Episodes We Love: Where's the Beef?

What if vegetables are poison? What if, instead, humans evolved to consume an animal-based diet of steak, liver, brain, testicles, eggs, butter, and milk? Shirtless influencers on TikTok and Instagram have acquired millions of followers promoting the carnivore diet. They say studies linking meat consumption and heart disease are flawed — and plant foods are making people sick. Likewise, meatfluencers say the livestock industry has no significant impact on the climate crisis despite abundant evidence suggesting otherwise. No controlled studies have been published confirming the advertised benefits of the carnivore diet. Yet, its popularity online is undeniable. In this rebroadcast, Endless Thread looks at how social media cooked up the anti-establishment wellness trend. You can find our transcript, with links and additional resources, here: www.wbur.org/carnivore Credits: This episode was produced by Dean Russell and Ben Brock Johnson. Mixing and sound design by Emily Jankowski. Ben Brock Johnson and Dean Russell are the co-hosts. Image Credit: Peter Dazeley/Getty

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores the intersection between fashion and sustainability. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Support for Endless Thread comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  When everything feels nonstop, movement becomes the pause. So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile. Targeted support adds steadiness to every pulse and hold.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  And dynamic stretch expands presence through every pose.

• 0:59Speaker 02

  Give the feeling. Shop in store and on lululemon.com.

• 1:05Speaker 03

  WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

• 1:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hey, Endless Threaders. How you feeling? Are you stuffed? Are you tryptophoned out? Have you been making your leftover turkey sandwiches or tofurkey sandwiches or whatever kind of sandwiches you want to make after all that eating and hanging with fam? We hope you're doing very well. This week, we're hitting you with a rerun because we are, you know, stuffed ourselves and hanging out on the couch, probably watching some TV, hopefully not shopping too much. In light of this Black Friday, we want to give you an episode about meat, about TikTok, about healthy diets and

• 2:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  unhealthy diets, and how all of these things are working together to try to sell you something. So kick back, take a spin through one of our older episodes, and enjoy the ride.

• 2:24Speaker 05

  When I was 19 years old, I broke my back. I fell off of a second-story forklift and had a garbage dumpster fall on me.

• 2:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Meet Jerry Brazy, whose story is crazy.

• 2:39Speaker 05

  I mean, I couldn't walk out of a hospital to the parking lot without sitting down halfway because the damage to the nerves in the base of my spine was so terrible. I mean, I just lived with this pain.

• 2:51Speaker 06

  No one would ever describe Jerry's life as easy.

• 2:55Speaker 05

  I've had 17 procedures on my back since then. Been addicted to opioids three different times.

• 3:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  But today, at least, Jerry has a sort of nonchalant charm about everything that's happened to him, all of which he shares on TikTok.

• 3:08Speaker 05

  What's up, everybody? Check this out. It has been one year ago, pretty much last week, that I...

• 3:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Jerry describes himself as an entrepreneur and self-made millionaire. It seems like Jerry's lived enough good and bad stuff for about three life stories.

• 3:25Speaker 06

  It's true. Aside from the thing with the forklift and the dumpster falling on him, aside from the addiction, the 17 back procedures, there is the big thing.

• 3:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, oh, there's a bigger thing? Okay.

• 3:38Speaker 06

  Yes, there is a bigger thing. More than a decade ago, Jerry was diagnosed with something called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a genetic condition that makes it hard for the heart to pump blood.

• 3:51Speaker 05

  And all of a sudden, my heart's racing and I can't breathe. And so they put me on drugs at that point. That was at 38 years old.

• 3:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  At the time, Jerry says, he wasn't doing great at taking care of himself either. He didn't exercise. He ate mostly fast food and processed food. He needed 19 pills a day to regulate his heart and pain. And he says, all of this took a very visible toll on his weight, which kept going up and up and up.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Until I found myself in November of 21 at 303 pounds.

• 4:25Speaker 06

  November of 2021, that's when Jerry's life changed again. Because one day after flying home to Tennessee from a work trip, his chest started to hurt.

• 4:37Speaker 05

  I drove myself over to the hospital because I was having a bunch of mini heart attacks. And somehow I had lost four pints of blood inexplicably.

• 4:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  At 52, he was admitted for what felt like maybe the last time.

• 4:51Speaker 05

  Laying in that hospital was kind of an eye opener for me. And I just said, I gotta get back. I'm either gonna live or I'm gonna die because I'm dying. There has to be a better way.

• 5:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  How did you hear about the carnivore diet? How did that idea come into your world?

• 5:11Speaker 05

  It, uh, it came across, I was listening to a Joe Rogan podcast, a doctor named, um, uh, his name escapes me, I'm sorry.

• 5:18Speaker 07

  So many people were like, have you checked out what this guy's doing? He's eating nothing but meat and he's a doctor and he's super healthy.

• 5:25Speaker 05

  I popped my phone open and, and started doing the, the research. And obviously the opportunities there to do your own research and hear people's own testimonies are limitless.

• 5:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  The carnivore diet, if you look at a photo of Jerry a few years ago and you look at him today, it's insane. We are talking Pillsbury Doughboy to Viking Warlord. And by the way, as a perfect dad bod specimen, I am not here to fat shame. I am just saying it is night and day.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  Jerry credits the carnivore diet for his health 180. He says he was mostly using Twitter and YouTube to learn about it. And then he moved to Tik Tok where the carnivore diet is big.

• 6:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  You've probably heard of its predecessors, paleo keto Atkins, diets that advocate for limiting carbs and processed foods.

• 6:17Speaker 06

  But the carnivore diet is different. It's a get back to our roots philosophy that literally rejects plants. No veggies, no grains, just animals.

• 6:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  But as Jerry points out, some people do get some food diversity within their carnivore diet regimen. Some, wait, sorry, sorry, just to be clear.

• 6:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Those are the, literally the only things that they eat?

• 6:43Speaker 05

  That's it. Beef, butter.

• 6:46Speaker 05

  Beef, butter, bacon and eggs.

• 6:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whoa.

• 6:50Speaker 05

  Yeah. 30 to 40 days on that and, and you won't believe how good you can feel.

