#26 - The Raft with William Robertson

What if confronting fear is the best way to find peace, purpose, and growth? In this special episode, Marcus reconnects with his longtime friend William Robertson—a painter, architect, and entrepreneur known for designing his own fire-resistant home and embracing sustainability long before it was trendy. Their friendship, like a river ride, flows naturally between ideas, challenges, and laughs.

William shares what led him to fight a 19-year-old in a Muay Thai match at age 48, and how facing discomfort—whether through martial arts, fasting, or microdosing—has shaped his resilience and deepened his presence. Together, they reflect on personal growth, physical health, business leadership, and why pushing limits in any form makes life richer. This episode is both a celebration of curiosity and a call to keep evolving—on your own terms.

Episode Reference: National Goju Karate
Website: https://nationalgojukarate.com/home
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/KarateBrisbane

Reach out to William Robertson:
Website: https://www.designbuildlabs.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamrobertson2/ 

Episode highlights:
(3:19) Confronting fear from Karate to Muay Thai ring
(7:38) The importance of being in the moment
(11:32) Detachment from past and future
(14:47) Training for a Spartan race
(17:53) Taking charge of health with AI and biomarkers
(22:51) Fasting results: Fat, energy, and focus
(28:39) Microdosing psilocybin Vs. Alcohol
(31:53) Consciousness, nature, and creativity
(35:45) The joy of daily rituals
(39:40) A Karate sensei and French coffee lessons
(41:34) Outro

Connect with Marcus

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcus-arredondo/
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/cus

Scales of Success

• Website: scalesofsuccesspodcast.com
• X (Twitter): https://x.com/scalesofsuccess
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Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@ScalesofSuccess

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Transcript

Note: The transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors.

William Robertson: 0:00

in the beginning he's, you know, taking this drug and he finishes the book overnight and then there's this whole like crime arc to it. It's fun, but in the end it's like, you know, I don't have to take it anymore. I've sort of like I've learned. You know, I've learned the way. Uh, the drug helped find the way, but it gets to a place where you don't need as much of it. Thank you for tuning in. This is a new thing we're going to experiment with. My friend, william Robertson is joining me. Thank you for being part of this experiment.

Marcus Arredondo: 0:34

I want to give a brief intro to our friendship and who you are and sort of where this came from. But to set the table for people, this is not going to be a typical interview sort of scenario. What I'm trying to experiment with here is to capture something that I have valued in your friendship for a couple of decades now, and I'll go into that in a second. But what makes you unique is there's a number of things. So you and I started working together about 20 years ago with the same real estate company. You're in real estate. You own your own construction, design and project management. You've gone off on your own. You've had a lot of success in that. But when we first started hanging out, I think in our relationship has you know, life happens and we've fallen out of touch a little bit, but it's been over the last year. We've reconnected, which has been amazing, and I wanted to capture part of our conversations. Our conversations have entailed a lot of thought provoking ideas and actions that in large part came from you, about what's moving us forward, what's inspiring us. I always came to the conversations with less energy than I left, like because there were a lot of ideas, a lot of things. We you and I both religiously take notes when we're hanging out. This includes late into the night while we're having a few beers. It also means breakfast as well and everything in between.

William Robertson: 1:53

Friday. I'm cool, but I want to set the table for two certain fronts, to give a perspective of what I think in part makes you unique One and you'll have to correct me if I'm wrong, but you graduated. We both went to cornell. You're, you're a little ahead of you, yeah, um, but you got on your bicycle and rode all the way to los angeles from was it massachusetts for massachusetts, which is 2500 miles. 3000 miles, yeah, it's 2500, as the pro flies, but maybe it was like 3100, just don't remember how it's out and you slept on the side of the road, yeah, little motels, yeah, and some busted tires. I'm sure lots of fun, yeah, um, but that always struck me as super fantastic as a 22 year old embarking on your new, uh, adult journey. And then, secondly, which is really what got us reconnected again is you did this post on linkedin and I'll share in the then. Secondly, which is really what got us reconnected again is you did this post on linkedin and I'll share in the show notes, which is so fantastic.

Marcus Arredondo: 2:51

But in your 40s you started to stay karate, yeah, and you are now a black belt. Yeah, uh. You've traveled to japan, um, for research and inspiration is that fair to say? Yeah, additional testing, yeah, and you've also gone into competition as well, and that's what this post was about and you talk about. Well, I don't want to put words in your mouth. I'll share it for people to see, but I'm wondering if you can give us some comments on. Yeah, absolutely, you know the, the detail on the competition to sort of start at the end.

