In this episode, I sit down with former NFL player and founder of Vaxxed. We talk about his journey to get vaccinated, why he chose not to get it, and why he didn t get it at all. We also talk about how the NFL handled the situation and why they allowed him to get a waiver to not get the vaccine. I think you're going to love this one. If you don't, you're not going to want to miss this episode. It's a good one! Thanks to everyone who reached out to me and all the people who shared their stories of getting Vaxed and how they dealt with the situation. I hope you enjoy this episode and share it with your friends, family, and loved ones. I know I did and I appreciate all the support and love you all have shown me. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for all your support and stay safe out there. Love ya, bye. -Jon Sorrentino Jon Mike Kevin Chris Tim Michael Matt John Joe Andrew Ben Chad Alex Evan Jake Matthew Jack Will Jordan Sam Justin Brian Daniel Zach Julian Christian Patrick Isabelle Can Adam David James Jacob Kacz Jared Nick Taylor Conor Dan Garrett Tom Brandon AJ Cody Kieran Josh Chacho Connor Austin Paul Tyler Anthony Our thoughts on the situation with Novak Djokovic & much more! - Thank you to: Ryan - How do you feel about the situation? - Is it a good or bad? Do you think it's better than it's going to be better than the other way to do it? Can it be better or not better than that? or not? And do you have any thoughts on it better than this? We'll see you guys have a chance to get more of a shot of the other one? Thanks for your thoughts on this one? ? and we'll hear from you in the next episode?
00:01:18.000It was really difficult, for sure, and a lot of different reasons.
00:01:23.000I think I knew that this was coming down, that at some point I was going to talk about my status because I'd chosen to not get vaxxed for reasons that you talked about.
00:01:58.000Now, I think, typically speaking, because I'm healthy and I take care of myself, getting vaccinated was not on the top of my list.
00:02:08.000But, you know, I wanted to look into it because everybody was doing it and talking about it and trying to be safe.
00:02:13.000And I wanted to make sure I was, you know, doing my part, if that's what was necessary, to keep myself safe and my loved ones safe and my teammates safe.
00:02:22.000And at the time, I went on the CDC website and they specifically said, you know, if you're allergic to PEGs, we do not recommend you get vaccinated with the mRNA vaccinations.
00:02:34.000So the only other one available was Johnson& Johnson.
00:02:37.000And it had just got pulled at the time for blood clots.
00:02:41.000So I looked into other options which included an immunization process through a holistic doctor and I researched and talked to probably a dozen different MDs and found a protocol That I felt like was the best available.
00:03:35.000How are they even getting a diluted strand of the virus?
00:03:38.000I don't know that exactly or want to get into that exactly, I don't think.
00:03:43.000But there was hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands of people that I knew in this circle that were using, that had been doing this to protect ourselves.
00:03:54.000Because we were thinking, hey, look, for me, I... I didn't want to risk anaphylactic shock or any type of clotting associated with the vaccine.
00:04:10.000And I felt like this was the best way to protect myself and my teammates.
00:04:15.000And that the NFL would understand and maybe grant me a waiver because one of the most difficult parts about the whole process was that there was clearly two classes of player at the facility.
00:04:30.000There was the vaxxed and the unvaxxed.
00:04:56.000Could not go into establishments with more than 15 people.
00:04:59.000You could not be around more than three individuals from the team outside the facility.
00:05:08.000All these different, what I think now we all realize were crazy policies.
00:05:15.000And that's what actually got me into trouble was that I attended a Halloween party in a 10,000 square foot warehouse with 18 other individuals all fully vaccinated and myself not vaxxed.
00:07:27.000I gave them 500 pages of research from a number of people that put together case-reviewed studies around homeopathy and immunizations and safety in them and also the efficacy of them.
00:07:45.000And then I had a conversation with the league, and the league said, in this conversation, this is when I knew that my appeal was definitely not going to happen, was they said, it's not possible for a vaccinated player, a person, sorry, to contract or transmit COVID if they've been vaccinated.
00:08:56.000January of 2021, they started giving out to older people.
00:09:01.000They started rolling out in March and April, because that's when I was going through the process of researching and looking into what I could do to protect myself, having the allergy of that.
00:09:10.000And by August, people were already getting it, even though they had been vaccinated.
00:09:25.000I had only known one person at that time, somewhere around April, that had been vaccinated and also got COVID, and I just thought it was an aberration.
00:09:37.000I didn't, based on what I saw in the first few weeks at the facility.
00:09:42.000And that's why I thought there was an opportunity.
00:09:46.000But it was difficult because we were separated.
00:09:49.000There was a whole other situation that was going on that You know, also is going on in the rest of society is that my non-vaxxed teammates who were on the bubble, right?
00:10:04.000So 53 guys make the active roster, 16 on the practice squad, so 69 guys on the squad, there's 90 in camp, right?
00:10:12.000So of the, I said seven, I think it was about 10 guys not vaxxed, only a few of us were guaranteed roster spots, like we were going to be on the team, and there's a lot of bubble guys.
00:10:23.000The general managers, and there was talk around the league how general managers were not going to keep bubble non-vax players.
00:10:35.000Not only did non-vax players have a harder chance of making the squad, but they also had an almost 0% opportunity to get a workout afterwards.
00:10:47.000So if you get cut and the season starts every Tuesday during the football season, Most teams will bring in anywhere from 5 to 15 guys for workouts just to see who's out there.
00:11:00.000Is there any players that can add to the roster?
00:11:03.000So if you weren't vaxxed, you had a very low percentage, not just of keeping a job, but even getting a job opportunity, like a workout, which is wild.
00:11:15.000And so after this conversation with the league, I knew that My appeal was going away and they were doing this, I call it a witch hunt, you know, where they were asking every single player, are you vaccinated?
00:11:27.000You know, they're asking a bunch of big quarterbacks and some guys were saying, you know, it's, you know, you know, it's personal or whatever, you know, didn't want to talk about their status.
00:11:37.000And it almost guaranteed you weren't vaccinated, right?
00:11:39.000So then they were getting ripped and certain guys said, yes, I'm vaccinated.
00:11:43.000And, you know, then they tried to get them to say shit about their teammates, you know, who weren't vaccinated, like dogged their teammates out.
00:11:49.000So I've been ready the entire time for this question and had thought about how I wanted to answer it.
00:11:57.000And I had come to the conclusion, I'm going to say, I've been immunized.
00:12:02.000And if there's a follow-up, then talk about my process.
00:12:06.000But thought there's a possibility that I say I'm immunized.
00:12:10.000Maybe they understand what that means.
00:12:41.000We understand what goes in our bodies.
00:12:44.000I don't have any judgment on any decision that a guy makes with their own body, right?
00:12:48.000But I knew at some point, if I contracted COVID, or if word got out, because it's the NFL and there's leaks everywhere, it was possible I'd have to answer the questions.
00:12:57.000And then sure enough, I contract COVID in...
00:13:02.000Well, the beginning of November, end of October.
00:13:05.000And that's when the shitstorm hit because now I'm a liar.
00:13:10.000I'm endangering the community, my teammates, all these people, and the attempted takedown of...
00:13:22.000Me and, you know, my word and my integrity began.
00:13:29.000But I will say, and I'm thankful to be on this show, like, I really appreciate you and you helping me out during that time.
00:13:37.000I reached out to you I think at the beginning of the season, I feel like, and just said, hey, because you had talked about in your podcast a little bit, you had some, you know, controversial, maybe less controversial now, people on there talking about...
00:13:53.000Talking about their, you know, people, experts in the field talking about, you know, their own ideas about COVID and, you know, you helped me with a, you know, a game plan to be ready in case I did get COVID. And I followed it to a T,
00:14:12.000and when I got COVID, you know, within 36 hours, I was, you know, symptom-free and feeling amazing.
00:14:19.000But the protocols was, you're off for 10 days.
00:15:02.000They were just looking for non-vaxxers.
00:15:04.000It was like a fever in the air because people had been convinced that this was the thing that was going to get us out of the pandemic.
00:15:12.000And if you didn't follow that thing, that you were the enemy of it.
00:15:15.000So I could kind of understand why people had that perspective if they hadn't looked into it, which is a weird term.
