BONUS: MAHA's First 90 Days

From our Patreon feed, we're catching up with RFK Jr. and his cadre of "Make America Healthy Again" influencers. Support us: Hear bonus episodes on PatreonWatch Aubrey's documentaryBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreThanks to Doctor Dreamchip for our lovely theme song! Support the show

• 0:11Speaker 00

  Tagline us, tag it, tag it. The podcast with rotting teeth because there's no fluoride in the water anymore.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  No, no, no, I got it.

• 0:18Speaker 00

  The podcast, alright, do it.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Do it.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  Hi, everybody, and welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that is banned in the EU, but somehow allowed in the United States.

• 0:26Speaker 00

  That's really good, actually. That also might be true at some point, although the opposite way around. We might be banned in America, but allowed in the EU.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  I'm Aubrey Gordon.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  I'm Michael Hobbs.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  If you would like to support the show, you're already doing that. Thank you so much.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  Or are you?

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Or are you?

• 0:46Speaker 00

  So, as part of our effort to both address, like, what is going on in the country, but also not to lose our minds, and also not to make, like, mega bummer episodes for the rest of our lives, we are going to start doing these kind of periodic check-ins on sort of the, the health grifters in office. That is the point of this episode. Officially, it's a bonus episode, but we're going to put it in the main feed because we think that this stuff is important, and people should know about it.

• 1:13Speaker 01

  We want everyone to be aware of precisely how bleak it is.

• 1:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, we want to put our, like, most bummer episodes free to the public.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  It's so, like, emotionally crushing to exist in the news landscape that we exist in right now.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  And I think there are ways in which it feels like both really important and oddly sort of refreshing to just go, okay, here are the moving parts, here's what's moving forward, here's what's not, rather than just, like, the wave of emotions crashing over us all the time.

• 1:44Speaker 00

  For this episode, like, I just went on the HHS website and pulled every single press release, and we're going to talk chronologically about, like, what RFK Jr. has done with, effectively, the first two months that he's been in power.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  In my sort of end of the research for today, which is, like, little, some profiles of some, like, public figures who are supporters of Maha stuff.

• 2:04Speaker 00

  Yeah, Aubrey's our comic relief for this episode.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  It's not very comical, and there won't be relief. But there was one of the people that I looked into had a quote that was like, "I'm fully supportive of RFK Jr.'s quest to find the cause of autism." And the way that they put it was, "To really get to the bottom of what's going on there."

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, this is another fucking thing.

• 2:27Speaker 01

  As a queer person who lived through the 90s, I absolutely remember the like, "Quest for the gay gene."

• 2:33Speaker 00

  This gets us into it because the first thing we're going to do is an audiovisual element. So on February 13th, RFK Jr. was confirmed. So that's kind of where our story starts. Like, the minute he takes power, he deleted all of his previous tweets from before this date. One of the first thing he tweets is like, a public statement of like, "Now that I'm in power, like, this is what you can expect from me." And both of us, I wanted, I wanted to do this like privately with you because our brains are broken in exactly the same way, but we'll just do it on the show.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Michael, I just, I would like to dispute that. Our brains are not broken in exactly the same way. I watched 10 hours of Montana State Legislature floor session yesterday.

• 3:14Speaker 00

  I think you were gonna talk about how your brain is broken in the true crime way, which mine is not broken in.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  That's also true. My brain is also broken in the true crime way.

• 3:23Speaker 00

  Okay, I'm gonna send you this link. This is RFK Jr.'s little statement, and we are gonna make like little ding sounds every time there's a conspiracy dog whistle.

• 3:34Speaker 01

  Can this be our sound for when there's a...

• 3:37Speaker 00

  Wait, what do you have?

• 3:40Speaker 00

  No, that's too happy. That's too happy.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  That's too happy?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  We need like the X-Files theme to play.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Wait, hang on, hang on.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  But we'll get sued.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  I got another one. I, Michael, I have a few of these. We could do this every time.

• 3:54Speaker 00

  Dude, I'm gonna put on the rap air horn. Hang on.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  We should remix the two together.

• 3:58Speaker 00

  It's gonna end up happening because there's gonna be so many of these.

• 4:00Speaker 01

  Remix!

• 4:05Speaker 01

  I was about to tell you not to tell anyone I did that, but then I realized I did it into a microphone.

• 4:09Speaker 00

  Into many, many people.

• 4:14Speaker 00

  Okay, uh, here's this. Did you get it?

• 4:17Speaker 01

  So wait, what are we, remind me what we're dinging?

• 4:18Speaker 00

  Dog whistles for conspiracy theories.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Okay, ready?

• 4:21Speaker 00

  All right, do it.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Hi, I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. On my first day at work here at HHS. I want to take this moment to say a few words, both to my supporters in the Make America Healthy Again movement, but also to all of the American public. I could read you a list of statistics proving that Americans suffer far higher levels of chronic disease, obesity, addiction, cancer, infertility and depression.

• 4:49Speaker 00

  Infertility.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  And ever before in history, in more than any other country in the world. You already know that. It's pretty obvious that something has gone terribly wrong with our health. I'm also not going to tell you the reasons for this decline. Why? Because neither I nor anyone else can be certain.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  See?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  But what I will tell you is that we are going to find out and we're going to do something about it.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  No one else was trying.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  My commitment to you is that we're going to make chronic disease our top priority. In our first 100 days, we're going to examine every possible contributing factor to the epidemic of chronic disease.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  Every possible factor.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  We will leave no stone unturned. We're going to listen to the experts and to the dissidents.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  And the dissidents.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  We're going to listen to insiders and to the whistleblowers.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Whistleblowers.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  We're going to listen to the doctors and we're going to listen to the mops.

• 5:36Speaker 00

  The mops.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  We will examine our food, our medicine, our water, our lifestyles and our environment. Everything that goes into Americans' bodies. We have to find something we care about more than being right, more than political advantage and more than financial profit.

