In this episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the comedian and podcaster joins me to talk about his new book, Conscious Capitalism, and why he thinks capitalism is the greatest thing humanity has ever done. We also talk about the benefits of vegan cheese, frozen meat, and frozen yogurt, and much more. It's a great episode, and I hope you enjoy it! -Joe Rogan is a standup comedian, podcaster, and writer. He is the author of Conscious Capitalism and Conscious Leadership, and is a regular contributor to the New York Times, CNN, and NPR. He is also the founder of Conscious Leadership and Conscious Entrepreneurship, and he is a frequent contributor to The Huffington Post, NPR, and other publications. He's also a frequent guest on the radio show Morning Joe, and hosts the morning show on SiriusXM's Morning Joe with John Rocha. He's on the road to becoming a regular on the podcaster and host of the Morning Joe Show on the morning radio show, and on the Today Show with Alex Blumberg, where he's a regular guest on Morning Joe on the Morning Show on CBS Radio, CBS Radio and CBS Radio. and the Morning Mashup with Sarah Abdurrahman, who is also a regular host on The Morning Joe Morning Show with Sarah's Morning Show, and a host of Morning Joe Live, and her own podcast, Morning Joe After Hours. , he also hosts a podcast called Morning Joe. with his own podcast Morning Joe and Morning Joe Outro, he also has his own a new podcast called the Joe Rogans Experience. . and has a new book out called , which is available on Amazon Prime, which you can find him on all over the internet. His new book called Conscious Capitalism . and his website is called Conscious Capitalism , which he is also available on the best of his social media account, Conscious Leadership which is also on the internet, which is on all of the social meditations, and his podcast is on his website. of course, you can get all the details on his socials, including the best coffee and all of his other socials , and his book is on the socials and podcast on the website, Podcast, and , all of this is also is on Insta: to get the full scoop on it all.
00:01:29.000Today, in this day and age, this very strange time, there's a large segment, I shouldn't say a large segment, but it's a very squeaky wheel.
00:01:35.000There's a segment of our culture that thinks that capitalism is evil.
00:01:45.000I think capitalism is the greatest thing humanity has ever done.
00:01:49.000If you go back just 200 years ago when capitalism was really getting going, 94% of the people alive on the planet Earth lived on less than $2 a day.
00:03:46.000And they think that the way out of this is socialism, some type of socialism.
00:03:52.000In my opinion, the people that are saying that, I don't think there's anything wrong with contributing and contributing to a better community in terms of making healthcare more affordable or free, making education more affordable or free.
00:04:08.000But human beings need incentives in order to perform.
00:04:13.000And that's just human nature, whether we like it or not.
00:04:16.000If you want a system that allows for a continual progress of innovation, like constant innovation, you've got to give people incentives to do that.
00:04:27.000Just the human animal strives to achieve for whatever reason.
00:05:14.000For example, Denmark's listed one place below the United States.
00:05:18.000It's like number 12. Sweden's like number 20. United States is like number 13 or 14. So Iceland is the freest of those Scandinavian countries.
00:05:29.000So Sweden's held up as an example, but what people don't realize is the corporate income taxes in Sweden are only 21%.
00:05:36.000They have no inheritance taxes at all.
00:05:39.000They have universal vouchers for education, so free competition in education, not a monopoly.
00:05:46.000They are probably in a lot of ways more capitalistic than Americans are.
00:05:50.000So what is it that they point to when they point to these Scandinavian countries?
00:05:54.000What are they using as an example of them being a shining light of socialism?
00:05:58.000In some sense, they're still stuck in the 60s when Sweden did an experiment with socialism before it moved away from it.
00:07:14.000When your economy tanks and 40 plus percent of your businesses are gone, I don't think economically you're going to bounce back nearly as well.
00:07:24.000I think it's a very dangerous place to be.
00:07:28.000Like Los Angeles right now, if you're a business owner, it's a dangerous place to be.
00:09:10.000But when they caught him at that restaurant, the French Laundry, you know, eating with no mask on, inside, no social distancing, all the things that he tells everybody to do.
00:09:20.000He tells everybody to put a mask on in between your bites of food, and he's not doing it himself.
00:09:49.000And if they have a reason where they can justify that, that it seems feasible, like COVID, then they just start imposing those rules.
00:09:57.000And if people are frightened, they're more likely to go along with those rules, too.
00:10:01.000Imagine if instead of doing what they did, imagine if they spent a lot of time telling people how to strengthen their immune system.
00:10:09.000Imagine if they distributed free vitamins.
00:10:12.000Imagine if they put money into keeping these hospitals well staffed, hired more people, and maybe even possibly tried to talk about opening up Alternative hospitals, if there was some overflow, but allowed people to go to work,
00:10:28.000told people, look, wear your mask, social distance, take care of your health, take your fight, do all these things.
00:10:34.000But we can't fucking tank the economy for nine months and not expect disaster.
00:10:39.000Well, we actually have some good examples out there.
00:10:42.000And even though it gets a lot of criticism, the way Sweden handled it, Is probably, again, more aligned with how America might have handled it in the previous decades.
00:10:53.000Because Sweden is so small in comparison.
00:10:56.000I mean, you have Stockholm, you have some cities, but you have all these, like, small villages, and people are generally healthier there, too.
00:12:08.000I mean, it's just two of the best clubs in the world, and they're right in this one city, and the community of comedians is just fantastic.
00:12:13.000And the fact that they closed all that down...
00:12:16.000Was it the Silicon Valley, so to speak, of comedy?
00:13:44.000As a general rule, to want to do that, to want to humiliate yourself, get on stage, and the failure, the bombing, is some of the most intense emotional pain a person can ever subject themselves to,
00:15:18.000It gives you an opportunity to try to figure out a better way to word it, or a better way to justify your position, or a softer way to land it.
00:15:29.000There's a lot of different weird things that are going on when you're doing comedy.
00:15:54.000I still have a speech I'm going to give, but I do alter it as I go along.
00:15:58.000I shorten some stuff, lengthen other stuff, and I substitute if I think that's going to bomb out.
00:16:04.000Well, I think public speaking, like what you're doing when you're standing up and talking about a very particular subject...
00:16:11.000It's almost more open-ended because you really never know what kind of crowd you're going to get, whether they're going to be in a good mood or a bad mood, whether they're bored or hot or cold.
00:16:19.000When you go to see comedy, generally people go there because they want to have fun.
00:16:24.000So they have a good perspective when they get there.
00:16:26.000They're like, I've come here to have fun and laugh.
00:18:13.000Austin's a particularly good place to do comedy because there's a great history of stand-up comedy in Texas.
00:18:18.000Like, Kinison, who's arguably one of the greatest of all time, you know, this is where he cut his teeth.
00:18:23.000This is where it all went together for him.
00:18:25.000So, Austin, like, when I first started doing stand-up, I was selling out in Houston before I was selling out anywhere.
00:18:31.000Because for whatever reason, they had this longing for that kind of raw comedy that you really, it's hard to get in a lot of places that are maybe a little bit too politically correct.
00:18:42.000Like there's certain places where they're so woke.
00:18:45.000They're almost like they want to laugh, but they want to call you out on your comedy almost as much as they want to laugh.
00:18:52.000And they don't want to get criticized for laughing on something that they shouldn't laugh at, right?
00:18:58.000Yeah, we were talking about this before the show.
00:20:31.000Right now, we're in a wave of this, right?
00:20:33.000It's become more popular now, I would say over the last, particularly during the Trump administration, the concept of socialism at least has become more publicly discussed than any time that I can remember in my life.
00:21:07.000I think because in a market society, which has been rare in history, we haven't mostly had market societies, but they're not very important in a market society.
00:21:19.000The intellectuals aren't very important?
00:22:02.000And they were smarter than the other kids in school.
00:22:06.000And now these other kids, they go to college, and they get a degree in business, and they're in a fraternity, and they make a lot of friends and relationships, and they make more money than the intellectuals do.
00:22:17.000And that seems like that's completely unfair.
00:22:20.000It's an unjust world that the less smart people are making more money than the smart people do, and they have more status in the society.
00:22:28.000And I think underlying it is a resentment or an envy of a society that doesn't judge them to be as important as they judge themselves.
00:22:38.000That's interesting, but I think it's a very flawed perspective.
00:22:41.000And first of all, the term smart is a weird term, right?
00:24:58.000It's almost like capitalism is like a genie that got out of the bottle and they're trying very hard to stuff the genie back in the bottle as much as they can.
