The Dr. Hyman Show - Do We Really Want To Get Back To Normal? with John Grossenbacher
Episode Date: June 15, 2020“I can’t breathe” has become a powerful phrase to symbolize the problem of systemic racism and unchecked prejudiced violence in our country. It’s also a powerful metaphor for the weight of how... people feel when it comes to the social, economic, and healthcare inequalities that continue to thrive. And in the age of COVID-19, we keep hearing people say they can’t wait to get back to normal. But if this is what normal has looked like, do we really want it? It’s time for us to get more involved than ever before to create a new normal that includes social justice, civil rights, and compassion. On this episode of The Doctor’s Farmacy, I talked with John Grossenbacher about how to begin this reimagining of America and so much more. John is a Navy veteran, was the Captain of a nuclear attack submarine, and rose to be a Vice Admiral and Commander of the US Submarine Forces. Following the Navy, John became the Director of the Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory (INL). INL is a sprawling industrial-scale research facility that covers 900 square miles and employs 4,000 people. There he led science and engineering research in energy, environmental, national, and homeland security fields. He also advised Governors, Senators, Congressmen, state, and local leaders in the region and Canada on energy, environmental, and homeland security matters. Here are more of the details from our interview: Saving the idea of America (3:08) Monopolization of wealth and industry in America (5:29) Managing our way out of the coronavirus pandemic with competence and compassion (8:37) Reforming America’s broken systems (12:26) They mythology of America and the American dream (16:28) Creating a culture of values (22:55) The impact of technology on our lives (25:39) Do we really want to get back to normal? (28:48) Reforming the food system and why you can’t separate the food system from politics (32:13) Learning from history and science, and John’s book recommendations include, “American Gospel” by John Meacham, “Thinking in Systems” by Donella H. Meadows, and “Trust” by Francis Fukuyama (48:53)
Transcript
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Coming up on this episode of The Doctor's Pharmacy.
Really good history informs us in a way that nothing else does.
Welcome to The Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, and that's Pharmacy with an F,
F-A-R-M-A-C-Y, a place for conversations that matter.
And if you care about where America's going after this horrible episode we're having in this moment, COVID-19, economic catastrophe, the results from it, and the social unrest that we're seeing today, then this conversation is one you want to listen closely to because it's with an extraordinary man, a man who spent his life serving our country, John Grossenbacher, who's a Navy veteran. He's a submarine. He was a captain of a nuclear attack submarine, and he rose to be the vice admiral and
commander of the U.S. submarine forces. So he was in charge of all the nuclear submarines
that were pointed at Russia and has quite an extraordinary history of service to this country.
He's led in the military an organization of 25,000 people.
He went around the world, around the country. He served multiple times in the Pentagon,
worked with the executive branch, congressional leaders. And then after the Navy, he became the
director of the Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory, where I used to work in
Idaho as a family doctor. And he knows a little town, Orfino.
I spent many years as a small town family doc, and it's an incredible facility,
employs 4,000 people, 900 square miles, and he led the science and engineering research in energy,
environmental, national, and homeland security. He's advised governors, senators, congressmen,
state and local leaders, and even internationally on energy, environmental,
and homeland security matters. And he's married to a very good friend of mine, Tracy Gaudette,
who's an extraordinary woman, is how I kind of got to know him. And she and I are quite a power couple. Tracy was the head of the VA's Office of Patient Experience to try to help improve the
quality of care in a more holistic way. She ran
Andy Weill's Integrative Healthcare Program, the Duke Integrative Health Program. She's been a good
friend for 25 years, and I think you guys are just an incredible, incredible couple. And recently,
John has been working on thinking about America in a new way, thinking about what should America
look like after COVID-19? How do we want it to look?
And even before this, he's written extensively on saving America, saving the idea that is America.
And, you know, when we look at what's happening in America today, it seems very far off from the idea that our founding fathers had. Jefferson and Washington and Franklin and Madison, all those characters were so thoughtful,
so perceptive, so deeply thinking about how to solve some of the big problems facing society and nations. And we seem to have gotten so, so far from that. So welcome, John. And I'm so excited to
have you on the podcast to talk about some of these issues. Oh, thanks, Mark. It's great to
be here. Thank you, and it's great to
see you. Great to see you, too. All right, so a lot of your writing and research lately has been
after running the world, saving us from imminent nuclear threat, is writing about this concept of
saving the idea that is America. What do you mean by that? And why does it need saving? And how do we do that? Well, the idea is an important one. And I think it's really unique in history that
a group of people, very diverse people come together and they say, we're going to figure
out how to govern ourselves. And it's going to take some wisdom. It's going to take self-discipline.
We're willing to work together to do that and do
it in a way that affords everybody a very high degree of individual choice and freedom. That's
unique in world history that a group of people comes together and creates an organization,
you know, a government to do that. So that's what I mean by the idea that is America.
I think it's under threat. I think it's drowning today. I think all we have to do is look around us and I understand
there's always a tendency to look at the problems of the day and say oh they're
terrible and they're historically really bad. Well these are historically really
bad. Our political system is dysfunctional. We can't get big things
done. It's open partisan warfare between parties. A lack of governance. We can't get big things done. It's open partisan warfare between parties.