• 5:53Speaker 00

  Financial profit.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  The health of our children is a higher calling for all of us. And here's another promise. We're going to usher in a new era of transparency in all of our health agencies. There's going to be no more hidden conflicts of interest, no more secrecy, no more profiteering from the substances that we're supposed to be regulating.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  That's why we're going to deregulate them.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  Dude, I sort of hate this thing because it makes it makes me realize what a like tinfoil hat person I sound like, because if you took the transcript of this and you were like, oh, like a normal politician said this, most of it, I'd be like, yeah, fine, like, chronic illness is a problem in America and like, yeah, we should have government transparency. I mean, a lot of the stuff he's saying on the surface kind of sounds fine, but also when you know the way that he spent his career and when you know the fucking anti-vax talking points, this stuff about like, we're not going to cave in to Big Pharma, the infertility stuff, we're finally going to have a conversation where we listen to the dissidents, oh, we're finally going to hear from people outside of like the expert consensus. It's all conspiracy nonsense.

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Well, and if you're not good at making your extremism sound reasonable, then you're not very good at your extremism.

• 7:05Speaker 00

  Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good way to put it. So to get into sort of the meat of this, because I think if you're someone who doesn't follow this very closely, this can all sound kind of reasonable and like, you know, why are like people like Mike and Aubrey, like, why are they trying to block this guy who like, all he wants to look at is chronic illness, right? But the minute you go like half an inch below the surface, you find, I'm not talking about like conspiracy talking points, I'm talking about actual misinformation.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  I do like that you're like, hey, you might be thinking, I've never listened to this show before. Why do these people?

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, why, what's going on?

• 7:35Speaker 01

  Hey, non-listeners of our show.

• 7:38Speaker 00

  These bad faith people.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Hey, people who aren't listening.

• 7:42Speaker 00

  So one of his first acts in office was to have what's being known as like the Maha Executive Order, like the statement of purpose of like, here's what we're going to do as like the Make America Healthy Again movement. And so we are going to read some excerpts from it.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Section one, Purpose. American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries with pre-COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years. Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases. An estimated one in five United States Lives with a mental illness.

• 8:26Speaker 00

  In a vacuum, all of these statistics are roughly true. Then we get to the next paragraph.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe. Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next highest rate. Further, from 1990 to 2021, the United States experienced an 88% increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.

• 8:58Speaker 00

  So this is straightforwardly false. America does not have the highest cancer incidence in the world, and we've seen a decrease, a significant decrease, in cancer incidence and cancer mortality over the last 30 years, according to the American Cancer Society. This is not true, that like every single thing that he's talking about is getting worse.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  The thing that gets left out of the conversation about stuff like this is like, actually, how much treatment has progressed of all of these things? How much detection has progressed of all of these things?

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, if you look at the sort of league tables published by the World Cancer Research Fund, the country with the highest cancer incidence is not America, it's Australia. And that's mostly skin cancer. And part of that is because Australia is like close to the hole in the ozone layer and like is full of white people who are susceptible to skin cancer. But it's also because Australia has very sophisticated systems for detecting skin cancer early and treating it. So the fact that Australia has high cancer incidence is in some ways actually good news. It means that they're catching it early. And if you look at the year, he's citing 2021 data, but that's kind of a perfect illustration of this concept because in 2020, we had an almost 10% drop in cancer incidence, which is like totally unprecedented, like you never get a fall in cancer that dramatic.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  But of course, it's not because cancer fell by 10%. It's because all the hospitals were closed because of the pandemic. And then, of course, cancer incidents skyrocketed in 2021 because people were getting screened again. This is the problem with the whole like muddy way that he's presenting this, that high cancer rates aren't necessarily bad news. And a drop in cancer incidence isn't good news. It could be less cancer, but it could also just be less cancer screening.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  There's a real bizarre sort of arrogance to, well, two things. One, there's a real bizarre arrogance to assuming that because we don't have answers that are like definitive and sort of set in stone, that that means no one's trying.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  That's a really, really strange, only I can fix it kind of attitude, right? And

• 10:59Speaker 01

  why does shit keep leaving my brain, Michael?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  I love it when you do two things, one, and then you forget your second thing.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  I fucking hate, I hate it so much.

• 11:09Speaker 00

  This is why, as a person in my 40s, I never say two things, one, because I know I'm gonna forget the second one.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  That needs to be left behind in my 30s. Fuck.

• 11:19Speaker 00

  I've, I've noticed this when I'm editing too. They'll be like, the real problem is A, and then I talk and I just never get to B. And I'm like, I'm just gonna cut out me saying A.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Our listeners don't need to know how broken our middle aged brains are, you know?

• 11:34Speaker 00

  I'm just gonna cut out this part.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, there's, it's really strangely arrogant to assume that because we don't have hard and fast answers, that no one's looking. And it also feels like there is this sort of

• 11:49Speaker 00

  You have no idea where you're going with this. It's okay, Aubrey, we can just move on.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  It was back. I had it and it was back.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  We have so many more excerpts. You'll get there. It'll come back.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  I know, I know it will. I'm so sorry.

• 11:59Speaker 00

  Just read this excerpt.

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm reading an excerpt.

• 12:01Speaker 00

  I'm sending you a thing about chronic conditions.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life. Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.

• 12:14Speaker 00

  You're always talking about this. You're always like, young people aren't qualifying for the military. And I'm like, Aubrey, we can't do a whole episode about it.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  This is actually like one of the big anti-fat talking points from the 2000s. It's nuts.

• 12:25Speaker 00

  We're not gonna be able to invade Canada because people aren't too fat. I'll be like, okay.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  How are we gonna annex Greenland when we're all this fat?

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Like, uh-oh, well, that's a sacrifice I have to make. So be it.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Nobody tell them about fat deadlifters. Ninety percent of the nation's $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for People with chronic and mental health conditions. In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively.

