The Joe Rogan Experience - October 05, 2017


Joe Rogan Experience #1020 - Amy Alkon


Episode Stats

Length

2 hours and 3 minutes

Words per Minute

192.96507

Word Count

23,754

Sentence Count

1,983

Misogynist Sentences

35

Hate Speech Sentences

57


Summary

Amy Poehler joins Jemele to talk about why men are the only ones who can do what they do, and why they should be locked up. She also talks about why women should like you for who you are on the inside, not for what you look like on the outside. And why women shouldn t care about what other people think about them because they don't care about other people's opinions about them. Plus, why women are better than men at sex and why men should care more about women who are attractive than those who are not attractive. And how women should be treated in the workplace and in relationships, and how they should treat men in general. And why a guy who is sleeping in grandma s basement is not going to want to have sex with a girl who is playing Atari or whatever I'm a girl playing Atari. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 5, 0, 2 5:00 - Why women don t care what other women think about you 8:30 - Why men are better at sex 9:00- Why women should not care about their appearance 11:30- Why men should be more attractive than women 13:00 16:20 - How women should care about how they look 16:15 - What women should do in a relationship 17:20- How women are appreciated by other people 18:40 - Women should like what they can do 22:30 21:15 22: How women can do better than other people 22:00: Why women are more attractive? 23: What are you going to do better in a dating life? 24:00 | How do you know what you should do? 25:00 + 27: What do you like about yourself? 26:00 Is a woman better than a man who s better than you? 27:00 & 27:10 28:30 | How to be a woman who can have a guy you can be a good woman? 29:00 // 32:00 Can you be a better woman than a woman you can do more than a girl you like? 35:00 Do you like a guy with a guy that s a girl that s good in a woman that can do a girl like that? 32: Is she a girl with a man you like you more than you can t have a girl she s a guy like a woman like a girl in a game she s not a girl?


