Order of Man - 178： Free Markets, Finding Purpose, and Forging Fitness

00:00:00.000 There is so much to talk about in the world today, but very few people who are capable of having

00:00:05.540 an intelligent conversation about some sensitive subjects without completely losing their minds.

00:00:11.500 Today, I am joined by my friend Sal DiStefano to talk about a lot of these issues and these

00:00:16.780 polarizing topics, including the moral implications of free markets and governments,

00:00:22.640 how important it is that fathers are in the home, the legalization of drugs,

00:00:26.640 the shift in society toward nihilism, and of course, we talk about everything and everywhere in between.

00:00:33.020 You're a man of action. You live life to the fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your

00:00:38.020 own path. When life knocks you down, you get back up one more time, every time. You are not easily

00:00:44.000 deterred, defeated, rugged, resilient, strong. This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you

00:00:51.560 will become. At the end of the day, and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man.

00:00:58.320 Gentlemen, what is going on today? My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder of this

00:01:02.500 podcast, The Order of Man. If you've been with us for any amount of time, you know that this is a

00:01:06.940 podcast about reclaiming what it means to be a man, reclaiming masculinity in a society that seems to

00:01:14.080 dismiss it at best, and it seems to be more and more aggressive on the assault on masculinity.

00:01:21.600 Now, I have a lot of guys who will say, so what? Men don't care about that stuff. I don't believe

00:01:25.520 that's true. I think men have an obligation to stand up against some of this and an obligation to

00:01:31.760 help raise future generations of boys by teaching them exactly what it means to be a man. And then,

00:01:38.260 of course, what we're doing here with the podcast is equipping men with the tools and the guidance and

00:01:42.760 the skillset and the conversations needed to help each and every one of us become better fathers

00:01:48.160 and husbands, business owners, community leaders, just better men in general. And that's exactly

00:01:53.420 what we're doing. And I couldn't be more proud and honored to be a small part of your lives and

00:01:59.260 this movement in general. So again, glad you're here. We've got a great one lined up for you today.

00:02:04.060 I've really changed some things in the podcast lately, and we've gone a lot longer on the

00:02:08.440 conversations and they've been a lot more conversational rather than interview style.

00:02:12.860 So I hope that you're enjoying that. This is one of the, if not the longest podcast that I've ever

00:02:18.020 done, but man, it was so, so powerful and so much to get into with a man that I admire and respect.

00:02:23.120 So we'll get into that just here in a minute. But before I do, I just want to let you know,

00:02:27.380 if you're going to be at origin, Maine, their immersion camp, the end of this month, August,

00:02:32.440 2018, please shoot me a message. Let me know. I'm going to be out there from the 26th,

00:02:38.380 through the 2nd of September. And I'm really, really looking forward to meeting any of you

00:02:42.980 who are going to be out there. If you're not familiar with origin, they do jujitsu rash guards,

00:02:49.000 geese. They have a supplemental lineup that's partnered up with Jocko. I use all of their gear,

00:02:54.000 most of their products. And I can tell you that if you are looking to improve your jujitsu game

00:02:59.480 or want to enhance yourself and your nutrition through some supplements, then this would be a great

00:03:05.960 place to do it. If you're interested, head to origin, maine.com slash order of man. Again,

00:03:11.140 that's origin, maine.com slash order of man. And if you end up purchasing anything over there,

00:03:15.700 make sure you use the code order in all caps, O R D E R. And you'll get a discount when you do again,

00:03:21.700 origin, maine.com slash order of man. All right, guys, that's all the announcements. That's all the

00:03:27.680 housekeeping. Let's get into the conversation today. My friend, Sal, the Stefano is back. He's

00:03:33.080 somebody that I've gotten to know over the past couple of years. And we had him and Adam and

00:03:38.400 Justin from mind pump media on, I want to say six or eight months ago, the episode did so well.

00:03:45.160 And I wanted to have Sal back on. We've been able to connect because we just, we agree. We agree on a

00:03:50.580 lot of the same issues and are extremely interested in having important and relevant dialogue on the

00:03:56.840 topic that, like I said earlier, most people shy away from. He's the co-founder of mind pump media

00:04:01.960 and he spent nearly 20 years as a fitness and personal trainer. And he's very, very focused on

00:04:09.140 science and the truth of the fitness industry. So although we only talk about fitness and nutrition

00:04:15.040 towards the end of this conversation, it is apparent that Sal is someone who strives to find

00:04:20.660 truth, objective truth in all facets of life. And he prides himself on sharing that truth with others.

00:04:27.280 I was in Salt Lake last weekend. I brought my headset because I have this like little travel

00:04:33.340 podcast setup.

00:04:34.460 Is it, it's the one with the mic that comes out of that?

00:04:36.820 Yeah. Yeah. Except for I couldn't get it to work.

00:04:39.420 Like all the little adapters and whatever.

00:04:41.640 You got to get yourself a Doug.

00:04:42.780 I do need a Doug. I absolutely need a Doug. But yeah, I couldn't get the adapters to work.

00:04:47.280 And fortunately I was in a friend's office and he had some stuff. So we,

00:04:50.240 we stole one of his friend's headsets and use that and we made it work.

00:04:53.740 Oh, we would be so lost without Doug. Completely lost.

00:04:57.960 Yeah.

00:04:58.640 It'd be smoke signals and letters.

00:05:00.420 It doesn't seem like it should be that hard. Like I talked to somebody about this the other day.

00:05:04.700 There shouldn't be a place where there isn't internet.

00:05:07.540 Yeah.

00:05:07.820 Internet should be everywhere. You should never drop signal. You should never not have cell phone

00:05:12.400 coverage. It just seems like we're that far ahead that we shouldn't have to worry about that.

00:05:16.800 It'll, it'll be there.

00:05:17.800 It will.

00:05:18.280 It'll get there. We have to appreciate how far we've come though.

00:05:21.140 That is true. I mean, can you imagine like 10 years ago, we couldn't have this comp? I mean,

00:05:25.400 we could, but the barrier to entry would be significantly higher.

00:05:27.720 That's the thing. That's the big thing is the barrier to entry is so low now and it's

00:05:32.400 decentralizing everything and it's making conversations like this possible. It's funny.

00:05:38.020 I was, I was watching an interview on Joe Rogan. He had Jordan Peterson on and they were talking about

00:05:42.220 how technology is changing the way people are having discussions because in the past,

00:05:47.880 bandwidth was limited. So if you had a complex problem or a complex discussion,

00:05:53.480 you had to make that your case in six minutes.

00:05:56.420 Right. Right. Very short soundbite.

00:05:58.080 Very short. You had so many channels, even when, you know, you had cable and whatever,

00:06:02.020 you still had so much more limited to compared to now and they would edit it to make it compelling.

00:06:07.600 And it was soundbites and you didn't get all the information, which is you can't discuss complex

00:06:14.020 issues in six minutes. You just can't do that. And the person who tends to get through is the

00:06:18.340 charismatic person who can do the bumper sticker, you know, short quotes or whatever. Today,

00:06:23.720 what we're finding is because technologies opened it up so much and the barrier to enter so cheap

00:06:29.820 in the sense that like before to start a radio show, it was expensive. It was difficult.

00:06:35.020 Equipment was expensive. People that would host you, you know, they had their corporate sponsors.

00:06:39.140 If they don't like what you said, you couldn't get on there. Now, pretty much anybody who's got a

00:06:43.640 few hundred bucks can start a podcast and broadcast their ideas out. And what we're finding now is

00:06:48.660 this long form is exploding. You've got podcasts that are an hour, two, three hours long, YouTube

00:06:54.820 videos that are lectures. You've got like Jordan Peterson was talking about how he's doing these

00:06:59.440 tours where he's debating Sam Harris, who is ideologically opposed to him.

00:07:05.360 Yeah, diametrically opposed.

00:07:06.420 But they get on stage and they debate for two hours in front of an audience. Nobody would have

00:07:12.020 thought that that would have ever happened in the past and it's starting to happen now. And so,

00:07:16.900 it's kind of exciting.

00:07:17.980 It's amazing that people are engaged that long because if you look at the trends in society,

00:07:22.160 most of it is, you know, 140 characters or whatever to make a point and you've got five

00:07:27.140 seconds or less to get somebody's attention. And so, it's amazing when you see these long form

00:07:32.400 conversations that people in droves are actually tuning in. Like we're craving discussion and dialogue.

00:07:38.980 But I wonder too, almost in a lot of ways, it's good because it opens up information and access

00:07:44.680 to information unlike we ever have. But at the same time, I think there's a lot of animosity.

00:07:52.260 I don't know if it's gotten worse than it was before whenever before it was, but I look around

00:07:57.880 now and I'm like, man, when we were talking about this a minute ago, people seem to lack the ability

00:08:02.700 to have civilized discourse, even in an environment where it's more possible than it ever was before.

00:08:08.960 You know, I think some people do have issues with that. And I think that that's louder sometimes.

00:08:14.260 And so, it seems much worse than it is. You know, what we're experiencing now is not that different

00:08:20.560 from what the world experienced when the printing press was created. You know, the Gutenberg printing

00:08:26.780 press, before the printing press, the only people who had access to books, which were

00:08:31.940 the information, were nobles and clergy. Because it took a long time to write a book. It took

00:08:41.000 thousands of hours. They were extremely expensive. Most people didn't even know how to read as a

00:08:45.720 result. And if you wanted information, you had to go to these gatekeepers, the nobles or the church,

00:08:50.800 and they would tell you, oh, this is the right thing. Here's the information. All of a sudden,

00:08:55.180 you have a printing press that makes it extremely inexpensive. And you had this explosion of access

00:09:00.520 to information. And one of the first-selling, best-selling books of all time was Marco Polo's

00:09:06.500 books on his travels. People were thirsty for this knowledge. And it's widely believed that the

00:09:11.480 printing press ushered in the Renaissance. But along with the Renaissance, you have the old guard

00:09:17.640 clawing at and trying to fight what's going on. You had a lot of book burnings.

00:09:22.040 That power, right?

00:09:22.860 Right. And so I think we may be experiencing that now. I think what we're seeing now is

00:09:27.280 we're seeing this explosion of information, access to information. The spoken word now has power,

00:09:33.700 like the written word does, which is incredible because you can listen. People tend to prefer to

00:09:39.200 listen more than read. It takes much more focus and concentration to read a book, right?

00:09:44.640 Right. You've got to sit down. You've got to turn the pages. You've got to write.

00:09:47.940 Right. But you can actually listen to conversations and books, and people are doing that like crazy.

00:09:51.580 Somebody's doing, mowing the lawn right now as they're listening to this.

00:09:54.180 That's right. And so it's changing everything, but the old guard is clawing and scratching and really

00:10:01.000 trying hard to prevent. You know, old media is dying. New media is growing. I mean, what's it?

00:10:07.080 Joe Rogan's podcast. I think he gets more downloads than all the news networks get views combined.

00:10:12.360 Unbelievable. Yeah. So it's really cool. It's what we're seeing is this decentralization of power,

00:10:17.360 and that's what technology is creating. And it's funny because I'll give you a great example.

00:10:24.280 My favorite example to use on this is Uber. Uber is a great example. For the longest time,

00:10:29.520 there were monopolies on taxis. Right. In fact, if you were in New York City and you wanted to be able

00:10:36.060 to drive a taxi, you had to buy a, what's called a medallion. Medallion. Medallion. The value of a

00:10:41.160 medallion not that long ago, like 15, 20 years ago, maybe even less, was over a million dollars

00:10:46.140 for one. Right. You would buy them on the market because they were limited. It was a monopoly.

00:10:49.960 There were only, I think, 13,000 or 14,000 of them for the whole city. Yeah. And everybody knows

00:10:54.380 that New York had far too few taxis. It was so hard to get one, and it was just shit. Right. But

00:10:58.740 that was it. There were laws. You couldn't do it any other way.

00:11:01.500 Okay. This technology gets invented that allows for ride sharing and boom, Uber explodes onto the

00:11:08.420 scene faster than government could regulate. That's one of the beauties of what's going on

00:11:15.660 right now is that government takes time to regulate and technology is way faster than that.

00:11:21.160 Way faster. Significantly faster.

00:11:22.460 And so they can't keep up with it. It's like the toothpaste is out of the tube. Good luck. Right.

00:11:25.820 So Uber comes onto the scene. As soon as it starts making noise and gets getting big,

00:11:30.940 government's like scrambling to figure out, oh, how can we control this and protect our

00:11:35.540 best, our interests in the, you know, these taxi cartels or whatever. Right.

00:11:39.860 Too late. It's out and people like it. So now you've got a lot of people who've experienced,

00:11:44.580 because if, if Uber never got out and people experienced it, if let's say somebody came out

00:11:48.980 and said, Hey, I've got this idea for this ride sharing company, it would have got shut down

00:11:54.000 fast because they would have scared everybody. Oh my God, it's dangerous. You're going to get into

00:11:57.300 a stranger's car. People are going to get mugged and raped and where people are going to lose jobs

00:12:01.560 and it's going to be terrible. And people would have said, no, we don't want Uber, but it came out

00:12:05.080 too fast, faster than people can regulate it. People loved it. Way better service and ratings and

00:12:10.760 taxis. And now they're trying to go and shut it down, but they can't.

00:12:15.180 It's even funny. You talk about governments, but even the taxi industry is fighting, right? Rather than

00:12:19.880 adapting, this is what kills me rather than adapting and saying, Oh, here's a

00:12:23.980 model over here that we can learn from, that we can grow from, that we can develop and create a new

00:12:29.720 product or service that's better than before. We're going to try to shut that down. I think

00:12:34.400 Austin, in fact, they shut Uber down. I'm sure Austin isn't the only example, but completely shut

00:12:40.300 down Uber. I think they've opened it back up at this point. Because the people want it.

00:12:44.120 Exactly. But you know, I have empathy, right? I have empathy for taxi drivers. Like now a lot of

00:12:48.440 these medallions are owned by these large cartels, these guys that are worth tons and tons of money

00:12:52.700 and have just monopolized this industry for a long time. But you have individual people

00:12:56.300 who saved their money, bought a medallion. Now they've seen in a matter of five years,

00:13:01.200 a medallion or whatever, which they probably borrowed against, right? Over and over again

00:13:05.600 to buy a house and whatever. They've seen the value of it go from a million dollars to today.

00:13:10.360 I don't think they've sold one in the last, I just watched a documentary on this.

00:13:13.200 They haven't sold one in the last like a couple of years at all. And they think the value is less

00:13:16.820 than a hundred thousand dollars. Yeah. If that.

00:13:18.600 And that's a market correction. That's what's happening. But you're absolutely right. You know,

00:13:22.780 here's another great example, like Blockbuster. You had the guys from Netflix literally went to

00:13:27.860 Blockbuster and said, Hey, we have this technology. We'd like to work with you guys. And Blockbuster

00:13:31.160 laughed them out of the room. No, thanks.

00:13:33.060 Out of business. Blockbuster gone. They were a major, major business.

00:13:36.540 But the question is, let me ask you this, because you pose a really interesting question.

00:13:40.620 And I think I fall into this trap. You fall into what everybody does,

00:13:43.520 where we think we've got it figured out and maybe it's ego. I'm sure part of it's ego

00:13:48.340 and part of it is just ignorance. I mean, how do you know though? How would Blockbuster ever know?

00:13:54.780 How would the taxi industry ever know that they need to get on board with this? You see what I'm

00:13:59.760 saying? Absolutely. Well, I think that's a very difficult business decision. I think when you're

00:14:03.720 a big ship, it's hard to turn. Sure. When you own a market for so long and then some guy or girl comes in

00:14:10.880 and whippersnapper and they're like, Hey, I got this new, whatever, it's the new thing. You're

00:14:14.360 like, look, kid, I've been doing this for 40 years. We're worth a billion dollars. Get out of my

00:14:19.620 office. And that's a difficult position to be in. But for me personally, as someone who's into this

00:14:25.920 kind of stuff, and I'm not an economist, I'm not an expert in that kind of stuff. It's just

00:14:29.300 something I have a passion for. When you look at all of this, decentralization increases efficiency

00:14:35.700 tremendously. Why do we want things to be more efficient? Because it allocates resources

00:14:40.380 so much better. I mean, Uber has employed now so many different people. It's so much easier to

00:14:47.820 get an Uber in places where you couldn't get a taxi. It's decentralizing a market in the sense that

00:14:52.840 it's making it more competitive. So prices go down, people do better. The barrier to enter into

00:14:57.640 that market's much lower. The resources that are freed up are better used somewhere else.

00:15:01.460 All that. And that's what you kind of want. And this has happened so many times. I'm sure when

00:15:07.060 the automobile was invented, wagon makers were probably lobbying their governments to try to

00:15:12.780 protect their business or their jobs. And it's like, okay, we got to look at the unintended

00:15:17.940 consequences and see what's going on. And in the short term, yeah, we'll protect the wagon makers.

00:15:22.300 But imagine had we passed laws that made automobiles impossible to build to protect the wagon,

00:15:28.000 where would we be today as a society? How much less progressed would we have gone? So

00:15:33.060 these are important things to look at. And I think technology is just, it's cracking me up because

00:15:38.300 I argue all the time or debate people on small government, big government, more free market,

00:15:44.240 less free market. I honest to God think it really doesn't matter. I think that government is getting

00:15:48.440 out-competed at such a rate that we're heading towards a super free anarcho-capitalist society,

00:15:54.320 whether we like it or not.

