What uh dangerous con man? My this fucking dude. Will James Guest happy? How are you.
Wonderful? Good? Yeah, thriving ready for learning more about park animas.
Very happy to hear that, James, I, you know, speaking of enemas?
What why? Why?
Did?
What is it about animas?
Why?
Why are some people fucking obsessed with this? Is like the key to all health?
Does seem to have a captivating power of the human spirit, doesn't it? The enema? Yeah?
Yeah, there's a kind of person Inema guys and anima girls who are just like obsessed with fucking animas? Is the answer to all health problems?
Yeah, it's I don't know, it's it's it's a lasting thread throughout human history. Someone should do a PhD on it. Yeah.
I think it may have something to do with the fact that it's like an intense experience that I met you. Yeah, create it's like powerful physical sensations, and some people just flip out over it. I don't know, Yeah, and it seems thankful to their life.
Yeah. Yeah, in a way that it's not if you inject park water into your colon.
Yeah, you gotta, like, I don't know, like there are like obviously. Sometimes enemas are a useful tool for healthcare people to give. Sometimes people need edemas. But it should never be like a regular part of your day to day, right, No, it shouldn't be.
Just like giving yourself enemas for fun. Yes, yeah, yeah, under medical supervision only. I think it's my starts on enemas. Yeah, they look at us, Enema cops, both of us. Yeah, NIMA cops. That's that's my job. I'm going to make sure people's assholes are nice and dry. I've broken with the anarchis obis, and I'll be becoming one of those really annoying stalinists on Twitter.
You're an asshole authority. Well, you know who's not an asshole authoritarian is wim Hoff. But he thinks, you know, if you live in a state with public health care, you should just cut your guts to ribbons with a sprinkler head. And you know your fellow citizens can pay for that because you're a drifter who abandoned your family for a decade.
That's what socialism does to him, to a motherfucker, Yeah, yep, every time. Can't not do it happened everywhere, So.
James, when we left Whim. He had just shattered his guts by taking a public enema from a water fountain to avoid acknowledging that he'd abandon his family. That said, he does eventually come back to the picture. His book The Way of the Iceman gives us very little detail on the long gap between oleah suicide and his rise to prominence right after Later, Wim remarried and had another son. We just get this line.
The children grew up and Hoff looked for more challenges. Yeah, they grew up more or less without you, buddy. Yeah, helik for challenges. It did not include parenting, are you Yeah? Not a challenge you was that interested in. So at this point his story jumps ahead to the mid aughts. There are not any particularly good or objective sources about the reality of his life in this period, so we're gonna have to rely on some bad ones. I found an article with irishnews dot com that features heavily an
interview with Laura Hoff. Now today, Laura is involved in her father's business in her fire, so not an unbiased source without a financial interest in how Wim is seen, and her interview does not acknowledge some of the unpleasant stories that Scott talks about. But I think her claims about what it was like being raised by Wim are still worthy of analysis, because, at the very least, if this is not accurate to reality, it does show how his kids, who are affiliated with his business, think it
is advantageous for their to be seen. Right yeah, yeah, sure if this is not an accurate recitation of reality, and we do not objectively know what happened with women as kids, right yeah yeah. Quote On a cold winters day in Amsterdam many years ago, while other parents were wrapped up warm to collect their kids from school, Laura Hawf recalls her dad turning up in a T shirt, shorts and sandals and then doing a bit of yoga
in the school yard. I think I was raised by a very special man, which I only understood later, says Laura thirty six, agreeing the childhood that she shared with her three siblings was absolutely different than that of her friends. We always used to play outside if it was cold, it didn't really matter. The weather man never dictated what
we needed to wear. Now that could be also go with whims, basically abandoning them to a squat the fact that like no one was there to make sure they were dressed brock so we did call clothes.
Yeah, so we didn't have any clothes. Laura gives us little detail on what Whim's life was like after Oleah's suicide and his event return to his family, which she, of course has no obligation to do, but it does mean that this next period of his life is a bit of a black box when it comes to hard facts. This is as much as she says about being raised by Wim. We were very free. I don't think there were any rules. Sometimes you would think, okay, kids need some rules. But it was also the best time in
my life. My father used to play more than we did, so he always wanted to go outside with us and that was great.
So I don't know. That's another version of the story believe what you want, rather juxtaposed. Yeah.
So.
Wim claims that after his wife's suicide and returned to his return to his family, he traveled around the world doing what a normal person would call extreme stunts, summarized in his idobiography This way, his breathing techniques, yoga and cold training gave him enormous strength, and he liked to share it with others. The media got him in their sights. Encouraged by the attention and the effect it had on other people, wim broke record after record. He took the
longest path in ice. He climbed snow covered mountain peaks wearing shorts. He ran a marathon th on in Lapland at negative thirty degrees celsius. He swam hundreds of meters under ice. His records were reported on television in Japan, Germany, Poland, Spain and many other countries. The BBC made a documentary about him, and millions of people watched his feats on the internet. And again, the way he's talking about his early activities is almost as if they like the fame
that he received. The media coverage was an accident, right, The media got him in their sights, as opposed to he was kind of a fame hound, and he deliberately went out of his way to get covered by the media.
Yeah, he actively pursued being in the media at any opportunity.
Yeah, it was like, oh, he just wound up getting famous somehow.
Real.
Shoot, there's some dudo over that climbing mountain in box of shorts. Maybe we should hear a story.
Yeah, Now, all of these records. The twenty six Guinness World Records that he claims to have set are in reality somewhat less than accurate, and we'll cover that shortly, but for right now, I want to return to another one of Whim's claims. He says frequently that after years of groundbreaking athletic success, he grew frustrated quote possibly because he was still coming to terms with Olea's suicide quote
from his book. He felt the need to share his knowledge and the possibilities of his body with more people. Could other people do what he can do? In two thousand and seven, the renowned Feinstein Institute in New York studied Hoff. The results showed that he was able to control his autonomic nervous system. For Whim, the results were logical, after all, he had trained to do it for many years,
but the researchers thought he was a medical wonder. From then on, Hoff put himself at the disposal of science. His main aim was to show others that they could also train to do what he does. It was the start of a very special time in Whim's life. He attracted more and more attention, and those who started using his method were wildly enthusiastic. Now, James, I'm gonna admit
to a potential failure as a researcher here. I have definitely found evidence of the Feinstein Center and doctor Tracy who runs it, commenting in articles that feature whim Hoff. They seem to be connected. I have not come across any publication from the Feinstein Center about whim from two thousand and seven, But two thousand and seven is the year that he claims to have run the world's fastest half marathon while barefoot on ice or snow in two hours and sixteen minutes.
