American snack cake
POPULARITY
Categories
In an episode from another great Politico show, On the Road, Jonathan Martin sits down with Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand at the Iowa State Fair to talk politics over a pork tenderloin and a deep-fried Twinkie. Sand, a Democrat running in a state that has shifted sharply to the right, makes the case that Iowa voters are fed up with one-party control, corruption and politics as usual. He discusses why Democrats have lost ground in rural America, whether the party has become too focused on insiders and national politics, and how he would govern with a Republican legislature. Sand also weighs in on the future of the Democratic Party, his unlikely friendships with Republican governors — and his brief career as a model.
In a new episode of the On the Road, Jonathan Martin sits down with Iowa gubernatorial candidate Rob Sand at the Iowa State Fair to talk politics over a pork tenderloin and a deep-fried Twinkie. Sand, a Democrat running in a state that has shifted sharply to the right, makes the case that Iowa voters are fed up with one-party control, corruption and politics as usual. He discusses why Democrats have lost ground in rural America, whether the party has become too focused on insiders and national politics, and how he would govern with a Republican legislature. Sand also weighs in on the future of the Democratic Party, his unlikely friendships with Republican governors — and his brief career as a model.
A woman from Cleveland moved to Wisconsin, took the surname of Watts – a man serving five life sentences for killing his entire family – and filed to marry him. Women have been doing this for well over a century, and the ones who later walked away have almost never been asked why.BOOK: “They Told Me My Newborn Died – They Lied” by Darren Marlar: https://amzn.to/4ihvu3kEPISODE BLOG PAGE (includes sources): https://weirddarkness.com/wattsandlizzieREAD or DOWNLOAD the full transcript of this episode: https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yzmw3jdnThis episode includes references to suicide and to the deaths of children. If you are struggling, you are not alone, and help is available. https://WeirdDarkness.com/HOPE is a free directory of mental health resources, organized by country, for anyone anywhere in the world who needs somebody to talk to. And if you're in the United States or Canada, you can get immediate help over the phone by dialing 988.FEATURED STORIES IN THIS EPISODE: Eight years after Chris Watts strangled his pregnant wife and smothered their two daughters, a woman from Cleveland has moved to Wisconsin, started signing his surname, and filed paperwork that now sits on a prison warden's desk. And Chris Watts is not the only man in permanent lockup who is seeking matrimony. Later, we'll look at the women who build relationships with men who will die behind bars, and what draws them in.CHAPTERS & TIME STAMPS (All Times Approximate)…00:00:00.000 = The Foreboding00:01:51.635 = Show Open00:03:19.353 = Ten Seconds At Dodge Correctional00:20:26.768 = Shannan, Bella, Celeste and Nico ***00:48:21.294 = He Will Write Back ***01:04:25.333 = Dead In All Respects ***01:24:35.204 = Nobody Counts Any Of This ***01:29:55.177 = Show Close*** = Begins immediately after inserted ad breakLISTEN ON PODCAST APPS: Look for this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Amazon Music, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, and other podcast apps. Get a list of free listening apps here: https://weirddarkness.com/wdapps*No AI Voices Are Used In The Narration Of This Podcast*WeirdDarkness® is a registered trademark. Copyright ©2026, Weird Darkness.Originally aired: August 19, 2026This episode of Weird Darkness covers the marriage application Chris Watts filed from a Wisconsin prison eight years after murdering his pregnant wife and their two young daughters, and the long record of women who write to, visit and marry men who will never get out.It opens at Dodge Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where an inmate may touch a visitor twice, once at the start of a visit and once at the end, an embrace reporting puts at roughly ten seconds. On August 12th, 2026 the Daily Mail reported that Chris Watts, 41, and a 39-year-old Cleveland realtor named Lizzie Henderson had applied to marry inside the Wisconsin prison system. Lizzie had moved from Ohio to Wisconsin with her mother, filed a sealed petition for a confidential name change on September 12th, 2025, and appeared in prison visitor logs roughly twenty times during 2025, plus a visit on Christmas Day of 2024. Wisconsin handles these requests under policy 309.00.06, PIOC Marriages, which routes the application through a marriage coordinator and leaves the decision with the warden. No ceremony or license has been documented, and Watts has no projected release date.From there the episode goes back to the family. The Watts family doorbell camera recorded Shanann Watts arriving home at 1:48 in the morning on August 13th, 2018 at 2825 Saratoga Trail in Frederick, Colorado. She was 34 and fifteen weeks pregnant with a son the couple had named Nico, raising daughters Bella, four, and Celeste, three, and selling Thrive for Le-Vel while her husband worked for Anadarko Petroleum and carried on an affair with co-worker Nichol Kessinger. Watts failed a polygraph administered by Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Tammy Lee, blamed Shanann for the girls' deaths, then retracted it. A drone over an Anadarko site called CERVI 319 found Shanann in a shallow grave and both girls submerged in crude oil inside storage tanks with eight-inch hatches. Judge Marcelo Kopcow sentenced him on November 19th, 2018 to five life sentences plus 84 years. In a February 2019 interview at Waupun, Watts described smothering Celeste in his truck while Bella sat beside her, and hearing Bella's last two words, "Daddy, no!", every time he closes his eyes.The second half opens in the autumn of 1921, when French railways ran extra trains to Versailles for the trial of Henri Désiré Landru, a furniture dealer who placed lonely-hearts advertisements in Paris newspapers and murdered eleven people. Women mailed him proposals of marriage while he awaited the guillotine. The modern version runs through Meet-An-Inmate, launched in 1998, and WriteAPrisoner, founded by Adam Lovell in 2000, which post profiles written on paper because American prisons allow no internet access; Susan Smith drew more than six thousand letters before pulling her listing in 2003. Hybristophilia, the term journalists reach for, was coined by sexologist John Money in 1986 and has never appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Sheila Isenberg's Women Who Love Men Who Kill, forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland's "perfect boyfriend" model, and sociologist Megan Comfort's San Quentin fieldwork in Doing Time Together supply what the women themselves say they are getting.Two 2025 studies found that actively seeking out romanticizing TikTok content correlated with attraction while passive exposure predicted nothing. The risk is documented in the killings of Regina Capobianco and John Mann by her pen pal Thomas Knuff in Parma Heights, Ohio, and in the strangling deaths of Stephanie Dowells and Tania Thomas during family visits at Mule Creek State Prison. The marriages run from Nina Van Zandt, who married Haymarket defendant August Spies by proxy in 1887 and may have married an innocent man, through Ted Bundy and Carole Ann Boone, Doreen Lioy and Richard Ramirez at San Quentin, the Twinkie that served as Erik Menendez and Tammi Saccoman's wedding cake, and James Whitehouse, who wrote to Susan Atkins in 1985 and went on to Harvard Law School to serve as her attorney. All of it rests on Turner v. Safley, the 1987 Supreme Court decision in which Justice Sandra Day O'Connor noted that most inmates are eventually released, leaving the man who never will be an untested case. Rhode Island's 1909 civil death statute declared lifers "dead in all respects", and Britain barred whole-life prisoners from marrying in 2024 after Milly Dowler's murderer Levi Bellfield was granted permission.The episode closes on the women who leave, absent from every study in the field. Lynn Hartman ended her engagement to Steven Avery in October of 2016 and wrote that she had been fooled by the Netflix documentary. Paula Williamson married Charles Bronson at HMP Wakefield in November of 2017, had it annulled in 2019, and died that July at thirty-eight. Anna Eriksson divorced Lyle Menendez in 2001 and still argues for his release. No agency counts prison marriages, and every figure circulating online is unsourced. Chris Watts belongs to a long file rather than a new one, having received his first letters from strangers within weeks of his December 2018 sentencing, before he had written a word to any of them.LIKE WHAT YOU'RE HEARING? WEIRD DARKNESS has new episodes 7 DAYS A WEEK! Listen FREE wherever you get podcasts or visit WeirdDarkness.com/Listen • Paranormal • True Crime • Ghosts • UFOs • Cryptids • Unexplained • Want even more? Become an OFFICIAL WEIRDO for commercial-free episodes, bonus episodes, weeknight live chats, audiobooks & more at WeirdDarkness.com/OFFICIAL
Thanks to our sponsor, LearnClash! Practice smarter for quiz night with LearnClash, 1v1 trivia duels on any topic. Free to play: https://learnclash.com/partners/quizbang?utm_source=quiz_quiz_bang_bang&utm_medium=show_notes&utm_campaign=creator_2026q3&utm_content=r1_2026-08-05A new week means new questions! Hope you have fun with these!What comedienne ended her weekly shows by tugging on her left earlobe?Which Wisconsin peninsula is nicknamed the "Cape Cod of the Midwest." It has 300 miles of shoreline and more lighthouses than any other county in the U.S.?William the Conqueror is most famous for conquering what?Also known for his role on MASH, who played Charlie Brown in a 1967 Off-Broadway musical "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown"?What is it called when fish fertilize externally?The 1973 movie, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid starred what two music idols?The Ana and Din or Shadow of the Leviathan series which include "A Trade of Blood", "A Drop of Corruption", and the Hugo Award winning "The Tainted Cup" are all by what author?Iten has been described as the Mecca of Long Distance Running and is located in what country?Who is considered the father of modern chemistry?Along with a cash prize, what do contestants win in the Nathan's Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest?Mare Imbrium, or the Sea of Showers or Sea of Rains, is a lava plain within the Imbrium Basin located where?What flavor was the original creme filling of Twinkies?Which composer has won the most Tony Awards?Which board game that won the Spiel des Jahres in 2014 has you collect precious jewels and gems like Emeralds, sapphires, rubies and diamonds?Ahura Mazda is the main deity of which religion?Which Greek goddess of love and beauty was said to be born from seafoam?MusicHot Swing, Fast Talkin, Bass Walker, Dances and Dames, Ambush by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/Don't forget to follow us on social media:Patreon – patreon.com/quizbang – Please consider supporting us on Patreon. Check out our fun extras for patrons and help us keep this podcast going. We appreciate any level of support!Website – quizbangpod.com Check out our website, it will have all the links for social media that you need and while you're there, why not go to the contact us page and submit a question!Facebook – @quizbangpodcast – we post episode links and silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Instagram – Quiz Quiz Bang Bang (quizquizbangbang), we post silly lego pictures to go with our trivia questions. Enjoy the silly picture and give your best guess, we will respond to your answer the next day to give everyone a chance to guess.Twitter – @quizbangpod We want to start a fun community for our fellow trivia lovers. If you hear/think of a fun or challenging trivia question, post it to our twitter feed and we will repost it so everyone can take a stab it. Come for the trivia – stay for the trivia.Ko-Fi – ko-fi.com/quizbangpod – Keep that sweet caffeine running through our body with a Ko-Fi, power us through a late night of fact checking and editing!
Put that Twinkie down, you slob, and let's talk about GLUTTONY. The fourth circle of hell is where Dante encounters the people who lived their lives scarfing down cannoli and now spend their afterlife getting pelted with slime and chewed up by the three-headed beast Cerberus. It's also where the poet subtly introduces some key concepts that help make sense of the whole poem--the relation between body and soul, the nature of civil war, and ordo amoris--the principle of love that structures the entire divine comedy. Let's, erm...tuck in! PLUS: I am extremely excited to tell you about my new book, A Way With Words, out in February. Pre-order A Way With Words now: https://a.co/d/0femohqf Dante Translations, reviewed by Boze: https://bibliollcollege.substack.com/p/the-eleven-best-translations-of-the Get the Hollander translation: https://a.co/d/0iCgdYaQ Get the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow translation: https://amzn.to/4wPbiK7 Get the Anthony Esolen translation: https://amzn.to/4sgKLTj Get the Dorothy L. Sayers translation: https://amzn.to/4djdh2s Get the Allen Mandelbaum translation: https://amzn.to/4dG6izR Chapters: 00:00 Introduction 00:46 Gluttony: Material versus Spiritual Reality 10:23 Reading Canto VI 19:31 Cerberus, the Embodiment of Ravenous Hunger 25:44 Dante's Hell and the Classical Underworld 41:49 On Pride, Envy, and Avarice 50:11 The Seven Deadly Sins Explained 1:00:53 Book Announcement: A Way with Words
Jeremy and Joe analyze the surprisingly exciting Hall of Fame game and Haynes King's game-winning dive for Carolina. They preview an action-packed Football Friday lineup featuring Joe Brady and Michael Fabiano before shifting focus to Drew Brees' future as an analyst. Joe provides an extensive review of the new Bills stadium food tasting event, highlighting standout items like the Texas Twinkie and Southern Junction barbecue. 02:08 - Hall Of Fame Game Recap 04:01 - Football Friday Guest Lineup 06:24 - Drew Brees Analyst Review 08:23 - Drew Brees Saints Legacy 12:14 - New Bills Stadium Food
“What's Buggin' You” segment for Wednesday 8-5-26
Criminal Behaviorology Episode # 73Title: The “Twinkie Defense”: Nutritional Neuroscience with Jerrod BrownThe entire presentation can be found on the YouTube channel: @criminalbehaviorology - https://youtu.be/tZYh6yQIOgMThe views of our guests do not necessarily reflect those of Criminal Behaviorology, nor our sponsors. Donate to Criminal Behaviorology Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/cw/u81930699Highlights:This is the third episode in a three-part series featuring Dr. Jerrod Brown. Following up on our discussion of Forensic Neuroscience, Dr. Brown introduces us to the tasty topic of nutritional neuroscience. We cover the Dan White case from San Francisco, California in the 1970s. Mr. White murdered Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, after a series of disputes. In the years since many have scoffed at White's lawyers who argued his poor diet led to physiological state where the defendant was suffering from a diminished ability to make decisions (i.e., “Twinkie Defense”). Could there have been something to that idea? Join us for this detailed discussion of how nutrition helps conduct our behavior. Contact Dr. Brown at jerrod01234brown@live.com for further information on this topic. He will provide a copy of the comprehensive nutritional neuroscience article to anyone who emails him.Highlights:- “Twinkie defense”: The Dan White case overview- Diet and criminal behavior connection- Lead paint- Prison diet and health impact- Circadian rhythms and their impact on health and behavior- The basics of neurotransmitters, neurohormones, and the HPA axis- The literature on lifestyle medicine and therapeutic lifestyle changes- Community partnerships and programs like community gardens and horticulture therapy- Criminal responsibility in light of nutritional neuroscience. Do we not choose what we eat?Jerrod Brown Criminal Behaviorology episode playlist on our YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVxxfcfP9WM&list=PLItw5c5If7XYLook up CrimBehav on Facebook: facebook.com/CrimBehavCriminal Behaviorology on Blogger. CB Podcast Sites:https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/dashboard/episodeshttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/criminal-behaviorology/id1441879795?mt=2&uo=4 https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy83MzY4OWFjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz https://open.spotify.com/show/5VM7Sjv762u7nb91YWGczZ https://www.breaker.audio/criminal-behaviorology https://overcast.fm/itunes1441879795/criminal-behaviorology https://pca.st/Q38w https://radiopublic.com/criminal-behaviorology-GEv2AZ https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anchor-podcasts/criminal-behaviorologyOn YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKSVoZOBwCG28xMnuPq_GtwOn Rumble:https://rumble.com/c/c-1826027On Locals Social Media:https://criminalbehaviorology.locals.com/?showPosts=1https://criminalbehaviorology.locals.comOn Twitter:https://twitter.com/CrimBehavOn Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81930699Amazon:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a3604516-0645-4341-a792-75d10754556d/criminal-behaviorologyPlease write a review on any of our podcast sites listed above. Questions, comments, and requests for transcripts to: criminalbehaviorology@gmail.comThank you for listening.
La Familia will face Kansas alums in TBT semis; Willie Cauley-Stein on fan support; (12:00) Will Stein on his O line; (18:00) Darrell Bird of the Cats' Pause on Stein and UK football; (39:00) a look back and a fun moment with the late Mike Leach; (49:00) we learn about Irish football as two announcers lose their minds over a championship; (55:00) Dan Orlovsky of ESPN is way, way down on pedicures for men; (58:00) Ken Trivette of the Kentucky High School Basketball Hall of Fame + just how bit is that Twinkie?