William Robertson: 3:27

You know karate led to Muay Thai. You know testing in karate it's you know it's always sparring, the real test, muay Thai, or like getting in a ring, actually joining a club that has competitions as a competition team. You know it's one thing has competitions, a competition team, you know, and it's one thing to spar in the gym, but it's another thing to actually, you know, get playing and go 110%. You know the guy that I fought he was 19 years old, 30 years younger than me, from Denver, colorado, had a third lung. Basically, I had every single disadvantage. You know it ended in a draw. You know, incredible kid, really impressive character. I think he played college football. Now it's absolutely insane to fight anybody my age, but you know, 30 years prior it was the bike trip. You know I was a little bit more naive then, but you know both of these things.

William Robertson: 4:29

I think, uh, you know, uh, support the journey upon which is confronting fear. Yeah, um, and uh, you know, early on, confronting fear was, uh, just trying to be less afraid of certain situations, and you know now it's become, you know, a little bit broader than that and you know I've learned that confronting fear sort of training the muscles that allow you to control fear strengthens your ability to understand and relate to people. To understand and relate to people. You know I understand more about, you know, everyone else's pain because I've just, you know, put myself into, you know, increasingly more difficult situation here, and so that's, you know, that journey is really what, you know, each one of these obstacles about. That's why I stayed with the project, that's why I stayed with it.

Marcus Arredondo: 5:25

Well, I'm glad that you're mentioning this because, um, there's several themes that I want to touch on, but, um, you know, this is part of why I started this podcast too, because, uh, I, you know I don't want to say I sat on my laurels, but I don't think I was trying the new things that, um, I needed to be doing to uh, further stress that muscle, and nothing throws you into that um, melee, like having a kid, yeah, first hand, to be in the throes of, you know, professional downturns and crises, uh, only accelerates your, your attention on sort of the need for, um, growing those muscles. So, on that note, note, I thought on this episode and I hope to have more, but we'll see, this is an experiment. So, if you're watching and listening, just feeling this out, but I want to share sort of what's going on in our life, that's moving us, and so that ranges. These are normal conversations we would typically have, but I just felt like I wanted to record it for nothing else, like you know, hopefully arctic, that's it like some of this, and maybe look back on it and think, uh, how far we've come, or, um, we got to get off our ass. So this includes books, movies, hacks, body stuff, whatever that comes to mind love it. We're gonna try and keep it to. You know, 30, 45 minutes, love it. Um, so I appreciate you being game for this journey. Yeah, and uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick it off with a book which I actually haven't even finished. Uh, partly because I'm uh, I've had to step away from it, but it's, it's relevant to what you're saying. So it's the art of learning by josh wayskin.

William Robertson: 7:02

For those who don't know who Josh Waiskin is, he is the prodigy, genius chess player who was, in his younger days, world-renowned and became a champion chess player well into his adult. He is the person who Searching for Bobby Fischer was about, and he wrote this book called the Art of Learning, which is so phenomenal. I won't sit here and read it, but there were a couple of passages which are really dead on to what you had mentioned here but um, oh great, I lost this. It's that book. Right there there's one other book, so there's two parts here, um, that I wanted to highlight.

William Robertson: 7:44

He starts talking about his career in chess but then goes on to talk about his evolution in Tai Chi. He's also mastered a whole bunch of other things. I think he's a big wave surfer and some other things. But he's pretty reclusive. So I only came to find out about him through a Tim Ferriss interview, which was terrific. But in this book I want to highlight two sections here. One was when he started to take Tai Chi.

William Robertson: 8:07

Master Chen taught me the body mechanics of non-resistance. As my training became more vigorous, I learned to dissolve from wave, from attacks, while staying rooted to the ground. I find myself calculating less and feeling more. And as I internalize the physical techniques of little movements of Tai Chi, meditative forms started to come alive to me and push hands, practice. So he goes on to say how he started to evaluate chess moves through tai chi, sort of cross-pollinating. But this idea of non-resistance, combined with a subsequent place in this book where he talks about um, a key component of high-level learning is cultivating a resilient awareness. That is the older conscious embodiment of child's playful obliviousness. This journey from child back to child again is at the very core of my understanding of success. So I bring this up because I think it's relevant to what you were saying about confronting fear from a perspective of childlike wonder, curiosity rather than a?

