Actor Ethan Hawke stopped by the podcast today to talk about how he went from weighing in at 500 pounds to being a healthy weight of 270 pounds. Ethan talks about his weight loss journey over the past 20 years and how it has changed his life. He also talks about how the weight loss has affected his career and how he is able to perform at his best on stage and screen. Ethan is an actor, comedian, writer, and podcaster. He has been in the business for a long time and has a great deal of experience in the entertainment industry. He is also a bodybuilder and has worked with professional bodybuilder, Jared Feather, who is one of the fittest people I have ever met. Ethan is a great guy and I really enjoyed getting to know him and talk to him about his journey to losing weight and getting back to a healthy, normal weight. I hope you enjoy this episode and that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed recording it! If you like what you hear, please HIT SUBSCRIBE on Apple Podcasts and leave us a review and tell a friend about what you think of the podcast! We really appreciate it. Timestamps: 3:00 - How much weight did Ethan weigh at his heaviest? 6:30 - How fast did he lose it? 8:00- What weight has he lost it? 13:00 15:40 - How many pounds have he lost since he was at his lowest point? 16:30 17:20 - What does he weigh now? 17:30- How much does he look like now? 18:20 19: How much has he changed since his heaviest weight? 22: How does he feel like he looked like a gorilla? 22:40 25:30 What is a normal human being? 27:00 What would you look like in a picture of himself? 29:15 32:00 Is he a monster? 31:00 Do you think he looks like that guy? 33:00 How would you like to lose weight now? 35:00 Does he need to be a little bit more? 36:00 Who would you lose weight? 38: What is your favorite piece of food? 39: What are you looking for in a photo of you in a movie? 40:00 Can you tell me what you would like to see me in a film? 41:30 Do you have a specific type of meal?
00:01:04.000I think that the thing that I've done that has been sustainable is undoing kind of...
00:01:12.000Look, a lot of diets come in and say, just do this and you'll lose weight.
00:01:16.000But we're not focused at all on how we got to whatever point we were at that we consider non-optimal that we want to change.
00:01:24.000And so, undoing the bad habits that I had that I would associate with allowing myself to get up to 550 pounds Is really more important than anything that I could say, this is what I did to lose weight.
00:02:02.000And how much weight have you lost since then?
00:02:05.0002002, I went from 550. I did a liquid diet for two months and lost 80 pounds.
00:02:11.000That 80 pounds, I've never dipped back into.
00:02:14.000So I was 450. And I went down to close to just under 300, then went back up to 400, then went down to 200, then back up to 350. And for the past five years,
00:02:33.000I've been around the weight I'm at now.
00:02:35.000So I've really gotten that under control.
00:04:56.000That's my favorite picture and that's not even down lighting.
00:04:58.000I was an idiot and I'm not super thrilled with my hair and my head and I wouldn't shave my head because I thought the hat looked better with a little bit of hair poking out and then it got in the way of down lighting.
00:05:12.000So that's not even as good a picture that could Downed lighting.
00:05:51.000When you look at that and you know how far you've come, I mean, it has to be incredibly satisfying.
00:05:58.000It's incredibly satisfying, but, you know, look, the reality is that I have mental illness and I don't look at myself and think, like, God, I look great.
00:06:12.000I see nothing but negative stuff every day and I try to I try to find something that I'm happy with.
00:06:58.000And what do you think is, what's fueling that distorted perception?
00:07:04.000When I go back to my childhood, I was put on a diet when I was five.
00:07:10.000And prior to that, I had no sense of self.
00:07:15.000I existed, and clearly I had fun and I played, but I was not aware of my body as a thing, kind of, if it is external to me, as a separate component to me, or just as a thing itself.
00:08:20.000But I spent most of my life feeling...
00:08:25.000Wrong like literally that I was wrong or bad or there was some some Just super negative about myself and so I still have to fight through that today like no matter what I've done I 2012 I went and rode every stage of the Tour de France or 2011 maybe Just for just for fun and I could do that on a bicycle and That's not fucking easy.
00:08:51.000That's thousands of miles on a bicycle in a very short period of time.
00:08:55.000I was much thinner than I am now, and I was miserable.
00:10:32.000The idea is, determinism is essentially based on the idea that you are You're a product of all of your life experiences.
00:10:43.000And the idea that you're responsible for everything you do at every step of the day, that's not entirely plausible.
00:10:51.000Because there's childhood trauma, there's life experiences, there's emotions, there's genetics, there's There's what you've had from all these life experiences that you've tried to assimilate,
00:11:07.000and those are different than my life experiences, and everybody's are different.
00:11:58.000And that's probably the best piece of fuel and inspiration for anyone out there that's looking to get their life together physically, metabolically, healthy.
00:12:12.000The best is someone who is at rock bottom, who is 500 plus pounds, and worked their way back to, like I said, a guy I would avoid in jiu-jitsu class.
00:13:13.000But I think that as my perspective shifts, I do today feel as though I have free will.
00:13:21.000I have to battle through everything that makes me me still, but I can do that and I can win.
00:13:27.000There was certainly a point where the momentum was such in the other direction That I failed time and time again.
00:13:34.000And again, it kind of always came down to I wasn't addressing how I arrived in the state I arrived at.
00:13:42.000I was addressing how do I lose weight, thinking that was the only piece of the puzzle that I was missing.
00:13:48.000And so once I'd lose weight and I'd wake up and go, well, none of the habits that I had cultivated for decades to get me to this bad place or this place that I deem non-optimal.
00:14:03.000And by not addressing them, they still exist.
00:14:06.000And now here I am repeating this cycle over and over and over again.
00:14:12.000Today, I have whatever version of free will I feel that I have, I feel very confident in decision-making because I can kind of work through these ideas.
00:14:23.000But there was a long time where it is tough to...
00:14:27.000To have the attitude with somebody who's in the middle of it and just go like, just make a decision.
00:14:34.000It's a rough position to put them in because you can make that decision a hundred times and fail.
00:14:51.000Which is really one of the most fucked up things about the weight loss addiction, which makes it so much more difficult than I think most addictions, is that you have to eat.
00:15:12.000I didn't know anyone who was a gambling addict until I started playing pool.
00:15:17.000And then I was hanging around this pool hall.
00:15:19.000When I was 22, 23 years old, there's a place called White Plains Billiards in White Plains, New York.
00:15:28.000Executive Billiards, rather, in White Plains, New York.
00:15:30.000And Executive Billiards was a full-on degenerate pool hall.
00:15:34.000It was just guys that were gambling, a lot of guys who lived in flop houses.
00:15:38.000They always had like $10 for their name, and they would bet that $10 and then try to bum money off of people.
00:15:44.000I mean, and it was as a young guy who came from sports, you know, came from martial arts, and I was, you know, I was like goal-oriented and I was trying to be very disciplined in my life.
00:15:56.000To see these guys live like this, I was like, wow, this is crazy!
00:16:53.000There was a time when, and it's so bizarre that it came out and they modeled it after Soylent Green, which ultimately turned out to be People at the end.
00:17:01.000Spoiler alert for anybody who hasn't seen that movie.
00:17:08.000But there's a Soylent Drink, which is...
00:17:11.000Pretty bland, but they have all, and they design it to like, here's my weight and height and activity level, and they give you these drinks and you basically stop eating.
00:17:20.000And I, when I heard about that, I was like, fuck, because I'm sober.
