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Sept. 15, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
01:03:04
Zuby | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 68
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I think one of the worst things you can do, especially to a young person, is to convince them that they're some kind of victim and that the world is against them and that they're oppressed, especially if that's not actually true.
because I believe that whatever lens you view the world through is gonna be your reality.
Hey, and welcome.
This is the Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special.
I'm excited to welcome to the show independent rapper, host of Real Talk with Zuby podcast, the author of Strong Advice, Zuby's Guide to Fitness for Everybody.
If you didn't know, it's Zuby.
Zuby, thanks so much for stopping by, dude.
Really appreciate it.
It's a lot, man.
I'm happy to be here.
Well, the first I had seen of any of your work, obviously it wasn't rap, because as we will discuss, I have some differences with you on rap, and I'm going to have you convince me that I really ought to listen to more rap.
But the first I was aware of you was when you cut that hilarious video that obviously went viral of you breaking every women's weightlifting record in the UK in one session, basically, while identifying as a woman.
Number one, what was the origin of that particular idea?
Number two, did they actually change the books to reflect the fact that as a woman, you had now destroyed all of the records?
OK, so well, how do I start with this?
So those videos were actually just from some of my random training sessions.
So I didn't actually enter a sanctioned powerlifting meet and officially break the records.
But I had the videos on my phone and I'd seen a whole bunch of stories popping up on my timeline about Transgender women beating biological women in their own sports.
It was happening in athletics and weightlifting, all these kind of things.
So just out of curiosity, I did a Google search just to see what the powerlifting records were in Britain for females in my own weight class.
And I saw them all, and I was like, oh, I can beat these Quite comprehensively.
So I just did a search on my phone and I had videos of training clips of me lifting more than those.
So I literally just created that first deadlift tweet.
So it was a video that already existed on my phone and it was already on the internet but without any context except it being from my training session.
So I just wrote that caption, you know, I keep hearing about how biological men have no physical advantage over women so watch me destroy the British women's deadlift record.
Without trying, and I really wasn't trying in that video, because that video was about 60 kilos, 100 pounds below my maximum, which was kind of the point, because I'm not even a competitive athlete.
So I just put that out there, thinking it would get a couple of laughs from my existing audience, and lo and behold, it took over the internet for a couple of days and got international coverage, and now here we are.
Well, how dare you, sir?
I mean, first of all, how dare you?
I mean, pointing out that there are average differences in biology between men and women.
This obviously is untouchable.
Did you get any serious blowback from people over the point that you're making?
Which really has nothing to do with transgender rights or anything like that.
The serious point that you're making is that obviously there are biological differences between men and women.
What was the blowback like from that?
Yeah, so firstly, the support was huge.
The support was gigantic.
I've got followers who are trans and I've had lots of messages from people who are actually trans saying, dude, that was hilarious.
Because they understand the reality, they got the humor.
There was a very tiny, tiny percentage of people, less than 1% of people, who responded to it, who were trying to attribute some kind of malice to what I was doing.
There were people who were angry at it for different reasons, though.
People who didn't understand it.
Some people were angry at me, saying that what I did was unfair towards women.
They were like, hey, you're not really a woman.
That's not fair.
What you did was messed up.
You took away the record from women.
But I was kind of like, that's the...
You kind of got the point, but you've also really, really missed it here.
And then there were also other people trying to say that it came from some place of hatred towards transgender people or LGBT people as a whole, which of course it wasn't.
Some people were saying, oh, well, you didn't go on the hormone therapy, so you're not really this or you're not really that.
Pretty sure even if I did go on hormone therapy for one year, I wouldn't exactly be equivalent to someone born a female.
But yeah, there was a little bit of blowback, as expected, just given how many people ended up seeing it.
I mean, millions of people saw that.
But overall, overwhelmingly, it was positive and people understood what I was getting at.
So, for folks who don't know anything about your profile, you have this very eclectic profile.
You're an independent rapper, and you have a book about fitness, and also you're a grad of Oxford.