Transcript

00:00:03.000 Five, four, three, two...
00:00:07.000 Oh, we jumped the gun.
00:00:09.000 Hey, how are you, Amy?
00:00:10.000 Hey, good.
00:00:11.000 Thanks for doing this, man.
00:00:11.000 Appreciate it.
00:00:12.000 I'm glad to be here.
00:00:13.000 How's things?
00:00:15.000 Well, outside of, you know, Vegas, everything's good.
00:00:18.000 I know, right?
00:00:18.000 You have to say that.
00:00:19.000 Everybody...
00:00:20.000 I mean, these things that happen that sort of just change the whole world, you gotta think that's probably one of the reasons why these psychos do it in the first place, right?
00:00:29.000 So that everyone...
00:00:30.000 Talks about them.
00:00:31.000 It becomes their big fireworks 4th of July grand finale before they leave.
00:00:38.000 Yeah, there was a very interesting post by a guy named Robert King on Psychology Today, and I guess he's doing research in this, and he talked about it as a way for men to get or chase status, and that he saw two bumps.
00:00:54.000 I think one was at 23 and one at 41 in terms of the ages that people do this, and it does tend to be men.
00:01:11.000 Yeah, well, to prevent it, you have to lock all men up.
00:01:27.000 I'm not for that.
00:01:28.000 That's the only way.
00:01:29.000 I mean, obviously not the only way, but it's all men.
00:01:33.000 That's a giant issue, right?
00:01:34.000 I mean, you never see women go on mass shootings.
00:01:37.000 But, well, without men, we'd still be living in grass huts.
00:01:41.000 No, listen, I'm a man.
00:01:42.000 I'm all pro-men.
00:01:44.000 But it's very weird that it's entirely men who do mass shootings and drive trucks into crowds and that kind of thing.
00:01:53.000 Well, I think we may start seeing women do that.
00:01:55.000 But actually, I don't think it's weird that it's men because men, if you look at how men and women evolved to get partners, women just have to look hot.
00:02:05.000 You have to look like you're fertile and young and have good genes.
00:02:09.000 Which is what we consider beauty.
00:02:11.000 These what feminists say are arbitrary standards of beauty aren't anything like that.
00:02:15.000 They're very across cultures, men like women with this hourglass figure, and who have long shiny hair and who are not 72. Because if you had sex with a 72 year old, your genes died out.
00:02:29.000 Yeah, the feminist thing about arbitrary standards of beauty, as a person who is deeply entrenched in science, that's got to be frustrating, right?
00:02:38.000 Because you're looking at something that's not accurate.
00:02:41.000 You're pushing a narrative that's just not accurate.
00:02:44.000 There's this very...
00:02:45.000 Take away culture, take away all your personal feelings about human beings, and you look at the mammal, the human mammal, and it's very clear why certain males are gravitating towards certain females and, conversely,
00:03:02.000 why certain females are gravitating towards certain males.
00:03:05.000 It's biological.
00:03:06.000 Right.
00:03:06.000 And it's so unhelpful.
00:03:08.000 It's really awful, this idea that people should like you for what's on the inside.
00:03:13.000 You know, we don't see the people...
00:03:15.000 If you look at porn, it's not the woman who buys a homeless man a sandwich, you know, who's in the porn.
00:03:20.000 It's the woman with those features that are just cross-culturally appreciated by men.
00:03:26.000 Well, it's also, too, we're talking only about sexual, right?
00:03:30.000 Because people do like you for who you are on the inside.
00:03:32.000 Like Melissa McCarthy is a perfect example.
00:03:34.000 She's this vibrant, hilarious woman, and no one's holding her up as the standard of beauty or sexual attractiveness.
00:03:44.000 You know, you're looking at her as this fun person, and that's why millions of people go see her in movies, and her TV show is this giant hit.
00:03:51.000 I mean, it's literally what's on the inside and how she carries herself.
00:03:56.000 Right.
00:03:56.000 And she is very vibrant.
00:03:57.000 And if you look at that cross-cultural research, David Buss, who is an evolutionary psychologist, did the big, big cross-cultural study.
00:04:05.000 And kindness was what both men and women wanted.
00:04:08.000 I think that was the top of each list.
00:04:11.000 But if you...
00:04:12.000 Prioritize, well, okay, well, what are my must-haves in a partner?
00:04:16.000 A guy is not going to want a very old, unattractive woman as his partner if he can do better.
00:04:22.000 And a woman is not going to want to have the guy who is sleeping in grandma's basement playing Atari.
00:04:28.000 Atari?
00:04:29.000 Or whatever.
00:04:30.000 I'm a girl, so I don't know anything about football or video games.
00:04:33.000 My boyfriend tried to educate me on the way over about some, I don't know, some guy who said something insulting to a female sports announcer.
00:04:42.000 Cam Newton, a pretty popular quarterback, said he got a question from a beat reporter that works for his team and asked him something about a wide receiver's route running.
00:04:52.000 He said it's surprising that a girl is asking about route running or something like that.
00:04:56.000 He got a lot of shit about it right now.
00:04:57.000 He got a drop from a sponsor.
00:05:00.000 It's also going on further now.
00:05:02.000 Is that all he said?
00:05:03.000 It's surprising that a girl...
00:05:04.000 I believe so, and then I heard that they went further into it, off the record a little bit, and he was rude, is what she said.
00:05:11.000 Oh, okay.
00:05:12.000 But okay, we really expect...
00:05:20.000 I think?
00:05:32.000 However, we now prosecute everybody for everything.
00:05:35.000 And the reason we do that is there's too much media.
00:05:38.000 Everybody's got a microphone.
00:05:39.000 Everyone's on Twitter.
00:05:40.000 So now the stuff, the dumb stuff people would have said in another era that would have just gone off into the ether.
00:05:46.000 Now it is just, it's a news story.
00:05:48.000 Do you think it's that?
00:05:49.000 I mean, I'm sure it is that, but isn't it also that we're examining behavior on a much more intense scale than we've ever done before?
00:05:59.000 And we see things that we don't like, and we're highlighting those things in a much more aggressive way than we've ever done before.
00:06:08.000 It's almost like...
00:06:09.000 There's accelerating social evolution that's going on right now and along the way you're getting a lot of bumps and a lot of weird stuff that's happening a lot of social justice warrior stuff and then you got a lot of alt-right stuff on the other side and they're battling it out with each other and it's almost like these intense extremes on this new landscape and people are jockeying for positioning on this new cultural standard playing field.
00:06:36.000 Well, I think what's happened is that now everyone has a microphone.
00:06:39.000 So everyone's on Twitter.
00:06:41.000 Everyone can put out a tweet that gets tweeted and retweeted to 4 million people.
00:06:47.000 And so people are looking to have standing, and they're doing it by putting out their opinions.
00:06:52.000 And they also, when you're saying this about these tribes, they do it to signal, look, I'm part of this tribe.
00:06:57.000 I'm a social justice warrior.
00:06:59.000 I'm on the right.
00:07:00.000 I'm Antifa.
00:07:01.000 And so I think that that's a big part of it.
00:07:25.000 Well, first of all, With quarterbacks and with any football players, you're dealing with head trauma.
00:07:31.000 You are 100% dealing with head trauma.
00:07:34.000 There is an extremely high likelihood that all those guys on the playing field have erratic behavior due to the fact their head's been smashed 150 fucking times a year since they were a kid.
00:07:46.000 And that is just a fact.
00:07:47.000 There's no getting around that.
00:07:48.000 Yeah, and actually, I really appreciate that we're starting to see people look at that and bring that out.
00:07:52.000 So parents know, you know, do you want your son to play football or to play some other sport?
00:07:58.000 Yeah.
00:07:58.000 I mean, look, I have kids, and I wouldn't want my kids to fight, even though I'm a commentator in fighting.
00:08:05.000 I just think, like, God, if you really want to do it, I mean, I'll support them in anything they really want to do.
00:08:11.000 But I would tell them, like, it's just...
00:08:14.000 The upside and the downside.
00:08:16.000 Like, if you can get out, like some guys get out, like Floyd Mayweather.
00:08:20.000 I mean, he's just a brilliant tactician and incredibly good defensively.
00:08:24.000 And he got out relatively unscathed.
00:08:27.000 But you really won't know how unscathed until 10, 15 years from now when you see him struggling with his words.
00:08:32.000 Right, right.
00:08:33.000 It's just not worth it.
00:08:34.000 Life is short, but it's long if you're fucked up.
00:08:39.000 Oh, absolutely.
00:08:40.000 And you see that from these guys.
00:08:41.000 I read some story about that the other day.
00:08:43.000 I'm trying to think, who is the guy?
00:08:45.000 So, so sad.
00:08:46.000 And this thing about it showing up much later where you get terribly mentally ill, people, they make those trade-offs where they think, okay, well, I can get money and fame this way and it's quick and everything like that.
00:08:57.000 But they don't really realize what the long-term consequences will be.
00:09:01.000 Yeah.
00:09:01.000 Well, I think a lot of people when they got into football and even people that got into fighting, they didn't know as much back then when they first entered this sort of journey.
00:09:10.000 Yeah.
00:09:10.000 You know, especially football.
00:09:12.000 I mean, football, I mean, we really, there was no conversation about that.
00:09:16.000 Think about like the OJ trial.
00:09:17.000 You know, I've been kind of on this OJ kick lately because I started watching that Cuba Gooding Jr. series where they sort of, you know, reenact.
00:09:24.000 Right.
00:09:25.000 And it's really kind of freaking me out.
00:09:26.000 It's bringing back The memories of the 90s and what it was like when that when that thing went down I was with my girlfriend at the time and we were sitting in front of the television holding hands and you know like waiting for the verdict and when When they said not guilty she threw her hands on her face like she had just seen a horrible car accident She's like,
00:09:48.000 oh my god.
00:09:48.000 Oh my god.
00:09:49.000 Oh my god.
00:09:51.000 Oh my god.
00:09:52.000 Oh my god and Now today, they're saying, the very doctor that was working with OJ said, if they were going to do that case again today, they would absolutely bring up CTE. Yeah, I think you're right about that.
00:10:07.000 Absolutely.
00:10:07.000 And there's so many football players who got in just not knowing who will come out like that, I think, within a number of years.
00:10:14.000 Yeah, that was only 20 years ago, 23 years ago, whatever it was.
00:10:18.000 That's not that long ago.
00:10:19.000 So 23 years ago, nobody thought about brain trauma when it came to football, which is just nuts.
00:10:24.000 Like, how's that possible?
00:10:25.000 And now these guys are debilitated.
00:10:27.000 There's a whole bunch of different lawsuits that are going on right now with the NFL, and you're seeing these older players.
00:10:33.000 I mean, they have on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, and they're sitting there, and they're shaking, and they can't control themselves.
00:10:38.000 You know, like, wow, this is...
00:10:40.000 This is unheard of 20 years ago, 30 years ago.
00:10:42.000 We never even thought of this.
00:10:43.000 This was never in the public discourse.
00:10:45.000 Yeah, and I suspect if you go back and look at those tapes sort of forensically that you'll see that kind of thing, the shaking.
00:10:51.000 And also that if you take a look at over football players, how many people have these diseases and mental illness that's related to this head trauma situation?
00:11:02.000 Yeah, I'm sure quite a bit.
00:11:03.000 But I mean, this football player guy that we're talking about, Cam Newton, you know, the only thing that's wrong with...
00:11:10.000 I mean, it's not even wrong.
00:11:12.000 I mean, he's trying to get sponsors.
00:11:15.000 That's the whole deal.
00:11:16.000 Yeah.
00:11:16.000 And if you're, whatever, Coca-Cola or whatever the company is, you don't want someone representing you that does something like that.
00:11:22.000 No.
00:11:23.000 And so it's sort of normal.
00:11:25.000 Yeah.
00:11:26.000 Yeah.
00:11:26.000 Well, it's normal that they say, okay, we're dumping you, and it's normal that he would say it.
00:11:30.000 But what's always funny is that these companies, they profess surprise when it's like, really?
00:11:36.000 You thought that this person was going to be this sort of curtailed, reigned-in person.
00:11:41.000 It's like with Kathy Griffin.
00:11:43.000 Oh, you just figured out that she says offensive things?
00:11:46.000 That was a surprise to you?
00:11:48.000 Well, it wasn't.
00:11:49.000 I mean, with her, it was just, like, so poorly thought out.
00:11:52.000 It's like, what's the message there?
00:11:54.000 You're holding up a bloody head?
00:11:56.000 Like, Jesus Christ.
00:11:57.000 I mean, if you want to hold up the bloody head of some murderous dictator who's, you know, killed a bunch of people, then I kind of understand.
00:12:06.000 But even then, like, what is...
00:12:08.000 Are you ISIS? Like, what's this message?
00:12:11.000 Right.
00:12:11.000 Well, I think she didn't think it out, and it was just, okay, outrage.
00:12:14.000 She's trying to be shocking.
00:12:15.000 She's trying to be shocking, and then sort of the fake apology, and then, okay, take it back.
00:12:19.000 It was the fake apology, and then it was like, he's a bully, and he broke me, and like, what?
00:12:24.000 Oh, come on.
00:12:24.000 Like, they're playing the victim card.
00:12:26.000 Yeah.
00:12:26.000 You're a comedian, you know?
00:12:28.000 And I know comedians have, like, you know what?
00:12:31.000 Someone's going to heckle you on, and so you have stuff ready for that, and this thing, like, where she's all like...
00:12:36.000 Poor me.
00:12:37.000 Well, it's just my career's over.
00:12:38.000 I don't have a career now.
00:12:39.000 It's like, oh, all right.
00:12:41.000 Just take a couple months off.
00:12:43.000 You'll be fine.
00:12:43.000 Yeah, right.
00:12:44.000 People forget there's some new outrage.
00:12:46.000 Well, there's always going to be.
00:12:47.000 There's always going to be some new crazy fucking thing.
00:12:49.000 And there's also going to be a bunch of people that are probably excited that you did that, too.
00:12:52.000 Yeah.
00:12:52.000 And they'll calm down after a while.
00:12:54.000 It won't be in the news anymore.
00:12:56.000 Yeah, it's just we live in a time where everything is hyper-examined.
00:13:01.000 Yeah, it is.
00:13:02.000 And so that's standard.
00:13:04.000 And that's why I think we have to be more lenient with people.
00:13:06.000 This idea that you say something awful, and then you're excommunicated, you lose your job, you're going to be living in a dumpster.
00:13:12.000 This is really wrong.
00:13:13.000 We need to understand that to be human is to be an asshole.
00:13:16.000 We're all assholes.
00:13:17.000 We all say shitty things to people.
00:13:19.000 And I try to recognize my assholishness and apologize when I've been awful, and make good.
00:13:26.000 Sometimes you have to put some money into making good.
00:13:28.000 It's what the situation calls for.
00:13:30.000 Well, you never know, right?
00:13:31.000 Especially when you run into someone in traffic and they're screaming at someone and giving them the finger.
00:13:35.000 You don't know what that poor person has been through that day.
00:13:38.000 Obviously, they're at nine.
00:13:41.000 They didn't start at one when they were in that traffic incident.
00:13:45.000 They're probably at nine already.
00:13:46.000 And then this happened.
00:13:47.000 Oh, you motherfucker!
00:13:49.000 And that's where they're coming from.
00:13:51.000 Raw nerve.
00:13:52.000 Yeah, and so it really is important.
00:13:54.000 People see it as a sign of weakness, but it's actually a sign of strength to say, I'm ashamed.
00:13:58.000 I did this bad thing.
00:14:00.000 I did this recently.
00:14:01.000 I shouted on the phone very bad to this really nice person at the Kaiser Pharmacy just because...
00:14:07.000 You know, she should magically solve my problem.
00:14:09.000 It wasn't a problem she could solve.
00:14:10.000 But after I did that, I thought like, oh, this is so terrible.
00:14:13.000 Number one, I talked to her.
00:14:14.000 She's kind.
00:14:15.000 She didn't deserve this.
00:14:16.000 So I actually, I went in and I asked for her and I said, I'm so ashamed.
00:14:19.000 I spoke to you terribly.
00:14:20.000 You didn't deserve this.
00:14:21.000 You're very kind to me.
00:14:22.000 So you did it in purpose?
00:14:23.000 Excuse me, in person?
00:14:24.000 Yeah.
00:14:24.000 Oh, yeah, in person.
00:14:25.000 Because, well, I was going there anyway to pick up a medication, so it was easier.
00:14:29.000 But I actually asked to speak to her because I think it means something to people.
00:14:33.000 When you do that thing where you say, you put your ego aside and say, look, I was bad and I was wrong.
00:14:39.000 People appreciate that you're doing that.
00:14:41.000 It gives them something back.
00:14:43.000 And it steals from people to just do something and then think, haha, I got away with it.
00:14:48.000 Yeah.
00:14:49.000 You didn't.
00:14:50.000 You know it, and actually, they know it, and they feel bad, and I don't like to make people feel bad.
00:14:54.000 Well, also, you feel less about yourself, and I think that's as important as anything.
00:14:59.000 Unless you're a sociopath, when you do something mean to someone, you feel bad about yourself.
00:15:06.000 You don't judge yourself the same way.
00:15:09.000 You look at yourself and your own behavior, and you go, well, I'm faulty.
00:15:12.000 I'm like...
00:15:13.000 I'm not proud of that.
00:15:14.000 That's awful.
00:15:15.000 What I did was a bad thing.
00:15:17.000 I feel bad about who I am.
00:15:19.000 And if you just deny that, you're just building up this weird wall of disconnect between you and reality, and you're going to make more and more shitty choices if you do that.
00:15:29.000 Right.
00:15:30.000 And you are.
00:15:31.000 I think that you are the sum total of your behavior.
00:15:33.000 So you can feel all sorts of ways.
00:15:35.000 You can feel wimpy and afraid and feel like you don't want to apologize.
00:15:40.000 But if you behave the good way, the better way, the way you want to be, then you're that person.
00:15:46.000 Right.
00:15:46.000 It doesn't matter what your feelings are.
00:15:47.000 Well, this is one of the main issues that I have today with this right versus left social justice warrior thing that's going on.
00:15:55.000 It's like people are being so fucking aggressive and so rude.
00:16:00.000 And so just the way they are trying to silence people from speaking, the way they are describing people and attacking people.
00:16:09.000 It's a it's a very aggressive way and it's very short-sighted because when you have that sort of Short-sighted aggressive bit what you're doing is like you're yelling shut the fuck up Well when you yell shut the fuck up nobody wants to shut the fuck up, right?
00:16:23.000 They don't just go okay like you're you're this is a childish way of approaching an issue like the the The more objective, nuanced, more thought-out way of approaching it is to take into consideration how this other person is going to view what you're saying.
00:16:40.000 The only way to get people to change is to present them some sort of an argument or some sort of an idea that is both Polite and well thought out and and there's no Social issue involved in it like there's no Negative back and forth between you where you're trying to get them and they're trying to get you The only way to get someone to really take into consideration your ideas Is to have them in some way respect you
00:17:10.000 or like you and as soon as you tell someone shut the fuck up like well, that's out Okay, well that's out.
00:17:16.000 And now it's just like, you're just gonna win by having more people yell?
00:17:19.000 Or what are you gonna do?
00:17:20.000 You're gonna put a ski mask on and break windows?
00:17:22.000 Like, is that how you're gonna get this done?
00:17:24.000 You're not.
00:17:24.000 You're just going to cause an action-reaction.
00:17:27.000 You're just gonna cause this sort of rubber band effect where you pull it back and then it snaps, and then you've got some sort of ridiculous infighting where people go full tribal and they get one side, goes against the other side, and this is what you're seeing today.
00:17:41.000 And you're seeing people do it to get attention as well.
00:17:44.000 You're seeing people do it clearly when they know the cameras are on.
00:17:46.000 They ramp it up and start, you know, yelling obscenities and being more ridiculous about it.
00:17:52.000 It's very odd.
00:17:53.000 It's very odd to watch it play out, you know, because it's so short-sighted.
00:17:57.000 Yeah, they practically wait.
00:17:58.000 Okay, are you rolling?
00:17:59.000 Yeah.
00:18:00.000 Three, two, one.
00:18:01.000 Okay, smash the window.
00:18:03.000 You know, what you said reminded me, the worst thing a man can say to a woman is calm down.
00:18:07.000 It always has the opposite effect.
00:18:09.000 A cop once said that to me.
00:18:11.000 I called our local police station about some problem.
00:18:13.000 The guy told me, calm down.
00:18:14.000 I'm like, does that work on your girlfriend?
00:18:16.000 Because it's not working on me.
00:18:17.000 It never works on any woman.
00:18:18.000 So here's a tip, dude.
00:18:20.000 Well, it doesn't work on men either.
00:18:21.000 It doesn't work on anybody.
