Ep. #966: Sal Di Stefano on Fear and Propaganda in the Fitness Industry

Mike: Hello, and welcome to muscle for life. Thank you for joining me today. I am Mike Matthews and in today’s episode, I interview my buddy Sal DeStefano from mind pump yet again, this is probably our fifth or sixth interview that we’ve done here on my podcast. And I’ve been on his podcast. A number of times, I’m actually going out there in a month.

Let’s see, October 18th, I think is when we will be recording that episode. Looking forward to hanging out with the mine punk crew. Again, it has been a while, but in this episode, I talked to Sal about fear and propaganda in the fitness industry, which is becoming a bigger problem today. Then it was certainly 10 years ago when I got into fitness.

We see, for example, the demonization of meat eating and even of high protein dieting now, as well as claims about the toxic masculine side of weightlifting of strength training and why men should be wary of strength, training and of strength training culture, because it can make them more harmful to society.

And then we have the ongoing discussion about veganism and the supposed moral imperative that we have to start eating a plant based diet. So as to save the world from climate change, and there’s the body acceptance movement, which has a positive side, but also a negative side. And more, I guess I am I’m giving you a preview of today’s episode, cuz these are the types of things that Sal and I talk.

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Go to BI legion.com/phoenix. Use the coupon code muscle when you check out and you will save 20% or get 10% cash back and try Phoenix risk free and see what you think. Sal, it’s been a bit, we’ve texted a little bit. I think we’ve had a phone call here and there, but I haven’t seen your cute face in a bit.

Sal: Ah, thank you very much. I was just commenting on how good you look. No, it’s always good to talk to you, man. One of my favorite people in in general, but definitely in our space. So it’s always a good time, man. Yeah, 

Mike: yeah. Same. I wish that, that I lived closer to you guys. It would be fun to, I don’t have, I don’t give much time for socializing, but we could work out together that always works together.

You know what I mean? That, really is my, that’s my social life. That’s really it. It’s the guys and there’s one or two women in the gym who are friendly enough to even say hi. And so that’s it. That’s my little my little social 

Sal: circle. Yeah. Plus I know you got, you got a family and kids and I have, I got my kids, I got another one on the way, you know that it’d be good to get the kids together.

That’s we did that. We try to do that here with with Adam, Justin and Doug. We’ll get our families together because we want the kids to grow up and know each other and stuff, and that’s been great. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. I’ve met a few families here since, I’ve been here for a year, but been busy where I’m building a house now.

So that was a whole process of getting on the property, getting off the property, blah, blah, blah. But I’ve met a few families and that also is a good quote, unquote, excuse to force yourself outta the house. Stop working, take your kids, go meet with some people, be a human. Yeah. 

Sal: That’s gotta be ch I could see your challenge.

You’re such a, and I’m not saying this to blow smoke. You’re very driven individual. You really love what you do so I could see how that’d be a challenge for you to peel yourself away from, from your work which, we all benefit from you. You, I don’t know anybody that produces as much content as you do.

Personally, I know people have teams and stuff like that, but I don’t understand how you could possibly do. As much content as you do, it’s insane to me, but again, we all appreciate it and benefit from it. So 

Mike: yeah, I appreciate that. It’s it’s like working out for me, at least it’s mostly a point of consistency, I have my time blocked every day for content creation and I’m good at sticking to it. Not always, but I’m, good enough and I’m just consistent with it. And then I think it’s also one of those things that the more you do it, the better you get at it. So maybe my output per unit of time, it certainly has gotten better for me.

I don’t know how it compares to other people, but it might be better than maybe some other people who are also producing content. And but I appreciate the Compli. 

Sal: Yeah it’s a lot and it’s good. And this might actually be a good, conversation or place to start is because one thing that, when we found you years ago, I actually knew about you before we started mine pump.

I would read some your blogs and your articles. And I remember Doug back in those days was my client and we would pull up your stuff. I didn’t know that one. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s how I met Doug. He hired me. And then of course we became friends and the rest is history, but we saw your content and we would use it as an example of how to, when we had come up with maps, our workout program, like this is a great example of how to put great information out there, build authority so that people can trust some of your information.

And then, if you wanna sell a product this is a great way to do it, cuz you had a lot of integrity and your information was good. And one thing that you do really is you can sift through studies and information and kind of distill it down to like here’s, what’s applicable.

This is probably what’s true. This is, probably what’s not here’s the data to back it up. Here’s also the experience that people have. And it was even more impressive when I met you because you weren’t a fitness professional your entire life. Like I was, it was a passion of yours. Then you got into it and you have this really good ability to decipher and sift through crappy information and then communicated to the average person, which I’d only really seen with people who had like personally trained people for years and years.

Cuz you gotta figure that out after years and years of working with people, cuz you’re like, okay, I gotta learn how to communicate this effectively cuz. How I was doing it before wasn’t working. And you did that really well. And now, so I’ve been working in fitness professionally since I was 18.

We’re looking at, over, two and a half decades, I never thought I’d see the day when fitness and health would get, there was always been bad information in the fitness and health space. So there’s always been crap, but it’s always been motivated, by people trying to sell shitty products or, make a dollar.

I never thought I’d see the day though, where fitness and health would get politicized and where propaganda from that aspect permeates our space in order to push a political agenda. Very strange. I’ve seen this now over the last few years. And so now I’m not just countering just bad information where someone’s trying to sell you something.

Now I’m countering official narrative information. That’s just as bad and false. And it’s really weird. It’s really weird. Like the people countering me now. Are coming at us from a totally different angle instead of saying, oh, but that fat burner or that ingredient, or that supplement or that, whatever, it worked for me type of deal.

Now I’m getting the you’re evil. You’re bad. You don’t want the environment. You want the environment to go, hell, you’re toxic mask, like all this weird stuff. so is it weird for you too, having done what you’ve been doing as long as you have to see now where some of the bad information is coming from.

The narrative, is it tripping you out as much? 

Mike: I started paying attention to, I would say politics and culture after nine 11. That’s when I that’s, I just got my attention and that’s when I started to pay attention. And I would say that I’ve always been a little bit cynical in just as a person.

And so I have expected, I wouldn’t say the worst, but I have, for some time been saying, I think things are gonna get pretty wacky. But I didn’t predict specifically, like the top female swimmer is gonna have a penis stuff. That is very strange to me and to your, so to your point the toxic masculinity stuff at least you.

You can see the connection. I don’t agree with that. I don’t agree with the claim. For example, that working out is making people making men more masculine in a toxic way. But I understand the argument. I don’t agree with it. However you’ve mentioned you mentioned the environment that there’s, that’s an argument.

I haven’t seen that working out is bad for the environment. 

Sal: Yeah. So scientific American publication. I used to really respect just like most or many popular media outlets I think is now been infiltrated if you will, for lack of a better term by a narrative and a and propaganda. And there’s an article that just came out that said that essentially eating a high I could read the title to you.

It’s wild. It’s crazy. And part of me is this is insane. And the other part of me is it’s par for the course. Here we go. This is the title of the article, eating too much protein makes P. Urine a problem pollutant in the us. Okay. So now eating protein too much protein makes your P really bad for the environment, which is the, has to be one of the craziest things I’ve ever heard in my entire life.

