SRS #310: w/ Josh Duhamel – Survival Skills, Off-Grid Living, Billionaires Building Bunkers (Transcript)

So I’m just trying to be smarter, I think. I’m trying not to take as many jobs, trying to work a little bit smarter. And really working on this company Gatlin is something that I’m as excited about as anything. I would rather honestly be working on that than anything else.

The Fleeting Nature of Fatherhood

SHAWN RYAN: Really? I mean, I think this is an interesting conversation because I think about this all the time. We were kind of just talking outside. I got two toddlers now. Time is going—

JOSH DUHAMEL: 6 and 4?

SHAWN RYAN: 4 and 2.

JOSH DUHAMEL: 4 and 2.

SHAWN RYAN: 4 and 2. Little. And time is just going by so damn fast. You look at old photos and you’re like, holy shit, man. It moves quick.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And you realize you’re aging just as fast.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But you don’t see that.

JOSH DUHAMEL: That’s the truth. I got a 12-year-old, and to see how quickly he went from 2 to 12 is like, it just goes by like that. The idea that I get to do it again with my little 2-year-old and then this little girl that’s on the way — it makes you really appreciate it that much more. So you’ve got a 4 and a 2-year-old, you’ll see, dude, it just flies by.

One thing I think I’ve learned, especially from Axel, my 12-year-old, is that I got to stay as present and in there with them as much as I can, because you don’t get those days back.

SHAWN RYAN: So how are you going to do it? Because I think about this all the time, ever since my son was about 2. The first 2 years I’m like, ah, they only want mom. It’s just diapers and boobs and milk, you know. So there’s not much for dad. I always thought I would bury my head in my work until I realize that I’m needed — or start showing interest, maybe that’s what I should say instead. And around 2 years old is when that started happening.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And so ever since 2, I’ve been kind of trying to structure my business so that I can step away and continue, but spend a lot more time at home. But it’s hard.

JOSH DUHAMEL: It is hard to remain present at home with all this shit going on. I mean, I was born to put my head down and work. It’s all I’ve ever known — just to grind my way to whatever I’m trying to get to.

Do you mostly live here? Do you travel a lot?

SHAWN RYAN: I travel a decent amount, but it’s in and out — quick trips to DC, or if I’m interviewing somebody overseas or something like that. But I have also decided to work smarter, so I turn a lot of shit down because it’s just not worth my time to be away from—

JOSH DUHAMEL: Consider that a blessing though, the fact that you get to stay — you’re mostly here.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUHAMEL: See, for me, nothing shoots in LA anymore. So I have to go to BC, British Columbia, to work for a month. And then I go to Malaysia for 6 weeks, and then I come back, and then I go to Winnipeg for another thing.

That’s what I’d need to do much less of, because even if the kids come and visit, I’m on set all day. I come home at night and I try to get them up in the morning and put them to bed at night, but it’s not enough. They need me more than that. And so traveling so much is really what kills me, because I’m gone for a week and I come back and I can see my 2-year-old has grown up just in that week. I’m missing a lot of that stuff and I don’t want to do that.

So I just got to be smarter about how I do it. I got to make a living and still maintain a lifestyle that has become pretty expensive. But I don’t need to work as much as I have been, which is what I’m really focusing on — just being smarter about it.

Growing Up — A Humble Beginning in North Dakota

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. I read something else that said you lived out of your car for a while?

JOSH DUHAMEL: No, no. My dad did.

SHAWN RYAN: Your dad did?

JOSH DUHAMEL: My dad did for a short while after they got divorced. He hates when I tell the story, but it’s amazing because my dad is one of my favorite people in the world. He’s just incredible, dude. He had a really rough time coming out of the divorce.

We were like, “Why does Dad have all this clothes on a rack in the back of his car?” We found out that he was living in there for a couple of months. So yeah, but I never had to do that, thank God.

We did bounce around a lot as a kid though. After the divorce, it was a rough couple of years. I think it was in ’85 before they got divorced. We’d bounce from house to friend’s house to friend’s house. For us, we didn’t really know much different. But there was a point I said, “Why do we keep moving around? What are we doing?” And then we ended up getting this little box of a house in Northeast Minot, North Dakota, and that was kind of when we started to settle in. But it was a rough couple of years there.

Does Money Make Life Simpler?

SHAWN RYAN: So where I’m kind of going with this is, obviously your financial situation has drastically changed since those days. I’ve built a pretty decent business here and I didn’t come from money. I’m not used to any of this. Leaving the SEAL teams, leaving contracting for the CIA, I was broke. I built a really awesome business here and now I’m not broke. But looking back, times were a hell of a lot simpler back then.

So what I want to ask you is — did the money, did the new financial situation, did that make your life more simple?

Raising Kids: Lessons, Responsibility, and Leading by Example

JOSH DUHAMEL: Such a good question, Shawn. Did it make it more simple? No, I don’t think it makes it more simple. What I do think it does, it buys you a little freedom. Buys you the ability to— they say money doesn’t bring happiness, but it sure does bring freedom to do some things that you want to. You know, you get to kind of shape the world around you a little bit more. You’re not really at the mercy of anything if you’re lucky enough to afford it. But I don’t think it necessarily makes you any happier.

For me it probably makes things a little bit more complex, because with money and power and all these things, you know, there’s like Spider-Man, you know, “comes great responsibility.” And you can probably feel that just by what you’ve grown. A lot of people are dependent on you now to answer whatever questions they have throughout the day, or what’s the next move. And it all sort of falls on you.

But I posed this question to you: how do you impart what you learned? And you’ve been through it, dude. You’ve gone all the way through the SEAL Teams and the contracting and all the things that you built here because of something inside of you that had this drive to go build it, achieve it. How do you impart that on your kids? Because that’s one thing that you can’t manufacture, you know, hardship.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I don’t know, man. I think about this all the time, and my son and my daughter are wildly different. I mean, it’s kind of interesting, the second one comes out and you’re like, “I’ve been through this s before, this will be fing easy.” Then they come and it’s like, well, this isn’t the same person at all. But my daughter is stubborn. She is going to be a f*ing badass. She just will not stop. She’s the younger one.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Always the younger one.

SHAWN RYAN: She’s like me. My son is very loving, so caring. Always watching out for his sister. I don’t know what his drive is yet. But anyways, where I’m going with this— I think about, man, I have all these things that I’ve learned throughout life, and how do I inject that into my kids, these major life lessons.

