The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - Mark Rippetoe - The Right Way to Get Stronger | The CBP (Bitcoin Podcast)

Episode Date: January 17, 2025

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES This week we welcome one of the founding fathers of fives, Mark Rippetoe. Mark is best known for his excellent strength training program, his books (Starting Strength: Basic Barbell Training and Practical Programming for Strength Training are musts for all new strength training entrants) and hosts the Starting Strength Radio Podcast once weekly from his gym, the Wichita Falls Athletic Club, in Texas. Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com ⁠Discord:   / discord   A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠www.easydns.com⁠⁠ EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠ The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. There's never been a quicker, simpler, way to acquire Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones, and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer. D-Central Technologies - https://d-central.tech/ Your home for all things mining! Whether you need a new unit, a unit repaired, some support with software, or you want to start your own wife-friendly home mining operation, the guys at D-Central Tech are ready to help. With industry leading knowledge and expertise, let the D-Central team help you get started mining the hardest money on Earth.

Friends and enemies, welcome back. Canadian Bitcoiners podcast. Weird time, weird day. Doesn't matter. We got a great guest today, Mark Ripito, one of the founding fathers of Fives, as I mentioned in the video description. We're going to have a wide-ranging discussion.

And the reason I want to talk to Mark, really there's a few of them, but the big one, I got to be honest, I see a lot of you guys at conferences and at meetups, I see you on Twitter and all of you look fucking weak and I'm sick of it. I am sick of it. I have said on this show many times that I think you should have to squat 225 pounds to be able to vote, maybe a little less for women. I don't know. And it doesn't look to me like a lot of you guys can do it. And I am guilty of having started thinking about fitness, you know, in my late teens and doing barbell curls or should say dumbbell curls and leg presses and all kinds of other nonsense. And it wasn't really until COVID that I started

thinking about size as the primary function and strength as a primary function, as opposed to aesthetic. And I'll tell you that I look better. I feel better. I am stronger. And as an athlete, you know, I am faster. I am more quick. I am all those things. And it's a result of proper strength training, not working out, not exercising, proper strength training. So we're going to talk to Mark. And as always, before we start the sponsors, EasyDNS. You guys know Mark Jeftovic, CEO of EasyDNS. He sent to my house last week a bomb thrower onesie for my newborn daughter. I don't think there's a better sponsor than the ones we have. And since I'm talking about Mark, I'll say he's the best sponsor right now.

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And then our third sponsor, Decentral Tech out of Quebec, the best when it comes to Bitcoin mining, whether you want to run a mining operation out of your house that will have your wife talking to divorce lawyers, or you want to run one that your wife won't know about because it's so quiet and perhaps also aesthetically pleasing. If you buy the bid ax again, I should really bring that thing up here so I can show it. But yet again, I've not learned my lesson. These guys will help you set your mining operation up. They'll help you with power supplies to help you with board repair. They'll help you with everything. If you want to heat your house, heat your pool, they can help you. These guys are best in the business.

They have who I'm told, the guy I'm told is the best board repairman in the world. And like I said, Canadian, can't beat it. We don't have a promo code. It's a relationship of love. So go over there, Decentral Technologies, and start your mining at home today. Mark Ripito, I have to tell you, it is my great honor to have you on the show. As I mentioned in the intro there, I wasted so much goddamn time doing dumbbell curls and all sorts of other nonsense when I should have just been doing my fives in my 20s. Now, here I am at 37 and stronger and faster, at least in a straight line.

Don't know about the side-to-side stuff anymore. I'm a little old for that. A few too many. You know, that, that doesn't matter as much when you're 37, you know? Yeah. You can kind of leave that behind. Mark, I want, I want people to know a bit about you because you're going to be unfamiliar to some of my listeners. And I think that people should leave here, uh, with an understanding of who you are, your background and why barbell training is the most important thing in any man's life. Do you want to give people a bit of background about who is Mark Ripita? Well, I am an old guy from North Texas.

I'm from Wichita Falls. I've been here pretty much most of my life. I had a little excursion into Colorado back in my 20s where I relocated up there. And then I decided, well, I better get my degree finished. So I moved back to Wichita Falls. And I have a geology degree, and I have a geology degree. So I have a science education. And I got into the gym business.

Oh, I was probably 18 or 19 when I first started working in the gym business. And, oh, I've been pretty much involved in the gym business ever since then. And I, you know, had studied to be a petroleum geologist. But that didn't turn out to be as welcoming an occupation as it could have been. And so I moved into the gym business full time in 1984 when I bought an existing gym and turned it into Wichita Falls Athletic Club. I have been doing that every day since 1984. What's that, 40 years ago? yeah and uh it's it's been a um let me i'll tell you what the deal is is when i first started

all of the gym business pretty much was the same as it is right now it was a big giant room full of machines and minimum wage kids setting pins on the stacks. That's what it was. That was what personal training was, and it was what the business model of the fitness industry was predicated on. And I didn't do it that way. I had been training as a competitive power lifter for, for quite some time. And I, uh, when I started the gym, uh, when people would come in to sign up for the gym and ask about memberships, I taught them how to squat, bench press, and deadlift, and power clean. At the time, I hadn't realized

the critical importance of press, the overhead movement. But I rapidly headed in that direction, and the program that became Starting Strength was born out of my personal experience with setting people up on a program. So somebody comes into the gym and I show them how to squat and I write down the first day's workout. And then I would bring them in. That's like Monday, for example. And then Wednesday, they'd come in and we'd go up a little bit on all of the exercises that I'd taught them how to do on Monday. And then Friday, we'd do the same thing. And then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the following week.

