#i keep finding these old interviews down internet rabbit holes when looking for something else

[abirdie]

Gael Garcia Bernal: The Dear Heart Of 'Diaries'

Article from the Washington Post, 25 September 2004 (x)

By Hank Stuever

Gael Garcia Bernal: the Mexican actor, who is so very right now and here in town for, you know, just a day -- the whole thing with the big hotel suite and the half-eaten plate of fruit and dos publicistas tappa-tapping en los BlackBerrys over there. (Mujeres! Silencio!) He's promoting his new Che Guevara movie, The Motorcycle Diaries, and everyone who has seen it is going on and on about how saintly his portrayal of young Ernesto Guevara de la Serna is and how sumptuously the movie's 8,000-mile trek across South America unfurls onscreen and oh, btw, critics agree: Bernal's got Che's iconic, serious stare down pretty good.

Green eyes, we write in the notebook. (Big duh.)

Also can testify that Bernal is about 5 feet 7, though it long ago ceased to be news that the hotties of film are pocket-size. More notes: He turns 26 in November. He has a proud, long nose that sometimes blushes red when he laughs. He's wearing one of those Salvation Army-seeming plaid western-cut shirts that often turn out to be designer-label, a pair of deep blue vintagesque jeans and some scuffed lace-up boots the color of old asphalt. His hair is cut bubblegum-mishap short.

Awright, already, he's de-lish. Did we need to bring that dogeared copy of 501 Spanish Verbs with us? Of course not: Dude went to drama school for a while in London when he was a teenager; not long after he starred for six months in a Mexican soap opera called El Abuelo y Yo (Grandfather and Me), and this particular fact has dogged him in every interview. ("People think I did all these soap operas," he shrugs. "I did only that one. And it taught me a lot — it taught me I never wanted to do another soap opera.") When it comes to Spanish, he can bend it to his will, the way Nicole Kidman can do in English, with whatever accent directors like Walter Salles and Pedro Almodovar need him to speak in — Mexican, Argentine, Castilian.

During our interview, he spends an hour dissecting, in English, the current state of Pan-American politics, extolling his sensible, leftist-tinged childhood, and at one point he quotes from foreign-policy magazines.

We hold up our end of the conversation with such questions as:

"So, um, like, what do you do when you're not working?"

"When I'm not doing this?" Bernal asks, motioning around at the movie-star-with-movie-to-sell air particles of feature story nonsense. "I like to do all the things I cannot do as much. My common days are very different now. I would, if I could, I would be home" — Cuernavaca, just south of Mexico City — "and I would sleep until whatever time. Swim, play futbol. Read and go to lunches and the lunches become dinners. Visit family, organize a party for that night."

Halfway through the image of Bernal swaddled in high-thread-count sheets until whatever time, a half-theory privately knocks around in our pea brain:

Gael Garcia Bernal, or someone very much like him, is exactly why so many of us faithful, independent-minded filmgoers still cram ourselves into the creaky seats of dumpy art house cinemas, even as the years tick by and things like Netflix, the Sundance Channel and the nicer stadium-seating art houses came along to replace them. No, you want to see Bernal's movie surrounded by drabness, because you get a better transport to the happy, imaginative place that way. The stale popcorn, the Fandango.com ads, the bathroom with only two toilets. (Cineplex Odeon Dupont Circle 5, we mean you.)

We do it because we're always waiting for that next small-time heartthrob — male, female, or sometimes just the foreign scenery itself. It's the subtitles and the eyes. It's whatever we can't get from those American goofballs who do those blech movies that tend to be about guys who go on canoe trips where a horny bear in the woods tries to hump them. Or whatever.

Bernal would never do that to us.

Hollywood beckons and he rolls his eyes because it offers him roles like, uh, okay, here's the pitch: He's an undocumented leaf-blower yardman caught up in a caper that only Jackie Chan can make right, if only they could understand each other's Engrish, ha ha.

"I'm open," he says. "I am, I am. But so far in the U.S. what they have offered doesn't even get close to the kind of things that excite me. Nothing is quite right, so I think I'll just stick with what I'm doing. I have to stay … hmmm … congruent to myself."

And so that's why certain filmgoers are inclined to sneak off to his "small little movies" (as he calls them) in the middle of the afternoon, get the large Diet Coke and consider the combustion in contemporary Spanish-language cinema that the rare actor like Bernal can harness. You feel like you've just gone somewhere, talked fast, smoked cigarettes. They call him the Marcello Mastroianni of Latino film when they're not busy calling him the Marlon Brando of it.

All that smoldering, the aching of youth! One, please, for the 2:50 showing of Y Tu Mama, Tambien. (That hormonal breakout hit, a coming-of-age road trip from 2001 starring Bernal and his childhood friend Diego Luna — people mix them up, still.) Or the 4:45 showing of Amores Perros (from 2000, translating as wordplay for "Love Is a Bitch," a chronologically scattered tale of how one car wreck in Mexico City changes three lives). Or the 3:10 showing of El Crimen del Padre Amaro, from 2002, about the sinful lapse of a young priest (Bernal, natch) caught up in a small-town mess of church corruption. Its release in Mexico naturally put hard-line Catholics there in a state of non compos mentis, which both baffled and delighted Bernal.

Some of his key appearances have been as himself. Fresh from Y Tu Mama, he and Luna graced the Oscar ceremony last year, cleaned up in their tuxes, to present a small award, and Hollywood swooned. He was seen dancing all night at parties at Cannes. For a while he dated Natalie Portman (well, that's what the tabs reported) and you almost can't stand the fleeting idea of how gorgeous their children would have been. (Cancel that. They broke up.)

His movies are always in exotic, crumbly locations, and we are there, because Bernal is there: the back roads of the Mexican interior, or ascending to Machu Picchu as a soul-searching Guevara or click-clacking around the cobblestone streets of Spanish villas in transvestite stilettos seeking revenge against priestly pedophilia at a boarding school, as he does expertly in Pedro Almodovar's next surrealistic offering, Bad Education, which will open this year in New York. (It's scheduled to open in Washington in January. Sorry, kids. Delayed for possible Oscar-sensitive reasons of timeliness, and to not get in the way of Diaries. He's one of those stars: Two big projects colliding in the art houses of the world.)

If Salles' Motorcycle Diaries, which opens Friday, doesn't make you feel like an earnest college sophomore with a crush on the Marxist professor who teaches your Latin American history class, then we don't know what will. Predating the muss and fuss of the Cuban revolution, the film is an epic, richly hued journey into the formative years of Che, back in 1952 when he was Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, an Argentinean med student in his early twenties.

Ernesto takes a year off school to travel on a 1939 Norton 500 motorcycle with his best pal, Alberto Granado (played by Rodrigo de la Serna), across and up the South American continent.

Guevara, a devoted diarist as a young man, took notes about the people and places he saw, and the gulf between rich and poor (it helps to open his eyes when his rich girlfriend dumps him). The further Guevara and Granado go, the more Che becomes Che, seeing native people and their lives transcending the bourgeois notions of government and ownership and greed. By the time Che's working with lepers in the Amazon, Salles' movie (and Bernal) have reached a subtly beatific realm. In case you're not quite feeling it, Salles ups the noble-people quotient with black-and-white still portraits of the working-class people the young men encounter along the way.

"We prepared for four months," Bernal says of the research phase, and the crew shot the film more or less chronologically, following Guevara and Granado's original itinerary. "I read 1,001 books about the land and biographies [of Guevara]. We traveled. We practiced on the motorcycle three times a week. We asked permission from the gods, and also the local political and cultural centers…. When finally we started shooting, I wondered if we were prepared enough for this daunting task. We got on the bike and the road started to appear and things started to happen the right way, without you even noticing."

Bernal was born in Guadalajara and raised in Mexico City. Both his parents are stage actors. He has been thinking about Che Guevara for half his life — and even played the revolutionary in a two-part miniseries on Showtime about Fidel Castro, which he would appreciate it if everyone forgot. It goes back, for him, like most kids, to middle-school social studies class.

"It happens when you are about 12 or 13," he says. "When you grow up in Mexico you have a very strong connection to Cuba. As a kid you listen to this story, it's incredibly, incredibly exciting to hear. [The revolutionaries] changed Latin America forever and they changed the world. So you start early, identifying with where [Guevara] comes from, and identifying with his ideas in a way, and identifying with the struggle, and therefore you're able to agree with it or criticize it. Leftist ideas redefine themselves constantly. I think my generation is much more critical of what works in Latin American socialist movements and what didn't. There used to be a stigma that any leftist revolution had to come with violence. I don't think we believe that anymore," he says, mentioning Zapatistas in jungles who carry wood carvings of rifles instead of actual guns, just for the symbolism.

You think this sounds a little pinko coming from the mouth of a movie star? Well, you try embodying Che Guevara and see what you feel like talking about when it's over. When Bernal speaks of politics and the world, it's not with fire. He leans back. He almost whispers. It's seductive, in a way.

Early in the shooting, Alberto Granado, now 82, was visiting the set, Bernal says. And he offered this advice to the actor: "He told me, don't try to copy Ernesto's voice, or his mannerisms. He said, 'Use your own voice. All Ernesto was was a 23-year-old Latin American like you. Traveling around. Seeing things.' And I realized that what the movie needs is that universal experience. Granado was right. I have a right as does any person to tell the story of Che."

When it was over, months later, having lost weight to play the asthmatic Guevara as the trip takes its toll, Bernal found himself still wanting to travel.

When the film was finished, "I felt serenely confused, like in a serene state of almost understanding something bigger, and then not quite understanding it. All the time I felt like that," he says. "It redefined my priorities. I have moments where I understand what has happened to me, and then moments where I don't. I wanted to just get back on the road and travel to anywhere." (He sort of does that now, subletting apartments in New York and London, spending four months in Spain working with Almodovar on Bad Education, spending a little time back home in Mexico. He recently spent a month in Austin, shooting an independent film called The King in which he plays a character named Elvis — "the bastard child of an evangelist preacher," he says.)

He says he can't believe how hamstrung American actors arewhen it comes to saying anything political. He wonders if the United States has forgotten how to hold a real election, with real debates. He shows up in gossip columns lamenting the lumbering, impervious quality of American imperialism.

"The U.S. is a great nation that's becoming a war machine. But it is a great people, which can save it," he says. "Some of us fall into traps where we can't say what we think. But it shouldn't be this way. Actors are free. That's the nature of being an actor, to do anything you want to do, to say anything. It's why we're here. And if I were an American, I could be pigeonholed for what I just said."

He'd go on, but our lecture has to end here, for it is time to throw us out and escort in another reporter. It happens to be a student journalist from American University, and she seems excited to meet the Mexican Marcello Mastroianni, but trying to keep it all in check, remain cool.

She shakes his hand, ready and willing for her revolutionary inculcation in the hotel suite of Gael Garcia Bernal. She's exactly the age where a young woman's thoughts turn to putting that Che poster on the wall, and we envy her.

[gottawriteanegoortwo]

Modern AU - Get the Mayor a Damn Dog

What started as me trying to explain to some friends why I’m giving Mayor Damien in a Modern AU a dog ran off and had a life of its own.

For context, Modern Damien (as I write it) is part of a failed ‘second cycle’ of the WKM events. When the barrier broke after the ‘Damien’ short, pieces of the characters trapped within were sent out to be ‘reborn’ in a modern world. This means that while Damien exists because Dark is made from pieces of the twins, William doesn’t since Wilford is him. But since there were enough differences, Damien (and Celine, don’t worry!) gets the peaceful life he deserved all along.