00:18:22.000 Maybe it works on kids.
00:18:23.000 No, it doesn't even work on kids.
00:18:24.000 It doesn't work on anyone.
00:18:25.000 I tell my kids to calm down.
00:18:26.000 They go, ah!
00:18:28.000 Opposite effect.
00:18:29.000 Always.
00:18:29.000 You know, like shut up or any of these things, these rude approaches.
00:18:33.000 And so the thing is, when you get somebody, what you do is you provoke somebody's defensiveness.
00:18:37.000 It's a fight or flight reaction.
00:18:38.000 You know, this happens to us on an emotional plane as well.
00:18:41.000 And so you're provoking that whole reaction that's designed to make you get away from a bear.
00:18:46.000 Yeah.
00:18:54.000 Yeah.
00:19:07.000 They're so far away from listening, you might as well just crawl under the desk and go read a novel.
00:19:12.000 It's just so pointless to even engage with them.
00:19:15.000 And so the people who do want to engage, if you engage on a polite level, maybe, possibly, if someone is just not totally reeled in by confirmation bias, they might listen.
00:19:26.000 And confirmation bias, of course, is that thing where we believe what we already believe, and then we throw away any disconfirming evidence.
00:19:33.000 And so, you know, if you recognize these propensities we have to do that, to believe what we believe, to be tribal, to stick to this side, to not listen, to not change our views, then maybe you have a hope of changing your views.
00:19:46.000 And maybe if you try to listen to other people who, you know, their differing views who are polite and trying to engage on a rational level, You can learn something.
00:19:57.000 I try to be open-minded.
00:19:58.000 I try to take criticism.
00:20:00.000 I try to not reject it out of hand.
00:20:02.000 Of course, I don't take the criticism that comes from, dear bitch, you ugly whore.
00:20:05.000 Do you get those?
00:20:07.000 Yeah.
00:20:07.000 But I always think like, just drop the dear.
00:20:10.000 Bitch, you ugly whore.
00:20:11.000 You know, just start with bitch, you ugly whore.
00:20:13.000 That's where the humor comes in.
00:20:14.000 The humor comes in when they're being polite while they're criticizing.
00:20:16.000 Yeah, I love that.
00:20:17.000 I love that.
00:20:18.000 It's so funny.
00:20:19.000 Well, people, when they get in arguments, it becomes a competition.
00:20:22.000 And that's a big part of the whole insult thing and the part of the shouting down thing.
00:20:27.000 It's like you're trying to win.
00:20:29.000 And you're trying to win an argument that very few people ever win.
00:20:33.000 It's usually like both people walk away just disgusted with a loss.
00:20:37.000 It's very rare that unless someone is egregiously incorrect and you literally have to shout them down because what they're doing is horrific and you need to point it out to them.
00:20:46.000 But that's usually not the case.
00:20:48.000 Well, usually it's disagreement, you know, most of the time.
00:20:51.000 Right.
00:20:52.000 And these people think they're so convinced.
00:20:54.000 It's religion.
00:20:54.000 They think that they're right.
00:20:56.000 We're on the left.
00:20:56.000 We're right.
00:20:57.000 We're on the right.
00:20:58.000 We're right.
00:20:58.000 And they are just unwilling to listen.
00:21:00.000 It's cartoonish now.
00:21:01.000 I saw something the other day about this great girl at Barnard, Toni Arakson.
00:21:07.000 And she's this young journalist student there.
00:21:09.000 Say her name again?
00:21:10.000 Toni Arakson.
00:21:11.000 It's A-I-R-E-E-K. Anyway, I can't stop.
00:21:14.000 Arakson.
00:21:15.000 Yeah.
00:21:15.000 What a strange name.
00:21:16.000 I know she's from Ohio and from a poor family and got a scholarship to Barnard.
00:21:21.000 And you see how hard she works.
00:21:22.000 She's a journalist and she looks to see different sides of things.
00:21:27.000 And I really respect that in her because you don't see that in a lot of people that age.
00:21:31.000 There's just such polarization.
00:21:33.000 I forgot why I was bringing her up.
00:21:34.000 It's this thing.
00:21:34.000 Oh, I know.
00:21:35.000 She posted something.
00:21:36.000 So she wrote an article.
00:21:37.000 They have, you know, Columbia Republicans who are, you know, who know?
00:21:40.000 What do they want to bring in?
00:21:41.000 Like Ben Shapiro?
00:21:43.000 I love the idea that anyone would be afraid of Ben Shapiro if I saw him behind me.
00:21:46.000 I'm post-Jewish, so I can make Jewish toast.
00:22:00.000 Post-Jewish.
00:22:01.000 You escaped?
00:22:02.000 Yeah, I'm an escaped Jew.
00:22:05.000 And so somebody posted something about being against white supremacists.
00:22:11.000 And it was really about, like, they're going to have a Republican speaker.
00:22:13.000 And they were so ugly about Republicans.
00:22:16.000 And I thought, God, have you ever talked to one?
00:22:18.000 My parents are Republicans.
00:22:20.000 My friend Tom, who's this Christian lawyer, I know he feeds the homeless because he thinks that's what Jesus said he should do.
00:22:26.000 These are not horrible people who are burning crosses and lawns.
00:22:30.000 They're your next door neighbor.
00:22:32.000 It's a gross generalization that doesn't do anyone any good, especially when you're talking about someone like Ben Shapiro.
00:22:38.000 Ben is a very well read, very well thought out, very reasonable, and when you talk to him in person, he's a very kind guy.
00:22:44.000 There's nothing wrong with him.
00:22:45.000 He's just conservative, you know, and whether I agree or disagree, and I'm sure I disagree with him on a lot of things, I had a really pleasant time talking to him.
00:22:53.000 I think he's a very nice guy.
00:22:54.000 His ideas and his The way he speaks is very well thought out.
00:23:01.000 He speaks very quickly, and it's intimidating to a lot of people.
00:23:06.000 His ideas, and the idea that he is this extremely articulate right-wing guy, immediately the best way to silence that is white supremacy, KKK. He's a Nazi.
00:23:19.000 I've seen people call Ben Shapiro a Nazi.
00:23:21.000 He wears a fucking yarmulke.
00:23:23.000 I know.
00:23:23.000 He's an Orthodox Jew.
00:23:25.000 I mean, it's hilarious.
00:23:26.000 It's so amazing.
00:23:27.000 It's so amazing.
00:23:28.000 And that kind of thing, we see it on both sides.
00:23:31.000 And there was something the other day.
00:23:32.000 So Dana Loesch, she's a commentator, and she's apparently very pro-NRA. Mm-hmm.
00:23:38.000 So people sent her just the ugliest tweets.
00:23:41.000 And I'm sure I disagree with her on a number of things.
00:23:44.000 I don't really look at her views, you know, extensively.
00:23:47.000 But they were things like, you know, I hope you die in a hail of gunfire or something like that, along those lines outside the NRA headquarters.
00:23:54.000 But I love this one.
00:23:55.000 The guy said, Dear God, and he spelled God G-D. Oh, boy.
00:24:01.000 We really are going to pussyfoot on the O in God on the vowels.
00:24:05.000 Oh, boy.
00:24:06.000 I love that.
00:24:07.000 That's like extreme left people that won't even acknowledge the existence of God.
00:24:11.000 So even as they write it, they put like an asterisk.
00:24:13.000 I think he might have been a religious guy or something.
00:24:16.000 Oh, maybe so.
00:24:17.000 I write books with fuck in the title and I always want them to write the full fuck.
00:24:21.000 But it's just, it was like enough to get the fuck in there with the asterisk and everything.
00:24:25.000 Isn't it funny that we're afraid of words like that?
00:24:28.000 Oh my God.
00:24:28.000 Like, what do you think you're confusing someone with that asterisk?
00:24:32.000 Right, like, oh, they actually meant, oh, Petunia, you know.
00:24:35.000 Asterisk makes it all okay.
00:24:37.000 Right.
00:24:38.000 There are people, and my favorite, when some people reviewed one of my books, they would say, like, this book is filled with profanity.
00:24:44.000 I mean, it has fuck on the cover.
00:24:46.000 What was your first fucking clue?
00:24:49.000 Yeah, people are really, really weird with that kind of stuff.
00:24:53.000 It's just...
00:24:54.000 You know, what they get upset about.
00:24:56.000 I know Dana.
00:24:57.000 I've met her.
00:24:57.000 She's very nice.
00:24:58.000 You know, I've been on her show once, right after that Cecil the Lion thing happened.
00:25:03.000 Oh, right.
00:25:04.000 I vaguely remember that.
00:25:06.000 She's, you know, she's like a right-wing woman.
00:25:10.000 I'm pretty sure she started her life, I think she was very left-wing at one point in time, and saw a lot of hypocrisy on the left and switched over to the right.
00:25:18.000 But again, it's like we were talking about before.
00:25:20.000 She's very tribal.
00:25:21.000 She's NRA, tribal, pro-gun, Second Amendment, and they dig their fucking heels in and that's it.
00:25:27.000 Right.
00:25:27.000 I want the bump stocks.
00:25:29.000 I want the fucking full auto.
00:25:30.000 I want magazines, big magazines, no matter what happens.
00:25:34.000 Right.
00:25:35.000 And I think, you know, to be, I call myself a neither.
00:25:37.000 I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican.
00:25:39.000 I'm libertarian, fiscally conservative.
00:25:41.000 And I think that helps me.
00:25:43.000 Identifying as sort of a nothing helps me to not succumb to so much of that.
00:25:50.000 Tribal stuff.
00:25:51.000 Right.
00:25:51.000 Being human, I do have views and I tend to stick to them, but I try to be open.
00:25:56.000 Right.
00:25:57.000 Well, when you go NRA, though, I mean, the thing is, like, if you're, like, a very outspoken NRA person, and she was famously involved in one of those really aggressive videos about the NRA. Did you see that video?
00:26:07.000 I don't think so.
00:26:08.000 It was, like, a sort of, like, it was really recently a very controversial video talking about gun ownership, and it was, like, a sort of pro-NRA video that was, like, widely criticized on the left.
00:26:23.000 And I think the subject of gun ownership and just what happens in these mass tragedies, I mean, it is a conversation that stirs up tribalism, logic.
00:26:36.000 It's a very complex, and also mental health issues.
00:26:41.000 I mean, I want to know what was going on with this guy.
00:26:43.000 I want to know if this Vegas guy, was he on...
00:26:45.000 Some sort of psych meds?
00:26:47.000 Because a giant percentage of these people are.
00:26:50.000 And what's the ramifications of that?
00:26:52.000 And what is causing this fucked up behavior?
00:26:55.000 Is it simply what people love to call toxic masculinity manifesting itself in the most horrific form?
00:27:01.000 Or is there some other factors?
00:27:03.000 I mean, these disassociative psych meds that they put these people on that allow them to just deal with life in a way where they just don't feel, you know?
00:27:12.000 I mean, have you ever been on psych meds?
00:27:14.000 Yeah, I took Zoloft once.
00:27:16.000 Oh, and I take Adderall every day.
00:27:19.000 Do you?
00:27:19.000 Damn, you're pilled up.
00:27:20.000 Fuck, it's great.
00:27:21.000 No, I'm not on it now because I would talk so fast I might hurt people with my speech.
00:27:25.000 I've had a lot of people in here that are on Adderall because they feel like when they do a podcast, they need to be ramped up to keep up.
00:27:31.000 And Jesus, it's so obvious.
00:27:33.000 I want to get them drinks.
00:27:35.000 And sometimes I offer them drinks.
00:27:36.000 I'm like, let's...
00:27:37.000 Let's have a drink.
00:27:38.000 Oh no, I know better.
00:27:39.000 Even though it slows me down and I'm on the same dose, 7.5 milligrams, I'm the total lightweight of lightweights.
00:27:45.000 So the Zoloft I took, because I went to a psychiatrist in New York and they actually tried to give me like lithium and all these other things, like for manic depressive people.
00:27:54.000 My friend said, you're manic, but you're not depressive.
00:27:57.000 And basically it was so crazy because all I was, it wasn't some kind of inexplicable, horrible depression.
00:28:03.000 I didn't have a boyfriend, I didn't have any money and I was bummed.
00:28:06.000 Right.
00:28:07.000 You know, like, and I took Zoloft, then I realized it just shaved off half my personality.
00:28:11.000 So I did the really dumb thing you're not supposed to do, which is just I thought, like, fuck this shit, flushed it down the toilet, and then I, like, fell off a cliff emotionally.
00:28:18.000 Whoa.
00:28:19.000 I think that was a bad idea.
00:28:20.000 Not only that, what'd you do to those poor fish?
00:28:22.000 Right.
00:28:22.000 It's like, East River, my fault, all those bodies.
00:28:26.000 Yeah.
00:28:27.000 Well, they said that there's, like, noticeable, like, trace elements.
00:28:30.000 Like, you could actually, like, measure trace elements in some water supplies of antidepressants.
00:28:37.000 Probably sorry, everybody.
00:28:38.000 That's you.
00:28:39.000 You did it, Amy.
00:28:41.000 But isn't that funny that that, saying that, like, I've talked to people that are extremely...
00:28:45.000 Extremely defensive about their use of antidepressants.
00:28:50.000 And anybody discusses, especially someone like you, who has tried them and is open about, like, what was the cause?
00:28:58.000 Well, here, I was bummed out I didn't have a boyfriend.
00:29:00.000 If you say that to people, they love to generalize depression as a disease.
00:29:08.000 It is a disease.
00:29:10.000 There is a mental issue and no exercise, diet, change of lifestyle, love in your life, none of that's going to fix it.
00:29:19.000 Having a career that's really fulfilling, none of that's going to fix it.
00:29:22.000 I have a disease and I need medicine for my disease.
00:29:26.000 See, that's such a just a sort of very one note idea.
00:29:29.000 And I love the research of this guy, Randy Nessie.
00:29:32.000 I love him.
00:29:33.000 He's a psychiatrist and an evolutionary psychologist.
00:29:36.000 And he talks about Nessie.
00:29:38.000 It's N-E-S-S-E. And you can go on his website.
00:29:40.000 He's now at University of Arizona because he was in Michigan.
00:29:43.000 It's freezing there.
00:29:44.000 Everybody eventually moves to Arizona, all these professors.
00:29:47.000 Anyway, so he talks about how depression, you know, the sad feelings, these are adaptive.
00:29:54.000 And so when something bad happens to you, being sad causes you to slow down.
00:30:00.000 You have the features of a sad person, which causes other people to gather around you and be empathetic.
00:30:06.000 Now, if it goes on for too long, you may chase people away.
00:30:09.000 But this allows you to think about what dumb fucking thing you did that made you get in the state.
00:30:15.000 And I talk about how emotions are motivational tools.
00:30:18.000 We think of them as sort of like wallpaper for our head to decorate our life, but they're not.
00:30:22.000 Emotions, when you're happy, that says, do more of that.
00:30:24.000 When you're depressed, stop doing that, reflect on it.
00:30:28.000 And so there are different kinds of depression.
00:30:30.000 There's a kind that is this medical depression that's inexplicable and that maybe drugs are needed for.
00:30:37.000 But often, I think that doctors, psychiatrists, my experience was, and my experience listening to other people, because I write this advice column and I get letters from everybody, and I've been doing this for a long time, since the early 90s, is that doctors just say, here's a pill, And a lot of these antidepressants,
00:30:55.000 they've been shown that they don't really work.
00:30:57.000 And so maybe it's a placebo effect, which actually is a thing, but a lot of times it's people are medicating away this helpful It's part of depression and sadness, which is reflecting and drawing people to you and all of this.
00:31:14.000 And so this idea of it's a disease, that, you know, it's also used with alcoholism.
00:31:19.000 It's just this idea, people like to put these things in these neat boxes, and it doesn't really work.
00:31:24.000 Yeah, I couldn't say that any better.
00:31:26.000 And I think that there are people that do have mental issues that do need medication.
00:31:30.000 We're not generalizing.
00:31:31.000 I think just like some people have liver problems, some people have thyroid issues, there are absolutely people that have issues with their brain's ability to produce serotonin.
00:31:40.000 I mean, it's just a fact.
00:31:43.000 How many of those people is the real question?
00:31:45.000 And to generalize completely, let's say, you know, all depression is a disease that should be medicated, or all depression can be cured with exercise.
00:31:56.000 I don't think it's healthy to go either way.
00:31:59.000 I know many people that have been in really bad places in their life.
00:32:04.000 They got on some sort of an SSRI, and then they started feeling better, and then they weaned themselves off, and now their life is in a way better place.
00:32:11.000 Like a good buddy of mine, he was suicidal.
00:32:15.000 The really interesting thing is, when he got on medication, he couldn't find the right one.
00:32:20.000 And that is really so baffling.
00:32:22.000 So it's science, obviously, right?
00:32:25.000 You're talking about medicine, you're talking about medication, but there's a lot of guesswork to this whole thing.
00:32:31.000 You know, I have to say, because I'm writing a big expose now, I didn't intend to do this, but I tried to shove it off on both Nina Teicholtz and Dr. Eads, and they wouldn't bite.
00:32:40.000 So I'm doing it reading medical research.
00:32:43.000 I can't even begin to tell you how non-evidence-based Maybe even most of our medical care is.
00:32:49.000 It's so terrible.
00:32:50.000 And I'm lucky that I have a psychiatrist now who is really evidence-based and went on for future training, further training, because I had been taking Ritalin, which just made me jumpy.
00:33:01.000 It didn't really help me with my focus.
00:33:02.000 You are filled up, Amy.
00:33:03.000 Jesus Christ.
00:33:04.000 Ritalin and Zoloft and Adderall.
00:33:07.000 Wow!
00:33:07.000 Well, this guy, he changed me.
00:33:09.000 I told him, I actually started taking, I was self-medicating.
00:33:11.000 This was bad.
00:33:12.000 This is before I read as much science as I do.
00:33:14.000 I was taking Mucinex and the guy's like, oh my God.
00:33:16.000 Mucinex?
00:33:16.000 Yeah.
00:33:17.000 Mucinex, the kind you get behind the counter.
00:33:19.000 It's like, it's some kind of like, they make meth out of it.
00:33:21.000 You know, they have to like sign, you know, I was buying at different pharmacies and hoping I wouldn't get arrested.
00:33:25.000 You know, meanwhile, I'm just taking it to write, not, you know, do anything.
00:33:28.000 I don't have a meth lab in my basement.
00:33:29.000 I don't have a basement.
00:33:30.000 So that helps.
00:33:32.000 So this guy said, okay, we're going to change you because I told him I couldn't focus.
00:33:37.000 He said, you can't take this.
00:33:37.000 It's making your heart race or whatever.
00:33:40.000 And he said that this Adderall, what it does that's different, it pushes a little dopamine out into your brain besides being a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, which we hear with serotonin, with antidepressants.
00:33:51.000 So it regulates that, but it also goes like, squirt, here's a little dopamine.
00:33:55.000 And the first day I was on that, the first pill I took, it was the best writing day I'd had Really, in 20 years.
00:34:02.000 It was amazing.
00:34:03.000 And so I'm still on the same dosage and everything.
00:34:05.000 But this guy, he gave me my life back because it was torture to write before that.
00:34:09.000 And that really was a big deal.
00:34:12.000 And so much of our medical care, if you look at the stuff on diet, Nina Teicholz has been great on this, Gary Taubes.
00:34:18.000 The Eads, you know, there are other people on this who have shown that, look, don't eat this high-carb, low-fat diet the government recommends.
00:34:25.000 It will make you sick and fat.
00:34:28.000 And here, this high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet, for many people, maybe not all because we have individual differences, this seems to be the most healthy diet and also not eating polyunsaturated fatty acids and stuff like that that we know about more and more.
00:34:45.000 And you see more and more on that.
00:34:47.000 Trans-fats.
00:34:47.000 Yeah, right.
00:34:47.000 But my Dr. Kaiser, I love to say those healthy whole grains on the wall, there's no such thing as healthy whole grains.
00:34:54.000 I haven't eaten a bun on a hamburger since 2009. I just wouldn't.
00:35:00.000 It's just dumb.
00:35:00.000 I eat bacon and grease all day, and I'm very healthy.
00:35:04.000 Even though my doctor actually thinks I'm going to have a heart attack by next week, the truth is if you actually...
00:35:09.000 Why does your doctor think that?
00:35:10.000 Well, because my cholesterol is like 303. But what I know, and this is from Mike Eads, the doctor who wrote The Protein Power.
00:35:18.000 He has this great blog where he talks.
00:35:21.000 He's very evidence-based but explains it very well.
00:35:23.000 There are these ratios you look at.
00:35:25.000 What's a ratio of your triglycerides to your HDL? And so basically my ratios, which the doctors at Kaiser don't understand, they are so good that I say that I'm as likely to have a heart attack as I am to be kicked in the knee by a unicorn.
00:35:39.000 I'm so not in danger of that.
00:35:41.000 And it's just terrible, though.
00:35:42.000 They sent me this letter to say, eat a low-fat diet.
00:35:44.000 Thanks.
00:35:44.000 Well, isn't that crazy, though, that doctors are doing this?
00:35:46.000 I mean, I understand that they went to school a long time ago, and I understand that a long time ago, that is what people thought, that if your cholesterol hit a certain point, you needed to take some sort of medication to lower your cholesterol.
