The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 1785 - How Healthmaxxing Is Destroying Men

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00:00:30.000 For as long as we've had a country, we've had quacks who claim that they alone understand the secrets of human longevity, and they tell us that if we simply follow their advice, we can maximize our lifespan. 0.74

00:00:43.400 Typically, the most popular quacks are the ones who demand that we sacrifice some enjoyable, commonplace activity in order to supposedly improve our health. 0.95

00:00:51.080 Now, in the early 1900s, for example, a man named Horace Fletcher came up with the idea that if you wanted to avoid alcoholism, appendicitis, insanity, and a host of other illnesses, then you needed to chew your food obsessively, hundreds of times to the point that it lost all of its taste before swallowing.

00:01:09.980 He once chewed a green onion more than 700 times just to make sure that it was totally liquefied.

00:01:15.800 And appropriately enough, Fletcher became known as the great masticator.

00:01:19.860 Not to be confused with the title claimed by Jeffrey Toobin on a Zoom call.

00:01:23.740 This is masticator.

00:01:25.700 Fletcher quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, including Arthur Conan Doyle,

00:01:31.160 Mark Twain, John Rockefeller, and the author Upton Sinclair.

00:01:35.340 In fact, Sinclair reportedly wrote the catchphrase of the movement, which was, and I quote,

00:01:41.300 nature will castigate those who don't masticate.

00:01:45.720 Johnny Cochran himself could not have invented a better slogan.

00:01:49.780 Now, in every case, when fads like this catch on, it's a sign of a deeper sickness that needs to be addressed.

00:01:56.160 Fletcher was successful because at the time, the United States was transitioning from an agrarian society to an industrial one.

00:02:03.140 People began eating more processed foods and living more sedentary lifestyles, so indigestion became more common among other health issues.

00:02:11.420 There was also a widespread fixation on efficiency, and it became fashionable to see the human body as a kind of machine that could be optimized.

00:02:21.280 Fletcher took advantage of the new health challenges and angst that the Industrial Revolution brought.

00:02:27.040 The fact that his solution was nonsense didn't bother many people.

00:02:31.040 They were terrified, and they wanted to extend their lifespans at any cost.

00:02:35.720 Now, today we're seeing a very noticeable return of this kind of thinking.

00:02:39.460 the health consciousness stuff uh the health maxing as it's called has gone massively overboard

00:02:47.380 as you've probably noticed people are walking around with bracelets tracking their vital signs

00:02:53.120 every second of the day like they're astronauts on the iss they're monitoring their heart

00:02:59.260 heart rates getting daily reports on their sleep habits treating alcohol or sugar like it'll kill

00:03:06.000 them if they look at it, counting their steps. It's now widely believed that it's impossible to

00:03:11.700 live a healthy life without being an obsessive, paranoid lunatic, never mind the fact that you're 0.88

00:03:16.620 eventually going to die either way. Just like the great masticator taught, people increasingly

00:03:22.180 believe that they need to make life miserable in order to prolong it. Now, I feel it necessary 0.60

00:03:28.480 here to issue what should be an entirely unnecessary disclaimer, which is that I'm

00:03:33.820 obviously not saying that it's bad to try to live a healthy lifestyle. Of course, that's not bad.

00:03:39.660 That indeed is very good. You should generally eat healthy and exercise. I lift four or five times,

00:03:46.780 four or five days a week. I run three or four days a week. Not exactly an Olympic athlete style

00:03:52.480 training regimen, and I'm not exactly an Olympic athlete. But the point is that I'm saying all this

00:03:56.800 as someone who gets a considerably above average amount of exercise. So this is not an anti-fitness,

00:04:02.980 anti-health message. This is more of an anti-paranoia, anti-panic, anti-fragile OCD

00:04:12.380 obsessiveness message. Now, in no small part, the panic I'm talking about is driven by podcasts that

00:04:18.660 are going out of their way for one reason or another to turn people into weird hypochondriacs.

00:04:25.940 And so here, for example, is footage from one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And it's a clip

00:04:31.580 that you may have seen in which Stephen Bartlett, speaking to Chris Williamson,

00:04:36.020 describes the allegedly catastrophic effect of drinking a few glasses of wine. Watch.

00:04:42.980 It's one of those areas where you don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a

00:04:47.780 while. And I think about my own relationship with drinking, and I stopped drinking at 30 years old,

00:04:52.160 I'm now 33, and I had just drank because I just drank. I'd never ran the experiment of just giving

00:04:56.880 it up for a while. And then, like, I don't know, maybe I was at 31, I thought, you know, I'll have

00:05:00.760 drink again because now i could really a b test it i had a year of not drinking decided to have

00:05:04.920 a drink again it ruined three days of my life i had a couple of glasses of wine didn't get drunk

00:05:10.280 it ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused so it meant that i got

00:05:14.680 worse sleep that night and then because i got worse sleep that night i ate more poorly the next

00:05:19.080 day because my my dopamine system or whatever the cortisol system was all messed up and then i

00:05:24.360 podcasted worse i didn't go to the gym the day after that that day or the day after because of

00:05:29.480 that because i felt really bad i then slept worse and i could track all of this on my week hashtag

00:05:33.640 ad hashtag sponsor hashtag investor whatever hey yeah and i was like oh my god those three glasses

00:05:38.840 of wine had this hidden domino effect that i must have been living with for my whole life

00:05:44.040 i drank two glasses of wine and then i podcasted worse 0.91

00:05:51.160 that might be the most pathetic sentence ever uttered by a male of the human species 0.97

00:05:59.560 and it somehow gets worse his whole week was ruined his little armband told him he was naughty 0.99

00:06:06.160 i mean how do you get to the point where you voluntarily say all these things out loud without

00:06:11.420 any hint of shame or self-awareness and more importantly how do we get to the point where

00:06:16.460 this interview has millions of views mostly from people who appear to believe that they're getting

00:06:20.000 serious, genuine advice on how to improve their lives. Now, first of all, the idea that you can't

00:06:25.880 podcast effectively after having consumed alcoholic beverages the night before is belied by, first of