This, coincidently, is the first time Wilford has met Damien (in some time, he thinks). What better way to do so than by deciding Damien should get a dog?

Word Count: 2,259 (hence the read-more)

-

If there was one thing to know about the city’s mayor, it was that he wanted a dog.

(And a family, but one thing at a time.)

It came up in several interviews, and various photoshoots included him posing with dogs. Some well-meaning patrons tried to gift him a dog - in other words, drop a dog at his door without any warning - but Damien was fortunate enough to have interceded before anything actually happened. For Damien, this would be a massive decision, and he wanted the choice in when and how it happened. In fact, it was why he didn’t have a dog to this point. With how busy the City Hall was, he couldn’t justify having a dog cooped up in an apartment all day. It might be spacious, it’d be heartless, and why have a dog for the bragging rights? What about the pet’s own life?

It made the days lonely and quiet sometimes, but Damien knew it was for the best. At least it started a running gag of friends giving him dog themed items for birthdays and other occasions that were dotted around his home. One such afternoon had him dusting some items, only for a porcelain dog figure to be dislodged and fall to the ground.

“Whoa there! Don’t wanna lose this pretty thin���, eh?” Damien could only watch with a bewildered expression as a man with a pink moustache who wasn’t there before caught the figurine and neatly returned it to its place. “Looks as expensive as everythin’ else here. Musta cost a pretty penny!”

“Uh, I - hold on a moment. Where did you even come from?” Damien knew the front door was locked. The balcony would be an option for only the fool who would want to climb seven stories. The intruder mimicked Damien’s action of blankly looking around like he was also looking for an answer.

“Yer totally Mark’s friend, right?” 

“Answer my question. How did you get in here?” Damien put the duster down, glaring at the stranger. When nothing happened, he gave a slow sigh. “I don’t know. ‘Mark’ is a common name. I know a few people with that name. Can you give better clarification?” 

“Good answer! He’s a little shorter than you?” No reaction. The stranger pursed his lips, making his moustache wiggle in thought. “He makes videos fer th’ internet?” That, luckily, helped Damien put the pieces together.

“I’ve been friends with him for years, nearly since we were kids. So now can you please tell me who you are, how you got in here, and what any of this has to do with Mark?” 

“Wilford Warfstache, reporter extraordinaire at yer service!” Wilford gave a dramatic, swooping bow. “I actually went ta yer office, but ya weren’t there. Th’ security fella that found me informed that it’s actually Sunday an’ no one works in th’ buildin’ that day. So then I came here, an’ here ya are! Well done fer not working!” He finished with a dramatic ‘ta-dah’ pose, complete with jazz hands. But when Damien didn’t clap, Wilford’s pose deflated (complete with sound effects that came out of nowhere). “C’mon, Dames, I didn’t even get lost. That’s a good thing fer me.” Damien pressed two fingers against his temple as he tried to follow what was going on.

“I’m going to let most of that slide, but why did you call me ‘Dames’?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“For one, it’s a nickname that only my oldest friends use.”

“Aren’t we?” Damien opened his mouth to refute the bizarre question, only to notice the genuine confusion on the other’s face. One moment, Wilford acted like they were strangers, and the next gathered they were old friends in his mind? It was a rather worrying state of affairs, but it was better to not correct him just yet.

“So, Mr Warfstache, what brings you here?” Damien clasped his hands behind his back, steeling himself for some terrible news. He had heard rumours of Mark being linked with some malicious, shadowy entity. Was this related to that? What rabbit-hole had he been pulled into? Wilford appeared lost at the question, looking around until -

“Oh yeah! It’s ‘cause yer cooped up in here all th’ time. Ya need ta get out more, talk ta people, see more things! But most of all, ya need some sorta company, an’ - wait!” Damien had turned and stormed off to find his phone. “C’mon, Dames, y’ve been like this fer years! It’s not gonna kill ya ta live a little fer once.”

“And what do you know about that? You don’t know me as well as you think you do.” Damien held the phone up as a warning. “I will call the police if you keep this up.”

“Poppycock. I’m tryin’ ta help. What part of that aren’t ya seein’? Yer a man who’s obsessed with puttin’ himself last. Anythin’ that can pull yer attention from work for a split second is somethin’ ya don’t get involved with! How long are ya gonna keep not livin’ fer?”

“What I do is none of your damn business! I know the importance of my work!”

“An’ what other man in yer position would throw his life away? Any other Mayor would have a romantic partner or family who’d be there no matter what. They’d juggle everythin’ because that’s what people do! Yer not ‘sposed to be some machine who works an’ does nothin’ else!”

“But that is what I want to do! I promised to give this city my all. I’m not backing down on this.” Wilford’s hand twitched, like he was about to grab something, but he forced himself to stop. Instead, he took a heavy, slow breath. The moustache was peppered with short, black strands of hair.

“An’ neither am I. I’m not lettin’ ya throw yer life away again because yer a fuckin’ moron. No. We’re goin’. Now. Get yer fuckin’ coat.” 

“Are you listening to yourself right now? You break into my home through whatever illogical technique, complain about how I choose to live my life, and now you’re trying to bring me somewhere? You’d be mad to think I’d go anywhere with you!” Damien took a nervous step back as Wilford gave a resigned laugh.

“Mad, ya say? Wouldn’t be th’ first ta say that, an’ ya won’t be th’ last.” His head lowered at the confession. A few seconds passed before he returned his gaze to Damien with a sigh. Unlike before, it was a more sober look. “I’m not seein’ ya waste away ta be nothin’ again. All I ask is that ya come with me ta look at dogs. That’s all.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. Ya always said ya wanted one an’ never got one ‘cause of work. But folks love dogs! Bet we could find a little one that’ll be great in an office an’ a small apartment. Like… Like one of these!” Wilford hurried to the couch to snatch up a cushion and excitedly point to one of the printed dogs. Whatever black was in the moustache had disappeared when he turned to Damien.

“You… Do realise that’s a Great Dane, yes? The complete opposite of what you just said.” 

“An’ that’s why I didn’t pick a dog! Yer th’ expert outta th’ two of us! C’mon!”

--

Despite the tense first meeting, Damien found Wilford to be a surprisingly pleasant companion. Eccentric, yet bubbly. He had a colourful view on the world, and it wasn’t long before Damien could see why Wilford was confused on knowing Damien. They got along like a house on fire, or like friends who were simply catching up after years apart. Wilford told him about his reporting job in a TV studio, various other quirky friends he had (though photographs were needed to remind Wilford of names), and the connection between himself and Mark.

Time seemed to pass both too quickly and slowly by the time the pair arrived at the local pound. Damien had tried to talk Wilford out of this idea, but the other was indeed too stubborn to change his mind. The staff welcomed the pair in and allowed them to see the dogs that were looking for forever homes. Damien had to remind Wilford twice that a small dog was what he wanted.

(“But Dames! Look at her pudgy face!”

“Wilford, she’d need a garden as big as my entire apartment to run around in.”)

They eventually split up so Damien could walk around and see if there were any suitable candidates to bring home without running commentary from Wilford. So many dogs were lively and friendly, but far too energetic for an apartment life or would be better suited to homes with children. Despite coming to the realisation that this was the wasted trip he knew it would be, he let himself have the chance to enjoy meeting some dogs. He was reading the information on some spaniel puppies when he felt eyes on him. Damien lifted his gaze to the corridor to find he was alone. As he turned to determine where the feeling of being watched came from, he found a dog in the den directly behind him staring attentively in his direction like it was on guard. It was a corgi, and Damien guessed it was a tricolour: predominantly black with sharply defined tan markings around his shoulders, eyes and muzzle. Unlike most corgis Damien saw on Crufts, the fur was longer and fluffier.

“What’s got you on high alert, buddy?” Damien lifted the information clipboard to skim for a warning on a vicious temperament. To his relief, it was the opposite. The corgi was approximately two years old, had high stamina but was mainly calm and observant. True to the notes, the dog approached the perspex door, sitting in front of it as he watched Damien. “Or are you making sure I don’t cause trouble… Soldier? An unusual name.”

“He’s a stray,” one of the volunteers explained as they closed the storage door with the back of their foot, arms laden with a large sack of dog food. “He was found at the local army base after trying to herd some of the soldiers that were training, which is where we got the name from. It’s strange… He’s a purebred, yet there’s no chip, no alert of a missing dog anywhere in the state or in neighbouring states… Nothing. Anyone that wanted to adopt him couldn’t get him to come anywhere near them. Aside from any of us who bring him food, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Soldier get this close to anyone.”

“That is… Rather unusual for such a social breed,” Damien hummed in agreement. “I read up on them before when first checking what breeds might suit an apartment life, yet... I wouldn’t have expected to find one here.”

“It might be fate, Mister Mayor. It’s happened a few times here before. Why don’t you say hello?” Without waiting for an answer, the volunteer skirted around Damien. There was a little struggle with the weight of the sack, but they successfully opened the upper half of the door. For a moment, he considered refusing the offer, but decided otherwise. A hand was cautiously lowered to pet the dog on the top of the head. Instead, Soldier pulled back so he could sniff the hand like he had the final say in whether the interaction was allowed. Once satisfied, he bumped the top of his head against Damien’s hand.

“Oh my God. That’s the first time he’s let anyone pet him without a bribe of food,” whispered the intern. “This is like a Disney movie. You need to take him home with you. I don’t think you’re gonna find a better suited dog. Soldier is always watching and paying attention to what goes on. We have a kit that’d help you care for him, if that’s a worry. But you spend time with him and make the choice for yourself. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” The volunteer hurried off with the sack in their arms, leaving Damien alone. Once the coast was clear, Damien sighed and knelt down.

“This is all quite a rush, isn’t it? We’ve barely met and now I’m being told to bring you home. I’m sure you don’t want to be stuck with a boring man like me. I work in one room nearly all day, and I don’t have a garden. I’m sure you understand that I’m not the home you deserve.” Soldier cocked his head to the left as Damien spoke, responding with a low bark. “I’m not entirely sure whether that’s in agreement or disagreement, I’m afraid. I don’t speak dog. And I doubt you can speak human either.” To Damien’s surprise, Soldier gave another bark, before rising up and crossing his space to pick up a chewed-up teddy bear. Upon his return, he placed his front paws on the perspex to offer the bear to Damien.

“Is this for me? She’s a pretty little lady, isn’t she? Even if her dress is a little tattered.” Taking the toy, Damien once again attempted to pat Soldier’s head with the other hand. This time, Soldier accepted, allowing Damien to properly pet him.

This was how Wilford and the shelter volunteer found them several minutes. The volunteer was mid-brag about how they knew it was a match made in heaven, and Wilford was quick to agree.

“He’s a handsome little fella, huh? Ya look fairly smitten, Dames.” Wilford slapped Damien’s shoulder with a grin.

“I think I might look into the adoption process… But if I do, I’m changing his name. ‘Soldier’ doesn’t suit him. He deserves a name that’s more intelligent. I’m thinking… Barnum. It rather suits such a bright-eyed fellow, don’t you think?”

[thusatlas]

Ask for what you want, not what you think you should have

I have a theory. Well, I have many, but this particular theory is a doozy. The theory is… (wait for it) …

Everything is connected. I know, I am a genius. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I’ll collect my Nobel Award whilst I pick a up cucumber canapé on my way out.

But seriously, as obvious as it is, the more I reflected inward on my stream of conscious and started asking why, the more I have begun to connect the dots. I have become more aware that my actions, feelings and emotions that can be explained through cause and effect.

