All Medicine is Mindful Medicine

All Medicine is Mindful Medicine

For the past few months I've been thinking a lot about why people seek out the medical treatments that they do. Today the average would-be patient has at least a dozen (if not hundreds) of potential avenues of medical care to address their ills--from the scientific medicine at hospitals, to specialty doctors, functional and integrative medical practitioners, urgent care, chiropractic, osteopathy, and seemingly endless iterations of alternative medical traditions.

While we can parse out the benefits and drawbacks of each approach, one fundamental similarity binds all medicine together: the patient feels some sort of symptom that they can't handle on their own, they seek out an expert who looks for signs of disease, and that person compares the signs and symptoms against other patient data to come up with a diagnosis.  This is the basic approach to medicine that has existed since...well...at least as far back as the earliest medical texts and probably quite a bit before then, too.  

If the first treatment doesn't work, then most patients won't just give up, but instead seek out other doctors or medical paradigms on their hunt for a cure. 

In this week's podcast I examine how the very ordinary activity of searching out solutions to your symptoms is, in reality, a very deep mindful practice--that has curative potential all on its own.  It doesn't matter if you stick only to doctors in lab coats or travel down to Peru on a spiritual journey--all medicine is at some level mindful medicine.

Check out Scott Carney Investigates anywhere you seek out find podcasts (Spotify) (iTunes) (YouTube). 

Curse Psychobiology and the Underground Market in Human Body Parts

If you've been a fan of my audiobooks then there's a good chance that you'll also enjoy my new podcast Scott Carney Investigates (Spotify) (iTunes) (YouTube). 

This week I have two amazing episodes for you. 

The first recounts how a fringe Tibetan Buddhist group was so nervous about my reporting that they resorted to black magic. At first I laughed it off the idea that they could hurt me with spells, but when strange things started happening in my life, I temporarily put my skepticism aside and hired a hundred monks in India to cast a counter-spell. It's not just magic, of course. Anthropologists have known for centuries about the psycho-biology of curses that can instigate deadly outcomes even if you don't believe in magic. 

The second episode recounts a 2007 investigation where I uncovered a global trade in human skeletons out of the city of Calcutta in India.  I found a facility on the banks of a river in West Bengal where recently-dead and stolen human corpses were denuded of their flesh and sold to international markets all around the world. This story eventually started me down the path to writing "The Red Market."

Happy listening!

Universal Yoga Nidra

Are you feeling a little burned out and looking for a way to recharge? Over the last few months I've been researching the science and practice of napping and have been blown away by the effectiveness of an ancient yogic tradition of conscious sleep called Yoga Nidra.  At the most basic level Yoga Nidra practice involves listening to a guided meditation as you gently let yourself relax into sleep. But you won't actually fall asleep. Instead, so long as you can pay attention to the guided queues you will move through various sleep stages while remaining aware of what is happening around you.  It will bring you to a very deep and relaxed state where you can allow your body to process whatever intention you want to set. 

I've led groups of people in this Universal Yoga Nidra meditation in the last two Wedge workshops and it has proven to be an excellent counterpoint to the more intense breathwork, heat and ice immersion practices that I've been developing. 

This week I am releasing a guided Yoga Nidra meditation on YouTube based on the principles of The Wedge that I call "Universal Yoga Nidra."  If you want to give it a try, allow yourself at least a half hour of uninterrupted quiet. Lie down. Turn off the ringer on your phone and follow the instructions as I take you through various stages of restorative sleep. The recording includes a half-hour of silence at the end in case you want to remain in the meditative state and lengthen your nap before YouTube recommends the next video. 

Episode 3: We are all Descendents of Evolutionary Winners

Consciousness is a tool for biology to identify and interact and make decisions about the world at large. In this week's podcast I examine the concept of The Wedge and how we can use it to control and program the way our nervous systems operate on autopilot to build resilience in the face of adversity.

What is happening with Twitter Blue?

This weekend I had the misfortune of having two tweets go viral. At first it was all good fun. In one I asked people to tell me that they were "in a cult without saying they were in a cult" and received many hilarious replies. But as the tweet picked up steam everything suddenly morphed into a string of conspiracy theories, racism, sexism and anger that I was a bit surprised by for what I thought would be just a funny, innocuous, tweet.  Then I noticed a large number of newly "verified accounts" were posting the majority of the offensive content. 

