The B.rad Podcast

It’s time for some more Bradsplaining!

These are short episodes inspired by longer, full-length episodes that I have on the B.rad Podcast, so if you want a little quick hit, maybe it will interest and intrigue you to listen to a longer show on the same subject—that’s the idea. 

In this episode, I’m talking about sleep and why it comes first on the list of health objectives—everything else flows downstream from getting optimal sleep. That’s nothing new or revelatory, but I see a lot of people paying lip service to th...

Welcome to a new series on the B.rad Podcast called “Bradsplaining,” where I provide tips, insights, and commentary on distinct subjects, giving you shorter episodes with actionable insights and takeaways.

The first episode explains why I quit jogging after 40 years—and why you might want to, too.

I was an extreme endurance machine from ages 15 to 55, but today I am a sprinter and a high jumper in the 60+ age division of Masters Track & Field. This is quite an unusual athletic transformation, as I’ve gone from competing in events lasting nearly nine hours to particip...

Today, I'm taking you through my latest blood testing with Vitals Vault and sharing the biomarkers I pay the most attention to for health and performance.

I explain why I track triglycerides-to-HDL ratio, fasting insulin, vitamin D, and especially testosterone, free testosterone, and SHBG—and why I've tested my testosterone about 30 times over the past six years.

I also break down how training stress can affect testosterone, why chronic cardio can work against testosterone optimization, and the lifestyle factors I focus on to keep my levels in a healthy range. Plus, I explain why total te...

I made a post the other day stating that people over 50 should be banned from running marathons, and was greatly amused to see all the savage, critical comments coming back at me.

Fair points made by those of you who are thriving in the endurance community, but what I am really talking about is the inherently stressful nature of training for extreme endurance events, like marathons and IronMan. Many people can be drawn into this deeply committed community, and end up training in an inappropriate and overly stressful manner, leading to breakdown, burnout, illness, and injury. I’ve...

Almost everything the average sports fan believes about doping is wrong.

The “dirty cheaters stealing medals from clean athletes” story almost never describes what actually happened. Instead, we’ve had dirty sports, Cold War dynamics, and athletes faced with the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” devil’s bargain. In this show you’ll learn why doping has been cleaned up significantly from past eras, where the problem remains, and why professional cycling is perhaps the most glaring example.

You’ll also learn surprising insights about the physiology of doping: Steroids don’t actually magically make...

Could optimizing your circadian rhythm be the most important health intervention of all?

In this show, I take a trip around the 24-hour clock, exploring fascinating ideas about light, leptin, metabolism, sleep, and circadian biology. We’ll look at why direct outdoor light in the morning matters, why eating after dark can cause more fat storage than eating the same number of calories at a different time, and how our modern use of artificial light may be extending “summer” throughout the year.

I also explain why the hours from midnight to 3:00 AM are so important for da...

I’m so excited to bring you this wonderful interview with Mr. Chu Zhu. He is the founder of a company called Somnus Lab, and they make an amazing mattress cooling sleep system to help you regulate your body temperature during sleep.

Chu is a scientifically sophisticated guest who explains some fascinating aspects of circadian rhythm and the hormonal processes governing sleep, including the role of the suprachiasmatic nucleus—the “light control tower” in the brain—and the buildup of adenosine that creates sleep pressure. We talk about why outdoor light is such a powerful signal for your body...

Let’s talk about testosterone testing and other important blood tests you can track for your overall health, wellness, vitality, and longevity.

I recorded this show on the occasion of my first visit to the blood lab after signing up for Vitals Vault’s premium program, and I talk about some of my favorite markers while pedaling home from the lab.

I focus a lot on testosterone because I believe it’s a great proxy for overall wellness, vitality, recovery, and resilience to stress. I share my own numbers, which have ranged from 562 to 1,004, and explai...

Should we pursue "loungevity" instead of longevity?

This is a question posed by prominent sports commentator Colin Cowherd on a recent rant that appeared on Instagram. It was very entertaining, and the intent was to be humorous, but it was also, to me, very offensive at times and brings up this big question that we continue to face: the juggling act of trying to enjoy our lives and not miss out versus trying to make sensible, healthy choices that promote longevity rather than send us into this spiral of accelerated aging and demise that has become the...

In your 30s, you start to lose a certain percentage of muscle tissue year over year, and that rate really accelerates when you hit 60. But everything we've been told about the importance of maintaining muscle as you age is roughly around half right.

Maintaining muscle mass and muscle strength is a key driver of longevity, but even more important is maintaining muscle power and explosiveness. They are not the same.

A recent 10-year study of nearly 4,000 adults revealed that those with lower muscle power and explosiveness had a six to seven times higher mortality risk...

Hey, Brad Kearns here with some thoughts from my morning walk about the foundation of any excellent, well-rounded fitness program for peak performance, vitality, fat loss, and longevity.

