I just started to hit a wall about the time I was 55. I'm 61 now. I didn't feel good. I had gone to the doctor, had a full workup, and for the very first time in my life, the doctor told me I was obese. And I was 207 pounds on my 5'10 frame between 170 and 175 now. And so I was desperate to find some sort of a way out.
I had a lot of visceral fat commissioned officer of the White House in that Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor role, and I had access to the president's medical unit and his doctors. And they gave me the full-blown workup. I had an alarmed thyroid and I had a bunch of other things that were wrong with me. One night I'm in our home in DC. I'm looking online, just like, I don't know what levers to reach for, and I stumble across Dr. Mindy Phelps.
And so I was fascinated with her presentation on fasting and this idea of autophagy, where your body shifts from burning fat, burning sugar to burning fat. I liked it from the weight loss perspective. But as I learned more about it, it's like taking acinescent cells. Cells that live too long, drive inflammation, age you prematurely, everything you were dealing with. Got into intermittent fasting and some multi-day fasts.
And I've heard it said many times, uh probably at least six or seven times by different doctors that if you were to do a water fast for five days once a year, your probability of getting cancer goes down by about 80%, 90%. Fasting once a year reduces cancer over 90%. I overused fasting initially. I was fasting like, dang, this is this is working good. So I went from 207 down to 157 in seven months. 157's too small. I was 157 pounds when I was 18.
I stopped fasting as much, was more methodical, tried to do the what they call the 522, five days of intermittent fasting, one day of feasting, one day of fasting, 24-hour fast.
When you st you create a pathway called M to the is as important as the fast. Wait till you hear this story. Admiral Doug Fears. Yeah, big military guy in the Coast Guard. Yeah, the a rear admiral, as it's called, ran some big teams. 40 years retired now. Wait till you hear what he's doing now. But I want you to learn from this story because this guy, obviously an incredible leader in our country, but took that leadership, took a hold of his life, and it changed his life.
And again, not done there, but you're gonna have to stay tuned. But I'm gonna introduce you to Admiral Doug Fears, now a good friend of mine. Yeah, thank you, Dan. It's a great pleasure to be with you today. Yeah, absolutely. Uh I just I so want you to tell your story. Uh, you know, obviously you came from quite the discipline, 40 years, uh rear admiral in the Coast Guard and um running some big teams. I was there. Do you remember when I was there? I got to visit it, and I was amazed.
I saw these massive screens. Y'all, until you see it, it's amazing. In like live, you see, like, you know, them coming on boats, like drug boats, right? I mean, I'm watching this like happen, and like y'all are looking at everything that's going on coming in. That's what you were responsible for, right? Yeah.
Yeah, kind of tell that a little bit. So that was my last assignment. I I so I started, uh I enlisted in the Coast Guard back in 1982 and didn't plan on staying in, and and uh and I went to sea and I just fell in love with going to sea.
Yeah.
And so eight ships later, and uh somewhere between 11 and 12 years of sea time, um, you know, I just I fell in love with doing what I did. Uh most of what we did uh from a shipboard perspective was counter-narcotics and counter-transnational criminal organization activities.
Uh and then my final active duty assignment, when we met and you came to visit in Key West, uh, I was running the Joint Interagency Task Force South, uh, which is the nation's um joint task force that oversees all the counter-narcotics activity, principally in the Western.
I mean, everything from the southern border, which I would argue is probably the biggest drug entry. Am I right on that?
Well, uh we interdict a lot at sea. Um the idea is defense and depth, and so you try to get it as close to the source as you possibly can. Uh and so a lot of our activities focus around cocaine interdiction, uh, even though we were agnostic to what we interdicted. But cocaine is is um grown and processed in the Andean region of South America. So we know there's only five, I think five countries in the Andean region that that are producers.
And so you can focus on those areas and provide a layered defense in concert with our partners and allies uh to interdict this stuff at sea as close to the source as possible.
I I was amazed, I guess it's satellite stuff, but we were looking at actual live footage of satellites, and there'd be like certain boats coming in, and y'all were looking at every boat. I mean, everything that was going on. That's interesting because like lately in the news, right? I mean, you know, we're just like nailing some of these boats. That's odd, like you don't do that anymore, but you would be.
I don't do that anymore. So what changed is uh this administration uh designated uh transnational criminal organizations as uh terrorist organizations. And so what what changes uh from a uh an enforcement perspective is before they were designated terrorist organizations, we we would try to interdict them and then you bring them ashore to prosecute them. And so very complex uh legal system.
When you're operating with other countries, uh some countries will turn people over to us, other countries won't. Um, but we would try to get some sort of a prosecutorial legal end game, right? And so uh when you designate them terrorist organizations, it's it's now we can now we can just nail them. You can just destroy the target.
Yeah. I mean, you know, I I think you know, some of the people say, Oh my gosh, well, how do we know that they're guilty? I mean, if you're nailing one, you know what they got in that boat, right? I mean, yeah.
It's abundantly clear when you run it, particularly when you're running cocaine, most of the non-commercial conveyances are what we call GoFasts. And GoFasts are boats that are probably 40, 45 feet long, and they're wide open, and half of the boat is filled with cocaine bales, and the other half of the boat is filled with gasoline. So it it's like you don't stumble across one of these and go, I wonder what these guys are in there.
You know, you know, it was one of the things I saw with these boats that uh like they're kind of underwater, like uh almost like not a submarine, but partial.
I mean, they're gonna call them uh self-propelled semi-submersibles. Yeah, yeah. We're gonna hit those all day long. And you might, they're they're big. You know, the interesting thing to me with with these is that uh they're built in the mangroves of countries like Colombia, Ecuador, uh, and and places like that. But they bring all these raw materials into the into the jungle and they build these things in the middle of nowhere. Uh and then they fill them up and they set sail.
And um, you know, I'm I'm a couple years removed from all that, but uh my recollection is that you'd get anywhere from four to six metric tons of cocaine. Yeah. Uh in one of those self-propelled.
Yeah, it's I mean you you retired in 22, as I recall, because I was there for your retirement. Uh that's how I I know the date. Yeah. Um but yeah, so not that far removed, but that's what he did. I mean, this was the guy. I mean, you protected our country, man. I mean, honestly, I I was amazed when I was there. Uh I felt proud to be an American. Honestly, when I saw what we were doing to protect our southern border, I was dang proud.
Yeah. Well, and and you happened, your your timing was serendipitous because when you and Marilee came down to visit, uh, we were having an open house so that our families could come to work and see what we do. Because when you're in a classified facility, you can't bring people in there. Yeah, right. I mean, I felt like I was behind the scenes. I was, yeah. So we had to make it unclassified uh so that we could parade people through the command. Uh yeah. Uh but your timing was impeccable.
Yeah, it was great. I I mean, honestly, I had the technology, I was amazed. I mean, yeah, it was like it reminded me like uh of like watching my kids play video games. Like it's like, but massive scale. It's like, wow, this is going on and already. I did, I felt more protected. So yeah, now with the the change making it terrorist, uh, you know, that I guess it got easier, right? At least to take some action. We'll see. We'll see how all this works out. But that's great.
But uh, anyways, okay, yeah. So now we know a little bit about what you do, and I I can imagine how stressful that job is. Uh, you know, you're working directly with the White House, you're working with, you know, big government stuff. So uh you got a little unhealthy, which is gonna bring us into our conversation. But uh tell us a little bit about that journey. Yeah. So um, and and also part of that is how you ended up finding me through Benazati, one of my students, et cetera, et cetera.
But yeah.
So um that's like boiling a frog, right? The old metaphor of boiling a frog. It happens so slowly that you don't really realize what's happening to you. And I've been asked before how I manage stress when I was younger. And the short version is I didn't do a very good job of it. I did I just didn't adhere to the principles of stress management.
Um, and you get to the point when you're not eating right, when you're not sleeping right, when you're under a lot of stress, when you're working long hours and you're really not getting a break. Um, I just started to hit a wall. Uh probably about the time I was 55. I'm 61 now. Um, and I just like I didn't feel good. And I I had gone to the doctor, uh, had a full workup, uh, and for the very first time in my life, the doctor told me I was obese. And I was 207 pounds on my five foot 10 frame.
Um, I'm between 170 and 175 now. And so I I was desperate to like find some sort of a way out.
I think there's a funny part of that story that I recall. Um, because I sat at a dinner table with your wife, but you came home and you said, Can you believe the doctor told me I was obese? And your wife kind of was like, Well, is that true?
Well, she she was uh like a good spouse. She's like, You don't really look like you're obese. Okay. Right? But yeah, I had a lot of visceral fat, I think, in particular. But, you know, I I was coming home at 10, 11, 12 o'clock at night when I was working at the White House. If I came home at all, there were nights that I slept on my couch. Uh, and I generally, my, my decision point on whether to go home to sleep was typically if I was done with my work by 1 a.m.
And if I wasn't done with my work by 1 a.m., I just sleep on the couch. So, uh, because then I was back up the next morning and and back at it. But I just like they're all these are all bad hygiene habits when it comes to health. And so I'm like, I I don't really know what to do. And I had access to, you know, I was I was uh commissioned officer of the White House uh in that Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor role.
Uh and I had access to the president's medical unit and his doctors and all the stuff. The best of the best. And they gave me the full-blown workup, and they're really, really good. They're talented doctors and and nurses uh that are there at the uh Walter Reed uh facility in DC. Um But as you know, they were treating symptoms. Like what's you know, I had an enlarged thyroid and I had a bunch of other things that were wrong with me. Um and and the result.
Typical American stuff, by the way.
I I'm not, you know, bringing it down by any means, minimizing it, but uh well, and so one night I'm I'm in our home in DC and uh I'm looking online, just like I don't know what levers to reach for, and I stumble across Dr. Mandy Pells, who's another one of your students. Um and so I was fascinated with her presentation on fasting and this idea of autophagy, right? Where you're where your body shifts from burning fat to burning uh or excuse me, burning sugar to burning fat.
Um and and I I liked it from the weight loss perspective. But as I learned more about it, it's like taking out some senescent cells.
Yeah, which are cells that live too long, drive inflammation, age you prematurely, everything you were dealing with. Yeah. That's right.
And so I had hip pain, I had low back pain, uh, I had brain fog, uh, a bunch of different circumstances. And so um I discovered over time, it took me a little while, uh, got into intermittent fasting and some multi-day fasts. And I've heard it said many times, uh probably at least six or seven times by different doctors that uh if you were to do a water fast for five days uh once a year, your probability of getting cancer goes down by about 80 percent, 90 percent.
