441: Jillian Michaels—Keeping It (Very) Real

Well, if you want it real, you're in the right place.

This is the way I heard it.

My guest is Jillian Michaels.

You know her from, well, God knows, I mean, she's been around every day.

The biggest loser.

Yeah.

You know, her podcast, Keeping It Real.

So many things.

She is a bundle of energy, intelligence, charm, and wit.

In fact, this episode is called Keeping It Very Real because

we kind of go all over the place and we say some things that, well, you know, they're real.

In her words, she's going to destroy your algorithm on YouTube.

Yeah, yeah.

Apparently you say some certain things on YouTube and you get penalized.

I don't know about all that, but she warned me and we talked about them anyway.

So, hey, that's going to happen.

You're going to love her if you think you know her.

Maybe you already do.

I was so surprised that I hadn't come across her before.

You know, she's just, you know, she and I both sort of occupy.

a lot of the same space and it's just

it was really great to meet her and get to chat super nice person too i just very cheerful upbeat and uh just full of energy and generous and opinionated very opinionated very generous you know she's frustrated with a lot of things a lot of people are frustrated with certainly if you live in california you're going to be commiserating with a lot of this if you're frustrated by not quite knowing which expert to believe when it comes to your cholesterol or what to eat what not to eat or how to feel about the tariffs or any number of things, you will be commiserating.

You might also be wondering how many times I can misspeak.

I know, Chuck, is you were shaking your head throughout this.

Yeah, I was

a few things.

You know, we settled on, actually, I got this wrong because I said that there were only seven permits in California issued after the wildfires to rebuild.

In fact, as of today, there are 12 permits that have been awarded to 155 people who applied.

Okay, boring.

Nobody cares next.

Well, Edward Ring is the Director of Water and Energy Policy at the California Policy Center.

I don't know what you said.

Okay, boring.

Nobody cares except Ed Ring.

Okay.

The title of the Wildfires in L.A.

documentary that you mentioned from the 60s was called Design for Disaster.

That's coming up.

From the 60s.

Nobody cares next to it.

Okay, one more thing.

Mike Albrecht is the president of the American Loggers Council.

What I said.

I think you said National Loggers Council, and you know I'm a pedant.

Oh, God, you really are a pedant.

All right.

Well, thankfully, Chuck won't be interrupting too much during our conversation.

He's got that off his chest.

I've got it off mine.

Jillian Michaels is here, and she's keeping it very real.

You'll see right after this.

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I'm just thinking, like, if we did the six degrees of separation or like the Venn diagrams, you and I probably know like a thousand of the same people.

I would bet, yeah.

We were just saying off air a second ago, it's like, how have we not Like we've been in this game in this town, sort of.

We're adjacent to it for

decades.

I don't know, but I was so excited.

I mentioned to you when I got the pod request, I thought it was fake.

I was like, okay, sure.

Why don't you call my publicist?

And

yeah,

I just thought, oh, you know, he would never want me on his show.

I was so excited.

Well, look, it's totally rational because there's so much bullcrap going on.

Like, in general, I mean, we don't even never mind the deep fakes and all the other things, but there's somebody, Chuck, what's his name?

The guy who's impersonating the producer of this podcast?

Oh, I've already forgotten.

It's like two first names, like Daniel, Jason, or something like that.

I'm getting it wrong.

Thousands of requests go out.

Right.

Right?

And people, maybe there's a book to sell or a documentary to hawk or maybe, I mean, everybody's involved in something.

So like the cat's out of the bag if you can get on a podcast with a decent audience, right?

Yep, 100%.

So I don't know how the scam really works, but actually I do.

Once people start the conversation, then it's a simple question of, oh, we want to pay to fly you in, right?

We'll get your hotel room.

Just send us your routing information, right?

Like after three or four back and forth, and then the next thing you know, yeah, you're thanked for 20 or 30 grand.

It happens all the time.

Crazy.

I know.

I did get a fake one for Lewis Howes.

Oh, yeah.

And was that the art of greatness?

I think House of, I have friggin', he's got a huge show, I'm ashamed to say

something like that.

And my business partner flushed it out, and he was like, sorry to tell you, Lewis House does not want you on his podcast.

I was like, oh, okay.

But that's why I had thought I was like, man, it's not.

This can't be real.

And so I was quite pleased

to learn that I'm legitimate.

That doesn't mean that anything good is going to come of this, but you're here.

And we're going to talk until you can't stand it anymore.

Perfect.

Full disclosure,

I don't know what your prep routine is like or if you even have one, but when I'm down here in L.A., normally what will happen is Chuck will say, okay, so-and-so's coming in, and I'll get up early and I'll put in my headset and I'll like walk down PCH, which, by the way, is still closed.

What the actual hell is going on is.

It's going to be closed for years.

I did just have a talk with Corolla, who I'm going to guess you know because you guys have so many similarities.

He's pissed.

He is pissed.

And he's been doing these vlogs along the PCH, but he says that there are some pretty competent people in there now that are privately contracted but that are getting some of the cleanup done.

I'll be amazed if people can get building permits because this is the Pacific Coast Highway for those of you who live in saner parts of the world.

This is the beautiful chunk of asphalt that runs up and down through Malibu where I believe you used to live as well.

I had two homes in Malibu over the past couple of decades.

So one I lost in the Woolseley fire, which was 2018, and that took me a year to get a permit to clean up the catastrophe, just to do the cleanup.

And it was so daunting that I couldn't even fathom a rebuild and ended up selling the property, which is what I think the hope is.

But, you know, we don't need to go down this rabbit hole, wrap ourselves in tinfoil at another time.

But, nevertheless, I can't think of another reason why you would make it so hellish.

But nevertheless, the home that I sold in 2021 was on Pacific Coast Highway directly.

The other one was across from Zuma Beach, half a mile in from the coast.

First place,

first part of the ocean I ever jumped into, first time I ever came to California with that knucklehead who I went to high school with.

We went up there to surf.

Remember?

What's his name?

Oh, yeah, Matt Walker.

Matt Walker.

And I just was like, this,

I mean, we're going to say some hard things about California, I'm sure.

Oh, I can't wait.

Or Newsome.

I'll say hard things about Newsome.

I love the people.

I love the state.

I hate the governor and the way that the place is run.

But for so many people, like everybody in my life who knows me and understands kind of what I've done and more or less where I'm coming from, when they, here I live in California, they just look at me like a cat

heads looking at a new gate.

They're just like, why?

And then when they learn I'm up in the Bay Area, it's worse.

Right.

And so, crazy town.

I just feel every now and then I need to say something that is screamingly obvious, which is this is a geographically magical and unmatched place.

Its appeal

can't be understated.

In particular, that specific component of its appeal, it is universal, global, far-reaching.

Brought you here?

Well, I grew up here.

Kept you here for a while.

It surely did until the politics of the state drove me from my home.

And we moved to Miami for three years.

It became an issue with family and some work obligations.

So we ended up buying in Jackson, Wyoming, because it's an hour and a half out.

I can get in and out of LA quickly if I need to.

And it was begrudging.

I didn't move for years.

You're absolutely right.

Paying 13.3%

state income tax.

Frog in the boiling water.

A little more, a little more, a little more.

A little more.

Exactly.

And now it's, I think, going up to 14.4.

And now you have a mansion tax, highest sales tax in the country.

But you suck it up because it is so beautiful here.

It's a toll.

Like all the bridges in the state, there's a toll attached to it.

But man oh man, it's gotten high.

And I don't want it just, you know, a couple couple of people who have done well in their chosen field bitching about the money no one deep down cares about that

what you said before is interesting was it really the politics that drove you out or was it the policies

interesting both you make a very good point it was both the policies are insane and it's not that i don't mind paying the money it's the fact that we pay the most in california and get the least from the state it's not like education is tremendous it's not it's not like healthcare is tremendous.

It's not.

Try walking into an emergency room.

You'll sit there for eight hours unless you've been shot in the temple.

