The Sevan Podcast - #790 - Emily Kaplan | Broken Science

Episode Date: February 7, 2023

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Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 hopefully not bam we're live we're live uh i was thinking this morning um i was like oh emily's kind of a little bit like a fixer but you know what you know what's wrong with um calling you a fixer is um did you ever see the show ray donovan it's basically a show about a guy who um he works in the hollywood scene and like if you're caught let's say you're an actor and like you don't want the world to know you're gay but there's some pictures floating around out there with you know a dick in your mouth or something he tries to hide those pictures right but that's and i was thinking that's not what you do because we don't live in that era anymore it's basically you're like a real life fact checker.
Starting point is 00:00:47 I think maybe like you're one of the only ones I know. You're not like a fake fact checker. You're like a real fact checker. Like people can, there's so much lying and ambiguity out there in the world. And if people don't have the time to like, to protect their name or to make sure that people aren't lying about them, you help. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:01:04 I mean, I appreciate that distinction because honestly, I feel like when people ask me what I do on the sort of like Clio side of my life, I'm like- What's that called? What's the word you used? The firm I have is called the Clio Group.
Starting point is 00:01:15 Clio is the music. So I like the idea of like, you're sort of correcting the record of history, right? Wait, say that again. I talked over you. What's the background of that word, Clio? What's it mean? She's the muse of history, right? Wait, say that again. I talked over you. What's the background of that word, Cleo? What's it mean? She's the muse of history, the Greek muse.
Starting point is 00:01:29 Okay. And I think like, I feel like I'm, a lot of that work is doing the same stuff that I did as an investigative reporter. It's giving voice to the voiceless. Only the voiceless now are the canceled people who nobody wants to talk to, right? Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:01:47 And, you know, as a reporter, when I was coming up, we spent, I mean, I got a master's from Northwestern. We had to take classes in law. Like we had to learn how to fact check. The joke was always like, if your mom tells you that she loves you, you've got to check it out. Like you don't believe anything. Right. Right. And now people are ripping like 10 stories a day. They don't have time to fact fact check anything i don't know what my dog sees out the window but she's your dog is totally fine this your dog is totally fine is that statue closed as long as that statue has clothes on it we're fine yeah no there's no no yeah okay no background youtube checks um yes the the statue has a hey um i think like you know there's a lot of work that goes it like when i was a young reporter coming up i wrote i wrote for a daily newspaper i wrote one story a day i would have three weeks to work on a longer story and the other big point that i
Starting point is 00:02:41 like to make is that like the average age in a newsroom was 45. Now it's like 27. Right. So I had a bunch of like, you're not even newsrooms anymore. Right. That's a misnomer. Yeah. And it's like,
Starting point is 00:02:50 I mean, I just think like I had all these angry old dudes yelling at me all the time. Like you didn't think of this or like, you didn't talk to this person. Now it's like how many stories, like they're writing like 10 stories a day. They're not hanging out with cops.
Starting point is 00:03:01 They're not going through court records. They're not fact checking anything. There's not even really any editing happening, right? So they're like ripping. I mean, I see this in the New York Times all the time. I'll get a press release on some health-related thing. And like, they're literally writing off the press release. Like, you'd get fired if you did that when I was a young cub reporter, right? It's just like so different. And so, I mean, I feel like one of the things that I've done, I mean, you know this, like, obviously with Greg, but also with a lot of people who with COVID who got kicked off of Twitter was go around and basically say, like, how the hell are you saying that this person is misinformation? misinformation and not at least covering this side of it. And I mean, it's profoundly dangerous
Starting point is 00:03:45 for this country, I think, to not have a free press and not have an independent voice of people who are smart enough to recognize when they're being misled. I mean, we saw this profoundly with Greg, right? Which hopefully we'll get into all of that. But I think, you know, I don't think of myself as a fixer. I think of myself as a healer, you know, right. I like bringing people together. And I also, I don't want to malign the press. I mean, I think a lot of people think like, oh, they're on the take or whatever. They're just young and untrained and no one's helping them, but they're getting paid shit, right? Like they're not doing this because they're evil or they're trying to push some agenda forward. They're just easy to
Starting point is 00:04:24 manipulate and people are doing that and no one's pushing back. I mean, I think like part of what I try to do is say like the nature of research is such that you only know what's in front of you. And so if you apologize, then it's an admission of guilt, right? And if, whereas if you say like, hold the phone, like that's not what I did, or that's not what I said, or I was simply questioning this thing. And now you're trying to like malign me. Like reporters get that on some level because they went into the field because they want to expose and they want to tell truth to power, but no one's giving them that and teaching them how to do it. So, I mean, I try really hard to work with young reporters because I think they're in it probably for the right reason. So they don't have anybody mentoring them, right? They don't have any of those angry old men anymore. They've
Starting point is 00:05:07 all been canceled and kicked out of the newsroom. So there's no one, there's no grownups at the table. Right. And that, that really does a disservice to the industry. And then none of us trust them. Right. So like, even when we read really good reporting from my perspective, I'm like, fuck, I don't know. I mean,'t know i mean you know what did you you know what i really liked what you just said when you say sorry it validates it validates them you know what else it does on the other side of that too it um it validates the victim meaning that like it justified like you're you're you're you're actually being a codependent so when joe rogan apologizes for this whole slew of uh racial slurs that he says and they edit them together, they're basically all the people who were offended by it.
Starting point is 00:05:49 They're saying when he says sorry, he's not. He's also telling them, oh, yes, you should play the victim. Oh, yes, you should play the victim when they were all to every single one of them taken out of context. Like they were never meant to hurt anyone's feelings. And if your feelings were hurt, that's your problem is the truth. It's not his problem. And so, yeah, it's crazy the misuse of the word sorry. It's pathetic. It's sad. And I also think it's one of these things where like are we assuming that the public is so dumb they can't contextualize things? Right.
Starting point is 00:06:19 That's where we're at, right? Yeah. We're taking the norm of 50 years ago and we're somehow applying modern day judgment to that action a long time ago without any of the nuance of like, well, you know what? It wasn't such a big deal before. Right. And if it's, I mean, this is like the whole, there's a lot of this with the me too stuff that I find really, I mean, I think me too has been completely weaponized. Right. So like, that's a totally different thing, but I think even in the nuance of like how, I mean, like watch like mad men. Right. I mean, like watch like Mad Men. Right. I mean, like these are accurate depictions of how women were treated in the workplace.
Starting point is 00:06:49 They're not treated that way anymore. Right. Are we going to go back and like, you know, take the statues down? Like all the, you know, titans of industry because they mistreated women wasn't mistreating women at that time. You have to understand that. And I think there's so much to be said for the progress we have made, right? On race, on gender, on all of these things. Like that should be celebrated. I feel this way about like a lot of the stuff being taught in schools right now, right? It's like, if you're teaching kids about slavery or whatever, like, that's great. But you know what the big takeaway is, is that we're the only country really in the world that has been a superpower without it. Right. For two thirds of our history, we have not had slavery.
Starting point is 00:07:30 We have not colonized other land. We wanted Alaska. We bought it. Right. Like that's that changes the like literally the history of the world was about conquering land. And part of that was taking people because labor is an asset. Right. And like that, it's a power dynamic there's an abolitionist one let's not forget who won that's right and that's my point republicans won the republicans won and the democrats lost it was it was a it was a clean split 1860 abraham lincoln the first republican president this country has ever had. Not a single Republican slave owner. They won. And the Democrats lost.
Starting point is 00:08:07 How long ago was that, right? Yeah. We're approaching 200 years. Individual rights have never been stronger than they are today. Biggest melting pot in the world. Yeah, biggest melting pot. There's no other experiment going on
Starting point is 00:08:20 like the United States, none. I mean, that's what I feel like kids should be taught. Right. Is like, yeah, like we, we made some mistakes, we learned from them and we're constantly revising and getting better because the individual is the most important thing in this country. Right. Then I think it's lost. What should people read who don't know that? What do you think? What books should people read to understand? You roger kimball at our last party right yeah yeah yeah he was great the guy with the funny hat the the the art critic genius yes and he so he's become like a good friend and he's so funny because when he came to the party he was like what's the dress
Starting point is 00:08:56 code and i was like casual like super california casual so his outfit was his casual outfit right awesome awesome the only thing casual about him was maybe like the drink he had in his hand, but I loved him. I loved his look. He's so he's brilliant. And he's so easy to talk to. He's just a lot of fun, but he published a book that was called land of hope. Um, and DeSantis actually adopted it and made it a mandatory part of the Florida curriculum. And it's now, it's becoming a very popular, you know, sort of antidote to like what's being taught in regular history curriculums. And he doesn't shy away from the, you know, other stuff, the bad stuff, right? The history that we've
Starting point is 00:09:39 learned from, but he doesn't create a victim mentality. He allows all American, I mean, he sort of tells the story of like Americans are the land of hope. Right. And there's a reason for that. So I really like that. And what Roger did was he he published that book. And then when it became something where schools really wanted to use it, they basically turned it into a curriculum. So there's teacher stuff. So like anybody who's trying to teach their kids who's in a school system where they're not getting this kind of education, I would suggest that because they have student resources now and they have teacher resources. So it actually makes it really easy. Um, which is exactly like Greg and I are hoping to actually copy that exact model with him for our program. I read the long March. Actually, that's not true. I didn't read it. I listened to it. That's one of Roger Kimball's
Starting point is 00:10:24 books. And if you, and I, and you know, was a huge uh hippie and read all the hippie uh books the jack kerouac books and if you want to have all of that shit ruined for you read the long march man he really lifts up the skirt on that thing whoo or sorry i don't mean to attack women he really pulls the pants down on that thing yeah it's um what an honest what an another honest man yeah okay so if you want to learn about individualism it's important that people learn that because there's a selfish component right when you hear that you're like oh that that means you're selfish what individual rights yeah individual rights sorry individual rights but i think there is this like again i and this is like more of a philosophical conversation but like i think there's something that's really interesting about this idea, which obviously Greg and I are sort of obsessed with, with like consensus opinion taking over, right, rather than like rational facts.
Starting point is 00:11:15 And the founding of this country was really based on this idea of individual rights will produce a better collective, right? So the founding fathers were really clear, like, if we don't have an educated public, we're not going to have a democracy, right? You have to be able to think for yourself and you have to be able to think for yourself critically in order to make good choices, including like who you elect into office, right? And you can't have that if people aren't well-informed. And so I think they actually go together, even though they sound really different. I think it's like, if you're about, you know, an individual's right to freedom, the pursuit of happiness, you're not guaranteed happiness, but you have the right to pursue it, right? We're not going to put roadblocks in your way. If you want to work hard and you want to
Starting point is 00:11:54 contribute to your community, you have the right to do that, right? And the state can't get in your way and religion can't get in your way, right? And that creates a social contract. I mean, in the enlightenment sense of like, we do give up certain rights in order for the collective, but we've agreed to that. Right. I would argue that we're actually at a point, we're pretty close to a point where that social contract needs to be rewritten, right? It's been taken away from us. And actually, individual rights are being taken away that we didn't agree to. Like, I didn't agree for all these people that I know who are brilliant scientists and public health experts to not be allowed on Twitter.
Starting point is 00:12:30 Right. Right. I didn't agree to give up my right to assembly when you canceled my kid's school and you told me I couldn't go to my job anymore. Like, those are big deal rights that we all just sort of surrendered. Right. Because what we were told to like, that's about as like you have to take your kids have to take drugs to go to public school in california you have to have a sign on your
Starting point is 00:12:51 bathroom that says if you have an individual toilet bathroom you have to have a sign on there that says um uh gender neutral what about what about as things as simple as um uh not parking in front of fire hydrants? Is that social contract shit? What about that social contract? We agree to give up certain rights. Pull over if an ambulance is behind you with its lights on. Yep. Right.
Starting point is 00:13:16 I mean, those are part of it. Don't litter. Don't litter. Yep. I mean, like the idea behind it really goes to this idea that like the more good we do collectively, the safer we are as individuals. A lot of it is safety based. Right. Like we agree to have force. We agree to have laws. Right. Take the injection so everyone's safe. Well, that's where the critical component of thinking comes in. Right. Because if you if you're not able to critically think about the issues or process them, then you end up using that to turn against it.
Starting point is 00:13:48 Now, all of a sudden I'm saying, well, you're eliminating my safety because you're not following this agenda and you need to, and there's no critical thought or education about what's actually happening. There's just a narrative that's being pursued, right? Emily, what about Dick Butter says, what if you drive faster than the ambulance? Is it okay to not pull over? No, that's the problem, right? People like this guy. This guy's too much of a critical thinker. I like to drive behind the ambulance. it okay to not pull over no that's the problem right people like this guy this guy's too much of a critical thinker i like to drive behind the ambulance so you get through the traffic critical thinking dick butter see hey what's it what's interesting emily too is we have the most well-informed society in the history of mankind too and yet we also have the most um there's some people are just drinking, I guess, from the
Starting point is 00:14:25 wrong. Well, they're drinking the poison water. I mean, I don't know. I think we were way more educated when we had just sort of like a basic rubric of like curriculum, right? Like everybody, like you look at math standards, right? Like kids were able to do much harder math 50 years ago than they can do today. And like, we, I think that's actually part of this victim mentality. We keep dropping the standards saying like, oh, you know, women don't score well on the SAT. Right. So it's a, it's a gender thing. The test is a, you know, is bad for women. Like, whoa, wait a minute. Maybe we're not doing a good job teaching girls math. Right. It's not that girls can't do math. Was that really a thing about the SAT?
Starting point is 00:15:07 Because don't women dominate the college scene now? Well, I know more women are going to med school than men, but I think there has been more of an emphasis on, but you know, I mean, the other thing, like I don't, we can get into this. I actually, when I, so Tom Seyfried, right? Who's a friend of ours, who we have dinner with sometime. We were, we had dinner with him recently
Starting point is 00:15:25 and he was talking about how some schools have colleges have their own like, basically like number of Chinese students that they'll limit, right? Because they pay in cash and they're good students and they come and they're great, but it's pushing out slots for americans and i had a conversation with somebody who we all know oh so when you say chinese let's be real clear here when you say chinese you mean chinese citizens yes not chinese the ethnicity most of them are but versus americans so this is different than affirmative action affirmative action is strictly based on skin color, ethnicity. This is based on nationality.
Starting point is 00:16:08 Okay, okay. Important distinction. And just so everyone knows, Thomas Seyfried is a friend of Emily's who I got to meet and a friend of Greg's who is on the forefront and the foremost expert on planet Earth today on cancer as a metabolic disease, meaning lifestyle choices. And he knows his books. What's his book? His book's crazy. Cancer as a metabolic disease meaning uh lifestyle choices and he knows his books what's his book his book's crazy cancer as a metabolic disease cancer as a metabolic disease yeah and save your money if you want to try to buy it he also has a lot of really great youtube videos okay what's interesting about him i know this is like tangential from the chinese thing we'll get back to that but like he um you know it's actually that's how i met greg i don't know if you know that but tom introduced us i think i uh i i think i was there the very first time you and your husband met greg and thomas was there and we hung out just in those
Starting point is 00:16:57 couches in the hotel lobby just like where like where the restaurant bar and lobby met we hung out like for hours there thomas was cool as shit. He, so I was working on a story about his work because I thought it was just like profound. I mean, he has the, for people who don't know, he has these really simple experiments that are called the nuclear transfer experiments where he takes the nucleus of a cancer cell and he moves it into a healthy cell because theoretically the modern, you know, sort of version of cancer is that it's all in the nucleus, right? It's a genetic disease. And what happens is you look at the healthy cell and it doesn't develop cancer. So then he does the same thing where he moves the mitochondria from a cancer cell to a healthy cell. And sure enough, it developed cancer. So like, just like if that's
Starting point is 00:17:40 all he did, that would be profoundly upsetting to the status quo. Right. How come he didn't win the Nobel Prize for that? I hope he still does. I mean, I think it's remarkable how his ideas are now being adopted and no one's giving him credit for it. But I feel like there's a whole history of scientific discovery that goes along with that trend. But I was working on a story about him and he was so funny because he was like at the end of you know hours talking to him in his office i was like what what does it take to solve this right like what do you need and he was like i don't know like three million dollars and i was like three million
Starting point is 00:18:14 dollars like can't we get that tomorrow like what's the hold up yeah yeah i'm in a lab i'm like i'm not a fundraiser like i don't know how to do any of that he's like but this guy greg glassman he gave me some money. And I was like, Greg Glassman, the CrossFit guy. And he was like, yeah. And I was like, that's random. And he was like, yeah. He's like, his dad called me and had me on the phone for like two weeks, rerunning all
Starting point is 00:18:35 my math and like making sure I had everything. Oh, that's right. I remember Greg's dad went through that book and we did his math for him. And, um, and then, and Tom was like, yeah, then he sent me some money. He goes, but actually I'm not really interested in his money. I'm interested in the idea that he has a community of people who don't accept just conventional advice on stuff. And he was like, this is going to get solved through that. It's not going to get solved because like the drug that he recommends using is off patent. No one's going to make any money off of it.
Starting point is 00:19:09 Right. Cancer is like by far, you know, the ICU is the highest generating part of a hospital in terms of revenue. And cancer treatment is like the big apple. So Tom does grand rounds at hospitals and people come up to him afterwards and they're like, you know what you just said would bankrupt us. Like we can't have you talk here anymore. So people hate him. Yep. That's it. That's yep. So then I sent an email to like info at CrossFit and I was like, I just talked to Tom
Starting point is 00:19:34 Seyfried and he said that like, you're working on this stuff and I would love to talk to Greg if he's available or whatever. And it was like five minutes later, my phone rang and it was like, hi, I'm Greg Glassman. And I was like, oh, wow. What year was that? Do you remember what year that was? Like 2017. Okay. And I recorded that call and I joke with Greg all the time. It's like the funniest call because I knew Gary Tabbs from like 2005. Right. And we were just like, kind of like comparing notes on like who we knew and what we knew. And it was like a really fun first conversation. He was like, I'm coming to Boston in a couple of weeks. Like, I want to hang out with you. And then I met all of you and that was a lot of fun.
Starting point is 00:20:11 Okay, but back to the Chinese, the SAT, the only certain amount of Chinese are allowed into. So some colleges sort of like as a, you know, independent decision limit, say 10% of their students can come. But because of all of the student loan problems and because all these colleges are in a lot of trouble, everybody's starting to rethink that.
Starting point is 00:20:33 So I was at the Brownstone event in Miami, which was, I had gone to the original one because I'm connected with all of those people. And so I was invited to this one a year later, which was really fun because now people are starting to realize like, we weren't all walking around with tinfoil hats, right? Like some of those objections were pretty spot on and the event was much larger because there were so many more people interested now in the COVID stuff. And somebody there, I was talking
Starting point is 00:20:58 to them about, I had never heard of this like sort of limit on Chinese people. And obviously with the gain of function stuff, it's really interesting to think like, are we teaching students that are going back and doing this research? Was this research happening in the lab, like completely funded by the U S why is the U S working on potential bio weapons with our probably largest adversary? Right. And so we were having this conversation and apparently Stanford doesn't have that. So Stanford will just take as many as they can. And I was like, does that pose a real problem? And the person that I was talking to, who was a professor, was like, I'm like, I hate this conversation because like my Chinese students are some of my favorite.
Starting point is 00:21:36 Like they work so hard and we have to have partnerships with other people. And I was like, well, I'm not trying to say that like we don't do that. But like if it's replacing the American brain trust, that's going to stay here, right? I mean, this was a big thing in nuclear technology a long time ago. I'm in Boston, obviously, and grew up with a lot of people who worked at MIT. And there was a whole thing about like, sort of training young Iranian scientists on nuclear stuff after everything sort of fell apart. And how do you basically discriminate, right, against students who are coming from other places where they may be well
Starting point is 00:22:09 intentioned? And we don't know if maybe they'll stay here and work here, right? It does create this sort of interesting friction, which I mean, I suppose somebody could say is racist or whatever, but it isn't. I mean, like we are living in a global world where we have enemies. Where it's more nationalist. I think we solved that problem. It's nationalist. Yeah. But, you know, what's interesting is like even what you see with this balloon bullshit right yeah like people aren't you know they're closing all of these um police chinese police stations you guys heard about this they just closed a big one in new york no no secret chinese police stations that are going around trying to get chinese americans
Starting point is 00:22:44 to work for them. And they've been cracking down. There was one in Texas. They just there was a big story this weekend. And what do you mean Chinese police station like public like just like what is that? They're secret, but they're basically like Chinese authorized military on U.S. soil. Are you kidding me? No.
Starting point is 00:23:04 Now, why isn't this story being talked about? Oh, this is crazy. What I've heard about from people in the media is if we do this big story on this stuff, there'll be backlash against Chinese Americans. Right.
Starting point is 00:23:17 And I'm sure. Not, not for me, but there would be right there. Well, that's, that's just that's him who would decide to attack, but it's like, wait a minute. So what?
Starting point is 00:23:26 Saying what to say and what not to say about truly what is a national threat. Right. On our soil. Right. I mean, I don't know if you and Dale King got into this, but the whole fentanyl thing is like that's all coming from Mexico up here oh i just talked to our chinese friend um who three years ago defended his country and now is basically begging to come live in the united states after going through covid there you know i'm talking about right yeah and i didn't i don't think you should go home i think you should stay here yeah he's basically begging to stay and uh not only that yeah his whole opinion of his country has changed in the last two years he says they're close to civil war there that they're having serious issues i can't but i mean there's so many of them right that's why apple's moving their manufacturing too isn't it all the covid restrictions and everything else that's why they're picking up and leaving and going to india to get out in front of it
Starting point is 00:24:17 or or are you hearing this story about uh um an in 2025? Have you heard that, Emily? I've heard it now twice. Say that again. Tell me more. I heard it from a guy who's in the military who spoke to a general saying, yeah, the open talk around here is that we're heading towards conflict in 2025. And then yesterday I saw something quick about it on some on on i don't remember where it was but i saw i saw another data point on it was probably it was it must have been youtube or instagram it's the only place i get my information i was like wow i mean i think
Starting point is 00:24:54 we're already at war i i don't like i don't have any between yeah between fentanyl the virus and opening up police stations in the united states yeah i mean I mean, I was- TikTok. Hey, isn't it the same? Like we all know that obese people are the leading chronic disease. And let's just face it, obese people are the leading cause of economic collapse, challenge. They're the anchor on this country, right?
Starting point is 00:25:22 Our whole medical, everything that an obese person participates in is is is causing this country more trouble and it's got to be the leading indicator that we're in deep deep shit and uh but but we and we talk about that all the time and there's no hate crimes against fat people there's no one out there just like shooting down fat people so i mean people are fat i don't know it's right right okay Right. Okay. Gotcha. Cause they're the majority. Okay. Well, you're right. That that's fair. I mean, I don't know. Like, I feel like Ben and I were having this Ben Allen and I were having this conversation about, um, the fentanyl problems, the military's facing and they're facing
Starting point is 00:26:00 it too. You just look, well, what's happening with them is that it's not people shooting up, right? It's somebody wants a Percocet. They go online, they order it, it arrives. It's not Percocet. And the kid dies. And the family, everybody's like, he wasn't a drug addict. Like, what the hell is this? And these bases are starting to talk about it now. But I started, because of that conversation with him, I started looking things up and I was like, wow, the leading cause of death for 18 to 45 males, which is basically what who we go to if we need to draft is suicide. Number one. Number two, fentanyl overdose. So if I'm China, theoretically, how am I going to best attack the U.S., I'm going to go after their military, that age population that would be fighting. And they're doing it directly with the military with these overdoses through, I think it's like Adderall and Percocet that are laced with fentanyl that you're buying on the internet. And then obviously just the general population. It's like profound if you think
Starting point is 00:27:03 about like how their action, I said to Ben, I was like, why doesn't somebody create a campaign where they say to the troops, look guys, we're at war. They're here. When you're ordering those pills and you think it's something else, they're attacking you. These are American casualties on in the homeland. I feel like that would rally people to be like, fuck, I'm not buying that shit online anymore. I feel like that would rally people to be like, fuck, I'm not buying that shit online anymore. We had a guy come on who made a movie about fentanyl. It was 26 minutes.