Did you know half of regular runners get an overuse injury every year, and 25% of regular runners are injured at any given time?

In this episode, I explain why the modern endurance running approach is deeply flawed, why walking provides an excellent aerobic conditioning effect with minimal impact load or injury risk, and why it should be the foundation from which you launch your more ambitious fitness...

What if the emotional patterns you struggle with aren’t actually who you are? What if they’re just patterns—and patterns can be interrupted?

I’m joined by Dr. Elisha Goldstein, returning to the show eight years after his first appearance, to talk about his new book, Tiny Shifts: How Emotional Health Transforms Stress, Relationships, and Longevity. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about healthy eating, exercise, fitness, sleep, and all the things we do to live a long and healthy life, but what about the emotional stuff? Because Elisha makes the case that emotional l...

Get ready for another great show with Ben Azadi, author of the new book KetoFlex. Ben has an incredible story—after struggling with obesity and depression in his early 20s, he lost 80 pounds and completely transformed his health.

Today he's helping people better understand metabolism, fasting, and the ketogenic diet by simplifying complex science and turning it into practical, actionable habits that don't feel overwhelming.

We talk about why eating too close to bedtime can interfere with your body's biggest fat-burning window of the day, why Ben believes in making just one "tweak a week" in...

Welcome to a most informative and inspiring show about the amazing ancient superfood of cacao!

This episode will give you everything you need to know about its remarkable health benefits, healing properties, and how to choose the most sustainable, eco-friendly, fair-trade bean-to-bar products. You will learn about the fascinating history of cacao as a sacred food, currency, and medicine, why it remains one of the most highly regarded superfoods on the planet, and how the food industry took this extraordinary raw material, stripped out everything useful, and transformed it into little more than a heavily sugared version...

Hey, how about a podcast guest of the fittest female athlete in the world?

Her name is Lauren Weeks and she is a Hyrox legend and a three-time world champion widely considered to be the most decorated competitor in the sport’s history and the world’s fittest woman. That’s a title you can throw around and argue about, but she has a legitimate claim because Hyrox is an incredible athletic challenge that demands both extreme endurance capability and the strength and power to perform these challenging stations that happen in between one-kilometer runs.

Lauren...

I am so excited to welcome back to the B.rad Podcast, Cynthia Monteleone, my good friend and sprinting mentor coach to numerous Olympic and world champion masters track and field athletes, and a former world champion herself in the 400 meters for women aged 45 and over!

Our last show was dedicated to discussing the dangers of chronic endurance training and the wide-ranging physiological benefits of sprinting. This conversation is focused on another hugely important topic: recovery.

The workout is the signal. The recovery is where the adaptation occurs.

You’re going to learn ho...

The more hardcore and devoted you get to fitness, the more risk you bring that you might actually be doing things the wrong way and getting counterproductive results.

In this episode, I break down 5 ways you may be screwing up your fitness goals—even if you’re consistent, disciplined, and training hard.

We talk about why sleep, rest, recovery, and downtime are the foundation for everything else, why the body is a dynamic organism and not a machine you can program, and why you have to be careful about outsourcing your intuition to technology.

I...

In this Q&A episode, I answer questions about how to train for varied competitive distances without getting pulled in too many directions, explain my compelling stance on avoiding coffee (and NSAIDs), and give a plug for Dr. Doug McGuff’s “Big 5” total-body workout—a simple, highly effective way to stay strong with just one workout per week.

I also share thoughts on how corporations like Whole Foods Market and PF Chang’s continue to sell plenty of crap despite their healthy reputations, discuss the magic of Zone 1 walking for building awesome aerobic fitness, and explain one of the bes...

Today’s episode is a special rebroadcast of one of my all-time favorite conversations on the B.rad Podcast!

Every so often, I like to revisit episodes that made a profound impact on me personally and delivered tremendous value to listeners, and this conversation with Thais Gibson is absolutely one of those episodes.

I am so pleased to introduce a fantastically awesome show with Thais Gibson, creator of the Personal Development School!

When Thais first sent me an overview of what she wanted to discuss, I thought, "Sure, let's talk about it." But I...

Running a marathon is a bad idea—and in this episode, I explain why. I react to a shocking new study suggesting that during a marathon, the brain may actually consume myelin (the fatty insulation around nerve fibers) for fuel once glycogen stores run low.

The researchers reassure us that the brain “bounces back naturally over time.” I’m not so reassured. I talk about the acute damage caused by marathon running—not just to the brain, but also to the heart, kidneys, hormones, immune system, and inflammatory response.

I also go deeper into the long-term...

Here’s a quick show about getting over yourself, inspired by a passage from Tony Robbins called “8 Rules for a Better Life.”

