1333: Chris Kolbe | Is Your Gym Shirt Slowly Poisoning You?

23:17We don't really know what the toxicity is in the product that we're wearing. Speaking of clothes with hidden chemistry, here's a quick word from the people whose chemistry with this audience keeps the lights on. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Everybody's got stuff. No matter where you are in life, how successful you look on paper, or how well you think you're holding it all together, challenges come for all of us. And you don't have to just white-knuckle your way through it. BetterHelp is now accepting insurance in many states with average co-pays around$23.

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24:24Fill out the questionnaire and check your coverage today at BetterHelp.com slash Jordan. That's BetterHelp.com slash Jordan. Average copay is based on eligible members. Actual cost and coverage may vary by plan. This episode is sponsored in part by AT &T. You know why I love summer? All those plans we made, they finally make it out of the group chat. Seems like there's more time to fit everybody in. Whatever you've got in store this summer, capturing those memories is a must. That's why I love the iPhone 17 Pro I picked up from AT &T. It's center stage front camera auto adjust the frame to fit everyone into group selfies.

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25:32It's a great companion to the show, very practical, and a two-minute read just about every Wednesday with little wisdom nuggets from past episodes of the show from us to you. Again, jordanharbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now, back to Chris Colby. Dr. Shanna Swann said there's phthalates in your shampoo and there are endocrine disruptors and the industry is kind of just like, that's OK, just don't eat it. Yeah. And so then most regulations that exist in consumer products and textiles is about safe levels of exposure. Not necessarily no, but just safe levels of exposure. What's that called?

26:07The LD50? You can have this much gasoline per year in your cereal. So when it gets down into the real nitty gritty of it is you think that the government or there'd be some body of organization globally that would be tracking and managing the risks profiles of these things like there would be in food. But there's shockingly not. There's no FDA for clothes, basically. There's not even a label. Oh, really? So all they have to require to put in on a label for clothing is the very basic information of what it was made with. but if it's less than 2 % of the content, you don't have to put it in there.

26:42And so that could be chemicals. There's all these things that don't qualify. And so what happens is when you really look at it, the shocking thing to me is like the Europeans are leaders in this. They're probably the best in class as far as being more rigorous about sort of universal restrictions protections. And they ban about 1 ,600 known chemicals on textiles. In Canada, it's about 400 toxic chemicals that are banned from being on textiles. And those are all allowed here in the United States? In the U.S., it's 12. We restrict. 1 ,200? 12. It might be even less now. Oh, God. Because we seem to be going the other way.

27:19Wait. Okay, so if there's only 12, what are they? They must be pretty bad if everyone else has 1 ,600, and we're like, now these 12, though. So you're starting to hear more about, you know, like this is also part of the opaque problem. It's like these are all acronyms, and people don't understand chemicals or chemistry, right? But people don't PFAS, right? I've heard of that because it's the forever chemical. God knows what that means. You know, you don't want it in your Teflon pans, right? Which is now banned. But you don't really know it's in your leggings. You don't know it's in your wicking.

27:47So PFAS is a nasty carcinogen, and it does not go away. Okay. I didn't realize that. I thought everyone was just like, it's a forever chemical. It never goes away. And I thought, so what? I probably have a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in my stomach that I chewed on as a kid that are still in there. but I didn't realize it was also a carcinogen and it lasts forever. It's all of those things. In PFAS, forever chemicals, we know we don't want it in our pans. We know we don't want it in our food, but it's in our leggings and it's in anything that has quick drying, wriggle-free. It's dangerous. And so BPAs, BPS, these are things that are microplastics.

28:23These are things that we know we don't want in our food, but they are in our clothing. And so these things are slipping through the system because we want the performance. We want soft plastic. We want the ability to dye our materials a nice color. And so when you put this all together is we just don't know what's on our body. And there's a lot of evidence and studies that are showing that when these things are on your body, you create heat, friction, and moisture. It literally activates these chemicals and solvents on the materials. They go into your sweat. When you say activate, you just mean it breaks down the bond between the chemical and the fabric and it just goes wherever.

29:04And so there's a term called porosity, right? Our skin is porous and it takes in about 60, 65 percent of what's on it. I didn't know that. I thought the whole point of skin was keeping everything out. It does until you break down your microbiome with these chemicals and it leaves you more exposed. Yeah, it probably keeps out germs in water, but maybe not industrial chemicals that have not something you found in nature generally. We just don't know what it's actually doing to us. It's like a low dose toxicity every day. And when you sweat, great heat, friction, and moisture, it literally activates these things to the point where they release into your sweat and then they go back into your body.

29:40So the analogy I always use with my kids is, would you heat your food in the microwave in plastic? And if you're an 80s kid, the answer is, sure, why not? What could it possibly do? What could go wrong? It's no different on your body. when you heat these things up, it literally causes these things to loosen and come into your body. So if you wear workout clothes, do not work out in them at all. The first thing I would say is if you wear polyester, nylon, or spandex in an exercise sweat environment, stop. That's going to be a tough one, Chris. Hey, if you have all those nice workout clothes that you spent thousands of dollars on, make sure you never work out in them at all.

30:16Just wear them to the office in an air-conditioned, comfortable environment only. There's practical steps here. Obviously, when it's 60, 70 % of the market, it's in everybody's closet. But it doesn't have to be this way. And I do think it starts with education and awareness and knowing that there are certain things you do not want on your skin all day long. There's certain things that you don't want on the most sensitive parts of your body. You think about genitalia, out of the arms, neck. These are all areas that are the most sensitive of your body. The neck is sensitive? Yes. I never heard that.

30:47I can imagine why someplace that sweats a lot would be, but... Those are your cues. If you're sweating there, it's sensitive. Those are the areas I would avoid, if at all possible, wearing anything that's highly synthetic or branded as some level of performance. I hate being doom loopy in these episodes, and I understand there's concerns with synthetic fabrics. Most people are going to slowly either not do anything about it for now or ever or slowly phase them out. But do I have to go back to wearing something my grandmother, I don't know, made on a loom? What are we going to do about this? You mentioned before, is there a tradeoff between some of these natural fibers and performance?

31:27Because I don't want to work out in wool pants. I don't want to necessarily have to become Amish or a Quaker in order to function in modern society without dying from chemical exposure. I can tell you just having been on the side of the business side of this is that you have to have commercial solutions that people want to wear. And sometimes perfection is the enemy of getting it right. And I think there's a lot of people in our industry that want to get it right. They want to do well. That's good news, I suppose. But it's never been harder to do it. So the reality is you have to have things that are commercial, that are economical for people to really make a change.