Starting point is 00:27:31 I'll send you a link. It was so hard to watch. I had to stop the movie like four times. I was crying so hard. But basically, last year, they imported enough fentanyl into the United States to kill everyone in the U.S. 300 times. kill everyone in the U S 300 times. And another thing is two point. If there's like, I don't know, 3 million people being born every year in the United States, 2.6% of that population dies from fentanyl, not the babies, but just that's how many people are dying in the United States from fentanyl overdose. And the vast majority of them, Emily, aren't even doing fentanyl. Do you know what I mean? So like they got some weed or they bought a Xanax on Snapchat and they
Starting point is 00:28:04 died from fentanyl. They're not even trying to Xanax on Snapchat and they died from fentanyl. They're not even trying to get fentanyl and they're dying from fentanyl. Yeah, it's crazy that that that is all Chinese, too. Everyone just knows that that's just the Chinese. I don't I mean, I don't know that there's any way to really confirm it, but that's I've definitely heard that from multiple sources that I trust. Wad zombie. My younger cousin doesn't know his times tables and just graduated from high school. So, so you, so you met, you met Greg and with Thomas Seyfried. Well, so Tom like sort of put the spark of like, you should talk to Greg.
Starting point is 00:28:39 And I knew of Greg, right? I mean, like Bob and I have both been doing CrossFit for a long time. Oh, you had been doing CrossFit up to before then i was at cfne after max was born so that was like 2012 maybe okay uh what was it crossfit what new england okay that's is that ben bergeron's gym it is okay um and i got a bad neck injury oh i'm sorry my fault that's what's very dangerous wall ball to the head twice um yeah no it was a really you know what it is it's that giant brain of yours you were you it started up thinking and you forgot to look up and you got hit i used to be an athlete and i'm not anymore but i like can't stop right like i keep going i literally like i threw the wall and it
Starting point is 00:29:22 hit under the target oh oh back at me right yes i'm going because i was like I threw the wall and it hit under the target. Oh, back at me. Right. Yes. Going. Cause I was like, I'm not going to fucking stop. Right. Good on you. And then I did the exact same thing again. And Cheryl, who was one of the coaches was like, you're done. You can sit down. Like, what the fuck are you doing? And I was like, fine. I like, I need to finish. And she's like, you need to sit down. And then I like literally couldn't move my neck more than this. I'd pay to see that video. I'd pay to see that video. Brilliant. So Sean Tully, who did the onboarding for me at CFNE, I just hired to have him come training me. And so like he would train me at home for years. Um, and then after Ben canceled Greg, I would never go back there again. Um, so I go to daybreak, which is amazing. And Mel's
Starting point is 00:30:04 awesome who runs it. But but anyway, so like I knew of Greg, but I wasn't like a CrossFit, you know, fangirl the way that obviously some people are, but I loved the workouts. And so but I was like, sort of, I didn't know that Greg was into all this other health stuff, right. And so that sort of formed a real bond and friendship. And then he turned me on to the NSCA case, which I thought was fabulous because I was also, I like have run different small companies. And at that point with two little kids, I owned three women's health centers that were gyms, nutrition, and then sort of like I developed a curriculum for them that was all about like sort of middle-aged
Starting point is 00:30:42 women and hormones and why weight bearing exercise is really important because of osteoporosis and how we have different bodies than men and they're not well studied and so there were and that launched the podcast that i had um where were those where were those health centers emily what state boston boston okay yeah um and that's where you live now boston yeah god you're like me you hate yourself you refuse to leave the hive you refuse to leave the hive yeah you refuse to leave the hive like i like you know it's hard if i could get everybody to move i would i'm in a zombie hive too but i think that is boston turning at all I'm in a zombie hive too, but I think that is Boston turning at all?
Starting point is 00:31:28 Are people waking up at all? Yeah, a little bit. Like, give me confidence. Oh, okay. I mean, I still see people wearing masks, right? Like I, yeah, me too. There were a lot of people who I am friends with, right.
Starting point is 00:31:43 Who are lawyers, doctors, whatever. And I was like, wow, what the, I mean, I was like uninvited to parties. Like I was, it was a lot. Dude, tons of Harvard grads who are retarded. Tons, the vast majority, I'd say almost all the Harvard grads I know are retarded. And by retarded, I mean, they are retarded. They can't, meaning their, their, their, their capability to think is severely stunted. Well, you'll appreciate this. So, you know, we have a lot of pharma companies here, but we have a lot of new billionaires in Boston because of covid. And when the Project Veritas stuff happened, I had a friend who's connected to Pfizer reach out and say they really need your help. And Greg was like, they they need you right help. And Greg was like, they, they need you right now.
Starting point is 00:32:25 And I was like, no fucking way. Pfizer needs you. Right. To like fix the problem. Double agent, be a double agent. But I was like, now I have their standards. Like, I'm not going to help people who are fucking guilty. Right.
Starting point is 00:32:39 Like that's not happening. They tried to erase that guy off the internet. Mr. Tristan. Yeah. But I mean, that's so happening. They tried to erase that guy off the internet, Mr. Tristan. Yeah. But I mean, that's so dumb too, right? So dumb. How to use the Wayback Machine. It's not like complicated to find that, right?
Starting point is 00:32:52 It's so funny. Did the media ever report on that besides Fox? Did anyone ever report on that? I don't think so. I mean, other than the Forbes piece. Hell no. How it was all bad. And then it turned out the Forbes guy was like actually a paid consultant for Pfizer.
Starting point is 00:33:07 That was classic. Doing gain of function research, Trish. Releasing a vaccine that's not a vaccine that's mRNA. Not doing studies, proper studies. He's saying what's Pfizer, Gilder. Not releasing data, like not giving trial information on time and trying to verify all that.
Starting point is 00:33:29 Putting the public women and children in harm's way, pregnant women and children in harm's way knowingly, just for starters. What Teddy Williams, you and your popcorn. Okay, so back to meeting. So you meet Greg there and you guys hit it off. Definitely. Yeah. I mean, I feel like we were just like, sort of like, I mean, we joke, right. That like scientific misconduct is our like favorite kind of porn. Right. It's just like, what? Like, how is this happening? Yeah. He loves that stuff. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:25 And he's just like such a wonderful storyteller and he's just encyclopedic in his knowledge. And so I just knew instantly there was so much that I could learn from him about all the things that I was starting to realize. Right. And so like around the same time I'm doing my podcast, I was getting recruited. So I sort of when I had kids, I thought I wouldn't work and really missed the sort of stimulation of being out. I mean, I had covered murder, right? And like all kinds of really intense things. I knew I couldn't do that with little kids. You were freelance? After I had kids, but before I was staff at ABC. Okay. I've written for the Globe and Boston Magazine, New York Times, like all, right, all over.
Starting point is 00:34:44 So I had a column for Boston Magazine magazine at that time um and the washington post was recruiting me to do health stories and wow these are horrible these are really bad places you worked abc new york times washington post these are when i was there right right right washington post is just absolutely fucking well so this is what happened they recruited me to do health stuff for them and i pitched them on like three stories that I wanted to do. One was Virta, right? Yeah. Yeah. The largest diabetes trial ever done. That's reversing diabetes and like 80% of their participants over three years, right? Like it's not a quick fit. It's not a, oh, we fixed it. And then the person gets diabetes again. Like they literally are managing the disease in a way
Starting point is 00:35:24 where the person doesn't appear to have it by managing the disease in a way where the person doesn't appear to have it by getting carbs out of their diet like profoundly important for the public to understand what was that guy's name uh he was the truly a guy right yeah yes yami inkinen or amy say it again so i think it's sami s yeah sami okay yeah um and the and i was like this is a mate like this is an incredible story right like people incredible it's always been this like managed disease and like we're gonna give you more drugs and you might lose your leg but we're gonna extend your life right like what if you just didn't eat the shit right wow and the editor at the washington post was like i think you're really biased. Like,
Starting point is 00:36:06 I didn't realize that you had this strong bias. Like all of these stories that you're pitching are like very politically loaded and whatever. And I was like, what? And she was like this, the Virta piece, for example, like that whole study is funded by the company. And I was like, who funds the insulin trials? Who funds every Pfizer study? Like, are you kidding me? me like what are we talking like how is this a double standard so i was getting she's projecting that's hardcore projecting it was like absolutely bonkers i mean hey i just want to ask you this real quick total side thing is vert is still around i think so i need to have him on the show okay who did you know sarah who
Starting point is 00:36:44 was the medical director and like spearheaded a lot of the research. Oh no, I never met her. I thought it was some dude over there who was kind of a CrossFit. Sami's the owner. Yeah. He launched the company
Starting point is 00:36:55 because he was this like really famous triathlete who developed diabetes. And he was like, wait, I'm super healthy. And everybody was telling him to go on drugs. And he was like, there must be an alternative. And because he was a billionaire, he did a lot of research and he figured was like, wait, I'm super healthy. And it, and everybody was telling him to go on drugs. And he was like, there must be an alternative. And because he was a billionaire, he did a lot of research and he figured out like, no, this is a carbohydrate induced disease. I can fix this.
Starting point is 00:37:13 And then, and he had sold his company for a ton of money. Trulia. It was Trulia. Yeah. So he was like, my new venture is going to be helping people who are diagnosed with diabetes manage this through lifestyle rather than drugs. But Sarah was the medical director. What was her last name?
Starting point is 00:37:28 I do remember her. Blonde lady? Yeah, Hallberg. She was amazing. Yeah, how did she die? Cancer, lung cancer. Oh, man. She looked good too.
Starting point is 00:37:38 Yeah, I think she had a tough battle. Okay. So I took you – I was asking if uh verda's still around when you were going to talk okay so abc uh going to them i'm starting to be like wait what the fuck is going on in the media right like this i had been out for a while and i was you know dabbling back in because it was the kind of thing where i could freelance and be home with my kids and i was running these businesses and i was like i don this is not like, I don't even know if I want to do this. And obviously, you know, Greg CrossFit is classified as a publishing company. And so, and you guys were
Starting point is 00:38:13 doing lots of great writing and producing and all kinds of cool stuff. And so he was sort of like trying to, you know, show me how you guys were actually telling the true story. Right. And that, no, it wasn't like a mainstream outlet and, you know, in the media sense, but actually the work you guys were doing was far superior at that point. Right. And, um, and so I kind of became friends over that, right? Like we, he'd send me stuff that you guys were doing and I'd send him stuff that I was doing and we'd talk about ideas and it like, just was really all about this idea of, oh, that's awesome. See, it's like, I mean, I feel like this is the stuff that drives me crazy is like the reason to be a reporter is to share important information that you think the
Starting point is 00:38:54 public needs to have. Right. And like something like when I wrote the column in Boston Magazine on the Virta trial and I did a podcast with Sarah on it. I got crazy people on Twitter, like sending me pictures of dead kids saying like, I hope your kids die this way. And it was because I came up with this analogy that was like, we are so restrictive about eating peanut butter, right? Because we don't want kids with a peanut allergy in the same classroom having an attack. But yet we're giving kids all the sugar. And then just telling them like, oh, just take your insulin. Like, no. Would we ever do that with a peanut allergy?
Starting point is 00:39:32 Like, oh, just take your EpiPen, Johnny. Like you can have the PB&J. Like that's it's bonkers. Right. Bonkers. Crazy. All these like type one moms went ballistic on me. And Greg was one of the first people I called when I was like, I'm getting all these death threats on Twitter.
Starting point is 00:39:47 And he's like, I know that group. They came after me, too. And he's like, they're mobilized by some other force. Totally mobilized. Yes. Hey, why doesn't Emily have a Boston accent? Are you? Sometimes when I have a lot of tequila, it'll come out.
Starting point is 00:40:03 Because she's educated. That's why. She went to Northwestern. You know, my mom went to Northwestern. Well, I got my master's at Northwestern. I think, didn't both your parents go? I think so, yes. Actually, that's correct.
Starting point is 00:40:14 My dad was history and my mom was English, I think. History major, English major. But they didn't meet there. They met at church. That's what they told you. And they eloped. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it's true. told you and they eloped i'm pretty sure i'm pretty sure it's true my mom can you imagine my mom was born in the united states and she married
Starting point is 00:40:30 this immigrant smart woman uh everyone should marry an immigrant if you want a hard-working man marry an immigrant there i said it okay um so uh so so then you – from there, you are kindred spirits in the fact that you both like going after the douchebags, the people who are basically lying. Yeah, I think we both have a very strong appetite for bullies. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Greg definitely does not – almost to a fault, he stands up for weak people. Yeah, it's kind of his true north. Isn't that crazy that they would cancel a guy who's most – I mean, you've seen it. He'll just walk right up to a homeless dude and be like, hey, dude, what's your problem? You need to get your shit together and like – a drug yeah yeah he'll lean right into a black guy a gay guy like any anyone who he feels like is like being like pigeonholed somewhere if he senses that he'll run over and like just be a shield for them offer them something greg's one of his like best traits and probably his biggest points of like weakness for other people to attack is his generosity. I think he's beyond, I mean, I asked Matt Holdsworth one time,
Starting point is 00:41:49 like, can you give me an accounting of like all of the things that Greg has paid for, for people over the years? Right. Like I've had people tell me stories of like, he paid for my cancer treatment and I never heard from him. Like he just paid for it and didn't ever expect anything from me.
Starting point is 00:42:01 Right. So like, there's this great story of like the coffee shop that you guys love in Madison and you went for breakfast one morning and it was closed because the air conditioning was broken. And Greg told Jimmy Waddell and somebody else like fix that for them. And so they found the person and it turned out that the landlord wouldn't pay for it. And they like rewrote the lease, got them a new AC, like all this stuff. Right. I can't, I cannot count the number of times that I've heard stories like that from people. And so I said to Matt, like,
Starting point is 00:42:30 how was this accounted for? Right. Like, was there like a, cause I know it wasn't done through the nonprofit side, right? Like the CrossFit charity organization, like Greg kind of hated, right. Because he doesn't like it. So those all could have been tax write-offs. He didn't bother. He would just say like, I don't care, just fix it, right? He hated it because it was a feeling, let the government into his business and he hated the government being in his business.
Starting point is 00:42:53 And I think it was also like, there's all these nonprofits that are really like cover organizations for something else, right? Which he was realizing CDC foundation and other stuff. And so he was like, I don't want one of those. I don't want to do business like that. But it's like, it literally like, A, it a wasn't a tax write off, which is a big reason. Most people do shit like that. Right. Is that like, you have to give away a certain amount
Starting point is 00:43:11 of money so that you don't give it to the government at the end of the year. That wasn't an impetus for him at all. And on top of that, it's like, there's no record. Like we can't figure out how many people he fixed things for because it was just like, just do it. Right. Like, I don't care. It's not a matter of whatever. And I think it's his downfall because I think then in some cases where he's overly generous and people come to expect it. Right.
Starting point is 00:43:33 And then they get mad when it's taken away and it's not. Yeah. Yeah. I hate it. He was just in town for two weeks and took me out to dinner every night. Last night I went to the restaurant and they gave me a bill. I'm like, no, what are you talking about? I've been here all week. I've never, what are you talking about? I've been here all week.
Starting point is 00:43:47 I've never, yeah. What are you talking about? Where's Greg? I wish I was joking. Hey, you know what else, Emily? How about this? I bet you he's given away 1000 level ones, but, but maybe 10,000, but maybe 10,000. I mean, he would give away one a day like like it was and so if
Starting point is 00:44:08 he gave away a thousand that's a million dollars that he didn't deduct as donations and if he gave away 10 000 it's fucking 10 million dollars right i mean so like no i've reached out to me under the new no no not 10 million it's a 100 million dollars. I mean, what would add three zeros? A hundred thousand. Oh, 10 million. Sorry. 10 million. Yeah. Not so it's crazy. His generosity is crazy. I agree. It's nuts. And I under the new ownership, there were people reaching out and saying like, hey, I my affiliate fees were waived because I, you know, serve this population of people that's in need. And Greg always thought like, that's more important than the affiliate fee. And like, as long as you're, you keep doing that and you keep serving these people, you don't have to pay. And under the new owners, they were
Starting point is 00:44:53 like, oh, sorry, you have to pay. And so people were saying to me, like, how, what do I do? Right. Like I give all my money away to pay for, you know, L1s for other people, right? Or to stimulate this, you know, group of people that don't have any money, like I don't charge or whatever. And like, now they're all being asked to pay. Like, that's a bad look, right? But it's also, you know, that's their choice. And Greg ran things so differently that I think that's one of the really interesting sort of points of like how he made decisions about what was best for the community versus trying to make money off of everything right and and no one knows what the stimulus is if he gave away a thousand l1s and that caused those people to tell three
Starting point is 00:45:34 people to take the l1s then he actually made money but there's no one there who can do that there now anymore there's no one with that authority because it's owned by god knows who um yeah there's also man it was such a cool company well he always had that analogy of like he was the caretaker of a forest and not the builder of a skyscrapers right and i think that that really shows right there because really what he's doing is he's going around and planting the seed by giving that away off of what you said where you give one away and then they go around turn three and the whole entire forest continues to grow and he's just the caretaker of it rather than charging and nickeling diming every single person so we could build the skyscraper two
Starting point is 00:46:08 different methodologies of business day i was he talks to more strangers than anyone i know by far just random people he'll talk to anyone and it was the same doctors right so he and i were talking this weekend about the mL2 that happened or whatever. And aromas. Yeah. And there were some people that were upset that they were charging for it. And I said something to Greg about it. And he was like, you don't charge doctors. He's like, doctors are going to call their patients to go to CrossFit. But it's like, it's a feeder system. Right. And they're not coaches. And I was like, that's another one of these examples of like how he thought about it differently. Like he's, he's brilliant. He wasn't dumb to the fact that like if I'm spending my earnings paying for L1s for other people, to your point, Seve, like they're going to go and then they're going to open a box.
Starting point is 00:46:55 Right. And it's going to feed the ecosystem in a really organic, natural way that like, shit, I'm not going to charge this person $3,000 to be part of my community when they're growing my business for me. Right. It's fair. It's fair to say the doctors are the army of pharma, right? I mean, they're basically the drug dealers of pharma. They're the foot soldiers, foot soldiers, for sure. I don't think there's any poetic license, any exaggeration, any hyperbole. I think it just is. And so to chart, you're right. It's funny. I didn't even think it was that big of a deal that they were charging them. But hearing you say it here, it's crazy to charge doctors to take their level one or level two or level three or level four. Like, you just want them to have the education, right? Yes. Yes. They can share some of it and
Starting point is 00:47:37 they can say, Hey, like I just took this course. It was really cool, but you could go to this box with me later. And actually these people are experts on this. Right. And I mean, his whole point with the MDL one, which I loved so much was like, you see your patients once a year, maybe, right? Like I see people that I'm training three times a week. Who's going to have a bigger impact on them? Who's going to hold them accountable? You're telling them to lose 20 pounds and then you're seeing them in a year and you're surprised they didn't happen. I'm seeing the multiple times a week and making sure it happens. Like we need to be aligned. Right. And the long-term effect by bringing the doctors into the community is far more valuable than any dollars you would extract from them from seeing the event. Right. Far more, far more worthy in the long-term to bring them into the fold.
Starting point is 00:48:20 Yeah. And I feel like we were like talking about all the CrossFit health stuff right before it was launched. And I was, it was like such a cool idea. And I feel like we were like talking about all the CrossFit health stuff right before it was launched. And I was it was like such a cool idea. And I feel like Karin did such a great job. You know, I agree. But when I was at that first MDL one, we were all staying at the hotel. Right. So it was like being and then a bunch of doctors and nobody really knew each other. And I think, you know, as like the social coordinator always, I was like, let's have dinner, let's go to the bar or whatever. And it was like a incredibly special moment because it was exactly how he had predicted it would be where all these doctors had recognized the impact of the CrossFit stimulus in their own lives, right? And they happen to be doctors. And they had been isolated, right. And these
Starting point is 00:49:05 little silos all over the country, different specialties in medicine. And they came together and they finally felt like, oh shit, other people know what I know. Right. And back in my little community, everybody's challenging me on whether I should be recommending this or not. I know in my heart I should be, but now that I've connected with all these other people who know the same thing to be true and they've seen the same impact, I'm going back to my community. I'm telling everybody to fuck off. This is the best thing we could be doing.
Starting point is 00:49:32 It empowered those people in such a profound level. I mean, like Greg and I often joke that like, really, he's a social engineer, right? Like he brings people together. He empowers them to do great things. They do great things. And I think what he did with those doctors was beyond brilliant, right? Just by putting them in the same room around a cause and a thing that they had all experienced and that they loved to go back to their regional areas, doing their medicine, totally different. I mean, like there's a
Starting point is 00:50:00 dermatologist, a plastic surgeon, an OBGYN, an internist, a cancer doctor, right? Like they weren't talking about medicine. They were talking about how CrossFit helps in all of those ways, right? And now they can go back and they have a network of other people to rely on when they're getting shit at home. It's like, it's so smart. To give you guys an example, and I'm sure Emily has a lot of examples too. So we would be in a room with 40 doctors and one doctor would raise their hand and be like, yeah, there was a time when a patient was
Starting point is 00:50:28 diagnosed with type two diabetes. And I told them how they could get rid of their type two diabetes with nutrition and exercise. And an hour later, a administrator at the hospital came up to me and told me never to do that again. And that I had to go talk to that patient and lead them towards the pharmaceutical solution. And so there were all of these doctors living in these silos who knew the cure for the world's most vaccine problem, but they felt like outcasts and they felt this pressure and they started thinking they were crazy, like many of us did during the COVID thing. And so they didn't have this cohort to hang out with. And so these CrossFit level ones happened and it was like um the doctors who came there i mean granted the level one's amazing it was great they got it but it was more or equal to just hey bring like-minded
Starting point is 00:51:13 doctors together so they don't feel like they're working in silos and after a year of that there was getting to be some crazy synergy right definitely yeah yeah okay we have the cure and and and we're doctors that's why it's called the ddc the derelict doctor club right right right yeah you're never supposed to say that out loud you're never supposed to say that's a secret you just let it out susan okay you get a pass is it even still around hey did you know that um susan was an affiliate nearby emily and he would sneak into those so he would he wasn't invited to them but since he was only 50 miles 60 miles north he would come i love that and a few times he at least one time
Starting point is 00:51:52 um one of the people there who was running it said hey what are you doing here you can't be here you're not on the list and so susan flipped the script he's like well i'll set up some chairs or something and then just started like working and shit i offered to put in like the the name tags like into the thing, like into the little sleeves and stuff. Cause I saw that she hated it. Did you just change that? Did you just pop that thing up on the bottom of my screen? I didn't.
Starting point is 00:52:11 Oh, it's probably okay. I was fooling around with the new features. That's good. Hey, that's on the job training. Yeah. Write something nasty under Emily.
Starting point is 00:52:19 You know what I love about that so much too, Matt is just, there's so that is actually like, it's a very common story of people who just want to be around and they know there's some magic happening. And so they're like, I'm going to sneak in. Or like, I mean, I had talked to a bunch of people who were like, yeah, there was like a cert one weekend. So I went over and whatever. And I'm like, but didn't you already have your cert? And they were like, oh yeah, but I would just like go hang out every weekend. And it was like, it's like, again, it's sort of like being around this movement,
Starting point is 00:52:49 right. And like not wanting to miss out and feeling like there's something going on here. How do I get into this club that I think happened? I mean, Sebi, you know this better than I do, but like, it seems like that happened a lot where people would be like, well, can I put out chairs or can I help with this? Or what can I do to be involved? Like, I just want to be there. Yeah. And that's really cool. Right. I mean, that, can I put out chairs or can I help with this or what can I do to be involved? Like, I just want to be there. Yeah. And that's really cool. Right. I mean, that's how I feel about Christians.
Starting point is 00:53:17 Just think I keep a bunch of them near my be just in case Jesus comes by your gate, your gang of Christians there. Yeah, I'm jumping in. I'm just going to run inside the elevator that goes up to. I mean, I'm good. I'm good. I've been a friend for a long time. Arizona. And he like moved to this like really like high Mormon neighborhood. I was like, how are they going to feel about like vodka soda? And he was like, Oh, they don't try to convert me.