00:15:23.000Or at least if they hadn't, it's kind of a shallow term, but if they hadn't consulted with real experts, especially in your case, that when you had an actual allergy, it's a particular issue, and the desire to not take the medication that was pulled for clots,
00:16:37.000And they were coming with all sorts of reasons why you shouldn't even say that.
00:16:42.000Yeah, they came after you about horse dewormer and Sanjay was on here and you mopped the floor with him and then he goes back on CNN and basically tries to rip you.
00:17:54.000Every off day, every day of the bye week, off for a week while everybody else is off traveling and enjoying their life, we stay in Green Bay and we test it every single day.
00:18:05.000So every day that you saw me, and I've said it before, I go to about two places in Green Bay.
00:18:10.000I go to the grocery store and I go to Barnes and Noble.
00:18:12.000I love to read and I gotta get my groceries.
00:18:15.000If you saw me at those two places, you can be 100% sure that I tested that morning and that I tested negative.
00:18:23.000Before I even could walk into the facility, I had to test, wait in my car, and then wait for 30 minutes for them to text me and say that you're negative, you can enter the building.
00:18:34.000So every single day I was at the facility, every single day that any of my teammates saw me, any of my coaches, every single day that you saw me at Barnes& Noble or at the grocery store, I was negative for that day.
00:18:47.000I took it seriously because obviously there was a lot going on.
00:18:53.000Now, I didn't believe in wearing a mask at a press conference.
00:18:58.000You have a room full of reporters who are fully vaxxed, wearing masks, sitting 30 feet away from me.
00:19:08.000They wanted me as a non-vaxxed player to wear a mask for an interview.
00:19:17.000While you're negative, you were tested that day.
00:19:20.000While I'm negative that morning, in a room full of fully vaccinated people, who are, none of them are closer than 30 feet away from me.
00:19:28.000I don't think during a pandemic there's anything wrong with testing people every day.
00:19:32.000I mean, I think if you want to keep people safe and you want to keep that from spreading throughout the team, that's probably the best way to approach it.
00:19:38.000But everything else just seems so nuts.
00:19:42.000But we're looking at it, you know, hindsight is 20-20, right?
00:19:45.000We're looking at it from after it's over.
00:19:47.000And so many people, they just bought the narrative that was being promoted by CNN and MSNBC and wherever, that if you get vaccinated, you can't get COVID, you can't spread COVID. That was the narrative.
00:20:06.000You don't want to keep people safe if that's the benchmark for it.
00:20:10.000But as we look back now, let's not revise history.
00:20:15.000Let's not revise history on what actually happened and what was said.
00:20:18.000Because what was said was, you get the vax, you can't spread it or contract it.
00:20:24.000And no one seems upset that that was a lie, including Birx, who has said that she had always known that it was not going to stop transmission and it was not going to stop people from spreading it, which is wild.
00:20:37.000She would say, we knew that you were still going to get it, even if you got vaccinated.
00:21:12.000It's so wild, because at that point when they had said that, we had already realized, like, oh, this is 78% of the people hospitalized were obese.
00:21:21.000Most of the people that died were either obese or very overweight or rather very old.
00:22:22.000And I didn't have a great game that game.
00:22:24.000But the last like six, seven games, I played really, really well.
00:22:28.000And then there was a reporter out of Chicago who said that I'm the biggest jerk in the league and he wouldn't vote for me for MVP because of my VAC status.
00:22:38.000So it kind of put the rest of the other 49 MVP voters, I think, on notice going, oh, are you going to let your personal political bias enter into a conversation about who the most valuable player of the league is and not vote for this guy because he's not vaxxed?
00:22:56.000I think that played into at least some of their minds at some point because they would have to answer, how do you justify not voting for this guy for MVP? Right.
00:23:57.000Some of those reporters are such cunts.
00:24:00.000It's just like, there's a thing in sports where there's...
00:24:05.000It's way less of it in MMA, but there's a thing in sports where...
00:24:10.000Where it's par for the course to be a douchebag to players, to treat them badly and to talk about them badly, because I guess they have this very special role in society where they get to be professional athletes.
00:24:29.000If there's a dropped ball or there's a play that doesn't go well, you could say all sorts of personal things about them and disparage their character and call them lazy and call them entitled and all these different things that they love to do.
00:24:44.000And it's really like ramped up in sports more than anyone.
00:24:48.000And I think it's because of sports fans.
00:24:51.000Like sports fans have been doing that forever, you know, when they're at work.
00:24:55.000You show up at the job and you're like, see that fucking game last night?
00:25:30.000You know, I think the interesting thing for me is to see how it changed and how my vaccination status But they couldn't get past that.
00:25:45.000They couldn't get past years of friendship and me doing favors for them, doing interviews with them if they needed something, making sure I made time to give them a soundbite or do an interview or come on their show.
00:25:59.000And I'm talking about probably a dozen...
00:26:02.000That I thought were allies in the media, meaning friendly to me, and that they knew.
00:26:07.000Like, if they needed a guest or something, and I had the time, I would always make time for them.
00:26:42.000If you don't follow the mainstream narrative, or if you don't agree with me, take out the mainstream narrative, if you don't agree with me, I can't be friends with you because I get to live in an echo chamber.
00:26:54.000And that's what society and social media has done, I think, on so many levels.
00:26:57.000Like you were saying earlier, 20 years ago, the guy bitching about his favorite player who played bad is bitching to his buddies at work.
00:27:05.000And now they're all on social media going nuts and stirring up.
00:27:08.000And like we were talking about earlier, it takes just a couple people with an opinion that can...
00:27:14.000You know, sway something in a direction and then, you know, start this landslide of negativity around something.
00:27:47.000I mean, whether they're using them for military, they're gonna use them for law enforcement, but we're gonna have robots wandering through the streets telling you, show your papers.
00:27:58.000I remember that movie used to be so fun, because I used to think of it as like, wow, this is never gonna happen, but this is kind of crazy if it did.
00:28:05.000And now I'm like, Jesus, when is that gonna happen?
00:28:08.000Because you see those Boston Dynamics robots.
00:28:12.000Like, my friend Lex Friedman has one, and it was over his house.
00:29:01.000All you have to do is be like, yeah, and if it's tracking with satellite, and if you have a fucking RFID chip that they can track, or some sort of a Bluetooth locator, like an AirTag, and they know where you are at all times.
00:29:17.000We're about a decade away from a very strange world.
00:35:01.000Yeah, but I mean, it's just what we're saying.
00:35:05.000This is a weird time in terms of like control and in terms of the influence of these forces with amazing resources that are trying to lean society into a very specific direction.
00:35:18.000You know, the World Economic Forum's article or the rather advertisement where they're like, you will own nothing and you'll be happy.
00:36:20.000The CEO of Pfizer was on that and he was talking about a medication that you swallow that has some sort of a chip in there that can tell people whether or not you actually took the medication.
00:37:30.000And New Zealand is far more restrictive than us.
00:37:32.000But all those other countries, they think that we're out of our fucking minds advertising for all these things that are going to make you happy.
00:37:40.000There's a girl running through a wheat field and there's great music playing.
00:37:54.000It's a strange time because our information, our media has been co-opted by money and the money that comes from selling pharmaceutical drugs.
00:38:03.000And we all know, look, I remember I went and I got my nose fixed.
00:39:11.000Yeah, I mean the pain management, especially with our sport, is fascinating to see how things are treated, and I use quotations untreated because up until probably a decade ago, you know, it was easily accessible to get Oxy, Percocet,
00:41:26.000I mean, I can't imagine someone fighting on that stuff.
00:41:29.000I mean, the USADA is very strict in terms of what you're allowed to take and what you're not allowed to take, and they test people very frequently.
00:41:37.000So much so that, you know, Paulo Costo, who just fought in the last UFC, they actually tested him the day of the weigh-in, which caused a huge outrage because this guy cuts a lot of weight, he was dehydrating himself, and they show up at his house at 6 o'clock in the morning and asked him to test.
00:42:27.000But like, but some of the pain management, you know, it's been a little bit wild for a while and I just don't understand why there isn't more natural options looked into that are out there that I've researched behind it and we're still pushing the same,
00:42:46.000you know, Percocet, Vicodin, Oxy, if you have pain and I saw at one point a teammate of mine who was unable to get treatment on a post-surgical operation without being put under anesthesia because of an addiction to pain medicine.
00:43:43.000The same people that were telling you that you had to get jabbed are the same people that were telling you that opioids were not addictive.