00:17:24.000And I totally understand this kind of black and white, like, when I'm doing something, I'm doing it 100%, whether that's eating cheeseburgers at 4am or, you know, scoring Coke and drinking a lot.
00:17:37.000And If I can just give up food and drink this soylent shit for the rest of my life, maybe I'm solved.
00:17:51.000I mean, I think it's a tool, you know, and you can use tools to kind of help you bridge gaps in between where you are and where you want to be.
00:18:34.000And when he had a kid, and he realized he was ridiculously overweight and sedentary and wasn't doing anything, and now he's a fucking beast.
00:20:13.000But if you can do it, it'll relieve so much anxiety.
00:20:16.000When I talk to people that are on anti-anxiety medication or SSRIs and all these different things, my first question is always do your exercise.
00:20:24.000And they'll look at you like you're talking to a cancer patient, like, how'd you do this?
00:20:55.000When I'm used to just walking to my car from my front door, can I walk past my car?
00:21:00.000Literally, if that's it, at 550 pounds it might be that small.
00:21:04.000But if you go into it with the attitude of setting goals, and you see that you can achieve this goal, and then you can beat it, and you can go a little further, I wouldn't use that to address weight loss, but just to feel that you can accomplish something with your body is a big deal.
00:21:24.000There was a lady that I used to yoga with and I watched her lose about a hundred pounds in a year.
00:21:32.000And I remember I brought it up to her and I was trying to figure out how to bring it up to her because I could tell she got like super uncomfortable and I was like shit.
00:21:40.000Like, I'm trying to be nice here, but I'm addressing the fact that she was gigantic and now she's just big.
00:21:47.000And I said, I don't remember what I said, but it's something along the lines of, I think your consistency is incredibly inspirational.
00:23:16.000It's amazing to watch someone just decide at some point in time, enough is enough.
00:23:22.000I'm gonna do something and that lady was in there every day and I wasn't in there every day I was only going to yoga a couple days a week and I go in there I'm like again you're here again yeah she was such a nice lady too and then the instructor said how much have you lost so far and I think she was at that time she was closing in on a hundred pounds which is amazing yeah but you know you could see the consistency it was changing like a practice like first for the beginning of the year versus the end of the year she's deeper into poses she could hold things longer and this is hot yoga too Which is,
00:24:05.000If you can't do anything, you just lay down.
00:24:07.000And I laid down and thought, I'm going to lay here and die because I'm too scared to tell this teacher to go fuck herself because I'm not allowed to leave.
00:24:16.000I'll kick a fucking hole through the door.
00:24:18.000I laid there for the rest of the class with my heart rate jacked up and thought like, I can't believe I'm going to allow myself to die in this sauna because this chick has a rule.
00:24:30.000Yeah, but that rule's good for your head.
00:24:56.000There's a study they're doing right now, I believe it's at Harvard, where they're trying to figure out whether or not hot yoga mimics the same sort of effects in terms of heat shock proteins that sauna does.
00:26:53.000I think that that is the thing that I like about exercise because sometimes the night before I'm looking forward to it, like I'm going to go to the gym tomorrow, first thing I'm going to feel better.
00:27:04.000The morning of, I'm never super amped up to get to the gym and start working out.
00:27:08.000And there's always a little bit of struggle there.
00:27:11.000It's never something I'm close to losing the struggle on nowadays, but...
00:27:17.000Making it through is a big deal for me and the fact that I put and when I string together a Succession of making it through the momentum carries me a long way Any day that I miss it and I lose that fight It's like a massive swing in the opposite direction.
00:29:00.000There's something about nature or genetics or whatever our code is, that when you're doing literally nothing, just laying around doing nothing, your body's like, what the fuck is the point?
00:29:14.000And what people don't recognize is like when you're laying around just watching television and then you shut the TV off and you feel like shit, you are artificially stimulated for hours and hours just staring at things happening while you did nothing.
00:29:28.000And then when you shut it off, the reality of your actual day sets in like, oh my god, I've done nothing.
00:31:41.000We're so malleable, you know, that to influence us with drugs, and then they hit you with, side effects may include, and then they may include, what if they definitely included?
00:31:52.000There's almost always colitis and rectal bleeding, and that's the one that I just go like, who the fuck wants to, that's not a trade-off!
00:31:59.000And the thing is, it's like, may include is weird, because what if it said, always include?
00:32:04.000Like, take this, and this is definitely going to happen.
00:33:41.000If you want to place some value on a scientific outcome, that's a human...
00:33:49.000It's an opinion that forces that scientific outcome into a value system.
00:33:56.000And so if you sit back and you assume that everybody innately has the exact same set of values, then yeah, we can have these arguments based on science, not science.
00:34:07.000But if people don't necessarily have the same value system that you have, why would we want all this?
00:34:15.000Like, this is where I get into people who want to protect other people, and it's like, well, you're just assuming that all the things that you want are the things that they should want.
00:34:26.000And when I hear what people should want, I go like, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense to me.
00:34:31.000Right now, It's slightly difficult to talk about weight loss because I've been obese and now I'm not obese and I celebrate not being obese.
00:34:43.000I am much better off with the way I have structured my life because of having lost weight.
00:34:50.000But I can't tell anybody else to do that.
00:35:11.000Now there's this diet culture monster in the room where even that is attacked because there's a whole new set of values that are born that must be enforced.
00:35:21.000And at some point, there's got to be the recognition that we don't all necessarily have to want the exact same stuff.
00:35:29.000There's also so much biological variability, right?
00:35:40.000Arguing about diets is another great one.
00:35:43.000I really like talking about diets simply because at the end of the day, it's so much safer than politics because there's no military backing up a diet system.
00:35:52.000You talk about politics and it's like, we have a fucking military to force you to do the shit we want you to do versus the other military that's going to force you the other way.
00:36:02.000But diets, it's like veganism versus carnivore.
00:36:06.000If we're just talking about weight loss, the other thing, some of these things get into like the minutia of health.
00:36:12.000If you've got a guy who's got 200 pounds to lose, why are we focusing on the minutia of health?
00:36:19.000I don't know that that's the right goal.
00:36:21.000If the goal is just weight loss, I don't think these are the same conversations.
00:37:00.000For the very first time in my life, I was thinking about the future in a way in terms of what I wanted out of life versus just like what makes me happy right this second.
00:37:14.000And I was seeing a girl who I'm now married to.
00:37:17.000We have a bunch of kids and I couldn't have a better life.
00:37:21.000Like 20 years ago, if I described to you the life I wanted in that moment, I've way surpassed that.
00:37:48.000I could take my wife on a hike, I could go to the beach with her and not, you know, sit under a towel in the back because I'm scared of people looking at me.
00:37:56.000These were not the thoughts I was having.
00:37:59.000So that spark of motivation of, like, what do I want out of life got me just so far because after an extreme diet, when you've crashed your metabolism and you then – and by the way,
00:38:18.000Your body is fighting against you tooth and nail doing these things because your body thinks you're starving to death.
00:38:37.000I forget the name of the hormone, but there's a hormone that makes you hungry.
00:38:40.000This is skyrocketing when you're on an extremely caloric deficit diet.
00:38:47.000So then you go to like just eating like a normal person and you're watching what other people eat and you're eating this and you're fucking putting on weight again like at a rapid pace and going like this doesn't make sense.
