Wondry subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now. Join wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hello, there.

Hello. We have YouTube's number one Doctor. 25 million plus subscribers. Sexiest Doctor Alive 2015, people magazine huge, sexy Doctor Buzzfeed. Doctor Mike.

Doctor Mike.

I love Doctor Mike. As you'll learn in this episode, I discovered him through my children's obsession with him. He makes the best videos. It's the only YouTube stuff I love when they watch. He also has a podcast called the Checkup with Doctor Mike. So listen to that and just. I challenge you. Go watch one Doctor Mike video on YouTube, and you will just stay and watch them all.

He's very charismatic and very interesting. Has a lot of knowledge.

Incredibly smart. Yeah, he does these kind of mashups, too, where it's like the videos you already want to watch, like trampoline injuries, and he'll pause and go, ooh, okay, I think that's gonna be a femur. Like, he'll smart. That's funny. He's lovely. We love Doctor Mike. Please enjoy Doctor Mike. What's up, guys? It's your girl Kiki.

And my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of.

Entertainment specialists and brightest. Okay.

Every episode, I bring on a friend.

I mean, the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to baby.

This is Keke Palmer on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

He's an object.

Of.

Told you that.

Oh, my God. Rob. Are we rolling? Doctor Mike, you got my whole family of water.

Sorry, I'm just trying to.

Rob, we're filming. No, he has to.

Rob, what do you mean, no? It's good. It's good. As long as you think it's okay.

You like it? That's comfortable for you?

Yeah, I'm the guinea pig guest. I like it.

It's a guinea pig, but an expert as well.

I know, but you should tell us the problems. Feel free to tell us as you see them filming.

Well, just any problems you see, shine a light on.

Okay.

Like, medically or not, I deputize you to be hypercritical of it.

Okay, deal.

God, you're so cute in real life, too. Oh, my God.

I appreciate that.

That's impossible. Did you see how tall he was, Monica?

Yeah, I said, and tall, too.

Have you ever added it up? How many hours of content you've created?

At this point, it's like 800 videos.

And they're generally how long?

Ten minutes. But then the podcasts, up to 3 hours at times.

Uh huh. If you and another doctor get geeking out.

Geeking out? I like to debate. I'm like you. I love that stuff. I love getting into it and finding disagreements, because I feel like that's a great way to find truth.

Yes.

I'm a fan.

Also. Do you find that a great source of fuel is a debate?

Yeah. In fact, I had another doctor on, and we were arguing about eastern versus western medicine, and I was talking about it, and I was getting excited, and he took it as aggression. And because he's in the psych space, he said, hold on a second. What are you feeling right now?

Oh, wow.

And I was like, wow, this is, like, cool. I'm being therapy in the moment.

Yeah.

I said, I'm excited. He goes, are you sure you're excited? Not angry? I'm like, no, I'm excited because we're truth seeking together, and when that happens, I get really, really in the zone.

Okay, well, we share this not only now the height, but also that I have been accused many times. My wife will say to me, she'll go, pause. You're very large. Does that ever get told to you? Like, yes, sure. You're arguing with the same veracity as everyone else, but you're very large, and you got to kind of remember that, and I don't always remember that.

Are you loud, too? Has your vomit generally?

Not with my dogs. Yeah. Like, I try and be that stern parent with my alpha. Yeah. Although that's been a little disproven with animals and such.

Ooh, wait.

Oh, viscous.

I mean, I'm not an optimist.

I want to hear about it.

A lot of this debate comes from definitions and people arguing about what words mean, vocabulary, semantics. Yeah, semantics. So the idea of being an alpha in most people's minds is about, like, dominating an animal.

Yeah.

Is that you?

Well, anytime you use the word alpha.

Yeah.

But also, when I use the word alpha, I think for her, we have different definitions of it, and she regularly. Am I speaking correctly for you? You do interpret that as, like, almost a bully as an alpha.

Sure. Maybe that's fair. But I think when we're normally talking about it, you're talking about a hierarchy, and you're saying this person is an alpha, and I think I interpret that as that person is the one that everyone wants to be or take down or evaluate themselves by. And I don't always agree with that.

Fair. And that's different life experiences showing themselves through a definition.

Also, just what I studied in college, which is primates and social primates and the hierarchy and, yeah, these roles that intuitive and primitive and evolutionarily came about, they're there.

Yeah. In different species. So wolves have a different meaning of hierarchy than primates do. And I'm not an expert, it's kind of an assumption, maybe you will, but I will say from a human side of things, especially as it relates to dogs, to me, an alpha is the dog should look for you to guide it because you know more, you know that if it's eating something that's going to make it die, the dog should look for you to be the leader in that situation. That's my understanding of what an alpha is.

Yes. And also I think you could say, like, oh, if there's an alpha there, someone's being subjugated. But I would say, like, for the dog, it puts them at great ease to know what that is. If you're intermittent in alpha with your dog and then sometimes you're not, I think it's confusing and a source of anxiety.

It can be, yeah, it's all about a balance. And I feel like that we're gonna get back to that balance all the time throughout this conversation, because if you overdo the alpha thing, then you're becoming dominating and mean and rude to your dog. And on the other hand, if you're too loose, the dog can develop anxiety. So it's finding that right balance.

Well, isn't that life? It's the nuance between the binary and everything we're presented is binary, especially on social media. Yes. As shocking as this may be, some people won't know about Doctor Mike, and so I want to bring them up to speed of just how enormous you are and of course, my own personal journey with discovering you through my daughters, which has been delightful. In general, I can't stand YouTube. I hate when they're on YouTube because it's so quick and it takes you to the next thing. I don't love it.

Please subscribe to us on YouTube.

Yes, with the exception of Doctor Mike and now us. But when I walk in and Lincoln's binging you, I'm like, go for it, keep going. And she'll be policing everyone around the world. Like, that's pseudoscience. That's not ever been?

Oh, my God.

That's a great word. Wow.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

In fact, Kristen got this. Maybe she already told you. She got this neck stretcher she saw, like, it was advertised to her on Instagram, and it arrived and Kristen was excited to use it. And Lincoln goes, doctor Mike says, those are not good for your neck. And Kristen, listen.

Yeah, well, I would too. So tall.

The goal of the whole YouTube channel is just to give practical, realistic advice in the age where everything is binary.

Yeah.

It's either all good or all bad, or this is the miracle. This is the cure all, and that's just not the reality. And medicine, so imperfect. So I hope that nuance has translated.

Do you know your demographic demographics for your audience?

Yeah.

Does it shock you that my daughters are.

No, that's like 15% of my audience have that age group.

What is the breakdown?

Actually? A lot of people will make an assumption and say, oh, the good looking doctor guy. You must have a only female audience. It's 50 50. It's actually more. I think it might be like 60 40 male.

You have such an interesting history, and I just want to start by saying, do you know anything about Mila Kunis?

I know that she's of ukrainian background.

And she came here at roughly six, same age, and just had to plop into an elementary school and figure it out. I think that's a character builder.

I think so. I think anytime you're entering an unfamiliar environment, especially to that degree where it's like you don't know the language, your parents have to start from scratch. That's a shocker for most people and obviously very motivating to see your parents go through something like that.

Yeah. So your dad is ukrainian, but he went to medical school in Moscow, near Moscow. But was it called the third medical school or something like that? I thought it was a bizarre.

Anytime something is the third, I get nervous. So I'm like, keep it out of.

The title, even if it is the third. But obviously he was a practicing doctor in Russia where you grew up until five. And mom was a mathematics professor.

PhD mathematics teacher, yeah.

If you hadn't done well in school.

I had no one to blame.

Oh, my God. Talk about getting set up for being bright.

Dear brothers and sisters.

I have an older sister.

And was she brilliant too?

She's done the entire world of medicine, it seems she's a physician assistant, but then she opened up like a cryotherapy place. She kind of went the opposite world that I'm in, more like holistic wellness. And I'm medical. Medical.

I want to be at that Thanksgiving dinner when you guys start talking about.

We definitely get our fair share of arguments.

You just said medical, medical on Grey's anatomy. When they write scripts and they just don't know how to write any of the medical terms. They just write medical. Medical.

Do they?

Yeah, in the script. And then they are going to have the expert consultant. But the writers just dropped that in. There's a famous example of that getting on the air. Do you remember that? No, not that exact thing, but it was. No, it was like an episode of CS, the Game of Thrones. Wait, there's a Starbucks cup in the.

Yeah, they left the Starbucks cup in.

It was like a CSI or something. And the line was, reveal. Important new fact of case. Something went nuts and they just said it. And everyone there was like year eleven and no one was paying attention and it made it to air. And I think that's so fantastic.

That's great.

Okay. But mom and dad leave when you're five. Your sister's 14.

Yeah.

You come to Brooklyn refugee status. What did dad do when he landed here?

Start taking english lessons. Because he ended up in medical school a year after that.

Really? And so he had to recertify himself.

To practice medical school, residency in a new language in his forties, while my mom is basically sweeping floors to make ends meet.

Oh, what character.

Right? I try to think what would have to happen to me in the next five years. That I would have to leave America, go to a country where I don't speak the language, and redo all my.

Education, do it all over again.

I wouldn't even know.

Well, what was it?

They were sort of predicting what's happening now in Russia. They saw that corruption was at an all time high. They saw religious persecution was terrible.

And you all are Jewish, right?

My father's Jewish. My mom is Christian, Catholic, mixed. Because of having jewish background. People would treat you differently. That was the reality that my father grew up in. He couldn't be promoted to certain ranks within his jurisdiction of healthcare because of that. And they were like, we need to get out of here for the sake of our children.

Yeah. You were born right when I suppose the wall fell, right?

Yeah.

You were able to watch your dad practice medicine while you were still a kid, which I think is probably really relevant.

Yep.

Was he like a superhero to me?

It was so exciting to see the learning process. Cause most kids aren't of age, where they see their parents go through school. And I watched it and I watched him study and I saw what he was studying, and he would be leaving his textbooks open, and I would say, oh, my God, I wanna know about that. Why does my muscle cramp up when I'm in Taekwondo or some sport that I'm playing? And I fell in love, I was like, I have to learn more about this. And I actually got the nickname doctor Mike when I was in high school.

Oh.

Because all my friends would come to me as if I knew shit and would say, like, hey, I did this to my knee. Like, what do you think I should do? And I'm like, oh, well, my dad.

Always says, right, I'm sure you weren't short with advice.

Definitely given way too much. Problematic.

Yeah. So one of my. We gotta fast forward so then I can double back.

Uh oh. We already have a problem.

Look at this.

That never happens.

Rob, you can come fix it.

I mean, I fixed it. We just need a new one.

I kind of want rob in the shot for 2 seconds. They look alike.

You think so?

Yeah.

That is so flattering. You don't really think so?

I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Oh, no. Yeah.

Rob.

Let's see.

Rob and doctor Mike look like brothers.

Are you a russian background? Oh, so close. And my last name is polish background. Maybe we should do some genetic testing here to figure this out.

I'm sorry.

Oh, that was a bummer. I got so excited for half a second.

I don't know.

Okay, you're too, like, that's enough. From the back. Poorly lit. You guys could have the same silhouette. Okay, so we have to fast forward a little bit. You go to medical school, you have this accelerated program through New York Technical.

Institute, New York Institute of Technology.

Really close. You decide to start documenting it on Instagram. What made you think to do that?

I can, after the fact, right now, create some really good stories.

Yeah, tempting.

I thought that it was cool to share a med student's life because there was a lot of stigma associated with giving up your social life when you went to medical school. And I was like, no, no, no. This is totally doable. And I liked showing that. And there was also benefits to it. You get some followers. As a broke medical student, you might get into a cool party.

Yeah.

So there was, like, things I took advantage of and I said, oh, let's keep putting stuff out and see what happens. And then I had one of those viral moments where Buzzfeed writes a story.

Check out this sexy doctor 2015. And then people names you sexiest doctor alive.

Oh, my God.

Which is an interesting distinction. Because a couple things. Does that imply that there were much hotter doctors that are now dead?

Who are those that are no longer alive?

Why alive?

I think I took. Sanjay Gupta was the sexiest doctor alive before me.

Oh, he is sexy.

He is sexy. But also poor Sanjay.

Why poor Sanjay?

Young buck comes along.

Oh.

Replaces, replaces yeah, that is sad.

Sanjay has been on the show several times. We love him. We're friends. He's from Michigan. He wasn't a heartthrob in high school. That's all I'm gonna say. So he had this great.

I wasn't either.

That's what I was saying. I gotta set this up so I can go back and just find out. Was this a complete revelation to you or were you killing it in high school?

No, I was nothing nerdy in high school and didn't get a lot of female attention. That was news to me in that regard. But then in college and medical school, I started coming into myself, getting into fitness, weight loss.

Were you super skinny in high school?

Very skinny.

What kind of weights were we?

So skinny. Where I remember going to the beach with a girl that, like, I like, and I was like, she's gonna like that I have a six pack. And instead she goes, you're all skin and bones. And I'm like, oh, that's the last thing I wanted a year. So after that, I said, I'm gonna start working. Working out real hard. Hurt my shoulder and, you know, did all the typical thing.

Voices.

Tried to bench press way too much first time out.

Exactly. Literally.

I gotta put on some muscle mass tomorrow.

Yep.

Okay. So then that's really fun to have not been a stud in high school and then get named all those things.

It's messy because then it starts going to your head a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you start like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna start writing inspirational quotes right now because I actually know stuff. So I started doing that, and then I got, like, 30 likes on those quotes. I would show them to people and be like, look at this. Life's not just fun and games.

Oh, no.

Well, that's the problem is if you haven't had the full experience leading up to that moment, this plagues actors who get on tv and movies, and then overnight, all of a sudden, they're very attractive to everyone and they have no practice in dealing with that. And they write inspirational quotes.

That was also the era of inspirational quotes. Like Twitter. What was Twitter in its early days? People saying they're in the bathroom or writing an Inspo quote.

We're trying to be funny. That was a big.

There was a bit.

Did you have a favorite inspirational quote.

That, you know, they were all.

I mean, you were stealing them from other places.

I wasn't stealing them. I'll give myself credit. I did not plagiarize, but they were not anything revolutionary. They were not anything new. There was no innovation there.

Pull some up for the fact. Stay tuned for the fact check.

Yeah. Do they exist still or did you go clean that up? They're still there.

Yeah.

God bless you.

You got it.

Oh, wow.

You gotta leave that stuff.

A lot of integrity. Okay, so that's taking off. Did you have any show busy fantasies growing up?

Not really. I wanted to do athletics, which is why the whole boxing arc happened. But doing the seven year program, that actually precludes you from participating in NCAA sports because of the number of credits you're taking, you're not allowed to participate.

What would have been your sport?

Probably soccer. I played soccer well in high school, and I really wanted to play that going into college.

Oh, yeah. You have nice thighs. I'm checking them out right now. Yeah, they're solid. I've worked so hard to get mine 70% that size. Your first year of medical school, your mom gets cancer. Or perhaps she had already had cancer.

She already had cancer? A little bit, yeah.

Leukemia. Yep. So she, what, had a phase of it and then went into remission.

The way that it happened is my parents, when they first found out, they hid it from us, and they kind of kept us in the dark. Oh, mom's sick, but, you know, it's no big deal. And I'm focused on school. Then they told us that she has this cancer that actually people live to old age with, and it's not something that actually cuts life short. And then we started seeing her get sicker and sicker and sicker, and we realized she has a unique variant where in her case, it is problematic, and she needed more extensive treatments, which meant that we had to fly her brother in from Russia, do stem cell transplants, bone marrow, all that. And that's an intense process because you essentially have to destroy one's immune system and replace it with siblings.

Yes.

And that was really what ended up making her lose her life.

How long was that? Let me also see. So my dad died in 2012 of small cell carcinoma. So I had that experience, and that was very truncated. That was, like, diagnosis in August, dead on December 31. And then my stepfather had prostate cancer, and he died, but he died over the course of, I guess you know, two or three years. And for me, having gone through both of those experiences, what I learned with my dad that I was able to apply to my stepdad, which is like, first and foremost, it's their thing. They get to decide what they want to do, what treatment they want or don't want. And fighting that at the end is such a waste of time. Like, regret fighting with him about decisions he was making. But then also dealing with oncologists was an interesting experience. I think I walked away thinking, you gotta remember they're very myopic. They have almost a single goal, which is to kill cancer cells, and they're not terribly holistic about what it's gonna do to every other aspect of your life and your body.

Practitioner dependent, right?

Sure. The specific example that happened was, my dad was so late in this, and there's cancer everywhere. He had it in his bones, he had it in a lot of organs, had it in his brain, and an oncologist came and said, I'd like to do brain radiation. And I'm like, I mean, he's gonna die of cancer soon here. Is that worse to die of that? Is that the one we should try to arrest? I told my dad, I don't think you should do this. He's like, I want to do it. We did it. It had some pretty major side effects for his cognitive function. You know, ultimately, in retrospect, I'm like, well, that was really a dumb idea. And then three weeks later, he was dead. So maybe in that anecdotal example, I thought, well, yeah, that guy's job is.

