Late Fame at 92, Toxic People Aging You Faster & Comedy History Auctioned Off

In this episode of the daily news/opinion show "Filtered," host TJ Walker presents a roundup of recent cultural, scientific, and political stories, weaving each into personal‑development insights. He begins with the obituary of sculptor Thaddeus Mosley, who achieved global recognition only in his 90s after a lifelong career as a U.S. Postal Service employee, using the story to illustrate the value of persistent passion over early fame. Walker then reviews a National Institute on Aging study of 2,000 adults that links regular interaction with "hasslers"—people who generate chronic stress—to a measurable 1.5% increase in epigenetic aging per stressful relationship, emphasizing the importance of curating positive social circles. The episode moves to the historic auction of the New York Friars Club’s memorabilia, marking the end of a century‑long comedy hub, and reflects on how digital media has supplanted physical gathering places for entertainers. Next, Walker highlights Nepal’s political upheaval: former rapper Ballendra Shah leads the Rashtriya Swatandra Party to a landslide parliamentary victory, underscoring how media‑savvy, non‑traditional backgrounds can translate into political power. The show then delves into newly released Justice Department records from the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, focusing on four FBI interviews with a woman alleging that Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump for sexual assault in the 1980s; Walker notes that many pages of those interview summaries are missing, raising questions about document handling and political bias. Finally, Walker shares findings from an eight‑year, 2,000‑person study published in Neurology that shows sustained engagement in intellectually stimulating activities (reading, puzzles, museums, language learning) builds cognitive reserve and delays Alzheimer’s onset by about five years, urging listeners to diversify mental challenges. Throughout, Walker intersperses promotional spots for his communication courses, AI clone, and books, and repeatedly ties each news item back to communication skills, relationship management, and lifelong learning.
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Ultimize. A sculptor who spent decades working a day job before finally finding global fame in his 90s. New research suggests difficult people in your life might actually make you age faster. The legendary Friars Club in New York City sells off its final relics, marking the end of a century of comedy history. In Nepal, a former rapper is on the brink of leading a political earthquake after a landslide election. New revelations from the Epstein investigation files raise questions about missing documents and past allegations involving Donald Trump. And finally, scientists say challenging your brain throughout life may help you delay dementia and keep you mentally sharp longer. All that and more today on Filtered. Welcome to Filtered with TJ Walker. Hi and welcome. Thanks so much for joining me today. Thaddeus Mosley, the acclaimed American sculptor who finally achieved global recognition in his 90s, has died at the age of 99. His life stands as a reminder that success doesn't always arrive early. For nearly 7 decades, Mosley carved monumental abstract sculptures from reclaimed wood, often working quietly in Pittsburgh while supporting his family with a full-time job at the US Postal Service. Even when the art world largely overlooked him, he kept creating works inspired by African art traditions and modernist masters like Konstantin Brunschuschi and Isamu Noguchi. And forgive me, those of you who are real artists and know that I probably botched those names. His breakthrough finally came late in life. At age 92, he was included in the prestigious Carnegie International Exhibition, launching a wave of attention from major galleries and museums around the world. Mosley said the recognition never changed his art. It only changed the circumstances around it. For him, the work itself has always been the goal. So this was inspirational to me. At many levels. And full disclosure, I was not familiar with his art. You know, I do like some sculpture and go for the classics, Rodin, and been to his museums in also in Pennsylvania and in Paris. I was not familiar with him, but to me this is fascinating. He worked at the U.S. Postal Service his entire career, his entire regular career, until he was able to get full retirement. He always just did his sculpture quietly on weekends, evenings, free time, vacations. He just kept creating and creating and creating. And apparently at one point, relatively early in his life, he was offered an opportunity to go to New York City, but he already had a family and it didn't come with any big salary. So he figured out he didn't really want to do that. He was the first man in his family in recent generations not to work. In coal mines. He studied English and journalism at the University of Pittsburgh, served in the Navy at the end of World War II, so he also was a veteran of that war. He did have a solo show at the Carnegie Museum in 1968, but things really never took off until the age of 92. Fascinating public sculptures displayed at Rockefeller Center. He often created works over 10 feet tall. And he was inspired by African tribal sculpture traditions and was working in his studio until really very recently. As I mentioned, he just passed away at the age of 99. Here is what he said in his own words: Every artist in the end must be self-taught because everyone must go beyond the lessons of other people. So no, he didn't have the traditional degree in art and the master's in fine art. He studied journalism in college and was a post office worker. I don't know if he actually delivered mail door to door, but he worked for the U.S. Postal Service and was able to finally spend more time in his art after retiring at presumably the early '60s. So it's not the kind of career young artists aspire to. Everyone wants to be rich and famous right away. Did not happen for him. But this shows, I think, what does happen or can happen if you really follow your passion. Now, these days everyone from Scott Galloway and others say, no, no, don't follow your passion, do what you're good at that makes a lot of money. Now, he presumably could have done something to make more money than being a postal official, but he did that so he could then spend all the rest of his time making his art and not worrying about how to