00:39:24.000Gluten intolerant that the way that we made bread in America with all the ingredients was just poisonous to the human body I was totally convinced of this and I watched this TED talk by Mike Isretel and In it it's called the the dietary landscape of healthy eating and he just goes over like Just be moderate.
00:40:14.000The way I was interacting with food, The idea that I'm a machine, like, you're a car guy.
00:40:22.000You're not going to put diesel fuel in your gas car.
00:40:25.000You're not going to do that because it's going to break it.
00:40:27.000And I had to start really thinking about food in these terms and going, like, I just have a bad relationship with food, a relationship that is giving me an outcome I don't want.
00:40:41.000The first carbohydrates I ate, after 15 years basically of being convinced that I was allergic to them, I was fucking terrified that it was going to be like cocaine and I was not going to be able to stop myself.
00:40:53.000I was going to sit there with a bowl of rice.
00:42:15.000There's other people that are doing it that are eating mostly pasta, and they can do that too.
00:42:20.000I think at the end of the day, if you're a guy who the idea of giving up carbohydrates, if you need to lose a shitload of weight, and the idea of giving up carbohydrates, if you can't really see that as a long-term thing, Fucking don't.
00:44:48.000Dude, when gluten-free bread was invented, because this happened in the midst of me becoming gluten-free, and it was like a few years into it that suddenly it was like, there's a cookie shop, there's a bakery in West Hollywood that does gluten-free pastries.
00:45:05.000And then I was just like, oh my God, they're speaking to me.
00:45:08.000And I would go there every day and I would eat muffins and cakes and shit and I would go, it's gluten free.
00:45:14.000And I would gain weight and I'd be like, what the fuck is the problem?
00:45:17.000There was no point that I was ever like, it's gluten for me has nothing to do with it.
00:45:23.000Now, if you have celiacs or Hachimoto's or something where gluten can mess with you, yeah, don't eat it.
00:45:30.000You know, there's so many trendy diets that come out and it's like you have a group of people that has failed so many times that they're desperate to just tell me the right thing to do.
00:47:22.000Because you take Wonder Bread, we used to buy a loaf of Wonder Bread, and we would roll up the Wonder Bread, the little balls, and put it on a hook and toss it out and the carp would get it.
00:50:32.000And then, you know, you realize like someone released them in.
00:50:36.000And there's a, like in Lake Austin out here, there's a grass carp that I was just talking to a guy who's a fisherman who was telling me that it's a real problem on the lake because the grass carp have eaten all the grass.
00:51:21.000Someone was just saying this, and it's a really good point, that invasive species, if you just found a way to make it profitable to go after those invasive species, that's the solution that they're trying to come up with with the python in Florida.
00:51:36.000Because pythons are overrun in the Everglades.
00:51:39.000They're so bad in the Everglades that they've killed most of the mammal species and they've started to eat alligators.
00:53:13.000One of the guys on that show was talking about the tags, like the allocations of tags that means how many alligators you could kill per season.
00:53:30.000When I was a kid, I lived in Florida for a little bit.
00:53:32.000We lived in Gainesville, Florida, and it was right near Lake Alice.
00:53:35.000And Lake Alice had alligators, but they were endangered at the time, because I guess people hunted them to the point where they had gotten down to very low numbers, and they were trying to save the alligators.
00:53:45.000But they fucked up and saved them too much.
00:54:53.000They're dealing with that with wolves in some places.
00:54:56.000They reintroduced wolves into Yellowstone in the 1990s, and they spread through Idaho and all these different areas.
00:55:02.000They've gotten to the point now where, I think it was in Idaho, they just decided that they have to kill all the wolves except for a small number of them.
00:55:11.000They have to get them down to a few hundred wolves.
00:55:14.000Because there's so many fucking wolves, they're decimating the elk populations and they're encroaching into people's ranches and killing steers.
00:55:22.000But they were endangered at some point.
00:55:25.000Yeah, well, they poisoned them to the point where, at the turn of the century, they were virtually extinct.
00:55:32.000And then they had to go to Canada and bring wolves from Canada and then repopulate Yellowstone.
00:55:37.000But isn't there a point where they can say, scientifically, we have determined that they are no longer virtually extinct, and scientifically, that means some are on limits to hunt?
00:56:19.000I can't think of a single animal I want to go away, but when an animal, like pigs in this state, there's a lot of pigs, and people have a lot of feelings about the way the pigs are hunted, but there's a lot of fucking pigs.
00:56:32.000They don't have any feelings about the way the pigs are hunted in Texas.
00:56:51.000What's weird about pigs is that if you took a regular pig, like a domestic pig, and you let it loose, within, I think, five or six weeks, they start to transform.
00:57:02.000Into those boars with the hair and the tusks.
00:57:05.000That's what's crazy is that they're the same animal.
00:57:13.000Domestic pigs are just wild pigs that have been domesticated.
00:57:17.000Like, if you take a domestic pig, they look all pink and white, and you let them go, their snout elongates, their tusks lengthen, and it happens quick.
00:58:32.000See, what they think though is that Hogzilla was one of those domestic pigs that broke so it fattened up and then broke through fencing and then went out and started the transformation.
00:58:44.000So once pigs fend for themselves, It's so weird.
00:58:47.000Like, a switch goes off in their brain and their fur gets thicker and denser.
01:02:07.000It's just the sheer amount of them in that photo, and that's just one photo, one random photo from a trail camera that shows how many pigs are just wandering through this field.
01:02:20.000They're really hard to get close to in the day because they're very smart, but their eyesight sucks.
01:02:25.000So what they do is they set up at night with night vision and just like they look for these weird glowing bodies and they take them out.
01:02:34.000That one in front looks pretty fucking big.
01:03:12.000You've got like these animals that are corralled in this – I mean it's harvesting meat and it's probably in some way more ethical than farming.
01:04:21.000Yeah, they're in people's lawns in San Jose fucking them up and they're trying to figure out what to do about it because they're encroaching on the tech community.
01:04:30.000California, you have to humanely capture the pig and then drive it out into the middle of nowhere and release it, I believe.
01:06:29.000I don't want some guy who just picked up a fucking bow and he starts launching arrows into other people's yards and, you know, hits someone's window, hits a kid.
01:06:50.000Often they have large teeth and are not afraid of people.
01:06:57.000It's, yeah, hunting in a neighborhood is, any kind of archery hunting, like, telling someone they should archery hunt is like telling someone they should jiu-jitsu fight.
01:09:59.000I mean, what evolutionary benefit is there to just pretend you're dead?
01:10:04.000No, I mean, if most things are going to eat you, most things that capture you like that are going to eat you, there seems to be no benefit.
01:13:15.000And I say all that, and I'm like, if the dude who's a professional video game player loves to eat pizza and is perfectly happy, good for him.
01:13:56.000Yeah, and I think it's going to improve.
01:13:58.000I think the shitload now is going to be more in a few years.
01:14:04.000I think as these things get more and more immersive and then more and more people get involved and also in a lot of places people go to watch them play.
01:14:12.000Well, I mean, you see whole stadiums filled up, but there are a ton of people that make money at home Playing video games and people are tuning in to watch.
01:14:20.000I don't understand any of this at all, but this is a real thing that our kids are growing up with.
01:14:51.000Starcraft is a particularly demanding strategy game that I've never played.
