The Life Changing Power of Lifting (feat. Casey Johnston)

Hey, this is a quick programming note from me, Jason, and it's going to be followed by another note and intro before we do the podcast.

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But for the first time since we founded 404 Media in August 2023, we're all collectively taking a week off.

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The last few months have been particularly crazy as we've been covering Elon Musk's takeover of the federal government, followed directly by the creeping surveillance state, Trump's mass deportation campaign, AI's role in stomping all over workers, the general destruction of the internet, and of course, the more uplifting stories of all the people fighting back against this sort of thing and doing DIY stuff and doing all the things that we care about.

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school's out for summer for one week.

We'll be back to our regular programming next week.

Hey, everyone.

This is Jason.

I mentioned this last time I did an interview episode, but we're going to start doing more of these about all sorts of topics.

This week, I'm talking to our friend and my friend, Casey Johnston, a tech journalist turned fitness journalist.

Casey studied physics, which led her to tech journalism.

She did some of my favorite coverage of internet culture, as well as Apple's horrendous butterfly laptop keyboards, if you remember those.

We worked together at Vice, where Casey was an editor and where she wrote Ask a Swole Woman, which was an advice column about weightlifting.

After she left Vice, Casey founded She's a Beast, an independent site and newsletter about weightlifting, but also about the science of diet culture, fitness influencers on the internet, the intersection of all those things, etc.

She just wrote A Physical Education, How I Escape Diet Culture and Gain the Power of Lifting, a really great reported memoir about how culture and the media often discourages people from lifting, how this type of exercise can be really beneficial to your brain and your body.

And it's a really great book.

I found the book really inspiring and actually started lifting right after I read it.

In this interview, we talk about the book, about journalism, about independent media, and about how doing things like lifting weights and touching grass helps us navigate the world.

Here's my interview with Casey.

Casey, hello.

Welcome to the 404 Media Podcast.

So excited to be here.

I'm going to grill you.

That's always what happens with podcasts.

They're always, you think it's going to be a nice chill time with your friends, and then it turns out to be an interrogation.

Yeah, a real gotcha situation.

So, I guess, like a little bit of background is we are friends, also colleagues, but I think this is our first like recorded conversation.

I think that's, I think that's correct.

I think that's correct.

So, Casey and I used to work together at Vice, but knew each other before that.

And Casey

started as a tech reporter.

Is that, I mean, I guess you did many things, but I knew you most as an extremely good tech reporter and who wrote many, many iconic blogs, probably

most famously about butterfly keyboards

on the MacBook.

That was really after I stopped being a tech blogger proper, but one of my proudest blogs for sure.

Yeah, I think I think you single-handedly got Apple to change their keyboard design.

I think I did too, because a lot of people were

sort of soft pedaling the situation where they were like, the keyboards, like

I think they were like, I'm having some issues, but there's no indicator that like it's a real issue and it might be just me.

And then I wrote this thing that was like,

I'm pretty sure it's not just me.

I think the keyboard might be total garbage.

And this is like still when, I mean,

I don't know, you lived through the era when, like, it was,

it felt dangerous to like criticize because Apple fanboys used to be like what gamer gators are now, a little bit.

Like, that's maybe an overly facetious comparison, but they were people were afraid to like criticize Apple too much.

So, Apple fanboys were really intense for sure.

But then, also, Apple PR was kind of relentless, as I recall, where they would, they would ignore me a lot.

But then when they decide not to ignore you, they would like relentlessly call and yell.

My scariest like PR situation ever, not scariest, but kind of like the wildest one was when Motherboard wrote an article called AirPods Are a Tragedy about the Environmental Impact of AirPods.

And we had a fantastic, it was a fantastic article by Caroline Haskins, who was a new writer at the time.

She works at Wired now.

And she was my intern before that, I think, at the Outline.

Yeah, there's a

that is correct.

Full circle.

And she was like, oh, Apple wants to talk about the story.

I'm going to hop on the phone with them.

And I was like, let me come also because they're probably going to be pretty mad.

And there were like six people on the line, like six Apple PR people on the line.

Poor Caroline.

Jeez.

But anyways, that is already.

We have digressed.

We're talking to you today because you have a new book out.

It is called A Physical Education, How I Escape Diet Culture and Gain the Power of Lifting, which is about weightlifting and your journey, which is not something that we talk about very often here, but, or really ever here.

But I was going to say, how often do you talk about weightlifting on this podcast?

Probably never.

I think this is probably the first mention of weightlifting in any way, shape, or form.

Yeah.

We do sometimes talk about surfing.

And recently I talked about baseball for like

weightlifting is technology

just old technology.

So it's like

more relevant than either of the things that you just said, I feel like.

I think that that is accurate.

And I also was going to say that you approach weightlifting from a scientific lens for sure.

And also with the background of both being a science reporter and a technology writer.

And so

there's that.

And then also, we can have anyone on the podcast that we want to have on.

There's no rules.