I mean, it does not run well.

I could be wrong, but the one fell into the ocean a few years back.

And I was just up in Napa for my wife's birthday.

And all the people up there told me that it's still not fixed.

So, you know, I haven't fact-checked this one, but...

It's not hard to believe.

You're like, well, that makes perfect sense.

Why would it be fixed?

You know, we spent $24 billion on a homelessness crisis to lose lose the money and have the problem become worse.

I look at it.

I look at it like misplaced urgency.

The things,

the policies that seem so rooted in urgency seem so

inconsequential in a relative way.

The ones that seem like ball's on fire, let's fix this now.

What is it, four permits have been pulled since the fire?

This is what's making Corolla go out of his mind.

I think they're up to seven now.

So

seven.

Oh, thank you.

They're really nice.

That's helpful.

I appreciate that.

That does change my perspective quite a bit.

I think that's by design.

I'm sorry, I can't fathom a level of incompetence.

Well, let me tell you what I mean by it.

I was listening to, since you brought him up, our governor.

I forget who he was talking to.

Maybe it was Dave Rubin.

I don't know.

But it was this,

he's doing his podcast now, right?

And he's bringing on voices from the other side in this kind of I don't know aren't I moderate?

Well, look at me wanting to bridge the gap.

Let's have a détente, shall we?

Let's just have a little parastroika in our conversation.

And let's, I'll hear you, you'll hear me.

And what struck me was when he said he was talking about the fact, the undisputable fact, that Afghanistan and India and Brazil and down the list of countries who are able to count millions and millions of votes in a day,

right?

We can't count.

It takes four weeks.

And on the one hand, he admits that that is unforgivable.

That's a problem.

The right has a great point.

But nowhere in the conversation is, oh, yeah, right.

I'm the governor.

Nope.

Maybe I'll fix that.

That's not there.

And that's what I mean when I'm like, well, where's the urgency?

in this and I can't find it.

I really do think it's by design though.

When he turns around and says, it's going to be different next time.

Next time you have a fire, we have a fire every friggin' six months.

I mean, northern Malibu just burned down.

The only thing that stopped it from getting completely wiped out from the Palisades fire was the burn scar from the fire that happened a few months before.

The natural fire road.

Exactly.

Like this man had a bill on his desk that had passed all the legislative bodies in California.

It was called AB2330 for forestry management, and he vetoed it.

That's not an accident.

That's not a lack of urgency.

That's on purpose.

You know for a fact that whether or not you have 100 mile an hour winds, you can mitigate what is causing the fire and you can improve how you fight it.

So, what could be causing it?

Well, meth addicts lighting fires.

We know that.

And 100-year-old equipment from our gas and electric company.

I mean, my fire was caused due to a $10 hook that was over 100 years old.

PG ⁇ E broke, started the Wolseley fire.

That actually was, I believe, the worst fire in California's history.

Nothing changed.

He didn't hold PG ⁇ E accountable because they were one of the top contributors to his governatorial campaign.

And in fact, utilized their firm to negotiate a lawsuit, or I'm sorry, to settle a lawsuit with victims of the fire.

And their settlement, in order for them to reap any benefit, was tied to the profitability of PGE.

The person who speaks most eloquently about this is actually Anna Kasparian, who is arguably more angry than me about it, which I didn't even think would be possible.

There's a lot of anger.

Yeah, I mean, that's by design.

He's paid to do that.

It's not a lack of urgency.

He's getting paid to not hold them accountable, not make them invest in the infrastructure, to wipe out the bill for forestry management.

He is, as Adam puts it, a sociopath.

I really believe it.

I really believe it, Mike.

There has to be a political reckoning for sure, and these conversations have to happen.

But I'll tell you what, I landed here the day the fire started and watched it unfold in slow motion.

In fact,

I was at the Huntley Hotel upstairs in the penthouse looking right

in your direction next to people who were watching their homes burn, one of whom had their pets still in the house.

Oh, my God.

Right.

And so it was an incredibly long, strange day that got exponentially weirder and weirder and more horrifying as it went.

I wound up staying down here for three or four days after that just because, you know, we were adjacent to it.

And I just, I was so frustrated.

But the first guest that I called, who would be terrific on your pod, was Edward Ring.

I don't know Edward Ring.

Runs the, was it California Policy?

California Policy Center.

He doesn't run it.

He He was the first president.

He was the first president.

Yeah, Will Swames doing it now.

Yeah.

And these guys are coming from, sure, there's a political bent, but fundamentally, it's forest management and water management and 20 years of

just a steady, steady, steady, it's coming.

It's coming.

I don't know if you saw this, but

there's an old black and white documentary that got a lot of

feet.

Later, Google Designed for Disaster, I think it's called.

And it's it's the Beverly Hills fire back in the early 60s.

It's the same thing.

I don't know anything about it.

That's because you're such a young pup.

Oh, that would be a good idea.

And it's so well preserved.

Well preserved, Ag Preeti.

Young pup, not quite.

Maybe just ignorant to this one, which I'm ashamed of.

But I appreciate you laying it at the feet of my youthfulness.

I'll take it 100%.

I knew there was a reason I wanted to meet you, Mike.

There's no new ideas.

There's no new tragedies.

It's just a wheel.

And I feel like, you know, I'm older than I've ever been.

And every time I look around, this little dock on YouTube presages this exact event, this exact confluence of circumstances from the wind to the low humidity to the Santa Ana's to the time of year.

You could almost set your watch by it.

And so watching that as this was happening made me call Ed Ring, and he came on and said a lot of smart things.

And that, to me, is what we need to hear.

Also, Mike Albrecht, guy who runs the National Timber Council, he sat right here and he blew people's minds with non-political facts.

For instance, a third of this country is forestland.

A third.

Most people don't know it because the planes really don't fly over it.

We fly over the plains.

Planes are over the plains.

You look out your window, you just see these vast open spaces.

A third of this country is timber.

It's rotting and it's burning because it's not being managed properly.

Now that's galling in and of itself.

But then you learn that the United States is the leading leading importer of timber.

You learn that California imports 80% of the timber that it needs, and it has more timber than virtually any place else.

So that's when I come back to the urgent thing, and I'm like, look,

like a fire is a great metaphor because when the flames are happening and you're the fire department, you've got to put the water where the heat is, right?

And we're not doing that.

And I know I'm preaching to the choir, but we can move on.

But any final thoughts on like, what has to happen?

We need new leadership here.

I'm sorry.

There were a million things that could have been done differently and they weren't.

And Mike,

I appreciate, you know, we need urgency, but I really do think that it has to do with special interests influencing the people in charge here.

I really do.

When did you become, were you always

vocal politically?

I know you've always been vocal, but like my experience of Jillian Michaels out there in the, in the ether, is a category expert with a lot of passion, a big heart, and a stubborn streak.

For sure.

So

how did you?

I'll ask you the question I get so, so, so, so much.

When did you veer so inexplicably out of your lane, Mrs.

Michaels?

Wow, I love that you get that question, though.

All the time.

Oh, I'm surprised.

I don't, I've always, never mind.

I've always seen you in this capacity.

When someone likes you and then hears you say something they disagree with,

it's almost impossible for them to not share their disappointment with you.

Interesting.

I'm so disappointed to learn that.

I have gotten that some.

But I've also, conversely, gotten, I'm so glad you said something.

Thank you for saying something.

No, I was never political because health was never political.

And the things I cared about, like houses burning down and people not being able to get fire insurance and having their lives decimated by natural disasters,

weren't political or rather

apolitical.

I mean, they were

like bipartisan.

Everybody cared whether it was political, like if it's political,

both sides cared.

Yeah, fire doesn't care.

Yeah, like this is, wouldn't somebody on the right and somebody on the left want to save people's homes and livelihoods?

Wouldn't you want your constituents to be healthy?

So,

given that, over the course of, honestly, I think the past 10 years, we've seen everything become a political football, in particular, MySpace, which is health.