Yeah. How much competition is that for that? I don't think there's a lot. Yeah, there a previous record.
First, it is important you remember the qualifier here is this is the fastest half marathon barefoot on ice or snow, right, not the fastest half marathon, not even the fastest half marathon barefoot. Now, this is his only legitimate Guinness World record. He did do this, This was verified by Guinness. He
does hold this record. I do want to note here that Whim's time, if you are not using the qualifier that that's the fastest half marathon barefoot on or snow, is not particularly historic, right, as a half marathon time, the current fastest half marathon is fifty nine minutes and forty seven seconds, which is insane for thirteen point one miles. He wouldn't be record breaking as a marathon time. Yeah, no, it would be good. It'd be very impressed. Two hours
is great marathon, yesh. But to two and a quarter hours, it's like, yeah, it's lessened in fast. People are running for fast marathonism. So the first hard evidence of scientific analysis of Whim's claims that I have is from twenty eleven. Wim had by this point turned his experiments in cold weather endurance into a lifestyle. He was well known for going on long, barefoot runs in the snow and submerging himself in ice for long periods of time without shivering.
A twenty eleven article published by Radboud University's Medical Center is the first example I found of him being tested by a reputable scientific source. It is notable that this
early article describes him as the iceman wim Hoff. Radboud's researchers were specifically testing Whim's claims that he could influence his autonomic, nervous system and immune response through concentration and meditation and in that they are talking about what people now call wim Hoff breathing, that is a version of g tomo breathing. And I'm going to quote from this study here. To investigate this, Hoff was administered indotox and
while practicing his concentration and meditation technique. During this experiment, various measurements were performed, including brain activity, autonomic nervous system activity, and inflammatory mediators in the blood. One of the researchers said, after indotox and administration, the increase of the stress hormone cortisol in Hoff was much more pronounced compared to other
healthy volunteers. We know that this hormone is released in response to increased autonomic nervous system activity and that it suppresses the immune response. In accordance to the levels of inflammatory mediators in Hoff's blood were much lower. On average, Hoff's immune response was decreased by fifty percent compared to other healthy volunteers. In addition, hardly any flu like symptoms
were observed. These results are definitely remarkable, so that makes it sound like Hoff was able to basically control his immune system to reduce his immune response to being mildly poisoned.
In a way that.
Reduced his symptoms, which is very impressive sounding, right. If that's a thing he was able to do, that is impressive, that's interesting. But the paper went on to caution those results were only obtained from a single person and thus could not serve as evidence for claims that Hoff's techniques could influence the immune system in meaningful ways.
Sure he could just have a weigh response.
Yeah, we will refer. There's follow ups to this study, so we will talk about that in a little bit. The year before that twenty eleven study, twenty ten, Hoff and his eldest son in Am had set up a company called innert Fire to capitalize on the growing fascination with Whim and his claims of superhuman abilities granted through breathing techniques. They started organizing workshops, first in the Netherlands,
but then all over the world. Several other of his children joined the organization, which grew rapidly as Wim became a bonafide celebrity. Now, if you don't recall, the period from twenty ten to twenty thirteen was the birth of commodified viral content. Online journalists and writers for culture webs sites like my old employer crack dot com had a voracious appetite for so weird it must be true stories, and wim Hoff was perfectly situated to go viral in
this area. The number one reason for his success was his embrace of mainstream scientific studies of his techniques. Hoff could do this because g TMO breathing, which is the basis of all of his claims, does work in measurable ways. In twenty twelve, researchers from Radboud performed that follow up study comparing volunteers trained by Hoff and a control group. Testes were poisoned lightly, and the immune activation of the
different groups was studied. An analysis of various studies on wim Hoff breathing by the medical journal Temperature notes the trained group had significantly increased epinephrine levels, increased levels of anti inflammatory cytokin decreased levels of pro inflammatory mediators, and
less pronounced fever. Also, flu like symptoms were lower in the trained group compared with the untrained group, and you will find this cited constantly on Whim's website and in news articles about which usually the study results are summed up as the people who Whim trained were able to control their immune systems and avoid sickness. That is not
what happened, and that journal article continues. The setup of the research, however, did not allow discrimination between the acute and the acquired responses, because during the experiment itself, the volunteers from the intervention group were allowed to hyperventilate and the control group was not. Therefore, the investigators included that hyperventilation can temporarily activate the sympathetic nervous system and suppress the innate immune response a long term yeah, long term
training effects were not addressed. Therefore, it still needs to be sorted out if the training itself, hyperventilation, cold end or meditation caused the observed effects. This study also notes that the trainees were not just given cyclic hyperventilation training, they were immersed in ice cold water, while the control group was not. This matters more than you might think.
Quote.
Finally, coal may exert health effects. First of all, cold may increase energy expenditure by shivering, but also by non shivering thermogenesis, as mentioned above. In the recent past, quite a few studies from several laboratories showed that humans are able to increase their non shivering thermogenesis capacity due to cold acclamation. This mirrors numerous studies in rodents. However, the study effects in humans are of a smaller magnitude compared
with these animals. So number one, it's very debatable. There's no evidence that there's significant health benefit to this. These people had mildly less symptoms than the control group, right of this mild poisoning in a controlled situation. And number two, there are too many variables that were not isolated for that. You can't say, oh, it was because of the breathing
or the meditation, or it may have just been. Yeah, there's health benefits to being immersed in cold water, like potentially at least short term.
Ones that buddy was freaking out because yeah it was drowning.
Yes, you can't say the kinds of things that are claimed.
Yeah, yeah, I mean that it was like for people who were on the internet back then, Like yeah, that was the whole genre of like health viral influencer, right, was taking a solid scientific claim and then building gradually less and less solid claims on top of that, and then grifting off that in too many people you can make them happy and healthy and see their lives and such.
Yeah, So anyway that gives you an idea and you can find other studies about Whim. They all have breakdowns like that when you actually get into what is being studied. Anyway, we will talk a little bit more about this later. So that's twenty twelve that that follow up study is conducted by Rad Bowd and it is the very next year that are ethically questionable. Friend Scott Carney comes onto
the scene. Twenty thirteen is the year that he met Wim Hoff well, and he's he's working on this book called The Enlightenment Trap, and he thinks Wim might be an interesting subject for it. He kind of wants to expose him as a grifter, so he talks Playboy Magus into letting him go like hang out and take one
of Hoff's classes. So yeah, and he specifically writes in his more recent article that he wanted to quote debunk him as a charlatan trying to sell fake superpowers to the masses, which is I think a reasonable way to describe Wim Hall.
Yes, yeah, he started out just fine.
