Mushroom Dealer Mason Taylor

Tommy: The Daily Talk Show.

Josh: It's The Daily Talk Show, episode 289, and this is an interesting layout.

Tommy: If you're listening, you can't see it, but if you're watching, there is a bunch of— I mean, on one side, because it's Fat Fridays, we've got Krispy Kreme doughnuts and some kombucha on the other side.

Josh: And we've got Mason Taylor with a bunch of his mushrooms.

Tommy: Is that what they are?

Mason: We've got 3 mushies. This is the thing everyone's like, ah, super feast, you know, you do all those those mushrooms. I've got my schizandra berry. I love this mushroom. I'm like, it's in the name.

Tommy: It's because they don't want to offend you.

Mason: Yeah, I think it's just like the branding of mushrooms is so strong that that's the association. Hey, go with it. But we've got some herb, got a bark and a root and some berries, and then 3 mushies we'll get into.

Josh: So, uh, Mason, we mentioned— or Jack Post mentioned you last week when we had him on. So you are his official mushroom dealer. He was talking about having mushroom teas and shit like that. Yeah. How did you get to selling mushrooms as a thing?

Mason: Well, okay, first of all, probably good to get clear, there's like 3 general categories of mushies as the fungi kingdom starts coming back into our diet in the West. We're very aware of the soil-borne mushrooms like portobellos and those that we had on pizzas growing up and that's not what we're talking about here. Not talking about trippy psychedelic mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, although that's an interesting conversation. Talking about medicinal mushies and especially the mushies that their native tucker is wood and they grow from living trees like the shiitake mushroom or they're gonna be growing off deadwood, which is like more so what you're gonna see the reishi doing. And I basically got into it because I was, God, long storey short, like I was traveling, I've been doing a lot of years, been cheeky and having the best time ever travelling around the world, being a ski instructor. And I just ignored all these symptoms. Like I had a fungal infection, funnily enough, coming out of my arm.

Josh: What did yours look like?

Mason: It was just like really inflamed and red. Like I gotta add the caveat a lot of the time, people are like, it wasn't like a little enoki mushrooms growing out of my arm, but it basically had an extreme immune deficiency and that led to me being quite exhausted and I was in my early 20s and I was like, man, something's gotta give. I was in Bolivia at the time and I was like, I gotta stop ignoring this shit. And I got back and jumped into the deep end in my final year of uni. I just went hardcore down the rabbit hole of studying longevity practices, tonic herbalism, medicinal mushrooms, and it just swept me off my feet and carried me into the sunset. So I just kept on going with it.

Tommy: And now you're here. Like, I mean—

Mason: Now I'm here.

Tommy: Hey, This is it. I've never met a Mason until Mr. 97, and now we've got two in the same room. I want to point out, this is a compliment. When I was young, my mum's a yoga teacher, she's been a meditation teacher for 40 years, 30 years, and she used to take me to health food shops, and I used to love just sort of, you know, smelling stuff and walking around and like, you know, trying little bits and bobs. When you walked in this morning you smelt to me like a health food store. What is that smell?

Josh: Coconut? I smell coconut.

Tommy: No, it's not coconut. It's like a, is it something you've put in your hair or is it like some sort of—

Mason: I mean, like particularly like the scent, I don't use any like perfumes. I don't really use soap. I prefer to skin cleanse. And so basically—

Tommy: I mean, Josh has been doing the skin cleanse, the no soap for a while.

Josh: Yeah, no, I use, yeah, no, I've gotten better at that. But no, I use that Mr. Pitts, which is like this all natural.

Mason: I think it's good to have something like that for crevices, but in general, I don't think we should be bombing our skin, which you need, like we've got a microbial biome within our skin as well that needs to be left intact. And in the beginning, if your skin's really congested, first of all, we need to be looking at the lungs 'cause the lungs govern the skin health. And so you get your lungs and then your liver really like nice and singing, you're gonna see some real superior skin health come through. But when it's been like, you know, living in cities and you've got all this stuff laying on you, I like to get into the deep skin cleansing. I'm like, I'm to the extent where I like using organic vodka, bicarb with MSM, and you get in and you scrub.

Josh: You don't drink it, but you get a little bit drunk.

Mason: Drink it, dude.

Tommy: Can you see the blue tint in my hands?

Josh: Oh yeah, he's turning into a fucking Smurf.

Mason: Well, that's nice for you. No, no, you're gonna have— I just decided which— I've got something coming. Yeah, Uber Eats, and I know which one you're going to be getting. Okay, good.

Tommy: This is not I've got a fungal infection. My wife bought it 'cause it was on special. It was like a hair shampoo that was like with a tint of blue. So it's like meant to keep the colour or something, but it's the only one I've been using and it's just going all through my hands. It's probably fucking doing something bad.

Josh: The other thing Tommy does is I've banned him from spraying his deodorant in the office because I'm like asthmatic and it's just like, but he will spray it outside and come in and it still gets into my throat.

Tommy: There's asthmatics and there's hypochondriacs. You're a blend of the two between when it comes to spraying these.

Josh: There's definitely carcinogenic.

Tommy: No, but hang on, you say that it's going to give you asthma. Yeah, this is not the carcinogenic conversation.

Josh: But which is worse, cancer or asthma? I don't want either.

Mason: Yeah, but they do lay in the same place. I mean, like, with asthma, first of all, like, I think you're right, whether it's carcinogenic or not, I'm definitely in the camp that these generally are going to be, and they're actually going to have like metals in them. And so I don't like that. So what I smell like, I've got Pure Heart Mist. Flower essence kind of spray.

Josh: It's called Pure Heart?

Mason: Pure Heart Mists. And so they're like—

Josh: That's a brand?

Mason: They're friends of mine.

Josh: Yeah, good.

Mason: Yeah, which, and that's what, and they've also got this, I don't know if you got like, in the shamanic circles, you'd be aware of like agua de florida. So it's flower water you use in ceremony. Most of that actually has carcinogenic stuff. And so they're kind of developing one that's got this 88 flower mother of a tincture. And then they've turned that into their flower water. And I grabbed that like a whole, bunch of that and just whack that over my head. So I'm kind of like, I think if you're going to be healthy, you need to really ingest and wear flowers. Yeah.

Josh: And so when you—

Tommy: can I just say, I feel like Josh and I are these gronks from the city and we've absolutely bought from somewhere else.

Josh: It's from Byron.

Tommy: And Mason's here, that's just on a completely different level. This is what I love. It's like we are worlds apart. And so you live in Byron?

Mason: Yeah, grew up in Sydney, now live in Byron.

Tommy: Yeah. And so this is two Gronks and a Byron Bay dude on the show today. It's great, I love it.

Mason: I'm a Gronkin myself, don't get me wrong.

Josh: Let's go there. A guru Gronk. The vagabonding thing you were talking about before we press record, that you'd done a bit of travel. What did that actually look like?

Mason: That looked like on my 19th birthday going over to Europe for a year, landing in Santorini, realising I don't really have enough money to be in Europe, so.

Tommy: Especially Santorini, dude. Yeah, that was honeymoon territory and it's expensive.

Mason: So I was just like working on the strip, working the doors of clubs, having the best time ever. Then just doing little trips over to Turkey, Italy, going and living in a university town in Spain for 5 weeks 'cause that was super cheap. And then going to Austria, not knowing what to do, having never skied before, found this 3-week course that taught you how to be an Austrian ski instructor. Didn't tell them that I actually never skied before, arrived and, in that time, passed with flying colours 'cause I didn't actually have any bad habits and then spending those 4 months in Austria and then just from there, Southeast Asia, then going over for a year in South America.

Josh: That's amazing. What was the biggest learning through all of that? Basically—

Tommy: Besides fungal infections.

Mason: Yeah, besides the fact that, you know, maybe there's some kickbacks to having like the best time ever. Man, biggest learnings, it was really formative. For me. It got me out of my deep-set belief systems in terms of the way life needs to look, in terms of going to uni, getting a degree, getting a job. And basically it just helped me with that. It's not like I completely liberated myself from the system or anything like that, but I've definitely gone down that fanatic route here and there.

Tommy: But although some nights when you're partying in Santorini, it felt like that.

Mason: I felt liberated. And I really like— and I was— I didn't have Facebook or Instagram back then. I wasn't on email, so I was completely free of the environment that really gave me formation. And so I, in that sense, I was able to really sit there, not actually meditating, but consistently inquiring within myself and diaring, um, within my diary as well, and learning just who I am, what makes me tick, and what possibly intentions I have within that should be coming out and setting themselves as the core values of my life and allowing that to somewhat help me navigate the decisions I'm going to make.

Tommy: God, it took me a lot longer than at 19 doing that. I'm only just starting to do that now, thinking about this stuff. Did you go into the trip thinking, I wanna work shit out or you just like?

Mason: Well, no, and I didn't, it's not like I came out of that one trip with that. I was like, it's only in reflection that I realised what I was doing. And I think that should be ingrained into every phase of life where we're transitioning, where we give ourselves that space to go and contemplate what's next. Free ourselves from the belief systems that we've given ourselves so that we can go and make really sensible, sustainable decisions that are ideally going to lead us to be like less of an asshole and more of a like, you know, a beautiful person that is not sacrificing their health for some other entity and also really ensuring that we have a contribution to the community and those around us.

Tommy: Recovering Gronkh, essentially.

Mason: Or just becoming like, you know, accepting the fact that we're a Gronkh and we're gonna be the best bronc that I can be.

Tommy: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Josh: What did it do to your relationships when you came back to Sydney or Byron or wherever it was when you first sort of landed home? Was there a process of realising that the changes that you had made weren't in alignment with your relationships? How did that go down?