I don’t know, man. I think one thing I do is I always make them figure it out. This kind of started about a year ago, and my wife is a lot more pampering than I am. So if he can’t figure something out, he’ll ask me to help him, and I will help him. But I will say, “No, you need to figure another way out of this. There’s always another way.”

So he was trying to climb up this hill out of our creek.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: He loves playing in the creek and couldn’t get up the damn hill. And he’s like, “Help me, Dad.” He wants me to push him up. And I’m like, “I’m not going to push you up. You have to find another way. No matter what problem you’re going to face in life, there’s always an angle that you can take to accomplish what you want. You need to start looking around.” And I’ll point like, “Hey, look, the hill isn’t as steep over there. Maybe you should walk over there.” And so that was the first time that kind of clicked in my head. And so that’s what I do now with my son— I force him to find other avenues to get what he wants.

JOSH DUHAMEL: That’s great. That’s great that you have this place to do that. That’s one of the reasons I love my place out in the woods so much, is they got to figure things out. I didn’t know how to do anything when I got out there. I didn’t know how to fix anything. I’d never owned a boat before, all the things that go into owning land. I mean, you’re just constantly working.

So I’m at the point now, my son is 12, and that stuff doesn’t stop. Now it’s like, “Okay, dude, you’re going to be looking after this place someday. You need to start watching. You want me to pull you on the tube? Go get it hooked up and ready to go. And then when you’re done, you got to properly roll it up and put it away.” Little things like that to start instilling some ownership and some responsibility and accountability. I probably could have done a better job of it with my 12-year-old. He’s the older one— super sweet kid, very thoughtful, very compassionate, but doesn’t have that.

My little 2-year-old is a little badass. That one I gotta watch out for. Very strong-willed, very physical, much more physical than Axie. But they’re just different kids, both amazing but just different. Just to be able to start imparting whatever I know, whatever I’ve learned onto them, and just start giving them responsibility, let them start figuring s* out on their own. Because I’m not going to always be here.

The Example You Set

SHAWN RYAN: What is one piece of advice you have for being a father?

JOSH DUHAMEL: My advice for being a father— I think the number one thing that I learned from my dad is something he didn’t know he was teaching me. It’s that the way he treated people, the respect that he had for people, didn’t matter where they were at socioeconomically.

I’ll never forget this story. He used to own a used car dealership, and it was right on Broadway in Minot, North Dakota. Next door to that was this old guy named Art. Art wasn’t very well off at all. He owned a little shack on this road. Now it’s all been demolished and they built nicer, bigger buildings there. But this guy was one of the last holdouts. He didn’t want to sell his little place.

I remember going over to his house next door to my dad’s used car shop. And I said, “He’s poor, isn’t he, Dad?” He goes, “He’s not poor. He’s rich because he’s happy.” Something about that— he lives a happy life. So he wasn’t placing this guy’s value on whether or not he made money. And this is me as a little kid not knowing s*, and he’s teaching me that it doesn’t matter how much money you have as long as you’re living a full and happy life. And this guy did.

I guess my point in telling you this is that I know my kids are watching me very closely— how I treat people, how I handle my own business. So the only advice I could give, because I’m the last person to tell people how to raise a kid, I’m still figuring it out myself, is that they’re watching you closely, and the example you set is the way they’ll go forward.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn, that’s weird. I was just going to bring that up and I lost it. When we were talking about the knowledge transfer to your kids— I think the best thing you can do is just be the example that you want your kids to turn into. You know, and it sounds like your old man did that to you. You’re back in the Midwest, and they are always watching.

I had an incident the other day that I’m not proud of. We were at the airport going on a little vacation, at the check-in counter. We got the bags and there was some mishap. It wasn’t our fault. And I was like, “You are going to make us miss our vacation,” in a very heated way.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And then my son looked at me and said the exact same thing to the woman behind the counter. I did a face. I was like, that wasn’t good.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Well, I mean, listen, give yourself a little grace, but it’s true. I have a story similar to that. Last year I was taking my son to school— he goes to school about 40 minutes away, we have to drive in heavy traffic to get there, and it’s always just a slog. So I take the shortcut where you got to kind of jump in and it’s a standstill basically. So I was trying to get in and this lady wouldn’t let me in and she just literally cut me off. I was like, “What the f? What are you doing?” And all of a sudden I hear, “Dad!” I was like, oh s, I forgot my kid was in the backseat. He couldn’t believe it. The poor kid is mortified. I’m like, yeah, there’s a good example of your kids watching. Do I want him to behave like that? No. So I guess it keeps me in check too.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. So how did you— did you grow up in the woods?

Growing Up in the Country

JOSH DUHAMEL: So I grew up outside of town in Minot, North Dakota, in this little area called Robinwood, about 5 miles out of town. And yeah, we were out in the country and I’d spend all day, especially in the summer, just out in the woods catching frogs, catching turtles, salamanders, fishing, riding our bikes wherever we could go. And that was kind of— and then my parents got divorced. We had to move into town. And that’s when that was sort of like the next phase of my life.

But my early days from time I was probably a baby all the way up through fourth grade, I was out in the country. So I think part of the reason why I have this place now is me sort of reliving that, the little Huck Finn story that I lived as a kid. I just love being out there. It really brings me back to being a kid. And for me to now see my kids experience this and watch them sort of get to do the same things I did growing up was part of the reason I did it. Honestly, really? Is that why you asked?

SHAWN RYAN: I asked because I was just curious if you moved back there for familiarity, and did you want your family to experience what you had, or if you were strictly there for the zombie apocalypse?

Building the Off-Grid Property

JOSH DUHAMEL: No, it was— in the beginning it was this. I guess I bought this place 16, 17 years ago, and in the beginning it was just because I just wanted to get away. I just wanted something really remote, really private. I was not trying to escape Hollywood. I just wanted something different that I could get away to if I needed to.

And then it became something as the world got a little bit scarier. I was like, you know what, really glad I bought this thing. In fact, I’m going to buy the property next door too. So then I had 55 acres out there and I was like, these two little cabins— and I really started thinking more about like, okay, how could I live out here so that if s* hits the fan, I can just live out here completely unplugged? So then I started taking steps to do that, which was solar, which I never use. We ended up bringing electricity in, but everything runs off of propane. And if we could fish, I could hunt, I could literally— we got 3 wells out there. So I got plenty of water and enough food if I need it. And then all the other stuff you need.

