Pod Insights Maintenance Phase The Diet Crimes of Metabolife About this episode The rags-to-riches tale of how an illegal methamphetamine manufacturer became a legal methamphetamine manufacturer. Support us: Hear bonus episodes on PatreonWatch Aubrey's documentaryBuy Aubrey's bookListen to Mike's other podcastGet Maintenance Phase T-shirts, stickers and moreLinks! How the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 Weakened the FDAMad About MetabolifeStimulant Propels Diet EmpireThe dangers of the herb ephedra - Harvard Health An Historical Review of Steps a...
Transcript 0:12 Speaker 00 What do you have?
0:12 Speaker 01 I'm not tagging us in!
0:15 Speaker 00 I was hoping I could just do that and you wouldn't notice.
0:17 Speaker 01 You thought I wouldn't notice?
0:19 Speaker 00 The problem is, I literally don't know what Metabolife is. Is it a shake?
0:23 Speaker 01 No, it's a pill. It's a diet supplement.
0:26 Speaker 00 Ah, okay.
0:29 Speaker 00 Podcast.
0:31 Speaker 01 I can't express to our listeners how many weeks of thinking about that.
0:35 Speaker 00 I'm sorry, I did more than a month. I could have Googled at any moment.
0:43 Speaker 00 Well, okay, tell me if this is problematic. Welcome to Maintenance Face, the podcast that will help you lose 10 pounds, but you will be grinding your teeth for days.
0:50 Speaker 01 Honestly, yes.
0:52 Speaker 00 Is that the twist of the episode that I spoil it?
0:53 Speaker 01 You lucked out.
0:54 Speaker 00 Because it's methamphetamine.
0:55 Speaker 01 I'm Aubrey Gordon.
0:56 Speaker 00 I'm Michael Hobbs.
0:57 Speaker 01 If you'd like to support the show, you can do that at patreon.com/maintenanceface. Oh, the tiny repeating machine is back.
1:06 Speaker 01 Or you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts. It's the same audio content. Yeah, there he is. Michael.
1:13 Speaker 00 Aubrey.
1:14 Speaker 01 Today, we are talking about one of the most popular diet pills of the sort of Y2K era, 90s into Y2K. The name of it is Metabolife 356.
1:28 Speaker 00 Wait, are they wrong about the number of days in the year?
1:30 Speaker 01 No, that is exactly the thought that I had every time I saw the fucking name, Mike. I was like, do you mean 365? Do you mean every day? Do you mean Metabolife every day?
1:39 Speaker 00 Is that because you get nine cheat days, though? 356 days?
1:45 Speaker 00 Once a month, you can just go nuts.
1:47 Speaker 01 356 was the number that the lab assigned it when they were formulating it.
1:51 Speaker 00 It's the name of the founder, John 356.
1:53 Speaker 01 We are beginning our story in the mid 90s. By this point, the 80s and 90s sort of fitness craze has grown into a massive industry. This is the era of buns of steel, of stop the Insanity of sweating to the oldies. This is also a time when the popularity of MLMs are on the rise.
2:18 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
2:18 Speaker 01 At this point, the burgeoning wellness industry is championing supplements and vitamins become much more widely used. They sort of move from like a thing that crunchy granola hippies do to a much more mainstream thing. This is when we get Flintstones vitamins and that kind of thing, right?
2:36 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
2:37 Speaker 01 And anxiety is about weight are on the rise, mostly in an individual way at this point and in sort of a cosmetic way.
2:45 Speaker 00 Yeah.
2:45 Speaker 01 So, Michael, I'd like you to imagine this with me. It's 1994. You're watching TGIF and between an ad for Slim Fast and maybe like a Bop It.
2:57 Speaker 00 Are those snap bracelets that killed like 3,000 children?
3:00 Speaker 01 You see this ad.
3:08 Speaker 00 With drug abuse spiraling, the federal government has created special units to combat what they believe could be a more serious problem. It's like soldiers like tooling up, like getting their gear together.
3:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, it looks like a scene from Heat.
3:24 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
3:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
3:27 Speaker 00 The action is the juice.
3:32 Speaker 00 Okay, they're breaking into a house. They're like SWAT teaming into this like giant McMansion.
3:35 Speaker 01 They're disarming the security system. There's some night vision footage.
3:39 Speaker 00 It's all very serious, very Osama bin Laden.
3:46 Speaker 02 Freeze, drug enforcement. Oh, oh, guys, hey, it's only vitamins.
3:50 Speaker 00 The hell?
3:51 Speaker 02 It's only, it's only vitamins.
3:52 Speaker 00 The FDA is conducting raids against natural vitamin users, but vitamins are not drugs. This harassment must stop.
3:58 Speaker 02 Vitamin C, you know, like in oranges.
4:04 Speaker 00 Protect your right to use vitamins. Call Congress now. What? Okay, this is a bizarre ad. So they're breaking into a house, the SWAT team going in, and then it's Mel Gibson.
4:13 Speaker 01 Jump scare, gremlin surprise, it's Mel Gibson.
4:16 Speaker 00 In the kitchen, in a bathrobe, like, I guess, putting vitamins in his water or something, or like, taking a vitamin, and they like, they're arresting him.
4:25 Speaker 01 Putting vitamins in his wat-
4:27 Speaker 00 Or like, whatever, I don't know it.
4:29 Speaker 01 Do you know how vitamins work?
4:30 Speaker 00 It's too early for this. My brain is not awake yet.
4:33 Speaker 01 Listener, it's 10:20 a.m.
4:35 Speaker 00 All right, all right, all right, all right, all right. Don't unmask me. But it's like, they're basically lying to you here and creating a scenario that I assume does not actually exist.
4:46 Speaker 01 No, not one single solitary case that I'm aware of, of anyone's house getting broken into for possession of vitamin C.
4:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, vitamin fucking C, which has been on the market for like, many decades at this point.
4:58 Speaker 01 This is an ad that is bankrolled by the supplement industry, designed to astroturf the idea that supplements are overregulated and that the government is on the precipice of some really perilous overreach, right?
5:15 Speaker 00 Yeah.
5:15 Speaker 01 There's a little bit of backstory here. In the 80s and early 90s, Congress had considered a number of bills that would have increased FDA oversight and requirements of supplement manufacturers. One of them would have standardized labeling for supplements and would have required ingredient disclosures at like, a more detailed level.
5:36 Speaker 00 Oh tyranny. That's actual government tyranny.
5:38 Speaker 01 No one was talking about raids.
5:41 Speaker 00 Right.
5:41 Speaker 01 No one was talking about confiscating supplements. No one was talking about charges for possession of supplements. They were talking about a label that tells you what's in it.
5:53 Speaker 00 It's so funny, like, RFK Jr.'s whole fucking thing is like, pushing back, it's like, the conspiracy of Big Pharma and stuff, but it's like, the supplement makers are such fucking scammers, dude.
6:01 Speaker 01 Yep.
6:01 Speaker 00 They don't even have to have fucking vitamins in their vitamins, they can just sell you anything.
6:03 Speaker 01 Those sort of coordinated lobbying efforts in the industry first really bore fruit with the- Passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act.
6:16 Speaker 00 Wait, D H A, A, D H A?
6:19 Speaker 01 Uh, I've been saying Diche.
6:22 Speaker 00 Diche away, as they always say on New Cause Drug Race. They're talking about drug relations.
6:27 Speaker 01 The Diche recategorized dietary supplements as food instead of drugs.
6:34 Speaker 00 Okay.
6:34 Speaker 01 So it was drafted primarily to do one thing, to define dietary supplements and exempt them not only from the FDA's drug approval process, but from an FDA approval process at all.
6:49 Speaker 00 Hmm.
6:50 Speaker 01 So supplement makers do not have to prove that an ingredient is safe before taking it to market.