be more commercial, how to make more money. And he walked to the beat of his own drummer. So I think you have to respect that. The point he was making when the quote I just read, I think, is something widely accepted in the art world. You can have a PhD in art, but if you really want to be seen as a Picasso, as a Dalí, you have to break new ground. You can't simply copy what everyone else is doing. If Impressionism is in vogue, you can't be the 122nd best Impressionist. You have to be the one who creates some new genre or does something different. And that's what he's given credit for doing. He also says, I knew that I wasn't going to get the same recognition, have the same opportunity— presumably he means by staying in Pittsburgh— but I tried because it's something I wanted to do. He also says, reflecting on his late-life fame, well, it feels good. I don't feel the work has improved, but the situation has tremendously. So I guess it was obviously very nice to receive recognition, more money, more attention late in his life, in his 90s. But he said it didn't really change the work because he did the work because he loved the work. That I think is the real message is find a craft that you really enjoy and do it. Maybe you don't get any lucky breaks. Doesn't sound like this guy had any lucky breaks till he was 92 years old. The point is, didn't matter if you enjoy doing it and you can control the means of production. Now, it's one thing to say my passion is making movies. I'm going to make movies till I'm 92. Well, making movies even today is expensive and there's a lot of collaboration even if you do things cheaply digitally. But sculpture is something you can do really basically just with your time. I'm sure there's some minimal expenses finding driftwood, but if that's your artistic passion, for that matter writing novels, I mean there's certainly been people who've written novels their whole lives. I'm not aware of anyone having their first breakthrough novel at age 92. But writing novels is another one of these things. You can do it without spending money if you really enjoy it. So congratulations to the lengthy career and the life of Thaddeus Mosley. You are a testament to devotion to a craft, devotion to your art, and living life your own way. Congratulations.
We'll be right back after this break.
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Want to advertise here? You better be legit. No crypto, no junk food, no supplements. Go to tjwalker.com/advertise. Hasslers and aging. A new study suggests that difficult people in your life may be doing more than ruining your day. They might actually speed up biological aging. Researchers studying more than 2,000 adults found that people who regularly interact with what they call hasslers, individuals who create stress or conflict, showed measurable signs of faster aging at the cellular level. Scientists analyzed saliva samples and measured epigenetic markers that reveal how quickly the body's aging. They found that every additional stressful relationship increased the pace of biological aging by about 1.5%. Now that may sound small, but researchers say those effects can accumulate over time and contribute to earlier chronic disease. Women and people already dealing with health problems were more likely to report these stressful relationships, reinforcing a broader scientific finding that strong supportive relationships protect health while chronic social stress can slowly undermine it. Okay, so what are we to make of this? You can't necessarily pick your family, your children, your parents, and very few people would say they don't have at least somebody who's kind of a stressor, kind of a hassler in their life. So you can't pick that, but you can pick your friends and you can decide among your friends who's positive, upbeat, nice to be around, pleasant. Talking about something good that's going on in their life versus someone who's complaining. Now, we all have something we can complain about, and we all need friends that we can confide in during tough days. But, and this is a huge but, it has to be proportionate. There is a lot of literature out there, whether it's a romantic relationship, a marriage, or any kind of relationship you have with someone, you need a 3 to 1 ratio minimum of good news versus bad news, good topics versus bad topics, praise versus criticism. And if it's more like 50/50 or 90/10 negative to positive, that could be really causing a strain on your life. Literally, it could make your life shorter. Let's look at some more of the facts. The study was conducted by the National Institute on Aging. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, so this wasn't just, you know, one associate psychology professor at obscure university doing a test on 7 students. This was done in a serious way with more than 2,000 participants. Participants reported social relationships in the previous 6 months. They collected saliva samples from— for DNA analysis. The DNA markers measured the epigenetic biological aging. Now, 30% of people reported at least one hassler. Women did report more hasslers than men. I'll let you make of that what you will. Adverse childhood experiences linked to more hasslers. Family members often identified as primary hasslers. Again, I'm not quite sure what you do with that. It's very hard to spend less time with family members, especially if it's your immediate nuclear family, although you can move away if it's extended family, I guess. Positive relationships are linked to longer life expectancy. Now, this is something that we've seen again and again and again in recent years. That the key to living longer and happier is quite often having strong personal relationships, positive relationships, not relationships where you're arguing all the time and bickering all the time. But the key isn't to simply eliminate all negative people from your life because that can result in loneliness. And the stats on that are also very troubling. Loneliness is linked to 871,000 thousand deaths annually worldwide. So loneliness is a big killer. So it's not simply saying, oh, that person's criticized me once, so we can never be friends again. That's learning the wrong lesson, because if you adopt that attitude, you can end up very, very lonely indeed. It's about proportion. We all know some people where all they do is complain. Cause drama, create stress, you've got to figure out how to spend less time with them. Okay, some more comments from this research. This is from Byung-Kyu Lee with New York University. Those less positive relationships may function as chronic stressors. This is someone involved with the study. Even small effects in terms of biological aging can accumulate. This is according to Brie Perry, of Indiana University, we do not know whether hasslers actually cause people to age. This according to the survey, it's correlational. They cannot prove causation. Dembra Umberson of the University of Texas weighs in and says it's just very important to have relationships. So you can't opt out of all relationships trying to protect yourself. You have to be proactive seeking relationships. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. This is the show where each day we look at top business news, economic news, technology news, health news, as in this case, cultural news, and then analyze it through the lens of personal development skills and communication skills. Who am I to be doing this? I've been helping people with their personal development skills and communication skills more than 40 years. And I do it in the form of online courses, workshops, seminars, in-person training and coaching as well. So if you think you could benefit in improving your own personal relationships, you may want to check out a free course of mine. You can get a free positive habits building course at ultimize.com. That's ultimize.com. Ultimize.com. Also find out more information about our longer paid online courses. There's lots more to come today. Stay tuned.
We'll be right back after this break.
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The end of the Friars Club. The legendary New York Friars Club, once a gathering place for some of the biggest names in show business, has effectively reached its final curtain. In an auction titled Legends of Comedy, More than a century of memorabilia from the famed entertainment fraternity was sold after the club's Manhattan building went into foreclosure. Items ranged from Jack Benny's violin to, via, to photo archives featuring stars like Barbra Streisand and Sammy Davis Jr. Two Frank Sinatra pieces brought the highest prices, each selling for $64,000. A trunk filled with handwritten jokes used by generations of comedians sold for nearly $30,000. For longtime members, the auction felt less like nostalgia and more like the funeral of a cultural institution. Many had hoped the artifacts would end up preserved in museums rather than scattered among private collectors. On a personal note, I do remember I had one opportunity to go to the Friars Club. This was probably 15, 17 years ago, and it did seem like a sacred place when you think of all of some of the most famous comedians, certainly arguably all of the most famous comedians in North America at some point spent time there, were given membership. There was a very humorous Seinfeld episode based on Jerry Seinfeld's involvement with the club. And it was a special place. I can't remember if I saw comedy there or music of some sort, but I got a full tour by a member, and I will remember that and cherish it as a sort of a window into a bygone era. I think it is important to note a couple of things. We are still suffering and well, suffering the consequences of the pandemic. This is the sort of thing that closed during the pandemic. It never made it back. Now, there's a chance it wouldn't have made it anyway because the age of the average friar was pretty old. But they never truly recovered from the pandemic. They did have very expensive real estate in New York City. Just the taxes alone and the upkeep, I'm sure, was tough. The other thing, and it sounds like I'm hitting this once again, you could argue too often, I think it's a sign of this, our cell phone. For those of you listening on the podcast, I'm holding up a cell phone. So many people would rather stay at home, watch comedy on their cell phone, text their friends rather than go to a place, have an adult beverage, and sit around with buddies in the industry. Now, the Friars Club did start off at a time when you did not see as many comedy clubs in every town in the country, so it was more of a meeting place. But these days, comedians, and the ones I, I know and brush shoulders with, they're either in comedy clubs, actual working comedy clubs, refining their set, trying to get paid if they're outside of New York City, practicing new content often if it's in New York City, or LA, and then their downtime, they're like a lot of the rest of us. They're at home sitting in front of a screen, sitting in front of a television, sitting on a couch, holding a cell phone. So, part of me that thinks it's very sad that so few Americans and increasingly people around the world don't have communal spots where they just get together with people, especially people they have stuff in common with, as comedians did. At the Friars Club. Let's look at some more facts here. Jack Benny— I realize most of you don't know who Jack Benny is, but those of you above a certain age well remember him. He was a pillar of the entertainment community in the United States many, many, many decades ago. He had a violin he sold— that was sold, he didn't sell it, he's been dead a long time— that was sold for $22,400. Frank Sinatra portrait sold for $64,000. You may be thinking, well, you know, Frank Sinatra wasn't a comedian. He was the subject of various roasts, and Don Rickles was a common part of that whole crowd, as well as Dean Martin. These were often televised. Now, Comedy Central has done a great job of reviving roasts, and I do enjoy roasts., and I'm a fan of Jeffrey Ross, the Roastmaster General. But you can still see on old YouTube clips, they still sell it on DVDs, these Friar Club roasts. Some of them don't age well, I will be honest with you, but it's still an interesting time capsule. A Sinatra bronze bust also sold for $64,000. A Quentin Tarantino roast poster sold for $5,000. There was a Sinatra action figure sold for $256. You could buy a joke trunk, a trunk filled with old jokes, for $28,000. A lot of other rare celebrity photos. Again, a little bit sad. It's a beautiful building on 55th Street on the east side of New York City. Their roasts were often done at the nearby Waldorf Astoria. The Friars Club itself wasn't quite big enough to have a giant roast and a televised affair, but it was done under the auspices of the Friars Club. So Friars Club, you're a part of history. You will be missed, but fortunately there appear to be more comedians making an actual living than ever before. So your, your tradition of celebrating comedy, humor, getting laughs does live on.