And then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the following week, and then Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of the following week, and then Monday, Wednesday, Friday of the following week. So I'd have, uh, you know, within four weeks, I'd have 12 workouts, and the numbers from the workouts were illustrative of exactly what the hell was going on. And they were getting stronger. And my only emphasis for these people was for them to get stronger. And it was easy to show them because I'd written their numbers down in the book. So you take it out after 12 workouts and spread it out in front of them and say, look what you've done. Look what's happened to you. Now, how do you feel? Well,

I feel a lot better. Are you sleeping? I'm sleeping a lot better. You've been running? Yeah. Are you running, feeling better? Yeah. Yeah, it is. Everything's feeling better. You playing baseball or anything like that? Softball league? Yeah, I'm in a softball league and I'm hitting the ball for it. So everything that they had experienced physically improved as a result of this increase in force production, increase in strength that they had obtained with small incremental increases under the bar

on all of the exercises. And that's the basis of the program. Five pounds of workout. That's all. It's not complicated. And the fact that it's very simple and uncomplicated is a problem. It's been a problem because that's not what marketing wants to see. Marketing likes complexity.

Marketing likes sine waves and complex formulas and percentages and all this other shit. No, you don't need to. What you need is to figure out where you are right now. And then next time you train, go up a little bit. Not too much. Because if you go up too much, you can't do it. But if you go up a little bit, what happens is you begin to accumulate

a strength adaptation that's the whole basis of it just it's just dna biology it's you are accumulating an adaptation that's what your dna is for it allows your body to change its proteins around as needed by the environment. So if you change the environment, in this case, that environment's the bar on your back, then your body changes to adapt to the new environment, which is five pounds of workout. And it's not anything same or complicated than that. Now, why don't we use 90 different exercises? Because it's not necessary. It's not necessary.

What we are doing is normal human movement patterns. You squat down and you stand back up. That's what your knees and hips are for right you're picking something up off of the floor that's what your knees and hips are you're pushing something up over your head that's what your whole body as well as your shoulders and your arms are for you're pushing something away from you. That's what your anterior shoulder muscles are for. You're pulling something toward you, like a chin-up.

That's what the lats and the posterior stuff that's attached to your arms is for. So all of these normal human movement patterns, you're picking something up and throwing it up and catching it. That's the power clean. I mean, it's a normal human movement pattern. And the equipment that we use is designed to allow you to load those normal human movement patterns.

So if you load them, and you load them five pounds at a time, I say five pounds at a time, that is kind of a metaphor for what we're doing. Five pounds a workout might really be a pound and a half a workout for the press overhead for a while it's 10 pounds of workout for the deadlift because that gets strong pretty quick and these there aren't there aren't many normal human movement patterns. All right. So what we do is different than what the rest of the fitness industry does. The fitness industry thinks in terms of muscle groups.

We do not think in terms of muscle groups. We think in terms of muscle groups. We think in terms of movement patterns. Normal human movement patterns do not isolate individual muscle groups. And that's why we squat instead of doing leg extensions and leg curls and, you know, whatever calf raises, whatever other silly shit everybody else wants to do. We want to, we want to teach you how to do the most effective way to do a squat with a barbell on your back. It requires some instruction, but not much instruction. And we can show you how to squat the first day in a way that makes sense to you

and to your body and then what we do is we keep that form that we learned on day one and we go up a little bit a little bit and wait next time you come into the gym and we keep that boring process going uh for you know as long as we can. That rate of progress, that proceeds at that pace for six to eight months. And then we've got to do something more complicated because by the time you have adapted for six to eight months, your ability to adapt is becoming truncated as you approach the potential you have for getting strong.

So you come into the gym the first day, and let's say you're a 21-year-old kid, and you're 5'11", you weigh 175, and you squat 135 on the first day. All right. If I look at you six months from now, you're going to be 5'11", you're going to be 225, and you're going to be squatting in the middle 300s. Now, that kind of response is normal. That's what everybody can do. Everybody can do that, and if you're not doing that,

then you have not been instructed properly. And this is the problem with the vast, vast majority of the fitness industry, is that they have not been taught to instruct these people correctly. And, you know, for the ex-phys guys out there that say, well, you can't get strong that fast. I've been doing it every week for the past 45 years. Yes, you can get strong that fast. And if you haven't gotten strong that fast, you've wasted a bunch of time.

