Raw Eggs, Ancestral Diets & Fitness as Defiance: A Conversation

[00:00:03]foreign [Music] by the man the legend a raw egg nationalist um he is an author an anonymous bodybuilding icon and in the words of Tucker Carlson if the Bro scientists have a spiritual leader it would be the man who calls himself raw egg nationalist welcome thanks ever so much for having me Alice thank you so much for coming on um this has been an episode that I've been planning I kind of wanted to to speak with you for a while and then at one point you followed me and I was like yes excellent now we can we can get things going um you are you know as as my intro implied somewhat of um and yeah essentially an icon because you represent almost the physical being of you exudes this uh this Aura um of of um wisdom about nutrition about Fitness and about nationalism so um tell me a little bit about slonking I mean this is kind of the this is what it's called the the consumption of raw eggs and um why is this such a symbolic gesture well I think it's I think it's it's symbolic on a number of levels it's it's an essential part of of uh raw egg nationalism because the egg represents in many ways the opposite of the kind of disgusting food that we're offered today uh by global corporations uh by you know these these these huge companies that uh control ever increasing proportions of the food market in the U.S and around the globe the the egg is a local food it's nutrient dense it's highly nutritious uh it's natural you can get it right from the source you can keep chickens in your own garden or you can go to your local Farm if you live in the countryside and pick up some some eggs you know there's no there's very little mediation between um a consumer of eggs and and the eggs that they eat ideally um so I mean we sort of fixed on the fixed on the raw eggs I think for that reason but also because they are uh they are an incredible superfood they're much maligned much maligned food in fact I don't think that there are many more many other foods that have been quite so maligned as eggs because eggs contain significant quantities of cholesterol and uh fat then they've been um for 50 50 plus years really then we've been told not to eat eggs when in fact actually what we should be doing is eating as many as possible one of the things that I talk about or talked about recently in an article that I wrote for the American mind which was about just egg which is this uh vegan plant-based egg alternative which is just like something Satan himself um you know might have come up with um in 1968 uh when Linda B Johnson was President then he was in a similar position to Joe Biden today he was uh suffering a a series of um crises that the Vietnam War inflation crisis and he was told by one of his advisors that people were getting very very ordinary people in the US were getting very very annoyed about the fact that the price of eggs kept rising and so what did Lyndon B Johnson uh do well being Linda B Johnson he told the uh Surgeon General to issue a warning about the cholesterol con about the cholesterol uh content of eggs and so that really began this this sort of 50-year process of of demonizing what is actually you know one of Nature's most perfect superfoods um so yes I wrote about that not a lot of people know about that but that is actually that is actually the primary reason why eggs in particular in the US have been singled out as something that people with heart conditions people who have high cholesterol shouldn't eat uh when in actual fact in recent decades and the science is is pointing completely the opposite direction now but actually consumption of cholesterol is good for you that consumption of cholesterol doesn't raise your blood cholesterol levels unless you've got some kind of quite uh rare condition so really what we're doing is we're we're pushing against the corporate regime that is trying to sell you you know processed foods and foods that are as far away from the the kind of foods that our ancestors used to thrive on and then there's and then we've just embraced eggs because yes they are a superfood uh once upon a time they were integral to uh Golden Age bodybuilding diets Vince durander who is my avatar he was a golden age bodybuilding Guru and he was a great champion of of eggs and the consumption of massive quantities of eggs rather than anabolic steroids so it's uh yeah it's it's I mean that explains the the health aspects and the nationalism aspects really too yeah so it's a kind of an aesthetic movement and historically informed by kind of this bodybuilding culture and I mean it looks good as well like kind of that what would it be like 70s error bodybuilding there's quite a lot of inspirational images from that period And I can imagine that kind of flows into into the personas that we see on on Anonymous Twitter yeah well it's I'd say it's more it's like 50s to 70s and maybe 60s is the kind of late 60s sort of uh is probably the the real kind of flowering of the Golden Age um uh when you've got people like well Vince Ronda but also people like Arnold Schwarzenegger just starting to emerge just really before the physiques became grotesque that's the thing you know the the Golden Age bodybuilders um still still wanted to achieve the sort of Timeless aesthetic principles that the Greeks had laid down and in fact that's actually something that Vince geronda himself says in his book which is called the wild physique he talks about the Timeless principles of Aesthetics that were established by the Greeks 2000 years ago and that inform his entire philosophy of bodybuilding so he was he was very different from bodybuilders today who would who would be interested really only in putting on as much mass as possible if you look at if you compare a bodybuilder from the 1950s or 60s to a modern bodybuilder I mean that's you know it's um it's an it's an incredible incredible change that has taken place and really what they've done is they've abandoned any sort of um any kind of sense of proportion symmetry balance that kind of stuff's all gone out the window and it's just it's just mass for masses sake really yeah they they tend to look like those uh genetically modified um I don't know colors that they have for beef I think like Charolais or something just like some some yeah genetic aberrations um yeah it's it's interesting because you know as as as a woman you know looking at those you know pictures from the 60s and 70s I can kind of understand the Aesthetics I mean those guys are big you know if you'd probably pull all women they'd probably prefer a smaller physique even even so but the um the guys that are now I know Mr Olympia or something like that they look like Abominations from the pits of hell like there's just something wrong with that and you know it's kind of like just viscerally repulsive um it's body dysmorphia really it is there's no there's no doubt about it it is a form of body dysmorphia yeah male to male transgender what was it yeah that was very good that was Darren Beatty wasn't it yeah it's a piece about uh Black Rifle coffee yeah that was a very good thing yeah it's interesting kind of going back to the the egg thing like how deep the um the propaganda about it goes like even here in Romania like I I tend to to feed my my you know I have a son who's like a year and a little bit uh old and I tend to feed him a lot of eggs and a lot of butter like I I spoon feed him kerrygold I know a lot of people will judge me for this but he loves it um and uh I think like a few days ago I just like you know in passing towards uh um a lady that helps me out like watching him for a few hours while I work um and I told her all he's he's had four eggs today you know he's been really he's he's been eating and she was like oh my God you know you're giving your baby heart disease they don't get heart disease that early number one and two he's fine he loves it like it's it's it's absolutely fine for that uh but it's it's incredible I mean this this lady you know she's in her 50s she's Romanian she's not on you know any sort of connected to the internet but it's um she she's been thoroughly um um incepted with this information that you know you shouldn't be having salt you shouldn't be having eggs you shouldn't be having butter you should have uh sunflower oil everyone Cooks in sunflower oil here that's the main uh thing and if you ask someone like what's the price of oil it specifically refined sunflower oil that's what people cook in that's what you fry and that's what you put in soups and stuff it's it's quite uh quite sad um so she's really concerned about me but I'm fine but it's crazy how you know how deep the The Story Goes and you know even people who you'd think like are kind of a more Trad minded here um they uh yeah it's been it's been a while since this information got out yeah well it's I mean it's listen we've been bombarded with this kind of information for decades and decades I mean it's it's not only it's not only that we've been well I mean we we've undergone a fundamental transformation in the way that we live and