00:43:50.000That paid out $2.3 billion in the biggest fraud case in the history of the world.
00:43:55.000Yeah, and then there's the Vioxx case that killed more than 60,000 Americans.
00:44:00.000Which, when I was in college, everybody was taking Vioxx.
00:44:24.000That was with John Abramson, who is a doctor who's worked to litigate against pharmaceutical companies, and in particular against Vioxx when they were doing that.
00:44:34.000They had clear information that Vioxx was going to be damaging to people.
00:44:38.000They knew there was problems and they literally said there's going to be some issues but we're going to do very well.
00:44:45.000That's literally internal memo saying we're going to do well financially.
00:44:49.000But people are going to have like that.
00:44:52.000Those kind of issues like cardiovascular issues, blood clotting issues, strokes.
00:44:55.000They knew it was going to kill people.
00:45:08.000It's just crazy that you could have any profit margin off of killing 60,000 people.
00:45:15.000And these are the people we're supposed to trust?
00:45:17.000Like, all of a sudden, people put aside all of their thoughts that they had kept...
00:45:23.000You talk to anyone about whether or not the pharmaceutical companies were ethical, whether or not they were telling the truth, whether or not they promoted dangerous medications that were unnecessary, and everybody would say yes.
00:45:35.000Those same people were calling you a plague rat.
00:45:42.000It's kind of funny now that it's over.
00:45:44.000But in the heat of it, it wasn't exactly the healthiest swath of the population either that was coming after.
00:45:55.000And I was like, do you understand that whatever you're doing to your body is way, way worse than what COVID's going to do to you?
00:46:05.000What you're doing to your body by being fat like this, if you think you're going to prevent that with some medication that just keeps you from getting COVID and it didn't, you're fucking dying, man.
00:46:18.000You're eating shitty food and you have a sedentary lifestyle and you're probably taking all sorts of pharmaceutical medication for anxiety and depression and all these other things that are fucking with your head.
00:46:32.000It's a wild time because people really are conditioned to think that they can take a medication and cure all their ills and cure almost instantaneously something that has become a problem from lifestyle choices that you've built up over years and years and years of body abuse.
00:46:50.000So you've abused your body for so long and then you think that all of a sudden a pain pill or this pill or that pill is going to fix all that.
00:46:59.000And no one's telling you, hey, you've got to lose weight.
00:47:19.000I think it, let's find out what percentage of the population, it's probably diminished because there has been quite a bit of publicity during the pandemic about vitamin D deficiency because they showed what percentage of people who are in the ICU, I think it was at one point in time was 84% of the people who are in the ICU were insufficient or deficient in vitamin D. I think that's gotta be low there,
00:48:34.000The majority of people work for that boss.
00:48:36.000If you work for a corporation, they have very strict rules that they'd like you to follow.
00:48:42.000There's behavior rules, there's language rules, there's dress rules, there's, you know, rules about the time you're supposed to be there and the amount of work you're supposed to do and what you're supposed to take home and what's required of you.
00:48:54.000People are conditioned to have someone tell them what they can and can't do.
00:49:00.000And then they get off on Friday and they can't wait to get drunk.
00:49:03.000And that's part of why they want to get drunk, is they want to escape.
00:49:07.000They want to escape this grind of a world.
00:49:10.000A person who can become autonomous, a person who can have their own job, where it's their business, or it's their product that they're selling, or their art that they're selling, or something where you can be self-sufficient.
00:49:25.000That is the biggest freedom that a person can have in this culture.
00:49:29.000And most people don't have that freedom.
00:49:33.000To have someone lay the rules out for them, tell them when they're supposed to be there, tell them what they get when they work for an hour.
00:49:42.000Most people don't have the ability to just think for themselves.
00:49:47.000It's been taken away from them because they want to make a living.
00:50:21.000And you owe money for loans you took out when you were 18. And now you're 65. That's a rough way to leave this life.
00:50:34.000It's a rough, and the amount of interest based on it.
00:50:38.000I was reading about this woman who took out $150,000 in student loans, and now she owes $250,000 because of all the interest and all the time.
00:50:48.000Yeah, and how much over the course of that loan, what are you paying?
00:51:52.000It's never pushed like, hey, go learn a technical skill where you can do a year of apprenticeship or college or study and then go make six figures in a job.
00:52:03.000One of the biggest times in my life where I felt like a loser was right out of high school, because I took a year off, and I remember just telling people that I was going to take a year off, and they're like, how could you?
00:52:12.000So this is Boston, too, which is very hardcore, blue-collar workers and educated people that work hard.
00:52:39.000Well, I went to UMass Boston, and it was one of those deals where you didn't have to have your SATs, because it was like a continuing education program.
00:52:49.000So I just started taking courses there, and I did it for three years.
00:53:26.000The last thing I wanted to do is sit in some fucking classroom and listen to some nonsense and memorize it.
00:53:31.000That's what I like about friends in Australia or Europe.
00:53:35.000Most of those kids, they finish school and then they take a year, right?
00:53:39.000They save up their money and then they take a year of traveling, going to different cultures, areas, come to the States, different parts of Europe, Asia, whatever, and...
00:53:56.000Yeah, that's one of the great things about social media now is that people are able to make a living off of things that were very difficult to pursue, like art.
00:54:06.000Like, if you have, like, really good art, you can, you know, post it on social media and people share it, and the next thing you know, you have orders coming in and you're painting for a living.
00:54:31.000But if you're one of those people like me that just can't fucking sit still, and that seemed impossible to you, you know, back then, you know, you just felt like a loser.
00:54:54.000I mean, when you were a kid and you were playing football, what was the attitude about playing in the NFL? Was it that this was a pipe dream?
00:55:03.000Was it something that was realistic because you were talented?
00:55:09.000I was on a spring break trip with a buddy of mine, I remember, and yes, we were 15 hours in a 15-passenger van going down to Mexico doing some humanitarian work down there.
00:55:22.000That was how I'd spent my sophomore year.
00:55:23.000And I remember we, you know, you're talking about who knows what, because back then you might have had a Walkman, but other than that, you didn't have any technology.
00:55:32.000And my buddy said, you know, what do you want to do?
00:55:35.000And I said, I want to play in the NFL. He's like, yeah, right.
00:55:40.000You should call that dude up every month.
00:55:48.000It was a dream, for sure, but a pipe dream.
00:55:50.000One of my favorite stories about somebody who didn't believe in me was I had this teacher at Cal, and I wrote this paper in a food appreciation class.
00:56:02.000That was the class, food appreciation.
00:56:59.000I said, look, I'm not asking for a special privilege here, but the other 14 kids who got an F on the paper got to re-write the paper and I didn't.
00:59:25.000I literally was on time every day, sat in the middle of the row, and was probably one of the only football players actually taking notes and paying attention.
01:00:47.000And some of them, they just give people fuel.
01:00:49.000They give people anger and determination to prove that person wrong.
01:00:54.000Yeah, but the shit part is, like you said, for me, it made me just work that much harder because I'm like another person that I can prove wrong.
01:01:45.000I was in an HOA years ago, and I was trying to get a fence built behind my house, because there was like a running trail behind it, and I like my privacy.
01:01:55.000And I went to this meeting, and the guy in front of me, poor guy, he had to paint five different colors on his garage of the color he wanted to paint his house, and had to have people from the community come by and vote on it.
01:02:08.000And he had come by, this was the second month that he had came by, and this 80-year-old woman, who has just an ounce of power in the community, who's running the HOA, goes, I'm sorry, sir, you don't have enough votes.
01:02:20.000This fucking guy's just trying to paint his, you know, his fucking house and he's got like, you know, it's five shades of like between tan and brown, you know, it's all the same goddamn color.
01:02:33.000Yeah, I've seen people get very upset about that.
01:02:36.000In fact, this community that I lived in, there was a homeowners association dispute and then somebody poisoned the dogs.
01:02:43.000Of people that were running the Homeowners Association.
01:02:47.000So like two different dogs got poisoned and they never figured out who did it.
01:02:52.000They don't know what happened but this person, whoever it was, killed people's dogs because they didn't like the way they were being treated by the Homeowners Association.
01:03:04.000Some people need conflict in their life, you know, and that, you know, and being told what to do by someone in the Homeowners Association, it's a fucking...
