Rogan = Cronkite? | Ringo Turns 85 | Bleach Cure Scandal | Chestnut Returns | CommUniverse

In the news, Ringo Starr turns 85 and still feels 24. Because of course he does. MSNBC's primetime reboot tanking. Joe Rogan is sounding more like Walter Cronkite than anyone on cable news. And yes, there's a growing movement trying to cure autism with industrial bleach. And just when you thought the 4th of July couldn't get weirder, Joey Chestnut returns to Coney island and reclaims his mustard soaked throne. All that right now on the communiverse with your host. Me, I'm TJ Walker. Segment one, let's just dive right into it. Is Joe Rogan the new Walter Cronkite? Sounds nuts, right? But Cronkite, well known CBS anchor way back in the 60s and 70s, essentially ended the Vietnam War in one broadcast. And this week, Joe Rogan said it's insane talking about actions of the Trump administration, the targeting of migrant workers. Not cartel workers, not gang members, not drug dealers, just construction workers showing up in construction sites, rounding them up, gardeners. Like really? That wasn't msnbc, that was Joe Rogan with tens of millions of listening. He even called out ICE for detaining a Turkish student for writing an essay critical of Israel. Regardless of what you think of Joe Rogan, he's not necessarily left by any stretch. He's not consistently right. He's Joe Rogan. And that independence is exactly what made Walter Cronkite so powerful back in the 1960s when he essentially lost all hope in the Vietnam War. It turned so many Americans against the Vietnam War. Is this a similar situation with what is going to go on regarding Trump's war on immigrants, migrants, refugees? A couple things to keep in mind. Joe Rogan does still, by most measures have the number one podcast in the world. He's got 11 to 14 million listeners per episode. He totally dominates Spotify, YouTube. He's more trusted by young men and independence than any news anchor on abc, BBC, cnn, Al Jazeer, any place like that. His viral clips hit millions of views overnight and he completely dominates the 18 to 49 male demo. Now that happens to be the place where Donald Trump was the absolute strongest in this last election. So it's going to be extraordinarily painful for him to lose support of those young men. Now, confession. I'm not a huge fan of Joe Rogan. I do listen to him from time to time. I think he's a skilled communicator. I do have some problems with his fact checking, with him giving such a wide berth to people who spread misinformation conspiracy theories and garbage without really pushing back on them. But he also puts a spotlight on a lot of bright, intelligent, interesting people, interesting authors and expertise. Whether you like him or hate him, you can't ignore that he is a force in the world of media. He is a force in American politics. I mean, so far, he's not weighing in too strongly on Modi in India or other, other democracies or other states around the world, but he's a huge, huge, big thing in the United States. So that's why I think it's crucial to, to listen to him, because he did end up endorsing Trump. Now, in the past, he's endorsed Bernie Sanders again. That's part of why he's respected. He's not someone where you just instantly say, I know exactly where he stands before I've even listened. He is, you could say, either independent minded. If you're being positive about him, you could say, he's wildly inconsistent in flip flops and has no core values, is how some would view it, too. Regardless, he represents tens of millions of Americans, not just young men. The average American does not necessarily look at any political leader or party through an ideological lens. They often cherry pick issue by issue, and they say, well, I like this at a conceptual level. I like cracking down on the borders at a conceptual level. But, oh, coming to get Jose and Marta from my favorite restaurant and now I can't eat there anymore, that's too much. Or my gardener, my mechanic, who I've known for 25 years and I know their children, they're now gone. That's gone too far. So it's going to be interesting to see how these macro messages that have been quite appealing really butt heads with the specific nitty gritty of how policy is laid out. Now, when it comes to immigration, ICE crackdowns, that's been in effect for several months, and we're seeing the effect of it with someone like Joe Rogan speaking out pretty forcefully. In this case, he's not trashing the incumbent administration. He isn't urging people to suddenly vote for the other party or to contribute to the other party. In preparing for the midterms, Joe Rogan's not seen primarily as a political activist. Part of his appeal is he's talking about exercise and mixed martial arts and jiu jitsu and sports and all these other things. When he talks about politics, it's often a small little slice, and that's what brings such a huge audience in. He hasn't pigeonholed himself. And ultimately, for both