Now they try to go in and make this argument for ni nitrogen and your urine and that’s whatever. And they’re trying to compare it to, and of course they’re really good at taking things and twisting them and make them sound a particular way. But it’s so strange to me now. It, it makes sense if you look at the bigger narrative, which it’s becoming quite obvious that the narrative and we can talk about and speculate on the, the drivers or, why are they doing this?

Mike: Cause that, that’s of course the question is why, like, why are these people making, why are they making these arguments? And why is the mainstream. Media and that, that, that includes big mainstream publications. Why do we see such widespread adoption of stuff like this? 

Sal: Yeah, it’s that’s the, that’s really the creepy part.

So we could talk about, what the motives are, but it seems quite clear that for whatever reason we could talk about what the motives may be, but seemed very clear that the goal is to get everybody to stop eating animal products, stop eating, meat, stop eating animal products, get everybody on a plant based or full on plant diet.

So vegan diet and oh, maybe add some insects in there as well. That seems to be, yeah. That’s, that seems to be another one now that they’re doing. And so what they’ll do is they’ll take, they’ll hit that from all kinds of different angles. Okay. So the, an argument that’s really hard. To counter.

And I do wanna be very clear with this. I, like I said, I’ve worked with people for a long time. You can definitely eat a healthy vegan diet. It just does require a lot more planning. It’s just a fact, it requires a lot more planning and probably supplementation, whereas a balanced diet doesn’t require supplementation and you’re far less likely to have nutrient deficiencies and it just doesn’t require as much planning from a nutrient deficiency standpoint.

That’s a fact, it’s been a fact for decades. We’ve known this for a long time. It’s not new science. This isn’t even, it’s silly. This wasn’t disputable 15 years ago. All of a sudden it’s just, whatever. But anyway, so I just wanna say that, but anyway, it’s very clear. They’re trying to get us off.

Animal products. And so they’ll attack it from different angles. So one of the angles will be building muscle is toxic masculinity. Okay. So why, because studies will show that animal proteins and eating a D a diet that has animal products tends to contribute more to strength and athletic performance studies are pretty clear on that.

Mike: And they’re saying what that, that leads to more aggression in men 

Sal: or aggression. And, in fact, I just read an article just about this, where they actually showed that they’re like, Hey, studies show that castrated men are far less violent. And I was like, what the hell are they trying to promote here?

This is crazy to me. So anyway yes, bigger muscles more aggressive, more dangerous. So they’re gonna attack the protein. Because animal products, best protein. You’re gonna get easiest gram per gram. 50 grams of protein for meat requires this much food, 50 gram, grams of protein from plants requires a ton more.

So they’re gonna hit it from there. They’re gonna hit it from the environmental standpoint, worse for the environment. They’re gonna hit it from a equity standpoint. It’s privileged to be able to eat, these kinds of things. They’re gonna hit it from all kinds of different, strange and weird angles.

And then of course it’s healthier for you. Oh, by the way, if you just cut out meat you’re gonna dramatically increase your or improve your health, which is also totally false. So they’re coming from all these different kinds of angles and then everything that’s attached to it lifting weights is toxic.

Masculinity gyms are the most judgemental places on earth. I’ve now seen people share articles with me. Which, okay. That’s a false perception that a lot of people have who don’t work out in gyms. Okay. Who’ve never really worked out consistently in gyms that they’re this really judgemental. It’s like this perception of the meatheads and the body obsessed people.

And you walk in there and you’re outta shape or overweight or a beginner. There are distortions of the truth, and then there’s complete opposite lies. That’s a complete opposite lie. One of the most accepting places on. Four people who are outta shape, who are beginners, who are overweight, is the gym. This is a, I’ve been in gyms my entire life.

Now there’s always assholes everywhere you go. But the place you’re gonna get judged, the least harshly. If you’re overweight is when you walk into a gym and you try to work out. Yep. 

Mike: I’ve been training for 20 years and I can’t remember a single time if I thought really hard, maybe I could find one, but nothing comes to mind.

If I try to remember a single time where a beginner was clearly judged, negatively or laughed at I can’t say I’ve ever seen it happen. I’ve seen a lot of encouragement, but I don’t know if I’ve ever seen somebody put down for not being in shape when they’re in the gym doing. 

Sal: It’s crazy.

And I’m I use this analogy to illustrate what I’m talking about. So if you and the people who they, who are, who people perceive or who they want you to perceive as being the most judgemental in that way, in that negative way, right? Are the fitness fanatics. Oh, that buff guy in the corner, or those girls over there have been working out forever.

They’re really looking at you, making funny and making you feel uncomfortable in that stuff. Go to any other space, any other industry, and find the most passionate, art and supporters of that industry go to tech. People who love tech really love innovating, go to restaurant industry. People who really love restaurants, really love cooking are really into cuisine, go anywhere where you find the most passionate people go into those places.

And just act like you wanna learn about that space and who’s gonna support you and help you the most passionate people in that space, they’re the least judgemental. If I went into a juujitsu school, not knowing, juujitsu know zero about it. And I go in there to the black belts and I’m like, man, I suck, but I really wanna learn.

Or I try. And I’m obviously messing up the people who are gonna come over and want to help me the most are the people who’ve gone through the journey and who, who really it’s a part of their life. The people who are actually gonna be the most judgemental are other people who are beginners, who judges people in gyms.

If anybody does judge people, it’s the other new people who aren’t. This isn’t a part of their life. If you’re in a gym and this is also true, I’ve I’ve like you I’ve been in gyms my whole life or most of my life, the people who’ve always helped the most helped me or helped other members are those big buff, scary looking.

You go up to them. Hey, how do I use this machine? Oh, let me help you out. Let me show you what’s going on. Hey, watch your foreman. I’ve seen some of the scariest buff, looking strongest, looking people in the gym, stop to help the lady over there. Who’s obviously trying to improve herself, maybe she doesn’t know what she’s doing or she grabbed a weight that’s wrong or whatever.

So it’s crazy that they would do that. But they’re doing that. I’ve seen articles like this, there’s also this body acceptance movement, which I has is totally Perver. It’s totally perverted and distorted, body acceptance, real body acceptance, which, you know, those of us who’ve worked in fitness forever who make this, our passion who want to help people.

Real body acceptance is saying, looking in the mirror and saying, I. To be cared for. I Des I deserve to be healthy. I need to do things now to take care of myself now, just because I reflect the fact that I haven’t done this and I haven’t taken care of myself, doesn’t mean I don’t deserve those things.

I’m gonna work towards those things. And I’m gonna seek out some help and see what I could do. That’s body acceptance. What they’ve done is they’ve taken body acceptance and they’ve said the opposite of body image dysfunction, which, there’s body image, dysfunction, which dysfunction, which says I’m not skinny enough.

I’m not buffed enough. I gotta become an orthorexic on the other end of that is I’m obese. And this is wonderful. And I’m healthy NFI. You are attempts or any attempts at trying to convince me otherwise, terrible bigoted fat, shaming, whatever. Okay. Or, white patriarchy or whatever. I’ve even seen stuff like that.

So it’s crazy and diets have always been weird. There’s always been like a religious component to diets. And I mean that in, in the negative sense, not the positive sense in the sense that, where they say don’t discuss politics and religion at dinner parties you could probably throw diets in there, right?

