Guest: James Maskell - Reimaging Healthcare: The Cure They Don't Want You To Know

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Welcome to the Free Thought Project Podcast, a hub for free-thinking conversations about the promotion of liberty and the daunting task of government accountability. Here are your hosts, Jason Bassler and Matt Agarist. Hello again, Freethinkers. Welcome back to the Freethought Project podcast. My name is Jason Bassler and joining me is the Freethought Project editor-in-chief, Matt Agarist. Well, guys, we are back from our holiday hiatus.

I hope everyone listening had a wonderful Christmas and a holiday season, a happy holiday season. I know I did. I think Matt did as well. Now, I'm sure our longtime listeners probably noticed that we now have a new intro for the show, and we also changed up the template imagery for our podcast social media posts. So I hope you guys all like it. It was definitely time. I think we've been using that same intro since 2018, so it was long overdue.

And when better to reboot the podcast than in the beginning of the year, right? Well, we have an awesome guest lined up for today with someone I've wanted to have on the show for a couple of years now. But before we get started, I did want to check in with Mr. Matt Agrist and see how he's doing. So happy New Year, Matt. And how was your holiday break? Thanks, brother. It was nice, man. I love being around my family and spending time with them and seeing everybody.

It's the most wonderful time of the year. Indeed and i always look forward to you know that few that what is like a week and a half stretch there after christmas we kind of just chill out and take some time for ourselves it's so necessary especially with the work that we do and you know i actually had plenty of time to think during the time we took off from the podcast and i had this revelation that podcasts really are this an amazing thing.

I mean, I know Matt's a busy guy. He works two jobs. He's currently also going to school and has two kids. I have two young children of my own, work freelance gigs, create content all day long, and don't have a lot of free time. I know our guest today also travels all around the world to speak and share his work, but we all coordinate to make this time to talk together. And when we do, that recording forever lives on the internet,

accessible to anyone. And it really is pretty amazing if you think about it. But with that said, you know, we've talked to guests from all over the country, a lot of great people doing important work, and we've even spoken to guests from different countries.

But this week, our guest is basically a neighbor of mine in the Sacramento area, and I was introduced to him by a mutual friend of ours. He's even been so gracious to invite me over to his home for, I believe, was a birthday bash. And I'm pretty sure we've been tentatively talking about doing this podcast since at least 2022. But our guest today is Mr. James Maskell. He is an entrepreneur, a speaker, an author, and a community builder.

He founded the organization The Evolution of Medicine that aims to support healthcare practitioners in transitioning medicine to functional and integrative medicine, which I'm sure we'll be getting into today. And he's also the co-founder of the Functional Forum, which is a conference and an online resource and community for health professionals that features monthly webcasts with top experts and thought leaders in functional medicine.

So James, welcome to the Free Thought Project podcast. And how are you doing today, my friend? Great to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to connect. And I'm sure people who come to this podcasts come because of your amazing memes online. And so the kind of people that would laugh at the kind of memes that you make are my kind of people. So I'm glad to be here with you. Well, yeah. Thank you, man. We certainly have put out quite a few memes in our time and articles.

And I like to think it's the full package. We've wrote a lot of great articles over the years, made some powerful videos. But part of the reason I did want to have you on today is a bit of a selfish reason. And I know we've had lunch before and discussed some pretty fascinating ideas. But to be honest, James, I really don't have like a firm grasp on what exactly it is that you do.

I know you're well respected in your field. I know you're a sought after speaker and a healthcare visionary. I know you had a lot to say during the COVID years, but maybe we could start by explaining to both our audience and myself what exactly functional and integrative medicine is, and how your organization, the evolution of medicine, facilitates sharing these concepts with the healthcare community.

For sure so i'll give you the the very brief version and when you can dive into whatever you think your audience would like the most so yeah i was i was trained as a health economist and i did health economics at university and in that training realized that in my lifetime and not like at the end of my life but basically at about this time when i'm like 45 and have two kids.

That we would see the collapse of medical systems both in the uk where i grew up and in US where I've lived for 20 years under the weight of chronic illness, right? That you see the trend of the cost of care goes up, you know, very exponentially and was already starting when I was in university 20 years ago. And that, you know, the societal outcome of that continuing growth of chronic illness would, you know, be catastrophic, you know, in my lifetime.

And, you know, with a bit of a nudge from the universe, I decided to just follow that path in 2005 and I moved to America, I would say, you know, over 20 years, I've sought the answers to various questions. The first question is, is chronic disease reversible, right? So can you take someone who has a chronic illness and take them back to health?

Because in the health economics and in the sort of general thought, the idea is no, is that like the pathway is you start your life, you get a chronic illness, it gets worse, it gets more costly, and then you die. And that's like the trend that all the things are built on. And I just grew up in a different way. I grew up, I was actually born in a commune. My parents did a lot of natural health stuff. I had a chiropractor and a homeopath growing up. So I just knew there was a different way.

And so in 2005, I moved to America. The first question is, is chronic disease reversible?

And I saw I worked in a clinic in Georgia for a year and a half and I saw that yes it is reversible not in a week not in an appointment but in you know three to six to nine months depending on the severity of the chronic illness it is reversible so that was the first part then I wanted to know like how common that was like was that a one-off or are there many other people doing that so I took a job selling to the kinds of doctors that I had worked with in that first clinic and saw that,

yes, this is happening everywhere under different names with different. You know, different methodologies and ultimately realized at that point that there were things that all of those different methodologies had in common. And then there were things that were different. And ultimately, if you want to build a movement, you have to learn to speak the same language and really functional medicine.

When it was presented to me at a conference, I kind of saw that this had at least the potential to be a common language for health professionals that are in the search of creating health, right? Our whole health system is built on a sort of a model called pathogenesis, which is medicine by disease.

