The Internet Is The World's Worst Pharmacy w/ Paris Martineau & Ashwin Rodrigues

Welcome to Radio Better Offline, a tech talk radio show recorded out of iHeartRadio's studio in New York City. Ed is joined in-studio by Paris Martineau of Consumer Reports and freelance writer Ashwin Rodrigues to talk about the amount of lead in protein shakes, why people turn to the internet for medical advice, and how supplements are the wild west of e-commerce. Paris Martineau https://www.consumerreports.org/about-us/our-people/our-experts/paris-martineau/ https://bsky.app/profile/paris.nyc Protein Powders story: https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-shakes-contain-high-levels-of-lead-a4206364640/ Ashwin Rodrigues https://bsky.app/profile/ashwinrodrigues.com Supplements Story: https://archive.ph/L6OZz/again?url=https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/well/doctors-supplements.html Want to support me? Get $10 off a year’s subscription to my premium newsletter: https://edzitronswheresyouredatghostio.outpost.pub/public/promo-subscription/w08jbm4jwg YOU CAN NOW BUY BETTER OFFLINE MERCH! Go to https://cottonbureau.com/people/better-offline and use code FREE99 for free shipping on orders of $99 or more. --- LINKS: https://www.tinyurl.com/betterofflinelinks Newsletter: https://www.wheresyoured.at/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/ Discord: chat.wheresyoured.at https://discord.com/invite/QUUQUP9szv Ed's Socials: https://twitter.com/edzitron https://www.instagram.com/edzitron See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:07Speaker 03

  Call Zone Media.

• 1:11Ed Zitron?

  Hello and welcome to Better Offline. I'm your host, Ed Zitron.

• 1:26Ed Zitron?

  Now, the other day, someone suggested I shouldn't do ASMR-style voices. And I'm still not sure what that means, but does it mean I shouldn't be this close and like being like, "You're in the bathtub"? Either way, I'm never listening to a single bit of feedback I've ever received. But today, I'm in studio in New York goddamn city, and I'm joined by the incredible freelance writer, Ashwin Rodriguez. How you doing, Ashwin?

• 1:47Speaker 05

  Good. Thanks for having me.

• 1:48Ed Zitron?

  And Paris Martineau of Consumer Reports.

• 1:51Speaker 06

  Hello. Should I do mouth noises too?

• 1:53Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, they love that. But you had a huge story, Paris, in the last week or so. It was like a week.

• 1:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, like a week or two. Time's a bit of a blur, honestly.

• 2:03Ed Zitron?

  So it was a story around 23 protein powders, ready-to-drink shakes, and popular brands. And you found that heavy metal contamination was common? How common, exactly?

• 2:13Speaker 06

  Yeah, very common, actually. Like, more than two-thirds of them, actually, this will be really important for your listeners, 69% of them

• 2:22Speaker 06

  had, 69% of them had a...

• 2:26Speaker 06

  Levels of lead in one serving that are more than what like our food safety experts say is safe to take in a day.

• 2:32Ed Zitron?

  Jesus Christ.

• 2:33Speaker 06

  And the more you kind of dig into the specifics, I feel like the more concerning it gets. Some of the most contaminated powders we found were plant-based ones and overwhelmingly plant-based powders instead of, you know, versus like whey or dairy or like dairy-based products like whey or beef-based, they had just higher levels of lead.

• 2:54Ed Zitron?

  Where is the lead getting in?

• 2:57Speaker 06

  I mean, the lead is getting in from a lot of different ways, but probably the most common is like the soil that plants are grown in. So basically like plants, when they're grown, they suck up all the nutrients around them. But if those nutrients are also contaminants like lead from either industrial pollution or just lead being in the natural environment, it gets in there. And who would have guessed, the process of making protein powder, which is called protein concentrate or protein isolate from stuff like plants involves concentrating and isolating things in it. And if lead's one of those things to begin with, it might get more concentrated.

• 3:30Ed Zitron?

  And are these like popular brands? Are these small brands?

• 3:34Speaker 06

  These are popular brands. We basically worked with a market and like analytics team and like trend reporters to figure out what are some of the best-selling like protein supplements, what are the most popular brands, most popular flavors. And we kind of did a general kind of sweep of the market and tested those. And to be clear, we didn't just test like a one-off scoop of each. We had, I mean, this was like a experiment designed by our laboratory scientists. Over a period of months, they went out and bought different like samples of each product, tested multiple lots, and then analyzed all the results.

• 4:08Ed Zitron?

  Lead planes, lovely. So is, and so it was, but it's more in plant protein ones?

• 4:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. So plant protein powders overwhelmingly, like they had about nine like lead levels that were nine times as much as dairy-based ones and twice as much as beef-based ones.

• 4:26Ed Zitron?

  How the fuck are people not dying?

• 4:28Speaker 06

  Well, the thing, that's the thing. The thing about lead is it's not like a, to be very clear, this is not like a, you need to panic if you're eating these, you're going to get lead poisoning.

• 4:36Ed Zitron?

  That's kind of what I was getting at.

• 4:37Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's like a.

• 4:40Speaker 06

  Lead, there, if you ask like the FDA or the World Health Organization, the UN or anything, there's like no known safe level of lead. It's bad for you, but it's not like immediately you're going to die bad in these sort of quantities. These are low but concerning levels and they're concerning because the kind of fucked up thing about lead, I didn't really think about lead that much until I started reporting on this, obviously, but the fucked up thing about lead is that it like kind of lingers in your body. So one of the ways people test for lead is like blood lead level test, but that doesn't even give you a really full picture. That just shows you how much lead is in your blood. But the thing about lead is your body, this is a gross oversimplification, your body

• 5:22Speaker 06

  kind of thinks of it like calcium, because they kind of look similar. So it's like um nom nom and puts it in your bones or in your teeth. And so it hangs out in there for like the blood in your, the lead in your blood kind of can come in and out of your body relatively quickly. The lead in your bones can stay there for a period of like years or decades. And then during periods where your bone, because your bones are always kind of repairing themselves. And when that happens, then the lead leaches out and it, it goes bad for you. So the real issue with these products in particular is, Consumer Reports has done a lot of like heavy metal testing and stuff, but it's, we've like tested things like chocolate or tuna or like things like that, but with protein

• 6:07Speaker 06

  powder, people who like protein powders, take them every day, or sometimes multiple times a day for periods of years. And that's kind of like a perfect storm to give yourself like low level chronic exposure to lead in a way that could in like years or decades like have measurable health effects.

• 6:26Ed Zitron?

  And there's no regulation or testing that should have stopped this? Is there a thing that this breaks? Like, we kind of have an FDA.