eat in the last 100 or so years uh and this is something that I talk about in my new book the ace Benedict option why we're eating this way well it's it's a complicated story and uh it does have to do with industrialization with urbanization um it's not you can't simply say that it's uh some kind of conspiracy or plan by big corporations to make us ill you know by by feeding us substandard food although it does look like that to some extent and it certainly is the case that you know corporations and the medical establishment are the chief beneficiaries of these significant changes that these Transformations that have happened in the way that we live and eat and they continue to benefit from our real health and uh encourage it really with with faulty science and with and with a kind of medical Focus that's on ad hoc treatment rather than addressing the underlying causes of of people's um uh illness whether mental or physical but um yes we've in in the last hundred years we really have moved fundamentally uh away from the kind of foods that we should be eating the kind of foods that our ancestors at that sustained them and and allowed them to flourish one of the key books I think that anybody who wants to understand this process and its implications uh is Western price nutrition and physical degeneration which I I talk about heavily in the eggs benedict option because it's it's an amazing amazing book so Western price was a dentist he was Canadian but he had his practice in Cleveland Ohio in the I think he qualified as a dentist in something like 1890 or 1889. anyway he had this practice dental practice in Cleveland at the turn of the 20th century Just As Americans were beginning to um undergo this diet transformation so a transformation from what we might call ancestral type foods to the products of industrial industrial food production refined grains um different kinds of vegetable oils that kind of thing but but especially refined grains and refined grain products so he noticed in his dental practice that more and more of his patients but especially children would turn up with um worse and worse dental health so they would he was seeing more and more children with terrible cavities with malformed jaws uh narrow cheeks narrow nasal passages recessed Jaws what you have to understand is that dentition uh the the overall health of the face and the mouth is actually an index of broader health so you know if you if you are displaying these kinds of symptoms physical effects in your face and mouth then actually your whole body is going to be unwell too so so Western price noticed these changes taking place and he started to form a hypothesis about what might be causing it and being a sensible man he thought it's probably what people are eating now so he went on this globetrotting Trek basically across every continent apart from Antarctica in search of traditional societies who were still eating their traditional foods uh in order to try and find groups that displayed perfect health so so dentition he was looking at their faces at their at their um facial development and their teeth and Jaws but also overall their you know resistance to disease their physical their stats their stature all that kind of stuff uh and he found he found I think 15 or 16 different groups different um tribes traditional societies people like the Inuit the Maasai he found some people in the outer Hebrides in in Scotland some traditional Crafters you know living on the islands who were eating eating their traditional diets people up in the high Alpine areas of Switzerland uh you know Dairy Farmers uh people in the Torres Straits islands off the coast of Australia northern coast of Australia and what he basically discovered was that all of these groups um despite the geographical differences despite the cultural differences we're all prioritizing one particular kind of food and that was nutrient what you might call nutrient-dense animal products so these are things like especially organ meat liver especially uh fatty cuts of meat so not the lean cuts of meat that we might prize like you know the tenderloin or fill it but the fattier cuts of meat uh things like eggs um blood products or just blood plain and simple uh milk milk and cheese um uh what else uh and fat products as well things like butter lard that kind of stuff and seafood seafood was the other thing so uh you know that was those are the kinds of foods that people in their traditional settings will prioritize if they can and if they can eat them then they will display fantastic health and those are precisely the kind of foods now that we're that we're moving further and further away from in our in our diets in the developed world and elsewhere you know there's no even in Western prices time then he found among these traditional societies groups of people who were starting to eat western style industrial industrial um grain diets and they were starting to display all the all the symptoms that he that Western price noticed back in his uh back at his practice in Ohio so yeah we're moving away from a template of nutrition template of dietary Health that was laid down well probably when humans first uh you know when humans first became human and they're uh you know there are studies there was a recent Israeli study for instance that um suggested that our more distant ancestors so not other forms of hominids so not Homo sapiens but other forms of hominid were super carnivores which basically means that they ate nothing but meat and the authors of this study reckon that maybe for two million years our ancestors at nothing but meat basically so I I I think the the value of a book like Western price is nutrition and physical degeneration is that it it basically lays out some iron rules what I would call iron rules for nutrition and um it's very it's very hard to dispute his findings and I think that we can lay so many of our of our um present ills at the feet of this dietary transformation that has taken place within the last hundred years yes I I have to say I just in terms of my experience with these diets I have to say I agree um I mean I've I've been probably my leanest and healthiest and by that I mean just my waist circumference I feel like that that's been the best kind of indicator of My overall health that I've ever had um has been lowest uh almost like to the sense that I've changed body types when I was doing keto the ketogenic diet but mostly meat and then I did carnivore for a few months and that was really excellent but just I was working in the city of London and I was working in sales and I had to go out with clients and you know there was steak juices seeping into my you know serviette to like it was it was a very kind of logistically troubling situation so I had to kind of had to quit it after a while uh but yeah that's it's almost impossible to compare just the way that I felt um I wasn't it wasn't very for enjoy Insurance Sports because I ran like a race at that point it was really bad it was a very hard race but intro maybe I wasn't adapted to that diet yet but it was uh in terms of anything else from gut health to just sleep to how I felt during the day it was just incomparable to any other existence I would say well I mean one of the things that I say to people in general is just look if you feel if you feel rotten if you feel really awful try changing your diet try a radical change because you can always go back this is the thing and this is it it always surprises me actually that people don't people aren't more willing just to to try six weeks of a totally different diet because actually within six weeks I can assure you um if you change your diet in the right way you will feel like a different person you know I mean if you're if you think you're sensitive to gluten and a lot of people are and gluten sensitivity actually is you know is rising around the world for various reasons not least of all because uh wheat is is very heavily treated with chemicals including glyphosate which is an absolute nightmare um but also because modern varieties of of wheat have been engineered so that they would have been engineered with with the consequence that actually they produce a more indigestible form of gluten in Greater quantity than um uh older varieties of wheat so you know it it's not a surprise that more and more people are actually becoming gluten intolerant or showing signs of gluten intolerance um but you know just if you think you're gluten intolerance stop eating bread stop eating stop eating stop eating gluten and see how you feel I I would bet you would feel a lot better I mean I get I gave up red and I've I've never felt better it was it was an amazing amazing um it was a revelation really actually when I gave up bread just just the uh the mental Clarity and the lack of uh any kind of sort of digestive problems any kind of any kind of um sort of bad feelings in my in my stomach all of that was just gone and that was just that was one food stuff but yes I I the the uh it yeah my advice is always to people look experiment on yourself experiment on yourself