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April 11, 2024
Breathing Techniques for Weight Loss. The Power of Nostalgic Music. Cinnabon's Effect on Men's Attractiveness. Businessmen Who Travel with Teddy Bears.
On today’s podcast …we’ll have a proven happiness technique from UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb.
You’ll hear how a little cheese every day can keep heart disease away.
You’ll learn the exact time to send emails so people will open them.
Also, why Harvard Business School says every day we should be writing down our small wins
And then, why is it that women are more likely to give men their phone numbers when they are approached at pleasant-smelling places - like coffee shops, bakeries, and flower shops.
Find out more at https://Tesh.com
(00:00) The Power of Music and Cheese
(11:42) Scent in Dating and Sleep
(20:57) Mindful Eating and Email Productivity
(27:53) Celebrating Small Wins for Success
(30:46) Celebrating Small Wins and Childhood Comforts
(36:54) Benefits of Learning an Instrument
Transcript
00:00 - Speaker 1
All right, welcome to the podcast, john Tesh with Gib Gerard, and we got some great stuff for you guys today. First of all, coming up, we're going to have a proven happiness technique. It comes from UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. Basically, it's just eat ice cream every day. I'm just kidding.
00:17 - Speaker 2
It does make you happier for at least a little while.
00:20 - Speaker 1
Yeah, okay, and you're also going to hear how a little cheese every day can keep your heart disease away. This was really surprising to me, because I always thought that too much cheese is clogging up the arteries, but apparently not.
00:33 - Speaker 2
I've heard all kinds of stuff about the benefits of cheese and we'll talk more about that in a minute, but cheese is just good.
00:41 - Speaker 1
Well, and it turns out that certain cheeses are great for your microbiome. Uh-huh yeah, as long as it's active culture.
00:47 - Speaker 2
You've got to make sure you get the stuff that you can't eat when you're pregnant. That's the good cheese. If it's cheese you can't eat when you're pregnant, that's the cheese, you can't eat All the germs, yeah, the good germs.
00:57 - Speaker 1
And then why is it that women are more likely to give men their phone numbers when they're approached at pleasant, smelling places like coffee shops, bakeries and flower shops?
01:06 - Speaker 2
I mean because everybody's happy.
01:08 - Speaker 1
Everybody's always happier when they're happier.
01:14 - Speaker 2
It's like it's tautological, but it's true, tautological, nice, yeah, it's self-referencing is the point. Everybody's happier when they're happier.
01:19 - Speaker 1
So let's talk first of all about this happiness technique. It's from UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. We've had Alex on Connie's health show quite a bit and we've quoted him on this show. He just says you need to listen to music from the happiest time of your life. Boy, does this make sense, right? So music affects the brain, he says, in a way that transports us back to the time when our life, when we first formed an attachment to a song. It's called context-dependent Memory if you want to impress your friends. So if you start listening to the music you were into back in high school or college, you'll feel more connected to that happier time in your life and it'll affect how you feel now.
01:55 - Speaker 2
My problem, as you know, gib, is that the music that I found happiest in my life is music nobody wants to listen to now, which is you know, odd time signature stuff, like you know, yes, and close to the edge, and and uriah heap and all those bands that you like too you make it sound like those bands are not still selling out arenas when they go on tour and you're in the front row at half of those concerts. Uh, I mean, look, I just was, I just was the problem is it looks like a science fiction film where nobody has anything but white hair and we all walk with a slight limp.
02:29
We're all listing slight lips at Starbucks Some people used to have canes as a fashion statement. Now it's an important medical tool. Yeah, I get it Go. There are moments where the song is so integrated into how you felt, particularly during formative years, I mean, and I think actually today's kids are not going to get to experience it. But there was a time and I'm sure you remember this. I remember and because you influenced my music when I was a teenager, I have all these 60s bands and 70s bands that I listened to as a teenager myself. So I feel a lot older than I am. But I remember the first time I got into a car without having anybody expecting me to be anywhere. You know, it was late teens. Nobody needed me anywhere and I was just going to visit friends and there was there was no responsibility on me at all. That first moment I was listening to a steve miller band uh, best of uh tape, cassette tape and I every time I hear that you know, uh, big old jet airliner, don't carry me too far.
03:30
It reminds, it takes me right back to that moment of the most freedom I had ever experienced in my life, in a single moment, and I anytime I listen to steve miller band, it brings me right to that place yeah, when I was, uh, when I, when I was working that's interesting because we're gonna do a piece on cheese here in just a minute.
03:44 - Speaker 1
But when I was working, it's interesting because we're going to do a piece on cheese here in just a minute. But when I was in high school, as you know, I had a job managing a cheese shop, the Garden City Cheese Shop on 7th Street in Garden City, and so I figured I was sort of hideously thin. Girls weren't interested in me. I smelled like clear as silk, I had braces on and I figured that a little cheese smell wouldn't be a me. I smelled like clear as silk, I had braces on and I figured that a little cheese smell wouldn't be a problem.
04:10 - Speaker 2
Why not why?
04:10 - Speaker 1
not just add insult to injury. Anyway, the reason I my only friend was like the disc jockey. He didn't know that I was his friend, but the disc jockey in WABC AM radio, which is huge, 77 WABC, and they used to always say, hey, call in for a request. That was back in the day when you could actually do that. I always call in and say, hey, please play 21st Century Schizoid.
04:33 - Speaker 2
Man by King Crimson.
04:36 - Speaker 1
And the cousin Brucey would go no, because it's like in seven different time signatures. So that's the music of my. Nostalgic music is stuff like that.
04:45 - Speaker 2
And it's not a short song either. So you're going to be taking up like 10 minutes of airwaves.
04:54 - Speaker 1
Well, they tried, and they tried that argument on me, right. But I was like no, no, no, no, no Stairway to heaven, come on. It's no longer the stairway to heaven.
05:06 - Speaker 2
Well, it's not stairway to heaven? It's 21st century Schizoid man.
05:12 - Speaker 1
But the point being, that's going to bring you right back to those moments. You can't forget those. You can't forget those.
05:15 - Speaker 2
I absolutely feel that way, and there's times when my kids are annoying me. I pull into the driveway, I kick them out of my car and I will put on the rock and roll that I listened to growing up, and it will help me relax before I have to actually deal with my children again. Use this as a life hack. Use it to feel happy again. For me, I'm going to be downloading the entire steve miller band. Uh, you know collection after this.
05:39 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I remember, you know, in high school. I may have been junior high, but high school school definitely. I'm walking down the stairway because everybody had parties in their basement on Long Island. It was the thing because parents just they wouldn't come down there, they would leave you alone. I remember walking down the stairs and hearing Elton John's, your Song on the record player. I can conjure that moment up and that's exactly what this is talking about. Which is it really creates?
06:03 - Speaker 2
happiness and it totally connects you right to that moment, right to that feeling, and that's the you know. By the way, that's the power of music in general. I mean, that's where it's really beautiful, but use this to get yourself to a happier place.
06:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely Speaking of the cheese shop, as I hinted at. I saw this. God bless you. I saw this. We should do a story about why, for some people, sneezes come in threes.
06:28 - Speaker 2
I'm one of those people. Did you ever look it up? No, but I have a friend whose name is Scott. He sneezes in like sixes and sevens.
06:39 - Speaker 1
It's so many.
06:40 - Speaker 2
Once he starts sneezing you might as well go and check your parking meter, because you've got time.
06:47 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you actually just sent me a piece that we'll have on the radio show we should do it on the podcast as well about how there have been many accidents from people who have allergies and aren't treated and who sneeze a lot. They end up being in car accidents, which makes sense.
07:02 - Speaker 2
There are times when I'm driving and I'm sneezing. I'm like how am I going to survive the next hundred feet?
07:07 - Speaker 1
well, how'd you? Because I don't see I'm.
07:09 - Speaker 2
Once I became a dad, I started dad sneezing, which is a very big, loud sneeze that is completely uncontrollable yeah, I'm one of those guys too.
07:17 - Speaker 1
So we were uh talking about, about cheese, and I always thought that cheese was sort of the demon of your body, bad for you, cholesterol, everything.
07:26
But now, according to the European Journal of Nutrition, they found that a little cheese every day can drive heart disease away. So there was an analysis that they performed. They found that people who ate a little bit of cheese every day were less likely to develop heart disease compared to those who rarely or never ate any cheese. Less likely to develop heart disease compared to those who rarely or never ate any cheese. So it turns out that cheese eaters had a 14% lower risk of heart disease and were 10% less likely to have a stroke. Why? Researchers think it's because of the calcium, the protein and the probiotics in cheese. People who got the health benefits from cheese ate about 40 grams a day. It sounds like a lot, but it's just a slice and a half of cheddar and the really good cheddar. That's the stuff that has the probiotics for your microbiome You've got to get the real cheese.
08:10 - Speaker 2
You've got to get the expensive cheese and you don't have to eat too much of it. No offense, I happen to love Kraft Singles, but this is not Kraft Singles. There's nothing that makes a better grilled cheese sandwich or, as you call it, a toasted cheese sandwich, than a Kraft single. But we're talking about the real cheese, the one that you have to go over to the other section of the grocery store to get in the nicer foods.