• 6:34Speaker 06

  We kind of have an FDA. This has been one of the most interesting things about this. The last time I was on your podcast, I was a tech reporter, the information, and I've been like focusing on like tech companies doing bad shit for like years. When I switched to Consumer Reports this summer, I'm mostly focusing on food safety, still doing some tech, but it's been fascinating for me to dive into things like the FDA and realize like the FDA historically, you know, has always come under criticism, like every government agency, for whether or not it's doing the best with the F part of FDA food or drugs. Within that purview is dietary supplements, which due to some chicanery in the 90s are regulated kind of totally different in a way that basically boils down to the FDA is like,

• 7:16Speaker 06

  well, we can't really do anything until it comes to market. And then when it comes to market, maybe we'll scrutinize it.

• 7:22Ed Zitron?

  And you just did, Ashwin, a big piece about supplements, right? And you kind of remarked upon this to me a few times in the past.

• 7:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, so my story in the Times was about how supplements, to this point that I saw in the Consumer Reports story about protein is in the 1994 D. Shea Act.

• 7:41Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 7:42Ed Zitron?

  Which was?

• 7:43Speaker 05

  It basically, it classified all dietary supplements to be regulated as food and not drugs. And dietary supplements can, is like such a broad umbrella where, you know, it makes sense to me that protein is considered a food, you know, like a whey protein or whatever. But then there's also things that people are taking for purported like drug-like effects like ashwagandha or, you know.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  Even like melatonin.

• 8:10Speaker 05

  What they call gas station heroin is a dietary supplement.

• 8:13Speaker 06

  Boner pills, dietary supplement also.

• 8:16Ed Zitron?

  What horny goat weed is that?

• 8:18Speaker 05

  No, there's a different, I believe it's kratom and something else.

• 8:22Ed Zitron?

  Oh.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  But this is the stuff that some people were using to wean themselves off of opiates and then other people who weren't on opiates were.

• 8:29Ed Zitron?

  To wean themselves onto opiates.

• 8:30Speaker 06

  Really great that that classifies as something the FDA is like, meh.

• 8:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, I've always been fascinated that like the gas station is like the cutting edge of pharmaceuticals for some reason.

• 8:40Speaker 06

  I mean, yeah, and it's just, it's so.

• 8:42Ed Zitron?

  Robert Evans would love this.

• 8:44Speaker 06

  It's so interesting to me because these supplement manufacturers aren't required to prove their products are safe before they like go to market. They aren't required to prove that their products are effective. And they're supposed to comply with like good manufacturing processes. But like, for instance, one stat that really stood out to me while reporting this is like, the FDA says there's 12,000 registered dietary supplement manufacturers. Last year, they inspected 600 of them. And like 510 of those inspections were domestic manufacturers. There was only 90 that were inspected abroad. And I suspect that's where a lot of the manufacturing of these products actually occurs.

• 9:23Ed Zitron?

  Is there like a bleed over effect where they say, oh, yeah, designed in America, but manufactured in the global south with however?

• 9:30Speaker 05

  I mean, there's lots of misleading labeling issues, not necessarily where it's manufactured, but more so what they're allowed to say they can, these things can do. It's like structure of function claims, where you can be like, because we know protein is healthy for you, or, you know, this compound is known to be involved in like, whatever biological process, they can say supports immune function.

• 9:56Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Designed to help with brain health and all these things where it's like mechanistically it might work, but this thing has not been proven to have the effect that people think it does. So like, that is a larger problem than being like, this has been designed in the US, but it's actually here.

• 10:17Ed Zitron?

  Right.

• 10:18Speaker 05

  And then the way that they aren't regulating these things for any possible like positive benefit, it's the same issue with negative, where it's like, unless there's either a class action lawsuit, or someone proactively finding the people who are experiencing negative side effects, those aren't being reported in the same way that a pharmaceutical drug is required, they're required to.

• 10:43Ed Zitron?

  Which is crazy, because Amazon is full of the fucking things. Because I lifted these amounts, been a bad month for it, I guess. But I tried various supplements and nothing changed anything. Like, I was straight up just like, I'll try. And nothing, just completely. And I just, I would write down how I felt in the morning and I'm the same, like I fairly good attachment to the body. But you can go on like the freak Andrew Huberman's Reddit, if you wanna see just like, here's all the things that Andrew, and it's like forty seven different pills.

• 11:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 11:11Ed Zitron?

  And how do you even?

• 11:12Speaker 06

  Who has the time is my question. Like, how do you, that's like a level of rich person brain. I can't understand. Once you get into like the hundreds or like multiple dozens of supplements. I'm like, I can't even regularly manage to take two pills a day.

• 11:26Speaker 05

  I think it's like, it's pseudo, sometimes it's like pseudo, you feel like you're doing something scientific, because there's a bunch of companies now where you can go. And even if you wanna do it by yourself, you go to, you know, Quest Labs or one of these startups and get a blood test. And most of them will offer a doctor's evaluation of those numbers, but you can look and be like, okay, my iron is low. This was something that happened. A doctor relayed this story to me that they had with a patient where the patient was taking an iron supplement because they were low on iron and a naturopath that they were seeing recommended that.

• 12:05Speaker 05

  And like, that makes sense. If you're low on iron, take iron. But what they didn't do is try and figure out why they were low on iron. And when the patient came to see this cardiologist, the cardiologist was concerned that they might have a reason for low iron. Thought it might be internal bleeding, refers them to a GI doc. The GI doc did a colonoscopy, colonoscopy? And they had stage four colon cancer. So it's one of these things where it's like, if you don't understand the pathology as to why you might have a deficiency, even with like the quote unquote boring things like, you know, I don't think people think iron supplements are sexy or like calcium or vitamin D.

• 12:45Speaker 06

  But they think like, quick shortcuts to health are sexy. And this is something, I mean, I just found fascinating researching for the protein story is just like, I spoke to a food historian at length. I'm sad I couldn't make it more into the article, because I was going to focus on the other stuff. But she had like spent months researching how basically protein mania has been just a huge thing over the last two decades, at the very least, but it's because people. Attached like a health halo to certain words.

• 13:16Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  I think supplements are definitely one of those categories where people just assume they're an alloyed good because it's like medicine, but not medicine. And then they don't ever think of the fact that these companies. I mean, one of the most interesting details about like the supplement, like regulation or lack thereof in comparison to other drugs is that supplement manufacturers are supposed to make sure their products aren't harmful. But basically they get to determine what counts as harmful and set their own like limits for that. So there's like no saying, hey, you can't have this much amount of lead in your supplement.

• 13:50Ed Zitron?

  Give me an example of a limit they'd set.

