The Checkup with Doctor Mike - Zach Kornfeld Tries Medicine Without A Recipe

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

**This interview was recorded prior to the SAG-AFTRA strikes** Follow Zach here: https://www.instagram.com/korndiddy/?hl=en Check out The Try Guys on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/tryguys Zach Kornfeld is one of the founders of The Try Guys, internet royalty who try everything under the sun. Over the last few years, Zach has been on a personal journey where he has tried navigating the US healthcare industry... with mixed results. In invited Zach on The Checkup to go into detail about his experienced in healthcare, from living with Ankylosing spondylitis, to nearly dying after a treadmill accident weeks before his wedding earlier this year. Hosted and Executive Producer: Doctor Mike Produced by Dan Owens and Sam Bowers Art by Caroline Weigum

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Zach from the Try Guys almost died before his wedding, and I'm not kidding. What up, bitchy boy, Corn Diddy. I'm sorry. Zach is, of course, one of the original Tri-Guys and master of all things digital, amassing billions of views in a career beginning at BuzzFeed, and extending now into a massive media enterprise of his own. And while Zach has had enormous success in creating content for online audiences, he hasn't quite enjoyed the same successes when it comes. to navigating the healthcare industry.

Zach lives with a chronic pain condition known as ankylosing spondylitis, a diagnosis that took countless years and doctors to come to. On top of that, Zach suffered an accident at his home this year that resulted him being hospitalized for weeks, putting his wedding and life in jeopardy. I've reacted to Zach's health videos before, but today I wanted to dive deep, so I flew out to L.A. and invited him to come on the checkup to discuss not only his health care woes, but are issues with American healthcare industry in general. Despite his frustrations, Zach is back on his feet and not slowing down anytime soon.

I'm back. Right? I'm back. I'm on the streets. Run for your lives. And the Achilles tendons in full force. Yeah. You know what's crazy?

Okay, so you and I had a talk and you asked me like, everything's fine, right? And I was like proudly like, yes, I don't even need physical therapy. I'm so good. Mike, I was not done. I was so far from done. Well, you had to do a lot of PT after you. haven't done PT and maybe I should. I also were waiting for some test results. I may have a bleeding disorder. No. Yeah. Wow. You're learning a lot. Your body in such a short period of time.

Well, because when I was in the surgery, they were like, you bleed a lot. Oh, they said that. Yeah. And then when they went to close the wound, they were like, whole, you know, okay, so I had a Pemrose, which is I called the forbidden boba straw. Yeah, you called a drain. So, that was sticking out of my leg to help it drain and when they finally took it out i they like it was two minutes five minutes 10 minutes and i would not stop bleeding oh my and he's like this is wrong like i just cut a suture like this there's nothing that it should keep bleeding yeah so then they cauterized my wound which is gross it smells gross it smells crazy you're laying on uh you know you're laying face down because it's the back of my my leg and you just

hear like, and you smell, it's not even like, it's not even bacon. It just, it goes right to burn. Okay, so wait, they singed your wound and then it stopped bleeding, but now they're exploring potential. Yeah, we're past the elevator pitch. Factor five deficiencies or something? You know what? Yeah. I think that's it. He said factor something. Okay. He, I was with my doctor and he's like, Ashkenazi, and I'm like, yeah, he's like, I know what's going on. The Jews, they get all strike again. So, yeah, basically he was explaining that there's two different types of clotting. And as I understand it, again, I haven't gotten the results back. So he gave me like the elevator pitch of it and then said, I'll explain it if it comes back positive. This is just something I need

to be aware of if I bleed a lot, which is a giant cut or surgery. And then it's like a nasal spray. But you're confirmed to have this already. Not yet. Okay. So maybe if you would, that's the route you're going to have to take. Well, because like, for example, when they say he There's a hemophilia A and B. So A is factor 8 deficiency. And the way I remember that is A8. Did you have to come up with all sorts of mnemonics in med school? What's the stupidest one you have? The metacarpals of the wrist, some lovers try positions that they can't handle. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And don't ask me what they stand for it. But each of those means a different metacarpal. See, I don't even know them. I don't even know what a metacarpal. I thought

a metacarpal was a Pokemon. It could be. It should be, actually. So metacarpals are in your wrist, metatarsals are in your feet. Metatarsals. Yeah. So you could have potentially damaged a metatarsal. And I, okay, so this is going back to where we started. I was so scared that when this all happened, that I would have nicked a nerve or something. And I proudly told you that everything was fine. And then for the next two months, my foot would tingle all the time. And I go, go, oh, no. I've, I spoke, I jinxed myself. But it's kind of, it's gone away. And now every now and then, I'll feel like a little weirdness tingling my toes. But for the most part, we seem to be okay. Okay. But you told me a lot of shitty experiences you had with the medical system. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Even like when you were in the hospital with your leg, like you were getting bills that were like screwing you over and I, someone, I mean, when you were in the hospital, you get woken up so much. And I mean, one, you're on painkiller. So you're delirious. But, They, like, you know, at midnight, they check your vitals. And then at two in the morning, like, you have to get up to pee or, or, no, in this case, it was explosive diarrhea. Yeah. And then at three in the morning, your surgeon, like, comes to check on your wound. And then they check your vitals again at 6 a.m.

And then someone comes in with an insurance form and is like, hey, you have to pay this right now. And I'm like, well, okay, just sign whatever you want, bro. And the, just tell them to bill your insurance company. Just, just always tell them to bill. And they're going to be like, no, you should just, I don't care what you'd say. Not signing anything right now. Not of sound mind. Don't do it.

I even, because I hit my out of pocket. Wow. And people, and I don't like, I'm just so used to like people pleasing. Like when they tell me to pay, I'm like, okay, sure. Yeah. Like I, I didn't, I've never hit my out of pocket, so I didn't know what that was. and I didn't know. My wife yelled at me when I went in for something and she's like, there's no co-pay anymore. You're done. And I didn't know that. And so I paid my...

