The Critical Compass Podcast - September 18, 2026


Steve Cooksey on Beating Diabetes & the Medical Industry ｜ Capitalism & Morality Calgary 2026

Free Cities are the Future of Alternative Governance ｜ Mailyn Salabarria Capitalism & Morality 2026

Episode Stats


Length

13 minutes

Words per minute

137.58

Word count

1,917

Sentence count

71


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 So, on my blog, I shared my exercises, my food, my experiments.
00:00:05.180 I shared what worked, what didn't work, and I handed out advice and opinions.
00:00:11.380 A major crime I committed, according to the state of North Carolina, was that I told people
00:00:16.900 they should eat lower carb to reduce their blood sugars.
00:00:20.600 That's a crime, isn't it?
00:00:21.840 It's horrible that I would tell people that.
00:00:23.700 An even worse crime was me telling people that they should shoot for truly normal blood sugars.
00:00:33.800 I mean, that's a horrible crime.
00:00:35.900 The chairman called me and explained that I was in violation of the law
00:00:39.020 and that I needed to take down parts of my website,
00:00:43.140 and I had to stop giving nutritional and medical advice
00:00:47.240 or face injunctions and possible fines and even jail time.
00:00:53.700 okay as fergus mentioned i'm standing here this morning because i fought the state of north
00:01:03.600 carolina for my right to free speech and i won that case and i fought that battle with the state
00:01:11.500 because 17 years ago i fought the greatest battle of my life which was diabetes the state of north
00:01:19.380 Carolina tried to silence me back in 2012, but with the help of the Institute of Justice,
00:01:25.100 I won the right to share my experiences, my advice, and opinions. I want to talk about three
00:01:32.020 main things here today. One is achieving personal health freedom. The second is the importance of
00:01:38.640 freedom of speech in health freedom. And the third is to talk about my book. So why am I
00:01:45.800 qualified to be here. Well, I'm a formerly obese. I'm no longer obese, but I was, and I was also
00:01:52.860 dependent on drugs and insulin to survive. I was taking four insulin shots a day,
00:01:59.960 and I was able to wean off those by following a low-carb diet. I've only used one drug since 2009,
00:02:07.840 and I've only seen one medical industry professional since 2009, and that was after a
00:02:13.200 biking accident but other than that one event i've been drug and in medical industry services free
00:02:22.720 and prior to my health rebirth i was a medical industry cash cow i had been on 13 drugs for
00:02:31.760 asthma respiratory infections diabetes cholesterol hypertension i've been prescribed nebulizers
00:02:39.520 inhalers so they threw everything at me to try to make me feel better but i just got sicker and
00:02:46.400 sicker but in literally a couple of months i went from chronically sick to pretty good health and
00:02:54.080 nine to ten months later i had achieved a rebound in my health and fitness so i do know a little
00:03:03.120 bit about going from being a cash cow for big pharma and the medical industry to achieving my
00:03:09.520 personal health freedom and as i used to tell people if i can do this you can too next i want
00:03:16.960 to talk about my case cooksey versus futrell my lawsuit against the state of north carolina
00:03:24.320 and as i like to say here i fought the law and won with the help of the institute for justice
00:03:31.980 So I knew pain and suffering that the diabetics endured when I was diagnosed
00:03:36.740 because both my grandparents or grandmothers were diabetics.
00:03:40.300 One was a type 1 and one was a type 2.
00:03:43.360 And they had suffered through the full list of diabetic complications,
00:03:47.000 heart attacks, strokes, amputations, organ failure.
00:03:53.200 They went through it all, and they suffered greatly.
00:03:55.660 So when I achieved my health and fitness turnaround,
00:03:58.840 I wanted to shout it from the mountaintops, almost literally.
00:04:03.760 And so I started going online and I started talking to people in these groups.
00:04:08.880 And the medical industry mocked me, blocked me, and ridiculed me.
00:04:15.800 They tried to silence me.
