Two Percent with Michael Easter

Ever feel like you're winning at life on paper, hitting your steps, your salary goals, your sleep score, and somehow still feel worse? This episode explains why.

Host Michael Easter sits down with the thinker who's lived rent-free in his head for five years: C. Thi Nguyen, a philosophy professor at the University of Utah and author of The Score: How to Stop Playing Somebody Else's Game.

They dig into a phenomenon Nguyen calls "valu...

If you turn on the news right now, you'll be hit with a sea of negativity, and it can convince you the world is falling apart. It isn't. Host Michael Easter sits down with two guests to explain why our minds are literally built to outweigh the bad, and how you can bias yourself back toward the positive.

First, meditation teacher Cara Lai offers a tip to instantly disarm anxiety: ask yourself "what if what's happening right now is e...

Cognitive decline as you age is not inevitable — but whether you keep your edge depends almost entirely on what you do right now. Host Michael Easter sits down with Dr. Tommy Wood, a neuroscientist and performance consultant  who works with Formula 1 teams. His book, The Stimulated Mind, changed how Michael thinks about staying mentally sharp.

They get into why sleep may be the most important factor in preventing cogniti...

Every four years, Americans suddenly remember soccer exists. The World Cup is here and it may be the single biggest sporting event in human history: 48 teams, 104 games over 39 days, and a final that draws north of a billion viewers.

Host Michael Easter sits down with two guests to make the case. First, soccer writer Leander Schaerlaeckens, author of The Long Game, on why this World Cup is bigger than ever. He also shares his take ...

Why do people lose their minds over seed oils, raw milk, carnivore diets, and long Covid? Alan Levinovitz isn't a doctor or a health journalist — he's a religion scholar. And from that vantage point he noticed something you can't un-see: the way most of us think about health functions exactly like a religion, complete with ideas of purity, contamination, salvation, and tribes that turn on you the moment you question the doctr...

What if you juiced a roster of athletes to the gills with performance-enhancing drugs and let them compete for a million-dollar prize? That's the Enhanced Games — the billionaire-backed "Steroid Olympics" held in Las Vegas — and the results were not what investors expected.

Michael Easter sits down with journalists Chris Gayomali and Sam Eagan, hosts of the Superhuman podcast, who were embedded with the founders, athlet...

UFC fighters routinely lose 10 to 20 pounds in the 5 days before a weigh-in — then put it all back on in the 24 hours before stepping into the Octagon. It is one of the most extreme metabolic feats in sports, and almost no one talks about what it actually teaches us about everyday fat loss.

In this episode, Michael Easter sits down with Tyler Minton, the nutritionist behind some of the UFC's top fighters and current advisor t...

Miesha Tate became UFC women's bantamweight champion by choking out Holly Holm in the fifth round at the MGM Grand. Two weeks after the highest moment of her life, she realized the title hadn't fixed anything. The next loss almost ended her. She packed her dog into a Kia, drove up the coast, and rebuilt herself layer by layer. She came back to fighting on her own terms, synced to her hormonal cycle for the first time in 15 years, a...

When it gets hot, most of us hide indoors with the AC cranked, the workouts moved inside, and the thermostat parked at 72°F all summer long. But humans evolved in the heat, and the new science says we can still use it to get stronger, healthier, and (maybe most surprisingly) happier. In this episode, Michael Easter sits down with two of the best people in the world on the subject of heat.

Ashley Paulson, the Badwater 135 course rec...

Dr. Julie Gurner has a two-year waiting list. The Wall Street Journal calls her the real-life Wendy Rhodes (the psychologist from the show Billions). Her clients are CEOs, founders, billionaires, and elite operators. But she started her career inside a supermax prison. In this episode, Michael Easter sits down with Dr. Julie Gurner to unpack what actually separates the top 0.01% from everyone else: audacity, what-if-it-goes-right t...

A year ago, Michael Easter walked 850 miles across southern Utah in 45 days — about a marathon every day. Dr. Andy Galpin turned him into a lab rat, studying his body before, during, and after his 45 days in the desert. What he found surprised both of them.

In this episode, Michael sits down with Dr. Andy Galpin — the world’s top performance scientist and co-founder of Absolute Rest. He is the guy MVPs, Cy Young w...

Adventure has been engineered out of modern life, and we're paying for it in ways we don't even realize. In this episode of Two Percent, Michael Easter sits down with two guests who have decentered optimization.

First up: Jay Carson, a former Clinton communications director and Hollywood writer (House of Cards, The Morning Show). Jay signed up for a 14-day Boulder Outdoor Survival School course in the Utah desert after a Covid powe...

What does it take to get genuinely strong, healthy, and creatively alive in your late 50s — while having one of the most demanding jobs in Hollywood?

Brian Koppelman is the writer behind Rounders, Ocean’s 13, and the seven-season hit show Billions. He also helped discover and promote the singer songwriter Tracy Chapman. At 57, he walked off a tennis court mid-match, certain he was about to faint, and decided to complete...

What happens when you eat 8 cans of sardines everyday for 30 days? For one doctor, his omega-3 levels hit numbers usually only seen in dolphins, his body fat dropped below 7%, and a smell he couldn't shake put a strain on his relationship.

Host Michael Easter sits down with Dr. Nick Norwitz (Oxford PhD, Harvard MD) to break down the science of the sardine diet. Then, George Kamel (Ramsey Network, author of Breaking Free from Broke)...

Sobriety isn't just "not drinking"—it's learning how to live without needing relief on demand. In this episode, Michael Easter sits down with therapist Ryan Soave (18+ years sober) for a sweeping conversation on why addiction often acts like a solution to deeper pain, how fear and shame quietly run the show, and what it takes to break the compulsion loop for good.

They dig into habit change that actually sticks, how to rebuil...

Dogs don’t just make us happy—they change how we live. Michael Easter talks with former Navy SEAL and writer Sam Alaimo about why dogs pull us back into the present, create purpose, and help us rebuild after our toughest moments.

Then researcher Dr. Nancy Gee (director of a human–animal interaction center) breaks down what the science actually says about how and why pet ownership contributes to our health and well...

What if everything you believe about freedom is wrong?

Author David Epstein joins Michael Easter to break down why constraints — not freedom — drive better work, better wellness, and better creativity. Epstein is the bestselling author of Range and The Sports Gene, and his new book Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better argues we have it backwards on freedom.

They discuss why General Magic collaps...

A 3-year old beat a PhD engineer at an engineering problem while playing legos—and that single moment kicked off a decade of research that exposed one of the strongest, most underrated biases in the human brain: we almost never subtract.

This week, Michael sits down with Dr. Leidy Klotz — University of Virginia engineering professor, former pro soccer player, and author of Subtract, which explored why your brain default...

More than 100,000 Americans die of drug overdose every year. The solution—or at least part of it—might be dorky as hell.

Sam Quinones spent 12 years reporting on America’s drug crisis and how — heroin, fentanyl, meth have reshaped the country. In this episode, l he unpacks how Mexican cartels replaced poppy fields with chemicals, lowered the price of meth by 90%, and unintentionally created a schizoph...