503: Alex Clark—Don't Eat That

What if some of the food we've been told is convenient, affordable, and perfectly safe is actually making us sick? Alex Clark https://www.realalexclark.com/, host of the popular Culture Apothecary https://www.realalexclark.com/podcast podcast and a passionate advocate for healthier food, joins Mike to discuss Breaking Big Food https://www.jigsawhealth.com/pages/breaking-big-food, a documentary in which she appears that takes a hard look at what's really behind America's processed-food problem. The conversation explores how Big Food adopted tactics pioneered by Big Tobacco, the science and marketing behind ultra-processed foods, what happens when corporate interests collide with public health, and why it's so difficult to know what's actually good for us anymore. But this isn't just a crusade for Alex—it's personal. She tells Mike about her father's battle with chronic illness and death, and how it inspired her mission to figure out why so much of what we eat seems determined to kill us. Alex gets fired up. Mike gets curious. And together, they ask a simple question: What exactly are we eating? Today's episode is sponsored by PureTalk.com/ROWE https://bit.ly/PureTalkRowe—Switch your phone service today and get UNLIMITED high-speed data for just $34.99 a month and save an additional 50% off your first month. CamelCityMill.com https://bit.ly/TWIHICamelCityMill—The last work sock you'll ever need. 100% American made with a 10year warranty. Use code ROWE for 10% off Mike's favorite work sock. NetSuite.com/Mike https://bit.ly/TWIHIxNetSuite—The #1 Cloud ER. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite'sFREE business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI Is Changing Everyday Work.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Mike Rowe?

  And welcome to another episode of The Way I Heard It. How are you Chuck?

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Uh, great, Mike. How are you?

• 0:11Mike Rowe?

  Are you hungry after that one?

• 0:12Speaker 01

  No, not entirely. Not, uh, not entirely.

• 0:16Mike Rowe?

  This episode is called "Don't Eat That", because honestly, everywhere I turn, everywhere I look, it seems that that bit of advice in some way, shape, or form is being articulated and directed toward me with an increasing level of passion and enthusiasm. Is it just me?

• 0:33Speaker 01

  No. In particular, this, uh, Alex Clark really brought the passion and enthusiasm.

• 0:39Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, you know, I don't know if you know her. She's made the rounds and every week or so, she seems to be getting more and more traction out there in the, uh, in the ecosystem of whatever this is. How do people get known these days, anyway? I mean, you know, all of a sudden, you're everywhere all at once.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, video goes viral, uh, you know, you say something, uh, off-color or-

• 1:04Mike Rowe?

  Maybe controversial.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Inappropriate. Controversial, yeah.

• 1:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Alex Clark has said some controversial things. She has a very successful podcast that's growing by leaps and bounds called Culture Apothecary.

• 1:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:19Mike Rowe?

  What Alex is doing is taking on virtually everything and everyone of, it feels like, um, the stuff from seed oils to the stuff in toothpaste that really shouldn't be in toothpaste. And I'm not talking about fluoride. I'm talking about sugar and all sorts of other things. Stuff that's in the lotions, virtually everything in your makeup. It feels to me as if virtually everything has something in it that's just either unpronounceable, unnecessary, or bad for us.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, this, everything's gonna kill us in one way or another, it seems.

• 1:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. So, there's this movie called Breaking Big Food that I watched a couple of months ago by a couple, uh, Sullivans, I think, right?

• 2:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. Uh, Patrick and Ashley.

• 2:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. And, you know, they're just on a mission. He got sick and, you know, a lot of it had to do with his diet. And so they just kind of turned their lives around, like so many people are doing. And Alex Clark is mentioned in this movie. In fact, she's featured. And, um, more recently, she's been to the White House to express her frustration with an executive order that, um, did not, in fact, ban the use of a chemical most often associated with Roundup. I think it's called, uh, nah, it starts with a G and ends with a than.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:40Mike Rowe?

  It's not glutathyamine. That's what I want to say.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Are you sure?

• 2:43Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, cuz I drink that every night for my liver now.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:46Mike Rowe?

  Yes.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:47Mike Rowe?

  It's not glutathyamine, but it's something like that. Anyway, she's a lot of fun because she cares deeply and she's well-informed and she's very controversial because she's taking on the establishment. And the establishment does not like to be taken on. But she's pissed. She's pissed off because, among other things, a study was released not that long ago that argued a bowl of Lucky Charms had the nutritional equivalence of a bowl of ground beef.

• 3:16Speaker 01

  That is just, just ridiculous.

• 3:19Mike Rowe?

  And yet-

• 3:19Speaker 01

  It's like common sense would tell one that that's not true.

• 3:22Mike Rowe?

  Yes. And so, whatever's happening in our culture more, more broadly, has really been synthesized into Alex's brain and to her podcast and to the mission that she is clearly on. So, I thought it would be a kick to hear from her and I was right. She has a lot to say. She's smart. She's funny. She's convicted.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:44Mike Rowe?

  You'll meet her and you'll remember her, right after this.

• 3:53Mike Rowe?

  Much as I'd like to attribute Pure Talk's explosive growth and unprecedented success to their decision to hire me as their official spokesman, I'm afraid I can't do that because I don't tell people to switch from big wireless to Pure Talk simply because I did. I tell people to do their homework. And even though I'm personally delighted with the service and the company, and even though I've personally saved thousands of dollars by switching, I'd never tell anybody to simply take my word for it. What I will do is brag about the results of the largest industry survey of its kind. 120,000 wireless customers were just asked to rate every wireless company out there for coverage, support, value, and data. Well, guess which company was the only company

• 4:38Mike Rowe?

  to get five stars in every category? That's right, Pure Talk. I'm talking about unlimited, high-speed data for just $34.99 a month, plus an additional 50% off your first month when you visit puretalk.com/row. Switching is easy, but don't take it from me. Take it from the 120,000 other wireless customers who crowned Pure Talk, the only American wireless company, with five stars across the board. Coverage, support, value, and data. Everything you need and nothing you don't at puretalk.com/row.

• 5:33Mike Rowe?

  Are we rolling, Chuckie?

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, we are rolling.

• 5:36Mike Rowe?

  Fantastic. All right, Alex Clark is here from Scottsdale, where we were just discussing the temperature on the ground is somewhere between the surface of the sun and supernova.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, and Satan's butthole, probably.

• 5:48Mike Rowe?

  Jeez, you had to drag the devil into it. Yeah, I never really think about the devil as having a lower GI tract or anything involved. But I guess he must, right? I mean, if he embodies basic sort of human form.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  It's definitely possible. I mean, he was an angel, right, who fell? He's a fallen angel.

• 6:06Mike Rowe?

  Yep.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  So, I don't know. But I don't think people go to the bathroom in heaven. So, maybe not, you know?

• 6:11Mike Rowe?

  Do you think maybe in hell, then, they never leave the bathroom?

• 6:15Speaker 02

  That would make sense. I mean, if you've ever eaten at Taco Bell, it would make sense.

• 6:19Mike Rowe?

  Oh, God. It is so hot there. I remember, I remember leaving Phoenix a couple of years ago. It was 121 and the pilot came on with two announcements. The first was, he said, "Folks, we'll be on our way in a minute. Our, uh, our tires are currently stuck to the runway."

• 6:35Speaker 02

  Oh, gross, yeah.

• 6:36Mike Rowe?

  And then he came on to say, "You know, we've just been doing the math up here in the cockpit and we've determined that we'd be better off holistically if we had a few volunteers just to get off, to get the weight ratio." And at that point, I'm like, "I'll go. I'm off."

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Well, anytime you land in Phoenix during this time of the year, it's a requirement. You have to make sure your air vents are on in the plane. All of the window shades have to go down.

• 6:58Mike Rowe?

  Oh, yeah.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  You know, all of that kind of stuff.

• 7:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Because it is the worst.

• 7:01Mike Rowe?

  Did you grow up there?

• 7:02Speaker 02

  I didn't. I grew up in southern Indiana by Louisville, Kentucky. So, going to the Derby and doing all that. I started a radio career there.

• 7:09Mike Rowe?

  Uh-huh.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  And, uh, I was 18, just had graduated high school. And, um, that kind of started the whole trajectory of how I ended up at Turning Point USA.

• 7:17Mike Rowe?

