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Lake, on episode 558 of the Behind the Shield
podcast. This episode is sponsored by First In
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can listen to episode 563 of Behind The Shield
podcast. This episode is sponsored by 5 .11,
a company that I've used for well over a decade
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offering you guys, the audience of the Behind
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the Behind the Shield podcast with the CEO and
founder, Francisco Morales. Welcome to episode
576 of Behind the Shield podcast. As always,
my name is James Geering, and this week it is
my absolute honor to welcome on the show Doug
Orchard. Now, Doug was originally in the tech
industry, but he found himself making documentaries.
His very first one, ironically, in 2009 was about
a flu pandemic. He then worked in the world of
fasting and created a film about that. The incredible
movie that first hooked me, The Motivation Factor,
discussing the impact of a high level of physical
education in schools in the 50s and 60s and the
direct correlation it had on their physical and
mental health and productivity and their academic
scores. One of his other films is called The
Power of Zero, which discusses the financial
crisis this country is facing. And once again,
so much of our debt is related to our healthcare
costs. So you can imagine the importance of Doug's
lens and this is why yesterday I posted about
this on social media. I wanted everyone to listen
to this episode. When we prioritize our physical
health, movement, what we eat, it factors into
every other element of our life. It reduces our
national debt through reducing healthcare costs.
It improves mental health affecting the addiction
crisis. It fosters community when we suffer together,
therefore repairing all these divides that have
been created the last few years. And productivity,
whether performing high academically in school
or whether in the workplace, by creating these
healthy human beings, every single element of
our life is improved. And there is no better
time to sow these seeds than now, after two years
of the pandemic, when the absolute priority of
discussion should be improving the physical and
mental health of every country on the planet.
So before we get to this incredible conversation,
as I say every week, please just take a moment,
go to whichever app you listen to this on, subscribe
to the show, leave feedback. and leave a rating.
Every five -star rating truly does elevate this
podcast, making it easier for others to find.
And this is a free library of 576 episodes now.
So all I ask in return is that you help share
these incredible men and women's stories so I
can get them to every single person on planet
Earth who needs to hear them. So with that being
said, I introduce to you, Doug Orchard. Enjoy.
Well, Doug, I wanted to start by saying thank
you so much for welcoming me to your beautiful
home today and taking the time to come on the
podcast. Hey, thanks so much. It is so great
to talk to you. I think we're kindred spirits
and all things. So thank you. It's going to be
a great conversation. I was listening to an interview
you did with three military members before when
you were making the film. And even that conversation
here in the pertinent elements, not only. from
the preparation of the tactical community, but
also the health of our nation. So I'm uber excited.
But we're sitting in a quite unique space right
now. So for people that can't see, where are
we geographically? So we're in Ormond Beach,
Florida. I had custom built out this studio.
This is where I actually do my creation. So we
got, you know, cedar wall right there. This is
like a special vinyl flooring for acoustics.
I could fly people out and actually film them
here. Ironically, the first audio recording anyone's
doing is you and me right here. Well, I'm honored.
Thank you. So great. But I have this backyard
I'm doing all this work on. I used to, when it
comes to editing my movies, I used to go off
to a forest or someone's cabin or somewhere.
I needed to be really in nature because what
I wanted to, when you're editing mentally, it
gets so, there's so much to it. For documentary
editing, the only way I know how to do that really
is you get to the point that all the footage
is just swimming in your brain. So you've gone
through it over and over and over. It's there.
And you don't want to be with another human until
it's on the timeline. And that's a five -day
process typically. And at the very end, and we're
talking about months of work before you can get
to that spot. And so you have to have a break.
Like it's just emotionally taxing. Mentally,
it just sucks life out of you. And so I found
that if I could just be in nature, it was really
helpful. So I decided I moved to Florida. I've
got my whole backyard is going to be full on
jungle. It looks like Costa Rica. And that way
I could just go outside, do some Indian clubs,
look at the nature for five or ten minutes and
get right back in and keep editing. That's what
I did here. That's what my goal. Beautiful. I
can relate to that. I gave you the book. I wrote
a book. just over a year ago now and it was the
porch where i did a lot of the writing but yeah
i mean trying to get that thought from your brain
if the moment of you know cell phone pings or
a child comes in and asks a question you just
focus is lost so i totally understand why you
need a separate space yeah so thank you welcome
so you talked about moving to florida i'd love
to start at the very beginning of your timeline
first and then obviously we'll get to all your
work so where were you born and tell me a little
bit about your family dynamic you know what your
parents did and how many siblings yeah so I was
born in Sacramento California and I spent most
of my life there I was only man I grew up Within
a 40 -minute drive of La Sierra High, where I
did that whole Motivation Factor thing. And at
the time, I was only 20 minutes away from it
when I did that film. So Sacramento, and I'm
one of six siblings, same parents. They're still
married to this day. They're like 84 years old,
healthy. Dad was a big track guy, McClatchy High
School there in Sacramento. He was an electrician
by trade, and when I was eight years old, he
got in a pretty significant accident. Lucky he
lived, but spent two months in the ICU, and then
it was a six -month recovery. He fell off a scaffold.
The scaffold broke on him, and he landed head
first, then arms. The arms were so shattered,
they didn't think he was ever going to be able
to work again. But his head caught most of the
falls. You can imagine what... what the situation
was with him. And that was the same time my brother,
who was a pole vaulter, great athlete, he was
16, he got diagnosed with having a cancer and
was told he was going to have six months to live.
And my other brother just went off to college.
So suddenly, I'm an eight -year -old kid all
by myself, and I'm off in our garden. We had
a lot that was the same size as our lot, and
next door to it, it was just a big garden. My
parents were big into gardening, health food.
So I'm out there at eight years old. Mom's gone.
She's at the hospital all the time. I've got
a couple of sisters and three others. Two are
younger than me. And that's it. And I was out
in the garden trying to grow crops, thinking
this is how we're going to eat. Dad's nowhere.
Brother's going to die. And he's off in hospital
too. And it was a really interesting moment for
me to kind of have to grow up pretty quickly.
I was the only kid on my block. It wasn't a bad
neighborhood, but I happened to be the only kid
on my block who didn't go to prison. Sometimes
it's just people get doing crazy things. And
so I had these experiences. And one day we had
from our church, they came and just delivered
a whole bunch of groceries. It was just bags
from where we go buy groceries. And this gal
sits down and explains to me, hey. Your parents,
for their whole life, have been involved in our
church. And every once a month, we do a fast
where we don't eat. We don't eat food. And the
monies we would be spending on the food as a
minimum, even poor people do this, or more if
you feel like donating more, we give. And 100
% of those funds, 100 % are used for people like
you right now. You're down on your luck. You
need bills paid, mortgage paid. You need food
or whatever. She said, hey, you'll never, just
know, you'll never not have food. It's a really
cool thing. So when I made the movie Fasting,
I gave that church three full minutes of explaining
what they do and why they did that. And I thought
it was a really beautiful thing how we could
end world hunger by going one day a month without
food. And it's healthy for you. I said to learn,
you know, fasting was all about what we could
learn by not eating every now and again. But
I was a recipient at eight years old. I mean,
that's how we ate for months. My dad was out
of work for a year. And it was pretty cool. I
also saw the value of doing your own gardening
and all that. And then while my brother was suffering
like that, that's when my parents got into, you
know, it was a death sentence. And that particular
diagnosis, don't ask me to say the name. It's
a complex thing. I've never really learned how
to say it. But it hasn't changed. A kid who gets
diagnosed with that in their growing years, they
got six months still. I mean, there's been no
improvement. So my parents tried to, we went
down, they went down to San Diego, went to one
of those clinics where they are doing wheatgrass
and everything else, natural, everything. And
so I, at that time, for a while moving forward,
I had wheatgrass every morning. I had juicing
every morning. They were big Jacqueline fans.
Jacqueline had a business partner. His name was
Ed Flint. He had a gym. My brother eventually
gets married, my one who lives, and he marries
this gal who was affiliated with this guy. And
that guy got me out to the gym when I was 13,
you know, freshman year. And so it's Jack LaLanne's
business partner. If you know Jack LaLanne, you
know his business partner. I mean, they're like
peas in the pod. And this guy was in the 70s.
He was the freakiest strong of anybody I've ever
met. I've yet to meet anyone at that age who's
still like that. And he just instilled in me
a desire to be a guy that's in shape and taught
me how to transform my physique. I don't remember
my weight, but I remember going into summer from
eighth grade. eighth grade going to ninth grade
and i said you know i really want to just improve
what i need to do and and i'm just like should
i be using these curls should i be doing this
and you know you're looking at the outside stuff
oh no no son if you want to mass up you need
to do heavy weights you need to be doing squats
deadlifts bench and it says something else can't
remember what else this thing you said but there's
like four things i need to do and then you need
to eat a loaf of your mom's whole wheat bread
that she makes every day, a full loaf, and drink
a gallon of whole milk every day. By the way,
if you do that for a summer, that definitely
works. I was transformed. We didn't have supplements,
other stuff then. So anyway, so yeah, I mean,
I did that, went through high school, but I was
not an athlete. I had to work. And I felt because
of what I went through in eighth grade, I felt
like it was super, I had to be super responsible
individual. You know, the sports I wasn't going
to be able to maintain, I wasn't even able to
save for my own college and everything else.
No one had gone to college in my family. I was
the first one to go and graduate and get a master's
degree and everything. So I wasn't able to do
a lot that I wanted to do that way, but I absolutely
stayed in shape. And it was something I always
did in my life. So anyway, that's... I ended
up getting an undergrad in English and a master's
degree in library science. It was competitive
intelligence was my focus at the time. I became
the number one tech recruiter in the country
using what I knew in 1995. Then I got into doing
streaming media stuff. I created a streaming
media company in 1999 -2000 that introduced me
to the world of video and stuff. a couple different
firms that it was in that space i was doing corporate
both recruiting stuff and video stuff and then
corporate marketing throughout the early 2000s
until 2009 when someone wanted a marketing video
on face masks and uh they have to stop you there
sorry the interview's over all right i'm joking
no they want to do a face on face mask and what
had happened is They had gone through the process
of getting FDA approval on a certain kind of
mask that you could put on that would provide
protection from microscopic particulate matter
for a virus, something that's so small that's
basically dust on the mitochondria. And they
were saying that a surgical mask would never
work, and that the N95s that they sell, those
would not work for a general public because you've
got to go through a fit testing thing, and that's
the... process and you're a firefighter you've
done that you know what i'm talking about many
years and so they had 3m and pasture pharma had
come out with a with these they had gone through
185 different facial designs of adults i mean
this was a very complex process and came up with
something that actually any adult could put on
if they didn't have facial hair and they would
have full seal total protection from a virus
And so everyone listening right now, if this
ends up being in the film, is probably sitting
there going, well, wait a second. How come I
haven't heard of this FDA approved general public
use respirator that both 3M and Pasture Pharma
has? And it's interesting because, you know,
I did a, these guys wanted a marketing video.
And I said, no one's going to watch a marketing.
No one's going to watch a video on that topic.
You'd be better off to do a documentary, a legit
documentary on pandemic flu. Talk them in to
give me a budget. Made my first documentary,
2009, Truth About Pandemic Flu, with Tommy Thompson,
who basically was a partner in that whole thing
anyway. And he was the former health secretary
and a four -term governor and had been a presidential
candidate. And, of course, he had his buddies.
They were the CDC and the FDA. He knew everybody,
all the immunologists, virologists, everybody.
The people who extracted Spanish flu out of cadavers.
All those people were in the film. I interviewed
all those folks. And it was a great movie. And
it was really clear what you're supposed to do
to prepare and protect yourself in a pandemic.
And then we had one. We've had this one. By the
way, H1N1 breaks out right in the middle of filming
that. Timing couldn't have been better. And I've
watched what we've done as a country since then
on this. And I was really puzzled. what we've
done and how we responded didn't match what they
said we're supposed to do. And absent in all
of this is this already FDA approved N95 GPU,
general public use respirator, FDA approved for
the adults. In the film, it cited Time Magazine
criticizing us because we didn't have. We should
stockpile 65 billion of these, the experts thought.
And we hadn't stockpiled them yet for Hurricane
Katrina. So this film comes out in 2009. H1N1
breaks out in 2009. It's typically your vice
president is over that kind of stuff, right?
And the vice president of the United States at
the time is Joe Biden. Well, I've watched Joe
Biden since come out and he's just wearing face
masks and saying, wear two of these. What on
earth? A face mask designed so that your drilling
dentist doesn't drill into your mouth while he's
drilling on your teeth. I mean, it's just to
stop drool. That's all a face mask is. N95 respirator,
that's designed to actually protect you, but
you have to be fit tested for it. The only thing
that exists is the GPUs. And for some reason,
our country's never bought them. And what was
super interesting is when Fauci came out in March,
mid -March. 2020, interviewed, should the public
be wearing face masks? He said, no, everyone
knows that, seen that. Two weeks later, CDC recommends
that we start wearing those. Start making them
yourself, whatever, put them on. Put scarves
around, bandanas, anything works, they said.
And so I looked at the website when he said,
don't wear them. Yeah, I just did a Google search
for those respirators and they were right there.
