I get a Champs, it's jumbo, it's fatty Harps, it's doctor Market's doctor Tiff over there at the Cook clinic. Where what do you specialize in? Again, doctor Cook? What's your specialty?
All of the things, punching in the face, noodling, whippets, m yeah, arangling.
Sounds like the ultimate therapy package. Yeah, it is.
It is.
You don't really have much on the actual doc because he's a doctor times three. He's got two PhDs and he's a medical doctor, so he's a doctor thrice, which is I'm trying to become a doctor once. And that's the fucking academic Mount Everest for me. But how old were you?
Doc?
Firstly, welcome Mark, How are you?
I'm great? Yeah, thanks for inviting me again.
How old were you when you were a medical doctor and you had your first and second doctorate?
At?
What age?
Was that? Good question? So I took time off my medical degree to do a PhD.
Then I went back into my medical degree, so I think it was about it might have been like twenty eight when I did finish my first doctor and I was one of the youngest professors. I was a professor at thirty seven and then I had my second PhD and my medical degree.
Wow wow, I love learning.
I spent a lot of time at UNI. I just love learning. I'm interested.
This is a dumb call. Well maybe it's not a dumb question, but I know you can't be objective about you. But are you highly intelligent, highly curious, very disciplined, very hard worker, or what is the overarching factor that allows you to be a doctor? Times three?
I am curious And the thing I focused on my whole life is fun, Like what is the most fun thing to do? And I always thought it was more fun to learn than to just work and make money. So I just I love being at UNI in that environment and learning and learning new things. So for me, it was about curiousity, what's the most fun? And I studied medicine cause I thought that would teach me how to have fun in life because I learned how to body works and how the mind works.
So that's my that's.
Really curiosity and a focus on fun. It's been my sort of secret weapon.
What's funny you say that? No pun intended, funny cookie, feel free to jump in and out at will. So I just want to read what's on your on your his could come back to haunt you. So on your homepage, I feel like you're under whoever your PR person is, they need to do better. I assume it's you. There's professor slash doctor Mark Cohen, wellness consultant, biohacker. Well, that could be Brian down the road who's never been to UNI.
Talk about underselling yourself, but I guess you can't write genius, and you wrote I bridge advanced science and ancient wisdom and offer simple, practical solutions that help you find fun, makes sense of life, master your mind and body, tame your toxic load, Live happy, healthy, and long. Now I'm sure you wrote that a while ago, but those five things. Find the fun, makes sense of life, master your mind and body, tame your toxic load, and live happy, healthy,
and long. I want to lean into those in what might become too small podcasts rather than big one one big one. So are you ready to go? Because I want to start with finding the fun.
Sure, that's always fun.
Yeah, So that seems like a very interesting I don't know that there would be too many people in the world who have done medicine because they thought it might help them have fun. I'm not saying it's not a good idea. Where did that correlation come from in your head?
I I think I've always been very strategic, and when I was in you know, I was I went to Melbourne High School and I was good academically. I wasn't a genius Academically, it's good. I just didn't have to get through in the top a few percent. But I really just thought about, Okay, I could go to engineering or law or medicine. I thought, like, what's going to teach me how the most fun and fulfilling life? And I saw people going into banking and hedge funds and money.
I was never really interested in money for the sake of money. I thought, I want to learn how to engage in life and have the most fun with my body and to have been fulfilled and be healthy and happy. And I figured medicine would do that. So it was a strategic decision for me to get into medicine. And it wasn't about I never really wanted to help sick people get healthy. I wanted to get healthy people super healthy. And I saw myself as just an ordinary person. But
so how can I stay healthy? How can I improve with age? I remember studying Chinese medicine, and you read about these Chinese martial artists and meditation teachers who get better as they get older. Yeah, you get these like seventy year old little martial art masters who throw twenty
five year old buff guys around. And I want that, I want to get better as I get older, and that that curiosity sort of led me through this whole part of Western medicine, Chinese medicine, engineering, and sort of wellness practices.