there's no there's no reason not to and there's potentially a huge amount huge amount to gain now what what would be let's say maybe the the top three interventions that you think most people today would benefit from like top three experiments that one might try uh okay well yeah I would say firstly uh give up gluten you give up gluten uh there's all sorts of there's all sorts of evidence actually for the really quite harmful effects of gluten not only physically but also mentally so there's a there's a paper that's become quite notorious because it's at the back of Mike Mars book harassment architecture it's called bread and other edible agents of mental disease which is quite the title for a paper but it's about it's about the evidence for uh links between various sort of mental disorders schizophrenia all that kind of stuff and gluten consumption and uh it's a historical there's all sorts of historical evidence there's evidence from from uh the great uh Famine of I think 1934 or 19 1943 or 1944 in Holland uh for instance when there was a a bread shortage massive red shortage and rates of mental illness decreased dramatically all sorts of evidence like that um substantiate the links actually between quite serious mental illness and um uh gluten consumption so I yes I would say intervention one eliminate gluten uh and also uh but be aware that gluten is used in a lot of a lot of products you'll find gluten in in places you would never expect to find it and it can actually trigger and it can actually trigger um it can actually trigger reactions even if the gluten is present in something like shampoo gluten is used in cosmetics as a thickener and it can it can trigger reactions so so be careful try to try to read the labels try to find out what um what's in the products you're eating and uh so pay attention uh number two I would say uh is cutting out vegetable and Seed oils and this is uh this has been a big thing on Twitter on right wing Twitter and uh spreading over now into the sort of Normie Consciousness into the mainstream I think but vegetable and Seed oils are are bad are very bad although they are promoted as being healthy fats in fact uh quite the opposite is true and there's a very long history for very long history behind why animal fats came to be demonized and vegetable and Seed oils came to be uh came to be um uh held up as healthy alternatives that is very very interesting but I won't go into too much detail here but anyway vegetable and Seed oils are in everything they are a Mainstay of all processed food so if I say to you cut out vegetable and Seed oils what I also mean is cut out all forms of processed food because processed food is is is very bad indeed it also contains you know lots of sugar colorings additives sweetness all sorts of all sorts of disgusting stuff what you really want to be doing is you want to be preparing your own food as much as possible and preparing it from whole food sources uh the third intervention actually I I wouldn't call this uh well this is a dietary intervention but it's more of a technical intervention learn how to cook that's that's absolutely key as far as I'm concerned learn how to cook it's not that hard learn how to learn how to use a saucepan a frying pan learn how to control the heat in the frying pan get some good cookware I use copper cookware and because copper is such a good such a good conductor of heat it's actually quite possible to cook a steak in butter without burning the butter um but it will be that will be that will be another transformative thing I think if you can learn how to cook you can uh you're much more in control of what goes in your body because you don't you don't need to rely on other people's cooking in order to uh to get your nutrition yeah that's that's a a really good um note because I've um I do have copper cookware as well but I have to admit I keep it on the wall as decoration at the moment so it's not uh it's not being used I use non-stick pans I don't exactly know what they're coated with but I'm sure it's some some ghastly Abomination should I take these things off the wall and learn how to cook with them yeah absolutely yeah the non-stick Coatings aren't uh aren't particularly nice I mean I don't think it's such a problem when the saucepan is new but once it starts to get scuffed you'll get microscopic bits of the of the Coating in the food so yeah I would I would counsel you to use those those very attractive copper copper saucepans uh I mean I was lucky enough to inherit some to inherit a big load of old sort of French copper cookware and it's just one of the things one of the best things about copper cookware is just that it is um it conducts heat so well it spreads it disperses the heat very very nicely over the surface of the pan that's why for instance um copper cookware is very good for making custard for boiling milk because you don't get hot spots where the where the milk will start to curdle which is something that you get with other forms of cookware so yes I would yeah I would say yeah bit bin the bin the um been the non-stick stuff yeah I will it was It was kind of one of those things that just felt so practical that I didn't even want to um you know research it too much until the last I get too scared of my saucepans but yeah I I should I should that's you know it's been on the back burner but I'll I'll prioritize it so that's that's that's really useful um with the eggs um is there a very very specific reason why they should uh be consumed raw do they lose a lot of their potency or nutritional value if you cook them I eat lots of eggs but they're all cooked well I mean first of all the the thing that I would say is that I would never discourage anybody from eating cooked eggs if they don't want to eat raw eggs fine eat eat cooked eggs I mean I would say eat a soft boiled egg rather than a don't nuke it don't um you know don't hard boil it make a nice omelette scrambled eggs uh soft boiled eggs that's great that's great absolutely great you will still get the best quality nutrition the thing about uh the raw eggs is that yes you do lose you do lose some uh some nutrition some micronutrients enzymes things like that uh B vitamins are damaged uh a little bit when you cook and also the cholesterol I think um is also slightly older might be oxidized um but but overall the main reason for consuming the raw is is quantity so if you've seen Cool Hand Luke the Paul Newman film you'll know that eating 50 boiled eggs is a very very difficult thing to do but actually you could eat 50 you could eat 50 raw eggs in 30 seconds you could slant 50 raw eggs in 30 seconds and you probably wouldn't even feel full actually that's the other thing that's one thing that um you know so many people say to me when they when the start slunky is actually oh I just knocked back 12 eggs and it feels like you know it doesn't it doesn't feel like 12 boiled eggs would you know it feels great it doesn't feel heavy on my stomach it doesn't feel doesn't feel um so problematic in any way at all um so yeah so it's uh I mean there's there's science behind it so there's one of the one of the things that is that Vince you're under the golden age uh bodybuilding Guru intuited or understood was that actually it's the cholesterol in eggs that is anabolic not I mean there's protein there's fantastic protein highest quality protein in eggs uh eggs get a score of 100 on the um protein digestibility corrected amino acid score uh they are a perfect protein but um no it's the cholesterol it's the cholesterol that is anabolic and there have been studies recently quite a few studies actually that are substantiated what gerund are intuited that there is a closer the more cholesterol you eat basically the more muscle you put on and this has been demonstrated in a number of studies and the effect is greater than for protein so people tend to think oh you eat more protein you put on you know more muscle and that is true but actually there's a stronger correlation between cholesterol consumption and muscle gain than there is between protein consumption and muscle gain so it's about consuming huge quantities of of cholesterol really that's what it is primarily um and is there like for for me because I am little baby with this I'm just imagining slonging 12 eggs which is my Skin's crawling there's some way you know for the non-initiate to sweeten the deal can I make like a custard or something out of it or some some intermediate form before I go all out on the small King ABS absolutely so there is a you don't have to slonk eggs as they come you really don't have to do that so there is a although a lot of people do so there is a there is a variation of the of slonking where you you slonk what I call the the OG shake the original giranda shake so uh this would be raw eggs a mixture of milk and heavy cream in equal proportion so Vince you're under called that half and half so you know 250 milliliters or 100 milliliters of milk 100 milliliters of cream uh and then you add maybe some honey or some maple syrup to taste and that is basically custard I call