Here I want you all to take one mental step to the left to avoid falling down the free will and determinism rabbit hole before you. That is not today's topic. It might be next weeks, but not today. So just shimmy on over to this mental path that I’m laying for you here. On this path, we are accepting that we as individuals are moral agents, accountable for our actions and behaviours. Therefore, you have free will in a world that has been pre-determined by other free moral agents. Or if that’s too deep for you, just move right on past this philosophical premise and carry on enjoying the allegory I’m about to weave for you.

This all began some time ago, way back in high school, when I had to write my CV for the first time. I know that feeling of discomfort one feels when you fill out a job form, write a personal statement or cover letter is not individual to myself. This is a widespread phenomenon and yet the only way that you can progress professionally or academically is to sell yourself. Hence there is an entire profession in which you can be paid for writing somebody else’s CV. Furthermore, hence the reason why the widely understood, highly inaccurate statistic accepted as truth is that all CEO’s and higher business people are psychopaths; one of the defining features of psychopathy being arrogance and narcissism (that part is true but again, not the point of today’s topic…moving on).  We, the neuro-typical, non-psychopathic, really struggle to write about our best selves when it comes to applications of any kind. We do it because we have to, not because we want to.

Now think about it. I write and talk about many things throughout my days, from objective truths to subjective feelings. I process categorical facts and infer meaning that is hidden within the subtext. I imagine stories, characters, worlds, conversations and ensuing emotions. All without effort.

And yet.

I cannot write about myself. I cannot write about my good qualities with ease, without that feeling of discomfort. I cannot do it as easily as I am writing this now.

Sound familiar? If it doesn’t, then firstly what’s your secret? If that does resonate with you, keep following me down the yellow brick road of this allegory. I’m going to turn it into something less deep, far easier to swallow and then bring it back to filling in application forms.

It’s going to be cool.

Hopefully…

The list of top 10 most loved/dreaded questions. Somewhere on this list is: what do you want for Christmas/your birthday because I find answering it be an egoistic minefield to navigate. Apparently, it’s considered impolite to ask for all one’s problems to be solved or a million pounds or a new car/house/holiday. What I used to say, was what I actually wanted in an exaggerated way that would generally garner a chuckle. Both myself and the other participant in the conversation knew that I was being 100 per cent serious and if the person asking was happy to buy me my dream house then I would shamelessly have accepted (whilst also repeatedly enquiring if they were sure because I couldn’t possibly, hoping beyond hope that they would not come to their senses). However, this rarely (never) happened. Thus, the usual rapport was:

Person A - “What do you want for your birthday?”

Person B - “I would love a 50-foot yacht and a butler named Steve to attend my every whim”

A and B participate in the prescribed requisite chuckle.

Person B – “But seriously, I haven’t really thought about it.”

Person A – “let me know if you think of anything”

Person B – “Of course, though you don’t have to get me anything”

Person A – “nonsense, it’s your birthday”

End scene. I will pick up the Oscar for lead performance whilst I sample these delectable mini-hamburgers. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I had this conversation for years until I questioned what’s the point of it if nobody gets anything out of it. Having been both Person A and B, it’s uncomfortable for both parties because Person B doesn’t want to be perceived as selfish while Person A is asking to avoid the stress of having to guess what Person B wants. Now, while I love a good humble moment, this is not the time to be humble. Similar to job interviews, CV writing or personal statements. Why is it that we are not comfortable with celebrating our wants, our needs even when we are being directly asked to sell ourselves or literally tell someone what we want.

So I had a revelation a couple of years ago. I am aware that this is not going to be groundbreaking for other people but stay with me here. As of now, my life in regards to birthdays and Christmas’ consists of throwing the humble pie out of the window. My birthday is fast approaching and my family have begun to ask what I want.

AND HERE IS THE POINT OF THE ALLEGORY!

Bedsocks.

(Groundbreaking isn’t it.)

But seriously, my feet get cold because my house is old and the end of the bed is right by a window. You see the issue. Might as well sleep with my tootsies exposed to the winter’s chill.

However, (plot twist) I also want the new Jean Paul Gaultier Classique perfume which retails from £44 - £88 depending on the outlet.

I’m going to pause here because this is a Q.E.D moment. While the point of this post is not about asking the internet to get me what I want for my birthday, I feel the need to point out that I would, of course, be happy with just a card or a hug or a text for my birthday. I am merely using this as an example for the said allegory which has not yet been fully actualised. I am not some entitled princess who’s going to throw a tantrum reminiscent of Dudley Dursley if I don’t get what I want.

(If you’re not getting that reference then shame on you).

Now that I am 80 per cent sure that you don’t think I’m Veruca Salt (you better get that one), I shall continue with my point. I chose to embrace and show that yes, I want bedsocks and yes I also want magnificent perfume. Two drastically different items for the same person but these are items that I objectively want. I was asked so I answered. I am a bougie queen with cold feet.

What was interesting was the reaction of person A. There was an acceptance of my bedsock suggestion, though they did amend with, “Is that all? It’s not much”. The response to the Jean Paul Gaultier suggestion was “you don’t want much do you?” said with a scoff. We shall gloss over the mixed signals and possible shadiness and explore the duality of these responses to the embracing of my wants.

If you ever need to ground yourself or remind yourself that you are a product of all that came before you and all that will come after you, look to the Ancient Greeks. For a society that existed over 4000 years ago, we are still practising and preaching the philosophies of Thales, Aristotle, Socrates and Plato. You can find watermarks of the Greek thinkers hidden in the folds of much of modern societies ideologies, legalities, politics and psychology.

Does that mean they were ahead of their time or with all that society has evolved over that time, the human condition remains the same, regardless of how wise and savvy we think we have evolved to be?

Now it was widely accepted amongst theologians, philosophers, sociologists and psychologists that if you wish to look at the skeletal structure of a society in a snapshot, then look to their religious beliefs.

I’m going to need you to take a mental step to the right to avoid falling down the ‘is God real’ rabbit hole. We are not here to discuss the objective existence of the divine. So, I’m going to need you to hope back on our yellow brick road where we are accepting the truth that all pantheons have objectively exist in the narrative of human history within their respective societies.

To the point, the Ancient Greeks believed in a pantheon full of diverse Gods (big G, we don’t theologically discriminate here). When I first thought of the Greek pantheon, my thoughts immediately go to Zeus and his ilk. However, I’ve been on the Google and am now more informed than I was 5 minutes ago (look at me and my fact-checking… if only Fox News were the same).Anyway, briefly for your understanding, the Greek pantheon is split into 8 parts.

Parts one through to four covers the Gods who are the essential ingredients for the fabric of reality. So, Gaia who is the Earth, Pontos the Sea, and Ouranos the Dome of Heaven. The Daimones (spirits) and Nymphai who nurture the life of the four elements and so on. The Daimones that affect the body and mind: Eros the spirit of love (not to be confused with lust or attraction), Phobos the spirit of fear, Thanatos the spirit of Death. The Gods who control the forces of nature and who interacted and taught mankind. Helios the sun and Anemoi the wind; the agricultural earth Gods Ploutos, not to be confused with the pastoral Gods Pan, nor the city Gods Hestia. The Titan Gods Themis, Kronos, Prometheseus etc, are not to be confused with the defied mortals who are considered to be part of this section of the pantheon: Herakles, Asklepios etc. Nor should they be confused with the Olympian Gods Hebe and Mousai. This condensed list is actually very long.

Now we have the fifth part that everyone knows. The 12 Olympians who preside and govern over the aforementioned and the ones who have yet to be mentioned. They are Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Ares, Athene, Aphrodite, Hephaistos, Hermes, Dionysos and Hestia. Part six through to eight covers the constellations and the horoscopes, the monsters and the semi-divine love children of the Olympians who defeated them

That is a majorly condensed list however its extensiveness is the point I am trying to make here so I appreciate you if you have stuck with me thus far. If you wish for a full list of the Greek Pantheon here are links to further your own reading: (1, 2, 3).

So, the Greeks had this diverse belief system. These beings who governed their every action. Literally everything, physical and metaphysical alike.

Now tell me what they missed.

Tell me what’s missing from this very extensive list.

Evil.

Ah, but there is Hades the God of the underworld you say! There are monsters!

Hades was made evil by Disney I’m sorry to say (though he was fabulous).

Hades in the Greek pantheon is the God of the dead and Zeus fucked up and much as he did. Odysseus is a soap opera, I swear. Anyway, the monsters?  They’re as neutral as death. They are creatures doing exactly what is within their nature to do. Thus the underlying ethos of the pantheon. Every one of those deities commits actions that can be perceived to be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ by the humans they lived alongside. The Greeks did not revere them to be absolute good, nor absolute evil. What they did, was perceive them to portray unavoidable facets of our day-to-day lives that should be celebrated, acknowledged and respected. For example, take Dionysus, the God of wine, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy. Basically, this bitch was the life of the party. As such, large banquets and hedonistic orgies were often held in his name, celebrating pleasure, life and the loss of control within the madness of relinquishing stress.

But we aren’t the Ancient Greeks are we (though I know I look fetching in a toga if I do say so myself).

Western civilisation, take the United Kingdom, for example, founded its legal system upon the 10 commandments of the monotheist pantheon of Christianity. Furthermore, The Act of Supremacy in 1534 appointed King Henry VIII the first Supreme Governor of the Church of England. A largely ceremonial title that has been passed on to reigning monarchs ever since. Within the United Kingdom, Church and State have been very much intertwined since the days of the court governance. As such, themes of Christian teachings and concepts became entwined within our culture, and over the years have become so embedded that accepted behaviour and social nuances are not intrinsically associated with its religious teaching. The obvious examples to point out are the recent milestone law amendments to same-sex marriages and abortion. Going deeper into social norms: the concepts of purity and promiscuity, humbleness and arrogance, greed, sin and punishment. I have been brought up in a time where I have heard the rhetoric about my own body change from ‘do not sleep around, don’t be easy’ to ‘it’s your body, equality, if men can do it, you can to’. Aside from my own personal views on this topic, this social rhetoric is a symptom of the culture in which we live. They also echo some (not all) Christian teachings. Triandis and Triandis (1988-2004) have produced many works on the development of culture, the bare bones of the explanation being that culture of a society is a product of history, language and stories. Prior to written print, all information was passed on from generation to generation through stories. These stories contained information about countries' histories, experiences, and beliefs. The languages and gestures telling the stories are a creole of invading forces and immigrating travellers. These are the bare ingredients for culture. All that is left to perfect this recipe is time. Leave to mature of a few centuries and you’ve got a fine wine and a handful of convoluted social norms. Hence, the aforementioned rhetoric and the continued acceptance within British culture that the Monarch is the head of the Church.

The Ancient Greeks didn’t have time. Their teachings and stories are still hailed today, but their civilisation did not survive long enough for their culture to become a social norm.

Now, the reason why we’ve gone through this is to point out that the Christian pantheon is heavily reliant upon the idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.  Absolute good. Absolute evil. I could do an entire blog on the different theological branches of Christianity and how they have affected Western culture. In this instance, we shall focus on the concept of sin. Though it is obvious, it must be pointed out:

Sin is bad.

Bad is punished.

Ergo -  Must avoid sin.

What is sin? Well, sinning is many things if we go by the Bible and the wholesome Leviticus, but here we are focusing on the widely known and accepted concept of the Seven deadly sins. Though these little devils didn’t specifically make a named appearance in the Bible, their themes were present throughout. Thereafter they were popularised and named via Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Dante’s Purgatory.

Hopefully, you’re beginning to see all the threads of this post coming together now.

The Seven deadly sins are as such:

Greed

Envy

Lust

Gluttony

Wrath

Sloth

Pride

It is accepted within Western culture that behaviour must avoid ‘evil’ to avoid punishment. Ergo, we must avoid behaving in any way that can be associated with the aforementioned fiendish sins.