SHAWN RYAN: Dude, I love prepping. So I want to hang out on this topic as long as possible.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I could talk about it all day.

SHAWN RYAN: All right. Where did— okay, where did you start? So you got a small cabin out in the middle of the woods, right?

JOSH DUHAMEL: So I bought 12 acres, half a parcel. Nothing on it from this old guy named Craig Cody, K-O-T-T-E. And then he passed away shortly after that. And he had a little hunting shack in the woods on the parcel, the half parcel next to where I just bought. No electricity, no water, outhouse. He had these little copper wires running through there that he would turn on these little lanterns, these little oil lanterns. That’s how he lived out there.

So then I had a little structure for the first time. So I had 26 acres and a little cabin that I never used because it was just so rat infested, mouse infested. I was like, it’s too much. I’d leave there with a sore throat every time I’d spend the night. I was like, I’m going to clean this place up before I decide to really start staying out here. So we’d go out, we’d camp a couple of days and then we’d just start fixing it up.

And then the other property next door that went up for sale, another 26 acres, with another little cabin that had electricity but no water. So we dug another well. So I had a well and I brought electricity up to the top one. Then I have this little one on the water with electricity, but built a well there. So now I have these two little cabins, but they’re both little. Now they’re— we’ve redone them now and they’re nice little guest cabins, but I still didn’t have— and so during COVID we spent all of our time out there. We had to wash dishes in the lake, shower in the lake. It was like—

SHAWN RYAN: It was like s*.

Ten Years of Homesteading

JOSH DUHAMEL: You were legitimately rough homesteading for the first 10 years. I loved it. That’s because I was constantly— it was pickaxes and it was shovels and it was clearing little spaces. I remember I found this little area down by the water that was all sand, but it had all these dead logs and all the kind of overgrown. And I just knew that if I could clear this off, we’d have like this beautiful little beach. And sure enough, that became Axel Beach. My oldest son, I named it after him. And that’s where the kids just run wild now. It’s all cleared up and it’s beautiful now.

But it was a lot of just— and then I got a tractor and I got a skid steer and then it got to go. We started moving because then you can pop stumps and rocks and clear things much quicker. But for the first 10 years, it was literally like homesteading. And I loved it because I’d leave LA, I’d go out there and I’d spend 2 weeks and just work on whatever my little project was. And over the years now, it’s become like a really cool little spot that we just— my family loves it. My parents, my sisters, my wife’s family, they all come out. We just make the most memories out there. It’s amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s awesome, man. What got you into the prepping? What was the last straw?

The Book That Started It All

JOSH DUHAMEL: I think it’s— I’ve always had this recurring— not nightmare. It’s more of like a daymare. I read this book by Wesley Rawls called Patriots: The Guide to Surviving the Coming Collapse, and it was based on the 2008 market crash. And things almost got sideways in Los Angeles and all over the country. If you remember, the banks and everything were freezing and it was like a whole thing. But then the government bailed them out and it sort of eased everybody’s stress.

This book plays it out as if it just kept going. And there are these certain cells around the country that had a plan that if things went sideways, we get on our walkies and we all sort of send a message and we all go to our spot. And it was in Idaho and it was like this camp where they would have— it was like a little mini militia almost where everybody had a certain skill set. Some were medical, some were weaponry, some were construction, some were farming, communications. They all contributed. And if you didn’t contribute, you were out. So it was like this little mini sort of militia of people that came with a certain set of skills that helped sort of fend off anybody that came.

So that was kind of the beginning of it for me. I was like, I need to build something that if things do go sideways, I got to have a plan to get out of Los Angeles and I got to have a plan to get from Los Angeles to here. And once I’m here, we’ll be able to figure it out because I’ll have what I need. So that was kind of the beginning of it.

SHAWN RYAN: And now it’s your plan to get out of LA?

Planning the Escape from LA

JOSH DUHAMEL: I got a motorcycle now. I got kids. I don’t know what I would do. I still got to figure— I got a little dirt bike, but now I got a wife and I got 3 kids. So the plan is shifting. It’s in development still. But I had a whole thing where, okay, if I have to, I’ll get a boat in the marina, I’ll take that up the coast, and I’ll have a truck in a parking garage. I go crazy with this stuff.

Because when things lock down in Los Angeles, and anything will set that off— those freeways lock up and there’s no getting out. So I need a way to get out of there, like through the hills, down to the water, up, and then get out. See, if I was a little bit tougher, Shawn, I could have been a Navy SEAL, but I’m just not made of the same stuff you are. I have the same mindset, just not the same toughness. But I really go deep with it. I really think about, okay, how do we do that? How do we get out of here? And that was— that still is one of the biggest things. If we’re there and we get stuck, how do we get out?

SHAWN RYAN: Have you looked at dual citizenship?

JOSH DUHAMEL: What do you mean?

SHAWN RYAN: Like, are you that far down the rabbit hole yet?

JOSH DUHAMEL: You mean like Canada?

SHAWN RYAN: Canada? A lot of— I mean, the top 5 places I think are Ireland. If you have Irish roots, you can get it immediately. Portugal, but you got to learn Portuguese. Italy was on there. Canada was on there. Paraguay was on there.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Which was always— I’ve always said, if I got to get the hell out of Dodge, I’m going to Paraguay.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Why?

SHAWN RYAN: It’s too far south for the cartels to be running drugs up. There’s no ocean, which means nobody wants to vacation there. There’s nothing there but farming and f*ing cows.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And nobody knows about it. So that was always my spot.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Have you taken any measures to do that or not?

SHAWN RYAN: Not yet. I’m like in process.

JOSH DUHAMEL: But do you think you’d have to leave the country to do all this?

SHAWN RYAN: What are your fears about it? Peace of mind. I’m not— I’m not going to abandon the f*ing country anyways. I’m going to fight for it.

JOSH DUHAMEL: But if—

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, but other people have to fight for it too. And if nobody’s fighting for it, one guy fighting for it isn’t going to do a damn thing.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I think there are plenty of people that fight for it though.

SHAWN RYAN: You think so?

JOSH DUHAMEL: God, yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t know, man. Sometimes I think it’s all talk.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: Which is why I’m looking at dual citizenship.

AI, Robots, and Billionaires Building Bunkers

JOSH DUHAMEL: I haven’t gone that far down the rabbit hole, but what are your fears about— I mean, I know we’re talking— we sound like crazy, tinfoil hat wearing— but I mean, I think AI robots could be a real thing.