Why Your Stroke May Not Be Causing Your Brain Fatigue For a long time after my brain surgery, I assumed my body worked like this: the stroke happened in my head, so whatever went wrong afterward would also happen in my head. Fatigue, brain fog, slow thinking all of it filed under “neurological,” all of it explained by the injury I already knew about. That assumption turned out to be wrong, and the way I found out was almost accidental. About eighteen months after my brain surgery, I had thyroid surgery to remove a nodule so large it had pushed my windpipe and esophagus six centimeters out of place. I had no idea it was there. No lump I could see, no difficulty swallowing or breathing that I’d noticed. It was found only because I had a chest X-ray to rule out an infection, and a doctor spotted something that had nothing to do with why I’d walked in. What followed was a slow, confusing recovery from that second surgery, and a wave of fatigue I automatically blamed on my brain, because that was the injury I already understood. It took time to realize the fatigue might be coming from somewhere else entirely: my thyroid. Hormones and Stroke Recovery: The Connection Nobody Talks About I brought this experience to Dr. Robert Hedaya, a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center and a pioneer of functional medicine psychiatry, to understand what actually happened, and to ask a bigger question: how many other stroke survivors are dealing with fatigue, brain fog, or mood changes that they’ve written off as “just the stroke,” when the real driver is a hormonal system that’s quietly stopped working properly? Hormones and stroke recovery turn out to be far more entangled than most of us are told. As Dr. Hedaya put it plainly: the brain is a hormonal organ. Thyroid hormone, cortisol, testosterone, estrogen every one of them acts directly on brain tissue, and every one of them can be knocked off balance by the stress of a major medical event. Why “Normal” Thyroid Bloodwork Can Still Mean Something’s Wrong One of the most important things Dr. Hedaya explained is that a “normal” TSH result doesn’t rule out a thyroid problem, especially after a stroke. TSH is a signal sent from the pituitary gland, and if a stroke has affected the brain’s signaling pathways, the pituitary itself may not respond the way it should. A survivor can have genuinely low thyroid hormone while their TSH sits comfortably inside the standard reference range, because the system responsible for raising that number in response to a deficiency isn’t functioning correctly. He also raised a striking data point: population studies suggest the average TSH in a healthy population is closer to 1.4, yet most labs still use an upper reference limit of 4.5, a range wide enough, statistically, to miss a real problem. His advice for survivors going into a GP appointment: ask specifically for TSH, free T4, free T3, and reverse T3, not just the standard single-marker test, and come prepared with symptoms written down if a doctor pushes back. A Nodule That Grew in Silence The brain is a hormonal organ. It’s an immune organ. It’s a neurological organ… there’s not one hormonal axis when it’s abnormal that cannot cause neurological or psychiatric problems. -Dr. Robert Hedaya My own nodule is a case study in exactly this kind of silent progression. Dr. Hedaya explained that because it grew inward rather than outward, it never created the visible lump most people associate with a thyroid problem, and because it didn’t press on my vocal cords or laryngeal nerve, I never developed the hoarseness that might have flagged it sooner. My body adapted gradually, and the fatigue that eventually surfaced was easy to misattribute to the injury I already knew I had. Cortisol, Stress, and the Difference Between Pain and Suffering Beyond the thyroid, Dr. Hedaya walked through the role of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone, and why survivors often struggle to answer a deceptively simple question: “Are you stressed?” His distinction between pain and suffering is worth sitting with: pain is often unavoidable, but suffering is shaped by the story we tell ourselves about a situation, and a stroke can compromise the very brain systems that regulate that stress response in the first place. Testosterone, Estrogen, and the Brain’s Need for Hormones to Rewire The conversation closed on sex hormones, testosterone and estrogen, relevant to both men and women, and their role in neuroplasticity. Dr. Hedaya drew a direct comparison to adolescence: the teenage brain rewires itself while hormone levels are surging, and the same principle applies after a stroke. A brain trying to rebuild pathways needs adequate hormonal support to do that work. Without it, recovery can stall in ways that have nothing to do with effort or physiotherapy. What You Can Do About It If any of this sounds familiar fatigue that doesn’t track cleanly with other recovery milestones, or symptoms a doctor has waved off as “just stress,” Dr. Hedaya’s PNIE (psycho-neuro-immuno-endocrinology) questionnaire is a useful starting point. PNIE Questionnaire download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1S7kC5uMFgBfS-gWcUOIHp0kOjGnrzZK5/view?usp=sharing If thyroid function specifically is what you’re navigating, the earlier conversation with Dr. Elena Zinkov, “Stroke Fatigue and Thyroid,” goes deeper into that piece (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/stroke-fatigue-and-thyroid/). And for more from Dr. Hedaya, the first conversation on photobiomodulation and stroke recovery is a good companion listen (https://recoveryafterstroke.com/photobiomodulation-stroke-recovery/). Getting your body back after a stroke is rarely just about the brain. My book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, goes further into the mindset shifts that came out of my own recovery (recoveryafterstroke.com/book). And if this podcast has helped you, you can support its continuation at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. This blog is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult your doctor before making any changes to your health or recovery plan. Hormones, Fatigue, and the Brain: Dr. Robert Hedaya Returns (Interview) A baseball-sized thyroid nodule hid in plain sight after Bill’s stroke. Dr. Hedaya explains the hormone testing every survivor should ask for. Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast Bill’s Book: The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became Thethe Best Thing That Happened Highlights: 01:45 Hormones and Stroke Recovery 02:11 Understanding Thyroid Function and Its Impact 17:07 Navigating Thyroid Health with Healthcare Providers 27:09 The Role of Stress and Cortisol 39:09 Nutrition’s Impact on Brain Recovery Transcript: Hormones and Stroke Recovery Bill Gasiamis (00:00) And they noticed a massive lump in my throat and my esophagus and my windpipe were pushed six centimeters. And they said to me, well, can you swallow? Can you breathe? Can you do it? And I was like, yeah, I’m all fine. There’s nothing wrong with my throat. that was the first sign that there was something wrong with my thyroid Bill Gasiamis (00:19) Welcome back to Recovery After Stroke. I’m Bill Garciamas, and today I’m joined again by Dr. Robert Hedeya, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center and a pioneer of functional medicine psychiatry, whose highland approach to brain health first brought him onto the show for our conversation on episode 404, where we discussed, amongst other things, photobiomodulation, a type of transcript. cranial laser therapy helping some stroke survivors recover lost function. He’s back today for a conversation I wanted to have for a while, the hormonal side of stroke recovery. We’re going to talk about thyroid function, cortisol, and stress physiology, and sex hormones like testosterone and estrogen, and why every one of these systems can directly affect how well and how fast your brain recovers. I’ll also share my own story of a thyroid nodule that grew undetected, which was discovered after my brain surgery completely by accident. if this conversation resonates with you, my book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became Thethe Best Thing That Happened goes deeper into the mindset shifts that shaped my own recovery. You can find it at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if you’d like to help keep this podcast going, you can support it financially at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Bill Gasiamis (01:46) Robert Hedaya, welcome back to the podcast. Dr Hedaya (01:49) Thank you for having me, Bill. Understanding Thyroid Function and Its Impact Bill Gasiamis (01:51) thank you for being here. The last conversation we had was very well received. And it’s always difficult in a one hour interview to ask all the questions that we could possibly ask about the brain and stroke recovery and all the things that people go through. And… I’ve got a lot of other questions that are related to the brain and the link between other parts of the body and the brain, because we have this sense. Well, I did at least when I was first diagnosed that whatever happens in my head is kind of isolated, that it just impacts my head. But there seemed to be some other impacts and cascading effects. that were occurring, uh, that I didn’t know were linked to the brain injury, Dr Hedaya (02:45) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (02:46) maybe indirectly, but they were perhaps. But one thing specifically that happened to me about, uh, 18 months after my brain surgery was I had thyroid surgery to remove a nodule on my thyroid. And when I was going through the recovery after that, surgery, I noticed that I had fatigue and I thought it was neurological fatigue related to my brain surgery. But it took a long time to develop an understanding that perhaps that batch of fatigue was related to my thyroid. And then that got me thinking all sorts of things. know, if the thyroid also causes the same neurological fatigue that brain injury causes, what people might be missing this in their healing from a brain injury, they might have a compromised thyroid and not know about it. So the first question is, what is a thyroid? What does it do? And why does it cause neurological fatigue? Dr Hedaya (03:54) Okay. So thyroid gland sits in the neck, right? There’s two lobes, there’s one on the right, one on the left, a little kind of island in the middle called the isthmus, and and it controls many functions, metabolism overall, energy overall, just broadly speaking. now it affects the immune system. It’s affects the nervous system. It affects the gastrointestinal system, it affects the muscles, it affects the heart, right? It affects the skin, it affects the nails, it affects the hair. You know, and I could go on and on and on. Okay? Bill Gasiamis (04:34) Wow. Dr Hedaya (04:35) Now the interesting thing about this is that this be a little technical, but the thyroid puts out a hormone called T4 or thyroxine, and this is a little molecule with four iodines in it on it, and that Gives you about 20% of the activity of your thyroid hormones in your body. But then that T4 goes all over the body to different tissues, and each tissue can has its own system to change that T4 into T3 by removing an iodine. T3 has 80% of the thyroid activity. So that means each tissue in the body can control how much thyroid it. It’s using and needs, right? And and has available to it. Okay. So that means the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, every tissue has its own enzyme that allows it to kind of modulate how much thyroid, right? Now, so why does that cause neurological fatigue? Well, thyroid in the brain affects neurotransmitters like adrenaline in the brain, which is called nor norepinephrine, noradrenaline. in order for that to work. The T3 has to be in the right amount for the receptors for the noradrenaline to be structurally correct so they can transmit the signal. It’s necessary for production of energy in all the brain cells. It helps the immune system in the brain. It carries molecules from here to there in the brain. it affects serotonin transmission in the brain, so mood regulation, anxiety, obsessiveness, depression. You know, those are just some of the functions of the brain, but it affects every cell in the bane in the brain. So you’re gonna, if your thyroid is off, most likely you’re gonna have some kind of brain problems, particularly, you know, when your thyroid is off, the tissues in your body that are most compromised or most stressed, that’s probably where it’s gonna show up, right? And in the case of stroke, that’s where it’ll show up. Bill Gasiamis (06:44) So it’s possible then, is it possible to overlook it? Is it very obvious that your thyroid is out of, well, is dysregulated or is not working properly? Dr Hedaya (06:56) Well, in general it’s easy to detect. And if you want, I’ll tell you how. So Bill Gasiamis (07:04) Yeah. Tell me how. Dr Hedaya (07:07) so there’s some blood tests that are simple and then s some symptoms. so for most people this holds. When your thyroid is low, you know, you’re gonna be cold easily, you’re gonna have dry skin, brittle nails, hair will fall out. Muscles will be weak, thinking will be slow, movement will be slow, getting up from a chair will be more difficult, going upstairs will be more difficult, your heart rate will slow down, you’ll be constipated. Those are the most common symptoms. If your thyroid is overactive, then you could be have palpitations, oily skin, acne, oily hair. Diarrhea, you know, kind of the opposite. The thing that’s a little confusing with the thyroid is sometimes overactive thyroid can show up and look like it’s underactive symptomatically, or vice versa. So you really need the labs. And the labs are TSH, which is thyroid stimulating hormone, and that’s tells you what the brain is doing. And then free T4. That’s the amount of T4 that’s kind of floating around free, not bound to protein, so it can actually do its job. The way I think of it is like, you know, a lot of the thyroid home is sitting on a bus. It’s not free, it’s bound to protein. Can’t do its job. But the stuff the thyroid this that’s out of the bus or not on a protein, that can do its job. That’s the free T four. And then the free T three, right, which carries eighty percent of thyroid activity. And then the last one is a reverse T3 because sometimes if your tissues in your body are making too much thyroid or getting too much thyroid, they’ll actually, instead of taking the iodine off the T4 molecule on the right side, they’ll take it off on the left side, or vice versa. So they make a fake T3 that doesn’t work. And this way they short circuited okay, you got all this T3. Well, let’s make it into a fake, fake T3 so it can’t do anything. So reverse T3 is also very important. And then you want to measure body temperature. Usually it’ll be low. And then, you know, a physical exam. Those are the ways to do it. If you wanted to go even deeper, you could do some genetic testing. There are genes that will tell you whether you’re converting the T4 to T3 in the brain. Adequately, or maybe you’re more likely to be slow in that regard. So you can have normal numbers in your blood, but your brain might be hypothyroid, right? And there are actually a lot Bill Gasiamis (10:05) Uh-huh. Dr Hedaya (10:05) of studies showing that hypermetabolic, like high doses of free T3, actually reverse treatment-resistant depression because it’s it’s thought that there’s a local in-brain. hypo-low thyroidism. You can have low thyroidism in your heart, in your muscles, but not in the other tissues, you know, because I told you every tissue can control how much it’s making. So if you have a genetic vulnerability, then you you might more be in general be more likely vulnerable to depression or to ADD or to anxiety, things like that. Bill Gasiamis (10:42) Wow. Are you blowing me away? I didn’t expect to hear any of the things that you just said. X. Um, some of the things that you described, the, uh, some of the symptoms that you described, had those intermittently in and out all the time, other than a thyroid nodule, which is what I had, which was obvious on a scan. Dr Hedaya (11:05) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (11:06) What other things caused the thyroid to not function? correctly. So is there lifestyle factors that interfere with the thyroid gland and therefore, you know, then have the cascading effect and take off, take all those other things or some of those other things offline. Dr Hedaya (11:28) So there a number of causes, right? So first of all, let’s take someone who has had a stroke or chronic illness, right? So you’re under stress and that affects your stress hormones, your adrenal glands, cortisol, etc. Well, if your adrenals kind of poop out, then maybe your body says, Well, I can’t handle all this thyroid, even though the amount is normal, it’s like too much. I can’t handle it, so it’ll make less thyroids. Now you develop a hypothyroidism. You could develop it just because all the chemicals in the environment, the ha the hormone interrupting chemicals, there are hundreds of those. you could develop it ’cause of nutritional deficiencies like tyrosine is necessary to make thyroid hormone, copper, you know, things like that. I can’t tell you offhand which which nutritional factors, but people can look that up, what nutritional factors are important. To make thyroid hormone. and then infections like, for example, Lyme disease causes Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which is an autoimmune where your immune system’s actually attacking your thyroid. COVID vaccination, like the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine, if you are genetically vulnerable, can also cause your immune system to attack your thyroid. So there are many, many causes, plus there are inherited genetic vulnerabilities and it It’s not always low thyroid, sometimes it’s high thyroid, hyperthyroidism, like Graves’ disease, right? You can have antibodies Bill Gasiamis (13:01) Mm-hmm. Dr Hedaya (13:02) that are actually stimulating thyroid activity as well. Bill Gasiamis (13:06) Wow. The environmental toxins. we talking about all day, every day household use kind of environmental toxins? I imagine the external of the house, they’re kind of out of our control, right? We’ll talk about like, you know, like pollution or things that are associated to things that are caused that we don’t necessarily control, but internally inside the house or what we expose ourselves to that we can control. what would some of those environmental toxins Dr Hedaya (13:38) Well Bill Gasiamis (13:39) be? Dr Hedaya (13:40) so for example, you know, in your produce, you know, there are pesticides, or in the man made materials in your car or the man made materials in your home. Let’s say you bought a new home and you have, you know, some kind of synthetic floors or furniture with synthetic materials or materials that are natural that are treated with chemicals for various reasons. Those things all can be not everyone is, but many of them are called homes. hormone interruptors because they actually can change the way your hormones function. You know? So we’re the truth is we’re bathed in these chemicals. They’re everywhere. And very hard to escape them. The best thing you can do is kind of try to detox them using a healthy diet, a lot of crucifer vegetables and lots of vegetables, above ground vegetables that are grown in healthy soil. Without pesticides, organic preferably, right? and then there are supplements you can take, such as metagenics makes something called UltraClear Plus, which helps support the liver, and its detox functions. You know, some people are more vulnerable than others, but you know, these thyroid nodules you like you have, they’re very, very common now. Very common. And that’s you know. In large measure, I think these hormone interrupters that are interfering with how the the thyroid follicles in the thyroid gland are operating. Bill Gasiamis (15:13) Is it possible to have thyroid nodules and not know about it? I, I Dr Hedaya (15:18) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (15:19) say that because I had nodules that were the size of a baseball, apparently in my throat that were growing inwards, that didn’t make a lump outside of my throat, which Dr Hedaya (15:33) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (15:34) I was not aware of. And the way they found it was they did a chest X-ray after brain surgery because I wasn’t recovering well. to check my chest to see if there’s an infection. And they noticed a massive lump in my throat and my esophagus and my windpipe were pushed six centimeters. Dr Hedaya (15:52) Wow. Bill Gasiamis (15:53) I’m not sure what that is in inches. And they said to me, well, can you swallow? Can you breathe? Can you do it? And I was like, yeah, I’m all fine. There’s nothing wrong with my throat. But that was the first sign that there was something wrong with my thyroid before that. there was no sign of it. I ask that because either I’m totally oblivious or it is possible to have thyroid nodules and not know it. Dr Hedaya (16:23) Well, most people don’t know it. Now yours is so massive, but I think it’s kind of what you said is how it grew. If it grew towards your vocal cords or your laryngeal nerve or something, you would have had some pretty bad hoarseness or something like that. But it grew I guess backwards so it didn’t interfere that much. And I guess your s your body adapted gradually over time. You know, yes, it’s very possible for sure. Very common. Bill Gasiamis (16:49) And how would somebody interact with a general practitioner, for example, now to go through the process of understanding, A, their thyroid health and whether or not they have any nodules. Navigating Thyroid Health with Healthcare Providers Dr Hedaya (17:02) I mean in other words, given what we’ve talked about, how should they approach their doctor basically? Bill Gasiamis (17:07) Yeah. Dr Hedaya (17:08) I guess I would say go to AI, get a list of the symptoms of low thyroid or high thyroid or all of them, check them off. So then when you go to the doctor you have a list, check your temperature, check your pulse, although the doctor will should check that. And then you could say, look, I have these symptoms, or maybe you don’t have any. But if you do, you have these symptoms, and clearly thyroid hormone levels can affect the brain. And I’d like a TSH, a free T4, a free T3, and a reverse T3. That’s it. And if they Bill Gasiamis (17:45) Okay, perfect. Dr Hedaya (17:46) say, no, no, we don’t need to do that, you know, a lot of times what they do, they’ll just do a TSH. Or they won’t do the reverse T3. They don’t, unfortunately, look at the thyroid gland in a dynamic way. They say, the TSH is fine. If your thyroid was low, your TSH would go high. We don’t need to do the rest. But that’s not true. That’s not true at all. Because especially if you had a stroke, your pituitary function may be compromised. Your TSH may be fine or low and your low thyroid. As matter of fact, in the last interview, the case that I talked about, who referred me to you, she actually had a low