And so. The point.

I want bougie perfume and bedsocks for my birthday. Bedsocks is an acceptable humble and utilitarian item. It is not frivolous.

Bougie perfume? It is frivolous. It is a luxury. It is Greed. The fact that I boldly stated as such? Maybe a hint of Pride in my request? Either way, it is a social norm to at least raise an eyebrow at somebody stating frankly that they want an expensive item for their birthday.

To stress this point: if I had asked for driving lessons which are double the price of the perfume, no comment would have been made because of its utility. And so I bring you right back to the beginning. I am applying for jobs and finding the whole process unbearably uncomfortable because I am wondering if me toting all my achievements in one go and really selling myself will come across as arrogant (pride).

I should be humble, shouldn’t I? Humble me in the face of power…Isn’t that the social norm here? Which leads me to my final conclusion. Here are two different worldviews and neither are false and neither are true. If everything is connected (and that is what we call a callback) and if I were an Ancient Greek, how would I apply for jobs? How would I tote my credentials when there is no punishment for being proud of my accomplishments? When there is no concept of sin within the narrative of my worldview and just differing aspects of my nature, surely applying for jobs, asking for presents, networking etc, etc, etc, would be a far less painful experience?

[amplesalty]

TV Binging: Wild Wild Country (2018)

Is it really TV binging if it’s on Netflix? Serialised content binging?

This is not a story that is entirely new to me, having previously watched a video by Fredrik Knudsen as part of his ‘Down the Rabbit Hole’ series on Youtube. These are documentary type pieces that seem to flip between weird historical events/figures from history (The Collyer Brothers, Plague Doctors or The Austrian Wine Poisining) and more contemporary oddities from the internet age (Furries, The rise and fall of Spoony or TempleOS). The internet stuff in particular often deals in an individuals spiralling psychological state and this delicate subject matter mixed with some eerie background music and the pace/tone of Knudsen’s voice lend the videos a very creepy quality. I will give Knudsen credit though in that it could easily become a rubber necking way to point and laugh at people with genuine problems, he always seems to approach it in a mature and respectful manner.

His video on the subject of Rajneeshpuram is currently down at the time of writing due to a copyright claim from Osho International, one that I assume is spurious and done only as a means of public image control. At nearly 40 minutes it’s amongst the longer of his episodes (massively dwarfed by the ones on TempleOS and WingsOfRedemption though) but doesn’t have anywhere near the running time of this series which has 6 episodes in the region of 60-70 minutes.  I remember at the time of watching it there were points I felt needed expanding on. I can’t remember the detail exactly, I think it was either a mention of the Rajneesh becoming heavily armed or how they gained control of the town through the elections that felt glossed over, presumably for the sake of brevity. I’ve had this saved to my watch list since then hoping for a more detailed exploration of the events.

02/07/20 EDIT: Found an alternative version of Knudsen’s video that apparently had some minor changes made to it in order to skirt around the copywright issues. https://archive.org/details/20180123rajneeshpuramdowntherabbithole

Ep 1

It’s immediately obvious the difference between Knudsen’s work and this, Knudsen being very much outside whilst this has the budget to be able to speak to people directly involved, from the people of Antelope to Sheela herself. There’s a foreboding opening from the Antelope citizens talking about how at the time they became aware of the situation and what was about to happen, even if they could never have imagined how it would turn out. The show hints at the events that are yet to come with shots of court cases, talk of thousands of felonies being committed along the way.

Which is something to keep in mind because throughout the first episode, things are covered in a rather positive light from the Rajneeshies point of view.  Rather understandable stories of how people were drawn to this when they talk about their fractured relationships or reflections on their own existence, wanting to commit to something greater than themselves and the shallow, materialistic life they lived. Even Sheela’s backstory has a rather sympathetic light shone on it, speaking of her admiration of the Bhagwan, being in awe of him during her meetings with him and how she became a widow after moving to America at a young age.

That opening teaser of crazier things yet to come is perhaps necessary as I feel the first episode starts out a little slow, it does have to establish everything and since everything is being told fairly chronologically, there’s nothing massively dramatic going on in the early goings.

Ep 2

Things continue much in the same vein, the construction of the group’s city seen as this very virtuous mission. It is admirable what they were able to accomplish, turning to the best and brightest minds amongst their community in order to build infrastructure, to build roads, houses, farms, even a bloody airport!  In their minds they just wanted to build their own community free of the of the materialism and hatred in normal society and instead build upon the principles of sharing, peace and love. Only, in the eyes of the people of Antelope, not the kind of love they want to see. A lot of the archived footage of those residents paints them as these old fuddy duddies looking down on these outsiders with their wicked ideas of free love and open marriages.

There’s a rather dramatic shift about a third of the way through the episode when William Gary, serving as the Deputy Attorney General in Oregon at the time, talks about how they were looking into the situation at the time and were worried about the possibility of another incident similar to the Joneswtown massacre in 1976. This was a settlement established by a new religious movement founded by Jim Jones in Guayana and culminated in the loss of over 900 lives including a congressman who was visiting the area at the behest of concerned family members of people who had moved to the settlement. I’ll need to find another documentary on this story as well as this only gives a basic outline of it. It’s interesting that there’s a strong link between the two given that the daughter of the congressman is one of the people that moved to the new city but she actually speaks out at any comparisons between the two.

From here, the tension between the group and the locals of Antelope escalate as surrounding farmers worry about the effects on their land that erecting a city might have. They start getting politics and lawyers involved and you think that might be the end of it but that’s when the Rajneesh get smart; if they can’t build their own town, they’ll just buy another one. And by sheer chance, that other one just so happens to be Antelope. Sure is a lot of houses and land on sale in that town for dirt cheap prices. Lot of old folk too that talk a big game about never selling up but when someone comes around flashing the cash, it’s kinda hard for them to resist.

Maybe it’s just that modern, leftist way of thinking but it does sound kinda bad when you have a bunch of old, white American’s going on TV, telling an Indian based group to get out and openly making threats of violence towards them. Meanwhile, the Rajneesh just take the calm approach of questioning how can the locals tell them to get out of ‘their town’ when this is everyones town and make accusations of bigotry. Some of the Rajneesh followers try and defend their actions by essentially saying it’s a free country but Sheela is a bit more blunt about it when she says that they were exploiting a loophole. There’s something really chilling about how measured and calculated everything is as they slowly infiltrate the town by buying up more and more of the land. It’s like something out of a horror movie, this whole town can see this threat coming but they’re just powerless to stop it. Even when they take the drastic measure of trying to disincorporate the town, the Rajneesh manage to out vote them. There’s a shot in the aftermath of the results where the Rajneesh are celebrating and the townsfolk look utterly crushed that is quite haunting.

There’s a lot of talk of the townsfolks’ slogan in the build up to the vote; ‘better dead than red’, making reference to the robes that the Rajneesh dress in, the idea that they’d rather see the town dead than have the Rajneesh take over. After the vote, one woman makes a rallying cry that someone has to step in before the entire state turns red. I can’t help but feel that the whole red part can be read into a little bit given that they probably weren’t that far removed from the worries that communism might overthrow America. And it’s not like Americans have any history of forcibly taking the land of a native people associated with the colour red or anything...

Tensions only promise to escalate from here though as the episode culminates with footage of the bombing of Hotel Rajneesh in Portland, a Rajneesh spokesman saying they will take any steps necessary to defend themselves in the face of such violence and Sheela talking about how at that point they had to go out and arm themselves in order to defend themselves when no one else would. Maybe those Antelope folks were wrong, clearly going out to arm yourselves with assault rifles in the name of protecting ones self and their family is as American as apple pie.

Ep 3

It’s a little unsettling to go from this peaceful community to the sight of several people in fatigues practicing their arm with machine guns. Something that Sheela is very quick to frame that they were pushed to, that they never had a single gun in their community until their hotel was bombed.

The Rajneesh council take hold but give some token seats to traditional residents, not enough to do anything about the sweeping changes brought forward like renaming the town, streets and introducing a new police force called the ‘Peace Force’. They are likened more to a ‘harassment force’ by the natives though, patrolling the streets with flashing lights late at night, arresting people speaking out about the Rajneesh and openly carrying their weapons. For a town of less than 100 people, it’s a little heavy handed but presumably done as a show of power or even just to rub people’s faces in the fact that they won. There’s a continuing sense of something bubbling under the surface just waiting to explode with talk of civil war, news reporters being monitored by the Peace Force and gun stores in neighbouring cities recording record interest.

There’s something delightful to watching Sheela in all the archive TV appearances she was involved in, very confident and smug at times. When one critic speaks of the wealth of the Rajneesh and the fleet of some 13, 14 Rolls Royces that the Bhagwan has, Sheela quite happily corrects them that it is in fact 17 and it’ll be 20 come next week. She’s very strong minded in the way she defends the Rajneesh and challenges those interviewing her but at the same time she can be rather brash and impulsive. There’s a moment when one lady is criticising her and her rebuttal is just a rather blunt ‘Oh fuck you’.

It’s so far a rare flaw into was has always seemed like a very calculated plan, almost to the point that has me questioning just how much research did they do into this whole plan. It’s been portrayed like they’re always just reacting to what other people are doing and only out to defend themselves but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Case in point, they start bussing in wave after wave of homeless people from around the country under the guise of providing help to the needy. A noble endeavour and another ringing endorsement for their PR. These are people who have been shunned by society, war veterans in some cases who have sacrificed so much for their country only to have nothing to show for it. Now the only people standing up for them are the Rajneesh, a people who in their own mind are being persecuted themselves. All they ask in return is that you vote for them in the upcoming county elections...

Part of the news footage shown is one of the officials being questioned on voting laws, the point being raised that it’s the easing of voter regulations that will allow these out of towners to come in and vote against them. There really is something super villainy how the Rajneesh are systematically using all these different American laws and ideals and turning them back on their own people. But that point about more lax regulations and Oregon being seen as one of the more lenient states in that regard does make me wonder if it was picked out specifically in order to run this plan or whatever it’s all just coincidence.

Officials see where this plan is heading, especially when they figure that the Rajneesh will have thousands upon thousands of voters that will outnumber them so when a bus load of Rajneeshi homeless turn up to register to vote in Oregon, they’re promptly told that all new voter registration has been suspended. In context you see why they’re doing it but it’s kind of a bad look for government officials to suddenly deny people their right to vote. Especially when it’s suddenly African American’s that are usually the ones on camera as examples of the Rajneesh homeless. Again, is that just a coincidence, selective use of footage by the film makers or a calculated move by the Rajneesh as another example of the bigotry they’ve faced?

Sheela really is becoming more and more a figurehead of the movement with her TV appearances and rallying of the supporters. There’s a point as well where it’s mentioned she has private meetings with the Bhagwan each night before returning to inform everyone what has been discussed and what their next moves are. Just how much control does the Bhagwan have though, whos to say she isn’t just making up all the plans herself and telling everyone it’s his command?

By now, the presentation of the Rajneesh and Sheela particularly is starting to shift as their actions become increasingly drastic. With the homeless voter loophole closed, their ace in the hole isn’t so valuable anymore and when reports of some bad apples come to light, orders come down to sedate the homless by spiking the beer supply issued to them with their evening meal. It comes a little out of nowhere and isn’t really reflected on by anyone in the documentary. Then the episode ends with talk of Sheela wanting to escalate matters in order to win the election, even if it means murder...

