Podcast Episode 96 2015 - paleomagonline.com€¦ · exercise and lifestyle perspectives from both...

Paleo Magazine Podcast Episode 96

2015 Page !1

Podcast Episode 96

2015

{Music}

Host: Welcome to PMR, Paleo Magazine Radio where we bring you Paleo nutrition,

exercise and lifestyle perspectives from both the experts and the every day.

PMR is brought to you by Paleo Magazine; the first and only print magazine

dedicated to the Paleo lifestyle and is hosted by Tony Federico.

Tony Federico: Known to his fans as “The Dean of Mean,” UFC Heavyweight fighter Keith

Jardine had notable wins over former UFC champions Forrest Griffin and

Chuck Liddell. Despite his success in Octagon, however, his body was being

broken down by chronic overtraining, extreme diets and stress.

A conversation with Keith’s friend, Tait Fletcher, made him realize that he had

to change his ways and he ultimately adopted the Paleo lifestyle. As a coffee

snob, Keith also realized that he really liked bullet-proof coffee. At this point,

Keith is fully embraced to the Paleo lifestyle; he even opened his own yoga

studio to incorporate more mindful movement in his daily life.

He’s drinking bullet-proof coffee and along with Tait Fletcher has founded the

Caveman Coffee Company. They’re trying to bring cold-brewed, nitrogen-in-

fused canned coffee to North America. It’s really great stuff. I had a chance to

sample it for the first time at PaleoFX and I think people are really going to

love it.


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I think you’re also going to really like my conversation with Keith today and I

think his story is going to give us all a lot of insight into how difficult it can be

to balance work, life, your passions and health. But ultimately it is possible to

overcome these challenges and put it all together.

In the second half of the show, we’re going to be featuring J. Brett Smith,

Program Chair of the Ancestral Health Symposium. He’s going to be talking

about what’s coming up with the Ancestral Health Symposium, what we have

to look forward to and give us a little bit of insight into the gap between the

science of evolutionary biology and the practicality of the Paleo lifestyle.

So, remember to protect yourself at all times and come out swinging. Paleo

Magazine Radio starts now.

{Music}

Tony Federico: Welcome to another episode of Paleo Magazine Radio. I’m here with Keith,

“The Dean of Mean” Jardine. You probably know him best from his work in

the Ultimate Fighter, his work in The Octagon as UFC fighter and some of his

acting roles as well.

Now, you might not know that he’s one of the co-owners of Caveman Coffee.

So, Keith is hoping to get the word out about cold-brew Paleo-friendly coffee,

so we wanted to bring him on the show today.

We ran into each other at PaleoFX this past year in Austin, Texas. I see a guy

standing in the Caveman Coffee booth and I’m like, “I’m pretty sure that’s


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Keith Jardine.” And so, of course, I had to go over there and talk to you and

wanted to have you on the show. So, welcome.

Keith Jardine: I remember that. It was great to talk to you back then too because when I first

got into Paleo diet, I thought it was a lot more obscure than it really was and I

remember the first time I was standing in Sprouts it was and I’m checking

stuff out, “Look, they got a Paleo magazine. I’ve got to check this out.” And it

was so cool just to flip through and see all the stuff. “Oh, I can eat that. Oh,

and look at this recipe” and all that. And it was just a great experience for me.

Tony Federico: Well, let’s actually start there because I’m sure people aren’t aware that you’re

following the Paleo diet and all that. How did you first become aware of Paleo

and what was your first introduction to it?

Keith Jardine: Well, that comes with the coffee a little bit because the style coffee that we do

is what shoehorned me into it. I was done fighting at that point; I never really

retired, but everybody just assumed I was done because I was performing so

horribly.

I was at an audition once and I met my really good buddy I haven’t seen in a

while, Tait Fletcher. He was auditioning for the same role as me.

Tony Federico: Host of Pirate Life?

Keith Jardine: Yes, exactly. Awesome fun guy; biggest heart ever and he sat down with me

for about 40 minutes and talked about “What’s your diet? How are you feel-

ing? And what are you doing these days?”


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And I’m like, “I’m alright. I’m researching. I’m looking at podcasts and doing

something; I’m trying to find some way to get myself healthy.” After my last

fight I was so unhealthy; my hormones were all out of whack, I was like an

80-year old man. I was just grinding metal for all these years; just too much

overtraining, too much high-sugar diet and riding that rollercoaster and count-

ing calories. Oh my God, counting calories.

So, Tait sat down with me forever and he started talking to me and he started

talking about a Robb Wolf book, Mark Sisson’s book and he sent me pictures

of them and then he started talking to me about this butter coffee and I thought

that was just silly.

I thought I was a coffee snob, which I certainly was and I went to Starbucks.

So, it took me about 30 days; it took about a month to actually try it because it

seemed silly to me.

Tony Federico: The idea of putting butter in your coffee?

Keith Jardine: Yes. I thought if I ate a stick of butter I’d die.

