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Interview With Matthew Lysiak

Episode 5 · 6 January 2025 · 2 hr 6 min

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Matthew Lysiak on Fiat Food: How Money, Policy and Incentives Shaped What We Eat

Why did the American diet change so much in the 1970s, and what does money have to do with it? Investigative journalist and author Matthew Lysiak joins Dr. John Oberg and Randy Lorensen to talk about the research behind his book Fiat Food. He came back in Episode 90.

Matthew starts with how he fell for journalism in high school, his years at the New York Daily News and what that pace cost him at home. He talks about the writing process and why he wrote the book.

Then he gets into the ideas behind Fiat Food: free speech and reading a study for yourself, how incentives shape what institutions say, and how he grew cynical of government and corporate power. He ties the shift in American food in the 1970s to the end of gold convertibility, and explains why he sees cheap, mass-produced food as an illusion of abundance.

In the last part, the three talk about taking control of your own health and your time, intermittent fasting, The Fourth Turning and why Matthew thinks reality reasserts itself in the end.

Fiat Food, Money and the American Diet

What you'll discover:

  • How Matthew went from journalism-obsessed teen to the New York Daily News
  • Why Matthew links the health crisis to the currency
  • What changed in American food in the 1970s
  • Why mass-produced food can be an illusion of abundance
  • Taking back control of your own health and time
  • Intermittent fasting and The Fourth Turning

This episode is for educational purposes only and isn't medical advice.

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome, Matthew Lysiak
  • [03:10] Obsessed with journalism
  • [06:14] Early career and life in the spotlight
  • [09:18] The New York Daily News, and the cost at home
  • [12:22] The writing process
  • [15:25] Why write the book
  • [18:27] Watching things change
  • [21:30] Free speech and discernment
  • [24:32] Talking about what a study really says
  • [27:37] Redactions, humans and incentives
  • [30:39] Open discourse in academia
  • [33:43] Secondhand smoke and harm to others
  • [36:48] Growing cynical of government and corporate power
  • [39:52] Health and the degradation of currency
  • [42:56] The shift of the 1970s
  • [45:57] Ellen White and a religious vision for the American diet
  • [49:01] The end of gold convertibility
  • [52:05] More dollars chasing the same goods
  • [55:07] A decades-long campaign on what to eat
  • [58:12] Plant-heavy diets and constant hunger
  • [1:01:16] A topic for a future guest
  • [1:04:18] Control over your own health
  • [1:07:22] Food as medicine
  • [1:10:24] Broken money and broken institutions
  • [1:13:29] The gold standard and an era of peace
  • [1:16:31] What happens under fiat
  • [1:19:34] Human behavior: why people go along
  • [1:22:39] Incentives and war
  • [1:25:42] Mass-produced food and the illusion of abundance
  • [1:28:47] What inflation originally meant
  • [1:31:50] Control over your time
  • [1:34:52] Seeing yourself as part of nature
  • [1:37:57] Carbs, clarity and autonomy
  • [1:40:59] Intermittent fasting
  • [1:47:07] The Fourth Turning
  • [1:50:09] Views on RFK Jr.
  • [1:53:12] The math of entitlements, and a rocket caught with chopsticks
  • [1:56:17] When reality reasserts itself
  • [1:59:19] Climate science and how it's used
  • [2:02:21] The topic they hoped to get to
  • [2:05:24] Go buy the book

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About Matthew Lysiak

Matthew Lysiak is an investigative journalist and author who reported for the New York Daily News. His book Fiat Food looks at how money, government policy and corporate incentives have shaped the American food supply.

Disclosure: Views expressed are the guest's own and are not investment advice.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect some spelling errors in names and terms.

