Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Sal Di Stefano on Fear and Propaganda in the Fitness Industry

Episode Date: September 21, 2022

I’ve had various non-fitness related discussions with my pal Sal Di Stefano (of Mind Pump Media fame) here on the Muscle For Life podcast, but this time we’re combining topics. In this interview, Sal and I chat about the intersection of culture, politics, and health and fitness, and how fear is used to manipulate people. Sound interesting? I don’t want to spoil the discussion, but we cover all sorts of subjects like propaganda in the fitness industry and controlling people with misinformation, toxic masculinity, claims about protein and the environment, veganism, the "body acceptance" movement, government and “conspiracy theories,” and we even speculate on what the future of fitness culture and manipulation in fitness industry might look like. In case you’re not familiar with Sal, he’s a co-host of Mind Pump Media, one of the top fitness podcasts out there. He’s also an author, coach, and repeat guest on my podcast for good reason. While we love to chat about fitness, we also enjoy our conversational jaunts into history, politics, culture, and economics. So, if any of this sounds interesting to you, listen to this podcast and let me know what you think! Oh and beware some of the topics are a bit controversial. So before getting up in arms, remember the discussion is just for fun. :) --- Timestamps: 0:00 - Save 20% on my Phoenix fat-burner! Go to https://buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points. 9:44 - How do you feel about the progress of misinformation in the fitness industry? 29:03 - Do you think there are good intentions behind misinformation? 42:23 - What are your thoughts about the “noble lies” of the media? 50:15  - What are your thoughts on people who think our conversion is all a conspiracy theory? 1:07:07 - What are your predictions for the next 10 years? 1:09:41 - Do you think we’re going to see a continued trend in America of “living in two different countries?” 1:15:54 - Where can we find you and your work? --- Mentioned on the show: Save 20% on my Phoenix fat-burner! Go to https://buylegion.com/phoenix and use coupon code MUSCLE to save 20% or get double reward points. Dr. Greg Brown on the Science of Transgender Women in Sports: https://legionathletics.com/transgender-sports-controversy/ Sal’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/mindpumpsal Mind Pump Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/mind-pump-raw-fitness-truth/id954100822?mt=2

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. Thank you for joining me today. I am Mike Matthews. And in today's episode, I interview my buddy Sal DiStefano from Mind Pump. Yet again, this is probably our fifth or sixth interview that we've done here on his podcast a number of times. I'm actually going out there in a month. Let's see, October 18th, I think, is when we will be recording that episode. Looking forward to hanging out with the Mind Pump crew again. It has been a while. But in this episode, I talk to Sal about fear and propaganda in the fitness industry, which is becoming a bigger problem today than it was certainly 10 years ago when I got into fitness. We see, for example, the demonization of meat eating and even of high protein dieting now, as well as claims about the toxic masculine side of weightlifting, of strength training, and why men should be wary of strength

training and of strength training culture because it can make them more harmful to society. And then we have the ongoing discussion about veganism and the supposed moral imperative that we have to start eating a plant-based diet so as to save the world from climate change. And there's the body acceptance movement, which has a positive side, but also a negative side and more. I guess I'm giving you a preview of today's episode because these are the types of things that Sal and I talk about. But first, you definitely don't need supplements to lose fat and no fat loss supplements are going to make a major difference in your bottom line results. How you eat, how you train, how you sleep, those are the primary factors that determine how quickly you lose fat. But if you have the budget and you have the

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20% or get 10% cash back and try Phoenix risk-free and see what you think. Sal, it's been a bit. We've texted a little bit. I think we've had a phone call here and there, but I haven't seen your cute face in a bit. Thank you very much. I was just commenting how good you look. No, it's always good to talk to you, man. One of my favorite people in, well, in general, but definitely in our space. So it's always a good time, man. Yeah. Yeah. Same. I, I wish that, that I lived closer to you guys. It would be fun to, you know, I don't have, I don't give much time for, for socializing, but we could work out together. That always works together. That, I mean, that really is my, that that's my social life. That's really it. It's the guys and, and, and there's one or two women in the gym who

are friendly enough to even say hi. And so that's it. That's my little, uh, my little social life. That's really it. It's the guys and there's one or two women in the gym who are friendly enough to even say hi. And so that's it. That's my little social circle. Yeah. Plus, I know you got a family and kids and I got my kids. I got another one on the way. You know that. It'd be good to get the kids together. We did that. We try to do that here with Adam, Justin, and Doug, we'll get our families together because we want the kids to kind of, kind of grow up and know each other and stuff. And that's been great. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. That's true. I've met a few families here. So, you know, I've been here for a year, but been busy where I'm building a house now. So that was a whole process of getting on the property, getting off the property, blah, blah, blah. But I've met a few families.

And that also is a good, quote, unquote, excuse to force yourself out of the house, stop working, take your kids, go meet with some people, be a human. Yeah, that's got to be. I could see your challenge. You're such a, and I'm not saying this to blow smoke, you're a very driven individual. You really love what you do. I'm not saying this to blow smoke. You're a very driven individual. You really love what you do. So I could see how that that'd be a challenge for you to peel yourself away from, you know, from your, your, your work, um, which, you know, we all benefit from you. You pretty, I don't know anybody that produces as much content as you do. I mean, personally, I mean,

I know people have teams and stuff like that, but I don't understand how you could possibly do as much content as you do. It's insane to me. But again, we all appreciate it and benefit from it. I appreciate that. I mean, it's like working out for me, at least it's mostly a point of consistency, right? I have my time blocked every day for content creation and I'm good at sticking to it. Not always, but I'm good enough. I'm just consistent with it. And then I think it's also one of those things that the more you do it, the better you consistent with it. And then I think it's also one of those things that the more you do it, the better you get at it. So maybe my output per unit of time, it certainly has gotten better for me. I don't know how it compares to other people, but it might

be better than maybe some other people who are also producing content. But I appreciate the compliment. Yeah, it's a lot and it's good. And, um, you know, this, this might actually be a good, I guess, conversation or, or place to start is, um, because one thing that, you know, when we found you years ago, I actually knew about you before, uh, we started mind pump. I would read some of your, your blogs and your articles. And I remember Doug back in those days was my client and we would pull up your stuff. I didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that's how I met Doug. He hired me. Um, and then of course we became friends and the rest is history, but we saw your content and we would use it as a, an example of how to, you know, when we had come up with maps, our workout program,

like this is a great example of how to put great information out there, build authority, uh, so that people can trust some of your information. And then, you know, if you want to sell a product, this is a great way to do it, you know, because you had a lot of integrity and your information was good. And one thing that you do really well is you can sift through studies and information and kind of distill it down to like, here's what's applicable. This is probably what's true. This is, you know, probably what's not. Here's the data to back it up. Here's also the experience that people have. And it was, it was even more impressive when I met you because you weren't a fitness professional

your entire life. Like I was, it was a passion of yours. Then you got into it and you have this really, really good ability to decipher and kind of sift through crappy information and then communicate it to the average person, which I'd only really seen with people who had like personally trained people for years and years and years. Cause you got to figure that out after years and years of working with people. Cause you're like, okay, I got to learn how to communicate this effectively because how I was doing it before it wasn't working. And you did that really well. And now, so I've been working in fitness professionally since I was 18. So, you know, we're looking at, you know, over two and a half decades.