What year did you start medicine, do you remember? Okay, so that was your first year out of school. Yep, yeah, me too, wow, with the same age. And I guess the medical model correct me if I'm wrong. But back then was, as you alluded to, was very much, you know, treating sick people rather than promoting healthy very much reactive, not proactive.
That's right. Health promotion was just a very nascent field.
Then.
You know, wellness wasn't even a word that you heard, so that's right. An alternative medicine was pretty sort of out there.
All right.
Back to our topic, finding the fun. So what's the role of fun, laughter and joy in our lives as you see it? Like, what are the and what are the you know, when we're in business, we talk about features, advantages, and benefits, like here's an idea, here's a concept, here's a business model, or here's a product, features, advantages, benefits. What roles I mean, other than the obvious that fun is fun and we like laughter? What role can fun laughter enjoy play? And should we be strategic about it?
I think so.
So fun is often considered frivolous. You know, it's something you do in your leisure time. It's not a serious pursuit. But I think I have an opposite view. I think fun is a is a really basic biological, fundamental principle, and you have fun when you're on the edge of your capacity and there's a whole lot of you know, I tap into the research on flow states. So we
have a certain capacity and we have certain challenges. And if your capacity is way beyond your challenges, now it means you can do things easily, but you sort of get bored.
You're not fully engaged, and you know you can do stuff.
You're competent, but you're not really using one hundred percent of your capacity. And to be boring, if your challenges are way above your capacity, it's stressful and you know you can panic and you have anxiety because you know what you need to do is beyond your skill set. But when you hit a point where your capacity exactly matches your challenges, that's that's fun, that's flow state. That's when you're you're learning. And generally, what happens when your
capacity meets your challenges, your capacity naturally increases. You get because when you're on that edge, you start learning stuff. And if you have a look at little kids, you know, when you're a kid, you're learning stuff and it's really enjoyable actually, and I really believe you learn the most when you're having fun with it.
And that's pushing your boundary as a person.
And it might be physical capacity, it might be mental capacity, might be intellectual capacity. But when you really find something that matches your capacity and it requires one hundred percent of your focus and attention and physical skills, that's when you're most engaged with life. That's when you're the most fulfilled by life. And that's when your body works as a single unit, and that's when you're healthiest.
So these things are correlated.
And generally what happens is as you get older, your capacity increases, so you need bigger challenges, you end up doing more. And I find now that I still don't know what I'm going to do when I grow up.
Options, Yeah, you and me both, I'm figuring it out, but I feel like that, Sorry, there's a real benefit in consciously choosing, intentionally choosing to do hard things that you don't have to do, you know, like, oh, this is hard, but you know, I'm not talking about reckless hard. I'm talking about strategic, but still nonetheless difficult, you know, uncomfortable, unfamiliar,
all that stuff. And it's in the doing of that and then inserting ourselves in the middle of that hard stuff that we become different.
You know.
It's like I put up something on social media this morning and said something like, you know, we don't need less pressure, we need more resilience. And it's then when I'm more resilient because pressure is an individual experience, because you and I can be in the same situation. I feel pressured, you feel happy. So it's a subjective interpretation. It's a self creation.
And that's your that's based on your capacity and your mental capacity of you know, knowing what you're able to do and actually and so I love learning that I can do stuff I didn't know that I could do it.
Yeah, that's really enjoyable. And you're right.
By putting yourself in a difficult situation, whether it's going wake up in the morning, going for a run and jumping in an ice bath, or putting yourself in an uncomfortable position just to prove to yourself that you can cope with that, and practicing being relaxed in an uncomfortable situation builds that resilience, It builds that capacity, so you actually have more fun doing other stuff.
Yeah, that's right. And the thing that was heavy for you or hard for you, or difficult for you or painful for you becomes relatively doable and easy, even though the stimulus is the same, or the weight is the same, or the temperature of the water is the same or the number whatever. But you're different. So the subjective experience of that thing that doesn't change changes.
That's it.
And so has having to spend longer in the ice bark or you have to do more than lift heavier weight for whatever it is.