Fuck you telling me. You've wasted a bunch of time. That's exactly right. And you know personally what I'm talking about. Once you start doing this correctly, you get strong very fast and you grow bigger very fast and you look better and you feel better and you perform better and everything that you do that is a relationship with your external environment improves everything so it's, you know, it's really, it's very simple. It's not, it's not an incredibly complicated process. And you can make it complicated if you want to sell personal training hours, you know, because that's what all that complicated shit is for, is to sell things.

For sure. But, you know, I think it's uh i think we've made some headway you know i think people are beginning to recognize that the starting strength method works for everybody works for the that 19 year old kid works for his grandmother works for everybody it works for yeah for everybody, Mark. And it's funny, like, you know, my wife just gave birth to our first child about two months ago. And, you know, she's been kind of watching me do your program. I will admit that I'm modifying it a little bit to fit my schedule and my sleep, for lack of these days but all the same you know

i went from basically never dead lifting at all to today hitting you know for a single 370 365 i can't remember now and then you know for fives 350 and and like that was unthinkable for me a little while ago i used your program to recover from an Achilles tear, you know, reading and listening to some of the stuff you've said about injuries and not babying them. Um, you know, I went from a torn Achilles to playing football in like four and a half months. And, and like, it's, it's doable if you don't baby it. And part of not babying it is as you like to say, not, and this is like a metaphor for life, I think, right. You don't rack the fifth rep. And, and if you, if you rack the fifth rep right you don't rack the fifth rep and and if you if you rack the fifth rep you don't know what you're capable of and there's something that's

beautiful about pushing your body to its limits i mean how many people do you see come into your gym and the first thing you think is like man you know if you had come here 10 years ago you could have avoided that heart attack that knee injury that back injury you know knee injury, that back injury. All the 65-year-olds that walk into the gym in that same situation, why in the hell did you wait this long to ask us what to do? Well, because they were told differently. They were told differently by their doctor. See, their doctor is the final arbiter of all things physical, right? Because after all, he is a doctor. And most of these people do not know anything about this.

They don't know. Well, but he's a doctor right well he's he is a doctor is the medical services industry is a is a profession like a plumber or a carpenter he's a skilled professional and he operates within a very narrow range of of of a practice you come into his office you're sick he gives you a pill that's what they want to do that's yeah majority of what they want to do you come into his office and uh and you've got chronic back pain and he gives you a pill because he doesn't know what to do other than that because that's the limit of his practice he gives you a pill he doesn't understand that dead lifting and squatting fixes chronic back pain hell yeah it

it fixes chronic back pain and a pill does not a pill makes you not notice chronic back pain. And so his practice is rather limited in terms of the big picture of your physical existence. You know, he is in a position to manipulate the chemistry of your physical existence. He's not in a position to manipulate the structure of your physical existence. And that's what we do. When do you think that started, Mark? This, this whole thing about, you know, I like to say on the show, we've become a society of people who trace instead of draw. No one is coming up with an original thought, an original attack method for problems, whether it's sports injuries or the number of people who are on lipids

or fucking COVID vaccine. Like there goes my YouTube money. Like when did this happen? I was saying to Rusty a little bit before the show that in my opinion, if you were to ask me when that started, it was when we got away from each of us having some level of primary knowledge. I know that what you're saying about weightlifting is not true because now that I've done barbell

training, I know that this works. You can tell me it doesn't work. You can tell me I'll get hurt. You can tell me deadlifting is dangerous. I know it's not true. And so once you have that primary knowledge, you assume know this this phenomenon gelman amnesia right i know that you're lying about this or not telling me the truth about this what else are you off base about in your view when did this start and maybe when did it become like this cancer in society like

it is fucking everywhere now everyone just believes the shit they see and the expert that's in front of them at that moment instead of thinking about it more deeply. Well, I think it probably happened with the advance of that particular cancer is NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN they are the source of legitimate information and that anything else is to be suspect. Right. So I think that probably happened, oh, you know, in the years after World War II, when the broadcast networks became entrenched in everybody's living room on the television, and you've got, you know, these people who, well,

like Lester Holt, you know, now, and Rachel, or i'm sorry richard maddow and and these you know people like that that that sit down in front of the camera and just assume that you will believe everything they say because if you don't then their effect is diluted isn't it you you have to believe what they say because they are the final arbiter and if you just sit there every day and have the tv on there will be some degree whether you want it to happen or not there's going to be some degree of um whether you want it to happen or not, there's going to be some degree of, of, I don't want to say brainwashing, but that, that's kind of, that kind of is the effect.

It's, it's the, it's a general and a prolonged wearing down of people's ability to think clearly about things that most people would understand, but from first principles, if they weren't constantly being bombarded i will note that if lester holt cared as much about the truth as he did about pretending he still had hair on the top of his head we'd be in a lot better place i think and yes in fact he's he's you know symptomatic i think of a bigger problem and i don't want to you know i don't want to necessarily the bigger the problem is not listening no all right let me let me want to necessarily... The problem is not Lester.

No. All right. Let me clarify this. The problem is that we watch him. Probably, but we listen to we believe what he says. That's our problem. And that problem stems from a very, very shitty education that we've all received in the public schools. We've received essentially no science education at all. So any, any matter of, of anything related to the physical or biological sciences, we're at the mercy of these people that are telling us the shit because we didn't learn how to think. We didn't learn how to question what we were told.