• 13:52Speaker 06

  So for like heavy metal contamination, for instance, the government might say like, hey, you probably shouldn't have like contaminants like heavy metal or, you know, foreign like metals and contaminants in your product. But they don't say like, hey, you shouldn't have X amount of lead in there. The companies themselves get to decide how much of a contaminant is harmful and they get to do their own testing to make sure their products meet those self-imposed limits.

• 14:20Ed Zitron?

  This just feels like it's going to kill someone. So I'm sure someone has already had a situation where they over supplemented.

• 14:26Speaker 06

  Well, no, this was a real issue back in the day.

• 14:29Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I mean, I think what's fascinating slash scary about it is because of the way this is reported, you, I think, get a very under-reported figure of when someone comes to the hospital and they triangulate that it was due to supplementation because there can be issues where whatever you're taking, even if it isn't contaminated, can interact with a prescription drug you're taking or another supplement that you're taking. And the doctors I spoke to said that it's not always clear what is causing the issue because it could be in one of the active ingredients in a supplement. It could be something that's a contaminant in the supplement. And like broadly speaking, liver damage is a huge issue in supplements broadly, just

• 15:13Speaker 05

  because when you ingest something, part of the liver's job is, you know, filtering that out, whether there's lead or whatever in it, even if it's exactly what you're supposed to be taking, it's taxing on the liver.

• 15:26Ed Zitron?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:27Speaker 05

  So like what I found kind of scary in the literature is that. Even when they know that liver damage was caused by supplements, the reason why is not always clear. It could be because

• 15:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, because you don't know what they took.

• 15:40Speaker 05

  Like what it says on the label very often is very different than the concentration of, you know, what's in the actual pill or powder.

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• 16:26Speaker 02

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• 17:00Ed Zitron?

  See, this is a thing I've seen in a lot of Amazon reviews because I've absolutely gone down this rabbit hole before. And you'll read things and people on Reddit will argue, it'll be like, actually, the concentration of the main ingredient is different to the one they say. And it's just like, okay.

• 17:12Speaker 06

  But I mean, then you can go even further. It's like, yeah, for that person, the concentration was different. Let's say it's like 200% more. That person, the next pill they took from that same bottle could be 100%, could be like 50% less or 300% more. It's really difficult. And it also, it baffles me because I feel like a lot of people who turn towards supplements do so because they Perhaps are skeptical about the medical establishment or pharmaceutical companies. So instead they're turning to a less regulated industry with fewer checks and that no one seemingly checking or I guess on the same level of checking to make sure the products are what they say they are.

• 17:53Ed Zitron?

  And I will say I have some sympathy to that. Don't worry, I'm not going that direction. Um, talking to when I I used to be really overweight. It was like three hundred and fifty pounds as a kid, crazy fact. And when I go to doctors, they pretty much go, yeah, you're fat. I'd be like, yeah, mate, I know that I'm told this every day at school seventeen times a day. I'm well aware. But any ideas like you should eat less. I'm like, sick. And then maybe ten fifteen years later, put on a bit of weight, not quite as much. Basically the same. You tried some walking. It's like, okay, but nutritionally, I could put you in touch with a nutritionist. Like it's like the base level knowledge isn't well, knowledge or advice isn't there. And then booking, especially in America, getting a doctor's appointment costs money, costs time. You wait an hour to get in, like you have all of these things that are in the way.

• 18:37Ed Zitron?

  And then there are full of communities, full of people who will talk to you about supplements all day and be like, yeah, it changed my life. I can tell you which of these nineteen pills I take an hour have changed my life. I feel really good and I have a way of referencing that. It's the same way that people get radicalized. It's

• 18:52Speaker 06

  It gives them a sense of control over something that feels uncontrollable.

• 18:55Ed Zitron?

  And the reason I looked at the Huberman Lab stuff is not because I listen, but because there's a ranking of podcasts on Reddit.

• 19:01Speaker 06

  And you're, I assume every, I assume right now you have a window open just refreshing it to see if

• 19:06Ed Zitron?

  I stopped doing that weeks ago. I, but it's, you can look and you can see it is like a cult style thing where it's like, let's look at your stack. I think you may, as you may, but it's like the pill stack and it's just

• 19:18Speaker 06

  I'm sorry, stank? Oh, okay. I was like

• 19:21Ed Zitron?

  The pill stank is what you get when you poop, when you kind of poop.

• 19:23Speaker 05

  There's a supplement for that.

• 19:26Ed Zitron?

  But there's, and since I started like posting my workouts a few years ago, I get the most insane advertisements on Instagram. These new set like, oh yeah, brain power, like mind, brain power. Every fitness influencer I've ever followed and unfollowed has always had like, there's this really great one called like the blind lifter. He's just this guy who's blind and lifts insane amounts and his wife's like a very like normal looking woman. And like really nice guy. And then he'll be like, yeah, it's my favorite supplement. It's like brain fuse. It's bright green. It's like, what the fuck? How do you know that this helps you? Does this, do you feel smarter?

• 19:58Speaker 05

  I think like going back to, you know, some people feel alienated or they don't feel like doctors are listening. I heard that from doctors themselves where it's like, you know, depending on where you practice as a physician, you might have about 15 minutes to see each patient.

• 20:15Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 05

  So like you're trying to figure out the relevant symptoms, what you can do. Maybe it's a procedure, maybe it's a medication. But like doctors themselves are telling me that either, you know, you don't get enough time to talk about lifestyle. Proven lifestyle interventions you can make, talk about exercise, talk about nutrition and all of these things. It's more like just putting fires out so people don't feel like they are have any space to talk to their doctor about things they could try, whether it's with exercise or whatever. So then you can find these people who will give you the time of day to walk through, you know, their spiel and their pitch. And then at that point is where poor decisions can be made because just someone makes you feel seen and heard.

• 20:58Speaker 05

  Doesn't mean you should take their bathtub pills that they made, but.

• 21:01Ed Zitron?

  Exactly. Or like, I'll go get magnesium pills and pick in a random one. There's like 70 options on Amazon and to your point, Paris, it's like, how do you know pill to pill? How much magnesium is in it? Do you have no consistency to it?

• 21:14Speaker 05

  I think there's two different kinds of people here, though. Like there's some people who are resorting to supplements because they haven't found something that works for them.

• 21:24Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 05

  In the traditional system, either because they haven't been diagnosed properly or they haven't had access to an expert or whatever. And those are people who are very desperate to, who will admit like, I am lowering my threshold for evidence because I've tried everything else.

• 21:39Ed Zitron?

  Oh, for sure.

• 21:40Speaker 05

  And if there's a chance, but on the Huberman side of things and like the stack where it becomes ritualized, like I do this every day, I do this every day. I think that's more like the wealthy or well to do, like worried well is what they're called. Where it's like, I have everything else dialed in.