I was talking about. I wrote this morning about something It's like when I first like years and years ago, thirty years ago, when I first started talking to big audiences, and by big for me then you know, like one hundred plus people in real time. I remember when I did Early Days in my twenties, still like a gig with five hundred people, and I was so terrified there. I didn't sleep and I felt immense pressure, right, which that was I created it. It's just a room full
of people, right. But now in the same situation, I feel immense excitement and comfort and familiarity because I've done it. But it's the same guy doing essentially the same thing in front of the same sized audience. But there is no pressure, when in fact, the only thing that has really changed is the creator of the pressure. You know.
Yeah, I've had similar experiences when I was younger, you know, speaking to audiences and conferences and things. I guess you don't want to embarrass yourself, and you know, you want to be seen in a good light, so it's actually you become.
Very self conscious.
Yes, as I've gotten older, I realize, you know, if I'm speaking to big audiences, I'm really keen to share the content that I have and to impart that and it's a more of a dialogue, so it's not about me trying to present myself, you know, and you are trying to present yourself as an authority and deliver information and be seen in a good light. But it's more of actually engaging with the audience and sharing content. And
that's exciting to be able to share that content. So it's more exciting than scary.
Is it true that we kind of naturally laugh less as we get older? I feel like I read something once it said kids laugh laugh. I don't know what it is, eighty four times a day and adults laugh on average twice or something like some huge discrepancy.
I think that I don't know the actual statistics. I'm sure that's true.
Kids have a.
Lot more playtime you free, and kids learnt. The rate the kids learn is way beyond what the rate that adults learn. And I really believe that you learn the most when you're having fun, when you're laughing, when you're enjoying yourself, and that's when your capacity increases.
And it's also that laughter, Like even in the joke, you know.
You get taken down one route and then the punchline comes and tells you something else and you're making these new brain connections. Oh, I didn't know that was connected to that, and that creates a laughter response With kids. When you're learning new stuff, it's enjoyable because you're making new connections in your brain.
You're increasing your capacity to link things in life.
And yeah, I think as we get older, we get ossified and the entropy sets in. We become closed systems, and then we have chronic disease, we have inflammation, we have more mental rigidity, and we don't laugh as much, we don't have as much fun, and that's the tragity of aging.
I think, yeah, yeah, And also that that minds that almost like that, oh, well you're this old, therefore you need to do these things and not do those things. It's like age appropriate behavior. Oh that's not age appropriate, age appropriate fucking clothing age. I'm like, what even is that?
Well, that's social pressure, and that's caring about what other people think. You're the same with public speaking. When you care more about what other people think, you end up compromising yea, who you are rather than just being who you are, being that naturally and let other people think what they want. And that's hard to do because where humans are social beings, we need other people around us to look after us and take care of us and
respect us and think that we're good. So to go through life and not caring at all what other people think is actually a really difficult thing to do. But it doing stuff because of what other people think is actually a recipe for unhappiness. You can't control what other people think.
And isn't it amazing how much Tiff and I have spoken about this, how much emotion we invest in caring about what people that we don't know think or write or comment. And it's like I could get one hundred positive comments and one negative one and guess we'll get Guess what will get the attention, you know, and guess what will get my emotional investment?
Well, that'sary response. You really don't want to know.
The risks of a small negative thing is potentially life threatening, so you don't want to ignore, you know, or risks. But in the modern world, because we can amplify our reach. You know, I don't know how many people are going to hear this podcast, but you know, if you thought, Okay, I only want to say stuff that every all the audience is going to like, it's paralyzing, but you can't.
Yeah, that's that's a very valid point. I I've quoted this. One of my professors in my first degree said to me, mister Harpery goes, if you want to keep everyone happy all the time, then say nothing, do nothing, be nothing, and stand for nothing.
And then I'm happy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right. So there's five parts to this kind of I'll call it your mission statement, find the one. Number two. Number one is find the fun. Number two is make sense of life. Right, so, what sense have you made of life?
I've made lots of sense of life. And I had this sort of early in my medical career. I started condensing knowledge into little mnemonics and little word games and little tricks to compress meaning into a few words. And I've been doing that for nearly more than forty years now. And it ends up when you condense lots of meaning into a few words, it ends up as poetry.
Yeah.