08:32 - Speaker 1
That's the cheese that you want to get.
08:33 - Speaker 2
You know, everybody knows what I'm talking about. There's the regular cheese for your kids' lunches for the week, and then there's the other cheese section. It's like, oh, we're having people over for dinner this week, we should get the good cheese. Go to the good cheese section. And, by the way, to your point, it's only 40 grams a day. So this is the same thing that people did with red wine. It's like, oh, there are flavonoids in red wine, great, I'm going to drink a case. It's like, no, no, no, the alcohol.
08:58
And the sugar is killing any benefits. It's a glass or two of red wine. Well, it's not a cheese-based diet. It's a slice and a half of really good cheese.
09:08 - Speaker 1
That's the difference. You've got to eat like a French peasant in the 19th century. That's what you have to think about, and don't mistake what Gib just said it's not a slice and a half of pizza.
09:19 - Speaker 2
Right. Right, although that probably wouldn't be too bad for you, pizza is surprisingly high in protein. Right, although that probably wouldn't be too bad for you, pizza is surprisingly high in protein.
09:26 - Speaker 1
That's not an endorsement, no, but there are those pieces that we've had before that say there are these nutritionists that say, hey, instead of the sugary cereals, you might as well go ahead and have full fat ice cream for breakfast. I'm thinking, wow, because at least it's got protein and actual fat in it. Or pizza.
09:41 - Speaker 2
Yeah, but go, so make sure that you're not eating nothing but cheese. And this goes back to a connection that we've talked about before, which is that nutritionists are starting to figure out more and more, which is that there is little correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. So we think of these high-fat foods that are high in the cholesterol that you consume and that that correlates with a bad blood cholesterol the next time you go to your doctor. There is new research that suggests that's not the case. That is not as much of a correlation between what you what you are actually eating, versus the cholesterol in the food you eat, versus the cholesterol in your blood. This does not mean, if you are struggling with high cholesterol, that all of a sudden you're like well, that means I can have 18 cheeseburgers no, talk to your doctor. But high fat, especially healthy fats that are like in cheeses with probiotics in them, that's going to be healthier for you overall than a diet with the saturated fats.
10:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and in an upcoming podcast we're going to talk a lot about the power of olive oil. Oh yeah, and how great the extra virgin olive oil is Olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil.
10:54 - Speaker 2
these are all great oils.
10:56 - Speaker 1
We're going to move on, uh, some dating and relationship intel and we uh we got this, uh study. Give that I found fascinating. I wanted to get your opinion on it. It turns out that women are more likely to give men their phone numbers when they're approached at pleasant, smelling places like coffee shops, bakeries and and flower shops, as compared to when men approach them in clothing stores or banks or a dumpster. I just put the dumpster in there, but it makes sense.
11:22 - Speaker 2
Look if you're introducing yourself to a woman at a dumpster unless you're working for Habitat for Humanity. You probably should just find a different time to approach her.
11:31 - Speaker 1
So the researchers believe it's because enjoyable aromas improve our mood, making us more receptive to romantic advances. So I mean, why not just hang out next to Cinnabon, right?
11:41 - Speaker 2
Right, I mean exactly. You brought up smelling like cheese and it hurting your chances of getting a date when you were in high school. You know you should have. German tells it yeah.
11:50 - Speaker 1
German tells it Somebody looking for a Sadie Hawkins partner. They run right past. The German tells it on your apron.
11:56 - Speaker 2
What's funny is the whole day is going to be about cheese today. But what's funny is that you, to this day, will go out to dinner and everybody in the family likes cheese. We like all kinds of cheeses and if the cheese gets a little too weird you really can't handle it. And you know them all. You know exactly what the flavor profile of each one of them is.
12:14 - Speaker 1
You're like I can't eat that them is you're like I can't eat that it's. I can do it with my eyes closed.
12:20 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, you had to do that for the test, you have to close your eyes and yeah, very impressive, yeah, very impressive, but you until they get to the limburger, then you go. I quit nobody wants to sniff limburger, but the point is look, we've and we've talked about this before our sense of smell is designed to protect us. It's designed to protect us from eating rancid food. It's designed to protect us from Sorry about that. It's designed to protect us from From allergies From allergies.
12:43 - Speaker 1
My allergy is going crazy right now.
12:45 - Speaker 2
I started the season, Well what?
12:46 - Speaker 1
happened was because we're doing this in California, and what happened was, with all that this is my unscientific idea. Hypothesis is that with all that rain now, we're getting all the new growth, and so I think there are more allergens out there than there were.
13:05 - Speaker 2
I 100% agree, and my office is. I mean I don't want to get too gross, but it is full of mildew. I can smell it every day. I have an air filter going on behind me and I am definitely experiencing it.
13:15 - Speaker 1
So, anyway, we've got to get you a new studio. Go ahead. So what are we talking?
13:18 - Speaker 2
about.
13:19 - Speaker 1
We're talking about women, we're talking about cheese again, but let's get back to talking about the women who were more likely to say yes to a date.
13:24 - Speaker 2
Your nose is meant to protect you. It's meant to protect you from all of these different things, so from rancid food, from germy situations. So it is a very strong one. We talked about that before with memory. We've talked about that before with emotional connection, about how important scent is. And why aromatherapy works is because of that strong connection into your brain. So it would make sense that if you are smelling something that is less than pleasant, your overall brain chemistry will be in a negative place, and if you're smelling something that is pleasant, your overall brain chemistry will be popular, positive. So it works for getting a date. It also works for selling cinnamon rolls, by the way, you brought up working at a Cinnabon and how many more dates you would have gotten from that Cinnabon fakes that smell, I mean they have the real smell.
14:11
but before they start making the cinnamon buns they have an air freshener so that when you walk by you're going to be like, oh, I feel so much better, I should probably eat a cinnamon bun.
14:18 - Speaker 1
It's actually a scent generator, You're right.
14:20 - Speaker 2
So yeah, so obviously companies are using this. If you're single right now, you might as well use this Get yourself some Dracar Noir and wear that. Get yourself some coffee-based cologne. Get yourself cinnamon bun, air freshener necklaces. Whatever you need to do but this will help you get a date.
14:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, if you gotta be careful, you might get chased by dogs with like vanilla, vanilla scented motion.
14:47 - Speaker 2
Yeah, no, uh, no, like hot dog scents. You don't want that?
14:51 - Speaker 1
then the dogs chase you uh, hey, speaking of, uh, speaking of dogs and uh and I were out on the road and we ended up in well, it's a long story but it's actually a fun story maybe at the end of the podcast, but we ended up in Scottsdale just for our anniversary, for our 32nd wedding anniversary. We thought let's not leave Leroy the dog with Gib and Prima because it would be too much, because we're going to be gone for over a week. So we brought the dog with us and we brought the crate and everything because we were really good. And then I got to the point where it's like the dog would jump in the bed and I'd be like, okay, you're fine.
15:35 - Speaker 2
And so now the dog sleeps.
15:37 - Speaker 1
So I've just destroyed it. Just all that training is, you know, is gone now.
15:41 - Speaker 2
If you had left him with us, he would have been sleeping in bed with me too. So you're fine with your, with your, with your kids.
15:47 - Speaker 1
But the point I'm bringing up here is that there was a study about whether they'll ruin your sleep or not. So with a dog, most of all they're just out right, and then they don't move. But cats listen. Sleep specialist Dr Michael Bruce. We've had him on the show a lot. Of course. You know Michael. He says dogs usually do sleep through the night. It's a fact.
16:10
But cats are highly disruptive and I grew up with two cats and it was just like this. Because they're nocturnal. So as soon as the lights go out, boom in the wild. Nighttime is when cats do all of their hunting. But a house cat will simply walk all over you. Instead of hunting, they'll gallop around the house, they'll bat their toys around while you're trying to sleep. At 2 o'clock in the morning they're just working and in order to get the rest you need, you may need to make your bedroom off-lim. Your to your cats at night. There's no way. Thank you, dr. Dr bruce, but having grown up with cats for a year, for 18 years, they will find a way in there. They'll, they'll like, flatten their bodies and slide themselves underneath the door?
16:48 - Speaker 2
did you have stephen king cats that they were able to like, transcend pet, pet cemetery. But but isn't that interesting the difference between the two, excuse me, yeah, well, I mean I would say, let's put a pin in puppies, because puppies are as disruptive at night as a young child, right, but cats, for their whole lives, are way more disruptive. Because dogs is this true that dogs sleep like 18 hours a day?
17:13 - Speaker 1
Yeah, they can. Yeah, older dogs, yeah.
17:18 - Speaker 2
So if you have a dog that you're exercising regularly and stimulating properly, they're going to sleep. So at a certain point and we also bred dogs to be our there is a theory that early humans took dogs and we domesticated them to help us sleep in colder environments, that they would provide extra body heat so that you could, you know, sleep more easily in caves and in cold environments. So they are meant to kind of snuggle up and sleep with us and help us get a better night's sleep. Uh, leroy, our dog absolutely will do that. He'll nuzzle in right there and and and and. It's great. Everybody I know who has cats has stories about them, about waking up with a on their face, about waking up with the cat getting the zoomies and running around the house and just completely destroying sleep. I love cats. We do have to figure out is there a nighttime cat thing we could make that would distract the cats so they don't wake people up Because you can't keep them out of the bedroom?