Two weeks later when Fauci, well not Fauci, but
the CDC changes their mind and says, okay, start
wearing these face masks. I just went to my history
to where I was two weeks earlier. I pulled up
the same page on the FDA's website where it listed
these products out. And those FDA approved N95
respirators, GPUs, that section of the page was
deleted. everything was the same before and after
and they just got rid of that part so they actually
didn't have on their site anymore the one thing
that is fda approved and scientifically clinically
proven to protect the public like literally instead
of closing down the country if we had 165 billion
of these sitting around we could have just handed
them out to the vulnerable, the population, and
it has been business as usual. They're protected.
The rest of us go on with our lives. We wouldn't
have spent $10 trillion unnecessarily on what
we're doing right now. So it's been very difficult
for me to watch this play out because we had
the answer already. And so this was like a makeup,
I guess, because we didn't prepare as a country
for that, which would have been a couple billion
dollars to buy those. You know, in an off -market
situation. You couldn't get them now. Nobody
could get their hands on them now. I'm not sure.
But they must be selling them. Somebody's getting
them. Ironically, my mother -in -law watched
that documentary I did in 2009. It comes out.
She's got a whole bunch of these still in her
closet to prepare for that day. She goes to the
doctor's office or to the hospital for her nursing
friends, because she's retired now, but her fellow
friends were still nurses there, and gives them
to them. Because they couldn't even get their
hands on N95 respirators. And people were just,
they were making homemade cloth things wearing
those in the hospital, which does nothing. And
I thought to myself, man, you have real N95 respirators.
It was just crazy. The whole thing was a crazy
experience. And I'm sharing this story right
now because just to kind of get you, everyone
to understand why I'm frustrated with our FDA
and those kinds of positions who are in the position
that we're paying them in tax dollars. We support
this to provide us with the information we need
for our health. And the choices they've made
to, in many cases, and by the way, everyone's
like, well, where's that documentary you did?
Why don't you just release it? Yeah. Someone
show me the platform I can release that movie
right now. Where would that be? Would that be
Spotify? Not anymore. Would that be Amazon? No,
it won't be Amazon. Would it be YouTube? Where
would I put that thing? Where it wouldn't be
ripped down within two days. And where I'd still
be able to go out and... do work, you know, and
not be labeled this, you know, whatever, even
though that's, it's the FDA in the film saying
it, and it's the CDC and it's, you know, you're
sitting there going, wow. So, so if they're prepared
to actually go so far as to delete what we do
know from their site, the day they say, put these
out. And I kind of get maybe why they would do
that. It would just be like, okay, well, we can't
tell the public, this is what you should get.
There's no way the public can get it. Like they're
just gone. They're off the shelves. They're just
gone. they're already would be gone so why frustrate
everybody and then so that you tell them the
next best thing just put on whatever but the
problem with that is it's a lie like it's a lie
if you tell an older vulnerable person or immunocompromised
individual put on a surgical mask and then go
ahead and sit right next to somebody on a plane
you're good you're lying to them You're absolutely
lying to him. And so you would be better off
not to be wearing anything and go by your distancing
and everything else than what we did. So that's
a little bit about, I could go on and on about
that, but anyway, it's out there. Yeah. Well,
I mean, it's such an important perspective and
I want to get to the part which isn't discussed,
which is underlying health, which is a big part
of your next film. But just touching on that
for a second. i've seen the polar right there
was a wedge driven by the previous president
as a wedge driven now and it breaks my heart
because i mean i heard you talked about kind
of mentioned this in one of the previous podcasts
too that you were on um i felt like we this was
a time where leaders were actually tested to
find out if they were actually able to lead and
the right and the left failed miserably oh yeah
you know but so come seeing this division seeing
these people these families these friendships
torn apart about vaccines or you know masks or
whatever it is most of us in the middle are like
yeah this is a real threat this is a real virus
that's definitely going to attack the immunocompromised
and there is an element where the right mask
at the right time will make a dent but coming
from the first responder profession as you mentioned
we go through this laborious process every year
of making sure our scba which is the the air
tank mask is fitted perfectly and we have to
talk and move around and do all these things.
And then we do the exact same thing with the
N95 and they spray this kind of bitter compound
in there that if we smell, then it's not the
right seal. And that's a one -time use mask as
well. So then coming from that background of,
you know, somewhat expertise when it comes to
having masks stuck to your face, I see, you know,
crocheted masks and you know i mean i'm assuming
people were using toilet paper as masks those
were all gone too right but you know and you're
like if can you smell smoke from the person over
there that those smoke particles are so much
bigger than a virus this isn't an argument this
is basic physics you know i mean it's just it
was so maddening because you want people to be
protected but as you said that was a complete
fictional story that was given to them And so
now you've got people mask shaming who on their
own face is something that's actually doing nothing
whatsoever versus, as you said, pooling your
resources, protecting the people that actually
need them. And then the rest of us just, you
know, getting the flu and moving on. And our
kids, thank God, that was a great news. They
were not getting negatively affected apart from,
you know, the type 1 diabetics. And, you know,
again, you protect those vulnerable people too.
It was 125 kids who passed away as of like last,
you know, three months ago. And that's a pretty
small number given how many infections it is.
So you're right. And less than the flu. So that's
a fortunate thing. And you have a bunch of focus
on them. It's a show. What bothers me is the
show. We are pretending that these institutions
are there to protect us and give us all this
information, but it's being used in a different
way. And so what do you even do about that? So
I've thought a lot, do I make a movie really
on this? And do I interview all those major people?
Because I can get them usually in my film and
have them review. We know why we created the
FDA. We know that it didn't do what we said.
We were hoping it would do. And we know that
it's not protecting us right now on so many things.
Would it be better if it was a private thing
or something else? What would be better? Those
are real questions. But when we really get into
health, we look at schools. We look at our own
corporations. We look at things. And I feel like
so much of what we do is a show. It's just to
put on a show to kind of appease. It looks like
we're doing something. We checked that box and
we moved on. And, you know, if you're doing exercise
and you've just checked a box, or I did my exercise,
I checked a box, you know, you're probably doing
it wrong. It is like one of the most wonderful
parts of our life, our day, when we get to exercise
and when we get to take that break and completely
renew our system. stress out our system right
to that healthy edge so that our body gives us
back this amazing machine and one that protects
us against viruses helps us withstand almost
anything thrown at us disease we have so much
in us always everywhere i still don't even understand
how covid actually transfers to people I know
if you have sex with somebody who does, you get
it. That happened to me. My wife, she had it.
I knew she had it. So they had it all wrong.
I was like, I'm good. I'm worried about this
thing. But when you look at a lot of this, there's
a lot we don't know. Why are some people getting
cancer, others not? There's a lot we could look
at. But we could look at the big killers. 80
% of our health care costs really go to those
chronic illnesses that are preventable. illnesses.
So 80 % of our healthcare costs are unnecessary.
And the moment you accept that, that we have
80 % of our, and that is by the way, almost the
entire national budget debt, our entire national
debt, you could almost eliminate historically
looking back if we started early enough, 1990
or whatever, by not having the unnecessary chronic
illnesses in America that we spent through Medicare
or whatnot. So just that alone. And then, of
course, you're looking at possibly being able
to wipe out 80 % of your insurance bills and
everything. So we're talking about the biggest
cost we have as a country. And the whole industry,
80 % of it's unnecessary. And it's just there
as Band -Aid solutions, which never heals us.
But on the side, that actually would... would
heal us and we could have this incredible health
span to the day we die and have this amazing
life some people are doing that some people are
are experiencing that they have emotional health
they like to be around other people they love
to be around other people they're interested
in it and why because they exercise and they
eat right it's diet And exercise. The word and
in between is required, unfortunately. You just
like doing diet or you like just doing exercise.
It's not enough. It's both. Got to do both. And
I have movies. I had a movie fasting. I was demonstrating
you can still eat bad and still lose weight if
you fast. And people got really mad. Well, I
was just demonstrating that. And then the motivation
factor is looking at exercise. Well, people are
like, well. So if we exercise hard, we don't
have to worry as much about diet. Well, you still
need to worry about your diet and everything
else. There's a lot involved. The issue is, are
we interested in health for the right reasons?
And if you don't really care about being seen
in your swimsuit, and that's not what's driving
you, which is most people, then you'd rather
sit down and just watch TV at night and start
snacking away. have some ice cream and everything
else. The problem with that mentality is as you
get a very unhealthy looking stomach, gut, it's
a reflection of the status of your brain. You
will, it can't do, your stomach and your gut,
your brain and your gut are completely interrelated.
And so there's not a free pass. Your brain doesn't
get a free pass. You have no muscles on you.
And it doesn't mean you're not operating at what
you could operate. You're not loving at the level
you could love. You're not having friendships
at the level you have. You don't have the compassion
and the empathy. You don't have the desires with
other people. You're much more impatient. You
could care less about other people. And you watch
our society and how we're behaving right now.
And I'm just telling you, it's a reflection of
where we stand in our health. It's our emotional
health. It's our spiritual health. It's our physical
health. It's all three. And good luck intertwining
any of those, by the way. I have learned for
years, I grew up understanding this idea that
there are cycles to civilizations. They're doing
well, growing and progressing. And there's a
period where they just are doing the wrong stuff
and it's deleterious to everything. And at some
point they'd crash, they're over. And then they
repeat this cycle. That does involve, unfortunately,
bondage and everything in that process. And so
you could see it historically. You can look at
it in a religious fashion. When I did the motivation
factor, that's when I learned that you actually
analyze cycles of civilizations based on the
health of the civilization. So there are moments
when that society is really healthy, usually
coming out of their slavery, bondage area. They
had to do a lot of physical stuff, and then things
get pretty good for them. They get fat and happy,
and they make some decisions they shouldn't make
because they're lazy. They have their ease gets
to them. They're not willing to put out the efforts
anymore. And so the whole story could be told
just by our physical health abilities and what
we're doing as a people. And we could say, you
know what, where are we as a country today? You
know, where's this country today? And you can
kind of see which country is going to be, where
their story is going to be in 10 years from now
based on the health levels of that people today.
Again, you can't separate the brain out of the
equation. It's going to be reflected in the quality
of the work, the customer service. It's going
to be the amount of actual real innovation, which
takes serious effort, serious risk, innovation,
money, all that stuff. People who are fat and
lazy, metaphorically, they're not going to be
willing to make those efforts. And so we're seeing
right now as a country, everything we've been
predicting was going to happen. It's already
manifested. It's already starting to happen.
But unfortunately, it gets much worse over the
next 10 years. So these are serious issues. And
the right place to start is with ourselves and
our family and anyone we can associate with.
And the right way to do that is to show the positive
side to being healthy and exercising and being
together with groups. It doesn't take much. It's
a simple. you know one of those tipping points
that we just go that direction it seems to impact
everything but as we get more sedentary and and
eat eat the foods that give us the instant rush
that was super easy to pull out of the box rather
than sit down and wait 20 minutes for those oat
groats to actually be soft enough to eat and
to just take them open the box and put in the
big difference in what that does to our health
and and with nutrients and everything But one
takes time and effort and the other doesn't.
Yeah. Well, firstly, watching the film, but secondly,
even listening to that one conversation that
I listened to driving up here, so many areas
on this show are really about just reverse engineering
to the nucleus of the problem. So I talk about
drug prohibition, for example, and what an absolute
clusterfuck that was and how that's created so
much. pain and misery and violence and death
and we get to see it i mean that's the strange
thing about the first responder professions is
you don't really hear voices from them nationally
but we have a perfect lens on what works in the
health what works in the violence prison system
in all these things you know is it working or
not but why are they taking the drugs i mean
really when you look at that exactly that's the
point it's a mental health crisis it's not you
know it's the when we made it illegal we empowered
the underworld and we criminalize addiction i'm
not talking about selling and smuggling but um
when you look at that i mean this is a 90 year
longitudinal study on the epic failure of that
well the 30s seem to line up with you know other
things too like physical education so i would
i would love you if you wouldn't mind walk us
through how the the value of physicality you
know prior to The 1900s? And then, you know,
when did things start to change in the West with
that? Right. So America has been through this
before. And that's the good news. All we have
to do is almost do a hundred year look back and
we live this amazing parallel path. But in the
1800s, late 1800s, America was not in shape.
We assumed everybody was physically fit. You
know, I didn't even know that they had gyms in
the late 1800s. I just assumed people just, you
know, were out in the farm working hard and nobody
would go to a gym. There were gyms. They had
gyms. And why did they have gyms? Well, they
had cities. And as they moved to the cities,
you know, everything that we're experiencing
now fell apart. And so there was a what do we
do kind of thing. Well, they were doing it in
Europe. And so you had the tortifying. You had
these different groups that were basically doing
Renaissance lookbacks. what worked throughout
history and civilizations. When you look at the
21 major civilizations, you will always see a
physicality there for two purposes. One, obviously
they need to be in shape to get your people there.
But two, they need to be unified so you have
them exercise together. So you accomplish it
together and you get a lot happening when they
can do that in that way. So there was in the
18... you know, 40s going up to the 90s, this
really interesting moment where we were concerned
about food and food quality. There were these
clinics people would go to and learn all about
it. Like, hey, how should I be eating? You know,
what should I be doing? Because I know some of
the food's getting bad. Well, in the 80s and
90s, 1880s and 90s, they were just starting to
come out with. Vegetable oil products, that was
starting to happen. The meats, things were being
shipped. They had problems with sugar starting
to get introduced. There was a lot of stuff happening.