But only for the year. For the year. But I paid my co-pay. And it's not like the insurance company is going to be like, oh, dude. Oh, my God. Here's your 50 bucks back. Sorry about that. Yeah. The office should do that though. And they should. Some places are messy. Yeah. Yeah, the economics of our health care system. Something terrible is going to happen for it to fix itself. And the fact that we're waiting for the iceberg while on the Titanic is kind of weird. What could be, because I feel like something terrible happens every day. So what, what seismically? Yeah. Colossily needs to happen. And not

needs to, it will happen. But would. Yeah. Like, I'll give you an example. You saw what happened in New York with COVID in March 2020, where the healthcare system couldn't bring in enough resources to help people with heart attacks. Something like that will happen again. Well, what's wild to me is that, yeah, I mean, you say something colossal happened. Something colossal did happen. Sure. Our medical system is, is crumbling under its own weight. Doctors and nurses are beyond burnt out and leaving. And so now, like when I was in the hospital, you were getting all these travel nurses. Nothing against travel nurses, but it's their first week in L.A. Yeah, they're learning where the stuff is in the hospital. They don't know where, like, it just, it's hard for them. And that's a bad experience for us. And then

the, I was at UCLA hospital. You know, I have nothing but great things to say about the people, but the system. And that's UCLA. And UCLA's as good as it gets. People in the yard, they were lining, uh, the hallways. Like the trolleys, like every cubic inch of that place was filled with a bed and you were under fluorescent lights day and night. Um, and it's because there was no room in the rest of the hospital. Capacity. Yeah. There's just no room. That's like I, that to me as a non-medical person. I can't fathom that a hospital's just out of room. What do you mean it's out of room? That's what you're here for. And I also, while we are hitting the U.S. hard with this, this is an international problem. The U.K. is dealing with this. Australia is dealing with

this. Like, everywhere, this is a problem. No one can quite figure it out. Is this something that it's like bloated salaries and bureaucratic misspending? Or is it that people are getting sicker it's in the u.s i can speak to the u.s no no it's a you i could speak to the u.s issue because i can't speak to what's going on really in the uk or australia but in the u.s the administrative costs to run a hybrid system has gotten so out of control that the health care costs have 10x what they were 20 years ago and it has nothing to do with doctors getting paid more or more doctors working or more nurses or their wages going up it's for every doctor you need like 10x you need like 10 10 staffers to make sure the insurance pays and to make sure that this pharmacy actually dispenses

the medicine and a front desk administrator to make sure that they pay their co-pay. So when you say hybrid system, you mean all of the bullshit that it takes to go from the doctors doing their job to whatever insurance entanglement to sign off on this. Sort of. When I say hybrid system, like in Canada, they have a universal health care. system. In the UK, they have universal health care system. Here, we have sometimes government-funded healthcare programs, Medicaid, Medicare, but then we also have employee-backed healthcare, but then we also have private health care. And that sort of hybridization means when you come into my office, I have no idea as a doctor, what you have to pay, because there's so many friggin different things versus in the

UK, you know what's going on. Right. And then, of course, anytime this is brought up any universal health care, there is the fear that having universal health care means I will lose my ability to the incredible private health care that I rich person wants. But it's not like universal health care is like a one-size-fits-all solution either. Look at the UK. They're struggling with their universal health care system too. It's crumbling under debt because someone has to pay for that too. Sure.

So the taxes need to be raised and people don't want their taxes raised and it's like, who pays for it? And it's like, okay, the billionaires, but then the billionaires move their money elsewhere. and now you can't tax it anymore and now it's not coming into your system and it's like holy shit this is so complicated I'd rather react to medical memes

it's so complicated and it's so unbelievably important because we're all going to go through this yes that's why anyone who thinks they're like taking supplements I will never need to deal with this you're wrong you're fucking wrong

everybody is going through this we we got into the you know you asked me about the issues that I've had with, I forget how you phrased it, the issues I've had with the medical system or something. And that was like a very intense one. But even just on a day to day, you know, I have a chronic condition. I have anglosic spondylitis. And it took me a decade to get that diagnosed. And I'm a, I'm a white dude. I'm the easy one to get diagnosed. It's so women, people of color have a really, really hard time getting, getting any sort of invisible

illness or chronic condition or anything well yeah women chronic conditions like that's the top two misdiagnosed things because here's what happens everyone wants to we call it punting in health care where you don't want to deal with the problem because it takes a lot of work and you're already under this huge load so maybe it's not even because you're a bad person but just because like there's like 10 rocks you're holding up and then if you get one more you're worried so you punt the rock to someone else but what ends up happening with people who have non-specific symptoms. When I say nonspecific, meaning if you come in and you have AS and you have back pain and fatigue, that could be 500,000 different conditions. So in order to like properly diagnose it

takes a lot of work to do a proper history, a proper physical, to order the correct tests without overordering tests and all these things, have a good communication line with you. So people are like, I'll punt it. Try some ibuprofen. And guess what? You can't really sue them because they're like, there's back pain and I said it's musco skeletal, is it not? And they're technically right, but they're also technically doing a disservice by doing it. And while I want to blame individual providers for it, it's a systemic issue. And a lot of times this goes into the issue of gaslighting where it's easy to villainize physicians or even nurses and say they give women bad care or they give people with chronic

conditions, bad care. If they're set up to fail by the system, how can we blame them? If the research on skin conditions were only done on people with white skin, how can we blame doctors for being bad at diagnosing dark skin colors? They weren't trained. Sure. So like, yes, they can go the extra mile. It's a systemic issue as much as it is a personal one. Yes, exactly. And that goes across the board, whether we're talking about heart attacks and women, the skin color issue for dermatologic conditions, diagnosing and spending enough time with a patient for autoimmune or chronic conditions, all of that yields to really bad care. And you know what that leads to? People being susceptible to miracle potions and cures in the naturopathic side.

Sure. Because those people are like, has the medical society in service done you wrong? We're here to be your ear. And it sounds like a better deal. It sounds like a better deal. And I also think that there's just such a desire for the magic bullet. Yeah. I've been looking for the magic bullet in my AS everywhere I can. I was hoping that medicine was the magic bullet. And then I went, well, okay, maybe acupuncture is the magic bullet. Maybe there's no one thing.

It's a toolkit. You need a variety of things. And unfortunately, with chronic conditions, there's usually not the one thing that makes everything all better. If it was that easy, we would just fix everything. Yeah. And it's really not. And anytime you do something that works in medicine, you always end up creating the other effect of doing something else, whether that's a side effect that's negative or just an unintended effect. And a lot of these supplements are like, it's natural. There's no risk. It's like if there's no risk, that means it's not doing anything either. I am curious about something. So advice that you would have for me

or for patients. Okay. Because I trust doctors slash I don't want to know anything. I love being stupid little boy. I like, my brain is like filled with movie facts and nothing else. Oh, what do you mean movie facts? I just like movies. Like quotes?

Sure, quotes, but I know who directed what and I know how they shot this scene and children of men. And I, that's what I, that's what my brain. like thinking about like thinking about camera composition and whatnot but even with even with my chronic disease i don't want to know anything about it which is a weird thing right why i it's just i well why because i i mean the real answer is i wanted again one magic bullet to make it all better and i don't have to think about this it's denial it's denial of something being a part of you It's fatigue, annoyance, anger.