As I read through the rules, I realized they all kind of hearkened back to my old podcast title, Get Over Yourself, which I believe is a quick and effective mantra for happiness, relationship harmony, and continued personal growth instead of getting stuck in ruts and rumination—which seems to be a common problem these days.

I talk about how anxiety comes when we ruminate about the future, depression comes when we ruminate about th...

Get ready for a wild one!

I dive into this Q&A with interesting insights on a variety of topics: designing your own intuitive diet instead of outsourcing decisions to others; the benefits of the hex bar deadlift; how the chemicals in American food—more so than calories—could be driving the obesity epidemic; how to address the root cause of runner’s knee (hint: it’s not switching to minimalist shoes!); and why sprinting for just 10–20 seconds can deliver huge fitness breakthroughs.

I also talk about how prominent influencers sometimes overstep their areas of expertise...

In this episode, I talk about whether you should announce your goals to the world with great fanfare—or just quietly plug away and pursue them.

The topic was inspired by a couple of social media clips, including a “sub-11 second 100 meters in 90 days” project, which sounds exciting…but also highlights  what we’re seeing more and more today—spouting big goals, getting instant attention, and receiving that payoff without having to continue on and struggle and suffer through the process.

I get into the brain science behind this, including how simply announcing a goal—“I’m working on a...

Enjoy this engaging interview with Kristy Matthews, the world indoor record holder in the 400 meters in the female 50+Masters division of Masters track&field!

She can run 58 seconds for 400 meters, which is on a par with collegiate level athletes! Indeed, Kristy was a collegiate track star at San Diego State University - a conference champ in the 800 meters and qualifier for the 1992 Olympic trials. 

Kristy eventually took a 30-year break from competitive track, played adult soccer at a serious level, and then burst onto the masters track&field scene in recent years. She excels at d...

In this episode, I talk about how to get super fit without going to the gym—and how it doesn’t take much time, equipment, or even budget to get started.

I share how a simple morning routine—even just five minutes to get the blood flowing and shake the cobwebs out—can become a powerful daily habit, and how I originally built this to “elevate the platform” after dealing with nagging injuries from that weekend warrior approach.

I also break down what I call micro workouts—short bursts of movement to break up long periods of sti...

In this episode, I talk with my good friend and greatest mentor for personal growth and self-awareness, Dave Rossi—appearing for his fifth time on the podcast, a new record, in the B.rad studio during his tour for his new book, Alphas Die Early: For the Man on a Mission — And the Women Who Love Him.

The book is so rich and deep, and I strongly urge you to read it—it can be life changing, as it has been for me. I had the great privilege of contributing to the book, and every time I talk t...

In this episode, I talk about why only about 21% of Americans are regularly active despite today’s booming fitness culture—and I share 4 simple ideas to help make fitness more accessible, affordable, and doable for more people.

Inspired by Derek Thompson’s “The Great American Fitness Boom” and data from the American Time Use Survey and Sports & Fitness Industry Association, I break down how fitness participation is highly stratified, why exercise is arguably the #1 longevity intervention (impacting inflammation, visceral fat, and neurodegenerative disease), and how modern habits and complexity have kept so many people on the sidelines.

Then...

This episode describes why your time in the 400-meter run could be the single best indicator of your longevity potential and your overall fitness competency.

The 400 is known in track & field as the “race of truth” because it sequentially exhausts the various high-intensity systems of the body—testing all of your attributes: speed, strength, power, metabolic fitness, and your ability to hold it together when your body is under maximum stress. No hiding, no faking it. While your aerobic competency is also a great longevity indicator—things like your mile run time (per Cooper Institute and UT Southwes...

In this episode, I talk about three simple ways to control chronic inflammation—and how to keep score on your progress instead of chasing expensive supplements.

The topic was inspired by a friend who texted me a photo of a pricey bottle of antioxidants and asked if it would help with inflammation, which prompted some classic Brad-splaining. I explain why the biggest drivers of chronic inflammation are everyday lifestyle habits—especially diet—and why heavily processed foods, refined industrial seed oils, refined grains, sugars, and alcohol disrupt metabolic health and promote visceral belly fat, the dangerous fat around...

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Courtney Conley, world renowned foot expert and author of the sensational new book, Walk: Rediscover the Most Natural Way to Boost Your Health and Longevity One Step at a Time.

Mark Sisson and I are big fans of Dr. Courtney’s work—there’s so much crossover with what we wrote in Born to Walk—and she does a beautiful job not just highlighting the wonderful benefits of walking, but getting into the specifics of how to create lifestyle habits so you can put in more steps, strengthen your feet, and rethi...

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Tommy Wood about how to protect and strengthen brain health across the lifespan—how overstimulation, chronic stress, and not giving your brain time to rest and recover undermines focus and productivity, and why restructuring your workday, prioritizing sleep, and building in real cognitive breaks can help you think more clearly and perform better.