As you no doubt have noticed, social media companies have begun to redefine what their blue verification badges mean, and opened up the program to anyone who can offer up $8/ month.

In this week's video I recount the short history of verification on Twitter that started in 2009 after Kanye West sued the platform over the proliferation of accounts that were trying to impersonate him to what it is today.  From there verification brought journalists, activists and other public figures under its protection and over time the blue badge acquired an element of prestige and everyone wanted a piece of the action.

Unfortunately, when Elon Musk opened up the program to the public, a lot of the people who ponied up cash did so because they want to immediately start spreading abusive content.  Now we are in a weird place where the people with legacy badges are involuntarily advertising Elon's Twitter Blue program.  I think it's time for anyone who got a badge in the old days to get rid of it...if only there was a way.  

Need Help with FOIA?

This is one for the journalists.  Particularly ones who are looking for a FREE lawyer to help them with complex issues.

The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is one of the most important tools at a journalist's disposal to secure the release of federal records for their reporting. . . at least in principle. 

 But as anyone who has filed a FOIA request knows that the process rarely goes as intended. It can take years to get information, and agencies do everything they can to send you the wrong documents.  And if what you're going after is particularly sensitive, sometimes it takes an actual lawsuit to get the records moving. 

Enter Tuan Samahon—a Villanova University law professor, former FOIA Advisory Committee member, and litigation specialist. Tuan has offered to represent select requesters in the media, academic, and independent author space on a no-cost-to-them basis in federal FOIA cases.

Cases typically don’t involve trials, depositions, or in court witnesses, but are usually won through legal pleadings and motions prepared by your lawyer. Even prior to suing, Tuan will assist you in preparing, filing, and "exhausting" FOIA requests that will be enforceable by a court, shaking loose records more quickly than the usual backlogged timetable.

Tuan has successfully represented requesters up against the CIA, DHS, DOJ, FBI (multiple times), and IRS, among other alphabet soup agencies. Feel free to reach out to him for a free consultation about your investigative research project. You can email him at tsamahon@gmail.com.

Introducing the "Scott Carney Investigates" Podcast

Journalism Has a New Home

Investigative journalist Scott Carney explores true crime, cult psychology, biohacking, fitness revolutions, climate change calamities, organ trafficking and whatever else seems interesting at the moment. The first episode, The Enlightenment Trap  just came out this week. I don't have a publication schedule set up yet, but expect amazing exclusive content to show up there. 

Last weekend I sent out an Emergency Broadcast  after I realized that YouTube is not a safe place for journalism.  As you are probably aware by now, after I put out a video in January about brewing problems with the Wim Hof Method, Wim Hof's son, Enahm Hof, began filing copyright complaints against my channel in order to silence my work. Enahm sent me multiple threatening letters saying that he would sue me for defamation and that he intended to file enough complaints against me to get YouTube to remove my channel. 

In response, I hired Siddartha Rao at Romano Law to defend my case and have an excellent defense in place should Enahm follow through with a court filing.  It is clear that what I do is protected speech under US law and I would prevail in front of an American judge or jury. Indeed, anti-SLAAP statutes indicate that Innerfire would probably end up paying my legal expenses should they move forward.

However, YouTube has been less than helpful in restoring the videos that were removed under fraudulent pretenses. Naturally, I can't continue my job as a reporter if after everything I put out requires intensive wrangling with YouTube's customer service after the launch just to keep the videos live. I did a twitter thread about how YouTube's policies have a chilling effect not only on my work, but all journalism in the public interest. 

The fallout of all of this is that I've realized that I can't depend on YouTube as my rock-solid journalism partner. I'm working on a new in-depth report about the Wim Hof method that contains some pretty hard hitting truths about the practice that I've known-and-loved for the last ten years. It's not all bad. But it's not all good either. Some myths will be torn down.  Since I know that Innerfire will attempt to remove my work from the internet again when it comes out rather than engage in public dialogue, I plan to release the story on as many platforms at once simultaneously.  This includes finalizing a partnership with a major American news source.  More importantly, That’s why I've decided to start a podcast. And I'd really like you to give a listen. 

Are There Secret Wim Hof Techniques?