TSH, but she had a very low, I think it was a free T4. Or free T3 or both, whatever it was, but she had too little thyroid hormone, and her pituitary couldn’t respond because of the stroke. Bill Gasiamis (18:37) understood. So that’s a great list of Dr Hedaya (18:37) So so be you have to be dogmatic and you say to the doctor, look Even put into even put into AI and say, look, if the doctor comes back to me and argues against these tests, what should I say? You gotta be prepared because the doctor will steamroll you. You know, that they only allow this, they only allow that, I’ll only do the free T4. Well, that doesn’t tell you how much has been converted to T3, free T3, and it doesn’t tell you, even if the free T3 is normal, that doesn’t mean you’re not overproducing thyroid and and dis you know, and neutralizing it with the reverse T three. So, you know I mean I I mean I think it’s s so important that a thorough look is is really important. If you have the symptoms, you know. Bill Gasiamis (19:22) I agree with you. That list of to-dos, I’m gonna put that on the show notes. People can go and get that list if they don’t wanna go into AI themselves or they haven’t got the time or whatever. They can just download it from there. And then they’ll be able to take that and begin a conversation with their general practitioner. What’s interesting is that I’m in Australia, you’re in the United States. My general practitioner is pushed back when a… when a patient will turn up and say, I have these tests? They’ll say, well, no, you don’t have any condition that is obvious that you need these tests. So it’s not covered. So you don’t need to do it. So my next suggestion to them is no problem. Order the tests and I’ll pay for them. Now it’s not ideal, but if you’re not going to do them for me and I need to know, cause it’s my health, I’m going to pay for them. So just tell me how much it is and I’ll find a way and I’ll make it happen and I’ll pay for it. So that’s another option. Dr Hedaya (20:17) Yeah. But if you go in with your symptom list, right, and you say, Well, that’s not true, because these are the symptoms, you know, that I have, here they are, right here. You can take a look, you know. And then the last thing I’ll say, this gets even more tricky, is the reference range, I’m sure in Australia, but certainly in the United States, the reference range basically is of the TSH, the pituitary home. Is 0.5 to 4.5, meaning you anywhere in that range and your TSH is normal. That is a bad reference range. And I know it to be a fact because I I I guess I won’t waste your time with it, but I did a study on a hundred people and with a very sensitive thyroid test called a TRH stimulation test. and I was able I hired a statistician to calculate this. And say, well, I don’t want to keep doing this test on everybody. What TSH predicts an abnormal TRH stimulation test? And he came back and said to me, Well, once the TSH is over 1.4, it starts to increase your odds of having an abnormal TRH stimulation. So I said, okay, so 1.4 TSH is my cutoff, right? That’s in my mind. I said, okay, that’s that’s my cutoff, that’s when I get suspicious. Later, several years later, a paper came out, a large, large study, called the NHANES Study, Nurses Health, and I’m not sure what it stands for. Thousands of people followed over many, many years, over decades, and they found the mean TSH in the US population is 1.4. So, right where I what right where my study found. So that means statistically, it is not. impossible to have the upper limit of the reference range being at four point five because statistically the upper limit is never more than two standard deviations. So even if your standard deviation is 1.4, which it can’t be, you you’re not going to reach 4.5, right? Unless you have a it’s called a bimodal distribution curve. If you have that, then you’d say, well, it it could be. But we don’t have that with thyroid. So that reference range is wrong. The upper limit of the reference range should be 2.5. And about half the endocrinologists in the United States believe that. And half say, no, no, no, don’t change it. So that’s another sticky point because, you know, easily people get a result and they’ll go to the doc and say, no, the reference range is 4.5. You’re normal. Then you could say, well, look, I have these symptoms, and they could do a literature search. What’s the normal reference point? What in in the N A N HANES N-H-A-N-E-S study? It’ll show you 1.4. and you could take be prepared to go to the doctor and say, Well, here’s a study that suggests that the reference range may be incorrect. and I have symptoms by the way. We don’t treat the lab, we treat the person. So could we give a trial? Just a trial, there’s no harm done, you know, trial. Let’s see let’s start at a very low dose. Let’s see how I feel. Maybe I’ll get better. I’ll come back in a month. Bill Gasiamis (23:45) Yeah, I love that. It’s really good advice, especially coming from someone who is a doctor who think is thinking on the same way as me, for example, the patient. Because that’s like a match made in heaven. And that’s so rare to be able to get that. Often, my challenge to my general practitioner was well, the reference range isn’t that average of a sick population, because it’s usually a sick population that comes to see you to get bloods. It’s It’s not the most healthiest people that come to see you to get bloods. And that’s kind of how I try to like start the conversation of convincing a general practitioner to do a test that they’re reluctant to do. And when I say they’re reluctant, I’m not in there every day. I’m not in there every week. And I’m not putting stress on the system to an extent where I’ve been over using the system. I’m not at all. in there once, twice a year, maybe, you so if I’m in once, twice a year, well, then, I’m not mucking around. Like I’ve come there to investigate something that I’m suspecting is wrong with me. It’s my body. I’m feeling something. had a bit of a look online. This is what I suspect. Don’t try and convince me out of my thinking or my instinct more better. Why don’t we just, work together to get to the bottom of it. If it is something it is, if it’s not, it’s not, and that’s okay. Not a big deal. I’m better to know. then not no, I think, you know, it’s better to be safe than sorry in my mind. Dr Hedaya (25:16) Yeah. I would I would only think only correction I would make is the reference ranges generally are made on normal populations. Now now the thing is who’s normal anymore? Number one. Number two, that’s a statistical norm that doesn’t tell you anything about your genetics. your vulnerabilities, it’s not an individualized statistic. I mean it’s it not an individualized thing. What’s your normal range? And are you out of your normal range? Nobody can answer that, right? Unless you had previous data before you were ill. And you say, well look, I’ve been running at a 1.1 for five years or 10 years and now I’m at 3.2. That’s a big change. Well, you know you’re stressed. Well yeah maybe but here are my symptoms. Always come back to your symptoms. Bill Gasiamis (26:11) Got it, got it. Dr Hedaya (26:12) No. Bill Gasiamis (26:13) You use the word stress just now and my general practitioner says, I might go in and some bloods might be out of whack or some things might be not feeling great. And he’ll say, are you stressed? And I’m like, well, I’m not stressed. like, I’m not stressed in any way that I can say is worse than normal. For example, I’m Dr Hedaya (26:35) Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (26:36) just, you know, I’m attending to my clients at work. picking up the kids from school, I’m, you know, making sure the bills are paid. Like I’m just doing the normal things that I always Dr Hedaya (26:48) Right. Bill Gasiamis (26:48) do, which tend to be stressful. And somehow when we talk about stress, cortisol seems to come into the conversation. Dr Hedaya (26:57) Mm-hmm. The Role of Stress and Cortisol Bill Gasiamis (26:58) And I don’t know how to respond to a general practitioner who says to me, am I stressed? Because I’m not experiencing something extreme or dramatic. in the months before I came to see him. So can we have a conversation a little bit about stress, cortisol, what is stress, what is cortisol, are they linked? Tell me about that, give me your thoughts. Dr Hedaya (27:21) Okay. Okay, so this is a multi-layer system. Okay, it starts with your perception and your of a situation and the story you tell about you the story you tell yourself about the the situation and your need for control of a situation and as opposed to saying I’m in the flow of the universe and All right, this is you know, this is the way it is, and I’ll adapt to it. Not so easy by the way, but it’s a much healthier way because most things will not stress you. Now, pain, let’s say you stepped on a nail, you’re gonna have stress, okay? Totally stressful, etc. But there’s a a difference between pain and suffering. Most of our problem is suffering. Suffering is a result of thinking patterns. perspectives of yourself and the world and the future and blah blah blah. I could talk about that for a long time. And that is probably one of the most important places to intervene and to train yourself, etc. Now, once this thing is registered as stress, it goes through back to the hypothalamus and the pituitary where all those hormones are controlled, the hypothalamus and pituitary in the brain, now you’ve God forbid, you’ve had a stroke. Those things may be affected, therefore, those systems may not be working well. In that case, you may not be able to handle stresses that you used to handle. You may not you may not have those shock absorbers. So, how do you measure this? I think the way you measure it again are symptoms, and typically it would be low cortisol and low DHA, d DHEA, and low pregnenolone. And the symptoms would be a lot of fatigue, right? Maybe poor wound healing, muscle aches, body pains, getting sick more easily, cognitive slowing, depression, anxiety, extreme exhaustion, salt cravings, in unstable temperatures, you know, I would say yeah You know, th loss of appetite in severe cases, you know, dizziness on standing. Okay. So those are the low adrenal output things. Now how d how do you measure and again, you think you have a problem, go to an AI thing, make that list, check it off, whatever applies, and you know, work yourself up symptomatically and then ask well, okay, what what are the best tests here? What are the best test. Now the way I test it is I get morning I got a morning like eight to nine a.m fasting ACTH and cortisol. It’s gotta be in the morning around between eight and nine a.m. fasting. I also at the same time get a D, like David, H E A and a D H E A sulfate, and then I also get a pregnenolone. And if I think there’s any kind of sex hormone problem that I want to check, then I will check a free testosterone, FSH, LH, and The testosterone measures the free testosterone is very unreliable. So if it comes out low, you want to do it two more times to double check that. But the other measures are pretty reliable. And then you’ll you’ll know the other thing you can do is you could do something called a Dutch test, which is a urine test that’ll look at your cortisol through the day, or an adrenal saliva test. It’s ASI, alleval adrenal saliva index, the Dutch test. or the ASI, both good tests. and those will tell you what’s going on through the day. Like if you’re not sleeping, it could be because your cortisol high at night, you know. Wake up horrible or in pain. Could be because your cortisol is really low in the morning. Really low. You can’t even get out of bed, you know, can’t get going, right? So these are all all things that you can do to measure and then you can replace these hormones and That’s one thing to do. The other thing to do is to work on how you manage stress. There are millions of ways of doing that, right? From meditation to heart math to Bill Gasiamis (32:05) Mm-hmm. Dr Hedaya (32:06) yoga to you know, there’s just a lot a lot a lot of ways to Bill Gasiamis (32:10) Yeah, let’s go back for a moment and talk about testosterone because when I hear testosterone, I’m hearing you say to a male that I need to have testosterone in my body and at certain levels, et cetera. And sometimes it can fall out of whack and you need to get it tested. I had mine tested recently. It’s all good. But women also need testosterone. Tell me about that. Dr Hedaya (32:35) Yeah, so I was I was thinking of both male and female when I said it, Bill Gasiamis (32:38) Yeah. Dr Hedaya (32:39) because it’s it’s you know, women who are postmenopausal can have it’s much more common to have a low free testosterone loss of libido, you know. testosterone the studies which I’ve reviewed a few times, you know, there’s a debate does it affect the mind, the brain, you know. It seems to have an effect on well being, on vitality muscles, sex drive obviously, libido erectile function, brain cognitive function, some mood effects, etc. So I I think it’s important now i it it has to be managed in women as well as men. You know, in in women testosterone is a step on the way to estrogen as it is in men, right? And in the metabolism, right? So it it should certainly be assessed in everybody. Bill Gasiamis (33:39) Yeah. And estrogen, mentioned estrogen. Now, one of them in my mind, it seems to be more associated again to women, estrogen, especially. And, and then men also have estrogen, need estrogen. Dr Hedaya (33:55) Men also have estrogen. I haven’t studied it so I couldn’t tell you, but I imagine it’s doing something. it probably turns men into better leaders after they’re fifty, is my guess. Let Bill Gasiamis (34:08) more emotionally intelligent. Dr Hedaya (34:10) more emotionally intelligent, less testosterone, you know. You know, I I I Bill Gasiamis (34:15) You know what? That’s a good theory. We’ll run with that for now. I might relate to that, know, who knows. Dr Hedaya (34:22) Yeah. I I think Bill Gasiamis (34:24) Awesome, awesome, so… Dr Hedaya (34:24) Yeah, so w for for women on estrogen, it depends, you know, who are you assessing? Are you that’s a whole complex subject, you know. Is it a young woman who’s menstruating? Does she have premature ovarian failure, endometriosis, ovarian cysts, insulin resistance, they all kind of travel together, methylation problems, they travel together. is it someone who’s perimenopausal where she’s starting to lose progesterone and getting a lot of PMS? That’s pretty easy. You can replace the progesterone. Is it postmenopausal a woman who’s just kinda lost the estrogen, lost the progesterone? You know, if there’s a family history of cognitive decline or dementia or something like that, there’s great evidence that transdermal estrogen and some oral progesterone bio bioidentic, not synthetic, is great and reduces the risk for lots of disorders later in life for women. You know. So there’s a whole you know, there’s a whole way of working all that up, depending on who who you’re looking at. But very important. Now so the let me Bill Gasiamis (35:31) Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Dr Hedaya (35:34) say this. The important thing here, and this is maybe the most important thing. Someone’s had a stroke, they’re obviously tremendously stressed. You have to look at all the hormones. You can’t the brain is a hormonal organ. It’s an immune organ. It’s a neurological organ. I used to teach psycho, neuro, immuno, and the chronology at Georgetown for a number of years. Okay? And the brain and hormones, you can’t separate it. So if the brain is under stress, the hormonal axes are under stress, and there’s not one hormonal axis when it’s abnormal that cannot cause neurological or psychiatric problems. Okay? So you must, as part of the work of anyone who’s had stroke. You must look at the endocrine, the hormonal axis. You know, you must look at it. Why? Because if you’re trying to recover from a stroke and you don’t have adequate hormones, it’s gonna be much, much harder. Much, much harder. Right? But Bill Gasiamis (36:37) Peace. Dr Hedaya (36:38) if you have if you have the the hormones at good levels, okay, now the the brain has that. If it has its nutrients, it has that, you know, okay, now it can do something, you know. What happens, think about it this way. What happens in adolescence? The brain is being rewired, the body’s growing, brain is rew being rewired. Where are the hormones? The hormones are skyrocketing. They’re necessary for the rewiring. You had a stroke, you’re trying to rewire brain, you gotta have adequate hormones. Bill Gasiamis (37:10) I love it. This is the thing that people miss. You know, we talk about the gap in stroke recovery. Acute phase gets handled Dr Hedaya (37:19) That’s Bill Gasiamis (37:19) 99 % of the time really well. People get patched up and they get sent home in some kind of alive state, whether they are fully functional Dr Hedaya (37:27) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (37:28) or working towards it or whether they are less functional and working towards being more functional, like some kind of stage Dr Hedaya (37:35) Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (37:36) of you’re alive and you’re good enough to go home. And then there’s no information after that. So how do we assess address? How, what do we know? What do we not know that we need to know? And this is kind of what this conversation is, right? It’s like, okay, here’s Dr Hedaya (37:53) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (37:53) a whole bunch of things we’ve just discussed. There might have been things that you heard for the first time. Don’t let that, get in the way of your curiosity and investigate the thing that pricked your ears up, whether it was a symptom that Dr. Hedaya mentioned and just do a little bit more work in understanding what that is, take that to your general practitioner and begin the conversation of taking responsibility for your recovery. And in my mind, like there’s gotta be like a foundational thing that people can do to intervene that doesn’t cost most of the time anything extra. And that helps encourage and nourish the brain in overcoming these challenges, but then has the a cascade effect of having the same positive outcome on all the other organs and hormones. And that to me is nutrition. So like, if you’re, if you would suggest to somebody how they might start thinking about their nutrition as opposed to what they might have been doing before stroke, how do you begin that conversation? And what are the two or three fundamental things that they need to consider? about nutrition. Nutrition’s Impact on Brain Recovery Dr Hedaya (39:11) Okay, so If it doesn’t grow that way, don’t eat it. I never saw a bread tree. I didn’t see an ice cream tree or a Twinkie tree. Okay. So if it doesn’t grow that way, don’t eat it. Balance your plate. Balance your plate. And actually our coach, Caroline Hade, is putting out an ebook. I don’t know, should be out at a week or two or three weeks. It’s like, I don’t know, four or five dollars or something. and that will tell you exactly how to balance your plate. and then I would say very important to have three meals and maybe, depending on your how insulin resistant you are, maybe additionally two snacks. and per day, but keep your calories you don’t want to be overweight, okay, because if you’re overweight, you know, that’s a That’s its own risk factor for brain problems, right? but you can’t lose weight in a day, you’re stressed, you’re hungry, you’re tired, you eat the carbs, you know, everybody struggles with that. But that that is one of the biggest enemies of eating eating eating these processed carbs that we all love is one of the biggest enemies of your health. One of the biggest enemies of your health for sure. Bill Gasiamis (40:35) Okay, there are some great resources that people can again look into how to eat to heal the brain. And we didn’t have to have a deep conversation about that. But I love Dr Hedaya (40:45) Mm-hmm. Bill Gasiamis (40:45) what you said about balancing the plate. And if it didn’t grow that way, don’t eat it. It’s such a simple thing. If it comes in a packet on a shelf in a supermarket with all fancy pictures Dr Hedaya (40:59) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (41:00) and stickers and a list of ingredients, like it’s probably not nutritional. of food. It’s probably something that’s going to make inflammation worse. It’s probably something that’s going to give you the type of energy that is not helpful. It’s probably going to have a whole bunch of other things. And that’s kind of my approach to healing and recovering my brain. It’s one of the first things I did was just look at my nutrition, immediately stop smoking and drinking. mean, I know it should go without saying, but sometimes you have to have a stroke for it to actually sink in and make sense. and don’t have any alcohol at all. I’m talking about forever if you can, but I didn’t have alcohol Dr Hedaya (41:46) Yeah. Bill Gasiamis (41:47) for at least the first four or five years. And now in the next five years or so, maybe I had one glass per year, just because I was, in an event where it was, everyone was drinking and it was almost necessary to have sip or half a sip or act as if I was drinking. So with that, I think we’ll wrap up this conversation today. There’s been a lot for people to digest, go back and listen to it a second time. And a third time that we have some resources in the show notes. And Dr. Hedaya, thank you for joining me again. And I look forward to our conversation that’s coming up in a few weeks time where we’re going to talk about toxin load and neuroplasticity. Dr Hedaya (42:29) Beautiful. Thanks so much for the opportunity, Bill. I hope I hope people get something out of this and they pursue what they need to pursue. Bill Gasiamis (42:36) Well, that’s a wrap on this conversation with Dr. Robert Hedeya. If there’s one thing to take from today’s interview, it is this. The brain is a hormonal organ and recovery isn’t just about the brain healing in isolation. Thyroid, cortisol, testosterone, estrogen, all of it is connected, and all of it is worth checking if your recovery has plateaued in ways that don’t quite make sense. Dr. Hadea’s free PNIE questionnaire is linked in the show notes. Download it, work through it, and take it with you to your next GP visit. If you want to go deeper on the thyroid piece specifically, go back and listen to the earlier episode with Dr. Elena Zinkov on stroke fatigue and thyroid. And if you missed it, the first conversation with Dr. Hedeya on photobiomodulation is a great companion to this one. if this episode has helped you, share it with someone who needs to hear it. That’s genuinely the best way to help this show reach more survivors. My book, The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, is available at recoveryafterstroke.com/book. And if you’d like to support the show financially, you can do so at Patreon by going to patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Until next time, take care of yourself and don’t assume it’s just a stroke. The post Hormones, Fatigue, and the Brain: Dr. Robert Hedaya Returns appeared first on Recovery After Stroke.