So we don't question what we're told. We just listen to it. And some of it, whether we want it to or not, some of it soaks in. And you know how to fix that? Turn off the fucking television. Don't watch the news. Don't watch the news yeah don't watch the news read the news there are several sources of information on the web on the internet that are that are perfectly capable of keeping you

broadly informed from a wide range of viewpoints and you you read all of them. And the ones that make sense to you, you retain that. For example, my favorite news aggregator, I don't know if you are allowed to watch this in sunny Canada, but it's called Citizen Free Press, CFP. I've heard of it, yeah. It's incredibly valuable. He puts up a new headline every 10 or 15 minutes, and they're listed in a long column,

and you just go down and just click on this stuff and read it. He posts mainstream stuff. He posts stuff that he pulls off of X, and he gets things off of Yahoo, for God's sakes, and the AP, and CBS, ABC, NBC, all this other stuff. But there are other sources on there, too. And if you look at all of this, you get a much more complete picture

of what the hell is actually going on here. But if you are not exposed to all these different viewpoints and the only exposure you get is to NBC News, my friend, you are not, you are not informed. Yeah. The, the, uh, you know, up here in Canada, we have a state broadcaster. You may be familiar with CBC broadcasting corporation.

Yeah. And you know, our, uh, current PM, although on his way out has been a big fan of CBC. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. We can have a laugh about that. The, uh, you know, our current PM has been a big fan of cbc yeah exactly yeah we're gonna laugh about that the uh you know our current pm has been a big fan of cbc and it's because they've carried water in my opinion they've carried water for a lot of poor policies that our current administration has enacted well and they're the state media they have no choice but to carry that they don't exactly and and people don't understand that and i would argue that in the u.s when people talk about three-letter agencies like the fbi and the cia they should

add three-letter agencies like cnn and abc because they are arms of the state right and and so i wonder if you have uh a view i mean we're we're uh into the weeds here a little bit but you know i think this is important to talk about, especially from you, because you don't really pull punches, Mark. You know, what role should the average person think that they have in something like picking a government? I mean, I'm of the opinion that your election in 2020 was fraudulent. I think we've had fraudulent elections. I think when I look at stuff like no ID to vote and illegals voting and all this other shit. There's only one reason to do that.

Of course. And like anyone who denies it, it's an IQ test, right? And if you fail, you fail. But at least then I know that you don't have, you know, the cut of your jib is not going to match the cut of my jib. And we can go on our merry way after that. What role does the average person even have in picking government? Like this is a problem that I think a lot of the modern world is coming to now. And I'm not sure if you've ever read The Sovereign Individual, but these guys were extremely prescient with their opinions in the 90s, the two authors.

And they mentioned stuff like, as the government starts to lose power, as the state starts to lose dominance over its subjects, the lengths to which they will go to preserve that power will become more oppressive and more obvious but there's going to be a huge chunk of the population that just doesn't care and so what do you think the average person should be doing like what is like the start it's not the starting strength radio listener i'm worried about no it's it's the pbs enjoyer i'm worried about what do you do for those people how do you open their eyes i don't think you can. And I don't think it's our business to try.

If people want to be actively uninformed, then they should have the right to be actively uninformed because it's easier. You know, it's easier. Do you think that they, and, and easy, I mean, if that's the way you guys want to do this, you know, if you want to do it the easy way, well, go ahead. But you have to realize that there are consequences to doing things the easy way. If you want to come in the gym and do five pound dumbbell curls, then go ahead and do it.

But don't complain about not making any progress. If you want to continue to vote for these criminals that are manipulating the system for themselves because that's all they're doing. If you want to, if you want to do that, then go ahead and continue to vote, but don't be shocked. When governor Newsom goes to the French laundry,

when you are locked up in your house, don't be shocked. You voted for that. You voted for that. You voted for that. All of this shit going on in California right now, it's a disaster. It's a disaster. It's been under-reported in the mainstream

because it is, and they'll call it climate change, because they have to. they have to blame it on something and then uh they just go on to the next story but the but what's going on in california right now is a function of the absence of responsible government in californ, and that is a function of the voter in California. There is every statewide office in the state of California for the past 25 years. Every one of the statewide offices has been Democrats. And as a result, those are the policies that are in place.

And as a result of that, I mean, need I mention the physical reality of the fact that if you do not clear dead brush out from underneath power lines, that you're going to have a fire. Yeah, the other physical reality. Get up high. Do I need to actually remind you of that? No, you want the dead brush under there because that's the natural environment. California has not been in a natural environment in a very, in a couple of hundred years.

Right. And no place else has either. But you voted for it. This is what you voted for. Now that you have seen what you have voted for and the effects of what you have voted for, you don't have any choice in how to unvote for that. You can't do it. So what do you have to do?