that anabolic custard um uh and you can you can uh whisk it up with a spoon if you want or leave the the yolks whole but that I mean you will have absolutely no problem knocking that back it's more it's more calorific of course because you've got milk and milk and eggs and ideally the milk should be raw milk but if you can't get raw milk just get the best quality milk you can get um but yeah I mean that is absolutely nobody could find that disgusting absolutely and then you just blend and blend that up and this would be like a meal replacement I guess yeah yep yeah you could have it you could have it for breakfast you could have it as a meal replacement you could have it before or after you work out you know uh instead of a protein chain I mean it's so much nicer than a protein shake and the thing about all of these um commercial protein shakes is that they're loaded with they're loaded with sweeteners and things like um aspartame and and you know that sweeteners are sweeteners are bad news especially something like aspartame um they they actually more and more studies are showing that they have all the negative effects of sugar consumption and others as well so um you know the the the no it's not good at all so yeah stick with the raw eggs add some milk and cream maybe some honey you can add a banana if you want as well um you can also make raw egg ice cream that's the other thing and that's uh in my cookbook then I I have a recipe for absolutely delicious no churn raw egg ice cream and you know you can you can you can put on muscle eating ice cream basically that sounds exactly like what I love to do um in terms of putting on muscle you wouldn't just be sitting there putting on muscle is there kind of a protocol of training that goes with raw egg nationalism what what would be kind of the the core message there yes I mean I've I've always advocated uh sort of got a golden golden age bodybuilding principles Golden Era style workouts so um I mean I so I'm in my background I was a martial artist so I was I was always very very I was very very lean um uh I used to do a lot of calisthenics kettlebell stuff I I was kind of I was kind of sold on the notion of functional fitness which I'm not at all sold on now I think it's a silly idea but um yeah so I I have I moved over to a to a a strength a strength based routine when I started or actually just before I started heroic nationalism stuff and then the royg the raw eggs kind of took it into overdrive but um yeah I I would say that you should if you're a beginner and you want to put on mass then what what you really want to do is you want to get strong so ideally you should focus on the bench press uh deadlift and squat overhead press and then add in some uh supplementary exercises um for the smaller body parts maybe some some bicep curls some tricep work uh chin UPS stuff like that bent over rows but you can actually you can actually make a huge amount of progress with a very very simple kind of meat and potatoes routine and a lot of the Golden Era bodybuilders you have to remember had very little access to equipment because a lot of it hadn't even been invented so you know the shiny uh bells and whistles uh kind of Machinery that you see in the Planet Fitness didn't exist in the 1960s 1950s not even really until the 1980s so you know you could you can build an amazing physique with basic uh basic compound exercises that's that's what you should focus on and that's what a lot of the one of the a lot of the Golden Age bodybuilders did and that's what I've done and this would be um necessarily lifting heavy things putting them down to failure or just kind of yes yeah I mean I mean whether or not you go you go to failure or not is uh is a kind of moot point but you what you want to be doing is you want to be building strength over time so you're going for Progressive overload um probably in lower rep ranges so there's a there's a very famous um style of training called five by five where you do five sets of five reps bench press squat deadlift and then you add two and a half pounds the next time you do the lift do five sets of five two and a half pounds and so on and you just work up like that um yeah that's that's the kind of thing that that you want to be doing you you do have to I mean a lot of people who go into the gym pick up weights and sort of half-heartedly you know do 10 repetitions or whatever put the weights down and then do that a couple more times and then you know kind of leave and then wonder why they don't make any progress you do need to be you do need to be pushing yourself I mean the thing is when you're a beginner when you're a beginner though especially if you're coming in from uh from being somebody who has very little experience of exercise somebody who doesn't do very much at all then the mere stimulus of being there will be enough and for a while that will carry you but at a certain point then you do have to get quite serious about it and one of the things I would recommend is to keep a journal so just have a have a little book and write down everything you did in your exercise everything you did in your workout as you're doing it so that you can keep track of your progress over time because that that is the way in the long term that you will make gains is to ensure that you are adding weight to the bar over time and getting stronger and and you said that you um weren't that Keen on on functional fitness anymore I mean what what is wrong with that approach well I think I think that people it's it's obviously true that some exercises translate into real world capability more than others but people people get it people have got this idea for some reason I don't know why that barbell exercises in particular because you know like in in the real world you don't do a bench I mean when would you do a bench press movement necessarily or when would you when would you do a pure squat movement so with a barbell on your back so they they get this idea perhaps that doing those exercises all you're doing is you're building muscle for show and you know you hear people say oh so and so is muscle bound so and so is so-and-so's muscles are for sure or whatever and that can I mean maybe that is true to an extent you can be too muscular you only need to really to look at the kind of Mr Olympia competitors who can barely sort of waddle through the aisles of the supermarket when they're when they're off the stage or out of the gym but um the functional fitness meme sort of leads people down these really ridiculous Avenues where they think that what you have to be doing is you have to be doing squats on top of a bosu ball about a balance on top of a bench on top of a broomstick or something you know and it's all it's just it's just ridiculous you don't with with exercises like that among other things what you can't do is you can't really progress It's very very difficult to progress with movements like that whereas with a barbell then you know you really can progress you can add more weight to the barbell each week or month or whenever and and progress but when you do these sort of silly functional fitness exercises um you can't progress and in any case I just think that you know you would be far better off focusing on on doing on adding weight to your squat for instance if you want to be explosive if you want to be a powerful a powerful running back in in football or whatever um you'd be far better off just adding weight to your squat than trying to do you know 100 silly sort of different exercises that apparently capture some aspect of real world movement that that's squatting with the barbell doesn't so yeah I mean I I it's not which isn't to say that I don't think that there is any value in doing things like body weight exercises or kettlebell exercises because there obviously is and especially as we've seen over the last two years with the lockdowns and things then actually you know you can end up in a situation where you have no access to equipment whatsoever and that can happen very very quickly and it's much better to do something rather than nothing and okay you you might want to bench press but actually you might have to build a you might have to build a workout a chest workout out of doing press-ups you know and and changing your hand or foot position to alter The Leverage to make it harder or easier or whatever um so yeah I certainly wouldn't discourage people from from um doing that kind of thing if they have to because you know any any exercises is better than none certainly and so in the end the conclusion seems that it's just about building strength and strength will translate into whatever it is you want to do with it afterwards yes yeah I mean I mean I building building strength won't necessarily make you a better long distance Runner although it although it might actually I think you would be surprised actually that the the kind of um crossover benefits that that uh a long distance Runner might experience for instance from building up their squat strength and certainly if you're a sprinter then you can develop explosive strength in the