So Carney describes Wim in twenty thirteen as quote at merse most a circus act. He wore a green hat and had a red nose and ruddy skin. That made him appear a little gnomish. He was bursting with energy, talked loudly, and smelled like an onion. To the extent that he was known at all, it was for performing death defying stunts in ice water and for a stint shilling battery heated jackets for Columbia sportswear, not for possessing
valuable insights on the mind body connection. Yeah yeah real, uh yeah, I didn't feel like they had a fallout. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's something happened here.
M hmm.
It is interesting because, like he describes in this period is like, yeah, he was like a big media figure in this part of Europe, but he was kind of like, you know, a little bit of a carny, you know, someone who you would show these gimmick jackets.
Yeah, he's like a Joe Exotica of like doing this stuff. You know, like he's famous but not necessarily respected. I guess yeah, I would. I would say that.
So Scott gets to work studying Whim and listening to his classes, and he finds himself, as he says, flabbergasted by the fact that Whim's techniques really do work. There's powerful benefits to this stuff. That's how Scott describes it.
Quote.
Within a few days, I learned to hold my breath for several minutes at a stretch and heat my body in the snow. An autoimmune illness that had plagued me for thirty years went away. A few years later, I climbed shirtless up Mount Kilimanjaro with Hoff. When the temperature dipped into minus thirty degrees. There was no doubt about it.
I was a convert. Soon I became as chief evangelist, not only writing the book What Doesn't Kill Us, which spent a few months on the New York Times bestseller list, appearing from more than three hundred media engagements, from TV shows and news articles to radio programs and podcasts, where I preached the good news.
That's so weird. Like, I don't know, man, I've written Abassi people like mine. I've writen ABAUSI people like hey, but I've never like, done three hundred podcast interviews about how great anyone is like it. He kind of seems to have moved from journalism to part of this Hoff grift at this point. Yeah, So.
It's at this point that we should probably talk about Mount Kilimanjaro. James, because Kilimanjaro is central to Whim's claims of supernatural ability. It features heavily in all of his stories, and I'm going to quote first from his how his conquest of that infamous mountain is described by Rolling Stone article Eric Headiguard in a twenty seventeen article, he attempted to scale Mount Everest wearing nothing but shorts and shoes,
but was thwarted by a foot injury. He tackled Mount Kilimanjaro next wearing only shorts and shoe and reach the top in less than two days and unheard of feet. So, James, that's not thankfully he has given us some stuff to dig in do here. So the first question we should ask ourselves is it an unheard of feet to reach Kilimanjaro and the top of Kilimanjaro in less than two days?
Right?
Is that exceptionally rare?
No?
The current world record, and this is fucking nuts, by the way, the current world record for an individual climb and descent of Kilimanjaro is six hours and forty two minutes.
That is fass. That is fucking nuts. That is mountain running. That is fucking yeah. That is wild. I don't I actually don't know how that's physically possible, but it apparently has been. Yeah, the altitude change. I haven't. I've been up the other two highest mountains in Africa, a High Atlas and Mount Kenya. But yeah, that you've ever done higher than fourteen k for a peak, and like that is a thing, you know, like fucking and this is like so, by the way, Carl Eggloff of Switzerland is
the guy who did that. Obviously it is Swiss. Dude, not surprised. Yeah, I had it down for being like someone from tanzanierro Kenyero somewhere.
I mean, and it is like when we are talking about Kilimanjaro. The peak of Kilimanjaro is nineteen thousand feet above sea level. It is sixteen thousand feet above its base plateau. That's the topographical prominence, which is a commonly used measure for the difficulty of climbing a mountain.
Basically, it's like.
Because you have a lot of peaks that might be like sixteen thousand feet, maybe they were only like a two thousand foot hike or whatever above kind of the ridge or whatever. So yeah, Kilimanjaro has the fourth highest topographical prominence of any peak on Earth, which makes it, you know, by any widely accepted mountaineering metric, one of the harder mountains out there to climb. So hey, whim is bullshitting about his time up to the top of
Kilimanjaro being particularly exceptional. But hiking to the top of Kilimanjaro in shorts and shoes does seem impressive, and it's certainly not a bad time. But he generally fails to note that he didn't actually summit Kilimanjara. He didn't actually reach the he didn't reach the top summit of Kilimanjaro. And I'm going to quote here from a write up by Pepisien von Erp, a mathematician from Radboud University, which is the same school that carried out the experiments that
initially seemed to verify Hoff's incredible claims. Quote wim Hoff and the group of pioneers started on January fourteenth at an altitude of eighteen hundred meters. From there, they marched onto a camp at thirty seven hundred meters. They stayed there during the night and went early in the morning to break through the top at five thoy six hundred and eighty five meters. Gilman's point, this tempo would normally not have been possible because of the acclimization time used
to prevent altitude seekness. But wait a second, Gilman's point, that's not the actual summit of Kilimanjarro, is it, wim Hoff, And it is in fact one of three official summit points on the mountain, but not the actual peak, which is a houru peak, which is where the dude who made the trek in less than seven hours reached and then made it back down. So again you can get some insight into the nature of Whim's personal sort of
like pr tactics here. Right, any normal person would consider reaching Gilman's peak with a group of largely untrained hikers and getting back down in two days or less to be impressive, and doing it in shorts extra impressive. But that's not going to go viral, right, because you're not
breaking any records. You know, you're doing a pretty good time and a pretty impressive thing, but you're not doing anything that's like going a win you an award, And so you've got to kind of jink the truth in order to get something that's gonna be real easy to like go viral. In an article or whatever.
And like choosing Kilimanjara is a choice, right, Like it's a big ass mountain and it's a great achievement to climb it. But it's not a technical climb, No, it's you know, like it's something you could, like people do kill a manjar in their retirement if that's the kind of thing they enjoy, and you could spend a lot of money, I have someone carry all your stuff, Like, yeah, for something that sounds super impressive, like it's not Everest. And yeah, he compares him in the same paragraph in
that piece you read a second ago. Yeah, it's very I know he's taken like one point of truth and extrapolated exactly exactly.
And the way that he phrases things, he's always got a defense if people call him out, because if someone's like, well, but you didn't actually do it this way, he can always be like, well, no, what I meant is that no one else hiked up at this time without a shirt or wearing shorts, or with an untrained group of hikers. Right, So it's the shortest time for someone doing all those things because like no.
One keeps track of that shit.
Yeah, It's like if I were to climb up kill him in Jarro in like five days and be like, yeah, but I did it the fastest anyone's ever done it. In my head full of cocaine, I was like, well, nobody's really keeping.
Track of that. Yeah, fastest guy named Robert Evans he his doing coca at the time.
Yeah, exactly, I beat that other Robert Evans. He didn't even make it up to kill him in Jarrow when he was on No, I don't do cocaine, folks, just just good old fashioned gas station adderall you know. That's the that's the healthy thing to do.
