Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1735. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Longevity Science, Metabolic Health, and Chronic Disease Prevention Protocols. Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan
Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by
night, all day. Hello, Peter. Hello, Joe. Good
to see you. Likewise. We're fucking neighbors,
man. How you liking the move? Loving it. You've
been here a year now, right? A solid year? A
little over, yeah. Loving it? I don't know what
took so long. Yeah, it's a different world, right?
Yeah. When you live in a place that only has
a million people, it's like, oh, like, wow, this
is you could do everything here. If I'd done
this three years earlier, I could have paid half
as much for my house, too. That's right. So smart
to have done this in 2017. Well, lucky did it
then and not now because now it's even harder.
It's harder to find a house. It's almost impossible.
Yeah. I mean, every person we introduce to our
real estate agent says the same thing, which
is like you have to build. yeah yeah it's that
is that wild which is uh i guess good i don't
know you know it's uh it's tricky because you
know google's building their they have this gigantic
sail looking building near the river have you
seen it oh yeah yeah so there's gonna be a bunch
of wokesters running around from that place they
have to fill that building up you know and then
you know you get is there a more woke corporation
than google yes Which one? Microsoft. Really?
Oh, I did see that. Did you hear that thing Ben
Shapiro did? No. Oh, my God. I didn't hear it.
What did he do? It's so funny that I went and
listened to it again, recorded it on my phone
off my computer just so I could text it to my
friends. So they had this thing where... I saw
the thing. Where they introduced, everyone introduced
themselves. With their pronouns and they described
themselves. You're right. So I would say, hi,
my name is Peter Attia. I'm a light -skinned
guy with a shaved head wearing a green shirt.
I go by he, him. Yeah. And you would say Caucasian
probably. Yes, yes, I would. I would, right.
But then one of the women said, before we begin,
I would just like to state that. Our land. The
land that this building sits on was actually
once owned by her. And she rattled off 17 tribes.
Yes. At which point, like, my brother was like,
well, just show me the title deed. Like, is it
yours or is it theirs? Because if it's theirs,
you really should give it back. What is happening?
What's going on? But Microsoft, which is interesting,
they were never like this. Like, all of a sudden,
they went full tilt. They just went from zero.
To 11. Right? They don't have a history of, like,
ads that were woke. I don't know. It has provided.
Give me some volume on this because it's so stupid.
And lots in store for you. First, we want to
acknowledge that the land where the Microsoft
campus is situated was traditionally occupied
by the Sammamish, the Duwamish, the Snoqualmie,
the Suquamish, the Muckleshoot, the Snohomish,
the Tulalip. and other Coast Salish peoples since
time immemorial. A people that are still here,
continuing to honor and bring to light their
ancient heritage. My name is Allison Wine. Hey,
give back their land. I'm a Senior Program Manager
in our Developer Tools Division. I'm an Asian
and white female with dark brown hair wearing
a red sleeveless top. I'm watching this. And
I'm Seth Juarez, Program Manager in the AI Platform
Group. I'm a tall Hispanic male wearing a blue
shirt, khaki pants. Today we kick off two days
of learning more about the latest solutions,
exploring how these key innovations can empower
you to do great things, and connecting with peers
around the world. They didn't tell their pronouns.
The other folks told their pronouns. Was that
for hearing impaired people? No, it's for visually
impaired people. Which is the greatest irony,
right? It's like, we want the people who can't
see our color to know our color. Ooh, right.
literally is the most logically inconsistent
thing you could ever have with what you think
are the right values. That's interesting. How
much racism is there amongst visually impaired
people? Well, apparently there'll be more now
because we get... But I mean, if you really stop
and think about it, they can't make that distinction.
They can only judge people based on how the people
communicate with them. They can't look at someone
and prejudge. They're probably the least racist
people alive. Well, we're going to fix that.
But all the fucking shit about the thing that's
ironic is she's describing all the different
tribes that have owned the land. Well, why do
you think there's so many? It's because they
killed each other and stole the land from each
other. Like, what the fuck are you saying? Michael
Knowles had this conversation I watched on YouTube
where this professor, this woke professor, was
trying to say that we should give back land to
native tribes. And he was like, okay, but which
ones? You got to decide which ones because like
the Comanche took it from the Apache, took it
from the, and he was like going through the history
of it. It's like, how do you decide? Like, do
you go back? Well, the Comanche took it from
you, but you took it from the Navajo, but the
Navajo took it from the Pawnee. I'm going to
ask her because she'll know. It's so exhausting.
What is happening to us? This wokeness. You know,
it's easy to say the pendulum is going to swing
the other way and it probably will. But my brother
actually said this and I think he's accurate.
It's not a pendulum. It's a wrecking ball. A
pendulum implies just this benign little thing
that's going to go back. But it's not. It's going
to go. Right. And it's going to kill a bunch
of people and ruin a bunch of lives and careers
on the way back to some reasonable equilibrium.
I think the only reasonable equilibrium is mind
reading software. I really do. I think the reasonable
equilibrium is going to be something that allows
us to read each other's minds so that there's
no confusion whatsoever about what your intent
is. Although, did you hear the person – I forwarded
this article. So I have a group text with a bunch
of friends and my brother where we just – this
is our only outlet for this insanity. And someone
wrote – actually, Jon Stewart defended Dave Chappelle
after the special and said, look, his intent
was X, right? And this – I don't remember who
it was. I don't remember what was in The Independent
or something like that. Wrote this whole thing
saying intent is bullshit. Intent means nothing.
And it was so ridiculous because the argument
she gave was homicide. She's like, even if you
don't mean to kill somebody, it's still manslaughter.
To which we're all at the same time like. Yeah,
and there's a difference between first degree,
second degree, involuntary. Like, of course intent
matters. Of course it matters. But the point
is there are people now arguing intent is irrelevant.
That's the dumbest thing ever because, like,
what if someone... If you can be charged with
manslaughter, if you get in an argument with
someone, like say if you are in a situation with
someone and they bump into your car and you yell
at them and they get in your face and take a
swing at you and you knock them out and they
fall and hit their head and die, you can get
charged with manslaughter for that. That is so
much different than breaking into someone's house
and shooting them in the face. Right. It's so
much different. Like plotting out. So the intent.
is everything. Absolutely. And the idea of communication
is always, it's always, I want to express my
thoughts to you so you can better understand
what I'm thinking and we can figure out what's
right and what's wrong. We can hash things out.
We can work on a plan. If you don't know what
the fuck a person really means and you're only
going by words, like what are we, are we code
now? Like intent doesn't matter. Emotions don't
matter. Thoughts don't matter. Of course it matters.
It's like the only thing that makes us human.
Yeah. It's so dumb, but it's people taking advantage.
of what the internet provides, which is this
ability to communicate and express outrage and
push buttons, right? So because we have this
new ability to do this, there's a lot of bad
actors that use that, that use that ability to
communicate to find things to complain about
that are really not relevant. They're not really
something you should be complaining about. And
if you do complain about it, it's really because
you don't have any legitimate problems in your
real life. Well, I think the other thing is there's
an insecurity. Actually, there's an opinion piece
in it. wall street journal today about this,
right? Which is, uh, what was the, the title
of the article was something along the lines
of why the woke can't take a joke. And what it
basically came down to was the, and this was
quoting guys from like a hundred years ago, making
the same thing when it came to jokes about religion.
And the idea was if you aren't comfortable in
your position, you're going to be easily offended
when somebody rattles you, when somebody pokes
fun at you. And if you're comfortable, like if
I, if I came here and said, Oh, hunters are wankers,
blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like it wouldn't
offend you because you're very comfortable in
your position in your beliefs. And it's like,
hey, if you don't like hunting, that's cool.
But that says nothing about me. Well, it definitely
wouldn't coming from you because you're a hunter.
You know what I'm saying? Like if you came to
me and said bow hunting is bullshit, I'd be like,
ha, ha. But if anybody said it to you, it wouldn't
faze you. Well, it wouldn't, but it would be
a conversation where I would probably, if I respected
that person, I would want to. either defend it
or explain my position. But you wouldn't be offended
is the point. You could engage with them as opposed
to throwing up a flag. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's
a weird thing that we're doing right now with
words. This is a strange time where we're trying
to ban words, and we're trying to change the
meaning of words and eliminate nuance in conversations.
And again, we're doing it because of social justice,
right? And the people that use social media to
try to enact social justice, which really doesn't
change. It's not really getting anybody justice.
It's just getting the rocks off of these people
that enjoy complaining, and most of them really
should be doing something else. Most of the people
on Twitter should be doing something else. I
have radically reduced my amount of time on Twitter.
But every now and then, I open it up, and it's
like watching a fucking room that's five by five
filled with 400 chickens. And they're just squawking
at each other and pecking each other. It's like,
Jesus, this is horrible. It's so bad for your
mental health. It's just people arguing and dunking
on each other all day long. Even outside of that.
My roommate from med school, who's a urologist,
called me yesterday because he couldn't wait
to tell me this ridiculous story. So a colleague
of his, this female urologist who's a badass
surgeon, was giving a lecture to the medical
school, which is common, right? You'll always
have the surgeon will come in or the doctor will
come in. And before she got up to give her lecture,
the dean said to her, I'm not making. this up.
This is a urologist giving a lecture to a group
of medical students, said, I would appreciate
it if you would not use the word penis during
this lecture. He said it before the lecture?
Yeah. She said, it's an anatomic term. I'm a
urologist. What would you like me to say? And
he came up with some idiotic... Oh, he said,
maybe you could call it male erectile tissue.
And she was like, well, she's now fucking with
him. She's like, but what if it's flaccid? Wouldn't
the use of male also be kind of triggering in
that sense? I mean, good point. Yeah. I mean,
and she basically told him to piss off. And what
did this, this guy was the dean? The dean of
the medical school. And I assume he's a doctor
as well? He should be. Yeah, yeah. If he's the
dean of a medical school, he would be an MD.
What in the fuck is wrong with people? I don't
know. One of my favorite videos is there's a
communist meeting, a meeting of these student
communists, and they're... They're like criticizing
each other for various things. And one of them
gets up and tells everybody that please keep
the chatter to a minimum and be respectful for
people that are easily distracted. And then another
one gets up and they yell out to stop using gendered
language because he said, guys, can you guys
please do this? And so he gets up and says, can
you stop using gendered language? And it's just
like, you guys are like LARPers. It's like live
action role play. You're playing like you're
in a different dimension. Want to hear it? It's
hilarious. And to win socialism. Thank you so
much. Quick point of privilege. Quick point of
personal privilege. Guys, first of all, James
Jackson, Sacramento, he, him. I just want to
say, can we please keep the chatter to a minimum?
I'm one of the people who's very, very prone
to sensory overload. There's a lot of whispering
and chatter going on. It's making it very difficult
for me to focus. Please, can we just, I know
we're all fresh and ready to go, but can we please
just keep the chatter to a minimum? It's affecting
my ability to focus. Thank you. Thank you, comrade.
Okay, is there a speaker against name, chapter,
pronoun? Point of personal privilege. Yes. Please
do not use gendered language to address everyone.
And she calls everyone comrades, too. It is adorable.
These fucking kids are doomed. They're doomed.
They're all going to have to join the military.
There's no way to save them. Oh my God. It's
just so weird. It's like it happened so quick.
Yeah, that's the thing. I keep saying to myself,
where was the inflection point and how did I
miss it? Well, I didn't totally miss it because
I had a lot of people on that were, you know,
six years ago, seven years ago, giving me warnings
of like what's going on in the universities.
But I didn't think the spillover would be so
broad. that it would really make its way into
corporations. I thought there would be a barrier.
Yeah, because it would be a containment. Particularly
with corporations, because I thought they weren't
going to tolerate that shit because it's going
to affect their bottom line. But then they realized
that you can sort of do what Microsoft is doing,
placate. And play to the woke. And then it will
somehow or another help you financially. But
I don't think it does. You know, Apple's looking
pretty good after that fucking commercial. Which
one? I didn't. The Microsoft one. Oh, yeah, yeah.
The Squamish and the Chumash. Well, hey, just
wait. I'm sure they'll come up with their own
version. I don't think they will. I don't think
they'll go that far. I mean, they're pretty woke,
but they seem a little bit more reasonable. The
craziest thing is that all of this is coming
through devices that are made by slave labor.
At the end of the day, it's so hypocritical that
all these people tweeting about social justice
and all the wrongs of the world, you're doing
it on a fucking device that's made by child slaves.
Sorry. You want to buy an iPhone? You got to
get something that's essentially made by people
that are getting slave wages. They're working
16 hours a day in a building that has nets around
it to keep suicide people from jumping off the
roof. That's Foxconn. That's where they make
them. They don't make them here. They're not
making them in Ohio with folks that are in a
union that get paid great wages and benefits
and can take care of their families. Uh -uh.
No. No, we want to try to keep the bottom line
nice and low. So in order for you to tweet about
social justice, you have to do it on a device
that's made by people that are not much better
than slaves. Not more well off. They're really
not. It's fucked. It's crazy that there's no
outrage to that. Well, the outrage is silent.
That's the problem. I mean, we're all, you know.
I guess I should be more vocal about it. You
should be more vocal about it. Everybody should
be more vocal about it. Because there's no way
the majority of people are looking at this and
thinking it's reasonable. No, they're not. But
we're not doing enough about it. We're not doing
anything about it. Yeah. No one has made a push
to make a phone in America, unless there's something
I don't know about. Is there a phone made in
America? Let's see if there is a phone made in
America. I bet there is not one. I'm willing
to bet there's not one. And if it is, it's a
piece of shit. I heard Elon's thinking of making
a phone. There's some talk of a Tesla phone.
If that happens, he might be like the only one.
If Tesla does that, they might be the only ones
that could sway people from iPhones. Yeah, I
think you're right. Right? If anybody can, because
it's hard. Like Samsung has some amazing phones.
The cameras are incredible, but... People look
at that green text coming in, they're not doing
it. But if someone like Elon convinced people
to switch over to Signal, which is probably better
for everybody anyway, to have some peer -to -peer
encrypted application. Librem 5 USA. This is
a Linux phone, isn't it? Yes. Made in the USA.
Electronics with a secure supply chain. What
does that mean? Made with a secure supply chain.
What does that mean? If you want a smartphone
built outside China in the walled gardens of
Google and Apple, this may be for you according
to the register. So it's real? Yeah, I just Googled.
32 gigabytes. Get the fuck out of here. My phone
is a terabyte, you fucking idiots. There you
go. It's the equivalent of your flip phone. What
else is in there? It's for essential communications.
Scroll back up so I can see the stats. Look at
that. 5 .7 in screen. Okay, it's kind of small.
Three gigabytes of memory. Piss poor. 32 gigabytes
of storage. That's terrible. But 4 ,500 milliamp
battery is substantial. And replaceable. Ooh,
that's nice. The big battery is substantial,
but that probably means that it's not water resistant
if it's got a replaceable battery. Hmm. So Pure
OS is what it runs. It would be a phone. That's
made in America. According to this. Unless there's
some sneaky stuff, too. Well, what I'm worried
about is I think they said they used supply chain.
Yeah. Secure U .S. supply chain smartphone. You're
not saying what I want you to say. What I want
you to say is everything is made in America.
All fabrication and manufacturing done at. The
Purism facility. Fabrication and manufacturing.
Individual components used in the fabrication
are sourced direct from the chip market. That
means they're from other countries. We use U
.S. companies with U .S. fabrication whenever
possible. That doesn't mean it's from the U .S.
Most distributors are based in the U .S. Most,
with the exception of large integrated circuits
that are made in a variety of countries where
those companies do fabrication, U .S., Taiwan,
South Korea, Japan. Well, those companies, at
least those countries that they just listed,
aren't using slave labor. As an example of NXPCBU
used from their fabrication in South Korea. While
we source chips made from the U .S. wherever
possible, chip country of origin is not nearly
as meaningful as country of board fabrication,
especially when all chips are verified. Hardware
circuits that are driven by free software in
the kernel. Yeah, these kernel motherfuckers.
These Linux guys, they start talking kernel and
my eyes gloss over. There's a chip shortage too,
right? Yeah. Whatever that means. I don't know
exactly what that means. It means it's hard to
get a car. Yeah. Yeah, I had a friend who was
trying to buy a Ford Raptor. He couldn't get
one. Oh, yeah. I ordered my pickup truck. Wanted
to get one in a manual, so I had an old Tacoma,
gave it to my brother -in -law. You wanted to
get a pickup truck and a manual transmission?
There's only two that are still made. Who makes
it? Tacoma makes a limited edition Pro Sport.
And the Jeep pickup truck comes in a manual.
Oh, well, the Jeep kind of makes sense. I can't
believe Tacoma still does that. Why do you want
a manual pickup truck? I want my daughter to
be able to drive manual. Oh. And I just miss
driving manual. Really? I grew up driving manual.
you know, six years ago when all cars went to
dual clutch, like when sports cars went to dual
clutch, I basically get up. So I still drive
manual on the track, but I kind of miss it on
the road. And I, and I just, I do want my daughter
to drive a manual. I feel it'll keep her. Well,
also it'll like, you'll be texting less and screwing
around less. I hope so. Maybe not. But anyway,
the point is I ordered the thing like six months
ago and it's always like a month away. Yeah.
It'll be a month away for another year. Yeah,
I have manual cars. I have a bunch of manual
cars, but they're older cars. Like I have a 2007
Porsche GT3 RS. That's a manual. The Gunther
Works Porsche is a manual. I got a 70 Chevelle.
That's a manual. 69 Camaro. That's a manual.
I got a bunch of manual cars. That 69 Camaro
is a four -speed? No, it's a Restomod. It's a
six -speed with an 850 horsepower engine. The
07 GT3. Must be nice. Oh, it's fun. Yeah. It's
really fun. It's a Shark Works car, too. Oh,
yeah. Yeah. Great sound. It's got 518 horsepower.
Because of the exhaust, it's boosting it that
much? No, they bore it out to 3 .9 liters from
3 .6. Yeah, yeah. You know Shark Works? Of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I almost had it on mine. Oh,
really? Yeah. Yeah. They make awesome stuff.
They really – they're a big fan of manuals. They
don't really particularly like dual -clutch cars
either. So they particularly like like Gen 1
and – like 997, Gen 1 and Gen 2 RSs that you
could really juice up. Yeah. I mean, you know,
it's funny. I wanted to get a GT3 in the 992
.1, and the Porsche dealer here said – No problem.
We have an allocation. We can get you one. But
you're going to spend $75 ,000 over MSRP. And
I was like, wait a minute. You're going to charge
me. The dealer is going to charge me $75 ,000
over the MSRP? No chance. That's so much more.
Yeah. You can buy a 991 .2 RS for less. Yeah.
That's dumb. Yeah, I'll give you a taste. You
can get a taste. You get a little bit. You can't
ask for $75 ,000. That's just hoping that someone's
a rich asshole and they're just willing to throw
the money down to have it. But you can get them
from other states. I actually called three other
dealers and the lowest premium I was getting
was 40K over. Really? But I was just on principle.
I'm like, I'm not doing it. It's the same reason
there's certain watches I just won't buy because
I'm not willing to pay the premium over when
it's based on a false scarcity. Right, right.
It just irks me. The watch market is very weird
with that. There's some watches that you see
them and you're like, why is that $100 ,000?
Help me out. I have sold more watches in the
last few years just – and I'm wearing like a
$100 G -Shock that I love. Are you trying to
get away from the watch fetish? No, I mean I
have – Do you drink caffeine? Yeah, yeah. Kill
clip. No, I mean I think I just – I had too many
and I wouldn't wear them all and it just didn't
make sense. I still have a lot of old watches
that I really like, like kind of 60s, 50s watches.
Oh, really? You collect them? Yeah. What do you
got? What kind do you like? So I like Rolexes
in that vintage, right? So kind of the Daytona,
the no -date subs, and the GMTs in that first
iteration. So the gilt version, which is kind
of the yellow, like it has the brighter marks
on it. Yeah. So I got a few years ago. Before
they got really silly in pricing, a guy that
I work with, his name's Andrew Shear in New York,
who does just vintage Rolex. He calls me up.
And I had told him for about a year and a half
I wanted a certain, I wanted a Gilt 1675 GMT.
And I remember I was getting on a plane. I was
at Newark just leaving. And he goes, sends me
a picture. And I'm like, dude, that's like new
old stock. He goes, yeah. It was like some guy
bought it in Hong Kong in 1967. It sat in a shoebox
for. Till now. Wow. So it doesn't have any patina,
no fade, no nothing? It actually still has a
little bit of a patina just based on how old
it is, but it's in perfect condition. I love
that watch. You know what I don't like? And I
like some of the watches, but I don't like that
they're doing this. They're doing a faux patina
on some watches. It's so weird. Like I got the
Omega. I'm a big Omega fan. And I got the James
Bond, the No Time to Die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did
you get the one with the metal bracelet? Yeah.