You talk to keto zealots, or, paleo zealots or whatever, and you get this big discussion. So it’s always been like that, but boys is it taking a whole nother turn? Where, I, like I just said earlier, you can have a healthy vegan diet. It just, and these are facts requires more planning.

Nutrient deficiencies are much more common. You’re probably gonna have to supplement with certain nutrients, at 

Mike: least with protein, right? Even if you’re willing to micromanage your foods, good luck trying to get enough protein. If you’re also trying to improve your body com. 

Sal: Yeah and it’s common for even with a well planned vegan diet to have B vitamin deficiencies, iron deficiencies, vitamin D deficiencies and creatine, although beneficial for most people, vegans who supplement with creatine actually see a cognitive boost.

It’s actually measurable boost in IQ because they’re not getting it from food. And they’re not obviously synthesizing enough of it with the foods that they’re eating. And those are just facts, but then that gets turned into no, you’re obviously evil. You’re obviously bad. You are. You’re part of the other side of the propagate.

It’s really wild to me now the silver lining in all of this is that I think our space is probably the hardest to infiltrate in this way because people who are really in health and fitness, we are empowered. We’ve gone through the journey ourselves. So when we see someone who’s obese, who falls for that narrative of.

This is healthy. This is beautiful. Any attempts that trying to lose weight is fat shaming or whatever we see through that, because we were probably there at one point in the sense that we were probably obese that might have been what started us off, or we were, skinny or at a shape or unhealthy.

So we’ve been through that journey. So it’s really hard to convince us otherwise we’re very empowered. Fitness is a very empowering pursuit because if you want, you wanna get a stronger bench, press, no one’s gonna do it for me. I gotta go do it myself. If I wanna improve my health or my fitness, I gotta, go out and do it myself.

We understand real acceptance because if you pursue fitness long enough, one of the lessons that you learn and you’ll continue to learn through your journey of fitness for life is acceptance. Like I had to accept when I was a kid. I remember too. I remember literal. I was 17 years old and I had just really figured out the role of genetics in body building.

And I remember accepting the fact that I would never look like Arnold I’m not gonna look like Arnold, no matter what I had to accept that and then continue to pursue it. We’re also growth minded and a bit harder to manipulate because of those things. So if you look at the response to the pandemic, the people that pushed back the hardest against some of the narratives were people from the health and fitness space because we’re just more empowered.

So then. Now we can get into the, like our own speculation. And that’s probably why 

Mike: you’re off Instagram man. And I’m currently in, in a timeout. So my, my Instagram visibility, I noticed overnight it went to about one 10th of normal, one 10th of normal, not a one, not a 10% reduction. And so something clearly happened, and somebody who works with me actually got in touch with somebody at Facebook, Instagram, meta, whatever, who confirmed, they looked and they said, oh yeah, there’s a restriction on the account. And visibility is throttled. I think it, it expires in a couple of weeks. I don’t really care Instagram. I never liked it very much.

Anyway. It’s not very important to my business or my life or world, but I just thought it was interesting and they didn’t specify even. Specifically what they didn’t like similar to you. I would share memes that just make fun of a lot of the absurdities of clown world. And I guess some of that pissed them off cuz a lot of these people, that’s what they hate the most is ridicule.

They hate being ridiculed. And so that got one of the freaks on the censorship team into a lather and restricted. 

Sal: So I got booted, I speculated that the pro I got looked at, or, and by the way, it’s gonna get ramped before election seasons. They ramped us up. So it’s no coincidence that it’s happening right now for you and mine happened before the the presidential election that’s when it really ramped up.

And what I would do is I would, I do memes and I would share commentary. And my commentary was, it was not extreme. I would share studies and say they say that this is what’s happening. Or like here’s what causes inflation, like stuff like ex basic stuff. It wasn’t like vote for this guy, this person’s evil, there are lizard people, ring the government, there’s whatever, I didn’t do any of that stuff or anything like that.

And I remember I started to get notifications from Instagram on stories. So you know how you have your Instagram posts and then you can share a story that it’s gone after 24 hours. So you post it and then 24 hours later, it disappears. I was getting notifications. On stories that I had posted two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, like they, they were gone for 2, 3, 4 years, and then I, they pop up and say, this goes against community standards.

And I’m like, oh my God, that was, and they would have the date. I’m like that. I shared that two years ago and I’m getting a warning now. And I told the guys, I said, they’re after me. They’re gonna boot me. For sure. Anyway, they did, I got kicked off. We had this lawyer who actually followed me and I guess he’s some big time lawyer.

And he is Hey, let me see, let me look into this for you. I’ll do it pro bono. I wanna see what’s going anyway. He got in contact with someone and he basically asked him, what’s the one, what’s the final thing that got Sal kicked off. And it was a meme. Do you know that meme with James Franco where he’s standing, he’s got like a loose noose around his neck and he’s looking over at his buddy and it’s like first time and it’s shared everybody shares it.

And the caption gets changed all the time. That’s the one that got me kicked off. And they said, because it was promoting. Personal harm. I swear to God, Mike, it was so benign that I forgot, like the meme itself was like, had nothing to do with politics. So they were 

Mike: just, they were just looking obviously for something that technically according to their little policies, if you interpret it in some weird way, gave them the green light to kick you off.

Sal: It was because he had a new surround his neck and, loose and I’m promoting personal harm, even though that’s a meme that’s been shared, but a billion times with different captions. That’s what finally finally did it. So it’s really it’s inter by the way, did you see the report that just came out?

I’m gonna, I’m gonna share this. I literally just read this and it’s the wildest wildest thing. So a bunch of internal communications obtained by America. First legal has just been released, just came out right now that the CDC. Coordinated with social media companies and Google to censor users who expressed skepticism or criticisms of COVID 19 vaccines.

And now on its face, you’re like, okay, that might be, I don’t know, is that a good thing or whatever? This was broad and wide and anything that went against any official narrative would get censored and people would get kicked off. And this is, remember, this is, these are private companies that if you thought back to like, how is it possible?

All these private independent companies seem to be coordinated work together. That’s how. They were all, working with the CDC, I think instructed, you brought up nine 11 here we go. Now we’re gonna go down the weeds a little bit. But if you look at some of the stuff that was passed after nine 11, it’s totally now legal for them to go to a private organization and say, Hey, you’re promoting, if you don’t do this is national security.

And we don’t need a warrant to tell you this and we could shut you down. Oh. And you can’t tell anybody that we talked to you. All right. See you later. , this is all by the way. This is in, these are in the things that we passed after September 11th. So really weird man, really weird shit. And the fitness and health space now is no longer immune to it.

We are now part it’s. Now we now have to fight this weird propaganda machine. Protein is gonna be demonized further. I’m gonna predict that right now. Protein’s gonna be the enemy. So weight lifting is gonna be the, anything that, that makes you strong, healthy, and empowered. An independent is gonna be the enemy and in our space, that happens to be anything that makes you feel stronger and more fit and more confident.

Those are all gonna be the enemy and sure enough, that’s what the, that’s what it’s looking and to what 

Mike: end, obviously it’s just speculation, but obviously you think about this and generally speaking things don’t just happen. They are made to happen. So there are people obviously who are pushing this agenda.