A lack of governance, we can't get fundamental things done.
Our economic system is out of balance. There are restraining forces that used to be in place that
controlled a lot of the activity in the economy that aren't there anymore. They're not effective.
And so what do we have? We have gross income inequality at a level that's just not
sustainable and a concentration of wealth and a relatively small number of individuals. So our
politics, our economics, our education system isn't serving us, our public education system. So I think that idea is drowning in a
sea of all those, what I call, you know, societal system failures, and it's happening simultaneously.
And now to add on to that, you know, the tragedy of this virus and then the social unrest,
it's serious. It's big time. You know, it's really
true. I think, you know, this monopolization of wealth in America is pretty interesting. You know,
during the turn of the 1900s, there was a lot of efforts to break up monopolies, the big monopolies
of steel and railroad monopolies and oil. And it was very successful.
The Sherman Antitrust Act was in place.
And that was sort of repealed under Reagan in some ways that allowed for,
at least in the areas that I know about, incredible consolidation in industry.
For example, the food and agriculture industry.
I mean, there were hundreds of seed companies in America
that were providing seeds
to farmers. Now there's four main companies. There were so many different slaughterhouses
and food processors. And now there's four main processors of meat in America. You know,
Smithfield, which produces pork, this one plant that got shut down produces 5% of all the pork in America.
And so we're seeing the break in our supply chain with incredible
centralization and monopolization of industry that when it breaks,
it really has an impact as opposed to one farmer and one slaughterhouse
going down out of hundreds or thousands, it's not going to have an impact.
So we're seeing this incredible break in our society.
We're seeing, you know, it's sort of revealed by the cracks that are apparent now
with the pandemic of coronavirus that's the worst pandemic since 1918,
with the incredible crushing economic blow that it's given our society where 40 million people are out of work
and the economic scale of the destruction in people's lives is staggering.
You know, there's 40% of Americans who can't withstand a $400 emergency.
40%.
And those 40% now are having way more than a $400 emergency. 40%. And those 40% now are having a way more than a $400 emergency. And then on top
of that, we're seeing the fragility of our social fabric, the death of George Floyd and the
incredible unrest that that's provoked across the spectrum of society. I mean, the scope of the protests, the number of people
out there saying enough is enough. I can't breathe. I mean, it's just, you know, I think it's a
metaphor for how I can't breathe that so many people feel. I can't breathe with the weight of
all these things that are happening today in America and the polarization of the economic
inequalities, the health disparities, the social inequalities.
I mean, this is not America that we want, is it?
No, it isn't.
It isn't.
And the road, the path out of this, the path forward, I think, is going to be extraordinarily difficult.
I mean, I don't try to use words like unprecedented, you know, but it is unprecedented.
I mean, let's just think about it.
First, we've got to manage our way. Yeah, you're a military guy. You're not prone to hyperbole,
right? Understated, just the facts. And it's, if you're saying that we should pay attention.
Well, we got to manage our way out of this virus in a competent and compassionate way. You know,
we know, I mean, public health experts have
made it clear what we need to do to protect the vulnerable, to protect our essential workers,
and to begin reopening the economy, begin economic activity in a way that doesn't take on undue risk. So we know how to do that.
It's not going to be easy, but we can do that.
Then, you know, we have to step back.
We have to bury our dead, you know, over 100,000 dead.
And we have to take care of those people who are going to have a long path
to recovery from the impact of the virus on them.
And we have to be prepared for the surprises
because we call it a novel virus for a reason.
And we've got a lot to learn about it.
And undoubtedly, there'll be some positive and negative surprises.
Then we can start to think about rebuilding our communities,
our citizenship, our citizenship,
our infrastructures, and our economy. We've got the systems of politics, economics,
education that we have, so we're going to have to use those. But I think we're going to have to take every opportunity for reform that won't change the system, let's be honest with ourselves,
but it'll move things in the right direction. So politics, you know, let's have fully funded
elections, get the money out of politics. It's a competition of ideas. You and your competitor
all get the same money in the same TV time. Good luck, you know, have at it. I mean, economics,
you know, clearly the minimum wage, you know,
has to be increased. We have to take on issues like corporate governance, where CEOs can't just
think that their only responsibility, their prime responsibility is returning value to the
shareholders. What about their employees? What about the communities? What about a sense of
social responsibility? So we've got those reforms to get through to rebuild and get ourselves back on our feet. In the meantime, we've got to feed, we've got to clothe, and we've got to house a lot of people. of this pandemic and near Great Depression levels of unemployment is not going to go away easily,
and there are going to be people that are hungry and need a lot of help. And we don't know how to
do that. We haven't done that in modern times. So we're going to have to do that. Then we can
turn our attention to what I think the long-term issues are in terms of
changing these societal systems of politics, economics, education. I think how we use
technology is an important factor as well. And that won't be easy because they're big,
they're complicated, there's lots of stakeholders, but we have to take that on.