32:04And so I'm of the mind that you can build businesses that are both innovative, clean, and commercial that people want to buy most of the time, right? And you still might want to buy some other things that maybe they're not perfect. It's kind of like food, right? Sometimes you're going to want to have a bag of Cheetos, right? But at the end of the day, you know that isn't the right thing to do, right? And you're aware of it. Yeah, it's a vice. You try to make the better choices most of the time. And I think apparel is exactly the same way as food. And so the more you understand and know, the more choice you're given that are commercially viable, the more likely the market's going to shift.

32:40Because the government isn't going to fix it for you. Everything being cheaper and more readily available isn't in itself going to fix it. What's going to change it is consumers demanding having things that are transparent and clean, safe, but also feel good, look good. They do the job that you want it to do. And so the ability to do that is the key. And so there are things that exist today that can be better options than wearing plastic on your body. Yeah, nobody wants to work out in a burlap sack, even if that's the most sustainable option. It's not going to happen. So it does have to be consumer-led.

33:17So what does a responsible brand need to do? Because auditing your suppliers and, I don't know, having third-party testing of your fabric, this stuff, it's so much more work than it is to just, I don't know, pump out some sludge and mold it into a pair of shoes or a shirt. Yeah, it starts with making a real commitment to do things naturally or from a bio-based perspective. So we have a bio-based technology where we're taking regenerative waste from natural sources and we're repurposing it into a new fiber that has enhanced abilities above just regular cotton and has enhanced abilities better than just merino.

33:55Can you explain that a little bit? You said you're repurposing waste. At first glance, that sounds like something you would not want to wear. Hey, it's recycled waste from a plant. But don't know, it's all natural, so don't worry about it. I've got some all natural waste that I wouldn't want to wear. In the spirit of sustainability, a lot of innovation has happened in this category they call cellulosics. They're coming from bamboo, or you'll hear things coming from regenerative cotton, things that are basically scrap waste, and they're being broken down and put into a solution where then they're adding in other ingredients like we use chiatin, which comes from shellfish, crab shells.

34:34We use things like jadestone, which comes from the waste of jade mining. And we have a technology that allows it to get down to a nano-sized level. So it's so small that when we put it into the solution and we turn it back into a solid fiber, that they're inherently built into the fiber versus it being sprayed on as a chemical. They're natural ingredients built into this fiber. and then we can combine this fiber with other natural products. So we use Supima cotton in ours, which is the best cotton in the world. Strong, dyes well, grown in the United States. Expensive. Yeah, because it's grown in the United States.

35:09But it's the best. Where do we grow cotton in the United States? Arizona, California, a lot of Texas. I never thought about that. Yeah. Almost all Supima comes to the United States and it is literally the best. I've been using it for years when I was at Land's End and other places. It's really phenomenal fiber. It's It's actually so strong, but in the 1940s, they used it on the sidewalls of car tires. Really? Wow. What makes, this is a tangent, but what makes strong cotton? Is it a different kind of cotton seed or is it the processing of whatever standard cotton that just makes it better? It's all genetics, right?

35:41Strands of cotton have longer fibers. And so, Cepima is one of the longest fibers. And so, when you get elongated fibers, it makes it strong. That makes sense. But it also makes it soft and smooth. And so this is kind of nature's best example of how you can make high quality, high performing cotton naturally. From breeding different kinds of cotton seeds over centuries. Yeah, it's shenanigans, it's soil, it's all of those things. And so on top of that, with our fiber, you not only can combine it with cottons of choice of clean cottons, better cottons, which we do. We also can combine it with wool.

36:15We can combine it with hemp. And there's all these other things we can blend it with. you're kind of developing a third way. You can avoid going just back to cotton and wool, which is great, but this is better. And you can avoid plastic and chemicals and unknown carcinogens by just going natural. So better material in many ways negates the necessity for the chemical to mimic that same function. From the sound of it, if you have a long cotton fiber that's soft and smooth, you don't need to spray that garment with something that makes it feel softer and smoother? Yeah. So you can avoid the chemical applications, and you're building functionality naturally into the fiber.

36:55And so things like kaiatin, which is pretty interesting, like these shellfish properties are natural biopolymers, which are antibacterial, and they're also antimicrobial. So they resist odor. So the shirt you're wearing, you could wear it time and time over again because of the kaiatin inside. Yeah, I wore it for a week without watching it just to see how long can I wear this thing before it starts to sink. And it was like six days. It does work, but what's cool is it's doing it without chemicals. And so the jadestone we put in, also known in Chinese medicine for centuries as a healing anti-inflammatory.

37:28I mean, that's a little woo for me. Go ahead. But that's a little bit like, okay, jadestone. Yeah, my chakras are aligned over here, but that's not what I'm going for. What we chose it for actually a more practical reason is jadestone is actually thermoregulating. And so it actually has a cooling functionality to it. So it can regulate your skin temperature up to about five degrees cooler just naturally. And it's pulling heat away from your skin. So you get the circulation effect without having, again, a chemical application to give you the performance. So these are all things where nature, if you find ways to repurpose it, you're taking waste and you're creating natural performance in a whole new way.

38:05And this is, I call it the third way because most people don't know about man-made synthetics or cellulosics. But we know Tencel and Modell, that's what those are. We have our own version of that that has a patent pending on it that has our own 88 different ingredients we put into it. But they're all coming from natural bio-based sources. So you have your own fabric, your own proprietary fabric. It's the lowest level is the fiber. So the fiber, we're making fiber in a way that can become a fabric and it can become a full product. And we can put it with so many different things. And the idea is that because they're bio-based materials is the future.

38:42How do you invent a fiber? Is that something you did or you get to hire some serious scientists to come up with a new fiber? So my partner is a material science expert. He owns his own mill. And so we work with everyone from the cotton farms to making the fiber, to making the yarn, to making the fabrics and even the products. So we do the whole thing. And so when I say the fashion industry has an opaque supply chain, we know the farmers. We know the mills. We know where the fiber is being made. We know all of these things. We know what's being put into it exactly. And so that's how you get trust.

39:16That's how you get verification. Now, we also do certifications because that's how you should be doing this in this industry. What does that mean? That's another company that's not you examines the material? Yeah. So we do everything. It's third-party lab tested. So we've lab tested, improved the cooling. It's 99.9 % antibacterial and antimicrobial. What does that mean? It can't kill 99.9 % of the bacteria on it. That would be like hand sanitizer. It does when it's on the fiber. So the fiber itself nullifies any, and this is why you don't get odor, right? Oh, okay. I just thought maybe my hygiene was decent, but no.