gym you know with a barbell uh but yes I mean it's I mean the thing with the the right-wing bodybuilder movement is that it is uh it's an aesthetic thing too as well it's uh it's uh it's a middle finger to The Establishment which wants you to be fat sick depressed and unmotivated it's it's the most visible way that you can show the regime that actually you're not on board with that you know you you believe that actually the the human body is a beautiful beautiful machine that is being created you know uh to do things to do amazing things and yeah so that so that's what ultimately we're we're trying to we're trying to do it's not it's not just about it's it's about building muscles for show yes muscles look good but also muscles that can do things too yes I think I think um that was very well uh captured by the the recent Tucker Carlson documentary of which you were uh at the star I think it was called the end of men wasn't it yes um and uh yeah tell me a little bit about that uh the the process of uh you know being in that documentary of of you know recording it I know Ben Braddock was also in the documentary um so yeah it's a it's an interesting Milestone I think for the for the movement yeah it's mad I mean I still I still have to pinch myself from time to time to uh remind myself that this is all real and not some not some very strange silly dream it's uh it's hilarious I I find myself laughing as well quite a lot now when I think about it think about going on the Tucker Carson Show to talk about it as well but yeah it was a it was a it was a it was a surreal thing to be to be contacted and asked to be a part of it to think that um you know Tucker obviously pays attention to what we're doing Tucker obviously has eyes and ears in our world and is and is taking what taking very serious notice I mean it's not despite what the uh the blue checks and the and the commentators would have you believe it's not a it's not a joke you know and I and I think that Tucker Carlson is is very very seriously behind the message of the documentary I think he believes it as as we obviously do um but yeah the process was yeah it was very very very strange I'd I when I was told what we were going to be doing you know that we'd be shooting bottles of vegetable oil and all that kind of stuff and and uh yeah it was just crazy but I mean I recorded I recorded two and a half hours of interviews for that I mean I I thought it would be like you know you hear these stories about people who've recorded three hours of or a day's worth of of scenes for a film or something and then it works out being at 30 seconds and so I thought oh he'll probably you know it'll just be a little clip of Me Maybe a sound bite or something but then it turned out to be 15 minutes of me espousing the whole uh the whole raw egg Nationalist and right-wing bodybuilder philosophy which was yeah incredible incredible really but but it's very timely I think very timely and it's not it's not um these issues aren't issues that traditionally get mainstream coverage you know I mean the the the extent to which people are being poisoned by these harmful chemicals is should be a matter of national and Global interest for ordinary people and yet it's um something that most people most people wouldn't have a clue what a Zen estrogen is if you if you asked them they wouldn't know what BPA is or what phthalates do and they wouldn't you know be able to tell you a thing about it so he's done a real service I think Tucker he really has and and also put his neck on the line because of course uh you know critics have wanted to to label it fascistic and all that kind of stuff because it's a regimented fitness and you know Cult of the body and all that kind of stuff but uh I mean there's obviously no substance to that but uh you know he he could have could have taken an easier path he certainly didn't have to um uh you know get on board with us and and get us to talk and give us a platform but he did and I'm very glad that he did yeah it was a a really good documentary I think if I don't think you can get it everywhere I think it's streaming in the US but there is I'll try to find the link where it was uploaded for my European audience okay good that's great I'll add the the link in the show notes but yeah it was a it was a really um startling to I'm sure there are more kind of anons in there that you know people are familiar with but uh are not necessarily you know uh declaring that they've been in the documentary um but I think one of the other messages in the documentary was the um kind of the testosterone collapse which is you know one of the big messages in the background um is that something that you feel you could diagnose just from lifestyle factors and these you know environmental factors or is there something more to that uh I mean I I think it is just fundamentally yes it is it's lifestyle and diet I mean one of the things that you have to realize about being overweight as a man is that being overweight is one of the primary causes of hypogonadism to hypogonadism is low testosterone uh so it's it's mostly overweight men who are diagnosed with hypogonadism so being overweight is is terrible terrible for your um testosterone but then yes it's it's diet lifestyle and expanded yes exposure to these uh exposure to these um horrible estrogenic chemicals that are everywhere I do yeah I do think I do think that that is probably about it I think that's that's certainly more than enough to be getting on with um you know if people if we could address all of those factors then I can guarantee you that men and women would be so much healthier so much healthier and is there a place for women in the right nationalist movement um yeah because I know you're the editor of the Man's World magazine um is there um I know are there women I mean I know the main you know right-wing bodybuilders are uh male especially the anonymous ones uh for sure um at least as far as we know and um I I don't maybe I'm not familiar but is is there kind of a sub group of female things uh that are being discussed there I should know but I don't want to be honest of female issues do you mean issues yeah yeah exactly oh yeah I mean yes I mean and this is actually something that's covered in the Tucker documentary there is he interviews Tiger Lily and uh talks about um talks about the kind of uh Dreadful toll at these chemicals and and foods and and lifestyle changes are taking on women too and so yes I mean absolutely if we if we cleared up if we cleared up the environment of all of these estrogenic chemicals uh if we reduced exposure across the board and if we got everybody to stop eating vegetable and Seed oils and so much sugar and to do some exercise and go back to eating nutrient-dense animal Foods then then yeah I mean a lot of a lot of problems that women have would disappear too I mean you these estrogen these estrogenic chemicals are responsible for all sorts of things they're responsible I think for the rise in uh conditions like endometriosis polycystic ovary syndrome all that kind of stuff and then you could look at for instance the um uh contraceptive pill you know estrogenic um estrogenic birth control all that kind of stuff I mean it's wreaking havoc with Women's Health and there's there's actually a very good book if if you're interested in the female aspect of this it's called I'm looking at it on my shelf right now uh the greatest experiment ever performed on women by Barbara Seaman and it's about it's about the discovery of estrogen and uh then it's marketing to women as a kind of um as a miracle hormone basically that's how estrogen has been treated or how it was certainly hailed in the beginning as a miracle hormone and actually it's had all sorts of terrible effects I mean you know estrogen is um there are lots of estrogen dependent forms of cancer especially breast cancer uterine cancer um and the argument is that actually you know the the mass prescription of estrogen to women has resulted in deaths it's not only compromised the quality of life of of of so many tens of thousands or hundreds or millions of of women but it's also actually led to Deaths it's you know it's it's killed women from cancer um so yes I I think that there is all of this all of this is tied up together this isn't just a movement for the health of men although that is you know I suppose the emphasis that it gets with uh with the men it's it's a movement for for human health and flourishing more broadly and um I think it was good that Tucker brought that out actually because that could have been uh that could have been a sort of critical flaw I think of the documentary or that would have been something that people would have picked up on you know always it's just this is just about men this is just scaremongering about men but actually you know it's it's it's it's for women's benefit too it is for everybody's benefit and uh yeah yes I uh I do know Tiger Lily and I do want to recommend she's had millions of incarnations as well she kept she keeps getting kicked off of Twitter and all sorts of platforms uh because