Wow, that's a whole lot of reform.
It is.
So reform is clearly needed.
We're talking about big ideas.
We're talking about reforming elections, reforming campaign finance, reforming corporate governance, reforming digital technology platforms, reforming social welfare programs.
I mean, this is like a whole revolutionary idea coming from a submarine commander, an admiral.
You sound like a hippie from the 60s.
I don't know.
So I don't know what's going on here.
But I think the question really I think people are going to have is,
how do you get this done?
Is it doable?
We know what needs to get done, but it doesn't get done.
So how do we break that logjam?
Yeah, I think in the near term,
there's lots of policy things that can be done that will be helpful.
I think how we elect our you know, our representatives,
how we, the whole primary system. You know, there's lots of what I call nuts and bolts things
that can be done. And I think if there's enough interest, if there's a broad social movement for
change, then you can get support for those kinds of things. You know, in the economic area,
there's really big things.
Like what would happen
if we reimagined our economy
as not being based on consumption?
But yes, consumption,
but substantially more savings
and investments in public goods.
You know, the things that are important to us all.
Infrastructure, education,
you know, things that the private sector doesn't do. So those big kind of changes aren't going to come from small, what I would
call incremental policy changes. We've got to take on a process of engaging, educating, informing
Americans, and getting them much more involved in their government.
To an American citizen,
that's the most important thing that we have to do right now
is we have to get involved much more than we've been in any of our memories.
I'll even say any of our lifetimes.
Then we can do it because we can engage, we can empower,
we can inform the millions of amazing people in this country
who will come up with approaches that are far more sustainable
in terms of how our systems work.
Because systems and the institutions, the organizations within them,
the term I like to use is that they're sticky.
They don't change easily.
There's lots of reasons for that.
But to take on major system change in politics, economics is enormous.
It's going to take a grassroots level effort,
not just engage citizens,
not just even a broad-based community support.
It's going to take an overt effort to educate,
inform and engage Americans.
And our role is we have to want to do it.
We have to want to change the direction of our country.
And I think it's also extremely important that everybody who's not suffering right now be engaged in this and be involved in leading it.
One, they have a lot more influence on the current system.
But I think it's incumbent upon us all to look around us and say, is this
what we want? Is this the future of our country that we want? And they're going to have to also
engage so that they earn the trust of the rest of us, that we all really believe, you know,
we're all in this together. And I'm going to do my part.
And that doesn't mean we all agree.
And nobody expects unanimity.
But we've got to be able to work together to form consensus
and, where necessary, compromise and move forward.
And we can't do that if we continue in the direction that we're headed,
with the polarization, but as
well, the lack of participation. So, John, you know, what I think is interesting to me is,
you know, thinking about America, I was sitting with my wife this morning talking, taking a walk,
and we're talking about America and, you know, what's happening and should we stay, should we go,
what's going to happen, you know, in the next election, what's going to happen, you know, what's happening and should we stay? Should we go? What's going to happen, you know, in the next election?
What's going to happen?
You know, society tends to break down.
And, you know, it's really clear that a lot of the things that made America great, the
individualism, self-determination, the American dream, you know, people being able to sort
of rise up out of the ashes and to reclaim their lives and become successes.
I mean, there's a whole sort of mythology of America, but the mythology of
America has actually prevented us from understanding the way in which we're interconnected,
interdependent, and to think collectively about solving our problems. It's all about me, mine,
us, and not, you know, we. And I think that it's, I think it's a challenge i don't know when we combine that
sort of dna of america with the rise of consumerism materialism that's a sort of culture of image and
beauty and fame and celebrity we're sort of ending up in a in a very scary place from my perspective
you know sort of some people call it the decline of the American empire.
You sort of argue that that's not inevitable,
that we can do something about that.
Right.
But you also challenged this idea of the original American dream,
which sort of valued climbing society's ladder, accomplishment,
material wealth.
And you sort of asked a very important question.
Is that what we want?
Is that the dream we should have now? Is that enough? Can you talk about that? Yeah, yeah. You know, I think, you know, I think
the whole, the term the American dream has been with us for a while, you know, probably
close to 100 years in terms of climbing the societal ladder to the things you talked about.
As a statement, I don't think it's bad. The problem is how we define success, how we define the ladder that we climb within society,
and that's what's got to change. Part and parcel of any of the reforms, any of the societal system
changes that we need, the foundation is for us to talk about what's important to us,
what we value.
And I'm not talking about these temporary arguments
over abortion and gun rights.
No, no, no.
Things that are more fundamental.
What are values?
What do we learn at home?
What do we learn at school?
They govern how I live my life, how I treat you, how you treat me.
Those are the things we've got to come to grips with.
And it's things like, well, I think people should be honest.
I think we should try to be honest. We should try to be fair.
Shouldn't we try to be fair to one another?
How about generous? Generosity is a good thing,
you know? Hopeful. Yeah, hopefulness is confident optimism. Let's be positive about what we can do together. Humility. And it's not false humility. It's, you know, I don't have all the answers,
and I don't know anybody that does. So So the way to get to the answers to hard questions
is we have to be humble and listen to one another, even though we disagree so that we can
work together. And last but not least on my list of these values is patriotism. And I'm not talking
about this, you know, we're number one, American first nationalism.