And when we started to have these psyops, like you can be healthy at any size, and there's no such thing as biological sex, and it's perfectly fair for a biological male to compete against a biological female.

There's no differences.

This is when you just go, hold on.

There's right and there's wrong.

And I have to say something.

Because you feel like those issues are either

right down the middle of where you live or adjacent enough to not be ignored.

Absolutely.

100%.

And somebody has to say something.

So here's another interesting component: is

when you are medicalizing gender dysphoria in children, right?

I'm gay, so I kind of hold a card in your little acronym that still makes no sense to me.

Well, you can certainly have a seat at the table, right?

So, I'm a mom.

I also work in the health space.

I've spent the last 10 years interviewing MDs and PhDs, so I have some understanding about what would happen if you interrupt puberty or the side effects of cancer drugs, especially when used off-label in perfectly healthy teenagers.

And you can't call me a transphobe, although people are, because I have a record of fighting for rights for this community.

This is my point.

Now you're out of your lane.

Not because of your opinion, but because your opinion runs counter to another deeply held opinion by somebody who's got, in their minds, a lot more skin in the game.

This episode is brought to you by PrizePicks.

Look, as the producer of this show, I make decisions every day, from which guest to have on next to when I should start looking for a new producing job.

I got a lot to decide.

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You just pick more or less on at least two player stats.

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I would argue I have far more credentials than the majority of those people.

And the experts are not actually experts.

And in fact,

the biggest,

the biggest advocates for this is a group called the WPATH.

And they're like, we're the world authority on transgender medicine and gender affirming care.

And Mike Schellenberger did an incredible expose called the WPATH Files, where he, through FOIA requests and whistleblowers, exposed that these guys knew.

what they were doing to these kids, that the kids didn't comprehend and the parents didn't comprehend.

They would be sterilized forever.

They would never have an orgasm, that there were significant risks to bone development and brain development.

They couldn't comprehend the choices, and they lied about it.

It's a billion-dollar business, first of all.

And then there is an ideology that people fight for.

But now we have pretty good evidence through something called the Cass Review, which was a systemic review.

Yes, yes, a pediatrician by the name of Dr.

Cass out of the United Kingdom, who worked for the Royal Academy of Pediatrics, one of the best pediatricians in Europe, arguably, did an independent, she was tapped by the government to do a meta-analysis, a systemic review of all the different studies on gender-affirming care.

It took her four years to do it.

The poor woman has subsequently gone into hiding.

I can't even get her for an interview because she was so attacked and destroyed.

But, nevertheless, due to the results of her research, all of Europe was like, hmm, let's, ooh, let's, let's pull back on this.

But here in the States, the WPath argued that she was wrong.

And of course, guess who funds them?

I don't want to say it on your show because I don't want it to get choked out, but, you know,

the drug companies fund them.

Okay.

Oh, right.

And you were saying earlier, it's like, so people's eyes now start to glaze over a little bit when we start talking about big pharma.

And your algorithm will,

this fascinates me.

I don't care.

It'll get choked out.

I think it's important, though.

I was saying earlier when I'm walking and I'm listening to you interview Bill O'Reilly of all people.

I know.

How the hell are you interviewing Bill O'Reilly, I think?

But I listened to it.

Because I don't understand tariffs.

I don't want to.

Well,

it was a great conversation.

And the thing that struck me as you were trying to figure out

all of the wonky economic stuff, because, right, most people today,

regardless of what lane they're in, are frustrated because our world is populated with experts on a given topic that don't agree with each other.

I know.

And what does a rational guy do when the experts can't come to a consensus?

Now, maybe it's about climate change.

Maybe it's about conception, life.

Maybe it's about the ethical treatment of animals.

Maybe it's, you just go down the list of things.

If the experts can't agree, what are the rest of us to do?

So Bill O'Reilly comes on your show to try and explain the nature of these tariffs, which is so interesting to me.

And you expressed, as an avatar for your audience, the kind of frustration most of us would feel when we run headlong into a buzzsaw full of contradictory facts.

Yeah, completely.

But as I'm listening to it, I'm thinking,

but that's what's happening in health, too.

Absolutely.

Most people who are just trying to live look at the back of a box of cereals cereals and say, what the actual hell does this even mean?

I can't pronounce half of the words.

And how come this one says statins will save my life and this one says they're going to kill me?

And how come everybody I have now, all my friends over 60, are getting conflicting advice

about what to do?

Oh, the HDL, the this, the this.

So everywhere I turn, and this is why I thought that conversation.

on your podcast was important, not because it was about tariffs, because it was about this overwhelming, ongoing talking past each other because we got no experts to help us anymore, it seems.

The experts are often conflicted, and I don't mean due to some nefarious corruption, but people do root themselves firmly in their ideological positions, and they, I mean, cholesterol being a big one, obviously, and they hold that ground as tightly as possible.

They're not attached to outcomes.

They're attached to being right.

Dogma.

They're certain.

Exactly.

So, the first thing I want to know is: what is your dogma?

What is your incentive to prove a point?

Is it to get to an end result?

Is it to truly explain what's going on?

Is it to find real answers?

Or is it to prove, see, we told you Trump was a bad guy and you voted for this.

Look what you did.

Look at the economy.

And I'm like, nah, you just, you have Trump derangement syndrome.

I'm not buying it.

He's not freaking deluded.

I don't buy it.

He's been saying this for decades.

We've all seen this clip of him on Oprah explaining.

1988.

Yeah, explaining the asymmetries in trade and the need to not export our manufacturing and to have national security of being able to produce our own drugs and our own chips and our own technology.

Like there's a reason he's doing it.

You'd have to be an idiot to think there wasn't.

Now the question becomes, what's his end goal?

Is he going about it the right way?

You know, is there a pain point?

Well, he'll reverse course or what should we be doing?

How should we take this information and make the best choices for ourselves?

And you've got to find somebody that isn't fully entrenched in their dogma, that is, is also an expert, though that does matter.

So that's why I asked you before.

Is it politics or policy?

It's both.

Are we capable of looking at an idea or a concept or a claim separate and apart?

from the bad orange man, separate and apart from the old man that preceded him, and take our feelings about those people and set them aside and try and approach it with something like a scientific method.

I'm just still stuck with the idea that what's the point in getting a second opinion if you know for a fact it's going to gainsay the first opinion.

And when you know where the opinions live, what's to stop the average confused person from simply going to get the opinion that they secretly want to hear in the first place?

You're absolutely right about that.

That's your confirmation.

You're absolutely right about that.

I've seen it work

for somebody and against them.

You know who it worked for?

This is interesting and arguably irrelevant to our conversation, but I found it fascinating: Tony Robbins had the tumor.

I believe it was on his pituitary.

Yeah, the growth.

Yes.

The giantism.

Exactly.

And everybody was like, you're going to die.

You're going to die.

You're going to die.

And he just kept going to doctors until he found one that said, leave it, you'll be fine.

And then he was.

No, I don't think that's great advice.

I'm not advocating to angry

a tumor in your brain.

However, I think it does say something to the effect that you need to defer to your common sense and your gut instincts about something.

So there's a PhD who I happen to love in nutrition science by the name of Lane Norton.

And he just goes out there and tears into everybody.

And the reason that I ended up becoming friendly with him is because he tore into me about protein intake.

And what I said when we got in our initial fight was, you're not really tearing into me.

You're tearing into these other five PhDs and the American Medical Association.

That's the advice that I'm giving.

I love him 90% of the time, but he'll tell you there's no data that says artificial sweeteners are bad.

And this is the part where I just think, Lane, we got to default to common sense here.

Powders, synthetic powders that are made in these crazy factories, there's no universe where I want to pretend like that's healthy.

I just, common sense dictates to me that it's not.

Well, where's the duty of care?

Like, why do I have to prove that something that seems so logically nefarious isn't?

Why don't you have to prove that something that seems so unproven is actually good?

