Overtime – Episode #679: Dr. Casey Means, Chris Cuomo, Mary Katharine Ham

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Speaker 4 Welcome to an HBO podcast from the HBO Late Night Series, Real Time with Bill Ma.

Speaker 6 She's a co-founder of Levels and co-author of the New York Times Festival of Good Energy, Dr. Casey Means.

Speaker 6 She's a Fox's contributor, host of the Getting Hammered podcast, Catherine, very Catherine, and he's the host of News Nation Squomo and the podcast, the Chris Cuomo Project, Chris Cuomo.

Speaker 5 Okay.

Speaker 6 Okay, here are the questions for panel. Has Trump's victory emboldened young misogynists like Nick Fuentes, who posted a video telling women, your body, my choice? Oh, well, that's rapey.

Speaker 6 Yes, that's horrible. I vote horrible.
Any dissenters?

Speaker 5 Terrible. Yeah, terrible.
Okay, well, Nick Fentent.

Speaker 7 He also, like, weirdly turned on Trump at some point during the campaign and said he was going the other direction.

Speaker 8 And now he's like... And then he pepper sprayed a lady, which is really alpha.

Speaker 5 Yeah, very.

Speaker 6 I mean, look, the Democrats have had their people, but I mean, there's just a lot of people in that administration that have women issues.

Speaker 7 Yes.

Speaker 6 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 6 Glad we all agree on that.

Speaker 6 There's AOC removing pronouns from her Twitter bio signal that she may be moderating some of her positions. I didn't know that happened.
And

Speaker 6 baby steps is all I can say.

Speaker 8 At least she didn't leave the platform.

Speaker 7 She's been listening to people. She's been saying, because I think she's smart, she's been saying to Trump voters who voted for her and Trump to explain why and tell why they split their ticket.

Speaker 7 It's been very interesting.

Speaker 8 Yeah, I think that she owns. her own positions.
You may not agree with them, but there's an authenticity to it.

Speaker 8 I think people resonate off that.

Speaker 8 Look, I think, Doc, that's one of the reasons that you were so blow away in your interview with Bill and why the book is doing so well, is that it just rings of being, you know, I don't have your sophistication, but if it makes sense, you know, to this salami on top of my shoulders, it is very impressive to people and it's great to hear it.

Speaker 8 I just wish you were more involved with the administration.

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 6 maybe she will be. Thank you.
I mean, your brother is, right? Isn't he closer to RFK?

Speaker 9 He's been very involved, yeah.

Speaker 9 Yeah, no, but I think there's something happening right now where I think there's been a lot of polarization and the algorithms are fueling it. But I think we're seeing a thread happening where

Speaker 9 authenticity and truth, you know, people respond to it. And I think, you know, a lot of people thought that there was no chance that Trump could win another election.

Speaker 9 But I think the assumption that Americans are stupid and they don't understand things, they rejected that. And they said, you know,

Speaker 9 we're going to come out and sort of vote for

Speaker 9 people who trust us to make nuanced decisions and have nuanced ideas.

Speaker 7 I think that Make America Healthy Again, those moms, those suburban moms, is an underrated part of the electorate, and it was going to change the coalition and possibly the way that Trump governs, as we're already seeing.

Speaker 7 And I think Democrats became the party of you can't say that. You can't talk about crime and immigration because it's racist.
You can't talk about trans issues because trans kids will kill themselves.

Speaker 7 You can't talk about the COVID vaccine because it means you want kids to have measles. And it's like a bunch of people went, you're full of shit.

Speaker 5 I'm allowed to deny our data.

Speaker 6 Nothing scares people like health.

Speaker 6 Of all the issues I've ever discussed on this show, and that's all of them over a long time, the ones that have gotten me the the most hate, health issues, like obesity.

Speaker 6 Like, that is the third, the ultimate third rail.

Speaker 6 Like, when I did it, even other anchors would call me up and say, I can't believe you talked about that.

Speaker 6 Yeah, because you have to talk. How can you not talk about it?

Speaker 6 I mean, it's the number one

Speaker 6 health factor in this country. Well,

Speaker 8 it gives me a disconnect, and I'll give you an interesting thing that MK will understand immediately.

Speaker 8 When you're looking at focus groups, okay, for a campaign or a candidate, right, very often you will, for a period, watch them with the sound down.