William Robertson: 9:05

um, not being afraid exactly, yeah right, and so there's an element of uh presentness. There's an episode that will be reading release next week. Uh, with that, I interviewed a friend of mine who was an ordinance, uh, explosive uh disposal technician. Um, and then last week, you also know, aj wilder talked about his mind and both those uh stories in embrace. This um really um confrontation with death, and I don't necessarily think you need to go all the way to death, but I think we need to get closer to that level of discomfort and so afraid of it and also being in the moment.

William Robertson: 9:39

Yeah, well, and that's exactly. I think that's really what it boils down to, and these things you know, the more intense it is, the more you know you really have to be in the moment to succeed at it. And there's nothing more luxurious, I think, than being able to think about one thing and just be doing that one thing and having it be so intense that, like, you can't think about it. You know, surfing is a perfect example. Like you have to, you have to take off on that wave at exactly the right time. It's totally fourth dimensional. You can't just decide that you're in the right mode for for it to happen, like it's got to be. You being ready in the wave, happening at exactly the right time. And when you're taking off on the wave, you're not thinking about the email that you do that's right draft.

William Robertson: 10:20

you can, or you won't catch the wave, or you'll shit, or both.

William Robertson: 10:23

That's the same thing with martial arts You're in there with somebody else that's reacting to what you're doing and you can't wait for being perfectly comfortable, perfectly in the right stance to throw that kick or that punch, because you're going to get hit in the face. You might get hit in the face anyway, but maybe not directly in the face. Maybe you're able to deflect it a little bit. Well, I wonder if you can comment on this, because something that AG actually referenced, which I find really interesting and it's pervasive elsewhere even in this book the detachment component, and detachment specifically. We are ultimately either anxiety-ridden fear of the future or guilt-ridden fear of the past in some way. Written fear of the future or guilt-ridden fear of the past in some way, and that detachment is the embracing of the now and the removal of uh, the expectations of what may follow, which is, you know, the ability to operate freely in the now, because you know, when you're thinking about the future you're not really reacting responding to the present moment.

William Robertson: 11:22

How did that you want one? Do you think that's accurate too? Has that? How did that, uh, come into play ever when you were? Those things are, are totally real.

William Robertson: 11:34

Um, I think that you know. Um, you know I try and embrace the future. I try and embrace the past. I think that's part of you know, living in the present. I think that's you know.

William Robertson: 11:46

That's part of controlling fear is just understanding you can't totally get rid of it. Um, you just gotta kind of flex those muscles on being able to, you know, focus where, uh, you're handling fear and controlling it. Yeah, I'm getting better at being able to stay in the moment, not just in these things that force it, but right now. I think that that's one of the keys to it. It ultimately enables you to build these muscles so that you don't have to be in the rain, you don't have to be on a surfboard to understand that singularity, that ability to be in the moment. I think it actually makes for if you're in that moment, and I think it actually makes for if you're in that moment, you're finding yourself more moments, you're having better conversations, you're understanding people better because you're not waiting for your turn to talk. You're able to sit still and just be quiet. You're able to obviously listen better, and it just makes for, makes for just better, broader understanding.

William Robertson: 12:42

I think it makes for, makes for, you know, just better broader understanding. Um, I think it makes for better business too. Yeah, you know, uh, it seems like you're tapping into a broader con. That's right. I mean, you know, one of the things that I think became so attractive so quickly it's martial arts for me, um is that I, I, I felt it making business better. I felt myself being, you know, less afraid of, you know, uncomfortable situations because there's less afraid of, you know, waiting for a contract to be signed. You know less afraid of what you know someone might disagree with me about in a certain conversation.

William Robertson: 13:23

You know less afraid of my designs, uh, or my ideas being questioned yeah so, uh, yeah, I just I got attracted, I got I got, you know, addicted to the drug of controlling fear, because it expanded my ability to empathize, yeah, and for people to empathize with me. You know, I was able to more comfortably be vulnerable and not be so defensive because, you know, I was very confident that I wasn't going to get hurt. Yeah, I was very confident in those conversations, to put it simply, that I wasn't going to get kicked in the head, and I was. I'm pretty comfortable with people throwing kicks at my head, yeah, so it's, it's not happening. I'm super peaceful.

William Robertson: 14:05

Right right, right. Well, if your physical presence is more protected and you're more comfortable with being able to parry blows, it seems like. You know, it's always interesting to me that you're emotional. You know, in many respects I feel like I can go for long distances, I can lift a lot of weights, I can push through that pain, but emotional pain, somehow it's like it's invisible. Yeah, it's at times insurmountable for people, yeah, myself. So that's really part of the process of sort of wanting to talk about this. But yeah, that was, that was mine.