00:25:07.000And I think if you think about it that way, you'll understand we're never going to win the intellectuals over.
00:25:34.000Their primary argument is that business is greedy and selfish and it's about motivations.
00:25:40.000That business people have the wrong motivations.
00:25:43.000In a lot of ways, Conscious Capitalism is an answer to that.
00:25:46.000It's a complete answer to that because in the book and in Conscious Leadership as well, we're basically arguing that business isn't primarily about maximizing profits.
00:25:56.000Business is primarily about creating value for other people.
00:26:00.000And through creating value for other people, you do make a profit.
00:26:03.000But it's the value creation that comes first.
00:26:06.000The profits come second in exchange, right?
00:26:09.000And it's almost if you are creating value, then you are profitable.
00:26:13.000And then you can reinvest those profits and you have this upwards spiral.
00:26:19.000So that's – business has its potential for higher purpose.
00:29:06.000The suppliers who are trading with the business, they're winning as well or they wouldn't make the exchanges.
00:29:11.000Investors are winning or they wouldn't make the investments.
00:29:13.000And the larger society is winning because business is the engine that creates all the money that goes into non-profits and governments.
00:29:21.000Without business, there is no government and there is no non-profit sector because those are ultimately supplied through what business creates.
00:29:56.000It's like we're going to take your success and we're going to redistribute it.
00:29:59.000So that, as again, you said earlier on, incentives matter.
00:30:02.000But we're going to take away the incentives for business to really flourish and succeed.
00:30:07.000They should do it from altruistic reasons.
00:30:10.000And we may do some things for altruistic reasons, but you cannot build a society around it.
00:30:14.000When you're talking about win-win-win, this is a very, in many ways, it's, I see what you're saying, but there are things that are negative that are associated with profit and innovation and particularly expanding industry,
00:30:33.000Like when you talk, when you say win-win-win, like there's very rarely when you're, especially when you're dealing with creating and designing and building things, you've got a negative impact in some way environmentally.
00:31:47.000Unintended negative consequences, as you say, environmentally.
00:31:50.000Well, that's why you have to regulate business to a certain extent.
00:31:54.000That's why you have to make people responsible for their environmental pollutants.
00:31:58.000And because business innovates and has an incentive to innovate, Business can innovate and create solutions to those environmental problems.
00:32:07.000Okay, let me stop you there for a second.
00:32:08.000When you say make people responsible for their environmental pollutants, then we're going to have to deal with another aspect of capitalism.
00:32:16.000And that's the effect that special interest groups and lobbyists have on politicians.
00:32:22.000Because they create laws that shield these big businesses from consequences from these negative actions.
00:32:27.000So by saying that they have to clean up their problem...
00:32:31.000The only way that's ever going to happen is if they're not protected, if they don't use that influence and money.
00:32:38.000So this is where I think a lot of people have a valid argument against capitalism.
00:32:45.000Capitalism has kind of fucked over our system of government in a way because money has gotten so deeply involved with super PACs and lobbyists and there's so much money involved.
00:32:58.000That it changes the way we govern things.
00:33:02.000Is that a flaw of capitalism or is that a flaw of government?
00:33:05.000I think it's a flaw of government, but that government has been influenced by capitalism.
00:33:09.000By capitalism's desire for universal growth.
00:33:29.000Because human choices and what people want varies.
00:33:35.000Capitalism will sell cigarettes to people because that's what people want.
00:33:39.000It gives them pleasure, but it's bad for their health.
00:33:41.000But they're giving people what they want.
00:33:44.000It's the same thing in any type of Right.
00:34:04.000But what you strive for is to take those externalities or those negative consequences and try to, through good government, to minimize them or lessen them.
00:34:16.000So you used to live in LA. Well, when I went to LA back in the early 80s, I think?
00:34:39.000Of industrialization and ameliorate them or lessen them.
00:34:42.000What do you think about the government of LA's decision or the governor of California rather's decision to eliminate all sales of combustion engine cars after 2035?
00:34:57.000My first thought is that a lot of times people make these proclamations in the future that they'll never be around to see the ultimate that actually realized, meaning that it'll be somebody else's problem then.
00:35:13.000A politician will make promises and claims for the future that they won't themselves ever deliver on.
00:35:18.000So I... I think that's well-intentioned in terms of lessening environmental externalities from the internal combustion engine or from carbon production.
00:36:16.000Agriculture is when you take a lot of land under cultivation, you're going to mow down the jungles and if you're going to graze cattle, that's going to have a negative impact on the environment.
00:36:27.000There's no escaping human humanity's impact on the environment.
00:36:41.000We solve some problems, and when new problems come up, every generation has to begin to solve the problems that the parents couldn't solve.
00:36:49.000I agree with you that capitalism is a better alternative, and I agree because of all the things that we talked about, that it gives more incentive, that having innovation And having these incentives creates better alternatives for people in terms of how to live their life.
00:37:05.000It gives them, in terms of medicine, and in terms of what's going on in the medical industry, saving far more lives, fixing far more people that have been injured.
00:39:35.000You're eating all that Whole Foods foods.
00:39:36.000I'm eating all that healthy Whole Foods.
00:39:38.000That is one thing that you guys did do that's very interesting, right?
00:39:42.000You created a market where, like, if you tell people, I go to Whole Foods, you know, people are like, oh, well, you care about your health.
00:39:50.000Like, it's synonymous with healthy foods, even in the name, Whole Foods.
00:40:42.000And then the narrative went sour because it's like you're a fool for shopping there because you can get the same food cheaper elsewhere, so you're going to Whole Paycheck.
00:40:51.000So the narrative turned negative, so to speak.
00:40:56.000I still see that pretty much all the time, although since our merger with Amazon, we've cut our prices many, many times.
00:41:03.000Amazon allowed Whole Foods to think long term again.
00:41:06.000We needed to cut our prices, but when you're a public company, if you're selling something for a dollar and you say, you know what, we need to sell this for 90 cents, and you start selling it for 90 cents, in the short run, you just cut your sales 10% because you're not selling any more of it.
00:41:21.000Over the long term, People will realize, man, I can get a good deal for 90 cents.
00:41:26.000And they start to shop with you more and your sales will go up.
00:41:29.000But when you're a public company and the market's very short-term oriented, you pay a heavy price in the short term for reducing your prices.
00:41:36.000And Amazon is willing to think long-term and let Whole Foods do that.
00:41:40.000Because Jeff Bezos got that long money, son.
00:41:42.000He has long money because he's had a lot of brilliant ideas and put together a pretty good team.
00:43:43.000It also attracts people to you that share that same purpose.
00:43:47.000This is something that I find very frustrating in people that don't recognize that it is incredibly difficult to build a successful business when they just want to tax the shit out of people and take all that money.
00:44:22.000Some people have suggested some extraordinary tax rates in order to get us out of this current recession.
00:44:29.000And then I talk to business people and they say that is the exact wrong approach because that's actually going to stifle business and business is the only thing that's going to bring us out of this.
00:44:38.000If you incentivize businesses to take risks and to be open and to make more profits, then more people are going to get jobs, then the economy bounces back.
00:44:48.000But if you Give them a gigantic tax burden.
00:44:52.000They're going to be less likely to take chances.
00:44:55.000They're not going to be able to survive.
00:44:57.000And people on the outside who've never built a business like Whole Foods, they don't seem to see that.
00:45:08.000The reality is that people like an Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, they're good capital allocators, so to speak.
00:45:19.000They're not going to waste that money.
00:45:20.000That money is going to be reinvested to create new and more dynamic businesses that will help – the innovations will help our society move forward.
00:46:21.000Innovationism is continually growing the pie.
00:46:23.000And in fact, humanity is demonstrably better off because of the capitalists, because of the innovationists.
00:46:28.000Let me play devil's advocate, because this is the way they look at it.
00:46:30.000They would say, well, when you get to that sort of a position, like a Jeff Bezos, where you have $150 billion, you can exert your influence on people in a way that's detrimental to society.
00:46:42.000You've achieved too high of a position.
00:46:47.000And you will probably use that power to...
00:46:51.000Loosen regulations, to bribe politicians or influence politicians, and to get laws passed that are better for your business and stifle competition.
00:47:19.000If he was, boy, would they come after him because he's balling so hard.
00:47:23.000They'd be like, that motherfucker who doesn't have enough?
00:47:26.000But I know that when Whole Foods was—we were a public company for 25 years, and we had the government go after us a few times.