[00:07] everyone I am Dr. John Oberg joining me as always my co-host Randy Lorensen Randy how are you doing great I gotta tell you I am so excited about today Matthew Le shock okay we just talked about this off the air L shock Le shock you nailed it Le shock I got it right all right we we practiced before and I still didn't have confidence in that one but Matthew Le shock here today to talk about a lot more than just his book out food Randy you you caught Matthew at speaking at a conference yeah at at the Bitcoin Commons here in here in Austin he was speaking an event talking about his book and I was fascinated it was the topic and frankly his enthusiasm and his passion for it was was very very obvious and very evident and I just thought this guy's a great guest we have to get him on well Matthew welcome we're so glad you have you have you here today thank you I'm I'm honored I appreciate you having me thank you very much this is fun you know I think in the room we have like Randy who is uh I mean a Bitcoin fanatic might not be a you know deep enough statement about his enthusiasm of Bitcoin I own Bitcoin a little bit uh B Because Randy told me to buy it when it was like I don't know $200 and I weighed until it was a lot more than that wish i' had listened and it sounds like reading your book you're probably a Bitcoin fanatic too I am I've been converted all right okay that's like I've been converted to Catholicism you guys have been converted to bitcoin so we'll see how that plays out today I'm exced excited about this I'm I'm a huge advocate of uh Bitcoin and where it's headed not like you two are but uh the link to food was a shocking one to me we'll get there in a few minutes I want to talk about your journalistic background can we start there andy yeah yeah absolutely journalism man like I had a horrible experience with a journalist when I was in high school where uh I was at a sports team we just had a big win and this guy had been beat up in high school as a journalist uh and he came to me and he asked me some questions about um the infighting between our sports team and other sports team on campus and my answer was I have a lot of great friends on that other sports team we support them you know rapidly um but sure there's times that people might get sideways but we're all great friends and the headline was um two sports teams still fighting at this high school and then I was made a pariah at my high school I was made to look really bad lost a lot of friends over the thing and I was really upset because he misconstrued I mean he literally took things out of context for his own agenda and that was my first experience with media and uh journalism has a a up and down history we talked a little about this before we got on so how how did you get into journalism and I found your journalism to be really well researched like the kind of Journalism I would hoped for when I was 17 not what I experienced I've always loved journalism and I think about this a lot because I I have four daughters and you watch People's Natural inclinations as they grow up and I think about my own past and I've always been into um not so much into school and when I was younger in my public school there was no journalism program there was yearbook and I ended up dropping out of high school and being obsessed with journalism I tried taking a part-time class at University in journalism but my professor had never worked in journalism he just had a degree in journalism I didn't feel like I could learn anything started my own newspaper in my town when I was 17 wow you started you there just walk over that you just most 17year olds that don't just start their own newspaper so what tells more about that I knew nobody would hire me to write a newspaper so I was going to start my own newspaper I started a newspaper called the danilan based in Danville Pennsylvania had some good stories I exposed an illegal sabatical my principal and superintendent had networked together and he had to resign um and exposed mistreatment at a local nursing home so it's was very proud of my paper but um I needed to go to New York City I was in a small town in Pennsylvania and I was that guy who went to New York City telling everybody I'm going to be a writer and uh just kind of scrapped my way from smaller newspapers like uh my first job was at the Brooklyn paper and then the New York Sun I did a third shift editorial gig and very serendipitously I ended up at the New York daily news which at the time was the fifth biggest paper in the country became the national reporter so my job was for years anytime a national story broke have the backpack in my car hit the next flight a lot of mass murders a lot of mass shootings and I was obsessed in terms of government corruption and crime those are my two for days in journal is my um you say those like like they're different I mean there's a lot of V I have a lot of friends in government I shouldn't say it that way I was just being cheeky it's well put though it's right on um I my my particular Fascination was motive like why people did the things that they did so on a mass shooting the paper might send a few reporters to cover funerals I was always there to cover the reason try to put pieces together on why the shooter committed to shooting and I've just been fascinated ever since um my career after after the New York daily news I I four kids and my wife was getting annoyed at the whole idea that I was gone half the year covering stories and uh I made the transition of bookwriting from there moved out of New York City into the country didn't know how that by the country you are I mean tell people where where that what that means well that first meant I moved back to my hometown of Danville Pennsylvania um my kids were thrilled about that going from Brooklyn to this small town and then my daughter Hildy who's now 18 she we wanted a quieter life and she gained a bit of notoriety because she got into journalism at a very very young age and it became a bit overwhelming in terms of suffocating with the small town with her being becoming like she became like a national figure for a while so then we moved from there to Patagonia Arizona which is really out in the middle of nowhere uh 18 miles from the Mexican border in the middle of the high desert Tiny Town and that's where we live now and hild's got like mean hil's got books on Amazon I saw she sells way more books than me that's amazing yeah yeah I I went and was doing a little homework and uh pulled that up and saw that you know you were the co-author right I mean it's funny because she was so young that she wasn't able to just have her name on the book but um it was fun working with my kid yeah it's not so fun that when your kid's the boss of the project though yeah it becomes a little awkward we always had to have these editor interventions that were always a hoot that's fun how I mean okay from from New York City Brooklyn to the middle of the desert in Arizona I mean what what what caused that I mean there's there's less Extreme Ways to get out of the city yes that's a good point I covered uh Gabby gord's the shooting that happened in Arizona by a young man named Jared wner and when I was there I got in a bit of trouble because I didn't understand the shield laws in Arizona were very different than in New York so in New York you could get onto somebody's property to get pictures in Arizona you can't do that so we actually did that and law enforcement was very very upset with us when we saw the paper the next day Texas you get shot for that I mean I don't know about the laws but it was it was an interesting time but we had to uh flee Tucson because the shield laws were different and they could legally detain my photographer and I and we kind of had to ditch our phones and go to Sedona because there was a snowstorm we could get out we couldn't get out of Arizona um but I remember being in Sedona and thinking I want to bring my kids here one day I want to bring my kids to see S Donut it's a fascinating place and when we did when we did come here for short ification while my youngest daughter was kind of blowing up in that time period um my wife was addicted she just move here and as a writer I I could now just it didn't matter where I lived and it sounded about right so we made the move to also the occlusion I mean my kids might not like it but selfishly for my wife and I it was Paradise to just not be hearing the traffic all the time it's great yeah I get it we we made a move my wife and I about a year ago now we it was our kids got out of school or went to college but we went out into the country too and it's yeah it's just better yeah and you know you make a tra you make trade-offs in life all the time as we were discussing previously and um I loved my career and I loved my job and my bosses were great to me I miss my job almost every day I think about the New York daily news and what it used to be in my role there but my marriage was not where I wanted it to be my wife was very unhappy with my absences she would say I I didn't sign up to be a single mom like what is this and I would always say well okay I'll talk to my editors but after this next story I'll tell them I can only do really big ones and it just never worked out that way so when we moved and I got my first book deal which was for with Simon and Schuster was called New Town it was about the shooting that happened in Sandy Hook by Adam lza um I remember just saying let's go I got this book Advance this is our opportunity I hope people keep buying my writing but if they don't I'll wait till and we'll be fine we'll be happy and fortunately I haven't had to wait tables yet but I don't regret that decision at all I um I get to spend birthdays with my kids you know I don't miss events and at the end of it right like family's everything yeah I don't want to take a left turn on your IND now I have questions about lifestyle rer yeah so I mean I think a lot of people uh romanticize being a writer right maybe a reporter maybe an author I just actually wrote a book and released it yesterday congrats yeah on uh some Consulting work we've been doing inside the church and um I think we've sold a copy I bought it um and Randy is working on a book and and I think there's a lot of maybe misconceptions about what it means to be writer in the lifestyle like being a journalist is hard being a writer is hard can you just like give us a little compare and contrast like what were the biggest surprises you know good and bad of being a journalist and then being a author um of books as a investigative crime reporter it was different phases for me and one of them was I was around people's most intense moments of their lives every day yeah so it's it became difficult for me when I would deal with a mom who just lost her son to a drunk driver and I'm spending my day with her and then I would come home to my family and it sounds like the Charlie Brown Won Won voice like I can't really engage emotionally to their complaints which seem so trivial suddenly when you see bigger life pictures but are valid nonetheless to like young girls growing up and my wife that was part of it that I think would surprise people is just I I noticed there's a similarity between EMT workers like when I talk to them they have that feeling that like the intensity it becomes addictive and then there's a narcissism that falls into it too I think personally where when you're around such important events all the time your perspective can get a little bit slam Ed on the bigger picture of life I um just C an adrenaline junkie for a long time and I couldn't it was hard to unplug from that now as a writer what I find I write every day and some of the time it's awful and I feel like an idiot I'm sitting at the computer and nothing's coming out but the process is what is important and it's yeah it does seem glamorous and I I I love my life but I'd be uh lying if I said that it was always fruitful most of my projects fail um I write all the time and they're not bought or you know my agent doesn't like it she writing books and articles and selling them is a little bit like gig work I'm at a point now where people buy everything I write okay so I feel very fortunate but for most of it it was my biggest skill I think was enduring failure and being told I sucked all trial and error for you like or did you have a mentor who kind of took you and said hey here's the way you're successful with this um I had really great people help me along the way but I when I first tried to get into New York City journalism because my lack of Education I was competing I had a chip on my shoulder I talk to my kids about this all the time I always feel like they're at a disadvantage because they're told how great they are too much I had a chip on my shoulder I had no degree I had no high school education so I'm competing against all these Columbia J school kids but but what I had was I worked at customer service jobs like McDonald's so I was used to dealing with other people and that was an advantage I had and I realized it early on was this Columbia J school kid who's had a very pampered life doesn't know how to interact with his mother who looks nothing like them and can't open the door and get that interview because they they can't relate yeah and I I try to use that to my advantage and I also I I was a scrapper I still consider myself a scrab I I try really hard I I don't think I'm the brightest guy on Earth but I work very very hard you're we'll get to your book in detail in a bit I will tell you that you're incredibly well researched book really I really appreciate as a guy with a doctorate I uh I did feel a little of that with the chip on the shoulder like against the guys with the doctor I was like hey man that's not me like that might be some and I think it was well called out like you were calling out that like just because someone has a doctor doesn't make them credible and everything and there's a lot of people that have that degree that try to hold it out to be more than than what they studied I think that's important so I agreed with that but I I did feel I I felt the trip a little too it's it's there and in particular I I take a lot of exception to a societal movement where too many people have outsourced their own decision- making to credentialism yeah and I think that we shouldn't just on the credential people they can have their opinions too but to really make like we're all smart you know people are smart and we should not Outsource our decision- making in especially in terms of health because we've been lied to a lot so interest I I I walked into medical clinics five years ago no degree and walked into medical clinics now with a degree and when I say hey Dr. John Oberg to see so and so was like immediately red rug doors open what it was like I have the same words the same information the same like like that has not change I mean I know more now because it's five years later but fundamentally it was going to be the same conversation and and so it's it was both like I'm glad I did it and that there's so much information coming at us I understand why it happens it just sucks that it happens so much information so much noise cutting through it it's credentialism I've never heard that before I'm G to write that one down I like that I like that a lot I mean it's it's it's becoming better now and I think you know we talked about the media landscape and the Open Access of information which really began with the internet obviously the pry press before that but the internet gave us all this kind of information that we didn't have access to before and podcasts like yours which are changing immediate landscape um so I I know it's like people people like oh Bro Science you know it's or or just anodal evidence but anodal evidence can be evidence too if it happens to you I mean I I am a big believer in trying things and trying different things and seeing how they work and how they react um but I do think that we should be be cynical of a lot of credential Authority especially today and you see a break today with that you see a lot of people venturing in different areas I think that's good well there's so much information about individualism and how how different we are like scientifically genetically and so I think that that you know in in your book um it touched on this but I wish it was a little stronger it's like you had someone go in there and we'll get into the you know what to eat how to eat but and he said this is what I eat and this works for me and I think that was such a powerful like I if I was you know I was listening to the book but I was reading it i' have like highlighted underlined it you know circled it like in the medical practice that I work in we tell people like what works for John may not work for this patient and there are times where you know we might have to move One Direction or another there's a broad direction towards eating healthy but we've been told as a society there's like this one thing we've been told that by a marketing engine that were not and we can trace it back to when there was kind of a a Schism in the world of psychology where a whole bunch of clinical psychologists went to work in marketing you know in the later part of the 20th century that really caused us to have people giving us information in ways they understood that we didn't and that's a little unfair if you think about it right and and and that anyway well I'm all over the place here but let's go back to the fourth pillar of Journalism and what the founding fathers did and my goal is to bring us back to a point we talk about how the founding fathers saw journalism and then I want to bring it back to like where should regulation play a role versus what all the policy makers are doing today which is I think broadly in need of help is that a gentle way of saying it I'm a a very optimistic person in terms of media right now I don't cry over my old employer death the