00:35:58.000 But if you eat a healthy diet, and your body is doing well on that healthy diet, you have to take into consideration, what are the What are all the factors involved in health and vitality and the understanding of HDL versus LDL and the balance of triglycerides?
00:36:19.000 If you're a doctor and you don't understand that and you're giving advice and you're telling people to get on statins, it's fucking disturbing.
00:36:27.000 It's terrible.
00:36:28.000 It's terrible.
00:36:29.000 And those statins are fucking terrible for you.
00:36:32.000 Terrible effects.
00:36:33.000 They can cause diabetes.
00:36:34.000 They have just the worst side effects.
00:36:36.000 And this is the thing that I look at when I'm looking at research or looking at...
00:36:40.000 Because I do what I call applied behavioral science.
00:36:42.000 So it's science help as opposed to self-help.
00:36:45.000 I look at what are the trade-offs.
00:36:47.000 If I tell you this, what are the trade-offs in doing this?
00:36:50.000 Where are you going to have a problem?
00:36:53.000 How worthwhile is this solution?
00:36:55.000 And that's what doctors aren't looking at when they give people statins.
00:36:59.000 It's sort of like from the drug company's mouths to your gut.
00:37:02.000 Well, it's just so many doctors are basing their decisions and the advice they give on really old evidence.
00:37:09.000 Or, excuse me, really old knowledge.
00:37:11.000 Evidence, quote unquote.
00:37:12.000 Yeah, I shouldn't say evidence.
00:37:14.000 Ancel Keys' fraudulent, quote unquote, science.
00:37:16.000 And it's so terrible.
00:37:17.000 Ancel Keys?
00:37:19.000 Yeah, he did this, quote unquote, research, but he excluded countries that didn't show- What research is this?
00:37:25.000 It was in the, I think it was in the 50s.
00:37:27.000 He did this multiple country study where he looked at what people ate and what he did.
00:37:33.000 It's like this, there's a story from the Holocaust where a guy shot all these bullseyes in the wall and some army person came up to him and said, how did you learn to shoot that way?
00:37:42.000 He said, it's easy.
00:37:42.000 I first shot the wall, then I drew the bullseye.
00:37:45.000 And so that's what Ansel Keys did with his research, and he excluded any countries that didn't fit what he wanted to say, which is eat this diet that we've been eating, our government told us to eat for years, this high-carb, low-fat diet that actually causes you to be just a hungry motherfucker all day.
00:38:01.000 Yeah.
00:38:02.000 Insulin spikes.
00:38:03.000 Yeah.
00:38:04.000 And so, you know, what I learned from Gary Taubes, who's actually a friend of mine, so I got in early on the low carb thing because I heard while he was writing this, that carbs, so this is potatoes, starchy vegetables, fruits, fruit juice, sugar, these things cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat.
00:38:23.000 It makes you diabetic and all these things.
00:38:25.000 And there's some indication that maybe Alzheimer's is diabetes 3, diabetes of the brain.
00:38:31.000 They need more evidence on that.
00:38:32.000 But personally, I do not eat sugar.
00:38:35.000 I eat one tiny little ice cream thing a week, just so I won't feel totally deprived.
00:38:39.000 But when I eat bacon and stuff all day, steak and green beans drowning in butter, I don't feel deprived.
00:38:46.000 And it's better for me.
00:38:48.000 And if you can do that, that's not much of a sacrifice.
00:38:51.000 Okay, I won't eat the bun.
00:38:52.000 Big deal.
00:38:53.000 I read Gary's book and I had him on the podcast as well.
00:38:55.000 It's a fascinating thing and very controversial too.
00:38:58.000 A lot of people emailed me, I need to get on and refute what he said.
00:39:02.000 Alright, relax.
00:39:03.000 I literally got dozens of people that did that to me.
00:39:05.000 But the thing that's most shocking, I started following Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint Diet.
00:39:12.000 And when I started doing it, I cut out all the sugar, pretty much.
00:39:15.000 I mean, I fuck around every now and then.
00:39:17.000 But one of the things that was so shocking was my appetite.
00:39:22.000 My appetite was so unmanageable.
00:39:24.000 I was ravenous.
00:39:26.000 I would eat, and then I would be exhausted, and then I would be fucking ravenous, like four hours later.
00:39:32.000 If I went three hours or four hours without eating, I was starving.
00:39:37.000 I regularly do intermittent fasting now, where I do 14 hours.
00:39:41.000 That's great.
00:39:42.000 It's really good for your body.
00:39:44.000 And I lost a lot of body fat for doing that.
00:39:46.000 But the big thing was that when it came time to eat, it wasn't like I was holding my breath the entire time.
00:39:53.000 I was like, finally.
00:39:55.000 It wasn't that at all.
00:39:57.000 It was just so normal.
00:39:58.000 And I was like, oh, so there's some other process that I thought I attributed to hunger.
00:40:04.000 I was thinking, okay, I get really hungry.
00:40:06.000 But it's not just hunger.
00:40:08.000 It's insulin.
00:40:10.000 It's insulin.
00:40:10.000 It makes you hungry in that way.
00:40:12.000 Before I stopped eating bread, I went to Starbucks in Culver City, and I would always get the thing that was the regular fatty thing, croissant, whatever.
00:40:20.000 Yeah, those are great.
00:40:21.000 I know.
00:40:22.000 I love all that kind of food.
00:40:24.000 So good.
00:40:25.000 I got, by accident, somebody gave me the sugar, the fat-free, whatever.
00:40:30.000 And after about 20 minutes, I mean, I wanted to bite off somebody's arm in line.
00:40:35.000 I wanted to kill people in line to catch the counter and get something.
00:40:37.000 Yeah, those fat-free things.
00:40:38.000 It makes you feel so terrible.
00:40:40.000 And I looked at all those years I had dieted, and at one point I just thought, like...
00:40:44.000 You know what?
00:40:44.000 If anybody doesn't like me a little rounder than other people, fuck them.
00:40:48.000 And I started going to Bubby's Diner in New York City having this chicken potato burrito, which now I wouldn't eat the bread and the potato.
00:40:54.000 And I started losing weight just by eating like a normal human being and not excluding fat.
00:40:59.000 And that was sort of instructive for this.
00:41:01.000 And now I just basically try to eat fat all day.
00:41:03.000 Grease, grease, more grease.
00:41:05.000 Yeah.
00:41:05.000 And you don't have that hunger.
00:41:08.000 And also, I know it's so much healthier for me to not eat bread and to not eat these.
00:41:13.000 We don't eat bad oils anymore.
00:41:15.000 And just to tell you another weight loss story, my boyfriend, he was Elmore Leonard's researcher, the crime writer, for 33 years.
00:41:21.000 And he had to do this book, Djibouti, and I begged him not to go to Africa because my boyfriend, his look is, I'm American, kidnap me.
00:41:30.000 You're scared he's going to get kidnapped in Africa?
00:41:32.000 I knew he would get kidnapped.
00:41:34.000 You knew it?
00:41:34.000 Yeah.
00:41:35.000 So I just, you know, I begged him not to go.
00:41:37.000 Did they kidnap a lot of people in Africa?
00:41:38.000 No, but they would kidnap my boyfriend.
00:41:39.000 Oh, all right.
00:41:40.000 You're nervous.
00:41:41.000 Was that the pills talking?
00:41:43.000 No, he's going to be mad at me for saying this, but he once got his pocket picked in Paris.
00:41:47.000 He just looks like the American guy that he'd do something to.
00:41:51.000 And he's a big guy from Detroit, so it's not like he's wimpy or anything.
00:41:55.000 But he needed to lose some weight, and some doctor gave him these, like, Candy bars that were $230.
00:42:02.000 And the thing of being from Detroit, not wanting to be ripped off.
00:42:05.000 I said, okay, if you do exactly what I say, because he's a guy guy, so he's not like, I'll do exactly what you say.
00:42:11.000 But I said, you will lose weight and you will not be hungry.
00:42:14.000 So I put him on a diet of bacon, eggs.
00:42:16.000 He could eat meat, no vegetables, and just coffee and spring water.
00:42:21.000 No vegetables?
00:42:21.000 Yeah.
00:42:22.000 This is like, remember Dr. Atkins, sort of the Atkins induction diet.
00:42:26.000 You have to take magnesium or you'll be blocked up like the Berlin Wall inside.
00:42:31.000 But he lost 30 pounds in five weeks while sitting in his chair researching Djibouti, the book Elmore ended up doing.
00:42:37.000 And he did not leave his chair.
00:42:39.000 He charms librarians on the phone and embassy people and stuff like that.
00:42:42.000 No, but is no vegetables a good idea?
00:42:45.000 It seems like you need vitamins, no?
00:42:47.000 Well, eventually.
00:42:48.000 But actually, Topps has said, we talked about this once, and he said basically that meat...
00:42:53.000 It has all the vitamins except vitamin C. And I'm sort of paraphrasing from a long time ago, so forgive me if I get this wrong.
00:42:59.000 But if you are eating meat rather than carbs, maybe you don't get vitamin C deficient.
00:43:04.000 Look at the Maasai and also the Eskimos.
00:43:07.000 I think it's the Inuit.
00:43:08.000 I think Stephenson was a guy who was up there.
00:43:11.000 And before they started eating a Western diet, they just ate blubber and whale meat and I guess maybe a penguin here and there.
00:43:18.000 Seals and stuff.
00:43:19.000 I don't know if they ate the penguins.
00:43:20.000 Penguins, I think, are an hour ago.
00:43:22.000 Dealing with a different part of the world.
00:43:24.000 Penguin nuggets?
00:43:25.000 Yeah, I'm really good on geography.
00:43:26.000 I think that's the South.
00:43:27.000 I failed geography, obviously.
00:43:29.000 But I know what you're saying, though.
00:43:32.000 And they also had extremely low rates of cancer.
00:43:35.000 They were just healthier humans.
00:43:37.000 Which changed as soon as they started eating the Western diet.
00:43:40.000 And Tom's brings up the Pima Indians.
00:43:42.000 Same thing, too.
00:43:42.000 They have horrible problems with diabetes.
00:43:45.000 Also, though, to throw some...
00:43:49.000 Other stuff in there.
00:43:50.000 There's also an issue with alcoholism and cigarettes.
00:43:53.000 There's the cancer and the heart attacks and a lot of things that happen with the Inuit.
00:43:57.000 A lot of people, there's a correlation between extreme consumption of cigarettes and alcohol.
00:44:03.000 So it's not just the American diet.
00:44:06.000 It's also all the vices that go along with that.
00:44:08.000 We're good at producing those.
00:44:10.000 Yeah, we suck.
00:44:11.000 We import horrible things.
00:44:13.000 I mean, look what we did to, not we, obviously you and I weren't alive back then, but whoever looked like us that did that to the Native Americans, introducing alcohol to them, and they didn't know what to do with it.
00:44:24.000 Their bodies weren't used to it.
00:44:27.000 Yeah.
00:44:28.000 There's a doctor that I'm going to have on the podcast soon who is on Twitter.
00:44:33.000 I mean, I have no idea if this guy's nuts or not.
00:44:36.000 Aren't we all?
00:44:36.000 Yeah, everybody is.
00:44:37.000 I'll tell you right now.
00:44:38.000 But this gentleman, he's a full carnivore.
00:44:42.000 All he does is eat meat.
00:44:44.000 And he holds a bunch of records in athletic pursuits.
00:44:48.000 It's really kind of interesting.
00:44:50.000 It's not Stephen Finney, is it?
00:44:52.000 I'll tell you in a minute.
00:44:53.000 I'll pull him up real quick.
00:44:55.000 But he and I have been going back and forth trying to figure out a time to get him on the podcast.
00:45:00.000 But he's 50 years old, and it's pretty impressive what he's been able to do.
00:45:05.000 And all he does is eat meat.
00:45:06.000 He doesn't eat anything but meat.
00:45:08.000 You know?
00:45:08.000 And he's an MD. So, of course, the fucking internet's not working here.
00:45:14.000 What's going on with the internet here, young Jamie?
00:45:16.000 Yeah?
00:45:17.000 It's a piece of shit laptop.
00:45:19.000 This laptop has been the worst one I've ever had.
00:45:21.000 Really?
00:45:21.000 As far as connecting.
00:45:23.000 It takes forever to reconnect.
00:45:25.000 Yeah, I hate that.
00:45:26.000 Anyway.
00:45:27.000 I never leave the house, so I'm always on my big computer.
00:45:29.000 You never leave the house?
00:45:31.000 Not lately.
00:45:31.000 I wrote a book for three years.
00:45:32.000 It spent three years trying to kill me.
00:45:34.000 Jesus Christ.
00:45:34.000 I know.
00:45:35.000 My boyfriend brought me food.
00:45:36.000 Otherwise, I would have eaten frozen hot dogs for three years.
00:45:39.000 Like the meat guy.
00:45:40.000 But that's not good, right?
00:45:41.000 It wasn't.
00:45:42.000 But the book...
00:45:42.000 You know what happens?
00:45:43.000 So you plan on writing this book.
00:45:45.000 And I thought, oh, this will be easier.
00:45:46.000 This is a book on how to transform to be confident.
00:45:49.000 And I thought, okay, this will be easy.
00:45:51.000 Because I've been writing this in my column for so many years.
00:45:53.000 And then I look into the science.
00:45:55.000 And I look a little deeper.
00:45:56.000 And I think, oh, my God, this is so horrible.
00:45:58.000 Yeah.
00:45:59.000 And what happens is, so this professor will do these people, these researchers, they do some research, but they don't totally support it, and then they don't work in a transdisciplinary way.
00:46:07.000 So you have to support this one's research with that one's research, and this became this big thing.
00:46:12.000 And I just kept having nightmares about my editor, who's a nice man, chasing me down the street, asking for my advance back with an axe.
00:46:22.000 An X? An axe.
00:46:23.000 Or an axe.
00:46:24.000 He held like an X. Yeah, right.
00:46:26.000 Well, this guy's...
00:46:27.000 I don't even know his full name.
00:46:29.000 His Twitter name is S. Baker.
00:46:32.000 He is...
00:46:33.000 Here, let me get it to here.
00:46:35.000 I like charades.
00:46:36.000 S. BakerMD is his Twitter name.
00:46:39.000 Haven't heard of him.
00:46:39.000 Multi-sport, world record holding, Masters 50-plus athlete, nutrition for performance and health, healthcare, not sick care, no medical advice here, and all he does is eat meat.
00:46:50.000 Wow.
00:46:50.000 He eats nothing but meat.
00:46:52.000 The guy I mentioned, so Stephen Finney, he is a dietary researcher.
00:46:56.000 He and Jeff Volokh wrote a very good book on low-carb.
00:46:59.000 Jeff Volokh's also a dietary researcher.
00:47:01.000 And Finney, I think, bicycles competitively or very intensely.
00:47:07.000 And he says that eating low-carb, there's apparently some hump you get over, but then that is better.
00:47:15.000 It gives you more energy than this whole, like, drink some Gatorade that people have held as the conventional...
00:47:22.000 Yeah, but is that the case with extreme endurance sports?
00:47:26.000 There's one guy that we talked about before.
00:47:29.000 Sean Baker.
00:47:30.000 Dr. Sean Baker.
00:47:31.000 Carnivore diet.
00:47:32.000 Zero carb diet plan.
00:47:35.000 Guy looks healthy as fuck.
00:47:37.000 He's on the right hand, right side.
00:47:38.000 Yeah, he does.
00:47:40.000 I mean, he's jacked.
00:47:41.000 Yeah.
00:47:41.000 And he's...
00:47:43.000 He dunks basketballs and lifts weights and shit, but he might just be some athletic freak.
00:47:46.000 I just don't know if...
00:47:48.000 It's part of genes, too.
00:47:49.000 It could be.
00:47:49.000 You know, I'm lucky.
00:47:50.000 I have good genes.
00:47:51.000 You know, the boyfriend looks at a saltine, and he gains three pounds, and I'm lucky.
00:47:56.000 So my family were Eastern European shithole Jews, and, you know, it probably wasn't a lot of food, and, I don't know, somehow my body learned to manage that, having a lot and having not a lot, and it managed it better.
00:48:06.000 Sure.
00:48:06.000 I'm just wondering whether or not that's a really viable diet to just eat only meat.
00:48:13.000 It just seems like...
00:48:13.000 Well, the Maasai do it.
00:48:15.000 And the Inuit did it.
00:48:18.000 And so the question is, are you missing nutrients?
00:48:21.000 And I'm not the person to answer this.
00:48:23.000 Are you missing nutrients?
00:48:24.000 And that's the problem with being vegetarian.
00:48:26.000 There's a guy named Chris Kresser who's posted on this.
00:48:29.000 I've had him on as well.
00:48:29.000 Oh, great.
00:48:29.000 I love this.
00:48:30.000 He's great.
00:48:31.000 And so he has some really good posts about what you're missing if you're a vegetarian.
00:48:35.000 People say, oh, I take vitamins.
00:48:36.000 But can you get the vitamins in the way you need, in the way your body uses them from taking vitamin pills or even from eating, you have to eat a ton of this, you know, I don't know, bean curd or something.
00:48:47.000 And I don't want to have soy.
00:48:50.000 That's the problem.
00:48:51.000 That's the dishonesty about vegetarianism.
00:48:53.000 And some people knowingly make that tradeoff, but I sure wouldn't.
00:48:56.000 I'm sorry as much as the bunnies are cute and Well, Chris Kresser was a vegan for a long time, and he had some pretty serious health consequences because of that.
00:49:05.000 But, you know, that's just him.
00:49:07.000 Some people are fine with a vegan diet.
00:49:09.000 And that's one of the most important things to talk about, is that the biodiversity in human beings is very...
00:49:15.000 There's a broad, broad spectrum of what people need and what people don't need.
00:49:20.000 Which is why some people, like my friend Brian, his mom can't even touch Brazil nuts.
00:49:26.000 If she ate a Brazil nut, she'd go into shock and she'd be dead.
00:49:29.000 I mean, I can eat them all day long.
00:49:32.000 They taste like shit.
00:49:33.000 I don't totally like them.
00:49:35.000 But, you know, there's a giant curve.
00:49:39.000 Right.
00:49:39.000 This is the individual differences thing that I was talking about before.
00:49:43.000 And there's this big push to say, oh, men and women are alike and groups are no different from each other.
00:49:50.000 But, you know, you don't see Jews as NBA basketball stars.
00:49:54.000 You know, and Jews and people from Northeastern Europe tend to have lactose tolerance in a way other people do not.
00:50:01.000 So where we are from, where we mainly our evolution took place, that, you know, and I mean, that goes back way, way, way, way back, that that affects us.
00:50:13.000 Our skills, our abilities, as well as our digestive abilities.
00:50:18.000 Can you eat this kind of thing?
00:50:20.000 Can you drink liquor and not be really affected by it?
00:50:23.000 All those things.
00:50:23.000 And so that's the stuff that people don't like to look at.
00:50:26.000 The way we were talking about before, that people like to say, it's just like this.
00:50:31.000 It's this thing, this is a disease, and it's horrible.
00:50:34.000 That lack of nuance, that's just so stupid, and it's so sort of anti-solution.
00:50:40.000 What people like to do, when people do that thing of...
00:50:43.000 You know, saying things are one way.
00:50:45.000 It's often in a way to, I think that people try to feel superior.
00:50:49.000 They try to simplify things too much.
00:50:51.000 They do.
00:50:51.000 So that too, because we like to understand things.
00:50:54.000 So I think it's that.
00:50:54.000 And then also there's a tendency to want to prosecute people to say, You are a slovenly fat person, and the reason you are heavy is that you did not go to the gym, and I went to the gym, and I am a holy gym-goer, and you are a scummy, terrible couch-sitter.
00:51:10.000 And that's not the case.
00:51:12.000 In fact, Hobbs wrote a great piece for New York Magazine about how we think exercise makes us thinner, but it doesn't.
00:51:18.000 And the reasons you were saying before for doing it for mental health, I try to do that when I'm feeling just my worst.
00:51:24.000 I make myself get on the bike and do these high-intensity intervals.
00:51:28.000 Because I know that that'll help me mentally, even though I feel like shit.
00:51:32.000 Let me stop you there.
00:51:33.000 Sure.
00:51:33.000 You're saying exercise doesn't make people thinner?
00:51:36.000 That's what Taubes in this piece says, and that's what I see over and over again.
00:51:40.000 And believe me, we don't want to believe that.
00:51:41.000 And I think people can lose weight.
00:51:43.000 Through exercise, but they get hungrier.
00:51:45.000 That's the problem.
00:51:46.000 You exercise, you get hungrier, and you replace that.
00:51:50.000 I don't have all the nuances on this, so everyone should look up that Tubbs piece in New York Magazine, because he's just fantastic and explains it well.
00:51:55.000 The problem with all that is it's very anecdotal.
00:51:58.000 When you start saying that diet is the way to go and that exercise does not make you thin, it's anecdotal.
00:52:04.000 Because some people, exercise absolutely makes them thin.
00:52:07.000 I mean, I know a lot of people that have started doing jujitsu and lost 30, 40 pounds.
00:52:12.000 I know a lot of people that have done that.
00:52:14.000 And it works, you know, because it's extremely strenuous, extremely rigorous.
00:52:18.000 You burn off a ton of calories.
00:52:19.000 You accelerate your metabolism.
00:52:21.000 Your metabolism starts burning off fat at an unprecedented rate for your body.
00:52:26.000 And it does work.
00:52:27.000 But it's like, what kind of exercise are you engaging in?
00:52:30.000 You know, that's another factor.
00:52:32.000 Like, are you just doing, like, a long, slow jog with very low intensity?
00:52:36.000 Or are you doing, like, powerlifting?
00:52:38.000 Like, there's a lot of evidence that actual weightlifting is way better for burning fat than anything else because when you weightlift, your body makes more muscle.
00:52:48.000 More muscle consumes more calories.
00:52:50.000 And if you have the same amount of calorie intake, but now your body has more requirements, it'll start burning off some of that fat.