00:06:32.780 all, my own personal experience. And at any rate, podcasting is not the kind of thing that seems to

00:06:37.840 require clear-headed sobriety anyway. Now, I've certainly never podcasted drunk, but it seems like

00:06:43.200 a lot of my peers in this space are drunk or high on something every time they turn on the camera,

00:06:47.520 at least judging based on the content. If you conducted a field sobriety test on 100 podcasters

00:06:53.120 in the middle of their shows, maybe five of them would pass. And you can debate whether that's a

00:06:57.840 good thing or not, but let's not pretend that podcasters of all people need to be in peak

00:07:01.920 physical and mental condition in order to do their jobs. The more inebriated and insane they are,

00:07:06.840 the more popular they seem to become. And yet, all that aside, you know, it's the podcasting

00:07:13.720 industry that's driving a lot of this, in particular the anti-alcohol hysteria, which

00:07:19.880 has now spiraled out of control. I mean, it's the worst and the gayest of the 90s anti-smoking 0.97

00:07:25.720 propaganda all over again. Okay. Give up alcohol if you want. I'm not trying to stop you, but the 0.99

00:07:35.200 stuff is not battery acid. Okay. A sip will not send you to the hospital. A glass of wine ruined

00:07:42.200 three days of your life? When did it become normal and acceptable for men to brag about 1.00

00:07:49.440 their weak constitutions? It's very strange. And I have no problem with anyone giving up

00:07:55.820 alcohol. I don't care. Drink it or don't. Who cares? That's entirely up to you. But

00:08:03.600 many in the health-conscious, health-maxing community now talk about a glass of wine

00:08:08.820 like it's literally cyanide, which is strange because that means that all of our grandparents

00:08:14.520 were drinking cyanide basically every day of their lives and their life expectancy as adults

00:08:19.380 taking out child mortality, which was higher back then, was not that much lower than ours is today.

00:08:24.960 Certainly not as low as you would expect for people who consumed a regular diet of poison.

00:08:30.980 Okay, it's the hysteria and the gross exaggerations. That's the issue.

00:08:35.580 You want to make a health choice for yourself? Fine. But it's poison. It will ruin your life. One sip. Calm down. Calm down.

00:08:48.460 Now, in any case, to be clear, I'm not accusing Stephen Bartlett of lying. Actually, I think he's making a very important point, although he clearly doesn't realize it.

00:08:55.200 what he's really acknowledging is that if you obsessively try to optimize and calibrate your

00:09:00.220 health every second of the day, then your body will be hit extremely hard whenever you find

00:09:05.680 yourself in a less than optimal situation. You know, it's like washing your hands is obviously

00:09:12.080 a good idea, but if you wash your hands a hundred times a day, then you'll never expose yourself to

00:09:17.720 any germs and your immune system will suffer as a result. And something similar has obviously

00:09:21.940 happened to Stephen Bartlett. I mean, his preoccupation with optimization has made him

00:09:27.040 so fragile that he physically can't handle a drink that your 85-year-old grandmother could

00:09:33.720 metabolize without any problem whatsoever. How is that an improvement? Even if you don't want

00:09:40.140 to drink, how has your health improved if something as mild and innocuous as a glass of wine can

00:09:48.640 destroy you. Being healthy should not be synonymous with fragility and brittleness,

00:09:56.040 and yet that's what's happened. The wearable health trackers are, of course, a big part of

00:10:02.520 the problem. Hundreds of millions of adults wear these things now. And in a vacuum, wearing a

00:10:08.440 bracelet that gives you second-by-second data on your health doesn't seem to be necessarily a bad

00:10:13.200 thing. It's a little weird, but not necessarily a bad thing. And certainly if you have a specific

00:10:18.020 health condition that needs to be monitored that closely, then technology can literally be a

00:10:22.920 lifesaver. But for a young and healthy person, I think there's good reason to believe that they do

00:10:29.920 more harm than good. And just take Bartlett's story as a case study. He claims that he was

00:10:35.060 nearly incapacitated for half the week after consuming a very moderate amount of alcohol.

00:10:40.420 How did he know he was incapacitated? Well, because he was monitoring it on his

00:10:44.860 whoop, which I guess is one of the bracelets. So was he really that bad off or did he convince

00:10:51.720 himself that his health had been ruined because the bracelet told him so? And then it became a

00:10:57.280 self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, how many people wake up every day, particularly when it comes to

00:11:03.380 sleep tracking, how many people wake up every day feeling relatively rested and refreshed

00:11:07.860 and then feel suddenly worse when their sleep tracker informs them that, in fact, their sleep

00:11:13.700 was suboptimal. Like if you wake up feeling fine, then what's the point of checking your sleep

00:11:21.060 score? These people that check a sleep score every day, do you feel fine when you wake up?

00:11:26.640 Why check it? Oh, I feel fine, but it feels like everything's fine. But should I check? Oh no,

00:11:32.180 it's not fine. And then what do you do with that information? Okay. Anxiously obsessing over the

00:11:39.240 quality of your sleep seems to be the number one best way to guarantee that you don't get

00:11:45.260 quality sleep. And that even when you do get quality sleep, you still feel like you didn't.

00:11:53.480 But if you want a popular podcast, then you're not supposed to point this out. Instead,

00:11:58.420 you're supposed to do what Brian Johnson is doing. Again, he's a popular influencer.

00:12:04.080 And here's one of his recent takes, quote, friends, stop drinking alcohol, not cut back,

00:12:08.640 eliminate. Alcohol increases cortisol, disrupts REM sleep, accelerates epigenetic aging,

00:12:14.540 shrinks hippocampal volume, elevates resting heart rate, raises inflammatory markers,

00:12:19.080 impairs glucose metabolism for 16 hours. One drink does that.

00:12:25.100 Now, not that anyone cares anymore, but what he's saying here is mostly not true.