Patriotism is we're all in this together and it's important to me that this
succeed. So I'm going to do my part.
And actually I had a bit of hope when this all started because I saw America
and the world coming together to adhere to social norms that we would not have
really imagined possible where we're all sheltering in place, not just for our own protection,
but for each other. Why are we wearing masks? Not so we don't get sick, but so we don't infect
others. And I think there's some people who are not doing it, but for the most part,
it's pretty universal wherever I go. I see people really being part of our collective community.
And I think that, you know, we need more of that. And one of the things that, you know,
we're reflecting on what you said is that in our educational system, we're not educating children to be thoughtful, engaged citizens.
And it's almost like we're,
we're creating a workforce of automatons who don't know how to critically
think.
And it's driving so much of the lack of ability to sort through information, to make sense of things, to think about things carefully and thoughtfully.
I mean, I remember going to school and I was like, this is terrible. I mean, I was in high school,
first year of high school, 10th grade. And I was like, this is not for me. And I literally dropped
out in 10th grade and went and found an alternative school where I was able to analyze and to think and to critique
and not just accept at face value and think carefully. Even in medical school, honestly,
it was rote learning. I was an automaton pumped through information and expected to memorize it
and regurgitate it out. And I just rebelled at that. In fact, I began to, you know, I mean,
I barely got in because I was an Asian studies major. And I, you know, majored in Buddhism and
not in science or biology or chemistry. And I barely passed a few of the science courses. And
I did all right on the MCATs. But, you know, it took a lot of work. I spent days and days and
hours and months, you know, studying and studying. And I was sort of got into the last minute. But I ended up, I ended up being at the top of my class. And I think the difference was that I had the ability to sort through the information, the flood of information, understand what was important, what was not important, what was the narrative and story behind it and how to think critically about it and to analyze not just to memorize and i i feel like america has just lost that i'm just like when i see you know like
when i see americans thinking that you know hillary clinton was running a pedophile sex ring
in the bottom of a pizza parlor and that they actually don't go like that doesn't really make
sense and that they're literally going there and protesting. I'm like, wow, we have created a nation and it happens on both sides, right? And I was like, wow, like we need
to start there. And that's sort of what you were speaking to is how do we create a culture of
values? How do we create a culture where people are understanding what our values are, how to
think critically about issues, how to work in collective ways to solve problems.
It seems kind of sad to me that how do we resurrect a thoughtful citizenry?
Yeah.
Well, let me make a couple points about that.
I think, first of all, getting everybody to sit down and talk about values when they're trying to get
through the day is a difficult thing to do. I recognize that. But this is also the business
of spiritual leaders, leaders, you know, philosophers. I mean, we need to have these
kinds of conversations. It doesn't matter where they occur. They can be in the bar,
in the barbershop. Who do you talk to about the stuff that really matters to you? Most of the time, it's family. So we need to make an overt effort to
stimulate those conversations. I sometimes think approaches like, I don't know if you're
familiar with American One Room, but this kind of experiment runs by some folks out of Stanford to
get Americans with vastly different
opinions together in one room. And with some supervision and guidance, get them to talk about
things. And guess what? They are less far apart than we imagine they are, and they can come
together. So I think there has to be that kind of effort. You know, we have lots of holidays.
Maybe we need several citizens days where we can,
you know, where we have, we've got to make the time and place to do this. The education system
is a classic case of a big complex system. And one of the challenges in our country is it's so
highly decentralized. And that makes, to me, I mean, highly decentralized systems like that,
they defy top-down solutions. There's too many stakeholders that you're telling, you're going
to give guidance or direction to, and they don't work for you, and it's their money. And so it's
hard to change those systems. They can be changed. Today, I think the most important thing we could
do is help the school boards, the teachers,
the government officials who own these schools and are responsible directly with the parents
and with the teachers to the students.
I think we've got to help them.
They need university-level resources in terms of data collection and analysis, understanding
what works, what doesn't,
sharing lessons and getting better, you know, being able to say what's politically incorrect,
you know. And I think the universities could help do that. But the other thing about
what you're saying, I think we have to face up to, and this is hard. It's the impact of technology on our lives. And I never
blame technology because I think technology is just stuff. It's things, it's amusements we create
because we think they're helpful, you know, they're tools, or we like them, you know,
and we've been doing it. Or they're designed to be addictive.
Yeah, a lot of them are. I mean, I sort of like food, right? I mean, food is great.
We all need it.
It's delicious.
But certain foods are designed to be addictive, hijack your brain chemistry.
And certain technologies and tools serve us.
And others have been designed to actually hijack our brains, which a lot of the digital technology does.
That's why many of the founders and creators of these big tech companies don't let their kids use their phone or iPads or social media. I mean, it's quite interesting when you see the level of concern about how this is
affecting our kids and our, and our, even our adults.
And now my wife is taking a week off of all technology and I'm hoping to do
that soon. This summer is my goal.