Yeah, I just got that too. It's amazing. It's
a beautiful watch. I'm a big fan of their – I'm
actually wearing one of their dive watches. But
the – That one they use that faux patina, and
I'm like why did you do that? This is one thing
we kept it from being perfect. It's a beautiful
I love I love tropical dials, and that's what
makes that watch to me so beautiful tropical
I mean like that brown color. Oh, that's tropical.
Yeah, so tropical is like kind of one of the
most Sought -after thing in a Daytona if you
get it if you get an old Daytona with a tropical
face It's they're hard to find but really gorgeous.
Yeah, hmm why watches are weird because it's
like There's something about it that appeals
to men more than it does to women. I know there's
a lot of women that are watch collectors, but
it seems if I'm paying attention to the internet
and watching videos, it's a male -dominated jewelry
thing. Totally. Which is the only male -dominated
jewelry thing that I could ever really think
about. I don't think there's another one. Because
it's weird because it's a jewelry thing, but
it's also a mechanical thing. There's something
about the engineering of the devices. I think
that's why. It is our jewelry, but the mechanics
of it are beautiful. If you like Omega, which
I'm also very partial to Omega, the Ed White
re -release Speedmaster 321 caliber is unbelievable.
Which one's that? It's my favorite Omega. What
does it look like? I have a couple of Speedmasters.
So it looks just like a pretty regular Speedmaster,
except that it has the caliber 321, which was
the up to 1969 caliber. So this is the Moonwatch.
So after 1969, they discontinued the caliber
321 and they went to the caliber 1861, which
is what they basically rode up until a few years
ago. But the purist loves that 321. The problem
is if you go back and buy one from the 60s, I
have one. I have an old one as well. They're
not the most reliable in the world. They're hard
to service, you know, all sorts of things. So
when they redid this, they had to basically,
they didn't even have the original drawings for
it anymore. They had to go back and look at existing
watches and kind of extrapolate from the wear
in the existing watches to what the movement
did. Oh, wow. That's amazing. So they had to
back engineer it? Yep. Had to reverse engineer
it. Is that it right there? Yep. So there you
go. That's pretty. I love watching those little
things move around because you realize that they
figured this out in the 1800s. Yeah. Probably
even before, right, with pocket watches? Yeah.
When was the first pocket watch? That's a good
question. Let's take a guess before we Google
it. Jamie, what do you think? First pocket watch.
With mechanics that work like that? Yeah. Wind
up. They were all wind up ones. I'm going to
go old 15. No, let's say before that, so like
1450 -ish. Really? They had to use something
like that probably for maneuvering the oceans,
I'm guessing. I don't know. How would they even
agree to what time it was? I don't have any idea.
See, because, like, before they agreed to what
time it was, no one had a fucking clue, right?
They were using sundials and things like that.
There was a time in history where no one agreed
what time it was. Well, like, how was Big Ben?
Like, that's probably the first agreement, because
they're like, hey, that's the fucking time right
there. Right, that's a good point. Big Ben. I'm
going to guess Big Ben is from... 1800. All right.
I was not too far off. I'm going to go a little
earlier. Really? Okay, hit me with it. 1510.
1510 is the first watch? German watchmaker, Peter
Heinlein. So he's like, this is the time? It's
here. This is it. He's like just decided. He's
the first guy to decide what the time is because
everybody else is like, well, fuck you. I don't
think that's the time. Like you could decide,
right? If you go back to caveman days, there's
no time. And then as like no one has any idea
what the time it is. But as time moves forward
and we get closer and closer to modern era, there
had to come a point in time where they decided,
all right, this is what noon is. Right here.
Yeah. I love the way in which, like, how accurately
we can record time now, right? It's pretty wild.
With atomic clocks. That's kind of mind -boggling
to me. Is it confusing us, though? Because we're,
instead of looking at actual time, which is a
thing that's existing right now only, there is
the past and there is the future, but actual
real time is just this. You can measure how long
things take, but is it confusing us as to what
time actually is? Because what we're really doing
is measuring time on devices. We're measuring
seconds that go by, hours that go by, minutes
that go by. It's not giving you an excuse to
not be prompt, but it's really kind of bullshit.
Well, I don't know, but I will say this. Not
having a watch on feels great sometimes. Not
having a phone with you feels great. Being in
nature, like when you're hunting, I do wear a
watch, but only because I want to know where
we are in relation to sunup and sundown. But
outside of that, you have no care in the world.
You care about wind. You care about scent. You
care about other things. Did I tell you about
the mountain lion I saw? No. I didn't tell you.
When we were in Utah, I saw a giant mountain
lion. Fucking giant. Like, as big as me. It was
huge. It was huge. How far from you? We were
in a truck, luckily, and it was about 30 yards
away. My friend Colton spotted it. We were driving,
and he hits the brakes. He goes, that fucking
mountain lion. And I'm like, where? And then
I see its eyes, because it was starting to get
dark out, but it was still light, and its eyes
were glowing. and uh i put up the binoculars
to take a look at it like closer through the
windshield and i was like holy it was huge i
did not know they got that big They get to 200
pounds. The one that I saw previously, I saw
one in Santa Barbara, and it was probably like
70 pounds, 60 pounds. It was pretty small. And
then I saw another one in Colorado, but it was
so brief. It was hard to tell, and that one seemed
the same size. It seemed like a smaller juvenile
one. This was not a juvenile. This was a 100
% full -grown tom with a big old pumpkin head
and huge paws, and the forearms were wild. That
was the weirdest thing. His forearms were as
big as my thighs. I was like, fuck, look at this
fucking thing. It was just looking at us, you
know, and it was under a tree. And, you know,
we opened up the car door and tried to like get
film of it and look at it closer and it took
off. And it was so big. Because I was thinking
like if I was out there on my own, you know,
because people do that all the time. They hunt
solo and they don't carry a weapon. You know,
like Colton didn't have a weapon. I only had
a bow and arrow. And here's this giant ass fucking
cat. Like if we zigged when we should have zagged
and all of a sudden we're on top of this thing
and it decides to pounce on us. Fuck. That better
be a good tri -pin. Yeah. Did you see that video
of the guy who shot the mountain lion in the
face? No. Jamie. He's hunting, too. And he's
got a Glock out. And he's telling this mountain
lion, hey, back up, back up. And it's not even,
it's a smaller one, like a 90 -pound one. But
he's saying to it, hey, fuck off. Get out of
here. And then it makes a move on him. And he
drops his phone. You hear crack, crack. One shot.
One shot. And then you see the thing twitching
on the ground. It's got a bullet hole in its
face. Wow. Yeah. Doesn't have that gun. He's
fucked. Because occasionally they will jump on
people. And that's the situation this guy was
in. Like, look at this. Give me some volume.
Rewind it and give me the volume. Because when
it's looking at its face. You get back. Look
at that. You get back. You get back. You get
back. Back. No. No. Motherfucker. I just had
to shoot this f***ing mountain lion. It f***ing
pounced at me and I popped it in the f***ing
face. Holy s***. Holy s***. That is wild, right?
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. At least he's
got, like, 100 % proof of self -defense. I mean,
that thing was, like, 10 feet from him. Wow.
And apparently it went, look at that. That's
where he shot it, right through the face. Apparently
it was about to pounce. What do you do? You got
to do that, man. Yeah, but I don't bring a pistol
with me when I win. Oh, no. But, I mean, you
know, it's funny. I never thought about it except
if you're hunting boars, right? That's the one
time when you're like you have to have a gun
with you if you're shooting a boar. They will
charge you. Yeah. Yeah. And they'll charge you
if you hit them. They'll charge you if you don't
like if you're bow hunting. Yeah. I was watching
a show once where the guy was packing and he
shot a pig, a wild boar with a bow and arrow.
And it came charging full clip at him with the
arrow hanging out of its body. And he had to
shoot it. Speaking of shooting, this range down
the street from you is incredible. Which range?
Whatever, the Austin Gun Club. Oh, the range.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The range, the indoor range.
Yeah, it's great. Yeah, that place is really
good. Yeah, I just went there for the first time
today. Yeah, it's really good. Yeah, we have
a corporate membership there. It's nice. Everybody
can go go bang bang. It's good. It's like shooting
guns is something you really have to do on a
fairly regular basis. What do you think the frequency
is? It's not as frequent as archery. I mean,
archery, if I go two days without shooting my
bow, I notice a difference. Really? Yeah. Yeah.
What do you figure it is? Like, you got to do
it once a month, twice a month? I think once
a month is reasonable, as long as you really
do take time and you make a lot of shots and
you have good form and you're really paying attention
to what you're doing, you know? I think... There's
just too many people that have a gun and think
that they're safe, and they don't know how to
use it at all. They don't practice with it. It's
really kind of strange. You could just buy a
gun. You don't really have to have. To get a
concealed carry permit, you have to show competency,
but you don't really have to do that for a regular.
The first time I bought a gun was in 1994 when
I first moved to California, and I just walked
into a gun shop. And they said, I want to buy
a pistol. So I bought a Glock. I still own it.
And I paid for it. They did a background check.
I think it was like a few days. I got the gun.
That's it. You don't have to know shit. I mean,
I shot it at that range, but you don't really
have to know much. And when I shot it at the
range, nobody taught me how to shoot it. I just
shot it. I'm just like, okay, you put the bullets
here, and this is where the trigger is, and point
it down there. Okay, bang, bang, bang. And now
at least with YouTube, there are some people
out there putting really good content out where
you can, if you're a newbie, you can say, okay,
well, show me what's the right technique. What
are the mistakes that people make here and stuff
like that. But yeah, back in the day, I mean.
You really should get, I think you should get
one -on -one instruction if you can afford it.
I don't know how much it costs to get someone
to teach you how to shoot a gun correctly, but
someone should show you how to hold it. Place
your hand and where you should put the pressure
and which hand should be relaxed and how to line
your sights up correctly. That's something that's
a little tricky to do in a video, you know. For
me, the long range stuff is, I just bought an
Accuracy International 300 Norma Mag, like super,
super long range rifle. And for me, and it's
actually too big a gun for hunting. So it's not,
it's really, it serves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's
just a little too long. Like the long barrel?
It's just too heavy a gun to take into the field.
Amazing weapon for hunting because the .300 Norma
mag is a ridiculous caliber. Like that'll knock
an elk over if you hit it in the shoulder at
1 ,000 yards. Wow. This is a gun that you can
work your way out to shooting a mile, you know,
shooting a dinner plate at a mile, which is just,
again, that to me is the joy, right? Like that's
the fun is learning the wind and learning the
technique because it is in the sense like archery.
You know, in archery, if you can't control the
pressure of your hand on the riser. At 20 yards,
it doesn't matter, but at 80 yards, it matters
everything. And it's the same thing with those
guns. If you're not on the clavicle the right
way and your face is not on this the right way
and your trigger isn't pulling back perfectly,
all of that stuff just amplifies mistakes. So
for me, that's the most fun thing is those. Otherwise,
not particularly helpful long -range rifles.
Yeah, when you really get into archery, long
-range shows you where your mistakes are. I was
talking to Lee Lukosky, and he was saying that,
for people who don't know, Lee Lukosky is a very
famous bow hunter. And he was telling me that
if he shoots 100 arrows, 99 of them are at 100
yards. Wow. He says that's how you find out.
where your form is and he goes and that's how
it's repeatable because he shot an elk at a pretty
far distance this year and he was explaining
it to me he said i i have a whole process that
i do when i shoot In the field versus when I
shoot at a target, it's the same process. So
he just does exactly what he does at home, and
he's done it so many times that he's very confident
that if he does have an 80 -plus yard shot on
an elk that he can make it perfectly. What is
your comfort range in the field, not at home?
I've shot a lot of elk at 60 yards, 67 yards.
I shot one at 75 yards. That was the one in California,
right? Yeah. Yeah, that guy was bedded for a
while. Yeah, yeah. But I was relaxed and I'd
been shooting at 75 yards a lot. And I felt comfortable.
Like there was no wind. I was comfortable. And,
you know, an elk is a large target. If I was
going to shoot a deer, it'd be significantly
less. I shot an axis once at 69. It was a good
situation. He was 100 % broadside and not at
all jumpy. I mean, I had no clue I was there.
But in retrospect, I still think that's a bit.
I don't know that I would take that shot again.
69 doesn't leave you much margin for error on
a deer. They're not that big. They're so small.
The axis deer especially. Yeah, what do they
weigh, 120 pounds, like a big one? I mean, the
biggest one I've ever shot was 200. 200, really?
Yeah. He was a beast. Oh, wow. What island was
this? Maui. Oh, no kidding. I've never been hunting
on Maui. You got to come, man. I think it's 10
times better than lanai. Really? Why? The terrain.
You're up on the volcano, right? That makes sense.
Haleakala is, I mean, the density of deer is
not as high as lanai, of course, but the terrain
is insane. And the bucks are huge. Like there
are lots of 30 -inch bucks out there. Oh, wow.
Well, the density in lanai is almost like. Right.
It's like too many eyes on you. It's just too
weird. It's also too weird. I kind of feel like
you could just close your eyes and draw back
and launch into the sky and you might hit something.
You know? I mean, there's so many deer out there.
For people who don't know what Lanai is, it's
a very small island in the Hawaiian Islands chain
and it has 30 ,000 deer on it, which is so crazy
to say. Right. 3 ,000 people. That's right, and
Molokai has 70 ,000. What? It's crazy. That's
insane. Yeah, and Maui has the most, I believe,
but obviously it's a bigger island. Maui has
more than 70 ,000? I used to know the numbers
for each of the three islands, but I think Maui
might have like 100 ,000. Are they as jumpy in
Maui as they are in Lanai? Because in Lanai,
they're so pressured because they hunt them so
often. I mean, that's the funny thing with them.
Even when you're up in— In Haleakalā, they're
still jumpy, and I keep thinking, like, why?
They haven't been around humans, but their evolution
is so strong. You know, I guess when you spend
half a billion years getting away from... Tigers,
yeah. You don't turn that off in 50 years. No,
I mean, that is the fucking animal, right? If
there's one animal that you evolved to get away
from and you have to be fast, I mean, the way
they can jump a string is so crazy. Like the
bow goes off and they hear the sound, they're
gone. It's amazing. It's so weird to see them
move like that. It's like, how does... The central
nervous system must be just so fucking tight
and wired like a drum. They need some stress
management techniques. I know. But it's weird
because they seem so peaceful until that moment.
They're like immediate to 100. Yeah. Because
they don't seem jumpy until they jump. Yeah.
It's amazing. Well, it's like what else are they
going to do? This is the problem with Australia.
It's the problem with New Zealand. It's like.
In Australia, they've made giant mistakes with
that where they brought in other animals to try
to mitigate the number of this or that. And then
those animals wind up wiping out native populations
of nesting birds like cats, like feral cats in
Australia. It's a giant problem. What the axis
deer are doing in Hawaii is brutal for Hawaii.
It's crazy. It's just killing that state. And
what can they do other than hire people to shoot
them? I mean, at this point, you know, Jake Muse,
my friend who runs that company out there, that's
Maui, Nui, Venison, these guys that are making,
you know, commercializing. They have a USDA grade
commercial program for making axis deer. And
they're about as efficient as they get. He does
not think they're, they're not even going to
be able to flatten the population curve till
2030. Whoa. So it's going to continue growing
until 2030. Are they just making those venison
sticks? Are they selling steaks and roasts? Everything.
Chef's boxes, everything. Oh, that's great. How
does someone get a hold of that? Because that
is a great opportunity for you to get actual,
real, legitimate wild game. And it happens to
be one of the most delicious wild games. Yeah,
yeah. I mean, if you go to, I assume, and by
the way, I should just disclose, I'm an investor.
But Maui Nui Venison, I think you just order
online. How do you spell that? Maui. Nui, N -U
-I, venison. See if you could find that. Yeah,
see what, yeah. This is, I mean, I can't recommend
venison. from uh axis deer enough it is so delicious
okay so this is nice i usually like get boxes
for friends as a gift when they're getting when
they're being introduced to wild game i'm like
oh they have bone broth too dude it's insane
the bone broth is next level this is amazing
the company that we had do the analysis on the
protein content repeated the analysis twice because
they didn't believe how much protein it had in
it. 25 grams of protein in a fucking bone broth?
Yeah. Whoa. They were like, yeah, yeah, this
is 2x every other animal we've ever seen. There
must be a mistake. They just repeated it over
and over again. Look how delicious that must
be. Let me see that. I'll tell you, you use this
as your stock and make rice? It's insane. Oh,
nice. How much does that shit cost? I don't know.
Whoa, $125. For eight bags. Oh, eight bags. Oh,
15 ounces each. Oh, that's nice. I'm in. But
what's amazing about this, and I think this is
why it tastes so good, it tastes better than
when you and I shoot one. Because when you and
I shoot an axis deer, even if it's a perfect
shot, that animal still takes a minute to die.
In other words, there's still a minute of stress
in its life. Oh, and these guys, they headshot
them. They headshot them at night. So they're
using night vision. They're 200 yards away. Yep.
And the animals are so unstressed that if there's
like, they'll shoot a group. There'll be 12 of
them there, right? And they'll have the sniper.
He shoots one. Billy goes down. The other 11
don't even move. Wow. Yeah. Where'd Billy go?
I don't know. And the next guy gets it. At least
taking a nap. Yeah. Wow. And then they process
on site. So there's a USDA inspector with the
sniper for every single shot. Every carcass is
examined. It has to be a perfect kill. That's
a great way to get meat. It really is. If you
want to think about an ethical way for you to
consume meat, if you're one of those people that
doesn't want to buy factory farmed meat, get
some of that. I can't. I mean, next to hunting,
that is about as good as you can get. Do you
find your taste for... Like non wild game has
gone down well when I eat a fatty piece of domestic
beef I think if it's like a sloppy lazy person
like I'm like you know I mean like if I see an
athlete and Then I go wow that guy looks like
he's in shape, and then I see a sloppy lazy person
like I just I just find that like And, again,
we're lucky, right? We get to hunt these animals.
We get to eat the elk. We get to eat the axis
deer. These are, you know, along with maybe pronghorn
and a few others, this is about as tasty as it
gets. But, boy, I find that even a really nice
ribeye just doesn't taste as good as it did to
me five years ago. Yeah. Well, it's missing a
lot of nutrition. It's not – if you look at the
dark red meat of elk, like elk, like a backstrap
from elk is a – Dark, red, like I took a photo
a couple days ago of some backstrap from the
elk I shot in California this year. I just cooked
it up. This was your 415? Yeah, that giant one.
Amazing. Yeah, it was huge. This is so much meat.
What I do is I'll cook a bunch of pieces like
that, and then I'll eat it throughout the week.
How did you prep that? Did you do that on the
Traeger? Yes. I cook it on a Traeger at 265 degrees.
I've tried a bunch of – the reason why it's blackened
on the outside is I'm using a rub called Traeger
Saskatchewan. I think it's blackened Saskatchewan
rub. That's one of my favorites. Yeah, it's my
favorite for elk. And so that's not like burnt
on the outside. That's the actual rub itself.
So I take it and I bring the internal temperature
up to 120 degrees and then I sear the outside
on a cast iron pan. I usually do maybe a minute
and a half on a really hot. cast iron pan with
beef tallow. I use grass -fed beef tallow. And
then I pull it, I let it rest, I slice it, and
then my family, we ate a lot of it, and then
the rest of it I put in like a Tupperware, and
then I'll eat it throughout the week. Because
in the morning, it's hard for me to get everything
in, all the stuff that I do and work out, and
then I'm pretty religious about my sauna and
cold plunge. So I'm doing – I have to allocate
40 minutes to that. And so between my workouts
and everything and I'm getting up at 7 in the
morning and then I'm out here doing the podcast,
I got to get everything in. So I want a meal
that I can just pull out of the fridge and in
10 minutes I'm done. Sit down, eat it, take my
vitamins, go. And so that's my move. I mean elk
is absolutely bananas. I also like it with –
I use – Do you ever use any of Mark Sisson's
stuff, his Primal Kitchen stuff? I know my kids
love his mayo. Yes. The avocado mayo, I think
it is. That's exactly what I was going to talk
about. He's got this chipotle avocado mayo, and
it's all avocado oil, and it's like a chipotle
pepper. seasoning to it and I just take some
of that and I put a like a fucking pile of it
on the plate and I dip the elk in that so I'm
getting my fats that way because you're not really
getting much fat yeah it's no fat there's no
fat in it that's the only thing that's missing
from wild game is the fat content so you got
to get your fat content from somewhere else and
um I'm changing my diet a lot lately and uh I've
basically decided that My love for pasta and
my love for bread and sugar, it's not worth it.