Speaker 8 Because what you're looking for is body language affinity, where like they're all getting it. If you think about the disparate ideas at this table, and when you talk about the idea of,

Speaker 8 you know, there's something in our food, there's a lot of stuff in our food that probably shouldn't be there. And every time they look, the more they look, the more they find that can kill you.

Speaker 8 Everybody's head is going like this. Yeah, I think food's a problem.

Speaker 8 My question to you is: if everybody's head is nodding like this, what is keeping anything from ever happening that moves us in the direction that you're doing? The food is delicious.

Speaker 6 That's the problem.

Speaker 5 I would say, I would say.

Speaker 6 That's what it is. I'll tell you.

Speaker 8 Who comes back from Italy saying, I can't wait to get some ragu?

Speaker 9 That's right. I mean, Italy, the food is all, it's more delicious than the food.

Speaker 5 But we don't live in Italy.

Speaker 6 You live near McDonald's. Not yet.

Speaker 6 I mean, this is not rocket science.

Speaker 8 Why don't we get our food safe? I'm not talking about like the food is delicious.

Speaker 5 It is.

Speaker 6 In America. If I had six months to live,

Speaker 8 I'd eat McDonald's every night.

Speaker 6 And if I ate McDonald's every night, I'd have six months to live. Yes.

Speaker 8 So look, I was on his teacher.

Speaker 6 McDonald's isn't delicious? Who are we fucking kidding? I absolutely

Speaker 6 live.

Speaker 5 It's delicious.

Speaker 9 See, it's so, I mean, we should talk, but I don't.

Speaker 6 I never have it, but it's delicious.

Speaker 8 And how do you know?

Speaker 5 I've had it.

Speaker 6 Have they changed the formula? I don't think so. Coca-Cola, also delicious product.

Speaker 6 I can see the success.

Speaker 8 When they put the Big Mac on the thing and the guy comes back three months later and it looks the same way, I was out.

Speaker 5 I know. I was out.
Anything that holds up better than my hairline, I'm not going to eat.

Speaker 9 You still are able to find deliciousness in it.

Speaker 6 I don't eat it. This is not rocket science, people.
I know something's delicious, and I know it's bad for me, so I don't eat it. Is that so hard to understand?

Speaker 6 Yes, but let's not deny that the one reason why people still do this is because people are always making decisions. Oh, we are, oh, we are doing this every day, present versus the future.

Speaker 6 If I stay up another hour, I'll be tired in the morning, but I want to watch this.

Speaker 5 I do it all the time.

Speaker 7 You're 100% right about McDonald's and it tasting good, and that's one of the reasons we do it.

Speaker 7 And also, Casey's right about the McDonald's doing something to your body that then makes your body want more McDonald's.

Speaker 6 Yes, primeval.

Speaker 5 That's how it works. It's engineered by food scientists

Speaker 5 for you to think that it's delicious.

Speaker 6 It's purposely addicted.

Speaker 5 Like a drug. Right, yeah.

Speaker 7 And one of the reasons we have, everyone nods their head, but nothing gets done because there are a bunch of money to interests here, and maybe you need, I don't know, a disruptor.

Speaker 5 Yes, you do.

Speaker 9 Over 20% of our GDP is dependent on us not talking about obesity. Honestly, 17% of our GDP goes to healthcare and a huge portion more goes to ultra-processed food.

Speaker 9 And there is a chokehold on talking about anything that could make people feel empowered to not take part in that system, which depends on us being addicted to processed food and then sickening the hospital.

Speaker 6 And again, for the people who are going to yell at me because, oh my God, are you defending Robert Kennedy?

Speaker 6 Well, just remember, your view on obesity from the left, to go into that roster of things that I said that they're crazy about, was, first of all, it's body positivity.

Speaker 6 Was there ever a more Orwellian phrase than that?

Speaker 6 It's not, there's nothing positive about it. I mean,

Speaker 6 when you're eating it, it's positive, tastes great. And if beauty's in the eye of the beholder, if you find, you know, someone large be beautiful, that's fine.

Speaker 6 But science is not in the eye of the beholder. Science is science.
And body positivity and healthy at any weight,

Speaker 6 there's no such thing as healthy at any weight. And they were pushing this.
They still are pushing this idea.

Speaker 9 Well, it's not that you can be healthy at any weight. It's that we are actually unhealthy at every weight now.
Even people who are thin now, you know, they have to be healthier with your thin.

