Behind the Bastards - The Primal Diet Con

Episode Date: April 6, 2023

Robert is joined by Dr. Kaveh Hoda to discuss the Primal Diet. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information....

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there, I'm Maya Schunker, host of the podcast A Slight Change of Plans. In our new season, we'll hear personal stories of change, and I'll talk with scientific experts on how we can live happier and healthier lives. We'll hear from social scientists Medupe Akinola, who studies stress and its benefits, and comedian Hassan Minhaj, who talks about the pitfalls of having a job that depends on whether or not people like him. Listen to A Slight Change of Plans on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. iHeart Podcasts is excited to welcome Jay Shetty to the iHeart family.
Starting point is 00:00:34 Tune in to On Purpose with Jay Shetty, the hit podcast where the former monk shares fascinating conversations with insightful people and investigates ways to live life today on purpose. When was the last time you did something for the first time with your partner? We're used to watching them do the same things, do the same activities. Let's see them do something fresh in you. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast, Transportista, Whom Murdered Captain Coral, tells the story of Columbia's drug wars. Pablo Escobar's death was supposed to bring peace to Medellin,
Starting point is 00:01:09 but that peace was shattered for Beto Coral when his father was murdered. Two sides, criminals and law enforcement, in a battle to the death, in the middle, a city full of innocent people. The result, thousands of forgotten victims. Listen to Transportista, Whom Murdered Captain Coral on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, Gwyneth Paltrow's Butthole is what Kava and I are talking about right now. Kava Hoda, Doctor, you were just interviewed by Buzzfeed about said Butthole. How did that go? You know, it's interesting. I have been spending a lot more time talking about Gwyneth Paltrow's
Starting point is 00:01:50 rectum than I ever thought I would. I assumed going into medicine, I would a little. I just didn't think this much a lot. I actually feel like a startling number of doctors have a similar story. Ah, Kava, welcome back to the show. For you and I, it's been weeks for the people listening. They have been jerked as if through time travel from the live show that we did earlier this year at SketchFest into this conversation right now about Gwyneth Paltrow's Butthole, which could cause psychological damage. We may have destroyed some people. And I think people will be very disappointed to realize how little growth there's been personally between us in the weeks from the show to now. There's been like, maybe you'll notice you can
Starting point is 00:02:40 like track it. You can just like pay attention to what we said then and now. And you could see a downward trajectory of our emotional growth. Oh, yeah. No, I think definitely we have we have like regressed in a number of ways. For example, I no longer know how to drive. I'm still driving. I'm still driving. Don't worry. But I've lost the ability to determine what the signs mean. Thankfully, my vehicle is very large, so it's been okay so far. I just kind of Americaed my way through that problem like everyone else on the road in a truck. Yeah, no, that's good. It's healthy and it's American and it's here. It's now I love it. I love it too. Speaking of American, nothing could be more American than adopting unhinged and dangerous diets that you stick to like a religion
Starting point is 00:03:29 for a series of farcical health benefits that are in no way real. That is maybe the most American thing that there is. It's the driving a truck without knowing how to drive of health care. We are the best at it. We are. Other people have tried. I've seen the Germans give a good shot at it, but no one does it like we do. No, you think the Mongolians could do nonsense like this? Absolutely not. Their fad diets are trash. No, their fad diets are probably actually okay for for you. But ours are the good old fashioned nonsense fad diets. Yes. Robert, the photos in this script are so gross. Oh, Sophie, I haven't even put all of the grossest photos in there. I'm waiting on those because I want I want you to be surprised by them too, Sophie. It's worse.
Starting point is 00:04:16 So I felt like first off, you know, a live show, we kind of have to be a little leaner than we do in our normal shows. We don't have as much room to kind of because, you know, you get a hard out usually the venues only open so long. So there's stuff that we kind of left on the cutting room floor. And as I was putting that stuff back in so we could talk about it now, there's also a bunch of stuff that I found and was fascinated by. And now we're just going to kind of talk about some really fucked up shit for a while. And if there's time left over, we may watch some more liver king. But first off, yeah, I wanted to talk, Kava, a little bit about the realities of the so called primal diet. Now, obviously, we use that word a lot in part one
Starting point is 00:05:00 in the context of the liver king. The term has, I mean, this goes back quite a while, but one of kind of the modern users of this term, one of the people who's been most responsible for sort of making it a big deal in the internet age is a health grifter, he would call himself a health blogger named Mark Cison. Mark is the author of the primal blueprint, which he describes as a set of rules to let you quote, control how your genes express themselves in order to build the strongest, leanest, healthiest body possible, taking clues from evolutionary biology. And I think some of what's going on there is we talk about this in some of the Jordan Peterson episodes, very common misunderstandings of epigenetics, which are often taken by these guys to mean that like, oh, you can
Starting point is 00:05:44 activate superpowers in your blood from your ancestors and are more often like, well, sometimes you can activate through environmental stresses, things that are beneficial, but sometimes you get diabetes. Like, it's a crapshoot. Exactly. And the very basic tenets of this are always so off. It's just like, first of all, to assume our ancestors all ate the same thing is ridiculous. Yes, we will talk about that. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But no, no, police content. Yeah. I'm sure you're going to talk about this, but it, and like you said, you, we left a lot of meat on the bone, so to speak, from that. Sure. Do you like that? That's a paleo reference. Yeah. Yeah. But and now, as we're going to do a meat, you know, as we've left meat on the bone, this is,
Starting point is 00:06:32 we're making like a nice stew, a bone broth, which these guys are soaking. Yeah. We're just going to soak in this. It's, I'm assuming this guy was like a wellness influencer, right? Like, how long ago was it that this, the primal diet came out? Yeah. Back in like the 1960s, I think, is kind of when a lot of this started. It was generally called the caveman or paleolithic diet. And yeah, a lot of it revolves around the idea that our earliest ancestors who lived from around two and a half million years ago to about 10,000 BC had everything figured out nutrition wise, right? They were, they were doing it like perfect. They avoided seed oils and processed foods. They ate exclusively meat. This is what guys like Marxists on claim that like, yeah, they avoided
Starting point is 00:07:20 seed oils and processed foods. That's why they were so healthy. They ate nothing but meat or 60 to 70% of their diet was meat. And that is kind of the ancient man that food bloggers and fitness influencers in the primal space, like our liver king, imagine them. Now, not all of what the paleo crowd is saying is bad. Obviously, Kava, as you know, processed foods are associated with higher cancer risk, especially processed meats. That is something you definitely want to limit in your diet for optimal health outcomes. Yeah, red meat is associated though, as well. They never seem to note that, but like, well, but red meats also not great for you in massive quantities. The funny thing about these guys is that their whole point is like modernity is
Starting point is 00:08:04 killing us. And yes, modernity is, but it's more because of guys like this and their ability to reach millions of people via the internet. You know, it's not, not everything they're saying is wrong. Like, yeah, you're totally right. Processed foods and particularly processed deli meats, red meats are not good for you. You should avoid them. But to like glorify this ancient diet, which, you know, they're probably not getting right. And it's going to be exposing them to higher risks of a cancer due to red meat and lower fiber and probably lower micronutrients because of this, these primal paleo diets. I mean, they miss the points. They're just, they're cherry picking little health points that help them sell a supplement at the end of the day.