Yeah, that was Thomas Seifried, um, one of the leading cancer doctors. Uh yeah, I'm an oncologist for 30-some years, and you know, realized uh that senescent cells become cancer cells, right? And fasting once a year uh reduces cancer over 90 percent your chance of getting cancer. Why? Because you're starving down, you're getting rid of, and that's the autophagy word, all these cells that potentially become cancer cells, right?
And I and I read, I've I've read at this point close to 150 books on cellular healing.
Okay, this is a Harvard grad. This dude learns like rapidly and fast. Yeah. So hence why he was one of the leaders in our country. But yeah, so you then you shifted all that power to like, I gotta save my life. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and it's it's uh it's fascinating because it's you know, as you begun I uh I only had a 10th grade biology class. And so to go back into this, uh, which was amazing to me, uh, to to just go, you can understand how your body works. You went uh Harvard, well, you weren't West Point. You were I went to the Coast Guard Academy. Yeah. And went to the Naval War College and also Harvard for uh my graduate degrees.
Yeah. But um, but I you know, like all that had to do with national security and public administration and and uh the functioning of government, you know, any of the service academies you're required to take. You get a Bachelor of Science degree, everybody does. Uh and so you've got to take a couple semesters of calculus and chemistry and physics and things like that. Uh and so it it's not that I'm uh unfamiliar with science, but it just wasn't my discipline.
You know, I wasn't training to do anything in the sciences.
Yeah, but you you had enough to g dig into the literature a bit, dig into some knowledge, you know. Like you said, you read 150 some books. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so what's interesting. You read my Beyond Fasting book. You're and by the way, we only had it out for a short period of time because we're relaunching it.
Yeah, how many times I've blown that book out to people.
And you know, because I was unhappy with it. And and I'm such a perfectionist, I took it off, and I had really unhappy people about that.
So you were one of the fortunate ones that you actually I started to tell people because I it is your book is the best book I've read on fasting.
And I've read it. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. I there was so much of it that I just wanted to do better.
So I would tell people, I'm like, you gotta read Beyond Fasting. And uh, another another good book on fasting was uh Dave Assery's book, Fast This Way. Uh and then of course Mindy's written a good book uh for fasting for women, uh Fast Like a Girl. Anyway, I would recommend your book to people. And the very first time somebody came back to me and go, it's not for sale. And like if I want a copy, it's used and it's $150 on Amazon.
Yeah. And so I started to poke you to go, you need to republish that thing. Yeah, yeah. We are actually fantastic. Yeah, working on that. But it's it's um, you know, this idea of being able to lose weight and I overused fasting initially. Um big mistake people make. Yeah. So I was I was fast and like, dang, this is this is working good. So I went from 207 down to 157 in probably seven months. Yeah. And 157's too small. I was 157 pounds when I when I was 18. Yeah, exactly.
And um, anyway, so you know, I I stopped fasting as much, was more meth methodical, tried to do the what what they call the five, two, two, you know, five days of intermittent fasting, one day of that's my principle. Yeah. That's right. Um, but one day of feasting, one day of fasting, 24-hour fast. Uh in fact, I did a 22-hour fast yesterday and uh ended up breaking it uh as I told you at Ruth Chris last night for the first time.
You might have gone to Harvard, but just so you know, five two doesn't add up to seven days.
Um, one four two one. Yeah. So that's right. Yeah. Um but it's it's this idea of uh fasting, as as you're acutely aware, getting into autophagy uh and then breaking your fast uh with enough protein to trigger mTOR. And so Feast famine. You're cycling.
Autophagy, you're breaking down all the bad. When you start feasting again, you create a pathway called MTO, yeah, you build new, which is the mTOR pathway, right? Yeah.
And I don't know, I've never known the proportions, uh, but in my mind, I've I've always thought, you know, 60 to 70 percent of the time, maybe autophagy, 30 to 40 percent of the time, maybe mTOR. Bodybuilders are an mTOR all the time.
All the time, which ages them prematurely. You don't want to be an mTOR all the time. That's a building pathway, an anabolic pathway. That's right. There's healing to it, but when you stay there, you actually start really, you can lead to cancer, you can lead to more inflammation, which bodybuilders do.
And so um the other the other challenge I had was um I had a lifting accident when we were moving back in 2020, and I limped for almost um a year, and my right hip just hurt. And I was listening to Banazzotti's podcast, and he interviewed Dr. John Lawrence. And John was, as you recall, he was the one that actually connected us both uh personally. But John had a clinic, uh has a clinic in Sarasota, yeah, and he used uh platelet-rich plasma.
And I had gone, I had gone to the tr uh traditional um orthopedic doc, and he said, I can take the pain away and you're gonna need a hip replacement at some point. Yeah. And so um I said, I I just I knew there was something more. And you know, this wasn't abundantly clear to me at the time, but when I first enlisted in the Coast Guard, I became an electronics technician. And so back then, you're dealing with vacuum tubes and migrating to transistors and resistors and diodes and capacitors.
We used to have to troubleshoot things down to the component level, replace the component, and then make the machine work again. And so this idea of troubleshooting down to the root cause had been trained into me. Yeah, exactly. And it's really no different in the human body. Yeah. And so um, you know, it's it's like a multivariable problem. Yes, symptoms present themselves differently depending on the circumstances. Anyway, I like this made sense to me.
And so when I went to see John, and and uh he's such a great guy, yeah. Um, he said to me, he's like he's he's checking out my hip with the ultrasound, and he's going, ooh, ah, ah. And I'm like, all right, Doc, can you help me? And uh I said, can you make me better? And he just smiled at me with that Laurent smile, and he just goes, That's what I do. Yeah. And so uh he and I've become really good friends too.
Um, but I've probably been to his clinic eight or nine times in Sarasota to advanced rejuvenation. But, you know, he got me into using exosomes and stem cells and doing other things. He does a lot of great work, you know. And and he essentially said, if you've still got tissue there in the joint, I can rebuild it. And so that's kind of the pathway we've been on. And then you find these other modalities that that are beneficial.
I've gotten into acupuncture, uh, gotten into less licensed massage therapy, and and it's really hard to find hard to find a really good licensed massage therapist. And I found one down in the lower keys. Uh I don't I don't know that I answered. Oh, you met her at the we had a reception one night at my my quarters down there. Uh she was out back with my chiropractor. Oh, right. I met her. Yeah, you're right.
Yeah. And so uh she was amazing, unable, able to unlock a lot of myofascial stuff uh that just made the functionality of my hips and the joints better. Yeah. Um, and then uh I still need you to give me a neck adjustment, by the way. Um but I can't do that anymore. But but the uh but the chiropractor I use down there was uh Dr. Paul Barrett, and he's so good, and he self-describes as a Palmer Gonstadter, uh, which which informs his technique.
Um and I just never found anybody that was effective at adjusting me the way that he was. And I, you know, I've been stationed all over the place, and I always try to find a new chiropractor, and you're like, this is kind of a letdown. And so it was good to go back to Paul and and be able to get treated by him. Same thing with LMT. Like it's really hard to find a good LMT that can unlock stuff for you. And the current guy I have is uh is up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland where I live.
Um he's out of New York City, he's blind. Uh but he's just like he wanted he wanted to find a profession that he could that he could, you know, not rely on his blindness to, you know, to uh be able to be uh an expert at what he's doing. So he gets in and feels everything and and he's able to help me quite a bit. Yeah. But it's but it's a multimodal maintenance thing.
So that was okay. So fasting really got you to take off the weight, right? And then you learned a lot of my diet variation principles, feast famine, right? And then you were in ketosis for a while. Learned even the rotate in and out of these diets. So talk about that because I want people to learn. So again, you were on uh a four-two-one, just to be so you were four days low carb, um, two days of fasting or feasting? Feasting. Okay, feasting, two feast days.
That meant high protein or maybe more meals that day. Could have been, you know, three meals a day as opposed to one or two, right? That you were on the four days. So those two days remind your body it's not starving, right? Very important. The feast is as important as the fast. And then you would do at least one day of one 24-hour fast where you wouldn't eat for 24 hours just water. That's right. Okay, yeah.
I mean, I I was also very successful, still am, you know, had one meal yesterday, probably on course for one meal today, but I also have days where I wake up, eat breakfast three meals a day, which you made the point earlier that a lot of people are abusing fasting. They're doing too much of it. They're not doing those feast days that remind the body it's not starving. They're not doing the feast days that put you in that m-TOR and build so you keep your muscle, your joints healthy, right?
So the feast is as important as the fast. So you did that. Now let's talk about what diets were successful, right? So, you know, you went into keto.
Yeah, I've I've used um I've used a lot of ketogenic, uh, uh ketogenic approach, low carb, right?
Yeah, in in keto, I I I'm always trying to teach in it, right? Because we have people out there that like, what is keto, right? I mean, a lot of my followers don't know. Keto is it is a low carb, typically under 50 grams a day of carbohydrates, which force your cells, and you heard Mindy say this, force your cells, instead of burning carbohydrates and sugar, to use fat. So you become a more efficient fat burner in ketosis, right? So you made that shift over.
And yeah. So and it's my understanding, uh, correct me if I'm wrong on the on the timeline, but it usually takes you a couple weeks to get fat adapted. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's true.
Uh the average person takes two weeks to get fat adapted, meaning you're using fat as your primary energy source instead of sugar. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Right. And then you can become keto adapted beyond that. Yeah. So where now you're using ketones, your brain uses ketones. That's right. And you're like, I feel amazing. My brain's firing, right? Yeah.
And so I've enjoyed that approach. Uh I also learned about the principle of hormesis through you and and and those who have learned from you. Uh and this I simple idea of uh a stress that is not a chronic stress, but is that I guess best characterized as maybe a micro stress. Uh and you do that by fasting and feasting. You do that by exercise, you do that by cold plunge, you do that by stress the body.
And if you adapt, the body gets stronger. That's right. Right. And and changing diet is a stress on your microbiome. It's a stress on your whole system. Your body has to reach for new energy sources like fat versus sugar. So that stress, when you adapt, your body becomes stronger.
That's right. And so when I go out the door in the morning, uh, because I stack a lot of these things, I either do them in sequence or I do them at the same time. Uh, but my morning routine, uh the very first thing I do is I get on my pulsed electromagnetic magnetic uh frequency therapy mat. Uh so I do a round of P EMF. Uh, I do breath work while I'm doing that. Uh, and so that's usually 16 minutes, which is two cycles on my machine.
Um, and then I then I get into my morning devotion with my wife, and uh we read the Bible and and pray and and uh usually get a couple of pages done in a book. Um and so uh and then I'll do uh a cold shower. Um I I our groundwater where I live is about 58 degrees.