18:20 - Speaker 1
Yeah, we've already made it.
18:21
It's called ambien, cat ambien here come here, kitty, have your melatonin, your tuna flavored melatonin gummies yeah, and the problem with a cat those of you have cats, you know, you know exactly what I'm talking about is it? They could be in your bed or whatever. You can be on the couch right next to the bed and all of a sudden you get this sort of weird feeling and and you open your eyes and they're looking at you right, and they've got those eyes that have that like the black cross in there they're predators, their eyes forward, looking right at you yeah, yeah anyway.
18:50
So, by the way you were talking about, you know, dogs to keep you warm. That's where the one of the most popular bands talking about nostalgic bands, three dog Dog Night. They're named after that because that was the way back in the day Was it Eskimos or whatever. Yeah, that's how you rated how cold it was at night. It was a Three Dog Night, it was a One Dog Night.
19:07 - Speaker 2
You needed three dogs in order to make it through the night, Otherwise you'd be freezing cold. Well, there you go.
19:11 - Speaker 1
Three.
19:13 - Speaker 2
Dog Night.
19:14 - Speaker 1
When you and I were camping in Boy Scouts, it was a 12-dog night.
19:19 - Speaker 2
And, by the way, chihuahua does not count as one of the dogs. Chihuahuas shiver at room temperature. I don't know how helpful they're going to be. Oh my gosh, we've come a full circle on so many things today, I know. I know.
19:33 - Speaker 1
That's the first one that hasn't gone back to cheese, thankfully. So, coming up in just a moment, we've got a quick break. We're going to talk about a quick way to eat less. It's from Harvard researchers and it's all about a type of breathing. Let me see what else we've got Also. Oh yeah, so if you want people to read and respond to your emails, there's a specific time and a specific day that you should send them, and this is great. I've already started doing this. And then we're going to talk about somebody you've interviewed before, Dr BJ Fogg from Stanford. He's a human behavior professor. He talks about how important it is to throw a party to celebrate your tiny wins. And then also there's a practice that's trending right now More and more people are traveling with their teddy bears and their Raggedy Ann dolls and I'm not talking about little kids, so that's all coming up.
20:20 - Speaker 2
I've seen this Right.
20:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's coming up. But first this Welcome back to the podcast John Tesh with Gib Gerard. And here is a quick way according to Harvard researchers. I like this idea. It's a quick way to eat less. So they found that before each meal, what you should do, Gib, is you should take two minutes to focus on your breathing and you use this pattern. They found that this pattern works the best. You inhale deeply through your nose, you pause, Then you exhale slowly through your mouth. That move will help you eat 400 fewer calories a day and cut four pounds every month. It's like what? Yeah it calories a day and cut four pounds every month. It's like what? Yeah, it turns out that deep breathing wakes up our brains appetite control center, so we will crave less food. I mean, can you imagine doing this on a first date?
21:36 - Speaker 2
exactly how was the date? It was fine, but the guy he, he might have some sort of problem because he like a deviated septum. He was doing this weird stuff before every meal.
21:48 - Speaker 1
What are you going to have? I'm not having nothing.
21:50 - Speaker 2
I could see me standing in the pantry at 1 o'clock in the morning just doing this deep breathing exercise, trying not to eat the chocolate almonds when I wake up in the middle of the night.
22:04 - Speaker 1
You failed me for the last time.
22:05 - Speaker 2
Go, go ahead this works because we're mindless. We are so mindless right now we mindlessly check our phones. We might I mean we mindlessly drive from a to b. If you've been going on the same, on the same route of your whole life, you know, or at least for a couple of months. You just your car just ends up there because we're not focused on anything. And this is basically just a mindfulness exercise. This is just focused, intentional breathing to bring your body and your mind back into the present, back into your body, and when you do that, you have all kinds of systems that are meant to control your appetite and keep you from overeating in the categories that we all overeat on.
22:42
The problem is not not a calorie problem. I mean, it is a calorie problem, but the problem is a mindlessness problem, and I am so guilty of this. I mean, we talk. How many times we talk about if you eat while watching television, if you eat while you're doing something stressful, if you eat while you're driving, if you do this, you end up eating more and more food because we are mindless, because we don't focus. That's why we say eat crunchier foods. If you eat crunchier foods, you'll eat less food because your brain can't help but check in with the fact that you're eating.
23:08
Well, the same thing is true. If you can just get mindful with your breath, your body will say oh, we're not that hungry, we actually don't need chocolate, we need protein. Your body has systems in place for all of that. We just need to stop and listen to it. And most of us don't myself included, because I love potato chips. So I'm going to reach for the potato chips. I love chocolate, I reach for the chocolate. But if I did this, I might have a hard-boiled egg or a small slice of cheese, like we were talking about before.
23:34 - Speaker 1
So I was talking to your 12-year-old daughter recently and she was talking about how, hey, pop-pop, did you know that my dad eats over a trash can? I'm like I couldn't wait. This is probably a good time, because this might be a Harvard thing too. Why do you eat over a trash? Can I eat over a?
23:51 - Speaker 2
trash. Can I eat over the sink? Look, we have. I mean both my wife and I. We both work, we have three children. They all do sports. They all do different sports, so I spend almost all my time at school plays.
24:04 - Speaker 1
I got to go to one of those.
24:05 - Speaker 2
Today we spend all of this time shuttling our kids to different places. I spend a lot of time just cooking and I don't have time to cook, sit down and have a family dinner and prepare for the practice that I have to go coach, so I put the food out for the kids and I eat while I'm changing clothes. And I'll eat over the trash can because I also don't want another dish to clean, so it's a disgusting habit. I'll eat over the sink too, but it's because I just don't. I want to just eat quickly and I want to get going to the next activity. It is a. It is totally utilitarian. I long for the day and I'm sure I'll miss this time when it's over, but I long for the day when I can actually sit and eat with my kids, as opposed to. You need to eat that you need to get your socks on. What are we doing? And while I'm changing for practice.
24:48 - Speaker 1
So again from the Harvard researchers before each meal, you take two minutes to focus on your breathing and you follow the pattern of inhaling deeply through your nose, then pause, then exhale slowly through your mouth. Helps you eat 400 calories a day. Sounds pretty simple. Please send us a video of you doing that.
25:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, Again, your first date joke is great If I could see me in the Oreo cookie aisle.
25:12 - Speaker 1
Just Well, let's do a quick productivity hack here. If you want people to read and respond to your emails, there is a specific time that you should be sending these emails, and it is Tuesday morning at 9.15 am. Scientists studying the behavior patterns of email users said people don't respond to emails rationally by replying to the most important ones first. So a three-month study listen to this a study of thousands of email accounts showed most people reply to incoming emails in the order they arrive. So even if the boss's email is a higher priority, if it's not at the top of their inbox it won't get open before one from someone they don't know. And when it comes to work emails, tuesday at 9.15 am is best because workers have dealt with the backlog of mail they say from over the weekend. On Monday and on Tuesdays productivity is the highest. So Tuesday 9.15.
26:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean it makes sense because we talk about this A lot of times. We spend our Monday dealing with all of the problems that we let go on Friday, right, and which is another reason why we suggest separately that you spend your Sunday evening just doing a little bit of work to make Monday more manageable. But Monday is almost a lost day because of what we just described. Because you have all of the catch up over the weekend, Everybody's a little bit more tired. You're getting back into the swing of things. Tuesday is that magic day where you're like all right, I'm actually accomplishing stuff today and 9.15 sounds about right. I just cannot believe. Do you remember when email first came out? I do, absolutely.
26:47 - Speaker 1
You have mail. You've got mail.
26:49 - Speaker 2
It was so exciting.
26:49 - Speaker 1
It was this amazing thing, it was the same feeling as going to the mailbox and seeing the flag up.
26:56 - Speaker 2
You'd see the little thing would show up oh my gosh, I've got an email and you'd check it out. And then we got spam and we got all this and everybody's got email, this email, that and I mean, if I don't check my email for three hours, I will have 300 emails just sitting there unread. And it's to the point where we have. I mean, I have a great. I have a third-party email application that is just meant to manage all of this stuff. So we have an email problem. It's a communication problem. Everybody has too much communication all the time, and email is one of the big culprits. But the reality is it's still a great way that we it's one of the best ways we have to communicate across platforms, across time zones. So it's not going anywhere. Now you know the best time Tuesday 9-15.
27:42
That's when you need to send your most important email and somebody needs to invent a solution, a better program to deal with the way email is, because it is broken for sure. Yeah, yeah.
27:53 - Speaker 1
This next piece is with. I selected it with myself in mind, and that is it's a guy that you interviewed. His name is BJ Fogg and he wrote the book Tiny Habits right, yeah, yeah.
28:08
And so I've put myself in a high stress situation lately because I'm working on on uh, on developing a course, a piano course, right, and so it's like, okay, here's how to play my song round ball rock, here's how to play this other song from pbh, and and the whole. You know, the whole thing is uh, is you know, based on not having to read sheet music or music theory. It's based on just using your ear and watching me play, because you can do that electronically. So I'm like Stephen King in the early years where you start typing a story that you throw in the trash basket.