Starting point is 00:08:43 They're doing that. And they're also kind of like one of the things like, yeah, if you are, if you are someone who is like living in a food desert, eating it, you know, reheated meals or whatever, swansons and stuff for every meal or fast food all the time. And you are able to switch over to like a, a, you know, raw food diet made out around like lean, organic meats. Yeah, you will probably notice some health benefits, but also most of the people who are living that kind of diet are doing it because it's what's affordable. It's what they have time to cook if they're working 80 hours a week. You know, if they live in a food desert, like millions of Americans do, they, you know, processed foods are what they have access to. So kind of inherently a lot of the,
Starting point is 00:09:25 when you do see different health outcomes with the people using, you know, living the primal life or whatever or doing keto or whatever fad diet they're doing, a lot of it's just going to be like, well, you're rich. So like, yeah, you know, you're accrediting it to this fad diet. But at the end of the day, you have the money to eat healthy and intentionally as opposed to like, well, I have 17 minutes to figure out what I'm having for dinner and it can't cost more than $4, which a lot of people are in that boat. And that, you know, you're not going to be able to make the healthiest possible choice if that's the reality you're living with. Yeah. So there is other stuff that's kind of more on the fence in terms of paleo advice. Paleo people tend to avoid dairy
Starting point is 00:10:06 or processed grains. And while it is absolutely true that a lot of people eat more dairy than is ideal for their health, if you look at like the groups of people who are longest lived in the world, for example, an awful lot of them eat lots of yogurt, like that is traditional food like kefir and different things like that. Those can be parts of very healthy diets and are for large quantities of people. And also a lot of these paleo folks are replacing whatever they're cutting out with massive quantities of raw red meat. If you're the liver king or just red meat, if you're a normal paleo person. And that's not necessarily an upgrade from a health standpoint. Meanwhile, some of the stuff they're cutting out like bread, you know, white bread's not great, but there's
Starting point is 00:10:44 all sorts of very healthy breads and very healthy grains that are good for your diet. And that are also as we'll talk about part of a diet human beings have been eating for hundreds of thousands of years. These kind of people also tend to avoid peanuts, lentils, bees, peas and legumes, which are all potentially healthy and were also probably available to many ancient peoples. As you noted, there are many health issues with a diet heavy in red meats and consuming said meat raw offers no health benefits and many downsides. It is worth noting a lot of primal diet advocates are not weirdos about eating it uncooked like the liver king is. But by far the most unhealthy thing about these specific primal diet folks is their insistence that not only does their exclusionary
Starting point is 00:11:29 diet benefit health, which is debatable, but that adhering to such a diet will cure modern illnesses they call these modern illnesses like diabetes. Sisson writes on his blog, while the world has changed in innumerable ways in the last 10,000 years for better and worse, the human genome has changed very little and thus only thrives under similar conditions. And that's not true. No, that's not true at all. Very factually wrong. No, like for what I say some bullshit. It is. I mean, and among other things, like a lot of these people are the folks who focus on like gut health and stuff and we'll talk about gut biome and not acknowledge that like, well, actually a lot of what has to do with whether or not we can digest certain things has
Starting point is 00:12:14 to do with gut biome, which can change much faster than 10,000 years. You know, it's it's funny. When these these people, the reason I think he does, he sells these like foods or the reason the liver king, I assume is pushing these this diet is not because he is even in any sense believes it works. It's just because he knows it's disgusting. And he knows that no one will eat it, but he has convinced people that it's going to help him to help them because of modernity and ancient detoxing and all these nonsense words that that every grifter in wellness throws out there. And because he knows no one will want to do the nasty stuff that he is advertising, which gets the clicks that he can then see to say instead
Starting point is 00:13:02 of doing all that, you just have this, I'll take care of it. This is the stuff that you need this one little pill. It's it's an ancient pill made in a lab. It is it is not it is modern, but it's not modern. And it's not going to be it's going to be a modern thing that's ancient in this nonsense that somehow people will buy and do the mental gymnastics around until they get to this point where they are willing to to spend shit tons of money on these products that are completely unproven in any way. Yeah. And it's it's taking advantage of the fact that like health is confusing. There is a lot that we don't understand, particularly when it comes to stuff like why is it hard for some people to lose weight or keep weight off? Like why is it difficult for
Starting point is 00:13:42 people to like control their blood sugar? Like all of the there's all these different things that like even when there is an answer, maybe you don't have good access to it because you don't have good access to quality medical care, but you always have access to tiktok, right? And so this guy can offer you a solution to all of your health problems. It's worth noting that like as we've talked about the idea that human beings have not changed fundamentally in 10,000 years or however long is fundamentally untrue as this right up from Scientific American makes clear. I'm going to quote from this now because it summarizes it pretty well. Several examples of recent and relatively speedy human evolution underscore that our anatomy and genetics have not been set in stone
Starting point is 00:14:25 since the Stone Age. Within a span of 7,000 years, for instance, people adapted to eating dairy by developing lactose tolerance. Usually the gene encoding an enzyme named lactase, which breaks down lactose sugars in milk, shuts down after infancy when dairy became prevalent. Many people evolved a mutation that kept the gene turned on throughout life. Likewise, the genetic mutation responsible for blue eyes likely arose between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. And in regions where malaria is common, natural selection has modified people's immune systems in red blood cells in ways that help them resist the mosquito-borne disease. Some of these genetic mutations appeared within the last 10,000 years or even 5,000 years. The organisms with which we share our bodies have
Starting point is 00:15:04 evolved even faster, particularly the billions of bacteria living in our intestines. Our gut bacteria interact with our food in many ways, helping us break down tough plant fibers but also competing for calories. We do not have direct evidence of which bacterial species thrived in the Paleolithic intestines, but we can be sure that their microbial communities do not match our own. Even if eating only foods available to hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic made sense, it would be impossible. As Christina Warrener of the University of Zurich emphasizes in her 2012 TED Talk, just about every single species commonly consumed today, whether a fruit, vegetable, or animal, is drastically different from its Paleolithic predecessor. In most cases,
Starting point is 00:15:41 we have transformed the species we eat through artificial selection. We have breadcows, chickens, and goats to provide as much meat, milk, and eggs as possible, and have sown seeds only from plants with the most desirable traits, with the biggest fruits, plumpest kernels, Swedish flesh, and fewest natural toxins. I think a big part of it for me is this ignorance of the fact that everything has changed about the things that people have access to since then. There's basically no one who's capable of living and eating the diet people did 10,000 years ago, or even particularly close to that diet. I mean, he's right to some degree. We haven't evolved so far from those ancestors that we would look that dramatically different, but there have been
Starting point is 00:16:22 acquired genetic mutations since then, things that help us with the changing diets, like starches, or being able to consume cow's milk well until after childhood. I mean, you could debate how much, but clearly, we have. Clearly, there has been some adaptation, that much we can see. Yeah. I mean, there's just a... If you want to think about how much even animals have changed, like there are a lot of species of livestock that require assistance in birthing their young because of the ways in which we have bred them. Wild animals, the ancestors of those animals, did not need human beings to deliver their babies. Obviously, they did. Otherwise, they wouldn't have survived. Yeah. The Kentucky Fried Chicken Chickens that come out so big,
Starting point is 00:17:04 their breasts are so big, they cannot mate or walk. Yeah. We made those. We invented them. I mean, maybe we shouldn't have, but we did. They're not the same as whatever people were eating 8,000 years ago, even if they were eating chicken. Very basic research done by scientists who study prehistoric man with rigor rather than write fantasies about him shows they also were not immune to health problems, which is the weirdest thing about this to me. I think a lot of it started... There was a lot of writing you would see 30, 40 years ago about people in 10,000 B.C., 20,000 B.C., probably if you survived to adulthood would have had a muscle and bone density that only the very best athletes have today, which they were living outside the whole time.