So if you understand the way that medicine was sort of, you know, formed and created modern medicine, it was in the early part of the 20th century, and it was really focused on understanding the disease and then sort of working out what the best plan is for that disease. But medicine has changed and, you know, the diseases of today are lifestyle-driven chronic illnesses. And so I started the Functional Forum initially to popularize functional medicine.

That turned into a business called The Evolution of Medicine, which is helping medicine adapt to this new environment. And ultimately, I would say the last 10 years has really been in the service. So understanding what are the friction points that keep medicine from evolving and how can we solve those friction points. And along the way, I have started an alternative to health insurance for health conscious individuals.

I've started a business where we looked at, came off my second book, which was on group medicine and delivering healthcare in groups for chronic illnesses to solve some of the sort of biopsychosocial challenges of where health comes from and how to reverse chronic disease consistently. And then more recently, I'm now working on a new project specifically aimed at Alzheimer's and cognitive decline, because it's the best example of a disease

that with conventional medicine, there's no plan, right? You can take... Some drugs, but those drugs only slow the slow decline to Alzheimer's and cognitive decline, whereas there are now clinicians that are consistently reversing cognitive decline, so people's cognition getting better. And, you know, when it comes to weight loss, you know, you could take a drug like a GLP-1, or you could do a more health-focused plan. So there are options, but in Alzheimer's, there just is no option.

And so, you know, that's what I've been up to.

So the big theme is understanding that the system of medicine that we have is not fit for purpose. And then over two decades, trying to work out where the friction points are for change and adoption and following those threads and looking to solve them with either businesses or movements. Wow, James, that's amazing. And I could see some parallels to what we've been trying to do with alternative media.

I mean, obviously there's a significant difference there, but much along the same lines of building a movement, you know, and wonderful to hear that you are also schooled in economics. I mean, I, I feel like my life significantly changed when I started to begin to learn economics. And I know a lot of people feel like it's just drab calculations and math and kind of boring stuff, but there's a great quote by Peter Botky.

I think that's how you say his name, which is economics is a set of eyeglasses. And when you put those eyeglasses on, you bring the world into sharp relief. And I couldn't agree more with that. So to know that that's kind of where your foundation stems from and your schooling and education, I guess that seems to make some sense. Now.

The ultra processed foods, that American diet, the standard American diet consists of, man, you're kind of a prophet, I guess, or maybe a visionary or a little bit of both. I mean, I guess it wasn't terribly difficult even 20 years ago to kind of see where this was all headed. So you certainly made the right decision to get into this field.

And boy, with the health care costs the way they are now, I think there needs to be some kind of upheaval within the system and for checks and balances and maybe even just a whole new reimagining of how things could actually be. And it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. But by now, you know, we're all familiar with the story of Luigi Manjoloni, Manjoloni.

I'm not quite sure I always say his last name, but the suspect who was allegedly the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, I guess he's become like a hero to a lot of people who believe that, you know, healthcare has spiraled out of control with astronomical prices. And obviously, you know, many people are very disgruntled about that and rightfully so. But you've mentioned that your mission is to flatten the curve of health care costs.

And that's an incredibly timely goal. Can you maybe delve into like how that would happen? Maybe some of the core initiatives and strategies that you are kind of trying to shape up to achieve this goal? And like what, you know, innovative approaches are you exploring to really make health care more affordable and accessible?

For sure yeah well there's a lot because it's you know it's a it's a it's over a decade of different things but i would say look the the biggest thing is like medicine and, the medicine that what that we all experience in western medicine you know was created in a time when acute disease like you get hit by a car or you have a acute infection you know was the was the necessary medicine of the day because that's what people were

dying from but then if you try and take that take that type of way of of dealing with medicine and you take it to chronic illness, you get the results that we've got in the last 50 years with explosion of chronic illness the more we spend, the worse it gets. And so you see that. So what I came to see is I called it the evolution of medicine because I was hoping that medicine would sort of adapt to this new environment and we could accelerate that adaptation.

But ultimately, you see that the model is actually almost 180 degrees opposite. So just to give you an example, in conventional medicine, the doctor is the most important person because the doctor knows how to do the surgery and the doctor can prescribe the drugs. But in this new model, the patient has the agency because in the new model, the doctor can't de-diabetes you, right?

You have to de-diabetes yourself by eating healthy and dealing with your stress and dealing with the poisons in your environment in a healthy way. And the doctor really can't do that much about it for you. So, you know, when, when the locus of control goes from the doctor to the patient, that is a dramatic shift.

And that doesn't just change one thing to another, that, that is a sort of a generational change that needs to happen because everything is built around, you know, the original system and, and ultimately like the success of the initial of conventional medicine in the early 1900s, whether you view that success as real or as a function of the Flexner report and sort of like the control economy, whatever, whatever caused it, it led to the sort of.

The, you know, concreting in that system as the system. And so when I say reducing friction, there's a lot of friction that needs to be reduced. There's the way that doctors are educated. There's the way that medicine is paid for. There's the, the actual clinical operating system that, that doctors use.

The good news is that it's accelerating. And I would say that it's about to get a big bump in acceleration through, you know, the changes that we're seeing politically, which is exciting because now you actually have unprecedented political unity on the fact that this needs to change. And interestingly, if you go back 20 years when I first started. The majority of this sort of progressive medicine effort is happening in big cities and sort of hippie towns around the country.

So Ashland, Oregon and Asheville, North Carolina and Austin, in Texas. But now you see that the sort of push towards health, obviously with the last election, coming from the red side is a very strange inversion, but it actually creates a level of political unity around the need for a drastically different way of doing chronic illness. And so I expect to see a huge acceleration because some of the friction points have been removed.

That is a very weird dynamic that you just pointed out about how the left used to be the ones embracing food safety and like non-GMO foods and vaccine safety. They were protesting thimerosal and vaccines. And now we see like the left just embracing a bag of Doritos, right?