00:15:55.260 I think it's an interesting thing. And for me, it raises this question. And again,

00:15:59.200 I'm on the side that says individualism, being able to have control and power over our own decisions

00:16:04.400 is a good thing. But that being said, it places a lot of responsibility and burden on the shoulders

00:16:10.680 of where it belongs, which is the individual. And I think what we're seeing as a consequence of this

00:16:16.180 is that people lack discernment. We've been relying so heavily for so long on somebody else,

00:16:23.160 something else, some government, some company to do this and fix that and change this and employ us

00:16:28.460 and provide the benefits. And now we get inundated with all this information and it's on us. Now we

00:16:34.800 have to educate ourselves. We have to provide ourselves. We have to come up with our own

00:16:39.340 solutions. And we have to try to filter out the noise, the stuff that isn't legitimate.

00:16:44.220 You're right. I agree with you. I think that's the way it should be. But I also think it's inevitable.

00:16:48.580 I mean, let's look at education as a great example, right? Look at higher education.

00:16:53.380 Higher education has been interfered with and regulated and just messed with for so long now

00:16:59.280 that it has become so incredibly expensive to become educated at a university that some jobs

00:17:07.560 or some careers aren't even worth the investment anymore. So I'll give you a great example, right?

00:17:13.080 So I don't need to argue that in order to become a doctor, you have to go to school. There's laws,

00:17:17.720 right? You have to go to school for it. You have to get a license.

00:17:21.020 The degree is required.

00:17:21.740 It's required to become a doctor. But some doctors, some positions are becoming more scarce

00:17:27.760 because the cost of getting the education, the investment's not worth what you're going to make.

00:17:32.900 Let's say you want to be a general practitioner. Well, you're going to graduate likely with $150,000

00:17:38.380 or $200,000 worth of debt. You're going to be going to haven't gone to school for years and years and

00:17:43.640 years and you're going to graduate and you might make a hundred grand a year for the first five

00:17:47.660 years or so. They're looking at this and going, well, this isn't going to make any sense.

00:17:52.160 So what we're starting to see is just things are starting to change. People are getting their

00:17:56.140 education in other places and it's starting to make more sense to do so for certain types of

00:18:01.640 positions. Well, I'll give you an example is even just in, you talk about a general practitioner,

00:18:07.360 for example, my wife has access to the same information our general doctor does. We've got

00:18:13.600 four kids when she says that our youngest, who's two years old, has an ear infection. She doesn't

00:18:20.420 need to go into the doctor to know that he has an ear infection. And it's interesting because we've

00:18:24.400 got this gal now, I think she's a PA. She will diagnose through text and images. So we'll send her

00:18:32.220 a picture or whatever if there's a symptom. Beautiful. She'll diagnose and prescribe through

00:18:36.980 a text. And this is rendering some of that other stuff completely obsolete, which I think goes to

00:18:44.200 your problem you're addressing here is like these guys and gals are spending hundreds of thousands of

00:18:48.920 dollars. They're going to be out of a job because nobody wants to go into the doctor's office and wait

00:18:54.380 there for two hours and then overpay for the five minutes they actually see the doc in the first place

00:18:59.320 to tell them what they already knew. Exactly. And like you said, a PA can do a lot of the

00:19:04.740 things that a general practitioner used to do, like prescribing for your run-of-the-mill

00:19:09.480 infections for kids or a pharmacist. A pharmacist should be able to prescribe something like birth

00:19:15.300 control. I don't know why birth control is still required. You go to a doctor, it doesn't make any

00:19:19.360 sense to me. Right. Everybody knows and yeah, exactly. Go to a pharmacist and get it over the

00:19:23.520 counter. That's a good point. It would increase access incredibly to people who need it. It would

00:19:28.320 reduce unwanted pregnancies and all that stuff. I don't know why anybody's not on, you know,

00:19:31.320 people aren't necessarily on board with that, but I honestly think it's going to happen no matter

00:19:36.960 what. I just read an article where people have been able to 3D print guns now for a little while.

00:19:43.680 That's going to become more and more accessible, cheaper and cheaper, and the guns you'll be able to

00:19:48.800 print are going to be better and better and better. Yeah. Well, look at even marijuana. It's not long

00:19:54.540 before that's completely legalized wherever you are. Why? Because the access to it and people want

00:20:00.860 it and it's going to be available. You can't regulate all this stuff. I really do think if

00:20:04.880 people really want society to progress, we have to look at it and think to ourselves, okay,

00:20:08.820 we have a scarcity problem. There are resources that are scarce. There's labor that is scarce.

00:20:13.700 There's interest in all these things that we have to manage. Let's figure out the best way for those

00:20:18.960 things to be allocated most accurately and to produce the least amount of inefficiencies.

00:20:25.160 Markets do that better than anything. They've always done that.

00:20:28.680 And even more so, I think the biggest problem that people had with markets is whether people were going

00:20:34.740 to be, whether they were going to be good people essentially with that. And I think what's nice

00:20:40.960 about what we're seeing now is there's a movement and a growing movement that we have to do good,

00:20:47.460 right? It's not just about making money, but it's about doing good, giving back,

00:20:51.880 doing it in the correct way. So even companies that aren't doing business the way they should

00:20:56.240 be doing business, morally that is, they're getting faced with backlash and protests and

00:21:03.940 boycotting and all of that stuff. So even that has a way of regulating itself.

00:21:07.740 Things are more visible now.

00:21:09.820 Yeah, true.

00:21:10.440 So you tend to know who the CEO is and see what they did. And there's less middlemen in between.

00:21:15.180 You have social media as a result. News spreads very, very fast. And you're right.

00:21:19.840 Being charitable is becoming more marketable to the point now where I will buy products and I'll

00:21:24.860 look at it and they will advertise on the product, fair trade certified or-

00:21:29.320 Buy this and we're going to give one to so-and-so or-

00:21:32.360 It's become something that consumers want in their products. But at the end of the day,

00:21:37.500 you're going to have bad people. That's just going to happen. And I would prefer a system where

00:21:42.640 if a person is bad, they bear the consequences of it. And if they want something and they're

00:21:48.260 greedy, in order to get what they want, they have to provide someone else something that

00:21:52.140 they want.

00:21:53.020 That's a good system.

00:21:53.920 Which is fine, as long as it's voluntary trade.

00:21:55.780 That's what I mean. So if, you know, in a market-based economy or in a market-based system,

00:22:00.980 if I'm a greedy son of a gun, you know, and I'm just this evil greedy person and I want

00:22:06.460 everybody's money, I can't get it unless I give you something you want.

00:22:09.460 Right. And that's, and I'm going to bear the consequences of being a shitty person.

00:22:13.640 Well, and there's nothing wrong with having two greedy guys interact either.

00:22:17.100 They have to work together.

00:22:18.300 For example, if you're greedy and I'm greedy, well, that's okay because you might have something

00:22:23.180 I want. I might have something you want. And we both walk away better because we work together,

00:22:28.100 even though we're in our own best interest.

00:22:30.240 Right. And by the way, greedy, everybody else is always greedy except for ourselves.

00:22:33.620 That's right.

00:22:33.940 I love it when people say that.

00:22:34.900 Yeah, of course.

00:22:35.380 This person's so greedy. And then I look at them and I say, well, you know,

00:22:38.600 how many pairs of shoes do you own? Why do you have more than one pair of shoes?

00:22:41.560 Are you greedy?

00:22:41.960 That to me is like the judgment thing. I get this one all the time. Oh,

00:22:44.420 you're being judgmental. Well, you're judging me for being judgmental. So think on that one for

00:22:49.100 a minute.

00:22:49.220 That's right. That's right. Absolutely. I'll give you another great example. So we're in the fitness

00:22:53.540 and health space, right? There's this device right now that they're working on that you can

00:22:59.420 literally scan a food through, and it's got a, I'm not quite sure how the technology works,

00:23:04.720 but it's actually quite, it's becoming quite accurate. It's pretty interesting. I could scan

00:23:08.300 food. I'm going to eat and it will tell me vitamins, minerals, proteins, fats, carbohydrate.

00:23:14.520 What do you mean? Like a barcode or the actual food?

00:23:17.100 The actual food.

00:23:17.820 And it identifies it.

00:23:18.920 There's an actual food.

00:23:19.940 Interesting.

00:23:20.300 And so I think it's like a spectrometer or whatnot. It'll tell you what's in that,

00:23:24.180 pesticides, herbicides.

00:23:25.780 Really?

00:23:26.180 Because it'll break and break it down for you. The technology exists. It's just super

00:23:30.360 expensive right now, but at some point it's going to be, right? We're going to be able

00:23:33.200 to have this. You know what that's going to render completely obsolete and out-compete

00:23:38.140 completely? FDA. Why are we going to have an FDA? I don't care about the FDA when I could

00:23:42.880 just go beep. Well, this food looks like it's got what it's supposed to have.

00:23:46.120 But I think there's a problem with governments in that they don't trust the individual.

00:23:51.420 For whatever reason, you hear these like soda bans, for example, because governments and

00:23:56.100 institutions, for whatever reason, don't trust individuals to make the decisions in their

00:24:01.460 own best interest. Cigarettes, for example. Everybody knows you shouldn't smoke cigarettes.

00:24:05.780 Like that's not a surprise. And if enough people die, and unfortunately, and this sounds

00:24:10.700 morbid, horrible death, everybody else will stop smoking cigarettes. Like it doesn't really

00:24:15.800 need to be regular because we can see it so easily.

00:24:20.260 Yeah. And they don't, many times they'll pass a policy without looking at what the actual

00:24:25.720 results are. They'll pass the policy based off of the feelings behind it or this, okay,

00:24:30.620 we want to.

00:24:31.160 Yeah. The emotion. Yeah.

00:24:32.100 Yeah. So there's, so for example, there were some cities that passed laws because they wanted

00:24:36.520 to fight obesity and it was all good intentions, right? Some of the worst laws, the ones passed

00:24:40.420 with good intentions, right?

00:24:41.760 You got to pass them based on results, not just on your intentions, but these cities pass these

00:24:46.140 laws that said, we want to fight obesity. If we force every food producer, every restaurant

00:24:52.600 to put a label on, on what they're doing on their menu to show calories and proteins, fats

00:24:59.280 and carbs, people will be a more informed to make better eating decisions and people will

00:25:03.420 lose weight. And you think about it and you're like, well, that might work. I'm not, you know,

00:25:07.180 maybe that makes sense. If people see the calories, sounds good, sounds good. So they did it,

00:25:12.400 right? They pass these laws, you know, of course, passing the cost onto the consumer.

00:25:16.140 Now, you know, restaurants and stuff have to pay money to change the thing, whatever this

00:25:19.480 and the other, but you know, of course it's all for, for good intentions. The results came back

00:25:24.120 with these experiments and what did they find? People ate more calories as a result of the

00:25:30.900 labeling. Now you think about that and you think, well, why that doesn't make sense, but it actually

00:25:35.200 does. When you start to think about human psychology, if I'm a person and I'm eating at

00:25:40.020 McDonald's and I'm at a fast food restaurant anyway, and I'm looking at the cheeseburger,

00:25:45.340 that's 700 calories and the double cheeseburger, that's 850 calories, rather than saying, I'm

00:25:51.440 going to pick the one with lower calories. I'm going to say, wow, it's only another 100

00:25:53.920 calories or 150 calories. I'm just going to go with the bigger one. And that's what people

00:25:56.760 did. Interesting.

00:25:57.860 And people actually ate more as a result of this policy.

00:26:01.400 So they started to justify their choices.

00:26:04.180 That's right. And that's what we end up getting. We get a lot of these unintended consequences

00:26:08.220 with policies that are based off of good intentions. Welfare is a good example. There were laws

00:26:15.420 that initially were passed, I want to say in the 60s and 70s, if I'm not saying it was

00:26:18.920 the 60s, where we would pay single mothers money if there was no father present in the

00:26:25.800 home. One of the unintended consequences of that was the increase in single motherhood

00:26:30.940 and fatherhood. Why? Because people were like, well, you can make money. I'm going to get

00:26:34.460 paid if he's not living with me and not helping me.

00:26:37.440 There was an interesting article or story. And it was this, if I remember correctly, it

00:26:42.220 was a daycare. And they were having a problem with parents coming to pick up their kids late.

00:26:47.860 They weren't showing up on time. So they had these kids for later than anticipated. And so

00:26:51.960 what they decided to do is for every half hour or 15 minutes or whatever you were late,

00:26:58.060 you owed extra money. And so they thought, well, if these people have to pay extra money,

00:27:02.480 then they'll come get their kids. We won't have any more late parents. Well, what ended up happening

00:27:08.360 is they had more late parents because now the parents felt justified for being late because

00:27:15.400 they could pay a few extra bucks and it was fine. And so the unintended consequence was not to

00:27:20.980 eliminate or remove the lateness. It was to actually add to their plate because it was justified now.

00:27:26.160 Well, you see with situations like that, because businesses experiment all the time, right? So

00:27:30.660 businesses constantly experiment and try to figure out what's working better and what's going to work

00:27:35.760 better and what's not going to work as good. That's okay because they're working with their

00:27:40.140 money. If they lose their resources, if they, and they figured that out, right? They figured it out

00:27:44.820 and they lost their money or maybe they raised the rates and ended up making more money. Who knows?

00:27:48.080 Right. But they figured that out when government does it. Well, there's a couple of things that

00:27:52.020 happen. First off, they're using our money, right? It's easy to spend somebody else's money. Oh,

00:27:55.580 the worst people to spend money are the ones that bear no consequence for losing it and the ones

00:28:00.620 that didn't earn it. Those are the worst people you give money to because they're not going to

00:28:04.180 make decisions as well as you were with your own money. Right. But here's something else that ends

00:28:07.680 up happening. Let's say the FDA made a bunch of mistakes and which happens all the time and food

00:28:14.660 comes out and there's E. coli outbreak or whatever, or lead poisoning and a bunch of people get sick and

00:28:20.640 maybe some people die. The FDA is inevitably going to say, it's because we don't have enough funding.

00:28:27.900 We need more money. Right. Okay. If a business, let's just imagine that there was a regulatory

00:28:32.380 agency, there was competing regulatory agencies over food. And whenever you went shopping, you buy

00:28:38.160 food, you'd look at it and be like, okay, this is regulated by so-and-so private company. And this

00:28:42.880 one's regulated by other so-and-so private companies. So which one do I trust more? I don't know.

00:28:46.860 Let's pick this one. And let's say that that company that you picked, you look in the news and

00:28:51.140 you're like, oh, apple juice that was regulated by so-and-so company, E. coli outbreak. Do they get

00:28:56.320 more money or less money? Do they get rewarded for being stupid or do they get consequences? Sure.

00:29:01.400 Yeah. They get less money and the competing regulatory agencies end up getting more market

00:29:08.280 share because they're doing a better job. That doesn't work with government. In fact, if government

00:29:12.600 saves money, they get less funding. So if you are, if that's true, if you don't spend your target

00:29:18.060 budget, you get less next year. If I put you in charge of an agency, let's say I put you in charge

00:29:22.580 of an education agency, you know, in the city of San Jose and we say, okay, this year we're going to

00:29:27.160 give you $5 million and here's your money that we're going to get you to work with. And you've got

00:29:31.080 these employees or whatever. And then you come back to me at the end of the year and you're like,

00:29:34.640 hey, I saved you guys $2 million. I only spent $3 million of the taxpayer's dollars,

00:29:39.180 saved you guys $2 million. Good job. Next year, your budget is $3 million or $2 million.

00:29:45.540 Yeah. So the incentives are all fucked up. They're all screwed up. It's not like that with markets.

00:29:51.860 That's one of the reasons why they're so efficient and effective. You look at even, even look at

00:29:56.820 charities, you know, there was just this huge issue in Seattle recently where they were trying to

00:30:01.840 impose this head tax, this extremely ridiculous head tax on businesses that were, I think, producing

00:30:08.400 over $10 million in revenue. So Amazon, which is based out of Seattle, had to pay this huge head

00:30:14.240 tax. And Amazon said, we're going to stop building our new facility and we're going to put it on hold

00:30:19.240 until we figure this out. Cause we're not going to spend, we're not going to have you guys tax

00:30:22.260 us all. Now the tax money was supposed to go to providing more beds for the homeless. And I forgot

00:30:28.120 what the amount was. They were going to raise something like 10 or $20 million for like 700 beds

00:30:34.020 or something like that. There's a private charity in Seattle that does the same thing

00:30:38.440 that provides like double the amount of beds for a fraction of the cost. And it's just the

00:30:44.240 inefficiency is just insane when it comes to government because, and it's not necessarily

00:30:49.540 because people are bad or good. You can have the best, the most altruistic, benevolent,

00:30:55.300 intelligent people working in government, trying to solve problems. The problem is they're not

00:31:00.800 getting the most accurate signals. They're guessing a lot. And so it's just super, it's

00:31:05.140 super inefficient when you're at the top of this tower, trying to control all these millions

00:31:09.400 of people trying to figure out your policies. You're not reading these intricate details and

00:31:14.400 signals like markets do where, you know, prices are going up or down. Supply and demand is constantly

00:31:19.700 being read so that where your money's going is being utilized most efficiently. When you're

00:31:23.800 trying to do that through government, you have to do a lot of guessing. You have to do it a lot

00:31:27.280 through policy and okay, I think what we're going to try this. And last year, this didn't

00:31:31.200 really work. Markets adjust themselves every single day.

00:31:33.900 And not only that, I mean, with governments, they're trying to serve as many people as possible

00:31:39.080 that have completely different needs versus a business. Take, take anybody listening to this

00:31:43.160 podcast, for example, we're not out here trying to serve everybody. There's a certain demographic

00:31:48.240 that is naturally going to gravitate towards the conversations we're having. So we can cater our

00:31:53.600 business, we can cater our conversations, we can cater our marketing to that specific demographic

00:31:58.560 that makes us much more efficient because we're solving a particular desire or need as opposed

00:32:05.420 to trying to reach the masses and serve everybody the same when they have completely different

00:32:10.020 variables to take into consideration.

