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

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

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Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On The Jordan Harbinger Show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people and turn their wisdom into practical advice that you can use to impact your own life and those around you. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long-form conversations with a variety of amazing folks from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, performers, even the occasional Emmy-nominated comedian, Russian spy, former jihadi, or former cult member.

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Just visit jordanharbinger.com/start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, most of us have spent the last decade trying to clean up everything that goes in or on our bodies. We're buying organic food, filtering water like we're prepping for some kind of apocalypse bunker, interrogating our cookware, side-eyeing fragrances, reading skincare labels like we're defusing a bomb, and yet every day we wrap ourselves in mystery fabric from the global petrochemical confetti cannon and go, "Yeah, this seems fine."

Your gym shirt, your underwear, your socks, your leggings, your golf polo, all that stuff pressed against your skin for hours while you sweat, move, overheat, marinate, and pretend that moisture-wicking doesn't sound like something a wizard says before poisoning an entire village. Today we're asking how much of the modern wardrobe is smart performance engineering?

How much is marketing sorcery? And how much is just plastic with a better publicist? And to be clear, this is not a burn your closet, move into a [00:02:00] yurt, and start weaving hemp underwear under a full moon kind of episode. This is about what's real, what's hype, what brands should be proving, and what normal people can actually do without taking out a second mortgage to replace their freaking socks.

Here to help us sort the science from scams is Chris Kolbe, who's spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which means he's not some wellness influencer yelling at polyester from a cold plunge. He's helped build this world and now he's asking whether the industry solved performance while creating a whole new set of problems.

So today we're getting into forever chemicals, synthetics, sweat, microfibers, greenwashing, biomaterials, jade, crab shells. Yes, apparently the future of clothing may involve jewelry and seafood scraps. And the five-minute closet audit that will help you make smarter choices without panic buying $400 underpants from a guy named River.

This episode is brought to you in part by HyperNatural Clothing, the founder of which I am speaking with here today on the show.

Here we go with Chris Kolbe. So Chris, you spent roughly 30 years inside the apparel industry, which is like a whole [00:03:00] ass career, I would say. What's something sitting in the average person's closet that you now look at in a completely different way?

Chris Kolbe: One of the things I'm always really amazed to find is when I talk to people and I ask them like, "Do you wear polyester, nylon, spandex?" And everyone's like, "Yeah, I think so," whatever workout thing. And I realize that when you ask them, "Do you wear plastic on your body?" And they're like, "No."

Jordan Harbinger: They look at their hands and they're like, "Yeah, I'm wearing," spoiler alert, "your shirt."

And then I think only plastic pants. So they're some kind of jogger, which when they get wet, it runs off immediately. And I'm like, "Oh, these moisture wicking." I don't even know. They're waterproof-ish and breathable. There's no way that they're not plastic, basically, I think is what I'm saying.

Chris Kolbe: And so when you ask people, "Do you realize polyester is plastic, and plastic is coated in chemicals to give it certain performance characteristics?"

The overwhelming population does not know, is not [00:04:00] aware. And then you ask them again, like, "Do you realize that these things on your body have adverse effects when you're wearing them, particularly if you're sweating in them?" And they're horrified to know that it actually leaches into their body. And so most people respond with, "I know plastic and polyester is bad for the environment, but I didn't realize it was bad for me."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So I looked this up, and you might have to correct me because I did it with ChatGPT, so that's the caveat. That's the asterisk by me having said I looked this up. I ran some of the studies you sent through the machine as well, and I wanted to clarify something. So the plastic itself, it doesn't look like that leaches.

It looks like the chemicals they spray all over the plastic, that's what I guess leaches or goes into your skin. But the plastic itself, the fibers, they're pretty durable and... Well, they do start to break down, but it seems like the stuff worth freaking out about, at least in the short term, is that they spray all kinds of stuff, like you said, on it to make it waterproof, to make it more durable, [00:05:00] to make it, I don't know, softer or shiny or whatever the heck those things do.

That stuff is when it heats up and gets wet from sweat, starts to stick around.

Chris Kolbe: The answer is it's both. Plastic is petrochemicals To make plastic soft and pliable requires chemicals that have, like, phthalates in them, which are hormone disruptors. And that's just to make it soft, right? And then there's all these other chemicals that go along with plastic.

Jordan Harbinger: That's what phthalates do, they make it soft? Because those are in shampoo and stuff too, right?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, it's in a whole lot of things. And so just inherently plastic in apparel requires chemicals. And then when we market that as, say, quick dry or wrinkle-free or water-resistant, those are topical chemicals that are applied to the surface of the plastic, and those things come off first.

Jordan Harbinger: I see.

Chris Kolbe: And so you're getting a, I would call, like, a layered cake of chemicals.

Jordan Harbinger: Yum. Yeah.

Chris Kolbe: And then we activate them in different things we do when it's on our body. And so that's where people don't entirely understand that we've been [00:06:00] sold over the last 30 years that it takes plastic to have performance.

Jordan Harbinger: Yes. I want to get into that a little bit. It's funny you mention the phthalates because Dr. Shanna Swan, who you probably have heard of or know, that was episode 658. She was fascinating, and I never had so many emails from people. My friend, in fact, one of my friends here in New York said, "I replayed that episode, like, 50 times because we threw away everything in the house that had these."

And I was like, "Gosh, I hope she's right about this." because he, like, went through his, every bathroom and thr- they're trying to have kids, so he's like, "I'm getting rid of every hormone endocrine-disrupting thing that I have." And he showed me essentially a laundry basket full of shampoo bottles, cosmetics, because e- they're in everything if you don't buy the one that doesn't have that in there.

And the other thing that I love about her was, uh, she said the words gooch and taint on my show even though she's 90 years old. Yeah. So that was

Chris Kolbe: like- Did you see her Netflix special?

Jordan Harbinger: I haven't yet. I think you or someone in your camp sent me the link to that, and I have it bookmarked to watch. Yeah, it looks really good.

Chris Kolbe: There's some [00:07:00] really good information that's come out more recently, and this would be one of them is The Plastic Detox on Netflix, which is about Shanna Swan.

Jordan Harbinger: She's great. And I'm still 12 years old m- mentally, so I laughed at her references there.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, you started talking about the genitals and the phthalate syndrome.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it was some sort of syndrome or something.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. There's a phthalate syndrome which it shows up in hormone disruption in the womb. It actually stunts the develop of male genitalia. So these, the thing with phthalates, it's in almost anything synthetic, and it's both the plastic and the things that are being put on top of it to t- to color, to make it perform, to make it soft, all of those things.

And so with all of that, this is getting into our body and it's causing all kinds of havoc.

Jordan Harbinger: The industry's kind of solved for performance but then created a much worse problem than, "Oh my gosh, I have a cotton shirt on at the gym

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. So I think if I was to sort of over my arc of my career, like in the 1990s, what I found is cotton was still the [00:08:00] dominant fiber in the market.

It was still the majority of what we were purchasing, consuming, and it was roughly over 55% to 60% of the market. In 2026, polyester is the dominant fiber. And polyester, nylon, and synthetics in total is like 69% of the market now. This has shifted over 35 years to such a significance that natural fibers are really becoming the minority of what we wear.

Jordan Harbinger: My closets, there's like leather jackets, there's cotton T-shirts that have, I don't know, scratchy stuff in it, which I assume is plastic. And then almost all of my pants are these comfy, like, athleisure plastic sheeting joggers. I guess before we demonize synthetic fabrics, what do they genuinely solve for customers? Because there's a reason they became popular. There's a reason my closet is full of different colors of this exact same pair of pants.

Chris Kolbe: So what happened is really we-- in the mid-2000s, we were started being sold really that performance was [00:09:00] technical, like fabrics, like polyester, nylon, the sheen, the durability, the wicking, all these things became common knowledge, and they became a real way to market the products as performance.

And so everybody says, "I need this for wicking. I need this..." It was being applied to everything, and it was both the synthetic materials, but also the chemicals that were being applied to everything, polyester, but also cotton. So we were making wrinkle-free cotton pants. And so what happens is it became like a marketing growth vehicle for apparel companies.

It worked very well. You think about your Dockers pants and your wrinkle-free dress shirts and all these things, just chemicals being put on top of whatever the fabric might be. In the mid-2000s, if you remember, Under Armour had the campaign that came out, "Cotton is the enemy."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I don't remember that, but I read about that when I was prepping this episode.

I remember Under Armour, right? I remember I had these white Hanes T-shirts that I wore all the time. I was like, "I'm replacing all of these with," I don't know, "Nike [00:10:00] Dri-FIT," or whatever the competitor was. And yeah, then I walked around the gym with a T-shirt three sizes too small for the next five years.

Chris Kolbe: We ended up demonizing natural fabrics, and we kept putting more and more performance chemicals and things on it and marketing that way to the point where the athleisure boom that came over the last 20 years, you think about yoga, running, HYROX, CrossFit, all these things that really exploded all required performance materials and products, and the big brands that were known for their athletic prowess and health and wellness became synonymous with these fabrics.

And it pushed it to a point where the consumer believed, "That is the only thing I can work out in. It is the only thing that works. It is what makes me a higher performing athlete." And a lot of that is just marketing.

Jordan Harbinger: The idea of working out in cotton pants, shorts, and a regular shirt In my mind, due to marketing, akin to I have to go to the gym, but the only shoes I have are these [00:11:00] patent leather shoes that I used to wear at my law firm.

But working out in those, right? It's weird. And you would go there and your feet would sweat and you'd think, "Oh, these are not ideal, but at least I'm in the gym." That's how I would feel about wearing cotton pants at the gym, because how dare you? You can't afford to go to Lululemon and get some, I don't know, whatever kung fu pants to work out in?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, so there's a little bit of like, you're not legitimate if you don't have the

Jordan Harbinger: look.

