Mike Keen

James (00:02)
Welcome to Big Bad Beautiful Brains. I’m James. Since I was diagnosed at the age of 45 with autism and ADHD, I’ve been on a journey not only to discover how my brain works and how to look after myself, but also about other people’s brains and how they look after theirs.

I’ll be speaking to people from all different backgrounds, all different ages, and all different experiences to understand how they think and how their big bad beautiful brains work.

James (00:32)
Hello again everyone, welcome to the first episode of season two of Big Bad Beautiful Brains. Glad to have you back.

this episode I’m talking to Mike Keen. I had this chat with Mike towards the end of last year in my little cabin and we had quite a wide-reaching conversation from Cormac McCarthy books to capitalism to evolution and human diet over the years. So I really hope you enjoy the conversation. ⁓

Mike is a chef with a deep fascination for our evolutionary relationship with food and a growing frustration with how quickly we’ve managed to get it all wrong. From March Mike’s embarking on an ambitious year-long dietary experiment. He’ll be living through the three main diets humans have evolved over the past two million years, hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and industrial, before finishing with a hybrid diet.

shaped by everything he’s learnt along the way.

It’s a really bold project, a simple premise, and a genuinely fascinating way to think about health, evolution, and the food system we all live inside. Anyway, hope you enjoy this week’s episode, and here we go.

James (01:42)
Mike, hi, how are you? Good, good. ⁓ We’re recording this at a time of year where the temperature has caught everyone by surprise and we’re both wearing very suitable, very sensible jumpers.

Mike (01:44)
pretty well thank you very much yeah

Very middle-aged.

James (02:00)
You know it’s the time of year when the thick woolly jumpers come out. But I suppose for you, guess, with your travels and that sort of thing, the woolly jumpers are always to hand.

Mike (02:08)
I’ve got a cupboard full of wooly jumpers and Gore-Tex and really horrible weather gear, yeah, I’m sorted out for that.

James (02:16)
prepared

for any eventuality. Excellent, well let’s ask you a few questions and see what comes out of your brain. What’s a song or sound that’s been stuck in your head recently?

Mike (02:22)
Let’s go.

I don’t often get songs that really stick but I’ve had this one song actually for the last week it’s Mont Blanc by The Quiet Hollers don’t know if you know it but it’s such a fantastic song and I love a song that’s got kind of a story a beginning a middle and an end and it’s this guy wrote it when he just he moved to the mid you know backwards in Kentucky somewhere

and he’d been watching The Road by Cormac McCarthy and it’s a very nihilistic, post-apocalyptic, what would you do? And the words are brilliant and the tune and melody is fantastic. I’ve just got it on repeat. You know when you’re a teenager and you just press play and they get the same song when I was a teenager, Lift the Needle and back to the same thing again. And I haven’t done that for years, but on this song it’s really bitten me.

James (03:19)
Is it a uplifting song? Because I think the road and both the movie and the book are kind of some of the most depressing storytelling ever. I think with the movie, I remember when it came out and people were kind of hoping for some sort of brevity or a little bit of a release at the end of happiness or some sort of spark. does the song manage to kind of create that spark or is it just as foreboding?

as the the the.

Mike (03:49)
Yeah,

it hasn’t got a bad ending. It’s just the little things that he wished he’d kind of knew. There’s a line saying, I saw all the warning signs in the TV and the Times and it’s, and he wished, he’s signed out the regrets for the books that he should have read, like all the prepping books and how to forage and all that kind of stuff that he never had time for. And then he’s bemoaning the fact, well not bemoaning, but he had a Mont Blanc pen and he just used to write for hours.

was about nothing that makes any difference now which I thought was a great line and it’s ⁓ it’s that kind of the luxury of a silver Montblanc pen means absolutely nothing when you boil it all down to just yeah surviving so it’s no it’s pretty miserable but the actual melody is quite uplifting and it’s it’s the words just carry me away anyway it’s great

James (04:43)
Nice, I’ve not heard that so I’m going to dig that out after we’ve spoken and have a listen and try and find a way to cheer me up from it as well. What’s something you’ve been curious about lately?

Mike (04:57)
Curious curious curious apart from the never-ending, you know search for funds for weird expeditions Anthropology it’s something that is obviously always there but it’s all my experiments into diet and ⁓ and How we’ve come to the position we’re in as a species at the moment

⁓ It all just comes back down to anthropology and it’s something we’re not particularly taught in school. You’re taught RE but not anthropology, which to me is nuts. But the more you look into it and try to fathom how long several million years and billion years of evolution of where we’ve got to today is and what a tiny drop.