It sounds like all of these emotions that you're having having to deal with this situation. Yes. But then something that happens that is quite negative. And I think, look, part of me not getting a diagnosis for a long time, I think it's systemic. I think it's the doctor's issue. And I probably shouldn't blame myself, but I do a little bit because I'll go in and I'll underplay my symptoms or I'll go, well, I guess. yeah, I mean, I don't know how bad it's been. Maybe it can't be that bad. And I start to doubt

myself. And I, it took me getting to just this unbelievable breaking point until I snapped and, you know, demanded an answer. Yeah. But it was years of being told like, oh, it sounds like you have a bad back. And I go, oh, you're right. Yeah, you know, you're right. It's, it's, I don't work out enough. That's why I have this pain. It's not something worse. And I imagine there are a lot of people like me who, when they are told a potential solution, I'm sorry, a potential explanation, the punt, they take it and they don't challenge it. Yeah. So advocating for yourself, just as equally as I want to advocate for systemic change,

I equally advocate for individuals to make change on their own. Because just like a really simple example is my friend was getting his apartment renovated and he had painters come over and get it. him a quote to paint the three bedroom apartment that was like 1500, 1600 square feet they said 60,000 and he paid it i'm one of those people by the way i would not pay it but i'm like i guess that's how much it costs yeah but like he's like i just wanted to make sure that they would do it right and i didn't want to underpay them but guess what ended up happening they still did a shitty job he still had to call them back they didn't show up so like as much as you want someone to take it off

your hands or the system to do a better job, ultimately no one will do it better as much as you. Yep. And that sucks because that's kind of how life is, but you got to do it. It's like arming yourself with the most advocacy and knowledge, even when you don't want to do it, it's ultimately like going to give you the best outcomes. No matter how nice the system is, no matter how good your doctor is, you or your loved one advocating for you is going to give you the best outcomes. The most important mental shift that I've had in my medical treatment, but

all throughout my life, is that no one is responsible for you except for you. And look, man, I want to just be a little baby boy. Oh, that sounds so great. I want mama health, doctors to mom and dad to just take care of me, and I go in and I say, I got

the boo-boo, and you just go, well, here's the boo-boo gun. I trust the doctor. The doctor's going to do everything great. But you can't. You can't. It's not to say you You don't appreciate doctors. No, it's saying you have to question. You have to question. So don't be a cynic, be a skeptic.

Okay. I like that. I think that's a good approach when it comes to. That's how I treat like novel treatments. Because when it comes to something new being discovered, everything new initially sounds a little wacky. I mean, the first person to advocate to wash hands in between performing autopsies and delivering babies was killed for his thoughts on that?

Killed. Killed? Killed. From the what? YouTube video coming. I like that from what, the anti-soap legislation? No, doctor is saying, like, what do you mean? You're telling us there's invisible things that we're putting on patients that we're killing them.

And they try to lock him up an insane asylum and tortured him, beat him, and he died. Wow. So, yes, every idea is going to sound a little wacky. So you have to be skeptical and put that idea to test, but it doesn't mean that you're a cynic that anything new that sounds interesting or miraculous needs to be instantly not believed. I'm curious. I found that doctors are, I don't know, forced or if it's just their, the way that their mind works is that if something hasn't been clinically researched, they seem to be somewhat dismissive of it. So I told my rheumatologist, who I adore, that I had been hearing from people with AS, that a plant-based diet was really beneficial. And he was like, oh, well, you know, can't hurt, but there's not. Like, he would have. tell me that that was a good idea. And I don't know if that was because I can't tell you that's a good idea because it hasn't been researched. I think that's part of it. Yeah. I think doctors, we are trained to be like there's an evidence level rating for

everything. And if it doesn't have one, we really shouldn't recommend it. And then you'll have the other end of the spectrum. Well, they'll recommend anything and everything just because their expert opinion, they think it works. And I'll tell you, the most dangerous mistakes in history have come as a result of bad expert opinion. I mean, George Washington, was killed because some expert doctor said we need to balance his humors. So they made him bleed and puke and have diarrhea. And they killed him. I don't know this. Yeah. That would have been way more exciting to learn than like chopping down the cherry tree. Right. So that's what we talk about on the YouTube channel. We have a video how every president died. How do you feel about things like

acupuncture? How do I feel about them? Like I've used acupuncture successfully. Yeah. But then I've also used acupuncture where they damaged my nerve in my hand. And it was like a really big problem where I had serious neuropathy. Oh, that's not good. That's actually probably good that that happened because it shows that again, acupuncture is not 100% safe, which means that it doesn't work in some cases. Sure. Because anything that works has side effects.

So I had a side effect from acupuncture. Yeah. But I've also had it work. I'll have some day. It's one of those things where acupuncturists have tried to explain to me. And I'm like, I don't, it sounds, what you're telling me sounds crazy. I'll tell you, but then I have effects and I'm like, well, I woke up this morning and I couldn't move my neck and I went to acupuncture and now I can move my neck. So I don't care

what's happening. It's not uniform. Like when you go to check your blood sugar, there is a uniform rating of what's normal. And when it comes to either acupuncture education or knowledge, it's not uniform what's happening. You go to one acupuncturist, they do needles in this area. You go to another one for the same problem, they'll do it in a different area. And it's not very universal versus if you come to me and you're a type 2 diabetic, I have guidelines and I'm like, this is the first medicine that I start, this is the second medicine that I start. And if your sugar is still out of control, we start insulin and here's the dosing regimen.

The acupuncture is kind of like whatever that person wants. Right, sure. So I think that's where we run into issues, even with testing it. They do sham acupuncture, but like, yeah. So like in order to compare if something, works you have to do a randomized controlled study so one group has to get the placebo and the placebo is like some people think that they're getting acupuncture but it's sham it's like a sticker so that's kind of cool that's fun so they have tried doing that but it's never ideal so it's hard

to test some things for sure um my idea when it comes to those things is alternative medicine can be something to try if it's not high risk and it's not telling people to go away from something that is proven. Yeah. That's why I think it can live. My take on it all is supplemental as well. Like I'm not going to throw my medicine away because I'm, you know, doing X, Y, or Z. But if that can be an additional tool in my toolkit, amazing.