And the right is now the one that's championing the health movement, which is by a person, might i add from the left right rfk jr is a unestablished leftist and always has been and it's it's weird to see that dynamic at play and it's also weird to see that the left like not all people on the left i'm not speaking in in uh in all certainty but you know a large portion of the left kind of just abandoned these thought principles and and and care

less about or couldn't care less about being healthy or calling out the large corporations who promote these vaccines with so many dangerous ingredients in them.

It's wild, man. I don't know how to explain that. I have a question in that same vein here. As Jason said at the beginning of the podcast, I'm getting a master's degree currently in applied computer science, and we've been studying systems thinking. And one of the things that stands out to me is when I'm looking at the world through these new glasses of systems thinking is the healthcare system. It's just crazy.

It's become so siloed, right? We got the current healthcare system that continues to silo itself over and over again, treating organs, small diseases, symptoms, and isolation instead of embracing this systems thinking holistic approach. And when I say holistic, I'm not saying like, you know, putting a lemon wedge on your eye to treat some kind of weird, obscure shit. I'm talking about holistic as in the entire whole system and looking at your body as a system.

And instead, we don't do that. We just, you know, people go from doctor to doctor to get treated for different things instead of trying to make themselves well, right? And functional medicine, as you stated earlier, it embodies this holistic view, and it addresses these root causes rather than just isolated symptoms.

So why do you think that the current healthcare system, instead of embracing this systems-based holistic approach, just continues to silo itself into these like further corners of medicine that don't really affect the patient at all in a positive manner, right? They just treat symptoms over and over again until their chronic disease kills them. That's just the way it is. Do you think that's just a case of how it's always been done and that's why

they refuse to change? Or do you think there's something deeper at play here?

Well, there's different elements to it. I think it's multifactorial. One of the best ways to think about it that I have thought about it for a while, that is an economic theory. So you'll like this, Jason. And it's really about like, you know, when you have a simple element that ends into a complex system, what you always have is diminishing marginal returns.

And so if you look at vaccines as an example, it could be true that the first five vaccines create a disproportionate increase in life expectancy and that that increase in life expectancy, you know, for the people inside vaccinology, you know, creates a situation that like this is the truth. But then when you put a simple intervention like vaccines into a complex system like human biology and webs of human biology, it starts to suffer from diminishing marginal returns.

So you can also see that those people who say, well, are we really getting any value from vaccines 20 to 70 on the paradigm? You could argue that too. So those things can both be true and they can both be true when you look at it through the lens of diminishing marginal returns. And that is. Just, it's just kind of obvious when you look at it and you can see it all the way around.

So like, for instance, in the first half of the 20th century, American medicine relied more heavily on medication than any other country because we were creating a lot of the innovations. And then you start to see from 1980, you've probably seen that graph, which has on one side of it, amounts spent on medicine on the X axis and on the Y axis is life expectancy. And in about 1980, the curve in America starts to like really flatten out.

So you get way more investment and no appreciation in life expectancy. There's your diminishing marginal returns curve exactly. Because it's like, yeah, the first, you know, the first five drugs, you know, dramatically improve life expectancy, but the next thousand and five, you know, flatten it out. Perfect example, antibiotics, right? You start out with antibiotics.

At the beginning, it's saving lives on the battlefield. And it's, you know, meaning that if you get cut in, you know, in a battlefield, you don't die because you do that. And then on the other end of it, now we have antibiotic resistant strains. And if you want to get one, you go to the hospital because that's where they fester. or the opiate crisis, where at the beginning, pain medication is like a total innovation for certain acute illnesses.

And now we have an opiate crisis. So in all three of those examples, you see it's a diminishing marginal returns curve. And ultimately, we're just at the wrong end of it. Now, in the way that economics should work, the second best theory should kick in. And that theory should be left alone because we're not getting any more benefits from the investment, the second best theory should kick in. And so that would be, and I don't think it's the second best theory.

I actually think it is the best theory, which is that we need to help people actually get healthier. But the problem is that the people who created the first system have an entrenched financial benefit in maintaining that. And so you see that it doesn't kick in in the way that it should. And ultimately, I think that's, again, what we're about to see here politically is that we could, if, you know, Bobby Kennedy gets to do what he wants to do.

And also that, you know, Jay Bhattacharya and Marty McCary and, and others, Dave Weldon, you know, play the role. We could see the explosive increase in health and longevity from the second best theory kicking in.

And the second best theory is, you know, nature and health and not poisoning each other and brotherhood and connection and community and you know and human connection if i had to sort of give it a name it's salutogenesis it's health created around health not created around pathology and so you know i'm hopeful that this is going to like unleash the handbrake for you know something that every other country is already benefiting from because they have a sort

of they didn't bet the whole house on pharmaceuticals in 1980. Right. Yeah, I guess that totally makes sense. I mean, that's, you know, been part of our focus here at the Free Thought Project is kind of highlighting the regulatory capture, the lobbying, the big business, big pharma aspect inside of things. And as you said, entrenched, I think that's probably the perfect word for it. It doesn't seem like there's been much movement in any direction. And I think we saw this coming.

I guess, you know, obviously that explains some of the healthcare costs as being astronomical. economical. But we saw this coming. And I think even though I was still kind of a junior baby libertarian at the time when, you know, Obama's health care started to kick in, a lot of people were really worried that a lot of the policies were being written by the health care companies and insurance companies, you know, and it just didn't seem to make a lot of sense.

But I guess this might be a good time to ask this question, because obviously, you know, we're touching on something here that doesn't necessarily even have to be a conspiracy theory. As we were saying, we see it. It's right in front of us. I mean, the statistics are there. Anybody paying attention really has a good understanding of kind of where the health care movement is in this country. And it's really not making too much headway.