Here is the truth: (https://www.copyandcontent.ai) Evergreen does not mean untouched. Evergreen means designed to stay relevant. There's a big difference. A good evergreen email sequence feels personal, timely, and useful even though it's automated. A bad follow up sequence feels like a broken vending machine selling expired Twinkies! (Do they actually expire?) Your audience can tell. They may not know what a workflow tag is. They may not know what dynamic dates are. They may not understand conditional logic, segmentation, or automation triggers. But they absolutely know when something feels off, looks dated, and smells strongly of BS! That tiny moment of confusion or inconsistency is where trust starts to fall apart. Not loudly. Quietly. Permanently. The hidden problem with evergreen email is not automation. It's neglect. Check out this podcast with Jim Edwards as he and Stew Smith discuss email follow up sequences to help make your sales pages EVERGREEN. For More info- Facebook Group – Sales Copy and Content Marketing Hacks at https://www.facebook.com/groups/copywritingandcontenthacks and for more information on the wizards used to make outstanding sales copy check out https://www.CopyandContent.ai
This week, we have two returning guests together for the first time! What a wonderful combination of some of our favorite folks. Also, check out their show:"Soccer Moms” is a production of iHeartMedia and Will Ferrell's Big Money Players network, with new episodes available weekly on Tuesdays on the iHeartRadio app and everywhere podcasts are heard. Starring:Adal Rifai John Patrick CoanErin KeifSpecial Guests:Katie RichHolly LaurentEditing by: Casey ToneyTheme by: Arne ParrottLogo by: Emily Kardamis & Emmaline MorrisWant more? Get Weekly Bonus Eps on Patreon!JPC's Guided Meditations Volume 1, available now at our Patreon digital store!Want merch? Visit our Dashery Store!Want to mail us something? Hey Riddle Riddle 6351 W Montrose Ave #267Chicago, IL, 60634Want to leave us a voicemail? Call (805) RIDDLE-1 or (805-743-3531)Want to advertise on the show? Check out Hey Riddle Riddle via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Si llevas tiempo intentando comer mejor, probablemente hayas recibido decenas de consejos contradictorios. Que si debes eliminar los carbohidratos por completo, que si el desayuno es obligatorio o si está sobrevalorado, que si comer de noche te hace engordar, que si es mejor ayunar por las mañanas, que el pan es malo, la leche es perjudicial, el azúcar es veneno… La lista es interminable. Te dicen que tienes que comer cinco veces al día y, al minuto siguiente, que lo mejor es comer solo dos. El verdadero problema de todos estos consejos no es solo que sean altamente discutibles; es que logran que alimentarse de forma saludable sea muchísimo más complicado de lo que realmente es. En mi experiencia, comer sano no responde a un alimento concreto que decidas consumir o desterrar de tu despensa, sino más bien a tu alimentación evaluada a nivel global. Hoy quiero explicarte por qué no existen alimentos buenos o malos y cómo la obsesión por señalar ingredientes individuales nos está impidiendo ver el panorama completo. El mito de la demonización: tu dieta global importa más que un solo ingrediente Vivimos en un entorno de abundancia alimentaria. Sin embargo, en lugar de entender esto como una ventaja, muchos gurús de las redes sociales te lo pintan como un escenario terrorífico. Te aseguran que la industria alimentaria quiere enfermarte y que existe una especie de conspiración para perjudicar tu salud a base de ultraprocesados. La realidad es que la nutrición no funciona analizando un producto de forma aislada. No hay alimentos buenos o malos por sí mismos: existen dietas que te aportan los nutrientes que necesitas y dietas que no lo hacen. Obviamente, si basas tu día a día exclusivamente en galletas y chocolates, será sumamente difícil aportar a tu organismo las vitaminas y minerales que requiere y, al mismo tiempo, será facilísimo que consumas más calorías de las que tu cuerpo gasta. Pero la responsabilidad real de esa situación no es de la galleta; es del planteamiento general de tu dieta. El experimento de los Twinkies: calorías frente a marcadores de salud Para entender cómo influye el contexto global, podemos analizar el famoso experimento del profesor Mark Houb, quien llevó a cabo lo que se conoció como la «dieta de los Twinkies». Durante un tiempo, este hombre se alimentó únicamente de estos conocidos bollos ultraprocesados. El resultado inmediato fue que consiguió perder peso corporal debido a que, a pesar de la pésima calidad de su fuente de alimento, logró generar un déficit calórico. Sin embargo, lo verdaderamente sorprendente no fue la pérdida de peso, sino que sus analíticas de salud mejoraron notablemente. Sus marcadores físicos, como el perfil lipídico y la proteína C-reactiva, experimentaron una mejoría rotunda. ¿Cómo es posible estar clínicamente más sano comiendo solo bollos que llevando una dieta teóricamente variada? La explicación es sencilla: la mayoría de estos marcadores de salud responden directamente a tu estado físico y a la reducción del sobrepeso, no a si consumes un producto concreto o no. Al eliminar el exceso de grasa, sus parámetros mejoraron. Esto no significa que debas alimentarte a base de bollería, sino que demuestra que lo verdaderamente crucial es que tu cuerpo reciba lo que necesita y gestione correctamente su balance energético. Desarmando el discurso alarmista de las redes sociales Me resulta frustrante ver a influencers, gurús e incluso a profesionales de la nutrición lanzar mensajes basados en el miedo: «no comas pan», «no consumas brócoli porque tiene antinutrientes», «el agua actual no hidrata», o «elimina la sal por completo porque te subirá la tensión». Este tipo de afirmaciones, lejos de educar, lo único que consiguen es confundir y paralizar a las personas. Hace poco analizaba un vídeo titulado «3 Alimentos que nunca consumo como nutricionista». En él, se desaconsejaban tres opciones argumentando que eran «potencialmente cancerígenas». Uno de los señalados era el edulcorante aspartamo, respaldándose en que está catalogado en el Grupo 2B de la escala de la Organización Mundial de la Salud. Lo que este tipo de discursos alarmistas omiten es el contexto real de las herramientas de medición: El teléfono móvil que utilizas a diario también pertenece a ese mismo Grupo 2B de sustancias con riesgo potencial. Si aplicáramos la misma regla de medir de manera coherente, habría que alarmar con idéntica intensidad sobre el uso del teléfono. En esa misma escala, la carne roja se encuentra en el Grupo 2A, lo que significa que tiene una clasificación de riesgo superior a la del aspartamo. Curiosamente, esta nutricionista no mencionaba a la carne roja en su vídeo, aun siendo más «potencialmente cancerígena». Químicamente, el aspartamo se descompone en tres moléculas; dos de ellas son aminoácidos y la tercera se transforma en metanol, el cual genera formaldehído, que es la problemática. Lo que no te cuentan es que un tomate natural contiene más formaldehído que un palé entero de refrescos sin calorías. El miedo infundado no soluciona los problemas de las personas. Si alguien padece un fuerte sobrepeso y le apetece disfrutar de un refresco cero calorías para hacer más llevadero su proceso, decirle que eso es malo y que es dañino solo sirve para poner otra piedra en el camino. De la prohibición a la estrategia: cómo evitar la ortorexia Hace unas semanas compartía un análisis sobre por qué considero que vivimos en la mejor época de la historia para perder peso y cuidar la salud, precisamente por la enorme variedad de opciones que tenemos a nuestro alcance. El peligro de escuchar listas de «alimentos prohibidos» es puramente psicológico. Cuando te repiten constantemente que un alimento es dañino y que no debes tocarlo, automáticamente te apetece más, sobre todo si es un producto diseñado para ser altamente palatable (es decir, muy sabroso). Nadie va a pasar el resto de su vida sin volver a probar sus alimentos favoritos. Por eso, los mensajes basados en el terror solo conducen a dos escenarios posibles: Vivir en un estado constante de frustración y culpabilidad cada vez que consumas un producto fuera de la lista «permitida». Desarrollar ortorexia, que es la obsesión patológica por comer solo alimentos considerados puros y saludables por determinados dogmas. En lugar de pretender que vivimos en el Paleolítico o en una época donde no existen los caprichos alimenticios, yo prefiero aceptar el mundo actual y diseñar una estrategia inteligente. Es totalmente viable disfrutar de tus comidas favoritas de forma controlada y, al mismo tiempo, mantener una composición física óptima, sin diabetes, sin colesterol elevado y con digestiones excelentes. Una solución práctica: optimiza tus nutrientes sin dogmas ni temores Para construir esta estrategia es imprescindible dejar atrás la mentalidad errónea de los extremos. La clave reside en aprender a evaluar tu nutrición mediante datos reales y no mediante el pánico. Por esta razón, considero muy útil utilizar el planificador nutricional que cuenta con un panel completo de nutrientes. Al registrar lo que consumes, puedes comprobar de forma objetiva si estás cubriendo tus requerimientos mínimos de: Minerales esenciales: Calcio, magnesio y potasio. Vitaminas clave: Vitamina C, A, E y el complejo B. Cuando configuras una alimentación que cumple rigurosamente con estas necesidades biológicas, descubres por ti mismo que ningún ingrediente aislado tiene el poder de destruir tu salud. Te invito a dejar de seguir los dogmas radicales de internet, a medir objetivamente lo que tu cuerpo necesita y a empezar a disfrutar de una relación completamente sana y libre de temores con la comida. Origen
Donny Deutsch and his Executive Producer Lou Pellegrino run through this week's brand winners and losers — Hostess Twinkies' rough quarter, Reese's first new flavor in a decade, Kylie Jenner's Dunkin' collab, and a promising new use for GLP-1 drugs in treating eating disorders. Plus: a $8,000 Paris procedure to permanently change your eye color gets a hard pass, a new study pours cold water on fish oil's brain benefits, ESPN Jeopardy! is coming to Hulu with Joe Buck and John Hamm, and Michael J. Fox notches another Emmy nomination. They also dig into a startling stat on the number of young adults still living at home, debate whether Matt Damon's "The Odyssey" can justify a three-hour runtime, and celebrate Sylvester Stallone's 80th birthday and his one-of-a-kind decades-spanning box office run. All that, plus a heated take on a Stanley Cup name-plate snub and the priciest piece of Knicks memorabilia ever sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Adam and Adir discuss EasyJet and the economics of discount airlines, Telstra’s outage, Twinkies, protein mania, gambling, Norway’s sporting machine, work from home obesity, Nvidia and Fermi’s AI bubble, Bitcoin, TEG, Ticketek and Live Nation.Watch the Luton Airport Prank Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya_LluCl16k Join us on Substack for articles, news and more: https://www.thecontrarianspod.com/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Welcome to Coolsville, population: Mac N Cheese Movies. With a face full of Turbo Twinkies, we discuss "The Iron Giant". What happens if a gun doesn't want to be a gun? A story about the red scare and friendship. We talk about the rebel filmmaker Brad Bird and the bomb this was financially but the legs that came out of it.
Welcome to Coolsville, population: Mac N Cheese Movies. With a face full of Turbo Twinkies, we discuss "The Iron Giant". What happens if a gun doesn't want to be a gun? A story about the red scare and friendship. We talk about the rebel filmmaker Brad Bird and the bomb this was financially but the legs that came out of it.
The United States has resumed military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran again. The Twinkie is not popular anymore. Seth reads from The Wall Street Journal’s opinion piece “Why Are Young People So Risk-Averse?” We’re joined by Don Spini and Logan Marcus, Esq. from Sun Valley Wealth. Seth has questionable choices in his preferred pizza toppings. Will U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner suspend his campaign and allow Democrats to choose a new nominee, or will he stay on until the election just to spite his party?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
We dig into the most common and expensive things dogs and cats swallow, from chocolate to string, and swap stories about our own pets' pricey vet bills. Jodi mourns the canceled Madonna biopic that Julia Garner was set to star in, and we chat about revenge bedtime procrastination and your brain's built-in personal GPS. Plus, listeners share their amazing $1 thrift store scores, from Vera Bradley bags to a never-used Twinkie maker.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Criminal Behaviorology Episode # 72Title: Forensic Neuroscience with Jerrod BrownThe entire presentation can be found on the YouTube channel: @criminalbehaviorology - https://youtu.be/MVxxfcfP9WMThe views of our guests do not necessarily reflect those of Criminal Behaviorology, nor our sponsors. Donate to Criminal Behaviorology Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/cw/u81930699Highlights:Following up on our discussion of neurocriminology, Dr. Jerrod Brown introduces us to forensic neuroscience. Dr. Brown has been a regular guest on the podcast, and has given numerous trainings and interviews on this, and many other topics related to new and informative perspectives on criminology and physiological influences.- Neurocriminology and forensic neuroscience. The overlap between these two fields.- Intersection with the law, criminal justice, forensic mental health.- This field of study has significant implications if you're working in court-ordered treatment, domestic violence with DUI offenders, people on probation or parole.- The survivors of crime, and the complexities of eyewitness memory and testimony.- All behavior leads back to the brain.- “Twinkie defense”: The Dan White case.-- When you study criminal behavior, you want to understand the amygdala, limbic system, and prefrontal cortex.- A neurobiological and neuroscience-informed treatment and rehabilitation plan.- The neuro-ethics world, morality, and free will.- Half of people on probation and in prisons may have a traumatic brain injury.- From a crime prevention standpoint, why wouldn't we want to implement these things that are supported empirically in the literature?- Becoming neuroscience informed as a practitioner and researcher.Look up CrimBehav on Facebook: facebook.com/CrimBehavCriminal Behaviorology on Blogger. CB Podcast Sites:https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/dashboard/episodeshttps://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/criminal-behaviorology/id1441879795?mt=2&uo=4 https://www.google.com/podcasts?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy83MzY4OWFjL3BvZGNhc3QvcnNz https://open.spotify.com/show/5VM7Sjv762u7nb91YWGczZ https://www.breaker.audio/criminal-behaviorology https://overcast.fm/itunes1441879795/criminal-behaviorology https://pca.st/Q38w https://radiopublic.com/criminal-behaviorology-GEv2AZ https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/anchor-podcasts/criminal-behaviorologyOn YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKSVoZOBwCG28xMnuPq_GtwOn Rumble:https://rumble.com/c/c-1826027On Locals Social Media:https://criminalbehaviorology.locals.com/?showPosts=1https://criminalbehaviorology.locals.comOn Twitter:https://twitter.com/CrimBehavOn Patreon:https://www.patreon.com/user?u=81930699Amazon:https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a3604516-0645-4341-a792-75d10754556d/criminal-behaviorologyPlease write a review on any of our podcast sites listed above. Questions, comments, and requests for transcripts to: criminalbehaviorology@gmail.comThank you for listening.