To kill brain cancer in the correct sequence of events. When a doctor presents a treatment, it should be presenting treatment a and d, no treatment, and discussion of pros and cons, and then allowing you to make that decision, or a loved one to make that decision. Healthcare has changed in that regard. Where now in our education, we talk about the team based healthcare approach, where sometimes I'll make an outright recommendation to a patient and then say, how do you feel about it? Do you want to do that? Do you have any concerns? And then we can talk about those concerns. In other instances. I say, look, it's not even clear cut what to do here, based on the evidence. So we can do option a. And here's the pros and cons of option a, and here's option b. And they'll say, what would you do? And I say, this isn't about me. Let's talk about this with your family. I can give you more data, but it shouldn't be me deciding.

So I think we're all very curious. When you ask your doctor, what would you do? And they generally do not want to advise you, is there anything like with HiPaa that they're not supposed to?

Well, it's not HIPAA. Hipaa's patient privacy stuff. I think from, like, a doctor ethics perspective, you want to respect one of these tenants of our care called bodily autonomy, where we don't tell you what to do. If you're a competent adult with your care and you're not a child, you know those kind of specific situations, when patients ask us that question, it's essentially making us tell them what to do.

Yeah.

So we want to not be biased in that regard. We can make recommendations and say, this seems to be the better play. I could say, based on what you told me is important to you, this sounds like it's a better option for reasons a, B and c. How do you feel about it? And that's the correct way. Does that happen in every single doctor interaction?

No, unfortunately not also, because then it becomes personal. If you ask, what would you do? I think it'd be hard to be medical and professional. You then become you as a real person, which is maybe not ideal in.

That scenario, because you have different wants and needs for what the patient has.

And from the patient point of view, of course they want to know that, especially if they trust you. You're someone that they trust and seem to be objective, and so you're looking for some guidance, and it's very tempting to seek that advice. We've had Atul Gawande on, and I think his take on, what do you want this experience to be? What are the goals in this last few months? Do you want to walk around? Do you want to do this? You should know what the goals are before you figure out what the strategy is.

And that goes for not just end of life care like in a situation like that. It also goes for something as simple as back pain. When people come in and they say, look, I have back pain to two out of ten, I can introduce various interventions, but some of those interventions have side effects. Then we have to explore, is it worth going and pursuing some of these avenues, or are we trying to get to a number that's not realistic? A B has way more risk of harm and see what's the benefit. Like if you're a pro athlete and going from two to zero is going to change your livelihood, maybe it's worth it.

Yeah, yeah.

But if you're a person who's like, it doesn't really stop me from doing anything. It's just kind of annoying. Well, then the options radically change of what we should do, and I think that's the important pros and cons weighing of patient individuality that we need to take into consideration, so.

Okay, now back to mom. Going through that experience, did that at all impact how you personally view that?

I think the biggest thing that changed for me in that regard was the moments where she passed. So I remember very vividly we're in one of the big cancer centers in New York. The alarms start going off. The residents run in to start doing chest compressions, which is something I talk about on my channel a lot. And they're like, I think we should stop.

Yeah.

And I understand why they're saying it because I'm already a med student at that time. I see the medications that she's on, and my dad is in disbelief, even though he's a doctor. Totally not rational.

That's what I mean. You can't.

She'll be fine. It's okay. Have him keep doing it. I saw that it was too far gone, so I actually was the one who had to tell him to stop.

Yeah.

And just seeing how that whole process played out of watching my father go home alone and then not know what to do. They had a trip planned a week later.

Yeah.

And the nurses laughing at the nursing station after. Not about my mom. They're humans. They have going on in their lives. They have death all day in the ICU. They need to laugh. But, like, hearing it gets you angry.

Yeah.

And especially, like, you're waiting for some paperwork or something. So then when I was a resident, I remember having some of my colleagues laughing about something unrelated. I'm like, just make sure the parents don't hear you because they're in a bad spot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a life experience thing that you can share with others.

Do you think it was uniquely brutal on your father to have been someone? I mean, look, we all want to solve our loved one's problems, and if you're an expert in some area, and even you are powerless. I just feel like it must be compounded so much, what he went through.

It was compounded, but not for that reason. He had the worst year that I can imagine having as an adult. He just gave up his whole life to come to another country. He just got on his feet. After going through medical school and residency, he opened his own practice. He bought his first home. He's so happy to share this moment with his wife and family. His dad dies. My grandfather dies. That year, his mom dies. My grandmother dies. Three months apart. Within a year, my mom dies.

Fuck me.

This is not tenable.

And there was other stuff going on, too, which makes it even worse. But it was just a lot to witness a person go through all that and still be like, I'm going to work. I'm showing up for my patients. This is terrible. I'm going to deal with it, but I need to show up for my family.

Well, they're probably the life preserver, the patients, to have that.

Oh, yeah, calm. I've seen that as well, where people are like, why are you still practicing medicine when you have such success on social media? I'm like, are you kidding me? That's the joyous. That is by far where you get the most refilling of your cup and meaning. Yeah, exactly.

Well, he's just stolen my questions for later, which is like, at what point do we just do the YouTube? Yeah. Yeah. And Sanjay, he still practices. You're the heir apparent to Sanjay, I would say.

I was just on his podcast. Oh, you are chasing.

Couldn't be more delightful.

Right?

And it's great to see someone in the healthcare space who's so successful in media, who hasn't sold out to the bullshit. Yeah, because Mandez every big names on YouTube.

Well, I was even thinking, you have this incredible YouTube channel. There's 25 million followers. Or maybe there's more at this point, but monetizing it for you is so much trickier than us. We're not trusted medical professionals.

Armchair experts.

Exactly. Imperative in this. So, yeah, we're free to talk about really anything. Cause it's just two bozos talking about anything. But it must limit Zachary.

Well, it limits it because I understand my word carries different value to people, and I don't want to take advantage of that. So I stay away from all of that medical promise of solution.

When does the Instagram. You start that in 2012.

Yeah.

And then 2017, we start the YouTube channel.

Yep.

So how do we transition from documenting your life, getting followers, going to nightclubs, it's a party. To maybe more mission driven. Or at least what I interpret your show to be. And why I love it is you're largely doing what my favorite person on Instagram do. You know Lane Norton, by chance?

You just saw my podcast as well.

Yeah, I love.

Literally, we're texting two different. Oh, yeah.

Isn't he the great. Yeah, I love him. So you're doing that. You're debunking a lot of these popular ideas about diets, medical treatment, supplements.

Yeah. There's just, like, two worlds that exist right now on social media. And I tried to bridge the gap between them, which is world one. It's complete B's, fear mongering, scaring people. And then there's this world of hyper optimization where it's like, the promise of getting bigger, faster, stronger, longevity, anti aging. And I'm like, this is B's, both sides. Here's the reality. The people that are doing the hardcore research that no one knows about, they're nerdy, they're not great on talking on camera, to be honest. They should be delivering my message because they're the ones that are the experts.

Yes.

But what I can do, well, where I found my skill is taking their knowledge, their confounded, complicated science.

Yeah.

And translating it to the general public so that we have a chance against the people that are spreading the misinformation to confuse folks.

I hate to admit, on that spectrum, I'm definitely in the camp. On your right hand, I'm like, yes, anything that could possibly make me more fit, I'm gonna listen.

Why do you like that?

Out alpha him.

What? Love muscles.

Okay?

I fucking love muscles. Mike. Can I call you Mike? Yeah, please say doctor. No, please call me having to do it either way. Mike. I love muscles. I've loved him since I was a kid. Conan the barbarian. I'm so much older than you, but had you been my age and you saw Conan the barbarian, I promise you would have made an indelible.

Well, I watched Xena and Hercules, like, when I was growing up, I would try and lift the couch and do that. Yeah.

Were you inordinately attracted to that?

Yeah, of course.

Yes. I just love muscles. I am a expert on people's bodies. I can tell you, like, peak Dennis Rodman body.

Okay, you're renowned.

I feel like I go toe to toe on male physiques with anyone, I'll give you that. What was the best brede?

Right?

Well, so that's one look or fight club. Fight club. That's very, very lean. He's probably.

Every time I would go to a personal trainer, I was like, this is it.

That's what everyone says. And no one realizes he's, like, 135 in that movie. I think what I like most, maybe a emotional, philosophical thing, is you don't pick your face. You come out, you got this face, you got this nose, you got whatever you got.

Well, these days, that's not.

Well, that's true. There's surgical options. I'm not above pursuing a lot of options. A lot of items on the menu.

Customization these days is high.

This room has some of that going on. I'll say it. This side of the room has a.

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Free on Amazon music. When I know I can change something, I'm really drawn to it. So the notion that like your body, you have a lot to say in how you look. I have looked so many different ways. My body, my face has been largely the same, but I. I kind of love that. And I'm like a goal oriented person and I'm kind of a militaristic, routine person and I like the sense of control it gives me. I like to be able to observe results. I love it. I'm not sure what the finish line.

Is, but that sounds like a positive thing. Yeah, but it also sounds like you're defending it a bit.

Well, you asked me, why am I so obsessed with muscles, didn't you?

No, I said, why are you so much on the camp of the right side of living forever and anti aging and all that.

Well, first of all, I don't want to die like everyone else, okay? Everyone in my family's died young, so I think I'm even more incentivized to figure out how to at least add a decade to this. My dad was 62. That's not going to work for me. I have a much different lifestyle. Yeah. If I hear creatine, I will remember where I'm sitting when I hear about creatine. Right? I'm in a science class in Santa Monica City college in 95. I'm like, wait, there's an over the counter supplement that gives you 11% more body mass. It was promised at the time. And I'm like, fuck, yes, I'm going to try that. And then also, I started doing testosterone six years ago, and I'm like, oh, my God, I fucking love this. This is fantastic. I can't imagine your super protest testosterone.

We'll find out. It depends.

I'm a 900. I'm not going to 1500.

Yes, but also, when you're starting, it matters. And for what purpose you're starting, it matters. So there's, like, a lot of nuance that needs to be had in those situations. But I feel like what happens on social media is bro says he was depressed. Bro says his gains weren't as strong as they were ten years ago. Bro is taking TRT, then comes on my podcast and says, I'm taking trT. And I'm like, oh, were your levels low before? And he goes, no, they were normal. I'm like, then you're not taking TRT. You're just taking supplemental testosterone, which is not true. Yeah, that's the hyper optimization that I warn people against, for sure.

And look, I like to think I'm pretty objective about it. Like, there's a cost benefit analysis to look at, and there is a, do I want to live to this age feeling this way, or do I want to live, you know, a little bit less than that and feel this way? You know, are you all about longevity? Are you quality over quantity? These are, like, philosophical questions.

Well, those are important questions. My thing that I always like to introduce into these conversations is how much we don't know. Even with testosterone as an example, the idea that if you take it, you will feel a certain way is just not true.

To add, you have a very specific.

Look on your face.

No, it's the reality of your personality. You're also an addict. You're an addict. And that side, to me, leans a little more addictive, where you do the sauna, and you eat this very specific thing, and there's a challenge to it that I think you feel good if you've mastered that challenge.

Yeah. I would argue that it's a replacement for what another addiction might be, and this one so far has been largely beneficial.

That's what life is. What's healthy to eat. Well, what are you replacing it with? Right. That's the real question. So if you're replacing an unhealthy habit with this habit, maybe that's good for you as a form of risk reduction. When we used to say, the only way to prevent STD's is absence, people were like, yeah, we're not going to do that. And then STD rates climbed, and they were like, oh, what about condom use? We continued risk reduction in understanding how it works with human biology. So in this case, what works for you great. Could work for you, and it could be a totally healthy coping mechanism. The thing that gets complicated is when we talk about it in generality and on social media and how a lot of podcasters, not you, talk about it.

Yeah, yeah.

They talk about it as, like, I have the solution. I'm the health guru.

I'm never promoting it. Mine is. I need to be honest. If you look at me and I'm 49 and I have this muscle mass, I need to include, like, yes, I'm eating this way, and I'm working out this way. But also, I take testosterone. I would feel dishonest to not be owning that. By no means am I promoting it. I don't think dudes who've not had kids yet. If your numbers aren't low. Yeah, I'm nothing. Not on a promotion. I will listen to all of it, and then I think I'm pretty skeptical, so I'll run it through a little bit of a. Okay. So we didn't really answer, though. When did you feel the exact transition to, like, it being lifestyle and then turning into kind of a mission driven, I'm gonna debunk stuff and educate people.

I always wanted to have value from this moment. The viral moment happened, and it was all about looks and all that. And I was like, well, how do I move that into something meaningful? Cause I'm getting this education.

Also.

Your looks are gonna go away.

That's true.

And your quotes, you only have so many.

And I would sit there and I would say, like, what can I do with this? And initially, what can I do as a resident? So I auctioned off a date for charity because I was like, oh, that's like a helpful thing. And we gave six figures to charity doing.

Wow.

That's.

How was that? Hold on.

It was really awkward.

I just imagined my dream date doesn't bid a lot of money to date me.

It wasn't a sum of money. You had to buy, like, a lotto ticket.

Oh, well, then that opens up the door to all kinds of cool.

I just didn't know what I was doing. Right. Like, you're starting out with popularity, and you're like, I'll do something for charity. That sounds positive.

Yeah. Yeah. Did you almost get trapped in that moment? Cause that's a very.

I thought it was weird.

Seductive moment.

It was weird. And then being in media in general felt so unnatural. You're used to having your. Your close group of friends or maybe even a wider tribe. You're doing reputation management every time you're at a party. But now it's like millions of people and everyone has an opinion. You don't know what to do with that. I had no training in that. So it was a growing phase of trying to figure out what that meant.

You were also terribly young.

I was pretty young. I was, like, 24 when all that was going on. Now it's even worse. There's, like, 16 year olds going viral. That's worse for them.

Oh, no, no. Yeah, that terrifies me.

For them, at least I had some sort of education knowledge or some background.

Oh, my God. Did you feel like. Like, am I supposed to kiss this person because they paid?

No.

There's been six figures on the line here.

You would've kissed this shit out of my head.

I know you would have. That's right.

It was a respectful, like. And I think her mom worked at her hair salon, and she heard about it, and she brought her a ticket, so I don't even know if she liked me that much. A lot was happening during that time.

There's a lot of new things coming your way.

And to answer your question, basically I got all these invites to go on television, and I was like, I'll go on under the guise of, like, they're inviting the sexy doctor, but I'm going to talk about something health related, substantive. Yeah. And that worked for two weeks.

Right?

And then they're like, we don't care about you anymore. You're too young of a doctor. You don't have enough experience. Yeah, get out.

Take your shirt off or get the fuck out of here.

No, no, that happened. I bet, like, one of those entertainment shows invited me, and they're like, oh, our reporter wants to go to a gym and work out, and you'll talk about the benefits of exercise. I'm like, awesome.

Perfect.

Show up to the gym. They're like, all right, take off your shirt. The reporter's not coming. We're just gonna get b rolls.

Stop.

Yeah. And I'm like, deuces.

Yeah.

So I just left because I didn't care. The fame wasn't the end goal.

You had a real job.

Luckily, this is the opposite of what I normally do. But if that happened to a woman, we'd be like, that's.

What are the.

Yeah, they're fired.

Yeah.

There's a lot of weird stuff like that you do, like Rachael Ray, and she's like, oh, my God. You look like a Chippendale stripper or whatever on television.

Oh, I didn't rehearse the response to that. This may shock you.

So I'm lucky enough that I was able to push through all that and say, okay, I won't get the invite, so I'll just do it myself on social media. And social media removed some gatekeepers, and as a result, we have this very successful YouTube channel.

Yeah. And it's fantastic. So very little of the content my kids, like, am I interested in. And I will regularly be in the kitchen. It's on. They're binging it. And I will sit down and I'll do fucking 35 minutes of you. And you're funny and you're irreverent, but the info's dense and it's there. It's so good. The production of. It's quite good.

Yeah.

The way that you interact with the clips and the graphics and everything, it's a really great show.

It's fun. And I think what we've managed to do is make the scandal about, like, the corniness or the sexy doctor or the silly humor, as opposed to corrupting the medical information, which is how people get views on social media.

Yeah.

Right.

They have those. Here's the pink himalayan sea salt. You're not eating. If you have headaches, this is what you need to. That's an actual video online.

Oh, I'm sure I've seen any product under the sun is the quintessential thing that's killing you, obviously.

Or we'll save you.

Yeah.

All right. I want to get into some of the medical stuff a little bit here.

So we have a big debate here about whether farting is holding in your farts. Holding in your farts. One. I think it's possible. Dax thinks it's impossible to do.

That's actually not my position per design. I must be dealing with much more than you if you're able to hold. Because there's just no way I would. So I'm just starting by saying maybe our baseline amount of gas. That's issue one.

Cause I said, no, you're just being a jerk and just entitled. You're entitled. And you're just farting all the time.

And I've known Monica for ten years now, and she's yet to fart around me, which is insane. Cause we're supposed to be.

Well, there's, like, also guy humor.

Exactly.

That's around each other.

That's her argument.

But then Dax told me that you said that I'll die if I don't fart in front of him.

Lincoln told me. Not doc, but Lincoln told me doctor might said, it's not healthy to hold your farts in. Which I promptly reported to you because I care about.

We would talk to you in person about.