she's very outspoken um yeah I was just thinking about the bodybuilding aspect I think that's a bit less represented in in women but yeah there's definitely a bigger kind of crunchy mom holistic sphere that's adjacent to to right-wing bodybuilding of which I am yeah definitely part of um there's um I think there's a good segue from this is just the kind of the medical community and the the hidden cost of of medical dysfunction of bad prescriptions kind of this this iatrogenic uh cost that people just don't realize you know because doctors in in many ways deservedly for some directions um I have this mantle of um of you know experts scientists you're doing uh you know a evidence-based procedures but at the same time you know you were talking about um hormones female hormones I mean I was put on progesterone at 13 on the basis of a conversation um it's the consequences of that have been you know dire in many ways for me and I wasn't the only person but it's it's just a fact that um having that power it's I feel like there's very little accountability for for what's been done to to people with these these you know novel substances which might be beneficial for some but are definitely not like a Panacea you can't just be finding something like this and saying okay you know everyone gets to have this well look I mean look at what's happened over the last two years um I mean if anybody anybody needed convincing that there are serious there are fundamental flaws with the way that medicine works in the modern world well look at what's happened over the last two years look at all of the look at the way that that people's legitimate fears about a novel form of therapy were totally well we're not only we not only dismissed those people were gas-lit and uh treated as extremists not only by the not only by the media and not only by sort of commentates people on Twitter but the government and and the medical industry and uh you know they've made a lot of money they've made a lot of money but they've also caused a huge amount of harm but yes iatrogenesis is a very very interesting subject I mean I did a I did a thread actually about our atrogenesis today because I was reading the paper about it you know um iatrogenesis this is the theory that um actually medical treatment the whole sort of medical profession actually causes harm and may even cause more harm than good on balance um I think it's iatrogenesis is the fifth leading cause of death in the world that's one estimate um and I did a whole thread about based on a paper that was just the paper was just listing some of the some of the statistics that have been gathered about uh things like um uh reactions to drugs adverse drug reactions things like that you know it's something like 10 percent of of patients have adverse drug reactions 700 000 people in the US die a year from adverse drug reactions from being prescribed to the wrong drugs seventy percent of all Sentinel events so Sentinel events are serious uh our events in a healthcare setting that lead to Serious harm or death seventy percent of those are caused by miscommunication between medical professionals miscommunication you know something like telling her telling a nurse to telling a nurse to give someone an injection in their spine rather than in a vein or something or you know that kind of thing I mean it's yeah it's it's a serious it's a serious problem and it's difficult to know as you say how to hold these people to account and the the sad thing about what's happened over the last two years is that I don't really see a way how we're going to hold these people to account I mean you saw that you saw that piece about the pandemic amnesty oh we need a pandemic amnesty I mean it's it's easy to say that when you know most of the fault is on your side when you are one of the people who has who has been in the position of of wronging others rather than being wronged you know it's I mean traditionally didn't we beg for forgiveness when we'd done something wrong I mean isn't that the way that you that you traditionally gain forgiveness is you beg for it and it's dependent on the the good character of the person being begged the the magnanimity of the of the person being paid but actually we're being told look you have to forget everything that happened over the last two years you have to forget the gaslighting you have to forget that you weren't allowed to see your grandmother when she was dying in the nursing home you know you weren't allowed to you weren't allowed to go and hold your wife's hand when she was in labor although I'm sure that some some women probably don't don't want their husbands or boyfriends uh in the room with them when they're in labor but you know that kind of thing I mean ordinary people have suffered so much over the last two years and they're and you know so much is coming out now so much is coming out you know they've had to walk back all of their claims about the efficacy of the vaccines they've had to walk back um uh and and they've had to admit things that a year ago or six months ago or a year and a half ago were denied as conspiracy theories they've actually had to admit them you know and people were banned from Twitter for saying things and banned from social media for saying things that now actually medical authorities and the government are admitting are true well I've been I got a strike on my uh on my YouTube account for a conversation I had you know months ago half a year ago with with Ben Braddock actually when we're talking about covert things that now are coming out and are admitted I still I got that strike two weeks ago so it's uh it's still these are things are still being enforced at the same level uh they're still going after their enemies for uh wrong thing that you know it's it's like um what's that called a celebration Parallax type situation where um you know we're still being punished for common truths that only they can say um and also let's all get to get along yeah it's it's it's ridiculous yeah yeah it's crazy it's crazy and I don't I don't see how I mean we need to we need to do something these people do need to be held accountable at the very least we need to we need to find a way to make it so that something like this can't happen again but the question is how we would do that I mean I think obviously there's a political route to that and we need to we need to elect people who say that that's precisely what they want to do that they want to make sure that that stuff like this can't happen again the the medical profession can't Can't Behave this way that government Can't Behave this way and also that social media companies Can't Behave this way I mean you're always going to get Ordinary People behaving badly but but they you know people have been enabled enabled by or disabled by social media companies um hand in hand in glove with with corporations and the medical establishment so I mean it's a yeah it's a it's a complicated business but but we can't just sweep it under the rug but that is precisely what they want to do of course is to sweep it under the rug um but then it will happen again yeah it seems to me like we're we've moved into a very different phase of History where it's very hard to hold people into account because things are moving so fast like the narrative is so all-encompassing and it's pushing forward at lightning speed like you know just things like lab leak you know yeah um just the implications of that and the fact that it's plausible but no one cares anymore we're on to the next thing you know even Ukraine is is old hat um all of these things are just it's just one churning big um I don't know just like a I don't know like a shredder that we're all being pushed into and even you know let the chips fall where they may you know I've had family members die because of the circumstance of the last years and you know not only do I have no recourse um no one cares like I don't even have anyone to talk to about it it's like yeah whatever um what's what's new in Ukraine what's what's what's the next thing it's um it's it's very disconcerting well one of the one of the things actually that really depressed me last year or really really shocked me was [Music] um so the the Euro 2020 football tournament was postponed for a year because of the coronavirus so you know so that's a that's uh for people who don't know then that's uh that's a football soccer uh competition between the European nations basically it's a tournament and um it should have taken place in 2020 but it was pushed pushed back to 2021.