Well, you have to move. Because in the final analysis, the voter can't do anything. If everybody else is just as stupid as you are, you know, you have the only thing you can control is your own personal shit. And that involves where you live. Now, a lot of people

in California have moved to Texas. And they've destroyed Austin. Austin used to be a pretty cool little place. But Austin is now California. And the people that move there from california have turned austin into california and it's you know they fucked a lot of things up they've got you're gonna austin under the overpasses or tent cities under the overpass

well that didn't used to we didn't used to tolerate that here. But, I mean, the homeless, they're the homeless. They're sacred. You know, people who can't keep a job are sacred. Yeah. To that group, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because that's, you know, they control the media.

The media have told us that the homeless are sacred. They've not said that the homeless are people who can't keep a job or won't get a job. Well, you and I don't have the option of not having a job. Not last I looked, no. I mean, have you ever not had a job since you were like 12? No, even before that, I was delivering Sears catalogs, if you can believe it. Yeah, no, I drew the shopper, you know, a little paper when I was a kid. I had some money and stuff, and I mowed yards.

Mowed yards for a lot of years. And made a living mowing yards. You know, in the middle of the summer in North Texas, in 112 degrees, and I'm out there mowing yards. Because what's your option? You know? Yeah. You know, that's just what you do.

You have to work. So these people in the tent cities under the overpasses, they just don't want to mow yards. You know, and since they're sacred now, we have excused this misbehavior. Yeah. And in fact, implied some virtue to it. This is the big problem.

Yeah. That it's become virtuous behavior here in Dundas in Hamilton, Ontario. We just had a vote. I think yesterday, the day before I live in a city of about 700,000, 600,000, something like that.

So not small, not big, but somewhere in the middle. And we have a tent problem in the downtown core. And in a lot of parks, the neighborhood I moved from to this house, uh, was starting to see tents and little fires pop up in the woodland,

not far from my house where I used to walk my dog off the leash and all this stuff. Right. And you know, this vote yesterday, uh, I think it was like 12, six in favor of dismantling the tent encampments.

You know, it's a, you ain't gotta go home, but you can't stay here type bill type type law. And the number of mouth breathers, Mark, uh, to the most generous term who are up in arms, furious about this. These people deserve better. They're just like you and me. I would point to a story and actually, you know, to your point earlier about not being able to keep a job. They're not all like that, Mark. They're not all like that. There's one enterprising group of tent enjoyers in one of the parks downtown here who built underground tunnels to sell and manufacture narcotics.

And the police were not allowed to raid this tunnel for months because of the backlash and the public attitude toward these things. And so when I hear things like we have to let them exist, we have to let them do that. It's always about someone else's right to cause mischief and not my right to be left the fuck alone and be able to enjoy the park that my property taxes go to or that my kids walk through or that I throw a ball to my dog in. It's always someone else. And this is really the problem with modern society, is that it is so easy to go after the net producers, and impossible to go after the people who need to be made to understand that they have to produce something or get the fuck going. Yes, that's absolutely true.

That's absolutely true. That's absolutely true. And the reason, I guess, for that is because it makes everybody feel better. If there's no, what would you call this? We don't want to be judgmental, see uh we don't want to be judgmental see we don't want to be judgmental about another person's productivity and uh another person's value to society as a whole in other words we don't want to do the math because this is just arithmetic. And we're back to our science education. It's just arithmetic. If a guy doesn't earn any, if he doesn't add value to some sort of a system, if he's a non-value-added participant but he is entitled to enjoy the same benefits

of adding value as you and i do well where does this value where does it come from that he enjoys come from? Well, it comes from me and you. Because there's nowhere to source for it. And this is just arithmetic. I'm sorry, arithmetic is arithmetic. It's worked pretty well. It allows us to build a house.

Arithmetic is just a series of calculations. Constructing a structure is the result of a series of calculations. And God damn, if the thing doesn't stand there. You know, hey, it stands there. It must have worked. Something worked there, yeah. something worked there yeah nothing worked and what worked was the arithmetic it's this whole thing is just arithmetic other than that i think you're right and i think the thing too mark is that because people don't understand

when they think about money okay watch me watch me try and lasso you into bitcoin here as when people think about money they don't understand that money is just value. And value is a measuring stick that is chameleon-like in its applications. Here in Canada, we have socialized medicine that doesn't fucking work. It doesn't work. I think we had like 17,000 people die waiting for scans last year in canada that number is unacceptable at any number if the population of canada if 90 of the population of canada didn't live within driving distance of the united states yeah you guys would have a different

system wouldn't you yeah because you wouldn't have any choice yeah yeah it's funny that the the the thing people like what they were's funny. The thing people don't get is that even if it doesn't necessarily cost you more money on your paycheck, our tax rates here are nuts. I don't know what they are in Texas. Here, I lose an untold amount of money running this business to taxes that I'll never fucking enjoy the benefits of. We don't have an income tax. Yeah. So I lose about 40% of my income in taxes right off the hop. And then more on the business. I spend my post-tax dollars and get taxed again. I can't be born or die here without significant tax burdens no matter what, whether I'm a baby or whether I'm a jar of ash,

the government wants it's cut. And the thing people don't get is that you're losing value, not just in your paycheck. People who don't have a paycheck are losing value too. Even if you're one of these leeches, you're still not getting what you could have otherwise had if we don't add more value producers. Because when you go to the hospital with a cut, it will become septic instead of you getting it fixed. Great example, in Manitoba, not one the hospital with a cut, it will become septic instead of you getting it fixed. Great example. In Manitoba, not one month ago, a veteran, Canadian Army veteran, went to the hospital to get a knee replacement, ended up losing her leg because the doctor was going to, quote unquote, return to sew up or suture up a wound and didn't come back for four days. Ended up losing a leg.

