, though.
I would drink it with two hands.
They had a big old, like, extra-large, absurd can for a while.
Oh, it reminded me of the beer of Sean and Marley.
You ever seen Sean and Marley?
No.
Oh, bro, bring them up.
They're Aussies, man.
Sean and Marley?
They're the best.
Yeah.
Get down with Sean and Marley.
Put me on there.
Show me on.
You never seen these guys?
Dude, these guys are the best.
Chris, if you, bro, next time you're home, this is one of the best times I ever had in my whole life.
Did you do this in Australia or here?
Yeah, in Australia.
How you going?
Hey, kid.
All right.
Can you hug it?
Dude, they're chefs.
I've never seen this guys.
Thank you, boys.
Thank you for welcoming me here.
Yes.
I'm very happy to be here.
I always say this thing fun.
He came to us and can see me and Sean from USA.
USA.
You've been to, have you been to America?
I can't remember.
Yeah.
I can't remember.
And look, it's becoming unmemorable.
I'll tell you that.
Get to the part with the beer, though.
We made beer chicken, right?
So these guys do recipes.
Bro, if you ever like, I'm not saying, but this would be an easy thing for you to go and do a little show with a little cooking.
And bro, they live at, they live, they don't live together.
One of them has Down syndrome.
One, I don't think one of them does, but one of them is just Korean or whatever.
They're just mates or yeah.
Yeah, they're just mates, but they've been friends for a long time.
We made beer chicken, right?
Yeah, was it?
Oh, dude.
Dude, yeah, it was good.
But Marley took the beer right out the hot beer and just drank it straight out of the oven.
Fricking legs.
Chicken juice and stealing hot temperature.
Look at that.
That can is probably 200 degrees, bro.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, your receptus is off, baby.
Come Up a Little Bit00:06:24
You got to come up a little bit.
Bro, he's right there, bitch, right out of the thing, bro.
But dude, the families are so sweet that, and they invited us over to their home and they made like up there.
There's a piece of art up above, like on the mantle up there on the right.
Yeah.
Right there.
They made like a rat for like the rat king.
Like they did like special things to make it just for me.
But their families are there, dude.
And it's like the best.
And they have the best time.
But bro, just to even, you would, it was honestly, I think it was the best part of my trip besides getting to perform the shows.
Yeah.
But that's right outside of Sydney, I believe.
Yeah.
We just got a rabbit eyes top on, which is Russell Crowe's rugby team, which is a Sydney Sydney team.
Yeah.
That green and that must be the heroes in.
Because they'll go to a lot of the games and stuff like that.
But Sean and Marley are the best, bro.
Oh, check them out.
And I think they still do the show all the time.
So that'd be pretty cool to go see it.
Whenever you get into spaces where you're like, you know, we're talking earlier about like kind of regrouping and getting a new look at things and like, you know, having some moments of self-evaluation and reflection and seeing if like, my old dreams are still my current dreams and where have they gotten me and and what do I do now?
And enjoying kind of the freedom of um, not knowing or not being sure exactly where I'm at in my journey.
Um, what are there practices that you go to to help you gain a little bit more clarity there?
Like, could it be something like just spending time with certain people, or meditation, or like, are there some practices that you use?
Yeah, it for me.
Um, I'm not great at like traditional seated meditation.
I could benefit from it if I was to sort of force myself to do it, but I prefer physical movement like, like training.
You know, surfing for me is an obvious one.
Oh yeah, complete.
Um, I've done that since I was, you know, 10 years old, and if I spend too long out of the ocean, my whole sort of, you know, being starts to suffer in one way or the other.
And not just vitamin D, but the sort of I don't know the sort of magnetic pull the ocean has to me, but the that's that's my true happy place.
So yeah, I spend a lot of dang, a lot of a lot of time surfing.
Are you comfortable enough on a surfboard to make a gang sign?
Dude, that is, that's actually a wave pool.
That's in Abu Dhabi, in the Mechanical Man Wave wave.
Yeah um, have you been to Pipe?
Uh yeah dude, I just went, like two weeks ago.
I went 15 years ago once.
It's cool huh bro, it was so cool, awesome.
I didn't know they had the Lexus Pipeline.