And if I can then get to a place where I feel so amazing because of my diet and my exercise and my treatments, whatever, maybe I can wean off of it. Maybe I can wean off of the medicine. But I'm not going to assume that one again is that magic bullet that is going to to offset the other. My just issue with the natural community is that they make natural sound safe and not everything natural is safe. Yep. Arsenic is natural. Cyanide is natural. So not everything is safe. And then also you have people who become predatory in the space. Yeah. And they start promising miracle cures and they're like, oh, I can do acupuncture and boost your immune system

and help you sleep better. It's like, can we start with the next spasm and like focus on that for a second. There is a, I believe it was in India. A man with ankylosing spondylitis was stung by a scorpion. Don't do this. It cured his A.S. No, no, no, no, don't do this. Well, I'm going to tell you to go it. It cured his A.S. And so the doctors were like, uh, cool. But what do we do with this information? Sure. Because you can't, you know, you talk about it. That's natural, but that's poison. Yeah. And it's, you can't ethically try that. Well, you could extract the poison

and put it in little petri dishes and do all the stuff. But maybe it's just a fluke. Maybe something else happened. It could have been maybe he was going to get cured anyway

because of other lifestyles and he happened to get stabbed by a scorpion. I'm going to blow your mind right now. In the 15th or 16th century there existed hotels called whale hotels that advertised

that if you sit in a dying carcass of a whale inhaling its fumes for 30 hours, it would cure you of rheumatism. Because some guy jumped into a whale's carcass, stayed there and claimed that it cured his rheumatoid arthritis. So all these whale hotels popped up. I'm not making this up. There's legitimate year?

15th, 16th century, am I correct? Like 100 years ago because there was a photo of it. Oh. Okay, that was. You know, I also don't love this fact because I think it's shady. But there's images of it. There's images of it. And it's from the Library of Congress.

This is listed on the dot-gov library congress. Aren't my tweets in the library? On the library website, there is a screenshot of a newspaper listing advertising a whale hotel. Yeah. There's not good evidence that people went to these places in Saturn, Wales, outside of one photo of a guy inside the whale. It was the thing. It's fun. Library of Congress.

But that's like the Scorpion story. Are you going to go swim in a whale carcass? I mean, if we got cameras, absolutely. there was um there is a woman who uh i believe she has lime disease and she uh she uses bee sting therapy oh yeah which i i always thought would be a really fascinating video um she she will sting down her spine i think once a month she takes bees that are are old and are about to die anyway um and and she credits that with curing her her lime disease i believe it's lime disease And to me, that I don't advocate for that.

I think it's amazing for her, and I'm thrilled that she had it. It's, you know, that's another thing that you can't really ethically reproduce because some people are allergic to bee stings. And then, I mean, you could ethically reproduce it, but like, we just have treatments for this thing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, like, why would you ever do that versus a 10-day or 12-day course of doxycycline?

Well, I think it underscores that a lot of these chronic conditions are underfunded and under-researched. And there are a lot of people who feel that there is nothing in medicine that is acceptable for them. And so you are driven to the mania of going, sure, I'll try bee stings down my spine. But what do you mean nothing's for them? What does that mean? Meaning they've tried things and nothing is working. Oh. And there is a world where we genuinely tried everything and nothing's working. Yeah. So like with my AS, I am on my fourth or fifth medicine.

And it's this maddening process where I don't have like a number that I get to print out and say, oh, it's 98% effective. Sure. We can look at the progression of the disease and go, okay, well, it's not progressing anymore. We can look at my inflammation markers. But it's really like, how do I feel on a day today? And I still have pain. And I have to kind of remember how much pain did I feel last year? It's very subjective.

I think this is less, and they always try and stay on a scale of 1 to 10, how much pain you have. I'm telling you, if you're in pain, you're always going to say 8. Maybe you'll say 7 because you want to leave a little bit of room, but then I'll, like, cut your arm open. You go, okay, no, that's 10. And then you, but then you stab your toe. That's 10. Like, 10 is also subjective. And it's also subjective per person.

Per person. So the whole number scale. And your mental health impacts how you feel pain. Yep, yeah. Experience pain. I hate the number scale. I understand its necessity, but I, I hate it.

So anyway, my point is for me, in that process where my medicines weren't working, absolutely I would have let a bee sting me. Because I'm just looking for anything. And if something has worked, and that's a shame. It's a shame that this stuff isn't better funded. That's the thing. It is funded. There's a lot of natural remedies that are actively being tested, and our government

actually does a lot of funding for it. And it's just, it's not sexy to hear about a study that proved something didn't work, so it doesn't make it down the path. I apologize. I meant that the medicines are underfunded. Like, AS is a pretty well-researched disease, but they're still working on it. And compared to, it's just not a lot of funny going around. Well, I will say AS and the medicines you're taking, you know, these are the number one profit driving drugs in the nation. I didn't know that.

Yeah. So all the immunomodulators, those are the. the most expensive drugs in terms of profit generating because what they do is they don't allow them to go off patent like they do in Europe to make generics it's really hard to make them they change their formulas around to keep them on patent a little bit longer these are targeted at people who will take them for the rest of their lives yeah so you don't have a choice but to take them but you also don't have a lethal condition so you will live a full life so you're going to need these for 150 years that you're going to live exercise is like the only thing that helps

diet and exercise. And of course, I'm on, I say that, which is a huge disservice to modern medicine. No, my medicine is hugely important and helps a ton. But no, I did a year journey where my goal was to gain 20 pounds of muscle, call out 20 pounds of muscle. It was about maybe five pounds of muscle and 15 pounds of softness. But I changed my diet. I went mostly plant-based. I cut out all these inflammatory foods. I was working out three times a week, which for someone as lazy as me, huge life change. Amazing. Okay. Were you happy with what was going on? Oh, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I felt amazing. And I hit my goal and I dropped off a cliff. Oh, no. So I'm now trying to get back into the swing of things. And it's, it's slow moving. Like, I'm curious why the drop off happened. Did you

not enjoy the exercise and all that? Or you were just like, I need to hit the goal. And that was the goal. And then you hit it. And then it kind of got bored. Yeah. I mean, it's just habits are really hard. I'm not an athletic person. So I never enjoyed exercise. It just has never hit for me. But I did a lot of habit stacking, which is something I picked up from all those like productivity podcasts. Okay. Tell me about those because I don't know what that is. Okay, so habit stacking is the idea of combining something you don't like with something you love. So an easy example is every time I work out, I'm going to have a Hershey kiss, right? It's like, oh, this little thing I love. But I decided to give myself something more high value. So weirdly, I binged the show succession. Okay. With working out. Which is a weird show to work out to, but it freaking worked for me. I don't know. You were walking or running? No, no, I don't run. So what was the exercise that you were doing? It's all low impact, like weight.

So you do weights while watching succession? That's tough. Because that's not an audio only show. No, and so I would have to rewind. It's not the best show for this. I've told Colin and Samir, I listen to their podcast while working out. That's one that I like. Podcasts are a lot easier.

Yeah, a lot easier. But yeah, you know, you do your push-ups. And you consume it on a phone? No, no, on my TV. So I'm working out in my living room and, like, I bring all of my exercise gear. I roll it out. And my wife is like, what the hell are you doing? And then at the end, I roll it up, which also made me then hate it.