New York daily news is it's barely a paper anymore there's a nostalgic part of me emotionally yeah that feel sadness for what was but no more than when I go to a childhood destination and see that it's destroyed because it's Evolution um these mainstream media Outlets don't deserve to be relevant anymore they've lost our trust and they deserve exactly what's happening to them so true or false the founding fathers I think saw media as a way of keeping the government in check it was the you know there's the executive branch judicial branch and then the the Congressional you know the legislative branch and but the media was designed to keep all those people honest and they were given protections to make sure they could do such and and those arguably have been commercialized in a way that now it's more about the profit of the media than it is about the keeping the society in check with with really good facts I would say it's become almost I I agree but I I would take it even a step further and I don't want to there's some mainstream media reporters who I'm still friends with this is my group and they're doing great work but they're restrained they're very restrained they're working with handcuffs on it's it's not just that they're looking for profits they're trying to be on the side of authority now it's almost the exact reverse so you have a lot of the mainstream media alets which were holding authority to account and they're now working on behest of authority I got to tell you nothing it makes me angrier than these reporters out there talking about the need for censorship you you're a reporter like that's our livelihood disagree with me all you want and I'm I look I used to be a mainstream reporter I was I was um at the fifth biggest paper in the country I was on MSNBC Fox News CNN Good Morning America I did all the shows I was always talking and um now I'm kind of like a heretic because I'm viewed by my former colleagues who I respect a great deal um but you could I can feel it right it's like what happened to me I went off the deep end and I I look at it a little bit different I maybe I did go off the deep end a little bit but it's because the plank I was walking on had been corrupted but they but you agree that I mean journalists need accountability to what they're saying like they shouldn't be able to um accountability only by the people who as I'm a very free speech absolutist so I think they should have the right to report wrong things so I'm going to say something that 90% of your audience is going to disagree with maybe more um Alex Jones who I can tell you his followers have gone after me for my book on new town but it's ridiculous that he was um bankrupted because he said something that wasn't true he said that the shooting in Sandy Hook never happened and was a government you know plot and he was sued for that well um I I think what he said was disgusting but the fact that they were able to bankrupt him is sad for America and sad for free speech and I I push back on any sort of notion on the limiting of information and the ability to discern it because you really can't control somebody's you can't control speech without controlling human minds and My Philosophy we spoke a little bit about it it's just that that's what humans are like you separate us from our ability to have thoughts that are independent and make choices uh what what does that make us or like animal s I'm huge on like personal accountability and personal responsibility and autonomy so I and boy this free speech thing I think I I'm close to where you are but and I haven't thought through this like you have so let me just arm rust with second here I I think people need to be accountable to what they're saying and if they're giving this information I think there needs to be accountability and and what that looks like is like um maybe like hey like I'm labeling this as a fact I'm labeling this as an opinion I'm labeling this as a heuristic I'm labeling but that way people can at least know where people are getting their information so that I can't I can't lay something down as a fact that I know is not I think there should be accountability for that Randy disagrees I can tell yeah I Who's the arbitr I mean who who says what is a fact I mean we just went through 2020 and all of these people were deplatformed lost their right to free speech president United States was kicked off Twitter for God's sakes and all of and now all of the crap that they said you're wrong this is a fact this is science they're backtracking on I mean the US Congress just came out and reported and and almost I mean fouchy has has I don't want to get too controversial with fouchi and all that because that's not the purpose I want to get into food here but almost everything that fouchi stated is fact he has now backtracked yeah I think I think that again as a scientist it's like here's what we know today and and I think any great scient even a good scientist would say like what we know today is going change tomorrow and so in a perfect world that's never going to exist I would just want people to know what we think we know and then let people have the information to discern themselves what they want to do yeah I think that's free speech because the other way somebody has to decide what is right and what is wrong you yeah we have people though that this is maybe part of the authority problem and that Authority problem is that we don't know who the authorities are like here's here I'll give you a real example I was going through this with a drug recently where someone was making claim things about what a drug could and couldn't do and my chief medical officer and I both went to all the fun foundational research we looked at all the outcomes and they were all correlated outcomes not causal outcomes and that wasn't called out in the science and so we went to our patients and said hey look here's the deal that sci they're making these claims and those aren't true here's the underlying research here's what actually happened and here's the anecdotal things that people are saying and so you can believe the correlation or you can you know whatever decision you want to make with us but we're we're the clinicians we're going to tell you what science is actually saying at the study level and then we'll make a decision along with you and I think that's the type of conversation I would hope is happening for people more broadly it's like let's let's talk about what the study really said and peer reviewers today aren't holding researchers to that level of they're just not like our peer reviews are weak today compared to what they were decades past John something in an area you've helped me you've you've told me Randy there is the world the way you want it to be and then there's the way it is and I would might Mir up to that I think that's I just the question is is there is there a policy that could do that without limiting free speech like could could we put policies in place that would put protections around the kind of mental manipulation that information is having on us today and still is is or do we just have to deal with it as it is and have totally free speech if you could explain to me a way where we can limit people's speech about limiting their thoughts I'd love to hear it I just I don't know how we get there I don't know if you limit it as much as you just flag it for what it is by who and for what reason you get into like the FTC or the FDA then you have all kinds of problems there too right like everybody I mean they're wrong about everything they lie constantly and as you said you said something I I think it's really profound and very true is that status you know the conventional wisdom today will change in 50 years and I just any inovation I of of people's ability to express thoughts and feelings I think comes to the root of the wording Evolution we're going to slow that down if we don't if we limit people's thoughts we're going to slow down the evolution slow down the the improvements especially the bad thoughts I mean I can tell you it's somebody who you know wrote a book on new town that the government lied about a lot of it that is true like the kids died they were shot by Adam Lanza but the government information I was able to access and when they did that what it fueled a lot of conspiracy theorists who could point to areas where the government repressed information and then that lack of sunlight Drew all kinds of wacky conspiracies that were just not true was any of that information I don't know the story well at all what would be one example of a of a detail that was concealed uh the Connecticut state police report came out and said that there was no evidence there was there nobody knew they acted like it was a weather event at the shooting um the FBI was at Adam's house years earlier and Adam was on got it social media platforms where he was expressing The View that children should die like he was on Radars they weren't responsible but it was they they withheld that information from the public and when that became known I mean this is now known yeah it fueled a lot of conspiracy theories who said no it actually never happened the government actually did this it was a false flag mission which is what Alex Jones espoused that's false it did happen I was at the funerals of these children yeah is there is there ever something that the government should withhold terms of information I we can get into National Security debates I can't it's interesting because in theory people can make really compelling Arguments for National Security but so maybe maybe but when you look at what they do withhold it's almost always to cover their own asses yeah it's such a slippery slope because just look at how much stuff they redact now in any report yeah and again we come down to humans and their incentives and a lot of this you cover in the book is talking about people doing things for their incentives right but if you give somebody that power even if you get the most noble person in the world in that office their successor isn't going to be the most noble person in the world and somebody's going to abuse that power yeah if you give it to him tough sticky Wicked just it's a and I'm an adult yeah like why why are you withholding information from me I'm going to I'm an adult like what what is this um you're going to tell me what to eat and drink and how to I I I have very libertarian leanings if you have but especially with free speech because it goes to the human mind and what I think it's the first amendment it's not the second it's literally the First Amendment me it's a core value of this country I think where I'm a little slightly different is I think that people need to be accountable to what they say so they can't just like like character assassination should be out of bounds right like I think there's just there are things that um that don't help discourse that don't help the conversation and when I say I disagree with your actions or I disagree with this policy I'm I'm all for that when I say you're an aole or you're this or you're you are this you are that and I'm characterizing things without any underpinning evidence or com like like give me the evidence that you don't like about how I act but I do think that like I think limiting character assassination like that shouldn't be free speech I shouldn't be free to give you my characterization of something without under like give me the underlying things you don't like but again who is going to make that decision yeah I don't know I I haven't thought that far through this isn't my fights with you know chronic disease but um I mean you're you're you're putting a lot of f in some random bureaucrat also think that the person who would make those allegations never biased ever if I were to come out here and for instance and say a bunch of racist garbage um your listeners would not buy my book and I would probably not get on a lot of other media circuits and that that to me is called accountability and I think that's good I think that would be a positive reaction to racist file comments and I think you see it every day I'm all for cancel culture I think it's the free market as long as a free market and people are making those decisions to cancel individuals based on thoughts they disagree with that's is cancel culture about silencing people though I mean isn't that shutting discourse down when individuals make the decision to cancel another individual and say I'm blocking you because you said something disgusting I may or may not agree with the disgusting comment but I think people have the right and I agree with they right to limit the people they're exposed to because you do get a lot of garbage yeah especially on social media but that flows out Stanford had this problem where they brought a judge in that people didn't like and they tried to cancel the judge and the dean of the law school came out with a really eloquent like 10 or 13 page paper that said like Hey we're here to learn about discourse like you may disagree but that doesn't mean we can then shut them off of a academic institution where ideas are the point of what we do here they were probably talking about firing him right no no he was a guest speaker oh really yeah and they wanted to like not have him come as a guest speaker and they were trying to cancel him in that way is my recollection someone has a fact be on that one several instances of this college campus I love how the argument happens though like that's the that's where it should be played out and I I think the protesters should be able to protest that person coming and then the dean can defend it what I don't want is the government coming in and having a panel that says you're allowed to do this and you're allowed to do that this is hate speech this is not hate speech that's where you get into really dicey areas that I think limit thought and then people are afraid to express honest opinions and that's another whole dangerous um side effect consequence I think I think there's another line and I don't know what it is because this isn't my area but I think there's a line with character assassination and hate speech that probably is a place we could draw a very bright line that isn't like governmental overreach but I don't again not my area of expertise I would be let's go let's go back to your original premise of the founding fathers yeah Franklin had there's few people that have had their character assassinated more than him yeah the pens and different and it's been a while since I've read on this but I'm pretty wasen family he his fair share of it too by the way under pen name yes he had multiple pen names that he wrote in his own newspaper making arguments and the Penn family ran a different newspaper and they went back and forth and he came out of it okay like he still came out of it as an American hero and even with George Washington when Washington took New York I forget what the newspaper is and maybe Matthew you know that remember know the story but there was a newspaper there that the British were using propaganda and they had been telling lie after lie after lie and when Washington confronted them the guy thought he was in trouble and Washington's like no we're going to protect the Press like he basically forgave him and was like that realize this is even though they had lied about Franklin they lied about Washington they went out the first amendment was literally to still protect the freedom of speech and the Press was a big part of that like any great scientist I'm gonna say maybe we just need more thought into this and you let me ask you this that if we could draw a bright line that was reasonable for all sides you'd be open to that you just don't believe the government can do that I don't think you have any right to tell me how to what to say I think you have a right to ignore me or call me names or whatever you want to say I just don't think another man or woman has the right to tell other people what to think I I don't not to think for sure I think it's it's the place where I draw the line is character assassination like that's the part where I think you know real damage is done with very little consequence and then you what it's like smoking right it's like you can't tell me to smoke or not this SM actually yes I can secondhand smoke hurts me and so once you do something that infringes on my autonomy I think there's a line that can be drawn and when someone gets into a national media platform and does something that is not factually true that is character assassination that has a material some cases Financial impact on my family my livelihood then what you're creating is secondhand smoke and so I I I don't again this is not an area I've thought of deeply and so I'm not an expert in this space there's people much smarter than me but my argument would be secondhand smoke we got a that let's how about this we uh I think we gave the listeners enough to chew on here yeah further conversation some other time let's let them let's let them make their own decision they know Matthew and I are right you're wrong but that's okay um so that might be true that look I think I'm a Libertarian at heart too I think that might be true but I I'm also I think um I'm an optimist like you are and so I wish there maybe I'm wishing for that future and just not my fight today so let's let's move let's let's move this to let's move this to to why we're really here um crime reporter I remember when I first heard you talking and you were talking about being a crime reporter and all of a sudden you're writing about food and I I just thought that was such a weird transition now after reading the book it was like this aha moment I'm like oh this this really is a crime on Humanity with food like it made you were the perfect person what I thought was odd was actually you were the perfect person to write this book so thank you for that but let's take us to the book and how you got there and