So what should we be doing about that? And during
the early 1900s, there was a concerted effort
to bring about And it had been happening, what
was working in Europe, and that is your classical
physical education. And with that, and we'd been
doing it in parts here and there, and it was
really at it. But then we had 1919 happen, 1918.
And there was two things. It was like a double
punch that really took us off our game. Because
you go back to 1910 and go look at us compared
to other countries, and we were on point. We
were doing great. 1919, United States enters
World War I, and it's game over. We're a force
to be reckoned with. We're nobody. We'd never
been part of anything, but we had a fit people.
But then you have the Spanish flu breakout, and
you had a lot of fear. You had a lot of fear
in society. And after World War I happens, which
we got dragged in because of Europe, the country
becomes disillusioned with Europe and all things
Europe. And we had these gyms. And in the gyms,
there were things like Indian clubs and Persian
meals and wands and, you know, gadas and all
this old school stuff. Dumbbells. And it all
ropes, it all gets replaced with balls and sports
because all that other stuff came from Europe
and they didn't like Europe because what happened
with Europe? Spanish flu comes from, everything
is from Europe, right? We hated what just happened
to us. And so we go balls and sports. We get
out of the fundamentals of classical physical
education that had existed. We can't find the
beginnings of them. We really can't. It just
seems like. A really well -functioning society
always had some elements of the same stuff. And
so we stop. And that's our situation going through
the 30s. There was a little bit of renaissance
as we saw Muscle Beach. The first beginnings
of Muscle Beach was a look back to what was working
at one point. But there was a guy named Griffin.
And he was a... He was there in Redwood City.
He was a guy that was kind of doing what always
was happening that they do, the original classical
physical education. He never stopped doing it
there. But most places, we got out of it. And
in the late 20s, we have a film that's in The
Motivation Factor, and it is a propaganda film.
And it's showing elementary schools and the kids
doing hopping exercises for their feet to help
the arch and the foot, and it's helping them.
to elongate the spine, you know, by hanging upside
down and doing all these things that we know
to work. And they were correcting posture from
one semester to the next. The school, the school
teacher, they saw, hey, this kid has a school
posture issue. Okay, let's use the physical fitness
protocols that we know about. And they were using
that. That was physical education. And they were
fixing kids in all these places. So that's where
we used to be. But they had to come out with
this propaganda film because it was Beverly Hills.
school district that did it because it had already
stopped by 1926. We had stopped that fast. Anyway,
it didn't exactly start again. Enter World War
II, well, we got a big problem then. And so there's
this monster effort to go back and bring these
people who actually knew what they're doing,
get them back in the military, figure out how
to quickly get people in shape. And so there
are a lot of people that got interested in physical
fitness and stuff because of World War II. And
then they went back and they started getting
jobs and they're school teachers. Well, you had
a number of people. You have Eisenhower's president
of the United States. There's this back doctor
named Hans Krauss. And he came from Germany before
World War II. He basically fled Germany just
before it. And he does this study in the United
States. He's kind of a famous back surgeon doctor.
He does this study in the United States looking
at six essential things a person must be able
to do. If you can't do all six, you will have
back pain in your lifetime. And they do a test
and they go over to Europe and they're finding
their kids are getting maybe 8 % of them. 9 %
of them are failing the test, you know, in Finland,
different places. United States is 54%. Eisenhower
freaks out. By the way, they did that test again
in 1984 and it was 84%. Ron Jones did that test
about five years ago to every kid who could test
and they were all failing. Like there's a reason
why we're in bad shape and why people are having
back pain is we can't do fundamental basic things.
But again, that test was given in Finland and
they were doing like 8 % were failing. And that
test, if it were given today, they still would
probably be doing really well compared to the
United States. So we got a problem. That's becoming
worse. So Eisenhower sees this and he creates
the Presidential Fitness Council. Like, we've
got to fix this problem. Let's create a Presidential
Fitness Council. They bring in really impressive
people in that first group. They're trying to
get it, but you know, it's politics. No one's
getting anything done. Right about that time,
we have Kennedy, John F. Kennedy. He's a senator
and he's really concerned about it. His back
problem and his back doctor is that Hans Krauss.
So as you imagine, Krause is feeding him every
time he's seen him. And so it becomes an issue
for Kennedy. And so Kennedy becomes president.
He's visiting Aerojet out in Rancho Cordova,
Sacramento, right by where I grew up. And he
has a chance to go meet with Stan LaPrade, who's
a coach at La Sierra High, who is doing this
exact classical PE system that this Griffin guy.
kept doing in Redwood City, California. Well,
the difference, the only difference was, is Stan
LaPrade was a brand new, out of college guy,
out of military. First job was over there with
Griffin. Learned on, and then he gets his own
job being a head coach, you know, head of PE
for this new school, brand new school in Carmichael,
California called La Sierra High. and it was
fed by three military bases, all the kids. So
you had all the parents were military -esque.
The superintendent had been the captain of a
battleship. The principal had been a major guy
in the military. La Prada had been in it. La
Prada had been trained. So you got parents' support.
You got all the school support. You have everyone's
support, and he had just been fully trained in
the system that had never changed, and so he
just comes in. implements the program without
a hitch. Like, it just works. Like, this is no
big deal. Everyone's like, yeah, this is great.
This is all stuff we're familiar with. They have
no problem. And that program existed all the
way until the day they closed the school because
of districting. They just didn't need the school
anymore. And so the motivation factor looks back
at that, and John F. Kennedy meets with him in
1962, and he's so excited about what they're
doing that he knows he's going to desegregate
the schools. You know, we're going to have blacks
and whites in the same schools for the first
time in the South. And what's that going to be
like? How do you suddenly unify races when they're
not getting along well? How do you do that? I
mean, just being the same algebra class, does
that just solve it? Do you learn unity by integrating
the flux on the bottom half of a cylinder in
calculus? You know, like what makes you unified?
How do you do that? When you do that, obviously
you do that when you're doing physical activity
together in motion. And he was classically trained.
He saw what they were doing and said, this is
our solution. So he writes about them in Look
Magazine. He writes about them in Sports Illustrated.
And it becomes the topic. Like, it's huge. You
have the President of the United States making
a big push. They follow it in 4 ,000 different
high schools. Well, Stanley Prade writes the
President, and he writes the Presidential Fitness
Council a letter to explain how this whole thing
works. And the title of his letter is called
The Motivation Factor. So that's where the film
title comes from. And you look at it, it's all
in this letter. It's a really interesting way
he lays out. In order to motivate people, you
need external and internal motivation factors.
You've got to appeal to them both ways, not just
one side. And so externally, they had them wear
color system, kind of like a... belt system with
karate they had different color shorts you know
you start with white shorts and after you and
you start as a team you're part of a team but
you also are individually you want to be able
to do some specific things as well that you get
rewarded for that are in addition to your color
thing and and so you're individually incented
to perform well and more pull -ups more push
-ups more all those things faster running whatever
But at the same time, as a group, you want your
team to progress from white level up to blue
level and all these different color red and all
these different color levels to you, you know,
as a group. And they become more challenging,
but you have this fundamental base and idea is
that you move at least each year. And they were
able to get all the kids to progress from one
level to the next. I think they may have had
two that didn't like the whole time. They were
always able to get them up to blue level. All
right. That's like 10 pull -ups. You've got an
entire school doing 10 pull -ups. Right now,
to get into the Marines, you need to be able
to do three, and to graduate, you need six. It
used to be in the Army, I just met a guy at Gold's
Gym. He's 79 years old. He could do more pull
-ups than anyone I've ever met. He says he used
to not be able to do a pull -up at all. He went
into the Army, and when he was in the Army, to
go to the mess hall, you had to be able to do
10 pull -ups. You had to do 10 pull -ups. And
then you had to do 10 pull -ups every time you
ate. So you had to do pull -ups every time you
went in there. And 10, 10 pull -ups, you're not
eating. So, you know, you work pretty hard. And
they get these kids to be able to do stuff. Well,
today, you know, go find any kid and hop on the
bar. And if you find anyone who could do 10 pull
-ups, you're really impressed with that. I could
do 10 pull -ups. I'm 52. But, you know, I have
always been able to do that. But it's really
interesting to see how many today. They can't
even hang on the bar. We have people go out and
play, and they'll do ziplining, kids. They'll
hang on the zipline, and they just drop. Like,
it's dangerous. We've got rid of pull -up bars
in most places because people are getting hurt
on a pull -up bar. How do you get hurt on a pull
-up bar? How do you get hurt on these things?
These are inanimate objects. They didn't used
to hurt people. Why are they hurting people now?
They were still human beings. Body parts haven't
changed. So what we're doing is we're de -evolving
as a society. And unfortunately, there are genetic
markers that get screwed up when you become unhealthy
and then you keep having kids. You can go the
wrong direction as a population. So this isn't
just kind of important. This impacts everything.
And so I started there. And The Motivation Factor
really wasn't a movie about high school PE. It
wasn't. It wasn't to me. It was for us as adults
to watch and hopefully motivate us as adults
of what we need to do for ourselves and to turn
our situation around. Because it's a baby boomer
problem. Baby boomers will bankrupt America in
the year 2020. Those listening, if this is recorded
and it's past 2030, they'll go, wow, that filmmaker
actually said it was 2030. But we will have a
depression within a year or two of 2030. It'll
be a social security trigger. I'm not the one
calling this. I mean, I have these economists
that work with us. And we're grossly unfunded.
But Medicare and that, there's not enough money
to pay the bills. We're going to have a real
big problem. And the only thing that's going
to turn it around is if we suddenly get in shape.
And they can. We can do this. It's not hard.
So the question by Dan Party, he asked in the
film, his PhD out of Stanford, he asked the question,
how do you make someone love being a healthy
person? And when you got to this issue that you
talked about with The drugs. When you look at
exercise, what you really are looking at in most
things, in almost everything, you're looking
at a chemical exchange between the synapses and
dendrites in our brain. And it's chemicals that
are going back and forth. We are chemically dependent
beings as humans. We need chemicals. We are motivated
by our chemical need. And we can get it a number
of ways. You can get the dopamine released by
exercise, but in order to get it, you've got
to be in shape, good enough shape that your brain,
your heart, and your muscles can work together
to release it. And so somebody who's not in shape
and just starting to exercise, they're not going
to get that great reward system. It might take
them six months. But once they have it, they
become addicted and it gets better and better.
And they want to exercise more and more. They
just can't wait until tomorrow morning because
of how it makes them feel. So I exercise because
of how it makes me feel. Ultimately, I realized
when I don't exercise that I'm one of those guys
that has a little bit of a depression issue from
time to time. But anyone knowing me said, well,
that's impossible. You're not. Well, I don't
have the problem as long as I exercise. It'll
show up the day I decide to stop for like two
or three, four or five days. i don't i'm not
the same guy anymore i'm not interested to be
around other people but i'm a totally different
human being by exercising and so we're talking
about the 80 people right now we're not talking
about the person who's really screwed up and
you know that that getting out there and running
is not going to fix it for him but for the majority
of us this is kind of this is what we need and
and um and so the drug prob the problem with
drugs and stimulants is it rewires the brain
The brain's not stupid. It's like, oh, I got
that release. My body just got that release.
And all I had to do is take that pill. I didn't
have to go out there at 4 .30 in the morning
and it's really cold outside and start running
for 45 minutes or an hour and a half and have
that experience or go hit the gym or do these
things. But the same thing with reward for work.
We get the release when we do a good job. We
put the effort out. We have this. It's just our
brains give it to us. But we could feel that
way by just taking the drug too. And once that
happens, oh, good luck rewiring it. There's a
lot of work. That's hard. That's some hard stuff.
And that's the addictions. And so we're a complex
system that requires movement. It requires movement.
And the hardest thing for that brain to do is
to move your arms around and physically do things
way harder. than it is for it to integrate the
flux on the bottom half of a cylinder. My math
example I used a few minutes ago. So you're not
doing much when you're sitting there thinking,
but you're doing an awful lot when you're moving
that arm around and doing a complex motion. Your
heart becomes elevated and a whole system gets
going. And so we have to move. And I learned
for productivity that if I set my alarm in every
50 minutes or 40 minutes, It goes off and I go
outside and do 10 minutes of something and I
come back. By the end of the day, I accomplish
more than if I don't do that. And if I'm doing
something really creative and really hard, I
set it at 20 minutes. And I actually end up getting
way, way more done. When I first started doing
this, my productivity from one year to the next
doubled. My income tripled. My productivity doubled.
And needless to say, I became pretty hooked.
I was like, why would I not do this? And then
we can look at the people who are super, super
successful. And we see that physical side to
them. It's an exception to find that other guy,
the Michael Moore -looking individual. He's much
more rare. You see a Ken Burns -looking person.
You know, you see the guy who did Fat, Sick,
and Nearly Dead. I know that guy. I should be
saying his name. I don't know him, but Joe Cross.
The Australian guy. Yeah. And, you know, I'm
bad with names. It's now becoming very obvious.
But the guy who did the McDonald's thing, right?