How much more is there to learn in the Wim Hof Method after you've mastered the breathwork and cold immersion? Is there a well of knowledge that will push your limits to untold bounds? Or is what you see what you get?

I've been writing and reporting about the Wim Hof Method for a decade, and it's given me a perspective on exactly how much more the method can offer beyond what is openly available everywhere on the internet. 

This week's video (don't worry, I'll continue to publish on YouTube for as long as my channel is live there) should offer you some idea of whether or not it's worth it to pay around $4000 to pursue the course to become a Wim Hof Method instructor.

How many people can live inside in a split brain?

Back in 1939 neuroscientists developed a technique to treat severe epileptic seizures by cutting the central connective tissue between the two hemispheres of the brain in two. This surprisingly simple technique effectively stopped the seizures, but that was hardly the most interesting thing about their findings. Researchers soon discovered that it was possible to design careful experiments that would allow them to communicate with each hemisphere of the brain independently. 

Neuroscience would never be the same again. 

Contrary to how you and I like to think of our conscious selves as a unified whole, Robert Sperry, who later won the Nobel prize for his work on split brains, discovered that each hemisphere processed information on its own. Each hemisphere had its own sense of subjectivity. Not only that, but each side of the brain appeared to be separately conscious from the other half.  

The implications are enormous. In this week's video I pull footage from split brain patients as neuroscientists unpack the strange reality that there might be more than one you inside your own brain.  This research shines a light on the sort of matruskha-doll-esque nature of consciousness that I wrote about in The Wedge. Consciousness doesn't sit inside single discrete objects, but is better understood as existing in the space between objects and biological beings. In other words, nothing is conscious in and of itself. Ratherm consciousness only arises in the relationship between things.  

How Ayahuasca Cured my Video Game Addiction

Addiction and Ayahuasca

I was deep in the middle of the Amazon jungle out of my mind on a psychedelic ayahuasca brew and all I wanted to do was talk to God. Instead, I leaned over a dirty bucket and horked up a lifetime's worth of video game addiction. This is probably the most embarrassing story that I ended up telling in The Wedge--not because I'm particularly squeamish about brain chemistry, but because I had to admit to myself (and now you) that I have struggled with the addictive nature of video games since I was a kid. Well, that all stopped for me after I visited a shaman in Peru and spent three days trying to connect with the universal consciousness, only to be told by the spirit of the plant medicine that I had to deal with my own failings first.

This week's video is both intensely personal, and, I hope, thrilling for anyone who is interested in learning how psychedelic medicine can change a person's relationship with addictive habits and substances. 

Principles of The Wedge Workshop

Denver, CO - Feb 25th 2023

The February workshop is almost full! 

The Wedge is that space between stimulus and response where the magic of consciousness transcends the body's innate reactions. When you jump into ice water and choose not to shiver, decide to put yourself a little harder in an endurance event, or calm your nerves when you feel under threat--you're using the Wedge.  After years of writing about the topic I've decided to offer a few in-person events to help people feel how their bodies adapt to different environments. After all, reading is one thing, but the body doesn't use words to understand the world--it operates through the language of sensation. 

I call the workshop "Principles of The Wedge" -- because there isn't just one technique, but a whole different approach to how you think about your body's relationship to the world.   Over the course of half a day there will be lectures, sauna sessions, ice bathing, breathwork and (light) outdoor exercise.  Someday I will offer larger group experiences, but for now I'm limited by the size of my sauna--so there are just 5 spots.  If there's a lot of interest I might hold a second workshop on Feb 26th as well.  Email me to book your spot.

Details:

When: February 25, 2023   

Time: 10:00 AM - evening

Where: Denver CO

Cost: $500

The Vortex Named a Notable Book!

This was a bit of a surprise! Last Friday I learned that The Vortex was selected as one of 25 notable books by the American Library Association.  

From the announcement:

Resilience emerges in the wake of a massive cyclone and the political violence it provokes, prompting the birth of the nation of Bangladesh.

If you haven't picked up your copy yet, check it out here. 

The Seven Steps to Writing a Book

Almost everyone think's they've landed on a brilliant book idea at one point or another. Maybe you have this one story bouncing around their head that you are simply sure will make a bestselling novel. The only problem is that actually sitting down to write a book is, well, kinda daunting. After all, it's one thing to have an idea, and quite another to make it compelling enough to have thousands (or millions!) of readers hang on your every word. Even the prospect of putting together an 80,000 word manuscript is daunting enough to stop most people in their tracks before they ever even try.