01:04:47.000So it's just people need to learn that.
01:04:50.000There's so many examples that they see, at least they think that this is what's happening, where this mean, shitty person who tells everybody what to do and is a dictator, that person gets ahead.
01:05:03.000So they think that they have to be like that.
01:05:47.000There's people that don't want to listen, they're not good, and you have to crack the whip, and then I think over time it becomes easier to be that sort of shitty dictator than it is to have this sort of balanced, nuanced approach to people and communicate with them and try to help them do better.
01:06:15.000In this day and age, people decide you singled them out because of their sexual orientation or the way they look or what part of the world they're from.
01:06:41.000I think there's a large percentage of the population that realize that...
01:06:45.000A lot of the behavior that you're seeing people exhibit and a lot of the chaos of this online mob culture, it's negative.
01:06:53.000It's not helpful and maybe they've been through it or know someone has been through it or maybe they even participated in it and they feel terrible.
01:07:13.000Because remember, I was talking years ago, like back 2014, 2015, we were mocking these stories that are coming out of colleges and the way people are behaving.
01:07:23.000And just the general, the rules of discourse, the way they were limiting the way people communicate about things.
01:07:32.000And I was saying that I think this is a real problem.
01:07:36.000People saying, well, why do you care about that?
01:10:11.000I don't know if you remember this, and maybe Jamie can look it up so it verifies this, but...
01:10:15.000I believe a few years ago when there was an ammo shortage, there was conversation around the fact that kind of bizarrely the government and I believe at the time the IRS had bought up something like over a billion or a couple billion rounds of ammunition.
01:10:33.000I remember thinking at the time, maybe it's TSA as well.
01:10:37.000I remember thinking, I feel like IRS, what do they need ammunition for?
01:11:22.000Just in case someone comes through the files.
01:11:24.000I would imagine there would be a situation where someone was a criminal, and they were hiding their taxes, and the IRS agents were in danger because they were going to target the IRS agent that was investigating their case.
01:11:38.000I could imagine that, but I think that would be a rare thing, and you would involve traditional law enforcement.
01:11:47.000I mean, are they technically law enforcement?
01:11:49.000What's the technical definition of IRS? It's not law enforcement, is it?
01:12:51.000Well, I mean, anarchists, their solution is that, I mean, I saw Michael Malice actually talking about this the other day, and he was making some very good points.
01:13:01.000And he was saying that there's no accountability when it comes to the police.
01:13:05.000In that if they were a private institution, they would have accountability.
01:13:10.000Like, if it was a private institution that was hired to take care of things, they would be able to say, hey, you've done a terrible job of enforcing crime.
01:14:34.000Well, we're going to freeze that money until we investigate how you acquired $25,000.
01:14:39.000I mean, all of these different draconian measures that they use to make their life easier and their life more convenient and certainly enrich the coffers of these states and their budgets.
01:14:55.000That all would be eliminated if they were accountable and if there was some sort of a privatized version of the police.
01:15:03.000He was making a very interesting argument about it that I'd never really considered before.
01:15:08.000And I don't know if that's the solution, but something has to change.
01:15:12.000I don't think private prisons are the solution.
01:15:18.000That's incentivizing people to create ways where people are doing something illegal.
01:15:23.000And that's what we found when you look into marijuana legalization.
01:15:28.000One of the biggest opponents of marijuana legalization was prison guard unions.
01:15:35.000Prison guard unions wanted no part of that because that's going to have less people in prison, so there's going to be less jobs for prison guards, which is fucking wild.
01:15:43.000So you're basically using people as a battery to generate money.
01:15:46.000You're basically using human beings and you're coming up with reasons to lock them up and put them in a cage and that generates revenue for your company.
01:15:56.000And you're actively trying to make sure that laws stay in place that are unjust because those laws, as they are now, are profitable for you.
01:16:08.000We were reading about this case of this guy who was selling pot to an undercover cop.
01:16:17.000On four different occasions, he sold pot to an undercover cop.
01:16:21.000And when you add up all of the amount of pot that he sold, it was about an ounce.
01:16:25.000And they put him in jail for 15 years.
01:16:27.000And this is in Phoenix, where marijuana is now legal.
01:16:32.000So this guy is in jail in Phoenix for 15 years for selling something that you can now buy at a store.
01:16:40.000No, they denied his clemency because of his past record, which I think is really ridiculous, because if someone gets arrested and they do something and they get out, in my mind, they did their time.
01:16:52.000This is a person that was punished for whatever crime.
01:16:54.000You can't apply this other crime that they've already been punished for to some new crime that, in my eyes, shouldn't be a crime at all.
01:17:06.000That's a large percentage of the people that are in jail in this country.
01:17:09.000That's why the hypocrisy about the Brittany Griner situation was so egregious in this country, where Kamala Harris is talking about how horrible it is that Brittany Griner's in jail.
01:18:02.000I'll tell you what gets me, and I don't really want to dwell too much on the COVID stuff anymore, but one thing that really sticks with me when you're talking about things that the government could do to make people's lives better is...
01:18:17.000You know, I'm 38. People that, you know, around my age I grew up with, went to high school with, college with, a lot of them are in that age group now where people are starting their own business.
01:18:51.000Started as two weeks to flatten the curve and then went to lockdowns in places like Chico, California, where I'm from, where there were multiple stretches of time where there were zero cases.
01:20:55.000So this was a decision that this politician had decided to make, this bureaucrat decided to make, to show that they're doing something.
01:21:02.000Because the numbers had gone up, so we're going to stop outdoor dining, which showed zero transmission.
01:21:09.000There was no cases that were connecting to outdoor dining.
01:21:13.000Especially in the early days of COVID. I think they've since revised that.
01:21:17.000Omicron apparently is so contagious and some of the new strains are more contagious and they think there may be some instances of outdoor spread.
01:22:06.000No one who was alive today had ever experienced a true pandemic.
01:22:11.000And I'm hoping that now that this is over, people are going to, you know, recognize that some serious errors were made and not repeat those.
01:22:19.000That's the best you can get out of it.
01:22:22.000But as far as compensation for all those people that were forced to close their businesses and keep their doors shuttered and lost everything that they'd worked for decades to build, no, they're just going to be angry.
01:22:51.000But you look at guys like Ron DeSantis, who kept Florida open and had some pretty reasonable policies in terms of what to do about COVID. And he mapped it out on television.
01:23:26.000A political shift is beginning to hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party's gains in recent years of becoming Republicans.
01:23:36.000More than one million voters across 43 states have switched the Republican Party over the last year.
01:24:59.000I mean, he's very well known as a liar.
01:25:03.000Like, there's all these videos of him lying about his education record, lying about so many different accomplishments that he's achieved in his life.
01:25:36.000Do you know, we used to have Joe Biden night at Stitch's Comedy Club in Boston because he got caught plagiarizing.
01:25:43.000So he got caught plagiarizing when he was running for president in 1988. So in 1988, we had Joe Biden night, where, like, you would do my act and I would do your act.
01:26:07.000I think they counted on people's ability to ignore negative press and also the polarization of this country because people hated Donald Trump so bad that Trump represented an opposition that had to be stopped.
01:26:22.000And so this was an established Democrat.
01:26:25.000He'd been around for years and We could probably win with him.
01:26:30.000But see, that's the problem with politics.
01:26:32.000Now it swings because you've got Weekend at Bernie's up there trying to read the prompter, and then some Republican steps up and is going to change the country and get us back to America first and whatever the hell slogan it's going to be, and then four years later it's going to swing back the other way.
01:26:50.000That's why I always say politics is a sham, man.
01:27:59.000Let me just tell you this one cool story.
01:28:01.000So in 2010, we played the Washington Redskins at the time, and one of our receivers knew a Secret Service agent and got us a White House tour.
01:28:11.000So we went to D.C. and got a tour, and Mr. President came back on that Saturday from actually a round of golf, and they shuttered us into the side where, you know, you can't see the President, you gotta get out of the way.
01:28:23.000And he actually came, he heard we were there, and he came and met all of us in 2010, which is so cool.
01:28:29.000And then we played golf in 2016, his last year in office, and at the end of the round, he was like...
01:29:20.000To just be like that present and aware.
01:29:24.000And then me and Mark Kelly, who flew a space shuttle three times, before his brother spent a year in space, I think he spent the most time in space, walked out of the front door of the White House onto Pennsylvania Avenue.