parties, if they want to succeed, they're going to have to appeal to people like Joe Rogan. Now, there's been a lot of talk in Democratic Party circles in the last few months about they have to find their own Joe Rogan. Maybe. Maybe they have to do a better job of communicating positive ideas and positive values to the actual Joe Rogan. Doesn't mean they can't cultivate other voices. But Joe Rogan isn't someone who is not seen as a character like Tucker Carlson. He's not seen as someone like a Steve Bannon, where, you know where they're going to stand. They're always going to be 100% in favor of current administration. On most issues, he is seen as someone different. He's seen as almost apolitical. Therefore, when he does have an opinion, it has more clout. Walter Cronkite, way back in the 1960s, when he did a story that was really the first mainstream media story criticizing the American involvement in Vietnam, it was seen as so credible because he was seen as someone who didn't tell you what his opinions were about politics. So here he was, through a news story, essentially editorializing against the Vietnam War, saying, look, this is unwinnable. This is a mistake. This is bad. This isn't going to turn out well for America. That was the gist of one of his famous broadcasts, and it was seen as really changing the tide. Now, I don't want to say that Joe Rogan has the same cultural impact in the United States in 2025 as Walter Cronkite did in 1968. That's just not the case. Walter Cronkite was someone absolutely every single person in the world knew of. He was voted the most trusted man in America. I don't think Joe Rogan has been voted the most trusted man in America. Huge swaths of the population have no idea who he is. They don't know what he looks like. Everybody, as someone who lived back in the 1960s in America, I can tell you, everybody knew who Walter Cronkite was. And any given night, tens and tens and tens of millions of people watched him for his entire broadcast. So I don't think we're coming back to that world. But we do still live in a world where people are looking for guidance. They might not say, influence me, Joe, but they are looking for analysis, some sense, some perspective on the world. Now, that's what I'm trying to do right here in Communiverse, is give you a perspective on the world when it comes to big business. Stories, tech stories and culture stories. And here, of course, we're talking about the media business. So I want to thank you for joining me today. We got a lot of fun, interesting stories come up, but a little background first. My name is TJ Walker, and for decades I've been a media trainer and communications consultant to top Wall street leaders, CEOs, billionaire fund managers, as well as presidents of countries, prime ministers, US senators and Ms. Universes. So now I'm showing you behind the scenes what really goes on when it comes to people preparing messages, delivering messages, what goes in to the craft of communicating messages. So that's what we're about right here. Lots more fun to come up. Okay, speaking of the media, we're talking about new media with Joe Rogan. Well, now let's talk about not old, old, old media, but you know, let's say 30, 40 year old media. I'm talking specifically about cable television. MSNBC's port primetime pinch. Rebecca Cutler bet big on a lineup overhaul at msnbc. She pulled Joy Reed and Alex Wagner replaced them with the Weekend and the Briefing with Jan Saki. Two months later, the numbers are bad. The weekend is down 31% total viewers, 35% in the demo. And when people talk about the demo, they're talking about this 18 to 49 group of people. Those are the people who buy. Kids don't buy much. Old people don't buy much. So that's what really matters the most when it comes to television shows. The briefing is down 17% overall, 28% of the demo. Chris Hayes is also down 32%. So this is not looking good. Interestingly, CNN's Kaitlan Collins is up 4%. Fox News Channel still dominant in the United States. So what's really going on here? It's not just a matter of rearranging chairs and finding new anchors. Now, this has been a problem. MSNBC has, has always had, they've always had a bit of an identity crisis where they're experimenting with new formats. And some experimentation is good. Constantly changing hosts. Now, full disclosure, I've been on msnbc, I would guess at least a hundred times. A lot of times I've been on cnn. I've been on the Fox News Channel many hundreds of times. So I've been on the inside and I do have a fair perspective of what's working and what isn't working. I do think we are in a period of secular decline for everybody on cable TV news. The average age of someone watching MSNBC and Fox News Channel, even CNN, is about 189 to dead. It's, it's old. People below the age of 60 and increasingly people over 60 are, are right where you are now. They're watching online, they're on social media, they're listening to podcasts. That's where