Like when I go long stretches of time without
eating that stuff and then I eat it, the impact
is so tangible. It's so obvious. But it's so
casual when you eat it all the time. When you
eat it all the time, you're always eating bread.
You're always eating pasta. It's like you're
used to feeling like shit. But if you go like
three or four weeks with just eating like – I'll
eat like potatoes, tubers. I'll eat meat. I'll
eat salads. I like salads with – I almost always
just have olive oil and some sort of a vinaigrette,
some sort of vinegar. And when I eat like that,
I feel so much better. So I've decided like I'm
not going to eat any other way anymore. Like,
I will give myself, like, one cheat meal a week.
But the rest of the week, I'm not eating like
that. Like, last night, somebody brought cheeseburgers
from Golden Tiger to the show at the Vulcan,
and I was like, I'm not eating that. I'm not
eating it. Did you do a similar set to the one
a couple weeks ago that I saw? Yes. It's insane.
Thank you. You know, to this day, my wife and
I still make some of those. I don't want to let
any of the jokes out, but you know the one I'm
talking about. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Once a day,
we make that joke. It's because this is a set
that's essentially, well, there's some new stuff
in it because there's a lot of COVID stuff, but
it's basically like the really strong bits are.
two and a half years old because usually they
would have been on a special by now but because
of covid because covid everybody's tour schedule
up and everything just got really polished and
tight dude i don't know if you could hear me
but i was I was literally embarrassing myself
how much I was cackling in the back there. That's
a great room, too. The Vulcan Gas Company on
6th Street. It's a great room. Hey, speaking
of, did you end up getting that comedy club?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't say anything, though.
I haven't announced where it is or what it is,
but yeah, I got that. The one in Santa Barbara.
No. No, I'm kidding. No, it's on the moon. Yeah.
No, I did. I'm excited. I'll show you. I'm taking
Ron White on a tour of it this afternoon if you
want to come. I'd love to see it, man. That's
awesome. You have the best backyard range I've
ever seen ever. Dude, it just got better, too.
How did it get better? I just bought more. Peter
has this range in his backyard because Peter's
an archery nut like me, and he basically has
a professional archery range in your backyard.
It's like you have hundreds of yards to shoot.
Well, we just bought the lot next to us, so now
it's like we could literally set up a tack. Oh,
wow. Yeah. And so what I've done now is I got
now elk in the woods. That's what makes it better.
So now when I was preparing for the elk hunt
this year, I was doing most of my shooting was
in between trees. Trying to build my confidence
at if you want to shoot something 50 yards away,
but you got two trees like this and a branch
going like this. Right. Now you've got to, you
have to judge like, well, can I make that shot
because of the arc of the arrow? Do you have
a full draw for? I do. You do? Those are the
shit. The Leupold has, for people that don't
know what we're talking about, Leupold has a
range finder that you put in the weight of your
arrow, the weight of the bow, the length of your
peep sight, everything. You have to put in everything.
Is it a peep sight? Is that calculated in? I
think it's peep height elevation. Yeah? Yep.
Okay. So you calculate all those things and it
will literally show you. how high your arrow
will be at the peak. So if you range something,
which is what you do, and you dial it in on your
site, it'll show you if you're going to hit a
branch or not. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. It is.
And they really took care of me because I had
the, I don't know which one. I had one that came
out a few years earlier and it was okay. And
then it just stopped working one day. It literally
wouldn't, it would only range something that
was perfectly dark. But anything that had even
a... Bit of brown in it, wouldn't range. And
I sent it back to them and I was like, hey, can
you guys fix it? And they're like, they just
sent me a full draw four, no charge. Wow. Which
is like, I mean, that's a really expensive range
finder. It's kind of wild that someone figured
out that you could shoot a laser at something
and then it'll report back to you how far that
laser is touching something. Well, I mean, that's
amazing. But the fact that they can just do angle
compensation is awesome. Yeah. Yeah, for people
who don't know what we're talking about because
we went into the full archery nerd mode. Angle
compensation means if you are shooting 50 yards,
right, if the object is 50 yards, but it's 50
yards uphill. you will really be shooting more
for like, you're probably 57 yards. You have
to, because you're fighting against gravity.
And if you're shooting downhill 50 yards, you're
really probably shooting 20 yards because you
have no problem with gravity. It's non -existent.
So you have to use an angle compensating range
finder that tells you based on how you're turning.
the rangefinder, which direction it's going,
whether or not you need to add or subtract yards.
And it does it all internally. It calculates
everything. And the first shot I ever took in
my life at an animal went a foot over his back
because I had been doing all my practicing with
a compensated rangefinder. And this was out in
Molokai. And it was an axis deer. My guide is
behind me and he ranges it, but he is using an
old school range finder that doesn't have angle
compensation. What? Yeah. How is he doing that?
Because he's old school. That's dumb. So this
animal was probably 20 degrees down. Right. So
I just took the distance and assumed it was compensated
for and shot. And I was like, that was a perfect
shot. Why did it go a foot over that animal?
Yeah. And I was like. Let me see that range finder.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then I realized, I said, Wayne,
you don't have angle compensation on here. He's
like, no. I was like, hey, from now on, can you
hold my range finder? Yeah, the amount of technology
that's involved in bow hunting and just hunting
in general now. I mean, people have watches that
have GPS on them. And, you know, you could put
waypoints and you could track on your phone exactly
where the hit was. And then, you know, from there
on, you could mark where each drop of blood you
find is. So I learned something last year that
blew my mind. My wife, as a gift, got me a framed
picture of Matthew McPherson's patent for the
compound bow. And I was like, oh, this is so
beautiful. So it hangs up in my, you know, my
archery room. But here's the thing that blew
my mind. What year do you think that patent was?
I kind of gave it away because I told you it
was Matthew McPherson. So, you know, I don't
know who he is. So you didn't give it away. Compound
bow. I've seen some old shitty ones and they
look like they're from the 60s. So I'm going
to say 55. Yeah, that's what I guess. It's 87.
Whoa. Really? Yeah. The patent for the compound
bow is 1987. Wow. That's amazing when you think
of how far that, yeah, there it is. That's it?
There it is. So you got that at your house? Yep.
What kind of a fucking wizard figured out a cam
for a bow like that and figured out all those
strings? Dude, I think it's the same guy who
makes Matthew's bows. Really? Yeah. Isn't that
who Matthew McPherson is? It must be Matthew's.
So that's the original bow. Yeah. They still
make one of the best bows in the world right
now. You ever shot one of them? I have never
shot one, but it looks amazing. They're amazing.
Just such a perfect hunting bow, such a short
axis, so compact. Yeah, the new ones are incredible.
Shane Dorian shoots with one. He loves it. He
was telling me how incredible it is. There's
so many bows now that are just top of the food
chain. It's like I just got the new PSE. That's
the carbon fiber one I was telling you about.
It's incredible. It doesn't even – it feels so
light. It feels fake. It's weird. When I go back
and shoot my RX3, which is only three years old,
it feels horrible compared to my NTN. Isn't that
crazy? The cam is so miserable to me. So, yeah.
We alienated a lot of people with this podcast.
I bring on a doctor. He wants to talk about bow
cams. All right. We're done with that. We can
talk about anything. I don't give a fuck. It
doesn't bother me. Is there any new information
in the world of longevity and the world of health
or anything that you know of that is exciting?
I mean, two extremes, right? I think on the one
end – Tell everybody what kind of medicine you
practice just so they know. Oh, so I mean my
practice is basically trying to figure out how
to help people live with a greater lifespan.
So how do you add – 10, 15 years to how long
a person's going to live and then how do you
improve health span? So how do you improve? And
your degree is in what kind of medicine? So I
did surgical oncology. I did general surgery
and oncology. But I left medicine in 2006 and
went, you know, did finance and other stuff and
completely went away from it until I kind of
came back to it about 10 years ago. Why did you
leave it? I mean, truthfully, I was super frustrated.
In cancer surgery, you're doing kind of like
very heroic operations. I mean, the most technically
challenging types of operations. But half the
people still die, right? So 50 % of people who
are going to have surgery, and in some cases
more, if you're talking about pancreatic cancer,
80 % of the people whose pancreas gets removed
for cancer are going to be dead in five years.
Wow. So, you know, I just I just felt like in
all in all regards, I just felt like there wasn't
enough in the way of prevention. And in some
ways that is necessary. I mean, because I trained
at Hopkins, which is in the inner city, it's
a lot of trauma surgery. So every third night
for five years, you're taking care of gunshot
wounds. And we had so many. I mean, Baltimore
averaged at Hopkins. We averaged at the time.
I don't know what it's like today. At the time,
it was 16 penetrating traumas a day. So 16 gunshot
wounds or stab wounds a day. So as a trainee,
that's amazing, right? Like that's what you're
there for. That's why I went specifically to
that program was to be able to learn to operate
on people who are shot or stabbed. But, you know,
it does take its toll on you, right? You just
feel like there's no end to this. Like, I mean,
it's a war zone out there. And, yeah, I mean,
I remember there were times when, you know, you'd
be a part of like. heroic rescue of somebody
and they go out the door and they come back a
week later with a gunshot wound to the head and
they're dead. And you're like, ugh. I mean, come
on. So yeah, I was just frustrated with everything
in medicine when I left. I was super pissed.
My wife was like, you know, you bitch and moan
about this so much. I think you have two choices.
You should either fix it or leave. And I was
like, well, I can't fix it, so I'm leaving. Um,
so I left and joined a company called McKinsey
and was recruited there to do healthcare, but
ended up because my background's in math doing
credit risk. And this was right as this was like
the two years building up to the mortgage meltdown.
So that became my day job and my night job. I
mean, that was all consuming for two years. What
was your night job? No, meaning like we worked
24 -7. I would run a team of analysts in India
during the night and then a team in San Francisco
during the day. And all day, all night, we were
kind of trying to basically figure out how bad
this thing was going to be. So you saw it coming?
Oh, yeah. How far out? So by August of 2007,
it was clear that the prime market was going
to implode. And I still remember the day, Thursday,
November 15th, 2007, is when I had a sense of
what the magnitude was going to be. The thing
I didn't know was when. I knew it was going to
be the next 18 months, but it wasn't like I could
say in September, which is when it ended up happening,
right? It was 10 months later. I couldn't say
in September the bottom is going to fall out.
Was there anything that could have been done
that would have mitigated the impact on? The
economy and society and repossessions. Yeah,
I mean that's a really good question because
at the time in November of 07, we – and I want
to also be clear. The reason we knew with such
clarity how bad this was is we had a client.
Our client was the largest – I guess I could
– probably the largest U .S. home lender in prime
real estate. And we had all the data. So we're
able to see stuff that's not publicly available.
But they didn't see it. But when we went back
and looked at the analysis, we figured out that
starting in 2004, starting in the second quarter
of 2004, every loan that was being originated
was behaving differently than the entire history
of mortgages. So this is a really interesting
analysis. It's called a vintage analysis. If
you bundle mortgages together and look at how
they behave, for all of time, they behave in
a certain way. For about the first 18 months,
none of them default. So 18 months after a person
buys a house, historically, there's no chance
of default. Then defaults start to rise. And
they rise for about the next two to three years.
And then they never default again. So the vintage
curve looks like this. This is cumulative loss
rate. So what's the reason for that? So the reason
nobody defaults in the first 18 months. is because
historically, you really make sure that the person
who you're selling a house to or giving a loan
to can afford it. You do a really extensive background
check on them. And if something's going to go
wrong, it's unlikely to go wrong in that first
18 months because of how much you've documented
their income and employment and stuff like that.
Then you get into an area where some people are
going to default. And then the reason three,
four years out, there's no more defaulting is
because by that point, people have enough equity
in their home that if they run into trouble,
they can always sell the home and the bank gets
their money back. So again, you go back in time,
every vintage curve for every single mortgage
looked like this. Really boring. We went back
and plotted all the vintage curves going back
to the year 2000, and they all looked doo, doo,
doo, doo, doo, doo. And then in Q2 2004, so you
plot these in three -month vintages, they started
doing this. Explain to people that are just listening.
Meaning they started to, instead of going up
and then flat again, they just kept going up
and up and up and up and up. But they actually
did it at an exponential rate. So they didn't
just go up straight. They would go. up exponentially.
In other words, there was no end in sight to
the explosion of losses. So the losses started
happening immediately and they never slowed down.
They accelerated with time. So this is looking
at a chain reaction. And this was one of five
models that we built to try to understand what
was going on. And they all pointed in the same
direction, which was catastrophic outcomes, basically
for loans that became originated after 2004.
So by the time we're in 2007, when we show all
this data to them, obviously they didn't believe
it, right? They said – well, because the punchline
was horrible. The punchline was you're going
to lose more in the next 18 months than you've
made in the last 10 years. And that was like
– they were like, that's not possible. And I
had to be the one to tell the head of the bank,
right? Because – and even though I was only like
– There's a hierarchy at McKinsey. There's like
senior partners, junior partners. And I was just
like a lowly manager who ran the analysts. And
the senior partner would normally be the one
to present such an outrageous finding to the
board of a bank. But he was like, you should
present this. And I said, why? And he goes, well,
you. You understand the technical details of
the model better. And also, you used to be a
cancer surgeon, so you're used to giving bad
news. I think this is not going to go very well.
So you do this. And it did not go well. It was
not well received. They could have done something.
Yes, they absolutely could have done something.
It wouldn't have stopped all the damage, but
it would have minimized the damage. Because remember,
there was still another. 10 months of horrible
loans being originated, horrible loans being
securitized, and they were mispriced. I mean,
ultimately, that's the problem with this, is
it was just a mispricing game. They didn't know
how to price the risk of the loans they were
making. And how many people were predicting this
the way you were? Well, look, a lot of people
way smarter than me were predicting it. Remember,
I was an idiot. All I knew was how bad this was.
I had no clue how one could make money off this
because I wasn't thinking about it through that
lens. Oh, I see. Some folks were. Yeah, if you
saw The Big Short. Did you ever see that movie?
No, I did not. Oh, so I think it's called The
Big Short, right? Is that it, Jamie? Yeah. Great
movie because it was actually very accurate.
Who's in that movie? Christian Bale plays the
guy. That's right. Kind of found the stuff. A
lot of people are into Steve Carell. Brad Pitt
was in it, if I recall. It was a really good
movie. It was actually super accurate in terms
of describing what was going on. And I remember
when it came out, I was able to finally explain
to my wife why we weren't billionaires. Because
she was always like, dude, you knew this was
happening, and yet why do I hear about guys like
John Paulson and all these hedge fund guys that
made $3 billion on this? And I said... Ah, this
movie will explain why. If you know this is happening
and the only instrument you have in your mind
to make money on it is shorting equities, you
can't make money. Right. In other words, and
by the way, ethically, I couldn't have done this
because I had inside data. I couldn't have done
anything with that information. But let's just
assume that I could have shorted all the other
companies. You couldn't have done anything legally
or ethically according to your own feeling and
standards? Certainly not ethically. I don't know
about legally. But I could never have shorted
this company that I knew inside and out. But
I could have shorted others. But even still,
I wouldn't have made a lot of money because,
one, shorting equities is really expensive when
you don't know when the shoe is going to fall.
Because you have to make a margin call over and
over and over again. It's not leveraged. Right.
What these brilliant guys did was they figured
out that they could short an option on what was
going to happen. They could basically short an
insurance contract. And that was super cheap.
You're leveraged a thousand to one at this point,
meaning you only have to put a dollar at risk
to get a thousand dollars back. on something
you know is going to happen. And you don't have
to really concern yourself with exactly when
it's going to happen, at least not in the same
cost inefficient way that you have to with equities.
So that's what Michael Burry is the guy's name,
by the way, that Christian Bale played. That's
what the Michael Burrys of the world did. And
there were a handful of these guys that were
like, we're going to make up these contracts.
So they went to banks and said, I want you to
sell me a contract that says this thing is going
to happen. And the banks were like, Wait, you
want me to sell you a contract that's saying
mortgage defaults are going to go up? We'll do
that all day because that's never happened before.
Happily. Happily, I'll sell you that contract.
And they price them horribly, meaning in favor
of the traders. Right. Yeah. Wow. It's such a
complicated world. And I don't know how else
you would sell houses to people unless they had
enough money to just pay cash for a house, which
nobody does. How else would you sell a house
to people? No, I mean, look, it's sort of funny.
When the whole thing blew up, people said, well,
this is because interest rates have been too
low for too long. So Alan Greenspan became the
very convenient bad guy for all of this. And
it's true. Interest rates were a little bit too
low for too long. But we know today that that's
categorically not the thing that drove it. Low
interest rates are simply the oxygen that's necessary
for a fire. But we're sitting in a room right
now with lots of oxygen. There's no fire going
on. Clearly, oxygen is not the root cause of
the problem. The root cause of the problem was
the absolutely inept lending standards. What
fostered it was the ability to securitize loans.
So once you could make a horrible loan and you
didn't have to live with it on your books, you
could actually sell it to someone else who didn't
understand what you were selling, then it just
became out of control. It was a scary time because
it was also a scary time where we were really
worried that banks were going to fail. And there
was a lot of people that were saying, let them
fail. The banks should fail because we shouldn't
prop up these banks. And meanwhile, these people
that are these CEOs, they're going to give themselves
bonuses. Which is so insane. Like, even though
they lost all this money and they had to be bailed
out by the government, these people still got
bonuses. And I was like, explain to me why they
get bonuses. They're like, well, these people
are very talented and they don't give them bonuses.
They're going to go somewhere where they do get
bonuses. I'm like, what the fuck does that mean?
Like, you guys are a bunch of crooks. Like, how
did you rig this thing where you fail miserably
and yet you still get a bonus? I thought you
only get a bonus if you're successful. Yeah.
And you got a bonus from... taxpayer money? But
then someone explained to me that the banks paid
those loans back quite quickly. Is that true?
It is. The TARP program made money for the government.
So the government extracted a pound of flesh
on those loans. So the people that said that
we should have just let the banks fail, that's
not correct. In my opinion, that is not correct.
The collateral damage of that would have been
devastating. But your other point is also notable.
So let's not confound two things. So if you let
the banks fail, everything goes to hell in a
handbasket. You have a recession that rivals
that of 1929. That's a bad scenario. The way
that the TARP program was engineered was to prevent
that from happening. But also it wasn't a gift.
It was you're going to pay these loans back,
which they did. But there still, in my opinion,
could have been and should have been more clauses
in that program that permitted some of the really
flagrant abuses that came down the line, like
the AIG guys getting bonuses that they probably
shouldn't have got. In other words, I think the
government basically made the argument, which
was, well, if we don't pay these people, they're
not going to stick around and we need them to
clean up this mess. And my view is I bet enough
good people would have stuck around without having.
to pay so many people so much. And by the way,
the people that really needed the bonuses were
not the CEOs. Like they're not the ones doing
the work. Right. Right. Yeah. And so you do this
and how do you change? Oh yeah. So, so yeah.
So basically actually everything for me changed
when my daughter was born. So my daughter was
born 13 years ago and I'm 35 and I mean, I'm
sure you can relate to this, but at least for
me, that was the moment when I first cared about
living longer. I just, it was the first moment
I had a thought beyond myself and thought like,
oh my God. I remember when my wife was pregnant,
I was like not that excited about it. I was kind
of like, we had a cat at the time and I loved
this cat. And I remember saying to my wife, I'm
like, I don't know if I'm going to love our daughter
as much as I love Midnight, our little cat. My
wife was like, are you crazy? And of course,
the second Olivia was born, I was like obsessed
with her. And then I was like, I got to figure
this out because every male in my family has
died of heart disease except one. Really? I have
horrible genes for heart disease. What causes
heart disease genetically? Like, what is it?
Well, the most common genetic driver of heart
disease is something called LP little a. So one
in about 10 people, somewhere between one in
eight and one in 12. So call it one in 10 people.
10 % of people have a gene called LPA that makes
too much of this. lipoprotein called LpA, which
you've heard of LDL, right? So LDL is this atherogenic
lipoprotein. LpA is an LDL that has another protein
wrapped on it called ApoA, and it makes it much
worse. So the single most common genetic The
single most common hereditary driver of cardiovascular
disease is elevated LP little a. And the tragic
thing is most doctors don't even know what it
is. So this is one of the things I have more
podcasts on this topic than any other because
it's inexcusable to me that a patient doesn't
know that they have elevated LP little a. This
is a screening test we should do on children.