Tony Federico: Right. Yes, go into cardiac arrest. {Laughter}

Keith Jardine: Exactly, right? The thing that really makes it work is the MCT; I put that in

coffee when (inaudible). I was kind of down, I was depressed; I was starting

up a new business. I got a yoga studio and just all the pressure and the things

with that: Money. What am I going to do? Am I going to fight again? I might

need to pretty soon and things like that.


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And I remember the morning I made my first cup and I’m on my way to go to

work and I get this euphoria that hits me; it’s like, “Wow, this is amazing. I

just feel so good. My head’s clear. I feel confidence and euphoria and I’m up.”

And I got immediately really worried about – first I was researching what I

put in the coffee; and it was nothing, it was just food. And then so I’m like,

“Man, am I going to crash? What’s going to happen?” I got really like what

goes up must come down. And I never really crashed.

From that point on I started preaching that and that’s what…

{Crosstalk}

Tony Federico: You’re high on fat.

Keith Jardine: Yes, high on fat, man, and who knew? I never put actual fat in my food be-

cause – I put a dash of olive oil or something like that, but I’m not going to

add those calories. Are you kidding me? That’s stupid.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. For people who might not be aware, part of being a fighter—and

you were a wrestler prior to that—there’s some pretty serious weight loss in-

volved in getting ready for a fight.

So, I’m sure, like you said, you were counting calories and then looking at fat

as being something you don’t want to add. What was your fighter’s diet –

what was your prep diet before?


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Keith Jardine: Man, it was really simple. I would just eat what I thought was clean year-

round, meaning like not a lot of – I never did eat a lot of processed foods or

things like that, but I’d eat a lot of carb: a lot of bread, a lot of sandwiches.

Sandwiches was like my main meal.

My favorite thing to do was go to a coffee shop and have a scone and a coffee.

That was notorious for if you wanted Keith, you’d find him in a coffee shop

reading a book with a scone and a coffee.

And three weeks before a fight now I got to really lose weight so, I’m just

packing all those carbs and they’re going to jump off me for the moment. But

I didn’t realize how bad that was making me feel.

Tony Federico: So basically doing a crash diet right into a competition?

Keith Jardine: Exactly. And all the information that happens, I was so over trained and with

eating the bad food and all the sugar I was so highly inflamed. Now that I’m –

I’m better now – I look better now than almost any time before my fights. If I

took a week to slim up, I would look bad; I was always a little chubby for my

fights. It’s not that I didn’t train hard; I train harder than anybody. It’s just be-

cause my diet was so off.

Tony Federico: And what was your primary source of information when it came to diet? Just

going around on the Internet? Was it trainers? Was it other athletes?

Keith Jardine: I got a degree in human performance and I had a nutrition class in school; it

was bad. It lead me to even chart my calories throughout the day and I had


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high protein, always had high protein but I would have at least one serving,

probably two servings of carbs for every meal.

Tony Federico: And, of course, the whole whole grain thing thinking that you got to just pack

as many of those in as possible?

Keith Jardine: Whole grain, yes.

Tony Federico: The wonders of the educational system; or the mis-education system.

So, you finally started breaking out some of that. You talked to your pal Tait

and you started drinking butter coffee, you started feeling good. What was the

next thing that happened after that?

Keith Jardine: Well, first of all, I was just bragging to Tait all the time about how good I felt.

I remember about a year after – no, maybe eight months after first grappling,

this whole lifestyle, Paleo lifestyle too, reading Robb Wolf’s book and stuff

about how – I don’t have to – (Dolce) told me once – he jumped onboard for

my last fight, but it was – I was too far gone by that point; he would tell me

not to train so hard. Leave some – leave the gym feeling I could do a little bit

more.

I used to think that I had to kill myself every day, be dead every day in order

to be able to compete at Jackson’s where all these killers are there and…

{Crosstalk}

Tony Federico: Right, some of the top guys.


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Keith Jardine: Yes, love to have a notch in their belt saying the tapped out Keith Jardine or

knocked Keith Jardine out or something like that.

So, I was always training in off-season. Always training, always training, al-

ways training. So, it’s been eight months, I’m doing this diet. I didn’t gain

weight, which was amazing. I used to step on the scale every day; like “I ate

this T-bone last night. Alright, it’s grass fed T-bone and all that. Alright, let’s

see. Oh, what? I didn’t really gain any weight.”

So, every morning was like that.

Tony Federico: {Laughter} Praying to the weight-loss gods.

Keith Jardine: And I ate all this chocolate; all this dark chocolate. “Well, how come I’m not

gaining weight?”

About eight months after grappling and – I went into Jackson’s and I was ner-

vous back in the beginning like, “Alright, well, I’m just going to do it and I’m

going to go train and see what happens. And if I get tired in the first round, I’ll

just leave” or something like that.

So, I go in, I do really good, I beat all these guys that are still fighting in the

UFC. Not really beat; like I do well in the grappling matches, grappling

rounds. It’s like sparring rounds.