In this week's video I aim to make the process of starting your own book just a little bit easier. I've published five books in the last twelve years and have made, and learned from, enough mistakes that I have t a few hard-won gems of wisdom that can get you well on your way to bashing out your first manuscript.  

The most important thing to remember is that books don't come together all at once. You're not required to write the perfect finished draft in the first go. Indeed, most professional writers I know fully understsand that our first drafts are bad.

Scratch that. 

Our first drafts are almost always embarrassingly horrible. The trick is knowing in advance that the only way to write something good is to start out with a bad first draft before you can begin the magic of editing.  

In my video I'll tell you what really goes in to making that bad first draft--from an easy method to get that creative material on paper, to how you can be sure that the manuscript you eventually come up with isn't so bad that it isn't a lost cause.  The trick, it turns out, is think that you book as something like a baby parrot. It will make more sense when you watch.  

When Plants Attack (and a Wedge Workshop_

When Plants Attack

I witnessed a murder deep inside a Central American jungle last week. It's not likely that any authorities will ever get involved, but I tell you it was brutal. A fig vine was strangling a a 600 year old tree so it could steal its sunlight and I caught the whole thing on tape.  A few hours later a different plant stabbed me with a hundred seed pods in an attempt to disperse its offspring through the forest. And finally, just minutes after that I came across a "walking tree" that has the ability to move up to one meter a year by selectively growing and killing off roots.  The rain forest is a weird place.  

In this week's video I dive into the strange and brutal world of plant homicide (herbacide?) and along the way get to interview Adrian Forsyth who just happens to have written nine books on tropical ecology.  

Principles of The Wedge Workshop

The Wedge is that space between stimulus and response where the magic of consciousness transcends the body's innate reactions. When you jump into ice water and choose not to shiver, decide to put yourself a little harder in an endurance event, or calm your nerves when you feel under threat--you're using the Wedge.  After years of writing about the topic I've decided to start offering some regular workshops to help people feel how their bodies adapt to different environments. After all, reading is one thing, but the body doesn't use words to understand the world--it operates through the language of sensation. 

I call the workshop "Principles of The Wedge" -- because there isn't just one technique, but a whole different approach to how you think about your body's relationship to the world.   Over the course of half a day there will be lectures, sauna sessions, ice bathing, breathwork and (light) outdoor exercise.  Someday I will offer larger group experiences, but for now I'm limited by the size of my sauna--so there are just 5 spots.  If there's a lot of interest I might hold a second workshop on Feb 26th as well.  Email me to book your spot.

Details:

When: February 25, 2023   

Time: 11:00 AM - evening

Where: Denver CO

Cost: $500

What's Happening In Wim Hof Land?

As you might be aware, there's been a fair amount of drama between me and Innerfire this month. After I released a video that exposed some unsavory business practices at the company, Enahm Hof (Wim's son) started issuing treats and takedown notices on my YouTube channel.  Things were heated up  and I decided to step away from the keyboard for a while and head down to Costa Rica and learn all about how plants murder each other.  I expect that there will be some pretty significant updates to the story soon--possibly even this week.  Stay tuned.  

Frozen Out

A few days ago I put out a YouTube video titled "How Wim Hof Lost His Method" that started an important conversation about the business practices of all things Wim Hof.  Within hours of the video going online, Wim Hof's son Enahm Hof started issuing copyright take down and privacy violation notices through YouTube's legal complaint system. Right now about half of my YouTube channel is offline, but the video has been mirrored in a few places including on my Instagram account and on the Internet Archive.  Enahm is systematically attempting to remove my presence from the internet, has issued me threatening letters, is impersonating his father and (I think) his sister in online forums, and is generally not being a nice guy. 

Journalism is a protected category of speech in the United States and (most of) Europe. Innerfire's misuse of YouTube's the content moderation system is explicitly against the site's terms of service. I am in consultation with my legal team for how to best respond.

Understandably, Wim is in a difficult spot. The day after it came out he said that the video was instigating necessary change within the organization--with plans that would reform payment practices, ownership of the company and other things. He urged me forward. This is an on-the-record recording of our conversation.  

