Mighty Pursuit Podcast

Exercise is one of the few things nearly everyone agrees we should do. And yet, most people still hate or dislike doing it.
We usually interpret that resistance as a personal failure. If you do not want to wake up early, drive to a gym, and lift heavy objects under bright lights, you must be lazy, undisciplined, or insufficiently committed to your health.
Dr. Daniel Lieberman believes we have the problem completely backward.
For most of human history, people did not exercise for its own sake. They moved because survival required it. Then modern life removed movement from nearly every part of the day and told us to schedule it back in as a separate activity.
So, of course, you do not want to exercise. The human body evolved to conserve energy whenever movement was unnecessary.
But that does not make movement unimportant. Regular physical activity remains one of the most powerful tools we have for preventing disease, preserving function, and extending life. Some studies have found as much as 10 years.
And few scientists alive have done more to help us understand why.
Daniel Lieberman is one of the most influential evolutionary biologists of his generation. The legendary Harvard professor has spent decades reconstructing how the human body evolved to walk, run, carry, rest, and survive. His research has fundamentally shaped modern thinking about endurance running, barefoot movement, physical activity, and the mismatch between our ancient biology and modern lives.
With more than 13,000 citations and a Google Scholar h-index of 91, Lieberman is not simply commenting on the science of movement. He helped build the field through which much of it is now understood.
This conversation asks a completely different question.
Not: how do you force yourself to work out? 
But: how do you build a life where movement feels natural again?
Chapters0:00 - Intro1:15 - Why We Don’t Want To Exercise6:06 - How Exercise Adds Years To Your Life12:13 - Why Exercise Is Not “Natural”25:07 - Is Sitting the New Smoking?38:50 - Do We Actually Need 10,000 Steps A Day?47:05 - Does Running Destroy Your Body?54:07 - Why Losing Muscle Is Dangerous (Starting at 30)59:20 - Why Chronic Disease Is Exploding in Modern World1:15:29 - Two Hacks To Stay Healthy: Necessity & Rewarding1:27:13 - The Four Basic Capacities We Need1:33:18 - A Final Word Of Encouragement
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Dr. Daniel Lieberman Links:Google Scholar Profile: https://shorturl.at/VdhjvExercised (Book): https://a.co/d/084jbaho
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

Something strange happens in the weeks before death.
Patients often begin seeing loved ones who have already died. They say someone is in the room. They describe being visited. And again and again, they repeat some version of the same phrase:
“I’m going home.”
This is not just anecdotal. In one Hospice Buffalo study, 88.1% of dying patients reported a deathbed vision. That finding echoes research from nearly fifty years earlier, when investigators examined tens of thousands of accounts from people approaching death.
But here’s the part that’s hardest to dismiss: hospice workers and researchers consistently report that these experiences do not behave like ordinary delirium or hallucination.
They seem to be something else.
Almost as if the boundary between two worlds is beginning to thin.
Hospice nurse Julie McFadden has witnessed this firsthand across thousands of deaths. Last year, we invited Julie onto the podcast, and more than 500,000 people watched that conversation.
This time, we wanted to go deeper.
Why do so many dying patients say they’re going home? And what might that reveal about where home actually is?
CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro1:45 - Dying Patients Say They’re Going Home8:09 - 80% Of People Have Deathbed Visions13:38 - The Skepticism Towards The Subject19:37 - Dead Relatives Start To Appear To Them28:27 - How Patients Describe The Other World34:25 - Pets Are Aware When People Are Dying37:36 - When Julie Witnessed a Miracle48:47 - Wrestling with Deathbed Visions56:23 - Regrets At The End of Life
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Julie McFadden: Links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hospicenursejulieTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@hospicenursejulieYouTube: https://youtube.com/@hospicenursejulieNothing To Fear (Book): https://a.co/d/imBFpLb
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