Is that the stuff that's by when you check out, it's quickly get giant drugger bills and I mix him with Creton. We call that a seven eleven speedball, buddy.
Yeah.
Yeah, you'll suppressed on posting your buddies natural responses when you do that. Let me tell you you sure will way better than Whim. Can we gotta line you up with some Dutch scientists, buddy, This could be a whole thing. Yeah.
So it's when you read Whim's book that it becomes clear he wants his followers to believe no one else can manage the hike in the time that he did quote, Haff decided he would climb Mount kill Him and jar with a group of people. Kill Him and Jarro was a five eight hundred ninety five meter three point sixty six mile high mountain in Tanzania. It's a very popular expedition for mountaineers and hikers. Well trained climbers can get
to the top in six days. To make the challenge even greater, Haff wanted to climb Killiman Jarrow in forty eight hours with a group of twenty six people. Haff wanted to show that we're all people of doing much more than most people think is even possible with excess this expedition too, everyone said it was impossible to get up to the top in forty eight hours with such a large group. As if that wasn't enough, some of the people in the group were suffering from diseases like
multiple sclerosis, rheumatism, Crohn's disease and cancer. They also had no climbing experience. The date was set for January twenty fourteen, and the run up to the expedition was chaotic. Doctor Girt Bougies of the Amsterdam Medical Center wanted to accompany the expedition in a personal capacity to help the group. The local guides thought the whole thing was a bad idea.
At the last moment, the guides decided not to go. However, Hoff was resolute this group was capable of reaching the top by focusing on their breathing, and because they had prepared with cold training, so they went. When the group arrived at Horombo Hut, a small huddle of climbing huts at an altitude of three thousand, seven hundred and five meters, the temperature had fallen to three degrees celsius thirty seven
degrees fahrenheit. As if climbing to the top of kilimanjar in forty eight hours with twenty six people, many of whom were ill, was not enough, Whim suggested they walk bare chested and in shorts, breathing in cold training were the seat secrets. And again, if that is the way
that it actually went, that's impressive enough. But again Whims, it's dumb, though, But Whim's got a lie and it's not like superhuman again he's lying about like it's almost well tra Only well trained climbers can get to the top and less than six days, no man people are up and down that thing. Someone has done it in less than seven hours. Yeah, just not to say like
everyone can do that. Obviously that's an extreme thing, but like six days is it's not like it doesn't it's not like impossible to do in less than six days.
And you're like you're doing cue declamation right, like when you're doing that six seven to ten days whatever you're doing, like you're you're taking time to acclimate to different altitudes. Yeah, it, I know, like I have a I don't know why
this one upsets me so much. I think having done some walking up mountains, like if your guide says, noah, fuck it, I'm not going that's dumb, you're like, don't go, because that same guide is going to be on a search and rescue team finding your dumb ass and like risking their life to try and help you, and that that's not okay.
Yeah, he's being really reckless here. And I've been reckless doing a mountain climb before that was ill advised, but not with twenty six people I was responsible for. You know, Like again it's about like who you in danger and like yeah, and I shouldn't have done the climb that I did, but it was a it's it.
Yeah, it's like this.
Yeah, it's it's this claiming that, like what you're doing is somehow like impossible. No one thought we could do it.
It's like no, man, like, people have done much more impressive things on Kilimanjaro than what you did routing it, not in like oh I'm just a gryfto or I just wanted to see if I could do it even or I wanted to do something odd, but being like, oh, I did it for everyone so everyone could see what they're capable of, Like, no you didn't.
Yeah, I'm glad no one died this time, but that may be evidence of the fact that, like, Kilimanjaro is a mountain that you can get away with that on as opposed to Everest.
Yeah, yes, yeah, someone would die or like K two whatever. Oh yeah, so send send him up K two. That's a challenge for me to shirt listen. Yeah, yeah, if you think you're.
Hard from two thousand, actually you know, first off, James, you know who is hard?
People who buy the products from these Yeah, because we've got dick pills. That's right, we do have dick pills. God willing you know, Uh, gotcha we'll get more dick pills. Yeah, so hopefully.
Yeah, grab some dick pills, grab some Trucker amphetamines and uh you know, grab on the gas station, create and mix them all together. See what happens.
Yeah, you know, run up about That's how they did it in six hours man.
Yeah, you know how. You know how weightlifters talk about muscle confusion. Confuse all of your organs.
You know what.
Just take every pill in the gas station and see what it does to you.
That's the key. You have some road records for sure, you sure will highest hot rate by you.
So from twenty fourteen on, Whim's fame picked up by leaps and bounds, Inner Fire became a popular lifestyle wellness brand for celebrities interested in pushing the extremes of human capacity. Harrison Ford ragged about taking his classes on a live talk show appearance, and he was far from the A lot of celebrities are into Wim Hoff breathing. I've done his stuff. Wim was a regular guest on the Tim
Ferris Show. That's one of the big things that made him huge, Tim Ferriss is the four hour work week and the four hour body. He does all of these like hacking, like body hacking and productivity hacking.
Is he the bulletproof coffee guy. No, no, No, that's a different guy. That's it. But I think that guy's been on Tim Ferris's show. Okay. Yeah.
And one of the claims that Wim made on Tim show was that he could speak ten languages fluently, which is an impress I've known some people who are that kind of polyglot. I've had some fixers who were that kind of polyglot, you know, vict.
Victor Boot, famous multiple language guys.
Maya, my Arabic teacher, learned Mandarin over the course of a year. Is like a ida hobby, like the way some people get into like basketball or something. Yeah, because he's a language genius. You know, some people are like that.
So that's an enviable skill.
It is a very It's the most enviable skill in my opinion. And I can't say that Wim can't do this. I don't know if Wim can speak ten languages fluently. I do know that Wim stretches the truth about a lot, and he's probably stretching the truth about this. But because Tim Ferriss is also one fan describes him as a language hacker. He asks whim, how did you learn ten languages? And Whim answers, just be open and love to learn,
and that's it. I had no real teachers, you know, people in the street, and sometimes I had to look for a teacher, like a Japanese teacher here in Amsterdam and a Hindu teacher. So yeah, I was just interested. If you are interested in life and you get to know and you never stop learning because you love it.
I don't think he speaks English fluently. Yeah, that's that's not a statement. Yeah.
I think he meant Hindi and not Gendu.
I was wondering what was going on there.
Yeah, so anyway, but that's understandable, right if he's like, if he's not his language, English isn't perfect, maybe he might mess that up. So appearances with Joe Rogan and other extreme sports affiliated media personalities followed, and WiM's portfolio of braggadocio expanded too. Kilimanjaro was always one of his chief claims to fame, but he soon added the claim that he had broken twenty six world records. This is
again untrue. He currently holds one Guinness World record for that half marathon, but it is easily Whim's most boring lie because there's not even a fun story here.