Mason: Yeah, good question. I probably isolated myself, not too much, it was necessary for me at the time, but I definitely isolated myself from my schoolmates. As I was telling you guys earlier, in the beginning I went down a bit more of a hardcore gnarly health route, which was the raw food route. And so I probably in that extremism in which my lifestyle took that turn, when it took that turn, it probably via osmosis isolated me a little bit from the original family culture in which I grew up in. And I had to get off that bandwagon really quick so I wasn't a judgmental asshole and I could still really be there with my family.

Josh: If you're gonna be an extremist, best just to eat fruit, right? Like, it's a good— in regards to extreme, it's a better version of an extremist. Yeah, exactly.

Mason: Let's not get into fruitarianism.

Tommy: Hey, if you've come here because of Mason and this— you're new to the Daily Talk Show— on Fridays we do something called Fat Fridays, which before you got here, Mason, we're like, ah, you were like a health freak in that respect, is we can't pull out the Krispy Kreme doughnuts which have been given to us by Karina next door.

Josh: Thank you, Karina, celebrating Fat Fridays.

Tommy: Let's just hand out the kombucha Which one do you want? Do you want a pomegranate or an original?

Mason: I'll do pomegranate. Yeah, go for it. All about the pomegranate.

Tommy: I'll go— What would you like?

Josh: I'll go the pomegranate as well.

Tommy: Go for it, mate. Mr. 97, can you throw over my phone that's over there?

Josh: It's just here, I think.

Tommy: Is this it?

Josh: Is that it?

Tommy: Yeah, because we have our Uber Eats order on its way.

Josh: So we set Mason the task of, we said, well, we thought we don't want to push any bad decisions onto you. Yeah. And so we thought, why don't we see through the lens of Mason what you would order for us. So we gave you Tommy's Uber Eats account and you could order us anything for Fat Fridays. And so we haven't seen it yet. Should we work out now what would be—

Tommy: Food and Mond?

Mason: Oh shit. Food and Mond.

Tommy: Very expensive restaurant.

Mason: Is that a— Exactly. Like a 5-star.

Josh: It's a 5-star restaurant.

Mason: I wish I could have ordered food and Mond.

Josh: So what— What have you ordered us?

Mason: So I've gone to Pachamama Kitchen. I was actually ordering and I didn't click the fact that I actually do know Pachamama Kitchen and I've done a talk there. And so I'm going through going, "Oh, they got some good stuff." And then I was ordering us a couple of kind of like on that, I'm not a mad fan of the ketogenic diet. I'm just gonna put that little caveat in there. I think it's a good healing system, but I got some keto coffees coming. And as I'm going down, It says, "Add Mason's mushrooms for like a dollar." And I was like, "Oh, hang on, I know where I'm ordering from here." So I've got a mix of 8 medicinal mushrooms.

Josh: Amazing.

Mason: And so I've got us 4 coffees coming, keto coffees, which are gonna be rad. Got some ghee and MCT oil in there. And I know they source really good coffee that's ethical and it's also low mycotoxin, which is also important to make sure you're getting that good level of coffee and some smoothies, including a Smurf smoothie. And that is gonna be beautiful for you. And I just told them to load me up with random tonic herbs and mushies. Amazing. Yeah, so that's what we got coming.

Tommy: Yeah. There couldn't be a better brand integration for your business. So that Mason's Mushrooms, that's your Super Feast brand or is that?

Mason: Yeah, that's the Super Feast brand, which I started in 2011. 'Cause I basically got outta uni in 2010.

Josh: What did you study?

Mason: International business, funnily enough. I really hated it. And I spent my last year, thankfully, Hopefully, P's get degrees just passing. But as I said—

Josh: What'd you say?

Mason: P's get degrees, passes get degrees.

Josh: P's get degrees.

Tommy: I was thinking of green peas.

Josh: Yeah, it's like, what's the pea? Where do we get the peas from is what Tommy wanted to know. That's how fucking drunk we are.

Mason: It's a strong premise, that was all about the peas. So I passed, but I was studying in that time also becoming a yoga teacher and I got out and have a bit of having my existential crisis going, what do I do? I can't stand what I learned in university. I basically learned how the corporate world goes in and conquests, like these emerging economies, didn't wanna be a part of it. I funnily enough have an international business in myself now, but my mom was basically got behind me then and was like, look, you're on about these, you know, nourishing yourself through foods, getting to be teaching people about their organ system, their immune system, teaching people about the sovereignty of their immunity and what happens when you actually develop a herbal culture within your own life and bring less dependency on institutions and healing institutions. Like if you're passionate about it, go for it, mate. She gave me that little bit of capital set me up in a spare room in her house in Gladesville in the west of Sydney. Yeah, and, um, where all great businesses are born. Exactly, it's been great, you know. I still haven't taken investment. We've grown from there to like have a really solid crew, warehouse up in Byron Bay, and it's been magic because I haven't had to compromise anywhere along the line. And so basically we're doing extract powders of Taoist tonic herbs including medicinal mushrooms sourced very particularly, and, um, the Mason's Mushrooms is 8 really epic medicinal mushies for the immune system.

Josh: Amazing.

Mason: And we're gonna be Trojan horsing them in our coffee.

Josh: I fucking love the word Trojan horsing, by the way. Like, we love Trojan horsing anything. Yeah, just fucking confusing people, getting in there and being like, haha, yeah, you thought you were coming for Seth Godin and now we're talking about dicks on the show.

Mason: Subversive.

Tommy: And today, mushrooms. Similarity between dicks and mushrooms.

Mason: Yeah, there are similarities between dicks and mushrooms. You sometimes, you see a chaga just like absolutely sticking out in this most phallic way ever. Very sexual, the mushroom kingdom.

Josh: Wait, so how many mushrooms are actually on the table right now?

Mason: So we've got chaga mushroom, which doesn't really look like a mushroom.

Josh: Looks like a fucking rot— it actually feels like a Muffin Break muffin. It's got that sort of dense—

Mason: Yeah, it's been cooked too much. It's all bran. That's an all-bran muffin.

Tommy: It almost looks like you've chipped a bit off a tree that looks like a big solid piece of bark or something.

Josh: It's amazing.

Tommy: It feels phenomenal.

Josh: There's something, there's a really good, something about that weight feels like a, it doesn't really smell like much.

Tommy: On the other side, it almost looks like a corkboard. That's cool.

Mason: Yeah, it's a good, beautiful, beautiful mushy. That one, that is a shiitake mushroom, grows on birch throughout the Arctic regions, that upper belt. And so I harvested that one when I went to visit where we do our wild foraging in China, up in Changbai Mountain in the northeast of China last year.

Josh: So you go and do the wild foraging?

Mason: Yeah, well, we only work with independent farmers or independent foragers. And so chaga is one of those herbs which there is a sustainable practise around wild harvesting it and the absolute magic, just ancient intention that comes through of going and sourcing herbs from where these ancient Taoists would say, if you want di dao herbs in that sense, where they wanted to see it as herbs were grown in a way and in an area where they sucked up as much cosmic energy as possible to pour that into us. So when that, when you actually look at that in, in modern day terms, when you go and study what the actual active constituents are within these mushies, when you grow them in these areas where there's a fungal system, a wild fungal system through the forest where you have good soil, good atmosphere, and in a sense you're going to see then good cosmology in that area, you're going to see basically a healthier herb crop come through.

Tommy: Can I just ask, is this alive right now?

Mason: Yeah, well, basically though, in herbalism, we've gone and dried that. And so the idea is that we can, we dry that and then we will take that to our facility. So technically it is alive in the sense that you are gonna be able to take that and get some deep medicinal action going on, some deep immunomodulation, which is very important. It's not an immune stimulant, it's a modulator of the immune system. So helping hit receptors within your immune system, which we are hardwired for the fungal beta glucans in this. So we're hardwired immunological level, especially through the macrophages that lay in our gut, take up these compounds.

Josh: They're called—

Mason: sorry, the macrophages, or macrophages. And so it's an immune cell that then will— with receptors on it. And the beta glucans, if it's extracted— so if you eat this now, you can basically see it's going to be like chewing wood. But when you hard boil that and also extract it in alcohol, so dual extract, all that medicine becomes bioavailable. And then we basically spray dry that that, and we've got an extract which then we can go and add easily to our coffees, to our hot chocolates, and these kinds of things. And then what happens is the beta glucans in here go past the, the stomach into the digestive system. They're prebiotics for our indigenous bacteria, so it's very good for gut health. And then getting uptaken within the receptors of the immune system, going deep into the immune system where it's hard to get nutritives, and then metabolized. And then that metabolised beta glucan is in that perfect shape again to fungal-based receptors within our immune system to turn the lights on. And so when you turn lights on within the immune system, all of a sudden you have less of a white bread flabby Western immune system that can't handle itself.

Josh: Definitely mine's a flabby bread. My whole inner, my organs are actually made purely from Wonder White, if you can believe that.

Mason: And possibly 2-minute noodles.

Josh: Exactly, 100%. And so in China—

Tommy: Guys, our food's been picked up, so it's great. Just another—

Josh: Good update. In China, is this common? What, what, like you, you're describing is in that region, are they using the mushies in this way?

Mason: Absolutely. It's integrated. Tonic herbalism is integrated. It kind of had a bit of a speed bump in the '50s when you get that red wash from the Mao administration and they basically tried to commodify TCM, traditional Chinese medicine. It's kind of almost like it's able to be sold to the West. Basically what that means is it's digestible to the West. What's digestible?

Josh: Reductionism.

Mason: If you have this symptom, you take this formula. If you, you know, like if you have this herb, these are the classifications and you can't go outside those classifications. And they basically wiped out the Taoist mysticism from herbalism. And that included things like organ massage, that really included things like deep 5-element theory. And it definitely included tonic herbalism, which are the herbs that we originally see a text in the Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing Du, or Ben Cao Jing Du is the translation. Or interpretation, the first materia medica around 200 BC, where we see there is a class of herbs called superior herbs, which are to be used for the purpose of A, lightening the body, bringing graceful ageing and longevity, and bringing the spirit and crack that through, which basically means you're healthy enough to consistently be able to reflect and just basically become a better human, learn your emotions, become less of an asshole, more of just a person that's awesome to be around.