I have a few days to clean up first like this podcast,
but I do find that when you disconnect from it, it brings you back to being
a human as opposed to being a passive consumer of information that's fed to you that you think
is actually your choice, but is actually being fed to you in ways that are highly manipulative
based on millions of data points from your online activity and your phone activity and your
geolocation. I mean, it's kind of terrifying. I don't know if you've seen the movie,
great hack, the great hack, but everybody should watch, but it's,
it's a movie about about Cambridge Analytica and how they manipulated the
populace through a very targeted social media. It quote,
quote misinformation campaigns that personality type to pay the people and
targeted messages based on their personality type to control what they were behaving. So for example,
if someone is fear-based and then they, they, they,
they actually appeal to that. If someone is sort of empathy based,
they appeal to that and then they can manipulate their choices and behavior.
And you think you're an autonomous human being where actually you're not.
So I think there's a level of like where they're agnostic, but they're also,
there can be not designed in ways that are not. Yeah yeah I'd like I'd like to say that technology
particularly modern visual technologies that you talked about they abstract
reality they present us with an abstract picture of it and if you surround
yourself in it enough you'll get you'll without not without even thinking about
it you'll battle become your sense of reality particularly of things you don't know anything about.
But the other thing I think it's done
is we've always had demagogues and crooks.
They've always been part of society.
But now, now we give them an opportunity
and a way to connect with each and every one of us.
Twitter.
Yeah, well, that they never had before.
And guess what?
You know, that gets utilized
and they're taking advantage of a lot of people.
Yeah, it's quite a situation right now.
I think one of the things
I want to sort of talk to you about
is this whole idea of how this pandemic is really going to affect us going forward. And you talk
about not going back to the new normal and not wanting to sort of just go, let's get back to
normal. No, we don't want to get back to normal because normal wasn't good. Normal is sort of
what we're seeing now happening in America with the pressurized effects of the pandemic, the economic hardship,
and the racial injustice. I mean, it's sort of exploding, and it's now hard to deny. So,
how do you see us moving into a new normal that's quite different?
Yeah, I think listening to you say all that it breaks my heart it really does it's um but first i you
know i'll go back to we have to competently and compassionately manage our way through the virus
um and then we're gonna have to you know we we're gonna have to look at what's happening
in the rest of the world because it's gonna impact us you know and there's uh and there's
certainly lots of concern about the potential for famine, given that in other countries, the supply chain for a lot of their food sources is a lot more fragile than ours.
So are we going to have to deal with large scale famines around the world?
Is there going to be refugee flows and political unrest associated with that?
Could be. And, you know, I think we're going to have to
soberly and constructively and compassionately face those challenges together. Then I think we
begin the rebuilding that I talked about and rebuilding, you know, certainly rebuilding the
economy, but rebuilding our communities, our citizenship. And at every step of the way, we've got to say,
what are we doing that we don't want to do anymore?
What can we change today?
And, you know, and you can go through a long list of things.
What are the top things that you think really need to shift
as a result of this?
Well, I think these are the things I would go address first.
I really, all the pandemic did was highlight them. They
were pre-existing conditions. So, you know, get the money out of politics, have funded elections,
as I said earlier, reduce gerrymandering. You know, we can come up with a computer model
that's acceptable to all the states that allocates representation, and now there's no more politicizing that process.
Economically, I do think we've got some significant monopolies that we need to break up. We need
a sense of social responsibility, needs to be responsibility in corporations.
I mentioned the minimum wage. Education, we've got to resource the, and I would use, I like the land grant university
concept in the United States. You know, they were created, I think, by Abraham Lincoln. You know,
we wanted education. So let's create institutions by say, go create one and we'll give you this land
as an endowment. And so you got some money to get started. And that's where all of, I think,
just about all of our state universities came from. Well, let's use them in a different way now.
We need them because they are a repository of knowledge and educational expertise that needs
to be tapped to move us forward in the long-term and the long-term reforms.
So you're talking about how you work with governors, senators, congressmen in the long term and the long term reforms. So you talk about how you work with
governors, senators, congressmen in the White House, local state leaders. I'm very interested
in food system reform because I feel like it's sort of central to a lot of our problems. It's
sort of central to a lot of the economic stress we're seeing. It's central to the chronic disease
stress. There's national security, which we'll talk about in terms of the military,
it affects our kids' ability to learn in school,
it affects the environment and loss of biodiversity,
climate change, these are all massive issues
that are in some way or another connected to food,
some more than others.
And we need to sort of shift that.
How do you see that kind of reform happening
and how do we sort of get
leadership to get that this is an issue? Maybe they do get it and they just are so entrenched
that they're not able to actually do anything about it. Well, I think it's a classic problem
of a big, complex, interactive social system. And, you know, when you draw a circle around it,
you say it's the food system. That's just for purposes of discussion. I mean, you can't
separate the food system from politics. You can't separate the food system from economics. So,
the first step is to have great respect for the complexity of a system like that and what it takes
to change it. I think the first step, and I think, you know, your work is promoting this,
is you've got to build the foundation for a broad social movement. You've got to educate, engage, empower
individuals, you know, these amazing people in our country who will do things that, you know,
Mark Hyman and John Grossenbacher never thought of. But that's a foundation. Now, the harder part,
I think, for us, and it's why so
many reform efforts fail, system reform, is you got to have enough people who can step back and
study, and I'll even say, admire this system. Because if you don't begin to understand how it
works as a system, then you can't make the changes, make changes at last.