Starting point is 00:53:39 They're really, they're awesome. And he's like designated drivers. They like love children. Right. And he was like, and I'm going to heaven because I've got nine kids. Right. And so all they care about is like how many kids you have. And he's like, so I'm going to heaven because I've got nine kids. Right. And so all I care about is like how many kids you have. And he's like, so I'm in, I'm in the club. Yes. Tell me, tell me about it because we're 53 minutes in and I do not want to screw this up. Well, I've already screwed it up. Tell me about what's going on in February. And then, and then I want to go back and talk about the CrossFit book if we have time.
Starting point is 00:54:04 And then also talk about the NSCA case. But tell me what's going on here in February in Broken then I want to go back and talk about the CrossFit book if we have time and then also talk about the NSCA case but tell me what's going on here in February in broken science and what your role is with it this is a partnership between you and Greg right right so we're business partners on this and then we're also doing a docu-series with Adam Corolla and Jimmy Kimmel on K-Rock so we're business partners on those things Jimmy Kimmel is doing it yeah well it's adam's like sort of origin story right and yeah but he is a world-class piece of shit jimmy kimmel well i haven't had that experience okay well he is he is a complete sellout and if and he's a spreader of of hurtful lies and he's he's a mean person he's a bad person he's a bad human but just saying adam carolla is not from
Starting point is 00:54:43 what i can see yeah no i like sorry i don't mean to attack your buddy your business partner but he's a douche okay well we'll talk about that another episode maybe when carol comes out okay and and it's the same with jack dorsey i don't give them a pass like joe rogan did like you can't you can't be you don't get a pass unless unless you come on my unless you come on my podcast and apologize. And Jimmy Kimmel hasn't even apologized. Don't make me send you the clips. I know you know he's a dickhead. I don't know that.
Starting point is 00:55:14 And I'm going to withhold judgment for now. Okay, well, he's huge into giving poison to kids. Huge, huge, huge support. Okay, I'll change subject. I'm sorry. Oh, look, sorry. Here we go. Sean Sullivan, Jimmy Kimmel's a dou'll change subject. I'm sorry. Oh, yep, look it. Sorry, here we go. Sean Sullivan, Jimmy Kimmel's a douchebag and a Pfizer whore.
Starting point is 00:55:28 That's, thank you. Chairman Prozac, Jack Dorsey's also a crap bag. Thank you. You guys are so good. I'm not getting any money. I wanted to like raise a ton of money. Do I see if people are giving, no one's giving any money. I'm going to save like the best dirt for people who well don't be gave five dollars like what happened like who were the
Starting point is 00:55:51 biggest douchebags through the cancellation i've got some really good stories people who fucking called gregory hey hey that would really make me feel uncomfortable because those are probably my best guests. Oh, I think you've heard a voice recording. Yes. Oh, Emily said, oh, I'm I'm really sorry. You're like my father, but I just have to do this for my business. I've got some good stories, people, but I want to see some money. Hey, let me tell you this. Guess what?
Starting point is 00:56:20 So I was at a coffee shop yesterday in Santa Cruz. Awesome. And rainbows everywhere because it had just rained and the sun came out. And there's this big, buff, handsome guy sitting at the door with like – outside the door, there's like a bench outside this coffee shop and a super trendy one. And he's got his feet stretched out and he's got his arms across like this, handsome, buff guy. And he goes, hey. And I go, hey. He goes, you recognize me? And I'm like, oh, shit, I do.
Starting point is 00:56:44 And it was danny julie fouché's ex-husband oh yeah and i got to sit down and talk to him for an hour god it was fun it was such a good talk that's interesting i'd love to know did he have any insights for you yeah yeah he was gentle he was gentle but he he yeah he oh here we go oh and now they come thank you some of that crossfit money uh black entertainment network bet thank you get with the programming thank you quad zombie oh my goodness fight all thank you i was like people like drink usually and donate later is that why like the early morning shows don't make as much money is there some sort of do we have a trend here
Starting point is 00:57:20 thank you seven seven seven what is it uh five is man six is satan and seven is god is that eric weiss here for the gossip please share red great bring it victor brown unleashed the beast holy cow easy people yeah wow okay so tell us about uh like how happy Emily is. Look at my goodness. Natalie Bates, name them. Emily, love you. Jeez. You guys, she's going to destroy. No one's going to ever come on this podcast again. Bruce Wayne, $10, $10. You ruined my deal with Jimmy Kimmel. So what do you think is worth more? I thought after all that, don't mention it. Hey, I love Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. They're great.
Starting point is 00:58:06 They're great human beings. Amazing. And introducing him to Greg was one of like, that was one of my favorite introductions I've made for him because they're kindred spirits, right? Like they both are sort of, they don't take anything at face value.
Starting point is 00:58:18 They speak their minds. I mean, I think Adam is like cancel proof because his audience loves that he's a contrarian, right. And loves that he's a contrarian. Right. And loves that he's very logical in how he thinks about things. And he's not like really he's not a bad person. So he's not scared to say what he feels. Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:58:33 He's honest. He's oftentimes so logical that it's really hard to argue with him. Very logical. We want names. Wow. We want to hear it all. See, I love it. Let's do it. I'm surprised
Starting point is 00:58:47 Jimmy made it past what was that show they had with the girls would jump around on trampolines? The man show? Yeah, I didn't watch TV during that era. I missed that and the Chappelle show. That was a good one for sure. The Chappelle show was so good. The Chappelle show was great. Everyone has like a
Starting point is 00:59:03 10-year period that they don't watch TV in their life and that was kind of my like i don't know what i was probably homeless okay so so tell me about february 17th and then we'll go back fine we'll we'll entertain these guys and we'll talk about the worst i'm out people so the broken science initiative i feel like the most is emily a cock tease oh my god look at. Look at that guy's profile picture. It's fucking Sousa with a mask. It's Sousa. It's Rosa with a mask on. Chairman Prozac.
Starting point is 00:59:32 Holy shit. I totally approve of that spelling of cock. Holy fuck. Say it again, Emily. Is that cock like the way you cock a bathtub? Yes. Yes. Yes.
Starting point is 00:59:44 That's the way I like to say it caulk so we don't get canceled uh to have emily part two three four and five fine fine three shirtless dudes uh brandon waddell oh my goodness dirty money for dirty deets way to go brandon let's go Brandon hey how would you pronounce his name Brandon but his last name Waddell oh I used to call him Waddle he had to unfuck me I don't read so good Waddle
Starting point is 01:00:15 well how does Jimmy Waddell spell his last name isn't it similar I don't know I don't know I've never that's interesting I've never seen it spelled how is Jimmy? He's great. I'm going to call Jimmy after this show and tell him I need therapy after what you're about to do to me. He'll come stand outside my house if I need him to.
Starting point is 01:00:35 I love Jimmy. He's great. Like a big brother. Chairman Prozac. I can't get enough of this profile picture. Philip Kelly, 499. Save me a good seat in Phoenix. You're going to Phoenix?
Starting point is 01:00:44 Awesome, Philip. Jeez. Cool. Seoenix you're going to phoenix awesome philip jeez cool sebi you're not coming is that i'm not i'm not coming that's bullshit why i'm sending uh my my uh representatives hayley and suzer i can't wait to like take your way listen you know you know me i need uh two weeks uh at a at a hotel or VRBO, and I need a jet to pick me up at the airport. These are the rules. And my mother couldn't make that happen? Jet? Julie Bauer leather design.
Starting point is 01:01:17 Oh, Julie's one of my favorite. Super sticker. Yeah, I like that icon. Let me go back to the broken science stuff. So the broken science initiative is really, I like that icon. are and sort of looking at things from a scientific problem solving approach. And when he got into the world of fitness and he recognized that there wasn't a definition of fitness, he also knew that there would be no way to measure anything, right? So he kind of solved that problem. And then I think through the process of being attacked by the NSCA and the ACSM, and we
Starting point is 01:02:01 can get into all that, which is fascinating. And being peer reviewed, right? Being the subject of peer review and then realizing the whole thing was fabricated and garbage and being used to push an agenda forward. He became sort of wise to the notion of these tools of propaganda that are using the name science, right? But are not scientific at all. And that then I think really led him to the CrossFit health stuff where he started to recognize there's a whole lot of medicine that's wrong, right? And so he got into Richard Smith and most research findings are false and Ionati's and, you know, the replication crisis and that launched CrossFit health. And I think he was- One quick thing, the case that Emily's referring to is Ohio State, I think it was
Starting point is 01:02:44 Ohio State or Ohio University, along with the NSCA, did a study. And basically they lied and got caught lying bad, saying that CrossFit injures people. And they got caught lying really bad. And so that was, that's what Emily's saying. That process there kind of really opened Greg's mind to how much fraud there is in peer-reviewed science. Correct? Perfect. Okay.
Starting point is 01:03:03 Yep. there is in a peer reviewed science, correct? Perfect. Okay. Yep. And so I think CrossFit health was like sort of the next iteration of all of this, right? And then when he got canceled, and he was sort of, you know, trying to figure out what to do, he and I went back and started really diving into the philosophy of science. And I think what happened during that time was that he actually had the bandwidth. I mean, some of this stuff is really dense and tough to understand, but, and I don't think he would have been able to do it while he was running CrossFit, but I think because he was really isolated, right. And honestly, like not, didn't want to be around people and didn't know what people thought of him. And it was all, I mean, I think, you know, we are, one of our taglines is
Starting point is 01:03:41 that like when consensus replaces predictive power, science becomes nonsense. And I think that really goes to the heart of a lot of the way that Greg thinks about things, which is predictive value, right? Like you look for patterns, you try to understand relationships, and then you can kind of, I mean, as a chess player, right? Like you can think a couple steps ahead because you kind of have some things you can predict. I don't think in a million years he would have ever predicted that COVID would shut down the economy and the world. And I don't think in a million years he would have ever predicted that COVID would shut down the economy and the world. And I don't think in a million years he would have ever guessed that he would be canceled the way that he was. And I think those two events happening in close proximity to each other really led him into a, you know, sort of rabbit hole where he
Starting point is 01:04:16 was like, fuck, I don't know what's going on in the world, right? Like what is happening here and how do we get here? And instead of being a victim, he was like, what can I do about this, right? Like where are we? And so- He never plays the victim, by the way. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever. Can you say that line again? What? When predictive when consensus replaces predictive value in science, science becomes nonsense. Meaning like when we have these things of like, we're voting on what science or not, or we're being told to believe the science, but none of these scientific outcomes are predictable, meaning they can't be replicated. You can do something once like a Pfizer trial, you do it one time and you say, this is the outcome and there's no unintended consequences. You don't
Starting point is 01:05:03 know what you're talking about. Right. And so then we start looking at what are the tools of validation in modern science? And their p-values, right, which is a statistical test, and confidence intervals, both of which were not by design meant to be tools of validation. So validation meaning like you're able to actually say that the thing that you are predicting works, right? So a big demarcation for us is industry versus academic science. And we both had dads who, you know, worked in rocket science and my dad worked on the LEM and his dad obviously was a rocket scientist at Hughes. And so I think we both grew up with these sort of like engineering brain dads that taught us like, you have to know what you're doing, but most importantly, the thing has to do the thing that you said it was going to do, right? Like rockets, you take, Elon's not like, I mean,
Starting point is 01:05:49 Greg likes to talk about this. This is a great example, right? Like Elon's not launching rockets one time and then putting a billion dollars behind it to make sure, like thinking it's just going to do that, right? That they figured it out. There are tests that go along to figure out how you get there. And the thing has to do the thing you said it was going to do. And then it becomes science, right? If it doesn't do it, or you can only do it one time, you haven't figured it out, right? And so there's this, we really get into this idea of like Karl Popper denying induction. And this gets hard for people because like, what's induction? And it turns out there's actually a lot of different definitions for induction.
Starting point is 01:06:22 And he and I kind of go back and forth on this a little bit. But I like the idea that induction is really taking information from the past and assuming that you can use it for something about the future. Right. So it's this notion of like history repeating itself. And in science, it's really this idea of like we did this thing. We have some prior information and we can apply that to move forward. And Karl Popper denied induction and basically said all of science has to be falsifiable. And at the time, what pop this part of this is for me, everything's history, right? And people related.
Starting point is 01:06:58 That's how I have to contextualize things to understand them. And Popper was living in a time where you had Einstein and you had Freud. And he actually was family friends with Freud's sister and had worked at a children's sort of like orphanage type place for kids that were really disadvantaged and psychologically challenged. And I think he was really struggling with this idea of like, if everything is like, I have penis envy, right? And so all my problems are because I want to be a man. You can't prove that, right? Or like if I say like, oh, my mom was terrible
Starting point is 01:07:32 and she treated me awfully. And that's why like I'm so difficult to get along with her. I have so much anxiety. But like your mom might've been much worse and you're fine, right? So what, that's so subjective. And so he had a real problem with psychology, which I would agree with.
Starting point is 01:07:45 Right. And I think we go back and we look at most of these hallmarks, psychological studies. Who had a real problem with psychology, Greg or Popper? Popper. Right. Right. And so I think I'm kinder to Popper than Greg is. But I think he Popper really had this idea of like you have to be able to falsify things. Right. Popper really had this idea of like, you have to be able to falsify things, right? So you have to be able to have a test that says like, if this doesn't work, then my premise is wrong. My hypothesis is wrong. And like, that's an interesting idea, but you actually really need both, right? Because otherwise you're not going to move forward. So like the sort of, I mean, probably like dumbed down example that I really like is like, it's like friendship, right?
Starting point is 01:08:24 Like if I were saying like, okay, you and I are friends because my prior information about you is that you're trustworthy, you're kind, we have fun together, right? That doesn't mean you're never going to be dishonest. Right. Right. But like, I can try and take these things apart and prove like, and only be looking for these negative things and we're never going to move forward. Or I can say, you know what? Like so far, so good. Let's keep moving forward and see where this goes.
Starting point is 01:08:49 Right. I mean, that's way oversimplifying this from a scientific perspective. But like, even the Dahlberg case, which was a big Supreme Court case that was looking at what is what science and they were really focused on like, who can be an expert witness in a, in a trial claiming to be a scientist. But two of their tests are peer review and accepted by the, you know, professional population, or you're part of a professional organization and recognized as a science. That's not fucking science. That's popularity. And that's consensus, right? Like if I make a backyard or a, I come up with some, you know, like Bob, my husband's doing all this crazy cancer research, like he has insane ideas that he's working on with Seyfried. Like, is he not a scientist because he's not peer reviewed it yet? Right. No, that's not that's not a test. Right. Right. Right. It feels just like popularity. Right. Like that is what it is. That is what it is.
Starting point is 01:09:44 Yep. And then that leads you down. She's it is. That is what it is. Yep. And then that leads you down a path. She's a witch. Let's burn her. All in favor, aye. Those are Jews. Throw them in the fucking train. Burn them. All in favor, aye.
Starting point is 01:09:55 And it's a great way to get shit done, especially if people are afraid for their lives, like what kind of we are right now. Well, and I mean, that's a, that, that, then you sort of, what's happened is that like public health, right, is not medicine. And like this again, I joke that like COVID was like a Petri dish for this project because it enlightened so many more people to some of these problems and sort of, you know, like false gods. Right. And so like you have this idea. So you are optimistic about that. So you are optimistic about that.
Starting point is 01:10:26 You do think that that it woke some people up. There was a net gain. You think it was a net gain? For us, it was huge because like, there's so many people that now get like, wait a minute, like the, I got my vaccine and I got COVID. This isn't what they told me it would be. Right. They're dying, drowning than they are of COVID. Like, why am I vaccinating my kid? Right. Like there's so many parts of this that have touched way more people than we would have ever been able to grab had there not been COVID. I
Starting point is 01:10:55 think. Um, I just, yeah. I mean, I mean, look at even just Jay Bhattacharya for one, right. So, right. I mean, even just like the average person, like we're talking about science on a daily basis in a way we were not before covid right yeah it forced the issue yeah and i think it's just like something that people are a little bit more curious about and trying to be more aware of like well what is this you know and of course totally exposed is like not knowing what they're reporting on right and so i think people are looking for a source of information that will help them understand these things. And so we're doing a couple, I mean, like we're going
Starting point is 01:11:29 to hopefully do a school curriculum is the main output for this. That's the thing I'm most excited about. Every time I hear that, I, I think this could be a curriculum for kindergarten to, uh, I don't know, someone with six PhDs and And there'd just be like eight different curriculums for whatever your fucking age level or IQ is. And then we also have Russell Berger to work at CrossFit. He's writing in my scientific misconduct column for us. No shit, I didn't know that.
Starting point is 01:11:57 Malcolm Kendrick just sent me a draft of a column he's gonna be writing. Where are those gonna be published? On our site. Can you bring it? Oh, but Teresa Sabara, I can't wait for Phoenix. Thank you. be writing where are those going to be published on our site can you bring it oh but theresa sabar i can't wait for phoenix uh thank you uh be sure for the chinese baron baron uh mike anderson mike arturian the armenian of course the armenian gives the most money i haven't donated in a while
Starting point is 01:12:17 hundred dollars you don't need to justify it yeah crossfit riverside 1999 bless your soul i don't know what that means i don't know what a soul is but thank you greg c 999 catching up uh but want to know all seven won't share i can't share anything i mean i have to tell you guys savannah's just as much as i do so you know you're horrible horrible horrible right it's horrible oh my goodness i was joking you guys know my friend jesse i was joking with her before like i have to go on this podcast and remember that sebi and i aren't at blondros right like this is a people listening to this so i have to be a little bit um uh so so can you pull
Starting point is 01:12:55 up the broken science website i want to so just to go back a second because um this this company you run cleo can anyone hire you who needs help well like if i'm the ceo of um my pillow yeah and i got canceled can i call you and and you help me call me i have a like i mean it's a really high bar i'm not gonna lie if i have any questions about what you did i just i mean i literally you're not gonna represent harvey weinstein basically if you suspect something's wrong with you you're not doing it right i can't because at this point if i call the new york times they have a sense of like i don't fuck around and so if i'm calling it means that they've fucked up you want to always stay on the side of the truth that's all i'm interested in honestly like i feel like it's it's about correcting the record uh emily keeps saying
Starting point is 01:13:42 right to annoy chairman prozac i don't even i'm not sure what that means did you say right a lot i don't know wrong is that right wrong oh chairman prozac oh he's making fun of you because you must have said right a few times right um right yeah right you know that's something that i was thinking the other day this whole podcast runs off of this idea that greg used to tell me that took years to sink in like just sell the truth and so that's what i try to do on this podcast i'm just like okay can i just tell the truth and and part of telling the truth is letting people know how you think how you came up with two plus two so that way if you're wrong they could unfuck you and kind of get you back to the truth. Right. So I have the people on, like, I'm always looking for someone
Starting point is 01:14:29 to kind of like fix my thinking and then, and then, and then lean into it. If someone says you're wrong, just lean into it and accept it. Like if they're right. You know what, you did that really well. I was watching one of your shorts where you were talking to, I think it was Travis. He was, you were saying that like Andy i think it was travis he was you were saying that like andy stump was there and he was saying he wasn't and you were sort of like all right i'll let you have it but it was like i knew in the back of your mind you were like i don't have this wrong right yeah fuck you travis he's like but he was there right okay okay you were graceful enough about it that you could let him talk and then you ended up figuring out actually you're both right.
Starting point is 01:15:07 Right. Yeah. That's a great example of your, how you're very effective at that. Right. You're able to listen and take in information and then you can come forward and say, well,
Starting point is 01:15:16 wait a minute, but that's sort of what I like. So he was there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So again, I think Travis was so,
Starting point is 01:15:24 it was Travis stoned in that that interview i couldn't see his eyes the whole time i was talking to him he looked like he was stoned out of his mind i don't know i don't know he stayed on track with his stories like there was never a moment where you like drifted him and then he stopped for a minute was like wait what were we just talking about which i feel like is the common you know like you're in some deep story that you see a cat and you look back and you're like, oh, shit. What was going on? I don't think I don't think he had that.
Starting point is 01:15:48 So that's the Cleo. That's the Cleo piece. And then there's the broken science piece, which is I know Emily has given you guys a lot and it's a lot. And some of it's even over my head. And I've heard it a thousand times, the induction and the pauper stuff. I'm slowly starting to get it. But the broken science is basically big picture. I want people to understand. on along with some powerhouse powerhouse people like crit like crazy powerhouse uh scientists um who those of you who are going to phoenix will actually get to meet in person and shake hands with and hang out with um that basically gives every human being the tools to not be duped it allows you to critically think they're going to be tools that give people
Starting point is 01:16:45 critically powers of critical thought so that they can look at something and unravel even the most complicated issues. Right. So not to be duped. That's right. And I mean, I like my lofty goal is to really like just like you just said, like sort of restore critical thinking and arm people with the confidence to be able to read whether it's like news or a scientific journal or whatever and say, like, wait a minute, this isn't at all what you're purporting confidence to be able to read, whether it's like news or a scientific journal or whatever, and say like, wait a minute, this isn't at all what you're purporting it to be, right? Or this isn't enough information for me to make a good decision about my health or my family's health, right? Or my kids. And, you know, I mean, honestly, to branch out a little bit, I think science, you know, we call it the empirical branch of knowledge and there's a purity to it, right? It's not supposed to be politicized. It's not supposed
Starting point is 01:17:28 to be opinion-based. And our entire sort of like cultural fabric has become so subjective that it goes back to this sort of idea of a social, you know, sort of a moral compass, right? Or a social compact. Like we're at a point where everything has become so relative, right, which I now have, like, sort of traced the philosophy of this back. And Popper was actually really influenced by Kant. And Kant had this whole idea of, like, what is truth? Like, my truth might be different than your truth, right? And in a philosophical realm, that's fine, right? Like, we can have these conversations. That's entirely different than your truth, right? And in a philosophical realm, that's fine, right? Like, we can have these conversations. That's entirely different than saying, like, my understanding,
Starting point is 01:18:11 and scientists really latched onto this in the 70s, where they had this idea of, like, you know, Kant's idea of truth is applicable in science, because, like, we call something red, is an example that's often given. Well, red at noon is a totally different wavelength than red at sunset so red is not red and it's like well no actually now we know we have tools to measure wavelength so we can say like red is in a spectrum that goes from this to this at different times a day but what happens is people start peeling this stuff back right and i feel like my older sister is like a pretty famous art historian and i was talking to her about it she was like getting upset that we were talking about Popper and we didn't speak German. So like that gives you an idea of my family and like how.
Starting point is 01:18:51 Where did she go to school? Where did she go to school? She went to University of Chicago and then she got her Ph.D. at Harvard. And of course, youngest tenured professor, I think, at University of Chicago ever. You can tell her to throw that Harvard degree away. She's very smart. But I was saying to her, you know, we see this in art, too, right? chicago ever you can tell her to throw that harvard degree away she's very smart but i was saying to her you know we see this in art too right like the the masters used to be doing
Starting point is 01:19:10 cadavers they wanted to make sure that anatomically they had everything perfectly accurate right right now we have art that's all literally expressly designed to create a emotional reaction in me like that's that's interesting and in the realm of art it's a different kind of experience but it's become this relativistic it's my experience that right like even my nine-year-old daughter has said to me like you know i'll be like hey go you got to go clean your room and she's like mom you know it kind of makes me uncomfortable when you say i have to go clean my room and i'm like who the fuck taught you that yeah yeah yeah you mean uncomfortable when you say I have to go clean my room. And I'm like, who the fuck taught you that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mean, so when you say reactionary art, you mean like making the Virgin Mary out of poop or like Bansky painting like stuff on the not like, you're not trying to
Starting point is 01:19:54 depict something perfectly, right? Right, right. And instead, you're trying to depict something that evokes a response from people in that my reaction to it might be different than yours, but like, I feel a connection to this thing. And I like, I'm all for all that. I'm not against modern art, but I think this is a very different depiction. And both I think science and art represent what's going on in the culture. And I think we've become subjective and we've become this, I mean, like I, like from the news perspective, you see this so clearly where it used to be like hard news was like fact-based right you did all this work to take out any opinion and now it's all opinion right yeah yeah yeah yeah like i feel i talked to this person who feels like i don't fucking care if you feel or not what are the or it's word
Starting point is 01:20:41 lots of word fuckery too and analysis right like i don't need like here you're about to see a brutal depiction of a lion eating a deer no i don't i don't need your fucking brutal i don't need your word brutal in there right i don't need you to tell me how to feel about this well and also like i was always taught that like good writing is like you're not you don't describe things that you don't tell people how to feel right right right enough information that you make a person feel that thing right right the three inch the three inch canines of the lion penetrated the gazelle's neck all the way down to its gums and blood poured out faster than you could pour water out of a cup okay now i can decide wow that was good thank you
Starting point is 01:21:23 that was descriptive i love you both i gotta run to hayward fire department bye love you say hi to the firefighters you're doing god's work i will i'll let them probably not god's work the apostles work probably one of the apostles work they listen to you now so you give me a shout out on your own all right i love you guys hayward hayward pd i used to work at bronco billy's pizza palace fire department fire department yeah yeah fire they're all you're all the same i mean of course the firefighters i apologize jody lynn 99 for seven therapy session to deal with kimmel kaplan thank you um is there how are you how so tell me about the crossfit book um instagram account what is that instagram account represent it seems like it's morphed like you were writing a book and now it's starting to
Starting point is 01:22:05 lean towards um uh kind of this drumbeat of the of this glassman of just greg glassman's more profound moments yeah and also may and may be taking shots at dumb shits too right and i think you know part of it was um I mean, I launched in part the page because there were other people who said that they were going to be writing books, right? Yes, yes. And I was sort of like, who are these other people? And they haven't talked to anybody. Like, none of my sources had talked to them, right? So I was like, you know, spending a lot of time with Greg in real time that like we would see happening in the community.