00:12:32.500 One drink does not, in fact, accelerate aging or shrink hippocampal volume. He's taking studies

00:12:37.940 that look at the effects of long-term drinking and he's implying that one drink has the same

00:12:43.400 effect. There is no reliable data showing that one drink does most of the things that he just

00:12:52.260 mentioned there in any kind of permanent, measurable, meaningful way. Okay, the idea that

00:12:57.380 one beer, one single solitary beer can accelerate aging is ridiculous on its face and not supported

00:13:06.860 by any reliable studies whatsoever. 0.72

00:13:09.500 So it's a lie, in other words,

00:13:11.460 but it's the kind of lie

00:13:12.420 that people feel justified in telling

00:13:14.140 because it's for a good cause.

00:13:16.560 Anybody who points out that it is a lie,

00:13:18.680 like I'm doing right now,

00:13:20.220 can simply be disregarded

00:13:21.380 as someone encouraging alcoholism

00:13:23.120 or some such nonsense,

00:13:24.940 as I surely will be.

00:13:27.980 And people have been using health hysteria

00:13:29.820 to push lies and propaganda for a long time.

00:13:32.840 And even though they all have something to sell,

00:13:35.180 by the way, that's the other part of this.

00:13:36.860 Every single one of these people, they all are selling things to you.

00:13:41.600 I mean, the clip with Bartlett was the most, he literally holds the thing up.

00:13:46.680 He's selling that to you.

00:13:50.020 So it's not that, much of the propaganda is not that hard to understand.

00:13:54.740 They're selling you something.

00:13:55.680 uh and you know when it comes to people uh lying about health related issues we lived through the

00:14:05.060 most extreme example of it a few years ago you'd think we'd have become more generally skeptical

00:14:11.000 of this kind of thing but for a lot of people the opposite has happened i mean you think we'd be at

00:14:18.040 a point now where everybody just naturally when you hear a claim like one beer accelerates aging

00:14:23.320 measurably. You'd think everyone is now just programmed to go like, well, wait a second.

00:14:28.880 Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second. That's not what's happened. In fact, a lot of people

00:14:34.880 are more susceptible to absurd health-related lies than ever. But the bigger issue here is that,

00:14:40.820 as Brian Johnson himself would probably concede, everything you do could have some negative effect

00:14:46.780 on your body, right? Or, or, or could at least put you carry, could carry some kind of risk

00:14:54.020 going outside means that you're exposed to the sun means that, you know, you could get skin

00:14:59.120 cancer. Does that mean everybody should stay inside? Does it mean that everyone should carry

00:15:03.240 a canopy wherever they go to ensure that no UV rays touch their skin? Well, apparently that is

00:15:10.400 indeed what Brian Johnson believes. And here's Brian Johnson doing everything he can to avoid

00:15:14.180 exposure to any possible hazards at all.

00:15:18.020 Watch.

00:15:20.060 Why are you holding an umbrella?

00:15:22.220 90% of visible skin aging is from the sun.

00:15:25.420 So this is a UV umbrella protecting me from the sun.

00:15:27.640 Even though the UV index is two, that's right, you got it.

00:15:30.040 So.

00:15:31.460 I might need to get an umbrella, oh my goodness.

00:15:37.360 Now, not to be too technical here,

00:15:38.620 but when you're using an umbrella

00:15:40.380 that's designed to shield you from the sun,

00:15:41.840 it's technically called a parasol.

00:15:44.180 And I know that because whenever I leave my house for any reason, I always bring my parasol with me, along with my pastel pink Stanley, my Ebola-proof hazmat suit, my Hello Kitty fanny pack.

00:15:56.520 Might seem extreme, but then again, you know, I wouldn't want to expose my body to anything that might reduce my lifespan by a fraction of a second.

00:16:04.320 Now, actually, in reality, and I don't mean to, I mean, I'm saying that we shouldn't engage in exaggeration hyperbole, so I don't mean this as an exaggeration. 1.00

00:16:12.020 I would rather die a thousand times than walk around like that, hiding away from the sun with your little umbrella like a scrawny gay vampire. 1.00

00:16:25.620 Now, what we're seeing from these podcasters and many others like them is the product of two independent problems that are now an epidemic in this country. 1.00

00:16:32.460 The first problem is that people have no idea how to interpret data or statistics anymore.

00:16:38.380 Second problem is much more serious than this, and we'll come back to that later.

00:16:42.020 Consider this claim by Andrew Huberman, who also hosts one of the most popular podcasts on the planet.

00:16:47.360 This is from a video with nearly 8 million views.

00:16:51.660 And again, I know we're not supposed to correct things like this because it's not really true, but it's for a good cause.

00:16:56.980 So let's just pretend it is. But I can't help myself. So here it is. Watch.

00:17:02.980 For every 10 grams of alcohol consumed. So that's one beer in the U.S., maybe a little bit more than one beer in Japan,

00:17:10.180 or basically a third of a drink in Russia,

00:17:14.400 there's a four to 13% increase in risk of cancer.

00:17:20.540 That's pretty outrageous, right?

00:17:22.260 And you might think, wait,

00:17:23.180 how could it be that this stuff is even legal?

00:17:26.380 Well, look, as I described before, it's a toxin.

00:17:29.740 It's also a toxin that people enjoy the effects of

00:17:32.520 because of the serious nature of what we're talking about.

00:17:35.100 And because I would hate to be confusing

00:17:38.120 or misleading to anybody,

00:17:39.240 I want to just emphasize that this statistic that there is a four to 13%, depending on which study

00:17:45.060 you look at, a four to 13% increase in the risk of cancer, in particular breast cancer, for every

00:17:50.840 10 grams of alcohol consumed, that's 10 grams per day. So that's one drink per day. But I do want

00:17:58.320 to emphasize that if that equates to seven drinks per week and all those seven drinks are being

00:18:05.740 consumed on Friday and Saturday, it still averages to 10 grams per day.

00:18:12.600 Okay, so he doubles back at the end there and clarifies that he's talking about one beer per

00:18:16.220 day, not one beer. And all the same, his claim is probably very surprising for most people. The idea

00:18:24.040 that if you drink just one beer per day, you might be increasing your cancer risk by 13%.