Tommy: Just listening to your body. Like, I was watching this morning driving my son to daycare, this woman at the lights just punching a durian. It was not Sandra Sully, just an update. Yeah, because it wasn't, um, there was like a 50-50 chance, right?

Mason: Exactly.

Josh: Yeah, punching durian.

Tommy: But what I did, what my wife and I had the conversation about was like, looking at that, like, you, when you wake up in the morning, when we wake up in the morning, so we're taking our personal experience, it's like my body feels like it needs kind of water. It's like if I listen listen to it, it's like it's wanting all these things that are gonna like help it.

Josh: Baby needs some water.

Tommy: Yeah, baby needs water. But then I, and I see her punching a dairy and I'm like, that's not what your body actually, your body wants that based on the addiction, but I'm like, it's actually counter because it's not great for you. I'm just like, there's a misalignment for a lot of people, myself included, about not listening to how I'm feeling. Like, you know, you push through it. I think work and all that, you know, life gets the better of you sometimes and so there is this disconnection from the body. Is it something like, how do you find— because it sounds like you have found that connection to listening.

Mason: Trying.

Tommy: Yeah, trying. I think it's a work in progress for most people. How do you go about that if you've— if you're not listening to yourself, if you're feeling shit in your guts after eating food all the time but then you eat that food all the time?

Josh: And how long is it— does it actually take? Because I think I'm probably very receptive to placebos, so I like the idea not even if all this, even if you take out all the science of it and just look at purely as a placebo effect, I feel like I'll have one sip and I'll be like, man, I'm fucking, I feel great. I feel, I even feel lean. I don't know how I'm losing weight, but it's happening. It's all going up. It's like what you do.

Tommy: I feel better, I feel better after drinking kombucha for some reason.

Josh: I mean, how, at what stage do you feel that it's placebo? And so like, do you see the instant, like how long does this stuff scientifically take, and can our lifestyle counter the benefits? So if I have the mushroom and then I am having some form of highly processed drink that's got a lot of sort of chemicals in it, does that all counter out so it's a waste of time, or?

Mason: They're really good questions. So we'll hit it from a few angles there. We'll definitely talk about the fact of what happens when we ignore our body and we use our sheer will to just drive through what's actually happening in our body, which is something what you are basically doing in that instance. And in the West, a lot of people are doing it, is leaking their Jing. So Jing being our primordial essence that lives in our kidneys, that gives rise to our libido, stamina, lower back health, our capacity to reproduce tissue basically and reproduce cells. You see what happens in the West, people get to about 50 and 60 and all of a sudden they're walking on eggshells, right? And we in the West to an extent, luckily, but to another angle to our extent, it's the absolute degeneration of our health because we become flabby in our intention. Oh, it's okay, a doctor will give me something or there'll be drugs and surgery. You get to that point and people enter the death cycle, right? They've leaked their Jing and their essence, their primal essence. They haven't kept that waxy candle that is the essence of who they are protected, right? They've sacrificed it like coal energy. They're chipping off the wax and throwing it in with another double coffee to get me through the day using that waxy candle wheel and ignoring what's going on, basically that's burning the candle at both ends. It completely lessens your capacity for physical exuberant health. And so in terms of one thing I will really empathise with is that person that's punching the durian who probably if you put a tobacco plant next to them wouldn't even recognise the plant that they're really interacting with every single day. You really could be, Easy on yourself. Don't come at it from the angle of like, you know, what you're doing is bad, what you're doing is wrong. It's never going to really get you that far. That's going to be a short-term thing to be like, to really like whip yourself like that, and the short-term thing to kind of get you out of it and then just go, I don't know, just go on your journey, start listening to your body, open up that can of worms. I would really say that to people, open up that can of worms. The simp— like, it's scary though. If you start feeling your symptoms, you don't want to feel like you're sick, you're functioning, and if you open up the can of worms, everyone goes, oh my gosh, you've got this you got this and you got this and you got this and you're like, I'm sick, I'm bloody sick. And that's not useful unless you are at that point where the symptoms are really, you know, like gonna be stopping you from going on living. Or if you, you know, if you have something gnarly like a cancer, you know, that's obviously like, right, you're in a compromised position, but generally that's not gonna happen. You're just gonna, you don't wanna be in that mentality. I would say start to gently open up that can of worms and don't put too much pressure on yourself. You might not have the time to become an expert in nutrition and herbalism, you know, get a practitioner. I've finally, finally got a naturopath that I'm like actually comfortable with to help me just sensibly get some markers to see where I'm at because I've driven myself for years and years and years on my pure instinct and it's been very useful for me and it's been amazing for me to awaken that but if you're in that position, get a prac-y. I've got like a, I've got an excellent mate, you know, Dan Sipple. He's like a good naturopath, you know, there's many out there.

Josh: How do you find— because I guess there's lots of doctors and all that sort of thing, and I always have pushback with medicating myself because I feel like, like I have two herniated discs. There was a time where I couldn't walk for, you know, a period of a couple of months or really struggled, and I didn't want to take painkillers and all that sort of thing because I felt like that was going to sort of reduce the symptoms or whatever, but not actually like fix the, the problem. How, what is the pro— how do we look at these things productively and whilst, and still being able to seek help? Because I guess there's a lot of— you could look at everything and feel like, I don't want to fucking do that, I want to do that, I don't want to do that, I don't want to see a doctor because they're going to give me that. Or how, what is the filtering system to be able to actually make progress in these things?

Mason: Yeah, very interesting. I'd make sure that you are doing it for yourself and not some external cultural idea that you, you know, it's good to be healthy and it's, you know, it's going to be like a good social standing if you're going to be healthy, or people will accept you more. I think you should be looking at your own intention. I think when you open up that can of worms, especially when it comes to pain— it's a weird cycle when it comes to pain because we don't actually know what pain is, we haven't quantified that. Yeah, but it is a signal from your body and it's something that one way or another you're you're gonna have to feel unless you get to the point where you medicate and medicate and medicate and medicate and that's when we get, we see people on their deathbeds, not actually able to feel their body and feel the process that they're going through and they have a numb death, which in the Taoist terms and yogic terms is the ultimate faux pas with life. You want to be really in a feeling sense at that point and so basically right now, take, you know, take the fact that pain is bad out of the equation and that there's any pressure for you to be somewhere, to get rid of the social pressure or the pressure you have on yourself and just begin to feel it gently and sustainably. At that point, when you start to feel and you get past that first layer of tension that's really blocking you from getting in there and feeling what's going on in your body, you'll find if you're with enough gentle persistence— and this is the key, small persistent steps, you know, whether it's a light movement practise or whether it's taking herbs that like are going to restore the Jing kidney essence so that you actually have the ability to go in and heal through the spine. Those consistent steps, what you'll find is you'll get to over a year, you'll look back and you'll go, holy shit, I can't believe how far I've gone in that time.

Josh: It's the 1%ers, that's what Tommy and I have identified it 'cause I've always been very extreme. I used to be 120 kilos, have been through a lot of different diets and the thing that I've only learned from the podcast is the incremental showing up every single day. And I'm still not there with the gym. The idea of going to the gym and doing some form of exercise but not feeling completely fucked by the end of it, it's hard to quantify and say, well, that was actually worth doing, right? Because in the moment it feels so small that it doesn't have any impact. Yeah, I think that that's probably—

Tommy: I used to be a personal trainer and I have clients that that I would train them. And if anything, I built my business around gently incrementally increasing the intensity because no one wants to come back after being absolutely throttled through a session, but it slowly, it works. But then there has to be the money, monetary commitment to me over the 10, 15 weeks or whatever, you know, 6 to 2 years training with me. It's like, it does work, but it is hard because we want the feeling of, of like being ruined in a session is mentally satisfying to some degree 'cause it's giving us a sign that we're doing something.

Josh: We need indicators. We do.

Mason: And we're extremists in the West. I like being an extremist. I've had to become an extremist within the context of looking at my life over a decade's long span, right? Not a decade, like over decades. And so when I approach my herbal practice, 'cause I used to be quite like a mega doser, you know, I'm taking like tablespoons of things. I buy these things every day.

Tommy: You do own the company, so you got a good stash.

Mason: I've got a good stash and that's partly why I did create the company in the first place. But even when it comes to physical exercise and herbalism, I really have started going, is this useful to my 80-year-old self? Is this gonna have me at 80 and 90 being able to walk up a hill, breathe easy, have a conversation and really be able to hold complex ideas at the same time, which is, I love the fact that we've got Krispy Kreme sitting there and some of the most ancient Taoist tonic herbs drawing the pure life force of the body because really, as we know that beautiful quote, the sign of true intelligence is the capacity to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time and still function. And I think that is so critically important and all these, like, is it really useful for me to absolutely go thrash my body at the gym? Especially if I'm not really in touch with what's going on within my joints and my adrenals when I'm doing this, is this actually useful to my 80-year-old self Now the thing about that path that's sensible in relation to yourself, you know, has an appropriate amount of excessive action, but majority is just this nice, sensible, and very sustainable way of going about things is it's not that sexy. It's not that sexy on Instagram. It is sexy in how you feel in your essence because sexy is something that you should be really embodying within yourself and who gives a shit what other people think, right?