Chris Kolbe: But the thing is, it's as much a look as it is a real tangible performance. So you ask what synthetics can do well. There are things that they are known for, right? Compression, strength. Think about sports bras, leggings.

These are things that synthetic materials do well because they are strong and durable. They can pull you in, suck you up, do all these things that natural things don't do. And they also, they make your butt look good. So there's vanity in all this, and I think we were sold really hard on this to a fault.

And so what I see is we've lost the plot because what we're thinking we're doing, hot yoga, running clubs, [00:12:00] gym workouts, sleep health, underwear on our bodies to make ourselves better It's actually making us worse. And so there's a real negative downside to all of this that is not talked about, and there's a real trade-off for what we think is performance in terms of our health.

Jordan Harbinger: So the chemicals that are sprayed on there are the main trade-offs. Also, there's environmental trade-offs. I assume it's easier to... What is it called? Life cycle analysis, where you have a cotton T-shirt. It's probably way less of a pollutant, probably biodegrades way faster than a pair of plastic joggers like I'm wearing right now, for

Chris Kolbe: example.

Yeah. Anything that's made from plastic is worse.

Jordan Harbinger: It's going to be around till the end of time, basically.

Chris Kolbe: And it's not just sustainability, it's just worse across the board. And generally, if it's bad for you, it's bad for the environment, and vice versa. And so I got into this project that I'm in today called HyperNatural because there are better bio-based ways to make performance.

There are safer ways to make sustainable materials [00:13:00] remarkable. You can actually give them tangible benefits. And when I discovered this later in my career, I realized it's as much a marketing problem as it is a product problem. And so there's a real opportunity to show people that actually going back to nature isn't a trade-off, it's actually better for you.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, so that was kinda my next set of questions is, okay, so what am I giving up if I don't wear plastic shirts anymore? And I actually have been wearing this HyperNatural shirt I thankfully managed to remember to wear to this interview. In my mind, there's no difference between wearing this and wearing what I usually would wear to the gym or around during the day.

I think the main difference is this looks like a normal shirt, but actually is also performance-esque, whereas the other stuff, like I said, it's three, you know, just sort of, you want compression. I mean, that's all you get with those things.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. You hit on the truth, which is it looks-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it looks normal.

It looks normal. I could wear this now and nobody thinks I'm going to the gym after this because of the shirt I'm

Chris Kolbe: wearing. Right. Which could be seen as a negative for someone who thinks they're getting performance.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, sure.

Chris Kolbe: But it also [00:14:00] could be seen as smart by someone that says, "I could actually wear this today, tonight, work out in it, and wear it tomorrow again."

Jordan Harbinger: This is exactly what I've been doing. This probably is TMI, but I'm not a wash my clothes every day kind of person. I wash them when they're dirty. Yeah, I wear it during the day. Maybe I go out again at night, or I change at night and then I wear this the next night, and then I work out in it, and then it goes in the laundry.

I don't just wear it for 10 minutes or go to dinner and throw it in the laundry. And this shirt has lasted several days. And I do what most guys do w- that we don't admit, which is smell the armpits- Yeah ... and see if you can wear it again. This has done a pretty damn good job. This is up there with, what is it, merino wool, where it just doesn't really smell that bad unless you really take it to task.

Chris Kolbe: The thing is, you're speaking to I think what is going to be the future of our industry, which is people are going to start buying things that are better quality, have more versatility But they can actually last longer.

Jordan Harbinger: I hope you're right, man, because the fast fashion thing, I've done shows about this, [00:15:00] it's depressing.

You go to these stores, I don't want to mention any names or brands, but the ones that sell stuff, they have 8,000 SKUs a year or whatever. When you look at the environmental damage from these things and you look at people who love shopping and they buy hundreds of things per year for $8, right? I would love to think that people are going to spend more on something that just lasts a really long time.

I like to do that. But right now, you walk into a department store, fancy European department store with red font. You buy 10 things and then you just, I don't know, you wear them during your trip and you go, "All right, half of these are unraveling already. Donate."

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. And I think we've gone through a high disposable cycle when it comes to apparel since 1990, and that's a big part of why synthetics have grown the way they have, because they're cheap, they're easy to produce.

You don't have to grow them, right? You don't have to work with a farmer. You don't have to deal with cotton prices and all these things. Oil is fairly stable until recently, but the idea that it's just cheap, economical, and it's really profitable to sell these things. And so you can sell, [00:16:00] like the Sheins of the world have built their businesses on just selling the cheapest, most dirty things at a really attractive aesthetic and just churning them through, and then they go into landfill.

And so what I realized early on in starting my business is that sustainability actually doesn't sell.

Jordan Harbinger: You're going to say, "Hey, this shirt costs four times as much as this other shirt, but it's going to last maybe five or even 10 times longer and look better and perform better." Some people just go, "Yeah, but I want three different colors, so no thanks."

Chris Kolbe: Usually it comes down to just cost.

Jordan Harbinger: Or like, "No way, that's expensive," and then they buy five items that cost way more and last half the time. But they're not doing the math. I'm not doing the math either most of the time. I don't care.

Chris Kolbe: Most people don't. What's happening with sustainability, and you're starting to see this week Everlane was sold to Shein.

I don't know if you saw that.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, really? Oh, that's kind of a bummer.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. So radical transparency goes into radical no [00:17:00] transparency. It's one of those things where the machine doing it dirty and cheap is a better business model today. The businesses that set out to run a more ethical business, more transparent, sustainable model are suffering because of inflation, cost increases, and they're making it very difficult to be profitable.

And the only way you can really get things of quality to scale is that you've got to make it commercial.

Jordan Harbinger: That's disappointing. Since you mentioned that brand, they used to sponsor my show a few years ago. My closet drawer is full of Everlane T-shirts, and I thought their whole thing was we care about the life cycle of this.

And I remember those were in some ways similar, right? They were like high performance, but looked nice enough to wear out, and I guess you're right. It just, there's more money in creating something that has a huge margin but is actually crap, or it's soon to be garbage the second it arrives at your doorstep.

Chris Kolbe: People don't realize that companies like Shein and the big fast fashion companies, even like the dupe brands that are copying high-end [00:18:00] designer and bringing it in at a cheaper price. A lot of these are factory direct models, and so what happens is they were able to import goods with no duty Straight from the factory to the consumer, and that made Shein and other people really, really successful in the last five years.

Now, the problem with that is when you send it direct from the factory, you have no idea what's on it. There's very little quality control. The factories get to decide what chemical finishes it uses, and a lot of them are just using recycled finishing from down the road from other mines and, you know, sort of industrial- What does that

Jordan Harbinger: mean?

Recycled finishing, what does that mean?

Chris Kolbe: They're using recycled chemicals, and you can buy it on a secondary market, and you can apply it to your products to give it wrinkle-free or have it travel safe. But when you open up those packages coming from those factories, often there's a smell.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I was going to ask about the smell.

So I always joke about this with my wife. I go, "Hey, I should open this outside because this is full of Chinese factory air." And sometimes you do smell it, and it's like a car exhaust was in the bag. I don't know if that's what's really in the [00:19:00] Chinese factory, but I assume that when you spray something and it sits in a box for a month...

When your luggage comes off the plane and it kind of vaguely smells like jet fuel, that's what I feel like I'm opening in my kitchen when I open a package from some of these places.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, so that's a huge warning sign. Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I

Chris Kolbe: would say so. Uh, not only just washing it isn't the answer, but you have to understand that there's very little oversight on these products coming into the United States.

And in general, the textile fashion industry is one of the most opaque and hard-to-manage supply chains in the world. There's a lot of parallels with textiles and food, but food is way more regulated than textiles.

Jordan Harbinger: People eat it. Yes, I remember there was a big thing about Xinjiang cotton, so cotton from western China, which they thought might have been farmed with forced labor, and so they banned it.

But it's just basically impossible to find out where your cotton comes from unless you're going to spend money on some sort of private detective consulting firm to, I don't know, walk your cotton from one farm to the [00:20:00] factory to the United States.

Chris Kolbe: So when these businesses like Everlane come out and they talk about transparency and traceability, well, that just costs more, and so you're already a premium brand by just doing that.

Think about Patagonia. These brands pay more to do it clean and do it transparent. That is not a good business model for a lot of people, and so it's much easier to do it cheap and dirty and opaque, and that's what the majority of the industry do. So when you smell things that smell, don't smell right, listen to your body.

If you're wearing things and you start to get rashes, listen to your body.

Jordan Harbinger: You know what? Actually, I know people that's happened to, although I don't know if we blamed the clothing, but that's probably the first place we should have looked.

Chris Kolbe: So in my 30 years in the industry, what I didn't think a lot about until maybe five years ago is what's actually in the products we were making.

Jordan Harbinger: When the average shopper sees, I don't know, moisture wicking or anti-odor, what's going on under the hood? You say chemicals, but some people are going, "Everything's a chemical, Jordan." Even you've said that on your show, which is technically [00:21:00] true, but we're talking about industrial chemicals. I want to close the loop here.

You said the chemicals are sometimes recycled. What are they recycled from? Because that also sounds like it could be kinda gross.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, it could be from any industry. So it could come from the mining industry, it could come from other textile offshoots from industrial bases, but these are all industrial manufacturing supplies, so a lot of them are sharing sources, right?

And so you're, it isn't necessarily someone there is inspecting these things to make sure that they're chemically safe for your body. Because the truth is, even if they were, we don't know much about the chemicals that are in our textiles.

Jordan Harbinger: No. We just don't. At all, from a science perspective, we just don't really know what they do.