SHAWN RYAN: You think AI robots could be—

JOSH DUHAMEL: I think so. I mean, this AI thing is moving so quickly that I don’t know if we can ever— we got to wrap our arms around this thing or it’s going to—

SHAWN RYAN: Well, it’s interesting that all the people building AI are also building bunkers, like Mark Zuckerberg that put a huge f*ing bunker in Hawaii.

JOSH DUHAMEL: They know a lot more about it than we do.

Building an Off-Grid Compound: Survival Gear, Guns, and Preparedness

SHAWN RYAN: I know that. So speaking of AI, are you familiar with Claude? Yes. Okay, so before you came on, we had Claude, Anthropic’s AI, scrape the entire internet on you and come up with the most viral question that would land with the audience.

Okay, here’s the context. You spent a decade in Transformers films where the entire premise is robots coming to kill humans. Then last month you told Fox News you’re now 72% ready for the apocalypse at your off-grid cabin. And you said, “I’m less afraid of zombies and more afraid of AI robots now. I don’t know if we’re ever going to fully be able to protect ourselves from what’s coming.”

Meanwhile, you spent 15 years quietly building a 26-acre compound 40 miles from the nearest store. So here’s the question. Take us inside the compound. If someone watching right now wanted to start building their own version of what you’ve got, what’s the gear, gadgets, survival kit, and guns you’d tell them to buy first?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Well, first thing you need is water, electricity, and water. So you need a pump to pull the water out of the well, so you need some sort of electricity, whether it’s solar or something, whether it’s gas-powered or whatever. You need something to pull. You need water. That was the first thing I did. I have guns. Hopefully I never need them for anything other than hunting.

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of guns? What would you recommend somebody to get?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I got some 9s. I’ve got shotguns. I’ve got rifles. Things that are all legal and registered. And anybody watching, please know that it’s all on the up and up.

But that’s one thing — protection. Learn how to fish, learn how to hunt, and have shelter. I mean, for me, I built the shelters that I needed, but it’s not like it’s a fortified military type anything.

I’m actually really looking at — I have this old container, this old shipping container that we bought during COVID that right now just operates, just acts as a shed for all my supplies, where there’s plumbing or extra wood or just tools, things that sort of overflow that go in there. Eventually I want to bury that, put up, under a thick concrete sort of shed above that. So you walk inside the shed, you go down in this thing, then you have this whole bunker.

AI, Exponential Growth, and the Fear of What’s Coming

JOSH DUHAMEL: I mean, listen, man, if they’re coming, they’re coming. I’m not sure if anything’s going to stop it. I just hope that we wrap our arms around this thing and have some sort of guardrails so that they don’t just — because the way it’s moving at a pace so fast right now, we can’t even grasp it.

I was at this event in Cannes last year called Cannes Lions. It’s a big branded marketing convention. All the biggest brands go and they talk the latest and greatest. And all they talked about was AI and how a year from the day it was — which is probably 6 months ago now — a year from that day, it’s going to be 60 times more powerful than it was one year earlier. 60 times.

So you can imagine you take that 60 times and then it just keeps growing exponentially. I can’t wrap my head around that. I don’t know if anybody can. So I just hope that smart minds sort of come together and say, “Okay, hold on, let’s just slow this thing down a little bit,” if we even can at this point. I don’t know. I don’t think it’s likely.

A Gift from SIG Sauer

SHAWN RYAN: I got you one other gift though. So before we get too far from the guns — I got a buddy at SIG Sauer.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh God.

SHAWN RYAN: And I told him you were coming on. He’s a huge Transformers fan. This is clear and safe, by the way. But that’s the SIG Sauer 365 Macro with a SIG Sauer suppressor and SIG’s new optic line. Holds 17 rounds plus 1 in the pipe.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Wait, you’re giving me this?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, you probably have to take that to the cabin though. I don’t think that’s going to fly in LA.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh my God, this is the coolest gift. Amber, thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, we’ll break it in here after this if we’ve got time.

JOSH DUHAMEL: That is amazing, dude. Thank you so much. What is it, a 9?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it’s a 9mm.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Wow, thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Truly, thank you so much.

SHAWN RYAN: My pleasure, man.

JOSH DUHAMEL: How do I get this back to Los Angeles?

SHAWN RYAN: We’ll talk offline about it.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Okay, how do I get this back to Fargo? Yeah, I’ll register it in Fargo.

Survival Tips: Books, Seeds, and Water

SHAWN RYAN: So that’s amazing. You’re welcome. Look good out there in the cabin. But I would love to go through this with you. One thing — you mind if I critique you a little bit?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, one thing. So you’re learning, right? You’re learning how to do all this. You need books — not f*ing downloaded programs, not stuff on computers. You need textbooks on how to survive.

There’s a really good series. This isn’t a plug, but whatever. It’s called Back to the Basics. They have a whole series in hardback, and it teaches you everything from f*ing gardening to how to build a cabin, how to filter water, how to wash your clothes, how to make soap.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Wow.

SHAWN RYAN: How to do all of it. So that way you don’t have to learn it all right now when the stuff hits the fan.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Because you never know. I mean, what if everything goes down, everything’s dark, we don’t have our phones or computers to just look everything up. So that’s the reason — just to have books.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. And it’s just — you’re going to use it, but you don’t have to stress about knowing it all today because you have textbooks.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Back to the Basics.

SHAWN RYAN: It teaches you how to raise chickens, how to do everything.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Wow, that’s cool.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, it’s a great series. So that would be something I would invest in. And then you can learn as you go. Seeds. Okay, you have seeds?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I do. I just bought a bunch of seeds. I just bought a ton of seeds.

SHAWN RYAN: Good.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Because we’re building a food plot. That’s one of our projects this year. We’re doing a big pumpkin patch. The deer are probably going to eat most of the pumpkins, but we’re hoping in the fall we can take the kids up and just do a big pumpkin patch thing.

And then I’m building — I cleaned up the whole perimeter of this. We live on this peninsula and I’m cleaning up all the wood, all the old logs and stuff, and I’m going to plant a million wildflowers. Not that those seeds are going to do us any good, but you’re talking about like what — corn and what, anything?

SHAWN RYAN: Corn, green beans, just lots of vegetables, lots of fruit. But I just store them in a bin and every time I go to Tractor Supply or wherever, I just buy a couple and throw them in there.