00:32:12.000 What you want is you want people to work together voluntarily to solve problems, right? That's what

00:32:17.940 everybody wants. And you want them to do it in the most efficient, effective way possible.

00:32:21.660 Well, markets allow that. And they allow that, like you said, from the smallest scale to the

00:32:26.720 largest scale, central planning, everything's from the top down. And it's very difficult to figure out

00:32:32.440 even simple problems, but especially complex problems. So here's a good example. Let's say

00:32:37.720 government says we want to build a railroad and we want to build it from city A to city B and it needs

00:32:43.740 to, but there's a big mountain in between. We need to figure out if it's better to go through the

00:32:48.880 mountain or to go around the mountain, both of which pose lots of different questions and problems,

00:32:55.060 right? If you go around the mountain, you're going to need different types of engineering. You're

00:32:58.420 going to need more track, maybe more space, more time. If you go through the mountain, you're going

00:33:02.780 to need different type, another type of engineering. You need to cut, you know, break through the

00:33:05.880 mountain. It's just different problems. How do they figure out which one's the most efficient? Well,

00:33:10.920 they have to look at, it's going to be a guess. Now markets just go with what's cheapest,

00:33:15.240 right? Which one's going to cost the least? Well, there's a lot of information in what's the

00:33:18.680 cheapest. It's not just what's the cheapest, right? The cheapest one is telling you there's

00:33:23.680 a lot of things like how much engineers are going to cost. How much is it going to cost to dig through

00:33:27.220 the tunnel? Potential revenue down the road, right? Supply and demand. Which one's more in demand?

00:33:31.320 If something is more in demand, let's say the bulldozers that are needed to, to dig through that

00:33:37.300 mountain are being used for another also very important reason. Well, that means the cost of using

00:33:43.920 those bulldozers is going to be up and expensive. And so I'm going to see that, oh, it's going to cost

00:33:48.420 more to go through the mountain. Let's go around it. And what I've done without realizing it is I've

00:33:52.480 helped allocate resources. See what I'm saying? And not only resources, your resources.

00:33:59.440 Of course. And I think that's the difference is because if you're not, this goes back to the

00:34:04.160 conversation we were having earlier. If you're not generating or don't have your own resources,

00:34:08.400 you have no vested interest in doing what's going to be the most effective and efficient.

00:34:13.860 There's no, there's no reason for you to because they're not your resources and they're potentially

00:34:18.500 infinite when you have the power to tax, for example, versus you and me. I mean, we're in your

00:34:24.900 studio right now. Your resources aren't infinite. No, they're finite. And so you have to decide,

00:34:31.480 is this particular microphone worth it? Is this studio worth it? Or can we do this more efficiently

00:34:36.620 and more effectively somewhere else? Absolutely. And there's also the moral,

00:34:40.200 the moral side of all of this. Like you said, the burden of responsibility is always squarely

00:34:46.620 on the individual. It really is. For example, if you have, and this is a tough discussion to have,

00:34:51.780 let's say you see somebody and they've made just poor decisions for most of their life. They're now in

00:34:57.220 prison, maybe addicted to drugs. The burden of their choices and decisions is on them. Now me as a good

00:35:04.740 person, I may choose to want to help that individual, but there is no burden on me to do

00:35:09.920 so. I didn't make those decisions. You're not required to do that. I shouldn't be, but do I

00:35:14.320 want to? I probably do. And I think we've left that idea of that responsibility where all of a sudden

00:35:20.120 it's like, you know, you've got people arguing where the argument like, you know, my choice,

00:35:24.760 my body. Okay. I can kind of understand that. Sure. But I want you to pay for it. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

00:35:28.960 Yeah. Yeah. That's weird. How did you do that? Like, how did you make that argument?

00:35:33.780 And don't you think that most people, I believe this anyways, that most people are inherently good,

00:35:39.620 that if they have extra resources, I believe that most people will find a way to allocate those to

00:35:45.980 those who are less fortunate. It's been proven time and time again. Look, the freest societies

00:35:50.420 give the most to charity always for a few, and not just more total because they're more prosperous.

00:35:57.560 Sure. Yeah. Percentage-wise.

00:35:59.240 Percentage-wise. Absolutely. And the more government involvement that occurs, the less

00:36:03.860 people tend to give. And I think part of it is you think, oh, well, we have a program for that or

00:36:08.560 whatever. So I don't really need to. So I think that may be a part of it as well. But you're right.

00:36:14.320 I agree with you. I think people are inherently good. And if you leave people alone to work together

00:36:20.760 or not up to them, that people tend to want to help and work together.

00:36:24.960 You know, the other thing about that too, is then you allow individuals to decide where their money

00:36:29.820 goes. For example, maybe a scenario would be, I'm not interested, for example, in the betterment of

00:36:35.940 San Jose as much as you are. Yeah, I live here.

00:36:38.620 And you're not as vested in the betterment of my town in Southern Utah as I am. So I would like my

00:36:44.200 dollars that I've earned and worked towards to go towards things in my community that lift us up

00:36:50.020 versus you over here lifting your community. That's right. So now we have this idea that

00:36:54.920 we're going to lift each other up and help each other out. And you allocate those a little bit

00:36:59.420 better, I think. People, nobody will spend money better than the person who earns it and bears the

00:37:04.080 consequences of not spending it well. That doesn't mean everybody's going to make good decisions,

00:37:09.800 obviously. Let me ask you this though, because I know there's going to be people that hear this

00:37:14.360 conversation and it's valid, is that there's always going to be people who try to take advantage of

00:37:19.320 the system, right? They try to work the system or manipulate the system or have some sort of benefit

00:37:24.780 at somebody else's expense. Do you let that stuff work itself out or does there need to be some sort of

00:37:31.480 regulation and ground rules for that type of behavior?

00:37:35.500 You know, so I'm the product of, and I promise this is connected, I'm the product of poor immigrants

00:37:41.140 who came to this country with nothing and weren't really given much and had to provide for

00:37:47.100 themselves. I grew up middle class. As a result, I have this business. And for most of American history,

00:37:52.560 if you wanted to come here, you could, but you didn't get anything for free. You just came here

00:37:58.720 and then it was up to you. Right. Now it's on you to do. It's on you. You have an opportunity to use it.

00:38:02.780 And what did these people take advantage of? There was really nothing to take advantage of. Either they

00:38:06.880 sank or they swam and most of them swam. The explosion in prosperity that was a result of

00:38:13.560 that and the entrepreneurial spirit in just the things that were created out of that was just

00:38:17.960 incredible. So I think, I think if we have systems in place that can be taken advantage of, I think

00:38:23.620 that's the problem. I think if you eliminate most, if not all of the barriers to enter the market

00:38:28.180 and simultaneously, and you probably can't do this overnight because we're in this situation now,

00:38:35.180 or if we, if we did this overnight, we'd have massive civil unrest. So this would have to be

00:38:39.680 a process, but let's just say that, you know, this, we did this over a period of time and we

00:38:43.240 did this pragmatically. You eliminate barriers to enter the market. So if you want to produce

00:38:48.520 something, sell something, work for someone for whatever rate you and your employer agree upon,

00:38:53.880 you want to learn someone from someone and you want to do it for free just to learn the skills and

00:38:57.540 they're willing to teach you or whatever barriers are gone. The only barriers that exist are the

00:39:01.460 market barriers. In other words, if you produce a shitty product, no one will buy it.

00:39:04.420 Right. You do that. And you also simultaneously eliminate getting free shit for, for doing

00:39:12.260 nothing, the welfare state. I think you'll see that work itself out quite a bit. Now, will there

00:39:17.480 be people who will filter to the bottom, the sick, the ill, the mentally ill people with incredibly

00:39:23.800 difficult circumstances? There definitely will be, I'm sure. But I also think that people will come

00:39:30.980 together and do a damn good job of figuring out solutions for that.

00:39:34.840 Well, there will be people that filter and trickle down to the bottom, but how is that

00:39:38.640 any different than it is now?

00:39:40.260 You're right.

00:39:41.760 You're right. And I think it's worse. It's worse because of the way we handle things now. I think

00:39:46.180 it would be, look at some of the policies that we've passed, you know, on good intentions. Maybe

00:39:50.720 they were good intentions or maybe they were just politicians trying to get votes so they would sell

00:39:54.020 them. But, you know, look at minimum wage laws and yeah, we raise a minimum wage law. Some people

00:39:58.840 make more money, but a lot of people don't get jobs. And a lot of people now don't have the

00:40:03.320 ability to get into a market, to get experience, to be able to move up in that market. And so you

00:40:08.960 get black markets.

00:40:09.580 Right. Because I'm not going to, I'm not going to hire, for example, a teenager to flip burgers

00:40:13.820 for $15 an hour. That's, that sounds absurd.

00:40:16.240 Yeah. So you've, you've raised the barrier into the market tremendously.

00:40:18.980 Right.

00:40:19.180 Or let's say you, you've made bad decisions for a lot of your life. Let's say you addicted to drugs,

00:40:24.220 you went to jail, you get out of jail, you've got a felony, but you're like, man, I want to do the

00:40:28.480 right thing. Right. And you go to an employer and the employer looks at you and you know, they're not

00:40:33.120 a charity. They're not going to hire you just to give you money. They're going to look at your skills

00:40:37.060 and say, well, you're not worth $15. What if you can negotiate that? What if the guy could come look?

00:40:41.660 I have no skills. I've had a bad life. I've had a felony. Here's what I'm gonna do for you. I want to work

00:40:45.880 for you for $3 an hour. Let me prove to you for a month that I'm going to do a good job. And then

00:40:50.300 if you like me, maybe you can pay me more, whatever. Now they may have some, a little bit

00:40:54.180 of leverage. Now maybe they can climb their way back up, but we've, we've done with some of these

00:40:57.580 policies. If we've eliminated that and made it quite difficult, the unintended consequences of the,

00:41:02.420 of a lot of these policies, which by the way, a lot of these policies, if you look at the history

00:41:05.380 of some of these policies, we knew exactly what they would do and they weren't passed for,

00:41:08.800 for good reason.

00:41:09.840 I think we talked about this the last time we had this conversation.

00:41:12.200 Absolutely. A few months ago, I went up to Napa, which is not too far from here,

00:41:16.400 about an hour and a half away, you know, wine country, right? So me and my girlfriend go up

00:41:19.460 there. There's one distillery in Napa, a bunch of wineries, only one distillery. And that's because

00:41:25.580 they make laws preventing distilleries, you know, protect competition.

00:41:28.600 This is the taxi thing we're talking about earlier.

00:41:30.260 So I get in there and I get a tour of it and it was a great Napa Valley distillery. I'm gonna give

00:41:34.640 them a shout out. Great place. It was a lot of fun. And they're making these spirits that are like

00:41:39.780 gin or vodka, but they can't call it gin or vodka because it wasn't made in this particular place

00:41:46.520 or way because of these ridiculous laws. Who do you think pushed these laws and regulations for?

00:41:51.340 Is it to protect the consumer or to protect the gin makers who wanted a business? Of course.

00:41:56.260 Absolutely. And so a lot of these things are passed with those intentions and they end up

00:42:00.980 screwing everybody. They end up screwing the consumer. They protect the small sliver of the

00:42:05.740 population. Everybody else gets screwed. And I'm just talking about alcohol, but I mean,

00:42:09.660 we can look at what's going on right now with this whole tariff thing that they're trying to do back

00:42:13.600 and forth. You know, every time they pass a new tariff, it just makes things more expensive.

00:42:18.080 Well, here, I mean, here's the deal to come back to individual responsibility. If prices are too high

00:42:21.860 on a particular item because of tariffs or whatever else, don't buy it.

00:42:24.760 Yeah. And enough people don't buy something. What happens? Well, prices go down.

00:42:30.180 That's right. It regulates itself. If we get out of the way of it.

00:42:35.600 You know, and I love having this conversation, especially the difficult parts of this conversation.

00:42:40.540 Here's a great one. There are price gouging laws in many, many states. So let's say you live in a

00:42:47.780 state and there's a natural disaster, right? Earthquake, hurricane, whatever. And it's just

00:42:53.420 terrible. You know, we lose power, lose electricity. I need water. We need to go buy a bottle of water.

00:42:58.740 We need clean water. So I go to the local, whatever, you know, convenience store. And I

00:43:03.900 see a regular eight ounce bottle of water, $25. How dare you take advantage of this emergency

00:43:11.160 situation to charge $25 for a bottle of water? So they pass law saying you can't do that. And it

00:43:17.000 sounds good, right? It sounds right. Like, oh, that sucks. You're in a terrible situation, emergency.

00:43:22.960 These businesses should not be able to charge shit tons of money for these essential things

00:43:27.200 because the people need it. So they pass these laws. Well, what ends up happening is the shortages.

00:43:30.820 You end up getting shortages because we don't understand why the prices went up in the first

00:43:34.460 place. The prices went up in the first place because there was low supply and demand and high

00:43:39.420 demand. Now, why is that a good thing? Why do we want to allow the convenience store to charge $25

00:43:44.960 for the bottle of water? Because that is a powerful signal to tell water producers, water bottle

00:43:52.160 producers, hey, we need more water here. It's selling for $25 a bottle. What do you think

00:43:56.540 the free market's going to do? You're going to have all these producers rushing in to put water

00:44:01.380 in there. Which reduces price. Which then brings the price. But people don't have shortages. Instead,

00:44:05.960 what you get are shortages. No water available, no gas available. And so those are the unintended

00:44:11.420 consequences of laws that have good intentions. Here's another one. And I love the touchy subject.

00:44:18.440 Before you go to that, let me add one more thing. The other thing it does is if you're on the

00:44:22.540 sidelines and you see that, it puts, again, the burden of responsibility to make sure that

00:44:26.980 you're adequately prepared on your shoulders. So for example, my wife and I, we've always done,

00:44:32.380 since we've been married, food storage and emergency preparedness. Why? Because if something

00:44:36.440 like this happens, we don't want to be in a situation where somebody else has control or

00:44:40.080 power over us. Even to the slightest degree, we want to be able to maintain as much power as we can.

00:44:44.720 Absolutely. And that is something that this country was founded on. One of the reasons why

00:44:49.860 we are where we are is because people had that, I will take care of me type of attitude. And it's

00:44:56.580 just personal responsibility gives you purpose and meaning. It's empowering. And without it,

00:45:02.660 you live a potential life of nihilism and depression. It's just the truth. When you do

00:45:09.060 things for yourself, and I know this very clearly, I'm not a psychologist, but I'm talking from a health

00:45:15.100 and fitness perspective as a personal trainer. When I have clients who assume that personal

00:45:20.220 responsibility for their own health and do those things versus take this pill or get the surgery

00:45:25.260 that gets you to lose weight, vastly different, vastly different in their success rates and the

00:45:29.960 way they feel about their success. And I'm sure the way that it translates into other areas of their

00:45:34.520 lives as well. Across the board. Two demographics that were my favorite demographics to train as a

00:45:39.760 personal trainer. The elderly and younger population. The elderly for different reasons. I love

00:45:44.100 training because they're wise and I learn a lot from them and they progress differently and it's

00:45:48.200 fun to watch. I love training kids because kids would come to me and many times parents would bring

00:45:54.140 me kids because they needed some guidance, not just in fitness, but usually in life. So the parents,

00:45:59.860 usually the parents were my clients and they'd say, Hey, I want you to train my son or my daughter.

00:46:03.320 They're having trouble in school. I think this may be a good thing. And so these kids were kind of

00:46:07.740 going in the wrong direction, so to speak, many times. So they'd come see me and we'd work out. And let's say

00:46:13.260 today we did 10 pushups. They'd come see me again next week. We're doing pushups. They did 12

00:46:18.080 pushups. I would always make sure to stop after that set. And I'd look at them and say last and

00:46:22.940 I'd write it down for them. So I'd show them and say, look, last week you did 10, this week you did

00:46:25.980 12. Do you know what that means? They'd look at me like, well, I got stronger. I said, yeah, but it

00:46:29.320 means something else too. You are fundamentally a different person than you were last week. Last week,

00:46:35.160 your body could only produce 10 pushups. This week, your body can produce 12 pushups. It is not the

00:46:41.940 same body. You put in hard work and this is what you get for it. And their light bulbs will start

00:46:47.080 going off. Next thing you'd know, after several months of training and them seeing how this

00:46:52.360 responsibility translates in very black and white, easy ways for them to read, now they would start

00:46:57.220 applying it to more complex areas of their life. School, friendships, relationships, work, everything.

00:47:03.100 Everything. And so my example with that is personal responsibility is a very, very important thing

00:47:10.300 to understand. And what we're talking about does reveal that to us in ways that if the nanny state

00:47:17.120 takes care of you, really, really doesn't. And we see that in productivity. I mean, we saw what

00:47:21.120 happened with the Soviet Union. We still see that what's happening in areas where it's much more

00:47:25.320 controlled versus areas that are much more free.

00:47:28.320 Why is it so difficult for us to see this? It's really interesting because I know somebody's

00:47:33.720 listening to this and they're thinking the exact opposite of everything we're saying. And they're

00:47:37.760 saying, why is it so difficult for Sal and Ryan to understand their perspective? Like, why do we see

00:47:44.580 our perspective is the right one? And this is it. This is the solution.

00:47:50.600 There is no problem with socialism or communism so long, here is the problem, right?

00:47:57.680 So long as it's voluntary. And that's where it all breaks down. Communism, socialism, systems where

00:48:04.900 they don't have personal responsibility. They don't work unless people are forced into that system.

00:48:11.560 Because there are communities, and I don't have any examples offhand, but I was listening to a

00:48:15.480 podcast about Native American Indians where these communities and tribes would voluntarily

00:48:20.040 give their possessions to the community. And they would live as a community serving each other,

00:48:25.700 helping each other, sharing resources, but that's voluntary.