• 6:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  He's right. I don't believe it, but just like butter, this new carnivore diet is popular.

• 7:03Speaker 06

  The other thing that sets this diet apart, it's a lifestyle created and shaped by social media.

• 7:14Speaker 06

  I tried the carnivore diet for 45 days.

• 7:16Speaker 07

  This is my second month on the carnivore diet.

• 7:18Speaker 03

  I've been on a carnivore diet for a year and a half. After four years of the carnivore diet, do I ever get tired of eating steak every day? The answer is no.

• 7:29Speaker 06

  Jerry's trip to the ER was two years ago. Since then, he's been eating carnivore. Sausage and 10 eggs in the morning, two pounds of steak at night. He's lost about 100 pounds, cut back on medication, and despite what you might think, he says his heart is stronger.

• 7:49Speaker 05

  My cardiologists think I'm crazy, but they can't argue with me.

• 7:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  And like the many, many, many people who have gone carnivore, Jerry says his experience has not only improved his health, it has altered his view of the entire medical and scientific community.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  I believe, and so do so many other people, and, and my proof is in the experience for me for the last 22 months is that everything we've been told about what we eat is wrong.

• 8:22Speaker 06

  I'm Dean Ribai Russell.

• 8:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm Ben Beef Butter Bacon and Eggs Johnson. Oh no. And you're listening to Endless Thread.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  Coming to you from WBUR, Boston's NPR butcher shop with two Ps because we're classy.

• 8:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Today's episode, where's the beef? Where is the beef? It's everywhere.

• 8:45Speaker 06

  How social media gave birth to the carnivore diet, meatfluencers.

• 8:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  And fast-spreading ideas about how ancient humans survived and thrived.

• 8:56Speaker 06

  And what that means for all of us.

• 9:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  For our purposes today, the carnivore diet, as we're calling it, is a bit of a catchall for meatposting, meatfluencing, lion diet, and a smorgasbord of red meat consumption ideas that has exploded online. The idea of an all-meat diet dates, at least in the Western world, to the 1850s, when a German author wrote about his year living on only meat and dairy. But the carnivore club didn't really get going until more recently, around the same time as TikTok.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  Search carnivore diet, or carnivore, or meat talk on TikTok, and you will find thousands upon thousands of posts.

• 9:54Speaker 06

  Beef, butter, bacon, and eggs.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Butter truly makes everything better. Sometimes I even eat it as a midday snack. Bison fat, goat fat, pork fat, aka lard. I got liver with breakfast, lunch, and dinner because liver is king.

• 10:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is how I eat a testicle from start to finish. Sounds nuts, but some of these folks have millions of followers.

• 10:17Speaker 06

  People who say that what you were told as a kid, eat your veggies. That's baloney, and probably why you feel like manure.

• 10:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  But an all-meat diet will be your cure.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  I lost 43 pounds in 44 days. You can heal gut damage. Get rid of eczema forever.

• 10:35Speaker 06

  Brain fog goes away. I had some autoimmune conditions that seemed to have gone away.

• 10:39Speaker 07

  It's actually going to probably help you get over cancer. The doctor said my stomach was the most beautiful one that he has ever seen. And I'm telling you, it certainly is because of this diet.

• 10:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  A lot of so-called latest health crazes originate with a singular health nut, or at least someone who sees the light and comes down from the mountain and brings us the gospel about what to gobble.

• 11:06Speaker 06

  The Atkins diet had Dr. Robert Atkins, a cardiologist. The carnivore diet has this guy. My name is Paul Saladino. I'm a double board certified medical

• 11:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Doctor, I'm going to show you what I eat in a day.

• 11:19Speaker 06

  Dr. Paul Saladino, formerly known as CarnivoreMD, 1.8 million followers on Instagram.

• 11:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not bad.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  500,000 on YouTube, another 500,000 on his latest TikTok account.

• 11:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  The first one was banned. We are not sure why. Day in and day out, I focus on meat and organs. This is grass-fed ground beef, raw heart, raw liver, bone marrow, desiccated testicle and desiccated brain, like whole package from Hardened Soil Supplements.

• 11:54Speaker 06

  Dr. Paul Saladino did not invent the carnivore diet. He's more like an apostle. But the reason he caught our attention was because he's a doctor.

• 12:04Ben Brock Johnson?

  A handsome, tan, often shirtless doctor.

• 12:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  He should be on one of those shows with a healthy surfer vibe. He got his medical degree from the University of Arizona and is licensed in the state of California.

• 12:19Speaker 06

  Now he's in Costa Rica, where he ticks his talks from a beautiful, treetop bungalow.

• 12:25Ben Brock Johnson?

  And yes, this is where I live. Meat, trees, surf-tanned pectorals. He's living the dream.

• 12:33Speaker 06

  Someone's dream.

• 12:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Carnivore dieters online vary by race, age, and gender. But the biggest influencers tend to be muscular, middle-aged white guys. And they often seem to be pointed at an audience of fellow men. Saladino is no exception. If you eat testicle, you will be getting bioactive testosterone into your body. And this diet, by the way, does have connections to the men's rights online community. We're going to get back to that. And we should also say it's not all that.

• 13:10Speaker 06

  Saladino stands out because of his credentials. He says his journey into the carnivorous world began by training in functional medicine, a practice that studies the, quote, "root causes of disease." He saw it as an alternative to the conventional medicine he learned in school.

• 13:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  We have knee-jerk reactions. You got eczema, I know the drug for you. You got psoriasis, I know the drug. You got Hashimoto's thyroiditis or autoimmune thyroiditis, I got the drugs for you. But we never think, wait a minute. Why do you have eczema? What's causing it? Why do you have depression? Why does anyone have anxiety? Right? And that is where, that's, that's where I think I went left when a lot of my colleagues went right. The idea, conventional medicine reacts. Functional medicine prevents. And not by prescribing drugs. And let's pause for just a second here to say, this makes sense to me. I agree. A ton of the healthcare industry today seems to be about telling people what to do, knowing they won't do it, and eventually just prescribing them drugs.