William Robertson: 14:38

I want to alternate here. What, uh, what's working? We're gonna go through a few here. But, yeah, what's working on your side right now? Um, yeah, I mean, great question. Uh, you know I'm still training. Uh, I do. You know I'm doing a lot more. Uh, have endurance, cardio training. Uh, you know trying to do this, uh, this spartan race, and a couple of you know something to have a goal for. Um, you know, the spark races are fun and challenging and silly and you're you know elbowing, you know army, crawling your way through the mud, so that would be a good time. And a bunch of people, um, when is that? That's in may, so, you know, like five weeks from now, but you're doing.

William Robertson: 15:18

You do crossfit four or five times a week yeah yeah yeah, so I think like no, no, no, I think it's. You know it's good, it's always the road work. I mean, I, you know, I don't like people don't put enough value in running. Yeah, and I don't. I don't love running. No one is they're saying that they're lying, right, uh, exactly right, um, but I discovered hokas, like there you go, you know a couple years ago.

William Robertson: 15:42

Now I have I'm on my like fourth pair and you know I mean maybe I'm losing some, some efficiency by like running on marshmallows, but you know what, like it does keep me getting back on the road, that's, you know. Right, I'm never gonna get back to like a five minute mile, but I'm here, my feet are comfortable. Well, I, I hate running, but nothing feels like the uh, nothing has the feeling of having finished work. Oh my God, that's, that's really. It's so. It's so efficient, it's so efficient at getting your entire body, your, your cardiovascular system pumping. I mean, think more clearly. Yeah, um, so you know what else is working. Um, you know, I'm constantly trying to become like more physically flexible.

Marcus Arredondo: 16:24

Yeah.

William Robertson: 16:25

It's, it's probably the hardest. You once told me you were only as strong as you are fucking. Yeah, I mean, I think, like I say those words to myself really, you know, every day, um, and I'm not naturally good at it physically, and you know, I've gotten way better at it, but I'm not naturally good at all, you know, uh, from a leadership perspective, oh, interesting, you know, I've practiced it enough now where I think that, you know, just like my ability to fight up significantly better than I once was, you know, I do have a tendency to just want it to be my way. You know, it is my company. I did start it. You know, sometimes you're like a little baby, you like just gonna do it my way. How do you combat that now? Well, I have employees that I've hired and I literally teach them all to, um, you know, disagree with me, um, and I also have hired people that are smarter than me, and so after they they've, you know, heard me out and let me, you know, spool out on my tantrums, they, you know, they'll jump in and they'll be like all right, well, that was nice. Maybe we should start some of these other ideas that have a little bit more flexibility built into them, so that probably the smartest thing I've ever done is just hire really smart people. Well, I'll take a shift here, just because you were talking about body endurance and increasing that flexibility. So I started. There's a couple of different fronts it is all related to health that I sort of want to, just for two reasons, share this. One because I think it's an interesting process and, to the extent that it's helpful for anybody else, I hope that it could be and want to share that. But two, like I told you, I, I sort of want to be accountable. So, despite the fact that I've got a little momentum here, I sort of want to hold my feet in the fire.

William Robertson: 18:15

So my son came in october 2022. Preceding that and following it, nesting was for real. Uh, we just moved in august and uh, if 2022. It's hard to put yourself back there, but you know it was still um, we weren't in the clear yet and um, it was. It was just a lot of time. So my activity became lower. We had family come in and it's christmas and thanksgiving and new year. Uh, all that to say.

William Robertson: 18:44

I, I just became a lot more dormant and what I my? My weight went up a little bit, but I didn't. It wasn't um overwhelmingly noticeable for me getting. I don't didn't really get on the scale, to be honest, but from a physical perspective. But what ended up happening was my inflammation started to get up. I started to have little aches in my knees. I just couldn't rebound when I started getting back.

William Robertson: 19:11

You know, in the workout mix which you know, I, I work out five days a week, give or take some days, some weeks of four, some six, uh, some weeks it's three, but you know I sort of make up for it. So I've I tended to regulate it. I indulged too much. But all that to say, what ended up happening was I accumulated. I have since discovered which subcutaneous, then visceral fat. The visceral fat is where things start to get kicked in, where things start to go haywire, and that's why nothing was working.