He's just full of shit. But papers including like that's he's done an enemer in a while, buddy, Yeah, yeah, he needs to get to get a shit out that'll clean the truth up here.
But like a lot I found, like Rolling Stone and Guardian articles, all sorts of articles that will just repeat the twenty six world records thing. Sometimes they hedge their bets, being like he claims to have won this, but rarely do they actually dig into the fact that like, no, we didn't.
He just didn't. He just didn't do this. Yeah.
Now, many major outlets have often been willing to lend credence to Whim's claims. By far, the greatest ally he's had as a grifter are the podcasts of guys like Joe Rogan. Probably my favorite example of this is quite
mild by comparison, but I found it funny. And one talk with Rogan, he was making his usual bold claims of having gained control of his immune system, and Joe asked, you're able to deal with malaria, and Wim responded, yes, he was, and further, he would be willing to get infected with malaria for.
Science to prove his resilience. And all I gotta say is, please,
let's do this. Yeah, whim get the number one killer of human beings across the the AONs of time that we've existed and infect yourself as a bit Jesus, as someone who's had fact you do not want to do that as a bit or not that will It's again, it's like fucking with uh, like with Mount Everest, Like you just don't want to do that, right, Yeah, you can fuck around with like you know, when they're doing these studies, they'll inject them with a little bit of poison, right,
that be a mild flu. You don't fuck around with malaria, like with malaria pills, like with the medicine that you take to avoid getting it has pretty serious sight effects. Yes, it does that stuff. I have seen some sunburns. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, where did Rogan plug that one from?
You?
Guys like, oh yeah, I can control my immune system. And he's just like, yeah, you want to do malaria. You want to take some malaria with me? So God, the good that would do to the world if we could get both of those men into a malaria challenge. Both get them to take it.
No, man, if you really want to d MT's pussy ship, if you really want to like learn some stuff about yourself, bro, you got to take malaria homes like that's how you fucking learn you're tough.
Really fucking hated that.
And the listeners don't get the horrifying visual of you that coming from your face.
It's just yeah, oh it's beautiful ruining. Okay, So yeah, you've ruined malaria, Robert. Yeah, you, Hilaria is gonna get canceled now. Yeah, chick and Gunya is right there wanting to take it spot the whole time.
Mm hmmmm.
I was going to go with the sleeping sickness. Yeah, so like that.
Much of Whim's success with shoddy journalists and podcast hosts lies in the low level of scientific literacy in this country and his skill at pulling out technobabble that would make a star trek writer blush. One of Whim's favorite claims is that his hyperventilation techniques allow someone to reach levels of oxygen saturation above one hundred percent in their blood.
Now, jam, so neither of us are doctors here, but can you pick out where the scientific irregularity might be there. Yeah, I think it's a it's run around in the no of a PERCENTAGEES is a thing. Yeah, I think.
I think in this next session we should have James read the part of whim.
You're right, You're right, James.
We're going to read a transcript from that October twenty sixteen interview on the Joe Rogan podcast where he makes this claim and Joe questions him, I'm gonna.
Be Joe Rogan. Okay, Oh I love that for you.
Okay, and you'll you'll be whim all right, So Sophie's gonna Sophie's gonna send them.
I gonna do my Dutch accent. Yeah, do your dut no, be real offensive with it. Yeah yeah, I'll do my offensive Joe Rogan accent. Yeah, I'll just say, what does it do? It's called from a chimney. People who don't understand the Dutch tradition of shwata pete uh not understand that joke.
Here we go, here's me as Joe Rogan, but there is nothing more than one hundred percent. They had a level that they thought was one hundred percent, and then they said nobody had reached a higher level than this, So it must be what one hundred percent saturation looks like.
Yeah exactly. It's not that you got more than one hundred percent saturation, it's that you achieved higher levels of saturation than they thought possible. Yeah exactly. They did it with a laser on the chest and then they were able to measure the mitochondria oxygen tension. They're able to receive more oxygen. That's a great finding. It shows we can have more oxygen inside. Suddenly we're able to get
into the cell and influence the energy production. If it is anaerobic, it is like two molecules able to produce. When it becomes aerobic, then it's thirty eight molecules they can produce. What happens What happens with a cell that is deprived for forty eight hours of thirty five percent less oxygen, It becomes cancerous? As simple as that. Have you ever worked more cancer patients? I want to, But it's very complicated. Thank god for that.
Now.
I gotta tell you, none of that means anything. That's bullshit. Yeah, it is not fucking That is not science. They have talked to medical experts, They have talked to doctors for and Scott Carney had to try to get this like translated.
It's nonsense.
Those are two people using words that they think means something that don't mean what they think they mean. But they they've properly learned how to pronounce them and are just using them in ways that don't actually.
Make well and it's pretty just writing.
Yes, it's inconceivable and nonsensical.
Well, Joe and and Joe is even a little worse there because he recognizes as soon as Whim makes his first set of claims that they've achieved, he says, like, we had oxygen saturation of one hundred three percent. Joe knows that's impossible, so he's like, you meant this right, and then Whim like just goes off on a limb using technobabble that like again does not is not accurate. This is not what is happening, is not what happens
with people who do his breathing techniques. But yeah, it does show kind of the degree of I would say, like collusion that Rogan has to try to protect his guests.
Yeah, he's trying to. It's a narrative being like, no, we have to make this credible, Like Steer in this direction. Yeah, and office is resolutely sticking to his absolute bullshit, fucking nonsense. Yeah, absolutely not being made credible.
Whim's dedication to this bullshit has caused consternation to some of the honest researchers who studied his techniques for years because they were impressed with some of the benefits that those techniques.
Might have had.
Scott Carney quotes Brian mackenzie, a breathwork expert who worked with Whim for years before being turned off by his pseudo scientific claims. McKenzie says that, in his opinion, no person at enter Fire has a meaningful grasp of the physiology behind their techniques. Woodo van markin Liechtenbelt, a professor of health at must Strict University, was studied off terms his scientific vocabulary galimattius, a rare word for nonsense.
Quote.
He mixes in a nonsensical way scientific terms as irrefutable evidence.
That's literally what I just said it okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Wooder just uses a fancier word. Yeah, Sophie's been sided.
Literally what I just said. I'm a professor of absolutely nothing.