But

you also are an independent journalist who owns She's a Beast, which is a bi-weekly, bi-weekly as in twice-a-week newsletter that is hosted on Ghost,

which is what we're also hosted on.

Our frequently asked questions for for subscribers is cribbed from you.

And

you, I feel like you pushed me to

begin 404 media or to think about doing it.

And then also

like pushed me to use Ghost and not a different one.

So, not that you needed like any reason to be on here other than writing a really fantastic book that we're going to talk about.

The whole head of the Casey Johnston just like hovers over the whole 404.

The whole enterprise,

the whole

enterprise.

So, yes, I wanted to talk about the book, though, and then we can get back to indie media maybe toward the end.

For sure.

I have been reading your work for a long time.

Ask a Swole Woman was an advice column where you answered people's questions about weightlifting.

And then She's a Beast expanded out upon that.

But I never

weightlifted.

Like, I never really like I read those and I was like, oh, this is very interesting to me.

This is like well reported, and it seems like Casey's inspiring a lot of people to pick up weightlifting.

But I did not do that.

But then I got a physical education, your book, and I read it for one hour.

And I immediately joined a gym and I immediately started weightlifting.

And I've been doing it right there three times a week.

In a way, it's like not my impact because I didn't have the impact until.

However, this is like the average experience of my writing.

I feel like over the years, I'll get people who find my writing and they're like, love your writing.

Read every single thing.

I'm never on my life ever going to lift weights.

And then several years later, they write to me and they're like, so you were right.

I finally tried lifting and it's changed my everything.

And I wish I had done it sooner.

So that's always how it goes.

People always feel bad.

And I'm like,

you all take a while to warm up to this stuff.

It's totally fine.

Do you remember when you got a pull-up bar and you were going to install it in the office right before the pandemic?

I did.

And there's an entire, there's a few chapters in your book about pull-ups.

I then gave you the pull-up bar or I bought the pull-up bar for you to do it at the office because we were going to do it at the vice office.

Right.

And then

the pandemic happened.

So I took it to my apartment.

Right.

And then I moved to California and I gave you the pull-up bar.

Well, I think what you had actually bought was basically like a squat stand, and it wasn't a nice one.

And it was maybe even mainly a pull-up bar, but you could turn it into, you could like put the hooks on it and turn it into a squat stand, which is what I did.

And I had it until we moved out of New York.

But

yeah, that, so that might have, if not for the pandemic, you might have gotten into lifting at that time.

We all may have.

I may have.

I may have.

And I promise that, like, I want to hear

so much about the book, but I feel like

this thing that you just described where people read your work and they say, oh, I'm never going to lift.

And then they end up lifting later.

Do you have any sense

why that happens?

Like you incept people and then it takes them a while to warm up to it.

And then they sort of just go and do it.

Yeah.

I mean, you could

describe my journey kind of that way, where it was like, it just feels so maybe unfamiliar or off the beaten path of like what quote unquote normal exercise is.

Like I've written a couple or at least one column about this on She's a Beast, where it's like, we have a sort of built-in literacy of like cardio because so much of our gym classes is cardio.

It's like, even if you think you don't know anything about exercising, you probably at some point had to like run the mile in presidential fitness.

So you at least know there's a concept of like pacing yourself and like you're running for time and like what it feels like when you're running a speed that is sustainable for you versus one that's too hard and you have to slow down.

It's like that kind of incremental

familiarity.

with a type of physical activity is we don't have anything at least like when I was a kid when you were a kid, when most people who are now adults are kids, did not have anything in our lives or schools that like

helped us grasp the fundamentals of lifting in that same way.

So it just feels like totally unfamiliar in the way that like a lot of regular sports or cardio don't.

So it takes some time to sort of like

you, you probably think you don't know anyone who does it until you become more aware of it.

It's like when you, I don't know,

learn about a

new type of car and then you start seeing that car everywhere.

It's like you learn about it, then you start seeing it everywhere and you're like, maybe this isn't so weird or abnormal.

And then you can sort of wrap your mind around doing it yourself.

Yeah.

So there's a couple of things in the preface that really spoke to me.

And I think that like right away when I started reading this book, I was like, I actually, I need to go try weightlifting right now.

And I luckily live very close to Muscle Beach in Venice, which is where Arnold Schwarzenegger famously lifted a lot.

So well, it's like famously the birthplace of like all

modern bodybuilding culture.

So it's like you just happen to live at the cradle of life of what I do now.

Yeah.

And I always thought that when I moved here, I was like, maybe I'll join for a laugh sometime just to say that I did.

And now I'm like going four times a week so i'm like the thing to know about it is that i didn't know about it for a long time is that it just like is a gym that you can join and like pay a monthly fee it's not just like a when you walk by even it's like what is this it seems like a platform for like maybe professional somethings to to like

i don't even know but the relationship you can have with it is like that of a planet fitness yeah and when you walk by it

Very often they're doing bodybuilding competitions and they'll have, you know, like spray tan booths and sell like tiny bikinis and things like that.