Current time is and and how kind of meaningless it is in the the grand scheme. It’s ⁓ yeah I find anthropology a really fascinating rabbit hole to go down and it obviously covers everything about For me, the main thing is the diet and how we’ve eaten for the last two million years when our brains started getting bigger And how we’ve managed to balls it up so quickly in the last 60 or 70 years, you know compare that to the two million years of

living seasonally and eating raw or fermented and sometimes cooked food. It’s amazing and I love it and every time I read a new book it takes me on a different tangent and it’s a never-ending study but it’s something that makes me increasingly ⁓ wonder what the hell we’re doing in our education system where this is one aspect that we should all know about.

and we just don’t, we can’t comprehend what two million years of existence is.

James (06:48)
Yes, it’s amazing how quickly numbers and scale can get away from you and how big numbers become meaningless. even to the point of you try and explain something to someone in terms of scale of something, it can run away very quickly and become an unimaginable scale of what something can mean. I think to your point on how quickly it’s diverted from two million years of kind of good eating and

⁓ eating seasonally and that sort of thing. It’s the commercialization of food to a certain extent of kind of profit over produce that has kind of skewed it so much where ⁓ instant gratification of things get in the way of

mindful eating. Yeah. Mindfulness is a tricky word for me because sometimes it can skew off into areas that aren’t really beneficial to anybody. agree. But I think considerate eating and just wondering what I’m getting out of this pack and actually putting into my body. Yeah. Compared to it’s easy and it’s fast so it must be fine.

Mike (07:56)
Yeah, it’s fascinating. Every kind of wrong turn, if you kind of track us back for the last several hundred years when it kind of started going wrong, every wrong turn has just been instigated by that search for constant profit and capitalism. If we didn’t live in this kind of hyper capitalist state, increasingly so at the moment, every bad…

decision or ⁓ avenue we’ve gone down has just purely been for increasing profits and money. It all just comes back down to money unfortunately.

James (08:31)
If you had to describe how your brain works in three words, what would they be, and why?

Mike (08:37)
Three words. Chaotic is definitely there. ⁓ And rather kind of ⁓ obtusely, guess, ⁓ slightly very well organized at the same time. You know, I think I make up for the chaotic. By chaotic, I mean… ⁓

Yeah, not that organized, leaving everything to the last minute, of procrastinating and just putting stuff that I don’t want to do, you know, to the back of the list. But then I think I make up for that with OCD type stuff, especially, you know, for my chef background, I’m very, ⁓ very well organized and compartmentalized when it comes to getting prepared.

So I’ve got all my, I’ve got my mise en place, know, all my stuff, you know, in neat lines and it’s, it’s got to be at 90 degree angles and it’s, I’ve got to do the kind of certain things at a certain time. Not to the extent where I’ve got to go back and check my front door handle 20 times or whatever like that. So I’ve got two there, haven’t I? Chaotic.

What was the other one? Okay, I’ll take all of them. And ⁓ childish, I think. I think in a good way. It’s constantly astonished me when I look at myself in the mirror or compare myself to other similar age people and they always look really, really kind of old and they’re together and they’ve got it and they’ve…

James (09:47)
I was.

Mike (10:06)
They’ve won at life and they’ve got the nice car and they’ve got a nice house and there’s me who’s still Yeah, almost living hand-to-mouth and not quite sure what the next money is going to come in from ⁓ and Yeah, so it just seems like I haven’t I guess it’s that kind of imposter syndrome where you compare you’re constantly comparing to other people ⁓ But the good side of that which I really enjoy is the humor of

childlike humour and just like behaving like a nine-year-old the whole time which I love you know Viz comics to me is it’s fantastic I’ve still got a subscription to Viz which I started reading I don’t know when I was 20, 19 and I still you know double up laughing from some stupid little comment in Viz sometimes

James (10:52)
This is ⁓ still for me one of the greatest literary publications of the 20th century. Absolutely. The profanosaurus, Roger Milley’s profanosaurus, still makes me laugh. Far too much than I care to admit, but I think it is just, and I think I’m very similar and I’ve always compared myself like, know, always thinking when I grow up. Yeah. And now I’ve just realised that I won’t.

That’s fine. And I’m perfectly happy being infinitely curious and fairly childish. ⁓ Because that’s me and I don’t want to be anything else.

Mike (11:31)
Yeah, I think without that childish outlook, know, toilet humor and stuff, yeah, is just the best. But without that childish outlook, I think you kind of, it goes hand in hand with curiosity. I think as soon as you lose that childishness, your curiosity goes out the window and you’re not Peter Pan or the Lost Boys anymore, you’re the grown up, you know.

James (11:53)
Yeah, I was talking to someone the other day who works in education and I was saying, I find it real problem that curiosity and play gets taken out of the education system fairly quickly. It’s kind of more conformity than anything else. And that’s where, for me, think things start to go wrong because you start to lose the wonder about stuff that you don’t understand and rather kind of take a kind of fearful…

look at things because you don’t understand them. But I’m always kind of asking questions and trying to understand why things work, how things work. And I’m fascinated by why people want to lose that and don’t kind of fight against if that’s being challenged and saying you can’t do that, why people don’t go, no, I want to do that. I find it interesting. That’s how I learn.