39:50It's a proof point when people like wear it for days and weeks and they're like, yeah, it literally works. And we also test our stuff with third party for chemical safety too. So there's Okotex 100, which is the gold standard in textiles. that would say that this is chemically safe. They test the final end product, right? So wherever it went along the whole supply chain, they test the final product to say, this is chemically safe. So Okotex is one way for the consumer to know that you're getting something that's clean. We also use blue sign dyes. Basically, it's a type of dye stuff and process that says this was done responsibly because the dyes are actually the worst part of the chemicals that are in your clothes.

40:30Really? Why is that? So there's all kinds of dyes, but dyes is the original chemistry in our industry. It goes back to the industrial revolution. And dye color was created by chemists trying to solve polio. And it created a color mauve. It's like a dusty pink. And so all the chemistry that we have in our industry originated in the dyes. And the dyes turning color, when they created the color green, they're using arsenic and copper. And it was killing people in the Industrial Revolution. And, you know, the people in the factories were having all these lesions. So you could just see the toxicity right away.

41:10But over time, what happened is things were basically swept under the rug. And over time, things became a little bit more regulated like they are now in Europe. But when synthetics came on the market, the toxicity in the dyes required to make plastic turn of color, they used this thing they call azo dyes. And azo dyes are the most toxic dyes, and they're what's needed to dye plastic a color. I see. Wow. I can't believe they used arsenic and copper. Green, not so lucky anymore. I guess you only find those things out the hard way when you have factory workers, I don't know, spontaneously dying from preventable...

41:48Oh, gosh. Yeah. People say, well, just go back to organic botanical dyes. And those are also not so commercial because they fade. They don't hold up over time, so people think it's bad quality. And so the thing with dyes is if you go with natural fibers, the dyes can be more safe. They can also be more regulated by things like GOTS and Okotex and BlueSign. But there is no safe level with synthetics. There is no safe level for dyeing a polyester, nylon, spandex garment, because these azo dyes is what's required is they're just toxic And they have all the things BPA, PFAS, BPS that you don't want in your body.

42:29It's crazy how always a work in progress, but food you can buy organic or whatever, you know, other healthy food. Skincare got cleaned up. That was kind of a thing, especially 10 years ago or so. Like, hey, make sure you don't have microbeads or whatever in your shower gel. Cookware got scrutinized with the Teflon pans and everything. Why do you think clothing escaped for so long? Clothing kind of got a pass until now-ish. It's such a huge problem. And it's one of those things where the fashion apparel industry is like a$2 trillion economy. It's big. And because the global supply chains and the networks that it requires to make it are international, it's very hard to regulate.

43:10And so I think the consumers generally have overlooked it. in the big apparel companies have been okay with that because it's more economical to do it the way we're currently doing. I also think it's just emotionally harder to detox your closet than it is a pantry. If I throw away a bunch of shampoo, I might be like, oh man, that was kind of expensive. But if I start throwing away$200 pants,$50 shirt, or whatever, I don't know, you can tell I don't buy my own clothes. If you start throwing away a bunch of your pants and shirts, that stings when they're still in good condition. Right. Or you're donating them, I guess.

43:46But still, it's like, oh, man, now you got a$2 ,000 dent in your closet if you've got a nice amount of clothes. It's not an overnight thing and it doesn't have to be. So I think there's ways to simplify your wardrobe. Look at the things you wear most of the time. I would definitely start with the things that you sweat in, things that you sleep in and things that you wear close to your body on your skin most of the time. underwear, your t-shirts, also things that you sleep on, look at your sheets. And so these are things where you do it one bit at a time, just like your food, right? You walk into a Whole Foods, right?

44:19You want to buy everything, but you still go to your regular grocery store and there's a little organic section there and you shop that too. And so I think the ability to know where to focus is a good start. Finding brands that you can trust that are certified, you know who's behind the brand? Do they control their supply chain? If it's just some faceless company running an algorithm making product and shipping it directly from the factory, you should be worried. If you're buying things purely on some functional performance criteria, you should be worried. And so these are things you can eliminate right away.

44:53And God forbid you do hot yoga in these things because I've talked to friends who are hot yoga instructors and they've talked about women having red dye running down their arm. Oh my God. My producer on this show, he's super into hot yoga. But I've done it with him and I want to say most people in there are wearing a very minimal amount of clothing because it's LA. You might as well show off that bod. But red dye running down your arm is, that's a gross visual. It doesn't have to be that way. We've been sold that we need all of these things for performance, but if the t-shirt you're wearing can do three or four different things for you, isn't that more valuable than a five or six$20 plastic tees that last less than a year.

45:34I would love to have five shirts instead of 35 shirts. Stuff adds up over time, especially for me personally, every sponsor sends a bunch of stuff. So it's usually too much, right? They'll go, oh, what size are you? Medium. And then I end up with 15 workout shirts that are, I don't know, plasticky. And then I turn down the sponsor because I don't like them, but I still have the product five years later. So I've got drawers full of stuff. I've started donating it, obviously, because, but I bet you I have 50 shirts, 45 of which I did not purchase. And yeah, they're all red dye run down the arm at some point.

46:12So I think the vision for the future is if you simplify your wardrobe and you have that one drawer you open up and you know everything in there is clean. It can do 80 % of what you needed to do. You just simplified your life and then you just kind of find ways to iterate on it. And the truth is for most people over the age of 40, you've already got your uniform. I was going to say, man, this is like dad mode. A couple pairs of pants and a couple shirts you wear them every day. Yeah. So those heavy rotation items, those things you're really loyal to, just scrutinize those. Make sure that they're clean, they're natural-based.

46:41And then with Hypernatural, what we're trying to do is show you that you can still have performance and have it safe. You can still have cooling and breathability and antimicrobial and still have it safe. These are the things that you want on your body. And we're just getting started. But as we get this patent pending, we're going to work with other brands too, because the best way to get this to more places is to partner with people that are already heavily synthetic and offer them, hey, we have a platform. In our technology, it can even put pharma-grade zinc oxide into the fiber to give you sun protection.

47:13Oh, that's cool. If you didn't have to put chemicals on. Yeah. If you're getting it into the fiber. Again, most of these chemicals, because the quality is not great, they only last 30 washes. And where does it all go? Out into the water, into the oceans. The forever chemicals in all your clothes are washing into everything else too. And so the best way to do this is just go back and start from what you wear most of the time. Get good quality, have it last, have it do a lot of different things. And then if you do need a rain shell to go on a hike, just recognize that thing has PFAS in it. And it probably is going to run off into the environment.