Competition was going on.
Oh yeah right, of course, and so I went to the event.
Huh, each day when I went it had been canceled for the day because the conditions weren't perfect.
But that's one thing that's so amazing about it.
It makes it so unique about these surf competitions is that it Can only happen if the water is right.
Yeah.
So it was like, it was almost this little mecca that we'd make each day.
It was about an hour from where I was staying, which was silly.
I should have just stayed up in the North Shore.
But I get there and they're like, yeah, it's canceled for the day.
But it was just like, even seeing that and seeing like, oh, this is a real thing.
Like, so many people come out and like, and they, all the surfers stay are in this place.
And like, it gave me a whole different appreciation for it.
Yeah, especially pipe.
I mean, that event is, they wait for it to be big and intense and beautiful.
And if it's not going to hit those, you know, that if it's not going to live up to that, they don't run the competition until it does.
And so you're often in for a pretty epic week of competition.
But that place is talk about like the power of the ocean and different regions, you know, that you'll have a six-foot wave there, which feels like fucking 20-foot compared to what a six-foot wave would be in a beach break somewhere else.
And the way the ocean comes from big, deep water, it just hits big slabs of reef is pretty, pretty mind-blowing and awe-inspiring and special, man.
It's gorgeous.
You feel the power of it all.
Yeah.
Do you ever surfed?
I surfed.
I used to live in Charleston, South Carolina.
I would surf out there some.
So I could do it, but I would need to go focus on it.
I think it just like recently what I've been thinking is, man, I just want to like, and it's like, I could do it, but it's like, you know, podcasting, it's a lot of attention.
You know, you're like going for the next week.
It's like having a show every week.
Yeah.
And so you're preparing.
And sometimes we do two a week now because there's so many different people to talk with.
Yeah.
And so it's another skill you've got to learn.
It's another, it's a lot of hours.
Yes.
And it's hard to like feel like I'm always like, all right, I got to make sure this next one is okay.
Yeah.
I'm never at a place where I feel like.
Yeah.
So it's like, I need to give myself a little more space and grace and just be like, okay, if you do go for a week or two, go do some things that you also want to enjoy.
You know, I do.
Do you find it hard to switch off?
What do you mean when you when you have yes, I do find it hard to switch off, but I also find it like you know, like take some time and go do these things.
And I'm not complaining.
I know I can do it.
I think it's just like, it's like we were talking about earlier, like having that space in your life.
Yeah.
Letting the uncertain have a little bit more room to walk around, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
The observation, the stepping back.
It's like, what will I see if I were to go have some new experiences?
Like, you know, and what will I learn when I'm a little separate?
And just being like, that is as much of the value as being sitting here looking under the microscope is standing out of the room and not even being in the laboratory, you know, and just having some of that energy.
So I'm not complaining.
I know I can do it, but it's just like that's some of it probably is a fear.
Yeah.
You know, no, it's hard to get off the train of when there's momentum with anything, you know, especially if you've been shocked by the handbraking of when it doesn't work out or things are kind of static and you're sitting there going, shit, if I only had or I was had that type of energy.
And so to sort of willingly, by your choice, step off is there's a risk to that, but it also is kind of scary because it's like there's a safety net and just carrying on is as exhausting and maybe detrimental it could be because you're missing other things.
It's like the uh there's a risk involved.
But again, I'm sure with you, you've found the same thing in life.
When you've stepped outside of the bubble, the bigger lessons are learnt, the bigger sort of experiences occur.
I think I came from that place where that was the thing I love the most.
Risk of Missing00:02:21
Yeah.
You know, but it's okay.
It's all interesting.
And I think that's why like even just having time like this today to think about this, it's like, yeah, we've been talking and we've been podcasting, but it's like, I think this is a conversation that I just needed to hear, you know?
Oh, cool.
So me too.
I mean, it's like I said at the start, none of it I've figured out.
Like, I just keep continually sort of asking and exploring and then hopefully not being too bogged down and having to come up with the outcome or the definitive certainty of it.
It's just staying curious, I feel like, is the more fulfilling place to be in, you know.
You're going, are you almost back to Australia, heading back home?