00:48:28.600 It's got to be voluntary. It's people working together. What are free markets?

00:48:32.580 People working together. That's the big problem.

00:48:36.200 People have such a weird concept of money. Like if everybody just understood, it's basically just

00:48:41.480 an agreed upon medium for transacting business, right? I think your services are worth this much,

00:48:49.960 and I would rather have money so that I can go get something I want versus whatever it is you're

00:48:55.040 providing.

00:48:55.900 Money is one of the greatest inventions of all time. And people are like, oh, you know, money is the root

00:48:59.720 of all evil. No, no, no, no, no. Money is just paper. It represents something. So it's not evil or good.

00:49:04.240 Right.

00:49:04.520 It's an, you know...

00:49:05.340 Potentially what it represents or the way that you approach it could potentially.

00:49:08.960 Exactly. But money itself is just representation of it.

00:49:11.700 Right. It's an inanimate object.

00:49:12.280 Yeah. Before money, we had to trade and I had to have something you wanted and you had to have something I

00:49:16.140 wanted, which poses its own problems. When there's a third party, right? Well, if you make shoes

00:49:20.340 and I raise chickens and you want chickens, but I don't want shoes, guess what? We can't work

00:49:25.600 together. Yep. No business is getting together. There isn't. But if we have money that has this value

00:49:29.920 that can be traded for whatever, now you can get chickens for me and you just got to give me money

00:49:35.500 and now we can work together. So that's all money it is. It just allowed everybody to be able to work

00:49:39.420 with everybody without having to have exactly what that person wants. It fixed the problem that trade had.

00:49:45.660 But in these examples you give of these small communities that were socialistic, if you will,

00:49:51.720 very different on a small scale. Families are very socialistic, right?

00:49:55.180 True. Good point.

00:49:55.880 But there's not a problem with that because there's a lot of checks and balances there.

00:49:59.280 Look, here's what happens in Native American communities with a lazy individual who doesn't

00:50:03.500 want to work. He doesn't get food. People think, oh, no, no, no. Everybody got everything. No,

00:50:07.720 it doesn't work that way. If you're able-bodied male and we're going hunting...

00:50:13.060 Yeah. And you're not partly hunting.

00:50:14.060 And you're like, nah, I'm just going to stay here and just, you know, I'm not going to go. I'm just

00:50:17.260 going to hang out, get a suntan or whatever. You're going to be out of the tribe. You're going

00:50:21.080 to starve. So I'm sorry it doesn't work the same way. Whereas these large...

00:50:25.120 That's a good point.

00:50:25.500 That breaks down on a large scale because we can't possibly... How can we do that with a town even of

00:50:31.440 a thousand people? I can't see what everybody's doing. I don't know. Those checks and balances don't

00:50:36.100 work. So that's where it all breaks down. And that's where markets really, really flourish.

00:50:40.780 And so the problem is that voluntary issue. The problem is at some point you have to force

00:50:45.760 people to do what you want. And what happens when they don't? What happens when we enact this system

00:50:51.680 of this communist system or the socialist system? And I'm this super intelligent. This is always

00:50:57.420 right. This is always what it is. It's these leaders who think they know better than everybody

00:51:00.600 and they're super smart. Maybe they are really smart.

00:51:02.560 Well, I don't think... I mean, maybe it's part to do with that, but I also think it's a little bit

00:51:07.340 more devious than that as well. Oh, of course. Not that, hey, I know what's best, but hey,

00:51:11.960 I want everybody else to participate in socialism or communism. I'm above that though. I want to be

00:51:17.620 the beneficiary of this system. Well, you're absolutely right. A hundred percent. But even

00:51:21.640 if they were like good about it and they're like, okay, here's the system. Nobody gets paid. We own

00:51:26.540 all the means of production. We own all the whatever. Everybody has to work. What do you do when you have

00:51:31.420 5,000 people that are like, I'm not doing it? How do you get them to do it? You know what you end up

00:51:36.140 doing? You end up killing them, which is exactly what it... We see this all the time. We've seen

00:51:41.680 this throughout. The 20th century is a great example of that. I mean, God, communism or socialism,

00:51:46.420 whatever you want to call it, was responsible for probably over a hundred million deaths all by

00:51:49.900 itself. Part of it, starvation because allocation of resources was just terrible because you can't

00:51:55.040 read. There's no way you can read the signals as well as markets do. So you had like, for example,

00:51:59.920 the Soviet Union had acres and acres and acres of fields of wheat that would go rotten because they

00:52:07.340 didn't know how much to produce, where to put them, how to distribute it well. So they would just

00:52:12.560 waste of resources. You had that happen. And then you also had, of course, people who just,

00:52:18.360 they had to determine who were the elite and who weren't the elite. You know, they went into the

00:52:22.080 Ukraine. They saw farmers who had a little bit of land who were producing a lot of the food.

00:52:25.840 And they said, no, you're the elite. You guys either leave your farms or we'll kill you.

00:52:29.880 Right. They killed them all.

00:52:30.820 And you had starvation to the point where there were people who were eating each other. There was

00:52:35.400 cannibalism going on because of it. And it's crazy to me today that, you know, if I were to walk around

00:52:40.200 with a t-shirt with a swastika on it, I would get just a flyably shunned, you know, for wearing a

00:52:46.320 shirt. But if I wore a hammer and sickle shirt from the, you know, from the Soviet Union,

00:52:51.180 nobody says anything. Let me tell you something right now. Yes. Nazis were disgusting.

00:52:54.780 Soviet Union actually killed more people than Nazis. And they were just as bad. Maybe their

00:53:00.000 intentions were quote unquote good, but what they did was absolutely terrible and horrendous. So

00:53:04.720 it's kind of weird that we, you know, that we have that. I'm not quite sure why we can debate and

00:53:09.080 argue all day long, but it's funny to me. I think people, when they think, oh, this will just work

00:53:15.560 if we just make everybody work together, they don't understand that they have to voluntarily do it.

00:53:21.120 And you're right. If everybody volunteers to work together, society would improve,

00:53:25.660 but they have to voluntarily do it.

00:53:26.340 They have to want to do it because there has to be that desire. But the other side of it too,

00:53:30.280 is that I don't want everybody doing the same thing. I don't want that to be dictated as well.

00:53:35.720 There's certain things that naturally and inevitably through practice or my own skillset or the way I was

00:53:40.980 born or the way my mind or body works that I'm going to be better at than you are and vice versa.

00:53:45.560 Now it's up to me to find what that is and it's up to you to find what that is. But if we're doing

00:53:49.900 the same task or you're doing the task that maybe I should be doing and I'm doing the task maybe you

00:53:54.880 should be doing, again, we get back to these inefficiencies. And so there's this real desire

00:53:59.500 for equality of outcomes when the input- Oh God, that's such a dangerous thing.

00:54:03.500 It is. I mean, the input, if you want to consider that, whether that's human capital or the resources

00:54:08.540 we have, will never be equal. Therefore, the outcome can never be equal.

00:54:12.480 Well, two things here. Equality of outcome is deadly. Every single time it's applied,

00:54:19.120 it kills people either because of inefficiencies or because people try to force it to happen and

00:54:24.320 people who don't want to end up getting killed or thrown into gulags or prisons or whatever.

00:54:28.480 So that's number one. Number two, it's impossible to enact in a society that naturally creates a value

00:54:35.220 system, a hierarchy, if you will. Now people ask, well, what does that mean? Well,

00:54:39.640 every decision you make is based off of an internal value system. The reason why you choose

00:54:44.620 something over something else is because you value something over something else. That means

00:54:48.600 naturally you're going to have people who are going to be more valued than others or skills that are

00:54:54.600 more valued than others and people who are better at those skills than other people. Naturally,

00:54:59.500 you're going to have people who are worth more in the market or maybe have more friends or who are

00:55:05.460 more popular than other people. Just the fucking way it is. You would not be able to navigate your

00:55:10.740 life if you didn't have an internal value system. You just wouldn't. Why do you pick the shirt that

00:55:16.200 you're wearing today? Why did you drive the direction you did? Why did you eat what you ate? Why did you

00:55:21.880 marry who you married? Why do you talk to the people you talk to? Because you have this internal value

00:55:26.480 system where you value certain things over other things. So to create an equality of outcome

00:55:31.240 is impossible. It will never work and trying to force it causes massive, massive problems. And

00:55:39.060 this is not theoretical. We've seen examples of this. Again, the 20th century is a fantastic example

00:55:44.980 of this. One of the other things about mankind that makes us so incredible and amazing is our

00:55:51.100 ability, and you touched on this when you said, I don't want everybody doing the same thing,

00:55:54.780 is our ability to specialize. Right.

00:55:56.600 For most of human history, when we were hunter-gatherers or whatever, you had to know how

00:56:01.740 to do everything. You had to know how to hunt. You had to know how to build shelter. You needed to

00:56:05.140 know how to build your own tools and weapons. And you had to know how to do all these different

00:56:09.160 things. At some point, when markets allowed people to trade skills and specialize where maybe I'm really

00:56:18.620 good at making weapons and I'm better than you are, and you're a really, really good hunter. Now we can

00:56:23.840 trade or we have the money which makes those things available. Now people start to specialize and we

00:56:28.820 can build upon skills of the past where today, I don't know how to make a car. In fact, nobody knows

00:56:35.700 how to make a car today.

00:56:36.680 They know how to put together a part or make that put together a part.

00:56:39.540 There's people who know how to make the tires. There's people who know how to make the shocks

00:56:42.460 and the whatever. Not one person knows how to make a car. And so we have specialization, which has

00:56:47.440 progressed us incredibly. And people take it for granted. Let's be honest here. The natural state of

00:56:53.440 man is one of poverty and squalor and it's difficult and grinding. And we live in a time

00:56:59.980 now where, I mean, we're spoiled. We're absolutely spoiled. What's that saying? Hard times make strong

00:57:06.480 men. Strong men make good times. Good times make weak men. Weak men make hard times and the cycle

00:57:11.400 continues. And so I almost feel like we may be in that struggle right now where we've got such good

00:57:18.420 times. We're so spoiled to where some kid in his mom's basement can get on his iPhone. The irony

00:57:24.660 never escapes them, which is strange. Get on their iPhone and buy a Che Guevara t-shirt or a communism

00:57:33.580 t-shirt through this capitalistic free market society. It's just insane to me.

00:57:38.440 Right.

00:57:38.840 It's absolutely insane to me.

00:57:39.660 And then people complain about it.

00:57:40.900 And then on top of it, they complain. I had a debate with a very intelligent individual. We have

00:57:47.020 a forum, a fitness forum, but on there sometimes we'll have discussions like this. And I love having

00:57:52.160 discussions. I'm always open. That's one thing too. I may disagree with you, but if we're having a

00:57:56.680 civil discussion, I'll go all day long with you. And I'll respect the fact that you have a different

00:58:00.120 opinion. I may think you're an idiot, but-

00:58:02.140 But you're welcome to be an idiot.

00:58:03.340 Yeah. And if you're not an asshole, we can talk all day long.

00:58:05.940 And there was a guy in my forum who's like super pro-communist. And we were going back and forth

00:58:11.760 and I said, you know, one of the biggest differences between you and I is in the society

00:58:15.140 that I advocate, you are free to have those views. In the society that you advocate, I am not.

00:58:21.100 A person advocating for volunteerism, individualism, free markets in a society like that

00:58:27.500 will be censored or thrown in jail or put to death. That's the big difference.

00:58:31.980 Guys, just a quick pause to tell you about the order of man store. I know I don't talk about it

00:58:38.600 a whole lot, but if you don't already know, yes, we do have a store where you can pick up all kinds

00:58:43.780 of gear and merchandise. We just came out with our new jujitsu rash guard by origin main. So it's a

00:58:49.360 collaboration between order of man and origin main. It looks incredible. We've got a half a dozen

00:58:54.420 different hats, several shirts, including some new ones that are going to be released in the coming

00:58:58.560 weeks, patches, decals. There's a whole lot more over there. As you know, we don't do a whole lot

00:59:03.360 of advertising on this show. I only advertise with companies that I know that I like, that I trust,

00:59:08.980 that I personally work with. So if you feel so inclined, picking up some order of man gear is a

00:59:15.100 great way to support the cause and the mission of reclaiming masculinity and helps me continue to

00:59:21.020 elevate the conversations that we're having here in the podcast. So again, if you're interested,

00:59:25.080 head to store.orderofman.com. You can see what's available, pick up your gear, pick up your

00:59:30.580 merchandise. And when you do make sure that you post those things on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter,

00:59:35.580 wherever you are, tag me on those things. I'll share it on my page. It's pretty cool. When you

00:59:40.340 see somebody who you've never met, who's wearing an order of man shirt or hat, or has a decal on the

00:59:44.920 back of his, uh, his truck or vehicle. Anyways, again, it's store.orderofman.com. Check it out after

00:59:51.940 the show. In the meantime, we will get back to my conversation with Sal.

00:59:57.020 Yeah. I just think it's so interesting that people participate in what they pretend to hate

01:00:04.380 and despise so much. And yet they're, it comes down to this. They agree with that position or hold

01:00:10.380 that position so long as it's convenient. And the minute it becomes inconvenient for them,

01:00:17.400 then they no longer hold that position. Right. And they make little exceptions to

01:00:23.440 what they pretend to be so principled about. Was it cognitive dissonance, right? It's like

01:00:28.460 they believe so deeply in their, in this belief system that they refused because any, if they

01:00:33.740 change it, it fundamentally changes who they are. And that's obviously a very painful thing to do.

01:00:39.320 And so you have a lot of cognitive dissonance going on. Sometimes I almost wish that people who

01:00:44.340 got what they wanted in some alternate universe. So they could come back and be like, Oh shit.

01:00:49.940 Like that's not, maybe that wasn't such a great idea. That wasn't a great, although I don't know

01:00:53.920 if that would even work. It's crazy. Like we have so many examples of, of the failures and they,

01:00:58.460 and people still refuse. Part of the problem too, I think is that markets are reflection of society

01:01:03.960 and markets aren't perfect. Not because markets aren't perfect, but because people aren't perfect.

01:01:08.780 And so we look at things like, Hey, how come Kim Kardashian's making so much money,

01:01:14.480 you know, doing nothing. Right. And it's like, well, a lot of people choose to make that happen.

01:01:19.980 Right. Just decide not to, and it'll be gone. Sure. Tomorrow. Uh, you know, Hey,

01:01:24.420 why is there a liquor store in every corner in my town? Because people are buying liquor.

01:01:28.580 Because people drink. Capitalism and markets didn't create these problems. Yeah. It's the people

01:01:32.520 who decided to engage in whatever their purchasing habits are. And so they want to go in,

01:01:36.580 they want to try and change that through law and legislation without realizing the unintended

01:01:41.360 consequences of those types of policies. Well, let's talk about consequences because I think

01:01:45.180 one thing that I see is that society, we, I say we as in collectively society has tried to strip away

01:01:51.260 the consequences of our behavior. And when we do that, I see that with kids all the time, you know,

01:01:56.100 kids misbehaving and parents won't correct or discipline their children because that's not fun.

01:02:00.780 I don't want to discipline my children. I don't want to get after my kids. And yet I do because

01:02:06.160 I want them to be self-sufficient contributing members of society when they grow up. But I think

01:02:12.220 a lot of people look at other people with these bleeding hearts and think, Oh, if I'm mean to

01:02:17.520 this person, or I, I uphold this standard, like how, how are they going to feel? And are they going

01:02:22.400 to be okay? I had that on the flight over here. There's, there was this gal, her son, her little

01:02:27.340 boy, he's probably five, six years old, old enough to know that he shouldn't be behaving the way that

01:02:32.240 he was. And she thought it was cute or something. There was no structure, no discipline, no consequence

01:02:38.480 to his behavior. And I just thought, you know, you think that kid's a little turd right now.

01:02:43.540 Wait till he's 18. Wait till he's 30. Wait till he starts raising kids. What does that look like then?

01:02:49.240 Yeah. I, you know, I had a situation like that a week ago with my son. So my son just,

01:02:52.940 he just turned 13 and he plays, he likes to play video games. And I don't remember the game that he

01:02:58.820 likes to play with his friends. They'll meet up and do this thing where they do tournaments and stuff.

01:03:01.640 And you can save up coins or points. And then when you save them up, you could buy,

01:03:06.920 you know, virtual products or whatever. And it took him, I don't know, seven or eight months

01:03:11.800 to save up this X amount of coins to buy this particular thing. He called me and he was really

01:03:18.440 upset. And I'm like, what's going on? And he goes, I got ripped off. I got scammed. And I'm like,

01:03:22.760 well, what happened? He goes, oh, this guy said he would give me this thing and I ended up not

01:03:26.100 getting what it was. And now he's not returning my messages. And so I sat down with it and he was real

01:03:31.220 upset. And I could tell he wanted me to give him the money to buy those coins back. So I sat him

01:03:35.980 down and I said, okay, what were some things you could have done to double and triple check that

01:03:40.920 this person was who they were? And he went through and he identified the mistakes and they were small

01:03:47.200 mistakes. And I said, now, what if you had still gotten ripped off? Then what do you think you

01:03:50.800 would realize? I said, well, that sometimes that happens and I need to kind of understand it,

01:03:55.480 whatever. And at the end of it, I said, look, son, I said, I want to buy those coins for you to give

01:04:00.960 you that back, but I'm not going to because I know you're not going to do it again. I know you learned

01:04:05.380 your lesson and you're not going to do it again. And that's not why I'm going to give you money for

01:04:08.960 those coins. He had to learn. You have to learn. And it sucks. Oh, come on, man. Nobody wants to

01:04:14.800 experience hardship and you do not want to see hardship in your kids. But if you don't allow them to

01:04:19.900 experience that, it's going to get worse. I guarantee you. Yeah. And I definitely think

01:04:25.260 that there should be laws to protect you from other people doing shit to you, other people

01:04:30.400 stealing from you. But laws designed to protect you from yourself, that is an insane concept.