00:18:29.420 Of course, a lot of people average much more alcohol consumption than that. And as a result,

00:18:35.400 We can assume that of the 8 million people who saw that video, many of them walked away convinced that alcohol is effectively a death sentence for everybody.

00:18:43.560 After all, 13% sounds like a lot, especially when you're talking about your odds of getting cancer.

00:18:49.080 Now, like if I told you you had a 13% chance of getting struck by lightning if you play golf today, you're probably going to stay inside.

00:18:56.220 But the statistic is deliberately misleading in this case.

00:18:59.440 the sleight of hand, which Andrew Huberman never explains, has to do with the difference between

00:19:05.040 relative risk and absolute risk. And understand the distinction. Imagine that somebody tells you

00:19:10.840 that because of your lifelong habits, you've increased your risk of getting lung cancer by

00:19:15.880 50%. Now, to most people, that sounds horrifying, but it becomes a lot less horrifying when you

00:19:21.940 realize that your baseline risk of getting lung cancer as a non-smoker was only 0.5%.

00:19:28.500 So a 50% increase on 0.5%, when you do the math, means that your risk is now 0.75%.

00:19:38.240 Okay, so your risk is not 50. It sounds like what we're saying is your risk is 50%.

00:19:44.360 Actually, your risk is 0.75%. Pretty big difference. It's still overwhelmingly likely

00:19:51.160 more than 99% likely, in fact, that you'll never get lung cancer in your entire life.

00:19:55.920 And the same principle applies to what Huberman is saying. According to the studies I saw,

00:19:59.740 a typical woman has around a 12% chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime.

00:20:04.960 That's the baseline. Now, if Huberman is right and drinking one beer a day increases the risk

00:20:10.280 of breast cancer by 13%, which is the very high end of his range, remember he said like 5% to 13%,

00:20:15.580 which is a big range, that's like 5% or more than triple that, right? But let's take 30%,

00:20:22.500 worst case scenario, then the beer drinking woman now has a 14% chance of getting breast cancer in 1.00

00:20:29.820 her lifetime. Okay. That's what we're talking about. Her relative risk, her relative risk has 1.00

00:20:34.780 increased by 13%, but her absolute risk of getting breast cancer has increased by a little over 1%.

00:20:41.380 1%. Okay, because we're going from the baseline, it's actually 1%. So again, if you want to swear

00:20:48.200 off alcohol to avoid that 1% increased risk, totally fine. I respect it. What I'm trying to

00:20:56.000 do is introduce some reality into the hysteria here. And you could do with it whatever you wish.

00:21:03.100 Now, virtually all the propaganda that you read about cancer rates uses the same tactic.

00:21:07.100 This is from a website called Our Cancer Stories and see what you notice. Quote,

00:21:10.680 So, sodium nitrate is a chemical salt that is commonly used in bacon, ham, and deli meats.

00:21:16.560 The study showed that it was associated with a 32% increase in the risk of prostate cancer.

00:21:21.000 Potassium nitrate, closely related to sodium nitrate, was found to cause 13% increased risk of overall cancer and 22% increased risk of breast cancer.

00:21:29.380 Sorbates, especially potassium sorbate, are typically used in wine, baked goods, cheeses, and sauces to prevent molds, yeast, and some bacteria.

00:21:36.180 they were found to increase overall cancer risk by 14 percent and breast cancer risk by 26 percent

00:21:41.060 potassium metabuculfite uh which is also used in winemaking was linked with a 20 increase in

00:21:47.280 breast cancer 11 higher risk of all cancers acetates are used in foods such as meat sauce

00:21:51.780 bread and cheese they were associated with a 25 higher risk of breast cancer and 15 increase in

00:21:57.540 cancer risk in general now what do you notice there aside from the fact they're listing like

00:22:02.600 every food. Um, everything gives you cancer apparently, which, you know, might be sort of

00:22:08.520 true, but the, but the, but the problem here is that in every single one of these examples,

00:22:13.520 they're using rates of relative risk. Now it's very scary to be told that your relative risk

00:22:19.440 of prostate cancer goes up by 32% when you eat bacon and deli meats. But that information by

00:22:25.700 itself is irrelevant unless you know your baseline risk of prostate cancer. It's a bit like saying,

00:22:31.380 if you go outside, then you raise your risk of skin cancer by 200%. Well, 200% compared to what?

00:22:38.200 If I told you that it was 200% when compared to someone who stays inside all day, like Desmond

00:22:44.420 and Lost, and that your absolute risk only increased by 1%, then you probably wouldn't

00:22:50.480 care at all, I would think. I mean, you keep going outside like a normal person.

00:22:54.700 Here's another way of looking at it. Imagine I said that if you get in your car and drive every

00:22:59.120 day, you're increasing your risk of a car accident by 100,000%. Sounds terrifying if you're stupid 1.00

00:23:06.640 enough to take it seriously. It's also technically true with a massive caveat. Your risk of an 1.00

00:23:12.680 accident goes up by 100,000% when compared to someone who drives only 10 miles a year. So if

00:23:20.260 you imagine that a person who drives every day will end up driving 10,000 to 15,000 miles a year

00:23:24.000 on average, give or take, then his relative risk compared to someone who only drives 10 miles a

00:23:29.720 year has increased by around 100,000%, if not considerably more than that. And if you compare

00:23:35.940 a person who drives every day with someone who never gets in a car at all, then his relative

00:23:41.500 risk has gone up by infinity percent. And yet still, the actual risk that you will get into

00:23:49.580 So an accident, particularly a fatal accident, the absolute risk remains extremely low.

00:23:56.380 It's not zero, but it's low. It's a risk that you take every time you drive anywhere without

00:24:01.740 even thinking about it. When you get in your car and drive to Target, you are technically

00:24:06.740 risking your life just to go to Target. Is it worth risking your life just to go to Target?

