Transcript for #1020 - Amy Alkon

I'm glad to be here. How's things? Well, outside of Vegas, everything's good.

Yeah, there was a very interesting post by a guy named Robert King on psychology today. And I guess he's doing research in this and he talked about it as a way for men to get or chase status and that he saw two bombs. I think one was at 23 and when it 41 in terms of the ages that people do this and it does tend to be men who have some kind of their marriage breaks up. They lose their job in their forties or the young men are just chasing status. So it's at least some kind of explanation other than, oh, someone just went wild. They just went crazy, which is not helpful because it doesn't tell us really what we can do to maybe prevent it or look at how, how do we look for these people who do this?

But, well, without men, we'd still be living in grass huts.

Well, I think we may start seeing women do that, but actually I don't think it's weird that it's men because men, if you look at how men and women evolved to get partners, women just have to look hot, you have to look like you're fertile and young and have good genes, which is what we consider beauty. These what feminists say are arbitrary standards of beauty, aren't anything like that. They're very across cultures men like women with this hourglass figure and who have long shiny hair and who are not 72. Because if you had sex with a 72 year old, your jeans stied out.

right and this it's so unhelpful it's really awful this idea that people should like you for what's in down the inside you know we don't see the people um if you look at porn it's not the woman who buys a homeless man a sandwich you know who's in the porn it's the woman with those features that are just cross culturally appreciated by men

Right. And she is very vibrant. And if you look at that cross cultural research, David Bus, who is an evolutionary psychologist, did the big big cross cultural study and kindness was what both men and women wanted. I think that was the top of each list. But if you Prioritize, well, okay, well, what do I, what are my must-haves? And a partner, a guy is not going to want a very old unattractive woman as his partner if he can do better. And woman is not going to want to have the guy who is sleeping in grandma's basement playing Atari. I'm a girl, so I don't know anything about football or video games. My boyfriend tried to educate me on the way over about some, I don't know, some guy who'd said something insulting to a female sports announcer.

Okay, okay, we really expect the football the quarterback to be the height of you know politeness and social etiquette. And okay, Asianists said this and I think that these there are some incredible women who are sports announcers, so I'm told by the boyfriend. And I think it's sexy to be a knowledgeable woman in sports. However, we now prosecute everybody for everything. And the reason we do that is there's too much media. Everybody's got a microphone and everyone's on Twitter. So now the stuff that dumb stuff people would have said in another era that would have just gone off into the ether. Now it is just, it's a new.

Well, I think what's happened is that now everyone has a microphone. So everyone's on Twitter. Everyone can make a tweet that put out a tweet that gets tweeted and retweeted to 4 million people. And so people are looking to have standing and they're doing it by putting out their opinions. And they also, when you're saying this about these tribes, they do it to signal, look, I'm part of this tribe. I'm a social justice warrior. I'm on the right. I'm Antifa. And so I think that that's a big part of it. So they're looking for criminal behavior socially criminal behavior and whereas you know this guy I mean do I really expect every quarterback to have the most PC views no and okay he's gonna lose a sponsorship when he says something like this but you know if you open the quarterback can you're gonna see quarterback stuff in there and it's not you know the Emily post well first of all

Yeah, and I actually I really appreciate that we're starting to see people look at that and bring that out. So parents know, you know, do you want your son to play football or to play some other sport?

Oh, absolutely. And you see that from these guys. I read some story about that the other day. I'm trying to think who is the guy so, so sad. And this thing about it showing up much later where you get terribly mental mentally ill. People, they make those trade-offs where they think, okay, well, I can get money and fame this way and it's quick and everything like that. But they don't really realize what the long-term consequences will be.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. Absolutely. And there's so many football players who got in just not knowing who will come out like that. I think within a number of years.

Yeah, and I suspect if you go back and look at those tapes sort of forensically that you'll see that kind of thing, the shaking and also that if you look at, take a look at over football players, how many people have these, these diseases in mental illness that's related to this head trauma.

Yeah. Well, it's normal that they say, okay, we're dumping you and it's normal that he would say it. But what's always funny is that these companies they profess surprise when it's like really, you know, you thought that this person was going to be the sort of curtailed-rained in person. It's like with Kathy Griffin. Oh, you just figured out that she says offensive things. Yeah. That was a surprise to you.

Right. Well, I think she didn't think it out and it was just, okay, outrage. Trying to be shocked. It's trying to be shocking and then the sort of the fake apology and then okay, take it back.

Yeah, because you're a comedian, you know, and I know comedians have like that, then you know what someone's going to hackle you on. And so you have stuff ready for that and this thing like where she's all like, For me, you know, I mean, my career's over.

Yeah, right. People forget there's some new outrage.

Yeah, it is. And so that's standard. And that's why I think we have to be more lenient with people. This idea that you say something awful and then your ex-communicated, you lose your job, you're going to be living in a dumpster. This is really wrong. We need to understand that to be humanist to be an asshole, we're all assholes. We all say shit, he thinks to people. And I try to recognize my assholeishness and apologize when I've been awful and make good. If, you know, sometimes you have to put some money into making good, it's what the situation calls for.

Yeah, and so it really is important. People see it as a sign of weakness, but it's actually a sign of strength to say, I'm ashamed. I did this bad thing. I did this recently. I shouted on the phone very bad to the some really nice person at the Kaiser pharmacy just because You know, she should magically solve my problem. It wasn't a problem. She could solve. But after I did that, I thought, like, oh, this is so terrible. Number one, I talked to her. She's kind. She didn't deserve this. So I actually I went in and I asked for her. And I said, I'm so ashamed. I spoke to Terrible. You didn't deserve this. You're very kind today.

oh yeah in person because well I was going there anyway to pick up a medication so it was easier but I actually asked to speak to her because I think it means something to people when you do that thing where you say you put your ego aside and say look I was bad and I was wrong people appreciate that you're doing that it gives them something back and it steals from people to just do something and then think ha ha I got away with it because you didn't you know it and actually they know it and they feel bad and I don't like to make people feel bad.

Right. And you are, I think that you are the sum total of your behavior. So you can feel all sorts of ways. You can feel wimpy and afraid and feel like you don't want to apologize. But if you behave the good way, the better way, the way you want to be, then you're that person. Right. It doesn't matter what your feelings are.

Yeah, they practically wait. Okay, you were all in. Yeah. Yeah. Three, two, one. Okay, smash the window. You know what you said reminded me, the worst thing a man can say to a woman is calm down. It always has the opposite effect. A cop one said that to me. I called that our local police station about some problem. The guy told me calm down. Like, does that work on your girlfriend? Because it's not working on me. It never works on any woman. So here's a tip, dude.

opposite effect always shut up for any of these things these rude approaches and so the thing is when you get somebody what you do is you provoke somebody's defensiveness it's a fight or flight reaction you know this happens to us on an emotional plane as well and so you're provoking that whole reaction that's designed to make you get away from a bear Yeah, or some type of wild animal, but instead of running and burning off all those biochemicals, it's all pooling in you. You're filling with hate and rage. So this is not a state in which you can listen to anyone. And so the moment you take it up to that area of invoking somebody's hate and defense and rage and all that stuff. They are so far away from listening, you might as well just crawl under the desk and go read a novel. It's just so pointless to even engage with them. And so the people who do want to engage, if you engage on a polite level, maybe possibly if someone is just not totally realed in by confirmation bias, they might listen. And confirmation bias, of course, is that thing where we believe what we already believe, and then we throw away any disconfirming evidence. And so, you know, if you recognize these propensities we have to do that, to believe what we believe, to be tribal, to stick to this side, to not listen, to not change our views, the may be of a hope of changing our views, and maybe if you try to listen to other people who, you know, they're differing views who are polite and trying to engage on a rational level, You can learn something. I try to be open-minded. I try to take criticism. I try to not reject it out of hand. Of course, I don't take the criticism that comes soon. Dear bitch, you ugly horror. You like to get those? Yeah. But I always think like, just drop the deer if you're gonna bitch you ugly horror. You know, start with bitch you ugly horror.