01:14:57.000I don't really understand, but it's a top-down game and you're looking down on this world and you're moving these players around and doing all kinds of shit and you're doing many things simultaneously.
01:15:08.000You're like playing war with these video game characters.
01:15:12.000And you'll see enormous stadiums, like 15,000 people filled with cheering fans and giant screens watching this game play out.
01:15:23.000They're on the new games now, apparently.
01:15:25.000This is not the current hot shit, if you will.
01:16:04.000Like, 15 years from now, who fucking knows?
01:16:06.000And you've got to imagine that the games these guys are able to develop now, in comparison to the games that will exist 15 years from now, they'll be even more immersive.
01:16:17.000Augmented reality or some form of virtual reality or some more insanely aggressively addictive version of these video games because they're so addictive.
01:16:30.000I was given, sometimes they give you presents.
01:16:32.000You're gonna start a movie and they give you gifts, which is a bizarre thing to happen, but I was given an Xbox.
01:16:37.000I was starting a movie, given an Xbox 15 or more years ago.
01:16:41.000And I brought it home and my wife said, oh, that doesn't come in this house.
01:19:26.000But with him, he was explaining how, because of probability theory, because we know that We know virtual reality exists.
01:19:36.000We know that technology is ever evolving and that there's always constant innovation and then there's a real thirst for it.
01:19:45.000We also know that wherever we are right now, if we can stay alive, whatever our technology is today will pale in comparison to the technology from a thousand years ago.
01:19:54.000Then we know that there are literally hundreds of millions of stars in this galaxy.
01:20:02.000Hundreds of billions of galaxies in the known universe each one of those Has who knows how many fucking stars each one of those has who knows how many planets So that means in some of these they've gone far past us if there is intelligent life out there in the universe Which they suppose there is right Someone has figured out how to make something that's indiscernible from this.
01:20:27.000So if this is reality, if what you and I and Jamie and everybody else listening exist in is a real tangible reality that you can touch and feel and you can weigh and measure...
01:20:38.000But that one day, we'll get to a place where there'll be an artificial reality that will be as amazing and as tactile as this, and you won't be able to tell the difference.
01:20:50.000Nick Ballstrom's argument was, because of those facts, it's more likely that it's already existed, and that we're in it right now.
01:20:59.000I mean, again, that's a heavy thought to run through, and I think that's exactly what my kid was trying to tell me, and that's fine, but I don't know what I'd do with it.
01:21:10.000It's just—Elon believes in it, too, by the way.
01:21:33.000Because we know for sure that at the lowest measurable or understandable level of reality, When you get to the quantum level, it's basically magic.
01:21:47.000When I talked to Brian Green and he was trying to explain it to me, and again, too dumb for that conversation, I just did my best.
01:21:54.000But you get to these super states where things are moving and they're also still...
01:22:01.000One thing is existing in two places at once.
01:22:04.000And then spooky action at a distance where somehow or another a particle in a long, far away place, far, far away place, Has an interaction with a particle that's here.
01:22:41.000All the shit that the Pentagon's releasing and all of that.
01:22:44.000I talked to a guy – because I'm hyper-focused right now on diet and stuff like that.
01:22:50.000But I remember reading Carl Sagan and him talking about how he thought that our first brush with extraterrestrials would be microorganisms.
01:23:01.000And I was talking to a guy who is a professor at UCLA, Emron Meyer or Mayer.
01:23:08.000And he was talking about our gut biome, how – There's more bacteria, individual organisms in our gut than there are stars in the galaxy.
01:23:45.000Yeah, and if something external that had no idea what we were were to perceive us in terms of living organisms, we would be the last because we're a single living organism with hundreds of billions of other organisms inside of us and around us and contributing to us and working together.
01:25:29.000So there's actually a company called Defense Soap.
01:25:31.000And Defense Soap, shout out to my man Guy Sacco, who created Defense Soap.
01:25:36.000He created it for grapplers and he created it for wrestlers and because a lot of these kids were getting sick and then they were using antibacterial soap, like they would get not sick, but they'd get little infections.
01:25:47.000And so he came up with this defense soap which is mostly healthy oils like tea tree oil and eucalyptus and all those things they don't kill the bad bacteria but they fight off the bad bacteria and they keep the skin biome healthy.
01:26:05.000And so there's a bunch of products that they've developed that are based on this principle that you're dealing with the surface of your skin.
01:26:17.000There's so many theories that you can run down to, like autoimmune disease and the rate of autoimmune in countries like America versus really, really third-world countries.
01:26:30.000Where it just basically doesn't exist.
01:26:31.000Now, I think the life expectancy might be lower, so that's not a good trade-off.
01:26:36.000When you have stuff like your immune system and you're clearing it of everything that it's learned to fight over however long we've been here, and suddenly it has nothing to fight, it's going to find things to fight.
01:26:53.000I think that that's the same with bacteria and all this stuff, and I know it's even kind of taboo in some circles to recommend eating vegetables.
01:27:02.000I know carnivores are not super into vegetables, but Even the mitotoxins in vegetables, you're getting just enough of it that your body learns to fight it.
01:27:18.000I think that's the argument, unfortunately, that some epidemiologists have made about our current situation in terms of constantly sterilizing our hands and hand sanitizer and also not even being around people.
01:27:33.000That our immune systems are atrophying, which is scary.
01:27:37.000My kid right now, my youngest daughter, has a cold, an actual real cold.
01:27:44.000I haven't seen a fucking cold in forever.
01:27:47.000When was the last time you saw a cold?
01:29:00.000Do we all have exactly the same values?
01:29:03.000I don't know that that's true and if that's not true, then this sounds to me like a religious position that we're making.
01:29:10.000But I try to understand these things and I was speaking with a guy who studied epidemiology at UCLA and he said they had a large sign that was a constant reminder to them every day and it just said,
01:29:30.000The idea is, because I was asking, if somebody's had corona, why are they pushing so hard for them to get vaccinated when the amount of reinfection doesn't look to be any worse than breakthrough infection post-vaccination?
01:29:56.000And his point was, well, in epidemiology, you learn that everybody lies.
01:30:00.000So your aunt, who never got tested but had a bad cold back in March and is convinced she had corona, might not get the vaccine when she might not have had corona.
01:30:11.000And so, therefore, they're going forward with everybody must get the vaccination as this kind of...
01:30:18.000But I think it's interesting to think about that.
01:30:49.000Handful of almonds, like 500 calories or something crazy.
01:30:52.000Dude, when I was keto, I would get bags of macadamia nuts at Trader Joe's and never look at the caloric value of them and eat them.
01:31:00.000I could just eat this full of fat and it's so good.
01:31:02.000And then I'm not losing weight and I'm eating bacon for breakfast, like a Package of bacon for breakfast, a steak for lunch, snacking on macadamia nuts all day, and not losing weight and fucking pulling my hair out because it didn't seem to be working.
01:31:17.000At some point, you can't eat more than your body needs or you're going to hold on to weight.
01:32:05.000And then like a sicko like me, I'm reading all the keto recipes of like how to make bagels with pork rinds and heavy whipping cream and cream cheese.
01:32:15.000And convinced that this is going to work.
01:32:18.000But I'm eating 5,000 calories a day in fat and not losing weight.
01:32:23.000The only thing that I did ever when I went on a diet to lose weight was that carnivore diet.
01:32:27.000But the reason why is because when you're not eating the pasta and the rice and all that stuff, like a salad or anything like that, the steak itself is enough.