like how' you get into this uh thank you that's very kind I appreciate it when I was uh 15 and 16 I had osteogenic saroma as a form of cancer and I was a sick little I was pretty sick and I um grew up in the 90s when we had the dietary food pyramid which said that we should have 8 to1 servings of grains a day and this was posted on every sandwich shop every Pizza plate it was a free advertisement my I had great parents like smart parents and why would they lie about this you know they just trusted the the science and at the same time lard was replaced by the seed oils that Revolution was basically completed in the early 90s sugar was looked at it's very acceptable so I was eating a lot of garbage and when I was sick I remember thinking I remember asking my doctors it's like what did I do you know what did I why why did I get this they're like we don't know you know it's not your fault though probably genetic I remember them telling me but I I intuitively felt like I had done something wrong I knew I was like my eating was was horrible I didn't eat a moderate amount of these things I atat a lot of garbage so you knew that at the time yeah okay I because when you eat three bowls of Cinnamon Toast Crunch for breakfast even though it says heart healthy on the box your body's telling you something's Goofy right the skim milk something was wrong um so Health has always been on my mind because I think I mean part of it is I'm in remission for cancer and I don't I don't want cancer again and when I became an investigative reporter which is really just my passion in life is is digging into information and trying to expose these stories um I've I grew very cynical of government power and corporate power um in I've interviewed former presidents and senators and like local government and there's a lot of corruption and that was kind of my life it's like trying to expose this corruption covid changed me though because it was a a turn where it was transparently a lot of it was lies I mean Co was real and I I I I I I obv it's like a real virus but you know when they told us it didn't come from the lab for instance and Wuhan at first that was something that they said was a crazy conspiracy it was transparently coming from the Wuhan lab that dealt with covid right the Corona virus lab um so that kind of set me down a rabbit hole where I was introduced to an author named saaden moose he wrote a book called the Bitcoin standard I I I like economics as a peripheral but I'm not an expert and he had a second book called the Fiat standard and in that he has a chapter with a brief mention about this how our food system has been corrupted and I had a lot of respect for safine as a economist I I regard him as one of the top economic Minds in the world right now um but this was nutty uh safine is not a nutritionist he's not an investigative reporter so it's like what the hell is this so I began factchecking it like deep diving into this chapter kind of obsessively and what I learned was that he had understated the case and I reached out to him and I I published books with every publishing house I have a really great agent I knew they weren't going to touch this topic um but at this point is that true to the I don't know how you published this book who was self-published I reached out to safine and I I proposed that he start his own Publishing House got it oh it was mentioned in the book is right at the beginning yeah yeah um and he he graciously agreed um and I actually did not think there would be an audience for this book I thought it'd be like a niche book with safes people and um the reaction has been really overwhelming is is being translated now into eight languages and uh I I could not be more proud of it I've written a lot in my life this is the book I'm most proud of food that's that's the kind of the the the short version of how I got into this topic because again my health I think about my health all the time and then I was able to use my skill set as an investigative reporter to dive into what happened like the corruption on how our food actually did get degraded and it you know something that kind of pisses me off a lot right now is we're having this moment where we're talking about health a lot we're talking about you know the Maha movement and we have uh Casey and and Casey means on on Tucker and they're doing great work and and Kennedy whose book is books are fascinating to me and he also is doing great work but they're missing like what the evidence shows is that the core of our health issues which is oddly enough and I know this sounds like a really wacky rabbit hole but it's the degradation of our currency like that's that's the real root cause when you break it down and you really drill down and it took a little bit for me to really grasp this because it seemed so far out there but the more evidence I dug up the more apparent it became and uh I wrote this book out it's more of more of like a passion project that I wanted my kids to read one day we can talk about what I want to talk about root cause versus Catalyst versus correlation here in a minute but I think think the thing that struck me in reading the book I'm I'm pretty um optimistic I give I I generally try to give like people the benefit of the doubt best intent and so I hoped opening the book that I was going to find that science had moved forward okay we thought this in one decade decades later we found more information and I think the disheartening part of reading the book was not the writing but you really blew the you blew the cover off that one for me like you can't be intellectually honest and say that we just learned more in science like that that like You can disagree with the your view on the motives of the people involved in the book like you could have a debate about that what you can't debate is that this wasn't just science moving forward I think that the facts you uncovered pretty Clearly say this wasn't science moving forward it's sad I mean there's it's it's there's a there's a Darkness to writing this book that I felt yeah uh in terms of also like Liberation you know you're were talking about what you doing in treating type two diabetes and this should be what you're doing should be embracing na should be braced all over the world yeah but there's a reason it's not being and you know what that reason is yeah I mean there's yeah we talk about policy level versus Community level versus individual level and one of our big one of the big parts of the research was how do you help the individual do something in a policy environment that's not supportive of that like we were very clear about Fiat is because I don't know that everybody everybody knows this hears this term but I don't know that everybody knows what it means Fiat means by decree and in financial terms Fiat dollars mean Dollar by government decree so um most of civilization we've had hard currencies our dollar was literally just a note that promises a tangible asset um whether you have it or not yes usually gold yeah and your dollar was a promiser note for a certain amount of gold so for most of the uh the 19th or 20th century it was uh $35 redeemed for one ounce of gold and uh you know we went to Fiat on August 15th 1971 and we transitioned from our dollar being notes for gold to just government dollars by government decree and the consequences of that I think cannot be can impossible to overstate how dramatic of a shift that was in America not just in food but it's interesting like looking into Aviation and just how in uh the 1970s there were people who would fly from New York to London for a day trip and come back that night have dinner like air air times were quicker like there's been a lot of degradation all throughout Society I would argue no more consequential than in the American diet and the metabolic dysfunction that's followed as a result I guess one step further I've heard arguments that well but gold I mean you can make more gold you just go mine and find more gold but that's not the same as printing money of course not there's effort involved in labor so there's a restraint um on gold that you it's it's it's it's um I don't I used to be a gold bug I've shifted into Bitcoin because when gold goes up the world's really big and it's just it it gold goes up in price it incentivizes people to just dig more gold so the supply can keep growing and that's where I didn't understand Bitcoin and I clearly don't understand it as well as you two do but the thing that really was it's an arbitrary line at 21 million Bitcoin that will ever be made it's arbitrary but it's hard and it's a much harder limit than the limit of gold or platinum or precious metals or whatever you're going to use is the hard currency but if you look at it that way there's an argument made that gold is not truly hard currency that's you were trying to tell me earlier today right it no it it's hard it's not the hardest bitco fa Bitcoin is the heartest right so would that would that be true of any cryptocurrency that has an arbitrary limit if I said I'm going to have n number of coins couldn't couldn't any I think I think let's shelf that for a future podcast okay um while we got Matthew here I think we get back to this because there's a you and I can have a long debate on this um fair enough so but let's Matthew's Not Gonna Take debate either huh all right well all right we're right again you're wrong that's no we go back we'll go back to that this is this is eily similar to my marriage like this happens a lot to me so let's let's get back in let's get back let's go on because we could go with Fiat I look I think there's I think it shows up everywhere right I think it shows up in science I think it's one of the most blaring things I think it's showing up in medicine which I'm sure you two could nerd out on for a long time but let's get let's get back to food okay so how did this start right because it wasn't always his way I mean take there's there's a lot of things that come together in the book so take us through some of those so pre-1 1970 you had a lot of Wheels in Motion in terms of the food supply already one of them was the Seventh Day Adventist Church who was heavily influential in nutrition uh started by somebody named Ellen White a young woman who was a descendant of the millerite movement she was walking home from school one day and gets hit in the head with a rock how big was this rock cuz I read this and I'm like I mean what it's a according to her it's a pretty big rock sent her into a coma okay and she wakes up from this coma and she's having visions from God and God is saying Ellen we need the end times are coming soon we need to purify body and soul for the next place whatever it's going and we need to do that by removing carnal desires which are actually the root of all disease she contends and carnal desires are caused by Meat specifically red meat got to get this out of the diet she goes on a crusade to try to get people to change their habits to purify their souls and she hires somebody named John Harvey Kellogg who is tasked with essentially finding an anti-oral breakfast food that isn't meat because at the time everybody's eating meat for breakfast lunch and dinner he invents Kellogg's Flakes he gets seceded by somebody named uh Lanna Cooper who found the American dietetic Association which becomes the government arm of nutrition at the same time corporations are also at work trying to introduce foods to the public that aren't really Foods this is something that I find be kind of my research was really fascinating was that pre you know the early 1900s Americans just really wanted to eat food and there was this movement starting I think more more big big Catalyst was only margin it was called and there were riots in New York for a period of time where people were finding this nonf food substitute for butter and there were court cases and legislation there's a Sor of History eventually people accepted margarine krisco was another one where people were like this isn't food why would we eat this uh Proctor and Gamble made Chrisco because the industrial revolution had ended and they had all this cotton seed waste and they're like hey let's just try to get people to eat this you know and it worked and they they advertised it as like a healthy really sophisticated marketing campaign was genius actually marketing that's a cleaner version than lard and there was actually a marketing campaign to demonize lard too which I didn't go into much in my book corporations also realized that you make more money on Plants than meat but all these factors are in play in 1970 Americans are still eating on average 155 pounds of red meat a year they're eating it for breakfast lunch and dinner what happens in 1970 when we decoupled from gold was the incentive structure changed and then America kind of had to get involved in the manipulation of the food supply not because they wanted people to get sick just because they wanted to stay in power and they didn't want people to get upset and um the when Nixon uh to give everybody a little bit of grounding on where we in 1970 the Vietnam war is happening and we were committing a bit of a fraud in America while Americans were no longer to redeem their promisory notes as previously discussed for gold at $35 an ounce foreign Banks still could so what Nixon realized when he came into office was all would have taken was a few banks at the same time from other countries coming to redeem their notes at once and we would be exposed as a fraud because our dollars were if I remember right in the book like four to one is that right is that's about approximately right yeah we had issued four to one more promisory noes in Gold we had in our treasury this was like very was during 1970 or before 1970 this the buildup was before 1970 with the Great Society in the Vietnam War um but it came to a head in 1971 because all would have taken was like an an international incident of some kind where PE where countries wanted to redeem their gold to expose it so when Nick it's not Nixon's sole fault to go off the gold Center he kind of was forced to he had he had very little Choice especially if he wanted to continue the Vietnam War which was costly um but he hired some guy named oh man what is his name the department of agric Earl buts and governments are very keen on understanding that people will deal with corruption they'll still vote you in office and they'll deal with war they'll still vote you in office when food prices go too high that leads a directly to political and they were very very concerned about not having enough food for the public once they decoupled because the prices of food was going to rise and there's no way to get somebody out of office as Camala and Joe Biden could attest to than the rising food prices so you see this shift in 1971 after nixing gives what's known as the Nixon shock this shift where Earl buts begins consolidate consolidating the food supply his his head of Department of Agriculture he had a a slogan which was go big or go home and through Fiat dollars they began printing huge amounts of subsidy dollars for corn soy and sugar in a more roundabout way and does the the government measures the money supply at this point yeah maybe take us I don't think every listener understands like we talk about like in the news M1 M2 M3 money supply and I think those are confusing for lots of people can you explain that just real quickly what that looks like over time I mean it's interesting because it it's it it's varied accounts and M1 M2 and M3 I don't understand these these I'm not an economist I don't understand them completely it's different measurements of the money SP some in different formulas right yeah some include but a lot of it has when I try to dig into understanding the M1 M2 M3 it it's there's a lot of debate on what they they even are amongst the people who come up with them but they all show growth right I mean that's and that's the thing that that is maybe more important yeah you're printing significantly more dollars chasing the same amount of goods but here's what your audience really should understand if you're uh eating meat or eggs or animal-based products that our ancestors have had for thousands of years these Foods you can't just print like dollars so you you can up the money supply and a lot of plant-based products you can basically print like Fiat but Stakes if you talk to a Rancher especially a good stake very time intensive and there was a real fear into Nicks Administration moving forward that what was going to happen was people were going to Riot like they did in Shri Lanka in 2022 when the food the price of food and milk and eggs went up too high and they stormed a palace and the leaders had to flee um according to American University there are 12,500 riots in Europe alone that dealt with food and energy in 2022 as well so leaders have long understood this but if you're just so so you but they did this by subsidizing those grain production and because you could do it in a more in a more like uh compact way on farms and it's harder to do that for meat and eggs and ptry because it takes more resources right per calorie I guess is the argument it's so it's very much more resource intend to do like you can print Doritos like you can print Fiat dollars so right now I have four daughters and I could keep them fed by giving them four boxes of cereal and by that criteria food's actually really cheap we're all happy but for the nutrients needed to thrive as humans food's becoming cost prohibitive yeah and right now we're in a situation where red meat's increasingly becoming a food of the class and you see the results all around on this shift like pre1 197 a lot of these incentives existed but it was only once Fiat came into being that the table shifted all the incentives in such a way where subsidies flowing to corn sugar soy and then this nutrition science gets funded to perverse like pre-1970 the government would