Aubrey
00:07-00:12
All right, welcome back to Generations. I'm one of your co-hosts, Aubrey.

Peter
00:12-00:15
And I am your other co-host, Peter.

Aubrey
00:15-00:19
So, Dad, how are ya? How have you been the last few weeks?

Peter
00:19-00:22
Hanging in there. Hanging in there.

Aubrey
00:22-00:22
Yeah.

Peter
00:22-00:36
It's you know, I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's still just like the the denouement of everything between, you know, your brother coming home and the wedding and all of that or what, but I'm just like, I feel trashed.

Aubrey
00:32-00:51
This is Yeah Yeah.

Peter
00:36-00:50
Like I feel absolutely trashed. I don't know what the problem is. It's like I get up in the morning and I'm like, I can make myself maybe go for a walk to like at least get some sort of exercise in, but more than that, I just don't have it in me right now.

Aubrey
00:51-01:33
Has work been extra rough too, or just Yeah, always Right, right.

Peter
00:55-01:32
You know, it hasn't so much been extra rough, and the last couple weeks have been okay. It's just been this cumulative feeling just exhausted from fighting with like administrative people to pull their heads out of their asses. And and like basically it's just like Let us do what's best for our patients and for our people. And oh, you don't have the slightest idea what that is because you're completely disconnected. So maybe get out of the way.

Aubrey
01:33-01:34
Always is the fight.

Peter
01:34-01:42
But just like constant fight to to to do that and oh good lord I'm tired.

Aubrey
01:42-01:44
Yeah, no kidding.

Peter
01:44-01:45
So I don't know.

Aubrey
01:44-01:46
That's rough.

Peter
01:45-01:46
But how are you?

Aubrey
01:46-02:45
You know, I'm doing pretty good. Um I kind of had to suffer a whole week by myself 'cause Hayden was gone for work trip things, you know. Um which was rough so I was here alone for a very long time. uh like s five whole days, which considering the fact we did long distance for like four years, you would think that wouldn't be that bad, but it's just like the trauma of being dropped off at the airport or having to drop someone off at the airport and then when I'm not immediately with him, I'm like, Oh, this means I'm not gonna see him for a month and a half or two months. months or something. Like my body immediately goes into the okay, time to just go numb and feel just like the m depression, despair for the next few days until you can figure out your routine again and then go back to your routine and until you see him again.

Peter
02:30-02:31
Right.

Aubrey
02:45-02:58
So I kind of did not do well. being alone. And I don't think the long distance trauma will go away for a very long time. Cause that was a lot.

Peter
02:57-03:04
You know, I bet that it will go away a little faster than you think.

Aubrey
03:04-03:06
I hope so.

Peter
03:05-03:23
I I think it will still stick around, but I I think it will go away a little faster than you think because I I think our minds can be and bodies. can be surprisingly resilient.

Aubrey
03:23-03:26
Yeah. Yeah. I hope so.

Peter
03:25-03:38
So that's you're still gonna feel it some, but I would be willing to bet that it isn't Especially now that like you guys are married and everything.

Aubrey
03:29-03:46
Yep Yeah, I hope so too, because he's gonna have to travel quite a bit for work.

Peter
03:40-03:42
I bet you that it will fade. I hope so.

Aubrey
03:47-03:56
And to be fair, the the three-week thing he just did is is out of the ordinary, we have found out.

Peter
03:47-04:29
Yeah, we Gotcha Yeah.

Aubrey
03:55-05:15
is that was not even for the longer trips, um, when people are starting out with Epic and it's a big customer, he usually people in his role are only supposed to be out for like a week and a half to two weeks. It's not supposed to be three weeks. Um so that was a bit of a rough. And it being right around the wedding and everything was just You know, lots of everything was everything was happening. There was lots of things going on. Extra exhausting, extra complicated and stressful, and Yeah, so you know he's been back for a week now, which has been great. So I've, you know, been applying to some jobs and looking into applying to the grad program at um the university in town. Um if I could get into that, that would be great. But it is a very, very, very competitive program. As I'm sure I've said before on the pod. So I'll try my best, but it's not like I have absolute straight A's all four years. College is way too hard for that for me. So Yeah, so we'll see, but I'm I'm just chilling for now.

Peter
05:10-05:12
Oh, yeah, a hundred percent.

Aubrey
05:16-05:35
Just You know, kind of soaking in the last bits of warm weather before it gets really, really cold and very snowy here. in Wisconsin. So yeah, I've been doing pretty good. But I was thinking you could introduce our topic for today.

Peter
05:32-06:12
Good. Sure. So our topic for today, and and I hoped that it would be I don't know. When I had this idea, I thought, you know, this might be kind of timely where you have finished um your undergraduate. But again, you are planning on going back to graduate school as and again kind of playing off the idea of of generations, right? I have been out of school school. um gosh, nineteen years. It'll be twenty years next summer when I graduated from medical school.