And it's like a very intimidating sort of situation, but it's also incredibly cheap.

It's $200 for a year, which is unheard of.

Nothing is that cheap anymore.

Yeah.

So here's, here's the quote.

You're talking about your appearances on podcasts and we're probably going to spend the whole time talking about this, but you write, quote, inevitably one question would always come up.

on podcasts, what was it about lifting that I loved so much?

I would say something along along the lines of, quote, it completely changed how I think and feel about the world and myself and everything.

I knew that was true, but I didn't know exactly what I meant, and I didn't have the words to put it in more specific terms.

This book became about finding them.

And that's why I like the book so much and your writing so much, because you're very often writing about the,

like, not how to do weightlifting, but the culture of weightlifting and also the culture that permeates our lives that prevents people from weightlifting, specifically diet culture, where you write here in the book as well.

Diet culture is not just a set of well-intentioned, if sometimes misguided, lifestyle suggestions.

Many of its patterns are directly, insidiously harmful, not just psychologically, but biologically in ways that engrave themselves again and again upon our brains and bodies.

And

the book, I feel, is a mix of a memoir as well as like reported science

about

weightlifting and what it does to your body, what it does to your mental health, and also why we feel the way that we feel about weightlifting.

Does that sound like a correct

summary of the book?

Yeah, I mean, now I think kind of what I do in general as like

sort of

translating the benefits of this thing that

at least formerly had a pretty niche place in our culture to an audience that I feel like I'm a part of a wider audience that is almost maybe

feels diametrically opposed to something like lifting or even working out in general.

And I'm my role is kind of saying, actually, here's a bunch of things that are not maybe well known about lifting that might interest you.

So yeah, it sort of uses my story as kind of like scaffolding for all of this information that I feel like is not widely known about how dieting works and how dieting is specifically destructive to our bodies and our brains.

Like it literally

No one ever said this to me when I was dieting, and I think it's still not widely said, but it like literally makes you stupid.

Like you, you think, you can't think as well when you don't, when you aren't fed, especially like chronically over a long time, you don't have to be

starved and like on your deathbed in order for that to be true.

It can be sort of like long-term moderate to semi-aggressive caloric deprivation leads to like dulled, literally dulled senses.

And

there's a lot of things that about strength training that are specifically corrective to the dieting that we so commonly engage in or the calorie burning and like the weight loss that we just sort of see as an obligatory part of being a grown-up in the world is that like you deny your cravings and you lose weight and you

exercise because it's like quote unquote good for you.

And

I've been saying about this book, like, this is not a long refere or like a lecture on like why working out is good for you.

Like, everyone knows working out is good for you.

It's about

all of the things that,

all of the dynamics at play between how, how we commonly understand this stuff to work and like how it could work if we sort of knew a little more.

I had a

writer who was interviewing me for Vanity Fair while we were talking said something like,

It's your book is about powerlifting in the way that Friday Night Lights is about football.

And I was like, That

is so perfect.

And I feel like nothing else needs to be said, really.

I just go around saying that instead of trying to explain myself.

Yeah.

So,

I mean, I knew this about you because we've been friends for a long time, but

you know, the you came to lifting after many years of dieting and running and cardio, and you sort of describe

like trying to

lose weight, stay thin, et cetera, as this like never-ending treadmill, forgive me.

And like this, this like

pattern of sort of deprivation and things like that.

And it seems like you felt for a long time that

like weightlifting was not for women or you never even maybe it never even like occurred to you that it was and and like you said it's like like

our culture has been, has pushed weightlifting off to the side for a long time.

And I guess I wanted to give you my perspective of weightlifting in my, because I've played tons of sports as a man.

As a man.

No, but I'm curious.

I'm curious because like this book is for everyone.

But I feel like some of the things that you describe in here, I also like I avoided weightlifting for a very specific reason, I think.

And I'm curious what you think of this reason.

And so I grew up playing baseball.

And in high school, we had weightlifting like in the offseason.

So I did a very small amount of weightlifting in high school for baseball.

And

I couldn't bench press the barbell.

Like, I just, I was a very, I was a pretty scrawny kid and I could not do it.

And like the other players on my team made fun of me more or less because I couldn't do it and and they could.

And so I was doing like other things in the gym with like dumbbells and lighter weights.

And eventually I was able to bench the barbell like at age 14 or whatever.

And that was one, it was like very embarrassing for me that I couldn't do the barbell and everyone else could.

And then

I also

always thought of myself as like

good at sports, sports, like

good at the skills of sports.

But

when I thought about the gym and when I thought about people weightlifted, I always thought of myself as like a smart kid.

And I didn't want to be like beefy and roited up and like seen as a meathead, more or less.

And like, so I stayed away from gyms.

And when I did go to gyms, I didn't weightlift because I didn't have any clue how to weightlift.

I thought that people would make fun of me if I did it wrong.

And then also, if I did the machines, if I did weightlift, I would do a machine because there would be a diagram of what to do.