Which, by the way, is studies show that a cold shower about that temperature is for most people more effective than the three-minute really cold bath that a lot of people are doing because of the body's ability to adapt.
Right. So I just I I feel and I'm in ketosis typically in the morning. Um and I walk out the morning, uh the house in the morning just feeling like a million bucks. Um but it's it's high energy, and uh I really enjoy uh the way it makes me feel, right? Because I I I got something back that I thought was lost forever. And let that let that sink in a little bit.
Like, you know, when you when you follow uh the principles of fasting and feasting, uh when you're following these principles of of hormetic stressors, like at 55, I and and it like how easy would it have been for me just to surrender and go, I'm getting old. I'm not what I was when I was 20 or 30, right? I'm getting old. And I could have easily given into that.
Yeah.
Um but it didn't.
Most people do. And the thing you didn't give into is the medication they put you on for the symptoms. We'd be having a very different conversation. You wouldn't even be here if that was the choice. But most people make that choice. Not because uh of any other reason, but that's just what you do, and they're not experts, so they think their doctor knows best, so they end up on the medications. Yep.
And I had uh I was on cholesterol and heart meds. Um, and within six to eight months I was off of both of them.
Uh because you were working with some of the top doctors. I were they blessing that or were they questioning that? Or what was that?
So this was after I'd left DC. Okay. And so I I was uh I was down at my last duty station in Key West, Florida. And so I was dealing with the physicians down there who were good. Um, but you know, I mean, most people when you have a conversation like I think I can reverse type 2 diabetes uh. Well, what do you mean? Yeah, you have that forever, yeah. Yeah. And so uh, you know, and and some of the books that I've read are some of Jason Fung's work, uh, who's written extensively.
Jason's lectured at my seminars, super man, super guy. Yeah, just amazing. Amazing communicator, makes distills things down. Uh the obesity code and the cancer code are the two books that I read by him. Um, but it it just reinforces all these principles to go, this is a lifestyle change. It is. And uh, and you know, you can do some things that are probably excursions from what the proper lifestyle ought to be.
Um, but you know, God gave us an amazing body, and and if you've removed the interference, and I love your saying, I repeat it all the time, if you fix the cell, you get well. And it's it's a very simple but profound uh statement. Yeah, yeah. And if you're able to remove those interferences, cycling into and out of autophagy and mTOR and and doing all the other things, clean eating, uh limiting limiting ultra-processed foods, um, those sorts of things.
Yeah, and um detoxing the cell, uh, the toxins accumulate there. You know, fix the cell to get well, you know, how we age, it's determined by how healthy our cells are, right? How good we feel is determined by how how healthy our cells are. You know, that's where our DNA is. That's where you know we make energy, you know, and everything that how we feel is determined there, right?
So, you know, when you look at these new tests that determine your age, so your cellular age is very different than your biological actual age. So you could be 60 like us and have a cellular age of 30, which means that, yeah, your cells are functioning like a 30-year-old, which means you feel like a 30-year-old. But these principles that we're discussing is how you get there. You know, it's like you got to get rid of the toxins, you got to upregulate these pathways.
I I really should put it in because people are probably like, you know, they want to know more about fasting. So my team, I'm gonna challenge my team. Um, I have a whole guide on how to do everything you did. It's a guide. I just have to get it to you all. So um, I'm gonna process that. We'll probably put a link to get it or something like that, but um, because people they're writing notes, but it's hard for them. But if I give them the guide, they'll be able to do it.
But uh, because you can't get my book like he did. You can for 125 bucks.
How much are you selling yours for? You know, like so. Every time I loan it out, and I've loaned it out probably 10 times, yeah, I'm always afraid that I'm not gonna get it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You forget who you lend it to sometimes.
Like, where is that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe that's the strategy. Maybe I shouldn't reprint it. Maybe we should just like see if the price gets up to uh $1,000 a book and then release them strat strategically. No, the uh the idea is to change lives, obviously, but um yeah, I just I just want to make it better.
But yeah, so one of the other things that that uh, and this is when I was under John Lawrence's care down in Sarasota, I had some symptoms present themselves in a way that that he said, you know, we ought to do uh like a uh a toxin panel on you. And so um I was unaware of having toxins in my body.
And so uh the toxin panel came back and I everyone's unaware of having toxins in their body. Meaning, you know, we don't think of it that way, right? But you know, the reason why most people don't feel well and have, you know, early disease, chronic disease, is because of toxins in the body at the cellular level. Yeah.
So I was diagnosed with um uh black mold toxicity. Uh I had mercury toxicity, I had Lyme disease.
And these are all neurotoxins, meaning they accumulate in your nerve system, including your brain.
Yeah. And then later I was diagnosed, as you and I were talking uh over coffee this morning. Uh I was diagnosed with Bobesia. And I never heard of Babesia. And and so, you know, when you think about these things, that's a bacteria associated with Lyme disease. Yeah. And so it diminishes your red blood cell's ability to deliver oxygen around your body, and and uh that results in things like brain fog and fatigue.
And by the way, I want to point out though, everything you just mentioned is common, not normal, but it's common in people who end up where you ended up, right? Overweight, right? Struggling through, using stimulants, right? I mean, I'm speaking to most Americans right now, right? But the immune system comes, the force field that protects us comes down, and then these pathogens start to build up. You know, we end up in mold exposures unknowingly, we accumulate the mold.
Heavy metal exposures are around us. See, when our cells are working good, we get rid of them and they exit. But we start, when we're not healthy, we start accumulating them. And these toxins accumulate, they're called persistent toxins in the literature, meaning persistent. They stay with you. These aren't normal toxins. And the neurotoxins are persistent, meaning they build up. So when you look at someone who goes, What happened to my life?
Uh, you know, if I had special goggles to put on, I would see mercury and aluminum in your brain. I would see, you know, all these other biotoxins and bacteria in your gut microbiome. But that's why people don't feel well. So then we have to get rid of them correctly.
Yeah. And that's well, and the metaphor that that was powerful for me was this idea of the toxic bucket. Right. I love my bucket theory. It's right here. And then it just fills up over the course of your life. And, you know, like it wasn't a problem when I was 30, and I'm doing the same thing. Yeah. No, it's true. Congratulations, your bucket's full. Here's the bucket theory, you ready?
Um, but So watch. Here it is. Oh, let me make it better. There you go. Can you see that? This one is this bucket's more full. Now imagine if we're really at the top. That's where you were, bro. Okay. Your bucket was that full. Meaning a little bit of stress, and look, all those symptoms start happening. The water's overflowing, the damage was happening, right? And people medicate that away. Right. And you know, eventually maybe they start even using supplements, biohacks.
But how did you get well? We had to empty this bucket, right? Now, this person, this is where you are now, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe a little more full. We're gonna get you down here. But look at the stress. I can do this, right? No, nothing coming out, right? This person has no symptoms. They get emotional stress, no symptoms. They get a lot of other stress, physical stress, they can handle more, no symptoms. This person, yeah, a lot of a lot of symptoms with a little bit of stress, right?
That's where you were.
So and so methodically kind of detoxing. Uh, and so it it it's made me feel I I I for probably so that was six years ago for me that I hit the wall. Uh probably within 18 months, I felt 300% better. And I I I learned, not not that I discovered it, but I I became uh aware of the fact that I could control these things. Yeah. And so my wife and you know, my wife uh has very graciously done all this stuff shoulder to shoulder with me. So Kate has been a uh a big player in us getting well.
Um we went through our whole house cleaning solutions, deodorants, shampoos, like uh I don't get anything out of the regular grocery store anymore. Do you still watch my Instagram?
Or uh am I boring you in easy stuff? No, no, I'm because no, I talk about all these things, meaning I'm showing people like this, don't use this shampoo, don't use this, don't use that, right?
I I've I have a smaller presence on Instagram, but I I do see your your video feed pops up for me and Facebook pretty regularly.
And the reason I say I wasn't being a wise guy, meaning like you know everything I teach, right? So yeah. Yeah.
So it's well, and it's you know, I mean, like you're you're the fountain of most of what I've learned through, you know, Mindy and Ben Azati and and John Lawrence uh and others. But I'm just like I do want to say I'm grateful for you and and your work in this space because it's it's changed my life. Yeah, yeah and uh I'll never I'll never be the same.
Yeah. I don't know how long I'm gonna live, but you know, when you were talking about uh biological age and uh and uh and so I'm 61, uh, but I use a a blood testing service called Function Health, which is um uh Mark Hyman's uh pet project. Um, but they estimate that I'm 47 point something years old.
Yeah.
So I would love to have known about this before I started making the improvements because I'm pretty sure I was 10 years older than my uh body age.
I was um 11, yeah, 11 years older. It's a cellular age than my biological age. Yeah. Now, I mean, uh now I'm much younger. I I the last actually DNA methylation just had me at 14 years younger, but um it w you know, I I gotta do I gotta do another.
To to know that you can just make some changes today, yeah, tomorrow, this week, uh and in six or eight months' time, you can be 10 years younger than you truly are. Right.
I mean, people just have to commit to the process, right? And uh unfortunately, uh, there's a time and a place for medication, but it it medication's not bringing health, right? Typically it's just removing a symptom. And um yeah, I mean most people don't think beyond that, right? It's like you you don't lack aspirin or Tylenol. Uh that it's not why you have pain, because you lack it. Yeah. Uh if that were the case, then yeah, you should take it.
And I can't tell you I used to eat Advil all the time. Yeah. I mean, I'd go to Costco and get the get the big get the big things of Advil, and and I don't know that I've taken an Advil in five or six years.
Well, we're gonna people will know when this uh was done. But the announcement yesterday, um Tylenol connecting to autism. Uh Trump in all Trump forms uh spilled the beans on the whole vaccine connection to that, which they're not finished with the studies, but preliminary studies are showing the connection. And yeah, if your uh a mother's taking Tylenol, it makes it even worse because of the acetaminophen, um, which there's a reason for that, by the way.
Uh it it affects certain pathways, um cytochrome 450 pathway, which is a detox pathway. Acetamini affects that. Uh acetaminophine can uh compete with folate receptors in the brain, which neurodevelopment um certain brain disorders like autism, neurodevelopmental problems occur when you block folate. And also it parallels some of the detox pathways like glutathione. So the brain inflames.
And then when you hit them with a vaccine and a mother's, you know, challenging that pathway with acetamidophine, it's the one-two punch. So they presented yesterday. Um we were laughing about it because I think the plan was just to present the acetamidophilin part of that. Right. Right? The Tylenol part of that. And and Trump like he does best. The president might have had another plan. He just couldn't wait to get to it. You know, his heart was for the kids. I mean, you could see it.