01:30:18.000Because no matter who you are, what you represent, someone's going to decide that you're evil.
01:30:23.000Even if they don't believe it, there's going to be some pundit, some radio politics personality that's going to talk all kinds of crazy shit about you and make up stories about you.
01:30:35.000I feel like the last 10 years, it's really, don't you feel that both sides, the extremes, have gotten farther apart?
01:30:41.000Like, I feel like for a while it was maybe the right had kind of been more extreme than the left, but I feel like now both sides, there's a real extreme wing to both sides, and there's even a greater divide between the two parties.
01:30:54.000Yeah, I think that's in part due to the reaction of Trump.
01:30:58.000You know, to Trump himself, the way he carries himself, I mean, he's a...
01:31:03.000He's that guy that got famous from saying you're fired.
01:31:06.000He got famous and he got all this press from all these crazy statements that he would make.
01:31:12.000And they would give him all this press and that's what helped get him elected.
01:31:16.000But it also just made people so angry.
01:31:19.000I remember we had an End of the World podcast that we did on 2016 during the election.
01:31:27.000So we did this live podcast from the Comedy Store.
01:31:31.000And I remember we went into the bar after it was all over and we watched CNN and we were watching like Jake Tapper and all these people like so depressed.
01:31:41.000They were so angry and so just it was so visibly obvious that these are not objective journalists that are just talking about this thing that happened but they had a very clear mandate and they had a very clear role that they were playing and that role was that we are the people that oppose this terrible thing that has just happened.
01:32:01.000Where we have legally elected, because of people's opinions, this person, who more than half the person, or at least the Electoral College votes, more than half had decided should be the president.
01:32:15.000So the people had chosen, and they were like, the people are wrong.
01:32:21.000It was wild to see because I was like, this is interesting because it's like, this is one of the clearest examples of, it's just, they're not objective.
01:32:38.000Which, I mean, I understand it if you're not a journalist.
01:32:41.000I understand if you're just a person, and you were a person who thought Hillary Clinton should be president, and then you saw this guy win, and you're like, what the fuck?
01:32:48.000But you're not just a person, you're a fucking journalist.
01:32:51.000And your job is to tell people what's happening.
01:33:44.000I would have liked to have been in the meeting with those people and just sit down and go, hey guys, look, I know you and I don't see eye to eye on things, but unless you want to lose a lot of fucking money, this is a terrible idea.
01:33:54.000If you want to make CNN plus free and then...
01:33:58.000...build up advertising revenue ultimately and eventually, yeah.
01:34:02.000But I think the people that are running CNN now are pretty wise.
01:34:05.000That's why they got rid of Brian Stelter and everybody else is on the chopping block, because they recognize that this is bad for their bottom line.
01:34:12.000You can't have people lose all faith and trust that you're objective.
01:34:17.000And the editorializing that they were doing is so piss poor.
01:34:20.000You have these dorks, these people without good social skills and they're not interesting and they're not likable.
01:34:25.000And they're the ones that are telling you what you should think.
01:34:50.000Look, these independent people, when you look at like Breaking Points with Krystal and Sagar and Jimmy Dore and all these other people that have these independent political shows that are objective, they give their opinions.
01:35:02.000I mean, they certainly editorialize, but they're independent because we know they're independent.
01:35:06.000We know at least if I agree or disagree or like or dislike, at least I know that that's coming from this person.
01:35:12.000When you would hear these other people talk, you would say, like, you've been given a specific mandate, whether it's from the producers or the executives or whatever.
01:35:21.000Your organization has a very specific slant, and you're ignoring reality in order to push this slant.
01:35:27.000And then when people find out that they ignored reality, or they find out that this information is biased and that you've excluded stuff that's contrary to your opinion, then people lose trust in it, and then the ratings drop off radically.
01:35:41.000They built this fucking entire business, unfortunately, during the 2016 election, talking about what an asshole Trump was.
01:37:36.000Like, he hit a very specific frequency.
01:37:39.000I'm not saying that all the people that supported Trump are dummies, but I'm saying that all the dummies supported Trump.
01:37:45.000That's not true either, because there's a lot of dummies on the left.
01:37:48.000But these dummies on the right, the ones that just want a very fucking clean, specific three-word narrative, and they, you know, keep America great again, you know, like that, those people, boy, he found their fucking vibration, and he's clung to it.
01:38:03.000But now that we all realize that that's possible, and they've woken up this group of people that were previously not politically active, it becomes an issue.
01:38:44.000The only one that had a chance was Ron Paul.
01:38:47.000If Ron Paul went independent, because Ross Perot did it.
01:38:50.000I mean, Ron Paul was a Republican, but I think that if you had a guy like that, that was saying things that resonated with a large swath of people, and he decided to go independent.
01:40:05.000And they fund their campaigns and they figure out who's going to win.
01:40:08.000And then when that person wins, then they get in there and then they make sure that they have undue influence on all sorts of things that affect regular people in a negative way.
01:40:17.000I don't think they care who wins as long as...
01:41:14.000Let's start this experiment in self-government that became the United States.
01:41:18.000And, you know, clearly by people that had an understanding of where human nature can go wrong.
01:41:25.000And they put all these checks and balances in place and they separated powers and they did it in a way that they hoped would be, you know, preparing this country for the future in a way that it would be for the people by the people.
01:42:03.000If you think about the music that's come out of here, the comedy, the films, the sports, the shit that's come out of the United States is bananas.
01:42:11.000And it came out in many ways because of the freedom That people were given by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
01:42:19.000Yeah, which doesn't exist in most countries anywhere close to it.
01:42:25.000Well, that's unfortunately what a lot of people find out when they decide to go against the United States and then they wind up getting arrested like Brittney Griner did in Russia and you realize, oh, there's places that are fucking way worse.
01:43:16.000Isn't it funny that that sounds like a crazy thing to say, but that literally would fix the world.
01:43:22.000If more people had psychedelic trips and more people had an experience that dissolved their ego and more people had an understanding that Community isn't just simply a bunch of people that live together.
01:43:34.000It's a bunch of people that care about each other and that we could treat the world like a community that could be done.
01:43:40.000It could be done in small groups of people and it could be done in large groups of people.
01:43:44.000And again, you're not going to resolve all conflict.
01:44:46.000I feel like there was me and then there was me after DMT, like a totally different person.
01:44:52.000I feel the same way about me and then me after Ayahuasca.
01:44:58.000But since I talked about it on Aubrey's podcast, it's been really interesting to see the people reaching out across the league.
01:45:05.000And there's been a lot of people outside the league and, you know, entertainers, sports people, you know, just friends from the past, people that work at the facility, you know, just the nine-to-five people,
01:45:28.000I think there's a hunger for what I experience, which you talked about with mushrooms, is this death of the ego.
01:45:36.000This realization that we're all connected.
01:45:38.000This greater sense of what community is.
01:45:41.000And I don't know if you've experienced in your DMT journeys and mushrooms, but when you dissolve the ego, The amount of love that you can give back to yourself and then other people, it takes away for me so much judgment of myself and others,
01:46:00.000so much separation between myself and others.
01:46:03.000The greater sense of connection It was overwhelming when I kind of came out of that and got back to reality or whatever.
01:46:11.000I was like, oh shit, now here's the integration.
01:46:17.000Here's my reflection that I see of myself and you.
01:46:20.000And we're all fucking connected in such a deeper way.
01:46:24.000And it's just doing a plant that's been used for generations in the Amazon jungles.
01:46:33.000And I got the same feeling on mushrooms as well.
01:46:35.000I mean, it was just an incredible connection to nature and life and all sentient beings and all plants and fungi and just the like, you know,
01:46:51.000of my previous self, I feel like the anger and bitterness and resentment and negativity that I'd kind of like standard walk around with.
01:46:59.000It wasn't like a super high level, but I felt like coming out of those experiences, it's like, that shit doesn't even matter.
01:47:10.000Like being present with people, having conversations, like putting your fucking technology away and like connecting with somebody and like seeing them.
01:47:20.000Because I think on a deep level, we all just want to be seen and understood.
01:47:34.000But let's just realize we're all the same.