00:52:56.000 Yeah, I think that's a really great point.
00:52:58.000 I'm not an expert in this area, and I haven't read very much in it, but I have read this.
00:53:05.000 What's the guy's name?
00:53:07.000 Shoot, I'm not going to remember it.
00:53:09.000 Mike Eads wrote a book with him.
00:53:11.000 It's Slow Burn Fitness.
00:53:13.000 And actually, I do that.
00:53:14.000 I lift weights.
00:53:15.000 You lift them until your muscles are just screaming.
00:53:17.000 And I can lift like eight pounds because I'm totally wimpy.
00:53:21.000 And you do it really slowly, like so slowly, like time's barely moving.
00:53:26.000 And that does increase your metabolism.
00:53:28.000 It improves your heart.
00:53:31.000 It improves your cardiovascular system.
00:53:34.000 And what's the other thing?
00:53:35.000 And it does help weight loss.
00:53:36.000 So there are nuances on that.
00:53:38.000 Sure.
00:53:39.000 I say that because when I look at the Taubes thing, all this stuff, he supports stuff very well.
00:53:44.000 It makes sense, but I'm a little light on what the details are.
00:53:47.000 So admittedly, you know, I think you bring up a good point on that.
00:53:50.000 And also the individual differences, things that we are, that we are different.
00:53:54.000 And so some people are able to lose weight in ways that other people maybe are not.
00:54:00.000 But I think this- No.
00:54:03.000 I have kids and one of the things you see is like you see kids that can just fucking eat anything.
00:54:09.000 They eat anything and they're skinny.
00:54:10.000 And then you see other kids that they're just really struggling at a really early age.
00:54:14.000 Yeah.
00:54:15.000 And their body packs on a ton of fat and they have those extreme endomorph bodies and there's...
00:54:21.000 You know, there's clear differences.
00:54:23.000 And they're both on the playground together at the same time.
00:54:26.000 They're both the same age.
00:54:28.000 You're not dealing with a lifetime of abuse.
00:54:30.000 You're talking about 10-year-olds.
00:54:31.000 Right.
00:54:31.000 And so it comes down to me, too.
00:54:33.000 How does your body process nutrients?
00:54:36.000 How does it process the food you take in?
00:54:38.000 And how well does it do it?
00:54:39.000 And where does it store it?
00:54:41.000 And so...
00:54:42.000 You know, those kids who are, you know, if you have them do the same kind of play, you will see that one kid ends up being fatter and one isn't.
00:54:49.000 And it's not, you know, if you fed them the exact same things, you can see that the factory is just working differently in one kid.
00:54:56.000 Yeah, genetics are real.
00:54:57.000 The other thing to take into consideration, you were talking about lactose intolerance.
00:55:02.000 One of the things that I read really recently is that a big part of lactose intolerance could be attributed to the homogenization and pasteurization of milk.
00:55:11.000 And that we're very concerned about diseases, rightly so, and freshness.
00:55:16.000 But milk's not supposed to be able to sit on a shelf for three weeks.
00:55:20.000 It's just not supposed to.
00:55:21.000 You're supposed to get milk, and if you drink it at all, it should be fresh.
00:55:24.000 And that way it has the enzymes in it.
00:55:26.000 And that what we're doing by boiling this milk and pasteurizing it and homogenizing it is where you're creating this dead protein liquid shit that your body doesn't know what the fuck to do with.
00:55:36.000 And then the weirder ones is when you take it and you suck the fat out of it.
00:55:41.000 Like when you have low fat milk and a lot of people don't even realize that low fat milk has sugar in it.
00:55:45.000 They literally add sugar to low fat milk to make it palatable.
00:55:49.000 So disgusting.
00:55:50.000 I didn't know that.
00:55:50.000 You're not getting anything.
00:55:52.000 It might be low-fat as in fat content, but as in the effects it's going to have on your body, it's not low-fat at all.
00:55:59.000 Yeah, actually, Jeff Volick, that dietary researcher, basically agreed with me when I said to him, so is it basically child abuse to feed your child skim milk?
00:56:07.000 I mean, here we are, America.
00:56:07.000 We're a very wealthy country.
00:56:09.000 People are feeding their children nutrient-free food.
00:56:12.000 It's so crazy.
00:56:14.000 Well, they just have not had enough time to study the research.
00:56:18.000 Most people, what they hear is, if you eat cholesterol, you'll get fat.
00:56:24.000 If you eat saturated fats, you'll have a heart attack.
00:56:29.000 And you're talking about like 1960s knowledge.
00:56:32.000 You talk to top of the food chain researchers today, no pun intended, in 2017, and they'll tell you quite the opposite.
00:56:40.000 They'll tell you that saturated fats and cholesterol are actually good for you, that they are the precursors for hormones.
00:56:46.000 Your body uses them to produce testosterone.
00:56:49.000 Your body uses them to produce hormones.
00:56:51.000 And that this idea that eating cholesterol raises your blood cholesterol, that's not true.
00:56:59.000 Right.
00:56:59.000 And actually, we've been so credulous as people.
00:57:03.000 I think probably it's not just us.
00:57:05.000 It's probably around the globe for many, many decades.
00:57:07.000 And now part of the good part of having all this media is that more of the sort of the counterpoint gets out there.
00:57:15.000 And so it's been sort of a religion.
00:57:17.000 People have believed this because the government put it out.
00:57:20.000 The American Heart Association, the AMA put it out saying fat is, excuse me, fat is bad.
00:57:27.000 And recently they did it again with coconut oil.
00:57:29.000 They're still doing it.
00:57:29.000 It's It's so terrible.
00:57:30.000 And it's so not evidence-based.
00:57:31.000 I know.
00:57:32.000 And I had to send it to a bunch of people like Rhonda Patrick and doctors and scientists that I know.
00:57:38.000 I'm like, am I wrong here or is this crap?
00:57:41.000 And Onnit wrote a piece, one of the researchers for Onnit wrote a piece essentially saying the American Heart Association is essentially whack.
00:57:48.000 It's kind of a whack institution and they're not on top of the ball.
00:57:51.000 Yeah, I just found this with another medical association in this piece I'm writing.
00:57:55.000 And it's really terrible because what happens is, so doctors say that you go to an HMO, those doctors, they go by the recommendations of these big associations.
00:58:05.000 So you've got the big associations telling basically medical fairy tales.
00:58:10.000 They're continuing to tell the same fairy tale that they've told.
00:58:15.000 Right.
00:58:16.000 Right.
00:58:21.000 Right.
00:58:32.000 All these people who have done this work to put out the real science, they have saved an enormous amount of lives and stopped people from having horrible diseases.
00:58:41.000 I really think that they're all heroic because it's been a fight to put that stuff out.
00:58:45.000 It's been a big battle for them and they have people fighting them all the time.
00:58:50.000 Well, most people, they go to a doctor for advice, but the reality about medical school is you take very little time to learn about nutrition.
00:58:56.000 Right.
00:58:57.000 So a lot of these guys, whether it's an orthopedic surgeon or whatever their specialty is, the idea that these people are the go-to expert on every single area of the body, including nutritional absorption, is ridiculous.
00:59:11.000 It's just not the case.
00:59:12.000 And there's a great many people that know more about nutrition, and especially state-of-the-art nutrition, than your doctor does, unfortunately.
00:59:23.000 But see, if you realize that, then you're already ahead of the game, and you can say, okay, I'm going to use you for tests.
00:59:30.000 But that sucks.
00:59:33.000 It really sucks.
00:59:34.000 Unless you have a great doctor.
00:59:35.000 I mean, there are obviously some great doctors out there that can give you some, like my doctor, Dr. Gordon, Mark Gordon, who is also an expert in traumatic brain injury.
00:59:44.000 And, you know, he's a really nuanced guy.
00:59:47.000 And when I talk to him about cholesterol and all these different factors and LDL and HDL and...
00:59:53.000 And he can give me a research-based sort of point of view on it because he's doing it himself.
01:00:00.000 I mean, he's eating this way himself.
01:00:02.000 He's paying attention to all the latest stuff, but he's got a voracious appetite for that stuff.
01:00:07.000 There's a lot of people that just don't want to be bothered.
01:00:09.000 They got their degree in 1982 and they're done.
01:00:12.000 I know.
01:00:12.000 And it's so terrible.
01:00:13.000 And see, if your doctor discloses that to you, if they say, look, I really know nothing about diet, and I'm going to give you advice because they say that I should give you advice, but really it's not based on anything other than they printed out some sheets here, then okay, because then you're informed.
01:00:28.000 It's not like your doctor is leading you on with a white coat, but most people are being let on.
01:00:33.000 Well, it's just, we have this idea, you know, we have this idea that, you know, what do I need to do to be healthy?
01:00:39.000 Well, you know, maybe I should go on a vegetarian diet.
01:00:42.000 That'll be healthy.
01:00:43.000 Well, listen, if you eat fucking cupcakes and burritos and fucking cheese doodles all day, yeah, a vegan diet is going to be amazing for you.
01:00:51.000 It's going to really do a great job.
01:00:53.000 The question is, is it optimal?
01:00:55.000 It might be.
01:00:55.000 It might be optimal for you, but it might not be optimal for you.
01:00:58.000 You know, it might be for me.
01:00:59.000 Maybe it's my thing, you know, but if...
01:01:02.000 Trying and trial and error becomes really difficult for people because most people have jobs and families and obligations and hobbies and things they like to do.
01:01:11.000 They don't want to spend time going through PubMed studies and trying to figure out what the fuck is the good thing to eat and the bad thing to eat.
01:01:18.000 What are the variables?
01:01:19.000 Is it based on the origin of my ancestors?
01:01:22.000 Do I have to think about...
01:01:24.000 You know those ancestral diet people that are really into that?
01:01:27.000 Where are your people from?
01:01:29.000 What did they grow up doing?
01:01:32.000 It's very hard.
01:01:33.000 It's hard.
01:01:34.000 The great thing is that there is more stuff out there that's written for lay people where people who read the research explain it to people in a way that is very clear and understandable so people can make more of their own decision, I think, than they ever could before.
01:01:48.000 There's also people that are super cynical.
01:01:50.000 They're like, hey man, I grew up with Dr. Seuss and the food pyramid was always weed at the bottom and at the top was all this other stuff.
01:01:56.000 But now everybody's flipping the food pyramid and you're just taking out the bottom part entirely?
01:02:01.000 And so what's going to happen five years from now?
01:02:03.000 You're going to tell me, well, high fat is actually terrible for your brain or, you know, it's just people are understandably tired of all this stuff.
01:02:13.000 And it's like real easy to just sort of compartmentalize and just push it away and just listen to your doctor.
01:02:20.000 Yeah, it really is.
01:02:21.000 And the point you made before about the people who are eating the Cheetos and cupcakes diet, well, of course, if you start eating a vegan diet, you're not eating Cheetos and cupcakes, you're going to see an effect, but is that a good effect in terms of your long-term health?
01:02:35.000 And we see that vegetarians don't have necessary proteins that you get very easily from meat and nutrients.
01:02:41.000 What if you eat balanced amino acid profile foods like I know pea protein and hemp protein is very good.
01:02:50.000 Quinoa.
01:02:50.000 You know more than I am.
01:02:51.000 This isn't my area because I don't care about that stuff since I'm not vegetarian and wouldn't eat that way.
01:02:57.000 But I see that.
01:02:58.000 So people like Chris Kresser try to help people to say, look, here's the deal.
01:03:03.000 And so you can make some choices and decide, you know, is there a way for me as a vegetarian to get the nutrients I need?
01:03:10.000 Or am I always going to be deficient?
01:03:12.000 And how might that affect my health?
01:03:14.000 So what are the trade-offs?
01:03:15.000 Yeah, but some people, they don't think of it purely as a health issue as well.
01:03:18.000 They also think about it as an ethical and moral issue.
01:03:21.000 They say, look, I don't want to be a part of factory farming.
01:03:24.000 I don't want to have anything to do with the death of animals, which I completely understand and I respect and appreciate.
01:03:32.000 What they're doing is they're trying to leave a smaller footprint on the world.
01:03:37.000 That makes sense, too.
01:03:39.000 Well, I can see that because, I mean, I don't think that animal cruelty is a good thing, and I think animals should be humanely slaughtered and kept.
01:03:46.000 And so I think that that's a really good argument.
01:03:48.000 I have friends who are vegetarians for that reason who know about eating meat and being a healthier way to have a diet, but they choose to make that trade-off.
01:04:01.000 And as long as you're making a choice, a reasoned choice, and you know what you're trading off, then I'm fine with that.
01:04:06.000 Yeah, no, I think that's, and again, for some people, vegetarian is probably the way to go.
01:04:11.000 And that's what gets really confusing.
01:04:13.000 It's like, how do you figure out what is the right way to go?
01:04:15.000 What is the, for you?
01:04:17.000 I mean, you really, what you're supposed to do is get blood tests.
01:04:20.000 You're supposed to do it on a regular basis.
01:04:22.000 You're supposed to consult with someone who actually knows what they're talking about.
01:04:24.000 Yeah.
01:04:25.000 And really just sort of just make these choices, test the results, and then make an educated decision based on that.
01:04:34.000 And here's a problem.
01:04:35.000 How do you find the evidence-based doctor?
01:04:38.000 Because I'm in an HMO, so I can just switch doctors forever and ever, but I just stay with the doctor and then read stuff myself because I can do that.
01:04:46.000 That's what I do for a living.
01:04:48.000 But for other people who aren't in an HMO, people want to find an evidence-based medicine practitioner.
01:04:54.000 People will say they are.
01:04:55.000 But then you hear what they suggest and they really aren't.
01:04:58.000 And that's a really big problem.
01:05:00.000 It would be great if there were somebody who could make a lot of money maybe doing a site saying, look, I'm this doctor and here's what I look at and think.
01:05:07.000 And so you could choose because we tried to find one for my boyfriend in Los Angeles and like, well, nobody knows.
01:05:15.000 Right.
01:05:15.000 It's hard.
01:05:16.000 Yeah.
01:05:16.000 I mean, they're out there, but it's hard to find them.
01:05:19.000 Yeah, because you try five, six doctors, you go through them, and these are all doctor appointments, you have to pay for them and everything, and then you find, okay, you don't know anything, right, on to the next.
01:05:27.000 And it's also incredibly time-consuming.
01:05:29.000 Like, when I go to my doctor, when I get blood work done, we have a 75-minute consultation.
01:05:35.000 We have to sit down for 75 minutes and go over all the various micronutrient levels and all the different levels of...
01:05:42.000 You know, everything.
01:05:43.000 Niacin, B12. And we go over diet.
01:05:47.000 And we go over, like, when are you eating?
01:05:48.000 What time are you eating?
01:05:49.000 Like, when are you eating before you take the blood tests?
01:05:52.000 And, you know, how much water are you consuming?
01:05:54.000 Are you dehydrated?
01:05:55.000 There's a lot going on.
01:05:56.000 I mean, if you want to, like, truly optimize your health, it's better than ever.
01:06:02.000 I think?
01:06:24.000 That that seems a really smart place to put it, even if you have to make some sacrifices in other areas.
01:06:30.000 Yeah, no, I think so, too.
01:06:31.000 And I think read as much as you can about, not just read books by people on nutrition, but read articles about those books.
01:06:40.000 You know, read, I mean, pro and con.
01:06:42.000 And I've read a lot of con.
01:06:44.000 And, you know, you've got to go over that stuff with a fine-tooth comb.
01:06:47.000 Look for bias.
01:06:48.000 And it's hard to do.
01:06:49.000 It's hard to do.
01:06:49.000 It's really hard to do.
01:06:50.000 Some of the important things are to look at the sample size, look at people, look at the limitations.
01:06:55.000 Sometimes they'll say them at the end.
01:06:56.000 I always like those studies that do that.
01:06:58.000 Sample size, you know, when somebody has like, oh, we had 22 people in this study, you know, that's not the one you want.
01:07:04.000 Look for, you know, and you can't just say necessarily, oh, it must be this number or that number, but look for a lot of people.
01:07:10.000 And what else?
01:07:11.000 Like if they say something's really significant, then I'm immediately suspicious.
01:07:15.000 Right.
01:07:16.000 What does that mean?
01:07:17.000 There's this whole argument about p-values and probability measure that's going on now.
01:07:24.000 Some people are saying, let's take that out of the equation.
01:07:27.000 Because people are using this as this sort of golden thing to say, okay, we had this finding and it's fantastic.
01:07:34.000 And to look at the whole study and the findings in a more nuanced way than just the p-value.
01:07:44.000 Yeah.
01:07:44.000 Yeah, it's hard for people.
01:07:46.000 I mean, one of the things that we've talked about a couple times recently that people keep throwing around is the recent studies that show that people who eat a lot of red meat are more likely to get cancer.
01:07:55.000 And the issue with these studies is a bunch of issues.
01:07:59.000 One, they don't differentiate what kind of meat.
01:08:01.000 They don't differentiate whether or not you eat it with vegetables or whether you eat it with white bread and spaghetti.
01:08:06.000 You know, and that's huge.
01:08:08.000 Whether you're eating grass-fed bison or whether you're eating some bullshit burger.
01:08:13.000 Right.
01:08:13.000 And you're just saying you eat meat five times a week.
01:08:16.000 That doesn't show me what's in your diet.
01:08:19.000 Right.
01:08:19.000 These are called cohort studies, and I call them, if you see that cohort studies or observational or population-based, you know, observational study, I call them leap to conclusions after the fact.
01:08:30.000 And they're just like the shit of studies, you know, because did the person, you know, like you're saying, what caused this thing that we're seeing?
01:08:39.000 Okay, they're, you know, have this effect.
01:08:42.000 Is it Is it processed food?
01:08:43.000 Is it nitrites?
01:08:44.000 And it's such a crappy way.
01:08:48.000 And you see it reported in the media.
01:08:49.000 These articles that say, oh my god, everyone should never eat this type of food ever again.
01:08:55.000 It's terrible for you.
01:08:57.000 And it doesn't say that at all.
01:08:58.000 But the reporters don't know that.
01:09:01.000 They don't even care.
01:09:02.000 It's just clickbait.
01:09:02.000 They just want to get a bunch of hits on their article.
01:09:05.000 Yeah.
01:09:05.000 And you'll see articles like that, that even in, like, really respectable publications that have this really attractive headline, and then you read the actual article itself, you're like, wait, what are you basing this on?
01:09:15.000 Yeah, it's really terrible.
01:09:16.000 And so that's the thing.
01:09:17.000 What you said to look at studies, look at the opposite, you know, the opposite point of view.
01:09:23.000 That's really important to look at.
01:09:26.000 It's just it's hard to read some of these studies.
01:09:28.000 I really appreciate researchers who write in clear language.
01:09:31.000 I think that's more and more important as people can get studies.
01:09:34.000 There's a site called Sci-Hub where you can get studies that are protected that the journals don't let you get.
01:09:42.000 And you can find them on professors' websites.
01:09:44.000 There are ways to find these studies if you want to find them.
01:09:49.000 I think?
01:10:13.000 And that's why it's important to not just be this lazy person who reads only the abstract and the conclusion, but to look at the methodology and see if their stuff screwed up.
01:10:20.000 I saw a study done by Harvard professors where they didn't have a control group for their third experiment.
01:10:26.000 And I thought, did you forget?
01:10:28.000 I mean, you're at Harvard.
01:10:30.000 If you guys don't know to put in a control group, you know, come on!
01:10:34.000 What was the study about?
01:10:35.000 It was a study on...
01:10:38.000 God, I'm not going to remember now.
01:10:40.000 It was...
01:10:41.000 Shoot.
01:10:44.000 The third part was in a train station.
01:10:47.000 And I can't remember what the study was about.
01:10:49.000 I brought it with me at an evolutionary psychology conference thinking, this will be easy to write a column from because I had a question that kind of matched...
01:10:59.000 A study in a train station?
01:11:16.000 And I like these professors.
01:11:17.000 I reference both of their work in my book, my next book.
01:11:21.000 So it was a psychology study?
01:11:22.000 Yeah, it was a social psychology study.
01:11:24.000 And I thought, you know, why don't you have a control for your third experiment?
01:11:30.000 And so then I had to do a new question for my second question in my column, and I was all annoyed, too.