141 million.
That’s how many people have watched an extraordinary story unfold in Utah over the last six months.
Two friends, Chandler and Josh, met a homeless man named Trevor. Then they did something almost no one else would do: they invited him to live in their home. A home without locks on the bedroom doors.
When we first came across the story, we had a lot of questions. In an age where almost everything is documented online, it’s fair to wonder what’s real and what’s staged. 
But after spending time with Chandler and Josh behind the scenes, hearing how it all happened and what life with Trevor has actually been like, we came away with the impression that these guys are exactly who they appear to be.
So this episode is about Trevor’s story. But it is also about you. 
Because underneath what Chandler and Josh did is something almost all of us are searching for: a life that actually feels meaningful.
Modern life keeps telling us the same thing: heal yourself, protect yourself, optimize yourself. And while those things matter, millions of people have done all of them and still feel empty, powerless, and profoundly alone.
So what if the life we’re looking for is not found by making life even more about ourselves? What if it begins by giving more of ourselves away?
This is the unbelievable story of what happened when two men opened their home to Trevor.
And hearing how it unfolded may change the direction of your own life.
CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro1:35 - Trevor Almost Got Arrested on Day 14:38 - Everyone Warned Them Not to Do It8:54 - Were Their Motives Genuine?16:50 - The First Time Meeting Trevor23:58 - When Trevor Kept Ghosting Them35:30 - Asking Trevor To Move In With Them45:20 - The First Few Weeks Of Living Together1:00:57 - A Dentist Offers Trevor $70,000 of Dental Work for Free1:03:48 - Trevor’s Son Finds Him a Viral Instagram Video1:23:04 - Why Moving Trevor In Actually Worked1:42:42 - Creating Trevor’s Hinge Dating Profile (And It Blows Up)1:49:58 - Why Most People Think They Could Never Do This
Join Our Newsletter (The Nine):https://mightypursuit.com/thenine 
Chandler & Josh Links:Instagram (Chandler): https://www.instagram.com/chandler.peach/Instagram (Josh): https://www.instagram.com/lovewithjc/Good Intentions: https://thegoodintentionsclub.com/
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
If you know someone whose radical generosity has transformed another person's life, we'd love to tell more stories like this.Email us: hello@mightypursuit.com

We’re living through a strange reversal.
Ten years ago, the body positivity movement was everywhere. The message was simple: your appearance is not the center of who you are. Stop objectifying women. Stop treating beauty as their greatest value. Celebrate bodies instead of ranking them.
And yet, somehow, the conversation has completely flipped.
Beauty is no longer just something to possess. It has become something to leverage for attention, status and opportunity. And in its most extreme form, for income itself.
We were once told, "You're more than your body." Now the message increasingly feels like, "Your body may be your greatest asset."
Few people have watched this shift more closely than Dr. Renee Engeln. One of the world's leading researchers on beauty, body image, and self-objectification, she has spent decades studying the psychological forces shaping how women see themselves.
In 2017, she published Beauty Sick, warning that our obsession with appearance was becoming a public health crisis. Nearly a decade later, many of her predictions have come true.
This conversation isn't just about why women feel trapped by beauty anymore. It's about why, for so many, beauty has come to feel like the only way out.
Chapters:0:00 - Intro2:13 - The Paradox of Catcalling5:04 - Why Beauty Is About Power14:21 - The Origins Of Self-Objectification24:44 - The Illusion Beauty Is Attainable40:52 - Your Looks Will Decline (Eventually)44:54 - Is Showing Off Your Body Empowering?58:43 - When People Only Love You For Your Beauty1:09:35 - Grieving The Way The World Is
Join Our Newsletter (The Nine):https://mightypursuit.com/thenine 
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Dr. Renee Engeln Links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beauty_sick/Google Scholar: https://shorturl.at/xxHWzBook: https://amzn.to/4vvkxhE
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

Something massive has changed.
Over the last two decades, billions of people stopped praying.
The numbers reflect it from every angle. Religious affiliation has fallen. Daily prayer has declined. And for the first time in recent history, an entire generation is coming of age without inheriting a ritual human beings have carried across cultures for thousands of years.
This episode investigates what happens when one of humanity's oldest practices quietly disappears.
Enough time has now passed to ask what changed.
Science is beginning to provide the answer.
And the results have profound implications for your mind, your body, your relationships, your purpose, and the life you're building.
CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro2:02 - The Downfall of Prayer11:36 - The Rise of A New God20:47 - The World On Your Shoulders35:31 - The Admission You Must Make39:02 - The Reconstruction43:28 - When Something Speaks Back47:16 - The Greatest Risk
Related Episodes:
https://youtu.be/jDkH6SWvnJ4
https://youtu.be/DbUlOAhrfB0 
Join Our Newsletter (The Nine):https://mightypursuit.com/thenine 
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