• 12:55Speaker 00

  So this is a talking point that he returns to over and over again. Like, this is what's crippling the country. Is that we're spending all this money on these chronic conditions that can easily be prevented through lifestyle. This whole concept is completely bunk, though, because the definition of a chronic condition is just anything which affects your daily functioning and anything that lasts for more than a year. And so this document itself even mentions earlier, roughly 60% of Americans have one chronic condition or another. So I have one, I have carpal tunnel syndrome. That's something that's been going on for more than a year. If you have back pain, one of the other ones that's mentioned is tooth decay. Most of this is just people getting diagnosed with things and also people living longer. So among people over 65, 95% of them have a chronic illness.

• 13:39Speaker 00

  The thing about 90% of our healthcare spending goes to people with chronic conditions is mostly just a function of the fact that the vast majority of healthcare spending is spent on older people. Older people happen to be sicker. And when you're sicker, you require more money to get care.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  And also, older people are the only people who get nationalized healthcare.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Well, that's the thing. I mean, a lot of people have numerous conditions. And the fact that the healthcare system is spending money on them is an indicator that people are receiving healthcare. Like, a healthcare system that only responds to acute issues, like you get hit by a car and you break your shoulder, that's not a real healthcare system. A healthcare system is going to focus on longer term care and it's going to spend money on care. This is actually evidence against the thing that he's talking about. It's actually evidence that the entire medical system does, in fact, care about chronic conditions already.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  It's really maddening. I mean, I think you see a similar thing when you look at the numbers around diabetes, for example, age-based prevalence of diabetes.

• 14:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Goes through the roof for seniors, right?

• 14:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  There is a bunch of stuff that is, to your point, all stuff that is an outgrowth of living as long as we now live.

• 14:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  It's really easy to see those as remedial problems. That we have somehow brought on ourselves and not actually like in the scheme of things. Good new problems that are like, oh, people aren't dying at 30 anymore.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, we're addressing the issues that people actually have.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  It doesn't mean that there aren't still issues to address, but it does mean that it it. It doesn't necessarily mean that we've been like fucking it up real hard.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  It also definitely doesn't follow that someone acknowledging the prevalence of chronic illnesses is therefore equipped and qualified to find solutions.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  This is the other piece that feels like it's big here is that like when we have this sort of like, ah, this thing is important and uh oh, we don't know what to do about it yet. There are two things that can sort of swoop in to fill that gap. One is worldview, right? And I think RFK Junior's worldview is swooping in in a big way.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  And the other is marketing and like, we'll get into this with the influencer side, but like the marketing side is like alive and well, right?

• 15:50Speaker 00

  Right.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  A bunch of the influencers who've attached to the Maha stuff have done so. I would argue because there is such an opportunity to like get boosted to a new level of audience and to get to sell your products.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  This is yet another theme that emerged in a lot of the HHS stuff that I've read is that he has like the worldview and the orientation of a fucking influencer, not a person of science.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:13Speaker 00

  Right? Because a person of science would be familiar enough with statistics not to like lie in the third paragraph of their sort of flagship executive order. And also this thing of like, you know, we're finally going to study it and like, oh, we're, we're going to listen to the whistleblowers and stuff. This is like what people say on TikTok who like, don't actually know anything and aren't familiar with the science. Like you don't want people like this running things.

• 16:36Speaker 01

  I want to be precise about something, which is like, the chances are that RFK Junior is not personally sitting down and writing this executive order.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Maybe he is, probably not. I think it's also an issue if he is not able to hire and supervise staff

• 16:50Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  in such a way that they can actually accurately fact check.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  It's an institutional problem.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  It is an institutional problem and you could absolutely see this guy like just, you could imagine this guy sending something back because it's not the numbers that come. With his worldview rather than that it's not accurate numbers.

• 17:07Speaker 00

  Right. Even though the vast majority of like chronic conditions in America are among older people, he then switches to chronic childhood conditions. Because this is yet again, like the way that you market your thing of like, we're finally going to take care of children. I looked this up, around 30% of kids have a chronic condition, but things like learning disabilities and ADHD are considered chronic conditions for kids. So if you look at like the the sort of distribution, it's primarily ADHD, learning disabilities and asthma, around 10% of kids have asthma. More kids getting diagnosed with learning disabilities, I think is a good thing. I think if kids need help and they're getting the help that they need, it's now about 8% of kids have a learning disability of some kind or another.

• 17:51Speaker 00

  I don't think that's like a crazy high number, around about like 96% of kids have a learning disability. That that doesn't indicate like over diagnosis to me. And like, some kids do have fucking ADHD and like, it's really great that people are also getting diagnosed with asthma early.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Right. I also think like, it's easy to forget what the cultural dialogue was around ADHD in the 90s and 2000s. And that was, it's all made up. Psychiatrists are pushing these medications on your kids who don't need them.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  It's over diagnosed and the medications themselves might be the issue.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  And I think you can sort of see some of that peeking through here, right? As a core assumption, right?

• 18:33Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  It also like, the thing that makes me like so profoundly uncomfortable with so much of his rhetoric is like, the assumption is that neurodivergent kids are a problem to be fixed.

• 18:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  We have to find out the cause of autism so that there are not more autistic kids. We have to find out the cause of ADHD, food dies, question mark?

• 18:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 01

  It's so sort of divorced from the science around those things. And it is so, it so speaks to the sort of like, both the like panic around those issues and also a likely discomfort with people.

• 19:04Speaker 00

  He's also so obsessed with the statistic that 1 in 31 kids have autism now. Experts say that it's more like 1 in 36, but like, that's 3% of. Kids. And like, that doesn't sound nuts to me. I'm just like, yeah, around 3% of kids have this thing that is relatively rare, but is also a real thing in the population. Like, is 3% the wrong number? That seems okay.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  It's like claiming to care about these conditions while like, pretty overtly increasing the stigma of facing people who have those conditions. And that's the thing that pisses me off. And also, I just feel like I know a lot of people who are struggling with that stigma part.

• 19:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  And I'm like, this isn't helping.