talk about Nutrition a little bit but basically nobody needed to buy my book or to listen to these podcasts on nutrition because people knew what to eat the same way a a lion knows what to eat nobody was like what do I look at a picture of a beach in California in 1960 and you see like no obesity it's shocking isn't it or the Star Wars line pictures it's like find a find a obese kid it's difficult to do and it wasn't that the kids weren't you know the kids were still eating not 100% meat but the diet and the incentives weren't shifted in such a way like where today you know if if you want to eat healthy and people really understood how inflation and the amount of bills despite all the technological advances in livestock raising you still can't get a decent riy for under 24 bucks it's really difficult and and ground beef is still okay but that's becoming cost prohibitive and you see this what is essentially a 55y Year gaslighting campaign to convince us to eat and to eat and and now like if you go to New York City now you see like young girls virtue signaling like while they're taking their skin off of of lean chicken like eating like 14th century peasants I mean it's become unreal and I really dove into how quickly this transformation happened I mean essentially like your great great grandmother was right like the foods that she ate she ate a lot of organ Meats uh a lot of meat plants sometimes but every meal relied on me it was based on me and um you can walk to any Walmart right now and look in line and see the devastation in terms of human life you know you look at the biology as I understand it and again not my area of expertise but read stories about how when when the human became really smart and the Brain really started growing it's when we figured out how to eat protein in bulk and I think Bor run might have been the book where I read it and it talked about how we finally learned how to hunt and and bring down meat on a regular basis and that was a real a real inflection point for the growth of the human and so uh interesting to see us kind of go the direction and it's not it's not just find there to be like a conspiracy where people gathered and nobody in my research I could would really wanted to make people sick that wasn't the motivation uh corporations were just motivated to make money they're obligated to their shareholder so if you go to I live 18 miles from Mexican border you go to Mexico they put sugar in their Coke we put corn in ours why not because Corn's worse for us to eat than sugar uh by most by a lot of metrics the corn syrup the high fructose not because it's uh they're try to make it thicker it's because it's cheaper for them and you find all these real ingredients being substituted for Less healthy ingredients because if Financial incentives have shifted a lot of times by government decree and in Europe this is different right yeah I don't know all the technical differences but well there's a lot of toxins they they're they're more adverse to poisoning their children than we are so they've outlawed a lot of the toxins while here don't put a sharp point on that though it's just it's it's true like the gloss fate and the flow is different there there's less chemicals but my wife can eat flour in Italy without having any gluten problems whatsoever but can't eat that here even in part of Western Europe she has problems with a little bit but in Italy for whatever reason seems to be not a problem and it's not a coincidence it's it's because of what we're doing to our food supply here and we give the we have the illusion of abundance that's that's the that's the key it's like you go into a supermarket and the person where making minimum wage you can buy all the food they could eat but what we've turned into is like chimpanzees who are our closest living relatives where they eat 95% plants but they're spending all day eating because they're always hungry and their bellies are big and their brains are small and that's what modern day man's devolving into we're constantly hungry where obesity used to be a sign of affluence and now it's a sign of depravity of our of nutrition because we're we're always hungry we're always trying to eat by the way have you seen have you seen I think it's on Netflix chimp Empire is I I have seen a little bit of it and my wife got so disturbed by it that she made us turn it off okay help me out never heard of it these scientists go out and they've been living with these chimps for I'm probably screwing this up you got fact check me here about 20 or 30 years and they've been out there and they recently made a documentary and and Matthew's right they're eating they're up in these fruit trees eating and eating and eating but what they really want to eat are monkeys they just don't have access to a lot of meat but that's probably what why your wife didn't like it is they go out and they hunt monkeys and they're eating monkeys every chance they get like that's that's their goal they're just eat they're eating the fruit because they don't have monkeys we all want to be eating monkeys yes there we go stuck eating fruit half the time I I don't think fruit's always bad I it's just it's it's unnatural to be eating fruit to be eating raspberries in Arizona all year round I mean it's it's not how we're we're designed yeah yeah I think you know I grew up in Minnesota and I grew up on a farm and I just I go to the grocery store now and I see all these foods that a lot of them I didn't know they existed a lot of them aren't Foods well but no I'm talking even like a V even kale nobody you didn't grow kale in Minnesota I don't know I think he grows in warmer climates or whatever but I didn't know kale was a thing I didn't know bok choy was a thing there were just a lot of things that you didn't get right and you didn't get oranges even I don't think unless it was the right season where now you see oranges did you ever see pictures of like what fruits and vegetables looked like 150 years ago oh yeah that's that's that's a bit shocky I I I I don't know what you're talking about Goin Foods essentially they're smaller I assume or they're but they yeah like corn was like and deformed they look deformed relativ today not nearly as uniform the cool news about this is that we actually have a seed like repository where we could go back to all of that where it's not genetically modified if we chose to like we've been we've been storing seeds for a very long time so if we ever decided that we were on the wrong path we actually could go back if we wanted to hit the reset button well there SE I don't think we will my wife has recently become a Master Gardener um out in Bastrop and so there is something I've heard that I don't know enough I know enough to be dangerous but they've got a seed bank there that they will share with people if people want seeds people can go I think this Topic's fascinating I'd love to hear I don't know a lot about it either I just know there's like seed Wars and there's the government keep seeds and some seeds are illegal and it's interesting I I don't go into that in my book at all but oh yeah I mean the have guest on that I'll love to hear about yeah we we need to talk to someone about the intellectual property rights and how how intellectual property law has been used um to kind of take out the people that want to keep growing non-GMO products and uh like food Inc was a documentary that I watched how that was and and you know I'm I'm a capitalist so I I I but I think capitalist unchecked can be pretty dangerous so I think when you when you take decisions out of people's hands that's a tough thing right so you have a farmer who wants to keep their own seed but they're forced to use seed that's been genetically modified because it blew over their fence like that's how people are using intellectual property law at least several years ago if that's true which again not an expert here that would really be disheartening well Okay so we've got the 7-Day adventage Church we've got the government that is trying to keep inflation down we've got corporations trying to make money I think I know when I talk to people about this stuff A lot of times they're just they're like oh come on Randy like this is too too conspiracy theory my government doesn't lie to me like these people yeah they're not they lie over here they do this but they really have our best interest at heart I mean take people through that more like what because what are people what what are these people doing like there's really this three-headed Alliance here right all moving in the same direction yeah let me spell it out for you in a really interesting period of time in January 2023 in the first week of January 2023 you had the tough's food Compass come out now this is the leading nutritional guidance offered in America these are individuals who all their life have studied nutrition this is their thing they have very fancy credentials they determine and they share first week of January 2023 that Froot Loops are healthier than 55 General Mills and Kellogg cereals are preferable over red cheese soy chocolate milk is preferred over whole milk these are what our Geniuses are telling us same week uh 60 Minutes airs renowned journalist Leslie stall uh is um a a large segment I believe it was 14 minutes on oek wovi in particular and these weight loss drugs have Dr Fatima Stanford very eloquent white white coat uh talking about new science she's Cutting Edge new science reveals that obesity is not a result of Lifestyle Choice it's actually a genetic brain disease I find this woman despicable one of the worst forms of human life because what she's doing when she's saying that I I believe she knows better she's clearly bright is you're undermining people's ability to be in control of the most fundamental aspect of their existence their own health and she's saying you're not in charge of your own health anymore but we have these drugs barely mentioned in this clip was that she was also a paid hack for wovi noo nordis the parent company of neovi in particular the only other expert interviewed was Dr Carolyn aoi also not somebody you want babysitting your children talking about how great wovi is also a paid a paid uh consultant for wovi all right the show is sponsored by your audience guest at wovi it was essentially a commercial it was PR that same month January 2023 American Pediatric Association for the first time in 15 years changed their guidelines so now children as young as 15 should be suggested these weight loss injections which you have for life well that's debatable like that that Point's debatable about the life yeah yeah we can talk about that a little bit well what do you mean so so our medical practice we use those types of drugs all the time um and and there is no science that says for life or not for life our our our working theory is that um we will be able to help people change their behavioral um lifestyle so that you can then come off those drugs so we've already started so those are drugs you start at one level you titrate them up to higher dosages and then you know you can titr trate them down to lower dosages and our our our hope is that we can then tit trate people off of the medicine in the same way you can get somebody off of insulin okay so I that's great that you're doing that Novo nordis in particular in a letter to their share for life and they and they want it to be for economic reasons that I think are again that that's the difference between Marketplace and science right like I'm interested in the clinical outcome uh you're not beholding to your shareholders are you J I do have shareholders but my yeah oh yeah we have shareholders in our company but but what we told our shareholders is that that profit is going to be a byproduct of a clinical outcome and if you don't like that then you should not invest is the Trump Administration listening to this they should be having you on one of their panels because as an adviser because that structure is something that I think would make progress in this country well it has to it's economically medicine's not feasible on the path that it's on the trajectory is unsustainable for us I think everybody knows that if they're being El honest but um look I I if if the people who make W GOI OIC you know Manjaro uh Zep bound uh and then all the generics like I'm a huge fan please keep doing the research it's a miracle drug it really is amazing and I think there are we're going to find some other side effects likely if the if the anecdotal data is right that show other really really positive benefits for other states and there's a right time that people may be able to come off those drugs as they can with insulin or at for other drugs we get people off of all the time because food is medicine too when the food is done correctly I I I'm a little suspicious of the fact that this food Compass came out um this 60 Minutes advertisement came out and the American Pediatric Association changer guidelines all within the same 45-day period And I looked for some sort of collusion I found none um but I'd be a little naive to think it was all just like a um that doesn't mean it wasn't uh but it it's kind of like look you're not in control of your your health um just hand it over to us we have these medications and it the incentive system where everybody was profiting so you were asking me earlier just how crazy this conspiracy sounds I would point the gaslighting cam campaign that kind of made us think inside this box and not be able to think out of it where we're now looking at food like a great percentage of people don't make the connection I have family members and it's like really hard for me they don't make the connection at all between what they eat and and they can back it up with credentials they can say well look at these studies look at all these people they're telling us to eat nothing but grains see this is my frustration we talked about this earlier in one breath earlier today you said Free Speech people should be able to say anything they want which means GOI should be able to pay for time and then and then you say well look at the research and my answer to those people will be great let's go look at the research not let Set about the research let's actually go into the actual studies because I think peer reviewers are failing us right now in in not every case not all the time but there's enough science that's published in in journals right now that wouldn't have made it past peer review decades past like I just think I'm back to what we started with which is shouldn't someone be like well I think fraud by a company if you're packaging baby formula and putting arsenic in it you should be liable that's not free speech that's fraud okay and that's where and the other the other argument I would make is that free speech between people is one thing when the government imposes mandates and gets involved then it's it's coercion yeah but I think John I don't want to I don't want to take us down this Rabbit Trail so much because I I don't want to the time on it but I think that if you get to why is the peer review failing us I think we're going to come back I'm I it's we're going to come back to the money if you don't talk about it in your book at least you allude to it it's the same thing right I think I think we have the same types of variables making influence in two different way so it's it's the same problem in a different place right we're going to come back to the money right and it's the incentives just like with the food I think that we've got government with an incentive we've got corporations we've got you know we've got religious groups medicine and the people being funded by the same broken money have also broken in there's one part of the book that I think is probably pretty natural for you and Randy and that's this piece about Bitcoin and uh you know Randy corrects me that you know he's not long on cryptocurrency he's long on bitcoin very specifically as a hard currency and it was a really um your your book actually on Fiat food helped me understand Bitcoin better help me understand Fiat currency better um and so take me through that third part of your book where you kind of brought it all together I'm not an economist so when I'm writing and I think Randy is probably far more eloquent than myself on this topic and understanding the Bitcoin I do understand bitcoin's capped I understand it's a higher currency I used to be a gold bug in terms of my Economic Policy as an old school Austrian I never um accepted keynesianism it's stupid by the way yours is the first book I've read that made such a clear distinction between keynesianism and the a Austrian School of Economics that I think it finally stuck I've been trying to figure out how to and I think you made it so real with the stories that I'm going to remember the difference now even though they should be easy to remember did you take did you take um economics classes in college I did both in my uh master's degree and my undergrad and also in high school but I just you know in I knew the I knew the two different schools of thought but I could never remember Who's Who and now because of the stories I'll remember who's who yeah I mean I tried I I loved economics as a kid but whenever I got into it I was exposed to keynesianism and at first I thought I just wasn't smart enough because this is so complicated and then when I got a little older I understood that it's just actually really dumb and that I wasn't stupid I was just like normal and understood that wow so maybe if I'm a kid with a lemonade stand and I I should reinvest my money not in my own business but into the government because of the Keynesian multiplier effect it at its base keynesianism is just an excuse to print more money and it's justification that you know he seees like um The New York Times the old theater critic who's now masquerading as an economic leader uh Krugman he's just a court jester for the