And I would like pull down on the little cord and I would say, okay, I did that.

It was fine.

And I guess like.

I never really thought about how that persisted in my life for like 25 years, that sort of initial perception of me thinking, probably from movies and also just my experience of getting made fun of, like one time, that like weightlifting was for dumb meatheads.

And I didn't want to be bulky because I didn't want to be seen as stupid, very stereotypically.

And I also didn't want to get made fun of.

And so I never did it.

And then in the book, you describe like some of that stuff.

And then the reality of the situation is like,

none of that is true.

People are very, very nice in the gym.

Yeah, I mean, I think we like have this cultural

perception or like prejudice where we're painting with a broad brush.

Of like, there are these two groups of people who want nothing to do with each other, which is the people who like are already strong and go to the gyms, and then people who,

you know, their favorite thing about them is their

clever thoughts, which is the group that I am in.

And I was, I thought similarly, where I was like, I'm really, I'm really just trying to like minimize my body's involvement in how anyone perceives me.

Like, honestly,

to work out more for that to be part of like my thing,

I thought that that would supersede my,

you know, the perception of me as an intellectual person.

And that was what I cared about.

So

that I think was like a really common

judgment.

And it still is.

And I still worry about it.

Like, I still feel like I don't get taken as seriously as a writer because of the topic that I write about, despite that I feel like I throw everything I have behind it.

And I try to really, like, there's people who write about fitness that I get it.

This is not, you know, Charles Dickens or whatever.

But

i really try to bring a lot of

heft in terms of the

reasoning and like the support and the data and all this stuff and um but still it's like i'm

you know

i don't think i'm probably getting the regard that i still would like to get or that I think I would get if it were a different subject with the same amount of effort put in.

But yeah, I think that ultimately, when I, the reason that I'm so behind it, even though it's not giving me probably the

gravitas that I would like to have, I still, like, I just feel like it's that important that I had this incredible experience where,

among other things, as you're saying, in the gym, I found like a really nice community of people where they were very welcoming of me.

Like they really wanted to share their hobby with new people.

They know what a new, they could identify a new person at like a thousand yards.

They, they knew exactly what was going on.

And they tried to like clear a path for me in a lot of ways where they would unload their weights or whatever and

be smiling and, you know, like, here's my bench.

Like I'm all done, like letting me know.

But also I liked that they

also did a measure of leaving me alone where they weren't in my business all of the time.

And they weren't like, you know, obviously there were a couple of people where they were trying to like sell me their personal training services.

But for the most part, the community members sort of like implicitly trusted me to have to like sort of find my way about it.

And that was really compelling to me as somebody who was like, hated having like a million voices in my head and just wanted to have like, to be able to figure it out on my own to some extent and to not have somebody like teasing me because, oh, you haven't put in any experience, but you can't bench the bar.

It's like, of course, I can't bench the bar.

I've like never done this before.

Why should I be able to do that?

You know?

So that was

that's really interesting because

there can be many, many different goals in weightlifting.

And I have just begun them, but you talk about the different things that you, you know, the different reasons one might lift.

And it's funny when like you start any other hobby or any other skill or sport.

It's like if you

weightlifting is a skill, but

an outsider would probably just measure it by how much can you lift and how many times can you lift it.

And what you just said, where it's like, of course, I can't bench the bar.

I'm just starting this

thing.

It's like the...

One of the goals of weightlifting is to get strong in a variety of different ways, but you have to start from somewhere.

And it's like we don't make fun of people who start other things who don't know the skills from the get-go.

Exactly.

Yeah.

For whatever reason, there's this like

perception of lifting that you're only supposed to do it if you can already do it or like it's sort of already your thing, like you need it for your job or you're a football player or something and you're like already strong.

So like you need this intense type of working out where if you don't have a natural,

you're not bringing some sort of natural talent to it, then it's like, what are you bothering with this for?

But it has like what I always find myself saying to people is that

the worse you are at it, the less experience you have, the more you have to gain with like barely any effort.

Like the

ramp up is so fast.

And it's only faster the further down you start.

It's like if you come in squatting 200 pounds, you're not going to progress as fast as somebody, like sort of relative to your starting point, as somebody who comes in who can only do like a bodyweight squat or whatever.

Yeah.

I guess I'll pause here to say that if you are thinking about getting started, like a physical education is not going to teach you how to do it.

It's going to more explain the why and

the sort of like

it's going to explain the why to do this, but couch to barbell is the guide for people who

have never done this before and want to learn how to do it.

Can you talk a little bit about Couch to Barbell and how you made it and when it came out and all that sort of thing?

Right.

So, yeah, that's also my book, my first book, although I published it myself online.

So, yeah, I mean, writing this Ask a Swole Woman column, the question that people would always ask me

over and over again, no matter how many times I tried to answer it in the sort of column form, was how do I get in?

How do I get into lifting?

How do I get started?

And I honestly, I didn't have that good of an answer.