• 19:43Speaker 00

  Okay, final excerpt. Aubrey, get your slide whistle out. The ostensible purpose of this executive order is to set up this commission that is going to study, quote unquote, finally study these issues. And so I'm going to read you a couple excerpts from the sort of purpose of like, the, the commission and like, what it's going to do. And I want you to like, use your little slide whistle when you hear like, a conspiracy talking point.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I now all of a sudden have test anxiety where I'm like, oh no, am I gonna fail?

• 20:09Speaker 00

  Just use it the whole time, Aubrey. Just as like, background noise. Uh, okay, so this is like, the purpose, like, of these assessments that it's gonna produce. One, identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Great.

• 20:22Speaker 00

  Two, assess the threat that potential overutilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures posed to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanism of disease. Assess the prevalence and threat posed by prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight loss drugs. Identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  He also has a thing earlier in the document where he talks about electromagnetic radiation.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  I do have to say, it was very funny to go through that whole thing and just silently, soberly slide whistle.

• 21:04Speaker 00

  That's what these updates are gonna be from now on. Just Mike reading and Aubrey with her slide whistle.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  A 21 slide whistle salute.

• 21:13Speaker 00

  So this is again, the thing that I will never stop shouting about. All of these people saying that like, "Oh, he just wants to like, make Americans eat better," or whatever, have to grapple with the fact that what he is saying is full of fucking misinformation. This thing of like, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are like, making kids have autism, or whatever, has been looked at. It's not fucking true. I mean, a lot of this stuff is just like, whack job, blogosphere shit.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  And I think it plays to this sort of like, oddly, kind of like, Luddite undertone, which is just like, there are new medical treatments, they must be witchcraft, right?

• 21:47Speaker 00

  I don't know why weight loss drugs is on here, too. That's interesting, because he always talks about obesity, and then he throws in, he's like, "We need to look into the influence of weight loss drugs."

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, he's very anti Ozempic, very anti everything. He wants his wellness farms instead.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the whole, like, the whole thing is lifestyle. He thinks that lifestyle can cure every single illness.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  Right, which is what you think when you have relatively good health.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  When your healthcare has always been provided to you.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  And when you've been taught that health is a meritocracy, and you get out of it what you put into it, which is not true of almost anything in this life.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  To me, it's like, it's fundamentally hierarchical. It's like, there's a good way to live, and there's a bad way to live.

• 22:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:30Speaker 00

  And if you're fat, it's because you're living in the bad way, and if you live in the good way, you won't be fat.

• 22:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and like, listen, my good bitches, if that is not like, extremely conservative, sort of fascist thinking.

• 22:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Like, I can look at you and know everything I need to know about you.

• 22:47Speaker 00

  Right.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  Like, if someone is willing to dehumanize anyone, there is a good chance they are willing to dehumanize lots more people than just that group, right?

• 22:58Speaker 00

  Speaking of dehumanizing, Aubrey.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  Oh, what a transition.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  The other kind of like, first hundred days, like, my first action in office thing that RFK Jr. does, is he joins the Trump administration's other ongoing witch hunts. So on February 19th, he puts out guidance saying, "HHS takes action on President Trump's executive orders defending women and children." This is the garbage about Trump. Like, there's only two genders and like, we finally, we're finally gonna go back to only having two genders. And I just want to read a quote from RFK Jr. because I think there's still like a little bit of residue of like, well, he's a Kennedy and like, he ran as a Democrat and like, maybe he's not so bad. So here is a quote from him. He says, actually, I'll send it to you.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  This administration is bringing back common sense and restoring biological truth to the federal government. The prior administration's policy of trying to engineer gender ideology into every aspect of public life is over.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  So no point in going into this in any more depth. We've done like a million podcasts about it, but like, this is of course, a deranged, bigoted, moral panic. But I just want to emphasize that like RFK Jr. is like a piece of shit on trans rights, the same way that every other fucking Republican is a piece of shit on trans rights.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  Also, people will argue he's not a Republican. I would argue you accepted a position with the Trump administration. I don't know what is more Republican than that, right?

• 24:20Speaker 00

  Immediately after this, he rescinds a Biden executive order, basically saying that like, gender-affirming care is fine and attacks on gender-affirming care, banning a form of fucking healthcare by law. All of this is illegitimate. The Biden administration put out this executive order, HHS rescinds it.

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Fuck off, asshole.

• 24:37Speaker 00

  He also launches an investigation of Maine for allowing trans kids in sports. The governor of Maine is a Democrat. And then now the Trump administration is quite just sort of openly illegally threatening to revoke all federal funding from the entire state over this. So this is like an ongoing legal battle. And then, this is just last week, he announced that there's going to be an online portal run by HHS where, quote, whistleblowers can submit a tip or complaint regarding the chemical and surgical mutilation of children to the HHS Office of Inspector General.

• 25:12Speaker 01

  Jesus fucking hell.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  So this is again, just classic fascist shit. They set up these fucking hotlines. They had one under the first Trump administration about immigrant crime, right? What they do is they cast this net super wide. They get a million reports. A lot of them are really bad faith. Like, oh, the school nurse is like doing surgery on kids or whatever. And more people get caught. Hot up in this insane dragnet of like deportations, getting disappeared off the street. This is very, very like classic authoritarian stuff. Gender affirming care for kids is like, you can go to, you can go to hospital websites and be like, what do you offer? Like, when are appointments available? This is not like a clandestine, secret thing. This is like a part of healthcare and studies about it are published in peer reviewed journals. The idea that we'd have like a whistleblower hotline about it is absurd. It's like whistleblowers

• 25:57Speaker 00

  about like knee replacements or something. It's like a normal part of healthcare.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  The concept of whistleblowing is like the idea that you would blow the whistle on internal operations of a company or institution that is systematically breaking the law?

• 26:12Speaker 00

  Right, exactly.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Or committing unethical acts?

• 26:14Speaker 00

  Which again, we have no evidence of in gender affirming care at all.

• 26:17Speaker 01

  What we have evidence of is patients who want care, seeking out that care and sometimes being denied that care.