they're getting their information. So msnbc, through no fault of its own, is a part of that downward trend. But there are other issues going along. Roger Ailes, the creator of Fox News Channel, understood correctly that people form long term relationships with host. That's why you see so many hosts on Fox News Channel who've been there forever and ever and ever and ever, unless there's a huge scandal. Bill O'Reilly finally forced out after decades because of sex scandals. But Sean Hannity, on the very first day the Fox News Channel went on in 1995, he's still on today, 30 years or 96. Forgive me if I got that one fact wrong. So they really do a great job of keeping talent because it builds a relationship, it builds a trust over time. Now, you may or may not trust Sean Hannity. I'll leave that up to you. But you know, if you want Sean Hannity's analysis, you know where to get it. You're gonna get it sometime in primetime. His, his time slot has changed a little over the years, but, but you're going to get him prime time on Fox today, Tomorrow, last year, five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Whereas MSNBC, many people don't even remember when they first started. They were not positioned as a liberal network, as a Democratic network. Ann Coulter, of all people, was one of their first paid commentators. They had lots and lots of roundtable shows and I was a part of that on many occasions debating issues. And they really were sort of more in the old style of let's have all visions, all ideas, all points of view given equal time. And then they would change and change and change and constantly alter their formats. Different hosts. Many of the hosts on Fox were previously host on msnbc. Again, people forget that Laura Ingram had a show on msnbc. Tucker Carlson, who was a huge star of Fox for many years until he was pushed out, was a host on msnbc. To this day, MSNBC still has its anchor morning show, Joe Scarborough, hosted by a former conservative Republican congressman. So they're not quite in that specific ideological niche that Fox has gained. And believe me, I'm not trying to quibble that they're mostly centrist or conservative, but there's simply nothing like on Fox News Channel having a former liberal Democratic congressman With his name on a show doing three hours a day, Monday through Friday, there's simply nothing like that. So what does this all really mean? What does it mean to you? Well, it's old technology. Cable news is old technology. And a lot of young creators these days are realizing, rather than beg, bag, beg, beg to get on for two minutes on MSNBC or any of these cable channels, why don't I just start communicating with people right here, right now on YouTube, on Spotify, on itunes? Then these cable networks want me. Fine. Two examples come to mind. Brian Tyler Cohen, he is an independent analyst. He's on the Democratic side. Doesn't make any, you know, bones over that, doesn't try to hide that he started doing analysis every single day, often every hour on his YouTube channel and his podcast, sometimes seven days a week, putting out content, putting out analysis, building his audience of millions. That gave him a position of power. So then MSNBC approached him. Please come on. Please be a guest. Please be a guest. Then they made him a paid contributor. And if you're someone like Brian Tyler Cohen, you figure, why not? Extra eyeballs, extra money. Why not? But here's the thing where Brian Tyler Cohen, I believe, is the real model for the future. And that is if MSNBC got canceled tomorrow because of its corporate overlords, wouldn't really matter to someone like Brian Tyler Cohen. He already has his own independent media company. He already has direct access through his substack, through his YouTube channel, other platforms with millions of people who like his insights. He's not dependent on a cable outlet. Another one comes to mind. Kara Swisher has a contract reported to be a quarter million dollars a year to be a contributor to cnn. And she goes on from time to time, or they call her up or connect. They have her go to the studio from time to time. But if CNN gets canceled or deleted or put out of business, it's really not going to affect Karen Swisher one bit because she's got multiple podcasts where she has ownership in them, and she has a direct relationship to millions of listeners and viewers and readers through her books, her audio podcast, her show Pivot, and others. She's not dependent on cnn. So what's my real message to you when it comes to your career? How you want to improve? For starters, if you like watching these shows on traditional cable, by all means, continue to do so. They've got some smart people on all of these networks. They have some interesting people on all of these networks. So by all means, go ahead and listen. But if you really want to keep your finger on the Zeitgeist, I recommend you spend at least half of your time, if not more, watching independent voices