00:24:13.700 well yeah it is i mean provided the absolute risk is low if it's a really low risk then yeah

00:24:22.340 but it's not zero and it's worth the non-zero risk because the other option is to inconvenience

00:24:30.100 yourself and forego doing normal things just for the sake of avoiding an extremely unlikely outcome

00:24:35.540 but here's the thing you just you just don't think of driving to target that way

00:24:40.960 in both cases we're all we're talking about risk and again it's technically true that running your

00:24:47.980 errand to target is putting your life at risk that is undeniably true but you don't think of it that

00:24:54.200 way and you don't think of most things that way because the more you think of things that way

00:24:59.160 the more incapacitated you are you can't function as a person anymore and when it comes to driving

00:25:05.360 you, for the most part, don't run the risk calculation at all.

00:25:11.060 And that's because when it comes to driving, you have a healthy and sane perspective, probably.

00:25:17.600 People are losing this perspective when it comes to many other aspects of life.

00:25:21.960 And here's the important point.

00:25:23.820 If somebody ran up to you right as you were getting into your car and said,

00:25:27.180 don't go to Target, you're risking your life.

00:25:30.680 Well, they'd be saying something that's technically statistically true.

00:25:35.360 But they're also being extremely misleading and emotionally manipulative.

00:25:41.140 You know, they're saying something technically true in the most dramatic, hysterical, and ominous way possible in order to persuade you to massively overestimate the risk.

00:25:52.940 And then if it turns out that also that person happens to be selling, you know, a grocery delivery service to you.

00:25:59.700 well not only do you know that they're exaggerating and they're misleading you but you know that

00:26:05.840 they're doing it for the most cynical greedy reason possible

00:26:09.500 and that's basically what's happening with a huge amount of the conversation around health

00:26:17.540 on the internet right now it's impossible to overstate how widespread these kinds of

00:26:22.600 misconceptions have become you see it everywhere this is a popular video on tiktok with thousands

00:26:27.980 of outraged comments. Just for example, watch this. What's that? Oh, it was just announced

00:26:36.520 that ham is considered a class one carcinogen and is on the same level as that of cigarettes.

00:26:44.800 Tell me more! Yeah, this is crazy. They just announced that ham is a class one carcinogen

00:26:51.220 and it is actually incredibly bad for you and it's equivalent realistically to having one

00:27:00.900 cigarette if you have one to two slices of ham okay now like i said this kind of stuff is all

00:27:12.380 over the place it's just and tiktok again just being a a bane on everyone's existence with this

00:27:19.640 with this uh with this sort of thing as as if a 30 second tiktok video is anywhere near enough

00:27:27.660 time to have any kind of actually informative uh conversation about that

00:27:34.740 now it's true that processed meats including ham have been classified as a group one carcinogen by

00:27:43.120 the world health organization which is maybe the least trustworthy organization on the planet as

00:27:46.840 we all learned six years ago, but never mind that. And it's true that in this same category,

00:27:52.040 they include asbestos, plutonium, and cigarettes. But it's completely false to suggest that

00:27:58.260 therefore, ham is just as dangerous as cigarettes. The label of group one carcinogen simply means

00:28:04.860 that there is conclusive evidence that the substance is capable, theoretically,

00:28:09.980 of causing cancer in some people. It doesn't tell you the odds that the substance will cause cancer

00:28:15.640 or the risk of the illness. Okay. And all these conversations are meaningless unless you get down

00:28:22.260 to the actual odds, the absolute risk. What are we really talking about? Right? None of these

00:28:29.180 conversations can, just like the example with Target. You're risking your life. Well, but to

00:28:34.660 what degree? Because that means everything here. If there's a 50% chance I'm going to die the way

00:28:40.860 to target, I'm not going. But are you saying it's like 0.1%? In which case, it doesn't mean

00:28:45.940 anything. Effectively, the risk for all intents and purposes doesn't matter.

00:28:53.440 Now, with the carcinogen thing, if researchers find that eating string cheese increases your

00:29:00.520 odds of getting cancer by 0.001%, then they can label it a group one carcinogen, which

00:29:07.180 podcasters can then use to convince you that eating string cheese is fundamentally the same

00:29:11.700 as like eating asbestos, like it's cotton candy. And what's happened in this video, once again,

00:29:17.140 is that the person has confused relative risk with absolute risk. And it's true that according

00:29:21.760 to the World Health Organization, eating 50 grams of processed meat every day, the equivalent of

00:29:25.120 two slices of ham, will increase your relative risk of colon cancer by roughly 18%. But again,

00:29:30.580 that's the relative risk. In absolute terms, your risk of getting colon cancer would increase from

00:29:36.120 around 5% to like 6%. That's what we're actually talking about. It's minuscule. You go from

00:29:45.500 someone with a very low chance of getting colon cancer to someone who also has a very low chance

00:29:50.380 of getting colon cancer. On the other hand, if you smoke every day, then your lifetime risk of

00:29:55.940 getting lung cancer increases dramatically from less than 1% to roughly 18%. That's the absolute

00:30:01.880 number. That is not the relative number. Your relative percentage goes up like 2,000%. In other

00:30:07.060 words, the person in that video is comparing the relative risk of eating ham with the absolute

00:30:12.740 risk of smoking cigarettes. So it is apples and oranges, or in this case, ham and cigarettes. It

00:30:18.440 is incoherent. But if you're not paying attention, it might sound convincing enough. The truth is,

00:30:25.980 for many years now, this kind of deception has been commonplace. About a decade ago,

00:30:29.760 a scientist who worked on classifying different carcinogens according to appeared on BBC and

00:30:35.640 explained that people are misunderstanding what this term means. Watch. But to say that it's

00:30:42.580 comparable to diesel fumes, asbestos, tobacco smoke, that's pretty scary. No one has done that.

00:30:50.480 That is a distortion. Those are specific carcinogens. The best characterization of this

00:30:58.300 is that eating red meat increases the risk of cancer,

00:31:01.760 but it's a distortion to classify red meat as a carcinogen.

00:31:05.900 We don't know what the carcinogens are.

00:31:08.080 What we're in a position to do is to provide the community

00:31:11.180 with a clear basis for public health policy in relation to diet,

00:31:15.760 and that doesn't involve labelling anything a carcinogen

00:31:19.260 or prohibiting anything.