01:04:37.460 That is just wild to me. Right. I always thought that way with seatbelts. You have to wear a seatbelt.

01:04:42.980 Why? Or a helmet. Or a helmet. Exactly. I mean, I don't want to see somebody get injured in an

01:04:48.820 accident, but we all kind of know, right? If you're riding a motorcycle without a helmet,

01:04:53.180 you run a pretty good risk of being injured, if not killed. And if you want to make that decision

01:04:59.920 with that information at hand, weird, but okay. Feel free. Well, here's the thing. This is what

01:05:04.720 it says. First off, if we're paying for other people's shit through taxes, let's say we had like

01:05:09.140 single payer healthcare, then the government can make awesome cases for protecting you against

01:05:14.660 yourself, right? Oh, well, you know, we're trying to reduce the amount of fatalities. We're

01:05:18.660 trying to reduce the amount of injuries or whatever. Then the government can get in and

01:05:22.680 really start to make the case. And people will kind of agree and be like, well, since we're

01:05:26.180 paying for healthcare, we should have laws that prevent people from getting fat. Yeah. You know,

01:05:30.780 so that dictating your lifestyle. That's the slope. That's the slippery slope we end up on.

01:05:34.960 Right. And that's a scary one. So that's number one. Number two, it's a strange concept. Let's say

01:05:40.580 we don't have that and you got to pay for yourself and all that stuff. Here's a question I like to ask

01:05:44.180 people who make arguments for that. And I love doing, especially to the ultra super progressive

01:05:50.640 liberal who argues that we definitely should have some of these laws to protect people against

01:05:54.840 themselves. And I'll say to them, I'll say, okay, well, who owns your body? Who owns your body and

01:05:59.800 your mind? And actually I'll argue this with the ultra conservatives as well when it comes to drug

01:06:04.500 policy. Cause there are a lot of times the ultra white wing conservatives are pro hardcore drug laws.

01:06:09.600 And I'll say the same thing to them. Sure. Who owns your body and your mind? Well, I do.

01:06:14.120 Actually, you don't. You can't do whatever you want to your own body and your own mind.

01:06:19.060 If you go in a car and you drive without a seatbelt, they'll force you to pay money. Right. If you don't

01:06:25.020 pay that fine, eventually you could probably get thrown in jail. Right. Take your freedom.

01:06:28.720 What if you want to take a drug to alter your mind? What if you want to take drugs and just get

01:06:32.700 yourself into a stupor and you're not hurting anybody. You're just on your own fucking your own

01:06:37.260 mind and body up. You could get thrown in jail. That is an assault on Liberty. That is frightening

01:06:42.000 to me. I don't even own my own body. And let's play this out a little bit. Cause I think the

01:06:46.060 argument is, well, that becomes either a detriment to society or the potential risk of hurting another

01:06:52.180 individual. You're right. So here's the thing, the potential, I don't like that. If you become a

01:06:57.720 risk, then yeah, you can get in trouble. If you do drugs and then drive or do drugs and then steal

01:07:04.600 or do drugs and then hurt someone, well, that's different.

01:07:07.580 So you're not, so let's just take drinking and driving, for example, it's not so much the

01:07:11.940 drinking that that's fine. All right. Sure. It's the driving and putting other people at risk.

01:07:16.760 That would be the issue. Completely different. Or if you're doing drugs and then because of the drugs,

01:07:21.440 now you're losing your mind and you're becoming violent. The violence is the problem, not the fact

01:07:25.980 that you've done something to your own body. I mean, you own your body and your mind or you're supposed

01:07:30.520 to, but you really don't. It's really, really a strange concept to think that the government can

01:07:34.920 tell you what you can and can't do with your own body, what you can and can't risk with your own

01:07:40.200 body. I can't get on a motorcycle and drive without a helmet. Why? It's my body. If I die,

01:07:45.740 if I get hurt and whatever, it's me. That is a crazy assault on liberty. And a lot of these laws

01:07:51.220 were initially passed, like drug laws, for example. They weren't passed to protect us. That's for sure.

01:07:56.240 We know- No, I mean, this is industry, protecting industry and business. I've done a little bit

01:08:00.340 of research on the hemp industry, and that's pretty wild how it was protecting, if I remember

01:08:05.440 correctly, oil. Is it paper? Yeah. Paper, because all the wonderful things that hemp can actually do.

01:08:10.780 Yeah. You had, I think it was, I don't know, maybe Doug can look this up, William Hurst,

01:08:14.460 if I wasn't mistaken, who owned all the paper mills or a lot of paper mills and also was printing

01:08:18.940 newspapers. Hemp existed for a long time, by the way. I think the Declaration of Independence

01:08:23.160 was written on hemp, if I'm not mistaken. I actually just came across an article just

01:08:27.080 yesterday that George Washington said to whoever was helping him plant his fields and manage his

01:08:33.980 farms that plant the hemp seed as much as we can, everywhere we can. So it's kind of interesting.

01:08:40.360 Anyways. Yeah. So, but hemp at that time didn't pose any risk to paper because it was a difficult

01:08:45.020 and expensive process to extract the fiber from the hemp plant. Well, an invention was, and I don't

01:08:49.460 remember the name of the invention, but they had invented this machine that was able to extract

01:08:53.540 the fiber at a very fast, efficient, and quick rate and was able to create paper from hemp at

01:08:59.280 competitive rates or cheaper than through trees. And hemp grows very quickly and it doesn't take as

01:09:06.080 much resources. So William Hurst put in his newspapers, started advertising propaganda and

01:09:13.820 lobbying government to make, and they came up saying their yellow journalism. Yeah. Oh yeah.

01:09:19.380 Demonize cannabis plant and spread public perception that there were connections between

01:09:23.260 cannabis and violent crime. Right. They invented the word marijuana, which was a Mexican word.

01:09:27.260 They said Mexicans and blacks are using this drug, raping white women, whatever government starts

01:09:32.780 passing these crazy laws and he eliminated his competition. And that's kind of the beginning of

01:09:37.560 drug prohibition and how it started, but it really didn't kick into, it really didn't kick into high

01:09:42.420 gear until the Nixon administration. And by the way, you can actually go and see exactly. This isn't

01:09:49.800 conspiracy. This is a hundred percent why they pass these laws. It's not conspiracy anymore, but at the

01:09:55.700 time, you know, during the Nixon administration, you had a very loud counterculture movement. It was a

01:10:01.580 lot of upheaval. People talk about the political climate now and how crazy it is. It doesn't even come

01:10:06.160 close. We had assassinations. You had civil rights leaders getting assassinated. You had, you know,

01:10:11.120 crazy shit. We had homegrown terrorism going on. You had protests that were just insane over the

01:10:15.480 Vietnam war. So the government at the time, you know, we had the, we had the cold war. We were

01:10:19.640 in full swing with the cold war. You had the CIA that was really created to combat the cold war and

01:10:25.160 their job is to look at domestic threats and they saw, okay, Soviet union, major, you know, domestic

01:10:30.400 threat, counterculture, another major threat to domestic sovereignty. What can we do about them?

01:10:36.860 Well, we can't throw them in jail because they're protesting peacefully. A lot of them are. And

01:10:41.740 that's protected. That's a protected Liberty, right? That's protected the bill of rights.

01:10:45.840 How are we going to fight this counterculture? And so they came up with the brilliant idea of

01:10:49.920 making the drugs that they use the most, the highest priority schedule one, throw them in jail,

01:10:56.060 get them off the streets. And so look at the drugs that are schedule one, LSD, mushrooms,

01:11:01.060 heroin and marijuana. And those were the drugs of choice, especially marijuana and LSD. Those were

01:11:08.000 the drugs of choice for the counterculture. And it was completely, and then the propaganda went out

01:11:11.900 and it was, it was used to try to shut down the counterculture. And we're still in the throes of

01:11:16.700 that terrible policy, which has cost the silver, I don't know how many trillions of dollars and

01:11:21.200 resulted in many, many fatherless homes and black markets, which have created, just generated

01:11:27.520 tremendous amounts of violence. And then these dark ways of generating money through the CIA now,

01:11:33.160 through the black markets, all kinds of stuff that's happened. That's just absolutely terrible.

01:11:35.760 And all under the premise of protecting you against yourself, which is just insane.

01:11:39.280 It is. I was watching a show. It's one of these like prison shows or whatever. And they were going

01:11:43.580 through the statistics of, uh, of drug crime. How many people are in here because they smoked a joint?

01:11:50.740 You know, like, is that something I'm going to do? No, probably not. But I just, I see a huge

01:11:55.280 disconnect between those choices and being locked in prison. It's a really fast, like just an

01:12:02.600 interesting thing. Show me the victim. You know, like if there's no victim, I don't understand why,

01:12:07.340 like if I hurt myself, I'm not victimizing. It's me. Even if you found me in possession of,

01:12:11.720 you know, a bunch of, you know, cocaine, right? I haven't done anything with it. I haven't hurt anybody,

01:12:16.220 you know, and we can talk about whether or not I'm trying to sell it and all that stuff. And that

01:12:19.720 I feel like a different, but if it's just my own thing, it's very interesting that we think, oh,

01:12:25.060 we want to help you. So what we're going to do is we're going to ruin your life. We're going to

01:12:28.260 throw you in a cage. You're going to have a tough time getting a job now. Right. And your family's

01:12:32.420 going to be without you. And when you come out, you won't have any skills. You're going to work

01:12:36.500 in the black market. Right. It's a very, very interesting policy. Uh, God, what country was it

01:12:41.620 that passed Portugal? Is it Portugal? I think it was Portugal, Portugal, uh, decriminalized. Maybe you can

01:12:48.120 look this up, Doug. I think it was Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use,

01:12:52.980 all drugs. If you're caught with any personal use amount of any drug that there it is, it is

01:12:59.720 Portugal crack, cocaine, heroin, whatever. And they've done this now 12 years or 12 or 13 years.

01:13:06.280 They've had this policy. They passed this policy and they said, 2001. Yeah. Oh, even longer. What has

01:13:12.040 happened as a result of this policy? Drug use has dropped. The amount of people infected with

01:13:17.280 things like HIV and HIV has dropped. The overdose rate has dropped considerably. It's been a resounding

01:13:24.620 success. It's saved them money. Why? What's the premise behind that?

01:13:29.560 So instead of taking people and throwing them in jail, if they see you with this thing, they'll tell

01:13:33.240 you, Hey, you know, don't get caught with this again. If they catch you again, they may give you,

01:13:37.140 they may do a fine or they may say, Hey, instead of paying this fine, you can enter into this

01:13:41.340 rehab program or whatever, but you've reduced the black market or at least the violence of the

01:13:46.500 black market. You now have people who can seek help if they think they need it.

01:13:51.300 It's almost like the child who finds his dad's gun, you know, and he's like, I want to play with

01:13:56.700 this because he's not supposed to versus me. I introduced my children to firearms, not to an

01:14:02.260 age where they don't understand, of course, but by the time they're four and five years old,

01:14:06.220 they might be shooting a BB gun to a pellet gun to a 22. I don't want that to be a mystery.

01:14:11.860 Like, I don't want it to be something so attractive because they know they can't have

01:14:15.920 it that they need to go sneak into my safe and try to pull out my gun.

01:14:19.200 You don't know how right you are. You know, teen use of marijuana in states where it's been

01:14:23.420 legalized now for a little while has actually dropped.

01:14:25.740 Right. Cause they're like, eh, it's not that cool.

01:14:28.100 It's not rebellious. You know, it's like, well, that's not going to do anything.

01:14:32.160 The only population that it's actually gone up quite a bit are the baby boomers.

01:14:36.500 They've actually, they've actually, I can see that.

01:14:38.680 And it's because they've reduced their prescription drug use.

01:14:41.020 Well, that's medical use. I'm sure of it.

01:14:43.040 Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I, you know, policies like this, we have examples. They do work. I

01:14:47.580 think the example, the reason why we passed some of these policies in the first place. And again,

01:14:51.300 I think it's insane that we pass policies that say things like, you know, there's no victim,

01:14:55.780 but we're going to make this a crime anyway. Prostitution is another good example. I'm not an

01:14:59.020 advocate for it. I don't think it's a great thing, but it's very strange that you get thrown in

01:15:02.740 jail for paying for something that you can do for free and not get thrown in jail. Very weird to me

01:15:06.820 that that's the case. We were talking earlier in this episode about how technology is decentralizing

01:15:12.860 things and changing things and disrupting things. There's a much larger percentage of the black

01:15:18.100 market now for drugs is now online because of blockchain technology. People are using things

01:15:23.240 like Bitcoin to buy drugs and they're doing it on the internet. So here's what's happened as a result

01:15:28.200 of this. Was it Silk Road? They had that website, the Silk Road, and they tried to shut that down,

01:15:32.220 but there's a lot of them that you can apparently go on and buy drugs. What's happened as a result

01:15:36.620 of this is drug overdose deaths has dropped considerably. Why? Because people are rating

01:15:42.480 their drug dealers through these websites. So now they're not getting bad drugs or too much or too

01:15:48.000 little, whatever. So people are more responsible with their drug use. And the side effect of that is

01:15:53.200 less deaths and cleaner drugs and less violence. I know there's people who want to get just

01:15:59.920 completely high and just oblivious to anything else. But I think the overwhelming majority of

01:16:06.300 people, we'll talk about drug users, are probably just recreational. For example, alcohol.

01:16:12.840 Most people have had alcohol. Yeah. And I don't think they do it just to get completely blitzed and

01:16:17.280 drunk off their rocker. I think they enjoy just being able to calm down, relax, have a beer with

01:16:23.000 some friends or have a beer at the game. And for all intents and purposes, they're fairly

01:16:27.960 responsible with it. I've had the luxury because of my podcast and it's a health podcast. I've had

01:16:32.440 addiction experts and we've talked about this very subject. And a lot of our ideas, our current ideas

01:16:40.460 on how addiction works are based off of these animal models that are extremely flawed. So what

01:16:46.840 they'll do is they'll take, like the old models is they would take a mouse or mice, they put them in a

01:16:51.260 cage. Then they'd give them the option of cocaine-infused water and water and food.

01:16:56.960 And inevitably, they would show that the mice would go to the cocaine over and over and over

01:17:00.900 again until they killed themselves or starved or whatever. And so they said, oh, hyper-addictive

01:17:05.820 substance, this is the problem. People can't help themselves. We've got to make sure we don't

01:17:10.680 have this out on the streets or whatever. Well, new studies are showing that if you put a mouse

01:17:15.480 in mouse heaven, so big area, it can run around, it can have sex, it can play, it's got things it

01:17:22.800 can do, it can be with other mice or whatever, that happens at a far, far, far, far lower rate.

01:17:29.660 Right. Because if I was stuck in a maze, then I'd want something to take my mind off of it as well.

01:17:34.560 What do you think would happen if we took a bunch of totally normal, healthy, functioning people

01:17:38.440 and put them in a cage and locked us in there and gave us just, here's your access to drugs or drugs?

01:17:45.000 Yeah, we'd all do a shit ton of drugs, right? Of course.

01:17:47.360 And that's what you end up finding with people who have become really addicted to substances and

01:17:51.500 really just destroy their lives, is there's underlying, a lot of underlying issues that

01:17:56.300 kind of drive that. So it's not necessarily the substance, it's a lot of the other things that are

01:18:00.500 kind of underneath that, that cause that problem. So it's a different attitude, it's a different

01:18:04.020 understanding of what's going on. And again, personal responsibility. You want to hurt yourself?

01:18:08.840 You have every right to hurt yourself. If I care about you, I'm going to try and help you.

01:18:12.580 Sure.

01:18:13.140 But at the end of the day, as long as you don't hurt anybody else, I mean...

01:18:16.080 I think that actually comes down, and we maybe even pivot a little bit here, is it comes down to

01:18:20.300 the family unit. You know, you talk about your son and I talk about my children and my wife quite a

01:18:24.980 bit. I really think there's a destruction of the family unit. And I think that probably creates some

01:18:32.260 dependence on the quote-unquote system, right? Okay, we're your parents now,

01:18:37.300 you know, versus biological parents. And I think, gosh, having that family unit is so critical. And

01:18:44.280 obviously, I talk a lot about having a father and a husband in the home and how important that is.

01:18:49.660 But man, that just seems to be a disturbing trend where that's going.

01:18:54.440 It is a very disturbing trend. And I definitely think, look, if you look at, especially boys that

01:18:58.480 grow up in a fatherless home, the increase in rate of anything bad, jail, crime,

01:19:06.320 suicide, depression, drug abuse.

01:19:08.920 It's just such a stark... Even if you control for income, by the way. Even if you control for income,

01:19:14.320 you still see that there's a huge difference there.

01:19:17.080 I've got some friends who run a couple of different programs. One is geared towards helping

01:19:22.500 young men who are still in their teens and younger just cope with whether that's addiction issues or

01:19:28.800 anger issues. And they're just having a hard time. The other one is more of a transitionary where these

01:19:35.320 are actually young adults, males, who have more of a failure to launch type situation where they just

01:19:42.500 don't know how to now transition into the real world. And what's interesting about this to talk

01:19:48.680 about when you say control for income is these programs aren't cheap. These programs are expensive.

01:19:53.900 And parents are shipping their boys to these programs because they don't know how to do it

01:19:58.620 themselves. They don't know how to handle these boys or handle parenthood or whatever it may be.

01:20:03.360 So it's definitely not an income issue. It's something much deeper than that.

01:20:07.700 Yeah. And there are problems that result from obviously not having enough resources and income.

01:20:11.500 Of course.