On January 18, 2003, Vinney Tolman was found dead in the bathroom of a restaurant.
By the time medics discovered him, he had likely been there for close to an hour. And here's the most interesting part: they placed him in a body bag.
As they were taking him away, a rookie medic decided to check him one more time. Against all odds, Vinney came back to life.
But the real story isn’t just that he died. It’s what he says happened while he was gone.
If you’ve been following along with us, you know this is a subject we’ve taken seriously for a while. A few months ago, we released a documentary-style episode on what science has revealed about the afterlife. 
And back in 2024, we sat down with one of the leading scientists in the field of near-death studies, a field that examines patients who clinically died, came back, and described where they had been.
But today is different.
Because today, we’re not talking about near-death experiences from the outside. We’re sitting with someone who says he had one.
And because we take this subject seriously, we knew that if we ever brought someone on to describe what they saw after death, the circumstances around the death had to matter. It had to be extreme. 
It had to be difficult to explain away. We needed to understand what happened medically, who was there, how long he was gone, and whether the basic facts of the story held up under scrutiny.
After doing the background work, we don’t think Vinney’s story is something you can casually dismiss.
So for the next two hours, you’ll hear what happened. The circumstances around his death. What he says he experienced while he was gone. And then you can decide what to do with it.
CHAPTERS:0:00 - Intro2:19 - How Vinney Died6:52 - Separating From His Body24:39 - Verifying It Actually Happened30:20 - The Life Review43:13 - The Bright Light47:45 - Experience of Time55:59 - Entering Another World1:12:29 - Coming Back In His Body1:30:02 - A Stunning Realization in Wyoming1:35:27 - The Lessons Vinney Learned
Related Episodes:https://youtu.be/DbUlOAhrfB0https://youtu.be/m-9o5aFAqrI
Join Our Newsletter (The Nine):https://mightypursuit.com/thenine 
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

We’re living through a boredom epidemic. Sexual boredom, that is.
 
More women are reporting low sexual desire than ever before. Many Gen Z women are stepping away from sex altogether, and in long-term relationships, the number of women who want frequent sex often declines with each passing year.
 
If you’re living inside this dynamic, it can be deeply frustrating on both sides. As a woman, you may wonder why you no longer want something you used to enjoy, or whether something is wrong with you. As a man, it can feel like rejection from the person you most want to feel desired by.
 
Few people understand this tension better than Dr. Lori Brotto. While many people claim expertise in sex, Dr. Brotto is one in the truest sense. She has spent decades studying women’s desire, published hundreds of scientific papers, and worked with thousands of patients.
 
As both a psychologist and a sex therapist, she is undoubtedly one of the world’s leading experts in sex.
 
So why is this all happening? We’re about to find out.
 
CHAPTERS:
0:00 - Intro
1:45 - Doing The Grocery List During Sex
13:13 - 43% Of Women Have Low Desire
18:47 - Women Are Different Than Men
21:26 - Spontaneous vs. Responsive Desire
34:10 - Understanding Turn-Ons vs. Turn-Offs
48:28 - When Your Relationship Becomes Boring
1:07:24 - The Problem With How Long Sex Lasts
1:25:59 - Is Low Desire Actually An Issue?
1:30:47 - Addressing A Desire Mismatch
1:39:20 - Maybe You Should Stop Having Sex
1:46:19 - Sex Must Include Some Sort of Novelty
1:51:13 - The Power of Mindfulness in Sex
2:01:16 - When You Are No Longer Attracted To Your Partner
2:07:19 - How Often You Should Have Sex
Join Our Newsletter (The Nine):https://mightypursuit.com/thenine 
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Dr. Lori Brotto Links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drloribrotto/Google Scholar: https://shorturl.at/ZKh9w
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

What if the source of your greatest pain is also someone close to you?
A parent. A sibling. A partner. Someone you didn’t just love, but needed.
Maybe the pain was obvious. Yelling. Fear. A house where your body knew something was about to happen before anything even started.
Or maybe it was harder to name. No screaming or violence. Just the suffocating pressure to become who someone else needed you to be. Reading the room and managing their emotions. Holding everything together.
And to make it even more complicated, it wasn’t bad all the time. There were moments where it felt like love. Moments where things were okay. Just enough to make you question everything else.
There’s a name for what this does to a person: relational trauma.
More than half the population is carrying some version of it, even if they wouldn’t use that language to describe it.
That’s why we sat down with Dr. Frank Anderson, one of the world’s leading trauma experts. He trained at Harvard, has spent more than thirty years sitting with people inside this exact reality, and has helped thousands understand what happened to them and why it still feels the way it does.
What makes Frank rare is that this isn’t just something he’s studied. It’s something he’s lived. He grew up in a home where he was in constant physical danger, which allows him to speak about trauma with a level of clarity, precision, and compassion few people can.
Because the truth is that relational trauma doesn’t end cleanly. Sometimes the person who hurt you is still in your life. Sometimes they’ve never acknowledged what happened. Never once apologized or taken responsibility.
Which means you’re still carrying the damage while they keep living like nothing happened.
Dr. Anderson doesn’t simplify that. He doesn’t offer easy forgiveness frameworks or tidy resolution arcs. He goes into all of it: the grief, the anger, the loyalty, the confusion, and the impossible complexity of loving someone who hurt you.
That’s what makes this one of the most honest conversations we’ve ever had on this show.