[01:00:31]and uh it was like people just when it actually happened you know and England did quite well we got to the final although we lost in the final on penalties um it was just like I mean it was very definitely a release valve I would say I think that all the the huge amount of tension that had built up in the country because of the social the social restrictions were just you know it was it was all let off and because we did well and it was like you know oh actually the last 18 months haven't happened and people were just pretending like everything was back to normal and it was just it was just it was just so surreal I was just like you know people are so people are so happy about all of this and they're so they're so pleased they've just forgotten they've just forgotten what's happened to them for the last year and a half um it really was a really was a kind of uh red and circuses I suppose but um yeah I feel like the the level of bread and services is so um Advanced so high now that I really wonder what the uh the the compromise in lifestyle or what the personal tragedy um would have to occur in in each of these people's lives for them to to to get shaken up a little bit like how yeah much in miseration can you stand before you ask questions yeah I mean it's like I mean in in Britain at one point in the early stages of the of the pandemic in the first year of the pandemic and it was made illegal it was actually made illegal to have sex with someone who wasn't your partner or spouse who was living with you it's like I mean very Trad yeah yeah we yeah we very briefly became an Islamic um an Islamic Republic but um you know it was just like imagine if you told somebody that that was going 10 years ago that that was going to happen in 2020 that the government was going to tell ordinary citizens who they couldn't couldn't um you know have a romantic relationship with it's like it's crazy but I I don't know what what you would have to do you lock people in their houses and tell them that they can't do anything I mean what what's worse than that really but I mean the depressing thing actually was seeing I encountered quite a few young people who were actually quite keen on the idea of another lockdown so when the second or third lockdown was coming and I did hear a few people say things like oh yeah I've got some some Netflix series that I want to watch and you know I can have eight weeks off work and watch all the all the Netflix backlogs that I've that I've built up and it's like Jesus you just you just don't understand do you um I think I think I think it's I think it has demonstrated that a lot of people maybe the majority of people even certainly something close to half are basically unreachable I think um which isn't a nice thing to I mean a nice thing to realize particularly but I suppose it it clarifies the mind and maybe it um uh suggests then other solutions to to our problems than simply relying on you know getting the majority of the population behind you yeah I mean they they don't call it the the populist delusion for nothing um it's yeah I think this is the conclusion that a lot of people in kind of our Wider Circle are reaching um yeah it's it's it's not about them um and sadly because you know ideally you'd want to have everyone's uh vote but yeah unfortunately that's not how things work and I feel like if the last two or three or five years haven't proven that to to most people then you haven't been paying attention like it's not you know nothing's been decided in an election except for you know culture War screeching but nothing really of substance the same people run the same stuff you know the ngos the headless you know faceless bureaucrats um it's all churning away in the background getting more and more um complex and inscrutable with every iteration yeah totally no I totally agree you know I totally agree it's uh I mean it's potentially a black bill but also I think as I as I say it's it's an opportunity to clarify our thinking about what actually needs to be done what what is likely to be effective and what isn't exactly and a lot of the things that can be done start you know at the at the basis of of oneself and the people around you and just making things work I mean I know you're a proponent of uh regenerative agriculture of um you know having maybe you know a few chickens of your own there are things that you can do uh in in your own life that um you know might not lead to the I don't know the death of cloud Schwab or whatever you know big regime enemies one one might have but uh it's it does um lead to a lot of important changes in in yeah in just your life which is essentially what matters most yeah I think yeah I think so I think it's um I think it's important to be humble I think it's I mean I think that's one of the benefits actually of of what Jordan Peterson has done and for all his faults I think that he's he's drawn people's attention to the to the benefits of taking a humble stance towards the things that are wrong in your life you know start small uh you know take care of the small things and the big things will look after themselves as the uh biblical proverb has it so yeah I think there's I think there's a lot to be there's there is something that you can do even if you can't alter the alter the um the larger scale political system in the way that you might like to with a you know with a click of your fingers or a or a taking a Ballot Box uh there are things that you can do that will add up if lots of people do them as well into a you know a fundamental change and what that's one of the things that I talk about in the eggs benedict option is the way that people can return to local uh agriculture so I use local forms of Agriculture so I use the example of um this thing that's called Russian household gardening which is which is quite an amazing system really it's it's an outgrowth of the of the peasant model of Agriculture that sort of uh has been present in agriculture in uh in Russia since you know since the since the first Millennium A.D you know since the the beginning of the of the Russian kingdoms the Russian principalities it's small scale uh local food production uh you might have a garden uh or you might have a plot of land in the countryside so Russia is now predominantly an Urban Nation two-thirds of people in Russia live in the cities and yet millions and millions of Russians head out of the cities to little plots of land in the surrounding Countryside to grow uh vegetables fruit and vegetables organically and to um uh they keep animals to keep chickens and maybe pigs and things like that and Russians actually produce on three percent of all of the total land under tillage in Russia or under under cultivation in Russia they produce over 50 percent of the food that they of the food that the country produces by value so ordinary people do that Ordinary People produce something like I think it's 92 percent of all potatoes that are eaten in Russia uh significant quantities uh 87 I think of fruit and berries that people eat uh significant quantities of milk and eggs um you know and this is a this is a Modern Nation this is a modern nation of 150 million people there's no reason why we have to rely why we have to rely totally on Industrial agriculture to provide our needs um you know a system like that could work in the U.S has worked in the past you know they've been back to the land drives there was a back to the land Drive in World War II Victory Gardens people started millions and tens of millions of people started cultivating their own food to help in the war effort it would obviously require political will I think it would have to be a political movement as well and that's something that I talk about in the book about the links between populism and small-scale farming and all that kind of stuff you know we shouldn't forget that um Thomas Jefferson's ideal for the U.S was as a nation of small farmers um and that doesn't necessarily have to mean people homesteading that could just mean that actually people people start to produce a decent share of their own food themselves and break free of the corporate Stranglehold I mean that would do that would do everyone that would do the country that would do the US World of good to break the corporate Stranglehold on agriculture because that's just uh it's part and parcel with the corporate strangle hold on American Life full stop now it's uh it's it's interesting because the the um partly this is what's happening in Romania as well um just a interesting side note there because I've um I used to go to Wine school or enology I kind of studied this uh viticulture essentially um and uh a big problem that we have here with with Farmers is that they're getting in in the farm shops in The Villages even you're getting access to these insanely powerful pesticides of herbicides and and fertilizers and they tend to overuse them and um this even goes uh towards like um I don't know like for in wine production there are sulfites that you add to wine and they they protect the wine from oxidation they protect it from you know going going bad you know you don't need like a perfectly sealed um stainless steel you know vat to produce your wine you can produce in in weirder conditions and that's sadly makes some of the the produce that comes out of the the farmer's market essentially even more Laden with these things because people don't know how to apply them they really like the new technology you know the the weed killer works amazingly the fertilizer makes everything pop you know Roundup is great um and they can get all that now and that's that's kind of the