• 14:12Speaker 06

  Saladino, however, is prescribing meat and other animal-based products. He doesn't shy away from technical talk. He embraces it.

• 14:23Speaker 07

  Butter is full of good fatty acids for humans like stearic acid, heart, the organ gifted to warriors, coenzyme Q10, riboflavin, B12, vitamin K2, choline, carnecine, carnitine, anserine, taurine, alpha-linolenic acid, linoleic, excuse me, alpha-linolenic acid, bioavailable vitamin A, biotin, riboflavin, folate, list is long.

• 14:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Saladino isn't the only TikTok doc in the carnivore club. There's Dr. Sean Baker and Dr. Anthony Chaffee. But Saladino is the most prominent meat M.D.

• 14:56Speaker 06

  And it's his use of scientific language that I found most fascinating. Here's a guy who's undercutting the anti-meat scientific establishment with, he says, science.

• 15:09Speaker 07

  I believe Western medicine is lying to you, that you've been misled by fallacies, parroted by your doctor.

• 15:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  What is the sciency philosophy that the carnivore diet is founded on? Well, there's a lot to take in. We're going to carve it into three main tenets.

• 15:26Speaker 06

  Carnivore credo number one, evolution.

• 15:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Eat like a caveman.

• 15:31Speaker 07

  Throughout human evolution, we have probably been scavengers first and then pack hunters, with animals as our primary food, using plant foods only in times of starvation or as an adjunct.

• 15:43Speaker 06

  Around the same time that humans started hunting with tools, our ancestors evolved rapidly.

• 15:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  Instead of eating the bulky, low-quality plant diet of other apes, we began feasting on calorie-dense meat and marrow. Our guts shrank, and most importantly, our brains exploded in size.

• 16:04Speaker 06

  Conclusion.

• 16:05Speaker 07

  Animal foods are what your ancestors have always sought.

• 16:09Speaker 06

  Meat made humans smart, so eating meat makes you smart too.

• 16:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  Carnivore credo number two: Eat like a hunter-gatherer.

• 16:19Speaker 06

  Hold the gatherer.

• 16:21Speaker 07

  If you visit hunter-gatherer tribes, who are our best representation of where we come from as humans, their preferences for foods are crystal clear. They are hunters first and foremost. Meat and organs are their most prized foods. They don't care about vegetables.

• 16:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Before agriculture, we were hunter-gatherers, and some of us are still hunter-gatherers, often said to be living in secluded groups comparatively apart from the globalized world.

• 16:46Speaker 06

  A few years back, the Paleo Diet's founder, evolutionary nutritionist Lauren Cordain, said that 73% of living hunter-gatherer groups get more than half of their calories from meat.

• 16:59Ben Brock Johnson?

  These groups of individuals also have lower rates of heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, even acne. The people who are today living like our ancestors, they are healthy.

• 17:12Speaker 06

  Conclusion: Meat keeps you healthy.

• 17:17Speaker 06

  Carnivore credo number three: Plants are poison.

• 17:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh, man. Eight-year-old me would agree.

• 17:29Speaker 07

  You sometimes ask me which vegetables are okay to eat. My answer is no. Why would you eat plant leaves and stems and roots and seeds? They put defense chemicals in those parts of plants.

• 17:41Speaker 06

  Saladino says that because plants cannot run away from predators, they evolved defenses that slowly poison anyone bold enough to eat them.

• 17:52Speaker 07

  Things like oxalates, lectins, saponins, digestive enzyme inhibitors like tannins, these are gonna mess up your digestion and your hormones, generally make you feel horrible, and they're gonna make you fart a lot, too.

• 18:01Speaker 06

  He's even gone far enough to link broccoli with thyroid problems and spinach smoothies with kidney failure.

• 18:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Technically, the carnivore diet is no plants, but Saladino says fruit is okay in moderation. This newer version of his diet, an offshoot of the carnivore diet, is what he calls an animal-based diet. And it allows for some fruit.

• 18:25Speaker 06

  In any case, some people on Meat Talk and Meatscram seem to lump fruit in with veggies anyway. They're all bad. A lot of vegetables are poison. Most vegetables are highly toxic.

• 18:36Speaker 01

  Brussels sprouts had 136 known carcinogens. Peppers and tomatoes are ruining your gut health. Broccoli, it has this compound that's like really anti-thyroid. I don't remember what it's called.

• 18:47Speaker 06

  Meanwhile, meat? It's a heart-healthy meal with all the nutrients you need.

• 18:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Carnivorous conclusion?

• 18:55Speaker 07

  No to vegetables.

• 19:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  So just to reiterate here, the three credos of the carnivore's diet are: Meat made us smart.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  Meat makes us healthy.

• 19:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  And veggies are bad for us.

• 19:12Speaker 06

  Saladino sells these ideas using words like oxalates and evolution, hormones and heart disease. Science-y words.

• 19:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  So we called up some scientists. I don't really believe that. You don't become famous on social media if you say we evolved to be omnivores.

• 19:31Speaker 06

  I see it as bad science being used to justify selling people something. Oh, yeah. Did we forget to mention the money?

• 19:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Big bucks and bad science? In a minute.

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questum School of Business. Is sustainability in fashion a selling point for consumers?

• 20:22Speaker 05

  I think the sustainability gets advertised as being a big driver. Of fashion, when in fact, I think it's way down on the list of purchase criteria for consumers.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on whether consumers can be both fashionable and sustainable.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  When everything feels nonstop, movement becomes the pause. So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile. Targeted support adds steadiness to every pulse and hold.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  And dynamic stretch expands presence through every pose.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  Give the feeling. Shop in store and on lululemon.com.

• 21:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  So how does social media fuel an anti-establishment diet?

• 21:27Speaker 06

  First, we have to look at those three carnivore credos a little closer.

• 21:32Speaker 07

  I think in the long term, it's probably not a good idea.

• 21:37Speaker 06

  Alice Lichtenstein talks like a scientist. And by that, we don't mean that she uses a lot of jargon. We mean that she weighs her words carefully.

• 21:47Speaker 07

  And rarely would I be so definitive about a specific statement.

