For as long as we ve had a country, we have 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. Typically, the most popular quacks are the ones who demand that we sacrifice some enjoyable, commonplace activity in order to supposedly improve our health.
00:00:26.320Visit shell.ca slash loyalty for full details.0.97
00:00:30.000For 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
00:00:43.400Typically, 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
00:00:51.080Now, 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.
00:01:09.980He once chewed a green onion more than 700 times just to make sure that it was totally liquefied.
00:01:15.800And appropriately enough, Fletcher became known as the great masticator.
00:01:19.860Not to be confused with the title claimed by Jeffrey Toobin on a Zoom call.
00:01:25.700Fletcher quickly attracted hundreds of thousands of followers, including Arthur Conan Doyle,
00:01:31.160Mark Twain, John Rockefeller, and the author Upton Sinclair.
00:01:35.340In fact, Sinclair reportedly wrote the catchphrase of the movement, which was, and I quote,
00:01:41.300nature will castigate those who don't masticate.
00:01:45.720Johnny Cochran himself could not have invented a better slogan.
00:01:49.780Now, in every case, when fads like this catch on, it's a sign of a deeper sickness that needs to be addressed.
00:01:56.160Fletcher was successful because at the time, the United States was transitioning from an agrarian society to an industrial one.
00:02:03.140People began eating more processed foods and living more sedentary lifestyles, so indigestion became more common among other health issues.
00:02:11.420There 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.
00:02:21.280Fletcher took advantage of the new health challenges and angst that the Industrial Revolution brought.
00:02:27.040The fact that his solution was nonsense didn't bother many people.
00:02:31.040They were terrified, and they wanted to extend their lifespans at any cost.
00:02:35.720Now, today we're seeing a very noticeable return of this kind of thinking.
00:02:39.460the health consciousness stuff uh the health maxing as it's called has gone massively overboard
00:02:47.380as you've probably noticed people are walking around with bracelets tracking their vital signs
00:02:53.120every second of the day like they're astronauts on the iss they're monitoring their heart
00:02:59.260heart rates getting daily reports on their sleep habits treating alcohol or sugar like it'll kill
00:03:06.000them if they look at it, counting their steps. It's now widely believed that it's impossible to
00:03:11.700live a healthy life without being an obsessive, paranoid lunatic, never mind the fact that you're0.88
00:03:16.620eventually going to die either way. Just like the great masticator taught, people increasingly
00:03:22.180believe that they need to make life miserable in order to prolong it. Now, I feel it necessary0.60
00:03:28.480here to issue what should be an entirely unnecessary disclaimer, which is that I'm
00:03:33.820obviously not saying that it's bad to try to live a healthy lifestyle. Of course, that's not bad.
00:03:39.660That indeed is very good. You should generally eat healthy and exercise. I lift four or five times,
00:03:46.780four or five days a week. I run three or four days a week. Not exactly an Olympic athlete style
00:03:52.480training regimen, and I'm not exactly an Olympic athlete. But the point is that I'm saying all this
00:03:56.800as someone who gets a considerably above average amount of exercise. So this is not an anti-fitness,
00:04:02.980anti-health message. This is more of an anti-paranoia, anti-panic, anti-fragile OCD
00:04:12.380obsessiveness message. Now, in no small part, the panic I'm talking about is driven by podcasts that
00:04:18.660are going out of their way for one reason or another to turn people into weird hypochondriacs.
00:04:25.940And so here, for example, is footage from one of the biggest podcasts in the world. And it's a clip
00:04:31.580that you may have seen in which Stephen Bartlett, speaking to Chris Williamson,
00:04:36.020describes the allegedly catastrophic effect of drinking a few glasses of wine. Watch.
00:04:42.980It's one of those areas where you don't understand the hidden cost until you really give it up for a
00:04:47.780while. And I think about my own relationship with drinking, and I stopped drinking at 30 years old,
00:04:52.160I'm now 33, and I had just drank because I just drank. I'd never ran the experiment of just giving
00:04:56.880it up for a while. And then, like, I don't know, maybe I was at 31, I thought, you know, I'll have
00:05:00.760drink again because now i could really a b test it i had a year of not drinking decided to have
00:05:04.920a drink again it ruined three days of my life i had a couple of glasses of wine didn't get drunk
00:05:10.280it ruined three days of my life because of the domino effect it caused so it meant that i got
00:05:14.680worse sleep that night and then because i got worse sleep that night i ate more poorly the next
00:05:19.080day because my my dopamine system or whatever the cortisol system was all messed up and then i
00:05:24.360podcasted worse i didn't go to the gym the day after that that day or the day after because of
00:05:29.480that because i felt really bad i then slept worse and i could track all of this on my week hashtag
00:05:33.640ad hashtag sponsor hashtag investor whatever hey yeah and i was like oh my god those three glasses
00:05:38.840of wine had this hidden domino effect that i must have been living with for my whole life
00:05:44.040i drank two glasses of wine and then i podcasted worse0.91
00:05:51.160that might be the most pathetic sentence ever uttered by a male of the human species0.97
00:05:59.560and it somehow gets worse his whole week was ruined his little armband told him he was naughty0.99
00:06:06.160i mean how do you get to the point where you voluntarily say all these things out loud without
00:06:11.420any hint of shame or self-awareness and more importantly how do we get to the point where
00:06:16.460this interview has millions of views mostly from people who appear to believe that they're getting
00:06:20.000serious, genuine advice on how to improve their lives. Now, first of all, the idea that you can't
00:06:25.880podcast effectively after having consumed alcoholic beverages the night before is belied by, first of
00:06:32.780all, my own personal experience. And at any rate, podcasting is not the kind of thing that seems to
00:06:37.840require clear-headed sobriety anyway. Now, I've certainly never podcasted drunk, but it seems like
00:06:43.200a lot of my peers in this space are drunk or high on something every time they turn on the camera,
00:06:47.520at least judging based on the content. If you conducted a field sobriety test on 100 podcasters
00:06:53.120in the middle of their shows, maybe five of them would pass. And you can debate whether that's a
00:06:57.840good thing or not, but let's not pretend that podcasters of all people need to be in peak
00:07:01.920physical and mental condition in order to do their jobs. The more inebriated and insane they are,
00:07:06.840the more popular they seem to become. And yet, all that aside, you know, it's the podcasting
00:07:13.720industry that's driving a lot of this, in particular the anti-alcohol hysteria, which
00:07:19.880has now spiraled out of control. I mean, it's the worst and the gayest of the 90s anti-smoking0.97
00:07:25.720propaganda all over again. Okay. Give up alcohol if you want. I'm not trying to stop you, but the0.99
00:07:35.200stuff is not battery acid. Okay. A sip will not send you to the hospital. A glass of wine ruined
00:07:42.200three days of your life? When did it become normal and acceptable for men to brag about1.00
00:07:49.440their weak constitutions? It's very strange. And I have no problem with anyone giving up
00:07:55.820alcohol. I don't care. Drink it or don't. Who cares? That's entirely up to you. But
00:08:03.600many in the health-conscious, health-maxing community now talk about a glass of wine
00:08:08.820like it's literally cyanide, which is strange because that means that all of our grandparents
00:08:14.520were drinking cyanide basically every day of their lives and their life expectancy as adults
00:08:19.380taking out child mortality, which was higher back then, was not that much lower than ours is today.
00:08:24.960Certainly not as low as you would expect for people who consumed a regular diet of poison.
00:08:30.980Okay, it's the hysteria and the gross exaggerations. That's the issue.
00:08:35.580You want to make a health choice for yourself? Fine. But it's poison. It will ruin your life. One sip. Calm down. Calm down.
00:08:48.460Now, 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.
00:08:55.200what he's really acknowledging is that if you obsessively try to optimize and calibrate your
00:09:00.220health every second of the day, then your body will be hit extremely hard whenever you find
00:09:05.680yourself in a less than optimal situation. You know, it's like washing your hands is obviously
00:09:12.080a good idea, but if you wash your hands a hundred times a day, then you'll never expose yourself to
00:09:17.720any germs and your immune system will suffer as a result. And something similar has obviously
00:09:21.940happened to Stephen Bartlett. I mean, his preoccupation with optimization has made him
00:09:27.040so fragile that he physically can't handle a drink that your 85-year-old grandmother could
00:09:33.720metabolize without any problem whatsoever. How is that an improvement? Even if you don't want
00:09:40.140to drink, how has your health improved if something as mild and innocuous as a glass of wine can
00:09:48.640destroy you. Being healthy should not be synonymous with fragility and brittleness,
00:09:56.040and yet that's what's happened. The wearable health trackers are, of course, a big part of
00:10:02.520the problem. Hundreds of millions of adults wear these things now. And in a vacuum, wearing a
00:10:08.440bracelet that gives you second-by-second data on your health doesn't seem to be necessarily a bad
00:10:13.200thing. It's a little weird, but not necessarily a bad thing. And certainly if you have a specific
00:10:18.020health condition that needs to be monitored that closely, then technology can literally be a
00:10:22.920lifesaver. But for a young and healthy person, I think there's good reason to believe that they do
00:10:29.920more harm than good. And just take Bartlett's story as a case study. He claims that he was
00:10:35.060nearly incapacitated for half the week after consuming a very moderate amount of alcohol.
00:10:40.420How did he know he was incapacitated? Well, because he was monitoring it on his
00:10:44.860whoop, which I guess is one of the bracelets. So was he really that bad off or did he convince
00:10:51.720himself that his health had been ruined because the bracelet told him so? And then it became a
00:10:57.280self-fulfilling prophecy. I mean, how many people wake up every day, particularly when it comes to
00:11:03.380sleep tracking, how many people wake up every day feeling relatively rested and refreshed
00:11:07.860and then feel suddenly worse when their sleep tracker informs them that, in fact, their sleep
00:11:13.700was suboptimal. Like if you wake up feeling fine, then what's the point of checking your sleep
00:11:21.060score? These people that check a sleep score every day, do you feel fine when you wake up?
00:11:26.640Why check it? Oh, I feel fine, but it feels like everything's fine. But should I check? Oh no,
00:11:32.180it's not fine. And then what do you do with that information? Okay. Anxiously obsessing over the
00:11:39.240quality of your sleep seems to be the number one best way to guarantee that you don't get
00:11:45.260quality sleep. And that even when you do get quality sleep, you still feel like you didn't.
00:11:53.480But if you want a popular podcast, then you're not supposed to point this out. Instead,
00:11:58.420you're supposed to do what Brian Johnson is doing. Again, he's a popular influencer.
00:12:04.080And here's one of his recent takes, quote, friends, stop drinking alcohol, not cut back,
00:12:08.640eliminate. Alcohol increases cortisol, disrupts REM sleep, accelerates epigenetic aging,
00:15:44.180And 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.
00:15:56.520Might 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.
00:16:04.320Now, 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
00:16:12.020I 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
00:16:25.620Now, 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
00:16:32.460The first problem is that people have no idea how to interpret data or statistics anymore.
00:16:38.380Second problem is much more serious than this, and we'll come back to that later.
00:16:42.020Consider this claim by Andrew Huberman, who also hosts one of the most popular podcasts on the planet.
00:16:47.360This is from a video with nearly 8 million views.
00:16:51.660And 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.
00:16:56.980So let's just pretend it is. But I can't help myself. So here it is. Watch.
00:17:02.980For 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,
00:17:10.180or basically a third of a drink in Russia,
00:17:14.400there's a four to 13% increase in risk of cancer.
00:17:39.240I want to just emphasize that this statistic that there is a four to 13%, depending on which study
00:17:45.060you look at, a four to 13% increase in the risk of cancer, in particular breast cancer, for every
00:17:50.84010 grams of alcohol consumed, that's 10 grams per day. So that's one drink per day. But I do want
00:17:58.320to emphasize that if that equates to seven drinks per week and all those seven drinks are being
00:18:05.740consumed on Friday and Saturday, it still averages to 10 grams per day.
00:18:12.600Okay, so he doubles back at the end there and clarifies that he's talking about one beer per
00:18:16.220day, not one beer. And all the same, his claim is probably very surprising for most people. The idea
00:18:24.040that if you drink just one beer per day, you might be increasing your cancer risk by 13%.
00:18:29.420Of course, a lot of people average much more alcohol consumption than that. And as a result,
00:18:35.400We 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.
00:18:43.560After all, 13% sounds like a lot, especially when you're talking about your odds of getting cancer.
00:18:49.080Now, 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.
00:18:56.220But the statistic is deliberately misleading in this case.
00:18:59.440the sleight of hand, which Andrew Huberman never explains, has to do with the difference between
00:19:05.040relative risk and absolute risk. And understand the distinction. Imagine that somebody tells you
00:19:10.840that because of your lifelong habits, you've increased your risk of getting lung cancer by
00:19:15.88050%. Now, to most people, that sounds horrifying, but it becomes a lot less horrifying when you
00:19:21.940realize that your baseline risk of getting lung cancer as a non-smoker was only 0.5%.
00:19:28.500So a 50% increase on 0.5%, when you do the math, means that your risk is now 0.75%.
00:19:38.240Okay, so your risk is not 50. It sounds like what we're saying is your risk is 50%.
00:19:44.360Actually, your risk is 0.75%. Pretty big difference. It's still overwhelmingly likely
00:19:51.160more than 99% likely, in fact, that you'll never get lung cancer in your entire life.
00:19:55.920And the same principle applies to what Huberman is saying. According to the studies I saw,
00:19:59.740a typical woman has around a 12% chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime.
00:20:04.960That's the baseline. Now, if Huberman is right and drinking one beer a day increases the risk
00:20:10.280of breast cancer by 13%, which is the very high end of his range, remember he said like 5% to 13%,
00:20:15.580which is a big range, that's like 5% or more than triple that, right? But let's take 30%,
00:20:22.500worst case scenario, then the beer drinking woman now has a 14% chance of getting breast cancer in1.00
00:20:29.820her lifetime. Okay. That's what we're talking about. Her relative risk, her relative risk has1.00
00:20:34.780increased by 13%, but her absolute risk of getting breast cancer has increased by a little over 1%.
00:20:41.3801%. Okay, because we're going from the baseline, it's actually 1%. So again, if you want to swear
00:20:48.200off alcohol to avoid that 1% increased risk, totally fine. I respect it. What I'm trying to
00:20:56.000do is introduce some reality into the hysteria here. And you could do with it whatever you wish.
00:21:03.100Now, virtually all the propaganda that you read about cancer rates uses the same tactic.
00:21:07.100This is from a website called Our Cancer Stories and see what you notice. Quote,
00:21:10.680So, sodium nitrate is a chemical salt that is commonly used in bacon, ham, and deli meats.
00:21:16.560The study showed that it was associated with a 32% increase in the risk of prostate cancer.
00:21:21.000Potassium nitrate, closely related to sodium nitrate, was found to cause 13% increased risk of overall cancer and 22% increased risk of breast cancer.
00:21:29.380Sorbates, especially potassium sorbate, are typically used in wine, baked goods, cheeses, and sauces to prevent molds, yeast, and some bacteria.
00:21:36.180they were found to increase overall cancer risk by 14 percent and breast cancer risk by 26 percent
00:21:41.060potassium metabuculfite uh which is also used in winemaking was linked with a 20 increase in
00:21:47.280breast cancer 11 higher risk of all cancers acetates are used in foods such as meat sauce
00:21:51.780bread and cheese they were associated with a 25 higher risk of breast cancer and 15 increase in
00:21:57.540cancer risk in general now what do you notice there aside from the fact they're listing like
00:22:02.600every food. Um, everything gives you cancer apparently, which, you know, might be sort of
00:22:08.520true, but the, but the, but the problem here is that in every single one of these examples,
00:22:13.520they're using rates of relative risk. Now it's very scary to be told that your relative risk
00:22:19.440of prostate cancer goes up by 32% when you eat bacon and deli meats. But that information by
00:22:25.700itself is irrelevant unless you know your baseline risk of prostate cancer. It's a bit like saying,
00:22:31.380if you go outside, then you raise your risk of skin cancer by 200%. Well, 200% compared to what?
00:22:38.200If I told you that it was 200% when compared to someone who stays inside all day, like Desmond
00:22:44.420and Lost, and that your absolute risk only increased by 1%, then you probably wouldn't
00:22:50.480care at all, I would think. I mean, you keep going outside like a normal person.
00:22:54.700Here's another way of looking at it. Imagine I said that if you get in your car and drive every
00:22:59.120day, you're increasing your risk of a car accident by 100,000%. Sounds terrifying if you're stupid1.00
00:23:06.640enough to take it seriously. It's also technically true with a massive caveat. Your risk of an1.00
00:23:12.680accident goes up by 100,000% when compared to someone who drives only 10 miles a year. So if
00:23:20.260you imagine that a person who drives every day will end up driving 10,000 to 15,000 miles a year
00:23:24.000on average, give or take, then his relative risk compared to someone who only drives 10 miles a
00:23:29.720year has increased by around 100,000%, if not considerably more than that. And if you compare
00:23:35.940a person who drives every day with someone who never gets in a car at all, then his relative
00:23:41.500risk has gone up by infinity percent. And yet still, the actual risk that you will get into
00:23:49.580So an accident, particularly a fatal accident, the absolute risk remains extremely low.
00:23:56.380It's not zero, but it's low. It's a risk that you take every time you drive anywhere without
00:24:01.740even thinking about it. When you get in your car and drive to Target, you are technically
00:24:06.740risking your life just to go to Target. Is it worth risking your life just to go to Target?
00:24:13.700well yeah it is i mean provided the absolute risk is low if it's a really low risk then yeah
00:24:22.340but it's not zero and it's worth the non-zero risk because the other option is to inconvenience
00:24:30.100yourself and forego doing normal things just for the sake of avoiding an extremely unlikely outcome
00:24:35.540but here's the thing you just you just don't think of driving to target that way
00:24:40.960in both cases we're all we're talking about risk and again it's technically true that running your
00:24:47.980errand to target is putting your life at risk that is undeniably true but you don't think of it that
00:24:54.200way and you don't think of most things that way because the more you think of things that way
00:24:59.160the more incapacitated you are you can't function as a person anymore and when it comes to driving
00:25:05.360you, for the most part, don't run the risk calculation at all.
00:25:11.060And that's because when it comes to driving, you have a healthy and sane perspective, probably.
00:25:17.600People are losing this perspective when it comes to many other aspects of life.
00:25:23.820If somebody ran up to you right as you were getting into your car and said,
00:25:27.180don't go to Target, you're risking your life.
00:25:30.680Well, they'd be saying something that's technically statistically true.
00:25:35.360But they're also being extremely misleading and emotionally manipulative.
00:25:41.140You 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.
00:25:52.940And then if it turns out that also that person happens to be selling, you know, a grocery delivery service to you.
00:25:59.700well not only do you know that they're exaggerating and they're misleading you but you know that
00:26:05.840they're doing it for the most cynical greedy reason possible
00:26:09.500and that's basically what's happening with a huge amount of the conversation around health
00:26:17.540on the internet right now it's impossible to overstate how widespread these kinds of
00:26:22.600misconceptions have become you see it everywhere this is a popular video on tiktok with thousands
00:26:27.980of outraged comments. Just for example, watch this. What's that? Oh, it was just announced
00:26:36.520that ham is considered a class one carcinogen and is on the same level as that of cigarettes.
00:26:44.800Tell me more! Yeah, this is crazy. They just announced that ham is a class one carcinogen
00:26:51.220and it is actually incredibly bad for you and it's equivalent realistically to having one
00:27:00.900cigarette if you have one to two slices of ham okay now like i said this kind of stuff is all
00:27:12.380over the place it's just and tiktok again just being a a bane on everyone's existence with this
00:27:19.640with this uh with this sort of thing as as if a 30 second tiktok video is anywhere near enough
00:27:27.660time to have any kind of actually informative uh conversation about that
00:27:34.740now it's true that processed meats including ham have been classified as a group one carcinogen by
00:27:43.120the world health organization which is maybe the least trustworthy organization on the planet as
00:27:46.840we all learned six years ago, but never mind that. And it's true that in this same category,
00:27:52.040they include asbestos, plutonium, and cigarettes. But it's completely false to suggest that
00:27:58.260therefore, ham is just as dangerous as cigarettes. The label of group one carcinogen simply means
00:28:04.860that there is conclusive evidence that the substance is capable, theoretically,
00:28:09.980of causing cancer in some people. It doesn't tell you the odds that the substance will cause cancer
00:28:15.640or the risk of the illness. Okay. And all these conversations are meaningless unless you get down
00:28:22.260to the actual odds, the absolute risk. What are we really talking about? Right? None of these
00:28:29.180conversations can, just like the example with Target. You're risking your life. Well, but to
00:28:34.660what degree? Because that means everything here. If there's a 50% chance I'm going to die the way
00:28:40.860to target, I'm not going. But are you saying it's like 0.1%? In which case, it doesn't mean
00:28:45.940anything. Effectively, the risk for all intents and purposes doesn't matter.
00:28:53.440Now, with the carcinogen thing, if researchers find that eating string cheese increases your
00:29:00.520odds of getting cancer by 0.001%, then they can label it a group one carcinogen, which
00:29:07.180podcasters can then use to convince you that eating string cheese is fundamentally the same
00:29:11.700as like eating asbestos, like it's cotton candy. And what's happened in this video, once again,
00:29:17.140is that the person has confused relative risk with absolute risk. And it's true that according
00:29:21.760to the World Health Organization, eating 50 grams of processed meat every day, the equivalent of
00:29:25.120two slices of ham, will increase your relative risk of colon cancer by roughly 18%. But again,
00:29:30.580that's the relative risk. In absolute terms, your risk of getting colon cancer would increase from
00:29:36.120around 5% to like 6%. That's what we're actually talking about. It's minuscule. You go from
00:29:45.500someone with a very low chance of getting colon cancer to someone who also has a very low chance
00:29:50.380of getting colon cancer. On the other hand, if you smoke every day, then your lifetime risk of
00:29:55.940getting lung cancer increases dramatically from less than 1% to roughly 18%. That's the absolute
00:30:01.880number. That is not the relative number. Your relative percentage goes up like 2,000%. In other
00:30:07.060words, the person in that video is comparing the relative risk of eating ham with the absolute
00:30:12.740risk of smoking cigarettes. So it is apples and oranges, or in this case, ham and cigarettes. It
00:30:18.440is incoherent. But if you're not paying attention, it might sound convincing enough. The truth is,
00:30:25.980for many years now, this kind of deception has been commonplace. About a decade ago,
00:30:29.760a scientist who worked on classifying different carcinogens according to appeared on BBC and
00:30:35.640explained that people are misunderstanding what this term means. Watch. But to say that it's
00:30:42.580comparable to diesel fumes, asbestos, tobacco smoke, that's pretty scary. No one has done that.
00:30:50.480That is a distortion. Those are specific carcinogens. The best characterization of this
00:30:58.300is that eating red meat increases the risk of cancer,
00:31:01.760but it's a distortion to classify red meat as a carcinogen.
00:31:05.900We don't know what the carcinogens are.
00:31:08.080What we're in a position to do is to provide the community
00:31:11.180with a clear basis for public health policy in relation to diet,
00:31:15.760and that doesn't involve labelling anything a carcinogen
00:31:53.280then it's much harder to sell expensive app subscriptions
00:31:55.720and diet plans. And therefore, many of the so-called diet apps only contribute to the
00:31:59.760confusion here. They prey on the fact that people are more neurotic than they've ever been when it
00:32:05.200comes to food and don't understand statistical. Most people just do not understand how statistics
00:32:11.440work at all. One of the great failures of the school system of many is we've got a whole,
00:32:18.460we have generations of people now who have no clue how to read statistical information
00:32:22.180and are manipulated all day long by everyone because of it.
00:32:28.220But here's a study from the UC San Diego released a few years ago.
00:32:32.460Quote, few researchers have studied how these apps affect women with eating disorders in university and college settings.
00:32:38.600This research investigates the unintended negative consequences of engaging with these tools.
00:32:43.220Participants reported that diet and fitness apps trigger and exacerbate symptoms by focusing heavily on quantification, promoting overuse, and providing certain types of feedback.
00:32:54.440Eight themes of negative consequence emerged.
00:32:56.820Fixation on numbers, rigid diet, obsession, app dependency, high sense of achievement, extreme negative emotions, motivation from negative messages, and excess competition.
00:33:06.860So in other words, diet and fitness apps cause more problems than they solved in many cases.
00:33:11.660And even when they're functioning as designed, these apps aren't making people happier or more motivated.
00:33:17.260And very often the apps don't even work. They're based on junk science.
00:33:21.320Somebody named Austin Lieberman just posted these two screenshots from the Oasis Health app, which supposedly will tell you if you're eating unhealthy food.
00:33:30.840And 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.
00:33:38.100not great especially for protein milk which you'd expect to be somewhat healthy and meanwhile you
00:33:44.180you pull up Jim Beam bourbon on the app and you're told that it contains no harmful substances at all
00:33:48.940and it receives a generous 85 out of 100 rating which the app translates as good
00:33:54.240so I guess the message is that instead of drinking protein milk you're better off with
00:33:58.200whiskey which you know sounds good to me frankly I'll take you up on that actually when you think
00:34:05.540about it for a second. The app might be correct. Maybe Oasis Health app is onto something here.
00:34:10.920After all, every single one of us is descended from people who drank alcohol literally all day,
00:34:17.020every day. So the idea that it's now poison akin to chugging gasoline straight from the pump and
00:34:22.800we can't even have a glass of the stuff without destroying our bodies is insane. I mean, if that
00:34:27.220were true, humanity would not exist right now. But here's the point. Even if all the podcasters
00:34:33.020were on the right track from a statistical point of view, which they're not really,
00:34:37.520then we should still ignore most of what they're saying. And that's because longevity,
00:34:43.400despite what godless neurotic podcasters and liberal women will tell you, is not the single0.82
00:34:49.820most important goal in life. No sane society would trade Alexander Hamilton, who died before
00:34:55.720his 50th birthday, for all the cat ladies and HR gargoyles in Brooklyn who think they're going to
00:35:01.040lived to 100 years old. If our founding fathers were afraid of the sun or even alcohol, it's
00:35:08.080likely we wouldn't have a country today. We certainly wouldn't have the same writings or
00:35:12.800insights from the founders. Certainly, if they were the kind of guys who would walk around with
00:35:19.320umbrellas because they're afraid of the sun, or the kind of guys with such weak institutions that
00:35:25.300one glass of wine would nearly put them in the hospital, then we wouldn't have a country. We
00:35:30.100just wouldn't. When Ben Franklin was being carried away from Independence Hall following
00:35:34.860the Constitutional Convention, a woman asked him what the men inside had created, a monarchy or
00:35:39.280something else. And Franklin, of course, famously replied, a republic if you can keep it. At the
00:35:43.560time, Franklin was suffering from gout, which historians suspect may have been related to his
00:35:46.940wine habit. It isn't something you hear about very often in school, but indeed, Franklin may
00:35:51.580have been slightly buzzed when he uttered that famous quote. And while we're at it, the Sons of
00:35:55.520Liberty met at their usual tavern before launching the Boston Tea Party. In fact, on a Friday night
00:36:00.540in September of 1787, the founders ran up a legendary bar tab after putting the finishing
00:36:05.060touches on the country's new constitution. They met at City Tavern, which was their usual watering
00:36:09.940hole just a few blocks from Independence Hall. And on this occasion, the founders were greeted
00:36:15.720by the Light Horse of Philadelphia, a cavalry corps that crossed the Delaware with Washington
00:37:03.780The musicians and waiters reportedly got a separate liquor bill
00:37:06.220accounting for 21 bottles of wine, which the soldiers paid for.
00:37:09.620Now, it's quite possible that by participating in this night of drinking,
00:37:13.800everybody involved raised his lifetime risk of cancer by 1%.
00:37:18.340It's even possible that some of these men may have affected their REM sleep cycles or caused a cortisol spike.
00:37:25.280Worst of all, some of these guys may not have been able to podcast for three, four days afterward.
00:37:31.620But all things considered, it was probably worth it.
00:37:34.500I 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.
00:37:42.900If they had done that, we'd be British subjects to this day.
00:37:45.660And 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.
00:38:02.340And you might say, well, they shouldn't have done that.
00:38:05.340Their Fitbits would have been yelling at them nonstop.
00:38:09.400But if that's your attitude, then you need to simply answer this question.
00:38:12.480the Royal Navy stopped the daily rum ration in 1970. Was the Royal Navy a more fearsome and
00:38:19.000effective fighting force before or after 1970? Before the rum ban, the Royal Navy contributed
00:38:24.720to the birth of the empire and the rise of the British naval supremacy. After 1970, they're
00:38:29.900lucky if they can find the keys to their aircraft carriers. They only have two of them, which they
00:38:34.620never use. I mean, the British empire no longer exists. The entire country has been emasculated.
00:38:39.380And 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.
00:38:55.540The point is that today you have men claiming they cannot function for a week after sipping a glass of wine with their Sunday dinner.
00:39:06.700Not 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.
00:39:17.580There is, again, an unmistakable fragility and neediness in all of this.
00:39:24.920And 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.
00:39:41.300And that's your ancestral story, no matter where your family comes from.
00:39:46.220We are descendants of men who slept for four hours on a bed of straw, woke up, drank wine, and stormed castles.
00:39:54.260You know, and we are losing that vitality completely. We're focusing on the wrong kind
00:40:01.160of longevity, the longevity of lifespan rather than legacy and bloodline. And it's not that
00:40:09.580we have to choose between the two necessarily, but the latter should be much more a priority
00:40:15.320than the former. You know, there aren't many examples of great men who achieved great things
00:40:21.760and lived perfectly healthy and optimized lifestyles.
00:40:25.120In fact, I can't think of any examples.
00:40:27.460I'm not saying there aren't any, but I can't.
00:40:30.940It seems that, you know, greatness usually requires a certain looseness,
00:40:37.280a certain lack of care for your physical health.
00:40:40.560Not recklessness, not like being suicidal and certainly not being a glutton,
00:40:45.840but just an openness to risk that terrifies the health optimizers with their little bracelets.
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00:41:18.780They look into the company. They ask thoughtful questions. They sound interested in the work
00:41:22.940itself. And the difference matters because when somebody actually wants to be there,
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00:42:06.120You know, you want people who understand the role and want the opportunity.0.50
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