01:20:12.380 But no, you're 100% right. We don't value that like we should,

01:20:17.820 societally speaking. And we've created situations in where our war on drugs has definitely created a

01:20:23.740 lot of fatherless households because maybe people were selling drugs or whatever. And so they were

01:20:29.720 thrown in jail. Now there's no father in the home. You have policies like the welfare state that

01:20:34.260 actually subsidize single parent households. And then you also have a breakdown in some of the moral

01:20:43.940 fabric of society. And I'm not talking about the, when people argue the oppressive aspects of it.

01:20:49.420 And I get all that. I'm talking about the actual, like they try to throw the baby out with the

01:20:52.960 bathwater. There's definitely value in purpose, meaning, and in the family unit, working together

01:21:00.680 and trying to stay together and work together. I'm a divorced father. And so believe me, I've been

01:21:07.840 through this. You know, if you say even, no, we're going to work together for the kids. People,

01:21:12.220 no, don't do that. Never do that. Like, I think sometimes that's a good goal if you actually do

01:21:16.320 work together because it makes a big difference. And the family unit is, I mean, statistically

01:21:21.740 speaking, is definitely broken down quite a bit. And now we're starting to see the result of what's

01:21:26.560 happening. So I agree with you.

01:21:28.360 Yeah, it's hard. I mean, it really is. And I come from a family where, you know, my dad was out of the

01:21:33.500 picture by the time I was three, had a couple of stepfathers coming to my life who at times I,

01:21:39.000 there was glimpses and moments of, oh, this is what it's supposed to be like. And you could

01:21:42.800 definitely feel it. Like as a young boy, I could feel it. I would even look at my buddies who had

01:21:49.000 dads in the home and feel like, man, I'm just missing something here. You know, I look at my kids

01:21:55.420 and my oldest, he's 10. And I mean, there's a lot of life lessons that can be learned in the home.

01:22:01.760 You know, like he'll gripe and moan and complain about doing chores. I'm like, this is your

01:22:06.700 contribution. Like we contribute. This is how you pay your way. You take out the trash, you clean

01:22:12.200 the pool, you do X, Y, and Z. This is the way you can contribute. But all of those lessons are

01:22:16.760 applicable. And I think just, man, there's just so many kids. And here's one thing that I have noticed

01:22:22.300 is that when the father's out of the picture, mom is required to go to work, right? Because she has

01:22:29.340 to provide some income. Now she's out of the picture or vice versa, however you want to look

01:22:34.200 at it. And now kids don't have parents at all. They've got babysitters, they've got TV and movies

01:22:39.320 that are entertaining them instead of having some sort of family parental structure there.

01:22:45.320 Yeah. I mean, we can talk collectively, right? We can look at collectively what men tend to

01:22:51.200 provide in terms of raising children and collectively what women tend to provide.

01:22:55.040 And I do want to be clear when you look at the individual that tends to break down, right?

01:22:58.280 There's variances all over the place. But generally when you look at what fathers provide,

01:23:04.760 structure and discipline, and that's, by the way, this isn't an opinion. This has been well

01:23:09.260 studied and documented. Psychologists have looked at this for, so this is well backed by research.

01:23:15.860 This isn't just my opinion and I'm not being sexist or whatever. Generally speaking,

01:23:20.700 fathers tend to provide that discipline and structure. Mothers tend to provide

01:23:24.280 empathy and nurturing, right? They're both extremely important. Of course, at the individual

01:23:29.840 level, you can always have a father who's opposite than the mother and maybe both are similar or

01:23:33.640 whatever. Yeah. Because one thing I hear all the time is, well, so-and-so grew up without a father,

01:23:37.580 so we'll look at him. I'm like, yeah, of course. I'm not saying that people aren't capable of being

01:23:42.780 great human beings if there wasn't a father figure in the home. I'm just saying there's a stronger

01:23:48.660 likelihood that this will be a more grounded individual if a father figure is present in

01:23:56.580 that young boy or girl's life. Absolutely. I mean, there's a reason why that structure has existed

01:24:01.140 for as long as it has. And there's a reason why societies have advocated for monogamous,

01:24:08.220 long-term, like why does that exist in most or if not all successful cultures and most, if not all

01:24:16.360 successful major religions have advocated for that? Why? Because it works. Right.

01:24:21.280 We also know, statistically speaking, polygamous societies are more violent. We know this. This

01:24:26.500 is actually a real statistic. It's been observed for a long time. So it's something that we've all

01:24:31.040 identified through thousands of years of evolution that this just works better than anything else.

01:24:36.320 When you have a father and a mother and they're dedicated to raising the child. And then of

01:24:41.660 course you have communities and all that stuff. And it seems to work best and all the data in the

01:24:45.400 world supports it. And of course there's tons of individual variances and differences and all that

01:24:50.980 stuff. But generally speaking, it just works. And one thing I want to say too, because I'm aware of

01:24:56.300 this just because of our community is there's a lot of guys who are raising their kids on their own

01:25:01.560 or are not maybe in some cases allowed even to see their kids. I see that a lot. And I think the

01:25:08.780 system is definitely stacked against fathers and men in general. So I'm not saying that you can make

01:25:15.280 it work is the point that I'm making. Like if it's not working ideally, like the way that we're talking

01:25:19.140 about, I still think there is an obligation, a moral obligation for you as a father to be as present,

01:25:26.980 as engaged as you possibly can, given your specific scenario.

01:25:31.640 Oh yeah. And we've lost that sense of definitely that sense of responsibility. And then we've been

01:25:36.280 punished on the other end. So it's just a perfect storm as a result. But I do think it's, and yeah,

01:25:41.660 generally speaking, it's much more likely for a man to abandon their kids than it is for a mother.

01:25:47.020 Generally speaking, when you look at the extremes, but also generally speaking in the middle,

01:25:51.700 humans are very paternal compared to all other mammals. We're extremely paternal. Like we don't

01:25:56.640 kill kids that aren't ours. We don't eat them. We don't, we're pretty damn paternal.

01:25:59.940 Right. We don't, we don't, we don't kill our children for mating rights again with our spouses.

01:26:03.880 No, no, no. Stop.

01:26:05.580 No, no. We're pretty damn good. I do think that that responsibility needs to be

01:26:09.280 placed a little bit more on us again. Like if you're a dad and you leave your kids and it's,

01:26:13.940 you just decide you're going to bounce, that's a total lack of responsibility. And I think society

01:26:17.860 should definitely, you know, make that a point. But I also think that on the other side of it,

01:26:21.480 they also make it difficult in many circumstances, which is crazy. It's a bad, it's a perfect storm.

01:26:26.260 It's not only crazy, it's just unfortunate. I mean, it really is because there's a lot of boys and

01:26:30.580 girls that are growing up without dads who otherwise, outside of the reason the marriage

01:26:35.580 didn't work, who would be amazing, amazing fathers. And it's so, it's really disheartening to see.

01:26:44.240 Yeah.

01:26:44.440 But to your point about fatherhood and responsibility, I think there are people who,

01:26:48.940 who do run away from that responsibility, which is sad because I know when we started having kids,

01:26:55.440 my wife and I, I mean, I wasn't ready. Like who's ready for that? You don't know what to expect. And

01:27:01.080 I was scared in a lot of ways. You know, I felt like I was a kid still and I'm going to have a

01:27:06.100 kid. I don't know how to do this stuff, but I'll tell you what, over the past decade of being a

01:27:10.360 father is yes, ultimate responsibility, so much more weight on my shoulders, but I am a completely

01:27:19.180 different, a better human being because I'm a father. And I'm not saying you have to be a father

01:27:24.280 to be a great human being. I'm just saying it has developed me and made me a more mature,

01:27:30.220 well-rounded, adjusted, patient man than if I would have not accepted that responsibility.

01:27:37.720 It's like the ultimate sense of purpose is what it is. So it's funny. They'll do,

01:27:41.360 they'll do these, um, these surveys, right. And they'll survey people with kids and they'll say,

01:27:47.080 you know, and they'll compare them to people who don't have kids. I love these because they're

01:27:50.580 hilarious, right? And this is pretty consistent. People with kids tend to be more stressed,

01:27:54.740 more anxious and have fewer moments of like happy than people who don't have kids. And so people will

01:28:00.600 look at that and be like, ah, see, but then they'll ask another question. Who has more purpose and sense

01:28:05.660 of meaning? People with children. I think what we need to understand is, and this has been

01:28:09.980 established now for a while in psychological literature, purpose comes from responsibility.

01:28:14.840 So you can do the Peter Pan syndrome and go think you're having fun and do whatever the hell you

01:28:20.220 want. But what you'll find is a lack of purpose, which turns into nihilism. And that is a scary

01:28:24.200 place to be. And here's a great example of what ends up happening as a result of that. Look at all

01:28:29.220 these celebrities with all the money in the world, access to women. They can bang all the women they

01:28:33.960 want. They got all kinds of drugs. They do what the fuck they want. And they're committing suicide

01:28:37.120 at high rates. Why? Because they're trying to fill a hole that can't be filled with that kind of

01:28:41.640 shit. You can't fill the purpose and meaningful hole or desire that we need without things that

01:28:47.800 actually provide those things, which is responsibility. And children provide that.

01:28:52.160 So am I more stressed because I have kids? Yeah, for sure. Do I do less like cool, fun things?

01:28:58.300 Yeah, for sure. Do I have a sense of purpose like I never had in my entire life before?

01:29:02.700 Absolutely. Totally different. Totally worth it. Harder, but totally worth it. And I think everything

01:29:08.540 in life is like that, right? Anything that has a real sense of purpose is the shit that's hard that

01:29:13.500 gives you responsibility. And that's the thing that I think we need to advertise more to men.

01:29:18.240 It's not just about having fun, making money, going out with girls, doing all that stuff. It's about

01:29:23.560 having that sense of purpose because that's purpose is what gets you through the struggle of life.

01:29:27.600 Life is tough for everybody. That's the truth. Life is difficult and tragic for everybody. I don't care

01:29:32.540 how much money you have or whatever. You're going to have your own challenges. Purpose is what brings you

01:29:35.740 through that. Children is a great way to observe that or to have that.

01:29:38.660 I think a lot of people are striving for an easy life. We look at social media, right? And we see

01:29:44.820 the celebrities and we see the people we follow and we see the highlight reel and the vacations are

01:29:48.760 going on and the dates and this and that and the cars they have and think, oh, if only I had

01:29:54.380 attentionless life. If only I didn't have struggles. If only I didn't have obstacles and challenges,

01:30:00.800 then I would be happy. I think that's a damaging pursuit.

01:30:07.000 That's not only damaging, it's never ending. And one of the worst things that can happen to

01:30:10.720 someone like that is that they get everything they think they want. That's a scary place to be.

01:30:14.740 I like Jim Carrey's quote. I think it was Jim Carrey. He said something like,

01:30:19.600 I wish everybody could have the chance to be rich and famous so that they could see that it's not all

01:30:25.220 it's cracked up to be or something along those lines. Yeah, that it's not. When I was a kid,

01:30:29.140 I used to love the Twilight Zone show. I don't know if you, did you watch that growing up? Great

01:30:32.620 show, great writing or whatever. There's one episode in particular that was fascinating. It

01:30:36.480 was this, the show opens, there's this guy running from the cops, there's a shootout, he shoots back

01:30:42.200 and then he hits the ground, obviously killed. He wakes up and there's a man in a white suit standing

01:30:47.420 over him and he's like, who are you? And he's like, oh, I'm here to, you know, help you out,

01:30:51.360 give you whatever you want, you know, whatever. And he's like, well, what are you talking about? Like he's

01:30:54.220 like, listen, he goes, anything you want is yours. And he doesn't believe him at first. He goes,

01:30:57.920 give me 500 bucks. Boom. He gives him 500 bucks. Like this is, so the man in the white suit leads

01:31:02.220 him to this apartment, luxurious apartment. And he says, look, this is where you're at now. You can

01:31:07.140 have anything you want. And he's like, what? He goes, okay, give me, bring me a three, a few girls

01:31:10.800 and you know, I want, you know, a suitcase of money. Boom. He gets it. Take me to the casino. Guy takes

01:31:15.540 him to the casino, rolls the dice, gets a seven, rolls the dice again, gets a seven. He's like, oh my God,

01:31:19.280 this is amazing. Guy in the white suit says, you know, I'm going to take off, but if you need anything,

01:31:23.540 just, just give me a holler and I'll be right back. So then they kind of fast forward. And it's

01:31:26.900 like a couple months later, same guy sitting there with kind of scruffy look on his face and he's

01:31:31.760 just distraught and he's throwing the dice and he wins. And he's like, oh, you know, and the girls

01:31:35.820 laugh at every joke. And he's this, this is terrible. He calls back to guy in the white suit.

01:31:40.000 And he says, this sucks. There's no chance. And the guy says, well, if you want, I can make sure

01:31:44.540 you structure it that you lose every once in a while. And he goes, no, no, no. Cause I don't know

01:31:47.300 what's planned because this is terrible. Like there's no chance. There's no, I just get everything I

01:31:51.400 want. He goes, this is, this is torture. He's like, I can't believe that heaven's like this.

01:31:54.900 And then the man in the white suit looks at him and says, who told you this was heaven?

01:31:57.840 Uh-huh. Yeah.

01:31:59.020 Beautiful story.

01:31:59.940 Yeah.

01:32:00.320 Beautiful illustration of what we were talking about. Do you ever see the studies on lottery

01:32:04.480 winners?

01:32:05.160 I've been exposed to it a little bit of how quickly they lose their money and the things that happen

01:32:09.960 in their life. Yeah.

01:32:10.860 I think it's two, I think it's two years later that they're-

01:32:13.060 Is that what it is?

01:32:13.660 Yeah.

01:32:13.820 Like two years later, they were just as miserable as they were before.

01:32:16.500 Well, and I'll tell you why. And I look at this with the lottery winners, for example,

01:32:19.800 is because they haven't earned it, right? They haven't earned and developed the skills in order

01:32:23.400 to possess that level of wealth. And so it's very easy for that to-

01:32:26.740 There's no meaning.

01:32:27.280 Their hands.

01:32:28.000 No meaning and no purpose.

01:32:29.220 There's a great quote by, do you know John Eldridge? He's the author of Wild at Heart.

01:32:33.720 Okay.

01:32:33.980 Really great author. Ransomed Heart, I think is the name of his organization, but does some amazing

01:32:39.180 stuff specifically with men. And in his book, Wild at Heart, which literally transformed the

01:32:44.320 way I look at masculinity in my life in particular. He says, deep in his heart, every man longs for a

01:32:49.700 battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.

01:32:53.160 Oh, so true.

01:32:53.920 And if you think about each one of those elements, I mean, all of them have a level of danger,

01:32:59.400 a level of risk, a level of potential loss and heartache and struggle. And yet it's something that

01:33:06.300 all of us as men crave, every one of those elements.

01:33:09.060 As a trainer, I would see that firsthand. I've had people who come to me. So I used to have a

01:33:13.840 wellness facility that was next to a hospital. And I trained a lot of doctors there and they

01:33:17.740 would send me their patients many times. And they had this gastric bypass program there.

01:33:22.120 Gastric bypass procedures is where they basically bypass your stomach and they leave you a stomach

01:33:26.280 the size of maybe like my thumb, right? It's like a small pouch.

01:33:29.300 Do they staple it or are they?

01:33:30.940 Yeah. So they literally bypass the stomach and leave you with this little tiny stomach.

01:33:34.300 Oh, interesting.

01:33:35.160 And it forces you to lose weight and it's used for the severely obese. So sometimes I'd get people

01:33:41.220 from there. So I had these two clients that had trained right around the same time. One was a

01:33:44.820 young lady, had over a hundred pounds to lose. She entered into the program to get gastric bypass.

01:33:50.240 Her doctor recommended that she work out and lose a little weight first to make sure that the surgery

01:33:54.000 was safer. So she came and saw me. I had another guy who came to me after he had the gastric bypass

01:33:58.840 procedure. Now the guy that I trained, he had the gastric bypass procedure. He came to me and he's

01:34:03.840 like, well, I'm supposed to work out. You already lost 30 pounds. You lose weight really quick when

01:34:07.380 you can't eat obviously.

01:34:08.420 Right. When you're not eating. Yeah.

01:34:09.880 So he comes to me and he's like, I want to, you know, I want to work out with you. And we worked

01:34:13.460 out together and, you know, he'd show up late for his sessions. We didn't really try that hard. And

01:34:17.300 he just wasn't really, you could tell he wasn't really into it or whatever. After about six months,

01:34:21.820 he lost most of the weight, but I never saw him again. Now the lady, we ended up losing a little

01:34:26.920 bit of weight, you know, before the procedure. And she ended up convincing herself, I'm going to try

01:34:31.660 this without the procedure. I'm going to see if I can. And over the course, it took us a couple of years,

01:34:35.900 over the course of a couple of years, she lost something like 30 or 40 pounds. She still had a

01:34:40.100 lot of weight to lose. After a couple of years though, things started really switching for her

01:34:44.000 and she lost all the weight. I eventually lost contact with her as well. Cause she moved. Well,

01:34:48.380 years later, I ran into the same guy that I had, you know, trained before who got the procedure.

01:34:53.480 He had gained a lot of the weight back. You can actually, believe it or not, you can actually

01:34:56.360 stretch out that small pouch if you try hard enough. Yeah. He gained back a lot of the weight and was

01:35:01.540 just miserable. I met with him, talked with him. He was the same guy. It was just not

01:35:04.700 dedicated, kind of miserable and happy. I got back in contact with the young lady through Facebook.

01:35:10.500 She'd become an entrepreneur, actually gotten a certification to became a personal trainer,

01:35:14.440 gotten married, totally, totally different. Now the difference was not the goal. They both lost the

01:35:21.460 weight. Yeah. The difference was in the voyage and the struggle. And she did it, whatever you want

01:35:26.780 to call it, the hard way or the right way or whatever. But she had to change those behaviors and

01:35:32.080 learn to love herself and become happy along the process. And that's how the weight came off.