• 21:54Speaker 06

  Dr. Lichtenstein is a professor of nutrition, science, and policy at Tufts.

• 22:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  She is also a senior scientist and directs the cardiovascular nutrition lab at the USDA. We talked to her about credo number three. Veggies bad? Meet good.

• 22:10Speaker 06

  The hallway to her office is lined with laboratories in minus 80 degree freezers containing? Not a bunch of meat, I assume?

• 22:20Speaker 07

  No, no, it's in that freezer. It's a bunch of, a lot of biological samples from studies that we've conducted and these samples are archived.

• 22:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Alice says rejecting plant foods cuts out several key nutrients like vitamin C. Shocker. Also?

• 22:37Speaker 07

  It's a very low in fiber. It's not clear how the meat is prepared, whether there's a lot of sodium. There's certainly a high, a large amount of saturated fat relative to unsaturated fat. And we tend to think of unsaturated fat as good and is good for health outcomes.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Where saturated fat is not.

• 22:58Speaker 06

  Meatfluencers reject Dr. Lichtenstein's statement, which she's basing on the more than 400 peer-reviewed papers she's co-authored, plus scores of other studies. By contrast, we couldn't find any peer-reviewed studies by Paul Saladino. In fact, no controlled studies have been published confirming the advertised benefits of the carnivore diet.

• 23:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Hmm, these are two very different examples of the idea of doing your own research.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Well, I think you just have to go to what the evidence base is.

• 23:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Science is a process, and not all studies are created equal. That's why Alice says consensus, the evidence base, is more reliable than cherry-picked data. For instance...

• 23:43Speaker 07

  Let me tell you guys why I think kale is bullshit. Look, it's a plant leaf. It's full of defense chemicals, which chemicals? Long word, isothiocyanates.

• 23:53Speaker 06

  Saladino has beef with kale and Brussels and broccoli. On his website, which misspells two of those veggies, he writes that they are, quote, "bullshit" and can pose a, quote, "danger to our thyroids", causing weakness or weight gain. Then, to prove his point, he links to one paper.

• 24:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  We contacted the paper's lead author, a biochemist named Peter Felker. He called Saladino, and I quote, "a doofus." The paper says you would need to eat two pounds of raw Brussels a day for several months to notice any issues. And I'm sure you would, because that sounds like torture.

• 24:33Speaker 06

  Plus, he added, "veggies are good for you."

• 24:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I can't believe we have to say that out loud, but yeah.

• 24:43Speaker 06

  We looked at other papers floating around Meat Talk, Meets to Gram and the like. One study was called out for misreading data. Another was a case study of one person. Another had ties to the meat industry.

• 24:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  But in the bite-sized world of TikTok, who's gonna know?

• 25:03Speaker 02

  If you pull from videos and you pull from the internet, you get a very different sort of interpretation than if you were to go into the academic literature.

• 25:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  What about carnivore credo number two? Meat is healthy. Just ask today's hunter-gatherers.

• 25:20Speaker 06

  For this, we called Alyssa Crittenden at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She's part biologist and part anthropologist.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  I have spent the last 20 years working in East Africa with a community of hunters and gatherers named the Hadza.

• 25:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dr. Crittenden works with the Hadza, a community of about 1,000 people in Tanzania. And by "works with them," we mean she's lived with them for months at a time. She's also done research with them in collaboration. The Hadza are famous. They're often referred to as the last true hunter-gatherers.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  There's this romantic fallacy that still exists, that we have communities of human beings who are living in these far, remote places untouched by humanity and are still sort of living entirely off the grid. And that is not the case.

• 26:15Speaker 06

  Western meat talkers talk a lot about the Hadza.

• 26:20Speaker 07

  So I went to visit the Hadza last year in Tanzania.

• 26:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  Including Paul Kale is bullshit Saladino.

• 26:27Speaker 07

  The Hadza don't give a shit about vegetables. They don't really eat vegetables. While we were there, they never ate a leaf. They never ate a seed. The men couldn't be bothered with roots, which we don't.

• 26:35Speaker 06

  Saladino hunted when he visited the Hadza. He ate meat and...

• 26:40Speaker 07

  Baboon brains?

• 26:43Speaker 07

  Would you do it?

• 26:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is giving Indiana Jones' Temple of Doom, which, as we all know, was a documentary.

• 26:51Speaker 06

  A very respectful documentary, yes. Alyssa says that if you look at the research collected by the Hadza community members, you will see that, yes, meat is hugely important, but...

• 27:04Speaker 02

  I would never, ever say that they don't give a shit about plants. I would never say that. So I know that it's...

• 27:10Speaker 00

  It's just patently false.

• 27:16Speaker 06

  The Hadza eat baobab fruit and seeds. They eat tubers, which are kind of like fibrous potatoes.

• 27:23Ben Brock Johnson?

  One reason Saladino may have seen more hunting is because he was only there for two weeks. He was more likely treated as a social media documentarian or tourist by the Hadza.

• 27:35Speaker 00

  I've had to hide with my Land Rover behind trees and in ditches when tourists come and we're doing actual data collection. And they say, OK, be quiet now because we have to do some performative hunting.

• 27:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Not for nothing, a foraging lifestyle is probably more physically demanding than a TikTok carnivores and far less reliable than going to Trader Joe's.

• 27:57Speaker 06

  But Alyssa also takes issue with Saladino's claim that modern hunter-gatherers are representative of our ancestors, the carnivore idea that they are living fossils.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  To point to them now and do that is not only harmful to the community and their own sovereignty, but it's also increasingly naive and exoticizing to assume that these communities are not globalizing just like everybody else.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  Speaking of ancestors, what about carnivore credo number one?

• 28:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  Meat gave us galaxy brain.

• 28:31Speaker 06

  AKA big brain.

• 28:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  A theory from the early and mid 1900s, after anthropologists discovered the first fossils of human ancestors.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Most of the methods that we had at the time for recovering information about past diets was biased towards meat. We could see meat more easily.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Amanda Henry is a paleoanthropologist at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She studies prehistoric diet trends.

• 29:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I would have talked to her all damn day.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  One of the main ways I studied diet in the past is by looking for microscopic remnants that get stuck in calculus or the plaque on teeth.