01:33:01.000Yeah, but you can get to this place where your body is in sort of a calorie deficit and also not as much calories as I'm accustomed to eating because I do eat a lot of food.
01:35:25.000Cold Mountain, 2002. And I had this brutal experience on a plane with a conversation with a guy who I think was very – meant well.
01:35:34.000But, you know, honestly, he framed it all in terms of like his relationship with Christ and how my relationship with Christ was clearly lacking because I was a mess.
01:35:51.000He was concerned for me, was basically at the root of it, and expressing that concern.
01:35:55.000I think anytime somebody tells me or has, you know, I don't want to talk really about masks or anything like that, but this is also very much like we don't all have to share the same values, but I recognize that when somebody's telling me I need to live a certain way,
01:36:13.000this is just them imposing their values on me.
01:36:44.000I don't even like walking around the block at that point.
01:36:48.000And I called her up and it was the most bizarre feeling because I am objectively 550 pounds at this point and I had to talk to her about wanting to change my weight and it felt as though I was telling her a secret.
01:37:03.000Like, I felt like I was gonna tell her something she didn't know.
01:37:08.000Like, if you couldn't tell, I'm morbidly obese.
01:37:14.000And in this conversation, she was like, okay, what do you want to do?
01:37:18.000And I was like, well, I want to lose weight.
01:37:20.000And she said, good, as soon as you get home, I'll have something ready for you.
01:37:23.000And when I landed, she picked me up and she had this whole liquid meal plan ready that was full of like fiber pills and vitamins and shakes.
01:40:35.000But I was on a very, very low calorie diet when I started eating.
01:40:39.000And I ate that way for another few months.
01:40:42.000So I continued to lose weight far, far more slowly.
01:40:46.000But then even then, I was still doing like under a thousand calories a day, but I was eating solid food.
01:40:53.000Have you ever heard of the story of the man who fasted for 365 days and he, do you know this guy?
01:41:02.000I don't know him, but I have heard about him.
01:41:05.000He drank only water and took in vitamins, I think IV vitamins, I forget how they did it, but this guy lost an insane amount of weight and the crazy thing is his skin shrank.
01:41:19.000I mean, listen, I don't want to say that's something that's not really talked about enough amongst people who have massive weight loss.
01:41:27.000And I find that people who start to lose a lot of weight are suddenly confronted with this fact that they have billowing skin and it's shocking and very upsetting.
01:41:37.000And I think that guy's an outlier because I did read about him.
01:41:43.000Mostly people are going to have a lot of excess skin.
01:41:48.000The thought was that maybe because the fact the guy was ketogenic for the entire 365 days a year and his body was consuming fat, that it also consumed skin as well.
01:48:01.000But treating it like a machine is so difficult because it's interconnected with all these feelings and pangs, hunger pangs, and there's so much going on, emotions.
01:48:11.000And in America, we celebrate everything with food.
01:50:04.000I would boil the pasta, and then I would take the sauce and dump a can of tuna into the sauce, stir it up, pour it on together, and then just thank god I was alone.
01:50:18.000Yeah, I don't think my body enjoyed it.
01:50:20.000And I don't know if it was the pasta or the combination of the pasta with the sauce and the tuna as well, but all together.
01:50:27.000When I upped my protein, I started paying attention to how much protein I got every day, and I actually had to increase my protein.
01:50:36.000If I would fuck up and miss a meal and wind up with like, I got 100 grams of protein left towards the end of the day, and I'd eat it all at once, which is a fucking shitload of protein to consume at one time, the gas, Everybody in my house would be furious with me.
01:50:56.000So that, you know, and I have my coach, Jared Feather, again, amazing guy.
01:51:01.000He would program me and he would say, you know, like, you eat 25 grams in this meal and 50 grams in this meal and spread it out throughout the day.
01:51:11.000If I get to the end of the day and I've only eaten one meal, I'll just eat everything then because I kind of like just fucking eating until I'm stuffed.
01:51:19.000And you'd go, that's a bad idea for a number of reasons.
01:51:21.000I'd go, okay, but does it really matter?
01:51:23.000And then the gas actually got me to spread it out.
01:51:55.000Wasn't Mark saying he eats one meal a day often?
01:52:00.000He's the guy that wrote that book, The Primal Blueprint.
01:52:04.000He had all sorts of arthritis and all sorts of issues with his joints and cut out, for him, this is his thing, he cut out all bread, all pasta, all grains, and just started eating Completely unprocessed food,
01:52:20.000eats a lot of grass-fed steak, eats a lot of just vegetables, and it all went away.
01:52:27.000And then he feels infinitely better and wrote this book about how to cook and how to eat with completely unprocessed food.
01:52:38.000But he now, but he's in his 60s, very fit.
01:52:52.000As far as an older guy, he looks amazing.
01:52:54.000And I'm pretty sure he only eats once a day for the most part.
01:52:58.000Occasionally he'll have a light breakfast or something like that, but he's got his body kind of dialed in to where he needs it and what to eat.
01:53:06.000Most of my friends, though, that are athletes, particularly fighters, they eat all throughout the day.
01:53:12.000A lot of them carry around those little Tupperware containers and they'll eat multiple meals a day.
01:53:41.000And in fairness, like a gripper, an electrician who's picking up heavy things all day, I understand that guy needs to eat throughout the day, but I, who am a fucking dumb actor, who mostly just standing around saying words,
01:54:13.000Those habits that people develop at work, I knew a lot of people that would act and they would be on sets and they would gain weight every time they would be on a set because that craft service table they'll set up.
01:54:28.000Especially if it's a good craft service one with the bagels and the locks.
01:54:33.000Especially in the morning when you're tired.
01:54:35.000When I'm tired, I have fucking zero willpower.
01:54:38.000When I'm tired, like when I come home and I'm hungry, I'm tired, it's like fast food, whatever.
01:54:43.000It's been proven, I believe, that your body reacts differently to cravings when you're tired and you make poor choices.
01:54:50.000Yeah, this is one of the habits that I've worked on really hard at changing is like I don't do anything hungry and I don't go to the grocery store hungry.
01:56:49.000Doing eight hours of cardio a day on a bike, and I didn't have abs, and it was really fucking disappointing.
01:56:56.000Now, all that said, I have loose skin, so it's like, you see those big muscle guys in loose shirts, and they don't, they just still, that's still what I got, because I got loose skin hangover, but downlighting.
02:00:18.000I did read an article once years ago when I was super cardio focused that said that this overweight power lifter really wanted abs and the way he got them is he did this kettlebell thing where he did a thousand swings a day for ten days.
02:01:44.000Like knee raises while holding on to like a 35-pound dumbbell with this thing at the bottom of your foot.
02:01:50.000And some guys work up to 45 pounds, 55 pounds.
02:01:53.000And you could really build the muscle tissue in your hamstrings and your hip flexors in a way that you kind of can do by holding something in your arm.
02:02:07.000But again, I thought it was a lot stronger.
02:02:09.000I thought my hamstrings were a lot stronger than they were.
02:02:12.000And in jujitsu, hamstrings really come into play because you want to squeeze someone and hold them in place.
02:02:18.000And you sort of develop that strength just from grappling, but you certainly can enhance it with lifting weights with your hamstrings.
02:02:26.000The best way I've found is with these monkey feet things, because it forces it to act as an individual unit.