Chris Kolbe: There's probably been, since the 1950s, about 100,000 synthetic chemicals created in the world.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, the whole world. That's a long time. That's a lot of chemicals, but yeah.

Chris Kolbe: Okay. And about 10,000 of those have been mildly tested for human toxicity.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so they don't test all this stuff. Mildly [00:22:00] tested, as in we tried it and the person is still alive.

Chris Kolbe: So you're talking about somewhere between 80 and 90% of the chemicals, we don't really know what the toxicity is in the product that we're wearing.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of clothes with hidden chemistry, here's a quick word from the people whose chemistry with this audience keeps the lights on. We'll be right back This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp.

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Requires trade-in of iPhone 15 Plus or higher, excluding iPhone 16E and 17E. Requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit att.com/iphone or visit an AT&T store for details. Don't forget about our newsletter over at jordanharbinger.com/news. It's a great companion to the show, very practical, and a two-minute read just about every Wednesday with little wisdom nuggets from past episodes of the show from us to you.

Again, jordanharbinger.com/news is where you can find it. Now, back to Chris Kolbe.

Dr. Shanna Swan

said there's phthalates in your shampoo and they're endocrine disruptors, and the industry's kind of just like, "That's okay. Just don't eat it."

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, and so then most regulations that exist in consumer products and textiles is about safe levels of exposure.

Not necessarily no, but just safe levels of exposure. What's

Jordan Harbinger: that called? The LD50? You can have this [00:25:00] much gasoline per year in your cereal.

Chris Kolbe: So when it gets down into the real nitty-gritty of it is you think that the government or there'd be some body of organization globally that would be tracking and managing the risk profiles- Yeah

of these things like there would be in food, but there's shockingly not.

Jordan Harbinger: There's no FDA for clothes, basically.

Chris Kolbe: There's not even a label.

Jordan Harbinger: R- oh, really?

Chris Kolbe: So all they have to require to put in on a label for clothing is the very basic information of what it was made with. But if it's less than 2% of the content, you don't have to put it in there.

And so that could be chemicals. There's all these things that don't qualify. And so what happens is, when you really look at it, the shocking thing to me is, like, the Europeans are leaders in this. They're probably the best in class as far as being more rigorous about sort of universal restrictions, protections, and they ban about 1,600 known chemicals on textiles.

In Canada, it's about 400 toxic chemicals that are banned from being on textiles.

Jordan Harbinger: And those are all allowed here in the United States? [00:26:00]

Chris Kolbe: In the US, it's 12 we restrict.

Jordan Harbinger: 1,200?

Chris Kolbe: 12. It might be even less now. Oh,

Jordan Harbinger: God.

Chris Kolbe: Because we seem to be going the other way.

Jordan Harbinger: Wait. Okay, so if there's only 12, what are they? They must be pretty bad if everyone else has 1,600 and we're like, "Now, these 12, though."

Chris Kolbe: So you're starting to hear more about, you know, like, this is also part of the opaque problem is, like, these are all acronyms and people don't understand chemicals or chemistry, right? But people know PFAS, right?

Jordan Harbinger: I've heard of that because it's the forever chemical. God knows what that means.

Chris Kolbe: You know you don't want it in your Teflon pans, right?

Which is now banned, but you don't really know it's in your leggings. You don't know it's in your wicking. So, PFAS is a nasty carcinogen, and it does not go away.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, so, okay, I didn't realize that. I thought everyone was just like, "It's a forever chemical. It never goes away." And I thought, "So what? I probably have a bunch of plastic toy soldiers in my stomach that I chewed on as a kid that are still in there."

But I didn't realize it was also a carcinogen and it lasts forever.

Chris Kolbe: It's all of those things. And PFAS, forever chemicals, [00:27:00] we know we don't want it in our pans. We know we don't want it in our food, but it's in our leggings and it's in anything that has quick drying, wrinkle-free. It's dangerous. And so BPAs, BPS, these are all things that are microplastics.

These are things that we know we don't want in our food, but they are in our clothing. And so these things are slipping through the system because we want the performance. We want soft plastic. We want the ability to dye our materials a nice color. And so when you put this all together is we just don't know what's on our body, and there's a lot of evidence and studies that are showing that when these things are on your body You create heat, friction, and moisture.

It literally activates these chemicals and solvents on the materials. They go into your sweat.

Jordan Harbinger: When you say activate, you just mean it breaks down the bond between the chemical and the fabric, and it just goes wherever?

Chris Kolbe: And so there's a term called porosity, right? Our skin is porous, and it takes in about 60, [00:28:00] 65% of what's on it.

Jordan Harbinger: I didn't know that. I thought the whole point of skin was keeping everything out.

Chris Kolbe: It does until you break down your microbiome with these chemicals and it leaves you more exposed.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, it probably keeps out germs and water, but maybe not industrial chemicals that have not... something you found in nature generally.

Chris Kolbe: We just don't know what it's actually doing to us. It's like a low-dose toxicity every day. And when you sweat, create heat, friction, and moisture, it literally activates these things to the point where they release into your sweat, and then they go back into your body. And so the analogy I always use with my kids is, would you heat your food in the microwave in plastic?

Jordan Harbinger: And if you're an '80s kid, the answer is, "Sure. Why not? What could it possibly do? What could go wrong?"

Chris Kolbe: It's so different on your body. Right. When you heat these things up, it literally, it causes these things to loosen and come into your body.

Jordan Harbinger: So if you wear workout clothes, do not work out in them at all.

Chris Kolbe: The first thing I would say is if you wear polyester, nylon, or spandex in an exercise sweat environment, stop.

Jordan Harbinger: That's going to be a tough [00:29:00] one, Chris. Hey, if you have all those nice workout clothes that you spent thousands of dollars on, make sure you never work out in them at all. Just wear them to the office in an air-conditioned, comfortable environment only.

Chris Kolbe: There's practical steps here. Obviously, when it's 60, 70% of the market, it's in everybody's closet, but it doesn't have to be this way, and I do think it starts with education and awareness and knowing that there are certain things you do not want on your skin all day long. There's certain things that you don't want on the most sensitive parts of your body.

You think about genitalia, under the arms, neck. These are all areas that are the most sensitive of your body. The

Jordan Harbinger: neck is sensitive? Yes. I've never heard that. I can imagine why someplace that sweats a lot would be, but-

Chris Kolbe: Those are your cues. If you're sweating there, it's sensitive. Those are the areas I would avoid, if at all possible, wearing anything that's highly synthetic or branded as some level of performance.

Jordan Harbinger: I hate being doom loopy in these episodes, and I understand there's concerns with synthetic fabrics. Most people are going to [00:30:00] slowly either not do anything about it for now or ever, or slowly phase them out. But do I have to go back to wearing something my grandmother, I don't know, made on a loom? What are we going to do about this?

You mentioned before, is there a trade-off between some of these natural fibers and performance? Because I don't want to work out in wool pants. I don't want to necessarily have to become Amish or a Quaker in order to function in modern society without dying from chemical exposure.

Chris Kolbe: Like I said, just having been on the side of, the business side of this, is that you have to have commercial solutions that people want to wear, and sometimes perfection is the enemy of getting it right.

And I think there's a lot of people in our industry that want to get it right. They want to do well.

Jordan Harbinger: That's good news, I suppose.

Chris Kolbe: But it's never been harder to do it. So the reality is you have to have things that are commercial, that are economical for people to really make a change. And so I'm of the mind that you can build businesses that are [00:31:00] both innovative clean and commercial that people want to buy most of the time, right?

And you still might want to buy some other things that maybe they're not perfect. It's kinda like food, right? There's sometimes you're going to want to have a bag of Cheetos, right? But at the end of the day, you know that isn't the right thing to do, right? And you're aware of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Bad advice.

Chris Kolbe: You try to make the better choices most of the time, and I think apparel is exactly the same way as food.

And so the more you understand and know, the more choice you're given that are commercially viable, the more likely the market's going to shift, because the government isn't going to fix it for you. Everything being cheaper and more readily available isn't in itself going to fix it. What's going to change it is consumers demanding having things that are transparent and clean, safe, but also feel good, look good.

They do the job that you want it to do. And so the ability to do that is the key. And so there are things that exist today that can be better options than wearing plastic on your body.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, nobody wants to [00:32:00] work out in a burlap sack, even if that's the most sustainable option. It's not going to happen. So it, it does have to be consumer led.

So what does a responsible brand need to do? Because auditing your suppliers and, I don't know, having third-party testing of your fabric, this stuff, it's so much more work than it is to just, I don't know, pump out some sludge and mold it into a pair of shoes or a shirt.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, it starts with making a real commitment to do things naturally or from a bio-based perspective.

So we have a bio-based technology where we're taking regenerative waste from natural sources, and we're repurposing it into a new fiber that has enhanced abilities above just regular cotton. It has enhanced abilities better than just Merino.

Jordan Harbinger: Can you explain that a little bit? You said you're repurposing waste.

At first glance, that sounds like something you would not want to wear. Hey, it's recycled waste from a, a plant. But don't know, it's all natural, so don't worry about it. I've got some [00:33:00] all-natural waste that I wouldn't want to wear.

Chris Kolbe: In the spirit of sustainability, a lot of innovation has happened in this category they call cellulosics.

They're coming from bamboo, or you'll, you hear things coming from regenerative cotton, and things that are basically scrap waste, and they're being broken down and put into a solution where then they're adding in other ingredients like we use, uh, chiton, which comes from shellfish, crab shells. We use things like jade stone, which comes from the waste of jade mining.

And we have a technology that allows it to get down to a nano size level, so it's so small that when we put it into the solution and we turn it back into a solid fiber, that they're inherently built into the fiber versus it being sprayed on as a chemical. They're natural ingredients built into this fiber, and then we can combine this fiber with other natural products.