I mean, you could ask the same question about any new medicine, any new vaccine.

And now here we go.

Well, because I'm going to destroy your algae.

I'm going to kill this show right now.

And I swore I wouldn't do it.

You're going to get five views.

The issue

is the the question who specifically are these five

that's four more than i remember a few really dedicated subscribers that will like seek out the show the day that it drops but the the algorithm will just push it right off of a cliff and the truth of the matter is that our

the three letter I'm going to try to word it in such a way or hopefully I had a the three letter agencies that are responsible for regulating this are captured and

the chemicals like artificial sweeteners fall under the grass rule, which is the generally recognized as safe rule.

And this is a loophole within the FDA that allows food companies to vouch for the safety of the chemicals.

And the FDA just goes, yeah,

cool.

almost every other country of the developed world, 9,000 plus of those chemicals of the 10,000 that are in our food, are banned.

So this is why, you know, you got to say to people,

common sense, you know, if it wasn't around a thousand years ago, 500 years ago, you know, a hundred years ago,

it's probably not great for you.

And what's the downside of you not consuming it?

Like, so if I'm wrong, and let's just say artificial sweeteners are perfectly safe.

Is there any downside to you not consuming them if I got it wrong?

What's it going to cost you?

Nothing.

But if I'm right and you're consuming them unknowingly and you're drinking five different diet sodas a day and you're putting it in your coffee and it's in your sugar-free treats and

it could potentially be bad.

And the cumulative effect.

of all these chemicals, it's very difficult to isolate one of these things.

You really can't do it.

And when I talk to the different doctors and the different PhDs that come on my podcast, why is early on-site cancer diagnosis up 79% over the last two decades.

You can't answer it because you cannot isolate.

Is it the plastics?

Is it the 10,000 chemicals in the food?

Is it the freaking pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides that are being sprayed on the crops?

Is it the fact that the crops are genetically engineered?

Is it the vaccine scan?

You could look at all of it together.

You can't isolate these things.

It's probably all of them.

Yeah, and just the sheer tonnage of it.

for the average person.

This goes back to my earlier point.

The average concerned, responsible person wants wants a workable understanding of tariffs to the point where at a cocktail party, they can form an opinion, articulate it, and then have another hors d'oeuvre and get on with it.

I think the same is true with should I eat that or instead of that.

We can't even seem to agree on

keto.

We can't seem to find a consensus.

I feel I can answer that one for you.

Should you want an answer?

Yeah, of course I do.

Okay.

Or just high protein, low carbs.

Honestly, high protein, high fiber is pretty good.

As long as you're not overeating your calories, you're not going to get too much protein.

And people really aren't.

So with that said, the bigger issue is that we're not getting enough protein, especially women.

But the thing with keto is it's an elimination diet.

In other words, If you can say, well, we've had improvement in autoimmune conditions and we've had improvement in type 2 diabetes and we've seen a lowering of body weight.

Well, sure, because we removed all of the garbage that you put in your body.

However, we threw the baby out with the bathwater.

What's the baby?

The baby would be organic blueberries, pomegranate seeds,

purple potatoes.

There's a great doctor by the name of Dr.

William Lee who is also a scientist and looks at the ways in which food can cure disease.

And this man is credentialed to do so.

He's brilliant.

He's written numerous books.

I've had him on my podcast a bunch of times.

And he wrote a book called Eat to Beat Disease.

And he looks at, for example, the ways in which pomegranates can help grow a microbe in your gut called acromancia.

And studies have shown that when your acromancia is completely depleted from, let's say, one Z-PAC and not replenished, it makes you more sensitive.

susceptible to different types of cancer.

So now you're on keto and you're not eating the friggin' purple potatoes that can help fight colon cancer and the pomegranate seeds, which can help boost acromancia in the gut.

So it really is a continuum.

It's an elimination diet that is far better than you going to the fast food drive-through every single day.

But there's a robust amount of data for, you know, when you get into carnivore, for fiber.

There's more data around the health benefits of fiber than saturated fat.

There just is.

And we know for a fact that fruits and vegetables, unless you have some sort of food allergy, have tons of nutrients in them that boost your overall health and wellness.

So we do know these things.

We do.

Are we going to come back to a balanced diet?

Is that basically what you're espousing?

I would.

I always do.

There is no Jillian Michaels diet.

I don't sell a diet.

It really is common sense.

Eat whole foods.

Don't overeat.

Try to remove chemicals as often as possible.

Get a friggin' water filter.

Get an air filter.

focus on getting your sleep and move your body as often as you can, but at the very least, have a step goal, do a little bit of strength training.

That's 90% of it.

The rest is baloney.

And even if it isn't baloney,

like, I'm sorry, I'm watching all of these really, and I don't mean to crap on anybody, and I won't say names, and they could be right, you know.

Look, you already screwed the algorithm.

Crap on him.

Nobody's listening.

Like, you know, Methylenblue.

Oh, my God.

The synthetic dye is God's gift.

And I'm just thinking, you know, like my grandparents who,

like, that didn't smoke live to be quite old.

And it wasn't because, you know, they had a methylene blue.

So, in other words, like, I,

at the moment, I am 51.

I am perfectly healthy.

You look fantastic.

Oh, you're very kind.

You're very kind.

I do.

I mean, for people who aren't aware of that.

For people who are watching,

if the evidence demands a verdict, and if what you're screaming has any efficacy at all, then you got to put yourself out there as some measure of proof.

I always

thought that.

Honestly, one would hope so.

I've said that for years.

I'm like, when do I get credit now for being 51 and not saying, oh, menopause has decimated me.

I couldn't keep the weight off.

I couldn't, you know, mind you, I mean, I don't know.

I'm sure I'm experiencing perimenopause on some level, but I have no symptoms of it.

Well, I didn't want to say anything.

No, of course not.

Look, you know, I would hope that I would be my own testimonial to a certain extent.

And you are.

But the reason it's interesting is that we're living in a state now where, like once upon a time, no one

possessed of rational thought would take health advice from a morbidly obese practitioner.

But today we do.

Because something happened in our brains that convinced us it would be rude to hold that person to the very standard that they're suggesting we embrace.

Now, that's crazy town, but we have entered it.

We must be this tall to get on the ride, and we are, right?

So, it's

the compliment I mean to pay is that it's refreshing to see somebody walk the walk and bring the receipts.

What you're doing is clearly working.

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There is no dogma.

That's why when Lane Norton criticized me about protein and I was like, all right, come on, let's talk.

And he convinced me.

I I ended up subscribing to his position.

With that said, though, it was in direct opposition to the American Medical Association.

But see, Mike, this is where, right, you're like, well, geez, which expert do you trust?

And you got to look at, okay, who captured the AMA?

How much were they paid for the studies that gave these mandates, if you will?

You got to defer to your common sense.

And it was also Lane Norton started to say it.

Dr.

Rhonda Patrick started to say it.

Dr.

Peter Attias started to say it.

So it was PhDs and MDs.

His book's amazing.

I love Peter.

He's such a good guy and reasonable.

You know, he's a reasonable guy.

I disagree with him on GLP1s, but...

He had to take 500 pages out of his book because the publisher, it's already as thick as a phone book.

And the publisher's like, I can't.

I can't publish like 1,600 pages on this.

Yeah, he was like, ah, you know, I may have overreached on this context.

But it makes my point in a slightly different way.

How much school do I have to go to to arm myself with an effective survival guide?

As you formulate an answer, think too about whether or not cookie cutter advice, like to what degree is cookie cutter advice really a problem?

I think, you know, in my world, like my lanes are education and labor.

And I mouth off a lot about the dangers of telling a whole generation of kids that the best path for the most people is a four-year, very expensive path.

Right.

Even though you can look at the data in all sorts of different ways and conclude that that path does, in fact, yield fruit for various other reasons.

And then we're going to have an argument that's going to get complicated.

But

I just see the same thing in your world.