So that's number one. After that, it gets much
more complicated. Heart disease is wildly polygenic.
So LPA is one rare example that's not polygenic,
meaning there is just one gene that drives LPA.
But when you start to get into something like
familial hypercholesterolemia, which is also
kind of common, that's any set of genes. And
there are over 3 ,000 mutations that produce
elevated LDL through one form or another. That
becomes another huge driver of genetic inheritance.
But what's scary, at least for someone like me,
is It's really clear when you look at my family
history, heart disease is a problem. I don't
have anything recognizable, meaning I don't have
LP little a, I don't have familial hypercholesterolemia.
I don't have any of the few known genes that
are really driving this. My cholesterol levels
were never really that heavy to begin with. My
LDL, which is kind of an irrelevant, stupid metric
anyway, but even if you looked at my ApoB, which
is the metric you're supposed to be looking at,
was never through the roof. But when I was 35,
I went and had a calcium scan. So it's a CT scan,
looks at your heart. And I had a score of six.
Now six is not a high number on a calcium scan,
but when you're 35, that places you at the 90th
percentile. So that was like the, I got to figure
this shit out. I'm going to devote the rest of
my life to understanding how to not die of heart
disease. And then ultimately, so my first focus
became an obsession with cardiovascular disease,
which lasted about four years. And then I realized
like, well, there's no benefit in not dying of
cardiovascular disease if you're going to still
die of cancer or dementia or something like that.
So then my obsession and interest just expanded
through all of that. What did you do to keep
yourself from being at the risk of dying from
cardiovascular disease? Well, I mean, it came
down to reverse engineering what is driving cardiovascular
disease, which is the most ubiquitous killer,
right? So there's no developed nation for which
cardiovascular disease isn't the number one killer.
Really? Yeah. So hands down. Only developed nations.
Yeah. Once you get out of developed nations,
infections and other things sort of start to
overcome that. Do they suffer from cardiovascular
diseases when you're dealing with tribal communities?
Yeah, definitely not to the same extent. What's
the factor? Well, I mean, I think there's a couple
things, right? One could be they're not living
as long, so we're not seeing it as much. And
we don't really have great autopsy data on people
who are dying in their 40s and 50s from infections
and other things like that. But, you know, it
could be, you know, that obviously they just
don't have the same toxins in their food system
that we do, right? They're probably not eating
half the refined crap that we eat. Yeah, that's
what I was going to get to. Like how much of
an impact do you think that stuff does have?
I think it has a significant impact for sure.
Yeah. So atherosclerosis is really driven by
lipoproteins first and foremost. So anything
that carries this ApoB protein on it, so that's
an LDL, an LP little a, a VLDL, that's the synquanon.
That is the necessary but not sufficient element
to drive atherosclerosis. Anything that impairs
endothelial function, so high blood pressure,
high glucose, high insulin, high homocysteine,
all that stuff, problematic. Anything that amplifies
inflammation. So basically I just said, okay,
we're just going to take a no holds barred approach
to addressing all of those things. And that's
why I sit here today and I can say, look, between
now and when I'm 60, the one thing I know I'm
not going to die of is atherosclerosis. I would
say that in the next 10 years, my greatest risk
of death is motor vehicle accident and cancer.
Those would be the two hardest things to mitigate.
Now, why is it so difficult to mitigate cancer?
Well, for one, of the big diseases, it's the
one for which I think we have the least idea
of what the risk factors are. So the big three
in terms of death is atherosclerosis, cancer,
and neurodegeneration. With cancer, it's also
very polygenic. What's that mean? Lots of genes
are involved. So if I did a genetic test, if
I had your entire genome in front of me, it wouldn't
tell me much about your risk for cancer. So the
genes that are driving it are also not germline.
They're somatic, meaning they're inherited mutations.
So one of the few things we know about cancer
is the earlier you can detect it, the better.
That's a truism that is becoming almost impossible
to argue. So you're always better off finding
a cancer when you have 100 million cells that
are cancerous versus... 10 billion cells that
are cancerous. And our tools for screening are
somewhat limited. Now, they're getting better.
So to your question earlier, what's one of the
things I'm excited about? I think liquid biopsies
are something in the last year that we have become
very excited about. So all of our patients get
these things called liquid biopsies, which is
a blood test that measures something called cell
-free DNA. So we're looking for tumor DNA in
the bloodstream. So meaning at very low levels.
of tumor burden, you can still pick it up by
getting some of this cell -free DNA floating
around your bloodstream. So it's literally like
you take a tube of blood and you can say, oh,
there's actually like some pancreatic cancer
here or some colon cancer here or breast cancer
here. And then you go looking for that cancer.
Wow. Because there are false positives, of course,
when you do these things. So you can't think
of screening as just one thing you do. It's got
to be layered, kind of like a Swiss cheese approach.
You want to have as many pieces of Swiss cheese
lined up as possible so that one and only one
pencil fits through the hole. And you know you
get a signal with your cancer detection. So this
one test just from a tube of blood, how new is
this? I don't even know if it's technically approved
yet. I know that we're doing it. Certain physicians
are being allowed to do it in the context of
having a very comprehensive approach to follow
up with patients. So because our patients are
doing it in the context of a billion other things,
so there's not as much of a concern from the
part of the FDA. But I don't think this is fully
FDA approved yet. But it's very recent. We've
been doing it only six months. Wow. I mean, I
did mine in April. I was probably one of the
first people to do it. Did you get nervous? I
mean, no. I mean, I was kind of like, look, it's
so much more important to me to know I have cancer
than to put my head in the sand and not know.
Right. Right. Of course. But every time I go
and get this diffusion -weighted image MRI, which
is this very particular type of MRI that's uniquely
tuned to detect cancer and getting a blood test
like this or getting a colonoscopy, which I'm
very aggressive with, all of these things, yeah,
there's always a moment of just let me come out
clean. Yeah. God. So you have these concerns
about longevity. You have these concerns about
cardiovascular health and cancer. And so what
prompts you to start your practice and re -emerge
into medicine? I just – there was nothing else
I could think about. Like at the time, I had
left that one company where I was doing all the
energy stuff or where I was doing all the finance
stuff and I went to join an energy company. So
now I was like working on like a renewable form
of oil. So – and it was really – Renewable form
of oil? Yeah. So this is a company that was using
– we were using algae and genetically programming
the algae to spit out a fungible form of oil.
Wow. So meaning it would produce a distillate,
a cut of distillate that could be refined into
gasoline and jet fuel. Whoa. From algae? Yeah.
How effective is that? Well, ultimately it could
not be done at cost. I mean, I left after four
years. That company went on for another four
years, but it just couldn't be done at the price
of where oil was, which at the time was like
50 bucks a barrel. I wanted to talk to you about,
this is a little bit of a deviation, but it's
not really. I wanted to talk to you about Theranos
because I am fucking completely obsessed with
that lady and her scam company. Dude, did you
know that I was almost the chief medical officer
of that company? No. Yeah, dude. So in 2006,
my McKinsey office, which was in Palo Alto, was
on the same – was on Page Mill, which was one
street over from where Theranos was located.
So Theranos at the time was a super small company.
So a good friend of mine, his father -in -law
was on the board and knew Elizabeth Holmes very
well. He was her professor at Stanford. And the
company was small at that time. It was like maybe
30 people there, something like that. And he
said, look, I want you, my friend, to potentially
look at this company because they could really
use a CFO. And he was in private equity at the
time, really smart guy. And to make it long story
short, I got introduced to Elizabeth. So I went
down and had lunch with her one day. Did you
ever catch her talking in her real voice? You
know, it's so funny. I don't remember. I met
her. later and she already had the fake voice
but I can't remember that day what her voice
was like I wish I could remember but you know
it's like 15 years ago right I would remember
if it was weird like I don't think I don't think
it was I think it must have been talked like
this I would say what is going on yeah yeah have
you had throat cancer I don't I don't what are
you doing I think she was must she must have
been talking a normal voice but here's what interested
me I sat down in the office and she pulled out
a black box that was I don't know if it was called
Edison at the time or if it was the precursor
to what would become Edison Diagnostics is not
something I knew a ton about, but I'd spent two
years at the NIH, and I certainly understand
how chemical reagents work, and I understand
how chemical assays work. And I know how, for
example, an ELISA works. An ELISA is a type of
assay that you do to measure something, but it
requires a lot of washing and rinsing and repeating.
And I know that many biomarkers that are of interest,
for example, something like insulin, if you want
to measure a person's insulin level, you have
to do these types of assays, right? So I was
saying to her, you know, Elizabeth, I don't understand
how you could put a drop of blood in here and
get anything out that's more interesting than
glucose, hemoglobin, sodium, and potassium, the
really simple things that can work, you know,
that can be measured off a drop of blood. And
she kind of gave me some answer. And I said,
well, can I see the inside of the box? And she
said, absolutely not. And I said, well, I've
signed an NDA, you know, I had to sign an NDA
to get in the building. So she was like, no.
So I just decided I wasn't interested in the
company because I couldn't get sort of straight
answers from her. So I ended up not doing it.
So fast forward to 20, this was 2006. Fast forward
to 2015, she's now on the cover of Forbes. And
you're like, hmm. Well, no, no. I remember one
day saying to my wife, because she was on the
cover of Forbes. And the company was valued a
little over $9 billion. And I said to my wife,
do you know how much we would be worth if I had
taken that job now? And she's like, how much?
And I told her, and she's like, good God. And
so I'm at the Vanity Fair event in San Francisco.
I didn't know it at the time. This was a week
before the Wall Street Journal article. would
fall, John Cario's article that was the one that
kind of unraveled all of Theranos in October
of 2015. And how did he figure it out? How did
this one guy figure out that it was all... So
I haven't read his book, Bad Blood, but I saw
the documentary. So, you know, that's like a
poor man's version of it, but basically just
interviewing people who were formerly employees
of the company. Oh, so they were bean spillers.
Yeah. And they were basically like, yeah, this
is a total scam. Oh my God. And... So sure enough,
I'm at this reception and she's the speaker of
the event. So it's a four -day conference and
she's the one everyone is there to see. So I'm
sitting at a table and I'm having a cocktail
and she walks up and I said, hey, Elizabeth,
you probably don't remember me. She goes, no,
I remember you exactly. And she remembered my
name and even remembered how I had been introduced
to her. I was like really blown away. We exchanged
pleasantries. She gave me her card. And then
a week later it all unraveled. And it's really
funny. I still have the card. You should frame
it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She must have known that
the shit was hitting the fan. No, no, she totally
did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the shit was hitting
the fan six months earlier. What does one do?
And it's not like you can liquidate, right? If
you're worth $9 billion but it's all stock and
you know the product is nonsense, you can't even
get out. Well, it's a private company, so at
best, you know, she could have along the way
been doing secondaries off her take. Oh, so it
wasn't even, yeah. Yeah. Jesus Christ, that was
wild. It's just when you, I'm obsessed with this
podcast that's out now called The Dropout, and
they update weekly with the trial results. Oh,
I need to check that out. It's great. Yeah, yeah.
I'm obsessed. So tell me this, how is it looking?
Is the prosecution looking like they're going
to win this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, they have falsified
documents. They pretended that they got a document
from Pfizer. They put Pfizer's name on a document.
And it was an internal document. And it was basically
substantiating the machine, the Edison machine,
and all the possibilities that it could. She
also lied about military use. I remember that.
Department of Defense contracts. Yeah, they have
her on the stand lying. or have her on the stand
admitting that she lied. Because there was recordings.
Has she taken the stand yet? I believe so. I
mean, there's definitely moments in the podcast
where she's being interviewed, where she's being
forced to answer questions. Oh, but this might
have been the civil deposition. Could have been.
Yeah, maybe. I don't know, but this is in the
middle of the current trial. So I'm not sure.
Because it's a really well -produced podcast,
and it has narration and music and all this stuff.
The Dropout. Yes. It's very good. And it also
predates. See, they picked up when the trial
came back. So the beginning episodes of The Dropout
all detail the scam and all detail all the stuff
that was going on. The people that were working,
they were slowly figuring out, like, what the
fuck are we doing here? And then... It went away
for a while and then came back during the trial.
So now it's detailing all the things that the
prosecution is finding. Also, it must be. No,
it's not the civil trial. It is the current trial
because they were specifically discussing these
documents that they had put Pfizer's label label
on. So they made it look like this document was
coming from Pfizer, like saying, oh, this stuff
is amazing. But really, it was just internal
from Theranos. wild i one of the things that
i love about it uh is um i'm always fascinated
by con artists and and cult leaders and and people
who manage to pull the wool over people's eyes
but when people do it in a clumsy way and still
get really far like she was clumsy she wasn't
just a little clumsy she was like she was a it
was i you know how i got obsessed with this this
is really weird She was giving a speech, and
this was before I had any idea that there was
anything wrong with the company. Oh, so this
is pre-'15. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Before she got
caught, she was giving some speech at some women's
group, some exceptional women were all getting
together, and she gave this speech. And this
speech was so bad that I was fascinated. I was
like, that's a moron. Like, this is not a smart
person. Like, this is a dumb, clunky speech.
Because I'm a professional orator. I mean, that's
what I do. I talk, you know. And so when I see
someone that's talking and she's basically, these
women are amazing. All you amazing women. I'm
just so pro amazing women. Is that the speech?
Let me hear this dumb speech. I am so incredibly
humbled and so honored to be with. this incredible
group of women. I want to just take a minute
to say, especially to the young women in the
room here, do everything you can to be the best
in science and math and engineering. It's our
actions that will determine this new stereotype
around women being the best in science and technology
and engineering. And it's that. That our little
girls will see when they start to think about
who do they want to be when they grow up. Okay,
I saw that. I'm like, that's a moron. That's
a moron. You want women to be the best at science
and engineering and math? Like, what the fuck
are you talking about? You want one gender to
be the best at science and engineering and math?
And you want women just do your best to be the
best? I was like, oh my god, that's an idiot.
And so I got obsessed with her. So when that
was going on, that's when I got obsessed. And
then when the fucking scam got released, was
it Washington Post? Wall Street Journal. I was
like, aha! I fucking called it. I knew something
was off. I remember watching that and going,
how? How? I would hear Steve Jobs talk. The one
thing I could never understand, but it wasn't
enough. I just didn't care enough. But in retrospect,
it was so obvious. There was not a single person
who understood the laboratory space on her board.
Oh. So remember, her board was the who's who.
You had General Mattis. You had Henry Kissinger.
You had Dick Kovacevic. I mean, she had the most
all -star corporate board in the history of boards.
Not one of these guys knew the difference between
a pipette and a microscope. Ooh. Like, that's
a red flag. Yeah, that's... That's smart, though.
That's the smart con. Right. The other thing
that got me was the affectation, the detail of
the wardrobe and the outfit. She was the little
Jobs. Yeah, she was clearly a little. But when
you heard Steve Jobs talk, Steve Jobs had a vision.
Here's my vision. This is what I think can happen.
And he would talk and he'd go, well, that's a
brilliant, completely obsessed man. Like, this
person is very brilliant, and it makes sense
that this is the head of this incredibly innovative
company. When I heard her talk, I was like, who's
this idiot that you have talking? Like, this
is not a person that spent a lot of time thinking,
right? If you went to college for a long period
of time and really worked on your, you know,
your grammar and your understanding of the correct
use of language to inspire and challenge people's
ideas, that's not the fucking speech you'd give.
Right? That was pretty bad. It was terrible.
But it wasn't just terrible. It was clunky. And
there was something about it for me that, like,
it made me think, like, what's going on here?
That doesn't make any sense. And I thought, well,
maybe she's just awkward when she speaks publicly.
You know, you have those initial impressions,
and you go, well, maybe I'm just fucking reading
into it wrong. Because I've been wrong before,
but not that time. So I'm fascinated that she
wouldn't let you look into the box. Because I
guess if you looked into the box, you would immediately
be able to be. I don't know that I would have.
I don't want to overstate my credentials. I'm
not a clinical chemist. She could have duped
me, I'm sure. But she didn't... I mean, and again,
we're under NDA. We're talking about me joining
her company as a chief medical officer. Like,
how are you not going to let me see inside this
freaking box? Like, what do you want? How am
I going to do my job? How could she have duped
you, though, if she's not technically astute?
Like, she doesn't really understand it. I don't
know if she could. I mean, look, she... Presumably
duped people smarter than me, right? I think
she duped. This is what drives me crazy. I think
she duped people from the image. I think they
wanted to believe. They wanted to believe that
there was this female wunderkind who left Stanford
at 19 years old, dropped out of school, and figured
out this amazing technology and along the way
became, at least until she got busted, the richest
self -made woman ever. She was worth, I think,
like her own personal. Four and a half billion.
Crazy. Crazy. And she just faked it. And one
of the ways she got busted was people from college
that she went to school with were like, why are
you talking like that? Like, what's happening?
And then people started hearing that that wasn't
her real voice. And then people started, like,
rumors and murmurs. There's so many layers to
that story. Oh, man, no doubt. Yeah, it's a fascinating
one. It really is. It's such an interesting story.
So for you. when all that was going down, that
must have been incredibly sweet. Because now
you don't have to think, man, I missed out on
all that money. Yeah, for sure. And I was also,
I felt a little bit validated. Like, okay, there
was a reason she didn't want to show me the inside
of the box. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It might have
been empty. It literally might have been empty.
There was candy in there. It's a giant little
thing. Dude, she got so many people. She got
Betsy DeVos for like $100 million. And poor General
Mattis. The guy didn't have two nickels to rub
together when he gets out of the military. He
put like a couple hundred K in or something obscene
for him. Yeah. Fuck. Crazy. Whenever someone
comes to me, like some guy came to me with some
crazy, I mean, I don't know if it's real, so
I don't want to talk about it, like say it specifically,
but if it's true, it sounds like this guy's going
to revolutionize a form of travel. And so he's
telling me about this. I was like, wow. And then
I said to my business manager who was with me
at the time, I go, don't ever forget about Theranos.
Whenever someone tells you something, the moment
someone tells me, I go, yeah, yeah. When it happens,
I'll believe you. I don't want to be involved
in any groundbreaking shit before it actually
– especially in some area where I'm completely
ignorant. And what am I going to do? Just start
going to school? Try to figure out engineering?
Think of this guy as saying something that's
actually possible and plausible? No, can't do
it. Not interested, buddy. So for you, though
– When it did come out, though, there had to
be like a cool feeling of satisfaction. There
had to be a little something there. I mean, the
first person I called was my buddy, the guy who
had introduced me to her way back. And I was
like, dude, what are the dinner conversations
like? And he's like, oh, dude, it's not good.
Because his father -in -law was still in the
believing camp. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. They talk about
him in the. Yeah. Oh, fuck. So it was. So he
got duped long after the jig was up. Right? Yeah.
Again, I don't know the details, but I was like,
man, fuck. It's good that we didn't do that.
It's one of the great scams of our time because
you have to wonder how they ever thought they
were going to get away with it. There really
was no technology. There really was nothing that
was capable of doing what they were saying it
was going to be able to be done. Yeah, there's
an interesting psychology there, right? Yeah.
On any given day, it's not a crisis, right? Like
you can always fake it for one more day, right?
Right. So what's the end? Like what's the end
game? How do they not have cancer? If stress
gives you cancer, imagine the stress of like
duping people out of nine billion and you're
sitting around knowing that your voice is fake
and you're wearing a black turtleneck and people
that you went to college with are like, hey,
that bitch doesn't even talk like that. I hear
the text messages between her and Sonny were
pretty funny because I read an article that said.
If you really want to incentivize people to not
commit crime, just let them know that all of
their cheesy text messages are going to be made
public. Oh, wow. Apparently there's just some
super embarrassing idiotic text messages. He
drove a Lamborghini to the office too, which
is also hilarious. It's just so crazy. But it
just shows you that there is this incredible
market. for people to try to optimize their health
and try to figure out what's wrong with them.
And if you can make it more simple than it actually
is, which is really, it's like, I don't even
think that's the other thing about it. It wasn't
that fricking interesting, right? Like who cares
if there's a little box that I can put a drop
of blood on that tells me what my CBC and chem
seven and, you know, pick your other panelists.
Like that's not that interesting. Okay, yes,
it's a little more convenient than going to LabCorp
and giving a tube of blood. What's interesting
is what you do with that knowledge. What do you
do with that information? Well, I think what
was interesting for what she was providing was
Safeway was going to buy into it. Was it Walgreens?