You know, you said 20 years ago, Bobby, we talked about this, right? You know, that why is autism look to the point, the the medical community right now with autism makes the statement is just genetic. Matter of fact, the the billions of dollars that have been given to solve this problem have all been driven at genetics as the reason. Hold on a second. Don't insult our intelligence. Not that many uh years ago, it was one in 30,000 cases. Uh, you know, one in 30,000 would have autism, right?
Then it went to one in 20,000. Then it was only 20 years ago, it was one in 10,000. And now it's one in 31. Boys in some states, one in 12. One in twelve. And maybe in California, one in ten. Like, dude, those are scary numbers. And that scared the crap out of Trump and others to the point where they were like, you know, you have to do something. I mean, Oz was up there going like he put the pressure on us. He's like, We you have to do something right now.
So that's why he was dumping everything that they already knew out there, right?
You know, there's so many other things like that that we've that we've watched the impact on the population. Yeah. Um, you know, I I think of the uh correlation, not causation, or at least not scientifically demonstrated to be causation, between the consumption of seed oils and obesity. Oh gosh.
Let's talk about seed oil. Oh, let me finish that point first. So the point was is genetics don't change in 20 years, 30 years, even a hundred. Genetics change generations it takes even to change a gene. It's not, it's like for those numbers, you know what, you know what the their answer to that is? Oh, we just got better at diagnosing it. No one believes that. Nobody believes that. But anyway, so the point, the point is, is we're doing something to cause this. Let's figure it out.
So all these things that we're talking about are the solution, detoxing at the cellular level, you know, all these pathways that happened at the cell, you know, that methylation folate pathway is just one of them. But okay, so seed oils, that was a big change with you. Uh you do what I do now. You go to restaurants and you say, hey, I'm allergic to seed oil, that's right, because we don't want it. Um, what did you learn? You've read a lot. What did you learn about seed oils?
So I think I I can't remember the first person I heard talk about it, but the first book I read about it was the the work of Dr. Kate Shanahan.
And she's been a real voice for this, um, giving her amazing credit and a real, you know, just um founding doctor, mother, or father.
And she was uh, I think uh if I remember her backstory, uh she was a biologist and was about to embark on a career as a PhD in biology, cellular biology, and she decided somewhere at uh at the last minute before embarking on the PhD program to become an MD. And so she ended up becoming a doctor, but she's got a very unique perspective as a doctor because she's a cellular biologist.
Uh and so um these seed oils uh emerged back in the late 19th century uh in the forms of things like Crisco, uh, and then have just really become ubiquitous. But she she refers to the hateful eight. I don't know that I have them all memorized, but canola oil, corn oil, safflower oil, sunflower oil, cottonseed oil. Uh what am I missing? Um vegetable oil.
Vegetable oil. And then um, oh, um uh grapefruit, grape grapeseed oil.
Grapeseed oil. There you go. Seven. So, you know, I I remember reading this and I looked at Kate and I said, let's go to the kitchen and uh open the pantry, and we just pulled out everything that was cleared it out for you and cleared it out. Well done. Haven't been back in our house again. Now, the challenge with a lot of those things because they hide in plain sight, uh, they get into a lot of processed and ultra-processed foods.
Um, and I I said on I said in one podcast I did that I don't I don't shop around the uh interior aisles. And I got home and Kate heard me say that and she goes, You don't shop, period. Like I do the shopping. So, honey, I I acknowledge that you shop for us on the exterior aisles around the perimeter of the grocery store where all the fresh fruits and vegetables are. And so we've really gotten quite good at that. Our home is uh, we like to say it's a sanctuary.
Uh so with the exception of my 20-year-old who has his own wallet and car, and uh he'll he'll bring some stuff into the house from time to time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard to control that. Uh yeah, but you know, I mean, when you when you are aware of things like seed oils, I read more labels now. Uh because that's where they're hidden. They're hidden in the labels. That's right.
Well, like last night I had uh I went to the the Roost Chris here in Salt Lake City and um uh I was talking to the waitress as I was ordering my meal and I said, Could I get this the salad? And she goes, Well, what kind of dressing do you want? And I said, I don't care for any dressing. And she goes, I don't know that I've ever had somebody order a salad without dressing.
And wow, I I guess I never ate there because we never the the dressing always has seed oils in it. That's always yeah. So yeah, I just say have can I have pure olive oil on the side, I make sure it's a pure olive oil, not a cut olive oil.
That's right. Uh because it's my understanding that that uh the FDA requirements, if you've got an oil that's called uh uh extravergin olive oil or or olive oil, um as long as it's 80% that, you don't need to disclose what the other elements are in the seed oil. So your sourcing of of uh high quality extravergin olive oil is important. Um but salad dressings, condiments of all sorts. They're all polluted.
Uh I don't, you know, and you you look at uh ketchup when you go to the restaurant, it's got high fructose corn syrup in it and other things. And so I I've just tried to learn how to, you know, eat as cleanly as humanly possible. Um and uh, you know, sources of You know what Kate Shanahan, right?
Uh do you remember Benazati um asked her the question of what's what's worse? Cigarettes? Yeah, or seed oils. Do you remember the answer?
That's right. Yeah.
She'd rather smoke than consume uh seed oils. And the reason for that, because that's kind of a shocking statement, that's why it works, to get people to understand how dangerous this stuff is, is that these oils stay around in, I used to say, you know, for four months is the half-life. Now there's near studies showing 658 days or something like that, whatever, let you know, um, let's just say two years a half-life, meaning that they stay in your cells for that long.
So they accumulate, like we talked about the toxins, persistent. They stay in your cell, they stay in your membranes. And I could do a whole lecture on the importance of your cell membrane as far as how your hormones work, how well you feel, how well your brain works, how well your energy, all your membranes are linked to all those things. How you get toxins out and good things in, that's your membrane. There's a saying, life and death begins on the membranes.
You know, your hormone health begins on the membranes. But those oils come in because the omega-6 is so important in the membrane. But in a these rancid seed oils, because they don't take heat in the processing of food, they go right to where they should go, but they're rancid, they're adulterated, they're damaged, so they drive inflammation. And that's the problem. So they erode people's health unknowing.
Yeah, when you've been doing this for your whole life, unwittingly, you know, what's the term? Inflammaging.
Yeah, or you inflammage. And then you add the toxic amount. Seed oils and toxins are why Americans are so dang sick. So sick.
Well, I was I was telling uh I've got a couple of restaurant own owner buddies uh over where I live, and I was telling them about your friend uh Giuseppe here in uh Salt Lake.
Yeah, my favorite Italian restaurant in Salt Lake.
Yes, Antica. Yes, you have to eat there. And so uh when I was out here a few months ago to uh to visit Dr. Getucki, uh we went out and it was a fantastic meal. Yeah. And in authentic Italian. Authentic Italian, and here's a here's a chef who lost lost a bunch of weight himself by shifting away from some of these rancid oils.
Yeah, I'm like I was a pest in his restaurant, right? I'm going, uh yeah, this is a real Italian restaurant. They came from Italy, him and his father, his family, right? It's like, but you know what they did? He tells you, he's like, listen, in Italy, it was always 100% olive oil, right? I mean, uh everything, right? It's you know, the best of the best. But when they came here, they're just like, oh, here, here's the oil we use.
So he just said we just started using the American oil, that because that's what we had access to, right? Canola, vegetable oils, right? Yeah. And you know, he he said that you know you could see a the shift in the quality of the food, right? But he didn't know it was the oils. But I'm going, you can't use this oil, you have to use this oil, right? So he shifted to 100% olive oil back to the way the old country did.
Then uh he was already getting the grain, they were only using grain from Italy because they it was the quality, right? And so they were already doing that, they're already getting their tomatoes from Italy, so they were sourcing good food from Italy. Um, but then in their fryer, I busted them on that. I'm like, nah, listen, yeah. So he's over the beef tallow. Beef tallow. Yeah, the good beef tallow. And you know what's this is a scary thing.
He says, yeah, but the problem is we have to replace it like, you know, three times a week now, right? Which is really expensive. When you have the vet the vegetable or canola oil in there, you could go weeks. Yeah. And it's the same oil.
That's disgusting, bro. Right. That's disgusting. No, well, and and it's it and it highlights another point. I mean, like when you're on this journey, there is no substitute for great ingredients. They just taste amazing.
That's why when people go to Italy, first of all, what don't you see in Italy? I don't know when the last time I I try to go every year, you don't see fat people. It's oh you do, it's but it's the dang Americans, right? It's the Taurus. Um, but you don't. And they eat 20% more carbs than we do, right? It's like, so wait a minute, what's going on? Yeah, something's going on, right?
Yeah. Um, but you know, unfortunately, not Italy, but other uh European countries are starting to use more canola oil, vegetable oil, and that's unfortunate.
Well, and I'm hoping this is one of the things that comes out of the Maha movement, you know, like some restrictions on some of these things that are clearly not good for you, right? But profitable for industry and all that sort of stuff.
You know, even people when I go to dinner with them in our industry, right? You know, people that most people watching this would even know they don't ask. I mean, I'm telling them I'm allergic. We even have seed oil cards. I can't have any of this, right? And restaurants look, we we go to the better restaurants that accommodate, right? But uh, we know we're not going to Kentucky Fried Chicken. It's like, yeah. Or I don't know the names of some of these places.
But um, you know, we're going to places that make it the way we want to make it. And if you tell them they're allergic, they're on it, man. They're on it, right? Because they'll come out and be like, can't have this sauce, can't do this, you can do this, this, and this and this. That's what we do every time. But I'm amazed. We go to dinner with these people, and I'm like, oh my gosh, like they were ready to throw down.
Like it's like if these things stay in my body for two years longer, it's the half-life. Like, I I'm not, you know, I'm not giving in. I don't. I don't want a bite of something that has a seed oil. You know, my kids were always embarrassed about this. My wife and I would jump the waiter, waitress through the hoops, and I always apologize in the beginning, right? I'm sorry, but don't worry, I'll tip very well. But here's the issue, right?
But now they're on it because they've experienced the health difference with and without seed oils. So that's right. You know, they, you know, all of them are like, man, they are robotic, just like we are. They will not be exposed to seed oils. I hope people listening to this get it, like of how dangerous these things. I have to have Kate Shanahan on. Yeah. So you should.