Super Size Me. He's a good -shaped guy. You start
looking through. That's just film, right? And
you start looking around in CEOs. And you start
looking at entrepreneurs. And generally speaking,
you're looking at people who are in shape. It
is a big part of their life. That 5 a .m. crowd
at the gym or whatever, they get it in. They
have to get it in. And so how do we do this as
a country? Because the film came out, I thought,
oh, this is going to change everything. Here
we go. Well, let me ask you that a second because
I'm in this space and I'm looking for films like
that and it didn't come up on my radar. So from
a kind of... marketing perspective why wasn't
the motivation factor firstly on all screens
all the net netflix recommended but secondly
at least in the wellness space because there's
a lot of people i know that are in the same kind
of space that hadn't heard of it and i was only
i only heard of it because one of my guests mike
salami told you about it yeah that's a really
good question when we made that movie we thought
we had funding in the beginning and there's a
big corporations and everybody. We wasted a lot
of time. I mean, a full year, year and a half,
just chasing the money for the movie. And it
ended up being a complete waste of time. And
those involved in trying to come up who had that
responsibility, I finally said, let's just do
a crowdfunding video. So I did a crowdfunding
video. We put it out there and it goes viral.
Eventually gets 50 million social media impressions,
which is a lot. But the problem was, it wasn't
my copy. People were taking the copy and re -uploading
on their own Facebook. They were lifting it.
And then where it just says, click here to support
the film, you know, for the crowdfunding. I didn't
put the link. I just thought, never in my mind
did I think someone would do this. They would
change the link so it went to where they were
selling fitness apparel. I'm not making this
up. And so the thing ends up getting all these
views, but we didn't get the money. I think we
raised less than $40 ,000 or something. And you
can't do much of a major motion picture. I edited
that film four separate times, six months each
time. I mean, it was a four -year of my life
project. I'm supplemented by doing other stuff.
And so we didn't really have marketing dough.
But I did still get, because of all that, there
was a lot of attention that received. I was on
Fox and Friends, you know, for 15 minutes, you
know, the morning show. And it got a lot of attention
in 2017, a little bit in 2017. And it was on
iTunes, Amazon, Google Play. It's there. But
as far as Netflix picking it up, Netflix did
not want, they weren't interested. We submitted
to Sundance Film Festival. They didn't pick it
up. They wrote a letter. We got 13 ,600 submittals
for documentaries this year. And I looked and
I could see where I submitted with a view. It
never was watched. Like it would show a click
when I submitted it. I give it to Netflix to
review and they turned down. Nothing happens.
But I know they never watched it because I kept
looking back. They had a clean link as well.
Later, four years later, I go back to that link.
It has a password and stuff. It's a Vimeo thing.
There's 14 ,600 views on that thing. What's that?
Somebody at Netflix shared the link. So somebody
eventually got around to watching it, liked it
enough to share it, and they just went out there
and I wasn't paying attention to it. That was
a pain. So to answer your question, it really
never got that kind of support. Because I saw
Tiger King pop up. And that didn't enrich my
life in any way, shape, or form. No, no, no,
no. And, you know, as a filmmaker, I will tell
you, it is, I know it will make me money. Like,
you got to do things that will make money. And
it's difficult. You know, you come up with the
really good independent stuff. It's a cult following.
That's what you end up getting. And there's a
cult following. I mean, it definitely has that.
But it's not, it's the message itself is not
one that. the academic world wants at all well
and that's my point i felt like you know it's
a film that should have been seen especially
if there was ever a time to watch this film it
was the last two years oh and it was it may not
be suppressed but the culture is such that the
absolute shit that was on a lot of the streaming
sites that was front and center none of that
was to do with health, nutrition, mindfulness,
you know, any of that stuff. And this would have
been a beautiful seed to sow at the beginning
so that two years in, we might have a bunch of
high schools and middle schools that are doing
proper PE. My son is in high school. About a
month in, he's like, Dad, I'm going to join JROTC.
I was like, wow, that's a change. He said, we're
not doing anything in PE. We just sit there and
read stuff. So he joined JROTC and kudos to that
program. It's amazing. And they have a kind of
hierarchy, you know, that they do excel in a
certain physical thing. They get pins, you know,
academic. I went to an award ceremony last night
where he got awarded for his academic achievement.
As you say in the film, you know, what the JROTC
kids or the sports program kids get, every single
child should be getting. And if I have a son
that... doesn't want to do pe because he wants
to go to another class where he can actually
do exercise that's a fucking tragedy you know
travesty absolutely so your film is so important
to educate us the parents of the world to start
asking the right questions to start getting things
like this changed in our schools because a three
-hour standardized test for a nine -year -old
kid is not how we create healthy humans no the
whole the whole thing unfortunately The whole
school system's got some pretty big issues. I
was pretty sensitive to schools in general. I
mentioned I got a Master of Library Science at
Indiana University. I actually went there to
get my EDD, Doctorate of Education. And I go
in first day before school, before the whole
thing starts, and I'm meeting with the chairman.
And I'm telling him how I want to create this
mentor -based education system similar to what
we see. like Lund University. So something we'd
see in Sweden, you know, back in the day, early
day, this mentor -based education system. Old
school, different way, not this, everyone's in
this class, you're this age and you're in this
class and you're going to move up when the whole
class moves up and, you know, it's a lot more
individual, you know, something that would actually
be individual and work. Thomas Jefferson kind
of an education, you know, the people who actually,
you learn, it's not hard to improve. It's not
hard to improve on what we got. So I tell him
what I want to do. And he goes, you know, I got
to be honest with you. Here we have a program
for you to get your doctorate degree that really
helps you navigate within the system. He says
it that way. For example, ED 5, 720. I was like
thinking, man, 720. That's a class. That's a
high level class in 720. He says, there we discuss
how do we interject to get taught what we want
taught. It was the first time that I even thought
of that age. Somebody makes a decision about
what we are taught, what we're going to do with
that time in the classroom. And anyway, in our
discussion, I decide. This would be a waste of
time for me to be here. I'm not going to waste
four years of my life. He says, look, to do what
you want to do, you'd be better off to go out,
just make some money, and start your own school.
Like, you don't have to do any of this stuff.
Oh. Oh, okay, thanks. So I went out, got a master's
degree while I was there on something else, and
went on my way. And my son was in second grade
and was not doing too great. He was liking reading,
but still was struggling on that SAT 9 standardized
test that they gave. It was pretty low on several
places. Now we're concerned about it. And there
was a traveling professor from a liberal arts
school, president of it, coming and speaking.
We went and listened to him. And at the end,
I went and talked to him after and said, hey,
my son's struggling. Second grade, he's my oldest
son, oldest child we have. What should I do for
him? He goes, here's what you should do. You
should pull him out of school. Just pull him
out. Just pull him out of school and have him
read the classics. Classics, like the classics,
like capital C classics, Greek stuff, Roman,
I mean, the classics, you know, real stuff. Okay,
well, what curriculum should I have him follow?
Well, I just told you, have him read the classics.
But like, what's textbook? No, no, no, no textbooks.
Just have him read the classics. Okay, so we
were so naive as parents and so frustrated with
the school in California that I decided to actually
do this. And so it's third grade. He's starting
third grade. And I give him, hey, here's the
Odyssey. I'll show you. He struggles to get through
the Odyssey. And we're reading the headings.
And I'm having him reread the first chapter.
And eventually, he gets through the Odyssey.
Then he tackles the Iliad. And then he goes after
the Iliad. A lot easier because he had already
done the Odyssey. And after that, he goes, man,
dad, everything's simple, super simple to read.
And he's reading stuff. And I'm having to read
Greek fragments of the Odyssey and all this stuff.
He gets into it. And then he's learning Greek.
And then he's learning Latin. And he's doing
all this stuff. And we don't have a teacher.
And I'll check in on him quarterly. I'm serious
about this. Now, my son just got a job. Last
week, he accepted a job. He's 28 years old, just
finished his PhD in economics, and he just accepted
a job with the Federal Reserve Board in D .C.
Wow. He wrote his dissertation on inflation,
and he's in that group. He will, his team directly
influences and gives reports to the chairman
Powell. So he's going to be that guy, right?
Once he starts there. And so it worked. It wasn't
exactly a complete fail. And I watched him progress
so fast. And we didn't have anything. We were
following nothing. We literally just, here, read
this book. And I was checking in on Cordley,
inspiring him to keep going. He had to do karate.
We had to do physical stuff. But the point is,
he did great without anything. And I'm looking
at all the money and all the effort and everything
we're doing and thinking we're doing scientific.
And, oh, by the way, his SAT 9 test the next
year. He was already at 90th percentile instead
of 25th. And the second, next year, 100th percentile.
So we drop him in sixth grade. He goes into sixth
grade and he starts, you know, three months into
it, two, three months into it, the district president,
the principal, and the teacher pulled me aside
and said, hey, Doug, we need to meet with you
about your son. And I'm like, what did he do?
Like, you're just freaking out. And they said,
well, it was just me with them. My son wasn't
there. Hey, we want to know, what were you doing
with your son before he came here? Because we
think you should keep doing it. Like, what? Well,
and the teacher's like, we got nothing for your
boy. Like, he's just, we got nothing. I go, I
thought you have like a gait program and stuff.
Oh, yeah, we threw that at him right in the beginning,
and he's bored with that. Well, he's not like
some brilliant kid. He's just like everybody
else. In the second grade, he was like the...
These are the same kids he was in class with.
And now it's sixth grade. He was below all of
them. Like he's the same guy. And so I told him
a little bit about what I was doing, which isn't
very much. I mean, it's just what I told you.
Bunch of classics. But by the way, you're learning
from the best. And this is a reason I'm sharing
this right now, because this absolutely applies
to how we exercise. What we choose to do, how
important the motion is and the quality of that
motion is, it's not just exercise. The kinds
of exercise we do matters tremendously. We have
all these back problems, all this stuff, even
by people who exercise. They're jacking up their
shoulders. They're screwing up this and that.
You shouldn't be doing that. You shouldn't be
screwing up. There's this thing called rational
training. There's this fundamental restorative
arts, which was a third of physical education
classically. We don't do any of that anymore.
Barefoot, for example. The barefoot thing, right.
Well, and the hopping exercises to form that
arch in that foot so that you can go out and
run. And how do you run? What's the right motion?
All those things matter. Anyway, long and short
of it, the teacher said he's kind of causing
problems talking about the Iliad. He's saying
I'm teaching it wrong. I go, well, I mean, you've
read it, right? I asked, you know, that's the
first question I ask. I knew my son had read
it a couple of years earlier. You read it, right?
He goes, I've taught it for 17 years. The district
president catches that response. He looks at
him, but have you read it? Well, I have the reader.
So the reader's wrong. The reader doesn't even
match that he's teaching out of with what the
Iliad actually says. And the reason I say that
is we got to understand that whatever we think
we know about exercise, It has been watered down
and screwed up throughout the last hundred years
so badly that it doesn't even represent where
we used to be. And just by going back and doing
simple first grade basic exercises properly,
you watch what happens to your body, your brain,
everything suddenly corrects, you're back. I
was going into a chiropractor three times a week
and the chiropractor finally, chiropractors hate
spine guys, you know, surgeons. And he says,
look it. I can't fix this. You've got this thing
in the bottom of your lower spine and it's throwing
you out every day. I can keep doing this every
day, but you're not going to be fixed. You're
going to have that thing removed. So I never
got removed, but I was doing the motivation factor
at the time. And Ron Jones, the executive producer,
introduced me to Indian clubs and showed me how
to really use them. And every day I get this
partial correction. It's a total fix. And it's
just like going to a chiropractor. My left shoulder,
I have these things out of joint. I know when
I'm stopped and just haven't been doing it for
a few days. I'm not in alignment like I normally
am. Everything gets fixed. And I thought, wow,
Indian clubs. Well, Indian clubs take effort.
It's like a musical instrument. You're not really
good at it for about six months of effort. You
kind of learn that. It's not something that you
could just pick up and do, like anything of worthwhile.
But if we don't teach people in school and then
work, if whatever, they provide a gym, but they're
not providing instruction. If people don't know
how to exercise correctly, well, they're only
going to have, generally speaking, a negative
experience. They're going to get injured. What's
the point of this? And that's it. It's over.
And so their education does matter. And as individuals,
we need to make sure we're going to people who
know what they're doing. The people who know
what they're doing doesn't mean they just have
a lot of views next to their YouTube account,
right? There's more to this. And it doesn't mean
that they're just, hey, look at them. They're
looking at their six pack. Look how amazing they
are. Yeah. Are they 28 years old? Yeah. So most
people doing anything look like that at 28 years
old. Follow a guy who's 65 years old that still
has that six pack. Now that's the guy to follow.