• 26:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  Right? Like if there's a problem here, it has much more to do with denials of care than it has to do with like, it's run amok or whatever.

• 26:32Speaker 00

  The other witch hunt that he's joining is the administration's crackdown on quote unquote antisemitism.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Oh no.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  So on February 5th, the HHS announces that it's initiating investigations of four medical schools for antisemitic incidents at their commencement addresses. And I was like, I haven't heard of this. Like, were people throwing things? Like was?

• 26:53Speaker 01

  No, someone fucking wore a Palestine flag pin or some shit.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Aubrey.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It's gonna be nothing.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  I'm sending you the link. I'm sending you the link. I'm sending you the link.

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  So I Googled this. I was like commencement, medical schools? Like it's a very specific thing, right? And the HHS press release doesn't name the schools or like what happens. I was like, where are they even getting this? This goes to one article called Medical Schools 2024 Commencements and Antisemitism: Addressing Unprofessional Behavior. This is like this random academic article. Scroll down Aubrey to figure one. It's in like a different color than the rest of the text.

• 27:32Speaker 01

  It's images of different scarves that people are wearing with their graduation robes. Some of them are wearing keffiyehs, some of them are wearing- Palestinian flag, scarves, that's it.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  It's not antisemitic remotely to do that. Like, these are not antisemitic incidents at commencement addresses. Like, they're just not.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  It's so fucking frustrating because antisemitism is a super real thing. And it's wild to watch this administration just appropriate it as a way of quashing political speech.

• 28:04Speaker 00

  Oh, also, you can scroll down to figure two if you want, which is like right down there.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  I don't want, but I will.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  And these are like antisemitic slogans that the students were holding allegedly?

• 28:14Speaker 01

  One of them says, "Stop bombing hospitals."

• 28:18Speaker 00

  It's not like this is like misinformation or something. Like, this group is being falsely accused of something like, "This is happening." So to say that this is a fucking antisemitic slur and that somehow this, this kid, which like, I think is relatively brave for putting this on at their fucking commencement, this person is the problem rather than the bombing of fucking hospitals?

• 28:36Speaker 01

  There's another one that is someone crossing the stage to presumably accept their degree and unfolding a banner that says, "End genocide, apartheid, Zionism, and something, something, something that I can't read, and then free Palestine."

• 28:52Speaker 00

  It says, "End your complicity."

• 28:53Speaker 01

  End your complicity, free Palestine.

• 28:55Speaker 00

  The core problem is the idea that we need some sort of exotic explanation for why young people would be offended at like entire cities being razed to the ground and like children starving.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Why doctors would not want hospitals to be bombed?

• 29:12Speaker 00

  I don't need an alternate explanation for this, like, wow, why are people doing this, like, totally irresponsible thing? It's like, no, I, I think very straightforwardly, people are offended by images of children starving. The idea that we're like casting around for like, what are their real motivations is fucking insane. So, anyway, this article, as far as I can tell, is like the only place, previous to this HHS press release, where this like antisemitic incidents at commencement addresses like thing was put forward. So like, we don't know what the consequences on these schools will be, but like, this is like a, this is becoming a real thing that people with power are wielding.

• 29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when you line that up with trying to rescind the tax statuses of universities, trying to sort of... Pull grants and funding like there's just like so much very clearly politicized manipulation happening here.

• 29:59Speaker 00

  So there's also one, we won't get as into it, but there's also one about DEI. There's a deranged article in the Washington Free Beacon about UCLA Medical School. They're giving in the woke DEI in that like they don't have as many white students anymore, something, something.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Finally, someone's looking out for white medical students.

• 30:17Speaker 00

  I'll finally have a white doctor in my life. The article itself has statistics indicating that this has not happened. It says that like they've appointed this like mega DEI president of UCLA Medical School, and it has statistics. Basically, there's the same number of white people from 2020 to 2024, but there are now fewer Asian people and more Hispanics. So like that has shifted, but like the idea that like there's no merit based admissions, like this is just like classic right wing moral panic garbage. But of course, HHS is now joining this and is like investigating UCLA. So again, we see this pipeline from like bad faith, right wing, tabloid nonsense into like actual government policy.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  Oh, god damn it.

• 30:59Speaker 00

  Okay, now that you're all pissed off, let's talk about influencers. Let's talk about influencers.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  It's not gonna get better.

• 31:04Speaker 00

  Well, I'm excited, though, anyway.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Do you want to know why it's not gonna, do you want to know who our first influencer is?

• 31:09Speaker 00

  Katy Perry in space.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Jillian Michaels.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. Who we talk about off the show like pretty frequently, but we finally get to talk about her on the show.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Everybody wants a mean lesbian, but then she shows up.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  It's all fun and games when she's on White Lotus, but in real life.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  So, Michael, while you were looking into the sort of official Maha agenda thus far, I was looking into some of the public figures that have lined up behind RFK Jr. in particular. And one of his biggest champions is Queen Gremlin herself, Jillian Michaels.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  Friend of the show.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Enemy of the show.

• 31:52Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Jillian Michaels. For folks who are unfamiliar, Jillian Michaels was the trainer on The Biggest Loser.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  Mike, are there any particular memories that you have of you did our Biggest Loser episode?

• 32:07Speaker 00

  All I remember is her like lying down so she could yell at someone like closer to their face when they were like doing pushups. That's the image that has burned into my mind of like, it's not enough for me to be shitty to you from like three feet away. I need you to be like six inches away.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  I will say, as someone who recently rewatched some Biggest Loser episodes, I thought she was awful. And then I went back and watched those episodes and I was like, oh, my brain has been going easy on Jillian Michaels.

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  She's so much worse when you go back and rewatch those old episodes than you can even like imagine. One of the big ones, and we talked about this on our episode, was her shouting at a fat person on The Biggest Loser who was on a treadmill and was saying like, was like wheezing and saying, I can't actually do this. I need to take a break. Jillian Michaels screaming at them at the top of her lungs, the only way you're getting off that treadmill is in a body bag.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Nice. It's just a thing that you say to people, just as an adult, a thing that you say to other adults.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Well, it's motivating, Michael, and you say it because you care.