Tommy: A sad documentary is Ronnie Coleman one of the world's best bodybuilders. And he was known to be one of the strongest guys in the gym, most muscular one, you know, 8 back to back and came from nowhere coming 8th every competition to then one year just coming first for the next many, many years. The documentary is so sad though because I looked up to him when I was young as a bodybuilder. He's fucked, he's had so many back surgeries, he's in pain 24/7. And you just see him with his family and he just, he looks I don't know, it's just a sadness. He's seeing the best side of it, knowing what he's accomplished and where he'll be left in history, but he's not thinking, he wasn't thinking 80-year-old self. His goal was so focused on being the best in that moment, but that's short-term, that's in-the-moment thinking, it's not forward thinking.

Mason: Exactly.

Tommy: How do we then live in the moment but not think too far forward to remove us out of this moment?

Mason: Good question, because like the idea then is integration to the present moment and I like, consistently and hopefully I can embody this through my practise is integrating my past experiences and honouring where I've been and ensuring that I'm representing that and each of those phases that I've gone through. 'Cause what's, when you get into hardcore diet or hardcore fitness or whatever, quite often your identity comes through opposing where you've come from, right? And the same with identity in this very moment. I am, you know, I'm into natural foods or I'm into raw foods I'm vegan or I'm, you know, keto because I'm opposed to Big Pharma and I'm forming my identity because they're evil and the way that I was brought up has left me with autoimmunity and I got this and I got that medication and they destroyed my microbial biome and, and then that— this is who I am because of that.

Josh: And we don't like contradictions, right? But in reality, life is—

Mason: well, it is a contradiction, but you want the contradiction to arise within and not externally. When your external identity is formed because there is a group of people that you go and hitch your wagon to, that star, your external identity then is like, we're about this because we're opposed to this. And ultimately that leads to mental issues. You can't actually generate your values of health internally and you can't actually, you don't have the patience to sit there and communicate to yourself why you would want to make certain choices and not, it's much easier just to take on a dogma like raw foodism or like activism. Not to say that I don't agree with those kinds of things being in existence, but I want them to be in existence from a value system emerging within, and I want your mind to be slippery enough to be able to make changes if you need to. Now, in terms of the past, that's what I mean about integrating with where you came from. Don't get into whatever you're doing because you're opposing the fact that you were a skinny kid that was bullied. Now it's great for marketing that you have like an official storey of why you got into things, but people— this is the thing with social media, and I kind of felt it in my early days of going and doing talks. I've done hundreds of talks now, and in social media it's even more of an issue. You, you start to get carried away by your stage identity or carried away by your Instagram identity, and you invest so much into it that you lose yourself in that identity, and then it makes it very hard to actually make sensible changes that are going to be really appropriate for your life long term.

Josh: Yeah, well, it's in a box. You feel like you're in a box.

Mason: You are in a box. You absolutely imprison yourself.

Josh: Mr. 97 has just, uh, dropped down the Uber Eats order.

Tommy: I'm gonna let you get into this.

Josh: Yeah, Mason, you, you tell us what's going on.

Mason: Oh yeah, oh my gosh, here we go. They've hooked us up, guys. So thank you, Pachamama Whole Foods. You guys are absolute legend. So it looks like— oh, they've, they've hooked us up. So this is, uh, these are chocolates. So I think these are going to be raw chocolates and something. Um, oh, they're Loco Loves! Oh my gosh, Loco Loves! Um, shout out to Loco Loves. They're our, like, our, um, our mates up in Byron Bay. They've got the best chocolates. They've put our wildcrafted schizandra berry, which is— schizandra, Shazam! Schizandra berry. I mean, if this, this orchard that we get this schizandra is absolutely insane.

Tommy: What is she? Oh, it's the mushroom.

Josh: Named after Sandra Sullens.

Mason: She's like, "This is a beautiful mushroom." She's like, "Can we eat that?" Yeah, yeah, we're gonna eat that right now. So these aren't just organic schizandra berries that I've gone and bought here in Australia. These are ones from our orchard on Changbai Mountain up in the northeast of China. Wu Wei Zi, it's a 5-flavor fruit. Let's get into it.

Josh: All right.

Mason: Oh, wow. It's bitter.

Josh: It is sweet.

Mason: It's sour.

Josh: Come and try one as well.

Tommy: It's got a bit of, it's almost like gingery, like the bite of ginger.

Josh: Yeah, I wasn't expecting that at all.

Mason: And so that's in the chocolates there. So get in. Yeah, so this is an incredible— so, um, Mr. 97, you're gonna like this one for getting your libido rocking. This is an amazing one for getting the sexual fluids rocking in the body and regulating hormones. This is— it's an incredible liver herb.

Josh: It looks like a Tim Tam.

Mason: Well, this is like— these, these are artisanal raw chocolates. It's going to be hard— you're going to be hard come by getting better than Loco Fuck.

Tommy: Is there dairy in this?

Mason: No dairy, no grain, no soy, no, like, no refined sugars. There's a good one. That's real good.

Josh: Okay, it's amazing.

Mason: So that's, um, Cherry and Raspberry Loco Loves.

Tommy: All right, did you actually order those, or they—

Mason: No.

Tommy: Ah, thank you.

Mason: They just surprised us with that. All right, now I got smoothies because smoothies are always fun. Yeah, I don't do them all the time. I'm not a big fan of putting like Oh gosh, they're like, oh yeah, that's right, it's Uber Eats.

Josh: We've had to like go fully like, yeah. What's the, um, what's your views on calorie intake and shit? Do we, how much should we focus on it?

Mason: It's not my area. I personally don't love it. Um, I think it's such a small part of nutrition. Um, but it, I really can't, um, discredit it for folks who are in that place where they're having trouble of eating too many calories and they need a short-term term protocol or guide to give them the possibility to feel what their body feels like when they have less calories. It's like a short-term means to an end kind of thing, I think, as all diets and protocols should be. People should try it. If it's useful, go ahead and do it, and then integrate it into your lifestyle and be able to throw away that calorie counter. That is definitely what I think. Okay, No Sugar Daddy. Okay, that's for you.

Tommy: Thank you.

Mason: You're going No Sugar Daddy.

Tommy: No, no, he's self-made. He's not relying Sugar daddy.

Mason: So you've got no sugar in that one. So in here we've got, they've added Mason's mushrooms.

Josh: Yeah, great.

Mason: Which has got chaga, reishi, lion's mane, cordyceps, maitake, shiitake, agaricus, and porcini mushrooms.

Tommy: Whoa.

Mason: And they've also spiked some of them with lion's mane, which we absolutely love. So we've got like a choccy nut one for Mr. 97.

Josh: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Choccy nut.

Tommy: That definitely helps his mission to find a life partner.

Mason: Yeah, we need chocolate.

Tommy: Somehow.

Mason: Chocolate is a— Wonderful aphrodisiac. We've got Smurf Power.

Josh: Is the Smurf guy?

Tommy: They're legit blue. Can you see it?

Mason: I wonder whether they actually put phycocyanin in it, which is the blue pigment that you get from, um, from algaes like spirulina.

Josh: Oh really?

Mason: Which is actually, if it is that, then that's a high quality. It's high quality and very wonderful.

Josh: My guess is it's not.

Tommy: You should say you pour this thing out, it's like fucking galaxy blue.

Mason: It's like, I mean, phycocyanin is galaxy blue. It's It's very hard to get blue pigment, sorry, in nature. Then we've got just these like these kind of keto-style coffees, you know, got the ghee in there and got MCT oil and then got Mason's mushrooms Trojan-horsed in your coffee. So I'm not necessarily against coffee per se, but I think we should acknowledge the fact that it is a yang herb. It's a very stimulating herb.

Josh: What does yang mean?

Mason: Yang, we get into the yin and yang kind of style of things. So yang is very, very expansive, it's very metabolic, right? And so we want a good amount of yang in our body. A lot of these herbs that I have are yang toning herbs, but as we were talking about over like here with the mushrooms, chaga, reishi, lion's mane, or more of these like kidney Jing essence herbs to restore, like, you know, if you're in that adrenal burnout kind of zone, you sit within the Jing herbs primarily. So I've got Eucommia bark, He Shou Wu, I put them into a blend called Jing which they've also, I think they've also slipped in. Now that's the other one, Mr. 97, I wanna get you on is Jing because kidney Jing in essence is what is actually gives you sexual vigour and libido and gives you that sex appeal. It's like sex on fire because your kidneys actually have the ability to regulate how much cortisol is being released and then on the other side of that, you have the ability to create a nice healthy array of ratios of sex hormones, including that testosterone magic. That's sexy, like sexy from the inside out.

Josh: Is there a difference between what men and women eat and drink? Does it matter or is it basically the same? Are we all basically humans with the same organs and need the same shit?

Mason: Yeah, it's a good question. We are definitely not the same. It is like there is like a big crossover in cellular biology and in many aspects of our organ systems that are absolutely the same and similar. And then especially when you get when you get into the sex hormones and when you get into reproductive systems, it is so incredibly and beautifully different. There's of course crossover, like men and women can take the same herbs and both have a boosting effect to their libido long-term. 'Cause I'm not going for short-term aphrodisiac, synthetic aphrodisiac, I'm going long-term embodiment of sexual vigour because it's an absolute sign of health.

Josh: Perfect for life partners, like we don't want some sort of Tinder one night sort of thing.

Tommy: No, yeah, it's not Viagra, it's— Mr. 97.

Josh: This is Mr. 97's 50 and he's still rocking it.

Mason: Exactly. Yeah, that is exactly what we're going for. And that's the intention. And so we've got a bit of turmeric in here as well, just because turmeric is always wonderful.

Tommy: It smells good. I like it. There has been so much beat up, not beat up, so much publicity around the MCT, not the MCT, the oils that you're putting into this, the butters, the grass-fed butters. I've never actually had it. Are you having it now?