Like, “Oh my God, what happened? I haven’t been training. I’ve barely

trained.” I got so nervous for training; I would not train because I did not want


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to feel like I did when I was fighting. When I was fighting, I was a walking

zombie; I could train, but then it’s eat and sleep; train, eat and sleep. That’s it;

no energy for anything else. And I was terrified to go and work out hard ever

and then feel like that again.

And so, I was barely working out. I was doing some solo runs and all that

stuff, lifting the heavy weights once a week and all that. And I went in and I

did well and I remember calling Tait and always just bragging, “Hey, I went to

boxing and I won every round. This is amazing. What’s going…” – I was just

bragging to him and I felt like – I never brag, I don’t have a big ego. But I felt

like I shouldn’t be doing that well.

Tony Federico: Yes, you just had that work ethic, that mindset that you had to kill yourself

and it didn’t make sense that you were doing well not doing that.

Keith Jardine: Yes. I never want to change the past because I wouldn’t be where I am today,

but not knowing that back then I would have told myself, “Keith, man, maybe

you need to take the year off.”

Tony Federico: Right. So, when did the idea for getting Caveman Coffee going? Did that

come into your brain around that time? Were they already trying to build

something up?

Keith Jardine: Yes. We never really intended to do a business. Tait and I, we’ve done a lot of

movies together. This time we’re doing a movie called (Transcendence) to-

gether and I was researching finding better-tasting coffee, single estate coffee,

I’m really educating myself about coffee: What’s good coffee? What’s bad

coffee?


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You taste coffee, it’s almost like wine geeks do, and pick up the notes and be-

fore and after. You can even taste and almost tell what region it’s from.

Tony Federico: (Sounds like: Terwar) – you’re tasting the soil that the beans grew in and

everything.

Keith Jardine: And then the processing that goes on, yes. So, I met these roasters at a choco-

late and coffee fest.

{Laughter}

Tony Federico: Nice. That sounds fun.

Keith Jardine: I got to go to that, right? And I made friends with them and we started just

talking and stuff and we started experimenting with different coffees and all

that.

One time I went in there and (David Certaine) – this is (inaudible) and (David

Certaine) comes and he shows me what a white coffee is because you’ve got

different stages on the roast; every coffee really out there for the most part is

after the first crack and there’s a second crack and it happens with really dark

coffee.

But before that it’s still almost a green bean still, but it’s roasted just enough.

You taste it; it’s almost like a tea. It’s not the normal coffee taste; it’s very

light, it’s very nutty, very buttery kind of taste and it was a pretty good experi-

ence. It also has more caffeine in it and contains more of the butter chemicals.


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So, I went home and I roasted it up the next day and I put it with butter and

MCT and we have other recipes that we do with it now and it tasted amazing;

it doesn’t have the thickness that normal coffee does when you do this mixture

with it. And like, “We’ve got to get this out there.”

And then so, I was doing a movie with Tait called (Transcendence) and bring-

ing him over to watch a roasting and we do it and we started selling this white

coffee bean. We call it Colombian White Gold. {Laughter} That was our first

trip into this business, but it was never really intent – like, Tait was just

spreading the word, I was just spreading the word and it just kind of naturally

grew into a business.

Tony Federico: Yes. You’re geeking out over coffee and playing with recipes and found some-

thing you really liked.

Now, my experience with Caveman Coffee was what you guys offer – those

nitro cans which is a really unique product I had never seen before. Can you

talk a little bit about that?

Keith Jardine: Yes, it’s something we’re working really hard on right now. This is something

I need to have on the shelves anywhere the cold brew is sold. It’s a little can of

nitro coffee; it’s nitrogen-infused. Nitro coffee’s been going on for a while; it’s

a similar process craft brewers use to make their beer. They hydrogenate the

coffee; we have big old vats and everything we do it with. We do our single

estate cold brew; there’s no cold brew that’s single estate out there except for

ours, in big time anyways.


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So, it’s all super-high quality beans we put in a can. We were one of the first

companies to figure out how to – so, you can do it on a tap; it’s normally done

on a tap. The (inaudible) is done in a can.

Tony Federico: It’s almost like a Guinness or something.

Keith Jardine: Exactly. And it’s – I wish I had a picture and its froth on the top. I’m not a

huge cold-brew fan. We sell cold brew; I love the taste of cold brew and I ap-

preciate it. A lot of people are saying that that’s a true way to taste the quality

of the bean is cold brew. Like a bad bean will be really apparent; a good bean

will be really smooth and but I’m not really a big fan of that because I like to

– this is cold brew, this is hot coffee. I like to sip my {sipping coffee} – a little

sip, “Oh, I enjoy that coffee.” Like, the whole experience, oh, man, I’m (in-

audible) or ice tea, it’s down. It’s gone for me.

Tony Federico: You could just chug it. {Laughter}

Keith Jardine: I’m so frigging high right now. {Laughter} Yes. So…

Tony Federico: It goes down a little too smooth.