47:52This is why even like ski resorts and stuff have a PFAS problem because a lot of this stuff is running into the environment because there's such a concentration of these types of products. And so you can get PFAS free things from Patagonia now, but that's newer. That's more recent. And so there's just so much of this stuff that goes into the environment, whether it be the microplastics or the chemicals, they just don't go away. And so that includes your body. I haven't really thought about that with the ski resorts and everything. That completely makes sense. I'm curious what the most misleading words are on clothing tags and labels.

48:26Because you said if there's less than, was it 1 % or 2%, you don't even have to write it on there. Imagine if that was the case with a food ingredient and it's like, oh, this is just all juice. Except for 1.9 % is motor oil, but we don't have to put that on a label. That would be horrific and it would never pass muster. But on clothes, that's fine. So we don't have a really rigorous labeling requirement, much like food would. And so you just put very basic information on there. And so there's something on your label today. If you ask people what they're wearing, most people would turn around, look at their label because they don't know.

49:01So if there's things on your label that say polyester, nylon, spandex, polymade, acrylic, microfiber, anything that you don't really recognize, it's probably synthetic and it's probably petrochemical based. So that's a warning sign. But you don't really know what's inside those things. And that's the level down that most people will never know, right? Unless you take it to a lab but have it tested. And so you look for certifications that say it's Okotex or BlueSign and things like that just to know that, okay, at least it's tested to be safe. But if you see things like cotton, wool, viscose, hemp, those are bio-based natural things.

49:42If you see rayon, okay, that is also bio-based. Rayon is a cellulosic material that's very soft and silky, but it does come from original bio-based plants and ingredients. So these are things where if you look at your clothing like you do your food, you'll start to see it differently. And you'll start to understand that when you stop wearing these things, these plastic things on your body, and about a month goes by, if you keep wearing that T-shirt, you're going to put on something plastic and your body is going to have a reaction to it. And you're going to know without looking at the label that this isn't natural.

50:17It isn't bio-based. And so your skin will adapt to not wearing these things because these synthetics, they're causing your skin distress. How do you measure something like that? I think for me, that's almost like, is that science? How are you measuring whether my skin is stressed by wearing something? Usually your skin tells you because it breaks out in a rash. People have psoriasis. People have autoimmune disease. These are all reactions from your external environment. And a lot of them they can't pinpoint, but there's a lot of correlation and cause associated with textiles on your body. We'll be right back after I check whether my socks are PFAS-free or just emotionally unavailable.

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51:59That's butcherbox.com slash Jordan. Don't forget to use our link so they know we sent you. This episode is brought to you in part by Lufthansa. When people talk about travel, they usually focus on the destination, the hotel, the restaurants, all the stuff that happens after you land. But the flight is part of the experience, too. Just like a great hotel can shape an entire trip, so can a great flight. That's exactly what Lufthansa Allegris is built around. On a long-haul route, comfort matters more than people realize. If you're cramped, tired, and can't relax, you feel it the second you land.

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53:22If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email us jordan at jordanharbinger.com. Somebody here will dig it up for you. It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Chris Colby. I definitely have seen this on Instagram where someone's like, I got this new thing. And like, look at this. And there's red lines all over the place. I see when my wife is scrolling Instagram, there's a lot of female influencers that do stuff like this. Guys don't usually talk about rashes in clothing. But I think women are always wearing sports bras and stuff.

53:54And they're tight and they are made of God knows what. And then, yeah, you get a rash on your back from that thing. So synthetic plastic materials, they deplete your natural biome on your skin that protects you. Why is that? Because the chemicals kill— It creates static electricity. And there's even been tests where guys wear like a synthetic sling for a period of time. Synthetic sling. Tell me more about this. No euphemisms on this show. It would be grape smugglers, whatever you want to call them, around the male testicles. Yeah. It causes infertility. And then there's been studies for this. And then when you go back to natural, they become fertile again.

54:28At some point, I got to look that up. That's one of those citation needed. That's so crazy. I can't believe it. It was done probably over 10 years ago, but they were doing it from the perspective of birth control and the idea that the static electricity and the things in the synthetic were actually causing male sperm counts to drop. And so if you look at right now, where guys are really interested in this subject is where infertility and hormone disruption is happening. And so people are switching their underwear because it's having a lot of effect on their ability to see. Static electricity? That's crazy to me that that makes any sort of difference.

55:02Because there's static everywhere, but I guess it's not always flowing through your clothing that is touching your body. Our bodies naturally want natural fibers on them. That's what, over the human evolution, we've grown accustomed to. So wearing these synthetics on our body is not natural. The chemicals coming off them are not natural. The off-gassing that's coming off them, not natural. is causing all of these chronic diseases and health effects that we can't entirely identify. But I have people on my team who have psoriasis that only wear our stuff to sweat in, and they have no problems. What is psoriasis again?

55:36Just a dry patch of skin? Yeah, it's skin irritation, dry redness of skin. But if you have autoimmune disease and you go to your toxicologist, you try to understand what's causing this, the first thing they'll tell you is quit wearing polyester, nylon, and spandex. jeez i've only talked to a toxicologist a few times this is a tangent but i got blood work done it was like oh your mercury level is really high and then i called the toxicologist because it's alarming and he said oh do you eat sushi yes oh then don't worry about it why not is the mercury from sushi better for you and he goes well if you didn't eat sushi and your mercury level was this high then we'd really have something to worry about because you're probably getting it from your house or something but if you just eat fish then you're going to have this level of mercury And I'm like, but it's red.

56:21It's like a 10 out of 10. And basically, as long as you can explain why that is and you don't do it all the time, I guess it's quote unquote fine-ish. But I don't know. I didn't love that answer. It's crazy to me that they would tell you to stop wearing those types of fabrics. But I guess if you're having high mercury, high-ish mercury in your blood is not the end of the world. But if you're breaking out with dry skin patches all over the place all the time and they're uncomfortable and possibly getting infected, that's a real problem. Yeah, I think everybody has different reactions to things.

56:52Roughly one out of five have chemical sensitivities out there. We don't realize the low dosing we're taking. And there's just a lot of trust we put in the system that it's not giving us a high level of toxicity. And one of the biggest misnomers is that somehow low dose is okay in certain things. But with these phthalates, PFAS and BPA and BPS, all these phthalates, there's no such thing as a safe level. So yeah, so Dr. Swan, I think one of the things she mentioned that I still find hard to wrap my mind around is a lower dose of some phthalate chemicals is actually worse for you than a higher dose.