01:35:38.340 Whereas this other guy, you just took away his drug. Right. And he had to figure out other ways

01:35:42.520 to cope and didn't have the ways to do it and didn't really have the drive to do so.

01:35:46.880 Well, I mean, the weight's not the problem, right? The weight is the symptom of the problem.

01:35:51.480 And I know there's medical conditions and that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about

01:35:55.420 in the majority of cases is that the, it's the symptom. It's the manifestation of a mindset or

01:36:04.040 behaviors or whatever it may be that's caused that. So taking away the symptom does nothing to

01:36:10.620 actually fix the problem. No. Once you realize that the goal isn't, that's not where it's at.

01:36:16.400 It's not the goal. It's the voyage on your way to that goal. And once you realize that, man,

01:36:22.020 it changes everything. There's a phenomena that happens with athletes where, and I used to see

01:36:27.500 this with clients all the time, where they'll train really, really hard for a particular goal.

01:36:32.120 Once they hit their goal, it's like they're lost. They don't know what to do. Sometimes they get

01:36:35.700 into a little state of depression. You'll see high level athletes will actually do this as well.

01:36:39.720 And it's because they didn't understand that it was about the process.

01:36:42.920 Right. They thought the objective was the final goal.

01:36:45.920 And I've been telling clients this for a long time who would come to me and say, I want to lose weight.

01:36:49.380 You know, I dig deeper, you know, why do you want to lose weight? And eventually it's,

01:36:52.020 it's say something like, oh, because if I lose weight, I'll be happy. I knew my job was to teach

01:36:56.140 them that they had to be happy before, so that they could lose the weight. You had to be happy

01:37:00.540 first, then the weight comes off. Right. It usually doesn't happen the other way around.

01:37:03.980 Right. Oh, I'm going to butcher this. One of my friends said, most people are,

01:37:08.260 oh, it's have, do, be. So that's how most people behave. Have, do, be. Once I have X, Y, and Z,

01:37:14.120 then I can do X, Y, and Z, and then I'll be happy. But it's actually the opposite. You want to be

01:37:21.340 first, right? Be happy and do the things that cause that happiness.

01:37:26.300 That happy people do or whatever.

01:37:27.320 And then you can have whatever it is that your heart desires.

01:37:30.580 Yeah. Absolutely.

01:37:32.020 Yeah.

01:37:32.260 Yeah. I mean, that's one of the reasons why I love fitness so much is it's a very black and

01:37:37.180 white, or at least in comparison to other aspects of life, a very black and white microcosm of life.

01:37:43.280 Put in the work, change the behaviors in fundamental ways and watch the result of it. And then you can

01:37:50.180 just, you know, it's like math. You could see what's going on and you can see the changes.

01:37:54.320 And in many times it does bleed over into other aspects of life.

01:37:57.260 That's what I've noticed is like, and people ask me this all the time. Hey, Ryan, you know,

01:38:00.900 I want to change my life and I want to build confidence and I want to just live the life

01:38:06.480 that I know I want, you know, that I'm capable of. Where should I start? I'm like, go to the gym.

01:38:11.840 Like, just go to the, well, what should I work out? Should I do? I don't care, dude.

01:38:15.240 Like, just go to the gym, run on the treadmill, do some pushups, do some bench prep. I mean,

01:38:20.680 pick something. Yeah. We can, we can talk about the specifics later and I'll send them over your

01:38:24.560 way. But like, just get into the gym and get your body moving. I just think there's so much to be

01:38:31.160 said for moving the body, uh, working those muscles. I think that enhances the mind. I think

01:38:37.940 the discipline, the dedication, the commitment, the sacrifice that goes into having that health

01:38:44.100 regimen, again, translates over into the relationship you have with your wife and your kids, to the,

01:38:49.300 to your boss, to your business, to your bank account, pick something and it can be enhanced

01:38:55.020 through the practice of exercise. It's very empowering and it's an easy in comparison to

01:39:01.080 other things. Like I said, it's, it's kind of black and white. Like you said, like work on yourself.

01:39:05.300 What do you mean by that? Uh, how about this? Go to the gym. Right. It's tangible. Yes. Right.

01:39:10.080 Because if I said, well, you just, you need to be more positive. Okay. I'll try, you know? And even

01:39:17.180 if you managed to be more positive randomly, then it's like, well, what does that even look like?

01:39:21.940 What does that mean? How about this? Go into the gym and do your workout an hour every single day.

01:39:26.840 You can measure that. You can jump on the scale. You can see that you're losing weight. You can put

01:39:31.780 your pants on or the other day I just started doing, um, intermittent fasting. And the other day I've

01:39:37.520 had this belt that I've got on right now for probably, I don't know, six or seven years.

01:39:42.020 Like I'm just like, it's a good belt. Like I don't need another belt. I've had to punch three

01:39:46.220 separate holes in this thing. And so like, it's hanging out, you can see it's like hanging out

01:39:50.500 the other side now, but you can see that, right? Like that's tangible proof that what you're doing

01:39:55.000 is working. I think there's value in that. Fasting is a great for, it's not for everybody. So if you

01:40:00.880 have a eating disorder where you don't eat, if you're anorexic or bulimic, it's not a good.

01:40:05.120 Yeah. That's, I don't ever have to worry about that, but for a lot of people, you know, look,

01:40:09.820 I'll tell you what fasting exists across all major cultures and every major religion

01:40:15.960 for thousands of years for a reason, besides the health benefits, because there are tremendous

01:40:21.280 health benefits on the body. Everything from speeding up, you know, cell autophagy and program

01:40:26.340 cell death and stimulating stem cells and lowering inflammation and increasing insulin sensitivity.

01:40:31.860 And I can go down a list, you know, anti-cancer. It's insane. But besides all that, as far as a

01:40:37.900 spiritual practice, and I don't mean it in the religious sense, I mean, in the personal growth

01:40:41.200 sense, it's amazing. Modern people, modern Western societies. And one of the reasons why I think we've

01:40:46.940 gone for lack of a better term, soft is we've never felt what it's like to be hungry ever since we

01:40:53.260 were born. Yeah. We've eaten every single day. We literally don't know what it's like to be hungry.

01:40:57.840 People think they're hungry, but what they feel is. My kids say, I'm starving. I'm like, dude,

01:41:02.760 you don't know what's starving. Neither do I, but you don't for sure. No, it's cravings. What we

01:41:06.960 think is hunger is cravings. Right. And that's all, that's due to emotion, context. Am I at the

01:41:12.180 movies? Oh, I want popcorn. Oh, you know, I'm at a party. I want cake. Oh, I'm stressed. I'm depressed.

01:41:17.660 I'm bored. It's time to eat. That's what we think hunger is. Eliminate food for two days,

01:41:22.700 go 48 hours without food. And you will relearn this natural feeling that you're supposed to have.

01:41:29.000 And you will start to learn how to deal with shit, like emotions and feelings and context

01:41:33.940 without food. You've removed that. Yeah. And it, I mean, it's a growth tool.

01:41:38.300 I imagine that's true because there's probably, and maybe I'm this, I don't know. I haven't really

01:41:42.340 thought about it too much, but a lot of emotional leaders, right? Like if something's wrong, if they're

01:41:46.560 happy, if they're glad, if they're sad, if they're mad, if they're angry, if they're whatever,

01:41:49.680 if they're celebrating something, it's like food, food, food, food, food, food, food.

01:41:53.220 All of us, all of us, all of us are emotional leaders. Unless you've actually gone for days

01:41:57.620 without eating, every motivation for food is based off of them. Here's a good way to tell

01:42:02.040 if you're actually hungry or not. Next time you think you're starving, will you eat anything?

01:42:06.540 In other words, you know, if someone comes up, oh man, bro, it's lunchtime. Oh, I'm so starving

01:42:10.940 right now. And you say, oh, you want Mexican food? Nah, I'm not in the mood for Mexican food.

01:42:13.940 You want some burger? Nah, I'm not in the mood for burgers.

01:42:15.680 Yeah, you're not starving.

01:42:16.780 That's not starving. You got a craving.

01:42:18.460 You got a craving. Hungry is like, whatever you put in front of me.

01:42:22.400 I'm going to eat that.

01:42:23.080 Yeah, I think I want to eat that. And the human body can go quite a long period of time.

01:42:26.940 Is there any, I've thought about this and I always, I don't know, I think a lot of the

01:42:32.180 way that our bodies work is just through the process of evolution over tens and hundreds

01:42:37.180 of thousands of years. Is there any history, human history, I'll say, that causes the way

01:42:44.480 that we eat in a specific period, for example, eight hours to me be more advantageous than

01:42:50.040 spreading it out over 16 hours of eating? You know what I'm saying? Like, I don't know

01:42:54.260 if I'm wording that right.

01:42:54.940 Yeah, no, I got, I got what you're saying. So think of the life of the hunter gatherer,

01:43:00.060 right? Food was very scarce. Most of our time was dedicated towards finding food and preparing

01:43:05.320 food and being able to consume it and then finding shelter. When we had food, we ate it. And when we

01:43:10.580 didn't, we didn't. And so what it probably looked like was long periods without food,

01:43:15.740 periods where we ate the hell out of it.

01:43:16.700 Feast and famine almost.

01:43:17.740 Feast and famine.

01:43:18.100 Okay.

01:43:18.540 But it's not the same kind of feast that we experienced today. So what I mean by that

01:43:23.400 is because a lot of people use, think that, oh, okay, modern hunter gatherers, feast and

01:43:28.660 famine. If they had food, they ate it. If they didn't have food, they didn't eat it. That

01:43:31.420 means when they had food, they just ate as much as they possibly could and made themselves

01:43:34.560 sick. No, the human body comes with natural, like palate fatigue, for example, is something

01:43:39.720 that is a natural thing that exists in humans. So I'll give you an example. And we've learned

01:43:43.980 to override them with processed food, by the way. So I'll give you an example. If I took

01:43:47.300 a bunch of potatoes and I boiled them, I took 2000 calories worth of potatoes and I boiled

01:43:51.580 the hell out of them. No salt, no butter, nothing, totally plain boiled white potato. And

01:43:56.600 I said, eat 2000 calories worth of these potatoes like this in the next 30 minutes, you'd have a

01:44:01.220 tough time doing it. In fact, you probably wouldn't be able to. You'd get through 600, 700

01:44:05.480 calories. You'd start to gag. That's palate fatigue. Now, if I took those same potatoes

01:44:09.740 and I sliced them up and fried them and threw some salt on them and then put that in front

01:44:13.580 of you and said, here, eat 2000 calories worth of bacon.

01:44:16.040 You got it. I got this.

01:44:17.280 No problem.

01:44:17.980 Right.

01:44:18.600 Professional food eaters know this. So like, here's another great example. What's that guy's

01:44:23.160 name in Man Versus Food? You know who I'm talking about, right? He's got that show where

01:44:26.240 he does these food challenges.

01:44:28.280 Yeah, I know who you're talking about.

01:44:29.240 So there was this one challenge where he went to this ice cream parlor and the challenge was,

01:44:32.740 if you eat a kitchen sink full of ice cream, this ice cream sundae that filled this kitchen

01:44:35.980 sink, then you win this t-shirt or whatever. And so he goes around the country and does

01:44:39.400 these things. So he went to this ice cream parlor and they filled up a kitchen sink with

01:44:43.760 this sundae. And so he went and he went to eat it. Well, he gets like three quarters of

01:44:48.280 the way through and he starts to gag and he's going to, I mean, he palate fatigues and he's

01:44:51.740 a professional food eater. So he knows how to deal with this, but he starts gagging.

01:44:55.740 So what does he do? He orders a plate of extra crispy, extra salty French fries, eats

01:45:02.100 those and then goes back to the ice cream.

01:45:04.180 Right. Because he, he, he overrode that signal.

01:45:07.720 Right. Interesting.

01:45:09.260 Processed food manufacturers spend a lot of money doing this, a lot of money doing this,

01:45:14.360 where they figure out the right texture, the right sound of the crunch, the taste,

01:45:18.500 the way the bag opens, the color of the food, all the things that make something hyperpalatable.

01:45:22.880 So when we think feast today, we think I eat so much that I get sick, my stomach hurts and

01:45:27.600 I can't breathe.

01:45:28.100 Right. We think of Thanksgiving.

01:45:29.200 Right. They probably didn't do that back then. They had those natural,

01:45:32.040 like you're going to eat as much steak as you can and then I can't do anymore. And you're not going

01:45:36.800 to be as stuffed and sick as you would today with a bunch of processed foods. So fasting and feasting

01:45:42.560 is fine. Eliminate processed foods and you're going to have more, much more accurate signals of when

01:45:47.300 you need to stop eating, throw in processed foods and it's all out the window. Now you're,

01:45:51.100 now you're going to find yourself eating to the point where you're going to make yourself sick and

01:45:54.160 it's not good for you.

01:45:54.980 Yeah. I watched a video on Netflix just last night. I think it's called the magic pill.

01:46:00.900 Oh yeah. Have you seen that?

01:46:02.620 Wait. Oh no. Take your pills. That's a different one.

01:46:05.080 No, Matt, the magic pill. It's about the ketogenic diet. It's actually really fascinating. They had

01:46:10.540 the guy that does the show or the documentary, he's got a friend and some family members that

01:46:15.140 are dealing with some, quite the list of medical conditions. And I think he's having them go onto

01:46:21.280 this ketogenic diet for eight weeks or 12 weeks or something. We, I just started it. So I'm not sure,

01:46:27.660 you know, all the, all the intricacies of the show, but it was pretty fascinating with the food

01:46:32.560 industry and how bad it's gotten. It's crazy.

01:46:37.080 Let's circle right back to, circle right back to government involvement. You can place that,

01:46:41.560 you could place that squarely, squarely at their feet. A hundred percent.

01:46:46.360 Why? What's, what's, what's the vested interest there? I mean, what, well, we know now what the

01:46:51.300 vested interests are, the special interests, right? So, uh, corn, wheat, soy, huge, huge industries

01:46:57.580 that really pushed for things like the food pyramid and stuff like that. Right. Initially though,

01:47:02.600 there were good intentions. It was, we need to feed people starvation. We're still solving food

01:47:08.160 distribution issues and we don't want people, we want people to have enough food. So they focused

01:47:11.740 on crops that were easy to grow and that were calorie dense. And so we started subsidizing corn,

01:47:16.240 soy, wheat, like crazy. And we started engineering them to produce like corn, the corn that we,

01:47:22.540 you know, that existed thousands of years ago was like a single spindle of kernel. It doesn't look

01:47:27.040 anything like the, the starch bomb that we've created today. Right. The deliciousness that we've

01:47:31.740 created. Yeah. And then we've, we've modified them so we can spray the shit out of them and kill all

01:47:36.700 the weeds and whatever. Right. So there's that. And then there's also, you know, public policy,

01:47:40.820 which government tends to put out maybe with good intentions, maybe not. And public policy was pushed

01:47:45.800 initially the whole low fat hypothesis was pushed by Dr. Ancel Keys, who did this study on,

01:47:52.760 I think it was nine countries to try and find out why we were seeing this heart disease, heart disease

01:47:58.500 was starting to grow. And so we're trying to figure that out. He omitted two of the countries to fit

01:48:03.140 his narrative. Why? What? Like, why would a doctor do that? I mean, is it just like special interest

01:48:08.580 stuff or what? I think maybe he was looking for some fame, maybe, you know, some recognition omits two of the

01:48:13.860 countries and comes up with this fat hypothesis where, oh, if you eat too much fat, that's what's

01:48:18.760 causing heart disease. And so it became public policy, lower your fat intake. And everybody

01:48:25.220 thought, oh shit, fat causes heart disease, causes heart attacks.

01:48:28.720 Which kind of, when you hear it, you're like, yeah, that makes sense. Fat, fat.

01:48:32.700 It doesn't. But that was what they pushed. People started going to the grocery store and food

01:48:36.760 manufacturers responded and say, oh shit, we need to make low fat products.

01:48:39.880 Low fat, light stuff. Yeah. But how do they make it palatable, right? They add more sugar or

01:48:44.540 whatever. And so fat consumption went down, carbohydrate consumption went up. And then of

01:48:49.380 course subsidies to corn and wheat and soy and the food pyramid and just years of decades of false

01:48:57.400 information and propaganda. And now the American diet is very, very heavy in these heavily processed

01:49:02.340 foods and carbohydrates. Also high in heavily processed vegetable oils because they're subsidized.

01:49:09.060 So rather than using, you know, a fat like lard or butter, which is what we've used for thousands

01:49:14.160 of years, we're going to use the cheaper alternative, which is cheaper because of subsidies, which is

01:49:18.640 this hydrogenated soy oil or whatever. Yeah. You know, and here we are now, here we are today.

01:49:24.840 And that was- Is this one of those things though? I mean, like if you take the, I think the fitness

01:49:30.160 industry, I mean, you're in the industry and I'm not trying to be offensive or anything when I say

01:49:33.780 this, but the fitness industry, the nutrition industry is like every six months or every year,

01:49:39.620 it's like, well, yeah, that's what we said last year, but, but this is the way to do it now.

01:49:45.580 And so I kind of have a fear that this, maybe not fear, but just a little bit of skepticism that the,

01:49:51.320 the higher fat diet or the paleo or the keto or the, now the carnivore diet is like the next thing.

01:49:58.560 And then next year it'll be something else. You are, you are correct. I do think though,

01:50:02.400 if we eliminated widespread funded public government policy, we would have figured it out

01:50:08.500 much sooner. For example, right now, the general consensus in the health and wellness and fitness

01:50:14.640 industry is avoid heavily processed foods. That's pretty, that's pretty damn good information.