01:11:34.000 So I remembered it.
01:11:36.000 Well, there's a difference between science and then headlines from articles that are written about science by people that might not even necessarily be scientists or really truly understand the science.
01:11:48.000 They just want to get an article out there that people are going to pay attention to.
01:11:51.000 Well, I'm sensitive to credentialism as I don't have a PhD and started out giving free advice in the street corner in Soho as a joke.
01:11:58.000 But since then...
01:11:59.000 You started out giving advice on a street corner?
01:12:01.000 Yeah.
01:12:02.000 I'm a wacky broad.
01:12:03.000 So what were you doing?
01:12:05.000 Well, I had these two friends and we just thought it would be funny.
01:12:08.000 So we set up on the corner of West Broadway and Broome with a card table and some folding chairs.
01:12:13.000 You just said advice?
01:12:13.000 It said, free advice from a panel of experts.
01:12:15.000 We were called the advice ladies.
01:12:17.000 And they're like, love and dating.
01:12:19.000 What year did you do this?
01:12:20.000 This was in the late 80s and then in the 90s.
01:12:23.000 You just decided to do this on a whim?
01:12:25.000 Yeah.
01:12:25.000 Well, we thought we'd just do it once.
01:12:27.000 Were you drunk?
01:12:27.000 I act like I'm drunk at all times.
01:12:29.000 No.
01:12:30.000 I'm just a weird person.
01:12:31.000 And we did this.
01:12:32.000 And we just thought we'd sit there and people walk past and laugh.
01:12:35.000 Because I always like making people laugh.
01:12:36.000 I once went out in an evening dress and a goatee and a mustache.
01:12:39.000 Just to be funny.
01:12:41.000 I frightened a child.
01:12:43.000 And we did this.
01:12:45.000 And people, it was New York, you know, free.
01:12:47.000 They lined up around the block.
01:12:49.000 And they didn't just ask us about their eyelashes or whatever, like, can I get directions to Grand Street?
01:12:54.000 They were asking us serious questions.
01:12:56.000 And I thought, holy shit, I better know something.
01:12:58.000 And so I read through all of psychology.
01:13:00.000 And when you're not reading psychology in school, you think like, oh, my God, Freud just made shit up.
01:13:06.000 It was really crazy.
01:13:07.000 And I discovered this guy, Albert Ellis, who was the father at the same time as Aaron Beck, of cognitive behavioral science.
01:13:15.000 And then started reading more and more and immersing myself more and more in science and going to scientific conferences.
01:13:21.000 And then because this thing where I look for people to criticize me so I can get better, I mean, not the people who are like, hey, whore on the internet, but I would ask professors, like, did I get this wrong?
01:13:30.000 And sometimes they'd say yes.
01:13:32.000 And so I learn more and more.
01:13:34.000 Yeah.
01:14:00.000 Now, so you started out doing this, you set up this card table, and some free advice, and then how did it progress to you having this column?
01:14:10.000 Well, so we're doing this, and just because it was so fun, and we got so much out of it, and I learned this, that basically if you help people, if you do kindness to other people, for other people, you feel really good.
01:14:21.000 So there's self-interest in being kind, especially to strangers.
01:14:25.000 And that's what we were doing.
01:14:27.000 And so we did this for a few years.
01:14:29.000 And this guy walked by.
01:14:30.000 He wrote for the New York Times style section.
01:14:32.000 He did a little teeny piece on us.
01:14:34.000 And then it got all cut down.
01:14:35.000 Eric Messenger.
01:14:36.000 And then because I'm a Garmento Jew, I do like five things well.
01:14:39.000 I'm one of those selling things.
01:14:40.000 Garmento?
01:14:40.000 What does that mean?
01:14:41.000 That means like you're in the Garment District and you're like hawking clothing.
01:14:44.000 So I can like get dressed.
01:14:46.000 Notice I don't say like, you know, I get dressed, eat.
01:14:49.000 Not cook.
01:14:50.000 What else?
01:14:50.000 Anyway, psychology, that's one of them.
01:14:52.000 And then selling things.
01:14:54.000 And so I got us a TV deal with De Niro, my partners and me.
01:14:57.000 And then I got us a column in the Daily News and a book agent.
01:15:00.000 And one of my partners ended up dying.
01:15:01.000 It's very sad.
01:15:03.000 And so I ended up doing the column myself at that point.
01:15:11.000 And then just syndicated my own column because I thought, well, you know, I'm writing this for one paper.
01:15:16.000 I don't make very much money.
01:15:17.000 How do I make more money?
01:15:18.000 And I was an entrepreneur.
01:15:19.000 And so I got it in a whole bunch of papers, even though all the syndicators who do that – and by the way, if anyone asks, it's not possible anymore.
01:15:26.000 Papers are all going out of business.
01:15:28.000 Is that true?
01:15:29.000 Papers are all going out of business?
01:15:30.000 They're really struggling.
01:15:32.000 But back then, I went to syndicators and they said, yeah, we think you write a really great column, but Ann Landers and Dear Abby of all the real estate, you'll never make any money.
01:15:40.000 And so I went to an alternative weekly newspaper conference in Montreal.
01:15:43.000 I stayed in like the Hooker Hotel because I couldn't afford the real hotel.
01:15:46.000 And I just went around saying like, here are my little samples, here are my little samples.
01:15:49.000 And so paper started picking up my column.
01:15:51.000 So I built a business out of doing this, out of free advice.
01:15:55.000 And then over the years became increasingly science-based.
01:15:59.000 You know, I had to learn statistics.
01:16:01.000 I have a book I weep reading under my desk, Biostatistics is the Bare Essentials.
01:16:06.000 I read a lot of stats websites and try to improve in that area in terms of scientific thinking and understanding statistics so I can be better at assessing studies.
01:16:19.000 People gravitate towards advice.
01:16:20.000 They really do.
01:16:21.000 Advice columns and advice, like, call-in advice shows.
01:16:25.000 Like, people love, like, Dr. Laura.
01:16:27.000 Like, that kind of shit.
01:16:28.000 When there's people calling, you know, what should I do?
01:16:31.000 What should I do?
01:16:32.000 Well, the thing that I do, I just feel like I don't have a right to just give you my opinion.
01:16:37.000 So before it was a science-based, it was very reason-based.
01:16:41.000 I always loved critical thinking and reasoning and logic.
01:16:44.000 And so now, you know, I'll look at somebody's question and I'll sometimes think I know the answer, but I'll always read to see, oh, actually, no, it's this.
01:16:53.000 I'll read a bunch of papers and I look for what's called the most parsimonious answer, because there can be a bunch of answers to something, but it's like, What is the thing that most closely, narrowly answers this person's question?
01:17:04.000 And then also there's this thing.
01:17:06.000 I see advice columns all the time.
01:17:07.000 They tell someone to do something that nobody would ever do.
01:17:10.000 So I always have like this sort of bullshit check on there of like, come on, is anybody ever going to do this?
01:17:15.000 Like what kind of stuff?
01:17:16.000 Well, it's like write stuff down.
01:17:17.000 I write stuff down.
01:17:18.000 I know, but you might do it.
01:17:20.000 And when people read those books, self-help books, it says, okay, okay, write this worksheet and do all this stuff.
01:17:25.000 I've never done that in my whole life.
01:17:27.000 You don't write things down?
01:17:28.000 Let's say if you have a list of things to do.
01:17:31.000 Oh no, I have stuff written.
01:17:33.000 My house is like a fire hazard with a bed and an oven.
01:17:36.000 It's like a walk-in paper pile.
01:17:39.000 So no, I write everything down.
01:17:40.000 Actually, I type everything out.
01:17:42.000 I'm a...
01:17:43.000 Blowhard in print.
01:17:45.000 But the thing is that in books, when they say, fill out this worksheet, I like reading.
01:17:50.000 I don't want to stop and do this thing.
01:17:52.000 And so I've never done that.
01:17:53.000 And so in this next book that I wrote, I have two ways to do something.
01:17:56.000 The lazy-ass Amy Elkin way or the way that's actually more efficient and will do better.
01:18:01.000 It's the way I changed because I was this loser with no confidence and I transformed myself And actually, it's based in good science.
01:18:08.000 What I did, I didn't know that.
01:18:09.000 I was just desperate and miserable.
01:18:11.000 But I say, look, if you make a list of these problems that you have, the things you're afraid of, this will help you.
01:18:17.000 Then you can tackle them.
01:18:18.000 This is smarter.
01:18:19.000 But I didn't do that.
01:18:19.000 I still got to where I needed to go.
01:18:22.000 But it's just dumb to do it my way because you can just do a little writing work and get to tackle the stuff you need to tackle.
01:18:30.000 So you give advice that you don't really take.
01:18:33.000 So like saying, like, write down all the different things that you have issue with, and then you can tackle those.
01:18:39.000 You didn't really do that?
01:18:40.000 Well, because I didn't do it based in science.
01:18:42.000 What I'm saying is that I recognize that some people will be too lazy to write stuff down, or they just don't do that.
01:18:48.000 But what I did is I said, here are the consequences if you do it my way.
01:18:52.000 Like, it's going to be slower and, you know...
01:18:54.000 You might not be as successful.
01:18:56.000 And this way, like, it seems worthwhile.
01:18:58.000 Like, if I could do this over again, if I had a time machine and go back and say, like, hey, miserable, loser-ish person, here's what you do, and write this down because then it's going to take you, you know, this many years instead of, like, that many years, I would do that now.
01:19:12.000 And so what I tried to do is persuade people to be smarter than I was, basically.
01:19:17.000 Well, you're giving advice based on your personal experience.
01:19:21.000 Like, this would have been a better way to do it.
01:19:22.000 Right.
01:19:23.000 This is a better way, and I see that based in the science, but I realize that some people won't do it, so you can choose.
01:19:30.000 This is the thing.
01:19:31.000 It's like with the diet.
01:19:32.000 Okay, you eat that cupcake, you're going to enjoy it, but here's the trade-off.
01:19:35.000 Well, writing things down, one of the things that's important about that is it cements those things in your memory.
01:19:41.000 and it puts them in especially in my opinion physically writing I don't know why but like for notes like I have notes on my phone that I keep from like comedy sets of like things that I need to do but they're not as effective as a notebook I keep a notebook as well and my notebook is not where I write in I write on a computer but my notebook is where I write things down that I need to remember like Yeah.
01:20:28.000 It makes sense.
01:20:28.000 See, this is the subject of my next book.
01:20:31.000 It's embodied cognition.
01:20:32.000 It's that we don't just think with our mind, that our body is intimately involved.
01:20:37.000 And there is research that finds you are actually going to remember stuff more if you write it down.
01:20:42.000 That's why they say in class you should take notes in pen and ink rather than typing.
01:20:47.000 And so the truth is, I mean, I have lists all over my house.
01:20:50.000 It's just that self-help book stuff.
01:20:52.000 You know, genre that I never wrote anything in where they said to write stuff.
01:20:55.000 But I think that that's very important.
01:20:57.000 And also for memorization, that that's an important thing, that to write stuff.
01:21:03.000 When I have, I did a TED Talk and I had to memorize stuff for it.
01:21:06.000 And I can see where I wrote stuff on the pages.
01:21:09.000 So I had the type pages, but then I had stuff where I scratched in notes.
01:21:13.000 And I can picture that still, even now, even though I don't have the greatest memory, I don't think, the places that I wrote notes in this colored ink.
01:21:21.000 There's something very memorable about that where it isn't with the type page.
01:21:27.000 Yeah, I don't know what it is, but it definitely works, right?
01:21:30.000 Well, the physical is very important.
01:21:32.000 You know, if you look at people who feel bad about themselves, they sort of hunch down and everything.
01:21:40.000 We're good to go.
01:21:46.000 We're good to go.
01:21:55.000 You know, I want to do anything but that, but I know that I just have to do it because I'll feel so much better, not just then, but the next day.
01:22:03.000 It seems to, I see an effect on mood the next day.
01:22:06.000 You know, with this thing in Vegas, I got very, just in a dark place that day that happened, and I just made myself get on the bike, and it's the time I felt least like that.
01:22:16.000 And I mean, like, how dumb, because all these people are going through this horrible stuff, and I'm like, oh, I couldn't get on a bicycle anymore.
01:22:21.000 But it really is, you have your own little world.
01:22:24.000 That's where you inhabit and you have to take care of it.
01:22:27.000 And that was what I did to just not, I didn't want to go into a depression.
01:22:32.000 Well, it's also a habit that's a good habit to form, the habit of getting off your ass and putting action to just doing something.
01:22:41.000 Right.
01:22:41.000 And sometimes it's hard for people that, you know, you can call it procrastinating.
01:22:45.000 I don't want to do it.
01:22:46.000 I think about not doing it.
01:22:47.000 You have to get in the habit of just doing things, getting the habit of getting up and doing where there's no option.
01:22:52.000 You don't have the option to not do it.
01:22:54.000 Force yourself to do it.
01:22:55.000 And if you can do that, you will appreciate your free time so much more.
01:23:00.000 People think that, like, well, I just like being lazy and I like relaxing and I like sitting around.
01:23:06.000 You may.
01:23:07.000 I believe you may.
01:23:08.000 But you won't like it as much as you would like it if you've accomplished your goals first.
01:23:13.000 See, you're so right.
01:23:13.000 Because then you feel good about something.
01:23:15.000 You've done something.
01:23:16.000 You feel good sitting on the couch.
01:23:17.000 I like sitting on the couch sometimes and watching TV. But it's because I work so much.
01:23:21.000 I get shit done.
01:23:22.000 So when I put my feet up, I can feel good.
01:23:25.000 I'm not fucking off.
01:23:26.000 I'm enjoying leisure time, which is also important.
01:23:30.000 There's this classic social science research by this guy, Carl Weick, who talked about small wins.
01:23:35.000 And that's really important.
01:23:36.000 And they talk about that.
01:23:37.000 That in AA, make your bed in the morning.
01:23:39.000 And the thing you were talking about with feelings, I'm a big advocate of not letting your feelings be the boss of you.
01:23:45.000 That's how I say it.
01:23:46.000 And so, for example, I write to a timer because when I sit down to write...
01:23:51.000 So my stuff is funny, so I always think, like, I'm not funny.
01:23:54.000 I have nothing to say.
01:23:55.000 I don't know what the science is.
01:23:56.000 I don't know what the answer is.
01:23:57.000 Those are those immediate feelings buzzing around like little flies in my head.
01:24:01.000 And none of that matters because the timer I put on, 52 minutes on, 17 minutes break...
01:24:06.000 And that's all that matters.
01:24:08.000 How many times do you write a day?
01:24:11.000 It depends on the day.
01:24:12.000 You have 17 minutes for a break?
01:24:14.000 Well, I'll do that.
01:24:15.000 Why 17?
01:24:16.000 How'd you come to that?
01:24:17.000 Actually, I read something.
01:24:18.000 I didn't even read the study.
01:24:19.000 I thought, that sounds good.
01:24:21.000 There's this thing called a Pomodoro where you do 20 minutes, but that doesn't seem very much.
01:24:25.000 With the humor stuff, sometimes if it's hard, I have to just keep shooting the shit with myself and looking up things on the internet.
01:24:30.000 Like, oh, look, a polar bear.
01:24:31.000 Okay.
01:24:32.000 And come up with some kind of joke or something like that.
01:24:35.000 And so it takes a while.
01:24:36.000 And I read this somewhere saying that 52-17, but I didn't even read the paper on it.
01:24:40.000 I didn't care.
01:24:41.000 Okay, good.
01:24:41.000 We'll run with that.
01:24:42.000 Yeah, right.
01:24:42.000 We'll run with that.
01:24:43.000 And so what I do often in the 17-minute break period, especially if I'm doing something really hard, is I will clean my house.
01:24:52.000 And I wish I could, you know, no one pays writers anymore.
01:24:54.000 So I'd actually like to have a team of maids and a butler, a little midget butler.
01:24:58.000 I don't know if we're allowed to say midget anymore.
01:25:00.000 I don't think you're allowed to say that anymore.
01:25:01.000 Oh, okay.
01:25:02.000 A little person.
01:25:02.000 Sorry, little person butler.
01:25:04.000 Why a little person?
01:25:04.000 How about a giant?
01:25:05.000 Because I always love the Wizard of Oz.
01:25:07.000 I think that they're amazing looking.
01:25:09.000 So it's probably a terrible thing and I'm probably going to be happy to have people like come after me on the...
01:25:14.000 What is this, Jamie?
01:25:15.000 Would you just pull up?
01:25:16.000 That's what a Pomodoro is.
01:25:17.000 I've only heard of it in Italian cooking, so...
01:25:20.000 Yeah, right?
01:25:21.000 Spaghetti, pomodoro.
01:25:22.000 Right.
01:25:23.000 It comes out of that little tomato timer.
01:25:25.000 It's 20 minutes.
01:25:26.000 So each 25-minute block of work is a pomodoro.
01:25:29.000 Once you've completed four pomodoros, take a longer break of 20 to 30 minutes.
01:25:33.000 This will help your brain relax and refocus before your next session.
01:25:37.000 So this is default mode processing that goes on.
01:25:57.000 But I find that the thing about not having a maid and doing the work yourself, you clean the baseboard down here or take the little Clorox wipe and do something, you have these small wins.
01:26:06.000 So you accomplish something, even though it's just a little tiny thing, you clean your countertop or whatever with bleach, that you've done something.
01:26:14.000 And where maybe you're writing, it's frustrating, you haven't really accomplished much, you didn't figure out the thing you needed to figure out.
01:26:20.000 So you have that elevated feeling of having done something that you're talking about.
01:26:25.000 Yeah.
01:26:26.000 I've heard a lot of people say they like to take breaks and walk.
01:26:29.000 And that during the walking, that's when they sort of sort out all the different things they were writing about.
01:26:34.000 And they usually bring a phone or recorder and then they talk into it if they have an idea and then go over that.
01:26:40.000 You know, obviously, do you use a transcription?
01:26:42.000 Do you have a smartphone and use a transcription feature?
01:26:44.000 I have that dragon thing on my phone, which I really like.
01:26:46.000 And the walking does seem helpful.
01:26:48.000 Nietzsche walked, and I've read papers on this that walking is helpful.
01:26:53.000 And so I do that also if I have something that's just where I can't figure something out.
01:26:58.000 What I do is I go to the bank and get $20 out, just so it doesn't seem like a meaningless trip there.
01:27:04.000 And then come home and...
01:27:06.000 You just go to the bank to get $20?
01:27:07.000 Really?
01:27:08.000 It's like on Lincoln and I walk back.
01:27:11.000 It's a short trip, but it's enough of a walk that it's a walk.
01:27:14.000 So like a symbolic thing of getting the money out?
01:27:17.000 It has no meaning.
01:27:18.000 It's just that if I just walked to the bank, it would feel purposeless and then maybe I wouldn't do it the next time.
01:27:24.000 How weird.
01:27:25.000 I know.
01:27:25.000 I'm a weird girl, what can I say?
01:27:27.000 But I do that and that's just such a, it sort of alleviates some kind of that pressing feeling of you have of like, there's not a solution, I don't know.
01:27:36.000 And you're moving, you're doing this thing where you're moving forward.
01:27:39.000 That's this thing about your brain, not just, we don't just think about solutions, like we can actually move in ways that help your brain be more powerful.
01:27:49.000 The walking thing, that seems to be one of these ways where you take some pressure off.
01:27:56.000 I put things on the wall in my shower and I'll correct things.
01:28:00.000 I also put up things I don't understand to look at them over and over again.
01:28:04.000 The other thing, too, is people feel bad if they're not instantly...
01:28:09.000 I'm geniuses at figuring something out.
01:28:12.000 And what I like to do is go over and over and over things.
01:28:14.000 So on this thing that I'm writing now, this medical care expose that I'm writing now, the research is really new to me and complicated.
01:28:21.000 And so what I do is I have a pile of papers.
01:28:24.000 There's like a step stool in my bathroom.
01:28:26.000 It's really crazy.
01:28:27.000 My boyfriend goes in there and he's sort of frightened by the insanity.
01:28:30.000 But the pile of papers.
01:28:31.000 So I put them on the bottom stool and then I reread them and I put them on the top.
01:28:35.000 So there's like a...
01:28:37.000 An escalator, going back and forth, because when you do it like that, you get sort of a deep understanding that you don't when you just read it at first.
01:28:44.000 And I know this from writing, that there's an understanding.
01:28:47.000 I can listen to somebody present their work at a scientific conference and understand it, but can I explain it to you?