Yeah. You should. Yeah. Um, you know, and I I I think about this through the lens. Mindy tells a story. Uh, Mindy Pells tells a story of uh during COVID. I think she was giving a presentation online, a Zoom call with a bunch of teachers in South Carolina. Have you ever heard the story? No. And she um is talking about all the things that you need to do in order to have a healthy meal and so on and so forth.
And somebody had asked a question that revealed kind of the the income disparity uh that they were experiencing in South Carolina, and just go, I I can't afford to do that. And and Mindy, of course, felt bad about you know creating this kind of dynamic within this conversation. Um, and then it it led her to say, like, what can you do that's free? Fasting is free. You know, you get rid of some seed oils and you do some other things instead, maybe a marginal increase in price.
But there are some key things that can be done. The big things that are um healthy and cheap and or free. Yeah. Right? And if you're and if you're following kind of an intermittent fasting schedule, well, you're not eating. So, you know, you can take the money saved uh from eating and apply it to other things that uh organic foods. Organic foods.
You know, I I know organic foods are more money, but today I think you have no choice. And I always tell people at least eat from the clean 15, stay away from the dirty dozen. You can Google what those are, you know. But um, but you're right. If you are intermittent fasting, you automatically eat less, but you're able to eat meals to full, which is because a lot of people would try to lose weight. People still do this.
I was gonna say it, you know, in the 80s and 90s, you know, but caloric restriction diet, just every meal, eat less. Well, that's not how God built humans. We're we're meant to eat to full, and the body tells you you're full, and the body keeps its metabolism up. When you eat less by pushing food away, then what happens is your metabolism gets lower.
That's why it works in the beginning, you lose 10 pounds, and then it doesn't work because metabolism goes down and then you stop losing weight and then even gaining weight, losing muscle. So it doesn't work. But if intermittent fasting, if you're eating two meals in a smaller window, at the end of the day, you've eaten less, but every meal you've eaten to full. So your metabolism stays up. That's the powerful part about intermittent fasting. Yeah.
And I once I got into that practice, um, I don't know that it's ever crossed my mind to count a calorie. Because if you're eating clean stuff, and you're eating too uh, you know, uh being satiated, right? It doesn't take as much. And then I supplement too with I think this is your prescription. Uh I do a couple tablespoons of olive oil every day. Yep. MCT oil, multi-chain triglyceride, uh, and a little bit of butter. That's in my book, you can't get. So anyway.
Well, it's uh, you know, with when uh the lady came by my table last night, she goes, Do you want some bread and butter? And I said, No, I don't care for any bread, but you can bring me the butter. She just kind of looked at me like, who is this guy? And I like slathered it on my steak when it came to the table.
It was delicious. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, you you're you replace that. When you're in ketosis, the the fat, you want the fat, right? Yeah. So do you know about um I'm gonna test his knowledge here a little bit because you're such a uh oh he says I'm not gonna expect you to know what this is, but have you ever heard of the Randall cycle? I have, and I don't have any context for it. Okay. All right.
So it's the people come off a ketosis diet, which it's a low-carb diet, but most often it is, in fact, a higher fat diet, right? So they they get used to eating high fats like we love when we're in ketosis. And then they move to, and hopefully purposely, but some people unpurposely, move to a higher healthy carbohydrate diet again, which I think is great. It's appropriate, right? But they keep eating the same amount of fat.
The Randall cycle says that your body, when you're eating high carbs and high fat together, will actually prioritize the carbs and then it stores the fat. Oh, interesting. Yeah. So people go, they gain weight. So this is why low-fat diets actually work, right? Because low-fat diets were the all the rage in the 80s and 90s, right? But low-fat diets have a problem. You know, people evolve away from fat, and fat is so important, it's so healthy, right?
But because people were eating high carbohydrate, American standard diet, right? High carbs, and they were eating high fat, but junk, bad fats, right? But still, the two together, you store the fat, you burn the carbs, you use that for energy, right? And you're not using the fat for energy. So the Randall cycle is when you come out of ketosis, you have to lower the fat because you're eating more carbs. Gotcha. So I probably taught some people that's I'm gonna re read up on that.
But I don't say I like I remember back in my 20s and 30s, I was a big runner, uh marathoner. It's you know, everybody talked about carb loading. And so, you know, as a 20-year-old, I was reaching for pizza to load my carbs instead of something that's probably a more appropriate.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I no I have no problem with carbs. I like again, I preach diet variation, right? There's times where I'm in a higher healthy carb diet, and there's times where I'm in a very low carb diet, like ketosis, and I've even done short periods of time in carnivore, which is no vegetables, nothing, everything but meat. Um but people want to be in one camp or the other, right? It's like, oh, it's this, it's that. Carbs are bad. This is that. No, no, carbs are good, right?
It's like your body, your cells have the ability to burn fat or sugar, right? Aka carbs. You know, and being metabolically flexible is what healthy people are. But most Americans are stuck with the inability to burn fat for energy and they get stuck as sugar burners. So they crave sugar. And if they're not eating, you know what they break down into sugar? They're muscle. It's gluconeogenesis, right?
So either way is bad because if you're using muscle for sugar to get into your cells, your metabolism is going down because you're losing muscle. You get skinny fat. And if you're a few, you can't burn fat for energy when you're not eating, now your body gives you cravings, so you break every diet. And I always say it's not your fault. Yeah. So these are like basic diet lessons that most people, even nutritionists, don't understand. Yeah.
Well, I I remember too, uh Ben Azzati shares his story about um uh doing the carnivore diet. And he did blood panels on the front end of the carnivore diet, and then he did blood panels on the on the back end of the carnivore diet. And I want to say the last one he did was 90 days. Um and every single blood marker.
Got better. Well, you know what? We did something even more fun. I was part of that. Okay, Ben. Okay. So Ben and I did more something more fun. So he did a um a microbiome test. That's where you're testing your your bacteria and your gut, right? And his diversity, which is the most important thing on the test, meaning the more diversity you have in your microbiome, the healthier you are, the better your brain works, the better your immune system, right?
We that's probably the most accurate part about that test. So looking at how diverse the variety of bacteria and the numbers. Well, he wasn't very good, which he had autoimmune, you know, he lived a very unhealthy lifestyle, but that's why he's so good now. Pain to purpose for Ben. But it wasn't very good. And so we decided to do the so back up. What the testing company recommends is a plant-based diet, high in all these fibers to improve his diversity, which makes sense to people, right?
You know, because fiber feeds good bacteria. It would make a lot of sense to go into that diet. Well, we did the opposite. So he went 90 days in carnivore. That's, folks, that's just eating meat and fat, right? Zero, not one vegetable, not one bean, not nothing that has a drop of fiber in it. Okay, nothing. Well, guess what happened in 90 days? His blood work was better, okay, as you pointed out. Diversity improved. Diversity improved. Yeah. Yeah. So what does that mean?
That means that the microbiome doesn't just feed from fiber. It does feed from fiber, but it was feeding from the ketones. Yeah. And that's like, wow.
Well, didn't he say he had to go back and explain this to the chief scientist for the company that did the right thing?
And by the way, I predicted it. I knew that was going to happen, right? You know, it's like um, because I watch it from the you know, symptomologies now. People go into a uh carnivore diet and their gut heals. Right. Jenny McCarthy sat in that chair and she went, you know, into a carnivore diet, right, and her gut healed, right? It's like that means her diversity got better. That means, you know, yeah. So these diets can be very, very healing for that.
So with the carnivore, let me ask you a question. I like I've I've heard that if if you uh did carnivore through a smash diet, like sardines, mackerel, uh anchovies, I forget what all the smash elements are, but yeah, but I've but I've heard that it's that much better.
Yeah. So there's different levels of carnivore. Yeah. Okay. Um, some people say carnivore, you don't do fish. I do fish in carnivore. Some people say you don't do eggs, I do eggs in carnivore. Yeah. Uh I believe our ancestors, if they had it, they would eat that, right? In in a carnivore diet. But um some people even say you can use a little bit of honey, but some people are purist in that um they just eat meat. Grass-fed, grass-fed is very important.
Um, so grass-fed, grass-finished is very important. But yeah, so I'm a believer in look, so many people today are reacting to plant toxins. What are plant toxins? They sound worse than they are, but they're in plants for a reason. And they actually act hormitically in our gut and can be beneficial. But if you have leaky gut, they're very inflammatory. Lectins, phytates, oxalates, etc., and some foods have very higher levels of those. Healthy person, no problem.
People that have gut challenges become problematic. So when you get rid of these things in a carnivore diet, it gives the gut a chance to heal. And then you have to add them back in slowly. I gotcha.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. And it's Dr. Gundry's written a lot about it. Well, Gundry, I think, is he um he functions from and him and I would disagree on this, and I respect for the man, um, but he thinks just lectins are bad. Lectins are a plant toxin, they're in almost every vegetable there is, but some much higher than others. So his thing is get rid of all these high ones. But I don't find that to be true. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: It kind of falls under the hermetic stress principle. Exactly.
Plant toxins act hermitically. But again, someone who's very has an inflamed gut, their hermitic sealing, meaning the amount of stress they can handle in the gut, is very low. So getting rid of and lowering those is going to help them. So many people are out there going, but that helped me getting rid of them. So Gundry's right. Well, yeah, it helped you, but uh the idea is to add them back in slowly, and it will actually help your gut heal. And it goes to your principle of diet variation, too.
Yeah, exactly. Yep, yep. Let's shift gears. Um, and this is your new line of work because you don't sit idle. Um really applies, and we had this conversation many people today, almost everyone, goes on Google or Chat GPT in particular. Chat is the new thing, right? I use it too. And especially the younger generation, they are finding health things and they say, Look, dad, right? Your son, my son, right?
Yes. Chat says, You're wrong, or chat says this because chat is the gospel, meaning this is whatever they read and it must be right. So what I find is people are becoming more confused than ever because if chat says it, it's real and it's right, but your new line of work has taught you a lot about that being not necessarily incorrect. This is an important topic because many people are finding all of their health advice with Chat GPT.
And it can be very helpful, but tell us the problem, tell them the problem.
Yeah, so so um just as a uh kind of a baseline here, I I run a small artificial intelligence company now. Um and so what we've discovered over time, uh, the company that I joined has been using small language models for 12 years.
Okay, so you're gonna have to because when you told me this originally, I didn't even know what you meant by large language models and small.
So a large language model essentially takes all the information on the internet. So AI, chat, takes all of this information. That's right. Okay. And then it gives you an average of all the information you found on the internet.
So meaning it's finding things that are true, but things that aren't true. That's correct. Taking an average, and then it gives you an answer here. That's right.