So, for example, the high leverage areas, you want to change a system?
First of all, change the paradigm under which the system operates, okay?
We don't want to have a disease care system anymore.
We want to have a health care system.
Change the purpose of the system.
We don't want a food system that delivers cheap calories.
We want a food care system that delivers nutrition.
Change the structure of the system.
And I've read your book.
Part of the problem is big agriculture and big food and big seed.
Break them up. Create the opportunity for change
by making them smaller with no objective other than you're changing the structure of the system
and now it can adapt and be more susceptible to change that's supported by a broad social
movement. So that's the kind of thing it takes. It's long term.
And in my opinion, you got to do it all. You've got to have the broad social movement. And when
you're doing the broad social movement, you can take on, you know, the obvious changes that you
can make today and you know people will support. But don't fool yourself. That's not going to
change the system. To go after the system, a lot of system experts say you have to learn to dance with it.
And my experience tells me that's true.
And it's hard and it's why so many, particularly societal systems,
because of their enormous complexity.
That's why those kind of reforms fail.
So you were Vice Admiral of the U.S. Navy.
You were commander of all U.S. submarine
forces around the world. And what we're seeing now is sort of a terrifying, from my perspective,
terrifying trend, which is that 70% of recruits for the military are rejected because they're
unfit to fight. And 700 retired admirals and generals in mission readiness, which has formed
a group of them called
mission readiness, where they create a report called unhealthy and unprepared. And what was
striking was not only are a lot of people rejected because they're obese or overweight and unfit in
other ways, but that of active military, there's a huge problem of unhealthy, overweight military. And during Iraq and Afghanistan,
there were over 70% more evacuations
for obesity-related complications
than for war injuries,
which I found a staggering statistic.
So how did you see that yourself?
And did you notice this challenge when you were there?
And was there a conversation about it?
And how does the military take a leadership in this because they have aligned interests you know they they you said before
when we're chatting that you know health care costs for the military I think it must include
the VA right it's 50 billion dollars a year no just just the department of defense health oh
geez okay so forget the VA which I don't know how much how many billions that is a lot of billions
50 billion dollars and and and these are you know you're thinking 50 billion dollars okay fine if Okay, so forget the VA, which I don't know how many billions that is. It's a lot of billions. $50 billion.
And you're thinking $50 billion, okay, fine,
if you're a bunch of 65-year-old people with diabetes.
But these were talking about people in their 20s and 30s who are healthy,
supposedly healthy, and it's $50 billion.
So how did you notice this?
What did you see the challenges were to addressing this?
And how do you think the military could be a leader in taking some of the initiative around changing the food and food systems, at least within the military?
Yeah, I mean, it's important to remember the military is just a cross section of American society that comes together.
Today, they all volunteer to come together, you know, for this mission to serve.
So they have, you know, if America is obese and unhealthy, guess what?
The input to the military is obese and unhealthy. And then the challenge of the military leaders
immediately and their job all day, every day is combat readiness. How do we make sure that when
we send these young men and women into combat, that they're going to be successful and they get
to come home? And that's, you know, it's going to be successful and they get to come home.
And that's, you know, it's hard to describe, I think, to people that don't live in that world,
what a unifying force that is. So do they care about every man and woman under their care? You bet they do. But they also, they know that they're not going to succeed unless they're combat ready, which means both physically and mentally, you know, healthy.
So when the input is unhealthy, guess what?
Now they've got to go work the problem and they apply resources to it.
And that's why the cost of healthcare is so high in the Department of
Defense.
But on the bases, you know, they're just,
they're just playgrounds for the food industry and there's fast food
restaurants and all the bases. They're eating all kinds for the food industry. And there's fast food restaurants on all the bases.
They're eating all kinds of junk from the commissary.
I mean, it's just like, why does the military say, look, this is going to be a health zone.
Our military bases are, you want to go escape and go to McDonald's, fine.
But here we're going to have a safe zone and we're going to provide food that's going to create high performance elite military um and that's what we should be focused on no i i think your question
is a good one i think you know military leaders a long time ago figured out that you know if you're
going to have warriors they have to be physically fit so they need gyms you know they need places
to exercise they need opportunities to do that but i don't think you know i'm not the most honest answer direct answer i can give you is i don't
think they've connected the food and and health and readiness in the way that you know you and
so many others do i mean if you're a submarine commander you got to get those guys in those
little tiny things to get in between compart. Like, they can't move around.