I never thought I'd see the day when fitness and health would get, there's always been bad information in the fitness and health space. So there's always been crap, but it's always been motivated, you know, by people trying to sell shitty products or, you products or make a dollar. I never thought I'd see the day, though, where fitness and health would get politicized and where propaganda from that aspect permeates our space in order to push a political agenda. Very strange. I've seen this now over the last few years.

And so now I'm not just countering just bad information where someone's trying to sell you something. Now I'm countering official narrative information that's just as bad and false. And it's really weird. It's really, really weird. Like the people countering me now are coming at us from a totally different angle instead of saying, oh, but that fat burner or that ingredient or that supplement or that whatever, you know, you know, it worked for me type of deal. Now I'm getting the, you're evil, you're bad. You don't want the environment, you want the environment to go to hell. You know, you're, you're a toxic mask, like all this weird stuff. So like, is it weird for you to having done what

you've been doing as long as you have to see now where some of the bad information is coming from and just, you know, uh, the, the narrative, is it, is it tripping you out as much? I started paying attention to, I would say politics and culture after nine 11. That's when I, that's, that just got my attention. And that's when I started to pay attention. And I would say that I've always been a little bit cynical just as a person. And so I have expected, I wouldn't say the worst, but I have for some time been saying, I think things are going to get pretty wacky. But I didn't predict specifically like the top female swimmer is going to have a penis. Stuff like that is very strange to me.

So to your point, the toxic masculinity stuff, at least you can see the connection. I don't agree with that. agree with that. I don't agree with the claim, for example, that working out is making people, making men more masculine in a toxic way. But I understand the argument. I don't agree with it. However, you've mentioned, you mentioned the environment. That's an argument I haven't seen, that working out is bad for the environment. Yeah. So scientific American publication, I used to really respect just like most or many popular media outlets, I think has now been infiltrated, if you will, for lack of a better term by a narrative, um, and, and propaganda. And there's an article that just came out that said that, um, essentially eating a high, I could

read the title to you. It's, it's, it's wild. It's crazy. And part of me is like, this is insane. And the other part of me is like, well, you know, it's par for the course. Here we go. This is the title of the article. Eating too much protein makes pee. Okay. Urine, a problem pollutant in the U S okay. so now eating protein, too much protein, makes your pee really bad for the environment, which has to be one of the craziest things I've ever heard in my entire life. Now, they try to go in and make this argument for nitrogen in your urine and that's whatever, and they're trying to compare it to, and, you know, of course, they're really good at taking things and twisting them and make them sound a particular way but it's so strange to me

now it makes sense if you look at the bigger narrative which it's becoming quite obvious that the narrative and we can talk about and speculate on the i guess the the drivers um you know or you know why because that that's of course, the question is, why? Like, why are these people making? Why are they making these arguments? And why is the mainstream media and that that includes big mainstream publications? Why do we see such widespread adoption of stuff like this? Yeah, that's really the creepy part. So we could talk about, I guess, what the motives are, but it seems quite clear that for whatever reason, we could talk about what the motives may be. But it seems very clear that the goal is to get everybody to stop eating animal products. Stop eating meat,

stop eating animal products, you know, get everybody on a plant-based or full-on plant diet, so vegan diet. And oh, you know, maybe add some insects in there as well. That seems to be, yeah, that seems to be another one now that they're doing. And so what they'll do is they'll take, they'll hit that from all kinds of different angles. Okay. So an argument that's really hard to counter. And I do want to be very clear with this. Like I said, I've worked with people for a long time. You can definitely eat a healthy vegan diet. It just does require a lot more planning. It's just a fact. It requires a lot more planning and probably supplementation. Whereas a balanced diet doesn't require supplementation and you're far less likely

to have nutrient deficiencies. And it just doesn't require as much planning from a nutrient deficiency standpoint. That's a fact. It's been a fact for decades. We've known this for a long time. It's not new science. This isn't even, it's silly. This wasn't disputable 15 years ago. All of a sudden it's just, you know, whatever. But anyway, so I just want to say that, but anyway, it's very clear. They're trying to get us off animal products and so they'll attack it from different angles so one of the angles will be building muscle is toxic masculinity okay so why because studies will show that animal proteins and eating a diet that has animal products tends to contribute more to strength and athletic performance. Studies are pretty clear on that. And they're saying what that, that, that leads to more aggression in men or. Aggression.

And, you know, um, you know, in fact, I just read an article just about this where they actually showed that they're like, Hey, you know, studies show that castrated men are far less violent. And I was like, what the hell are they trying to promote? This is crazy to me. So anyway, yes, bigger muscles, more aggressive, more dangerous. So they're going to attack the protein because animal products, best protein you're going to get easiest gram per gram. 50 grams of protein for meat requires this much food. 50 grams of protein from plants requires a ton more. So they're going to hit it from there. They're going to hit it from the environmental standpoint. Worse for the environment, they're going to hit it from a equity standpoint. It's a privilege to

be able to eat these kinds of things. They're going to hit it from all kinds of different strange and weird angles. And then of course, it's healthier for you. Oh, by the way, if you just cut out meat, you're drama, you're going to dramatically increase your or improve your health, which is also totally false. So they're, they're coming from all these different kinds of angles and then everything that's attached to it, like, uh, lifting weights is toxic masculinity. Gyms are the most judgmental places on earth. I've now seen people share articles with me, which, okay, that's a false perception that a lot of people

have who don't work out in gyms, okay, who've never really worked out consistently in gyms, that they're this really judgmental. It's like this perception of like the meatheads and the body obsessed people. And you walk in there and you're out of shape or overweight or a beginner. There are distortions of the truth. And then there's complete opposite lies. That's a complete opposite lies. That's a complete opposite lie. One of the most accepting places on earth for people who are out of shape,

who are beginners, who are overweight is the gym. This is a, I've been in gyms my entire life. Now there's always assholes everywhere you go, but the place you're going to get judged the least harshly if you're overweight is when you walk into a gym and you try to work out. Yep. I mean, I've been training for 20 years and I can't remember a single time. If I thought really hard, maybe I could find one, but nothing comes to mind. If I try to remember a single time where a beginner was clearly judged negatively or laughed at. I can't say I've ever seen it happen. I've seen a lot of encouragement, but I don't know if I've ever seen somebody put down for not being in shape when they're in the gym doing the work. It's crazy. And I'll use this analogy to kind of illustrate what I'm talking about. And the you, and the, and the people who they, who are, who people perceive or who they want

you to perceive as being the most judgmental in that way, in that negative way, right? Or the fitness fanatics, oh, that buff guy in the corner, or those girls over there had been working out forever. They're really looking at you, making funny and making you feel uncomfortable and that stuff. Go to any other space, any other industry and find the most passionate, you know, ardent supporters of that industry. Go to tech, people who love tech, really love innovating. Go to restaurant industry. People really love restaurants, really love cooking, are really

into cuisine. Go anywhere where you find the most passionate people. Go into those places and just act like you want to learn about that space. And you know, who's going to support you and help you the most, the most passionate people in that space. They're the least judgmental. If I went into a jujitsu school, not knowing jujitsu, no zero about it. And I go in there to the black belts and I'm, and I'm like, man, I suck, but I really want to learn. Or I try and I'm obviously messing up. The people are going to come over and want to help me the most are the people who've gone through the journey and who, who really it's a part of their life. The people who are actually going to be the most judgmental