Since then, however, his tone has changed a little bit. Now he's saying that I am a journalist "on a vendetta" against Enahm. His language closely mirror's his son's. I expect they talk frequently.  In my first video he said that day-to-day operations overwhelm him and he doesn't want to be involved in his social media presence or the business itself.  Wim is isolated and wants a way out. I have suggested several ways that we could de-escalate the situation, but Wim says he doesn't want to be part of it, and  that I should speak directly to Enahm. Unfortunately I am having no luck with productive conversations with Enahm.

This has put me in a bit of a pickle. 

I do worry, however, that escalating from here could result in the removal of the official Wim Hof YouTube channel. This is not my goal. But there might not be another choice.  I would like to see the problems within the WHM organization corrected, while still being able to continue my journalism career without further harassment.  Ideally we could get to a place where Innerfire acknowledges that my reporting alerted them to problems in the organization and everyone could have a cooling-off period before doing actual damage to a method that I have practiced for ten years.  

I do not know where any of this is going to go in the future. I pray that we are able to come up with an amicable solution and get back to our regular duties of ice baths and breathwork. 

Why Am I Releasing The Enlightenment Trap Now?

Some people have suggested that the timing of my video on the Wim Hof Method was suspiciously close to the re-launch of my book The Enlightenment Trap.  Perhaps they think that this was all an attention-grabbing ploy to sell millions of books at the expense of Wim's business. I want to tell you officially that there is in fact a relationship between between the book release and my video, but it's more complicated than it appears.

Let me explain.

 I originally met Wim in February 2013.  I had just written an article in Playboy about how a charismatic Buddhist teacher's meditation program led to the death of Ian Thorson in the Arizona desert. His death closely mirrored the death of my student Emily O'Connor at a meditation retreat in India several years earlier.  Both Emily and Ian believed they were on the cusp of enlightenment and could achieve superpowers. I expected Wim would be a similar-sort of questionable guru and I planned to debunk him--thus beginning a career as someone who takes down charlatans professionally.  It just so happened that Wim messed up my plans because his methods actually worked. My story in Playboy ended up launching his career. A few months later he appeared in a VICE documentary, and from there an appearance on Joe Rogan. I was really happy about the attention he was getting, and knew I would one day write a book, but I couldn't do it right away. 

I first had to fulfill my book contract for A Death on Diamond Mountain on the dark side of meditation. So I spent a few more years working on that project while also practicing the WHM daily. The book came out in 2015 to great reviews. Unfortunately it didn't sell particularly well. I managed to acquire back the rights to from Penguin, but the audiobook rights were locked up by another publisher until last year. 

In 2017, What Doesn't Kill Us became a NYT bestseller, but I always felt that it didn't quite made sense unless people also understood my earlier project. They're connected at a very deep level. 

In August 2022 I decided that I would finally re-record the audiobook for The Enlightenment Trap and I spent several weeks in a recording studio when a strange thing happened. See, I hadn't actually re-read it in seven years. There were parallels between the protective cult-like practices at Diamond Mountain University and what I was seeing in the leadership of the Wim Hof community. Something wasn't sitting with me right, but I didn't dwell on it too much. I set a release date for  January 15th, 2023 and went back to work.

Then, when I put a video out about how practicing the Wim Hof Method for (almost) ten years had changed my life that included two very mild criticism of Innerfire, I started to get aggressive and threatening messages from Enahm Hof.  His tone echoed the voices I'd just recorded in the sound studio just a month earlier.  I started talking to WHM instructors and I saw what I worried that was history repeating itself. The more I investigated, the more I knew I had to put out a new video.  As I mentioned in the video they took down, I don't think Innerfire is a cult. I don't think Wim Hof is a guru proclaiming enlightenment.  But the mechanisms of control that Enahm uses are, in my opinion, similar. 

Maybe I was being naïve, but I didn't really expect the video "How Wim Hof Lost His Method" would be such a flash point for the community. I hoped that it would spark some change, but I didn't expect a full-scale onslaught on my professional reputation.  If I had, I would have delayed the video's release until afterwards so that I could focus on launching The Enlightenment Trap properly.  

A few people in the Wim Hof community (mostly Enahm, but others as well) are saying that "I'm just in this for the money." I need to respond to this directly.