02:02:33.000It forces it to balance the weight and maneuver it, and I think it gets all those stabilizing muscles.
02:02:39.000I trained with Eddie Bravo a long time ago, and I have gigantic legs, very, very strong legs, as you know somebody who carried around 550 pounds would have.
02:02:51.000And I would go around to other places.
02:02:55.000Whenever I'd travel, I'd find somebody and go do a private somewhere.
02:02:58.000And I was like, I'm going to throw fucking lockdown on Marcel Garcia and see if my legs are really strong.
02:03:34.000And that's one of the reasons why Marcelo always avoids what he calls strongman moves.
02:03:38.000Like, Marcelo never uses Kimuras, because he feels like Kimuras are a strongman move, which is really interesting.
02:03:44.000But a lot of guys who even, like Gabe Tuttle, who's the head coach at 10th Planet in Austin, he uses Kimoras, and he's a small guy, but he likes Kimoras to set up other things.
02:03:56.000So he uses Kimoras because when you have to defend Kimoras, then it sets up back attacks, it sets up arm bars and triangles.
02:04:05.000There's different things that happen, so as you clamp onto that Kimura and pull it, the guy has to react, and then you use that, because it's a very predictable action, right?
02:04:14.000If you have a hold of a person's arm and you're threatening with a Kimura, there's not a whole lot of things they have to do, or they can do, rather.
02:04:21.000So you've got this thing and you're yanking it back like that.
02:04:26.000So as you anticipate that, then you transition to a triangle or you transition to something else or take the back.
02:04:32.000There's a whole series, I think David Avalon has a whole series of Kimura traps and how they call it a Kimura trap.
02:04:40.000You're setting up, you're using this attack and you can finish with that attack if you get it, but you're setting up a bunch of other stuff.
02:06:41.000He uses those legs to transition, he uses those legs to enter into techniques, and he uses those legs as control when he gets a hold of a guy.
02:06:48.000And by the way, couldn't be a nicer human being.
02:06:52.000He's like one of the nicest guys I've ever met in my life.
02:09:35.000It was right after he had that boxing match with KSI. He was vacationing in the same place I was with my family, and all of a sudden I get this tap on my shoulder.
02:11:28.000Joey Diaz always says, I never met a bookie with a part-time job.
02:11:32.000The thing that could happen, and this is very unlikely to happen, but what could happen is if Logan holds him and hits him and hurts him.
02:11:41.000So if there's a moment in an exchange where Logan, who is a very good wrestler, I mean a very good wrestler.
02:11:49.000We saw him wrestle Paulo Costa who's a UFC middleweight contender and you watch the scrambles like he was controlling Costa and they scrambled he was keeping up with Costa but you watched him move and you're like man this kid can fucking wrestle and Floyd is not like this one punch obliterating knockout power puncher and then he's also 50 pounds lighter so the The weirdness...
02:12:13.000What's the weirdest thing that can happen?
02:12:15.000Is Logan could somehow or another tie him up and clip him.
02:13:13.000I would never train a guy like him if I was a trainer.
02:13:18.000I would never train a guy like him to try to box with Floyd.
02:13:20.000I'm like, you are not going to be on the outside trying to outmaneuver literally the slickest boxer that's ever walked the face of the earth.
02:13:27.000Do you get broken up if you get an underhook?
02:13:33.000Some referees say, fight through it, fight through it, and it really depends on whatever rules they develop specifically for this one sort of understanding.
02:13:42.000I know there was some specific understandings for the Conor McGregor fight.
02:13:45.000When Conor fought Floyd, if he did anything that was MMA-related, like if he tried to take him down or kick him or something like that, I think he would lose all his money or be fined a million dollars.
02:14:28.000When he clipped him with that uppercut in the first round, Floyd was like, oh shit, this guy can strike.
02:14:34.000But Conor's used to being a sniper and using all his other tools, like kicks and kicking the legs and Jabbing the body with that front kick that he likes to throw.
02:14:47.000For him to just use his hands only He can kind of get things off until Floyd figures out his timing and then once Floyd figured out the timing then Floyd was just not there when those punches land and then Conor's punches became more and more labored and Floyd just dragged him into the later rounds and started fucking him up.
02:15:04.000Do you think that's like the worst thing that can happen for a fighter like a fighter like Conor who I remember watching a video on him before he maybe his first UFC fight when they followed him around Ireland he was he did not have much money at all Poor kid,
02:15:24.000To go from that to making $100 million in a boxing match, where as long as he doesn't kick the guy, he makes a fortune, is maybe the worst thing.
02:15:35.000I mean, for a guy who still seems at times like he wants to fight, for that, for that sport, for mixed martial arts, having so much seems to be working against him.
02:17:24.000It could have just been that my goal wasn't to lose 100 pounds and keep it off for 5 years or 10 years or 20 years or whatever or lose 100 pounds for life.
02:17:34.000My goals were literally just I'm going to do this diet for 4 months.
02:17:42.000And I have no idea what Conor's goals are, but a guy like that who goes like, I'm gonna make $100 million.
02:17:47.000Once you make $100 million, you gotta set new fucking goals, because he's not fighting the same way that he was, at least in UFC, prior to that.
02:18:12.000That fight, it's hard to judge him based on the Dustin Poirier fight because most people tend to look at the end result.
02:18:20.000You tend to look at how it went down and how the fight ended.
02:18:23.000And if you look at how the fight ended, you go, oh, Conor Soft.
02:18:27.000But when I look at it as an analyst, I look at it from the beginning to the end.
02:18:32.000And one of the best ways to look at it is my brother Daniel Cormier has a thing on ESPN called Detail about that fight.
02:18:41.000And he shows the first fight, and he shows the second fight, and he shows the adjustments that Dustin Poirier made, and then he shows the difference between the way Conor fought the first fight and Conor fought the second fight.
02:18:53.000And one of the things is Dustin started kicking the low calf instead of the thigh.
02:18:58.000In the first fight he kicked the thigh.
02:19:00.000It's way easier to absorb a few hard kicks to the thigh than it is a few hard kicks to the calf.
02:19:06.000The calf, it becomes debilitating almost immediately.
02:19:09.000One or two good shins slamming into your calf.
02:19:15.000There's a thing called compartment syndrome that happens where your blood pools up in the leg There's a guy, you want to get grossed out?
02:19:24.000There's a guy named Austin Hubbard who fought in the UFC. Google compartment syndrome Austin Hubbard.
02:19:30.000He had a fight in the UFC and he got his legs kicked to high heaven and afterwards they swelled up so bad they had to split his leg like a banana.
02:20:24.000I think he's fighting welterweight and well he's fought both I believe that's what's going on but his leg was twice the size of his other leg just just from swelling and tissue damage and when you get that compartment syndrome they have to alleviate that look at that one picture go back to where you were look at that picture in the middle with the two legs split up I know but look at that that's an example of compartment syndrome So they have to open you up and figure out a way to drain all that shit.
02:22:00.000If you want to get really gross, and I don't talk about this much because it seems to put people off, but when I was going to have the skin surgery, I told the doctor that I wanted to tan the skin and make trinkets for my friends.
02:23:12.000I had so much anxiety about sitting still and gaining weight while I was sitting still that I didn't sit still and I fell and tore my side open and had to have a wound vac just like that gentleman for a long time because they can't sew you back up and it fills with fluid and you have to constantly suck the fluid away from the wound.