  What in the world happened to you? I'm sure you're sick of telling the story. I wanted to talk to you because I think, I think the most important quality and the one that's in short supply right now in our country is skepticism. I think it's really, really important right now. If we're ever gonna get our faith back in our institutions, to be brutally skeptical of them now. And you seem to, to be pretty skeptical of a lot of what you might call the, uh, standard orthodoxy around the food and nutrition.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I wasn't always. So, basically, here's my story. I grew up in Indiana in a Christian conservative home. I had, you know, my parents had Fox News on every single night. I grew up listening to Dennis Prager and Michael Medved and, and watching The O'Reilly Factor, right? And Sean Hannity and Combs and all of that stuff.

• 8:08Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  And so, that's what, how I grew up. And so, as a conservative, we were very distrusting of mainstream media and, and, you know, the Department of Education and big tech and, and all of those things. But conservatives never historically questioned pharma or food. We just assumed if it's being sold in the grocery store, then it's safe.

• 8:30Mike Rowe?

  Because we have an acronym looking out for us, right? We have the FDA. We have whatever other long list of bureaucratic assignations that are gonna, that are gonna protect us.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, I thought, like, I think the majority of Americans thought is, well, there must be so many steps and, and rules and things that brands have to go through before they're allowed to put an ingredient in your food. And during the pandemic, and I had grown up, well, let me say this. I had grown up eating primarily ultra-processed food, standard American diet. In high school, it was very normal for me to go through the line and just take six Rice Krispie treats and a Hawaiian punch. And that was my meal. I mean, it was horrible. I, I had zero nutrition for like, the first half of my life. And my mom definitely tried, bless her heart. She tried to get me to eat real stuff and I just didn't. I was addicted to sugar and ultra-processed stuff. And by nature, they make it so addictive, which we can get into.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  But during the pandemic, when they mandated the vaccine, as somebody who had never questioned any health advice or anything, or our medical institutions, I just thought, "This is so wrong to me to tell people you have to put something into your body, whether you like it or not, or you're gonna lose your job or you're not going to be allowed to participate in public spaces." And so, when I started looking into that, I thought, "Okay. Well, has the FDA ever been wrong before?" And of course, you start looking into this and you go down the road of thalidomide, which was recommended to pregnant women, you know, which caused all kinds of birth defects and-

• 9:59Mike Rowe?

  Love Canal.

• 10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, all sorts of stuff. I mean, there's a bunch of things, but it also reminded me of OxyContin. And OxyContin, we were told, was the first non-addictive opioid, right? When it came onto the scene in the late 90s.

• 10:11Mike Rowe?

  You ever see Dope Sick?

• 10:13Speaker 02

  So, this is what's crazy. I'm so glad you bring this up. During the pandemic is when Dope Sick comes out. And I'm watching this and I'm already having, like, the wheels are turning where I'm questioning, you know, how much can I trust the government when it comes to health recommendations? I'm watching Dope Sick and I was very ignorant on the opioid crisis. I'm very privileged to be able to say, you know, my family wasn't touched by that. And so, I just didn't understand a lot of it. And I'm watching the show and I am enthralled. Like, I am reading every book I can about the Purdue Pharma scandal now and OxyContin and all these different things.

• 10:47Mike Rowe?

  Sackler.

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yes. And I just thought, "This is the number one American true crime story." How, how is not everyone talking about this? And talking about how we are not, we, there, it's not totally guaranteed that we should trust some of these three-letter institutions, right? And so, that really jump-started my journey after watching Dope Sick into questioning everything I had been told about health.

• 11:10Mike Rowe?

  Dope Sick, if I remember, that's actors were portraying real-life stories, right? From people who had become just remorselessly addicted. And it was just one story after another. But it was, it was powerful cuz it was rooted in a doc. But it was a portrayal. Was that the one?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's based on the book by Beth Macy called Dopesick. And so that was like a real life kind of picture of these blue collar states and cities that were wrecked by OxyContin and and stories of real people who were affected from doctors to athletes and and you know, just stay at home moms or whatever. And so then Hulu came in and they were like, okay, let's have actors portray some of these stories. So it was like, you know, probably a little bit twisted or embellished, but overall based on the real story.

• 11:58Mike Rowe?

  Well, sure. I mean, I just talked to a guy the other day who produced a great movie called Young Washington. And he made the point, he's like, look, when you're dealing with a topic, any topic that's really rooted in history, you have to remember when you're making the movie, you're not taking a picture, you're painting a portrait. And, you know, it's incumbent on you to get the the broad strokes right. But the rest, you've got to get people interested enough to watch, you know, you've got to get them engaged. If you don't, then, well, who cares? What have you done?

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I was staying up all hours, reading books on Monsanto and and the American Beverage Association and all these different things and just had never heard any of this. And so I started sharing the information I was learning with my audience, which are a bunch of, you know, typically conservative women, 25 to 35 years old. And I'm like, have you guys heard this before? I had never.

• 12:55Mike Rowe?

  But your audience, are you talking about their radio days or culture apothecary?

• 12:58Speaker 02

  With Turning Point USA.

• 13:00Mike Rowe?

  Okay.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  So these are a bunch of young conservative women who had been following me and they kind of grew up similarly to me. And they had never heard any of this either. And I start sharing everything that I was learning and my analytics for my content on social media, my show, just go through the roof. And so I knew that I needed to rebrand my show to be specifically a conservative health and wellness podcast, which is what it is now. And so in early 2024, I told Turning Point, hey, I think I need to rebrand. I think actually the future of the conservative movement with women is going to be health. And and nobody was talking about this. They were like, what are you talking about? What does health have to do with conservative politics? I was like, I don't think you understand.

• 13:42Speaker 02

  Everyone is so passionate about this and nobody votes harder than a pissed off mom of a sick kid who cannot get any answers. And you need to be paying attention to this because if the Republican Party, because you know, I'm a conservative, so I care about us winning. And so I'm like, if we want the Republican Party to win, we need to start sharing what we're going to do about these different issues. And by the way, these are all nonpartisan issues. So it's really not Republican. I'm just saying, someone, Democrat or Republican, somebody should be talking about it. And nobody was. In fact, you know, Bobby Kennedy, who now, of course, famously jumped in there with Trump, he tried to go to the Harris campaign and said, hey, would you guys be willing to talk with me and work with me on how we can make America healthy again? And she said, no, I really think that Kamala

• 14:28Speaker 02

  could have had a better chance of winning if she would have taken that opportunity to partner with Bobby that Trump did.

• 14:32Mike Rowe?

  Why didn't she?

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Because she's one of the most bought and paid for candidates that Pharma has ever had. And so the Democrat Party is completely bought into Pharma. But to be fair, because I call everyone out, the Republican Party is completely bought and paid for by big ag and big chemical.

• 14:48Mike Rowe?

  No kidding. What the heck was, what was that EO with that unpronounceable crap?

• 14:54Speaker 02

  Glyphosate.

• 14:55Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. What?

• 14:58Mike Rowe?

  I mean, come on. I mean, you grow up in a part of the country where farmers are getting absolute, they're just taking it in the neck on account of this stuff. It seems, it seems like it.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  It's definitely going to go down in history as one of the most controversial moves by the Trump administration, bar none, for this term.

• 15:17Mike Rowe?

  Explain it just so people are.

• 15:20Speaker 02

  So the Trump admin comes out with this executive order, basically saying, we're going to protect glyphosate, which is a pesticide that is used on crops. You find it in Roundup that you spray in your yard, at our playgrounds where kids play. And the Trump admin says, basically, we're going to protect it. It's a national security issue because without it, you know, everybody starves, basically.

• 15:44Mike Rowe?

  Right. The whole food chain would get very wobbly.

• 15:48Speaker 02

  Which is true.

• 15:49Mike Rowe?

  If you suddenly said, you can't use this.

• 15:50Speaker 02

  Of course. And and I have never advocated for a ban of it. But the problem is, is, one, we shouldn't be just going out and saying, this is a national security issue. We need to ramp up production and then also protect it. We should be saying, okay, how are we going to help our farmers transition off this cancer causing pesticide? And everyone who is, is, you know, a friend of Bayer is going to say, well, there's no proof it causes cancer. Then tell me why you've done over $16 billion in settlements for cancer. If it doesn't cause cancer, what are you settling on?

• 16:25Mike Rowe?

  That's a German company, right?