Ep 4

Starts with inspector talking about a visit to view some of the construction, how they’re initially blocked getting into the city as a road is closed off due to an ‘accident’. Then, when they do get in, they’re fobbed off when they start asking to look inside some buildings. ‘Oh, there’s nothing important in there. Just janitorial supplies.’ ‘Oh, it’s locked and I don’t have the key’. The man reveals that it later transpired that the building he was intending to look in turned out to be their lab so he wonders how things might have played out differently had he pressed the issue. This sounds very cinematic, I can imagine it in my head playing out as a henchman is sneakily cocking a handgun behind his back ready to take out the inspector before he uncovers the truth, smiling politely when the inspector goes along with the story and decides to head home instead.

There’s something very ominous about the Bhagwan finally breaking his silence of 4 years to denounce the now departed Sheela, basically throwing her under the bus for any number of things with accusations of attempted murders within the commune itself and the surrounding communities. It almost feels like a reversal of one of my earlier thought, now she’s not here to defend herself, who’s to say he isn’t using that to make himself look better? Blame her for all this stuff in order to bring everyone back onto his side.

Also pretty chilling with the final statement of ‘If the police will not take action, then my people will take action’ as the footage immediately cuts to a shot of a Rajneesh security guard complete with assault rifle. It’s weird that all this build up of potential violence has suddenly shifted into a civil war of sorts.

Ep 5

Feels like we’re literally going down a rabbit hole when they search Sheela’s old house which seems to have a network of secret rooms that each contain multiple other secret doors and tunnels with switches hidden away in things like air coniditioning units.

There’s a fantastic shot of her paperwork including a book titled “How to Kill (Vol. V)” by John Minnery and a book titled ‘Techniques of HARASSMENT’ which has a delightfully cartoonish front cover. I would encourage you to look up the aforementioned ‘How to Kill’ if only for some of the accompanying blurb and reviews related to it.

Lousy Obama government, cracking down on our freedoms! They’ll put you on a watchlist just for buying this book, like when you ask your school library for a copy of Mein Kampf or the Communist Manifesto. If Forest Whitaker taught us anything though it’s that Ghost Dog didn’t have any trouble killing.

A rather scathing review from Drew who demands more detail in his murder instruction manuals. It’s just another example of ‘the man’ censoring our attempts to teach the unwashed masses how to make their own homemade guns. This was before the advent of 3D printers though, I’m sure every Tom, Dick and Harry has their own downloaded rifle these days.

There’s also an amazing story of potential tampering of the local water supply, a unverified story mind you, where someone had heard that beavers are ridden with bacteria so they had sought to introduce beavers into the water supply. However, after finding that the potential entry point had a mesh covering preventing directly putting the animals in, they then killed the beavers, liquefied the bodies and then poured that into the water. Again, only allegedly. Granted that took a rather sour turn once the killing of the beavers was introduced but I can’t help but be amused at something that ridiculous. I guess it reduces the possibility of connecting it to anyone is they were to be discovered. You might find a paper trail for chemicals but you find a few beavers swimming in a dam and you might chalk that up as bad luck.

In what seems to be a running theme in this series, there’s even more talk about the stockpile of arms that the Rajneesh have assembled and the possibility that the government might end up having to mount a full scale assault on this community in order to enact their plans to arrest the suspects in their investigations. One news report suggests they have 96 AK-47 rifles and 1 million rounds, with one of the Antelope contributors suggesting their arms outnumbered that of the entire combined police forces in Oregon.

But it’s all for nought when the Rajneesh basically smuggled the Bhagwan out in the middle of the night on a jet. It does feel a little sensationalist of the producers of this series to keep building up to these supposed skirmishes that will take place but never actually do.

Ep 6

Another thing that seems to be consistent throughout is the reserved manner in which the apparent crimes of the Rajneesh are handled. Talk of assassinating politicians, the sudden outbreak of food poisining or highjacking planes in order to use them on a suicide mission to crash into a county building very quickly comes and goes, never really being focused on or allowed to settle.  Maybe it’s a way of underlining just how causally the Rajneesh ultimately viewed these acts, thinking nothing of hurting other people so long as they gained from it. There is some hesitation and remorse from the people recounting these stories but with the overall sympathetic slant of the series in my view, it can come across a little apologetic.

Thankfully, the final episode seems to indicate it was more of a pacing or story telling choice, with them now really going all in on everything once the government has access to the inner workings of the Rajneesh and have an informant ready to tell all. Whilst Sheela was prosecuted for all manner of poisonings, arsons, assaults and conspiracy to commit murder, the Bhagwan himself rather tamed in comparison with only charges relating to immigration fraud that was eventually bargained out to him agreeing to the leave the country.

The part that stands out though is Jane Stork or Ma Shanti B. Hiding out in Germany in order to avoid extradition to America for prosecution for her part in Sheela’s plans, she receives news of her son having a terminal illness over in Australia but due to the outstanding warrant for her arrest, she’s unable to travel unless she goes and faces the music back in the US. She describes herself as throwing herself at the mercy of the court, something she’s given as she’s sentenced to time served and becomes a free woman. It’s all told in a very triumphant tone, something you’d normally get in a story with an innocent person finally being exonerated. Like there’s all these drawings peppered throughout the footage with a very cold, shadowy look to them up to the point where she is essentially freed, where the colours become much warmer and clear. It’s very odd, not least because that freedom is now tinged with the fact that it’s not much of a celebration considering she has to go watch her son die.

Being the finale, the episode looks at the ramifications on the Rajneesh community itself, with both its spiritual and admistrative figureheads gone, it’s position becomes untenable and people start to move away. It’s quite a sorrowful piece, with people reflecting on their time there and one person even being reluctant to go in spite of what’s happening, insisting he’ll be the last person out of there and that they’ll have to have to come and physically remove him. Even the talking heads within the series still seem very attached to the community all these years later, with Philip Toelkes (Swami Prem Niren) speaking passionately about the continued success of the Bhagwan’s teachings to this very day and being visibily moved when talking of his passing.

It’s one of things I’m taking away from this show, how surprisingly positive it’s looked at by those involved and even the show itself. Maybe I’ve just interpreted it in a different way then it was intended but this was ultimately a group, or at least niche sections of it, responsible for the largest bioterrorist attack in the US. It’s a shame that the Knudsen episode is down as it would be interesting to look at it again for comparison, I can’t seem to find a mirror of it anywhere either. He is quite clinical and matter of fact though so I suspect it would be more damning as I think it covers a lot of food poisoning and plotted assassinations.

I think the most interesting parts to me though are the middle block of episodes covering the growth of the Rajneesh community and its interactions with the wider community around it. Again, the fact that the producers could draw upon all of this archived news footage gives you the chance to see what reactions were like to the saga at the time. There’s even a clip of Johnny Carson leading a goodbye song to the Bhagwan when news comes out of him being deported. I was just really fascinated with the way that Sheela manipulated the virtues of American society, the supposed land of freedom and opportunity, to her own ends.

I would encourage anyone to give the show a watch, if only to witness the crazy turn of events as the Rajneesh go to greater and greater extremes to reach their goals. It’s a lot like 2020; each time you think you’ve reached a new low and have bottomed out, the floor suddenly gives way to new unthinkable depths.

[paulpowder2-blog]

Episode 420 – Q&A with Robb and Nicki #13

We’re back with Robb and Nicki for Q&A #13. Listen in as we answer some of your submitted questions!

We’ll be switching to doing mostly Q&A episodes from now on, so hope you guys like these!

Show Notes:

1. [1:58] Electrolytes the whole time?

Rob says:

Question for you that I can’t seem to find an answer to anywhere else: do I need to continue to consume the high levels of electrolytes entire time I’m on keto? I am still doing it twice a day drink mix with about 2300mg Na, 350mg Mg, 1200mg K.

2. [4:14] Genetic Testing

Joseph says:

Robb and Nikki

I was wondering which genetic testing brand you recommend.

Joe

3. [6:00] FTO Polymorphism

Justin says:

Hi Robb and Nicki!

My wife and I both did our 23andme years ago but just recently ran it through Dr. Rhonda Patrick’s Genome Analysis Tool.

We both have FTO polymorphisms that put us at highest risk of obesity specifically from saturated fat consumption and it looks like high levels of saturated fat by itself even causes insulin dumps with this polymorphism.

I did not even realize this was possible I thought this could only happen with refined carbs. This is something that varies population wide but since we know we in particular have this polymorphism I have some questions about how to tackle this to feed my family of 4 with foods that are right for us.

At current just doing a paleo diet I have lost 40lbs, currently I’m down to 198. I run about 5 miles a week there isn’t a particular goal weight or strength level but for my height (5′-10″) it seems appropriate to be closer to the 160-175 range. Since we’re trying to do this as a family and I have young kids I’m not trying to put anyone on a “diet” just make sure they’re eating good foods when we’re at home where we have the most control of what’s around.

The Paleo template is working very well for us but with this new information I want to make sure we’re optimizing our food choices. My question comes in with foods I thought were very healthy and now I feel like may be healthy or benign for the general population but likely should be avoided by my family for example:

-Coconut oil

-MCT oil

-Pastured Beef (85/15)

-Pork

-Dark Chocolate

So three questions,

Should we be avoiding the above mentioned foods and shoot for higher levels of mono and poly unsaturated fats mixed with fish/chicken/turkey/93\7 beef?

What is a good target number of saturated fat in a day with this gene polymorphism for an adult to keep insulin levels healthy?

Since cutting those saturated fat levels down is going to cut a lot of calories should we be increasing carbs, mono/poly unsaturated fats, protein or a mix to make up the difference?

Thank you for your time and the work you do,

Justin

4. [12:50] Keto Masterclass/Labs

Chris says:

Hi Folks,

As a 38 year old male, I was curious your thoughts on a free T3 and Testosterone plummet on a low carb or ketogenic diet. My thoughts were not enough carbs? Or, because of the appetite suppressant effect of the diet, possibly not enough calories? I know tracking might shed light, but curious if there was an obvious solution and common finding here.

Many Thanks.

PS- all other markers have markedly improved.

5. [19:44] Omega-6 from nuts and avocados

Roberto says:

Hey Robb, just wanted to say that I am a huge fan of your work, and I have been following your podcast and blog since 2011. I really appreciate the research and information you are putting out there. Anyways my question is regarding Omega 6 from healthier sources such as nuts, seeds, egg yolks and avocados. I use to consume a large amount of almonds and Olive oil to maintain my weight but stopped after reading Dr. William Lands work on Omega 6 and Omega 3. I started going down the internet rabbit hole and before you know it I am at a Ray Peat forum where everyone claims any amount of Omega 6 will send you to an early grave! Since I am a follower of popular opinion, I switch most of my fat intake to highly saturated and almost instantly felt worse. After about a year on a high saturated fat diet my glucose was constantly higher, cholesterol levels increased and I looked like shit. I wasn’t as lean anymore and felt sluggish throughout the day.. I am really tempted to switch back to more of a mono/poly fat type diet, but there seems to be so much biochemical evidence against it. Walter Willet, seems to think it is not a problem, but Dr. Lands, Peatarians, Chris Masterjohn, Jaminet, etc., make such good cases. Although one could argue that most studies vilifying Omega 6 are actually showing the negative impacts of industrial seed oils instead of natural sources of Omega 6. Thoughts?

6. [24:58] Question about evolution to Nicki 🙂

KZ says::

Hi Nicki and Robb

Always love to listen to QA podcast, I can’t stop notice how Robb likes to geek out.

So how did you guys actually meet? What was Robb’s pick up line!

I am sure there is story there!

KZ

Where you can find us: YouTube Facebook Submit questions: https://robbwolf.com/contact/submit-a-question-for-the-podcast/

Download a copy of this transcript here (PDF)

Nicki: Are we still calling this the Paleo Solution Podcast?