6:59 Speaker 00 Love this.
7:00 Speaker 01 And it meant that the FDA could only restrict a supplement ingredient if it posed a, quote, "significant and unreasonable risk if used as instructed."
7:11 Speaker 00 So the whole point of the law is like, give the FDA less power over this?
7:14 Speaker 01 It is functionally like, almost complete deregulation of the supplement industry.
7:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:19 Speaker 01 You don't know that what they put in there is what they said they put in there.
7:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:24 Speaker 01 You don't know that it's not contaminated with something like lead.
7:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
7:28 Speaker 01 You don't know that it is as potent or as non-potent as they say it is.
7:34 Speaker 00 You're just trusting Gwyneth with like, your, your long-term health. And Gwyneth is like, the best case scenario, honestly.
7:40 Speaker 01 It was signed into law by President Clinton in October of 1994.
7:46 Speaker 00 Doh.
7:46 Speaker 01 Diche was cosponsored by Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, and Orrin Hatch, notorious trash can Orrin Hatch, Republican from Utah, one of the longest-serving.
7:59 Speaker 00 Trash cans.
7:59 Speaker 01 Trash cans.
8:01 Speaker 00 Yes.
8:01 Speaker 01 In Congress. For both Harkin and Hatch, both the Democrat and the Republican. One of their largest campaign contributors for both of them was previous maintenance phase subject and weight loss super MLM Herbalife.
8:16 Speaker 00 Oh, really?
8:17 Speaker 01 Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
8:20 Speaker 00 What was the like, stated argument for this?
8:22 Speaker 01 That supplement makers should be able to like do what they need unencumbered by government incursion.
8:28 Speaker 00 It's just like hollow anti-regulation.
8:29 Speaker 01 Yeah, they should be free to innovate and blah, blah, blah. It's like general
8:33 Speaker 00 God.
8:34 Speaker 01 deregulation shit. And it's like 1994, right? So we're like coming in hot off of Reagan and H W Bush.
8:42 Speaker 00 But think about, think about how much less often Mel Gibson is getting raided in his home for having a vitamin supplement in the middle of the night.
8:48 Speaker 01 This is the other thing that I do want to say about the fucking Mel Gibson ad is like, that is also indicative of how much fucking money they had.
8:55 Speaker 00 No, I know.
8:56 Speaker 01 Arguably the biggest movie star in the world in 1994.
9:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:00 Speaker 01 And they are hiring him for a TV ad.
9:04 Speaker 00 Yeah. That in itself, you should call Congress and be like, whatever they want, don't give it to them. These people have too much fucking money.
9:09 Speaker 01 Listen, sugar tits.
9:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
9:13 Speaker 01 So this is the environment in which Metabolife goes to market.
9:17 Speaker 00 Okay.
9:18 Speaker 01 It was a multi-level marketing company that, like Herbalife before it, sold herbal weight loss supplements, quote unquote.
9:26 Speaker 00 That's always a good sign when like you can't buy it at a store or from like a normal place. You have to like call up somebody and like their website doesn't say what they do or what it costs.
9:34 Speaker 01 That's how you know it works.
9:36 Speaker 00 When a friend from high school asks you to sell it.
9:38 Speaker 01 It was started by Michael Blevins and Michael Ellis, two dudes from the greater San Diego area, who had been childhood friends.
9:46 Speaker 00 They're not gays, are they? I don't have to be mad at gays.
9:48 Speaker 01 No, they're not homosexuals.
9:50 Speaker 00 Because then I would have to support it.
9:51 Speaker 01 [laughing]
9:51 Speaker 00 Especially if they were under 5'8".
9:54 Speaker 01 You just start yelling, "Representation matters."
9:57 Speaker 00 Short gay Michaels, I'm sorry.
9:58 Speaker 01 At the time that the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act passes, Ellis is bouncing around from one job to another. He reportedly worked for a time as a chauffeur, a real estate agent, and a private investigator.
10:13 Speaker 00 Oh, no.
10:16 Speaker 01 Oh no is correct, Michael.
10:18 Speaker 00 I'm just like, red flag, red flag, red flag.
10:20 Speaker 01 Again, there are two co-founders. There's Michael Ellis and Michael Blevins. Michael Ellis went on to write a book about Metabolife. And he also became the face of the company. So we're going to focus more on him because we've heard more from him. In the book, he writes about a couple of his prior jobs in the 1980s before founding Metabolife. The first is as a police officer for the National City Police Department near San Diego.
10:48 Speaker 00 Okay.
10:49 Speaker 01 He writes at some length about how competitive the application process was, that there were 300 applicants for three open jobs, and that he made the cut.
10:58 Speaker 00 Okay.
10:59 Speaker 01 But he also says he just needed the money and that, quote, "A job with a gun sounded interesting."
11:07 Speaker 00 Cool. You had me at, "I wanted a gun."
11:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
11:11 Speaker 00 I want to buy your weight loss supplements. I'm already in.
11:13 Speaker 01 When he talks about the neighborhoods he policed, it is also not great. He has long passages about how rundown the streets and buildings are.
11:22 Speaker 00 Nice.
11:23 Speaker 01 He goes on at length about the scourge of street gangs that are predominantly Latino. On one of those calls to the quote-unquote "gangbanger war zone."
11:34 Speaker 00 Nice.
11:34 Speaker 01 He ends up chasing someone who he says starts threatening to stab him and his partner with a screwdriver.
11:42 Speaker 00 Okay.
11:43 Speaker 01 Michael Ellis goes on to shoot this person who collapses and stops moving. According to Ellis, this young man is permanently disabled as a result.
11:53 Speaker 00 Is he telling this as like, I'm a hero story?
11:56 Speaker 01 This is his story of being like, "This is how I learned being a cop was not for me." But it's very odd that in the book, he only really talks about the impacts on his own emotional state.
12:08 Speaker 00 Right, right.
12:09 Speaker 01 He doesn't really grapple with like, the life this dude could have lived, or the effect on his family, or the implications for the community.
12:17 Speaker 00 Right.
12:17 Speaker 01 There's no existential anything. It's like, "I shot someone and I felt really bad, and I didn't want to feel bad anymore."
12:23 Speaker 00 I can't believe a pathological individualist would go on to sell weight loss supplements.
12:27 Speaker 01 In 1990, after leaving the police force, Michael Ellis faces drug charges.
12:32 Speaker 00 Wait, what?
12:33 Speaker 01 So he was charged because he had rented a house for the express purpose of cooking meth in it.
12:40 Speaker 00 My meth joke is true?
12:42 Speaker 01 Your meth joke is so much truer than you realize.
12:45 Speaker 00 Wait, he's literally cooking fucking meth and then he goes, I'll just sell a weight loss pill?
12:49 Speaker 01 He and Michael Blevins, his future co-founder, rented a house, hired a cook, and attempted to make meth.
12:56 Speaker 00 They hired a meth cook?
12:58 Speaker 01 They hired a meth cook.
12:59 Speaker 00 You hire a meth cook, writing the ad on Craigslist?
13:02 Speaker 01 It sounds like he was like, neither one of them was very good at being a drug kingpin. Ellis rented a house that the owners were trying to put on the market. So they kept getting things set up to cook meth and then they'd get a notice from the landlord that like, "Hey, some buyers are coming by."
13:21 Speaker 00 They have to put a blanket over the meth lab?
13:24 Speaker 01 They have to like dismantle and put it all away?
13:27 Speaker 00 That's like the sitcom version of Breaking Bad. Like, we gotta hide the meth lab again?
13:32 Speaker 01 It's just Heisenberg shrugging and looking into the camera like, "Wuh."
13:36 Speaker 00 Dude, that's so funny that like, he couldn't even cook the meth himself. He had to delegate it. He like, it was such a calculated plan. Like, I'm gonna be a meth kingpin. But he like hired it. It's like opening a bakery or something. Well, now I have to hire some bakers.
