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News topic du jour:
https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/how-democracy-ends
“The pandemic events of 2020-2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected President of the United States to systematically end democracy. The course of events leading to this outcome need not be a repeat of the direct assault on the Capitol, but a distortion of risk of illness as a justification for military force and suspension of democratic norms.”
1. Cannot Sleep After Hard Training – JiuJitsu and Weightlifting [21:18]
Nick says:
After a hard JiuJitsu training class (or weightlifting) I always have trouble falling asleep. I also have trouble eating, too. I think it’s my adrenaline from hard rolling. I am competitive and this definitely affects my ability to rest. Practice starts at 6 and usually goes to 730-830. Both days I get insomnia if I train really hard. What can I do to relax my mind and body so I can fall asleep within two hours of training?
I know carbohydrates play a role. I try not to eat too much during the day because I get drowsy at my desk job. I usually track macros and I began to up my carb intake to see if it helps the issue – it doesn’t. For example. Today I ate 131g carbs from organic purple sweet potatoes. (143g protein from organic grass fed beef). All cooked with EVOO & seasoned liberally with Mediterranean Sea Salt, garlic and pepper. I trained at 6pm. Got home at 830. I know I need food but I cannot eat so I recently I tried forcing myself a shake made up of 35g grass fed whey, 4 eggs, plenty of fruit and 1/2 cup of oats. I am just ranting because I am suffering from this insomnia right now. I just discovered your product LMNT and instantly bought it after reading your story on the Amazon store website. I thought that an electrolyte in balance could be the issue so I’ll find out. I consume a lot of salt but maybe I actually don’t.
Then I found your Instagram and realized I can ask a question so here I am. Thanks for reading this word salad! I am excited to LMNT and resolve this insomnia!
2. Workout intensity, frequency, duration [28:11]
Dan says:
Robb, I read the Paleo Solution and have found it to be only the tip of the ice berg compared to the value of your podcasts. Thank you, great stuff.
I am looking for more guidance on workout intensity, duration and frequency for improving body comp. I’ve been doing a crossfit-type of workout at my club for six months. They call it “Dynamic” but essentially its the same stuff focusing on stability, power and strength in weekly rotations. I usually get in 3-4 of these workouts a week and sometimes a one hour bike ride (18mph) on off days. The workouts are a full one hour with a “melt down” in the last 10 minutes. I generally burn 700-850 calories during that time, ave HR 70-75% with max HR above 90% (according to Polar HRM). I’m not sure the instructors understand the concept of stress-induced cortisol release and I want to understand it myself. I am wondering if the length and intensity of these workouts are unnecessary beat downs; and/or if I am doing too many in a week.
I started in March, weighed 236 and about 29% body fat (6′ 0″). I lost 18 pounds over first 3 months with calorie reduction, higher-carb low fat. I then plateaued for 3 months with no changes in eating or workouts. I’ve been 100% Paleo for two weeks and the weight appears to be coming off again (down to 212 lbs now). Ideal goal is to get to 185-190 at 10% body fat.
I hear you guys talk about “Cross fit beat downs” and working out too frequently; I’m not sure if I am falling into that. I am looking for a better reference of what is an optimal body-comp program in terms of intensity, duration and frequency. Any guidance is appreciated.
Thank you for what you do.
Dan
3. Collagen and Folic Acid [34:47]
Kay says:
My SIL, who is involved with a MLM supplement company, said that I should not take collagen supplement daily because it will influence folic acid in my body in a negative way. She said her supplement is only taken for 10 days out of 30. I have never heard of this. Any truth?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/4417592/
4. Aging and Abdominal Adipose [38:14]
Annette says:
Would love to hear your comments on abdominal fat. I am in good health for 65 yrs old. Always had a “belly” but I am 116 lbs, 5 ft. Not fat, but my middle holds 6-8 lbs of fat I know is there. I have a good dietary intake, exercise 3-4 days weekly, 2 of those days are weight training. I have good abdominal muscles under the fat I can feel. Can I ever lose this weight? I am an ICU nurse with a Masters in Critical Care, and I have my adult NP so I am not without a good background education. I enjoyed one of your books on Paleo; I feel you are a great educational resource. Please advise.
5. Is “Prepping” The Only Solution? [43:37]
Richard says:
What steps can a person or family take (other than to be as healthy as possible) to mitigate this situation as best we can? I look at what is happening in Venezuela, for instance, and wonder what I would do in that situation: an almost complete breakdown of society, with hyper-inflation wiping out saving and making income equally worthless. Is “prepping” the only solution: lots of weapons, years of stored food/water/gas, a bunker mentality? I’m not sure that is a viable option of the majority of citizens. So, what are your thoughts on what the average Joe-citizen can do?
https://www.foxfire.org/shop/category/books/
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Transcript:
Download a copy of this transcript here (PDF)
Nicki: It’s time to make your health an act of rebellion. We’re tackling personalized nutrition, metabolic flexibility, resilient aging, and answering your diet and lifestyle questions. This is the only show with the bold aim to help one million people liberate themselves from a secure system. You’re listening to the Healthy Rebellion Radio.
Nicki: The contents of this show are for entertainment and educational purposes only. Nothing in this podcast should be considered medical advice. Please consult your licensed and credentialed functional medicine practitioner before embarking on any health, dietary, or fitness change. Warning, when Robb gets passionate, he’s been known to use the occasional expletive. If foul language is not your thing, if it gets your britches in a bunch, well, there’s always Disney+.
Nicki: Good morning everyone, hello.
Robb: Yes, we’re back.
Nicki: Welcome to episode 93 of the Healthy Rebellion Radio. It’s a plaidtastic Wednesday morning here in Montana.
Robb: What do they say, the plaid … Well, plaidtastic’s better, you had a better one.
Nicki: Plaidtastic is a little better, yep.
Robb: Yep.
Nicki: Yes, and this is obviously not a visual podcast, but we are both wearing our plaids today.
Robb: We are.
Nicki: All right, let’s see. Oh, I wanted to share for the record, because if you all recall, if you listen to the last episode, we had a little debate about whether we had used the Tamarack/western larch question in any of our previous trivias, and I was right. You were wrong.
Robb: Do you know what’s ironic about that?
Nicki: Well, I didn’t believe- –
Robb: -You lacked the huevos to actually make a fucking bet, so it doesn’t matter.
Nicki: No-
Robb: The one time that you would’ve won-
Nicki: Okay, I didn’t bet, but I’m still right, and that matters.
Robb: It matters even less, because you lacked the confidence to just own it and take it. So it makes it even worse.
Nicki: I-
Robb: I would’ve been so disgusted with myself at not taking the bet and just taking the risk that I would’ve not mentioned this. This is a major blight upon your credentials here.