The BOB & TOM ShowJune 23, 2026 6:00 AM6:00 Everybody's upset with me – Tom6:03 Tom's mic and chair don't work6:11 Had great flight attendants – Tom6:12 David Muir wants me – Chick6:14 Guy sitting next to Tom on plane had a bad odor6:25 Clampett family clogging the aisle on an airplane – Tom6:29 Letter: Kids took me to Toy Story 5 for Father's Day; loved it6:32 Letter: “Sugar, Sugar” stuck in my head6:35 Tim Wilson's car was a trash can on wheels – Tom6:36 Letter: Batch of minnows in car created a bad smell6:49 Tom has a whole tissue box in his nose – Chick6:50 Airport security: Shoes or no shoes? – Tom6:53 Letter: My first 45 record was “Sugar, Sugar” from a cereal box6:54 Letter: Marina = boat parking lot 7:00 AM7:05 Jeff in studio7:05 CEO hiring discussion7:10 I used to hire people; first question was whether they were sober – Jeff7:29 “Momma So Fat” joke – Josh7:30 Explains the TV show Sea Hunt – Tom7:48 Sports7:51 High-end stadium food discussion7:53 $22 Twinkie hamburger and stadium food discussion 8:00 AM8:07 Texas Twinkie discussion8:08 My mom loved The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas – Josh8:11 Pinball once outlawed in South Carolina8:21 Jess in studio with several types of bacon8:23 Trying beef bacon and carrot bacon8:24 Vegan bacon review – Tom8:29 “Cracklin' Rosie” is a wine8:30 Man fell to his death at a concert at Madison Square Garden8:31 Comment on concert accident – Tom8:37 Paddington movie discussion8:53 Tom was about to sneeze8:54 Today in History 9:00 AM9:14 Kathy Rigby9:26 Jaws discussion9:33 Dog on tray table9:34 More people killed by cows than sharks9:36 Bees spilled on the road9:43 Jacana birds9:50 “This Is What You Sound Like” – Chick and Kristi9:51 Tesla in a pool Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Full episodes and much more available on Patreon.com/slopquest Ryan deletes another melody from Andy’s brain. The boys use the cost of pizza as a an economic barometer. They lament the cost of food trucks especially compared to brick and mortar restaurants. Then Ryan pitches the idea of a food truck that specializes in spaghetti sandwiches while Andy pitches a Twinkie based sandwich idea. Andy ruins the company YouTube algorithm with hema recommendations. They talk about using durian fruit skin as a hema helmet. Andy reveals the shocking truth behind how calories are actually made and it makes them question the entire science behind nutrition. Then O’Neill fantasizes about how hard Andy would freak out if he saw O’Neill get assassinated. Andy blows Ryan’s mind with stories about Jack Parsons and Ryan brags about sneaking into Devil’s Gate Dam. Ryan talks about how many people walk around with no conscious mind. Andy’s Three Musketeers painted hema mask is mistaken for the “Pringle’s Guy”. After the break the boys talk about China buying Detroit and Andy finds an unhinged Reddit post about a man who wants to bang his therapist and thinks he’s “done with therapy”.
What is the secret to deep relationships?In this teaching on Psalm 133, John Ortberg explores intimacy, connection, loneliness, and the small daily habits that strengthen relationships.Drawing from the work of relationship researcher John Gottman, John explains the powerful idea of "bids for connection"—the small invitations people make every day to share life together.This episode explores:- Psalm 133 and unity- What intimacy really means- The epidemic of loneliness- John Gottman's relationship research- Turning toward connection- Jesus as the master of connection- God's invitation to relationship throughout ScriptureFeaturing reflections on:- John Gottman- Dallas Willard- Robert PutnamScriptures:- Psalm 133- Genesis 2- Genesis 3- Genesis 4#Psalm133 #JohnOrtberg #Relationships #Connection #Intimacy #SpiritualFormation #ChristianFaith #JohnGottman #BibleStudy #Psalms
The devil did not make you do it! Nor did your mom, social inequity - not even a "Twinkie!" It seems that God will run a 1,000-year experiment to show that the problem with us, is us! It's the Millennial Reign of Christ, and we'll read about it in Revelation 20. Today we'll hear the second half of Jim's sermon, then I hope you'll stick around for an announcement about the program. Listen to Right Start Radio every Monday through Friday on WCVX 1160AM (Cincinnati, OH) at 9:30am, WHKC 91.5FM (Columbus, OH) at 5:00pm, WRFD 880AM (Columbus, OH) at 9:00am. Right Start can also be heard on One Christian Radio 107.7FM & 87.6FM in New Plymouth, New Zealand. You can purchase a copy of this message, unsegmented for broadcasting and in its entirety, for $7 on a single CD by calling +1 (800) 984-2313, and of course you can always listen online or download the message for free. RS06102026_0.mp3Scripture References: Revelation 19 & 20
Tony and NWI Steve recap the White Sox's strong 3-1 series win over the Minnesota Twins, including a dominant 15-2 blowout and a frustrating extra-innings loss. The guys break down Munetaka Murakami's continued power surge, Chase Meidroth's grand slam, and David Sandlin's impressive MLB debut after being recalled from Triple-A.They also discuss Rikuu Nishida's early impact since his call-up, Sam Antonacci's base-running adventures, and whether the current batting order is getting the most out of the lineup. The conversation touches on the growing energy at Rate Field, the “tarps off” section, and what Murakami's hot start could mean for the franchise long-term.It's a fun, honest, and at times fiery episode as the Sox continue to show signs of life in 2026.
Can broccoli make you fat? Or cause inflammation? What about sugar, carbs, seed oils, dairy, gluten, lectins, fructose, or ultra-processed foods?Why does every fitness influencer blame a different food for your health problems? Learn about the composition fallacy in nutrition, where we blame one food for what the whole diet (or lifestyle) is responsible for.This episode covers the logical error underneath every single-food blame claim, the evidence on the 4 loudest food villains right now, and how to think about food without organizing your diet around fear.We examine studies on linoleic acid and inflammation, plant oils vs. butter, ultra-processed foods, flexible vs. rigid dieting, and the prevalence of orthorexia. If you're over 40 and navigating fat loss, body composition, and decades of contradictory food advice, learn to avoid rigid food rules, binge cycles, or wellness panic.Join in Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to preserve muscle, lose fat, and manage their physique for life, WITHOUT restrictive food rules.Timestamps:0:00 - Food villain claims 2:57 - Composition fallacy 8:01 - Seed oils, linoleic acid, and inflammation 10:36 - Sugar and the Twinkie diet experiment 13:28 - Ultra-processed food and how fast you eat 16:44 - Celiac, gluten sensitivity, and carbs 18:48 - Skills vs. food rules 19:56 - Energy balance and food quality 22:30 - Sumo wrestlers and Paracelsus 25:10 - 80/20 flexible eating framework 27:30 - Orthorexia and binge eating cycles 29:16 - Bonus: 3-question food villain test
Episode Summary: In this episode, I look at diet soda, artificial sweeteners, and the real-world question that matters most: compared with what, at what dose, for whom, and at what tradeoff?Diet Coke, Twinkies, and the Questions That MatterI start with a memory from medical training: a cardiology professor walking around with a Diet Coke in one hand and a Twinkie in his pocket. Was he making a smart tradeoff, or fooling himself? That image captures the artificial sweetener debate well. A diet soda may be a useful substitute if it replaces a sugary drink, but it becomes less compelling if it simply gives us permission to eat more ultra-processed foods.The cleanest case for artificial sweeteners is substitution. In the CHOICE trial, adults who replaced caloric beverages with water or diet drinks lost a modest amount of weight over six months, suggesting that noncaloric beverages can help when they replace sugar-sweetened drinks. The SWITCH trial similarly found that people assigned to non-nutritive sweetened beverages did at least as well as those assigned to water after a 52-week weight management program. I also explore the common fears around artificial sweeteners. The cancer concern has roots in older animal studies involving very high doses, but the National Cancer Institute notes that the saccharin bladder cancer mechanism seen in rats does not apply to humans, and saccharin was removed from the U.S. carcinogen list in 2000. A large French observational study, NutriNet-Santé, did find a small association between artificial sweetener intake and cancer risk, especially aspartame and acesulfame-K, but observational studies can't prove causation and are vulnerable to residual confounding. On weight gain and glucose metabolism, the evidence is less alarming than the headlines. Randomized trials do not support the idea that diet soda inevitably causes weight gain. And in the SODAS trial, replacing artificially sweetened beverages with water in adults with type 2 diabetes did not improve glycemic measures, which weakens the claim that diet drinks secretly worsen blood sugar control. The microbiome question is interesting but not settled. A well-known 2014 study suggested artificial sweeteners could alter the gut microbiome and glucose tolerance, but much of that evidence came from mice and a very small human experiment. More recently, the SWEET study found that sweeteners and sweetness enhancers, when used within a healthy diet, supported weight-loss maintenance and were linked with beneficial gut microbiome shifts in adults with overweight or obesity. The real issue may not be whether Diet Coke is “good” or “bad.” Water wins the purity contest. But food and drink also provide pleasure, ritual, and sustainability. If a diet soda helps someone avoid sugar and enjoy lunch, that may be a reasonable bargain. But if it becomes a permission slip for a daily Twinkie, we should pay attention. Ultra-processed foods matter because in a controlled feeding study, people ate about 500 more calories per day when eating an ultra-processed diet. TakeawaysAsk the better question: not “Is diet soda good or bad?” but “Compared with what, at what dose, for whom, and at what tradeoff?”Artificial sweeteners appear most useful when they replace sugar-sweetened drinks, and less useful when they replace water.Diet soda may be a reasonable pleasure for many people, but it is worth noticing whether it helps reduce sugar—or simply makes the Twinkie in your pocket easier to justify.Send us Fan Mail
J-Si found his hand twin, and Big Al brought Part-Time an inappropriate gift. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
What a batshit crazy weekend! I actually got a short nap on Friday before my 50th Birthday party that night, which helped…because I was out WAY past my normal bedtime. 11pm & I just don't mix anymore. Saturday was an absolutely spectacular day for a charity motorcycle ride…and yesterday was my first ever parade as an Oktoberfest Grenadier. I'm pooped! Back to work this morning with LOTS to talk about, including what's on TV today/tonight, rock stars with NO tattoos, male cleavage becoming a "thing", and 21% of people who DON'T do this. In the news this morning, Pabst is discontinuing production of Schlitz beer, the African stork seen in Wisconsin just got a new home, the lead singer of Dr. Hook passed away at age 76, a recent survey on how safe people feel when it comes to cruise ships, a wild video of a car YEETING in Fond du Lac, everyone survived after a couple of jets collided, and apparently the Hantavirus can remain in human sperm for up to six years! In sports, the Brew Crew took 2-out-of-3 from the Twinkies this weekend, the Cavs beat the Pistons in game seven last night to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals in the NBA, SGA is the MVP for the second year in a row, game seven between Montreal & Buffalo is tonight, the Vegas Golden Knights get penalized for skipping media availability, Ronda Rousey gets a win over the weekend, and Jake Paul's reaction to the Conor McGregor announcement. Hero stuff right here as a man helped save a woman & her child after their SUV ended up in a pond, and a burnt kitten gets saved. Elsewhere in sports, the results of yesterday's NASCAR All-Star race…along with the results of the Preakness & the PGA Championship. Plus, Aaron Rodgers is coming back for another year with the Steelers, and strippers in Montreal are planning a strike during the Formula-1 Canadian Grand Prix weekend. Played a round of "Who'd you rather?" - Weird foods edition. A SPAM hot dog? Asparagus flavored ice cream? Or wasp cookies? And in today's "Bad News with Happy Music", we had stories about another issue with Waymo vehicles, a #FloridaMan who blew "sugar"(aka FENTANYL) in a cop's face, a woman in Arizona who was selling land mines, and a septic truck that got destroyed by a train!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Snack Crate World Taste Test | Stay Outta My Fridge turned our kitchen into an international snack battlefield. Matt, Megh, Iyla, and Lo traveled around the world through food trying snacks from Malaysia, Scotland, Sweden, Greece, and France… and some of these flavors absolutely blindsided us. This Snack Crate taste test delivered everything from incredible chocolate and chips to snacks that tasted like they were invented during a fever dream at 2 AM. One country completely shocked us with amazing candy, while another nearly made somebody tap out on camera. Family food challenges always get chaotic in this house, but international snacks somehow unlocked a whole new level of confusion. This week on Stay Outta My Fridge, the family dives into global snack culture, weird flavors, hilarious reactions, and some unexpectedly elite treats from around the world. If you love food reviews, taste tests, family vlogs, and seeing people question their life choices after eating mystery candy… welcome home. What's In The Fridge This Week: Malaysia snack taste test Scotland candy and chips review Sweden snacks challenge Greece food reactions France snack haul and family food vlog Stay Outta My Fridge is the show where the kids take over the kitchen. Join Beard Laws, Avery, Isla, and the whole family for the most chaotic food reviews on the internet. Every episode feels like a family sitcom powered by snacks and poor decision-making. The best part? Every country brought something completely different. Scotland came in strong with bold flavors. France tried to get fancy. Sweden got weird. Malaysia surprised everybody. Greece showed up like the underdog nobody saw coming. Timestamps 00:00 - Tasting the purple Millions black currant chewy treats 00:23 - Isla's first reaction: tastes like grapes or blackberry 00:55 - Discussion of flavor profile: fizzy, soda-like candy with bold black currant flavor 01:27 - Comparison: Blackcurrant Millions versus other snacks, rating 4/5 01:57 - Moving from Scotland to France, guessing snack flavors 02:39 - Tasting French Lay's chips, flavor is savory rotisserie chicken 03:10 - Honest reactions to intense flavors, guesses based on French seasoning 03:55 - Trying Indian-inspired baked potato flavor chip, surprisingly savory and herby 04:24 - Transition to Sweden, tasting Polly milk chocolate with marshmallow-like texture 05:21 - Canada's favorite candy, enjoyed as a cozy, movie-night treat 07:24 - Transition back to Scotland for haggis-flavored chips 08:12 - Scottish chips: spicy, herby, capturing national flavor 09:42 - Comparing Scottish pepper chips with American snacks 10:12 - Texture and flavor critiques, Isla's reactions 11:34 - Tasting Scottish haggis chips, fun facts about Burns Night 12:33 - Scottish sheepherding-inspired snack, not a fan but interesting profile 14:22 - Moving to Malaysia for crunchy barbecue Curry twisties 15:47 - Malaysian snack featuring chewy ramen noodle treats, some enjoyed more than others 16:46 - Back to Malaysia for more regional snacks, some flavors reminiscent of seafood boil 18:24 - Returning to Scotland for spicy black pepper chips—perfect with cheese or panini 20:21 - Exploring snacks from France, including bubble gum gummies with a hint of blueberry 21:11 - Tasting crispy black truffle breadsticks, a delicacy from France 22:31 - Ending in Greece with a layered pastry snack, tasting like a banana Twinkie, a sweet highlight A proud production of the Beard Laws Network. New Stay Outta My Fridge episodes every Thursday — subscribe and join the family! [SOCIALS] #StayOuttaMyFridge #SnackCrate #FoodReview #FamilyVlog #SnackChallenge If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a 5-star review on your favorite podcast app! It's the best way to help our family show reach more people.This has been The Stay Outta My Fridge Podcast, your source for family comedy, snack reviews, and '90s nostalgia.Find us on social media The Stay Outta My Fridge Podcast is a part of the Bleav Network. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Take off all your clothes and climb into bed with your female pal, as David Lynch's twisty neo-noir nightmare-dream that tickles the seedy underbelly of Hollywood gets Rated or Dated. Join Mick, Hannah and Jen, as they ask questions, such as ‘what the fuck is happening?', ‘who cares?' and ‘WHY?' about a film some regard as one of the greatest movies of the 21st century. Is that a dolphin? What's in this Twinkie? WHO CARES. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In this solo episode, Karl Bryan powers through day two of a fast (and confesses to feeling extra ornery) to deliver rapid-fire wisdom on the realities of luck, the psychology of sales, the pain and pride of cold calling, and the crucial moment of hiring your first staff member. Karl unpacks why so many coaches get stuck at plateaus, how to genuinely engineer a lucky streak in business, and what most people get wrong about networking, cold calls, and building high-value relationships. Key Topics Covered The Psychology and Strategy of Luck in Business Karl explains why believing yourself lucky matters, how neediness repels, and why you must align energy and action. He outlines a three-step formula for attracting luck: know what you want, know why you want it, and commit to paying the price—while detaching from the outcome. Powerful personal rituals, visualization, and "proximity is power" are explored as ways to up-level your circle, thinking, and probability of "lucky" breaks. Networking Groups: BNI and Beyond BNI and similar groups are "sandboxes"—solid training grounds, but not where high-level, long-term business happens. True growth and influential relationships occur in higher-level spaces: golf clubs, yacht clubs, exclusive networks, and private schools—where the real deals get done. Hiring Your First Staff Member Karl demystifies the fear around hiring—especially the belief, "I'll do it when I'm ready." The lesson: you're never ready. Hiring forces growth and creates positive pressure, opening streams of revenue and opportunity. He warns against hiring people just like yourself (e.g., coaches hire coaches, graphic designers hire designers) rather than plugging your real gaps (typically, admins or lead generators). Cold Calling: Embracing the Pain for Lasting Pride Cold calling's pain is fleeting, but the pride (and results) are lasting. Karl likens it to taking a cold plunge or completing a mental fast. Shows how incremental changes in expenses and pricing can dramatically impact profits—clear, compelling reasons to reach out to business owners. The bigger point: most successful business icons started with or mastered door-to-door/cold outreach. Sales: It's Everything—Especially Listening Everything in life is selling, from brushing your daughter's teeth to getting invited to a party. Hosting "epic" entrepreneur gatherings or dinners builds authority, status, and a referral pipeline. Karl spotlights Tony Robbins' mastery: real influence comes from asking questions and letting others do most of the talking. Timing & Luck with Legendary Examples Behind giants like Apple, Amazon, Nike, and Walmart is always a combination of strategic effort and perfect timing. Understanding and engineering timing increases your "luck surface area"—but you must remain unattached to specific outcomes. Notable Quotes "Who's stronger—the Twinkie or you?" "Needing nothing attracts everything." "You can't win if you don't enter... a business coach who says 'I suck at cold calling'—I don't even need to meet them to know they don't do it." "Hiring your first team member: you're never going to be ready. Just do it." "The labor passes quickly, but the pride remains." "Everything is sales. Hosting the party, getting the invite, getting the client... it's always sales." "Luck is as much a strategy as anything else. But timing—timing is the secret no one talks about." Actionable Takeaways Embrace Discomfort—Pride Follows: Do the hard things (fasts, cold calls, taking risks) because the short-term pain gives way to lifelong confidence and skill. Engineer Your Own Luck: Actively seek higher-level circles, visualize outcomes, and invest effort into "being around" the kind of clients and environment you want to serve. Detach from the Outcome: Work fiercely, but avoid neediness. Focus on what you can control—your energy, your effort, your network. On Hiring: Don't wait for perfect timing. Hire to fill genuine business gaps, not duplicate yourself. Take the leap and adjust after 90 days as needed. Sell with Questions, Not Monologues: Great sales (and influence) is about listening 80% of the time and speaking 20%. Practice the Tony Robbins method of curiosity. Throw the Party: Create communities and gatherings for entrepreneurs rather than just trying to get invited. Authority is built by being the connector. Resources Mentioned Profit Acceleration Software (by Karl Bryan) The tool for demonstrating instant, practical value to business owners and clients. BNI and High-Level Networking Contrast drawn between mainstream groups (BNI, chambers) and higher-level venues (golf, yacht clubs, private schools) for real business development. Book Recommendations Shoe Dog (Phil Knight, Nike story; timing and risk) Arnold Schwarzenegger documentary (Netflix; lessons in detachment and strategic positioning) If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe, share with a fellow coach, and leave a review. See you next week on Business Coaching Secrets! Ready to elevate your coaching business? Don't wait! Listen to this episode now and make strides towards your goals. Visit Focused.com for more information on Profit Acceleration Software™ and join the community of thriving coaches. Get a demo at https://go.focused.com/profit-acceleration
I sat down with Jason Gagne, fitness trainer and creator of the 90-day beginner program Good 2 Go Body. Jason has been training people for over 20 years and specializes in beginners — the people who've been told they're not in good enough shape to start working out. Check out Jason's 90-day program → https://www.good2gobody.com (Every sign-up puts a few bucks in my pocket. Thank you. ) Here's what we got into: Three things you need to get in shape. Sleep. 100–128oz of water a day. A 20-minute walk. Everything else is built on top of those three basics — and most people are skipping all three and wondering why they're not getting results. Consistency beats intensity. The human body responds to consistency far more than intensity. You're only in shape for the gym. Most people who work out regularly are fit for the specific movements they do at the gym — and nothing else. Jason calls this "gym functionality." He built Good 2 Go Body around functional training, so your body is ready for anything: softball, hiking, chasing your kids, not throwing your back out moving furniture. Fitness influencers are lying to you. Most of what you see on Instagram is either athletes whose full-time job is their body, or guys making trips to Mexico for gear. Comparing yourself to that as a beginner isn't motivation — it's a trap. Don't change your diet and your exercise at the same time. Jason's take: People know how to eat. They don't need another nutrition program — they need to build the exercise habit first, get their first results, and then the nutrition questions start answering themselves naturally. The 85/90 rule. 85–90% of what you eat should be real food — meat, vegetables, fruit, and seeds. The other 10–15%? Deep fry a Twinkie and put it on a hot dog. You're not working out to be a monk. You're working out so the Twinkie doesn't matter. TIMESTAMPS: 00:00 — Intro: Jason Gagne and Good 2 Go Body 03:00 — Why 20-day intense programs set beginners up to fail 07:00 — The three basics everyone skips: sleep, water, walking 10:00 — Consistency vs. intensity: why 25% every day beats 90% three times a week 14:00 — Gym functionality vs. functional training — what's the difference? 18:00 — Pilates, yoga, and the small muscles nobody talks about 22:00 — Fitness influencers, gear, and the Instagram trap 26:00 — Nutrition: don't change everything at once 30:00 — The 85/90 rule — and why the Twinkie is fine 35:00 — How 40-year-olds today look nothing like 40-year-olds used to Watch full episodes of The Lou Perez Podcast and more on YouTube → https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4Vb53s4I0A&list=PLb5trMQQvT077-L1roE0iZyAgT4dD4EtJ Listen on Apple Podcasts → https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lou-perez-podcast/id1535032081 Listen on Spotify → https://open.spotify.com/show/2KAtC7eFS3NHWMZp2UgMVU Lou's book — That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore: https://amzn.to/3VhFa1r TheLouPerez.com | info@thelouperez.com Newsletter: https://substack.com/@louperez #Fitness #BeginnerWorkout #Good2GoBody #FunctionalTraining #LouPerezPodcast #WorkoutMotivation #FitnessAdvice #HealthyLifestyle Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Hosts Pendy and Jay welcome back PKFC, Jen, and Twinkie as we all give our final thoughts on the DQ VII Reimagined. Did the additional content make up for all the cuts? What did we think of the post game and the arena? All that and more in this episode. Ultimate Post Game XP Farm - Dragon Quest VII ReimaginedSlime Time t-shirt found here!For more about the Slime Time team, hit us up @DQSlimeTime on X, Bluesky, and Instagram, email us at slimetimepodcast@gmail.com, or join in all the DQ discussions taking place at the Dragon's Den or on the Dragon's Den Discord and the Dragon Questers DiscordFeel free to hang out with us at our respective FB groups: Slime Time and Dragon QuestersThanks to the the Descendants of Erdrick for our intro and outro Slime Time Podcast website
Send us Fan MailOkay, here's the 4-1-1: Four men delve into science and figure out that ghosts are real and can be contained. It seems like this would change everything we ever thought about the afterlife. Hmmm… better to not think too hard about this. Kids, this is the story of how this ghost-busting show came to syndication. Who created this clever idea? Where did that earworm theme song come from? Twinkies? Why did it have to be Twinkies? All these questions, and more, will be answered in this look at THE REAL GHOSTBUSTERS!Thanks for 'tooning in!
Send a FanMail to the GenX Stories gang via text message!Before Google Drive, Gen X processed artifacts the way we handled most everything else: by burying it and hoping future people would care. Yup, you guessed it - this episode is all about time capsules — a concept so ironically Gen X it practically comes with a side of Twinkie and the sense of impending doom. From bicentennial school projects we definitely forgot about, to NASA flinging a gold record into deep space like 'here, aliens, have some Chuck Berry,' to Nickelodeon's pop culture treasure trove sitting somewhere underground until 2042, get comfy. We have a ton to talk about. Tune in like, NOW.Episode linksA Brief History of Time (Capsules)Time in a BoxBlasts from the Past: 7 Cool Historical Time Capsules30 Interesting And Cool Historical Time CapsulesTime capsules are more popular than ever, as Americans take history into their own handsHow to create a time capsuleAndy Warhol's Time CapsulesFor America's 250th Year, a Time Capsule to Stay Buried for 250 MoreHow engineers designed the America250 time capsule to last a quarter millenniaConnect with usSubscribe to GenX Stories in your favorite podcast appBuy some kickass merchWrite us a reviewVisit our site
The Idiots talk with Zul Arifin about everything Godzilla and realize we all want to destroy a city. Ted tells a talentless buffoon to accept his fate. Scott helps people start small to win big.
Emails, Your Guess is as Good as Mine Categories: Rich Musical Artists & Countries! Plus The Mens Room Top 10 and the Shot of the Day!
The Mens Room Top 10
Full show - Monday | Worst movie ever | News or Nope - Artemis II, Love on the Spectrum, and Twinkies | Erin is jealous of the rest of us | OPP - Can she trust her neighbor to watch her kid | The show is divided...and alliances have been formed | Did Slacker uncover a scandal? | The naked mom theory | Erica's doggy car seat | Stupid stories www.instagram.com/theslackershow www.instagram.com/ericasheaaa www.instagram.com/thackiswack www.instagram.com/radioerin
Dan, Manny, & Billy celebrate the anniversary of the Twinkie by putting this classic snack to the ultimate test—THE NOSTALGIA TEST! “The literal first ingredient is sugar, even before flour.” -Billy D'Elia The food episodes are back with a vengeance as the boys test their childhood and stomachs with the Twinkie. So many god memories, so many tangents, and let's not forget Billy's kickass hat, “IMMIGRANTS MAKE AMERICA GREAT!” Because the f***in do! The guys talk about the possibly poisonous ingredients, what it was like top track Twinkles down, how Hostess was taken over by the Mexican company Bimbo, and the history of Twinkies being filled with banana cream pre-WWII. Then they eat them, and, well, you'll have to listen to see the reactions because it's the greatest reactions to food in the podcast's history. They guys also talk about their childhood memories of Entenmann's cakes and chocolate chip cookies, the Ghostbusters Twinkie reference, and they read the results of the online poll. Oh, and wait for a sort of “secret track” to get Dan. Manny, & Billy's off the mic reactions. So, grab a tall glass of strawberry milk, stare into the abyss of despair that is 2026, and get ready to go on a gastric nostalgia test journey like no other. Special shoutout to Beleafer CBD for getting Dan through this episode. Email us (thenostalgiatest@gmail.com) your thoughts, opinions, & episode idea for The Wheel of Nostalgia! Suggest A Test & Be Our Guest! We're always looking for a fun new topic for The Nostalgia Test. Hit the link above, tell us what you'd like to see tested, and be our guest for that episode! Approximate Rundown 00:00 Cold Open Chaos 00:17 Twinkie Myth Setup 00:52 Podcast Intro Twinkie Test 01:23 Text Thread vs Podcast 02:07 Vaping Sponsor Tangent 02:35 Why Food Hits Different Now 03:21 Twinkie Obsession Memories 04:04 Ingredients and Dye Rant 05:10 Hunting for Twinkies 08:06 Captain Crunch Mouth Cuts 08:47 Regional Snacks and Mann's 11:09 Entenmann's Cookie Debate 12:24 Ghostbusters Pop Culture 13:32 Twinkie Origin Story Stats 16:43 Bankruptcy and Iconic Junk Food 17:34 Hostess Snack Cake Roll Call 18:07 Snack Cake Throwbacks 18:46 Unwrapping Road Trip Classics 19:18 Shrinkflation And Smell Test 20:02 Recipe Change Reveal 21:16 First Bite Reality Check 23:00 Nutrition Label Shock 24:08 Rant And Better Alternatives 31:03 Instagram Poll Results 34:00 Final Verdict And Aftermath Book The Nostalgia Test Podcast Bring The Nostalgia Test Podcast's high energy fun and comedy on your podcast, to host your themed parties & special events! The Nostalgia Test Podcast will create an unforgettable Nostalgic experience for any occasion because we are the party! We bring it 100% of the time! Email us at thenostalgiatest@gmail.com or fill out the form at this link. LET'S GET NOSTALGIC! Keep up with all things The Nostalgia Test Podcast on Instagram | Substack | Discord | TikTok | Bluesky | YouTube | Facebook The intro and outro music ('Neon Attack 80s') is by Emanmusic. The Lithology Brewing ad music ("Red, White, Black, & Blue") is by PEG and the Rejected
We're talking deep dives into childhood memories involving Twinkies, neighbors who definitely shouldn't have let random kids walk into their houses, and the kind of nostalgia that makes you question how any of us survived the 80s.Naturally, because this is a funny podcast, things don't stay wholesome for long.The crew somehow finds their way into one of the strangest medical stories you'll ever hear — a story so bizarre that half the room doesn't believe it, and the other half wishes they didn't. It sparks a debate that swings wildly between science, skepticism, and jokes that probably shouldn't be made before 7am.From there, it only gets better (or worse, depending on your standards). We get into Siamese cats and why they might secretly be broken, relationship talk that goes from thoughtful to brutally honest in seconds, and a surprisingly real conversation about divorce, friendship, and what NOT to say when someone's life is falling apart.Oh, and apparently we're all supposed to be hugging more? Cool. Good luck with that.This episode is everything you expect from a funny podcast like The Rizzuto Show — unpredictable, sarcastic, slightly unhinged, and packed with the kind of conversations that make you laugh while also questioning humanity just a little bit.Whether you're here for the weird news, the ridiculous debates, or just to feel better about your own life choices, this funny podcast delivers exactly what you didn't know you needed.Follow The Rizzuto Show → linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → 1057thepoint.com/RizzShow.Hear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Welcome to another completely normal episode of The Rizzuto Show — which is to say, absolutely nothing about this is normal.We kick things off and it quickly spirals into a nostalgic deep dive about Twinkies, childhood snack theft, and the kind of neighborhood freedom that would absolutely get your parents arrested today. Somewhere along the way, we uncover the truth about Twinkie shelf life (sorry, apocalypse preppers), and debate whether deep-fried snack foods are a gift or a cry for help.Then comes the story that divides the room: a man claiming to suffer from a condition that causes spontaneous… let's call them “moments”… up to 100 times a day. Is it real? Is it exaggerated? Is it the worst possible superpower ever? The show investigates with the scientific precision of people who also just argued about snack cakes.And speaking of questionable life choices — we pivot into one of the most heated debates of the episode: what do you throw up in? A toilet? A trash can? Or, if you grew up a certain way… a literal cooking pot that goes right back into circulation after a dishwasher cycle. Yes, this is real. Yes, friendships are tested.But the crown jewel of chaos? Riz admitting to committing a suburban sin: tossing a bag of dog poop into a neighbor's freshly emptied trash bin — and then discovering the entire incident has been immortalized on the Nextdoor app like a digital wanted poster. The crew conducts a full mock trial, and let's just say… the verdict is not looking great.It's messy, it's ridiculous, and it's everything you expect from a funny podcast that thrives on real-life chaos, questionable decisions, and stories that somehow keep getting worse.If you like your daily entertainment loud, sarcastic, and just a little unhinged, this funny podcast is exactly what your ears deserve.Follow The Rizzuto Show → https://linktr.ee/rizzshow for more from your favorite daily comedy show.Connect with The Rizzuto Show Comedy Podcast online → https://1057thepoint.com/RizzShowHear The Rizz Show daily on the radio at 105.7 The Point | Hubbard Radio in St. Louis, MO.“Consequences”: Florida Chick-Fil-A Sparks Heated Debate After Firing Entire Staff Over Suggestive Viral VideoThe living hell of a man who orgasms 100 times a dayAre humans monogamous by nature? Here's what Americans think2 high school teachers accused of sexual misconduct with same teenage student: ‘It's not an achievement'See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
These are the headlines you NEED to know about!