Aubrey
06:11-06:17
Yeah.

Peter
06:12-06:23
And and residency, while it still is obviously postgraduate education, it's not the same. It's just not so much of it is You know what you could call on-the-job education.

Aubrey
06:23-06:24
Right.

Peter
06:24-06:45
Um and so I I read an article early in September by a guy named David Perell, uh or Perel, I don't know. Never heard of him before. Not even exactly sure how this article came through. Um I I actually know I bet you I know what it was. I bet you it was so So I use a service called ReadWise.

Aubrey
06:45-06:47
Mm-hmm.

Peter
06:45-07:50
I'd heard about it for a little while and I was like, that seems dopey. I don't think that's for me. And then I finally decided to try it and I was like, oh no, I'm hooked. So what ReadWise is, it's a couple things. It started out as a service that could connect to Um it could connect to kind of your Kindle library and other things like that. They had a plug-in for browsers where you could You could look, you know, you're on the internet, you find an article, you can highlight that article, and then it would save those highlights to your ReadWise account. And then you go and you open the ReadWise app, and depending on how you have it set up, when you open it every day, it will surface a certain number of things that you've highlighted. And like I say, I didn't think that that was going to be that useful. And then I started using it and I was like, actually, you know, highlighting is one of those things that I've always thought, I always thought was more performative than anything.

Aubrey
07:50-07:51
Yeah.

Peter
07:50-08:08
You know, you see people highlighting and you get books and they're all full of highlighted highlighted passages. And I remember I'd get used books in uh in college. And you open a page and you're like, there's more stuff highlighted than isn't. I mean, what is the highlighting done? Are you just gonna go back and read your highlights?

Aubrey
08:07-08:07
Right.

Peter
08:08-08:10
You're reading like 90% of the dang book.

Aubrey
08:10-08:10
Right.

Peter
08:10-09:56
Like what what the seriously? So read wise, I think makes the highlights useful because using spaced repetition, it's sort of sort of randomly going through and it's picking 10. It's not like the 10 most recent. It's It's going back and it's pulling from all of your different highlights and it's surfacing them. And then you get a chance and you go through and you read them. You can add notes, you can add tags, you can low heart it, you can um can keep it. You could actually say, you know what, now this isn't that meaningful and you could discard it. But then they added ReadWise Reader. And ReadWise Reader is basically a read it later type service where you can send articles to ReadWise Reader. And what it does is, you know, like a lot of these other tools, it strips out all the crap and just makes basically a text and the images that are actually in there. It just makes those a um It makes those just an article that you can easily read. And then you can highlight in ReadWise Reader, and again, it automatically syncs all those highlights to your ReadWise account. And so I've been using it and I use it a lot. I mean I use it every day. And they send out every week a newsletter. Where they say, oh, here's some articles, or here's the most highlighted PDF from our users this week, or here's this. And and so you'll get things that you otherwise wouldn't get. Now that I think about it, that's where that came from. So Uh it was called uh Learn Like an Athlete, I think was the title of it. And the idea behind this is he was talking about knowledge workers, which I would consider myself in many ways a knowledge worker. You know, so much of my job depends on my knowledge.

Aubrey
09:55-11:21
Right Oh no.

Peter
09:56-11:21
And I do have to learn. Obviously, we have to do continuing medical education or CME. And I do that. But I like to learn in other parts of my life. And over the years, I've signed up for a bunch of courses on like Udemy, U D E M Y, and and I've got a bunch of books about different things, but it's kind of like, oh, I'll start a course and then sometimes I finish and sometimes I don't. And The crux of this article was that we should come up with specific learning plans, and he recommends doing it in kind of three-month sprints. So every quarter we have a new learning subject or a new topic that we want to focus on, and then we make a plan and we apply it. And this really resonated with me. So to get to kind of the the meat of what I'm going to be doing, and then I'd like us to just sort of talk about lifelong learning and what our plans, our goals, what have we done? What do we want to do? That kind of stuff. But I uh, you know, in the past three years, I wrote a novel during November for National Novel Writing Month. This year I still wanted to write another book, but NanoRammel just it it's kind of lost some of its the not for profit organization that's behind it and has been since nineteen ninety six dissolved in twenty twenty five.

Aubrey
11:21-11:22
What?

Peter
11:22-11:36
And there were a lot of reasons. There were some accusations of like grooming happening in like the official forums, that mods had not been uh appropriately, you know, shutten down and stuff.

Aubrey
11:28-11:35
Oh, geez. Wow. Yeah.

Peter
11:36-11:54
And then there was uh there was kind of a stance, uh, a weird back and forth on the use of AI in people writing stuff and It just it all blew up in their face. Plus, it's an expensive thing. It was a not-for-profit that was entirely supported by donors.