So, what's your life story?
How did you get to the point where you're now here, sitting in this studio?
Yeah, sure.
So, the abbreviated life story of Zuby, I was born in the UK.
I actually moved to the Middle East.
I lived in Saudi Arabia.
I moved there when I was one.
My parents worked out there for a couple of decades.
My dad's a doctor, and like your wife.
And my mom was working as a journalist at the time.
So we lived in Saudi Arabia.
I went to school there up until fifth grade.
So when I was 11, I went to boarding school in the UK at the age of 11.
So I was back and forth between the two countries for a long time.
Did really well in school.
Got into Oxford University and went there to study computer science.
So I did that for three years.
When I was in my first year, I started rapping.
When I was a kid I used to play piano, so I did some music in the past then.
I also played trombone in a band for a while.
And then I kind of fell out of love with music and fell back into it.
I was a hip-hop fan in my teen years at school.
And then I started rapping in university and discovered I had a knack for writing lyrics and performing.
So I released my first album, Commercial Underground, when I was 19.
and put that out just independently, sold a few thousand copies, and that kind of set the spark of, oh, this is maybe something I can do something with.
So I graduated, moved to London.
I worked as a management consultant, actually, for a couple of years whilst juggling my music stuff on the side.
And then in November 2011, I took the plunge and said, hey, I'm going to go and pursue my music stuff full time.
And I haven't starved to death yet, so I'm doing something right.
And then other things have been added to the mix as time has gone on.
So this year I started my podcast, Real Talk with Zuby.
I wrote and released my first book, Strong Advice.
In terms of the fitness stuff, I've been training for over half my life.
So I figured, yo, why don't I put something together here that can help people?
So I put that out this year, started doing a little bit more public speaking and stuff like that.
You know, I'm just trying to fulfill my potential, basically.
Because music is the core of what I do.
It's something I'm extremely passionate about.
But I'm aware that I have a lot to offer beyond just the music.
You know, I've got something to add to the conversation.
There's stuff I can help people with in terms of fitness and developing a stronger mindset and stuff like that.
And all those avenues are things I'm trying to contribute to the world in a positive way, really.
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So, first of all, what was it like to live in Saudi Arabia?
I mean, I didn't know that part of your profile.
What was that actually like?
Click on that microphone at the top of the homepage, type in Shapiro, that is stamps.com, enter Shapiro.
So, first of all, what was it like to live in Saudi Arabia?
I mean, I didn't know that part of your profile.
What was that actually like?
As somebody who, for one particular reason, is not allowed in Saudi Arabia, what exactly was that like for you? - I actually really liked it.
Where I grew up was, it was kind of like a bubble.
It was an expat community, so you had people there from all over.
The USA, Canada, UK.
It's why my accent doesn't even sound British, because I lived in Saudi Arabia and I was in the American school system for such a long time.
And I'm someone who's really hard to influence, so even when I went to the UK, my accent just didn't really shift too much.
But it was a great place to grow up, really, like, diversity in the true sense of the word.
I was surrounded by people of All different nationalities, different religions, different races, whatever, just from the very, very beginning, which is part of why I find some of the identity politics stuff that's happening now really, really weird, because I didn't grow up with any of that.
It just wasn't a thing.
But yeah, great place to go to school.
Had a lot of good friends there, some of whom are still there.
In terms of what it looks like, it's weird being in L.A.
because it looks really similar, and the temperature and climate is actually really, really similar.
And the roads and the trees, everything like that.
So just as we were, you know, driving around the place, I've been thinking, man, this reminds me of Saudi.
But overall, I have a very positive view of the place.
I know it's one of those countries that a lot of people have negative views of.
And I can understand some of that.
But there's also a lot of pros to it and the way they there's a lot of things I think that country could learn from a place like the US or UK.
There's also stuff I think the US and UK could learn from a country like Saudi Arabia, which people might be surprised to hear. - And what are some of the things you think that the West could learn from Saudi Arabia? - Well, I think, firstly, it's a very, I know you're a religious person.