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Want to support the show? Skip the ads and buy me a coffee. That's buymeacoffee.com/tjwalker. Nepal's political upheaval. Nepal's political establishment may have just been upended by one of the most unusual candidates in modern politics. A former rapper, Ballendra Shah, once known for his music career, now leads the Rashtriya Swatandra Party. Apologies if I botched that pronunciation. That party is headed toward a landslide victory in Nepal's parliamentary election. The party, founded only 4 years ago, has already won more than 100 of the country's 165 directly elected seats and is leading in many others. The surge follows youth-led protests last year that toppled Nepal's long-dominant political leadership amid anger over corruption and economic frustration. Shah first gained national attention when he won the mayoral race in Kathmandu in 2022 as an outsider reformer. Now his movement appears poised to form the next government. Marking one of the most dramatic political shifts Nepal has seen in decades. Let's look at some more facts of this, and I'll explain why I think this is significant regardless of whether you live in Nepal or don't, because most of our viewers and listeners do not live in Nepal. Okay, the election was held after the 2025 Gen Z-led protests. We talked about that on the show. There was a huge protest of young people in that country unhappy with government corruption and government policies there, and they had an impact. This party was founded only 4 years ago. He was elected mayor in 2022, and now it looks like he's going to be taking over the entire country. So the government requires a majority of the 138 seats in the parliament. Now, what initially started all this was a social media ban. Political leaders a number of years ago tried to ban all social media. Guess what? Not a popular thing to do if you're a politician among young people. The supporters celebrated with flower garlands and vermilion powder. So here's why I'm putting a spotlight on this issue. I think if you are someone who aspires to hold political power in democracies around the world, you have to take a look at someone like this, someone like— and I don't hold him up as a role model very often— Donald Trump, someone like Zelensky in Ukraine. When you look at the backgrounds of these people, Zelensky was a TV comedian. Donald Trump was arguably, you could call him a TV comedian, but a reality TV talk show host was basically his claim to fame. And now we have a former rapper gaining, about to assume power over a nation. What do they all have in common? They did two things. They learned two things. They learned how to communicate effectively through the media And they attracted people who liked them. They attracted followers. That, I think, is real currency in politics everywhere in the world these days. If you have any kind of aspirations to win votes in anything that is a democracy, or at least still has remnants of a democracy, you got to figure out how to communicate in the media and build a tribe, build followers. Love him or hate him, and there's a good case to be made for both, Trump did that with his many, many years of getting his face on TV, not just as a paid host and producer for shows like The Apprentice, but just buying his way in, buying full-page ads in the New York Times in 1988. To demagogue things like why certain young innocent Black men should be given the death penalty. Again, I'm not relitigating that. My point is simply Trump is someone who didn't play the traditional game. He didn't get a law degree, start off running for city council, state legislature, House, Senate, governor, and then president. No, he spent his entire career building a media following, Honing his communication skills, building fame. Now you can make the case that isn't the best thing for democracy, but that is how increasingly people are gaining power. It happened in Ukraine. Zelensky was a TV comedian. He played a politician part on TV as a comedian. And now we have this situation in Nepal where the next leader is coming from an entertainment background. Now, true, he has served as mayor now, so he does have some political seasoning. But I point this out to you: if you, if you do aspire to leadership in your country, your state, your city, your community, sometimes the best path there is not the traditional linear way of working your way up precinct manager, city council, mayor, governor, or congressman, governor. Sometimes you have to think about, how can I do something completely different? How can I be interesting? Because the modern social media world values being interesting. You can make the case that maybe that's not the best thing for democracies. Maybe it's not generating our best people taking over power, but that is reality. Am I telling you if you aspire to become the president of your country, you should spend all of your time making demo records and trying to be a rapper? No, but I do want you to at least think about how you can have the other side of you, whether you like singing on the weekends or playing piano as a hobby or doing sculpture, whatever it is. Think about how you can show other sides of your personality and share it on social media and other places, because you never know, that may ultimately be what gets you elected to office. I'm TJ Walker. This is Filtered. I appreciate you spending time with me. By the way, I do have a lot of politicians, aspiring politicians, and incumbent politicians reach out to me and hire me to do their media training and public speaking training. I have personally worked with US senators, US presidential candidates, presidents of other countries, prime ministers, Nobel Peace Prize winners, members of parliaments around the world. If you're thinking of running for office, and you're going to have an announcement in the next 2 years, you may want to hire someone like me, or hire me. I do have online courses specific to candidates for public office, so you can check it out by going to ultimize.com, and you can even get a free course on communication skills which could help you a great deal as a candidate. And you can also find out information about how to contact me if you are looking for political training on how to speak to the media and how to give speeches, because the importance of those skills has never ever been higher. More in a moment.