Aubrey
11:51-14:03
Right Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Peter
11:54-15:09
And so they just decided, you know what, it's not worth it. And I can kind of understand why they decided that. But now that NanoRimo isn't you know, the website isn't there and it was fun. You go and it would you could sign up where you were and it had had forums dedicated to your local geographic areas. So it was easy to interact with people. who live near you, who were writing. Uh it had a nice page where you go in and, you know, you'd put in the title of your book and you could put stuff and then you'd log how many words you wrote each session or each day and it would It would keep track of it and show you how you were progressing and and that just doesn't exist anymore. So I I felt less excited about writing another book. And Then I I read this article and I had my aha moment. So I have purchased a lot of books on reading. Excuse me, a lot of books on writing. From like Humble Bundle, you know, the past few years, Humble Bundle would have uh the a nanoRimo book bundle about books about writing or getting into the publishing business, all that kind of stuff. And you know, it's like 30 bucks and you get like 30 books. So I would do that. And then another online uh site that does e you know ebooks uh story bundle. They've done the same thing. So I've amassed this massive library of books about writing. But I've never really done anything with them. I've always kind of been, uh, what's what they refer to as the pa as a pantser. So I've written my books by the seat of my pants. Like I have a main idea when I sit down, but it's like you sit down and you start writing, you're like, well see where this goes. And while that's a little fun having things Kind of come to you and fold over time. One of the reasons I haven't let anybody read my books now that I'm realizing it is there's a lot of sort of key things that you need to make a book good. that I just was lacking because I was basically going scene by scene, whatever sort of came to me at the time, without this overarching idea of kind of what are key story structure beats. And so that's what I've decided I'm going to do this year is I'm going to spend the next three months learning better how to structure a book, how to develop characters, how to develop a book's theme. And doing exercises, because all these things that I'm going to be reading and studying will have exercises, and I'm going to apply all those exercises to my idea, because I have my I have kind of the big idea in terms of the world and the setup for my next book that I want to write, but I'm going to be using these three months to really try and develop that. Get my story structure beats, have my plot outlined, so that when I sit down on January 1. I've actually like I know what I'm gonna write. I don't know the words of every scene, but I'd even like I'd like to, if possible, have it like outlined out scene by scene, what's gonna happen And and I'm really excited to have some structure.

Aubrey
15:03-15:09
Yeah, yeah.

Peter
15:09-15:19
Again, I like learning. I want to learn. I do it. in part because I want to, in part because I'm terrified of, you know, having my brain turned to mush as I get older.

Aubrey
15:18-15:21
Right. Yep.

Peter
15:20-15:28
And there's just so many things that are basically like, hey, continuing to learn is like that's how you don't have your brain turn to mush and turn stupid when you get old.

Aubrey
15:27-15:29
Right, right.

Peter
15:28-15:43
So uh but yeah, that's kind of my plan and I'm excited. I'm I think I already know what I'm gonna do in January, and I'll just go ahead and say and I have always been fascinated with photography and wanted to know more about photography.

Aubrey
15:41-15:44
Mm-hmm.

Peter
15:43-15:46
I know Diddley, squat about photography.

Aubrey
15:44-15:45
Yeah.

Peter
15:47-16:14
And so I honestly think that that's going to be my learning objective for quarter one of 2026, will be, hey, I want to learn about photography. I want to learn about You know, what do all the the you know what's an F-stop? What is the ISO? And you know, what are all those sorts of things? But then also let's look at like photo composition, what makes photos good, what to look for, how to you know and and kind of get my brain in a place where I think about taking pictures and stuff.

Aubrey
16:14-16:25
Yeah Yeah.

Peter
16:14-16:26
So um so yeah I I'm excited to start doing this and And saying, okay, I've got three months. What am I going to focus on for the next three months? But I've talked a lot.

Aubrey
16:28-16:36
No, no worries. Um, I did watch your video on I think I'm your number one fan probably. on the on the YouTube.

Peter
16:36-16:37
I I appreciate it.

Aubrey
16:36-16:46
I make sure I watch I I watch every single one of your um videos and I give it a like too to boost the algorithm.

Peter
16:38-16:41
I'd love more fans, you know, people swing by.

Aubrey
16:46-16:51
So If it looks like you only have one like on like a short or something, it's probably me.

Peter
16:46-16:52
Love that. Thank you. Hey, you know what?

Aubrey
16:51-17:06
Um so if you um But anyways, yeah, I've kind of I'm I've been kind of in a bit of a stuck, I don't know, mindset.

Peter
16:52-16:55
Every like is awesome. I love it and I think I appreciate it.

Aubrey
17:07-17:29
a little bit at a loss of what to do learning wise, especially if I don't get into grad school for next year. Um But even still I I at least have a full year until I even would start grad school, even if I do get in.

Peter
17:29-17:30
Right.

