The Nik Hawks Show

On the surface, the story is straightforward. 2 guys become friends, start a company, decide to donate a percentage to charity. It's when you dive deep that a story gets interesting. TJ Ferrera and Sean Lake talk about the (way) back story of how they got into BUBS and what shaped them not just as entrepreneurs but as men. These two guys define smooth operators, top performers, and the wild spirit...

-importance of experts, addressing the last show Email from Mike in Flagstaff: "I basically agree with everything you say, but want to push back just a little on your comments about experts. I don't take issue with what you say as far as it goes. But, I do feel the general theme of not needing experts and that a generally competent person can learn what they need to know about any general topic ne...

John Gierach has long been a fly fishing hero of mine. What I didn't know, but came through clearly in this Paleo Treats Podcast interview, is that he's also a writing hero. We start the interview by talking about one of his major influencers, his Uncle Leonard. Leonard was "just good at things in a duct tape and baling wire kind of way. He didn't always do things right, but he always got things d...

I've been driving around lately listening to all my usual podcasts and going off on my quests down various seams of curiosity and thought I'd share some of my convos with myself, with you. This is the first solo-cast I've done, let me know if you'd like to hear more or if you'd rather get back to the interviews with another person. In this episode I'll talk about the following ideas: -dare to be g...

I spoke with Joshua Cooper Ramo in this podcast interview, partly about his latest book, The Seventh Sense and partly about his overall life and pursuit of excellence. Mr. Ramo started off as a journalist, working at Newsweek then for Time Inc back when, as he says, "it mattered who The Man of the Year was." He worked as both senior and as foreign editor at Time, and he wrote for them long enough...

Dr. Amy Kruse began tearing things apart as a (very) young girl, ripping apart her first typewriter at 5 years old. Raised as an only child by high school English teachers, she ended up in neuroscience working in the defense industry helping soldiers learn to shoot faster, more accurately. Of course. She currently works at the Platypus Institute, which is an "Applied Neuroscience" institute. That...

"The more we understand, the more rational we are and the more courageous we can be." In this conversation with Prof. Dr. Chahan Yeretzian , a Syrian born Armenian physical chemist based out Switzerland, we dive deep into where the arenas of science, academia, industry, culture, and coffee meet. From the advice he gives his students to why undergrads can't make good enough coffee, to the religion...

Ready to listen to the embodiment of curiosity? Bob flew around the world two and a half times in a plane about the size of a Ford F-250. He's visited a few hundred countries and the "accomplished" side of his bucket list reads like a compilation of any 5 normal people. "At a project up in Spirit Lake, Iowa, in a bar, a drunken popcorn seed salesman gave me a quote to live by: Seize upon the momen...

Every so often you come across a dude who appears normal but turns out to be a real gem. Brad Barlage is one of those guys. At 5'9 and all of 150 lbs, he's a rangy, stringy dude with bright eyes and a stoked smile. How you do one thing is how you do everything. A superb climber (redpointed 5.14), a real adventurer ( kite skiing Baffin Island with Andrew McClean ), a dog lover, and the kind of guy...

I first heard about Gavin when I watched The Rocky Mountains Traverse . The possibilities of paragliding immediately captured me, specifically the vol-biv work he and Will Gadd were doing. If you're into adventuring, whether it's kayaking, sailing, kite surfing, or paragliding, you'll probably dig Gavin's take on the world. Whether he talks about his early "frequent bad decisions" or how he's not...

Upon getting back into rock climbing after a 17 year hiatus, I quickly discovered Mark & Mike Anderson's contribution to training for the sport in the form of The Rock Climber's Training Manual . After reading through it I realized that these guys were demonstrating more than just an interest in training, this is total "pursuit of excellence" material. In this episode of the Paleo Treats podcast w...

I've been curious about AI, or Artificial Intelligence, for a few years now. I read with interest the opposing points of view in Pedro Domingos The Master Algorithm and Nick Bostrum's Superintelligence regarding how quickly machines are approaching human capacities for general intelligence vs what's called "narrow learning", or the ability to operate in one very small segment of a problem but to d...