28:43
Because, I'm realizing that it's okay. So I'm going too fast for people. I need to slow down, I need to do this, and so I keep starting over and over. Too slow, I'm going too fast for people.
28:48 - Speaker 2
I need to slow down.
28:49 - Speaker 1
I need to do this. And so I keep starting over and over and finally I'm getting to a good place. But then it's like, okay, we've got to stop, let's do the podcast, and we've got to do the radio show and everything. And so there's so many things that are like almost finished but not so. When I saw this thing have to do this. And so what fog says is we need to throw a party to celebrate our tiny wins. And again, bj fog is from stanford human behavior department. He says if we don't focus enough on the small things that we accomplish, uh it's, it's bad for us. When we do, it can be very motivating. We can keep going. That's why he says every day we should be writing down our small wins, even if it's just I ate a salad yeah, this is an example. Or I wash the dishes instead of leaving them dirty in the sink, because what I've left myself with is stuff that's too big.
29:37 - Speaker 2
Right.
29:37 - Speaker 1
I'm not going to. So I have to pick the small, the small wins inside that.
29:41 - Speaker 2
And it gets overwhelming if you don't celebrate the small wins, all of the stuff that you have, if you don't celebrate it properly. It's like I didn't really get much done today, as opposed to doing the little things and then celebrate them. This is the same basic concept of making your bed first thing in the morning.
29:59
Just making your bed goes a really long way in setting the tone for your whole day, because if you can make it and celebrate it getting the kids to school on time, all all those little things that happen throughout the day you have to count those too. Count them, celebrate them, reward yourself for them. It creates a dopamine cycle that will make you more likely to accomplish things. Because, look, if we don't get the dopamine burst from doing the things that we want to do, if we don't find a way to give ourselves that, we will find dopamine bursts in unhealthy habits.
30:28
We will find in mindless doom scrolling, in looking at stuff on social media. It gets to us. We're going to look for it one way or the other. You might as well do it to reinforce the habits that you're trying to build in your life.
30:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, as you were saying that, you said it so well.
30:46
I was thinking not of myself for once, but I was thinking of of caregivers, you know, and I was thinking of of you because you are a caregiver and you're at a place in your life now with three kids, you know, 12, 10 and 7 and every all three of them play at least two sports. Yeah, you're coaching. You're coaching one of the sports you're actually two of the sports, because you're coaching basketball as well and then also you're refereeing a lot of the sports Actually two of the sports because you're coaching basketball as well and then also you're refereeing a lot of the soccer games, and so a lot of what you're doing is just serving others, and so if you don't have those small wins, eventually you're going to have a beer.
31:22 - Speaker 2
Just kidding. Eventually I'm going to have a beer anyway. That's going to be how I celebrate the small wins. I'm just going to put that out there um I just gave you license.
31:31 - Speaker 1
I but talk about the dopamine. No, but I do this.
31:34 - Speaker 2
You know, I, I, this is, this is the same basic concept of um, uh, sandwiching, where if you have a criticism for somebody, you put it between two compliments. It's I have I have to do it for because I coach baseball, um, probably the most. I spend the most time with my, my son, playing baseball versus all the other stuff that my kids do. And when baseball is, I say this to the kids in the first practice of every season baseball is a game of failure, the best hitters in the world strike out 65 to 70% of the time.
32:04
That's the best hitters in the world. They don't get on base, they're walking back to the dugout 65% to 70% of the time.
32:11
That means they have between a 300 and a 350 batting average which is incredible, but that means that most of the time, they're walking back to the dugout. A significant amount of the time they're walking back to the dugout, you have to have the things that are positive, that you can latch on to in order to deal with the fact that it's a game of failure, and so I'm always looking for to help them reinforce it for themselves, and this here's here's the evidence that we need to be reinforcing it for ourselves. I'm always looking for a positive. Hey, that was a great job fielding the ball. You have to finish with a good throw because you threw the ball into the outfield instead of throwing the first base. So, like you, you have to. You have to find ways to find a positive so that they see that they're improving, while also giving them the adjustments that they can improve, and we need to do this with ourselves. Hey, I ate a salad today. Did I lose all of the weight that I'd set out trying to lose?
33:01 - Speaker 1
Not yet.
33:01 - Speaker 2
but I ate a salad today and that makes me happy, that makes me feel better. I'm going to celebrate that.
33:07 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's good, that's good. We have one more piece for you, and this will probably be at least one of the pieces that you'll share with your friends. It'll be a conversation starter, because this is a trend now is people taking their childhood teddy bears on the road with them and, according to experts, the next time your stress is spiking you should in fact grab your childhood teddy bear Raggedy Ann or Cabbage Patch, kid Yale. Scientists who studied this, they call it the object safety signals, something uplifting and comforting, they say. That's never been associated with negativity, oh, that's good. And holding a safety signal, the teddy bear stimulates the part of your brain that controls thoughts and behaviors, which replaces feelings of stress and tension with comfort. And if you fill your mind and your body and your heart with these things, these safety signals, the rest of the stuff is not going to have any room to climb in.
34:02 - Speaker 2
Okay, so full disclosure. I was not a weird kid that took this blanket with me everywhere, but my grandmother had sewed me a blanket when I was a baby and it was on my bed all through high school and it was on my bed all through college and it got me through some hard times. And I don't mean in a weird wet blanket kind of way, I mean I would just if I was having a bad day, getting on my bed and taking a nap or something with that blanket. It helped me and it gave me all of the comfort that you were talking about. And I feel so bad because you had yours. And was it your Uncle Bo that destroyed it, that threw it on a fire literally? Because everybody's had this at some point in their life and you're told for better or for worse, you need to grow out of it. And you had yours thrown in the fire, right?
34:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it was a pillow. It was a little pillow and it had nylon. The covering was nylon right. And I called it my night-night and I carried it everywhere. There was a bunch of strife in our house because my sisters were 10, 11 years older than me in the 1960s and so my dad had a hard time handling that and so I had my night-night. But they were all fighting right, so I hung on to it. Maybe a little too long, I don't know 16, 17 years old.
35:22 - Speaker 2
But I see this?
35:24 - Speaker 1
I think I may have been, I don't know, in early junior high school and I went over to visit my uncle Charlie, Uncle Bo, at his house and he's a tough guy, you know, he's a naval officer, just like my dad. And he and he took the. He said, yeah, you don't need this anymore. And in front of me he took my night night and threw it into the fire and it slowly burned and the nylon melted.
35:49 - Speaker 2
And I'm like. No, the fumes alone did damage to your psyche. That was my future was going up in flames. The emotional connection, sure, but also just the nylon burning. I mean what that did to your hippocampus.
36:01 - Speaker 1
I wasn't thinking. You called me the nylon. It was my heart. My heart was on fire. I don't care what it smelled like, so yeah.
36:11 - Speaker 2
So there's a difference.
36:12 - Speaker 1
What were we talking about?
36:14 - Speaker 2
I want to say there's a difference between, like, an unhealthy connection that some people have to this stuff, where you see, like mine, no, I don't think yours was unhealthy, I think you had something that was really important to you taken away, which is why I wanted to bring that story up. But there's an unhealthy connection. But then there is this sort of nostalgic connection and I think that the nostalgic gentle brain signal is a good thing in the end.
36:39 - Speaker 1
I think that's beneficial for everybody. Yeah, I agree with you, let's say your Uncle Bill destroyed it for you.
36:50
We became friends after a while. We became friends after that, after a while, a couple years after that. Sadly, that's it for today's podcast, because I've had a good time. Of course we'd love to have you guys as regular subscribers, so make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast. Give us five, give us five stars, if you would. Also, if you want to learn how to play a song on the keyboard or on the piano, you can go to Teshcom and you'll see a connection there where you can get instant access to the piano course.
37:15
And the way I've been talking about this course, gabe, as you know, is not so much. Oh, it'd be great to play a song, but at the end of our concerts and again at Teshcom you can find out when Gabe and I are live in concert there's always people who come up who are my age or older and they'll just say, ah, I wish I hadn't given up piano lessons. I wish I could start. Is it too late to start? And so that's what this whole course is about is me teaching the songs that I wrote for the public television specials, and nice and slowly. But the way we're promoting this is is the way I I love for people to think about it, which is we now know how great, and gibbs got all this in his brain too. Uh, how, how great it is to for your brain, for your hippocampus, for your, for your memory center, to especially play piano, where you're using your left and your right hand and it goes right across the two hemispheres yeah, no, it's.
38:07 - Speaker 2
I mean, look it's it. Study after study shows that one. It's never too late to start and at any point. If you start, there are, there are cognitive benefits that will help stave off everything from, you know, dementia, alzheimer's, uh, your memory, or your working memory overall, can improve. I mean, learning an instrument has a serious impact on on your brain, as you even your mood, so you can actually have neurological benefits when it comes to mental health. So, learning an instrument and in fact, uh, there's this ad running the the only time I ever watch ads is when I'm watching, uh, sports on television there's this ad running about a um, a veterans program that gives guitars to veterans to help with PTSD. Yes, I saw this Because the link is so strong. I mean, we know that the link is strong. So do yourself a favor Learn an instrument. If it's not the John Tisch piano method, find another way to learn an instrument. But this is right there. This is available for you right now.
39:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, there is no other way. Thanks, gabe, it's great, and folks, we.
All right, welcome to the podcast, john Tesh with Gib Gerard, and we got some great stuff for you guys today. First of all, coming up, we're going to have a proven happiness technique. It comes from UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. Basically, it's just eat ice cream every day. I'm just kidding.
00:17 - Speaker 2
It does make you happier for at least a little while.
00:20 - Speaker 1
Yeah, okay, and you're also going to hear how a little cheese every day can keep your heart disease away. This was really surprising to me, because I always thought that too much cheese is clogging up the arteries, but apparently not.
00:33 - Speaker 2
I've heard all kinds of stuff about the benefits of cheese and we'll talk more about that in a minute, but cheese is just good.
00:41 - Speaker 1
Well, and it turns out that certain cheeses are great for your microbiome. Uh-huh yeah, as long as it's active culture.
00:47 - Speaker 2
You've got to make sure you get the stuff that you can't eat when you're pregnant. That's the good cheese. If it's cheese you can't eat when you're pregnant, that's the cheese, you can't eat All the germs, yeah, the good germs.
00:57 - Speaker 1
And then why is it that women are more likely to give men their phone numbers when they're approached at pleasant, smelling places like coffee shops, bakeries and flower shops?
01:06 - Speaker 2
I mean because everybody's happy.
01:08 - Speaker 1
Everybody's always happier when they're happier.
01:14 - Speaker 2
It's like it's tautological, but it's true, tautological, nice, yeah, it's self-referencing is the point. Everybody's happier when they're happier.
01:19 - Speaker 1
So let's talk first of all about this happiness technique. It's from UCLA neuroscientist Alex Korb. We've had Alex on Connie's health show quite a bit and we've quoted him on this show. He just says you need to listen to music from the happiest time of your life. Boy, does this make sense, right? So music affects the brain, he says, in a way that transports us back to the time when our life, when we first formed an attachment to a song. It's called context-dependent Memory if you want to impress your friends. So if you start listening to the music you were into back in high school or college, you'll feel more connected to that happier time in your life and it'll affect how you feel now.
01:55 - Speaker 2
My problem, as you know, gib, is that the music that I found happiest in my life is music nobody wants to listen to now, which is you know, odd time signature stuff, like you know, yes, and close to the edge, and and uriah heap and all those bands that you like too you make it sound like those bands are not still selling out arenas when they go on tour and you're in the front row at half of those concerts. Uh, I mean, look, I just was, I just was the problem is it looks like a science fiction film where nobody has anything but white hair and we all walk with a slight limp.
02:29
We're all listing slight lips at Starbucks Some people used to have canes as a fashion statement. Now it's an important medical tool. Yeah, I get it Go. There are moments where the song is so integrated into how you felt, particularly during formative years, I mean, and I think actually today's kids are not going to get to experience it. But there was a time and I'm sure you remember this. I remember and because you influenced my music when I was a teenager, I have all these 60s bands and 70s bands that I listened to as a teenager myself. So I feel a lot older than I am. But I remember the first time I got into a car without having anybody expecting me to be anywhere. You know, it was late teens. Nobody needed me anywhere and I was just going to visit friends and there was there was no responsibility on me at all. That first moment I was listening to a steve miller band uh, best of uh tape, cassette tape and I every time I hear that you know, uh, big old jet airliner, don't carry me too far.
03:30
It reminds, it takes me right back to that moment of the most freedom I had ever experienced in my life, in a single moment, and I anytime I listen to steve miller band, it brings me right to that place yeah, when I was, uh, when I, when I was working that's interesting because we're gonna do a piece on cheese here in just a minute.
03:44 - Speaker 1
But when I was working, it's interesting because we're going to do a piece on cheese here in just a minute. But when I was in high school, as you know, I had a job managing a cheese shop, the Garden City Cheese Shop on 7th Street in Garden City, and so I figured I was sort of hideously thin. Girls weren't interested in me. I smelled like clear as silk, I had braces on and I figured that a little cheese smell wouldn't be a me. I smelled like clear as silk, I had braces on and I figured that a little cheese smell wouldn't be a problem.
04:10 - Speaker 2
Why not why?
04:10 - Speaker 1
not just add insult to injury. Anyway, the reason I my only friend was like the disc jockey. He didn't know that I was his friend, but the disc jockey in WABC AM radio, which is huge, 77 WABC, and they used to always say, hey, call in for a request. That was back in the day when you could actually do that. I always call in and say, hey, please play 21st Century Schizoid.
04:33 - Speaker 2
Man by King Crimson.
04:36 - Speaker 1
And the cousin Brucey would go no, because it's like in seven different time signatures. So that's the music of my. Nostalgic music is stuff like that.
04:45 - Speaker 2
And it's not a short song either. So you're going to be taking up like 10 minutes of airwaves.
04:54 - Speaker 1
Well, they tried, and they tried that argument on me, right. But I was like no, no, no, no, no Stairway to heaven, come on. It's no longer the stairway to heaven.
05:06 - Speaker 2
Well, it's not stairway to heaven? It's 21st century Schizoid man.
05:12 - Speaker 1
But the point being, that's going to bring you right back to those moments. You can't forget those. You can't forget those.
05:15 - Speaker 2
I absolutely feel that way, and there's times when my kids are annoying me. I pull into the driveway, I kick them out of my car and I will put on the rock and roll that I listened to growing up, and it will help me relax before I have to actually deal with my children again. Use this as a life hack. Use it to feel happy again. For me, I'm going to be downloading the entire steve miller band. Uh, you know collection after this.
05:39 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and I remember, you know, in high school. I may have been junior high, but high school school definitely. I'm walking down the stairway because everybody had parties in their basement on Long Island. It was the thing because parents just they wouldn't come down there, they would leave you alone. I remember walking down the stairs and hearing Elton John's, your Song on the record player. I can conjure that moment up and that's exactly what this is talking about. Which is it really creates?
06:03 - Speaker 2
happiness and it totally connects you right to that moment, right to that feeling, and that's the you know. By the way, that's the power of music in general. I mean, that's where it's really beautiful, but use this to get yourself to a happier place.
06:14 - Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely Speaking of the cheese shop, as I hinted at. I saw this. God bless you. I saw this. We should do a story about why, for some people, sneezes come in threes.
06:28 - Speaker 2
I'm one of those people. Did you ever look it up? No, but I have a friend whose name is Scott. He sneezes in like sixes and sevens.
06:39 - Speaker 1
It's so many.
06:40 - Speaker 2
Once he starts sneezing you might as well go and check your parking meter, because you've got time.
06:47 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you actually just sent me a piece that we'll have on the radio show we should do it on the podcast as well about how there have been many accidents from people who have allergies and aren't treated and who sneeze a lot. They end up being in car accidents, which makes sense.
07:02 - Speaker 2
There are times when I'm driving and I'm sneezing. I'm like how am I going to survive the next hundred feet?
07:07 - Speaker 1
well, how'd you? Because I don't see I'm.
07:09 - Speaker 2
Once I became a dad, I started dad sneezing, which is a very big, loud sneeze that is completely uncontrollable yeah, I'm one of those guys too.
07:17 - Speaker 1
So we were uh talking about, about cheese, and I always thought that cheese was sort of the demon of your body, bad for you, cholesterol, everything.
07:26
But now, according to the European Journal of Nutrition, they found that a little cheese every day can drive heart disease away. So there was an analysis that they performed. They found that people who ate a little bit of cheese every day were less likely to develop heart disease compared to those who rarely or never ate any cheese. Less likely to develop heart disease compared to those who rarely or never ate any cheese. So it turns out that cheese eaters had a 14% lower risk of heart disease and were 10% less likely to have a stroke. Why? Researchers think it's because of the calcium, the protein and the probiotics in cheese. People who got the health benefits from cheese ate about 40 grams a day. It sounds like a lot, but it's just a slice and a half of cheddar and the really good cheddar. That's the stuff that has the probiotics for your microbiome You've got to get the real cheese.
08:10 - Speaker 2
You've got to get the expensive cheese and you don't have to eat too much of it. No offense, I happen to love Kraft Singles, but this is not Kraft Singles. There's nothing that makes a better grilled cheese sandwich or, as you call it, a toasted cheese sandwich, than a Kraft single. But we're talking about the real cheese, the one that you have to go over to the other section of the grocery store to get in the nicer foods.
08:32 - Speaker 1
That's the cheese that you want to get.
08:33 - Speaker 2
You know, everybody knows what I'm talking about. There's the regular cheese for your kids' lunches for the week, and then there's the other cheese section. It's like, oh, we're having people over for dinner this week, we should get the good cheese. Go to the good cheese section. And, by the way, to your point, it's only 40 grams a day. So this is the same thing that people did with red wine. It's like, oh, there are flavonoids in red wine, great, I'm going to drink a case. It's like, no, no, no, the alcohol.