And, you know, you got to ask yourself as a Canadian, is that nuts?. And you got to ask yourself as a Canadian, is that nuts? Like you got to ask yourself as a Canadian, what is it you want out of a system that you are paying more than any other first world citizen into and getting less and less back? Whether it's the bumps in the road, a subway that's unsafe or healthcare where you will die before you get a scan.

What is it that you want as a Canadian? And you guys don't have that problem. I say to people all the time, and maybe we can talk about this. I am dying for some kind of deal from Donald where he'll match my CAD savings one-to-one with USD as long as I buy a house in some state that's underpopulated or something. I'd'd be on the next plane mark honestly because it's just a better way to live as opposed to just giving money away to these pet causes do you like do you guys think about this at all does anyone up there even want canada to be the 51st state we already are the 51st state many canadians don't realize

that well you're already you've been the 51st state for a very long time. Yeah. But everybody that's thought about it has realized that you guys are a pain in the ass. Wait a minute. Why? Why? Because you've got this attitude. Because you voted just like the voters in Los Angeles. You voted for this shit. Yeah.

This is your deal. This is your baby. It's not Texas's baby.xas you don't you don't we don't have a job voting we don't have an income tax in texas that's incredible now we've got stupid ass property taxes yeah but income is like it it penalizes productivity it does penalize productivity you can't have that no and uh i don't know. Let's see what Mr. Trump does when he, he said a bunch of real interesting things over the past couple of months. You know,

let's have to see what he actually manages to accomplish once he, once he gets an office, if they don't kill him first. Yeah. I've heard you say that. I'm sorry. They've tried twice. There's a lot on the line, Mark. There's a whole bunch of bureaucracy on the line. A whole bunch of government employees don't want him in office. A whole bunch of them.

And there are more people with an incentive to kill him than there are with an incentive to protect him. In that inner circle, for sure. In that circle. He is forced to run him. You know. I just hope he has his own people.

I hope he's got his own people that he trusts. Because, I mean, the Secret Service is... people hope he's got his own people that he trusts because i mean the secret services well you saw the secret service detail unbelievable i didn't believe it i mean they're 28 year old fat women are in the mark it's the same pool it's the same pool as the los angeles fire department same thing they're all getting the same pool just amazing it's just absolutely amazing i think it's it's so dangerous man because like you guys you know you didn't you know it's one thing if you have like a wartime president you can deal with shitty people around a wartime president but you

guys are just finishing four years of a fucking n time president and now you got fucking a decade you know of of like he basically did more than a decade worth of undoing of decent policy i would even go back to some of the obama policies that he's got a decade of diversity hires yeah and that's all it's a disaster i mean everybody that watched kamala har Harris try to run for president understands what a diversity hire is. Yeah, totally. You know, her entire presence was an education about diversity. You know, she's not there because of what she can do.

She's there because of what she can do. She's there because of what she is. And that's all of this DEI woke bullshit. It's just, it, you know, and it wants you, if, if merit is not part of the equation, then the thing doesn't work. You know, this is just one, one more, one more regression back to arithmetic. This is just arithmetic. This is what you should have learned in the public school system that you didn't learn. You apply this to everything, and we can't. the laziness of the american voter is is responsible for her and sleepy joe being in

four years of the the worst administration in the history of the united states by far the worst administration in terms of what they've accomplished and what they've destroyed this is the worst administration we've ever had i totally agree canadians feel that way too i think by and large we may not express it i mean i would express it like that i think that guy's a you know a total sort of loser but the canadian public i think would look at their quality of life and say you know we've had a significant decrease and. And there's an implicit admission there that, number one, it doesn't matter what policies we come up with. If you guys are not competent, you know, things are not good. You guys are like the Knicks, right? You know, the Knicks are not my favorite team all the time, but the NBA is better when the Knicks are good. And you guys need to be good for the whole thing to work. And when you're not good, the whole thing fucking sucks. And it sucks for us up here. Oh, I know.