Peter Defty from Vespa Power rejoins us and shares the life that brought him to be on the leading edge of fat burning performance. From his early days hunting and butchering animals on the farm to flying a biplane all over Guatemala as a young man to his current day job working to bring Vespa & OFM to performance driven athletes, this is a deep dive into a fascinating life. Enjoy!

David Easton builds "museum quality, visual masterpiece walls that happen to support the roof." His medium is rammed earth, he's been doing this for 40 years , and if you've ever loved any kind of architecture or building you'll dig this show. This is closer to Paleo than many of our other podcasts in the sense that rammed earth building is a "locavore" (or loca-building) method. Typically you'll...

Charlie Glass is an American journalist who has covered some of the most fascinating and horrific stories of our time. While you might not think a journalist has any connection to Paleo, these story tellers are vital to one of what we believe are the 7 Pillars of Paleo, and that's Community. Without someone to tell our stories we remain individuals only aware of those we know personally; people li...

Of all the paths to excellence, perhaps the most reliable is one based on the importance of personal responsibility. In this podcast, Brian Mackenzie from CrossFit Endurance shares with us what drove him from being a broken down ex-swimmer getting crushed on the run sections of the triathlon to one of the foremost minds in cross training for endurance. From running technique to eating habits to mi...

Peter Defty of VespaPower goes through the OFM (Optimized Fat Metabolism) pyramid in this fact-packed podcast. Peter is a long time student of endurance performance and specifically the effects of nutrition and goes through the whole process of transitioning from being a carb burner to a fat burner. Whether he's talking about who OFM is for (everybody) or "not being held hostage by food", Peter is...

Ian Dunican joins us today to talk about one of his favorite subjects (other than jiu-jitsu and ultra running), which is sleep. He's currently working on a PhD at the University of Western Australia (UWA) focused on the question, "Can you use sleep as a performance enhancer?" Starting off in the Irish Army as an infantryman, after five years he left the military and moved into personal training, e...

One of my favorite guests, Roz Savage combines the fierce heart of an adventurer with the ability to describe beautifully the wildest & loneliest places on the planet. As a Guinness World Record holder (first woman to row solo across 3 oceans), Roz is a shining example of someone following her dream. She started out as a money hungry young professional, saying “I was laboring under the illusion th...

Greg Skomal is the classic adventurous scientist; driven to discover all he can about his subject and willing to go anywhere to slake his thirst for knowledge. "Not all science is boring." He is the Senior Scientist at the Massachusetts Shark Research Program and works closely with both the Atlantic White Shark Conservancy and OCEARCH to study Great White Sharks. He literally wrote the book on sha...

"I never thought I would look forward to getting an email again." Dave is a news junkie and the author of daily email newsletter NextDraft , which he describes as a "modern day news column". He organizes the newsletter into the 10 most fascinating news items of the day, works on it for 3-4 hours in the morning and blasts it out around 1 pm PST. Dave is famous for having 75 tabs open at any one tim...

When Nick Sloane got the call to refloat the Costa Concordia in 2012, he was in New Zealand wrapping up another job and dreaming about playing golf back home in South Africa. When he said "yes" to the job he couldn't know that it would take 30 months, 500 team members, 26 nationalities and 130 divers a day in the water to get the big cruise ship off the ground and towed to Genoa, where she would u...

If you've paid attention to anything beyond the pages of paleo desserts on this website you won't be surprised that we've brought on another dog trainer to the Paleo Treats Podcast. The folks who are good, really good, at communicating with dogs HAVE to be in pursuit of excellence; they've developed skills the rest of us don't even know we have! This episode with Jean Donaldson draws on her experi...

Mike Friton has been working as an innovator for over 30 years. Known for his shoe designs and his extensive work with Nike, he's also helped smaller companies like Soft Star Shoes design minimalist shoes that support a healthy foot. Trained as an anthropologist, Mike focuses on bringing together many elements from the "fringes"; as a paper folder, weaver, and former competitive athlete (Junior Na...

"You must believe nothing." So says Tim Noakes, one of the most well respected exercise scientists in the running world. Author of Lore of Running and Waterlogged, Tim has radically changed his beliefs throughout the course of his 30+ year career, always in response to his own questions and the answers (or lack thereof) found in scientific literature. From discussing why studies of 7 people aren't...