on YouTube, on iTunes, on podcasting platforms and social media. Because increasingly they are the ones shaping the Zeitgeist. They are the ones shaping the worldview, they're the ones shaping elections. So if you want to be on top of things, you've got to really focus on where the attention is. We do live in an attention att attention economy. And I realize that's a cliche, that's not a unique insight, but increasingly the attention is going to not only Joe Rogan, Brian Tyler Cohen, Midas Touch, the Daily Wire, I mean, there's tons of them all across the ideological spectrum, spectrum, but also in the business world, the technology world. You look at a show like Prof. G Markets, which is now, depending on the week, the top show for reaching young men who care about making money on the stock market, what's going on in international commerce. And it's a small, lean, independent media organization started by Professor Scott Galloway. And it's just killing it when it comes to audiences and reaching people. That's why they are attracting advertisers. So if you are someone who likes the media, likes to be in the media, likes to promote your business, your views, your ideology, your book, your consulting practice, I urge you, don't spend all of your time with publicists trying to get on these big old, well known brand name cable news networks, or for that matter, broadcast. Create your own content. Now, when you create enough content and build enough of an audience, the networks will be chasing you. Mr. Beast has every Hollywood production company, every TV network, every Netflix in the world calling him every day, begging them, please come work for us. Please let us give you bags of money. He's able to do that. Not because they were thinking, huh, let's find some unknown guy who lives in the middle of North Carolina, small town. No, they're chasing him because they want his audience. He's already built the largest audience in the history of the world online with his hundreds of millions of subscribers to Mr. Beast. Now, we can't all be Mr. Beast. I'm never going to have an audience as big as Mr. Beast. You probably aren't going to have an audience that day, but you can have an audience that's meaningful to you. And these days, you're much better off having an audience of say, 300 people who listen to your podcast for an hour a week, or half an hour a week, or watch your video for 12 minutes. A week and regularly access you, then you already get a three minute hit on CNBC or Fox Business News or MSNBC or cnn, where it's there, it's gone and how much lasting impact does it really have? So we'll be continuing to monitor the news. I don't think that the main news networks in America, cable news networks, and by that I mean msnbc, cnn, Fox News, cnbc, Fox Business News Channel, Bloomberg, that's what I would consider the main ones. I don't think any of those are going to go out of business in the next 18 months. But if one or more of them were just shut down in say two years, three years, it would not surprise me at all. Okay, let's go to the next segment. It relates to news and, or what passes for news, what seems like news but often isn't really. That's right. The bleacher movement is back. They're back and now they're bigger than ever. Alternative health influencers are pushing chlorine. Chlorine dioxide, industrial bleach. This is a cure for everything from COVID to, to cancer to autism. At a Trump resort this week, or excuse me, this past May, bleach promoter Andreas Kallaker said it works on cancer. It helps necrotic fingers grow back, possibly the greatest medical discovery of the last hundred years. And chime out if There are any YouTube algorithms scraping this show, please realize I don't agree with that. I'm not trying to support this misinformation. I'm putting a spotlight on misinformation that's out there. And yes, RFK Jr. Now the health Secretary here in the United States, praised Trump for exploring even chlorine dioxide. Now, the Food and Drug Administration calls it dangerous. Why? Let me be very clear here. Over 16,000 poisonings occurred in 2020, including 2,500 children. This isn't fringe anymore. It's a movement with Facebook groups, books, products and conferences and it is disastrous. To clarify again, there's no scientific evidence that ingesting chlorine helps you. It's credited with 16,000 poisonings in 2020 alone. And this, this person, Calacher, was charged after a child death in Argentina. One promoter, Carrie Rivera, is promoting bleach for autism via enemas. I'm not a medical doctor, but guess what? These people are not either. RFK Jr now the health Secretary cited chlorine dioxide in his Senate testimony. The FDA warning page has now been removed because of influencers. And according to research on Facebook, there are 30,000 Facebook members in various Bleach groups. So this is something that's really creeping into the mainstream of pop culture, even though there's no mainstream evidence that