00:47:35.000They tried to stop our—we tried to make an acquisition of a company called Wild Oats back in 2007. We actually made the acquisition, but the FTC tried to stop it.
00:47:43.000We ended up going into court with them.
00:47:45.000We actually won in court, and very interesting, the FTC has their own court— And after we won in the federal courts, they said, well, now we want to take you into our court, the administrative court.
00:48:08.000Well, how many people have won in that court?
00:48:11.000I think when I looked at it at that time, this back in 2007, I think 46 of the 48 previous cases, this is from memory, so I could be wrong, had lost.
00:49:30.000When someone is involved in that kind of a fucked up scenario where you bring them to FTC court where no one wins, if you do win, like ultimately in Supreme Court, they should take it out of the salary of the people that forced you into doing that.
00:49:47.000It should be worth it for you to go to war.
00:50:03.000I don't know what he paid in taxes because we never actually saw his...
00:50:06.000We just heard what the New York Times said he paid, but we don't really know for sure because we never really saw the taxes.
00:50:11.000Well, the New York Times would never lie.
00:51:34.000That Sidney Powell lady, she seems unhinged.
00:51:38.000We'll see if she can deliver the goods or not.
00:51:40.000I'm very curious to see how this all pans out, but it just...
00:51:47.000You know, it just seems like the most divided I can ever remember this country being.
00:51:53.000Definitely in my lifetime the most divided.
00:51:55.000Which is exactly what they were talking about in The Social Dilemma.
00:51:58.000They were literally saying that what's happening with these algorithms...
00:52:03.000What's happening with these echo chambers that people are involved with in social media?
00:52:07.000What's happening with the way it influences the mind to gravitate towards these things that upset people and to rile people up and get people more and more interested in these particularly polarizing subjects?
00:52:23.000We're headed towards almost like a civil war.
00:52:27.000Of course, I think The Social Dilemma is a good movie and a lot to learn from, and I do think it overstates it.
00:52:35.000In our book, Conscious Leadership, we talk about cultural intelligence in the book, particularly the very last part of the appendix, and we talk about how there are three major types of worldviews that exist in the United States that are clashing with each other.
00:52:48.000The first one is more of a traditional worldview of heritage values that It might be traditional Christianity or traditional Judaism combined with belief in the Declaration of Independence,
00:53:06.000the Constitution, sort of very traditional values.
00:53:12.000And then you have the modernist worldview, which is science, rationality, capitalism, success, getting ahead, and that's the second.
00:53:23.000And now we have a progressive worldview that hasn't been around that long, but it's a third major worldview.
00:53:29.000And I think statistically, we think about 30% of the population is in the traditional worldview, about 50% is in the modernist worldview, and about 20% is in the progressive worldview.
00:53:43.000And all these worldviews are struggling with each other to dominate, to have their values become the law of the land.
00:53:51.000And everybody must conform to their values because their values are correct.
00:53:54.000So we think that's the essence of this cultural struggle going on.
00:53:58.000And we argue in the book that there's a fourth we call post-progressivism.
00:54:04.000Which basically recognizes all the values have good things about them and they have some bad things about them, right?
00:54:12.000And if we're going to get through it, we need conscious leaders who will be able to take the best things about each one of these worldviews and integrate them together so that we can give each of the worldviews enough to feel like this is a society worth belonging to.
00:54:29.000If we try to cram one set of values down everybody else's throats and force that into law, we're going to have a civil war because America's not going to stand for it.
00:54:37.000Yeah, I like that perspective, that there are good things and bad things about these sides.
00:54:43.000And that's one of the things we're talking about, like we're so polarized today.
00:54:47.000And something you were talking about with capitalism, because you were saying, hey, John, it's not perfect.
00:54:51.000And capitalism is a sort of part of the modernistic worldview, and it's not perfect.
00:54:57.000There are problems and challenges with it, but the dignities of it are tremendous, and we can't throw out the baby with the bathwater just because it's not perfect, because there is no perfect solution to any of these problems.
00:55:11.000We're going to muddle our way through like we always do.
00:55:14.000Now, when you look at the positive aspects of all these different schools of thought, and you look at progressivism, which is the one that is probably the most on the rise today, why is it the most on the rise?
00:55:41.000200 years ago, 250 years ago, the modernist worldview was just being born.
00:55:45.000The founding fathers of our country were early modernists, people like Franklin and Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton.
00:55:53.000These were early modernists, but almost everybody else was a traditionalist.
00:55:58.000But we created the foundation to create really the world's first modern society, which was the United States.
00:56:04.000Now, progressivism, in a way, is a reaction to the...
00:56:08.000Disasters of modernism, like modernism does have negative environmental impacts.
00:56:14.000And so part of it is we have to solve those problems.
00:56:18.000And so progressivism is partly solving that problem.
00:56:22.000Things like racism and sexism and homophobia or whatever, these are also aspects that progressivism is reacting to, to say that this is not fair, this is not just.
00:56:37.000So the really beautiful thing about progressivism is that it's striving to give dignity to all these different sort of marginalized people that were always, you know, used to get beat up when they were young, so to speak, in a more modernistic traditional society.
00:56:54.000The problem is, is that when you begin to force your values on everybody else, then we begin to get a lot of blowback on that.
00:57:03.000And that's true for progressivism as well.
00:57:05.000It needs to harmonize with traditionalism and modernism and not treat those as the enemies that must be conquered.
00:57:12.000The things that progressivism, the things that resonate with a lot of people is the uplifting of the impoverished.
00:57:20.000The education in poor communities where traditionally the education has been substandard.
00:57:27.000All these different things that I think, for whatever reason, Our government or our society has – we've erred.
00:57:37.000There's a problem in not dealing with those issues.
00:57:43.000So I would take a little different interpretation.
00:57:46.000Actually, modernism is dealing with it.
00:57:48.000Modernism has been lifting humanity up, as I argued earlier in this talk.
00:57:51.000Okay, but it's not – But it's not perfect.
00:58:11.000We need to find solutions to their problems.
00:58:13.000But it's not by throwing modernism out.
00:58:16.000It's by taking modernism and then And then adding on a greater sensitivity for those who are downtrodden, who have bad educational systems.
00:58:25.000This is where you can take some of the good aspects of progressive thinking.
01:00:07.000When we get stuck in an echo chamber, if you're a traditionalist and you only watch Fox News, for example, then you're not going to get a wider perspective.
01:00:16.000But if you're progressive and you only read the New York Times and watch...
01:00:20.000CNN and MSNBC may not be getting a wider perspective either.
01:00:23.000We need to expose ourselves to the wider context of information that's out there.
01:00:27.000That is a philosophy that I think should be taught in school that is as important as mathematics and history.
01:00:35.000There's a thing about challenging ideas and looking at your own ideas In an objective way, I think one of the things that I've worked very hard at doing is not being married to any of the ideas that I have in my head.
01:00:54.000And even though I've espoused these ideas, even though I've defended these ideas, if something comes along that shows me that this idea is flawed or inaccurate, I have made a very...
01:01:07.000A very conscious, positive effort to abandon those ideas.
01:02:03.000They are just what I'm wearing for right now.
01:02:05.000That's an interesting way of looking at it.
01:02:07.000And I think there is a real problem with people looking at people's ideas and judging them and their value as a human being based on those ideas.
01:02:16.000But we do it because most people are married to their ideas.
01:02:19.000And we're taught to defend our ideas to the death.
01:02:22.000These ideas are core to who you are as a person.
01:02:25.000They're core to how you identify, how you think of yourself.
01:02:52.000So one of the things I try to do as CEO of Whole Foods Market is I always try to admit my mistakes in a very public way because I feel like that helps everybody else admit their own mistakes.
01:03:02.000And I'll just say, you know, I was wrong about that.
01:03:28.000I mean, nobody wants a dictator that they have to walk on eggshells around and, you know, they have to pretend that this person is only making good decisions when you think that...
01:03:37.000I mean, that's the argument against Donald Trump, right?
01:03:40.000I mean, never says he's wrong, never admits he's wrong, doesn't show any empathy.
01:04:37.000When you go to a party, if someone says, we're going to have a party over my house, during times of COVID, I'd be like, how many people are going to be there?
01:04:45.000That'd be one of the first questions I ask.
01:04:47.000I don't want to go to a party where there's 500 people and I don't know anybody.
01:06:04.000You take people that are COVID positive, you send them to a nursing home where folks are older and their immune systems are compromised, and a lot of them die.
01:06:11.000I mean, I don't know what number died, but I know that there have been reports in places where there have been COVID deaths where an enormous percentage of them were in nursing homes, like more than 20%.