Speaker 9 Well, there is a concept of metabolically healthy obese, which and there's also tofi, which you may have heard of, thin on the outside, fat on the inside, which means sort of visceral fat around the organs.

Speaker 9 And that's a thin person who's going to have a lower life expectancy than potentially a heavy person who has metabolic health.

Speaker 9 So that's why I think reorienting the conversation away from the very emotionally charged obesity conversation towards are you fundamentally cellularly metabolically healthy? It's unemotional.

Speaker 9 And right now, 93% of Americans are not. And we all need to understand that about our health because 93%.

Speaker 9 93.2, according to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2022 paper showed that only 6.8% of Americans have optimal metabolic health biomarkers.

Speaker 9 Metabolic health is the most foundational aspect of all health. It's high-end.

Speaker 6 And that's the cell stuff, Dee, which is a lot of money.

Speaker 8 But is that too high a standard of exercise?

Speaker 9 So it's actually incredibly lenient. The actual ranges that they put for metabolic health are vastly more lenient than what I would consider optimal.

Speaker 9 For instance, if regulators ride less than 150, we want to shoot for 50 to 60. So no, I think if you actually had optimal ranges, it would be about 2%.

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Speaker 8 I read something on TikTok that cholesterol is not really a thing.

Speaker 8 And And I

Speaker 8 ended my analysis.

Speaker 5 I ended it.

Speaker 6 That's a good topic to get on. That's part of this whole discussion, cholesterol.
This country loves to demonize things. They hear a little bit of the truth.

Speaker 6 Like, can cholesterol be bad for your health? Of course it can. And then they don't realize it can, you need cholesterol.

Speaker 6 Vitally. Same thing with sunshine.
Like, sun, a lot of people think sun is just flat out bad for you.

Speaker 6 Right? And of course, we're solar creatures. You have to get sun to convert vitamin D.

Speaker 5 I'm telling you, I figured this out.

Speaker 8 There was a picture on TikTok of a guy holding a panda, and it said on the bottom, eggs aren't so bad after all.

Speaker 5 And there was a link. I didn't go to it because that was enough.

Speaker 6 If you don't like what the.

Speaker 6 If you don't like what the medical establishment is saying about eggs, just wait six months.

Speaker 5 Well, this is the problem, right?

Speaker 7 And I think this is one of the reasons for revolt against public health and this huge vacuum of trust that RFK and people who agree with him are walking into is that the message was always, oh, we're not going to allow you to do any smart cost-benefit analyses.

Speaker 7 We're not going to give you information like adults and have you parse it.

Speaker 7 We're going to tell you to sit in your home and we're going to call the police if you go out and we're going to take all these civil liberties away from you and we're going to make you take shots.

Speaker 7 And that's how this is going to work. Well, now people don't want to listen to them anymore because they lied to them and they bullied them.

Speaker 7 And we're going to have a different conversation.

Speaker 9 Yeah. And health got destroyed for children during that time period, and mothers don't like it.

Speaker 2 So no one's paid for it now.

Speaker 6 So here's a question: and I know people are saying this: what are the chances of contracting bird flu from raw milk?

Speaker 6 Because raw is, you know, RFK put out a tweet, and when I read the tweet, and he said, we're going to have all these things that have been demonized

Speaker 6 and sometimes made illegal, like I know people who have had to go to Mexico to have stem cell therapy.

Speaker 6 Why do we have to go to Mexico? It's not witch doctor stuff. It's stem cells.
But we, okay, I could go off on my horse on a lot of these, but bird flu from raw milk.

Speaker 6 Now, can you get diseases from raw food?

Speaker 5 What are you looking at us for? You're like,

Speaker 5 dog

Speaker 5 and everybody.

Speaker 6 Okay, but I'm saying.

Speaker 6 Can you get something from raw? Yes, of course you can. I mean, the debate, I'm just trying to set it up for people to know what we're talking about.

Speaker 6 The debate is, yes, when you pasteurize and homogenize things, you're never going to get sick from it immediately because you kill the bacteria. But the point is that you want the good bacteria.

Speaker 6 That's why we want raw. So there are places, are there times when raw would be bad for you? Yes.
But to blanketly make it illegal is something a lot of people like myself don't want.

Speaker 5 We want to get raw with you from it.

Speaker 6 And I've had it, farmer book.

Speaker 6 Is that about right?