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Correct. So that's the other thing. So we are partnering with and protecting foreign chemical companies. ChemChina, China, Bayer is Germany. This isn't even, these aren't even American companies that we are going above and beyond to protect. But what made this so bad in particular is that you have moms across the country, Democrat, Republican, and everybody in between, who knows that this pesticide that is covered, has covered our food, and the parks that their kids play in is, you know, contributing to asthma and allergies and and all of these different gut issues that kids have, of course, cancer. And they want something done about it. And so the executive order comes out at the same time that companies like Bayer are going

• 17:08Speaker 02

  state to state and trying to pass pesticide liability shields. Now, these liability shields would prevent citizens of that state from suing over 57,000 different chemical products and their companies if they are made sick from their product. Now, I can't imagine, I can't think of anything less American than that. That if if this product makes you sick, and by the way, it's owned by a foreign company, you cannot sue if you, your husband, your child gets cancer. And so I have been working really hard in the last year with a few other key people in the Maha movement, the Make America Healthy Again movement. We've protested at the Supreme Court and we've gone to the White House to meet with the president himself and done a roundtable with

• 17:51Speaker 02

  the whole admin, you know, explaining why this is so important to change track on because this really matters to moms, but families.

• 18:00Mike Rowe?

  Did they listen? You're worried they're patting you on the head a little bit?

• 18:07Mike Rowe?

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• 18:52Mike Rowe?

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• 19:30Mike Rowe?

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• 19:45Speaker 02

  Well, it's been, that was in April. And so now it's been a few months. So yeah, now it's starting to feel like it was a pat on the head. But you know what? We'll just see where the chips fall in the midterms. Because I said, this is pesticides are the number one most important issue to these moms that won 2024. You have basically given them the middle finger on this issue. In fact, the USDA just announced that they have ramped up production of cotton fields so that we can have more sustainable clothing. Well, what are we using on our cotton crops? They're not organic cotton crops. So we're using glyphosate. So they're packaging all of these different initiatives and announcements to make it look Maha. But in reality, it's all a handshake, a backdoor handshake for Bayer.

• 20:27Mike Rowe?

  Okay, let's back up a little bit, so people really understand. And I'll take care of some of this in the preamble. So the basic exposition, right? But you're a kid with a garbage gut. You eat like crap. You're doing everything wrong, right? In high school, you're just just eating garbage. And somehow or another, you get hooked up with TPUSA and you start to change your diet a bit, I suppose. And then you realize that this larger issue that touches everything from toothpaste to cosmetics to the lotions we put on our skin, and of course, anything we chew and swallow that falls under the food category, all of it becomes increasingly suspect in your mind. And and so this is the audience you want to talk to.

• 21:11Mike Rowe?

  When does culture apothecary become a thing? How large is your audience? And when you talk about these moms as a cohort, are they by and large your audience today?

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, so those moms are my audience. I went to Charlie Kirk in July of 2024 and I was like, look, I need to rebrand my show by September. I just, in my mind, I knew September was going to be the month to do it. Had no idea, by the way, that Bobby was going to come out and endorse Trump. We had no idea. And I said, I know that this is the future of the conservative movement with women. Maybe because we're heading into midterms, they won't care right now. You know, my rebrand, it might be like a small like blip on the radar in the scheme of things that I've rebranded to use health and wellness show because everybody's going to be talking about midterms.

• 21:54Mike Rowe?

  What was your prior show called?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  The Spillover. It was just a, it was a generic interview show podcast that I was doing with Turning Point, where I interviewed people that were experts in fascinating things or had amazing life stories. Like they survived a serial killer or something like that. So I just-

• 22:09Mike Rowe?

  And sorry, but what kind of audience did you have? Just in terms of numbers, so I can-

• 22:12Speaker 02

  Oh, like numbers? I mean, I mean, not even close to what I was. It did okay. It was just very niche and very small.

• 22:23Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  I think, I think before we rebranded, I had maybe accumulated like seven million downloads. Okay. In like a couple of years. So it wasn't horrible. I mean, but it wasn't amazing.

• 22:36Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  So I go to Charlie, I pitched this idea. I said, I really think this is the future. He said, okay, let's do it. Like, I trust you. If you really feel strongly about this, you see the data, let's try it out. I had planned the date to rebrand two weeks before that. Bobby Kennedy comes out, endorses Trump, Make America Healthy Again is born. It explodes and then I come out and I'm like, hey, I'm the, I'm the conservative girl and I'm doing a health podcast and it just absolutely explodes. We thought the numbers, there was a typo. In fact, Charlie, when we told him how well it was doing after a couple of months, he was like, you need to go back and run these numbers. And we were like, no, we did seven times and this is the number. And he was like, well, you're right behind me. And I was like, exactly. I was like, so you better watch out.

• 23:20Speaker 02

  No, he was so proud and so excited and he really saw then and there like, okay, this is, this is serious. We have serious power here going into the election. Alex was right. And, you know, we've maintained that success. We're a top 10 health and wellness podcast. If you look on Spotify charts and the, and the health charts.

• 23:36Mike Rowe?

  Any idea how many people are listening?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  We are, I don't know, getting close to 60 million downloads, I think.

• 23:44Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 02

  So that kind of shows you the scale of, I mean, what, eight to 60?

• 23:49Mike Rowe?

  Somebody's digging what you're screaming.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So it is all of these young women who are starting families for the first time and they see their precious, perfect baby. And they're like, you know, how do I keep you safe? How do I protect you? What do I feed you? All of the guidance that I'm getting is literally bought and paid for by the big food companies. So that was a huge wake up call for myself and my audience is finding out that a lot of the nutritional information that we're given was genuinely paid for by people in big food companies. And it's like, well, how is that legal? How is that allowed? Exactly. It shouldn't be. You've got this revolving door of the people in the government that are making decisions based on, you know, how safe a food product is.

• 24:32Speaker 02

  They literally have worked or will end up working at those same food companies.

• 24:37Mike Rowe?

  So you're pissing off people right and left.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Every day, Mike. Every day.

• 24:43Mike Rowe?

  What is your-

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Including the White House every day. Cause I, like I said, I'm an equal opportunity. I call it out. I am, it is so important to me to just share the truth. And so if you're doing a great job, I'm going to say it. And if you're doing a crap job, I'm going to say it.

• 24:57Mike Rowe?

  How confident are you that you know what the truth is?

• 25:02Mike Rowe?

  And before you answer, consider how sure you were once upon a time of what the truth was.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  I don't think I was sure about what the truth was before. I think I was very ignorant. I just assumed I was outselling knowledge and I just assumed somebody else must know better than me. And the truth is, is that knowledge is basically free at this point. You don't even have, you don't have to go to college. You can find anything you want to know on YouTube. You could look up anything, you can read any book. I mean, you have all these amazing podcasts, you can learn all this stuff, right? You can listen to the experts, you can listen to the professors.

• 25:38Speaker 02

  I think a lot of us are smarter than we've been led to believe, right? Because they tell us you need to trust the experts or you don't know your own child. I'm the doctor, you don't know. You know, I think a lot of people during the pandemic woke up and said, no, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being told that I'm too stupid to understand. And I'm interested in finding out for myself.

• 26:01Mike Rowe?

  One small tweak, if you'll permit me, devil's advocate.

• 26:08Mike Rowe?

  Knowledge may be not quite as ubiquitous as information. The information is a fire hose and it's everywhere, right? And I get this criticism a lot myself because I'm one more voice in a really noisy cacophony. I have an opinion about a couple of things that I'm pretty dug in on. I'm pretty persuadable in most other areas and I'm pretty skeptical now overall. But the difference between information and knowledge, I, you know, and wisdom ultimately, right? Like, we just want to, we just want to know. And I said to a guy who sat here yesterday, who I think you would probably love,

• 26:52Mike Rowe?

  a doctor called, uh-

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Philip Ovadia.

• 26:55Mike Rowe?

  Philip Ovadia. You know him?

• 26:57Speaker 02

  I don't.

• 26:58Mike Rowe?

  You're going to dig this cat, man. He wrote a book called Stay Off My Operating Table and another one called Stay Off My Kitchen Table. The difference with respect between him and you and me and him is that he's a heart surgeon. He's done over 3,000 open heart surgeries and he lost a hundred pounds that he desperately needed to. I mean, imagine a thoracic surgeon, cardiac surgeon, a hundred pounds overweight, about to cut through your sternum to fix something like, the cognitive dissonance is incredible. But this guy now is basically, if you distilled everything he's doing into three words, it would be meat is medicine.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Great.

• 27:41Mike Rowe?

  All right. And I'm, I'm with you and I'm with him. But that's what like, the average person who is truly open minded and truly skeptical now has to sift through books like his, shows like yours, people like me. Like we're all out there and like the, like the certainty. Certainty is easy. Information's easy. Knowledge is hard. Wisdom is tough.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:11Mike Rowe?