The Twinkie was invented on this day and Dan Levy shuts down hopes of a Schitt's Creek reunion.
Transcript Paper: Gearhardt AN, Brownell KD, Brandt AM. From Tobacco to Ultraprocessed Food: How Industry Engineering Fuels the Epidemic of Preventable Disease. Milbank Q. 2026;104(1):0202.https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0009.70066 https://www.milbank.org/quarterly/articles/from-tobacco-to-ultraprocessed-food-how-industry-engineering-fuels-the-epidemic-of-preventable-disease/ Ashley, let's talk a little bit about, just set the stage for what this paper was all about, and since it was your brainchild, you approached Allan and me about being involved. Tell us what you set out to do and why you thought these issues were worth digging into. Ashley - You know, I've just been so struck that when we think of cigarettes, they were something that's so common, so normal that we kind of think, oh, they've always just sort of been there. But truly, they're just taking a natural plant from the ground and through advancements and corporate engineering and technology and knowhow, they took a poisonous plant and made it into the most deadly and addictive drug in human history. And yet that was, you know, just accompanied by tons of debate. It didn't look like other addictive substances. And I just really felt like, man, we're reliving this history right now when it comes to how we've altered our food supply. I wanted to really bring you all together and see if we could really lay that story out of the, the parallels of these two public health crises. We'll get in a minute into the issue of what you discovered, but tell us what you covered, what the paper was meant to do. Ashley - The paper really goes back from how you take the tobacco plant in the field, or the corn in the field, and walks essentially through all the kind of levers that are being pulled to transform it in very specific ways. And through specific technologies and corporate practices that are being shared by modern cigarettes and ultra processed foods. These products maybe look harmless on their face initially, or don't look like they're just maybe pleasurable or craveable. But truly, I would argue that they've crossed thresholds into things that are addictive and clearly damaging many people's lives. Okay, so several decades ago, I don't know who came up with a term, but there was a lot of discussion about similarities between tobacco industry behavior and food industry behavior. And the press started publishing cover pieces that would say food is the next tobacco. And it was a term that the food industry really didn't like, and they don't want that comparison at all. It'll be interesting to see whether they deserve it. You clearly made that connection in this paper. Allan, let's turn to you. Oh my God. I mean, we could do a 15-hour podcast and not cover the history of the tobacco industry. There's so much to say, enough that you wrote a massive book about it. But give an overall sense, if you will, of the kind of tactics and morality of that industry. Allan - Well, as Ashley already mentioned, early in the 20th Century we wouldn't really be thinking much of cigarettes, and they were just a very peripheral sales consumer item. And over the course of the 20th Century, we came to a point in the middle of the century of the 1970s, and '80s where about half of all American adults were smoking cigarettes regularly. I wanted to understand that. How do you take something that's at the very margin of the economy and culture and make it a dominant consumer force? And I think in that way, we have certain parallels to ultra processed foods. But then there were the questions, how do you make it so popular? Is it dangerous to use? Is it addictive? Does it cause disease? And how do you resist regulation and other public health approaches to try to keep people smoking? And I found a lot of evidence in each of those areas, both of how the industry acted. And when you say, you know, it's ultra processed food like cigarettes, we're learning a lot about ultra processed foods. But we know a ton about what the industry did to make the 20th Century what I call the Cigarette Century. And we have seen really important declines in smoking in the last 30-40 years. It's a remarkable public health effort. But at the same time, the industry worked incredibly hard and, in some ways brilliantly, to maintain the popularity of their product. And underlying all this is the idea that nicotine is highly addictive. And the industry came to understand that certainly before consumers did. And as a result, they could engineer, manage, manipulate the addictive character of a product that kills. I think looking for parallels, both in terms of how the industry did it and how perhaps public health law regulation can undo it, is the critical aspect of what we've been working on together. Okay. So, the tobacco industry did more than just take a plant, dry it out, chop it up, and roll it up in some paper. Then people might be driving whatever natural pleasure there would be from that product. But they did more, didn't they? Allan - Yes. And you talked about nicotine in particular. So how manipulated was this industrial process and was it designed to create such high levels of addiction? Allan - Well, for a long time we couldn't be sure about that. And we have learned that the industry had learned sophisticated techniques of industrial production of cigarettes. So, it wasn't like just chopping up tobacco and putting it in paper. You know, they added many additives. They added liquids. They dried it out, they put it in long strips of tobacco for cutting and packaging. And they had innovated the technologies, instead of human beings rolling cigarettes, they were able through machinery and technology to produce hundreds of thousands of cigarettes a day. And then they had to figure out how do we sell this tremendous volume of cigarettes in order to make our industry truly lucrative. So, there were those aspects. And certainly by the middle of the 20th Century, many people realize that - I smoke regularly and I crave my next cigarette and I'm smoking a pack a day, sometimes two packs a day. And people would ask, well, is it a habit? Is it habituating? Is it addictive? And as the science of addiction really grew in the middle of the 20th Century, we began to realize it had all the characteristics of addiction. But we really didn't know exactly what the companies were doing. And what we did learn in the '80s and '90s is that the companies had a precise ability to manage the nicotine in their product. And they did, so that even as they put filters on and they claimed they had safer cigarettes, they were also producing increasingly addictive cigarettes where we have craving, we have withdrawal, we have tolerance. The basic categories, that structure, how we understand addiction. Okay. We'll dive into some of those in a little more detail, but thanks for that background. Ashley, people kind of get it that drugs can be addictive and they know that alcohol can be addictive. They know that cigarettes can. But what about food? Ashley - Yes, so I think one of the things that when I take a step back, is that the reward and motivation system that alcoholic beverages, cigarettes can start to hijack and drive towards compulsive problematic use, that was laid down in the brain to make sure we were getting enough food. It's really sensitive to food reward, energy density. But the thing is you actually consume nicotine probably most days. Nicotine is actually in a lot of plants like tomato and eggplant, but nobody's getting addicted to the chemical in that delivery vehicle. I would argue the same thing's happening. When we look at our research nobody's getting addicted to minimally processed foods like bananas and broccoli, and salmon filets. It's when you're able to process and titrate and hedonically engineer food reward in a way that mimics the intensity and the sensory appeal and the spikes and crashes and the craveability of something like cigarettes, that you start to see people losing control. And when I read Allan's book, my husband was watching over my shoulder. And he's like, you know, if you highlight every single sentence, it's not gonna help you because you've highlighted the whole book. And reading what Allan laid out about how each wave of cigarette addiction, it wasn't because we suddenly discovered what nicotine was, it's because the industry got better at manipulating engineering, designing, flooding the market with it. And then health washing it, so people didn't really understand what they were getting into. And to me, that is what we've done to our food supply. And the result of that has been the astronomical increases in diet related disease and health concerns. Tell us about the concept of ultra processed food and how that fits in. Ashley - Yes. Yeah, that's a great question. So, ultra processed food is a concept that actually came out at about the same time as the Yale Food Addiction Scale, that Kelly and I published together, about how to operationalize who might be showing signs of addiction and certain foods. Carlos Monteiro from Brazil was noticing that his grocery store was starting to be flooded by foods that you could not make in your home kitchen. I have exactly no idea how to make a double stuffed Oreo or a flaming hot Cheeto, or a Cherry Coca-Cola. And as these products that were industrially created with additives and flavor enhancers that are kind of biologically novel, that's when the disease risk started to go up. And so, these foods are so fundamentally changed in they're kind of most archetypal forms of things, like sodas and, you know, your sweet, savory sort of snacks, that a whole new category had to be created for them. To really distinguish them from, you know, grandma's homemade cookies or, you know, an apple or an orange. Ashley, you're brilliant at framing things. And one of the things that I learned from you a long time ago, and I've used a thousand times in discussions with people, is thinking about food, like turning the coca plant into cocaine and into crack cocaine. That if you take the coca plant into its natural form, people can live in harmony with it. You don't really have addiction. But when you process it and it becomes cocaine, then things change dramatically. And when you hyper process it, like the hyper palatable foods and the ultra processed foods, then the crack cocaine becomes incredibly addictive. So that same sort of phenomenon I think applies here. And it's a very compelling way to think about this. Allan, let's get back to the addiction thing and tobacco. One of the most stunning things I remember about the tobacco history. Is the videotape of the seven tobacco company executives testifying before Congress that nicotine wasn't addictive. Swearing, you know, sworn statements about nicotine. Tell us about that and what that kind of meant in history. Allan - It's a great story and it has a kind of visual linkage to many of us who actually saw those congressional hearings. And it was a brilliant sort of performative politics, if you will. And there had been more and more knowledge that the industry was manipulating nicotine to make cigarettes that they were claiming were safer and not addictive, even more highly addictive. And David Kessler, the head of the FDA under Clinton, had really been a major player in this. And one thing I should say is we were learning more and more about the industry because people were suing them. And they would typically lose the suits, but they would get hundreds, hundreds of thousands of documents. And the industry also had whistleblowers who were coming forward and saying, of course we know it's addictive. So, Henry Waxman, a really fantastic congressman who represented consumers invited all seven of the major tobacco CEOs to a hearing on nicotine. And he went one by one - do you believe nicotine is addictive? And they would say, Congressman, I do not believe that nicotine is addictive. And it's like any great prosecutor, he had figured out how to get them essentially to perjure themselves in front of a congressional, and video news audience. And in fact, the Department of Justice considered for some time whether they should be put on trial and indicted for perjury before Congress. But it was so in congress, with what we had come to know, especially experts, but even, you know, parents and the public and citizens had come to know that it was incredibly difficult to get off of nicotine. It just didn't comport with our existing knowledge. And we're not quite to that point with ultra processed foods yet, but I think we have a good chance to get there because as we understand what they're doing better and we have a sophisticated understanding of the characteristics of addiction, that same question will be put ultimately to CEOs of the food industry. Especially those who are producing these highly addictive products. And there are many people who are involved in this. So, they will tell a story of how we understood we could make our product sell better and be used at a much higher level if we could make it addictive. And regrettably, as we learn more about addictive addiction, we not only learn perhaps how to help people who are addicted. But we often learn how to make certain products even more highly addictive. Ashley, let's take what Allan said and apply it into the food arena. So, if you think about the criteria for addiction, like Allan had mentioned: cravings, withdrawal, and tolerance, and, tolerance being the need to have more of the substance over time in, in order to produce the same pharmacologic effect. How do those things apply to foods? Ashley - Yes. There there's very strong parallels there. And I actually have a paper I wrote with Dr. Alex DiFeliceantonio, where we took the 1988 Surgeon General's report on the addictiveness of tobacco and nicotine in particular. And we took what they identified as the necessary and sufficient criteria to prove that it was addictive. It was a watershed moment for tobacco. And the major one is that people consume it compulsively. Meaning, you know, they want to cut down and they can't. They know it's harming them and they can't. Clearly we see that with ultra processed food. That it shifts mood. It increases pleasure. It reduces negative affect through its mechanism on the brain. And I think if you look at any marketing, you know, they're always saying you're craving meet your maker, get your bliss point. You're not you unless you're eating a Snickers. They show that it was highly reinforced. And that is, you know, animals and humans will work really hard to get access to it. With nicotine one of the major points of that is that animals, about 20% of the time, would work to get nicotine over cocaine. And that was quite striking because cocaine is so powerfully addictive. Well in those same models, animals will work for processed sweet taste and choose it 80% of the time over cocaine. It just shows that when we start altering, processing food reward into these unnaturally intensely stimulating packages, our brains were not evolved to protect itself against that. And then the final pieces that's been kind of added over time has been the cravings. I mean, if you think about what is the core of addiction, it's the craveability of it. That they maximize that. So, you can't stop thinking about anything else. And when I read, and we even quote in our paper, spots where, you know, industries, the big food is having webinars and how to turn cravings into corporate wins. And how to take snackers who are consuming, because their cravings feel unmanageable, but here's how you can keep them snacking even though they want to quit. And so, the craving really seems to me, based on my read of what I've seen from the industry, is the core engine of driving and selling ultra processed food. So, these foods, and I've heard you say this, Ashley, you know, they have less to do with the farm and, you know, these sort of romantic ideas of the farmer growing crops and the crops being harvested and coming to a farmer's market. These are really industrial lab-based, you know, heavy duty factory related products. And there's a real question, isn't there, about what you even should call them food. Ashley - Yes, absolutely. I actually grew up on a farm and I never ate anything that we grew on the farm because it was all due to Ag policy. Just, corn to go into high fructose corn syrup, soy to go into soybean oil. And I was surrounded by what looked like lots of food, but in reality, it was not. And some of the things that I learned in writing this paper with you all is just to what degree ultra processing allows them to even control the molecular structure and size of the different starch chemicals. That carby kind of access point in food. Allan talks in his book about how you can treat tobacco. So, you break it down and make it molecularly more bioavailable so nicotine gets more rapidly into the body. That's a huge driver of addictive potential. I found in ours that they were actually using enzymes that mimic what's in the saliva in your mouth. And hitting starches with it. Essentially you were predigesting, pre salivating, essentially the starch creating what's called a starch slurry. And that's a base of so many common ultra processed foods like cereals and savory snacks. Many of these products really have far more in common with that cigarette and have almost nothing in common, you know, with the apple or the can of beans anymore. You know, that image that you said about pre salivating food. I mean, it's in some ways as if the industry is spitting in your food to bypass your own biological mechanisms that occur when the food gets in the mouth and. People get a kind of a yuck response to that, but it deserves that kind of a response. Let's dive into the paper and talk about what you reported, Ashley. You talk a lot about the kind of processes. You just mentioned one of them, but there are a lot more. What are some of the specific techniques to food processing that surprised you when you started digging in. How did you get this information? Ashley - Yes, so one of the functions that actually didn't surprise me, but it made me look at it in new light, is the work on how we really changed the way we saw cigarettes when we realized they weren't just taking a plant and drying it and rolling it up. But that they were actually curating and titrating these just right doses of nicotine. So, you get stimulated, but not too satisfied and you don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of nicotine. When we realized that was very intentional and designed and titrated, that really changed this from a natural kind of product, it's just a plant to, oh, this is an in industry engineered product. They're controlling so much of this. We all know that they are altering the amount of sweetened refined carbohydrates and fats in our food. I mean, that's just plain knowledge. And at levels that go way beyond what exists in nature. But I think I've become very obsessed with extrusion technology. Extrusion is something where they take really high pressure, high shear mechanical impact, high pH, high temperature. And they can break the corn or the potatoes and things into this slurry that is broken down again into this kind of predigested molecular base that on its own is nasty. No one is like, oh, starch, slurry, yes! They need all the sensory and flavor additives to blitz that and texturize it so it can trick your brain into thinking it's appealing. I realized that actually has such a strong parallel to modern cigarette where, as Allan talks about in his book, one of the major technological advances was creating reconstituted tobacco where they take the tobacco scraps and they do the same sort of process to create what they call a tobacco slurry. That was then very easy to manipulate by putting flavor and preservative additives in it, and that's what makes up a large component of modern cigarette. And so, when we look at these processes and those sensory additives, the flavors, that are put in it, cigarettes have more sugar and flavor additives in them by weight than they do nicotine. And so many of those flavor additives are actually in our ultra processed food supply. Why? Because the flavor and sensory profiles are what you start to become really emotionally attached to. And that starts to drive brand loyalty from a very young age. I could go on and on and on. Oh man, we could be here for a day, so I'm really inhibiting myself. I'll be exhausted. I'll have to go get an ultra processed food from this. But it was stunning to me to see how the goals of the engineering were so shared. And I guess it shouldn't surprise us because, you know, we know that the tobacco companies like Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds actually created, manufactured and sold many of our favorite ultra processed foods that are now in our modern food supply, like Fig Newton's and you know, Hawaiian Punch and things. It really came from the same industrial practices. So Allan, I want to bring this back to the tobacco industry in a minute, but Ashley, I wanted to ask you first. I'm going to make a characterization. Tell me if I'm off on this. The industry is kind of manipulating every possible characteristic of a product. Its fragrance, its color, its texture, everything in the ways you mentioned. It becomes this industrialized product much more than a food. People consume it. They get immense reward from it because it's delivering a drug, basically, to the brain very quickly in a very efficient way. People then, of course, want more of that sensation. If tolerance exists, then it means they need more of the food over time in order to get the same reward. And then you've got a public health nightmare on your hand because people aren't just eating a little bit of these foods, they're eating a lot of these foods. And they're designed in order to produce that very impact. Does that seem fair? Ashley - Absolutely. That sums it up quite nicely. Okay, Allan, back to the tobacco experience. This kind of information that Ashley is talking about in the context of food, and you talked about in the context of tobacco. Manipulation of the product. As this kind of damning information became public knowledge, how did that happen in the tobacco arena? And then what was the consequence? Was it, you mentioned whistleblowers; was it investigative journalism? The hearings you mentioned were important. Scientific research, discovery. It sounds like a whole