Okay, let's talk about sphincters. Because sphincter control is awesome. Because if we didn't have sphincter control, we would be defecating ourselves where we sit. So our sphincter is actually quite interesting in that it has a sensor built in to know when it's just a fart. Or is there matter?

Well, his is debunked.

So actually under our control. The practical answer of this. It doesn't matter.

Did you hold them or not?

I mean, yeah, I thought there was a story about. Barring extreme. I know someone's gonna be like, this person had some gangrenous bowels situation. Barring extreme, please hold your farts. Please fart. Do whatever makes you feel.

I feel victorious.

You should. And now I gotta find the video that Lincoln claims to be referencing in her bibliography of your show. This may interest you. Maybe you've already thought of this. We had an astronaut on, and he had been in space for a year. I think they spent the longest amount of time in space. A couple things that shocked me. I was like, does it feel so great to sleep in space? Because you're, like, weightless, you know, he's trying to get comfortable on the pillow, like it seems like. And he said it's nearly impossible to sleep in space because gamma rays, which are blocked by the atmosphere, are coming through your eyelids. They penetrate your eyelids. So you're laying in bed with your eyes closed and you're getting huge flashes of light that are the gamma rays.

What?

Isn't that fucking crazy?

That's wild.

So that was one thing that was nuts. And then another thing was, you can't shit because your digestive system is gravity driven. And he said that the russian cosmonauts gave him the advice, want to take shit? Eat more food, basically.

Or maybe like, a gastric massage. Not gastric motility.

Yeah. So I was like, oh, I would have never thought about. Oh. And then the other thing he said, which would make total sense to you, well, your body is designed to live at one atm, right? So it's a pressurized system, driving blood up to the top of your. Well, without that atmospheric pressure, it pushes way too much blood to your brain. So they have headaches, they're getting flashes of light, and they can't.

I wonder what the adaptation process for that is, because the human body does adapt quite well.

It's a master of homeostasis.

You know, there's these astronauts stuck up there right now.

Yeah, I heard that.

That's so weird.

So weird.

Space scares me.

Oh, no. I have no desire to.

You, like, that's my anxiety. Anytime I look up, I get nervous, I get vertigo. I just start thinking the world's ending.

Yeah, anytime you look up.

Yeah. Like, anytime. Open spaces. I'm like, we're all gonna die.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. I'm not gonna be on any of those ships.

No, you won't. Blue origin or whatever.

The only thing that seems very enviable is many of the astronauts describe looking out the window. They say, like, when they're not doing the things they're mandated to do, most of them will spend their free time just laying in the bed, staring at Earth, watching it go around. And they all say there's something so surreal about being on the outside of it and how beautiful it is.

I believe that.

I'm envious of that.

Have you ever flown in a fighter since you like speed?

No. I've been invited a couple times. I know that you throw up. I know that's what they do to you.

They try. Yeah. Yeah. I did the Thunderbird. Thunderbirds, you did it? Yeah.

And you didn't throw up?

No, because I did 9.3 g's.

9.3 g's. What was that experience like?

I mean, I'm afraid of all this stuff. Yeah, you totally blackout.

Yeah.

You have to do the g straining maneuver, where, like, you're breathing in a specific way because you can't take a full, deep breath. So you have to do these, like, concentrated puffs of air. It's very weird. And you have the g suit squeezing you. It's like a whole experience.

Yeah. But you didn't get nauseous?

Oh, I got nauseous.

Oh, you got nauseous?

Yeah, I just didn't throw up, okay. I fought it, and we did all the maneuvers.

I have a side issue, which is I've done a couple USO tours. I was in a blackhawk at one point, and the guy said, do you want us to do combat simulation flight? And I was like, yeah, I'm a fucking daredevil. Let's party. And about 20 seconds into it, I was like, I've gotten myself into a situation where someone's potentially trying to impress me, and I don't want someone in impressed mode when they're operating something. I was just like, I never signing up for that again.

I had that with Mario Andretti. I did one of those ride alongs with him. Oh, you did? And I was like, oh, my God, he's old. He's gonna try and impress me right now. He's gonna say the doctor. I'm like, please don't have a stroke right now.

What if you were like, yes, I'm in. Can I take your blood breaker really quick? I just wanna do a couple quick.

Oh, I talked to him before. Cause I was like, let me, like, chat with you. Make sure you're all there cognitively.

He's a bad motherfucker behind the wheel. 90. He'll still be a monster behind the wheel.

And I love cars.

Was it in a two seater indycar?

Mm hmm.

At what track? Oh, fun. Do you like f one?

Yeah.

I think we should be bros. I'm so much older than you.

You're a car guy, right? Or motoristic guy?

Well, both.

I have a lot of cars. I'm a big car guy.

All I know is you had a urus that was stolen by a. Was it a doorman or something? Garage attendant took his Lamborghini Urus and went for a five hour zip through New York City.

And then when he came back, the cops came. He's like, I went for a family emergency.

Oh, that was the best answer ever.

They were really bored, and I had to blow their mind by fucking no.

But then the cops scanned the license plate, and it was, like, all over New York, so who knows where?

I would imagine, too. The nav was recording where it had all been.

Oh, yeah. Probably could have done that.

Do you want to do your game and guess his car?

Oh, yeah. Can you?

Well, I can tell you what car you should be in.

Oh, okay.

And we'll see if you have it.

I probably have it.

Yeah, I mean, you must have a GT three.

I thought that's what you would say. But I have a 911 turbo s. It's great.

Very close. Yep.

No, gt three has it. I have another card that's fun. Like a gt three.

Okay. What is that?

An f eight spider.

Okay. Okay. We can cut it out.

Yeah, if you want.

No, I mean, whatever.

That's very conservative.

But I like to play with them and swap them out and I just started collecting within like the year.

Okay. I have a sickness. Yeah.

Yeah, there's a disease.

I actually just bought my dad aroma for his retirement.

Oh, what?

A Ferrari.

Oh. I don't know what the Roma is.

It's like a GT. Like relaxed engine. Yeah. Front engine.

Okay.

Oh, that's nice.

And I surprised them with it. It was like really cute.

Okay, we're gonna debunk some stuff.

Yep.

I guess my first question is, it would seem like the most audacious exaggeration of science is in nutritional space and the diet space. Do you think that's the number one place where you see disinformation?

It's probably the most common on social media.

Yeah.

Or like vaccines. Hesitancy.

What is your theory behind why that? Well, first of all, let's just talk about why our nutritional science is so fucked up. It's like every time you hear a different study, it's just so variable. It seems like we can't learn anything concrete.

Media messed it up for all of us because they're really terrible with their science literacy. And I'm going back like 40 years where like one epidemiological study showed that people who ate nuts lived on average twelve years longer. They didn't account for, like wealth, they didn't account for exercise or any of these things. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

And then they write an article like, nuts make you live twelve years longer. That's not what the study said.

Yes.

Even now it's still bad where they'll see the word significant and they're actually saying that a study is statistically significant, which does not mean the same as practically significant. So this is actually really fun and I kind of geek out over this stuff, where if something is statistically significant, that means odds are whatever the result happened is true. That's all it means, whether that result is good, bad, or something. The other mean anything clinically significant or practically significant means that it actually makes a valid difference.

So it's just saying that the test was done correctly.

That means by chance the results didn't happen. Like 95% chance that this is the truth. And that to us, is the barometer that we set in science, 95%.

Well, also, the way the data is reported is so significant. So this was my personal experience with it. I got curious. I was like, well, Sweden ran the experiment for us. They didn't social distance and they didn't mask, and they took a very specific approach. Approach. The results are in, like, one day I'm like, oh, I want to see what that was. So I searched, you know, what was the outcome of Sweden's policy? And the articles, all of them are like, 50% rate, fatality rate increase. And I'm like, well, that's pretty heavy. Then I actually look at the data in the article as compared to their neighbors. Well, their neighbors had a death rate of two per 10,000. People in Sweden had a death rate of three for 10,000. And that is 50%.

Well, there's like. But that's absolutely absolute or relative.

So everything gets reported that seems immediately enormous and, like, you've almost halved your chances of survival, but three out of 10,000 or two out of 10,000, that's negligible. But, boy, when you read it positioned that way. That's my main issue with these studies being reported in the media all the time. It's like, what is the incident rate, really?

That's important because when we even say, oh, those who eat red meats have higher rates of colon cancer by, like, 20%, or processed meats have a higher rate of colon cancer by 20%. And then you have to, like, then figure it out that the natural incidence is 4% and 20% increase goes up to five. Right. So it is 20, but it's one.

Right. Interesting.

Yeah. It's really, really misleading. You can really.

You can twist it, basically. Yeah. To make it say whatever you want. And because of that on social media, how are you going to get viewership? By twisting it as much as possible.

Right.

Sweetened up even regular media at this point.

Yeah, exactly. But at least with regular media, why it's a little harder to do. It is they have more to lose.

Yeah.

They have investors, they have reputation management, like all that stuff versus if you're like a dude reading stuff in front of a camera, you're like, yeah, cancel. If you're canceling me, it's because you're silencing me now. And there's that playbook that's used all the time.

Oh, God. Yes. But what are the most alarming trends that you're seeing in the diet space that you've been spending time on.

I think it's changed. Before, it used to be like intermittent fasten, fasting keto. Then, like, carnivore popped up for a while and you started getting all these tribal camps. And the reality, as Lane Norton always points out, it's like, whatever you can do to lower your calories, that's going to help you lower your weight.

No one really wants to hear that, though, do they?

That's not fun.

Yeah, he's got a great thing. It's like, yeah, intermittent fasting works, but not because of some magic of intermittent fasting, but because your caloric intake ends up being reduced. We're not going to get away from calories in, calories out.

Well, notice if we look at the misinformation space 25 years ago, all the nighttime commercials were like, here's how you could lose five pounds with our new formula. Here's the grapefruit diet of how to lose five. Notice those went away. Do you know why they went away?

No.

Ozempic, we have a proven way to lose weight. We don't need the b's stuff. And I'm not saying that everyone should be on ozempic, but they lost market share because their stuff didn't work, versus this stuff is proven and has side effects, obviously, and shouldn't be used by everyone, but actually, it's proof that it works.

That has to be a topic people really want you to talk about. I know even in here, it comes up a lot. Very pro ozempic. I have had friends. I've watched them try to lose weight forever, and they had gotten themselves into an actuary line that's pretty dangerous. And lo and behold, now they're significantly thinner, and people are mad about that. And I'm just confused why someone would be mad about that.

People like the natural thing, and they view this as unnatural, and they view it as pharma getting rich and weaponizing. And look, a lot of these arguments that people have with these situations are all what I call truth wrapped in a lie. There is a kernel of truth that this is a natural, that pharma is getting rich. But what the ultimate answer is conspiracy. Exactly. What I see is happening is society creates problems. We created through capitalism, all these foods that are hyper palatable, we want to eat more and more. They're not satiated.

Designed by scientists.

Yeah, exactly. And then we started gaining so much weight that we couldn't stop eating these foods. So now we created another problem, which was what capitalism does. It creates a problem. Before, we had poop on the streets of horses. And then we're like, how do we create the solution? We created cars. Now we have solution. We're gonna create a solution. So it's like constantly playing catch up. But because this medication breaks it in a fundamental way where it changes your relationship to culture, because food is culture, I think that strikes a chord with people.

Yeah. And there's this sense that, yeah, people have cheated or they didn't.

I had to work hard.

Yeah. Like, I put a lot of effort into my fitness, in my diet, but I don't care if someone.

But also people that are on Ozempic, they also might be putting in effort. They should be really. That's the correct way to use that medication.

I think the only thing about ozempic that people aren't shining maybe the best light on or could be doing better with is it is great. But also, you do tend to lose muscle mass on it.

If you consume less calories, you'll lose both. And if you do it in a way where you're not resistance training, you're not consuming the proper amount of protein. Yeah. You will lose muscle.

Are you in the attia camp? Do you believe in metabolic health improvements through muscle mass and.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Sure. Where we disagree from, like, the Peter Attia camp versus what I do is the worlds in which we practice medicine are radically different. I work at a community health center.

You don't have bezos as a patient.

Yes, allegedly. Allegedly.

I don't know who his patients are.

I don't know who throw out a rich person. It's very consumer oriented. People that are going there are already pre motivated. They already have a bias that this is gonna work, which means that it will work just because they believe that it will work. And then also, some of the things are not evidence based. Some, not all.

Okay.

Where it's a protocol that he's created. And I am scared of that because science can go wrong in so many different ways. So whether we're talking about full body scans to catch things early, just preventatively.

Or are you pro or anti those?

Generally speaking, anti those.

I believe I did it. I did it.

And I know which brand you did, so I don't want to say. I mean, I guess, yeah, I presume.

I'll tell you. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, we gotta hear why not?

As of now. And remember, science evolves. And this is important to say because we messed this up bad during COVID and we were like, this is the answer, and this will never change. Science evolves. As of right now, the only group of people that really should be getting these scans are people who have extremely high risks of cancer because they have a genetic condition. There are specific ones that create higher risks of familial cancers. Besides that, what we've seen on a population level is that the benefit is outweighed by the harm.

The harm mean the radiation.

Well, a lot of those tests are now MRI driven, so the radiation is not. A previous iteration was the CAT scan model, but now it's MRI, so that's a little bit better. But the human body has lumps, bumps, masses, things that don't have clinical significance.

Okay, I'm going to guess what the problem is. I'm in lockstep with you, which is they did a study. I'll get the numbers wrong, but in general, you'll get what I'm saying. They did a random mris on a thousand people's backs that did not have back pain and something outrageous, like 40% of them, 67. Yeah, yeah. Had, like, ruptured disks or they had something that was. Yes. And so if you go in with your back hurts, 70% of people you give a MRI to, you're gonna find something it doesn't mean. So is that maybe the concern is that you'll start treating something that didn't need treatment?

Yes. Or maybe you're more conservative that you say, I won't get treatment, but you need to investigate investigations. Biopsies, needles inside the body. There are side effects to procedures. There are side effects to the anxiety that comes with knowing you have something. And some will say, well, maybe it'll motivate you. Yeah, maybe. Or maybe it'll give you such bad anxiety that you'll have more problems.

Right.

So right now, we don't have the data to support it, that it's easy to sell it in a sexy, fear mongering way. And I really dislike that because right now the science isn't clear cut. Saying that's a good recommendation.

Okay, now we're going to click into patient doctor mode. So I am an ex smoker of. I quit when I was 30 and I started at 15. So I smoked for 15 years. I haven't for almost 20 pack a day, pack back pack and a half. I was hammered and doing code 23 packs.

Okay, so 20 plus pack years.

Yeah.

Okay.

Snorted a copious amounts of coke, drank like a motherfucker for a decade or more. I wanted the peace of mind that they looked in my lungs. There were a lot of question marks that I thought with my history, I would just feel a lot better taking a peek inside there and seeing what was going on. So with someone with my history, would you say, still probably don't need to do it?

There is an age where we do for people who have an extensive smoking history, preventive screening with a low dose dose CAT scan. So we do do screenings for that. For lung cancer.

You'll be relieved to know I was out of the woods, or so we think from that results, you could just.

You had the opposite. It relieved some anxiety.

A thousand percent.

Which then is what if you found.

A nodule that then you needed to follow?

I would follow it, yeah.

And how would your anxiety feel then? You have a girl. Oh, no. Okay.

Because literally, I go into those, I'm like, I definitely have lung cancer. You know, when I got the CT scan of the heart, I'm like, this is gonna be a mess.

Oh, you got a calcium score?

Yeah. Yeah. I go in thinking it's gonna be like, 70%. I eat meat nonstop. It was zero. Shocked.

So I'm not.

You're not what? Shocked?

Yeah.

Cause of the exercise?

No. Cause that's what's. That's why I don't scan you.

Yeah. Oh, this is perfect timing. Cause of my heart explosion.

You had a heart explosion?

Any day now.

Okay.

You would probably know him. Do you know doctor Richard Isaacson that does the Alzheimer's work done?

He's a preventative neurologist. He worked with Sanjay, and he has.

Sanjay did a four part story.

Yeah. He has a whole thing going that we are participating in.

Yeah, we're in a study.

Yeah, we're in a study, which is very cool. We give a ton of our blood. All of our blood. And then he's called us with some results, and there's some unnerving stuff about my cholesterol, which I already know. I have high cholesterol. I've had it since I was a kid. He's basically asking for that. And I said, yeah, I've always had high cholesterol, so sue me. Doesn't seem to be related to anything I eat or not. It's the way it goes. And he was like, okay, but now I'm going to go to preventative cardiologists, and there's gonna be more tests. It's, like, good to maybe clear that and see. But it is funny. Cause to me, I've always just been like, well, yeah, I just have it. I've always had it.

You're in acceptance mode.

Yeah. But now I am nervous.

Well, that would have flagged on any checkup for you.

They do. It's like, just keep an eye on it. Keep an eye on it. And he's surprised that that's been the response and it hasn't been.

Do you know what the numbers are?

I don't currently. I didn't ask very much. I was kind of overwhelmed.

Well, no, look, I'm not here saying, oh, just throw your hands up and you'll be fine. Wellness and screening, getting in front of problems is what I preach. That's what family medicine is. But it's knowing when screening is beneficial and knowing when screening can actually cause more of a problem.