But in a time when misinformation and conspiracy theories are kind of rampant around this health care sector, some, of course, are valid. Some are just kind of clickbait theories capitalizing on people's biases after COVID. Can you maybe help us separate some fact from fiction and share like what some of these conspiracy facts with our listeners as to like who the real culprits are, how they're shaping these healthcare policies and, you know, what we can do to really fight back?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, maybe just it's easy. I'd like to talk about my own journey to becoming a libertarian, actually, because I mean, I, you know, for me, it was vaccines along the way, right so i i took this job so when i took that job that i explained earlier when i started working with doctors that were reversing chronic illness the company that i took a job with just in new york and the area where i live there were doctors at that point

that were working with you know vaccine injured children and this was not something that i knew anything about and i showed up and i saw first of all. I saw, you know, people have a kind of an idea of what they think autism is and they think it's like Rain Man, but go and spend time with parents of kids that have like full-blown autism where they have to wear a helmet and they can't take care of themselves. And they have these like very distressing, repetitive behaviors.

You know, you start to realize like, this is, this is a tragedy, a human tragedy on so many levels and a coming economic tragedy, because the cost of the care for someone with autism over a lifetime is, you know, is upwards of $3 million. I mean, it was $2 million when I, you know, 10 years ago, now it's $3 million.

And it's probably be like, you know, as inflation keeps going up and as the cost of care and healthcare keeps going up, I mean, it could be $10 million per kid, you know, over their lifetime. And so, you know, that, that, as I started to understand at that point.

You know, the, the clear relation between environmental, it's like, you know, back then it was like, oh, it's genetic or they're not counting it right and you know obviously all of that is bullshit i mean it's it couldn't be more obvious that it's that like where are the 60 year old people with autism if it's just miscounting they don't exist right so you know so once you understand that i became kind of like a single issue issue voter and i would think of myself as like blue

green voter like i voted for the green party in the last election before i left them i left england but like the only the only politician that i like really found any sort of heart resonance with in the last 20 years was ron paul because ron paul was awesome and i was like you know calling on behalf of ron paul calling people in nevada and new hampshire and iowa in whatever it was december of 2012 when he was running for the republican nomination because i was like

here's a guy who doesn't want to force vaccines on everyone because i could see all you know the beginning it's sort of like have you ever seen the movie, The Big Short, right? Where they, they, you know, they can't believe that people in Florida are getting houses, $600,000 houses with no income and no job. And then they take a trip and they see that these people are getting those houses and there's no way that they're going to pay back. And then they realize the whole thing is a fugazi.

And it's the same thing. It's like, I'm literally sitting in these offices and realizing like kids are being poisoned. The, the, the way that they are becoming poisoned, you know, reflects differently depending on the biology of the, of the, of the kid. And I see, yeah, sort of became like a single issue voter. And actually the Genesis of what I've described helps everyone understand the Bobby Kennedy phenomenon, because here's Bobby Kennedy, who's an environmental guy.

And I think of myself as sort of like, I mean, I want to take care of the environment. I see that he's an environmental guy. He sees a case of acute poisoning. He can't look away. And ultimately he finds connection and an agreement with the libertarian right and not the, you know, and not the left, because ultimately like they're the only people that wouldn't bestow the poison on you. And you're totally right about Obama and Obamacare.

I mean, all you have to look is the stock price of, you know, the insurance companies. And you look at like a company like United healthcare, people don't realize that these big insurance companies, their biggest client is the government. Like 60% of their revenue comes from government. And that's because Obamacare.

And if you take a step back, I mean, I grew up in the UK, so like they have socialized medicine, but you know, I can see how people on the left in 2009, 10, 11, 12, 13, think that Obama is bringing in leftist ideas into healthcare, you know, with like more access and all that. But. But, but, but forcing people to buy a commercial insurance project product, which is not actually insurance. It's a, it's a health plan.

It's a pharmaceutical first health plan is what you're buying with all of the associated costs brought into it. You know, you are, you are forcing people to buy it under the tax penalty that, I mean, that's not leftist. I mean, that's definitely authoritarian. And so, you know, so ultimately like that was what was happening in my world. then I had kids. And ultimately from there, it's been about building the future that you want to, that you want to see and you want to leave a legacy for.

And some of that relates to how do you get more doctors to like leave the system and start to practice in a new way so that you can prove that the outcomes are better. Some of it is organizing the way that healthcare is paid for in more of a community decentralized way. And not everyone give UnitedHealthcare their money and hope for the best way.

And some of it is really now what I'm focused on is, you know, we've helped thousands of doctors leave the system and start their own like independent practices, delivering medicine directly to the people and cutting out all the middlemen. Now the era is about unifying those, you know, those dissidents and creating something that could actually work to solve the problem at the scale that exists. So there's my Ted talk.

Can you explain that? So you, you, you, you help create these projects called new health and heal community.

Can you explain how that those programs or projects rather compared to this modern day health insurance that's forced on us? How it like, say if someone broke their leg as an example, and they had new health. How would that compare to someone who has UnitedHealthcare and breaks their leg? Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, new health, I kind of imagine that new health would be the most interesting to your listeners, particularly because it's more of like a libertarian concept.

But the idea for this came around when, you know, in the 1980s, Mennonite groups. So if you're a Mennonite church and you're 10,000 groups strong and you live in your own commune, you realize like, why are we all, why do 10,000 of us buying United Healthcare Insurance? Because basically we're paying for the like drug usage, medication. And, you know, overuse of the healthcare system by like the unhealthy, unwashed out there.

And we actually have enough in our little commune, we have enough of a way to reduce risk by the fact that there's 10,000 of us. So the simple way that it worked at the beginning in the 1980s is like, yeah, we're all part of a church and we are going to, you know, make an agreement amongst us of sort of a volunteer agreement, I would say. So like something that we all volunteer that if. If some, you know, if Johnny breaks his leg and it costs a thousand.

$10,000 to, you know, fix his leg, that will all send Johnny a dollar. And that's literally how it started where like people are just sending money to each other to support each other. And that way, none of us have to pay these healthcare premiums. We all pay zero and we only pay when we're paying for the like, absolutely necessary costs.