57:30And I believe she explained it in the episode, and I can't remember exactly why, but it had to do with... If your body getting a low dose, it changes a bunch of things. But if your body gets a high dose, I don't know, maybe it somehow recognizes that it's an unnaturally high dose and the reaction is different. I just found that really disconcerting because you think, oh, it's only a little bit high. That's worse than having it a lot high somehow. Yeah. And so this is why if you have hormone disruption concerns or you have infertility concerns or you have autoimmune sensitivities, we are living in the age of chronic disease.

58:02We all know it. We can see it. People in their 30s getting cancer. And so you have to take clothing seriously. And so it is a huge blind spot. And if we thought about our clothing like we did our food and our beauty, we would actually change a lot faster. And so we're here to kind of say that there's no safe levels of dyes on plastic performance products. There's no safe levels for quick dry and wrinkle free. If it says wrinkle free and it's cotton, that's just as bad. That's dangerous. So really pay attention to the labels and the marketing and who you're buying from if you really want to avoid this environmental exposure when it comes to our clothing.

58:41because the simple adage is what's on our body is in our body. It's just like, you know, what we eat. And people are not taking it seriously in a way that they're actually changing how their wardrobe is being built. And so we're here to say that it's not a huge sacrifice. You can actually make better products using nature and working with nature. Our approach is it shouldn't be a trade-off. There should be just simpler, better, more versatile ways to do this. Normally, I'm not a huge fan of just, Oh, it's natural, so it's automatically better because it's a kind of an appeal to nature fallacy.

59:13But as long as you don't have the same sort of trade-offs, where would you still recommend synthetic performance fabrics, if anywhere? It'd be areas that you need high durability. Okay. So if you need a tent, I would definitely go with synthetic, right? Yeah. If you want something that has high, you know, abrasion, like you don't want the knees to wear out or things like that, you do need synthetic because they are usually more durable. And so industrial type of things. But if it's touching your skin all day long, I don't think you need it. And I think everything from wool to cotton to hypernatural materials can be legitimate alternatives.

59:50And you may not get the perfect weight or you may not get the perfect water protection in certain cases. But it's way better than taking in the stuff. And I think to me, it's like we're always looking for perfect and cheap. And I think there's no such thing. What's the difference between biobased, which I've heard you say a couple of times, and biodegradable? They're different. Yeah, they're definitely different. I think brands kind of abuse the terms, though, so I'm curious what the actual definitions here are. So biobased because it comes from nature in some shape or form. It can be repurposed, like we're doing.

1:00:25You're repurposing it into something new, but the origins are biobased, or it's almost like a version of plant-based, right? But although a lot of times it's minerals or other things that are natural. Biodegradable just means that it is going to break down over time in the ground. And different fibers and fabrics have different biodegradability. Like leather takes a while. What we make with hypercool jade breaks down when like three to four months in the ground. So it's like biodegradable quick. Polyester plastic, five, six, seven hundred years, something like that. because these things are built for durability also stick around a long time in the ground, right?

1:01:04And so we use like mother of pearl buttons on our shirts because those come from nature, right? So I would say that's natural or bio-based. Our fiber comes from scrap cotton, jade stone, and other minerals. That is bio-based because it comes from nature. It's more likely to break down. Now, some things, bio-based plastics that exist, you think about your straws, right? Those do break down, but they take a little bit longer, right? They're engineered to last a certain length. So where you see durability and things that are meant to last, they also last longer in the ground. This is a really creepy reference, debatable whether I should leave it in.

1:01:41But I went to Cambodia and I went to the killing fields on a rainy day. There's bones and stuff still. Like I remember stepping on something and it was stuck in my sandal and I pulled out a jawbone with teeth in it because it had washed up and stuck in my sandal horror movie level surprise with that kind of thing. And you can see there's fabric from people's clothes sticking out of the ground. And I remember thinking, it's just this weird juxtaposition of, wow, that fabric really made it a long time in the dirt and the rain in this moist environment because all that's left of that person is like a bone and then their clothes is still there.

1:02:20We were burying some of my shirts in my backyard as a test. Thank you for changing the subject a little bit, by the way. And it worked. The worms took care of it. Over a year, we had it in there. I live in Wisconsin, so it gets a little cold in the winter. But it did work. And I do think one of these things is originally we wanted to make the most sustainable product remarkable. Could we make the best possible product at the least amount of impact? And then we realized sustainability is really the same thing as health and wellness. So health and wellness is about giving people something that's clean, natural on their body that actually works with it, not against it.

1:03:00And so the idea is that the way we really move sustainability forward is we're using wellness you can wear. And we can start to do health supportive things with natural things in your body that are not only health negative, but they could actually potentially be health supportive. And so we're moving down this path of how do we build things not only of quality, but they have this sort of bio-based technology, but they're also in line with our bodies. We get that jade, get your chi, chakra, chi energy going in there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I brought you some jade stones. I was just down in Sedona and we were like doing all the crystals and all that stuff, you know.

1:03:36And we were in the vortexes and it was really fun. That's funny. But the cool thing is we all intuitively understand that when we get back to nature, it's good for us. Camping makes you feel good. A lot of that's probably not having your freaking phone in your pocket all the time. But yeah, there's all these things that were not natural to us. And when we get further away from it, we do feel different. And so the same thing goes with you wearing these things in your body every time. It does feel different. I wear our shirts literally every day. I have worn them for two years. I go back and put on my favorite team jersey.

1:04:05And I just literally, I can't make it an hour. And so what you realize is your body does adapt for better or worse to what it's wearing. Are you sure that's not some psychological reaction that you're having to your clothes? Like, oh, I'm wearing a plastic shirt now. I don't mean to make fun of you here, but I might just do it a little bit. There's these guys that say, like, I'm bulletproof. I do bulletproof this, bulletproof that, bulletproof coffee. And then it's like they smell gluten and they have a breakout reaction. I'm like, how bulletproof are you where you can't even smell McDonald's before you have to get an IV bag out of the trunk?

1:04:37To me, again, it's not about perfection. It's about doing what intuitively makes sense and going in a natural direction. But just be understand that we've been marketed to for 25, 30 years to believe that we need all of these things to perform. And it's not entirely true. And there's ways to do it better for you. And if you really care about your food, the way you're fasting, and you're doing all these things for your bodies to optimize, then you should really pay attention to what's on your body most of the time. And if you're really tuned in, you're going to realize you'll probably be even healthier and better performing by going with natural solutions versus trying to force yourself into thinking that this looks technical.

1:05:18I need this to golf in because this is what a golf shirt should look like. Not true. Golf shirts in the mid-90s were cotton. Look at Tiger Woods' early days. He's wearing cotton. Now look at us today. We all look like we're going to some sort of European disco. The fashion is what's dictating the desire. The marketing is that we need these things for performance. And the real truth is when you pull out of that and you put something on more natural and you do it for a month or two, you start to see like, you know what? I don't really need these things. Yeah, it reminds me of when they used to play football and they had those leather helmet or no helmet.