Starting point is 01:22:51 And we'd be like, what the fuck? That's not how it went. Right. Or that's not what it was. So I was like, I'm going to use this page as a place to correct the record. Right. Okay. Call things out. But also there is, I mean, honestly, I think the CrossFit website is
Starting point is 01:23:06 encyclopedic in how much good information is on there. Right. And this goes back to like when Greg and I first met and I recognized the work you guys were doing was profound, right? Like on health, on exercise, and also like culture. I mean, there was a lot of stuff that's, that's still there. And so I sort of have felt like I made an editorial calendar for the year for that page. Right. And I sort of went through and I've created like sort of themes for different things that I know will come up at different times. Right. But really trying to pull from that, because I feel like I don't think most people, and maybe this is wrong, but I don't think most people have any idea how much is on that site that's worth reading and rereading and rereading and rereading.
Starting point is 01:23:48 No, of course they don't. It's not even pushed to the front. In all fairness, it was all taken down while Greg was there. It was taken down in 2018. Right. And I think, I mean, I think that's too bad. Yeah, it's so too bad. Yeah, it's so too bad.
Starting point is 01:24:18 Hey, and not only that, whoever owns CrossFit is absolutely nuts to not pull all that shit up to the front and re-release the app that we used to have that makes it so every time they publish it, and they should publish it to it every day so you get the notification on your app and you go back to it. And it should be recommending articles every single day. Like all these other apps send me notifications. Like I got a notification just now. Six of them. You know, the ideas that you have around that and that you had before, I think when you had them before they were ahead of their time. Right.
Starting point is 01:24:34 And I mean, I think Greg has acknowledged that. And I think, yeah, there's simple ideas. It's not in venue. Nick ship. Emily is a bad,
Starting point is 01:24:42 I'll say it. Bitch. She is. She is pretty bad. Thank you. That's a compliment i don't know if you know that you listen to that's rap vernacular that's rap vernacular i got it okay okay um but yeah i mean i think like all like you had you were prescient in seeing the future of technology and video and all that stuff right and it And it's, it's a, it's a travesty that,
Starting point is 01:25:05 that hasn't been grabbed right. The way that you saw it years ago, and it's still not being harnessed. And so I think part of the page, I mean, the page is really like a legacy project in a way, right. For Greg, it's a holding place for the most important information that I think people need to know about him in addition. And it's also honestly like through my reporting and for the book, I go back and watch those things. And I think like, wow, these are great, right? Like somebody, I'm not the only one who's going to think they're great. I'm not going to hoard them all. And they're not all going to be in the book. So let's create a platform where we can share all these things
Starting point is 01:25:37 and remind the community of how important they were and how foundational they were and how ahead of their time they were. Right. And so it's, it's sort of a combo, you know, and it's not like completely all worked out strategically, but like, have you given up on an actual book? No, the book I've written a lot of it. I think that the big, is it historical? Is it like, do we hear Greg was born into a major next to a donkey and a horse in 1959? Is it like that? Like from the beginning? Yeah. I mean, I think honestly, it's like the formula for the book is a hero's journey, right? Like from the beginning? Yeah. I mean, I think honestly, it's like the formula for the book is a hero's journey, right? So we're familiar with that. It's like, he's born into a family that he kind of rejects because it's so much science and it's so much sort of,
Starting point is 01:26:16 um, rigor, right. And then he has to leave the nest to go. You talk about that landscape of LA too, just his crazy childhood and like having polio and all that. Yep. And all the people that he grew up with. Yeah. Yeah. Incubator. Right. Yeah. And just what it was like to grow up in this sort of like rocket science community. Right. Where like everybody's dad on the block, it's like reading the, you know, trade publication on rocket science and how it was just sort of like common discourse and how different that is. But I think he had to leave the nest. Right. And go out on his science and how it was just sort of like common discourse and how different that is. But I think he had to leave the nest, right? And go out on his own and reject all of that in order to recognize how important it was and how fundamental it would be in his life's work.
Starting point is 01:26:55 The reason the book isn't out yet is because there are some big questions. Who bought CrossFit, right? But you know, I've been working really hard to nail down. And also broken science is the ending. I mean, it's like what happens with broken science will has to be included in this. And Greg teases me all the time that cause like, I don't want to be in the book. And he's like, you got to be in the book now, ghetto, because of all these things that have happened. But I think it's, it's such a, what he's doing now with broken science is so important and profound. Yes. It's way bigger than what CrossFit ever was.
Starting point is 01:27:32 Right. Like and he tells me that all the time. And I think I trust him. And I think like I can't. Well, it is. It is. Right. I can't trust.
Starting point is 01:27:40 I can't write his biography without having the most important part come to fruition in a way. Right. Well, you change the name of the book. You think you think it'll be called Greg Glasson or you think it'll be called the CrossFit book? Or can you even call it that the CrossFit book? I think I can do whatever I want, because I think what a lot of people don't realize is that Greg retained the rights to his stuff. Right. OK. If he gives me the rights to use them, we'll figure all that out. But I think and I mean, the book isn't going to be bad for CrossFit, right? And so it's like, I mean, I've had a lot of people be like, oh, like, you know, during the cancellation period, there was a lot of media that was trying to stir up old drama, right? Like people drinking a lot or having affairs or whatever like
Starting point is 01:28:18 that. I don't have any interest in that. That's not what this book is about. This book is about Greg being a visionary. And it's really about CrossFit as a business model, wildly disrupting the industry as an example that other people could follow, right? About doing good, empowering people, not trying to be greedy. It's not about making a lot of money. It's about, as he says, like the pie gets bigger and my slice stays the same percentage, but my slice gets bigger too, right? It throws on its
Starting point is 01:28:46 head what people are learning in business school, which I love. Um, and I think it can be replicated, you know? And so I think it would be one of those things, um, at MIT, but my dad, what's LEM. It's the lunar excursion module. How did this guy know that? I mentioned it. Oh shit. Um, mentioned your dad in this interview yes i did i said that he and greg's dad had similar oh oh right okay sorry like backgrounds bad listener bad listener sebi jeff don't do that again don't expose me again um so so yeah so i mean i think like you know and also i don't think anybody's heard the whole story of the cancellation right and like how that went down and how fucked up it was and who was actually behind it. Right. So all those things need to be.
Starting point is 01:29:31 Do you think you could get to the truth of that? vet that first, but I think there were individuals who were, we can say this, there were individuals who were behind it, who were pushing the narrative because they were trying to buy the business and they were trying to actively devalue the business by saying bad things about Greg and having people believe them. I mean, like we could talk about Floyd 19. I still feel like people don't fucking get that. Right. And it's amazing that so many people can't explain what he meant by Floyd 19. And at the same time, like jumped on the bandwagon and we're like i'm i'm out i'm out it's like you're out none of the i'm out posts none of the i'm out all the i'm out posts are idiot writing all of them just say i don't stand by greg and it's it's a whole page of writing but they never say what greg said they're
Starting point is 01:30:21 never like oh my god i saw swastika he lifted up shirt and I saw a swastika tattooed on his ribs. Like there's nothing, there's nothing where I'm like, like, wait, what did he do? It's all, it's all just abstract. It's crazy. Keep spilling. We won't tell anybody. Paper Street Coffee, a hundred bucks. Yay. Thank you, Gabe. Thank you. I like the money coming in. It makes me feel good about supporting Seve. So bring it. Thank you. Okay. So, so tell like the money coming in. It makes me feel good about supporting Seve. So bring it. Thank you. Okay.
Starting point is 01:30:46 So tell me, what does Floyd 19 mean? So, I mean, I think, okay, there was a couple of things. Like if we go back to that time, he had been tweeting at the IHME, right, which had come up with COVID models. And he, as a math guy, recognized that their models were flawed. We had the Royal College in London with Neil Ferguson putting out similar models. At that point, they had retracted theirs and apologized and basically said like, we got this wrong. Now, anybody who looked at those models early on, you had Aaron Ginn on, right? Like he knows this stuff really well. They were, I mean, like we didn't have,
Starting point is 01:31:18 they were telling us how many people are going to die. We didn't even have tests. We didn't know how many people had it. How do you have a, you know, there's no denominator. So how are you coming up with any kind of projections of the spread? Like there was so much about it that was like illogical from, you know, elementary perspective. And I think it was driving. Elementary. Yeah. Right. So I think that stuff was really like that was in the background for him and it was driving him crazy. And he couldn't believe that we were making these massive decisions that were going to clearly have long-term impact, right. And without really doing any of the math or the, the using the math to justify bad science. Um, and so what happened was instead of apologizing, the IHME came out and they said they were going to start modeling racism as a public health crisis.
Starting point is 01:32:09 And I think Greg lost his mind because he was like, you just modeled COVID and let us into fucking quarantine. That's going to cause inflation and it's going to like more overdoses. I mean, like kill people, it's going to kill people. And so he was basically like, I mean, I think Floyd 19 specifically, he felt like Floyd had the same number of letters as COVID, right? He was trying to be clever, but he also included a quote. He was clever. Right. Under the Floyd 19 thing. That was a quote from the journal of infectious disease, right? And it was retrospective that was looking from the plague, I think through flu a or H1N1. plague, I think through flu a or H1N1. And it was looking at the use of quarantine, right? Through all these pandemics. And it basically came, this peer reviewed journal article came to the conclusion that using quarantine as a tool of segregation, that it disproportionately impacts minority groups or the disadvantaged groups within any population.
Starting point is 01:33:04 And so wait a second. So you're saying he was standing up for these people. Correct. He was saying it wasn't a racist tweet. It was actually standing up for people. It was the opposite. He was. I know you guys with your modeling is fucking racist. You've quarantined people and it's going to disproportionately impact all the minority
Starting point is 01:33:23 groups that are suffering in this country. And now you're telling us that we should trust you with something like racism. So all the people who said I'm out are actually the racist because they were upset that Greg was standing up for these people. I don't think we should call people racist for saying. OK, scumbags that hate colored people. You're saying all the athletes that said I'm out actually hate black people, melanated people, Mexicans, poor Jews. Just kidding. There's no poor Jews. Character, right? It's like you didn't take the time to like, I mean, people who knew Greg, who called him racist, didn't even bother to call him and say, Hey, buddy, like,
Starting point is 01:33:56 what the fuck did you mean by that? Yeah. Right. What about this thing where it was insensitive? It's it sounds it sounds like it's that doesn't even have a place anymore when you explain it like that it's the exact opposite of sensitive insensitive it was very sensitive it was insensitive in that he gave people too much credit intellectually but it was sensitive in the fact that he was he was people were smart enough to know what he was and they didn't and he was looking out for people who were uh underserved underrepresented, had less money and less intellectual horsepower to defend themselves. Correct. This is fucking maddening.
Starting point is 01:34:33 So what happens- This is maddening. What should we do to those people? How come those people aren't coming out in hordes and apologizing? I mean, I think it's like a stoning. That's the closest thing that I can equate it to, right? Like in sort of literature, you hear about stonings and somebody walks by and they throw a stone and
Starting point is 01:34:49 they see somebody else throwing a stone and they don't want the stone being thrown at them. So they pick up a stone and they start throwing it. Right. And the person's like fucking innocent. Who's getting stoned, let's say. Right. And it's like, that's what happened. I mean, I feel like the Reebok thing drove me crazy. Like you can go, I have Greg's whole Twitter account, right? You can go through and there are like, I mean, I can't even tell you how aggressive he was about hating Reebok, right? He sued them. He was never going to do a deal with Reebok again. Reebok comes out with the statement and it is basically like, we, you know, we were thinking about redoing our contract at the end of this year. It's like, you didn't have a fucking chance. It's like me dumping you around and
Starting point is 01:35:24 telling people like I broke up with her first right right publicly broke up with you on twitter over and over and over again right now you're gonna like jump on this bandwagon try and get some like social cred like are you kidding so reba basically if the the understand reba also hates people with melanated skin that sucks the. The Nano 2 is a really nice shoe. That's too bad. It really is amazing. Maybe Reebok is going to apologize someday. You think they're going to apologize? You think they're going to apologize someday? Oh, my God.
Starting point is 01:35:54 We're so sorry. Are they going to wait until he's dead? There are people who have not the big-named people. But when I, on the page, explained some of this, there were actually a number of people who reached out and were like, I'm so glad you explained this. I never knew what it was. I got really caught up in the moment. I feel terrible. Would you please tell him that I'm sorry that, and you know what, Greg will forgive anybody. I know, I know he will forgive anybody. And that is for sure. It's one of those things where there are people who are using his name, going around quoting him, maybe sometimes not attributing it. Even this whole magic of CrossFit thing. I think it's great that his you come make amends, right? Or do what you have to do,
Starting point is 01:36:45 but don't like use him now in some way to better yourself when you haven't actually done what's right from an integrity standpoint. I shot Martin Luther King, but now I use Martin Luther King quotes. Right. Natalie Bates, $1.99. That's not enough for me to read that out loud.
Starting point is 01:37:03 Sorry. No, I'm joking. Virtue signaling lemmings. I don't even know if they are. I mean, like there's a guy I interviewed who says that he was he takes credit for some of this, which is interesting. And credit for what? Some of what? For Greg getting canceled. And he basically said to me, I, um, I wanted to call attention to the fact that CrossFit wouldn't put up the black square. And so I started making messages and posting around about it and whatever. And I had, Oh yeah, I think I know you're talking about, is he out of the East coast guy? Yeah. Um, and it kind of, it like just basically like went off
Starting point is 01:37:44 the rails, right? Like he did not expect it to go the way that it did, but once it did, he couldn't do anything about it. Right. And it's the same as like when Greg had the call with the black affiliates, he had black affiliates texting him that were on that call being like, dude, like this is a trap. They're recording as someone's recording you. I can't say anything because I don't want to look like I'm, you know, against the other black affiliate owners, but like, this is crazy. Right. And it was like, nobody wanted to be, I mean, I will say you. The call was crazy by the way. And they were complete assholes to fucking Greg.
Starting point is 01:38:14 They were fucking, they were not, they didn't behave like humans. It was, it was not, you don't treat anyone like that. Especially someone who's giving you the foundation and the methodology to run a business with such a low barrier to entry. Who's been so good to you. Anyway, sorry. What were you gonna say? Were you gonna say something nice about me? I hate it when I cut people off. We're about to pat me on the back. Just to go back in time to that moment. So what was happening was I was in like the final draft of my NSCA story, which was a long form piece. Right. And my editor can't wait to hear about that. My editor basically was like, well, now you got to write about how this guy's a racist. And I was like, what? Like he's, he's not a racist. And I had just spent the weekend at his
Starting point is 01:38:48 house. You were there with the guys from Compton where he was like opening a free box in Compton because they have the highest diabetes rates in California. And he thought he could have a bigger impact by opening a free CrossFit box and putting his best trainers there and doing all this stuff. Right. And I just was like, but he's not a racist. Can I write a piece about how he's not a racist? And she said to me, you can, but then we can't run your NSCA piece, which I'd been working on for a year. And I was like, what do you mean? And she was like, it'll look like you're biased. And I just was like, oh my God. And Greg had been calling me being like, what do I do? This PR firm is telling me to apologize. And I was like, I don't think you should apologize. You never had somebody to, you know, you didn't stand up and make announcements about why, you know, what is the same black affiliates?
Starting point is 01:39:29 Why do we? Hey, this is a fair question. You're right. It is stupid. You're right. But but at the time, that's the way it was characterized. And I apologize. I should say that there should not be a separation between black affiliates and white affiliates. But for some reason, during that time, there was this the black affiliates wanted to meet with greg and like emily is saying a large chunk of those those affiliate owners were like this is fucking crazy so what yeah and just so i realized we should give more context to that after the i swear to god if sebi ends the show to go skating today i'm not i'm i have i have time i have i'm i cannot last Emily, maybe. But yeah, but I feel like we should address that because that was a specific call with black affiliate owners. It wasn't trying to like sum up all the black affiliate owner populations. There was a group of people who were all happened to be black who wanted to have a call with Greg about what had happened with the tweet.
Starting point is 01:40:22 So that's why we're talking about it like that. It's not every black or African-American affiliate owner. It was a specific group of people. Okay. So, but anyway, so I basically was like now stuck in this position where I was like, I either defend Greg in writing, or I have this story that I've worked on forever. Right. So I was like having, and I had already had this Washington post thing happen where I was like, really turned off with the opportunities that were presenting themselves for actual reporting I wanted to do. So Greg was sort of saying to me, like, what do I do? Like, they're telling me to apologize. And I was like, apologize for what? Like, and I'm not a PR person, but like, that just seems nuts to me. Right. And and then the PR guy quit, was fired. I don't know if you remember all of that. And Greg and Brett called me and were basically like, please, can you help? And so I got on the phone with the New York Times. Oh, I do remember that.
Starting point is 01:41:11 That's the Canadian guy. Yep. And I basically was like, if I do this, I can never be a journalist again. Like I can't cross over and ever go back. Right. And so I, but I also got to the point where I felt like I couldn't sit on the sidelines and watch him be taken down knowing it was wrong and had the ability to potentially help and not help. So I retired from journalism at that moment, got in the trenches, got on the phone with a New York times reporter who had been canceled on twice, which by the way, is not a good start
Starting point is 01:41:42 to things. Um, and she had been told all kinds of stuff. And she was asking questions about like, oh, I heard at this affiliate gathering that people were drinking and hooking up with each other. And I was like, is that illegal? Like, what are you talking about? What is the story? And she was, she basically, she had this idea that it was a toxic workplace, right? So that was when the allegations went from being racist to switching over to being toxic workplace and sexual harassment. Right. And Brett was on that call with me. And I think he was shitting himself on the other line because he was sending me messages. He still works there, right? Does Brett still work at CrossFit Inc? Yeah. Okay. But I was like, I'm sorry,
Starting point is 01:42:21 are you at the New York times? And the reporter was like, yeah. And I was like, so are you in the newsroom? Like, do reporter was like yeah and i was like so are you in the newsroom like do you know so and so and so and so who were like probably like fucking last night like she was acting as though the news like no one hooks up at work right right no one drinks too like you're in the news business i'm sorry like you got to be kidding me and so i said to her like these are like young super hot people traveling on the road and these stories you're talking about are like 10 years ago. Like, what is this story? What are you getting at? Like, Greg hasn't even been in the office.
Starting point is 01:42:50 Right. Like, this is another thing that I don't realize. He wasn't in the office for like five years. I don't know how he was going around, like asking to see people's boobs and stuff. Like, which first of all, like hysterical. And this was during the Me Too thing, too. They were just trying to drag. It was like the Me Too movement was like a black hole.
Starting point is 01:43:06 They're just trying to, OK, what every story had to be either Me Too or black or racist, right? Right. So, OK, they had to have that connection. Part of why there wasn't fact checking, because it was like these stories were doing really well. Right. And so you could get tons of hits off of them. And everybody just
Starting point is 01:43:26 sort of assumed like, you know, women don't make this stuff up. Well, so one of the women behind that I knew had just made an offer on CrossFit. And so I said to the reporter, you know, your primary source in this is trying to buy the company. And she was like, no, I didn't know that. And I was like, well, she is. And so you have to consider that as an ulterior motive. And so that sort of developed a rapport with her and I, I think partly calling her shit on like, people don't hook up at work. Like what do you like? What is rape problematic? Hooking up? Like, what are we talking about? Right. And I think people are often scared to call reporters out on that. But it's like I said to her, I was like, I was a journalist yesterday. Like,
Starting point is 01:44:02 I don't really know what I'm doing. But like, I want to walk you through this stuff. And to her credit, her future drafts of stories, she would call me and we would go through line by line and I'd counter them. And what I was going to say about you was that there were some dates of incidents that never happened that were allegations that you were able to help me untangle by looking at photographs. And I had access to all, you know, credit card receipts and all kinds of things because I knew we could rip forensic information from those. And it wouldn't be a, he said, she said it would be very conclusively like he wasn't here. And I mean, there was an allegation against you. Can we talk about this? Well, like you were in our country, right? Like for a month. Yeah. Yeah. It was,
Starting point is 01:44:43 it was a really gnarly allegation about me. You're talking about Southern California? Yes. Yeah, that was fucking absolutely nuts. I think I was in Ushuaia getting ready to go to Antarctica. Thank God I had those pictures. Yeah, and thank God you sent – that would have been published, and I would have not been able to say don't do anything about it if you hadn't stopped that.
Starting point is 01:45:02 And there was a lot of – I'd never even been to that hotel, by way in my life or that city i that's not that's one city i'd never even i don't think i've ever even been to that shit was nuts hey and i just want to say this in defense of greg too while emily is doing this you might think like well this is a no-brainer greg didn't want to defend himself greg thought that like he because he thinks so clearly he was like none of this is true why do i have to prove my innocence so as they're they were just throwing out dates of these things that they were supposedly saying were happening and emily scrambling to be like hey that couldn't have happened then because this was happening then
Starting point is 01:45:39 and this couldn't have happened and she was basically showing and using pictures and and schedules but but greg was kind of like fuck I'm not going to sit here and prove my innocence. Like, right. personally was that like, he was all about fighting the outside world. Right. And he knew he had lots of enemies and he knew like pharma, sugar, soda, right? Like he'd been at war with all these people and he could handle it and he liked it. And it kind of energized him. Right. He felt like it was his people and like his community that wouldn't stand up for him, his heart broke. And then he was like, right. Right. I mean, I was just saying to him, a lot of people turned on him. A lot of people turned on him. Like lot of people turned on him. Like they basically jumped off of the CrossFit boat and onto other boats that were sailing nearby.
Starting point is 01:46:29 Yeah. Like Julie Foucher, for example. Right. I mean, Ben Bergeron. Right. That was unbelievable. Right, right, right. Austin Maliolo. I think there's a lot of, you know, there was there was this idea probably of just like this is a moment.