Robb: Are we rolling?

Nicki: We are rolling.

Robb: We are noodling on a rebrand and part of the reason why we’re noodling on a rebrand is that we’re shifting probably 99.99999% of our stuff to Q&A. The author interview stuff, people generating books like I think we’ve really mapped that experience and folks were okay with it. It’s cool, but what we found is that people have specific questions about their individual needs and that that’s probably the place that we shine the most. Every once in a while if we find somebody that has some really cool stuff, like there are a couple of researchers have some amazing work that they’ve done that I definitely want to interview at some point. So we’ll weave a little bit of that in but mainly we’re shifting this around to a Q&A format and so we are thinking about some sort of rebrand. So we’ll think about that. And I do have my cup of happy.

Nicki: It’s my cup of happy. But you’re using it. That’s okay.

Robb: Well you won’t let me use the cup that I usually use because of what’s on it.

Nicki: All right let’s get going with question number one. It’s a question from Rob. Electrolytes the whole time. Rob says, “Question for you that I can’t seem to find an answer to anywhere else. Do I need to continue to consume the high levels of electrolytes the entire time I’m on keto? I’m still doing it twice a day, drink mix with about 2300 milligrams of sodium, 350 milligrams of magnesium, and 1200 milligrams of potassium.”

Robb: Yeah so in general if you’re on a ketogenic diet, and this is one of the features like if childhood epilepsy, ketogenic diet kind of scenario, they will be on a sodium enriched diet in particular and then try to get the magnesium of potassium as much as possible from dietary sources but the sodium is really the linchpin to that. I will say that over the course of time usually those needs decrease to some degree but there’s just a ton of variability built into that. Somebody on a low card or ketogenic diet needs more sodium. Period. But then anyone who is exercising, exercising in heat and humidity, the american council support medicine guidelines put the sodium needs between seven and ten grams per day for an average size person. So what we’re finding and this is completely self serving because we’re selling LMNT and so yeah it’s a completely self serving statement. But a ton of people are really under supplemented in sodium. And so that’s the longer answer. The short answer is yeah if you’re on a lower carb diet, you’re generally going to need to supplement over the long haul.

Nicki: Especially if you’re training.

Robb: Especially if you’re training or doing any type of. And again heat and humidity. I just got back from doing a training camp, Brazilian jiu jitsu down in Costa Rica. It wasn’t blazing hot but it was 85, 90 degrees non air conditioned facility.

Nicki: Three hours of training at a time.

Robb: Decent humidity three hours. And the folks that were not staying on top of the electrolytes supplementation specifically sodium were having bad cramping issues. And then when they addressed that not only was their cramping decreased but their fatigue and whatnot was improved so. Yeah.

Nicki: All right. Next question is from Joseph on genetic testing. “Rob and Nicki, I was wondering which genetic testing brand you recommend.”

Robb: Man I’m honestly not super well versed in this stuff. I know that 23 and me has been selling our data to like the FBI and CIA or something like that.

Nicki: Is that real?

Robb: Yeah it’s real. It’s a non fake news deal. But I figure at this point I mean just coming back into the country, like they scanned me and like body cavity searched and everything so I don’t know that I can.

Nicki: No escaping anything.

Robb: There’s no escaping. I think just a basic 23 and Me is pretty legit. I think that they generally do a good job and then there’s going to be a question here I think next on FTO polymorphisms. Once you get that basic report out of 23 and Me and it’s kind of cool for the ancestry and stuff like that. Like I’ve connected with some second cousins and some cool stuff like that. But then you can export that data into different platforms like Ronda Patrick’s Found my Fitness, DNA Fit is really quite good also. That one definitely looks more at kind of sports and performance metrics like are you fast or slow twitch. Do you tend to oxidize fatty acid or carbohydrates better. It goes pretty deep on that and does a reasonably good job. So I would start with just 23 and Me. Or if there’s another option out there that they are not selling your information to the government, and you’re into that tin foil hat kind of gig and trying to protect your individual identity and information, then search out one of the others but 23 and Me is just nice API. It’s easy user interface. All that type of stuff. So yeah.

Nicki: All right, so this next question is from Justin on FTO polymorphisms. He says, “Hi Robb and Nicki, my wife and I both did our 23 and Me years ago but just recently ran it through Dr. Ronda Patrick’s genome analysis tool. We both have FTO polymorphisms that put us at highest risk of obesity specifically from saturated fat consumption. And it looks like high levels of saturated fat by itself even caused insulin dumps with this particular polymorphism. I did not even realize this was possible. I thought this could only happen with refined carbs. This is something that varies population wide, but since we know that we in particular have this polymorphism, I have some questions about how to tackle this to feed my family of four with foods that are right for us. Currently we’re just doing a paleo diet and I’ve lost 40 pounds. And I’m down to 198. I run about five miles a week. There isn’t a particular weight or strength level but for my height, 5’10 it seems appropriate to be closer to the 160 to 175 range. Since we’re trying to do this as a family and I have young kids, I’m not trying to put anyone on a diet. Just make sure they’re eating good foods when we’re at home where we have the most control of what’s around.”

Nicki: “The paleo template is working very well for us but with this new information I want to make sure we’re optimizing our food choices. My question comes in with foods I thought were very healthy and now I feel like maybe healthy or benign for the general population but likely should be avoided by my family. For example, coconut oil, MCT oil, pastured beef, pork, dark chocolate. So three questions, should we be avoiding the above mentioned foods and shoot for higher levels of mono and poly unsaturated fats mixed with fish, chicken, turkey, and 93.7% beef? What is a good target number of saturated fat in a day with this gene poly morphism for an adult to keep insulin levels healthy? And finally since cutting those saturated fat levels down is going to cut a lot of calories. Should we be increasing carbs, mono poly unsaturated fats, protein, or mixed make up the difference. Thank you for your time.”

Robb: Holy smokes that’s a lot of stuff to unpack. So the first one should we be avoiding the above mentioned foods. One thing that’s important to take away with this stuff is although so like this FTO polymorphism definitely has some implications for like lipo proteins, the potential saturated fats don’t benefit insulin sensitivity, all of the studies that have been done are still typically within the context of a mixed western diet. Nobody is pumping folks with paleo type foods through this process. So do we get the same gene expression under those circumstances? And I think that that’s a valid question to ask although we do see some folks whether on the low carb side of paleo or straight into keto they have some squirrely stuff happen. Some elevated inflammatory markers. What I would do with this is actually get a baseline of what your lipo proteins and your lipo protein insulin resistant score is and we’ll put a link to that in the show notes. You can get that ordered through specialty health folks that we work with here in Reno.

Robb: But if you are insulin… let me back up with that. Doesn’t really matter where you are. But within that insulin resistance score, the lipo protein insulin resistance score in general lower is better in this regard. So but if you’re already 20 then like cutting it to 10 isn’t really going to be that big of a deal. But if you have an LPIR score of 80 then yeah we want to really look at stuff. But what I would do is get that as a base line so that then any tinkering that you do we actually can know that it’s benefiting you or potentially not benefiting you. You’ve already lost a bunch of weight which we know for a fact regardless of everything else that’s improved your insulin sensitivity. It’s decreased inflammatory markers, like that’s just a guarantee. But if we’re going to do additional tinkering then I would strongly recommend getting that LPRI score as a baseline. And again we’ll plug that into the show notes. I don’t remember off the top of my head so I would use that as a baseline and then all of these recommendations from there the good target for an amount of saturated fat for a day… I wouldn’t even know where to go with that.

Robb: I guess some of the even Cordain backed guidelines are somewhere between like eight to twelve percent of total calories and if you’re reading on the leaner side of the protein spectrum, more fish, more monounsaturated fats. That should be reasonably easy to get and yeah I mean if you are cutting so the third question if you got the saturated fat levels you probably will need to replace those calories to some degree. And just play with that again. Maybe you add some more paleo type carbs. Maybe you add more mono unsaturated fats. I probably about 60% of my calories from almonds right now. Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds no less because I love the smoky saltiness. But again I would make the case that the tinkering is less important than having a baseline so we can assess what the tinkering does. Because that LPRI score again you will know what your LDL particle count is which is critical in that kind of cardiovascular disease story even though it’s not straightforward and simple at all.

Robb: It will tell you help us your insulin resistance score and then based off of everything that you do then we can assess that. And I think that this is one of the really dangerous things that happens where people say go do this. And it’s like well how are we going to assess whether or not that does anything for us, either good or bad. I’ve always liked how do you look, how do you feel, how do you perform. And then look at bio markers of health and disease. And we’ve been recommending that since like 2007 when we first started going on the road doing things and over the course of time our ability to do that under the hood look at specific bio markers that give us some good feedback has really improved. So the things that you ask Sarah are great questions. I don’t know which one specifically to do. All of them are fair game. Increasing monos, increasing carbs, decreasing the saturated fat levels, the saturated fat in coconut oil will almost certainly provide a different stimulus on that FTO gene versus say like the 85% lean beef. And certainly different than butter and cream.

Robb: So those are all things that you can tinker with and once you have that baseline then we can actually do some good assessment.

Nicki: What effects they’re having.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: Okay. Next question is from Chris on keto and labs. “Hey folks, as a 38 year old male I was curious your thoughts on a free T3 and testosterone plummet on a low carb or ketogenic diet. My thoughts are maybe not enough carbs. Or because of the appetite suppressant effect of the diet possibly not enough calories. I know tracking might shed light but curious if there was an obvious solution and common finding here. P.S. all other markers have remarkably improved.”

Robb: Tracking, that’s madness. Why should we know where we are to figure out where we want to go. That’s crazy talk. So you know the drop in T3 and just T3 in general is not surprising on a low carb or ketogenic diet. It may not in some situations we’ve seen that it may be consistent with some clinical problems. But also again self servingly to some degree we’ve noticed that a remarkable amount of the problems that pop up related to low carb and ketogenic diet is whether it looks like kind of hypothyroidism or adrenal fatigue like HPTA axis dis regulation is inadequate sodium and inadequate electrolytes. And then once people address that, three years ago I would have been much more reticent to recommend low carb or ketogenic diet to a various cross sections of people and just working with Tyler and Louise at keto gains. They just don’t experience all these crazy problems that everybody else does because they are neurotic on having appropriate calorie levels so to Chris’s point we don’t want to be low carb and hypo caloric which is why we do actually need to track and that’s why it says keto master class/lab. So if you’re doing the keto master class we tell you to track that damn stuff at least for a while.

Robb: So we do need to establish a baseline but then they are neurotic in tracking electrolyte levels. And I think that that ends up addressing most of the issues. So if we drop carbohydrate intake we don’t need as much thyroid because the thyroid is critical in carbohydrate processing. So whether or not that is manifesting in what we would characterize as like hypothyroidism like being cold, dry brittle nails, dry brittle hair, all that type of stuff. That’s something that we need to keep an eye open for and then similarly with the testosterone levels, we find that a lot of people the testosterone levels may drop but then it appears that the androgen receptor sites improve in efficiency so you may not need as much. So this is again where I would default back to some clinical manifestations like are you still waking up with some wood. Are you frisky? Do you maintain muscle mass? Like all that type of stuff. And for women, kind of the analogous thing. Like is libido okay? Are you feeling fatigued and lethargic? Or do you have good energy and you’re motoring along? But again I wouldn’t immediately ascribe problems to the low carb diet. I would ascribe problems first to potentially having inadequate sodium and electrolyte levels and then kind of going from there.