Let me tell you about that. Let me tell you how that affects you. So, when you send a submarine to sea, you send it to sea typically 70 days
underwaters is pretty standard. You can probably push it to 120. The limiting
factor, the limiting factor is how much food you can carry because you make your own oxygen. You,
you know, the reactor has enough fuel for 30 years. You clean the atmosphere that the people
breathe. So the limiting factor is food. So what do you do? You have two big ice boxes and you've,
you've stuffed them with as much frozen protein as you can of every form.
And then everything else is canned and dehydrated. Everything. So, there's an
emphasis on both calories and nutrition, but in that context, you know, there is,
there are no fresh fruits and vegetables.
Well, canned is fine, and dehydrated can be fine too.
It's not necessarily processed food.
I mean, if they're all eating Doritos and Cheetos. Right, but then I think you get into the food system,
and when the military procures things, how do they procure them?
Where do they come from?
And they get trapped in that same system that you know, how do they procure them? Where do they come from? And they get trapped
in that same system that, you know, you know so well and write about. And, you know, there's even
political influence, you know, Wisconsin butter, everybody should eat Wisconsin butter. You know,
I mean, those things are factors in that environment. But I think the fundamental issue
is that military leaders haven't put enough emphasis, and perhaps enough of them don't understand, the food element of health and readiness.
And if they're getting there today by spending money, you know, I'll even say wasting money on a healthcare system that they wouldn't otherwise
need. Nobody's shown that to them. To your point, they could show everybody else how to do that.
And I think they should listen to you, Mark. I think they should. I'm serious. I think.
I hope so. We've been talking, I mean, you know, it's interesting. I met with a lot of
military leaders over the years. And, you know, it's interesting. I met with a lot of military leaders over the years and, you know,
I actually spoke with the CIA and, and they're,
they're very focused on the performance aspect. Right. And, and, you know,
you think of these, you know,
these guys who have these million dollar horses running the Kentucky Derby,
they don't feed them McDonald's fries and a Coke. They give them a lean feed.
They know how to create this high performance athletes.
And I think the military is seeking to create the mission readiness and to
create the, you know, combat readiness, but it's,
it's amazing to me that I haven't connected the dots completely.
Again, in, in, in defense of that world,
part of their thinking is look, I've got to get,
I got to get these people ready to fight.
I've got to make sure they have what they need to fight and that they're,
and that they're going to be successful. And I've got lots make sure they have what they need to fight and that they're going to be successful.
And I've got lots of moving parts here.
So I've got these doctors over here, and they're supposed to deliver to me healthy people.
I pay them a lot of money.
I'm not in their business.
They work for me.
What have you done for me lately?
What have you done to ensure the health of my people so that I can make them combat ready.
So I do think, you know, the military health care system who serves the operational commanders, see, that's –
Well, that's the problem.
That's the problem there is assuming that doctors know how to help people
get healthy.
They don't.
They know how to treat disease.
They don't know how to create health.
And that's really what the difference is.
That's what functional medicine is,
is really about the science of creating health.
It's what Tracy does.
I know. And so it's like – what the difference is. That's what functional medicine is really about the science of creating health. It's what Tracy does. But in that world, the operational commanders rule supreme,
because they're the ones that have to accomplish the mission. They determine what they do determines
whether or not these young men and women come home, you know, and so they are focused so intently
on all the things they care about. And again, they have these support functions like medicine, like the food supply system.
And they expect that those are going to serve them well.
And if they don't, then they compensate for it.
If it's bad enough and they're aware of it, then they'll take it apart and fix it. But it's, you know,
when you're trying to get through the day in that business, that's,
that's not easy to do when you're trapped inside this bigger system.
It just seems like the defense department is one of those sort of, you know,
closed systems that has the ability to address these systemically because they,
they procure the food, they provide the healthcare, they provide the health care, they're
sort of aligned incentives to do the right thing.
They're more part of the America and the American societal systems than I think you're saying.
But I do think it's an important message that needs to be carried to the top level leadership.
Well, you might know them.
They might be buddies of yours.
Call it the head of the Navy.
Yeah, I'll work on it, Mark.
I'll work on it.
Okay, you got me.
Have a conversation.
You're right.
You're right.
All right.
Well, fantastic.
So, you know, just to sort of close up here,
you talk a lot about the challenges we're facing
and the impact of COVID-19
and how to sort of
reflect on what life will be like after.
And what do you think the impact will be? I mean,
when this is all said and done, where will we be as a society?
Where will we be as a government?