Starting point is 01:46:46 Right. Like people are Google searching this. I can get more followers, like really selfish shit. Then there were people who were sort of like, I know Greg's not racist and I know he doesn't rate people, but like, I don't want to be the one standing up for him because then maybe they're going to come for me. Right. Right. There were very few people. And I mean, now that I've helped other people who have been canceled, one of the things I say to them is like, this is going to be really shitty. But at the end of it, you're actually going to know who your friends are. And I don't I've never been canceled. So I actually don't know. Right. Like, I don't know who would be there for me if I was wrongly accused of something really publicly. But you will. And then you can go forward with those people and never question them. Right. can go forward with those people and never question them right their loyalty to you and their sort of honor around your relationship will be tighter than it's ever been and that's actually
Starting point is 01:47:29 a gift right what do you think what do you think would have happened if greg would have said fuck you all you affiliates that want to leave um i i'm going to write down a number how many affiliates i think would have left fuck you um all you affiliates who want to leave leave i didn't mean anything racist by it you guys can all eat a dick i'm glad you're leaving you affiliates who want to leave leave i didn't mean anything racist by it you guys can all eat a dick i'm glad you're leaving you woke turds i think how many do you think would have left well so one of the things that i did like week one was um got all of the numbers of affiliates who had left this morning chalk up was writing all this bullshit about how there was like a mass exodus of affiliates yep yep now keep. Now keep in mind, we were during COVID, those gyms were all shut
Starting point is 01:48:09 down for three months. And I was selling my gyms at that moment, which was really interesting to go through my due diligence while Greg's selling CrossFit and it's like on warp speed and no one's checking anything. Right. My little business is being like the autopsy on everything is crazy. Right. My little business is being like the autopsy on everything is crazy. But was, you know, one of the things that was crazy to me was like not very many gym facilities can withstand the financial pain of not having any revenue for months, still paying rent. Right. And it's your own salary. Most people are owner operators. Right. So like that's really rough financially. And I think it was like 450 affiliates
Starting point is 01:48:49 left between the, what do you have? I had 500 most, I think, I think 500 would have left. And I think most of those were not because of, of Greg, they were because these people had been financially wrecked and they couldn't stay on any longer. So trying to delineate down like how many of the four 50, let's say in protest, it was a much, much, much smaller number. Like it was not like this was a widely, I think what happened was there were people with big platforms who were out there saying this stuff and it made it seem like there was a groundswell. There was not a groundswell. COVID had far more impact on the business than Greg's. Right, right, right, right.
Starting point is 01:49:30 But it became a massive thing, right? And then Rosa comes in, doesn't do any due diligence, is out like with his fucking shirt off and all the games athletes rather than learning how to run the business. I had calls with him where he called the affiliates franchisees. And I had to say like, buddy, these aren't franchises. And it's like a totally different
Starting point is 01:49:50 business model. And you're running around telling people you're the owner. I know you're not the owner. I know you own 2%, right? And during the scholarship program, during his first week or second week in office, he went to Cookville and hung out with rich for the week while the scholarship program went on with chuck carswell and dave castro and over in atlanta somewhere i thought that was so telling well he came in with the racism card but then when push came to shove he got to hang out with the cool kids and didn't go do the do the real work he's a douche um somebody that we know i probably could say her name because she wouldn't really care, said Rosa bought the business to improve his online dating profile. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 01:50:32 A lot of people were speculating that he was a wealthy guy, but he wanted to be popular. Right, right. I don't know. Why do you think Greg didn't just say, fuck you and hang in there? I mean, in hindsight, it was, pardon me. I think his heart was broken. I think he was like completely devastated personally on a level that is, you know, unimaginable to think you're like, you're in battle for years with all these people.
Starting point is 01:50:58 And then the battle shifts directly towards you personally, and they won't get your back. Like, why stay here and like, keep paying all these people very high salaries when they can't even like sherwood like sherwood was making probably 200 000 a year de-affiliated but didn't have the balls to quit his job at crossfit that was some fucking weird shit there was tons of that though right that was some really weird shit i was looking around yeah people were doing some crazy shit. I mean, there was a there were a handful of female or female employees who agreed to give statements that I could share with the press. And they are like heroes to me because they knew that people would, you know, talk badly about them or that they would look a certain way or whatever. And they were like this. I've worked for Greg or with Greg for this long, and he's never been inappropriate with me. And I can't, I like just can't stand by and do this. So it wasn't that it was everybody, but I think there
Starting point is 01:51:52 were some key players in all of this who really broke his heart. And I was literally talking to him last night about this, where he was saying, he said to me, just get me to the close, right? Like, I just want to fucking sell this business and get out of here. I can't believe that these people who I have worked with and tried to help and built other businesses, like help their other businesses thrive and their personal brands and all this stuff are lacking of integrity in such a profound way. I don't want to be around these people anymore. They're not the people I thought they were. And I think at that point, all he really cared about was Maggie and the kids and like making sure that they had enough that they could, you know, not that they wouldn't be hurt by this, I think was the message that he gave me.
Starting point is 01:52:35 Trish, I'm so sorry. I'm going to have to do this to you, eviscerate you right here. Sherwood asked his community what they wanted and they voted. It wasn't his sole decision. Stop it. Stop it. Stop being a dumb ass and then and then you say at least it was at least sherwood was democratic about it that's the whole i i can't tell if you're being joking or not but that's the whole point of this hour and 52 minutes is that consensus is idiocy and also like leads to idiocy like what do you mean he was closer to great how would anyone in his community be able to give him advice on Greg when Sherwood worked with Greg for fucking 15 years I mean come on man that's fuck that there's another like sort
Starting point is 01:53:14 of tangential thing that this brings up I don't know if you remember this but there was like a town hall meeting that I feel like Ben Bergeron and Julie and like that cohort all got together and they were like voting on who should be the new CEO of CrossFit. Did they really have one of those? Yes. And I remember being like, oh, my God, like you guys don't own the fucking business. It's not you don't get to vote and decide like who's replacing Greg. Right. Or do you have that recording where Julie called Greg? I know I have it somewhere. Do you have that recording? I have. I'm sure I do. I also have the Ben the ben stuff where he like you know went out of his way to talk about how great greg was and how it was like a business decision for him to go on instagram and
Starting point is 01:53:54 call him a racist i mean it's like did those people not think that was ever going to get out like greg was never going to share any of that shit like mind-blowing and yet they've they've gone on right they're fine like whatever i just think like you know i don't know if they are fine i don't know if those people are fine i don't really know i mean i like i i don't follow them i'm not interested like they're they just seem really weak so so to to go back basically in hindsight now it was i mean from a strictly a financial perspective it was brilliant because greg sold the company covid fucking hit and uh decimated the fucking gym landscape and then now we have people reporting uh from 60 minutes that um it's you're you're not fat but you have obesity and that it's a disease
Starting point is 01:54:47 that you need medication and surgery for. And we also have that if you work out, you're a white supremacist coming down the pipeline. So he kind of got out at the perfect time, right? Well, I don't know. I mean, I feel like I could push back on that and say he would have had so much fun with all of that. He would have. And imagine the brand value of anyone who would have stood up to the woke crowd. Like, fuck you. He's also 65. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:55:17 I mean, at some point it's like, fuck, he's got to like just do. Well, I don't know if Greg knows how to. I mean, he's not a put your feet up and fish kind of guy no but you know i mean i will say like he seems like from my outside perspective not knowing him as well as you did so you can speak to this better than me but like he's healthy he's homeschooling his kids right oh he's way happier he's way happier great stuff he's working on big problems like i feel like he's good you I think like, and this is in the book too, like there was a part of him before COVID that I think felt like CrossFit had run away from him. Right. And I think he really wanted to get back to the roots of like what it was when it started, where it was really focused on health and focused on people taking
Starting point is 01:56:01 ownership of their health. And I think, you know, the game stuff, which, you know, we could spend another two hours talking about all that. Like on top of the introduction of CrossFit Health, right? Like he was sort of trying to figure this stuff out in his head. Like, how do I make this less complex and more simple when the application,
Starting point is 01:56:20 like, I don't think he wanted to run a super huge business, right? I mean, he didn't even want to have affiliates, right? Like at the start of it, that's not what he wanted to do. And so I think when this all happened, there was also in the back of his mind, this idea of like, I just want to help, like, I want to get back to helping people. And that looks a little different than what CrossFit is now. And I think that has to have been part of this too, right? That like, there was a lot of, and I think, you know, I mean, you know, this, like there was a lot on the executive team that was going on that was sort of crazy in terms of like
Starting point is 01:56:51 people not, you know, being polarized or being unhappy or whatever. And I think. Well, we had that douchebag CEO with that douchebag mistress. Right. Yeah. Douchebags to, to the worst human beings. But I also think like people had lost direction and like people were going in their own ways. Right. Yeah. Douchebags to to the worst human beings. But I also think that people had lost direction and like people were going in their own ways. Right. And there was a lot of sort of like, are we CrossFit?
Starting point is 01:57:12 We had a lot of turbulence. Yeah, we we had lowered the sails when the storm hit or we had raised the sail. I don't know what the metaphor is, but it was it was really a bad time for it to hit. We basically put our since we'd gotten rid of our media my thought is we'd basically put our guns down we had no way to fight back when we were attacked because our way to fight back would have been the media team and we had just gotten rid of the media team well but there also was a there was a lot of unrest about um right a lot of a lot of people we had let go who were just waiting to attack the mothership there were a lot of people yeah and i mean like were just waiting to attack the mothership. There were a lot of people.
Starting point is 01:57:45 Yeah. And I mean, like, that's a phenomenon that I find really interesting, too. Like somebody works for CrossFit for two years. They've been laid off five years ago and they're still upset that they got laid off. Like that's the mission people felt they were attached to. Right. Like that doesn't happen. That's a good point.
Starting point is 01:57:58 That's a really good point. Yeah. People loved it. There was a lot. Also, there was just like a lot of I feel like infighting. I mean, again, like my analogy would be like, it was sort of like a family, right? And Greg's the dad and everybody's trying to like get proximity to dad. And it's like, it becomes like a distraction from actually like doing the work, right?
Starting point is 01:58:17 And I think all of that stuff led to people like, you know, feeling like Greg meets people and their lives are changed forever. Right. Right. Right. I don't think that he carries that with him. He can't, right. Like he has to be just as friendly and nice because it's his personality that the taxi driver, as he does to the people who are working for him. And he's genuinely interested in like what your story is and what your background is and all this stuff. And I think when people then feel separated from him, it's like they're personally rejected in this profound way that makes them angry at him, right? And that's sort of what I mean by his generosity. It's like, he's so generous,
Starting point is 01:58:55 and then people come to expect it, and they get mad. Whereas if he hadn't been generous in the first place, maybe they wouldn't have ever had that expectation or entitlement or whatever, and then they wouldn't be mad, right? And I think because CrossFit is such a mission rather than a business, these things became very complex, right? In terms of the dynamics of employees and all that other stuff. And I think that was, I mean, I think it was hard on all of you, right? I don't think it was, I don't think there was a simple solution to it, but I think it got greatly exaggerated when the crisis hit because people were sort of you know in hindsight it's awesome in hindsight it's an amazing story we were out at
Starting point is 01:59:35 sea and the whale bit off the front of the boat we all made it to shore i mean it's i love stories i people ask me all the time like why i make decisions i make this continue down certain paths that i continue it's because i want to be witness to the end of the story most people like of course everyone's your your friend who turns into a heroin addict and steals your car you stop being friends with them fuck that i'm leaning in i want to see how this fucking thing ends you know what i mean it's like holy shit how what happens next you know what i mean i mean you don't leave your keys around anymore right live and learn yeah but like hey i think that um i think that i would guess that 99 of the people who ran away with the mob who uh and and like you know ran 100 feet away from greg and then turned turned
Starting point is 02:00:20 and faced him and started throwing rocks at him regret it don't you well what a fucking huge mistake you made now you have a horrible seat now you the story's turned and you're now the villain and you have a horrible seat i mean it's like the other thing you know just practically speaking right like if any of those people had ever actually thought like 10 steps ahead they would have thought okay who's gonna buy the company i mean maybe they really believe that they could like well why do they have to step do 10 steps ahead emily why have thought, okay, who's going to buy the company? I mean, maybe they really believe that they could like, well, why do they have to step do 10 steps ahead? Emily, why can't they just be good people? Well, that's right. Why do they have to be like, they were all making these calculated decisions. They like were surrendering the idea that they
Starting point is 02:00:56 were good people because they didn't do the right thing. Right. So like, okay. Okay. Because they were looking out for themselves, right? They're bad people and they have bad calculus is what you're saying. Not for themselves. And they were dumb because like, honestly, like if you have your own brand and you're selling fish oil, right. Greg doesn't want anything to do with fish oil. So he's like, great. You make fish oil, go for it. Now you have a company that's coming in with investor backing and they're thinking all those fish oil companies are scraps on the table that he left behind. That's money that we could be making.
Starting point is 02:01:28 Why don't we make CrossFit fish oil? That's not good for that business. That's not good for that individual with the brand to have somebody who's gonna grab their market share. No, right? It's like the devil you know, right? Greg was awesome about stimulating local, you know, right? Like Greg was awesome about stimulating local CrossFit economy, right?
Starting point is 02:01:48 The ecosystem of CrossFit is like billions of dollars worth of stuff, right? So you can see why like private equity is like, what the fuck, right? Like- Yeah, how did he let Rogue happen? How did he let RX Bar happen? Yeah.
Starting point is 02:02:00 All of these things, right? And Greg was very clear. I'm professionalizing the trainer space, right? That's what I do. Bright and shiny objects, you can have them. I don't want them, right? And Greg was very clear. I'm professionalizing the trainer space, right? That's what I do. Bright and shiny objects, you can have them. I don't want them, right? People with the bright and shiny objects should have recognized somebody else is going to come in and they're going to want my bright and shiny object, right? Like this isn't going to be so easy to run my business. And that's yet to play out fully, but I think it's got to be in the cards, right? Because like, that's what I would do if I was running a private equity firm and I bought CrossFit. I'd be making like home delivery kits for workout stuff that you can do on our online program here.
Starting point is 02:02:36 I had to release the bar already. Right. Hey, do you think the the the the NSCA case ever like is there a time when that's going to get released when we're going to know what happened? I have a new inside source who is giving me some good information on the – it was a massive payout. Okay, because I heard – I don't think from the same source that the reason why – I know it's not the same source. I don't think from the same source that the reason why I know it's not the same source that the well, I guess I can't know anything. But the reason why that it wasn't released is that the payout was so massive that they were they knew the affiliates would have their feelings hurt. That they you know what I mean, like they can do the math if there's 10,000 affiliates and they pay $3,000. I don't know that I would give anybody credit for thinking about the affiliate feelings i think i would think like okay we're we bought this company for this much the company has
Starting point is 02:03:30 lost a significant amount every initiative that rosa put forward failed miserably right yeah like we should say you know how much they lost on the julie fouché initiative i heard it's over a million dollars what i heard about that and i haven't confirmed so it's like opinion whatever is that the deal was signed and paid in full and was never delivered on which feels like some wow wow wow oh dang okay and so do you think the nsc so i don't think anybody can talk about the nsca because it was signed under terms of strict confidentiality. So like they would have to. But people know. Right. A dozen people know. Yeah. Does Don know? I doubt. Well, I don't know. I don't know how that would work. I don't know. I mean, like if Don knew he wouldn't be allowed to tell anybody.
Starting point is 02:04:18 But Rosa knows. Rosa knows because he was the CEO at the time and and and so they authorize it probably i mean i'm sure the board had just the you know investors had to sign off on it the conspiracy theory obviously is that like that was part of the sale of crossfit right that whoever bought crossfit bought it to settle that case because here's the thing about the nsca that still is so troubling to me is the nsca was that that whole thing was about licensure. So they were going to make it illegal to be a CrossFit trainer, which was a, you know, multi-thousand dollar fine. If you personal trained without their certificate or certification or a year in prison, that's what that was about. Okay. Explain that to me a little bit more. Is that the thing that happened in
Starting point is 02:05:04 Washington, DC where they were, where we had to get it reversed? And it died in Florida. But it was it was all over the country, local bills. So they were trying to make it so anyone who teaches fitness anywhere in the United States would have to get even if they had a cross with level one, they would have to go through the NSCA and pay some money to get licensure to do it. Kind of like the way you have to get a license to cut hair. Okay. Wow. Okay. And so the thing is with the lawsuit, right?
Starting point is 02:05:32 Like it was at the end. Like when I was reporting on it, the federal judge had said that it was the most egregious case of scientific misconduct and fraud she'd seen in her 25 years on the bench. It was the worst case of scientific misconduct she'd ever seen. They were at a point to determine damages, right? There was no question of like guilt or innocence, right? And that's all public record. So like they can't seal that. So what happens is, and this is really important because I don't think people realize this, was that it wasn't just that, and the licensure thing was enough to like really go to war over. But the other part of this that's fundamental is that like, they're the main competitor,
Starting point is 02:06:09 right? So they didn't have enough money. Like I had been following their money and it had been, they had been trying to like siphon money into their nonprofit and their nonprofit was paying their legal bills, which was like completely unethical, but they would have been dead. They would have had to declare bankruptcy. They never would have been able to fund enough to pay off the damages, right? In the lawsuit against CrossFit Inc.? Right. Against Greg.
Starting point is 02:06:33 CrossFit had won. Like, it was done, right? It was determined that this is their at fault, right? And it was bad. And then you think about how many news stories printed, CrossFit kills, CrossFit injures. All of that stuff is computated into what the damages should be right so you have and greg's whole thing is like the currency of victory is light i don't want to settle this i want the world to know i want this i mean he had that whole great saying about how like i have a glass case of scientific misconduct and
Starting point is 02:07:02 formaldehyde right here for people to be able to study later. Museum quality specimen. Yes. How did they do this to us? I want it all public. So every time that they came and they said, Hey, let's settle. We'll give you this much money. Greg said, fuck you. Yeah. And the judge was even tripping, right? I remember the judge was tripping like, dude, you're not going to take this money. Greg's like, no, no. Cause it wasn't about money. It was about clearing the affiliates name. That was it. That was all he cared about. Right. And so to sell does two things. It prevents that from being a massive news story. These people lied. They made it up. CrossFit doesn't cause injuries. This injury data was all fabricated, right? The peer review process was all fucked up and not done as a peer review process.
Starting point is 02:07:47 Like every aspect of that was interesting for the public to know, but it would have cleared the name that CrossFit causes injuries. It would have been a huge story, right? So you prevent that, but you also are keeping your competitor alive, which I cannot understand, right? Now, sure, they could have, the American Beverage Association is funding all their shit. They could have popped up as a new organization. William Cramer would have been running the, you know, now we're going to call it the American whatever, right? Rather the national, or they would have done something stupid, but they would not have been as strong as they were. They would have had to start from the ground up. How can you literally like be about to stump out your main competition for certifications
Starting point is 02:08:29 and not do it and settle, right? Right. Clear the name of your entire company and everybody who's been working for you saying like, we don't cause injuries. We're functional fitness. Anybody can do this, right? Right. For money, like that's, I mean, you can't get more opposite than Greg's approach.
Starting point is 02:08:44 for money like that's i mean you can't get more opposite than greg's approach so that's something i wish the community was more rallied around and would say like can somebody from hq explain to us what the fuck happened because that was my reputation as a local why don't you think they are you think that just the affiliates are too busy running their day-to-day i think that part of what happened. Like, why would you care about Floyd 19, but you don't care about what happened to the single greatest threat ever facing your gym that's been buried. And it's, it's, it's to be honest with you now that Greg's not looking out for that, it's gotta be coming back somewhere. This thing is going to come back. It's already back. Look at, I like they CrossFit had a post about, um, like health in a hundred words, I think maybe a month ago. And I was looking at it in the comments Look at, like, CrossFit had a post about, like, health in 100 words, I think, maybe a month ago.
Starting point is 02:09:26 And I was looking at it, and the comments in there were like, oh, this is ridiculous. Like, you shouldn't be giving nutrition advice. You're not an RD. Like, oh, carbs aren't that bad. Like, I eat sugar. And I was like, what is going on? Like, if the Russells were in play, they would have decimated those comments. Like, no one's moderating that.
Starting point is 02:09:45 No one's correcting it for what CrossFit believes is right. They would have decimated those comments. Yeah. Moderating that. Yeah. No one's correcting it for what CrossFit believes is right. That's nuts. Right. I mean, it is already. I think you already see the erosion. Hey, look at this girl's hair too.
Starting point is 02:09:57 Hey, will you click on her? I love CrossFit. I love doing it. I love watching it. I wish they'd leave nutrition alone. Cause it's misguided. You can eat sugar folks. Just know your moderation. Click on that. Let me click on her. Of course, you fucking troll. You woke fucking moron.
Starting point is 02:10:26 When you guys were running the show, like you would have, you know, challenged those people, explained why they were wrong, explained like why that's not believed. That's not happening at all. There's none of that content going on. And hey, how stupid is she, too? She doesn't even understand. Well, can you view the replies on that? I want to see if anyone smashes her. Like I got to put my glasses on.
Starting point is 02:10:41 Oh, you're right. It is just idiot central. Oh, my God. oh you're right it is just idiot central oh my god oh my goodness and i mean i think that was part of it right like greg has his joke about how he sold the hell's angels to costco and i think like you see it in some of this sort of like detail where like people aren't. And it doesn't have to be angry. Right. It can be just like, hey, guys, like not really like this is why, you know, insulin is problematic or whatever.
Starting point is 02:11:17 But no, my goodness. Yeah, you'd have fun going. Yeah. Wow. She's really in there. OK, so she's a shill even. Wow. God, please don't respond to people who have fun going. Yeah. Wow. She's really in there. Okay. So she's a shill even. Wow. God,
Starting point is 02:11:27 please don't respond to people who have private accounts. People have private accounts are just the worst. Click on that ladies. Click on that one's elite nutrition. Let me see this moron. Oh my goodness. Hey, these are... God, it's crazy.
Starting point is 02:11:51 Okay. Hey, I... Why are so many people... It's a different show. Just all the influencer... Anytime I see posts like that, anytime I see so much effort being put in posts and stuff like that, I just know you're a fucking fool, a tool and a charlatan it's like what were they putting graphics together
Starting point is 02:12:10 that's harsh uh yeah to to to push their agenda like how about just anything authentic it's like every single one of your posts is just every single one of your posts is just uh uh polished it's like it's it's like hey it's like uh fucking a guy and then getting up early in the morning before he wakes up to put your makeup on so he doesn't see what he fucked it's like come on man he already fucked you like show give me some like realm of authenticity well okay so you don't think business right they're trying to sell a product and so it's not they're not trying to be authentic they're trying to sell you something right i don't know how that works on people i there's only so much of that i could take before i unsubscribed you unfollow you
Starting point is 02:12:55 well i think that you know when you had dawn on i watched that and i thought you know your advice about like you have like an army of people around the world, right? Yeah. Like creating content who are like, get all of this, like use them. Like, that's brilliant. Right. Like that's like a free and it's authentic.
Starting point is 02:13:15 And it's like, I mean, or cheap as shit, even like give, give. Yeah. If you build an army of filmmakers too, you'll have your own propaganda machine. I mean, that's what CrossFit was in the, for the first 10 years, we had just this army of just dudes out there and girls out there with video cameras, putting together videos for a hundred to 10,000, a hundred dollars to $10,000. It was awesome. You know what Craig told me about you was that you came on and you were making these videos that were awesome and you were
Starting point is 02:13:46 charging, let's say, I don't remember what the money was, but like, let's say it was like a hundred dollars a video or whatever. And they were like, Oh, this is great. Like just keep doing as many as you can. And then you do like 10 a day. Yeah. And Greg was like, this, this guy's awesome. Right. But now I have to go and tell him that like, he's going to be like our biggest budget if he keeps producing at this level. So he's like, I had to sit, set me down and basically be like, okay, so we want you to keep producing at the same level of content, but we're going to pay you a fraction of what we're paying you now,
Starting point is 02:14:13 because we can't afford to keep doing this at this level, but we want to bring you on. And he was like, I remember going into that conversation and thinking like, how am I going to convince him to take less money? He always took care of me. I know that conversation because I'm like, how am I going to convince him to take less money? He always took care of me. I know, but I love that conversation because I'm like, you were outpaced. He was like, we, everybody else we had was like, they do a video and it would take them like three weeks.
Starting point is 02:14:34 And he was like, and Seve came in with like 50 videos and like, you know, 10 minutes after I told him that he had the opportunity. And I was like, that's a hustler. He's yeah. I wanted to, I wanted to, we would go places and then on then on the on the flight home i would just edit them in the plane yeah it's what you do i wouldn't do that now i'm now i'm now you need a private jet and i'm a pampered weakling i'm a pampered weakling okay so nsca case never comes out we never find out maybe i mean i would like to i'm trying i'm trying to
Starting point is 02:15:06 get people to leak me shit if anybody wants to do that that's great um and why why why do you think so um do you think that that's accurate the affiliates don't want to know just because they don't they're just too busy doing their day-to-day shit that they can't be bothered or well i think honestly towards the end there right so like the media team gets scrapped in in 18 right and then crossfit health becomes the focus the wrestles are not doing stuff on battles i think there was a like a dearth of information i don't think that it was communicated to people like i mean i'm always surprised on the instagram page how often people are like wait what is this about like why was this a deal and i'm like you guys like literally your livelihood
Starting point is 02:15:50 was trying they were trying to take it away from you right right it wasn't greg saying soda horrors and being flippant it was like they were coming for you and your job right to make your shit illegal unless you paid the money right mob shit and people are always like oh i don't know like why is soda so bad or like they had you know panda express at the first games or whatever and i'm like you're missing the whole point right yeah and you know greg made and uh dave made fun of them too by the way right i love that yeah you should tell it i've told it a million times baby panda express was a sponsor of the second CrossFit Games in 2008 for sure. And he made fun of him. He called it like, he went up there, he goes,
Starting point is 02:16:30 yeah, okay, and the winner gets a $50 gift certificate to some shitty fast food. And the whole crowd starts laughing. I mean, we treated our sponsors the same way Greg treated Reebok when they first signed on. Those shoes that they sell that they say will strengthen your butt, complete fucking lie. Reebok did not like that. Hey, what do you think about Monster Energy drink coming in? I told him that I would text him if I needed a lifeline. You want me to see if he wants to say hi to you?