  So how do you think about that? And how do you like, because I know you're in business. I got a business to run too. Packaging matters, marketing matters. And this pesky truth thing just is like fluttering around it like a, like a moth around a flame, you know?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  I think it's asking people to bring back common sense. When you're talking about how we have all this information, how do you know what's true? Okay. So for example, the experts put out a study saying that Lucky Charms were as healthy as ground beef. Actually healthier.

• 28:45Mike Rowe?

  I believe what they said was it's magically delicious.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Common sense would tell you that's not right. And so I think there are certain things, again, when, when you are looking at your child and, and they're struggling with something, they've got eczema or whatever. And you're like, okay, something isn't right, or I know my child is vaccine injured. None, we had none of these symptoms until they took that MMR vaccine. And you're going to your pediatrician and you're explaining all this evidence that you've seen with your own eyes and you're saying this, this isn't right. And, you know, the experts are telling you, well, that, that can't be right. I, I think a lot of this health advice that we have been given, conventional medical wisdom is lacking common sense.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  And so, you know, when it comes to, when you find out like how the FDA again, has been promoting people to work there that were at big, were with big food companies. You know, those are the types of things that I think you should question and pause and kind of look more into things. Does that answer the question?

• 29:47Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, it does. You know, I think about it. The other book I'm really stuck on now is called Collective Illusions by a guy called Todd Rose. And he, among many great points, argues that the thing we ought to be most worried about as a country is the power of the manufactured consensus. And that's why I think skepticism by and large is important on both sides, on all things, pretty much all the time. Because the power of the media that you're in, the social media, the thing we're doing right now. When you get a consensus, when you get an audience, it's really easy to tell them what they they want to hear, once you know what they want to hear.

• 30:32Mike Rowe?

  And that's the thing that I I worry about. Like, for instance, right now, there's a there's a giant consensus in this country that data centers are bad and that AI is going to kill us. Seventy-five percent of the people are very skeptical of that. But why are we so skeptical of it? Maybe we saw the Terminator, maybe we saw The Matrix. Or maybe the Chinese government has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to impact the algorithms that determine the very ecosystem where you and I make our living, to populate those ecosystems with all kinds of bot-driven messages to instill fear, skepticism, and uncertainty about this thing.

• 31:17Mike Rowe?

  And so the result in this country is seventy-five percent of us have a very negative view about data centers and what's coming. In China, eighty-five percent think positively about the exact same things. So when I, like, I guess maybe my question to you is, what consensus is that you're skeptical of, do you believe were manufactured? And how do you navigate them? How do you view them on your show? Are they a necessary villain? Are they the foil? And is the consensus in general terms your enemy? Or have you created a consensus of your own that's starting to feel?

• 32:02Mike Rowe?

  You know what I mean? Like, it's it's very tough to know when it tips.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  No, for sure. And and so I try to, there's definitely some people I throw in there, like on my guest roster that I don't necessarily agree with. I I think, you know, that's interesting. I think it is important to listen to people that you you think you don't agree with or you know you don't agree with, so that you can understand how the other side is thinking. You understand their argument. So I do encourage my audience to kind of go outside of that bubble. And here's the other thing, too. So if people listen to my my show and they're hearing, like, you know, a lot of anti-vaccine episodes, for example, they're like, well, why don't you spotlight a doctor who is pro-vaccine? And I'm like, that's all you've ever heard?

• 32:46Mike Rowe?

  Lots of so-called experts disagree about the ultimate impact of artificial intelligence on humanity. But there's no argument about what AI means for business today. And if you have a business to run, you really can't afford to put your head in the sand because your competition is adapting. And if they adapt faster than you, you're going to lose. That's why you ought to consider NetSuite Next. NetSuite Next lets you ask very complicated questions in plain English in real time. It's like talking to a much more knowledgeable colleague. No offense. But technology is only part of the story. AI is also reshaping how people and teams work together. And that shift is already underway, big time.

• 33:29Mike Rowe?

  That's why you should pick up a free copy of A Lining for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work. They could have called it AI for Dummies, but I'm guessing that title was already taken. This is the definitive guide to how AI can reshape work across your entire organization and how you can position your business to prosper from that shift. If your revenues are seven figures or better, pick up your free copy of A Lining for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work at netsuite.com/mike. The guide is free at netsuite.com/mike. That's netsuite.com.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  That consensus is basically everywhere. It has been a lot harder in the last several years. I mean, social media completely banned. You couldn't even post a clip on Instagram using the word vaccine during the whole pandemic. So, you know, if you are looking for conventional medical advice, that's easy to find. That is the status quo that we have been living under for the last, I don't know, hundred years, right, since Rockefeller? And so what did we get? Okay, so if people are like, well, how do you know that this way is right? How do you know that questioning these different institutions is right? How do I know? How do I know? Well, look at where following the other experts, quote unquote, has gotten us. Okay, so we we did their way.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  By the way, the same doctors who were supposed to be trusting were telling you it's okay and and healthy to smoke. Right? So those people have now led us where half the nation is completely morbidly obese. You have skyrocketing rates of non-alcoholic liver disease in teens, in teenagers. The reason why we had to rename type 2 adult onset diabetes to type 2 diabetes was because so many freaking people were getting it and they weren't just adults. This is a diet and lifestyle disease. You are choosing to be fat. You are. You know, when it comes to that, like, it's what you're eating, it's it's how you're living your life. Now, when I look at those numbers and see where we're at, you cannot tell me that the, you know, the conventional wisdom from the American Heart Association,

• 36:00Speaker 02

  who, by the way, was taking money from Big Canola and seed oils, which causes heart disease, by the way. Like, does any of this clock? Is any of this making sense? So like, when I see stuff like that, I'm like, hello? I mean, we, what what do we have to lose by trying something different? You know what I'm saying? What do we have to lose? Again, you've got one in 12, we're in the state of California. One in 12 boys in the state of California is being diagnosed with autism. How can you tell me that this isn't environmental? You don't see, it's not that we're just finding a better way of testing it. No, that's bull. Because if that were true, you would see all these old people walking through the mall or down Santa Monica Pier, head banging and drooling and and flinging poop or whatever. That's not true.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  It's only happening in younger kids. And it's not that you have RFK Jr. saying, we need to find out what's causing autism because we hate autism and and autistic kids. We're not talking about the super geniuses who can, you know, you can say, what was the weather on June 4th, 1942? And they just know. We're not talking about those kids. We're talking about the kids who are living in a mental prison and their families are in a mental prison. And we're wanting to know, how did that happen? Because you didn't always have that. And so when you're looking at literally just everyone, you know, cancer exploding under 30 years old, pediatric cancer exploding, just the infertility rate that's gone up 1% every single year.

• 37:27Speaker 02

  When you look at at statistics like that, you know that something isn't right. And so it has to be something that we have been doing now for the last several decades. And what has that been? It's been following this conventional advice on what is or isn't healthy to eat.

• 37:42Mike Rowe?

  Wouldn't you just piss off with the birth control thing? What was that all about?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  I make everybody mad only because I'm a conservative raising the alarms on hormonal birth control and the dangers to women's health. If I was a liberal, nobody would care. And I say that because it was actually liberal feminists who first brought up the birth control conversation and said, there's something not right with this pill. There's something you're not telling us. It's making us unbelievably sick and you're not telling us the truth. It was liberal feminists in the 70s at the Nelson Pill hearings who brought this up. And because they made a huge stink over it, that's why when a woman now is prescribed birth control, you open up your pill packet and there's like a, literally, it's like the size of of this table, a huge pamphlet that has microscopic text of all the different risks and side effects.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  We didn't have that for the first couple decades of birth control until those liberal women raised alarms. And so now we have it. But this was really actually a feminist liberal cause because they were sold to take birth control first. Right? They were told, you should be living as men, you know, have being the same, go to work, don't worry about getting pregnant, all these things. And so they took it first. And then they were finding out the risks and the side effects were were so dire, were so terrible. And so when I started talking about it, because like I said, conservative women, we just we just trusted. We had no idea about any of this. When I started bringing it up with my audience, their minds were blown. You know, NBC News and all these different outlets are recording, reporting on me talking about it

• 39:14Speaker 02

  as if I'm some like Christian nationalist and, you know, my goal is to have.

• 39:18Mike Rowe?

  Dude, they hate you, man. You really, you, I guess, you know. What's the expression? You know you're over the target when you start taking that kind of flack.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Well, and that's what I would say to them. Every single reporter that would talk to me, I would say, you know, why aren't you questioning all of the liberal activists who've been talking about this? They don't ever publish that part, that I say that.