 I do of course recognize that there is crossover between the two projects.  It's also true that I am an author and I make my living selling books. I absolutely want you to buy my book. Indeed, I want attention on all of my projects.  

But the reason I tell these stories doesn't stem from purely financial motives. You might be surprised that I only earn $4-$7 on any book I sell. Being an author isn't an especially lucrative career. I  write because I deeply care about the subjects. I think they help improve the world.  There are themes that connect them. More than money, I want people to talk about the things I write about and let my research inform their view of the world.   I don't care if you get my books from a library or borrow them from a friend. I don't get too upset if you pirate them, either.  The payoff for me are the letters that I get from my readers about on my work has changed their lives. Thank you for being part of that journey.

 The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain comes out on January 15, 2023. The audiobook and kindle edition are available now for pre-order.

How Wim Hof Lost his Method

In What Doesn't Kill Us I alluded to how Wim Hof's son, Enahm Hof, created and ran his father's business affairs, and that he was often more of an obstacle to spreading the message of the revolutionary breathing and ice bathing techniques.  When I first writing about Wim Hof back in 2013 I had a feeling that I would eventually have to look past just the techniques and into the business practices of the organization itself. As Wim Hof grew into an international brand that generates millions of dollars a year, along with movie deals and celebrity appearances, it has become  harder and harder to ignore Enahm's influence on Wim's message. A few weeks ago I began digging into corporate records and interviewing eyewitnesses to the inner workings of Innerfire. I was shocked by what I found.

This week's video is a full exploration of Enahm's Wim Hof empire where nothing is as it seems.  Indeed, Wim Hof has no control over his social media presence, no ownership stake in the company itself and doesn't even own the trademark to his own name. By his own admission the man who does, doesn't even regularly practice the breathwork or cold exposure. Wim is little more than an employee of the business that literally owns his name.

And that's not all. A quiet revolution forming among hundreds of Wim Hof Method instructors threatens to upend the entire organization.  Enahm requires instructors to volunteer up to two weeks a year to lead on pricey winter travel expeditions for free while the organization pockets hundreds of thousands in revenue.  Publicly available financial documents show exactly how much money the Hof empire makes every year.  

This is not a video about a personal grudge I have against Enahm, but my sincere attempt to help preserve Wim's legacy for generations to come.

I spoke to Wim every step of the way, letting him know what I was finding and what I was planning to report. And, just in case people think I'm taking him out of context, I also include a link to his unedited response so you can see the nuance and decide for yourself how good my reporting is. (UPDATE: I had to take the unedited Wim video down because Enahm sent several threatening letters, including ten copyright strikes on my account. I am considering options on how to best get it to the public). People have been asking me to do this video for years. Now it's finally out in the public.  If you love the Wim Hof method, you need to watch this video to the end.

New Book coming January 15th!

Anyone who has been following my writings on Wim Hof knows that my aim was to debunk him as a charlatan. By then I had spent several years investigating strange deaths at Buddhist meditation centers in India and Arizona among people who wanted to achieve superpowers through esoteric practices.  I was documenting the strange collision between Eastern spirituality and American magical thinking that leads some people into madness. In the process I collected half-a-dozen journals of people who had died or ended up in mental asylums during meditation retreats to understand the mind of people who want to meditate their way to transcendence.

The book originally came out under the title A Death on Diamond Mountain, and had great reviews. Even so, it was never quite the book that I wanted it to be. It had the wrong title, was missing important chapters and had no photography. The Penguin imprint, Gotham that published it went out of business the week before the book's official launch, and still, they wouldn't allow me to read my own audiobook or have input on the title or cover. It was a saga. 

Well I'm excited to announce that as of January 15th of this year, I've corrected the record.  The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain is the book that I always wanted it to be.  I'm putting another video out about it next week, and if you're curious about the strange journey that some people take on the way to transcendence, I'd love you to pick up a copy. The audiobook and kindle edition are available now for pre-order.

Does This Parasite Control the World?