injecting or putting up someplace else chlorine, chlorine dioxide into your body helps you at all. And you can say, well TJ you sounds like you're not for free speech. I'm all in favor of free speech. The problem is for many people, especially kids, people who don't have scientific grounding is if you just hear someone and see someone who's good looking, looks healthy, say, hey, I'm doing this, here's this supplement, here's this drug, here's this miracle, whatever, it's easy to get a lot of people killed. I mean, that's the real problem. We all have to be more careful about who we let influence with our health. Nobody, myself included, is an expert on every single drug, every single aspect of the body. So what is a rational person to do? We're told, you know, do your own research. Do your own research. The problem with simply saying do your own research is that the easiest way to get so called research is to have influencers push to us through TikTok because they look good, they look healthy, they look sexy, you're jiggling around, they're good speakers, they got something to sell and they can't simply tell you, drink more water, eat unprocessed food, turn off your phone at 8 o' clock at night and get a good night's sleep and walk 10, 12, 15,000 steps a day instead of sitting on your butt watching screens. They can't say that there's no money to be made. The money to be made is in selling you snake oil and potions and pills. And I don't think the problem is by any means limited to chlorine dioxide. I would. I've got real issue with so many influencers selling all kinds of supplements where there's actual no evidence at all that any supplement helps the average person who hasn't been diagnosed with a specific deficiency. So my criticism goes across the political spectrum when it comes to podcasters, influencers, YouTubers who might look down their nose at this chlorine. And make no mistake about it, I do, but are then talking about their, you know, their magic green powder that's going to make you healthy, therefore you don't have to eat healthy. That's a huge, huge problem as well. Hello, if this is your first time, my name is TJ Walker. This is the Communiverse. This is a show where we look at the top stories every day. When it comes to what's going on in the business world, the tech world, our culture, we analyze things through a communications lens. We decode it through a communications lens in order to boost your personal success. And certainly not dying because you didn't inject yourself with some phony scam, potion, medicine, drug is a way of being more successful. I chalk that up. Any day I don't die, I would say that's a successful day. Speaking of not dying, someone who's done a fantastic job at this, an absolutely fantastic job of not dying is 85 year old Ringo Starr. He turns 85 on July 7th. He's the first beetle, former beetle, to turn 85. He's just a little bit older than Paul McCartney. Only the two of them, they're the only ones remaining now. Ringo Starr, he turns 85 and says he still feels 24. I look in the mirror and I'm 24. I never get older than 24. That's what he says. He just dropped a country album, believe it or not. You can look it up. He filmed a concert special and he'll hit the road again. Oh, and that Grammy winning Beatles track now and then, that's Ringo on drums and vocals. He also spent two full weeks helping director Sam Mendez revise the Beatles biopic script. So this guy is not slowing down at all. He seems to be having a lot of fun in life now. He's not one of these celebrities who squandered all of his wealth through cocaine and prostitutes and high living and now has to scramble around just to keep a rent over. And no, he's not like that. Independent estimates peg his fortune at about a third of a billion dollars. So maybe he's not as rich as Paul McCarty, maybe he's not a billionaire. But when you got $300 million in the bank, you can really sit back and relax. You can have a private island and have anyone and everyone brought to you every kind of feast. You can have mansions all over the world and still your great, great, great grandchildren never have to worry about work a day in their life because you've got so money, so much money. He's not like that. He's not resting on his lord. So why is that? Very in depth profile interview with the New York Times. You may want to check it out here where he just talks about the first time he played drums. He knew it. That's what he wanted to do his whole life. It was fun. His own mother told him at a very early age. I never see you happier than when you're playing the drum. So it gives him joy. He's one of the lucky ones. Where he knew at a very early age what his purpose was, what gave him the most joy. He focused on it. And even though he was in a field where 99.99% of people never make a living, he became not just wildly successful, he was a part of the most successful band of all time. So things worked out pretty well. What lessons can