90%,

by your own admission, is common sense that can apply universally.

It really does.

But the other 10%,

What if I've got some preexisting condition?

I mean, it's diet is medicine.

Food is medicine.

You can find it though.

So for example, if you're getting your physicals regularly, example, you brought up cholesterol, and this is, man, is this a complicated one.

But

you can get answers.

So I brought Dr.

Arthur Agotston on the podcast several years back, and I said, okay.

I don't understand.

Am I eating saturated fat?

Am I not eating saturated fat?

Can dietary cholesterol become serum cholesterol?

Like, my cholesterol is at 200.

Am I going to have a heart attack?

Do I need statins?

And this is why he created the calcium score.

So what he ended up explaining is that certain people have a genetic predisposition to be hyperabsorbers.

And he said for a small percentage of the population, they are able to, in fact, take dietary cholesterol and absorb it into the arteries.

It can happen.

And there are people that lack an enzyme to clear low density lipids.

They can do a cheek swab to find out if you're one of those people.

They can do a calcium score to see if your cholesterol is in fact getting into your arteries.

It's quantifiable.

And then at that point, when you go, okay, I may have a cholesterol of 220, but I have a calcium score of zero.

I don't need to worry about this.

But if my calcium score is higher or it's showing plaque in the arteries, then I can have that conversation with my doctor.

So another example would be Lane Norton does take statins.

And he's like, I've always had high cholesterol.

It hasn't

affected my testosterone levels.

So you can take that individual and you can say, oh, I see you've got a genetic predisposition.

You do have cholesterol in the arteries.

Let's put you on a low dose of statins and see how your body is responding to the side effects of that.

And if you have that information, you can have that conversation with your cardiologist.

So if that cardiologist or your internist says,

okay, you've got a cholesterol of over 200 and this is bad, we need to put you on statins, before they do that, ask for the cheek swab and the calcium score and then see a cardiologist to have a more detailed conversation.

So I get it annoying.

I have six friends in mind right now.

I hope they're listening to this.

I hope the algorithm hasn't hasn't squashed them.

I do too.

We'll have to send a link.

I will.

I mean,

Jesus.

When,

how is the better query?

How do we get trust back into your field?

Since you mentioned the AMA.

Yeah.

And since we're going to get squashed in.

Subsidiaries of big pharma, basically.

It's the army of angry acronyms.

Yeah.

In people's minds.

The CDC, the WHO, the AMA.

In my world, it was OSHA.

It was, you know, EPA.

Of course.

You know, like, yes.

People watch dirty jobs through the lens of their own expertise.

And when they saw things that ran afoul, right?

And so we are beset.

We're beset with acronyms and experts within those acronyms, some of whom you say are captured.

I'll give you some examples.

Okay, I'd like to hear about it.

And by the way,

I'd like to better understand what role, if any, you've got in Maha and your relationship with Bobby.

Are you ready for this?

I have no relationship with Bobby.

You want one?

I've met him twice, but that just goes show.

I have no agenda.

I don't work for the administration.

I'm not getting paid.

He's not a homie of mine.

I don't even know his phone number.

I've met him twice on a hike, once with my friend Brigham Bueller, who invited me along, who runs a wellness company called Ways to Well.

What's his name?

Oh, he's awful.

Brigham Bueller.

Brigham Bueller.

He's just, I,

God, he's such a good person.

With a name like that.

You'd have to be.

He's just such a good guy.

And all these,

the landscape of, listen, I also like Dr.

Mark Hyman, but Brigham has a company called Ways to Well,

and he also has a compounding pharmacy in the baloney.

You've heard about compounding pharmacies.

It's a whole separate thing.

I suggest you interview him.

He's brilliant.

He's been on Rogan.

He's been on Tucker.

He's made the rounds in that circle.

But he also understands uniquely peptides and exosomes and stem cells.

And he's working with the administration in reforming the FDA.

Brigham had invited me on this hike, and then Callie Means

had invited me to testify in front of Congress, and Bobby happened to be there.

I'm also very careful, not that I think there's anything wrong with Maha, but I don't...

I'm not looking to be captured.

I don't want to be Maha because if something goes wrong, I'll say so.

Just one more acronym.

Yeah, exactly.

Kind of the point.

And I don't love, you know, God forbid there should be an attempt to monetize the movement.

I want to be careful to make sure that I'm not a part of that.

If that happens, if something does go wrong, I will call it out completely.

You know, and it's like, we fired people who inspect food.

And I called Callie and I was like, I need to know what's going on.

You know, I'm hearing this through in the zeitgeist.

And he's like, Jill, listen, these are all the things we're doing right, which I have been following.

You know, we're trying to get rid of the grassroll.

We're initiating studies to find out the root cause of autism.

We are

getting all the garbage out of baby formula.

We're trying to get soda off of snaps.

All this awesome stuff is happening.

He's like, but we are moving quick and mistakes are going to happen.

And when they do, we're going to fix them.

But you can't expect perfection.

Mistakes will happen.

And I said, I completely hear you, but you better be careful because if there's an outbreak of gonorrhea and we fired the people that are tracking that, you know, that doesn't look good.

Not a good look.

And they know that.

these aren't bad people.

If mistakes will happen,

there's no intention to fire those people, there's no malicious intent, it is a mistake, and mistakes will be corrected.

But I want to be able to call balls and strikes, I don't want to monetize any of it.

I've been a great advocate for Bobby, I think I've evidenced that, but there is no dogma for me.

I don't belong to anybody's club, and um, if something goes sideways, I'll call it out, period, you know, end of story.

What in the hell does your business card even say these days?

Oh my gosh, I don't even know if I'm in business these days.

Well, I mean, back to the tariffs.

That hurt, right?

I did feel that.

That hurt your interest.

It did, actually.

We just signed a deal with a treadmill company because I've been talking about walking pads so much.

Because, you know, you want to give people something accessible.

So it's like, what can we do?

I'm like, we'll get a walking pad.

So this walking pad company reached out and said, does she want to create her own walking pad?

Does she want to work with us and endorse our products?

We just got this deal done.

And we were supposed to do a shoot May 14th, and they manufactured the products in China.

So they're like, yeah, that's right.

They're like, we're going to need to pause the deal.

We've got to figure out what we're doing if we're going to move manufacturing to Vietnam.

And there's very little I can actually do to make money.

I'm perfectly comfortable, don't get me wrong, but I don't work with big food companies.

I don't work with big pharma companies.

Eight best-selling books?

I do have eight best-selling books, but there's no money in that either.

Best-selling video or DVD workout.

You used to be able to sell content.

Now

people are conditioned to get content for free.

So

podcasts are free.

Nobody's paying me any money.

If we can call together enough through ads, then to cover costs, that's great.

Get her 20 bucks.

Yeah, we can give you 20 bucks.

Coffee at least.

Absolutely.

I offered you one earlier.

No, you did.

You did.

You're not.

Not the record show.

We offered coffee, tea, water, whatever she wants.

A nice soda.

Yeah, yeah.

That'd be great.

No artificial sweeteners.

I'll take the straight sugar.

It just, it's difficult to monetize it because you can no longer charge for content.

It's a loss leader, which is fine.

And I'm comfortable from the days I did sell content.

So that's great.

But

if you could sell something that you believe in, like a freaking treadmill or, you know, a creatine supplement,

cool.

That's right in my wheelhouse.

and I can make money being honest with you and doing what I like to do but both of those businesses yeah got smashed by the tariffs because the freaking containers that the supplement company I invested in they come from China so a whole shipment got turned around and I was just like well you know it is it is what it is well that's kind of what I was

I was muttering to myself as I was listening to you and O'Reilly talk about this.

I had a similar conversation yesterday with Theo Vaughan.

Oh, I love him.

Have you been on?

I have not, but I think he seems like a very sweet soul.

He is, I think, about,

I think he's the most unique person in the space right now.

Really?

I really do.

He's got such a big heart, this kid.

He's from Louisiana.