Starting point is 00:17:49 They were always moving. They were always like, yeah, maybe that was the case, but that's kind of translated into they didn't have any health problems and none of the modern issues that we have, which is objectively untrue. For one thing, obviously, a minority of our paleoancestors lived to adulthood. Many would have died before 15, which is why their life expectancy was so low. More to the point, they suffered a lot of the same ailments we did. A recent Lancet study found signs of atherosclerosis or clogged arteries and more than 100 mummified remains from ancient hunter-gatherer and forager societies around the world. A common assumption is that atherosclerosis is predominantly lifestyle related and that if
Starting point is 00:18:30 modern human beings could emulate pre-industrial or even pre-agricultural lifestyles that atherosclerosis or at least its clinical manifestations would be avoided. They found evidence of atherosclerosis in 47 of 137 mummies from each of the different geographical regions. The shit that they claim is like, well, this is a result of your processed diet. I'm sure that makes it worse in some cases, more common, but they got this shit back then too in part because they've eaten a lot of red meat. There's always this interaction between, and I'm sorry, this is probably more sciency than you guys want, but there is always this complicated interaction between your genetics and your environment and the things you do and how it affects your body and how people,
Starting point is 00:19:16 the cholesterol, how they may react or how they may have it in their bodies. When it comes down to it, it genetically, as long as you're able to pass on your genes, which means you're able to have sex at some point and have kids, then whatever happens after that doesn't matter as much. If you are dying of atherosclerosis in your 30s, your 40s, you were still able to pass on your genes. It didn't make you genetically weaker. It wouldn't necessarily be affected that way. It could still be there. It could have been there then and still here now. We know that there is a genetic contribution to all these diseases. Yeah. There are reasonable people in the Paleo subculture that reject the liver king stuff about munching raw organs, but they still tend to see the basic
Starting point is 00:20:01 realities of the ancient diet. They tend to argue that the basic realities of the ancient diet provided a good guideline for optimal health performance, which is also just nonsense. As you mentioned a little bit earlier, we don't know much about what prehistoric people ate in a lot of cases in all regions of the globe, certainly. We don't know how widespread different kinds of prehistoric diets were, but we do know that they were different all over the place based on the time of year and based on what different people had access to. More pointedly, there's no such thing as the primal diet or the hunter-gatherer diet. There were a bunch of different ones. I'm looking at a chart right now that lays out. This is looking at modern
Starting point is 00:20:46 hunter-gatherers, and modern hunter-gatherers like the Inuit, like the Hiwi, like the Ikung, like the Hadza, are often called living fossils because of how similar they supposedly were to our hunter-gatherer ancestors. That is not true. There's certainly value in studying them. You can learn things about hunter-gatherers in all periods by studying hunter-gatherers today, but these are modern people living in the modern world whose lifestyle, whose bodies, whose health have been affected by modernity. They are not fossils. They're human beings. I can't imagine they like that term. They're just people. Now, it is worth kind of if you want to look at what these different people's diet includes.
Starting point is 00:21:28 Inuit folks, as much as like 90, 95% of their diet from animal products, from animals that they hunt. The Hiwi people, it's more like 80% animals, about 10 to 15% fruits and vegetables, and then about 15 to 20% roots, something like that, 75%, maybe a meat. But the Ikung only eat about 10% of their calories, 15% of their calories from meat, whereas they get about twice as much from fruits and vegetables. They eat a few roots. The vast majority of their caloric intake, more than half, is seeds and nuts, and they get a little bit from meat or from milk and cornmeal. The Hadza are at about 50% of their calories from meat and fish. They get, you know, about 15, 20% from fruits and vegetables, and then about 30-ish percent, something like that, from roots.