And so it's a volunteer community model. And that really spoke to me because i think it's libertarian right it's like people deciding it's voluntary it's not being forced upon you and it's a way of people working together to solve some of the like you know it solving some of the like market failures or solving some of the inherent problems with risk so i really enjoyed that and i joined it and not only did i find that it was like spoke to me but it also made me

a better custodian of the healthcare resources like i didn't want to rip off the system. Whereas now, if you guys are signed up with UnitedHealth today, and the murder only brings that into sharp contrast, what incentive do you have to not just rack up the bill? In fact, your only incentive is to rack up the bill because you want to get value from the health plan that you're paying for. That's very exciting, very big.

So if suddenly plastic surgery is available on UnitedHealthcare, you're going to get plastic surgery, even though it's not helping your health at all. And that's an extreme example, but it's giving you an example of like, do people become custodians of their own healthcare dollars and they don't. So anyway, fast forward to Obamacare and, you know, a million people are using this like Christian medical cost sharing communities around the country.

And it's like markedly less expensive than insurance for essentially the same service. Like if something happens, you get care and it gets paid for if something, you know, traumatic happens, but like ultimately you're in agreement with the rest of the people that you're living in a healthy way and that you're not going to overuse the system and you're not on drugs and you don't smoke. And, you know, you have these kinds of agreements between the people in the group.

And so, you know, when 2018 came around and Trump ended the individual mandate, so January, 2018, Trump ends the individual mandate, which means that you don't get to, you don't get a tax penalty if you don't buy one of the obamacare sanctioned insurance companies and they actually grandfathered in these five five uh church things because i think they didn't realize how big they were to get they exploded during obamacare because the cost differential was so crazy and by

the way it's not just the cost differential like i you know we chose we lived in new york city then and we chose to have a home birth because we did the studies and showed that home birth had better outcomes like for everyone So we had done the research and we were in the community of practitioners and decided we were going to do that. We, you know, if we had had insurance at that point.

It wouldn't have paid for us to have the home birth and the thing that we wanted but in these medical cost sharing entities it allows you to have the choice of the medicine that you want and so you know that was another factor it's not just the lower cost it's the fact that there's choice there's actually complete provider choice there's no network because you're just paying cash and if you pay cash you get a you know 50 discount on every cost so there were

so many things about it that like made sense to me. When Trump ended the individual mandate on the 18th, January 2018, no one else kind of realized this because they weren't in it like I was, but I realized what it actually meant is that anyone could start their own medical cost sharing. It wasn't just these five that were grandfathered in because the tax penalty had gone away. You could do it. And that became New Health. There's now like dozens and dozens of these things.

And we can we can have a debate as to whether or not it's you know similar enough to health insurance but essentially it does what you want as a normal person which is that if you have some sort of catastrophic thing it takes care of you and if and otherwise you're just living a healthy life and using the money that you would have been spending on united healthcare to your local chiropractor or your local functional medicine

doctor or a local sauna subscription or you can choose because that's the, that's the foundation of the, of the, of the agreement. It also incentivizes health instead of, instead of carelessness, right? Like you want to be healthy because you don't want to be a drain on the voluntary system that you are a part of, you know, like you're not going to, you're not going to treat your body as if you can just go get, heart surgery, right? I love that approach, man. That was a very good explanation.

And so what's the difference between the new health and heal community? Yeah. New health is for consumers and small businesses, and it's a way of taking care of your health, health expenses. And so like, it's, that's what that is. You know, heal community was built after I, I'm not actually involved with new health anymore. My business partner passed away in 2019. And so I had a sort of a, a re I'm excited.

I'm excited about that potential, but like, I, I, I felt like what I really wanted to, to double that when my business partner passed away, I sort of had a clarity that I needed to really double down on reversing chronic disease at scale.

Cause although the insurance thing solves some of those issues and, and solve some of the, you know, bad incentives in medicine, you know, what I recognize is that the, the movement to learn how to reverse chronic illness was actually the most important thing and that i had some ideas that i wanted to share on that so i wrote my second book which is called the community cure and then that book started to look at essentially

like that loneliness is such a driver of all cause mortality that you know it's crazy to do if you want to try and reverse chronic illness like just a fact a fact is that that loneliness and social stress is a bigger driver of all-cause mortality than smoking than food than alcohol and just think about all the different.

Public health money and efforts that are put towards alcohol right and and smoking and and food and so social stress is worse and ultimately like socially stressed people lonely people end up getting sick and in the healthcare system. And so ultimately, I wrote this book called The Community Cure. And The Community Cure was essentially advocating for this sort of cross section.

If you imagine a Venn diagram where one of it is like functional medicine and integrated medicine and where one of it is community, where those two things intersect, you actually have a more economically viable model for scale. To go back to the very beginning, I said, is chronic disease reversible. The next thing I want to see is, is it reversible at the scale that it exists?

And functional medicine in the way that it was being deployed cannot reverse it at the scale that exists because there's not that many doctors, it takes a lot of training, and it's a very resource intensive way of doing medicine. It takes a lot of time from the doctor, it takes a lot of effort from the patient, and it's just not really like efficient enough to become the standard of care.

And I had started to see new models emerging where instead of having like one person with diabetes that you're treating differently? What if I got all the people in the clinic with diabetes and put them in a group and sort of supported them in building a cohort where they would support each other in doing these new healthy behaviors?

And I was very intrigued by that situation. I talked about it in my TED talk in 2015, because from an economist point of view, now I saw something that was like with the right methodology, but also had the right sort of economic structure. So I wrote that book in 2019 and it came out January 1st, 2020.

So I was ready to like kick ass and take names and basically get the whole healthcare system to realize that doing chronic disease reversal in groups was the way both economically and financially and all these things. And it was being done that way in the Cleveland Clinic Center for Functional Medicine. There's amazing examples in my book.