Nicki: I see it differently.
Robb: Well, of course you do. Vinay Prasad has a piece that’s talking about how we’re going to end up with literally two branches of science, which we can talk about at a later date, but …
Nicki: Yeah, anyway, I’m sure all the listeners out … All the … Yes, I’ll just leave it at that.
Robb: All six of them.
Nicki: All six of them will be siding with me.
Robb: Only because you’re better-looking than I am, no other reason.
Nicki: Okay, let’s jump in. I wanted to share some highlights from our 30 day Rebel Reset that just ended. I’ve got a handful of little Post-Its some of the members that participated share. She said, “My goals were to move more and tighten up food habits that I feel had gotten out of hand. So I added two lifting workouts a week, banished all nuts, and severely cut back dairy. I hit my protein goals and got good sleep. So while I gained a half a pound, I lost inches, woohoo! Down three inches at navel, one inch at the high waist, and three quarter inches off my hips, half inch off chest, and my tight pants are not so tight. I will probably actually wear them now, albeit untucked, LOL. So thanks again, I always learn something new each time.”
Robb: Pretty cool.
Nicki: So that was a cool one. Diane says, “I am very happy with the reset. I focused on diet and pleased with the results. Even though it’s not everything, I’ve dropped seven pounds and gotten into a good rhythm, even though this was one of the busiest months for me work-wise. The next month I will be getting into sync with movement. Thank you all for the incredible support to make the changes I needed.”
Robb: Do you want to mention who Diane is?
Nicki: Diane is a midwife in Reno, Nevada, and she helped deliver Zoe and Sagan.
Robb: Both of our kids.
Nicki: Both of our girls, yeah, so she’s-
Robb: Which was wonderful getting her in there.
Nicki: … lovely, and yes, it was a wonderful-
Robb: And she has the most infectious laugh …
Nicki: She does.
Robb: That you will ever-
Nicki: This is true.
Robb: … and neither masking nor vaccinations can protect you from-
Nicki: This is true. Let’s see, we have one from Lucy. “My biggest success has been with movement. Just about every day for the last eight months or so, I’ve woken up with the idea of ‘Today’s the day I start working out again.’ But it took this reset to actually get my butt in gear, and I can already feel the difference after just a few weeks.” So that was another really good one. And then Elizabeth, “Okay, I did my measurements, I’m down five pounds, lost two inches in the hips and a half inch in the waist. I feel good. My sleep is dialed in, movement was consistent, my planks feel really solid, and now I want to add weight training and continue to experiment with different food ratios. My sugar cravings are basically eliminated. What a great experience.”
Nicki: And then finally, one from Christine. She said, “So I did my measurements, and the results are I’m down five pounds, one and a half inches off of waist, one inch off of hips. Navel calc body fat shows a 2% drop. I can’t complain about that one bit. I have no plans to change much of anything from where I am right now, except heavier weights. I’m so happy I’m here with you all.”
Robb: Nice.
Nicki: So yeah, that was some really good stuff, each time we do one of these, obviously for many people the goal is to lose some body fat or have some body composition transformation, but I always love when, maybe they’re not as significant, but people are feeling better, they’re sleeping better, they’re back into a routine, they’ve got their flow going. All of those things just means that it’s going to be carried forward and continued, because it’s not about just this 30 days only and then we throw everything out the window and go back to doing whatever we were doing before. It’s making small, incremental changes, and celebrating the progress we make, but then also continuing along the path to being as health as we can be.
Robb: Indeed. And I’ll just throw a greasy used car salesman pitch out there to folks that have maybe been waffling on this. Generally, people get a really remarkable change during these resets, and it costs you about a dollar a day. So there are-
Nicki: And the next one is coming up in January, and we’ll be, obviously, sharing those dates as we get a little closer.
Robb: And in between the resets, we have several archived strength resets, mobility resets, just the day to day claptrap of support and fun, and we have access to-
Nicki: If you’re on our email newsletter list, then we email, at the end of each month, we email what we call The Next 90, so it kind of gives highlights into what’s going on inside the Healthy Rebellion community over the next 90 days. I believe Jess just sent that email out, maybe even this morning. So we’ve got a lot of good stuff coming up, we’ve got different people hosting different cooking demos, we’ve got one of our physical therapist members doing a pelvic floor workshop coming up, so lots of good stuff in between our main resets, so always something going on.
Robb: Indeed.
Nicki: Yeah. Okay, do you have a news topic for us today?
Robb: Yeah, so this one is form Dr. Vinay Prasad, which Vinay popped up on my radar fairly early in the whole COVID story, and interestingly enough, pretty quickly I started trying to mainly look at things that would pop up on WebMD, because sourcing and all the rest of that stuff, just if I was going to share something, it was like, “Well, I might as well try to find it from an outlet like that.”
Nicki: It’s harder for people to do the knee-jerk reaction, “Well, it’s from that publication, so-“
Robb: Exactly.
Nicki: … “it can’t be, why should I read that?”
Robb: Exactly. Even though clearly the discussion and investigation of this stuff has become a shockingly bifurcated process, which sucks. It outright stinks, but ironically, without at least one side of this investigative story, we would not know that gain of function research has in fact been funded by Fauci, et al., and that the NIH has been aware of it, and we’re two years into this, but we’re just now starting to see the front edge of that story coming up. But Vinay, I would argue, has been this kind of, I think, fairly beloved person, although he has … He mentioned being shocked and stunned by the vitriol of some of his pieces, which from my perspective have been very balanced, very reasonable, really talking about risk. Looking at the situation before us and doing a fair risk assessment, and I was not aware that Vinay’d spun up a Substack, and so this is from his Substack, and the title is How Democracy Ends, and the first paragraph of that.
Robb: “The pandemic events of 2020-2021 outline a potential pathway for a future democratically elected President of the United States to systematically end democracy. The course of events leading to this outcome need not be a repeat of the direct assault on the Capitol, but a distortion of risk of illness as a justification for military force and suspension of democratic norms.” I have a lot to say about that, but also in some ways I’m not sure how much more needs to be said about that. This has been kind of a cautionary tale that I’ve been making for years around just the general flavor of discourse about one group of people being able to burn down various cities, and other groups of people not, and there being no equitable response to these things, and I’ve just seen this as a death by a thousand cuts to Western liberal democracies.
Robb: And I’ve also made the case that I … And this is going to get kind of political, and if people want to check out, they can check out, because we’re kind of at the point where if you’re so thin-skinned or so incapable of just taking in some information, maybe I’m full of shit, but here’s my thesis that I’ve had for a long time. I don’t think totalitarianism will come from the left, not directly. It will be facilitated by the left being batshit crazy assholes, doing all kinds of weird power grab stuff and hating-
Nicki: Setting precedents.