Mike (12:41)
Yeah, definitely.

guess school just by its nature has to have that structure, which again is the antithesis of creativity and childishness and that kind of curiosity. The ideal school, if I had the chance for my kids again to go through an education system, it would be a home school type thing. But then the whole capitalist system doesn’t

doesn’t allow for that, it’s very difficult for that because you need one parent who’s got the time and is not going to earn money to teach the kids and just take him out to the woods and just like whatever questions and whatever tangent they go with, that’s what they’re going to learn that day which is what we’ve always done, it goes back to evolution again, we’ve done it for millions of years.

James (13:31)
Yeah, and back to kind of missteps because of commercialization. Someone else was saying that the school system is still geared to industrialists and creating workers, not creating happy humans. Yeah. Which again is, in hindsight, you kind of look back at it go, yeah, but there’s no one there to kind of challenge it or ask or say, what are we trying to get out of the education system? Is it happy education?

humans or is it skilled workers? I hope it would be the the happy humans first rather than the skilled workers.

Mike (14:04)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

This is a theme that keeps coming back in. I’m writing a book at the moment, which is out in a year or so. Well, I say writing a book, I’m thinking about writing a book. I’ve got a contract to write a book. I’ll probably leave it till the last night again. But it’s like, when you were a kid, especially when we were kind of growing up, you didn’t have…

limitless channels to watch. It was like three or four channels and everyone watched the same kind of program after school and you grow up watching BBC and all your news, all your information about the world just came from that one or two media outlets. So it’s totally controlled and you think, the government, the prime minister’s got to be the most clever person on the planet or in the country and wow isn’t he great, what a great guy he must be. And then especially I think since the advent of social media, so in last 10 years, 20 years.

really, you start to think, hang on a sec, they’re all corrupt as you like. There’s nothing great about it at all. Every decision they make is because they’ve been lobbied or they’re in the pocket of some industrialist. it kind of shakes your whole world foundation in your worldview when you start to realize, hang on a sec, everything I was brought up to believe.

has had this shiny veneer of patriotism and capitalism kind of washed all over it and it’s a complete load of bollocks.

James (15:36)
Yeah, and it’s nothing new. It’s just that the veneer has come off. Whereas before the news cycle and the ⁓ route of communications was fairly linear and you would kind of digest it through certain news organizations and ⁓ it wouldn’t be a fire hose of data and I’m kind of completely against this kind of…

constant doom scrolling of information. fall foul of it a lot anyway. But I think it’s the case with modern politicians the veneer has been taken off them and they’re probably more bombastic.

people because people are looking at celebrity rather than or charisma rather than ⁓ skill set. And they’re also trying to kind of hold ⁓ sand in their hands and it’s just slipping to their fingers because there’s so many different networks, there’s so many different channels of communication, there’s people always videoing something that the ability to kind of hold that ⁓ the honor of the office

up is kind of impossible now. The only thing that’s changed is that it’s always on and people can see it for what it is. ⁓ Which is kind of interesting in a way but also terrifying in another way because it’s always been there. It’s just never been so raw and visible before.

Mike (16:58)
Yeah, you kind

of think politicians are like, you know, all Mother Teresa type people, but I think it’s, I don’t know, one in a thousand is maybe doing it for, because they actually give a monkeys about the public or possess any kind of shred of empathy. The other 999 are career politicians and they can, you know, whether they start out that way or it just happens as they kind of get offered all these great big tempting, you know, backhanders and

and bonuses and seats on the board of big companies it just seems to be ⁓ that they get swallowed up by this capitalist machine and it just depends who pays the most money is whatever they’re gonna kind of push for in the next bunch of policies.

James (17:46)
And I think Mari Black was one of the politicians that I always admired and she’d kind of stand up in the House of Commons and really command people’s attention and really tell people what it is. And she got to a point in her career and she’s like, this is impossible. I’m fighting against a massive tide here. I can’t do anything. Once you’re part of that machine, you can go in with the best intentions possible, but…

you become a very small cog in a very big machine very quickly and you can’t do anything by that point.

Mike (18:17)
Being a politician looks like you’re not hiding to nothing as well, because whatever you do, you know, again, this is one of the flip sides of social media, whatever you do, you’re going to get absolutely slagged off by, you know, whatever percentage of the population hates you or hates what you stand for. Yeah, so yeah, why would you do it if you’re going to be exposed or your family’s going to be exposed to that kind of, you know, hatred or, you know, people just…

disliking you intensely for different policies.

James (18:48)
Yeah, so it’s a thankless role, I think, in kind of whatever route you decide to take in it. I think perhaps people that do go into it for the right reasons might come out of it quite quickly or end up in it for the wrong reasons. And it’s, you know, I never want to touch politics with a 10-foot barge pole because it just looks soul-destroying.