It’s very naive to think that this just spontaneously formed out of grassroots concerns. It appears to be top down. And I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on that. And then again, to. Some people would say, if some people who want to be charitable, they would say it’s because people really are concerned.

People who are in positions of power, they really are concerned about the environment, or they really are concerned about the wellbeing of people. And in the end, maybe they’re wrong and maybe time will prove them wrong, but they had good intentions. That’s an argument I hear when people want to excuse a lot of what you’re talking 

Sal: about.

Yeah, no historically, no, that’s not the case. And again, I ha historically that’s never been the case. The it’s not for, because of good intention. I how to sell it. But the truth is, look, here’s the deal. The most effective tool we’ve ever had throughout all of humanity to solve our problems ever has been human ingenuity, always.

That’s just a fact. Okay. If we do in fact, have crazy problems ahead of us, then the best way to solve that is to have happy, healthy, strong people and more people, not less people, more people innovate, more healthy people innovate more, the more productive we solve more problems. Okay. For people who don’t, who, who maybe are like that’s not true.

No, look, here’s the deal. The countries making the greatest innovations to solve problems like pollution and climate change and, equality for, people who need help or whatever are the rich, wealthy countries. Why? Because we’ve solved the immediate need issues. First we need food, we need shelter, we need safety now when we solve that stuff and then we got wealthy, then we start to okay, now let’s be more charitable.

Let’s look at these other issues. When you’re starving, I don’t care what rapper. My food comes in, but when I’m not starving and I have money and I have money and I’m looking at all these different companies for when I wanna buy my food, now I can start to say which one has the most biodegradable rapper and which one’s innovating the most and which one’s doing the most to, move towards the causes that I believe in type of deal.

So that’s just that’s just a fact, okay. So why am I saying this? Here’s the deal? And I know this is a as a health and fitness professional. If we coerce the population at large, which knows very little bit, little about diet and exercise anyway, and you just say, Hey, just stop eating this entire category of food, which happens to be where you’re getting most of your essential nutrients, which is true.

If you look at, if you look at the average, typical person’s diet, not fitness, fanatic, not health fanatic, but the typical person’s diet. And you look at the whole foods in their diet, which we know, typically the healthiest, the Nu most nutrient dense, and also the ones we’re least likely to overeat that’s effect.

Heavily processed foods are engineered to make you over eat whole natural foods. You tend to eat less of ’em. So this is a very established fact. Now in studies, if you look at their diet and you look at the whole natural foods, they tend to be what eggs milk. Meat. So we’re gonna do is gonna tell people to remove those foods and replace them with what plant-based, what probably processed foods.

They’re not gonna replace ’em with a well-planned whole food plant diet that requires more planning. Whereas, a piece of steak gave me all these nutrients now I need to go to the store and I gotta get I need some get the impossible 

Mike: steak or whatever 

Sal: bullshit. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna produce a sicker population with more mental health issues.

Mike: How many vegans have you come across over the years who eat very poorly? Actually they eat a lot of highly processed, relatively not nutritious vegan food. Vegan junk food essentially is like half their daily calories. 

Sal: A lot. The only vegans that I’ve ever worked with that did a good job with it were very dedicated.

Their motivations behind veganism were not health related. It was a moral issue. So for. They were very strongly motivated because they really believed in the welfare of animals. Which, I totally respect. And they were very smart about it, but all the people who did it for health reasons, weight, loss reasons, for example, their diets were worse were absolutely worse and they would suffer the con.

So we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna make everybody much sicker. Okay. Much, much sicker. Why are they, why do they want us to get sicker? I don’t know if they necessarily want us to get sicker, but I do know this is pretty I think this is a pretty well thought out speculation. The beef industry, big industry makes a lot of money, but you can’t patent to cow.

Not yet at least. I can’t capture that industry as a cattle farmer or producer of beef. It’s hard. I can make beef products. I can make processed food products with beef, which by the way, if you look at all the processed foods out there, majority of ’em are plant based, not animal product based, but nonetheless, very, I can’t do that.

I can’t patent. Fish or milk or eggs? Maybe not yet. Maybe they’ll figure out a way to do it, but I can’t do it yet, but can you patent plants? You can, GMO plants are patented protected by patents. Okay. So that’s what I think. I think what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to be able to control the food supply in that way, by saying, one or two producer.

Now make all of our food, they make all the money with it. And now we can control this particular part of the market. You, if you, if 

Mike: you’re gonna speculate, you have to include that if you’re talking about, especially in the context of history , and especially in the context of governments and power over people, you have to at least think about the implications in the realm of power control over people over how they think, how they act, how they spend their money, how they live.

Sal: Totally. Yeah. If you, this is again based off of historical references. Okay. So this isn’t me guessing. This is me saying, all right. If we look back for th through thousands of years of recorded history, how have people been effectively controlled? And there’s a few components there. One of ’em is fear.

So when we’re, and this is psychological when we’re afraid, we don’t make great decisions for ourselves. Fear based decisions tend to be hasty. We don’t consider all the ramifications. I think, I don’t think that’s debatable. I think most people will understand that. So fear confusion is another one.

I know the Soviet union. If you read about, you read books like the ULA arch, or, people who really talk about what it was like living during those times in the control, part of it was confusion where I’m told one thing. Now I’m told another thing.

Now I’m told another thing. So you get to the point where you’re just like, okay, I don’t know. Tell me what to think. Just tell me what to think and what to say. So lots of confusion. Lots of fear and then dependence. I need you for medicine, or I need you for my money or my house or my, I need you for my safety.

I’m dependent on you. You throw those ingredients together. And then you can effectively control people. So what does that look like? Let’s get people, let’s control their food. Let’s scare the shit out of them. So we can get, all the, whatever we want past to get past let’s control their money, which, we can go down that rabbit hole if you want, but let’s control the money supply and what that looks like.

And if we can control what you spend your money on, where you spend your money, the value of your money. Now now we’ve really got you and those, the quotes from the central bankers, right? Like I don’t care who, who makes the nation’s laws along as I control their money.

So that’s what it looks like. And this is of course all speculation, but historically, this is how they’ve done it. So when you look at the landscape and there’s some silver linings, I think I it’s latest polls show that people’s trust in the media is at all time lows, which makes me feel good because I don’t feel like I’m the only one losing my mind.

I think everybody’s looking at the media going, you know what remember during the pandemic, how ridiculous. Some of the stuff was, and I’m not even talking about, I’m not even gonna get into the debate over the stuff. That’s controversial. I’m just talking about the obvious stuff. Like I was literally wa I remember a new, it was a newscast going on.

I don’t remember what channel it was. It was one of the mainstream ones. And they literally were saying, this is within the same, like 30 minutes. Okay. So it wasn’t like they separated it and it was all the same. So they were talking about how dangerous it was to be around people like you are killing people.

If you’re around, people isolate yourself, stay at home, wear a mask at home, stick to your bubble. If you go near people, this is very dangerous. You gotta stay away from people. And then they panned over or switched over to the George Floyd protests and riots literal. Tens of thousands of people smashed together, yelling and spitting on each other, nobody wearing a mask.