01:28:53.000 And that's a whole different level of understanding, this deeper understanding.
01:28:56.000 Yeah, that does make sense.
01:28:59.000 When you're talking about walking too, do you think that walking has an effect also because it's a very mild exercise?
01:29:06.000 So it's not exhausting you, it's not hard, but you are getting some good circulation because you're forcing your body to pick your legs up and move forward and your heart starts beating and I think it sort of ignites some systems.
01:29:19.000 Yeah, I think that you're probably right about that.
01:29:21.000 And you feel just this sense, you know, because you're going forward.
01:29:24.000 So forward's a metaphor for success and progress and all these things.
01:29:29.000 And I think that all of that, it sounds kind of silly, but I looked at all this metaphor stuff and I don't think it's so silly.
01:29:35.000 You know, a success is up.
01:29:37.000 Moving forward is progress.
01:29:39.000 And so our bodies are connected.
01:29:41.000 Our first language as organisms, the little we organisms, they had two things, approach and avoid.
01:29:48.000 It's like, oh, look, a yummy piece of plankton.
01:29:51.000 I'll approach that.
01:29:52.000 Or, uh-oh, that thing's going to eat me and I'll back up.
01:29:56.000 And those, there's a term called neural reuse by this guy Anderson, and a guy named Dehane said it in a different way, but the idea is that the human emotional system comes out of, or they use the term scaffolded, I don't think they use it right,
01:30:11.000 but it comes out of the approach and avoid mechanisms of tiny organisms.
01:30:17.000 So going forward, that's approach.
01:30:19.000 Going backward, receding, that's avoid.
01:30:22.000 And so if you look at it that way, it makes sense that walking, that going to the bank, I'm going to walk in little tennis shoes and wear those Asian pool man sunglasses.
01:30:32.000 What are those?
01:30:34.000 What are you talking about?
01:30:34.000 I got them from my neighbor.
01:30:35.000 She's Japanese at a garage sale.
01:30:37.000 What's an Asian pool man?
01:30:38.000 They're giant.
01:30:39.000 They're like those wrap around.
01:30:41.000 It's basically like putting a strap.
01:30:42.000 You know how they, like if they don't want you identified in a photo, they put a black bar over your face.
01:30:47.000 It's like the sunglasses version of that.
01:30:49.000 They're huge and they're plastic.
01:30:51.000 And it's like a car windshield.
01:30:53.000 I got them at her, you know.
01:30:54.000 Oh, also because, so I'm just like, I'm related to Whiteout.
01:30:58.000 And so I'm just hoping to not age like an old...
01:31:03.000 Hermes handbag, you know, by living in California.
01:31:05.000 So do you spray, like, sunscreen all over your face when you do that, too?
01:31:08.000 No, I use FDA-banned sunblock.
01:31:11.000 Jesus Christ!
01:31:12.000 Why would you do that?
01:31:13.000 No, because...
01:31:14.000 No, the FDA, they're wrong to ban this.
01:31:16.000 They don't allow the most protective sunblock, which is with Mexoral, that they sell in France.
01:31:22.000 No, French people have not been dropping dead in the streets.
01:31:24.000 They haven't been dying of cancer from using sunblock with this very protective ingredient.
01:31:28.000 The FDA allows the sunblock now to be sold here.
01:31:31.000 It's called anthelios.
01:31:33.000 But it's like with whatever mucinex I used to take that they now have behind the counter and they sell the one out in the aisle that doesn't work.
01:31:40.000 They remove the active ingredient and they sell the lesser ingredient in America.
01:31:45.000 So if you want to get the anthelios that actually works, you have to go to France.
01:31:48.000 I buy a case when I'm there.
01:31:49.000 Other people bring back a dress.
01:31:50.000 I bring back $350 worth of sunblock.
01:31:53.000 So you can't even order it online and have it delivered?
01:31:55.000 No, you can.
01:31:55.000 Well, this is the great thing about the internet now.
01:31:57.000 How do you spell it?
01:31:58.000 It's A-N-T-H-E-L-I-O-S and there's a little French accent mark in there.
01:32:04.000 How would you say it if you were French?
01:32:09.000 Antelios.
01:32:09.000 So this stuff is just way stronger than anything you get here in America?
01:32:14.000 Well, it's this Mexoral that's the ingredient that protects you from UVA and UVB. And it's just, it's really the most protective ingredient.
01:32:21.000 You can also get it in Canada.
01:32:23.000 I got some when I was in Vancouver, you know, but I get it in France because I can get it cheaper there.
01:32:29.000 So I buy a whole case.
01:32:30.000 Like I go, you go to a bad neighborhood and buy it there in some like yicky pharmacy there.
01:32:34.000 So when you're taking this stuff, like what is the difference between that and say like Coppertone or something you get in America?
01:32:39.000 Well, that doesn't, I think it doesn't protect, I can't remember whether it's UVA or UVB that it doesn't protect against fully.
01:32:46.000 The kind with the titanium dioxide protects, but also the other problem with these sunblocks is that, you know, do they affect your endocrine system in terrible ways?
01:32:54.000 Do they?
01:32:55.000 I don't know, but I'm so vain that, I mean, just don't want to be, you know, like look like a sheepdog.
01:32:59.000 But how could they affect your endocrine system?
01:33:01.000 Well, because you're putting these chemicals on your skin and stuff goes into your skin.
01:33:06.000 But again, I haven't gone outside in a long time, so that sort of mutes the effect.
01:33:11.000 And I wear a huge hat, like it could be a witch with a black hat, and that helps too.
01:33:18.000 You're kind of crazy, Amy.
01:33:19.000 I am.
01:33:19.000 I'm nuts.
01:33:21.000 So it's one of my better qualities, I guess, or worse.
01:33:24.000 But that is an interesting point about affecting your endocrine system that I never really took into consideration.
01:33:30.000 I've been thinking about sunscreen, you know, because I was reading this thing about the Great Barrier Reef being destroyed by sunscreen, and spray sunscreen in particular.
01:33:40.000 Oh, really?
01:33:41.000 Yeah, someone sent me this message, and I don't know if it's correct, that the spray sunscreen is the issue with wreaths and not the rub-on stuff.
01:33:51.000 Oh, good.
01:33:51.000 I hate to be a wreath criminal.
01:33:53.000 I don't know if that's true, though.
01:33:53.000 I don't know if that's right.
01:33:54.000 See if you can find out.
01:33:57.000 You did see something?
01:33:58.000 I think I remember looking this up recently.
01:34:01.000 I don't want to say it wasn't true, but I'm looking up again.
01:34:04.000 For whatever reason, there's something in the aerosol version that is more dangerous for reefs.
01:34:11.000 But it kind of makes sense.
01:34:13.000 I mean, you're putting this fucking skanky chemical on you, and then you're jumping in the water.
01:34:17.000 I mean, where's it going?
01:34:18.000 Well, it would seem, though, that both kinds would work that way.
01:34:21.000 But maybe it's because the lotion kind probably absorbs more into your skin.
01:34:26.000 Here it goes.
01:34:27.000 No, your sunscreen isn't killing the world's coral reefs.
01:34:30.000 Varying studies, I've found those, so I don't know if this one is even accurate.
01:34:34.000 I found two other ones that said it is.
01:34:36.000 Varying studies produced by the sunscreen industry.
01:34:39.000 I want to believe that.
01:34:40.000 Is it clickbait?
01:34:41.000 I don't care.
01:34:42.000 Scroll up and let's see what it says.
01:34:44.000 Let's get a little larger there.
01:34:46.000 Thank you, sir.
01:34:47.000 Swimming that, uh, swimmers that slather themselves in sunscreen are doing their skin a favor, but it might not be so helpful to any nearby coral reefs.
01:34:54.000 That claim, released in a recent scientific study, sparked global headlines faulting sunscreen for the global decline of these hotbeds of biodiversity.
01:35:02.000 It's a disturbing idea that something so necessary for protecting humans from skin cancer could be doing so much environmental damage, but what weight should we give this scientific finding?
01:35:12.000 Not much, it turns out.
01:35:13.000 We're good to go.
01:35:34.000 They determined that the chemical has a detrimental effect on the DNA of coral in both its juvenile and adult stages.
01:35:41.000 The study was published in the journal Archives in Environmental Contamination and Toxicology.
01:35:47.000 In the lab, the researchers exposed coral to high concentrations of oxybenzone.
01:35:55.000 Not only did it deform coral larvae by trapping them in their own skeleton, the study found that it was also a factor in coral bleaching.
01:36:03.000 Terry Hughes, director of the Australian Research Council Center of Excellence Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University, told Mashable Australia he thought the report's findings were inconclusive.
01:36:15.000 He was paid off.
01:36:16.000 This particular study was done in a laboratory, so they actually used artificial seawater, he explained.
01:36:23.000 They put tiny bits into coral in Aquaria and then added some chemicals.
01:36:28.000 It's not surprising that coral didn't like chemicals thrown at them.
01:36:31.000 I don't know...
01:36:32.000 See, this is a good point, and this is something, when you look at studies, this is one of the things I look at.
01:36:36.000 They call it in vivo or in vitro.
01:36:38.000 You know, are you looking at stuff, do they pull out some cells and do something to them, and does that replicate or not replicate what happens in the human body?
01:36:48.000 Are there other things, other reactions going on that are missing from them, you know, when you do that, when you pull it out and just look at it in a Petri dish?
01:36:58.000 Yeah, I would imagine.
01:36:59.000 But it seems like in that environment, it showed that the coral does not like it.
01:37:04.000 I mean, I would imagine that's not really terribly surprising.
01:37:07.000 But I'd like to know what are the trace amounts that they're seeing in coral.
01:37:11.000 And can they mimic those in studies?
01:37:13.000 Or are they just pouring it on them?
01:37:15.000 And, you know, like salt, for instance, right?
01:37:18.000 If you put a little bit of salt in your food, you're going to be fine.
01:37:20.000 You eat a pound of salt, you'd be dead in an hour.
01:37:22.000 Well, this is the thing that, you know, if you look at studies, this is why it's important to read them over and over like that and to really pick them apart if you want to assess them in any sort of reliable way, because you have to look at those nuances and think, well, wait a second.
01:37:35.000 I call this thing the leave-the-lab syndrome, where you look at something, they've studied something, you think like...
01:37:40.000 That's not how it works in real life.
01:37:42.000 Why are you doing the experiment that way?
01:37:44.000 That's completely dumb.
01:37:45.000 And this is stuff, you don't have to be a scientist, but it helps to think scientifically, to think logically, and so it's always good to enhance that thinking so you can look at that and look for the bullshit.
01:37:56.000 Yeah, but for a lot of people, they just see that headline.
01:37:59.000 Oh, coral reefs dying because of sunscreen.
01:38:02.000 Sunscreen bad.
01:38:03.000 Right, and we like to blame people.
01:38:04.000 And I felt bad when you said that.
01:38:06.000 I felt like I sucked.
01:38:07.000 Goddammit, I'm out there killing coral.
01:38:09.000 Yeah, right.
01:38:09.000 Just for my skin so I won't look like an old hag.
01:38:12.000 Well, also cancer.
01:38:13.000 Right.
01:38:13.000 We don't want cancer.
01:38:14.000 Well, see, here's the thing, though.
01:38:16.000 There's so much stuff.
01:38:16.000 So much is more complicated than we think.
01:38:18.000 Am I giving myself problems by not getting vitamin D the natural way and by taking a little pill?
01:38:24.000 Because I take a little pill.
01:38:26.000 Right.
01:38:26.000 So that's one of those trade-offs.
01:38:27.000 And I think, like, okay, I eat a ketogenic diet and then I put on the sunscreen.
01:38:32.000 And you look at all that and you try to make the best guess you can that works also within what matters to you.
01:38:37.000 As a woman, I don't want to look really haggard, you know, when I'm 65. Well, you're You're supposed to be living in like Scotland or something.
01:38:44.000 If you look at your skin color, you're supposed to be in some marsh somewhere.
01:38:48.000 Right, exactly.
01:38:49.000 Clouds overhead.
01:38:49.000 Right, exactly.
01:38:50.000 Sucking vitamin D out of the sky, like a giant sunscreen thing.
01:38:54.000 And so, you know, when you change these things in a modern environment, they call it evolutionary mismatch.
01:39:00.000 You know, what are you doing?
01:39:02.000 Are you screwing yourself up in some way because you aren't getting this nutrient or whatever it is, the way your body evolved to take it in?
01:39:12.000 Yeah.
01:39:12.000 It is such a weird thing, the color of people's skin is really just because we changed environments.
01:39:18.000 Right.
01:39:18.000 You know, I mean, that's the whole race thing is so thrown out the window when you take that into consideration.
01:39:24.000 The way we look, the shape of our noses, the shape of our faces, the color of our skin.
01:39:30.000 All determined by the environment that our ancestors grew up in.
01:39:34.000 That all these people who are, say, Irish, they all grew up in this place.
01:39:38.000 And so they are characteristic Irish features.
01:39:41.000 Yeah.
01:39:41.000 And it's just...
01:39:43.000 See, what's happened now is we can't make jokes anymore.
01:39:46.000 I skated with 20 black guys in New York.
01:39:48.000 Oh, I stopped.
01:39:49.000 The thing you said about the football thing, I thought, okay, I earn a living writing, and I really can't do a lot else that if I crack my head open, I might not be able to earn a living ever again.
01:39:59.000 Yeah.
01:39:59.000 But these guys, they called me whiteout, which I thought was hilarious.
01:40:03.000 That's funny.
01:40:04.000 Yeah.
01:40:04.000 And when you are not racist, I mean, it's not bad to joke about racial stuff.
01:40:10.000 But now, I mean, it's just really the third rail of everything that you even say the slightest thing.
01:40:15.000 You make mention that someone's a different color.
01:40:18.000 I mean, forget it.
01:40:19.000 But also there's no negative connotation to being white.
01:40:22.000 Right.
01:40:22.000 So when you say you're white out, it's not bad.
01:40:25.000 It's not like, hey, charcoal.
01:40:26.000 Like, ooh.
01:40:27.000 People, you call black guy charcoal.
01:40:30.000 They feel like shit.
01:40:31.000 Well, charcoal doesn't seem like insulting.
01:40:33.000 And also black people don't seem insulting.
01:40:35.000 I thought, I had a black boyfriend.
01:40:36.000 He had chocolate.
01:40:37.000 His skin was the color of chocolate.
01:40:39.000 Right.
01:40:39.000 Well, that's not super black.
01:40:41.000 There's like some super black.
01:40:43.000 Well, I think that...
01:40:44.000 Like really dark.
01:40:45.000 But I think they're beautiful, those people from Africa.
01:40:48.000 I do too.
01:40:48.000 With that gorgeous...
01:40:49.000 They're amazing.
01:40:50.000 Until they start putting plates in their lips.
01:40:52.000 That's when I go, hey, so bad.
01:40:53.000 I draw the line.
01:40:54.000 Slow down.
01:40:55.000 The plate lip thing.
01:40:56.000 How do you kiss someone like that?
01:40:57.000 You lick the plate.
01:40:57.000 Like, is there food left on the plate?
01:40:59.000 Sorry.
01:41:00.000 Well, that is one of the weirdest...
01:41:02.000 Eubanges.
01:41:03.000 What's that?
01:41:03.000 They're called eubanges, I think, the people who do that.
01:41:05.000 The women like that?
01:41:06.000 Yeah.
01:41:06.000 It's from Suri.
01:41:07.000 That's the part of Africa that they do that, I believe.
01:41:10.000 That seems like one of the weirdest...
01:41:13.000 Sort of habits or behavior patterns that people have ever adopted, where it's one of the weirdest cultural traits that's just passed down from generation to generation.
01:41:23.000 And the larger the plate in their lip, the more cattle they're worth when they get married.
01:41:29.000 It's super twisted.
01:41:31.000 It's like, how did that ever come about?
01:41:35.000 Yeah.
01:41:36.000 No idea.
01:41:36.000 I don't know that area down there, but some of these cultural things that go on are really crazy.
01:41:42.000 Well, whenever you see body mutilation, which is essentially what that is, I've read that also being connected.
01:41:50.000 It's very vague now.
01:41:51.000 I'm trying to remember it, but I remember it being connected somehow or another to the slave trade and that it made these women less likely to be raped.
01:42:00.000 Oh, interesting.
01:42:01.000 Yeah.
01:42:01.000 I don't know if that's true, though.
01:42:03.000 So I probably shouldn't say it, but I do always.
01:42:05.000 I hear things I don't know if they're true.
01:42:07.000 I just repeat it and let people sort it out.
01:42:09.000 Google it, folks.
01:42:10.000 Don't listen to me.
01:42:11.000 But what we were saying about white people before, now actually, I mean, you see this probably all over Twitter, too, this thing of white privilege.
01:42:17.000 I got that.
01:42:18.000 Do you have that?
01:42:19.000 I guess I must.
01:42:20.000 I caught it.
01:42:21.000 I caught it when I was like 18. It was like typhoid.
01:42:24.000 And so now if you're white, you're just guilty.
01:42:29.000 There's nothing you can do.
01:42:30.000 And you see this, there was a video, it was in Berkeley, some social justice guy.
01:42:34.000 And the woman just, it was like, there's basically, I mean, that's what she said.
01:42:37.000 There's nothing you can do.
01:42:39.000 You're guilty.
01:42:40.000 I wish I could remember the words of it.
01:42:41.000 Checked your white privilege.
01:42:42.000 Yeah, right.
01:42:42.000 I checked it.
01:42:43.000 It's okay.
01:42:43.000 It's full.
01:42:44.000 I'm on F. I love that.
01:42:46.000 Yeah.
01:42:48.000 Yeah, but it's a way to silence people, and it's also a way for you to be guilty of something, whether or not you're...
01:42:53.000 You can have a clean slate.
01:42:55.000 You are on the defensive instantaneously.
01:42:57.000 You are already a guilty person.
01:43:00.000 So they can virtue signal.
01:43:01.000 They can decide that you need to be punished, or you need to be...
01:43:06.000 Your opinion is invalidated because of the melanin content in your skin.
01:43:11.000 I mean, it's literally...
01:43:12.000 So crazy.
01:43:12.000 It's the antithesis.
01:43:13.000 I love Martin Luther King.
01:43:14.000 Yeah, I was about to say that, yeah.
01:43:15.000 The content of your character.
01:43:17.000 And that's so beautiful.
01:43:18.000 And it just, it's so terrible, this thing of you're white and you're wrong.
01:43:22.000 And people don't understand.
01:43:23.000 That's the same thing as the racism that's been done to blacks, you know, for so, so long.
01:43:29.000 And I'm just, I'm sort of stunned by that and this idea.
01:43:33.000 I mean, basically, you're racist is now shut up.
01:43:36.000 Did you pay attention to what went on in Evergreen State College in Washington State?
01:43:41.000 I love that guy, Brett Reinstein.
01:43:42.000 Oh, my God.
01:43:43.000 He's my hero.
01:43:44.000 He's amazing.
01:43:44.000 And what happened was, for people who don't know, they essentially said, they used to have a day of absence of people of color.
01:43:53.000 And the idea is it's a very progressive school.
01:43:54.000 And they said, look, if we have a day where people of color or people of varying ethnic, people who aren't white, essentially, that's what it is, they don't show up, maybe they will be appreciated more, maybe we'll take them into consideration more, their absence will be felt.
01:44:10.000 So then they decided, let's flip that around and force white people to stay home.
01:44:16.000 White staff members, white teachers, white students.
01:44:20.000 And Brett was like, you're out of your mind.
01:44:22.000 Like, this is racist.
01:44:23.000 It's one thing that you want to call attention to the value of people of color by not being there.
01:44:30.000 Which is also arguably not the best way to handle it.
01:44:33.000 But at least you're not saying to someone that they cannot be there because of the color of their skin.
01:44:39.000 Which is what you're saying by forcing these people to...
01:44:42.000 And then, obviously, all hell broke out.
01:44:45.000 People were protesting him.
01:44:47.000 They were looking for him with baseball bats.
01:44:49.000 Terrible.
01:44:49.000 The whole thing is horrific.
01:44:51.000 But it's this escalation, this war of ideas, where you're forcing your ideas and you're shouting people down and calling people guilty before they've ever done anything, which is essentially what this is all about.
01:45:04.000 And, you know, now he's not at the school anymore.
01:45:07.000 So tragic.
01:45:07.000 And the school's imploding.
01:45:09.000 I mean, it's really crazy.
01:45:10.000 And actually, I would argue that, you know, for people who are of color to make a protest by not going to school for a day after people fought so hard.
01:45:20.000 I love that little girl, the picture of the girls in Little Rock going to school, you know, where they desegregated the school.
01:45:27.000 Imagine being a little girl and that's you going with these police officers to school.
01:45:33.000 It's fucking crazy.
01:45:33.000 And to value an education and to not, to skipping school.
01:45:38.000 Okay, so beyond that, Brett Weinstein said his argument was, I think this is racist and let's not do it and let's talk about it.
01:45:45.000 And his speech in the hallway there outside his classroom, I saw him and I thought, wow, this is an amazing guy.
01:45:53.000 Look at how rational he is.
01:45:55.000 And measured.
01:45:56.000 Yeah.