Aubrey
17:29-18:15
Um and I've n like I didn't take a gap year after high school or anything. And so for m literally my entire life at the moment, I my only break from school has been the summer. And I remember uh mom would give us like math books for our like summer math books. um for our grade levels and would try and get us to do them and then we wouldn't really and they would just be kind of tossed aside. But then at the beginning of every school year, you know, you have to remember, kind of re-remember the things you learned at the end of last year, especially math skills.

Peter
18:14-19:20
Yeah There you go.

Aubrey
18:15-19:29
Um And so when I watched your video I thought that was really cool 'cause I mean there is a reason why school's broken up the way that it is. Um, even though college is in so semesters, there's still like the midterms and like halfway through the semester, a lot of the time you switch stuff up and you know they break down the units to cover the material in that time frame that they have and Stuff like that. So something I really want to make sure I do in terms of learning and maybe structuring it in that three-month thing would be Would be good for my brain to kind of not feel like I'm biting off more than I can chew. Because I feel like that's kind of what I would do. Is kind of have like an open-ended, I would like to do X, Y, and Z, but then I have an no deadline or anything like that to even motivate me. So then it kind of just trickles off. But something I do want to do is actually keep up my best skills. Because if I'm going to go to grad school in astrophysics, there is literally nothing more important than keeping up my mouth.

Peter
19:25-19:29
Yeah.

Aubrey
19:29-19:45
math skills because if I forget the light little facts not not really light little facts but just the uh not necessarily problem problem solving techniques, but just like like how a star works.

Peter
19:30-19:57
Yeah Oh yeah.

Aubrey
19:45-20:25
Like um, you know, blue means hot, red means cold. Like that sort of stuff. That's really easy to pick back up on if you Have forgotten those, but the math skills not so much. So I my mentor, my research mentor Did say he was like, no matter how long your gap is between now and grad school, you have to keep up your math skills. You have to give yourself homework. You have to Um and I think doing the physics GRE math section, like study questions, is a really good way to do that because it's the knowledge I should.

Peter
20:22-20:23
Yeah.

Aubrey
20:25-21:01
have right now. It's not like graduate school knowledge. And I guess I I kind of I took this summer as a break and obviously was planning the wedding so I I wasn't really I wasn't like, oh, I really gotta get locked in on my like keep up my learning because I just was so I'm just so used to having the summer be like, well this is the summer, is this is the break. But it is now October and so I feel like it is it is a good It is a good time to, you know, have some s some learning goals.

Peter
20:52-20:53
Yeah, that's true.

Aubrey
21:01-21:36
And I've kind of fallen off of our the goals. thing in general, um, just because everything was so busy with the wedding and everything like that. But I feel like I am in a good place. I can and start doing stuff like that. So definitely math skills is one of mine. I also I mean, I've been still on like my fitness game as much as I could. Obviously the hotel gyms were crap. Traveling for the wedding and being on the cruise and stuff.

Peter
21:33-22:13
They are I mean coming at it like a scientist.

Aubrey
21:36-22:41
Um But I think I want to do a little bit more fitness goals so I can be a little bit more motivated because since I don't do powerlifting as much, I don't have like a a weight goal. Like I'm not like I don't have like a one rep max I'm trying to get. Um my blanket goal is to just like get big, but I want to do more of the learning parts from like a personal training standpoint where I'm learning actually which moves are better to target different things, you know, like coming at out more of a nerdy academic standpoint. Right, exactly. Um, because then if it's like the more you know about something, usually the more excited you can get about that thing. And Hayden when he first started getting into the gym, he went full scientist nerd route, like full doing all the research, planning his perfect program to target all the things and whatever.

Peter
22:25-22:47
Oh yeah Okay.

Aubrey
22:41-23:27
But I kind of want to be able to do that because I do want to get my personal training certificate at some point. That's kind of always been a goal for me. And I I've cut like coached boxing before and I really enjoyed it. And so I I think if that can be one of my learning goals is just And and also in high school, like Anat and Fizz, the anatomy part was real easy for me. Very, very easy for me. So I feel like coming at that will not only, you know, keep me in the learning new things, working my brain, keeping the juices flowing mindset, but also um can get me more, I don't know, excited about the hobby that I'm already doing, if that makes sense.

Peter
23:27-24:08
Totally Well, you know, I've always been interested in um I would like to at some point, I think, maybe.

Aubrey
23:28-24:00
Because I really do think of the gym as as a hobby for me, rather than like something I do have to do, which is I've I've I think I've been lucky in that regard where I do actually get excited to go to the gym because n I mean our gym is fantastic and I feel like it's just I feel like it's a fun hobby for me, which is good, but I do want to get, yeah, just a little bit more knowledgeable about things. But anyway, now I've talked for a while, but what's another one? What's another one you had?