JOSH DUHAMEL: And where do you plant them all?

SHAWN RYAN: No, I just stockpile.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh, you stockpile it. Okay. And is there an expiration on those or no?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t believe so.

Water Sources and Filtration

SHAWN RYAN: Okay, books, seeds, the water stuff. Do you have to have a — well, you live on a lake. So yeah, not too worried about that.

JOSH DUHAMEL: No, we’ve got 3 wells up there which are really, really good water. So that I think is good enough.

SHAWN RYAN: Nice.

JOSH DUHAMEL: The lake itself is all spring-fed. So it’s a really good — one of the clearer lakes in Minnesota, which is awesome. I mean, I’m not going to drink it, but if I had to boil it, I guess we could.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you know what a Berkey water filter is? No. So it’s a gravity filter. You just — it’s like putting a bucket on top of a bucket and it takes out like 99.9% of everything.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Super easy. You have that here?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t have it here, but I have a couple at the house. And you could take literally just about any water, dump it in there, and when it’s done doing its thing, it’s —

JOSH DUHAMEL: Really? I’ll do that this summer. And where do you buy that?

SHAWN RYAN: You can get them on Amazon.

JOSH DUHAMEL: All over the place. Berkey water filter.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Another thing for you in LA — I think I’ll just text it to you. Another thing for your LA home when you’re in LA is if you’re worried about water, you can get a dehumidifier and a solar inverter, which you can get on Amazon for like $500. And you just plug in the dehumidifier and it will just pull water right out of the air.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: And it’s filtered, obviously.

JOSH DUHAMEL: And how much water does that make? Enough to —

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Have you ever seen one?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I don’t think so.

Communications, Weapons, and Family Life

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. You just run the dehumidifier, just pulls the humidity out of the air, and then there’s a little tank inside the dehumidifier. I mean, you can— these are like, I don’t know, $100 maybe at Home Depot. And yeah, you just hook it up to your solar inverter if you don’t have power, and it’s going to pull water fast.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Okay. So, and that’s called the what again?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s a dehumidifier.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Just a dehumidifier? No, there’s no— it’s not called anything else?

SHAWN RYAN: Okay. All right. A lot of people put them in their basements.

JOSH DUHAMEL: But good to know. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: What do you do for communications? What do you have for that? Are you planning on communicating?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yes. Well, I bought— I got— I saw them on Instagram, and they work. They’re amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: They’re the satellite push-to-talks, the walkies. They would—

JOSH DUHAMEL: They work great. We just started using them. I just got them working this last time I was out there.

SHAWN RYAN: Nice.

JOSH DUHAMEL: They seem to work great, and apparently you can— where they work, they triangulate with different satellites and you can use them across the country. Is that even real? I’ve never tried that, but I know that they work really well on our property.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on, man.

JOSH DUHAMEL: How about you? What do you have? Do you use any kind of—

SHAWN RYAN: I’m not set up with comms yet. Yeah.

JOSH DUHAMEL: So I’ll send you what I have. They seem pretty good.

SHAWN RYAN: What about ammo?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I could use more. I have a fair amount, but yeah, I think it’s good to have enough.

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of guns do you have?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I got a .223. I got a Glock 21SF, Glock 17. What else? Shotguns, mostly for hunting. Bird guns, rifles for deer hunting. I got a crossbow out there.

SHAWN RYAN: You got a .22?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I do have a .22.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, that’s the best one, man. You can take thousands of rounds with you at a moment’s notice because they’re so light.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah. What else do I got? I got this. What is this?

SHAWN RYAN: This is a Sig Sauer, the Sig 365.

JOSH DUHAMEL: 365 Pro. I just got this one just recently, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. Is the fam into the prepping?

JOSH DUHAMEL: She thinks I’m a little bit crazy, but she also appreciates it, because at first— and bless her heart, my wife is amazing because she grew up living that lake life. Her family is very close to where mine is. So she gets it. She loves being out there and we’ve made it comfortable now.

For the longest time, she was with me during COVID and the whole thing. So it was rough. Like, believe it or not, girls don’t like having to go into an outhouse in the middle of winter in Minnesota, walk outside in their snow boots to go to the bathroom. It doesn’t go over well.

You’re not going to attract a lot of women with an outhouse behind your thing. But she must really love me. But now it’s much more comfortable. We built— everything’s got a bathroom, we got plumbing. And it’s beautiful. We’ve got this beautiful beach that we built. So it’s not super posh, but it’s comfortable.

I don’t ever want it to feel too luxurious. I like that it still feels a little bit rugged. We still got to work to make— and we’re 40 minutes from anything, so we got to come prepared. Every time I’m out there, it becomes similar to what you’re talking about with the books, back to the basics. It’s like— I forget about all the stuff that— when I’m in Los Angeles, it’s all about work, achieve, create. But out there, it’s about survival. It’s about making sure that my family and everybody who’s come to visit us has enough water, enough food, enough heat. That’s really where my head goes. And it’s a really liberating thing to not worry about the things that you do in the real world, and just sort of focus on what is actually important.

SHAWN RYAN: I feel like your mind rejuvenates when you do stuff like that, get out of the loop. How do you stay present with your kids in LA when you’re in the mix, when you’re working?

Fatherhood and Family Priorities

JOSH DUHAMEL: I just show up for everything. If I’m in town, I’m there. I take him to school, I take him to soccer practice and basketball, go to all the games, help them with their homework if they need it. Teach him how to shoot a jump shot. He’s all into basketball right now. So he always wants to play me and learn. And so I’m always out there, just whatever I can.

Because I’ve learned, seeing him as a 2-year-old and now a 12-year-old, these moments matter. And if I’m gone for months at a time, I need to make sure that I am with them and they know that I’m with them 100% when I’m here. So they don’t ever feel like— my biggest fear is looking back going, I screwed my kids up because I wasn’t around enough. That is one of my biggest fears. I do not want to do that. I want to make sure that they know that I am doing everything I can to be there for them as a dad.

SHAWN RYAN: Does your wife keep you on the level?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh yeah, she does. Maybe too much so. No, she’s great. She truly is the best thing that ever happened to me. She’s a North Dakota girl, very level-headed, great mom, loves my 12-year-old who isn’t even her kid.

SHAWN RYAN: How’d you meet her?