13:50 Speaker 01 To their credit, both Blevins and Ellis turned themselves in and pled out.
13:56 Speaker 00 So the cops eventually found them and then they were like, "Yes, we did this," and then got a plea deal.
14:00 Speaker 01 Again, this is a place where we don't have digitized records of other reporting from the time so much?
14:07 Speaker 00 Wait, so in his book, he says, "For no reason," he just marched into the police station, said, "Hello, I'm cooking meth."
14:13 Speaker 01 He was like, "We had a conversation about it. We decided it was the right thing and we wanted to be like upstanding guys." And so we turned ourselves in. And I was like, "That didn't happen."
14:22 Speaker 00 No.
14:23 Speaker 01 A couple of fucking San Diego dirtbags are turning themselves in? Like, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
14:28 Speaker 00 "Excuse me, officer. Excuse me. I stole something yesterday. I just want to let you know that I broke the law so you can punish me."
14:33 Speaker 01 I cannot tell a lie.
14:34 Speaker 00 Yeah. He must have gotten caught.
14:37 Speaker 01 Michael Ellis is sentenced to probation and Michael Blevins is sentenced to prison as the guy who hired the cook and transported the meth. So while Michael Blevins is in prison, Michael Ellis starts Metabolife.
14:53 Speaker 00 Okay. He's like, with my experience in meth, I went into diet supplements.
14:58 Speaker 01 Yep, correct. So the story that Michael Ellis tells about this sort of in the press throughout and in his book is that he developed Metabolife while his father was undergoing cancer treatment to help him combat fatigue and negative symptoms.
15:14 Speaker 00 Does he have any background in chemistry or any of that?
15:16 Speaker 01 No.
15:16 Speaker 00 He's just like a random guy.
15:18 Speaker 01 He's a cop, a chauffeur, a PI.
15:21 Speaker 00 What does that mean? Like, I developed? How would you even do that as like a random civilian?
15:25 Speaker 01 He doesn't say.
15:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:26 Speaker 01 In 1992, he starts selling it. Initially, he starts marketing it as a bodybuilding supplement at gyms in the sort of Gold's Gym era.
15:37 Speaker 00 And it's a weight loss thing or it's a muscle building thing?
15:39 Speaker 01 Right now, he's saying it's a muscle building thing, but that doesn't work. So he goes, mm, it's for weight loss.
15:44 Speaker 00 Those are opposite things, which is very funny.
15:46 Speaker 01 One of them helps you put on weight, the other one helps you take off weight. Correct.
15:49 Speaker 00 Yeah.
15:50 Speaker 01 The active ingredient is marketed as Ma Huang, a Chinese herbal supplement. That's true.
15:55 Speaker 00 That's an actual herb?
15:56 Speaker 01 That's an actual herb. Metabolife uses Ma Huang as an appetite suppressant, but historically in Chinese medicine, it was used as a cold remedy.
16:04 Speaker 00 Okay.
16:04 Speaker 01 The historical herbal use of Ma Huang is to make a tea out of the leaves that are not distilled down and crushed into a capsule and all of that kind of shit. Metabolife distributors are telling you to take this every day.
16:17 Speaker 00 Right. That's why I take Mucinex every day to make me feel a little bit healthier.
16:21 Speaker 01 Right. It would be like if you were like, I'm taking NyQuil every fucking day of my life.
16:25 Speaker 00 This is also, it's such, it's so funny thinking back on this time when you could just say like, it's an ancient Chinese ingredient. And everybody like, ooh.
16:32 Speaker 01 That is the entire Herbalife model, right? And the entire Metabolife model. We now have two MLMs that are just like doing the full like ancient Chinese secret fucking bullshit.
16:43 Speaker 00 Totally.
16:44 Speaker 01 Metabolife distributors tell really extraordinary stories about its effectiveness in weight loss, eating whatever you want, still losing weight, blah, blah, blah.
16:54 Speaker 00 Amazing. Wow, I feel incredible.
16:56 Speaker 01 They also brag after the passage of the diye, they advertise that we're the only-
17:03 Speaker 01 Only weight loss supplement that's lab tested for safety.
17:07 Speaker 00 Oh, what? But also, they can just fucking say that because there's no regulation. They can just fucking lie.
17:11 Speaker 01 Yes, correct, correct, correct. And you called it, it's both Ma Huang, 12 milligrams of Ma Huang in a Metabolife caplet and 40 milligrams of Guarana concentrate. That's caffeine, baby.
17:25 Speaker 00 Wait, is that Guarana?
17:26 Speaker 01 So it's about one espresso shot worth of caffeine.
17:31 Speaker 00 Okay.
17:32 Speaker 01 As the business is getting started as an MLM, Michael Blevins, he who is in prison, starts recruiting distributors in prison.
17:41 Speaker 00 Wait, really? Use your networks, baby. Get those Facebook messages out.
17:46 Speaker 01 I had real conflicted feelings about this. It's an MLM, so it is garbage from top to bottom. They are selling a product that is garbage from top to bottom. And also famously, the people who make money in an MLM are the first people to get in the door.
18:01 Speaker 00 So in this case, the prisoners got like rich off of it because they're like the first 10 people.
18:04 Speaker 01 So I was like, is this redistribution of wealth? No, they're recruiting from their fucking networks.
18:11 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
18:11 Speaker 01 They're fucking over people that they know.
18:13 Speaker 00 And the first 10 prisoners might make money, but the next 90 prisoners don't.
18:16 Speaker 01 Once Metabolife launches as a weight loss supplement and as an MLM in 1995, the business grows really big, really fast. In the first couple of years, its profits, it's already turning a profit in the millions.
18:32 Speaker 00 No way.
18:32 Speaker 01 In the first like two years. In 1999, just four years after the launch, they report $1 billion in sales.
18:41 Speaker 00 I guess they just got in early after this law got passed. There's probably like a vacuum that they were able to fill and just making these insane health claims before essentially everybody started doing that. It was a crowded market.
18:52 Speaker 01 Yes, and it's not the only one using Ma Huang. It's one of the most popular ones, but it's not the only one. There are also brands on the market. You may remember these. I definitely do Xenadren EFX.
19:06 Speaker 00 No.
19:06 Speaker 01 Hydroxycut.
19:07 Speaker 00 I may have even taken that one for a while.
19:09 Speaker 01 And one called, and I quote, herbal ecstasy.
19:13 Speaker 00 It'll make you lick someone else's face, but it's herbal. Wait, I'm looking, I Googled, I wanna see their logo.
19:19 Speaker 01 It's bad.
19:20 Speaker 00 At this time. Oh, it's so bad. Metabo Life, it's like bright yellow and there's like seven different fonts happening.
19:28 Speaker 01 There's like a little gold seal.
19:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:31 Speaker 01 And red font and it just says diet in big letters.
19:34 Speaker 00 Herbal formula to enhance your, and then it's like, the font goes up like 50 sizes and it says diet. Oh, and provide energy asterisk asterisk.
19:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
19:43 Speaker 00 It's in super small print.
19:44 Speaker 01 All of these brands also get a big boost in 1997, a big windfall.
19:49 Speaker 00 From the release of Entrapment starring Catherine J. Jones and Sean Connery.
19:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, everybody wanted to look like her, snake through those lasers.
19:55 Speaker 00 Snake through the lasers.
19:56 Speaker 01 No, the boost that they get in 1997 is that Fen-Phen has pulled off the market.
20:00 Speaker 00 Oh, right.
20:02 Speaker 01 So Fen-Phen, miracle drug that stopped people's hearts. And the thing that we have done a previous episode on, if you would like to know that story, go back and listen to the Fen-Phen episode.