are other people who are beginners. You know, judges, people in gyms, if anybody does judge people, it's the other new people who are, aren't, this isn't a part of their life. If you're in a gym and this is also true, I've like, I've like you, I've been in gyms my whole life or most of my life. The people who've always helped the most help me or helped other members are those big buff, scary looking people. You know, you go up to them, Hey, how do I use this machine? Oh, let me help you out. Let me show you what's going on. Hey, you know, watch your form. I've seen some of the scariest, buffest looking, strongest looking people in the gym stop to help the lady over there who's obviously trying to improve herself, but you know, maybe she doesn't know what she's doing or she grabbed

a weight that's wrong or whatever. Right. So it's crazy that they would, that they would do that, but they're doing that. I've seen articles like this, you know, there's also this body acceptance movement, which is totally pervert. It's totally perverted and distorted, right? Body acceptance, real body acceptance, which, you know, those of us who've worked in fitness forever, who make this our passion, who want to help people, real body acceptance is saying, looking in the mirror and saying, I deserve to be cared for. I deserve to be healthy. I need to do things now to take care of myself. Now, just because I reflect the fact that I haven't done this and I haven't taken care of myself doesn't mean I don't deserve

those things. I'm going to work towards those things and I'm going to seek out some help and see what I could do. That's body acceptance. What they've done is they've taken body acceptance and they've said the opposite of body image um dysfunction which you know there's body image dysfunction which dysfunction which says i'm not skinny enough i'm not buffed enough i got to become an orthorexic on the other end of that is i'm obese and this is wonderful and i'm healthy and if i your attempts or any attempts at trying to convince me otherwise, terrible, bigoted, fat shaming, whatever, okay? Or, you know, white patriarchy or whatever. I've even seen stuff like that.

So it's so crazy. And diets have always been weird. There's always been like a religious component to diets. And I mean that in the negative sense, not the positive sense, in the sense that, you know what they say, don't discuss politics and religion at dinner parties. You could probably throw diets in there, right?

You talk to like keto zealots or, you know, paleo zealots or whatever, and you get this big discussion. So it's always been kind of like that. But boys, is it taking a whole nother turn where, you know, I, like I just said earlier, you can have a healthy vegan diet. It just, and these are facts, requires more planning. Nutrient deficiencies are much more common. You're probably going to have to supplement with certain nutrients. At least with protein, right? I mean, even if you're willing to micromanage your foods,

good luck trying to get enough protein if you're also trying to improve your body composition. Yeah, and it's common for even with a well-planned vegan diet to have B vitamin deficiencies, iron deficiencies, vitamin D deficiencies, and creatine. Creatine, although beneficial for most people, vegans who supplement with creatine actually see a cognitive boost. It's actually a measurable boost in IQ because they're not getting it from food and they're not obviously synthesizing enough of it with the foods that they're eating. And those are just facts, right? But then that gets turned into, no, you're obviously evil. You're obviously bad.

You are, you're part of the other side of the propaganda. It's really wild to me. Now, the silver lining in all of this is that I think our space is probably the hardest to infiltrate in this way because people who are really in health and fitness, we are empowered. We've gone through the journey ourselves. So when we see someone who's obese, who falls for that narrative of, you know, this is healthy, this is beautiful. Any attempts at trying to lose weight is fat shaming or whatever. We see through that because we were probably there at one point in the sense that we were probably obese. That might've been what started us off or we were, you know, skinny or out of

shape or unhealthy. So we've been through that journey. So it's really hard to convince us. Otherwise we're very empowered. Fitness is a very empowering pursuit because if you want, you want to get a stronger bench press, no one's going to do it for me. I got to go do it myself. If I want to improve my health or my fitness, I got to go out and do it myself. We understand real acceptance because if you pursue fitness long enough, one of the lessons that you learn and you'll continue to learn through your journey of fitness for life is acceptance. I had to accept when I was a kid, I remember too, I remember literally I was 17 years old and I had just really figured out the role of genetics in bodybuilding. And I remember accepting

the fact that I would never look like Arnold. I'm not going to look like Arnold no matter what. I had to accept that and then continue to pursue it. We're also growth-minded and a bit harder to manipulate because of those things. So like if you look at the response to the pandemic, the people that pushed back the hardest against some of the narratives were people from the health and fitness space

because we're just more empowered. So then now we can get into our own speculation. And that's probably why you're off Instagram. And I'm currently in a timeout. So my Instagram visibility, I noticed overnight, it went to about one tenth of normal, one tenth of normal, not a one, not a 10% reduction. And so something clearly happened, right? And somebody who works with me actually got in touch with somebody at Facebook, Instagram, Meta, whatever, who confirmed. They looked and they said, oh yeah, there's a restriction on the account and visibility is throttled. I think it expires in a couple of weeks. I don't

really care. Instagram, I never liked it very much anyway. It's not very important to my business or my life or world, but I just thought it was interesting. And they didn't specify even like specifically what they didn't like. Similar to you, I would share memes that just kind of make fun of a lot of the absurdities of clown world. And I guess some of that pissed them off because a lot of these people, that's what they hate the most is ridicule. They hate being ridiculed. And so that got one of the freaks on the censorship team into a lather and restricted. So I got booted, right? I speculated that the problem I got looked at or, and by the way, it's going to get ramped before election seasons, They ramped us up. So it's no coincidence that it's happening right now for you.

And mine happened before the presidential election. That's when it really ramped up. And what I would do is I would do memes and I would share commentary. And my commentary was, it was not extreme. I would share studies and say, well, you know, they say that this is what's happening. Or like, here's what causes inflation. Like stuff like basic stuff. It wasn't like vote for this guy.

This person's evil. There are lizard people running the government. You know, there's whatever. I didn't do any of that stuff or anything like that. And I remember I started to get notifications from Instagram on stories. So you know how you have your Instagram posts and then you can share a story that it's gone after 24 hours. So you post it and then 24 hours later, it disappears. I was getting notifications on stories that I had posted two years ago,

three years ago, four years ago. Like they were gone for two, three, four years. And then they pop up and say, this goes against community standards. And I'm like, oh my God, that was, and they would have the date. I'm like that. I shared that two years ago and I'm getting a warning now. And I told the guys, I said, they're after me. They're going to boot me for sure. Well, anyway, they did. I got kicked off. We had this lawyer who actually followed me and I guess he's some big time lawyer. And he's like, Hey, let me, let me see, let me look into this for you. I'll do a pro bono. I want to see what's going on. Anyway, he got in contact with someone and he basically asked him, what's the, what's the final thing that got Sal kicked off? And it was a meme. Do you know that meme with James Franco where he's standing, he's got like a loose noose

around his neck and he's looking over at his buddy and it's like first time and it's shared. Everybody shares it. And the, the, the caption gets changed all the time that's the one that got me kicked off and they said because it was promoting personal harm i swear to god mike it was so benign that i forgot like the meme itself was like had nothing to do with politics so they were just they were just looking obviously for something that technically according to their little policies if you interpret it in some weird way, gave them the green light to kick you off. It was because he had a noose around his neck and, you know, loose, and I'm promoting personal harm, even though that's a meme that's been shared a billion times with different captains. That's what finally, finally did it. So it's really, it's interesting.