You're well, that's right, that's right now. Wooder wrote that article in the Journal of Temperature that I quoted from earlier, and he has explained scientifically how some of Whim's most apparently impressive accomplishments are less than what they seem. A good example is his famous ability to remain submerged in
ice water for significant periods of time without shivering. Wooder notes that upon exiting the ice he does shiver like anyone else, and that while he has adapted to the cold to a degree most of us would find impressive, many other people have shown shown similar capacity without following his methods quote. The conclusion must be that nothing miraculous occurred. Although a non shivering thermogenesis of forty percent is considered
as high, it is not that extreme. I think wim Hoff withstands the cold in the ice cubes through a combination of several factors, an increased heat production, non shivering thermogenesis, brown fat activation, contraction, respiratory muscles efficiently increasing body tissue insulation fasoconstriction, thereby reducing heat loss and conserving the body core heat content. And finally, perhaps not unimportantly, he used his well trained mental ability to endure the cold, change
of mindset as he calls it. As soon as he steps out of the ice, he starts shivering just as everyone else, due to the redistribution of the cool blood from his limbs to the body core, also known as the after drop effect. Now, one of the things we will note is that there is evidence in some of these studies that the people who train with Whims show benefits beyond those normally associated with g tamo breathing. Those benefits, though, are in line with the fact that he is very
good at motivating people. He is a good teacher in his ability to make people excited and feel both comfortable and safe and good about themselves so that they will explore pushing the limits of their bodies beyond what they might normally do. And that is to the extent that there's anything extra going on with Whim's training, it's that he's really good at making people feel comfortable experimenting and
taking risks they might not otherwise take. And on the level of that where it doesn't go badly, it has a pretty profound impact on people. Right when you are convinced to try something you didn't think you can do that is difficult and uncomfortable and a little scary and then you succeed, you feel great, Yes, right, super empowering. It's very empowering when you deal it with a group
of people. You can become very close to those people, right, and if there's someone who leads you through it, like that person can become a guru.
Right.
It can engender and almost religious mania. This is why a lot of we talk about like all these different kind of cults and stuff that have they'll get people in a group and have them like yelling and and insulting and attacking each other, or they'll all focus on like abusing one person, which is a lot less healthy
than kind of the way whim does it. But the goal is the same, right to have an intense, extreme experience that pushes people beyond some limit they had set for themselves, and that can cause them to have a degree of like almost religious faith in the person who led them through it. Right, it's guru syndrome, you know.
Yeah, yeah, you see anal kinds of things, and it's why it can be so empowering. Like it's why we run like outward bound programs for people with disabilities or people with injuries, Like I've worked on some of those, and it's one of the coolest things to do. If you've you don't before you turn into a total piece of shit.
Yeah, and that's the problem with whim right, because you know, a lot of aspects of what he's doing are certainly healthier than I don't know, the kinds of like training that some of these like weird drug abuse cults and stuff would do, where they'd have everyone shouting at each other in a circle.
Sure, a lot less.
Toxic than that, But there is an alleged body count to the way Hoff's training works. Before we get to that, we are building to that. There are a couple of other lies I want to bust of. His first one involves the claim sometimes made that he summitted or at least got close to summoning Mount Everest in shorts. Yeah, I forgot about that. Yeah, you'll hear that. Sometimes he aborted his attempt at ever of Everest slightly past base camp because he got frostbite. Because again, you tried to
do the shit he's done other places. You can't fuck around with Everest. It's Mount Everest. It kills you, It kills people all the time. It doesn't give a fuck. The other is his claim that he holds the world record for longest swim underneath an ice flow without breathing equipment. Here is a segment of his response to a twenty twenty two Guardian interview that gives you an idea of how that one tends to sound. There was a moment swimming under the ice when I found myself. I lost
my way because my corny is froze underwater. I had no goggles on, just shorts holding my breath. I was under a meter thick layer of ice in Finland, lost and blind, but I never felt like I was drowning, no panic or pain. I felt at peace and in control. That experience brought me so much, and the end of safety diver brought me back by pulling me by the ankles to the exit hole, which I'd passed long ago. I did a huge gasp per air when I came up. In that moment, I conquered the fear of death. Now
I'm not afraid of dying. I'm afraid not to live.
Fucking me.
Of course, First off, he didn't need to do that. Second, like every other fantastic claim, Whim makes, his recollections here do not jive with the record, and it's here that I'm going to return to Scott Carney's Miaculpa rite up. All was not as it seemed that day. In the twenty eleven book Becoming the Ice Man, Haff wrote that he almost died on his first attempt under the ice. On that try, he ignored his own safety protocols and tried to sprint twice the planned distance without telling anyone
on the crew. Afterwards, Hoff claims his eyes froze under the water and he lost his way, and that he was lucky a rescue diver found him after he blacked out and brought him to the surface. His brother, Marcel, who was standing on the ice above him that day, remembers it differently. He took it too far and blacked out, Marcel says. He recalls Hoff performing his staple breathing exercise of his method, deliberately hyperventilating just before his underwater swim.
According to Marcel, it's just as likely that Haff experienced shallow water blackout as his failure was to frozen eyeballs. There's no reason it couldn't have been both.
Yeah, I mean, I like, I don't know if this is a spoiler, but like hyperventilating will cause you to have shallow water blackout and so well sprinting underwater. Yeah, which is why you shouldn't do it. Yeah, absolutely, do not do this shit. Yeah.
Be again, the water a lot like Mount Everest, deserves your respect.
Yeah, where supposed to be there. Yeah, we are particularly not supposed to be underneath ice sheets. It's very alien to us. You must be extremely careful. Yeah. I've watched Abatatu wave the water and I understand that. I understand a lot more now, but yeah, you are not welcome. Well, the water is a lovely place and people should go underneath it, but like, don't be pushing your limits and hyperventilating. I take a course from some.
Care take training. Go with a group, have rescue equipment available, lots of safe ways to be in the water, ways to mitigate risk, you know, in the water.
Yeah.
Yes, if he hadn't had not just a buddy, a whole team of people with significant equipment like a diver in gear underneath ready right Yeah yeah, and he's still very nearly died. Yeah, this is why people.
I don't know if he took a rope, but like people traditionally free diving for recors like rope dive down. Yeah, and then they have safety divers at every height to accompany them in case they prop out. But because he goes twice the fucking distance, I don't know when he did that or not, Like, yeah, you will die. Yeah.