Mike (19:10)
Yeah, I think

in more optimistic moments, I think. ⁓ why shouldn’t I go for a counselor or something like that? But then, through various businesses, you kind of get an idea of how kind of brain destroying it all is and the regulations and the type of people it kind of attracts. And you swiftly go, no, that’s a really stupid idea,

James (19:36)
Yeah I’d rather be on the outside kind of lobbying, causing trouble on the outside and trying to do something ⁓ that makes change rather than be on the inside and feel like I’ve had my hands tied behind my back.

Mike (19:39)
Yeah.

Yeah, and

it all comes down to that money thing again, doesn’t it? know, lobbying is a massive problem, well, I doubt politicians see it as a problem, but I think it’s a huge problem for the state of pretty much every country in the world. Everything is dictated by money, whether it’s obvious or not. It just always comes back down to, you know, who’s the greediest?

James (20:12)
Yeah, who’s got the biggest pot of money to guide change? What’s something you’re still figuring out?

Mike (20:17)
Yeah.

⁓ yeah, well the obvious button on there is life.

But I think I mentioned it before about ⁓ having a house and a nice car. that is still pretty much the ⁓ measure or the yardstick of success is by how much shit you’ve got. And it is absolutely ridiculous that you have to live like that. I haven’t worked as a chef for, as in like 50, 60 hours a week chef, for quite a few years.

I’ve been off doing different adventures and pop-ups and stuff like that but recently the last two weeks I’ve been doing it and yeah you’re stuck in traffic at seven in the morning and you don’t finish till eight or nine at night and you think Christ is this what this is what we’re kind of geared up to to exist as until we retire when we have the last twilight years of our lives to do whatever we want thanks very much

James (21:25)
Absolutely not.

Mike (21:26)
Yeah, it’s

just such a crazy way of living. And it’s one of those things that you get lost in that whole fog of capitalism and expectation when you’re a kid. And yeah, what career do you want to have? And this is what you want to do, this progress up the career ladder.

It’s quite rare that you look beyond that kind of veil and think actually, you the whole thing is a complete load of bollocks. It’s not how we’ve existed or evolved to exist over millions of years. It seems crazy that just in the last few hundred years we’ve put ourselves in that tiny bubble.

⁓ of having to do that. It’s just not what we’re designed to do at all. ⁓ But trying to get out of that means a complete change of the whole structure of civilization basically. it’s a tricky one to get around.

James (22:22)
Yeah, there’s a lot of unlearning to do, I think, around that and from ⁓ both what the school system sets you up for, a working life, and expectations of others and that sort of thing. And I spent a long time surrounding myself with people who were motivated by money. ⁓ it took me a long time to realise that I’m not

⁓ but I was kind of kidding myself for a long time that money was the most important thing. And that sudden realization one day, this, I don’t really care about money. like solving problems and I like conversation and I like, ⁓ creating things. The money’s nice, but it’s not the

primary concern or even a secondary concern for what I want to do with my life. Yeah, it’s kind of like I want to do good things and I want to do nice things. I want to do good things with nice people. Yeah, it’s as simple as that. but for a long time, it’s kind of and kind of the comparison to others, like you said earlier, that that can get in the way of actually what you really want to do. And once you kind of shrug all of that sort of stuff off, it feels a lot freer. Yeah, because you don’t have the pressures.

or the expectations of anyone else.

Mike (23:44)
Yeah, I think that’s another thing of lifting the veil of civilization is you don’t really realize that you’re not particularly motivated.

You’re not particularly motivated by money until you’re in a position of luxury where you don’t have to work all the hours that God sends to just to put bread on the table and stuff like that. you know, I think you’re in the same position as me where, yeah, we’ve got enough money that we’re in a of luxurious position to be able to look back at that and say, actually, I’m not motivated by money. It’s not all about, you know, a great big paycheck coming in.

So it’s that, but that is one of the things that’s inherently crap about capitalism is you don’t…

you know, of reach that position where you can realise where you are until you’ve got enough money, until you’ve, yeah, not that I’ve got enough money by any stretch, but I’m not having to worry about, you know, putting food on the table or a roof over my head, which a of a lot of people, and more and more, you know, all the time, are having to worry about that now. It’s a weird place.

James (25:01)
Yeah I think it’s the… ⁓ I’m fully aware of the fortunate position I’m in to be able to have that realization, because I realize a lot of people don’t have that and it ⁓ is a struggle to even kind of get beyond that realization that you have to do that, you have to keep doing that same thing, you have to be the hamster on the wheel. ⁓ I think where

The turning point is that you don’t need more. ⁓ You can get to a position where enough is good. And again, that’s still a very fortunate position to be in. it’s such a shame that that has to be an difficult position for people to reach for a lot of people that you can jump off that hamster wheel.

or there is another way?