Right.

And we've had instances with that. We've changed our guidance on prostate cancer screening. We've changed recommendations on breast cancer screening when we should cut off certain screenings because we found over testing was a problem, and over testing is a real problem. Especially. This is pretty unique. It makes sense shitty that the world exists this way, that those who have less money get worse health care. They can't afford medications, they don't have good health insurance, they don't go for preventive stuff. Logically shitty, but makes sense. The wealthiest demographic also gets bad healthcare, really? Because they're over testing. They think they can buy good health care. They get great hormonal treatments that they may not need.

I feel single to have attacked attacks.

I'm saying this generally speaking, and it happens and it happens. That's what my hope is on the YouTube channel, just to say, here's what actually we know. And then there's people doing stuff that we don't know about because they want to be on the forefront of it, and they want to be the leaders, and they believe in it.

And this is, again, where studies get so hard to isolate what variable you're actually testing, which is that also correlates perfectly with what we know about happiness and financial. Right. So when you're very poor, it's missing, miserable. And when you're above, you know, it was kind of low at that time. At that time, yeah, they've updated, but you plateau after 170 to 3.1 million. Beyond that, you have a reduction in happiness. So it's like, okay, now our health reflects that, and also the happiness is in the mix.

It's life homeostasis.

Right.

Our acid base balance in our body, like, our ph is so narrow and what's considered a good range for your body, the body keeps your ph within like a decimal point. And then you have. People are like, drink alcohol, alkaline water. And I'm like, okay, hold on a second. Pause. You're going to have alkaline water, slightly more basic water that's going to go into your stomach that's full of gastric acid, which is one of the most potent acids. Your water is no longer alkaline. A, b, it's going to get absorbed into your gut. Your body will do whatever it wants to do with it because it's controlling your acid base balance.

It'll dump it or use it.

Right.

If it needs it or not.

Yeah. So it's like the idea that you're controlling something with your alkaline water is.

Just want to feel control. That's really what it is.

I'm so glad you're debunking alkaline water. I've been pitched it many times, I just. Don't you love it?

Is it the taste of it or you like that? It's fun. Great. Just the health claims are not true.

No, I know.

Well, this is the example I give when you're talking about homeostasis. To me, opiate addiction is the finest example of it, which is you give yourself an opiate, it blocks the receptors. The body grows more receptors, and now you need more. And then you take more. There's no end to that. Your body will fucking win. It's why it's the most terrible addiction.

You can have to clarify. It lowers the receptors cause it doesn't want to have as much of a reaction. So it down regulates.

Oh, I thought the opiate blocked the receptors from uptake of the pain.

For the opioid example, yes, let's say for mental health of serotonin.

Right, right, yeah, yeah.

There's instances where it happens in both ways where you could upregulate or downregulate. I just want to point that out.

Yeah, okay, great. But just you're in an arms race with your body, with opiates, and you actually can't get the upper hand. You can oD, I guess, but, yeah, it's like the body is insanely good at reaching homeostasis.

Did you read both good and bad?

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Did you read dopamine nation by Anna Lemke? Oh, God, it was good. I think you would really like it. You're not an optimized guy, but I do feel like you would recognize benefits.

To a lot of these things.

So her position is, okay, we like dopamine. It's a great chemical. There are ways to spike it. Cigarettes, caffeine, all these things. But in all these studies, if you spike it, the bad chemicals that reregulate, you last far longer than the spike did. Right. It's an investment with a return. And conversely, if you cold plunge for eight minutes, you get 2 hours of elevated dopamine as it tries to re stabilize you or reach homeostasis. So go ahead and chase dopamine. But what? One has the good odds?

Yeah.

And so I read that, and I was like, oh, that makes total sense. And I'm a dopamine junkie, so, yeah, let's suffer three times a day. And I dig it. Are you in any of that cold plunging or.

No, I like saunas.

Yeah, me too.

I'm not a cold punch person because I don't like the feeling of being cold.

Nobody does, Mike.

Yeah, but, like, I don't even enjoy the challenge of it. I'd rather challenge myself in the gym or boxing or something, getting my ass kicked. I'd rather do that for some reason. But even that whole protocol thing has been blown out of proportion.

Studies that people are referencing, it's just.

Like, my protocol is better than your protocol. And if you're not doing it this way, or if you're not breathing this way, or if you're not meditating this.

Way, it's like, nah, yeah, I'm with you. But I do try them all. If you're one, we just learned.

But you can have fun with it. Like, if you're doing it for fun, that's like the same thing with all those fitness trackers, right? Like, everyone loves their fitness tracker. If you just love it for the fun of it, great. But the health aspect of the fitness trackers is really questionable.

Okay, so I wonder if we have the same position on this, because I fight with my wife about this all the time. She's had every kind of tracker, okay? She was wearing a glucose monitor for a while there, and I'm like, the results of which you will know, okay, I gotta sleep 8 hours. I gotta eat this way, and I gotta exercise this way. Like, we already know what the prescription will be if you don't like the results, so just live by the prescription.

If you wake up and you feel well rested after a night of sleep, and you slept the correct number of hours for your age group, why do you need an app to tell you you slept well? Because if that app tells you you didn't sleep well, your performance is gonna suffer. That's been proven.

That's exactly what I say to our friends. Charlie, who's a fitness trainer and has got Adonis of a body, but yeah, he'll wake up, and it'll tell him, don't train today. And it's like, well, what are you gonna do with that?

In the upper echelon of performance? Like, for the LeBron James of the world? Maybe it's different. But again, I work at a community health center, so I have, like, real people, like, the averages of the world. They don't need the health tracker to change their life. They need the information, and they need guidance as to what is the biggest bang for. For their buck in terms of effort, not money, in order to change their world, their numbers, all that. The fitness tracker, the cold plunges. That's not in medicine. Never in a real medical encounter in, like, a legitimate medical institution, tertiary care center, is anyone being like, did you cold plunge today?

How much are you cold plunging a week? Are you getting your eleven minutes?

That's true.

Like, that's not happening. And it's not because we don't care about wellness. It's just. Cause that's not really wellness.

It also makes everyone a victim. It's like, oh, I only slept 2 hours. Hours. I hate that.

And again, that's not saying sleep isn't important. It's so important.

The most important.

But, yeah, you know, if you've slept well or not, for the most part.

And if you're not, like, searching for the reason why you're not is very important, too. And that's what we talk about on the channel, ways to improve that sleep, hygiene, all that good stuff, Evan.

Okay, so I want to talk about gut health because I find it very intuitive. I'm very interested in every time they start talking about just how much it's regulating your overall health. What is your position on gut biome, and what do we know about it, and what can we actually augment about it?

That's a good point. So, like, what we know versus what we can augment is pretty limited. There's certain medical conditions that we've seen. Evidence of messing with the gut microbiome is valuable. Far few between, like, c. Diff. We do fecal transplants, and it works. Antibiotic associated diarrhea in some cases, traveler's diarrhea. There's like, some childhood things, but in general, general, there's no good data for probiotic use right now.

Really?

And they're sold for every condition. And that's not to say that in the future we won't find one. Yeah, but saying it prematurely is doing a disservice, because then people who have an issue where they need to go get a checkup and get a colonoscopy to check for colon cancer, are not getting it because they're wasting time trying a probiotic for a condition that probiotic doesn't help with.

Okay, but what about this rationale? Which is like, yeah, we might note know, I think a lot of people live under this approach, which is like, yeah, we're not sure. It can't hurt. Maybe it will be proven. Well, here we go.

There's been issues with probiotics causing problems with people, infections in the gut. A lot of the probiotics that are sold on the shelf, and this actually goes to the larger picture of supplements. What's written on the label is not what's actually in the product.

How bad? Like, what are we looking at?

Like, I've seen consumer labs who do these off the shelf testing be as high as 70% for some of the.

Supplements, meaning they actually contain 70% of what they say.

70% of the supplements on the shelves have an inaccurate label. What's in them? Someone's that sell herbs. The presence of the herb isn't even there because they're not regulated. And people are saying, well, that's because pharma is a problem. Natural is better. It's like, both are businesses. Both are for profit. One is at least somewhat regulated. And if something happens with a farm, you can sue. There's someone to hold accountable for that. There's no one to hold an llc that you'll sue. They'll open up a new one.

It parallels nicely the kind of bitcoin debate of, like, they love it because there's no regulation, and then when it gets stolen, there's like, there's no one to call. There's no one to punish. Like, wait a minute. Maybe accountability is rat in a monetary system.

Balance. We're back to balance. Some regulation is better than none. More regulation isn't better than some.

So are there chronic conditions that you do think are originating from poor gut micro? I'll just own that. I think the future of it seems very promising that you would be able to regulate the microbiome and have pretty powerful impacts on, like, some autoimmune stuff and different things. It seems very promising. Of all the different things that really we don't know a ton about, we've.

Seen a pattern of people who have poorer health have disruptions in their microbiome. What that means, we don't yet know. Is it chicken or the egg? Can we alter that chicken or the egg phenomenon? We don't know. And anyone that's saying they do know is jumping too far ahead because we don't yet know.

Right. So just to articulate specifically, you're saying like, yeah, does the poor health cause the bad microbiome or does the bad microbiome cause the poor health? We don't know yet.

Yeah. What I'm excited about is AI, but not in the way most people think. So when I give patients blood pressure medications because their blood pressure is elevated, I gave them a diagnosis of hypertension after checking it correctly, which most people don't do after multiple visits. We tried lifestyle modifications, didn't work. For whatever reason, their blood pressure is still high. We want to lower that blood pressure. Why? Because over the population of people who have high blood pressure, by controlling it to a certain number, we see a decrease in risk of heart attack and stroke. Forgetting the number, we see a decrease. Yeah, but now, if I gave you the medicine, that same percentage doesn't hold true for you. In fact, in most instances, that medicine is going to do nothing for you. But I don't know which one of my patients that has the high blood pressure. It will prevent the heart attack and stroke. It. AI can use a lot of data points and then further reduce the number of patients that I need to treat to actually get the benefit of said treatment.

And am I right in understanding this? I've heard a couple people talk on it, but, yeah. The amount of data they're going to be able to put into this evaluation, knowing your genetics, knowing 65 different markers, they're going to be able to point to a much more probabilistic treatment.

Correct.

That doctor would have to spend three weeks sifting through to try to figure out.

Sifting through. And there's experimentation. Sometimes, even with psych meds, we're experimenting with patients, we're giving them this one. How you doing? That's subjective, right? That doesn't always work really well. And I'm excited for the day where AI genetics can all come together and guide this. But you know who's the biggest opponent of. Of that notion? We have to guess what indigenous pharma. And I'm not like someone that's like anti pharma because they're also making the greatest changes for humanity and saving us from problems. But why? Big pharma would not be a fan of this problem.

Yeah. Less medication.

Yeah. Because I would need to treat.

Prescribing 70% of it. That is, I would be lowering the number. Well, that's interesting. Back to Ozempic. That was an issue they were in, right. Is they were a company that was manufactured insulin, and they had created this thing that would potentially cannibalize their insulin business. And you're just hoping that that company believes that, you know, they'll make more money. You're just praying.

Yep.

And it does make you wonder how many. I'm not a big pharma conspiracy there. Again, it's not binary. They're not good or bad. They're both.

You know what their incentives are.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's not a mystery.

When the incentives align. It's really nice. Sometimes they don't always align, and that sucks.

Ideally, they want it to be good and work for everyone so that they can sell.

But if it cannibalizes their original. Yeah.

And there's been evidence of some pharma companies being like, oh, this one's coming off patent. We need to create a new one to protect it, even if it's not that much that happens. Yeah, absolutely. And it's like a financial game for them.

Oh, I've always wondered this. And you're someone who prescribes a lot of medicine. How the fuck are you staying on top of it? I feel like half of your job would have to be evaluated. The numerous medications that are constantly coming out. I watch 60 minutes every episode. I find out about three new medications.

There are new medications. Being a primary care doctor, I have, like, a common arsenal of medications, and we have really good resources these days. One that I use often is called up to date, where I can literally punch in a condition. It'll give me some information about the epidemiology of it, how it presents in patients, what the first line, second line treatments are. Here's the evidence behind why. Like, you can click into it, and then the dosages are all there, the length of days. That's what we use, and I use that quite often. I use that with the patients in the exam room. We look at it together.

Oh, that's great. And that's a service you're subscribing to the hospital? The hospital does. What's your take on autoimmune diseases? I guess I'm trying to back you.

Okay, well, some.

Wait, people don't believe in autoimmune disease?

No, no, no. I think I potentially have a fringe opinion about it based on the fact.

That I love to hear it.

I'll try to do the four second version. Seven years of pain, joint locks up, get surgery on my toe. My knee locks up to get surgery. A dermatologist looks at my fingernails, and he says, I think you have psoriatic arthritis. You should go to a rheumatologist. I go, I get tested. Psoriatic arthritis. I get put on Humira right away. After eight years of trying to figure out why the fuck all this is happening. It's like a light switch. I have a year of no pain in my joints anymore. I'm like, oh, my God, this is heaven. It stops working as good as it did. They wanted up my dose. I didn't want to go that route of continuing to carpet bomb my immune system. So I was like, I'm not going to pursue this. I got to get off it. It was miserable. Through three or four years of trial and error, I've really fine tuned my diet. I have a prescription for zeljans. I almost never have to use it. If I cheat and I'm on a vacation and I eat a bunch of hamburger buns, I will have to use it. So for me, anecdotally, so it's like.

Gluten related for you.

Gluten, peanuts, garlic, a couple other things I'll forget while we're talking, but, yeah, I have a very. And sugar. If I were to go eat four pieces of bread tomorrow morning, my forehead would be flaky, my eyebrows would flake, and my wrist would hurt. My conclusion, and then talking to other people with different autoimmune diseases, heres again, I have no business saying this theory, but I think were all allergic to stuff. And I think these allergies can manifest in a lot of different ways, whether thats a Crohn autoimmune disease or its a psoriatic arthritis thing, or I feel like a lot of the autoimmunes may be originated in just allergies.

Well, if you really think about what an allergy and an autoimmune condition is, an allergy is an overreaction of your immune system. But which line of the immune system is important? Because the immune system takes various forms. There's different cell lines of the immune system. So when you have an allergic reaction that's very specific, sometimes a patient will tell me, oh, I don't like this antibiotic because I'm allergic. I say, well, what symptom do you have? They say, my tummy hurts. That's not an allergic reaction. That's an adverse reaction. Not allergic. Allergic is a very specific reaction.

What's it defined by?

Swelling, itchiness, hive histamine release. Correct. Mast cell histamine. Yes, that's an allergic reaction. When you have autoimmune reactions, now you're having cell lines damaging your existing tissue for whatever reason.

If I understand it correctly, they've identified your tissue as a pathogen.

Correct. Not a pathogen. As an antigen. That is bad.

Okay, great.

Maybe I get pathogens.

I'm really stupid. Stuck on a patient saying my tummy hurts.

It's kind of cute. Maybe they were flirting with you.

Yeah, I don't trust that person.

I wonder how many people fake illnesses to come and see mine.

No. Most people don't even know I have a social media patient.

It doesn't matter. They meet you and they're like, fuck, I wouldn't mind going to see him again.

I had an allergic reaction.

Let me ask, how many of your patients show up like they're going to a formal event?

So they don't know. They don't know.

They don't know they're going to see you.

Yeah.

Well, you have recurring patients.

Yeah, I do. But they're patients that I built up through residency. I know they're family. I delivered some of their babies.

Your tummy would hurt a lot once.

You deliver someone's baby. Your relationship?

Have you delivered babies?

Yeah. Family medicine.

Well, but you're not an ob gyn. It's not like you have smears.

I deliver babies. Not anymore. Okay. Because I did that during my residency, but I still perform basic gyn.

Great. But when's the last time you delivered a baby?

2017.

Okay. It's pretty good.

Seven years ago, I delivered 38 babies because I had to get them. I had to, like, document it from my residency.

I feel like I would have interest in keeping in touch with them. Is that a warning?

Well, they're my patients.

They then went on to be your patients, the ones you delivered.

That must be so rewarding.

That's what I'm saying.

Family medicine is so awesome.

Yeah. You bring them into the world, and then you keep them healthy.

Those are the ones that are.

Some of them write to me on social media, and I'm like, this is crazy.

That's why they're not abnormally attracted to him. Because that thing happens with a family member.

Sure, sure. Like, whether it's your sibling. You're not attracted to yourself.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. Because you imprint their pheromones.

We figured it out.

We should fight about something. This is the explanation I learned in Anthro, which was. I think I learned in Anthro. I shouldn't say that. Yeah. That you imprint the pheromones of your family members, which turns off your sexual attraction to them.

Wow.

This is 100%. You could look this up. There's this really creepy phenomenon. I shouldn't say creepy. I should be judgmental. Where parent and child get reunited, there's an inordinate amount. Where I. They start dating.

No.

Yes, inordinate. In the general population, this is outside expertise. The general population rate of daughters dating dads is very minuscule. And in this population of people that have been reunited, there was an article. I talked about it on the show. I read it.

I probably wiped an expert on that.