01:06:27.000And I mean, 95% have comorbidities, right?
01:06:31.000Can you imagine being in that situation where you're an older person and you're just like trying to ride out your last days and the governor sends sick people back to the nursing home and you realize that Mary down the hall is coughing up a fucking storm now?
01:07:22.000When you're in a situation like that where there's not much you can do, when you are stuck...
01:07:27.000I was talking to a nurse and she was explaining to me, she's a nurse in a COVID ward, and she was explaining to me the decisions that they have to make.
01:07:35.000She's like, during the peak when all the beds were full, she's like, we really were in situations where we're like, we have to send this person home and they're going to die.
01:07:46.000And there's no room for new people to come in, so we literally have to take people that are terminal.
01:08:25.000Yeah, it's hugely unfortunate, but it's also unprecedented, right?
01:08:29.000Like when Mario Cuomo became governor, or Andrew Cuomo, rather, became governor, he didn't think that this was something that he was going to have to encounter.
01:08:37.000He probably had strategies in play for economic growth, for, you know, dealing with law enforcement, all these different problems that a governor would face.
01:09:26.000Your time doing this, your time spent as a leader, do you understand better the pitfalls of these leaders because of the fact that you've been a leader of a corporation for a long time?
01:09:44.000You just have a lot of responsibility.
01:09:46.000And if you're a leader, you're also being paid to make good decisions.
01:09:50.000And If you make good decisions, a lot of people benefit, and if you make bad decisions, a lot of people might suffer.
01:09:58.000So you've got to have a high batting average here, Joe.
01:10:01.000You're going to make a few mistakes, but you make those mistakes hopefully at a smaller level, not at the biggest level.
01:10:08.000And I've made plenty of mistakes at Whole Foods, and one of the reasons I've been successful is I've just learned from a lot of my mistakes.
01:10:16.000As I say, I have a lot of scars, but they've made me better, too.
01:10:21.000Now, when you do have these very strong ethics and morals that you operate your company by, but you're also incentivized by profit, do you make a conscious effort to explain or to espouse these ideas to the people that are working for you and working with you?
01:10:43.000Our quality standards, our core values, our higher purpose, these are all...
01:10:47.000We actually have a program in Whole Foods now called Cultural Champions, where people go through a program and get certified to be a cultural champion.
01:10:54.000And it's very important because, I mean, we have 100,000 people working for Whole Foods, and every year we're hiring 10,000 to 20,000 new people.
01:11:53.000There's two things that people want at work above all else.
01:11:57.000I mean, they want to earn a paycheck, too.
01:11:58.000But besides, if you get the money right, there's two things that people want which will make them long-term committed to your organization.
01:12:06.000The first one is everybody wants to have a sense of purpose.
01:12:09.000They want to feel like their work It's actually contributing.
01:12:19.000And secondly, they want to feel like somebody gives a shit about them, that they're cared for.
01:12:26.000And if you do those two things, if you give people purpose and love, then you're giving them probably the two things they most desire in life.
01:12:44.000What's great about that to me is that because your business has been so successful and it's such a popular spot for people and people are very aware that it's like that.
01:12:56.000My hope is that this is going to be contagious, and that other businesses are going to go, you know, we're going to follow the Whole Foods model, and we are going to create an environment where it's family, people are loved, they're cared for, and then the people that come there,
01:15:02.000The only argument I would say against that would be that you don't love your competitors.
01:15:08.000You're out there to kick their ass, right?
01:15:11.000If you're playing on a team and you're supposed to go up against another team, you want to be as amped up, as aggressive, as motivated, and as focused on victory as possible.
01:15:23.000That's why so many corporations adopt these sports metaphors, right?
01:18:31.000How are they doing that sidekick that keeps hitting me?
01:18:33.000Well, one of the things they show you, one of the beautiful things about martial arts, it's always been the case, martial artists are very open.
01:19:41.000You're not really wanting for them to crack their head and they never get up again.
01:19:45.000This is a concept, this concept that we're describing, whether it applies to martial arts or to business, that… A socialist would have a very difficult time grasping that you can both be loving and ultra competitive and that these things are not mutually exclusive and in fact they help.
01:20:06.000So this is, if I'm going to put words in your mouth, this is probably one of the things that frustrates you the most about these ideas, these progressive ideas, is that when they apply them to business, they don't really understand business.
01:20:42.000And we had millions and millions of people die from starvation by collectivizing the agriculture, even though the Soviet Union had already failed to do it.
01:20:49.000So China did it and they forced all the people to collectivize their agriculture and the result was a terrible idea because they didn't have the incentives that were there any longer to try to optimize their production.
01:21:04.000And as a result, mass starvation occurred until China wised up.
01:21:09.000Finally, some communists said, let's let them own at least a small little plot themselves, that they get to keep what they produce for their families.
01:21:17.000And that proved to be so productive, it gradually took over the entire agriculture.
01:21:22.000They went back to capitalism and agriculture in China.
01:21:52.000And then we ask when we get older, why can't we make the whole society like the family?
01:21:56.000And the answer is because it's too damn big to do it that way.
01:21:59.000And when you try to do it that way, you get the slackers and the people who don't want to work being parasites on the others.
01:22:06.000And you end up with the free rider problem.
01:22:08.000And ultimately, that's the problem with socialism is a free rider problem that they've never been able to solve for except through coercion.
01:22:16.000And putting people in labor camps and things like that.
01:22:45.000I mean, I don't think that's a good idea.
01:22:46.000But when you have a situation like a pandemic, where so many people, through no fault of their own, are being forced out of work, they cannot work.
01:23:00.000But isn't that a good argument for universal basic income, at least for a temporary situation?
01:23:05.000Well, when people are sick, they need to be taken care of.
01:23:08.000When they're healthy, they don't need to be taken care of.
01:23:09.000They need to stand on their own two feet.
01:23:11.000Right, but when you have a situation where they can't stand on their own two feet because they're literally not allowed to work, like California.
01:23:19.000I mean, California, they're right now shutting down restaurants that serve outside.
01:23:33.000But there's a lot of people that get really hysterical about this, and they think this is the only way we're going to save people.
01:23:38.000There's a lot of people out there with terrible health, and they think that what we need to do is shut everything down, and that's the only way we're going to be safe.
01:23:47.000I was reading this woman's Twitter the other day.
01:23:50.000Someone said something ridiculous, and I'm like, oh my god, I need to check this person out.
01:23:55.000And they were talking about, hey, I am ready to lock everything down for five weeks.
01:24:24.000But some guy who runs some whatever, figure out whatever store it is or whatever kind of business, they need to be there in order to be open.
01:25:40.000And this is not nearly the same type of pandemic that we had back then.
01:25:45.000It's very interesting, the time that we live in, the reaction that we're having today to COVID being so very different than the reaction we had to the influenza epidemic of 1918 and 1919, which was far more destructive.
01:27:33.000Two kids in school right now, and it's soul-sucking watching them stare at a laptop.
01:27:38.000And then I sat in, in my daughter's room once, and watched the teacher teach the class, and Jesus Christ, this lady could have not been less motivated.
01:27:52.000Well, hopefully these vaccinations are going to be as effective as they're reporting and will not have side effects, and that a year from now, this will be in the rearview mirror.
01:29:12.000I believe vaccines are the reason why we don't have smallpox, why we don't have polio.
01:29:16.000When I hear about measles cases rising, I get angry because these fucking hippies don't want to vaccinate their kids, and they send them to school with other people's kids, and these people get fucking measles.
01:30:58.000I want them to assure me that it's not going to be devastating in terms of the side effects.
01:31:05.000I would hate to have encouraged people to take something and then find out two years from now that there's some residual side effect that's devastating, some neurological thing.
01:31:18.000And the way it's been described to me, that won't be the case.
01:31:21.000The way it's been described to me by doctors, that's an unfound fear.
01:31:25.000Because of what this is, a messenger RNA vaccine, that this is not the type of vaccine that you...
01:31:31.000It's just essentially delivering your body this sort of message that encoded with a common cold virus, that what it does is it makes your body develop the proteins to fight off the disease.
01:31:47.000It sounds like these are vaccination breakthroughs that might transform vaccinations in the future.
01:32:54.000He's supposed to fight for the flyweight title, and he couldn't make the card.
01:32:58.000So they got a replacement for him, but it's because of COVID. If you want to look at, like, young, healthy people, that is one of the best examples you're ever going to get of a young, healthy person.