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Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me. Epstein Files— I'm kind of tired about— of talking about them, but there's been huge, huge dramatic news since we last met on Friday, and yet nobody really seems to be talking about it. Epstein files and questions about Trump. Newly released Justice Department records are raising renewed scrutiny over previously withheld documents in the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. FBI interview summaries from 2019 describe a woman who alleged that Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump in the 1980s when she says she was between 13 and 15 years old and that Trump sexually assaulted her. I'll— you may want to send children out of the room. I will brief you on the exact nature of those charges in just a moment. But first, Trump has repeatedly denied wrongdoing, says it's all fake news, and investigators did not substantiate the allegations or bring criminal charges. That's what Trump is saying. It's true, they did not criminal charges. What's drawing attention now is the investigative record. The FBI interviewed the woman not once, not twice, not three times, but four times during the Epstein investigation. Now, that's something investigators rarely do with claims that they immediately dismiss as completely non-credible. At the same time, journalists report that dozens of pages tied to those interviews remain missing or were previously removed from public databases before later being restored, prompting new scrutiny from lawmakers. So this is what's bizarre here. Now you could say, well, well, TJ Walker, that doesn't sound credible. You know, anyone can say anything about anyone. That's true. You're absolutely correct. But, and this is a big but, if someone just says, oh, I don't know, your father assassinated Fidel Castro, and they call the FBI, and, or assassinated John F. Kennedy, shall we say, and the FBI does a quick analysis and turns out the person you're talking about wasn't even alive when John F. Kennedy was assassinated, they don't then schedule another interview with you and then another interview with you and then another interview. They might respectfully listen to you if somehow they were to meet with you in person. They might look at you, take a few notes, But the notes would say, this person is clearly delusional, let's not waste any more time here. And the case would be closed. There would be an investigative record of those notes that states exactly why they think you're cuckoo. Here's the problem: the records of those meetings have suddenly disappeared. Okay, maybe they'll say the same thing. It's possible that there was some bureaucratic snafu, and each time members of the FBI met with this woman, who was an adult woman at the time, they came to the conclusion she was crazier than a bedbug because she's stating things that can't factually be true. She's saying, well, Epstein took me and Trump on a spaceship to Mars, and I was assaulted there. If she said something that outrageous and crazy, it would be in the notes, and any fair-minded person, myself included, would, would come to the conclusion, well, clearly Donald Trump is innocent here, these are false allegations. But the records are missing. Why is that? Now, it's certainly possible that the woman made allegations that seemed extraordinarily credible. It could be she said things that matched up with other things we knew. It could be that she came across as sane, as sensible, as someone who was in fact abused and troubled by it and trying to do her best to not relive the worst moments of her life but give honest and accurate, fair information to FBI investigators, not once, not twice, not three times, but on four separate occasions. Now, she has since said, I don't want to have anything more to do with this. She allegedly too concerned about security. I can certainly understand that. But here's what's bothering me tremendously. I think this means Trump has won. The fact that so few media organizations are even talking about this means Trump has won. And Trump essentially won by getting us to, uh, don't look here, hey, I'm going to start a war over here that could cause World War III, according to the former president of Russia. Hey, that's more exciting than these Epstein files, right? Well, yeah, the prospects of World War III is exciting, there's no doubt about that. But should it be this easy to just push legitimate stories off the front page. I mean, I'm old enough to remember where people were just horrified that Bill Clinton would have a dalliance of a sexual nature with an adult woman. I would love to see all these Republicans who talked about how awful it was for Clinton to be involved with a 23-year-old because she was a mere child. And now we have FBI records purporting the idea that Clinton— excuse me, not Clinton— Trump had sexual activity with a 13-year-old. Now, you can, you could certainly criticize Bill Clinton, as many have, for having any kind of sexual contact with a staff member. And you could certainly say, well, at age 23, maybe she was a little bit too deferential to the President of the United States. You could make that case, but you can't really make a case that Donald Trump— and I'll go ahead and tell you what the allegations are. The woman has stated, and this is in the FBI records, this is not me passing along just willy-nilly rumors floating on the internet. This is in FBI records as released by the Epstein report, by the Epstein files. She is alleging that Epstein led her to Trump and that Trump demanded to receive oral sex from her and that she bit him in a certain place and he then hit her. Upside the head and said, get out of here. Those are the allegations. Again, I don't know if they're credible. I would love to know. And the