A few years ago I learned a parasite called toxoplasma gondii had the ability to make mice lose their fear of cats in order to complete its lifecycle and reproduce in a cat's intestines.  That was strange, but just the beginning of the story. Last week Nature came out with a study last month that showed that wolves in Yellowstone national park are 46 times more likely to be the leasers of their packs if they they have toxoplasmosis gondii infections. That's right, a parasite has a significant impact on the social life of an entire species.  I had to know more so I've spent the last few days reading up on this strange protozoa and discovered that it also makes people much more likely to be entrepreneurs, to be more attractive to the opposite sex, and to take more risks in general.  I started to wonder if maybe the parasite has had an even more outsized influence on the development of human civilization, too. Perhaps the reason I'm a cat person and tend to take a lot of risks is because I got infected when I was a kid.

Watch this week's video and then go tell your cat that I say "psss pssss psss psss".

What 12 Years Doing the Wim Hof Method Taught Me

It's hard to believe that I began my journey with Wim Hof 12 years ago next month. I had no idea that my attempt to debunk an eccentric ice-guru in the mountains of Poland would so profoundly change my life. That week at his dilapidated training center ultimately spawned 2 books, stopped me from getting canker sores ever again and gave me tools to tackle depression and anxiety. More than that, it opened me up to a really great community of fellow ice seekers. 

But after 12 years of (nearly) daily practice I also have a few thoughts about the overall direction of InnerFire and the official Wim Hof Brand as well as some observations about how some effects of the method seem to trail off after extended practice.  So I put together an off-the-cuff video where I only drop a few bombshells.  

This is a picture of my very first time dunking in ice water. For those of you who thought that I am the ultimate picture of human composure in the face of extreme cold: think again. Fortunately, I got a lot better with practice

Time To Nap: An Essential Guide to Your Superpower

If you do one thing today: take a nap.

If you do two things today, support this kickstarter so you always have an excuse to make time to nap.

Come be part of my next project: a book that is a true call to NAPtion. A tome that will make you want to put your head down for fifteen minutes. A key to a superpower that we all have, but usually ignore.

It's time to get serious about napping.

Kickstarter Link:

What happens after you die? Physics, consciousness and the afterlife.

The physics during the creation of the universe tell us a lot about what happens when we die. It's all connected. You are the universe.

9 Lobsters Enter. One Lobster Leaves.

A New Tradition

John F. Kennedy once let a turkey live on Thanksgiving, but the official presidential Turkey pardon didn't happen until the Regan administration. Nonetheless, I think letting a doomed animal survive a feast day is a pretty decent thing to do, overall.  That's why at this year's annual Carney family lobster broil my sisters and I decided to let one of these crustaceans go so it could spread a word of warning to all of lobster-kind that maybe it would be a good idea to avoid the traps that humans put at the bottom of the sea.

So, yeah, this week's video is pretty different from our regularly scheduled programming. It's part heartwarming, and, if you think about it too much, a little horrifying. That said it's also your exclusive inside look into my very odd yankee family roots. 

New Books and Training Programs

In other news, one book project that I'd been working on for a while hit a dead end two weeks ago, and I'm positively brimming with new ideas ideas that could end up being books, businesses or training programs. This week I'm recording The Enlightenment Trap as an audiobook (a long overdue project). I'm also beginning research on a book on napping that I hope will be the excuse everyone needs to give themselves a mid-day siesta. I'm also talking with Adam Rodman at Harvard about an idea on abandoned medical therapies that could still change the world. 

But that's not all!  I'm also beginning to lay the ground work for a training program based on What Doesn't Kill Us and The Wedge geared towards business leaders and people preparing for mountain summits or other difficult environmental terrain.  The plan is to offer a few different tiers--consulting over zoom, in-person sessions with 1-2 people in my back yard setup, a more adventure-focused expedition with Eric Hinman in the Denver area, and a 9-seat retreat near Powder Mountain in Utah that combines all the elements together. I hope to have more information soon. 

In the meanwhile, it might be a good idea to brush up on some books . . .

Was Andrew Huberman Wrong on his Shiver Protocol?

Last year Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman put out a video where he suggested that ice bathers around the world were doing their ice bathing all wrong---at least when it came to fat loss. When I first heard his advice I worried that my entire career might have been in error and assumed that he'd dug deep into the literature and found the optimal protocol. But more than a year after his video came out--and after millions of views and listens--I decided to check in again and I was a little surprised that I couldn't find any testimonials or other video of people using his protocols and having their lives and bodies transformed.  Maybe there was something wrong with his protocol?