• 21:56Speaker 06

  It's the optimizers.

• 21:57Speaker 05

  I eat.

• 21:58Ed Zitron?

  Brian Johnson's.

• 21:59Speaker 05

  Eight ounces of chicken breast and X, Y and Z. And I make sure I get enough sleep because I'm tracking it and I have a bed that works as long as AWS is up. And you know, all of these things. And then the supplement is really like the icing on the cake is usually the term that they call it where it's like, if you have everything else dialed in, this might help. And, you know, if it works for you and you're able to find things that are pure and like, there's so many ifs, like, then maybe, but there haven't been studies to show like, we have like, 4,000 guys like you, and we've run this as a test. And a point that I think is missed sometimes is if something works, there's a mechanism.

• 22:40Speaker 05

  So like, there's a trade off somewhere. And I think actually, Dr. Cohen, who's an over

• 22:47Speaker 06

  I was about to say, I could tell Dr. Peter Cohen, I think he was referred to as now the supplement king, because it's the opposite of that. He's like, the chief supplement, like, skeptic. He's a great researcher and doctor who we both spoke to for articles that has been kind of tracking the same issue that we've been talking about, but for decades.

• 23:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. And he was like, he's like, I'm not fully against supplements as a concept. But all of these issues we brought up where it's like, you know, before you even run one of these N of one studies on yourself, if you decide to, you can't guarantee that what you're testing yourself with is what it says on the label. And then aside from that, he was like, I think the main ones that he called out as being if his patients are using them, it's like, we need to have a conversation about stopping.

• 23:37Ed Zitron?

  This is actually a question I had like.

• 23:40Speaker 05

  Stuff for weight loss, stuff for exercise, stuff for male sexual enhancement, which is another gas station.

• 23:48Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah. So, so I want to admit, like, I take testosterone. I'm on weekly Zyste, prescribed by my doctor. Before I went and got that, I really looked into all of these weird testosterone things online.

• 24:00Speaker 06

  You were doing the gas station boner pills?

• 24:02Ed Zitron?

  No, no, no. No, because like, there was like, it was a weird thing where I was like, I recognize this as a hormone and I've known enough woman in my life that like, I know hormones do more, you can't just like, hormone up one day and it'll be fine. But it's, it's interesting because when you go and look online, the amount of. Cons related to testo- just the word testo- there's a whole supplement thing of like testosterone enhancer. And the it's just like based on no science. And then there are websites you can go to where it's like, we'll speak to a doctor. And then you'll send us blood and then we'll send you testosterone in the mail and you'll inject yourself in the bar, I think.

• 24:37Speaker 06

  I love to send someone blood and receive an injection.

• 24:40Ed Zitron?

  No, there is a whole com- I ca- viom, I think, where you said like poop and.

• 24:44Speaker 06

  Oh, and then they, yes, and then they, uh, it was a couple that started this poop testing startup and now they're both on the lam. Uh, from, I believe, fraud charges.

• 24:54Ed Zitron?

  So that's why they didn't get back to me. I sent them a lot of poop. Some mine, some others. But it's just interesting how there's this whole predatory supplement, testosterone. Protein powder thing online. There's a hundred different companies that are all doing weird share. I get, I get targeted for the, the, um, high protein foods now.

• 25:14Speaker 06

  Yes, that was a.

• 25:16Ed Zitron?

  Are any of those full of lead?

• 25:18Speaker 06

  I don't know. We didn't test them.

• 25:19Ed Zitron?

  God damn it.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  Um, but I'm fascinated by them and it's all I was thinking about when I was reporting this out. I just put, cause every store has like a. Protein boosted pasta, protein croissant, protein pop. I've eaten a lot of them as well. But then you look in the back and it's like, what's one of the first ingredients? Like, uh, whey protein. Yeah, yeah, it just has lead. It's like a whey protein concentrate or like a, a pea protein.

• 25:42Ed Zitron?

  The plant ones, I'm staying the fuck away from. Those ones are really fun though, cause you go and look, it's like, yeah, I need, uh, twenty grams of protein and only two hundred calories for the cookie. And the cookie is the size of a dime. It's like, and it's, it's the insanity of these things as well. And it feels, the internet is just this in, like this. Kind of abuse mechanism for it because there's the ton. A- actually, I will say, there's a ton of really good Reddit threads where they're just like, no, it's bullshit. No, it's bullshit, which is awesome. But the amount of hooey ploy around like, yeah, this supplement changed my life. And then another guy, I hate this. It gave me diarrhea. And it's like, okay.

• 26:16Speaker 06

  I've been really fascinated. One of, um, the responses I've gotten in my article from some of the people who take the supplements that are the most lead is being like, well. It's not that much lead. It's actually fine in comparison. I was like, why are we stumping for lead, guys? But second, like to your point earlier, I think just one of the things about this story. That I find the most valuable is just people need to know, like. Should people should be able to figure out what is in their product and make an informed decision about whether or not they want that. If you like read, yeah, that um Huell, uh one serving of Huell's Black Edition has like six point three micrograms of lead uh in it and you're like, I'm into that. Good for you. Like make your own decisions.

• 26:59Ed Zitron?

  I've tried their food like that. And what's great is they call it food product, which is what you really want from the thing you're eating. And it also tastes and looks like prison food. It's.

• 27:09Speaker 06

  I love food products. Back in the day was a Soylent girly during a really deeply depressed time of my life.

• 27:15Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah. No, I've had, I've had some depressants.

• 27:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. But there was like a time where Soylent was just selling like a, a neutral rectangle of basically food products.

• 27:24Ed Zitron?

  Yes, just slop.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  It was, it was slop, uh, but in a square shape.

• 27:28Ed Zitron?

  A slop brick?

• 27:28Speaker 06

  Yeah, it was a slop brick. Uh, and.

• 27:31Ed Zitron?

  Just stuff.

• 27:32Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, that was giving me some sort of mental poisoning at the very least.

• 27:36Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yes. There really is.

• 27:37Speaker 06

  Just based on vibes.

• 27:38Ed Zitron?

  I do think you kind of said something, Ashwin, that got, it's like, there is a faith-based thing to it. It's a ritual. It's like, uh, I know when I've been in the, I'm gonna be very vulnerable, the throes of like depression around weight loss and working out and such. The shit I would eat and like the small amounts of food or like the weird insulting products I'd eat. And you go online and there are other people doing it too. It's like, yeah, I, I am the penitent man. I shall pass like in Indiana Jones and I, I suffer like you do. And everyone's kind of suffering together. And at the time I was like, oh, this is great. Other people, I'm like, we all are very unhappy. And it's, but the amount of.

• 28:12Speaker 06

  But it's forming a community around being unhappy and that's addictive.