01:45:57.000 And full of grace in, you know, there's this mob there, you know.
01:46:01.000 They're calling him racist and shouting him down.
01:46:03.000 Shouting him down.
01:46:04.000 And I thought, oh my God, I want to study with this guy.
01:46:07.000 Can you please do a, you know, MOOC on Coursera so I can take a class from you and learn how to do what you do in a heated situation?
01:46:15.000 Nicholas Christakis at Yale is another one who had people screaming at him and was just a class act.
01:46:21.000 That was just as crazy.
01:46:23.000 I know.
01:46:23.000 And they've lost.
01:46:24.000 So they've lost Brett Weinstein from Evergreen.
01:46:27.000 He is, I mean, this guy was a valuable guy to have there.
01:46:31.000 And it's so sad that he is now, it just wasn't safe for him when they're there with baseball bats.
01:46:35.000 I mean, it becomes a circus.
01:46:37.000 It's no longer about education.
01:46:38.000 You can see why he couldn't go back.
01:46:40.000 And his wife, too.
01:46:41.000 It's very sad.
01:46:42.000 Very, very sad.
01:46:43.000 But this is what's happening, that they're not allowing discussion, this idea, the accusation of you're racist.
01:46:49.000 This is now just this thing.
01:46:50.000 It's a just giant muzzle.
01:46:52.000 You're supposed to Yeah, well that's exactly what it is.
01:46:55.000 It's a giant muzzle.
01:46:56.000 Just shut up and it's a way to silence you and it's a way to force their ideas down your throat.
01:47:00.000 See, and you bring something up there.
01:47:01.000 I call it a way to have unearned power over other people.
01:47:04.000 Yeah.
01:47:05.000 And so I think that part of this, this is the un-PC part, is that...
01:47:10.000 We have kids go to college who are not prepared for college.
01:47:13.000 And this is especially true if you go to some terrible school.
01:47:16.000 Not if you're the child of wealthy parents who got all the SAT training and everything like that.
01:47:20.000 But so you get promoted because they want a certain color face in there.
01:47:24.000 So maybe you do okay at Duke, but they send you to Harvard.
01:47:27.000 Because you can get in there because they're like, oh, we have all these Asian people.
01:47:30.000 Screw you Asians.
01:47:30.000 We're going to kick you out and not admit you.
01:47:33.000 That's the craziest thing.
01:47:34.000 They're racist against Asian people.
01:47:36.000 It's so terrible.
01:47:37.000 But clarify.
01:47:39.000 Because people don't know what we're talking about, about the racist policies against Asians.
01:47:43.000 The racist admission policies.
01:47:45.000 So Asians, I mean, I think it has to do something with the culture and the family there.
01:47:50.000 If you're Asian, I had an Asian assistant before.
01:47:53.000 She lived at home with her mother, father, and her sisters and her grandma.
01:47:56.000 Grandma answered the phone.
01:47:57.000 You didn't speak Korean.
01:47:58.000 She hung up on you.
01:47:59.000 But there was a very strong work ethic that you must succeed.
01:48:03.000 There were very strong family ethics.
01:48:05.000 It wasn't a single-parent household.
01:48:07.000 And that's what happens to a lot of these at-risk kids.
01:48:09.000 I speak at a school.
01:48:10.000 I created a program to try to help kids make it by showing an example, like saying, look, here I am.
01:48:16.000 I failed.
01:48:17.000 Slept on a door in New York on two milk crates.
01:48:19.000 I'm not from a wealthy family.
01:48:20.000 You have to be creative.
01:48:22.000 Apprentice to somebody.
01:48:23.000 All this stuff.
01:48:24.000 Kids don't get that.
01:48:25.000 They don't get that.
01:48:25.000 If you grew up in a bad neighborhood and your parents don't model that sort of work ethic and the possibility to hope for success, well, why should you think there would be any hope for you and why should you work?
01:48:36.000 Right.
01:48:36.000 We're getting a little off track.
01:48:37.000 What I want to say is about the standards for Asians being admitted to schools.
01:48:52.000 And so if you get this grade point, say it's like a 3.8 and you're Asian, forget it.
01:48:58.000 You're out.
01:48:58.000 But if you are this person of this face color that we want, we're going to put you in there even though, you know, you have the same grade point as somebody we're kicking out.
01:49:08.000 Sorry to ramble.
01:49:09.000 I do that.
01:49:09.000 That's what it is.
01:49:10.000 It's like they have higher standards for admission.
01:49:14.000 Like they've essentially put the bar higher for them and it's racist.
01:49:18.000 It's racist.
01:49:18.000 It's terrible.
01:49:19.000 It's discrimination against a minority.
01:49:21.000 Right, and they are a minority, and it's terrible.
01:49:24.000 A bigger minority than African Americans, a bigger minority than Hispanics and Latinos.
01:49:29.000 It's a big minority in America.
01:49:31.000 I was thinking, I was nodding, and then I thought, are they?
01:49:33.000 Oh, that's really interesting.
01:49:35.000 So, what I suspect, and I could be wrong, this is just a guess on my part, is that...
01:49:40.000 I think?
01:50:04.000 Which isn't to say...
01:50:05.000 So people think that when you say that, you're saying, oh, this group of people, they're stupider or worse than other people.
01:50:11.000 But if you go back to the schools, if you help those kids, this is what they're doing with charter schools.
01:50:16.000 If you give those kids what they're missing, there isn't...
01:50:20.000 We're individuals.
01:50:21.000 You can help people who might have been throwaway people to succeed if they just see, look, it's possible.
01:50:27.000 And here, how do we put the stability?
01:50:29.000 Or you're a child of a single mother that comes with it certain...
01:50:32.000 It comes with certain risks if you grow up in a certain kind of risky neighborhood.
01:50:35.000 There's a whole area of evolutionary psychology called life history theory that talks about this.
01:50:41.000 It's called having a fast life history strategy.
01:50:44.000 It's adaptive if you grow up in a risky, terrible neighborhood where things are unstable, to get pregnant early, if you're a male, to be violent.
01:50:52.000 All these things that aren't helpful in our modern society, but they're kicked off by that unstable situation.
01:50:59.000 It's unstable environment where you grow up.
01:51:01.000 So, okay, if instability is a problem, we can't just say, okay, your single mother should go back in time, get in a time machine and go find a man and marry somebody before she has you.
01:51:11.000 That's not realistic.
01:51:12.000 We can't throw away people.
01:51:14.000 And that's what I see people advocating sometimes.
01:51:17.000 Like, okay, well, we've got to tell people to not get pregnant without a family structure.
01:51:22.000 You can't tell people that.
01:51:23.000 They're not going to listen.
01:51:24.000 You can't.
01:51:24.000 It's human nature.
01:51:24.000 And so because they've done that, you don't punish the kids.
01:51:27.000 How do we give those kids the stability they lack?
01:51:31.000 And I think one of the ways is to have people go in from the earliest grades and model what, for example, my parents modeled for me as these suburban, not wealthy, but just sort of middle class suburban people, work hard, do this, do that, and you will be okay.
01:51:45.000 Well, I think also the problem with the Asian folks in universities is they don't complain.
01:51:51.000 And the squeaky wheel gets the grease and these people aren't protesting and aren't screaming that it's racist.
01:51:56.000 What they're doing is they're putting their head down, they're working.
01:51:58.000 And they're working hard and that's a part of their culture.
01:52:01.000 You know, I grew up with a lot of Korean kids and they're extremely hard working to the point that I felt like a lazy fuck when I was around them.
01:52:09.000 And one of my good friends when I was a kid, my friend Jungshik, he was doing his residency for medical school.
01:52:17.000 He was also competing on the U.S. National Taekwondo team.
01:52:20.000 He was going to school all day long and then he was training two to three hours a night.
01:52:25.000 This kid was a fucking maniac.
01:52:27.000 And I would be around him, and I just felt so lazy.
01:52:30.000 No matter how hard I worked, it was so lazy.
01:52:33.000 But he never complained about anything, ever.
01:52:35.000 And it was the culture.
01:52:36.000 The culture was to never complain.
01:52:38.000 Just to work hard and never complain.
01:52:40.000 And you're seeing that in universities.
01:52:41.000 You're seeing that with their results.
01:52:43.000 But you're also seeing that with the fact that even though they're discriminated against, Like, racially discriminated against by universities.
01:52:50.000 No one's complaining about it, so they continue to do it.
01:52:53.000 And they do it under the guise of diversity, because so many of these Asian people are so successful in their academic careers, and they're doing so well, and getting into schools, they're pushing them out to try to balance it out.
01:53:03.000 But that doesn't balance out shit.
01:53:05.000 What you're doing is you're encouraging this sort of, like, weird way of looking at people.
01:53:11.000 You know, you're not...
01:53:12.000 You want...
01:53:13.000 Equality of outcome, okay?
01:53:16.000 That's not real.
01:53:17.000 Equality of opportunity is real.
01:53:20.000 Equality of outcome is not real.
01:53:22.000 The equality of outcome happens when everyone works the same amount.
01:53:27.000 And this is the thing about a free society that people don't like to understand.
01:53:32.000 But when you have inequality, inequality is, in many ways, because of freedom.
01:53:40.000 Because you have the freedom to choose to work as much as you want or as little as you want, you're going to have inequality in outcome.
01:53:47.000 And there's other factors, for sure.
01:53:49.000 There is absolutely discrimination.
01:53:51.000 There's sexism.
01:53:52.000 There's racism.
01:53:53.000 There's all these different factors that play into account as well.
01:53:55.000 But there's also effort.
01:53:57.000 And to deny that and to deny that effort is a factor in outcome is preposterous and it sets up this fantasy land that so many kids live in today while they're protesting Ben Shapiro calling him a fucking Nazi.
01:54:11.000 That's where it all comes from.
01:54:14.000 You have these kids that are trying to shut down Republican-speaking on campus by calling them in these blanket statements they're white supremacists and racists.
01:54:25.000 Like, okay, what about Ben Carson?
01:54:27.000 He's a fucking Republican, too, and he's black.
01:54:29.000 There's a lot of people that are black that are Republicans.
01:54:31.000 This is a preposterous way of looking at the world.
01:54:33.000 And it's this sort of isolationist view.
01:54:36.000 And it's weird.
01:54:37.000 It's weird that they don't see how racist it is to discriminate against Asian people.
01:54:41.000 It's terribly racist.
01:54:43.000 And also, you know, if you look at what real diversity is, to me, it's bringing in people who didn't have economic advantage because these are the people who have a hard time.
01:54:52.000 It doesn't matter if they're black or white.
01:54:54.000 You know, I know I have a number of black friends who are highly successful.
01:54:58.000 Some of them are researchers and they grew up in suburban neighborhoods.
01:55:01.000 They grew up like I did.
01:55:02.000 They had a family.
01:55:03.000 Their family was intact.
01:55:05.000 You know, they didn't need a leg up from anybody because they did what I did, which is work hard.
01:55:09.000 My mother told me, so I grew up a Jewish kid in a neighborhood with no Jews and they like egged their house and everything like that.
01:55:15.000 My mother said to me, you know, there are people who hate Jews, so you're going to have to work harder than other people because some people are going to be prejudiced against you and try to keep you out.
01:55:24.000 So that was a message not, oh, we should whine about this and isn't this terrible, as murderous as my parents can be.
01:55:30.000 Yeah, I don't know.
01:55:32.000 It would be really beautiful if everybody just did the Martin Luther King thing, right?
01:55:36.000 Just judge people in the content of their character and not...
01:55:39.000 The color of their skin, not the origin of their birth or their ancestor's birth.
01:55:44.000 But unfortunately, we are tribal, and we do have these weird tendencies to sort of lump ourselves together.
01:55:50.000 And by the way, for people that are listening to this that are disagreeing, if you're a fucking social justice warrior, you're tribal too.
01:55:55.000 If you're a radical lefty, you're fucking tribal.
01:55:59.000 That's a tribal outlook.
01:56:01.000 And we would all be better off if we were a little bit more balanced, me included.
01:56:05.000 Well, me included, too.
01:56:07.000 I mean, and if we listen, what I try to do is to look at the other side, you know, the side I don't agree with, like you were talking about this before, where you maybe see things, you see their point, or you look at stuff that you want to agree with.
01:56:21.000 There was a Nick Kristof thing, a piece on, okay, here's what we have to do with guns.
01:56:27.000 And I looked at it because we all want, there's this idea of like, do something.
01:56:30.000 We want to do something, but something is not a good thing to do.
01:56:33.000 And I looked at his piece wanting to find something in there that would say, yes, we just do these things.
01:56:38.000 And every single thing in there, it was all meaningless stuff that wouldn't have stopped the guy in Vegas.
01:56:44.000 And so I looked at that wanting to see something and you see nothing.
01:56:47.000 And so it's the thing of being honest, being intellectually honest, and honest when your side is full of shit too.
01:56:53.000 Yeah.
01:56:53.000 Yeah.
01:56:53.000 And, you know, when it comes to something like the thing in Vegas, we want to find some sort of solution when it doesn't necessarily exist.
01:57:00.000 There's so many different factors.
01:57:01.000 I mean, obviously, the access to weapons is a big one.
01:57:04.000 It's a huge one.
01:57:05.000 And to deny that is silly.
01:57:06.000 To deny that on the right, like the people that are massive Second Amendment proponents.
01:57:11.000 Look, to deny that the access to weapons has no factor in someone using those weapons is pretty fucking stupid.
01:57:17.000 I mean, it doesn't make any sense.
01:57:18.000 But then to say that those weapons should not be accessible to people who are not criminals, that's also weird.
01:57:27.000 Because you're saying, like, well, if we have laws in this country that allow a person to go and buy a gun for personal safety, And then something like this happens where people get shot and murdered by some crazy person.
01:57:41.000 And then you take those rights away from the people who have done nothing wrong.
01:57:46.000 That's not good either.
01:57:48.000 Yeah, it doesn't stop it either.
01:57:49.000 Look at the Charlie Hebdo thing in France.
01:57:52.000 They don't have guns in France.
01:57:54.000 I don't even know if the policemen are armed.
01:57:55.000 I don't think they are.
01:57:56.000 But that's a different thing, right?
01:57:57.000 Because it's Muslim extremists that were acting on religious impulses.
01:58:00.000 Well, but they got guns.
01:58:02.000 They got horrible, horrible guns that killed people.
01:58:05.000 I mean, I think they might have even been automatic weapons.
01:58:09.000 I mean, I don't want to use that term because I don't know anything about guns.
01:58:13.000 So I probably just used that wrong.
01:58:15.000 But they don't allow guns in France, and so they got them.
01:58:17.000 And I think that criminals—I live near the hood.
01:58:19.000 You know, you can get whatever drug you want, you know, in a corner.
01:58:22.000 Adderall?
01:58:22.000 Can you get that there?
01:58:23.000 What?
01:58:24.000 Adderall?
01:58:25.000 You know, maybe.
01:58:26.000 Maybe.
01:58:26.000 I don't know.
01:58:27.000 Good question.
01:58:29.000 Look, Australia is a perfect example.
01:58:32.000 They had one mass shooting.
01:58:33.000 They rounded up all the guns.
01:58:34.000 They haven't had a single one since.
01:58:36.000 But Australia also has less people than Los Angeles, and it's huge.
01:58:40.000 It's the size of the United States.
01:58:42.000 So, you know, there's a discussion to be had, for sure.
01:58:46.000 And along, you know, the way, we need to discuss access to firearms.
01:58:51.000 That's a part of that discussion.
01:58:53.000 But, you know, I talked about it the other day with my friend Alonzo Bowden, and immediately people were making articles saying that we were calling for a police state and confiscation of the guns.
01:59:03.000 I didn't say that.
01:59:04.000 No one said that.
01:59:04.000 But this is the right-wing, you know, Second Amendment proponent, knee-jerk reaction.
01:59:10.000 To instantaneously demonize anyone who's critical of the guy having access to 23 fucking rifles.
01:59:17.000 Right.
01:59:17.000 And see, the thing that's happened with the polarization is that now, just saying, let's think about this.
01:59:23.000 You know, because I'm libertarian.
01:59:25.000 I'm pro-Second Amendment.
01:59:26.000 But I also think, let's look at this.
01:59:29.000 It's not bad to say, let's look at this.
01:59:31.000 It doesn't mean we want to take away everybody's guns.
01:59:33.000 It means that we want to think about things.
01:59:36.000 If there's ever been a clear instance that there's a giant problem with someone having access to guns like that, show it to me.
01:59:43.000 Because this guy broke windows in a hotel and shot 500 fucking people.
01:59:48.000 If that's not a clear situation where people need to look at it and go, okay, how does this get prevented?
01:59:55.000 And it doesn't get prevented by burning your head in the sand.
01:59:58.000 It doesn't get prevented by just going back to the Second Amendment and just yelling it out and stomping your feet and pounding your fist on the table.
02:00:06.000 You know, SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED! That's not how you prevent your children from getting shot by a fucking psycho.
02:00:13.000 See, I think what's hard in this, too, is that we don't have any answers.
02:00:16.000 There's no, well, if it was just mental health or just this or just that, because it's a mystery.
02:00:21.000 So people are just grasping at things, and everybody's standing their ground, the pro-gun, the anti-gun, and they're saying, see, see, and all the disgusting stuff on Twitter.
02:00:31.000 And people did try to curb this a bit, the stuff of people using that as a ramp for their own, whatever their views were.
02:00:38.000 Sure.
02:00:39.000 And that was pretty ugly, you know, seeing those videos.
02:00:41.000 You always have that, right?
02:00:43.000 Well, you always have that.
02:00:43.000 But when it's loss of life and it's not just, oh, Trump said this dumb thing, that just barrage.
02:00:50.000 I saw that video of all the people running.
02:00:55.000 It's like a 10-minute video and the police hurrying them along.
02:00:59.000 Some people didn't even realize it was gunfire.
02:01:01.000 And you hear that conversation.
02:01:02.000 It's a constant barrage when you hear that for that period of time, that gun going off so many times and so many people being just that guy's victim.
02:01:11.000 That was so horrible.
02:01:13.000 Did you see that guy's brother getting interviewed?
02:01:15.000 No, I just saw a photograph of it.
02:01:17.000 He did a 90 minute interview and is one of the most fucking bizarre interviews I've ever seen in my life.
02:01:22.000 He's so removed from his brother doing this and he's talking about what a great guy his brother is and how Quirky his brother was and how his brother was just he was eccentric and he was just talking about what his brother would have done and the casino people all knew his brother and to say they didn't know him was crazy.
02:01:43.000 But this guy seems like a guy trying to act normal.
02:01:47.000 It is so weird.
02:01:49.000 I mean there might be like some sort of a mental health issue with the entire family because the dad apparently was a psycho and was a serial bank robber.
02:01:55.000 Yeah.
02:01:56.000 I don't know, but it's the fucking strangest interview where he's not horrified, he's not crying, he's not stunned.
02:02:05.000 It's so fucking weird.
02:02:07.000 And it brings me back to the mental health aspect of it.
02:02:11.000 There has to be a lot of shit wrong with your mind for you to be able to do something like that.
02:02:16.000 What it is, I hope we figure it out.
02:02:19.000 I sure do too.
02:02:21.000 Jesus, Amy, I thought this was going to be a positive interview.
02:02:24.000 Sorry.
02:02:25.000 Turned out to be a big old bummer.
02:02:25.000 Crazy girl, what can I say?
02:02:27.000 No, you're fine.
02:02:27.000 This was great.
02:02:28.000 It was fun.
02:02:29.000 I really enjoyed it.
02:02:30.000 Me too.
02:02:30.000 So, for people that want to read your column, it's advicegoddess.com.
02:02:35.000 Well, yeah, or actually, I prefer they read it.
02:02:37.000 Look it up in papers, and some of them have changed it to the name I prefer, which is scienceadvicegoddess.com, so I don't feel like...
02:02:43.000 This chick who's just pulling out of her butt.
02:02:45.000 And then I have a new book, Unfuckology, a field guide.
02:02:50.000 You're fucking a lot of your books.
02:02:50.000 I know.
02:02:51.000 It's so terrible.
02:02:52.000 This was an accident.
02:02:54.000 And actually, so it's Unfuckology, a field guide to living with guts and confidence and good manners for nice people who sometimes say fuck.
02:03:00.000 Thank you, Amy.
02:03:01.000 It was a lot of fun talking to you.
02:03:02.000 It was great.
02:03:03.000 All right, folks, we'll be back in a little bit with Russell Brand.
02:03:05.000 See ya.