08:58
And the sugar is killing any benefits. It's a glass or two of red wine. Well, it's not a cheese-based diet. It's a slice and a half of really good cheese.
09:08 - Speaker 1
That's the difference. You've got to eat like a French peasant in the 19th century. That's what you have to think about, and don't mistake what Gib just said it's not a slice and a half of pizza.
09:19 - Speaker 2
Right. Right, although that probably wouldn't be too bad for you, pizza is surprisingly high in protein. Right, although that probably wouldn't be too bad for you, pizza is surprisingly high in protein.
09:26 - Speaker 1
That's not an endorsement, no, but there are those pieces that we've had before that say there are these nutritionists that say, hey, instead of the sugary cereals, you might as well go ahead and have full fat ice cream for breakfast. I'm thinking, wow, because at least it's got protein and actual fat in it. Or pizza.
09:41 - Speaker 2
Yeah, but go, so make sure that you're not eating nothing but cheese. And this goes back to a connection that we've talked about before, which is that nutritionists are starting to figure out more and more, which is that there is little correlation between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol. So we think of these high-fat foods that are high in the cholesterol that you consume and that that correlates with a bad blood cholesterol the next time you go to your doctor. There is new research that suggests that's not the case. That is not as much of a correlation between what you what you are actually eating, versus the cholesterol in the food you eat, versus the cholesterol in your blood. This does not mean, if you are struggling with high cholesterol, that all of a sudden you're like well, that means I can have 18 cheeseburgers no, talk to your doctor. But high fat, especially healthy fats that are like in cheeses with probiotics in them, that's going to be healthier for you overall than a diet with the saturated fats.
10:43 - Speaker 1
Yeah, and in an upcoming podcast we're going to talk a lot about the power of olive oil. Oh yeah, and how great the extra virgin olive oil is Olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil.
10:54 - Speaker 2
these are all great oils.
10:56 - Speaker 1
We're going to move on, uh, some dating and relationship intel and we uh we got this, uh study. Give that I found fascinating. I wanted to get your opinion on it. It turns out that women are more likely to give men their phone numbers when they're approached at pleasant, smelling places like coffee shops, bakeries and and flower shops, as compared to when men approach them in clothing stores or banks or a dumpster. I just put the dumpster in there, but it makes sense.
11:22 - Speaker 2
Look if you're introducing yourself to a woman at a dumpster unless you're working for Habitat for Humanity. You probably should just find a different time to approach her.
11:31 - Speaker 1
So the researchers believe it's because enjoyable aromas improve our mood, making us more receptive to romantic advances. So I mean, why not just hang out next to Cinnabon, right?
11:41 - Speaker 2
Right, I mean exactly. You brought up smelling like cheese and it hurting your chances of getting a date when you were in high school. You know you should have. German tells it yeah.
11:50 - Speaker 1
German tells it Somebody looking for a Sadie Hawkins partner. They run right past. The German tells it on your apron.
11:56 - Speaker 2
What's funny is the whole day is going to be about cheese today. But what's funny is that you, to this day, will go out to dinner and everybody in the family likes cheese. We like all kinds of cheeses and if the cheese gets a little too weird you really can't handle it. And you know them all. You know exactly what the flavor profile of each one of them is.
12:14 - Speaker 1
You're like I can't eat that them is you're like I can't eat that it's. I can do it with my eyes closed.
12:20 - Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, you had to do that for the test, you have to close your eyes and yeah, very impressive, yeah, very impressive, but you until they get to the limburger, then you go. I quit nobody wants to sniff limburger, but the point is look, we've and we've talked about this before our sense of smell is designed to protect us. It's designed to protect us from eating rancid food. It's designed to protect us from Sorry about that. It's designed to protect us from From allergies From allergies.
12:43 - Speaker 1
My allergy is going crazy right now.
12:45 - Speaker 2
I started the season, Well what?
12:46 - Speaker 1
happened was because we're doing this in California, and what happened was, with all that this is my unscientific idea. Hypothesis is that with all that rain now, we're getting all the new growth, and so I think there are more allergens out there than there were.
13:05 - Speaker 2
I 100% agree, and my office is. I mean I don't want to get too gross, but it is full of mildew. I can smell it every day. I have an air filter going on behind me and I am definitely experiencing it.
13:15 - Speaker 1
So, anyway, we've got to get you a new studio. Go ahead. So what are we talking?
13:18 - Speaker 2
about.
13:19 - Speaker 1
We're talking about women, we're talking about cheese again, but let's get back to talking about the women who were more likely to say yes to a date.
13:24 - Speaker 2
Your nose is meant to protect you. It's meant to protect you from all of these different things, so from rancid food, from germy situations. So it is a very strong one. We talked about that before with memory. We've talked about that before with emotional connection, about how important scent is. And why aromatherapy works is because of that strong connection into your brain. So it would make sense that if you are smelling something that is less than pleasant, your overall brain chemistry will be in a negative place, and if you're smelling something that is pleasant, your overall brain chemistry will be popular, positive. So it works for getting a date. It also works for selling cinnamon rolls, by the way, you brought up working at a Cinnabon and how many more dates you would have gotten from that Cinnabon fakes that smell, I mean they have the real smell.
14:11
but before they start making the cinnamon buns they have an air freshener so that when you walk by you're going to be like, oh, I feel so much better, I should probably eat a cinnamon bun.
14:18 - Speaker 1
It's actually a scent generator, You're right.
14:20 - Speaker 2
So yeah, so obviously companies are using this. If you're single right now, you might as well use this Get yourself some Dracar Noir and wear that. Get yourself some coffee-based cologne. Get yourself cinnamon bun, air freshener necklaces. Whatever you need to do but this will help you get a date.
14:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, if you gotta be careful, you might get chased by dogs with like vanilla, vanilla scented motion.
14:47 - Speaker 2
Yeah, no, uh, no, like hot dog scents. You don't want that?
14:51 - Speaker 1
then the dogs chase you uh, hey, speaking of, uh, speaking of dogs and uh and I were out on the road and we ended up in well, it's a long story but it's actually a fun story maybe at the end of the podcast, but we ended up in Scottsdale just for our anniversary, for our 32nd wedding anniversary. We thought let's not leave Leroy the dog with Gib and Prima because it would be too much, because we're going to be gone for over a week. So we brought the dog with us and we brought the crate and everything because we were really good. And then I got to the point where it's like the dog would jump in the bed and I'd be like, okay, you're fine.
15:35 - Speaker 2
And so now the dog sleeps.
15:37 - Speaker 1
So I've just destroyed it. Just all that training is, you know, is gone now.
15:41 - Speaker 2
If you had left him with us, he would have been sleeping in bed with me too. So you're fine with your, with your, with your kids.
15:47 - Speaker 1
But the point I'm bringing up here is that there was a study about whether they'll ruin your sleep or not. So with a dog, most of all they're just out right, and then they don't move. But cats listen. Sleep specialist Dr Michael Bruce. We've had him on the show a lot. Of course. You know Michael. He says dogs usually do sleep through the night. It's a fact.
16:10
But cats are highly disruptive and I grew up with two cats and it was just like this. Because they're nocturnal. So as soon as the lights go out, boom in the wild. Nighttime is when cats do all of their hunting. But a house cat will simply walk all over you. Instead of hunting, they'll gallop around the house, they'll bat their toys around while you're trying to sleep. At 2 o'clock in the morning they're just working and in order to get the rest you need, you may need to make your bedroom off-lim. Your to your cats at night. There's no way. Thank you, dr. Dr bruce, but having grown up with cats for a year, for 18 years, they will find a way in there. They'll, they'll like, flatten their bodies and slide themselves underneath the door?
16:48 - Speaker 2
did you have stephen king cats that they were able to like, transcend pet, pet cemetery. But but isn't that interesting the difference between the two, excuse me, yeah, well, I mean I would say, let's put a pin in puppies, because puppies are as disruptive at night as a young child, right, but cats, for their whole lives, are way more disruptive. Because dogs is this true that dogs sleep like 18 hours a day?
17:13 - Speaker 1
Yeah, they can. Yeah, older dogs, yeah.
17:18 - Speaker 2
So if you have a dog that you're exercising regularly and stimulating properly, they're going to sleep. So at a certain point and we also bred dogs to be our there is a theory that early humans took dogs and we domesticated them to help us sleep in colder environments, that they would provide extra body heat so that you could, you know, sleep more easily in caves and in cold environments. So they are meant to kind of snuggle up and sleep with us and help us get a better night's sleep. Uh, leroy, our dog absolutely will do that. He'll nuzzle in right there and and and and. It's great. Everybody I know who has cats has stories about them, about waking up with a on their face, about waking up with the cat getting the zoomies and running around the house and just completely destroying sleep. I love cats. We do have to figure out is there a nighttime cat thing we could make that would distract the cats so they don't wake people up Because you can't keep them out of the bedroom?
18:20 - Speaker 1
Yeah, we've already made it.
18:21
It's called ambien, cat ambien here come here, kitty, have your melatonin, your tuna flavored melatonin gummies yeah, and the problem with a cat those of you have cats, you know, you know exactly what I'm talking about is it? They could be in your bed or whatever. You can be on the couch right next to the bed and all of a sudden you get this sort of weird feeling and and you open your eyes and they're looking at you right, and they've got those eyes that have that like the black cross in there they're predators, their eyes forward, looking right at you yeah, yeah anyway.