Peter
24:08-24:32
Um a lot of caveats there. Uh I I think I guess not caveats, but more qualifiers. But I I I have toyed around with the idea of learning how to code in some way. And so I've thought about that as a possible learning opportunity. At the same time, you know, I I think that I think that the writing is one I'd like to come back to.

Aubrey
24:32-24:33
Yeah.

Peter
24:33-24:41
I also really, really want to get better at playing a guitar. So committing to that is one that I have in mind.

Aubrey
24:37-24:44
Yeah.

Peter
24:42-25:05
down the road, like I say, I kind of want to do the writing one here so that I can write my book. Then I'd like to learn the photography. And I think that Again, it's as I think about this. I feel like the photography three-month learning sprint would fit nicely in when I'm also trying to write a book. Like I feel like that one is a little bit less intensive.

Aubrey
25:01-25:03
Yeah, totally.

Peter
25:05-25:31
I mean, look, I've I've probably overdone what this quarter is, and so this is my first time. It will be interesting to see how it pans out. But I basically have it set up that October, November, December. There's two books each month that I'm going to read. And then I have um I'm I've signed up for the Writing Mastery Academy from Jessica Brody.

Aubrey
25:22-25:45
Yeah Wow.

Peter
25:31-26:21
She's an author. She has a whole bunch of books and including a bunch of stuff about how to write. So She's kind of one of those where she's written, I mean, she's got like 20 plus books to her name, but then also does a lot of teaching people how to write. And I had done a course of hers. uh called the Foundations of Fiction. Uh had done that previously. It was her and a friend of hers kind of co-author, like another author. They wrote they did this together. I found it very useful. And so I signed up for the Writing Mastery Academy. And I've got like one uh or I think I actually have a couple of those courses from the Writing Mastery Academy. that I want to get through each month as well. So I'm like, all right, is six books and six you know courses on on this thing a little much for three months?

Aubrey
26:14-26:20
Yeah. Right.

Peter
26:21-26:30
We're gonna find out. So I I do have it a little structured where it's like there's two books this month.

Aubrey
26:23-26:26
Yeah. Yeah, no way to know till you try it.

Peter
26:31-27:05
The second one I might sacrifice. um and in favor of spending more time practicing and workshopping some of the things that I'm learning in this first book. So we'll see how that goes. But that'll also give me an idea, okay, yeah, I think Like I say, I I think it will be a little bit as I look at, all right, what else am I doing in my life that will help me decide which learning subjects are going to be more or maybe a little less labor intensive. And kind of use that to guide which ones I pick and choose.

Aubrey
27:02-27:32
Totally Yeah, yeah, no, that's a really good idea. Yeah, it's funny. I also have always loved photography. Um I think one day I have I have like a little savings like vault where I try and put a little bit of money whenever I get paid for a nice camera one day, but they are so expensive So expensive, it makes me want to cry.

Peter
27:32-27:46
I mean, it is one of those things that like, because I thought about it, I was like, oh, maybe I'll get myself a decent, just like sort of good beginner but all around kind of photography camera.

Aubrey
27:32-27:34
So eventually one day.

Peter
27:46-27:49
And you're still looking at like $2,300.

Aubrey
27:46-27:49
Yeah.

Peter
27:49-27:52
You know, two two to three grand.

Aubrey
27:50-27:56
Yep Yep, the minimum I've saw was like eighteen hundred.

Peter
27:53-28:17
And that's before that's before you start getting more glass more lenses where it's like, okay, that's just the camera and whatever lens it comes with, but it's like, well, but I want a tele lens or I want a this lens or you know, so I look at that and so so I have already committed And I'm saying this out loud to put this into the world.

Aubrey
27:59-28:02
Yes. Yep.

Peter
28:17-28:34
My plan doing this next quarter's photography learning What I am committing to and had already committed to myself, but what I am saying is this is going to be learning the basics of photography.

Aubrey
28:25-28:29
Mm-hmm.

Peter
28:34-28:42
And then using my phone camera. Boom. Full stop. To really go, okay.

Aubrey
28:40-28:42
There you go.

Peter
28:43-28:52
Because I've read that's the other thing, is I've read so many different things that are like, you know, you don't need a fancy camera. You don't need a fancy camera.

Aubrey
28:51-28:56
Yeah, yeah.

Peter
28:52-28:59
And so that's why I want to focus. I want to learn the technical details behind photography and stuff so that I understand that.

Aubrey
28:56-29:07
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Peter
28:59-29:29
But my focus is going to be more on photo composition and and and editing, you know, going into like not really like totally photoshopping, but again using like Lightroom or Darkroom or things like that where it's like, okay, let's Yeah, let's let's play around with things and let's do some masks and some other things like that to really to learn that aspect of it, with the idea that I want to learn about the art of photography itself.

Aubrey
29:12-29:22
Right. Right. Editing the contrast and the black point and all that stuff, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Peter
29:30-29:45
And go, how much better can I get just using the camera that I always have with me, which is my phone? And if I get to a point where I'm like, I really like this and I feel like I'm really making some headway, then I think I could say, Okay, now I could justify getting a real camera.