reason we don't know is these files that are coded in the Epstein files as existing, the individual files, have suddenly disappeared. What's the possible reason for it disappearing? You could say, well, maybe there's someone who really dislikes Trump, and these reports all say why the woman was crazy— or she was a girl at the time— why the woman at the point of testimony was crazy, and why it wasn't followed up and investigated. So may— I'm being fair now, folks— it may be that there's some dastardly anti-Trump partisan in the Department of Justice who removed those files because they all suddenly made Trump look innocent. That's one theory. Doesn't sound very plausible to me given who's running the Department of Justice these days. But if you're theorizing in a fair way and not just in a conspiracy-minded way to make someone look bad you don't like, That's a possibility. However, there's another possibility. The possibility is the actual reports from these 4 separate interviews with this woman making these hideous criminal allegations against the current president of the United States— another scenario is that she seemed very credible. She seemed honest. She didn't seem like she was making up anything. Everything she said factually comported with the world as we know it. Maybe some of it she couldn't prove. Maybe most of it she couldn't prove. But it was not like, for example, Donald Trump just saying Barack Obama was born in Kenya.. It wasn't just saying outrageous things. It wasn't like President Trump just purporting that Ted Cruz's father killed JFK, things that were obviously the rantings of a lunatic that could be fact-checked and proven as false. So to me, that is far and away the more reasonable assessment as to what happened. Is someone who was pro-Trump, i.e., Kash Patel, Pam Bondi, everyone with any authority in the Department of Justice these days, saw these reports. So, hmm, this makes the president look really bad. We want to help the guy, otherwise we're going to get run out of office too. We could all go to jail, or certainly we'll lose our job, and we'll have to do honest work for a living, and that's going to be hard because we're unqualified. Let's hide the reports. I don't know what other possible explanation makes sense. So these FBI interviews took place in August and October of 2019. Hmm, who was president in August and October of 2019? Who might want something like this hidden? Hmm, I want it buried. Might want it deleted. Hmm, who could that have been? Oh yeah, it was Donald Trump. The interviews documented in official FBI Form 302 reports. So the woman, again, she's alleging that the abuse happened when she was between the ages of 13 and 15. Now you could say, well, she doesn't remember the difference between age 13 and 15. If you want to discount her for that reason, okay, be my guest. She's alleging that Epstein introduced her to Donald Trump, that the incident occurred in the 1980s. I was trying to be fair here to Trump, so I used every kind of Google, every kind of ChatGPT to, to say, is there something with her timeline that makes it impossible for this to have occurred when she said, and nothing came back. Doesn't mean he's guilty, but if she alleged this happened in, you know, 1978 and Epstein was still a high school teacher, then we could say, okay, this is incredible. But that's not what's happened. Now, no criminal charges were filed against Trump, but let's be fair, these investigations happened while he was president. The Department of Justice released additional interview records in 2026. They claim that the files were mistakenly labeled as duplicates, but they're not claiming that there was only one interview with this. See, that again would make sense if they're saying there were 4 separate interviews. Oops, we had a problem with duplicates. There was only one interview. Maybe you could say, okay, that makes sense. Let's see the transcript of the interview. We're not seeing that. 15 additional documents were later released after re-review. I should point out that Congress passed a law signed by Donald Trump ordering them to release every single file related to Jeffrey Epstein. We continue to see stuff like this. Oh yeah, there's more. Oh yeah, we didn't quite give you it. Let's dribble out a little more. Again and again and again, it's happening. Where are the conspiracy theorists when you need it? The people who were so quick to say, well, Hillary Clinton must be running a pedophile ring in a basement from a pizzeria in Washington, DC. Let's go there with guns. Even though the pizzeria had no basement and Hillary Clinton was not involved, why aren't they excited about this? I also had to tell you, this is a perfect example of how the so-called liberal media isn't. If the main so-called mainstream media, the New York Times, and CNN, not to mention MSNBC, if they were anything analogous to Fox News Channel, forget aside just making up stuff in line, if they, if they in any way acted in a truly partisan way, in a strategic way to hurt one party, this is literally the only story that would have been on the news for the last 5 days. And yet it was buried, if you're hearing it from me saying, I don't remember hearing about this, that you're proving my point. Here we have evidence that reports are missing about Donald Trump that could help us all determine whether in fact he did sexually abuse a 13-year-old girl, as alleged. And all of the official FBI interviews are just missing, or, or the, or at least 37 pages are missing. I should point that out. We do have evidence that these interviews did take place, but we don't know what the FBI investigator wrote down. Wouldn't it be nice to know? Again, if you like Donald Trump and you think he's completely blameless on all things, wouldn't you like to know that the FBI investigator made