Central Bank any economic problem the solution is always we need to print more money money to increase government growth so I've understood uh for a long time that fiat currency was bad it's it because what it does is under Fiat you don't actually own your money the ownership of your money is a slogan because there's an unelected Central Bank that could just print as many of your $10 bills in your wallet as they want um and if you go to the roots of Fiat you go to World War I so there's the tie between Fiat and war is is really interesting and if you look about history between the Napoleonic Wars of 1815 and World War I the world was pretty much under a gold standard and the world was at an unprecedented piece but there's another leader who did this even before that in your book who was a warlord cubacan Kuan yeah that was interesting too uh in World War I in particular before in under a gold standard if you wanted to have War you needed the consent of the public or you needed to confidence gate their gold because war is expensive or get another country to help out or you had to actually you had to do the hard work of exactly so you find it words were often short uh because it was cost prohibited for leaders they don't want to funnel their money from their own treasury so in World War I they met this issue great verin did where they wanted to keep war going but the people didn't want it they first tried selling war bonds people were like we actually don't want this war we're not going to buy your bonds um that's where John Mayer kees came involved he came up with a way for them to print currency that wasn't actually tied to the metal and that was the start of Fiat and it's really fascinating because now in uh I don't want to get to in the weeds in this when Amer we had a bread and woods agreement post World War post the war where all the other countries in the nation agreed to pin their dollars their currency to the American dollar which was then pinned to gold and when Nixon broke that pack the people were still using the dollar so it's not a quence that since 1971 America's been at War every single year except 1976 1977 1978 1997 and 2000 it's because now we don't need to have gold to commit War we can weaponize the productive labor of not just America but since bread in woods the entire world to keep war going and what's a really messed up concept is when you get to the point where you understand that the goals are never to really win or lose the war it's just keep the war going and this is similar with health I don't feel like these people really that's the incentive you said it's the goal that's the incentive that's the incentive maybe it's not someone's goal stated goal but the incentives whether you like it or not are aligned to that of course and same with health but who's benefiting so let's let's dig into that a minute because I 100% agree with you and you're you're hitting one of my hot buttons now right because the war thing I'm I'm about as anti-war as you can get so who's incentivized or whose goal is it to keep it going it it's oh man so I'm not a great expert on this there's a lot of contractors we live in Arizona by um I think it's called Ron who's a very Ron a grow it's takes over half the state it there's a lot of money that goes on also political power I mean think about George Bush he was never more powerful than after 911 and it's it's amazing that we are able to be because what happens under Fiat is when the government prints money they are not just printing paper they're printing productive labor and it could siphoned from the current holders of money so it's not a coincidence that the wealthiest people in America are the people most in debt because when I was little I used to think that when a loan was made people were going to buy a new house it was taken from other people's money who had put money in a bank to get an interest rate no under Fiat the money is printed so what happens is it's not it's created it's new money that comes into the system which is why there's a correlation between interest rates no matter whose money it is if I take debt today and I pay it with inflated dollars tomorrow I win like like like debt today is an inflation hedge of course and it's like you hear these Financial experts um like uh who are sort of dated they they they have great they have your grandmother's advice which was great under a gold standard save pay off your debt under Fiat we live in a Bizarro world where if you have a 2.7% interest rate that you did four years ago on a 30-year mortgage you're an idiot if you pay that off because you might not be able to buy an extra value meal 15 years from now with your current mortgage today it's cost prohibitive under see some of this in Zimbabwe where they had like super hyperinflation of course or look in America um in 1908 if you took a $10 gold coin and you buried it dug it up 10 years later you could reasonably expect that that $10 gold coin would have a significant increase in purchasing power due to technological advances do the same with a $100 bill see where it gets you 10 years now we don't have to guess a little we can look back 100 years right we don't to guess where this goes like we're we're idiots if we don't see and it's increasing it's increasing which is why the gaslighting campaigns going to only increase why we're going to have all kinds of powerful pushes to to get away from meat and animal based products which you just can't you can't create it scale so Bitcoin solves this well the way I put it is Bitcoin before before we go to that good question let's put a pin in that just for a minute I I think the thing for people to remember again so many people just have a hard time believe their government and all these people in Authority are lying to them right but if you look at the incentives if it whether it's Ron or halberton or whatever defense contractor they are getting rich as hell from all of this like while Matthew was talking I Googled how much money is spent on defense lobbying and I don't know the date but so far in in 2024 over about 111 billion dollar partway through the year I think the challenge people in this is where I think you know as a as a Communications Guy where I do have some expertise around human behavior I would say part of the reason that people there's a couple things going on I think that we should be aware of one is that you know if the pain the pain of having a hard currency is real like like because you have to deal with real Economic Consequences of things how how much a war costs among a whole lot of other things that that some people people would rather be just let let the government handle it is like a like a emotional opioid right and and so it just it's less painful and it's less in your face you don't have to deal with the problem front and center and so you have the difference of a frog being in boiling water versus the temperature being turned up one degree at a time doesn't feel differently but it kills you all the same so I think that's one part of it well but there's a second piece too and that is when we use really sharp sharp sharp language where against someone's existing beliefs they B is off of them versus them really considering So when you say like hey so and so is lying that may be true but it's it's harder to digest that than saying hey you know like this information they may have the best of the intentions but the underlying facts don't support that so let's be honest about the incentives in play and then let's evaluate and I think that I hope that people start to do more of that evaluation more of that introspection and say you know I'm not going to make a value judgment whether they're lying or not because they they're they the motive doesn't even matter the fact that they're wrong is matters I would argue uh that Dr darish mafarin Who Um probably saying his name wrong the leader of the TBS food Compass he knows that uh red meat does not cause diabetes which is something that he put out I would have to think he was a complete to believe that or Paul Erick who wrote the population bomb that might all be true who like still positing these insane theories they're propagandists and I I think they be caught out for such um or you could just be a much nicer person than be J I'm not sure I'm not sure maybe I I I'd prefer to see that I'm more pragmatic which is I don't like like you could be right or wrong about them being a liar knowing not knowing I just want you to be honest about red meat so you can make a good decision and if I have to choose which Hill to die on I want to die on the red meat Hill not that this guy's a propagandist or not Hill and so if I only get to if I only get to battle in War I just want to choose my War my war is about the food not the person and I'm not even saying you're wrong by the way I'm just I'm just saying I'd prefer not to even enter my energy into that debate I'd rather get to the real debate which is right like like Whole Foods are better for you than processed foods yeah I I I think I might it might be a negative part of my character I take I take this all very personally I mean I feel like what they've done to the public is disgusting and that's why I'm harsh on these people and I I I do it with full intention and I think they should be shamed and I think that's appropriate I do too I think I think it is a war in itself right I mean the fact that again if this number is Right 111 billion and 2024 is not over just split up 111 billion dollars by how many people are in Congress that's a lot that's a big incentive for people to keep war going look you're both probably right I'm just suggesting that the approach we're taking right now is not as not as as effective as this something my wife tells me all the time but I also think I also think that it's important for people to understand this because most people still even if you ask them does the government is the government honest they say no when they're taking a poll yeah but they still follow the guidelines they still listen whether it's food or whatever they still believe these people have their best interest at heart and I don't think that until they realize that those people are PE just human beings and if somebody gives them all of this money to vote a certain way whether it's supporting War whether it's supporting crappy healthy poison food or whatever it is that self-interest drives so much of what happens in the world it's not just us this is all this it's it's hum and you want to talk about incentives so we go back to this what I term an awful human being Dr Fatima Stanford um did she get laughed at or mocked really or Fe face any consequences for saying that people have no control over their own health their their weight that it's a genetic brain disease no I'll tell you what happened to her she got a pointed to the American dietetic Council which is going to be a decision-making for the Food guidance nationally which will be imposed on every hospital prison and most consequentially the public school and what they've done to the public school district I mean most people come out metabolically compromised and I have a lot of compassion for people who are over weight because I was overweight too I mean I ate the food at the public schools where the whole milk was substituted for skim flavorless milk that nobody drank so they had to infuse it with almost as much sugar as Coke and Pepsi and they took out the the lard that fried the chicken nuggets and they put in seed oils and they took out the real cheese and they put in like whatever that stuff is I mean it's these kids are they have no shot and by the time they're out of high school they're already sick and they're part a lot of times like they're going to be visiting you hopefully to have to get things reversed yeah and there's no doubt we need a policy there has to be some kind of policy reversal that changes I'm just not a policy expert like that's the and and and candidly I'm trying to learn more about that world because part of my world is going to bang up into that at some point um for sure but this is like I've talked to a couple of my friends who are policy experts and I've just been really honest and like I don't know how to fix this but one of the solutions I came to which goes back to bitcoin isn't that Bitcoin is this God in that just fixes things it's not my my perspective it's that Fiat has corrupted it and when you remove the incentive of Fiat to Aus skate the food supply they're not just going to do it because they're not evil they're not do evil in a cave he just wants to hurt people they need to constantly Gaslight us to eat mass produced waste products to make the food supply seem abundant it's just in their interest but when there's a h currency there's no reason to do that and they're not going to do that for kicks and Giggles um and it wouldn't just be Bitcoin that would do that any hard currency would do that I I happen to think Bitcoin would be the best one because it's it's just decentralized and harder to confiscate gold look back through your history there isn't an instance where any country has not confiscated their people's gold even here in America did I mean did we have and again total na here but did we have this same problem with tobacco and were we able to solve that problem absent the the inflation and hard currency problem or is this a different problem in your mind that's an interesting question could you be more specific well I mean you know tobacco was I think a product that was pretty widespread for a long period of time and it wasn't I don't know if it was healthy but I don't think people thought it to be unhealthy necessarily broadly speaking and then you had all this Mass Tor stuff that kind of moved people in a different direction and then I think you had you know the makers of tobacco get into the food World which is I think ironic um that's probably a whole another conversation but like is there I don't know maybe that's sort a different I guess my again I'm not an expert on this either but I'm at least under the impression that the the biggest problem with tobacco is all of the additives they've put in it right and that it's not similar to food again I'm so far from an next let's find out let's let's go let's go find a guest I think we'll come back to this one for sure because that's an interesting topic I have friends who are insistent that nicotine's not bad for you right and um some very high performing friends and I caught one of my daughters doing doing Zen pouches not going to name which one she's not here right now but she probably won't listen to this um and my wife and I are like how do we handle this this is well R yeah let's make a note to come back to that one for sure and then I want to I'm going to go back to what you said earlier in the show and then I think you just came back around to it a little bit which is you know there's there's abundance and then there's the illusion of abundance and I think people as a as a society I I think maybe it would be to say that we're okay with the illusion of abundance and what on the three of us would agree on I think is we'd prefer abundance to the illusion of abundance I hope that's a real that's that's fascinating you said it I'm just I'm reflecting back to you wow I'm I blowing myself up here no I I think the way you put it though I haven't I haven't thought of it like yeah that we're that people are okay I haven't thought about the the idea that people would be okay with the appearance of abundance but I think they are right because if you think about the money supply roughly since the Fed was created 1913 has gone up seven 7.2% I think call it 7% per year per year on average which is by the way the definition of inflation I believe this is in your book as well until at some point maybe the 70s you talk this the definition of inflation was an increase in the budget an inflation of of the money supply the root word INF latio to inflate right so that's gone up 7% if you take a chart and you lay it over top of the stock market the stock it it might look like this or go you know up and down but those lines are pretty much the same line I the stock market broadly is like like 9% over the same period right but they're they're pretty much they're pretty much the same line and it's well cuz money supply has gone up much quicker in the last four years only valued yeah that's I I don't know but but that is the illusion of abundance right your portfolio goes up I mean we talked about we've talked about what a million dollars is yeah I mean when I was a kid a million when you were a millionaire you were set like you if somebody had a million dollars I mean I what was an average house back then 40 50 60 I mean where I grew up probably $220,000 but an average house wasn't very much you could buy a house you could put that money in the Bank a million dollars at and let's say the average income I write about this in my book I should know but I'm bad with specific numbers but I want to say was5 $20,000 back then was an average income well if you could make five six s% on a million dollars just putting it in a savings account or in bonds which in the 70s you could make way more than that right but that's that's like three average incomes well today try and do that today you can't you couldn't retire on a million dollars especially after tax I mean you could if you want to go live in the woods or something or in a tent but it's a million dollars just isn't what it used to be it's not even close I mean we' we've talked about financial Finish Lines yeah I'm not one to agree with you this readily but I think uh I will in this case which is that even if you took the net take inflation out and forget the fact you could make a lot more in the 70s as a result of inflation wipe all that out if you could make the same two or three% of a million dollarss it's $30,000 for a million dollars which would be you know twice the average income if