We discuss how the balance of stimulus, supply, and support shifts as we age, why retirement and prolonged illness can accelerate cognitive decline without ongoing challenge, and how physical activity, deep work, and continued learning help maintain fu...

In this episode, I answer the question of “Why is your B.rad protein so expensive?” and dig into why protein prices keep rising—and why lower prices often mean watered-down products.

You will hear about the huge distinction in quality in the protein supplement marketplace, why the gold standard is grass-fed whey protein isolate, and how it stands in stark contrast to whey protein concentrate and plant-based proteins, which are less pure, less potent, and harder for the body to digest and assimilate. I also explain cold processing, lactose sensitivity, and why many people think they can’t...

Are you overemphasizing cardio in your exercise program?

The answer for almost everyone out there is yes. We are doing too much cardio at the expense of the most beneficial fitness stimulations by far (as known to exercise physiology, not just my opinion): anaerobic system development, true sprinting competency, and true muscular strength and explosive power. The biggest drivers of accelerated aging are sarcopenia (age-related loss of muscle mass) and dinopenia (age-related loss of muscle power and explosiveness).

Falling is essentially the first step in accelerated aging, because the body naturally loses anaerobic muscle power...

In this episode, I explain why my stance on supplements has shifted and react to a New York Times article by Alex Hutchinson (author of Endure and The Explorer’s Gene) that cuts through the hype surrounding fitness supplements and asks a simple question: which ones actually work?

I break down why the supplement industry is such a mess, including research showing that many so-called workout boosters contain unlabeled stimulants, steroids, or dangerously high doses of caffeine, how one study revealed that creatine gummies made by several leading supplements brands actually contained zero (or just trace amounts of...

In this episode, I dive deep into why protein—especially high-quality whey protein isolate—becomes non-negotiable as we age, and why so many popular products completely miss the mark.

I explain the real differences between whey concentrate, isolate, and hydrolysate; why lactose intolerance is often a quality issue, not a whey issue; and how misleading media “best of” lists often favor cheaper, inferior formulations loaded with additives, sweeteners, and questionable sourcing. I also share why I launched B.rad Nutrition in the first place: after struggling as a consumer to find a truly clean, grass-fed, cold-processed whey protein...

In this episode, I do a reaction—and a critical deep dive—into Paul Saladino’s newly released Heart & Soil grass-fed whey protein.

I explain why whey protein is considered the highest biological-value protein on the planet, why I’ve personally been very selective about using it, and what immediately caught my attention when Paul repeatedly claimed his whey is “better than all other proteins” because it’s made directly from milk instead of cheese—without explaining why. Since that claim matters, I dig into the details to see whether it actually holds up.

I share insights f...

Please enjoy a great conversation and in-person show here in the Sacramento studios of the B.rad podcast with my good friend and sprinting mentor Cynthia Monteleone, coming to you all the way from the beautiful Big Island of Hawaii.

We had a long, wide-ranging discussion on health, fitness, peak performance, and longevity—especially in Cynthia’s area of expertise, acting as a truth seeker and naysayer in the health and fitness scene. She isn’t afraid to speak straight, challenge prevailing opinions, and back it up with deep research and her experience working with elite athletes. We tal...

In this episode, I get into all these viral “every man should be able to…” fitness challenges you see on Instagram and YouTube—the ones with the deep-voice narrator rattling off random benchmarks that aren’t age-graded, aren’t grounded in any science, and somehow declare you “top 10% of health.”

I talk about why the subject is relevant, what these lists get wrong, and how to think more clearly about real fitness benchmarks—especially as we age. I share the simple 6%-per-decade decline metric from masters track, my own goals in the 400 meters and high jump, and the example my dad...

In this episode, I talk about the modern tendency to obsess over “science says…” posts—like the viral claim that slapping your quadriceps ten times will wake up your motor cortex, spike your stretch reflex, and increase vertical jump by 18% and sprint speed by 12%.

I describe why these numbers raised my hackles, walk through the reality of neural activation and theatrics we see from athletes like Karsten Warholm and Noah Lyles, and explain why a 12% speed boost would mean my 60-year-old 400-meter time drops from 60 seconds to 53.8, which is royal screaming BS. You’ll hear reactions from world-clas...

A friend recently asked, “What’s a good episode to start with?” for a basic overview of health and lifestyle optimization. Great question—and honestly, I didn’t have a good answer. So here it is!

This show covers the basics from a big-picture perspective—the one to share with friends and loved ones. It’s not sciency or intimidating, just a simple, reasonable framework for how to live a healthy, happy, long life.

I hit the five key areas: sleep, diet, movement, fitness, and stress management. You’ll hear why sleep, rest, and recovery are #1—everythin...