01:34:35.000Those mass people wear those viruses, you know, unless you got the N95s and plexiglass, chances are that little piece of cloth is not really keeping the virus out.
01:34:44.000That's one of the things that freaks me out.
01:34:45.000Like when people dive in a lake somewhere and they get some brain-eating amoeba.
01:39:46.000Because people, they lose body mass, they lose muscle mass, they lose strength and vitality.
01:39:51.000And I think you probably know that muscle mass and body mass strength is directly connected to longevity.
01:40:00.000You have to have enough protein so your body can repair itself, so that if you're lifting weights, you're going to grow muscles.
01:40:06.000You have to have adequate protein stores.
01:40:09.000But the extra protein, your body has to then go through complicated reactions to convert that into fuel, which actually puts the stress on the kidneys.
01:40:16.000On average, Americans eat about twice as much protein as they actually need.
01:41:09.000Did you always eat plant-based or did you slowly gravitate towards it?
01:41:17.000I was vegetarian in my early 20s, and then I added fish.
01:41:23.000And then back in 2003, I became 100% plant-based, but for ethical reasons.
01:41:28.000I think that's why in the book, The Whole Foods Diet, we allow, ethics aside, we think a little bit of animal foods is consistent with good health.
01:41:38.000You know, one of the things that I've heard about mollusks is they're so primitive, they're actually more primitive than plants.
01:41:44.000I don't know if they're more primitive than plants, but they don't have well-developed nervous systems, so they may not be able to experience pain as we know it.
01:41:51.000As far as we know, plants respond to stimulation, but we don't have any evidence they experience pain.
01:41:57.000So mollusks might be consistent with ethical veganism.
01:42:00.000I've heard that argument said very well, and that not only that, but they're sustainable, you can harvest them and grow them, and that their nervous system is set up so they're moving in some way,
01:42:16.000like they close their shells and open their shells, but not in the sense that you wouldn't consider them an animal, but you can get animal protein from them.
01:42:23.000By the way, we're talking about things like, to be clear, we're talking about things like clams, oysters, Because I think like an octopus.
01:42:56.000Do you know that one I'm talking about?
01:42:58.000There's a fantastic Instagram page that just, they're in love with octopus and octopi, and they're constantly highlighting all the cool things about octopus, particularly their ability to camouflage themselves and hide.
01:44:11.000Did you ever see that video that they put a camera in a tank at the aquarium because they were losing sharks and they were trying to figure out what the hell's going on so they put a camera in there to watch and it turns out the octopus were killing the sharks.
01:44:26.000How big was the octopus and how big were the sharks?
01:44:28.000Well, the octopus was basically the same size as the sharks.
01:44:31.000I mean, it wasn't a big shark, a small shark.
01:44:34.000But, you know, they never thought an octopus would hunt a shark.
01:44:37.000And the octopus was just sitting there chilling, all camouflaging a shark.
01:47:34.000Each male wants to mate and pass on his genes to a new generation.
01:47:37.000Trouble is, the female is often larger and hungrier than he is, so there's a constant risk that, instead of mating, the female will strangle him and eat him.
01:47:46.000The males have a host of tricks to survive, though.
01:48:48.000You know, that's what, you know, when they catch stone crabs, they catch them and they just snap off their claw and then throw them back and they'll just grow a claw.
01:49:00.000It's one of the weirder fish or weirder types of seafood because it's one of the rare ones where you can catch the thing, snap off one of their limbs, and chuck them back.
01:49:12.000You can keep part of them and they still survive.
01:49:16.000And they don't even have a problem with it.
01:52:17.000Is intelligence one of the variables you use in determining what animals you'll eat and not eat?
01:52:22.000Yes and no, because pigs are intelligent, but I'll eat wild pigs because pigs are invasive and it's a real problem in terms of management of wildlife and the amount of animals that you have.
01:52:33.000And what kind of destruction they can do to ground-nesting birds and other species that are native to the area.
01:52:41.000Invasive animals are a gigantic issue.
01:52:44.000And pigs, in particular, are one of the most devastating invasive species that we have in North America, for sure, but worldwide.
01:52:53.000In Australia, they're a giant problem.
01:52:55.000There are actually now an increasing problem in the hill country here.
01:53:49.000They breed three or four times a year.
01:53:50.000Joe, you've got to get out there and help protect our land.
01:53:53.000I'm not the guy, but I will eat them and I will kill them.
01:53:59.000Pigs, the wild pigs, when they're six months old, they're viable.
01:54:03.000So they start having sex and breeding at six months old, and they'll breed a litter three times a year sometimes, which is crazy.
01:54:10.000So they'll have four or five piglets three times a year.
01:54:12.000So one pig could be responsible for as many as 20 other pigs, one female, in a year.
01:54:18.000And I have a friend who works on a ranch, and he says, you have never seen anything like the devastation these things do when they move in and find a crop.
01:54:28.000So if they'll have a crop of food that these folks need for their livelihood, and then a pack of wild pigs come in and just destroys it.
01:56:06.000We were so narrow in the marketplace, we weren't successful.
01:56:10.000And it wasn't until we relocated that store, merged with another store, changed the name to Whole Foods Market, and opened a bigger store that sold meat, coffee, alcohol, all natural and organic foods,
01:56:25.000but a full spectrum, that we became successful.
01:56:29.000So was that in many ways like a battle for you a little bit because you have this one idealistic perspective of what a supermarket could be versus this is the most profitable?
01:56:42.000What I learned is that in order to do the most good in the world, in order to help the most people, you have to be willing to meet the marketplace where you find it.
01:56:53.000If you try to stand above the marketplace, And you're too pure for the marketplace, then you're not going to help anybody.
01:57:34.000They did, but they were drinking instant coffee, like Folgers and Maxwell House.
01:57:39.000Or Dunkin' Donuts, that's where I used to drink.
01:57:41.000But I never thought that coffee would be a thing that would be on every corner.
01:57:46.000Like there's a place in Houston, and Louis Black used to have a joke about it, where you'd be on, it was in River Oaks, it was across the street from another Starbucks.
01:57:55.000There was a Starbucks across the street from another Starbucks.
02:00:02.000It took me, when I got off of caffeine back in the year 2000, I had, first of all, I had physical withdrawal symptoms of headaches that lasted, horrible headaches that lasted about a week before the headaches went away.
02:01:02.000Let me withdraw that statement because that wasn't the real point of it.
02:01:06.000The point of it was that once I got my own vitality back, I was no longer a servant of the caffeine, which would determine when I felt good and when I didn't feel good.
02:01:16.000I just had my natural flow of energy and vitality.
02:01:20.000And having compared the two states, this is a preferable state in my mind.
02:02:24.000I've read possibly different studies and articles than you have in different books.
02:02:29.000Well, I've had too many people explain things to me here, or, you know, I had some ideas that I had in my head that I thought was correct in terms of nutrition and what's good and what's bad for you, and you Let me give you a couple of facts that you might find interesting.
02:02:46.000First of all, there's been only one diet that's been proven to reverse heart disease.
02:02:51.000And that is a whole foods, plant-based diet.
02:02:55.000I know what you're saying, but I've actually read that that's not true either, that this proven to reduce heart disease, that that's not what's reducing heart disease.
02:03:04.000What's reducing heart disease is healthy behaviors and that you're making this change in terms of eliminating toxic foods and processed foods.
02:03:13.000So do you have any other studies that show you can reverse heart disease?
02:03:19.000Without being on a whole foods, plant-based diet?
02:04:57.000And you apply those positive habits and the fact that you eat a vegetarian diet, you could assume that the reason why they're healthy is because of the vegetarian diet.
02:05:04.000That's not what I'm saying because none of the Blue Zones except for a small subset of the 7-Day Adventists are actually vegetarian.
02:05:12.000Most of them just eat small quantities of animal foods, about 10% of their calories, which is what we recommend in this book.
02:05:17.000Right, but they're almost all very active people.
02:05:19.000Yes, but we don't have any examples of longevity in any culture that eats a heavy meat diet.
02:05:57.000The introduction of cigarettes and alcohol is what's fucked those people up.
02:06:02.000I'm merely saying, and I put the challenge to you, show me examples of long-lived peoples that are heavy consumers of animal foods.
02:06:08.000Well, I don't know of any specific long-term...
02:06:12.000Studies that have been done on people who are eating a lot of animal food and are also very active and healthy and making healthy choices outside of that.
02:06:23.000The problem with alcohol and cigarettes and all these other things that people tend to take in and consume when they're also consuming animal foods is that all those things get lumped in together.