Mike (25:59)
I wonder if it’s as simple as that kind of fork in the road where you get to that fork and you go, okay, do I continue and end up, you know, someone like Musk where it just seems that it’s just a constant, that constant need for more and more money and more money than, you know, a thousand people could spend in their lifetime. Why is all that in the hands of one person? So I think when you hit that fork and if you take that right road to go and actually, yeah, money,

doesn’t motivate me on put some of it back on and do some good stuff then that’s that’s clearly yeah good versus bad. Whereas yeah and at what stage what kind of how big does your bank balance have to be before you can actually realize that or do you think that’s what people like Musk do and they go just another million and then then I’ll be and then I’ll stop and then I’ll do something good I’ll set up a foundation or whatever. Yeah it doesn’t often seem to happen.

James (26:55)
No, and it’s, you know, the perfect point with Musk and the character that he was, if someone can tell me how to serve world hunger, I’ll pay to solve it. I don’t know if it was the WHO or someone else just went, here’s the plan.

Mike (27:13)
That was nearly that much money.

James (27:14)
Radio silence. it is ⁓ someone else I was talking to recently and it’s a similar sort of thing, that homelessness can be solved. There’s a solution to homelessness. if homelessness remains, it keeps enough people scared of losing their homes.

to ⁓ keep it in place because it makes sure workers keep doing what they’re doing and it’s an interesting concept around the kind of elements of society and how they’re structured to keep the safety net or lack thereof in place.

Mike (27:50)
Yeah, you’ve always got to that boogeyman to scare the great unwashed. It’s a bit like the use of immigration now, it being ⁓ inflated to such a ridiculous degree when it’s not in the grand scheme, it’s nowhere near the problem that the right is making it out to be and how it’s become such a central pivotal subject. It’s crazy when there’s much bigger problems to worry about like taxing

billionaires and making sure that the uber wealthy pay their rightful way.

James (28:28)
Yeah,

completely. there is only a finite amount of money in the system. If you have to make more money, you get inflation or deflation. So Musk taking a trillion dollars out of this system means that that trillion dollars doesn’t get distributed amongst people who need it. It’s not suddenly trillion dollars that have been magic out of nowhere. It’s getting taken from something and put into one person’s pocket. And it’s just mind blowing.

We’re at that stage.

Mike (28:59)
Yeah, one thing, sorry to interrupt, I love that thing of like a million seconds is something like 11 days, a billion seconds is 32 years, and a trillion seconds is 32,000 years. That’s such a massive, staggering increase, you know, from each of those levels. And that kind of goes back to what I saying about how long we’ve been on the planet. You know, the planet’s 4.6 billion years old.

been evolving since the first single cell effectively four billion years ago so you’re trying to fathom that amount of that amount of time is like trying to fathom having that much money you know compared to you know if you’ve got ten thousand in the bank and how much more than that a million pounds let alone a billion or a trillion is it’s just absolutely obscene that people can can have that it’s just such a nuts system

James (29:57)
What’s something about everyday life that’s easy for you, but hard for others, or the other way around?

Mike (30:03)
That’s a good question and normally I wouldn’t, I’d be a bit more self-effacing and humble but cooking, cooking for me, like just chopping up an onion or getting the timing right on a family dinner or something is something that is second nature for me because I’ve spent most of my life doing it. But then when people are watching me in the kitchen and it’s not just me, it’s any chef pretty much.

they’re going, how’d you do that? How do you get the timings right? How can the kitchen so clean when you’re cooking for a table of 12 or whatever? And it’s just something like you and guitars or talented people on whatever their talent is. It’s something that people who haven’t got that talent are constantly gobsmacked about and it’s incredible.

So I think that for me, cooking for me is second nature and it’s something I enjoy and I think the OCD part of my head enjoys the structure and the timings and kind of bringing it all together for that final moment when you’re plating up or whatever and you look back in the kitchen, the sink isn’t like 12 foot high with dishes and rubbish everywhere and it’s complete carnage is actually quite calm and neat. yeah, I’d cooking.

James (31:20)
And

on the flip side of that is anything that you find particularly difficult and you look at other people and you go, how on earth are they doing that? That seems like wizardry.

Mike (31:30)
Yeah, any kind of musician is I’m always in awe of anyone who can pick up a guitar and just knock out an amazing song. It’s something that I wish I’d always done as a kid. I wish my parents had kind of forced me to learn guitar when I was young. I’ve had a guitar for 20 years, but the F chord always gets me every time and I kind of put it away and I try to pick it up again next week and then it never happens. So yeah, any kind of musician.

It just leaves me awestruck really, if they’re good obviously. But yeah, there’s a lot of good people out there.

James (32:08)
I

won’t play you an F chord because it’s still hard. I’ve been playing for 30 something years and the F is still a tricky one for me. And I guess a lot of it can come with practice and kind of repeat and repeat and repeat and repeat. And some stuff is second nature and it just kind of feels that you found your natural space and it comes naturally anyway. It doesn’t feel like you need to.

over-prepare or over-rehearse it just becomes a kind of simple process. I think that’s for me is I find a few things and I find those super rewarding and it is just kind of protecting those spaces and ⁓ making them your own and then kind of finding ways to kind of enjoy them further as well.