I know this is, the geopolitical relationships have to be paid attention to. Yeah. You know, they have to be paid attention to. If Canada, if the United States is not functioning to prop the rest of the area up only area suffers. Yeah. You know, uh, now is, is Canada, but gonna radically change its, uh, it's economic policies. Probably not. But without us as the, the, the safety net, you know, 90% of you guys live within driving distance of the border you know uh then you know i mean if you had the choice of driving five miles to a canadian hospital

or 75 miles to an american hospital what do you do I'd go to Buffalo for any imaging I needed now. I'm about 50 minutes from the high mark where the bills play, basically. And so I would go to Buffalo and pay $1,000 US for imaging and just take it home with me on a USB drive the same day, as opposed to waiting here. I mean, even if you know somebody in the hospital system, you're still waiting a month minimum. And it fucking sucks. To get in, you're waiting waiting month minimum and like it fucking sucks

like the money you're waiting a month to get a scan mark to get a scan by the way the machines fucking suck you go there they're four hours behind the nurse hates her life because she's run down and why is she run down she's run down because she doesn't make any fucking money she's run down because you know 75 you know because because 10 years ago five percent of the people didn't speak english now it's 75 of the people she sees don't speak english she's run down because, you know, 75%, you know, because, because 10 years ago, 5% of the people didn't speak English. Now it's 75% of the people she sees don't speak English. She's run down because she can't afford her house or groceries are triple the cost. She's delivering Uber Eats.

So she's not sleeping. Her nutrition's gone down. So she's not feeling well. And you're just there because your knees fucked up. And it's a, it's like a, you're at the tail end of all of this chaos. And it's just like, you, you're at the tail end of all of this chaos and it's just like you you're taking the the runoff right like that's really if you want to talk about trickle down economics like that's trickle down economics trickling down onto me during my experience trying to get an mri

that's all economics trickles down yeah you morons all economics trickles down. Yeah. Trickle down. Making fun of trickle down economics. I love it. People don't know anything about economics. They don't know anything. And listening to your point about Kamala Sutra there running for president, I was fucking dying at some of those debates when she's talking about trade surpluses and whatnot. She doesn't know what a trade surplus is. She doesn't know what trade is. She doesn't know what a trade surplus is. She doesn't know what trade is. She doesn't know what a surplus is.

She doesn't know the meaning of the words. Yeah. She doesn't know anything at all. Yeah. And, you know, can you not watch her talk? Yeah, it's ugly. She doesn't know anything at all about what she's talking about. And they stood her up there anyway.

I know. I know. Yeah, listen, I don't know if you usually drink at 3 o'clock. You might today. I don't know i mean she uh it's it's uh it was it was really a fascinating thing to watch yeah the leadership of that party stood those people up there and and just let them die yeah this is beating you can't put them in charge of anything you put them in charge of the state of california look look what they did yeah yeah if you don't get burned alive you get you know shit on or pissed on by a drug addicted vagrant on your way to your job the job the taxes you 50 percent of your wage one of the two yes, we're coming up to an hour here.

I have an obligation, Mark, to the listeners. You're all about arithmetic. You're all about going against the narrative. Mark, the Bitcoin thing, man. I should tell people before we signed on, Mark literally sat in the chair. He was in the chair for 10 seconds and he said, we can talk about anything as long as we don't talk about Bitcoin. I feel like I've softened you up enough that you'll at least tell me how wrong I am about it if I ask you about it.

Let me tell you what I, I can't tell you that you're wrong about it because I don't know anything about it. Okay. I'm totally S uninformed. I don't understand it. I don't understand. I understand why gold has intrinsic value. Why precious metals have intrinsic value. Gallium, for example, is used for things that nothing else can be used for. Palladium, rhodium, platinum, gold, silver. These things have physical properties that make them important in processes and in products that mean that their scarcity drives the price of these materials.

Now, Bitcoin, I don't understand in that way. I don't understand how it seems to me like a fiat currency. Oh, no. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And I'll tell you what, there's a lot of people that understand it at that same level that I do. I don't see the point. But, you know, enough intelligent people are in favor of this, where there's got to be something going on there that I've just, maybe I just haven't investigated it enough, but I don't, it is, it seems to me to be just a creation of something. I can't. Yeah, go ahead. And so tell me how I'm wrong.

I, I, it's a conversation that is too long. I'm going to do something I've never done before on this show. Okay. I'm going to send you a book. I hear you talking about reading. You've you read some books that I've never heard of, although I do have behind me here, a copy of the super athletes. So I am at least somewhat on the same page as you.

And I think that if I send you a book by a friend of mine, friend of the show, and significantly impactful Bitcoiner for a lot of us who are into Bitcoin, the Bitcoin standard. And I'm going to send you something called an open dime. And Rusty and Nick can help you figure it out. It's going to have some Bitcoin on it. And you're going to send you something called an open dime and Rusty and Nick can help you figure it out. It's going to have some Bitcoin on it and that you're going to be on your way. You're going to be on your way after that. I have no, I have no doubts that you will embrace this. It's, and I don't disagree with you by the way, on gold and the other stuff. I have a gold chain. I'm Italian. I see gold. I love it. I see cement. I mix it. These are the things my people do. And I can't fight that. And when I love it. I see cement. I mix it. These are the things my people do.