Now, unfortunately that book came out right before covid which is the greatest you know destruction of community in our lifetime by far right everyone literally being forced to be in their homes and so at that moment i was still like fired up about community and so heal community was an attempt to work out one could you get the same benefits of group medicine that had been proven in person virtually and then you know because ultimately.

Scaling something virtually is a lot easier than scaling something that has a strong in-person element just because of the sort of logistics and so heal community is virtual groups as a service and we sell that to healthcare systems and organizations that are delivering population health and we learned a lot through that process too about you know do people want to be in groups are groups sexy and aspirational is it a little bit too much like aa you know is there an appetite to be in groups and

then can you deploy it at reasonable scale and a lot of those learnings I'm taking into you know what I'm doing now but that's the difference between those two but they all have community they all have this cross-section of like the cross-section of community and and this new way of doing health but they're just sort of aimed at different people well first of all I just wanted to say apologies for the loss of your business partner I'm sure that wasn't easy and you You know,

geez, man, the free market, these libertarian principles, decentralization, voluntarism, you know, who would have guessed that that would have been the solution?

And it's pretty fascinating to hear that it kind of transcends into the medical world as well as far as healthcare and the solutions that go with that. You said a lot, God, I want to touch on a bunch of it, but we are already at the 40 minute mark. And I know something that you had mentioned was you had seen some success in reversing cognitive decline in your father. And I know that's a topic that you're deeply passionate about.

So do you mind getting into that a little bit? Could you maybe share about True Nero and maybe the key strategies, lifestyle changes, and all that stuff that made a significant impact on his cognitive health? And were there any unexpected challenges or surprising benefits that you and your family discovered along the way in this journey? Yeah. So 2017, we're at the biggest conference for functional medicine.

And the whole topic is on brain health because Dr. Dale Bredesen has written a book called The End of Alzheimer's and is now training people on his methodology to show the very first time that, you know, that cognitive decline has been reversed. And so a lot of doctors in my space get excited about it. They start taking the training. One of those doctors is my doctor who lives down the road from me in El Dorado Hills, California called Dr. Christine Burke.

And over the last few years, especially since I moved to the area at that same time, you know, she's entertained a lot of my crazy ideas about buying a hotel and turning it into like a chronic disease or a cognitive decline recovery center, that kind of thing. But the problem was always like, it's like if reversing an autoimmune disease or a digestive disorder or whatever else is, you know, is, is tricky.

What's even trickier is reversing cognitive decline, because essentially the thesis is you have to work out what's causing the cognitive decline, and then you have to get the person to take action to deal with that cause. And so it's really like the hardest version of functional medicine, but it's actually the most rewarding too, because, you know, obviously you can bring people back to life, which is insane. And it's never really happened. There's no historical precedent for it.

So, you know, a year ago, actually in December, 2013, I get a call from a friend. My dad lives in South Africa, in Cape Town. And I get a call and saying like, my dad is unresponsive. He's in bed. You know, he's sort of collapsed at lunch is, you know, at my friend's bed and both myself and his brother, you know, book a flight straight away to go and see him.

And when I arrive, he's sort of like indistinguishable from death, really, apart from very slow breathing, eyes closed, completely unconscious in bed or whatever. And he suffered like a major cognitive decline, right? So his brain is just like not really working. And so I, you know, in preparation, I've got a couple of days before my flight takes off or that I'm speaking to two of the doctors that I know, Dr. Burke and another amazing pediatrician in my area called Dr. Nicole Chirac.

And they both say like, look, if you have a cognitive decline that happens that rapidly, it's always an infection. So go and check for an infection, take him, get him looked out. And if it's not an infection, if he doesn't have an infection, then go and see what's going on in the house. Cause it'd probably be moldy. So I go there and long story short, his apartment, which he's not in at that moment, cause he's at a friend's house is like black mold.

So it's, it's late spring, like December and the house is disgusting. And like, you know, he's 86 and my brain suddenly goes back to the conversations that we're having every day or every other day for the last three months where he's saying, oh, it's so cold and I just want to stay in bed and I'm just not feeling well or whatever. And I start to realize, okay, this has been a three-month journey and maybe even longer for him to get there. So...

Everyone there, all of his whole care team is like, this is death. Prepare for death. This is what death looks like. And so I'm preparing for death and I'm like dealing with his flat and selling his stuff and, you know, moving his stuff and working it out because I'm the only child and I'm, you know, taking care of the death rights.

Lights so then about a few days later we move him via ambulance he's still like mostly comatose to a friend's house like on the coast at a friend's house who say hey you can come and spend his last days at our house old friends the woman married my wife and i and we we move in there and over the next two weeks the lights start to like start to turn on a little bit like there's like a slight improvement in it and ultimately it's like i called it on the way in like with you know

with the help of those doctors that if it's mold well if it's mold if you get them out of the moldy environment that's step one and so he is and so it starts to turn on and then like two weeks later we have a meeting with the original doctor and they're like well he doesn't really have a terminal illness and so then it's kind of obvious that like that it was mold and that like this is you know that new things are possible because he's not in the moldy environment anymore.

And so, you know, he gets into full-time care. He needed it because like he had lost so much muscle mass in his legs, he couldn't walk. But I just went to South Africa in December, a year later, you know, in about, I would say in about like, in about April, he's now able to use WhatsApp again. So he's in full-time care and now he's able to like text me on WhatsApp. So for six months he couldn't use WhatsApp.

And now in april he can start using whatsapp again and then by the middle of the summer you know he's reading he's reading like three or four books a week which is what he used to do before he said and he's you know that function is coming back so the reason i bring this up is because like you know.

Even in America today, the chances of that situation occurring where you go in for a major cognitive decline and the person that you speak to knows that it's mold and deals with it and tells you it's mold, let's take a look at your house, do that. That would not happen in any place in America either because the understanding of mold as a driver of chronic illness and especially about brain illness is nowhere.