1:05:54Or you look even like 70s NBA, right? The little tiny shorts and the cotton socks up to their knees and it's just like, oh yeah. Or baseball uniforms back in the day. Yeah, this is all just cotton. Nobody cared. They still played. Now it's all moisture wicking or whatever. I'll tell you a quick, really funny story on performance. I didn't know that our stuff could actually really perform for like an elite athlete. And so one of the creative directors on my team is an Ironman triathlete. Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. He's running six, seven miles a day, every day, rowing, swimming, you know, 10 miles. Those guys are built different for sure.

1:06:28Yeah. And this guy's legitimate, took our T-shirt, the one you're wearing, and last summer wore it every day on a six mile run the whole summer. Never washed it. Oh, I was going to say never washed it. Oh, I was going to joke about that. He really never washed it. He swears that he's never washed it. Oh, man. But he said what was really interesting is that when I'm wearing this on the top half of my body, I can feel the temperature being cooler. I felt more breathable. And then my synthetic leggings that I'm wearing on the bottom felt completely different. It was warmer, not like suffocating. And so the contrast was really noticeable to him.

1:07:07And so he's like, if we could make things that had the compression and the durability, which is something we're working on, because there is bio-based synthetics coming that are derived from corn and sugar that can start to give us some of those functionalities that we need. And so when these high-end athletes are really in tune to their bodies, and so when someone who's an Ironman triathlete tells you that this works, and I legitimately had put it through the paces, it makes you realize that there is a lot more we can do with what we consider to be performance beyond just plastic. Speaking of plastic performance, let's hear from our sponsors because even the cleanest closet won't save you from the filthy economics of podcasting.

1:07:49We'll be right back.

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1:09:42The Personal Development School has a 99.7 % NPS score in helping people achieve the results they want in their relationships and dating life. The Personal Development School helps people grow, heal, and build the best relationships of their life, starting with the relationship to yourself. Also, y 'all, we have a subreddit for the show. If you're a Redditor, you can talk about episodes of the show or anything you like over on the Jordan Harbinger subreddit. Now for the rest of my conversation with Chris Colby. Most of us, well, I don't need compression, right? I don't need it. I want breathability and comfort, and that's why I choose most of the things that I choose.

1:10:20And yeah, I've got some stuff that I've had to get rid of over time. I remember the leggings craze. Get the leggings and then put shorts over them. And I just remember thinking, like, these are the most uncomfortable things. I'm not doing anything that requires compression for long periods of time. It's totally ridiculous. So I think part of that, like you said, is just marketing. It's just trendiness. Oh, I just want to look athletic today. It's a little silly. That's the fashion business. We're all about selling the way things look and making them feel good. And the way we do it isn't entirely healthy.

1:10:54I mentioned to say something before about the sunscreen thing. I hate putting sunscreen on. I don't know. I mean, people say, oh, it's got chemicals in it or whatever. I'll be honest. It's just the way that it feels, that greasy feeling. And even the non-greasy stuff, I just, I hate it. It really gets in my eyes. My eyes start to feel really not even dry. There's just this weird feeling that you get from having whatever that is in your eye. So I just wear sun protective clothing instead. And I know that you can't always get it over your face, but I've got, you know, a shemag looking thing. And it's just way better.

1:11:22You look at SPF and it goes, oh, you need to reapply this every hour, or every 90 minutes. If you get wet or sweating more, you got to do it even more often. And then my friend who sells a bunch of outdoor performance clothing, I said, what about UPF on a shirt? If it gets wet, does it change? If it gets pulled on or whatever, does it change? And he's like, no, it's just always UPF 50 until it breaks down in 100 years, like you said. But unfortunately, that's still a chemical. This one is just the way the fabric is woven. Is that possible? Or is that not possible? It is possible, but UPF 50 has got to be pretty heavy fabric to do.

1:11:55Oh, really? Oh, this is not. It's very light. So this has a chemical in it? Dang, that's disappointing. Just be very skeptical of anything promising performance that you can't trace back to a natural benefit, say like merino wool or something like that. If it's really lightweight. It's lightweight and it's not natural. It's like mylony, stretchy thing. I hate to tell you that it's probably got a chemical. Crap. I got to ask him about that because he didn't say that it didn't have chemicals in it. I just assumed it was because, oh, it's really tightly woven. You might not know. This guy knows so much about clothes.

1:12:23I'd be shocked if he doesn't know. The question I would ask them is like, how is it achieving that functionality? Is it topical or is it inherent in the fabric? Because if it's inherent, then it could be built into the weave and the construction. But for the most part, the way we're doing it is we're putting literally farm grade zinc oxide into the fiber. So it's inherently in the fiber. And that gives you an added sun protection versus it being applied on top. And so I think we're going to do all kinds of things. We're adding magnesium into it to help you sleep. I got to look up the science on that because magnesium on your clothes to help you sleep, that's up there with Jade getting my chakras aligned, Chris, I got to tell you.

1:13:04So this is where we build it and then we let people try it and test it, and that's how we do it. If it has a placebo effect and it helps you sleep, that's still something. The best thing I can advise you can give anybody is just simplify your wardrobe, buy natural bio-based fibers materials. your body will respond differently. What claim or claims do you avoid making because the evidence is not there yet? So a lot of the biofunctional claims require higher level testing. And so those are just really expensive. And so those are things that we're going to do next in our next round of investment.

1:13:38We've done independent lab testing on cooling and antibacterial and verifying the chemical safety of everything. So that's where we've invested our money initially. But like any startup company, you got to pick your spots. We started by marketing things that people want, cooling, antibacterial, antimicrobial. The biofunctional, we think, is the future. And so you can start to build things that just works with your body. The idea is that this is better on your body versus things that are not natural to it. That's our future. That's our technology. It allows us to inherently build these in. And then we'll test into this with more biofunctional medical testing, third-party testing.

1:14:16But that's a pretty big investment. What's the most scammy version of this category that listeners should watch out for? Where do you see people making claims that are just ridiculous and untrue? Mostly the polyester plastic synthetics. Really? Yeah. But that does all that stuff. It just may be not good for you. There's a lot of marketing that goes on without a lot of testing. And that's the truth of the fashion industries. It's about the way things look, not what they actually do. What claim would someone see on marketing that you go, yeah, that literally can never be the case? Maybe sun protection.