Keith Jardine: A little bit too smooth and with the nitro coffee it’s the same way, but with ni-

tro it gives it that – a lot more body with the fizziness with the head that it

forms and it gives it that texture and you sip it and you enjoy it more like you

would a Guinness. And to me that’s just an amazing experience.

And I guess especially coffee (inaudible) is supposed to be studies right now

about does nitrogen enhance the uptake of a coffee. It seems like it does be-


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cause there would be reports to that effect and just the creaminess; it adds

sweetness to the coffee and all that stuff and it’s just a natural deal.

And that’s something that I’m working right now for for our first real endeav-

or to get to retail all over the country.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. At this point if somebody wanted to pick some up, what would be

the best way to go about doing that?

Keith Jardine: You’d have to come to (sounds like: Elk Creek) in Mexico. {Laughter}

Tony Federico: Yes. So, you got to go to the headquarters?

Keith Jardine: Yes. I’m talking to people right now; I’m talking to people about getting our

pallets out there and we’re talking about distributing to CrossFit boxes and

places in California right now. Once I’m done with this, I’m off to work on…

{Crosstalk}

Tony Federico: Like literally.

Keith Jardine: Exactly.

Tony Federico: Well, I appreciate you taking the time, man. So, you’ve got a lot going on with

the Caveman Coffee business. What is your training schedule like? What is

your diet like these days? Are you still making time to train? Do you still get

into the gym? Are you still as focused on the exercise and all the other life-

style pieces?


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Keith Jardine: Absolutely. A lot of old guys say this, but it’s the honest-to-God truth: I’m a

better fighter now than I’ve been in the last, I don’t know, seven or eight

years, healthier. I went to Jackson’s practice yesterday. I’m not in the best

shape in the world, but I’ve got a new boxing coach and I go there just to learn

the art of boxing. And, “Oh, this is how you throw a jab. I never knew how to

throw a jab” and that kind of stuff.

Tony Federico: Right. Yes, I guess you were always looked at as having a unique style when it

came to striking.

Keith Jardine: Exactly. Real herky-jerky and just hard to figure out; it’s because my training

(inaudible) my kick-boxing style just worked perfect for MMA and I copied a

lot of that stuff. But I’ve got to stay in shape for movies, so I learned that like

right now I could get a (inaudible), “Hey, they want you for so-and-so. Could

you take a picture with your shirt off?”

Tony Federico: So, you’ve got to be ready. {Laughter}

Keith Jardine: Yes, so.

Tony Federico: But are you, like you’re saying, leaving a little bit more in the tank at the end

of the day?

Keith Jardine: Oh, always. The ego’s not there anymore and I’m walking my dog in the

mountains for an hour, that kind of thing where in the past, “Okay, now I’m

going to sprint up this hill five times.”


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Tony Federico: Yes, right. Yes, always just kind of beating yourself down.

Keith Jardine: Yes.

Tony Federico: That’s cool man. What about all the other pieces because as far as thinking

about getting ready for a fight and everything like that, I’m sure there’s a lot

of stress in many different ways. The pressure of – I mean, really just as a line

of work there’s very few people who work for three, four months and then

have maybe 15 minutes to actually get paid to actually show up and do your

job.

It seems like everything’s just focused like a laser on that very short window

of time and it can go one way or another, really. Can you talk a little bit about

that and what it’s like now without having that pressure on your mind all the

time?

Keith Jardine: Yes, it just made me pretty nervous just the idea like it just becomes a way of

life. I was talking to somebody earlier about you get to a certain point and I

see it with fighters now: you get into that fog of war. For two months you go

do a fight, you rest for a few weeks and you go back and train for two months

and next thing you know it’s years later and especially when you lose a few

and you’re fighting in the big show in the UFC and now you’re going in there

with “I got to win this fight” and that’s the wrong way to do it.

Like going into a movie audition, “I got to land this part.” It’s like “I’m going

to go in there and I’m going to have fun and I’m going to do the best that I can

be and be the best (inaudible) I can be and we’ll see what happens.” That’s the

way it needs to be.


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And that’s when you get real present and you get Zen-like and you’re not

thinking in the future or in the past and that’s where you need to be. That’s

where you see a lot of the best fighters today and that’s where they’re at.

Cowboy, that’s my favorite guy.

Tony Federico: Cerrone?

Keith Jardine: Cowboy Cerrone. Yes, absolutely. I think he’s got the best skill-wise, top to

bottom of anybody I’ve ever seen, but you can see him in a fight where he’s

like – he’s not really present, he’s probably nervous. Not nervous about his

partner, nervous about his performance, whatever. And then you see the mo-

ment he gets hit or something like that, like, “Oh, I don’t care about all that;

now I’m just fighting this fight.”

Tony Federico: Success, interestingly enough, requires you to not think about success.