On the one hand, he's, there's something almost, this is, this is probably the wrong word, but there's, there's a weird mix of, he's wholesome.

He's redneck.

He's a hillbilly.

He's a little feral.

There's something feral about him.

He talks to the president about like doing cocaine.

And he's got, and he's sitting across from the president.

But I saw him do something once.

I love that interview.

It was my favorite.

Yeah, man.

I just show up in the middle of the night, just like staring at shit.

And the president's like, yeah, so

was it alcohol for you or was it the, you know,

it was so

great

to see that level, right?

Anyway, Theo,

I saw him.

I did a show a couple years ago, and I wasn't sure who he was, and I came back and I started looking around, and he's very much into the addiction space.

Very much.

He's recovering, and

as he says, always will be.

But somebody called him and he listened for 15 minutes as this person

talked about their struggle.

with addiction and how the setbacks and the frustration and the fear and the self-loathing.

And Theo just sat there looking at the camera, listening, never interrupted him.

And after 15 minutes, Theo talked for like five minutes about how he could commiserate.

And he didn't really offer advice so much as encouragement.

And I'm like, who does that?

So anyway, I'm on Theo's show yesterday and we're kind of complimenting each other.

But we're having

this same conversation about trying to understand

what the tariff thing means.

And Bill just reminded me of it again.

And my take real quick is that you're either having a tier two conversation or tier one.

If it's tier two, it's only about the economy, your personal economy or the macro economy.

And I don't know any economist right now who's saying the tariffs are a good idea for the economy.

But if you're having a tier one conversation,

earlier this week, a guy sat where you're sitting and told us the story and offered the receipts of the fact that 60,000 to 100,000 organs are being harvested from prisoners in China.

The number of

every year.

It's a $9 billion business, Jill.

And the number of prisons now with hospitals built next to them is shocking.

And that's gruesome.

And the Fulong Gong, who's been persecuted for decades, 70 to 100 million of them, many of them are political prisoners, people are scheduling.

open

heart transplants.

You can't schedule a heart transplant.

You have to go on a list and you have to wait for somebody to die in a car wrack and be

brain dead.

Right, of course.

Because you can't take it from a cadaver.

They're scheduling major organ replacements and they have been for years.

So the thing I wanted you to say to Bill and the thing I said to Theo that'll probably squash his algorithm was you're either having a tier two or tier one conversation.

And if you just like me come right out of a conversation where you're seeing the receipts of organ harvesting happening in this country or the Uyghurs or go down the list of things and go, look, we just have to decide, are we going to be in business with these cats under any circumstance?

And that's tough because now you got your treadmill involved and I got interest and everybody's, that global supply chain touches a lot of different things.

Sure does.

But it's real hard for me to look at that and not think about 1860.

in this country and the conversation about what's going to happen to our economy if we get rid of slavery.

What's going to happen?

And the arguments were loud and very persuasive.

Some even said that the economy could collapse to the point where there'd be a war and tear the country apart.

We can't get rid of slavery.

But then on tier one, people were like, Yeah, you know what?

If you're going to wear cotton, you ought to at least visit a plantation.

You ought to at least look

at how the slaves are treated.

In the same way, if you're going to eat a steak, you ought to go to a slaughterhouse.

Right?

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Yes, I've personally been impacted by that one.

I know exactly what you're talking about.

I have too.

And so look,

this is back to policy, not politics.

I don't want to make it about Democrat or Republican, but these are hot issues.

You could put abortion on the list as well.

You could put capital punishment.

You're for capital punishment.

You ought to see a hanging, and you ought to see the switch flipped.

You're for abortion, you ought to see that too.

You're for slavery, or you're for wearing goods, right?

That's where we are now with China.

It's really unpleasant.

You want to kill your algorithm fast?

Say what I just said.

Yes, I get it.

It'll walk me right around the barn and shoot in the head.

But I'm telling you, we're talking past each other with health issues, with tariff issues, with all the big issues of our day.

When we reduce it to nothing but what's it going to do to the economy?

Yeah.

Then we might as well talk about work, like, well, what's it pay?

As if there's nothing else to the job.

What's it doing to my friggin' Roth IRA?

Yeah.

But when I look down the road, you have to ask that question of: if Trump doesn't deal with this, does Rome fall?

They're like, oh, no, it's never happened.

You know, I'd had that conversation with Bill Maher a year ago, and he's like, no, no, we're like a teenage boy that just gets away with everything.

It's like, but forever?

So I have to imagine that all the things Trump is concerned about and has been concerned about for decades are very real.

Previous administrations have kicked the can because look at the chit show it's created.

Who would want to take that on?

Bill Bill did make a very good point, though.

They're like, couldn't we have gone country by country?

I can't speak to it.

I'm certainly not an economist.

But I do think something needs to be done.

It's clear that tier one here is, there's bigger problems.

That's it.

Without question.

So I'm for change.

I hope this is the right way we're doing it.

I don't know.

I'd like to trade with everybody that...

doesn't offend a tier one sensibility, but not because they have something we need, because they have something we want.

And then we can make a reasonable deal.

My buddy's an American giant.

You know, the CEO comes in here and he's,

this is a Wall Street guy who started making sweatshirts and hoodies and jeans in America just to prove it could be done.

But he's my age and he remembers in 1988, 80% of all the clothing we wore in this country was made here.

Today it's 2%.

And the argument is, well, you know, these jobs, these factories, it's really better if somebody else makes them for us.

And the next thing you know, you're having the same conversation about oil and timber and medicine.

I just had this conversation about drilling.

Like, oh, well, are you happy?

I'm like, gas is down.

Well, yeah, because we're drilling here.

But I was like, but what is this?

Where do you think the gas is?

Same planet.

So you're okay drilling in somebody else's backyard, but not here.

Now you're dependent on Russia or Iran or whatever in the vague understanding I have of this because you don't want to pollute our environment, but it's the same planet.

I think it's a closed system most of the time.

From what I've read,

well, the planet rotates, Shelly, you see, and above the planet is the atmosphere, and the degree to which it rotates with the underlying landmass, I'm not sure, but I'm pretty sure that the smoke from over there is eventually going to get out of it.

Right.

You know, we don't want to cut down the trees here because of the woolly mammoth mole that lives in the bark of the fallen oak or whatever the heck it is.

Well, now you're going to care about them in Canada's forest?

Like, what am I missing about that?

It is so bizarre.

You're not missing anything.

It's NIMBY.

You know, it's not in my backyard.

Yes.

And that's what Ed Ring would tell you about the spotted owl and the tortoise and the delta smelt.

And there's a long list of misplaced priorities and misplaced urgencies.

And look, everybody's got a different dog in the hunt and everybody cares more about this than that.

And that's what I think we've got a front row seat to.

You know, throw the internet, throw our devices on top of everything else.

And now we can participate in the conversation, if it's even that.

We can participate in the miasma, the shit show, as you would say.

It's happening all around us all of the time.

Constantly.

And nobody knows who to trust and what to believe, which is why it's a good time to have a podcast, right?

Because you can, I mean, who else is going to talk about this for this length?

I mean, forget the mainstream.

They can't do it.

It's going to be Theo Vaughn.

It's going to be you.

It's going to be Rogan.

You know, maybe us to some extent.

I don't know.

But that's.

Of course.

Where else are we going to talk it through?

Are you following the criticism that Joe is getting because Douglas Murray said you're platforming people with dangerous ideas?

Are you following that at all?

I watched the whole thing.

I did too.

Fascinating.

I loved every minute of it.

It was the best discourse.

I agree.

Warts and all, right?

Warts and all, but Dave Smith and Douglas Murray with Joe Rogan assuming the role as some kind of de facto moderator and 12 million people listening.

I took stuff away from both sides, by the way.

Absolutely.

I was like, oh, I didn't know that.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Oh, wow, I didn't know that.

And it did shift me a little bit.