• 39:39Mike Rowe?

  Well, I'm gonna go back to a second. No one looks at common sense as the enemy. No one says, I, you know, don't, don't give me that. Everyone thinks their opinion rhymes in some way. But you do make a good point. I think in a way, the simpler point is that long shot of a sold out crowd at Yankee Stadium in 1962, next to that same exact angle of that, a sold out crowd in 2026. In the first picture, you play a game called, find the morbidly obese person. You can't. You can't.

• 40:24Mike Rowe?

  There are 50,000 of them there and you look and you look and they're, you just can't, like, where are they? Ask the same question in 2026. It's, it's pretty easy. They're everywhere. In fact, it's mostly everyone. So that's the argument I make when I think about the status quo and when I think about a consensus, you know? Things change over time. You're right about the doctors too. When you see a guy in a lap coat, smoking a Pall Mall, telling you it'll calm your nerves. It's not the fact that he's wrong. It's the fact that he's certain. And where does his credibility come from? And I think that's your point.

• 41:07Mike Rowe?

  He's sitting there, not just as an agent of the cigarette manufacturer. He's sitting there under the auspices of the government. And he's wearing his little costume. And we bought it. Why did we buy it? Jesus, because we want, we want a manual. We want an instruction manual. We need some direction. We're desperate for it because what do we know?

• 41:33Speaker 02

  Well, and we trust authority. So I cannot think of the name of the study. It's, you know what it is. You know, remember where they had those inmates torture the other? They thought somebody was in charge telling them what to do. And then I don't know if you saw this documentary on Netflix a couple of years ago, about the true story about the, the freak that was calling fast food restaurants for decades and decades and decades, acting as a police officer and getting the managers of the restaurants to sexually assault their employees. Do you remember this?

• 42:00Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Okay, that was a crazy doc. It was really well done. But I think of that, like, when you were told somebody is an expert and they're an authority, we are just so trusting. And it's a really, really scary place to be. I think that's something, you know, parents really need to be thinking about is teaching your kids how to respectfully question authority, you know, ask why, and not just blindly trust the science.

• 42:26Mike Rowe?

  Are you worried though, that, like, you know, a couple of things can be true at the same time. We can be right about the smoking, we can be right about the obesity, we can be right about the food pyramid. That's another great example. Not only was the food pyramid wrong, it was as wrong as wrong can be. Like, you didn't have to rearrange the things in the, you just had to turn it upside down. Right? And so, yes, because authority has the capacity to deceive and/or just be flat out wrong. And because we can point to examples where it happens, should our default position, and I'm asking this as a skeptic, but should it be ratcheted up to the point

• 43:09Mike Rowe?

  where we fundamentally don't believe any authority at all, ever, on its face? Where we just hold them to it? Like, is there any consensus you're still comfortable with?

• 43:19Speaker 02

  Sure. I think it's, yes, you question things, but also when you're talking about experts, it's not that you just don't trust any expert. I'm talking about experts in quotes, like, you know, the, the ones that we are used to. But I'm saying, you know, when you're being presented with a study, okay, who funded this study? For example, the Lucky Charms one that I brought up, you know, that's a real one that was done. When we're told those different things, I think it's okay to look into, okay, well, where is this coming from? For example, there was a massive Washington Post exposé in the last two years. They were wondering, you know, why are so many influencers on TikTok talking about body positivity? You know, everybody's talking about how like, every size is healthy, every size matters.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, you, it's rude for you to go to the doctor's office and for your doctor to question your weight and tell you that you need to lose weight. That's rude and hateful and you should find a new doctor. Okay? So Washington Post looks into this and finds that tens of thousands of dollars were spent by soda companies to give those influencers money to be talking about body positivity talking points. So that is an example of a consensus that so many people fell for in the last decade of like, every size is beautiful and all of this stuff. No, it isn't. Because you're literally killing yourself. You'd say the same thing. I mean, look at Ariana Grande. I'll say the same thing about Ariana Grande. She's not obese. Something is wrong with her.

• 44:43Mike Rowe?

  Make her a sandwich now.

• 44:44Speaker 02

  It's so sad. It is so sad. And so that's not healthy either, right?

• 44:48Mike Rowe?

  Get her some of those Rice Krispies.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Right? And, and you don't have to have six pack abs, but we also shouldn't be glorifying 600 pounds. And by the way, some of those influencers who were famous doing mukbangs and just like, look how much I can eat and they're famous for being fat, have died in the last like five to 10 years that we've got famous on social media for being fat and saying it's okay to be fat. They're dead now.

• 45:08Mike Rowe?

  I'm thinking, like, if we could get you out of your shell. Right? Like a mash.

• 45:14Speaker 02

  Like if I wasn't so shy.

• 45:16Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Poor Chuck. Chuck is like, he, he's turned you down as far as you can go.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  I'm so sorry.

• 45:23Mike Rowe?

  No, literally, your mic is off. But it's coming through this, so now he's turning mine down a little bit. No, look, man, I, I really appreciate your, your enthusiasm and your passion. Sincerely, I think it's, I think it's.

• 45:39Speaker 02

  Well, it comes from a personal place. Here, here's the thing. So my dad died a year and a half ago at the age of 57. He had glioblastoma, brain cancer. He had heart failure, type 2 diabetes, multiple heart attacks. My dad was addicted to ultra-processed food. Every single meal, it was White Castle, it was Burger King, it was Chick-fil-A. We went to the hospital to remove his brain tumor and literally pulling out of the hospital, he was like, can we please go get Chick-fil-A? And then a couple of hours later, we got home, can you please take me to Pizza Hut? The food killed my dad. I know it.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  We were also sitting in the hospital and the internet just raked me over the coals for this, said like, well, if I was your dad, I would want to die too. Because we were in the hospital the night before his brain tumor surgery, which by the way, at that time, we were told he might have like, a little over two years to live. And so we're just trying to buy as much time as we can. And as we're sitting there waiting for the surgery, the nurses keep bringing in cases of orange Fanta. And I said, excuse me, um, my dad has brain tumor surgery tomorrow. Maybe, don't you think it might be a good idea for him to have water? And the nurse is like, well, that's a good point, Ms. Clark. Mr. Clark, what do you think about what your daughter is saying? And he's like, no, I want my orange Fanta. I mean, you know, my dad was totally that kind of guy. And so, um, you know, the hospitals, don't even get me started on the hospital food and everything.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's being, that's being changed. We're telling them they're, they're gonna be losing a bunch of benefits and stuff if they're gonna continue to serve that crap and not adhere to the new dietary guidelines.

• 47:12Mike Rowe?

  How about our military for how many years?

• 47:14Speaker 02

  The military, the military is a whole nother thing. It is atrocious what our men and women on the front lines have been being served. It is crazy. And then, you know, we're at like, 70% of young American men are not even able to join the military because of different chronic diseases, morbid obesity, whatever. I mean, this is a national security issue, but.

• 47:36Mike Rowe?

  Metabolic problems.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:38Mike Rowe?

  In some flavor are keeping 70%

• 47:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:43Mike Rowe?

  of men in this country from qualifying for military service.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  This is extremely disturbing. I mean, this is putting our country in a totally vulnerable place. But when I, back to my dad, when I posted, you know, how disturbing it was at the hospital was aiding and abetting this addiction for, you know, and then he's in there for the disease that those products caused, I believe. People online were like, well, your dad is dying. He should just have a soda. Like, Americans do not understand still, there's so much work to do in explaining the addictive qualities that have been done to our beverages, to our food that are, are making people sick. And these, I believe, everything that my dad has, that my dad had, was completely avoidable with correct diet and lifestyle changes.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  Unfortunately, I didn't have my awakening until it was like way too late and then my dad was so sick and he was like, well, I don't remember when you went to medical school. I'm like, yeah. So, I mean, my dad was the first person. When you're talking about skeptics on this stuff, my dad was the number one person. And so I feel like I couldn't save my dad. But if I can save one more person or one more dad or some other family from the meeting the same fate that my family did, I will feel so accomplished. And, you know, every single day I get messages, because I'm not an expert, I'm not. I interview the experts on various different things and topics. And I am getting told, you know, listening to your show, I learned this and I completely reversed this chronic disease.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  So, you know, I learned this, now we know who our local farmer and rancher is. We never would have known that before.

• 49:21Mike Rowe?