Aubrey
29:45-29:46
Yep, yep.

Peter
29:46-29:53
But yeah, I've decided that I've decided that I I I'm going to stick to just using the camera that I got.

Aubrey
29:46-29:48
Yeah, definitely.

Peter
29:54-30:02
And only after I get to a point where I go, okay, no, this is really something I like, then would I be willing to consider getting a real camera.

Aubrey
30:02-30:09
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, because it's a huge that's a huge oh they're crazy. One day, one day.

Peter
30:07-30:15
Well, and again, what I don't want for me is I don't want to rely on the equipment.

Aubrey
30:15-30:16
Right.

Peter
30:16-30:19
as like use that as like a crutch or something.

Aubrey
30:16-30:19
To make it good.

Peter
30:19-30:29
I want to understand the the ideas behind it and everything and and see what I can do with the camera that I have on me always.

Aubrey
30:19-31:08
Yeah. Yeah. Right, right Yeah, yeah. Another one that I um definitely want to kind of get back to eventually is playing the piano. Um it's rough because it's not like I've had a piano in my house. for the last four years. So how are you supposed to practice the piano if you don't have piano? Um but one day, one day when we're not in a smaller apartment I I definitely want a big piano, like eventually long term. Um like a real piano I could do with the keyboard, but it's just not the same. It's just not the same.

Peter
31:09-31:11
It's it's not the same. You're right.

Aubrey
31:11-32:03
Yeah, and it's I mean, I have been spoiled playing on very v beautiful grand pianos. Um, you know, not only at our house, but in like performing and my uh piano teacher and stuff. So that I definitely do miss and I definitely think I would be real rusty and I'd have to just be okay with being humbled for a really, really long time before I'm able to get back to whatever I I once was. Cause I mean when I think about like I did dance for a really long time. I will fully admit I don't think I was the best. I definitely could have been a lot better if I had just dedicated, I guess, more time and more energy to it, but I liked it more as a hobby and not a lifestyle dance was for me.

Peter
32:02-32:08
Right.

Aubrey
32:03-32:08
Um but piano, I won't even lie, I was really good.

Peter
32:09-32:31
You are Yeah.

Aubrey
32:09-32:31
I was really, really good. And I was playing some crazy crazy pieces at like six years old that I remember going to competitions as a 16-year-old and seeing someone play a piece that I played when I was in first grade. So I won't even lie, that's the one thing I will toot my own horn about.

Peter
32:32-32:33
No, you you were good.

Aubrey
32:32-32:34
I was very good.

Peter
32:33-32:35
You were very good.

Aubrey
32:35-32:52
And so it and it's not like I ever practiced as much as I should have, but One day that is something I want to get back and do a big ol' learning sprint. Maybe multiple. Dedicate multiple to that. 'Cause I do miss that, but just situationally.

Peter
32:50-32:52
Yeah, totally.

Aubrey
32:53-32:58
Situationally it's hard if You know, I can't put a piano in here.

Peter
32:57-33:03
No, no, that's you're not at the time of your life where piano makes a ton of sense.

Aubrey
32:59-33:30
But No, certainly not. But and I guess there's the one thing I have been consistently learning about that is a big hobby for me is my plants. Because there is so much information and knowledge to be gained about houseplants. Like There has been just so many things that I'm like, wow, three months ago I can't believe I was doing that and now I know better to do not the thing that I was doing.

Peter
33:27-34:06
Yeah Very cool.

Aubrey
33:30-34:07
So that's always that's been fun though. That has been keeping my juices flowing and making it so I don't completely raw away into mush. um this summer has been taking care of my plants and just yeah, it just is cool because there's so many different kinds of houseplants, every everything needs Um, every plant needs different things and there's a lot coming at it from a scientist's perspective, it's it's been really cool and interesting. Um for me. So yeah. Yeah.

Peter
34:06-34:23
Well, you know, I again I think one of the reasons I wanted to bring this up is kind of like I said in that video briefly, I think a lot of times We finish school and there's this attitude that, oh, I'm done. I don't ever have to do that again.

Aubrey
34:22-34:24
Yeah, mm-hmm.

Peter
34:23-34:31
And I think that's kind of a sad way to think about it because our brains are amazing.

Aubrey
34:28-34:35
Yeah.

Peter
34:31-35:05
I mean, our brains are incredible. The things that we can do with them, the things they can learn, understand, and and everybody's different in how their brains work, but That's the cool thing is once you're done with school and you're not learning what other people are telling you to learn, take advantage and say, all right, what interests me? And then Find ways to learn. And, you know, like I said briefly in that video, but I'll say it again here, ChatGPT was great. I went into ChatGPT and I said, here's a list of the books.