Keith Jardine: Yes, exactly. And then you get that immortal feeling guys like John Jones, An-

derson Silva, these guys go into fights thinking that they’re immortal; they

haven’t been tested yet, maybe, whatever. They’ve got this streak going on

and they have that confidence. You can see when it gets taken away from guys

and they’re just a different person.

Tony Federico: Yes, because unfortunately nobody wins forever.

Keith Jardine: That happened to me. I was a way different person when I was younger climb-

ing up the ranks in the UFC until I fought Chuck Liddell, actually. And I beat


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him and then I really didn’t deal with that pressure right away of being, “Al-

right, now I’m the guy.”

Tony Federico: In the mix and on the main card.

Keith Jardine: Yes, there’s a lot of pressure there. But now you talk about life afterwards, I

think I always thought of fighting as an art and self-expression and all that.

People talk about my style; well, that’s me expressing myself. Now what do

you do after you’re done fighting? Everybody, no matter who you are, it could

be anything, you’ve got to have an art. You’ve got to have that outlet.

Before it was fighting I was getting in bar fights. Not much, but I had that

thing that would get up in me. Now, I would just – I needed an outlet and I

would find something. I started playing rugby.

Tony Federico: This is when you were a teenager maybe, a young guy?

Keith Jardine: College-age, yes. And so that’s when I started doing fight. I was like, “Oh, I

can’t be doing that. So, I’ve got to find out this outlet because I’m not playing

football anymore.” That was my outlet and I had this space where I was just

coaching and I started to get pretty aggressive.

So, then I started playing rugby, I started training for fighting. Fighting led to

fighting. But now that I’m older now I know what it was: It was just having

that outlet of just expressing yourself and just having that outlet and you can

have it in anything and right now acting is it for me.


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And I get the same exactly feeling when I’m on deck to go on auditions as I’m

on deck to go into a fight.

Tony Federico: Really?

Keith Jardine: Yes. I’m in the hallway with a bunch of guys that look bigger and meaner than

I do and I recognize some of them from movies and they’re reading the same

part I am and I’m going into this casting director and I don’t want to make

myself a fool.

So, you get nervous when you go over your lines just like you do when you’re

fighting: what’s my game plan and all that. Okay, I’m reading to go. “Alright,

Keith, you’re on deck.”

Tony Federico: Let’s come on. Boom.

Keith Jardine: Yes. And then you’re in and you’ve got one shot to do it and that’s it.

Tony Federico: Although you don’t get an entrance music or anything there. {Laughter}

Keith Jardine: No. That actually probably would be helpful. I should – I’ve thought about

that, bring in my character like having this certain music going in my ear-

phones.

Tony Federico: Right. Yes, walk-out music. Awesome, man.

I think you touched on an interesting thing when you were talking about the

present-momentness. You mentioned a yoga studio. Is that an aspect of your


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practice as well, the mindfulness piece? Because that’s something I’m person-

ally real big on and I talk about it because I need to keep that fresh in my own

life. I think it’s part of the whole Paleo thing, but it doesn’t get as much focus

as the food and the sleep and the exercise or movement component, just get-

ting back to yourself and getting some quiet in your mind.

What do you do to quiet the thought process down and just get still and get

present?

Keith Jardine: I have a couple routines I do. Like, yesterday was a bad day, though, and it’s

like I still got so far to go on that. You talked about fighting real quick back

there. I look back on that; that was easy. I had one thing to do. Now I’ve got

the Caveman Coffee, I want to train for acting every day, I got the yoga stu-

dio. I got so much stuff and it was like, wow, I have no time because I get car-

ried away with time and having that moment to stop and collect yourself.

And what I do is beyond meditation is just having that moment where I’ll take

my big breaths and you might notice it and you might not and I just really

think about really letting myself be where I’m at right now. Like I’m doing

right now: I’m here actually talking to you, not thinking about what I’m doing

next. I’m just going to let myself be here right now. Right now my mind just

changed just thinking about that. That’s one thing that I do.

Tony Federico: Just taking that moment to just check in and be like, “Hey, this is where I’m at

right now.”

Keith Jardine: Exactly that and it’s really that simple. When I did it yesterday it was like,

“Okay, like right now I’m standing in the lobby of my yoga studio; I’m about


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to teach class. I’m really here right now. People are going to come in, I’m go-

ing to be looking forward to seeing these people, {taking deep breath} and

this feels really good. All that stuff that happened earlier doesn’t really matter

and tomorrow won’t matter at all.”

Tony Federico: Yes, moment of transcendence.

Keith Jardine: Exactly. So, I try and tell myself that and that helps. I’m still working on it.

Everybody is on a path of working on something. I’m trying to keep that more

of a constant feeling. Every morning I get up and I really don’t meditate at

that point; I just do free thinking.

I just sit down, I drink my coffee and coffee really – I’m plugging my coffee

now, {laughter} but it really kind of enhances that. My mind starts really rac-

ing and gets really smart and I just go where it takes me. I don’t have to buck

anything; oh, now I’m thinking about this and then, oh, now I’m thinking this.