20:11 Speaker 00 It is kind of a miracle that with a single pill, you can stop your heart.
20:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:14 Speaker 00 Incredible. Humans have been working on it for so long. So amazing.
20:17 Speaker 01 That winds up being quite a boon to the industry, right? You've got all these people who were on Fen-Phen who are really dejected that it's like off the market because it didn't stop their heart. What the fuck?
20:27 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
20:27 Speaker 01 And they're looking for something else and actually these things you can get cheaper and at the gas station. You don't even need to get a doctor involved. You can get it from your neighbor.
20:35 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:35 Speaker 01 So these are now some of the biggest sort of like pill makers in the country, right? And they have a bunch of fucking money, so their ads are all over TV.
20:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
20:49 Speaker 01 So we are going to watch a Metabo Life ad from 2000.
20:55 Speaker 00 Fuck yes.
21:15 Speaker 00 You wanna buy a watch?
21:16 Speaker 03 Don't be fooled by imitators. Metabolite is number one for a reason. Laboratory tested for safety and clinically
21:21 Speaker 00 There's ugly label.
21:22 Speaker 03 For weight loss. Only available through Metabolite retailers and distributors. Call for the location nearest you.
21:28 Speaker 01 So for the listener, what is happening is that there is a guy wearing a trench coat who opens his trench coat and it's lined with like fake bottles of Metabolite.
21:39 Speaker 00 He's up late at night like meticulously sewing the extra pockets into his trench coat. He's like, I gotta be able to open the flap.
21:45 Speaker 01 This drug dealer has dedication. Yeah, so they're doing this weird thing where they're like implying that their competitors are like A shady and B like drugs and they are not drugs.
22:01 Speaker 00 It's so funny for them to complain about like fly by night counterfeit producers.
22:05 Speaker 01 They're like, take it from us, a fucking cop who disabled someone, but also a guy who doesn't cook the meth, but does hire the guy who cooks the meth.
22:15 Speaker 00 Cause you just made this up too. You're just like, you're just as much of a drug dealer as people selling counterfeit Metabolite.
22:19 Speaker 01 Well, Michael, the drug dealer plot thickens.
22:23 Speaker 00 Ooh.
22:23 Speaker 01 Because the active ingredient, Mahuang, is better known in English as Ephedra.
22:31 Speaker 00 Wait, what's Ephedra?
22:31 Speaker 01 Ephedra is the name for the plant. The plant has sub compounds called alkaloids called Ephedrine and Pseudo Ephedrine.
22:42 Speaker 00 Oh, that's the meth shit. That's the shit you can't buy without ID anymore.
22:46 Speaker 01 Yep, correct.
22:47 Speaker 00 Dude, that's the shit whenever you're sick. If you get like, what is it called? Mucinex part D? Or some shit. It's a full on crack cocaine. It's like the shit that you have to go to the store and like ask for the thing behind the counter. I did this once because the suggested dose or whatever is two of them. And I was like, I've never taken this before. I'll take one. I felt like I could like lift a fucking Volkswagen.
23:07 Speaker 01 Yes.
23:08 Speaker 00 I'm like, they tell you to take two of these fucking things?
23:10 Speaker 01 So for Americans who bought cold medicine before like the mid 2000s, you will recognize the brand name Sudafed. You can still get it. It's behind the counter.
23:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:20 Speaker 01 It's short for Pseudo Ephedrine. That's what it was.
23:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
23:23 Speaker 01 In addition to its Chinese Chinese medicine use as a cold remedy. It was also used in the US for the same purposes. Until the 1980s, ephedrine was an over the counter cold and allergy medicine.
23:39 Speaker 00 I bet it clears out your fucking sinuses. Your like, heart is beating like 300 times a minute.
23:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, so ephedrine does in fact constrict your blood vessels and speed up your heart. For people with asthma, that means that it helps reduce the swelling in their airways and can genuinely be helpful for respiratory stuff. But it was ultimately banned by many, many states because of the safety risks and the risk of dependence.
24:08 Speaker 00 And it was also the basis for cooking meth, right?
24:10 Speaker 01 Yes, pseudoephedrine as one of the sort of sub compounds was absolutely like a key ingredient in cooking meth, which is what ultimately got pseudoephedrine banned.
24:21 Speaker 00 That's why you have to show your ID because you can't just go into the store and buy like 300 packets of it because then they assume you're cooking a shitload of meth. And I believe it's not sold in the EU at all anymore.
24:29 Speaker 01 There was like a high risk of dependence.
24:32 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:33 Speaker 01 There are major safety risks for selling something over the counter that speeds up your heart? Are you kidding me?
24:39 Speaker 00 Also, I only took half the recommended dose. What if you took twice the recommended dose? I mean, you could, it felt like you could like really hurt yourself. I was like, as soon as I took it, I was like, why is this legal?
24:47 Speaker 01 You know, we mentioned that this is predominantly used as a respiratory thing in the US in the 80s. I will say that they honest to God learned about the weight loss effects of ephedra during asthma research. So they're doing some research into the effects of ephedrine on asthma. And the researchers are like, man, these asthma patients are getting real skinny.
25:10 Speaker 00 They're tripping balls and they're like fighting and like biting each other all the time, but look how trim they are.
25:15 Speaker 01 Very svelte, skinny many.
25:18 Speaker 01 On the less intense end, ephedrine users can experience jitteriness, anxiety and insomnia.
25:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
25:27 Speaker 01 On the more intense end, ephedra does increase your heart rate. It does increase your blood pressure, which in turn can lead to cardiac events, stroke, all kinds of acute and really scary things. And on top of all of that, ephedrine users may even experience hallucinations, seizures and psychosis.
25:51 Speaker 00 Nice.
25:52 Speaker 01 Also, there are people with ephedra allergies who might experience like their throat closing up, hives, like that kind of thing. And on top of all of that, ephedrine, like the methamphetamine that it is then used to make, people can develop a tolerance really quickly to a small amount and they need to up their dose.
26:14 Speaker 00 Right.
26:14 Speaker 01 So very quickly, in order to get the same effects, people have to take more and more and more.
26:20 Speaker 00 And then you're talking about long-term health and side effects and everything else.
26:23 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:23 Speaker 00 You rebrand this thing that is just like a pharmaceutical. You rebrand it as like ancient Chinese medicine and people think they're taking something like natural and herbal, but I mean, everything is natural when you think about it.
26:33 Speaker 01 There are lots of parts of the natural world, not to get all Werner Herzog on it, but like there are lots of parts of the natural world that are trying to kill you.
26:42 Speaker 00 It's all just marketing to be like, ooh, it's Ma Huang, it's very natural and ancient. It sounds like it's just fucking drugs. You're just like taking drugs.
26:48 Speaker 01 Yes, and the ingredient listed on Metabolife isn't just Ma Huang, it's Ma Huang concentrate.
26:57 Speaker 00 Right, so it's just like, it's a fucking drug, you're taking Sudafed.
26:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, you're taking ephedrine.
27:01 Speaker 00 Also, also, didn't you say earlier that Metabolife is Ma Huang and caffeine, basically?
27:06 Speaker 01 Right, so research found at the time that the combination of ephedra and caffeine marginally increased weight loss over ephedra alone, right?
27:16 Speaker 00 Well, yeah, probably, fucking hell, yeah, you're a crack.
27:19 Speaker 01 But caffeine, like ephedra, also increases your heart rate and your blood pressure. It also increases the likelihood of those side effects. And particularly the like vascular and cardiac effects, right? So adding caffeine to this is really like pouring lighter fluid.
27:37 Speaker 00 Yeah, totally.
27:38 Speaker 01 On the risk side of it, right?
27:39 Speaker 00 And also, this is something that you would want on like a warning label of like, this is habit forming. You can fucking overdose on this stuff. I mean, you can overdose on caffeine.
27:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
27:47 Speaker 00 Again, this is like the perfect argument for the fucking FDA to regulate this shit.
27:51 Speaker 01 Michael, leave me with my Panera lemonade in peace.
27:55 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. You could like really hurt yourselves.
27:58 Speaker 01 So unsurprisingly, knowing all of this, adverse reaction reports started to roll in with just, within just a year or two of Metabolife's launch, right? Metabolife comes onto the market as a weight loss supplement in 1995, and by 1997, there's this massive wave of adverse reaction reports.
28:18 Speaker 00 It's like, I only lost three pounds and I murdered my entire family. That's normal.
28:23 Speaker 01 So the early adverse reactions that come in show reports of sudden hypertension in people without existing cardiovascular conditions. As with Herbalife before it, a lot of people didn't report their adverse reactions, right? Some assumed that because it was listed as herbal and because Metabolife touted that they were lab tested for safety, that it couldn't hurt them, so they didn't think to report that. They're just like, weird mystery hypertension, right? Others assumed that their weight already put them at ill health, so they blamed their weight and not the medication.
29:03 Speaker 01 Again, Metabolife is launched in 1995. By 1996, multiple states are already proposing full or partial bans.
29:11 Speaker 00 Yes.
29:12 Speaker 01 On Ephedra.
29:13 Speaker 00 It's fucking crack. It's crack.
29:15 Speaker 01 When Fen-Phen is taken off the market, it's September, and just immediately thereafter, Ephedra supplements like Metabolife start marketing themselves as quote unquote herbal Fen-Phen.
29:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
29:27 Speaker 01 By November, two months later, the FDA is already issuing official warnings about Ephedra use and the dangers of Ephedra.
29:34 Speaker 00 Man.
29:35 Speaker 01 Still, the product continues to grow, the business continues to grow, and by 1999, the FDA reports over 1,000 adverse reactions.
29:44 Speaker 00 Man.
29:45 Speaker 01 And 35 of those are deaths.
29:48 Speaker 00 Wait, what? People died?
29:49 Speaker 01 Thirty-five people have died in four years that the FDA is tracking.
29:54 Speaker 00 What?
29:55 Speaker 01 Yes, correct.
29:55 Speaker 00 How do we pull Fen-Phen and we didn't pull this shit? This is fucking crazy.
29:59 Speaker 01 So, of course, this leads to a wave of lawsuits. There are class action suits from consumers. There are suits from distributors, many of whom are also consumers.
30:11 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:11 Speaker 01 But there are also lawsuits from Metabolife.
30:15 Speaker 00 Wait, what?
30:16 Speaker 01 They start suing people.
30:18 Speaker 00 Wait, who?
30:19 Speaker 01 So, as these adverse events grow and more states consider bans on Afedra, so too does the negative media coverage, as it fucking should.
30:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
30:30 Speaker 01 Right? And when these negative news stories crop up, Metabolife often files suit for defamation.
30:40 Speaker 00 Again, great sign that you're running a real business. You're selling a useful product to people.
30:45 Speaker 01 In his book about Metabolife, Michael Ellis writes about this wave of lawsuits, and his reactions are nutso.
30:53 Speaker 00 Send it, send it, send it, send it.
30:55 Speaker 01 No, I'll send you a quote in a minute.
30:56 Speaker 00 Okay.
30:56 Speaker 01 But just as a preview, he has a passage and he talks about his power combo to prep for depositions.
31:04 Speaker 00 Is it like seven Metabolife?
31:05 Speaker 01 It's a bunch of Metabolife pills and dip.
31:11 Speaker 00 Gross, gross. He's like spitting into the cup in like a little room.
31:16 Speaker 01 He, for younger listeners, dip is like zins, but without the like teabag.
31:22 Speaker 00 So gross, dude.
31:24 Speaker 01 He does talk in the book about how much dip you can put in your lip without it showing up on camera in the deposition video.
31:33 Speaker 00 He's like doing that like with the brown liquid coming out of his mouth.
31:38 Speaker 01 Um, he talks, he's like, I would check my lip sometimes and feel if there was like a bump. No, we're good.
31:43 Speaker 00 Also, think about how psychotic you would feel if you're also, if you're on caffeine and like dollar store meth and fucking tobacco.
31:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:51 Speaker 00 Your little heart is just like a little shrew, like.
31:54 Speaker 01 Right. I imagine the effects being somewhere on the cocaine spectrum.
31:58 Speaker 00 I would not want to give a deposition in that state.
32:01 Speaker 01 Disaster.
32:02 Speaker 00 Someone, someone asks you like, what's your address? And you start talking about your screenplay idea.
32:05 Speaker 01 So I just sent you a little passage from the book of him talking about his attorneys and depositions.
32:12 Speaker 00 I'm gonna add little spitting sounds.
32:13 Speaker 01 No, don't. Please don't. No.
32:16 Speaker 00 Every couple of seconds.
32:17 Speaker 01 I don't like it.
32:18 Speaker 00 He says, "Most of the attorneys I've met in my long string of legal battles fall into one of two categories. Either they work their asses off, or they do the opposite of work their asses off." Oh, he's a good writer. Wow, this is just singing.
32:31 Speaker 01 He really paints a picture.
32:32 Speaker 00 "The reason they can exist in either of these ways is that they've basically created their own industry. In other words, the legal world is so complex, so convoluted, that you now need an attorney for everything, from defending yourself against trumped up lawsuits to filing paperwork at the office. Lawyers just help you get through the fog, a fog they created. Throw in the fear that gets propagated by the justice system and you can't help but want to hire a whole team of lawyers. That's the ultimate job security right there." I love how you're also just like a dick to your own lawyers, like, "Ooh, what do I need you for?"
33:04 Speaker 01 Oh, my God. The way he writes about, he's like, "One of my lawyers was real fat. He was real baby Hootie type."
33:10 Speaker 00 Oh, good stuff. Wow.
33:11 Speaker 01 Where you're like, gross. But also, he thinks lawyers are grifting?
33:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, I know. I know. How dare they?
33:19 Speaker 01 He thinks everyone is grifting all the time. It is a self-justification narrative, right?
33:27 Speaker 00 Yeah.
33:27 Speaker 01 Like, "I'm just doing what everyone's doing."
33:29 Speaker 00 Also, lawyers only have ultimate job security if you're constantly getting sued for people dying.
33:34 Speaker 01 Right. The reason they have job security is, in fact, Metaplex.
33:38 Speaker 00 Maybe if you sold a product that like helps people or like adds to their life rather than killing them, maybe you wouldn't have this problem.
33:44 Speaker 01 All of that legal activity increases media attention, which publicizes some more troubling aspects of Ephedra products. There's more and more media from more and more outlets. It is frankly too many to sue.
34:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
34:02 Speaker 01 And that includes this 1999 coverage from the New York Times talking to a researcher who tested Ephedra products on the market. That researcher's name is Dr. Gurley.
34:13 Speaker 00 Dr. Gurley said, "Most Ephedra users who become ill can blame their own stupidity for going well over their recommendations on labels. But he and his colleagues have tested the potency of a dozen Ephedra products." And found that the amount of active ingredient in some brands varied by as much as 130%. Most contained less ephedrine than the labels claimed, but Dr. Gurley is still troubled. As a consumer and a pharmaceutical scientist, it was an eye-opening experience. He said, "You can't trust what's on the label." Yeah, dude, they're varying by as much as 130%? She might be getting 10mg or like 23?
34:47 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:48 Speaker 00 That's huge!
34:49 Speaker 01 Yes.
34:49 Speaker 00 Also, the fact that most of them are under what the label claimed is also bad. I mean, like, it's not like people need more ephedrine, but it's like, yeah, if you're selling 10mg of something, it should have fucking 10mg in it.