• 28:15Ed Zitron?

  It's the predatory nature. It's the, it's radicalization, but in a different form. And weirdly enough, I haven't seen it around the fitness things. Like all the fight camp people I've talked to are just like kind of crazy. Like, we just enjoy punching the bag.

• 28:29Speaker 06

  I mean, but there is like such a cult around protein maximalization, like protein maxing.

• 28:35Ed Zitron?

  Yeah.

• 28:35Speaker 06

  That I, I mean.

• 28:36Ed Zitron?

  Well, actually, tell me a little bit about this.

• 28:38Speaker 06

  It's, well, people overwhelmingly think you need more protein than you actually do. Like, I was definitely one of these people before I started like researching this story. I thought I was like similarly in my pits of depression, like, uh, and micromanaging the food I ate. I was like, oh, I'm woefully protein deficient. I need to be making sure I'm having like seven chicken breasts a day or something crazy like that. Cause that'll be great with my working out.

• 29:01Ed Zitron?

  Ashwin was actually really helpful on this for me. Keep going, sorry.

• 29:03Speaker 06

  And it's just like. For the average person, you're probably getting more than enough protein through your food. And unless you fall into some specific categories or have like a specific type of like workout need that you have, like, you don't need to be having way over the recommended daily allowance of protein, which is 0.8 grams per kilogram body weight.

• 29:22Ed Zitron?

  Thank you. I'm glad you know this. I was actually going to ask. But Ashwin, you've been quite transformative with my weight loss because you're the one who mostly advocated for doing less weird shit. Just like try and get like work on consistency.

• 29:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:36Ed Zitron?

  And eating enough protein.

• 29:38Speaker 06

  Yeah. Who'd have guessed? Doing, doing things regularly is useful.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  I feel like, because I, I definitely fall into the index, maybe over indexing for protein, but in like, I think part of the reason that it's having a moment slash sustained moment is that when people like, if you're trying to have a rubric for, you know, how to assemble a plate and, you know, the largest things are protein and veg, like those are the most filling things, right? With fiber and how satiating protein is. And it's like, if you do that, there's not many other rules that you have to kind of abide by without getting into like, you know, you otherwise you can get kind of a little bit disordered depending on how you think about this stuff.

• 30:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 30:24Speaker 05

  But then I think what became an issue is that there's research and, you know, an emphasis on protein. And then it's like, okay, we need to put protein in water. We need to put it in chips. We need to put it.

• 30:35Speaker 06

  It was protein beer. Like, why, why? We need to, we need to calm down, folks.

• 30:39Ed Zitron?

  I like the protein chips.

• 30:41Speaker 05

  It's fine.

• 30:41Speaker 06

  Listen, the protein chips taste significantly better than you'd expect.

• 30:45Ed Zitron?

  Yes, that's, but that's always with proteins. It's like, it's better than you'd expect.

• 30:48Speaker 05

  It seems like it's a, we're just, whoever is trying to solve like a much bigger problem with just a consumption.

• 30:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I think there was like some interesting research I came upon, which is like, people, if they looked at like two identical like cereal brands, that one had the word protein on it and one didn't, they'd be like, oh, the protein one is healthier. And then if you actually looked at the ingredients in the back, the protein one was like less healthy.

• 31:13Ed Zitron?

  The new low fat.

• 31:13Speaker 06

  Uh, it is the new low fat, but it's been like. It's the first of these diet trends that we've had go on for a long time without ever having the bubble pop on it. Like, there's no people being like, oh, protein is bad for you. And I don't think like, that's, protein isn't bad for you. It's totally fine to have, but you don't need to be obsessed with it. It doesn't need to be the end all be all of

• 31:36Ed Zitron?

  We both say this as people who have obsessed over protein.

• 31:39Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 31:40Speaker 05

  I think it's like, the old, the old trope was, you know, how in, you know, like, women's fitness magazines, they'd be like, I'm worried about lifting weights because as soon as I pick up a dumbbell, I'm gonna be like, you know, jacked bodybuilder. And I'm worried about that. That's something that happens to people.

• 31:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 05

  And I think now.

• 31:56Ed Zitron?

  And that is categorically untrue, just to be clear.

• 31:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, it's completely.

• 32:01Ed Zitron?

  If only it was that easy.

• 32:02Speaker 05

  It's like, you know, you trip and fall. And if you pick up something by accident.

• 32:05Speaker 06

  I don't know about you guys. Every time I accidentally touch a weight, I just get ripped.

• 32:09Ed Zitron?

  Just like a Rob Lee feel.

• 32:10Speaker 06

  I can't even like, wear sleeved shirts.

• 32:12Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, just they pop out.

• 32:14Speaker 05

  But I think it's the same thing now where, you know, I've been like this, I've had friends like this, where it's like, they go to the gym twice. And they're like, I don't think I'm getting enough protein. Like, why? You're like, I just, I don't feel like I'm getting the results. And you're like, how long have you been doing whatever? And then they're like, two days. Like, okay, you're trying to solve a much bigger problem with a consumption, you know, solution.

• 32:35Ed Zitron?

  Yeah. And I think it's all taking advantage of a really shitty, sad thing, which is, yeah, if you're putting on weight, you might be eating too much food. If you're not putting on muscle, maybe you're not doing enough consistently.

• 32:46Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 32:46Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, maybe if you're not, if you're not feeling healthy, are you doing things that hurt? It's like.

• 32:50Speaker 06

  It's like a really easy shortcut to feeling better about your choices. You're like, oh, I'm not, it's not bad that I'm having a pop tart. It's a protein pop tart.

• 32:58Ed Zitron?

  I'm not changing my, I'm not changing my life in any way, but my life will change somehow. And it's not my fault. It's not changing. It's something else.

• 33:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's like, it's not bad that I had a whole bowl of pasta tonight because it's protein.

• 33:09Ed Zitron?

  The protein pop tarts are pretty good. I've tried, I feel like, I do feel like we're in the golden age of like, low calorie, high protein things. I love it. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, you can just eat as much food as you used to in protein. And you're just gonna, you're not, you're gonna plateau.

• 33:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 33:25Ed Zitron?

  And it sucks and it sucks a lot because I don't know, this all gets back to the core internet thing of everyone wants the easy choices. It's like the radicalization of young men. Oh, it's because women won't speak to you. Maybe you're rude. Maybe you don't bring much to the conversation.

• 33:38Speaker 06

  Maybe you've got bad vibes.

• 33:39Ed Zitron?

  Maybe you have bad breath. Like, maybe you have a bad something. Maybe you have...

• 33:42Speaker 06

  Maybe all that protein you're eating makes you stank.

• 33:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, protein farts are real.