• 29:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Wow, so in a way, you're like, you're like...

• 29:17Speaker 02

  A dentist to the...

• 29:18Speaker 03

  The dead. Yep.

• 29:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dr. Henry says that the myth of man the hunter is a common one. That's because in the early days of anthropology, they focused on animal bones, which had cut marks from tools dating back 3 million years.

• 29:33Speaker 06

  But bones stick around better than plants. It wasn't until new technologies rolled around that scientists got a better picture of diet.

• 29:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  And does that better picture say they mostly ate meat?

• 29:47Speaker 03

  Absolutely not. Even Neanderthals didn't eat meat all the time. And especially not even early modern humans.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Hominins, that is Homo sapiens, Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and other early humans. Hominin diets varied by region, species, and time. They ate different meats and plants. And it's not yet clear if they ate one more than the other.

• 30:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  Even today, different people vibe with different foods. Some people are lactose tolerant, some have biomes that thrive on seaweed.

• 30:24Speaker 03

  To badly paraphrase The Princess Bride, there is no one optimal diet. Anybody who tells you different is selling something.

• 30:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Amanda, my ears love you.

• 30:36Speaker 06

  You want to talk hard science to endless thread? You do it in movie quotes.

• 30:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  For real. But meat posters out here say there is an optimal diet.

• 30:46Speaker 07

  We have a pretty clear anthropologic record showing that we ate more meat. And that may have been the spark that improved our nutrition and led to increases in the size of our brain.

• 30:57Speaker 06

  About this meat-brain theory, Amanda says...

• 31:00Speaker 03

  Don't make any single thing your explanation for anything in human evolution. We're way more complicated than that.

• 31:09Ben Brock Johnson?

  Originally, scientists thought our brains started ballooning 1.8 million years ago, after scavenging and hunting began. More recently, the data has been re-analyzed, and it is less certain.

• 31:24Speaker 06

  Amanda says new evidence suggests the brain gain may have come much slower, accelerating later, about 800,000 to 400,000 years ago. And what else was going on then?

• 31:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Fire.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  You've hit on a topic that is...

• 31:39Speaker 02

  Fiercely contentious, I would say, in the field.

• 31:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, seems like it. Some very scorched earth arguments.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, indeed.

• 31:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Sorry.

• 31:48Speaker 02

  People with burning passions everywhere.

• 31:52Speaker 06

  Some scientists believe cooking with fire gave us the energy we needed for bigger brains. It killed parasites in meat and made plants much easier to digest. There are other theories, too, like, funny enough, carbs.

• 32:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  And meat talk hates carbs. This isn't to say meat isn't important to our evolution. The point is that science isn't sure that it was the only thing, or even the main thing.

• 32:22Speaker 06

  So to base a diet on an incomplete theory?

• 32:26Speaker 02

  It makes me angry because I see it as a marketing ploy.

• 32:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Is this a marketing ploy?

• 32:33Speaker 06

  We reached out several times and several ways to Dr. Paul Saladino while reporting this story. We never heard back.

• 32:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  Until just as we were getting ready to publish this episode, Paul Saladino, he did get back to us.

• 32:51Speaker 07

  Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you guys. I know you're a little skeptical based on the emails I've seen, so it'll be a fun, it'll be a fun conversation. Yeah.

• 33:01Speaker 06

  Dr. Saladino spoke to us from his home in Costa Rica. And while he is a medical doctor, he told us he is now a full-time content creator.

• 33:12Speaker 07

  I make,

• 33:15Speaker 07

  make educational content for people based on health and nutrition and illness and try to, try to put good things out in the world.

• 33:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Good things that, he said, have stood up to scrutiny on social media.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  I think that if people put ideas into the ether and they're unfounded, there will be many people who will disagree with them and will provide ample evidence of why those things are not necessarily good ideas.

• 33:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  From our perspective, that is a pretty aspirational view of how social media contributes to, you know, fact-based discussions. But hey, he's got a right to be optimistic. So what of the ideas that are out there? We started by asking Saladino about how much meat and dairy constitutes a healthy diet.

• 33:57Speaker 06

  And we pointed out that his advice goes directly against the USDA, American Heart Association, World Health Organization, Harvard School of Public Health, and many others recommending limited meat consumption. What do you say to those recommendations? Do you trust these institutions? How do you view that?

• 34:17Speaker 07

  Do you understand, Dean, what those recommendations are based on as a consumer? Or do you look at those as bastions of quote "truth" and accept their recommendations?

• 34:29Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think ultimately you can find it out pretty easily. I don't know that we, as consumers, necessarily always go down that rabbit hole, but I think that stuff is in public view. But it sounds like your answer is no.

• 34:45Speaker 07

  Well, don't put words in my mouth.

• 34:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Saladino said, quote, "It's not about trusting institutions. It's about, quote, 'science.'"

• 34:54Speaker 07

  Why would we trust anyone? Why wouldn't we think for ourselves?

• 34:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  Well, because I'm not a doctor and I'm not a nutritionist and I can do my own research for sure, but like, at the end of the day...

• 35:06Speaker 07

  So who do you trust?

• 35:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  I mean, usually I trust somebody who knows a lot more than I do about a given specialized area of anything.

• 35:16Speaker 06

  According to Saladino, such institutions, like, say, Harvard, may sound like places to trust, but...

• 35:24Speaker 07

  These are plant-based, plant-influenced institutions.

• 35:28Ben Brock Johnson?

  That's a phrase I've never heard before.

• 35:31Speaker 07

  These are plant-influenced institutions, absolutely.

• 35:34Ben Brock Johnson?

  Saladino argues that he is not biased. He makes free content and...

• 35:39Speaker 07

  Oh, maybe YouTube is putting ads there, but I don't have sponsors. So, yeah, maybe YouTube revenue, maybe $4,000 a month from YouTube ads.

• 35:48Ben Brock Johnson?

  Okay, all right.

• 35:49Speaker 07

  Something pretty meager, yeah.

• 35:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  To which we said, okay, maybe you're not a YouTube gajillionaire, but for a lot of people, $4,000 a month is a good chunk of change.