So we use Supima cotton in ours, which is the best cotton in the world, strong, dyes well, grown in the United States Expensive.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, because it's grown in the United States,

Chris Kolbe: but it's [00:34:00] the best.

Jordan Harbinger: Where do we grow cotton in the United States?

Chris Kolbe: Arizona, California a lot, Texas.

Jordan Harbinger: I never thought about that.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. Almost all Supima comes from the United States, and it is literally the best.

I've been using it for years when I was at Lands' End and other places. It's really phenomenal fiber. It's actually so strong, but in the 1940s, they used it on the sidewalls of car tires.

Jordan Harbinger: Really? Wow. What makes-- This is a tangent, but what makes strong cotton? Is it a different kind of cotton seed, or is it the processing of whatever standard cotton that just makes it better?

Chris Kolbe: It's all genetics, right? Strands of cotton have longer fibers, and so Supima is one of the longest fibers. And so when you get elongated fibers, it makes it strong.

Jordan Harbinger: That makes sense.

Chris Kolbe: Sure. It also makes it soft and smooth. And so this is kind of nature's best example of how you can make high quality, high performing cotton naturally.

Jordan Harbinger: From breeding different kinds of cotton seeds over centuries.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. It's genetic, it's soil, it's all of those things. And so on top of that, with our fiber, you not only can find [00:35:00] it with cottons of choice, of clean cottons, better cottons, which we do. We also can combine it with wool. We can combine it with hemp, and there's all these other things we can blend it with.

You're kind of developing a third way. You can avoid going just back to cotton and wool, which is great, but this is better. And you can avoid plastic and chemicals and unknown carcinogens by just going natural.

Jordan Harbinger: So better material in many ways negates the necessity for the chemical to mimic that same function from the south.

If you have a long cotton fiber that's soft and smooth, you don't need to spray that garment with something that makes it feel softer and smoother.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, so you could avoid the chemical applications and you're building functionality naturally into the fiber. And so things like chitin, which is pretty interesting, like these shellfish properties are natural biopolymers, which are antibacterial and they're also antimicrobial, so they resist odor.

So the shirt you're wearing, you could wear it time and time over again because of the [00:36:00] chitin inside of it.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I wore it for a week without washing it just to see how long can I wear this thing before it starts to stink, and it was like six days.

Chris Kolbe: It does work, but what's cool is it's doing it without chemicals.

And so the jade stone we put in, also known in Chinese medicine for centuries as a healing anti-inflamma- Yeah,

Jordan Harbinger: I mean, that's a little woo for me. Go ahead, but that's a little bit like, okay, jade stone, yeah, my chakras are aligned over here, but that's not what I'm going for

Chris Kolbe: when I get clothes. But what we chose it for, actually a more practical reason, is jade stone is actually thermoregulating, and so it actually has a cooling functionality to it.

So it can regulate your skin temperature up to about five degrees cooler just naturally, and it's pulling heat away from your skin. So you get the circulation effect without having to have, again, a chemical application to give you the performance. So these are all things where nature, if you find ways to repurpose it, you're taking waste and you're creating natural performance in a whole new way.

And this is, I call it the third way because most people don't know about man-made synthetics or [00:37:00] cellulosics, but we know Tencel and Modal. That's what those are. We have our own version of that that has a patent pending on it that has our own 88 different ingredients we put into it, but they're all coming from natural bio-based sources.

Jordan Harbinger: So you have your own fabric, your own proprietary fabric.

Chris Kolbe: It's the lowest level is the fiber. So the fiber, we're making fiber in a way that can become a fabric and it can become a full product, and we can put it with so many different things. And the idea is that because they're bio-based materials is the future.

Jordan Harbinger: How do you invent a fiber? Is that something you did? Or did you get to hire some serious scientist to come up with a new fiber, yeah?

Chris Kolbe: So my partner is a material science expert. He owns his own mill, and so we work with everyone from the cotton farms to making the fiber, to making the yarn, to making the fabrics, and even the product.

So we do the whole thing. And so when I say the fashion industry has an opaque supply chain, we know the farmers, we know the mills, we know where the [00:38:00] fiber's being made. We know all of these things. We know what's being put into it exactly. And so that's how you get trust. That's how you get verification.

Now, we also do certifications because that's how you should be doing this in this industry. What

Jordan Harbinger: does that mean? Like, that's another company that's not you examines the material?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. So we do everything's third-party lab tested. So we've lab tested, improved the cooling. It's 99.9% antibacterial and antimicrobial.

Jordan Harbinger: What does that mean? It can't kill 99.9% of the bacteria. That would be like hand sanitizer.

Chris Kolbe: It does when it's on the fiber. So the fiber itself nullifies any... And this is why you don't get odor, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, okay. Uh- I just thought maybe my hygiene was decent, but no.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. It's a proof point when people, like, wear it for days and weeks and they're like, "Yeah, it literally, it works."

And we also test our stuff with third party for chemical safety, too. So there's OEKO-TEX 100, which is the gold standard in textiles that would say that this is chemically safe. They test the final end product, right? So wherever it went along the [00:39:00] whole supply chain, they test the final product to say this is chemically safe.

So OEKO-TEX is one way for the consumer to know that you're getting something that's clean. We also use bluesign dyes. Basically, it's a type of dye stuff and process that says this was done responsibly because the dyes are actually the worst part of the chemicals that are in your clothes.

Jordan Harbinger: Really? Why is that?

Chris Kolbe: So there's all kinds of dyes, but dyes is the original chemistry in our industry. It goes back to the Industrial Revolution, and dye color was created by chemists trying to solve polio, and it created a color mauve. It's like a dusty pink. And so all the chemistry that we have in our industry originated in the dyes and the dyes turning color.

When they created the color green, they're using arsenic and copper, and it was killing people in the Industrial Revolution. And, you know, the people in the factories were having all these lesions, so you could just see the toxicity right [00:40:00] away. But over time, what happened is things were basically swept under the rug, and over time things became a little bit more regulated like they are now in Europe.

But when synthetics came on the market, the toxicity in the dyes required to make plastic turn a color, they used this thing they call azo dyes. And azo dyes are the most toxic dyes and they're what's needed to dye plastic a color.

Jordan Harbinger: I see. Wow, I can't believe they used arsenic and copper. Green not so lucky anymore.

I guess you only find those things out the hard way when you have factory workers, I don't know, spontaneously dying from preventable-- Oh gosh, this is a-

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. People say, "Well, I'll just go back to organic botanical dyes." And those are also not so commercial because they fade. They don't hold up over time, so people think it's bad quality.

And so the thing with dyes is if you go with natural fibers, the dyes can be more safe. They can also be more regulated by things like GOTS and OEKO-TEX [00:41:00] and Bluesign. But There is no safe level with synthetics. There is no safe level for dyeing a polyester, nylon, spandex garment because these azo dyes is what's required is they're just toxic, and they have all the things, BPA, PFAS, BPS, that you don't want in your body.

Jordan Harbinger: It's crazy how always a work in progress, but food you can buy organic or whatever, you know, other healthy foods. Skincare got cleaned up. That was kind of a thing, especially 10 years ago or so, like, hey, make sure you don't have microbeads or whatever in your, uh, shower gel. Cookware got scrutinized with the Teflon pans and everything.

Why do you think clothing escaped for so long? Clothing kinda got a pass until now-ish.

Chris Kolbe: It's such a huge problem, and it's one of those things where the fashion apparel industry is like a $2 trillion economy. It's big. And because the global supply chains and the networks that it requires to make it are international, it's very hard to [00:42:00] regulate.

And so I think the consumers generally have overlooked it, and the big apparel companies have been okay with that because it's more economical to do it the way we're currently doing.

Jordan Harbinger: I also think it's just emotionally harder to detox your closet than it is a pantry. If I throw away a bunch of shampoo, I might be like, "Oh, man, that was kind of expensive."

But if I start throwing away $200 pants, $50 shirt or whatever, I don't know. You can tell I don't buy my own clothes. If you start throwing away a bunch of your pants and shirts, that stings when they're still in good condition, right? Or you're donating them, I guess. But still, it's like, oh, man, now you got a $2,000 dent in your closet if you've got a nice amount of clothes.

Chris Kolbe: It's not an overnight thing, and it doesn't have to be. So I think there's ways to simplify your wardrobe. Look at the things you wear most of the time. I would definitely start with the things that you sweat in, things that you sleep in, and things that you wear close to your body, on your skin most of the time.

Underwear, your [00:43:00] T-shirts, also things that you sleep on. Look at your sheets. And so these are things where you do it one bit at a time, just like your food, right? You walk into a Whole Foods, right, you want to buy everything, but you still go to your regular grocery store, and there's a little organic section there, and you shop that, too.

And so I think the ability to know where to focus is a good start. Finding brands that you can trust that are certified. You know who's behind the brand. Do they control their supply chain? If it's just some faceless company running an algorithm, making product and shipping it directly from the factory, you should be worried.

If you're buying things purely on some functional performance criteria, you should be worried. And so these are things you can eliminate right away. And God forbid you do hot yoga in these things, because I've talked to friends who are hot yoga instructors, and they've talked about women having red dye running down their arm after hot yoga.

Ugh.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh my God. My producer on the show, he's super into hot yoga But I've done it with them [00:44:00] and I want to say most people in there are wearing a very minimal amount of clothing because it's LA. You might as well show off that bod. But red dye running down your arm is, that's a gross visual.

Chris Kolbe: It doesn't have to be that way.

We've been sold that we need all of these things for performance, but if the T-shirt you're wearing can do three or four different things for you, isn't that more valuable than a five or six $20 plastic tees that last less than a year?