02:24:34.000So you had to worry about staph and things along those lines, or MRSA, which is really scary.
02:24:38.000Oh, I was on heavy-duty antibiotics, Levoquin, the whole time, just to kill bacteria as it came up, in case it was like something I had to take every day, no matter what, in case an infection happened.
02:26:10.000You know, and when I found out that John Donaher, Gary Tonin, who is also one of the greatest grapplers alive, is also a John Donaher student, has entered into One FC, which is a mixed martial arts organization in Asia, and he's been incredibly successful.
02:26:26.000And then I was like, well, who's his striking coach?
02:26:29.000And Gordon's like, John Donaher's his striking coach as well.
02:26:57.000And Gordon, who is a great athlete, who has incredible dedication and discipline, was trained by the greatest mind in combat sports alive today.
02:27:55.000He has not yet, but he has signed for 1FC, exclusive for MMA, and they might put him in grappling matches in 1FC as well.
02:28:03.0001FC is a really interesting organization because they have kickboxing, They have Muay Thai, so they have regular kickboxing with gloves, with big gloves, boxing gloves.
02:28:13.000They have kickboxing with small gloves.
02:28:15.000They have Muay Thai with small gloves.
02:28:17.000They have MMA, and apparently they're going to have grappling as well.
02:28:22.000So they're going to give away a grappling belt, same way they have 1FC belts for all these other disciplines.
02:29:10.000He tells you how he's going to tap them.
02:29:13.000Like he fought Wagner Rocha and he wrote on a piece of paper He wrote a triangle and he handed it to the guys who are doing commentary and he said, open this envelope up after the match is over.
02:29:36.000He fights this guy, triangles him, and he said he was going to manhandle him for a long time because apparently the guy fucked with him when he was 19. He's going to manhandle him for a long time and then triangle him, and that's exactly what he did.
02:30:19.000And he's only 25. So when you're 25, you just keep getting better.
02:30:22.000And he's training seven days a fucking week.
02:30:25.000He gets up in the morning, he lifts weights, he does MMA training, and then he does jiu-jitsu, and then he eats, and he goes to sleep, and he does it all over again.
02:30:33.000And they moved to Puerto Rico so they could do it because New York City was shutting down the gyms.
02:30:38.000So they're like, okay, we'll go over here.
02:30:40.000They're like, we're not going to stop.
02:31:00.000With one FC, I think they have a promotional machine behind them with financial backing that might incentivize people to compete against him.
02:31:09.000So they might be able to talk some other elite grapplers who are also heavyweights to get in there and risk getting tapped.
02:31:17.000Because this is what they wanted to avoid.
02:31:19.000Because he had a match with Cyborg, Roberto Abreu, who's a huge fucking powerhouse of a man.
02:32:46.000So this is it, which means partial paralysis of the stomach is a disease which the stomach cannot empty itself of food in a normal way.
02:32:53.000If you have this condition, damaged nerves and muscles don't function with their normal strength and coordination, slowing the movement of the contents through your digestive system.
02:33:02.000And they think that that happened because of the continual use of oral antibiotics just over and over and over again.
02:33:10.000He's on this stuff and it eventually fucked up his stomach.
02:33:13.000And is the staph infection under control?
02:33:16.000Staph infection is under control, but now he's got this gastroparesis.
02:33:28.000He can't eat what he wants, and he's still the best.
02:33:30.000Yeah, still with this fucked up stomach thing, because he thinks that if he didn't have the stomach thing, he could, because of his steady weightlifting and everything, he could get up to 240, where he thinks he can dominate people even more.
02:34:23.000Because Hickson had this crazy physicality and flexibility that these other jiu-jitsu guys did not have.
02:34:30.000And also this insane understanding of positions and insane understanding of the language of the interactions of human bodies in grappling exchanges.
02:34:41.000He just knew how to grapple in a way that other guys just did not.
02:34:45.000And a lot of it was just based on repetition over and over and over and over again.
02:34:49.000And the fact that he was stronger than the other Gracies.
02:36:06.000And the idea was that they would use Hoist until Hoist lost, and if Hoist ever lost, then they bring in Hicks, and then everybody's fucked.
02:36:14.000Yeah, but Hickson went over to Japan and won the Japan Vale Tudo and became a giant star in Japan and then he fought in Coliseum and he fought in Pride and I think Coliseum was his last fight and if I'm gonna be accurate I want to say it was the year 2000. I think that was Hickson's last hurrah.
02:36:34.000So who today I didn't mean Hickson should fight him now.
02:36:53.000I think that would be an interesting fight because Cyborg still, now Cyborg and him did have one other match and Cyborg was disqualified for slapping Gordon in the head repeatedly.
02:37:51.000But then if they put enough money, people will start to risk that.
02:37:55.000If they put enough money, and that's the argument about something like 1FC, is that 1FC might have the financial means to goad maybe some judo champions and some elite grapplers in other disciplines, you know, and make it a big deal.
02:40:31.000He's this guy from the Czech Republic.
02:40:35.000This big fucking crazy striker who fights wild and he just comes straight at you and puts it on you in this Wild way where he just throws himself at fighters and forces them into these dogfights.
02:44:02.000I started training more with force multipliers.
02:44:06.000So I was doing a TV show and the character I was playing was based on a real dude who his job is to train tier one guys in edge weapons, blades, knives and stuff like that.
02:44:50.000But I'm not going to bars and putting myself in situations where I'm going to have like a street fight.
02:44:57.000And so when I would think about that, I would think, like, what would the circumstances be to require me to have some kind of a physical altercation?
02:45:06.000And it always came down to their lives, where my wife's life was in danger.
02:45:12.000And then it just led to, like, the idea of weapons, basically.
02:45:18.000And so I started training with weapons.
02:46:02.000So all these things become difficult to train with this stuff, but I also am mostly at my house, and it's not illegal to carry anything at your house.
02:46:44.000Yeah, but wasn't it interesting how, I don't know if this is the case with you, people who never talked about guns all of a sudden started inquiring about guns.
02:46:53.000And I'm sure if people know that you train with guns, they probably question you about it.
02:47:44.000Yeah, I've had that conversation too, and many other friends that I have that have had guns have also had those conversations with other people when they've asked them.
02:49:04.000You know, this is another place where people get so divided, and I just think it comes down to, like, preferences and values, and I hear people argue about it, and I'm like, sounds like people are arguing about flavors of ice cream to me,
02:49:22.000because it's like, I like this, I don't like this, and what I like, you should like, and it's, you know, it's a weird thing to think about.
02:49:30.000Well, people don't like the argument that if you take guns away, then you'll be helpless against a tyrannical government.
02:49:47.000And I'm like, no, I don't think it's going to happen.
02:49:49.000I like the senator who said the US government has nukes, talking about how people with firearms at home couldn't defend themselves against the US government.
02:50:01.000And I just wish I could point out to that guy that neither Vietnam or Afghanistan had nukes.
02:50:08.000They didn't have much of anything, and they seemed to do pretty well against the US government.
02:52:17.000If the hospitals, if that infrastructure collapses, that's devastating to the country.
02:52:23.00078%, and I thought it was 80, you corrected me earlier, 78% of the people who were hospitalized for COVID were obese.
02:52:33.000We're not allowed to tell anybody to lose weight, but if they did, we would certainly, and I'm not saying it would be one for one, but we would certainly reduce the need for hospitalization.