• 35:59Speaker 06

  Yes, a lot of, a lot of people, including public radio producers. Anyway, Saladino says the majority of his income comes from his business, Heart and Soil, a dietary supplement company based in Texas.

• 36:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  Heart and Soil sells pills composed of dried animal organs. Saladino founded it a few years ago. He says that as co-owner, maybe 80 or 90% of his income comes from Heart and Soil. But?

• 36:29Speaker 07

  I don't even talk about it that much. I talk about it very rarely on my social media at all. Heart and Soil Supplements. Heart and Soil Supplements. Heart and Soil Supplements. Heart and Soil.

• 36:38Speaker 06

  Sometimes Saladino fails to mention that Heart and Soil is his company.

• 36:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  The first supplement on the site is called Whole Package. It is designed to reinforce your manhood. The ingredients are, of course, grass-fed and finished testicle. Also, liver and whole blood extract. It costs just a measly $68 a month.

• 37:06Speaker 06

  Pocket change.

• 37:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  Pocket change, baby.

• 37:08Speaker 06

  Its products are not FDA-approved and, quote, "not intended to treat, cure, or prevent any disease." But Saladino told us the company has a couple hundred thousand clients.

• 37:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whoa, which, you know, carry the one. 70 bucks a month times 100,000 people? That, that's not bad. And this raised questions for us, particularly what is the difference Saladino sees between plant-influenced health organizations and himself? As someone who is telling you not to eat plants and then asking you to pay 68 bucks a month for a dietary supplement?

• 37:51Speaker 06

  You're providing advice to people online. You run a business, though, that benefits from the advice that you give people. How do you see a difference?

• 38:00Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think this is also kind of an underhanded association. We live in a capitalist society. In order to do this work, I spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year making free content for humans.

• 38:14Speaker 06

  This continued for a while, so we asked again.

• 38:18Ben Brock Johnson?

  You yourself brought up the idea of like, being skeptical of these organizations because of their funding, right?

• 38:26Speaker 07

  So I think that it'll be really interesting to let the audience decide whether your assertions are reasonable, or completely, or I should say, partially or potentially connected with underhanded intentions.

• 38:42Speaker 06

  Just about every major meatfluencer is selling something related to the diet. Steak in Butter Gal sells meal plans. Santa Cruz Medicinals sells supplements. Sean Baker sells carnivore community subscriptions. The Liver King, who was exposed for using steroids, sells supplements.

• 39:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  And actually, The Liver King co-owns Heart and Soil with Saladino. But Dr. Saladino isn't just some random salesman. He's got credentials, which he mentions a lot.

• 39:13Speaker 07

  And a double-board certified medical doctor. A nutritionally trained physician. Classically trained medical doctor. I'm an MD. I used to do a lot of jujitsu when I was in medical school. When I went to medical school. We're both doctors and we're both just trying to help people understand.

• 39:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  And it's true, he is a doctor. He told us he's never practiced in a hospital, but he's studied functional medicine, which focuses on the, quote, "root causes of disease." Functional medicine, however, is not recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties and has been criticized for its, quote, "lack of evidence in treatments considered, quote, 'harmful and dangerous.'"

• 39:47Speaker 06

  He is also double-board certified. One certification is in psychiatry. In 2020, a couple of years after he began promoting the carnivore diet, he earned his other certification from the National Board of Physician Nutrition Specialists.

• 40:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  But Saladino's beliefs contradict that organization, which maintains that a healthy diet is generally high in veggies and low in red meat. So why seek credentials from an organization opposed to your beliefs?

• 40:18Speaker 07

  And the reason I have that board exam on my credentials is because, essentially, because I went on a show in 2019, The Doctors Online, and there's a doctor on there going, "I'm certified as a physician nutrition specialist." And it's like, well, guess what? I am too. You know, like, just because you have a certification doesn't mean that someone should trust you, or that you have the ability to pontificate in a way that's any more valid than anyone else. So the certifications and a medical degree, these are essentially meaningless.

• 40:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  So the credentials and certifications Saladino often references in his own videos are meaningless, according to him. "Do your own research," he might say, "and figure out what works for you."

• 40:59Speaker 06

  Heart and Soil Supplements features several testimonials of people who figured it out on its site, including one from Saladino.

• 41:08Ben Brock Johnson?

  He's not just the founder, he's also a client.

• 41:12Speaker 06

  It also features a testimonial from Dr. Joseph Mercola, a well-known anti-vaxxer with multiple warnings from the FDA for false advertising. Saladino told us he was unaware of that.

• 41:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is where we should point something out, about how meatposting is connected by the algorithms that drive our internetting to more problematic ideas and influencers. To say nothing of the "I'm just asking questions, man" approach Joe Rogan takes to ideas with very little basis in fact, Jordan Peterson, the infamous men's rights author and online persona who has said that white privilege is a, quote, "Marxist lie," was on the carnivore diet and promoted it. I eat a lot of meat and a lot of high-fat meat, and so I'm never hungry. One could argue that in the Venn diagram of fake, hateful, democracy-threatening groups

• 42:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  and ideas online, you really can start at "healthy diet" search and end up at "women are less than," "white privilege is not a thing," and "vaccines don't work."

• 42:17Speaker 06

  Saladino has cast doubt on COVID vaccines, but men's rights are not mentioned in his content, as far as we could tell. He learned about the carnivore diet from the anti-feminist Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan. So we asked him what he made of the indirect link between those two online communities, meat and men's rights. So what I was curious about is, as a major influence in this sector, what do you make of that? Does the association bother you?

• 42:49Speaker 07

  Thank you, Dean. This one's gonna go viral, man. Thank you. This is an amazing piece of content, dude. Thank you. This is gonna go viral. That's amazing.

• 42:57Ben Brock Johnson?

  A problem we kept having with Paul. When we asked him for definitive answers to our questions, he would react with his own questions, or accuse us of trying to paint him into a corner. Even if he did eventually have a response, it wasn't a direct response to the question that had been asked.