And I can't fight that. And when I hear people talk about gold as a good store of value, it has intrinsic value, I'm right there. And the thing about Bitcoin is that it has some physical ties to energy, has some physical ties to commodities, which are limited. Everyone understands that. And this idea that we can move gold, at least in some ratio, the same properties with some improvements in portability and fungibility and whatnot to the digital medium is appealing to a lot of people. And I'm on the older end of Bitcoiners at my age. I think a lot of people younger than me, they, and this is another piece of it, right? The zeitgeist around Bitcoin compared to the zeitgeist around gold. One has seen its peak already

and the other, I think, has yet to see it. And this is another thing that's driving some of the value. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I don't know. Is it without risk? Certainly not. But we both agree that the fiat standard that we're on right now is not,

I don't think long for this world at this point. Well, it's, it is certainly subject to a lot of adverse manipulation. You know, if, if, For example, if the dollar becomes not the currency in which the energy markets operate. Well, the United States is... It's a big problem. They're as fucked as you can get. Yeah, that's a huge problem, for sure. It's a huge problem.

So, I mean, yeah, there are exposures to fiat currencies. They work as long as everybody agrees that this is what we're going to do. Right? You know, they work as long as everybody agrees that this is what we're going to do. Right. And there's not enough gold. On the free gold on the surface of the planet for it to function as a medium of exchange on a daily basis with human beings just isn't enough of it this is big this is bitcoiners greatest hits you're playing them you're playing them all right now there's there's uh you know and you could make you could expand into other precious metals if you want to but you you ever once in a while you're going to run into a situation where

if you want to make a large enough uh transaction i mean i don't know how rhodium is going to work you know you could have rhodium coins right right? You could have palladium coins. They're beautiful, but there aren't enough of them to where, and so you've got to have some kind of fiat exchange medium to swap value. Everybody has to agree that this represents some value. And if I give you X amount of this, then I've exchanged value that I have now to you. Right. Well, I understand how it works, but, uh, you know, and it, it may be that Bitcoin is, but I'm telling you, there's got to be some better explanation done i agree than has been done so far i uh after this interview

i'm doing a nationally syndicated show here in canada as a guest and i'll be talking about bitcoin and some of the stuff that's been going on in that space and after after every appearance i make on that show my twitter feed fills up with people who have the same questions you do and i think those are the thing that bitcoiners do wrong and maybe you've had an experience with this maybe you haven't we are unkind to people who don't understand at first glance and we have to stop doing that because there's a lot of good people out there no i've experienced that myself it can't well maybe the reason i don't understand is because you can't explain it.

It's part of it. Yeah, for sure. And if you can't explain it, how am I supposed to understand? Yeah. If you can't explain it, how do you know you understand? My diminutive intellect is just not, you know, it's not up to the task, I guess. Or I'd already know it like you did. Mark, you've been a great guest um before you go tell people about

starting strength tell people about where they can learn more about the program there's no gyms up here in canada unfortunately no and we're not gonna we have uh two levels of of gym participation. We have, uh, our franchise gyms, which are, uh, owned by people who have, uh, participated in our, it's a franchise just like McDonald's is. We provide the structure and the, the effort in the design and everything else and how the gym works and how it's equipped and all that stuff. And those are franchise gyms and those are only in the United States.

And we won't go into some United States. For example, we won't, we won't go into California. Not a surprise. Or New York or New Jersey or Maryland. We won't go into those because you just can't deal with those governments. Right. And then we have people who have been certified as starting strength coaches who have demonstrated to us their capacity to coach this material,

who are able to open a starting strength affiliate gym. It's their gym and it's designed by them but they can use our logos because they're going to use our program so there's two ways you can participate in starting strength yeah now there are a few uh canadian starting strength coaches but we won't operate a franchise gym in a foreign country right now because we it just it's too weird to try to do it it's just too goddamn weird so we're kind of limited as far as that's concerned uh i explained the method earlier in the earlier in the program today and if you want to know more about that,

startingstrength.com is our website. Startingstrength.com, as far as I know, is the largest strength training website on the internet. I mean, there are other websites that deal with fitness and bodybuilding and stuff like that. But as far as strength training per se is concerned, we are the largest strength training website on the internet. There's hundreds of articles and hundreds of videos

and a very, very active forum that I moderate every day where you can post your questions and get them answered or discussed at least. And so if you want to contact us and, and you're interested in, in learning more about starting strength, the website is where you start starting strength.com. What you guys, you should plug the podcast your your show is one of the only other shows I recommend people listen to on a weekly basis we have a podcast that airs it goes up on various podcast sources at midnight on

Friday so Friday is a new podcast every week. Now, occasionally we will do a rerun. If we do a rerun, it's because we had some scheduling problems. And our goal is to run a new show every Friday. And we pretty much stick to that. And we've got guests on. We've got your questions. You guys submit your questions to us, and we answer them on the air. Or we'll pick a topic to discuss and, uh, stick with that. And, uh, you know, it's a variety of stuff. It's not

the same thing every week at all. Oh, it's a fun program. You got Rusty and Nick there. Rusty and Nick. The guests are outstanding. It's very good. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, not to mention comments from people on YouTube who hate you and, uh, Oh yeah yeah that's that adds quite a bit of value that's mark ripito uh thanks all right joey appreciate you having me on we'll do you got

it buddy you got it you're welcome anytime take care everyone