02:07:25.000I think what we can all agree on is that eating toxic food, eating processed food, not healthy, not exercising, living a sedentary lifestyle, consumption of cigarettes and alcohol, all these things are detrimental to your health.
02:07:41.000I'll even go so far as to say that A vegan junk food diet is about the most unhealthy diet you can eat because you're just eating processed foods.
02:07:52.000Animal foods are actually whole foods and they have a variety of nutrients in them.
02:07:57.000You can get them all from plants except for B12. So what do you think is bad about animal foods other than the ethics?
02:08:02.000From a health standpoint, it depends on how much you eat.
02:08:06.000And if you eat too much of it, then we see the heart disease, we see cancer.
02:08:13.000These all correlate very closely with...
02:08:15.000Right, but now you're talking about epidemiology studies.
02:08:17.000Yes, but epidemiology, we can't do controlled studies on people over the long term.
02:08:22.000Right, but you understand that the people that you're seeing high rates of cancer and heart disease aren't consuming grass-fed steak and salads.
02:08:29.000What they're consuming is cheeseburgers and fries and milkshakes and soda and all sorts of bullshit.
02:08:34.000So when they do a study on someone, they say, how often do you eat meat?
02:08:37.000And they say, I eat meat five days a week.
02:08:38.000And they go, oh, well, look at the incidence of cancer and people that fill out the study and say they eat meat five days a week.
02:08:44.000That's where they make these correlations and connections.
02:08:47.000It's like I do this debate all the time, too.
02:08:50.000And so I understand your position on this.
02:08:53.000And all I would say is, where are the epidemiological studies to support your point of view?
02:09:05.000If you wanted an epidemiology study that supported the fact that animal foods are not bad for you, you would have to find groups of people that only eat animal foods and don't consume alcohol and cigarettes and then comparing to people that do and find out what the variables are.
02:09:22.000People who do consume cigarettes and do consume alcohol and do consume processed foods and sugars and excess, you know, corn syrup foods and all the shit that we know is a part of a standard American diet, right?
02:09:33.000Are you saying that people that consume animal foods are more likely to consume processed foods, cigarettes, and alcohol?
02:09:40.000They are, because people have been told that animal foods are bad for you.
02:09:44.000So when people are like, fuck it, And they just have a cheeseburger, particularly if you're talking about the average American.
02:09:50.000The average American that's getting their meat, they're probably not eating a grass-fed ribeye.
02:09:55.000They're probably eating a cheeseburger that they get from Jack in the Box or someplace like that.
02:09:59.000So you're getting processed foods, you're getting meat, but you're also getting sugar and corn syrup and all sorts of other nonsense.
02:10:06.000That's the problem with these epidemiology studies, and you know that.
02:10:09.000Yeah, but you're talking about a pretty small group.
02:10:12.000If you've got the whole world to work from, lots of the world eats animal foods that are grass-fed, and the same type of results show up there.
02:10:36.000Would you like me to send you some studies?
02:10:38.000No, I want you to tell me right now because you're saying it like you know it for a fact.
02:10:42.000What studies are showing that people that consume grass-fed meat and vegetables are showing the same levels of heart disease and cancer as people that eat the standard American diet?
02:10:53.000Since I don't have those studies in front of me.
02:11:09.000So when you're getting this standard American diet and they're applying it to an epidemiology study where they're saying, oh, this person eats meat five days a week.
02:11:39.000If you're interested, I will send you studies.
02:11:43.000And I can tell you that the studies contradict what you're saying.
02:11:48.000And that the epidemiology, because it's not as good as a randomized, controlled study, which are hard to do in nutrition, does not make them worthless.
02:11:57.000It just means that they're not a complete answer.
02:11:59.000But they do point in certain directions.
02:12:02.000But they're conveniently pointing to this meat argument versus all the other stuff they're eating, which we've shown to be bad for you.
02:12:10.000People have been eating meat since the beginning of time.
02:12:13.000But not in very large quantities, generally.
02:13:44.000So whenever they got a chance to eat plants, they probably had to be real careful with what they could eat and what they couldn't eat because most of it was inedible and much of it even toxic.
02:13:56.000Whereas if they can catch an animal and eat it, they're almost all edible.
02:14:00.000How many different animal foods do you eat?
02:14:11.000How many different plant foods do you eat?
02:14:13.000Well, I live in a Western society where I can go to Whole Foods and I can get tomatoes and all kinds of avocados, stuff that's not even grown here.
02:16:42.000Those blue zones are also people that are very active.
02:16:45.000There's a direct correlation between physical activity.
02:16:48.000I think the people that live a vegan diet, that follow a vegan diet, but are healthy and exercise, Are far better off than someone who lives a sedentary lifestyle and even eats healthy meat.
02:17:01.000I think the key is healthy, like if you're going to be a healthy person, you need physical activity.
02:17:08.000And that there's a direct correlation between physical activity and longevity and health benefits.
02:18:14.000I think the article was basically stop saying that a vegan diet reverses heart disease.
02:18:20.000And it was explaining all the problems in that logic.
02:18:23.000I didn't find that specific one but there's an article here from the British Heart Foundation that talks about this and I think that started with a small study of 22 people that did plant-based and four of them had some reversal.
02:18:38.000This article here though currently goes into deeper studies and It says that there isn't really a good study about it.
02:20:02.000Exactly, but they cut out the bullshit that was killing them.
02:20:05.000It wasn't that plant-based diets were reversing heart disease.
02:20:09.000They cut out the things that were killing them.
02:20:11.000This is what the other article that I wish I could find it.
02:20:14.000So I guess what I'm saying is show me a study that people eat, cut out all the processed foods, This is showing that the people are cutting out toxic things that we know are toxic.
02:20:33.000I don't believe animal foods are toxic.
02:20:36.000I think people have been eating animal foods from the beginning of time.
02:20:39.000I think the problem is these things that we haven't been eating since the beginning of time, processed carbohydrates, Sugars, fruit juice, all the bullshit, vegetable oils, all these things that people have been adding to their diets fairly recently that coincides with a direct uptick in heart disease.
02:20:58.000So your hypothesis is, first of all...
02:21:02.000Okay, so what you believe from the shit you've read is that you could eat a high animal food diet, cut out all the processed stuff, and you'd reverse heart disease.
02:21:14.000I think that the reason why people get heart disease is because they eat shit and they don't exercise.
02:21:21.000I think that is where heart disease is coming from.
02:21:24.000I don't think plants are going to fix your heart.
02:22:21.000When you see the results, like how healthy or how sick you are, there's a lot of factors that go into there.
02:22:26.000But people that are plant-based tend to lean on that one factor.
02:22:31.000They tend to lean on this one aspect of their lifestyle choices that seems to be improving health.
02:22:37.000And I don't think you can do that as much as I don't think that you can lean on meat as being a cause of cancer when you look at epidemiology studies with people that eat meat five days a week but also consume a bunch of bullshit.
02:22:50.000So clearly we're going to not agree on this one.
02:22:53.000I think we need to make studies that show, like, if they had a study where they took someone...
02:22:58.000Or took a group of people, a large group like in that study, and they took them off of the standard American diet and fed them grass-fed beef and vegetables and then had them exercise on a regular basis, I bet we would see similar results.
02:23:15.000First of all, if you did, again, it's a matter of degree, if you're feeding people vegetables, fruits and vegetables, and they're not, and you take out all the shit, that's a pretty healthy diet right there.
02:23:27.000It's just not the healthiest diet I think you could eat, but it's a lot healthier than the standard American diet, so you're going to get some good results on it.
02:23:35.000I'm merely saying that the studies that we know that have actually reversed heart disease cut out all the shit and And also limit oil, or don't have any oil, limit total fat consumption, and also limit animal foods.
02:23:50.000Now maybe others will work as well, as you say.
02:23:53.000We should do a study where they eat 30% of their calories in animal foods, cut out all the processed carbohydrates, and see if that reverses heart disease.
02:24:02.000But as far as I know, no study has been done.
02:24:04.000So that for now, based on what we know now, we do know That if you eat a whole foods, plant-based, low-fat diet, you can reverse your heart disease.
02:24:40.000I think what we can say is that cutting out all the things that we know are very unhealthy, exercising and eating plants are probably good for you because they're whole foods.
02:24:53.000You can say that we aren't certain that the meat is a contributing factor, but we cannot say that the studies that have reversed it didn't include meat.
02:26:02.000I'll send you some data and some studies.