01:47:38.000The thing about the social media interactions though is that it happens in isolation like you're alone and you're putting something out there and then the other people alone and they're receiving it and that's why they can be so cruel and shitty is because they're not looking at you and seeing you like most of the things that people say on social media they would never say to someone's face even if they were bigger and stronger than that person they wouldn't say because it feels terrible to say shitty things to people It's an interesting thing that happens when you recognize that a
01:48:09.000lot of the way we react with each other is based on insecurity.
01:48:15.000We put up these armored walls between us and the rest of the world and you have this thought that, you know, fuck everybody and everybody's fucking me over and fuck them.
01:48:25.000And then you do something like DMT or mushrooms or ayahuasca and you recognize...
01:48:44.000And that was so profound to me, like this recognition of what the problems that the ego presents and that these problems This ego, first of all, was not designed to live in a society like this.
01:48:58.000Our bodies were not designed to live in these neighborhoods of millions and millions of people.
01:49:16.000And the solution to that is to expose people to these things and allow them to recognize the flaws and the patterns of behavior that they've been following their whole life.
01:49:29.000But the more people that get exposed to that, the more that's going to be a normal narrative and that people are going to understand that you're just a person.
01:50:28.000But DMT, I always describe as mushrooms times a million plus aliens.
01:50:32.000It was the encounter of entities that was so mind-blowing.
01:50:37.000This thing that there might be some sort of...
01:50:43.000Some sort of disembodied consciousness that exists in some realm that you can access within 15 seconds.
01:50:51.000Just the thought that that's a real thing.
01:50:53.000Ayahuasca as opposed to DMT. Ayahuasca is, for people who don't know what we're talking about, is a oral version of DMT. DMT is broken down in the gut by something called monoamine oxidase.
01:51:12.000One plant that contains dimethyltryptamine and another plant that contains an MAO inhibitor, harmine.
01:51:19.000And you combine the two of those together and it produces this orally active version of DMT that's a much longer experience, but typically it's not as intense as the smoked DMT. When you smoke it, it's like right into your bloodstream.
01:52:53.000Yeah, and one of them is from Brazil, I believe.
01:52:56.000They might be both from Brazil, which obviously has a long history of use of psychedelic medicines.
01:53:02.000But that these people have these incredible communities that they've based around the entire I'm like, that's really what a church probably started out as.
01:53:17.000If you read The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, which is John Marco Allegro's book.
01:53:21.000I was hoping you were going to bring that up.
01:53:23.000I was just talking to a buddy actually last night about this book.
01:53:26.000It's an amazing book that I believe, I'm not sure if this is true, but let's find out.
01:53:30.000I believe it was bought out by the Catholic Church.
01:53:32.000I have two copies of the original printing of The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, and it's a fucking phenomenal book.
01:53:38.000Because it's written by this guy, John Marco Allegro, who's a biblical scholar and a linguist, and he was also an ordained minister.
01:53:45.000But through studying religion, he became agnostic.
01:53:49.000And he was like, I think these are all...
01:53:55.000So he was hired to decipher the Dead Sea Scrolls.
01:53:59.000And for 14 years, they painstakingly deciphered this, which I believe was the first version of the Bible that they encountered that was in Aramaic.
01:54:09.000And they found these scrolls in Qumran, which is in Israel, where they found these caves.
01:54:18.000And inside these caves, they found these ceramic pots that had these scrolls in them.
01:54:22.000And it was so painstaking that they had to do DNA samples on the scrolls because these scrolls are made in animal skins.
01:54:31.000And they took these scrolls and they had to match up the DNA with a specific cow that was on each.
01:54:38.000So they knew that these strands were from this one cow.
01:54:41.000So let's put all these together and figure out how they piece together.
01:54:45.000So they do all this and then they analyze the language and then they decipher it.
01:54:51.000His interpretation after 14 years of study was that the entire Christian religion was a giant misunderstanding and the original version of it was all about fertility cults and psychedelic mushrooms and Particularly in his eye it was a lot of it was about the Amanita muscaria which is a very misunderstood and very confusing mushroom because I've done that before,
01:55:46.000All of it is connected, because the reindeer eat Amanita muscaria mushrooms, and then they would...
01:55:52.000They would actually knock people over trying to get to their piss because they would smell the Amanita Muscaria in their piss.
01:55:59.000And these people that did this ritual, they would eat the Amanita Muscaria and then they would drink their own piss because the psychedelic compounds were in the piss, which is...
01:57:51.000So these people had this idea that when it rained, it was God giving life to the world and that rain was God's semen.
01:58:02.000And if you've ever been in a place that has mushrooms, when it rains, You wake up in the morning and there's mushrooms everywhere.
01:58:11.000Mushrooms that weren't there before, they grow so quickly.
01:58:13.000A mushroom as big as this coffee cup could appear overnight, which is really crazy.
01:58:18.000So these people, it would rain and then in the morning they would find these mushrooms and they would eat them and they would fucking trip balls.
01:58:31.000And then they wanted to hide these stories from the conquering Romans and from all these other empires that were invading them.
01:58:38.000And so they hid them in allegories and in myths.
01:58:41.000And this was his take on the Bible, is that all these stories were translated over and over again from Aramaic and Ancient Hebrew to Latin and Greek and English.
01:58:55.000And then so much was lost in the translation.
01:58:58.000That doesn't really fly very well in the Christian church of today, I don't think.
01:59:02.000Well, it does if you go to that one that's from Brazil that takes psychedelics.
01:59:05.000They're probably like, yeah, yeah, that's exactly what it is.
01:59:08.000I was talking to a teammate of mine last night about that, and he's never heard of it, and he's like, I don't know.
01:59:34.000I mean, Martin Luther was almost killed because he translated the Bible into a phonetic language that people could read and understand, and he wanted people to interpret the Bible themselves.
02:00:35.000Actually, Watching your podcast years ago and hearing you talk about it got me, like, aware of that.
02:00:44.000I mean, growing up in a very strict religious culture, anything outside of, like, the straight and narrow was a major sin and a no-no, you know?
02:00:56.000But for me, being a little rebellious, like, I was like, that sounds kind of fun, though, you know?
02:02:42.000But I think I'd stole a line from either yourself or somebody that I said at one point, but science that can't be questioned isn't science anymore.
02:03:20.000There was questioning, but it wasn't allowed.
02:03:22.000You're automatically put into anti-vaxxer, flat-earth, crazy, right-wing conspiracy theorist.
02:03:27.000That's what I said when I made that video to Neil Young, when Neil Young was getting all his music removed from Spotify because I was promoting misinformation.
02:03:35.000I said, what you say is misinformation today Not going to be misinformation in the future you have to understand that and I was saying how they were saying there was misinformation well The things that you were getting kicked off of social media platforms Initially you were saying that masks don't work or saying that The vaccine might...
02:04:41.000All those things, we get you kicked off social media, now they're widely understand to be true.
02:04:46.000So this is one of the things that I said when I made that video, that these people that you're talking about, one of them, Dr. Robert Malone, he holds nine patents for the creation of mRNA vaccine technology.
02:04:58.000He was a part of the creation of mRNA vaccines.
02:05:02.000He took the mRNA vaccine and had a horrible reaction and almost died.
02:05:10.000Peter McCullough is the most published physician in history in his field.
02:05:16.000This is a guy with rock-solid credentials who initially was telling people to take the vaccine.
02:05:21.000And then he was experiencing all of these patients that were coming in with these diseases and these illnesses that they'd acquired, he believed, from the vaccine.
02:05:30.000And there was no ability to discuss this and no ability to ascertain if that was the fact.
02:05:37.000You had to follow a very specific narrative.
02:05:44.000One of the things that we learned from John Abramson when he came in here and he was talking to us about...
02:05:48.000He was a doctor who had worked to litigate against pharmaceutical companies when they had produced He was part of the Vioxx thing and some other medications.
02:05:59.000He said that when a pharmaceutical company creates a product and they do studies, when someone peer reviews the data, they don't peer review the raw data.
02:06:11.000They peer review the studies that the pharmaceutical companies has given them, which is fucking crazy.
02:06:55.000They're basically paying to get their product approved.
02:06:59.000Well, and how about the CDC stopping the distribution of COVID vaccine booster data from people 18 to 49, because they said it would contribute to vaccine hesitancy.
02:07:10.000How about Pfizer asking to wait 75 years to release their data, and then 55 years?