00:31:22.020 It involves a sensible intake of red meat and processed meat

00:31:26.140 to minimize any risk of cancer.

00:31:31.420 So this is the common sense advice

00:31:33.020 that you've probably heard from your parents.

00:31:34.820 Everything in moderation.

00:31:36.640 Don't drink to excess.

00:31:38.360 Don't eat anything to excess.

00:31:41.100 And you'll probably be okay. 0.99

00:31:44.080 Until you die, 0.99

00:31:45.400 which you will also die along with the rest of us. 0.99

00:31:47.880 But in the meantime, that's all you can do.

00:31:50.520 It's not that complicated.

00:31:52.100 But if you're told the truth,

00:31:53.280 then it's much harder to sell expensive app subscriptions

00:31:55.720 and diet plans. And therefore, many of the so-called diet apps only contribute to the

00:31:59.760 confusion here. They prey on the fact that people are more neurotic than they've ever been when it

00:32:05.200 comes to food and don't understand statistical. Most people just do not understand how statistics

00:32:11.440 work at all. One of the great failures of the school system of many is we've got a whole,

00:32:18.460 we have generations of people now who have no clue how to read statistical information

00:32:22.180 and are manipulated all day long by everyone because of it.

00:32:28.220 But here's a study from the UC San Diego released a few years ago.

00:32:32.460 Quote, few researchers have studied how these apps affect women with eating disorders in university and college settings.

00:32:38.600 This research investigates the unintended negative consequences of engaging with these tools.

00:32:43.220 Participants reported that diet and fitness apps trigger and exacerbate symptoms by focusing heavily on quantification, promoting overuse, and providing certain types of feedback.

00:32:54.440 Eight themes of negative consequence emerged.

00:32:56.820 Fixation on numbers, rigid diet, obsession, app dependency, high sense of achievement, extreme negative emotions, motivation from negative messages, and excess competition.

00:33:06.860 So in other words, diet and fitness apps cause more problems than they solved in many cases.

00:33:11.660 And even when they're functioning as designed, these apps aren't making people happier or more motivated.

00:33:17.260 And very often the apps don't even work. They're based on junk science.

00:33:21.320 Somebody named Austin Lieberman just posted these two screenshots from the Oasis Health app, which supposedly will tell you if you're eating unhealthy food.

00:33:30.840 And as you can see there, the app ranks Fairlife Protein Milk as having three harmful substances and it receives a rating of 14 out of 100.

00:33:38.100 not great especially for protein milk which you'd expect to be somewhat healthy and meanwhile you

00:33:44.180 you pull up Jim Beam bourbon on the app and you're told that it contains no harmful substances at all

00:33:48.940 and it receives a generous 85 out of 100 rating which the app translates as good

00:33:54.240 so I guess the message is that instead of drinking protein milk you're better off with

00:33:58.200 whiskey which you know sounds good to me frankly I'll take you up on that actually when you think

00:34:05.540 about it for a second. The app might be correct. Maybe Oasis Health app is onto something here.

00:34:10.920 After all, every single one of us is descended from people who drank alcohol literally all day,

00:34:17.020 every day. So the idea that it's now poison akin to chugging gasoline straight from the pump and

00:34:22.800 we can't even have a glass of the stuff without destroying our bodies is insane. I mean, if that

00:34:27.220 were true, humanity would not exist right now. But here's the point. Even if all the podcasters

00:34:33.020 were on the right track from a statistical point of view, which they're not really,

00:34:37.520 then we should still ignore most of what they're saying. And that's because longevity,

00:34:43.400 despite what godless neurotic podcasters and liberal women will tell you, is not the single 0.82

00:34:49.820 most important goal in life. No sane society would trade Alexander Hamilton, who died before

00:34:55.720 his 50th birthday, for all the cat ladies and HR gargoyles in Brooklyn who think they're going to

00:35:01.040 lived to 100 years old. If our founding fathers were afraid of the sun or even alcohol, it's

00:35:08.080 likely we wouldn't have a country today. We certainly wouldn't have the same writings or

00:35:12.800 insights from the founders. Certainly, if they were the kind of guys who would walk around with

00:35:19.320 umbrellas because they're afraid of the sun, or the kind of guys with such weak institutions that

00:35:25.300 one glass of wine would nearly put them in the hospital, then we wouldn't have a country. We

00:35:30.100 just wouldn't. When Ben Franklin was being carried away from Independence Hall following

00:35:34.860 the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him what the men inside had created, a monarchy or

00:35:39.280 something else. And Franklin, of course, famously replied, a republic if you can keep it. At the

00:35:43.560 time, Franklin was suffering from gout, which historians suspect may have been related to his

00:35:46.940 wine habit. It isn't something you hear about very often in school, but indeed, Franklin may

00:35:51.580 have been slightly buzzed when he uttered that famous quote. And while we're at it, the Sons of

00:35:55.520 Liberty met at their usual tavern before launching the Boston Tea Party. In fact, on a Friday night

00:36:00.540 in September of 1787, the founders ran up a legendary bar tab after putting the finishing

00:36:05.060 touches on the country's new constitution. They met at City Tavern, which was their usual watering

00:36:09.940 hole just a few blocks from Independence Hall. And on this occasion, the founders were greeted

00:36:15.720 by the Light Horse of Philadelphia, a cavalry corps that crossed the Delaware with Washington

00:36:20.260 and served as his personal bodyguard.

00:36:22.720 The Light Horse also fought in several major battles of the war,

00:36:26.420 including Trenton and Germantown. 1.00

00:36:28.520 And so began the massive bender that started this country. 1.00

00:36:32.540 According to the final bill, which was recreated in the 1950s, 1.00

00:36:36.080 as you're seeing right now,

00:36:38.080 the Founding Fathers drank, quote,

00:36:39.300 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of Claret,

00:36:43.680 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of Porter,

00:36:46.080 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 bottles of beer,

00:36:48.940 and seven large bowls of alcoholic punch.