1:14:47Sun protection? Interesting. Yeah. I would say there's a lot of people talking about wicking, quick dry, all these kinds of things. Things quick dry when they're plastic. And then the other thing is like how they achieve in it, right? So I think you want to understand in any functional performance claim, is it inherent in the ingredients that it's being made with? Is it merino? Naturally, it's hydrophilic, naturally antibacterial, which it is. or is it being achieved through some sort of artificial means of chemicals that may or may not have been proven, right? And so, again, because you don't have to put these on labels.

1:15:21Yeah. You don't have to really know. There's a trust the marketing kind of aspect of it. And so I would argue that a lot of this is marketing and sometimes it's hard to understand the performance. And that's why I like natural things because you do know that natural things do these things inherently well for thousands of years. What we're doing with The Third Way is we're testing it more because it is new, but we're also really focused on safety and focused on making sure people know the origins of these things. We're not claiming cotton that is CEPIMA unless it can be traced. And so verification and reliability is really important right now because most people are cheating.

1:16:00Even your organic cottons, good chances are not really organic. If you really saw the way things were being done at the lowest levels, you know that a lot of swapping and switching goes on and then they sticker it and they say it's this. And so with Supima, you can literally genetically trace it back to the farm it came from, which is why we chose Supima. We know it's American. It's traceable. At least you know what you have. You get to sequence the genome of your T-shirt. Yeah. Crazy. You can. But a lot of things claim it's organic. And if they come from certain countries, which I won't name.

1:16:30Yeah. But if they are, you should not entirely trust that is what it says it is. Why won't you name the countries? Because we do business all over the world. I don't like stickering people in that way. It's also unfair, right? Because if you get non-organic cotton from China, you also get a lot of the other good stuff that's just fine from China. Yeah. You can't get cotton from China. You can't get any cotton from China. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah. Like literally the cotton, the Qingjiang cotton band in the U.S. is entirely anything from the United States. Oh, I didn't realize that you couldn't get any cotton.

1:17:02I just thought it was from that one place. But maybe that's the only place they grow cotton in China. Oh. Oh, so it's actually a ban on Chinese cotton, not a ban on Xinjiang cotton only. Yeah. And so while there's good reason for that, but it also drives market prices up and it creates less supply and it creates a lot more cheating. And so every time - Because there's more incentive to sell nonsense cotton because the price is higher. Or it's easier to claim something that's not and make more money. But when supply is reduced, cheating goes up. Huh. Okay. In closing, I want to do like a five-minute closet audit.

1:17:34you mentioned anything that goes on your skin. So stuff you work out in, what's the first item you would tell a normal person to examine? Leggings or shirts or what? Where would you start? I would look at the thing you wear almost every day. So probably a t-shirt or polo or a legging. Those are things that I would start with and really question if they're polyester, nylon or spandex. Okay. And then, so yeah, daily golf polos, workout shirts. I want a sane version of this because no one's going to go, I'm throwing away every gym shirt, socks, polo that I have in my closet. What are you going to wear tomorrow?

1:18:05Yeah. And then look at these things that are most sensitive parts of your body. So your underwear, your bras, things that you're sleeping in, things you're sleeping on. These are all things that you can start with. Okay. Sleep naked. That's the moral of this story. Sleep naked on organic cotton sheets, cotton not from China. So underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, bedding, my kid's pajamas. I can't even think about my kid's stuff. Jeez. Okay. And the formula is what? skin contact plus heat plus sweat plus hours worn? I don't know, a little flow chart here. So start with things that you wear the most on your body hours a day.

1:18:40So if you're wearing it 23 and a half hours a day, start there. Okay. Yeah. Then ask yourself, visit on your most sensitive parts of your body. Is it something you're sweating in? Think microwave plastic. Microwave plastic. Yeah. Okay. If your kids are wearing these things, I would absolutely start there because they're the most sensitive and exposed because their bodies are still developing. Their skin layers are not as thick. And every sort of team sport you get or every sort of free t-shirt that's given away, they're all plastic because they're cheap. I always ask people like, do we have to have disposable plastic t-shirts as the giveaway?

1:19:18Yeah, that's a good point. You have to work really hard to find something that doesn't have plastic in it. Yesterday, day I walked through the Flatiron and went through every store, you know, that we all know are favorites, right? Every store I went into and I asked him, I go, can I get something that doesn't have polyester and nylon or spandex in it? And a hundred percent, we're like, we don't have anything like that. And these are like$70,$80 t-shirts, right? Yeah. It's New York. Yeah, exactly. But it's not even like all cotton and it's still fairly expensive. And so what happens is there's just a lot of opportunities to start to ward these things off from your wardrobe and then start to ask yourself, like, what can I buy that doesn't have these things in it?

1:20:02And is it of good enough quality where I could wear it for a period of time? What should people not worry about replacing immediately? Your rain shell, for example, right? Stuff that you wear only rarely and occasionally and that needs to be, I don't know, super performance, like a raincoat. Yeah, but you're probably not going to replace your ski pants, right? Things you wear like maybe 10 times a year. Good point. Or you're not going to replace that heavy winter jacket that keeps you warm. So there's things that you want, but wool is great. Wool does a lot of great things and cotton is great.

1:20:32We've built the third way that you can enhance both cotton and wool with hypercool jade and hypernatural. But the idea is that it doesn't have to be 100 % of your closet. You can absolutely have some of these other things in it that you're favorites and they do the job. but be mindful of it's like the 80-20 roll like what you're wearing probably 80 percent of the time what's your uniform what's your go-to what's the thing that you really love the most so don't panic just start where exposure is the highest skin sweat heat duration and change one thing i like the sane version of this the last thing i would just say is be mindful of durability think good quality like buy one or two good things versus 10 like just cheap crappy things because those things are probably better for you.

1:21:17They're probably going to last you longer. And the actual value equation is better if you look at it from a number of wares. And so we just get caught up in like cheap on the ticket, but we don't look at the longer arc of things. And I think value is what you get. And I think you get a lot more with natural fibers and things that are going to work with your body. For me as a chronic overpacker who hates packing because I have to make decisions about, my ideal closet is just a bunch of high value items that you can use for anything. Like I'm wearing this shirt today all day. I'm going to wear it tonight.

1:21:52I'll probably work out in it tomorrow. I just want five of those and I can fit everything into a carry on. Instead, I've got a closet just absolutely bursting with stuff that one day I'm going to go to a party where I need to wear a red, shiny velour shirt for sure. So I'll keep this thing like that's me currently. and my ideal is just that level of minimalism with high function. I think that's where the larger zeitgeist is going. Totally, yeah. We're post-peak stuff. Yeah, hopefully. Right? And think we're getting a little more practical. And this is just your health and wellness has become really top of mind for everybody.