So, this book was my attempt to answer it in as thorough a way as possible for an audience that I felt was not well addressed

by anyone out there currently because I felt that usually there's, I think,

it kind of felt like anyone who educates anyone about

working out assumes there's like sort of the body weight, Pilates, yoga, running, whatever people, they're over here, they want to keep doing their body weight stuff.

Then there's like the people who want to learn to lose weights.

And there's nobody who really wants to go from one group to the other.

And

I was one of those people where it was like, I was a runner.

I got to a point where I was getting a lot of injuries and I wanted to try strength training, but I had no, like, I had no ability for it.

Like a lot of the guides that I found assumed that you could lift a barbell

and I couldn't.

So I had to find all of this, all of these other resources for myself to bridge that gap.

So I was like, what if I made a program that bridged that gap for the people like me where they're not good at this, but they're bought into the idea that there's something for them there, even even though they don't have this natural ability, which you don't need.

You shouldn't need to have anyway.

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To talk a little bit about the why and some of the benefits that weight training has done without turning this into like a science says sort of thing, I feel like one of the smartest things you ever did was on your website, you have a video of you pulling a gigantic box of chewy, like pet food

around.

Because I feel like

if anyone listening to this has pets, you order like a gigantic thing of dog food or cat food or whatever, and then like moving that thing around is

you just like throw out your back trying to do it and you're just like pulling it around with ease.

I want you to talk a little bit about

moving through the world with confidence to like move stuff around, to carry a table around, to carry your pet food around.

Like, I feel like that's very, that's very appealing.

Yeah.

I mean, this was like one of the,

it wasn't an immediate payoff, but it was so fast because it's like

while my big nemesis was the 40-pound box of cat litter that I had to buy because I had two cats and I had no money.

And that's like the cheapest form of litter you can get, but I physically could not budget, let it alone, let alone like get it up all of the stairs to my apartment.

But 40 pounds in the scheme of learning to lift weights, it doesn't take that long to learn to lift 40 pounds, to learn to squat 40 pounds.

So the way it works is like you add five or 10 pounds per

session every time that you go to the gym.

So like in a matter of couple weeks, you might be squatting 40 pounds or benching 40 pounds, overhead pressing 40 pounds.

So it doesn't, it's not an exact one-to-one translation with a box of cat litter, but like you can build the amount of strength that you

that for like your sort of daily challenges really, really quickly.

And

not only is it the strength, but the sort of like

form that goes along with it, like the sort of picking up things in the quote unquote right way with your muscles rather than trying to lug everything with your lower back, which means you're going to throw it.

throw it out or get a spasm or whatever.

So that was really one of the things that hooked me really quickly was how much of a difference that made.

Yeah, that's

again, like I just started and I've been an active person my whole life.

Like I,

there was a period where I was going to yoga quite often and I stopped going to yoga just because I stopped like signing up for stuff out of laziness a few months ago.

But then I started lifting

and I went to yoga the other day after doing six weeks of lifting.

And I realized that I

felt a lot more stable.

Like I was able to do a lot of the movements that I previously struggled with.

Even when I was going to yoga like two or three times a week, like I did, when I was going to yoga a lot of a lot, I felt like certain moves were getting easier and like I was maybe

in better shape, but I would still struggle with things like chair pose, which is essentially a squat and you hold it for a very long time.

And when I went the other day, without having done yoga for quite a while, but having done just like a few weeks of weight training, I felt

I just felt like all of my poses were like stronger and better and I was like moving with more ease.

And I felt that surfing also.

And,

you know, I've been surfing for a long time and I would just like surf every day and I was getting in much better surfing shape and much better shape.

But

all of the surfing forums and like people that you talk to about surfing say like, don't weight train because you'll get like bulky and then you'll get heavier on the board.

And then it's like blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, I did a few weeks of weight training and I can paddle so much faster and so much better surfing.

Like I can just tell, I can tell.

And so

I don't know.

I just feel like it's, it's helped out a lot very quickly in terms of just like very basic,

like moving through the world stuff.

I'm very happy to hear you say all that because I feel like I say all of these things and like no one believes you.

And not only that, but they say the, they're like, oh, well, you know, maybe that will be true, but then it'll be all undone by this like bulky argument, which is not

realistic for anybody.

Like it simply can't, like nobody can grow muscle that fast.

Like you can add muscle like one pound per month and that's simply not going to be the difference maker for most people.

But anyway,

yeah, I think the contribution of free weights when you have to stabilize them and they're like on your back or in your arms as opposed to on a machine is super, super, super underrated, especially because I have a column in my like to-do list to write about this.

But the fact that

not only is there this free weight stabilization, which you could say also takes place in like Pilates or yoga or whatever, but with free weights, you're able to do what we call overreach in a systematized way that scales with your ability.

But like

you can, when you're using your body, you're only sort of building your capacity for your own body.

Whereas like, essentially, you're, when you have weights on you, you're building your capacity for like if someone were to, you know, push you, like you have so much more, your muscles are gaining so much more

capability in that stabilization task because there's more weight that they're handling in this in this task.