02:07:28.000At a bare minimum, it should just make you pause and go, even if you say, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm not any of these things, a rational, to me, and this is an opinion, a rational thinking human would just be like,
02:07:49.000When it comes to pharmaceutical companies, it's like that old story of the scorpion and the frog.
02:07:56.000You know, the scorpion hitches a ride with the frog, and the frog's like, hey, man, don't sting me, because if you sting me, we're going to drown.
02:08:04.000And the scorpion stings him, and the frog's like, what the fuck?
02:08:06.000And the scorpion says, hey, it's my nature.
02:08:29.000What they do is they have a responsibility to their shareholders, they have a responsibility to the corporate management, and that responsibility is to make the most amount of money possible, and they're going to do that.
02:08:39.000And they're going to do it by hook or by crook.
02:09:04.000And if you discuss it amongst many people that have like a shallow understanding of this topic, they will immediately roll their eyes and say, oh, look at Aaron.
02:09:12.000This crazy fucking hippie asshole football player thinks he's going to educate me.
02:09:17.000Well, I watch MSNBC and I have the data.
02:09:31.000You know, I've had some people that also were very pro-vaccine, very anti, all these different things, and then got really badly sick and were very conflicted and didn't know what to do.
02:09:43.000I know people that got really badly sick from COVID post-vaccinated, and I know some people that got really badly sick from the vaccine itself, and they were very conflicted.
02:09:53.000And some of them just kept their mouth shut and stopped talking.
02:09:56.000And some of them even publicly said, I would still take it again.
02:10:25.000The difference between Texas and California was so stark that when I came out here with my kids in May of 2020, they're like, let's move here!
02:11:04.000Yeah, I mean, that's not good either, because it is a real fucking disease, and if you're not healthy and you're not covered, you could get fucked up by it.
02:11:13.000But what I was saying, or trying to say, was why is nothing else being talked about as far as ways of combating this disease, like eating better, like exercising, like vitamin D deficiency?
02:11:45.000And all of it is a lesson for people in the future that if something else happens again, to be more skeptical and to understand the influences that are behind these decisions that politicians and even, quote-unquote, health experts make.
02:11:59.000They're being influenced by things other than just data.
02:12:03.000And that's very important for people to understand, that there's an enormous amount of money that's being spread around here, and people have gotten obscenely wealthy because of this pandemic.
02:12:12.000And they've done so because they promoted a very specific narrative that they knew was going to be profitable for them, even if it was detrimental for people, even if it removed people's ability to choose.
02:12:25.000Even if there was people that would not be adversely affected by that virus statistically because of their health, their age, they didn't give a fuck.
02:12:36.000And I want you to do it publicly so that I can get more money out of those other people that are thinking about it and they're on the fence.
02:12:43.000Yeah, and then we're going to virtue signal to say, look how righteous our league is.
02:12:47.000We have 95% compliance with the vaccine.
02:12:51.000And if you don't, we're going to send a stooge to your team to show you graphs of your vaccination percentage of your team compared to the rest of the league, which actually happened.
02:13:12.000Day three of training camp, they sent this stooge in, and he showed these slides about what your vaccination percentage was on your team, where you compare to the rest of the league.
02:13:22.000And I started asking him questions about liability.
02:13:50.000Well, it's not only going to affect your day-to-day status on the team, but your ability to get a job, your ability to keep a job, your ability to get a tryout if you get cut from this team.
02:14:00.000Because you want to put a percentage above 90% of your team where you guys can have some sort of special virtue.
02:14:09.000And then they scared teams and said, if you had an outbreak caused by a non-vaccinated player, you'd not only forfeit that game if you had enough players out, but you wouldn't get paid for that week.
02:14:25.000And here I am showing up to training camp, Joe, the first day, and we got five people who work for the organization out with COVID all fully vaxxed.
02:14:35.000And I got COVID from a fully vaxxed individual who only got vaxxed to keep his potential of being a part of the NFL. How many people do you know that had vaccine injuries?
02:16:29.000Did you ask him why did you publish this?
02:16:45.000I said, do you understand my relationship with Pat and AJ, who's my best friend on the show, and the jokes that we have and the lightheartedness?
02:16:51.000I said, did you watch the episode at all?
02:16:54.000Because if you did, you would know that they were making a joke about how I hurt my toe when I had COVID. I said, and also, sidebar...
02:17:05.000Every, probably an assumption, but I'm assuming this is probably true, just about every beat writer that works for the, that covers the Packers, right?
02:17:12.000And national media that watch that show each week because they write stories about it.
02:17:17.000Not one writer wrote anything about COVID toe.
02:17:24.000No one fucking, you know, was like, oh, let me look into what Covito is and maybe I can, you know, scoop this first and write an article about it.
02:19:11.000Well, with this stuff, it was specific.
02:19:13.000With this particular medication, this particular vaccine, it was very specific that they were going to exempt them from any liability because of this emergency use authorization.
02:19:26.000Which is only granted, I mean, you know these things.
02:22:26.000It depends on what kind of medications they get him between now and then.
02:22:29.000Whatever the fuck they gave him during that second debate, that's a good mixture.
02:22:33.000I don't know if he can maintain that mixture, because I have a feeling that every cell in his body is like, like re-entering orbit in the space shuttle, like, fucking keep it together.
02:22:42.000So let's live in that world for just a second.
02:23:13.000I would have him on every fucking thing that's available, NeuroGum.
02:23:16.000I would give everything that you can to enhance this memory, acetylcholine, all these different things that we know through peer-reviewed data that actually do help your memory.
02:23:26.000And then I would give him some sort of stimulant.
02:23:29.000I would give him something that's maintainable, something where he's not like out of his skin going crazy and you'd probably practice.
02:23:36.000Practice with low doses and I know they had practice debates and so he had his talking points dialed in and I would even give him an earpiece.
02:23:47.000I'd give him something where we could give him data and tell him this and tell him that and don't say this and here's how I respond to that.
02:23:55.000But I don't even know if that would be good, because sometimes when people have things in their ear, it confuses them.
02:24:00.000It's hard to get used to, like having people talk.
02:24:02.000Have you ever had someone talk in your ear while you're talking?
02:25:38.000That's who you should be going to when you decide whether or not something's a takedown.
02:25:42.000So I think they erroneously credited that with the first time that Kamaru Usman's ever been taken down in the UFC. It was the second time, but it was the most significant.
02:25:50.000Because not only did he take him down, he took him down, he mounted him, and then he took his back.
02:25:54.000And he was threatening with a rear naked choke.
02:25:57.000But then Kamaru, who's the champion he is, took over, and he won most of the remaining rounds, and it looked like it was three rounds to one.
02:26:07.000It almost looked like Edwards had kind of resigned to the fact that he was going to lose on a decision.
02:26:12.000Yeah, that's what a lot of people were saying.
02:26:13.000I mean, Dean Thomas, actually, who's the guy we go into in between rounds, who's an expert coach, he said he's broken.
02:26:21.000You could see how he wasn't looking his coaches in the eye, and he looked dejected.
02:26:25.000He goes, he does what it looks like when you're mentally broken.
02:26:28.000And then he went out there and landed the greatest head kick in the history of the sport.
02:26:37.000The way he does things is so smooth and so efficient.
02:26:41.000And so it wasn't shocking that he could do that.
02:26:45.000It was just shocking in the context of his performance up until that moment.
02:26:48.000But the way he fainted with the right hand, extended the left, forced Usman's head to move off the center line and threw the kick at the same time.
02:28:32.000He was scheduled to fight Tyron Woodley in England.
02:28:36.000That fight got canceled because of the pandemic, and there was all these setbacks, but we had always known that he was one of the very best in the division, and he was this dark horse, this guy that people maybe in the general public weren't really aware of.
02:28:49.000Everybody's aware of the big stars, and he was this super talented guy that had only lost one time in the UFC, and that was to Usman early in his career.
02:28:57.000And that was when he didn't know how to wrestle.
02:28:59.000So one of the big victors was him taking Usman down the first round and showing him, hey, motherfucker.
02:29:19.000I mean, how do you not react that way when that happened?
02:29:21.000I mean, everyone behind us had the same reaction.
02:29:23.000There's a video of Tony Hinchcliffe, who was right behind me, and when the head kick lands, he stands up and puts his arms in the air and he goes, Oh my god!