We'll do it in the fact check. We'll talk about this phenomena. Moving on back to autoimmune, though.

Okay? Yeah. So your thought is that it's an allergy? It kind of is. As an allergy is sort of autoimmune in that it's an overreaction. It's just not attacking your tissue. It's creating that inflammation, that histamine response, as you said, Evan.

Yeah. I guess my intuition is that it's either through what you're putting into your body orally, by eating it, or there's something obviously environmental that's coming into the system that's triggering this response.

It's all. And it's hard to know in each case which one it is.

Well, what's the conventional explanation for these? Why would it.

What you're putting into your body. It's also what you're now putting into your body. So, like, for example, parents that withhold peanut products from their children actually raise rates of peanut allergy. That was a statement made by the American Academy of Pediatrics back in the day. Like, withhold peanut products, allergen foods. And then we saw that it caused a huge spike. So we actually now recommend introduction through, like, bomba and all these snacks.

Growing up with a pet, you're drastically less likely to have a pet allergy.

It's interesting how putting things into your body. Not putting things into your body. Environmental exposures, mental health. Well, I was gonna say we look.

At the correlation between autoimmune disorders and ace scores is kind of really hard to deny. Yeah.

Talking about adverse childhood experiences, I'm sure you're familiar with the book, the body keeps the score.

Oh, I love it.

There's so much value in talking about that. And there's people who are anti some of the messages in that book because they sound.

What? Woo.

Yes. But also, I've had experts on, in the psychiatric space that say, like, well, there's no actual part of the body that keeps the score. I'm like, it's a metaphor. We can make a metaphor. Yeah. The statement was the body doesn't keep the score. The body's like the scoreboard.

I'm like, all right, yeah, you won.

So I think that's true. And there's truth in that the mind is so much more powerful than we give credit to. That's why the placebo effect is true. That's why if you're able to have a positive mindset through your cancer journey, you're more likely to have better outcomes. All these things, even like the Wim Hof and that whole world of it, which is not super evidence based, there's like proof that they can modulate their immune system, that they can change the heat that's within their hands in a given moment. They can survive in extreme temperatures. There's truth in how powerful the mind is. What we do with that knowledge remains to be seen and we need to use a response responsibly.

But, well, it's not a far walk to the area we all agree on, which is under moments of great stress, your body's immune system amps itself up, preparing. Yeah, so, okay, great. We agree on that. Now, what could stress you out, Doctor Justin?

What can't stress you out?

But if you're an extreme ace score person who's in a constant state of fight or flight. Yeah. Your immune system is likely to be probably overactive.

Overactive or underactive. Remember, some of the steroids that the body creates are also immunohisthen modulating down regulating.

Explain that.

Like when you take prednisone, which is a corticosteroid, part of the side effect is that you could have higher rates of infection. It immunocompromises you.

Right.

And that's a corticosteroid. That's like, what it is. That's how it works. And the body naturally produces those steroids during moments of stress.

Are you aware of the uptick in emergency room visits for pickleballs? Have you seen the data on this? I keep reading headlines and they seem impossible to be true. You in your own practice?

I've had a few, but isn't that because just pickleball is becoming more popular?

Yeah, but there was some. I'm not even gonna attempt to say the statistic. Eric sent us all the article.

Okay.

But it was a double digit percentage of emergency room visits last year were pickleball related.

Well, I can actually see why that's happening is cause the population that plays pickleball is usually older people who can't play tennis. Cause it's a little bit too physically demanding. So they try out this sport. Are you calling me a low impact? No, but that's just the population trend.

That I've seen 49 or above.

Yeah, I would probably say my patient's like 60 plus, usually.

Yeah, I think.

And that's like, when rates of tears and arthritis are already high. You know who also has an uptick in injuries? People who use testosterone treatments because they're.

Overexerting in the gym or.

Yeah, especially if they go into the supra physiological levels that you were talking about, the 15 hundreds and all that. Because they have really high levels. They're sometimes of older age. Their muscles can't take that, and they tear a bicep.

Okay. So you deal a lot in studies, and I imagine you do your best to do maybe more than meta analysis of many, many studies I have grown, and I've read some things recently that I've just grown more and more skeptical of. Studies in general, a. Let's just discuss how hard it is to study a human being in a single variable within a human being. Going to stay with this subject the entire day and the entire week and month. There's so much going on. If you had to rate studies across the board, especially all these ones that are making into the news cycle, what grade do you give it?

Evan?

It's just very broad because nutritional studies aren't great, notoriously because most are not so controlled. There have been new ones where they actually had people unlocked wards and they controlled what they ate. That's like the gold standard.

That's all we would really care to hear about, really.

But when we're testing, like, medications and such, you can control a lot of the variables to get a sense of what's happening. And because in these studies, what you're doing is you're controlling one variable, and if you start seeing a statistically significant and clinically significant result, that's pretty good, as long as it's replicatable. So hopefully that you're able to do another study and say, oh, yeah, look, these results hold up.

Right? I guess. What level of skepticism do you start?

100%. And in fact, one study is rarely enough to change our general way of practicing. That's not because we're slow to adapt. It's because one study, in comparison to many studies, doesn't hold that amount of value. So we need to see in general, okay, studies are starting to move in this direction. Okay, let's see how it's moving. And we're very patient with it, whereas people want to, like, I saw that one study, let's change everything.

Yeah. And if you hear something on the news about red meat, I think your next question should be, like, how many other studies also have said that? Because, boy, these make the headlines.

That's the biggest headlines and why people are so confused. I mean, how often did we hear that coffee's terrible for us. Coffee's good for us. Coffee causes cancer. It prevents cancer.

Same with eggs.

Yeah, eggs.

Oh, my God.

I was on a fat free diet when I was 20.

I mean, that was a popular sticker on labels. Fat free.

Fat free.

But triple the sugar.

Yes.

To make it taste a little bit better.

You're a big fan of lifestyle changes. That's the most powerful thing we can do for our health. Yeah.

That's under our control. Probably the biggest.

The one I like to think about is surgery versus physical therapy.

Oh, okay. For musculoskeletal stuff.

Yeah.

That's my world. I'm a doctor.

Yeah. So tell me, in general, like, what kind of outcomes you expect with physical therapy versus surgery?

Well, again, very dependent on condition. But in general, what I see, people knee jerk reaction when they have pain or they want better performance is fix it. And really, what we need to focus on is the body's own ability to heal itself. That's the magical thing. So we either have to intervene when necessary or stay out of its way. So intervention when it comes to, like, surgery, should be, like, the small minority of the time or in, like, traumas, whereas people think that's the treatment for all problems.

Step one.

Step one is not surgery minus the extremes.

Sure, sure.

People say, oh, my God, you're finding that I have a torn meniscus. Mean surgery right away. No. My labrum's torn in two places right now. I have a torn rotator cuff. My shoulder works great. Just because you have that injury doesn't mean you're doomed for surgery. And that's why we don't jump to the MRI. And sometimes patients get upset, like, you don't want to get imaging. Well, I say, number one, your insurance probably won't pay for it. So are you cool paying for it out of pocket? Most people say no if they say yes. I say, just realize that we might find something that we didn't care about finding in the first place.

Yes.

If people are okay with that, I get them the MRI, and they can continue on their way. But unless I'm planning for surgery or I'm really confused or we tried conservative management through physical therapy, activity modification. I'm not really getting imaging.

Admittedly. I've had so many surgeries. I have no business saying this, but do you think we are in, generally speaking, an over surgery option?

I would say we're more. We're over intervention.

We don't have enough faith in the body.

Needs to be a little bit more patience and understanding of how the human body heals itself. And when it comes to musculoskeletal stuff, we have, like, so few modalities to actually help. Like, if you really think if someone comes in with, let's say, knee pain, we have some medications over the counter, the set of medifans, ibuprofen of the world, and there's different classes within there.

I like nsaids.

Yeah, well, ibuprofen is a good example of that. People use those a lot, maybe overuse them, create gastric ulcers, kidney issues. That happens. Also, those who have high cardiovascular risk should be talking to their doctor if they should be using nsaids regularly. Important.

Wink, wink, wink.

I love Advil.

I love.

Then there's physical therapy, which is like the gold standard. I love physical therapy. That's good. Even if it doesn't help your initial problem, it's going to be valuable.

Right. You're going to end up strengthening something along the way.

You're going to decrease fall risk, you'll get better balance, you'll have better flexibility, better performance. All that good stuff. Then we have, like, some injectables which have really bad evidence.

This would be getting the steroid shot.

Well, steroid shot, we know what it does, but it usually is not a long lasting intervention. So it's like a temporary relief of a situation. There's injections that we do for arthritis where it mimics the synovial fluid in hopes of decreasing arthritic pain. And the evidence for that is really.

Low quality synovial fluid.

It's the fluid that's within the joint that allows it to be lubricated.

Okay, great.

So there's some prescription products that you come in for every few months, these injections, multiple times. And the evidence for them is not great, but the placebo effect is wonderful.

So people like PRP and symptoms.

Next step. So PRP is interesting because we found some evidence in some body parts, and then we said, put it everywhere.

Right.

Put it on the scalp, put it in the vampire facials, put it in penises, put it everywhere.

Carpet bomb.

Yeah. It's like a little preliminary.

How does PRP work? They take some blood, they spin it, they get out the plasma. They re inject that somewhere.

Correct. So basically, there's growth factors within the blood. It's called platelet rich prolotherapy. And we take those growth factors, we spin them down because they're heavier, so they'll sit lower. You inject them into a joint, and you hope that they create inflammation and healing. So it's funny, we used to, like, decrease inflammation to help healing happens. Now we're increasing inflammation because initially, prolotherapy started with injecting just sugar into joints. Dextrose.

Oh, really?

And they would create massive inflammation. We thought that stimulated healing because it brought growth factors, but then they created platelet rich prolotherapy.

They're skipping a step.

Well, they're not skipping stuff. They're trying to create, like, the better new science version. And there's been some evidence for medial epicondylitis.

You're so embarrassed that I got that wrong.

Not for Doctor Mike.

Don't interrupt Mike again. Well, whatever.

So anyway, PRP.

And what about stem cell? There was a great. I think it was the second season of Doctor death. Maybe it was about these crazy stem cells. People were getting this massive infections.

I'm not well versed in the stem cell world. Cause it's nothing mainstream enough to be in my purview, but from what I've seen, there's a lot of people taking advantage of folks with these stem cell clinics abroad.

Yeah. Like, they might have some promising future, but again, it's almost like probiotics.

Yeah. Literally haven't seen enough, haven't documented enough.

I would urge people that when they're taking advice from people, they should minimally ask themselves, are they an expert in this?

I want it to be that. And I wish it was that simple. But then there's even experts in some fields. That bias that we sometimes have. Yeah, we're like, I'm a doctor, so.

I know in its most extreme case, we see it with the tech entrepreneurs. They have demonstrated a genius in this category, and now we listen to them on biohacking. And it's very curious, but you're like, well, he's one of the smartest people in the world, so surely I should probably translate. It doesn't. Right?

Well, it's what Lane Norton said on my podcast about nobody. Price syndrome. So, like, those who win Nobel prizes have also believed in some, like, incredibly wild and accurate theory as well, because they were so smart that they convinced themselves they were right. Well, like, Linus Pauling believed, like, vitamin C can cure anything and cure cancer. And then Linus Pauline died of cancer. It's like the classic example, like, Steve Jones.

Yeah, that one. You're like, why are you Steve Jobs?

I mean, well, that's like the example of that's done. The rich people getting bad outcomes. You have the Steve Jobs example, or like the Michael Jackson example where they say, give me that medicine because I'm a celebrity. Or now we're kind of seeing it with Matthew Perry. You're a celebrity, you can demand it. And that's why I've never really been successful at allowing celebrities into the practice where I practice. They ask for things, and I'm like, but this isn't ideal. And then when they don't get it, they get mad and they seek the care elsewhere. I'm like, great.

They can go doctor shopping.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Now to talk about the Matthew Perry thing for 1 second, I will say one thing that's aggravating me about the stuff that's coming out. And again, I'm coming from a very specific place. I'm an addict. I think it's okay if I now say I was around him in this pursuit of sobriety, trying to hold this assistant accountable. I agree, is we're hurt or sad. It's a tragedy. We just can't resist wanting to blame somebody. But unfortunately, the attic is to blame. I'm to blame. I had a great fucking doctor do a surgery. I haven't told him everything. I call for more. I ran out of my, you know, like, that's too much for someone to manage someone's entire personal life or know what's going on. Now, when you're a doctor and your only patient's Michael Jackson and you're putting them to sleep every night with propofol, that line, for me is really clear. That's criminal. No.

Well, that's criminal negligence. You know what you're doing at that point.

Yes. You know, also not disenfranchised, like an assistant who's working paycheck to paycheck.

Yeah. I mean, there's a difference between ethical, moral lines and then legal lines. Because even if someone did something by accident and then a life was lost, maybe legally there is some kind of rule that they're crossing. But legal doesn't always mean moral and moral doesn't always mean legal. Those lines always cross.

Addicts.

It's just they're fucking slippery. You don't know what he's saying said to her, even if she.

Oh, yeah. Also, addicts are tricky.

Yeah, it's very tricky. People who one haven't been around an addict don't know that. And two who haven't been an assistant don't know what that's like either, where you're just like, I guess I have to do all these things. It's a weird livelihood zone.

Your whole life.

Yeah. In your career, you feel like if I don't do this, then I'll never get hired again.

Sure.

It's very tricky.

That's scary. There's the power dynamics.

Yes.

But speaking of addicts, I listened to day seven on my way here.

Oh, you did? That's a little bit heavy for a ride here.

Wanna? Like, you guys are doing great work. I gotta say. Thank you for being open and sharing that journey. It's awesome for me, as even a doctor, to hear that perspective because a lot of times what's said in an exam room is not as honest and open as how you guys talk about it. Thank you for, like, the openness of that conversation because I think it does a lot of good from a humanistic standpoint for people to understand what happens behind the scenes in these scenarios. They're not often talked about because embarrassment, shame, fear, all the things that you guys discussed on the episode that leading by example there is powerful.

It's hard for me to take a compliment about that episode, but thank you. It's weird to now feel like it's always tricky for me, but I really appreciate that. Okay, we've come to a new segment on our first episode of video, which is questions my daughter was dying to ask you. I told her a few days ago, you have a couple days to write down. I'm going to allow you five questions. Oh, P's dad. Ask him if he can do a russian accent.

Oh, my God.

I could do the Borac thing.

Ps, dad.

PSD.

So that's not one of her questions.

She wants a russian accent.

That's the weirdest request, because he knows you're from Russia.

Is that like a russian villain thing where.

Who knows what she's thinking of? Yeah. Presumably she saw it in some teenage caper where there was a russian villain.

I'll answer one of the questions in a row.

Okay. Oh, my God. This is. This is great. Who is the better snuggler? Rib or bear? Maybe we should first say, I have.

Two Newfoundlands, two giant dogs.

I had one as a kid.

Oh, really?

Yeah, yeah. What are they?

Amazing. Bear is 130 and rib is already, like, 110. And he's six months.

Oh, my God.

He's gonna be a month.

Yeah, maybe 160. We'll get to.

They suck at cuddling. They do they get too hot.

They do. And they start foaming.

They start foaming. And he's camp breathing and panting. So they go on the floor and they go on the tile. So I get very limited cuddles, cold plunge.

We're back. Do you know the origin of their breed?

All the time. Of course. You can get them out of the pool.

You know the origin of the Newfoundland?

Yeah, of course. They're like the rescue swimming dogs.

Yeah.

They're the same bernards of the water in Italy. They throw them out of helicopters.

No.

Yeah, there's, like, videos on YouTube.

Awesome.

And they go and they rescue people.

Wait, save drowners. I should get one by.

Teacher would go find.

I'm not sure about my swamp skills, so it'd be good to have one around.

I think this is right. St. Bernards would rescue people in avalanches and arctic conditions.

Them in, like, bernese mountain dogs, like the Swiss.

And so the Newfoundlands are that version, but of the water. And sailors would shipwreck out and they would release these dogs and the people hang on to them. They fucking swim.

And they would pull heavy loads.

We had a book growing up, and it was all the championship dogs. In fact, ours was from, like, our great grandfather had a. There's a picture of it, like, 70 enormous trees on a sleigh pulling it through the. Yeah, they can pull thousands of pounds. They're very cool. But the slobbering is rough.

So they don't talk about a certain shed, really. But the slobbering is.

Wow.

It is on the ceiling. Cause they do the ceiling in the food when you're eating. It's everywhere.

Okay, number two, forgive me.

Uh oh.

Have you ever farted front of a patient?

Oh, good question.

Is it.

Because I have farted not only in front of a guest, on a guest, and it became on a.

Guest because we were taking.

I did not feel this coming. We stepped outside to take our picture, and as I put my arm around her, I farted. And it was audible. I go, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. She now does a show with Monica. I think it was a great ice break.

I mean, that happens. It's a human body.

Yes. So that's yes.

The answer is yes. And I believe it was during, like, an eight hour surgery when I was a med student.

You had plausible deniability because there's eight people in the room.

There's people in the room.

And then maybe the body smells, maybe the patient.

The person's alive still. It's not a body.