That's impressive, right? So all these things
are really interesting to me. As I've gone through
this whole process about how do we actually change
the country, how do you change your family, how
do you change yourself? And so I asked Dr. Rady
this question at Harvard. I said, you know, and
he's the guy that wrote Spark, you know, all
the research about exercising the brain. He's
probably done, he really is the poster child
for that and got a lot of credit. of drawing
out those 10 ,000 studies that have already been
done, of linking exercise in the brain, health,
brain health, better performance academically,
better performance professionally, better relationship
quality, all those things, right? All the things
that we really want in our life that we think
are so important, there's no way to get there
without exercise. Like, you have to. You have
to stress your system so it can appropriately
stay healthy and do its thing. But just the right
amount of stress. Use stress. Yeah. So anyway,
I asked him, so how do you do this? He goes,
I go, what's the right exercise? He goes, the
exercise that they will do is the exercise that
they will do. So you start with that. You start
by having people exercise. So if I had one wish,
it would be that. We could start doing real exercise
at the most fundamental classical level and that
we don't worry about anything else. We just look
at the most basic motion exercises and we have
all the kids in school go through those basic
motion exercises the right way. Teach them how
to do it. Teach them how to be posturally correct.
Teach their feet how to get the arches back.
Go back and do that for them. Because that's
something that they could take with them the
rest of their life. That's education that's really
valuable. Yeah. I would start with that. I wouldn't
be so worried about whether people can do 20
pull -ups and all these other things, but they're
absolutely going to have to get off the ground.
Your spine is being compressed every day by gravity.
You have to be off the ground to decompress it.
It releases things when you do. You feel a certain
thing that happens. So these are very important
things to do. That's going to be grip strength.
That's going to have to first start by them just
hanging on the bar until they can hang for like
a minute before you even think about pulling
up. and then learning how to do a scapular pull
-up because you're not pulling from your arms,
you're pulling straight from here, and learning
how to do these things correctly, that's going
to involve actually the teachers knowing how
to do that. And so we're at a preschool level.
We kind of lost all of our knowledge. So it's
bad. And then my film, it shows that there was
one last school still doing that, Prescott High
School. Tell me about that because I know there's
a sad story behind that. Yeah, so Prescott High
School, they learned. They went up and got trained
in the 70s, late 60s, early 70s at La Sierra.
They brought it back to the junior high level.
They kind of watered it down a little bit appropriately
for junior high. But it all was there. And they
had a phenomenal system. And it was unchanged
all the way up. The time I was filming him, everything
was great. As we were getting close to COVID,
the coach there gets a little bit frustrated,
calls me up one day. He says, Doug, you won't
believe this, but the superintendent has just
made PE optional. I go, right, because of COVID?
No, period. He goes, here's the problem. We've
been banned from having PE. Like the schools,
everybody went virtually. So I only have, you
know, he only has two years of students. So we
were in school for a little bit. And then, you
know, we had in that semester early, then we
have the new people. So we're only dealing with
the seventh graders who are now eighth graders.
And that new semester, if you follow kind of
how COVID went. So those are the people who have
to teach the next generation, right? Well, those
seventh graders are no school, no nothing till
the very end. And then bringing them back, he
decides to make it optional. well, if you make
that optional, what's the next year going to
be like? You don't have anyone to work with.
He says, I'm going to be started from scratch
in a year. And by the time we really go all the
way back in California, and I'll be starting
from scratch with nothing, but I don't have any
parental support anymore. I don't have the superintendent
support anymore. Like he had no support. Well,
juxtapose that to La Sierra when Stan LaPrada
had come from the training, just like this guy,
he had it, but he also had... the superintendent
and the principal, all the military guys, and
all the parents were feeding them because they
all worked for military stuff. So they all kind
of, at least they weren't, they didn't have an
aversion to someone doing jumping jacks. Where
what was happening in the late 60s, why this
went away when Johnson becomes president after
Kennedy, is parents were seeing people do jumping
jacks and they said, wait a second, we see them
doing jumping jacks, which they don't even call
jumping jacks, but we're doing jumping jacks
in boot camp. We see them doing jumping jacks
in boot camp and you have our kids doing jumping
jacks here. You're just prepping these kids for
Vietnam War draft. That's all you're doing. That's
what this is all about. Which is unfortunately
not true. Turns out you need to be physically
fit for reasons other than killing people. And
by the way, I don't know. I've never actually
fought. But my understanding is when you go up
to kill somebody, generally speaking, you don't
kill them by going up and doing jumping jacks
against them. Maybe there's two on either side
and you're like punching them repeatedly in the
face. I mean, I don't know. Maybe new Marvel
movie, some weird character, right? Chubby Jack
Flash. So it's the physical illiteracy that's
out there that drove the end of this stuff in
the first place. It ended because parents thought
this was too military looking. And you're like,
well, why would it even look any different? Because
I go to the gym right now. And it goes, Jim,
I see people doing all that same stuff. All the
same stuff. Push -ups. They're doing all of it.
They have this boot camp in there. They're doing
all of it. And none of them are planning to go.
I'm looking at them. None of them are planning
to go in the military. So how come they don't
have a problem with it? And what happens is when
you're so far removed from what it takes to be
a physically fit person, that you're just...
What's the word for it? It's nice. uh you're
very naive but it's a generational problem isn't
the same the same with the obesity epidemic as
far as what kids are eating it's the same with
you know what we're seeing with crime and addiction
is you know let's say clearly there was a lot
of mental health coming out of world war ii and
what a lot of people have had on the show right
their grandfather that era was an alcoholic their
dad acted this way now that kind of permeated
into them and so you have a generation that was
brought up Thinking the exercise is some sort
of commie whatever, you know, or, you know, some
military thing or the fact that you were never
exposed to that. There's that fear. Well, I don't
want you doing that because I don't want to do
that. Even in the first responder professions,
there's a lot of people that have found themselves
out of shape and they are in the union or their
administration and they will fight fitness standards
because they know damn well that if they're held
to that standard, they. are going to have a mirror
held up to them. And it's not about taking jobs,
it's about bringing back to where we need to
go because no one wants their family dead because
a firefighter was too fat to get up there. And
that's the reality. But I see that in my profession
too. I see that in the communities is this, once
you get through a generation, now it's a real
uphill battle because that family doesn't, as
you said, understand what it's like to move properly
and what it's like to eat properly. So what happens?
So you have to look. And Ron Jones will say,
well, you look at history and there has to be
a war. And the country has to go through almost
bondage. You have to go back through the whole
cycle before it recorrects. Well, I don't accept
that. Because we have seen some times where we
have woken up and went at it. I had a gentleman
on the show probably a couple of years ago now,
Pasi Salberg, who is originally from Finland.
He's an educator and he actually lives in Australia
now, but he tours around the world talking about
the Finn education system. I think one of the
really interesting things is when you look at
the national rankings, Finland's normally the
top or if not the top. And yet it's definitely
a less is more kind of mentality when it comes
to. time you know sat down studying so talk to
me about you know what you've seen in their system
and and the impact of exercise and community
on the success educationally in the children
so we don't even need to go to finland we can
still go to ohio and we can look at boys schools
and i'm not going to actually be able to come
up with the name of it off the top of my head
at the moment. But there's two that existed and
have since the mid -1800s. And one takes a break
every 35 minutes in the classroom. They send
them out there for 15 minutes or more. And the
other one does it at 25 minutes. That's it. Classroom
is 25 minutes, 15 -minute break. Back in class,
25 minutes, 15 -minute break. Their scores are
off the chart. They're the best. The waiting
list to get in is off, you know. And their days
are short, too. And so we, for some reason, decided
that we don't care about quality and results,
but we care about just a show. Again, this gets
back to this is just decorations. We're doing
things to look a certain way rather than what
actually works. When you look at my son's story
that I told you about with school in second grade,
he was having a difficult time. I asked him a
question about curriculum, and the president
of the university says to me, let me ask you
a question, and you'll know exactly what to teach
your son. Okay. One question? Yeah. One question,
and you'll know how to do an entire curriculum
for your son. Okay. Think about high school for
a minute, all right? What do you remember? Like
what I did? He goes, what do you still remember
that you learned in that classroom? He says,
I guarantee you it was something you were interested
in. Anything else is gone. He says, design a
program that does one thing, start where they're
interested and go from there. I'm like, whoa.
You can't be interested in anything after sitting
for a certain time period. It gets too long.
Your brain just needs to do that physical break.
And so the workday, the way we have it scheduled,
is too long. The sitting in classrooms is too
long. So Finland gets better test results because
they don't have their kids sit so long. It's
that simple. Their brain is capable to learn.
The more physical, you know, you just have to
have this break. So now, like, I try to explore,
well, how short can it go? I mean, I get excited.
So that means if I don't like what I'm doing,
I don't have to sit longer than 20 minutes. Like,
I'm not going to improve that anyway. It suddenly
makes things more. more doable for me. I can
be an adult and sit down and do that thing I
didn't want to do. And I'm going to be off a
break for 15 minutes right when I'm done. And
I'm going to be better off than if I sat there
and suffered for a full hour or two hours or
three hours through this thing. So anyway, that's
helpful. I don't know. Sometimes I think, well,
man, hey, church, let's keep the talk shorter.
So I think of all these different things, which
is just to be a little bit shorter and brief
and to the point. But the reality is our attention
span is short. And we are not benefiting from
these super long, drawn out classroom experiences.
So tests go up when you exercise. You get the
highest test scores the closer you've been to
physical exercise. go down and down and down.
So if you have a kid who's going to take a test,
it's a super important test, you might want them
to actually exercise just before the test. Go
swim, do whatever they can. They can have dripping
wet hair and go into the test and they'll do
better than if they crammed all night long, studied,
studied, studied, studied, no exercise, and then
go and take that test. They'll do better the
other way with exercise. And so will we in everything
we do. And so usually before interviews, before
I do anything, I am... I always exercise before
I go out and film and do interviews with people.
I have to. Because my brain needs to be firing
all cylinders and working. It won't work. If
I just kind of wake up and go, I don't know,
I mean, just read. I have to get the physical
side to it. Am I right in remembering that the
term you used in The Power of Zero, I think it
was? Was presenteeism? Oh, that's motivation
factor. Presenteeism. Okay. Yeah. Presenteeism
is a condition where you're present, but that's
it. Brain's not there. And that's what's affecting
our productivity in the workforce today. Presenteeism
is a condition where you are just not feeling
like doing it today. And that's happened to a
lot of people. And the best antidote to that,
the best way to cure yourself of presenteeism
is to be in shape, to get in shape, and to exercise
and take more breaks. And so in a lot of ways,
we've been talking about that the whole time
in everything I've been saying. But that's presenteeism,
and it is a disease that's affecting our entire
work culture. And now, you know, with COVID,
post -COVID, now everyone's just at home. And
if they're not even walking around to get a drink,
they're not walking way down the corner and around
the bend and down the flight of stairs to get
that water cooler experience and walk back. They're
not even getting that anymore. Now they're just
sitting there and they have the water bottle
sitting next to the computer and they just sip
on that all day. you know and then there's the
bathroom like five feet away from them they go
to the bathroom and there's no movement or motion
and and good luck if you if you had a tough time
with the product and you're calling them and
that's the person you're calling for customer
service good luck getting much compassion out
of them there's just not much they're hardly
a human being anymore especially by the end of
the day so we do need to so if i if i were to
in fact i tried i had a And they were interested,
but they didn't actually do it. And I said, look,
you could do a study and look at how much movement
you should do as a corporation, employees, and
impact productivity. Like, what does that do
to your actual bottom line? Can you measure that?
And it's a super interesting thing to do, but
you've got to talk everybody into it. And in
the end, that's what you kind of learn about.
The things professors study are the things that
they're paid to study. All right, so this is
a money reality thing at the moment. It's not
like most professors can just decide, I'm going
to exert this much time and attention and I'm
going to look at this question. What they really
want is a grant out there paid for by a corporation
that wants someone to look at this question.
And they want to win that grant. And then they
got that money to look at this question. And
that's most of what's being looked at in America
today. So the things that we're talking about,
nobody cares. There's no one paying for this.
No one's paying for it. But I always thought,
man, Kessin or some major consulting firm, they
ought to actually have a division. And they actually
redesign that workforce so that natural movement's
there. And you would see dramatic increase in
productivity. That is the case, but it'll be
a long time before we're there, I think. That's
like an Elon Musk kind of a thing. A company
where people think and try something new. But
for us individually in our life, we should think
about that. Where are you productive? And if
you're not that productive, can you just make
a slight modification in your schedule? Some
of us have like an hour, hour and a half time
to sit down and just read something, but we would
never think, I should disrupt this. midway through
and go out and do like indian club break or go
do you know se routine or some chubby jacks or
whatever you know you don't think like that but
you should you know during the movie you're watching
a movie okay pause what are you stopping it for
we're out there mark he's got a whole hour left
yeah well we sat way too long we got we probably
should stop three times during this movie not
not that that we care about productivity when
we're just sitting around watching nonsense but
anyway Well, you talked as well about the integration
with JFK, you know, with the integration of schools.
One thing I've observed in the multiple departments
I work for was when the bar was held very high
and when we suffered immensely together, there
was absolutely that bonding, that community.