18:50
So, by the way you were talking about, you know, dogs to keep you warm. That's where the one of the most popular bands talking about nostalgic bands, three dog Dog Night. They're named after that because that was the way back in the day Was it Eskimos or whatever. Yeah, that's how you rated how cold it was at night. It was a Three Dog Night, it was a One Dog Night.
19:07 - Speaker 2
You needed three dogs in order to make it through the night, Otherwise you'd be freezing cold. Well, there you go.
19:11 - Speaker 1
Three.
19:13 - Speaker 2
Dog Night.
19:14 - Speaker 1
When you and I were camping in Boy Scouts, it was a 12-dog night.
19:19 - Speaker 2
And, by the way, chihuahua does not count as one of the dogs. Chihuahuas shiver at room temperature. I don't know how helpful they're going to be. Oh my gosh, we've come a full circle on so many things today, I know. I know.
19:33 - Speaker 1
That's the first one that hasn't gone back to cheese, thankfully. So, coming up in just a moment, we've got a quick break. We're going to talk about a quick way to eat less. It's from Harvard researchers and it's all about a type of breathing. Let me see what else we've got Also. Oh yeah, so if you want people to read and respond to your emails, there's a specific time and a specific day that you should send them, and this is great. I've already started doing this. And then we're going to talk about somebody you've interviewed before, Dr BJ Fogg from Stanford. He's a human behavior professor. He talks about how important it is to throw a party to celebrate your tiny wins. And then also there's a practice that's trending right now More and more people are traveling with their teddy bears and their Raggedy Ann dolls and I'm not talking about little kids, so that's all coming up.
20:20 - Speaker 2
I've seen this Right.
20:22 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's coming up. But first this Welcome back to the podcast John Tesh with Gib Gerard. And here is a quick way according to Harvard researchers. I like this idea. It's a quick way to eat less. So they found that before each meal, what you should do, Gib, is you should take two minutes to focus on your breathing and you use this pattern. They found that this pattern works the best. You inhale deeply through your nose, you pause, Then you exhale slowly through your mouth. That move will help you eat 400 fewer calories a day and cut four pounds every month. It's like what? Yeah it calories a day and cut four pounds every month. It's like what? Yeah, it turns out that deep breathing wakes up our brains appetite control center, so we will crave less food. I mean, can you imagine doing this on a first date?
21:36 - Speaker 2
exactly how was the date? It was fine, but the guy he, he might have some sort of problem because he like a deviated septum. He was doing this weird stuff before every meal.
21:48 - Speaker 1
What are you going to have? I'm not having nothing.
21:50 - Speaker 2
I could see me standing in the pantry at 1 o'clock in the morning just doing this deep breathing exercise, trying not to eat the chocolate almonds when I wake up in the middle of the night.
22:04 - Speaker 1
You failed me for the last time.
22:05 - Speaker 2
Go, go ahead this works because we're mindless. We are so mindless right now we mindlessly check our phones. We might I mean we mindlessly drive from a to b. If you've been going on the same, on the same route of your whole life, you know, or at least for a couple of months. You just your car just ends up there because we're not focused on anything. And this is basically just a mindfulness exercise. This is just focused, intentional breathing to bring your body and your mind back into the present, back into your body, and when you do that, you have all kinds of systems that are meant to control your appetite and keep you from overeating in the categories that we all overeat on.
22:42
The problem is not not a calorie problem. I mean, it is a calorie problem, but the problem is a mindlessness problem, and I am so guilty of this. I mean, we talk. How many times we talk about if you eat while watching television, if you eat while you're doing something stressful, if you eat while you're driving, if you do this, you end up eating more and more food because we are mindless, because we don't focus. That's why we say eat crunchier foods. If you eat crunchier foods, you'll eat less food because your brain can't help but check in with the fact that you're eating.
23:08
Well, the same thing is true. If you can just get mindful with your breath, your body will say oh, we're not that hungry, we actually don't need chocolate, we need protein. Your body has systems in place for all of that. We just need to stop and listen to it. And most of us don't myself included, because I love potato chips. So I'm going to reach for the potato chips. I love chocolate, I reach for the chocolate. But if I did this, I might have a hard-boiled egg or a small slice of cheese, like we were talking about before.
23:34 - Speaker 1
So I was talking to your 12-year-old daughter recently and she was talking about how, hey, pop-pop, did you know that my dad eats over a trash can? I'm like I couldn't wait. This is probably a good time, because this might be a Harvard thing too. Why do you eat over a trash? Can I eat over a?
23:51 - Speaker 2
trash. Can I eat over the sink? Look, we have. I mean both my wife and I. We both work, we have three children. They all do sports. They all do different sports, so I spend almost all my time at school plays.
24:04 - Speaker 1
I got to go to one of those.
24:05 - Speaker 2
Today we spend all of this time shuttling our kids to different places. I spend a lot of time just cooking and I don't have time to cook, sit down and have a family dinner and prepare for the practice that I have to go coach, so I put the food out for the kids and I eat while I'm changing clothes. And I'll eat over the trash can because I also don't want another dish to clean, so it's a disgusting habit. I'll eat over the sink too, but it's because I just don't. I want to just eat quickly and I want to get going to the next activity. It is a. It is totally utilitarian. I long for the day and I'm sure I'll miss this time when it's over, but I long for the day when I can actually sit and eat with my kids, as opposed to. You need to eat that you need to get your socks on. What are we doing? And while I'm changing for practice.
24:48 - Speaker 1
So again from the Harvard researchers before each meal, you take two minutes to focus on your breathing and you follow the pattern of inhaling deeply through your nose, then pause, then exhale slowly through your mouth. Helps you eat 400 calories a day. Sounds pretty simple. Please send us a video of you doing that.
25:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, Again, your first date joke is great If I could see me in the Oreo cookie aisle.
25:12 - Speaker 1
Just Well, let's do a quick productivity hack here. If you want people to read and respond to your emails, there is a specific time that you should be sending these emails, and it is Tuesday morning at 9.15 am. Scientists studying the behavior patterns of email users said people don't respond to emails rationally by replying to the most important ones first. So a three-month study listen to this a study of thousands of email accounts showed most people reply to incoming emails in the order they arrive. So even if the boss's email is a higher priority, if it's not at the top of their inbox it won't get open before one from someone they don't know. And when it comes to work emails, tuesday at 9.15 am is best because workers have dealt with the backlog of mail they say from over the weekend. On Monday and on Tuesdays productivity is the highest. So Tuesday 9.15.
26:06 - Speaker 2
Yeah, I mean it makes sense because we talk about this A lot of times. We spend our Monday dealing with all of the problems that we let go on Friday, right, and which is another reason why we suggest separately that you spend your Sunday evening just doing a little bit of work to make Monday more manageable. But Monday is almost a lost day because of what we just described. Because you have all of the catch up over the weekend, Everybody's a little bit more tired. You're getting back into the swing of things. Tuesday is that magic day where you're like all right, I'm actually accomplishing stuff today and 9.15 sounds about right. I just cannot believe. Do you remember when email first came out? I do, absolutely.
26:47 - Speaker 1
You have mail. You've got mail.
26:49 - Speaker 2
It was so exciting.
26:49 - Speaker 1
It was this amazing thing, it was the same feeling as going to the mailbox and seeing the flag up.
26:56 - Speaker 2
You'd see the little thing would show up oh my gosh, I've got an email and you'd check it out. And then we got spam and we got all this and everybody's got email, this email, that and I mean, if I don't check my email for three hours, I will have 300 emails just sitting there unread. And it's to the point where we have. I mean, I have a great. I have a third-party email application that is just meant to manage all of this stuff. So we have an email problem. It's a communication problem. Everybody has too much communication all the time, and email is one of the big culprits. But the reality is it's still a great way that we it's one of the best ways we have to communicate across platforms, across time zones. So it's not going anywhere. Now you know the best time Tuesday 9-15.
27:42
That's when you need to send your most important email and somebody needs to invent a solution, a better program to deal with the way email is, because it is broken for sure. Yeah, yeah.
27:53 - Speaker 1
This next piece is with. I selected it with myself in mind, and that is it's a guy that you interviewed. His name is BJ Fogg and he wrote the book Tiny Habits right, yeah, yeah.
28:08
And so I've put myself in a high stress situation lately because I'm working on on uh, on developing a course, a piano course, right, and so it's like, okay, here's how to play my song round ball rock, here's how to play this other song from pbh, and and the whole. You know, the whole thing is uh, is you know, based on not having to read sheet music or music theory. It's based on just using your ear and watching me play, because you can do that electronically. So I'm like Stephen King in the early years where you start typing a story that you throw in the trash basket.
28:43
Because, I'm realizing that it's okay. So I'm going too fast for people. I need to slow down, I need to do this, and so I keep starting over and over. Too slow, I'm going too fast for people.
28:48 - Speaker 2
I need to slow down.