Starting point is 02:17:01 Greg? Yeah, you have any questions for him? No, I have no questions for him. No, no, you can give him a uh that would be crazy i was like i'll tell him i'll tell you what the story is what story should we make him tell he needs to he needs to come in if he is going to come in i'm going to play a one minute commercial and go pee okay okay i'm gonna do let me see uh um can you play the one that's um not the though? What's a good story for him to tell? About why he wouldn't settle the NSCA?
Starting point is 02:17:32 That would be good. That would be fucking awesome. Hey, Caleb, can you not play the level one one? Can you play the one that's just a compilation of just like funny outtakes from this show? No, you don't see it. I don't see it either. What happened to that? Do we have to go to a different?
Starting point is 02:17:52 Oh, look, you changed it oh that was nice you did it compilation 50 you see it 55 seconds i see it i'm gonna push it and then run to the bathroom is that cool caleb okay i'm gonna pull emily off will you pull me and emily off in case i'm not back in time okay what is with this guy, you know? If Howard Stern and Joe Rogan had a baby, you'd be looking at him. Remember, the people were live, so don't, like, start picking your nose or pull your dick out or anything crazy like that. And this is why this is the greatest show on the internet because there's a comment here that says a lot of pre-cum,
Starting point is 02:18:19 and then right after there's a comment that says it's so sad. Let's go back to hand jobs. People without their names and they, uh... No one clip that and play that on the internet. A thumb with a mustache, yes. Listen, a guy named Johan Lopez called you a thumb with a mustache. Wow.
Starting point is 02:18:43 I'm gonna shit myself. Man, that seven on podcast is dull as shit okay you guys have a great day okay you too thanks for calling no i was feeling familial like it was my mom i screwed that up you did that perfect caleb i screwed that up. You did that perfect, Caleb. I screwed that up. I'm going to text my wife and get a second cup of coffee. And we shall move onward. Guys, thank you so much uh for being patient two hours 19 minutes in and i feel like we're just cruising along i'm so stoked for this uh fucking work right now oh you're at
Starting point is 02:19:35 work uh i love this commercial more than that one commercial okay good awesome it would be awesome hey emily i think if greg came on even for like can you hear me yeah i think if greg even came on once i just need to like get him used to coming on yeah and then i could probably get him to come on regularly i want to hear i want to hear like all his thoughts i want to hear his thoughts on the chinese balloon i want to hear his thoughts on just like i mean you and i get a chance to hear all that stuff from him i think think people would love it. I mean, you could ask him anything. You could ask him what makes a good pizza and he's got a great answer. I know. And he's like, I mean, he really is like the best storyteller. I was saying to him last night, I was like, you know, I think you should
Starting point is 02:20:16 go on, not me because I'm like the ugly stepsister. Cause Cinderella is like busy at the ball. Like everybody wants to hear from you. And he's like, I will. I just, you know, I don't know, like whatever. And I'm like, just, he needs to do it and like get back in the swing of things, I think. But I agree with you. I think it's important for him to have his voice heard. And I think- Can we get Emily on as a regular?
Starting point is 02:20:37 No, she's offended by your picture of that ass. So she refuses. It's a good superficial question. Emily, what kind of dog do you got? Honey is my golden retriever. Honey, come. Wad zombie, this is incredible. Philip Kelly, Emily isn't ugly at all.
Starting point is 02:20:57 You should see my dog. Okay. So NSCA case. um uh ns so nsca case um so you you though the one of the theories could be out there is that it was cheaper to buy crossfit than settle it let me just ask you this real quick there's this company called berkshire right berkshire and berkshire thank you berkshire and they bought crossfit it's not warren buffett people keep getting confused it's it actually started as a warren buffett of spinoff, but Warren Buffett does not have any holdings in Berkshire. Okay.
Starting point is 02:21:31 So Berkshire wrote – they're the ones who wrote the check to Greg. But we're not going to say that Berkshire owns CrossFit because they're what, what's called a holding company and they're basically someone. Yeah. I mean, this is, this is not completely confirmed. So I think you have to be a little careful, right? So Berkshire is a private equity firm. So they, you know, buy companies and try and grow them. Right. And they have funds where they own part of companies, or they may have like, honey, go sit over there. We may have they may have, you know, like Harvard probably invests with them. And then some of Harvard's money is put in different funds.
Starting point is 02:22:15 Right. And do they get to influence? Do they get to influence what they buy? Like, well, Harvard be like, hey, we've given you a billion dollars. We want you'd have to have that as like a term in the deal. Right. And it would have to be like you'd have to be a majority owner or have some stake in it right so but what can happen and i think what's particularly interesting about this case is um it's also a great pass-through organization so like you and i decide that we're going to buy some company we don't want anybody
Starting point is 02:22:41 to know we're buying it we go to a private equity fund and we basically say, Hey, we've got a billion dollars to invest in this thing. We want it. We don't want to be a part of, you know, public persona around it. Let's create a fund together. You guys will get 10%. Is the fund that bought CrossFit a new fund? I feel like I can't, I don't want to speak to that quite yet because there's a lot of question marks around what fund it is. Is it part of another fund? Is it? But either way, it's not wrong to say that these types of companies like Berkshire could be used to hide blind investors. All the time. OK, OK. And so if a company like also like diversification, right? Like if I have
Starting point is 02:23:26 a billion dollars, I'm not going to put it all in one pot. I'm going to give it to different, you know, outlets that are going to invest it in different things. And that's just smart because basically the way those companies work is they invest in a ton of shit. They wait for one to be like a huge hit. And then what are you doing? Sorry. She's trying to say hi. She, and so once one is a big hit, then they dump their lowest, right? So like you're trying to buy in at a ground level or a lower level, assuming there's massive growth potential, but you know, there's not likely always growth potential and more likely these businesses fail than they succeed. And so you're looking for the big hit.
Starting point is 02:24:07 And when you get, I mean, what somebody told me is that like, depending on how CrossFit's doing right now, if potentially, and if let's say, take all the political conspiracy theory out of the picture, Berkshire gets a massive win with one of their other investments, they dump CrossFit, right?
Starting point is 02:24:23 This isn't necessarily a long-term, we really love CrossFit. We want to invest in this company forever. I'm sure it was a, look at all the fish oil that they're not making money off of. This is an easy, massive 10X growth opportunity. Let's see what we can do, which is the opposite of obviously how Greg thought about it, but it is very typical. That's not like a bad, they're evil or something like that. That's just how that business model works, right? Like you invested a bunch of shit, you wait for something to take off and you dump the things that are the lowest, just like you would with stocks. They're just doing it with companies. And so basically, um, there, there was to kind of paint the picture, there were numbers upwards of $100 million being thrown around to settle the case. And when Greg gave those the middle finger, it wouldn't be outrageous then to think, okay, their next play would be just to try to buy the whole company.
Starting point is 02:25:25 play would be just to try to buy the whole company okay so the conspiracy theory and like i want to say that like 10 times right like this is let's call it all opinions there's no case against us let's say the nsca lawyer said to greg i think we can make this go away for 100 million dollars and greg told him to go fuck himself and he said we can do this the easy way or the hard way and greg said go fuck yourself year. That would not be something you want to say to Greg, by the way. A year later, Greg's canceled. The company is purchased for 200. Within a year, less than a year, the case is settled. And the CEO, the PR guy are now gone that they put in power they're gone this the the other part of this you have to remember is that if let's say the american beverage association
Starting point is 02:26:11 bought crossfit they didn't buy crossfit for 200 million they saved themselves right at least 100 million maybe more than 200 million right so it's a sunk cost. And they shut down a worldwide cult that was against the consumption of sugar. And made its leader disappear into the shadows. Although he's not. He's coming back with a vengeance. In 18 months, Greg's no-compete is gone? Yeah, I think it's about 18 months. So theoretically, he could start another CrossFit up in 18 months?
Starting point is 02:26:42 Theoretically. Sure could. No, so Greg didn't lose that's the thing so greg lost what the case no greg never greg won the case the new owners settled the case meaning they got paid out and no one gets to know what the settlement was and why do you think that they don't want going back to this question? Why do you think that they don't want to say what the settlement is? Don't you think they'd want to celebrate that with the community? No,
Starting point is 02:27:10 no, no, no. I'm sure it wasn't. It wasn't CrossFit who said like, Hey, let's make sure nobody talks about this. The NSCA said,
Starting point is 02:27:15 we'll give you all this money. Yeah. You can't ever talk about it. And why would CrossFit agree to that? They wanted the money more than they wanted the truth. So if this theory is correct it's basically um uh for beverage company a just paid itself a hundred million dollars and got rid of the problem yeah so basically they that's amazing isn't it you buy the company and then and then
Starting point is 02:27:42 and then settle the two companies that you both own, settle the suit with each other. It's just like moving money around. Shit. They may even made more money. They may have even made more money, like with tax write-offs and shit like that. Right. This is crazy. Thank you, babe.
Starting point is 02:27:58 If CrossFit, let's say fails. Yeah. They get a big win on the books. They get rid of CrossFit. It's a write-off it's a loss yeah how's that are you drinking a coke right now and justin coke zero i like i'm fully addicted to coke zero and in honor of them to help them pay their legal bills right yeah yes he was when he was in santa cruz he was like and the house is stocked with coke zero and i can only imagine this is like you're doing so thanks a lot and i was like oh i love coke zero what's the difference between
Starting point is 02:28:29 coke zero and diet coke it's so much better it is oh yeah much better neither of them are good without booze in them i like it's fine hey um okay so so so that that'll be interesting if that ever unfolds. And let me ask you this. Do you think Rosa knows the truth, or do you think he was just a pawn? I actually think he probably was just a pawn. I mean, I don't know. I think he's probably privy to a lot of information, but I don't think he really cares. And I don't think – you know, it's interesting.
Starting point is 02:29:00 When I was doing background on Rosa at the time of the sale, right, so like when we were going through all this stuff, I realized like he was, you know, the New York Times wrote about his business successes and all this stuff. And all he wanted to do was talk about CrossFit, which was like kind of cute, right? Like you've got this really successful digital company. And like, all you want to talk about is that you like open a CrossFit box in the basement of the business, right? Like die hard. And he'd worked with Berkshire before so like again if you go to this conspiracy theory level which is like totally unproven and just for fun i think like there is something interesting about the fact that like if i'm the aba the american beverage association i go to berkshire and i say look we gotta we have an opportunity here and we want to take advantage
Starting point is 02:29:38 of it who can be the spokesperson who can be the front man for this they're like fucking eric rosa dude this guy like we've invested with him before and all he'll do is talk about crossfit right you tap him you say hey we've got this great opportunity whatever and the guy who reached out what's his name woods yeah reached out to greg he'd been reaching out to greg for like i mean that's been misreported over and over again he'd been reaching out to greg regularly for like more than a two years three years, saying like, hey, this guy, Eric Rose, is really into CrossFit.
Starting point is 02:30:07 He'd love to buy it. So like, that's all true. But my guess is that like in the conspiracy theory realm, somebody knew Eric Rose could be a perfect pawn in all of this, right? Yeah. And I don't know.
Starting point is 02:30:21 I think just based on like the stuff that happened with him towards the end, I think he really thought it was gonna be like an easy business to run. Right. Didn't spend any time studying it. Had no sense of like the community, really. Right. Like Greg always talks about how like at some point he said he made some joke with him about. Something about like opening the box in the morning or whatever. And he's like, he's never opened his box.
Starting point is 02:30:48 Right. No. Well, you know, you know, the thing was, is one time he left one time he left the box and he was told to lock it up. And he told all the executives who were there when he was right when he bought HQ and he was he told us all that he owned a box, but it wasn't his box. It was his ex-wife's box and her boyfriend's box. And really. And and when he left, he was bragging that he didn't know how to open or lock the door because he had never done it. When basically how many times did Greg invoke that moment that a box owner unlocks the door and gets there at 430 or five in the morning? That was like one of Greg's favorite things to invoke because he shared that with all of the fucking affiliate owners and this guy on the other hand is bragging that he doesn't know how it's i mean it's telling yeah it's telling please bring emily back she hasn't she hasn't
Starting point is 02:31:33 gone anywhere yet just to be super clear you have to know that i i'm not not going to uh before anyone says anything stupid i have to hear it a bunch more times i am not not going to uh before anyone says anything stupid i have to hear it a bunch more times i am not not going to broken science because um there won't be a private jet i would drive there i would run there there are other there there are other reasons why i'm not going and and i still may go i still may go i hope you do otherwise i might have to like take advantage of your wife yeah listen i um i i canceled my trip to tahoe uh this year and uh three days later uh greg's wife called me and said hey you want to come to tahoe with us i was like are you fucking kidding me oh the universe and i had i know i hadn't even told my broken it to my kids yet that i was having to cancel my trip and i was like this is crazy we went to tahoe so that was that's pretty
Starting point is 02:32:19 crazy so i so i suspect i'm going what is the i suspect i'm going i suspect i'm going I'm going. What is the, I suspect I'm going. I suspect I'm going. The 18th. I'm going to drive my minivan there with my kids in it. Do it. Yeah, I suspect. It's going to be great. I mean, I think, you know, Seyfried's speaking, right? Briggs is speaking. So we're going to have like, Malcolm Kendrick is coming. We had a hard time figuring out his situation.
Starting point is 02:32:37 Is everyone invited? How do people go? Can anyone go? If you go on the website and- Broken Science. Yeah, broken science.org on the events page you can also view all of the past events that were private where there's lectures greg's giving great talks um but you click on there and there's a register button and we're charging a hundred bucks but it's only if you don't show because basically we had to come up with like there's going to be a so you you get your money back if you show up that's right
Starting point is 02:33:09 it's a free event i just needed to have that's brilliant that's some fucking greg glassman shit right there actually it was an emily caplan thing but really that's such wow that's brilliant it's a hundred dollars but if you show up you get your money back god that's good if we just said we were having a public event, we'd have a million people say they're coming, but they're not going to buy plane tickets. They're not going to actually show up. And so like we're doing a reception that's going to be like great food and booze. We have to pay per person before we have anybody show up. So if you tell me it's a thousand people, I'm not going to, we're not going to pay for
Starting point is 02:33:41 that and then have a hundred show up. Right. So I needed something and it was hard, but Mia, who does all of my backend like website development, you met Mia, right? She's amazing. Um, she came up with this way of doing it. Credit card companies do not love putting a hold on your credit card for that long, but they did. Uh, well, Emily is paid by him to write a book. Um, that's not true, is it? uh well emily is paid by him to write a book that's not true is it nope not true he is not paying me to write the book nor is he asked to ever see anything or have any expectation of any edits of anything and he's i mean honestly like the other thing that's interesting about greg in
Starting point is 02:34:17 terms of this he's very uncomfortable with the book to be honest not in the sense that he's uncomfortable with what's going to be in it. He's uncomfortable with the attention. He told me that he, anytime I ask him about the book, he's like, dude, talk, ask Emily. I don't ask her any fucking questions.
Starting point is 02:34:31 I give her access to everything. Like he's not, he's not comfortable with the, with the attention. I think he'd probably prefer it came out like after he was dead. I think it's also, he's like that in general. I mean,
Starting point is 02:34:42 I think people don't realize this about him because he comes across or like people have this false impression of him in some other way. But even through the crisis, managing all of that, he gave me access to everything. I had to talk to everybody. I had to ask him everybody he'd ever hooked up with. There were intensely personal situations that I went through with a number of different people. He never asked me once, hey, what did Seve say? Or hey, what did so-and-so say? Or who's mad at me? Or who's going to be on my side? He let me manage all of that completely privately, which I can tell you probably isn't easy. And I have other clients who are not like that at all, right? They want to see notes. They want to see all this stuff, but I can't do my job effectively, both writing the book and also in, you know, sort of
Starting point is 02:35:23 managing that situation. If I don't have other people feeling like they can tell me truthfully, like, did something fucked up happen or not? Like, I need to know in order to know what we're dealing with. And in his case, he was like, I have nothing to hide. So like you talk to everybody and you don't have to tell me shit. And that was pretty mind blowing. I mean, even like you remember this, maybe Sebi, like through that whole thing, I wouldn't
Starting point is 02:35:44 sign any paperwork so the lawyers were freaking out because i was privy to like everything that's ever happened i do remember now it's clicking yes you mean you're talking about when the deal was going the lawyers for uh the new owners of crossfit wanted you to sign yes well and marshall was like greg this is fucking nuts like she has access to everything how weird is shit for marshall or like a non-competer like you know any kind of like she won't tell this story and greg was like i want emily to sign a disclosure document and everybody was like what is that and he's like that she will disclose all of this information not that we're going to muzzle her to not disclose this information. I mean,
Starting point is 02:36:25 that takes a lot of balls, right? You don't know what I'm finding out. And you're telling everybody that you're not going to, you know, muzzle me in some way. Like, yeah,
Starting point is 02:36:34 that's big volumes. Right. So how weird, how weird is shit for Marshall? It must be weird working there. I don't, you know, I mean,
Starting point is 02:36:43 I don't know. I don't know. Like I, that's a Marshall question. I feel like I can't answer that. I think anybody who I don't, you know, I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Like I, that's a Marshall question. I feel like I can't answer that. I think anybody who's still there, it's, you know, it's a big transition. It's a different kind of thing. And I think it's got to be rough for everybody. Right. I think everybody's whole, I think, you know, there's an undertone of optimism. That's important that I think when you're on it, I had a conversation with somebody who's still there and is on the seminar staff. And they said to me, like, I actually,
Starting point is 02:37:13 there's a lot I don't like about the way things are being run or the way things are talked about, but I know my job is to like go out into the community and keep spreading the methodology. And like, I actually am more committed to that than ever because I'm so worried about what's going on over here. And I like fully respect that. Right. That it's like people, some people are like,
Starting point is 02:37:32 I'm fucking out and, or I'm, you know, I can't stand this and there's shit talking, or there's other people who are like, I'm doubling down because like, I'm worried this magical, wonderful thing that we created is in jeopardy.
Starting point is 02:37:43 And I don't, I have a role in spreading that word. And so I'm not going to, you know, worry too much about what's happening over here. It's sort of like what Greg said, like during Rosa stuff, when we were going on our tour that never really materialized into anything where he was saying like to the affiliates, like what you do is what is like, you know, sort of where all of the action is, right? Like being in the affiliate and changing lives is, is what you're all about. And it doesn't really matter what the name is on the door. So like, don't worry too much about this. And I, I mean, I was like proud of him.
Starting point is 02:38:15 Like I couldn't kind of believe it, right. Because there's a lot of anger and upset about things, but there also is this thing where he really wants CrossFit affiliates still to be successful, right? And still to be spreading the methodology, not because it's his, but because it works. And it might be the only sort of signal of hope moving forward. And that still means a lot, right? And I mean, you know that better than me. I'm preaching. Travis Bajent told me the other day, the bar is set so low for humanity that if you want your kid to be successful, you only have to do two things. Don't give them a cell phone until they're over 15 and sign them up for CrossFit Kids.
Starting point is 02:38:52 Love that. Yeah, it's pretty good. Have you met Don? I have. We had dinner with him before he was CEO. Oh, did you know he was going to be CEO when you had dinner with him? Not, no. And did you get a chance to interact with him much?
Starting point is 02:39:07 Or were you like, who's the stream? Yeah. What? You sat next to him. Oh. Very small group. Dave put it together, I think, through Ross. And he, I liked him.
Starting point is 02:39:20 I mean, I like, he and I mostly talked about his time at Facebook where he was like the guy censoring. I mean, he was sort of like in charge of all the censoring and how that had changed so much after the government. Really? That's what he was in charge of over there. Oh, I love Don. Don't tell me that you're breaking my heart before it got bad. Like he was basically like the toughest part of his job was that they had sort of like a no policy, like they weren't going to censor anything. And then it became to just shut everyone up come to them with like you know
Starting point is 02:39:47 horrible stories about some child or something or whatever and they would be like sorry like we just we can't we're not going to get in the business of of touching that even though it's like obviously awful and so i was like when did that pendulum swing because obviously i was helping all these people who had been kicked off of social media. And I think he had some interest. I should probably be more guarded about sharing that conversation. But I'm sure he would tell you if he talked. I mean, I think he's wonderful.
Starting point is 02:40:15 I think he's cool. You do think he's wonderful. You like Don. Yeah, a lot. I think he's very smart. I think he's sort of like the perfect mix in a way of like the military background. Right. You think he's too polished?
Starting point is 02:40:32 I mean, that's a weird that's a weird criticism, but it's the only criticism I've ever heard of him. I loved him. But but he is really polished. If you let him go, if you let it give him too much rope, he'll he will go into like, I don't know, just polish talk. Well, you know, I mean, I think he's towing the line, being safe. He's very safe. Perfect. Right. Cause he's like, he's got the sort of academic business school pedigree, right? Yeah. He's got, he's great. Yeah. Formality. But he also is like, I mean, he's tough guy and he's tough guy. He's no pussy. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:41:03 And he also, he seems like a listener to me like in a genuine way right like um yes i think he cares about crossfit he seems like a decent person he's not i mean like he doesn't smart decent good pedigree not an egomaniac right like not like i think he's um i think he's great i don't have i honestly don't have anything bad to say about him other than he's like well i know it's a weird thing to say his shirt's too clean his shirt was too white i know but it's all i got it's the only negative thing i can say about it this is partly like the hell's angels thing though right like there was a grit to things before and so having somebody who's polished or well-spoken or like you know really well prepared or whatever comes
Starting point is 02:41:42 across as a difference but no one's going to be the same. Right. So like people have to surrender that it's not going to be the same. It's going to be different. So what differences really matter. And like, if he cares a lot about his job and what he says and how he's coming across, cause he's kind of entering a hostile environment, right? Like, fuck, that's good. That means you care. Right. Okay. Let me ask you this other crazy question then i think for that place to be successful uh he has to um i i don't even know what this means what does that mean professional meaning you're willing to don't talk like that about don don won't suck dick for money that please don't talk to about don like that uh i think that don either has to fire all the woke people or fire all the old
Starting point is 02:42:27 staff that you can't have both. What do you think about that? Absolute. Well, I would think that's like a typical management thing right out the gate. Right. You'd fire everybody. You'd bring in your own people.
Starting point is 02:42:36 And I think Rosa fucked up by not doing that. I think. Yeah. Right. Cause then you sort of, now you're creating this thing where like Nicole's back. Right. Gone. Like, what are you back. Right. It's gone.
Starting point is 02:42:46 Like, what are you doing? Right. It doesn't matter about the legacy or the history and the old person. You have to either get rid of the mentally ill people. I want to change that. You either have to get rid of the mentally ill people or fire all the old staff. I think what he's up against is really like he's got old staff and then he's got Rosa people. I don't know that he's really brought in anybody on his own.
Starting point is 02:43:03 That should be the next iteration. Well, I think he's been financially way more responsible than rosa uh tommy rodriguez don is great any ideas or comments on what happened to eric yeah he started a band um i saw him in a hotel bar literally playing right and that was amazing that you were there yeah who were you why did everything left dave had left like five minutes earlier which would have been spectacular to see that interaction and g Dave had left like five minutes earlier, which would have been spectacular to see that interaction. And Greg had left like 10 minutes earlier. God, what did I hear the other day? Do you know about some of the lawsuits that they have going on internally, by the way?