02:52:53.000Michelle Obama, when Obama was president, Michelle Obama had some get out and move campaign, right?
02:53:00.000And that if something similar was employed during the Trump administration, during COVID, we could have gotten people healthier and said, but I don't think they necessarily knew at the time.
02:53:10.000I think it took a few months before they recognized that obesity was one of the main comorbidity factors.
02:53:19.000And Which they took away by keeping us inside.
02:53:40.000But vitamin D, in one study at least, 84% of the people in the ICU with COVID had insufficient levels of vitamin D, and only 4% had sufficient levels, which is really crazy.
02:53:52.000Obviously, it doesn't mean it protects you 100%, but it's a strong factor.
02:53:58.000And then when you look at the national numbers, I think 79% of the population in total has insufficient levels of vitamin D. It is a real problem because it's a hormone, and it's a hormone that your body best produces when you're out in the sun,
02:54:15.000but you don't get it any other way unless you supplement.
02:54:26.000Yeah, why is it not pushed as a value?
02:54:28.000The New York Times recently had a piece that they put about how people who exercise regularly, it's a strong factor in not having COVID in a severe case and recovering from it quicker.
02:54:42.000This is another thing that doesn't get discussed.
02:54:45.000All that gets discussed is locking down, vaccinations, all these different things, when it should be a multi-tiered approach to getting people healthier.
02:54:58.000But it's hard to tell people to be healthy.
02:55:00.000It's like what we were talking about before.
02:55:02.000Hearing you talk about the emotional pain involved in being overweight before you decided to take these incredible steps and this amazing result, it makes you think like, man, it's hard to tell someone, especially someone like me, who's never really been fat,
02:55:18.000it's hard to tell someone that you have to lose weight.
02:55:22.000So if the government started doing it, and goddammit, there's so many snowflakes today, If they did start doing it, people would be freaking the fuck out.
02:56:56.000And then if you are saying this publicly, and one of the problems with social media is, even if what you're saying doesn't necessarily make sense, you can get enough fucking people to agree with you, and they'll pile on.
02:57:07.000And then the person who is in this debate is an individual, and they get attacked by enormous amounts of people.
02:57:41.000But you don't have to defend yourself.
02:57:42.000I mean, brilliant people who've wrecked vacations because they checked something on Twitter where someone was attacking them, and they spent all their...
02:57:51.000Vacation time in the hotel room, crafting a response.
02:59:58.000Overall, in general, we need to be way more compassionate with each other, and one way is to recognize that you don't exist the way you are because you just decide this is the way to be, and it's real clear,
03:00:13.000and I'm gonna fuck people over, and I'm gonna do this, and this is who I am.
03:00:18.000No, you just become that person over a long period of time.
03:00:22.000And I was explaining this to someone recently, and I've said it more than once, but it bears repeating that when I had children, it changed who I am as a person because then I started to think of people as babies.
03:00:57.000And then, you know, maybe he fucking got arrested and did time in jail for something he didn't do, and next thing you know, here's Tom, the 40-year-old asshole that's giving me a hard time at the gas station, and I'm thinking about flatlining Tom.
03:02:23.000And then there are various ways that we can go about accomplishing stuff if we don't try to accomplish everything in a day, I think.
03:02:33.000So I get scared and I don't think this is the point of Sapolsky, but I think it's easy to hear that and to go like, everything led me to this point.
03:03:22.000And for that person to recognize that this person is reaching out with kindness and then respond in turn with kindness and say, I'm really sorry.
03:03:42.000That's what we really need in response.
03:03:45.000And unfortunately, some really intelligent people Who are well-meaning, they think they're doing the right thing, are involved in this sort of cancel culture thing where they're attacking people.
03:03:57.000It's bad for them, too, because they kind of feel what they're doing while they're doing it.
03:04:01.000It gives you a very low opinion of yourself.
03:04:03.000Because if you're a person that's piling on on someone, you don't think of yourself as being a hero or some sort of courageous or enlightened person.
03:04:12.000That group often eats its own, too, so it's like a dangerous group to be in.
03:04:17.000It's a product in many ways of social media because it's a shit way to communicate with text online like that.
03:05:21.000You can decide, like, you know what, I kind of recognize that this has never served me in the past.
03:05:26.000I've seen all these errors I've made up to this point, and I'm going to choose now to move forward with a different ideal and with different ethics and different morals, and I'm going to try to be a better person, and I'm going to try to treat other people the way I would like to be treated.
03:05:41.000Not pile on them on social media or attack them for some shit that they might or might have gotten incorrect or whatever, but instead to just recognize, like, this is a terrible way to treat someone you care about.
03:06:05.000You know, it doesn't mean you shouldn't be critical of certain things.
03:06:09.000And certain things demand critical thinking and they demand criticism because it allows the other person to recognize that they've erred and that other people see things from a different perspective than they do.
03:06:20.000But you don't get that from insulting people and being shitty and mean.
03:06:26.000That's the majority of these interactions.
03:06:28.000It's like people trying to find people who have erred or people who are worthy of attack and then going after them.
03:06:36.000Yeah, and I find that people that I could have total disagreement with on any of these things, if I sit down and have a conversation and try to see their point of view, I often do.
03:06:46.000And I often have empathy, and suddenly they're a real person.
03:06:49.000But if I take my understanding of them based on something I read or off a tweet or something like this or...
03:06:57.000How they're discussed amongst other groups of people, then it just becomes like the other and I want nothing to do with them and they're scary and I won't talk to them intentionally.
03:07:38.000Politics today really look like the Catholics fighting the Protestants to me, where you're just like, wait, what are you guys really fighting about?
03:07:55.000We evolved in tribes, and we evolved to be fearful of other tribes, and as other tribes are going to do you damage and steal your resources and kill you.
03:10:50.000But if you caught me three days in a row, no gym, who knows?
03:10:54.000Maybe I'm like, fuck them and fuck this.
03:10:57.000I have an inclination to I have an inclination towards aggression and say fuck you and fuck this and fuck that.
03:11:04.000And I try real hard to avoid that inclination and to get better.
03:11:09.000And it's not better in like one fell swoop.
03:11:11.000It's like I don't learn it from one mistake and now I'm better.
03:11:14.000It's like I need to make a gang of mistakes and keep recognizing that I made those mistakes and better.
03:11:20.000And I think we need to have that leeway, not just personally for ourselves, because generally, if you're healthy, try to give yourself a little leeway for mistakes.
03:11:28.000We need to have that leeway for other people.
03:11:30.000And I was thinking about this on the way over here.
03:11:32.000I was thinking about felons, like felons that can't vote.
03:11:37.000Like, you get arrested when you're 17 for robbing a bank, and then you can never vote for the rest of your life.
03:11:44.000I mean, we could just take what our mutual friend Michael Malice has to say about voting and talk about how all votes are an act of violence or they're all illegal and nobody should be voting at all.
03:12:21.000I think about this sometimes and I think about like you go back to ancient Rome and there weren't explicit laws against murder.
03:12:29.000Eventually, and I mean like 700 years into the Roman Empire, they made laws about killing slaves because they were just like, people are killing too many slaves.
03:14:48.000When people want to think about the world today as opposed to the world of the past, they want to make this, you know, this judgment that today's filled with monsters and assholes and, you know, society's fucked.
03:15:01.000Like, it's the best time to live ever.