the rest of us really learn, though? Because we can't all be rock and roll stars. We can't all be professional athletes. We can't all be supermodels. By the way, I'll have to tell you something. I was a male model back in the late 1970s. My peak salary for appearing at fashion shows on the Runway. $5 a day. I kid you not. We'll save that one for another day. What I love about Ringo Starr is his sense of joy. He's constantly experimenting. Here he is putting out a country album. This guy was a rock and roll star. Here he is, you know, making movies, being a part of documentaries. He's not just sitting around the old folks home talking about the good old days. He does talk about the old days through interviews, but he's constantly creating new things. He certainly appears to be fit. And forgive me Beatles fans for what I am about to say, but if you look at some of the other photos in this spread in the New York Times, it does seem like he has a bad dye job. I mean, he's 85 years old. His hair is just so black, it looks kind of fakey. I would just think If I had $300 million and I had a nice full of head of hair the way he does, I'd get a better colorist. Apologies if that seems too petty for you, but overall he looks extraordinarily healthy, active, vibrant. What does this really mean? Again, a lot of people look at him and say, well, T.J. that's irrelevant. We can't all be superstar rock stars. But guess what? You don't need to have $300 million and be making another five, $10 million a year. The way he is with his different ventures. Plenty of people could in fact retire, let's say with retirement savings of 500,000, a little Social Security, and continue creating by self publishing poetry or by making music and appearing at local venues in your town, appearing at weddings, continuing to. Maybe you make an extra 20,000 a year. Okay? If your total income with Social Security and pulling money in from Your retirement is 65,000. Making an extra 20,000 is a pretty significant chunk of, of your overall income. Could in fact change your lifestyle. Certainly let you be more generous with friends, family, children, grandchildren. I think too many people put themselves in the category of okay, I worked and I paid my dues. Now I'm going to relax and enjoy life. I'm 65, I've got enough in my IRA or my retirement or I've got a pension. Now I can just sit back and enjoy life. And they do that. And after about two months they realize, not much going on here, not much to do. Let me just watch TV and get grumpy listening to people complain about how the world's going to hell in a handbasket. That's not life that ages you. The time you spend sitting in your chair, often isolated, that ages you. Ringo Starr could isolate himself. He could just stay and he could buy his own giant island, have a mansion and fill it with staff telling them, don't ever speak to me and don't look me in the eye. If he wanted to do that, he could do that. He's not isolated himself. He's out hanging out with friends, touring, socializing, collaborating new creative ventures all the time. You and I can do the same thing, maybe not at the same scale, but you don't have to make $300 million to be a success. You don't have to launch a new album and make $2 million the first week to be success. So my message to you is figure out Mike Ringo, maybe not at age 14 when it happened to him, but figure out what you are passionate about and then figure out how can you collaborate, create, share your passions with people where some exchange of value can take place. And I don't mean to suggest that everyone is retired or every 85 year old has to do, run around, do all these side gigs and focus on making money. That's not what I'm suggesting. But when you create something, whether it's a piece of artwork, piece of poetry, a song, a movie, and you share it with the world, and some people pay you money, it just feels good, you know, that they really value it and it is something that can keep you alive longer. There's been a lot of research that shows that people who live the longest often are getting validation, they're getting esteem, they are getting positive attention. And Ringo Starr apparently still enjoys the spotlight. Some people say enough. They go behind in their cave, they close the doors and you never see them again. He's out, he's about, he's active now. He or I could drop dead tomorrow. There's no guarantee. But he certainly seems to be living an extraordinarily vital and interesting life. He's not one of these people just sitting around spending all of his time reminiscing. If you live in the past, you destroy your future and you destroy your present. The proper mix is, yeah, enjoy your past successes, but really take a hold of today by creating things that can be enjoyed by you and others in the future. That is what I think keeps people. I know. It keeps me young. That's why I'm creating this show here for you. It's fun. And do I make some money? Yes. But I would do it even if I had to just pay money and was guaranteed to never make a cent. I hope you find something like that again. I want to sound mercenary and say, well, it all has to be about money, but find something you enjoy creating. It could be just enjoying community centers. It could be creating community gardens in your town, but find something that gets you out of yourself and your own head. That's the biggest problem I see with so many people who are not just 85, but 75. 