Jordan Harbinger: I would love to have five shirts instead of 35 shirts. Stuff adds up over time, especially for me personally, every sponsor sends a bunch of stuff.

So it's usually too much, right? They'll go, "Oh, what size are you?" Medium. And then I end up with 15 workout shirts that are, I don't know, plasticky, and then I turn down the sponsor because I don't like them, but I still have the product five years later. So I've got drawers full of stuff. I've started donating it obviously because...

But I bet you I have 50 shirts 45 of which I did not purchase. And yeah, they're all [00:45:00] red dye run down the arm at some point.

Chris Kolbe: So I think the vision for the future is if you simplify your wardrobe and you have that one drawer you open up and you know everything in there is clean, it can do 80% of what you need it to do, you just simplified your life, and then you just kinda find ways to iterate on it.

And the truth is, for most people over the age of 40, you've already got your uniform.

Jordan Harbinger: I was going to say, man, this is like dad mode. Couple pairs of pants and a couple shirts you wear 'em every day.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, so those heavy rotation items, those things that you're really loyal to, just scrutinize those. Make sure that they're clean, they're natural-based.

And then with HyperNatural, what we're trying to do is show you that you can still have performance and have it safe. You can still have cooling and breathability and antimicrobial and still have it safe. These are the things that you want on your body, and we're just getting started. But as we get this patent pending, we're going to work with other brands too, because the best way to get this to more places is to partner with people that are already heavily synthetic and offer them, "Hey, we have a platform and our technology can even put [00:46:00] pharma-grade zinc oxide into the fiber to give you sun protection."

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, that's cool.

Chris Kolbe: If you didn't have to put chemicals on-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Chris Kolbe: if you're getting it into the fiber. Again, most of these chemicals, because the quality's not great, they only last 30 washes, and where does it all go? Out into the water, into the oceans. The forever chemicals in all your clothes are washing into everything else too.

And so the best way to do this is just go back and start from what you wear most of the time, get good quality, have it last, have it do a lot of different things. And then if you do need a rain shell to go on a hike, just recognize that thing has PFAS in it, and it probably is going to run off into the environment.

This is why even, like, ski resorts and stuff have a PFAS problem, because a lot of the stuff is running into the environment because there's such a concentration of these types of products. And so you can get PFAS-free things from Patagonia now, but that's newer. That's more recent. And so there's just so [00:47:00] much of this stuff that goes into the environment, whether it be the microplastics or the chemicals, they just don't go away, and so that includes your body.

Jordan Harbinger: I haven't really thought about that with the ski resorts and everything. That completely makes sense. I'm curious what the most misleading words are on clothing tags and labels, because you said if there's less than, was it 1% or 2%, you don't even have to write it on there. Imagine if that was the case with a food ingredient and it's like, "Oh, this is just all juice except for 1.9% is motor oil, but we don't have to put that on a label."

That would be horrific and it would never pass muster. But on clothes, that's fine.

Chris Kolbe: So we don't have a really rigorous labeling requirement, much like food would. And so you just put very basic information on there. And so if there's something on your label today, if you ask people what they're wearing, most people would turn around, look at their label, because they don't know.

So if there's things on your label that say polyester, nylon, spandex, polymaid, acrylic, [00:48:00] microfiber, anything that you don't really recognize is probably synthetic and it's probably petrochemical based. So that's a warning sign. But you don't really know what's inside those things. And that's the level down that most people will never know, right?

Unless you take it to a lab and have it tested. And so you look for certifications that say it's OEKO-TEX or Blue Sign and things like that, just to know that, okay, this is, at least it's tested to be safe. But if you see things like cotton, wool, viscose, hemp, those are bio-based natural things. If you see rayon, okay, that is also bio-based.

Rayon is a cellulosic material that's very soft and silky, but it does come from original bio-based plants and ingredients. So these are things where if you look at your clothing like you do your food, you'll start to see it differently. And you'll start to understand that when you stop wearing these things, these plastic things on your body, and about a month goes by, if you keep wearing that T-shirt, you're going to put on [00:49:00] something plastic and your body's going to have a reaction to it.

And you're going to know without looking at the label that this isn't natural, it isn't bio-based. And so your skin will adapt to not wearing these things because these synthetics, they're causing your skin distress.

Jordan Harbinger: How do you measure something like that? I think for me that's almost like, is that science?

How are you measuring whether my skin is stressed by wearing something?

Chris Kolbe: Usually your skin tells you because it breaks out in a rash. People have psoriasis, people have autoimmune disease. These are all reactions from your external environment. And a lot of them they can't pinpoint, but there's a lot of correlation and cause associated with textiles on your body.

Jordan Harbinger: We'll be right back after I check whether my socks are PFAS free or just emotionally unavailable. This episode is sponsored in part by ButcherBox. The biggest difference between an average cookout and one people actually remember is the quality of the food that you throw on there. That's why I like ButcherBox.

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It's that important that you support those who support the show. Now, back to Chris Kolbe I definitely have seen this on Instagram where someone's like, "I got this new thing," and like, "Look at this," and there's red lines all over the place. I see when my wife is scrolling Instagram, there's a lot of female influencers that do stuff like this.

Guys don't usually talk about rashes in clothing, but I think women are always wearing sports bras and stuff, and they're tight and they are made of God knows what, and then, yeah, you get a rash on your back from that thing.

Chris Kolbe: So synthetic plastic materials, they, uh, deplete your natural biome on your skin that protects you.

Jordan Harbinger: Why is that? Because the chemicals kill-

Chris Kolbe: They create static electricity, and there's even been [00:53:00] tests where guys wear like a synthetic sling for a period of time, and it causes-

Jordan Harbinger: Synthetic sling. Tell me more about this. No euphemisms on this

Chris Kolbe: show. You know, that would be, uh, grape smugglers, whatever you want to call them, around the male testicles.

Yeah. Causes infertility, and then there's been studies for this, and then when you go back to natural, they become fertile again.

Jordan Harbinger: At some point I've got to look that up. That's one of those citation needed. That's so crazy, I can't believe it.

Chris Kolbe: It's actually done a, I mean, it's, this was done probably over 10 years ago, but it was, they were doing it from the perspective of birth control, and the idea that the static electricity and the, and the things in these synthetics were actually causing male sperm counts to drop.

And so if you look at right now, where guys are really interested in this subject is where infertility and hormone disruption is happening, and so people are switching their underwear because it's having a lot of effect on ability to conceive. Static

Jordan Harbinger: electricity. That's crazy to me that that makes any sort of difference, because there's static everywhere, but I guess it's not always flowing through your clothing that it's touching your body.

Yeah.

Chris Kolbe: Our [00:54:00] bodies naturally want natural fibers on them. That's what, over the human evolution, we've grown accustomed to. So wearing these synthetics on our body is not natural. The chemicals coming off them are not natural. The off-gassing that's coming off them, not natural. It's causing all of these chronic diseases and health effects that we can't entirely identify.

But I have people on my team who have psoriasis that only wear our stuff to sweat in, and they have no problems.

Jordan Harbinger: What is psoriasis again? Just a dry patch of skin?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, it's skin irritation, dry, redness of skin. But if you have autoimmune disease and you go to your toxicologist and you try to understand like what's causing this, the first thing they'll tell you is quit wearing polyester, nylon, and spandex.

Jordan Harbinger: Geez. I've only talked to a toxicologist a few times. This is a tangent, but I've got blood work done, and he was like, "Oh, your mercury level's really high And then I called the toxicologist because it's alarming, and he said, "Oh, do you eat sushi?" "Yes." "Oh, then don't worry about it." Why not? Is the mercury from sushi better for you?

And he [00:55:00] goes, "Well, if you didn't eat sushi and your mercury level was this high, then we'd really have something to worry about because you're probably getting it from your house or something. But if you just eat fish, then you're going to have this level of mercury." And I'm like, "But it's red." It's like a 10 out of 10, and basically, as long as you can explain why that is and you don't do it all the time, I guess it's, quote-unquote, fine-ish.

But I don't know. I didn't love that answer. It's crazy to me that they would tell you to stop wearing those types of fabrics. But I guess if you're having high mercury, high-ish mercury in your blood is not the end of the world. But if you're breaking out with dry skin patches all over the place all the time, and they're uncomfortable and possibly getting infected, that's a real problem.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, I think everybody has different reactions to things. Roughly one out of five have chemical sensitivities out there. We don't realize the low dosing we're taking, and there's just a lot of trust we put in the system that it's not giving us a high level of toxicity. And one of the biggest misnomers is that somehow low dose [00:56:00] is okay in certain things.

But with these phthalates, PFAS and BPA, BPS, all these phthalates, there's no such thing as a safe level.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. So Dr. Swan, I think one of the things she mentioned that I still find hard to wrap my mind around is a lower dose of some phthalate chemicals is actually worse for you than a higher dose. And I believe she explained it in the episode, and I can't remember exactly why, but it had to do with Your body getting a low dose, it changes a bunch of things, but if your body gets a high dose, I don't know, maybe it somehow recognizes that it's an unnaturally high dose and the reaction is different.

I just found that really disconcerting because you think, "Oh, it's only a little bit high." That's worse than having it a lot high somehow.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. And so this is why, uh, if you have hormone disruption concerns or you have infertility concerns or you have autoimmune sensitivities, we are living in the age of chronic disease.

We all know it. We can see it, people in their 30s getting cancer, and so you have to take clothing seriously. And [00:57:00] so it is a huge blind spot, and if we thought about our clothing like we did our food and our beauty, we would actually change a lot faster. And so we're here to kind of say that there's no safe levels of dyes on plastic performance products.

There's no safe levels for quick-dry and wrinkle-free. If it says wrinkle-free and it's cotton, that's just as bad. That's dangerous. So really pay attention to the labels and the marketing and who you're buying from if you really want to avoid this environmental exposure when it comes to our clothing. Because the simple adage is what's on our body is in our body. It's just like, you know, what we eat, and people are not taking it seriously in a way that they're actually changing how their wardrobe is being built. And so we're here to say that it's not a huge sacrifice. You can actually make better products using nature and working with nature.

Our approach is it shouldn't be a trade-off. There should be just simpler, better, more versatile ways to do this.

Jordan Harbinger: Normally, I'm not a huge fan of just, oh, it's [00:58:00] natural, so it's automatically better because it's a kind of an appeal to nature fallacy. But as long as you don't have the same sort of trade-offs, where would you still recommend synthetic performance fabrics, if anywhere?

Chris Kolbe: It'd be areas that you need high durability.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay.

Chris Kolbe: So if you need a tent, I would definitely go with-

Jordan Harbinger: Oh,

Chris Kolbe: yeah ... synthetic. Sure,

Jordan Harbinger: yeah.

Chris Kolbe: If you want something that has high, you know, abrasion, like you don't want the knees to wear out or things like that, you do need synthetics because they are usually more durable, and so industrial type of things.

But if it's touching your skin all day long, I don't think you need it, and I think everything from wool to cotton to HyperNatural materials can be legitimate alternatives, and you may not get the perfect weight or you may not get the perfect water protection in certain cases, but it's way better than taking in this stuff.

And I think to me it's like we're always looking for perfect and cheap, and I think there's no such thing.

Jordan Harbinger: What's the difference between bio-based, which I've heard you say a couple times, and [00:59:00] biodegradable?

Chris Kolbe: They're different.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, they're definitely different. I think brands kind of abuse the terms though, so I'm curious what the actual definitions here are.

Chris Kolbe: So bio-based means it comes from nature in some shape or form. It can be repurposed like we're doing. You're repurposing it into something new, but the origins are bio-based, or it's almost like a version of plant-based, right? But although a lot of times it's minerals or other things that are natural.

Biodegradable just means that it is going to break down over time in the ground, and different fibers and fabrics have different biodegradability. Like leather takes a while. What we make with Hypercool Jade breaks down in like three to four months in the ground, so it's like biodegradable quick.

Polyester plastic, five, six, seven hundred years, something like that. These things are built for durability also stick around a long time in the ground, right? And so we use like mother-of-pearl buttons on our shirts because those come from nature, [01:00:00] right? So that I would say that's natural or bio-based.

Our fiber comes from scrap cotton, jade stone, and other minerals. That is bio-based because it comes from nature. It's more likely to break down. Now, some things, bio-based plastics that exist, you think about your straws, right? Those do break down, but they take a little bit longer, right? They're engineered to last a certain length.

So where you see durability and things that are meant to last, they also last longer in the ground.

Jordan Harbinger: This is a really creepy reference, debatable whether I should leave it in, but I went to Cambodia, and I went to the Killing Fields on a rainy day. There's bones and stuff still. Like, I remember stepping on something, and it was stuck in my sandal, and I pulled out a jawbone with teeth in it because it had washed up and stuck in my sandal.

Horror movie level surprise with that kind of thing. And you can see there's fabric from people's clothes sticking out of the ground, and it's-- I remember thinking So it's just this weird juxtaposition of, [01:01:00] wow, that fabric really made it a long time in the dirt, in the rain, in this moist environment, because all that's left of that person is like the bone and then their clothes is still there.

Chris Kolbe: We were burying some of my shirts in my backyard as a test just to honestly like, I want to know-

Jordan Harbinger: Thank you for changing the subject

Chris Kolbe: a

Jordan Harbinger: little bit, by

Chris Kolbe: the way. Yeah. Uh, and, uh- Yeah ... and it worked. The worms took care of it. Over a year we had it in there. I live in Wisconsin, so it gets a little cold-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah,

Chris Kolbe: I can see

in the winter, but it did work. And I do think one of these things is originally we wanted to make the most sustainable product remarkable. Could we make the best possible product at the least amount of impact? And then we realized sustainability is really the same thing as health and wellness. And so health and wellness is about giving people something that's clean, natural on their body that actually works with it, not against it.

And so the idea is that the way we really move sustainability forward is we're using wellness you can wear, and we can start to do health supportive things with [01:02:00] natural things in your body that are not only health negative, but they could actually potentially be health supportive. And so we're moving down this path of how do we build things not only of quality, but they have this sort of bio-based technology, but they're also in line with our bodies.

Jordan Harbinger: We get that jade, get your chi chakra, chi energy going in there.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I brought you some jade stones. I was just down at Sedona and we were like doing all the crystals and all that stuff, you know? That's

Jordan Harbinger: nice,

Chris Kolbe: nice. And, uh, and we were in the vortexes- Yeah ... and it was really fun.

Jordan Harbinger: That's funny.

Chris Kolbe: But the cool thing is we all intuitively understand that when we get back to nature, it's good for us.

Jordan Harbinger: Camping makes you feel good. A lot of that's probably not having your fricking phone in your pocket all the time, but

Chris Kolbe: yeah. Yeah. There's all these things that were not natural to us, and when we get further away from it, we do feel different.

And so the same thing goes with if you're wearing these things on your body every time, it does feel different. I wear our shirts literally every day. I have worn 'em for two years. I go back and put on my, my favorite team jersey, and I just literally, I can't make it an hour. And so what you realize is your [01:03:00] body does adapt, for better or worse, to what it's wearing.

Jordan Harbinger: Are you sure that's not some psychological reaction that you're having to your clothes? Like, oh, it's, I'm wearing a plastic shirt now. I don't mean to make fun of you here, but I might just do it a little bit. There's these guys that say like, "I'm bulletproof. I do bulletproof this, bulletproof that, bulletproof coffee."

And then it's like they smell gluten and they have a breakout reaction. I'm like, how bulletproof are you where you can't even smell McDonald's before you have to, I don't know, get an IV bag outta the trunk?

Chris Kolbe: To me, again, it's not about perfection, it's about doing what intuitively makes sense and going in a natural direction.

But just be understanding that we've been marketed to for 25, 30 years to believe that we need all of these things to perform, and it's not entirely true And there's ways to do it better for you. And if you really care about your food, the way you're fasting, and you're doing all these things for your bodies to optimize, then you should really pay attention to what's on your body most of the time.

And if you're really tuned in, you're going to realize you'll [01:04:00] probably be even healthier and better performing by going with natural solutions versus trying to force yourself into thinking that this looks technical. I give this to golf in because it's, this is what a golf shirt should look like. Not true.

Golf shirts in the mid-'90s were cotton. Yeah. Look at Tiger Woods' early days. He's wearing cotton. Now look at us today. We all look like we're going to some sort of European disco. The fashion is what's dictating the desire. The marketing is that we need these things for performance, and the real truth is when you pull out of that and you put something on more natural and you do it for a month or two, you start to see like, "You know what?

I don't really need these things."

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It reminds me of when they used to play football and they had those leather helmet or no helmet. Or you look even like '70s NBA, right? The little tiny shorts and the cotton socks up to their knees, and it's just like, oh, yeah. Or baseball uniforms back in the day. Yep.

This is all just cotton. Nobody cared. They still played. Now it's all moisture-wicking or [01:05:00] whatever.

Chris Kolbe: I'll tell you a quick really funny story on performance. So I didn't know that our stuff could actually really perform for like an elite athlete, and so one of the creative directors on my team is an Ironman triathlete.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, yeah. Okay.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. He's running six, seven miles a day every day, rowing, swimming, you know, 10 miles.

Jordan Harbinger: Those guys are built different for sure, yeah.

Chris Kolbe: And this guy's legitimate took our T-shirt, the one you're wearing, and last summer wore it every day on a six-mile run the whole summer. Never washed it.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I was going to say, never washed it?

really never washed it?

Chris Kolbe: He swears that he's never washed it.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, man.

Chris Kolbe: But he said what was really interesting is that when I'm wearing this on the top half of my body, I can feel the temperature being cooler. I felt it more breathable. And then my synthetic leggings that I'm wearing on the bottom felt completely different.

It was warmer, not like suffocating. And so the contrast was really noticeable to him. And so he's like, if we could make things [01:06:00] that had the compression and the durability, which is something we're working on, because there's bio-based synthetics coming that are derived from corn and sugar that can start to give us some of those functionalities that we need.

And so when these high-end athletes are really in tune to their bodies, and so when someone who's an Ironman triathlete tells you that this works, and I legitimately had put it through the paces, it makes you realize that there's a lot more we can do with what we consider to be performance beyond just plastic.

Jordan Harbinger: Speaking of plastic performance, let's hear from our sponsors because even the cleanest closet won't save you from the filthy economics of podcasting. We'll be right back Also, y'all, we have a subreddit for the show. If you're a Redditor, you can talk about episodes of the show or anything you like over on The Jordan Harbinger subreddit.

Now for the rest of my conversation with Chris Kolbe Most of us, well, I don't need compression, right? I don't need it. I want [01:07:00] breathability and comfort, and that's why I choose most of the things that I choose. And yeah, I've got some stuff that I've had to get rid of over time. I remember the leggings craze, get the leggings and then put shorts over them, and I just remember thinking like, these are the most uncomfortable things.

I'm not doing anything that requires compression for long periods of time. It's just totally ridiculous. So I think part of that, like you said, is just marketing. It's just trendiness. Oh, I just want to look athletic today. It's a little silly.

Chris Kolbe: That's the fashion business. We're all about selling the way things look and making them feel good, and the way we do it isn't entirely healthy.

Jordan Harbinger: I mentioned, said something before about the sunscreen thing. I hate putting sunscreen on. I don't know. I mean, people say, oh, it's got chemicals in it or whatever. I'll be honest, it's just the way that it feels, that greasy feeling, and even the non-greasy stuff, I just, I hate it. It really gets in my eyes and my eyes start to feel really, not even dry.

There's just this weird feeling that you get from having whatever that is in your eye. So I just wear sun protective clothing instead. [01:08:00] And I know that you can't always get it over your face, but I've got, you know, shemagh looking thing, and it's just way better. You look at SPF and it goes, oh, you need to reapply this every hour or every 90 minutes, and if you get wet or you're sweating more, you've got to do it even more often.

And then my friend who sells a bunch of outdoor performance clothing, I said, "What about UPF on a shirt? You know, if it gets wet, does it change? If it gets pulled on or whatever, does it change?" He's like, "No, it's just always UPF 50 until it breaks down in 100 years," like you said.

Chris Kolbe: But unfortunately, that's still a chemical.

Jordan Harbinger: This one is just the way the fabric is woven. Is that possible, or is that not possible?

Chris Kolbe: It is possible, but UPF 50's got to be pretty heavy fabric to do that.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, really? Oh, this is not. It's very light. So if this has a chemical in it, dang, that's disappointing.

Chris Kolbe: Just be very skeptical of anything promising performance that you can't trace back to a natural benefit, say like Merino wool or something like that.

If it's really lightweight- If

Jordan Harbinger: it's lightweight and it's not natural, like it's a, like-

Chris Kolbe: Yeah ...

Jordan Harbinger: nylon-y, stretchy thing.

Chris Kolbe: I have to tell you, that's probably got a chemical.

Jordan Harbinger: Crap. I've got to ask him [01:09:00] about that, because he didn't say that it didn't have chemicals in it. I just assumed it was because, oh, it's really tightly woven, so it's UPF 50.

He might not know. This guy knows so much about clothes, I'd be shocked if he doesn't know.

Chris Kolbe: The question I would ask them is like, how is it achieving that functionality? Is it topical or is it inherent in the fabric? Because if it's inherent, then it could be built into the weave and the construction, but for the most part, the way we're doing it is we're putting literally farm grade zinc oxide into the fiber so it's inherently in the fiber, and that gives you an added sun protection versus it being applied on top.

Yeah. And so I think we're going to do all kinds of things, like we're adding magnesium into it to help you sleep and-

Jordan Harbinger: I've got to look up the science on that because magnesium on your clothes to help you sleep, that's up there with Jade getting my chakras aligned, Chris, I've got to tell you

Chris Kolbe: So this is where, uh, we build it and then we let people try it and test it, and that's how we do it.

Jordan Harbinger: If it's a placebo effect and it helps you sleep, that's still something.

Chris Kolbe: The, uh, best thing I can advice-- can give anybody is just simplify [01:10:00] your wardrobe. Buy natural bio-based fibrous materials. Your body will respond differently.

Jordan Harbinger: What claim or claims do you avoid making because the evidence is not there yet?

Chris Kolbe: So a lot of the bio-functional claims require higher level testing, and so those are just really expensive, and so those are things that we're going to do next in our next round of investment. We've done independent lab testing on cooling and antibacterial. It's verifying the chemical safety of everything, so that's where we've invested our money initially.

But like any startup company, you've got to pick your spots. We started by marketing things that people want: cooling, antibacterial, antimicrobial. The bio-functional we think is the future, and so you can start to build things that just works with your body. The idea is that this is better on your body versus things that are not natural to it.

That's our future. That's our technology. It allows us to inherently build these in, and then we'll test into this with more bio-functional medical testing, third-party testing, but that's a pretty [01:11:00] big investment.

Jordan Harbinger: What's the most scammy version of this category that listeners should watch out for? Where do you see people making claims that are just ridiculous and untrue?

Chris Kolbe: Mostly the polyester plastic synthetics.

Jordan Harbinger: Really?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: But that does all that stuff, it's just maybe not good for you.

Chris Kolbe: There's a lot of marketing that goes on without a lot of testing, and that's the truth of the fashion industry is it's about the way things look, not what they actually do.

Jordan Harbinger: What claim would someone see on marketing that you go, "Yeah, that literally can never be the case"?

Chris Kolbe: Maybe sun protection.

Jordan Harbinger: Sun protection? Interesting. Okay.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. I would say there's a lot of people talking about wicking, quick dry, all these kinds of things. Things quick dry when they're plastic. And then the other thing is like how they're achieving it, right? So I think you want to understand in any functional performance claim, is it inherent in the ingredients that it's being made with?

Is it Merino? Naturally it's hydrophilic, n- naturally antibacterial, which it is. Or is it being achieved through some sort of artificial means of chemicals [01:12:00] that may or may not have been proven, right? And so again, because you don't have to put these on labels-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah ...

Chris Kolbe: you don't have to really know. There's a trust the marketing kind of aspect of it.

And so I would argue that a lot of this is marketing, and sometimes it's hard to understand the performance. And that's why I like natural things, because you do know that natural things do these things inherently well for thousands of years. What we're doing with the third way is we're testing it more because it is new, but we're also really focused on safety and focused on making sure people know the origins of these things.

We're not claiming cotton that is Supima unless it can be traced. And so verification and reliability is really important right now because most people are cheating. Even organic cottons Good chances they're not really organic. If you really saw the way things were being done at the lowest levels, you'd know that a lot of swapping and switching goes on, and then they sticker it and they say it's this.

And so with Supima, you can literally genetically trace it back to the farm it came from, [01:13:00] which is why we chose Supima. We know it's American, it's traceable. At least you know what you have.

Jordan Harbinger: You get to sequence the genome of your T-shirt.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah.

Jordan Harbinger: Crazy.

Chris Kolbe: You can. But a lot of things claim it's organic, and if they come from certain countries, which I won't name-

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah

Chris Kolbe: but if they are, you should not entirely trust that is what it says it is.

Jordan Harbinger: Why won't you name the countries?

Chris Kolbe: Because we do business all over the world. I don't like stickering people in that way. It's

Jordan Harbinger: also unfair, right? Because if you get non-organic cotton from China, you also get a lot of the other good stuff that's just fine from China.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. You can't get cotton from China.

Jordan Harbinger: You can't get any cotton from China? No. Oh, I didn't know that.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah, like literally the cotton, the Xinjiang cotton ban in the US is entirely anything from United States.

Jordan Harbinger: Oh, I didn't realize that you couldn't get any cotton. I just thought it was from that one place, but maybe that's the only place they grow cotton in China.

Oh. So it's actually a ban on Chinese cotton, not a ban on Xinjiang cotton only.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. And so while there's good reason for that, but it also drives market prices up, and it creates less supply, and it creates a lot more [01:14:00] cheating. And so every

Jordan Harbinger: time you- Oh, because there's more incentive to sell nonsense cotton because the price is higher.

Chris Kolbe: Or it's easier to claim something that's not and make more money. But when supply is reduced, cheating goes up.

Jordan Harbinger: Huh, okay. In closing, I want to do like a five-minute closet audit. You mentioned anything that goes on your skin, so stuff you work out in. What's the first item you would tell a normal person to examine?

Leggings or shirts or what? Where would you start?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. I would look at the thing you wear almost every day. So it's probably a T-shirt or polo or legging. Those are things that I would start with and really question if they're polyester, nylon, or spandex.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. And then, so yeah, daily golf polos, workout shirts.

I want a sane version of this because no one's going to go, "I'm throwing away every gym shirt, socks, polo that I have in my closet." What are you going to wear tomorrow?

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. And then look at these things that are most sensitive parts of your body, so your underwear, your bras, things that you're sleeping in, things you're sleeping on.

These are all things that you can start with.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay. Sleep [01:15:00] naked. That's the moral of this story. Sleep naked on organic cotton sheets, cotton not from China. So underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, bedding, my kids' pajamas. I didn't even think about my kids' stuff. Geez, okay. And the formula is what? Skin contact plus heat plus sweat plus hours worn.

I don't know, a little flowchart here.

Chris Kolbe: So start with things that you wear the most on your body, hours a day. So if you're wearing it 23 and a half hours a day, start there.

Jordan Harbinger: Okay, yeah.

Chris Kolbe: Then ask yourself, is it on your most sensitive parts of your body? Is it something you're sweating in? Think microwave, plastic.

Jordan Harbinger: Microwave, plastic. Yeah, okay.

Chris Kolbe: If your kids are wearing these things, I would absolutely start there because they're the most sensitive and exposed because their bodies are still developing, their skin layers are not as thick, and every sort of team sport you get or every sort of free T-shirt that's given away, they're all plastic.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Chris Kolbe: Because they're cheap. I always ask people like, "Do we have to have-" Disposable [01:16:00] plastic T-shirts as the giveaway.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, that's a good point.

Chris Kolbe: You have to work really hard to find something that doesn't have plastic in it. Yesterday I walked through the Flatiron. I went through every store, you know, that we all know are favorites, right?

Yeah, sure. Every store I went into and I asked them, I go, "Can I get something that doesn't have polyester, nylon, or spandex in it?" And 100% were like, "I'm sorry, we don't have anything like that."

Jordan Harbinger: Wow.

Chris Kolbe: And these are like- 70, $80 T-shirts, right?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. It's New York. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Kolbe: But it's not even, like, all cotton, and it's still fairly expensive.

And so what happens is there's just a lot of opportunities to start to ward these things off from your wardrobe, and then start to ask yourself, like, what can I buy that isn't have these things in it, and is it of good enough quality where I could wear it for a period of time?

Jordan Harbinger: What should people not worry about replacing immediately?