  Here's a crazy idea. What if there was an academy out there that paid students to learn instead of the other way around? Specifically, men and women who want to work in the skilled trades. And what if this academy not only paid for your training, but also covered all the expenses associated with your training, like travel and food and lodging? And finally, what if this academy guaranteed you a job at the end of the training period? Well, that's exactly what's happening at America's Workforce Academy by Meta. This is a five-week, highly immersive pre-apprenticeship program that gets you all the necessary certifications you'll need to start a career in the skilled trades immediately.

• 50:03Mike Rowe?

  I'm talking about AI-proof, six-figure jobs, helping to build out the new infrastructure that our economy is depending on. Electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, welders, fiber optic technicians, these jobs, they are all in demand like never before. And again, every graduate of America's Workforce Academy is guaranteed a job on a Meta website. I first announced this program a few months ago, and I have been watching the response ever since. It's extraordinary. This is a nationwide, unprecedented fast track to a long-term career in a skilled trade. If you, or your spouse, or your kid, or your grandkid are looking for a straight path

• 50:46Mike Rowe?

  into a career with no cost at all, check out the opportunities for yourself at meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. That's meta.com/america'sworkforceacademy. How important was this movie? Breaking Big Food. I watched it on a plane. I liked the couple at the center of it.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Patrick and Ashley?

• 51:07Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. No, I think they're on a great mission. And man, when I, you know, I saw the farmer in there who I would just, that was Dirty Jobs 101. I wanted to go back and reboot that show just to talk to that guy and, you know. But you popped up and I was like, okay. I'd seen you around before. In fact, you know, when Charlie was killed, I kind of went back to look at that whole cadre of people. Cause I, he had interviewed me two or three days earlier.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  Really?

• 51:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 51:42Speaker 02

  I didn't know this. About what?

• 51:44Mike Rowe?

  About MicroWorks. He was a big supporter. He was a big fan of what-

• 51:48Speaker 02

  Of the trades?

• 51:49Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 51:51Mike Rowe?

  Yep. He had invited me, in fact, to the next big event. And he invited me the year prior too, and it was always a scheduling issue.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Well, you should come. We would love to have you at America Fest, our huge December conference.

• 52:03Mike Rowe?

  Yeah.

• 52:04Speaker 02

  Huge. Yeah, that'd be so fun.

• 52:06Mike Rowe?

  Well, we should talk about it. Because I think, I think all the rules have changed. I think all the standards have changed. I think all of credulity has changed. I think this movie, to everything we've said so far, is the perfect metaphor. You have a consensus, you know, a deeply held series of beliefs by a plurality of people. And a lot of it's wrong. Is all of it wrong? Is some of it wrong? You know, we don't know yet. And again, I just keep coming back to the same question to you. Are you prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater? Is it like a pox on all their houses?

• 52:47Speaker 02

  I think for the first time, you know, there is some hope. Like, we've had some incredible changes coming out of government, right? You know, with this administration, with Bobby Kennedy, just like the pesticide stuff, I've called that out, right? So like, I feel like that should gain me some credibility with this audience, is that there, has this been perfect in making America healthy again? Absolutely not. Have we made more strides than we ever have previously with any other presidential administration? 100%. The fact that we completely revamped the dietary guidelines, we're looking into baby formula, what causes autism, banning food dyes, right? A lot of states are banning ultra-processed food from school lunches, or banning fluoride from the water supply. Like, this is unprecedented.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  So what you have here, oh, looking into microplastics and the effects that that might have on infertility and other chronic disease. So, no other presidential administration has cared. Most, all of them have been bought and paid for by Big Food. You had the, you know, Michelle Obama previously famously tried to tackle the obesity epidemic, right? And what a lot of people forget, because I know a lot of people on the left like to bring that up, like, well, you guys think you're so cool trying to make America healthy again, what about Michelle Obama? Ooh, you know, they do that. And I'm like-

• 54:05Mike Rowe?

  Do they make that sound?

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Yes, they always do. It's involuntary, I think. So, they bring that up, and I'm like, okay, hold on a minute. Yes, at first, 100% Michelle Obama had a really noble mission, which was to figure out why are so many American kids becoming obese, dangerously obese. Here's the problem. Within, I don't know, a month, a year, maybe weeks, I don't know the exact timeline, but it was a very short amount of time, when she started that initiative, she changed it quickly. I don't even remember what the first name of the mission was, but she changed it to "Let's Move." And then she was partnering with Subway, the fast food chain.

• 54:45Mike Rowe?

  Right.

• 54:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And so, and by the way, at that time Subway sandwiches had yoga mat material in them. So, so she's like, why are our kids so fat? Here, have some yoga mat. You know, eat some shoes, some shoe soles. That's what she was doing, you know, unknowingly. But she was totally bought and paid for by Big Food again. So it was like, we can't escape this matrix. Finally, we have a president that's like, no, I want to look into this. And again, I'm not saying he has been perfect, but at least he is trying and he has accomplished some things on this. So when you're, when people are like, well, what, you know, what's the difference between the Democrats or the Republicans? The Republicans still have failed on some things, sure. But the Democrats, when it comes to making America healthy again, specifically, this is what I'm talking about, when it comes to making America healthy again, the Democrats

• 55:28Speaker 02

  are currently offering Americans zero. Zero. They are offering you zero initiatives to fix anything. At least the Republicans are giving you something. My opinion, I'm taking what I can get. I am going to hold feet to the fire. I'm going to call people out, uh, uh, call people out, hold them accountable. You promised this on the campaign trail, now this is happening? Why? You know, it's, um, it's scary. The White House listens when you're somebody that has Turning Point USA in front of your name and you're calling out things. They don't like it. I can tell you.

• 56:00Mike Rowe?

  But I, you know, it's also a drag when they're pissed off at you, isn't it?

• 56:03Speaker 02

  It sucks. It was, has literally been the most terrifying several months, last several months of my life. I can't express to you the scariest stuff. I need to write it in my, like, memoir one day.

• 56:12Mike Rowe?

  Dude, you just, I mean, you just said that there was yoga mats in Subway food.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  It was before. I can't exactly, because, you know, the name is like, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like something I can't even pronounce.

• 56:23Mike Rowe?

  You said once, if I remember right-

• 56:26Speaker 02

  But Vani Hari, the food babe, exposed it. She exposed the, that they were, they were using that ingredient.

• 56:31Mike Rowe?

  I'm not saying they're not. I'm just saying-

• 56:33Speaker 02

  They quit several years ago.

• 56:35Mike Rowe?

  Well, yeah, and they also hired Jared.

• 56:37Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, I know. It hasn't been great.

• 56:40Mike Rowe?

  That worked. Yeah. Yeah. But look, uh, I guess maybe if you're just a citizen on a search for truth, but you don't really have time to take the deep, deep, deep dive, and you come across an Alex slayer, right? And you're like, okay, you know, I think she's, she's the big tobacco thing, yeah, and the big food thing, yep, yep, yep, yep. But then, you know, I gotta brush my teeth with, what, whole milk or something? And, and they're putting Silly Putty and Chick-fil-A, and hold on a second-

• 57:10Speaker 02

  That's all true.

• 57:11Mike Rowe?

  And Chemtrails, and like-

• 57:13Speaker 02

  Chemtrails are true. They've had, they've had to testify at the United Nations.

• 57:17Mike Rowe?

  Look, I'm saying that it's like nail and jello to a tree. Like, once you say, all right, as a skeptic-

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 57:28Mike Rowe?

  You know, if this is true and that is true-

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:30Mike Rowe?

  Then these other things become exponentially suspect.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  So, as far-fetched as you think it is for me to say that the same ingredient as Silly Putty is used in Chick-fil-A sandwiches, it is, by the way. The American Beverage Association was also going and telling our members of Congress that it's racist to remove soda off of Snap. Okay? So, that is also, I mean, absolutely bizarro crazy world, but it's true and it really happened. And that's the type of corruption that we uncover in Breaking Big Food in the documentary. And I love that movie too, as in Arizona now, because not only is it going through just corruption nationwide that we face as a country and why we are so sick, but it also goes into how Arizona in particular is doing things so right.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  We are one of the best states for clean food, and I mean, like, clean restaurant options, organic farm-to-table, like, we are killing it, especially in the Phoenix area, which is weird. I don't think a lot of people think, like, there's going to be a lot of seed oil-free restaurants in Phoenix, but there's tons. So, um, it's a really exciting documentary and spotlights a lot of people who had a personal issue, who were sick or had a family member that was, and said, I've got to invent something, I've got to create something, I've got to build something differently, which is totally your wheelhouse and specialty, which makes sense why you love the doc. And so, that's what I love about it. Like, Patrick and Ashley, the main people, you know, um, he had cancer, he was super sick, and not only did they make this documentary, but they also launched their own organic

• 58:58Speaker 02

  coffee shop in Phoenix, Firefly, which is cra- killing it crazy, because it's, you know, one of the only places to get mold-free coffee. Because all coffee is moldy.