In functional medicine, it's everywhere because it's the truth, you know, but in conventional medicine, they have no idea about this. And that's why they've never reversed any kind of Alzheimer's because they don't understand the cause. But you might say, well, I heard that Alzheimer's is type three diabetes. It is also that it can also be true for some people, the causes that they have diabetes and it manifests as Alzheimer's. And for some people like my dad, it's not.

So the key is how do you separate out what the causes are and treat the causes. And this is something that, you know, Dr. Burke has done very well. If you go to dementiareversaltrial.com, you can see that she is one of the trial sites for, there's already been a trial and it was in the Journal of Alzheimer's in 2022 that showed that the reversal is not only possible, but is happening consistently with these doctors.

And right now we're in the middle of a trial, which is the first placebo controlled trial, where they are, you know, doing the next layer of proof that if you get the protocol, it gets better. And if you don't get the protocol, it doesn't get better. And so she is one of the six trial sites in the country just down the road from us, Jason.

And ultimately when I got back, I just felt like extremely emboldened to try and like, take this story because unlike every other functional medicine doctor, I haven't had this story that I just shared of my own like personal family member having an issue. My kids are all healthy because of the choices that I've made because of what I knew. So I don't have an unhealthy, you know, why for an unhealthy kid with a mystery chronic illness, you know, because I was informed ahead of time and knew what

to do. But this thing really like spoke to me. And so in the last year, we've essentially like turned the technology. Basically like technology, created technology to replicate this protocol and help any clinic implement it. So in 2025, our goal is to get a few thousand clinics that already do precision medicine and functional medicine using the software because it saves them time and it aids in the implementation.

It supports both the patient to do the healthy things that they need to do and the doctor to work out what the root causes in this specific patient and treat accordingly. And then my goal for 2026 is to have this in, you know, Medicare Advantage plans and, you know, in memory care centers and even, you know, older living communities so that people can avoid these issues.

And, you know, as if you look at all the different things that affect human health, whether it be poison, whether it be social stress, whether it be, there's an amazing book called The Indoctrinated Brain that I think a lot of your listeners would like, and really about how the sort of weaponization of COVID and to create, you know, to weaponize essentially to, and how the indoctrinated brain breaks down over time, everything tends towards cognitive decline.

And so ultimately I feel like we're right over the a target for creating a scalable new healthcare system because these are the hardest cases. Everything else is easier than reversing cognitive decline. And so the early signs are that one. Dr. Burke is amazing, super amazing. We actually just kicked off our first mastermind with the first 20 clinics they're going to be using it. And she is educating doctors in a level that is absolutely tremendous. She's so thoughtful.

I mean, in order to create this software, we basically had to download her brain, which is like, how does she think about weighing different parts of different values and weighing different pieces of data that come in?

And so she's amazing. obviously the appetite is there because literally no one else can execute this like there's no plan for alzheimer's apart from just die and like you know and i guess i just want to leave you with one one piece of information is that if we don't solve this there are statistics to show that by 2050 everyone in the country will be involved in alzheimer's either you'll have it or you'll be caring for

someone with it everyone because it takes three people to care for one person with Alzheimer's. So this couldn't be more important and I'll be 70 by 2050. I'm 44 now. So we've got a good rap at it. And I would say we've got some exciting potential that this software can, you know, solve that problem and, you know, be deployed by initially precision and functional medicine clinics, but then eventually by all clinics.

And this could be a way that functional medicine could become the standard of care. That's the dream that I'm going after right now. Man, that's fascinating, man. I've been taking a lot of information about AI and the function of healthcare. And I think that's the answer. So long as we keep it out of the hands of the people that want to, the same people that are forcing us to take injections that cause myocarditis, right? Man, we have time for one more question. But before I ask that,

man, I just want to thank you for like all this, dude. This has been an amazing podcast. The functional medicine and holistic care knowledge that you have, dude, is second to none. I don't think we've had a podcast guest that was able to go this in depth with it, especially in the economic side of it, of things. It's just, it's amazing, dude.

Appreciate that. But, you know, that said, we always like to leave our listeners with a white pill kind of question, like a note of hope, you know, if you will.

So if you could address all of our listeners right now, which you are about to, what's one actionable step you think that individuals or small communities can take right now to move toward this more functional, holistic model to their health. I'm glad you asked about that. Jason, I haven't told you about this, but this is basically happening right now.

So I am pioneering. Another thing that I'm doing this year is, is like, I realized that look, Bobby and all these people getting to high office is great and it'll make some, hopefully some structural changes. But if Jason, if you and I want to take advantage and get advantage of this in the next two years, and Trump has said like, okay, Bobby, do something about chronic disease in two years, it has to happen locally.

And ultimately, on the 5th of April, 2025, I'm going to be co-hosting an event called, Healthy Eldorado Expo, which is the county that Jason and I live in. And it's going to be at one of the big high schools here. And it's going to be a one-day event, essentially connecting the local health infrastructure. So that might be the functional medicine clinics. It might be the chiropractors and the acupuncturists and the fitness centers and the yoga studios.

But it's also like the homeschooling resources, because in California, if you want to keep healthy kids, you kind of have to homeschool or things that are homeschool adjacent, which another thing that I've done in the last three years is bring back a homeschooling sort of cooperative model that my kids go to.

And then also the local organic food web, because we need to create ways to grow access to the local organic food web, or we just happen to be blessed in California here with basically being able to grow whatever you want. So on April the 5th, it's called the Healthy Eldorado Expo. It's sort of a hat tip to make America healthy again without being so explicit because we want it to be for everyone. And I'm speaking at an event actually in January called Healthy Tennessee with

a similar sort of energy being created. And my hope is that this turns into a sort of a local strategy for Maha, Maha local strategy. And ultimately we have a Facebook group called Your Healthy County Leaders. And in that group, we're basically sharing exactly what we're doing to make this event in real time to all the people in the Facebook group with the idea that they can take the same idea and implement it in their county.