Whereas when it's just body weights, only your body.

So, yes, that's like a really huge aspect of it that I think would come into play in surfing also with balance, right?

And I think people don't know about it.

And I feel like I have not, you know, there's a secret to talking about it.

I haven't landed on it yet, but I'm super happy to hear that.

Yeah, I think,

again, that's why I like reading your stuff so much is that it's very practical and pragmatic about this sort of thing in a space that is full of grifters and people trying to sell you stuff, whether that's supplements or

weight loss pill or their e-book, which I guess you are trying to sell us your book.

But, like, it's in a straightforward, like, I'm a journalist who did research sort of way versus a like,

you know, grifter way.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about how you've found the

fitness, journalism, health, journalism, science, journalism intersection space to be as someone who is coming at it from a very

journalistic perspective in a world that's like full of influencers and people trying to, where, where maybe the

incentive is not super clear, I guess.

I do think there's a lot of grifters, a lot of people who are just trying to make money off of everyone's insecurity and

shame.

And

they know that we feel insecure about how we look or what we eat and the fact that we are not quote unquote taking care of ourselves.

And so they're giving us all of these sort of

shortcuts to

try and be like a quick fix for all of these bad feelings.

And a lot of those bad feelings are rooted in like, I mean, part of why I get into all of like my family stuff and my own personal history is because it just sort of gratifies the idea that a lot of this is really complicated for everybody.

Like, we're told that dieting is simple or that exercise is simple.

And then we all feel bad because it's like, why can't I just walk into the gym?

Why can't I just like not eat cookies?

Like, what's wrong with me?

But for a lot of us, those things are immensely emotionally complicated and have to do with not just a matter of willpower, but like our sort of built up experiences in life.

And

so,

where was I going with this?

I guess the grifting, like, I, but I think even if you had the sort of best of intentions, there is a

like

tendency to

try and tell people what they want to hear.

And what they want to hear is not always like actually that helpful.

I think this stems from the fact that

the traditional sort of like

fitness educator in an adult world is like a personal trainer, somebody who works in a gym, and they have people coming to them.

And they're like, whatever the person wants, they have to sort of go along with it.

If they're like, I want to lose weight for my daughter's wedding, or I want to get huge biceps, it's like the personal trainer does not have space to be like, well, what would actually help first is if we build a strength base for you and then we can like bring in a calorie deficit or we can add in some more bicep accessories.

It's like they want what they want right now.

And your job as the personal trainer is to sort of more than it is to like actually try and take care of their health is to indulge their like

sort of almost fantasy of how things work.

So the beauty of the internet, I feel like, is that I can, I can sort of be like, this is my vision for how things should work.

You don't have to agree with it.

I'm not even really here to like convince anyone per se,

but my hope is to find my way organically to people who are, who have found themselves on the page of like, okay, I think like full body beginner strength training for a normal person might be where I'm at.

Is there a resource for that?

And then it's like, here I am.

And that feels like a much healthier relationship for both me and all those people out there, you know?

Yeah, I feel like.

So

when you left Vice, you started She's a Beast, like very quickly after that,

which is a subscription, you know, paid subscription just like 404 Media.

And I just felt like it was the perfect thing for you

immediately because you had this audience of people who were coming to you for Ask a Soul Woman.

And

I just, I've maybe, I don't know anything about the,

you know, exercise

health like newsletter space per se, but it felt like you were filling a gap that like extremely did not exist at the time.

And maybe it, and I think it probably still doesn't exist.

Like you are that gap.

You are, you're like the little domino that's holding up like the entire

like

science and

like facts-based real talk

exercise journalism ecosystem.

Maybe that's maybe that's being

I'm sure there's others.

I'm sure there's others is what I'm saying, but I'm not sure.

But I guess it's just like you, I felt like you were early to the newsletter game.

You were, this is a journalism question, essentially.

It's like,

I feel like you were early in the newsletter game.

I feel like you built a community very fast.

How has it been going for you?

Like, how, how, what does the space even look like?

Who are your competitors?

What's going on?

Right.

I mean, I think I have a combination of like

insane passion for lifting.

Plus, like, I bring a, you know, science research element into it, plus, like, a voice that people like.

Like, I do think that

there's people who tell me that

maybe not millions of them, but they're like, I kind of like everything that you write, regardless of what it's about.

So, I think that, you know, a little bit of humor or like

sort of candidness

or.

you know, playfulness in this subject area is not that common.

So I think people respond to that.

I think like a lot of this content can be like, I have people that I follow whose content I really appreciate,

but it can be maybe a little bit dry as so much research or science-driven content is not that fun to read about.

So I can like take it and

inaccessible, I guess.

Yeah.

Like pull it all together and sort of sum it up in a way that's like helpful to people where they don't have to then read it all themselves.

So yeah, I think there's a lot of like,

to me, there's a lot of room.

I don't feel like there's like, I'm not like elbowing people out of the way.