• 33:11Speaker 00

  I'm actually like a really good person for being like a huge piece of shit to you.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  In what I would argue is the least surprising turn in human history, Jillian Michaels is now a regular on Fox News. She is also on News Nation. She recently wrote an op ed for the Daily Mail about how being trans is the result of social contagion and because people are just doing it because it's quote unquote fashionable.

• 33:37Speaker 00

  You're not even an athlete, Jillian. You're just like work out. You're just like good at working out.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  She also has a podcast called Keeping It Real.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  What? It's not even like a pun? It's not like Biggest Losing My Mind?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  If you go to Apple Podcasts right now and you pull up her podcast, there will be three recent guests just on the same screen without even like load more. Those guests include Candace Owens, Bill O'Reilly, and Alan Dershowitz.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  So she's in. She's not like one of the reasonable ones. She's like a full on psycho.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  She just sort of started popping up on these shows like five to 10 years ago. Part of it is she had this program called Healthy Wager, she still runs it. That is, the idea is you place a bet against yourself.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  Oh, we've already talked about these. These are such garbage. Yeah.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  And throughout all of this, I think this is really interesting. This came up with a couple of the sort of like lady influencers that I looked into for this. They're continuing to be platformed by like entertainment news and women's media. So like E! News keeps giving a platform to Julian Michaels.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  It's too E! News.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. With our fashion police. It's really notable to me how many of the folks that I started to sort of look into on this Maha and started out with some level of weight loss content.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  And I wanted to just lift up that like people who have strident anti-fat views, people who devote their time to making sure that other people look a way that is acceptable to them.

• 35:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Are people who also buy into healthism and ableism in a really big way, right?

• 35:21Speaker 00

  It's very similar to this, all this garbage about like sort of anti-trans stuff, but also just like, I had a purple haired barista at Starbucks and somehow that's like an imposition on my rights. It's just like a hatred of difference.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  I think you're right about like a core discomfort with difference and a core disdain for difference. I think the thing.

• 35:44Speaker 00

  Two things. One.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  The direction.

• 35:46Speaker 00

  Two things. What's the second thought?

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Leave all of it.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Where's the second thought? You said one, where's two? Is there gonna be a second thought?

• 35:52Speaker 01

  No, the thing I was gonna say about Julian Michaels is that like the sort of core complaint that she has about a number of things, she is also very skeptical of Ozempic. She is also very skeptical of weight loss surgery on The Biggest Loser. She refers to it as, and I quote, "taking the easy way out," which like I would encourage you to

• 36:12Speaker 00

  Just God.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  To just pilot that, just see how that goes over with anyone who has had or performed weight loss surgery.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  Also, just leave people alone.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  The core assumption there is that. If fat people don't want to be treated badly, they should just not be fat.

• 36:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  But also, don't be fat in the ways that I want you to not be fat.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  Right.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Right? Which totally erases Jillian Michaels' own behavior from that equation, right? It totally absolves anyone who is treating fat people like shit of having to think about their own behavior. And it's a kind of thinking that shows up in a lot of conservative politics, right?

• 36:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  It's the, if that person didn't want to be sexually assaulted, they should have dressed differently or they shouldn't have been there, right? Like, it is all of this sort of thinking that is like, there are no aggressors, there are only foolish people who make themselves prey.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Right.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  That is the canary in the coalmine for a lot of people, that their politics might not be as like rock solid and they might not be as deeply empathetic.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  As they might want you to think. Although Jillian Michaels, in fairness, never wanted anyone to think she was deeply empathetic. That was never the message.

• 37:22Speaker 00

  She's mean as hell, but now she's just mean as hell in a specific way.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  So that one's just like a little like, where are they now?

• 37:27Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  And the answer is, they've gone from yelling at fat people to yelling about trans people and immigrants on Fox News.

• 37:34Speaker 00

  I, my next little section of like RFK Jr. stuff is like the sort of decent things that he's done or like borderline decent things. So maybe, maybe this will lift us back up. Maybe this will lift our spirits.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  We talking about pharma ads?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  No, we are talking about the measles outbreak. This is moving very fast. It's now in many states. There are two deaths so far. On March 3rd, the HHS releases a press release called "Measles outbreak is a call for action to all of us." And this is written, sort of officially written by RFK Jr. The sub-headline is, "MMR vaccine is crucial to avoiding potentially deadly disease."

• 38:08Speaker 01

  Genuinely kind of stunning coming out of an administration run by this guy.

• 38:13Speaker 00

  I was happy to see this. Like, there were various things going around on social media of like, RFK Jr. defends measles vaccine. And I'm like, okay, great. Like, lowest imaginable bar, he cleared it, I'm happy about that. However, if you read the full public statement.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  He also says some slightly more out of pocket things. So here is a paragraph from later in the press release.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Shocking. It is also our Responsibility to provide up to date guidance on available therapeutic medications. While there is no approved antiviral for those who may be infected, CDC has recently updated their recommendations, supporting administration of vitamin A under the supervision of a physician for those with mild, moderate, and severe infection. Studies have found that vitamin A can dramatically reduce measles mortality. Boy, oh fucking boy.

• 39:02Speaker 00

  So out of one side of his mouth, he's like, get the vaccine, and then out of the other, he's like, well, but also you need vitamin A, because vitamin A is like miracle.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  Take it from a guy who had an eating disorder, vitamin A is in fucking everything.

• 39:14Speaker 00

  There is some data that vitamin A can, kind of like in an incoate way, help strengthen your immune system when you have measles. Like, it can help you recover a little bit more quickly, although it's not, like, necessary in any way. It's like, eh, this might help. But also, people are now taking it as a prophylactic, because they think that it will prevent measles, and there's no fucking evidence of this. And taking vitamin A in large doses regularly is really bad for you. So, parents in Texas are giving their kids vitamin A regularly, and kids are coming into the hospital fucking sick.