Yeah. Well, it's hard. I don't think I'm a pessimist,
but it's hard for me to say anything that it's going to be very,
very difficult. You know, it's hard for me to say anything that it's going to be very, very difficult. You
know, it's not, it's not the 1918 Spanish flu and Great Depression simultaneously, but almost,
as best I can tell so far, I mean, 100,000 dead, you know, I think the Spanish flu was 670,000
dead Americans. I mean, it's awful. It's horrific. The unemployment levels are very, very high. So
that's going to have a huge impact on us. And then, you know, the international outside our
country challenges that are going to touch us, whether we want them to or not. So I think we've
got an enormously difficult path ahead of us. I am hopeful because I believe that people possess extraordinary reservoirs of
creativity and fundamental goodness in them, that we do care about one another, that we are connected to, you know, to ourselves and really to all living
things. And this terrible time may actually force us to stop doing all the busy stuff we do
and look at that and say, yeah, you know what, we got to fix this. And the time to fix it
is now. We're not doing this anymore. And then they're going to need help. They're going to need, you know, leaders and people
who understand the complexities of some of these big societal systems, where a lot of people are
just doing what they think they should be doing, because that's the way the system works. Or they
know it's screwed up, but they don't know how to change it. So there's a lot of fundamental
foundational work that's going to have to be done in terms of education,
empowerment, and training. But, you know, I'm an optimist. I think that, you know, the course of
human progress is not over. I do think we're at a critical point. And we haven't talked a lot
about technology, but I do think that that's one
of the things we're going to have to come to grips with. We have to step back and say, do we want to
live in a man-made world? You know, if you have enough man-made light around you, you don't see
the stars anymore. I've been in environments where you don't see anything but a man-made world for
months at a time. It's not good. Yeah, it's not good.
And people can tolerate it.
People can make it work.
But that's not who we are as living, breathing,
you know, I like to say,
spiritual beings on a human journey.
We want to come out of these submarines.
Yeah.
So we've got a lot of work to do
and we've got to do it together.
There's no other way. There is no other way.
That's really true.
I think it's really about us sort of understanding our common collective
humanity and understanding that, you know,
maybe this virus has unified us in some ways that I think will allow us to
understand our collective need to work together to solve our problems,
which we, I think we have done in some degree around this.
And I think I really thank you for your thought leadership
and your sort of laying out a different view
of how we need to think about things going forward.
I do want to ask you something that just came up in my mind,
which was, you know, who have been the thinkers and writers
and teachers that have inspired you?
Because you seem to have a very
enlightened view. It doesn't seem to be typical of people in government who've been in public
service. So who's inspired you? There's so many of them. I mean, I love history because
history always reminds me how messy the real world really is, and also how complicated it is
and what it takes to solve big challenges.
So I'm a big fan of Francis Fukuyama, and he writes these, you know,
from the history of mankind from when the Earth's crust was still warm,
you know, and our social systems and how they change.
And I think really good history
informs us in a way that nothing else does. So I like history. And I try to read all I can.
For me, it's my best teacher. I like John Meacham. He's a popular historian of the day. And I think
he wrote a book called The Soul of America, I think it's called.
And it's a wonderful book about religion in our country and what it means and what it's
that story of our lives has been. So I think history is number one. I think science education,
I've spent a lot of my time studying science and engineering. And I think that helps because it it
grounds you and what reality is and and I think even more importantly it reminds
you every day of what you don't know and how little we really know and when
people behave as if they think they're masters of the universe. I mean, it's so silly.
I mean, we know so little, and we've got so much more to do.
The more you know, the more humble you get about what you don't know.
Yeah, I think so.
But history for me is, and these kinds of things, has been the best teacher.
So if you were thinking of recommending a summer reading list for people to wake them
up to what world we need
to live in? What would be your top two or three books? Well, I think John Meacham's writings are
good. I think he's done, you know, he's written a number of biographies of presidents, but I think
it's called The Soul of America is a good read. And I'd start there. You know, there's always the classics you can go back to,
you know, I mean, if you ever really, if you really read the Federalist Papers, you know,
you read a paragraph, you go, wow, you know, Hamilton and those guys, they really understood,
didn't they? They understood human nature in a way that I think is extraordinary.
And we would be wise to listen to them.
Not that their solutions and prescriptions all fit today.
I'd like to think that Jefferson probably knew everything about the technology of his day in a way that, you know, nobody can today.
It's too complicated.
It's too detailed.
It's too involved.
So I think we have to be careful with literal interpretation,
but I think conceptually, philosophically,
and a really deep understanding of human nature
and trying to put together a system, our governmental system, that would work given the frailties and the challenges of human nature.
Oh, that's great.
I mean, I actually have thought lately of going back and reading those writings of Jefferson, Hamilton.
And I think maybe we should pause and
think about why we started America and how do we get back to some of those founding ideas.
And I think for people listening, if they want to learn more about John's work and his perspectives,
a lot of his articles are published on The Hill, which is an online publication
that is for Washington, but I think it's relevant for all of us. There's just fabulous articles
in terms of saving the idea that it's America,
how to save America.
We must examine our values.
We must repair or modernize our politics.
We must rebalance our economic system.
We must rebuild our education system.
Why we have to make technology a choice.
These are all fabulous articles that John's written
and I encourage you to check out and learn more
because I think we need the kind of leadership
and thinking you're talking about.
And hopefully we can sort of come to our senses
after this is through and redesign
and recreate a better America.
Oh, thanks, Mark.
Thanks.
Thanks very much.
Well, thank you for listening to this podcast.
Thanks for being on it.
John, if you've loved this podcast,
please share with your friends and family.
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And we'll see you next time on The Doctor's Pharmacy.
Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman. Thanks for tuning into The Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving
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Hi, everyone.
I hope you enjoyed this week's episode.
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This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical
professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical
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