By the way, did you see the report that just came out? I'm going to, I'm going to share this. I literally just read this and it's the wildest thing. So a bunch of internal communications obtained by America First Legal has just kind of been released, just came out right now, that the CDC coordinated with social media companies and Google to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticisms of COVID-19 vaccines. So, and now on its face, you're like, okay, well, that might be, I don't know, is that a good thing or whatever? This was broad and wide and anything that went against any official narrative would get censored and people would get kicked off. And this is, remember, this is, these are private companies that if you, if you thought back to like, how is it possible that all these private independent companies seem to be coordinated working together? Well, that's how they were all, you know, working with the CDC, I think instructed, you know, you brought up a nine 11, um, you know, here we go. Now we're going to go down the weeds a little bit. But if you look at some of the stuff that was passed after 9-11, it's totally now legal for them to go to a private

organization and say, hey, you're promoting, you know, if you don't do this, this is national security and we don't need a warrant to tell you this and we could shut you down. Oh, and you can't tell anybody that we talked to you. All right. See you later. So this is all, by the way, this is in, these are in the things that we passed after September 11th. So really weird, man, really weird shit. And the fitness and health space now is no longer immune to it. We are now part, it's now, we now have to fight this weird propaganda machine. Protein is going to be demonized further.

I'm going to predict that right now. Protein is going to be the enemy. So weightlifting is going to be the enemy. So weightlifting is going to be the enemy. Anything that makes you strong, healthy, and empowered and independent is going to be the enemy. And in our space, that happens to be anything that makes you feel stronger and more fit and more confident. Those are all going to be the enemy. And sure enough, that's what it's looking like. And to what end? Obviously, it's just speculation. But obviously, you think about this. And generally speaking, things don't just happen, they are made to happen. So there are people obviously,

who are pushing this agenda. It's very naive to think that this just spontaneously formed out of grassroots concerns, right? It appears to be top down. And I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on that. And then again, to what end? Some people would say, if some people who want to be charitable, they would say, well, it's because people really are concerned. People who are in positions of power. They really are concerned about the environment or they really are concerned about the well-being of people. And in the end, maybe they're wrong and maybe time will prove them wrong, but they had good intentions. That's an argument I hear when people want to excuse a lot of what you're talking about. Yeah, no. Historically, no, that's not the case.

And again, historically, that's never been the case. It's not because of good intentions. That's how they sell it. But the truth is, look, here's the deal. The most effective tool we've ever had throughout all of humanity to solve our is, look, here's the deal. The most effective tool we've ever had throughout all of humanity to solve our problems ever has been human ingenuity. Always.

That's just a fact, okay? If we do, in fact, have crazy problems ahead of us, then the best way to solve that is to have happy, healthy, strong people and more people, not strong people and more people, not less people, more people, more people innovate more. Healthy people innovate more. The more productive, we solve more problems, okay?

For people who don't, who maybe are like, well, that's not true. No, look, here's the deal. The country's making the greatest innovations to solve problems like pollution and climate change and you know equality for you know people who need help or whatever are the rich wealthy countries why because we've solved the immediate need issues first we need food we need shelter you know we need safety and once we solve that stuff and then we got wealthy then we start to like okay let's be more charitable let's look at these other issues. Like, you know, when you're starving, I don't care what wrapper my food comes in, but when I'm not starving and I have money and I have

money and I'm looking at all these different companies for what I want to buy my food. Now I can start to say, well, which one has the most biodegradable wrapper and which one's innovating the most and which one's doing the most to, to, you know, move towards the causes that I believe in type of deal. So that's just, that's just a fact. Okay. So why am I saying this? Here's the deal. And I know this is a, as a health and fitness professional, if we coerce the population at large, which knows very little, little about diet and exercise anyway. And you just say, hey, just stop eating this entire category of food, which happens to be where you're getting most of your essential nutrients, which is true. If you look at the average typical person's diet, not fitness fanatic,

not health fanatic, but the typical person's diet, and you look at the whole foods in their diet, which we know, typically the healthiest, the most nutrient dense, and also the ones we're least likely to overeat. That's a fact. Heavily processed foods are engineered to make you overeat. Whole natural foods, you tend to eat less of them. This is a very, very established fact now in studies. If you look at their diet and you look at the whole natural foods, they tend to be what? Eggs, milk, meat. So what we're going to do is we're going to tell people to remove those foods and replace them with what? Plant-based what? Probably processed foods. And I'm going to replace them with a well-planned whole food plant diet that requires

more planning. Whereas, you know, a piece of steak gave me all these nutrients. Well, now I need to go to the store and I got to get, well, I need some. Get the impossible steak or whatever. Bullshit, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to produce a sicker population with more mental health issues. I mean, how many vegans have you come across over the years who eat very poorly? Actually, they eat a lot of highly processed, relatively not nutritious vegan food. You know, vegan junk food, essentially. It's like half their daily calories. A lot.

The only vegans I've ever worked with that did a good job with it were very, very dedicated. Their motivations behind veganism were not health related. It was a moral issue. So for them, they were very strongly motivated because they really believe in the welfare of animals, which, you know, I totally respect. And they were very smart about it. But all the people who did it for health reasons, weight loss reasons, for example, their diets were worse, uh, were absolutely worse and they would, they would suffer the con. So we're going to do that. We're going to make everybody much sicker. Okay. Much, much sicker. Why are they, why do they want us to get sicker? I don't know if they necessarily want us to get sicker, but I do know this, this is pretty,

pretty, uh, I think this is a pretty well thought out speculation. The beef industry, big industry makes a lot of money, but you can't patent a cow. Not yet, at least, right? I can't capture that industry as a cattle farmer or producer of beef. It's hard, right? I can make beef products. I can make processed food products with beef, which by the way, if you look at all the processed foods out there, majority of them are plant-based, not animal product-based, but nonetheless, I can't do that. I can't patent fish or milk or eggs. Maybe not yet. Maybe they'll figure out a way to do it, but I can't do it yet. But can you patent plants? You can. GMO plants are patented, protected by patents. Okay. So that's what I think. I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to be able to

control the food supply in that way by saying, you know, one or two producers now make all of our food. They make all the money with it. And now we can control this particular part of the market. I mean, if you're going to speculate, you have to include that if you're talking about, especially in the context of history, and especially in the context of governments and power over people, you have to at least think about the implications in the realm of power control over people over how they think, how they act, how they spend their money how they live totally yeah if you this is again based off of um historical references okay so this isn't me

guessing this is me saying all right if we look back for that through thousands of years of recorded history how have people been effectively controlled and there's a few components there one of them is fear so when when we're, and this is psychological, when we're afraid, we don't make great decisions for ourselves. Fear-based decisions tend to be hasty. We don't consider all the ramifications. I think, I don't think that's debatable. I think most people will understand that. So fear, confusion is another one. I know the Soviet Union, if you read about, you know, you read books like the Gulag Archibelico or, you know, people who really talk about like what it was like living during those times and the control, part of it was confusion where I'm told one thing, now I'm told another

thing, now I'm told another thing. So you get to the point where you're just like, okay, I don't know. Tell me what to think. Like, just tell me what to think and what to say. So lots of confusion, um, lots of fear and then dependence. I need you for medicine or I need you for my money or my, my house or my, you know, I need you for my safety. I'm dependent on you. You, you throw those ingredients together. Um, and then you can effectively control people. So what does that look like? Well, let's, let's get people, let's control their food. Let's scare the shit out of them. Um, so we can get, you know, all the, whatever we want past to get past, let's control their money, which, you know, we can go down that rabbit hole if you want,