Speaker 9 You know, I think it's important to pop up from some of these fringe, super divisive issues like rye milk and fluoride and this and that, because the reality is I think what people want is to fulfill the American dream and feel free.

Speaker 9 And right now,

Speaker 9 there's this obsession with eliminating risk. I think that's what we saw with COVID.
If you actually go to the

Speaker 9 HHS.gov website right now, the banner at the top is something like, less risk, more living. And it's their ad for getting shots, basically.

Speaker 9 But I think we've really distorted the conversation around risk. It's like the best possible thing is zero risk, but that's not living.
That's being imprisoned. Okay.
And so I want to be able to form

Speaker 9 a relationship with a local farmer, understand his integrity, look him in the eyes, pet his cow, and then understand if I can drink his milk. And I want to see inside his barn.

Speaker 5 And that, and so it's not about, it's not about

Speaker 9 the raw milk. It's about this bloating of regulation, which is antithetical to what the founding fathers wanted, and a sense of being sort of imprisoned by overburdensome regulation.

Speaker 9 And I think that, and on top of the health benefits,

Speaker 9 I think it's bigger than the milk.

Speaker 6 I really do. Farmers in your area want you to pet the cow.

Speaker 5 You know, we get, you know, we get all right now

Speaker 9 there's a war on small farmers.

Speaker 9 There is a war on small farmers where they are being, there's four conglomerates for meat in the country. They want all the meat to be sold to bigger conglomerates.

Speaker 6 I'll just ask one more thing about this because obviously this is the issue we're all interested in talking about. You mentioned fluoride.
Now, I don't know shit about fluoride.

Speaker 6 I know they put it in the water when I was a kid, and I guess they still do. Then I was reading this week because he mentioned fluoride.
And again, this is the problem with...

Speaker 6 our health discussions in America.

Speaker 6 Half the people in this country hear somebody who's going to question fluoride and they go, oh my God, Bobby Kennedy's a crazy person who wants to take fluoride out of the water.

Speaker 6 And I'm not that person.

Speaker 6 Like fluoride, I don't know. Did it hurt me being in the water? Probably not, but again,

Speaker 6 it's naturally occurring. I don't know why we have to put more of it.
If I wanted, I could get it in toothpaste. You know what I want in my water? Nothing.
Water.

Speaker 5 How about that?

Speaker 6 So I'm not afraid of fluoride, but I don't want you to put shit in my water.

Speaker 6 I like water. And also I read that it does have health repercussions.
Right.

Speaker 7 Well, and the basis of that is you're not afraid to have that conversation. And a lot of people are getting very sick of being told they cannot have conversations.

Speaker 6 Right, that's it.

Speaker 8 I think that's the best hope I've seen. I mean, look, I took a lot of things I thought were good to see in the the elections, separate from the outcome of who won, right?

Speaker 8 Because everybody has their feelings about that. People voted as independents more than ever before.

Speaker 8 They voted as independent more than as Democrat, and that's probably because of attrition from the party, but equal to Republicans. And I believe that's the best hope we have here.

Speaker 8 And as you know, you're a magnet for that audience, because you need to get back to critical thinking and people who are okay hearing

Speaker 8 ideas they don't agree with. It's the biggest problem we've had in our business.
The number one complaint

Speaker 8 I get that isn't like related to my face is you

Speaker 8 gave this person a platform.

Speaker 8 Why did you give them a platform? I said, well, you know, there's a lot of people who believe it. Yeah, but there are people who don't agree with

Speaker 8 Dr. Casey.
Yeah, I know, but she's got real ideas, is the number one times bestseller, and we got to figure something out because, you know, everybody's walking around.

Speaker 5 They're like three times the size they were when I was a kid.

Speaker 7 I was a people refused to platform people at the expense of hearing from voters and what they believed. And then you miss a big story like how to win an election.

Speaker 6 We have too many ways of shutting down debate in this country.

Speaker 6 Just like words that you just say, like, you know, Islamophobe. Oh, well, then we can't talk about that issue at all.
Get your phone.

Speaker 9 Disinformation, disinformation, computer science platforming.

Speaker 5 It's not a problem.

Speaker 6 Not here.

Speaker 6 We do it all.

Speaker 5 Thank you, everybody.

Speaker 4 Catch all new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher every Friday night at 10 or watch him anytime on HBO On Demand. For more information, log on to HBO.com.