• 39:45Speaker 01

  Michael, this is the reason that Pete Evans' Kids Cookbook got pulled from the shelves.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  For vitamin A?

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Was because there were recipes with mega doses of vitamin A that were designed for, like, toddlers and infants.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Dude.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  That's why we all don't have a copy of Bubba Yum Yum by Pete Evans.

• 40:06Speaker 00

  There's also this, the following paragraph.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Tens of thousands died with or of measles annually in 19th century America. By 1960, before the vaccine's introduction, improvements in sanitation and nutrition had eliminated 98% of measles deaths.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Good nutrition remains a best defense against most chronic and infectious illnesses. Vitamins A, C, and D, and foods rich in vitamins B12, C, and E should be part of a balanced diet.

• 40:39Speaker 00

  Notice the conspiracy language here. Tens of thousands died with or of measles annually. People did not die with measles. That's like a COVID conspiracy myth, right?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Like, was, they died, they had COVID when they died, but that doesn't mean that's why they died.

• 40:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, oh, if you die in a car accident, but you have COVID, it's listed as a COVID death, which wasn't fucking true. But this goes around conspiracy circles, and it's especially ridiculous with measles, because most people who died of measles were fucking little tiny kids. So just straight up misinformation. And this whole thing of like, well, by 1960, we basically didn't even like need the vaccine, because like, sanitation and nutrition got like so much better. Like, he's implying that like the vaccine didn't matter, because everything the vaccine achieved, we achieved with lifestyle beforehand, which is not true. So it's like, even when he clears the lowest imaginable bar, he still throws in conspiracy garbage and fucking vaccine hesitancy talking points.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's maddening. Also, like, do you want to look at life expectancies before 1960, my guy?

• 41:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, for little tiny kids. There's another, like, we now have outbreaks of whooping cough, too. And like, whooping cough used to kill like hundreds of kids a year. And it's coming back. It's like really dangerous stuff. Because people are refusing to get vaccinated. I had to go, I had to go update mine, because my parents didn't vaccinate me. Because they saw that documentary.

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Are you fucking kidding me?

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had to go get it like a couple of months ago. Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  I had a friend who like admitted to me recently that he did not have his kids vaccinated until like, I think they were teens or whatever. And he was just like, yeah, man, I was just in sort of like crunchy, lefty spaces where people were like, that's what the government wants you to do. Or whatever, right? Like, and he was just like, so I just sort of like went along with that, and whatever else.

• 42:22Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:22Speaker 01

  It's just really wild, I think, especially on the Maha stuff, to just think about how many people I know who are like, well, they are poisoning our food.

• 42:31Speaker 00

  Right, right, right.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Like, the number of people I know who talk about endocrine disruptors without actually having any sense of like what that means or how it would function.

• 42:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  And I think it's just been really striking to me. How much the people who think they are least vulnerable to this stuff are actually most vulnerable? I think that's my point here.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  Also, like, full amnesty for anybody who was, like, previously an anti-vaxxer or whatever. Like, if you come to the party late, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna yell at you for how late you are, I'm gonna be happy that you're here. So, like, good for your friend, good for my parents, like, it's, it's much better to sort of de-stigmatize people who change their minds on this stuff and be like, "Well, that's great, you got vaccinated." I think that's good, however people get there.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:09Speaker 00

  But this sort of stuff actually leads to, like, the next little string of RFK Junior initiatives. So, at HHS, he's also done a lot of stuff about food additives. So, on March 10th, he announces that the FDA is going to close the loophole by which food companies can assess that their own ingredients are generally regarded as safe. I don't know if you remember this from our Daily Harvest episode.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, grass.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  The grass stuff. So, the idea is that in 1958 Eisenhower passed a law that basically established the modern food system and said that, like, every chemical that goes into food has to be tested and has to be safe. However, because there was already an existing food supply, you had to have, like, a little exception for existing ingredients. So, like, the one they always use is olive oil. Lots of foods had olive oil, and you can't just, like, "Well, take all the olive oil out of the food, and, like, we'll test it and make sure that it's safe." You can say, like, "Well, it's generally regarded as safe." Or, like, baking soda. So, this makes sense in its inception. Since this time, there's now a process where food companies can self-certify that their ingredients are generally regarded as safe, and this isn't necessarily checked. There's, there's kind of two different ways of doing this, and one of the ways of doing

• 44:16Speaker 00

  it is, like, you have to submit an affidavit of research, and then the FDA can be like, "Okay, we're not gonna contest this," and then it goes forward. But there's also a way that you just, like, notify the FDA, and the FDA's like, "Okay." Since the 1950s, we've had more than 750 chemicals enter the US food supply, and only 10 of them have gone through the process of, like, being tested as chemicals.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 44:39Speaker 00

  So, like, this is an actual thing, and, like, left-wing think tanks have, like, also written reports about this. We talked about it in the Daily Harvest episode. It's like a real, genuine problem. This loophole in the FDA, like, this is worth closing. However, this also- Is like one of the sub, sub, sub bad reasons why you shouldn't have like conspirators running things is because I don't fucking trust RFK Junior to like run this process.

• 45:00Speaker 01

  If we leave it to him, then fucking measles is gonna end up on the grass.

• 45:04Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 45:06Speaker 00

  Just like a vial of measles and like your lucky charms.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 45:09Speaker 00

  So like, again, it's like, there are people who are like, well, I think we should give him credit for doing this. And like, maybe, but we haven't seen the outcome of this. And I do not trust a person who has no fieldy to like, basic facts, and who has a bunch of conspiratorial beliefs to run a fucking process like this. I don't think the outcome of this is going to be positive.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Right. It requires like, a level of, if I'm thinking about like redesigning a system like this, right, from a policy standpoint, this would require years and years of public engagement, years and years of buy-in building.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Such high levels of transparency that would be really difficult for someone who has never held office before.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  It also requires not firing thousands of people, tens of thousands of people from fucking HHS, which is one of the other first things that he's done. They've gone from 82,000 employees to 62,000 employees. And just this morning, I saw that the NIH put out another report showing even more fucking cuts. So again, any serious effort to make Americans healthier and to like, address chronic illness would not have mass fucking firings. It would have a huge increase in the capacity of the government to do stuff like this.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  And then the people who stay get to stick around for like, staff meetings where he's throwing around the R word apparently, where you're just like, Jesus, God.