• 59:07Mike Rowe?

  Coffee is moldy, Subway's got yoga mats in it.

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Azodicarbonamide.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  ADA.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yes, that's it.

• 59:16Mike Rowe?

  What the, now, why would they do that? Why would they put just something so assy in my food?

• 59:22Speaker 02

  Because people care more about, Americans care so much about how something looks and feels and the texture. And that yoga mat material was making that bread so soft and spongy.

• 59:31Mike Rowe?

  Hmm, yeah.

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, and so that's why they were doing it.

• 59:34Mike Rowe?

  Made me want to do a downward facing dog on it. You know what I'm saying?

• 59:37Speaker 02

  It'd probably be soft.

• 59:39Mike Rowe?

  There's a beat in this movie where you've got a picture of, what are you doing, Chuck? You tell me how much time I have?

• 59:43Speaker 01

  That's 50 minutes.

• 59:44Mike Rowe?

  I thought you were having a seizure.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Every now and then I do.

• 59:47Mike Rowe?

  Your arms go out, they're like, ah! That freaks me out.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  They, they, they have a heart out.

• 59:52Mike Rowe?

  I know they got a heart out. We got 10 minutes. There's a shot in here of like, you know, McDonald's french fries next to other french fries, or maybe it was french fries from 30 years ago, and the list of ingredients, right? And just, just, oh, God, and you're right. I mean, it's the color, it's the texture, it's all of that stuff. The only question really is, is, it's such a stupid thing to say, but is it, is it really bad for us? Is a yoga mat really bad for us, Alex?

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, again, when we go back to just common sense.

• 1:00:22Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Common sense, so somebody said, this is totally safe to eat, put it in bread, but would you just take a munch in the middle of Pilates? You know what I'm saying? Like, use your brain. And so when you are talking about how we are America, we are the leaders of the free world, why are we shortchanging our citizens with crappier food that we are not selling other places? So I marched in Michigan at the Kellogg's headquarters in the fall of 2024 with Callie Means, who's also in this documentary, with the food babe, Vani Hari, and, and a multitude of others. And we said, here's the deal. Why are you, Kellogg's, willing to make dye-free cereal, you know, using natural food colorings, not artificial food colorings, for every other country in the world, but you're not doing it in America?

• 1:01:07Speaker 02

  Not only that, you are making the dye-free versions in America. But our kids are being poisoned, but no other kids are, and you're an American company. Like, that has to change and stop.

• 1:01:18Mike Rowe?

  All right, all right, all right, you're a queen of the world. Right? You can do whatever you want. By fiat, you can just decide. What are you going to legally remove from the shelves?

• 1:01:31Speaker 02

  Ooh, okay. So we have over, I believe, 70 or 72 chemicals that are currently allowed to be used on our crops that are banned in other countries, including by the countries that make the chemicals that we're using.

• 1:01:45Mike Rowe?

  That's annoying.

• 1:01:46Speaker 02

  You've got 7,000 or so food ingredients that are allowed in the United States that are not allowed everywhere else. All I am saying is, put America on an equal level playing field. That's it. It should just be fair. It should just be fair. When you're looking at Roundup, for example, when we're talking about weed killer, which please, please, God, if, if you remember anything from this interview, tell your dad, tell your, tell your grandpa, tell your neighbor to stop using Roundup on their lawn. Even if you don't use it in yours, the, the wind drift is carrying it over and your children are absorbing those chemicals that cause cancer through their skins of their bare feet when they're playing outside. It's just, it's horrible. But when you look at Roundup in the United States versus the EU even, they've got like a vinegar solution version.

• 1:02:28Speaker 02

  They have ingredients even in the Roundup that they don't use that we are using.

• 1:02:33Mike Rowe?

  No. Never mind how much I agree with that you've said. Most of it, frankly. But from a persuasive standpoint, I would say the most compelling argument you've made is that one. Equal the playing field. And then let the acronym, or the experts, or the agency, or whoever's writing the checks, let them explain why. The only answer can be, because it's a free market and this is what the people want. Can you live with that? Can you live with the explanation that says, look, TV sucks, but we have the TV we deserve

• 1:03:16Mike Rowe?

  because we watch what we watch. And our government is kind of disappointing on many levels, but we deserve it because we can vote them out, but we don't. And we're fat. Jeez, we're, we're eating yoga mats, shoes, silly putty. All right, we, what are we thinking? Like, like, we kind of deserve it.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:39Mike Rowe?

  Because, because we want the Lucky Charms.

• 1:03:41Speaker 02

  The market will decide, but here's what I believe. When you educate people and explain to them what a lot of these ingredients are, or that we are being fed things, or things are being passed through that are not allowed other places, anywhere else in the world, people will actively choose to not eat that or consume that product. And we, as consumers, have so much power. You're not only voting every four years in a presidential election, you are voting three times a day, every single time you choose what goes on your plate or your family's plate. And these companies abide, that's why you have Doritos now, haven't you seen these Doritos that are like, we're dye-free? You've got, um, um.

• 1:04:13Mike Rowe?

  Oh, D-Y-E.

• 1:04:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Reese's Cups just announced.

• 1:04:18Mike Rowe?

  Now with less death.

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  Right. They've announced now that they're going back to their original recipe, you know, peanut butter and chocolate.

• 1:04:24Mike Rowe?

  Peanut butter and chocolate, yeah.

• 1:04:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like, what else has been in there? Why do you need, why do you need that other stuff? It's because, you know, in the 80s, you had these chemists from the tobacco companies that were bought over by big food to start making our food as addictive as possible, exactly what they did to the cigarettes. And so when you explain that to people, they will choose otherwise. Remember how?

• 1:04:45Mike Rowe?

  Hold on, hold on, hold on. People still smoke, in lesser numbers.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:04:53Mike Rowe?

  Your dad wanted a Fanta. Right? People, we think, we think if we build it, they'll come. We think if we show them, we think the evidence truly demands a verdict and we'll prosecute our case and we'll make our point. But then you know what these people do? Our fellow frickin' bipeds walking around, they, they ignore it. They do it anyway. I can tell them and I can prove, I can prove that when you say, I'm famished, I'm starving, I'm so hungry, that you're not. You feel hungry, you're not. I can prove that. Now you're gonna eat anyway. You're gonna jam in the Twinkies or the Ho Ho's, or the Ring Dings, or the Ding Dongs, or whatever the Reese's Cups are.

• 1:05:37Mike Rowe?

  You're gonna jam it all down your well-muscled throat and you're gonna blow up like a dick. I can't stop you from doing it. My question to you is, I'm stipulating all of it. You're queen of the world, you've prosecuted the case, you've shown everybody, and the evidence is compelling, but they're still drinking the Dr. Pepper, right? And they're still just, like, do you get to a point where you go, nope, sorry, I'm taking the option away?

• 1:06:02Speaker 02

  Well, I'm not a Democrat, Mike, so I'm not gonna force people to put certain things into their body.

• 1:06:08Mike Rowe?

  I'm not a Democrat. I'm just trying to keep the conversation lively.

• 1:06:14Speaker 02

  That's what I'm saying. So, you know, if somebody, of course, if somebody wants to make the choice like my own dad, then they're gonna make that choice. And so, you know what? You love someone where they're at? I still love my dad, even though I completely disagree with him, and I wish he would have made a different choice, because I wish he could have even had just one more year, even if he had two more months or six more months. That would have been such a gift to me as his daughter and for my poor mom. But people are gonna do what they want to do. But here's the thing, I disagree, like, that it's then not worth pursuing. You just had Poppy Soda. What, what did they just sell to Pepsi for $4 billion? It's like the most expensive food buy ever, I think, in history in the last two years or so. So that shows you, big food sees the trajectory. They see that the consumer is actively choosing healthier foods with better ingredients,

• 1:06:59Speaker 02

  non-GMO, organic, what have you. And they are investing. And they do that when they see what we are doing, you know, with our money, when we're at the grocery store, and the decisions that we're making. And this is all coming from education. It's podcasts like this and people waking up to what they're eating, making other choices. You know, calling out big food and ultra-processed food, people are like, well, what am I supposed to eat? Real food, real food. Shop on the peripheral of the grocery store. You know, is it an ingredient item? Chicken breast, broccoli, eggs, cheese. Okay, those are real food items, but, um, uh, uh.