Starting point is 00:22:21 So, as you can see, even within just these four people, the diet varies quite widely. And like, you know, you could look at the Inuit and say, well, that looks like at least in terms of quantity of meat consumed, like what the liver king is doing. But if you look at the Ikung, that doesn't look at all like the liver king's diet, nor really does the Hadza. So, it probably behooves us to take a deeper look at one of these people, the Hiwi, to just talk about kind of how their diet and their health actually are in modernity, because they do eat, I get about 75% of their calories from meat and fish. And most of this, like sometimes up to 95% of their diet is wild caught or wild foraged, right? So, they are getting almost everything they eat from nature around them in a way that is
Starting point is 00:23:09 very traditional, that is very much kind of like what these paleo people imagine, folks, you know, the hunter-gatherers they're looking back to getting their calories from. But the animals they're not eating for one thing are not the kinds of animals that you are going to find in a grocery store. The Hiwi eat capybara, they eat collard peccary, they eat anteater, armadillo, fish, turtles, iguanas, birds. A lot of these are species that simply are not available in grocery stores. I would love to try capybara. If I'm being honest, I've seen a couple at the zoo, and they look a little tasty. They have like a little juice to them, like a little ham running around with fur. I'm not going to not eat a capybara if it's an offer to me, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:23:50 Although they are very sweet, so that might be emotionally difficult. It's a hard pass for me, fellas. I'm a curious man. I'm a curious man. I'll eat anything someone offers me in their home. Exactly. I watched Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom. We talked about this. There's only one good part of that whole movie. There's only one good part about that whole racist movie, and it's that it teaches, it doesn't matter what's put in front of you, you eat it, because that might be the last meal that those people have to offer. You eat it. That is a firm thing that I believe in. That is the one bright moment in that movie's attitude towards, I don't know. But then it gets really racist with like monkey
Starting point is 00:24:34 brains. It gets racist pretty quick, yeah. Anyway, Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom, Dr. Kavehota recommends it as a awoke guide to life. So let's continue talking about the Hebrew, because while these folks do kind of live the ideal liver king life on paper, they are not a famously healthy people. Now, obviously, this isn't just due to their diet. We do not know how they would have lived a couple of thousand years ago, right, before, you know, the colonization. You cannot divorce the health problems that these people face from capitalist modernity, or the degree to which they've had their climate ravaged, their environment ravaged, and their traditional homelands encroached upon. But they also suffer consequences that have
Starting point is 00:25:18 probably always been present of eating huge quantities of game that has not always been sufficiently cooked. The Hiwi are shorter, thinner, and less energetic than other hunter-gatherer tribes nearby, like the Aceh and Paraguay. They suffer from infections of parasites like hookworms at an exceptionally high rate, and only about 50% of their children survive to adulthood. Behind the Paleo craze is a legitimate debate by some scholars over the realities of the Stone Age diet and how much it might match an ideal diet for modern people. The fact that some of these scientists, like Lauren Cordain of Colorado State University, have written books advocating the Paleo diet muddies their claims a bit more, and I'm going to quote from National Geographic here.
Starting point is 00:25:58 After studying the diets of living hunter-gatherers and concluding that 73% of these societies derive more than half their calories from meat, Cordain came up with his own Paleo prescription. Eat plenty of lean, meat, and fish, but not dairy products, beans, or cereal grains. Foods introduced into our diet after the invention of cooking and agriculture. Paleo diet advocates like Cordain say that if we stick to the foods our hunter-gatherers once ate, we can avoid the diseases of civilization, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, even acne. Now again, there's some of this that has its origins and probably kind of the motivation to start writing about this shit has its origins in a somewhat legitimate
Starting point is 00:26:37 anthropological theory, which is the idea that we humans might have developed our big brains and thus our ability to invent shit, like podcasts, because our ancestors were such good hunters that they ate a shitload of protein and that made their brains grow up big and strong. Now, it is true that hunter-gatherers around the world crave meat more than any other food and usually get around 30% or more of their annual calories from animals, but most of these groups also endure extremely lean times where they eat less than a handful of meat each week. There's studies right now that suggest that kind of reliance on meat in ancient humans probably was not the only thing that fueled the brain's expansion, especially since there would
Starting point is 00:27:17 have been large chunks of the year where that simply would not have been available. And we're going to talk about that as well as the high meat subculture, which I'm excited to introduce to you, Kava. But first, you know what? Never. You know what is responsible for our large brains, Dr. Hoda? Yes, the fact that the female human anatomy allows for the pelvis to have an anterior sort of direction allows for a wider birth canal. No, no, sorry. No, no, it's these products and services. That was my second guess. That's the second guess. That's right. It feels like making smart money decisions has only become more difficult in the current economic environment. It's hard to know how to respond in an era of inflation, of fed rate hikes,
Starting point is 00:28:09 and stock market volatility. That's why our show How to Money Exists. We want to help you make confident and informed decisions in an area that most folks find daunting. It's no wonder most of us are flummoxed by finances. I don't know about you, but I didn't learn anything about budgeting or saving or investing in school. And I didn't learn a ton about those things at home either. But I do remember what a rhombus is, though, although that hasn't been terribly helpful in adult life. But our show is all about helping you to become more informed so that you can make smart and confident decisions with your money. That's right. Yeah, we're two best buds covering practical topics like buying versus renting, saving money at the grocery store, maximizing your
Starting point is 00:28:47 income potential, and ways to battle money anxiety. So if you're looking for help in navigating a world of financial uncertainty, check out our show. You can listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University. And I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like, does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can
Starting point is 00:29:41 we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception, and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty. And on my podcast On Purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet, Oprah. Everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying
Starting point is 00:30:33 our best to create change. That's for me been taking that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself, because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn. On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read, and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. Oh, we're back. And I just, I feel smarter. Thanks. Oh, man. Those were amazing dick pill ads
Starting point is 00:31:21 that really hit the spot. I mean, I typically don't like dick pill ads, but those make me think that it actually works. Yeah. And, and, you know, what they say about dicks, they're like a brain. They're the brains of the crotch. That's not what people say. So let's talk about the anthropological theory that a reliance on meat is kind of what made human brains get so much bigger. It's kind of worth noting that like the idealized version of hunter-gatherers and of our ancient ancestors is of these kind of like super hunters, you know, stumbling into the bush or going into the bush with, you know, a spear or an atlatal or a bow and arrow and just like dropping animals every single day in order to bring meat back to the family. That's not the
Starting point is 00:32:13 way it ever has been or ever will be because hunting is actually really hard, Kava. It's extremely difficult to do. I've never done it. I tried fishing once. It didn't work out well for me. I'm not, I would, if there ever isn't an apocalypse and I'm going to try and find you so you can gather food for me and hunt things for me because I will perish otherwise. I mean, most people will, basically everyone will perish if you rely entirely upon hunting for your calories. Trapping is much better. You know, when it comes to fishing, doing stuff like setting up kind of traps along the coast that are, you know, big nets that can sweep up large numbers of fish, that's much smarter than just like going out into the bush with a bow and arrow. You do get
Starting point is 00:33:00 calories that way and you get stuff that's useful for you like, you know, skins and pelts and whatnot that can be a necessary part of like clothing folks. But, you know, groups like the Hadza and the Ikung Bushmen of Africa fail to get meat more than half the time when they go out hunting, which doesn't mean they're bad hunters. It's just like hunting is difficult and it's gotten more difficult in the modern period. But also, even though certain things have gotten more difficult now, they also have better weapons than people would have had access to 20,000 years ago because, again, they're not living fossils, right? They're human beings in 2023. Yeah, it's kind of worth noting that when you actually look at different kind of peoples living a more traditional life,
Starting point is 00:33:46 who do eat meat all the time and who do make it the vast majority of their diet year round, it tends to be coastal peoples or people like up in the Arctic. I mean, that is also a coastal peoples like the Inuit who do a lot of, you know, fishing, they do a lot of trapping. They do get a lot of like larger animals like seals and narwhals. But as a general rule, most hunter-gatherers cannot rely on hunted meat year round or even trapped meat, which is why all of these groups only survived because of foragers, which was a job primarily done as far as we can, as far as we're aware by women. Often women with like young children would do a lot of the foraging. They would get things, you know, various kinds of plants, tubers, nuts. It can be kind of resource
Starting point is 00:34:30 intensive to process them. So it's a good thing to have little kids do. It's not hard to teach little kids to like process nuts or to process tubers. Things like plantains and manioc in the Americas. Australian aboriginal people often feasted on nutgrass and water chestnuts. There's this kind of story that these peoples all must have been these sort of primal hunters, but again, none of them survive without foraging. And when they're foraging, they're eating the kind of stuff that these primal diet advocates and guys like the liver kinks are telling you not to eat, including grains. There's evidence of people eating grains for at least 100,000 years, which is more than enough time for us to have evolved the ability to tolerate them.