Yeah. Cuz if you're in the room with just the patient and start smelling. There's only two.

Then you would have to apologize.

Yeah, that would be rough. Would you ignore it? You would ignore it?

I mean, would you apologize?

It had to be really pungent if it was pungent. Yeah. You'd have to go pick it up.

On the patient's face.

And you gotta go straight to an excuse. You go. Holy smokes. I'm so sorry. I tried a new restaurant today. I'm definitely never going back. Like, you'd have to.

I would try not to put a lot of story into it. Cause that makes it more memorable.

Yeah. What happens if there's a tummy? Going back to that word tummy incident during surgery.

From the patient or the doctor?

The doctor.

Well, like, if they have to leave to have.

Yeah. Has that happened?

Sure, it happens. Yeah.

You can take a bathroom break.

Yeah. Well, you do have to re scrub.

Well, yeah.

What if you didn't rescrub?

I didn't think. You didn't have to. I just said, yeah, you have to.

Fecal matters.

Excuse.

Well, if it's fecal transplant c diff.

Patient, you might save their life.

That's not a surgical thing.

Where did you go to middle school? She just started middle school.

So that's PS 104 in Brooklyn.

Have you been delighted to see Brooklyn come up in the way it has?

I haven't realized Brooklyn was coming up.

Oh, it's very cool.

What are you talking about?

I always thought it was cool. That's why. I don't know.

People only live in Manhattan, and now everyone wants to live in Brooklyn. That's a change.

I love Brooklyn. Growing up, I had to move to Staten island for high school, which I wasn't, like, a fan of. It wasn't a choice.

A lot of Guido's out there. What was the vibe?

You know what's funny? I had the Pauly d hairstyle when I was in. I had pictures on my phone. Good for you. I had to fit in. You got no choice.

They simulate you're a russian jew. You had to get that hair as high as you could. Oh, do you want to third, newfie?

I was very close to getting a third dog this week. Someone clearly knows me very well.

She waiji.

And I didn't even say anything.

She probably knows more of your episodes than you do.

Oh, my God.

Are you her Matt Damon?

Oh, big time. She's not old enough to know she's in love with you. But she's in love with you. It's kind of adorable.

Wait, what happened to Matt Damon?

Oh, no, he's my doctor mike. He, to me is doctor Mike to Lincoln.

Okay, fair. So before I got rib, I was talking to a friend of mine that recently got a bernese mountain dog.

I love those.

And they were like, it's amazing. You have to talk to this breeder. Put a deposit down. I was like, okay, let's just put it down. Cause who knows when it'll come? It's like whenever my dog gets pregnant, you'll be, like, the first to know. And she messaged me this week, and she's like, you ready? And I'm like, left her on red for now. So I haven't decided yet. Oh, raising a puppy is hard.

Oh, my God.

And, like, I take it seriously. I do the whole crate training thing every 2 hours out.

Wow.

It disrupts your life.

Yeah. My wife is the ultimate dog person, but she has a rule. No puppies. Not a chance. She's like, let someone else deal with all that. We'll take on. They're fucking broken. We've got a three legged one inside.

My husky's three legged.

Oh, really?

I know.

This. This is kind of sad. Had a band aid that was on too tight and caused gangrene.

What we suspect. Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Are you impressed with the research?

That's great.

Thank you so much.

I mean, the fact that you knew the dates when things happened was impressive. Earlier.

Okay, great. How was it moving from the city? I think she means away from the city.

I still have my apartment city, but I find myself spending less and less time there. I'm realizing that I'm a nature person. Growing up in Brooklyn, you never thought that's something that you would identify?

You're not even aware that it exists.

Yeah. And now I'm just like. I like sitting with the tree.

You're in upennesse. Doctor Mike. This has been a blast.

I had fun. Yeah?

Did you have fun?

It's surreal. Like, it's awesome. Yeah, from afar.

You really threw me for a loop with that height. I mean, you really. I'm still kind of recovering from that first introduction.

Do you do any boxing?

I don't.

Oh, I was gonna say we could spar or something.

You fought an influencer?

I fought influencer. Then I fought on Showtime, pay per view boxing.

You were the undercard for Anderson Silva and Jake father. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Were you shocked that he beat Silva? I was very. Yeah.

I was also lost right before that, so I was a little. She was. The board gave up a lot of time training for that.

A lot of surprises that evening. Do you watch couples therapy?

No. What's that?

Couldn't recommend it enough. It's a great show. Orna's a therapist in Brooklyn. Yeah, I think Brooklyn. It is intoxicatingly great.

Couples therapy.

Yeah. It's working on all the levels. It's like you're rubber necking. And then there's enormous breakthroughs that are incredibly empowering. It's the best show.

Favorite show right now is a couple syrupies.

We burned through that.

I love only murders in the building.

Okay.

I love that show.

Where is that? You guys are still talking about show I just finished. Presumed innocent.

Oh, me too.

That's so good.

It was good.

The ending.

I know. We're not gonna spoil it. Dax hasn't seen it.

Although I saw the movie. It has to be the same ending. We don't know. We're not gonna say. There's twists.

Okay. But I did.

Really?

Did you watch fallout?

No. I played the game, though.

Oh, then you would even be more incentivized to watch it. It's fantastic. What else do we love? Chimp crazy.

What's that?

By the makers of Tiger Kingdom.

It's on Netflix.

It's on Max.

Okay.

Same director.

Crazy.

And, of course, now we're exploring people who own chimpanzees, which, as you and I, would both.

Chimp crazy.

Yeah.

Terrible idea to own a male, sexually active chimp.

What about a spider monkey? Those look like fun.

You're not gonna have your face eaten off by it.

Yeah, I heard that happening.

Oh, here's. I'll quiz you. And don't give me a real answer because you know I'm giving you fake answers. Yes, and I'll tell you why. We have a bias. To not be made a fool of, basically. So if I ask you how many times you think, blank, you already know it's going to be higher than I would think. Or lower. Right. The fact that I'm asking you a question, there's a hint in there that it's a shocking number, right. So then you try to adjust. Okay.

So don't.

What I'm asking you is to give me the answer you would have really given me. Without any prep, how many times do you think a male chimpanzee has sex in the wild? In a day? What would be your real guess? I probably would have went five. I kind of know their mating strategy. Yeah.

Why do you? That's. Okay.

Well, because I was an anthro major, and I love primates right. And they have enormous testicles, which is the giveaway of their mating strategy, which is just spread it everywhere. 50 times a day. 50 interesting times. They're only awake 12 hours, Mike.

So what does that mean for proportion of the day? Forget the times, because what is the proportion? Eating, sleeping and sex?

That's a great question. There should be a pie chart. I get my hands on that. But the sex. Let's go. They're in and out.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you seen a lion mate?

No.

Oh, I have. Millions of people.

Clearly. I need to get on.

Boom, boom.

Female chimps, it just sucks.

Unless you're a bonobo chimp, then you're having female and female, they're very inclusive.

It's just when we say the male chimps are having sex 50 times a day, that means the female chimps are also having sex 50 times a day. But it's split up.

The male chimps not having sex with the same female 50 times a day, he's having sex with multiple females in a day.

Rabbit thing, a fallacy.

What's the rabbit thing?

Well, like, do they say, like, rabbits hump all the time or whatever?

Oh, hypochondriac rabbits.

That's a great word.

One more time.

High fecundity rate.

High fecundity.

That's how quickly they reproduce.

Oh, my God.

I knew one word you didn't know.

High fecundity.

I might get a painting made that says fecundity. But my point being is if you have this animal that in its natural state should be fucking 50 times a day, and it's in your household with all that crazy venom.

Well, I've seen, like, people, like, aggressive dogs are like, oh, yeah, you gotta relieve them. I've seen that. I don't know if that's.

Well, we know that if you castrate them, they're infinitely less aggressive.

But the relieving component of it.

Well, then we get into this. We're very obsessed with dolphins and people who have had sex with dolphins.

Oh, yeah. Didn't you say, like, dolphins always do it consensually or something?

No. What we were hypothesizing is now morally. Clearly, legally. No, no.

Let's be very clear about that camera for the time.

Yes.

Having someone should ever have sex with a dog.

Is this happening?

Yes. Many people and some scientists have had sex with dolphins.

Like, anatomically. What does that mean? Blowhole?

No, no, no. It's always male dolphins having sizes.

I'm learning so much today.

So when you go through, okay, it's bad, it's no good. But we can establish a hierarchy of what would be the most evil and what would be the least evil to cross that line with. Because a sheep doesn't want to have sex with a human being. The dolphin wants to have sex with a human. They've shown it time and time again. There's so much footage of these people swimming with dolphins for their fun thing, and the dolphin male gets on top of some poor swimmer and starts pumping away. They want to have sex with human females.

We should stop allowing children at these, like, dolphs.

Well, they know about, like, 18 and.

Oh, they do?

Yeah, they know about.

They have dolphin school.

Yeah.

Did you see this viral video? They're so perverted, it's insane. This one dolphin got an anaconda in its mouth, and it was swimming up the Amazon, and it was fucking the dead. They are the most perverted.

I am gonna have the weirdest flight back to New York. I hope they don't track.

I might only say there was this documentary in the. The eighties, and it was about this team of researchers, and this female scientist just says very matter of factly, she said you just couldn't study them unless when you got in the pool with them, you quickly relieved them, and then you could study them, because until then, the only thing they're trying to do is have sex with you. So you got to kind of do that to even get into the study.

So is this the same for anthropology and ape research?

I've not heard the tales, like, these dolphin situations. There was also, famously, a female dolphin that was in love with her male scientist, and when he left, she killed herself.

Remember that?

How does a dolphin do that?

She, like, swam, suffocated herself. Somehow. She didn't come up for air.

We also had an armchair anonymous story where we talked to listeners, and there was a man who had a small, short love affair, not sexual, but real love with a dolphin. With this dolphin.

Interesting.

And they're very smart, and there's some human like stuff, and then obviously, this sexual component. It's very interesting. Everyone, if they listen and they are attracted to dolphins, that they can always just.

That a safe way to say it would just be to write hash dolphin asparagus. And you're not really admitting anything, but we will know what you mean. Like, if you're in love with dolphins.

Like, if you want to comment, you want to tell us that actually it's me. I'm in love with dolphins. That's how you can do it.

Asparagus. Wow.

They have a really impressive mass to neocortex ratio, which is relevant here, I think.

Because that makes them.

You should only make people that are mentioned they can stand by their decision. They can't be ruled incompetent in a courtroom.

Okay.

They were very with it.

That was awesome.

Yeah. That was maybe the funnest part.

Right?

The gutter is always a fun place to splash around for a little bit.

A little dolphin humor.

Well, thank you so much for being our first video, guys. This was so awesome.

So cool.

We picked you because you're so handsome.

If you. You guys make your way to New York, I'd love to reciprocate and I can ask you all the questions about. I'd love to.

Actually gonna be there in a minute. Funny enough. So. Yeah. Anytime you would want to have town Manhattan, so. Okay.

Easy enough. Have you guys been to peak or the edge?

No.

Oh, I gotta take you there.

Peak or the edge?

So the edge is the highest point observatory deck in New York where you can go outside and overlook the city. But what's cool is there's a little triangle. I can't stand on it. But you could see all the way down to the floor and people, like, lay on it. It's a whole adventure. And then you could eat there. It's like a really good quality restaurant.

And the burger is great.

Everything they make is great.

Okay. What's your favorite burger in the city, though?

You know, it's funny. I like garbage burgers. I like five guys. I like shake shack. Yeah, but that's, like, not sexy to say. There's not a bad.

There's hardly a bad burger.

Yeah, it's like.

It's hard to, like mixed messages.

I grew up in Brooklyn, so you can imagine.

Which was always great, apparently.

Brooklyn was always awesome. I don't know. I treasure my childhood in Brooklyn.

Well, Doctor Mike, this has been incredible. You're gonna have to oblige me because I'm now gonna introduce you to my daughter and she's gonna do it.

All right.

I'm excited.

Thanks for coming.

Yeah.

Hi there. This is Hermione Permian. You like that? You're gonna love the fact check. Miss Monica. Three I take free. I take four. I'm so woe I took four advils.

Oh.

To have you with your friends so.

I won't wake up for a while and feel.

No, that's too dark.

Don't walk in my Advil collection. They're all gone. Are we rolling?

Robbie, that is a ding ding ding. Because this is for Doctor Mike. And we talk about Elmer foie. We don't talk about Elmer Fudd, but we talk about. We talk about Advil.

Oh, nsaIds.

Yeah.

I thought you're saying incest. I'm like, I do not recall talking. We probably did with Doctor Mike.

Well, you could have.

We could have.

He was very playful. Playful?

Doc, a rare thing happened. He stayed the whole evening.

Oh, fun.

He even got his agent, who was down the street waiting for him, and they had a flight at, like, ten something. And fully for me because I liked him so much. But also, Lincoln loves him.

Yeah.

So I was like, you know, we're chatting by the gate, and I was like, you guys want to hang? We're going to order dinner. And so. And Kristen's dad and step mom were visiting, so they joined. So it ended up being all of us around a table. And it was really cute because both Tom and Kelly, the father and stepmother, must have said 30 times, those were really nice people. Really, really nice people. Really interesting people. It's kind of cherry picking. If I just invite the people that were on the show, they're generally gonna be pretty interesting for dinner.

That's true.

Yeah. It's kind of a stocked pond.

It is.

To pull dinner guests. And he sent me.

What? He sent you?

This is for us. Dolphin accused of sexual assault at beach. A sexually frustrated dolphin. And Wasaka Bay, Japan, is accused of assaulting 45 people, biting and rubbing its genitals on beachgoers. Researchers suspect it's the same dolphin due to similar talphen wounds. So, boy, he said, oh, my gosh. You guys weren't kidding.

Yeah, they're out there. You got to be careful. You really got to be careful.

Yeah. Look from afar. They're adorable.

Cute.

They're cute until they're biting you and rubbing their genitals on you. Not so cute.

Yeah.

Although I want.

And there's no dolphin.

I wouldn't want the bites, but if he rubbed his genitals on me, I could survive that.

No one can take these dolphins to court, right?

There's no dolphin jail. Well, I guess.

Seaworld.

Are they a sponsor? Do we tell you about my evening? I mean, I already told you about my evening, but can I recap my evening? Yes. It was really something else.

Okay, let's hear it.

Just. We've been busy.

Yeah.

So when we got off work, which was pretty late, I was tired. I was ready to go to bed. But Delta has shown this great passion and interest for basketball recently.

How did that happen?

I don't know. As I just told you a minute ago, we were at a barbecue for Lincoln's school. I took her to the bathroom. As we were walking back from the bathroom, there was a basketball car. And so. So I said, let's shoot hoops, or whatever. And she was immediately very good at dribbling, and she was immediately very good at shooting.

Wow.

And I said, have you been practicing at school? And she's like, no. And I'm like, delta, you're very naturally good at this. Like, really? So maybe that's, like, in the stew, you know, like, encouraging people.

Yeah.

And it was so genuine. I then went on to fall on her.

Yeah.

Which was the. Maybe the worst moment I've had with.

Her as a parent.

Yes. Other than when I shaved my beard.

Yeah, that was a few.

Look, you rack them up over time. But in this situation, she got under my legs at some point, like. Cause I was looking up to grab the ball, and then all of a sudden, I was tripping over her. And then I made this really dramatic move to step out of the way so I wouldn't fall on her. And I rolled my ankle in that exact moment. And so then I just collapsed. I had no control over my fall, and she was already on the ground, laying on her back, and I fell full. I couldn't do anything to stop it. It was the worst feeling ever, falling and knowing she's under me. I landed directly across her rib cage, and her body let out a gasp like it was. She didn't. It was involuntary.

Yeah.

I was like, oh, my God. I turned. I felt so bad. I was very worried. I had broke her rib. This is 200 pounds. Fell on her chest.

Too much. Baby. She's a baby.

She got up and ran to go find mom. All the parents that were in that gymnasium, always all me lying on my daughter and her screaming and crying and then running away from me.

Yeah, not a great.

I was very embarrassed.

Oh, you were?

I wasn't, in fact, like, an hour later, when she was long over, it cut to the, you know, the cry, cry, cry. Her ribs were fine. She even told me she felt better after it, which was very kind and codependent of her. And then an hour later, I took her back to the bathroom, and some of the parents that had been in there, and one of moms goes, is she okay? And I was like, yep, she's doing good. And then what I love about Delta this is that she's so weirdly mature in this way. We got to the bathroom. Someone was in there. So now we're sitting there waiting for the bathroom, and she goes, if I were you, I would have felt very judged by the way that woman just said, am I okay? And I go, I do. I'm exact thinking that. And she goes, yeah, there's a way she. And then she picked the word. The word. She came up, lilted her voice, and she really had caught the whole thing.

Wow.

Yeah.

So then.

Oh, I'm sorry. You were embarrassed. That was just something that happened.

I know. It's just embarrassing to hurt a little girl. Well, on accident, because my fear was they thought I was being overly competitive with her or something.

That's not what was happening.

That's not what was happening. But then that was. That was Saturday. And then, so Sunday, we got our basketball, and then we went to Titi's house and shot around.

Nice.