I start every morning off with that and it really helps me out a lot.

Tony Federico: Just giving yourself some creative space?

Keith Jardine: Exactly. I’m just letting it go. Who knows where it’s going to take you.

Tony Federico: Absolutely. Talking about where it’s going to take you, do you have any

projects coming up in the future? Any film or TV shows or anything like that

that people can keep an eye out for and catch you in?

Keith Jardine: This has been a great year for me. Last year sucked. {Laughter}


2015 Page !21

Tony Federico: Yes, I guess it’s like fighting, man, you’ve got up and down.

Keith Jardine: Yes. And I have a hard time getting taken seriously as an actor. Being an ex-

MMA fighter I get a lot of things; like one role I got this year was on a movie

called (Shock Collar). It was a prison movie; I got a pretty cool little role on it

that I really liked; I’m cellmates with the main actor in it.

I got turned down for that right away because the guy was like, “Hey, I like

Keith Jardine, but he’s an MMA fighter and it’s really not that kind of movie.

Like, this is an artsy movie; it’s not The Expendables or something like that. I

deal with that a lot. It’s like, “No, man, I’m a real actor. I train every day at

acting.”

So, the casting director showed him some file of a movie I did—and I’ll talk

about that in a second—and, “Oh, really? He was in that movie? Okay.” And

then he looked at it, “Oh, he’s actually pretty good” and changed his mind and

I got a role in this.

So, I’m fighting that every day as I…

Tony Federico: So, perceptions?

Keith Jardine: Yes. It got me in the meetings being a – and I love it, but now it’s like – now

I’m trying to be Keith Jardine the great actor.

So, what happened is in December a movie did called Inherent Vice got re-

leased.


2015 Page !22

Tony Federico: Yes.

Keith Jardine: You saw that?

Tony Federico: It’s in my Netflix queue. {Laughter}

Keith Jardine: Yes. It’s a strange movie; I love the movie, but it’s with Joaquin Phoenix and

one of the best writer/directors ever, Paul Thomas Anderson.

Tony Federico: Yes, it’s awesome.

Keith Jardine: Yes. I was in the gym one morning and I got a call from my manager, “Hey,

they’re having trouble casting this role. Do you want to come out to LA and

they’ll see you?” They had no idea I was a fighter; it probably would have

hurt me if I was a fighter for this one too.

And I went out there and I read for it; I read for about an hour of cold read. On

my own dime I went out there, I did this whole – and came back; two weeks

later I found out I got this role and I didn’t know what it was for back then. It

was a Paul Thomas Anderson movie.

Oh my gosh, I got this role. Most – a lot of actors out of Hollywood actors

would die to be in his movie. How fortunate am I? It made me feel real hum-

ble, like I better train a lot harder.

Anyway, so that was released in December and since that release I’ve got a lot

of more opportunities this week; I’ve done a lot of short films, I’ve done Dusk


2015 Page !23

till Dawn the TV series, I got three episodes on that, I got (Shock Collar), I’ve

been doing some stuff.

I got something I just heard about right now. I can’t even talk about it, but I’m

put on hold for my favorite writer/director in history and I shouldn’t be saying

anything, but because that means I’m on hold means between is between me

and maybe a couple other guys.

But, man, if I get this one, I’ve been into this guy since I was a little kid.

Tony Federico: That’s wild.

Keith Jardine: This guy is like – he’s a true artist, man. So.

Tony Federico: It’s great to hear that doors are opening in that realm of exploration and cre-

ativity.

Keith Jardine: Thanks, man. I’ve got irons in the fire right now and I always hear about

things. But who knows? I might not get another job this year {laughter} and

that’s the way it is. But I do stunts as well too and I love doing stunts and I

know some great stunt coordinators that give me parts on their jobs.

Tony Federico: Well, it sounds like you’re doing it because it’s something that really enjoy

and I think – like you said, if you have a craft you’re going to want to do it

one way or another; it doesn’t matter if you’re necessarily getting a job that

day or that week, you’re going to keep grinding.


2015 Page !24

Keith Jardine: You don’t really – you don’t need all these people watching you to perform

your art. You just go to this place and let your mind shut off and do this one

thing for that moment and it’s such a beautiful thing to be able to do that and

now I’m practicing an art.

Tony Federico: That’s great, man. Well, hey, the art of life, I guess, is ultimately what we’re in

it for and it sounds like you’re a master of that or at least engaged in mastery.

{Laughter}

Keith Jardine: I’m just a guy on the journey, man, and podcasts like yourself and there’s so

much information out there and if you’re not searching then you’re really

shortchanging yourself.

Tony Federico: Well, I really appreciate your time today and I think that anyone who listens to

this is certainly going to come away with a broader understanding of you as a

person; you’re not just a fighter. You’re an actor, a yoga instructor, a business

man, a coffee aficionado.