Starting point is 00:35:11 In fact, we would not have survived to this point without them. We have had adaptations clearly for starches and for grains. Sure. Yeah. And there was probably a fairly long period of time where large numbers of people were doing a lot of weird pooping. And those people are heroes and we should remember them as such. Our courageous ancestors who pooped out grains long enough that they were eventually able to tolerate them. God bless you all. Heroes, American heroes. Just like those ancient Europeans guzzling milk and just shitting constantly for generations pooping themselves to death so that I could enjoy a nice block of cheese.
Starting point is 00:35:52 That's right. Just trying different milk from different animals. Just to see what happens. Pioneers all. So white people have a long history of fetishizing indigenous peoples and those living kind of what are called more traditional lifestyles while also attempting to profit off of merchandising aspects of that lifestyle. The liver king is one silly example of this trend, but perhaps the most preposterous is the tale of high meat. So, Kavit, fermentation. Blue apron before there was blue apron. Yeah. Yeah. You will make blue apron high meat if you just don't take your blue apron bag in
Starting point is 00:36:26 for several months because it's just rotting meat. So Kavit, you can ferment meat. Fermentation is a process of controlled decay. You can ferment meat and eat it and it can be fine for you. That is a process that's not wildly different from the process of making sauerkraut. Various peoples all around the planet have done this with meat and fish for as long as there have been people probably or pretty close to it. There are examples for food in Scandinavia, I think like lutefisk, which is basically fish that you let rot in a very specific way so that it ferments. The Greenland Inuit, the Greenland Inuits enjoy what's called kiviak, which is a fermented seabird dish. And it's actually fascinating. I've never had this.
Starting point is 00:37:09 I would try it where it offered to me, as we just discussed. But the way that you make kiviak, basically, you get several hundred small birds called ox, and you leaving the feathers and stuff on them, you tightly pack the bodies into a bag made of seal skin that you've left the fat on. Because as it rots, the fat is going to make the bird meat tender. So you sew up this seal skin with all of these hundreds of birds in it, and you grease it with seal fat, which repels flies. And then you store it underneath a bunch of rocks, right, so that animals can't get to it. And you let it ferment for, I think, usually something like three or four months. When the process is done, when you kind of come back for it, you open it up, you remove the feathers from
Starting point is 00:37:53 the birds, and then you eat the birds' skin, bones, organs, and all. It's consumed raw. I think the bones get a lot softer when you kind of let it ferment like that. And that's the thing a lot of people are going to be like, well, that sounds nasty, and that's fine. You don't need to eat it. I would, again, I'd try it. The Greenland Inuits, like most Inuit peoples, eat mostly meat, and they sometimes get as much as 98% of their calories from animals. They do consider kiviak a delicacy, but it evolved for a specific and very practical purpose. The fact is that hunting, as we've talked about, is often difficult or impossible for chunks of the year. Think about what it's like where the Greenland Inuits live. There's times where you simply can't go out and hunt because
Starting point is 00:38:34 it's too fucking cold to survive doing that. And you need to have food that's stored that can tide you over during those periods of time. Kiviak is hunted and prepared in the spring so that it can be consumed during the winter. And it was probably developed over time as a way to preserve calories during periods of abundance for the lean winter months. Because it contains so much organ meat, kiviak is extremely high in vitamins and nutrients. It is thus an incredibly pragmatic thing to have in your diet if you live the way in Greenland that the Inuit do, right? It makes total sense when you actually think about logically why would they do this, what role does it fulfill? A very practical thing to do. But of course, weirdo fitness
Starting point is 00:39:16 influencers and diet freaks on the internet have leapt onto the idea that fermented meat is the ultimate source of nutrition. They call it high meat, which they say I think is a term that has been used and been used by some Inuit peoples rather than, but you know, when we're talking about like kiviak, this is a that's a pretty deliberate and elaborate process. A lot of high meat advocates are basically leaving mason jars of raw meat out for months at a time, either in their fridge or at room temperature to consume after its age. Some people will age shit for like a year, which people aren't generally doing with stuff like kiviak. So I wonder how many GI illnesses that I as a gastroenterologist have treated over the years,
Starting point is 00:39:59 where it was someone who did something like this and they just didn't want to tell me. Yeah, they've been eating high meat and it's making them poop themselves to death because they didn't tell me. Yeah. And it is worth noting you can buy meat and you can ferment it and you can eat it and it will not be dangerous for it. It is possible. I should I'm not saying you should do this. It is theoretically possible to ferment meat as other people have done for generations in a way that is not dangerous for you. It is not likely that you are going to do it with the advice that you are getting on reddit.com and there's no specific health benefits for it, right? And again, the Inuit are not eating kiviak because it's like a superfood that gives
Starting point is 00:40:42 them liver king like powers. They're eating it because like it has a lot of vitamins and it stores well, right? Like it's it's not. They have to. Yeah. Well, it's if they have to, it's become part of the culture. There's all sorts of cheese and stuff is a way we've got all this milk. How do we store this shit for a long period of time, you know, right? I'm sure some of it was found out by mistake. Like they were really hungry and they had stored something and they realized it was it was something they had stored for a while and it fermented that point and they tried it and they realized that they were able to survive it and it got them through and then they were able to sort of adapt that and make it work for them. I get it. I get it. Yeah, it's like
Starting point is 00:41:16 the story of how cheese, I mean, this is it probably is much it's certainly much more complicated than that. But there's kind of like a legend that there's this guy in the desert and he's got this water bag that's made out of like a lamb's stomach and he pours some milk in it to go hiking in the desert and over time because it's got that I forget exactly what there's like a stomach acid that used to make cheese. And like that's where we get our cheese from, right? Is like this guy's hiking and he realizes, oh, something has happened, you know, that's that's but delicious. You wouldn't call it cheese is not a superfood. It doesn't because it's made this weird way. It does not come with like all sorts of superhuman medical benefits. It can be part of a healthy
Starting point is 00:41:55 diet, right? Yeah, right. High meat advocates are, of course, weirdos on the internet. And so they take the weirdo on the internet tact of being like, this shit gives you powers, basically, it makes you euphoric. It'll they do talk about it helping you lose weight, which I suspect they're right about, but not. Yeah, man, if you eat nothing but rotting meat, you will lose weight. Shit yourself to good health. The Robert Evans health book, just get by 400 hot dogs and leave them leave them in the bed of your truck. Get one of those like get it get it get a Ford F 150. That's a key key or a Toyota Tacoma and get one of those big metal lids fill the whole bed with hot dogs and just drive around all summer in it, right? And then when winter comes and food is
Starting point is 00:42:46 scarce, pop that hood open and just go to town with a spoon, you know, you're good to go. You're good. The hot dog truck is the ideal way to consume calories. It'll put it'll it'll go straight to muscle. It's like steroids for you really you get extra energy from it. It's great. That's a coma truck full of basically hot dog pudding. Yeah, a hot dog, a hot dog Tacoma. Sometimes I'll get just sour cream, pour some in there too. You want to like start at the beginning of June and then by October, your hot dog Tacomas probably ready to eat. Are we just trying to see if we can make Sophie puke at this point? Yeah, I think we are. You can't do it. But you know who can make Sophie vomit with joy? Yes, the sponsors of this podcast.
Starting point is 00:43:34 Hi, I'm David Eagleman. I have a new podcast called Inner Cosmos on iHeart. I'm a neuroscientist and an author at Stanford University. And I've spent my career exploring the three pound universe in our heads. On my new podcast, I'm going to explore the relationship between our brains and our experiences by tackling unusual questions so we can better understand our lives and our realities. Like does time really run in slow motion when you're in a car accident? Or can we create new senses for humans? Or what does dreaming have to do with the rotation of the planet? So join me weekly to uncover how your brain steers your behavior, your perception and your reality. Listen to Inner Cosmos with David Eagleman on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Starting point is 00:44:28 wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jay Shetty. And on my podcast On Purpose, I've had the honor to sit down with some of the most incredible hearts and minds on the planet. Oprah. Everything that has happened to you can also be a strength builder for you if you allow it. Kobe Bryant. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Kevin Hart. It's not about us as a generation at this point. It's about us trying our best to create change. Lewis Hamilton. That's for me been taking that moment for yourself each day, being kind to yourself, because I think for a long time I wasn't kind to myself. And many, many more. If you're attached to knowing, you don't have a capacity to learn.
Starting point is 00:45:14 On this podcast, you get to hear the raw real life stories behind their journeys and the tools they used, the books they read and the people that made a difference in their lives so that they can make a difference in hours. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Join the journey soon. Starring Westworld's Jonathan Tucker and Eddie Cathege from Twilight. I wouldn't go digging around, stirring up trouble if I was you. Tune in to uncover what happened when three boys entered a Tennessee cave, but only one returned. This is the exact spot where we found the bodies, Julie.
Starting point is 00:46:15 The Manta Wall Caves. M-A-N-T-A-W-A-U-K. A production of iHeart radio, Longhouse Television, and Psychopia Pictures. Every minute I remain in Manta Wall County, the thicker the fog gets. Listen to the Manta Wall Caves now on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey everybody, we're back and boy, we have some more high meat to talk about, but Sophie has informed me that earth-shattering political news has just come down the fucking pipe. Yeah, Donald Trump will be the first former president to face criminal charges. Honestly, good for him. Proud of him.
Starting point is 00:46:59 Oh man, it's been a while since fun-breaking news broke while you were reporting, Robert. See, so this means that the grand jury has voted to indict him on this is, okay, so I'm sorry, I shouldn't know this, but this is because of the hush money? Is that that's why? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's the 130,000 or something. Yeah, his role back in the in the hush money he paid Stormy Daniels back in 2016. No, before, no, apologies, before that he paid Stormy as before the 2016 election, and then lied about. God, that's funny. Is there any chance that he will actually suffer any form of consequence from this?
Starting point is 00:47:43 Well, I mean, I think he has to either surrender himself or be arrested, just because he has been charged criminally. So, you know, that's you could argue a consequence, although there are there is some kind of reporting from people around him saying that he wants to be arrested and get the cameras on him and stuff. And, you know, obviously, you can and there is a decently long American political tradition of being arrested in ways that benefit you as a as a public figure, right? That is a thing. And Trump is certainly capable of being that kind of guy. I am still saying it's pretty funny. No, it's it's hilarious. And I love it. And it's the best news I've heard in a while.
Starting point is 00:48:26 Wow. What a great piece of news, Sophie, to come in while we're talking about eating meat that you've allowed to rot for unbelievable quantities of time. Speaking of rotting meat. Yeah, speaking of Donald Trump, in a way, isn't Donald Trump like a Toyota Tacoma filled with rancid hot dogs and butter? Yeah. Yes. A lot like that. He's a fermented ex-president, is what he is. Yeah, he is. He is a politician that we have. I mean, honestly, Rudy Giuliani's been fermenting for a lot longer. And leaking. Yeah. So, high meat advocates report feeling euphoria after eating rancid meat. It's called high meat because you feel high having eaten it. There's no way to disprove a subjective claim like this. It might be due to the placebo effect.
Starting point is 00:49:13 It might be due to the fact that a lot of these people shit themselves after death and they feel hilarious. But also outside of, I mean, maybe they do. Maybe it does make you feel high, right? I've definitely had like a fucking good ass kombucha that made me feel pretty pumped. So I get it. Maybe it's I'm not saying it's impossible. But the health claims that are generally made by these people about high meat are impossible. A Jonas Vanderplanitz is an advocate of the primal diet and one of the former leading lights of the high meat subculture. He claimed that a primal diet cured him of everything from autism to juvenile diabetes. Here's a fun quote from a New Yorker article that interviewed him. That's disappointing because his name is so fucking cool.
Starting point is 00:49:54 It is a pretty cool name. Vanderplanitz says he got the high meat and its name from the esque that he they use, you know, the term that you shouldn't use for the Inuit who savor rotten caribou and seal a regular serving of decayed heart or liver should have can have a tremendous Viagra effect on the elderly. Vanderplanitz told me recently, the first few bites, though, can be rough going. I still have some resistance to it, but the health benefits. I'm 52 now. I started this when I was 42 and I feel like I'm in my 20s. So that article was published in 2014. Shortly after being interviewed for it, in August of 2013, Vanderplanitz fell off the railing of his balcony in Thailand and seriously injured himself. A statement I found from a friend
Starting point is 00:50:37 on the Get Raw Milk website explains what happens next. Yeah, he broke his back quite severely next to the first rib and could not move his legs. He took care, charge of the care of his body, even in the hospital where he had them wrap his torso to stabilize the bones. He did have one x-ray and then would not let them do more. The doctors wanted to operate and he refused. He had them wrap him and feed him food and continued so for two days. He was apparently in good spirits, but did experience what must have been severe pain, for he did let them give him at least two pain shots. This might have been necessary for him to stay awake and in control as the body can shut down from pain. There was blood in his stomach at some point, for he did regurgitate some food
Starting point is 00:51:17 with it. On the third day of his hospital stay, he sent his girlfriend to a court proceeding in Bangkok about three and a half hours away about the land there in Thailand over her protests. He insisted she go. While she was gone, he went into a coma and they put an IV in him. When she returned, he was very bad. At this point, she emailed our time member who called a few of us. The doctors say he had a kidney infection and a blood infection. They continued to feed him butter and honey as instructed and followed his wishes as possible. They gave him oxygen as his breathing decreased and he steadily lost blood pressure. They told us his kidneys had stopped functioning and were not producing urine. They wanted to do something, but no one had any authority
Starting point is 00:51:51 to override his stated wishes. I'm not going to laugh about this guy's situation, but that is kind of the consequence of this attitude towards health. I'm just surprised the honey didn't fix his kidneys. That's the part of it that I don't understand. Yeah, it's shocking. Seems like that should have done the trick. They didn't give it IV. That's the thing. Yeah, that's probably it. IV honey, that would have saved him. Most of the high meat videos that you are going to find online are of some dude who looks like he owns multiple crypto wallets and has intense opinions on decentralized. I did find a fun one by Dr. Annette Bosworth, MD. Now, when you Google her, the first result is Annette Bosworth guilty of all charges, which immediately let me know we
Starting point is 00:52:38 were in the right direction here. It turns out she ran for Senate and filed a bunch of false documents, which is actually a lot better than I'd expected, given that she's a doctor. I was expecting like, oh, how many people did she get killed? How many bodies is this lady stacked? That's the best case scenario. Yeah. In this video, she starts by saying she's on the ketogenic diet and recommends rotting meat for ketosis, which again, I guess kind of makes sense in the same way that getting so drunk you vomit up everything in your stomach can technically aid in ketosis. The first thing that she notes as she walks you through her journey of fermenting raw chicken livers is that she was quickly forced to put the jar outside because it stinks so bad,
Starting point is 00:53:19 which might have been a sign. You have to like, basically burp the meat like this to let the gases out and like expose it to air periodically and stuff. There's like, there is a process to fermenting the meat if you don't want to get super sick, although it doesn't look good. Sophie, can you show him the day one of the fermenting chicken liver? Just so we're starting with the baseline. Okay. I've seen some bad stuff. She's like adding some salt to it, a little bit of water. So that's day one, Kava. Yeah, let's do it. Show me. Your consent. Okay. Yep. Okay. That doesn't look great. Okay. It doesn't look amazing, but not bad. Yeah, just just kind of looks like meat that you've got seasoning or something. Here's day four. Oh, that's rough.
Starting point is 00:54:05 Yeah. Yeah. That's not the way the meat that you put in your body should ever look. No, no. So she does this for weeks. She doesn't say exactly how long until it's a pure black sludge. Look at this shit, Kava. That looks like oil. That looks like just pure petroleum. Can I tell you this? There are certain things that the body does that hit you in a primal way to tell you it's not okay. Don't do this. This is a dark tarry sludge that if I'm being honest, it looks like when you have a big upper GI bleed and it gets partially digested as it moves through your track, it comes out looking like this. We call it melanin. Oh, that's good. That is what this looks like. Just the look of it hits me on the primal level that my brain stores for the
Starting point is 00:54:53 fear of sharks and the aliens from alien. This is how this hits me. This is not to be consumed. No, no. Speaking of aliens, this reminds me of the black ooze that comes out of the aliens and the super soldiers and ex files. That is the closest thing to this. Sophie, can you play that segment from the video for us all? This is them eating it. And they seem as frightened as you should be. It's her and her son. Yeah. Okay, so that. Oh, yeah. Well, that's what they were all about. I don't know. Oh, okay, let's cut it up and put it down on that so I can see it. It has the consistency of a dead slug. So there's a piece of liver. Oh, it still has a substance to it. It's not.
Starting point is 00:55:45 Okay, so there's cut that half and you can have half and I can have half. Oh, that's a lot. That's a lot. Who's this kid? This is a kid. Yeah. Oh, she's coming. Your son cry at first. Why is she making her kid do that? You don't fall. Oh, she can't handle it. Because people aren't supposed to eat things like this. This is horrible. This is a jackass video. Can I stop it? I don't like it. Okay, I'll put salt on mine. That's a great talk, put salt on mine. No, this is like what Chuck Grassley Seaman looks like.
Starting point is 00:56:37 Yeah, it does look exactly like I imagined Chuck Grassley comes that one time I saw it. No, Sophie, I am going to take over, though, because I want to show you guys some stuff, because I've been I've been doing my digging here, you know, as I want to do. And I've been following a bunch of different paleo and primal accounts. So here's one. This is a Twitter account, a Risto perp breakfast for winners, raw heavy cream, fruit and honey, leftover raw ground beef with raw eggs. It doesn't look good. But at least it's fresh. And the next response is him saying, a friend convinced me to eat raw rotten meat, high meat yesterday. And it actually felt great. Very interesting, since everyone would think it's crazy. And then there's a deleted tweet.