And then they literally said these protests and riots are contributing in no significant way to the spread of COVID. I remember reading some of those 

Mike: articles. I was like, I want to hear this one. I actually want to hear this argument. And if I remember it boiled down to what they were saying as well, they were outside, actually, a lot of people were wearing masks and actually there was a lot of social distancing, so yeah, 

Sal: no, they’re right on top of each other and that, and then you see the footage and you’re like no, it was in the same breath.

It was like, it blew my mind. 

Mike: It’s literally it’s like from 1984, don’t believe you’re lying eyes. 

Sal: Yes, I so a hundred percent. So I remember I would see stuff like that. And I’m like this is wild to me. This is crazy to me. And, 

Mike: And of course if you are at least a little bit awake and willing to think independently, when you see stuff like that, you have to wonder what else they’re lying about.

Like that. That’s not conspiratorial thinking. That’s just logical. Okay. This is clearly absurd. This is gas. Lighting really is what it is. And so now I’m just skeptical of anything. These people tell me. 

Sal: Yes. Which again goes back to confusion. Part of me is are they doing this on purpose so that we just stop believing everything and don’t know who to trust or what to believe?

The other one was the whole, like they shut down gyms for a long time. Gyms were shut down the longest. Dude. I have friends that lost their business. It was just terrible. And they shut them down. First off I, my personal belief, this is my personal belief. So we’ll start there. I believe that you, once informed, you can choose to risk your life or not so long as you don’t expect anybody to take care of you.

If you make a stupid decision, that’s the other side of that, there’s responsibility that comes with it. So if people are informed and they wanna be around other people, that’s up to them. So that’s that belief, but here’s the other side of it. Okay. They’re like, no, we gotta shut down gyms because people are working out next to each other.

They’re gonna spread the virus. This is crazy. And I remember as a gym owner, right? I’ve owned gyms and I’ve the last place. And I knew that. I said this on my podcast. I said, I can’t wait to see the data. And now we have data to support. What I said is that the last place anybody goes when they’re feeling a little under the weather is the gym.

Now people will feel a little cough. Or scratchy throat. They’ll go to the grocery store. They’ll go to the movies. They’ll go shopping. They’ll go to a restaurant. But no people, nobody works out when they’re feeling a little sick. Nobody’s oh man, I got a little bit of a headache. I’m gonna go hit the gym.

Like I’m gonna skip it today. That’s all I needed. That’s all I needed for me to skip the gym. Now we got data come out now showing that gyms were not only a place that, that didn’t spread. It was one of the least likely places where you’re around people that 

Mike: spread. Yeah, it was gyms. I remember airplanes as well were not a vector of 

Sal: disease.

Yeah. And I knew that, the other one was were the mask mandates on children? I have friends that work in the medical industry and I remember when they passed the mask mandates at first I thought, first of I don’t like mandates like that, but okay. I could see the rationale.

And then I talked to my friends in the medical industry and they’re like, dude, they’re like, do you know the training that we go through? On how to wear a mask and I had to handle one properly and then they went through it with me and I’m like, holy shit, no, one’s gonna do that. this is a total waste of time.

And they said, yes, it is. It’s a total waste of time. Nobody handles these things properly. I don’t 

Mike: know if you remember early on, I believe it was even Lord Fauci, who said that masks are not are not useful. And he was discouraging people using masks. And then later he said that was because he wanted to try to preserve the PPE for the professionals, a white, noble lie, so to speak and actually masks do work well.

And now that we have enough of them, everyone should wear them. And some people when they see stuff like that, they just go, oh, okay. All right, that’s fine. I guess I’ll just wear the mask. Now. Some people though wonder. What else might this guy be lying about? He just told me that he lied to me in a, again, he says, that’s a noble lie.

And he said, it was for the greater good but he did lie. 

Sal: Yes. So now I remember what my friends would tell me this about mask had to handle them what to do in order to make them effective, the kind of mask that you need to wear. They’re like, dude, these cloth masks, these other masks are total waste of time.

You need to have this, back then it wasn’t very well known N 95. And you have you handle ’em you do once you use it one time, once you touch it, that’s it. You get another one oh my God, no one’s gonna do that. But then I took it a step further and I said, okay, forget the fact that 99.9% of anybody isn’t gonna do that, which is by the way, why the data shows that mask mandates did zero.

Cuz we now have the data to show this. I said, why are we forcing kids? Like four year old kids. I can’t even keep my kid. I can’t even have my kid keep his socks on, let alone a mask that they don’t touch and handle properly and whatever this is crazy. And then I took it another step further. Look I’m not an expert in neurobiology, but it’s also, it is one of my passions.

And I do know that a very large part of our brain, if not all the entire brain lights up, when we’re deciphering faces and expressions and reading people’s expressions. In fact, we can make faces outta almost anything. If you look at the front of a car, you can very easily make the headlights and the grill look like a face.

And this is an evolutionary thing, right? To be able to see if it’s predators, there’s also our ability to read human emotions. This is a very, social creatures can read cues very well. The more social a creature is the more important this is. And then knowing what I know about brains plasticity and how children’s brains develop.

Based on their environment. So like a child can learn several languages and never develop an accent, speak them fluently and sound like they’re from those countries because of the plasticity of the brain. If you teach an adult different languages, they’ll learn them, but you can always tell their native language was English or whatever, because they develop.

So there’s permanence in how the brain develops and I’m like, holy shit, we’re gonna put all these kids. First of all, in mass, which ain’t gonna work for kids because adults aren’t gonna handle ’em properly, let alone a four or five year old, but now we’re gonna cover their faces. So all day long, they’re not reading facial expressions and their brain is now developing accordingly.

This is gonna cause some serious problems. And I said that on my podcast, and now we have data to support this as well. Speech therapy, anxiety lots of issues now are developing. Because children went for two years in many in California, two, almost two years. You think as an adult? Oh, two years.

Yeah. It’s a long time. Not that big of a deal. Okay. You take a third grader or a second grader. Someone’s in second grade for two years covering their face. That’s a huge chunk of their life. And 

Mike: why are they covering their phase? What message are they being told again and again, it’s that the environment is in danger is dangerous.

Be afraid of the air basically is what they’re being told. I have friends who live in Virginia around where I lived when I lived there. And they ran into this issue with one or both of their daughters. One of them in particular, I know for sure, seven, eight years old and after six to eight months or so of having to wear a mask every day in school and elsewhere, I don’t know how much she wore a mask outside of school, but certainly in school.

My buddy told me that his little daughter was now afraid to go into any indoor space without a mask. 

Sal: So I have kids I’m in California and they were forced to wear them in school. My daughter, when this all went down was in fourth grade, finishing fourth grade. And they, when they finally ended the mandates in schools here in California, which took a long time, took like a, it was like two school years, right?

They all continued wearing ’em. The kids refused to take ’em off. They didn’t wanna take the mask off. Now why? Partly I think there’s the fear aspect, but here’s the other part. This is a big one. When you’re growing up as a kid and especially through formative years, adolescence, 11, 12, 13, you wanna hide, you ever seen a kid that’s insecure, right?

They wanna hide behind their hoodie or whatever. So you have them covering their faces, developing friendships with kids around them. Cuz two years is a long fucking time when you’re a kid. Okay. Covering your face, developing friendships, developing patterns and behaviors. Now you want me to reveal my face?