but let's control the money supply and what that looks like. And, um, you know, if we can control what you spend your money on, where you spend your money, the value of your money, um, well now, uh, you know, now, now we've really got, yeah. And you know, those, the quotes from the central bankers, right? Like I don't care who, who makes the nation's laws so long as I control their money. So that's what it kind of looks like. And this is, of course, all speculation, but historically this is how they've done it. So when you look at the landscape,

and, you know, there's some silver linings. I think the latest polls show that people's trust in the media is at all-time lows, which makes me feel good because I don't feel like I'm the only one losing my mind. I think everybody's looking at the media going, you know what, remember, remember during the pandemic, how ridiculous some of this stuff was. And I'm not even talking about, I'm not even going to get into the debate over the stuff that's controversial. I'm just talking about the obvious stuff. Like I was literally, I remember a new, it was a newscast going on. I don't remember what channel

it was. It was one of the mainstream ones. And they literally were saying this is within the same like 30 minutes. Okay. So it wasn't like they separated it and it was all the same. Right. So they were talking about how dangerous it was to be around people. Like you are, you are killing people. If you're around people, isolate yourself, stay at home, wear a mask at home, know stick to your bubble if you if you go near people this is very dangerous you got to stay away from people and then they panned over or switched

over to uh the the george floyd protests and riots literally tens of thousands of people smashed together yelling and spitting on each other, nobody wearing a mask. And then they literally said these protests and riots are contributing in no significant way to the spread of COVID. I remember reading some of those articles. I was like, I want to hear this one. I actually want to hear this argument. And if I remember, it boiled down to that they were saying as well, they were outside. Actually, a lot of people were wearing masks.

And actually, there was a lot of social distancing. So, yeah, no, they're right on top of each other. And then you see the footage and you're like, uh, no, it was in the same breath. It was like it blew my mind. I mean, it's literally it's like from 1984. You know, don't believe your lying eyes. Yes. I,

so a hundred percent. So I remember I would see stuff like that and I'm like, this, this is a wild to me. This is crazy to me. And, and of course, if,

if you are at least a little bit, uh, uh, awake and willing to, to think independently, when you see stuff like that, you have to wonder what else they're lying about. That's not conspiratorial thinking. That's just logical. Okay, this is clearly absurd. This is gaslighting, really is what it is. And so now I'm just skeptical of anything these people tell me.

Yes. Which again, goes back to confusion. Part of me is like, are they doing this on purpose so that we just stop believing everything and don't know who to trust or what to believe? The other one was the whole, like they shut down gyms for a long time. Gyms were shut down the long. Dude, I have friends that lost their business. It was terrible. And they shut them down. First off, my personal belief, this is my personal belief, so we'll start there. I believe that once informed, you can choose to risk your life or not, so long as you don't expect anybody to take care of you if you make a stupid decision. That's the other side of that, right?

There's responsibility that comes with it. So if people are informed and they want to be around other people, that's up to them. So that's that belief. But here's the other side of it. Okay. They're like, no, we got to shut down gyms because people are working out next to each other. They're going to spread the virus. This is crazy. And I remember as a, as a gym owner, right? I've owned gyms and I've the last place. And I knew that I said this on my podcast. I said, I can't wait to see the data. Now we have data to support what I said is that the last place, and I knew that, I said this on my podcast, I said, I can't wait to see the data. Now we have data to support what I said, is that the last place anybody goes when they're feeling a little under the weather is the gym. Now, people will feel a little cough or scratchy throat. They'll go to the grocery store.

They'll go to the movies. They'll go shopping. They'll go to a restaurant. But nobody works out when they're feeling a little sick. Nobody's like, oh, man, I got a little bit of a headache. I'm going to go hit the gym. I'm going to skip it today. That's all I needed. That's all I needed for me to skip the gym. Well, now we got data, data come out now showing that gyms were not only a place that didn't spread. It was one of the least likely places where you're around people. Yeah, it was, it was gyms. I remember airplanes as well.

We're not a vector of disease. And I knew that, right? The other one was, um, were the mask mandates on children. You know, I have friends that work in the medical industry and I remember when they passed the mask mandates, um, you know, at first, at first I thought, first of all, I don't like mandates like that, but okay, I could see the rationale. And then I talked to my friends in the medical industry, and they're like, dude, do you know the training that we go through on how to wear a mask and how to handle one properly? And then they went through it with me, and I'm like, holy shit, no one's going to do that. This is a total waste of time. And they said, yes, it is.

It's a total waste of time. Nobody handles these things properly. And they said, yes, it is. It's a total waste of time. Nobody handles these things properly. I don't know if you remember early on, I believe it was even Lord Fauci who said that masks are not useful. And he was discouraging people using masks. And then later he said, well, that was because he wanted to try to preserve the PPE for the professionals. he said, well, that was because he wanted to try to preserve the PPE for the professionals. You know, a white noble lie, so to speak. And actually masks do work well. And now that we have enough of them, everyone should wear them. And some people, when they see stuff like that, they just go, oh, okay, all right, that's fine. I guess I'll just wear the mask now.

Some people, though, wonder what else might this guy be lying about? He just told me that he lied to me. Again, he says it's a noble lie. And he said it was for the greater good. But he did lie. my friends would tell me this about masks, how to handle them, what to do in order to make them effective, the kind of masks that you need to wear. They're like, dude, these cloth masks, these other masks are a total waste of time. You need to have this, you know, back then it wasn't very well known, N95. And you have, you handle them, you do once, you use it one time. Once you touch it, that's it. You get another one. Like, oh my God, no one's going to do that. But then I took it a step further and I said, okay, forget the fact that 99.9% of anybody isn't going to do that, which is, by the way, why the data shows that mask mandates did zero, because we now have the data to show this. I said, why are we forcing kids, like four-year-old kids? I can't even have my kid keep his socks on, let alone a mask that they don't touch and handle properly and whatever.

This is crazy. And then I took it another step further. Look, I'm not an expert in neurobiology, but it is one of my passions. And I do know that a very large part of our brain, the entire brain lights up when we're deciphering faces and expressions and reading people's expressions. In fact, we can make faces out of almost anything. Like if you look at the front of a car, you can very easily make the headlights and the grill look like a face. And this is an evolutionary thing, right? To be able to see if it's predators. There's also our ability to read human emotions. This is a very, you know, social creatures can read cues very well. The more social a creature is, the more important this is, right? And then knowing what I know about brain's

plasticity and how children's brains develop based on their environment. So like a child can learn several languages and never develop an accent, speak them fluently and sound like they're from those countries because of the plasticity of the brain. If you teach an adult different languages, they'll learn them, but you can always tell their native language was English or whatever because they develop. So there's permanence in how the brain develops. And I'm like, holy shit, we're going to put all these kids, first of all, in masks, which ain't going to work for kids because adults aren't going to handle them properly, let alone a four or five year old, but now we're going to cover their faces. So all day long, they're not reading facial expressions and their brain is now developing accordingly. This is going to cause some serious problems. And I said that on