Mike (32:55)
Yeah,

I never had that kind of discipline. And perhaps there is a certain part of talent that you find easier earlier on, but I never found it easy to do. But perhaps that’s just me being undisciplined and giving up too early. I really wish I’d spent some time doing it when I was younger. Or even now. There’s nothing to stop me picking up the bloody guitar now and forcing myself to do it.

James (33:22)
Yeah, it’s just, know, always ⁓ enjoy discovering new skills.

And sometimes they’ll I went through a phase of really enjoy making candles and I found them kind of super therapeutic just to kind of get into a state where there was a process and it was similar to cooking to a certain extent. There was a there’s a there’s an ingredient and there’s a method and how you and just kind of getting into that state of being super focused on one thing. And I do need to get back into kind of making because I really enjoy it and be it’s just a nice kind of meditative process. And it is sometimes those things that you

discover that is kind of just for me it’s like the dopamine hits and just kind of getting the rewards out of that but there’s some things that I find sometimes that you just kind of get into a state and you don’t really think

I mean, candle making never really kind of, you know, wasn’t when I was a kid and going, well, I candles when I grow up, but just kind of stumbled into the idea and it is discovering those things. And like, you my challenge to you is, know, if you, if you can’t find that with a, with a guitar, is there another musical instrument you can find that with, or is there, you know, is there a jumping on point for something that you kind of go, Ooh, that’s it. That’s the thing. That’s the thing that’s given me the buzz to want to kind of learn more and get deeper into it. And I don’t think, you know, that goes back to curiosity and play and having that

mindset. I’m always looking for things that give me that. I’m never kind of satisfied that it’s just going to be candles from now on. There’s always going to be something else that I can find it in and that’s the fun of it. It’s just discovering stuff and being open to it as well.

Mike (34:58)
Yeah, I think if there was one skill that I’d take to my grave wishing that I’d learn or was learning, I think it would always be guitar though. Music, I’m always listening to music and all my favourite stuff is kind of the classic.

guitar singer songwriter type stuff you know Simon & Garfunkel where they just do a real simple melody but it’s it’s it can like lift your whole day or can make you cry or it can just bring a certain memory back and it’s something that’s really you know it’s more than just the music it’s your whole mood it’s the whole kind of the whole of your time in that place and you during that day it’s kind of hard to ⁓

to vocalize it I suppose but it’s ⁓ yeah all the stuff that really gets me now it can just be just ⁓ a chord change or something in a song and it’s just my god that’s awesome you know a bit like the song I was saying earlier it’s something about it I can’t put my finger on one certain bit but it’s the whole it’s the whole package of

Yeah, the words and the melody and where it changes up and down. I’m no musician, it’s, yeah, it’s the whole dynamism, I guess, of the song. But yeah, guitar. Yeah. Get me back in a year’s time and I’ll tell you how I’m doing.

James (36:25)
check in with you regularly and ask you how the F chords go. That’s not a euphemism. Have you found any approaches that make the world work better for you?

Mike (36:36)
Yeah, failure I think is a really wonderful thing with hindsight. I’ve failed, well when you say failure I think it means the general modern life definition of failure like going bankrupt or…

losing a business or losing a marriage or something like that. think failure is the only way that you can develop and become hopefully a better version of yourself. think people who haven’t had failure or haven’t been exposed to failure, I don’t think they’re as well-rounded as the rest of us.

Yeah, failure. you’ll see that a lot on TED Talks and stuff, go, failure’s the best thing you could have accomplished, because it means that you get back to the grindstone and you try again. But I think that’s very true. And I’ve failed in quite a few things in my life. And I wouldn’t be where I am today, which I’m probably the happiest I’ve ever been at the moment, without all those failures that have brought me to where I am.

But yeah, failure.

James (37:57)
Yeah, I’m with you on that and it’s constant source of frustration and hilarity for me is that I tend to buy two of things because I know I’m gonna break the first one because I tend to learn stuff by getting it wrong. Whether that’s kind of writing a piece of code or buying a new piece of music kit or the second candle wax melter I bought because I’ll kind of test things to destruction and I’ll…

probably skip over the instructions for stuff or starting a business or coming up with an idea. And I think it’s the fear of failure that can sometimes hold a lot of people back. But if you want to kind of progress and step out of your comfort zone, you’ve got to be prepared to get it wrong. getting it wrong can be, there’s quite a scale of failure from very small to very large failure. But you need to kind of step out, you need to take those first steps.

Mike (38:46)
Yeah.