• 33:46Ed Zitron?

  No, they really are. They're really, it's really bad.

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• 35:04Ed Zitron?

  But it's like you can't find an easy way out, so you blame something. And in this case, it's, I didn't have enough pills. I didn't have all of the many pills.

• 35:13Speaker 06

  My stack needs to be higher.

• 35:15Ed Zitron?

  No, really, the stack stuff is crazy.

• 35:17Speaker 05

  Well, that's actually, to that point, like, I've spoken to, like, health influencers who have, and ones who I consider, like, pretty responsible. And they're like, we're trying to make boring things sexy, whether it's like, because otherwise you can't have a health podcast that comes out twice a week with just established stuff. Because it would be like, hey, did you get enough sleep? How much have you exercised this week? How is your mental health? And how is your nutrition? And that would be it, you know, like, but they can be like, oh, there's a promising new rat study done on one, two rats, one of them exploded, but the other, you know, looks pretty good.

• 35:54Speaker 06

  So long as you don't explode, you'll be so hot.

• 35:56Ed Zitron?

  Only two out of the seven rats exploded.

• 36:00Speaker 05

  And they had bad vibes.

• 36:01Ed Zitron?

  And the others were jacked.

• 36:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. No, this is the problem. Whenever I spoke to like fitness or performance, like experts in like the research field of like protein and muscle, I was like, oh, well, what's like the best advice for you? And he's like, nobody wants to hear it, but just like, eat whole foods, make healthy choices, take care of your body. Everyone falls asleep if you say that.

• 36:23Ed Zitron?

  No, it's, I like, my big secret is that I sleep seven and a half to eight hours a night. I mandate this. And it's like, doing that changed my life more than any pill I've taken in my goddamn life, other than like maybe my methylphenidate for my ADHD. It's insane how much that helped. But the problem is, is once you, once you've got into the routine of sleep, it's great. Making yourself get into a routine of sleeping that much is actually very difficult.

• 36:50Speaker 06

  Nightmarish.

• 36:51Ed Zitron?

  And you need, like, I sleep with, like, the blackout thing. Like, I-

• 36:54Speaker 06

  I'm just imagining you in a coffin.

• 36:55Ed Zitron?

  No, I really, like, it's super cold. I like, I like, have like the full blackout eye mask. I take a, I take like melatonin and trazodone sometimes if I'm having trouble sleeping. I, I sleep like a baby and it's great. But it's like, to your point, Asher, it's like, yeah, that would really help. I don't know how the fuck a parent does that. Like, I don't know how like someone with like three kids would possibly ever fucking do that.

• 37:21Speaker 06

  Someone who works nights.

• 37:22Ed Zitron?

  Someone who works nights, someone who just has a stressful job that comes up in their mind when they close their eyes.

• 37:28Speaker 06

  Someone who's housing insecure.

• 37:30Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly. Like, like, any number of things could change. Or just, anyone with a decent amount of stress in their life, it's difficult. And even like the, I feel like some of these fitness influencers or the fitness communities, there is a degree of pressure. There's not really much empathy at all. Like, Asher, I've definitely messaged you with just like, I feel that shit about my, it's, most of the time you just say, you're doing all right? Like, it could be, maybe you got knocked off your routine. And I think that the grisly fact of all this is, yeah, it's routine consistency, actually having good advice. Like, I took me years to find someone who could actually tell me a routine that would work. I was lifting and literally hurting myself for years because everything I read was like, you need to do the big three core lifts, you fucking moron. You can't bench, you can't, you can't bench your weight.

• 38:13Ed Zitron?

  Like, I'm like a buck sixty-five, buck seventy, right? Bucks, yeah, buck seventy maybe. And I can't bench my body weight, but I'm healthier and stronger than I've ever been. But just like on one core lift, I can't. And it's like, can squat three hundred though. And it's, it's fucking strange because there's so much literature that says that's bad. Even the BMI, which is by like a.

• 38:33Speaker 06

  By like health insurance, not health insurance, uh.

• 38:36Ed Zitron?

  I thought BMI was by like an anthropologist.

• 38:38Speaker 06

  No, it's by some corporate, uh, figure, perhaps life insurance?

• 38:43Ed Zitron?

  No, no, that's steps. Steps were the one that, I'm sorry, anyone who talks about steps, that was a Japanese life insurance company. It was like, or like a Japanese health insurance company. I'm pretty sure the BMI, I'm gonna look this up live on the show.

• 38:55Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, you have the technology here.

• 38:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, there we go. Uh, who invented this? Uh, Adolph Quetelet, a Belgian astronomer, astronomer, said that word flawlessly. Mathematician, statistician. Uh, device the basis of the BMI between eighteen thirty and eighteen fifty.

• 39:11Speaker 06

  Hey, that's when they really knew their stuff.

• 39:13Ed Zitron?

  That's when they really knew science, for example. Ah, it's just fucking stu-, there's so much bad, like, the steps thing is the thing that frustrates me as well. Because you can do so many steps without anything happening. Like, I've fallen into this trap myself and I feel, I hope that it's clear, anyone listening to this, this is not a shame thing. This is a thing that I have done many, where he's like, oh, I got ten thousand steps. That means shit. Like, it's like.

• 39:36Speaker 05

  What is that based on? Like, the Japanese pedometer?

• 39:39Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, yeah, that's exactly, it's like the insurance company. And it's, it sucks because that was the earliest version of this supplement fitness kind of scam thing.

• 39:48Speaker 05

  Well, I feel like, you know, ten thousand steps was, you know, the, uh, kind of like the prototype for a bunch of things we've seen since where all of these devices have come up with some kind of proprietary metric. Where it's like, you know, you got a million Google points for, you know, your activity.

• 40:06Speaker 06

  The one, every, the one I'm seeing so much now is like, your body's age, your biological age is eighteen or something like that. And it's like, sir, you are a thirty-nine-year-old man, just feel good about.

• 40:19Speaker 05

  Yourself, you have boy blood.

• 40:21Speaker 06

  You've got boy blood.

• 40:22Ed Zitron?

  I should also be clear, by the way, if you're doing steps, moving is important. It's good if you're trying.

• 40:27Speaker 06

  Doing any of these things, if something makes you happy and you're an adult with free will, live your truth.

• 40:34Ed Zitron?

  But I have an Oura ring and I do have an eight sleep mattress.

• 40:37Speaker 06

  Did it break during the?

• 40:38Ed Zitron?