Starting point is 02:43:34 We should talk about that. I don't know if I'm about what, but some of the woke people who they hired are now suing them because they're woke. I mean, because... What is the premise of the lawsuit? I can't. The irony is un-fucking-believable. Imagine being hired because you were black and then being upset and then suing the company
Starting point is 02:44:01 because they put you in charge of the basketball team at CrossFit and you said, hey, they just put me in charge of the basketball team because I was black. It's something like that. Even though you were just openly hired just because you were black. This is a metaphor. This isn't true. But do you know that story? I know a little bit, but I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing.
Starting point is 02:44:18 Okay. It's fucking – it's insane. That's the thing. You can't hire woke people. You have to know that. You can't – they'll eat each other. It always. You can't hire woke people. You have to know that. They'll eat each other. It always ends the same way with woke people. I don't like that, Sebi, because I feel like that's just you're doing the shit that they're doing.
Starting point is 02:44:35 Which is what? You think I'm just being ambiguous? Well, a little. Well, here's the thing. I haven't named anyone, though. There's someone in the comments disparaging Greg right now, but they won't say what that what it is i'm not suggesting if i were gonna say if i if i was gonna say no because they're not saying anything specific if it was someone specific i was talking about i would say like i told you like i don't like the the only thing i don't like about don
Starting point is 02:44:57 is his shirts are too clean and they look pressed yeah there you go i mean and i'll also admit that that's a stupid reason to fucking judge someone. But that's the only fucking bad thing about the guy. I'm just saying. What do you mean when you say like we should no one should hire woke people like people, people who are mentally ill to the point where they can't think clearly. And they and they and they play the victim role as their core lifestyle value. And you're going to set that up on a job interview like how are you what is this determination being based like i mean i like that's just hard i feel like at some point in your life you probably felt like you were a victim and it probably bothered you right and let me give you an example crossfit inc is uh um overtly explicitly inclusive.
Starting point is 02:45:46 Everyone is fucking welcome from a fucking midget to a fucking transgender Taliban pygmy goat. And to then hire someone who wants to make it more inclusive for black people is woke because you know, right away, Oh shit, that's going to be some divisive shit. Okay. But I would call it discrimination. I would say you're discriminating against people by label. Well, that's one of the core tenets of being woke is you have to be discriminatory.
Starting point is 02:46:10 That's what I'm asking you to define. Oh, sorry. Okay. Okay. Sorry. You're right. That's fair. Yeah. Like you don't want people who discriminate. Okay. Yeah, I don't want people who are racist, especially those ones parading like that they're not racist. I don't want ones claiming the women's independence and believing in how strong women are. And then they suck dick to climb their ladder up the food corporate food chain. But but but then make videos on how it's because women are so strong and great in the workplace. Like, I just, I can't have that inconsistency.
Starting point is 02:46:48 It could be both. Or it could be transparent. Hey, I use my magic pussy to climb the chain. I mean, I would be totally fine with that. I'm not closed-minded. It's the line that I don't like. That's good. Okay, thank you.
Starting point is 02:47:01 I like that I know exactly who you're talking about with those. Yes. There's a handful of people fall into that category. Okay, thank you. So I think, okay, I'll give you an example, another example of what, because I want to ask you that question one more time about what do you think Don should do. Those people who turned on Greg, right? Do you think that that sort of reveals their character? Like if I was. Yes, it's all about them. It was all about them.
Starting point is 02:47:41 It was nothing about greg it was all about them from the get-go wanting attention right wanting a following wanting to like worried about not doing the right popular thing right it's a it has nothing to do with greg right they they're gonna fly with the wind right now that greg's coming back and being popular again we already see these people talking about how great greg was the founder of the company and all this stuff wait what right right oh it's just whatever the way they the bandwagon jumpers. Right. So do you think, do you think, do you agree that Rosa has to do or that Don should do one or the other, get rid of the, um, uh,
Starting point is 02:48:15 get rid of all the people that were the new hires that I was calling woke. The ones that are parading around is something that they're not the ones who are the ones who aren't putting the methodology first. I'll say that the ones who are putting like people's gender or sex or color, they're doing all this stuff to detract from the fact. I mean, I'll tell you the example here. Here's an example. Greg got really upset one time about a gun post that Dave made. And he was, and I'm, and maybe I'm the spirit of what I'm saying is right. And the fact wasn't that he was upset because it was a gun post. Greg loves guns. It was the fact that it detracted from our thing, that it took some attention away from Coca-Cola should not be meddling in the sciences. And the right. And so there's people who work there who are detracting from what CrossFit is really about.
Starting point is 02:49:00 They brought their own agenda there instead of a cure to the world's most vexing problem. I think Don knows, actually. I think Rosa thought it was a sport. I think Don knows it's a cure for the world's most vexing problem. Susan just went to that affiliate gathering. He's like, holy shit, it's the first time in two and a half years I've heard someone say that we have the cure for COVID. I'm paraphrasing, but Don basically opened with something like that. And I think that I personally think that Don either has to get rid of those people who aren't pushing the core tenant of CrossFit forward. Or get rid of those people who are and let it just become a giant social justice warriors. I like that delineation better where it's not you're not saying like the old versus the new versus the whatever. Sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like Gary Gaines could have stayed. Gary Gaines is a Kool-Aid drinker.
Starting point is 02:49:44 Gary Gaines is a new guy. He could have stayed. I mean, ironically, they fired him, but he could have stayed. Yeah, well, I mean, I think he had the mission. He had the right mission going. It's the same as like I feel like there was something where. Like, I think it was Dave again, I got in trouble for posting something and then Weinstein was posting stuff that was like it was like political or something. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. Weinstein was, uh, hated, hated fucking Trump with a passion and he posted about it. Yeah. Well, I think it's like, if you're going to tell employees, you guys can't post anything on politics. No, I don't care. Left, right, center, blah. It's not, this isn't what we do here. And if you're a public facing employee, then you can't do that. Right. And it's not about the content. It's about
Starting point is 02:50:25 the thing that you're engaging in. Right. That's fair. I think that's fine, but you can't have it one way and not the other. And the same way I wouldn't try to delineate employees based on like where they fall on a political spectrum or whatever. I would base it on like, what is your output? How are you contributing to the mission of spreading CrossFit to more people, right? How is your skill set matched with what we need in order to accomplish those goals? And if you can do those things, then I don't fucking care what you think. I mean, I'm a big believer in individual rights, right? That's sort of like how we started this conversation. So like, if you believe something different than me, that's awesome. And I'm glad that we can be friends and talk about it. I don't
Starting point is 02:51:01 want to get rid of everybody in my life who doesn't agree with my political opinions. That's not informative to me, right? It's not even interesting. I like arguing, right? So like that, that's not the name of the game. Like I think diversity is really important in the sense of diversity of ideas, because this is how we all grow and we challenge ourselves. This idea of diversity and like, you have to have this many number of people that look like this and that's not diversity. And actually what you're doing is the opposite. You're clamping down on the spread of ideas by making people feel scared. Right. They don't fit into a certain box or they don't have enough of a certain box. I don't give a shit about that. I want to know what you think. Right. And so I think if I were advising Don, I would say to him, like, very clearly, like, you've got to figure out who's on this for the mission of spreading the methodology because methodology changes everybody. I don't care what you look like. Right. I don't care what your politics are. I don't care. Yes. No, no, that's not. It's irrelevant. And if you're hell bent on CrossFit, then it'll bridge the gap between these other divides that you're talking about.
Starting point is 02:51:58 I don't want to exacerbate them by saying like, oh, you can't you you're too woke. You can't work here. Great. You're woke and you believe in CrossFit. Awesome. Let's do this together. Do you think that it's a misnomer to say that Greg was canceled? And that I mean, well, let me put it this way. My hair is driving me crazy. Me and Kathy and Thomas Krubar and Brian Mulvaney and Haley Parlin, Haley Matosian, we were canceled, meaning we didn't have control over our destiny. We were fired because we were part of the toxic culture.
Starting point is 02:52:32 Whereas Greg was in control of his destiny. He owned the company. And so he sold the company. Whereas canceled might mean more like um you you didn't you you you didn't you didn't have control like you were you were just fucking whacked for for your stuff that's just your stuff it's not true like like my kids are canceled from school because they won't take the vaccine so they're canceled they don't have control over it they don't own the school yeah so you're just thinking of just i'm just trying to find the word canceled.
Starting point is 02:53:07 Like sometimes it bugs me. It bugs me that people say he was he was forced out. And I'll be like, he wasn't fucking forced out. He fucking sold and rode off into the sunset on a big fucking horse. With a lot of guns in his bag. So I just I just I trip on it sometimes. I think what you're saying, though, is like a is a victim definition right you're saying like you were victimized because you didn't have any control in the situation and you were collateral damage essentially right
Starting point is 02:53:34 well i had control in the sense that i chose to work there and when you choose to work there then you're setting yourself up to to some point to some point, you were going to be like mentioned in the New York times, right? Like that wasn't part of your job. So in that case, you are a victim. I just hate the word victim. Can you choose a different word? I don't want to be. That's exactly why I used it. Oh, thank you. This is my show and you're offending me. I'm just trying to make the point of like, what is canceled? I think canceled is like when something, when there's a public backlash against you that directly impacts your livelihood, your ability to do your job, your ability to be the person you were before you were canceled.
Starting point is 02:54:19 Right. And so in that regard, I would say he was canceled. I'm not sure if you get less. It's like, let's take another scenario. Let's do like a victim thing, right? Like you're Donald Trump canceled. No, because he's still out there. And I think being like being that that persona is part of what made him who he is.
Starting point is 02:54:39 Rather, I think if I think if canceled, though, is like no good people are can't no bad no good no bad people are canceled like I don't think of uh uh Weinstein is being canceled like he was he was fucking raping women right well but that goes to the heart of this notion of like um injustice there's some injustice associated which is also like being a victim, a real victim, right? Not like a social victim, like a victim of a crime, right? Like they're innocent of any wrongdoing and they're harmed in a way that makes them a victim. I think we've appropriated that word and used it in lots of ways that it's way overused now.
Starting point is 02:55:19 But like, I would say the difference is the paycheck, right? So what if you're a victim of a crime and you and you go to court and the jury awards you a big settlement? Are you no longer a victim? Because it's been remedied. Yeah, that's a good question. That's a good question. This Jesse Smollett. What's Jesse Juicy Smollett? Was he canceled? I don't know. He should be canceled, though. Yeah. And again, like that's somebody who did something wrong. Right. Right. Right. So like there has to be like a presumed innocence, I feel like, to being canceled in a way.
Starting point is 02:56:04 I mean, so yeah. Okay. So you, so you, okay. I just, I don't know why sometimes it, um, I liked the fact that Greg kept control of his own destiny. I just, yeah. Right. And the whole time, I mean like, like he shot his way out of the, he didn't die in the, um, in the Alamo. He shot his way out. He was his way out. He didn't, he, he like, yeah. And I mean, I think that like being heartbroken, part of it is the consequence that you're ignoring for that. Right. Like, say, say that again to what, say that again. Sorry. The heartfelt, heartfelt consequences. Yes. Okay. Heartbroken about, I mean, and he would say like,
Starting point is 02:56:42 I'm fine. That's a great point. I'm being really superficial about it. I'm just talking about like the piece of paper that says he's the owner of crossfit ink you're right well i think you're being somewhere where the mob turned on him right well you like i mean you had to leave a job that you loved that you were good at that you've done for a long time and you didn't get a paycheck right right i did when i was there when i was there i got a huge paycheck but i'm saying like you didn't leave with a settlement. No, it's fucking sucked. Yeah.
Starting point is 02:57:08 Like a regular person now. So that's different. You're never a regular person. Thank you. Thank you. Let's not go there. Yeah. All right.
Starting point is 02:57:19 Hey, do you have your socks on? Uh, no, I don't. I don't. I, I wore them yesterday.
Starting point is 02:57:24 I wore them yesterday though. I wore them yesterday. I wore them yesterday, though. I wore them yesterday. And my hat. My hat's amazing, too. Thank you. You're welcome. That's from where? The dick socks are not. But the hat is from Jesse's store. Who's Jesse? My friend who I brought last time. Oh, she has a store like that. Oh, that's cool. Why doesn't she sell the dick socks? Would those be inappropriate? I don't think that's really on brand for her. Hey, for those of you who don't know, I will wear the dick socks and show you guys them. I'm not going to describe them here, but I will show you them.
Starting point is 02:57:57 And when I first got them, I was like, what is this? This isn't me. And then I put them on. I'm like, this is hilarious. Because I was wearing long johns, and I could pull up my long Johns. It's pretty, uh, it's pretty braggadocio. I'm sorry. I sent Sousa a pair too.
Starting point is 02:58:14 So you guys can wear them too. My wife, my wife kept wanting me that the Christmas present you sent me sat on the kitchen table until yesterday. My wife's like, why won't you open this? I'm like, cause if I open it, I'll have to write a thank you note. And I don't want to stop and write a thank you note. It's just, I just see presents and I that's what kind of scumbag I am. I just see work and she's like, open it and tell her, thank you.
Starting point is 02:58:36 I'm like, all right, fine. That's funny. No, you just like the picture you sent me was your thank you note. We're done. Okay, good. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I meant by picture you sent me was your thank you note. We're done. Okay, good. Well, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I meant by thank you. And I use the term, uh, loosely, um, when, when, how close are you to, um, curriculum? How close are you to something? Uh, whether it be a written or a 10 part video series, like there's things that you talked about, like the, the Daubert case, you know, the Supreme court case where they figured out what makes someone a, a professional witness. What's it called? An expert, like, like that type of stuff is so fascinating and it could be in that
Starting point is 02:59:22 curriculum, right? Showing you like the timeline of how this disaster kind of unfolded where idiots got the mic. When will when can I be like, OK, my son's eight now, my oldest son, when he's 12, will there be a. Yes. And what will it look like? Will it be 20, 30, 20, 30 minute videos or will it be a book or. Yeah, I think it'll be a book. I mean, I think Greg feels strongly it needs to be a book that's sort of like the Bible. Right. And then if you take the CrossFit example, it's going to be similar to that.
Starting point is 02:59:53 I think it's like he's like the L1, the L1 course, the L1. OK, what a lot like one of my big goals for him was to get him writing again. And he is and it's fucking brilliant. It's like he really is writing again. He is. And i think it's the best stuff he's ever written okay um and and then i think you know these lectures that they're giving at at events right those can all be repurposed we're doing a series of interviews where we're gonna i'm gonna interview the speakers and nate who's adam carolla's like production guy is gonna help with that he has a team of animators in Spain that I'm hoping are going to, we have Briggs doing a podcast for us and hopefully that the animation team is going to animate those.
Starting point is 03:00:33 Those will all be, I mean, I think Greg and I both want this stuff to like, again, it's like, we both want the, we want to help the world, anyone, not everyone, right? Same thing, latch onto this and be able to use these tools. I mean, I joke, it's like a decoder everyone, right? Same thing. Latch onto this and be able to use these tools. I mean, I joke, it's like a decoder ring, right? Like as a kid, you get out of the cereal box and all of a sudden you see the world differently. Like I had an epiphany probably a year ago where I was like, holy fuck. Like I see everything differently now. I had to read like David Stove's book three times before like some of that stuff really clicked for me. And to Greg's credit, he knows one time I dropped my kids off
Starting point is 03:01:05 at school in the morning and he'd call me like the minute later and he'd just read to me and he'd ask me what I didn't understand. And we'd go back and forth and I'd be like, I don't think that's really right. And like, I don't see it like that. And we'd argue a lot about different ideas.
Starting point is 03:01:17 And then I got to this point where I was just like, fuck. And every now and then he calls me and he's like, holy shit, right? And it's like, there are all these moments. And I think we have been in the process of trying to figure out how we're seeing this stuff and other people haven't. And so we keep being like, what are we missing? Like, yeah, don't go too far down the rabbit hole of abstraction or else you won't be able to come back and tell the rest of us. You know that, right? I do. But I also think it's now we're
Starting point is 03:01:41 at a point where we're like, okay, like we've talked to these leaders in the field who, after we explained the ideas, we're like, shit, that's right. Enough that we're validated to move forward with the project. Like, I can't even tell you for how long I'd be like, can I write this up? Can we do something with it? Can I post about it? Can we make a movie? Can we whatever?
Starting point is 03:02:01 And he'd be like, no, no, no. And he kept being like, nothing good happens fast. Nothing good happens fast. And I'd be like, for fuck's sake, like, I want to share this. And he finally is at a place where he's like, let's share it. And that's massive, right? Because I think we're both confident enough in the ideas and the basic thesis of what we want to put forward.
Starting point is 03:02:19 And it's a matter of, I mean, like right now, it's just being him, right? So like we have a team of people who are helping us, but they all have other jobs. And so it's like pretty scrappy in terms of getting this stuff out. And I think with the columns coming out, we have these three columns being written. We have the podcast and then we're going to have these events. And I think we're going to do one big public event a year, which is the one we're doing now. And then we'll do another one later.
Starting point is 03:02:41 And then we're going to do much smaller parties that are sort of more like thought leaders, people who are in the, you know, homeschooling world, the charter school world, all those people who were building a great network with already. And then, you know, this idea for like a docu-series that would probably be free. I mean, like, again, like people are like, how are you going to make money off of it? And I think he and I are both like, the money will come, right? Like the school curriculum could be huge money if it's adopted by big chains of schools. But right now, like the world is in a fucking crisis and people need to have this information. And that's sort of more important. And I think he and I are both have both come to this awareness of like, there's a couple of really great examples
Starting point is 03:03:18 of books that started as like novellas, right? In newspapers or something. So it'd be like a series of stories that you'd read every Monday. And then they're turned into a book and everybody buys the book right so i don't think that like if we offer all this stuff for free it won't also be useful to have in a teaching format and so i think right i'm can i just tell you how i see it i'm gonna tell you anyway i see it as a timeline and like word back there that's a big timeline i see it as a timeline and you start in um i don't 13 22 i don't care when you start and you come to the present and it's um uh 50 to uh 20 minute videos that i show my kids every three days and as part of their, their curriculum.
Starting point is 03:04:07 And maybe it comes with like something where they answer and, and, and then by the time the kid gets, and you show that to your kids three years in a row, right? You show it to them in the third grade, fifth grade and seventh grade, the same videos you skip a year and they see these 52,
Starting point is 03:04:23 20 minute videos and they take tests on it each time, you know, or like the, some at the end of every week. And then every time they see those same video by the seventh grade, the test is getting harder. Right. And then by then they're inoculated from stupidity, right? They're no longer like, okay, I'm not going to accept that. Like you didn't accept the word woke. Okay. I'm not going to accept him saying the word woke. What does he mean by that? I'm not going to accept the word. Uh, Greg was racist. What did he do? Right. You know what I mean? I'm not going to like, and, um, God, I'm so hungry for that for my kids, for my own selfish reasons. I'm so afraid they could be, anyone could be put to sleep. You
Starting point is 03:05:00 know that, right? People go to Stanford and they get lulled to sleep by the tens of thousands. You know that, right? People go to Stanford and they get lulled to sleep by the tens of thousands. They get turned into zombies. Well, you know, I may have told you this story before, but when I was in college, I was a history major, and then I studied psychology as a minor. And really, in history, I studied ancient history, and then I focused on revolutions. And there is something really interesting that happens with revolutions, where you basically, you don't see people fight at their worst. You see it when it starts to get a little bit better. And you can see this in psychology too, right? Like a woman's in an abusive relationship. She doesn't leave when she's getting the shit kicked out of her. She leaves when she finds a new boyfriend. She leaves when she finds, I guess, a job, right? Something happens in her life that allows her to be like, fuck, I don't have to do this anymore. Right. And I think we're kind of at that turning point.
Starting point is 03:05:44 But even like to your point, like I had a, we're kind of at that turning point, but even like to your point, like I had a, we did a psych study that was like, I don't know, like, you know, something with rats. And like my study came out that there was nothing statistically significant. So I wrote it up and the professor was like, Emily, like you're a great student, but I'm going to have to give you like a C or something on this. Cause you didn't find anything significant. And I was like, but wait, why? Like, that's still significant. It's still interesting, right? That I did this and nothing came of it. And she basically like tried to break me down in this way where she was like, I think you're going to be great. And I want to train you to be great. And
Starting point is 03:06:15 part of that is you really, people only care about what's significant. So you're like, no one would ever publish what you found. And I was like, why? That's what happened with the NSCA case. Holy shit. It's just as important to know what isn't. Yes. As it is to know what is. And she was literally trying to give her credit. She was trying to help me,
Starting point is 03:06:36 but she was teaching me the way this is done. And it's like, well, that that's not the right way. Right. Like there's a, she wanted you to, she wanted you even to lie or fabricate something.
Starting point is 03:06:47 Right. Three of the rats were injured. Oh my goodness. And it is, it's wildly ingrained, right? P-values are like, they're not testing anything that tells you anything that's about whether this can replicate. And yet you cannot get published if you don't have that. And like,'s about whether this can replicate. And yet you cannot
Starting point is 03:07:05 get published if you don't have that. And like, this isn't just in medicine. Like we found it now it's happening in physics, which we thought was like, oh, we want to create a curriculum that like the physics department would adopt. Well, physics is in like a mental crisis about what science is and what it's not too, because there's all these beautiful theories. Strength theory is a great example, right? We're like, well, you've come up with this theory, but you can't prove anything. It's all ideas. And that's great. But that's like more philosophy than it is science. And there's, I mean, it's the same with public health, right? So like we had this whole thing with COVID where public health was telling us, we see this really clearly with statins, right? Everybody needs to take this thing. Well, no, that's not everything,
Starting point is 03:07:44 everybody. And it's really like your doctor is charged with treating you the patient in front of them not the population right so when they tell my daughter that she needs to have a vaccine that she's not at risk for the disease of because it's going to benefit my dad that's public health not medicine we've confused them right right right right wow that's a great distinction that's public health, not medicine. We've confused them. Right. Right. Right. Right. Well, wow. That's a great distinction. That's hugely dangerous. There was a book I was just looking for it that, um, Greg, uh, suggested to me. I can't, it's written by a female physicist and it's about the particle colliders. You know, book I'm talking about. I thought it was called
Starting point is 03:08:20 follow them. What's it called? Lost in math. Yes. Lost in math. Holy cow. Yep. Holy cow. The other one that I like to recommend to people if they're interested in the broken science stuff is the theory that wouldn't die, which traces like Bayes theorem through history and shows how much. Is that, is that, is that the theory that wouldn't die? Yeah. Is that palatable though is that is that like the book i'm talking about any idiot can read some of you
Starting point is 03:08:51 the books you and greg read it's not like that yeah the theory that wouldn't die is like a history book it's going through history looking at like sort of how bays was adopted and used when the shit hit the fan and yeah even when people don't want to acknowledge that that's what they're doing that's what they're doing so that's what they're doing. So that's a very good recommendation. I love that one. Yeah, this is a crazy book. This is, I'm listening,
Starting point is 03:09:13 I almost completely listened to this book. This is a crazy book. This is sort of sad. What a waste of money, the particle collider is. Everything having to be like beautifully symmetrical and like all these standards that are like, they're not scientific standards. you remember that in the malcolm do you remember in one of those malcolm gladwell books there was a um there was a plane flying over new york and it was like
Starting point is 03:09:34 i don't i'm sorry if i'm gonna be get the wrong ethnicity in here but it was like two thai pilots and one of the thai pilot in their culture you're not allowed to tell to speak to the captain unless he speaks to you first. And the assistant captain knew that the plane was running out of gas, but he didn't want to say anything. Cause it'd be inappropriate. And the plane went down and they all fucking died. Like that's basically the bullying shit that's going on in science.