Every night, there is something happening inside your body that is either quietly protecting you or quietly working against you.
And the hardest part is that you may not feel the difference right away. You wake up. You go through your day. You might even think you’re fine. But underneath the surface, your brain, immune system, heart, metabolism, and emotional regulation are all being shaped by the quality of your sleep.
When sleep breaks down, the consequences can reach almost every system in the body. Your brain may be less able to clear the proteins associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Your immune system may become less effective at identifying and destroying cancer cells. Your heart, blood sugar, stress response, mood, memory, and decision-making can all become compromised.
Not just because of what you ate. Not just because of whether you exercised. But because of how you slept.
And yet, we’ve built an entire culture that treats sleep like it’s optional. It becomes the first thing we cut when there aren’t enough hours in the day. There is even a kind of pride in it: the early mornings, the late nights, the badge of honor that comes from needing less rest than everyone else.
But the science has arrived. And what it shows is that many of us have been making one of the most consequential mistakes of our lives every single night without realizing it.That’s why we sat down with Dr. Matthew Walker, neuroscientist, professor at UC Berkeley, and author of Why We Sleep. His book didn’t just become a bestseller. It became a cultural phenomenon, changing how millions of people understand the role of sleep in human health.
It made doctors rethink their advice. It made leaders rethink their schedules. And it helped reveal something most of us were never taught: sleep isn’t just one pillar of health among many. It may be the foundation everything else depends on.
How well you eat, how hard you train, how clearly you think, how emotionally steady you feel, and how long your body can keep repairing itself are all connected to how well you sleep. This is a conversation we’ve been working on for over a year. And it was worth the wait. Because when it comes to sleep, there are very few people in the world who understand the science at this level.
What Dr. Walker lays out here has the potential to change how you think about your health entirely.
Chapters:0:00 - Intro2:00 - The Mind-Blowing Benefits of Sleep30:25 - The Four Things That Actually Determine Good Sleep44:09 - Why We Wake Up At 3 A.M.56:10 - Overcoming Anxiety Around Sleep1:11:48 - How To Set The Conditions For Great Sleep1:44:44 - When You Do Everything Right And Can’t Sleep
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
Dr. Matt Walker Links:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drmattwalker/X: https://x.com/sleepdiplomatWhy We Sleep: https://amzn.to/4e9AfJM
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com

Let's get this out of the way: we’re not here to play with your emotions.
If you clicked because you’ve lost someone, we know what this topic carries. And if you clicked because you don’t trust the title, good. A claim this personal should never be accepted at face value.
To be as clear as possible: this episode is not built on religion. Not Christianity, Islam, Hinduism or Buddhis,. Not any holy book. And it’s not built on sensational claims or stories you simply have to “believe.”
Rather, we examine seven independent fields of study that collectively span 155 years of research. Inside each field are serious scientists, clinicians, and thinkers. 
Some researchers have connected the dots that we lay out. But to our knowledge, no one has stepped back and laid it out in one straight line.
That’s what this episode attempts to do.
And at the end, we’ll talk about what it means.
Because if these fields are pointing where they appear to be pointing, the implications are substantial. Not just for what happens after death, but for grief, love, consciousness, and the possibility that the people we’ve lost may not be as gone as we were taught to believe.
CHAPTERS:0:00 - 7 Fields, 155 Years of Research2:10 - How This Was Possible To Study4:56 - Tier 1A Evidence5:15 - Near Death Studies16:36 - Hospice Care25:00 - Tier 1B Evidence25:27 - Attachment Science28:51 - Grief Science32:38 - Anthropology38:11 - Tier 2 Evidence38:38 - ADC45:25 - AIR52:29 - Interpretations
This episode is a sequel, but you don’t need to have seen the first one to follow it. Both stand on their own. To watch the earlier episode on the afterlife, you can find it here:https://youtu.be/DbUlOAhrfB0
If you’re interested in Continuing Bonds and ADC, and would like to see a future episode on what these can look like practically in everyday life, sign up for our email list to be notified when it’s released:https://mightypursuit.com/thenine/
List of Resources & Research:https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZGcfXdgKHyRJ2v7DV-gaA4zyBl0ZwctATrdRJuiIwDc/edit?tab=t.0
Mighty Pursuit Links:Website: https://www.mightypursuit.comInstagram:  https://www.instagram.com/mightypursuit/TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@mightypursuit/X: https://x.com/MightyPursuit
For business inquiries: hello@mightypursuit.com