  I was, and I'm a, I'm a baby. I need like cold, cold. Like I have it in like minus 10. I'm, I am like an actual creature. But it's, I have stats from my ring. I have stats from my bed. I've got this thing called Somni that does like tacks, electrical things. It's great. It really helps. And like my REM sleep is up and I think I feel, it's just, but like, I don't really have any frame of reference for what any of this does. Knowing how much I sleep is useful because it's like, yeah, if I have less than eight, I don't feel as good. But it's like, all, I have data for years, years and years, years and years. I could not tell you a single fucking thing about my fitness, other than I feel and look better than I have. Like I can't tell you shit.

• 41:17Ed Zitron?

  But there's this guilt factor about it as well with like Strava loves to inform me like, oh, you move things down, your, your numbers are low. It's like, thank you, Strava. What am I meant to do with this? Oh, I forgot to work out. That's what happened. I need guilt trips.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I think like it takes a lot of discipline and perspective to not go nuts from,

• 41:38Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 05

  You know, having all this information in front of you. Like I remember when I got one of the first Fitbits and it very, very quickly became like a obsessive thing that I had to stop using where it's like, oh, I could get to a nice round number if I go for another run. Or like, you know.

• 41:54Speaker 06

  It's like the MyFitnessPal trap.

• 41:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was when I, when I, once I signed up for a gym and they had to, like, as part of the package, you could get a session with a personal trainer. And I got this guy who's like, oh, you gotta start tracking what you eat. And I, he was like, use MyFitnessPal. And I tried it for a day. I was like, this is going to drive me

• 42:15Ed Zitron?

  Yes.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  insane and give me a new type of eating disorder that I don't want. And, you know, it's just one of those things where, you know, some people are able to do that and make it part of their lifestyle and other people, it drives them fucking nuts.

• 42:28Ed Zitron?

  I do think we need some degree of like tonal, for example. I did injure myself using it. It was my fault. I just overtrained. It feels like it should be able to tell you, like, hey, man, you've done four heavy lifts in the last five days. Maybe not. Maybe you should think about it for a second. Peloton, I mean, I've overtrained on it when I used to do it years ago. You go on the Reddit, tons of people overtrain on it. You get obsessive. They have the medals you can get. And there's absolutely no like coaching aspect. It's not like a, hey, you've done a lot of heavy stuff. Maybe do some light. There's no real guidance and there's so much.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  It's because all of these companies now operate like tech companies where increasing user engagement is one of the end goals. Of course you want engaged users. Of course you want your users that are moderately engaged to become highly engaged. Why would you ever want to slow down that ramp? But it gets more complicated when you're talking about people and their bodies and habits and actual human things.

• 43:23Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and it's also just, it gets back to the thing of there's not much qualified advice. There's a lot of seemingly qualified, but it's hard to tell what the actual. Oh, there's 100 million different people be like, I'll build you a plan. There's none, none of them have worked other than the guy called Ben the PC guy on, on Twitter and as in personal computer. Um, used to work at Microsoft, lovely guy. He's the only person other than Ashwin, I think, who's given me like any like useful, reliable fitness advice. A lot of it's just, yeah, mixing a bit of cardio, uh, volume's good. And it, but you read a bunch of others say, no, dude, starting strength, 5x5, you fucking pig.

• 44:00Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:01Ed Zitron?

  If you don't have 1.5x by the end of the year.

• 44:03Speaker 06

  I'm gonna come to your house and kick you in the balls.

• 44:05Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, I'm gonna squat you in half.

• 44:07Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 44:08Ed Zitron?

  I'm gonna do to what Bane did to Batman and I'm gonna log that in Strava. Strava's also shit. A lot of these things are also shit for logging fitness. Like it's just like the Apple Watch also doesn't stay on my, there's a lot of just times when I use the stuff, I'm like, do people who do fitness use this thing? Or is this just to your point, Paris, just another tech company? I like to, I will go to bat for Tonal in that I've used it for years and I think it's one of the best ones. Cause it does actually really hound you about form, but like things like Peloton, they don't give a.

• 44:37Speaker 06

  I was gonna say, I think any of these products, if you use them in moderation, if they bring some sort of joy to your life, they bring consistency, that's great. But it's hard when you mix a kind of habit forming products and the kind of.

• 44:52Speaker 06

  Flywheel of engagement with something like exercise.

• 44:57Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, and I feel like it's almost antithetical to the what makes exercise successful, which is you kind of need to learn how your body feels, which is a very woo woo thing, but it's true like.

• 45:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:05Ed Zitron?

  You know, when your body, like some weeks you may do four exercises, sometimes you may do two because you're, I don't know, speaking for a species, you hurt your calf and you hurt your elbow in the same week. Yeah, you probably shouldn't push yourself to box or lift, even if your brain's saying you'll get fat if you do, but nevertheless, it's like that it runs completely contrary to a product that's the goal is to keep you using it. Like the, the, you must log in every day. If you don't do that, you're a pig and a hat.

• 45:30Speaker 06

  The Duolingo owl is gonna beat you up.

• 45:33Ed Zitron?

  I will kill the Duolingo owl. I will.

• 45:35Speaker 05

  I use, I do my Duolingo every day and like that Lily will be like, hey, you haven't done, it would be a shame if you lose your streak and I take all of my sleeping pills tonight. You're like, chill out, I'll do it.

• 45:47Ed Zitron?

  But in the garage.

• 45:48Speaker 05

  Like the, the incentive for these, you know, the companies, you know, obviously they act like tech companies where they're trying to keep things as sticky as possible and you know, have things on subscription basis instead of just being able to buy stuff outright. And I found like it's antithetical to a, a proper business model, but a lot of this stuff is useful for a period of time. Like I, I tried Whoop and some of it I found useful, some of it, it was annoying to me that it doesn't track weightlifting as well as cardio. And because I lost the forest for the trees, I would do more cardio because that would get counted. Which is idiotic if you step back and be like, I'm doing it because of my bracelet that I'm paying for.

• 46:31Speaker 05

  But you know, some people, you use something to collect some data and then you kind of pair that with your intuition and what works or what you're feeling, you know, because I found Whoop would tell me I had a great sleep and I felt like shit and vice versa. And you realize you have to know yourself well enough to maybe make a overriding decision that it's not.

• 46:53Speaker 05

  Accurately capturing how you feel. And then it, once you spend a period of time doing whatever training, you don't necessarily need a gizmo or gadget to tell you what you feel, you know, intuitively. But that's not something that they're going to say like, oh, try this and then throw it in the garbage.

• 47:09Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, you're only gonna need this a minute, mate. Don't worry, just pay us for a month. Who gives a shit? They love the, all the growth people are yelling at me, but you just fucking get rid of me. It, it sucks, but I, I do love, I really, I love.

• 47:21Speaker 06

  You are the most, I feel like, metrics obsessed person I know. In just terms of you're always posting your fitness metrics.

• 47:29Ed Zitron?