I mean, like media, unfortunately, has like been, it just like is flushing the toilet every

two and a half years, you know, like we lose so many people so fast.

It's like, if you can just sort of hang on,

that's a big factor in success.

Not only hang on, I guess, but like also have some integrity, Like

at the risk of being too mean

to

a lot of people, it's like

to be in this business and not be like doing tons of SpawnCon

or

doing your own sort of grift of,

I don't know,

selling supplements is one that comes to mind that seems to happen with a lot of fitness influencers.

But like,

to stay in it without going down that road is like unusual.

So, kind of in a way, just by holding on, I've like built some trust that I really cherish and I think has become, unfortunately, really rare in the media world.

And, uh,

but I value it.

It's like, I think if I wanted to

sell this newsletter or like,

I don't know, take, take, take sponsorships.

I could be doing that, but I feel like it would compromise what I want to be doing.

So, I don't do it.

And I've been fortunate to have the support of readers who also see the difference between those things.

So,

that's, I think, though, that's like a big problem.

I know my question was like all over the place.

Need to work on that.

But, um, I really do see like what you're doing.

and

you know i knew that what you were doing was resonating with people like you started she's a beast

i think a year before 404 media maybe longer than that um but i knew that it was like that you had built this community of people uh that people were subscribing to you that you were able to spin up a website You were on Substack, then moved over to Ghost,

which ended up being very important to us to not be on Substack Substack and to be on something that's like open source and that more aligns with our values.

And I just feel like the fact that you were able to do it and make it look like pretty easy.

I know it's not, but like really did give me a lot of confidence to say like, oh, maybe we should try something like that.

And I guess what I'm saying is like, I think that you have done a very good job in not in building what you've made to be beyond just like, I'm going to send you a newsletter sometimes.

It's like there, you have shirts, you have books,

and I feel like you have a very clear voice and a clear like value proposition that is like

you've staked out a lane of we're, I'm going to tell you what I think.

It's going to be well researched.

I'm not going to pull punches, but I'm also not like, I'm not going to compromise

my values because it might, maybe it would work better if I did it this other way.

And I feel like that's something that we have tried to do, where it's like, this is what we want to be buffer tech.

I think it's tough.

Yeah, I think I actually do make it look a lot easier than it is.

I've definitely had one of the

meanest things.

someone ever said to me was like, well, of course people pay for your newsletter because it's like, they feel like an obligation to spend money on fitness stuff.

Like your,

I think I was trying to encourage someone to start their own newsletter thing and was saying that I was having a good time doing it.

It was working.

And they were like, well, of course it works for you because

people spend guilt money on fitness stuff, essentially.

And I was like,

that's so wild.

I think that's true.

That's like not untrue, but such a

like,

I don't know, under

underestimation of like how much I put into this.

People might feel like it's an investment in their, themselves, which is not a bad thing.

But if what you're offering them is shitty, they're not going to stay

and they're not going to recommend their friends do it.

And

I

like a lot of people I know have found you through word of mouth

in the same way that we hope that people will find 404 media through word of mouth, where it's like, oh, you're not reading 404 media.

Like, what are you doing?

Like, you have to read it.

Like, here, go do it.

And it's funny, my

aunt lifts

and she, yeah, she found you through someone at her gym.

Really?

Yeah.

And I think, I mean, I hope she subscribed, but she definitely follows you on Instagram and is like, oh, swell woman.

Like, I love following her.

I love her.

And, but I do feel like it's a space where like word of mouth and community is so important.

And, um,

I do feel like, yeah, it's like, I think we've lost track of how actually helpful that can be because we are so used to all this like programmatic advertising and like people spamming social media and

paying paying for their own like sort of algorithmic driven, you know,

ads on Instagram or whatever.

But it's like, not only does that stuff not work, still the only thing that really works is somebody who you trust saying, hey, I like this thing.

Like, if you are interested in this, you might also like this thing.

And things don't grow as

you can't sort of froth your numbers

with that because like it doesn't happen that fast for most things.

Like, obviously, some things sort of go viral and it's like, you got to see this, the dress post.

Some people say it's blue and black and some people say it's gold and white or whatever.

And like but

good things

by and large sort of percolate more slowly than that so it's like you have to give them time it's like we see so many media ventures that start and then 18 months later they shut down because it's like oh we're not like we don't have like 200 million readers

and

And like we've run out of money to like pay Facebook and Google to boost our stuff.

Right.

Or for traffic from like Kazakhstan or whatever.

So yeah, I think that it's like easy to lose track of like your own impact.

You're like, who am I?

I'm one person like making a recommendation to another person.

But like

a good recommendation from like a person who you have like not somebody like like in Amazon reviews online, but like somebody who you trust to make a good recommendation is like, that's still the

gold standard of like

how these businesses work you know yeah

this is a very big question but but

what what why lift like in terms of like science science wise um because there is a lot of very good science in the book that talks about the benefits of lifting and we don't need to go like very deep into it but like what are the

you said it changed everything about your life like what what did it change about your life

i felt like the unique contribution of lifting to my life, as opposed to like

other forms of exercise that I've tried,

is that the sort of atomic unit of lifting is you do a rep or you do a set and then you pause, you rest for a while.