Robb: And if at the end of all this unwinding and tinkering, the person legitimately is just not functioning as well as they would like on a low carb diet. Like they have clinical manifestations of like low thyroid and low testosterone. Then by all means start reintroducing some carbohydrate into the mix. 50 grams a day is a start. Run with that for a couple of weeks. Maybe add 20 more grams a day. And play with that and usually that addresses things. But again I’ve been surprised and this is why it’s good to have a coach and why I work with Tyler and Louise with my stuff because they’re very knowledgeable with this stuff particularly on the coaching implementation level. I really under valued how important the sodium and electrolyte story was. And when I address that then a bunch of the problems that I had were addressed.

Nicki: But bottom line tracking.

Robb: Tracking.

Nicki: So we know that you’re getting enough calories in the first place like Rob said under eating calories and low carb.

Robb: Low carb plus low calorie is a great mix for breaking someone.

Nicki: And if you’re doing, you didn’t say whether or not you’re doing much training. And if you’re training hard and if you’re not supplementing with sodium that can get you in some hot water.

Robb: And again within all the stuff what is keto so for me throughout the course… and still going to work on my training update for year 47. I still have that in the works but I’ve been noodling on some pieces to that and one of them is that I just kind of naturally periodize my carbohydrate intake throughout the week. So Monday tends to be a pretty low intensity day as far as training. I might make it to the gym and do some low level cardio. I mean literally it’s like 140, 145 beat per minute type stuff. I might lift some weights but it’s low volume, low intensity. So on Mondays I’m pretty low carb. Like probably around 50 grams max for the day because I just don’t need more. Tuesday I coach jiu jitsu but it tends to be a very skinny class and so that day also tends to be pretty low carb. Wednesday I will either lift weights or do some conditioning and it usually is a little bit friskier on that day. It just kind of naturally plays out that day and also Thursday can be a pretty hard day of training. I coach that class but it seems like more people more big people, more crazy people show up for that day.

Robb: So Wednesday I start ratcheting things up, maybe about 75 grams of carbs. On Thursday it will vary as to how much I have based on the training day. But Friday and Saturday are like get after it days. Those are my hard training days and those days the carb intake may hit 120, 150 grams for those days. And then Sunday is kind of recovery day and I actually drop the carbs on that because I find I recover better on the lower carb side of things because it’s not a glycogen issue. It’s kind of a systemic inflammatory issue. So I kind of naturally periodize carbs throughout the week. But I’m still always in ketosis. So even this notion of what a ketogenic diet is, people need to be more flexible with that. And I do find spots where I need more carbs to kind of have that low gear and to not feel kind of systemically blown out afterwards.

Nicki: Okay. Let’s see. Our next question is from Roberto on Omega six from nuts and avocados. “Hey Robb, just wanted to say I’m a huge fan and I’ve been following your podcast and blogs since 2011. I really appreciate the research and information you’re putting out there. Anyways, my question is regarding Omega six from healthier sources such as nuts, seeds, egg yolks, and avocados. I used to consume a large amount of almonds and olive oil to maintain my weight, but stopped after reading Dr. William Land’s work on Omega six and Omega three. I started going down the internet rabbit hole and before you know it I am at Ray Peat’s forum where everyone claims any amount of Omega six will send you to an early grave. Since I am a follower of popular opinion I switched most of my fat intake to highly saturated almost instantly felt worse. After a year on a high saturated diet my glucose was constantly higher, cholesterol levels increased and I looked like shit. I wasn’t as lean anymore and felt sluggish throughout the day. I’m really tempted to switch back to more of a monopoly fat type diet but there seems to be so much biochemical evidence against it.”

Nicki: “Walter Willet seems to think it’s not a problem, but Dr. Lands.” What do you?

Robb: Pedatarian.

Nicki: Pedatarians. Chris Master, Jaminet, et cetera make such good cases although one could argue that most studies vilifying omega six are actually showing the negative impacts of industrial seed oils instead of natural sources of Omega six. What are your thoughts?”

Robb: Man it’s a really good question. And it pops up a lot and Roberto kind of hit it with that I really think that the studies are basically showing that industrial seed oils suck and other sources of Omega six are just really not, how do they say it, person of concerns. A molecule of concern. I talked to Matt Aland about this episode a lot and where this really becomes a big deal is if you have an adequate EPA and DHA as a baseline. Then these issues become a bigger problem. But then beyond that, and you know it’s funny because I vilify epidemiology on the one hand and then jump in and use some epidemiology but consuming nuts and seeds just like whether you’re paleo or vegan or fucking whatever, like nuts and seeds are pretty darn good. I think getting a variety of those and not being really super set in consuming too much of one variety even though I ate a shitload of Blue Diamond Smokehouse almonds. I eat the pants off those things. But I am just so unimpressed with the clinical and this again like we’ve talked a fair enough about labs and John Welbourne has looked at this where if he’s followed more of the super high saturated fat, low polyunsaturated fat intake and he feels like shit.

Robb: His blood values go kind of sideways. His good friend, Tom Inkladon which Inkie is kind of crazy. He’s crazy dude, super smart, but again and again he’s found that people that are really top heavy on the saturated fat like they end up just systemic inflammatory deal and like bad glucose disposal and everything. And so yeah I’m unimpressed with the argument to avoid nuts, seeds.

Nicki: Clearly you’re not feeling good. You’re not looking good. So clearly for you it makes sense to make shift. And try to get to where you’re feeling great in the morning. Your body composition is where you want it to be. Your numbers look good. I mean that in equals one scenario.

Robb: Yes, yeah, yeah. I think that there’s a lot to be said with that and again you know a way that you could get a really nice baseline on this is looking at that LPIR score which provides a marker of systemic inflammation called Glyc A which is so much better than a sea reactive protein. I’m going to have Dr. William Cromwell on. He will be one of the people that will probably interview a serially. Something I’ve noticed like Mike Rousha, there’s just a couple of people that provide so much value for folks when they listen because they’re just fucking on point and people always get something. So instead of a random grab bag, like in the interviews. I’m noodling are going to be more a curated process of people that just consistently provide value to the listeners and are really on point with stuff. So William Cromwell is going to be another person that will come on and talk about specifically why a glyce is so powerful as a marker of systemic inflammation. And again this is something that you can experiment with maybe you take a baseline out of your ray pedian kind of scenario and then alter it for a month, two months.

Robb: And then get a reassessment and I’ll go out on a limb and say that if you’re LPIR score improves, if your insulin sensitivity dramatically improves, if your gylce A improves, if you look, feel, and perform better I’m going to go out on a limb and say that that’s probably a net win all things considered.

Nicki: Okay. Let’s see. We got a question from Casey. A question about evolution to Nicki. “Hi Nicki and Robb, always love to listen to the Q&A podcast and I can’t stop noticing how Robb likes to geed out so how did you guys actually meet? What was Robb’s pick up line? I’m sure there is a story there.

Robb: We’re going to have to fire [inaudible 00:25:20] for letting this one make it in the Q&A.

Nicki: Okay. Let’s see here.

Robb: Do you want me to give the run down on this?

Nicki: How did we actually meet? So I was working in a coffee shop in Chico. Has finished school in San Diego, moved back closer to home to Chico. And the first time I met Robb the door to the coffee shop, the little bell on the door jingled and I looked over and in comes this guy with a tank top on with big muscly arms and.

Robb: Yeah because I’m huge. Just as a reference she was vegan at the time so anybody that had an ass, legs, or the remotest amount of muscle looked like some sort of body builder.

Nicki: So yeah, tank top, muscly arms, and then tapered acid wash jeans.

Robb: The tapered acid wash jeans were standard jeans and they look tapered because again I add ass and quads. And so I actually fill them up instead of just these Popsicle sticks walking around in hemp baggy pants like the rest of the guys you hung out with.

Nicki: So yeah so he comes up to the counter and says, “Do you guys roast your own beans?” So I guess that wasn’t really the pick up line but that was the first sentence.

Robb: Hey I’m just moving here from Seattle, and I literally I drove more or less non stop other than getting gas. I peed in a bottle. Went from Seattle to Chico. Chico was where I did my undergrad and I was moving down there to open a group in the fourth cross fit affiliate gym in the world. And that’s where I met John Frankel. And so the very first human being that I exchanged words with after being out of Chico for nearly seven years. Was my future wife, Nicki. Those are big arms Violetti.

Nicki: He asked if we roast our beans and I said no.

Robb: Well she said no. And then she went back to talking our other misanthropic friends.

Nicki: And then he asked do you know where.

Robb: No I said do you know who else in town roasts their own beans. And she said Cal Java. And then went back to talking to her misanthropic friends. I said do you know where they’re located and she said across the other side of town.

Nicki: Now I was not that big of bitch. Just saying.

Robb: Former clients and former employees would argue with you.

Nicki: Robb’s version of the story. Yeah. So anyway so that was our very first meeting. That summer, and that was like in April. And that summer I kept getting emails from Robert Wolf. I had signed up for this group mailing list because I had done some [inaudible 00:28:03] in San Diego and was wanting to get into it also. And Chico so I started getting these emails all summer long and then one email was talking about the mystery from Seattle coming down to do a big workshop. So I show up at this workshop and Robb is there. And turns out he was co teaching the classes with one of our friends Jeff OG. So started doing [inaudible 00:28:27]. And then I guess I invited you to the first thing, right?

Robb: Nicki invited me to a vegan pot luck which I ate before attending that. And then.

Nicki: So we went to a vegan pot luck.

Robb: And not long after that, maybe about six hours after that Nicki was pretty sure that I was a serial kiler and so you’ll have to meet us in real life and focus more on the rest of the background on that.

Nicki: We won’t go into it right now but.

Robb: You’ll have to play us with some margaritas.

Nicki: It was, I had good intuition based on the circumstances that this was not a normal guy.

Robb: Nicki has commitment phobia.

Nicki: That I should run far far away. And when I told all my close friends they said oh yes run far far away.

Robb: Nicki has commitment phobia.

Nicki: No it has nothing to do with that. There might be a shred of truth to that.

Robb: The commitment phobia was a multiplier applied to some very non deft actions.

Nicki: Not deft is a very smooth way of saying it.

Robb: Yeah.

Nicki: So yeah.

Robb: So yeah there was nothing cool or slick or anything about my MO. Really the thing that I had going for me is in Chico there are about five women for every one to two men. And that’s really the thing that I had going for me. So but yeah KZ if you want the rest of the story, or other people want the rest of the story, couple margaritas and we’ll unpack the rest of the story. But guess sorry that we’ve been gone bit. I’ve been working on two books simultaneously. The first keto book is off to the publisher under the first draft. I’m working with Diana Rogers on a sustainability book which I am going to be riding away on that. So we’ve been pretty pretty hopping.

Nicki: So keto master class students and just anyone in general, we’re turning all of the material in that course into a book and it’s going to be super super cool.

Robb: We have a massive amount of additional information and so for keto master class students if you’re kind of like why wouldn’t I buy this thing. I did… I’ve been thinking about a longevity book for a long time. And I actually took the bulk of what I’ve noodled on putting into a longevity book and put it into that because writing two books at once made me decide I never want to write a damn book again in my life. So it really digs into M tor, fasting, like the pluses and minuses like I don’t want to toot my own horn too much but nobody has dug into that stuff on both the molecular level and also on the kind of macro application level. I haven’t seen anybody do it. So I think it’s going to be a very good book, very practical. But then also for the geeks out there, if you’re kind of like well I’ve checked all this stuff out. Like I put a ton of arterial into the cholesterol and cardiovascular disease, implications of a low carb ketogenic diet and I went really deep on that. And then I also got into M tor, IGF, the pluses and minuses of autophagi and fasting and all that.