1:22:26So this sort of fits with the way you're thinking about it. And I love our customers when they tell me like, you know, I packed Ron when I went to Europe and I only took one short sleep shirt and it was super hot. so I wore your shirt for 10 days on this trip and it held up right and so then this like true believer and they're kind of like if I can travel that light and I can have something that does all these different things it's just better and so they don't get hung up on the price they get more into what it how it works if you've got a daytime shirt a night shirt and a workout shirt you really have three shirts so if it costs twice as much as a regular shirt then who cares you're already you're saving money at that point essentially and at the end of the day I'll tell just being in the fashion business as long as I've been, people always care what it looks like.

1:23:08Does it look good on me? Am I tired of wearing the same color all the time? Or do I want something different? Absolutely. That won't change, but you can choose who you want to do that with and you can choose how much you really, really need. And I'm always astounded by what people consider to be new because most things out there aren't really new. They're just variations of things. And so I do think you can feel good and look good without it being a trade-off. I wonder if you think polyester is going to be the lead paint of clothing in 10 or 20 years. It already seems like it might be in some ways.

1:23:44I think it's like cigarettes. Yeah, maybe that's a better analogy. You didn't die after the first 10 or even the first couple of years of smoking. But over time, there's an accumulative effect. And I think that's the part where if you really don't care, then just keep microwaving your food in plastic. If you don't really care, just keep smoking, right? Because it's the same thing. And I always joke to my friends who do hot yoga, it's like, it's like smoking while you're doing yoga. And so people are like, well, can you prove it? And so that's the problem with our industry. It's very difficult to prove things singly in terms of the cause and effect of apparel because you wear such a variety of apparel.

1:24:20It'd be hard to make somebody wear the exact same clothes for 30 years or whatever to run that kind of test. Not really possible. But there's been instances where things in the uniform business, say like the airline industry, I used to be the president of Land's End. And so we used to sell uniforms to airlines. And about five years after I left, we had done the Delta uniforms, the purple ones, the famous, you maybe remember them. And we did them for three or four other airlines. And it caused all of these health problems for the flight attendants so bad that people had to quit working. And they having like all of these like really disastrous effects and it was really affecting the general population that was working for Delta.

1:24:58And so it's one of those things where sometimes people have to wear these uniforms every day, sometimes for 24 hours a day. Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah, I guess you could run that test. And you could start to see the cause and effect. And so there was actually lawsuits on all this stuff. And even then, very hard to prove. But the direct correlation on the general population was very obvious. And so why is that? Those uniforms were made to be wrinkle-free, so they look great, right? They held up over time. They would be colorfast, so they wouldn't lose their color. They could be washed many times.

1:25:32They were meant to be strong and durable, right? And so all the things that we built in the original uniforms before that were wool, and now these were polyester. And so there's a lot of industries, whether it be medical uniform and things like that, where they could all shift more natural bio-based things and it would be good for their work population. And so at some point, we want to do FedEx uniforms and we want to do airline uniforms. We want to do school uniforms, right? Your school uniforms are all synthetic if your kids are going to a uniform school. And so all of these things don't have to be polyester and plastic.

1:26:07There are ways to create economies and do this better. But we got to make sure people understand that that's a choice. Chris Colby, thank you very much, man. Interesting. A little scary, but mostly good news is in that we are becoming aware of this and able to solve the problem instead of just like doom and gloom. You're going to die from wearing your compression shorts now. Let's hope not. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you. Chess isn't just a game. You're about to hear a preview where Danny Wrench shares how buildingchess.com put him face-to-face with cheaters, death threats, and a past he had to rewrite to survive.

1:26:41I was born into a cult. As I've talked about it more and more, I've gotten better at just saying that, naming it for what it was. The collective itself was called the Church of Immoral Consciousness. My generation, within a couple of years, was part of the first group of kids that were being born into the collective, which, again, at that point, it was full communism. People's finances are merged. When you came to the collective, you gave up all of your material belongings. You just sort of look at it and go, this was fucked up. This was not okay. There is no excuse to be made for this. And then Western media was paying attention to chess for the first time, maybe since Bobby Fischer in the 70s.

1:27:17This movie had come out, and these two kids trapped in a cult were basically under house arrest and didn't have anything else to do. And anything that Stephen Camp was fond of, everybody was into, right? He was literally in charge of every human being in the collective. I went from zero to being one of the top kids in the country. Within two years, I was already an All-American. I was one of the top-rated players. And I've worked very hard to heal my relationship with my own abusers, not because I'm trying to excuse their behavior, but because I really do believe that forgiveness is not rewriting the past.

1:27:49It's freeing yourself from it. And so with chess.com, accidental success 15 years later. So we have 25 million games a day. 623 games finishing every second. You can have a different relationship with your experiences if you want to. The obstacle can be the way and you can overcome hard shit. That was my goal with this. To hear the story of how Danny Wrench got on the hit list, check out episode 1289 of the Jordan Harbinger Show. Big thanks to Chris Colby for joining us today. The point here is not to sprint home, tear open your dresser, and scream that your underwear betrayed you. The takeaway is much more useful than that and frankly less likely to get you permanently banned from Target.

1:28:29Start where the exposure is highest. Direct skin contact, heat, sweat, and hours worn. Underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, daily t-shirts, bedding, the stuff that's basically living on your body for multiple hours at a time. Read the label. Watch for vague claims like anti-odor, wrinkle-free, stain-resistant, water-repellent, antimicrobial, clean, natural, wellness, whatever. That can mean anything from third-party tested to our marketing intern found a leaf emoji. And ask brands for receipts, not vibes, not inspired by nature, not a photo of a woman standing in a field looking mildly constipated by purity.

1:29:03Actual receipts, fiber composition, added finishes, PFAS status, certifications, test methods, wash cycle durability, third-party results. The same move here is not replace everything, it's upgrade one high-contact item at a time. That's how you avoid turning a legitimate concern into another luxury panic hobby for people who already own a$900 juicer and a trauma-informed mattress. We cleaned up the kitchen. We cleaned up the water. We cleaned up skincare. Maybe the closet is next. And 10 years from now, we may look back at some of what we wore here every day and say, I can't believe I spent half my adult life sweating into fossil fuel yoga pants.

1:29:38All things Chris Colby. We'll be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about 6 Minute Networking as well over at 6minutenetworking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And hey, the show, it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tata Sidlowskis, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others.

1:30:07The fear for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in health, wellness, exercise, performance apparel, or randomly a supply chain nerd, share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time.