So, I think that one of the lessons is that everybody’s a lot more dimensional

or multifaceted than we often think and that’s always something that we could

have more of which is perspective and just understanding of our fellow man.

Keith Jardine: Respect and understanding of your fellow man; I like that.

Tony Federico: Hey, man. Well, it’s been great. Really appreciate you coming and sharing

space with me today.

Keith Jardine: Hey, thanks for having me on, man.


2015 Page !25

Tony Federico: That was Keith “The Dean of Mean” Jardine. You can find out more about

him on his website, keithjardine.net. You can also find out more information

about Caveman Coffee by going to cavemancoffeeco.com.

Coming up next, the Ancestral Health Symposium’s J. Brett Smith. I’m Tony

Federico and you’re listening to PMR.

{Music}

J. Brett Smith: My name is Brett Smith; I’m the 2016 Ancestral Health Symposium Program

Chair. I have a masters and a bachelors in biology and a second bachelors in

philosophy from the University of Alabama. I got involved in this whole scene

about three years ago and it’s just been amazing.

So, I guess one of the things I’ve been thinking about because I’m not an ex-

pert in nutrition or strengthening or conditioning or anything like that, but I’ve

been reading about – I was trained in (inaudible) biology, I’ve always found it

fascinating and Paleo just immediately clicked with me and it made obvious

intuitive sense given what we know about evolution.

So, we in the Paleo scene use terms like evolutionary mismatch or evolution-

ary health or evolutionary medicine. But what is exactly is that? What do we

actually mean by that?

So, evolutionary medicine in general started out about 20, 25 years ago with a

paper published by the famous biologist George C. Williams and Randolph

Nesse. Nesse was a young medical doctor and he teamed up with an evolu-

http://www.keithjardine.net

http://www.cavemancoffeeco.com


2015 Page !26

tionary biologist and they wrote a paper called The Dawn of Darwinian Medi-

cine in the Quarterly Review of Biology in 1991.

And it was followed up by sort of a general nonfiction booked called Why We

Get Sick. I recommend that to everybody in the Paleo community because it

would see – give us a chance to see what evolutionary medicine is in a theo-

retical sense as well as how what we’re doing fits into that larger framework.

So, in that book they describe six reasons, six basic theoretical reasons why

the evolution left the body vulnerable to disease. If we can grow from one cell

to a functioning phenotype that can do all kinds of extraordinary things and

then repair damage, why is it that we get older or die when we get diseases or

dysfunctions in the first place? If evolution is powerful enough to sculpt those

kind of adaptive mechanisms and machines like us, how is it that we get sick?

Well, the six reasons that they gave were, number one, evolutionary mismatch

which we’re all pretty familiar with.

Number two is the co-evolution of pathogens; bacteria, viruses that can evolve

quickly, more rapidly. So, they evolve resistant to our drug treatments. For

instance we’re all pretty aware of antibody resistant drugs, our bacteria and so

forth.

Number three, though, would be something like constraints.

Number four would be – are something called tradeoffs. Like the femur could

be so big and massive that it would not break ever, but that would allocate re-

sources toward that area which may be needed in another part of the body and


2015 Page !27

like our dollars or our time or anything, we have to – evolution has to dis-

tribute resources and time and – toward competing goals.

So, number five is like – the actual goal of evolution is not to make organisms

optimally healthy; it’s actually to make them ultimately reproduce. Sometimes

that comes in conflict with long-term health and so they body out – so evolu-

tion we see behaviors and aspects of the phenotype that actually make us go

for reproductive success even though it comes at bodily expense.

Number six is the – and the last reason is defenses. Things like coughing,

sneezing, vomiting, diarrhea. They call it pain and suffering in the patient, so

doctors many times they’ll historically have said, “Oh, well, my patient is suf-

fering, so let me give a drug to reduce fever or to block the diarrhea” or what-

ever.

But that sometimes is a bad thing. If you have a smoke detector, it causes

alarm, it’s distressing to us. We want to have the smoke detector not blare out

this loud sound. So, we could just block that, right? But as unpleasant as a

smoke alarm is, it’d be much more unpleasant to have a house fire and not

catch it.

So, that’s evolutionary medicine in a nutshell. Now, I’ve noticed that what

people in the Paleo community talk about and are concerned with are the

mismatch effects and practical ways of how we can tweak our lifestyles

through knowledge (inaudible) and such to reverse the effects of these mis-

matches.


2015 Page !28

And we have made stunning progress. I’m just continually amazed at going to

PaleoFX and the Ancestral Health Symposiums and just seeing how many

people have just come up with these brilliant ways of doing that.

Tony Federico: For people who are established in the field, what do they think about Paleo

(inaudible)?

J. Brett Smith: Last month it was in early March the first-ever truly international symposium

on Darwinian or evolutionary medicine took place at Arizona State in Tempe

and I was one of the few Paleo people that I knew there really, I guess.