Yeah, to have the premiere tonight through Crime 101 and then we're going to fly back home tomorrow.
I've been gone for three weeks and it's hard, man, with like with kids.
And they're here with you now.
No, no.
And they're at the age where they weren't really aware of time, you know, for a long time.
And now they're like, it pisses them off, you know, and it's like, well, how long you said this?
And, you know, are you supposed to be here?
You're supposed to be a dad.
You're supposed to be here and you're never here.
And then it's like.
It's not a dick, dad.
It's not a dick.
A dick, dad.
So touch my dick, miss.
That guy's crazy.
That kid was crazy to be saying dick that much at school.
Like 24-7 as well.
He's a ranger.
He's a ranger, miss.
Don't rang us.
Stop calling him a ranger.
Well, he is, miss.
Why not?
Yeah, yeah.
And didn't his dad come down one time?
Yeah, don't come down because this is the funniest one.
So he does a drawing and it's basically a drawing of an image leaning over and touching him on the groin.
And he's just taking the piss.
And the teacher's like, what's this?
He's like, oh, that's me and my dad.
So it comes down to principal's involved, the teachers involved.
And then they call the dad in, and they're like, yeah, we're really concerned about what's happened.
And he goes, yeah, I made it up.
And then the dad loses his shit.
What the fuck?
What would I touch his dick for?
What did you fucking say?
Thank God there's humor in the world.
Oh my God.
What else?
What else?
You know, if we can't laugh and have fun and enjoy the experience, what the hell are we doing?
Homeschooling Insights00:08:03
What's the way that you communicate with your children or teach them to communicate that you think has been like a novel choice for you or something that you brought along from a place that you learned?
Like, has that been a practice for you to do that?
Because it just seems like you try to have some awareness about why you think certain ways and why you operate.
Whereas some people don't.
Is it even possible to incorporate that into some of your kids' interactions and lives?
You do, but I think the biggest thing I've learned is nothing I say is really imprinted.
It's like they learn by example.
And if I'm not modeling that behavior, it doesn't matter how many times I tell them, you know, do as I say, not as I do.
It's just, it's rubbish.
And so if I'm trying to tell them to go off their phones and so on or stop swearing and I've got to do it, you know.
But exposing them to nature, you know, like they're, and we lived in LA for probably 10 years, my wife and I, before we had kids, and then we had kids, we were here for about a year or two and it was like kind of chaos trying to do anything with the kids and paparazzi and so on and moved back to Australia.
What pervert would take pictures of a kid?
That's the weird thing.
You know what I'm saying?
Except for most of the people in our business.
Except for most capitalists and Hollywood elites.
Oh, it's brutal.
Yeah, no.
And so we went back home and we just didn't get that sort of attention.
Has it been a good choice you made?
The best ever.
Like a big conscious choice to leave the environment that was kind of even for my own personal sanity, like reminded of what I was doing or what I was not doing.
And so it's very hard to escape the kind of work, the thought process.
But for them, just to look, to expose them to what I thought was a normal upbringing and being as much outdoors.
And so we have a farm and they surf and we got motorbikes and horses.
And look, what a luxury that is.
That's not where, like we grew up in the bush, but we had no money, you know, and now very different sort of financial circumstances.
But, and that's the trick is trying to teach them the same sort of appreciation and gratitude that I had learnt by not having, my parents not having money, but now we're equipped very differently.
And that's tough to do.
It's a really tricky one, you know, but it's hard to teach your kids your same struggle.
Yeah.
And it's so you try and expose them to sort of different situations or parts of the world, but it's also in sort of in discussing with them the not taking it for granted and having gratitude for it.
But also, you know, I talk to my mum about this all the time and she's like, I could show you, you know, whether on this pay scale or, you know, this end of the spectrum, finance or not, healthy and unhealthy people.
And it's about love and security.
And do they feel safe to explore this world and explore who they are genuinely, you know, and do they feel seen?
And so making sure we're there and present.
And when I'm not working, I'm 100% there and in your head's not somewhere else.
But just getting them outdoors, you know, it's the biggest thing.
They went to a school, traditional sort of school, and then we put them in the school where it's just like 15 kids and three teachers and they surf for two hours in the morning and then they do like really focused learning for a couple of hours in the afternoon.