William Robertson: 19:39

I came from south texas really never measured or monitored nutrition. It's unfortunate that it was in my late 30s, early 40s that I started to understand a little what nutrition is. Big thanks to my wife for really helping me to understand that. Limiting the processed foods, sugars. I was incrementally getting there, but that really sort of accelerated it. I'll bring this plane in closer to landing. But there's multi-phases here.

William Robertson: 20:03

So I decided to start taking matters into my own hands, because I know, went to a doctor and tried some concierge medicine and also went to some trainers and I just got so many disparate piece of advice. At one point, glp came up and was just like I got really aggravated because that's not I didn't, that's not a solution that I was going to accept. What's the gm? Uh, a zampic type? Okay. Oh, if you need to accept 50%. What's a G-O-M-E A Zempic type? Okay. So a webcast? Sorry. And so I said I'm just going to start. You can only manage when you can only measure it, and so I just started breaking it back. I do want to talk a little bit about AI, but AI comes here.

William Robertson: 20:41

So I started to take photos of my food to get the macros. I bought a scale, started measuring everything. It comes a little bit with a cycle. My intention wasn't to be the cycle across the board. I also started getting I joined this program that gets called Building Biomarkers Blood Tests, so you can sort of incrementally see if it's a clinician that talks to you afterwards talking about nerve biomarkers. A lot of that stuff was overwhelming. It still sort of is. But each time I'm understanding a little bit more about uh, homocysteine and apple b and a1c and lbl, hdl, like you know these things. But when you start to see it in actuality, paired with what you might be doing, observing it, it started to really uh resonate a little bit more with me and I was just determined to solve this myself.

William Robertson: 21:33

So, on top of the two-pronged approach the two-pronged approach is on top of the biomarking, which now they're measuring it on the scale a lot more consistently, because I just want to get back to a stasis that I'm happy with and I'm also concerned about what I'm doing want to. I want to get back to a stasis that I'm happy with and I'm also concerned about what I'm doing now with a two-year-old and I'm an older dad. I I want to do feral and healthy and flexible and strong and uh, go for the waller. Um, I don't want to miss it. When did you? When did you start? Uh, well, I started with the workout program in january of 2023. Uh, I'm sorry. Yeah, 23, 24. I switched that sort of operating program, was looking for some different things. That's when the concierge medicine sort of came in Late, 23, 24. Then I switched at the end of 24.

William Robertson: 22:23

And so when I started measuring everything, that's when I said when I gave up and I was like I'm taking this bull by the horns, which I have no qualifications to do, to be sure, I you know there's a lot of health food roads out there. I'm not that guy that's, I'm just trying to share that, like what I've observed. So, starting in September, um was my first measurement, um, but really my measurement started, uh, at the end of the year. Then I got some last month. So before I get to this, the second part is that I started to fast.

William Robertson: 22:52

Um, I've read a lot of um interesting components about not intermittent fasting like hardcore, straight fasting. So, um, a couple days, more than that. So I've read about this. I've. Now there's some. You know there might be some opposition to this and I'm by no means suggesting I'm sure I'm to get all sorts of hell about like this being unhealthy or whatever, but I I what the short story that I've been able to produce is that by fasting you eliminate, you go into a ketosis state. It eliminates all the glucose in your body, so you start processing the fat in your body as a source of benefit and by doing that something happens to your body. It also deprives your cells of that fat, and the fat is typically has been linked to increased causes of cancer, because that's effectively what the cells feed on. I'm butchering the hell out of it, but that's sort of my, what I took away.

William Robertson: 23:47

So my goal was to start doing a fast once a month for three to four days and then once a quarter, do it for seven days. So I've done it. In February, march, you were gracious enough to invite me over on my quarterly fast, which is I'm on day two of seven, but for February and March I was drinking coffee, which is why we're drinking coffee. We're doing four I'm doing. I did four days in each of those days. Now I just want to share something before I share the results, because I do think it's a job.

William Robertson: 24:15

This is certainly a component. I think what it does is, of course, fuel on the fire. It adds gasoline, it creates the new baseline. Now, when I hit the baseline, obviously you're losing weight. That is only a minor part of the reason I'm doing this, but you know I might be here. I come down here and then I stay here. Then I come down here and then I stay here, so it creates a sort of a breakthrough path.

William Robertson: 24:38

But while I'm doing it, this is what I found most interesting. I think most people would suggest like, oh man, that sucks, what are you doing? I will be honest, honest, first time I did it, I was apprehensive. Uh, I'm gonna really want to do this. Uh, I'm lucky that my, my wife actually wanted to partake in this, so that that helps that team member. Yeah, uh, she doesn't do it quite as long, but, um, and I'm measuring my ketosis levels.