It was largely medical doctors plus pretty sophisticated academic evolutionary

biologists and such. There were people there and people like Marlene Zuk

who wrote the book Paleo Fantasy who were pretty dismissive and pretty crit-

ical of this whole caveman lifestyle approach.

However, I was glad to see three of the speakers who spoke at that symposium

were also previous Ancestral Health Symposium speakers including Daniel

Lieberman from Harvard, Barbara Natterson-Horowitz from UCLA and Kevin

Boyd who is a dentist, actually.

And so, I was glad to see that there was some overlap; that was encouraging.

Tony Federico: And what does the Paleo community need to do to align with evolutionary

medicine or evolutionary biologists? What do you think we could do to get

their buy-in?


2015 Page !29

J. Brett Smith: Yes. Well, I think just keep doing what we’re doing mainly because when you

start to apply some of these a lot of lifestyle like (inaudible) you not only feel

better, lose weight, get stronger, sleep better, whatever. But, I mean, you

change your biomarkers and that’s going to impress medical doctors.

As far as what the academics think of us. I think if we were more sophisticat-

ed about what evolutionary medicine is in general, just going – like reading

some websites, google the term evolutionary medicine or certainly like Randy

Nesse’s work.

Plus, too, maybe we can start to think about the other five reasons besides

evolutionary mismatch, like diarrhea or loose stool, maybe we should think

about, well, is that necessarily a mismatch effect or do we have a pathogen or

something that is actually our body’s defense.

And so, pain and coughing and things like that may actually be an indicator of

actual health, proper defensive functioning against pathogens. And important-

ly I think we just need to keep hammering away and use the concept of mis-

match and tighten our thinking and our reasoning about what mismatches are,

how these mismatches can affect multiple mechanisms; not just our bodies

and our fat storage, but also things like dentistry and dental alignment and vi-

sion.

Even Todd Becker gave a talk last year at the Ancestral Health Symposium

about myopia as being an effective mismatch and something that we can actu-

ally do something about.


2015 Page !30

Also I’m thinking probably what we’re doing, which you might consider ap-

plied evolutionary medicine. So, you have Randy Nesse and the theoreticians

in the academic world that are doing the theoretical work. We are the applied

part of evolutionary medicine and I think that mismatch in particular is going

to be the area of evolutionary medicine which is going to have the most low-

hanging fruit of the – they’re the most potential benefit for the least invest-

ment.

So, I think we need to buoy our spirits and go forward confidently.

Tony Federico: Can you say something about the Ancestral Health Symposium’s future plans?

J. Brett Smith: Yes. We had to postpone for 2015 just due to some logistical issues but we are

going to use this year off to regroup and maybe strengthen up our website, our

blog which is ancestralhealth.org; regroup and rethink how we want to focus

this message and go forward.

We are tentatively looking at going in August of 2016 at the University of

Colorado at Boulder. So, that will be a nice time so everybody just mark their

calendars for that and we’ll send out the call for proposals at some point for

that.

{Music}

Tony Federico: Alright, Paleo Nation, that’s going to do it for today’s episode. Coming up

next time on the podcast, Jen Sinkler of jensinkler.com. You might know her

from her popular e-book Lift Weights Faster. We’re going to have Jen on the

http://ancestralhealth.org

http://www.jensinkler.com


2015 Page !31

show to talk all about her career, how she got into fitness and why she thinks

intuitive training is so powerful.

What is intuitive training, you might ask? Well, here’s a little clip to give you

just a small idea of what we’re talking about.

Jen Sinkler: I used the testing protocol to figure out which dead lift version was right for

me on that day and it changes from day to day with every single person.

Sometimes you’ll go through a period of time where one particular version of

a dead lift or of a press or of a squat or of a pull will test best for you and then

suddenly one day a different one will because your abilities expand.

Tony Federico: If you want to learn more about intuitive training from Jen Sinkler, you’re go-

ing to have to turn into next week’s episode. The best way to do that, of

course, is to subscribe in iTunes, Stitcher, whatever app you like to use there.

While you’re there, please, please, please make sure you leave us a rating and

review. If you’re listening to this podcast right now, these words are going

into your ears, if this is your first time listening to the podcast, if this is your

50th time, 90th time listening to this podcast, just take a moment right now be-

fore you get to do it, go to iTunes, leave us a rating, leave us a review.

I can’t tell you enough how big of a difference it makes in terms of us reach-

ing our audience. We don’t ask for any money for this podcast. This is the

only thing that we’re asking for you to do because it helps us reach a bigger

and bigger audience by improving our rankings on iTune charts and reaching

more people with the good word about Paleo living is what we are here to do.


2015 Page !32

So, thank you in advance. I’m Tony Federico and on behalf of everyone at Pa-

leo Magazine, thank you for listening.

Host: If you would like to share your story on PMR, please visit our Facebook page

at facebook.com/paleomagazine. For full transcripts of the show as well as

exclusive online content, go to our web page paleomagonline.com. You can

also talk to us on Twitter at #pmradio.

THE END

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