And I ended up writing Dave and I was like, Dave, I got to be honest, I have always leaned more pro-Israel, and I still do.

But you made some really good points that have shifted the way that I'm looking looking at this and the lens through which I'm viewing the situation.

And I appreciate your humbleness, your openness, your intelligence, the fact that you're always out there doing these things.

And I was geared more towards Douglas Murray's position initially.

I am too.

And maybe still am, arguably.

But, you know, it still kind of am.

Well, the thing I disagreed with with Douglas on was the primacy of experts.

And the reason I liked your conversation with Bill is that you got a chance to be you, the person we know, but out of your comfort zone and trying to learn and trying to understand something.

Douglas was arguing that, look, this is the grown-up table and the stakes are very high.

And I don't really know that we need a comedian coming in here to mouth off about the geopolitical realities that are liable to either usher us into a third world war or not, right?

And Dave's point is like, well, wait a minute.

Have the experts let us down, yes or no?

Is there a consensus anywhere among the experts?

And Douglas is like saying, well, look, yeah, there actually is.

Winston Churchill was a great man, the right guy at the right time.

And to have these other people out there suggesting such and such is crazy and irresponsible.

And I'm sitting home listening to that thinking, yeah, you know what, I do agree with that because I've read everything there is to read, I think, on Churchill.

But what do you say to somebody?

I mean, what about a flat earther?

Yes.

What about somebody who wants to say, hey, you know what?

That virus, it wasn't from a wet market.

Right?

Yep.

So now you have to pick.

Now you have to decide, you know, which your issue is and when you start to feel uncomfortable.

What he should have said was, hey, what do you say to somebody who's pretty sure the moon landing was faked?

Now, Joe's had a dozen conversations with people who believe this.

Should you be allowed?

to talk about

that possibility.

That's right.

Did you just see that they uncovered some obscene amount of money in grants

from the Biden administration to combat disinformation?

And of course, it was all tied around COVID, which was completely diabolical and nefarious.

So you start to see these videos of politicians, whether it's Hillary Clinton or Senator Kerry, guys like Bill Gates.

We got to have AI that filters out this health disinformation.

Well, could that be?

Because you have billions invested in the tech and the vaccine.

And you realize Bill Gates

funded something called the Virality Project, because I had a woman who was vaccine injured on my podcast during the AstraZeneca vaccine trials.

He funds this thing called the Virality Project to suss out vaccine hesitancy on the web.

This is the brief that lands on Biden's desk that he then utilizes with...

what was Twitter and is now ex and Facebook to have them systematically silence dissenters.

You want that?

Or are you willing to listen to a guy that says Churchill was the bad guy?

I would much prefer to do my own homework on an issue.

I'm sorry, than have the alternative.

And I don't know where the middle ground would be because which experts can you trust?

You only have a choice, in my opinion, to consume all of the information and do your own homework.

I'd rather have all the information.

And that is chaos.

If you're asking 330 million people in this country to do their own homework and arrive at their own conclusion, and we know that the experts that exist, we know they're out there to confirm virtually any belief.

So all the reasoning can become reductive, and all of the opinions now can be bolstered by the fact that I found an expert, like you were saying with Tony.

You're like, look, I found a guy who said, leave it alone.

So I'm going to leave it alone.

So we're not going to unwrap it.

I think it's the most interesting and best time to be alive in the history of the world, if for no other reason, because wow, wow, man.

If you're bored right now,

then you're never going to be engaged with freaking anything ever if you can't find something to just luxuriate in, right?

So I see that as good.

But the challenge, the challenge is to come to terms with the fact

that this thing.

My little device here with an internet connection.

I could go live right now on Facebook with 7 million people watching and say any foolheaded thing I want.

Right.

This is a gun.

This is a weapon.

But Mike, where's the agency and the accountability?

To a certain extent.

I like when you whisper by the way.

That makes it intense.

I'm not crazy about it.

That's okay.

He's like, uh-oh.

Mike, where's the agency?

People need to take her care of it.

Just blew it up.

Wasn't ready for that.

Yeah.

Go too aish for it, buddy.

At the end of the day, we do have to take some responsibility.

And we love to put people in this victim state.

Oh, you can't lose weight because you have a disease called obesity.

Oh, no, you can never elevate yourself out of poverty because the world is against people of color.

Oh, no, you know, it's this constantly, you're too stupid to do your own homework.

You're not sophisticated enough to figure it out.

You're a climate denier.

Honest to God.

You're a protein denier.

You're a saturated fat denier.

That's what you are.

Look, on the one hand, what we need, I think, more than anything is to encourage healthy skepticism because that's the root of science.

To be willing to be wrong, that requires humility.

You make a great point.

But this is my job.

This is all I got.

I don't really work anymore.

I've never thought of that one, though.

Hold on, wait a second.

I don't do shows anything.

Some smart person should come up with the graph that juxtaposes the relationship between certainty and skepticism.

Or humility, you could say.

And it seems like the more fraught things become and the more uncertain things become, the more humble we should be because surely, no matter what your belief is, a whole lot of people are wrong about everything.

Now, I don't think that lines up politically.

I think my conservative friends are wrong about a certain number of things.

And I think my liberal friends have managed to get their heads so far up their buttons.

Oh, my God.

But

I don't think we can paint with too broad a brush.

And to your point, that requires extraordinary homework.

That requires like, you've got to look at every issue and you've got to think, what's his name, Ben Shapiro in the first term with Trump.

He used to be like, look, there's nothing left for me to do except say good Trump, bad Trump, and look at every single decision through the eyes of that decision and nothing else.

And so he did.

And I admired that.

I tried to do the same thing.

I tried the same thing with the last president.

I tried to do the same thing with everything.

But it's really hard.

I'm finding it difficult.

I know.

I see what you're saying.

Especially because, you know, when Trump does something

that people really don't like, like the Maryland guy that they sent to the El Salvadorian prison, and the Supreme Court said, bring him back.

And supposedly, they've defied the Supreme Court order.

And I'm thinking to myself, if all of this is true, I'm against it.

And then all my friends on the left are like, you see what a monster.

And it's like, so who wants to take that on?

So you want to defend it because you don't want to hear that you were wrong and they were right.

But I will acquiesce and say, if all this is true, I disagree with it.

However,

all the things that happened with the Biden administration, letting all of these gang members in in the first place, letting the cartels utilize our border as a billion-dollar business, trafficking kids, trafficking fentanyl.

You know, if 1% of 14 14 million people are criminals, not good with that either.

If I've got to pick an evil, I'm still good with my choice as it stands right now.

And if you're not, just check out the news 24 hours from now.

Because I got news for you.

That Maryland thing is looking a little wobbly.

I saw that today in the free press.

Really wobbly.

So, look, back to the tariffs.

The thing that

amuse is the wrong word, because I got businesses too, and I got a 401k, and I'm in the market, and this is not pleasant to watch, you know.

But the thing, when it moves this fast, the experts are now confronted with a new challenge, which is your opinion, whatever it is, is now based on data that's irrelevant and obsolete because you're still alive and an hour went by or a day.

So it's like, an hour went by.

That's so true.

I've never seen so many otherwise reasonably intelligent people look so foolish because, I mean, my buddies over at the National Review write these thoughtful, reasoned pieces.

I don't always agree, but they come out because it takes time to write 2,000 thoughtful words.

It takes time to edit it.

It takes time to get it out there.

And by the time they get it out there, there's a new headline.

And every single thing they wrote about, never mind if it was right or wrong, it's just over.

So

it's like trying to read a book with no spaces between the words.

That's where we are now.

It's like trying to read the back of a script or

a list of ingredients.

It's just Greek and a lot of stuff jammed together.

And I agree with you.

We have to do our homework, but nobody trained us to do this level of analysis and thought on every freaking topic.

I don't disagree with you.

I like your solution of what is the percentage of skepticism you need to apply to every scenario?

What is the gut check on the issue?

Is your expert captured?