Because that's another thing with habits is the lower resistance, the easier it is. So, like, if you want to work out, don't make it that you have to go to a gym. Don't even make it that you have to take your stuff out. Make it, like, as easy for you as possible. I'm anti a lot of these hacks. Well, hey, if it works for you, then I'm not. This is why I'm curious your take on my opinion on it. My thought is when you start doing it in this way, unless you really enjoy the hacking process, because some people are like, you know, fidgeting with technology or whatever, trying different things out, by trying to do this and like hack it so much, it becomes so tedious and stressful and anxiety inducing that actually it takes away from the power of the hack.

Okay, but you, I'm going to guess you didn't need the hack. What do you mean? I saw you did the creator class. You got yourself in shape. Okay, I'm going to make some wild guesses. Okay. Student athlete? Yes.

Runner? No. No. Not cross country. No. Hmm. Okay, I'm out of guesses. Sprinter, I mean.

Oh, come on. But I didn't do it. Sprinting is running. No, no, like our track team in high school was like, you're on the soccer team. We need kids on the track team. Were you on the soccer team? Yeah. Yeah.

See, this is the whole. foreign world to me. No. I'm a few my hands. They haven't worked a day in their lives. I am a soft boy. All right. Can we get you to like, boulder? Have you heard of bouldering? I used to do bouldering. See? And I loved it. See, I think that's a sport for you. It's like puzzle.

Yeah. So I never know what's right or wrong with my AS. So Anglosing spondylitis, it's I'm not telling you, I'm telling them. Tell me. You're the expert on your own. No, I'm certainly not. Well, about your symptoms at the very least. Yeah. So it's an inflammatory

disease and I need to do things that are low impact. Basically, the easiest way to understand it is it's spinal arthritis. It's in the spondolo arthritic family. Um, so I need to do things that are low impact. And when you boulder, which is rock climbing without ropes, when you're done, you just fall. Yeah. You just jump off. And I'm like, that's probably not the best thing for me to like thud over and over. Okay. But maybe you're right. But, but then I was thinking about it. Okay, because I played pickleball for the first time the other day. That's pretty high. And it's high impact, but I loved it. And I'm like, well, what...

How did you feel when you were doing it after the fact? Oh, it hurt. But it felt, but it was good. And that's the thing is that I'm like, if I love it, I think physical activity is better than no physical activity. So I think even if it's a high impact activity, there are ways for me to work it into... I don't think I need to be so binary about it.

I guess is what I'm saying. I think I would be better served. if I, you know, new, like, okay, play your pickleball weekly, and then lay on your heat mat and ice it and take some CBD and you're getting some physical activity. What about swimming? I don't have a pool. I'm just, a gym near you that has a pool? Swimming would be the best thing for me.

But that is, I've never, if I have to go to a gym, I won't work out. Sure. Weirdly, too. I know that's tough because I know swimming is like not. When do you work out? Whenever I have time to be honest these days. I like working at night. I'm like a 9 p.m. exercise.

If you're not doing high intensity crazy stuff, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, people think I'm crazy when I tell them that. But it's like my body's so achy in the morning. Yeah. It takes a while for you to warm up and get gone. I got to get that rest off.

Yeah. That's normal. I don't know. Okay, cool. Like a lot of people will ask some of the responding to comments questions. Like, when is the optimal time to work out? There's no answer for that. When you can do it.

When you can do it, when you like to do it, what works for you? Like, it's so individual. There's no one-size-fits-all answer here. While Zach's healthcare struggles have been a burden, he has been supported by his friends and collaborators at the Try Guys, who despite their enormous success, hit a rough patch this year due to the controversial separation from fellow Tri-guy, Ned Fulmer.

We touch on this briefly, but for more info, you can learn more by reading any Reddit thread or watching them get parodied on Saturday Night Live. Zach didn't start getting portrayed by Mikey Day on SNL, though. In fact, him and I got to see same start to our internet careers here. We started in the same place. I got my startup BuzzFeed as well. What are you talking about? My viral success happened because of BuzzFeed article got me popular. No kidding. When you were working there, I presume. That's

2015. You were there? Yeah, I was there. Yeah. Wow. So like they wrote an article, check out this doctor. And I was like, whoa. And then went viral. What were you posting on? Was it Instagram? Yeah. Instagram. Yep. And then since then, you guys left BuzzFeed? Is BuzzFeed a thing? Didn't they go bankrupt or something? They have not, no, you're thinking of Vice. No, something happened with BuzzFeed News?

They did shutter their news division. Yeah, which is a major bummer. Sad. Yeah, super sad. What was your, like, reason for leaving? Oh, I mean, there were a lot of reasons and also a very simple reason. Like entrepreneurial. Yeah, I was at BuzzFeed for four years and changed, maybe five.

and I felt like I had reached the limit of what I could do there that to grow I needed to move on specifically with the try guys it felt like we were not by their fault but we were in a box that was too small for us

and in order to explore it in all the ways that I thought we could that necessitated moving on and taking control there could have been a world in which they you know carved us out our own little mini studio they weren't equipped to do that.

So all of our contracts were coming up. And we kind of just had this moment of thinking about what could this look like as a company? Could we afford it? Would we make enough money to support a staff around us? To be able to make videos of the same quality and then some? Don't miss Swipe. A new movie inspired by the provocative real-life story

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They, I mean, we negotiated with them for a while. to retain the rights. I mean, we bought the Try Guys IP, which was certainly not a given. How much you pay? Yeah, I'm not allowed to talk about it. How many figures? I could, uh, I'm not allowed to talk about it.

Oh, my God. That's not allowed to. I'll tell you off camera. Link, how many fingers? No, it's, uh, I mean, look, um, it was a lot of money. Yeah, of course. And, and it was really cool that,

that they even allowed that to, to be a thing. Um, because there's, You know, you make, you create IP at a company. There is no obligation for them to give it to you. That is their show that I made as an employee. That is, they, they own that. And so we were, we were talking about starting over and trying to come up with new names and they all sucked. What were some of the names for consideration?

I literally, like, I don't even, like, it was like, the guys. And we're like, that's not even a thing. That's just that you can't just take try out. Try guys were the guys. Yeah, we like took our initials and tried some. some bogus thing, like nothing was even, nothing was even acceptable. It was all bad. But we were ready. We actually, we filmed two versions of our trailer launch video, one with, I think we just said the guys and one with the try guys. And like, we were ready to hit publish because the deal was

like, hey, this is just never going to happen. And then our lawyers were like, wait. Yeah, and a week later. How many videos have you made since then on your own? Oh, who knows? I mean, because we were, you know, at BuzzFeed, we would do 10 episodes seasons or maybe we had 60 episodes when we were there. And now we release two videos a week, sometimes more, plus the podcast. And that's been every week for, you know, actually now we've hit more time solo independent than at BuzzFeed. Oh, wow. Yeah, we've been over five years doing the channel. So potentially 500 videos to like 500 to 800 to 800 videos?