Okay. And that's why uh and and large language models are fantastic, by the way. Uh they're super useful for a whole bunch of different applications, um, but they perform better when you ask them more questions. And so the idea of um being very precise, I've I've heard people even say they upload, you know, their company's core values, uh, the company's mission and purpose uh into a chat query uh and then asked it a very specific question, and you get a more precise answer.
Okay, because you're taking a large language and then making it more small with the more prompts questions you ask it.
Yeah, you're narrowing, you're narrowing your query down by giving it more boundaries, right? And so as a general rule, the more questions you ask a large language model, the more precise the answer is going to be. Uh and you and I were talking about this uh over coffee this morning. There's there's actually an academic paper uh titled Chat GPT is bullshit. Jim something. Don't remember the author. I know that was the guy that wrote the book. Okay, I'm sorry.
So uh and and it's uh you can Google this and find the paper. And essentially it's garbage in, garbage out. You know, and so if you're not asking the generative uh engine the right questions, you're not going to get the most precise answer. Small language models, and the approach that my company has taken to uh uh the approach with data is we're a science company first that uh then uses scientific behavioral methods to understand how best curate data.
And so instead of taking an average of everything on the internet, for example, uh if if I wanted to uh focus around make America healthy again, I would collect, I would collect and curate data in a way that like everything that's coming in means something to me. So I'm not taking an average of everything that's out there. I'm just I'm just ingesting the data that very precisely is the things that I care about. Right. I got it.
And then when you apply a small language model to it, uh it doesn't, the small language model with curated data that has a scientific foundation uh doesn't hallucinate. I got it. And uh there was an NVIDIA engineer who wrote a paper, maybe or published a paper maybe a month ago, uh, that essentially said, and he did it with I I believe Georgia Tech, um essentially small language models are the way of the future for artificial intelligence.
Yeah. That doesn't mean you're not gonna need large language models, but it's you know, it's like anybody that's ever had a toolbox and has worked on a specific project, uh, having the right tool in your hand matters. Absolutely. And so if large language models hallucinate, I don't know, say 40% of the time, and small language models that operate off curated data that has this foundation of like everything that you care about in your problem set gives me an outcome that's 98% accurate.
Yeah. And companies, I think, are more privy to this because they need solid data, right? Oftentimes, but the average individual looking for things is not, right? So um you know, I just I just typed in just for fun, um seed oils, right? And okay, it says they lower LDO cholesterol, right, when replaced with animal fats, right? Okay, because that was the bill of goods we were sold. Vegetable oils, healthy. We should replace all those saturated fats.
You know, all those animal fats are going to kill you. They cause heart disease. I just heard someone say it today. I it's like, oh, I have, you know, my doctor told me I need to get all the saturated fat and meat out of my diet because my blood pressure was high. I'm like, where do I start? Right? It's like, wow, this is still a model that's out there. Well studied in large population data. Some studies link them to lower heart lowering the risk of heart disease. There you go, right?
And to diets high in saturated fats. So this is an example of Chat GPT. Is it lying? It's a myth, it's a the, you know, but it's a large language model. It's picking up what's relevant, or what's relevant, what's that average talk that's out there, true or not.
So we have to be careful. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You have to be careful. And I think uh so one of the I'll give a shout-out to these guys that that uh run this organization called the Rational Optimist. Uh so I subscribe to their newsletter, I get something that drops into my email inbox every every Sunday morning. And it's typically some feature of technology technological advancements.
They spend a lot of time trying to understand AI, uh, you know, nuclear power going into the future, other things like this. But the but the idea behind it is we're living in a really powerful age with all these things. And so how can you leverage them to make our lives better? Right. Right. And so um I and I use large language models routinely, but they have specific applications and they have uh propensity to hallucinate, and you just need to be aware of the tool that's in your hand.
Yeah, exactly.
Right. So be aware, right? Because it could lead you in the wrong direction. You know, you could start increasing your rancid seed oils because Chat GBT told me it was good for my heart. That's right. Right. Oh, and my doctor said it too. So it must be true.
Um, um, but it's simply not. You know, it's like it's like going into what I would assume is the corpus of data uh surrounding research that's been funded by commercial interests. Right. Many times those things are misleading. Uh there's certainly bias towards the commercial interest desired outcome. And now this is a scientific study that's peer-reviewed and so on and so forth.
Like, how do you distinguish between that which is righteous and that which is unrighteous if you're ingesting that entire course of corpus of data? Now, if your if your corpus of data was such that uh you've curated everything to know that they were completely objective, uh, you know, double blind and random control placebo, uh, so on and so forth, um, could you set up small language models on that and and get some sort of medical advice? You're gonna get something that's much more precise.
Right. Yeah.
So uh to your point, like what people can do watching this right now is you can prompt Chat GPT with better questions to bring the large model down to a smaller model. Meaning the more specific you get with the questions you ask, the the better it's going, the more direct it's going to give you. So I want only double-blind peer-reviewed study, uh, you know, whatever the questions is. I mean, you can very be very direct.
Aaron Powell That's right. Um and and it's really it's not that the large language model becomes a smaller model. It's just you're you're putting bookends on what it is you want to know. Uh and it's giving the model uh the context that you need for a more precise outcome.
Aaron Powell This is affecting so many things and your connection with government and that. You told me a story about how governments have to do this, right? Because you know tell that story that you told me, because I it was something about like they're going in, I maybe it's even the company you're well, I I don't want to expose anything I shouldn't, but where they have to look at um, for example, how Russia is manipulating certain smaller governments.
Yeah, there's there's um there's a thing, uh, malign influence uh in in even in in recent times, uh there's uh a term of art, cognitive warfare, uh, where there are state actors and in some cases non-state actors that conduct influence operations in different populations. Uh and it's a principle of warfare. I think it goes back to Klauswitz or one of the early theoreticians uh of warfare, but you've got to win the hearts and minds of the population that you're at war with.
Uh and so this idea of persuading people to do to believe certain things or to do certain things. Um and I mean this goes back to uh the Soviet Union. I think um Stalin was probably one of the first to get engaged in disinformation, disinformation so that you can control a population. Well, Hitler did it too. I mean, right? You know, they have everyone. Everybody's as nation-state actors uh has some awareness or some activity in these spaces. Uh and so we have adversaries.
And I I don't I don't think for a second that, like in the social media environment, for example, uh that some Russian element doesn't come to work every time. Oh, so is the the Chinese jackhammer to American values and things that are things that are politically divisive for us as a country. They're creating a lot of that division. They're creating they're they're if they're not creating it, they're at least increasing the gulf between two different parties.
And so that that division is uh really dangerous for our country. Yeah.
And so uh a lot of that uh some of the governments have to figure out oftentimes, like through these models, you know, how to what do I want to say, uh, combat that, I guess? That's right. Yeah.
Um you you want to think you want to think of this because, you know, the American value structure, I mean, we're all about freedom. We're all about democracy, we're all about individual rights. Uh we want to create an environment in this country that allows people to thrive and to thrive in their own individual, individualistic uh way that's that's constructive. Societies like China, like Russia, like Iran, uh, and other places.
I mean, you know, we were talking about immigration on the ride over here. Um, people aren't immigrating in large numbers to countries like Russia, China, Iran. You don't read anything in the paper. They want to come here. Uh they want to come here. They want to come be free and be able to unleash their genius, their individual genius on whatever their passion play is and work and be productive and all those sorts of things.
And so um we've got uh I've called it before a superpower uh in the Western countries in general, in America in particular, um, because there's a lot of immigration in Europe, there's a lot of immigration in in uh North America. People are coming to Canada, United States, and other places. Um and it's just like if you were to to basically break down uh what our demographic profile looks like and the push-pull features of immigration, uh those are hard to design.
Like you kind of get stuck with the hand you're dealt, uh, but it's the fruit of uh a century's worth of investment in the American way. Yeah people want it. They want to come here and they're gonna be able to do that.
And again, uh countries like China and Russia want to erode that. Yeah. Right. And again, I I don't know.
But they can't they can't concoct a pull factor in Russia to persuade somebody to go, hey, why don't I immigrate to Moscow? Yeah, no, exactly. Like they want to come here.
Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's right. Yeah you know, but I know Russia has been used this in smaller societies through AI, you know, again, changing the thought process to with the goal of taking over. I mean, there there's this stuff in our country, our government has to be privy to this, that this is being used.
Yeah. Well, and it's it's uh in this realm of what I what I'd characterize generally as cognitive warfare. It is so dang subtle. Yeah. It's a and I know you're you're hedging this.
You know, you have you know a lot more knowledge than most of us do around these government things. And you know, but I just want people to hear that this is going on. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
So the advice the advice I give to friends and family is don't get your news from the uh from the online environment. Yeah. You know, uh if you want to go to a couple reputable sources of news, I mean it's very hard to not get bias in news reporting these days.
Um and so I think the antidote to that is to find five or six that are as close to unbiased as possible and develop a site picture based on the reporting that, you know, uh I I I had a friend who once uh was surprised that I said one of my sources of information is Al Jazeera. And it's just one more line of position, you know, not that everything that's on Al Jazeera is right or wrong. Um, but you know, when when I look at different cultures, different news reporting apparatus.
You just want to see their angle. You see Al Jazeera, BBC, you know, what whatever the whatever the channels are, and somewhere in there the truth lies. Yeah, you want to hear every angle that you can, right?
Yeah, hip huse um you know was uh really their whole goal. I I watched an interview with the uh CEO of the company, and uh it was fascinating to me because it was started, I think uh just out of a suburban New York. Um a college kid, it was the Asian population was watching the bad information that their country was put you know putting into the system, and they started Apoc News, uh, you know, and um it was just a little, you know, paper thing.
And then it now and now it's gone into this non-biased news source that you know often gets criticized by both sides for their stories, but they really take an unbiased view. And it's it's old-fashioned journalism the way it used to be, yeah. Where they literally are trying to dig to the truth.
Trevor Burrus, Jr. And it's never been perfect, but you know, I I have this uh thesis when I when I speak in think tanks and national security fora. Um I have a I have a topic that I that I've in artfully coined as the erosion of permissiveness, right? And that's it's this idea that things that you take for granted, let's say the oxygen in the room here, right? Like neither one of us have stopped for a second to say, do we have 21% or do we have something less? Right.
And so as the oxygen in your environment uh goes down metaphorically, uh now all of a sudden you don't have the freedom to do things that you would have done had it been at 21%. And whether it's uh as a Coast Guard ship driver, you know, I I still marvel at the fact that the Houthis shut down the Red Sea. Like this freedom of navigation, sea lines of communication, like these are things that we take for granted. And somebody comes in and challenges that in a way that that is meaningful.