my podcast, and now we have data to support this as well. Speech therapy, anxiety, you know, lots of issues now are developing because children went for two years in many, in California, almost two years, right? You think as an adult, oh, two years, yeah, it's a long time, not that big of a deal. Okay. You take a third grader or a second grader, someone's in the second grade for two years covering their face. That's a huge chunk of their life. And why are they covering their face? What message are they being told again and again and again? It's that the environment is dangerous. Be afraid of the air, basically, is what they're being told. I have friends who live in Virginia, around where I lived when I lived there, and they ran into this

issue with one or both of their daughters. One of them in particular, I know for sure, seven, eight years old. And after six to eight months or so of having to wear a mask every day in school and elsewhere, I don't know how much she wore a mask outside of school, but certainly in school, my buddy told me that his little daughter was now afraid to go into any indoor space without a mask on. So I have kids, I'm in California and they were forced to wear them in school. My daughter, when this all went down was in fourth grade, finishing fourth grade. And when they finally ended the mandates in schools here in California, which took a long time, it was like two school years, right? They all continued wearing them. The kids refused to

take them off. They didn't want to take the mask off. Now, why? Partly, I think there's the fear aspect, but here's the other part. This is a big one. When you're growing up as a kid, especially through formative years, adolescence, you know, 11, 12, 13, you want to hide. You ever seen a kid that's insecure, right? They want to hide behind their hoodie or whatever. So you have them covering their faces, developing friendships with kids around them because two years is a long fucking time when you're a kid, okay? Covering your face, developing friendships friendships developing patterns and behaviors now you want me to reveal my face to all these people so they literally they wouldn't take them off all of them where to the point where it got to the point where i had to force my kid i told you not wearing that sorry yeah you're not gonna wear it Sorry. Yeah, you're not going to wear it anymore. It actually became an issue. Damage, tremendous damage, all because we were afraid and we just

did these knee-jerk reactions. So it is very strange. And again, to circle back, R-Space is not immune. It is now being permeated and they're slowly doing. Like you're going to start to see articles that say things like protein caused cancer and they'll use mTOR studies, which anybody who understands mTOR knows that it's complete bullshit that if you have cancer, anything feeds cancer. It's your cells. So I could make or I could show articles that, you know, studies show that fat feeds cancer, carbs feed cancer, proteins feed cancer, nutrients feed cancer. Oh, my God, don't take in any nutrients because you're going to make the cancer get worse.

But they're going to focus on mTOR and its driver and how it drives cancer growth and protein. You're going to start seeing articles on testosterone, why it's this toxic hormone. You're going to start seeing articles, which we're already seeing on strength training and exercise and why it's self-hate and harm and all kinds of different things. So it's all just going to get worse. And I want to say it on the record, and I'll continue to say it on the record, because when it happens, I want people to be able to say, I said this two years ago, I said this year ago. And right now I know there's people watching who are thinking, ah, it's crazy. That's not going to happen. Oh, it will. I promise you, it will. Within a year or two or three, this is the message that you're going to start to see

get hammered. So again, I want to call it out and put it on the record because then we can go back and I can say, I told you so. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general, and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new, word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one,

please do tell them about it. And what are your thoughts about people who would dismiss a lot of what we've said here as conspiracy theory, as conspiratorial thinking. I've read a number of articles over the years trying to debunk conspiracy thinking and conspiracy theories and how to talk to family members who believe in conspiracy theories. And I think that that psychology and the argument that is made is interesting. But what are your thoughts on that? That actually was a conspiracy theory,

is a fact, was a term created, invented by the CIA a long time ago. I think it was regarding JFK, right? Like that was the context. It was to brand any alternative theories as conspiracy theories. Yes, yes. Now, look, are there people that believe in crazy things?

Yeah, I mean, there's this flat earthers and there's all kinds of crazy stuff out there. So that's, that's, I 100% Q-tards, that's, I 100% Q-tards. That's what's often used actually to dismiss all quote unquote conspiracy theories is that they are all as absurd as Q. That, that's, that is,

at least these days, that's what I see in articles. I just read one yesterday from a professor or assistant professor at an Ivy League school. And that was the crux of the argument is like anybody who you mentioned 9-11, right? So anybody who would even entertain the idea that maybe our government knew about it had something to do with it. I don't know. I'm not even saying that's the case. But even if you were to start to think those thoughts, that is just as ridiculous as believing in the Q predictions and all the wild stuff that has come from. Or the moon landing was fake or something like that. Which I don't know.

Maybe it was. I don't know. I actually haven't looked into that because I don't really care. But maybe it was. I don't know. I'd have to see the evidence. When I heard about Flat Earth first, I was like, okay, I want to hear the argument.

What's the argument? And when I heard that basically every video, every picture, all evidence of the Earth out in space as a as a globe is is fake and uh the every government that's ever published anything is in on the conspiracy and every private now we have spacex we have these other companies they're all in on it as well and then what evidence is there for that nothing it's just a story that's when i moved on from flat I mean, that was enough for me to dismiss it. Yeah, no, I, I don't, I think that what's most likely is that you have, um, opportunists, uh, in, in politics, this has always been the case. Like you talked about nine 11, you know, um, 100% when that happened, there were people in government who use that as an

opportunity to, uh, either declare war on government who used that as an opportunity to either declare war on a country that we've been trying to for a long time. We just needed public support. Iraq, that's a great example. Or to pass bills that would have never passed before or spending that they never would have passed before because of this thing that just happened. So there's opportunists. So you have a pandemic. We don't need to talk about what caused it, what's going on, whatever, but what a great opportunity if you're in government and you're like, Hey. Or pharma. What a great opportunity to make a lot of money. Oh, huge. Like, okay. I want, I want to, I want to give money to all these donors and friends of

mine. Let me sneak these in, this rescue bill that gives every American $600, which somehow came out to be trillions of dollars, which that's not what it adds up to. So if you look at all the money, where it went, a very small percentage, they actually gave to people. So I think there's opportunists.

I think there's narratives that are very effective at dividing people, and that's what you want. You want to be able to rally your people so you can get them to vote a particular way. So I think that's, what's the obvious thing. But as far as the conspiracy theory thing is concerned, look, um, and this is just a fact, so you can, you can take this wherever you want, but I'll use one. That's a fact. Okay. Area 51, uh, which, you know, long, you know, speculated as this place where, you know, there was a UFO that crashed and the government retrieved some aliens and then they hid it from us and all this stuff. We know what Area 51 now was.

It was where they were developing the top secret Blackbird spy plane that was the fastest plane in history and was able to spy on the Soviet Union. And they wanted to come up with a story that was so crazy that they could counter it, but to kind of spur this narrative so that they could counter it because people are going to see shit flying above them. And so what did they come up with? Let's put forth, this is literally, they admit it. We're the ones that made people think they were aliens. We put these stories in newspapers and we got people to believe this and it was a great cover, right? So sometimes these conspiracy theories that sound crazy could be ways of getting us to not really look at, you

know, what's going on. Like if someone comes out and says, Hey, this is, this is bullshit that meat is, is unhealthy. This is not true. All the research we've ever for all in nutrition history and human history and how we evolved shows that meat is a very important part of, of eating healthy. What they'll do is they'll come out and say, maybe they'll put something out that says, um, you know, uh, people who don't want us to eat meat are, uh, possessed by Satan. And here's the evidence. And then, you know, they'll put the evidence out. And so then what you'll do is you'll be like, oh my God, that's crazy.