To all these people. So they literally they wouldn’t take ’em off all of ’em where, to the point where it got to the point where I had to force my kid, I told her you’re not wearing that. Sorry. Yeah you’re not gonna wear it anymore. Actually became an issue, damage, tremendous damage all, because we were afraid.

And we just did these knee-jerk reactions. So it’s, it is very strange. And again, to circle back our space is not immune. It is now being permeated and they’re slowly, doing this. Like you’re gonna start to see articles that say things like protein cause cancer, and they’ll use mTOR studies, which anybody who understands mTOR knows that it’s complete bullshit that if you have cancer, anything feeds cancer.

It’s your cells. . So I could make, I could show articles that I, studies show that fat feeds cancer, carbs, feed cancer, proteins, feed CA feed cancer, nutrients. Feed cancer. Oh my God. Don’t take in any nutrients, cuz you’re gonna make the cancer get worse, but they’re gonna, they’re gonna focus on mTOR and its driver and how it drives cancer, growth and protein.

You’re gonna start seeing articles on testosterone. Why it’s this toxic hormone. You’re gonna start seeing articles, which we’re already seeing on strength, training and exercise and why it’s self hate and harm and all kinds of different things. So it’s all, and it’s all just gonna get worse.

And I wanna say it on the record and I’ll continue to say it on the record because when it happens, I want people to be able to, I wanna be able to say, I said this two years ago, I said this year ago and right now I know there’s people watching it who are thinking that’s crazy. That’s not gonna happen.

Oh it will. I promise you, it will. Within a year or two or three, this is the message that you’re gonna start to see get hammered. So again, I wanna call it out and put it on the record because then we can go back and I can say, I told you 

Mike: hey there. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome.

Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast, or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or I’m not so loved one, even who might want to learn something new word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show.

So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. And what are your thoughts about people who would dismiss a lot of what we’ve said here as. Conspiracy theory as conspiratorial thinking. I’ve read a number of articles over the years trying to debunk conspiracy thinking and conspiracy theories and how to talk to, to family members who believe in conspiracy theories.

And I, I think the, that, that psychology and the argument that is made is interesting. But what are your thoughts on that? 

Sal: That was a, that actually was a conspiracy theory is the fact was a term created invented by the CIA a long time ago. I think it 

Mike: was regarding JFK, right? That was the context it was to brand.

It was to brand any, yeah. Alternative theories as conspiracy theories. 

Sal: Yes. Now look there people that believe in crazy things. Yeah. There’s just flat earthers and there’s all kinds of crazy stuff out there. So that’s I, a hundred percent cue tars 

Mike: that’s what’s often used actually to dismiss all quote unquote conspiracy theories is that they are all as absurd as Q.

That’s, that is at least these days. That’s what I see in articles. I just read one yesterday from a professor or assistant professor at an Ivy league school. And that was the crux of the argument is like anybody who you mentioned nine 11, right? So anybody who would even entertain the idea that maybe our government knew about it had something to do with it.

I don’t know. I’m not even saying that’s the case but even if you were to start to think those thoughts, that is just as ridiculous as believing in the Q predictions and all the wild stuff that has come from. 

Sal: Or the moon landing was faked or something like that. Which 

Mike: I don’t know, maybe it was, I don’t know.

I, I actually haven’t looked into that because I’m, I don’t really care, but maybe it was, I don’t know. I’d have to see the evidence. Like when I heard about flat earth first, I was like, okay, I want to hear, I want to hear the argument. What’s the argument. And when I heard that, basically every video, every picture, all evidence of the earth out in space as a globe is fake.

And the, every government that’s ever published, anything is in on the conspiracy and every private, now we have space, these other companies, they’re all in on it as well. And then what evidence is there for that? Nothing. It’s just a story. That’s when I moved on from flat earth. That was enough for me to dismiss 

Sal: it.

Yeah, no I don’t. I think that what’s most likely is that you have opportunists. In politics, this has always been the case. Like you talked about nine 11, 100%, when that happened, there were people in government who used that as an opportunity to either declare war on a country that we’ve been trying to, for a long time, we just needed public support Iraq.

That’s a great example. Or to pass bills that would’ve never passed before or spending, that they never would’ve passed before. Because of this, this thing that just happened. So there’s opportunists. Okay. So you have a pandemic. Okay. We don’t need to talk about what caused it, what’s going on, whatever, but what a great opportunity if you’re in government and you’re like, Hey or pharma, what a 

Mike: great opportunity to make a lot of money.

Sal: Oh, huge. Okay. I want, I wanna give money to all these donors and friends of mine. Let me sneak these in. Rescue bill that gives every American $600, which somehow came out to be trillions of dollars, which that’s not what it adds up to. So if you look at all the money where it went a very small percentage, they actually gave to people.

So I think there’s opportunists. I think there’s narratives that are very effective at dividing people. And that’s what you want. You wanna be able to rally your people so you can get them to vote a particular way. So I think that’s, what’s the obvious thing, but as far as the conspiracy theory thing is concerned, look and this is just a fact, so you can take this wherever you want, but I’ll use one.

That’s a fact, okay. Area 51 which, long, speculated as this place where, there was a UFO that crashed and the government, retrieved some aliens and then they hid it from us and all this stuff. We know what area 51 now was. It was where they were developing the top secret Blackbird spy, plane that was the fastest plane in history.

And it, was able to spy on the Soviet union and they wanted to come up with a. A story that was so crazy that they could counter it, but to spur this narrative so that they could counter it because people are gonna see shit flying above them. And so what did they come up with? Let’s put forth.

This is literally they admit it. We’re the ones that made people think they were aliens. We put these stories in newspapers and we got, people to believe this and it was a great cover, right? So sometimes these conspiracy theories that sound crazy could be ways of getting us to not really look at, what’s going on.

If someone comes out and says, Hey, this is bullshit. That meat is unhealthy. This is not true. All the research we’ve ever for all in nutrition, history, and human history and how we evolved shows that meat is a very important part of eating healthy. What they’ll do is they’ll come out and say, maybe they’ll put something out that says people who don’t want us to eat meat are.

Possessed by Satan and here’s the evidence. And then, they’ll put the evidence out. And so then what you’ll do is you’ll be like, oh my God, that’s crazy. Therefore, all the other stuff is crazy. And that’s just I don’t know what you wanna call it SYOP or whatever we’ve been doing it forever.

Misinformation, 

Mike: disinformation you can read a lot about that type of stuff. I just know in, in world war II, if you want a lot of good examples of great misinformation and disinformation campaigns that were meant to mislead the enemy into believing wrong things. Speaking of Q do you know about operation trust?

This was a Soviet union. It’s very similar actually to the Q phenomenon, which was a supposed insider leaking information. And it was a government operation to mislead people and find the centers. And it was smart. It was clever. And I read an article. I don’t know, maybe six months ago that indicated that the Q phenomenon might have originated with the FBI or they co-opted it at some 

Sal: point that’s fascinating.

I was not familiar with this at all. And I’m familiar with like operation Mockingbird and MK ultra and Northwood and all this. Sure, which I was 

Mike: gonna mention also, if you wanna talk about other conspiracies, like just go look at what the government did with MK ultra that’s some weird shit. And anyway, though, so I don’t remember the article that I was referencing, but it wasn’t like a Facebook post or something.