Right. And these people think they're so convinced it's religion. They think that they're right. We are on the left. We're right. We're on the right. We're right. And they are just unwilling to listen. It's cartoonish now. I saw something the other day about this great girl at Barnard Tony or Raxon. And she's this young journalist student there. Say her name again. Tony or Raxon. It's A. I. R. E. K. Anyway, I can't relax. Yeah. What a strange thing. I know she's from Ohio and from a poor family and got a scholarship to Barnard and you see how hard she works. She's journalist and she looks to see different sides of things. And I really respect that in her because you don't see that in a lot of people that age. There's just such polarization. I forget why I was bringing her up. It's this thing. Oh, I know. She posted something. So she wrote an article. They have, you know, Columbia Republicans who are, you know, who know, what do they want to bring in? Like Ben Shapiro. I love the idea that anyone would be afraid of Ben Shapiro. on the street, I'd be like, oh great, fantastic, dark alley, Ben Shapiro, no problem, sorry Ben. But who's nice guy? I don't know him, but, you know, he seems fine, you know, we're a little yamaka and everything. I'm post Jewish, so I can make Jewish toast. So I just gave it to you. I'm just scaped you. And so they somebody posted something about being against white supremacists and it was really about like they're gonna have a Republican speaker. You know and there is so ugly about Republicans and I thought God if you ever talked to one my parents are Republicans my friend Tom who's this Christian lawyer. I know he feeds the homeless because he thinks that's what Jesus said he should do. These are not horrible people who are burning crosses and lines. They're your next door name.

It's hilarious. It's so amazing. It's so amazing. And that kind of thing we see it on both sides. And there was something other day. So Dana Loche, she's a commentator and she's apparently very pro and array. So people send her just the ugliest tweets. And I'm sure I disagree with her on a number of things. I don't really look at her views, you know, extensively. But they were things like, you know, I hope you die in a hail of gunfire or something like that along those lines outside the NRA headquarters. But I love this one. The guy said, dear God, and he spelled God G-D.

We're really going to push the foot on the like the oh and in God on the vowels like boy.

I think you might have been a religious guy or something, you know. Oh, maybe so. I write books with fucking the title and I always want them to write the full fuck, but it's just it was like enough to get the fuck in there with the asterisk and everything.

There are people in my favorite one. Some people reviewed one of my books. They would say, like, this book is filled with profanity. I mean, it has fuck on the cover. What was your first fucking clue?

Right. And I think, you know, to be, I call myself an either. I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I'm libertarian, fiscally conservative. And I think that helps me identifying a sort of a nothing helps me to not succumb to so much of that. Yeah, of course. Right. Being human, I do have views and I tend to stick to them, but I try to be open.

Yeah, I took Zoloft once and when I take it, I forgot I took Adderall every day. Do you?

No, I'm not on it now because I would talk so fast. I might hurt people with my speech.

I know I know better. Even though it slows me down and I'm on the same dose as 7.5 milligrams of the total lightweight of lightweight. But so the Zola off die took because I went to psychiatrists in New York and you know, they actually tried to give me like lift them and all these other things like for manic depressive people. My friends said, you're manic by you're not abrasive and basically it's so crazy because all I was, it wasn't some kind of inexplicable horrible depression. I didn't have a boyfriend. I didn't have any money and I was bombed. No, like, and it took us all off, then I realized it just shaved off half my personality. So I did the really dumb thing you're not supposed to do, which is just, I thought, like, fuck, this shit flushed it down the toilet, and then I, like, fell off a cliff emotionally. Whoa.

See, that's such a, just a sort of very one note idea. And I love the research of this guy Randy Nassie. I love him. He's a psychiatrist and an evolutionary psychologist. And he talks about hostility. It's any SSE. And you can go on his website. He's now University of Arizona because he was in Michigan. It's freezing there. Everybody else. Eventually most Arizona all these professors. Anyway, so he talks about how depression, you know, the sad feelings, these are adaptive. And so when something bad happens to you, being sad causes you to slow down, you have the features of a sad person which causes other people to gather around you and be empathetic. Now if it goes on for too long, you may chase people away. But this allows you to think about what dumb fucking thing you did that made you get in the state. And I talk about how emotions are motivational tools. We think of them as sort of like wallpaper for our head to decorate our life, but they're not. Emotions when you're happy, that says, do more of that when you're depressed, stop doing that, reflect on it. And so there are different kinds of depression. There's a kind that is this medical depression that's inexplicable and that maybe drugs are needed for. But often, I think that doctors, psychiatrists, my experience was in my experience listening to other people because I write this advice column and I get letters from everybody and I've been doing this for a long time since the early 90s, is that doctors just say, here's a pill. And a lot of these antidepressants, they've been shown that they don't really work. And so maybe it's a placebo effect, which actually is a thing. But a lot of times, it's people are medicating away this helpful part of depression and sadness which is reflecting and drawing people to you and all of this and so this idea of it's a disease that that you know it's also used with alcoholism. It's just this idea people like to put these things in these neat boxes and it doesn't really work.

You know, I have to say, because I'm writing a big expose now. I didn't intend to do this, but I tried to shove it off on both Nina Tisholts and doctors' eats and they wouldn't bite. So I'm doing it reading medical research. I can't even begin to tell you how non-evidence-based Maybe even most of our medical carousers. It's so terrible. And I'm lucky that I have a psychiatrist now who is really evidence based and went on for future training for their training because I had been taking riddle in which just made me jumpy. It didn't really help me with my focus. Well, the sky he changed me. I told him I actually started taking a self-medicating. This is bad. This is before I read as much science as I do. I was taking Houston X and the guys like, oh my God. The kind you get behind the counter. It's like, and it's some kind of like they make meth out of it. They have to like sign, you know, is buying it different pharmacies and hoping I wouldn't get arrested. You know, I'm just taking it to right not, you know, do anything. I don't have meth lab in my basement. I don't have a basement, so that helps. Um, but um, so this guy said, okay, we're gonna change you because I told him I couldn't focus. He said, you can't take this. It's, you know, making your heart race or whatever. And he said that this, um, Adderall, what it does that's different, it pushes a little dopamine up out into your brain, besides being a dopamine reuptake inhibitor, which we hear with serotonin with antidepressants. So it regulates that, but it also goes like, squirt, here's a little dopamine. And the first day I was on that, the first pill I took, it was a best writing day I'd had. really in 20 years. It was amazing. And so I'm still on the same dosage and everything, but this guy, he gave me my life back because it was tortured or right before that. And that really was a big deal. And so much of a medical care, if you look at the stuff on diet, and you know, it ties shelves. It's been great on this Gary Tubbs. the AIDS, you know, there are other people on this who have shown that look, don't eat this high carb, low-fat diet and the government recommends. It will make you sick and fat. And here, this high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet for many people, maybe not all because we have individual differences. This seems to be the most healthy diet and also not eating polyunsaturated fatty acids and stuff like that that we know about more and more and you see more and more of that. Yeah, right. And so, but my doctor Kaiser, I love to say this healthy whole grains on the wall. There is no such thing, this healthy whole grains. I have an eaten a bun on hamburgers since 2009. No, I just wouldn't. It's just dumb. I eat bacon and grease all day. And I'm very healthy. I, even though my doctor actually thinks I'm going to have a heart attack by next week. The truth is that if you have a doctor think that. Well, because my cholesterol is like 303, and then, but when I know, and this is from Mike Eats, the doctor who wrote the protein power, he is a great blog where he talks, he's very evidence-based, but explains it for you well. There are these ratios you look at. What's a ratio of your triglycerides to your HDL? And so basically, my ratios, which the doctors don't at Kaiser don't understand, they are so good that I say that I'm as likely to have a heart attack as I am to be kicked in the knee by a unicorn. I'm so not in danger of that. And it's just terrible though. They sent me this letter to say, eat a low-fat diet. Thanks.

It's terrible. It's terrible. And those statins are fucking terrible for you. Terrible effects that can cause diabetes. They have just the worst side effects. And this is the thing that I look at when I'm looking at research or looking at because I do what I call applied behavioral science. So it's science help as opposed to self help. I look at what are the trade-offs? If I tell you this, what are the trade-offs in doing this? Where are you going to have a problem? How worthwhile is this solution? And that's what doctors aren't looking at when they give people statins. It's sort of like from the drug companies mouths to your gut.

Yeah, he did this quote unquote research, but he excluded countries that didn't show searches. This is, it was in, I think it was in the 50s. He did this multiple country study where he looked at what people ate and what he did. It's like this. There's a story from the Holocaust where a guy shot all these bulls eyes in the wall and some Army person came up to him and said, how did you learn to shoot that way? He said, it's easy. I first shot the wall, then I drew the bullseye. And so that's when Ansel Kees did with this research and he excluded any countries that didn't fit what he wanted to say, which is eat this diet that we've been eating. Our government told us to eat for years. This high carb low fat diet that actually causes you to be just hungry mother fucker all day. Yeah. And then also spikes. Yeah. And so, you know, what I learned from Gary Tobs was actually a friend of mine. So I got an early on the low carb thing because I heard while he was writing this that carbs. So this is potatoes, starchy vegetables, fruits, fruit juice. They sugar. These things cause the insulin secretion that puts on fat. that makes you diabetic and all these things. And there's some indication that maybe Alzheimer's is diabetes three diabetes of the brain. They need more evidence on that. But personally, I do not eat sugar. I eat one tiny little ice cream thing a week, just so I won't feel totally deprived. But when I, when I bake and stuff all day, steak and green beans drowning in butter, I don't feel deprived. And it's better for me. And, you know, if you can do that, that's not much of a sacrifice. Okay, I won't eat the bun.

It's insulin. It's insulin. It makes you hungry in that way. Before I stopped eating bread, I went to Starbucks in Culver City and I would always get the thing that was the regular fatty thing, croissant, whatever. I know, I love all that kind of food. But I got by accident somebody gave me the sugar, the fat free, whatever. And after about 20 minutes, I mean, I wanted to bite off somebody's arm in line. I wanted to kill people. My dad's the counter gets something. It makes you feel so terrible. And I looked at all those years, I had dieted. And at one point I just thought, like, you know what, if anybody doesn't like me a little rounder than other people, fuck them. And I started going to Bubby's Diner, New York City, having this chicken potato burrito, which now I wouldn't eat the bread in the potato. But, and I started losing weight just by eating like a normal human being and not excluding fat. And that's what, that was sort of instructive for this. And now I just basically try to eat fat all day, grease, grease, more grease. And you don't have that hunger. And also, I know it's so much healthier for me to not eat bread and to not eat these. We don't eat bad oils anymore. And just to tell you another weight loss story, my boyfriend, he was Elmore Leonard's researcher, the crime writer for 33 years. And he had to do this book, Djibouti, and I begged him not to go to Africa, because my boyfriend, his look is, I'm American kidnap me. It's so funny.

Oh, I knew he would get kidnapped. I mean, you just, yeah. So, I just, you know, I begged him not to go.

No, but they would kidnap my boyfriend.

No, he has to mad at me for saying this. But he once got his pocket picked in Paris. He just looks like the American guy that you know, do something to. So, and he's a big guy from Detroit. So, it's not like he's won't be or anything. But he needed to lose some weight and some doctor gave him these like, candy bars that were $230, you know, and the thing of like being from Detroit now, wanting to be ripped off, I said, okay, if you do exactly what I say because he's a guy guy, so he's not like, you know, I'll do exactly what you say. But I said, you will lose weight and you will not be hungry. So I put him on a diet of bacon, eggs, he could eat meat, no vegetables and just coffee and spring water vegetables. Yeah, this is like, this is like, remember Dr. Ackensner, the Ackens induction diet, you have to take magnesium or you will look at people locked up like the Berlin wall inside. But he lost 30 pounds in five weeks while sitting in his chair, researching Djibouti, the book Delmore ended up doing. And he did not leave his chair. He terms librarians on the phone and embassy people and stuff like that. But is no vegetables or good idea?

Well, eventually, but actually, top says said we talked about this once and he said basically that meet has all the vitamins except vitamin C, and I'm sort of paraphrasing from a long time ago, so forgive me if I get this wrong. But, and that if you, but if you are eating meat rather than carbs, maybe you don't get vitamin C deficient, look at the Messiah, and also the, the eskimos, I think it's the enuit. I think Stephenson was a guy who's up there, and before they started eating a Western diet, they just stayed blubbered in oil, meat, I guess they may be a penguin here in the world. Yeah, yeah, they ate the penguins.

And when nuggets, yeah, I'm really good on geography. I think that's how I failed geography, but honestly.

Right. It's changed as soon as they started eating the Western diet. And Tom's brings up the Pima Indians, same thing to they had horrible problems with diabetes.

Yeah, I hate that. Anyway, I never leave the house. So I'm always on my big computer.

not lately. I wrote a book for three years that spent three years trying to kill me. So my boyfriend brought me food, otherwise I would have eaten frozen hot dogs for three years. Like the meat guy. But that's not good, right? I wasn't, but the book, you know what happened? So you plan and writing this book and I thought, oh, this will be easier. So this is just book on how to transform to be confident. And I thought, okay, this will be easy because I've writing this in my column for so many years. And then I look into the science and I look a little deeper and I think, oh my God, this is so horrible. And what happens is, so this professor will do these people, these researchers, they do some research, but they don't totally support it, and then they don't work in a transdisciplinary way. So you have to support this one's research, but that one's research, and this became this big thing, and I just kept having nightmares about my editor, who's a nice man, chasing me down the street, asking for my advance back with an axe.

The guy I mentioned, so Stephen Finney, he is a dietary researcher. He and Jeff Wallach wrote a very good book on low-carb. Jeff Wallach's also a dietary researcher, and Finney, I think, bicycles, competitively, or very intensely. And he says that eating low-carb, but there's apparently some hump you get over, but then that is better. It gives you more energy than this whole, like, drink some gatorade that people have held as the conventional wisdom.

Yeah, he does.

I'm lucky. I've good jeans. You know, the boyfriend looks at a sultine and he gains three pounds and I'm lucky. So my family were Eastern European shit whole Jews and you know, it probably wasn't a lot of food and I don't know somehow my body learned to manage that and having a lot and having not a lot and it manages it better. Sure.

Well, the Messiah do it. And then they, and they, the, and you did it. And so the question is, are you missing nutrients? And I'm not the person to answer this. Are you missing nutrients? And that's the problem with being vegetarian. There's a guy named Chris Cressor who's posted on this about. Oh, great. I love this. Yeah. And so he is some really good posts about what you're missing if you provide you. Terrain people say, I'll take vitamins. But can you get the vitamins in the way you need, in the way your body uses them from taking vitamin pills or even from eating. You have to eat a ton of this. You know, I don't know, being heard or something. And I don't want to have soy. That's the problem. That's the dishonesty about vegetarianism. And some people knowingly make that trade off, but I sure wouldn't. I'm sorry as much as the bunnies are cute.

This is the individual differences thing that I was talking about before. And there's this big push to say, oh, men and women are alike. And groups are no different from each other. But, you know, you don't see Jews as NBA basketball stars. You know, and Jews and people from Northeastern Europe tend to have lactose tolerance in a way other people do not. So where we are from, where we mainly are evolution took place, that, you know, I mean, that goes back way, way, way back, that affects our skills, our abilities, as well as our digestive abilities. You know, can you eat this kind of thing? Can you drink liquor or not be really affected by it? All those things. And so that's the stuff that people don't like to look at. Everyone, the way we're talking about before that people like to say, it's just like this. It's this thing. This is a disease and it's horrible. You know, that lack of nuance, that's just so stupid and it's so sort of anti-solution. What people like to do when people do that thing of You know, saying things are one way. It's often in a way to, I think that people try to feel superior to try to simplify things too much. So that too, because we like to understand things. So I think it's that. And then also there's a tendency to want to prosecute people to say, You are a slowly fat person and the reason you are heavy is that you did not go to the gym and I went to the gym and I am a holy gymgoer and you are a scummy, terrible, couch sitter. And that's not the case. In fact, Top's wrote a great piece for New York Magazine about how we think exercise makes us thinner, but it doesn't. And the reasons you were saying before for doing it for mental health, I try to do that when I'm feeling just my worst. I make myself get on the bike and do these high intensity intervals. because I know that that'll help me mentally, even though I feel like shit.

That's what Tubs in this piece says, and that's what I see over and over again. Believe me, we don't want to believe that. And I think people can lose weight through exercise, but they get hungrier. That's the problem. You know, you exercise, you get hungrier, and you replace that. I don't have all the nuances on this. So everyone should look up that Tubs piece in New York Magazine, because he's just fantastic.

Yeah, I think that's a really great point. And I am not one to that's I'm not that's I'm not an expert in this area and I haven't read very much in it, but I need to have read this. What's the guy's name should I'm not going to remember it. Mikey's wrote a book with him. It's it's slow burn fitness. And actually, I do that. I lift weights. You lift them until your muscles are just screaming and I can lift like eight pounds because I'm totally wimpy. And you do it really slowly. It looks so slowly, like times barely moving. And that does increase your metabolism. It improves your heart, improves your cardiovascular system, and what's the other thing? And it does help weight loss. So there are nuances on that. And I just I say that because when I look at the top thing, all the stuff he supports stuff very well, it makes sense, but I'm a little light on what the details are. So admittedly, you know, I think you bring up a good point on that and also the individual differences things that we are with the thing that we are different. And so some people are able to lose weight in ways that other people may be or not.

Right. And so it comes down to me to how does your body process nutrients? How does it process the food you take in and how well does it do it? And where does it store it? And so You know, those kids who are, you know, if you have them do the same kind of play, you will see that one kid ends up being fatter and one isn't. And it's not, you know, if you fed them the exact same things, you can see that the factory's just working differently in one kid.

Yeah, actually Jeff Valleck, that dietary researcher basically agreed with me when I said to him. So is it basically child abuse to feed your child's milk? I mean, here we are, America. We're a very wealthy country. People are feeding our children nutrient free food. It's so crazy.

And actually we've been so credulous as as people, I think probably it's not just us, it's probably around the globe for many, many decades. And now part of the good part of having all this media is that more of the sort of the counterpoint gets out there. And so it's been sort of a religion. People have believed this because the government put it out, the American Heart Association, the AMA, put it out, saying fat is, excuse me, fat is bad. And recently they did it again with co-stulging it. So terrible.

Yeah, I just found this with another medical association in this piece I'm writing and it's really terrible because what happens is, so doctors say that you go to an HMO, those doctors, they go by the recommendations of these big associations. So you've got the big associations telling basically medical fairy tales They're continuing to tell the same fairy tale that they've told and people are basing their health care decisions on that doctor's are. And then the patients are listening. They assume, okay, you're wearing a white coat and you went to medical school and I went to school of Google. I guess I'll listen to you. And that's really, really damaging. And this is why I think Neonetye Schultz, Dr. Eeds, Gary Tobbs, all these people who've done this work to put this put out the real science. They have saved an enormous amount of lives and stopped people from having horrible diseases. I really think that they're all heroic because it's been a fight to put that stuff out. It's been a big battle for them and they have people fighting them all the time.

But see if you realize that then you're already ahead of the game and you can say, OK, I'm going to, I, I'm going to use you for tests. Yeah. And try to use the sucks. It really sucks.

I know. And it's so terrible. And see if your doctor just closes that to you, if they say, look, I'm really known. Nothing about diet. And I'm going to give you advice because they say that I should give you advice, but really it's not based on anything other than they printed out some sheets here. Then okay, because then you're informed it's not like your doctor is leading you on with the white coat, but most people are being let on.

It's very hard. The great thing is that there is more stuff out there that's written for lay people where people who read the research explain it to people in a way that is very clear and understandable. So people can make more of their own decision I think than they ever could before.

Yeah, it really is. And the thing, the point may be for about the people who are eating the cheetos and cupcakes diet. Well, of course, if you start eating a vegan diet, you're not eating cheetos and cupcakes, you know, you're going to see an effect. But is that a good effect, you know, in terms of your long-term health? And, you know, we see that vegetarians don't have necessary proteins that you get very easily from meat and nutrients.

You know more than I and this, this isn't my area because I don't care about that stuff since I'm not vegetarian and wouldn't eat that way. But I see that so people like Chris Cressor try to help people to say, look, here's the deal and so you can make some choices and decide, you know, is there a way for me as a vegetarian to get the nutrients I need or am I, I always going to be deficient and how might that affect my health? What are the trade-offs?

Well, I can see that because I mean, I don't think that animal cruelty is a good thing, and I think animal should be humanly slaughtered and capped. And so I think that that's a really good argument. I have friends who are vegetarians for that reason who know about eating meat and being a healthier way to have a diet, but they choose to make that trade off. And as long as you're making a choice, a reason choice, and you know what you're trading off, then I'm fine with that.

And here's a problem. How do you find the evidence-based doctor? Because I'm in an HMO, so I can just switch doctors forever and ever, but I just stay with the doctor and then read stuff myself, because I can do that. That's what I do for a living. But for other people who aren't in HMO, people want to find an evidence-based medicine practitioner, people will say they are. But then you hear what they suggest and they really aren't. And that's a really big problem. Be great if there were somebody could make a lot of money, maybe doing a site saying, look, I'm this doctor. And this is what I look at and think. And so you could choose because we tried to find one from my boyfriend in Los Angeles and like, nobody knows.

Yeah, because you try five six doctors. You go through them. And these are all doctor appointments. You have to pay for them and everything. And then you find, okay, you don't know anything on to the next.

Let's see, so the doctor you go to, that seems like a smart, if you're going to spend money because that guy's probably really expensive. But if you're going to spend money, you know, a doctor who sees you for 72 minutes and looks at you that way, that seems like a really wise investment in your future, even if you're maybe somebody who is not doesn't have money to burn. that that seems a really smart place to put it if you even if you have to make some sacrifices in other areas.

It's really hard to do some of the important things are to look at the sample size, look at people, look at the limitations, sometimes they'll say them at the end. I always like those studies that do that. Sample size, you know, when somebody has like, oh, we had 22 people in this study, you know, that's not the one you want. Look for, you know, and you can't say necessarily, it must be this number or that number. But look for a lot of people. And what else? Like if they say something's really significant, then I'm always, I'm immediately suspicious. That word is significant. You know, well, there's this whole argument about p-values and probability measure that's going on now. And we'll, okay, let's take that. Some people are saying, let's take that out of the equation. And because that's people are using this as this sort of golden thing to say, okay, we had this finding and it's fantastic. And to look at them, to look at the whole study and the findings in a more nuanced way than just the p-value.

Right. These are called cohorts studies. And I call them if you see that cohorts studies are observational or population based, you know, observational study. I call them leap to conclusions after the fact. And they're just like the shit of studies, you know, because did the person, you know, like you're saying, what caused this, this thing that we're seeing, okay, they are, they're, you know, have this effect. It's just, it's such a crappy way and you see it reported in the media, you know, these articles that say, oh my God, everyone should never eat this type of food ever again. It's terrible for you. And it doesn't say that at all, but the reporters don't know that. And they just don't even care. It's just clickbait.

Yeah, it's really terrible. And so that's the thing. What you said to look at studies, look at the opposite, you know, the opposite point of view. That's really important to look at. It's just it's hard to read some of these studies. I really appreciate researchers who write and clear language. I think that's more and more important as people can get studies. There's a site called Sihub where you can get studies that are protected that the journals don't let you get. And you can find them on professor's websites or ways to find these studies if you want to find them. You can use Google Scholar to look up the thing. So it's just a scholar.google.com. And then you can start finding these and try to get them through other sources if they are past were protected. Because you don't want to just read the abstract. Because they can say the abstracts that part at the top where they tell you what the study is about. Oh, you're the significant finding. And we found this in that. And you will often not often, but you will sometimes read a study. And you'll see that the thing that they say they found is not what they found. And that's why it's important to not just be this lazy person who reads only the abstract and the conclusion, but to look at the methodology and see if there's stuff screwed up, I saw a study done by Harvard professors, where they did have a control group for their third experiment, and I thought, did you forget? I mean, you're at Harvard. If you guys don't know to put in a control group, you know, come on. Um, it was, um, a study on, um, God, I'm not going to remember now. It was, um, um, shoot. It was, the third part was in a train station. And I can't, I can't remember what the study was about. I just, I brought it with me in an evolutionary psychology conference thinking, this will be easier right, a column from because I had a question that kind of matched, um, I can't remember, but it was in a train station and they should have done study and a train station. Well, no, they did two of the experiments. The first two experiments were where they played videos or something. I think it had something to do with cell phones or something. I can't quite remember. Oh, was someone trying to borrow a cell phone? Someone saying, can we borrow your cell phone? And so, and, and I like these professors, I reference one of their, both of their work in my book, my ex book, but, um, it was a psychology study. Yeah, it was a social psychology study, and I thought, you know, that why don't you have a control for your third, for your third experiment? And so then I had to do a new question for my second question of my column, and I was all annoyed too, so I remembered it.

Well, I'm sensitive to condentialism as I don't have a Ph.D. has started out giving free advice in the street corner. And so, who is a joke?

Yeah, well, wacky, broad. Well, we just, I had these two friends and we just thought it would be funny. So we set up on the corner of West Broadway and broom with a card table and some folding chairs to set advice. It's said free advice from a panel of experts. We've called the advice ladies and like loving dating and you know when what you're to do this was in the late 80s and then in the 90s.

Yeah, well, we thought we just do it once. I act like I'm drunk at all times. So no, I'm just a weird person and we did this and we just thought we'd sit there and people walk past and laugh because I was making people laugh. I once went out and even dressed and I'd go tea in a mustache just to be funny. I frightened a child and we did this and people it was New York, you know, free. They lined up around the block. And they didn't just ask us like about like their eyelashes or whatever, like, what can I get directions to Grand Street? Grand Street, they were asking a serious questions and I thought, holy shit, I better know something. And so I read through all of psychology. And when you're not reading psychology in school, you think like, oh my God, Freud just made shit up. It was really crazy. And I discovered this guy, Albert Ellis, who was the father at the same time as Aaron Beck, of cognitive behavioral. therapy basically and then started reading more and more and immersing myself more and more in science and going to scientific conferences. And then because this thing where I look for people to criticize me so I can get better. I mean, not the people who are like, hey, horror on the internet. But I would ask professors like, did I get this wrong? And sometimes they'd say yes. And so I learn more and more. and got better and better and incorporated more science. So now what I do is sort of a synthesis from a cross-science. I write a cognitive neuroscience textbook and I use evolutionary psychology. I use that as sort of an underpinning theory to everything. So I look at social science research and say, how would this have made sense in an ancestral environment? Because if there's no sense to it, then there's something empty and wrong with what they're finding or what they're concluding.

Well, so we're doing this and just because it was so fun and we got so much out of it and I learned this that basically if you help people if you do kindness to other people, for other people, you feel really good. So there's self-interest in being kind, especially to strangers. So and that's what we were doing. And so we did this for a few years and Sky walked by, he wrote for the New York Times style section, he did a little teeny piece on us, like, and then it got all cut down Eric Messenger. And then because I'm a Garmento Jew, I do like five things well, one of those that means like you're in the garment district you're like hockey clothing. So I can like get dressed, notice I don't say like you know I get dressed eat cook and not cook what else anyway psychology that's one of them and then selling things and so I got us a TV deal with De Nero my partners and me and then I got us a calm the daily news and a book agent and one of my partners ended up dying so he said and so we I ended up doing the column myself at that point Um, and, and then just syndicated my own column because I thought, well, you know, I'm writing this for one paper. I don't make very much money. How do I make more money? And I was a entrepreneur. And so I got it in a whole bunch of papers, even though all the syndicators who do that, and by the way, if anyone asks, it's not possible anymore. Papers are all going out of business, but, um, is that true? They're very, they're really struggling. But back then, I went to syndicators. They said, yeah, we think you write a really great column, but Anne Landerson, dear Abby of all the real estate, you'll never make any money. And so I went to an alternative weekly newspaper conference in Montreal. I didn't like the hook or hotel because I couldn't afford the real hotel. And I just went around saying, like, Here are my little samples, here are my little samples. And so paper started picking up my column. So I built a business out of doing this, this out of free advice. And then over the years became increasingly science-based. You know, had to learn statistics, I have a book. I weep reading under my desk, biostatistics, the barricentials. I read a lot of stats, websites, and try to improve in that area in terms of scientific thinking and understanding statistics so I can be better at assessing studies.

Well, the thing that I do, I just feel like I don't have a right to just give you my opinion. So before it was a science base, it was very reason-based. I always love critical thinking and reasoning and logic. And so now, you know, I'll look at somebody's question and I'll sometimes think I know the answer, but I'll always read to see, oh, actually, no, it's this. I'll read a bunch of papers and I look for what's called the most parsimonious answer because there can be a bunch of answers to something, but it's like, what is the thing that most closely narrowly answers this person's question. And then also there's this thing. I see advice columns all the time they tell someone to do something that nobody would ever do. So I always have like this sort of bullshit check on there of like, come on. Is anybody ever going to do this? What kind of stuff? Well, it's like right stuff down. Right stuff down. I know, you might do it. And when people read those books, self-help books, it says, okay, okay, right this worksheet and do all this stuff. I've never done that in my whole life. You know, right things down?

I have stuff written. My house is like a fire hazard with a bed and an oven. It's like a walk in paper pile. So no, I write everything down. Actually, I type everything out. blow hard on print. But the thing is that in books when they say fill out this worksheet, I like reading. I don't want to stop and do this thing. And so I've never done that. And so in this next book that I wrote, I have two ways to do some that lazy ass Amy Elkanway or the way that's actually more efficient and will do better. it's the way I change because I was this loser with no confidence and I transform myself and actually it's based in good science what I did I didn't know that I was just desperate and miserable but I say look if you make a list of these problems that you have the things you're afraid of this will help you then you can tackle them this is smarter but I didn't do that I still you know got to where I needed to go but it's just dumb to do it my way because you can just do a little writing work and get to tackle the stuff you need to tackle

Well, because I didn't do it based in science. What I'm saying is that I recognize that some people will be too lazy to write stuff down or they just don't do that. And so up. But I what I did as I said here are the consequences if you do it my way. Like it's going to be slower and You know, you might not be as successful. And this way, like, it seems worthwhile. Like, if I could do this over again, if I had a time machine and go back and say, like, hey, miserable, loserish person, here's what you do. And write this down because then it's going to take you, you know, this many years instead of like that many years, I would do that now. And so what I tried to do is persuade people to be smarter than I was, basically.

Right, this is a better way, and I see that based in the science, but I realize some people won't do it. So you can choose this is the thing. It's like with the diet. Okay, you eat that cupcake. You're going to enjoy it, but here's the trade off.

It makes sense. See, this is the subject of my next book. It's embodied cognition. It's that we don't just think with our mind that our body is intimately involved. And so, and there is research that finds you are actually going to remember stuff more if you write it down. That's why they say in class, you should take notes in pen and ink rather than typing. And so, the truth is, I mean, I've list all over my house. It's just that self-help book You know, Sean Road that I never wrote anything in where they said to write stuff. But I think that that's very important and also for memorization, that that's an important thing that to write stuff. When I have, I did a TED talk and I had to memorize stuff for it. And I can see where I wrote stuff on the pages. So I had the tight pages, but then I had stuff where I scratched and notes. And I can picture that still even now, even though I don't have the greatest memory, I don't think. The places that I wrote notes in this colored ink. There's something very memorable about that where it isn't with the type page.

Well, the physical is very important. You know, if you look at people who are, you know, feel bad, they, you know, about themselves, they sort of hunched down everything. There's a different way of standing if you feel good about yourself and good about where you're going and walking, going forward. I mean, all of these things are very important. If you're depressed, it really can help to take a walk. And this is this kind of thing where you have to force yourself. It's like when I force myself to get on the bike, You know, I want to do anything but that, but I know that I just have to do it because I'll feel so much better, not just then, but the next day. It seems to, I see an effect on mood the next day. You know, with this thing in Vegas, I got very just in a dark place, that day that happened, and I just made myself get on the bike, and it's the time I felt least like that. And I mean, like, how dumb, because all these people are going through this horrible stuff, and I'm like, oh, I couldn't get on a bicycle. But it really is, you have your own little world. That's where you inhabit and you have to take care of it. And that was what I did to just not, I didn't want to go into depression.

There's this classic social science research by this guy Carl White who talked about small wins and that's really important. And they talk about that in AA, make your bed in the morning and the thing you were talking about with feelings, I'm a big advocate of not letting your feelings be the boss of you. That's how I say it. And so for example, I write to a timer because when I sit down to write, so my stuff is funny, so I always think like, I'm not funny. I've nothing to say. I don't know what the science is. I don't know what the answer is. Those are those immediate feelings buzzing around like little flies in my head. And it doesn't. None of that matters because the timer put on 52 minutes on 17 minutes break and that's all that matters. How many times do you write a day? It depends on the day because sometimes it's reading minutes for break. Well, I'll do that and you know what I do actually I read something I didn't even read the study it just I thought that sounds good There's this thing called a Pomodoro where you do 20 minutes, but that doesn't seem for like very much You know with the humor stuff sometimes if it's hard I have to just keep shooting the shit with myself and like looking up things on the internet like oh look a polar bear Okay, and and come up with some kind of joke or something like that and so it takes a while and I read this somewhere saying that 52 17, but I didn't even read the paper on it Okay, all right, well, run with that. And so what I do often in the 70 minute break period, especially if I'm doing something really hard, is I will clean my house. And I wish I could, you know, no one pays writers anymore. So I'd actually like to have a team of maids and a butler, a little midget butler, I don't know for now, let's say if we're a little person sorry, a little person butler. Why a little person? How about a giant? because I always love the Wizard of Oz. I think that they're amazing looking. So let's probably a terrible thing and I'm probably going to be happy to have people like come after me in there. What is this, Jamie?

It comes out of that little tomato timer. It's 20 minutes.

So this is default mode processing that goes on what happens is you're more efficient if you take breaks. See, I'm from the family of the Puritan work ethic Jews of like, you know, just like beat the horse and have it work for hours, but that's really inefficient because your brain does background processing while you're doing this, you know, you're watching the dishes or whatever. And so, but I find that the thing about not having a maid and doing the work yourself, you like clean the baseboard down here, or take the little clerks, why I've been doing something, you have these small wins. So you accomplish something, even though it's just a little tiny thing, you clean your countertop or whatever with bleach, that you've done something, and where maybe you're writing, it's frustrating, you haven't really accomplished much, you didn't figure out the thing you needed to figure out. So you had that elevated feeling of being, you having done something that you're talking about.

I have that dragon thing on my phone, which I really like. And the walking does seem helpful. Neat you walked. And I've read papers on this that walking is helpful. And so I do that also if I have something that's just where I can't figure something out. What I do is I go to the bank and get $20 out. I'm just so it doesn't seem like a meaningless trip there. And then come home and go to the bank to get $20. But it's near my eyes like I'm Lincoln and I walk back and you know, it's a short trip, but it's enough of a walk that it's a walk and I'm like a symbolic thing of getting the money out like some. It has no meaning. It's just that, you know, if I just walk to the bank, it would feel purposeless and then maybe I wouldn't do it the next time. So it feels like I know. I'm a weird girl, what can I say? But I do that and that's just such a, it's sort of alleviate some kind of that pressing feeling of you have of like, there's not a solution. I don't know. And you're moving, you're doing the thing we're moving forward. That's this thing about your brain, not just, we don't just think about solutions like we can actually move in ways that help your brain be more powerful. And that's the walking thing. That seems to be one of these ways where you take some pressure off. And actually that, and I put things on the wall my shower, correct things. And I also put up things I don't understand to look at them over and over again. And the other thing too is people feel bad if they are not instantly geniuses at figuring something out. And what I like to do is go over and over and over and over things. So on this thing that I'm writing now, this medical care expose that I'm writing now, the research is really new to me and complicated. And so what I do is I have a pile of papers. steps to my bathroom. It's really crazy. My boyfriend goes in there and he's sort of frightened by the insanity. But the pile of papers, so I put them on the bottom stool and then I reread them and I put them on the top. So there's like an escalator going back and forth because when you do it like that, you get sort of a deep understanding that you don't when you just read it at first. And I know that's from writing that there's an understanding I can listen to somebody present their work at a scientific conference and understand it. But can I explain it to you? And that's a whole different level of understanding that's deeper understanding.

Yeah, I think that you're probably right about that. And you feel just this sense, you know, because you're going forward. So forwards and metaphor for success and progress and all these things. And I think that all of that it sounds kind of silly. But I looked at all this metaphor stuff and I don't think it's so silly. You know, you know, a success is up moving forward as progress. And so our bodies are connected. Our first language as organisms, the little we organisms, they had two things approach and avoid. It's like, Oh, look, a yummy piece of plankton, I'll approach that, or, oh, that thing's going to eat me, and I'll back up. And there's a term called neural reuse by the sky Anderson, and the guy named DeHane said it in a different way. But the idea is that the human emotional system comes out of or scathe use of term scaffolded. I don't think they use it right. But it comes out of the approach and avoid mechanisms of tiny organisms. going forward, that's a approach, you know, going backward, receding, that's avoid. And so if you look at it that way, it makes sense that walking, that going to the bank, I'm going to, like, walk in little tennis shoes and I wear those Asian pullman sunglasses that, you know, I've got them from my neighbor, she's Japanese at a garage, sell this like Asian pullman. They're like those wrap around. It's basically like putting a strap. You know how they like if they don't want to you identify in a photo, they put a black bar over your face. It's like the sunglasses version that they're huge and they're plastic and it's like I got them at her. Also because so I'm just like I'm related to white out and so I'm just hoping to not age like an old

The French people have not been dropping dead in the streets. They haven't been dying of cancer from using sunblock with this very protective ingredient. The FDA allows the sunblock now to be sold here. It's called Anthelios. But it's like with the, whatever, Muesnex I used to take that they now have behind the counter. They sell the one out in the aisle that doesn't work. They remove the active ingredient and they sell the lesser ingredient in America. So if you want to get the anthillios that actually works, you have to go to France. I buy a case when I'm there. There are people bring back a dress. I bring back $350 worth of sunshine.

No, you can. Well, this is the great thing about the internet now. What do you think about it? Anthil, it's A and T, H, E, L, I, O, S. There's a little French accent. Oh, the accent. Yeah. Accent. It goes. That's like the air.

Well, it's this Maxwell that's the ingredient that protects you from UVA and UVB. And it's just, it's really the the most protective ingredient. You can also get it in Canada. I got someone I was in Vancouver. You know, but I get it in France because I can get it cheaper there. So I'm by a whole case. Like I got you go to bad neighborhood and buy it there and some like Yankee pharmacy there.

Well, that doesn't, I think it doesn't protect. I can't remember whether it's UVA or UVB that it doesn't protect against fully. The kind with the titanium dioxide protects, but also the other problem with these sunblocks is that, you know, do they affect your endocrine system in terrible ways? Do they? Um, I don't know, but I'm so vain that I mean, just don't want to be, you know, like, look like a sheep dog. by the time they have the effect of your endocrine system. Well, because you're putting these chemicals on your skin and stuck those into your skin, but again, I haven't gone outside in a long time, so that sort of meets the effect. Right. And I have a huge hat like that, you know, like it could be a witch, a black hat, and that helps to kind of crazy Amy. I am nuts. So it's one of my better qualities, I guess, they're worse.

Oh, good. I hate to be able to prove though.

Yeah. Well, it seemed though that both kinds would work that way. But maybe it's because the lotion kind probably absorbs more into your skin.

I want to believe that.

see this is a good point and this is something when you look at studies this is one of the things I look at they call it in vivo or in vitro you know are you looking at stuff do they pull out some cells and do something to them and does that and replicate or not replicate what what happens in the human body are there other things other reactions going on that are missing from them you know when you when you do that when you pull it out and just look at it in a petri dish

I mean, I would imagine that's not really terribly surprising.

Well, this is the thing that, you know, if you look at studies, this is why it's important to read them over and over like that and to really pick them apart. If you want to assess them any sort of reliable way, because you have to look at those nuances and think, well, wait a second. I call this thing the leave the labs syndrome where you look at something they've studied something you think like, That's not how it works in real life. Why are you doing the experiment that way? That's completely dumb. And so, and this is stuff you don't have to be a scientist, but it helps to think scientifically to think logically. And so it's always good to enhance that thinking so you can look at that and look for the bullshit.

So I won't look like an old hag.

Well see, here's the thing though, there's so much stuff, so much is more complicated than we think. Am I giving myself problems by not getting vitamin D the natural way and by taking a little pill? Because I take a little pill. So that's one of those trade-offs and I think like, okay, I eat a ketogenic diet and then I put on this sunscreen and you look at all that and you try to make the best guess you can that works also within what matters to you as a woman. I don't want to look really haggard, you know, when I'm 65.

Right. And so, you know, when you change these things in modern environment, they call it evolutionary mismatch. You know, what are you doing? Are you screwing yourself up in some way because you aren't getting this nutrient or whatever it is, the way your body evolved to take it in.

That all these people who are say Irish, they all grew up in this place. And so they are characteristic Irish features. And it's just an accepting what's happened now is we can't make jokes anymore. I skated with 20 black guys in New York. Oh, I stopped the thing you said about the football thing. I thought, OK, I earn a living writing. And I didn't really can't do a lot else that if I cracked my head open, I might not be able to earn a living ever again. Yeah. But these guys, they called me white out, which I thought was hilarious. Yeah. And when you are not racist, I mean, it's not, it's not bad to joke about racial stuff. But now, I mean, it's just really the third rail of everything that you even say the slightest thing you make mentioned that someone's a different color, I mean, forget it.

Charcoal doesn't seem like an insult. And also black people seem charcoal. I thought I had a black boyfriend. He had chocolate. His skin was the color of chocolate. Right.

Well, I think that really dark. But I think they're beautiful. Those people from Africa. I do, too. With that gorgeous, they're amazing.

It's a draw the line. It's a plain plate lip thing. How do you get someone like this that you like the plate? Well, like is their food left on the plates? Sorry.

They're called you bangies. I think people would like that. Yeah.

Yeah. No idea. I don't know that area down there, but God, that's some of these cultural things that go on are really crazy.

Oh, interesting.

But what we're saying about white people before it now actually, I mean, you see this probably all over Twitter to this thing of white privilege. And there is, I guess I must. It was like typhoid. And so now if you're white, you're just guilty. There's nothing you can do. And you see, there was a video, it was in Berkeley, some social justice guy. And the woman just, it was like, there's basically, I mean, that's what she said. There's nothing you can do, you're guilty. I wish I could remember the words. You have your white privilege. Yeah, right. Oh, check on. It's okay. It's full.

It's the antithesis. I love Martin Luther King and say that yeah content of your character and that's so beautiful and it's just it's so terrible this thing of your white and your wrong and people don't understand that's the same thing as the the the races and that's been done to blacks you know for so so long and I mean I'm just I'm sort of stunned by that in this idea I mean basically your races is now shut up well that's you did you pay attention to what went on an evergreen state college I love that guy that Ryanstein oh my god he's my hero

So tragic.

And actually, I would argue that for people who are of color to make a protest by not going to school for a day after people fought so hard, I love that little girl, the picture of the girls in Little Rock. going to school, you know, where they segregated the school. Imagine being a little girl and that's you going with these police officers to school and to value an education and to not skipping school. Okay, so beyond that Brett Weinstein said his argument was I think this is racist and let's not do it and let's talk about it and his speech in the hallway there outside his classroom I saw him and I thought, wow, this is an amazing guy. Look at how rationally he is. Imagine. And calm. Yeah. And full of grace in, you know, there's just mob there, you know, they're calling him racist and shouting him down. And I thought, oh my God, I want to study with this guy. Can you please do a, you know, MOOC on Coursera? So I can take a class from you and learn how to do what you do in a heated situation. Nicholas Christakis at Yale is another one who had people screaming at him. And it was just a class act. You know, that was just as crazy. I know, and they've lost. So you've lost Brett Weinstein from Evergreen. He is, I mean, this guy was a valuable guy to have there. And it's so sad that he is now, it just wasn't safe for him when they're there with baseball bats. I mean, it becomes a circus. It's no longer about education. You can see why he couldn't go back and his wife, too. It's very sad. Very, very sad. But this is what's happening that they're not allowing discussion, this idea, the accusation of your racist. This is now just this thing. It's a just giant muzzle. You're supposed to shut up.

See, and you bring something up there. I call it a way to have unearned power over other people. And so I think that part of this, this is the NPC part, is that we have kids go to college, who are not prepared for college. And this is especially true if you go to some terrible school. Not if you're the child of wealthy parents who got all the SAT training and everything like that. But so you get promoted because they want a certain color face in there. So maybe you do okay at Duke, but they send you to Harvard because you can get in there because they're like, Oh, we have all these Asian people screw you Asians. We're going to like kick you out and not admit you and well admit. That's the craziest thing is that they're racist. So terrible. So maybe that if you get clarified that

So what they do? Yeah, the racist, the racist, mission policies. So Asians, I mean, I think it has to do with the culture and the family there. There's, you know, if you're Asian, I had an Asian assistant before she lived at home with her mother, father, and her sisters, and her grandma, you know, grandma answered the phone, you didn't speak Korean, she hung up on you. But there was a very strong work ethic that you must succeed. There were very strong family ethics. It wasn't a single parent household. And that's what happens to a lot of these at-risk kids. I speak at a school. I created a program to try to help kids make it by showing example. Like saying, look, here I am. I failed. I slept on a door in New York on two milk crates. I'm not from a wealthy family. You have to be creative. A apprentice to somebody. All this stuff. Kids don't get that. They don't get that. If you grew up in a bad neighborhood and your parents don't model that sort of work ethic and the possibility to hope for success. Well, why should you think there would be any hope for you and why should you work?

here it's so terrible and so we're not going to admit you we're going to take the standard standards for Asians are going to be much higher than for everybody else and so if you get this grade point say it's like a 3.8 and your Asian forget it you're out but if you are this person of this face color that we want we're going to put you in there even though you know you have the same grade point as somebody we're kicking out sorry to ram you do that

Right. And they are a minority and it's terrible.

I was thinking I was nodding and then I thought, are they? Oh, that's really interesting. So what I suspect, and I could be wrong, this is just a guess on my part, is that when you are promoted to a place where maybe you aren't capable of succeeding, that maybe possibly you instead of putting your energy into succeeding, you put your energy into protesting and saying the system is terrible and racist and unfair, because that is the way that you become somebody and you have power and everything. If you can't get it through the okay, I'll work hard. way, which isn't to say, so people think that when you say that you're saying, oh, this group of people, they're stupid or worse than other people. But if you go back to the schools, if you help those kids, this is what they're doing with charter schools, if you give those kids what they're missing, there isn't, you know, we're individuals, you can help people who might have been throw away people to succeed if they just see look, it's possible. And here, how do we put this stability? Or are you, you're a child of a single mother that comes with it, comes with certain risks if you grow up in a certain kind of risky neighborhood. There's a whole area of evolutionary psychology called life history theory that talks about this. It's called having a fast life history strategy. It's adaptive if you grow up in a risky, terrible neighborhood where things are unstable to get pregnant early if you're a male to be violent. All these these things that aren't helpful in our modern society, but they're kicked off by that unstable unstable environment where you grow up. So, okay, if instability is a problem, we can't just say, okay, your single mother should go back in time, get in a time machine, and go find a man, and marry somebody before she has you. That's not realistic. We can't throw away people. And that's what I see people advocating sometimes, you know, like, okay, what we've got to tell people, and then not get pregnant without a, you know, family structure. You can't. And so, because they've done that, you don't punish the kids. How do we give those kids the stability they lack? And I think one of the ways is to have people go in from the earliest grades and model what, for example, my parents modeled for me as these suburban, not wealthy, but just sort of middle class suburban people work hard, do this, do that, and you will be okay.

It's terribly racist and also, you know, if you look at what real diversity is to me, it's bringing in people who didn't have economic advantage because these are the people who have heard time doesn't matter if they're black or white. You know, I know I have a number of black friends who are highly successful. Some of them are researchers and they grew up in suburban neighborhoods. They grew up like I did. They had a family. Their family was intact. You know, they didn't need a leg up from anybody because they did what I did, which is work hard. My mother told me, so I grew up at Jewish kid and a neighborhood with no Jews and they like egg their house and everything like that. My mother said to me, you know, there are people who hate Jews. So you're going to have to work harder than other people because some people are going to be prejudiced against you and try to keep you out. So that was a message, not, oh, we should wind about this and isn't this terrible as my parents can be.

Well, me included too. I mean, and if we listen, what I try to do is to look at the other side, you know, the side I don't agree with, like, you were talking about this before, where you maybe see things who see their point, or you look at stuff that you want to agree with, there was a Nick Christophe thing, a piece on, okay, here's what we have to do with guns. And I looked at it because we all want there's this idea of like, do something, we want to do something, but something is not a good thing to do. And I looked at his piece wanting to find something in there that would say, yes, we just do these things in every single thing. And there was all meaningless stuff that wouldn't have stopped the guy in Vegas. And so I looked at that wanting to see something and you see nothing. And so it's the thing of being honest, being intellectually honest. And honest when your side is full of shit, too.

Look at the Charlie update thing in France. They don't know guns in France. I don't know if the policemen are armed. I don't think they are.

Well, but they got guns. They got horrible, horrible guns that killed people. I mean, at that, I think they might have even been automatic weapons. I mean, I don't want to use that term because I don't know anything about guns. So I probably just use that wrong. But they don't allow guns in France since they got them. And I think that criminals, I live near the hood, you know, you can get whatever drug you want, you know, in a corner. Can you get that there? But you know, maybe.

Right. And see the thing that's happened with the polarization is that now just saying, let's think about this. You know, because I'm libertarian. I'm pro-second amendment, but I also think let's look at this. That's not bad to say, let's look at this. It doesn't mean we want to take away everybody's guns. It means that we want to think about things.

See, I think what's hard in this too is that we don't have any answers. There's no, well, if it was just mental health or just this or just that because it's a mystery. So people are just grasping it things and everybody standing their ground, they eat the program, the anti-gun, they're saying, see, see, and all the disgusting stuff on Twitter and people did try to curb this a bit. The stuff of people using that as a ramp for their own, whatever their views were. Sure. And that was pretty ugly. You know, seeing those videos.

well you always have that but in this you know when it's loss of life and it's not just oh Trump said this dumb thing you know that's that just barrage I saw that video of all the people running um you know that that was um there's a it's like a ten minute video and the police hurrying along some people didn't even realize it was gunfire and you hear that that that constant barrage when you hear that for that period of time that gun going off so many times and so many people Um, being just that guy's victim. That was so horrible.

No, I just saw a photograph of it.

It's going to be a big ol' bummer. A crazy girl. Look at us. It's fine.

Well, yeah, or actually I prefer they read it. Look it up in papers and some of them have changed it to the name. I prefer which is science advice goddess.com. So don't feel like this chick who is just pulling out of her butt and then I have a new book, unfuckology, um, uh, feel good. Fucking a lot of your books. I know what's so terrible. Um, this was an accident and actually so it's an unfuckology, a feel guide to living with guts and confidence and good manners from nice people who sometimes say fuck.