Yeah, Walgreens. And so Walgreens, I believe,
backed out. I think they realized somewhere along
the line that she was full of shit. And there
was some... text messages and emails that they
read out from the CEO because he had retired
before it ever came to fruition and then they
backed out of it. But Safeway wanted to put them
all in the stores and so you could be able to
go shopping for food, get your blood taken, a
little tiny pinprick and find out if anything's
wrong with you right there and then. But again,
it still comes down to having somebody that can
actually tell you what's wrong. And by the way,
the stuff that was relevant, it's not like they're
going to measure LP little a. It's not like they're
going to tell you your ApoE4 status. It's not
like they're going to tell you like of the 10
most relevant things that I would look at in
somebody's blood, they weren't measuring any
of them. Is ApoE4 the stuff that makes you more
susceptible to CTE? It probably makes you more
susceptible to CTE. It definitely makes you more
susceptible to Alzheimer's disease. But today
we know it's more nuanced. We know that there
are other genes that can. be protective and can
completely abrogate the effect of APOE4, which
is the, that's the, that's the gene that's the
more risky one. When you hear about, I don't
know what the gene is, but there is a gene that
predisposes someone to breast cancer. BRCA. Is
that what it is? Yeah. And when Angelina Jolie
actually had her breasts removed as a preemptive
measure, does that make sense to you? Yeah. Really?
Yeah. Wow. So it's that. It's depending on there's
two variants of the gene, but it can have up
to a 80 or 90 percent lifetime incidence of breast
cancer. Wow. And what's even more frightening
is the ovarian cancer, because, you know, a woman
suffers far more from a prophylactic oophorectomy
than a mastectomy. And from an endocrine perspective,
I mean, socially, obviously, there's challenges
of a mastectomy. But from an endocrine perspective,
when you if you took a 35 year old woman and
just took her ovaries out, you're putting her
in menopause. Wow. So the consequences are huge.
As far as the way she feels. Oh, my God. It's
devastating. Yeah. Yeah. The that gene. um, that
predisposes a woman to breast cancer, would you
say it was again? BRCA. How common is that? Oh,
that's a good question. Um, it's not that common.
It is the, it is not remotely, uh, common as
far as the leading, you know, I mean, breast
cancer is obviously a pretty common breast cancer
is a pretty common cancer to women. Um, you know,
I would guess that 5 % maybe would be BRCA associated,
if not less. And is her action of doing that,
is that a common move now? I'm certainly seeing
more women who are BRCA positive undergoing prophylactic
mastectomy. And when they undergo this prophylactic
mastectomy, they actually can retain the initial
appearance of breast now. So they do it knowing
that they're going to do that, and then they
replace it with a breast. Yep, they put it in.
That's right. Fuck, that's one thing that dudes
don't have to think about, breast cancer. Yeah.
I mean, I guess the equivalent for males is prostate
cancer in terms of like a gender specific cancer.
And so if you look like lung cancer is the number
one killer for both men and women in terms of
death rate. More than heart attacks? Oh, no,
no. I'm sorry. Within cancers. Heart attack is
still number one. But, you know, breast and prostate
are. very high up on the list of killing along
with colon cancer. Those are sort of your big
three. Prostate cancer is a bit complicated because
every man will die with prostate cancer. Some
will die from it. Whoa, every man will die with
some? Yeah, if you live long enough, absolutely.
By the time you're 50, like you and I, there's
a greater than 50 % chance one of us has prostate
cancer right now. Holy shit. So if you and I
were killed in a car accident tomorrow, and they
took our prostates out and sectioned them up,
the likelihood that they would find prostate
cancer cells in one of us is at least 50%. And
those cells may or may not be a problem. Statistically
speaking, they're not going to be a problem.
Because remember this, with the exception of
the brain, you don't die from cancer unless it
spreads. So the brain is the one exception to
that rule. If you have brain cancer, it can kill
you just staying in your brain. But if you have
lung cancer, or let's use prostate cancer or
breast cancer, a woman never dies because breast
cancer invades her breast. She dies because it
spreads to her brain, her bones, her lungs, her
liver. Same with prostate cancer. Prostate cancer
almost always spreads to the bone, and that's
the only time you die. So if prostate cancer
stays in the prostate, There's no death. If someone
has a very small amount of prostate cancer, is
there a thing that they can do to mitigate its
spread? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So you can remove
the prostate surgically. This is a technique
that was pioneered by a guy named Pat Walsh at
Johns Hopkins in the 1980s. And it wasn't that
taking out the prostate was hard. It was taking
it out while preserving sexual function was really
hard because the neurovascular bundle of Walsh,
which is now bears his name. which is what controls
erectile function, wraps around the thing you're
trying to cut out. Oh, Jesus. So it's like how
do you cut this gland out without taking out
all of the nervous tissue that you need to maintain
an erection? And so basically prior to Walsh,
you were almost guaranteed to never be able to
get an erection after you had your prostate taken
out. So you were staring down the barrel of not
two very attractive choices. How many guys went
out in their shield? I'm keeping my heart on.
I'll die young. Yeah. So the goal is to basically
identify a guy with prostate cancer who has the
variant that's going to spread. So today, this
has been, I mean, there's been so much progress
in this field. So we use a blood test called
a 4K score. So you know what a PSA is. You've
probably had your PSA checked a bunch of times.
PSA by itself is not a great blood test. You
have to use more information than just the PSA.
You have to know the PSA velocity and the PSA
density. So the velocity is what's the rate of
change of the PSA, and the density is dividing
the PSA by the prostate volume. So if you get
an MRI or an ultrasound, you can tell the volume
of the prostate in grams or the volume, and then
you can turn it into grams. So you normalize
PSA to volume or mass, and you have a density.
And those two things become more suggestive.
So once the PSA starts to look a little bit suspicious,
and once it gets over about four, we do this
4K blood test, which is another form of liquid
biopsy. And that gives you a much more interesting
number. It basically tells you. what's the probability
that this person is going to have metastatic
prostate cancer, not just prostate cancer? And
if that 4K number is above a certain threshold,
I think 7 .5%, the probability that they're going
to have metastatic prostate cancer approaches
85%, 90%. What are your thoughts on ketogenic
diets in relation to cancer? been a lot of articles
written about the idea that cancer needs glucose
to survive. And then if you can keep your body
functioning off of ketones, it's less likely
that you get cancer. Does that make sense? Yeah,
no, definitely. I mean, you know, I was on a
ketogenic diet for three years. Yeah, I know
you were. And so I was super steeped in all of
this stuff. What made you get off of it? It became
just really difficult. I mean, I was so strict.
I didn't take a day off. I took one day off in
three years. But the stuff I had to give up,
like even, like one of my favorite things is
stir fry. Like I love huge curry stir fry that
I make. And even something that's that, it's
just vegetables, but it was still too much to
keep in, it was too much carbohydrate to stay
in ketosis. So I just kind of missed. And also
at that point I was switching more from ultra
distance swimming and stuff into shorter distance
swimming. Like I was doing more, you know, pool
racing and more. just shorter distance stuff.
Also on the bike, I was becoming, going less
from kind of ultra distance bike stuff to, you
know, like a 20 kilometer race or a 40 kilometer
race. So as you move towards that new energy
system, you just need more carbohydrates. But
anyway, to your question, I think there's an
awesome theoretical argument for it, but it's
also important to understand that even when you're
on a ketogenic diet, your glucose isn't zero.
So it's all about probabilistic reduction, right?
It's keeping insulin lower. That probably has
a greater effect than keeping glucose lower.
Because if you're on a ketogenic diet and you're
not on a ketogenic diet, we're talking about
a difference of one millimolar in glucose. So
it's probably more the presence of the ketone,
the reduction of the insulin, if anything, that's
having a role. What I think is most interesting
is not just a ketogenic diet. It's when you combine
it with a drug called a PI3 kinase inhibitor.
which is a drug that blocks a very important
pathway for cancer to grow, but has one escape
valve, which is it raises insulin. So that's
a bad thing if you're trying to minimize cancer.
So when you combine a ketogenic diet with a PI3
kinase inhibitor, at least in animal studies,
which is about the extent of where this has been
studied so far, the results look really good.
Because PI3 kinase inhibitors by themselves have
not panned out. Even though theoretically they
should, they should be amazing for cancer. They
haven't been great. And it's been speculated
that that's because of that escape valve, which
is it pops off to a higher insulin level. So
when you layer on top of that a ketogenic diet,
it seems to work really well. And anecdotally,
one of my good friends from med school, his wife
has metastatic breast cancer. She was diagnosed.
God, probably seven or eight years ago. So metastatic
breast cancer is a death sentence. It's unsurvivable.
She was enrolled in a clinical trial in Boston
that was using PI3K inhibitors. And so she got
one of these drugs. She's the only woman to this
day that's still alive. Whoa. And she went on
a ketogenic diet. Now, again. How many years
ago? Seven or eight. And what is the usual lifespan
of someone who gets diagnosed? I mean, five years,
maybe. Less, probably. Is she deteriorating?
Is she maintaining? No, she literally has this
one little foci of metastatic disease in her
hip still. So this one little nubbin of potential
cancer inside her hip bone, but it's stayed static.
I mean, it's causing some structural issues.
She, you know, obviously her hips weaker, but
it's kind of amazing. Her story is actually kind
of one of the things that's got some of the people
who develop these drugs thinking about this idea
of combining ketogenic diets with PI3K inhibitors
to try to squash the insulin level and minimize
basically that escape route for cancer. Wow.
And there's other ways to do this pharmacologically,
right? Like you could argue combining it with
metformin or something else that's going to lower
insulin would also potentially work. And metformin
is that anti -aging drug that's fairly controversial
as well too, right? Yeah, I don't know if it's
that controversial. I mean it's – It is in terms
of human performance. Well, yeah. So the reason
I stopped taking it three years ago – I took
it for probably eight years. But three years
ago I stopped because it does impair mitochondrial
function at least at the level that I can measure
it. So I measure my lactate levels when I'm exercising
in a certain type of exercise every day. And
I'm basically trying to generate the highest
amount of power I can generate on a bike while
keeping lactate below two millimole. And that's
like the limit of my mitochondrial throughput
as my kind of my maximum aerobic efficiency.
And when I was on metformin, I just noticed like
I was hitting that lactate level higher than
I believed I should hit it. Just based on my
fitness. Is lactate, is that lactic acid? Is
it the same thing? Synonymous, yeah. So you would
develop more with metformin. That's right. So
it would make your performance less effective.
But what if you took the metformin after exercise?
It stuck around too long. So I had tried all
that stuff. I would take the metformin immediately.
Exactly as you said, I'd take it immediately
after exercise, but it would still be in my system.
24 hours later. Yeah. So I then said, well, what
if I stop metformin altogether? What if you intermittently
took metformin and intermittently exercised?
All great questions. Is there a half -life in
terms of? Yeah, eventually it'll wash out. But
I think exercise is the single most important
longevity drug we have, bar none. Like if you
said, like, I want to go deep down the rabbit
hole of living longer, what do I need to do?
It's like a super well -crafted exercise program
that is geared towards strength, muscle mass,
and cardiorespiratory fitness. So it's all of
the above. It's not just one. Right. I mean the
hazard ratios for each of these are pretty interesting.
This has become like each year I try to bring
one new focus into our practice. And the past
12 months the focus has been entirely around
taking exercise. to a new level in terms of our
understanding of how to fine tune it. And the
data are unbelievable, right? So if you, everybody
knows that if you smoke or have diabetes, your
risk of death goes up a lot, but your risk of
death from having a high cardiorespiratory fitness
goes down by much more than your risk of death
goes up from smoking or diabetes. So smoking
and diabetes will double or triple your risk
of death, depending on the timeframe you're looking
at having very high cardiorespiratory fitness.
So having a VO two max that is elite, we would
define that as the top 2 .5 % of the population
compared to below average is a five fold reduction
in all cause mortality death from any kind. Whoa.
I mean, we don't have drugs that have a five
X reduction in mortality. That's incredible.
And that's just elite cardiovascular health.
Right. And then when you layer in strength and
muscle mass, we actually now have pretty good
data as to the fact that strength is more important
than muscle mass. Muscle mass is a good proxy
for strength. But if you just focus on strength,
that's the metric that matters. It's about a
threefold reduction in all -cause mortality when
you compare high strength to low strength. And
the tests are, you know, we're talking, it's
not like how much you can squat and deadlift.
It's like. Grip strength, dead hang. How long
can you do like an air squat? You know, like
what's your quad strength? How quickly can you
do five reps up and down from a chair? I mean,
it's relatively simple stuff. But when you stratify
people by those metrics and you compare the highest
to the lowest performers. There's just no comparison.
Is there a point of diminishing returns, though,
where you just get really, really strong, but
it's not helping you any more than being fairly
strong? On the strength data, we don't see it
because the data have only been parsed out as
high to low. On the cardiorespiratory, there
is a point of diminishing return. So remember
I said elite is the top 2 .5%. So we break them
into five categories, but they're not equal in
bucket size. You get most of the benefit, honestly,
by going from... not fit at all to average fit.
That gives you three of the five X. Now that
said, I hold myself and my patients to a way
higher standard, which is we have a chart that
shows all the data by age, by gender, and by
VO2 max. And I would say, if you're a 52 -year
-old male, I'm asking you to have the VO2 max
of an elite 42 -year -old male. So I want you
to be a decade younger elite. And then we do
the same thing with strength metrics. And when
you prescribe that, like say if you take a 52
-year -old male that doesn't have a history of
cardiovascular activity, maybe they lightly work
out at the gym or something like that. particular
exercises do you think are the best to achieve
that result? So we'd start with a base of zone
two. So this zone two is that lactate thing I
was talking about. So your zone two is defined
as the highest level of aerobic output that you
can generate while keeping lactate below two
millimole. So I think a bike is the easiest way
to do this because the - Stationary or? Stationary
just because you can keep it steady state. When
you're on the road, you're all over the place.
So if you're on a stationary bike, And also wattage
is such an easy metric for people to understand.
So how many watts are you putting out, right?
So the first thing we would do is say you probably
need to be doing at least three hours a week
of that zone two, which is building an aerobic
base. So four 45 -minute sessions at zone two.
constantly driving it up and honestly one session
of vo2 max training per week and the best protocol
for that is the four by four protocol so that's
four minutes at the highest output you can sustain
so here you could do it on an air bike or something
right so you could do what's the highest wattage
you can hold for four minutes and then four minute
recovery and do five of those sets once a week
So when you're doing that, do you think that
the best is like an Airdyne that works the arms
and the legs? Or do you think just a regular
bike that just works the legs? For Zone 2, I
mean, it really just matters that you're consistent.
I think most people find you can do a higher
output when you're on an air bike in terms of
absolute wattage because you are leveraging upper
and lower body. It really doesn't matter that
much. I mean, you can do this on a treadmill.
You can do this on a stair climber. You can do
this on any kind of cardiovascular activity.
But you need 45 minutes four times a week. That
seems to be the minimum effective dose on zone
two. Now, if someone's super deconditioned, it
can probably be three 30 -minute sessions to
start and they'll see benefit. Interesting. And
then as far as a strength program, do you recommend
specific exercises? Is it like squat, deadlift?
Well, this is where it gets very dependent on
the person. So we have a test that we put our
patients through that's... 10 exercises and they're
all basically normalized to your body weight
and gender so like a dead hang so how long can
you hang from a bar dead so for how long should
you be able to hold well we hold males to the
standard of two minutes and that's a long time
yeah and females to a minute and a half at the
age of 40 so then it gets discounted By decade?
You know, it's interesting. When we were hosting
Fear Factor, Dead Hang was one of the stunts.
These people hung from a chin -up bar that was
over a bridge into a river. Do you remember how
long people could go? No, but the women won.
Interesting. Yeah. We had a big jack guy. He
was fucking pretty stout, and he fell into the
water quicker. I think it's weight, body weight.
Oh, it's harder the more we weigh, of course,
Theory, you should be stronger if you're a man
as well. Yeah, but if you're a 250 -pound man
and you're carrying all that extra weight because
you've been doing bodybuilding -type exercises.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And especially if you use
straps and you don't have that grip. Two minutes
is a long fucking time though. The very first
time I did it, I did it after deadlifting. So
my grip was a little taxed and I only got to
126. And then about a week later, I tried again
and I got to two minutes. My longest is a little
over three minutes now. I do it twice a week.
How much do you weigh? Like 171. And as you get
heavier, your hand strength must really need
to be a giant factor. It's like you're dealing
with a guy who's... should be 171, like if you
decided to body build and you went to 250, that
would probably radically decrease your amount
of time. Yeah, although to your point, I would
hope that I was using my grip strength to make
that happen. I mean, grip strength is probably
one of the most correlated indices with longevity.
Yeah, I've heard that, but I don't know why.
Why is that? There's probably two reasons. One
is, I used to think it was the obvious reason,
which is, look at... Look at the causes of mortality.
We have this thing in our practice called the
death bars. So one of my analysts, Bob Kaplan,
about a year ago, I said, Bob, I want you to
make these five graphs for me. And they're basically
everything about the causes of death. So one
of them is just show me all cause mortality by
decade. Now break it down into the subsets. And
one of the most common things is accidental deaths.
And this is the most interesting trend is accidental
deaths change so much by age. So in our age group,
so by the way, accidental deaths are uniform
across the population, but they become a much
bigger source of death on a per capita basis
as you get older because there are fewer older
people. In our demographic, most accidental deaths
are overdoses. When you're older, they become
virtually all falls. 90 % of accidental deaths
are falls. So a fall is a very lethal thing by
the time you're 75. Like you and I don't think
about it. By the time you're 75, falling is a
devastating consequence. Isn't that wild? So
think about how strong grip versus weak grip
would impact your ability to tolerate a fall.
It's can you get your hand down? Can you grab
something when you're falling? All of those things
matter a lot. The second reason I think grip
strength matters a lot is it is such a good proxy
for strength because one of the things I've learned
in the past year becoming so obsessive with grip
strength is how as my hands have gotten stronger,
It's alleviated all the shoulder. Like I have
a torn labrum here from my swimming days that
is so painful. I thought I would never be able
to do a dead hang pull -up again. Because whenever
I was in this full position, I'm putting so much
stress on the labrum. So I would just, I was
doing pull -ups to here, right? Like I would,
you know, I'd go from here to here. And then
Beth Lewis, this person in our practice who is
kind of like our strength guru, she was convinced
that if I could just get my grip stronger. I
would fix this. And I was like, Beth, that doesn't
even make freaking sense. Like, why does having
more grip fix my shoulder? But I just started
doing everything she said, like all of these
dead hang finger exercises and all this other
stuff. And now when I do a pull up, I can dead
hang with zero pain. And I'm just putting all
this extra pressure in my finger. And I think
the reason is. It is allowing us to potentiate
force more stably from our scapula all the way
through. And so much of the instability we have
in shoulders and all these injuries is just because
we don't transmit force correctly. So I think
something about having really strong grip just
basically fixes so much of the upper body strength,
you know, weakness, you know, strength imbalances
that we have. Again, it's a proxy for people
who don't fall. It's a proxy for other things.
It is a proxy for muscle mass. The more muscle
mass you have, the more glucose you dispose of,
the more metabolically healthy you are. So that's
my best guess for it. And what exercise do you
do besides dead hang? So the other things we
have people do is – so another important principle
of aging – so think about hunting, right? Where
are you more likely to hurt yourself, walking
down a steep hill or walking up a steep hill?
Down. Absolutely. Breaks is everything in life.
Eccentric strength matters more than concentric
strength. Concentric strength is important, but
we overemphasize it. We don't train eccentric
strength enough. So a big part of this program
is how do you train eccentric strength? So one
of our metrics is you have to be able to step
down from a 16 -foot block and take more than
three seconds. Sorry, I don't know if I said
16 feet. You're 16 inches on a block, and you're
going to put one step down, but you have to do
it in more than three seconds. So think about
how much control you need in the supporting quad
to put yourself down that slowly. That's how
you walk downstairs and don't hurt yourself.
That's how you have the ability to stop yourself
if you lose balance. We have eccentric modes
as well. So you have to be able to hold 50 %
of your body weight and do a certain number of
box step -ups. You have to be able to farmers
carry with 75 % of your body weight. So we have
a whole bunch of other things that have to do
with ankle mobility. It's a lot of non -sexy
stuff that is our top 10. And of course, deadlifting
and things like that are super important because
that's a big part of how you train those things.
But we also don't fixate on it. Like my wife
has scoliosis and... If she deadlifts, it just
puts a little too much stress on her back. So
she does hip thrusters instead. And you can get
most of the hip hinge benefit using a hip thruster
without having to deadlift. What about kettlebell
swings? Amazing exercise, right? Is that good
enough as a hip hinge? Yeah. I mean, I think
if you're good. I mean, the problem with a kettlebell
swing is it requires a ton of technique and coordination.