Robb: Setting precedent that then when the people who get shit done, which are the more conservative, right-leaning people, when a right-leaning totalitarian comes into being, which very well could happen due to the zig-zag back and forth, pendulum-swinging insanity that is our world, that person will get shit done. That person will take a situation like a … And Vinay just uses a run-of-the-mill flu season that gets a little out of hand, like it hits 100,000 deaths-
Nicki: Well, we’ve come to a spot where we want safety at whatever cost-
Robb: At all costs.
Nicki: … and we’re opening the door to these policies, we have, over the last two years, that are essentially a gigantic fucking slippery slope that can …
Robb: Yeah. And this is so obvious to me. It seems so obvious to people like Dr. Prasad, and it is so incredibly not obvious to a host of other people. Like we see what’s going on in Australia, and my God, there are a good number of people in Australia that are like, “No, we’re cool. We’ll do what we need to do,” and there’s more of a collectivist mindset, which I think is good in some ways, and I think a lot of people are just kind of looking at that and are like, “These are sane, reasonable people that have completely abdicated their freedom, and-“
Nicki: We have those people in the-
Robb: We have those people here.
Nicki: … United States as well.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: So-
Robb: It won’t go well, here, however, depending on how this plays out. And I don’t really know what to do. Part of what I’m trying to do is, I’ve honestly been a bit paralyzed by this stuff, because it’s like, “Do I post rebuttals on social media?” Well, it mainly just caters to the people who are already bought into all this, the social media platform benefits by my content, which I’m kind of like, “Fuck you, assholes,” at this point, I don’t want to provide anything there. We’ve been kind of rejiggering the inner workings of the Healthy Rebellion itself to provide some buffer on this, because some of these topics are inherently political. They just are.
Nicki: And some people, their focus is health, and they don’t want any posts of any political flavor at all, which is completely understandable, it’s-
Robb: And totally reasonable.
Nicki: … there’s too much out there already, as it is. But there are a lot of people that also see stuff happening and want to have conversations with like-minded people, and it’s, the Healthy Rebellion is their tribe, and so they want to have the ability to talk about some of this stuff. So we’re looking at doing a private group within the Healthy Rebellion where some of these more, shall I say, delicate conversations can be had.
Robb: Yeah. I mean, because again, it inherently becomes a bit of a politicized thing, because it is politicians and political processes that are driving all this stuff forward. So we’re spinning that up, I’m noodling on the potential of doing my own Substack. I need another project like that like I need a hole in the head, but I kind of feel like I should be doing more, should be doing something to avert this stuff. Because I mean, we have a question at the end of today’s show that kind of speaks to all this stuff in a writ large way, but things are getting pretty serious. Things have been pretty serious for a long time, but it is reaching a fever pitch, or maybe I just lack imagination and can’t imagine how-
Nicki: Well, the water is getting warm, and ostensibly there’s a flame under the pot that we’re all in, and some of us are like, “You know what, I’m starting to sweat here, it’s getting a little toasty in this tub.”
Robb: And I guess others just look at it as a sauna session, I don’t know. Anyway, I would check out Dr. Prasad’s work. I would, if you, whatever side of this goddamn story you’re on, I would read his work. Because it’s very well-balanced, and what was interesting to me when I got in and looked at what he’s been doing on his Substack, because interestingly, he hasn’t had anything published on WebMD or MedPage for a long time, he just kind of disappeared from those venues. But he has a couple of pieces talking about how he predicts that science is going to bifurcate into two completely separate realities, and largely that COVID drove this.
Nicki: It’s kind of like that already, honestly.
Robb: It is, but I mean, but he’s talking about-
Nicki: It is, but he’s talking about-
Robb: … like, institutional level.
Nicki: … the future, like when people look back at this point in history, and it’s like, there’s going to be equal number of studies talking about why lockdowns were good, why school closures were good, why they were bad, because-
Robb: Now, he goes a step further in which there will be these two competing realities, possibly coexisting, or more likely one of them trying to destroy the other one, which has all kinds of other cryptic stuff. Dr. Prasad has … And some, “Oh, he’s a lunatic,” or whatever. He’s a super credentialed oncologist, a very reasonable, seemingly kind, loving human being that I … And to what benefit, for him, to stick his neck out here, other than he cares about people, other than he took a Hippocratic Oath to help heal people, and he’s a wonderful communicator. And so even if you don’t agree with everything, or really anything that the guy has to say, you’ve got to look at it and just be like, “Well, at a minimum this strikes me as a very reasonable, sound-“
Nicki: Argument.
Robb: … “measured, person.” Well, person.
Nicki: Person, yep.
Robb: And so then from there, where do you start picking away at whatever the guy is talking about? And I don’t know, again, I could probably spend an hour talking about this one piece, because I think it’s really, really important. I think that we’re, I don’t know, maybe we’re so far past a tipping point, I think … Yeah, I don’t know. Time will tell, we’ll see. There are lots of people outside the United States that hate everything that is represented by the United States. There are lots and lots of people inside the United States that hate what is represented by the United States and Western liberal democracies in general. But I tell you, if those things go away, it ain’t going to be better. I will guarantee you it’s not going to be better. Whatever your social justice cause du jour is, or if you really care about the plight of poor or marginalized, it’s not going to fucking fix things. It is going to make it far, far, far worse.
Robb: And I’ve been to places that have had civil wars within recent memory, within the lifetimes of people that are 18 and 20 years old, and it’s a horror show. And I would encourage people to do some thinking and some reading on that stuff and figuring out how we unwind the situation that we’re in. Because there aren’t enough Vinay Prasads out there, there aren’t enough people talking about where this stuff goes and doing the risk analysis of, “Okay, yeah, we want safety, but at what cost? What trade-off are we willing to do X, Y, or Z, in the hope that we save one life? And in that process of saving the one life, how many other lives are we destroying in that process?” So anyway, moving on.
Nicki: Moving on. This is, our tee shirt review winner this week goes to 100 Envelopes. “Thank you for being a rebel. Your community needs it now more than ever, keep up the good fight. You inspire me every week to share my opinion even if it doesn’t agree with the mainstream media. You’ve become the first podcast I gravitate and listen to on my drive to work. Thank you for helping me be a more informed advocate for my body and for my children.”
Robb: Thanks.
Nicki: 100 Envelops, thank you for your review. Send us an email to hello@robbwolf.com with your tee shirt size and your mailing address, and we’ll send you a Healthy Rebellion Radio tee shirt. And this episode, and all episodes of the Healthy Rebellion Radio is sponsored by our salty AF electrolyte company, LMNT. And as I’m standing here on this plaidtastic Wednesday, I am drinking my warm lemon habanero, and it’s wintertime, and it is the time for warm electrolyte beverages.
Robb: I just had my Salty Palmer with some orange and a Lipton decaf tea, because Lipton is awesome, and yeah, it was amazing.
Nicki: I just have to interject, this is a total tangent. But so, we do a virtual holiday party inside the Healthy Rebellion, and yesterday Jessica posted the event so that people could RVSP. And I’m not going to get this right, because it’s in the evening, but she said, “Bring your holiday beverage, your hot chocolate salt, your favorite glass of wine, or your Lipton tea,” so that one was for you.
Robb: Thank you.
Nicki: Yes.
Robb: Good to know I’m still included.
Nicki: Yes, you’re still included. But folks, ’tis the season. If you know people that might love LMNT in their stocking or as a Christmas gift, you can buy that now. The best value is to do the value bundle, you can buy three boxes and get the fourth box free. You can do that at drinklmnt.com/robb, that’s drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B. I think a lot of people, active and otherwise, would enjoy LMNT as their stocking stuffer this year. Okay, we ready for questions?
Robb: Let’s do whatever it is that we do, yes.
Nicki: Okay. So our first question is from Nick. He can’t sleep after hard training, whether it’s jiu-jitsu or weightlifting. He says, “After a hard jiu-jitsu training class or weightlifting, I always have trouble falling asleep. I also have trouble eating, too. I think it’s my adrenaline from rolling hard. I’m competitive, and this definitely affects my ability to rest. Practice starts at 6:00 PM and usually goes to 7:30 or 8:30. Both days I get insomnia if I train really hard. What can I do to relax my mind and body so I can fall asleep within two hours of training?”
Nicki: He goes on to say, “I know carbohydrates play a role. I try not to eat too much during the day because I get drowsy at my desk job. I usually track macros, and I began to up my carb intake to see if it helps the issue, but it doesn’t. For example, today I ate 131 grams of carbs from organic purple sweet potatoes, 143 grams of protein from grass-fed beef, all cooked with olive oil and seasoned liberally with Mediterranean sea salt, garlic, and pepper. I trained at 6:00 PM, got home at 8:30. I know I need food, but I cannot eat, so I recently tried forcing myself a shake made up of 35 grams of grass-fed whey, four eggs, plenty of fruit, and a half a cup of oats. I’m just ranting because I’m suffering fro this insomnia right now. Just discovered your product LMNT and instantly bought it after reading your story on the Amazon store website. I thought that an electrolyte imbalance could be the issue, so I’ll find out. I consume a lot of salt, but maybe I actually don’t. Thanks for reading, I’m excited to try LMNT and hopefully resolve the insomnia.”
Robb: Couple of thoughts here. One is, you just got to chill out on training. Like if you’re going hell-bent for-, and this can be tough. If the energy of the school is a super competition-focused environment, and it’s five minute rounds, and people are trying to take your head off your shoulders, it can be hard to relax. I’m trying to think of somebody online that has a lot of rolling or lot of examples of just being very relaxed, and Ryron Gracie is probably the person that comes best to mind, where the dude is just super relaxed, super chill, and you’ve got to adopt that. And I think that that is the way to train 95% of the time. And it’s interesting, we had our coach John Frankl here over the summer, and he was talking about John Danaher and the Danaher Death Squad, like Gordon Ryan and all these guys training together. And even in their drilling and live rolling, 95% of their training is at a flow roll pace. And these are the best people in the world.
Robb: And this is much more akin to, and this is kind of in contrast, American wrestling and wrestlers, very, very good people, very tough, but a really hard, explosive kind of energy and style, and particularly the training, every day is a fucking hard day. The more Eastern Bloc countries don’t train that way all the time. They have more intense periods and less intense periods, they do a lot of skill development repping. You’re giving resistance, it’s real, but if you both agree to go at 30 miles an hour instead of 90 miles an hour, it’s all still real. But then you can’t, if you’re being bested at 30 miles an hour, you can’t goose it up to 60 just to beat that, you have to respond to it at 30 miles an hour.
Robb: And this is a tough thing for people to figure out. I’ve figured this out because we have some coaches that are very, very good at this. Henry, John, Ray, just different people.
Nicki: When you feel it, then you get it.
Robb: When you feel it you’re like, “Oh, okay, I totally get this.”
Nicki: And when you watch one of these people roll, you get it too. When you’re going so fast, it’s hard … Well, and also I don’t know what level you are, Nick, but as a blue belt, going fast, I miss a lot of things. If you go slower, it’s like, “Oh, that’s the opening, I can do this.” Like you actually have time to think. So there’s-
Robb: And if the person’s going super fast around you, then you just let them go crazy. And are you going to win as often as you did previously? No, but you’re going to get better at your jiu-jitsu.
Nicki: And also, as John Frankl likes to say, you have to love jiu-jitsu more than you love winning. So it’s about the learning and the process and the journey of it all, not like, “Oh, I tapped five people out tonight.”
Robb: Yeah. So that’s a big part of it. I would really recommend figuring out how to be mellower in your rolling and ratchet down that intensity. And then beyond that … That may be enough to really mitigate like 80% of this, and then you come home, and if you’re not super adrenalized, then you can eat a little bit of food, and then you take a cool shower, and you do the blue blockers, and maybe you take a little bit of melatonin on those days, start with maybe a milligram of sublingual melatonin and do those things that we know can help mitigate that kind of stress response.
Nicki: Maybe a cold shower, to kind of cool you-
Robb: I would say cool.
Nicki: Cool, yeah. Yeah, not extreme.
Robb: We don’t want to go Wim Hof, because again, then we’re just getting into this cortisol thing. But any shower that is cooler than body temperature is going to cool your core down. And one of the big features of sleep, or one of the necessities of sleep is that we get a decrease in body temperature, and that’ when we release melatonin, and we enter deeper sleep, and this is one of the challenges of training harder in the evening, is that we tend to get that kind of rebound bump in our metabolic rate, and it’s harder to cool off, harder to wind down. So cool shower, not cold. Like get yourself to where you’re maybe a little bit shivery, and do that right before you go to bed. And towel off, jump in bed, the bed feels warm, that should help. Blue blockers, dim lights, melatonin. Eat the food that you feel like you can eat. Small-ish meal is probably good, because again, we’re trying to allow the body to cool off. So you do a huge meal right before bed, and then you get an uptick in your metabolic rate.
Nicki: Right. So what do you think, his practice starts at 6:00, and obviously we don’t know what his work schedule’s like and if this is even doable, but I mean, one thought that comes to mind is he could try to frontload calories there.
Robb: For sure.
Nicki: Really have a large lunch, do the European thing or the Italian thing and make lunch your biggest-
Robb: Your biggie.
Nicki: … meal of the day. And that way you’re not coming up under-fueled at the end of the day, but you don’t have to make up all these calories at the end.
Robb: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah.
Nicki: Okay, our next question is from Dan on workout intensity, frequently, and duration. “Rob, I read the Paleo Solution and found it to be only the tip of the iceberg compared to the value of your podcasts. Thank you, great stuff.”
Robb: Only the tip.
Nicki: “I’m looking for more guidance on workout intensity, duration, and frequency for improving body composition. I’ve been doing a Crossfit type of workout at my club for six months. I call it dynamic, but essentially it’s the same stuff, focusing on stability, power, and strength, and weekly rotations. I usually get in three to four of these workouts a week, and sometimes a one hour bike ride, 18 miles per hour, on off days. The workouts are a full one hour with a meltdown in the last 10 minutes. I generally burn 700 to 850 calories during that time, with an average heart rate of 870 to 75%, with max heart rate above 90%, according to my Polar heart rate monitor. I’m not sure the instructors understand the concept of stress-induced cortisol release, and I want to understand it myself. I’m wondering if the length and intensity of these workouts are unnecessary beatdowns, and/or if I’m doing too many in a week.
Nicki: “I started in March, I weighed 236 pounds and about 29% body fat. I’m 6′ tall. I lost 18 pounds over the first three months with calorie reduction, higher carb, low fat. I then plateaued for three months with no changes in eating or workouts. I’ve been 100% paleo for two weeks and the weight appears to be coming off again. Down to 212 pounds now. My ideal goal is to get to 185 to 190 at 10% body fat. I hear you guys talk about CrossFit beatdowns and working out too frequently. I’m not sure if I’m falling into that. I’m looking for a better reference of what is an optimal body comp program in terms of intensity, duration, and frequency. Any guidance is appreciated.
Robb: That’s a spicy meatball. Tyler and Luis would probably honestly be better folks in some ways, because body recomposition is what they do. But I creep their stuff enough to say that, to some degree, the main thing is that you’re consistent, and nutrition is generally on point, sleep is good, and in general, if progress is being made, you’re stronger, fitter, what have you, then that’s really where the benefit is going to be, and just maintaining this process. Adequate protein, a mild caloric deficit, that’s what gets things done. I will say that when you look at what they achieve within the Keto Gains boot camp, there aren’t really circuits. They don’t even really advocate for cardio, per se. If you want to do it, do it, but it’s not their main thing. They do a three to five day a week basic barbell program. Squatting, deadlifting, pressing, pulling, incremental increases in loading, and it works miracles mainly because that’s an adequate stimulus, it’s not so much of a beatdown that you can’t maintain it over time, and they modify it as people get bigger and stronger.
Robb: As you get stronger, you can actually dig a deeper well. This is part of the problem that strength athletes face when they go into CrossFit, they can recruit so powerfully that you can just absolutely annihilate yourself. If you are untrained or you’ve mainly been an endurance athlete, and just not really that neurologically strong, it’s hard to … You can’t deadlift 300 pounds for 50 reps consecutively, and just crater yourself from that particular activity. So I don’t know what’s optimal for body composition. So much of it is subjective to what you like to do, what’s going to keep you engaged-
Nicki: What’s keeping you going.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: If you’re feeling like you’re not recovering, part of assessing whether this is a beatdown is, are you feeling adrenalized, are you feeling so sore that you’re kind of like, “Ugh, I’m going to go do this again, and I can’t sit on the toilet seat,” kind of thing. So that’s something to pay attention to. And then-
Robb: Sleep.
Nicki: … sleep, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Robb: But the name of the game, to do what … One, you’re doing great. You’ve made phenomenal progress already. But the real deal here is adequate protein, a consistent strength training stimulus, and consistency. A mild caloric deficit. And whether you’re higher carb or lower carb, at the end of the day I think that that’s just kind of an individual, subjective thing. But those are the pieces that are non-negotiable to make this work. And if you’re-
Nicki: And if you find that this sort of plateaus out, what you’re doing, then I think a dedicated barbell program, dedicated squat, bench, deadlift, press pull.
Robb: And then a little bit of low-intensity cardio in between, maybe a day of sprints, and that’s a pretty legit program. But again, progressive overload, adequate protein, mild caloric deficit. That is the non-negotiable features of all this, and you will get there. There’s probably a nice community element, I would assume, to these classes, so that may be a draw. So that, it’s getting cold here, and although we have a decent garage gym, it’s kind of cold, it’s kind of dark. The idea of going out in the garage to work out is just like … Nicki’s better at it than I am.
Nicki: I like working out in the garage. Robb’s more social than me, so he likes going to the gym.
Robb: Well, I just like seeing another human being. I love my family, but only seeing three other people throughout the course of days on end, I’m like, yeah, I get a little squirrelly, and honestly, I get a little depressed. So I really benefit from … And also, although we have a decent garage gym, and this is getting off-topi, but we have cat food bags and we have this and we have that, and there’s never a deal where I just walk in and I’m like, “Okay, I can get my shit done.” There’s some amount of-
Nicki: You have to move some stuff.
Robb: … shuffling shit around and everything, and we’re 10 minutes away from a nice little gym here, the Montana Athletic Club, and so I just go there. In the 10 minutes I could’ve been moving bikes, and cat food bags, and everything else out of the way, I drive there and see a few human beings, and-
Nicki: And you see some human beings, and all is right in the world. So Dan-
Robb: So that community element could be a factor here too, which wasn’t really mentioned, but I think sometimes people miss that that may be an important piece of this overall story, as well.
Nicki: Absolutely. Okay, our third question this week is from Kay on collagen and folic acid. She says, “My sister-in-law who was involved with an MLM supplement company said that I should not take a collagen supplement daily because it will influence folic acid in my body in a negative way. She said her supplement is only taken for 10 days out of 30. I have never heard of this. Is there any truth to it?”
Robb: So it’s funny, this is probably the most technical question of the podcast, and it’s going to be by far the shortest answer. I had never heard of this. Folic acid is important in collagen synthesis, and the best I can pull down is a study that I linked to that basically is discussing inadequate folate is linked to poor collagen synthesis. And vitamin C is important in this story, there’s a lot of different co-factors that go into this. But as far as I can tell, these folks have this story exactly ass-backwards.
Robb: Collagen synthesis requires folate, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t encourage collagen synthesis on a continual basis, you just want good dietary sources of folate. It just didn’t make any sense to me at all. If they have some other magic science behind what they’re up to, then I guess maybe circle back and share that with us. But yeah, I can’t … It seemed like bunk.
Nicki: Okay.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: Well, we’ll link to this study in the show notes if you’re interested, Kay. And it’s time for the Healthy Rebellion Radio trivia. Our Healthy Rebellion Radio sponsor LMNT is giving a box of electrolytes to three lucky winners selected at random who answer the following question correctly. Robb, what are you dressing up as for Halloween?
Robb: I’m pulling out my I, Caveman costume from many a year ago and wearing that again because we’re going to be outside, it’s probably going to be chilly, and it’s quite warm. So caveman costume.
Nicki: And it’s also stinky.
Robb: It’s got a bit of an odor to it, I will admit it. It’s got a bit of an odor.
Nicki: They are actual, real animal skins that, when-
Robb: That were lived in for two weeks, and-
Nicki: With no bathing.
Robb: … the smoke, and the sweat, and-
Nicki: And they’re not really washable, as far as I can tell, because you don’t want to-
Robb: You could probably dry clean it, but yeah.
Nicki: Yeah. So every time Rob pulls these out, which is usually for Halloween, the girls are like, “Ugh, dad, it smells so bad.” Okay. So the answer to this week’s trivia is caveman, caveman costume.
Robb: Caveman, yeah.
Nicki: Okay. To play, go to robbwolf.com/trivia and enter your answer. We’ll randomly select three people with the correct answer to win a box of electrolytes from element. The cutoff to answer this week’s trivia and be eligible to win is Thursday, November 4th at midnight. Winners will be notified via email, and we’ll announce the winners on Instagram as well. This is open to residents of the US only.
Robb: Have we really not updated just that line since back in January?
Nicki: Well, because I have a template that I copy this from, so yeah.
Robb: So the answer is no.
Nicki: No. What I could do is just omit a date altogether. Sorry, guys, Rob’s picking on me and it has nothing to do with the show.
Robb: It has everything to do with the show.
Nicki: All right, question four is from Annette on aging and abdominal adipose. “I’d love to hear your comments on abdominal fat. I’m in good health for 65 years old, always had a belly, but I’m 116 pounds and five feet tall. Not fat, but my middle holds six to eight pounds of fat I know is there. I have a good dietary intake, exercise three to four days weekly, two of those days are weight training. I have good abdominal muscles under the fat that I can feel. Can I ever lose this weight? I am an ICU nurse with a master’s in critical care, and I have my adult NP, so I’m not without a good background education. I enjoyed one of your books on paleo, I feel you are a great educational resource, please advise.
Robb: Oh, thank you, Annette. That’s very kind. A couple of thoughts. I think that being an ICU nurse, I’m guessing there’s probably some-
Nicki: Night shift stuff, potentially.
Robb: … night shift, or some disordered sleep there, which just makes this stuff really, really tough. I’m going to throw somebody kind of under the bus. I was at the Diet Doctor … Or I guess it was Low Carb USA, and the Diet Doctor folks, who are wonderful people, were recording some interviews, and I was chatting with Nina Teicholz, who is also a wonderful person. But I was talking about the effects of sleep deprivation and shift work on insulin resistance. She just somewhat caustically dismissed this, and she was like, “That’s not it, it’s all carbs.” And I’m like, “Okay, well, you’re reasonably lean, but you self-admittedly don’t sleep at all, right?” Just her work, and she’s kind of high strung, like east coast, and she’s like, “Right.”
Robb: And I’m like, “Okay, if we wanted to get you to figure competition lean, there is no amount of carbohydrate restriction that will get you there. The only thing that will get you there is fixing your sleep.” And she was kind of like, “Huh, okay.” So it’s a multifaceted thing. And when we layer in the other piece of sleep deprivation playing into willpower, and decision-making and whatnot, and it sounds like Annette’s … But maybe that’s not an issue.
Nicki: And cravings, yeah, maybe-
Robb: Cravings, and all that stuff. You never know. So that’s a thing. So just the nature of your work environment may make this challenging, or it may be a deal where if this is really a goal, that you make some deals with various devils so that you’re day shift only for, hopefully forever, but for some period of time to be able to get in and do this. The fact that Annette’s 65, I’m personally nervous about getting in and doing some really hardcore calorie restriction. She’s only five feet tall and 116 pounds, she’s a wee bit of fluff already. So two days a week of strength training, could we bump that up to three? Make sure it’s really smartly constructed, and Keto Gains has their three 5×5 barbell workout, so find something like that and chase that progressive overload, make sure you’re proper form and all those caveats. Make sure that you’re getting, let’s say, 115 grams of protein per day, at least.
Nicki: I was going to say that.
Robb: 115, 120.
Nicki: She says, “I have a good dietary intake,” but we don’t really know what that means. And as we’ve talked about, gosh, probably over 100-
Robb: Ad nauseam, yeah.
Nicki: … times on this podcast, protein is sort of the magic bullet when it comes to body composition, so …
Robb: Every single reset we do, we have folks that have followed our work for ages, they followed other folks’ work, and they get improvements, but they still have this overarching goal of improved body composition. And even though I’m not like the weigh and measure guy, doing some amount of that is really important at various points in these processes, and people begin weighing and measuring their food, and lo and behold, they’re like, “Wow, I’m getting less than half of the protein I’m supposed to.” I wouldn’t be surprised, Annette, if you’re getting like 70 grams of protein, which it’s just not there for driving that really good body composition. And again, being older and driving caloric deficit is a little concerning, but so long as protein is adequate, so long as there’s good resistance training going on, then I would be comfortable with that, so I would try to address any type of sleep issues, if they exist. Could certainly do a hormonal panel, and find a functional medicine doc, and just see if all the hormones are as in place as they can be for a 65 year old woman, might do a little hormonal tinkering on that front.
Robb: 115 grams of protein minimum, three days of weight training, and a mild caloric restriction, like a five to 10% calorie restriction, which, again, because she’s so little, she’s going to be eating not a lot of food there, in general. But those are the things that, if we’re going to get some progress out of this, I think that that’s where we get it.
Nicki: Okay. Last question this week is from Richard, is prepping the only solution? Richard says, “What steps can a person or family take, other than to be as healthy as possible, to mitigate the situation as best we can? I look at what is happening in Venezuela, for instance, and wonder what I would do in that situation. An almost complete breakdown of society, with hyperinflation wiping out savings and making income equally worthless. Is prepping the only solution? Lots of weapons, years of stored food, water, gas, a bunker mentality? I’m not sure that is a viable option for the majority of citizens. So what are your thoughts on what the average Joe citizen can do?” It’s a tough question, and I know that we’ve had questions similar to this in the past. And I think the number one thing is, and you’ve talked about, and I don’t know, you’ve read different books on this, but just being aware that stuff an go south is a huge positive, because there are a lot of people that if the situation that Richard is describing, if, hope to hell not, but if we go the way of Venezuela, there are going to be a lot of people that are caught completely flat-footed and off guard, and that is almost more damaging than the circumstances themselves, like psychologically not being-
Robb: The psychological space, yeah.
Nicki: … ready for it, yeah.
Robb: People enter into a state of shock, and they enter into a state of denial. And if systems start failing, those people that we expect to be there to take care of us aren’t going to be there. The government won’t really be there to take care of you, police, fire, this is where having solid community connections is super important. I had a bit of a rant at the beginning of the podcast around Vinay Prasad’s piece that he did. And this last place, I’m not sure that this is a viable option for the majority of citizens, it’s not. There are resiliency measures that everybody can do. You can have a little extra food, you can have a little extra water, you can have the psychological framework that a hurricane could hit. We live in the far north-
Nicki: Earthquake when you’re in California.
Robb: An earthquake, a blizzard. There’s almost nowhere that one could live that there’s not some sort of just natural disaster that could befall one, and that you should be a little bit, just psychologically and as much as you can physically prepared for dealing with that. But this is one of the things that has made me crazy of late, when we see folks that, effectively, either hate Western liberal democracies, or don’t appreciate … It provides us so much that it’s like magic. People just assume that energy is extracted out of the Earth via fossil fuels, or nuclear energy, or even the process of creating wind and solar. There’s a massive infrastructure that goes into doing that, just to turn a light on and have electricity, to turn a faucet on and have water, and we take this completely for granted. Everybody does. The power goes out, and how many times do you go to flip on the light switch, because it’s just this habit? And so I think just having that psychological headspace that things could get really squirrelly.
Robb: And then, from there, you do kind of a risk assessment, I think. Any type of power redundancies are smart, if you can do it, and a lot of people will be like, “Well, I live in an apartment in Manhattan,” and it’s like, “Okay, then you have fewer options there.” But you could probably squirrel some food, you could probably get a couple of five gallon jugs of water and stick them somewhere that they’re not growing to grow green algae on the inside of them, and you can probably meet other people that are kind of … And it doesn’t have to turn into a prepper thing, but, “Hey, if things got squirrelly.” We have all these supply chain issues right now, like there are all these container ships and truckers that are potentially striking, or can’t work because of a host of things. And God, this is where my brain kind of explodes on this stuff. These situations are what they are due to the death by 1000 cuts of horribly ridiculous policy around this goddamn pandemic. There was just a news piece this morning talking about how hospitals are overwhelmed with people who have all these weird, worse illnesses than what they had before the pandemic.
Robb: One question around this is, part of the statement is that people’s overall health is worse now than it was before the pandemic, which I fully agree with, and it is fairly obvious, and is another one of these egregious failures that we should’ve been told to get healthier at the beginning of the pandemic, and fucking Fauci said one time in one interview, “Oh, of course, getting healthy is important,” but there’s been no-
Nicki: No national call to arms.
Robb: … putting a man on the moon type-
Nicki: “Hey, America. We are one of the most overweight nations in the world, and you know what? If we can change that, it can completely change the outcome of this situation that we’re in.”
Robb: Yeah, and nothing.
Nicki: Nothing.
Robb: And so hospitals are overwhelmed because there’s lots of sick people. Hospitals are also overwhelmed because medical staff are being furloughed because they’re unwilling to be vaccinated. Which then begs the question, how goddamn … So I don’t know, I’m just totally spinning out, but this is where all of this stuff is really tightly, tightly … Let me run with it, unless …
Nicki: Nope.
Robb: It’s really tightly tied together, and people don’t understand how resilient … I don’t understand how resilient these systems are. But I tell you what, once you break them, it’s really hard to put them all back together. It’s like a fine china plate. You shatter that thing, and you can glue it back together, but it never really goes 100% back together, and you never get every little last bit of-
Nicki: Fleck.
Robb: … flakes and granules and everything, and is a shockingly incomplete restoration. What we had …
Nicki: So you’re saying you can’t Build Back Better a china plate? Sorry.
Robb: Well, it’s-
Nicki: Sorry.
Robb: Yeah, you can’t. And this is part of the ridiculousness of all the stuff. When the idea is that you’re going to burn the current system down, it’s utopist fantasy stuff the likes of which Jim Jones giving people cyanide-laced Kool Aid. It’s a fucking lie, it is ridiculous, and this is so much of the social upheaval we had post-George Floyd and everything, this is utopist type stuff. And it’s in response to the legitimate grievances, but the response is not burn everything down, the response is not Build Back Better. It’s not that we destroy the current system, you’ve got to iteratively move towards something else. If we want to go towards 100% renewables, okay, but be prepared for rolling blackouts all the time, and incomplete delivery of food and medical supplies and all this stuff. You need to really be prepared for that, and I guess that this is super far-afield from-
Nicki: Well, let’s get back to Richard’s question. So …
Robb: Here’s the reason why I went off on all that stuff, because all this shit’s connected.
Nicki: Totally.
Robb: And it is the whys behind why a guy in a Western, liberal, first-world democracy is asking questions about, “What should I do?” Because there are hints at ending up like Venezuela. So what do you do? I would definitely try to find solid community. The fact that you are aware that there’s some degree of potentiality around this is super powerful.
Nicki: Which of your neighbors have their head in this space? Connect with them. Have some of these conversations.
Robb: Maybe somebody’s got some good … The way that people pull through things like Venezuela, and I read a book on when Yugoslavia went through its civil war, and people starved to death, in addition to just trying to murder each other over completely arbitrary differences that were generated, ironically, by the government, not by anything else. But having some sort of skill that you can trade, having some sort of benefit that you can provide to a group of people. And the situations there ranged from very urban to very rural, but it was still kind of similar. People in more urban environments, like if you had some medical stuff. You just have to think about, “What’s something I can do that could help somebody else?” So that there’s some sort of trade and barter and all that type of jive. I think that that’s really valuable. Squirreling away a little bit of money, a little bit of resources, food, water, that, I think that there’s no-
Nicki: Medical supplies.
Robb: Medical supplies. No problems with that. And then, again, the psychological headspace of just knowing that things could go completely sideways, or could go sideways, but at this, the equivalent of a bowling ball going down a stairway. There’s another problem, and it-
Nicki: Clunks.
Robb: … clunk, and another problem, and a clunk, and that’s almost … It’s better, in a way, because it gives you more time to prepare. It’s almost worse, in a way, because it is the frog boiling in the water deal. It’s like, “Well, things have changed a little bit,” but things get really, really bad before you notice how bad they are. And I don’t know what … And we, to the degree that social connectivity via the interwebs can help us, I think that we rely on that as best we can so that we can find ideas to inform what we’re up to.
Robb: Just as an aside, we put a little bit of thought into squirreling away some water or squirreling away some food, that sort of stuff, but we really tried to figure out how to do it in a way that enriches our life now. So we’ll do some food prep projects like dehydrating some food, and we get the kids involved, and we’ll make a big batch of almond flour banana bread, and the kids help process all that, and we’ll squirrel a little bit of that away. So it ends up being fun, the kids are learning how to bake, they’re learning how to do some other stuff. And so it’s improving our lives today, and it’s also a little bit of a hedge for later.
Nicki: And I’ll just add one more thing, you mentioned the skill thing. There are a lot of forgotten skills on how to live, and I’m totally blanking on the book, somebody shared it in the Healthy Rebellion, and I want to say it …
Robb: It’s the one you got me for Christmas last year.
Nicki: Okay, so that’s one, but that’s not the one I’m talking about. So the one I got you for Christmas is called The Lost Ways. But just learning some skills, like if you had to kill an animal and butcher it, do you have that skillset? Is that something you’d be interested in learning?
Robb: Well, and a lot of stuff like that, even just watching your way through a YouTube video, the physical, tangible skills are really valuable, and if you could, I don’t know, a rabbit or something like that, and it’s largely whole, and then you could process it, that’s a big step. There’s a difference between a rabbit and a deer, but the basic mechanisms like avoiding the bladder, avoiding the intestines, all that stuff is still there. But you’d be stunned by what a good run through a YouTube video around stuff like that. It’ll give you, “Okay, well, I don’t start at the butt, I start here,” and just some stuff around that. So yeah.
Nicki: And I’m going to, give me two seconds, because I’ve got to find this book. Somebody shared it in the Rebellion, it was given to her as a … Of course my internet connection is failing me. Oh.
Robb: You can just put this in the show notes later.
Nicki: I’ll put it in the show notes. It was a gift that was given to her and her husband when they got married, and it’s this collection of books, I think there’s like 12 of them altogether, and I had it in my-
Robb: Dude, you have no internet, so …
Nicki: I have no internet, okay.
Robb: Yeah.
Nicki: Damn it. I think it was like, a hog, something with a hog, Fire and a Hog? I don’t know. I’ll put it in the show notes, as Robb’s glaring at me. But just maybe put that on your Christmas list this year, and get some books that can kind of … There’s a lot of skillsets that have been lost over the years because we live in a modern society where we don’t need to do those things, but if shit gets squirrelly, you might need to do some of those things.
Robb: Indeed.
Nicki: Is that where you want to end it?
Robb: Yeah. I mean, I could go on and on with this stuff. I really am … It’s interesting that we get questions about this, and I guess the, maybe I’ll call them cynical, or maybe they’re informed, or like, “Well, of course that’s what you get, because you guys are lunatics yourselves,” or maybe people are legitimately concerned. We’ve had people in the Rebellion mentioning, they’re like, “We’re having to make some hard decisions around what food we do and don’t buy, because inflation has” … There are all these folks in the goldbug scene and all that, and are like, “Oh, if you print enough money, you’ll get inflation,” and then there are some other people that are like, “Well, that’s not exactly how it works.” But however it does in fact work, pretty legit, inflation appears to have arrived upon is. And doesn’t really affect the rich, it absolutely affects the poor, and it guts the middle class. And a lot of people are feeling that.
Robb: And then you layer on top of that supply chain issues, and the curtailment of basic human liberties and dignity, and the stress associated with that, and we’re in a dodgy position right now. And it’s interesting, being in northern Montana, you don’t see much of this here, because the culture is just kind of open and free, and ironically people are not dying in the streets, the hospitals are not, in fact, overwhelmed. There are still folks who are sick and are dying, and … But that would be true if there was “just a flu season.” This is, so much of this stuff that’s so taken out of context, but folks are hurting. And they’re scared, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope in sight, other than each other. That’s it. We’re each other’s anchor. Or life-
Nicki: Anchor?
Robb: Anchor, life-
Nicki: Life preserver?
Robb: … preserver, I don’t know. Maybe one of us an anchor, one of us is a life preserver, and so we’re just stuck in between.
Nicki: Hopefully they balance each other out.
Robb: Yeah. But, and that’s just a recipe for dodgy stuff. Hopefully it’s one of these things, like reading Sebastian Junger’s book on tribes, where people mentioned that, in Great Britain during the bombings that the Germans did, people were living in subway shelters and stuff, because it was underground, and that was the best time of their life, because they weren’t concerned with the bullshit of work, and everybody was pulling together and everybody was a support mechanism for the people around them. So maybe there will be some good that comes out of this, it will force us to look up out of our iPhones and engage one another and help one another, depending on how sideways all this stuff gets.
Robb: But again, if you haven’t looked into the history of places like Cambodia, or Yugoslavia, Serbia, these places, you would do well to even just pull up a Wikipedia entry. The story of the Khmer Rouge and what happened in Cambodia, if you’re unfamiliar with that, it’s jaw-dropping. And it’s not identical to what we’re going through, but there’s a lot of parallels there, this incremental attrition in human rights, finding some fairly arbitrary but identifiable means of defining the in versus the out group, the star-bellied versus non-star-bellied Sneetches-
Nicki: Sneetches.
Robb: … and it’s just off and running from there. And yeah. Again, I could go on. We’ll call it there.
Nicki: We’ll call it there this week.
Robb: Do you have any other thoughts?
Nicki: I don’t.
Robb: Cool.
Nicki: Yeah.
Robb: Thanks everybody, and seriously, for all of y’all, we really appreciate the continued interest and support. There are absolutely days where I … Maybe Nicki is a little more confident in our competence, but there’s some days where I’m just kind of like, “I don’t know that anything I do matters. I don’t know that it helps anybody,” and maybe that’s good, in a way, because I’m not some huge narcissist assuming that I’ve got all the answers. But some days, I’m just not entirely sure what to do. So if you’re feeling that way, you have have good company, I guess.
Nicki: You’re not alone, yep, yep. All right, everybody, thank you for joining us. Remember to check out our show’s sponsor, LMNT, at drink L-M-N-T.com/R-O-B-B, that’s drinklmnt.com/robb, and I think that’s it. We’ll see you all next week. Have a wonderful weekend, happy Halloween, and all that jazz.
Robb: Oh, and real quick, just as an aside, I generally don’t do interviews, but I will be interviewing Chris Masterjohn next week.
Nicki: Nice.
Robb: Yeah. Bye, everybody.
Nicki: Bye everyone.
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