Mason: It's an interesting one, that keto world. So first of all, coffee, yang herb, stimulating herb. It's not a superior herb. It's not one of these ones that are gentle enough that you can consistently integrate on their own and they're not going to take you out of balance. But at the same time, it's a wonderful herb in that it's a regular herb category. It's probably one that, um, in excess obviously is going to take you into a place of excess, which is adrenal burnout, or you're going to be compensating for your adrenal burnout with coffee. So what I like to do is if you're gonna have it, first of all, consider getting yourself to a place where you don't need coffee, where you can just actually have one as a herb 'cause you choose to. But in the meantime, you can add mushrooms or Jing, Jing herbs to balance out the overall energy of that tonic.

Josh: What's the definition of a herb, by the way? 'Cause you use, everything seems to be a herb when you're talking about, 'cause coffee I never thought about as a herb. What is a herb?

Mason: Yeah, um, it's a plant, mineral, um, or animal, um, derived, uh, or mushroom-derived, um, medicine. Something that has a medicinal action.

Josh: I always thought of them as like mint and parsley.

Mason: Culinary herbs.

Josh: Yeah, a bit of a gronk like that.

Tommy: You know, I think, Josh, this is something you'd be into because this feels like a meal, right?

Josh: Extreme. But this is the problem, I'm getting fucking pumped. I'm getting it straight, I'm taking notes. And the problem that I need to be careful of is next week I move into a new place very close by to the office. I'm sort of, I feel like it's an opportunity for, I like to call it a personal rebrand.

Tommy: And you'll be wearing your singlet.

Josh: Exactly, I'll have the exact, the exact, I'll first get our friend Gemma can hook me up with some laser hair removal, but then I'll be wearing wearing the, uh, what is it called, a singlet? A singlet, yes.

Mason: Well, I mean, like, I, I like calling them wife beaters.

Josh: Wife beaters, yeah, good. Yeah, it's the 2019 wife beater.

Tommy: I cannot say wife beater to these.

Mason: Yeah, I know, but we do.

Tommy: People do.

Josh: But it's a blue— that is a— is that a specific— the blue one, is that a quintessential Australian brand or something?

Mason: It is a quintessential Australian brand. Yeah, just like— this is just a Bonds chesty box. Yeah, I'm actually— I'm like, we're in the works, or I'm putting it out there to anyone. If you want to create either like, you know, an organic cotton singlet like this that's got nice stretch and the versatility, maybe make it hemp, make it bamboo or whatever, but as long as it's got versatility, I'll wear it and I'll like endorse the crap out of it.

Tommy: I can't believe there hasn't been one out of Byron. It seems like there's all of that stuff happening.

Mason: There's heaps of them, but like when you get like a lot of the time hemp ones are just gonna get like, they're just stretchy and bally.

Tommy: Yeah, man. And too many people trying to smoke them in Byron.

Josh: This is, uh, this is merino wool, but it's like a blend. I fucking love these t-shirts by a company called Wool and Prince. But I went away for 4 months last year and I wore like t-shirts for weeks at a time without washing them, and they're like odour resistant and all that.

Mason: So good. I mean, that's like when it comes down, when it boils down to it, like there's, you know, like I, I need Convenience at some point.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: And I need to like, I basically wear this every single day. It's my uniform. I did a talk last night, I did it in this.

Tommy: Yes, I looked at some photos of you and I saw you in there.

Josh: It's a fucking peacocking uniform though too.

Tommy: Like, I feel like if you're from Croydon in Victoria and you're wearing that, it's not, it doesn't have the cut-through as I'm from Byron.

Josh: Yeah. Oh, it's perfect.

Tommy: I just tried my smoothie, this is epic.

Mason: Oh, they're good.

Josh: I mean, this is, yeah, coffee is great too. It's got that, it reminds, I did keto for a while but I did I did a terrible version, which was a lot of cheese. And it was, I felt by the end of it like a big blob of cheese.

Mason: And look, I don't mind keto and I think you've absolutely, like, you know, a lot of people who don't even do the cheese route, they don't have the bacterial or liver capacity to really move that much fat through the body. And so the way I kind of see it is their liver and their small intestines become this big oozing blob of cheese that can't actually digest and they start off-gassing in these ways through the bacteria, through so much excessive fat in a way that starts loosening the tight junctures in their digestive system.

Josh: Oh, you don't want that.

Mason: No, you don't, 'cause that's leaky gut. And there's certain constitutions that rocket on keto, right?

Josh: What does constitute, what does that mean?

Mason: It's just your basic, you know, like whether you're prone to be able to metabolise carbohydrates or a higher ratio of fats, where, you know, it has a lot to do with how much constitutional Jing essence you were born with in your kidneys. A good way to think about it is Keith Richards came through with a lot of constitutional Jing, right? He can go and go and go, but then we know there were people who like—

Tommy: It's also cocaine.

Mason: Well, but look at where he is. I mean, it hasn't killed him. There's a lot of people that wouldn't be able to back up once after a night out, you know? That's like they're constitutionally, they don't have that much Jing, right? And so someone who's got a really strong constitution You know, for instance, I was telling you I was on that raw food for 4 years. I was really rocking it. My spleen could handle it. I have a lot of digestive fire organically, and so it didn't come to my detriment. I made the change just based on my own will because I knew that it was time to make that shift to something that was probably more accessible long-term, and a diet that I'd be proud to share with my kids, right? Rather than going, it's just raw food, here's the book, here's the dogma, you know, I'm a missionary. So basically, but on raw food, you see there are a lot of, especially women who already have inherent hormonal disturbances, who don't have a spleen function, which is able to really heat up and break down and cook the food within the belly. And they do absolutely terribly on raw food. And it's the same with keto. And it's shit when you see people who are like, you know, keto is just like, you know, I did it and look at me now, shredded, look at these abs. And then there's people in these support groups, right? It's like with anything, it's like with Medical Medium right now, there's people in these Facebook support groups and they take particular people in these dietary worlds, whether it's veganism or raw or keto or Medical Medium.

Josh: That's a fucking loud helicopter. That sounds like a big—

Mason: This is, you know what, these are the people in the dietary dogmas and they know that I'm talking about them. Exactly. And they've just like, they've just sort of like, you know, just sent out their missionaries This is actually Uber Eats.

Josh: They've done a real extra special. They're coming down with raw treats.

Mason: Hachimama, you've done it again. And so basically what they always do, and it's the same with herbalism, you know, I could be in a position where I could go, yeah, everyone should have reishi all the time, no matter what. But that's a really irresponsible thing that doesn't respect people's instincts and the fact that people should engage with these herbs and find an appropriate usage for them. Don't pick just the few good people and then only highlight that 'cause then there's other people and it's like, it's a bit easier with herbalism 'cause it's not a complete dogma. It's just something that is on offer to include with a lot of education if you're doing it responsibly. But in the dogma or in like the keto world, there's people within those groups going, why are those people rocking it so much and why am I getting sicker? And there's no one because it's, because the responsibility is to stand firm behind sets of rules and what you've discovered is the big thing and what is the thing that works. You don't actually go and highlight the fact that there are very, there are a lot of nuances within our bodies and with what works and the time period. Keto is an incredible healing diet. People with brain injuries, I think, you know, you should go into a state of ketogenesis. You know, I like the idea of water fasting. I've done it and I will do it again. You enter into a state of extreme that's extreme ketogenesis when you do that and you start burning fats and working off fats and you heal, but long-term, there's no romance in it. And long-term, your culture needs to have this integrated lucid romance in terms of the nutritives and the way that you're preparing food in a way that engages your senses. It's more down the lines of like that Italian mama who's rocking the kitchen, you know? That has to be in there long-term and you can't get that in dietary dogma no matter what they say.

Josh: How do you reconcile the use of Instagram for business when you see that there is so much misinformation or people who have great rigs to start with jumping on to certain trends as a way of just selling product?

Mason: Oh man, good question. I talk about it all the time. I talk about it in my talk last night. I'm the first to take the absolute piss out of adaptogenic herbs and taking medicinal mushrooms these kinds of things off a pedestal so that they can be gently integrated, if useful, into the lifestyle.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: Now, in terms of jumping onto bandwagons, um, I think it's, um, I just think it's always going to happen. I can't get too worked up about it. Um, I do think that it is quite irresponsible if you are in the position where you start not just documenting your journey, but you just start actually sharing, like, hang on, I've found the truth here, guys. The other thing, I think if you're going to start giving advice, I still run the Super Feast Instagram. I still write back to every single DM. If you're going to make yourself a figure of education, and especially I, and I've really, it was a turmoil for me in years in terms of selling the product and educating about the product. It was really difficult for me, but I make myself accessible nonstop, answer all those questions. I do a high amount of training for my team. Team, and we don't bypass the hard questions that may burst the bubble of our, our, you know, our butterflies and rainbows take on adaptogens and tonic herbs. We're very realistic, and if we don't think it's appropriate, I will tell someone, no, it's not time for you to be going for this. You need to go and like go a little bit deeper. You need to be working with someone. You need markers within the body. Stop stabbing in the dark. Although I'm very, I'm very much for people getting into their own sovereignty and taking their health back into their own hands and their family hands and law and folksy remedies and herbalism into the house. You need to really appreciate where your edges of expertise are, and at that point you need to look outside that bubble so you can learn and go to someone who's like, you know, maybe a practitioner, you know, maybe just someone who's a teacher, and then go and learn to get a few markers that are going to actually enable you to, you know, get on top of the symptom or whatever it is of the illness.

Tommy: So owning a business like Superfeed at least, you've got a product that people, you know, it's not within their day-to-day unless they choose so. And you get people that are doing, you know, things like network marketing. So Isagenix and these things where they try and, talking about their product like the thing that you're missing out on. Like, and you start feeling bad 'cause you're like, well, hang on. And I've always had the thought of like, if it was actually good for everyone, why the fuck wouldn't everyone be on it? And so how do you tackle like with, 'cause from what I'm hearing is, is if this isn't for you, if this doesn't work for you, you don't need to have this. So that's just—

Mason: Well, dude, I mean, I told people to like, I had to finally accept that this was something useful, having powdered extracts. And I put them in like really beautiful ultraviolet jars that cost a bomb and it presents really nicely. I want them to be presented in the house, but it's still an extract powder in a jar. And for ages, I just wanted to bypass that and teach people how to go and forage their own mushrooms herbs. Yet when I was doing the markets for years in Northern Beaches of Sydney, I'd have conversation with mums of 4 who would just absolutely—

Josh: don't have fucking time to forage. Is that what they're saying?

Mason: This one mum, Trish, I've been talking to for ages, she had 2 autistic kids and 2 kids, um, older, um, like 2 older kids, 2 younger kids who are autistic. Her and her husband had full-time jobs, they were all in school.

Josh: No bullshit, Trish.

Mason: No bullshit, Trish. And I was like— she's like, oh my gosh, you've got the mushrooms you've been talking about for ages. You know, at the same time I've been talking about it's about hydration, getting inflammatory foods out of the diet, getting off processed foods, it's like, and definitely getting off pesticides and these kinds of things.

Josh: How do you get off pesticides?

Mason: Well, you can't get off pesticides, they're pervasive. It's a bit of a complex conversation in terms of, you know, making the best food choices, talking to the farmer, ideally getting local and understanding how it's grown in the first place, and then opening up your detox channels, including your skin, your colon, through your bladder and through your lungs and getting your lymph moving, moving so you are not allowing pesticides to embed within your body and embed within your, um, within your brain. And especially using things that are either binding, like clays, and other things that are like somewhat chelating or able to, you know, help you detox from these, like zeolites. And so, nice caveat, because that's a good one. Like, like, what— don't just— like, it's like in business going, just get a good bookkeeper. And it's like, what does that mean? And I like— and I hate that bypass, you know, just get off pesticides, because it's like we're talking over 30 'Here, how do I do this?' Yeah, and can I eat—

Josh: like, I guess where I get, uh, I struggle with is I can overthink things. So I've associated eating things, say eating fruit from punnets, or like punnet of strawberries, I've now associated that with like pesticides and chemicals, and I almost like, 'Can I taste that in these ones?' Like, so how do we, um, how do we create a certain level of scepticism around things versus being able to be a productive human that's eating.

Mason: I mean, it was perfectly put. I, I think just having that— that's a quality question. That's what I like to— like, I think each time we're having a problem internally when it comes to our diet, quite often we're not asking enough of a quality question that within it already has the answer riddled throughout it and then defines really clear steps. You know, you're not going to— it's not useful for you to go into extreme paranoia about pesticides being everywhere. Especially if you get into the plastic-free realm, like I live basically, I endeavour to get plastic-free, I try as much as I can, but when I'm in a city, I just don't freak out. I'm not freaking out right now that this is a plastic-lined estrogen-rich cup, no matter what they say, no matter how compostable it is, there's still plastics and those toxic xenoestrogens within there do have the ability to go in and take down testosterone. But do I let that freak me out? Absolutely not, because I have strict values in the way that I wanna live life and I wanna feel primarily that leads. So putting me into a state of tension and stress is never going to be useful for me. If it does, if it is, it's only for short periods. I've got this stress and then what actions can I take so that I actually, you know, can I turn it into something useful? So I don't know the exact steps to take, but I will say that if you just sit in increasing the quality of the question and just lean into it and be like, especially like, why don't you want pesticides within your life rather than it being a rule? That would— it'll be, you know, it'll just be evident from the very beginning, like what steps you should take.

Josh: And if the cups are going to kill us, I reckon the asbestos floors will get us first. What do you reckon, Tommy?

Tommy: Definitely.

Mason: Trish.

Tommy: Absolutely.

Mason: I was just thinking about this. Yeah, she's just like, you know, and I was like, look, Trish, you know, and like, I know you I know why you want the mushrooms, but you know, I'm really— you live near Lane Cove National Park, you can go and harvest your own turkey tail mushrooms there and dry them this way. And she's like, mate, 4 kids, full-time job, no time, give me the fucking mushrooms, mate.

Josh: Yeah, getting aggressive.

Mason: Yeah. And I was like, wow, okay. I was like, I've stopped, like, yeah, okay, this is relevant. She's got a strong intention. She's like, every year we get the flu, I can't— will not have the whole household going down for 3 weeks to the flu. And I was at the time, like, I got a 2-year-old now, right? I can, like, I felt the time I was like, I'm really empathetic to that, it's going to be really hard. And now I'm like, oh my God, it's impossible.

Tommy: I've got a 2-year-old, he gets sick, we get sick, then he gets sick, then we get like, it's, you're just passing it on. It's horrible.

Mason: Just like, it's just this big game of backgammon. Yeah, backgammon, badminton. I don't know why I said backgammon. It's this big strategic game of how to give influencer today, everyone.

Josh: It's just that complicated. Slowly. Mm, you play that move, I'll play this move.

Mason: So basically, in that instance, she— then we're like, right, how are we gonna get them into your family? And so I was like, you know, hot chocolates is a wonderful way. And so 4 in the household would drink the hot chocolates, 2 autistic children wouldn't. Okay, that doesn't work. What about berry smoothies? No, that wouldn't work. I'm like, oh gosh, I don't know, Trish. It was in my early days. And then she came back one day cheering and I was like, oh, how'd you get it in? She's like, in the spag bowl, mate. And she just like took a table spoon of the Mason's mushrooms and would just put that in the spag bowl, Trojan horsing it into her family. Important to do that with consent, not that they're trippy. But, and then when she came back after the winter, I said, how did you go? And she said, great, you know, everyone got the flu, but it was only for a week and it wasn't that severe, and I'm really happy with that. And so that actually started to bring some relevance for me, um, about why these full-spectrum herbs that hadn't been isolated in their constituents, they're in a bioavailable form that could just be added to whatever whatever you were doing within the kitchen, so you could easily integrate it into your life, which is— that's where the roots of Taoist tonic herbalism lies, gently. And you're asking about China. Yeah, they're putting cordyceps and reishi in the stock, right?

Josh: It's there.

Mason: Astragalus in the stock, he shiwu in the broth. They're making wines out of schizandra berry, and if they're having a rice wine, it's a schizandra and food, you know. They're OG, and they're non-fantastical about it, which is where I I wanna be with tonic herbalism. It's a budding conversation in the West. And so, you know, I have to, you know, put some spirit finger terminology onto it to get people's attention.

Tommy: Is it those things like what happened with Trish that gives you the confidence? 'Cause I could imagine like, you know, even selling myself as someone who makes videos in my early days, it's like you were trying to get some confidence and wins on the board, even though you believe in what you do. And then has that been a case for you Oh man, I love this.

Mason: This is like my constant internal conversation.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: Um, and to ensure that I don't go into a place of just pure justification because I have a few testimonials that I can just go out willy-nilly and market these things as something everyone should be doing because I've got that in the quiver. To make sure that I'm consistently appropriately sharing these things, and because I've taken it upon myself to create a business out of it, which, you know, at the same time, I really wanna support my family. I really wanna support my mom who had an aneurysm and ensure that I've got her set up for when, you know, when certain things happen in the future. And so that's there. And I like to be really upfront about that. And I also like to be upfront about the fact that I haven't taken investors and I don't wanna take investors because that would be too far from me in turning this into something that's too much of a commodity that I can't, not necessarily control, but guide. But because I've taken it upon myself to sell them and educate about them in that interesting grey area where I do both, I really need to consistently, humbly making myself available at every layer, appreciate that just as it was at the markets where I've got new people that need those new distinctions and how to not just run— let this run off to become a fad in their lives, but they have the distinctions how to appropriately do it. So yes, they're very safe herbs, but it doesn't matter. They're still herbs and they're still gonna have a big action and you want to integrate them into the culture and lifestyle in a way where it's gonna be long-term benefits and usage, not just that immediate take the herb and feel something and get a hit like we were talking about. Now that happens. If someone's adrenally exhausted, they take Eucommia bark and He Shou Wu and they feel, "Fuck out, man, like I'm getting this energy." And that's their kidney system, their organ system and their chi coming back online. Same with some people get on the mushrooms and they hit the immune system and the receptor gets the cobwebs blown off and they feel that Qi and they go, my God. Now I go, that's wonderful, feel it, whether there's been a deficiency or you're now reducing an excess and you're really feeling that's wonderful. Go on for maybe a week, maybe a couple of weeks, but then when it becomes more subtle, because we don't want to use them as like, I just need to feel something. That's not where it's at and it's not where long-term herbalism lies, right? You want to be like long-term using them and just tending to the function of your organs in your system problems with these. And that, as I go along, and we're now reaching more and more people, I need to ramp it up even more so in constantly making that distinction. And I just can't sit on the back of it that I've been doing this since 2011, I've been doing this the entire time, there's enough content out there, guys, you can find it. Yeah, no, I need to keep on doing it. It's my responsibility. But at the same time, I, like, it's fun because the more I get to have that broad entry-level conversation education to ensure that these things aren't just felt as a fad or a cure or something like that, and something to be respected at the same time. I get to have those real technical deep conversations because there are more and more people that are really becoming tonic herbalists within their own lives and understanding the nuances of this tradition and bringing that and ingraining that into the Western health culture, which I really love. So, but you know, You know, for me to earn that right to educate on that level, I need to consistently do my chop wood, carry water in my practice. And I think it's a part of it having a business and being responsible with it and putting my face out there nonstop and ensuring that it's effectively integrated.

Josh: Yeah, do you think serving the Australian market, being this sceptical market that it is, has made you a stronger communicator?

Mason: Yeah, good question again, because you go to America and I've got mates that are like, like, hey, how does it feel to be back in the land where people actually celebrate you having a business and making these games? And I'm like, it's wonderful for 2 weeks, but then it gets a little too inflating for me.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: And, um, come back to the land of, um, tall poppy syndrome, and it is wonderful. Yeah, the scepticism is great. And I, again, we were talking about Instagram, I'm not a big fan of the rajibaji, uh, American you know, just like ignore what everyone else says and just go forth and believe in yourself. I think that should probably be like 80% of it. But 20%, you should definitely be listening to the scrutiny and you should definitely be listening to why people are just questioning what you're doing and the validity of it because that will give you some biofeedback, you know, and most of the time it's, you know, there's trolls out there that just are just trying to like, you know, you know, just like, just raise hell. But majority of the time, people's intentions are good, and that scrutiny can be really used to sharpen your sword and make sure that you're plugging all the gaps of how what you're saying could be misinterpreted. And so that's empathy, and that's putting yourself in all the different shoes. And that can be seen as a very silly business decision to slow down to that extent. Yeah, where you acknowledge all that, but I've got to sleep at night.

Josh: That's the decades practice, right?

Mason: Exactly.

Josh: That's it, yeah.

Mason: And I got to sleep at night, you know.

Tommy: Joe Rogan, one of the biggest podcasters in the world, had a guy on talking about mushrooms.

Josh: Yeah.

Tommy: Did you see any change in numbers of people wanting, in Australia, mushroom?

Josh: Was that Michael Pollan or who was that?

Mason: No, that was Paul Stamets.

Tommy: Oh dude, that blew my mind, him talking about mushrooms. And so I could just imagine that everyone's going, "Ah, I need some mushrooms," and they're looking up finding you. Is that— did that happen? 2011.

Mason: It definitely did.

Tommy: Because I think we're in a time now that like accessible information has never been more accessible. Information has never been more accessible. And I think it's like you've been on this, you've been on the train since 2011. It's now, you know, choo choo.

Mason: Yeah, I mean, I've earned my right to be in this position as the wave really started crashing and the mushrooms really came into popularity. And these like when in the West, we call them adaptogenic herbs. This is a very general, um, general statement. And in the East, in, in the— in one system we call them Taoist tonic herbal, um, tonic herbalism. In Ayurveda we call them rasayanas. And so just so you get that understanding where it's like, what's a tonic herb, what's a medicinal mushroom, what's an adaptogen? And so we can get into that, but they're all in the same family. Yeah, when Paul Stamets happened, I had someone on my team watching the SEO on lion's mane especially, and and it exploded and we definitely saw an increase. Now that was a beautiful thing that happened for me in that because he's a mycologist and heavily a scientist, right? And so he leans towards growing them in labs in America on, I think, a growing medium of brown rice, which makes sense to him so that you can have somewhat of a standardised growing process.

Tommy: What do you mean they're eating brown rice?

Mason: That's what they eat rather than their native—

Josh: That's what the mushrooms eat.

Tommy: Go, man, I'm on brown rice. Too.

Josh: Super lame, little bit of tuna.

Mason: Yeah, I mean, like, it's an interesting one where I agree that in certain circumstances where they're wanting to really have a standard product close to home, that you'd grow it in that particular way.

Josh: They've westernised it.

Mason: It's definitely not the, uh, foraging in the mountains of China, and it lacks romance. And I really, I don't think that's a bad idea to do that. I'm glad people like scientifically, and it's also in that realm of having a business and wanting to have something a little bit more streamlined that doesn't have so much chaos embodied into the sourcing process. So that makes sense to me, not opposed to it. I don't wanna give that to my family.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: I definitely don't like, if you're sick, maybe it makes sense for you to like be like, all right, I know this has been studied and standardised in a particular way in that practitioner realm. Yeah, go for it in that sense. But I want this reishi to be grown on my land wild oak logs.

Josh: Difference between grain-fed beef and like a grass-fed.

Tommy: Exactly. If you could have one or nothing, so if you had the brown rice mushroom grown or nothing for your family, which one is it? Do you go there?

Mason: I'd probably, I'd still go brown rice, but I'd keep it on higher circulation and it would be more of a a regular herb, not a tonic herb. It'd be something I wouldn't integrate into my life necessarily. I'd use it for more specific medicinal actions. If you know what I mean? Because personally it needs that, we'll explain Di Dao sourcing and the cosmology and growing in particular areas. That's got enough romance there that it earns the right to be within a kitchen that has the senses engaged. And he, Paul Stamets came out and was just like, I basically, studied all these mushrooms from China and, you know, only 9 out of 10 are good, just don't get anything from China. And it's such a reductionist scientific way to look at it. And I wrote a blog about it going like, you know, damn right I source my mushrooms from China. I kind of see it, it's like it was the only way for me to go about it when I was randomly sourcing all the herbs very in the beginning. And I didn't know which ones they were. I just, like I had Reishi 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and there were different standards, some grown organically in America on grain, on wood, some from China, from Di Dao in the hills and others, you know, organic in China. And I found, and some were standardized. So we chopped out particular medicinal components, standardised it to 5% or 30%. All right, so they've chopped up the energetic ratios of the herb itself. And I kept on being drawn back to the Di Dao full spectrum. There was something about my body that was able, and my organs that was able to like recognise the herb ongoingly. So it was, I was, able to create more of a habitual action of going back to it without having to think. And so that's why I started going down that route. At the same time, I've been to the farms. You can see like, you know, at the, you know, where we're growing the reishi, which is in the Darby Mountains, it's just surrounded by wild forest deep in the hills. It's villages, only independent farmers. Like, I'm like, has Paul Stamets been here and tested that one? Or are you just reducing it to its parts and just going, oh, just throw it out? And just come and buy them from Australia. Whereas like, I'm from America and I'm like, well, that's kind of cool, but that's not a very colourful conversation. I like having conversations that are very colourful and I don't oppose other businesses that are doing their thing. I think there's different caveats of society where it's appropriate to have different growing styles. And I've got a very particular one and I'm not sitting here trying to poo-poo everything else. So you come and buy this, I don't give a shit, try them all and find there where it's appropriate use At the same time, yeah, I'm there walking through the schizandra orchard. I'll show you a picture of it later. And there's companion planting with pine trees, there's walnut trees going throughout, they're harvesting that, there's weeds growing all throughout, there's mushrooms going everywhere, there's no pesticides and there's no organic fertilisers being brought from externally, right? And then laid out, like, you know, laid out, which would still get me an organic certification. Then yeah, we test for pesticides, pides and metals and microbials and aflatoxins and all those kinds of things have such, um, like we're fastidious about like looking at ensuring that we dry them appropriately so no mould grows in the transportation and very particular about how we extract. And so we've got one test of all those things and then another test on like at the facility, then another test in China before we get them sent, and then we get them tested here in Australia for the same thing. So on that side of things Rockin', zero pesticides, beautiful. Like, you know, it's like when you get to the standards of heavy metals, that's like, you know, absolutely knocking it out of the park in Australia and absolutely knocking it out of the park in the US. It's just like, you're a scientist, there's the data and we got the romance. And it's in a way that it's not in a pill. So you get to control the dose. That's how I like to do it. I don't wanna be given a pill, I'm not sick.

Josh: Yeah. Does it feel like a spiritual experience when you go to China?

Tommy: Yeah.

Josh: And what does that mean for you personally? Is it, do you actually take a significant amount of time there? Is it a slow process? What does that actually look like?

Mason: Yeah, so I'm partnered with someone to go and source the herbs from independent farmers and ensure that there's basically where the current farming practises or wildcrafting, wild harvesting practises are at, that we get it as close to the wild thing as possible with the least amount of human intervention as possible. That's the DDAO sourcing practice. Practice. When I got like last year in October, I was there for 2 weeks driving all over the place visiting different independent farmers. And for me it is a slow process. I've got a partner there that's, um, that I've, you know, been able to create a very tight bond with that knows just how fastidious I am and is almost more fastidious than me. And it's like, you know, it's someone that was able in the beginning to really educate me and going, that's a good question, A better question is this one. And I'm like, holy shit, yeah, I'd never, I hadn't even thought about, you know, I'm thinking about my own water and what water I extract in, but I hadn't thought about it on a commercial level. And so those kinds of things emerge. And so in that sense, I'm happy. I'm really, I can sit really happy in the herbs that, you know, Trish and the students and, you know, my own, like my own family, you know, these are the herbs I'd wanna be taking. And that's what I share. With the community. And obviously there's a certain cap to the supplying and sustainability in that kind of farming, and I'm just going to have to be aware of that. That's in our game plan as a business. In terms of going and visiting these places, absolutely, there's something very primordial about the place. There's something very integrating and humbling for me, and especially going to places like, um, um, Wudang Mountain in central China, which is one of the birthplaces of Taoist philosophy. I'm going there and I'm in this temple and I'm like, this temple isn't really exciting me too much, you know? I'm like, and I'm sitting there going, go to the museum later and you can see the effort that at one point Taoism became trendy in ancient China and the emperor is gone, let's mobilise 300,000 people to go and build these temples in the wilderness.

Tommy: Interesting.

Mason: I'm like, okay, well that's, you know, it's beautiful and it's a place of like, you know, deep inner inquiry and you've got to respect that and you can feel the prayer that's gone in there, you know, which is like, and it's, and it comes. But before that, it was simply just humans that had gone into nature to the places where there was spring water, where there was tea growing, and where there was wild herbs growing, right? And they just go, as we are all trying to do now in maybe a little bit of a different environment, just inquiring, just trying to like learn what are we about, what's this about for me, what are my values, and what do I want to accumulate and cultivate within myself that I think would what would be useful for this lifetime. It's not this institutionalised ism. It's just humans doing their thing, and we're using some tools that are useful in that inquiry. And that was the biggest thing I got out of my last trip. It completely took this whole— I use the term Taoist tonic herbalism because it's useful, because it is a system, but then I want to burst the bubble of that system and make sure it's very accessible business-wise.