And I think most people do it incorrectly. But
if you're doing it right, it's an amazing exercise.
Yeah. So what is your routine? What are the things
that you concentrate on? I know I watch your
Instagram. You've been doing deadlifting. I love
deadlifting. But I don't deadlift heavy these
days. I've been deadlifting relatively light.
But I do it with like a, I do a very heavy focus
on eccentrics. I do a no touch deadlift where
I'm taking only, I'm only letting 50 % of the
weight down in between reps. So kind of more
staying under constant tension as I lift. Ton
of single leg stuff. You can use a fraction of
the weight. And I do, I started about six months
ago doing a lot of blood flow restriction stuff
as well. So you're really going light. The blood
flow restriction stuff is very interesting. Have
you done it? No, I haven't, but I've heard great
things about it. But I wanted to ask you this
before I forget. You had written something once
about, I meant to talk to you about this, about
deadlifts actually decompressing the spine, which
I found so counterintuitive. So how does that
work? How are you getting deadlifts to decompress
you? And this is easiest in a hex bar deadlift.
It's much easier with a hex bar deadlift than
a sumo deadlift. That's what I use anyway. Yeah.
So the reason is if you have enough intra -abdominal
pressure and you're putting your spine at just
the right amount of extension, you're actually
extending your spine when you lift because of
the position of your hip. So it's hard to explain.
without feeling it and it took me a really long
time to feel this but have you heard of dynamic
neuromuscular stabilization no dns so it's this
it's this discipline that really taught me how
to do this kind of intra -abdominal pressure
where you you put a huge amount of pressure in
your pelvis basically so you're like you ever
notice how the Really good power lifters have
huge abdomens. Yeah. And this is a big part of
it is they can generate so much pressure in their
abdomen that they're basically stretching out
their spine, pushing out everywhere. So they
have kind of a cylinder inside their body. Right.
And if you if you can't do that, you almost have
like a triangle in your body with the diaphragm
being the top and the pelvis being the bottom.
So the force is not going out in all directions
in the same way. So what you want is this force
to be going out equally. And when I do that with
a hex bar deadlift, I can hear my spine like
actually like going like an adjustment, just
the same as when I'm dead hanging. You can sort
of hear a crack. Yeah. What is the steps? Like
how do you start it? You start on the ground.
It's the easiest to do when you're on your back
and you have somebody who knows how to cue it
initially. So you know the two hip bones here?
Yes. This is called your anterior superior iliac
crest. So I go about two finger breaths in. two
finger breaths down. And as I'm laying on my
back, I'm trying to put as much air into there
as possible. And you want to imagine that your
shorts, which have, you know, the ring that the
waistband of your shorts make, you want to make
it as big as possible in all directions. So you're
trying to get air out into your back. You're
trying to get air into your pelvis. So the first
step is just being able to do that. And then
eventually you want to be able to do that while
breathing, meaning you want to be able to get
that pressure out. and then take a breath. Because
at first, you won't be able to do that. At first,
you'll just blow out. Right. And you'll be holding
your breath. So the next thing you want to be
able to hold that while you breathe. And then
we do some other exercises before we would go
to deadlifting. So now you want to be able to
get into certain positions where you're on your
front and you're in opposite support. So the
obvious one is like a bear position where you're
on all fours. But then ultimately we get into
these really complicated positions where you're
on one elbow and the side of one knee, but you're
keeping your pelvis totally level. Like these?
Yes, exactly. So for example. So there's a whole
chart. Yeah. Basically what DNS comes down to
is modeling the neurodevelopment of an infant.
So basically if we're left, if we're not messed
around with when we're kids, we will develop
perfectly normally for the first two years of
our life. These are the exercises I use to fix
my back, Joe. Really? Without even knowing. That's
what it was called. Yeah. The doctor, it took
her a couple of weeks to figure it out. But that
first thing was like getting, I'm trying to find
like this position here where her back is. up
and her legs are like that, that's basically
what fixed it. And just trying to get that breathing
in after a couple of weeks, all the pain kind
of just kind of went away. So you see the one
that's four to five months there where she's
in an eight, so where her left leg is out. So
that's, to me, that is the gangster position
that gets you ready to deadlift. When you can
do what she's doing and now pick your hips up
off the floor and stay perfectly level with only
your left leg down and your right elbow down,
and you'll feel your spine will just go. you
feel this total expansion. That tells you you
have the intra -abdominal control to deadlift.
So left leg down, right elbow. Yep, right elbow
down. That's it right there. Opposite, opposite,
yep. She's not doing it fully right now, but
that's the precursor. She's on the way. Yeah,
that's the precursor to that position. And so
that's how you start to learn. So then there's
expanding in those images right there. You see
how they're using, is that the diaphragm that
they're using? Yep. To push out? Yep. And so
that is what expands your back. Yep. Do you do
any decompression in terms of like, you ever
use one of those teeter decks? Do you know what
I'm talking about? Yeah, I do. Not the ones that
hang by your ankles, but the one where you hinge
from the waist. No, the only thing that I do
decompression for is my neck. So I have a device
at home. Every day I do 10 minutes of neck traction.
Oh, you do one of those? Yep. Do you do one with
the inflated one that you pump up, or do you
do the hang one? Neither. So it's called a Sanders
machine. You lay in it, and it grabs your mandible.
and your occiput, and it pulls you up, and you
adjust the poundage. So I do 25 pounds for 10
minutes. What's the machine that you use? What's
it called? It's called a Sanders. I bought it
on, there it is. Oh, interesting, because I have
one where I hang. That looks safer. This is much
safer, because you would start somebody out at
a much lower poundage. Jamie, will you send me
this link? Thanks. But you don't have any cervical.
disc issues do you i have i've had them yeah
i had um so i would do i would do this under
the guidance of a physical therapist just to
make sure that they tell you how i mean are you
literally hanging by your neck right now no not
fully but like you know how much weight how much
weight are you uh i just have one of these things
that it hooks onto a door yeah yeah the top of
the door and i pull the thing like this click
click click click click click oh okay okay and
then i can choose to like lean into it and put
more weight like let it let it make my neck decompress
more, and then I can pull it up more, and so
it gets to like this. I got it. I'm hanging there,
but it feels good. Where is the pressure being
applied? More in the front or more in the back?
Kind of like a bolt. Okay. It's a strap, and
you tighten it down with Velcro, and it's like,
ah. So the other thing that DNS, that I do every
day for DNS is, so there are muscles that run
on the front of your vertebral bodies and your
cervical. spine. And they're called deep neck
stabilizing muscles. And one of the challenges
that most of us have, who all have sort of cervical
neck issues, is those muscles aren't strong enough.
They're not fully engaged enough. So another
exercise I do when on my back in that position
with the intra -abdominal pressure is kind of
look down at my chest and without lifting my
head up, go through the initiation of a lift
up. And to do that, you basically will end up
using these deep neck stabilizers as opposed
to the scalenes, right? You don't want to be
moving your neck or stabilizing your neck with
these muscles that are outside. You want to be
doing it with the muscles inside. extending the
spine you can't feel these muscles they're everything
you're feeling right now is sort of superficial
do you use anything to strengthen your neck like
an iron neck or anything like that no i just
i do the i did when i was boxing of course you
ever use an iron neck i don't know i would do
like the you know i used to do the thing that
you wrap around your head and right but the issue
with that is that it puts an unnatural amount
of leverage on the disc itself the iron neck
is a halo that you know what it is no I'll give
you one. We have a stack of them. They sent me
a bunch to give away. But you have a halo, and
you pump it up like a Reebok pump. It fits tight
to your head, and then there's a 50 -pound bungee
cord. And so you pull back so that you're under
tension, and then you can adjust the amount of
tension. See that guy's using it there. There's
a video of me doing it too because the guy who—
Yeah, this would be kind of cool for driving.
Because that's a thing in a race car, right?
Your neck is under a lot of G -force. Well, the
idea behind it is there's the guy who invented
it. Is it Mike Jolly? Is that his name? He's
a former NFL player, big fucking stout fella.
And he developed this to aid in people. There's
Tom Papa too. To keep people from, there's a
lot of folks that get head injuries. and a lot
of it is from the weakness of the neck and that
makes your head snap. Yeah, I'd love to try it.
But with jiu -jitsu... it's gigantic because
there's no real safe way to train your neck.
But with that, my mind - We used to do neck bridges
rolling, all this idiotic stuff. Yeah, we used
to do that too. But this iron neck thing is way
better because you don't really do that, but
you do do this. So the halo's on, the bungee
cord's on, and I go like this, twist here, twist
here, twist here, twist here. And then I turn
around, I do it backwards, and then I do it sideways.
So I have it going to my right side, I have it
going to my left side. And I do what they call
the Stevie Wonder. So I do this thing like this.
And the whole idea is that you're not putting
that unnatural hinge on your discs. And all of
this muscle tissue has gotten so much stronger
because of it. My neck is bigger. I mean, I haven't
measured it, but, I mean, shirts that I used
to wear I can't fit anymore. But it's just stronger.
It's more stable. Yeah, I'd love to try it. You
can have it. I have one for you. There you go.
JRE swag. So I'm going to have to try that with
the hex bar. I mean, it seems like I'm going
to have to. I mean, start with the positions
on the ground. It's easier to show you if I was
actually putting you on a mat and having you
do it. Well, we'll do that someday. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. And so you do that. You do those. So I
do my four days a week. I do four sessions a
week of the 45 -minute zone two. So that's the.
I'm titrating my wattage to keep lactate at two
millimole. Um, I do one session a week of a higher
end anaerobic exercise. I typically do it on
a stair machine. You know, those rotating machines
where I just do like, I'll do a one minute sprint,
a two minute easy climb, one minute sprint, two
minute easy climb, or four on four off on a bike.
And then four sessions of strength a week for
four strength sessions a week. And that's it.
Like, I mean, this is the least I've ever exercised
in my life. I exercise a total of. 10 or 11 hours
a week, which is still a lot by most people's
standards. By most people's standards, it is
a lot. But by my standards, that's like nothing.
Well, people need to understand that you're a
fucking maniac and you swam all the different,
you swam in between all the islands of Hawaii.
No, no, no, no, just Maui and Lanai. But you
were trying to do, what was, there was something
going on where they wouldn't let you do it at
night, right? Yes, that was that swim. Those
are the tiger sharks. What? Because at night
it's so dark, you have to pin a glow stick to
your bathing suit. And they were like, the boat
captain, like, I'm going to start at midnight
to avoid the wind. And he's like, dude, you'll
be like chum out there with a little glow stick
on your butt. Really? They would come for you?
Yeah, yeah. They would love that. Tiger sharks
are dangerous, huh? So for you, 11 hours a week
is not a lot. For most people, that's a big commitment
because it's more than an hour a day. And we'll
say to our patients, like, look, what can you
do? Can you do six hours a week? But at some
point, you've got to do it. You can't say, I
want to live long. I want to be a kick -ass 85
-year -old and not train for it. It's so logically
inconsistent. And I want to. be able to hunt
when I'm 80 and I want to drive a race car when
I'm 80. Yeah. And if I want to do that, I have
to put in a lot of time right now to make sure
I'm strong enough to do those things. Yeah, there's
no other options, you know, especially for bone
density. maintaining muscle mass. There's no
other way to do it. Yeah, the data is overwhelming,
right? So there's a study that was done that
looked at 60, I want to say 65 -ish year old
folks, and it put them on a super high strength
training program. And in six months, they added
one, I want to say 1 .7 kilos of muscle mass.
Wow. That's pretty good. That's like three and
a half pounds of muscle. For an old person, that's
very good. Six months of... super dedicated training.
And I forget exactly how much more protein they
were feeding them. But so high protein diet,
high training. A separate study took people of
basically the same age and put them on 10 days
of bed rest. They lost 1 .5 kilograms of muscle.
So 1 .5 kilograms of muscle in 10 days of bed
rest, and did they get it back quickly? No. That
was it. It takes a very long time to get it back.
And you could lose it all in 10 days of bed rest.
You could lose in 10 days what you got in six
months. God damn it. So, I mean, it's like, you
know, it's this sexy, it's this non -sexy, like,
don't stop exercising. Don't ever get out of
shape. Right. And avoid injury like the plague.
And as you get older, This loss of muscle mass,
what we call sarcopenia, is an enormous killer.
So sarcopenia is like one of the primary indicators
that someone's unhealthy. Yes. Sarcobesity, which
is a term that I don't know who coined it, is
like the worst of all, right? So that's high
amounts of fat, low amounts of muscle. And that's
going to happen to a person naturally, right?
You're going to lose about a pound. of muscle
a decade, a little bit more than that, probably
two pounds of muscle. No, no, I'm sorry. You're
going to lose about, I want to say lose a pound
of muscle, gain two pounds of fat every couple
of years by the time you're 40 if you don't make
it, if you're not super diligent about avoiding
it. And do you have a body fat percentage that
you like to maintain? For me or just for our
patients? For anybody. No. So I think superficial
or subcutaneous body fat is so highly genetic
that we don't really tend to fixate on it that
much. So in other words, for an individual, we
care about what their trend is. But I'm not that
lean anymore. I'm 14%, 13 % body fat. For me
to be below 10 % body fat, I have to really change
what I'm eating. And you were at your leanest
when you were a keto? Yeah. Well, as an adult,
I was probably leaner when I was boxing. But
as an adult, my leanest was 7 % when I was keto
by DEXA. And that was actually not that hard.
But I was exercising like a fiend and eating
a stupidly strict ketogenic diet. But what I
care much more about is visceral fat and what's
called ALMI. Appendicular lean mass index. And
you can get both of these numbers off of DEXA.
So visceral fat is how many pounds of fat do
you have around your organs. And that's a far
more important predictor of your lifespan. And
what causes fat to accumulate around the organs
versus subcutaneous? Well, the subcutaneous fat
is sort of just – it's your excess depot. I mean
you can store an infinite amount of weight there.
The visceral fat probably has to do with hepatic
fat. Our liver produces a lot of fat. I mean
if we're unhealthy, right? So the liver will
start to store fat. Drunks. People drink a lot.
Yeah. Alcohol is a huge contributor to it. But
of course now there's something called non -alcoholic
fatty liver disease, NAFLD, which is – probably
the leading indicator for liver transplant in
the United States now. Whoa. And that seems to
be mostly driven by fructose. Fructose. Yeah.
Goddamn corn syrup. Yeah. People want to pretend
that all fucking sugars are created equal. They're
not, are they? No. God, no. Isn't that a weird
thing, though? Why do people want to say that?
It seems like whether they're contrarian or they
want to have knowledge that counteracts the narrative
that people keep hearing. The narrative that
we keep hearing from people like yourself or
from a lot of experts is that particularly high
fructose corn syrup is just really bad for you.
I mean, I think Rick Johnson's data shows Rick
Johnson is, I think, the world's expert on fructose.
What his data show is that there's nothing worse
than drinking fructose. Like if you really want
to drink your sugar, you're putting it on the
fast track to the liver. Because your body does
not normally encounter that. Your body normally
encounters fruit with fiber. There's the speed
with which it basically hits the liver is too
high. For the liver to process it correctly.
Yeah, and also it gets into other parts of the
intestine that it wouldn't get to if you were
eating it. So if you took 100 grams of sugar
and you ate it in a solid food versus if you
drank it, there's actually pretty interesting
animal data that the fructose that you drink
is making it all the way into the colon and it's
actually increasing the risk of colon cancer
in a way that you wouldn't get it through solid
consumption. So what about fructose from fruit?
Is there any danger in that or is it just – You
know, one of my favorite drinks is a Paloma,
like as far as like a summer cocktail, right?
So I noticed this summer when I started making
them, like how many grapefruits do I need to
squeeze to get a 500 ml thing of grapefruit juice?
And it's about 10 grapefruits this big. It kind
of occurred to me. I was like, it is so easy
for me to drink this thing. Like I can drink
500 ml of grapefruit juice. Assume it's orange
juice. It could drink 500 ml of orange juice
in one chug. I don't have to think about it.
Right. Could you eat that many oranges? It could
be hard. You would really have to be motivated.
Yeah. So that's why it's just better to eat fruit
than drink fruit. Just because of basically the
lower dose. The dose and the velocity. You know,
I noticed when I was on the carnivore diet for
a while. How long were you on it, by the way?
Just a month. I did it one month. No, I did it
twice. This was like three years ago, two years
ago? Yeah, about three years ago, and then I
did it again a year later. Again, a month. One
thing it does do is you lose weight because you
just don't eat anything else other than meat,
and your satiety levels are reached far quicker.
satiated in terms of like you don't want to eat
any more steak but if somebody pushed a bowl
of pasta in front of me and said you could eat
that too i'd be like oh i'll fucking eat that
whole thing it's weird and you did this super
strict you didn't have a single vegetable no
vegetables i just ate steaks i ate mostly ribeye
steaks for a month and i lost 12 pounds i got
ripped how did you feel i felt good i felt a
little aggressive that was what was odd It was
like I was a little extra aggro. Not aggro in
a negative way, like I was more like, ah, like
I had more. How were your workouts? Not that
good. The workouts were not that good. Even the
pure strength workouts? They were okay. Like
your grappling would be horrible, right? Right,
that's what I'm saying. They were okay, but my
ability to maintain for long periods of time
was not so hot. Whereas I could. I could do like
a Pavel Tatsalin type workout where I'm doing
low reps, large amounts of rest in between the
reps. But like rounds in the bag were horrific.
It was not good. It was like I got drunk the
night before or something. Like I was hungover.
I was like, oh, fucking push. I was trying to
push. But mental clarity was very high. How was
your sleep? Not bad. That's no different. No,
no different. The sleep was high. The sleep was
fine, rather. Mental clarity was high. But I
do feel like I had a little bit more grr. I'm
a little bit more like, I've got to go out and
fucking get shit done. I had good energy, which
is odd that it didn't translate into the workouts
because it really didn't. Well, you were glycogen
depleted. You were down to 40 % glycogen in your
muscles. But why did I have mental clarity? You
probably had ketones floating around and you
had no glucose fluctuation. No glucose fluctuation,
I think, is it. Is that a negative way to eat?
A carnivore? Yeah. I mean, look, I haven't done
it. It just strikes me as unnatural. I'm sure
there are some people for whom it's a reasonable
way to go about it. It's hard for me to understand,
though. Is it unnatural? Look, the Maasai are
largely carnivores, right? So there are clearly
some civilizations who have done it. But we have
to distinguish between it can be done from it
is optimal. Those are not the same thing. And
we're clearly omnivores in your eyes. If one
was going to - Just like a vegan diet at the
other end of the spectrum. Can it be done? Sure.
Is it better than the standard American diet?
Sure. Is it necessarily the optimal diet? No.
Why is it necessarily the optimal diet? Just
because some guy's telling us it is. Well, the
idea is that I think the vegan diet is the only
diet that comes with sort of a moral imperative.
That's right. And I think these folks that do
it, they're saying, listen, I care about A, climate
change, B, the animals, all the above, whatever
it is. So that's a different – like can you do
it and survive and thrive? Yes, you can. When
you're doing the carnivore diet, I think their
idea is that they're trying to avoid plant chemicals
that plants release when they're being consumed
by predators, which does happen, right? Yeah,
I guess I just – I have to feel like we have
evolved enough tools to – thrive despite plants
like i just well isn't it also true that there's
an effect that when you're taking in these plant
compounds that are designed to ward off predation,
that your body has a sort of hermetic effect.
And it's actually somewhat beneficial to have
those. That's Rhonda Patrick's take on things
like broccoli sprouts and things along those
lines, right? I don't have a point of view on
it. I mean, clearly hormesis is an important
part of our existence. But I don't know. My null
hypothesis would be we evolved to eat. plants
right i just i and vegetable vegetables fruits
and and meat as well yeah yeah the the but we're
also super versatile like we can do we can do
a lot i don't know any elite athletes that do
just straight carnivore but i do know a lot that
do carnivore ish so they do mostly meat and then
they supplement it with fruits And so they'll
eat like apples and pineapples and things along
those lines. And they get their glucose essentially
from fruit. And they basically avoid all plant
matter, which I also take athletic greens. I
take that supplement. Dude, I'm freaking obsessed
with it. It's great stuff, right? I feel good
when I take it. I go off of that, you know. Oh,
so yeah, that's interesting. Could you do carnivore
with AG? Mm -hmm. Yeah. I'd feel a lot better
if I did that, psychologically. I don't think
I'd feel right if I was not eating any vegetables.
I like them. That's the problem. If I have a
nice salad with tomatoes and onions and olive
oil and vinegar, I look forward to that. I like
it. I like to start off a meal with a good salad.
It tastes good. I like it. It's one of those
things where I'm not sure that's bad for me.