28:49 - Speaker 1
I need to do this. And so I keep starting over and over and finally I'm getting to a good place. But then it's like, okay, we've got to stop, let's do the podcast, and we've got to do the radio show and everything. And so there's so many things that are like almost finished but not so. When I saw this thing have to do this. And so what fog says is we need to throw a party to celebrate our tiny wins. And again, bj fog is from stanford human behavior department. He says if we don't focus enough on the small things that we accomplish, uh it's, it's bad for us. When we do, it can be very motivating. We can keep going. That's why he says every day we should be writing down our small wins, even if it's just I ate a salad yeah, this is an example. Or I wash the dishes instead of leaving them dirty in the sink, because what I've left myself with is stuff that's too big.
29:37 - Speaker 2
Right.
29:37 - Speaker 1
I'm not going to. So I have to pick the small, the small wins inside that.
29:41 - Speaker 2
And it gets overwhelming if you don't celebrate the small wins, all of the stuff that you have, if you don't celebrate it properly. It's like I didn't really get much done today, as opposed to doing the little things and then celebrate them. This is the same basic concept of making your bed first thing in the morning.
29:59
Just making your bed goes a really long way in setting the tone for your whole day, because if you can make it and celebrate it getting the kids to school on time, all all those little things that happen throughout the day you have to count those too. Count them, celebrate them, reward yourself for them. It creates a dopamine cycle that will make you more likely to accomplish things. Because, look, if we don't get the dopamine burst from doing the things that we want to do, if we don't find a way to give ourselves that, we will find dopamine bursts in unhealthy habits.
30:28
We will find in mindless doom scrolling, in looking at stuff on social media. It gets to us. We're going to look for it one way or the other. You might as well do it to reinforce the habits that you're trying to build in your life.
30:42 - Speaker 1
Yeah, you know, as you were saying that, you said it so well.
30:46
I was thinking not of myself for once, but I was thinking of of caregivers, you know, and I was thinking of of you because you are a caregiver and you're at a place in your life now with three kids, you know, 12, 10 and 7 and every all three of them play at least two sports. Yeah, you're coaching. You're coaching one of the sports you're actually two of the sports, because you're coaching basketball as well and then also you're refereeing a lot of the sports Actually two of the sports because you're coaching basketball as well and then also you're refereeing a lot of the soccer games, and so a lot of what you're doing is just serving others, and so if you don't have those small wins, eventually you're going to have a beer.
31:22 - Speaker 2
Just kidding. Eventually I'm going to have a beer anyway. That's going to be how I celebrate the small wins. I'm just going to put that out there um I just gave you license.
31:31 - Speaker 1
I but talk about the dopamine. No, but I do this.
31:34 - Speaker 2
You know, I, I, this is, this is the same basic concept of um, uh, sandwiching, where if you have a criticism for somebody, you put it between two compliments. It's I have I have to do it for because I coach baseball, um, probably the most. I spend the most time with my, my son, playing baseball versus all the other stuff that my kids do. And when baseball is, I say this to the kids in the first practice of every season baseball is a game of failure, the best hitters in the world strike out 65 to 70% of the time.
32:04
That's the best hitters in the world. They don't get on base, they're walking back to the dugout 65% to 70% of the time.
32:11
That means they have between a 300 and a 350 batting average which is incredible, but that means that most of the time, they're walking back to the dugout. A significant amount of the time they're walking back to the dugout, you have to have the things that are positive, that you can latch on to in order to deal with the fact that it's a game of failure, and so I'm always looking for to help them reinforce it for themselves, and this here's here's the evidence that we need to be reinforcing it for ourselves. I'm always looking for a positive. Hey, that was a great job fielding the ball. You have to finish with a good throw because you threw the ball into the outfield instead of throwing the first base. So, like you, you have to. You have to find ways to find a positive so that they see that they're improving, while also giving them the adjustments that they can improve, and we need to do this with ourselves. Hey, I ate a salad today. Did I lose all of the weight that I'd set out trying to lose?
33:01 - Speaker 1
Not yet.
33:01 - Speaker 2
but I ate a salad today and that makes me happy, that makes me feel better. I'm going to celebrate that.
33:07 - Speaker 1
Yeah, that's good, that's good. We have one more piece for you, and this will probably be at least one of the pieces that you'll share with your friends. It'll be a conversation starter, because this is a trend now is people taking their childhood teddy bears on the road with them and, according to experts, the next time your stress is spiking you should in fact grab your childhood teddy bear Raggedy Ann or Cabbage Patch, kid Yale. Scientists who studied this, they call it the object safety signals, something uplifting and comforting, they say. That's never been associated with negativity, oh, that's good. And holding a safety signal, the teddy bear stimulates the part of your brain that controls thoughts and behaviors, which replaces feelings of stress and tension with comfort. And if you fill your mind and your body and your heart with these things, these safety signals, the rest of the stuff is not going to have any room to climb in.
34:02 - Speaker 2
Okay, so full disclosure. I was not a weird kid that took this blanket with me everywhere, but my grandmother had sewed me a blanket when I was a baby and it was on my bed all through high school and it was on my bed all through college and it got me through some hard times. And I don't mean in a weird wet blanket kind of way, I mean I would just if I was having a bad day, getting on my bed and taking a nap or something with that blanket. It helped me and it gave me all of the comfort that you were talking about. And I feel so bad because you had yours. And was it your Uncle Bo that destroyed it, that threw it on a fire literally? Because everybody's had this at some point in their life and you're told for better or for worse, you need to grow out of it. And you had yours thrown in the fire, right?
34:55 - Speaker 1
Yeah, it was a pillow. It was a little pillow and it had nylon. The covering was nylon right. And I called it my night-night and I carried it everywhere. There was a bunch of strife in our house because my sisters were 10, 11 years older than me in the 1960s and so my dad had a hard time handling that and so I had my night-night. But they were all fighting right, so I hung on to it. Maybe a little too long, I don't know 16, 17 years old.
35:22 - Speaker 2
But I see this?
35:24 - Speaker 1
I think I may have been, I don't know, in early junior high school and I went over to visit my uncle Charlie, Uncle Bo, at his house and he's a tough guy, you know, he's a naval officer, just like my dad. And he and he took the. He said, yeah, you don't need this anymore. And in front of me he took my night night and threw it into the fire and it slowly burned and the nylon melted.
35:49 - Speaker 2
And I'm like. No, the fumes alone did damage to your psyche. That was my future was going up in flames. The emotional connection, sure, but also just the nylon burning. I mean what that did to your hippocampus.
36:01 - Speaker 1
I wasn't thinking. You called me the nylon. It was my heart. My heart was on fire. I don't care what it smelled like, so yeah.
36:11 - Speaker 2
So there's a difference.
36:12 - Speaker 1
What were we talking about?
36:14 - Speaker 2
I want to say there's a difference between, like, an unhealthy connection that some people have to this stuff, where you see, like mine, no, I don't think yours was unhealthy, I think you had something that was really important to you taken away, which is why I wanted to bring that story up. But there's an unhealthy connection. But then there is this sort of nostalgic connection and I think that the nostalgic gentle brain signal is a good thing in the end.
36:39 - Speaker 1
I think that's beneficial for everybody. Yeah, I agree with you, let's say your Uncle Bill destroyed it for you.
36:50
We became friends after a while. We became friends after that, after a while, a couple years after that. Sadly, that's it for today's podcast, because I've had a good time. Of course we'd love to have you guys as regular subscribers, so make sure you like and subscribe to the podcast. Give us five, give us five stars, if you would. Also, if you want to learn how to play a song on the keyboard or on the piano, you can go to Teshcom and you'll see a connection there where you can get instant access to the piano course.
37:15
And the way I've been talking about this course, gabe, as you know, is not so much. Oh, it'd be great to play a song, but at the end of our concerts and again at Teshcom you can find out when Gabe and I are live in concert there's always people who come up who are my age or older and they'll just say, ah, I wish I hadn't given up piano lessons. I wish I could start. Is it too late to start? And so that's what this whole course is about is me teaching the songs that I wrote for the public television specials, and nice and slowly. But the way we're promoting this is is the way I I love for people to think about it, which is we now know how great, and gibbs got all this in his brain too. Uh, how, how great it is to for your brain, for your hippocampus, for your, for your memory center, to especially play piano, where you're using your left and your right hand and it goes right across the two hemispheres yeah, no, it's.
38:07 - Speaker 2
I mean, look it's it. Study after study shows that one. It's never too late to start and at any point. If you start, there are, there are cognitive benefits that will help stave off everything from, you know, dementia, alzheimer's, uh, your memory, or your working memory overall, can improve. I mean, learning an instrument has a serious impact on on your brain, as you even your mood, so you can actually have neurological benefits when it comes to mental health. So, learning an instrument and in fact, uh, there's this ad running the the only time I ever watch ads is when I'm watching, uh, sports on television there's this ad running about a um, a veterans program that gives guitars to veterans to help with PTSD. Yes, I saw this Because the link is so strong. I mean, we know that the link is strong. So do yourself a favor Learn an instrument. If it's not the John Tisch piano method, find another way to learn an instrument. But this is right there. This is available for you right now.
39:05 - Speaker 1
Yeah, there is no other way. Thanks, gabe, it's great, and folks, we.