• 46:24Speaker 00

  He also in that speech said that like, the deep state is real and shit. He's such a completely office rocker. Yeah.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  He was like, it's real and it's not just Soros or whatever. And I was like, oh, God, help us.

• 46:34Speaker 00

  It's literally Elon Musk, though.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  We gotta do something about antisemitism while I blame a high-profile Jewish person for being the deep state.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  The last thing we're gonna talk about is, he has in late March, until now, effectively embarked upon the Maha tour, where he is like, visiting different states. And in the HHS announcement, it says, Senator Kennedy will celebrate new state law. That ban ultra-processed foods and dyes in public schools restrict snap purchases of candy and soda and ban the addition of fluoride to public drinking water. So he's basically celebrating these like right wing efforts to do like right wing food shit. The thing again, removing dyes from school lunches. This is legislation that was just passed in West Virginia. It's sort of an empirical question, how big of a deal this is.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  The idea that like there's a chemical additive that is like harming us is sort of plausible to me. But also that's like, we need to actually look at research. I don't, there's like also a fear mongering component of this.

• 47:39Speaker 01

  The thing to know about the food dyes stuff is that when you ask people like, what's the issue? They will tell you it's hyperactivity in kids. What they won't tell you is that the core question that most frequently gets researched is, do food dyes exacerbate existing symptoms in kids who already have ADHD? But because we're all playing one giant game of telephone about this shit, that has turned into, it causes ADHD, right? So it's leaning really hard into like straight up proud ableism.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  The, the really bad one is this stealth effort that is happening in numerous states now to ban soda and quote unquote candy from food stamps. Have you heard about this, this like nationwide effort to take soda off of food stamps?

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's just an attempt to make food stamps inaccessible to as many people as possible and to make them as confusing as possible and to make them as unappealing as possible. It's sort of the hostile architecture approach to like public support programs, right?

• 48:42Speaker 00

  Of course, it's also perfect for them because they can say like, oh, well, soda is very bad for you. And we care about the health of Americans and we're just trying to improve the health of Americans. Right. But of course, what this amounts to is just a further restriction on food stamps. So 15 states have proposed bills to do this. And actually, when he was running for president, RFK Jr. published a editorial in the Wall Street Journal that said that he wants to exempt not only soda, but also quote, processed foods from food stamps. Is like significantly worse because like soda, there's some issues with like how to define soda. But like processed foods is just like, no one knows what the fuck.

• 49:20Speaker 00

  Like, everybody has a completely different definition. And so exempting quote unquote, processed foods could be a small category or could be like a massive category.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  There is almost no food that you could argue is entirely unprocessed, right?

• 49:34Speaker 00

  There's also the question of like, why is this happening all of a sudden, right? If 15 states are doing something at the same time, that means that there's a push from like an outside actor. So this entire wave is being pushed by a think tank called Foundation for Government Accountability, which is very open about the fact that it wants to basically gut every form of welfare. So Biden expanded food stamps like quite significantly during the pandemic. This organization has published op-eds arguing to roll that back. The FDA also uses a specific like basket of goods when they're calculating food stamp amounts. It's based on like the prices of various foods. And there's like different ways you can do that. There's like the thrifty bucket. There's like the enough nutrition bucket. There's like too much nutrition bucket.

• 50:18Speaker 00

  There's like different ways of doing this. And this organization has pushed for an even lower threshold to be used. Like, people should be eating even shittier and cheaper food than they are now. So this is an organization that wants to cut food stamps. That's not like a he said, she said thing.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  All of these are designed as entry points into a larger sort of like set of movement values and like policy objectives. And I think we get so far into like wanting to give everything a fair shake and wanting to both sides everything.

• 50:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Turn off our critical brains and just allow ourselves to get got by some of this stuff.

• 50:55Speaker 00

  Luckily, I don't think this would make that much of a difference, honestly. I mean, people are not spending that much of their income on sodas anyway, because soda's super cheap. But on the other hand, why the fuck are we even doing this? Like, there shouldn't be food stamps. There should just be money that you get. Like, the whole idea that like, there's like, right now, food stamps, like, you can't buy hot food with food stamps. You can't buy like paper towels and stuff with food stamps?

• 51:17Speaker 01

  In most states, tampons and pads are not covered by food stamps. So we're just like, great, cool.

• 51:23Speaker 00

  Is like a single mom with three kids supposed to go to the grocery store and get like raw broccoli and then like make nice roasted broccoli with olive oil for her kids. Well, A, she doesn't have the time. B, broccoli is expensive as fuck.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Right? Like even if you agreed to the premise that like actually lifestyle is at the root of every, everything, he also doesn't want to do the things that would make those lifestyle choices possible.

• 51:42Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a thing that you say, so you can get your weird conspiratorial anti-vax garbage into polite society. It's not something he actually has any interest in doing. If you look at the, the, the history of this man's life, like what has he spent the last three decades doing? You find no evidence of doing anything for low-income people or doing anything about chronic disease. You find a bunch of anti-vax garbage.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  Right. And a bunch of rhetoric that like actively makes life harder for people who have chronic illnesses, mental illnesses, neurodivergence, all of that kind of stuff.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 52:15Speaker 00

  So that is our bleak RFK Jr. update.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Calgon, take me away. Send me to the wellness farm.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  No one is still with us, Aubrey. Nobody. Everyone too down. They're like, this is too much.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  This is a death march. I hate it.

• 52:31Speaker 00

  I want you to say two things. One, and then say something. And then the episode ends and it's a cliffhanger and people have to tune in next time for the second thing.

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Next time on Forty Year Old Woman's Brain.