When it comes to music, everyone has a totally unique taste. So when a song comes on to perfectly fit your mood, it kind of feels like magic. In the credit karma, we do the same thing, but for your finances. We got tired of the financial system, giving broad, impersonal, and a relevant advice to everybody. So we created a way for you to cut through the noise and find offers and recommendations that make sense for your specific money goals. So you know the guidance you're getting is truly custom to you. Download into a credit karma today and get everything you need to outsmart the system. College students get 50% off Walmart Plus memberships. So you can get things like talkies, lab notebooks, and socks delivered straight to your dorm. DLN September 13th to join now, Walmart Plus. Free delivery on college essentials. $35 minimum for free delivery for eligible college and grad students. It's 91324, seat term, subject to change. Okay, welcome to The Other People Show. A weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. My name is Brad Listi and I'm in Los Angeles. Thank you for tuning in. I've got a great episode for you today. I'm going to be doing a craft work conversation with John Oakes, author of a book called The Fast. The History, Science, Philosophy, and Promise of Doing Without. It is available from avid reader press and we are going to be talking about fasting. Not eating food. The history of this practice, its implications, health-wise, creatively, and otherwise. A very fascinating talk with John Oakes. That is coming up in just a couple of minutes. I do want to make note of the fact that today's episode is airing on Tuesday and not Wednesday. There has been some shifting of the schedule, as I'm sure you have noticed over the course of this summer, there have been new content offerings, things happening, things not happening. So much of this is experimental and some of it is tied to my schedule over the summer, having my kids at home work stuff. So bear with me, there will be, for the rest of the summer, a Tuesday, Thursday schedule, just because I have to make this work in my life time-wise. On Tuesdays, I will share with you my latest interview for the show in its most traditional format and then on Thursdays, I will be airing the latest episode of the Brad and Mira Culture series, like pop culture conversation that has been happening over the course of this summer. Sort of a fun change-up on this show, which is usually strictly literary. So I hope that explains it. If you have any thoughts, I welcome them. You can email the show at letters@otherppl.com. You can also DM me on Twitter and Instagram, but email is the most reliable way to get to me. A quick reminder, before we get going that I do a weekly email newsletter, don't forget to subscribe over at BradListy.substack.com. I will keep you appraised of the latest episodes of this show on a weekly basis. I also share a list of links to things that I have been reading and finding interesting. So sign up for my newsletter over at Substack. If you are a regular listener of this program, if you tune in week after week, if this describes you, I hope you will consider joining the other people Patreon community over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. I need your support to do this work, to keep making this content week after week, year after year, as I have been doing since 2011. So if you love this show, if it gives something to you, that is valuable. I hope you will support it over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. Today's episode is brought to you by Penguin Press, publisher of the memoir in essays, The Way You Make Me Feel by Nina Sharma. This is a book about love and allyship told through one Asian and black interracial relationship. Nina Sharma chronicles in the pages of her book, her relationship with her husband, and in doing so, she examines how their black and Asian relationship becomes the lens through which she understands the world. This is a series of sensual and sparkling essays that reckon with, among other things, cast, race, colorism, and mental health, moving from Nina's seemingly idyllic suburban childhood, through her and her husband's early sweeping romance in the so-called post-racial Obama years, and then onward to their marriage. Again, the book is called The Way You Make Me Feel, a new memoir in essays by Nina Sharma, available from Penguin Press. Okay, so my guest once again is John Oakes. His book is called The Fast, the history science, philosophy, and promise of doing without. It is available from avid reader press. John Oakes is a publisher of the Evergreen Review and editor at large for OR books, which he co-founded in 2009. He has written for a variety of publications, including the Oxford Handbook of Publishing and Publishers Weekly. He is a graduate of Princeton University and a native of New York City, where he continues to live. I am very pleased to have John Oakes on this show and to talk with him about a very fascinating and maybe somewhat controversial subject matter, this issue of fasting. So let's get to the conversation. Here I am with John Oakes and his new book, One More Time, is called The Fast. Before this one long fast I did like 30 years ago, my only experience with fasting had been as somebody who's Jewish and not terribly observant, but I did observe Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, where you'd fast for one day. My family and the community was always a big deal. Everyone would get very worked up about this one day fast and you'd prepare for it, and it was really a moment of focus. And then sometime post college, I met the person I became eventually married to, and she is Swiss, and in her family they would often go on these week-long fasts, and I was appalled. I thought that was insane and incredible. And then she convinced me to do one with her, and I survived obviously, and it wasn't a bad experience, but the whole time I was focusing on how hungry I was or hungry I wasn't, and when it would end. But I got through it, and that was a good experience, and I put that behind me, went on to live my life, and then then along came Trump. And this is really true as I live and breathe. When Trump got out of office, I really felt this spontaneous need to just purge myself. I just wanted to get rid of, I just really came out of those four years since I know many other people did probably with better reason than I did suffer terribly under him or anything, but I just wanted to get rid of him, and I wanted to just get him out of my system. And I just sort of thought, "I want to do a long fast, something I haven't done in a lifetime over 30 years." And so I did, and in the course of that, I mean it was a week which, for me, is a big deal. And I got to thinking about the process of fasting, and I was just curious about how I realized that it was all around. We all know it's all around us, it's generally in our culture, people talk about it in terms of health, but when you look even slightly more carefully, you see that this concept of fasting and withdrawal is all around us. It's in every major world religion, and this idea of pulling back, of stepping back for a period of time, of stopping something that you normally do, which really is what fasting is for me, is sort of part of the human condition. And I became interested in that, and I didn't really see a history of it. And so that's how I got into, I thought, "Oh, this could be an interesting book." And I read more and researched more and started talking to people, and there you are. So just to be clear, the fasts that you undertook both 30 years ago and then in the aftermath of Trump, these were like water fasts, all you had was water. I had tea and water, and then I also have vegetable bouillon, which is strained, it's just vegetable extract, but nothing solid. No juice. No. Because there is juice fasting, I know. There's different levels of caffeine. And you know, Brad, as you could tell already, perhaps I'm an emphatic, non-absolutist about this. I think it's fine. But for me, for what I was doing, I wanted to really cut back on sensations. I wanted to sort of assess where I was, what I was thinking, what I was feeling. I wanted to go through a period where I could, so almost a period of renewal. And you know, I go sink back into my old habits when I end the fast, but for a time, it's really, for me, it became a really empowering experience to know that I can exist comfortably for a week or more. And actually, now I try, I do it twice a year. You know, it's usually eight or nine days, but I don't think it's for everyone. And I would never suggest that, but the lessons that it has to impart, I think, are for everyone. And I think people can benefit from the concepts, even if they don't fast themselves. Well, what are some of the lessons? I think this idea that for creation or for, I mean, to use an overused word, empowerment, sometimes stepping back and withdrawal is a path to for growth. And that we don't always have to be going as fast as we can and doing as much as we can in order to move ahead at sometimes a stepping off the treadmill. And at least in my life, you know, as a good New Yorker, born and raised, I've constantly, or almost constantly doing stuff and thinking, I should be doing stuff, when I'm not doing stuff and racing around like crazy, this stepping off the treadmill is a very valuable break in routine. And I think anyone can benefit from that. And of course, as you know, there are all these, there are also some, I think by now, pretty widely accepted scientific benefits to doing it. But really, that wasn't at the heart of what I was interested in. Well, yeah, I mean, when I think about your book, one of the first things that occurs to me is how fasting does seem to be in the cultural firmament now in ways that it was not earlier in my life. It seems to be having a moment intermittent fasting, people taking juice fasts, people taking water fasts for three, four, five, seven, 10 days, whatever it is, that feels like it's trending. And so your book is well timed in that way. You know, I hate to think I'd be flogging into a trend. I would much rather be going the other way anti trending. But yeah, that may be the case. I think most of the fasting that you see now, though I think there's always been a steady undercurrent amongst, I guess you'd call it the more spiritual community of another kind of fasting. But most of the fasting you see now is about health and is in a way, in a weird way, for me, it's anti this is fasting that is anti fasting because it involves self obsession. And for me, one of the valuable things about fasting is that it takes me out of myself and it has to be think about, you know, life, time, the universe, death, things I don't often give time to. And I think most of the fasting that it'll be when I tell people I've written this book, they say, Oh yeah, I do intermittent fasting. It's almost always about, you know, they want to lose weight, which is or look better. And that's important too. But and certainly that can improve your health. And that's a good thing. I'm all for people being healthy. I'm not trying to put that down. I'm all for people taking care of themselves. But that wasn't my primary interest in in researching and writing this book. And although this kind of spiritual fasting can also lead to a kind of self improvement, even if it's only temporary. Well, I feel like fasting has a long history in human societies and human spiritual traditions. And there's got to be something to it. I think like outside looking in, it appeals to me at the level of common sense, this idea that stepping off of the treadmill as you put it can be good for us. That seems obvious, especially in American society, where everybody's sort of constantly doing and never being progress. And it also just feels at the level of common sense, like giving your body's digestive system, giving the internal systems of your body a break every once in a while, instead of constantly running them, I think of it like a machine, right? Every once in a while, it's good to turn the machine off and let it have a rest, right? Absolutely, absolutely. And and from a just there, they've been sort of rumblings in the scientific community, but it's only recently that there's been serious research and just talking for a moment about these health benefits, it does seem to this kind of reset is a real thing. And your body does benefit from the even short, very short, fasts of a few hours have been shown to have an actual material effect on our bodies. To me, just a footnote, the intermittent fasting seems to me very difficult. And I would find that very hard to do. For me, it's much easier to sort of be all in or not. And so, you know, I'd like doing, you know, knowing that, okay, for at least the next week, I'm going to be in our fast and I can block it out to do a little bit here and a little bit there that would require, it seems to me a discipline that I don't think I could muster. What about the psychological part of it? Because I've done a couple of fasts. And I do notice that mentally, it works on you, especially those first couple of days where you're like, okay, not going to eat. You start to realize how you organize your day around food. I'm not even that big of a food person. Like, I eat the same stuff over and over again. I'm not a foodie. I'm not, you notice, I'm not like some big, I don't have time to be a chef. I don't have people who can spend two hours preparing a meal. Like, I don't have that luxury, but I still noticed when I got into the fast, how much anxiety I was experiencing around. Like, just the mental chatter of, okay, I'm not going to eat. So what am I going to do? But that's a real thing. I mean, you have this thing that sometimes called the brain and your gut, your enteric nervous system, which is really second only to your brain in terms of the number of neurons. I forget how many, but the number of neurons in your enteric system, you know, the digestive system has been compared. I guess it also just depends on the size of the dog, but it's been compared to the number of neurons in a dog's cerebral cortex. So you have this, basically the second brain down here, which is telling you, you know, you got to feed me. And so even if the brain in your head is saying, you know, I want to take a break and I want to go without food for a few days or a week or more, that the brain, it's got a first wrestle with this brain in your gut. And so you have this push me pull you thing going on. And so what you experienced is, I think what we all experienced, certainly the first two or three days of any serious fast are uncomfortable. I wouldn't say painful, but that's generally what people feel. And then after, you know, certainly after 72 hours or so, then this other cocktail of chemicals kicks in, which is really cool. This stuff, these things called endocannabinoids, which as it sounds, you know, they have a very close connection to their cousin cannabis, and because you feel of serenity, there's serotonin, which is sometimes called the happy hormone that kicks in. And there's a ton of other stuff. And I'm sure you've heard about ketone bodies, all this kind of stuff starts coursing through your system. And you get, it affects, I think everyone obviously were totally different as individuals, but we share a lot too. And so I think almost everyone feels some sort of leveling off, even a feeling of serenity after about day three of a liquid only fast. Yeah, I did a 10 day juice fast years ago. And what I found was that on day 10, like day one through three were the hardest as most of the fasting literature, it seems to indicate. But then by the time I got to day 10, I could have kept going. Yes. I was like, yeah, I got it. I almost was like, I guess I'll eat, you know, but like, and I enjoyed eating. I was happy to, but it was like, by that point, I felt fine. In fact, I felt quite good. Well, as a writer, I'm sure you were thinking, you might have thought, somebody who's cited more often than he should be, but Kafka, you know, really was obsessed with fasting. And you know, his story, the hunger artist, and then also it comes up in, I think it's investigations of a dog, where the dog is narrating and talks about not eating and being a bad dog. But you, sorry, back to your point, Kafka also talks about this idea of just not wanting to stop fasting and sort of being greedy for the absence that you encounter. I want to say that Ernest Hemingway also talked a little bit about wanting to like write on, at least on an empty stomach. That's interesting. That's, that's it. I didn't know that at all. And, and while in person, of course, he was anything but look, I guess looks are deceiving, but did not look like a pastor certainly is writing reflects that. It's Barton. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, I think maybe this was earlier in his career. He does not, he is not a person commonly associated with restraint, a self-diverist and women and wild times and, and fighting and, and violence. Yeah. Yeah, it's not the fastest regiment, but yeah. So psychologically, you're able to do this relatively easily. You haven't like found yourself like walking the streets of New York City and like suddenly just like sprinting into a bodega and like buying a can of Pringles or stuff. No, for me, actually, because I do cook and I, a food, I, I, of course, eat out this, I guess, one does in modern America, but I like to cook and to buy food and choose my food. And then I spend time cooking and eating it and cleaning up afterwards. From, from me, the real challenges, you have this, these lacunae in your day. And I spent hours, or I spent hours you know, preparing food and buying it and eating it and cleaning up. And when you don't do that, suddenly you have a lot more time in your day. And that's, it, it's boring. I mean, to be without food and, and to miss that, that you realize how much you, you're missing. And so I guess one way I try and combat that is by focusing on the absence. And there have been some very helpful and thoughtful philosophers who've written about this idea of absence that, that I found rewarding to draw upon. Simone Vey was one, you know, she was in the middle of the last century, and she was a, probably anorexic, but faster and an activist and philosopher. And she really talked about this idea of the presence of an absence and that, and she was a devout, she was a, a Jew who converted to Christianity. And she talked about how God only, his great act of creation was occurred because of withdrawal. So he withdraws from the world and he allows the world to take shape. And for her, and I, I thought it was a beautiful image. She, it's really the act of pulling back that allows creation to occur. That's interesting. And, you know, I'm thinking of just like the physiological aspects of this. And it's hard not to think that most of us, myself included, we eat too damn much. Yes, that's true. Our stomach like, I think the human stomach on average is like the size of a fist. So if your stomach is the size of your fist, and then you think about what you're putting into it on a daily basis, you're probably overeating. I think that's definitely true. It's not entirely our fault. And just to your point, exactly, I think it's the number one element in in landfill is food in America. It's the number one cause of, you know, component of our garbage. But I would say that we are, after all, all pretty weak humans. And we've also constructed this environment where you can't turn around, you can't scratch your nose without being, you know, offered 30 varieties of candy bars and you walk into the store and there's this incredible array of food and of incredible marketing that assaults us. And I think, you know, we're wrapped in this, not to be too dogmatic about it, but we are wrapped in layers of capitalism that, you know, work really hard to sell us stuff. And by now, they're pretty good at it. And there's no question but that, you know, our national without fat shaming or anything, but it's just a fact that we are a lot heavier than we were certainly a generation ago. All you have to do is watch those films from the 30s and 40s and, you know, see Humphrey Bogart who looks positively skeletal or Carrie Grant or Lauren Bacall or someone, you know. Well, I mean, I think part of it is the fact that maybe we're eating more than we used to and taking in more calories, but it's also different kinds of food. We're eating all this processed food that just isn't good for us and isn't really meant to be eaten. And it's easy, easy, it's cheap, it's very satisfying, you know, as plenty of people have observed, you know, and it's completely addictive. It's very hard to get away from that. Yeah, you're making me think of those Pringles that I mentioned earlier. I was sorry. That's like, that's a case in point, right? I mean, a sleeve of Pringles is like just bio-engineered to satisfy in some really kind of sinister way. But yet, who can resist? Who really can resist, you know. This episode is brought to you by AutoTrader. Look around. What do you see? Cars. Lots of them. And guess what? They're probably on AutoTrader. Whether you're into timeless classics or the latest trends, if you see it on the road, you can likely find it on AutoTrader. New, used, electric, and one day, maybe even flying cars. See a car? Find it on AutoTrader. Visit AutoTrader.com to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yet, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you can be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance. It's easy, and you could save money by doing it right from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner, and more. So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24/7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliate's national average 12-month savings of $744 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary discounts not available in all states and situations. So when you do a fast, just so we're clear, you're, like say, taking eight or nine days where you're just drinking water, drinking tea, and then drinking vegetable bouillon. What? And then you have these, like you said, you characterized it as these lacunae in your day, which used to be filled with meals, but, you know, obviously, that is not the case when you're fasting. What else do you stop or do you stop anything else? Like, I think that one of the things a lot of faster struggle with, and one of the things I struggle with when I've done it, is like, well, what can I exercise? What do I do? Should I live my life like I normally do except no food? Or is there some other set of withdrawals that I should undertake in concert? Like, how does it work for you? And how does it traditionally work? Well, you know, traditionally, I guess I can give you talk about that a bit. But for me, it's really a, I really look forward to these long fast that I do now twice. Or for me long, I'm sure your listeners, there are plenty of people who regularly go in much longer fast. And so I'm not trying to claim the, you know, prize here or anything. But for me, it's a gift. I really find it a strengthening process. And I like doing it. I like sort of feeling the texture of my day, which normally I don't bother to stop and do. And to answer specifically your question, yeah, I mean, I, you know, I'm not an athlete, and not a fitness fanatic, but I go to the gym and run my, you know, six miles, seven miles. And yeah, I think running six or seven miles would put you in. Yeah, I don't know how slowly I do it. I think the average American would call you an athlete if you're running six or seven miles. I guarantee I am not. But I guess I tend to spaciness anyway. But I get a little, I think most of us get a little spacey, a little weird by, as I say, you know, because this cocktail that goes through your system, you get a little high. And so, you know, I probably wouldn't want to have a, but I did, I've had, you know, some, some pretty advanced discussions while on my day five or day six of a fast. And, and I don't think I was totally gibbering nonsense. Cesar Chavez, the great labor leader, was a real, he was a inveterate faster. And he used to say that on day five or so of a fast, he would suddenly develop this perfect memory, perfect recall, and he could recite conversations word for word that took place. That never happened to me. Unfortunately, no, I'd never had anything like that. But some grounds, some seem to be some scientific grounds for these, you know, I don't want to say superhuman powers. But it, it also makes sense, I think, from an evolutionary point of view, because, you know, your body chemically and biologically is doing what it can to give you this sort of burst of strength and clarity so you can go out there and find an antelope and hunt it down and kill it and eat it so you can get back to the routine. So, that side of you is, is trying to shore you up. Did you, did you find yourself like hunting down sewer rats in New York City? Like, I have not on my share of sewer rats. Just grabbing them by the tails. No, but I did find myself somewhat floating through the streets of the city and a little, a little sort of stoned by my fast. And I, I like that. It's different. It's a different perspective. It takes you out of yourself and for a time. And then you slip back into this routine. And you can hear, like, even now I'm sort of wistful about the experience, but it may also, a fast like that is a secret unless you're really telling everyone that, "Oh, I'm on a week long, fast." You know, nobody has to know what you're doing. And I love this idea that it's totally, it can be totally internalized. And, but it's a real thing that you're doing. And you have this very special secret that, you know, the people around you when you go into the store or you're going to work, you know, nobody knows unless obviously you don't really want to make lunch dates during the time you're fasting. And then you're very ostentatiously, I imagine, not eating while everyone else is, you know, chowing down on their burgers. You say, "No, no, I'm just going to have a glass of water. I'm starving for the week." But, but I think, no, it's a very special thing. You know, I think anyone, it's sort of been reasonably good health can do this. And, and it's exciting to me. Okay. So just to be clear, when you do a fast, you can go to work. You can go to the gym even. I guess you don't want to go crazy at the gym and like run a marathon or something. You know, I, you're talking to the wrong person, Brad. I'm not, as perhaps you can see, I'm not a weight, weight lifter guy, but, but I, you never go crazy. But I mean, speaking of history, I mean, Achilles fasted, of course, before, after it was very much to do with the death of his partner, but Patroclus, Patroclus, I don't know, pronunciation. And in the Bible, the ancient Jews, when they were, you know, busy attacking their, their neighbors, they would fast before going into battle. And I think that's, it's often, you know, seen as a prelude to heavy activity. But it's true that if you go for a few days, he's, I, at least I start feeling a little weak, you know, that day four, day five. And you have to just like listen to your body, basically. Yeah. Yeah. But I absolutely do, you know, I don't lie at home in a warm bath or anything. I, I think it's fine. I think that, I think that's right. I mean, if you're fasting, and especially in the early going experiencing that sort of psychological, that acute psychological experience of lack, right, that like, what do I do? I'm not eating. I'm so hungry. You do have to kind of fight your way through that. I think if you are also just like sitting at home and not really like living your life or doing anything, then it's probably going to make it even harder. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, please. Well, I was going to say, you know, you mentioned Simone Vein, you talked about how, you know, there's no creation without withdrawal and how there is a relationship between those two things. You talk about Kafka Hemingway, whoever it is. I think a lot of artists like either know this implicitly or explicitly. Like it's like the whole, I mean, it's as simple as like, if you eat a big lunch, you're probably not going to do much good writing after lunch. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like on a full stomach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's like connection between stuffing yourself and then not allowing room for creativity to happen. And this guy I know who actually was somebody who I published at one point, but I talked to him. He's a Buddhist monk, former Buddhist monk. And he used this analogy of a cup of tea, you know, if it's filled all the way, you can't, it doesn't allow any ways. It's when I'm speaking to you, he put it so beautifully. I wish I could recreate that. But this idea that if you don't leave room for something, you're stuffed to the brim with what's already there. And you're not open to possibility. And life after all is about possibility. And that doesn't mean at the same time, it's about necessarily doing things or acquiring things or even making things. But about it does considering things, I think. Is there a correlation? I guess there is a strong correlation between fasting and creativity. Have there been tangible benefits for you in that regard? In the course of writing your book, did you learn about maybe even scientific ways? Any kind of scientific studies that have indicated that creativity can be boosted by a fast? That's really interesting, Brad. And I wish I had explored that. But I mean, just thinking about what you're asking here, I mean, we all experience this idea of, you know, you're thinking of a name or a person or a concept, and we say it slips our mind, right? And sometimes we all know that the best way for it to come back is by not thinking about it. So you move on to something else. And you say, oh, yeah, that was the name of that book or that song. So I think we can get, I think we all freeze up when we were focusing too hard and we clench up too much. That's really an inarticulate sentence. But I think by turning away sometimes and trying to get, I mean, it's the same thing that millions of people do every day with meditation, which is something I've never been very good at. So maybe for me, at least this fasting is a kind of extended, enforced, self-enforced meditation, which is, I think, very powerful. And oh, I wanted to add to the list of artists, people who, I mean, Michelangelo had that famous phrase about how a block of that is sculptures where he would just take a block of marble and just remove everything that wasn't the sculpture, which is, to me, is also related to this idea of fasting, this idea of not trying to put stuff in but take stuff away and allow something to emerge that you maybe didn't know was there. Yeah, I feel like for the purposes of creativity that doing a fast might fit best into moments where an artist feels like he or she needs some kind of renewal. Yeah, like maybe not if you're going great and you're working on a book and the words are flowing, that might not be the time to suddenly do a 10-day fast, or maybe it would. But it seems more likely to me that the time to do it would be like in between projects where you're sort of in like No Man's Land and you don't quite know what you're up to and you want to kind of reboot. Yeah, absolutely. Instead of staring at the blank page, I guess nowadays, the blank screen in front of you and forcing, you know, I got to come up with something it would be. I think that makes a lot of sense to me that that would be a we know scientifically that a fast food is a kind of a physical reset and it stands for reason. It's some kind of a mental one as well. But that's, you know, it's hard to do to sort of choose nothing and to think about nothing and to say, okay, for the next few days, I'm not going to be beating myself up but not creating and not producing that the best way is weirdly to turn away from this and to do something else. Well, there are different kinds of fasts that are worth mentioning. You know, it's not just food fasting. You know, you hear about people doing what's what I guess we call digital detox when you step away from the internet and you put your phone down and you take a few days off. I've done that. That was that was actually very striking to me. Yeah, because I've only the sad truth is that I've only done it in my adult life really once where I had a week where I didn't use the internet or look at my phone at all, at all. And the amount of brain space that it freed up in me and the amount of settling that I felt happening was significant. And I guess like what digital detox, what are the other kinds of fasting? I guess you could go out to nature and like detox yourself from the city. I mean, there's different ways. There's this thing, the Japanese do this thing called forest bathing, where they walk into the forest and just sort of hang out with the trees. And I think many of us do that in different ways. So there's fasting from each other and fasting from sleep, from sex, from anything that you normally do in the run of things. And then you take a break from it. And I think what's key about fasting and he come up with this idea of fasting versus starvation, which is very different. Fasting is self-imposed and it has to be self-imposed. And starvation is something that's imposed from outside. And of course, we're in a moment right now where there's quite a bit of mass, imposed mass starvation going on. And that's a very different and horrible thing. But fasting has limits. And that also, that makes it distinct from something like anorexia, which is basically fasting without a limit. But having a reasonable limit on it, I think is an essential part of the process. Otherwise, it becomes a mental disorder or something else. I think it's an important distinction because you could be talking to somebody who has an eating disorder who's telling you that they're just really into fasting. And how long have you been doing it? It's been going on for two years. It might have a problem. And if it becomes a question of sort of never being satisfied with yourself and this idea, or I mean, there's many, many of anorexia's. I looked into it a little bit and I am not an expert on the subject. I say that right up front. But it's such a many-sided and complex phenomenon. And there are many reasons for it. A big part of that, by the way, seems to be genetic, though, that there seems to be a genetic tendency that people have. It's not just a question of people being oppressed or tricked into it by marketing. It seems to go back many centuries as far as we can tell. Ryan Reynolds here for, I guess, my hundredth mint commercial. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Honestly, when I started this, I thought I'd only have to do like four of these. I mean, it's unlimited premium wireless for $15 a month. How are there still people paying two or three times that much? I'm sorry, I shouldn't be victim blaming here. Give it a try at midmobile.com/save whenever you're ready. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes of CD-Tails. Hear that? Yeah, that's the sound of you relaxing, because now you're managing diabetes with the freestyle Libre 3 system. You get to know your glucose levels and where it's headed. Manage your diabetes with more confidence with the freestyle Libre 3 system. Ready to learn more about the number one prescribed CGM in the U.S.? Visit freestylelebrae.us to learn more. Based on retail sales data for patients last full prescription by manufacturer, refer to the Flare NL4 study published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care 2019, safety info found at freestylelebrae.us. So while we're in this space where we're talking about the different kinds of fasting, I have to ask you about this anechoic chamber that you went into. Oh yeah, I love to talk about that. You write about in the book, but first of all, can you explain to my listeners what the chamber is? Yeah, so anechoic means that I guess it's a, I don't, you know, I should know this right off the bat, but it means that there's no sound. The normal human hearing starts at about zero decibels and an anechoic chamber has a negative decibel level. And the particular one I went to in Minneapolis has, I think it was negative 13. And it's since been, it's gotten the record for the quietest place on the planet. And by comparison, the Russell of Leaves, I think is about 20 decibels and breathing is like 10 decibels. So this place is negative 13. And I had come across this concept. I had been reading John Cage, you know, as a composer and pastor and philosopher, and he spent a little time in an anechoic chamber. And I thought that I should do that too. And so I contacted these guys and the chambers normally used to test industrial equipment, like dishwashers and motorcycles and all of that stuff has a very noise that is calibrated, which we don't think about. But, you know, you want your dishwasher, for example, to sound like it's running smoothly, but you also want to hear it. So, so you know, it's running, that kind of thing. But so this really, it's, it's a very cool places, a building within a building, basically the walls inside this building, the walls of this chamber are about three feet thick. It's about maybe 15 feet on a side. And the floor is some kind of plywood that's suspended on airline cables. So when you walk on it, it bounces slightly and the walls are all covered in foam. And it is really was a really weird experience when you speak normally, your voice bounces off whatever's around you. And, you know, it travels in ways, right? Sound travels in ways. But in an anechoic chamber, it's like when you speak, the words drop from your mouth as though they were rocks and so they sort of land right in front of you. And they don't travel. It was really an interesting experience. And then, so I was in there for two hours alone in the dark, which I hadn't thought about. But, you know, they, they turned off the lights and there I was in this absolute complete pitch blackness of black. You can't tell if your eyes are open or closed. And it was like, it was really almost a hallucinogenic experience. And that was, I was doing it really to explore this, the sensory deprivation and this idea of fasting from senses. And it was, it was great. And I'm probably talking too much. I mean, if you, if you wanted to go to an anechoic chamber, can you just call up and make an appointment? Or did you have to sort of, did you have to charm him? No, I wouldn't have been very good at charming him if I had to do that. But I had to rent it. I rented it for a couple hours. And that's how long you were in there? You sat in there for two hours? Yeah, I chose, yeah, two hours because I was told that was the most anyone had spent in the anechoic chamber. And I didn't. I sort of felt since I was exploring fasting, it was a sort of a against the principle of fasting to sort of try and break the record and say, you know, I could do it longer than anyone else. And to me, that's not what the whole thing is about. But I, I did want to experience it and see if I'd go nuts. And actually, as it turned out, I came out of their feeling just great. And I thought I would sort of be overwhelmed by walking out of the room after two hours. But I felt this kind of serenity. And I was told that that in fact is what, you know, people spend time in these chambers. They tend to feel that they've been sort of a blackboard of a couple week book has been erased. And then we could start over again, the mental blackboard. It feels good to not be engaged in the static. I don't think maybe we realize because it's our norm, right? It's the, it's the default mode of human beings in modern society to be always on constantly going constantly doing and to have it enforced upon you in an anechoic chamber, no less, where you're not seeing things. It's beautifully quiet and still. And you have beyond, it was beyond quiet. Yeah, I could hear my eyelids opening and closing. And for two hours, I think there's something essential about the amount of time. If you were in there for 10 minutes, say, or even 20 minutes, that's one thing. But by being in there for two hours, you have to sort of like fasting past the two or three day mark where you have to push through this kind of limit and essentially surrender to the experience a little bit, right? It certainly that makes sense to me. I do want to say that when I was in there, I thought I'd been in there like 20 minutes. I, at the beginning, I was kind of nervous and worried about it. But then I relaxed and really got into the experience. And I got off this chair and laid down on the floor and sort of waved my arms in the dark and in the total absence of sound. And I was really surprised when they pushed open this three foot thick door and told me two hours have gone by. I really thought like maybe 20 minutes. And yeah. Did you check? Did you check your watch to make sure they were telling you the truth? Yeah. Or this is this is just what they do. Yeah, it's been two hours. Yeah. Give us our money. Give us our money and get out here. We got a dishwasher to test. No, no, it was absolutely two hours. Yeah. In fact, there were two of them there because I think they thought that they'd have to drag my body out of the room. But as it turned out, you know, I'm not a very zen-like person as is also perhaps evident. But I really thought that was great. It was wonderful. Well, you hear about, I've heard about anyway, these darkness retreats, which is another kind of cultural or subculture that's kind of proliferating. And it's essentially, I don't know if you're familiar with this, but you go into an intentionally dark and soundproofed space for days on end. And you're fed, you know, they'll slide meals through like a crack in the door. You know what I'm saying? This is your only interaction, but basically you're left in an environment of pretty profound sensory deprivation for four, five, six, seven days. And then that's amazing. Yeah. And then it ends and you come out. And so I will see on the internet, like on TikTok or Instagram sometimes, not even by searching for it, but I'm sure you can. They play videos of people emerging from darkness retreats. So they video people as they are coming out of a hole, essentially like a black hole for a week. And then they have them blindfolded and then they take the blindfold off and then they video on the people start weeping because they'll look at the trees and you don't have saying like they're suddenly flooded with the beauty of the natural world again. And they're just happy, probably happy to be out of the hole. Happy to be alive, sure. And to, yeah. And so all, you know, I'm all for experimenting as long as you're taking care of yourself and you're being safe. Like I think there's merit to all of these sorts of things. And at the same time, I will often notice that there is a kind of what I call like bro culture or tech bro culture component to a lot of this stuff. Like a lot of the time when I hear about things like fasting, intermittent fasting, darkness retreats, meditation retreats, psychedelics, you know, like psychedelic therapy or ritualized psychedelic usage. It is often in this kind of bro culture context. And the subtext of it has to do with performance, competition, success, winning, getting an edge, being better, being better than someone else. And it, that part of it bums me out. I think that's kind of a misapprehension of it or a perversion of it that I'm not comfortable with. Yes. And it becomes instead of withdrawal, it becomes its own kind of acquisitions. You know, it's one more form of acquisition of being better than anyone else at this. It's sitting in the dark or whatever. I completely agree with that. And whereas this appreciation of emptiness is something that's very different, I think. And yeah, I think you put your finger on something, this broke culture, awful thought. So I mean, certainly, you know, you see all around the stuff about wellness, which you just can't get away from, you know, whether it's, you know, Gwyneth Paltrow or people paying hundreds of dollars for IV drips. And for that matter, paying thousands of dollars to go to a place where you pay people for the privilege of not eating. Right. You know, it drives me nuts. It seems, I mean, obviously, if you have some medical condition, you, you, you, I guess have to do that. But to me, the whole concept goes against the whole idea of fasting and, and, and trying to not, it's, yeah, I guess I shouldn't try and set rules for everyone. But for me, it does seem to undercut the whole principle of the thing, which is about retreating and, and not having to go to some fancy clinic, but maybe just sitting in your home and going about your life, but just making certain adjustments that allow you to return to what you are doing, but, but, and maybe with a better appreciation, even if it's only for a temporary period. Yeah. So I mean, I get it. I don't need anything. Well, I was going to say that's exactly the point. I mean, if you have some medical condition and you need to be monitored while you're fasting, you know, fine. But if someone's trying to sell you, if your fast is costing you thousands of dollars, that's sort of missing the point, right? This withdrawal, this withdrawal should save you money. You're saving money by not eating for a week. I mean, this should be a kind of exercise in like restraint and economy. And yeah, completely. You know, in this kind of extended way, this related way, you talk about wellness culture, it doesn't, it's not limited to fasting. It in fact, it's limitless. That's the way that it feels. Yeah. And it's never ending. It's never ending. What to eat? What not to eat? What skin products to use? What skin products not to use? What causes cancer? What doesn't cause cancer? I find that this stuff proliferates in my timeline, possibly because I'm susceptible to it. But I think it's all over the internet. And it's, it drives people crazy. There's no end to it, is there? It's never going to stop. Yes, absolutely. Because we are, we're wonderful, all of us wonderfully human. And therefore, all of us wonderfully imperfect. And, and can be sold on this idea that perfection is just around the corner, you know, and, and that I have the key to it. And you just got to send me, you know, 400 bucks for, you know, I, I mentioned this in the book, you know, that I meet, well, the endless supplements you can buy that, that are derived from fasting, you know, that are supposed to touch on chemicals, some of the chemicals that, that fasting engenders in the body and that there's this fad for this thing called sirtuin s-i-r-t-u-i-n, which is, you know, people don't quite understand what it does, but it's supposed to have something to do with aging. And, and so, you know, fortunes are being made, even as we're sitting here chatting bread, when you and I are talking about Simone Faye and Hemingway, people are out there busy making a lot of money off of fasting and, and the idea of selling the idea of withdrawal. Yeah, no doubt about it. And so, I want to talk about something else that's in your book, that's of interest, where you, you say that surprisingly, the fasting tradition may owe more to the hedonists than it does to the stoics. And I think at first blush outside looking in, you would be like, oh, it was the stoics who were into fasting and who really originated it or popularized it. But you're saying, no, it's the hedonists that we might owe more to. Well, I, I also don't want to pose myself as an expert on, on the classics, but it just seemed to me that the Epicureans, Epicurus, you know, it's the leader of the Epicureans, they were much more about using the body as sort of defining our limits. And because of that, and that to me is very closely relating, related to the concept of fasting and that we, we learn what our body needs or doesn't need it. It's a very physical connection, obviously. And the Epicureans, the big, who got called heatness, the big thing for them was that our senses are signposts and they tell us what's good and what's bad. And, and they were very much actually against this idea of excess and Epicurus himself was eight minimally and lived a very eschewed luxuries. The, the idea that to enjoy yourself, you have to be surrounded by luxury is I think was alien to many of these ancient Greek philosophers that improvement and, and, and being closer to truth and to, to what was valuable in life, it didn't mean being surrounded by endless amounts of riches and vast amounts of food. It meant having what was necessary to, to proceed in your life. So when it comes to fasting and health and the benefits that it might have for the body in regards to just kind of your overall health, your cognition, your immune system, like do you have a sense of where the science is on this? I know it's in process. It's not like a, it's not a done deal, but I know a lot of people are looking at this and I think both through the contemporary scientific lens, but also through the historical lens because this has been happening for so long that it's pretty clear that there are benefits to be derived, right? Yeah, so, so absolutely. So for obvious reasons because it involves, you know, involved human experimentation, there haven't been a lot of large long-term studies on what it does for you, but there have been a few involving volunteers like the calorie studies and the sky, Roy Wolford was a pioneer in this. This, there has been absolute documentation that generally for all any of us eating less is beneficial. It extends your lifespan. And if that's a positive, but if you want to stick around here, that's a day right right now. I'm not so sure. But, but it, it really has been pretty consistently shown. As long as you get with adequate nutrition, I think that is a key concept that people sometimes leave out. If we cut out the amount we're eating, as long as we keep up our nutrition, we're, we're really going to do much better, you know, heart disease, cancer, diabetes, all so many things. But it doesn't involve starving ourselves. It involves cutting back and moderation, which by the way, of course, was also a big theme of just about all the Greek philosophies. Well, it's like, there's a, there's a study that I think I'm recalling that was done on some mice where they did, what you're talking about really is caloric restriction, not starvation, but like cutting back. And there are studies that I think are pretty clear that when you restrict calorie intake in mice, their lifespans increase significantly. And there are, there are subcultures of human beings who take this very seriously. And they eat, like these are people who are eating like what 800 calories a day or something like that. So there was a, the, the, that's absolutely correct. And the, one of the great human examples is, and I'm not sure it still holds true, but about 30, 40 years ago, there was a study done on the most of the population of Okinawa seemed to have a, you know, the island off of Japan, had inordinately long lifespans. And the Japanese government really zeroed in on this and tried to determine, you know, just what was going on here, because they really extraordinary number of centenarians and people living to help the very old age. And they basically ate a lot less even than other people in Japan were doing, which then and certainly compared to the American diet, the number of intake calories was way much less than, than what we're used to. So in terms of immune system benefits and cognition, did you come across any like scientific findings, or I guess also in your personal life, like, do you feel like there are benefits to be derived cognitively and immunologically? You know, I don't, I can't speak to the immune system, and I haven't, I don't recall studies about that in terms of, but certainly there's a ton of anecdotal evidence, which I guess can be dismissed readily, but you know, endless, you know, Mark Twain would always, he was a big faster and he would say that whenever he felt it cold coming on, he would just stop cut down on his eating. And, and in terms of, I, I certainly feel better. I'm a lot older than you are and I feel better than not that much older, probably. You look good. You look good. But, yeah, I, I don't know that there have been long term studies on the immune system and cognition. Certainly, as I say, a lot of anecdotal evidence, there has been quite a bit on, on arguing for extended lifespan and, and sort of general overall health. And like, just as a way of closing, I feel like you've talked about this a little bit, but it's a point worth making that the process of fasting can strengthen us. And it's a little bit counter intuitive because it's this withdrawal, right? It's about like not taking in food and kind of purposefully weakening yourself or diminishing yourself. But this process of diminish, diminishment can bring a kind of strength, right? Yeah, absolutely, Brad. I, as you're talking, the image came to mind of honing a knife, which it, it's not such a violent metaphor. But this idea that in order to get it sharper, you have to pair away a little bit of it, right? And I think fasting for me is the same process of, of, of focusing and, and honing. And you come out of it, maybe a little bit of a better instrument than when you went in. And, and, and that's not a permanent characteristic. Yeah, that's with you for a period of time. And but it, it is a, as I say, a gift for, for that period of time. So when's your next fast? Well, I do them generally in March and September. So why be in the fall? I just like that balance, you know, spring in the fall and, you know, winter is a little too traumatic. Summer, you know, I'm fat and happy and spring is sort of really the beginning of a new year, Easter, Passover, Ramadan. All right. So you got some time, you can, you're in it right now, you're eating lots. Right. Absolutely. I should see me stuffing it in. There you go. Well, it's fun to talk with you. And I appreciate the time and congrats on your book. And I wish you all the best. Brad, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you very much. All right, everybody. There we have it. That was my conversation with John Oakes, author of the book entitled The Fast, the history science philosophy and promise of doing without it is available from avid reader press. You can find John Oakes on the internet at john-oakes.com. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. One more time the book is called The Fast. It is a comprehensive look at the practice of fasting in its history and its implications. Fascinating stuff. I really enjoyed that conversation. Hope you guys did too. Don't forget to hit the subscribe button. Wherever you listen, you can also subscribe on YouTube. Follow me on social media, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, and Blue Sky. Sign up for my newsletter over at Substack. Join the other people, Patreon, over at patreon.com/otherpplpod. Help keep this show going into the future. If you want to get another people t-shirt or join my book club, you can do that at otherppl.com. The show is official website. If you have two minutes and you want to do me a quick favor, please give this show a rating. Wherever you listen, Spotify, Apple podcasts, wherever it is, rate the show, review the show. It helps new listeners find the show. My latest book is a novel. If you want to read it, it's called Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, available now in trade paperback, e-book, and audiobook editions. I narrate the audiobook, so check it out if you want to check it out. It's a novel. It's called Be Brief and Tell Them Everything. All right, so coming up on Thursday, there will be another edition of Brad and Mira for the culture. I will be joined by my friend and colleague Mira Gonzalez to try to digest and comprehend the week in popular culture. So stay tuned. [Music] [Music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