  I love it. No, actually, like, it's just also like good to, for me to just do and be like, okay, I did that. I forgot whether I did it or not.

• 47:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, it seems like, I don't know.

• 47:36Ed Zitron?

  It's fun. No, I just run to a local basketball court and I just run around for 45 minutes, missing.

• 47:42Speaker 06

  I'm just imagining you by yourself. There's not even a basketball.

• 47:45Ed Zitron?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just air shooting. No, I, I admit, I went on Amazon and there was a tech-enabled basketball. I don't know.

• 47:54Speaker 06

  Imagine that your basketball can like degrade you while you're doing it.

• 47:58Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, it's like claptrap from Borderlands, like, ah, that was a match. That's a good fucking, no, it's like you can measure.

• 48:05Speaker 06

  Guys, we should stop this podcast right now.

• 48:07Ed Zitron?

  No, if you.

• 48:08Speaker 05

  We have a ball to design.

• 48:10Ed Zitron?

  If you're one of the companies with a connected basketball, send it to me. I would love to play the basketball. You can send all my data to China. Just like it, there's a pig butchering operation that starts in on me because I can't shoot.

• 48:22Speaker 06

  If you shoot the basketball well enough, then a hole opens in it and it shoots a protein supplement right in your mouth.

• 48:28Ed Zitron?

  Like a fish biscuit from Lost. No, or, or just like it, if you shoot really badly, you have to keep playing. The ball starts getting heavier. That was $250. $250, I guess, like.

• 48:44Speaker 06

  I mean.

• 48:44Ed Zitron?

  I sort of.

• 48:45Speaker 06

  This is a dumb person thought, but my thought is, it, wouldn't it be kind of hard to make a tech product that works well? That you also throw at the ground.

• 48:52Ed Zitron?

  That's the thing. I'm like, I'm oddly curious about it. And I guess now I've talked about it on the show, I could tax deduct it, but it's, there was also a $5,000 basketball hoop. Which fucking

• 49:02Speaker 06

  What?

• 49:03Ed Zitron?

  No, it's like, it's so cool. I definitely went down there. I'm like, not would never

• 49:06Speaker 06

  What about it?

• 49:07Ed Zitron?

  What it is, is the hu- the backboard of it is a screen. So it's like Peloton and it's like

• 49:14Speaker 06

  But again

• 49:15Ed Zitron?

  Shoot the ball, shoot the ball.

• 49:16Speaker 06

  Why are you making a complicated tech product that is expensive that you throw something really hard at?

• 49:24Ed Zitron?

  Well, that I can understand because that's how basketball works. It's more, I'm just like, who the fuck is this for? Cause five grand for that, you can just, you can probably just go to a local court where people play and they'll just tell you why you're trash. They'll screaming at you. And like, if anyone in New York wants to get together, shoot hoops, absolutely. Ashwin, I know it would be mean, but it's like, the most joy I've got out of any of this isn't the tech-enabled stuff. It's shooting the shit with people. Once you get over the initial hoop of exercise sucking. And I wish like, it sucks because the supplement stuff online is very noxious. The kind of predatory stuff, but the communities online with fitness have been very good. Like there's actually like, when you get away from the very negative ones, it's just the people having fun. It's great.

• 50:08Ed Zitron?

  But there's such a war within them of like the, the stat maxes. Or the cheats, of course. The people who just cheat.

• 50:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 50:15Ed Zitron?

  The Peloton cheats are fucking great. You can, you can fuck with

• 50:18Speaker 06

  There is that website that uh, will allow you to cheat your Strava? Yeah.

• 50:23Ed Zitron?

  That's, the Peloton ones, you can change the magnets. You can un-screw it and change the magnet.

• 50:28Speaker 06

  Hacking your Peloton.

• 50:29Ed Zitron?

  No, because like, when I used to do Peloton a lot, I used to get really pissed off because I'd really like, I knew my stats. And I'd see a guy doing like 500 watts for like 45 minutes. I'm like, you are fucked.

• 50:39Speaker 06

  Who is this for?

• 50:40Speaker 05

  It, it's Yeah, it's like doping in the nerd Olympics.

• 50:42Ed Zitron?

  No, it's, it's straight up broke. It's why I stopped using Peloton. Cause I'm like, the whole reason I do this is to get better. And this is a measurement of my strength. This number no longer means anything. Like, this number is meaningless now. I can't even tell-

• 50:57Speaker 06

  Especially because it's obviously a competitive aspect-

• 50:59Ed Zitron?

  Yeah, exactly, it's like-

• 51:00Speaker 06

  It's like, you're like, "I'm always being lapped by this person who clearly just has, like, their magnets."

• 51:05Ed Zitron?

  And then you look and the line is just at the top of the graph.

• 51:08Speaker 06

  I don't know, maybe the strongest guy in the world-

• 51:10Ed Zitron?

  Yes, just the guy with lace-

• 51:11Speaker 05

  I hear Terminator, horseman-

• 51:13Ed Zitron?

  Like thighs, three feet wide thighs, just like, he has to get a special pedal. The tiny feet. Alright, I think we're gonna wrap it then. We've talked about the tiny footed Peloton person. Paris Weppe people find you.

• 51:26Speaker 06

  Um, you can find me on Bluesky at paris.nyc or Twitter at ParisMartineau, um, and follow my work at Consumer Reports.

• 51:34Ed Zitron?

  Ashwin?

• 51:35Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, you can find me at, uh, Bluesky as well. I think I'm the only Ashwin Rodriguez on there, and my website is ashwinrodrigues.com.

• 51:44Ed Zitron?

  And I am Ed Zirk, Sean. You can find me on the podcast Better Offline. I nearly mis-said the name of the podcast there, but I recovered flawlessly. I took a week off the, of my fucking premium newsletter last week, so please subscribe so that I can feel better about myself. Should be a fun, fun week coming up. I think I'm just gonna do a very simplified monologue this week and just really run through the basics, because I, I've had requests that we need the basics of the AI bubble done, which is crazy, except I'm like 100 episodes on it. Anyway, I love you all. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to Bahid. We're out here in New York City. We kicked ass out here. And yeah, catch you next week, and actually on the monologue as well.

• 52:27Ed Zitron?

  Thank you for listening to Better Offline. The editor and composer of the Better Offline theme song is Matt Osowski. You can check out more of his music and audio projects at mattosowski.com. M-A-T-T-O-S-O-W-S-K-I dot com. You can email me at [email protected] or visit betteroffline.com to find more podcast links and of course my newsletter. I also really recommend you go to chat dot where's your ed dot app to visit the Discord and go to r slash betteroffline to check out our Reddit. Thank you so much for listening.

• 52:59Speaker 06

  Better Offline is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 53:34Speaker 02

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