that conclusion, that the young woman was perhaps delusional or making— wouldn't you like to know that? Wouldn't you like to know the person who actually sat down and talked to this young woman on multiple occasions what what their thought was on her perspective, her state of mind. Not just inquiring minds want to know this. I think everyone wants to know this. Because there's not much agreement in American politics anymore. People can disagree over tax policy, whether global warming and global change and environmental change is real, whether trans athletes should be able to participate. There's all sorts of disagreements, but I thought there was one area of agreement still left in America, and that is pedophiles bad. Pedophiles couldn't have the most powerful, prestigious office in the world, i.e., the presidency. I thought that that was still one thing that brought us together. Maybe I'm wrong, but I would, I would love to know what's in this. Hats off to Congressman Massie, the Republican, and most Democrats in the House who are not giving up on this. But I frankly find it bizarre that every single Democratic member of the House and Senate is not filibustering on this issue, saying there will be no work done by this Congress until this is released because we fear there's a pedophile running our government. I think it's frankly outrageous that they're not talking about this nonstop and filibustering on it every single day. But, you know, there's a lot going on in Washington these days. Stay tuned. I'm TJ Walker.
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Hi and welcome back. Keeping your brain sharp. Scientists say keeping your brain active may help delay cognitive decline, but the key is variety. New research tracking nearly 2,000 adults for 8 years found that people who regularly engage in intellectually stimulating activities— reading, writing, learning languages, playing chess, or visiting museums had a lower risk of Alzheimer's disease and slower cognitive decline. Participants with the most lifelong learning developed Alzheimer's about 5 years later than those with the least mental stimulation. Researchers say these activities build what's known as cognitive reserve, strengthening neural connections that allow the brain to compensate for damage from aging or disease. Experts stress there is no guaranteed way to prevent dementia, but combining mental challenges, physical exercise, and healthy lifestyle habits may help keep the brain resilient over time. Now, this is not shocking news to anyone who follows personal development, but it's yet again more evidence. Again, it's tracked 2,000 adults for 8 years. So again, I, I don't waste your time with some study done on 5 undergraduates by an associate professor at a local community college. Not that they can't do good work from time to time, but I do feel much more comfortable sharing with you stuff that's done by serious scientists at scale. And 2,000 people over 8 years seems pretty significant. So how do you stretch your brain regularly? The problem I find with so many people, even if they're well-educated from elite universities, is it's so easy to retreat in this. Again, for those of you listening on the podcast, I'm just staring at my phone, looking at social media where everything is confirming my worldview. That's the problem so many of us face. It's passive, it's sedentary. Now, I don't have the magic guaranteeing you'll never get Alzheimer's or dementia, but I do like the odds of keeping it away for 5 years. I hope I never get it. I have had grandparents and others who did, thankfully not until seemingly their late 80s or 90s, but I'm sure early 90s, but I'm sure they would've loved an extra 5 years. How do you do it? It's not by just watching the same old shows or watching the same old YouTube channels. Unless of course it's this one. I hope this one keeps you lively and active. But even this one, I'm just being facetious. Expand your horizons. Do different things that test you, even if it seems silly or goofy or takes you out of your comfort zone. I am not a good artist. I'm not a good drawer, but I do a drawing every single day. Why do I do that? It's just something that sends a little zap to my brain reminding me, hey TJ, you can create. It's not going to be anything that gets into a museum, but it's exercising a different part of my brain. Every single day I write poetry. Here, you want to hear some? Oh, I'm not going to share. It'd be embarrassing. It's awful. Just a little rhyme. Sometimes a haiku, but I do it every single day to stimulate a different part of my brain. I urge you to do the same thing. Every day I play Wordle and Strands on the New York Times for a couple of reasons. It stimulates the brain in a slightly different way, and it's something I do with my daughter each day. It's a tradition in our household. So I'm urging you, don't do the exact same things I do, but do something. According to Dr. Ronald Petersen at the Mayo Clinic, lifestyle change may help slow down the arc of deterioration. That's a depressing phrase, kind of a sad phrase, but it does kind of accurately talk about what does happen to human beings. I hope it's not happening to you yet. I still feel great, but if I'm honest with myself, there's some deterioration. It used to be very easy for me to stay up till 2 AM if I wanted to socialize with friends, do fun things, have a big night out on the town. These days, that would ruin me for the next week. I gotta be in bed by 9 o'clock at night. Now, I don't feel like that diminishes my life, But if I'm honest, it's some form of deterioration. It's happening to all of us. Now, you might be 18 years old thinking, well, that's a long way off. It's never too soon to start healthy habits. And one of the healthiest habits you can ever develop is to simply do new things, try