And her and I played pig. Many rounds of pig love pig. She's doing great again. And then I'm like, I'm gonna get a basketball hoop. Obviously. This is great. Maybe we should get good at it. And that could be her sport. So I ordered one. And so last night we finish, and I see the box sitting there. It's arrived. Told her Wednesday, your basketball hoops coming. And so there were a lot of parts, but I looked at it, and also Kristen was like, do you want to get in the sauna? Cause it had been a long day. And I go, I'm gonna get in. I'm just gonna put this basketball hoop together really quick.

And this is like a full ten.

Foot high with adjustable.

Whatever.

In my mind, whatever. I even said, turn it on. I'll be done in 20. And then I'll get in. Be the time it heats up. An hour and a half into the project, I'm not even close to being done. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, my God, I'm gonna have explosive hannes.

Oh, no. Okay.

I run into the house. I go to the bathroom right next to the front door. I harness. It's epic.

It's serious.

Yes. I flush the toilet.

Yeah.

And it doesn't flush. And what I know is, it's not the harness that's not clogging the toilet. The toilet's already been clogged.

Yeah. You harnessed on top?

I harnessed on top of a clogged toilet.

Oh.

And now I'm like, ugh, fuck, I gotta deal with this. So then I go get a plunger.

Okay.

And I'm working the plunger, and I'm trying to get the balls. You know, it's a. It's ugly work.

Yeah, sure.

And it needs to be done. And then that plunger's not getting it done. And I plunge a lot. I'm pretty good at plunging. So I'm like, fuck, I'm gonna have to go get that crazy plunger I have out in the guest house that's got a real long accordion neck on it. Cause this other one's not working.

Okay.

I go get that one. I'm plunging. I'm playing. I eventually lose my temper. Right now something's going down, and I'm reflushing. So it's not. It's not great, and it's not at its worst point, okay? But now I'm fucking trying to plunge this thing, and fucking water's getting on my leg.

You mean hottest well on the floor.

And I'm getting mad now. I'm just like. I feel like I'm like I'm field dressing an animal. Like, no, I just gotta get it over, kill this thing and make it stop squirming. Like, I felt life or death all of a sudden. Why won't this fucking thing unplug? I've been down this road. It won't unplug. I went to battle with this toilet, so now I gotta call a plumber so it never. It wouldn't go down. I'm like, this thing. Everything has to be snaked. That's where we're at. So now I call a plumber, and then I go back outside, and I resume building this basketball hoop. They're busy. They arrive in, like, 40 minutes. Oh, no problem. I'm still working on the basketball hoop.

But they. They came that day. That's good.

They had to come that night. Yeah. I couldn't have slept knowing this.

Was there such a. I didn't know that. I thought, like, are there emerging? See plumbers?

Oh, yeah. Oh, well, even roto rooter, which is a franchise, you know, they can come in. Yeah.

Yeah.

People have. They have plumbing disasters. I was having one. So they arrive, and the first thing they do is they snake the toilet. Well, that doesn't help, but doesn't go down. So then they go to the outside of the house where you have it. You have a clean out, right. And you take the cap off, and then you can plot. You can snake the pipe beyond that wall.

Okay.

So then they snake from the cleanout. Still not going down. Now we have. So now we have a problem. That's not in the toilet, and it's not in minimally, the first 40ft of sewer main.

Okay.

They go to the next cleanout, which is, like, at the wall of the property.

Okay.

And I don't even know if I should describe what happened. Mind you, I'm right. That that's exactly where I'm building. This basketball hoop is like 6ft from. From the final clean out.

Okay.

They take the cap off the cleanup.

What?

Mostly tons of water starts billowing out and duty stunning into the yard.

No.

And I'm like, human duty. I'm like, oh, my God. I can see it's starting to get. We're not dark yet, but it's definitely. The sun has set.

I thought you meant the car.

I'm like, oh, my God. They shouldn't have taken that fucking cap off. And when will it stop? Is it coming from the street? Like, is this losing Felix's?

Ew. Ew.

And I'm like, oh, my God. Is it gonna, like. It looked. For a minute, I actually thought, is my yard gonna flood with the city's waste?

It would be so ironic.

Kind of warranted, I guess.

I guess you've asked for it.

I'm also still building this basketball hoop because I now I'm going to fucking finish this thing. I thought it was gonna take me 20 minutes. I'm like, this is now two and a half hours I've been building this thing.

Yeah.

And it's now gotten dark. So then I go get some lights. I put some lights up to finish. These guys are 6ft away. It smells horrendous. You know, the kids are coming out, then they going in. Oh, daddy farted. I'm like, it didn't fart. It's the fucking city. Sewage is in our yard. You know, I think Kristen's checking in. Like, is he gonna blow? Kind of, you know.

Yeah.

In the red izzy on this. And. And they weren't being very optimistic, right? Cause then when they came in, there's toilets. It's not. It's not, you know, then the second one, they're like, it's not. I'm just. I'm starting to sense from them they're not gonna be able to fix this situation. So they're working on that for a while and they got it. So when we built through all this renovation, we did a whole new sewer line out to the wall. But I don't think from the wall to the street was replaced. So roots. Oh, when they finally pulled out what it was, they pulled out this mass of roots that had backed everything up from the street.

Oh, my God. Oh, my God. So it was.

I saved this part of the story for you.

Yeah.

You knew about the basketball hoop.

You were in the middle of building a basketball.

Yeah.

Yeah. All that to say, they wrapped up roughly the same time. I finally finished this fucking basketball hoop. And it was. It was 3 hours that I was doing that. It was my entire night. I finished that. I went upstairs and put my jammies on. Took a shower and put my jammies on.

Did she play?

So this morning, they got up before school, and they both played the whole time before school.

Oh, cute.

Yeah. And I do think people should see their dad in this state, as long as it's not directed at them. But it was definitely, like Christmas story, right? Where I'm in the bathroom, they can hear plunge in, and I'm just in there like, fucking mother. What the f? I'm just like, just mumbling swear words.

Yes. Yeah, I know. I know.

And then they'll peek their head outside. And then I'm like this fucking, you know, I'm putting this thing together. I'm swearing at the tools and stuff. So it was like a good 3 hours of me just murmuring. All kinds of muttering. Muttering. I was just muttering.

Yeah, dad's mutter.

Yes.

Well, it got settled. Geez.

So it was a hell of an evening. Yeah.

So what did you do with the poop in the yard?

Do you spray hose the hell out of it and then into this little outcropping of new bushes that were planted?

Okay.

So part of me was like, that's fertilizer.

I mean, sure.

Good for them.

Yeah. Wow.

Are you afraid that they have hepatitis now?

I just think those plants. I just think your whole yard is.

Covered in poop by the end, after the washdown happened.

I know, but the washdown is really just, like, diluting it.

Fair.

Cause it's not going anywhere.

Seeping into the soil and nurturing the plants.

Okay, that's interesting. Cause we don't mind often. I mean, I do think. And I'm not just saying this to be, like, a prissy girl. I don't. I'm not someone who loves the smell of my farts. I know that's like, a thing that everyone says that, like, people like the smell of their farts. That's fine. I.

Things. I take you at face value. I think I blindly believe you. It's so hard for me to imagine.

I mean, why would I lie about it? I know I've said a lot of stuff on here.

Yeah, you have. And in that way, I should take it, but it's hard to imagine you don't like them. But you don't hate them, do you?

Yeah, sometimes I hate them. I know what you guys are saying, but I really, really don't have it.

Right.

And that's fine. I think most people do like the smell of their farts, but all to say, they don't like their poop, I guess because you love the smell of your farts and you did not like having poop on you your own.

You do not want to have my poop on me.

Yeah.

Smells one thing like distinction.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, it's not healthy to have your poop on you because then you spread it. It's not good.

It just for me. There's not that.

Yeah, if you like it, then you should like it. You should marry it. You like it so much.

You like it so much. I don't even marry it. No, I would rather. Hmm.

Mm hmm. I like this. Something big's coming.

I think I would rather have poop on me, my own. My own, than smell my own fart.

Wow.

I think. I mean, obviously, if I can wash off immediately, not like.

And in this scenario. Yeah, obviously you can't smell it. Cause that would defeat the purpose.

Exactly. Right, correct. No smell. But if it's on me, and then I know I can wash it, I'm not. I have. No, you're fine. But I. But I think it's because of that. It's like farts. You don't know how long they're gonna last. That's part of their fart anxiety.

That's where you get the dopamine. Cause it's unpredictable. And that's where kind of the fun of it is.

Happy for you. Happy that you have that.

So, anyways, that was my evening. What was your night?

No, nothing. Just worked.

Plumbing worked great.

My plumbing didn't assemble. Anything has worked great.

Yeah. The blessing of all this, if I'm being honest again, all these. There's blessings in all this.

Yeah.

The whole house was clogged, so we could have been discovering this at 03:00 a.m. true. Discovering it at 06:00 a.m. when we're all trying to get ready for school and I gotta go to work.

Yeah.

So in a weird way, what a blessing, because all the toilets would have started backing up.

Blessing in disguise. Ding, ding, ding. Armchair anonymous coming up.

Check it out.

Coming up. All right, so, Doctor Mike, I looked for his inspirational quotes.

Oh, yeah.

But the Twitter, the X app, I can only go to 2020.

Really?

Yeah.

When pain.

When I roll, like, when I.

By the way. And it takes probably a very long time for you just to scroll to 20 long.

And then now, like, it's off. Okay. So I can't get his inspirational quotes. He's probably glad about that.

What do you think? What variety do you think they were? Like, stay positive kind or probably work hard kind.

Nose to the grindstone.

Because these are. He's a hard worker.

Yeah. But he liked. But part of his videos were like, you can still have fun, still go to clubs. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm gonna go ahead and assume that they were work oriented.

Okay. Do you wanna make one up that you think he would have made up?

Yeah. Nothing tastes as good. No, that's a.

What's that?

Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. I say that to myself all the time out loud. It's kind of like. Remember our trip to the sandings when I said, no calories on your birthday?

Yeah.

It's been a long time since we told that story.

Yeah, tell it. That was fun. Yeah.

It's not even. It's only good at the very end. But how did it even originate was someone's birthday? It wasn't yours because we weren't in the sandings in August.

We were there for Erica. We were there for Thanksgiving.

Okay.

And we were eating Thanksgiving food, and it was all delicious and it was rich and it was. There were a lot of calories involved.

For some reason, I just said, past the such and such, no calories on your birthday. So then the next day, I did it again. And then I started this thing where I would tell a story that was unrelated to calories and I would end it with no calories on your birthday.

But it was. It was incorporated. Well, like, you were. Tells her about this woman. And then by the end it was like. And then.

Yeah, it was a totally made up story, but it sounded real. And then the punchline would be, and she said, no calories on your birthday. It worked pretty good. And then it was starting to get a little long in the tooth. Like I was doing it too much, for sure. But then we left the sandings and we all checked into this hotel in Palm Springs for a night.

Yeah.

And everyone was in a panic of, have we ordered food for the kids? And so I claimed I had ordered the food for the kids. And everyone's, like, really paying attention because it's like, it has to happen. Like, don't worry. I ordered. I got so and so something something. And then they. I don't know how you guys feel about this, but they. You get a free milkshake with the kids meal. And I was a little bit nervous, but then I said no calories on your birthday and had been days.

Yeah.

And all of it was fake.

Yeah. Everything you said was fake. That was also. It was just like, you wasted so many minutes of our lives telling us these stories that are fully made up. Oh, Mandy, man. Funny.

Anyway, you found.

You found it.

Oh, wonderful.

Does your ex 2020 maybe being on a computer.

So. No, I was on my phone. It was 2015. Yeah. What I like about this is we already. Now we guessed.

Yeah.

So it's a real time. Find out if we were right. Choose a job that you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life. Now I am gonna have to call bullshit on him because I said you were stealing. Cozy said, no, it was making those up. And that's definitely existed before.

Well, this one.

But by the way, that was hard work related.

It is. Choose a daily video. Never. Okay. But. But that one, to be fair to him, is printed on a piece of paper, and it's obviously in his office, so.

And there's a hanging stethoscope next. That way. That's how we know it's a doctor's office.

No, no, no, but.

Okay, now you have to look at his caption. His caption is probably the quote. He's probably. It says, step one, know thyself.

Using biblical terms, that's a big swing.

Step two, find a passion. Step three, enjoy the ride. Found mine. Have you?

Classic. He's a natural at. He knew. He knew about social media long before anyone else. You ask a question so people feel it.

Yeah.

Engagement prompting them. Smart. Next one. Okay, so you're right. So he's. The post is, fall for their strengths, you have something. Fall for their weaknesses, and you have something extraordinary.

I'm gonna have to think on that one.

I don't understand that one, but let's read this caption and maybe human vulnerability is a beautiful thing. Oh, we love that doctor Mike.

Yeah, we love that.

Focus on the whole package and appreciate the faults. Enjoy exploring how they got there. The flaws. Tell a story. A story that's dot, Dot, Dot.

We can't see the rest of it.

Great message.

I get it.

I think he wrote this after he. He screwed a girlfriend over.

Oh. And he wanted forgiveness.

I'm teasing. I'm teasing. I love doctor Mike.

Okay, now another. Another one is also one that's not his.

Correct. And it's very, very long. And then he just wrote yes. So we're gonna.

We are gonna do that one. Okay. The next one is.

Although. Let's see what message he wanted out in the world. You wanna read this one?

Sure. Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that. And living alone won't either. For solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken or betrayed or left or hurt or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.

What if midway through you got, like, you started crying, a huge lump in your throat?

You know, I'm not very sappy.

Hey, people could never say I couldn't kick you in the act.

I know. This is what I said. I want to sit over there. I like more distance.

You feel safer?

Yeah, a little bit.

Well, and I just want to say, for the record, we are not making fun of Doctor Mike. He made fun of himself.

Exactly.

And he had a very good sense of.

This is all very in keeping with Doctor Mike's energy. Playful, sexy energy.

Sexy tiger. He's also, like, probably 25 in these.

Yeah, it was a long time ago. Okay, the last one is very cheeky.

Oh, you have another one?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. I do too.

You want to read it?

An apple a day keeps anyone away if you throw it hard enough. That's just good.

Yeah, but he. He likes apples. These last two are apple related.

Also biblical.

Interesting. Very interesting.

Lincoln's learning the Old Testament right now at school.

Oh, wow. Does she have questions or she has thoughts that are interesting to share here?

Of course. Of course.

Let's hear.

Well, she learned that God said, you know, this place is for you. It's in Eden. Don't eat the apples. She said the apple symbolizes wisdom. That's probably an atheist point of view, but I don't know where she got that. Oh, that's interesting.

Don't eat the apples. Why wouldn't you want to consume wisdom?

Well, he didn't say that apple represents wisdom. She's saying the apple represents wisdom. I don't know that. We have a great explanation for why you're not allowed to eat the apple.

It was a test from God. It's a test for God. Yeah.

And so the serpent gets Eve. That betraying, conniving bitch. Yeah, big old bitch to tempt Adam.

Yeah. This mean bitch.

Yeah. He was so good and pure. He would have never eaten that apple.

No. He was such a good boy. He was a best boy. Sexy man.

Yeah.

He always listened to his daddy, mean, evil bitch temptress siren.

Yeah. And then she fast forward and she said. And then, you know, we learned about Noah and he had. God had to kill everyone because something was raining on Earth. Evil, for lack of a better word. I said, well, hold on, hold on. Are we to believe that Noah and his wife populated the entire planet? That's a lot of inbreeding. And she said, no. He brought his three sons and their wives. And apparently God told them, you cannot have sex on this boat. I mean, I don't know why.

Cause, like, it'll tip. There's a lot going on in that boat with so many animals.

Motion of the ocean.

Yeah.

For whatever reason, they were not supposed to fog on the board of the ark. One of the sons did. People that are really biblically inclined are like, screaming at their dashboards right now. But he and his wife did, and they had kids. And then those kids then brought back the same evil that God had just rid the planet of. And now he said, I'm not gonna meddle anymore.

Oh, he's.

His declaration.

He was tired of it.

And I said to. And I'm like, so he really fucked that up. God, basically. And she's like, yeah, he just can't seem. Can't seem to make a plan that works.

Do you think this is where the term rock the boat comes from? Don't rock the boat.

Don't rock the boat. Maybe. Wab wabi. Hello? It's Robert. Well, Delta just chimed in. She's not learning about the Old Testament, but she said that's your Adam's apple.

Yeah, it is.

I said, that's why dad has so much witnessed wisdom in his voice.

God, did you shut. Did you teach her about the clitoris? And that's where we keep our wisdom.

I don't see nothing wrong. It's time for the dawdy dada dance with a little bombing. So what I have decided about that daddy daughter dance is if it ever comes across my desk and I'm expected to do it, even though I will not pay for a wedding. They gotta figure that out.

Really?

Yeah. Cause I didn't have one. I think it's absurd to spend that much amount of money. You're starting your life.

You are so all over the place.

Okay, say more.

Sometimes I worry I don't know you anymore.

Yeah, that's probably what it is.

That is what it is.

This is. This isn't new, obviously. I didn't have a wedding, so I think it's crazy to spend a bunch of money on a party when people are starting their life and you could buy them a fricking starter home for what these weddings cost.

Yes.

So I think it's a dumb use of money.

I get that.

Invite some friends over, whatever. So that's not inconsistent.

No, it's not very consistent. Yeah.

If. If my daughters want a daddy daughter dance, by God, I'm gonna give them one.

I know. Yeah.

Now if it comes across my desk, I'm gonna do the thing where I'm gonna learn, like, the jitterbug with her or something. Like, I'm gonna put a month into it being the greatest daddy daughter dance you ever saw.

That's fun.

Props, chairs, aerial stuff. And then that would be awesome, because that would just be me and one of the two daughters performing.

Yeah. That's great. No, that's. But then. But you have a stance about asking the dad's permission, which that, to me, feels very old. But this. It's like we're in the same world. We're in wedding world. We're in marriage world. Yet there's a lot of inconsistencies and thinking.

Well, and that one thing is, like, steeped in tradition that I'm honoring. But again, I'm just gonna put a really fine point on it. I don't believe in the permission part.

Yeah. Good.

I don't. That's not really what I'm doing.

Yeah.

In the same way that I'm not celebrating Jesus birthday on Christmas.

I know.

Yeah. So I just want to be clear about that.

Yeah.

I'm saying to him, I'm humble enough to come acknowledge this is the most important thing in your life, your daughter. And I want to show you my character, and then I can bend the knee and honor you right now.

Yeah. I mean, I know what you mean. It just is an antique. It's an old school tradition.

Yeah.

And it is. It's based in things that are old. Just like paying for a wedding is based on things that are old. Like, a lot of these things are based on old foundational structures that are gone and, like. And. And it's just interesting. And, look, we all do this. We all pick and choose what works for us and what doesn't work for us. It's just. It's a la carte, but it. Is it hard to predict? It can be hard to predict, and.

It'S scary when you can't predict people.

Yeah.

But also it's why we like a lot of people.

We like make messies.

Well, novelty's burbling up and it keeps everything interesting and exciting. It's like we want total predictability and we hate total predictability. It's another great dichotomy and paradox of just what even what we want. It's like we want safety and predictability and then you have it and then people are bored and. Yeah, I disempassioned.

Yeah.

So then you're trying to, like, you're trying to infuse novelty and excitement and keep the, you know, it's all like.

Traders, but it's, I think that's different for everyone. Everyone has a different level of novelty seeking. We all want some, but there's definitely a spectrum. And we talked about this on next week's fact check. You can't say that, Dad. I. What I have to say, it's sort of because it's what's happening and then it's gonna sound real weird when they hear it. But I like safety.

Yeah.

I really, really like safety a lot. And I seek it out. And I seek predictability out. You don't think so? I mean, there are.

I know you like safety, but I don't think you're attracted to safety. Like you could have gobbled up at any moment a ton of safe options that are on the table for you and you're not attracted to those people.

You mean. Oh, you mean with partners?

Yeah. Well, this is the tension we live in.

No, no, no, no. You mean safety like a personality? No, that's. Oh, what do you mean?

Highly predictable. Yeah. Highly trustworthy. I mean, I don't think.

I don't know if I've had those options.

What you wanted. You could have had that so easily, so many times, Zachary.

Yeah, I mean, I don't. Yes, you're right. Those aren't things at the top of my list of what I want.

They don't wake up your attraction.

Yeah, but they're probably what I need.

Totally. But again, this, this is pretty universal, I think. It's like that is the tension. Everyone's trying, you're trying to get whatever the peak amount you can handle.

Yeah.

So you're getting the most amount of excitement and then whatever, you know, whatever the minimum requirements you have for safety and all that. But you're not just like running towards super safe. You're not like, oh, yeah, this person, they don't even leave their apartment. They're never going to talk to anyone else, you know, like, you're not that.

But that's not what, that's not what I mean. I. We're look, that's looking. Looking at it in such a monogamy way, or. No, it's just such, like a black and white. Like, to me, safety just means, like, I basically know for the most part.

Yeah.

What this person's gonna say or do or think like, I know them. I know what's.

Yeah. Yeah. And I got. I got you. So you're saying even if it's on the outrageous end of the spectrum, there's a zone in which their outrageousness should be predictable.

Consistency or. So I think it's more. It's more consistency than it is. I guess that's the same thing as predictability.

But, like, Eric's not safe at all.

But he's very safe to me. That's what I'm saying. That's exactly what I'm saying. He is not safe. He's outrageous. He'll say the craziest stuff.

You don't know what's going to happen. And we both are so attracted.

It's a live wire. But you do know he's not going.

To hurt you physically, right?

Exactly.

That's about all we can say.

He's not going to hurt you, but, you know, you're probably gonna get something absolutely outrageous. But, yeah, he's consistent. I just mean in life, not just with people. Yeah. Again, next. Next. Respect. I like routine.

You like to know your toilets gonna flush when you flush it.

I do that.

It won't be back.

I appreciate that. And I like seeing the people I like to see and I like, you know. Yeah, yeah.

I just think it's a fascinating paradox of people.

It is.

We still want to be surprised a lot, too.

Well, it's wild. Social media works. We're playing a slot machine every time we go on there. We like that. We obviously like that as a human.

Then you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand.

I know that song. Yeah, yeah.

Back.

It's a good.

Do it again. You claim you don't like gambling, but then you're back in Vegas with a handle in your hand.

That's a ding ding ding to what we're talking about.

That's right. Oh, thanks you to the people in the comments. Remember the other day? You wouldn't remember, but I was saying, I was like, and I can't go for that. It led to the witch song.

Mm hmm.

I don't give up about. But the original song I was trying to sing is actually a weezer song. I don't care about that. Oh, they were like, you were thinking of the Weezer song, and that is what I was.

People are. I like it. I do, too.

Buddy Holly.

Buddy Holly. Holly.

Just like Buddy Holly.

Oh, that was such a huge. Okay, so he said he does pap smears.

Yeah.

Or did pap smears or whatever. I don't know what I would do if my doctor came in and it. And he looked like Doctor Mike and he was gonna perform a pap smear. First of all, this is why, like, absolutely no to met. For me, for you, for a male kind of any dog. Not any. But I do prefer women because. Yeah. I'm never gonna try to impress paradoxes.

Because I honor that, and you're totally right. But can you imagine if a man said only male doctors?

I mean, I think a lot of men will say only male, like, testicular doctors or whatever.

Oh, I'm.

You have a woman? You.

I wish. See, I'd way rather have a woman meeting my ball sack than I. I.

Think mostly the women are like, I won't have male patient. Like, it's. It's more. It's always a protective woman because the woman. Women are the ones, mainly.

I accept it, but I'm supportive of it. I'm just pointing out the paradox. It'd be crazy if I said, like, never have a woman doctor.

Yeah.

Stupid.

No, they're just often. Women are not often hurting men physically. They have, and they do, and they will.

I'm watching a great Netflix stock right now. If you watch the love stalker or whatever one I know you've seen it pop up.

I haven't seen it.

It says, like, lovers stalker or something. And it is wozers.

And it's a woman doing some nuts.

Yeah.

Yeah. Look, we are all capable. We're all capable of all things. We are. I am. I am for sure not saying otherwise.

Yeah.

But proportionally, get real.

Yeah. Let's look at Larry Nassar. I mean, come on.

It's. It's quite lopsided.

Yeah. But anyway, whatever. I mean, I had a male. I guess he was a student or something. It was during the egg freezing.

Okay.

And so he was in there with my doctor, and. And they asked, and it was fine.

You let him stay?

I did. I do remember being on edge in a different way when he was in there, and he was. He was also attractive, so I want.

To ask some follow up questions. Oh, he was attractive.

Yeah, he was. And so doctor Mike.

I mean, that's when I need to. I need to get really specific care. Are you saying you wouldn't want Doctor Mike because he's just a man, or he's so hot? A, now I'm insecure, self conscious, or b, I don't want to be aroused during this.

Okay, so there's so much to answer there. If a man's not attractive, I don't want him there either.

Okay, great. So you just don't want him.

I don't know. Yeah, but, um. But with doctor Mike.

Yeah.

If he walked in, I would feel very self conscious and worried.

Like, I hope he likes what he sees.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that is not what you want to be thinking about when you're getting a pap smear.

But what if you were. Now let's.

And the. Okay, I know you want to hear about the arousal.

Well, also, what if you were feeling very confident, like, I can't wait for.

You, but you never know. You never know what?

People wait for him to see this.

What if he walked in? I was already undressed. He's, like, ready for it. Check it out. I'm ready for you, Doctor Mike. You never know what people's cups of tea are.

That's true.

So as confident as I could be, you don't know. You don't know, and you don't know.

What people like, and you don't complain.

And so I would feel nervous.

Yeah. And excited.

Do you think, what if I, like, had my top off, and he was like, you don't need to. For fab Smith. He's like, you don't need to take your shirt off. No, no, I know, but I just.

I feel better, more comfortable. I mean, it's a vulnerable situation. I feel much better with my breasts out.

Much more comfortable this way. And then what would I do? Because I. I also would, because I like him and he's nice and he's a great daughter. I wouldn't. I would feel codependent and nervous to say, I would really prefer if a female conducted the pap smear.

Yeah. Or you put on, like, an ugly mask.

No, because by then, I've. I already know it's too late. And then, yes, theoretically, I would be a little nervous. A little. I mean, I. Look, I don't think epap smear is horrible.

They're terrible.

Sucks.

Speculum. No.

Yes.

Okay.

Yes. Fun. So I don't think I would get aroused, but what if. And then you're in your head, and then you can't be natural if you're in your head, you know, lots, lots at play.

Yeah. And I'm in a much different scenario as the aforementioned assaults on women. I'm not ever nervous I'm gonna get assaulted.

Yeah.

So I'm in a different headspace.

Yeah, you're in a different headspace. Across the board, yeah.

Yeah.

My computer did just die. Okay, do we have a situation power? Let's see here. I have a charger, actually.

Thank you, poybums.

I'm gonna. I've been meaning to tell you guys.

Both you go on the other side.

It's broken.

No, no, I mean your other shoulder. So you're not like, nope, nope. No, you wrapped. Oh, my God. That's like watching. I would've loved to watch you build that basketball.

I never have ever claimed to be good at spatial stuff.

Yeah, it's not your thing.

It's not my thing. But I have wanted to tell both of you. I wanted to admit something to both of you. I bought a new laptop, like, finally, like, months ago.

You did.

And remember, Rob, you set it up for me.

Yeah, yeah.

And I never refused it. I'm, like, refusing to use it.

You are such.

I don't know what's going on mentally.

Yeah, this is the bathroom door and the.

Yeah, I do know what's going on mentally. I'm like, yeah, I'm clinging on for dear life.

I know how this thing's fucked up. That thing doesn't have any space on it either. It's not functional. Really?

Yesterday, battery life, when you tried to put something on it, and you're like, oh, there's no space. It's like, fuck, I am gonna have to move over.

Yeah. The hard drive has no memory on it.

It has no memory, but it has all my memories.

Right.

You still keep it, so that's important. It's taking a long time to boot up.

Yeah, the other one probably would. The battery.

This is really expensive, too. Like, I bought, like, the nicest laptop.

A ton of memory.

Yep. And it's just sitting.

You should leave the price tag on it for when you take it out to do in public. When you're doing your editing at these bars and restaurants you frequent, has anyone ever complained to you? Any patrons? Cause. No. Cause you're drinking the whole time you're there.

Yeah. I make sure to have something in front of me. Not drinking necessarily. Sometimes I'll just order food, just throw in the trash. I do try to really. Milk, whatever. Drink. Like, drink it so. So slow so that I can be there for a long time.

Yeah. Yeah. Without raising any red flags. Do you ever buy people's meals that you don't know?

Yeah. Yeah, I've done it. I like doing it. It's really nice.

It's really fun.

Yeah. It feels good. Sometimes it gets complicated. Yeah, I tried to buy. So this is not someone I don't know. Bill, my dad and contractor.

And I hate to bring this up, but I'm meaning to.

What?

I haven't seen anyone working over there in so long.

Okay.

They stopped.

No, they haven't stopped. They're, like, wiring the house. So maybe.

Are they doing that remotely?

Well, I don't think wiring is that big of a. Maybe you just don't see it.

Yeah.

Have you been over there in a minute?

Well, we took a walk on Sunday or something, and we walked by it. It just looks the same as it's looked for a very long time. And I'm not seeing any cardinal parked in front. And I'm in and out.

I'm around on the weekend.

I mean, even during the week, I'm not seeing.

Well, I have. Because I can't park there. Every time I try to park, I'm back on Hobart. I'm not even trying to. This is something that has happened between us. You. You reminded me, you've mentioned a few times, like, why don't you park in the neighborhood?

Yeah.

And that's a fair question. And I said, well, it's hard to park in the neighborhood. And that's because there are cars all over the place. There are cars, like, outside your house, and then there are cars outside my house because of construction. And I said that. Then you asked me again, and I said it again, but then it got my head a little bit. I was like, oh, okay. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it is fine to park inside, and there's plenty of space, and I'm crazy. And two days in a row, there was.

The wirers were there.

There's no place to park. And I had to drive back out, and it took long, and then I was panicked. Cause then I'm late, and I could have just parked on Hobart to begin with, and I should have listened to my own intuition.

Yeah, you always should.

Okay, now. Oh, you mentioned our astronaut that we had on a long time ago.

Yeah.

And you said you thought I. He was the longest guy in space.

American.

American. The longest us space flight. Frank Rubio. He spent 371 days in space. So that's not who we had on.

No. No. We had the twin. Scott Kelly. Scott Kelly.

Scott Kelly. Well, anyway, Frank Rubio good job, Frank. Blue origin is the Bezos Aerospace company.

Okay. Blue origin.

Oh, the new number for happiness.

For the money.

For money is 500,000.

Okay. Seems like they keep fixing it a lot.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's correct. Indicative of the original 75,000.

No, I thought it was 170 was the one. I don't know why, but you know, 500 is a substantial living.

Well, originally it was Kahneman. Oh, it was, yeah. And it says here, and it was in 2010 and said, found that money could only boost happiness up to about 75,000.

Wow.

Yeah. But new studies say 500,000.

Okay, great. So keep pushing till you hit 500 and then put it in neutral.

Yeah, plateau. That number resonates for sure. I think that's right.

But it's also so different around the country.

Exactly. Okay. Genetic sexual attraction. We talked about that a lot. Most people say is pseudoscience. What is genetic sexual attraction? The attraction basically between like an adopted mom or dad reuniting with their kid. But there is. There's a. There's like science around it that has to do with like smell and reuniting.

Well, that's what I was saying is that the smell hadn't imprinted.

Well, this is the opposite of that.

What article? I wonder if the same article I.

Read, it's from Cumbria county council.

Nope. Dax, no disrespect to Cumbria county.

I'm telling you that most things I found normal were like. No, like. That's the only thing that's saying it's a possibility. There is a Wikipedia on genetic sexual attraction, a hypothesis that attraction may be a product of genetic similarities. While there's scientific evidence for this position, some commentators regard the hypothesis as a pseudoscience. And then I. The more I looked, everyone was saying.

That, God, I'm gonna find it.

I would like that. I would like it.

It was from a very legitimate news source and it was just doc. Now the explanation. I'm not. I have no dog in that fight.

Yeah.

But my claim that it's an inordinate amount that that happens to. I stand by. I'll find the article.

Find the article, report back.

Weird phenomena.

Yes. You. If you grow up with the pet, you are significantly, your chances are reduced of developing a pet allergy later in life. That is true. The second season of doctor death was. You said maybe it was about stem.

Cells cancer guy in Michigan.

Cancer guy.

Yeah.

Maybe third was stem cells cancer guy. Surgeon guy. Cancer guy.

Miracle man is the third. And that is about, uh. Oh, smart and handsome surgeon we trust.

Good looking people more I know.

Then bad magic, maybe that. Ooh, that one sounds good. Bad enough. When a young, charismatic doctor.

Watch out. Get ready for your pap smear. Get your breath, you get your bra.

I'm not seeing stem cell. But we did. I think we had someone on who did a podcast on that. And then the dolphin who loved the woman. That was a nasty funded project. The woman name. The woman's name was Margaret Lovett. You can read up about that if you'd like.

Okay.

But we talked. We've talked a lot about it, so it can be done. Brad Pitt, according to the Internet, was 155 pounds during fight club.

155. That's fan. Cause he's six foot tall.

Yeah, the tall boy.

The stem cell thing, I think so Laura Beale, when she came on, she was talking about her new podcast, Bad batch, which was about stem cells. There we go. Thank you, Rob. That makes a lot of sense. So the original reporter from the first season of Doctor Death's second project was called Bad Batch.

That was not connected to Doctor Death.

Wasn't under the Doctor death umbrella.

That makes sense. Yeah.

But I think it's still wondery. Still wondery.

Oh, cool. Still ding ding.

Under the mega umbrella. What would you call above an umbrella?

Oh, the sky.

Okay. Yeah, a canopy. It's in the. Oh, yeah, that's good. Wondery canopy.

Oh, nice. That's nice.

Very nice, very nice.

Oh, that was for Doctor Mike. Yeah.

I love you.

Love you.

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