I think when I have a bowl of pasta, I like that
too, but I'm like, oh, you fucking idiot. After
I eat it, I'm like, oh, dummy, what have you
done? I never feel like that after I have a salad.
After a salad, I'm like, good. It was good. I
liked it. But that's my optimal meal. My optimal
meal is a good salad and a piece of meat. That's
what I like the most. And maybe some sort of
a starch like my favorite sweet potatoes. Sweet
potatoes are yams. Those are my favorite. Because
I feel like with those I'm getting all the benefits.
And I do know that you can take potatoes and
boil them and then cool them off. And then whatever
it is that happens to the potato, you lose a
lot of the negative effects. Yeah, there's this
whole resistant starch argument. Again, for me,
I take a much simpler empirical approach to this,
which is I have in my mind a predefined set of
metrics around how high I want my glucose to
be, how much I want it to vary, and where I want
it to average. And I titrate my intake to that.
And you wear a constant glucose monitor, right?
Yeah, yeah. I saw it on your arm. Yeah, yeah,
yeah. So my activity and my sleep basically determine
what I eat. And is that monitor working with
an app? Yeah. What's the app? What's it called?
This monitor is called Dexcom, so it just works
with the Dexcom app. And there's another one
called Libre, the Abbott version of this, but
it's a bit more cumbersome. How much do you find
it varies throughout the day, your glucose levels?
Quite a bit, and it varies a ton with sleep and
stress. So if you have a bad night of sleep,
like I don't even wear this when I go hunting.
Because you don't want to know your data? Well,
first of all, also there's a part of me that's
like perhaps naively. worried that any sort of
Bluetooth signal out there in the field is being
picked up by a deer. What about your phone? I
always have it on airplane mode. Oh, okay. But
also, I just think - Do you think a deer can
pick up a Bluetooth signal? I have no idea, but
it's like if I'm going to wear a stupid hex suit,
I'm going to - Yeah. You know what I mean? Do
you buy into that hex suit thing? I don't think
so, but it's one of those things where it's like
the downside of it. It clearly works with fish.
Really? Yeah. Yeah, it seems to really work with
fish. I've talked to people that understand.
Have you bow hunted fish yet out here? No, I
have not. I've heard it's awesome, though. Yeah.
I think spearfishing is the move. I got to get
that going. That seems like the move. snorkeling
and spearfishing. You should come to Maui with
us in June. We're going to go out there, Justin
Lee and Mark Healy. Do you know those guys? Yeah,
I know Mark. You know Mark. He's a great guy.
So they're going to teach me and another buddy
some serious diving and spearfishing in June.
Yeah, that's like hunting underwater. Those guys
are, I mean, that looks incredible. It looks
so, and for someone who's been so comfortable
in water, they keep telling me, like they said,
Justin told me that, Within a couple hours, he'll
have me down to 75 feet. And I'm like, that can't
be possible. There's no way I could go to 75
feet. And he's like, of course you can. You can
swim 25 yards of a pool holding your breath,
like there and back, which I can. He's like,
how could you not do it? And I was like, well,
when you put it that way, but still, it seems
so hard. How do you get down there, though? Do
you have to have a weight on or something? I
think they do. Yeah, they use long fins and a
slight weight. And you titrate the weight to
a certain level of buoyancy, like a slight negative
buoyancy, I think. And if you're panicking, you
can release the weight? Yes, I believe you can.
And how much weight is it? That's funny. I asked
Justin about this. Now, of course, it depends
on how thick your wetsuit is, if you're wearing
a wetsuit and things like that. But it wasn't,
I want to say it was like eight pounds or something.
It wasn't like some staggering sum of weight.
It's amazing. You know the guy who has the world
record in the static hold? He might have to quit
his career because he got myocarditis from being
vaccinated. Oh, really? Yeah, unfortunately.
He's one of the rare few that gets it, and he
lost like 30 % of his ability to hold his breath.
See if you can find that guy's story. Somebody
just shared it with me. But some of these guys
can hold their breath for seven, eight. Yeah,
I was going to say, what's the static apnea record
now? It's probably approaching 10. Oh, no, but
I think it's if you preload with oxygen, it's
different, right? Oh, that's cheating. That should
be cheating. I want to know what can a person
just go and hold their breath. And the preloading
with oxygen, I think David Blaine did something
insane. He went like 10 minutes or something
crazy. He's a fascinating guy. He sure is. Have
you ever met him? No, I've spoken on the phone
to him. I've never met him. My goodness, dude.
When you watch him do magic, you're just like,
what the fuck did I just see? How would you do
that? He did some crazy shit with us with his
sleeves rolled up. He wanted us to know that
his sleeves are rolled up. He's making cards
disappear. And Jamie and I were like, what the
fuck did we just see? Where did that go? It's
really weird. He is pretty amazing. Beyond and
that whole world of magicians and people who?
You know understand like how to distract you
in a way that you don't notice what they're doing
while they're doing it But they have this insane
hand dexterity So they're moving in a way that
a normal person can't even imagine that your
hands can move And they're shuffling these cards
in front of you. You don't even seeing what's
happening Did you see that movie with with Hugh
Jackman and Christian Bale the prestige? What's
this here, buddy? This is his post about it.
I was trying to go to the source. Okay. So this
is from his Instagram. It says, I want to share
my annoying experience after vaccination and
perhaps have some testimonials from similar stories.
From Free Divers, did you get better? He said,
after my second dose of the vaccine, I noticed
my heart rate was way higher than normal and
my breath hold capacity went down significantly.
During sleep, I'm at 65 to 70 beats per minute
instead of 37 to 45 beats per minute. During
the day, I'm now over, wow, I'm now always over
100 beats per minute instead of 65, even when
I sit down and relax. Once I even reach... reached
177 beats per minute while having dinner with
friends. Three exclamation points, four exclamation
points. Ten days after my second jab, I went
to see a cardiologist, and he told me it's a
common side effect of Pfizer vaccine. Nothing
to worry about, just rest. It will pass. Forty
days. After the second jab, I had no progress,
so I went to see another cardiologist and got
diagnosed with myocarditis and trivial mitral
regurgitation, which is basically an inflammation
of the heart muscle caused by the immune system
and some tiny leaks of blood from the valves
that no longer close properly. I'm now struggling
to reach eight minutes breath hold, which is
hilarious. That sounds amazing. 150 -meter...
D -Y -N, I don't know what that means. And even
have, what is 150 meter D -Y -N? Do you know
what that is? I don't know if that's dying as
in, I don't know. And even have a strong urge
to breathe doing 40 meter dives. 30 % decrease
in my diving performance roughly. My first thought
and recommendation to free divers around the
world is to choose a vaccine which is done the
old fashioned way like Sputnik, Sinovac. Sinopharm,
et cetera, instead of the new mRNA vaccines.
It's weird because he spells vaccines wrong every
time. Does he have not spell check? Is he from
another country? Yeah. Oh, so they spell things
wrong. Like they spell like tire with a Y in
England. What's that guy's name? Mr. Ten Minutes.
Florian Doggery. Mr. Ten Minutes is his. Say
it. Yeah. Wrong. World record holder for apnea
diagnosed myocarditis. 1031 was his time. 1031.
That's so long. Meanwhile, he's complaining he
can only hold his breath for eight minutes. Like,
bitch, that's so long. Stop bragging. I mean,
you know, I was just talking about this with
a friend yesterday. I do. A year and a half ago,
I remember thinking. You know, one silver lining
of COVID is going to be that science will regain
its place as, you know, an important part of
our civilization, right? Like there was a day
in the 1960s when a scientist, an engineer was
really respected and the best and the brightest
kids wanted to go into those professions. And
I don't think that's necessarily the case anymore,
right? I mean, if you're a super bright kid today,
you're going to go want to work at Goldman Sachs
or something like that. And I remember thinking
like, God, you know. if they develop a vaccine
to this and, you know, develop a vaccine in a
year, which is unheard of, it's going to really
impress people. People are really going to think
science is amazing. And instead, I think the
exact opposite has happened, right? I think that
there has been a fundamental confusion between
science and advocacy. And I think it has done
a huge disservice to science in the short term.
And I don't know where it's going to shake out.
Like, I wish I had a I wish I had something I
could go into a crystal ball and look back and
say in 10 years, how will this have panned out?
Because guys like this, I completely believe
that. And I absolutely think that there are lots
of side effects to vaccines. I still think for
most people, vaccines are a net positive. But
I think that there's been so much discussion
of anything that talks about anything about a
vaccine that's bad, we can't talk about because
we've taken this advocacy view, right? So again,
the difference is... A scientific discussion
is one that says, let's just talk about the facts,
let's look at all of the facts, and let's speak
with varying degrees of certainty and uncertainty.
An advocacy view says, I have a point of view
about what is important for your health, what
I believe is important for your health, and if
the message is get vaccinated, then we're going
to talk about that at the expense of talking
about anything else. Including the negative effects
of the vaccine. Including the negative effects
of the vaccine or... Being able to talk about
it in a nuanced way, and this is going to probably
get me in a million piles of shit, but I'm not
excited about getting my four -year -old and
seven -year -old vaccinated. I look at everything
through a two -by -two lens of risk and reward.
You're either picking up pennies or Bitcoins,
and you're picking them up in front of tricycles
or trains. That's your risk -reward trade -off.
If you're an 80 -year -old person, getting vaccinated
is like picking up a Bitcoin in front of a tricycle.
It's a no -brainer. It's a no -brainer. Yeah.
Right? The reward, the Bitcoin, is so worth it
compared to the downside of getting hit by a
tricycle, which would hurt. If you're five years
old, I mean, the risk of dying from influenza
is five times higher than the risk of dying from
COVID. If we knew the vaccine was 100 % safe
and we had a million patients that had taken
it and we could clearly document what the risk
was, maybe it's worth it. But I don't know that
today, right? Now, for me, yeah, it makes sense.
Like, the risk of me getting myocarditis from
long COVID is higher than the risk of me getting
myocarditis from a vaccine. Do you think that's
true still? Because it probably was true before
the advent and the use of monoclonal antibodies.
Yeah, it's a good question. I just had a patient
who got COVID two weeks ago. So I'm one of his
doctors, and then he has a primary care doctor
as well. And we wanted to put him on monoclonal
antibodies. His primary care doctor didn't want
to put him on monoclonal antibodies. His risk
was too low to justify it, given the side effects
of MABS, but the risk of MABS are pretty darn
low. So in the end, we get monoclonal antibodies.
But what is the risks? Oh, I mean, you can have
a hypersensitivity reaction to it. Very small
risk. And also, especially if you're monitoring
a person while they're getting it, it's basically
a non -existent risk. So my view was, yeah. And
by the way, have you seen the new Pfizer drug
that came out, this protease inhibitor that was
just approved or given a UA? That thing is remarkable.
Yeah. Like stupidly remarkable. And again, it
wasn't a huge trial. So I want to see more data.
But in the roughly 2 ,000 people that got this
that were divided into two groups, in the placebo
group, so meaning the people who weren't getting
an actual drug, the risk of adverse reaction
was something like 6%. In the drug group, it
was 2%. Meaning like no adverse reactions. The
mortality difference was 12 people versus one
people. So it was a 91 % reduction in death and
about a 63 % reduction in hospitalization. This
is a protease inhibitor. So it's a slightly different
mechanism from the Merck one that is a nucleotide
inhibitor. So, yeah, I mean, today with... That
drug with monoclonal antibodies with fluvoxamine.
Yeah, fluvoxamine, which is fascinating, which
is an antidepressant. Yeah, it's an SSRI. What
is the mechanism? I don't know. That's not to
say one doesn't know, but I don't know. Dr. Drew
is explaining it to me, but I forgot. We became
interested in it based on really early reports
that suggested that it was minimizing long -term
neurologic fog that some people were experiencing.
And then there was a JAMA trial and then very
recently a Lancet trial that was a bigger trial,
a very well -done trial. And it, on an intention
to treat basis, so meaning for all the people
who took the drug versus those who didn't, and
it's 10 days, 100 milligrams twice a day, there's
about a 67 % reduction in death and hospitalization.
Just from an off -the -shelf SSRI. That's fascinating.
So a cocktail or a stack of fluvoxamine, monoclonal
antibodies, this Pfizer drug, all those things.
I had great results with the monoclonal antibodies.
All anybody focused on was ivermectin when people
were upset at me. But I said that casually with
a list of all the other things. I didn't even
promote it. But for whatever reason, there's
been some sort of a demonization of that particular
drug. Make of it what you will. Which, by the
way, you know the safety profile of ivermectin,
right? I mean, it's just a horribly dangerous
drug. Tell me about the safety profile because
it is kind of hilarious. Tell everybody, I should
say. Yeah, so the WHO estimates that ivermectin
has been dosed four billion times since its inception.
So not necessarily 4 billion people, but 4 billion
doses of this drug have been administered. And
in that time, there are a total documented number
of 28 adverse neurologic responses. This is one
of the safest drugs ever. There's no antibiotic
that I'm aware of that has a better safety profile
than this. When you saw that goofy Rolling Stone
article that claimed that there was a hospital
in Oklahoma and that they had gunshot victims
that were waiting to get into the emergency room
because they were so - So many people who overdosed
on ivermectin. What did you think of that? I
didn't see the article. You didn't see that?
It is a 100 % fake story. But Rolling Stone printed
it. And Rachel Maddow tweeted it. And then doubled
down afterwards. And was claiming that there
was calls to poison control. Which means jack
shit if the drug isn't poison, you fucking idiot.
That's a dumb thing to say. Poison control? Like,
it's not poison. I mean, look, we had used ivermectin
in some patients six months ago. We don't use
it today. So we use fluboxamine today. And I'm
waiting to see if more data emerged. There are
five clinical trials registered on clinicaltrials
.gov that are looking at it. The problem is most
of the trials on ivermectin to date have been
very small, and they've looked at many different
things. So when these people do meta -analyses
to combine them, the trials are so heterogeneous.
They have different endpoints. They have different
doses. They have different durations. They're
combined with different drugs. It's messy. It's
so messy. And then there was that one very, very
fraudulent trial from Egypt. And that really
diluted things. Wasn't there another one that
was fraudulent? Possible. I feel like there was
one that, I want to say, was it Argentina? There
was one in Brazil that got a lot of talk, but
I don't know if that was it. So the data's messy.
And it's also... If you look at the Andrew Hill
revised meta -analysis, and I think his is probably
the best, and I think it came out in August,
it looked at, if you included all those studies,
including the fraudulent one, it looked really
good. Ivermectin, with a p -value of less than
0 .01, had a 90 % reduction in hospital admission
and death. Now, the minute you stripped out that
one fraudulent study, the results became way
less impressive. It went to a 38 % reduction
with a p -value of 0 .05, which is right on the
cusp of not even being statistically relevant.
What about in use of prophylaxis? That's the
problem. That study included both prophylactic
use and treatment use. Is one or the other more
promising? That's a good question. I don't know
what's being tested in those five studies today.
But I've – so I shouldn't speak because it's
just not something I'm – I don't know the data
well enough. What I was going to say is that
my – the cocktail that I used, what I called
the kitchen sink, was monoclonal antibodies,
ivermectin, IV drips with a high dose of vitamin
C, glutathione, zinc, and then I did NAD every
other day. And you didn't do fluvoxamine? No,
I did not. No. I didn't know about it at the
time. You should have called me, dude. I should
have. I was sick in September? September? No.
Wait, was this before your Alcon? Yeah, it was
before the Alcon. Quite a bit before the Alcon.
We're in November now. So it must have been August
when I got sick. Yeah. Yeah, it must have been
August. But I was better very quickly. How symptomatic
were you? I knew when I was coming home something
was wrong. I was in Florida, which at the time
it was a hotbed, and I was doing arenas. So I
was doing stand -up in an arena, and I'm doing
it in the round. And so this is what it's like.
So I'm on stage in the round. Around me is 15
,000 people. They're screaming. It's a COVID
cloud. And then I go through the audience to
leave. I go through the audience to get to the
stage, and I go through the audience to leave.
And as I'm walking through the audience, people
are screaming, and they're high -fiving me, and
they're like, thank you, thank you. I'm shaking
people's hands, and then I go into the back room.
So I did that. And then the second night, I went
to a pool hall. I met my friend John Shoman,
who's like a legendary pool cue maker. And we
played pool until like 3 o 'clock in the morning,
3 .30 in the morning. And I had a bunch of margaritas.
I was hammered. And I was tired. I was really
tired. And then I started feeling like shit.
And I was like, oh, my God, I feel terrible.
But I just thought I was hungover. Yeah. And
then the next day. I had a headache and I was
like, oh, I feel like garbage. But I didn't know
if I was sick or if I was just hungover. I thought
I was just hungover. Drank a lot of water, ate
a bunch of food, had another show that night.
No problem. Killed. Had a great show. A lot of
fun. Flying home, I started to feel shitty. But
again, I wasn't sure because I was pretty fucking
drunk on Friday night. And I was like, maybe
that was it. Maybe I need to just go home, get
in bed, and go to sleep. But when I got home,
I said to my wife, I said, I feel odd enough
that I'm going to separate from everybody. And
my kids were already asleep because I got home
really late at night. My wife's already had COVID,
and so I just avoided her and went right to bed.
And then I was sweating. I was sweating in the
middle of the night. I was like, this is not
good. So then I got tested the next day. Are
you vaccinated? No. Okay. Positive, tested. And
then right after I got tested, that day I got
IV vitamin drips. And then the next day I got
monoclonal antibodies. Within a day of getting
the monoclonal antibodies, I felt pretty fucking
good. That would be a Tuesday. By the end of
Tuesday, I felt pretty good. By Wednesday. I
made that video that went viral. Right, I remember
that. That was Wednesday. So that was like three
days after, and I was like, I feel pretty good.
And then by Friday, I was testing negative. By
Thursday, I tested negative on one of those over
-the -counter tests, but not like - Not on PCR.
Not on PCR. Friday, I tested negative, and then
Saturday, I was working out. I mean, I'd put,
of your cocktail, to me, the Mabs were, that's
the linchpin. I think so, too. That's what I've
been telling everybody, that when people get
sick, I don't know if you've been paying attention
to this Aaron Rodgers thing. Yeah, a little bit.
He asked me what to do. Look, in any other world,
when a friend calls you up and you've been sick
with something, hey, man, I got the thing that
you got, what did you do? And I said, I really
think the monoclonal antibodies helped. And I
said, do you have access to those? And he did.
And then I recommended the vitamin drips, IV
vitamin drips, and be really aggressive with
it. And then I also recommended NAD. And he did
those. And he also got better very quickly. This
is not, it shouldn't be controversial to tell
someone what you did. I'm not offering unsolicited
medical advice. I'm not, you know. telling people,
do this and don't do that. What's odd about his
case is that he told people he had been, in quotes,
immunized. I wasn't aware of this until later.
He had done some sort of a homeopathic, which
to me always is, it sounds like voodoo. When
someone says homeopathic, I go, oh, you do voodoo.
I don't think that's real, right? It's homeopathic.
One part per billion? What is homeopathic? What
is that? What does it even mean? It's nonsense.
It means giving a dose that is so diluted that
it's non -existent and claiming that there's
some benefit from it. But what does it mean?
Why is it homeopathic? What is even the definition
of that? I don't know what the entomology of
that word is. Somebody gave me some homeopathic
medicine once, and it was fucking sugar. When
I'm taking it, it was like these little pills.
I was like, this is sugar. It tastes so sweet.
It seems like sugar. And they're like, no, no,
no. Arnica or whatever the fuck it was. And I
was like, bro, this is sugar. This is not fixing
anything. But anyway, he did some protocol that
some homeopathic doctor put him on. I don't know
what the protocol was. I don't know if that would
even – how could you even do it? Like what could
immunize you? So he was telling people he had
been immunized. He was given one copy of the
virus. Right. I don't even think he was given
that. But he has an allergy to – what is this
stuff called again, Jamie? Is an allergy to it's
an ingredient that is in the mRNA vaccines that
specifically says on the CDC website that if
you have this, I have it in my phone. If you
have this allergy, you actually should not take
the mRNA vaccine. It says it on the CDC website,
in which case he would he would have to take
the Johnson and Johnson. So why didn't he take
that one? I don't know. I think he was worried
about blood clots because he was like, right.
right around the time where people got blood
clots, where they pulled it for blood clots.
Which was so ridiculous. Was it? Yeah, six people.
Six people out of, I mean, I don't remember.