• 43:23Speaker 06

  Our interview with Dr. Saladino went for more than two hours, and it did get into the weeds. We asked him about some of the scientific papers he's cited to support his claims, like the claim that eating regular amounts of broccoli, kale, and Brussels can harm your thyroid.

• 43:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  A claim that is not actually in the paper that he cites making the claim. The paper's author, you will remember, called Saladino a doofus.

• 43:51Speaker 06

  Can you explain why the study that you use as evidence does not say the same thing that you are saying?

• 43:58Speaker 07

  That's an inaccurate statement, Dean. I'm not saying...

• 44:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  We asked him about telling his large following that spinach smoothies can cause kidney failure, a claim apparently based on a case study of one person.

• 44:11Speaker 07

  Does that make it invalid?

• 44:12Speaker 06

  We asked him about a paper he cited with questionable data, and another he publicized that was funded by General Mills and a livestock company. It got repetitive.

• 44:22Speaker 07

  I think that none of this is cut and dry, but as I said repeatedly, what I'm doing is drawing attention to these issues that aren't really out there in the health zeitgeist.

• 44:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Dr. Saladino was just as unwilling to accept that he'd mischaracterized the Hadza hunter-gatherers, despite criticism from Dr. Alyssa Crittenden, who had spent 20 years in the field. Same thing about his theory that eating meat is what helped humans evolve, and that other theories, like fire, are without merit.

• 44:50Speaker 06

  Do you see how this could be misleading to suggest to the public that eating nose to tail is what increased our human brains?

• 44:58Speaker 07

  You guys are really good at putting words in people's mouths. I don't know if your people you interview push back as much as I do. I hope they do. It's such a leading question.

• 45:12Speaker 06

  I'm not putting new words in your...

• 45:13Speaker 07

  I love it.

• 45:14Speaker 06

  I'm quoting you.

• 45:15Speaker 07

  No, I love it.

• 45:16Speaker 06

  Quote, "Eating nose to tail is what made us human. Eating animals, quote, 'allowed our brains to grow.'"

• 45:31Speaker 06

  This left us with one final searing question: Who cares?

• 45:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Seriously, who cares? To each their own, right? As we heard, there is no one optimal diet, so maybe an animal-based diet is the right one for some people. People like Jerry Brasey, who was in some ways pretty hard to argue with because he doesn't seem that unreasonable.

• 45:54Speaker 05

  No doctor ever said to me, "Hey, fatso, you're dying. You're killing yourself. You better get serious." No one ever said that to me. No one ever scared that into me. They all said, "Here's your medication."

• 46:05Ben Brock Johnson?

  And ultimately, in some ways, it's the Jerries I am worried about. People who discover the carnivore diet on Rogan and then maybe make major life changes, including using their discovery to influence their own set of potential future bacon, butter, steak and egg eaters. Do you worry that what you are putting out into the world is something that works for you but also does not work for a majority of people?

• 46:34Speaker 05

  I'm betting my life that what I'm doing is correct. So I don't take it lightly, right? I'm not being paid by anybody. If you watch my videos and you see what's happened over the last two years for me, this is all my experience, to your point, 100%.

• 46:54Speaker 06

  In a recent survey of 2,000 carnivore dieters, most said that, like Jerry, they feel better. Maybe it's because of the meat. Maybe it's because they stopped eating processed food. Maybe it's because these are people recruited from communities like Facebook's World Carnivore Tribe. I don't know. Take the results with a grain of salt.

• 47:16Speaker 05

  I add incredible amounts of salt.

• 47:22Speaker 06

  Admittedly, after watching dozens and dozens of carnivore TikToks and YouTube videos, they had me thinking, maybe there is something to this. Because firsthand accounts are compelling, even if they aren't scientific data.

• 47:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Whether these folks remain feeling healthy in the future, who knows? The diet hasn't been around for very long. Still, that is their reality for now, and it's their choice.

• 47:48Speaker 06

  That's the thing that stands out in all of this. It's their choice because, as with most diets, it's about them. It's about the self, the me. It doesn't concern anyone else. Except that how we all eat does affect all of us.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  We start tonight tracking extreme heat. Unprecedented heat wave. Relentless wildfires.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  With major flooding. Very powerful storm surge. An above-average hurricane season this year.

• 48:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Last year was the hottest year on record, partly because of El Nino, but mostly because of our rapidly destabilizing climate. In 2023, there were hundreds of climate-related disasters globally.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  The death toll is now over 100 in Maui. At least 200 people have been confirmed dead after Cyclone Mokka. Death toll from Cyclone Freddy has crossed 400. First, more than 5,000 people, I believe, dead due to flooding in Libya.

• 48:43Speaker 06

  Famine is at Somalia's door. Nearly 8 million people are going hungry.

• 48:53Speaker 06

  The people most affected by the crisis are not the people who can afford to buy meat for every meal at the grocery store.

• 49:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Remember the Hadza, the hunter-gatherers that meat talkers love to talk about? The plants that the Hadza do eat are fewer and fewer because their environment is changing because of climate change.

• 49:14Speaker 06

  We are not trying to say that meatfluencers are responsible. That would be a ridiculous speculation, and we wouldn't want to do that. But global meat consumption is responsible for between 11 and 20% of greenhouse gas emissions, gases like carbon dioxide and methane. That's according to six separate, peer-reviewed studies. Scientists say that there is no way to get to net zero without changing our eating habits.

• 49:42Ben Brock Johnson?

  Meat requires more water, fertilizer, and in particular, land than plants. If the whole world ate as much meat as an American, let alone a carnivore, we would literally need a second planet.

• 50:00Speaker 06

  I used to eat meat, and I don't anymore.

• 50:03Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I was raised vegetarian. Now I'm an omnivore. And that's fine. As the scientists we interviewed told us, there is no one optimal diet. But they also said that Americans in general should eat less meat for the climate. Promoting an animal-based diet is, at best, irresponsible.

• 50:25Speaker 06

  Paul Saladino has a different take.

• 50:28Speaker 07

  Look at how green this grass is and how healthy this field is as the cows are doing what they're doing. And we know that the methane that they burp is just part of the carbon cycle. It has no significant impact on climate change, guys.