34:58 Speaker 01 So by the end of the 90s, there's a growing number of adverse reactions, a growing number of deaths, a growing list of side effects. It's not just the sort of jitteriness and hypertension stuff. It's cardiac events, it's psychosis. And that is when 2020 decides to film a piece about Ephedra and Metabolife.
35:20 Speaker 00 Okay.
35:21 Speaker 01 In 1999, 2020 filmed 72 minutes of interview with Michael Ellis for this piece. The segment they run is under 15 minutes and it includes about one minute of Ellis's interview. In the press, Ellis says that the interview felt, quote, "more like a deposition."
35:39 Speaker 00 Because you were dipping?
35:40 Speaker 01 A deposition.
35:43 Speaker 00 That's what I call them, because I'm dipping so much.
35:49 Speaker 01 So he, after the interview, he was like, "Uh-oh, the fix is in. This is going to be a hit piece." So Metabolife cooked up a wild strategy.
35:58 Speaker 00 You can't say "cooked up" on this episode.
36:00 Speaker 01 Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
36:02 Speaker 00 It's like zing.
36:03 Speaker 01 2020 recorded the interview and filmed it. So did Metabolife. This was like a relatively common practice at the time.
36:10 Speaker 00 Yeah.
36:11 Speaker 01 They were afraid that the edit was going to be unfavorable, so they came up with like a pretty wild and innovative solution for 1999 purposes. They decide to upload the uncut interview on a standalone website.
36:27 Speaker 00 This has become like more common since then, yeah.
36:29 Speaker 01 And then they sink $2 million into an ad campaign, buying full-page newspaper ads in The Post and The Times and TV spots, including some TV spots during 2020.
36:44 Speaker 00 That's actually kinda good, okay.
36:46 Speaker 01 Being like, "Go to this website and see the full, uncut interview."
36:50 Speaker 00 Right.
36:51 Speaker 01 The website, Michael, is televisioninterview.com.
36:55 Speaker 00 What? Dude, sit on that domain. That domain's probably worth millions.
36:59 Speaker 01 I should also say, Michael Ellis's website, after all of the Metabolife stuff, is like MJEllis1.com.
37:07 Speaker 00 RealMichaelEllis.com, yeah.
37:09 Speaker 01 When the interview airs, it's focused on Metabolife's claim that it is, quote-unquote, "lab-tested for safety." As it turns out, and as 2020 reports, their, quote-unquote, "studies" have extremely small sample sizes, they have high dropout rates, and in one case, they couldn't account for the contents of the bottles in what was supposed to be a blinded trial.
37:33 Speaker 00 We think we're giving you Metabolife. We don't, we're not sure.
37:35 Speaker 01 These meth cooks can't do anything right. Ellis, in the book, writes about the 2020 interview, and his account is bananas. The tone is 100% like, "The fix was in from the beginning."
37:48 Speaker 00 Yeah.
37:49 Speaker 01 The chapter title on this scenario is called "Hindsight is 2020."
37:55 Speaker 00 Got 'em.
37:55 Speaker 01 He writes about sort of every aspect of it. He's like, "These fuckers are so shady." For example, he talks about, like, the interviewer from 2020 is getting in makeup for TV, and Ellis is like, "Who's gonna do my makeup? Is there somebody to do my makeup?" And the interviewer is like, "No."
38:13 Speaker 00 Okay.
38:13 Speaker 01 And Ellis writes, "I get it, I thought. He's Kennedy and I'm Nixon."
38:18 Speaker 00 I know, dude. Or you could sell a product that doesn't kill people. I don't know. Or you could do that.
38:22 Speaker 01 Also, you have a billion dollars in sale. You could hire a makeup person.
38:25 Speaker 00 You could get some concealer.
38:26 Speaker 01 You could do it.
38:27 Speaker 00 You could go to Sephora.
38:28 Speaker 01 He also says that a bunch of Metabolife staff came to watch the filming of the interview. And that they burst into applause after filming. Because Ellis was so good, and he made the 2020 interviewer look so bad.
38:45 Speaker 00 Why didn't you put that on your TV?
38:47 Speaker 01 He takes issue with the editing. He's like, "We recorded 72 minutes and they only aired one minute?" And I was like, "Do you know how..." Editing works?
38:54 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
38:55 Speaker 01 In the book, he writes, quote, "I guess everything else just made me look too good to air."
39:00 Speaker 00 Yeah.
39:00 Speaker 01 The entire segment ran for 14 minutes.
39:04 Speaker 00 Boom.
39:04 Speaker 01 So in his head, he thought it was going to be a full hour on metabolase?
39:08 Speaker 00 He thought it was gonna be a live interview with you, just like a verbatim interview?
39:12 Speaker 01 Yeah, like a sitting fucking president. Like, we're just gonna dedicate an hour.
39:17 Speaker 00 Also, does he say that it's not true? Like, they made substantive allegations against him about, like, the lab testing and stuff. Because ultimately, the interview doesn't really matter. If the allegations that they're making are true, then like, what is the interview even supposed to fucking say?
39:30 Speaker 01 It's very funny, because there are some press pieces that come out after this where they talk to Michael Ellis, and they're like, "When they said this thing, do you think that was fair?" And he was like, "Oh, sure."
39:42 Speaker 01 And they're like, "What about this thing? When they made this allegation, was that a fair thing to go after?" And he was like, "Well, it's true."
39:47 Speaker 00 He's like, "Yeah, our product is not tested." But anyway.
39:49 Speaker 01 There was one incident that he wrote about where I was like, "Oh, okay, so now he's just lying." So I'm gonna send you a passage from his book. He's talking about Mr. Diaz in this. That's the interviewer from 2020.
40:04 Speaker 00 It says, "Mr. Diaz," we heard the producer say, "would you like to meet Mr. Ellis's mother?" Diaz turned around to glare at me. "Fuck Mrs. Ellis," he said. And without another word, he stalked away. In one microscopic instant, my mood changed from triumphant to enraged. It took every ounce of my effort not to chase him down, grab him, and beat the hell out of him. I mean, who in his right mind would say something like that to an old woman? To a man's mother? For me, Diaz's slight was the turning point. The point when I decided that the media had harmed my family for long enough. From that moment on, I would remain on the offensive. I'd had enough rolling over. Yeah, when he said, "Fuck your mom," to my face, I was like, "That's it." This is a real thing that happened, and I'm super mad about it.
40:48 Speaker 01 Two things. One, I do not believe that this happened.
40:51 Speaker 00 There's no fucking way this happened.
40:53 Speaker 01 And two, when were you rolling over?
40:56 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah.
40:57 Speaker 01 When you were suing TV stations for covering your product?
41:01 Speaker 00 I've also, I've been in situations where someone's like, "Do you want to meet my friend?" Friend or like, do you want to say hi to my mom? And I like, definitely don't want to do that. I'm not gonna be like, fuck your mom. There's no way.
41:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:10 Speaker 00 There's no way an actual professional in a setting like this would say fuck your mom. There's no way.
41:15 Speaker 01 The only way that that's coming out of my mouth is if your mom is like Kristi Noem.
41:20 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:21 Speaker 01 So the 2020 piece, as it aired, included some interviews with doctors and researchers who had researched Metabolife. One of those doctors worked for Columbia University's Hospital, St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital. In the piece, he was asked a factual question, which was, did your research definitively prove that Metabolife was safe? He said, no.
41:48 Speaker 00 Okay.
41:48 Speaker 01 For Metabolife, that was unacceptable.
41:50 Speaker 00 Okay.
41:50 Speaker 01 They hired a private investigator. They dug up some allegations against one of his old supervisors. Who had been alleged to have doctored research. Metabolife then reached out to 2020 to pass it along and quote unquote, like, make sure you were aware. Pretty heavily implying that this doctor was in on the bad acts of his supervisor.