65. 60 is you can become so selfish because. Because you're not worried about just making a living anymore and you retreat inward. Now, I want you to spend some time inward, but spend some time outward, focused on the rest of the world. And maybe you too can be as active at 85 as Ringo Starr. I know that's something I would certainly aspire to. So thank you, Ringo, for being a good role model. And we wish you. I don't know if I can say 85 more years, but certainly a lot more years. Now, let's talk about something that is. I won't say it's unique to America, because every time I do that, someone will politely say, oh, T.J. you're the typical ignorant America American. We do that in Canada or we do that in Asia. We do that other places. So. So I haven't researched this thoroughly, but I will tell you, it sure seems like something specific to Americans. I'm talking about hot dog eating contests. Joey Chestnut returns and devours the doubt. After missing the 2024 contest over a vegan sponsor deal, Joey Chestnut is back. And he didn't just show up, he won. He ate 57 hot dogs in 10 minutes, buns included. And if that sounds like the most disgusting thing you've ever heard, well, you're wrong. Because one year he ate 75 hot dogs in 10 minutes. This is his 17th title. He's 40 years old, he told the New York Times yesterday. It's good to be home. There's nothing like the Fourth on Coney Island. Now, this happens at a very famous place, Nathan's Hot Dog Stand in Coney island, which is a part of Brooklyn, which is a part of New York City, which is a part of New York State. And I've been to. I've been out there on the 4th of July. I've been to Nathan's. I don't think I've physically been there close enough to see the hot dog eating contest. But, you know, I have very mixed feelings about this because it's always nice to do interesting, quirky things and to be a little different and to do fun things and just celebrate silliness. And certainly this is all of that. But I do feel that this is really kind of glorifying gluttony. And we live in a time where obesity is absolute epidemic in the United States and many other parts of the world. We live in a time when 70% of Americans are either overweight or diabetic. And there are just numerous, numerous chronic diseases associated with being overweight and obese. Folks, this is not fat shaming. It's not about, you know, this guy looking better or worse than me or, you know, fine for you to say, well, T.J. you don't look very good. I'm not talking about looks. I'm talking about the difference of dying prematurely. And that's the real problem with the modern American culture, the modern American diet of which hot dogs are a part of. Have I ever eaten a hot dog? Yes, once or twice a year. Will I eat a hot dog? Yes. But. But processed meat is known for dramatically increasing your chances of getting colon cancer, all sorts of other health problems. And in general, Americans just eat way, way too much meat, certainly too much processed meat. And when you package that with the typical bun, which has all of the whole grains stripped out of the. The wheat flour to make it healthy, and it's all bleached processed bread, there's no nutritional value. It's instantly converted into sugar by your body, and it's profoundly unhealthy. Now, will one hot dog on 4th of July kill you? No, I'm not suggesting that. I'm not a fanatic, but 57 hot dogs, I mean, that's just. That's disgusting. I don't know else you can do to really say about it, because it's just so much. And there are people going to this saying, you know, joey Chestnut, I want you to be the father of my children. I mean, this guy. Marry me. This guy has a huge, huge fan base. And it just strikes me as perverse. Why can't we get this many people to come to a science fair for kids? I mean, spelling bees do have some audience, but I don't think that many people are coming to the spelling bee telling the winner of the spelling bee, hey, I want you to be the father of my children. Which I guess wouldn't really be appropriate since those are often 14 year old kids. But I hope you get my point. As a society, what we choose to celebrate says a lot about who we are and what we prioritize. And in America, we do seem to prioritize more, more, more bigger helpings, more unhealthy helpings of food. Stuffing ourselves, stuffing ourselves to the point where we can't stick another piece of food in our mouth. Because that's what happens at these hot dog eating contests. People basically