I could figure it out, but I'm not going to lean over for my phone. lot. It's too many, I think. Is there one that stands out in your head? You're like, that's the video. Yeah. What video are you most proud of? Most proud of? I mean... Okay. Yeah. My grandma's coming into town. Mm. From Russia. And I'm like, hey, man, show her what you do. Show me the video. Videos for grandma, very different than videos for other people. Okay. My grandma's a hip 28 year old time. Your grandma's cool as hell. Well, we have so many different things. And what I love about the Try Guys is that it's been such a giving format.

We have our main show, The Try Guys, where we try different things. But then we have Without a Recipe, which is a food cooking competition show that kind of is its own format unto itself. We have Eat the Menu what we talked about. I make absurdist chaos videos. There's no better way to say it. I have one coming out. It'll be out by the time people are listening to this, where I went to cheese. cake factory wearing body paint. So it was like, no shirt, no shoes, no service. What if they

don't know that I'm not wearing clothes? And it's really stupid and intentionally as absurd and stupid as possible. And I'm very proud of the dumb ones. Like, you know, some people will do pranks. We like to do pranks on ourselves, the people who are doing the prank. So we tried to trick Eugene into sitting on Keith's lap by hiding Keith inside a chair. It's really dumb, but it makes me really happy. The absurdity is something that I really get off on. But without a recipe, I think, is the one that I would recommend to your grandma. It is a show and the most indicative of what we want to do.

You know, you talk about, like, that's a lot of videos. I love my job, and I love the opportunity that I have, and the opportunity that you're afforded as a digital creator to greenlight any idea you have and run your own ship, but there is something really relentless about it. It's an algorithmic platform. That requires a certain cadence of uploading. And for us to afford the team of our size that allows us to make premium content, like without a recipe, we got to do the turn and burn. We release stuff that I am not proud of. And I don't want to bad mouth those videos because I don't think they're bad. They're just not as artistically satisfying. And it creates a lack of

consistency within the channel. So, you know, we had a, we had a, called it a corporate shakeup last year. And so we've been doing, what a kind way to put it. Corporate shakeup. So management restructure. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And so we've been, I've been doing a lot of really deep thinking while studying the ship and making sure that everything's okay. I feel we're talking about this because I'll talk about how like, we're changing everything. And people like, it's been the same for eight months. I'm like, you don't. don't know how slow things move here. We shoot two months in advance and then I stabbed myself and went on a wedding and Keith was out of town. We got things going on. We're working.

But I want to really shift us to a place where we're prioritizing premium content on digital. I don't know if that can be done. I don't know if that's what YouTube wants, but I'm going to try really dang hard. Why do you think that's not what YouTube wants? I don't mean YouTube the company, but I mean... The audience. Yeah, the audience. I just think. that it is, when I think, I think that YouTube is ultimately about this connection, the connection between the audience and the creator. And frankly, I think the more you dress that up, the more there are these layers of, a barrier, these layers of separation, it creates an artifice. And I mean, I guess I'm, it's not necessarily true because Mr. Beast, what he is doing is

on the hugest production scale and is obviously paying insane dividends in terms of views. But at the end of the day, I think that there's something, even in his videos, there's something very, what's the word? Distant, not as transparent. I was going to say the opposite, actually. You think it is very transparent. I think that a lot of the appeal of his videos is in this idea of like hanging out. And the camera just feels like it's hanging out there, right?

like there isn't like it's not a corporate network feel like on a typical game show that you would see on NBC or CBS exactly yeah now I understand what you're saying and I think in part of that is developing a strong community with somewhat of a parasocial relationship and to me my biggest concern with doing that obviously I'm in the medical space it's a little bit different but for you guys

like when you were going through your management restructure and quote wasn't it difficult to have a power social relationship with your audience in that moment? 100%. I, you know, look, the parasycial, uh, relationship is the only reason I'm here. It's, it's the, the people who watch me, I, I owe them everything and I, I want to give them everything. But there has to be boundaries you create.

It's, it's a really tricky thing. I also don't want to abuse that relationship. I think it's really easy to look at your audience and go like, we're friends and come on, you love me, support me. We're not friends. You don't know me. I'm lying to you all the time. I'm curating what I give you.

I'm trying to make myself look as good as possible. The job of a creator is to be as broadly likable as possible. Well, you're trying to entertain people. Don't make it seem like you're doing something evil here. I'm not trying to. Yeah. But hey, man, it could be. No.

No, if you're doing it for nefarious purposes, if you're trying to take advantage of people. You don't know my long game, Mike. What is your long game? No, I'm kidding. What did you plan in Scars Day in 1990? Yeah. No, it's just, it's something that I'm really acutely aware of. And it's also a drug, right?

There's this temptation where you go, okay, well, if people like, they want to get to know me, they want my personal life, now, okay, cool, I guess I'll show more and more and show my relationship and my family and that's how you get family vloggers. And like, it just, it spirals out of control. I mean, I shared my wedding, but I had to do so by creating a really specific boundaries for myself so that I was giving, you know, one, turning it into art that I was proud of, giving the audience something that they liked, but making sure that I wasn't losing myself in that process.

Give me an example of a boundary that you set for your wedding. Oh, there were so many. Number one, I was not performing. Meaning what? When a camera turns on, I change. The intonation in my voice, the way that I spike a camera to make a joke. I am a different person when a camera is present. okay um so you know early on my videographers and i had told them that i didn't and they were

incredible i don't want to bad mouth them in anyway they fucking rocked i loved my videographers um but i told them early on like i am not performing if you want someone to perform keith's right there eugene's right there and day one like it was actually even before the welcome party because we had like a multi-day event people got into town early they like came to me and they like tried to interview me on camera and I just was like, I'm not giving you anything. I'm not going to make any jokes. I'm just living my life. You capture me. So maybe you just need to be yourself more often. Yeah. I'm asking. I don't know. It's about being present in life, but also creating work. I've tried really, really hard to have work life balance. We, you know, are content creators.

Sure. Everything is content. Everything you do. But I've made a point to not, you know, Instagram or Snapchat my dinners every day. Like, I'm working. I have my work hours. It's so tempting because it's like monetization. Sure. Like Harry Jousy was just sitting here. He's like, Mike, you're not uploading on Snapchat.

You're losing on revenue. And Sam's like, Mike, yeah, you're losing on revenue. And I'm like, I literally was texting about with Lauren, Lord DIY about this today. And it's tempting. But at the same time, it's like, can I just eat my dinner without showing it to people? Yeah. Look, it's, I mean, one, I don't think that's a place where I thrive.