42:16 Speaker 00 Okay.
42:16 Speaker 01 They also start calling people at the hospital where he works. They say, again, we just want to make sure you knew that this guy was mixed up in this shit. Like, you're fully just trying to get this guy fired.
42:27 Speaker 00 I'd also for this guy saying like, a boilerplate thing. Did you prove that it's safe? Any researcher would say, no, because there's no way to prove that something is safe.
42:34 Speaker 01 Right. That is a factual statement.
42:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
42:36 Speaker 01 Did one single study prove definitively that any substance was perfectly safe?
42:42 Speaker 00 Right.
42:43 Speaker 01 No.
42:43 Speaker 00 Any responsible scientist would, would answer in that way.
42:46 Speaker 01 So on top of that, once again, they take out newspaper ads accusing this scientist of working for a competitor because he had also conducted research separately on Slim Fast.
43:01 Speaker 00 Oh, what? Well, that's also normal.
43:03 Speaker 01 So they're like, he's trying to fix the market for Slim Fast. He just wants-
43:07 Speaker 00 That's fucking normal.
43:08 Speaker 01 Right. And they're, so they're arguing that he's like an operative for Slim Fast, who's trying to undercut Metabolife's success is sort of the implication, right? It wasn't just scientists that they were doing this for. They were hiring PIs on plaintiffs in their lawsuits.
43:25 Speaker 00 No way.
43:26 Speaker 01 And in his book, he alleges that many of them were feigning disability and feigning their reactions.
43:34 Speaker 00 Good stuff.
43:35 Speaker 01 To Metabolife. They were walking around just fine. They seemed good to me. I saw the pictures.
43:40 Speaker 00 Oh, my God.
43:41 Speaker 01 So as you can tell, there's like trouble in paradise. All of that media attention leads to more government action. The FDA brings Michael Ellis in for questioning about the negative side effects of their products, which they downplay, and about how many adverse reactions the company has heard about through their customer service line. They say it's in the hundreds. That diverges sharply from the FDA's records, which are over a thousand, right? There are congressional hearings.
44:13 Speaker 00 Oh.
44:13 Speaker 01 Ellis is called to testify, and he invokes his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. So he shows up, but he doesn't testify. And by 2002, the DOJ launches a criminal investigation into Metabolife.
44:30 Speaker 00 Again, why do these companies still exist?
44:32 Speaker 01 They are trying to determine whether or not executives understood the danger of their product and the risks that it posed to consumers. And by this point, according to FDA records, Metabolife users have reported 95 heart attacks.
44:49 Speaker 00 Oh, wow.
44:49 Speaker 01 69 strokes, 70 seizures, 91 cases of high blood pressure, and 81 deaths. And that is what's reported.
45:01 Speaker 00 Is that bad? Is that?
45:02 Speaker 01 Is that bad? 81 deaths? Is that bad from a diet pill, from an over-the-counter diet pill?
45:06 Speaker 00 But how do those people look? But how do they look?
45:08 Speaker 01 Amazing.
45:09 Speaker 00 Are they like ropey?
45:10 Speaker 01 Still, that same year, the same year that the DOJ criminal investigation launches, the FDA declines to take action on Ephedra and says that they're waiting for more studies. While all of this is happening, the IRS is also investigating Michael Ellis for hundreds of thousands of dollars of tax evasion.
45:28 Speaker 00 Oh, wow. Of course, of course.
45:30 Speaker 01 So this comes to a head when the IRS raids one of Ellis's houses, and he depicts them in the book as absolute supervillains.
45:40 Speaker 01 He has different like little pet names. Uh, he doesn't know the names of the agents who raid this house. One of them has a battering ram, so he calls him Rammy. And there's another one who he says he can smell alcohol on his breath, so he calls him Drunky.
45:57 Speaker 00 That's not even good.
45:59 Speaker 01 He says that his wife was crying the whole time, which I absolutely believe. If my house got raided, I would cry and then barf and then cry and then barf and then barf and then cry. He writes, quote, "When they had finished with the safe room, they searched every other room in the house, beginning with the bedroom, where Drunky immediately started rifling through Monica's underwear drawer, holding each piece up and laughing. 'Ooh,' he would say. 'Look at this one. I wonder what it cost.' Laughter. All of this happening right in front of my wife."
46:35 Speaker 00 It's like the least reliable narrator we've ever had.
46:38 Speaker 01 1 million percent where he's like, woo, like holding up his wife's underwear. I was like,
46:43 Speaker 00 Yeah.
46:44 Speaker 01 If these guys are doing raids, they see shit that is so much more interesting than underwear.
46:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, there's no way. Yeah.
46:50 Speaker 01 They're not stopping to comment on like, this woman has underpants.
46:55 Speaker 00 This woman has a crotch. Yeah.
46:56 Speaker 01 He also really leans into how the IRS agents raiding his house were armed. At first that gave me pause. IRS agents with guns is just kind of a wild fucking image.
47:09 Speaker 00 Yeah.
47:10 Speaker 01 But then I learned what they found in the raid, which was a hidden safe with a million dollars in it and guns.
47:16 Speaker 00 No way.
47:17 Speaker 01 He again had been previously convicted of a felony or he pled guilty to a felony. So he's barred from owning guns.
47:24 Speaker 00 Also, a million dollars in cash in the safe is fucking crazy.
47:26 Speaker 01 Here is his explanation.
47:30 Speaker 00 He says, "At the time of my conviction back in 1991, I knew that I could no longer possess firearms. So I asked a federal agent friend of mine what I should do with the two handguns that I already had. So I gave my guns to Monica, my girlfriend at the time, explaining to her that I couldn't have access to them, no matter what. She promised that she would keep them away from me. And to that end, she..." Bought a safe that only she would know the combination to. She put several things in there with the guns, including her paper copy of the safe's combination. Oh, don't put it in the safe. Long story short, for the three or four years leading up to the raid, we couldn't access that safe even if we wanted to.
48:05 Speaker 01 So, there are a few things to note here. One, he's alleging that everything in the safe was his wife's and that the safe belonged to his wife.
48:11 Speaker 00 What about the million in cash?
48:13 Speaker 01 Hers, according to him.
48:14 Speaker 00 She's frugal. She's very frugal.
48:16 Speaker 01 He's fully throwing his fucking wife under the bus.
48:19 Speaker 00 Although, I don't think that's like a useful loophole. Like, you do have access to guns, but they're your wives? I don't think that, like, works.
48:24 Speaker 01 And you bought them.
48:26 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:26 Speaker 01 When you know that you can't do that.
48:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:29 Speaker 01 And you're married, so everything that is hers is also yours, my guy.
48:34 Speaker 00 Right.
48:34 Speaker 01 Unfort, unfort for you.
48:36 Speaker 00 Yeah.
48:36 Speaker 01 As part of the fallout from this, they raid Ellis's home. They also raid Blevins's home. Michael Blevins goes back to prison on gun charges. Starts the company with a prison sentence. His exit from the company is also a prison sentence. And Michael Ellis ends up going to prison for lying to the FDA.
48:58 Speaker 00 It's actually so weird that he didn't just go to the federal authorities and tell them that he was breaking the law. Because that's what he usually does.
49:05 Speaker 01 So, once again, as before, Michael Ellis pled guilty. He was sentenced to six months in federal prison and a $20,000 fine.
49:14 Speaker 00 Wait, what?
49:14 Speaker 01 Six months and a $20,000 fine for a guy whose company made $1 billion in one year.
49:19 Speaker 00 But that's a thing of, like, convicting people for lying to the FDA or whatever, when it's like, the product that he sells is trash.
49:25 Speaker 01 Yep.
49:26 Speaker 00 Because the actual problem here is basically this previous law that means that they don't have to label anything.