Your rain shell, for example, right? Stuff that you wear only rarely and occasionally, and that needs to be, I don't know, super performance. Like a rain [01:17:00] coat. You only wear it

Chris Kolbe: maybe- Yeah. Like, you're probably not going to replace your ski pants, right? Things you wear, like, maybe 10 times a year.

Jordan Harbinger: Good point.

Chris Kolbe: Or you're not going to replace that heavy winter jacket that keeps you warm.

So there's things that you want. But wool is great. Wool does a lot of great things, and cotton is great. We've built the third way that you can enhance both cotton and wool with HyperCool J and HyperNatural, but the idea is that it doesn't have to be 100% of your closet. You can absolutely have some of these other things in it that are your favorites and they do the job.

But be mindful of-- It's like the 80/20 rule. Like, what you're wearing probably 80% of the time. What's your uniform? What's your go-to? What's the thing that you really love the most?

Jordan Harbinger: So don't panic. Just start where exposure is the highest. Skin sweat, heat, duration, and change one thing. I like the sane version of this.

Chris Kolbe: The last thing I would just say is be mindful of durability. Think good quality. Like, buy one or two good things versus 10, like, just cheap crappy things. Because those things are probably [01:18:00] better for you, they're probably going to last you longer, and the actual value equation is better if you look at it from a number of wears.

And so we just get caught up in, like, cheap on the ticket, but we don't look at the longer arc of things, and I think value is what you get, and I think you get a lot more with natural fibers and things that are going to work with your body.

Jordan Harbinger: For me, as a chronic overpacker who hates packing because I have to make decisions about, my ideal closet is just a bunch of, like, high-value items that you can use for anything.

Like, I'm wearing this shirt today all day. I'm going to wear it tonight. I'll probably work out in it tomorrow. I just want five of those, and I can fit everything into a carry-on. Instead, I've got a closet just absolutely bursting with stuff that one day I'm going to go to a party where I need to wear a red, shiny velour shirt, for sure.

So I keep just saying, like, that's me currently, and my ideal is just that level of minimalism with high function.

Chris Kolbe: I think that's where the larger zeitgeist is going.

Jordan Harbinger: Totally.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. Is [01:19:00] that we're post-peak stuff.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Hopefully.

Chris Kolbe: Yeah. Right? And, and think we're getting a little more practical, and this is just your health and wellness has become really top of mind for everybody.

So this sort of fits with the way you're thinking about it. And I love our customers when they tell me like, "You know, I packed wrong when I went to Europe and I only took one short-sleeved shirt and it was super hot. So I wore your shirt for 10 days- Yeah ... on this trip and it held up," right? And so then this like true believer, and they're kinda like, "If I can travel that light and I can have something that does all these different things, it's just better."

And so they don't get hung up on the price. They get more into what it, how it works.

Jordan Harbinger: If you've got a daytime shirt, a night shirt, and a workout shirt, you really have three shirts. So if it costs twice as much as a regular shirt, then who cares? You're already, you're saving money at that point, essentially.

Chris Kolbe: And at the end of the day, I'll tell you just being in the fashion business as long as I've been, people will always care what it looks like. Yeah, of course. Does it look good on me?

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Chris Kolbe: Am I tired of wearing the same color all the time, or do I want something different? Absolutely. That won't change. But you can [01:20:00] choose who you want to do that with, and you can choose how much do you really, really need.

And I'm always astounded by what people consider to be new because most things out there aren't really new.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah.

Chris Kolbe: They're just variations of things. And so I do think you can feel good and look good without it being a trade-off.

Jordan Harbinger: I wonder if you think polyester is going to be the lead paint of clothing in 10 or 20 years.

It already seems like it might be in some ways.

Chris Kolbe: I think it's like cigarettes.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, maybe that's

Chris Kolbe: a better analogy. In that you didn't die after the first 10, or even the first couple years of smoking, but over time there's an accumulative effect. And I think that's the part where if you really don't care, then just keep microwaving your food in plastic.

If you don't really care, just keep smoking, right? Because it's the same thing. And I always joke to my friends who do hot yoga, it's like, it's like smoking while you're doing yoga. And so people are like, "Well, can you prove it?" And so that's the problem with our industry. It's very difficult to prove things singularly in terms of [01:21:00] the cause and effect of apparel because you wear such a variety of apparel.

Jordan Harbinger: It'd be hard to make somebody wear the exact same clothes for 30 years or whatever to run that kind of test. Not really possible.

Chris Kolbe: But there's been instances where things in the uniform business, say like the airline industry. I used to be the president of Land's End, and so we used to sell uniforms to airlines.

And about five years after I left, we had done the Delta uniforms, the purple ones, the famous, you maybe s- remember them. And we did it for three or four other airlines. And it caused all of these health problems for the flight attendants, so bad that people had to quit working. And they having, like, all of these, like, really disastrous effects.

It was really affecting the general population that was working for Delta. And so it's one of those things where sometimes people have to wear these uniforms every day, sometimes for 24 hours a day.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah, I didn't think about that. Yeah, I guess you could run that test.

Chris Kolbe: And you could start to see the cause and effect.

And so there was actually lawsuits on all this stuff, and even then, very hard to prove. But [01:22:00] the direct correlation on the, on the general population was very obvious. And so why is that? Those uniforms were made to be wrinkle-free, so they looked great, right? They held up over time. They would be colorfast, so they wouldn't lose their color.

They could be washed many times. They were meant to be strong and durable, right? And so all the things that we built, and the original uniforms before that were wool, and now these were polyester. And so there's a lot of, lot of industries, whether it be medical, uniform, and things like that, where they could all shift to more natural bio-based things.

It would be good for their work population. And so at some point we want to do FedEx uniforms, and we want to do airline uniforms, we want to do school uniforms, right? Your school uniforms are all synthetic if your kids are going to a, a uniform school. And so all of these things don't have to be polyester plastic.

There are ways to create economies and do this better, but we've got to make sure people understand that that's a choice.

Jordan Harbinger: Chris Kolbe, thank you very much, man. Interesting. A little scary, but [01:23:00] mostly good news is i- in that we are becoming aware of this and able to solve the problem instead of just, like, doom and gloom.

You're going to die from wearing your compression shorts now.

Chris Kolbe: Let's hope not.

Jordan Harbinger: Yeah. Thank you very much.

Chris Kolbe: Thank you.

Jordan Harbinger: Chess isn't just a game. You're about to hear a preview where Danny Rensch shares how building chess.com put him face to face with cheaters, death threats, and a past he had to rewrite to survive.

I was born into a cult. As I've talked about it more and more, I've gotten better at just saying that, naming it for what it was. The collective itself was called the Church of Immortal Consciousness. My generation, within a couple years, was part of the first group of kids that were being born into the collective, which again, at that point it was full communism.

People's finances were merged. When you came to the collective, you gave up all of your material belongings. You just sort of look at it and go, "This was fucked up. This was not okay. There is no excuse to be made for this." And then Western media was paying attention to chess for the first time maybe since Bobby Fischer in the [01:24:00] '70s.

This movie had come out, and these two kids trapped in a cult were basically under house arrest and didn't have anything else to do. And anything that Steven Camp was fond of, everybody was into, right? He was literally in charge of every human being in the collective. I went from zero to being one of the top kids in the country.

Within two years, I was already an All-American. I was one of the top-rated players, and I've worked very hard to heal my relationship with my own abusers, not because I'm trying to excuse their behavior, but because I really do believe that forgiveness is not rewriting the past, it's freeing yourself from it.

And so with chess.com, accidental success 15 years later. So we have 25 million games a day, 623 games finishing every second. You can have a different relationship with your experiences if you want to. The obstacle can be the way and you can overcome hard shit. That was my goal with this.

To hear the story of how Danny Rensch got on the hit list, check out episode 1289 of The Jordan Harbinger Show.[01:25:00]

Big thanks to Chris Kolbe for joining us today. The point here is not to sprint home, tear open your dresser, and scream that your underwear betrayed you. The takeaway is much more useful than that, and frankly, less likely to get you permanently banned from Target. Start where the exposure is highest.

Direct skin contact, heat, sweat, and hours worn. Underwear, socks, bras, leggings, gym shirts, daily T-shirts, bedding, the stuff that's basically living on your body for multiple hours at a time. Read the label. Watch for vague claims like anti-odor, wrinkle-free, stain-resistant, water-repellent, antimicrobial, clean, natural, wellness, whatever.

That can mean anything from third-party tested to our marketing intern found a leaf emoji. And ask brands for receipts, not vibes, not inspired by nature, not a photo of a woman standing in a field looking mildly constipated by purity. Actual receipts, fiber composition, added finishes, PFAS status, certifications, test methods, wash cycle durability, third-party results.

The sane move here is not replace everything. It's upgrade one high-contact item at a time. That's how you [01:26:00] avoid turning a legitimate concern into another luxury panic hobby for people who already own a $900 juicer and a trauma-informed mattress. We cleaned up the kitchen. We cleaned up the water. We cleaned up skincare.

Maybe the closet is next. And 10 years from now, we may look back at some of what we wore here every day and say, "I can't believe I spent half my adult life sweating into fossil fuel yoga pants." All things Chris Kolbe will be in the show notes on the website. Advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support the show all at jordanharbinger.com/deals.

Please consider supporting those who support the show. Don't forget about Six Minute Networking as well over at sixminutenetworking.com. I'm @JordanHarbinger on Twitter and Instagram. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And hey, the show is created in association with PodcastOne. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jase Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sidlauskas, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi.

Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can give us is to share the show with those you care about. If you know somebody who's interested in [01:27:00] health, wellness, exercise, performance apparel, or randomly a supply chain nerd, share this episode with them.

In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn, and we'll see you next time