And it's kind of like homeschooling in a way, but they're absorbing that information more because they've exerted energy through the day.
But there's less kids and more teachers.
So there's far more kind of personal interaction.
But it's almost like sort of accidental learning where they'll talk about, you know, their math class might be around shaping a surfboard.
So it's, you know, six foot two and 18 and a half inches.
And, you know, what's the leaderage and the volume?
And so they're calculating things where there's, there's an invested interest as opposed to just numbers on a board.
Has it been working well?
They're happier than they've ever been.
Really?
They've been in that school for a year and a half or two years.
That's a blessing, man.
And a lot of people are talking about homeschool here more in America.
You're starting to see a lot more of it.
I'm friends with Candace Owens and she talks about this all the time is like, get your kids into a space if you can where other like neighborhood moms or dads are also doing the teaching and people.
I'd be worried if it was homeschooling me trying to teach them.
We did that in COVID and that was a nightmare.
You were teaching them during COVID?
Oh, it's just all of us were being, every parent was being sent like the curriculum and it was like trying to teach them math, you know, grade five math that none of it made any sense to whatever math I learned in high school 20 years ago.
And I was like, let's go outside and have a surf.
And, you know, would you have a chalkboard or whatever?
No.
Oh, no.
We had just like, it was, to get them to do the right one sentence was just like World War III.
It was all for evil.
We're just like constant protest and not listening.
And I called my buddy, who was their teacher, and I said, how are you doing?
And he goes, mate, I can't even get my own teachers that my kids to do.
He said, let's just catch up when this thing passes.
So we had outdoor education, which was like adventure.
Homeschooling hits record numbers.
Last year, last academic year, DIY education grew at nearly three times the average rate it did during the COVID-19 pandemic.
So it's growing at three times the rate that it did during COVID.
That's unbelievable.
In the 2024, 2025 school year, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States, increasing at an average rate of 5.4%.
Amen, dude.
I think the system in a lot of places can be contrived to have some autonomy over what your children are learning.
This is nearly three times the pre-pandemic homeschooling growth rate of almost 2%.
Recent estimates put the total homeschooling population at about 6% of students across the United States compared to about 3% pre-pandemic.
I wonder how much of that is like, you know, parents teaching their kids or a group, you know, 10 or 12.
Like I said, that's the problem.
I think it's class sizes are too big.
You've got one person for 30 kids.
It's like, God, fucking good luck, you know.
Whereas having more of a sort of mentorship, tutoring sort of program where it's less children, more teachers.
Oh, it's yeah, when there's just some connection, yeah.
Because when you're just sitting there and you're just, you're almost just like a piece of cattle for information.
That's what you feel like in school.
A lot of times I would remember that.
It would be like, well, there's just this information.
I write it down.
And it's like, what do we?
This doesn't feel like.
No, there's no relationship to it.
There's got to be a better way to do this.
And there's no real relationship to each other while we're learning it, except going like a dick on someone.
Let me see.
The fraction of parents saying K-12 education is heading in the wrong direction was fairly stable from 2019 to 2022, but rose in 2023 and then again in 2024 to its highest level in a decade.
The reasons for the move away from public schools certainly vary from family to family, but there have been notable developments in recent years.
During the pandemic, many parents discovered that their preferences regarding school closures and health policies were anything but a priority for educators.
I don't even know if teachers have as much individuality and autonomy as they used to, anyway.
Yeah.
No, and it's tricky for my mom was a teacher.
It's just.
Yeah, what does she say about it?
Oh, just how.
And this is America, too.
America is definitely.
Yeah, but it's just how it's the hardest, one of the hardest jobs in the world.
And she just said trying to control 30 different personalities and then teach 30 different personalities who have different styles of learning and absorbing information was just chaos.
And yeah, that's how it is.
You look at our education system 500 years ago and now it hasn't changed.
Just chalkboard and people sitting at a desk looking in one direction.
Yet every other form of industry has evolved exponentially.
That's a great point.
And so I think there does need to be a big, drastic shift in how we're teaching our kids.
And, you know, like a lot, people talk a lot about sort of AI and so on and absorbing information.