That's true. It depends on the person. It's know thyself and I think for Harry. I have that tattooed on my back. No kidding. In Latin. What is it? What is it in Latin? No, say it Epsom. Say it slower. I'm here for Bet Rivers Online Casino and Sportsbook with poker icon Phil Helmuth. Thanks to Bet Rivers, I'm also a slots icon. Great. And a same game parlay icon. Cool, cool. A blackjack icon, a moneyline icon. A roulette icon. If you love games, Bet Rivers is the place to play in bet.

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inaccurate. But for someone like Harry, I imagine that is the cornerstone of his business and there are things that I do that he can't do. So, I don't know. That was a decision that I made or I'm trying to make again and again is that I don't want to be an influencer in that sense. That's not why I got into this. And even though there are the temptations, I don't want to lose myself in the content. I want to express myself in the content. That's a very mature thought. I'm trying. Because it's very easy to lose yourself. Yeah. When there's money involved and outside influence and success and numbers and

cloud and all this stuff. Yeah. It's tempting. And everything that we do has a metric associated with it. Yes. Everything. Everything we do. Watch time, retention, rankings, views. I don't know if normal people, normal people. People. I don't know if people realize that in the YouTube backend, they rank your video blank out of 10. So every day when your video comes out, like how it's performing in the first three hours, it's number four out of ten compared to your last releases. And when you get a 10 out of 10, 9 out of 10, you feel bad. That was my yesterday. Yeah, it sucks. It was sad. And you know what really sucks too is that yesterday's video, I don't know what it was, but if it was one that you were really passionate about,

it shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter. But it does. And you try, but you know, and you try to not let it. I've gotten a little bit better because I've been in moments enough times over the last five years where the numbers dropped and then I was like, no, you've got to stay the course, keep doing what made you successful, keep being passionate about what you do, and the numbers will come and following that mantra allows me to keep calm about the nine out of tens and ten out of tens. I'm glad to hear that. But it's, man, that's hard.

That takes some discipline. Do you think there are things from your medical practice or maybe even just your medical mind that have lent itself to YouTubeing. Very different field. Yeah. The idea of what drives a click is largely based on psychology. Yeah.

So what my patients are curious about, how they think about medical problems or what's going on in the news leads me to create better at least ideas of content and then thumbnails of content because it's all a psychological mind game. That makes sense.

Spider-man-esque with great power comes great responsibility you don't want to take advantage of that trust yeah because it's very easy to turn into a doctor oz where you're like here's how your horoscope affects your heart health i want to know see you're clicking on that frigging video i want to know sam will sometimes pitch me like such a great concept he's like here's the one way to cure acne for good i'm like i'm clicking on that video because i don't know yeah but like medically you got to be honest you got to be and honestly that just doesn't apply to medicine i feel like that's pretty broad but and i think and i think I think, though, that that is something that your audience will appreciate.

Over time. Over time. Yeah. I think that there is, you know, I'm at a point now where I've been doing YouTube for nearly a decade. Yeah. And I get really excited talking to, you know, I go to VidCon and like I talk to the new creators.

And like, I think it's really important to, to keep learning about things that people are discovering. Yeah. But I'm also super fascinated talking to people that have, that have been here for a long time. and how do you sustain this as a career? And it's not something that really anyone, many, not many people have answered. Well, because there's no one else,

no one's really done that. There's like a handful of names like yourself that have been doing it for that long. Otherwise, it's like, who do you go to? It's like a very small niche community. Yeah, it's, I mean, I could probably count it on one hand, if not too. And if you tell normal people, normal people again,

your problems, oh, you didn't make your million views? Uh-huh. If I got a thousand views, I'd be happier, you ungrateful little shit. And it's like, I know, but I have to pay Sam and Dan's health insurance, and they have a lot of medical problems. I can relate. No, yeah, it's, look, unfortunately, I want to just be a weird artist. That's, I would be thrilled.

I don't care about money at all. But art and economics have always been connected. You can't create in a vacuum. And so long as we live under capitalism, this is how we do it. And that's also, you asked what else, help. helps me with my medical career into the YouTube career is the same way that you just said it's art economics. Medicine is art and science. So like the approach to getting the glass out of your leg, the decision of how to approach that was as much art as it was a science. Tell me more.

Well, you can go to two different doctors and they'll be scientifically accurate with two different opinions. And the way that they either explain both options to you or apply those options to you will change based on their art of medicine. interesting and that art is where our system collapses because we've lost that art when we turn it into an assembly line where we turned it into all capitalism click boxes checkboxes check boxes eHRs and we forget that there's a human sitting in front of us who has a wedding that they were on the treadmill for and now they have glass in their leg and they're worried if they're ever going to walk again until you said the wedding I was like are you talking about

YouTube or medicine because both of them felt accurate right that's why they're both interchangeable i want to do a surgery video a try guys try surgery video and i'm wondering if there's like a surgery dummy or so there is yeah and it's like 30 000 i so okay i've looked this up and i've seen how expensive it was on shark tank how do i get it we need to start a go fund i i don't got that mr beast money i got it maybe mr bees can fund it for us and we'll sponsor it by feastables or something i gave i gave a poor YouTuber his surgery dummy Yeah, exactly. But then we can donate it to a school after we're done with it.

I'm cool with that. Yeah. If the company that makes the surgery thing is listening, Mike and I would like to poke around in its plastic body. Sam, send him this clip. Send, yeah. We have it. We have it on our Shark Tank video. I remember I reacted to it.

Heck yeah. But it's really realistic. Does it bleed? Does it squirt at you? No, no, it doesn't bleed. But like the structures are real. I want to do surgery without learning how to do surgery. Okay.

And what surgery? you like if you could pick any surgery oh that's i don't know uh an appendixitis an appendectomy appendectomy um i think you'd have more fun doing something maybe you could have that this is this is how the video is like a c section is i come up sure yeah because then it's like two lives and one whoa that's high risk yeah now i wonder if i could just let you guys operate on me can we do that like legally yeah can i give you the like what can you take out of my body See, you're really thinking like a YouTuber now I would need to get like an abscess

If Mr. Beast can be in a pool for two days Or say 100,000 times Logan Paul Or whatever he's done I can let you guys operate on my body No I just want to say for the record His idea and I love this I mean I yeah

I mean it's for medical education I always said I would donate my body to science You just think we have to do it earlier. Yeah. Zach had the hair transplant surgery. Yes. And Mike has talked about doing it on his beard. Oh, yeah.

Oh. I had like a patch that I wanted to show people what it's like. Yeah. So like I got the guys. I'll hook you up. But can you do it? Yeah. They use, usually they use a robot.