00:04:17.520 So in 2010, I started a blog thinking, well, if I have my own site, nobody can stop me.
00:04:25.800 Nobody can shut me up.
00:04:27.940 Well, I was wrong.
00:04:29.020 The state tried to do that.
00:04:31.540 So on my blog, I shared my exercises, my food, my experiments.
00:04:36.380 I shared what worked, what didn't work, and I handed out advice and opinions.
00:04:42.440 So I'm going to give you a brief little synopsis of what type 2 diabetes is.
00:04:48.760 Type 2 diabetes is a disease of insulin resistance.
00:04:54.160 it's diagnosed when blood sugars achieve a threshold above certain levels now there are
00:05:02.460 things that raise blood sugars there are quite a few things that can but eating carbohydrates are
00:05:08.360 the the lowest hanging fruit and they have the greatest effect on blood sugars if you eat sugar
00:05:13.540 or high carb foods it will spike your blood sugars if you maintain truly normal non-diabetic
00:05:21.820 blood sugars i'm not talking about normal blood sugars for diabetics but non normal blood sugars
00:05:28.540 for non-diabetics diabetic complications go away i'm proof of that i've maintained normal blood
00:05:35.580 sugars for 17 years and i have no complications so now you know more than most diabetics know
00:05:45.260 about diabetes. A major crime I committed, according to the state of North Carolina,
00:05:52.360 was that I told people they should eat lower carb to reduce their blood sugars. That's a crime,
00:05:58.020 isn't it? It's horrible that I would tell people that. An even worse crime was me telling people
00:06:04.480 that they should shoot for truly normal blood sugars. I mean, that's a horrible crime. The
00:06:12.940 chairman called me and explained that i was in violation of the law and that i needed to take
00:06:17.780 down parts of my website and i stopped giving well i had to stop giving nutritional and medical
00:06:23.540 advice or face injunctions and possible fines and even jail time so with the help of the institute
00:06:31.360 for justice i sued them and we eventually won the state gave in they changed their regulations
00:06:38.380 average people like me could give ordinary diet advice.
00:06:43.360 So next I want to talk about my book.
00:06:47.300 It's the lessons I've learned in 17 years of dealing with diabetes, okay,
00:06:52.560 and with the state.
00:06:54.740 But the machine in this context, you know, the name of the book is Starve the Machine.
00:06:59.120 And in this context, the machine is big food, big pharma, and the medical industry.
00:07:05.540 Now, Big Food, they manufacture, and that's a key word, they manufacture, highly palatable
00:07:11.920 addictive foods and products that make us sicker, all right?
00:07:17.540 As we get sicker, Big Pharma sells more drugs.
00:07:21.680 Now, there's nothing wrong with that, except that the drugs do not treat the underlying
00:07:27.480 disease of insulin resistance.
00:07:29.660 It treats a lab value, and that lab value is blood sugar for diabetes.
00:07:34.600 So they sell you drugs that cause your blood sugars to fall a little,
00:07:39.880 make you feel good about yourself,
00:07:41.660 but you're still way above truly normal blood sugars.
00:07:46.080 Now, diabetics will be on these drugs for years, decades,
00:07:49.440 and the whole time these diabetic complications and the damage is accruing.
00:07:54.880 And then over years or decades, the medical industry,
00:07:59.000 they're selling more appointments or tests or procedures more surgeries it's a win-win for
00:08:05.960 everybody everybody but the people okay now each industry they're profiting and what do they use
00:08:13.400 those profits for this is the really meat of the book in my opinion it talks about corporate capture
00:08:19.880 Corporate capture of science for FIRST, they fund studies and indirectly and directly fund studies
00:08:30.220 through trade groups, and this capture of science, it also affects the disease protocols,
00:08:36.900 not just diabetes, but that's something I know a lot about, so I use that as an example.
00:08:44.940 But this captured science that influences the disease protocols is why the American
00:08:53.580 Diabetes Association and the Canadian Diabetes Association both push high-carb diets to those