your numbers are right I don't I don't know but so I'm supporting your point that you know forget forget the person who's trying to shoot holes in what you're saying by saying well you made that money because of inflation or both you could take all that out and Randy still right I think that's the that's the really cogent Point here but to your point that's the illusion yeah right I mean houses people buy a house and having just bought a house I wanted a new house I didn't want a house with a 20-year- old roof a 20-year- old Foundation 20-year old pipes 20-year- old everything right because that 20-year old house is worth less but not really if you would have bought the house 20 years ago it's worth I don't know you're way more into real estate than me what 4x 8X I I mean the price of that house would have certainly gone up so then so matth you what what does abundance look like I mean rain are super interested in abundance in all different ways so what would abundance look like in a healthy way from your perspective food Bitcoin like what is have you given much thought to that having control over your time say more about that I think I'm in rap like if violent agreement exists I think I'm in violent agreement but I you I didn't come up with this a good friend of mine told me who's very wealth they mentioned that real wealth was being in control of your time and I I think about that a lot in terms of my physical health am I captive to an addiction uh an illness a toothache I can't be my full self I can't be creative I can't produce for my family um and am I hold in to do things I don't want to do for other people to find material Goods to satisfy a need that I may or may not have so that's that's how I mean I wish I could go on longer I mean it's pretty simple to me I just want to be in control of my time I'm GNA take a second with that thinkink in that is one of the more profound things we've heard on the show it's great right but that's where the bit that's where Bitcoin comes in also right you have to have you can Preserve your wealth because money is time and they're not stealing your dollars when they print more dollars and they create debt they're not stealing your dollars they're stealing your time make no mistake about that they're taking your time away from you and we only have so many years there so many nights we have and I want to be able to spend them with my children and my wife I want to be able to spend a lot of that time by myself alone too like in nature um you didn't see this but your daughter just chuckled off to your off your shoulder that's a good one great she knows I need a lot of alone time she does too um but yeah I mean I I I I take this this isn't just an abstract conversation from an academic standpoint to me this is my life and I take it seriously when people push keynesians kism and a need to grow the economy through stealing my productive labor it's not just my money like I I work really hard and I I'm glad to I enjoy work but it's my work and um I don't you know when my time's taken from me and I'm trying and Bitcoin gives me the ability I'm not in Bitcoin to make money I'm in Bitcoin to just preserve my labor so I I was so glad to hear Bitcoin went over 100,000 obviously I relished that last night I was at a a Bitcoin event when it happened it was really cool everybody was freaking out but I just want to preserve my labor and Bitcoin allows me to do that because it can't be inflated they can't make more of it 21 million that's it what what are you doing this is all I mean again the book was insanely well researched it was um great Stories the writing was fantastic in terms of drawing people in that was my experience with the book Thank you I want to know what you're doing differently how how has all of this really good work you've done changed behavior I eat about 90% animal-based um but over the overriding effect it's had on me has been really profound where I don't look at my myself anymore it's in terms of the context to my world and um I'm more in tune with nature and I look at myself as part of Nature and that comes the food it starts with things I consume but also the information I consume and even things like sunlight like I I look at myself more as trying to be in harmony with nature and that I've done things in my life that have taken me away from that whether it's too much technology or um I go through periods where I'm addicted to news and I'm getting the dopamine hit from MSNBC and fox constantly and I have to tune it out um and it shifted this perspective I guess just of myself and my place on this Earth I know that I know that sounds kind of corny I I don't know how else to put it though and it but it it really has I mean I my priorities have completely shifted I mean I used to even think like we talked a bit about the need to procreate as people and I used to think about my my whole reason to be on earth as uh I'm a writer and I'm going to write books and my kind of life will be measured by the library of books my grandkids have access to and now I I look at my primary purpose as like a husband and and a father and I I feel more whole and more real and what people think of me uh which used to matter more in the field of Journalism when I was the weird kind of outside heretic in New York City journalism um I just I can't even make myself care that much mavian hierarchy of needs well like that was sorry just I I want to point out a moment a genius you had some humility earlier today and we're going to play that part back for and she I don't want to do this so I'll try and make it as generic as I can but basically she she ate was eating something really unhealthy and I just I just kind of made a comment and just you know needle needling a little bit but her response was well what are we supposed to eat like it was it was a defe like nothing's healthy you know she didn't say everything causes cancer but it was it was sad right so what would be your message to people that just feel overwhelmed by the whole thing or how how do you give them hope what would you tell them well the first thing I would say is I understand um we're told a lot of things by a lot of people for a lot of reasons but you don't need to buy my book to under like the first thing you need to do is just like in terms of diet just try it for 10 days try eating nothing but animal products for just 10 days and just see what your body tells you and that doesn't mean you never go back to eating other things but uh I don't I don't the research is a little varies but one thing I know is that if I'm eating carbs I'm not thinking well I'm not I I I I think that physical health presupposes autonomy and if I'm not in a place where I'm physically feeling well and that doesn't just mean that I'm not aching that my mind isn't as concise I'm not experiencing as much Clarity which to me is far worse than physical aches then I'm only partially realizing what I am as a human and my ability to exercise will because I'm just sort of I feel like when I'm not healthy I'm like in the ocean just bobing with the waves I'm not a real person I don't I'm not making these decisions I'm just going through my existence I I feel the defeat I know what that feels like but it's inside of her but it begins with your health I I mean really like none of us are at our top shape as a podcaster as an author as an author to do what we want when we can't think clearly a great and I want to underpin the 10 days part because in the first three days you might feel like crap like that like like you got to take enough time to get through the the the decontamination of you know it's this I that's great but by the way I can't remember if it was in the book or I think it was on a podcast I listened to somewhere else you tried going vegetarian at one point it's a nightmare I play a lot of I I I run every day and I'm I'm very at I I try to be atic I play basketball with people much younger and in better shape than me um taller and bigger so I I really tried hard to like keep physically fit and I did vegetarianism and the truth is at first it felt great because I was eliminating a lot of toxins so I had eliminated a lot of the processed foods but I think within a month six weeks I felt like a drama itic energy decrease and I just wanted to be honest with myself because I was all on board like I read a lot of books on it and was younger um but it it it was devastating for my energy level I I felt an initial burst of energy I think that was from detoxing from a lot of processed foods um the carnivore diet for me Isn't without flaws so I want to be upfront with your audience about that I'm like 90% carnivore but one of the things I had to add in was I was losing too much weight so I introduced raw milk and I began drinking a lot of raw milk and it it fattened me up a little bit more so I can I can compete and I also feel better I don't think it's great to be in ketosis necessarily for years um the raw milk helps like keep me out of ketosis I like ketosis it feels good for short periods of time but I I don't know I haven't dug into the science on ketosis just as a disclaimer yeah I'm G I mean we we talk about diet with people a lot in our medical practice and I would say that uh as we get into understand getting the individual more each individual is to figure out what works for them kosis so how do you feel how do you what's your your experience I mean look for me personally I'll give you my personal experience I think it's been really helpful for me intermittent fasting has been a really important um part of my toolkit and I don't intermittent fast all the time I intermittent fast at times and so I think it's a really healthy thing how long get an intermittent like how you can do it a couple different ways there's um one way to do it is like a 168 or like a like a um you can do like even less like 186 where you eat for eight hours a day or eat for six hours a day and then you don't eat for the other you know 16 or eight 18 hours a day that's one way of doing it that's what my daughter does naturally a different way of doing it is to do like a 24h hour fast or a 48 hour fast once every week that's a different way of intermittent fasting there's two or three different ways that people would say it it works the the 24-hour fast once a week didn't have the same like physiological impact on me I didn't feel as good doing it where 168 does and then I'll do elimination diets in January where we take a 30-day Elimination Diet to get all different types of foods out of my body to kind of figure out what's feeling good not feeling good do you feel John I guess both of you do you feel like a spiritual component to this and I say this because it is for me in a sense that when I do a fast or when I take the meat away I'm depriving myself of something that I I feel like I'm in control suddenly of my own body and there's a there's I I can't articulate this very well there is this trickle down effect in the rest of my life when I can control this element of it which is really hard for me I love sugar I am a completely addicted to it I cannot moderate sugar I don't know how people do it can't do it can't moderate it even if I'm having fruit I'm going to lead to the duts it's going to lead if I have pasta I'm going to need to eat sugar it's it's a mess right so I just have to stay away from it um but when I assert that control I feel as a human just more present does it is this something either of you experience okay first thing I just want to say I love what both of you're talking about individualized health right and I appreciate that you're like this is what I did and this is what works for me so I I I think that's great and I think everybody's different I have probably done longer fasts than John I don't get a lot out of intermittent fasting I don't know exctly but when I do 72 hours I've I've done three day five day 7 Day um I'll probably never do a S day again but I'll I'll definitely do fact I'm overdue for a three or five I I feel stronger mentally like it's it's I I really believe in doing hard things I just think it does something for I I don't know if it's religious but it does kind of do something for the soul yeah and I think more than that it's like I'm a little bit of a psycho I like to push things and whatever is good I want to do more and I have to kind of control not going to the extreme on it but it is empowering to just go seven days without eating and just know you don't have to and you're okay and it's one less thing to think about it's freeing you stop thinking about preparing the meal eating cleaning up it's unbelievable how much time it gives you and I think it helps in other parts of life and I I would have to think more about this but I do think I do think there is something you know when we're getting to the Sol we're getting religious we're getting spiritual so I I I think yes but I don't feel strong in the Bible they talk about prayer and fasting together right like it's so I think that my initial answer is you know all caps yes underscore bold exclamation points like absolutely there's a spiritual component uh and as a guy who runs a medical clinic I feel obligated to say you you got to make sure you're safe in doing this medically like if I I have a someone that I'm aware of that if they were to go in an all cornivore diet because of their iron levels and their body and other things going on to be incredibly unhealthy and they would just need to be super aware of that before walking into that kind of diet I also know a guy who is a type 1 diabetic who uses almost no insulin because he's a very strict vegetarian Whole Foods only and and that works for him although I can never have that diet myself so I think we have to as a as a as a healthc care profession move towards individualized um decision- making and so our our one of the core Theses of our practice is that you have an expert plan we have an expert and the patient planning together and working together to create the plan not just an expert telling the patient what to do not just the patient doing things are uninformed but working together to have a really good well-informed plan where the patient and the provider at the center of that and the patients making really informed decisions about their own health and feeding back what's working and what's not working and a really good feedback you think it's a really important part of what has to happen if we were to step back a little bit and see like what you're doing and I I I just think we're at a really big moment in our country and I I do think there's a spiritual element to it although as somebody who's not studied in religion um and it's it's an Awakening and I hate to use words like this because I sound uh new Agy but there is an Awakening happening and I do think there's a blessed despite all the horrors of Co there is a blessed in people reexamining their lives and we're living living in that and we're asking questions that haven't been asked before and you're having me on whose heretical thoughts are completely off the the boundaries in many circles um and it's there's something really beautiful about that and I think I think it comes back down to self-autonomy I think people are reevaluating their life from their own premises instead of often times like many including myself have done in the past relying on others to sort of Outsource a lot of the decisions we make is just conventional wisdom like this is right so we do it now we're like why I know if that's right I don't know if that's what we should do and I think that's great I I think we're at an interesting time in history the world the world is changing a evil you know John and I have talked before I don't know about on the air but we've talked about the fourth turning and you know sorry what's the fourth turning it is a concept that basically every 80 years I believe that Society resets itself and it's it's it's a simpler version of it for I guess to the purpose of the time you heard the sayings Hard Times make make hard men or or hard men makes good times good times make make strong man yeah good times makes off man that whole that whole cycle do you know that one I do yeah that the fourth turning is a different way of looking at that throughout history and that about every 80 years Society circles back around um and it goes through you know we can go from World War II right was hard times making strong men and then you just look at every generation from there and kids rebel against their parents to different places where we end up where we are now with a lot of wokeism and and it seems that we're now transitioning back into another cycle yeah I feel very optimistic I do and I think I I feel that way because of the way information is being freed how when I was a young kid it was like ABC NBC CBS and these Gatekeepers of information and it's been decentral ized and then the internet came around and decentralized it for a brief period of time and then that got taken over by a few corporations which kind of put us into these uh to be blunt uh intellectual ghettos like Facebook Twitter but now that the podcast has gone above that and I I'm just grateful for this because this book which is to my shock doing really well would not be 10 years ago because I would have no access to the public when I would publish my books in 2013 through these major publishing houses I'd have a media person who would get me on big shows and you'd sell books and spurts but this is so different and it's beautiful I never would have had the opportunity and it's not just me you see all kinds of theoretical ideas being pushed out into the culture um and it's I just it I think because of that there's going to be trickle down effects that just raise everybody's Consciousness to different levels and come to a place of ultimately I think it's really interesting what we're witnessing and we try to keep this podcast Evergreen but you know we recently had the the election