William Robertson: 25:03

But day one uh, first time I did it modestly hungry. Uh, first time I did it modestly hungry. Second day, my, everything else was okay, I was fine. Second day had a peak of hunger, primarily when I'm feeding my son and he's got leftovers and I'm always putting stuff out, so, having to pass that.

William Robertson: 25:22

Day three, things started to turn, and what I mean by that is uh, my energy popped up. Um, my, my sleep was terrific. I didn't think about food at all. My workout was superior. Um, and by day four, it was like anything I felt before um, without any influence. I was crystal clear. I was highly motivated. I snapped out of bed. Uh, I was highly energetic, and this is the ketosis state.

William Robertson: 25:53

And so once I got to, you know, I started at 0.3, 0.4. Uh, you start to get into ketosis above one, uh-huh, uh, you get heavier ketosis, you know, beyond that. Um, but once I got to one, two, one, three, I mean, I feel it, I definitely feel it. And now I'm seeing one, two, one, three. How are you measuring? So I admit there's a ketosis, uh, which I'll have, I'll add in the show notes. But if you prick your your finger, measure the blood and just like blood sugar measurement, yeah, so, yeah, so, wow, um, those two things have been pretty great, so I was just going to share this.

William Robertson: 26:30

So my body fat has gone down by 17 percent. Uh, my visceral fat's gone down by 20. Uh, my subcutaneous has gone down by 18.2. Um, this is all that's. Over the last three months, my over the last six months, my lbl has gone down by 31%. My glucose has gone down by 10%. My testosterone is going up by 33%.

William Robertson: 26:52

I will say I'm taking supplements. You can go into supplements, but I'm not reporting any of this. So this is all a big experiment, but I'm going to try and mark this to see what's working, what's not working. Is it testosterone? No, it's DHEA. The big ones, I think, are vitamin d, uh, omega-3 okay, um, there's nnn and um. There's one other one that I'm blanking out on right now, but it's not it. I've tried to limit it because I I want to limit the variables, but I do think vitamin d and omega-3 have helped to sort of lubricate my system.

William Robertson: 27:26

So I feel like with the exertion I'm making, I'm getting better results. So it's if I'm feeling that momentum pick up a little bit, obviously to that point. My vitamin B is up by 65%. I think that would be a huge thing if I'm at this position and generally how I'm approaching life. My ApoB is down by 30%. My triglycerides are down by 17.

William Robertson: 27:54

Next question is gonna be like how are you measuring that? Uh, I do have a hume scale, uh, which has sensors, um, and measures your you know, through your feet. Yeah, all of this, your bone density, your lean mass, my lean mass is going up considerably and that's not certainly not 100 accurate, but the trend lines is sort of what I'm. Well, that's right if you're using the same uh, yeah, measuring. So I appreciate you listening to all that, but, uh, this has been an interesting experiment for me to uh, I feel like I'm gaining traction, I'm starting to understand, um, you know, flow I can take, you know, measuring everything. I sort of have a basis for, like what this looks like. I even used ai to sort of create a schedule from then until september to sort of uh, it was based on weight because I think that's a little bit easier to measure in increments.

William Robertson: 28:39

Have you modified your diet significantly, other than not not overwhelmingly? I I'm generally pretty, um, I'm generally pretty healthy, um, with the exception of alcohol. But my alcohol intake has dropped dramatically. You know, I'm probably about 20% of what I used to drink, so I'm typically not drinking anything from, you know, sunday through Wednesday, or Monday, thursday, something like that. Yeah, I obviously break, but every week when I fast, I'm also not drinking crew, uh, so I think that was automatic. That's huge.

William Robertson: 29:14

I also think that, like you know, uh, you know I've I've been, like, by producing psilocybin. Yeah, I think that happy that you're sharing that. That's the future. So tell me more about that. Well, I just think that, like, it has nowhere near the same negative side effects as alcohol or marijuana, um, and you know, not only do I feel like I'm, you know, more entertaining in a party setting than I am when I'm, you know, drinking or or smoking marijuana. But I feel like, even in like other times where you know it's not a social situation, you just want to feel relaxed or you know, clear calm, you know it's it's a much better path to to that goal, um, much more comfortable. I mean we're talking like 200, 300 milligrams here of psilocybin, not like 35 on the plate. I'm talking about eyeballs floating sky here, but I think that's the way to have a Wednesday afternoon with your 10, 12-year-old daughters. You know where you're still participating. Maybe you're even, like you know, reaching them at their level a little bit better.