So this and numerous videos of him enduring ice water baths, spending time fully submerged in ice water, all that kind of shit. This is all critical to the wim Hoff legend and also the deadliest part of it. And introduce this segment. I'm going to quote from an article by Outside Online August tenth, twenty twenty two. A southern California lawyer named Rafael Metzger was at home was at his home in Long Beach with his seventeen year old daughter,
Madeline Rose Metzger. After a busy afternoon a phone calls and work, Rafaele left his home office to start dinner. He searched the house for Madeline, eventually walking to the backyard to see if she was taking a dip in the family's swimming pool. He saw her laying face down in the water, motionless. Rafael attempted CPR, but to no avail. Paramedics later arrived at the house and also tried to
resuscitate her, but she was gone. Two days after the accident, a medical examiner from the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office told Rafael that Madeleine had died of accidental drowning. Her toxicology tests were clean, they said, and there was no sign of physical abnormality like a heart arrhythmia. Madeleine put on her bathing suit, went to the pool to cool off and to reduce anxiety following an argument with Tammy Metzger,
and she did whim hoff breathing. The suit states she became hypoxic and thereupon drowned in the shallow water, despite being an excellent swimmer. The lawsuit from the Metzger family accuses Tammy and Hoff of negligence in Madeleine's death. It also Levy's charges of fraudulent concealment, unfair business practices, and false advertisement against Hoff and Inner Fire. Defendants were either aware of or culpably indifferent too unnecessary risks of injury.
Rafael Metzger is seeking sixty seven million dollars in damages and also asking courts to require Hoff to post warnings on his website and promotional materials that the method is dangerous and should never be done in water due to the risk of drowning and death. We were shocked to hear that such a young girl round and in ham Hoff told outside shocked by the allegations, which don't make any sense to us.
I mean, yeah, it's gonna it's gonna kill you. It's yeah, it's somewhat remarkable that I know he has a body count. I guess it's very hard to tell how many people have died hyperventilating in water, right, like, yeah, yeah, it died swimming and free diving often.
Yeah, And it's hard to know the exact potential body count. I think there are something like fourteen or fifteen people alleged in lawsuits against Hoff's organization. Currently you'll hear numbers between like twelve and fifteen. We're gonna read one more story, but first, you know what never gets anyone killed, James.
I don't think we can safely say that, well it dick pills again, because they've got a they've got a body count.
I mean, look, and you call it living if you don't have dick pills, that's.
A good question, you know, you got to sometimes it's better to have lived the days that you did have.
Yeah, yeah, which is why again, go to the nearest truck stop, buy every pill they have and just mix them with like some ever clear and some some some high sea.
You know.
See what happens to see. Yeah, you'll you'll learn a lesson about yourself or someone else will. Yes, and someone will learn a lesson one hope, Yeah learned. Yeah, you'll contribute to humanity's knowledge.
Here's ads. We're back.
So I'm going to read one other story of an alleged whim Hoff training victim. And this is from US Scott Carney's article on Labor Day. In twenty nineteen, Andrew Encinas, a twenty seven year old social media entrepreneur, shuttled back and forth between his new office to set up his desk with a fleet of new computer monitors and the
party at his brother's house in Anaheim Hills, California. Like his business Gary Vaynerchuk in Cinas thrived on the challenge of starting a new business and constantly looked for ways to optimize his performance. His favorite technique for dealing with stress was a breathwork in ice immersion protocol called the whim Hoff method. Around six point thirty in the evening, and Sinus made his last trip back from the office. His brother Adam invited him in for ice cream in
a football game on TV. Sure, he said, but first I want to do my whim Hoff in the pool. He asked to borrow a pair of swim trunks. This wasn't unusual. Over the years in Scenus had learned that the wim Hoff method had an almost miraculous calming effect on his nervous system. He watched videos of Hoff swimming under Arctic sea ice and teaching influential social media stars to hyperventilate to the point of passing out in SNAs. Preferred to practice alone and often did four or five
rounds of breathing in a single day. Video of Andrew doing the breath work in the water a few months earlier focused on the peaceful expression on his face. He texted his friends that the method works really well in the cold. A few minutes after Andrew went in the pool, Adam started to wonder when he would finish up and rejoin the family. Then, according to the coroner's port report filled in Los Angeles County, at the party, noticed Andrew appeared to be sleeping in the shallow end of the pool.
Adam ran outside to find his brother in a meditative position underwater, with his hands clasped in front of his chest and unresponsive. Adam dragged Andrew out of the water and performed CPR to get his heart beating again, but when we got to the hospital there was no brain activity. He was already a goner, says Adam and Cinas. So don't do this stuff, Yeah, do not do folks, be
very careful. Don't do it in anywhere near water. If you're going to experience with like these TUMO breathing techniques, do them nowhere near water and put a lot of time in between doing them and getting in the water.
Yeah, yeah, don't even do them, like if you said, if you scuba dive, right, like, you shouldn't be doing any of this within the COVID days of scuba diving.
No care, take care. So Wim does warn on his site and in videos these two techniques, the breathing in the cold water immersion, which make up the majority of his teachings, should never be combined. But he also shows off video of himself submerged in water or swimming constantly, and both water and g Tomo breathing are key components of his stick. This is a big part of why reputable scientists and quasi reputable reporters like Scott have backed away.
I don't have a lot of respect for Carney after the role he played granting credibility to Hoff, but I will note that his article on the man is about as complete a buddle of him as you are going to find, and it does a good job of showing how Hoff's claims that Interfier warns students away from mixing techniques together do not hold well water. And I'm going to quote from that article again. Hoff's website and YouTube videos do in fact include prominent warnings against performing the
breathing method and water. One typical example, a YouTube video that gives Hoff's basic breeding instructions and has sixty six million views, includes this warning in its description exclamation point exclamation point. Don't do the breathing exercises in a swimming pool before going underwater, beneath the shower, or piloting any vehicle. Always practice sitting or lying down in a safe environment.
And Hamhoff, Wimhoff's son and the CEO of Interfire, is adamant over email well wim Hoff doesn't teach hyperventilation techniques. Within the wim Hoff method, we never teach people to do our specific breathing exercises before submerging in water. We are very careful and protective in teaching people the wim Hoff methods so they practice in a safe environment now, even in places where warnings exist, Hoff simultaneously teaches a
veritable recipe for blacking out in water. In numerous instances, he conflates water work and breathwork and abandons safety protocols that he explicitly states are necessary. According to a wim Hoff Method instructor, the training center that Intererfire operates in Poland lacks even basic safety gear like AEDs in case someone's heart stops. During his intensive workshops, the disconnect between what the Hoff organization says and its official capacity and
the actual teachings Hoffs gives can be jarring. Take, for instance, the eighth week of his ninety nine dollars class ten week video course. After almost two months of training and breathwork and cold exposure, which work up from very mild practices to ever more intense variations, wim Hoff stands in front of an icy waterfall, alongside an eager, shirtless student and gives some simple instructions. Go into the water, he says in the video, keep go on with the breathing,
keep on being focused. Then you sit, then you immersed focused, and you stay in the water. Hoff gives similar sets of instructions various ways three times over the course of the lesson, ultimately hyperventilating in his own characteristic way and then dunking his own head under the water and staying for about a minute. A strange disclaimer in the comet section next to the video appears to contradict what Hoff
is doing on screen. It reads the guy in the video was guided by whim to learn to deal with the cold. He's not doing the breathing retention and then putting his head under the water. At the very least, the juxtaposition between the written warning and Hoff's own words is confusing. At worst, it's a dramatic acknowledgment of the sort of negligence that could get someone killed. And that's the whim Hoff story. James magnificent. Yeah, wonderful stuff. Yeah, can'd be doing this? Yeah?