• 1:07:33Speaker 01

  Azodicarbonamide, ADA.

• 1:07:36Mike Rowe?

  Yoga mat.

• 1:07:37Speaker 02

  That's not a food.

• 1:07:38Mike Rowe?

  No, yoga mat, you're in the wrong aisle, brother.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  That's not something that God made, right? So if, if it's, if it's something that God made, it's like, pretty safe, okay, you should eat that.

• 1:07:48Mike Rowe?

  Are you telling me God didn't make a yoga mat? You'd be very careful with that answer. You, you, you think about what you're saying there. I know you're pressed for time. Lightning round, AI questions? These are sometimes fun. I haven't read them yet, but, ready?

• 1:08:01Speaker 02

  I'm ready.

• 1:08:02Mike Rowe?

  All right. What's the healthiest habit you've adopted that had absolutely nothing to do with food, exercise, or supplements?

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Um, going outside to get the sunlight in my eyes within 30 minutes of waking up, resetting my circadian rhythm.

• 1:08:16Mike Rowe?

  Man, I hear that all the time.

• 1:08:18Speaker 02

  It's so easy for you, you have no excuse living here.

• 1:08:20Mike Rowe?

  You know what I, well, you, Scottsdale.

• 1:08:23Speaker 02

  Well, I know, and so it's easy for me, but it's also 120 degrees even at 6:00 a.m. when I wake up.

• 1:08:28Mike Rowe?

  I've had enough of your excuses, young lady.

• 1:08:30Speaker 02

  You can do this. You don't even need an alarm anymore.

• 1:08:36Mike Rowe?

  I learned from the doctor, who I'm gonna recommend again, why can't I remember his name? Phil?

• 1:08:42Speaker 01

  Philip Ovadia.

• 1:08:43Mike Rowe?

  Ovadia, yeah, yeah. Vitamin D is not a vitamin, it's a hormone. Technically, yeah, the more you know. If you could require every American to read one product label from start to finish, which product would you choose?

• 1:09:01Speaker 02

  Probably the Chick-fil-A sandwich. It's got over 50 ingredients. 50 ingredients in a chicken sandwich. What the heck? It should be chicken. It should be one.

• 1:09:09Mike Rowe?

  What kind of conservative are you? Don't you love Chick-fil-A? They're always there, the volunteers, the disasters.

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  I don't know, they're, I don't know what's going on, but they also switched, they, they used to be, you know, non-antibiotic chicken or antibiotic-free chicken. Now they're back to antibiotic chicken. I mean, they've totally lost their way.

• 1:09:28Mike Rowe?

  It's the Lord's chicken, man, you know?

• 1:09:33Mike Rowe?

  What's something people worry about constantly that probably matters far less than they think?

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  Counting calories.

• 1:09:42Mike Rowe?

  Good one. You relax. Can't help it, man. You relax. She's on fire. I love it. Right? I love it. What's the biggest health improvement you've made in your life that cost $0?

• 1:09:57Speaker 02

  Oh, and I already used my circadian rhythm one.

• 1:09:59Mike Rowe?

  You already used the sunshine. Now what? Moonlight?

• 1:10:02Speaker 02

  Actually, um, that costs $0? Uh, well, hold on, I'm thinking. That's hard.

• 1:10:13Mike Rowe?

  I know. It's tricky too, because there is a lot of money in all aspects.

• 1:10:20Speaker 02

  Okay, well, how about this? How about this? Um, making sure that you are prioritizing community and spending time with loved ones, friends, family. That is a supplement. That is a health supplement. To have fellowship with other people that care about you, that you care about, laughing with your friends, that is medicine.

• 1:10:40Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, bullshit.

• 1:10:44Mike Rowe?

  No, you know what? Man, I mean, that's pandemic 101, right?

• 1:10:49Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. And people with grandchildren live longer.

• 1:10:52Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, yeah. All right. That's good. Good answer. Good answer. It took a while getting there, but I appreciate you landing the blame. What's the difference between being informed and being obsessed?

• 1:11:06Mike Rowe?

  I swear I didn't write this. This is, this is, I just said Alex Clark's coming by. Give me some questions. Nobody ever asked.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  I mean, you can be informed on a bunch of things, right? I'm informed on a bunch of stuff. I'm informed on why certain people are pro-choice or whatever, but I'm obsessed with like things that I actually like. I don't know. That's a really weird question.

• 1:11:26Mike Rowe?

  I know. Chat. GPT sucks. I should have asked Rock. What topic do you think future generations will look back on and wonder why we weren't talking about it more?

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Oh, I think it's going to be the pesticides.

• 1:11:41Mike Rowe?

  Really?

• 1:11:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:42Mike Rowe?

  More so than the toothpaste and the food and the chemtrails, more so than meat?

• 1:11:46Speaker 02

  Because here's the thing. This is why the pesticide issue is so, so, so important. We could do a whole episode just on that. The pesticide issue is so important because when it comes to food, I have a choice. I can choose what I'm eating and what I'm putting on my plate. I cannot get away from or, you know, choose something else. Like the pesticides are being sprayed on all the food. It's in the air. It's drifting from my neighbor's yard. I cannot rinse it off. I cannot wash it off. We have no choice. If I want my child to play in the park or go to public school and play at the playground and have recess, they're being exposed to it and we have no recourse. And they're wanting to actively take away our right to sue. That is so diabolically evil and demonic.

• 1:12:31Mike Rowe?

  Well, we started with the devil's butthole and we ended with demonic.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Bayer is demonic.

• 1:12:37Mike Rowe?

  And in between, I think we learned a bunch of stuff, the least of which is certainly not breaking big food. A fine doc available. Where is it now? Is it on Amazon or? I believe it's on YouTube.

• 1:12:48Speaker 02

  Amazon and Apple TV.

• 1:12:49Mike Rowe?

  Okay, great. And then how often do you do this, uh, this crazy podcast of yours? Culture apothecary?

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Twice a week, Mondays and Thursdays, 6:00 PM Pacific, 9:00 PM Eastern, anywhere you get your podcasts.

• 1:13:01Mike Rowe?

  Whoa, six. Like, so is it live? Do you do them live?

• 1:13:04Speaker 02

  No, it's just when we drop it.

• 1:13:05Mike Rowe?

  Oh.

• 1:13:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:06Mike Rowe?

  Dropping it.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:08Mike Rowe?

  Any interesting guests coming up? Yeah.

• 1:13:10Speaker 02

  Well, there's this guy named Mike Rowe.

• 1:13:14Mike Rowe?

  Yeah, I did agree to do this. We haven't done this before, but for those of you still listening, uh, I'm gonna go do her podcast right now, right here from this very set.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, same set, same outfits.

• 1:13:27Mike Rowe?

  We might switch, uh?

• 1:13:28Speaker 02

  We'll switch outfits.

• 1:13:30Mike Rowe?

  No, I was, I was gonna say chairs, but I'll, I'll jam myself into your little denim getup there. I'll look like a summer sausage.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  This would be a Mike Rowe appropriate aesthetic.

• 1:13:39Mike Rowe?

  It is.

• 1:13:40Speaker 02

  Denim, you know?

• 1:13:41Mike Rowe?

  Uh, look, if it comes in a European husky, I'll put it on. In the meantime, that's Alex Clark. She's awesome. You might not agree with every daggone thing she has to say, but I'll tell you what, man. Read Teddy Roosevelt's The Man in the Arena. She's not a man, but she is in the arena.

• 1:13:55Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 1:13:56Mike Rowe?

  We appreciate you being there.

• 1:13:57Speaker 02

  That's a really nice compliment.

• 1:13:58Mike Rowe?

  That's the nicest thing you're ever gonna get.

• 1:14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was very nice. Really appreciate it.

• 1:14:02Mike Rowe?

  Come back anytime.

• 1:14:02Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:14:03Mike Rowe?

  Adios. This episode is over now. I hope it was worthwhile. Sorry it went on so long, but if it made you smile, then share your satisfaction in the way that people do. Take some time to go online and leave us a review. I hate to ask, I hate to beg, I hate to be a nudge, but in this world, the advertisers

• 1:14:45Mike Rowe?

  really like to judge. You don't need to write a bunch, just a line or two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. None more. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. And not three. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. Definitely not two. All you've got to do is leave a quick five star review. We need five. All you've got to do is leave a quick. Even if you hate it. Five. Especially if you hate it.

• 1:15:11Mike Rowe?

  Thank you.

• 1:15:16Speaker 03

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• 1:15:46Speaker 04

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