James (38:54)
It’s like learning to walk and stuff like that. You’re probably going to fall on your face or…

Mike (38:58)
Yeah, I think it’s subject that needs to be taught more in school or accepted more in school. know, it’s still like it was when we were kids, you know, you get a test if you score less than 20 out of 30, you failed. you know, everyone’s brain is wild differently. know, some of the most grounded, the best people in life will have failed all those tests because that’s not the way that they’re programmed to be. And it still creates a huge amount of stress.

in kids because they don’t want to fail, they don’t want to fail their GCSEs, they’re told they won’t get the job they want if they don’t get whatever grade it is at university. think failure is something that needs to be accepted a lot more. You see the stress in, you know…

My wife’s got two young girls, 10 and 12. And the 12 year old is just starting to get onto that kind of hamster wheel of tests leading up to GCSEs and college and that kind of stuff. And the stress that they have about a test that they’ll forget totally about in a few years time is disproportionate by a long way. ⁓

James (40:08)
I did a talk at a local school recently ⁓ to business students and ⁓ I don’t think I’ve seen quite so many ashen-faced teachers when I said do what you love first and if what you love makes money, great.

and they’d been spending a good few years kind of teaching them about you know money first you know profit margins all that sort of thing but it’s kind of like just find happiness if you can and if you can find happiness and it makes you money awesome yeah but you know I’m more of a happiness first kind of guy these days so it’s like but it is the the fear of failure is kind of built into you quite early on in life

Mike (40:54)
Yeah,

yeah. And yeah, it is something that needs to be accepted by kids and stuff and not, you know, don’t come down on them a ton of bricks if they fail a test or they fail to do something the right way. Because that’s just part of growing up and yeah, not that I advocate growing up to anyone.

James (41:15)
Keep it childish. What’s the small thing that always makes you smile?

Mike (41:23)
Small thing that always makes me smile. ⁓

it’ll probably come back to music again I think yeah a small thing like a certain change within the song like a key change or whatever and it’s just ⁓ god yeah that’s really good that’s something that I’ll listen to a song over and over again just for that one just for that one piece in a song so yeah that’s probably what makes you smile

Another thing is neatness and like, yeah, organisation is quite a big thing for me. If everything’s lined up and everything’s clean and in its place. I probably sound like I’m some kind of OCD freak, but I’m not. But I just, like it when everything’s kind of neat, like your shelf there, you’ve got the screwdrivers in the right position and little things like that make me happy.

James (42:23)
I’m

organized, but only in certain places. Like something like, point my shelves and the kind of, that’s pretty organized. ⁓ Bordering on serial killer levels of organization. But then there’s also a laundry pile ⁓ in the house that I really should get around to. And it’s just kind of everywhere. ⁓ So I’m kind of selectively organized and it is usually in kind of work where…

things have to be in the right positions and then when I’m not thinking about work everything just kind of all goes free range and kind of lives where it needs to.

Mike (42:57)
Yeah,

I think it’s important to add that again. That’s a good example of slight failure within the whole system. It’s I think if you haven’t got that small imperfection or that flaw, then you’re definitely on the on the serial killer. Yeah.

James (43:11)
Yeah,

if I find myself ⁓ neatly organizing my laundry, then I’ll start to worry.

Mike (43:17)
Yeah, and that way back. ⁓

James (43:20)
If you had a free day with no plans, how would you spend it?

Mike (43:25)
I would probably spend it outside. There’s a whole bunch of jobs that I keep that I should be doing, like fixing the chicken house a bit better, making sure they’ve got enough shelter, putting the skirting boards up. I’d probably do something like that actually. It’d be nice to say I’d go out for a walk along the beach and have a hot chocolate somewhere, but I’d probably get what…

get rid of one of those jobs that you know those kind of jobs that are always there at the back of your mind that you haven’t done for years but you keep meaning to do i think i’d probably get a few of those ticked off in my mind in a way in reality i’d probably spend half the day doom scrolling and go ⁓ crap it’s gone dark now it’s too late for it

James (44:15)
chickens will have to wait.

What’s something that makes you lose track of time?

Mike (44:22)
Apart from doom scrolling doom scrolling is terrible. It’s like I really have to kind of check myself on that ⁓ And I don’t think I’m anywhere near as bad as as the youngsters nowadays anyway lose track of time ⁓

That is a tricky, there’s not many things that do that. I’ve got so many things on the go the whole time. If I kind of get bored with one thing, I can quite easily jump onto something else. So I don’t often find myself, you know, like two hours into a ridiculous job or hobby.

James (45:06)
Do you, when you’re cooking, does that fly past and you kind of just get into a flow state and ⁓ you suddenly kind of, it’s closing time or it’s the end of the evening and you suddenly kind of you come up for air and…

Mike (45:23)
Yeah, prep, cooking is never just one or two jobs. If you’ve got a prep list, it’s never just like three different jobs. It’s always, you’ve got those three done, but you could always do that and that and that. And then my wife, Lucy, she has got a heritage seed company. So there’s loads of veg or trial veg that I’ve got to find different ways of trying to preserve so we don’t give it to the goats or the sheep or something like that. So there’s always, oh, I should make some sauerkraut from that.

or make some kefir or kombucha out of that. Yeah, or prep it and jar it and pressure can it or whatever. So yeah, I can just say I’m just gonna make a cake in the kitchen and then several hours later I’ll have jars of sauerkraut and a whole bunch of stuff on the go. So yeah, cooking can lead me down those rabbit holes a bit.