Aubrey
35:02-36:00
Yeah Yeah Yeah, right.

Peter
35:05-36:07
And because it can search the internet, because everything, it knew what all of those books were. And so it was like, here's kind of a logical progression of these, you know, little and I I was very clear. I said, my goal is I want to learn this. Study this while while working on my book so that on January 1, I'm ready to start writing my my next book. And it kind of plotted that all out. And it said, and even said, you know, I said, look, I have access to the Writing Mastery Academy stuff. So it was like, yeah, uh pair pair this course with these two books this month and pair this with this and this with this and here are suggested exercises for you to do during those months that apply to that. And So we have so many tools available to us. I mean, heck, even every time I sit down and use it, I'm like, golly, just flipping YouTube. I mean, you don't have to, you don't have to go and and buy books and sign up. Like you can learn so much from either like YouTube or or Conicat.

Aubrey
36:05-36:06
So much.

Peter
36:07-36:11
I mean, there's so many things that are just free as long as you have internet access.

Aubrey
36:11-36:13
Yep.

Peter
36:12-36:15
Use that. Use that and learn.

Aubrey
36:13-36:16
Yeah.

Peter
36:15-36:18
Exercise your brain. I mean, good grief.

Aubrey
36:17-36:18
Yep.

Peter
36:18-36:31
If maybe people use their brains more, we wouldn't be in the Shh, can that we're in right now. Anyway, I don't know. That's all I have about that. Do you have an Astro Fact for us?

Aubrey
36:32-36:36
Unfortunately, do not because I'm silly and forgot.

Peter
36:33-37:34
That's okay. I have No, you're fine. I don't really have uh well no that's not entirely true. I do have a health thing to share. All right, here we go. So, you all know me. Anybody who's been listening knows that I am a bit of an Arnold Schwarzenegger fan Um you know, he's a flawed person just like we all are. That's okay. Uh I think he He he is somebody who, and I guess somebody could come and tell me all the reasons I'm wrong, and that's fine. But I feel like on the whole, Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of those people who have intentionally tried to put more good into the world. So I love the pump club emails. I love the pump club app. It is my go-to workout app because, hey, look. You want to be able to say, oh yeah, I'm doing a program that was designed by Arnold frickin' Schwarzenegger.

Aubrey
37:31-37:32
Yeah.

Peter
37:34-38:16
Suck that. Um anyway. What they found is that there was uh there have been some studies that have shown again, we're coming back to the idea of heavy resistance training. Heavy resistance training, as you get older, especially, leads to strength benefits that can last up to four years. even if your intensity in training has to drop off. So what they found is they took adults who are in their 60s who completed a year of heavy resistance training. Four years later, at an average age of 70, those who had trained for that one year were significantly stronger than their peers who did not lift.

Aubrey
38:17-38:20
Wow.

Peter
38:17-38:22
Four years later, they were still stronger.

Aubrey
38:20-38:42
That is crazy Wow, that is crazy Right.

Peter
38:23-39:00
Again, I had a patient earlier this week, I think maybe it was last week. Older guy, his energy is getting lower. He's gained some weight. He's not really happy. And he's like, what should I do? And I said, you know, this isn't my specialty. You should follow up with your primary care doctor. But say, here's what I'm gonna tell you. Resistance training is the closest thing there is to an actual fountain of youth You want to feel younger, lift weights. You want to lose weight? Lift weights. You want to be stronger? Lift weights. You want to have more energy? Lift weights. I mean, I know people don't like it.

Aubrey
39:00-39:01
Yep.

Peter
39:01-39:33
A lot of people would rather do their cardio. That's great. I'll be honest and tell you. We live on a road that's a popular place for runners, joggers, walkers. I see a lot of people who have been regularly pounding the pavement out there, month after month, year after year, for the 12 years we've lived up here. And you know what? These people all look exactly the same. Or just a little older. It cardio doesn't provide body composition change.

Aubrey
39:32-39:35
Yeah.

Peter
39:33-39:38
It doesn't change how you look. I'm not saying it's not important for your heart, but you know what?

Aubrey
39:36-39:36
Right.

Peter
39:38-39:50
If you just choose to occasionally shorten, have lifting days when you shorten your rest times, you can get a very significant cardio workout. I mean, I'm just saying.

Aubrey
39:50-40:06
Yes, absolutely Yeah, that is crazy.

Peter
39:51-40:05
So I just thought this was fascinating that, you know, people in their 60s lifted heavy, you know, intensely for one year. And then didn't. And four years later, they were still stronger than people who didn't.

Aubrey
40:06-40:08
That is so crazy.

Peter
40:07-40:23
Yeah. They think that it basically locks in neuromuscular adaptation that allows you to really build truly what we refer to as muscle memory that persists even after you stop. Your muscles are primed to perform better.

Aubrey
40:22-40:24
Wow.

Peter
40:22-40:24
Because they did in the past.