01:50:20.600 It really is. That to me, I hear that. I'm like, yeah, that's common sense. That almost seems like

01:50:25.000 common sense now. Yeah, no, I, if the fitness industry, it was responding to a couple of

01:50:30.460 different things. First off, when consumers demand the impossible, only lies will suffice. So

01:50:35.700 consumers want, I want to lose weight tomorrow. I don't want to change any behaviors, any fundamental

01:50:41.440 behaviors. Give me the magic pill, the solution. And so the fitness industry delivers, tries to

01:50:46.080 deliver magic pills, magic solution, next big diet, super ridiculous, intense workout. And this is

01:50:51.660 what works for you. But the fitness industry is not that old. It's actually a relatively new industry.

01:50:56.640 And I think if we leave it alone, it'll start to solve a lot of these problems. We're also

01:51:01.100 contending with public policy. Supplements were low fat for a long time because that's what we were

01:51:06.560 told was best. And so consumers are like, wait a minute, I learned in health class that fat's really

01:51:11.200 bad. So I need to have a low fat protein bar or whatever is packed full of chemicals and protein.

01:51:16.780 I mean, even just the word, you know, fat. Well, I don't want to be fat, so I shouldn't eat fat.

01:51:20.920 Like it just sounds kind of like, well, that's what you should do, even though we know that's not

01:51:24.520 true. No, what we're finding, the reality is there are general truths when it comes to nutrition.

01:51:29.980 Don't overeat, avoid heavily processed foods, you know, so kind of stick to whole natural foods in

01:51:36.020 their natural state. But when you examine the individual, it all breaks down because part of the

01:51:41.920 way your body responds, reacts, and assimilates food, a large part of it has to do with your

01:51:46.540 immune system, which includes your microbiome, your internal microbiome. And that's a fingerprint.

01:51:52.580 It's very different from person to person. So you can have people who do very well on a vegan diet,

01:51:59.900 you know, genuinely do well on a vegan diet. And you can have other people who genuinely do well

01:52:03.940 on a carnivore diet or who genuinely do well on a paleo diet. And there may be more people,

01:52:09.240 you know, if you look at generally, I would argue that most people do better on a paleo diet versus

01:52:13.680 others. But I've trained enough people to know that there's always that individual variance.

01:52:18.080 I think the message needs to be stick with whole natural foods, work on your relationship to food.

01:52:24.380 So in other words, learn when you're eating because of emotion or whatever, and figure out what works

01:52:29.680 best for you. And what works best for you today isn't what's going to always work best for you.

01:52:33.780 Don't become dogmatic about your nutrition.

01:52:35.360 So this is a process then of trial and error. I mean, I know there's ways that you can

01:52:39.080 map out, you know, you're talking about your fingerprint, for example, like map that out.

01:52:42.900 So you know what your body's more agreeable with.

01:52:46.360 I think fasting is a good way to do that. I think elimination diet is a good way to do that.

01:52:51.040 Explain it. When you say elimination diet, it's just like gradually taking things out of your diet

01:52:55.080 to see how your body responds to those.

01:52:56.860 You start out with foods that have very, very low rates of a reaction or intolerances in people.

01:53:03.000 So you'd avoid gluten, corn, soy, sugar, you know, most starches, nightshades. Like you'd go with

01:53:09.960 super basic, basic diet, see how you feel, and then introduce one at a time.

01:53:14.440 So if you have a reaction to that, then, you know, that's the culprit.

01:53:17.520 Right. And food intolerances are much, much more difficult to identify because food intolerances

01:53:21.360 can show up a day or two later. They're not as obvious. Like an allergy is easy, right? Oh,

01:53:24.740 I get an allergic reaction.

01:53:25.980 Right. It just shows up.

01:53:26.500 Yeah. No, an intolerance might be. And here's the other thing. People need to learn to connect

01:53:30.180 food to things other than just the taste of it. How did I sleep? My skin, my digestion,

01:53:37.140 my performance, like start to attach and understand these things. And by the way,

01:53:41.520 when you start to connect those dots, you start to make better food choices based on those things

01:53:46.240 because food manufacturers have known this for years. They'll make connections between things

01:53:51.020 to get you to eat their foods. For example, most people don't eat a lot of popcorn except for when

01:53:56.340 they go to the movies.

01:53:56.980 Right.

01:53:57.460 That's been a connection that's been made for us by food manufacturers. So we crave popcorn

01:54:02.100 when we're at the movies.

01:54:03.220 Makes sense. Yeah.

01:54:04.180 If you start to identify, let's say you love pizza and you kind of don't like broccoli and the only

01:54:09.980 signal that you pay attention to is taste. Well, yeah, fuck, pizza is going to win all day long.

01:54:14.060 Of course.

01:54:14.720 But what if we start to connect other dots? I notice when I eat pizza, I get constipated.

01:54:18.660 I get lethargic. I don't feel good. Maybe I get irritable. My skin breaks out.

01:54:22.000 And when I eat broccoli, skin looks better, better digestion. I have more, I sleep better,

01:54:27.360 whatever, right? Start to connect the dots and start to identify.

01:54:29.560 This comes back to your value conversation. Like what is it that you value? Do you value

01:54:33.280 just the taste or do you value more as I get older and think about some things I want to

01:54:38.420 accomplish? I value performance.

01:54:40.320 That's right. And so what ends up happening is when I go to make my food choices, it doesn't

01:54:45.200 become this, I can't eat that. I'm on a diet. It becomes, I don't want to eat that.

01:54:49.080 I know that one tastes really good, but I also know all the things that come with it. And I know

01:54:53.200 all the other things that come with this other food over here. That's what I actually want.

01:54:56.340 I used to be 50 pounds heavier and my office was right across the street from Burger King.

01:55:03.200 And I would go into Burger King and I'd get their double Whopper playing with cheese, man.

01:55:07.360 The meal, right? The supersized meal or whatever it was. I know, man, when I got back to the office,

01:55:12.740 it tasted good, no doubt. But when I get back to the office, I was worthless.

01:55:17.040 You know, I was tired. I didn't have any energy. I didn't want to work. I didn't want to talk or

01:55:22.760 communicate with clients. And so it was, it was a real problem. I mean, a real problem,

01:55:26.840 not to mention the weight and everything else that comes along with that.

01:55:29.300 You just have to become aware with those. And also, like I said before,

01:55:33.140 eliminate processed foods because processed foods throw those signals off so much that it's hard

01:55:39.120 to listen to your body. It's really hard to pay attention because these foods were designed,

01:55:42.400 they were designed to hijack those systems. They're designed to create a dopamine release

01:55:47.740 and to override your palate fatigue and cause you to overeat. And anyway, think about it. Like

01:55:53.100 we're combining flavors and textures and things and foods that never existed in nature. Your body

01:55:57.680 doesn't know how to deal with it. It's like pornography. Like pornography does this to people

01:56:01.640 who as well, when they look at all time, desensitizes them to the real world because they're exposed to

01:56:06.720 something that in nature would have never happened unless they were like maybe some tribe leader or

01:56:11.340 something had access to all these women, right? It's the same thing with processed foods. I have

01:56:14.520 access to this hyper palatable food and I'm eating it all the time. I can't trust the signals of my

01:56:18.480 body. I can't make good decisions. Very difficult. Eliminate all processed foods. You're going to go

01:56:22.600 through some withdrawal, give it a couple of weeks and you're actually, your body, you'll start to see

01:56:27.400 that you'll start to eat a little better naturally because of these signals that start to kick in that

01:56:31.380 you were born with that we've learned to ignore. Right. Yeah. We're dealing with that with my son

01:56:35.960 right now because he's been, the last year or so, he's just been complaining about his stomach.

01:56:40.480 Like not bad, but just like, you know, dad, mom, my stomach's hurting a little bit. And it was just

01:56:45.320 like becoming more and more regular. So we finally took him in to get this figured out. And gluten is

01:56:50.200 a big, a big deal for him. Gluten, corn, certain berries like strawberries, bananas are a real problem

01:56:57.100 for him. So we're trying to help him relearn to eat differently. But in the meantime, we want to be

01:57:03.340 supportive of that and change our own lifestyle and how we're eating. So it's been pretty eyeopening over the

01:57:09.540 past three or four weeks for us. Not to mention that when you eat foods that you're intolerant to,

01:57:14.380 because what an intolerance is, I think it's important. I explained this intolerances are

01:57:18.880 created in many different ways, but one of the most common ways is this, which is believed to

01:57:23.500 be the most common ways is you have gut. Let's say you have some gut inflammation and I eat a lot

01:57:29.340 of a particular food by gut. It's a membrane between me and the, almost like the outside world. I mean,

01:57:35.220 think of your gut as a tube that runs from your mouth to your anus. What goes in there is not in

01:57:39.100 your body. It has to go through that first. And that's a, it's a very intelligent membrane that

01:57:44.020 allows foods to come through at particular times and it breaks it down or whatever. It has to be,

01:57:47.880 that's just the way it works. When it's inflamed, the wall of your gut becomes permeable. And so

01:57:54.200 particles, protein particles or whatever pass through when they're not supposed to. Your body develops an

01:58:00.120 immune response to those particles. It recognizes it as a foreign invader and you develop a food

01:58:05.560 intolerance. Different than an allergy, but similar. This is why when somebody has a food intolerance,

01:58:11.720 it's a many times a food that they've eaten a lot of. So you'll see people like, God, I used to be

01:58:15.500 able to eat shit. I used to, I used to have milk every day. And all of a sudden, well, you, you had

01:58:19.400 some inflammation going on. You were constantly eating this particular food. Your body now has developed

01:58:23.920 this immune reaction to this food and now you have a food intolerance. And when you have a food

01:58:28.320 intolerance reaction, it's not just your digestion that can get affected. Although that is oftentimes

01:58:33.380 it gets affected. It's not just stomach pain that gets affected. It's everything that the immune

01:58:37.460 system touches, which is everything. So it can be eyesight. It could be skin. It could be brain fog.

01:58:44.760 It could be depression. There's a very strong link between depression and inflammation. An immune

01:58:50.620 response is an inflammatory response and it spreads throughout the whole body. They're actually now

01:58:55.460 starting to connect anxiety and depression to diet and changing diet oftentimes alleviates. In fact,

01:59:01.880 fasting for long time now we've known has been shown to be a pretty novel way of treating certain

01:59:08.960 types of depression and all autoimmune issues because you're not eating. So you don't get this

01:59:13.660 response. So it's very, very fascinating. And of course now, you know, let me look at our diet and

01:59:18.260 look at our lifestyle and it's no wonder we have ADD and all these behavioral, whatever issues you want

01:59:23.620 to call it just on the rise. Don't wonder. I'm sure you probably noticed some behavioral changes in

01:59:27.300 your son from taking some of those foods. Have you noticed any?

01:59:30.500 No. I know it feels better, but from a behavior perspective, I haven't really thought about it

01:59:36.800 actually. Maybe more energy. I can see that. Maybe more energy. Certainly seems a little bit more

01:59:42.600 energetic.

01:59:43.300 Yeah. As those intolerances get worse, there's more and more, aside from the obvious, I don't feel good,

01:59:48.240 therefore.

01:59:48.580 Right, right. Interesting. I think in the hours and hours of conversation that you and I have had

01:59:54.960 over a couple of different podcasts, this is the first time we actually talked about what it is you

01:59:58.920 even do. Because we're always talking about politics and other stuff. So anyways.

02:00:04.240 No, I really, really have a passion for people. So the subjects that surround people,

02:00:09.120 economics and politics are part of it, but health and fitness, and that's my real expertise. And that's

02:00:14.800 how I've worked with people for over 20 years now. And I just love it.

02:00:19.400 Where does a mind pump come from? You know, you think a pump, obviously there's a fitness

02:00:23.080 connotation there, but then mind pump, you're talking about intellect and all the other things

02:00:26.900 that we're talking about. So how does this all tie together?

02:00:28.880 When we got together to create this podcast and this business, well, we knew where our expertise

02:00:34.240 really lied, which was in health and wellness, but we also didn't want to pigeonhole ourselves

02:00:39.420 because we had lots of other passions and we wanted to keep the door open for conversations

02:00:44.380 like the one we're having now. We wanted to provide a podcast that was entertaining and

02:00:50.060 thought provoking that was largely centered around health and wellness and fitness, but

02:00:54.820 also allowed us the flexibility to be able to talk about a lot of different things. So

02:00:59.060 that's why we named it instead of naming it like paleo or health or wellness or whatever.

02:01:04.280 And initially it made it difficult because when you pigeonhole yourself, you get more like

02:01:08.180 if we named our podcast, like muscle building pot, we probably would have, they know exactly

02:01:12.080 what they're getting.

02:01:12.900 Yeah. But now it's really served us well. Cause we can go, we've had economists on the

02:01:16.080 show. We've had psychologists. We've had, uh, you know, just all kinds of, I had a, you

02:01:21.220 know, I had a Matt Kibbe, who's a libertarian on the show. Uh, we had a sex therapist on

02:01:26.620 the show. And then of course we talk a lot about health, fitness, muscle building, fat

02:01:29.660 loss, all that stuff. So it just gives us that, that ability to do that.

02:01:32.980 I like it, man. I've always enjoyed our conversations for sure.

02:01:35.800 Same here.

02:01:36.180 Well, Hey, I've got to ask you a question as we wind down. I didn't tell you about

02:01:39.200 this, but you've, you've answered this question, I think once already. And that question is

02:01:42.200 what does it mean to be a man?

02:01:44.040 For me personally, it means being a very good provider, father for my kids, a protector

02:01:49.860 and an example of, uh, sacrifice and responsibility. And I speak in my context of my, my kids and

02:01:56.200 my family. So.

02:01:57.340 Right on. I agree with that. I agree with that. Well, how do we connect, man? How do we learn

02:02:01.200 about the podcast or find out all the stuff that you guys are doing? We're here in your

02:02:04.040 studio, which is pretty cool. You've got, you've got the gym out front and then you've

02:02:07.400 got the recording studio, which I got to admit, I'm a little jealous of.

02:02:10.640 Oh, it's, we have such a good time, man.

02:02:12.560 Mine's like my, my recording studios, my guest bedroom downstairs, my basement is, uh, probably

02:02:18.380 a quarter of the size of this.

02:02:19.860 Yeah. We're, we built this way big, initially built it much bigger than we were. And now we're

02:02:24.200 starting to fill it. The idea and the goal is to, for mind pump media to become a media

02:02:29.160 company that is a kind of a maven for good health information, fitness, health, but all

02:02:36.740 aspects of health, including personal growth and all that stuff. We really want the health

02:02:41.800 and wellness and fitness industry to be the answer to a lot of the problems that we have

02:02:46.180 in societies, in modern societies right now. It's not, there's a lot of bullshit in the

02:02:50.120 fitness industry, but we'd like to change that. And so that's why we built all this, but

02:02:53.460 yeah, you can find, we have a podcast, which is mind pump. We have a YouTube channel,

02:02:57.020 mind pump TV. We have a bunch of free guides on fitness. You can find it mindpumpfree.com.

02:03:03.480 And then our website is mindpumpmedia.com.

02:03:06.240 Right on. We'll link it all up. Appreciate you, brother.

02:03:08.660 Thanks. Same here, man.

02:03:09.800 I think we're going to go for probably another couple hours because, uh,

02:03:12.500 now we're going to interview you.

02:03:13.300 We're going to do another podcast.

02:03:14.120 Oh, hell yeah.

02:03:14.740 Right on, man.

02:03:15.280 Thanks.

02:03:16.820 Guys, there it is. My conversation with Sal DiStefano. I told you it was going to be a good

02:03:21.080 one. Yes, it was a long one. So if you stuck around, I'm glad that you did. I'm sure that

02:03:25.060 you got a ton of value out of this. I know I did every time I sit down with Sal, uh, I

02:03:29.280 learned something new, a lot of new information that is going to impact my life and the people

02:03:34.620 that I'm, that I'm working to serve. So connect with Sal and Justin and Adam and Doug over

02:03:39.620 at mind pump media. They're doing great things specifically in the fitness and health industry

02:03:44.340 and world. You're not going to be disappointed with what they provide. Uh, let us know, let

02:03:48.560 Sal know, let me know what you thought about the conversation, what you enjoyed, what you

02:03:52.300 took away, uh, what you agree with, even what you disagree with. Let's have a conversation.

02:03:56.340 Let's keep the conversation alive because man, there is so much more to talk about and

02:04:00.420 we can go a lot deeper into the subjects that we covered outside of that guys, just by way

02:04:05.700 of announcement. Again, if you're going to be at origins immersion camp, the end of this

02:04:09.360 month, August, 2018, shoot me a message probably on Instagram at Ryan Mickler. That's the best

02:04:16.320 place to do it. Let me know. You're going to be there. Cause I want to connect with you.

02:04:19.120 And then of course, in the meantime, make sure that you had to store.orderofman.com to pick

02:04:25.100 up some of your order of man merchandise, including the new origin rash guard, which turned out

02:04:30.660 really, really good. If you have a need for a rash guard, this is going to be the one that

02:04:35.200 you want to own. So check it out. Store.orderofman.com until next week, gentlemen, I just want to let

02:04:41.220 you know, as always that I appreciate you. I appreciate you showing up. I'm inspired and

02:04:45.420 motivated by you every single day. And we just couldn't do this without you. So I'll sign out

02:04:49.980 for the day until the end of this week for our Friday field notes, take action and become the

02:04:54.480 man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the order of man podcast. You're ready to take

02:05:01.100 charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be. We invite you to join the order

02:05:05.740 of man.com.

Order of Man - August 14, 2018

178： Free Markets, Finding Purpose, and Forging Fitness ｜ Sal Di Stefano

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