Um and so, you know, your ability to function as a as a sovereign nation or as an individual uh is suffering from things that erode the permissiveness to be able to go, I I want to decide that I'm gonna go do something, but you can't. Are you are you more concerned about Russia or China? Yes. Yeah. Uh they're they're both bad actors. Yeah. Um I think in the in the world of malign influence and misinformation, uh, they they both follow different approaches.
Uh I think the Russians are probably they're certainly more mature as a propagator of and and the way I see it is like what started out as disinformation in the 1920s in the Soviet Union to control the population evolved a little bit into misinformation, which evolved a little bit into information that is contextually inaccurate.
And so a lot of times these weapons of cognitive warfare uh can be accurate, but contextually not properly applied uh that effectively deceive you into believing what it is that you believe. And so it's just the the world's complicated. But I like it's it's for decades has been a nation-state problem set.
And my concern is as we go forward, substate or um uh you know, transnational criminal organizations or whatever the case may be, uh, will have these tools that used to be the domain of nation-states in the past. Uh talk about chaos and the and the opportunity for chaos.
Well, I think that's all uh, you know, the goal oftentimes is to create chaos. I think that's you know, for sure China's goal. You know, is it true? I mean, people make the statement, oh, China's in no economic position to be a true world power, and we don't have to worry about them militarily. Is it you think that's true?
Or you think I believe that they're quite capable of being a world power, and we should be concerned about them militarily. Uh they've built up a lot. Um the challenge I have is again, I see this through the lens of a ship captain. Um, you can assemble a ship's crew, but you have to train them and you have to have different people of different pay grades. Uh, you know, the non-commissioner, non-commissioned officers corps uh in our services, chief petty officers in the Navy and the Coast Guard.
I'm like, these are really technically expert people in their area. You can't just have officers and not have NCOs and not have junior people to do all the different functions. And so when you bring a ship together, you need to train a lot to be ready. Uh, and so this idea of readiness is an important one in the military. Uh, and so China can have 10 aircraft carriers someday. Does that mean they're operationally ready to engage in warfare, naval warfare?
Yeah. You know, I mean, like I don't I haven't read enough. I I've I'm good friends with this geopolitical strategist, a guy named George Friedman, written a lot of books, New York Times bestsellers. Um and I've I I've kind of chirped at him a couple times to say, you know, I don't I don't hear enough about the readiness. I I hear about the number of ships and the number of airplanes and the number of hypersonic missiles and all the other the weapons of warfare.
But like, what about the people running them? Yeah. And how well trained are they to function that way? And um And you better have an organized system from top down. So while I we gotta keep an eye on them and we've gotta uh engage them as a serious um adversary uh in some respects, uh, I think we'd be foolish to underestimate them. I think we'd be foolish to overestimate them.
All right, I I've pushed you there as as far as I can. I want to go back. You have a a very from your experience, you're you what you did um, you know, at the Coast Guard with government, understanding um how to organize systems, you have a very opinionated view on Maha because you care. You care about making America healthy again. It's a passion of yours.
It's become uh you know, you talk about a lot about um setting up something that's durable, meaning that what's going to happen when this administration goes away? Right? Durability, meaning it has to last. These things that we have now, the worst thing that could happen is four years from now, five years from now, another government gets in or another administration gets in and it all goes away.
And and all the stuff that we just did on dyes and all the stuff that we're doing to make vaccines about all this stuff could just go away like that. So, what is your theory here or solution even? And and maybe I can get Bobby to hear this.
Well, so in my experience, and I'll I should back up and say what my experience is. So I I've spent uh eight tours of duty in Washington, D.C. I've worked in the House of Representatives uh in the legislative process as a liaison for the Coast Guard. I've been in think tanks.
Uh, I've done two, uh actually three different assignments at the National Security Council staff as a policy director, a policy senior director, and ultimately as a Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to the president. I have shepherded either controlling the pen or my team has controlled the pen dozens of strategies, policies, and implementation plans to the finish line. And so while my hope is high. And you worked for the Trump administration the first time. I did.
I worked for George W. Bush's administration in the mid-2000s as a policy director, and then uh Trump administration as a senior director and Homeland Security Advisor. So there are two general ways to make policy. There's a top-down approach and there's a bottom-up approach. Top-down approach is faster. Top-down approach loves. He loves putting points on the board. Uh, I get it. And there's there's there's a natural tension between top-down and bottom-up. Okay. Right.
So the benefits of top-down is you have more control. You may or may not collaborate with more people that are stakeholders, uh, and you're able to get something to the finish line uh in a much faster way. Uh instruments of presidential power, uh, I'll bookend by saying there are a bunch of different instruments of presidential power. Uh on one side is the executive order. I've just got to draft it, you know, properly staff it. The president signs it, it's in force. So right?
The other end of that spectrum is like painstakingly slow, and that requires engaging 535 members of Congress in developing legislation that they then send over to the president to be signed into law. So the only way this can happen is if we can tr if they control the House and the Senate, then. Not necessarily control, but you know, if if I you know, I've always said, and I'm not this is not an original thought of mine, but good pol good policy equals good politics.
Um, you know, I I think you can get people on both sides of the aisle around.
Yeah, I mean, I I thought I used to think that in the past, but today it seems like it's much harder to do that. Seems like I mean, I the the last thing that they voted on, like this Charlie Kirk thing, it's like uh they all voted against it, right? I mean, like, how could that be possible? So it seems like everyone's lined up and they're not budging on either side.
Aaron Powell So this this is the is as you said, if if all of your policy making is through executive orders, when the next person comes in, if they like them, they might stay in force. And if they don't like them, then there's a wholesale dismissal of all those things until they can develop new things.
Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, and I and and I think that what like them or not, the powers at bay in big food, big pharma, big chemical are. So powerful that, like them or not, it's like the even if the people like them, right? It's like those forces, the next administration, they're going to be washed out. Could could very well be. I mean, again, I don't know the next administration. I'm saying that no matter what the net they're going to put the pressure on that administration.
That's correct. And and don't ever underestimate the uh industry lobby in Washington, D.C. They're everywhere. Um and I I shared a story uh recently, that was on a different podcast. Um I when I was in the Coast Guard's liaison office of the House of Representatives, uh there was a milk lobbyist, a dairy lobbyist that used to come into our office three or four times a week. I was gonna make a joke. The milkman, they used to come to our house.
Uh but it's a super nice guy, and and he was there to lobby for the dairy industry. Um but his son was in the Coast Guard, so he would make a point of just coming by and being friendly. And um and I I think I saw him on average three or four times a week.
And so uh if that's the dairy industry, where else in big food, where else in big pharma, where else in uh other industrial controls um, you know, for agriculture and and other th other things, people are up there working, they're elected leaders uh in our system of lobbying. And so there's a lot of powerful forces at play, you know?
And so when you're trying to develop or implement a policy uh that takes something away from some element of industry without maybe engaging the industry as a whole to go like, here's where we want to get. Like, do I just make you do it this year uh and cause a lot of financial pain on your industry?
And that system makes you do it for, but it can only it may only last a period of time if if you don't think, again, this is that durability.
The idea of durability is an important idea. And uh not everybody is patient enough to uh to try to develop durable policy options. So when you think about, you know, agriculture, you know, monocrops, herbicides, pesticides, glyphosate, uh soil quality, like there's so many different stakeholders.
I just had somebody, uh, because I live on the Chesapeake Bay, I just had a uh scientist, PhD friend of mine, uh send me this report on uh the water of the Chesapeake Bay and what all these chemicals are doing to the water quality, right? And these things can be run off from agricultural plots and fields and chemicals and all the things. Uh and it's essentially taking the oxygen out of the water, right? And that kills life. Uh certainly doesn't sustain it uh robustly.
And so the Maha effort in my mind is going to cover a lot of things from pharmaceutical issues to food-related issues to chemical-related issues to healthcare system-related issues, um, soil quality issues, all these things go into that really big bucket. But if if you'll accept that a well-developed strategy, I had a professor when I was in grad school who said, you know, if you've got a if you've got a good strategy, consider it like an umbrella.
And then everything under that umbrella is a point decision. It either supports your strategy or it doesn't support your strategy. And so when these things nest, as we say in the in the policymaking community, you know, you have a strategy, and then you have policies that nest under that strategy that that seek uh very specific uh objectives. And then you then you need an implementation plan. Uh and so implementation planning is the hard work.
And a lot of times people say, here's my new strategy. Uh high five, everybody, we're done. Yeah, yeah. They're not implementing craft. But if you're not, so I I'll give you an example from my time in the in the Trump White House. Uh we developed a cyber strategy. Uh, we developed a cyber policy that was kind of concurrently developed with the cyber strategy. And then we got, we rolled our sleeves up and we developed a cyber implementation plan.
And that cyber implementation plan, the strategy was probably, I don't know, 20 or 30 pages long. Uh, the policy itself was probably another 20 or 30 pages long. Uh, the implementation plan was 135 pages long. And so we took the strategy to the president, he signed it. We took the policy to the president, he signed it. And then we took the implementation plan to what they call in Washington a principals committee meeting.
The principal principals committee meeting is comprised of all the cabinet secretaries. So they all sit around a table and they approved it. Um and I got some resistance, I won't, I won't name names, but uh I got some resistance to taking the cyber implementation plan to the principals committee meeting. Uh, and yet I insisted on it. And I ultimately won the day, and we took it to principals committee meeting and got approved. So why does that matter?
As soon as we got that implementation plan approved by principals, we sent it over to the Office of Management and Budget, who were in the process of building the president's budget, and we instructed them in writing to ensure that this implemented the, you know, again, strategy signed by the president, policy signed by the president, implementation plan approved by principles, get it into the budget. And I would argue that our cyber uh effort has been durable. Durable.
You know, so we did that during the Trump White House. That was an arduous process. It was. Uh and these things take time. Um, and again, there's there's there's a natural tension between bottom up and top down.
I get that. So I if you know Bobby could listen to this, right? So um, what would your advice be? Um, meaning l how how could we make these changes because he's changing big food, he's changing big pharma.
He's changing how do we make it durable? Yeah, so I I think part of that, and I know he's surrounded by really talented people on this stuff. I think I think uh Callie Means is on his team and a few others that I've heard are are quite good at these things. Um, you know, engaging industry.
And there are times when you just go You know, engaging industry meaning throw them some bones, meaning so we're gonna take seed oils out.
Listen to their concerns. Yeah. Like if if if you're gonna if if you're gonna make minor changes, you might be able to just do that through an edict, like an EO, an executive order.