It was at least it respectable journalism. And that would make a lot of sense to me given how the Q phenomenon has evolved and how many people it has misled into believing all kinds of wacky things that never came to pass. But again, people listening, if you’re interesting, check out operation trust, and it’s very similar to what has happened with Q.

And it’s just another example of if you. We’re on the other side and you are trying to get people to, for example, one of, one of the, I think if that’s the case with Q one of the brilliant aspects of it was the message was. Fundamentally that conservatives didn’t need to do anything really because the real Patriots were in control.

It looked like that the Patriots were losing, but that’s all a smoke screen. And actually behind the scenes, the Patriots are winning. Don’t worry. Trump is coming back. The military’s gonna kick Biden out, install Trump. Hillary’s going to jail. We’re breaking up. The child, trafficking rings all of that stuff.

But it had a mollifying effect. I know boomers love this shit. They still love it. And so I know some people who are still into it and they’re still preaching the same message, which is essentially they don’t need to organize. They don’t need to do anything because their team is actually winning, even though.

Peer that their team has completely lost and might not ever be back on the field again. And so that’s clever psychology. 

Sal: It is. And it’s hard because you get to this point where what’s, what are they, what’s real, and what’s not real, but I tell you what the obvious stuff, if it’s obvious and crazy to you, it probably is being a, being somebody who’s been in, in the fitness space, as long as I have, and I’ve worked with athletes and I know how the human body works.

Like when you tell me that a biological man can transition to a woman and within a year lose every physical, competitive advantage that a, that they had as a biological band. I know you’re full of complete shit. I know this. You could give my sister all the anabolic steroids in the world, and she’ll never be as strong as me on my weakest day.

Okay. I know this it’s insane to me. And they kept pushing that and they’re still pushing. Crazy to me that people will actually argue this. And they’ll silence you by saying you’re D discriminatory or you’re a bigot, which is no, I don’t look, here’s the deal you wanna, it’s your body.

You wanna do what you wanted to do your body, you ahead and do that. But don’t come over here and tell me that after a year that you’re lost all your advantages, cuz I know for a fact that’s totally false. You competed as a swimmer as a, like you talked about Leah Thomas, you competed as a male swimmer and the best you ever got was 42nd.

And the year after you transitioned, you’re breaking world records, like this is crazy. And show me the trans men that are crushing records. Oh, there are none. That’s right. Cuz they try to compete and they get their acid kicked because even though they’re on testosterone, it doesn. It doesn’t do everything 

Mike: because the advantages begin in the womb.

Actually, I had a professor on my show go over the research on this in depth. And I forget the name off the top of my head. I’ll find it and put it in the show notes for anybody who’s interested. But he he did a very good job explaining the weight of the evidence and the existing research.

And it was very 

Sal: clear it’s and it’s it. Okay. So here’s the funny thing though, Mike, this is the part that makes me get so frustrated. We gotta bring, we gotta bring research like this was, this is, it’s almost like it’s almost like somebody says to me, look, show me the research that putting my hand in a fire is gonna burn my hand.

Cause I need to see the research. But there are people 

Mike: out there who think like that, you say it’s unhealthy to cut off your head and they immediately say, ah, where are the peer reviewed studies that show that you don’t know that? 

Sal: Yes, it’s crazy. It’s wild. And I had somebody send me an article saying here’s why meat, causes cancer because when you cook it, especially if you cook it over a flame, those damn toxic males barbecuing outside, it creates carcinogens.

And I say, what? And then I, I replied back and I said, how have we cooked meat for all of millennia over fire? And they say show me the data. I’m like, okay, I’m done. , 

Mike: I’ve actually written about that. And my conclusion was based on the research that I reviewed at the time. Yes, mechanistically speaking, there’s validity in that.

However, of course the dose makes the poison. And so if you are eating pounds of charred meat every day, seven days a week, You have other problems, but that is not great for your health. That might increase your risk of cancer to some degree. However, if you grill yourself a hamburger once a week, twice a week, every other week, and you live a relatively healthy lifestyle, you eat a lot of nutritious food.

You exercise, you get enough sleep, you maintain a healthy body composition, that little bit of charred meat that you eat now, and then is going to have absolutely no impact on your health 

Sal: or longevity. Listen, it’s ridiculous. It’s bullshit. That’s how we’ve always cooked meat. That’s how we’ve always consumed meat.

It’s okay. It’s like me saying the most mineral dense food on the planet is a rock. Okay. I could break down the mineral content of a rock and I bet. I bet you, I could get some rocks that will kick the shit out of any food. Does that mean you’re gonna eat this rock and be healthy? No. So it’s like they take something, they extrapolate one piece of data more than that.

It’s just 

Mike: taking it to an extreme, right? Think of the sun we’ve been in the sun for a long time, but I think you would agree that if we are in the sun too much, it’s going to increase our risk of skin cancer. 

Sal: It’s radiation, there’s radiation come, did you know, peeling a banana releases, radiation.

Did you know that the radiation comes off of the peeling of a banana or peeling tape off of a roll? Don’t do that. There’s radiation. We’re gonna die. It doesn’t work that way. It’s insane. To me, it’s crazy to me. So it’s okay. So people are like what do I do. Here’s what you gotta do. And here’s what I’ve been telling people lately.

I like Mata analysis. I understand how to read a study and what makes this study good. Sample size, peer reviewed, double blind, placebo controlled. Does this sample size apply to me? Is it a bunch of college-aged males? I’m a aged woman. Is this study on testosterone really applicable to me that kind of stuff.

Also look at historical anecdote, cause anecdote has been demonized, but when you look at, for example, Up until 15 years ago, there were really no good studies done on ashwaganda, but ashwaganda had been used for, I don’t know, hundreds or thousands of years in medicine, that’s historical anecdote. And I think that has got some validity when something’s been used for hundreds of years or thousands of years, historically, for a particular purpose, for example, honey, to help with coughs.

I remember when my oldest was 17, was a kid. I asked the doctor about honey and tea to help with the cough. And they’re like, oh, it’s an old wive’s tale. When I got studies, now that show that there’s actually a compound in honey that actually suppresses the cough reflex and that, but we’ve been using it for hundreds or thousands of years.

Mike: A lot of researchers look to that to get ideas for research. 

Sal: Correct? Correct. And then look at wisdom. Look at wisdom. What is wisdom? What wisdom’s existed and is wisdom is knowledge and information that has passed the evolution of ideas. Meaning it’s existed for a long time. We might have forgotten why we do certain things, but it’s existed for so long that it’s passed the test of evolution.

And in the sense of ideas like we still do this. Why have we done this for so long? Like, why are we in monogamous relationships? Why is that prized in every, successful civilization that exists today? And you wanna break it down, but let’s, what’s that one saying before you tear down a fence first understand why it’s up in the first place, cause it might look silly to you, but you don’t you that’s because you don’t know why it exists in the first place. So you have to take all of that. And then that’s where you can, I think derive some of your, there was art people have been sharing interesting articles with me there was one article like why divorce is good for kids.