Starting point is 03:09:57 Like no one's like, Oh, over here. We're just throwing money away. Yep. Well, and that's the whole Begley Ellis thing that you've probably heard Greg talk about before, right? Where they were looking at, um, it came to CrossFit and
Starting point is 03:10:10 gave us the lecture. Remember that it was bad. I wasn't there for that. I wish I was there. That would have been amazing. But it was like, you know, the thing that, Oh, where were you, Emily? Where were you? I can't, I'm going to miss February 17th, but you weren't at Begley. Uh-huh. I was, i wasn't invited i think that was before you were invited you were out at your kid's birthday party but like that you know what's crazy about that is that they promised all the scientists that they would keep them anonymous in terms of trying to replicate their studies and so the studies that that they proved could not be replicated are still out there and
Starting point is 03:10:46 none of those analysts have voluntarily said like our work is garbage let's take it down right like this cannot be a foundational study for cancer research anymore it's still out there right and we saw this last summer i didn't even know that until you said that just so people wouldn't know what she's talking about there were like these 58 seminal studies on cancer that were the foundation of cancer a guy named two guys begley and ellis tried to replicate those 58 and like of the 58 46 were unreplicatable and not only did begley ellis do it but i think bayer did it i think another company did it it was amgen yeah amgen okay and and they had basically the same results. Oh, shit. And now what Emily's telling me, and I didn't know this, is they never went back and were like, hey, these studies are bullshit.
Starting point is 03:11:30 They promised to do it anonymously so no one still knows which papers were the ones that were bullshit. And it's the foundation of cancer research today. Fucking insane, dude. You know, the other thing that people, if they're interested in this, we have have it on our site but it's like fucking mind-blowing was science magazine last summer in august i think did this big expose on alzheimer's research and the foundational studies for alzheimer's are brain imaging right and you can see the plaque developing right and that's like what all cancer drugs and everything has been based on since i think that was in theies last summer, this huge expose comes out and shows that these like, basically like internet geeks who are image experts were like,
Starting point is 03:12:09 these studies are, have been Photoshopped or these images have been Photoshopped. This is not a brain scam. This is somebody went in and like clumsy redid the image to make it look like there were these buildups of plaque. The whole fucking thing is fraud all of it and so all of the research that has come since photoshop it's like eighth grader shit right and i mean like it's every it's so pervasive that like when i think about things
Starting point is 03:12:38 like when helping russell write the column i'm like there is no lack of this going on, right? Like you are going to have so much to write about because it's fucking pervasive. It's everywhere. And so when people are like, oh, that can't be right. Like most research findings are false. It's like most implies 50%. I would guess it's far greater than 50%, right? So trying to navigate all of that is really, really challenging. I mean, one of the things about the Bayesian theorem is that you're taking prior knowledge and you're applying it to sort of evaluate the predictability of your hypothesis. Right. So like not the data, the hypothesis. And I think what's fucked up is that so much of our prior knowledge, like the information we think of as prior is wrong. So even if we applied Bayesian methods to it, the bedrock of most modern medicine may not be right.
Starting point is 03:13:34 Right, so we come at it with the precept, like you were talking about earlier, like about a cancer. Is it a metabolic disease or is it a- Right, like back to basics. Like we've over complicated these things to the point where like, it's like taxes, right?
Starting point is 03:13:46 Like you should be like, what I loved about Seyfried stuff is like, you can explain it and it's really logical. Like you're moving the nucleus, you're moving the mitochondria. What's the difference? What do you get a different reaction? You do. Oh, well, that's something. And when I called around to other scientists and cancer researchers, when I was working
Starting point is 03:14:00 on that a million years ago, they were like, oh, well, if that were legit, I would have heard of it. And I'm like, you don't want to look if that were legit, I would have heard of it. And I'm like, you don't want to look at it? No, I would have heard of it. I don't even know who that guy is. Like this would upend all of your work. You don't want to take a peek?
Starting point is 03:14:18 Like where's the curiosity, right? Tough to believe all this while she's saying as she guzzled some cocoa earlier. I think you must be joking, but I do want to say this on that point. Imagine someone who's smoking a cigarette telling you that smoking is bad and that you shouldn't smoke. And instead of realizing that they're an expert and know what they're talking about, you're so fucking retarded that you call them a hypocrite. Just think about that. Every time, like you, you want to like pooite just think about that every time like you you
Starting point is 03:14:46 want to like poo-poo the messenger but i have to assume you're joking gp i have to assume you're joking and i also want to say to follow up on that a lot of people thought greg hated coke he had no issues with coke he was a free market guy he hated the fact that they were using their money to um steal science to make false claims and false science and to interfere in in science and then the truth that was his only issue with them other than that he was like drink away do what you want he doesn't have a problem story that he said to me about how like with the you know if you've got like a crack dealer next door he's like i'm not gonna call the cop you know right like you do you're you're you're selling your crack. Like, that's fine. You do that. But if you come over and steal my fucking bike, I'm calling the DPA on you. Right?
Starting point is 03:15:29 Like, that's how this goes. And that's what happened with Coke, right? Was that, I think he had no, like, go ahead, you drink sugar, you drink soda, you do you and see what happens. I'm going to be over here doing me and helping people. And like, that's fine. I'm not going to tamper with your business model until they started coming for him. Right. And like, that's fine. I'm not going to tamper with your business model until they started coming for him. Right. And coming for everybody at CrossFit. Then it became something different. And so, I mean, I, yes, I drink Coke Zero all the time, but I'm not at war with Coke and Pepsi right now. I do not drink Coke Zero all the time. I do have a bang in my refrigerator to drink in case of an emergency
Starting point is 03:16:05 do you know when monster was at the games i was with greg and we were in uh jackson and i was like oh look monster's a sponsor right we were like deep in the conspiracy theories about who had bought crossfit and they're owned by coke is monster coke Coke or Pepsi? Yeah, Coke. And he was like, let's do target practice on a bunch of Monster cans. And I was like, okay. And then I was like, can I put it on Instagram? And he was like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're not doing it. We're not doing it. And I was like, it's amazing.
Starting point is 03:16:41 It is interesting what CrossFit is having to deal with. One of the darlings of CrossFit, Brooke Wells, is now taking money from Snickers bar. And what happens at that point is now there is going to be some confusion because the affiliates are supposed to be promoting the cure to the world's most vexing problem, right? Because the affiliates are supposed to be promoting the cure to the world's most vexing problem, right? At the pyramid, you have nutrition and then you go up and this is a lifestyle methodology. And, you know, you have your circle of support there you train with and your friends and it's this community. And now you have the games pushing something that you really wouldn't ever guess you would see being sold in an affiliate, which would be snicker bars, right? So there is, it is i i'm enjoying watching the um
Starting point is 03:17:34 how this is going no no one gives a shit as long as she keeps posting pictures of her butt everyone's cool i mean i joke with settle down people you're gonna get another thirst pick tomorrow settle down and i and i'm not hating either i'm'm not hating either, but I, but I do think it's going to confuse a lot of people. Yeah. Well, and I, I, right. Absolutely. And I mean, this goes to the same thing of like the comments, right? Like, is anybody, does anybody care enough anymore to point out the fallacy of what that's all about or why that is not a good role model, right. Or why that's off-brand right or whatever you want to call it um right i mean like you know you've heard this before but
Starting point is 03:18:11 like there's the joke about like the games athletes are like the franken like greg's frankenstein monsters right like right there they don't get it necessarily right and they're not necessarily driving traffic into the affiliates and they're not like they're their own thing. And that's cool. And it's a spectacle. Right. And it's absolutely marvelous what they can do. But it's not necessarily what CrossFit does for the average person. Right. It's sort of like Greg told me that he I asked him once, like, why did you go for the like military law enforcement so hard at the beginning? And he was like, I knew if I got those guys, I would get the soccer moms. But if I got the soccer moms, I would never get those guys.
Starting point is 03:18:50 Right. And it's like, there is a sort of, there's a method to the madness in how you spread the message. And if you've got some poster child out there eating Snickers bars and whatever, who's in tip top shape, it does spread a different message than you might want. Right. Versus the person who's lost a hundred pounds. Who's like, Hey, I stopped eating snicker bars and I stopped drinking soda. And I started going to my box and I have all these new friends and I'm healthy and I'm off my meds. And that's a totally different campaign. Right. Right. Right. And they accomplish different things. Four grams of sugar, high protein snicker bar bar some would say crossfit and their athletes have
Starting point is 03:19:26 bent some of these corporations toward providing better options so so he he's got a uh uh like a positive spin on it it kind of reminds but but the thing is is that the brand is built so the bedrock of the brand is this pyramid and uh and and it, and it's, and it's healthy. And you're right. You could say, I heard someone ask someone the other day, I don't think, sorry, I'm interrupted. Go ahead. I don't think that the team's athletes who have tipped the scales, I think it's the millions of CrossFitters who have stopped eating sugar that have caused things to go from being like low fat to low sugar. We see this in products. I don't think that that's the games athletes. I think it's the consumer market riding the market, right?
Starting point is 03:20:11 Like people aren't buying as diet anymore. They're buying shit that says no sugar. That's it. I think that's a direct downstream effect of how many CrossFitters have stopped eating sugar and how many there are in the world, right? It's a market be found well so that's what he's got like a million dollar contract and said like hey can we make a high protein bar they're not gonna fucking do that whereas right i think i think this guy would agree with you i think so let me let me i know this guy mike calvin i think he would agree with you let me read a four gram let me reread it then with the way you're saying a four gram of sugar high protein snicker bar some would say crossfit and their in their CrossFit affiliate members
Starting point is 03:20:47 have bent some of these corps toward providing better options. I think he would agree with that. And then they're using an athlete who has a lot of followers then to sell it. My point is, if you wanna stick to, well, there's two points.
Starting point is 03:21:04 I'll tell you this one. My audience already knows this, but one of the reasons why I can't stand the fact that she's doing this is she made a post about Greg saying, I'm out claiming it was for value for value value. She has, and now she sells poison to children. So I'm calling her bullshit.
Starting point is 03:21:15 You're like, you don't have any values. You sell poison to fucking little boys and girls. You, you are, you're someone who sells poison, little boys and girls. Like you don't,
Starting point is 03:21:23 you could give two shits about what Greg says. They don't, I don't know how she reconciles that right i'm i'm but but um i don't think if i someone asked the other day someone hey do you think that joe biden's too old to be president and their response was i've seen 72 year olds who are in worse condition than that 80 year old man it's like that's not an answer that's avoiding answering the question and all i'm saying is i and i'm not against not against Brooke Wells making a shitload of money. I'm so happy for her that she got it, that she's making money. I think it's cool. The more rich people, the better we are. Um, I just, uh, I think that the affiliates, if I was an affiliate owner,
Starting point is 03:21:59 I would not recommend that snicker bars to anyone to eat ever at any cost under any circumstance unless they were fucking dying in the desert. But but Brooke Wells eats it. I know. So that's where I'm suggesting that the message is going to start getting weird. Let me ask you a question. Why do you think it is? Maybe maybe I just don't know that there are. But it doesn't seem like there are games athletes who are out really pushing the methodology
Starting point is 03:22:25 or the nutrition right like it's that seems like a just rich just rich just josh bridges it's a dying breed just scott panchick all the old dudes i mean like you the most rich has the loudest voice and say it again okay i was just thinking that's like a massive opportunity for somebody to sweep up everybody who's experiencing it on a day-to-day basis and they're doing the opposite affiliate these hwpo these provens this just all these groups they're avoiding saying the crossfit name i i think in the long run it's going to bite their ass but you go on to like there's all these people out there who are like crossfit games athletes don't do crossfit but if you go to the largest media youtube channel in the space which is crossfit the mayhem empire you have chris the you have the head programmer over there and rich CrossFit. But if you go to the largest media YouTube channel in the space, which is CrossFit,
Starting point is 03:23:05 the Mayhem Empire, you have Chris, you have the head programmer over there and Rich Froning saying nonstop, hey, all we do is CrossFit. All we do is CrossFit. All we do is CrossFit. We just do CrossFit. We just do CrossFit. And but everyone else wants to set themselves apart. And I don't know why. I think maybe they got scared or it's their ego or they're afraid that if the brand goes down, they'll go down with it. But really, they're just showing their true colors. And I think in the end, it bites them in the in the in the ass. I think I do, too. I just think it's like it's like from a marketing perspective or a communication standpoint. It's such a low hanging fruit for them. Right. Like I'm doing what you're doing. And look like I'm I'm a goddess and I can do all these crazy things. And I'm doing what you're doing and look like I'm, I'm a goddess and I can do all these crazy things and I'm following the same prescription you are.
Starting point is 03:23:47 How cool is that? It connects us, right? Yeah. I see that millions of people around the world who are going to be like devoted to you because they're experiencing the same thing you are. It's, it's interesting, right? It probably is like, they don't, they think they're big enough or strong enough that they can go out on their own without the association.
Starting point is 03:24:08 And that's slightly naive. Hey, you know, it'd be cool. You know, it'd be kind of cool to do. There's this CrossFit Games athlete. Her name is Ariel Lowen. And she's a mom. She has a kid. And she took 10th at the games this year and it's her third
Starting point is 03:24:27 i think it's her third time going to the games second or third and she said she only entered the games because she wanted to get she only started up the progress of becoming a games athlete because she wanted one of those placards with her name on it she had no thought that she would ever actually go to the games this this girl works out in an affiliate when i had her on the show i'm like so what's your training like she's like i just work out call her a woman what i call her girl oh um this woman processing this woman this lady this woman this this woman, this woman works out, this woman works out at an affiliate. And when she was on the show, she just, she works out an affiliate and works out with all
Starting point is 03:25:10 the people at the affiliate. And then if for some reason they don't cover all the movements she wants to cover, then on the weekends or later on that day, she goes back and supplements it. But this is like not supposed to be able to happen. You're not supposed to be able to go to an affiliate, have a baby and go to the CrossFit games. And you're not supposed to be able to happen. You're not supposed to be able to go to an affiliate, have a baby and go to the CrossFit games. And you're not supposed to be able to do just that programming that Greg Glassman invented. And here she is. We should start a GoFundMe page for her and see if we could raise a million dollars for her. I mean, that's the best story I've heard. That's great. She's dope. She's dope. She's amazing. What what was she doing before was she an athlete before
Starting point is 03:25:48 uh she definitely was boning she got a kid i don't know she's just i don't i honestly don't boning that was what is that yeah yeah she was boning she's making a kid and then she moved across it i forget i don't remember i just really like her every time she's on the show and i know she has a kid i know she has a kid and I know she has a husband and I know. Oh, go ahead. Yes, Caleb. Hi. She was a gymnast, I think. Oh, OK. Gymnast and like a collegiate gymnast. Thank you, Caleb. Did you ever meet Caleb? Yeah. In the beginning of the show. Hi, Caleb. She can't see you, dude. There you go. There you go. all right there you go there you go yeah no i love that and that's like that feels like it's intangible to me i'm not going to lacrosse at games right but i see something
Starting point is 03:26:31 like that and i'm like fuck that's awesome that that inspires me right if uh if emily co-hosted this podcast seven would have more sponsors you know that this whole time that i'm just procrastinating the talk i have to give at broken for the broken science thing i haven't written it and i like i've got my kids have passports my closets color coordinated like i'm so like procrastination is fucking awesome because i get all this other stuff done i'll stay on here with you all day so that i don't have to work on what i'm going to say at the event that being don't have to work on what I'm going to say at the event. That being said, we have to go. Hey, but this went way better than I thought.
Starting point is 03:27:10 We get along better on podcasts than we do in real life. I don't know. I love you at Cilantro's. Yeah, I love you at Cilantro's too, but this is pretty damn good. We're pretty good together. I'm here for you, baby. Whatever you need. Okay.
Starting point is 03:27:22 Why don't you come to the event and we can do another one in person? Oh, that would be cool. Hey, tell me, um, do you think the balloon was really, let me just, let me ask you this about the balloon. You think the balloon was really a Chinese balloon? No, sorry. You think the balloon was really a Chinese balloon? Yes, I do. You do. Okay. All right. I don't trust anything anymore. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if it's a Chinese balloon. I actually thought it might be an EMP and that's why we weren't trust anything anymore. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if it's a Chinese. I actually thought it might be an EMP and that's why we weren't shooting it down. What's an EMP? The electromagnetic pulse thing that takes out the grid.
Starting point is 03:27:52 Oh, oh yeah. Those are cool. So. Those are cool. I got Jimmy Waddell putting a go bag together for me. I have a hundred pounds of rice. That's all I got. I was like, Jimmy, I like definitely want the sat phone. I want all the shit. But my real thing is that you're going to come get me if shit hits the fan. Right. And he's like, well, maybe that's why you need some
Starting point is 03:28:16 communication tools. Right. And I'm like, oh boy, everyone. God, that's what sucks about having money. You start to get scared too early. All right. Thank you for coming on. Thanks for having me. Thank you for the dick socks. Thank you for the hat. My pleasure.
Starting point is 03:28:35 We were approaching the longest show in history. I appreciate you. Thanks for all the money. Thanks for making people pay money. What? You make a lot of money? Yeah, I think I did good. I think I'm going to go eat now.
Starting point is 03:28:43 Eat out now. I don't't what you and hayley do is your business okay so fine oh nasty all right i'll see you in a couple weeks in arizona absolutely thank you bye bye hi jessica hi caleb hey false flag incoming state of the union announcing martial law balloon was misdirection something else is going on there's always something else going on that's true something else going on that's true do you want to say anything about that
Starting point is 03:29:30 show it was awesome it was really okay I enjoyed listening to her talk it was a she's fucking smart huh there's a lot of smart people that come on the show is she in it she's an attorney yeah no I don't think she's in I mean she may have her law degree but I don't think she's fucking smart huh there's a lot of smart people that come on the show is she an attorney she's an attorney yeah no i don't think she's in i mean she may have her law degree but i don't think she's a practicing attorney that's for sure she basically just she's i shouldn't say just she's a reporter wow yeah yeah she's a reporter turn though but she really does do some crazy high profile shit now where she she she'll beat people down who need to beat down so like like
Starting point is 03:30:07 people who are trying to do dumb shit to greg like she will come after them and beat you down and ruin your life yeah like she's really good at her job she only she like definitely gave me attorney vibes yeah yeah look at we already made oh shit the estimated revenue of the show is four tenths of one penny usually that estimated revenue doesn't show up for like a couple days wow that was a huge show
Starting point is 03:30:35 god she'd do a lot of viewers I had no idea I thought it would be a tiny show I think people understood the gravity of her coming on the Greg whisperer yeah trying to see who we have on tomorrow i think we have a live calling show tomorrow what do you oh shit my wife is telling me uh do you think I'll be able to go to yoga at 11? Yes. Yes. Uh, 11 AM is okay. I'm done. We have a live calling show. Okay. Wouldn't it be cool if, um, uh, uh,
Starting point is 03:31:22 uh oh someone someone just sent me a text saying trish is woke uh trish are you woke they're sending me some content that you erase somewhere don't be woke trish don't be woke come to the light over $500 donated to not pay Caleb and Sousa good thank you for giving me the okay on that and she has good tacos
Starting point is 03:31:56 oh tatas you couldn't see her tatas in the show could you I didn't see her she's wearing a whole turtleneck yeah honestly I thought it was Greg who was coming on She's wearing a whole turtleneck. Yeah. Honestly, I thought it was Greg who was coming on. I almost anticipated him to show up for a little bit. Me too.
Starting point is 03:32:13 When she said that, I sent him a link. Not yet. Trish is smart. Hey, this is Dick is Dick is like a Tata sniffer. That's awesome. You just you're like i could just tell uh does emily uh do conflict mitigation didn't she say pfizer tried to contact her to help her that's not exactly what she said but she alluded that they could use her help yeah she uh no i don't know what she she basically she's basically a fixer but not in the traditional sense she's she's she helps protect people she
Starting point is 03:32:52 helps people when they're being attacked by the woke mob even though she want doesn't like that word i'll use it um she helps uh them you know tell their truth and show that that it was a lie i mean she knows she knows who the liars are out there. She has a master's degree in journalism. Thank you. Someone, someone was listening. Am I late?
Starting point is 03:33:13 No, no, you're just in time. She'll be on any second, Tyler. Hang tight. She just had to go drop a deuce. I thought I was hoping someone would call in and just ask a doozy a bunch of pussies out there
Starting point is 03:33:27 today yeah i think everybody was either too scared to ask or they just really wanted to listen to her talk there was some guy named wanton obviously a fake account claiming that they knew greg and trying to bash him but once again wouldn't say anything i thought it was so interesting they either attacked eric ootley or eric Wise or something and said, you're intellectually lazy. I'm like, dude, you haven't said anything. Yeah, everything he said was super vague and like it had no substance whatsoever. Yeah, you and your fake ass account. There's a lot of he was just making a lot of assumptions, I think. You didn't think I wanted calls but i was just
Starting point is 03:34:05 letting the number scroll across the bottom the whole time yeah i saw that up there and i said okay here we go yeah i thought uh wanton uh ding dong wanton ding dong yeah that guy yeah she's intimidating for sure yeah yeah i've hung out with her a lot maybe 40 times and we'll usually gravitate to each other if the if the room gets noisy and we need someone to hang out with i'll gravitate towards her and we can hang out she's cool she knows a lot she says she's a smarty pants that's for sure and she's good she's a smarty pants. That's for sure. And she's good. She's good people.
Starting point is 03:34:47 She wants to help people. Oh, Andrew Weinschnitzel burner account. Oh, God. I think he's moved on. He's he's. He's left the house. He never even did go CrossFit. You just did it for the house. He never even did go to CrossFit. You just did it for the cloud. Oh,
Starting point is 03:35:10 wanton with typical lib accusations, uh, racist, misogyny, white privilege, et cetera. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 03:35:15 He was like, everybody's glad that he left. Like, I don't believe that. Maybe someone, one of the wrenches banned him too. I don't know. It's kind of fun
Starting point is 03:35:25 keeping a hater in the in the ranks yeah i wanted to cut him out but i was i just thought it was just let him let him talk let him talk his shit trish are you woke i just got this text talking from someone's uh a spy in the audience that you posted something on the Sarah Sigmund's daughter. You used the word toxic. You like the word toxic. Toxic. Oh, and you deleted your comment, Trish. It's not cool. The hell, Trish. It's not cool.
Starting point is 03:36:06 The hell, Trish? Savon, where are the news shows? I need to make more thumbnails. Oh, where are the new shows? Oh, okay. I'll get on Susan on that. Let me see. Do we not have them?
Starting point is 03:36:18 Let me see. I think we have a bunch of them posted on StreamYard. Bruce has been making, um, the thumbnails for us, which is awesome. Okay. So tomorrow we have the live calling show. Oh,
Starting point is 03:36:31 and that's it. And you want, and, uh, then we have, uh, Chris Cooper. Then we have the world's greatest squash player.
Starting point is 03:36:40 Uh, then we have a Dave Castro show. Those aren't your thumbnails though. You usually make the crazy ones right you make the like the ones that are more wild like did you make that popemobile one bruce that one's crazy no that one's mine oh you made that that one's nuts who made the one with alex casares kicking me in the head and i have the sevan podcast logo on my back i know that wasn't me though i'm in bruce that one's awesome that's dope uh when it when greg on when greg on yeah kimmy jimmy kimmel friendship is very strange
Starting point is 03:37:21 he is a a nasty nasty uh human being don't be surprised when he dies from some sort of cardiac pulmonary fucking disaster uh so capable child videos they end up like newsletter videos relics no no i put one up yesterday, Kenneth. Quiet, Caleb. Don't entertain that. I put one up yesterday. I put up a capable child video yesterday. And the newsletter, we stopped paying the guy.
Starting point is 03:37:55 And he said he would keep doing it even if we stopped paying him. But he didn't. He said he was on those people. He was like, I'm not doing it for the money. I'm not doing it for the money. I was like, oh, cool. Then I won't pay you. And then the newsletter stopped interesting gracias rubio
Starting point is 03:38:10 hey it all comes down to this dude i the podcast comes first and if i can't figure out a way to do both i i just can't i can't the podcast uh suza and uh my wife will be there but i am dedicated to the podcast all right i'm off to the skate park i i might do a two-day fast today i think i i mean i know i am i didn't eat yesterday i'm not gonna eat today nice yeah dude i need to cleanse a little bit purge is that what that's called purge purging is out purging and vomit oh all right i don't think you're purging no uh excuses uh priorities i mean priorities i love you guys you too bruce you're a good dude uh trish start coaching and you will have all kinds of... Okay. Thank you. I worked at the Oots Pretzel Factory as a young girl.
Starting point is 03:39:08 I lost my hair on a machine once. Wow. You absolved me of my sins. Thank you. Caleb, thank you. See you tomorrow for the live call-in show. Sounds good. Thank you, Eric. Great show. Great to see you guys.
Starting point is 03:39:27 Bye-bye.

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