Josh: What's been the biggest learning through having a business and doing something? Is like, is it a perishable item? Does it, does it go bad quickly?

Mason: Oh man, I was like, so smart choosing this business. Like, um, it's got like a 2-year— yeah, great, 2-year shelf life. Um, biggest problem we come in, because we don't add fillers, um, we don't add any—

Josh: what would be a filler that people use? Bamboo.

Mason: Really? Yeah, the bamboo is probably a good quality one because it's actually contributing some silica. But basically what the starch would do, standardise it if you're doing encapsulation especially, but also would suck up a little bit of the moisture. I don't want to put in a filler, I don't want to put in an excipient, I don't want to use capsules because then I have to generally use a sliding agent to get it in through the, you know, through the machine. And into the capsule. So what that means is that's pure medicine and it's just susceptible to humidity. And so that's just like, at the moment we're just like, cool, we're gonna put bigger desiccants in, just go on an education campaign. You know, it doesn't happen too often, get on education campaign. Like if it's humid, you know, we basically, we really wanna make sure that no moisture gets in. Don't use, you know, like wet spoons and again, like maybe keep it in the freezer, you know, where it's a low moisture space if you're not using it every single day. In terms of learning as a business, oh man, I've been clipped on the ear by this business so many times. I'm quite a fanatic and creative type. I can't believe I'm still doing the same thing. I really run off with the fairies with the next idea. And the business has really taught me how to like just beautifully shoulder the weight of responsibility for the choices that I've made and being the CEO. It's like, it's only this year that I've acknowledged myself as the CEO of a company and really started to really responsibly take on that role within the structure of the company, you know. Um, which is—

Tommy: why has it taken that long?

Mason: I've, um, you know, maybe not the last, last 2 years so much, but before that, um, I just— inherent was just this idea of just running away from the business for some reason as soon as I could. Um, I was, I guess, maybe scared by the consistency of what it took within a business to actually make sure that I kept it healthy. And then as other people started coming into the business, the responsibility of knowing that this is a livelihood here within this company. I don't know why I was trying to run away. Again, I was just someone, it was like, I used to do it when I was a kid. I was just like, I just run away. I was just like, I'll go on another trip. I'll go and I'll start something else. And that was really inherent in my 20s. And now I've got a 2-year-old and that didn't make me go, I better straighten up and do something I don't like. It was just my dojo.

Tommy: Empowering in responsibility. Absolutely. And as I get older, I lean into it more because it's like I feel like I've fucking got my shit together. It's like taking it on, but there is also, you know, doing, starting it a long time ago, but then when it starts, something starts working, it's like, fuck, I can't believe this is actually working. And there could be some imposter syndrome happening and all these things.

Mason: Yeah, and it's just a dojo or terrain or a biofeedback place for you to get that fit, like, you know, get like, oh, that's what's going on. I'm gonna have to work for it. It's not the business that's the problem, it's the fact that I don't wanna feel this opportunity I have to grow and evolve and see like, well, I'm an imposter, I'm an imposter. Well, let's work with that for a year or two. And that's, I've just gone through it. I've stuck my head down and my bum up. I have a really good friend, Sebastian, tall German guy who's like, I've been known for a long time. He's like, he moved to Byron, you know, a couple of years ago.

Tommy: A lot of Germans are tall, by the way.

Mason: They are. Happy Sebastian.

Josh: Sebastian. Happy Sebastian.

Mason: And we kind of had our businesses going at the same time. He had a sauna company, he has a sauna company, and I had Super Feast. And he's, um, he's a little bit older than me, so I had a little bit more maturity in the area. And I was just like, I'd be like, oh, my little bratty self years ago, I'm like, I just, I feel trapped, you know, by this business. And he said, you are trapped, enjoy it.

Josh: Yeah.

Mason: And it was like, it really, I told him the other day, it was really, um, defining that one moment where I actually listened to that advice. Yeah, you are trapped. Yeah, really embrace that.

Tommy: And so you've chosen— like, if you were— if you have hyper-responsibility, you are where you are because you chose to be there.

Mason: Exactly.

Tommy: Everything you did, every decision has led you here.

Mason: It's not useful to blame the circumstances. And I was kind of leaning towards that, you know, things happen in the family, and, you know, I was just like, it was It was, you know, Trish on the Northern Beach.

Tommy: Trish got me here, gave me the confidence. No, it's so human. I love that Josh and I have spoken to so many people in this podcast and what I love is that is the human experience. Feeling like you're not worth it for a time, feeling confident about it, ebbs and flows of your emotions about what you're doing.

Mason: Exactly. I mean, and that's like, and what I get to do is actually completely in alignment with that. I learn about emotions. And the Five Element Theory. And I learn about how emotions relate to the way chi, electromagnetic, magnetic energy, moves through different organ systems and how it transforms through different organ systems. And if there is a stagnation of chi or this, this forgetting of how it's called for the chi to actually move through an organ and transcend one frequency or style of movement into another you get that blockage, we can see a residue of, um, of emotions or negative emotions, and we can just gently work with that rhythm of the Qi, unblock the physical organ, work with herbs and practises that move that Qi and give us enough space so we can reflect on those emotions so that the Qi can then remember how and continue to move harmoniously through the body. And more and more and more, hopefully our organs will not give rise to these quote unquote negative emotions and more to our virtues, right? Which is very personal, can't learn that in a book, but it's nice to be able to choose a life where the work that I'm doing is actually, I can learn about it as my job.

Josh: Did you feel like you were trying to learn everything through a book? Were you a student of "The 4-Hour Workweek" or anything like that? Did you get into any of that stuff?

Mason: I mean, I respect, like it's not like it matters, like Tim Ferriss, if you're listening, I respect your work. No, I like it, but no, I don't work that way. I'm not a systemized person. I'm very, you know, I'm very touchy-feely. I need to be out there experiencing things. I need to experience them over long term. I'm not quite, I've curbed my fanaticism. I'm still an extremist in my own right, but I feel like I've kept that into a place where I just keep myself on the edge of chaos these days.

Josh: Was there a tipping point where you felt, where you identified that you'd gone too far? What did that actually look like?

Mason: Oh man, yeah. I've taken on a few projects that were way too big and out of alignment for where the company was that really hurt the company. I've made that classic entrepreneurial mistake of bringing someone on too early because I'm trying to escape certain responsibilities and stepping out of the business only to step in to be like, my gosh, look at this shit fight the finances and the customer service have been, which is not anyone's responsibility but mine ultimately. So I've done that. That and learned very, you know, some pretty heavy but beautiful lessons in that. And they were definitely turning points for me. And in terms— I've had so many turning points, man, and it just keeps on going on. Like, to be cliché, it's a journey, you know.

Josh: Don't stop believing.

Tommy: At least you're doing it in Byron Bay. Yeah, it helps.

Mason: That was really useful for me actually, because I was like, if I'm going to own my own business, I'm going to do it in Byron Bay. And that's like— and And that's, you know, now I've gone— it's where I, I can, um, really feel good about, you know, creating a little family of my own.

Tommy: Yeah.

Mason: In space, you know, like, you know, close to the beach and close to the shrub, and also been a place that has really good infrastructure. And so I can run like a rad little business from there.

Tommy: Yeah, it's so cool.

Josh: Mason Taylor, mate, thanks for being on the show.

Mason: Thanks for bringing—

Tommy: thanks for bringing your mushies.

Josh: If people were to do one thing, there wasn't— because I feel like my our first instinct is always to pull out the wallet and buy something for quick gratification to feel like I'm— whether it's a gym membership or fuck it, like I'm very excited to buy your products. The first step before that, what is something that we can do without pulling out the wallet to make ourselves a better version today?

Mason: Such a good question. So many things flood into my mind. So many. In terms of And well, maybe we can keep it in this conversation that we've had today that crosses over into herbalism, but I really feel it's a good exercise to sit there quietly and really feel yourself in the present moment, not opposing, or at least feel the resentment if it's there, or the ignoring of where you've come from and just sit with that. So hopefully you take away the chart and then really go decades, as far as is useful. Maybe it's a week or maybe it's 20, 30 years into the future and feel where you want to be at that point and how you would like to really feel in that moment and what some of the variables would be, you know, strong knees, you know, good cardiovascular health and these like, you know, I'm gonna play with my grandkids.

Josh: They're so simple, aren't they?

Mason: So simple and just sit in that and feel that and recognise that this is an intention. That's going to be with me for my entire life, most likely. This is a pretty safe place to take action from.

Josh: That's great. It's a daily talk show.

Tommy: I just wanted to add some, you know, listen, being honest with yourself, listening to, like, I just know as I've gotten older, even recently, I've just had some realisations of some things that I wasn't being honest with myself about. And it's truly empowering actually feeling those and going, okay, that's what it was. Even if you haven't verbalised it, like, I think there's stages of going, going, I recognise I wasn't honest there, I'm internalising it now, and then the next is verbalising it and actually leaning into that. And it's like, it's a journey.

Mason: It is. And this is beautiful distinctions. Okay, like the fact that we're having these ongoing conversations is magic, and I would definitely just throw your hat in the ring to keep on having an ongoing conversation that you're going to be having for the rest of your life. And that's what we're doing here. There's no like, and so those are the rules, that's how you have a happy life, the 12 principles.

Tommy: He's got his Airfloss machine with him. Exactly.

Josh: Daily Talk Show, everyone. Mason, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, Dad. Hypethedailytalkshow.com if you want to send us an email. And, uh, next week we have very— a very exciting update in regards to the journey of Mr. 97 finding love. Yeah, that will be happening Monday. Yeah. Bye, guys. See you guys.