new things, learn new things. Don't just get stuck doing the same old thing. Watching the same old stuff. Worst of all, of course, being sedentary. I know a couple of years ago my wife and I took a ballroom dancing class. Now, do I love ballroom dancing? Can I tell you I got so hooked we now do it 3 hours a night every week? No, haven't done it since, but I'm glad I did it because it really forces the brain to learn a new and different ways, unique ways. And it kind of did something a little different in my brain, and I'm glad I tried it. I went to a square dance a couple of months ago. Again, I'm not the best square dancer. I square danced as a kid growing up in the South. But is it something I have to do forever? No. But one evening event, it was fine. I didn't just say, well, that's not for me, let's stay home and watch the same old shows. No. Try new thing. It's one reason why I create personal development courses in many, many different areas. Now, I think of them all as under the umbrella of personal development, but a handful of years ago, I was in the process of dramatically reducing the clutter from my home. Simplifying things, throwing away things, cleaning things, getting rid of clutter, trying to practice minimalism. So I actually made an online course on how to declutter your life. And for quite a while it was a bestseller and it made some money. And it was not a huge success, but a success. If I had told myself, well, I only teach communication skills, I won't be credible teaching people on decluttering, I never would've done it. The sheer act of me creating a course on this subject forced me to go deeper, forced me to learn more, took me out of normal thought patterns and expanded my brain. So I urge you, do something like that yourself. Here's some more facts from the study I want to share with you. Again, 2,000 adults were studied, age 53 to 100. It lasted 8 years. It was published in the journal Neurology. And again, what they found is lifelong learning was linked to lower Alzheimer's risk. Who wouldn't want that? High cognitive activity delayed Alzheimer's by 5 years. I would love to have an extra 5 years of not just life, but quality life. If you live to 100, but you have Alzheimer's from the age of 80 and you don't know where you are and don't even recognize family members, what kind of life is that? 948 participants underwent brain autopsies after death. So they literally studied what the brain looked like. And again, the conclusion was cognitive stimulation linked to slower cognitive decline. Now, activities included reading, writing, puzzles, chess, and museums. I like all of those things. I did try to learn how to play chess a handful of years ago. It just didn't stick. I tried as a kid, it didn't stick. I tried as an adult, but all the others— I like to read every day, I like to write every day, I do puzzles every single day, other word games beyond the ones I mentioned to you, and I do frequent museums. I would urge you give all those things a try. No, you don't have to spend every waking moment on the weekends going to some boring stuffing museum. Try museums you like. I mean, there are museums for ice cream these days. There's candy museums. Go to any kind of museum to stimulate your brain. Brain training programs, studying attention and reaction speed. Physical exercise obviously supports brain health as well. High blood pressure harms brain blood vessels. Diabetes can trigger inflammation brain damage. Healthy diet and weight help protect cognition. These are all findings from this study. Social activities like book clubs encourage brain engagement. I should look into that. I do have a niece and a sister and a few other members of my family who are active members of book clubs, and they do share with me their excitement for them. Other things that reduce dementia risk: a shingles vaccination. I did get a shingles vaccination a few years ago, so I'm hoping that helps as well. I should point out there's no single lifestyle change that guarantees that you're not going to get dementia or Alzheimer's, but you add it all together, it does increase your odds of getting more good years. And I think that's ultimately all we can hope for. I'm TJ Walker. I want to thank you for spending time with me today. What we're talking about right here, how to increase your odds at living a long, healthy life, expanding not just your lifespan but your healthspan. These are issues I talk about in a good number of my personal development online courses. If you're interested in getting a free online course course. All you have to do is go to ultimise.com. You can get a free habits building course. You can also look at all the other courses. There are hundreds of them on every aspect of personal development, including how to live a healthier, happier life. I am TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me. I will see you. Oh, you know what? I missed a few comments and I do appreciate people who watch live. Most of you are watching this on demand or listening to it. On demand as well. But I do want to say hello to Julie Incredible, says it's interesting, easy way to know the truth, the brain, nice subject, we know a lot now. I never thought about drawing to stimulate my brain, good idea, and to write poems. So thank you so much, Julie, for stopping by, and thank you for appreciating the fact that I am sharing a vision of a good life as well. Claus writes in and says hello as well. So Claus, Julie, thanks so much for joining us live. Thanks to all of you who are watching or listening to this on demand. Please post your comments on the YouTube page or any other social media platform where you find it. You can also reach out to me and write to me from ultimize.com. Thanks so much. See you tomorrow.
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