the sad thing because you think oh I'm just going to go to farmer's market I'm going to get like my organic produce but it's it's everywhere and it's it's really it's sad and I would have been I would have been a bigger proponent of farmers markets here if I if I didn't you know do the the viticulture uh course and all this type of stuff and saw exactly how uh you know just just this one um crop grapes is treated um and yeah it's it's it's it's a big problem like there's there's layers and layers upon this but it's yeah I it's I know it's a sad fact yeah it's a it's it's it it is true that a lot of farmers actually you think farmers are very very sentimental about the land and about animals and stuff and actually a lot of them really aren't um farming is tough it's really tough you're dependent on the weather whenever whenever there's some substance or magic potion that gives you an edge especially if it's cheap and you know it protects your crop from X or Y you know possibility of disaster which many of these things do you know you'd you're definitely going to go to the shop and get some some magic dust and spray it on your crops or whatever well in the in the Soviet Union famously then they uh for a while they came up with this idea of um basically firing radioactive material into the soil to make it more productive and they created these sort of special tractors that would go around firing I think it was cesium or something like that some horrible radioactive substance to make their crops grown of course had all these terrible terrible side effects including poisoning land for many many you know hundreds or maybe even thousands of years for the for future Generations but yes I mean it's interesting actually um Russia for all its faults Russia is Russia is committed now to being the world's largest producer of organic food that was actually a commitment that has been made by the Russian government and um is being encouraged uh in stark contrast to the trajectory of the EU which is for a long time the EU actually had some quite good environmental regulations but they're they're starting to Fall by the wayside there was a there was a landmark case in the European Court to do with Italy where um I can't remember the exact details but some Farmers or some groups didn't want Farmers to use um a particular kind of genetic modified crop and then the EU Court said that well since this crop has been declared legal in the whole of the EU we can't make you can't make an exception in Italy and so yes I mean the situation in in the EU is is actually starting to move closer to closer to America than it is Russia which is a shame because actually the EU you know and and Britain even uh uh um you know Britain outside the EU could actually be a Bastion for for the best kind of farming rather than the worst but it looks like it actually looks at the moment like Russia is going to be if you want to look to any one particular Nation for you know the the model for farming in the future of a real you know good farming and yeah it's it's probably Russia yeah that's that's really interesting yeah for sure for Romania the EU has been a mixed blessing I mean I personally have big problems with it it's been useful in some ways I've talked about this on the podcast as well it's it's broken quite a quite like um a game theory problem that we had with corruption because they kind of imposed external order and uh oversight and it really did help with reducing corruption which really is a big problem like it really you couldn't do business with Romania 20 30 years ago it was almost impossible now it it's it is possible it's okay people expect to not have to pay bribes when they go to a place you know there's a you know the the burden of expectations have has moved on to the don't pay bribes uh and which is an amazing uh Improvement instead of the for sure I'm gonna have to dish out some bribe and then I'll get this is a whole awkward thing of where you put it what it's going to be who you're going to give it to now you know it's uh it's it's different I'm not saying there are no bribes but it's not like you go to the dentist you have to bribe and you go to the Post Office you have to bribe them so it's really eased things on the other hand we have an eternal Stranglehold of regulations you know one crazier than the other and apparently also um you know the uh the regulations that you highlighted so that's uh that's a great one to add to the to the naughty list um I I know we're coming up on time and I want to ask you the last question the question of the show and everyone uh gets this question it's um these subversive thinker question do you have anyone that you found influential I mean you you mentioned Western price but um anyone who was an important influence for you and you think is underrated and people should read more of um you know if you could point us in that direction uh let me think who do I like uh well okay here's somebody who's been a big influence on my recent work is an anthropologist called James C Scott and seeing like a state seeing like a state but yes he that's a great book um he wrote books his early books were about sort of um silent forms of resistance the way that that peasants can resist his actions by their Lords by doing things like dragging their feet and and sabotage and all that kind of stuff but he wrote a book a few years ago called against the grain and that was a very very big influence on the way that I came to frame uh the eggs benedict option so against against the grain is an historical account of the Agricultural Revolution and contrary to to the to the Happy clappy sort of story of of the Agricultural Revolution which is that the transition to farming was a wonderful Boon for mankind and you know it made life so much easier and and uh and uh regular and you could guarantee food production and it led to civilization and all this kind of stuff parts of which are true of course um Scott tells a very different story based on uh up-to-date archeology and and um sorts of other epidemiology all sorts of other stuff about the real burden the real burden of the transition to Agriculture and the fact that actually it benefited a very very narrow Elite but the majority of people who were subjected to it and they were subjected to it they were forced to become farmers for the most part uh really really lost out and that for me I think was a very very allowed me to make a very very provocative comparison with what might happen with the great reset if we're all forced into eating plant-based diets which is what is the great reset model for the future of food of course and that's the I think that is actually the the basis or the UN the real underpinning of the great reset so you know the the Neolithic Revolution was a social transformation predicated on a transformation in the way food was produced and consumed and the great reset is exactly the same more or less but but you know with very similar aspects and also some uh some new sort of wild cards thrown in there um so yes I would I would recommend reading James Scott but especially Against the Grain it's a provocative it's readable he's he's one of these interesting academics who is a wide-ranging he's a wide-ranging non-specialist but he's he's so well read and he's articulate and provocative and and uh you know it's not nothing about it is dry it's not a dry book at all it's an it's an interesting book and he talks about you know why life was better as a why life was better as a barbarian he says there was this thing called the Golden Age of Barbarians for sort of you know a couple of thousand years maybe up until about the sort of 1600s where actually if you were a barbarian you were likely to be happier healthier uh and Freer than somebody living a peasant living under a you know in the grain state so uh yeah that's a that's a fantastic book that's one that I would absolutely that would I would heartily hardly recommend yeah that's that sounds like an excellent recommendation thank you so much um this has been lovely I'm so glad we got to do this um and I want to point people again towards your books I mean the latest one is uh the eggs benedict option but you have cookbooks you have Man's World magazine you have a extended Opus which includes documentaries aired internationally uh and and many many more bits of media other podcasts as well um I'll link the documentary in the show notes and and your latest book as well is there any other thing that people should be paying attention to in the raw egg sphere I've got an op-ed coming out in the epoch times on Friday which is pretty big news I think um and uh you're probably going to see me writing for some more mainstream conservative Outlets I write for American mind already I've written four pieces for them and I'll continue to write for them hopefully but also for some other people so so stay tuned there's big news coming up uh keep uh keep your eyes and ears on my Twitter and uh you'll find out what those things are excellent thank you so much it was a pleasure thank you for having me [Music]