So when I watch The Motivation Factor and see
the students of La Siena, you know, all in those
teams working together, trying to level up to
each, you know, color level. i can see how that
would positively affect mental health how it
would kind of remove ridiculousness like you
know sexual or racial prejudice or anything because
well you know we're team alpha or whatever it
is and you see that on the football field people
you know narrate how racist the nfl is whatever
it's like well dude you're all playing as a team
you're all seem to be doing well you're all getting
very well paid you know i think you know there's
a bigger picture than this so the suffering You
know, suffering together element, I think, is
huge. What was the outcome of these PE programs
in fostering the community? So, last year, when
I first started looking at that, I interviewed
200 people on the phone before I even started
doing filming or anything else. And part of that
was they started calling me. They found out I
was doing this and they kept sharing the number
around. I'm like, I'm doing something else. I
don't have funding for this movie yet, but there
it is. Here comes another interview. And they
walked down memory lane. And one reoccurring
theme I got that really just, it was like fireworks
going off. You know, somebody, one of their fellow
students gets cancer. And this person from their
school class. comes over now we're talking about
40 years later right they'll come over and mow
the lawn this person's coming in and then they
just all network together and they all take care
of this person Now, we see that in like maybe
a church community. We'll see something like
that. Or family, you know, they'll take care
of that. And maybe a really tight current sport
team. You know, guys, they're part of a team,
you know, pick up whatever it is. And they'll
take care of their fellow teammates or something
like that. You don't see something that stopped
40 freaking years ago. And, hey, one of our fellow
La Sierra alum just got cancer way over here.
They're 10 minutes from you. Anyone want to go
over and mow the lawn? Oh, yeah, I got this,
you know, and I'm taking care of this. I'm bringing
this. And, hey, you know, and that's what was
happening. So this idea of community, right,
community, what is community? It's unity, right?
It's unity. And for the common good, it's unity
for the common good. And when you think about
what's the purpose of government? I mean, why
do we have our government? Why do we do this?
I mean, what is it that we really want? Well,
we want security. We want to be able to protect
it. We want to be able to live our life. We want
it to be better than if we were just all for
ourselves. And so community, this idea of unity,
is something that you experience as well as have
a desire for because of your physical health,
mental and social health. Like those are all
conditions that have to be there for it. So we
desire to be participating in a community because
we've participated in a community. I became interested
as an individual in this idea of not eating food
once a month and saving at least, even when I'm
super poor, the money I would be spending on
that food and giving it to someone else who's
poor, who doesn't have food, that I know 100
% of that money is going to be used to help them.
Because when I was eight years old and I was
out in the garden trying to grow crops, not knowing
and not being able to express as an eight -year
-old my concerns, my parents would have sold.
alleviated my concerns like it would have been
fine there was we weren't going to go hungry
but as an eight -year -old you don't know that
you don't know how to talk to adults sometimes
right but but i saw it i experienced this unity
this community of what happens and so as as a
society we need to experience it and we experience
it in a uniform basis together on the field and
we can through pe And that's what was interesting
is the other thing is when I interviewed each
of these students, these alumni at La Sierra,
all of them had a story where life got thrown
at them. Yeah, a diagnosis for cancer or a surgery
that went bad or whatever, you know, some form
of life, a job loss and all the things that happened,
death, loved one, all the things that happened
to us. And we all look back to where we learned
to have some grit. And most of us learned it,
you know, some of us learned it over here. We
typically never learned it in algebra, but we
learned it somewhere, right? And all of them
would point back that they learned it on the
PE field, in their PE class. All of them. We're
talking about thousands of students saying the
exact same thing. And suddenly I was like, wow,
if you want to teach resiliency, and if you,
and when we say, what's the purpose of this government?
Well, The purpose of the government isn't to
go bankrupt. The purpose of the government is
to everyone be miserable because the vast majority
of our society can't even take care of themselves.
That they have one problem come up and they can't
handle it. And everybody's drug dependent. They
just want to be drugged up. They don't want to
deal with reality. They want to kill themselves
because it's too hard to deal with. And I mean,
we go through the whole of an unhealthy society.
We want to be part of a healthy society. And
we're those. You know, safety nets are minimal
because people are resilient. They can handle
it. Well, they taught that in PE. They taught
it. It was a uniform method of dealing with the
hard parts of life. And I thought, wow, that's
a solution. Now, that's a solution we are actually
looking for right now that costs almost nothing.
It costs almost nothing to do with this. This
is a program that didn't even have balls. I think
you needed like a whistle, you know, you know,
and the kids had to buy some different colored
shorts or something. But those could have been
done with like, you know, you could have just
dyed a belt each time or whatever. There's a
lot of ways around this thing that you could
have made it pretty easy. So so it's an interesting
thing when you think about this, like what would
it do for our society? Where could we go as a
society? if the vast majority of us were operating
at our potential health -wise. And as a consequence
of that, we wouldn't be plagued with the financial
debts that we have as a nation, where 80 % of
our debt and 80 % of our healthcare costs is
on preventable stuff, if we had none of that.
I mean, you're talking about none of that. You're
looking at just take whatever people who died
from opioid addictions, get rid of 80 % of that.
So now we're in a manageable number, right? You
can look at the homelessness situation and you
can factor in there's a big element there as
well that started with this drug. So in all these
things, one could argue that... You know, we
could probably see maybe as much as 80. This
is going to sound crazy. But when I went through
the film, I mean, it really did open my eyes.
I was like, we could see 80 % of our problems
go away because they're all intertwined here.
I mean, we're talking about domestic abuse. We're
talking about bullying. We're talking about,
you know, the suicides. We're talking about the
drug dependencies. We're talking about the people
who just don't believe themselves and they give
up. So they go to a life of crime. How important
is it that you believe in yourself? How important
is that in reality? Like, that's a faith thing.
If you don't believe you can succeed, you won't
put forward the effort. And you'll just sit down
and watch TV all day and do nothing. And then
you're going to be a problem, a statistic, a
problem, a burden, whatever, in our society.
Somehow we have to pay for you. And that's a
lot of people that are falling in that gap right
now, the way we're doing it. And then when the
government with COVID, they were handing out
paychecks, you know, to everybody. Like, you
know, even I got one for my business. One of
those PPP loans where everybody was because we
couldn't work. My income stopped. Other than
the film stuff, my income for a whole year. And
you're sitting there going, I don't want paychecks.
I want to be able to just do my thing. I hated
that. And then you start getting these great
checks. Like, oh, there's a big check. And you're
sitting there, whoa. I wonder if they're going
to do that again. Slap yourself around. Well,
what am I thinking? No, no, no. No, I've become
dependent on our government again. There's this
story, and I always like to tell this story,
and you can delete this later. No, everything's
fine. Okay, so Ken Burns does a documentary.
Ken Burns is like all of us documentary filmmakers
always. None of us think that we're better than
Ken Burns because we're not. Ken Burns makes
amazing documentaries. He made a documentary
called National Parks. He makes these great historic
documentaries. He made one on the national parks.
And in their series, usually, in one of them,
he looked at Yosemite and looked at the bears
problem that exists. Everybody knows that these
national parks, especially like Yellowstone and
Yosemite, have a problem with their bears. It's
a problem that still exists to this day. And
it's so bad that if you go in and you have an
ice chest, you leave it out. and you leave it
unattended, they'll fine you a grand. A thousand
bucks or more, sometimes $2 ,000 for leaving
your ice chest out. You know, wow, it's kind
of a lot. I mean, and it's funny because you
go to my neighborhood. We've had a black bear
in my backyard one time. Not while we lived here,
but the previous owner. There's black bears all
over Florida, but you don't have them going through
people's garbages and all this problem. But you
go to the national parks. Man, they're all over
the place having problems. Well, why are the
bears in the national parks such a problem, but
they're not here where the people live? And yet
they're here. Why? It's the same freaking animal.
So everyone should think about this for a minute.
Why is there a problem? Well, Ken Burns documents
the problem. What happened? So in the 60s, somebody,
it wasn't a good idea, got an idea. to put bleachers
around the dumpsters, put all the dumpsters together
around dinner time at night, a little after dinner,
right when the bears are going to want to go
out and eat, and open the dumpsters up and let
the bears come in and start eating and fighting
over the food in the dumpsters. And they had
bleachers around for the campers that night to
come sit and watch and laugh, and they would
eat popcorn, and they thought it was great. Until
somebody coming through, one of the rangers,
probably one of those guys without the personality,
decided, I don't think this is a very good idea.
Should we be doing this? This doesn't seem like
a good idea. So they decided to stop doing it.
Well, the next night, those bears come down to
eat. Well, the humans are now their source of
food. They hadn't been a source of food forever.
They hadn't been a source of food. I mean, you
go back as far as you go, they've never been
the source of food. But hey, for the last four
or five years, every night, they're the source
of food. And so the mom's coming in with the
cubs. They're all, hey, where's the food? So
they just meandered into the campgrounds. Oh,
here's the food. They put the food over here.
And they grabbed the food. And they're trying
to chase them out. Okay, you got to fight for
the food a little bit here and there. And then
they had to haze them a little bit. They tried
different things. They took a long time for them
to start doing that. But the problem is the cubs
were learning from the mom bearer that the humans
are the source of food. Well, that's still today.
I went backpacking, and there was a cinnamon
bear that was bigger than our Toyota Corolla.
I remember at that time when I was backpacking,
I was like, that's the biggest bear I've ever
seen. And it was coming in camp, and it was looking
for food. And we were backpacking. We were in
the backpacker's camp below Half Dome. Those
who climbed that know exactly what I'm talking
about. And it's a cinnamon bear. It has a name,
and it comes by every night. It's a big bear.
It gets a lot of food. So what happens is, and
then they were having cubs that would swat people
going by them with backpacks. They would just
swat it open because sometimes out would come
out candy or food right out of the backpack.
So it's a problem. In 2020, it was 1960 when
they created this problem. They only did it for
a few years and then they stopped. It's still
a problem today. They can't stop it. Once you
wire your brain that this is the source for your
immediate fix on your drug chemical or this is
the source for those paychecks, you do such a
disservice, whether you do it for animals or
humans. We are all that way. And the best thing
that we could do is instill in people and demonstrate,
have them achieve levels of physical stuff that's
hard for them and achieve it. that they didn't
even think themselves that they could do. But
you showed them, you gave them goals, they followed
it, they achieved it. Wow. Now they suddenly
can believe in themselves. They may not have
been taught, they may not have come from a family
that ever would have been taught that, but now
they believe in it. And it doesn't matter. We
were looking at Prescott PE. I was interviewing
kids that are in the movie that were living in
their car with their mom. That's where they lived.
And they had no problems with bullying. They'd
had problems with bullying before. But not at
Prescott. They totally believed in themselves.
I've followed these kids since. They all, every
one of those kids in that film are super successful
kids. And I'm saying, why would you close that?
Why would you end that? What kind of moron superintendent
would do that? Only the kind that is a complete
ignoramus on the topic. Like, you would never
do this. But the problem is, where in their education
would they even learn about this? It's absent.
So are they educated? The idea, are you an educated
person, really must be evaluated this moment
in our society. If you don't know how to properly
eat and properly walk and properly sit and properly
run and exercise and move your body, are you
an educated human being? If you don't know how
to optimally study, optimally work, and how to
intertwine exercise with that to hit optimal
productivity, are you an educated person? You
might be able to do some interesting things technically,
but you're not there yet. And so we do need to
reevaluate this whole thing. And what the ultimate
impact will be is we will correct our national
debt. We will bring health care costs back in
realm. We will bring people so they're interested
in behaving and talking to one another again
and be interested in being with each other. We
will improve qualities of relationships. We'll
have people who will actually strive, who have
given up, who will now believe in themselves
and strive. Like that's the big carrot here for
us to go for, right? That's the reward. It's
worth the effort to actually do this. And I don't
know what the substitute would be. I don't know
what it is. I'm watching everybody come up with
these failed, pathetic people who are running
for president, both parties. Every time they
come up with their ideas, I'm like, that's not
going to work. If it's an idea that's been tried
before, it failed every time. And why are we
going to do that again? And then it's like, okay,
that sounds like what we try to do with the...
the bears in Yosemite. You're going to make another
group of Americans dependent on you. Great idea.
That has never worked. Like, how has that worked
with any group so far that we've made dependent?
It has not helped them. Instead, you've got to
actually, how do you go the other route? We need
to help people realize that they can do it. And,
you know, you're giving people, you know, nice
little things to enable them, help them succeed.
But you don't, you don't just hand it out. well
well based on that so the power of zero is another
documentary that you made um a really really
you know fascinating kind of view into the fact
that the money's going to run out at some point
as you said the baby boomer generation yeah that
was back in 2018 when the national debt in that
film was approaching 20 trillion and we're now
just past 30 yeah and you predicted that in i
didn't predict it that fast though to be honest
with you nobody did in that movie like it's kind
of scary it's getting way worse way faster Well,
and it goes back to, so with you talking about
the health, I mean, again, our perspective, you
know, my career, I got to see the ripple effect
of the ill health, the ripple effect of the mental
health crisis, whether it was overdose, whether
it was violence, you know, all these things.
And what you talked about in the motivation factor
specifically is. a resolution for so many problems
community i mean that you said the left and the
right i've talked about this all the time i can't
stand either of them these leaders were asked
to lead and you know we realize okay neither
of you can we get it now and that's a big surprise
anyway but um and we need real leaders we need
a system that creates real leaders but And there's
no sense of, there's very little sense of community.
This division was so easy. Like you said, even
the paychecks, one of my previous guests made
a good point. There's a lot of people that hate
their jobs. The moment this came around, they
were like, I will gladly stay at home. I don't
want to be at work. I hate my boss. I hate what
I do. You know, but so what they did at La Sierra,
isn't it? La Sierra. I think I might have said
La Sierra before. is the answer to so many things.