William Robertson: 30:39

Well, do you feel like you can access I mean, I hate to go back to this context, but do you feel like you're Access different states? Yeah, a little bit more connected, absolutely conscious of things. But do you feel like you're access different states? Yeah, a little bit more connected, absolutely. And you know what? Even when I was taking 3400 milligrams in college, I still felt like it was like the best drug I'd ever had. You know, I still felt like, you know, uh, there were like levels of consciousness that I was able to to kind of untap and hold on to.

William Robertson: 31:05

Yeah, you know, I mean, there were times where I would smoke marijuana and paint and think it was awesome, and then look at it the next day and it's terrible, or it was just C plus at best. Same thing like drawing something, some idea that I would have for designing a building, and it would just be A plus when I was doing it the night before and then just be B minus the B-minus the next day. It's just like that. You know that drug's not making me better and, for that matter, like you know, no drug's going to make you better than what you are on the inside. But like I do feel like psilocybin has this, like you know, ability to kind of open up the portal that is there, yeah, and just that be to found or make big enough. Yeah, well, it's interesting you mentioned that Cause. Like um, I mean related to psilocybin, but like um, um, as you can tell, consciousness has been on my mind quite a bit.

William Robertson: 32:04

But you talk about connectivity and what is consciousness? But the analogy that I've come across and I'm certainly not the author of this and I can't claim it, sure, and I don't know where I can cite it from but fungus, if it's being attacked by a virus on one side of its forest, the other side of this forest starts to prepare, it has, uh, reactive quality. Same thing in sort of a tree, uh, tree forest where, um, there are defense mechanisms and so they're not speaking to each other, but there's some consciousness there and because it's, yeah, there's, there's some energy there, that um, and look, I think this goes back to what we talk about, philosophy, but I think it's it's more interesting to me to find practical implementations of that philosophy I've been talking up here. I want to understand, like, what it means on a great basis, so, on that consciousness, being you connected to other people, uh, and also your work.

William Robertson: 33:03

You're mentioning your artwork. Do you find? Have you had fun out there in bevers, where you've been inspired, or that quality of work would be at a caliber that you're? Uh, that would be on par with you I mean, it was really suicidal.

William Robertson: 33:18

Um, you know I haven't really experimented with it hard in that in in that way, but but I am able to, you know, I am able to, like you know, take notes, make sketches when I'm microdosing or, you know, remember things from those those times that they don't go from like a plus at the moment to like c plus when I read it the next day, like it it's still really cogent stuff. I opened up the portal and it wasn't fake, it was a more crystallized version of something that I already was trying to piece together. Sometimes it's just kind of an organizing thing. There's this really fun movie, limitless. Oh yeah, who's in that movie? It's.

Marcus Arredondo: 34:10

Bradley.

William Robertson: 34:11

Cooper, and so you know, in the beginning he's taking this drug and he finishes the book overnight, and then there's this whole crime arc to it. That's fun, but in the end it's like, you know, I don't have to take it anymore. I've sort of like I've. You know, I've learned the way. Uh, the drug helped find the way, but it gets to a place where you don't need as much of it, um, and so I think I feel like it's like the limitless drug you know well. It just sort of opens up the pathways that are already there, just kind of like helps you to organize your mind. You've already got bright stuff in your head, totally. Pathways, I think, are really the same thing with fear. But I feel like we're just boring new neuroplasticity within our behaviors and our minds of thinking, and I think nobody has anything created. We are just synthesizers of receiving thought, ideas or concepts, right. So to the extent that we can cross-pollinate our own ideas and effectively taking disparate parts of our own parts of our lives and combining and reshaping those new ideas, that's ultimately. I mean, great books aren't necessarily breaking ground in some way with new thought, but their organization resonates with it, presents different inspirations. Oh yeah, that's well said so we can crystallize and summarize. I mean, that's what it's all about. Yeah, well, I know we're going to come up on time here, but I'm going to turn it. We've got probably a couple more. When do we get to talk about that? Well, that's what I'm going to bring up.