02:26:04.000I think the idea that meat is not bad for you is a fairly recent idea.
02:26:09.000I think that people have been, first of all, you have to go back to the sugar industry, bribing scientists to say that saturated fat and not sugar is what caused heart disease, and I'm sure you're aware of that, right?
02:26:23.000I've had a debate with Nina Ty Schultz, and I've argued with Gary Taubes before, so I see it differently than they do.
02:26:38.000You're going to have to read through my book.
02:26:39.000Okay, but before I do that, you know that the sugar industry has been proven to have bribed scientists to alter results so that they prove...
02:26:48.000Well, they're pointing to the idea that it was saturated fat that was causing heart disease instead of sugar.
02:28:37.000In order to try to prove their products are healthy for people.
02:28:40.000They fund studies to try to prove their products are healthy, but do they bribe scientists to lie?
02:28:45.000Joe, no one's defending the sugar industry.
02:28:49.000I think you're making a logical fallacy.
02:28:52.000The fact that the sugar industry acted unethically, that proves that saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease.
02:28:58.000No, it changes the perception of people when it comes to meat and health.
02:29:02.000And I think it did, and I think it has ever since then.
02:29:06.000The people saw this and read this, and in their mind, meat became saturated fat, saturated fat became heart disease, and it became a dangerous thing to eat too much meat.
02:29:16.000So, here's an interesting question for you.
02:29:21.000How much do you think total animal food consumption has gone up in the United States per capita in the last 80 years?
02:29:28.000I would assume it's probably pretty high.
02:29:47.000Because the task wasn't to try to get people to stop eating meat.
02:29:50.000It was to get people to not worry about eating sugar and consume more sugar and not have any fear about the health consequences of consuming sugar.
02:29:58.000Because it wasn't sugar that was giving people heart disease.
02:30:33.000You know, I mean, there's been a lot of people that have eaten what they call a carnivore diet and reversed a lot of symptoms that they've had with autoimmune diseases.
02:30:45.000And there's different people that have different reactions to foods.
02:30:49.000There's certain people that eat nuts and they get deathly ill.
02:30:51.000There's certain people that eat them and they're very healthy.
02:31:33.000Well, you did say it's the only diet that's been shown to reverse heart disease, and I don't really think it has.
02:31:37.000But the burden of proof is to give me one study where that's not true.
02:31:43.000So I've made the claim, prove me wrong.
02:31:46.000There's a lot of factors that led to reversing that heart disease.
02:31:50.000And I think when you look at all those factors, particularly the eliminating sugar that we know is a toxic substance, the adding of exercise, the eliminating of oils, all these different things that we know are not good for you, I think those are contributing factors.
02:32:06.000If you wanted to say, It's been shown that a whole foods, plant-based diet plus eliminating all these toxic things have been shown to reverse heart disease.
02:33:38.000There's things that people eat, that we've been eating particularly over the last few decades in this country, that are just bad for you.
02:33:46.000The problem is we get into these ideological discussions of meat versus plants.
02:33:51.000And this is where things, people tend to sort of gravitate towards one side or the other and ignore all the different aspects of this conversation.
02:34:03.000What we're talking about here with eliminating sugar, exercise.
02:34:07.000If you said a whole foods, plant-based diet plus adding exercise and eliminating foods that we know to be toxic is better for you, there's not a single person who's going to argue that.
02:34:17.000The problem is everybody says it's a whole food, plant-based diet, that this is what's doing the good.
02:34:22.000But I think what's doing the good is a lot of things.
02:34:24.000So exercise, eliminating toxic foods like sugar and all those vegetables.
02:34:31.000Well, a whole foods diet eliminates those things, so that's redundant.
02:34:34.000If it's a whole foods diet, it's not going to have sugar, refined grains, or oil in it, because those aren't whole foods.
02:34:49.000I want you to just, because I think Cole with Esselstyn's work on heart disease is worth looking at for you, because he didn't do anything but diet.
02:34:56.000So he didn't have exercise in his program.
02:35:32.000So what we need to do, what you need to do, or you need to come up with some evidence, or somebody needs to that you can throw in my face, is a whole foods, meat-based diet What eliminates all these toxins will also reverse heart disease.
02:35:47.000Remember how we talked about beliefs earlier that they're just a pseudoclose?
02:35:51.000You produce that evidence and I'll take off the pseudoclose because I'm actually about being intellectually, having intellectual integrity.
02:35:58.000I've come to my conclusions based on my own dispassionate study.
02:36:04.000So, if you produce the evidence, I'll probably change my mind.
02:36:08.000What do you think people are doing wrong when they're eating a vegan diet and they have all these health problems?
02:36:14.000They're eating a junk food vegan diet.
02:36:16.000They're not eating a whole foods vegan diet.
02:37:57.000But they can be, I believe, cancer promoters.
02:38:00.000You know, there's also been proven there's a big issue with eating cholesterol along with simple carbohydrates and things like processed foods.
02:38:10.000Since we agree on the simple carbohydrates, we don't have to argue about that anymore.
02:40:42.000A magnetic healer who came up with it in a seance In the 1800s, came up with this idea that by adjusting people's spines, you're going to fix all these illnesses.
02:40:52.000And so do you know that when you go to a chiropractor...
02:41:57.000But my point is that there's no evidence that that is doing anything to you physically.
02:42:03.000If you go to a doctor, okay, and you have a serious issue like you've got a broken arm and you have to put, you know, plates in it and screw it in place and put it in a cast, there's real evidence that that works.
02:42:32.000In fact, there was an article just today that there was, I think it's in Israel, They've figured out a way to have genes that actively go after, like surgically go after cancer.
02:42:48.000There was an article in, was it Scientific American?
02:42:50.000There was an article today about a fantastic breakthrough in cancer therapy.
02:43:19.000That doctors are not good at treating cancer because they're constantly working on it, and they're making breakthroughs like this all the time.
02:43:30.000That's just a theoretical breakthrough, and I hope it's correct.
02:43:36.000Researchers have demonstrated that CRISPR-Cas9 system is very effective in treating metastatic cancers, a significant step On the way to finding a cure for cancer.
02:43:48.000The researchers developed a novel, lipid, nanoparticle-based delivery system that specifically targets cancer cells and destroys them by genetic manipulation.
02:45:52.000Well, I agree with you on that, and I agree with you that there is a gigantic problem with pharmaceutical industries having influence over doctors.
02:45:59.000My wife's mom's a nurse, and she would tell us stories about how these pharmaceutical companies would take everybody out to dinner in these fancy restaurants and pay for everything.
02:46:10.000And they weren't bribing you, but they kind of were.
02:47:20.000Probably, the doctor thought, I played competitive basketball in high school, college, and City League for years.
02:47:28.000And he thinks that I was really small when I got to high school.
02:47:33.000I was only five feet tall and I grew about a foot in a couple of years.
02:47:36.000And he says that there's a disease that when you're growing that rapidly and if you have a lot of contact in the hip area like you might get from martial arts or you might get from football or basketball, from jumping and all that lateral movement, that my hips were not quite in the socket.
02:48:18.000What you're saying is that doctors over-prescribe medication and under-prescribed healthy living and diet and doing all the things that we know to be positive for the human body.
02:48:45.000I'm like, what's a good diet where you're going to get vitamin D3? A business model that I'm kicking around investing in would be a business model where You have doctors and you have a whole team.
02:48:57.000We do the complete workup of everything about your blood, your total health, and then we begin to customize our ideas to get you to live an extra 10 or 15 years and increase your health span.
02:49:10.000How can we optimize your health and well-being?
02:49:12.000And a team of people that are working with you, studying you, You're paying a monthly fee to get this.
02:49:18.000It's kind of concierge medicine, but not just dealing with getting a prescription from this doc so you can get your Viagra or whatever from the doctor.
02:49:25.000It'd be about them optimizing your long-term health and well-being.
02:49:30.000I think that is going to be a big future business model.
02:49:34.000Then you would have to have people actually go out and do things.
02:49:37.000Like, Mike, you're going to have to work out.
02:49:43.000We have executive coaches that corporate leaders frequently get.
02:49:48.000Why not have a wellness coach with a team of a doctor and wellness coaches who are helping you to optimize your absolute peak performance that you can get?
02:49:59.000Have you ever thought about implementing something like that for employees at Whole Foods?
02:52:50.000The problem is we actually do locate close to gyms, and sometimes our storage workout deals with the gyms to incent people to use the gyms.
02:54:38.000And for them, it's not even a workout.