What, and I’m sure you can make some cases, oh, this kid got stronger and made it more, and that’s what they try to do these articles. But why dads are not that important? That’s another article someone sent me. Why have, why not having a dad in your life is not that big of a deal?

So yeah, also throwing a little common sense and say that sounds stupid and crazy probably is probably a stupid and crazy then 

Mike: any final predictions for the fitness space or just clown world in general, over the next say, I don’t know, five years, 10 years max who knows beyond that, 

Sal: I’ll make some non fitness predictions that they’ll stay on your podcast.

So if your podcast gets kicked off don’t blame me, but they will move to a digital currency and it will be a central bank produced digital currency and. 

Mike: Do you think global cause the, because cause the great reset crowd these guys and gals openly talk about the need for a global government abolishing private property, digital currency, global 

Sal: currency.

It will be global in the sense that it’ll be the organized, Western world that’ll probably have their own currency and it’ll be out of necessity. So they’re not gonna just put it forth and be like, Hey, this is better. It’ll be like, holy cow. Our currencies are so inflated.

Our they’re just it’s causing all these problems. We’re gonna just fix it by creating this digital currency that we can really control. 

Mike: Which by the way would parallel the pitch that was used to sell the federal reserve system and its currency, by the way. It’s that was essentially the pitch.

Oh it too much volatility and currencies. We have all these banks doing crazy things. 

Sal: That’s already coming. The federal reserve already said they’re already working. They already have a digital currency they’re working on. It’ll be. Blockchain, which now that everybody’s say, oh, blockchain’s so great.

So it’ll be through blockchain. Now that people are sold, that’s the way that we need to do it. So that’s a non fitness and health prediction. My fitness and health prediction is the next macro nutrient to be demonized not for selling books and supplements, but rather for political reasons as protein, we went through the fat demonization, the car demonization, I called this one actually five years ago.

I did not know the motives though. I just thought it’s the next macronutrient that they’re gonna attack, sell us something. I think now this gonna be politically driven. It’s gonna be protein. It will be demonized mark my words. And along with that will be anything that is that related to building muscle and building strength is gonna be connected to toxicity, toxic masculinity patriarchy and that kind of stuff.

Those are my fitness predictions. So digital currency. Demonization of protein and building muscle. Those are the three predictions I said here. And, 

Mike: and last question for you. Do you think that we’re going to see a continued trend here in America of what’s almost becoming two different countries, where if you wanna live one way you go to one of these states, if you wanna live another way, you go to these other states.

If you’re one of these types of people, you are not going to fit in this state, you’re not gonna fit in California, come over to Florida. Vice 

Sal: versa. Yeah, I do. I think that’s gonna continue to happen. It’s part of how we designed our government. I think that there’s more pros than cons with that.

If we didn’t have our state system, we would’ve been screwed over the last few years. So I, and it’s already happening. People are moving. Away from places and two places, although it’s the blue states are bleeding. It’s not the red states that are bleeding right now. Who knows if that’ll change moving forward.

But yeah, I do. I do think you’re gonna see more of that. What does that mean moving forward? I hope it doesn’t mean violence. I don’t think it will, what I think it might lead to is what those of us who would say we’re Liberty, people have always wanted, which was a weak federal government and a stronger state state governments in the sense that they’re, that the states can pass certain laws and the federal government can’t, that’s what I’m hoping, but I don’t know, man, I don’t know what it’s gonna look like, but it’s already looking like that.

It’s already getting this, state versus state thing is starting to get worse and worse, which is really interesting. I live in California, which is, I get, you could quite easily categorize as this like extreme, liberal, like super blue state, but I live in California and the truth is it’s Silicon valley.

And then the coast where LA is that’s that the rest of California is actually very conservative and red. There’s there’s more ranchers and farmers and Cowboys in California than there are in almost any other state, except for maybe Texas people don’t know this. So I think what that may lead to is more of a like splintering, like we’re and there’s been people who’ve proposed this let’s turn California into four different states, so who knows? 

Mike: Yeah. I wonder what it would even take to accomplish something like that though. The what’s the legal legislative process. It seems extreme, but. Again, like we’ve said, we would’ve said that about a lot of what’s going on right now, 10 years ago. I used to tell, I used to try to talk to my dad about some of what I saw going on and some similar kind of predictions 10, 15 years ago, again, after nine 11.

And I started paying attention to things and he thought it was cute. He. Some of my ideas about how things could get outta control and that these the trajectory to me seemed to be downward, not upward. He didn’t wanna see it at all and laughed it off. Of course he has repented now and he sees that that I was more right 

Sal: than wrong.

My favorite conspiracy theory, this one I’ll actually call conspiracy theory. But my favorite one that has come out is that they turned on the large Hadron Collider at like full speed. This is where they slam particles into each other and, try and see how the universe look, see what happens.

My favorite one now is that they turned that thing on and it shifted us into an alternate reality that we’ve been on since. And that’s why everything’s so crazy. and I’m like, you know what? If that turned out to be true, I’d be like, you know what I can, that makes sense, cuz everything’s gotten so freaking weird, 

Mike: Just interesting to think about like why some people really want to believe really weird things and those are the cue crowd.

And it paints us all with this wacky brush. Anyone who questions, any sort of mainstream narrative is quickly put into the same bucket as the multiverse, Hey, drawn Collider people, 

Sal: yeah. I mean it’s because things, like I said earlier, when I saw that news cast where they’re like, don’t be around anybody.

But these protests and riots aren’t spreading, when I see something like that, my instinct is to be. Like this has the world gone crazy, but all you gotta do is look at history and consider human behavior. Hasn’t changed for thousands of years. We’re all the same cultures changed, but human behavior hasn’t.

So when you look in the past and you think to yourself how could all the Germans allow the Nazis to RA to round up all these millions of Jews and kill them? God, it would never happen today. No, it could. It totally could. And you probably not you, but you listening or watching would not be SHR.

You probably would be one of the people that turned a blind eye and allowed it to happen. Say, look at, look 

Mike: at what happened in the Soviet union. It’s even crazier in some ways. Tens of millions of their own people got killed. And you mentioned the Gulag archipelago. And if if anybody listening, you can just watch a documentary on how absolutely ridiculous that.

That regime was, but how many people just went 

Sal: along with it and we wanna point the finger and be like, that wouldn’t be me. No, it would, human behavior is the same. You’re not some superhero. You’re not the person that would, if you’ve been driving, 

Mike: if you’ve ever driven with a mask on that’s it, you would be one of them.

I’m sorry. 

Sal: Yes. You, that’s you probably wear a condom when you jerk off too. They’re the same guy, correct? Correct. 

Mike: Anyways, this was this was fun as always Sal let’s let’s wrap up with where people can find. So you’re very active on Twitter these days, which you probably are enjoying more than Instagram, cuz I think it’s better suited to sh sharing.

Various thoughts and 

Sal: yeah, I’m not big enough on Twitter yet to get kicked off. So I only have about 15,000. I just started getting on there, but at some point I’m sure I’ll get kicked off too. So we’ll see how many of these I can rack up, but yeah, mind pump Sal on Twitter. And of course the podcast is mind pump.

You can find us anywhere. 

Mike: Cool. Cool. Thanks again for doing this Sal. I look forward to the next one. Thanks 

Sal: brother. I appreciate it. Thanks. 

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