Therefore, all the other stuff is crazy. And that's just, I don't know what you want to call it, psyops or whatever. We've been doing it forever. Misinformation, disinformation. You can read a lot about that type of stuff. I just know in World War II, if you want a lot of good examples of great misinformation and disinformation campaigns that were meant to mislead the enemy into believing wrong things. Operation Trust. This was a Soviet Union. It's very similar, actually, to the Q phenomenon,

which was a supposed insider leaking information. And it was a government operation to mislead people and find dissenters. And it was smart. It was clever. And I read an article, I don't know, maybe six months ago that indicated that the Q phenomenon might have originated with the FBI or they co-opted it at some point. That's fascinating. I was not familiar with this at all. I'm familiar with like Operation Mockingbird and MKUltra and Northwoods and all this. Sure. Which I was going to mention also, if you want to talk about other conspiracies, like just go look at what the government did with MKUltra. That's some weird shit. And anyway, though, so I don't remember the article that I was referencing, but it wasn't it wasn't like a Facebook post or something. It was at least respectable journalism. And that that would make a lot of sense to me, given how the Q phenomenon has evolved and how many people it has

misled into believing all kinds of wacky things that never came to pass. But again, people listening, if you're interesting, check out Operation Trust. And it's very similar to what has happened with Q. And it's just another example of if you were on the other side and you are trying to get people to, for example, one of the, I think, if that's the case with Q, one of the brilliant aspects of it was the message was fundamentally that conservatives didn't need to do anything, really, because the real patriots were in control. It looked like that the patriots were losing, but that's all a smokescreen. And actually, behind the scenes, the Patriots are winning. Don't worry. Trump is coming back. The military is going to kick Biden out, install Trump.

Hillary's going to jail. We're breaking up the child trafficking rings, all of that stuff. But it had a mollifying effect. I mean, I know boomers love this shit. They still love it. Right. And so I know some people who are still into it and they're still preaching the same message, which is essentially they don't need to organize. They don't need to do anything because their team is actually winning, even though it would appear that their team has completely lost and might not ever be back on the field again and so that's clever that's clever psychology it is it's it's hard because um you get to this point where like what's what are they what's real and what's not real but i tell you what the obvious stuff if it's obvious and crazy to you it probably is like um you know being a being somebody who's

been in in, in the, in the fitness space as long as I have, and I've worked with athletes and I know how the human body works. Like when you tell me that a biological man can transition to a woman and within a year lose every physical competitive advantage that they had as a biological man, I know you're full of complete shit. I know this. You could give my sister all the anabolic steroids in the world and she'll never be as strong as me on my weakest day. Okay. I know this. It's insane to me. And they kept pushing that and they're still pushing. So crazy to me that people will actually argue this and they'll silence you by saying you're discriminatory or you're a bigot, which is like, no, I don't. Look,

here's the deal. It's your body. You want to do what you want to do to your body. You go ahead and do that. But don't come over here and tell me that after a year that you lost all your advantages because I know for a fact that that's totally false. I mean, you competed as a swimmer, like you talked about, Leah Thomas. You competed as a male swimmer and the best you ever got was 42nd and the year after you transition you're breaking world records like this is crazy and show me the trans men that are crushing records oh there are none that's right because they try to compete to get their asses kicked because even though they're on testosterone it doesn't it doesn't do everything because the advantages begin in the womb, actually. I had a professor on my show go over the research on this in depth. And I forget the name off the top of my head.

I'll find it and put it in the show notes for anybody who's interested. But he did a very good job explaining the weight of the evidence and the existing research. And it was very clear. Okay. So here's the funny thing though, Mike, this is the part that makes me get so frustrated. We got to bring research. It's almost like somebody says to me, look, show me the research that putting my hand in a fire is going to burn my hand because I need to see the research. But you see, there are people out there who think like that. You say it's unhealthy to cut off your head and they immediately say, where are the peer reviewed studies that show that? You don't know that.

Yes, it's crazy. It's wild. And I had somebody send me an article saying, you know, here's why meat, you know, causes cancer. Because when you cook it, especially if you cook it over a flame, you know, those damn toxic males barbecuing outside, it creates carcinogens. And I say, what? And then I, you know, I replied back and I said, how have we cooked meat for all of millennia over fire? And they say, well, show me the data. I'm like, okay, I'm done. You know, I've actually written about that.

And my conclusion was based on the research that I reviewed at the time. Yes, mechanistically speaking, there's validity in that. However, of course, the dose makes the poison. And so if you are eating pounds of charred meat every day, seven days a week, you have other problems, but that is not great for your health. That might increase your risk of cancer to some degree. However, if you grill yourself a hamburger once a week, twice a week, every other week, and you live a relatively healthy lifestyle, you eat a lot of nutritious food, you exercise, you get enough sleep, you maintain a healthy body composition, that little bit of charred meat that you eat now and then is going to have absolutely no impact on your health or longevity.

is going to have absolutely no impact on your health or longevity. Listen, it's ridiculous. It's bullshit. That's how we've always cooked meat. That's how we've always consumed meat. It's like me saying the most mineral-dense food on the planet is a rock. Okay, I could break down the mineral content of a rock, and I bet you I could get some rocks that will kick the shit out of any food does that mean you're going to eat this rock and be healthy no so it's like they they take something they extrapolate uh you know one more than it's just kind of taking

it to an extreme right i mean think of think of the sun we've been in the sun for a long time but i think you would agree that if we are in the sun too much, it's going to increase our risk of skin cancer. It's radiation. There's radiation. Did you know peeling a banana releases radiation? Did you know that? Radiation comes off of the peeling of a banana or peeling tape off of a roll, right? Don't do that. There's radiation. We're going to die. It doesn't work that way. It's insane to me. It's crazy to me. So it's like, okay, so people are like, well, what do I do? Well, here's what you got to do. And here's what I've been telling people lately. I like meta analysis. I understand how to read a study and what makes a study good,

sample size, peer reviewed, double blind, placebo controlled. Does this sample size apply to me? Is it a bunch of college aged males?? I'm a middle-aged woman. Is this study on testosterone really applicable to me? Like, you know, that kind of stuff. Also look at historical anecdote because anecdote has been demonized. But when you look at, for example, up until 15 years ago, there were really no good studies done on ashwagandha. But ashwagandha had been used for, I don't know, hundreds or thousands of years in medicine. That's historical anecdote. And I think

that has got some validity when something's been used for hundreds of years or thousands of years, historically for a particular purpose, for example, honey to help with coughs. I remember when my oldest was 17, was a kid. I asked the doctor about honey and tea to help with the cough. And they're like, oh, it's an old wives' tale. Well, you know, we've got studies now that show that there's actually a compound in honey that actually suppresses the cough reflex. But we've been using it for hundreds or thousands of years. I mean, a lot of researchers look to that to get ideas for research.

Correct. Correct. And then look at wisdom. You know, look at wisdom. What is wisdom? Well, wisdom has existed and wisdom is knowledge and information that has passed the evolution of ideas, meaning it's existed for a long time. We might have forgotten why we do certain things, but it's existed for so long that it's passed the test of evolution in the sense of ideas. Like, well, we still do this. Why have we done this for so long?