00:09:00.860 that need it the least. The Canadian Diabetes Association promotes a diet with 225 to 300
00:09:07.820 grams of carbs per day now that may not mean a lot to you but for me that could be a week's
00:09:14.700 or two weeks worth of carbohydrates and canadian diabetes association promotes that every day
00:09:21.580 for diabetics now what does that do that amount of carbohydrate will without question raise blood
00:09:29.340 sugar levels and insulin levels their high carb recommendations cause the need for more drugs
00:09:36.780 and cause more diabetic complications and more pain and suffering that's the truth
00:09:43.900 it also generates more profits for their largest corporate donors but those aren't related
00:09:52.300 yeah wink wink next i want to talk about corporate captured media
00:09:58.620 Big Pharma spends $5.15 billion on network advertising.
00:10:05.180 That's over 11% of network revenue.
00:10:09.940 Over 11%.
00:10:11.140 And as a business, when one customer generates over 10% of your business,
00:10:17.460 it changes how you deal with them and how you treat them.
00:10:21.060 Money talks.
00:10:21.840 if you don't see a lot of investigative reporting on the adverse effects of drugs
00:10:28.320 you don't need to know why or understand why you can put one and one together next i want to talk
00:10:35.620 about captured government the definition of lobbying or a definition is legally attempting
00:10:44.000 to influence policy made by politicians and agencies it may be legal but it doesn't make it
00:10:51.520 right big pharma spent 877 million dollars lobbying the government last year big food spent over 200
00:11:03.680 million dollars lobbying government last year combined that's over a billion dollars spent
00:11:10.320 lobbying government to influence policies policies that benefit them do you remember when celebrities
00:11:19.760 reporters scientists presidents former presidents all said at the same time the same phrase
00:11:29.920 covid vaccines are safe and effective do you remember that that's what it looks like when
00:11:36.880 corporations capture science the media and the government i'm 65 and i've seen my share of
00:11:45.840 political messiahs as we were talking about the other day fergus people i thought would
00:11:53.040 really make a difference in the end all i heard was a lot of talk and very little action i personally
00:12:00.000 stopped believing that we were going to vote ourselves out of this mess maybe i'll be surprised
00:12:05.840 someday but i doubt it corporations only understand one thing money and that's fine
00:12:12.800 we just we just need to address that we need to stop feeding the machines so what do i mean
00:12:18.160 when i say that we need to stop feeding the machine with our purchases
00:12:23.360 we can weaken it we can weaken the machine and hopefully someday we can starve it but we're
00:12:28.240 actually contributing to their profits to their revenues and they use that to influence policies
00:12:35.520 that make us sicker, and we just need to stop doing that.
00:12:42.160 Now there are cracks in the machine, okay, and that's good.
00:12:46.240 Big food volume growth is stalling in some sectors.
00:12:49.900 My job and our job should be to hopefully someday widen the cracks and starve the machine.
00:12:58.940 A few other points I've got less than a minute.
00:13:01.700 resistance is the root cause of much of the modern diseases today. And ultra-processed foods
00:13:08.420 are the main driver of that. I calculated, and I go into a lot more detail in the book, but I
00:13:15.620 calculated that in the 17 years since I've starved the machine, that I've withheld $300,000, over
00:13:22.600 $300,000 from the machine by withholding my purchases. And so that's $300,000 that they
00:13:31.820 didn't use or couldn't use to influence the media, government, and science. Now that's a drop in a
00:13:38.140 bucket, right? But if more of us can do it, exponentially we can make a big difference.
00:13:43.960 We can affect real change. Starve the machine. Do it for your personal health,
00:13:50.760 and also do it to weaken the machine.
00:13:54.040 Thank you very much.
00:13:55.480 Thank you.
00:13:55.900 Thank you.