So I've written all these, I've shared poems I think before with you.
But I've tried to integrate the Chinese medicine philosophy and Chinese cosmology with Western scientific knowledge and.
Bridge that and come to an understanding of how you know. And it's not a co incedance.
There's five points to my sort of mission statement because in both in Western and Eastern philosophy they lump things into five You know, you've got five reason So I actually lump a lot of things into five compartments, right, And.
I've when I decide well I'm going to do in life.
I came up with this a few years ago now and really guides what I do. And there are five aspects. So if I'm going to do something, it has to be fun. That's that's the that's like the momentum. That's the driving force behind everything. It has to bring like fortune, and that's not just money, but it has to increase my resources. So fun and fortune is measurable. They've got that the staccato, the fixed in Chinese men to be
wood element. It has to bring fame and it has to not that it has to be famous, but you want to leave a legacy of goodwill. So when you do stuff, you want people talking good things behind your back.
M hm.
So you're leaving a positive see behind you people saying good things. So fun, fortune, fame, fluency, and that that's your own capacity to do stuff. How fluent are you the language?
Fluent? Are you with your body?
Your ability, your skill set? And the final thing is family and friendships. So now I've got so many opportunities and things to do in my life, and I get all lead to do this or that, and if it brings fun, fortune, fame, fluency, and friendships, I do it. If it doesn't bring all those five, generally I don't. And then this podcast is really fun for me. This is fun sharing my my worldview. You know, hopefully people
say good things about me. It's not really going to be me and I don't get paid for this, but you know, if it puts that out in the world, it makes me fortunate. You know, I'm very fortunate to be able to share my views, and that that then comes back. I've become more fluent. The more I practice talking, public speaking, talking in podcasts, it builds my capacity.
And you know, now we're friends. So like, ye, yeah, you know what I love.
I love the idea that so you've done, you know, multiple degrees and you're a professor and you know all this stuff, but at the same time you're still like I would think most of your learning has not been in an academic well a lot's been in an academic environment, but maybe equal has been outside an academic environment, and I'm I'm always trying to find a way to share ideas and thoughts and occasionally scientific principles or ideas in a way that resonates with people. And I think you're
really good at that. You're taking stuff, feel good at taking stuff that could be boring or bland or complicated and distilling it into something that's really digestible, like emotionally, psychologically, behaviorally. Oh,
I get it. Like that's not you know, I think finding no disrespect to academics, but finding academics that have that capacity to say, well, this is all the stuff I've learned, this is what I've been taught and told and trained, but also some of that's bullshit a bit, and then there's this other stuff that I didn't learn
that's actually more helpful and empowering. And to bring that kind of like the mark distillation, like that synthesis of everything you've been taught and told and trained on top of the stuff that you've experienced and seen and been in the middle of to almost create your own kind of philosophical platform.
Well that's where well I have I mean, I've done you a lot of deep research into you know, ancient principles because you know, early humans and our ancestors, you know, they knew stuff and they condensed that.
So you know, I'm a student of history and of.
Medical history specifically, but also I've learned a lot just from being I'm being a doctor. You're in a really privileged position because you can talk to patients about anything. And I mean one of my mentors in the in the nineteen nineties was a doctor, Patch Adams, So.
You know him. Robin Williams paid him in the movie and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I became good friends with Patch and he always used to say that to be the best doctor, you want to create an intimate relationship with your patients.
So as a doctor, if.
You're really holding space, you can ask people about you know, their wildest dreams, their sexual fantasies, you know the color of their shit, you know their childhood.
Traumas, and they will tell you anything.
I mean, Patch Adams used to go to patients and say yes, used to go to their house and look through their sock draw and ask them, do you have.
A personal diary?
Can I take your diary home and read it so I can understand you better. And because of that intention, so you can actually build really intimate relationships with people and everybody, every human is fascinating. You know, there are no boring people. So when you actually have that intention, you actually learn what makes people tick.
There's a lot of learning in that.
So medicine was a great deal to go into it to learn about people.
And I've learned so much from my patients. And because when you're seeing people, especially and sick people that.