02:29:37.000Because when you think, that's one of the beautiful things about MMA that is different than any other sport, or boxing too, is that you could come from behind with one move, one thing, and it changes everything and shuts it all off.
02:29:58.000Where somebody's been getting beat up.
02:30:00.000That's what I love about the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder fights, is because you just knew at any point, it didn't matter who was ahead, one punch from either of these guys, and it'd be fucking over.
02:30:10.000But in the UFC, you just don't see that a whole lot, where a guy's getting his ass whooped, and then comes back and...
02:30:16.000Well, it's a credit to Leon that he was able to do that, but also a credit to Leon that he really didn't absorb a lot of punishment in that fight.
02:30:33.000He was still very fresh in the fifth round, which is also a credit to his conditioning, that he was able to fight that kind of a grueling fight and still be fast enough.
02:30:44.000As well, because some of the other fights, multiple fighters were really, I mean, poor Luke, you know, wasn't conditioning-wise, but there were other, in the prelims, where people were really tiring out in the second and third rounds of three-round fights.
02:31:28.000So you're able to condition your body better, and then you recover at altitude.
02:31:37.000So in your sleep time, your rest time, then your body acclimates and produces more red blood cells, which enhances your endurance, but you're still getting in more work.
02:32:10.000And I know BJ Penn used those when he was fighting, and some other folks have used those, but Leon used that throughout his camp.
02:32:17.000So even when Leon was training in England, before he came over to America to prepare for the final leg of his training, he was sleeping in an altitude tent.
02:32:36.000I don't know, because a head kick like that takes a long time to recover from, and that's something that really needs to be discussed, because his ability to absorb punishment may be Because of that kind of a knockout when you get knocked unconscious,
02:32:55.000like Freddie Roach wouldn't let Manny Pacquiao do anything for like a year.
02:32:59.000He wouldn't let him fight, he wouldn't let him train, he wouldn't let him spar.
02:33:03.000He was like, you need to take a long time off after Juan Manuel Marquez knocked him out with that one punch.
02:33:09.000That kind of KO when you're flatlined, when you're flatlined by a massive blow like a fucking head kick, which is the most powerful blow that you could throw in MMA. That can affect you.
02:33:22.000And it affects different people in different ways.
02:33:25.000There's all sorts of different variables that have to be taken into consideration.
02:37:09.000In boxing, you have guys that are fighting at 147, and then you have guys that are fighting at 154, and then you have guys that are fighting at 160. That's so reasonable.
02:37:17.000Six-pound weight class differences are very reasonable, and then it goes to 68. That's reasonable.
02:37:22.000Then it goes 68 to 75, also reasonable.
02:37:56.000If you just structured the weight classes and ran hydration tests to make sure that guys are competing in a weight class that is actually their frame, that actually fits them.
02:38:32.000But I was there while he was trying to make weight.
02:38:35.000So he missed weight and then they gave him a certain allotted amount of time to try to make weight again afterwards to see if the fight can still go on.
02:38:41.000I watched him shuffle because he couldn't walk.
02:40:21.000And it's one of the biggest dangers in the sport.
02:40:24.000There's a company called One FC that apparently have some sort of hydration policy.
02:40:32.000People that were competing at lower weight classes are now competing at higher weight classes.
02:40:35.000They move stuff around, but they've addressed it.
02:40:38.000And they've addressed it in a way that seems to work for their organization.
02:40:41.000And I'm sure there's some fuckery involved and some shenanigans involved, but way less than we have in the UFC. We'd like to see them be preemptive instead of...
02:41:23.000And there was some maybe genetic issues going on, but at the root, there was not the right nutrition and hydration policies or education involved to allow these guys to recover.
02:41:41.000And what was going on Only got changed when there was a tragedy.
02:41:47.000Do you think that's because they are trying to instill mental toughness and just condition them to just some extreme level by doing this and that this was like this old school thought?
02:42:28.000He went through two camps in a row because one fight got canceled, and they went right into another camp, and then he went out fighting Kelvin Gastelum, and he was gassed out, like, almost immediately.
02:42:37.000Which, that fucking guy has a gas tank as big as the ocean.
02:45:17.000Now, there's education that comes up and conversations, and we further...
02:45:22.000But it's not like, hey, you got a concussion?
02:45:24.000Okay, you're going to hyperbaric for, you know, days one through three and do light therapy in this day and do, you know, and take, you know, this on this, whatever it might be.
02:46:09.000He plays in the same golf tournament I do in Tahoe.
02:46:11.000He's played every year it's ever been on, and I've talked to him about his issues and heard him talk about it as well, and it definitely gives me pause.
02:46:21.000That's why I'm always doing research on my own about stuff that people have done.
02:46:26.000Joe Namath has talked a lot about his use of hyperbaric chambers, actually, and healing some of the gray matter that has been associated with traumatic brain injuries.
02:46:37.000But, you know, CTE has been linked to a number of suicides that we've had from former players, and it's a real thing.
02:47:29.000You're playing a contact sport, and there's things to look into and to think about when you're playing and when you're done playing to make sure you're Cognitive function is still there, and you're, you know, lesser at risk to some of the effects of CTE. Well,
02:47:47.000you're a very proactive guy, so I'm sure you have kept abreast of all your own impacts.
02:47:55.000How many times do you think you've been concussed?
02:47:59.000Let's see, I've had three concussions, I believe.
02:48:06.000Yeah, I've had three concussions where I've come out of games in my playing time and obviously taken a number of other hits to the head that didn't classify as concussions.
02:48:19.000But the last one I had was in 2018 and I got kind of clotheslined.
02:48:28.000And I went over and sat on the bench and I was like, oh man, I kind of dinged up a little bit but felt like I wasn't, I was okay and then just came on and my vision just went like, you know, and took myself out of the game and that one kind of scared me to be honest because it,
02:49:04.000So that's when I really started looking into some of the things that people were writing about and researching on traumatic brain injuries and And ended up getting a hyperbaric chamber and felt like those dives have really helped me.
02:49:25.000And then, you know, taking out for brain is awesome too.
02:51:52.000But they don't kind of make him like that at all.
02:51:56.000I feel fortunate to be still playing at 18 years.
02:51:59.000But you learn how to take care of your body and avoid.
02:52:03.000I mean, Tom has avoided, I think, big shots most of his career.
02:52:07.000He had one knee injury, another than that.
02:52:09.000He's been fairly healthy most of his career and not really had any concussive issues.
02:52:15.000And I've been able to stay relatively healthy as well in my career.
02:52:18.000But But yeah, it's a young man's game and that's the fun part is the battle against time and the battle against age and the battle against the young guys trying to take your spot.
02:52:29.000You said you've had some knee injuries before, right?
02:52:34.000I've had multiple cartilage issues, two clean outs, had an ACL reconstruction in college, and then just a lot of issues around that, nerve issues, arthritic issues, bursa,
02:53:13.000They said I was, you know, anti-Midwesterner.
02:53:16.000LAUGHTER But when I did that, and I really limited gluten as well, I haven't had knee issues since January 2016. Really?
02:53:29.000And that was since 1999, 17 years of knee issues, clean-up, and a change in diet, and nothing less, six years, as far as inflammation goes.
02:53:40.000I had a fracture in my knee in 2018, but nothing inflammation-related.
02:53:47.000That's really amazing that diet had that much of an impact, especially when you consider the amount of abuse that your knees would take playing football.
02:53:57.000Yeah, it's been a total game changer for me.
02:53:59.000But diet has a big effect on more than just inflammation in your knees.
02:55:54.000Because there's so many people that are co-opted by these companies, and then they'll immediately be the expert that comes on to calm people down after this, oh, you need to look at the actual data.
02:56:05.000We're talking about the most minuscule amounts.
02:58:34.000And it's like it's almost unavoidable at this point because I don't believe that these studies were released.
02:58:39.000I think they figured this out somewhere in like the 2010s.
02:58:43.000And so we have like 10 years of this data and maybe even less where they're just sort of working out like what are the implications and what's actually happening to people.
02:59:13.000Tests conducted by moms across America found the impossible burger tested positive for residues of glyphosate.
02:59:19.000The levels of glyphosate detected in the impossible burger by Health Research Institute laboratories were 11 times higher than the non-GMO Project Verified Beyond Burger.
02:59:29.000But wasn't there something about rats?