Aubrey
40:24-40:32
That is crazy. Yeah, if anyone's gonna learn anything from this podcast, is that they should lift weights.

Peter
40:27-40:42
Yep. I mean, I feel like I'm beating this kind of broken drum because I keep coming back to it, but it and the good news is I I I got your mom on board.

Aubrey
40:42-40:44
Yes, there you go.

Peter
40:43-40:47
Do you know do you no, but you want to know what we had to do? And she actually is really enjoying it.

Aubrey
40:47-40:49
What?

Peter
40:48-40:51
We signed her up for the Arnold's Pump Club app.

Aubrey
40:50-40:56
Oh, there you go.

Peter
40:52-40:56
Because she was doing like she was doing Fitbot or she was doing the Peloton stuff.

Aubrey
40:56-40:57
Yeah.

Peter
40:56-41:05
And she said to me one day, she said, I hate how random it is. I hate that it's just like this little exercise and then this little exercise and this little.

Aubrey
41:01-41:39
Yes, yes, yep Yeah.

Peter
41:05-41:41
I said, okay, great. I said, then this is what we need to do. We're gonna sign you up for the pump club. Look, it's like if you're if you're on sign up, if you're on the email list, it's only 80 bucks a year. Like seriously, $79. 99. You put in the you put in the code that they regularly send you in the email, which sign up for the email, people. It's a great email. Five days a week. Awesome stuff. But um so we went and we signed her up and then we just you can't you can't do any program until you do the foundation. So you have to do the foundation and it's very basic and it's split into upper lower. Or it's like whole body. I think it's actually the first half is full body and then it maybe goes up or lower.

Aubrey
41:41-41:42
Uh-huh.

Peter
41:41-42:01
But it's just it's three workouts a week. And it's the same workout each, you know, it's it's each day. So the first workout of the week is the same, the second, and so she was able to just go. She knows what's coming next. She's had a chance to repeat the same exercises often enough that she's starting to feel comfortable with them.

Aubrey
42:00-42:01
Yep. Yep.

Peter
42:01-42:20
So Yeah.

Aubrey
42:02-43:10
Yeah, I think that doing the repeat and like progressive overload has been such an absolutely massive game changer for me with lifting because Like, I mean I used to do push pull leg push pull leg and I would just have so I'd have two different push days, two different pull days, two different leg days. Um But still repeating it every week means you could not only like see the actual progress, because you're like, oh well, last week you know, I did this weight for seven reps. So this week I'm gonna do this weight with eight reps. And then like if you are actually if you are increasing the reps. and going till failure, till just before failure the same, like every time, then you are literally watching yourself get stronger, even if it's hard to see physical results, especially Like if you've been doing it for a really long time and so the original, you know, crazy all of a sudden you're shredded has gone away and now it's more slower gains.

Peter
43:09-43:13
Yeah.

Aubrey
43:10-43:44
Um It has just been absolutely game changing because I do the same like I do six to ten reps. Once I've hit ten reps of that weight, then the next week I go up in weight and then go back down to six reps. And then I just do that every single time and it's made it so I literally actually am getting stronger without just being like Oh well I hope I'm getting stronger because my workout's different every day. Which Fitbot, I won't lie, it was great for getting me started and getting me comfortable with a really like with a with a wide range of moves.

Peter
43:40-44:14
Yeah There you go.

Aubrey
43:44-44:14
because then it made it so when I left for college and I had to actually go to a public gym, which was really scary, I felt like I knew how to do enough moves that I could kind of just throw myself in. there and then learn how to do the machines and get comfortable with that. And now I you know obviously I feel comfortable doing Whatever, and I don't care if I look goofy during doing a silly move in the gym because I know the silly move works, so I'll do it. I don't care if anyone's looking at me.

Peter
44:14-44:24
There you go I mean, it's for good reason.

Aubrey
44:14-44:25
But anyway, anyway, as I said, if anyone's gonna learn anything from the spot is that we're obsessed with weight trading. Yep.

Peter
44:24-44:29
It is it's it's the way to go, so well cool.

Aubrey
44:27-44:33
Yep, sure is. Alright, well I didn't have anything else.

Peter
44:31-44:35
D I don't think so.

Aubrey
44:33-44:34
Did you have anything else?

Peter
44:35-44:37
I think that's good for me today.

Aubrey
44:36-44:53
Sweet. Okay, well we will talk to everyone in a few weeks and hopefully you know everyone's given us five-star ratings. Please, please do leave leave a review. And some feedback. I've don't you still have your feedback form, I think?

Peter
44:53-44:55
Yep, nope, still the same email.

Aubrey
44:54-44:54
Yeah.

Peter
44:55-44:57
Feedback at generations. fm.

Aubrey
44:56-44:59
Sweet. And we will talk to everyone in a few weeks.

Peter
44:59-45:00
Bye.