lot of things happened that made this information available to the public, which in turn changed public opinion against the industry. Allan - Yes, I think that's exactly right. It changed public opinion and it changed public policy and it took a long time. So, these are aspects that I think we have to, you know, acknowledge in thinking about public health and especially these powerful commercial interests that spend a lot of money on lobbying. They spend a lot of money on advertising. They know how to get to kids. These are very challenging. I do think, you know, early in the anti-tobacco campaigns, there were a few lawyers who said, well, we're going to sue them because they have misled, deceived, and in some instances probably acted criminally to build their addictive and extremely harmful life-threatening product. And people said, well, you know, it's everybody's decision whether they want to smoke and people quit all the time, so you're not going to do very well. And I think as a young academic type, I was very skeptical of the suits against the companies. But one thing that happened that I think was unanticipated, the lawyers asked for the company's records and their research reports and what people were doing. And they took depositions and the lawyers often lost the case, but they won an incredible archive that was incredibly self-incriminating of what the industry knew. When they knew it and how they continued to act to sell a harmful product. And I think that began to change things. So once you have documents, you know you're going to be more successful in court. Once you have some documents, you can call the CEOs in and say is it addictive? When they say no, you have documentation to challenge them about their own industry. Obviously, education is important. Investigative journalism. A lot of the documents not only came from the court suits, but from whistleblowers who snuck them out of law firms. Some of the whistleblowers came directly from the industry where they said, here's what my bosses told me. They need to know can you make this cigarette even more addictive? And they knew, for example, that taking nicotine out of cigarettes, which is not that difficult to do given the extent of manipulation, had to be something that was resisted. We could end the tobacco pandemic by just removing nicotine. Even if we did, you know, 10% a year. Many people would be able to stop smoking who cannot. But we had to array a kind of knowledge and practice and advocacy that really hadn't existed till the second half of the 20th Century. Ashley, when Allan mentioned these archives that exist on tobacco industry behavior, there's some food things in there, aren't there? Tell us about that connection between tobacco and food companies. Ashley - Yes, so you know, actually, Dr. Laura Schmidt at University of California - San Francisco, has done this just stunning work by using those same tobacco archives. Because they owned alcoholic beverage and ultra processed food and beverage companies she's been able to show really how much these industries kind of spoke back and forth. The different sectors of Philip Morris and RJ Reynolds, you know, they're big conglomerates. They were pulling scientists working on the cigarettes, or the marketers working on marketing cigarettes to kids, and putting them on and intentionally using that playbook to sell their ultra processed foods and beverages. That's very clear and very intentional. They might not say as blatantly. I feel like they learned their lesson a little bit. Oh, we're going to make this more addictive. They use synonyms even out in the public. Some of it that we report in this paper is not hidden. It's industry trade newsletters. It's interviews on 60 minutes with labor scientists where they're saying, yeah, we design these products, so you get a big flavor burst. And then it fades really rapidly because that makes you want to keep coming back for more and more and more. And yeah, addictive is a good word for that. And so there is this moment where it just becomes so implausible that they don't know that they have crossed the Rubicon into something that is hooking people. That plausible deniability that we're just, you know, giving consumers what they want, not actually engineering their desires to override what they know they should have to nourish themselves. It just feels beyond the pale to me to believe that's the case. Allan, look, you mentioned delay. And I'd like to talk about that a little bit more. There's a point in time when the science on something becomes robust. And you're very certain say that tobacco is causing lung cancer and heart disease. And then you can't change things the next day or the next week. So, a little bit of delay is probably acceptable and to be understood. But the delay in this case between that knowledge and significant public health action policy action wasn't measured in days, weeks, months, or even years. It was decades. And you can count the number of attributable deaths to that delay in the millions. What did the industry do to make that delay as long as possible in terms of planting doubt, conflicts of interest with science and things like that? Allan - This is highly relevant to our moment because I make a few claims in the book. One is that the industry invented disinformation and misinformation. And there's always this way that says, well, I know that study appeared, but we need more information. And this was very clever on the part of the tobacco companies because they said, well, you know, that science shows this, but that science is unreliable. And we need to use different methods. And lung cancer is not a result of cigarette smoking, it's actually genetic. And maybe there are a few people that shouldn't be smoking cigarettes. We should be able to identify what's different about them. They kept finding strategies of delay, manipulation, building uncertainty. There's one of the tobacco documents in this phase that says, from now on, our product is doubt. And what they really needed to do to sell the product was to create doubt about a science that was highly robust and really important to consumers. On the other hand, I think consumers are sensitive to being manipulated. They don't like that. They don't like being tricked. They know these industries, especially tobacco industry, you know, is disreputable. And as that became the case, what did they know and what are they selling. We began to see some slow shifts in public awareness. And, you know, it's so interesting presenting the cigarette problem to a jury in 1970 became radically different than presenting the case against the tobacco companies in the 1990s. And a lot had changed, A lot had been documented and, you know, we never even thought of the idea that a company would scientifically mislead us probably until in any consequential way till the middle of the 20th Century. And now we're incredibly skeptical and I think taking advantage of the public skepticism, both politically and culturally is going to be one of the important issues of pushing back against what I've called rogue industries. They're operating unethically; in many cases, unlawfully. They're misrepresenting what they produce. And they have the idea that having addicted customers is the best customer. And Warren Buffet once said, you know the tobacco industry, that's crazy. It cost a dime to make it. You sell it for a dollar and its addictive. He said, what industry could be more, you know, lucrative than tobacco? Ashley, how do those things apply into the food area now? Ashley - Oh, my brain is just exploding with all the things I want to say. But I think I have an answer to Warren Buffett, which is if you've pulled all those same levers and pretend to people that it's food, and it's because we all have to eat, you know? And I walk around a grocery store and I, in my head, I'm like, if I waved a magic wand, and all the products in here that are masquerading as food but are actually ultra processed, chemically adulterated starch, slurries essentially disappeared. There is so little food in my grocery store. Real food. And it's also expensive. We would be rioting in the streets if we really saw the degree that we're not being adequately nourished or supported in our current environment. And it's the mirage of abundance that is totally hooking us. You know, taking us hook, line, and sinker. And so, you know, I'll have people often say to me, you know, it's food. Like can't really be addictive. We all need to eat. And to me that is absolutely true. Just like we all need pain management. And there used to be a belief, a myth, that if you were in pain, you couldn't get addicted to painkillers like opiates which we now know is incredibly wrong. That just because we need calories to survive doesn't mean that if you manipulate and hedonically engineer those products, that it won't impact the brain in a way that can drive it in compulsive problematic ways. It's so essential for us to carve out, yes, you need real nourishing food. This is real nourishing food and these other things. I'd love it if the grocery store, it's like you're walking around this spot, you know you're getting real food. Sure, you want to go get those Cheetos, go for it. But it's in a very clear designated area that you're not being tricked into thinking that you're eating something that's nourishing you when it's really addicting you. So, people have very strong affective attachments to foods. Particular foods that they like. Some of it is kind of what you grew up with, what your parents gave you, but a lot of it's marketing as well. And you mentioned a Cheeto or Coca-Cola, or a Dorito or a Twinkie or whatever it is. People don't want that taken away from them. Tell me if this is correct, the problem isn't so much that people eat Cheetos. It's that they overeat Cheetos, and then you add to that all the other thing, not just that food. But then you've got a real problem. Could it be a matter of just removing some of the especially troublesome ingredients from that. If you look at the list of ingredients on these foods, there could be 25 or 30 different ingredients. Well, what if, what if 12 of them got taken out or 13 or 15 of them got taken out? You'd still have the food; it would still have its taste. People could enjoy it, but it's not hijacking your biology. Ashley - Yes, I'm very skeptical of that as the response, because as Allan lays out in his book, we were like, okay, if we just get the tar out of the cigarette. You know, it's all fine, Vapes, right? Oh, you're vaping. It's fine. It will be harmless because our reward system is so porous to different levers that signal food reward. We see it with the non-sugar sweeteners. Look, we took all the sugar out, we gave you Diet Coke, we gave you non-sugar sweeteners. It's a get out of jail free card. And now we're realizing how much that messes up our gut microbiome, could potentially lead to earlier brain aging and so, you know, abstinence, clearly making this stuff illegal, that's never the goal. But I think that sense of saying, oh, we can just engineer our way out of this is unlikely. And we have the alternative. You know, for what should be the majority of what we're eating. I love a Reese's Cup, right? I will have an ultra processed food, but it shouldn't be 60% of the food supply, or 70% of what my kids are getting for their calories. And so again, that clear understanding that this is something that's fundamentally different from the food that nourishes us. We have the answer which is real food. If we poured even a tiny amount of the investment, even closing the tax loopholes on things like ultra processed food marketing to kids that they get tax breaks on and invested that into technology to make real food in its original food matrix affordable, accessible, convenient. That stuff is tasty. Have a fresh apple. It's just everything's been wired for that to be the minority of our food supply. That's often unaffordable and we all feel really time poor. These are solvable problems. We've just been shoving all our money towards how we make new flavor additives to sell high fructose corn syrup, starch, slurries. So, we just need to have the right in incentives in mind. Your point is very well taken that government trying to say, okay, let take out this ingredient or that ingredient is stepping into a trap. It makes all the sense to me in the world that that is a trap because. Using that philosophy requires a trust in the industry that if you ask them to take out these 12 things, they're not going to put in 12 new things that might even make things worse. And both of these industries, tobacco and the food industry have done everything but earn our trust so that's a very good cautionary note that you raised. I would say in the tobacco area, the idea of that we think that, you know, vaping will be harm reduction. And there's been a strong political notion that we should be, you know, doing harm reduction. And of course, in many instances, harm reduction can be helpful. But I found in tobacco, that I can't trust the industry to make a harm reduction product that's not going to get kids addicted. That's going to, you know, make sure that we're not using both tobacco and nicotine in the form of vape or other products. And so while many people who I admire in the public health world have said, yes, harm reduction is the way to go. I don't think that's true with tobacco. We have a lot of children and adolescents today who are profoundly addicted to nicotine. So, this discussion has led to lots of, oh my God, kind of observations from both of you. Paints a pretty scary picture of the food supply. How much manipulation there is. And how much harm gets caused by it. I'm hoping we might end on a bit of a positive note if there is one here. I'd like to ask each of you, is there a reason to be hopeful about the future? Allan, let me start with you. You're looking in on this with a unique perspective because of your years and years of working on tobacco. As you look in on the food space and see what's happening, what do you think? Allan - Well, I tend to be an optimist. I believe public policies can make a difference. I believe the courts can be used to serve consumers who have been harmed in the market. So, I have seen those things work to a really significant degree around the cigarette. Especially in countries where we have resources for education, where we can make policies that sometimes work or mostly work. I don't think I ever would've thought when I started this work in like the 1980s that we would've gotten so far. I once said to my son when he was seven, he was taking a flight with me. And I said, you know, people used to smoke on airplanes. And he said, no, that's impossible. And he just couldn't believe the idea that we had let people smoke on airplanes. And I've been collecting cigarette packages that were given out by the big airlines. Of course, you and I, Kelly, remember probably, when they start to put smokers in the back of the plane. But the smoke was wafting throughout it. And a lot of things that seem almost impossible now, were actually reduced through regulation and politics and public health. I'm very hopeful that we can use what we've learned about how to get smoking from 50% of the population down to 15 or 12, as bad as that is. And apply it to other gigantic risks like ultra processed foods. All right, thanks for that positive note. Ashley, what do you think are there grounds for being positive? Ashley - Yes, I'm also a huge optimist. I feel wildly optimistic. I just, from listening to consumer sentiment right now, the degree to which corporations are able to hack our limbic systems, I mean, you see it right now with social media and sports betting. I think in our bones as a society, we're starting to just get fed up. And to me there is nothing that is more clear cut of how industries can manipulate us than taking food, the thing we most evolved to care about and to find rewarding and nourishing, and somehow jacking it up into an addictive, harmful substance. And I have two little kids. I have a five and 7-year-old and I am just as a mom full of rage every time I go grocery shopping because they've just shoved protein in a Pop-Tart, now they're trying to tell me it's a health food. I think we're catching onto them, and I think that there is no way to go but up. And again, we already have the solution. In opiates, we are still struggling to find non-addictive pain management. We have non-addictive food and it's called, you know, minimally processed real foods. So, it's just about putting the incentives in the right place. BIOS Ashley Gearhardt, Ph.D., is a Professor of Psychology in the Clinical Science area at the University of Michigan. She also earned her B.A. in psychology from The University of Michigan as an undergraduate. While working on her doctorate in clinical psychology at Yale University, Dr. Gearhardt became interested in the possibility that certain foods may be capable of triggering an addictive process. To explore this further, she developed the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS) to operationalize addictive eating behaviors, which has been linked with more frequent binge eating episodes, an increased prevalence of obesity and patterns of neural activation implicated in other addictive behaviors. It has been cited over 800 times and translated into over ten foreign languages. Her areas of research also include investigating how food advertising activates reward systems to drive eating behavior and the development of food preferences and eating patterns in infants. She has published over 100 academic publications and her research has been featured on media outlets, such as ABC News, Good Morning America, the Today Show, the Wall Street Journal, and NPR. Allan M. Brandt is the Amalie Moses Kass Professor of the History of Medicine and Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, where he holds a joint appointment between the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Medical School. Brandt served as Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 2008 to 2012. He earned his undergraduate degree at Brandeis University and a Ph.D. in American History from Columbia University. His work focuses on social and ethical aspects of health, disease, medical practices, and global health in the twentieth century. Brandt is the author of No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States since 1880 (paperback, 1987; 35th Anniversary Edition, 2020); and co-editor of Morality and Health (1997). He has written on the social history of epidemic disease, the history of public health and health policy, and the history of human experimentation, among other topics. His book on the social and cultural history of cigarette smoking in the U.S., The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America, was published by Basic Books in 2007 (paperback, 2009). It received the Bancroft Prize from Columbia University in 2008 and the Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine in 2011, among other awards. Brandt has been elected to the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2015, he was awarded the Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award by the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In 2019-20, Brandt was a recipient of fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. He recently served as the interim chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Brandt is currently writing about the history and ethics of stigma and its impact on patients and health outcomes.
The “mad scientist” behind 2 Fast 2 Gekido, Michael Krukar, joins us to hit the streets of Japan for The Fast & The Furious: Tokyo Drift! After hearing about Michael's history with the franchise (and his thoughts about its future), he floors us by answering the Hobbs screentime question in a brand new way. We then share new thoughts on Tokyo Drift, like whether Han is the Dom of this particular racing scene, a new vision of the Family's happy ending, and our “Twinkie turnaround.” Michael injects a bit of anime into the Fastiverse, which ties into an observation by Joey and Wes's automancer theory. We talk about the tasteful inclusion of the Karate Kid, the film's many father figures, and which franchise would be best-suited to a Fast and Furious crossover (including many horror options). Michael pitches a Logan-like movie called Toretto. Email us: family@cageclub.meVisit our Patreon page at patreon.com/2fast2forever. Show your support at the 2 Fast 2 Forever shop!Extra special shout-out to Alex Elonen, Brian Rodriguez (High School Slumber Party), Lane Middleton, Jason Rainey, Wes Hampton, Josh Buckley (Whole Lotta Wolves), Michael Moser, Terra New One, Aaron Woloszyn, and Randy Carter for joining at the “Interpol's Most Wanted” level or above!Intro music by Nico Vasilo. Interlude and outro music by Wes Hampton.
Burying the Ex - "Twinkies Don't Expire"We are back with another Joe Dante flick this week - BURYING THE EX (2014). Evelyn (Ashley Greene) and Max (Anton Yelchin) are opposites that eventually don't attract. Unfortunately, their love has been sealed by a magic pact from a Satanic genie that is intent on keeping them together forever & beyond. This horror rom-com is full of hijinks and some bitter sweet moments featuring the late Anton Yelchin.We hope you enjoy this freshly risen episode!Support the show
Dave and Chuck the Freak talk about Dave locking himself out of the station, National Pass Gas Day, kids don't laugh at farts anymore, Consumer Electronics Show, plane's tires exploded on landing, man shot child who ding-dong-ditched him, jewelry store employee tied up and robbed, blind woman says a longtime acquaintance stole thousands from her, guy dropped ring through grates on sky bridge while proposing, former NFL player sues ex-wife for talking about his privates on podcast, NFL coach firings, Nick Reiner lawyer withdrawals, Mickey Rourke doesn't want help with GoFundMe, rapper shot over chain, bring your own popcorn bucket promotion, Netflix adding James Bond movies, Pat Smear broke foot in gardening accident, woman lit BF's clothes on fire, guy stole lady's car while she was giving birth, man facing charges after fight at Pizza Hut, woman robbed Chick Fil A to get gambling money, the man with world's smallest penis, fortune teller arrested, guy flipped car during chase, man uses sword to remove squatters, pizza and ranch candle, world's oldest Twinkie, and more!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.