00:36:52.900 Now, there were only 55 attendees,

00:36:55.300 which means that every guest was afforded several shots,

00:36:58.180 a few cups of punch, and two bottles of wine,

00:37:00.560 roughly a gallon of booze per person.

00:37:03.780 The musicians and waiters reportedly got a separate liquor bill

00:37:06.220 accounting for 21 bottles of wine, which the soldiers paid for.

00:37:09.620 Now, it's quite possible that by participating in this night of drinking,

00:37:13.800 everybody involved raised his lifetime risk of cancer by 1%.

00:37:18.340 It's even possible that some of these men may have affected their REM sleep cycles or caused a cortisol spike.

00:37:25.280 Worst of all, some of these guys may not have been able to podcast for three, four days afterward.

00:37:31.620 But all things considered, it was probably worth it.

00:37:34.500 I mean, we should all be grateful that they didn't lock themselves in a basement and refuse to go outside for any reason because they might increase their risk of death.

00:37:42.900 If they had done that, we'd be British subjects to this day.

00:37:45.660 And speaking of the British, for centuries, sailors in the British Navy were issued a half pint of 109 proof rum every day, which is like four or five shots every day for months or years, while working in the most extreme and dangerous environments imaginable.

00:38:02.340 And you might say, well, they shouldn't have done that.

00:38:05.340 Their Fitbits would have been yelling at them nonstop.

00:38:09.400 But if that's your attitude, then you need to simply answer this question.

00:38:12.480 the Royal Navy stopped the daily rum ration in 1970. Was the Royal Navy a more fearsome and

00:38:19.000 effective fighting force before or after 1970? Before the rum ban, the Royal Navy contributed

00:38:24.720 to the birth of the empire and the rise of the British naval supremacy. After 1970, they're

00:38:29.900 lucky if they can find the keys to their aircraft carriers. They only have two of them, which they

00:38:34.620 never use. I mean, the British empire no longer exists. The entire country has been emasculated.

00:38:39.380 And the point is not that the British Empire collapsed because sailors stopped getting hammered every day. I'm not alleging a direct causal connection here, although it's not crazy to think there might be some kind of connection to some degree. That's not the point, though.

00:38:55.540 The point is that today you have men claiming they cannot function for a week after sipping a glass of wine with their Sunday dinner.

00:39:06.700 Not that long ago, men were literally conquering the world while drinking whiskey-like water and having in every way what the modern podcaster would call suboptimal health habits.

00:39:17.580 There is, again, an unmistakable fragility and neediness in all of this.

00:39:24.920 And the hysterical claims about a sip of beer or a trip to McDonald's destroying you physically are revealed as absurd against a historical backdrop where men did much worse than that to their bodies and yet also achieved much more than you or I ever will.

00:39:41.300 And that's your ancestral story, no matter where your family comes from.

00:39:46.220 We are descendants of men who slept for four hours on a bed of straw, woke up, drank wine, and stormed castles.

00:39:54.260 You know, and we are losing that vitality completely. We're focusing on the wrong kind

00:40:01.160 of longevity, the longevity of lifespan rather than legacy and bloodline. And it's not that

00:40:09.580 we have to choose between the two necessarily, but the latter should be much more a priority

00:40:15.320 than the former. You know, there aren't many examples of great men who achieved great things

00:40:21.760 and lived perfectly healthy and optimized lifestyles.

00:40:25.120 In fact, I can't think of any examples.

00:40:27.460 I'm not saying there aren't any, but I can't.

00:40:28.860 Can you off the top of your head?

00:40:30.940 It seems that, you know, greatness usually requires a certain looseness,

00:40:37.280 a certain lack of care for your physical health.

00:40:40.560 Not recklessness, not like being suicidal and certainly not being a glutton,

00:40:45.840 but just an openness to risk that terrifies the health optimizers with their little bracelets.

00:40:55.240 A resume only tells you so much, which means hiring the right person can be very difficult.

00:40:59.440 Most people's resumes say they're motivated or a hard worker. Everybody is apparently a dynamic

00:41:04.480 team player. None of that means anything anymore. What actually matters is whether somebody genuinely

00:41:09.620 wants the role. And you can usually tell pretty quickly, some candidates sent out 200 applications

00:41:14.760 that morning and barely remember what position they applied for. Other people show up prepared.

00:41:18.780 They look into the company. They ask thoughtful questions. They sound interested in the work

00:41:22.940 itself. And the difference matters because when somebody actually wants to be there,

00:41:26.820 they tend to care more. They pay attention. They learn faster. They fit better into the culture

00:41:30.960 you're trying to build. Well, if you're hiring, you want a candidate who's passionate about your

00:41:35.520 role, but you can't get that insight from a resume unless you post your job on ZipRecruiter.

00:41:40.400 And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:41:43.360 ZipRecruiter's powerful metric technology helps you find qualified candidates quickly.

00:41:47.840 They also have a new feature that shows you the most interested qualified candidates first,

00:41:51.760 so you can spend more time talking to the right people instead of digging through stacks of applications that clearly aren't a serious fit.

00:41:58.440 Candidates can also tell you in their own words why they're interested in your job,

00:42:01.980 which is important because hiring isn't just about checking boxes on a resume.

00:42:06.120 You know, you want people who understand the role and want the opportunity. 0.50

00:42:10.060 ZipRecruiter helps surface those candidates faster.

00:42:13.460 Find candidates who really want your job on ZipRecruiter.

00:42:17.020 Four to five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day.

00:42:20.420 Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:42:22.520 That's ZipRecruiter.com slash Walsh.

00:42:24.960 Meet your match on ZipRecruiter.

00:42:28.460 Now, it's not every day that I cite Harvard on this show,

00:42:30.900 but this study bears mentioning because it began long before Harvard

00:42:34.500 and the rest of higher education in this country went completely insane.

00:42:37.000 there's something called the harvard study of adult development and it's described as the longest

00:42:42.060 study of human life that's ever been done uh mass general studied three generations of families

00:42:47.900 across thousands of people for 85 years and they began this study in the 1930s and here's the top

00:42:53.380 line conclusion after all that time quote the people who are happiest who stayed healthiest

00:42:57.900 as they grew old and who lived the longest were the people who had the warmest connections

00:43:01.860 with other people. So even if you're tempted by the neurotic perspective on this,

00:43:09.060 it still doesn't matter. I mean, in the end, it all comes out in the wash.