JOSH DUHAMEL: She organizes the place, she keeps everything sort of running at the house. I met her in Los Angeles, believe it or not. She was living there. We’d communicated through Instagram, believe it or not. And a friend of ours actually got us in contact, because he knew her and he knew that she was from North Dakota. She knew that he knew that I was from there. And he said, “You guys should meet.”

So we talked back and forth, never any real thoughts of a relationship because she’s younger than me. I didn’t want to be that guy. Well, it turns out I am that guy. Because I met her, I brought her to my house, I invited her over for this barbecue, and I was like, “Damn, she’s beautiful, she’s such a beautiful girl.” And then we started dating after that, and from there I kind of knew that this is the kind of girl that I want to be with.

Because I dated quite a bit after the divorce, and I was like, “Josh back out in the wild is not a good thing.” I’d forgotten how to survive in the wild. It’s like a monkey that grows up in the zoo. You throw them out in the jungle, you know, feed himself.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUHAMEL: How long have you been married?

SHAWN RYAN: 6 years.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Okay. So, 4 years.

SHAWN RYAN: Is she an end of the worlder?

JOSH DUHAMEL: End of the worlder?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. Does she think the apocalypse is really around the corner?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Not really. She lets me— she likes the fact that I’m handling it, but she’s not that concerned about it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. How about yours? Your wife?

SHAWN RYAN: I would say it comes in waves. She’s pretty tuned in with what’s going on in the world just because of this. So when I come home after a rough interview and tell her all about what I’ve learned for the day, then she’s like, “I’m glad we have 3 years of food prepped in the basement.” But I’m going to do that too. Yeah, we’ve— I mean, ever since COVID, it’s been— I’ve always been concerned, just from my previous life. But it’s just how I think. I always think that the bottom is going to fall out at a moment’s notice.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And so I’m a big contingency guy. But yeah, she’s in on it. It goes in waves, but sometimes she thinks I’m crazy and then something will happen and she’ll be like, “Oh, sh.”

JOSH DUHAMEL: Well, that’s the thing. It’s kind of our job to have a plan. Protectors, you know.

Societal Division and Growing Concerns

SHAWN RYAN: So what— I mean, I want to go into a little more detail. It can’t just be AI robots. What do you think is going to happen? What are your biggest concerns right now?

JOSH DUHAMEL: It just feels as if there’s an instability. There’s a lack of respect for law and order. And people are really divided. And I could see some sort of event where this side— I don’t want to call it a civil war, but it feels more and more like— I don’t feel like we’re coming together. I feel like we’re getting further and further apart. So it could turn into something like that.

I’m hoping to God it doesn’t. I hope the cooler heads prevail and we figure out a way to find some common ground, because right now it just feels too divided and people are too okay with hating the other end. There’s a real hate problem in this country. And I’m seeing people behave in ways they never would have behaved. I mean, I’m not going to give any examples, but well-known people, I’m like, “What the hell happened to you, dude? You’re so blinded by your hate that you’re just behaving in a way that’s just not you.” And I see that all over.

I have a Cybertruck, and I bought this thing well before any of this stuff was happening, well before any of the backlash against Elon was happening. And driving down the street in Los Angeles, I can’t tell you how many people like, “F you, f you.”

SHAWN RYAN: Serious?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Like, that is just not okay behavior. Like, when is it okay to just do that? That’s just blind hate for something that has nothing to do with— I can drive whatever car I want to. But to have that kind of behavior, to me, scares me because people are irrational right now. And I just want to make sure that I do what I can to keep the peace and to protect my family if I need to. Because it’s getting— it’s just getting too okay with behaving in ways that weren’t okay even 10 years ago. It feels like it’s becoming more and more of that.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you see that in North Dakota?

JOSH DUHAMEL: No, not anywhere. Not even close.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t see that around here.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah, it’s just completely irrational behavior, and it’s because there’s such hatred for the other side that people are just losing their minds a little.

Finding Common Ground and Political Frustration

SHAWN RYAN: I used to see it. Yeah, here. The farther we get from COVID, the ease— it’s easing up. But I will say, with everything that’s been going on, the vibe that I’m getting is that maybe we are finding some common ground with shit like the Epstein files and a lot of the stuff that’s going on in the world. It seems like a lot of people are like, yeah, this isn’t going how we thought it was going to go. I think there is a growing base of the country that is just f*ing hating our government, our politicians, and I think that’s a good thing because it’s at least something to, hopefully, create some accountability.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah, because without getting too much into it, because I don’t like to— I’m never going to preach to people about how to believe or what they should believe or shame them for what they do believe. But there’s definitely got to be some accountability because there’s been some heinous behavior that just shouldn’t be okay. And like I said, things that weren’t okay even 5 years ago now seem to be somehow brushed under the rug. It’s like, no, that’s not okay. I just want to make sure that people are maintaining some clarity around what is okay behavior and what’s not.

Is It All Biblical?

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think this could all be biblical?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it like that.

SHAWN RYAN: You haven’t?

JOSH DUHAMEL: No.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re a Christian, right?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I am, but I guess I haven’t made that connection. What do you mean?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, a lot of the things in the Bible— a lot of things are happening that the Bible says would happen.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh gosh, right f*ing now.

SHAWN RYAN: And that’s a whole other conversation, but that’s kind of where I’ve landed.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh boy.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I don’t know, like, what do you mean? Expand on that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I mean, you want me to expand on this? Right now there are 3 of the religions all going at it in the world right now, and that’s supposed to happen. There are public figures in the world that mirror very closely to predictions. I don’t know if they predict things that say that’s going to happen in the world. And it’s a lot of political shit that has gone on in the country— like gender ideology, shit like this. And it seems to be speeding up, getting faster.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah, I don’t see any backing off from either side. This is why I tend to not get overly involved in this stuff, because one thing that I’ve learned from all this is that I’m not changing anybody’s mind. People are dug in.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

Returning to Faith

JOSH DUHAMEL: All you can do is just sort of behave in a way that you think is right, loving, not filled with hate. Part of the reason I went back to the church— honestly, I needed something to rise above the noise because I found myself starting to feel some of the same hatred against the people that I disagree with. And I was like, what am I doing? I was losing sleep over it. I was really, really angry and started thinking, what am I doing? I need to get back and reconnect spiritually.