Do kids absorb it better and can you then curate it more?
But you have to have an individual there.
You know, we can't sort of cut off the human experience or the human connection part of it.
But I would, if you could control it, you want to incentivize teachers and encourage more people to come into this industry by paying them more.
So government funding because they don't get paid enough and they don't get rewarded enough.
Incentivizing Education00:03:46
It's dark.
I mean, yeah, the fact that we don't pay them and nurses nowadays.
Yeah, it's backwards.
It's heartbreaking.
Yeah.
It's just like, and it's not the people.
No.
It's the elites.
It's the government.
That's the sick part.
It's like.
Yeah.
No, there's sort of a yeah, we could go down a rabbit hole.
Yeah, we could go down a rabbit hole, but let's just stay in the garden for today.
Stay in the garden, brother.
We'll stay in the garden for today.
Crime 101, it's in theaters.
Valentine's Day weekend.
Oh, yeah.
Eat your lady out or you're gay and both you guys like action.
That's right.
You know what I'm saying?
Which is kind of rare in a gay relations.
Usually one dude kind of is a little bit more bridges in Madison County.
And, you know, but whatever, you know.
Do you like heist films?
Yeah, if you like heist films, that's fascination-driven, you know, thought-provoking.
Yeah, you like some espionage.
You like different levels of heist.
Yeah.
You want to support the heisters and Thomas Crown Affair, Heat, collateral.
It's a big, beautiful cinematic experience, shot in the gritty streets of Los Angeles.
So nothing gets shot here anymore either.
So there's a nostalgia to watching this film, I think, that the people appreciate.
Yeah, David Spade and I made a movie, and I know I've said this before on here.
It's coming out in April that we shot in just north, right outside of here.
Oh, cool.
And here.
Actually, we shot some of it in places that I've even been to AA meetings, dude.
We shot in places where I've done AA meetings over the years.
So it's pretty legendary.
But yeah, it's great to see something shot in LA.
And if you've been to LA, you'll see parts in the background where I was like, oh, that's Venice.
Like whenever Ruffalo was sitting outside with Hallie Berry.
And Hallie Berry's in it, huh?
Fantastic, man.
What a force.
It was crazy working with her.
I've admired her for so long and she's incredible.
And then it was one of those, I've had this happen one time with Kate Blanchard as well, where I'm so intimidated by the person and watching them and in the middle of the scene, but also captivated by what they're doing that I'm just like an audience member and I'm forgetting like that I have to contribute.
I'm just going, and she's that and she's just a beautiful human being.
Barry Kyogan's in it.
Oh, shit, that was a surprise.
Yeah.
He talked about like dangerous electricity on screen on and off the camera.
You know, he has such an unpredictability about him and it's it but just captivating.
Well, you feel like he's in control of what he was doing, you know?
Yeah.
It's still crazy that he was slurping up that dude's bath water or whatever.
You know what I'm saying?
You know what I'm saying?
I love the Fosters.
You know what I'm saying, bro?
That's what I'm saying, bro.
I don't sip out of the bottom of the tub anymore.
I'll drink off the top of the tub, you know, the top water, but I'm that undercurrent.
That's just for him.
And my friend Crosby Fitzgerald is in it as well.
She plays Ma in the new remake of the Little House on the Prairie that's coming out.
So our fans over the years know that I love that show.
And she has just a small role in it.
There she is right there.
Beautiful young lady, so talented.
And that show's going to be on Netflix coming out soon.
But Crime 101, it's in theaters now.
Give my best to your brother.
I will, man.
And to your brothers.
Yeah.
And yeah, thanks so much for coming and just sharing some information with us, dude.
I appreciate you, man.
I love the show and have been excited to come on for a long time.
So thank you so much.
Yeah, dude, it was fun.
And I appreciate it.
And tell everybody in Australia that I said, what's up?
And we're coming back there, dude.
And we're going to go to the beach and we're going to do everything.
You hit me up.
We'll go on an e-bike and we'll hit the coast.
Good day.
Yeah, good day for that.
All right.
Cheers, man.
Thank you so much.
Thanks so much, man.
Now I'm just folding on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.
I must be cornerstone.
Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.