In this week's video I go against more than a decade of training and let the shivers enter my body. I wanted to know what it felt like to embrace after drop.  It turned out that--even if he is right on the science--the shiver method is just so miserable that it turns anyone who tries it away form ice baths forever.  Indeed, there's good reason to think that regular ice baths that I (Scott Carney) as well as Wim Hof, Laird Hamilton and Brian Mackenzie have been teaching offer the sort of experience that will keep people coming back to ice water and ultimately build up similar levels of brown fat (BAT). 

So while I have immense respect for Huberman--indeed he is a major part of my book The Wedge--I think that in at least this piece of advice, he got something a little wrong. 

New Research in Nature demonstrates how cold exposure can cure cancer

Last month the most astounding research I've ever come across on cold exposure appeared in Nature, the world's most prestigious scientific journal. The study showed how regular cold exposure can slow the growth of cancerous tumors by activating brown fat (BAT) which denies the tumors the glucose that then need to sustain their uncontrolled growth.  The article, titled "Brown Fat mediated tumor suppression by cold-altered global metabolism"  is the first real peer-reviewed study making the link that the type of cold exposure that I wrote about in What Doesn't Kill Us and The Wedge had a significant anti-cancer effect.  Indeed, the results were so promising that the researchers said that cold exposure "will provide a general approach for the effective treatment of various cancers."  On the page, that sentence might not look like much, but it basically means that cold exposure could become a staple of any anti-cancer treatment as well as for anyone looking to prevent themselves from getting it.

In this week's video I dive into exactly what the article found, how the scientists isolated brown fat as the key component, and the anti-sugar diet that everyone needs to get on board with right now. I can't tell you how exiting this study is. It's probably the most important study I've read all year.

If you want to learn more about cold exposure and all things environmental training, now might be a good time to pick these books up again. Heck, I might have to put out updated versions. 

The Truth About Roswell

Roughly 75 years ago, the military issued a statement saying they'd captured the remains of a strange flying disc, which had crashed into the desert outside Roswell, New Mexico. But the very next day, they retracted that statement and said the debris had simply come from an ordinary weather balloon. For the most part, Americans shrugged it off and took the government at its word. 

But thirty years later, that quick change of story seemed a bit suspicious. Given events like Watergate and Vietnam, Laura Krantz reminds us in this week's video that a lot of people had good reason to start second guessing just about every official message that the government issued. This led a whole generation of UFO researchers to re-examine the original story about what actually crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947. Just a weather balloon? Or could it have been extraterrestrial visitors?

Does Laura really think there's truth to the alien story? Well, if you've listened to her podcast Wild Thing you probably know that she likes to get her facts straight before jumping to conclusions. Whether or not the government actually found and hid the remains of an intergalactic crash, how we treat that conspiracy is almost as interesting as the possibility of aliens themselves.

In the Future Every Man Will Get a Reversible Vasectomy

What Happens When Vasectomies Aren't Permanent, anymore?

The problem with vasectomies is is that they're really hard to undo. Doctors recommend that men should only go for the snip if they are completely sure that the never want to have any more children. So they're a pretty bad option for anyone who isn't sure, or just wants to have kids later in life. But what would happen if men could turn their fertility on and off with just a 15 minute, pretty much painless, procedure? 

This week's video is all about a promising new technology called Vasalgel that I think will revolutionize family planning. What makes vasalgel different that a traditional vasectomy is that instead of cutting the vas deferens (the tube that connects the testicles to the prostate), a doctor instead injects a small amount of water-based hydrogel into the tubing that acts as a sort of colander for sperm.  

Instead of sperm shooting out for a discrete rendezvous with a lady's egg, the gel blocks them before they have a chance to escape. A few hours later the body reabsorbs the frustrated little guys and no one has to have any babies. 

The gel will stay secure in the vas deferens for at least ten years, unless the man decides that it's time to have kids. When that happens all a doctor needs to do is inject a tiny bit of solvent into the vas deferens and -- presto! -- he's fertile again. 

If you ask me, this is the sort of technology that every boy should get at the onset of adolescence.  

Considering that many Americans no longer have safe access to abortions after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, Vasalgel offers at least a tiny ray of hope where men can do their part to participate in family planning.  

Want to learn more about Vasalgel? Check out this week's video.