They're scared, they're in pain, they're anxious, So you actually see people at their worst. But the interaction you can have with them is super meaningful.
So if you help them out of that situation, you know they'll.
Remember you for a long long time afterwards, you know, perhaps for the rest of their life because you have helped them in this difficult situation.
So to have that many for impact with people teaches you something.
But it also it filters into your own capacity, of your skill set, but building with other things in life.
So right, being a doctor's very privileged.
Position, but you learn most of well, I learned most of my medical information not from what I learned at UNI, but from actually being with people.
And I've done that in a lot of different environments.
So you know, I've worked in emergency departments, I've worked at general practice, I've worked.
At festivals, I've traveled the.
World, I've worked in different alternative medical settings, and you know, I've learned in all of them.
I'm sure the answer to my next question is, well, lots of things. But is there one thing that springs to mind when I say, what's something that you've changed your mind about, like maybe a significant thing that you think a and now you think fucking Z.
Yeah, that's a great I think you asked me that once before, and it's a really great question.
Right, And I mean, I need to do better.
Well, well, I've always been very contrarian.
So I remember when Marjorine came out, and you know, I was saying, that's better than but I said, bullshit, you know, but it's the best, you know, so and and then there was, you know, the fight against that. The whole medical world was you know, low fat diyce and I was, that's bullshit. You know, I've seen through a lot of stuff that the medical world was sort of touting and then they've changed the medical world has changed your mind.
But I've always had that opposite view. I mean, one of the things that I'm just learning now.
I mean, I used to think that the whole financial world was all just bullshit and irrelevant and not not.
Irrelevant, but it was.
It was a scam that you couldn't get into, and I was never really focused on money and that.
Now I've actually been, you know, throughout the pandemic.
In the last few years, I've been studying the history of money, and that's been really interesting. And now I mean, I'm proponent of bitcoin, and I'm super fortunate because I you know, I turned sixty this year.
I got my super I dumped it all into bitcoin. That's been sensational for me.
Hang on, when did you dump it in? What months?
I was from March onwards? I sort of had too.
Good good time to dump because you've already doubled your money, haven't you.
Yeah, well almost, yeah so.
But then, but learning about that there is a form of money that actually represents value, that that's not controlled by governments, and that whole world, the whole world of economics and finances, I really wasn't interested in it. Now become interested in in the power to change people for the bet for the for the better, and actually have
a good effect in the world. So that's that's been a real learning for me at the moment, because in the past, I've just you know, I mean, I didn't really even though I did medicine, most and a lot of people do medicine of the status and the money, you know, I was, I was a university student for thirty years. You don't make money doing that. So money
wasn't really high in my priorities. But now it's like, oh, wow, money is a force of good in the world, or can be a force of good in the world when it's egalitarian and decentralized and not controlled by people with the puppet strings. So that's that's been a real change in my life. And I guess I'm you know, I'm super fortunate because she always thought that by the time I retired or but by to my access, my super
the whole financial system is going to collapse. And now I see, Okay, we're gonna have this nice transition or nice condition, and I'm really optimistic about the future.
So that that whole attitude towards money has changed.
Not that you know, I'm really focused on money now, but it's like I just just have a lot of disdain for that whole world.
And now I've got more.
Respect for seeing that the positive things that can happen. But what else have I changed my I mean I used to be I mean, I've never been political ever, you know, left or right or anything. But I was really brought into the whole climate debate and carbon dioxide and all this sort of stuff and thinking we have to do sustainability. But I never thought about it from the climate or carbon doxide perspective. Always thought about it from a toxicity perspective.
Yeah, And but.
I was, you know, I used to talk a lot about sustainability in the wellness world and looking at you know, water usage and carbon doxide emission. But now I'm changed my tune on that. But I'm really I mean that one of the items on my you know, my mission statement is to obtain your toxic load.
How can we have it's toxicity, So that that's that's been a focus.
But I have changed my my attitudes a little bit about I mean, I'm into you know, saving power and you know, not wasting not wasting things, but not because it's going to change the climate or you know, overpopulation all those sort of issues.
You know, I think we need more people.
