AMA: June '26

It’s the fourth Friday of the month, so it’s time for our AMA.

We’re approaching this AMA differently.

The producer of the Two Percent podcast, Robbie Hiser, had a fun idea.

“Let’s field questions and I’ll ask you them.”

The idea is to have another voice in the room, so the AMAs are more conversational. Robbie will ask me your questions and some of his own, be there with followups, force me to clarify anything confusing, and defend my position.

Watch the video above, which we filmed in the Two Percent studio.

We covered 15 questions ranging from rucking to nutrition to mental health to the real health impacts of alcohol and much more. Below, we have a transcript for the readers.

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Yesterday’s podcast: A Neuroscientist for F1 Drivers

Cognitive decline as you age is not inevitable. But whether you keep your edge depends almost entirely on what you do right now. I sat down with Dr. Tommy Wood, a neuroscientist and performance consultant who works with Formula 1 teams. His book, The Stimulated Mind, changed how I think about staying mentally sharp.

We got into why retirement may be the most dangerous thing you can do to your brain, the science behind “super agers” who keep their 50s brains into their 80s, how AI will impact our brains, and best practices you can use now to stay sharp tomorrow.

• Listen to the episode here.

• Watch the episode here.

Quick housekeeping

• Become a Member to get full access to the AMA and all three Two Percent posts a week.

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily. Get a discount here.

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June ‘26 AMA: 15 questions

• Is there something about martial arts training that makes it better than other forms of exercise for longevity? I see lots of old, ripped guys doing it.

• What’s the actual difference between rucking with a backpack and just wearing a weighted vest? Because from the outside they look like the same thing.

• How many days a week should someone ruck? Can you do it daily?

• I’m worried about long-term knee issues from rucking (I have bad knees). What should I do?

• When you had Andy Galpin on the podcast, he laid out his six-pillar exercise protocol. Andy’s idea of a “pretty resilient” person—someone that can just go on a 20 mile hike—is above average. Him prescribing that stuff is like rattling off ways to become a millionaire: technically true, but useless if the average person can’t actually do it or fit it into their life. How do you respond to that?

• When you had Dean Statmann on the podcast talking about alcohol, you said drinking “a bit” seems fine. But what does “a bit” even mean? And if it’s one or two drinks, how many people who drink every day actually stop at one or two? I think most daily drinkers blow past the seven-to-fourteen drinks-a-week threshold. What do you think?

• I gave up on natural peanut butter (like the one you recommend from Costco). Even with a fancy mixer, oil was going everywhere and it still wasn’t mixed. Do you have a system for this, or did you give up on it too?

• You mentioned how sugar is important to have in electrolytes. Does Stevia do the same job? Are we losing the benefit by going sugar-free?

• I want to learn how to camp without a sleeping bag and how to start a fire from scratch—basically, real bushcraft skills. Where can I learn that?

• When you had Julie Gurner on the podcast, she said most people get in their own way. They’re the obstacle between themselves and what they want. How do you tell someone to deal with a lack of motivation when the thing in their way is depression? You’ve written a lot about doing hard things. How would you talk to that person?

• If you had a walk-up song that played every time you walked into a room, what are you choosing?

• Three books on a desert island. Go.

• You can swap lives with one person alive today for twenty-four hours. Who are you picking and why?

• Aliens come to Earth and ask to meet “your leaders.” What three people are you taking them to?

• Someone has never heard your favorite genre of music. What’s the first song you’re playing to introduce them, and why that song?

Have fun, don’t die, thanks for the questions. And thanks to Robbie for suggesting this.

-Michael

Transcript for the readers

Note: I’ve bolded each question if you want to skip ahead in the text.

Michael: To queue up the people who read 2%, we’ve been doing AMAs written out for a long time. Sometimes I would do them live. Now, the problem I think we had with them as they existed is that people would submit questions, and I would just answer them, but there was no conversation behind them, like no back and forth.

If I wrote something and the reader’s going, “Well, why did you think that?” Or, “I think that’s kinda bullshit,” no one’s there to push back on me. So you have been the producer on the 2% podcast, Robbie Hiser, and we figured, all right, let’s run it like this as a conversation. That way we can hopefully get more out of AMAs and give people, give people better answers.

Robbie: Totally. Totally. And before we jump in, just to let everybody know, we do have some new merch up in the store.

Michael: We do have new merch.

Robbie: You’re currently wearing one of the shirts.

Michael: The Old Time Religion tee. This was one of my freak ideas that you said yes to ... and I’m, I’m glad we did it.

Is there something about martial arts training that makes it better than other forms of exercise for longevity? I see lots of old, ripped guys doing it.

Robbie: All right. Well, let’s get into these questions. Um, the first one is from our episode with Tyler Minton on the Science of UFC. It comes from New Carpenter. “Is there something unique about training in martial arts that makes it better than other forms of exercise for health, fitness, longevity?

Robbie: The actor Scott Glenn, while not a UFC fighter, has done a lot of martial arts training, and he seems fitter in his late 80s than I could ever hope to be at half his age. I’ve often wondered if that’s specifically from his martial arts training.”

Michael: Here’s how I’ll answer that. Do I think UFC, MMA training is more unique than any other type of physical activity that would give you the same sort of stimulus, meaning you’re getting cardio, you’re getting high-intensity work, you’re also getting strength work?

Michael: No. But what I will say about MMA and UFC is that you do it with other people. I think that’s one thing that can, one, you get more social benefits. Um, two, I think you find that when people are doing exercise with other people, it tends to improve adherence rates. So the number one thing that matters when we look at exercise in terms of longevity is, are you gonna do it across your lifespan?

Michael: Right? Like, one workout done for a month repeated, that’s not gonna help, and you’re doing it at 30 years old, that’s not gonna help you live till 90 if you quit. If you can find something that improves adherence, that’s super useful. So I think that in that sense, MMA does have those qualities. So I think it’s a good one, but at the end of the day, it’s like, with exercise, the best exercise is the one you’ll do for the longest.

Michael: It just so happens that MMA hits cardio, it hits high intensity, it hits strength, and then you got the social thing, so.

Robbie: Gotcha.

Michael: It’s kind of a yes and no.

Robbie: So you get exercise, community, and you stick with it.

Michael: Exactly.

What’s the actual difference between rucking with a backpack and just wearing a weighted vest? Because from the outside they look like the same thing.

Robbie: All right. Our, uh, next question comes... Actually, we have three questions back to back, uh, from YouTube that are all about rucking.

Robbie: So we can just hit all of them.

Michael: Here we go.

Robbie: What is the difference between rucking and just a weighted vest?

Michael: So would classify them both as rucking and use that word. I think what the question’s really trying to get to is, like, what’s the difference between wearing a weight vest and a weighted backpack?