Like, why are we in monogamous relationships? Why is that prized in every, you know, successful civilization that exists today? Well, you know, and you want to break it down, but let's, you know, what's that one saying? Before you tear down a fence, first understand why it's up in the first place, you know, because it might look silly to you, but you don't, you, that's because you don't know why it up in the first place, you know, because it might look silly to you, but you don't, that's because you don't know why it exists in the first place. So you have to take all of that. And then that's where you can, I think, derive, you know, some of your, like there was, people have been sharing interesting articles with me.

There was one article like, why divorce is good for kids. and i'm sure you can make some cases oh you know this kid got stronger and made more results and that's what they try and do these articles but um you know why dads are not that important that's another article someone sent me why why why haven't why not having a dad in your life is not that big of a deal um so yeah also throwing a little common sense and say well well, that sounds stupid and crazy. Probably it's probably a stupid and crazy then. Any final predictions for the fitness space or just a clown world in general over the next, say, I don't know, five years, 10 years, Max, who knows beyond that? I'll make some non-fitness predictions that they'll stay on your podcast. So if your podcast

gets kicked off, don't blame me. They will, they will move to a digital currency. And it will be a central bank produced digital currency. And do you think do you think global because, because, because, because the great reset crowd, these these guys and gals openly talk about the need for a global government, abolishing private property, digital currency, global currency. It will be global in the sense that it'll be the organized Western world that'll probably have their own currency. And it'll be out of necessity. So they're not going to just put it forth and be like, hey, this is better. It'll be like, holy cow, our currencies are so inflated. It's causing all these problems. We're going to just fix it by creating this digital currency

that we can really control. Which, by the way, would parallel the pitch that was used to sell the federal reserve system and its currency by the way that was essentially the pitch oh it too much too much volatility in currencies we have all these banks doing crazy things that's that's already coming the federal reserve already said they're already working they already have a digital currency they're working on it'll be through um blockchain which now that you know everybody's like oh blockchain so great um so it'll be through blockchain uh now that people are sold that that's the way that we need to do it um so that's a non fitness and health uh prediction my fitness and health prediction is the next macronutrient to be demonized uh not for selling books and supplements but rather for political reasons

this protein we went through the fat demonization, the carb demonization. I called this one actually five years ago. I did not know the motives though. I just thought it's the next macronutrient that they're going to attack to sell us something. I think now this is going to be politically driven. It's going to be protein. It will be demonized. Mark my words. And along with that will be anything that related to building muscle and building strength is going to be connected to toxicity toxic masculinity patriarchy and that kind of stuff those are my my fitness predictions so digital currency demonization of protein and building muscle those are the three predictions i said here. And last question for you. Do you think that we're going to see a

continued trend here in America of what's almost becoming two different countries where if you want to live one way, you go to one of these states. If you want to live another way, you know, you go to these other states. If you're one of these types of people, you are not going to fit in in this state. You're not going to fit in in California. Come over to Florida, vice versa. Yeah, I do. I think that's going to continue to happen. It's part of how we designed our government.

I think that there's more pros than cons with that. If we didn't have our state system, we would have been screwed over the last few years. And it's already happening. People are moving, you know, away from places in two places, although, um, it's the, the blue States are bleeding. Um, it's not the red States that are bleeding right now. Who knows if that'll change, uh, you know, moving forward. But yeah, I do, I do think you're going to see more of that. Um, what does that mean moving forward? Uh? You know, I hope it doesn't mean violence. I don't think it will. What I think it might lead to is what, you know, those of us

who would say we're liberty people have always wanted, which was a weak federal government and a stronger state, state governments in the sense that they're, you know, that the states can pass certain laws and the federal government can't. That's what I'm hoping, but I don't know, man, I don't know what it's going to look like, but it's already looking like that. I mean, it's already getting this, you know, state versus state thing is starting to get worse and worse, which is really interesting. You know, I live in California, which is, you know, I get, you could quite easily categorize as this like extreme liberal, like super blue state, but I live in California and the truth is it's Silicon Valley. And then the coast, uh, where LA

is, that's that the rest of California is actually very conservative and red. There's like, there's more ranchers and farmers and cowboys in California than there are in almost any other state except for maybe Texas. People don't know this. So I think what that may lead to is more of a splintering. There's been people who propose this. Let's turn California into four different states. So who knows? Yeah.

I wonder what it would even take to accomplish something like that, though. What's the legal legislative process? It seems extreme, but again, like we've said, we would have said that about a lot of what's going on right now 10 years ago. on right now 10 years ago. I used to try to talk to my dad about some of what I saw going on and some similar kind of predictions 10, 15 years ago, again, after 9-11, and I started paying attention to things. And he thought it was cute. He thought that some of my ideas about how things could get out of control and that these the trajectory to me seemed to be downward, not upward. He didn't he didn't want to see it at all and laughed it off.

Of course, he has repented now and he he sees that that I was I was more right than wrong. He sees that I was more right than wrong. You know, my favorite conspiracy theory, this one I'll actually call a conspiracy theory, but my favorite one that has come out is that they turned on the Large Hadron Collider at full speed. This is where they slam particles into each other and try and see how the universe looks, see what happens. My favorite one now is that they turned that thing on and it shifted us into an alternate reality that we've been on since and that's why everything's so crazy and i'm like you know what if that turned out to be true i'd be like you know what i can that makes sense because everything's gotten so freaking weird you know

just interesting to think about like why why some people really want to believe really weird things. And those are kind of the Q crowd, right? And it kind of paints us all with this wacky brush. questions any sort of mainstream narrative is quickly put into the same bucket as the multiverse hadron collider people you know yeah well i mean it's because things like i said earlier when i saw that news cast where they're like don't be around anybody uh but these protests and riots aren't spreading you know when i something like that, my instinct is to be like, like this has the world gone crazy, but all you got to do is look at history and consider human behavior. Hasn't changed for thousands of years. We're all the same cultures change, but human behavior hasn't.

So when you look in the past and you think to yourself, like, you know, how could all the Germans allow the Nazis to rat, to round up all these millions of Jews and kill them? Like, God, it would never happen today.

No, good. It totally could. And you probably not you, but you listening or watching would not be Schindler. You probably would be one of the people that turned a blind eye and allowed it to happen. Look at,

look at what happened in the Soviet union. It's, it's even crazier in some ways. I mean, tens of millions of their own people got killed and and you mentioned the gulag archipelago and if um if if anybody listening you can just watch a documentary on on how absolutely ridiculous that that regime was but how many people just went along with it.

And we want to point the finger and be like, that wouldn't be me. No, it would. Human behavior is the same. You're not some superhero. You're not the person that would, you know. If you've been driving, if you've ever driven with a mask on, that's it. You would be one of them. I'm sorry.

Yes, that's you. you probably wear a condom when you jerk off too they're the same guy correct correct uh anyways this was uh this was fun as always sal let's uh let's wrap up with with where people can find so you're very active on twitter these days which you probably are enjoying more than instagram because i think it's which you probably are enjoying more than Instagram because I think it's better suited to sharing various thoughts. Yeah, I'm not big enough on Twitter yet to get kicked off. So I only have about 15,000.

I just started getting on there, but at some point I'm sure I'll get kicked off too. So we'll see how many of these I can rack up. Yeah, Mind Pump Sal on Twitter. And of course the podcast is Mind Pump. You can find us anywhere. Cool, cool. Well, thanks again for doing this, Sal. And I look forward to the next one.

Thanks, brother. I appreciate it. Thanks, Mike. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future.

I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.