And I think that, you know, if we could implement county by county across the country, it's not that hard. It's not that time consuming. Someone could do it who has a full-time job and just do it a couple hours a week. But that is, you know, like so many people don't even know that there is healthcare where health is the goal. And ultimately we can solve that. It just will happen on a county by county level.

So whether you choose to be engaged in that and involved in that at the very minimum, you know, get your community together, find some people that you want to be, that want to be healthy to, and use online tools to create offline connections and build some sort of healthy behaviors that you do as a group. And if I had to recommend something to avoid dementia, I think sauna is a, is a good idea.

And, uh, just as it happens, like two minutes from my house, this guy just launched a, like a communal sauna business. And so I'm going there tomorrow and bringing a group of friends together. So look, there's all kinds of ways that we can build community and create healthy community. And ultimately I just share that because this is, you know, it take, you got to take, you got to get into it and take action. And I believe that that's what all of us have the ability to do.

And if you really care about it, care about it enough to do it, not just for yourself, but a few people around you and see how that sort of exponentially grows as you put that energy out into the universe. Yeah, so much of this, you know, many of the things we talk about on this podcast really can start at more of a ground level, a grassroots level. So I really appreciate Matt asking that question. I really appreciate your answer with that. And April 5th, I just put it in my calendar.

I will try my best to be there. I'll certainly help promote it in any way that I can. And, you know, everything that you've said in the last few responses here, James, I mean, I know you've rubbed shoulders with RFK before in the past, but I really hope that you have some type of connection to really get this on his radar because all this just seems so innovative and groundbreaking and just a complete departure from the paradigm we're currently living in.

So fingers crossed that, yeah, this new administration really does start to take some lead here and make America healthy again, as the acronym states. I just want to say, Jason, like whether they do or whether they don't, you can still at now take advantage of the energy that's around in the community to go after it. Like people are energized about it out there.

So we can use the energy to move it forward locally, whether or not Bobby gets in as the head of health and human services, like that possibility exists for all of us today. Excellent point. Hey, Freethinkers, this is Matt Agarist, and I'm going to take a quick pause to remind you of something really important.

First off apologies for the interruption but if you're still here that means you're resonating with what we're doing and we need your help to keep it alive independent platforms like ours don't survive on corporate sponsorships or mainstream media funding we survive because of you if you're finding value in these unfiltered conversations and real solutions the best way to support us is by liking subscribing and sharing this podcast with your friends and fellow free thinkers.

It's a small act, but it's a powerful one. It helps us break through the censorship and algorithms designed to silence voices like ours. This isn't just about supporting a podcast. It's about standing for freedom, exposing corruption, and building a movement that inspires real change. And if you want to go beyond liking and sharing, we'd love for you to become a member of the Free Thought Project.

Just head over to thefreethoughtproject.com and click on the TFTP membership link at the top of the page. As a member, you'll be directly supporting our mission and helping us to stay independent. Your support is what keeps this platform alive and fighting. So thank you for being part of this journey, for sharing these ideas, and for standing with us. All right, guys. Well, before we end this podcast today, I did want to try something

a bit different. And hopefully we could continue this throughout the year. At the end of each show, I want to begin to start to highlight an organization or an individual, I believe, is doing important work in the Liberty Truth community and get them more familiar, get you guys more familiar with their work. And, you know, we have a pretty good size audience that listens to this show. So, you know, if we can help other people doing good work in the Liberty community, then we should be.

So this week, I wanted to share one of my favorite Instagram accounts and probably one of the best Liberty t-shirt producers in the game. My friend Jay over at antistate.net. And it's not just the epic t-shirts he creates, either guys, he has all types of swag, including hats, stickers, magnets, hoodies, flags. In fact, I have one of his flags up in my garage that says, when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

I always love to see my neighbor's reactions when they walk past my garage and look over at it. But if you appreciate our work here at the Freethought Project, you'll definitely enjoy anti-state's content. So make sure you follow him on Instagram. Check out his website at antistate.net. He's definitely doing great things in his own way to support the liberty movement. So we should also support him. So definitely check it out, guys.

And also, if you enjoyed this podcast and our guest today, please also follow and support James's work. James, if you don't mind, can you please tell people where they could find more of your work, where they could follow you on social media, and really anything else you'd like to share or plug? Sure. Yeah. JamesMaskell.com is the website where I have listening to books and businesses and things that I'm working on.

Mr. James Maskell on Instagram is where I'm most active. I wish that I had been at, I wish that I had put all my money in X now, but I just didn't use Twitter really that much, but maybe it'll be in the future, but yeah, that's what I'm, that's what I'm doing. And yeah, I'd love to connect. And yeah, if you're, if you're in, if you're interested, your health, your healthy County leaders is the Facebook group.

And that's where we have 1100 people that are all activating towards make change locally. I will definitely become a member of that group. And yeah, it, this has been a great podcast, but guys. Before we get out of here, please remember to like and share this podcast on social media. And also, please take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review. It really helps us out so much. But James, thank you so much for coming on. I'm glad that we finally, finally made this conversation happen.

You're an abundance of expertise. And I feel like I have a much better understanding and respect for the work that you're clearly having an impact doing. So we appreciate your time today. And thank you for joining us. Thanks, Jason. Thanks, guys. Music. All right, Freethinkers, this episode is nearing the end.

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If you believe in our mission and support our cause, please consider donating or subscribing by going to the membership tab at the top of our website. Your contributions ensure we are able to continue our important work, having these important conversations, and your donations help us do just that. Lastly, if you're part of an organization or own a business that aligns with our mission and values, we are currently inviting sponsorships for our podcast.

This is a fantastic opportunity to promote your product or make your brand visible to our engaged audience while supporting meaningful discourse. Thank you for your support, Freethinkers. And as always, thank you for listening. Music.