keel over, they're so full. Or they vomit sometimes. And you are disqualified, apparently, if you vomit. How you could eat 10 hot dogs without vomiting escapes me. Much less 57 hot dogs with buns in 10 minutes. What do you think about this? Am I. It's only once a year. You could say, tj, you're making too much of it. It's just a quirky cultural thing. I'm not asking the government to ban the hot dog eating contest. I'm simply asking myself and you to reflect a little more on how much meat we consume. And I'm not saying that from an environmental standpoint. There's strong, strong cases to be made that the whole world's environment would be much better off if we ate less meat, beef, less pork. That's not even my argument here. My argument is we're actually seeing average life expectancy decrease in the United States and other countries because our obesity rates are skyrocketing. And coupled with obesity are chronic diseases of diabetes which leads to heart attacks and stroke and hypertension and. And a gazillion other health related problems. Is the hot dog the only culprit? No. Is it the main culprit? No. But it is definitely a part of the family that is profoundly killing a lot of Americans and a lot of people around the world. This idea of more and more meat, more and more packaged food, more and more heavily processed food, more and more food that's got lots and lots of. I was about to say sugar. I meant to say salt. But yes, there's even sugar put in most hot dogs too. Anything unhealthy for you. I don't think they're putting chlorine yet, but almost anything unhealthy is in a hot dog. And we're celebrating essentially overdosing on it. Now, some people like to smoke cigars and cigarettes. Obviously not healthy for you. If you smoke one cigar a year, is that going to really harm your life? Most doctors would say, hey, I'm not recommending you smoke. But you know, one cigar a year is probably not going to do much to harm your life. But we don't have contests to see who can smoke 20 packs of cigarettes in a two hour period because it's kind of disgusting and it's kind of leading people to the idea of smoke more, get more lung cancer. We don't want that. So that's the parallel I'm seeing here. What do you think of it? I would love to hear from you. If you have any thoughts about any of the subjects on today's show, please leave a comment right here. Wherever you are watching or hearing this podcast, you can also just send a note to feedback j.walker.com I'd love to hear from you. I do review all the feedback and we're always looking for ways of making this show better. Quick note, this is sort of a test pilot. It's not a pilot in the sense of no one's ever seeing it. This is live on the Internet. But we're testing this show. We're testing the concepts and going to have a full official rollout and full official launch September 2, 2025. At that point, it will have a more edited feel to it, a little more production value. It will be in an audio format on podcast as well. So we're looking for feedback right now. My thought is take five or maybe a few more top stories of the day that relate to business, technology and culture and then decode those stories through the lens of communication to boost your personal success. So I'm using my background as a communications expert and as a personal development expert to help you because it's so easy just to watch the news, listen, read the news and get bummed out or feel like you're learning stuff. But what do you take away from it? I want to use these stories as a learning moment so that you can see what's the real message going on here. How was this position by the creators of this news story or by the newsmakers themselves? What was their real agenda? Why are they doing this? When it comes to the hot dog contest, we know who's behind it. It's Nathan Hot dogs. Now, they used to claim this was like 100 years old. Apparently it only started in the 1970s. But Nathan's hot dog stand gets millions and millions of dollars worth of publicity because of this stunt. And there are tourists who go not just July 4th, but every single day of the year. Nathan's gets customers it wouldn't otherwise get because people have heard about them through this hot dog eating contest. So, you know, what worked in the 1970s does still work today. If you can create something of interest to people, the delivery mechanism, the technology can change. Broadcast news, change to cable news, cable news, change to blogging, change to podcasting, change to YouTube. Technology will change. But the thing that's consistent is can you be interesting if can you capture people's attention? If you can capture people's attention, you can be popular in any technology, whether it is carving stone tablets or whether it is a TikTok video. Thanks so much for joining me. I'm going to try to come here tomorrow and the next day and the next day, because I'm having a blast. I want you to join me too. Thanks. I'll see you tomorrow.