And then you're asking yourself in that time, like, how did that feel?

Was the weight too light?

Was it too heavy?

How is my form?

And you have this sort of incremental process of

self-perception maybe you're like learning how you respond to things and learning how to observe it and

i had had this experience in life of learning to always push down my feelings and always like kind of be on my toes and be responsive to everybody else and like it didn't matter how i felt i would take on whatever i needed to in order to like

create my own safety, really.

I thought that was what I had to do.

It didn't matter if it was fun or if it felt bad.

It was just like what had to happen.

I had no sense or concept of basing things around how they made me feel, or even

figuring out how I felt in order to base decisions or whatever around them.

So, having this kind of

discrete sandbox sandbox for practicing feeling stuff and observing how I felt was

this thing that radiated out into the rest of my life without me even really realizing it.

Like, I wasn't expecting lifting to

translate into like helping me figure out relationships, like sort of romantic relationships or relationships with my family or work.

But all of these examples sort of come to pass in the book where it's like, I

am able to better realize when I'm getting some bad signals from things and to value those signals because I'm so used to being like, well, even maybe if I do like have a sort of

pervasive bad feeling about something.

I'm used to thinking I'm wrong that I like if I if it were bad that someone else would tell me or like make it okay for me to act on that feeling.

But that's like not how life works.

You have to be able to trust your own feelings and act on them.

And that was a really

kind of zero to one moment for me.

Yeah.

In my very brief time lifting, I feel like

exercise always

helps push down my anxiety or helps relieve my anxiety, not push it down.

It straight up just like dissipates.

And it's a real like, you know, touch grass moment.

We talk about touching grass constantly on the pod

because you can't just like stare into the abyss of the internet all day

or phones or whatever.

And so that's why I initially really got into surfing because I was like, I cannot look at my phone in the water.

And I would just feel like so much better taking a moment away from.

the computer or my phone and then also just like all of the

much studied benefits of exercise, whatever.

Something that I appreciate about lifting though is that it doesn't take that long, at least when you're getting started.

It's like 30-ish minutes, 30 to 45 minutes.

And

in between sets, you rest for a minute.

So I have actually found it to be

a good happy medium for when

I need to like do something.

I need to like get away from my computer, but I can't be like fully away

for a minute, which I bet a lot of people have.

Where it's like,

I can answer an email in between a set or answer a Slack message if I have to.

And I feel like you can't really do that with other types of exercise.

There's like, there's like built-in breaks, and I appreciate that.

Yeah, there's like an

action and an inaction sort of like pattern to it that

I think is not only like

like I just enjoy it as a form of exercise where I was so used to it being you know you start running and you're not supposed to stop running for 30 minutes and you just got to keep going no matter no matter what happens no matter how you feel

and so I when I learned that in lifting not only could you, but you are supposed to

take these rests between only five reps and then rest, five reps and then then rest.

And that was

always something that I really liked about it.

And I think not enough people know that about it.

But yeah, it makes it a little bit easier to,

I don't know.

Yeah, it's like if you're running and you have to answer an email, you would have to like stop

slow to a walk and it would like ruin the whole thing.

Yeah, I feel like I can fit it into my life when I'm busy.

Like when I'm really busy, I I still feel like I can fit into my life without it feeling like I'm fucked up the entire exercise.

Like, cause you're right.

When I, when I run it and it's like, oh my God, like I, I'm getting a call and I need to take it.

It's like, cool, like, I've stopped.

I've stopped the exercise.

Whereas here, it's like, oh, actually, I needed to take a short break anyway.

But

yeah, I don't know.

I think it's like, if you've never lifted or if you have, you should definitely read a physical education.

You should consider, consider starting to lift because I,

again, it's something that I never thought I would like, never thought I would enjoy.

You're fully the reason that I even tried.

So thank you for that.

Oh my God.

I'm so happy to hear that.

I'm so happy for you that you finally gave it a try and that I wore you down and that the book worked.

That's the main, you know, I mean, it doesn't have to work.

I will say this.

You could read the whole thing and be like, that's nice.

I have like so much more knowledge, so many little facts that I can roll out at a cocktail party, but you, and you might not be compelled to lift.

And that's like totally fine.

It's like, you will just know a lot more than everyone else, which is always

not always a good feeling, but often a good feeling.

No, we love knowledge.

We love reading.

Casey, thank you for coming on.

Thank you for having me.

Thanks, everyone, for listening.

The book again is called A Physical Education: How I Escape Diet Culture and Gain the Power of Lifting by Casey Johnston.

You can find her at She's a Beast.

Highly recommend it.

I'm a subscriber.

You should subscribe as well.

And again, we're going to start mixing these interview episodes in as bonuses every now and then.

Thank you for listening.