Yeah, good times that it's just so like I get, it's such a sad like condemnation of this whole industry, Like here's a guy I will teach you how to breathe and people have paid for that, and sadly people have died. Yeah, it does. It's very calming. I like to free dive. It is the closest. Yeah, I just do a bit of wim Hoffing and then off like that. It's the closest human beings going to get to flying, I think, But no, I do not wim hoff It is bad if it's like a joke. It's a standing joke.
If you go free diving with someone new for the first time, like go out there and you still go it just wants a dude look at you, like like what if I got myself in for?
You know?
So, James, I wanted to end by reading a couple of little things I found in this listicle about wim Hoffs, because there's some fun ones in here.
Wait.
Number one is the claim that wim learned to control his heart rate in university. Quote and it wasn't even part of his curriculum. Here's a quote from this very reputable article, James. When the Reddit user futbucker twenty four four.
Asked whim.
Asked Whim when he learned to control his heart rate. Whim replied, in university by measurement. Can you picture it? When most students were.
Desperately trying to make their way through an economics textbook or recover from a grueling hangover, Wim was spending his days learning to control his heart rate. Very impressive.
Fut futbucker or butt fut bucker, Yeah bucker, thank you, thank you for that.
Question.
Number thirteen is Wim doesn't need psychedelics because he can trigger his own dmd gland. In Whim's ama, he was asked, Hi, Wim, do you or have you ever used any kind of drug to find deeper consciousness in order to control your autonomic nervous system. His response, No, not at all. I can trigger my own DMT or hormone driven from the pineal gland. I know how to get there and can do that all the time. You have better control over the hormonal system. You don't need drugs to be drugged
out by yourself in a natural way. Fuck me, Whim, I will take d MT with you, and I guarantee it will fuck you up in a way that you cannot fuck yourself up.
I will promise you that, my friend, Well, where do you think the DMT comes from? But you go to obviously from the gland. That's right, That's how I get it, from the gland of a Dutchman. Yeah, get kill a Dutchman instead. Much more ethical than a giraffe. There's plenty a Dutchman. Yep, they're not a rare species. So yeah, no shortage. Had the harvested d MT from the d stands for Dutch, Yeah, yeah, M stands for man. I don't know what the stands for. Yeah, I do. I
hate the article. Author of that stupid article, John Brooks. I do want to read you his bio, even though it's a little bit of an aside. John Brooks is a stoicism teacher and crucially practitioner. His stoic meditations have accumulated thousands of listens, and he has created his own stoic training program from modern day Stoics. Well, it's one of the things about stow this is they really thrive on how many people download their podcast. Very stoic. Nothing
more stoic than noting your thousands of listeners. You're getting to add revenue.
God, and I've never seen stoic use more in a sentence three times.
Yeah, we got to get the seo up. It's another big element of stoicism.
It's one of those things like stoicism. You want to read like ancient Greek stoics perfectly fine. People who talk about being stoics one hundred percent of the time very frustrating human gests.
Yeah. Yeah, it's just like people who talk about reading infinite jest. Yes, cos. Yeah.
For people who will like call themselves utilitarians, like, oh.
Yeah, yeah, that's a bad end to you.
That is you are You are not talking about the actual attempt to determine the greatest good for the greatest number of people. You are trying to justify cheating on your girlfriend. Is that is what's going on in this story?
Yeah, and hopefully someone plays football with your head too as it did. Yeah, anyway, James, anything to plug well after that, Buddy, I not holding your breath underwater?
Yeah, don't hold your breath under water. Don't hyperventilate, you know, well, you can hold your breath underwater sometimes if you do it the right way.
Fast, sensible. Yeah, there's a Fena Feinae office, one Addie Office, one f Fi offer one free diving glasses. You can take them. Yeah, what else do I have to plug? Yes? I have a book already and you can find it by going to the library and saying this, dude, James stat has written a book. It's called The Popular Front of nineteen thirty six Popular Olympics. And they will order it for you and you will have to pay and yeah,
and it could happen here. You can hear. In a few weeks I will do a podcast which involves me talking about holding my breath underwater in a non fatal way. Yeah, and going to the Marshall Islands to do it. Yeah.
And you can find me when I eventually have my fist fight with whim half.
Yeah, in Mark Zuckerbug's garden. In Mark Zuckerberg's garden.
Yeah.
I bet on you, Robert, thank you. Yeah, we all are. I betting on malaria to be the real Yeah.
That might be if he gets infected. You know that might be me too.
Yeah.
I know.
I've seen how you deal with someone who's in the in the grips of gastro intestinal distress. Robert, I think you could. Yeah, Robert and I have had some times. You should have bought that second charm James, Yeah, I should have done, man. I didn't have enough meet your rights on me that day as a result. Yeah, that was funny. Are not familiar. Robert and I went on a reporting trip to Thailand to cover the civil war.
After after like two weeks, I was like, you know what, I'm going to get us a nice night at a very nice hotel. I'm already it in Bangkok. You know, we'll have like a little bit of luxury on our way out. James gets sick on the way in and just hurls in the park warking lot of one of the nicest hotels, and Banker and you.
Both, you both were separately messaging me about.
It, and it was so funny. It was like chances like, I don't think I'm gonna diet. Robert's like, he fucking did it. He made it. It was the nicest hotel. I'm so proud of him.
It was beautiful.
An analogy in waiting for them to give us our roof, it was so funny. I got it. I'll give it up to them.
You know, the Lamridian staff must have seen some ship because they didn't not.
And then I think the best part of this was that Robbert had thought we got a sweet with two rooms in fact, in fact, it was one big room with a frosted glass bathroom. So you got to watch my shadow. That's Harmon had a good time. Yeah. Shout out to the old lady who gave me a shopping bag because I filled up all the vomit bags on the flight. Yeah right, Yeah. Things we do for journalism, The things we do for journalism anyway, like and subscribe. Yeah, you can go to cooler Zone Media to get this
without ads. You can buy my book After the Revolution. It's wherever books are, or you can get it free at a library, or you can find it free at atrbook dot com.
Whatever. Live your life, Motherfuckers.
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