02:54:40.000It's a normal part of their everyday life, so their legs are just totally conditioned to be able to hike up those hills and walk constantly.
02:54:49.000People don't realize how difficult hiking is.
02:55:15.000I love I love hiking and I love long-distance backpacking and I do it ultra light so I mean it's like I've got it down to a science so when you say backpacking so you're sleeping out there in the wilderness the whole deal yeah absolutely now there's not a lot of CEOs that are willing to do that I don't know but remember the other second time I hiked it I did it and over four years because I couldn't take that much time off when I retire sometime the next few years You're just gonna go hiking?
02:55:47.000There's so many people right now that are aspiring CEOs that want to be some big-time baller like you, and they hear this like, oh, when I retire, I'm gonna go walking.
03:01:29.000Our genetics are working against us because we can eat calorie-dense food every single meal, every day of our lives, and we just get fatter and fatter and fatter.
03:01:56.000There's never been a time in history where you could be poor and fat.
03:01:59.000It used to be the rich people were fat and the poor people eat the traditional diet and they were not getting enough calories so they were thin.
03:02:14.000They eat whole foods, whether it be plant-based or meats or both, and they just take better care of themselves.
03:02:21.000It's such a catch-22 for folks, too, because when you're tired and you're exhausted, and a lot of times when people have poor nutrition, they're tired and they're exhausted, it's very difficult to manage your appetite.
03:02:33.000When I'm tired, I have to stay the fuck out of the kitchen.
03:05:48.000The only time I really eat that food is when I'm going on a long-distance hike and trying to get enough calories is a problem because I'm hiking 10-12 hours a day and I'm burning 5,000 calories and I've got to get more calories in me.
03:06:02.000My wife says, John, You should admit to the world that really the only reason you like to go backpacking is because it gives you the excuse that you crave to eat crappy food.
03:08:01.000I don't have the desire to cook lasagna and I'm very fortunate that I don't have that desire because every now and then my wife will make lasagna and if I come home, especially if it's late at night and I've just done stand-up and I find lasagna in the fridge,
03:08:16.000that lasagna doesn't have a fucking chance.
03:09:44.000It's super easy for your body to digest.
03:09:46.000There's something about hemp protein, like if I know I have to work out in an hour, I hesitate with some forms of protein, like specifically whey.
03:09:55.000Like whey, my body doesn't digest that well.
03:14:04.000A lot of those are good for a day when you go with GPS. I know, which is why I switched from the Apple Watch to this one, because it does this.
03:14:11.000And does it monitor your heart rate, your sleep, all that jazz?
03:14:33.000And you're going to have a long conversation and you're going to laugh and you're going to joke and you're going to tell stories and you're just going to have a lot of fun.
03:14:40.000For me, red wine enhances that conviviality and I'm willing to make the trade off.
03:17:04.000I don't know if you're going to edit any of this, but we argued probably for 30 minutes about heart reversal with meat and plant-based stuff.
03:19:16.000The honest answer is I stopped eating eggs for a very bizarre reason, which was that when I first became plant-based, the media got really interested in it.
03:20:39.000I know, that's worse than is coffee good for you.
03:20:41.000One of those things where you can find a hundred articles that say eggs are the greatest food in the world and a hundred articles that say eggs are going to kill you.
03:21:16.000It's like he's just saying like – and it's what we're talking about essentially, like the argument of plant-based versus paleo versus now carnivore, which has been – I had a very compelling conversation with Paul Saladino for three hours where he was talking about the benefits of a nose-to-tail carnivore diet,
03:21:33.000eating organs, organ meats, and the importance of organ meat.
03:22:19.000I think having cheat meals is not a bad move.
03:22:22.000And that's what I basically do when I have big bowls of pasta or I sit down with a bag of cookies.
03:22:27.000I don't think it's bad to reward yourself, but I think the majority of what you consume should be, it should taste good, but be good for you.
03:22:36.000And I think that that's where people need to make their choices correctly.
03:22:54.000And we're going to die anyway, so we should have some joy in our lives.
03:22:59.000But we'll have the most happiness and joy in life if we're also healthy.
03:23:03.000So if we go too far in indulging ourselves, we may be sub-optimizing in the long run.
03:23:09.000Now, when you say you're going to die anyway, when you see these CRISPR people and all this crazy genetic manipulation, if they start rolling out some new technology that extends life far into the future, like I've heard that if you can make it to 2050, you're basically going to live forever.
03:23:24.000Yeah, Ray Kurzweil's been making that singularity, right?
03:25:18.000It's like, it's hard to keep these life forms alive, but I can keep the sex part of me alive, and through sex I can spread it, and I, DNA, will continue to live.
03:25:48.000I feel like that's how we're gonna look back at people who died at 80 like these poor fucks they didn't have genetic engineering they didn't understand that as you get older you have a better understanding and maybe you can achieve enlightenment in your lifetime he could be free of all the bullshit that holds people back and yeah I read I read a great science fiction series the first one was spin by Robert Charles Wilson and in It's
03:26:19.000a long story because it has three novels based in it, but the essence for what it relates to what we're talking about is we sent some people to Mars and they evolved over time and they came back to the Earth and they had developed certain Martian drugs that would extend our lives about another 50 years.
03:26:47.000The thirds because they'd have this other third to their life.
03:26:52.000And the thing is, is that humanity became a lot wiser.
03:26:57.000Because as we get older, we do tend to get wiser.
03:27:00.000I'm a lot wiser today at 67 than I was when I was 40. And a lot wiser at 40 than I was at 20. So if my brain doesn't degenerate through Alzheimer's or dementia, it seems reasonable to think I'll be wiser at 100 than I am at 67. And think if we were able to extend that into 120,
03:27:19.000130. A lot of these problems that we have, wars and all this irrationality, would start to disappear because we just become older and wiser as a species.
03:27:58.000Like, maybe if you give morons enough time, they eventually will get to a point where they're like 160. They just start apologizing to everybody.
03:28:18.000I can't have half my customers, half my team members boycotting Whole Foods.
03:28:22.000Do you know, Joe, back in 2007, I wrote an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Whole Foods as sort of what we were doing for healthcare.
03:28:32.000Because at that time, we didn't have Obamacare wasn't in place yet, and President Obama had asked for suggestions.
03:28:37.000So I just sent out what Whole Foods was doing, and the Wall Street Journal put an unfortunate title on that, which is Whole Foods' Answer to Healthcare, or to Obamacare, something like that.
03:30:03.000I think that that's very unfortunate, you know, because I think having an opinion about something is, especially when a person has achieved a level of success where they've seen a lot of things and they've had to navigate a lot of things.
03:30:16.000Those are the people that I want to hear from.
03:30:19.000Like, why is someone so upset about a person, just a public person, your opinion?
03:30:27.000About an issue that we're all dealing with.
03:30:29.000I think it's because we talked about before earlier today that some people identify their beliefs with who they are.
03:30:35.000So when you express opinions that differ with their beliefs, they experience it as a personal attack.
03:30:39.000And that's why they get so upset and angry.
03:31:27.000I thought the Tea Party times were tough, but Obama wound up being the successful president and pulled us out of the 2008 crisis, even though there's a lot of dispute as to whether or not he should have bailed out the banks.
03:31:39.000At the end of the day, things are going pretty well towards the end of his presidency.
03:31:44.000You know, whether people liked him or didn't like him, This is a different animal.
03:31:48.000This situation we have now, where Trump is claiming that the election has been stolen, and there's a large percentage of people that think that's the truth.
03:31:58.000And then there's other people that are like, you know, they voted for Biden just because they hate Trump.
03:32:03.000There's not a lot of people that are really excited about Biden.
03:32:06.000Well look, in this case, they're either going to be able to prove the claims, or they're not.
03:32:25.000It's the most bizarre political time of my life, or at least as an adult.
03:32:29.000Yeah, as we were talking about earlier, it's this situation that they talked about in The Social Dilemma, this same polarizing moment, but it's more accelerated now than I've ever felt it.
03:32:41.000Do you feel like you're being manipulated by social media?
03:34:54.000I just think you're a man that has strong passions.
03:34:57.000And those passions carry you into life.
03:35:00.000And when you're full of passion for whatever it is, I think you're probably prodigious in terms of what you do.
03:35:08.000But then you have these other periods of time where you're sort of, you know, you're not caught up in the passions and you're just sort of treading water, so to speak.
03:35:32.000So you know what you could do that wouldn't mess with your self-esteem is if you just make a conscious decision, I'm going to do this today.