Robb: I feel like I did a very thorough treatment on that. Those are in an appendix. So even the flour map of the book is a little bit different. We kind of jump in with the how to and then we cover the more technical science at the end in the appendix. I’m hoping that that will lead to not a massive pissing match with my publisher so hates the science and technical stuff and just wanted everything to be like eight days to paleo lab. And so I’m hoping the fact that the technical stuff is in the back that they’ll kind of give a little sign off on that. It won’t be a shit fight on that. But that’s what we’ve got going on.

Nicki: Yeah. So that’s coming out early next year and then the sustainability book with Diana.

Robb: More like June, July.

Nicki: Summer of next year. So that’s kind of.

Robb: Cool. Yeah. So keep the questions coming in. We’re back in the hot seat to do this. Love the questions and thank you all for your support. We’ll talk to you soon.

The keto diet is one of the most effective ways to shed fat and improve your health. Keto Masterclass helps you start keto right, step-by-step, so that you can be successful long-term.

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Robb Wolf

Robb Wolf, author of The Paleo Solution and Wired to Eat, is a former research biochemist and one of the world’s leading experts in Paleolithic nutrition. Wolf has transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people around the world via his top ranked iTunes podcast and wildly popular seminar series.

Source: https://robbwolf.com/2019/03/22/episode-420-qa-with-robb-and-nicki-13/

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On Philadelphia and Video Gaming: A Conversation with Fusion Chief Business Officer Joe Marsh

The Philadelphia Fusion lost last night, but it happens.

They went down to the New York Excelsior, which is a dumb team name. I hate losing to New York, but losing to the “Excelsior” is even worse.

I checked out the Twitter replies last night and people didn’t seem too happy with the performance of “Sado,” who I think is our main tank. Some fans were calling for “Fragi” to play instead, so it seems like we’ve got a bit of a controversy brewing. I might even call up Sports Radio 94 WIP to share my feelings.

Anyway, I stopped by the viewing party at Xfinity Live last night before the match started. I didn’t have time to stay for the actual thing, since I had to roll back to the Wells Fargo Center for the Sixers game, though it looked like a nice crowd was there for the event.

I did have a candid and interesting conversation with Joe Marsh, who is the Fusion’s Chief Business Officer. We talked about the popularity of esports and the growth of a nascent Fusion fan base, and even though I load my Fusion articles with satire and humor, I tried to keep it pretty straight with Joe while learning some things about gaming along the way.

Here’s the full discussion:

Crossing Broad: I gotta be honest; the last time you guys did this, for the season opener, I looked at the crowd photos and was kind of shocked. This place was packed. I assume you were not shocked.

Joe Marsh: Not anymore. But if you would have asked me that in January of last year, I think our first watch party had something like 300 people at Wahoo’s. As the season progressed we started building the fan base. This was all from scratch, you know? We were a hockey team with no esports experience, so we had no fans. Then we had to shoot content and shoot video for a team that was playing on the west coast, so it’s kind of hard to attract a fan base when your talent is across the country. But once we reached the playoffs it kind of spiked from there with the underdog video. We brought the guys to (Philadelphia) and did a thousand people twice. The first watch party had 800 people pre-register before they even walked in the door. Consistently drawing a thousand people each time is pretty good.

Moe after the jump:

Crossing Broad: When I come to one of these events and I’m looking at the crowd here, who am I seeing? Am I seeing young? Old? Men? Women? What is the demographic of the Fusion fan base?

Marsh: You’re definitely seeing young. But you’re seeing a lot more women, even as far as merchandise sales it’s 60/40 women, which is surprising, because most games you’ll see the stats and it’s 88% male fans vs. 12% female. But at live events, purchasing merchandise, it’s primarily female. Even in Korea, when we go there, a lot of the fans are women. The fans here are female, but it’s not because they like one player, it’s because they like and play the game. A lot of young fans, too, the average age is probably 14 to 25. We do see older fans because it’s parents bringing their kids down here. I always like to chat up the fans that are sitting there and they say, ‘I have no idea what’s going on, but my kid likes it, so I take them down here,’ and I’m thinking ‘cool, that’s awesome.’

Crossing Broad: Do you see a cross-section of… I guess I should ask it this way – What is the cross-section of Philadelphia Fusion fans that are also interested in the Sixers, Eagles, Flyers, and Phillies –

Marsh: Four for four.

Crossing Broad: Yeah, the old cliche we hammer into dust is this “four for four” thing. Do you see the Fusion fan base interfacing with those other sports?

Marsh: I think the biggest benefit that we have as a team is the fact that we’re a Philadelphia-based team. Because you have that built-in (idea of) ‘you’re from Dallas and I’m from Philadelphia, so we hate you.’ Overwatch is the only geo-based game right now, so we have a market, we have a home base to go to. We have that built-in kind of grounding, but the difference is our fans, a lot of them could never relate to traditional sports, that four for four idea. But when video games like Overwatch came out, now they can relate to that (mentality). Now you’re seeing the same passion you’d see with a Sixers or Flyers game watching one of our matches. When we went to the grand finals in Brooklyn (last summer), that was primarily Philly fans. We bused them up there and they were the loudest people in the building. That same fighting spirit, the cheering, the never give up attitude, it’s carrying over. It’s what we do in Philadelphia. It’s kind of ingrained in you.

Crossing Broad: Older people who might not be familiar with esports, they always get hung up on this idea of, ‘why am I going to sit around and watch somebody else play video games?‘ I’m sure you guys have heard it a million times now and tried to combat that narrative a million times now. What’s your answer to that?

Marsh: It’s the same question asked right back to them. Why do you want to watch a basketball game when you’re never going to be able to dunk? You might be the size of Muggsy Bogues, but you’re not Muggsy Bogues. Why would you want to watch the Eagles play? Because you’re never going to be able to throw a 50-yard touchdown. It’s the same concept. You just enjoy watching someone who is the best at something ply their trade. It’s the same thing in video games. I can play a video game, then I play against one of our guys and I suck. If I played pickup basketball with LeBron, I’d lose 10-0. I’d lose 10-9 if he spotted me nine points. You just like to watch the best in the world do what they do, and that’s the reply to that.

Philadelphia Fusion/Comcast-Spectacor

Crossing Broad: One of the things I find intriguing about esports is that when I was a kid, I hated sitting around watching other people play. I’m a thirty-something year old kid from the suburbs –

Marsh: Me too (laughs).

Crossing Broad: So you can relate. We would sit around, and if someone else had the Nintendo 64 controller, I got bored. Now you’ve got kids growing up, a generation that experts say are addicted to their phones, they can’t sit still, everybody has A.D.D. or whatever, yet here we are in 2019 and they’re watching other people play games. I guess the question is, what changed? Is it the advent of the internet? Twitch? Accessibility? Why is it different now?

Marsh: I think it’s the internet and it’s also the sites you can go to. If you go on Twitch, you can look at any kind of content. It’s like going down a rabbit hole on Youtube and you start looking at Kimbo Slice fights.

Crossing Broad: I wanna watch Soundgarden videos.

Marsh. Yeah, exactly. Twitch brings you some of the best gameplay in the world. In the NBA, we don’t get to see those guys practice. We just see them playing the game. Gaming fans are allowed to see that. They stream. Our players go stream, and you watch them have fun and goof off and talk to them, interact with them on their streams and donate money and support them.

Croossing Broad: People do the same thing with Youtube stars and influencers, they’ll just sit there and consume their content for hours at a time. It’s really not that much different.

Marsh: No, it’s not. I think it’s more – with Youtube you can’t interact with those people in real time. You can type comments. On Twitch, I could make a donation and you can respond and say, ‘hey Joe, that was awesome, thank you.‘ For that person, it’s a big deal to them. You can interact with them. It’s the connectivity. I think it’s a lot of that, and having the accessibility on your phone. A lot of our fans, you’ll see them in there double screening and they’re looking at the phone, they’re interacting on Twitter, they’re watching their tweets on the big board. It’s the ability to multitask and do more than one thing and I think that’s what separates the young vs the old crowd. And I’m like you, I grew up playing Goldeneye in the basement, no Oddjob.

Crossing Broad: Yeah, no Oddjob, remote mines in the facility.

Marsh: In college we’d play Call of Duty with the door open and talk trash.

Crossing Broad: Halo was big, too.

Marsh: Yeah, so we’d do the same exact thing, but now it’s online. Before it was just in person, and now it’s gone global. You can be in your house with your headset on and people say it’s anti-social, when you might be talking to someone in Israel.

Crossing Broad: Right, you could argue that it’s the total opposite of being anti-social.

Marsh: For sure.

On the big screen, esports. On the small screen, Sixers pregame live.

Crossing Broad: So tell me about the new arena.

Marsh: Been working on that for a year. Originally when we looked at it, we were trying to go to University City, where the critical mass of college students is located. Timing wasn’t going to work out. So when they offered us the plot of land next to Xfinity Live, which – this was always in the master plan, to build an arena or an amphitheater here –

Crossing Broad: Yeah, and I remember the original blueprints for this place, and it was supposed to be bigger.

Marsh: Yes. This was supposed to be bigger and there was supposed to be an arena there. When they offered us the land we jumped at it. We interviewed architects and found Populous. Since the fall we’d been designing and trying to find the right fit, and what you saw a few weeks ago is what we’ve got. It’s 3,500 seats with traditional arena amenities, so our training center will be in there. It’s got full-on production space and a media room. Then you look at premium seating. You have club seats, you have box seats with TVs that show you the perspective of a player on the stage. You have traditional suites and a VIP back bar. Everything you’d find in a traditional arena is there. It just happens to house an esports team, but it’s also fit for concerts and comedy shows and all that other stuff.

Crossing Broad: Last one for you, and this is kind of an open-ended question. If I was sitting in the Fusion board meeting and y’all were talking about strategies to move this thing forward, what would I be hearing? What are some of the immediate goals to grow this thing and get more people interested?

Marsh: I think getting more colleges in the amateur scene involved. The NCAA is never going to regulate gaming. Players get paid right now, so you’d run into the same argument traditional sports is having right now – getting paid vs. scholarship. These colleges are now giving out scholarships for gaming, but they’re able to collect prize money.

CB: So if I was on the League of Legends team at Penn State or whatever, I could get paid for that?

Marsh: Yeah. When you enter tournaments, you get prize money. Certain schools, like Harrisburg University, which is one of our sponsors, they actually give you a scholarship to play there, AND you get your prize money. So you’re kind of double dipping anyway, which then gets you into the age-old argument with the NCAA and paying athletes in traditional sports. I think servicing that scene, getting more colleges involved, getting more high schools involved (is important). The City of Philadelphia was kicking around starting a league this spring. Programming our venue with those types of events – because we only have 14 nights a year with the Fusion – it makes you think about what you want to do with the rest. It’s amateur events, getting those collegiate events, then also getting major events in Europe and the west coast to come here. And there’s always going to be the next new game, so like now it’s Apex Legends, being first to those things is what’s going to drive a new market. Games are going to fade. League of Legends has been around for a decade-plus, but then you have games like Fortnite, which has been around for two years-plus. That could fade away. Call of Duty popped, then didn’t really go anywhere. Sea of Thieves was hot for like three minutes. You’re always going to have the next fly-by-night game, it’s about capitalizing on that fan base. There’s a lot of crossover in hosting events. The live event experience is what makes gaming that much better than watching online. It’s like hockey. Watching hockey is much more exciting in person than on TV. Watching playoff hockey is even that much better.

….

Thanks for reading.

Let’s go Fusion.

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