And the national debt, you look at the, I think
we're what, 4 % of the world's population. I
think we use something crazy like 80 % of the
world's opiates. We've got 25 % of the prison
population. I mean, the statistics go on from
supposedly the greatest country in the world.
Oh, and by the way, let's just look at COVID.
The number of people in the ICU in America is
77 out of a million. The number of people in
the ICU in Japan is seven out of a million. And
the next highest below us is Canada at 20 out
of a million. So you're like, wait, that's the
same illness, right? COVID is not different in
Japan or Canada that is here. But as far as in
the ICU, and you're like, why so many more of
us in the ICU as a percentage of the population?
Oh, different vaccinations. No, no, no. No, it's
the population health. itself and you can just
look at the obesity each of those countries where
does japan and where's canada and where's the
united states canada's way up at the top obesity
canada is also pretty high so japan united states
is the top canada's you know in there pretty
high so it's up there next and then japan's like
150th way down there finland they're off the
chart low so so you could see And then you're
like, okay, what's the cost? What's the cost
per drug that you're given in the ICU? And it
all goes around to the individual. So we are
the sum of our parts and our parts are unhealthy.
So I love this kind of question that I posed
to you. You're king for the day. You get to design.
the the pe program and you know the school day
in general but especially the pe program starting
today we're giving green light we're giving all
the funding to be proactive instead of reactive
what the what do the pe programs look like from
here on in yeah well school's half a day total
um that's easy um and um and you're probably
not gonna hit the same classes each time each
day you know you would go you know a and b um
And the PE program would have a third of it,
the thrust of it, would be restorative arts.
So you would train them how to do Indian clubs
and wands and the Persian mill. You would train
them how to get off the ground with the bars.
You'd train them calisthenics. You would do group
exercise. And PE would be an hour a day. You
would give someone a heart pumping hour a day
experience and you would require showers. There's
a lot of reasons why. And possibly where you
could, you know, you would do outside, almost
exclusively outside for that hour every day.
So if you're in a super cold place, you'd be
outside exercising in the cold there. And if
it's super hot and gross, you'd be out there
exercising in it. It's good for our bodies to
acclimate with where we're at. Lots of good reasons
why. So, we would do that for sure. So, it would
involve group exercises. I would do the SE routine
-like experience for sure all the time. That
would be part of it. I don't care if there's
one ball or sport involved at all in PE. I would
also incorporate with it basic nutrition. I would
train them how to eat what they eat. I would
train them how to pair foods together. This is
something no one talks about. I would train what
alkaline food is and acidic foods are and encourage
them to get to like 78 to 80 % alkaline and 20
% acidic. So you're not going to do something
like meat on a hamburger with a white hamburger
bun and potatoes in the deep fried oil with a
shake. Because that's all acidic. Like you're
doing nothing but acidic. Like you wouldn't do
that. You would have... you know, a meat and
these vegetables or whatever. So I would actually
teach them that, you know, train them that. So
that would be health for me. And that would also
involve the postural science, postural correction.
I would redesign completely all the desks. There
would not be a flat desk ever again. You would
have slanted desks, 22%. 22 degrees. That's absolutely
critical. I would redesign the classroom so the
lights coming in aren't refracting the wrong
way off of that. So the students are facing with
their eyes and their necks the right direction
so that they're not turning constantly the wrong
way and screwing themselves up. And that's to
the floor and that whole thing said I would teach
them how important it is to be like a drafter,
you know, that you're sitting there in that setting
and that they carry that on at home and tell
them, you know, don't go home, start doing video
games and be all slouched over this way. Do this.
You know, I would teach them that. And then for
the education, I would probably eliminate almost
every textbook there is. I would. I would write
all the freaking time. I wouldn't be so much
concerned about grammar. I'm very good at it.
You know, I'm an undergraduate. I could write.
I've edited major publications. I've done all
that stuff. I mean, it's good as most folks.
I write my scripts. I know what I'm doing with
that space. But I do know that I don't think
too much about prepositions. This dangling modifier.
Okay, I don't mind learning that. There's times
to learn this. But kindergarten's not one. And
in our schools, in our freaking schools right
now, kindergarten and here, they're teaching
prepositions and all that stuff to kindergartners.
This guy's so, they don't know what they're doing.
They so don't know what they're doing right now.
So I would do a lot of writing of expression,
learn how to really write and write a lot, really
flush through it. Handwriting, I would teach
handwriting. I would not let them type it. I
would have them handwrite it because you need
the neurofeedback and you need the fine motor
skills of the hand. Like you have to do that.
Don't, we're losing that and it needs to come
back. And if anyone's listening right now and
you haven't done this for a while, get like the
Remarkable 2 pad or something like that and start
writing. Start writing a lot. You'll see what
starts coming back to your life. So I would have
them read from the best. So the best classics.
You learn from them. I would get ideas. And I
would care less if something was written last
week or 3 ,000 years ago. It doesn't matter.
We're all humans. It's all human experience.
And you want to learn from best with that. So
those are the things that I would do that would
change it dramatically. And really, those are
the elements. That's all you have to do. And
things would change around. But again, the school
day, the classroom day, it would be 25, 35 minutes
in the classroom. And then you move. Now, you
might still have to come back to that subject.
But you wouldn't sit longer than that. If you
chose to do a traditional school setting. as
opposed to more of doing that once or twice a
week and then you're in a mentor -based situation
or whatever, which I think is actually still
superior. I really am a fan of teams and people
interacting with others and doing that together,
but doing that right so that you don't just have
them flounder and hate. working with others so
that because it doesn't work because this person's
not trying all this stuff um there should be
a lot of thought and work into that so that that's
a good experience and they they they experience
the value of hey we pulled this together and
look what we just accomplished like this was
really impressive when i do movies i can't do
although you see my name everywhere it looks
like i did all of this stuff It's impossible
to make a movie by yourself. Some of these movies,
it looks like a city there. There's so many people.
And every movie is really its own company that
you're creating. It's its own. You're bringing
all these people together. You're finding these
experts and you're getting feedback from everyone.
You're putting something special together. That
is a skill that once you experience and go, you
know what? It's better together than it is by
myself. That realization is helpful. So that
we are interested in community and doing this
right. Like, I can be better off part of a community.
And we need to experience that again. We really
do. And this COVID has served as an excuse for
those who had nefarious aims to push their agendas
forward. And they absolutely have harped on it.
Harped on it in a major way. And we've got to
be very careful right now because that can't
happen. We have to have community. We have to
have freedom. We have to be able to assemble.
We have to be able to speak. We have to protect
each other's rights to say it, whatever it is.
We have to have the freedom of religion and ideas.
Full freedom. Full freedom. This idea that Congress
will make no law establishing a religion or prevent
the free exercise thereof. Which means they can't
prevent the free exercise. You look at all these
things, and there's a reason why we came up with
this verbiage. There's what we were experiencing
as a people before and throughout history, and
these were well -educated people. Thomas Jefferson
has the Thomas Jefferson education. It's a very
well -documented mentor -based system he went
through. Super educated. John Adams, he could
talk in three different languages fluidly, age
12. with you. These people, they would have a
small library, but they had read every book and
thought about what they read. There's no thought
in what we're doing right now. It's like, we
somehow want to say, just because you heard it,
a fact, we got the fact into you and you can
regurgitate it, that now you're a thinking person.
I graduated from college. I'm educated. I could
think. Not really. Just go back and rethink about
how many papers did you really think about? Or
did you just try to give back what that teacher
wanted? We've been taught what to think. We've
been taught how to express it. But there's a
reason why the entrepreneurs who drop out from
college are the standouts now, because they think.
And so for those of us who went to college, it's
like, okay, well, wait a second here. I also
want to think, what do I need to do right now?
Like, how do I really do this right? And it's
a fun thing to explore. and realize, okay, I've
got a lot of room to grow. And a lot of that
great thinking happens while we exercise. Our
brain's free. And so I'm a big fan of not listening
to music while I exercise, listening to sounds
of nature. Dr. Rady, when you interview him,
will say that, that it's better for your brain
to hear the dog barking and, whoa, is that a
dog that's going to attack me than have it completely
drowned out because you got the thumping of some
music going through and you're just running along.
or even on treadmill where you don't even think
about anything. You don't have to worry about
that. But if your brain has to do all this other
work of situational awareness and you are doing
something complex and you're moving and your
heart's going, you're doing all of that together,
well, man, you are building a super strong, resilient
brain. And it's going to reward you with this
beautiful chemical cocktail that's going to bless
you in so many ways all throughout your life
in every way. Beautiful. Well, I think that's
the common theme and it's definitely the reason
I started this podcast. It came out of six funerals
I went to of firefighters. But when you take
a step back and you think, like you said, rather
than being fed information, you think and you
look at the world we live in, especially this
country we live in, and you look especially through
a first responder's eyes and you ask yourself,
the way we do it, is it making the streets safer?
Are our people as healthy as they can be? You
know, are we prepared, God forbid, if we get
invaded? You know, and the answer is no, no,
and no. And so it's time for us to say, look,
the way you've done it, we've given it enough
time. The same way as, you know, this two years,
you know, a lot of people listened and we played
that game and it's time to move on. It's time
to change it. But with the health of the nation.
the statistics show that it's been an epic failure.
The way our food is processed, the way we eat,
the way we move or don't move, our mental health
kind of philosophies. So it's innovations that
we need. But as you mentioned, it's really about
going back to what people did. I mean, literally
100 years ago is a great benchmark. The way our
great grandparents ate, they moved, they were
learning. The sense of community in the smaller
towns back then, we need to refine that. And
I think, you know, Looking at the way we do schools.
And obviously, as you've talked about a lot in
other conversations and in a documentary, there's
an ownership in the house. And we're not talking
about ignoring that, but creating that environment
to thrive. And I talk about this. It's easier
to point a finger at someone who's... out you
know out of shape and be like well if you just
ate well and you know the addicts or if you just
stopped drinking you know yeah but it's the environment
as well the environment the last two years the
gyms were closed fast food and alcohol could
be delivered to your house not an environment
to encourage people to to choose healthily you
know so in our schools when our kids are first
learning and then as the multi -generation now
you create probably a lot more intact households
again that are teaching their children from day
one how to move, how to eat. We have to start
today because as you touched on, the only contributing
factor that differentiated countries with this
COVID epidemic was the underlying health of the
nation. And if this isn't the biggest fucking
red flag, then I don't know what is. Absolutely.
You're absolutely right there. If I were going
to try to destroy a society, Like, what would
I do to really just destroy that society? Because
it's hard. You know, if we were all physically
healthy and everything's rocking and rolling,
how could China come and take over the United
States with 300 million people armed, right?
Look at how well, no one's taken over Afghanistan,
ever. You can't take over an armed people who's
healthy. You just can't do it. They have to give
up. How do you get someone to give up? because
ultimately you still can't just take over. Well,
one thing I would do is I would make it so they
can't meet together anymore and have that interaction,
right? There's no more community. I would make
it so they're sitting around and they're just
mentally not healthy by no physical movement
anymore, right? I would definitely cover up the
mask so that everyone's depersonalized. I would
serve them junk food nonstop. I would serve them
chemically mind -stimulating drugs. I would entertain
them with absolutely nothing nonstop so that
they just sit around and just like a little...
I'm watching this TV. Ooh, it's a pretty ball.
It's a pretty whatever. Oh, look at this. Hey,
that's interesting. Someone's invading from another
planet in this movie. There's an idea that I've
never heard of before. That would be nonstop.
I would do the same old thing, entertain him,
and then lots of options like that. When you
start going through this, it's pretty spooky
because what we are actually doing in our society
is exactly what you would do to destroy the society.
I would financially task it to the point and
I would just start printing money and sending
so much out there that it's just mind -blowing
per person what it would take. Do you realize
right now, we talked about power of zero. And
by the way, I make financial films and I make
health films and they're just an A and B of the
same coin. That's all those are. People, when
you really look at this, you'll see it. The Committee
for Responsible Budget back in 2015 looked at
the question, can we solve our national debt
deficit? The deficit. So there's the debt that
we have, and then there's the deficit where we're
missing. Can we solve that by taxing rich people?
So they looked at people who make $400 ,000 or
more, let's tax them. What would we need to tax
them at? And they realized that they figured
it all out, and you'd have to tax those individuals
at $100 ,000. and 10 % of all their money. 110
% per year. Go to LeBron James and say, hey,
I want to take 110 % of your money. So not just
all that you made this year, but 10 % more than
that. You have to just, it's going to cost you.
he's going to say, that sounds like something
else from way back in the past, right? That sounds
like slavery, but worse. That's like worse than
slavery. I got to pay to be a slave. Right, I'm
paying to be a slave. That's not going to work
for me. And so then they're like, okay, that
wouldn't work. Let's drop it down to those making
$250 ,000 or more. And they found that, okay,
we're only down to 92%. Gross tax. That doesn't
work if you live in the state of California with,
you know, those people with that economic bracket
are paying. Maybe 8%, 10 % state tax, right?
So that won't work. So then they looked at, okay,
150 ,000 married, 150 ,000 filing joint. So basically,
people make 150 ,000 a year as well as those
who are filing joint, 150 ,000 a year. So a lot
of people now. We're in a lot of people. You
would have to tax them at a rate of 82%. 82%.