So I started— I dropped my son off. He goes to a Catholic church, Catholic school. I would just drop him off and go sit in church for 15 minutes, just pray or just meditate. If I’m on location somewhere, I’ll find a church, whether it’s Catholic or Presbyterian or Lutheran, I don’t care. As long as God lives there, I’ll go. And I found that that’s really helped me make sense of some of it and hopefully find some clarity in it all, because I just needed something. I didn’t want to be that woman in the street flipping me off with this hatred in her eyes. I’m not going to be that person. I need to find a way to find God again.

SHAWN RYAN: When did you start looking at that?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I mean, I go through phases where I’ll be really connected spiritually and times that I’m not. And I find that when I am connected spiritually, I’m a much better friend, father, husband, brother— just a better person all around. When I’m not, I can get a little squirrely, I can start to lose track of what’s important. And this business can really take you down some dark roads.

I think that’s what the Catholic religion did for me. Even though I don’t agree with a lot of this stuff, I still find that it really taught me right from wrong, gave me that backbone. Whenever I’d go wayward one way or the other, it always kind of brought me back. Church, friends, family— thank God I have a good group of friends, really good family, and was raised Catholic, was raised Christian. Now the dogma of it all doesn’t mean as much to me. I don’t care so much about what religion says I have to do, as long as it feels like it’s about love, peace, harmony— things that keep my head clear of all the noise.

SHAWN RYAN: I grew up Catholic too.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah. Are you still Catholic?

SHAWN RYAN: Yes, I think so.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Me too.

Rediscovering Christ and Spiritual Warfare

SHAWN RYAN: But like you, I started kind of going around— I mean, I fell out of it. I was raised Catholic and then kind of fell out of it in the SEAL teams. And recently, maybe with the last 2, 3 years, kind of refound Christ. And so I started going to all these non-denominational churches.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah, me too.

SHAWN RYAN: And I really like them. I think— I think I’ll probably get blasted for saying this, but I think one thing that the Catholic religion lacks on is the teachings of Jesus. Because growing up, I don’t know shit about the teachings of Jesus or really who he was. And I realized that when I was going to these non-denominational churches. I was like, these Southern boys and girls over here are quoting scripture like, bam, bam, bam. I can’t do any of that. And so I really started paying a lot of attention because I wanted to learn more about Christ and the life of Jesus and what it all means, instead of just the typical Catholic Mass.

And then I started reading a lot about spiritual warfare and diabolic influence and stuff like that. And I don’t think anybody in Christianity matches the Catholic Church when it comes to spiritual warfare— what it all means, how it works.

JOSH DUHAMEL: And so what do you mean by that?

SHAWN RYAN: Spiritual warfare?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah. And how— nobody can match the Catholic religion. What does that mean? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t think it’s a good thing or a bad thing.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Why is the Catholic religion better at spiritual warfare than the rest of them? And what is spiritual warfare?

SHAWN RYAN: Man, how do you describe it? Basically, spiritual warfare is the good and evil and the battle for your soul.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Your mind. Okay, now I get it— for the world. I would agree with that then, because that’s what’s kept me from really going off the deep end, really taking that dark road down whatever path it was going to take. Spiritual warfare brought me back to— whether you agree with the Catholic dogma and all the stuff around it, it does give you that sense of right and wrong.

SHAWN RYAN: It talks about— I had this guy Father Ripperger on, and he’s like the exorcist in North America.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Okay.

SHAWN RYAN: He wrote this book called Diabolic Influence, which I’ve been picking up and digging into since I interviewed him. It talks about everything from— I mean, I don’t know if you believe in possession and exorcisms and all that kind of stuff, but he talks about how evil demons, demonic influence, kind of seeps into your life and how it gets in. And a lot of the ways it gets in is by really bad shit that you’re doing. So if you get into it, it’s pretty fascinating.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I’m going to read that book.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll send you the episode.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh, I’ll go find that.

SHAWN RYAN: You can’t even buy the book.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Oh really?

SHAWN RYAN: That’s the thing. He wrote it for— basically he wrote it for the Vatican as a guide to how this is happening. And it’s fascinating, dude.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Okay. You have a copy of that?

SHAWN RYAN: I got a copy.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Wow. I would be very interested in that because yes, I do believe in that. I do believe that there are dark forces at play.

SHAWN RYAN: Me too.

JOSH DUHAMEL: And if you’re not spiritually connected, you’re really susceptible. It’s easy to become susceptible if you’re not vigilant about staying spiritually connected.

Longevity, Testosterone, and Peptides

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. So what got you into the longevity stuff?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Well, I was taking testosterone replacement therapy for a few years before I ever started into this, and I was keeping it a secret. I was doing some of the peptides, but never told anybody about it. But I was seeing how much it was actually helping me. And my friend Fabian Calvo brought me this idea to be part of this company. I was like, no, no, I can’t tell people— that’s my dark little secret. But then I started thinking about that and I was like, of course I should do this. This is something I could easily shine a light on that makes it okay, because it’s helped me so much.

Testosterone replacement has been huge for me. It’s brought my levels back. I was low, so I’m able to keep muscle on, able to do things that I could do in my 30s that I’m now 53 can do. And then we got into the peptides, started learning more and more about them and how much they can actually help. I think that was the reason why— it gave me a chance to sort of share some of the stuff that I’d learned, even though I was keeping it quiet for so many years.

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of peptides?

Wellness, Longevity, and Gatlan

JOSH DUHAMEL: I do Tesamorelin. I do the Wolverine stack, which is HGH, HKGCU, TB500, and KPV, which is great for joints and skin and hair recovery, cell regeneration. What else do I do? I do NAD and MOTC.

SHAWN RYAN: What does that do?

JOSH DUHAMEL: NAD and MOTC, they help with the mitochondria. I’m probably going to butcher this a little bit. I’m learning. But it’s really good for energy, skin, staying young looking. The mitochondria and the energy and stuff like that is what it’s supposed to be. Do you do any of this stuff?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I do TRT. I don’t do peptides, but I’m getting ready to. And then the NAD stuff.

JOSH DUHAMEL: It works, man. It really does work. And then there’s the HRT. We just started doing it for women too. We started as just a men’s company. And then I had so many females in my life saying, “Dude, you got to— we need help too.” And I started doing research on that. And there’s the HRT, which can literally prolong the youth of women. It can stem the effects of perimenopause and menopause and bring your levels of progesterone and estrogen back up to what they were. So women don’t have to go through the same things that they always have with menopause. So all this stuff is like—

SHAWN RYAN: Wait, are you saying it like skips menopause?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Well, no, it just delays the effects of it and reduces the hot flashes. I have never gone through it because I’m not a female. But from what I’ve heard, if you can regulate your hormones— that’s part of the reason why menopause is such a b for women is because their hormones have fallen off. Like in men, it’s testosterone. Women, it’s estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone as well. So you can really sort of regulate that stuff with this hormone therapy.