Um President Boom, done, signed, throw the switch, but it doesn't alter their big financial plan too much, probably might stick. But if it does alter the finance of big food, like taking seed oils out of everything, you could be in big trouble. So you're saying involve them in this somehow? You need to understand their profits interests to some degree.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Because nobody wants to run an unprofitable company. Yeah, exactly. And they're bound by law to pay attention to their shareholders' interests here, right? And so is there a way to create a tectonic shift that might be implemented over the course of five or six or seven years that makes it palatable for a pharmaceutical company or a agricultural chemical company or a food company to go, you need to be here in five years' time. Yeah. Or we're cutting off whatever.
Absolutely.
And so then you help them give a plan to get there. That's right. So now you're giving them an incentive to change and making it more durable.
Well, and that's and that's good good policy, provides incentives, you know, good legislation. You want to incentivize people to do the right thing. But if you you know, one of the things that I've always challenged people for, because you this stuff is so complex that you can really get into playing whack-a-mole on a couple of big things and not take a holistic view.
And so what I challenge people to do when you're sitting around the White House Situation Room on a decision-making dis uh decision is step back and go, what's our desired national outcome? And and ponder that for a few years. I mean, I I think Bobby's doing that. I think he is. Um I, you know, and I'm not saying uh because I don't have any particular insight. Yeah. I'm not saying he's not doing these things. But if I were there uh involved in this, this is what I would expect to see.
Uh, so that strategy, um, you know, you don't just work on strategy and then go, all right, strategy's done. Now I'm gonna start working on policy. A lot of these things you can work on concurrently, and you do it through an interagency process and engagement with Capitol Hill so that you don't get some quarter of who you need to support this to revolt against your effort.
How's he going to involve engage big pharma? I mean, he's taking some big things off. I mean, he's changing the way they vaccinate. He's, you know, going to make safer products, right? I I mean, uh he just hit Tylenol, right? I mean, it so what would your advice be?
Aaron Powell Some of these things are hard, you know, and I I think he's um from what I've seen, he's fearless in pursuing what he thinks is right.
Aaron Powell But if he if it's too much fearlessness, we can put executive orders in place, but the long again, the durability may not be there unless he engages them. Aaron Powell I think he should engage them.
You know, he might have some bad things to tell him, uh, but he needs to listen at the same time to listen to what their concerns are, because we don't want industries to go upside down.
Uh, well, because the fact is, is they're not going to. That's right. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So right. I mean, i if someone's small and they're putting out a bad product, we can take them out, right? But that's not what's going to happen here. Well, you know, it's so your point is, is he has to listen and he should listen.
He should listen. Uh because if there is a pathway to save a company's profits interest and at the same time achieve his desired outcome, then let's find the pathway. Yeah. I think it's great advice. But those things take time. Yeah. And they need a good calm strategy. Uh there's been a little bit of uh my observation is there's been a little bit of secrecy there about what's being developed. Uh they decided not to put the strategy out publicly and instead meet it out a little at a time.
Um I don't have a problem with that. Yeah like it's the prerogative of the White House and the administration. Uh but if if you want this to survive three years from now when we have another election, um the idea, I guess, that I'm putting forward here is is this idea of durability. Like, is there a way to durably create a strategy and policy that allows everybody that has a profits interest to not lose their profits interests and go, here's a pathway?
But you know, when you look at things like soil quality, you know, I I've I've heard of a variety of different uh estimates on how many more uh seasons of harvest we have because these monocrops and chemicals and everything else are killing our soil.
Yeah, no, I it it's true. I mean, so I I mean, if everyone's goal is really to make America healthy again, right? I think many people watching this would be like, that's not their goal. Their goal is just a profit, right? It's like, but I I think that right now there's so much pressure. Their goal is that they're gonna have to come into some type of thing. Okay, how can we still make profits and bring health or not at least rob health, right? So again, it's this, right?
We're doing so many things to deplete our health, right? And and we just need to arrest those things. And I'm I'm reminded, I don't know. Have you ever seen the film The Biggest Little Farm? Yeah. It's great. Yeah. So uh the guy who made that, his wife, uh, and the producer are all childhood friends of my wife. Yeah, that's great. And uh but the thing that captured my attention on this film, by the way, if you haven't seen the film, go watch it. It's it's fantastic for all ages.
Um, but they essentially took over this monocrop farm in Southern California, 220 acres or something like this. Yeah, it was a complete disaster in the beginning, yeah. And then they essentially restored the ecosystem. It took them the better part of a decade to do it. I know, with every possible bad thing happening. And then with all the wildfires in California, it's my understanding that the that the soil is so moist and vibrant that it didn't catch on fire.
And so stuff is burned around their farm. Wow. But has not burned that farm. And so, like if I were the governor of California, maybe I'd say, hey, this is a this is a good exemplar, and maybe we should start farming differently.
We won't talk about the governor of California because that would be a whole nother thing that I would go buzzlistic on.
But but my point is if you've got a way that works and that leads us to a better future, why not try to pursue it? And I know that that's what they're trying to do with the Maha stuff, but like soil quality. Yeah, it's important.
Yeah, no, no doubt about it. Bobby knows that. Yeah um it's it's really important. But again, you have big agriculture coming at you, companies like Monsanto coming out. Of course. I you know, I I fear for his life. I I do. I I'm you know, he's really trying to make it work. I that's why I wanted to have this conversation with you that understands the durability of these decisions.
I mean, you know, look what he's accomplished already, but again, where's it where are we going to be four years from now? I don't know.
That's right. And and I guess that would be my only point in the whole conversation is consider those things that are most durable uh because that's gonna that's gonna be great for us in the long run. Um but you know, we got we were talking about this on the way over, midterm elections are in another year. Uh maybe one of the chambers of the of the Congress uh flips. Uh the president could be a lame duck at that point.
It becomes that much more difficult to pass legislation and do things that you're are on your political agenda. And so, like the step back and say, you know, I want this to be excuse me, I want this to be enforced in ten years. Yeah. We gotta pray, folks.
We gotta pray. Yeah, exactly. I think we all want to see healthier children, and that's the goal. I you know, it amazes me that people hate this man because he went from this side to this side. And it was painful for him. Yeah. What because he took some family hits. Yeah, I'm sure. And but he did it for the love I know the man. It's like he did it for his heart for what he's been called to, and that's the health of children.
And to know I listen, I knew I sat at dinner table with him before he had any aspirations to run for president or any big position. And his goal was the same. And it's like, and I'll tell you, no one did it better than him.
What was the uh the speech by Teddy Roosevelt, the man in the arena? It's not the critic who counts or how the strong man stumbled and fell, whether the doer of good deeds, I forget uh how the whole thing goes. Uh but what matters is the man in the arena whose whose face is marred with dust and sweat and blood. Uh, you know, it's about striving to do the right thing. Yeah. And that's all that's always honorable. Yeah. Right. That's what it's like.
We've gotten into this quagmire uh in our country of all these commercial interest driving things. And it's I'm not naive. I mean, this is the way it works, right? But if you're gonna change things in a durable way, you just need to think about it through that durability lens.
Yeah. I've squeezed you as as as much as I can, man. You have a lot of wisdom. I don't know. You do. Yeah, it's worth it. A lot of wisdom, yeah. You you've been around uh the political game, you've been around government, you've been in the military, uh, you know, all of it, you know, and it it's it it yields a lot of wisdom.
It does. Yeah, it does. Well, I want to thank you, Dan, because it this has been one, interesting to me intellectually, but um your work has has contributed greatly to improving my health condition. Yeah. And it's been through a few of your surrogates as well. But uh, it's great. You know, and for John and and uh Ben and Mindy, if you're out there listening, thank you guys for uh what you've done for the Fears family. Yep. Um, but this is like the pathway is so clear to me.
And if the environment around me can just like be improved to make it easier, because so many of these environmental toxins and bad seed oils and all the other things are ubiquitous. Yeah. And that's it. And you really have to be on high guard.
Yeah. Well, and that's that's why this you know, government part of this conversation, policy, everything, making things durable, that's why I wanted to have the conversation, because um at the end of the day, I can sit here and on social media and just, you know, combat these problems. But unless something changes, you know, from the top down, maybe driven from the bottom up, yeah, uh it's gonna be a waste of my time. Yeah.
Well, be solutions-oriented and try to come up with durable things that are sustainable in ways that uh improve. I mean, you know, I I lost, you know, this uh Kate's dad, we lost him a couple years ago, uh lifelong farmer. Yeah.
Handling chemicals like I've watched those people become arthritic, unhealthy, chronic inflammation, uh, and no one's attributing it to the chemical that they're being forced to use. I mean, and I say forced, of course, everyone has a decision, but meaning from an economic standpoint, it's become very hard for farmers. But look, I, you know, you're a busy guy. You didn't have to be here fly in for this. But I'd do it for you. That's why, thank you.
That's why you need to share like this, because people need to hear this, man. It's a passion. They need to hear that conversation. It is, man. I know that about you.
I I think it's attributed to Marilee from Pain to Purpose. Uh was she the purpose? Yeah. Yeah. And the idea behind it is is a simple one, but uh this has become a purpose for me. Yeah. Because I didn't I mean, you guys, this community restored something to me that I thought was forever lost.
Well, you know, that we talked about that AI technology. There's a lot of companies that need that, right? Um how do they find that?
And you didn't come here for that, but you know uh No, they're they're um yeah, I I just run a small boutique company that's uh a hundred people. But if if you wanted to track me down, I'm sure you could. Uh you could do it through Dan. Um but don't do it through me. Give them a me. But no, it's it's uh there are a lot of different boutique capabilities. Uh and so our website is Magi M A G I.ai. And you don't get a whole lot off our website.
Uh yeah, well, there's and they can contact you because you all offer great service uh to businesses um uh that uh really help them target their clients and build, you know, so you're doing tremendous capabilities. Yeah, you're doing some high-tech stuff that people pay pay attention to uh where AI is going.
And uh and again, you can Google those two reports. Uh the first one is ChatGPT is bullshit. Uh again, it's a peer-reviewed academic paper.
Yeah.
Uh and and uh interesting title. Um and then the second one is this uh one that NVIDIA and Georgia Tech published, uh saying that small language models is the way uh way of the future. I don't think large language models ever go away.
Yeah. The applications Well, like you said, there's a there's a place for it, but people are getting deceived by it too. Yeah. So there you go. Yeah. Yeah. From the man at nose. So do that and keep following me right here because we're gonna bring more topics like this. Dr. Pompa podcast. Tell your friends.