• 50:39Speaker 06

  We spoke with Saladino for a while about the climate crisis. And while he acknowledged that it is real, he also said things like this.

• 50:48Speaker 07

  The plants are not without, quote-unquote, "greenhouse gas blood" on their hands either.

• 50:53Speaker 06

  Still, the real meatfluencers aren't Paul Saladino, or Jerry, or Joe Rogan. They are the corporations that make up the meat and dairy industry, an industry that gets $38 billion a year in federal subsidies, an industry that has spent hundreds of millions lobbying against climate action in the US.

• 51:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  The industry has a dedicated, quote, "digital command center" to track meat mentions in the media, and an online "master of beef advocacy" program for training influencers.

• 51:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Like big oil and big sugar, it downplays science, backs greenwashing PR campaigns. In fact, the guy who invented public relations in the 1920s is the same guy who was paid to convince us all that bacon and eggs make the all-American breakfast. Sausage too, by the way.

• 51:50Speaker 06

  Every scientist we interviewed brought up the climate crisis. And every scientist we interviewed saw social media meat influencers, not as people concerned about health, but as people stuck in a larger system, a cycle, creating divisions at a time where we desperately need the opposite. Again, paleoanthropologist Amanda Henry.

• 52:13Speaker 03

  Food is identity. And you end up, people talking about food as a way of not only expressing themselves, but of drawing in groups and out groups and using it as a way to prove they're better than somebody else or judge other people as part of that, like, group definition.

• 52:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  And this idea really stuck with us. Because it's true, right? Food is so elemental for humans. It is life. And most of us are trying to, as we like to say on social media, live our best lives.

• 52:50Speaker 06

  And in our endless search for answers about how to do that, how to live, we often look back through the mists of history. A species-level "get back to our roots" nostalgia becomes our guide through the modern food industry, through conflicting reports about what's good for you and what's not. Meat influencers are capitalizing, literally, on that nostalgia.

• 53:15Ben Brock Johnson?

  But Dean, we are technically influencers too. We are podcasters, man. I mean, we're no Joe Rogan, but you know.

• 53:23Speaker 06

  I don't think I can even influence my cat, but sure, okay, whatever.

• 53:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  So I do want to push an idea based on little to no scientific evidence. Is that cool?

• 53:32Speaker 06

  Oh, God.

• 53:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  I want to suggest the possibility that as we look back through those mists of history, when we sort through ideas of what made human brains and capabilities really take off, like the discovery and control of fire for cooking, or hunting big game, we might be looking at the cave paintings with a group of hunters surrounding a big woolly mammoth or whatever, and focusing on the wrong thing, on the big pile of meat, instead of the act of doing something together. Could it be a social change that we can't see?

• 54:12Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 54:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  That is actually the thing that blew our brains up?

• 54:18Speaker 03

  There are a lot of people who agree with you on that point, that they also want to evoke a social change, but it will forever be out of our grasp, let's say, to find evidence for it, unfortunately.

• 54:34Speaker 06

  Dr. Amanda Henry, as a dentist to the dead, says we might never know if a social change, like cooperation, is the thing that set us apart.

• 54:44Ben Brock Johnson?

  But what we do know is that good science is something we do together. It's an act of consensus, not a single idea or a silver bullet for your gullet. Good to remember that this year, in case while scrolling the internet, you find someone who wants to tell you about the miracle diet they have discovered, and maybe also sell you a subscription to pills full of desiccated testicles.

• 55:09Speaker 06

  And add to cart.

• 55:25Speaker 06

  Endless Thread is a production of WBUR in Boston. This episode was written and co-hosted by me, Dean Russell.

• 55:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  And written, and written, and rewritten. Poor Dean Russell. Also, me, Ben Brock Johnson. Mix and sound design by Emily Jankowski.

• 55:41Speaker 06

  The rest of our team is Samata Joshi, Grace Tatter, Matt Reed, Paul Vikes, and our resident vegan, Emery Sivertson.

• 55:49Ben Brock Johnson?

  Who was mysteriously missing from this episode.

• 55:51Speaker 06

  Sorry, Emery.

• 55:54Ben Brock Johnson?

  By the way, our full interview with Dr. Paul Saladino, if you want to hear it, we are putting a link to the full unedited version in our show notes. That's where you can find it and listen if you dare. Endless Thread is a show about the blurred lines between online communities and beef, butter, bacon, and eggs.

• 56:14Speaker 06

  Mmm, the four food groups.

• 56:16Ben Brock Johnson?

  Delicious. Yes.

• 56:18Speaker 06

  If you have an unsolved mystery or an untold history that you want us to tell, hit us up. Endless Thread at wbur.org.

• 56:48Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Moro Tri Institute at BU Questram School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts, and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring fashion and culture journalist and author Dana Thomas on the origin of fast fashion.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  In the 1990s, during the early days of globalization, a small brand out of Spain called Zara was deciding to spread its wings beyond Spain and move throughout Europe and roll out its stores of not expensive, kind of fashionable clothes, middle-market, accessible fashion. And what they did for their business model was they would go to fashion shows and see what was the hip thing, and then reinterpret it in less expensive fabrics, just like Gap was doing. But at the time, Zara was embracing this business model called QR, Quick Response, which was in fact invented by the US apparel industry. Basically, you'd

• 57:52Speaker 01

  put in a few items of a collection in the store, and if it did really well, then you put more into production and you put them in the store. And if they... Didn't do so well, then you stopped it and you moved on to the next thing. It was like, almost like doing a focus group drop of clothes in the store and seeing what, what works, what doesn't, and what does. You play. So they started moving into this area of quick response and turning out more collections more quickly and getting them onto their store floor faster. And they saw that by doing this, by upping the number of times they did drops in the store to every two weeks as opposed to four times a year, that their numbers of visits from consumers went up dramatically.

• 58:37Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 58:51Speaker 02

  When everything feels nonstop, movement becomes the pause. So give Lululemon this holiday season. Smooth, seamless running gear builds momentum through every mile. Targeted support adds steadiness to every pulse and hold. And dynamic stretch expands presence through every pose. Give the feeling. Shop in-store and on lululemon.com.