William Robertson: 35:55

Thanks to my father, who was a dentist, I wanted to bring this thing on. I have. This is called the Sonic Fusion 2.0. Yes, it is a uh toothbrush, okay, and by all means, please make fun of me um, but it's also a water pick. Now, I will say, as a toothbrush, it is inferior to the last toothbrush I had. Uh, it sort of vibrates, not, it doesn't turn. Uh, I also had a water pick uh, which I used religiously, again as the son a dentist, so that was a part of it. Does this do both simultaneously? Yes, it can, and this water pick is actually less precise than that one, but you can do both at the same time, and I used a water pick a lot more consistently. It's got a shorter, smaller tank. The volume of water that comes out of this it's greater than the water pit, so it's not as accurate, but it really bulldozes the shit out of anything you got and I will say, you know, one of the things I really enjoy I, about 15 years ago, I invested in a whole new set of shaving equipment. Um, I got a safety razor. I, I got, you know, oils and an experiment and a bunch of other things.

William Robertson: 37:05

But one of the things I wanted to make sure it was like, the things that I have to do every day. I want to take joy in them. I had older. My uncles and my dad were like, oh, you don't need to shave, just enjoy it. It sucks, you have to do it every day. I wanted it to be different and this is a perfect example of like finding joy in something that I have to do every day. Yeah, and I gotta tell you, my mouth feels terrific, and walking out of the house with your mouth feeling terrific, just a really good way to start out the day. So, and it's a good looking device, nice and clean. Be unhappy looking at that, it's, it's small, yeah, it's. I have no affiliation with the sonic fusion water pick. Yeah, um, thanks to my dad who got this for me, but uh, I think this is a great.

Marcus Arredondo: 37:47

Yeah, this is um it's to be.

William Robertson: 37:49

You know, you know, keep it light, um doesn't have to be, too deep, that's right that's just a new thing that I'm really enjoying. I'm not even my day, oh my god. That that makes me happy, that it makes you happy.

William Robertson: 38:03

Yeah, I mean something that it doesn't have to be big things next time we talk, uh, or even just a little bit right now, I'll tell you about my probably my favorite purchase this this year was a was a new uh coffee grinder. Um, these are investments that pay dividends. Yeah, uh it's, it's made by bodum, which, like, basically makes it probably made their fame on, like french presses, um, and you know anyhow, like I started reading up on on uh coffee grinders because the last couple that I've had, you know, died this is for your french piss.

William Robertson: 38:35

Yeah, so you know, there's like basically two ways of grinding your coffee. There's like the spinning blade way, the burger, yeah yeah, game changer, game changer, yeah, you know, and so it, like it, like twists the beans apart, which, you know, kind of gives them more texture. They're not, they're not like. They're also fine that they're fine. They're finer if you want them to be or they're, but they're just they're. They're sort of twisted open like an orange, you know, and so you're really getting, you know, more of the flavor out of it. I think that's you can have a cheap coffee maker, but if you've got a good for a brownie, that's the difference, yeah, and it's got this, this beautiful hopper that the beans sit in and you get to. They sort of vibrate when it's grinding so you can kind of see how the the beans move around. It's uh, yeah, it's a trick. It's very tasty coffee and it's unfortunate because once you get good coffee like this, you go to a bad time for having that. Well, not just pruned sludge, yeah, yeah.

William Robertson: 39:39

Something that really turned me on coffee was like one of my favorite karate sensei's dojo in Brisbane, australia. I'm actually going to be testing for my third degree black ball with him this summer right after my 50th birthday. This guy's been training martial arts since he was five years old. He's like 51 years old now. He is one of the nicest guys I've ever met and also one of the most fierce fighters by far. One of the things about him that's most surprising now is the amount of information he knows about coffee. Now I've come to learn that this is something that's kind of endemic to aust, that they take their coffee really seriously. But Sensei Jamie and I were in Japan like two and a half years ago. I was testing for my second review of Black Belt. He was there and I can't believe. I mean we probably drank seven fingers of whiskey while he was telling me about the finer points of grinding coffee and how he literally trained the staff of a French coffee shop how to make coffee. He went in there to get an espresso. They botched it so badly that he ended up spending the rest of the day behind the counter.

William Robertson: 40:56

Like a true sensei, you pick little pieces of information up from undone places. Who knows what sticks with him. Thanks for the coffee, thanks for hosting this little pieces of information up from undying places, but you know what sticks with him. That's right. Well, thanks for the coffee, thanks for hosting this, of course, and allowing me to come over and being a participant, and not only a participant, but a willing collaborator, enthusiastic collaborator. So I hope we can do this again. Any closing thoughts, any ideas on what you think we may have done right or wrong here? We're both confronting fear. Pretty well, that's my main medication Move it there. Yeah, let us know what you think. It was a nice little experiment, see you guys soon.

Marcus Arredondo: 41:42

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