James (46:19)
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Mike (46:22)
I don’t think I’ve ever been I’ve never been personally given advice that that has stuck with me But I think it comes back to that failure thing. That’s a kind of a really gradual Realization and you know you see it on different TED talks and God forbid if you spend too much time on LinkedIn You’ll get it rammed down your throat. Yeah failure is yeah learn from your failure learn from your mistakes

Yeah, every time we do balls up, it still hurts. It doesn’t mean it hasn’t got to hurt and you feel embarrassed or ashamed by it. But you’ve got to get it in perspective and just think, ⁓ yeah, fucked up. But it doesn’t really matter. Look what’s going on in the world at the moment in comparison to all these people who by the modern kind of parameters or whatever, they’re super successful. They’re billionaires.

But look what a crappy job they’re doing of things. Yeah, so I think learn from your mistakes and just accept it and then let it go and move on and learn from it.

James (47:36)
in the future, apart from an F chord?

Mike (47:38)
⁓ yeah, guitar definitely is something. Becoming a ⁓ proper adventurer as well would be bloody brilliant, which I kind of fell into a couple of years ago on the kayak thing. I’ve never really kayaked before, but I decided to do this big long kayak trip and I’ve got a ski, I’m crossing.

the sea ice in Melville Bay in Northern Greenland next May, skiing across it. I haven’t skied for 30 years. I’ve had to get onto YouTube and find out what kit I need and all this kind of stuff. So it would be nice to get to a position where I feel fairly competent at any of these cool activities. But I don’t mind too much learning and just…

again learning by my mistakes but in that kind of situation if you do make a mistake it can be a bit more serious than ⁓ you know a mistake here here in England but yeah it’d be nice to feel like I was kind of competent at doing some adventure-y type stuff

James (48:46)
And I mean the adventures you’ve been on so far and the adventures that you’re planning are all in fairly cold environments. Is there anything you’d want to do in a slightly warmer space?

Mike (48:58)
Yeah, yeah, I’ve got this big project starting in March next year for 12 months where I’m going through, there’s been essentially three main human diets for last two million years. So the hunter-gatherer, then agriculture, and then industrial, which we’re in at the moment. And part of the hunter-gatherer, and for each one it’s a three month period and I’m kind of deep diving into each diet with full medical tests.

and part of the hunter gatherer one, as well as this skiing thing across the ice in Greenland, I’m going to Namibia for four weeks to live in the Kalahari with the Bushmen. it’s the polar opposite of the Greenland diet. But essentially it’s the same thing because it’s hyper local, seasonal, raw or fermented, sometimes cooked food. There’s not like a million different ingredients in each meal.

And it’s living within the environment. Yeah, and you’re totally affected by the environment. The circadian rhythms, you the air, you’re not bombarded with ⁓ crappy civilization type stuff the whole time. So yeah, that’s gonna be hot out there in Namibia, which will be a great one.

James (50:19)
What’s the one thing you’d like listeners to take away from this conversation?

Mike (50:24)
I think it only comes with age. You realize life is really bloody short. looking back, I guess it’s part of that whole, wrapped up in that whole kind of failure thing where you’re overly concerned with what people think of you or what that looks like.

just don’t give a monkey’s about it as far as you can. I know it’s easy to say it but really don’t. If you screw up or you make a fool of yourself or whatever, it’s not the end of the world. We’re here for such a tiny amount of time and it’s not about the money. It’s about living it as best you can.

you know, bearing in mind that you’re not an individual, you’re part of this fantastic, massive ecosystem that is the world, is humankind, is, you know, the whole environment. You’re part of that. And it’s such a short, tiny amount of time.

and it does fly past kids, you know, when you roll your eyes at the old people saying, ⁓ yeah, it flies past, it just seems like yesterday. It’s really true. And in 50 years time, if you’re a teenager listening to this, you’ll go, bloody hell, where did that go? You know, I shouldn’t have been as hung up as I was on whatever stupid thing it was you were hung up on. Just enjoy life and get it in perspective.

James (51:57)
And last question, what’s next for you?

Mike (52:00)
Next is this big diet project next year. So we had this, I did this kayak adventure.

up the coast of Greenland which got Nikolai Kostelwildau who was Jamie Lannister from Game of Thrones involved which is a whole interesting bunch of coincidences but that’s been turned into a documentary that has been pitched to Netflix and History Channel in the next couple of weeks ⁓ which is really exciting so if that kicks off then this big project for next year will get filmed as well as a six-part series so hopefully that’s next

And if not, then I’ll still be doing the Greenland and Namibia thing, just paying for it myself. So yeah, just trying to get sponsorship and work to get enough money to pay for it basically. Thank you very much. Absolute pleasure to be on.

James (52:45)
Thanks Mike and happy travels.