I did the math on it at the time. I mean, it
was just another example of failing to basically
communicate nuance. Is that all it is? Yeah,
totally. Now, when it comes to VAERS, like VAERS
reports, how underreported are they? It's a good
question. I mean, I think they're more reported
now because I think we're realizing that there
could be more things going on, right? Like at
the time, put it this way, when a drug hits the
market, the insert, the package insert basically
says these are the side effects we saw in the
trial. These are the things you should be aware
of. Well, at some point, the real world application
of that is going to be greater, meaning the number
of people that take it is going to be greater
than what you see in the clinical trial. You
know, we should see more side effects as time
goes on. And obviously, it's important that they're
all reported because most of them are probably
unrelated to the drug. I mean, we know that from
clinical trials, like the placebo people are
having more reactions than the drug people. But
only by kind of capturing all of them will we
see if a pattern's emerging. I think that's,
I don't know. I mean, that to me is what's disappointing
in all this is just that somehow this has turned
into. Anything that questions the safety of this
or the benefit of that somehow means you're anti
that. I mean, I'm a very pro -vaccine person,
but I still think to not ask the questions about
the risk versus reward trade -off. The Financial
Times did a really nice analysis a few months
ago that plotted by decade what the risk reduction
was from the vaccine. So if you were 85, it took
you from a risk of 2 % down to a risk of 0 .05
% or something like that. And it did this if
you're 80, 70, did it all the way down to 20.
And the first thing that jumps out at you, so
their purpose of doing this analysis was to show
that in... Immunized 80 -year -old has the same
risk as an unimmunized 50 -year -old, which is
pretty cool because a 50 -year -old is in pretty
good shape. So if you're 80 and you get the vaccine,
you're now like a 50 -year -old walking around.
But two things I found interesting about this.
The first was everybody experienced about a 1
.5 log reduction in risk. So a log is 10x. A
2 log is 100x. So 1 .5 log, just call it directionally,
a 20x reduction in risk. So at the surface, that
says everybody should get vaccinated because
the risk is always a 20x. But if you don't know
the harm of the thing, then that risk at some
point won't be worth it, the risk reduction.
Because a 20x reduction when you're starting
at 2 % means you only need to treat 100 people
to get the benefit. But if you're a 40 -year
-old or a 30 -year -old, and your starting point
of risk is so low, a 20x reduction requires you
to treat 10 ,000 people to see a benefit. So
at some point, these curves intersect, the curve
of risk from the vaccine and the curve of benefit
from the vaccine. And that's where children come
into play. And that's where, by my math, below
the age of 13, I'm having a hard time seeing
the data with the limited data set we have. I
only have anecdotal evidence based on my own
children. They both got COVID and it was nothing.
I know that children have died from COVID, but
I also know that those children, almost all of
them had pretty severe comorbidities. Yeah. I
mean, I don't know the latest data. I know the
New York database, which, you know, again, we're
talking about, I mean, kids are dying way more
commonly from influenza, from rotavirus, from
other things like that. So, again, look, if in
a year we have enough evidence where that vaccine
is just as safe as the MMR vaccine, great. Let's
do it. I'm just saying, like, it's not as pressing
as it was for someone like me. I thought even
though my risk from dying of COVID was really
low, I was more concerned with sort of the comorbidities
of COVID. Right. There's been talk of people
getting vaccinated. And then catching COVID afterwards
being one of the best ways to get really strong
immunity. Because if you get vaccinated, you
have a protection from death and hospitalization.
And then if you get COVID, then you get the much
more robust immunity that's imparted by the actual
natural immunity from the infection. I think
probably you're also getting – vaccines are,
depending on which one you get, are typically
– highlighting B -cell or T -cell response. So
the mRNA vaccines are really good at inducing
B -cell immunity, which is antibody -based immunity.
The adenovirus vaccines are better at inducing
T -cell immunity, totally different type of immunity.
What is more effective at stopping the virus?
It's not clear, but my two cents on this as a
former immunologist, but speaking like out of
his ass a bit is... I think the best way to vaccinate
will be one of each. I think that if you got
an mRNA vaccine, and we don't have data on this
yet, but I hope that we do have data to test
this hypothesis. So you would get like one shot
of the J &J, wait a while, and then one shot
of the Pfizer. Exactly. So my plan is to probably
wait until Novavax gets approved in the U .S.
before I get a booster and then boost with that
or J &J. And what is Novavax? I think it's an
adeno. What's the difference between that and
the adeno that we have now? It just seems more
effective. So if you look at the European data,
it seems more effective than even the mRNA vaccines.
Now, when you see people getting myocarditis
and pericarditis and strokes and what have you,
do you think some of that has to do with not
aspirating? Like if someone is shooting the vaccine
directly into a vein inadvertently because they
didn't aspirate? Do you think that that could
be causing some of these side effects? Because
even when they did Joe Biden on television, they
did not aspirate. And I was shocked. I'm watching
this. I'm like, I can't believe they just shot
that into his arm. That's crazy. You're supposed
to aspirate, correct? Yeah. Although typically
with these intramuscular injections, they don't
really aspirate. I remember the first time I
would teach a patient how to inject testosterone,
for example, if they're doing it in the upper
part of their glute, which is where you're supposed
to do it. I would say, look, there's enough blood
vessels there and it's a big enough needle, even
though it's like a 23 gauge or maybe a 25. Just
do a quick aspiration. Typically in the deltoid,
you know, there's not really huge blood vessels
there. I don't know. I mean, that's an interesting
hypothesis. Yeah, because it's a limited number,
right? And if this stuff is causing this problem,
like why is it causing this problem with some
people and not others? And if you're supposed
to aspirate but no one does, like is that – I
mean, there are blood vessels there, right? Yeah.
I mean, they're tiny at that point, right, because
they're typically jabbing you with a little needle
like this. What's more interesting is has anybody
looked at the amount of muscle mass? in the different
people who are getting this? In other words,
are you more likely to get this? Are you less
likely to get it in a muscular person because
there's such a big target and you're almost guaranteed
to be putting it right into the muscle? That's
an interesting question. That makes more sense.
That actually does make sense, right? Again,
it's wild speculation, but worth testing. To
me, when I hear about therapies now, I feel like
it's a shame. that the only thing that gets discussed
is the vaccine. And in particular, wanting people
to get vaccinated that have already recovered
from COVID seems asinine to me. It doesn't make
any sense. When we have these therapies that
are available, these therapeutics, whether it's
the new Pfizer stuff or for sure the monoclonal
antibodies, which are very effective, why would
anybody be continually pushing the vaccine on
people who have already had COVID and recovered?
I don't know. And I think what's even more hard
for me to understand is why people are still
being told to wear masks. Yeah. I mean, it's
so logically inconsistent with what is so obviously
inevitable. SARS -CoV -2 is never going away.
Like, it's never going away, right? In 50 years,
this virus in one form or another will be a part
of our ecosystem. So when I see... You know,
the head of the CDC talking about the importance
of wearing masks. I'm saying to myself, is the
implication of what you're saying that we will
wear masks forever? Because if it's important
to wear a mask today for some reason that I can't
understand, it will presumably be just as important
in 50 years. So is that just the new world order?
Masks everywhere. I'll never be able to go to
an airport again without wearing a mask. You
know, I mean. We should just accept the fact
that this virus is here to stay. So let's worry
more about the resilience that we're going to
develop around this as opposed to, quote unquote,
containment. Do you know Naval, Naval Rob? Yeah,
he he tweeted something I thought that was very
appropriate. He said this virus, this pandemic
is not going to end when everyone is vaccinated.
It's going to end when everyone's infected. Everyone
will be infected. There's zero doubt in my mind.
Everyone will get this virus. And you haven't
gotten it yet? Not to my knowledge. Have you
checked your antibodies? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah,
constantly. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get tested
all the time for whatever reason. I mean, can
I get tested again tonight? I got tested here.
I'm going to go get tested in an hour. Oh, that's
right. So you're going to go to Formula One in
Brazil? Yeah. Wow, you're a wild man. Oh, Brazil's
an amazing circuit. Oh, I've been to Brazil.
You've been to Aerologos? I've never been to
the circuit, but I've been to Brazil for the
UFC multiple times. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How did
you like the F1 here this year? It was pretty
wild. Have you been to many races? No, that's
the first one I've ever been to. What corner
did you sit at? I can't imagine that. I don't
know. It was in the Goldman Sachs fucking thing.
But I can't imagine that this is the only Formula
One race course in America. It's the only built
-for -purpose one like this. I mean, the U .S.
almost has always had a Grand Prix. But they
do it in streets, right? Yeah, or Watkins Glen
was an actual circuit or street circuits. Koda's
amazing. I mean, that was sort of one of the
huge perks of moving to Austin for me was to
have this circuit in my backyard. Well, you're
a freak when it comes to racing. I mean, you
love that shit. That is your thing. I freaking
love it, man. Look, my son is named after the
greatest driver of all time. What's your son's
name? My youngest son is Ayrton. Oh, Ayrton Senna.
Yeah. Okay. I watched that documentary on him.
Amazing. It's wild. Yeah. The video that you
were showing me today of your little Formula
One car. That's Formula 3. Formula 3 car, whatever
the fuck it is. That thing, that little tiny
car that you're whizzing around in, that's a
wow video. I mean, it is. Where do you store
that thing? Do you have that at your house? No,
no, no, no, no, no, no. So I actually rent that
car from a guy who has it stored in Houston.
Because the real thing with those cars is you
have to have an amazing mechanic. Like you have
to have a person who. Because you're always fixing
something in those cars, right? They're not that
expensive to buy, but they're expensive to run.
Right. And it's not just the tires. It's like,
I mean, just the other day, that video from that
day, I mean, like the auto blips stopped working.
So the first session I was out there. You know
what auto blip is, but just for someone listening.
So when you're downshifting a manual car, you
have to rev match. You have to be able to, as
the clutch is in, you have to be able to hit
the throttle a little bit so that the RPM goes
up. And then as it's winding its way down is
when you want to drop the gear so that you've
rev matched so that you don't engine brake and
unnecessarily slow down. in formula cars they
auto blip because you're using paddle shifters
now and that means anytime you do a downshift
the the sensor knows it and just hits a little
blip so i'm out there driving and like at the
high gears when i'm going six to five and five
to four it's working but when i'm going three
to two i'm not shifting i'm just staying in third
and it's There's enough slow corners at Koda
where it's a total disaster. The guys behind
me are going to bump into me because I can't
accelerate off the line. So after two sessions
of this, we're looking at the telemetry. We're
looking at the data to see why am I not doing
this, and we can't figure it out. We're like,
maybe I'm thinking I'm making a mistake, and
then we finally figure it out. No, the auto blip
sensor stopped working. They use auto blip on
a lot of new cars, like new manual cars. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. And Formula One cars are all auto
blip, which is interesting because when I learned
to drive paddle shift, I always blipped myself
because you left foot brake. So you heel -toe.
No, you don't have to. In my MX -5, I have to
heel -toe because I still have a clutch. Oh,
okay. In the Formula car, you only need the clutch
to get into first gear and reverse. Once you're
into first, you don't need the clutch anymore,
so I left -foot brake. Oh. Boy, my left foot
is a dummy. My left foot, I've tried to hit the
brakes before. My left foot's like... I have
no nuance with my left foot. On a street car...
I still right foot brake. And anytime I try to
left foot brake, I do the same thing. I'm like,
dude, what is wrong with you? It's so bad. But
somehow in a formula car, I feel very comfortable
left foot braking. Maybe it's just like your
brain tells you we're racing now. You know, we're
on a racetrack. Because when I try to hit the
brakes with my left foot, I'm like, you don't
know what you're doing. Well, you just don't
have the feel for it. I know, but it's crazy
how bad it is. Because my right foot is so adept
at it. But I have a simulator too, so most of
my reps are in a simulator. Well, yeah, you have
this amazing system at your house, and I'm very
jealous. I need to get one of those. Dude, I
have a new one. You should come over and check
it out. I'm scared. I'm scared I'll be fucking
racing with you. You don't get motion sick, do
you? No, I don't. Because that's the only thing
is, like, I have put friends in there, and they
get sick as shit. Oh, that sounds awesome. No,
I don't get motion sick, luckily. But that system
that you have, like, I should tell everybody,
Peter has this thing where you have, like, a
steering wheel that's a yoke, right? Which is,
by the way, I have that on my Tesla. I'm getting
used to this yoke, which is not a fan for a fucking
street car. I think it's goofy. But that's how
the car comes. Yeah, yeah. But then you have
this huge screen that's kind of curved, right?
Is it curved? I have three screens that wrap
around me, yeah. And then you have a real clutch
and a real brake and a real accelerator. So you're
treating this like you're essentially seeing
a very close simulation to what you would be
seeing on a racetrack. Yeah. I mean, the... You
know, simulators come in all shapes and sizes.
You can spend a million dollars on a simulator.
What? If you're a Formula One team, that's what
they're spending, right? What? The F1 teams have
million -dollar simulators. What does that look
like? It's a real car, and it has six degrees
of movement. So it moves this way. Oh, my God.
Pull that up. It moves up and down, and it moves
this way. Oh, boy. So you get to simulate every
aspect of it. That's right. So it's like a flight
simulator for, like, a combat pilot. That's right.
Wow. So then, so you've got that end, right?
And what is the visuals? What are they seeing?
It's still three screen. So VR, last year, no,
actually earlier this year, I did the VR experiment.
So I bought the four best VR devices on the market.
Like I said, cost is irrelevant. I don't care.
Just let me get the best four. Right. Tried each
of them out. Total garbage. Really? Yeah, total
crap. For someone like you that knows how to
race? No, no. I think for any car simulator.
So this is it? Whoa. So this does not look like
three screens. This is like a giant screen. This
isn't typically the ones that... This is fucking
wild. So this seems like this guy is really driving.
Oh, he has one huge curved screen, yeah. That
is wild. That's a million -dollar racing simulator,
it says. So he's got the full cage. He's in a
car. Oh, my God. This is fucking incredible.
This is incredible. It's insane. You can never
have too much money, Peter, because this is one
of the things you want. You know what's funny
about this simulator, or these ones in general,
is the size of the room you need to put them
in. So this guy's experiencing shake in his hands.
Oh, as do I. So that's the thing I was going
to say. So you don't have to spend a million
dollars to get a really good simulator, right?
If you go away from motion, just the pedals.
The wheel and the belts can provide a ton of
sensory feedback. But it feels like that would
really make you a better racer. Hit that shit
again. Let me see that from the beginning again.
Just take it back to where it was or anywhere.
When I'm watching this guy do this, it's like
that seems like when you're looking at it through
his POV, that seems like that would really make
you a better racer. Like, look at that. That's
wild. Like, it seems like you're racing. The
sim is everything. And the sim is calculated
to the grip of the tires and the amount of G
-force you can generate? The software I'm using
is so good that when I get in the car and pull
out and do an outlap, it knows the tires are
cold. If I push it, I crash. That's crazy. Oh,
yeah, yeah, yeah. And not only that, it has built
-in tire wear. So, for example, if I'm driving
the McLaren MP430, which is a Formula One car
in the simulator, it has the Pirelli softs on
it. I know that... The first three laps, I can't
go very fast. I have to get temperature in the
tire. I hit my peak time, laps four through seven,
and then the tire degrades. Wow. Yeah, it's just
super precise. So then what do you do? You pull
in and restart the game? Yeah. Restart the simulator,
rather? Yeah, or I just drive cars with tires
that have a longer life, so I can get 15 laps
or 25. There's some tires I can get 35 laps out
of. But they will have a commensurate. But they
have lower performance. Yes. Wow. You won't have
peak stickiness. That's crazy that it's just
like the actual tire in the real world application.
You adjust everything. We adjust the light. So
for example, at Koda, if you ever run first thing
in the morning, when you're going into turn six,
you're freaking blind. So I want to simulate
that. So I will tell it. Show me sunrise. Let
me go do 10 laps at sunrise. And I have to now
pick new reference markers to turn because I
know I can't see turn six and I can't see turn.
Actually, late in the day, you can't see turn
10. You have to take turn 10 blind at sunset.
No. Yeah, you have to take turn 10, which is,
by the way, a flat out corner blind. Oh, my God.
That's so crazy. Now, are you wearing glasses?
No, I'm just in my monitors. But when you're
driving, are you wearing any kind of sunglasses?
I just have a visor, and I have multiple visors.
Is the visor... It's UV -protectant, but I generally
like wearing my clear visor, not my blacked -out
visors. Because you just want to be able to see
everything. I want maximum acuity, yeah. Wow.
Yeah, this is the one that I normally used to
see. Okay, this one's bullshit, though. That
one... Comparison to the other one. Depends if
it's moving. Depends if that's... Oh, see, this
one I know that I'm in a race simulator. This
one's fucking weak. But you're still getting
a ton of value out of this because, remember,
the big part of the simulator is learning the
track, is learning the line, and learning the
steering control and the throttle control. Well,
this looks pretty dope right here. It's enough.
It'll get you enough. So it's like you're looking
through a weird windshield or something. Yeah,
the problem with VR... That's 2009. ...is it
just... Yeah, that was the Williams FW16. That
was the FW16, yeah. So the refresh rate is not
fast enough and the resolution is not high enough.
So I think VR is probably awesome for a flight
simulator because things aren't moving that fast
in a flight simulator. Even though you're traveling
fast, your relative distance is not. But in a
car... You know what it's like to drive a car
fast. Things are happening like that. What kind
of refresh rate are those monitors? My monitor
is refreshing at 320 frames per second. Wow.
It's not in hertz? Well, hertz is. That's what
it is? Hertz is frames per second? Hertz is 1
over 60, but yeah. Oh, okay. They talk about
it in frames per second. So it's smooth even
though you're. I can run. With my computer, I
can run at the maximum capacity of the simulator.
Wow. That's wild. But what do I not have? I don't
have movement. I don't have yaw. Right. And yaw
is the single most important feeling for a driver
to develop. The ability to recognize the g -force
on your body. It's the ability to know the difference
between front and rear grip. Oh, and the simulator
doesn't have that? Mine does not. If I want that,
I have to spend 10 times as much. Okay. So that's
those million dollars. That's right. So for me,
I know that I'm oversteering only by vision.
So if I'm driving the carousel at COTA, right,
and that's a corner where you, in a high downforce
car. can go flat out. You can be pedal to the
metal around 16, 17, 18 of coda, that curve at
the end. But in most cars, you can't. And in
the Formula 3 car that I showed you the video
of, you can't be flat out in that corner. It
doesn't have enough downforce. And you judge
the grip of a car, the ability around a corner,
it's based on feel, correct? Yes. And that's
what's missing from the simulator. So what happens
in the simulator is... I'm pushing. How hard
can I go? And I know I've gone too far when I
see, uh -oh, my back is spinning out from under
me. The problem is that's happening a split second
after I would have felt it. So in the simulator,
it's actually harder to correct oversteer than
in a real car. So it's only giving you like 70
% knowledge or something like that. When it comes
to oversteer. Understeer is different. Understeer
is a visual thing. So the simulator is perfect
for understeer, but it is limited in oversteer.
Wow. There's too many things in this world. You
could get really excited. You are like me that
you don't want to try to play golf for the same
reason. I'm never going to play golf. Well, I
see how you've taken to bow hunting, and I see
how you've taken to racing. Yeah, there's too
many things in this world. We should probably
wrap this up. We're more than three hours in.
Yeah. Wild. Fucking time warp in this room, right?
It's the lack of light. It's like a casino. No
windows. It's a little bit of that, but it's
just interesting conversation. How do you like
this studio compared to your last one? Yeah,
the last one, which is right next door. No, no,
I mean the one in LA. I'm sorry. Oh, this is
like the same. It's not much different in terms
of the inside of it. I like this one better than
the one that I had in L .A. But in terms of the
studio space, like where I'm at, now that I'm
putting a gym here, it's great. I loved having
the gym there and having the sauna. Are you going
to bring the archery simulator thing? Yep. Yeah,
I'm going to bring that next time. I want to
try that. Yeah, it's fun. You'll love it. You
don't shoot your arrow, do you? Yeah. You shoot
everything. You just take out your regular field
tips for a flathead tip that looks like the head
of a nail. Okay. And you're shooting it into
a Kevlar screen. And it's all HD animals roaming
around, and they scream, and they do everything,
like the elk bugle, just like a real elk does.
It's amazing. Yeah. All right. Yeah, you'll love
it. I'll get that in soon. Next time you're here,
we'll do that. Awesome, man. Thank you, brother.
I appreciate you. Thank you, Jamie. Tell everybody
your Instagram and all that jazz. PeterAtiaMD.
A -T -T -I -A -M -D. That's Instagram and Twitter
as well. Yeah. And the podcast is The Drive.
The Drive. And that's on everything. Every single
Monday, all on health and longevity. All right.
Bye, everybody.