Starting point is 00:57:24 And he he he he posts a picture of the high meat that he ate. Oh, my God, there's bubbles all over it. There's its growth on on the meat. It's horrible. So fucking gross, man. It's so fucking. I don't understand what they think they're getting from this that they couldn't just get from regular meat. What about the I mean, could they just not to see it like fermented things that we have made in our know are safe? Like if they just have like sauerkraut? Yeah, it's I think a lot of it just comes from these are people who are in the kind of fitness and various like kind of weird specific elimination diet communities. And the more you get into that, the more kind of weird stuff that you'll hear and be willing to try. And it's one thing if like, you're actually doing your research
Starting point is 00:58:14 and you're interested in like, Oh, I want to know all these different ways people used to ferment weed or meat or do ferment meat and cultures around the world. But a lot of folks aren't doing that. I found this one Reddit thread where this guy is talking about his high meat diet and people are like, he's doing like oysters, like he's letting oysters rot. His goal is to ferment shell. My goal is to ferment shellfish until it is at least one year old. Holy shit. Who knows? Maybe it won't even smell like farts, but start to become more tasty. Oh, God, it's horrible. And there's like, listen, I can't explain to you the nasty things that I've seen with my job and the unspeakable things I've seen in the human body and and done in the human body to help people. And this is
Starting point is 00:59:05 troubling to me that this is this is hard for me. I can do it. I can do it. You're not going to. I'm not going to tap out. I will not tap out from from these videos, but I don't enjoy this. Yeah, it's it's there's a lot that's like fucked up about it. At one point someone is like, hey, I'm looking at your I'm looking at like what you're doing here. And, you know, I live in Inuit territory. And it's never as hot as it is where you live here. Like whatever they're doing to ferment their meat, it's like 60 at the hottest part of the year. So you may not be doing it right. And he's like, no, man, the Inuit have been doing it forever. It's he just like doesn't listen at all. There's another person who responds because they're talking about like, well, salmonella and
Starting point is 00:59:48 botulinum and E. Coli are our faculative anaerobes. So they can't grow when oxygen rich air is present, which is why you expose stuff to oxygen. And someone responds, biochemistry researcher here, this is absolutely incorrect. Salmonella and E. Coli are faculative anaerobes, but this means they grow best with oxygen, yet can adapt to anaerobic environments. Like there's all of these like and hopefully everyone is okay. Hopefully the people doing this don't get themselves killed. I don't know. Those tweets were often like a year ago, right? I didn't see anything. I didn't see any follow up on that. Yeah. No way to know. But I don't know. Don't do this. Don't do this is kind of I think we're both Kava and I are going to come to at the end of this episode. We don't agree on
Starting point is 01:00:34 much, my friend, you and I. Yeah. But this is one thing I think we can both agree on. Yeah. I don't know about this. You know, the funny thing about all these people, this is so I've been spending a lot of time sort of like diving into medical grifters recently and doing stuff on people like Dr. Bos here. It's always the same concept. It's always the they start with this very basic premise of like health is a choice. I mean, they don't take into account any of the socioeconomic stuff and any of the genetic stuff. Yeah. It's a choice kind of implying that, you know, if you're sick, it's your fault. And then on top of that, there's like they'll polarize foods. They'll be like, here are foods that you should eat. Here are foods that you
Starting point is 01:01:17 should not eat. Here are foods that are good and foods that they almost make it like a moral thing like they're good and there's evil foods. And they do that. And then the third thing they do is then they have their supplement that they sell or their scam or their book or their YouTube channel that you have to subscribe to. That's how they they monetize it at the end of the day. It's always the same thing, this polarizing of food and romanticizing the past and romanticizing things. It's whenever you see the term ancient, it's always it is 99 percent of the time a scam of some sort. Yeah. Yeah, it's like you wouldn't. Ancient peoples sometimes were able to take care of their injured and sick loved ones. And sometimes they beat them to death with rocks or left them to
Starting point is 01:02:05 starve because times were tough. And that was the best thing that they could do, right? Shit's tough, you know? Shit was tougher in the past and people had to make hard decisions. You wouldn't advocate that because those hard decisions were a necessary part of the survival of our ancestors, that they are good things to do in the modern era, right? Because, for example, we have like splints now. Like you don't have to, you don't need to, if it's a cold winter and there's not enough food, you don't need to club grandpa to death because he breaks his ankle, you know? That's not, not that that's what everyone did. People went to great lengths to try to save their loved ones, but hard choices had to be made. And we don't have to make choices like that anymore
Starting point is 01:02:46 because we have like stoves and heaters and people who can splint wounds, you know? You know, the whole thing about this, this doctor and these people eating the fermented foods that they, you know, and doing this again, the thing about it is, you know, 10 years ago, you would have shown me this video and I would have been like, all right, whatever, they're doing it to themselves, let them make themselves sick, let her do that to her and her son. I mean, who cares if it doesn't kill them, then, you know, whatever. But, you know, the truth of it is, like, all this pseudoscience stuff, now more than ever after the last four or five years, I realized that it's all contributing to our society getting much worse. It's all, all this
Starting point is 01:03:36 stuff is incrementally making people trust real science less. It's making people not clear about what is real and not real when it comes to things like, say, the vaccine. And people have a harder time making the right decision when it comes to things that are really important. So, and yes, also, they are dangerous, too, to do these things. There's parasites, there's bacteria and all this stuff. But it, the stuff all makes me so mad now. It didn't used to bother me that much. I used to just laugh about it. And now it makes me just actually kind of angry whenever I see this nonsense. I mean, the liver king is a weird one, too, like his, I'm not entirely sure what his, what his thinking is, but like, it's almost like implied, like you eat the balls of a bowl,
Starting point is 01:04:17 you get the strength of the bowl, you eat the liver, it'll make your liver stronger, you eat the brain, it'll make your brain. It's like this weird homeopathy, like cures, like sort of thing, which has been disproven. And again, it's just, it's perpetuating this, this faulty science at best, I'll call it faulty science. But it's all like a grift. And it all contributes to basically the collapse of our society. It makes me very upset. And I think what you're saying, Kava, is that we need about 60 volunteers that because we're scientists, we're going to do a double blind. So 30 of you fill a Tacoma bed with a metal top with hot dogs and butter or cream and just let it sit for three months and then eat all of it. And then the other
Starting point is 01:05:02 30 of you around October, just buy a fresh Tacoma full of hot dogs and butter and eat it all fresh. And then we'll see who's healthiest and that'll let us know if this is a good idea. It's randomized. It's, I don't know if we could double blind it because we might have to figure out like how to hide the smell in the stench, but I feel like we have a trial here. I feel like there is something we could do. There's something we could work with here. Now, you don't hide the stench. You just get like a decal that says work truck and stick it on the side. People won't ask questions. Nobody's going to ask questions. There's no good smelling Tacomas. Well, everyone, sign up to volunteer for our Tacoma high hot dog challenge to see if it's
Starting point is 01:05:51 good to eat hot dogs that have been left in the back of a Tacoma. We'll do a science altogether, endorsed by Dr. Kavehota. Yeah, sure. Sure. It's the end of the world anyway. Why not? Might as well. Maybe this will help us survive the end of the world. Maybe this is what makes us not need water, you know? Yeah. Enough Tacoma hot dogs and we could make it possible for people to survive in Arizona again. Yeah. It's like the tarragon mist. You'll survive it and be stronger or you won't. Yeah. Yeah. One way or the other. Look, there's only one way to find out. Kava, do you have any place that people can find you online on the Twitter? Find me at the House of Pod Twitter and listen to my podcast where we talk about things like medical drifters
Starting point is 01:06:39 and we'll talk about other medical fun stuff and then sometimes not such medical fun stuff. It's called the House of Pod podcast. Listen to it where you listen to podcasts. That's it. That is it. Well, thank you, Kava. Thank you for being there with me and the live show going into the field with me to fight the liver king and all of these other silly people. They're free, buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm there for you all next week, but not anymore this week because we're done for the week. Goodbye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeart Radio app,
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