And what makes this company so great is that we have a whole team of doctors. So it’s like a concierge service. The FDA doesn’t let you just go out and click, click, click and have the stuff sent to you. They want you to be guided by a professional medical expert, somebody with the ability to actually walk you through this and create a plan. And so we have a whole team of doctors. We feel like we’re doing it the right way. We’re really able to help so many people and this stuff works. It truly works.

It’s been really, really fun, actually, for me, learning more and more about it because I have a real natural curiosity for wellness and longevity and trying to stay as healthy as I can for as long as I can. Not just for my work, but for my kids. I’m 53 years old and I have a baby on the way. I need to be as strong as I can for her as long as I can.

SHAWN RYAN: Congratulations on that.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Thank you. You can have any more?

SHAWN RYAN: Probably not.

JOSH DUHAMEL: No. Yeah. How old are you? 43. Oh, you’re still a young man.

SHAWN RYAN: I would love to, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah, you got two beautiful ones. That’s all that matters. Yeah. So that’s the main reason— just because I wanted to be able to build something and help. And for myself personally, selfishly, I was trying to learn as much as I could to stay in the game for as long as I could. I’m not going out without a fight, man. I’m going to stay as young and strong and virile for as long as I can.

What’s Next for Gatlan

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. You guys going to venture into anything new, or you’re going to stick with the peptides, NAD, and TRT?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yes, right now there’s just so much— there’s stuff coming up on the horizon that’s just like unbelievable. Some of these things that are not approved yet, but they’re about to be. So for now, yes, hormone therapy for men and women, testosterone for men, HRT for women, whether it’s estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, and then all these amazing peptides. Eventually it may be stem cells.

SHAWN RYAN: Nice.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Which is another thing that’s going to be coming, incredibly beneficial. The science behind that is incredible too. I’m just beginning to learn about how amazing that stuff can be if done and administered properly. And thankfully with Dr. Lawrence and his team, we have just the best people in the world to help.

Plasma Exchange and Parasites

SHAWN RYAN: Have you looked at this plasma exchange stuff?

JOSH DUHAMEL: I’ve heard a little bit about it.

SHAWN RYAN: You know what I’m talking about?

JOSH DUHAMEL: You talking about when they spin the blood in the PRP?

SHAWN RYAN: No, no, it’s almost like blood filtration. Have you seen it? I don’t know how much time you spend on social media, but right now there’s this trend, there’s all these people, they hold up these bags.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I saw Rogan did that, didn’t he? Didn’t Rogan have a big one?

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, that’s plasma exchange. So apparently it’s like filtering all the spike proteins and all the s* out of your blood.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Really?

SHAWN RYAN: Like maybe heavy metals and stuff. And the darker the bags are, the more toxins that it’s pulled out.

JOSH DUHAMEL: I would hate to see what mine looks like.

SHAWN RYAN: I know, me too.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Might it be like a greenish hue?

SHAWN RYAN: We’ve never seen that color before. But yeah, that’s something I’ve been looking into to do. Especially with all the exposure of all the f*ed up places I’ve been throughout the world.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Parasites is another one I want to look into. I’ve heard a lot about this stuff. I’m no expert in any of this stuff. I’m as curious as anybody else, but I do have a natural sort of curiosity to learn more. And parasites are one of them that my mother— my mother’s always kind of been on the forefront of this stuff. She was eating the egg whites in the early ’80s. We were so embarrassed. Like, “Mom, you’re asking to take your egg yolk.” She’s always sort of been ahead of the curve. And she just tells me about parasites and how you need to get checked for them and how you can get them sort of expelled from your body. Is it a fad? I don’t know. Feels like it could be real.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

JOSH DUHAMEL: All the stuff we eat.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I’m sure it’s real. But where do people find the company? Who’s it for? Is it for everyone?

Finding Gatlan

JOSH DUHAMEL: It’s for everyone. We’re finding in our data that people are doing it younger and younger as a preemptive sort of way to prevent some of these effects of aging that happen. So people in their 30s are starting to use this stuff. But we’re meant for people my age, 40s, 50s, even 60s or 70s. These are things that can be really beneficial.

Gatlan.com will set you up with one of our doctors who will put you through a few of the steps that it takes to get involved. This is a big deal for people to get into, and it can be scary for people. So we want them to be as comfortable as possible. Make sure they get their levels checked. Make sure you know where you’re at. Just in general, you should know that anyway. Just get your levels checked. You’ll find that you’re probably not optimizing as well as you could be. There’s a lot of peptides you could be using. Your hormones can be leveled up to where they should be.

It’s a pretty easy process. It’s telemedicine, but it’s like telemedicine 2.0 because we make it real simple. Everything’s delivered discreetly to your house, but you’ll also have somebody there to help you so you don’t have some dude from the gym who compounds out of the backseat of his car. Stay away from the research and development stuff from China. I’m telling you. All of our stuff is 100% compounded in the USA through our own 503 pharmacies and API wholesalers. We know where this stuff is coming from and it’s all the best quality.

SHAWN RYAN: Right on. And just at Gatlan.com?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Gatlan.com. Yeah. G-A-T-L-A-N. We got a hat for you too, by the way.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, good.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Thank you.

Staying Grounded

SHAWN RYAN: Nice. Thank you. Well, I think we’re wrapping up the interview, but I just want to say that, man, you’re like a really grounded person, seems like.

JOSH DUHAMEL: So are you, Shawn. Thank you. But I already knew that about you. Watching the show.

SHAWN RYAN: How do you stay grounded?

JOSH DUHAMEL: Honestly, I’ve got a really, really awesome group of friends. There’s like 20 of us that every day we’re on a thread. And if you didn’t know we were best friends, you might think we’re worst enemies because there is no pulling any punches. These guys are ruthless but also super loving. They don’t let me get any higher than I need to be. They love me and they got my back, but they don’t treat me any differently. And I think that’s been a big part of it. Great family. Amazing wife. North Dakota has been good.

SHAWN RYAN: Good for you, man. Got some good people around you.

JOSH DUHAMEL: Yeah. Well, thanks for coming.

SHAWN RYAN: Thank you so much for having me.

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