Oh. But that's not entirely. So they use the robot for the extraction. And what it's so crazy gross. They basically just. like, like, poke little holes in, I mean, in my case, in my head. And then they, they extract with the machine, one follicle at a time. And then they, you see it's like this little follicle with like a little flesh nub. Yeah, it looks like a little, like a little like

sushi egg almost. And then they, they, they one by one implanted. So can you do that? I don't, yeah, I'll call them. Yeah, just be like, hey, can I do this? Can I do it? Or I call my dental I would, Daniel, you'll let you take out my teeth. I've wanted to do a dentist video too. Yeah. Oh my God. We have a lot of medical stuff. Yeah.

I can't believe. That's probably painful, though. I bet it is. I'm looking at your face. It's a great face, big fan of that face. And the idea of like, slicing it. That, like, is, I, doing surgery on you, hugely intimidating. Doing surgery on your face is,

I feel like is a lot of pressure, but also I don't know that I could steady hand it. It's not the hands that I'm worried about. What about the electric cordy tool? It's not the hands that I'm worried about. It's the mental, I think you, I think doctors, yeah, underappreciate or underestimate the mental hurdle that us Normies have to get over to cut flesh. Yeah. Especially a face, face is hard.

you got you're so steeped in the doctor mike world you could cut flesh no he could give you could have a dermatitis you could have double cut your arm stitches that's kind of boring you know what i'm thinking about too that i'm realizing so surgeries uh invasive surgery is demonetized on youtube is it and i know why do you know this because we did an earwax extraction video, which is not an invasive surgery. It's kind of ASMR, Jason. People like the sad, like, like, um, uh, pimple popping. It's like very satisfying. And they demonetize it and they called it invasive because we were entering the body, which I think is bullshit. Well, how did you take out the earwax? Uh, with like a scoopie. And it was medically? And a camera.

Was it a doctor? It was like a earwax guy. What the hell is an earwax guy? I think it was an E&J. Oh, an E&T. E&T. Okay, so it was the doctor. Yeah, it was doctor. Well, as long as you were doing under medical care, I don't know why they said that was problematic. I agree.

One of the Try Guys' most popular series is called Eat the Menu, where Zach's friend Keith goes to a chain restaurant and eats literally everything on the menu. I would know because I actually helped him eat del taco menu earlier this year. How Keith manages to endure consuming every item from a fast food menu in just one sitting is a medical miracle that leaves even me stumped. We've talked about Keith as a competitive eater, and I actually think what he does is possibly more impressive or as impressive on a different scale than competitive eaters. It's the difference between sprinting in a marathon. He's a marathon eater. He is a marathon eater. And he's been doing it for a long time. Yeah. I want to like break down

his body scientifically. Like what is happening when he eats? Like what are his vital signs before and after and eat the menu. I can make a prediction. Yeah. So, like, when you eat something like Del Taco that is incredibly high in sodium, I guarantee his blood pressure goes up. And his weight would probably go up from water weight, not just a food weight. Whoa.

Because the sodium is going to make him hold on to some more water. It, like, he gets food drunk and he looked this up, and it's something where his brain is literally trying to shut him down. From eating. Because it's like, you won't stop eating. We just need to flood him. so he gets sleepy. Yeah.

And that's a food drunk's a real thing. Well, that's why when people say like, oh, Thanksgiving, triptophan, turkey, all this stuff, like, it's not really the triptophan. It's you're eating a carbolo giant meal, and you're going to get sleepy when you eat a giant meal. So explain this to me. Is it, is what he's saying correct, that your brain is sending, like, chemicals to try? Evolutionary speaking, I have no idea. But it is part of it, like, that you do get sleepy.

That's a normal human response. Because you're eating a lot of calories. Also, I'm sure it has something to do with circumcision. When you're consuming that much food, you have to dedicate a lot of blood flow to your stomach, to your intestines. And when you're taking resources from one part of the body to another, you're going to get tired. I, so we, we tried, we filmed the video the other day where we were attempting to eat 400-something dumplings, right? We went to a bunch of different restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley, incredibly delicious. By the end of it, the idea of flavor nauseated me. That's normal.

Like, I wanted to eat styrofoam. I couldn't even, like, something came to me, and it was a delicious bite, and that made me, like, no. But my body, there was no room left. And it got to a point where it was just like, if you're going to keep doing this, something's got to give. Something's going to come out the other way. Gas was trying, like, I don't know how graphic I want to get here, but it just was like, I'm going to fart not because I want to, but because there's literally no other. choice. Yep.

I think that's the perfect way to wind down this podcast. Thank you for that. Pleasure. Thanks for having me. No, seriously, thank you for coming by. Where do you want to send everybody to watch?

Well, this is a podcast, so I think you should come over and listen to my podcast. I have two of them. I have guilty pleasures, which is all about the movies that you're afraid to admit you love. It's the under-celebrated.

I have one. What's yours? It's going to be something terrible like uptown girls or something. Yes. This is perfect. I love the chick flick era. Come on the show.

Mike. Okay. Yes. Can you give me like a movie, a trivia question right now to end of the A trivia question? Yeah. Like give me a line and I'll tell you what movie it's from. Okay, I'll end with that. Before I'll plug my other show. The tripod. We've lately, we've, uh, we've been doing plogging, which is us podcast vlogging. So we've been trying to go to the stupidest places in the world possible. A lot of Starbucks drive-thrus, but we went to a Chucky Cheese. We're going to start coming to people's houses. I think we're going to be in the smash office in a couple weeks. We're just going to show up. and see if they'll let us record a podcast.

I'm going to come. Yeah. Plogging at the hospital. Yeah. So go check out the tripod. Okay, a movie quote to end on. Okay, I'm going to give you a quote from my favorite movie ever made. And I'm going to see if you can get it.

Meet Me and Montauk. And you got to whisper it. Meet me in Montauk. It's not the notebook. It's not sleepless in Seattle. No. Think less rom-com and more movie about love that is... Forbitted.

No, no. I guess you would call it sci-fi. Not really sci-fi, but... Alien? I don't know. What? Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Minds. Oh, I didn't watch it. Dang.

You want to come over? Yeah, I want to watch it. Actually, that's Jim. Carrie, right? Yeah. I want to watch that. There's that and I want to watch Lost and Translation. I don't know why I put both of those movies in the same category. They, uh, they came out around the same time. And they come up on the same Netflix, like, recommendation. It was a movement of, of, of like, indie filmmaking, having a lot of success. Yeah. So those two I got to watch. Movie, movie, movie date. I'm in. I'm in. Uptown girl, Eternal Sunshine, devil feature. Yes. Heck yeah. 13 going on 30. Let's go. Oh, you are, you are perfect for the show. See, those are the kind of movies that I watch. All right. Get over here. We'll do it. Thanks man. I'm hype.