I mean, we saw that with Burks and Fauci and Collins.

I mean, very clearly they were captured.

And you could tell that's the part where it just, if you didn't see that these guys were captured, if your common sense didn't dictate that it didn't make sense,

I am somewhat surprised.

Even just the concept of the mask, you can get it in your eyeballs.

I mean,

it doesn't, you know, we're...

We can't broadly encourage skepticism if the immediate reaction to someone who's skeptical is to brand them a denier.

Yes.

So you're a vaccine denier, you're a wet market denier, you're a mask denier.

I still stand in jetways a couple of times.

a week and I still see the signs six feet apart.

And I'm like, to the airlines.

You realize none of that is rooted in anything scientific.

And the people who asked you to implement that rule have since walked it back.

Why are these stickers still here?

Why in the world won't you take the stickers away to say maintain social distance?

I see it in airports, in jetways today.

What's the answer?

I honestly don't know.

I mean, it could be Occam's razor, you know, the simplest.

It could be, you know what, the maintenance guys.

It's still on my mom's building.

When I walk in, it's like, masks.

I think to this day,

but no one just bothered to take it down.

I think maybe the act, like,

if the person who put it up believed they were doing a virtuous thing, then the only way they can take it down is to admit they were wrong or lied to by someone they trusted.

And that's painful.

It's always painful to realize you've been betrayed.

You know,

I really don't struggle with that, but I

appreciate like that moment where it's like, oh God, you know, you get attacked by your friends who hate Trump.

But I had a vaccine scientist that was literally sold to my podcast producer years ago.

It's like, oh, you know, this is one of the people that's working on the vaccine tech and they just want to educate your audience.

And I was like, awesome.

Thanks.

Let's do it.

And looking back now, oh my God, it's like, oh, it just stays in the shoulder.

It's out of the body in 24 hours.

We've had this tech for 30 years.

Don't be a fool.

And all of it was a lie.

I know.

But I didn't know at the time.

I thought I was a good guy.

I thought I was doing the right thing.

And that's the part where I'll say, like, I'm sorry, I gave you bad information.

I did not know.

I thought this is an expert.

Surely.

I think if you can walk it back,

At least you're role modeling that for other people and more people can do it because you're only as good as the information you have.

Well, look, humility

allows you when you put bad policy into place and you say, Listen, we're doing the best we can.

Nobody has a crystal ball, but this is what we think right now.

That's different than saying, Trust us, we know what we're doing.

Now,

since we want to got to land the plane here in a minute, but we'll bring it back to your hero.

What did Newsom do?

He not only implemented the policies

with certainty,

he violated his own policies.

And for me, you'll have your list of reasons.

Everybody will have their hot button.

I'll never get over the French laundry.

Oh, I will not.

I will never.

Absolutely not.

I will never get over it.

I'll forgive it because, hey, I'd like to be charitable.

But that level of hypocrisy in a governor

should be disqualifying.

Period.

I completely agree with you.

And he was the last one to reopen the schools.

He was the most draconian with his lockdowns.

He arrested a guy right out there for surfing.

Yes, I remember that.

Basically, in the same week, he was having dinner at the most expensive restaurant in the state without a mask.

So I can't pretend that didn't happen.

Like, to the earlier point, that's a thing

I have to look at.

If I'm going to consider voting for him, I have to look at that.

I don't need to measure it against the other option.

I just have to look at that and say, that level of hypocrisy is either tolerable or it's not.

It's a personal decision.

Final question.

It's not even a question, but I want you to talk just a little bit about your philanthropy.

Because I don't, I'm endlessly interested in why famous people do nice things.

And this is your opportunity, by the way, to make yourself likable to those you've offended in the last hour.

I mean, right.

To be totally honest with you, I get involved in different things, but I'm very much against internet philanthropy, like the posts.

I hate that stuff.

One thing that really impacted me many years ago, I had a previous client who I had been a personal trainer to, and she was a producer for Maria Shriver at CBS News, and then produced a documentary on refugees, in particular, the crisis that was going on in Syria at the time.

And you're seeing these disgusting, horrific visuals of little bodies of children and babies washing up on beaches.

And my dad is Syrian and Lebanese, so I thought, like, am I even, am I related to one of these kids?

That could be like my third cousin, this little child on the beach.

And the things that you don't work for, that's, I mean, if we were to use, I hate this word so much, but if we were to be honest about things that are, quote, a privilege, I didn't earn being a citizen here.

I got lucky.

And then you've got the to whom much is given, much is required.

And I wanted to find a way to be helpful for the people that were not advantaged in the way that I was.

So we started working with the United Nations Refugee Agency.

And I went and stayed at a refugee camp in South Sudan.

I wanted to go to Syria.

I want to be clear.

I didn't end up in South Sudan because I'm a white savior.

I ended up there because much bigger celebrities were raising awareness in Syria.

So they asked me to go to South Sudan because nobody was.

I stayed in a refugee camp there and of course donated and tried to raise awareness and started an online campaign where it's like, okay, get people to sponsor you.

Refugees take this many steps over the course of a year.

And that's a cause that's really important to me.

And I do believe in legal immigration.

It's one of the reasons I adopted internationally because I was like, I have this golden ticket.

Two kids, right?

Two, but my ex had my son.

He's a great kid and he's adopted adopted to me, but he was a citizen, obviously, regardless.

But I had the ability to give somebody citizenship.

I did it legally.

It took me two years.

It cost me a heck of a lot of money.

And I had the means to do it, which is why I didn't adopt in America, why I

adopted internationally.

So for me, that's a really big deal.

And I do think that we have,

I know for a fact, we had a very good system in place to vet refugees.

There had never been a terrorist attack by a refugee that had been relocated in the States.

This is very different than being an economic migrant, and it's a separate podcast entirely.

But it's something that, for some reason, has moved me pretty deeply.

And animals, the animal stuff's big for me.

It's the innocents, man.

It's just the ones that can't, cannot, under any circumstance, pick themselves up by the bootstraps because they literally have no boots.

There's no means.

No thumbs.

Exactly.

Yeah.

That's the thing about bootstraps.

If you don't have a thumb, man.

Screwed.

Well, look, Matt, that's probably about the smartest place to leave.

How long have we been talking, Chuck?

You're like 90 minutes or so?

Not quite that long.

That's long enough.

An hour, 20.

I mean, I could talk to her forever.

You probably got life to do.

You got people out there

desperate to take a few pounds off.

That would be it.

Live a better life.

So forth.

Website, anything you want to, like, where do people go to get more of your particular brand of authenticity and charm?

JillianMichaels.com.

And the podcast that you mentioned is everywhere you get a freaking podcast.

Keeping it real.

Keeping it real.

Maybe I could get you on his yes.

Anybody listening?

Because my standards are pretty, well, never mind.

It depends.

Don't say big trees.

If you know exactly what I'm doing.

You'll get tons of views.

I'd be happy to.

Where do you podcast from?

Van Euys.

You have a studio in Van Euy's.

I thought you were out of the state.

I am, but I joined Bill Maher's Network, and that freaking studio is in Van Nuys.

I got you.

So I come in and out.

Where's the new home going to be?

Jackson, Wyoming.

Oh, yeah.

That's awfully nice.

It doesn't suck.

The Teton.

You know what I love about the Tetons?

Unlike any other range, these things, they come like right out of the ground.

Like this.

It's dramatic.

It's so.

It is.

It's great.

I'm glad you have a good view.

And

at the risk of sounding sexist, you've certainly provided me with one.

Thank you.

I was.

Take it.

I will take it.

Thank you so much.

Come back anytime, and I'd be happy to darken your doorstep.

Sorry, what's up?

100%.

Okay, that's Chuck.

Yeah.

Well, or who's ever in his position.

Yeah,

he threatens to fire me a slight out there.

We're getting rid of him next week.

Thanks, everybody.

It's Jillian Michaels.

I'll talk to you next week.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, guys.

This was so much fun.

Good.

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