00:43:13.680 Eat bacon if you want. The most important thing you can do, according to the experts themselves,

00:43:19.280 is to do exactly what I'm saying. Don't focus exclusively on extending your life. Focus on

00:43:26.540 doing something significant. And when I made this point on social media, as expected, a lot of people

00:43:31.360 attacked me, called me a troglodyte, et cetera, which fine, maybe so. But then they told me about

00:43:37.300 their diet apps and their heart rate monitors and their vegan diets and so on. And my response to

00:43:43.200 these people is pretty simple. Maybe with all of that stuff, you optimizing your health to that

00:43:49.720 degree, well, I'm not doing all that, although I am doing, I think, reasonable things. Maybe you

00:43:55.300 outlive me by a few years or maybe not but who cares like i have six kids i have four sons my

00:44:03.820 bloodline and my name will live on i could die tomorrow and i still win the problem with the

00:44:10.840 health maxers is they only care about extending their own lives by every minute possible

00:44:15.760 they don't think about bloodline they don't think about legacy and that's the kind of longevity

00:44:22.660 that matters. That's the kind of longevity that lasts a thousand years. It's why we have a

00:44:30.540 republic today. Now, increasingly, this health optimization obsession has become a desperate

00:44:36.580 and doomed quest for actual immortality. Brian Johnson's motto is don't die, which has all the

00:44:42.780 scientific seriousness of trying to sell a course on how to harness telekinetic powers, which is

00:44:48.100 something that TikTok influencers are actually doing, by the way. That's a conversation for

00:44:51.960 another time. A self-described engineering physicist responded to that video of Johnson

00:44:56.520 hiding under an umbrella with this, quote, avoiding sun is being extremely bearish on the

00:45:01.080 longevity biotech thesis. Assume we will have peptides for everything. Retroviral DNA upgrades,

00:45:06.960 nanobot healing glands. Nature wants us dead at 35. Science will have us live to see the stars

00:45:13.860 burn out. That again is just the hysterical fear in these people. Nature wants us dead at 35.

00:45:22.920 And you're supposed to nod sort of solemnly at those kinds of pronouncements.

00:45:26.340 Oh, yes, that's true.

00:45:27.260 What are you talking about? 0.77

00:45:29.220 What the hell are you talking about?

00:45:31.560 Nature wants it. 0.77

00:45:32.540 Where are you getting that?

00:45:34.820 You're just making it up.

00:45:37.560 But it's all for a good cause.

00:45:39.760 What's the good cause again?

00:45:41.020 Oh, making you terrified, paranoid, and again, selling you things.

00:45:44.480 but anyway sorry to inform you uh that's not how it will work or can work you're going to die

00:45:55.540 absolutely very soon actually in the grand scheme of things you have several decades at most in 80

00:46:03.600 or 90 years tops nobody listening to these words right now will be alive and most of them won't

00:46:10.280 even be remembered. Like, it'll be like they never existed, as far as the world's concerned.

00:46:16.440 And this fact is so terrifying to some people that they live every second in denial, clinging

00:46:21.900 to the insane hope that somehow science will come along and rescue them from mortality.

00:46:28.060 And even if it could, which it definitely can't, then what? You live to watch all your friends

00:46:34.960 and loved ones die, and even their tombstones decay while you linger on, trembling in fear,

00:46:41.700 grasping desperately onto a life that no matter how long it lasts, you're wasting anyway.

00:46:47.960 And then you get to see the earth decay around you and the sun burn out, so you can live on in

00:46:53.480 total darkness and decay. Well, sounds like a lot of fun, but no thanks. I don't need to live for

00:47:02.920 a billion years. I just want the time I have, however long or short it might be, to be

00:47:09.060 meaningful. But they don't sell any bracelets that will track your progress towards living

00:47:14.560 a meaningful life. There are no supplements or peptides for that. Science and technology

00:47:21.720 can do a lot of things. It can even extend your life by a little bit. But however long

00:47:28.280 the life it gives you, it can't make that time actually mean something. And that should be the

00:47:35.380 part that matters most. That'll do it for the show today. Thanks for watching. Thanks for

00:47:39.320 listening. Talk to you tomorrow. Have a great day. Godspeed.

00:47:49.060 Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon, widely considered one of the greatest Americans

00:47:53.500 who ever lived. A man who had a vision for a colorblind society, a post-racial America.

00:48:00.700 He had a dream. It's just not the dream you thought it was. Were his true aims a colorblind 0.57

00:48:06.140 society or something far more radical? Who bankrolled him? What unfolded behind the scenes

00:48:11.980 in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? Was civil disobedience actually peaceful? We wanted to

00:48:19.900 show you a clip of the I Have a Dream speech, but according to our lawyers, we can't. In fact,

00:48:24.860 King's family has made a lot of money suing media outlets. They want to silence critics like us.

00:48:30.140 What they're doing makes it very difficult to judge Martin Luther King Jr. not by the color of

00:48:34.220 his skin, but by the content of his character. Is America today stronger, more unified, and racially

00:48:41.260 equal than before King's rise? These questions demand answers, and as Americans, we are entitled

00:48:46.540 to a full accounting of the Civil Rights Movement

00:48:48.800 and its consequences, King's Movement

00:48:50.680 fundamentally transformed our country

00:48:52.760 and our system of government.

00:48:54.300 I speak as a citizen of the world.

00:48:57.200 Each day the war goes on,

00:48:59.020 the hatred increases,

00:49:01.160 though the cause of evil

00:49:02.680 prosper.

00:49:03.620 First part of our two-part special on the Civil Rights Movement,

00:49:06.780 a new constitution, available now

00:49:08.640 on Daily Wire Plus.

The Matt Walsh Show - May 26, 2026

Ep. 1785 - How Healthmaxxing Is Destroying Men

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