I think people are an asset on the world, So that's I guess. No, I really have great hope for people, and I used to think I used to discount a lot of people just to have thinking ninety people and muppets, and.
That doesn't bode well for you, and itiv Hey, we've got to wind We've got to wind up. But I want to ask you one I just want you to riff for a few minutes on this very commonly spoken about idea, which is seeing as we're talking about making sense of life, which is life purpose, everyone is like this kind of I don't know, this spiritual thing that we've got to find our life purpose under some mystical rock somewhere, or or maybe we choose it and create
it and then live it. What are your thoughts on that as an idea.
Well, I think it is great to have a purpose.
And I think one of the greatest things I've had in my life is a focus. You know, I've focused on fun and I've done that through the sort of the container of medicine. So that's been a great and because I've done this for forty years now, you know, I've sort of propelled myself far down that route where a lot of people they don't know what they want in life. And I'm a big fan of Joseph Campbell who says follow your bliss, which is similar to my
stating you find the fun. You know, if you find your fun in life, that will guide you to where you're going to get the most fulfillment and the most learning and the most enjoyment, and also you're going to be the most asset to other people. And in my life, I've always said, rather than fighting what I don't want, I'm actually going to work towards what I do want.
What you don't want, you're focusing on something that's not fun, you know, it's something that's negative, and you're fighting all the time, Whereas if you're focusing on what you want, you're focusing on something that's fun, that's enjoyable, that you're aiming for and working towards that is actually really rewarding. So having a purpose in life is finding what you want and working towards that, and that and the guide
for what you want to focus on. I used to have a lot of discussions with PhD students and you know, career decisions, and I love those discussions because you Again, a little discussion can put someone on a whole trajectory towards a whole different life purpose. But you know, telling people what do you love doing that When you're doing it, you lose track of the time.
Once just something you read.
When you're reading it, you know, you're just you're reading up all night because you're staying up or not reading that because that's you're really interested in that.
They're the things you want to focus on.
That's where you'll find your purpose, That's where you'll find your fun, and that's where you'll get the most learning, the most rewarding life by focusing on the things that you really enjoy that turn you on.
So that's yeah, that's that's as far as a purpose. It doesn't have to be a big goal.
I'm going to change the world, you know, I must want to get to Mars or whatever it is.
But it's it's finding and it.
Can be just built in creating a family, bring stuff with the kids, creating a beautiful environment. But the things that you enjoy, focus on them, and the things that you don't want in the world, let them just you pass.
You by last one just quickly. Sixty seconds is contentment sustainable? Is it or is it transient? Like can we just because it seems like us humans a lot of us wherever we are, it's not where we want to be. Whatever we have, it's not what, it's not enough, whatever we achieve, it's got to be a bit more like it seems like contentment eludes us.
Well, I think it's you're going to balance between the present and the future. So you know, you can be content in the moment, but you still want to work towards something in the future, and that that's that's a real it's a paradox because you want to you want to be in the moment one hundred percent right now, but you're still working towards a potential future.
We have to we have to snap between the two.
And that's the paradox of being human, where when you're when you're totally in the moment, when you're totally in flo you're.
Not actually thinking that's contentment. But when you start to think.
Of the past or the future, then you're not happy and you have to change things. And we need to do both, and I think we need a balance. So you want to balance being fully content in the moment, just happy with where you are and how you are, but also working towards a better future.
That's why we get you. Hey, mate, we appreciate you. Thank you so much for coming to play on the new project again. Do you want to direct our audience to your website or any other source or tool that you want to point them out?
My website's doctor Mark D M A r C dot co dot co. I'm a little bit active on LinkedIn and Facebook, but vary. Sometimes when I travel and do stuff, I put out a lot. Sometimes I don't put out much at all, but yeah.
Doctor Mark dot com. I've got a few businesses.
We make combuch of vinegars and tonics and water filters, and I've got children's books and I've got poetry, free poetry in my website.
So yeah, people can check me out on my website.
They can email me if they want to through my website if they want to connect.
But yeah, thanks for inviting me on. It's always it's always a pleasure.
Thanks mate. We appreciate you. Thanks TV. Thanks boys,