49:31 Speaker 01 Correct.
49:31 Speaker 00 They are operating within the law, but the law is fucking bad.
49:34 Speaker 01 Yes, agree.
49:35 Speaker 00 Also, he dips. I feel like, go to jail. Just go to jail for dipping.
49:38 Speaker 01 Just for the dip? Just for your fucking tin of skull?
49:42 Speaker 00 Anytime you have it, if I catch you with it, you're going to jail.
49:45 Speaker 01 It also turns out, through this sort of increased government oversight period, that the company was falsifying its taxes, cooking its books, and concealing over $93 million in four years.
49:58 Speaker 00 Whoa, okay.
49:59 Speaker 01 Their accountant, Michael Compton, admits to federal authorities that he did cook the books at the behest of company executives.
50:08 Speaker 00 No way.
50:09 Speaker 01 And when the story broke about the company's tax evasion, Compton died by suicide.
50:14 Speaker 00 Oh, no way.
50:15 Speaker 01 Michael Ellis writes about this in his book, and he goes, "It's a real shame." And that's it.
50:20 Speaker 00 That's it?
50:21 Speaker 01 Again, it's not unlike the shooting when he's at the police force where you're like,
50:25 Speaker 00 What a bummer.
50:26 Speaker 01 You don't seem to be grappling with this with any level of depth.
50:30 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:31 Speaker 01 For hiding $93 million, the company is assessed a $600,000 fine.
50:37 Speaker 00 What? Come on, dude.
50:39 Speaker 01 After Michael Ellis is released from prison, he publishes his book. That's in 2008. I have not told you this whole time what the title of the book is.
50:51 Speaker 00 Okay.
50:52 Speaker 01 The title of the book is "The Metabolife Story: The Rape of Cinderella."
50:58 Speaker 00 What?
50:59 Speaker 01 Yes.
50:59 Speaker 00 What the fuck does that even mean?
51:00 Speaker 01 Like, we were a Cinderella story.
51:02 Speaker 00 Oh, and they were raped by the IRS?
51:04 Speaker 01 And our company was raped by the federal government.
51:07 Speaker 00 That is rape. No.
51:10 Speaker 01 It has since, if you look for it now, it's still available as like an ebook or whatever.
51:15 Speaker 00 Okay.
51:15 Speaker 01 It now is called "The Metabolife Story: The Rise and Fall of an American Success Story" or something like that.
51:22 Speaker 00 They're like, "Make it normal. Please be fucking normal. Give it a normal title, dude." Because that title is just like, oh, you're a nutcase.
51:28 Speaker 01 The final straw for Ephedra products comes when there is a high-profile death. So far, there have been many deaths from Ephedra products, and there is one from a public figure. So in 2003, Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Belcher heads to spring training in Florida. Since last season, he has put on some weight, so he starts taking an Ephedra supplement to lose weight. During spring training at 23 years old, Steve Belcher, a professional athlete, collapses and dies.
52:08 Speaker 00 23? Holy shit.
52:11 Speaker 01 As the reporting comes out about Steve Belcher's death, it comes along with like that reporting is like, actually, this isn't the only Ephedra incident for athletes. Another player for the Orioles who had previously collapsed and been found unconscious, then disclosed that he had been taking Ephedra supplements at the time.
52:31 Speaker 00 That's not even the only incident for the Orioles.
52:33 Speaker 01 There are also adverse reactions for Corey Stringer from the Minnesota Vikings, Devon Darling, a linebacker for Florida State, a college student. Like, the list goes on. There are many, many more.
52:47 Speaker 00 Wild.
52:48 Speaker 01 This is popping up in sports media, so it's no longer like government accountability reporting, and it's no longer like quote unquote women's media reporting. It's now getting in front of sports fans who are like, hey, wait a minute, what the fuck? Sorry, what?
53:03 Speaker 00 Wait, how much is the meth that I can go to the store and buy?
53:06 Speaker 01 Right, like, there's like a big outcry following this death. According to the Nutrition Business Journal, US Ephedra sales in 2002 were $1.28 billion. And by 2003, the year that Belcher died in the spring, sales fell to 510 million.
53:27 Speaker 00 Okay, 50% hit, more than a 50% hit.
53:29 Speaker 01 Metabolife is trying to defend themselves, you know what I mean? Like, they're trying to, like, save face a little bit. So they put up a statement on their website about Belcher's death, and they're like, hmm, he was overweight and he was exercising strenuously in the heat, so don't do that.
53:45 Speaker 00 Everyone who does that dies.
53:46 Speaker 01 Also, like, do you not think fat people are taking your weight loss product?
53:49 Speaker 00 Yeah, no kidding, exactly.
53:50 Speaker 01 Do you not think that the people who are taking your weight loss product live in hot climates?
53:54 Speaker 00 And are also exercising because they're trying to lose weight?
53:56 Speaker 01 Steve Belcher dies in the spring of 2003, and in December of that same year, the FDA finally announces a ban of Ephedra.
54:04 Speaker 00 Okay.
54:05 Speaker 01 At the time that it is banned, Ephedra represents 5% of sales of dietary supplements in the US. 5% of dietary supplements sold are Ephedra, but they are 45% of adverse events linked to any dietary supplement. Soon after the FDA banned sale of products containing Ephedra, Congress moved to ban pseudoephedrine because of its role in the manufacture of black market meth. It was first introduced in Congress as a standalone bill that had some, I can't remember the name, but it was like something like the like Combating Methamphetamine Act of 2005 or whatever.
54:49 Speaker 01 Ultimately, it passed as a part of the Patriot Act.
54:52 Speaker 00 Wait, what?
54:53 Speaker 01 It was in the fucking Patriot Act. You remember how they dropped it at night? And it was like a bajillion pages?
54:58 Speaker 00 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
54:58 Speaker 01 This was in the Patriot Act.
54:59 Speaker 00 Dude, we should do one of those sleep casts where we just read federal legislation.
55:03 Speaker 01 So today, many nations around the world ban Ephedrine. Some also ban Ephedra as a whole. The US bans both, and we also track sales of pseudoephedrine and have moved it behind the counter. Metabolife ended up filing for bankruptcy and its non-Ephedra assets were sold to a new owner.
55:24 Speaker 00 The product is still around, although they wouldn't be Ephedra anymore.
55:27 Speaker 01 Yes, they have reformulated with Dr. Oz's favorite, green coffee bean extract.
55:33 Speaker 00 Okay, well, at least that's fake and dumb and doesn't do anything. At least it's not like scary.
55:37 Speaker 01 I will say, I didn't come to this one thinking that I was telling you a story about money and politics, but like, here we are.
55:44 Speaker 00 Yeah.
55:45 Speaker 01 There's no real move today to repeal the Dietary Supplement Health Education Act.
55:51 Speaker 00 Of course.
55:51 Speaker 01 We clearly have bigger fish to fry as a nation, but it is a bad policy that puts consumers at risk. If not with Ephedra products anymore, then with all manner of other shit that doesn't have to prove that it's safe before it goes on the fucking market.
56:07 Speaker 00 For no upside, for no benefit to anyone.
56:10 Speaker 01 There are supplements on the market legally that are very, very, very hazardous.
56:15 Speaker 00 Or just full-on scams or something you sawdust and you're paying 12 bucks for it or whatever.
56:19 Speaker 01 Or we don't fucking know and you should know and be able to know before you take a thing.
56:24 Speaker 00 It's totally indefensible.
56:25 Speaker 01 So Metabolife isn't the juggernaut that it once was, but the system that created it remains.
56:32 Speaker 00 By which you mean they are still raiding the home of Mel Gibson.
56:37 Speaker 00 Simply for putting vitamins in his water.
Previous Raw Milk Next Russell Brand Part 1 Page updated November 6, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated