EP 50 - EP 50 with Josh Rainer: Raw Foods, The Crisis of Youth and Ancestral Lessons from the Farm

Welcome. Thanks for having me, brother.

No, my pleasure, man. Um, I feel like you're one of the only guys that I have seen online that's really just like giving a really good example for, um, all this. Like, you're actually talking the talk, uh, but you're walking the walk with the way that you do your farming and the lifestyle that you kind of get behind. So I just want to, yeah, get you on to kind of talk about that and, um, how that kind of relates to the modern world today. But, uh, yeah, man, just want to say it's really cool what you do. And, uh, I think I, I saw you first, uh, eating raw chicken. So why don't you walk us through that?

Uh, yeah, it's funny that, that kind of, uh, that video did a lot of things.

Um, isn't it how funny how just one little bit of content can really just shift things?

Yeah, well, I mean, that's kind of like what— that, that video was recorded, let's see, like January of, of last year.

Yeah.

And I had been a couple months into Primal at that point. And, uh, you know, after eating— like, I had been eating raw meat since 2013, but mostly just organs.

Yeah.

Um, and after I started doing more and more of it, and, you know, I started thinking about it and realizing, okay, I go to a restaurant and eat tartare all the time, and, uh, I eat sushi all the time. And, and listening to what Arjunas was saying about bacteria, I'm like, could raw chicken really be that bad?

Yeah.

And so I figured if I was gonna do it, I might as well just eat a whole raw chicken and see if anything happens.

Yeah.

Um, so I I went to like a good quality butcher shop that had pastured chicken and I just brought the whole thing home and plopped it on my table and started ripping it apart. Yeah, like before I did it, I was kind of like, "Is this the end?" But you know, you eat the whole thing and you realize that you've been scared of this stuff for nothing. And it's surprisingly good. People don't know that they actually do have chicken sashimi in Japan. They do that.

Oh, really? I didn't know that. Cool. Yeah. Yeah, the easy one to get kind of people on board, it's like, "Whoa, you're eating raw liver, dude?" It's like, "Okay, but the beef tartare in the restaurant, that's raw." So like, you get a really rare steak, the middle is raw. It's just like your perception of tolerance of like how much raw meat is allowed, but it's like, 'Okay, but we eat that fine.' Um, once you try it, you realize, 'Wow, this actually feels better than eating cooked meat a lot of the time,' uh, because there's more enzyme, uh, within the meat that you have to work, uh, less hard to digest. Similar to like big chunks of cooked steak, like that's, you know, really crisp through, or even ground beef to a point, uh, if it's cooked all the way through, it's just like seems to sit heavier in the stomach and Um, what, what does Iona say about, uh, raw foods in general? And what is the Primal Diet that you were on before?

Um, so, you know, it's, it's kind of, uh, he's taught, you know, he calls it the Primal Diet because he's describing it as the natural human diet. Um, just, just like the paleo thing, it's like this is how we evolved to eat. It's just that same idea, but with a lot more thought put into it. It doesn't mean that I think that it's entire— everything he says is gospel, it's entirely the right, you know, approach. But that's kind of the idea behind it. And I mean, it does make sense when you think about the fact that at some point humans had to learn how to make fire, right? But before that, you know, what, are you gonna just hope that there's like a nearby lightning bolt and then create a fire every time you eat? Like, that doesn't really make sense.

Yeah.

And you think about the fact that, you know, all other animals on this planet eat their meat raw.

Yeah.

So when you, you know, and it's interesting because one, no one blinks twice if you eat an apple raw, right? We all sort of accept fruit in its natural state is fine, even though fruit are commonly infested with worms and stuff like that. But no one is all up in arms about it.

Yeah.

And, and that's another thing that you— like, one of the things that Arjun is so important about is, even if he's not right about everything, is that he, he brings so much to light when you realize just how terrible the food system is.

Yeah.

And when you, when you look at your fruit and you go to the grocery store, if you go to like, let's just call it Whole Foods, a high, quote-unquote, high-quality grocery store that many people in America have access to, Yeah, the fruit has all been radiated before it gets to you, so it's already been put through heat, it's already been put through, uh, you know, electromagnetic frequency, it's already been treated and altered before you can eat it. And they say that's to protect from bacteria, mold, um, you know, worms, parasites, whatever you want to call it. So when you realize that our food system is not does not give us true unadulterated food. It is, it's, it's already modified when you're eating your, like, you know, clean eating, whole foods kind of diet sort of thing.

Yeah.

Um, so from, from Audrey's perspective, you know, he kind of brings up how raw foods already contain, uh, all the enzymes that are required to digest them. So you're maximizing the digestibility. Yeah, they, uh, are maintaining all of their nutrients, so you're just— there's more to nourish yourself with.

Yeah.

And at the same time is they still have bacteria, and, and bacteria plays a huge role in our existence, right? Like, we are majority bacteria, more than we are ourselves. We are these other, you know, microscopic organisms, and part of us is, you know, we, we have When people talk about the microbiome now, which now we understand this as a thing, like 10, 20 years ago, that didn't even exist. There was no— the word probiotic, microbiome, these words didn't exist that, hey, your intestines are actually filled with these things, and if they're all messed up, your health will be terrible. But every inch— our skin is covered in bacteria, and that's why things like hand sanitizer are terrible for you because they're taking off your protection of bacteria, of, of kind of like mucus and, and these, and oils that protect your body from the elements. Yeah, the bacteria is, you know, people talk about our immune system protecting us from bacteria, but the bacteria are our immune system, and it's sort of just what we kind of have in this, in this symbiosis and in this balance with the outside world. Um, so as far as like, you know, the food element goes You know, it's like I said, fruit people understand to be raw. And that's like where this weird socially conditioned kind of thing comes in where, you know, in the Western world, we— people love sushi. They go, oh, Japan, they have this wonderful cuisine. It's a bunch of raw fish and it's okay. Why exactly?

Yeah, I don't know.

It's just— it's accepted. So we're going to go with this.

Yeah.

And that's what people always tell me about the chicken thing, where it's like, man, no, I, I know I've eaten the raw meat now, I get it, like it feels great, man. I just can't get over it mentally, can't get over this chicken thing.

Yeah.

And you know, again, not that everyone needs to eat raw chicken, but it's, it's wild how much of all these things that we do are so socially constructed. But when you look at it, every culture— this is one of the things that I think really points to not necessarily like what we should be doing, but what clearly has worked thus far. It's what commonalities do we see across all human cultures that we've ever come to know, experience, research, found evidence of. And when it comes to food, every cuisine has a fermented, dish. Fermented foods are very, very common. And, you know, whether it's for preservation, whether it's for the nutrition element there, it's clear that fermented foods are a part of being human. Um, every, every culture has, uh, organ meats.

Yep.

They eat parts of the animal that we in kind of this like modern world don't even consider to be food. I mean, I didn't have liver until I was 23. I didn't even know that there was such a thing that people had. It wasn't knowledge to me.

Yeah, yeah.

And every culture has raw food. You know, it's all over the place if you just pay attention to the fact. And a lot of these foods are like really highly prized. And so when you, when you think about that, you, you realize that there's these elements to human nutrition that are like mainstays for however long you may believe humans have been here. Those things have been there. Oh, and by the way, I'll add, every single human culture eats animal foods. There's not a single culture in recorded history that does not do that. And I'm sure most of your followers and people listening either would, you know, eat animal foods or would sort of realize that that's true. But yeah, you know, if, if, if these foods are so, you know, prevalent in every single culture, they're so vital to our experience here, um, there's clearly a reason for all of these things.

Yeah.

And so, um, when you're, when you're trying to think about how to formulate a diet just like when you take an animal, right? When we take an animal into captivity out of the wild, what we do is we try to go, well, how did they eat before we put them in this, like, enclosure? You know, it's like, you don't, you don't get— you don't take a tiger and you'd be like, so we give him beans, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, um, and just the same thing, it's like you don't get, like, a cow and you go, well, here's some chicken nuggets or something. You know, it's like, yeah, yeah, you, you understand that these, these different Creatures are these different physiological beings, and you try to go along with that. Um, so yeah, I did, I did primal pretty solidly, like about 99% raw food for, for about a year. Um, and you know, it's kind of like, for me, it's always been this just experiencing different approaches to eating and kind of bringing in what really, really registers for me. And one of the things that was really, really clear off the bat was the digestibility of the foods, the digestibility of the meats when raw. You know, I could eat like 4 or 5 pounds of meat in a sitting. And what I always described to people was that I didn't feel full, as in there was an uncomfortable sensation in my belly, but I felt satiated. My body just told me, "You got it, you're good." And that was, that was a really big change for me because over the years I just dealt with like various digestive issues, just like bloating and stuff, and trying to figure out like, well, some foods just give me trouble and some foods are better. And, and little did I know that, you know, if I just kind of ate most of my meat raw, that, that really helped things along. Um, and especially like doing it very, very strict for even just— it was just a couple weeks in that all of a sudden everything changed like on a dime. My entire gut felt different. My entire, uh, daily experience felt different because of like what was going on inside myself on a regular basis.

Yeah, it's like when people— there's, there's no discipline needed when you just see what kind of behaviors make you feel a certain way. And when you understand that there's a level of digestibility and just the energy it gives you, the lack of sluggishness from, okay, shifting to less cooked stuff. I still cook some of the stuff, it's the vegetable foods that I eat, they better to be cooked so they're kind of broken down for us, but still probably not the majority of my food. The majority is gonna be the raw foods like fruit and animal meats, eggs. Raw milk, of course. And it's just like this new level of eating. And you think about in the past how like the healthy diet is kind of like dry chicken breasts. It's because you got to cook it, cook it completely through, otherwise you get salmonella or whatever. So you just totally murk that thing on the grill. Broccoli, this indigestible plant fiber, again cooked, and there's nothing that your body can use. So you're just kind of processing this dead material which one, your body depletes enzymes, its own enzymes to break down because you've destroyed all of the rest by cooking it. But I think that— and you're jacked as well, right? Like, I think that this level of nutrition bioavailability that you get from raw foods, or more raw foods at least, enables you to put on muscle a lot easier even though you might not necessarily be eating X amount of calories because nutrition's all there.

Well, yeah, I mean, that's the idea is that you are absorbing more of the food that you're eating. So it's actually cost-effective, right? It's not just that, it's time-effective. You don't have to cook it. Cleaning up is easier. Yeah. You know, and it's interesting, you know, one of the things you first mentioned was like, oh, you know, it's clear that you're kind of doing the things that you're talking about. It's interesting that we're kind of in this, in this kind of world now where, um, a lot of the people who are talking about health, um, in various ways are, you know, anonymous online, which, you know, I understand why people are. I understand why you do it too, but you still post physique, right? You know, it's— and it's not, it's not that like literally how shredded you are is a determiner of what you know or even how healthy you are, but yeah. It at least shows that there is something real behind it.

Yeah.

And, you know, I come from a world where, you know, like, I've only really been very active on Twitter in the last few years. Most of my, my stuff had been on Instagram for a while.

Yeah.

Where you can't— there's no anonymous on Instagram. Everyone is very upfront about who they are. And, you know, being in the fitness industry my entire adult life, I realized that, especially when with my what I've been doing the last few years, you realize that the entire fitness and health industry is a very unhealthy and deprived kind of sick world. You know, like these people who are jacked, they don't look healthy. You can clearly see that their body is starving. And they're either on, they're either only able to do this because they're on a ton of drugs or they're just kind of like, they're burning through whatever their body has to sustain them. You can see it in their face, in their eyes. They look, they just look tired, you know? And it doesn't matter whether they're like on the, on the chicken rice and broccoli diet or they're on keto or they're on a plant-based thing because the whole world that they're in is centered around this like deprivation. It's like, they're all starvation diets, even if you're in a surplus or not, because they're so devoid of real nutrition. Yeah. And, you know, it's a weird thing where I actually kind of started to realize, like, when I was— when I first started getting into Primal, it was— I kind of had this thought, like, you know, in some ways raw vegans can be closer to it than, like, your standard, like, you know, meat eater. But, you know, they're— the thing, what they've understood is that the body needs these raw nutrients. If— for— and especially raw vegan can be good for cleansing. That's just they don't have any building blocks left in them.

Yeah.

Um, and so all of these diets, they're, they're usually— even when you're keto, the average keto person still— everyone's just focusing on losing as much weight as possible. And not building themselves up as much. And then you would think that bodybuilding would sort of solve that. Fitness would be like, okay, well, we're gonna try to develop strength and things, but it's still, with the diet being inadequate because it doesn't have the right nutrition, you then require to deprive yourself in order to get the aesthetics that you're looking for. Whereas if you were to eat a proper amount of, fat-soluble vitamins, a proper amount of carbs, and, and a lot of raw nutrition, you don't have to eat as much, and your body's doing more with it. There was, um, there was a study that, uh, that I had seen about mice fed raw and cooked, uh, meat, like a certain breed of mice that is known to eat meat, and the cooked-fed mice got fatter. And, you know, when people tell us that, oh, we, we evolved with cooked meat and the cooked meat allowed us to digest the meat better, I think it's one of those things where it might allow us to extract more calories out of the food but not more nutrition. And I think that's why we have this modern world of people who are fat and obese, but they're malnourished. Yeah, right. They're both starved and fat at the same time. I mean, how does that— that seems completely impossible, but that's kind of what we've done to ourselves.

Yeah.

Um, and I'm not blaming literally all of that on cooked food. It's obviously our modern industrial processed food that's completely devoid of actual nutrition.

But seed oils as well.

Elements. Yeah. I mean, you know, you, you, you're giving yourself all this inflammation, um, without any like real usable benefit of it. And yeah, and that's where I think it's really important as we're kind of, the health world is kind of turning this like new corner and it's really exciting. And I think what a lot of us are doing can really kind of help like usher in this sort of like this new world really. Yeah. But I think it's really important to have people who can stand by what they talk about and show, that they're— they're— they literally— they literally exist, that they're real, and that it works.

Yeah.

Um, because I mean, there's so many guys like on Twitter just like spurging out about this thing or that thing, whether it's on the— on the Primal side or something, or whether it's on the Pete side of something. And it's like, yeah, okay. And you know, literally, but post-physique though, let's just see like how things are going for you. You don't— you don't have to like ruin your whole life and show everyone what all the stupid shit you've been saying, but just—

yeah.

Show us that at least something is happening here.

Yeah, yeah.

And, you know, because you can argue this minutia, like, oh, well, actually, you know, this study says this thing, or actually, you know, Oginis said this thing, or whatever. It's like, let's just see what works. And that's really what kind of led me to, in a weird way, kind of transition a little bit out of the full raw eating, because again, it was still that mindset of, But how really would a human eat in my situation? And it's like, okay, I'm farming in winter weather, and if I eat raw meat, especially like that's out of the refrigerator, which is its own kind of novel thing, at a certain point my body temperature gets really cold. And so eating seasonally became a really large element of that where it's like, okay, so if I eat mostly raw, but during the winter I eat a lot of broth and stew, stuff like that. Yeah, it completely changed things around for me. I was like, oh man, I think this is better. And, and if maybe it's not under some weird lens of looking through it, um, I can't do— I can't live as effectively as if I didn't have this. So this is what my body is telling me that it needs, so I'm going to go with that and see what happens.

Yeah, again, going back to your point, if it's consistent in human cultures throughout history, then there's probably something to that behavior. Stews and broths have been made during winter, um, you know, there's a reason for that. And whether that's bone broth, animal-based, or like the soaked vegetables and onions and things like that, um, just eat like, you know, Grandma did and the rest will kind of take care of itself.

You know, that's, that's like the funny thing. So my dad is you know, is his grandparent age. My dad's 89, I'm in my early 30s. But, but he grew up with his, uh, I, I had a post about this a little while back, but his father was a milkman, and so he had raw milk in the house all the time. And his grandma and grandpa lived with him. And his— so, and you know, that's another thing, multi-generational homes, like that is a part of of the human experience. Like, you know, not having your grandparents and stuff around is very odd.

Yeah.

Um, and they're the ones that pass things down. And so his grandmother, her recipe that she always made was liver and onions. Now he tells me that he hated it and he had to pour ketchup all over it, but my dad was eating liver, raw milk, and his grandpa had a giant barrel of sauerkraut that he had outside the house so it didn't stink up the house. And so there you have the raw animal product in the milk, you have the organ from the liver, and you have the fermented food from the sauerkraut. And so that's kind of like— it always has to be compared to that sort of situation where like, okay, where is the history here? It doesn't mean that the answers are exactly this is how it's done, this is how it must be, but it's a reference. And with the broth thing, I think there's a lot of reason to point out to, through an evolutionary perspective, that eating bone marrow is what really created our brains to grow. And if anyone listening has ever processed an animal, You know, it's, it's pretty tough to, to break through bone when you don't have like modern— even with modern tools. So if you don't have a, like a bandsaw to cut through a bone and split it into— they call it the canoe cut, where you can scoop the bone marrow out— it is really difficult to actually eat an appreciable amount of bone marrow. You could smash it on rocks, but you're still kind of struggling to get it out, especially those bigger bones. You're talking about some femur you're trying to break open.

Yeah, of a big animal as well.

Yeah, but if you, if you think about the fact that, well, if we discovered how to, you know, harness fire and we can slowly over time extract the nutrients of the bone, then that is a real— like, bone marrow is an incredibly rich source of nutrition.

Yeah, you know, it has the most, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's not only is it pure fat, but it has stem cells in it. Like, that's It's such a potent source of nutrition there. And so I can understand that for animals like us that don't have these teeth, like, you know, if you have a dog, you can watch just gnaw on bone forever and ever and ever, and you're like, there's nothing left. And the dog's like, no, trust me, there's something. Yeah, that's true.

Why are they doing that?

And break down your, like, what little, you know, the teeth that we have, you can extract all of this nutrition out of the bone. And when you're living off the land in a nomadic tribe, you need every little bit of food you can get. And what's interesting is that there is raw properties to broth because the gelatin in bone broth is hydrophilic. And so it actually draws— it maintains the enzymes within it.

Wow.

So a lot of why people, a lot of what I think the benefits of eating raw food are, you know, we talk about like maintaining the enzymes, the broth mimics raw food in some ways. I'm not saying it is literally a raw food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it might maintain, it's a broth or a stew because the meat that is within the gelatinous broth still maintains those elements. A meat from a stew is more quote unquote raw than potentially like a medium-rare steak.

Yeah, well, that's incredible. That, that must be part of the reason why people feel so good having bone broth every day and why it's like recommended for healing the gut and that microbiome.

Yeah, yeah, I definitely think that's a huge part of it. Um, you know, not just the nutrition, the nutrition in it, but it's like kind of chemical composition. And when it comes to thinking like, you know, with the raw perspective it's not just what foods you eat, but what state they're in when you eat them. And I think that is sort of, you know, underappreciated because people recognize that, you know, I mean, even, even like people like us who, you know, we might be like, okay, yeah, we're eating raw meat, this is good. You're not going to eat a raw potato. No, right? You know, you need the heat to, to make those starches actually bioavailable.

Yeah.

So if you kind of look at it and you go, and, you know, even Even Arjuna says if you're a bodybuilder, you need cooked starch. You will not have the energy required to do the things you want to do. And so if you eat a mostly raw animal-based diet, you know, with lots of meats and organs and dairy and eggs, and you eat fruits, and then you do some like potato and like white rice.

Yeah.

And some broth. You have one hell of a diet.

Exactly what I do. Like, you might as well have described my diet now that I've come to, but I add a lot of olive oil as well.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. I mean, and I think, I think, uh, you know, if it's, if it's from the, uh, a fatty fruit, you know, olive and avocado and coconut, yeah, yeah, those are fine too. But I mean, that's, I mean, that's, that's exactly what I do too. And I think, I think this is kind of like, you know, there's obviously going to be personal, you know, variations, especially on both like genetics and like what your situation is. Like I said, I think seasonal element plays a huge part of it, but I really think that is like the diet, kind of. That's the, that's the base of what the diet has to be.

Yeah, exactly. You put anyone on that diet and it's impossible to feel bad, really.

Yeah, I mean, you're, you're not devoid of any macronutrient of any micronutrient, you know, especially if you, uh, if you include a good amount of seafood too.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think, I think, uh, raw seafood is, is really incredible. I mean, oysters, very potent, but I eat, I eat a lot of raw shrimp too. Um, I love to make like a ceviche with the raw shrimp.

Yeah.

Um, you know, that way you're getting a lot of those minerals too that, that a lot of the, uh, the land-based foods don't have. Yeah, and that's one thing I tell people is that, you know, you don't have to eat organs and you don't have to eat seafood, but you, you need to eat one of them, and it's better if you eat both. Um, you're not going to find the dense sources of, of those minerals if you don't eat one of those. And I mean, if you think about it, every single, you know, human culture, it was either— it either had a pretty small amount of land where it had, you know, ruminant animals where it could harvest the organs from, or it lived, you know, by water and it could get seafood. Um, and, and people, you know, like we were kind of talking about, like the, the bodybuilding world and kind of, um, the kind of general health world is they don't focus enough on, on these, on minerals and, and from food. So there's not— you don't see bodybuilders talking about like, man, liver, like that's a new thing. You know, but at the same time, it's an old thing because Vince Gironda was talking about desiccated liver tablets in the '50s.

36 a day.

Yeah, 36 raw eggs a day. Um, you know, all the liver tablets. Uh, I believe he was a proponent of raw milk as well. Uh, George Hackenschmidt, who invented the hack squat, he was vegetarian for a time, but he drank like, you know, gallons of raw milk a day. You know, a lot of these things we, you know, Art Devaney was a bodybuilder who ate like entirely raw, you know, and these things are not new. That's what a lot of the, you know, regardless of whether you're kind of like adjacent to us and talking about nutrition or anything else, what is it's like, it's the return meme, right? It's like we're literally going back and trying to find what actually worked over time that we've lost. And a lot of these things are— none of these things are new. We just have to kind of bring them to the present.

We've forgotten them more so than they've—

we've forgotten.

Yeah.

And that's where, like, you know, for instance, talking about not having, you know, whether it's like grandparents in the home or, you know, I mean, think about, like, you know, I, I, I feel bad for the modern young man because you don't have mentors. You know, we don't have people teaching us and passing us— passing these things down that have been passed down for God knows how long. It's been completely lost, you know. You, you sort of get like, you know, plopped out of your, your family and then just get thrown into some business world kind of thing. And, you know, it's like there's nothing— there's no tradition there. It's like the field you're in only existed 5 years ago. Um, there, there's this element of, of all this old knowledge and these customs and traditions that we've just lost in like every element of life.

Yeah, it's things like rite of passage that you see in tribal cultures. It's like when the boy is 16 or whatever age they deem as an adult, he goes through something which is a, you know, usually a trial of some kind, something to prove his mettle and just be a ritual to mark the passing from boy to man. And that's a very serious, like, change in your development, in your head, and how you view the world and your perspective and your responsibilities, and therefore how you spend your time. And I think a lot of guys, the first rite of passage is when they have their first kid because they don't have some other previous thing. But that becomes like the "oh shit" moment in your head, which you, you know, you're I haven't had a kid, so I'm, you know, I'm theorizing somewhat, but in absence of some ritual, I've heard from a lot of guys that that's the moment when you're just like, alright, this is serious now and like, let's change it up there because usually that would happen in a healthy culture to say, alright, Jimmy, look, you're a man now. You got to try and, you know, protect the tribe, kind of work for something greater than yourself and kind of do away with childhood stuff. We're missing that. And a whole other bunch of stuff in terms of people growing up like perpetual children, to be honest.

Yeah, I mean, you know, okay, well, so today's March. Okay, so I'm literally— I just had a son. He's like not even a month old, my first.

Oh, congratulations, my man. That's beautiful.

Thank you, thank you. And everything you said is 100% true about all of it.

Yeah.

It's, you know, I think about that because I always wanted this sort of, this rite of passage. I wanted something that, you know, was me proving myself in some regard. And, you know, as a kid and my whole life, like sports were my life. And so you're kind of trying to, that's your kind of, battle, war type element, right? And that's how you test your might always. But it's what, when you realize at the end of the day that they're all, they're literally, they're games, right? And not that, you know, like adults can't play games, but games are for children. And the way that, the way that, you know, an ancient society would have been is that your game as a child was testing you for real life battle, right? Like the sports are really just a proxy for war. And, but where they came from, they were literally training you for war. Like the, you know, whether you're wrestling or whether it's something like throwing a javelin or like these things are actually like, hey, we're gonna start you young and develop your skills. And one day, they're gonna be needed. And, you know, it's, we do not have these rites of passage. And at no point is there something where a man is sort of, one, we don't even have, like, we don't have a tribe. We don't actually have a community where the people who you're interacting with likely even knew you when you were young in the first place. You just sort of show up randomly and you go, here's a resume that tells you what I maybe have done. And that person goes, I hope that you're not lying to me and maybe I'll call some of these people and I don't know who you are.

Yeah.

And so there's this weird thing where, you know, people become adults and they've— men, you know, boys become quote unquote men and they've never been tested. And, you know, it's really sad and it's like something that's been taken from us. And, you know, because our life, our lives just become easier. And because of that, there is no real drive to actually really kind of harden in a way— and not in some unhealthy way, but harder in a way that, that means growth.

Yeah.

And, you know, you realize, because everyone knows some guy who has come to adulthood, you know, they're usually in like their mid-20s or something, and you're like, this dude has never been punched in the face before. And, and, and, and that's where, in a weird way, post-Vasik is so strong where it's kind of like, okay, you talk a lot, but can you stand by it? Whether or not you're full of shit or not, can you actually in the real world stand by what is that you're saying? Because, you know, someone who's— everyone, you know, grew up with some kid who was just wilding out and you're like, Man, you know, and you think about that as adult, like you could never get away with that in the grown-up world. And then you realize now that there's millions of those people because there is no, I mean, there is no system or situation where, oh yeah, this dude is just talking shit to you in the office and you can just smack him, right? And so there's this sense of importance because there is no check. There's no reality check. There's no, oh, and this is why I love, I don't know if you do any martial arts, like I do jiu-jitsu, I'm terrible at it, But anyways, I love it.

No, it's a negative affirmation. Don't say that. But I see the point.

You know, you're learning. Yeah, I'm learning. I'm learning. No, let's just say it. I'm a white belt and I love it.

Yeah, there we go.

Much better. And what the thing I love about that is you go in there and for the most part, one, everyone is usually very nice in these places. And if someone isn't, No one wants to roll with you. So it doesn't even matter how good you are. It's an element of, one, are you a good person? And can you do something respectful out there? And that means either can you actually bring a good quality of ability to the mat? But adjoined to that is, do you have a good attitude on the mat? Because if you're the biggest, baddest dude in the gym and you go way too hard and you're doing all these like wrist locks and stuff, then no one's going to want to roll with you and you've lost your actual merit of a good fighter because you're not part of our tribe because you betrayed our own trust here. So either— now if you talk shit though and if you're being kind of a dick, then someone is going to get you who is really good and they're going to put you in a position of hurt where they don't need to But it's like, hey, you're being an asshole and you're gonna find out what's up here. There is, there really just needs to be an actual system, a situation where men are in, where reality is, you're faced with reality. You're really met with what it is that you're doing. And you better, you better one, show up and bring whatever you have. And two, you better do it in a respectful way because we're a part of a community. And that's kind of like, you know, people get into like sigma mindset thing and like, look, I get it in the context of the fact that most of the communities that you're exposed to suck. And so to actually pursue excellence, you might have to go outside of that. But at the end of the day, you have to come back to your community and you have to find one because humans are not, singular animals, right? We are creatures, we're tribal, we need our pack, and it's not the right way. And so you might have to break free from something, but you must return to an actual element after you've gone through that growth. And when you think about what a lot of rite of passages from these tribal communities are, is they send a young boy up a mountain, and when he comes back, he's a man.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, you might have to go through this The hero's journey. But when you come back, you are a part of us and now we're all together. So it's like you have to prove your worth that we know that we can count on you when we're all— because when we're out there, whether we're on the hunt, whether we're at war, whatever it is, we have to know that you can hang. Because if you can't, you're back with the women and children. Like, that's just kind of like what it is. You didn't earn that man thing. Yeah. And that's why, you know, the whole you know, having a, having a son has been so incredible, is that I, I mean, it is a switch that's flipped, and I don't know how else to describe it, because now it's, it's, it's, it's really, it's life or death, and it's not for me, it's for someone who is more important than I am. And, you know, there really can't— there's no room for, for any of this nonsense anymore. And, you know, it's there's, there's this quote that I came across in the last few years, and oddly enough it's from a woman, but it's so true. I don't know if you're familiar with Camille Paglia.

Oh yeah, yeah.

Um, but it's, it's, a woman simply is, but a man must become.

Yeah.

And it's, it's, I mean, it really is like what I was saying, like there's, there's the men and there's the women and children. And so if you're a child and you're, uh, male or female, you're with the women and children. And if you're a, you know, a female who grows up and you're a woman, you're with a woman and children. But a man has to earn his place with the men, and if not, you're forever a boy. Um, and I think it was, uh, I think it was Ryan Michler who I heard say this other quote, um, and it was, uh, like, a boy consumes more than he produces, and a man produces more than he consumes.

Yeah.

And I think that's another really important element of this kind of, um, this growth and development is that— and that's really what sort of like led me into the farming thing, which, which was I'd always been so interested in health. And then you're like, okay, to get the best quality food, I need to— I can't go from the store anymore, I have to go to a farm. Now going back to the Oginis thing, okay, so the fruit's been radiated. A lot of people don't know that when you go buy your organic grass-finished meat from any store in America, in order to be sold in the store based on USDA regulations, it must be sprayed with citric acid, which they harvest from mold. So it's a preservative that they're washing your meat in.

Wow.

So your meat already is tainted. You can't even get real unadulterated meat. So then I was like, okay, I have to get my meat from the farm, and I need the farm to be you know, an organic farm. All these animals raised on pasture. They do regenerative agriculture. It's sort of a holistic, self-sustaining system. And then at some point, it really was just like, how— I have to do this myself. It just— it started to feel wrong. It's like, I have to— at least I have to know what it really is. Because you see all these people talking about, oh, like, I get my food from this thing and that thing. And I go, one, You don't actually know where your food comes from unless like you've actually been there, because places tell you all kinds of things. Most of these terms are marketing. You really don't know what it actually is like. But when you hear like people talk about— like, I've even heard someone who's like all about the kind of stuff we're talking about and being like, oh yeah, when you buy your, um, when you get your, your, uh, your meat from the store that, that is grain-fed its whole life, it's like, okay, well, first off If you fed a cow nothing but grain its whole life, it would never grow up. Like, cows need to eat grass. Even your conventional cow was grass-fed for 70% of its life because it's just not going to grow up. And it really is just like understanding the truth of what happens in these— like, how easy/difficult it is to actually create food. Because you're going to talk about all this health and you're going to be like, oh, you need to get this thing and that thing and that thing. It's like, do you even know what that thing you're talking about is? Do you know what it actually takes to make it? Do you know that the thing that you think is the thing that you're buying actually isn't?

Yeah.

And so there's an element of that where combined with, man, I need to grow up and I need to produce some things. I need to spend my time actually making things. That like all these things sort of converge in this point. And it's certainly not a coincidence that, you know, my diet changed a bunch. And at the same time, I was also thinking like, man, I'm ready to like to, to grow up, to get married, to have a kid, and, you know, kind of change my life direction and really do something. And so, you know, all these things— having a kid and, and working on a farm and sort of this next level of health— they all came at the same time. And that's why, that's why having this really, you know, all-encompassing holistic approach to health, it's every element of your life. It's your— it's what you eat, it's what you do, it's your spirituality. It's, it's, it's every moment of every day has to be an element of your life. And you see these people with these huge, these huge holes. Like, okay, they're really into the fitness thing, but you know, they're, they're, they're not really eating a properly nutritious diet. Or maybe if they are, then they're, they're actually like— they're kind of emotional or spiritual health is all messed up. Or, you know, that there's people who are all about optimizing like the most perfect diet in the world, but they've never been outside. Like, you know, they can't deadlift two plates. You know, if we were— if we got into some shit, it's like, can you help? Like, are you actually of use for us, like, to get something done? There really is this like reality of being human that we've really lost.

Yeah, and I think like it's important to mention as well, no, not everyone is gonna raise their cows, chickens, you know, grow their own gardens, every single household. But before supermarkets, that's what everyone did. They had their own little garden, or at least, you know, within their community. Okay, I'll do the potatoes. Okay, you do the cows. That's the kind of sharing of responsibility, which is a microcosm of what allowed capitalism as a model to succeed, is like specialization and scalability, but it's gone too far. The scalability, the purely profit-driven things, the legislation which has allowed our food supply to be poisoned, literally poisoned, um, the citric acid you mentioned, uh, you know, general pesticides and the soil quality, uh, is a whole other topic, uh, that kind of falls by the wayside when it's purely profit-driven and not simply farming like the way we did a couple hundred years ago. Uh, so it— once you understand that, you realize how much, uh, of the health problems we see today is purely due to a poisoned food supply, uh, in every sense of the word. And like you were saying about things not being what they say they are, people will pick up a packet of things and it's, you know, healthy, uh, chocolate chips, cookies, or whatever. It's like, okay, but what else is in that? Uh, all the preservatives, all the processed sugar, seed oils, like anything that they can kind of chuck in there, they will. Uh, and you're not eating food, you're eating these food products, which is— once you conceptualize that and go, okay, um, this is why I'm feeling bad, because I'm not nourishing myself with, uh, foods that we've been eating for thousands of years, and that's the switch that gets flicked again. Uh, and I, like you were saying, this emerging new health sphere where we are penetrating the mainstream, you know, the seed oils thing is, is on the cusp of being, uh, normie-friendly. And I think that that's gonna— what we're gonna see in the next year or so is a big shift. And, you know, it seems like Oatly, when they come on Twitter, they just get roasted because everyone's kind of aware of their game of selling, uh, you know, water and canola oil and calling it fucking oat milk or whatever. Um, there's a big shift happening, I think, which is concurrent with just the general global consciousness, uh, being put under immense pressure by the last couple of years, leading to more and more people kind of having their wool pulled off their eyes in every facet of life because it really does penetrate to, um, our cellular level with the food that we are eating every day and what we're told is good for us.

Yeah, and that's— that is really, you know, we, you know, we might think of ourselves in this like health sphere of things, but when you realize, at least with, with what the world's happening right now, we don't really have a lot of luxury to specialize right now. I mean, we can have our points, but you're really gonna have your bases covered if you're trying to survive moving into this future. Because if we've seen what they can do really overnight with shutting down the world, and then now with this, with this war really affecting the supply chains even more, um, like, you need to— yes, quote unquote. Um, But what you can tell is that there's nothing that they won't do on a global scale that can throw everything out of whack on a moment's notice.

Yeah.

And not that you need to go like full prepper, but you need to have yourself a basis of skills. You just need to learn these skills to survive as a human being.

Yeah.

And, and whether you're a man or woman, at, you know, to some extent it doesn't matter. You just need to cover your ass right now. And, you know, community is a— I'll never not sing the praises of community. If you can find a strong community that you can trust, please, like, go after that because we are always going to be stronger the more numbers that we have.

Yeah.

But you need to make sure that you have a viable way to feed yourself, to protect yourself, that you kind of know how to navigate a way of bringing in some kind of money in the future. And I'm not personally a big crypto person. I just don't know a lot about it. But whether that's some element of it, probably it's going to benefit you if you learn some basic first aid and how to render basic medical care. Because if you have to go into a hospital, but you're not allowed in this hospital unless you've done this thing, then things are going to get a lot trickier. And, you know, a lot of this is like, "Oh, okay, well, look, you're going a little crazy. Like, this stuff won't happen." It's like, maybe it won't, but we've already seen what did happen, and you need to, at the very least, prepare yourself for what we already know can happen because it has happened. And then, you know, also prepare for a potential what-if in the future. And again, like, look, we are not all these, like, same automatons, and we can't all be generalists and all, but but you need to have a base and then you can find your specialty, right?

Yeah.

And so again, community, like on the farm we have a guy who's a mechanic and he, you know, while we're all out there, we're milking cows or we're doing whatever, he's fixing the tractor and he's doing this thing and that thing because that is his specialty. Yeah. That is his skill that he has. And at the same time, it's like, you know, I'm learning from him And I'm learning these things just like, okay, well, I might not know how to do God knows what he's doing with like the hydraulics for the tractor, but if I can learn some basic engine stuff, like that's gonna help me. And so it really is like, there is no luxury moving forward of, oh, you know, I'll just hire someone to do this thing. It's you, you're gonna really wanna make sure that you're in a position where you just know how to take care of yourself because it's— the stakes are too high. Like, we can't— you can't just do potatoes anymore unless you're in such a tight, tight-knit group that, you know, your potatoes and that dude's milk are basically— you're, you're basically in a commune of sorts.

Yeah.

And but that has to be a really very high trust situation.

Yeah.

But at the very least You have to, it's like, just do something, you know? Like people talk about, yeah, not everyone can feed themselves in a garden. Yeah, but can you grow like a little? Can you grow like one tomato plant?

Yeah, yeah.

Can you grow some herbs in your, if you live in an apartment in New York City, one, get the fuck out of there. But two, can you put something on your like windowsill? Just something.

Yeah.

Because even if that, what it actually makes itself isn't really that much, at the end of the day. You at least know how to do it, and you understand the, the work and care required to do that. And that is a major element of like what people need.

Yeah, exactly. It's, it's having a general basket of, uh, life skills, which I will not pretend that I am there, uh, you know, that— and that's something that I am personally working on as well. But once you have that, uh, you are not going to need to obey some tyrannical order if they say, okay, well, if you don't do this thing, uh, you're not allowed into the supermarket to eat. You know, as long as you have a buffer of some kind with most of the skills that keep you alive to either, one, delay a few weeks so you can figure out another option, or two, just subsist off your own back, um, there's never going to be a a time in your life where that's a bad— where that's bad knowledge to have, you know. And once you've done it, I think most of this stuff can be learnt relatively quickly if you're doing it intensely and just dedicate a few days. You know, humans are very adaptable, and a lot of the gains are going to come— in fact, most of the gains are going to come within a few weeks of that skill, you know, in terms of going from zero to fairly competent. You kind of get by with help that is a massive, massive leap from where you were at zero compared to like, okay, I haven't been doing it for years, but I can get 10% better over the second year compared to 80% better in that first year, you know. And then that's just, that's the case with most skills in general. People think that, oh, I don't, I can't do that because they see the years it requires to become a master of that thing, which is true, but becoming a novice, that happens fairly quickly.

Yeah, I mean, you know, you think about like, okay, so something for instance like guns, right? Like being able to use firearms is kind of just an important element of what we're talking about because it's always going to be there, at least for quite a while for humanity, especially the ones that can get them. And if you take someone who's never fired a gun before and you spend like 2 hours with them and just show them how to hold it, You know, it's like that just 2 hours is already completely changed. They might have been scared with it before. They might have not known at all, like, which eye, you know, how to use their eyes and to line up the sights and how to brace for it. And all of a sudden they have like, oh, okay, I know now in some situation, like, if something happens and the gun happens to fall into my lap, at least I know what to do with it, as opposed to just being like, uh, this is just a random piece of metal. Or like, you know, I didn't know how to drive stick until I worked on the farm, and then you just— I mean So sometimes it's still a little, a little crunchy on the clutch, but it's like now for some reason I'm somewhere in an emergency and this— and a stick is the only car I can drive, I know I can get myself to where I need to go. And but you're right that like, you know, just consistent, um, experience and exposure to these things for, for just short periods of time, if you can do it especially intensely, you can ingrain a skill like really quite, quite quickly. Um, I mean, I've always— I This was always so clear to me when I was personal training and, you know, someone's never done a squat before, you know, and you put a bar on your back and they're like, they don't know where to put their weight, they don't— all these things. And then just like from the first session to the next session, they're a different person, you know. Even if they have a lot of work to do, they, they're not— it's not like you've never jumped in a pool before at this point. It's like you, you at least aren't as— you're not scared and, and completely ignorant of the element. You just need to work on it. But you've, you've broken that barrier, which is a huge thing to do in a situation that is, you know, not stressful. As opposed to, imagine someone's coming at you and there's a gun next to you and you've never used it before, and you're going to try to figure out how to put everything together in a matter of seconds, um, with your life on the line. So all of these skills that you can develop and learn, like, you know, really, like, get a really solid base. Like you said, like, that— have that basket of things you can kind of just rely on. And, you know, I really think like that is such a, you know, we're kind of talking about preparing ourselves for this world, but I think, you know, I think both you and I can relate to this like as like men that these skills, which we probably could have learned a lot of times when we were like 5, 6 years old, we had to wait till our 20s to learn these things just because our situations didn't lend themselves to being like, hey, this is— you need to do this or this is being exposed to you. You know, like, I've been on farms where, you know, the people have their kids that are like literally 4 or 5, 10 years old, you know, whether they're feeding animals or driving tractors and stuff. Like, yeah, the other day, uh, my— the farmer's 12-year-old son was driving the tractor as we were like standing in the bucket and doing some welding, you know. And I mean, he just is like, yeah, I've just been— he grew up on the tractor. Yeah, these things. And this is like, you know what I'm— what— okay, this is, this is what I'll say is one of the bigger elements, uh, for myself at least. When we talked about, you know, having a child being this major shift for, for— from boy to man as like a rite of passage, where it's not even just, oh, I have a responsibility to take care of him, to keep him alive. It's, I have a responsibility to to teach him, to, to have him be better than, than I've been. And that means that if I give him a lifestyle where he's on the farm with me every day, by the time he's, you know, he's a young child, he's going to know all these skills that I didn't learn until I was 30-something. Yeah. And just imagine what that base, what that basket is like for him when he becomes an adult, and what he can then pass on to his, his kids. You know. And, and so that's that huge element where it's, how do I want to raise my kids? And I'm not saying that every, every person, you know, can or should have children, but it's clearly without children there are no humans, and it's a very vital part of, of, of our existence here as, as a, as a living, you know, breathing species.

Yeah.

And so how how he is raised is so important.

Yeah, it's your, it's your greatest life's work, right? This, this tiny creation that's come down from wherever, and now there's plus one person that's half you and half your wife, and now you get to program him essentially from birth, uh, for the best levels of success. What, what have I learned so far? What did I wish I had learned? What I wish I had done? Uh, to your point about farms, the people that I knew growing up that were generally the most capable with their hands always grew up on a farm, always without question. There's no, you know, as you said, they're growing up around animals, equipment, tools, responsibilities, jobs, uh, outdoors, you know, compared to being castrated spiritually by, uh, an upbringing via YouTube and video games and, and the iPad, which is— I, I don't know about the majority, but like a lot, a lot of kids, uh, in the Western world, at least today, that have fallen away from the quote-unquote traditional, uh, methods of existence because it is so easy, you know. Partially myself, um, as well.

Yeah, I mean, and that's, and that's the thing is that, you know, I think for both of us, I, I think there's an element of you have to sort of experience that to understand how damaging it can be and how how disassociated from that reality that you can be. And then you go, well, I want more for myself, I want more for my family, for my children. And, you know, that's a big element too, which is like, you know, I've— I want to share with my son and any other children I may have everything that I've learned. And but also understand, I mean, I'm still, I'm still on the young side, and I still have so much to learn. And so a lot of what will happen is we'll be learning things together, you know, and, you know, people— there's this saying, you know, that like children teach you more than you teach them. And it's, it's wild, like how much that really is true. Um, and a big part of that element is, you know, one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it.

Yep. 100%.

And I remember like one of my first few weeks on, uh, on this farm, you know, I've been milking the cows and then, you know, we kind of had like 2 people going out there and then the guy who I'd sort of been— I'd been working under like 1 or 2 different guys and then one day someone was like, all right, Josh, you take point and then, you know, Christiana will go with you. I'm like, wait a sec, what? Like, like, I know how to like follow the orders but like, what, what am I supposed to do? And so it was, it was, I think it was like my second or third week on the farm, and I realized that I had already learned the names of a dozen cows, and I knew exactly which one was which to write down how much they had each milked. I knew how to turn on the machine, how to work everything, how to, you know, use my hands and get them started and stuff. You know, like, for people who don't know how, like, you can milk a cow by hand and takes a really long time, or what, what we do is You know, you kind of, you use your hands to get them started and kind of clean off their teats. And then there's a little suction pump that you put in there and it pumps it into a can. And, you know, it's all of a sudden I was just telling her like, yeah, you want to do this? And I'm like, wait a second, I didn't even realize that I knew all that. And not just that, but in that, in some moments where I didn't know something, I kind of had to stop there and go, well, what would make sense? And I'm just using my my limited experience to solve problems on the fly. And that, that is one of the big things that you said, like all the people you knew who are the best with their hands grew up on farms. I mean, like my, my job with these farms is like predominantly like managing the livestock, but that doesn't mean that I just have to understand animals. I have to understand the soil, I have to understand seeds, I have to understand how to use electric fences, and I have to understand how to work the batteries. I have to understand how to use tractors. Like, all of a sudden, I'm like, okay, my job requires this large breadth of skills that you don't even think of, like, as the job itself. It just, it goes along with it. And so by doing something like that, and that's why I just think, like, you know, like you were saying, like, a lot of people used to farm. I think it was like 40 or 50% of Americans farmed, like, in the, like, you know, 50, 60 years ago. That's, that's half of everyone. That means that, you know, you walk in or you walk down the street and every other person you see probably knew how to do all of those things. Because when you're on a farm, it's every element is required. You just have to know these basic things. And like, you have, you know, I mean, like, we're talking about learning construction and welding and and, you know, and cars. And it's just like, okay, this— I found this is the best way to learn everything.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like, even like, okay, well, we're sitting on the farm shooting prairie dogs the other day because they're just like totally infesting the area, and they destroy the soil. And you're like, okay, you know, I'm learning how to, how to produce food. I'm learning how to use equipment. I'm learning how to like defend myself.

Yeah.

I'm learning all of these things things. And it's, it's wild how it all comes together. And before you know it, it really is one of those things where it happens when you're not realizing it. And I mean, you know, to think that, you know, a cow's a 1,000-pound animal, and not that they're like these like terrifying things, you know, they don't have claws and they're, you know, they're not trying to eat you or anything, but a lot of them have horns and they're gigantic. If you piss one off, it can do a lot of damage to you.

Yeah.

And so you realize how quickly you become comfortable around this animal, how you feel comfortable pushing it around, because you have to, you have to tell it, you know, you have to really tell it who's boss and you have to tell it where it needs to go.

Yeah.

Um, and it's like, at the same time, it's like, weirdly enough, I understood elements of jiu-jitsu better because I understand, I understand where I have to put my weight, where I have to use leverage to move this cow. If I put it all into its side, it's not going to work. I put into the hip, I have to put it into the shoulder. There's all these convergence of everything that you learn when you're existing in the real world. And when your world is not sitting at a desk in front of a computer or on your phone, you learn how to interact with and manipulate the real world. And so you're talking about like iPads for kids and stuff, these kids become so good at using iPads. Like, they know how to use touchscreens because they're, they're little geniuses and they absorb everything.

Yeah.

And they're gonna take in whatever it is that you give them because what they believe the world to be— that's why humans are so successful, is we can adapt to like anything. So if instead you take a child and you put them in a situation with animals and they feel comfortable, right, you, you, you show them life and death They're there for these births. They're there for the slaughter, right? They understand the reality of it. They start to, you know, use their hands with stuff. They're used to the smells. You have them learning how to, you know, drive the tractor or to work the machinery and stuff. And before you know it, like, man, like, there are boys who are 10 years old who are more, like, respectable and more capable than, like, the majority of the modern man. And that's— it's, it's really sad. But on the bright side is that if you can realize this, if you're an adult man and you realize, man, we have fucked up, we have really fucked up, what you can do is you can go, okay, one, I will not accept this anymore for myself. And two, I know, I know how to make this better. And that's, I'm gonna have a child and I'm gonna raise them the right way.

Yeah, it's—

and that's going to create a better world.

Exactly.

Yeah, it really is. I mean, who would have thought? Like, you know, it's so weird that if you think about who— like, think about like punk, you know, from the '80s and '90s and stuff. Those punks are now being like, hey man, like, get the jab. You're like, what the fuck happened to you? And now Now the, the rebels, the counterculture, the punks, or whatever you want to call it, that is this like return to tradition type thing. It's such a wild— I don't know how we got so flipped upside down.

Yeah, well, it's decades long of propaganda and, uh, abdication of religion— or not really religion, but spirituality, um, poisoned food supply, fluoride in the water. I mean, the list goes on, but ultimately the responsibility always comes down to yourself. Uh, once you have the awareness and the conscious understanding of where you're at, where you need to be, uh, it doesn't matter what is happening externally. It doesn't matter what, you know, shadowy groups may or may not be doing in the background. It's like, okay, this is the reality that I am in. How do I best solve it for my own personal, um, satisfaction, gain, the good of my community? How do I, how do I hack this thing in whatever state that I am in and whatever environment I find myself in? It's your responsibility to solve that. And making excuses and yes, understanding what's going on so you can kind of resist it in your own way is important. But ultimately it comes down to you. And you said so many beautiful things there. One, it's like the farm is, you know, a microcosm of society in a way, and life, death, all of that kind of stuff. Some of the most transformative moments of my life has involved, you know, my dad's a veterinarian. So at a relatively young age, I went with him to work one day and he wanted me to be in the room when this dog had to be put down, really old dog. You know, really suffering in the hips. And it's just one of those things you have to do. And I was in the room when, you know, my dad gave it the injection, the owners gave their final goodbye when they were crying, when I was crying because I saw it as well. And you see the life kind of exit the dead dog's body. It makes it real, it makes all of life real. And it makes you just think about the world in a different way. You've been insulated in a way up to that point. And I had a terrific upbringing. I'm not saying it was any full of any trials and tribulations relatively, but it is one of those things where, okay, that's life, that's death, that's this extra element to things that I hadn't considered. And it's all about maturing and in this perpetual kind of childlike society where it's been so good for so long. That everyone's kind of forgot the reality and even an appreciation for where we're at and what we actually have. Like, do you know what it takes to have consistently hot water come out of your wall every single day? Like, do you know what goes into that? Do you know how to fix that if that happens? Like, at scale, how cities really operate, um, and how it all kind of meshes together, that it's not accidental. And it's because of the work of of far more knowledgeable and practical people that without that, you know, renaissance of that knowledge, it's going to degrade. And then people aren't going to understand how good we have it now, even relatively.

Well, and then, you know, that's that point is that, you know, all of this, what we've seen is that all this stuff can be taken away from us quite easily. You know, when you have people who literally are in charge of flipping a switch of what you're allowed to do and what you have access to, you realize how truly free we aren't, how dependent we are on this whole system. And it's similar to kind of what you were saying. It's like, look, we can get all caught up in like, oh man, it's the satanic lizard pedophiles and this and that thing. It's like, yeah, okay, sure. But at the end of the day, what are you gonna do about it? What can you actually actionable steps take And this is where, you know, similar to what I was saying about the nutrition thing, it's like, great, you got this study, that study, cool, that's, that's fine. How does it actually work in practice? Show me, show me the people that are, that are actually thriving. Because what, regardless of what it says on paper, oh, if you do this, if you actually do 47% of this mixture, yeah, okay, that you're missing the point here, right? You're, you're so zoomed in, you know. I, there's this kind of a, you know, people say you're missing the forest for the trees. And what I think that we have in this world is that we have two kinds of people. We have the people who are so zoomed in, they're looking at like bark, and there are people that are so zoomed out that they just see vague green blobs. They don't even see the full, right? And people actually miss the layers of their reality. And so, you know, when, and this is like where, you know, I had, I kind of got caught up in, especially with the last like election COVID ends up happening, you start like, okay, no, I started just running this whole gamut of different like political things and thinking these different ideas. Oh, if we just did things this way. And this is where every, you know, the, the term theory cell has gotten a lot more popular. And which is why, for, you know, someone like a Jordan Peterson, who I think can be really helpful for people, you know, it's like you need to listen to a couple sound clips and then you need to get to work. You need to get to life. Yeah, because if you're sitting there going, oh well, you know, no, no, man, if you just read Marx, you'll be like, this is how we have to do things. And it's like, you sit in your apartment all day jerking off. I don't care what, what, what the book says. Show me a real life thing. If you're going to talk to me about nutrition and fitness, like, show me physique. You're telling me about business, show me what you've built. Talk to me about, you know, how to structure society. Have you structured a family yet? Do you know how to run like 2, 3 people? You know how to run a community of people? Then why are you talking about thousands, millions of people? No, it's a waste of time.

Yeah.

What, what can you actually take steps on in the real world? Because at the end of the day, we're at least we're supposed to be in the real world. And, and unless you want to go like full Matrix VR and just be like, no, I'm going to stay in the pod and everything's great and there's, you know, I can, I can do flips and stuff, and there's a woman in a red dress, like, it's great. It's like, okay, cool. I want to live in reality. I want to live like— I literally spend my days in animal shit and I love it, right? I want, I want the reality of the thing. I want the fact, man, this hurts, man, it's hot, man, it's cold. I want real life. And so I need, I need for myself and for the people I want to surround myself with, I want people who are doing real life. And I don't care what, what field it is or what thing that you think you have like figured out or something. Like, let's bring it into real life. Let's develop ourselves. Let's build community. Um, let's build families and, and not worry about like, oh well, you know, this thing over here is— it's, it's, it's a waste of time. It's a distraction. And it's what, you know, I might say they want you to be distracted with instead of like Man, you could be compl— oh man, the election was this thing, or we need to do this thing, or Bill Gates is doing this. It's like, great, cool, but can you actually build something on your own, or, you know, with people, but in real life that can actually increase your chance of survival, improve your health, you know, have meaningful experiences? And can you actually transition whatever it is that you think needs to happen in the world? Can you do it yourself? And that, that's why, you know, that Jordan Peterson clean your room thing. It's like, look, you're trying to restructure society and your room's a complete mess, so why don't you like do the most basic thing? Do real things and like stop reading the self-help books and just help yourself. You know, you've read enough of those books. Let's spend less time in theory and more time in practice.

Yeah, the greatest lessons that you're gonna learn are from living real life. They're not even in this podcast, as great as it is, you know. Uh, you gotta take something that I say or, or Josh has said here and apply it to your own life, and then boom, okay, cool. There are lots of very well-read people who basically exist in a fantasy land in their head about what's the right thing to do and what's the wrong thing to do. But like you said, this post-physique philosophy needs to be applied to every area of life. You talk about girls, but you know, you're single and you're still talking about not having a girlfriend. It's like, okay, well, where's the success there? Is your relationship even healthy? Um, are you jacked? Do you look vibrant? Do you look full of vitality? And, and you know, that's, that's where most of the vegan crowd gets lost, is because you look at them and it's like, ah, you're not healthy, you know. What are the doctors that are recommending soy, what do they look like? Okay, that's not really what I want to look like and it doesn't naturally look good. What do the doctors that eat meat look like and fruit and honey and things like that? It's like, okay, they look good, they have musculature, they're at a healthy weight. So, you know, the whole, I think I mentioned this before, but health ministers in our society who are obese, it's this.

How are they all the single unhealthiest people you've ever seen?

It's inversion, you know, it's, it's done, I think, on in some levels on purpose. It's like this mockery of, you know, we should have the biggest, healthiest looking chads like yourself running the health departments, you know, that's, that's simple to me. And who's the best with money? Who's, who's managed their funds the best? Okay, we should probably put them in charge of the finance of the government. Um, that is if we have a government. Ideally we don't have one, but that's, uh, that's a different story.

Yeah, no, yeah, I mean, that's like— I love— that's like, post-physique has nothing to do with your body. Post-physique is just show me the proof. Show me that, you know, you know, I, I love the expression like the proof is in the pudding. Just show me the pudding. That's great. You got— you have this recipe you're telling me about, man, I make the best pudding. It's just like, great, give me some, make some for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're like, no, no, just trust me, it's the best. It's like Do you know how to make it? It's like, yeah, just, this is the best, right? Like, oh, just give me some and then I'll tell you. It's good. Yeah, I have to know that it's real. Like, I'm not going to take your word for it. It's like, cool, I, I believe you, but let's, let's see where it is.

Yeah.

And so we, where our world is in desperate need of pudding. Yeah, we need, we need, uh, you know, the kind of bullshit, you know, needs to fall away and the pudding needs to rise. And in some ways they actually look quite similar. But when you stick your spoon in there and you put it in your mouth, trust me, you can tell the difference. And that's really like, it's fascinating that that's kind of what has happened to the world is it's been this inversion. Like it's literally shit instead of pudding. And you know, it's, It doesn't matter what field you're talking about, what anything you're talking about, it's always like, "Post the vizique," you know, "Show the pudding." Like, just let me get— let me try your real-life application of the thing you've talked about. And I mean, that's where like a real— I've noticed that my, especially my interpretation and my The way I judge men has changed a lot, where it's like, man, I might not agree with you on like anything, but I still res— there's a respect. There's a, there's a man-to-man respect that is had for a man who is capable and can do real life things. And there's— that's this element that I didn't quite understand when I was younger, you know. It's like, it's really easy to become threatened by other men who are if you don't like them, especially if they make you feel inadequate in some sort of capability. And you know, it's like, if you've seen— have you seen, um, uh, that Anchorman with Will Ferrell?

Yeah.

You know, when Vince Vaughn is like, I hate you, Ron Burgundy, but damn it, do I respect you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, it's, it's this weird element that I, I only understand it from like a man-to-man type thing, and it's something that I think you know, can kind of get lost where people who are like, you know, there's a sort of saying that people who are like doing the work, who are, you know, who are walking the walk and are actually showing up in life, like, man, I just, I want to learn from, from capable men, you know. And that's kind of what the thing— yeah, that maybe should have happened when I was really young. And, you know, whether— I mean, I had a great loving father who was always around, but, you know, he just did not work a blue-collar job and he didn't really pass anything on to me. And so, you know, it's kind of like, okay, well, I'm going to go work for someone on this farm and I'm going to learn everything that they have. I'm going to go to this, you know, jiu-jitsu gym and I'm going to learn what they have. It really is like, it's this real-life practice of things. And, you know, I think especially because of how devoid we are of community, and of these, whether they're brother-like figures or father-like figures, we go to online to find them. And that's okay, that's good. I mean, if it wasn't for the internet, I wouldn't have found any of the important people in my life now. I wouldn't have learned all these things which were not exposed to me with the way I was raised. But we have to use these elements which have been weaponized against us, and we have to use them back the other way. And so that means, you know, find your, your tribes and find your people online, and then go find them in real life. Make the connection, and then change where you are. Like, you know, I, I've met my wife, best friend, everything, all online. I met them all online, and then I went and, and were with them in real life, and then it became real. But it's not real until you've, you've sort of, you've brought it into, into the tangible reality. And so yeah, read, learn skills. You know, we have YouTube. If literally anything goes wrong and I'm like, fuck, I don't know what to do with this truck or the tractor, I'm gonna just YouTube it. I'm like, oh, okay, that makes sense. And, and then, you know, I kind of fudge around with a little bit, and then it's like, okay, cool, I know, I got it, I got it. Um, yeah, but, you know, use these elements to your advantage. You know, people say with like social media, like are you using it or is it using you?

Yeah.

Right? Are you making money off of it? Are you building relationships off it? Or are you just like scrolling and just like consuming, right? And that becomes back to that producer consumer thing.

Yeah.

Can you take real, and again, pudding, to make pudding requires producing.

Yeah.

And that's where we need, that's where we need to bring men into now is to get into this production mindset. And not like this, like, I don't know, consumerist idea. It's like, no, things that have actual value.

Yeah.

You know, and it's like nothing has more value than like land, livestock, firearms, you know, ammo, like real life resources. It doesn't matter how much Bitcoin you have. If at the end of the day, the whole grid goes down and, you know, and someone else has like hundreds of, cattle and water and stuff, your Bitcoin has lost its value. The whole point of having these assets is you have to convert them to real life. It doesn't mean that you should sell off all your Bitcoin or whatever. It's like, keep a wide base. Have a lot of eggs in your basket and have different things you can pull from.

In many baskets.

Yeah, many, many baskets, but keep your head about what reality is. And try to trend. I mean, you know, I think a lot of your followers are probably young. They might be like late teenagers, early 20s, and they're trying to like, look, I mean, I can't imagine what it would be like to have been like in school these past few years when all this stuff was happening. And you're just inundated with this. I mean, you know, what we've seen is this just massive abuse of authority, but like to have teachers down your throat, all this stuff and doctors and then the government and all these kinds of things. And they're either, you know, completely asleep and they're being abused by their parents or stuff, or they're trying to like break free from this. And like, I need— what— there's got to be more. This is terrible. What do I do? And if anything that they, you know, like, man, if I could go back, which I don't like to do that because I love where I am, but I would say I would have never gone to college and never spent that money. I would have learned to trade. Yeah. Anything. Anything. Go work on a farm. Go, go learn from a carpenter, go learn from a mechanic, um, you know, go, go work in a quarry, something, something that, you know, that you're not just making money for another person but you're actually learning a skill that has a real-life application. And put yourself in situations where, you know, where the only, the only way is to do the thing, you know. Don't give yourself an easy way out. Like put yourself in hard situations. That's, that's why I think fitness is such a great, um, kind of mirror for life. It's that you put yourself under stress willingly. It would be easier to not do the squat. I could just not do it. I don't have to do it. But if I make myself do it, now I'm stronger. Now I can do more. And now when I go into the real world and I have to pick up some heavy thing, now I'm stronger for it. You have to, you have to purposely put yourself in things that are more inconvenient, you know, waking up early and doing hard work, getting your hands dirty. Um, that is the development of the man, to put— to do, you know, it's— being a man is very sacrificial. It's like, okay, you know, again, we talk about the woman and children thing. It's like the man is— must sacrifice for the woman and children. That means he's got to work hard, he's got to put himself in uncomfortable situations, and he might even have to put his life on the line. But to not do that is to not realize yourself as a man. And if the world's not going to require that of us— I mean, damn, it actually might with the way things are going— but either way, you're going to want to put yourself in a situation where you can actually do it if it, if it comes to that.

Very well said, my man. Uh, I, I want to thank you for joining me. This has been incredible, um, on this episode of the Soulcast. Josh Rayner, um, hopefully, you know, we'll do this again one day, but thank you so much for your time. Where can people reach you online, and, uh, what are the main things you're kind of working on or talking about other than, um, the farm situation, which is, you know, probably the most important?

Uh, yeah, I mean, both on, uh, Twitter and Instagram, @JoshRaynerGold. Um, and I do, you know, I do health coaching So you can shoot me a DM on any of those things and get you situated with a good nutrition plan, whether it's even kind of pointing in a direction for fitness and stuff. It really is because that's the way I think about it. It's like, man, I will be your therapist. I'll be your whatever it is that you need because I have just found so much benefit from such a wide-ranging, holistic approach to all elements of life and health. Um, and yeah, I, I, um, uh, I have a website called Animal Food Plant Medicine that I'm working on building up right now, um, that I'm hoping to release my, uh, my books through and, um, be able to do some projects through. And, uh, you know, even some like fun like merch and stuff that's still in the works. Um, and so yeah, there's a, there's a raw, there's a raw book um, that I'm kind of putting the finishing touches on right now. Um, kind of like a, a basic how-to with, with raw foods, um, that I think might be an easier intro than like an Arjun thing, as well as being a different approach than his. Because, uh, you know, it's— he has his thing and I sort of have my own, my own take on things.

Beautiful, man. Well, I can't wait for it. Thank you so much again, and, uh, this has been Solkast.

Yeah, thank you, brother.