and I think it's less interesting that Trump was elected but more interesting who is with him and you know Trump was a Democrat not that long ago Elon Musk was a Democrat till not that long ago tulsy Gabbert RFK and all these like all these groups are coming together and all of a sudden the unions and the blue col people that have always been Democrats are on his team and I think I I I think that is a sign I think that that Society is telling us it's leaving clues that we are in this change and I don't know I don't claim to be smart enough to know where we are in the change but I think it's and and I would be Curious by the way as a followup your you can comment on that but your feelings about RFK and what he's doing about you referenced it earlier right his make America healthy he's a genius um and he's great at describing the symptoms of what's going on and also what he's saying about corporate capture is completely true the ignoring of the currency just makes me feel like we're throwing snowballs on Ferris wheels at each other and it's very hard to hit it right um one of the things that makes me super optimistic is in this election more so than any is that in 2008 there is a popular consensus that demographics was Destiny and that the color of your skin dictated how you voted and this was widely held consensus among all the political political Elite and that went against a worldview of mine and I was open to all being wrong but like no we're actually individuals and our skin color does not dictate our belief system that's insane and that's actually highly racist and offensive to me look who won the election for Trump regardless if you like him it was Amish Pennsylvania it was Arabs in Michigan and it was large cities in Wisconsin Phil and in uh Georgia which people voted different and that is very encouraging to me because we're not monoliths we're more than that we're individual people who think and have our needs and this political realignment I love how I have friends anti-ar former Democrats who are now like this is basically a third party there's no more Republican Party Lindsey gr's extinct these Mitch McConnell warmonger corporate lover types yeah I mean it's this is a weird third party I don't agree with everything in it but I do think that the change in terms of getting rid of these you know political monps has that shipped in that is is encouraging and I feel hopeful again hopeful who knows I I don't know how this is going to end I I do too I just I also I always go back to the incentives and I think like I'm so hopeful partially because I've learned a long time ago don't underestimate Elon Musk like everything that guy does is that people say is impossible right I mean he created a rocket company out of whatever 90 million or $180 million when the US government the Chinese government the Japanese government the Russian government all those people threw all this money and had a 25 30 40 50 year Head Start and he did it so I don't want to underestimate him and what he's doing with Doge and you're talking about the government not the coin I'm sorry man I actually don't think I don't think I don't think anything's going to happen with that I'm pretty pessimistic about those I I I I'm so hopeful because I love what they're doing and I don't see how they're going to cut two trillion and I think like recently he caught without cutting entitlements I the math doesn't add up right recently he caught a rocket with a pair of Chopsticks one of the most amazing feats I've ever seen and I think that's easy compared to fighting all the incentives that broken money has caused in government I I I again I am 100% behind him I nothing would make me happier than to be wrong on this and I just I don't I'm going to sit back and eat my popcorn and hopefully hopefully they win and they prove me wrong but I have doubts yeah I mean I got to I I've had several convers not several I've had a few conversations with former President Clinton uh and um it's like he was clearly a very bright man he was interested in people like that was the one takeway I I didn't get to spend lots of time with him but he definitely like liked people you could see him talking to the help when the cameras weren't on him he enjoyed that kind of thing and U there is an aspect of trump who I met at a 911 event once that just reminded me of them they were very similar and just like interested in people so I hope that everybody's you can't be president or run for that office without being a bit of a sociopath I think like you have to be something there has to be something kind of wrong with you almost today to run and the narcissism and it's it's a lot but I just I'm hopeful I'm trying to stay optimistic I don't know my political allegiances are all over the place I wish I could go into one box but I'm skeptical of all of them that to me that says a lot about you right because anybody that is fully in one box is not thinking for themselves like it's almost impossible that they fit perfectly in the red box or the blue box you asked me about Kennedy and how I thought he's saying a lot of great things we had a debate in the car on the way up here about how um he is talking about beef Tallow going back into McDonald's and that would be such a positive a small it seems small but it' actually be huge you know pre-1990 McDonald's used beef Tallow and then through a huge pressure campaign they got forced to use toxic I don't even like calling it vegetable oil because that's not accurate it's not veget it's it's it's really that seed oils are it's a thing that's people talk about it a lot it's like it's it's no it's it's legitimately really bad for you from everything I've seen but is he going to force these companies to do it or can the incentive structure be switched well if you eliminate the subsidies for corn suddenly we're not drinking so much fructose in our soda we're not putting corn in our pancakes that's weird why are we putting corn on our pancakes right it's like all these trickle down effects that would happen and if they want wanted to do that it'd be transparent so if you wanted to subsidize really bad foods for Americans you'd have to make your argument or sell like bad food bonds or direct taxation now they don't need to because they can just print it through Fiat we end that structure we end that system we bring back real currency hard money whether it be gold or Bitcoin you you put a spoke in the tire of of the Distortion system that has compromised our food system and what happens after that is reality reasserts itself we don't need them to tell us anything we actually just need the propaganda to end so that people can just make which goes back to free speech their own decisions um you're dealing with a social societal opiate though you're going to move from painkiller to antibiotic and antibiotics don't taste as good they don't feel as good they just solve the problem right yeah but they're picking winner you're what you're getting at is they've been picking winners and losers and I guess I I'm never in charge I'm much like you very libertarian I just want the government to stay the hell out of the way leave everybody alone so I never want them to pick winners and losers including forcing people to eat what's healthier I just want them to to leave people alone but I guess what really angers me it sounds like much like you it's not just that they're picking winners and losers but they're they're choosing the poison is what they're picking as the winner right so at least if they forced beef Tallow which I'm against them forcing that too but at least they'd be picking something healthier they'd be forcing us to do something that didn't kill us right right yeah I I'm with you but it's it's a complicated conversation and I just think the the first step is to end a system of distortion just then people will F like people don't want to be unhealthy you know people have been told in the 90s snackwell cookies were good I mean cannot tell you how many snackwell cookies I had I I I thought I was eating like a health food it it's all sugar chemicals it's nonsense and you know you see like these shifts um to get us not to eat meat and it went from like we talked about John Harvey Kellogg saying that meat caused caral desires which caused all Health maladies and this was a very popular assumption at the time this wasn't like a which by the way you actually underpin that was partially true of course true it it yeah me the connection between me and carnal desires there's some really great studies on that and even like you go back to Roman wars they wouldn't they'd wait till their they had enough meat for their soldiers to go out and fight to have like vital and energy um and then it switches like in 70s to no in the 40s it was Don eat meat because we need to save meat for the soldiers so plant your Victory Gardens and then in the 70s it really hyped up because of I I believe because of uh the degradation of our currency to um don't eat meat because of overpopulation and meat was so resource intensive that we're going to all end up eating ourselves if we don't switch to plants and now it's donate meat as meat is like a thermostat control for the temperature and we're going to particular take it out on our children especially carbon dioxide for the atmosphere exactly global warming yeah um but it hasn't really changed like in the 1400s they used to get eccentric women for changing the weather and make them confess to like changing the weather crops weren't growing now and the women would confess and they burn them it's become a little more sophisticated I don't I'm not an expert in climate science so just let me throw that out there but they're weaponizing that whether it's real or not real they're weaponizing climate scientists to try to control we eat and it's to the benefit of authority to do so because it again is another reason now we talked about personal autonomy and we have an Italian Heritage I was talking to some of your staff and how guilt is so fundamental in terms of how to control an individual um and if you can make people feel guilty about what they're consuming then and you have a a level of control that's not positive so you've talked about your hope I want to know like maybe Randy if you want to keep us here we can but I'm interested in going to like what's next what's the next book how are you seeing the future for yourself like I I'm interested in like I like how you look at the world but take me inside your mind like what are you said you're hopeful what's the next project you want to work on what's the next big thing um I have a movie coming out I wrote a screenplay it was my first screenplay based on a book I wrote uh and I'm excited about that I'm the current book I'm writing is on medicine and I'm going to be in touch with you John because I'm learning a lot from you from our experience here it's on how uh the financial system has corrupted medicine and is very connected to food but very different in other ways there's been a shift in incentives in medicine as well and it's fascinating to go back and look at the flexer report and John D rockefeller's involvement in getting rid of a lot of Natural Therapy and shifting into a pharmaceutical based petroleum based um so I'm digging into that but I I don't feel great comfortable talking about it to you yet because I haven't done full research on it um primarily though I'm just like everybody else I'm trying to uh keep my family happy as can be keep myself healthy as can be keep playing basketball keep running every morning and uh yeah how how do like so for listeners who interested myself included like how do we how do we get the books how do we keep in touch with you in a way that you're looking for you know readers and listeners to you know stay up with the work that you're doing what's the best way for us to find you I'm on Twitter um I'm horrible at social media you know I'm not a big self-promoter with like I should be for being an author um I just don't like it I don't like social media I don't like being on it my agent always like you need to be on Instagram post three times a day I don't I just something about it bothers me so where do we find you on Twitter it's just my name and I'm horrible at it like I'm not piy I sometimes try to make like cool comment it always comes out bad my books are available on Amazon and uh again I partnered with Saina moose who I recommend all of his books he has a publishing house now he's published uh Parker Lewis and I'm gonna introduce him to Randy at some point and try to see if that could be a match because ry's book sounds fascinating what's the Publishing House called It's called The Safe House the safe house and you could buy in Bitcoin oh look at that shocker it's great is there any questions you were hoping we get through today things you were like man this is the one or even maybe you thought of during the show you're like this is the one thing I was really hoping we'd take this left turn we didn't make that left turn for you yeah but it I don't I was curious as to like why if you're more comfortable talking about this offir I'd understand how you became sort of a heretic of of medicine in in many people's eyes because I was told type two diabetes can't be treated it's actually you can't treat type di so why are you telling me lies and telling me that you are treating it and healing people that's my question yeah it's a well-known Story I mean my um I was I was I started a company in 2014 that was an alternative to health insurance that was helping people pay for their medical bills in a non-insurance format we saw lots of chronic disease problems in the same way that insurance companies do and it came to a head when I visited my mother-in-law in rural South Carolina type two diabetes she was not well and uh she ended up in the hospital for 4 days and it should have been solvable with s you know one or two insulin injections in a blood glucose reading or two and so you had this like $100,000 event in a hospital that could have been prevented with you know less than $30 of supplies in medicine and it was really hard to get a hold of her medical provider who by the way I've been in touch with since then I have all the respect in the world for a medical provider but the system made it difficult to get involved like really uh engage with the medical provider and um it just it I got really angry at the system and I was like I'm going to go fix this problem and so I went and I applied get a doctor at USC and I just I wanted to figure out exactly how to solve this problem and it turns out we have the medicine we have the devices we have the understanding of psychology we we understand all these things but the system hasn't allowed us to put it together so that's I got really angry happen yeah it's a beautiful form of yeah well congrats man I I think that's that's amazing I I knew people talked about curine type 2 diabetes I mentioned it briefly in my book but you're actually doing it I'll be pedantic we're not curing it it we're reversing it and and I think there's what's the difference well curing it would mean that I could go and eat whatever the heck I wanted it wouldn't come back like it didn't yeah so insulin resistance which I'm sure you're aware of is a real big problem and so I don't know how to like cure the problem with insulin resistance I just know how to counteract it permanently and sustainably and so but that requires Behavior change over a long period of time like sustainable Behavior change so if you treat me in it reverses it I can't go back to drinking the 2 L Mountain Dew Code Red yeah I mean you could it just might take a lot of insulin and then which is counterproductive because you're making insulin resistance a bigger problem there there's some some virtuous cycles and there's some not so virtuous cycles and all of that and so we try to help patients understand all of that kind of wherever they're coming from so we try to meet them right where they are with their current knowledge based their current ability to spend money and time and um you know treatment burdens are really big problem so how do you reduce treatment burden reduce cost and improve clinical outcomes all at the same time and how do you do that in a way that doesn't cause the provider to burn out it's a great origin story I think it's like I I just want to say to our listeners go out and buy the book um for sure we have we have hit on a bunch of stuff but I had multiple things written down that we could have talked about and there's tons and tons of great stories in there so go out get the book and thank you for you're helping this this we Tales of abundance is is the podcast and you are helping bring abundance to the World by making the world healthier making people aware kind of you know taking the blindfold off people so just thank you for the work and I I look forward to the next book and I want to thank you for shining a light on the difference between abundance and the illusion of abundance that is my huge like aha moment for today is that I mean you are helping people to to see something so clearly that I wouldn't have put my finger on before our conversation today and now I'm going to go talk about it I'll give you credit of course but uh I mean that was a real aha moment for me thank you thank Youk thank you for having me yeah thank you for being here been fantastic all right listeners uh check out the show notes we'll put some links in there for where you can find Matthew and uh like Randy said get the book like this was a great great read I think it really helps anybody understand uh more about not just uh Fiat and food and their own health but it puts some real great stories behind it and help help you think through uh you know what's going into your body and uh who's influencing that so thanks again and uh yeah check out talesof abundance.com thanks listeners 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