This doesn't include your state tax. In order
to... be balanced 10 years later in our national
debt this was the year 2015 this was before covid
this was before the trump tax cuts before all
of that then back when the national debt was
about 16 trillion not 30 so then like what do
you do if we just can tax everybody Those guys
making McDonald's, the 50 % who aren't paying
any federal tax, it has to be a 52 % tax rate
to solve the then stated deficit. Now, we've
added, we've doubled our debt since then. And
with every 1 % increase in interest that goes
up, which, by the way, we're at an all -time
low, but if we raise it 1%, Every 1 % is an additional
$300 billion that we have to come up with in
taxes for interest on that year. So if you were
to raise it three, four points, five points,
it's an additional trillion of taxes that we
don't have. And you go look what we do. You realize
we have a little bit of a problem. OK, it's such
a problem that it's impossible to continue the
direction we're going. It's why Obama and every
president since and before and everybody looking
at this question stated this is unsustainable.
And then we have new presidential candidates
always come in and they have a new idea. Let's
give everyone free college. Let's make health
care, Medicare for all. Let's do all. That's
not. The solution. What we're talking about is
the solution. This is something that actually
gets to root cause and strips away the vast majority
of it because we couldn't tax a person who's
working minimum wage at McDonald's 52 % of their
money. I don't think I could handle 52 % of my
money going away. Yeah. How would that work?
I mean, it would be really tough. So that's what
it had to be in 2015. Today, if they were to
do the same thing, I would always think about
doing that and making a documentary on it. When
I really looked at those numbers, I realized
this is not a film that I should make. It's really,
really bad. So instead, we should look at what
can we do. And I really want to thank you for
this interview because we've focused on here's
what will actually. This is something that really
will make a difference. How do we scale it fast?
How do we scale it from the rest homes all the
way down to the preschools, throughout the corporations,
and most importantly, our individual lives? How
do we do that? How do we make people love being
a healthy person and decide? that that's their
top value because it's the driver of everything
else. And then the adaptation of it. You know,
you have an injury. Well, you still need to do
some exercise. Now, you won't be able to exercise
that part of your body, but what can you do?
And don't allow the excuses. I mean, there were
people who just did things in their house when
they couldn't go outside. They figured it out.
They did what they needed to do. And they were
resilient. They had good relationships. They
went through. They flourished. threat um and
then those that just use as an excuse to sit
around and and it was it was endless caramel
corn and and ice cream shakes and um they're
not doing too great right now with that i want
to thank you i mean we've we've had such a great
conversation but genuinely like i i i think one
of the best things that's come out the last few
years it is you know podcasts documentaries this
unfiltered channel where you can get good information
of course every single one of us ultimately has
some sort of agenda my agenda i hope is clear
i hate people dying and being ill um but uh you
know i think it's so important to have these
conversations but the motivation factor every
single human being needs to watch that full stop
um the power of zero again when you tie in the
the financial side it's funny because i started
watching it first i'm like oh this is about money
i'm not sure this is my then then the light bulb
went off and i'm like oh wait a second the solution
to this is exactly what we've discussed you know
the the the impact of the ill health of the nation
is the reason that we're so damn poor and at
the you know at the uh propensity to join wars
very easily and then you've got the whole pretty
much the whole solution fasting was another fascinating
one at least the first 30 minutes everyone should
watch the first 30 minutes of fasting that's
a prescription because that that we're looking
at what happens when you don't eat at night and
why if no one's listening the the the shortcut
is think of it like a dishwasher our human body
has a dishwasher and it It needs to have an empty
gut to turn on for eight hours. So if your gut's
been empty for eight hours, it'll turn on and
it takes four hours to run. And that does the
pre -cancer screening, taking out. It's regulating
your blood sugars, your blood pressure. It's
doing all of that. So all of the chronic illnesses
kind of go away. If you happen to be a rat, they
did all these studies. Just by doing that one
thing. So there's a lifestyle adjustment that
will make you feel super clean and great by just
not eating basically after 6 o 'clock. I fell
into that by accident. So after I transitioned
out of the fire service and I was at home every
day, which was also an adjustment because I was
moving even less. The fire service, we're a lot
more sedentary than we realize. We sit in the
vehicles. We sit in the back of the ambulance.
We sit doing reports. We sit doing online training.
We sit a huge amount. But my day shifted where
now, okay, every morning I can go to jiu -jitsu
now. I can go to the CrossFit gym at the beginning.
So, I was coming back at like 11 o 'clock and
then starting to make food. And by the time I
was eating, it was almost 12. And so, I was inadvertently
having this 12 -hour window. And I noticed, A,
my workouts were amazing on an empty stomach,
you know. And B, you know, I wasn't getting as
much bloating and kind of sluggishness. And,
you know, I never, I always felt. intrinsically
like it wasn't good to eat late i could just
feel that in myself but um so yeah then you touched
on it even with crappy food in that window they
still saw benefits so then obviously the answer
is well eat good food in that window and it makes
more sense and you look kind of evolutionary
at it with with natural daylight you're probably
not pigging out at nine o 'clock at night in
the winter so you know if anytime i question
something i'm like all right what would we have
done a thousand years ago exactly this just go
backpacking and you'll experience it real fast
like you get so much daylight it's all perfect
you're super tired sun's going down you've already
had dinner and you're just asleep sun goes out
you're asleep you wake up 4 30 in the morning
about an hour and a half before it's even light
you're moving and you're not eating until you
know you're done hiking a couple miles or three
and it's perfect like it's just it ends up being
perfect um but we're doing that all wrong a lot
of people are eating that they're they're being
told unfortunately by personal trainers who don't
know better you know make sure you're eating
something just before you go to sleep protein
or whatever drink and then then eat a moment
you wake up eat some food and then go hit the
gym and like you know no uh you're gonna be you're
gonna develop pre -diabetes and hyperglycemic
and all kinds of problems by doing that you got
too much going on that liver that liver does
not want to and need to process that much that
often so give it a break Yeah, so these are fundamental
things that I've benefited from tremendously
and not one idea is mine. And that's super important.
I have a documentary film. I'm documenting those.
I was the number one headhunter tech recruiter
in the country, 95. So I focused on competitive
intelligence. I got my master's in library science
there in school. I became very good in intelligence
and looking at it. I learned how to track industry
experts based on their habits on the internet
within the Unix world, pre -World Wide Web. I
kind of followed that through afterwards. And
so all my films are, as I'm identifying, you
know, you hear me talk about classics for education,
learning from the best people. Well, all that
I'm really doing is identifying who really are
the people who've demonstrated ideas that are
really, you know, something we should look at
and then synthesize those. And that's what the
movie is. It's not Doug Orchard. It's not, you
know, I don't actually have the high opinion
of myself for a lot of good reasons. I mean,
I know, you know, you live your own life. You're
like, I'm not great. But these people have some
really huge contributions. And so like you, you're
trying to be a mouthpiece to a channel to share
those ideas because those ideas and those individuals
don't even have a voice and they're not ever
going to for what they do. They're focused on
what they're after. So as we as humans in a community
spirit share these ideas with each other, and
we say, oh, it's not science. Well, there's different
levels of science, right? There's the question
too. And what should science even look at? Is
there something that's happening that we're seeing
a recurrence of and it appears to be good? And
for me, the nexus that's interesting that I make
a movie of is where history has, we've shown
through history, it's beneficial to maybe thousands
and thousands of people, or maybe for thousands
of years. And then science has now just discovered,
oh, it turns out this is actually really beneficial
scientifically. You know, when those things cross,
when they're both going the same direction, that's
a pretty safe thing to make a movie on that I
know I got at least a decade or more run on.
And it's a really interesting... place and it
becomes very frustrating when we don't do it
as a people. You know, we know everything we've
talked about. These aren't theories. I mean,
it's not a theory that the human being has to
move. We see what happens when you become sedentary
and lethargic. What happens to your brain? What
happens to your mood? What happens to your spirit?
What happens to your relationship with others?
What happens to everything? And yet, this response
from school is right now, for some reason, Sit
more and more and more and more. And let's eliminate
PE. Let's eliminate breaks. Do you know that
the elementary school right here where I'm at,
they have eliminated all breaks. They get a very
short lunch and they get one 15 -minute break.
They've eliminated all of them. I don't know
what they're thinking. These are kindergartners.
They're in there until 2 o 'clock in the day.
There's no freaking way in the world if I had
a child that age, which I don't, that I would
actually... Do that to them. I don't know what
they would end up like on the other end. It's
not right. So we're going to have to become involved.
We really are. We're going to have to become
a little more involved in a loving community
way to make differences. And you're right. The
leaders right now, they're a big fail. And I
have met with them, a lot of congressmen, everyone
else. And I say, well, what drives the discussion?
What drives the conversation? What happens behind
that curtain? You know, like Wizard of Oz. What's
going on behind that curtain when no one is looking?
What's going on back there? And they say, the
only thing that's discussed is what's been on
the news the past three nights. That's it. There's
no, hey guys, let's talk about this problem in
our country. We've identified with this big budget
we all have. We've identified these following
needs. We need to do this. No, it's what's being
discussed on the news. And so the news, of course,
is corporate. Right. It's financially owned by
six entities. And so they're driving they're
driving the show. You got that. You got the lobbyist.
And it's all unfortunately, you know, when we
talk about health care, like FDA and Pfizer and
and all those kinds of things tied together.
Well, it's the same entities that are very involved.
And the people at the top of all those are like
bored. They're switching back and forth. And
it's the same money involved. And and they're
putting those people in political power. And
it's a it's a really crappy situation that we're
in. It really is. And so, one, we do need to
understand and kind of open our eyes at that
and just appreciate where we are. Two, support
any kind of channel that allows for like what
you're doing here, you know, to get a message
out. And don't think that you're educated because
you watched a major or standardized news. Those
are gone now. It's all propaganda. It's all propaganda.
It always has been. And it absolutely is today.
So just kind of be aware of that. As a filmmaker,
for The Motivation Factor, I sat in with, they
had a couple major Hollywood people there as
kind of a spiff to have your film at this Hollywood
Film Festival. And they had Mel Gibson's, I don't
remember the guy's name, but he was Mel Gibson's
PR guy for The Passion of Christ. I remember
that. He was in there. And he said, his advice
was, never put in any of your movies something
that would be derogatory to the news primary
advertising sources. So think about like Big
Pharma was the example he used. He goes, you
know, Big Pharma represents 70 to 80 % of all
the advertising money for the news. He says,
so don't think that the news is going to cover
your film. If you are speaking derogatory to
them about them, he wasn't saying, hey, let's
be nice to Big Pharma. He was just as speaking
as a business to a business filmmaker. So business
filmmakers know I can't have that bad stuff about
them in my movies. Well, you just muzzled all
your major journalistic guys unless they wanted
to try to. create something like the motivation
factor, put it out there and not get any major
news. Well, who's going to pay for it? How are
you going to get anyone to hear about it? And
so you're wondering, well, how come this wasn't
covered everywhere? You just start going through
it and you can figure it out really quickly.
And so we have a really difficult task ahead
of us that only will be resolved if we individually
experience this. And if we do, then we just kind
of know. And then we share it and we go to their
school boards and we just tell them, no, this
has to change. You go to the corporation, this
has to change. We put our foot down because it
has to change. And I made the movie just so you
know, Passion of Love. There wasn't an economic
upside for me. Anybody put in the money, Ron
Jones sunk 20K into it. I sunk money into it.
We're all negative into it. We did it because
we were hoping this would be a flag, a flag that
could be waved. to kind of rekindle this thing
and get it going again. So that's why we made
this movie. It's my favorite movie. I don't think
I'll ever make a movie I love more in that I
think it was more pure in its purpose and all
involved. They really got pretty heartfelt, and
there's a lot of people involved in that movie.
So it was a great experience. So thank you for
allowing me to share a little bit about it. Well,
thank you for making it. So for people listening,
where can they find the films? And then, you
know, where's the best central location online
to learn more about you? Well, my site is dougorchard
.com. And I do have links to much of my films
there. You could also look at all my, if you
look me up in IMDB database, that's the movie
database. So IMDB. You can just look me up and
you'll see anything I'm linked to. I have made
some films that aren't on my site linked to because
I was just like a director or whatever. And then
for the motivation factor, you could look on
iTunes or Amazon or Google Play or Real House.
That's the primary place to find that. Fasting,
you could look at on Amazon or... on Real House
or at Gia Network, G -I -A. It plays free there.
It's a subscription model kind of company. It
used to be on free on Amazon Prime, but for some
reason, they now charge rent. It's not a lot.
It's like two bucks or something. I can't control
what the platforms do with my films once they're
up there, by the way. So, they just do what they
want to do with your movies. Well, I just want
to say thank you. I mean, like I said, the films
themselves really opened my eyes. you know the
the proactive preventative element is what we
need to hear they're all articulated so well
and if you watch all three and as you said they
all interlink i mean it's it's it's incredible
but also just being so generous we've talked
i think over two hours now um and uh yeah it's
been an incredible conversation i'm going to
put this out very very quickly because people
need to hear it so thank you for coming on the
podcast thank you thank you very much