I'm a religious person.
It's a very totally God-fearing country.
Everybody is on the same page.
So that, like, it has its benefits and it has its drawbacks in terms of the rules and the laws and whatnot.
It's pretty strict.
And there's some stuff that maybe people in the West may think should be allowed, which is not allowed there.
But when it comes to things like, I'd say, a lot of the social issues and problems that are major issues in the modern western world, they hardly exist over there, right?
So if you're talking about broken families or fatherless homes, or, you know, yeah, kids growing up without parents, drug addiction, alcoholism and alcohol problems, all that, it's just not a thing there.
Because alcohol is illegal, there's no drugs.
And again, people fear God, so You find that people there are very honest, actually.
People are extremely honest, very hospitable, very traditional in certain senses.
So it's easy.
It's an easy place to criticize for a lot of reasons, but it does have its benefits to society in terms of just things working and functioning and people kind of being on the same page and just knowing, OK, this is how we do things.
Respect it, take it or leave it.
And it's a weird one to balance, but as someone who lived there for 19 years, you can certainly see how it works and it's not all bad in the way that people seem to think that it is.
I mean, you have this really iconoclastic worldview where you talk a lot about responsibility, and you're obviously anti-identity politics.
What do you think shaped that?
I mean, you talked a little bit, obviously, already about the fact that you grew up in a diverse community, but identity politics is so much a part of modern politics, and it's something that I deplore a lot of people on the political right and many in the political center seem to deplore, but it obviously is a serious force in both European politics and certainly in American politics.
What do you make of the upswing in identity politics, people seeming to identify by racial group or ethnic group rather than identifying as individuals?
I think it's a shame.
I think it's a huge step backwards.
Like I said, all throughout my life, whether it's what my parents and my family taught me or the schooling I went through both in Saudi and in the UK and even up through university, none of this A lot of these talking points just were not a thing.
It seemed like people had moved past all that stuff.
Obviously, it was a major problem in the past, and it still is in certain countries.
But it seemed like in the mid-2010s or early 2010s, suddenly people started falling back into this sort of racial identitarianism.
There's a version of it on the far right.
There's a version of it on the far left.
They don't seem to want to accept the fact that they're actually kind of similar to each other in a lot of ways.
Their motives and wording of stuff might be a little bit different, but they're kind of playing the same game, and I'm very much an individualist who's just like, look, I don't care where you're from, I don't care what skin color you are, I don't care what Sexuality, all that kind of stuff.
It seems so obvious and basic and people do say it, but then a lot of people, the way they behave and the rhetoric they use, it starts defying what they're claiming to talk about.
So yeah, I'd say it lines with just my own personality and then where I was raised, my own family, my parents, it was just never A thing.
They never sat me down and were like, oh, Zuby, you're black and we're black, so life is going to be harder for you, or you're going to have to work 10, you know, all that stuff.
There's something that people call the talk, and I never got the talk in that sense, which I'm very grateful for, because I think one of the worst things you can do, especially to a young person, is to convince them that they're some kind of victim, and that the world is against them, and that they're oppressed, especially if that's not actually True, because I believe that whatever lens you view the world through is gonna be your reality if you walk around thinking that.
The whole society and nation is very, very racist and very, very sexist and very, very bigoted.
You'll start to see those things even where they don't exist, right?
You'll get onto a bus and the bus driver might be a little bit rude to you and you'll say, oh, he was like that to me because I'm black or because I'm a woman, whereas it might just be that he's not a very nice guy or he's in a bad mood or whatever, right?
you start reading intentions that may not even be there.
And you're seeing people doing this a lot now, right?
You're hearing people talking about things like the rise of white supremacy and things.
And I'm like, what?
Where?
Is the KKK coming back?
If they are, then let me know because I need to be aware, right?
But you're having people just saying these terms and putting things out there and really catastrophizing in a way.
And I just don't think it's helpful to people.
Like I said, I just don't think you want to be convincing people that they are victims, that they're oppressed, and then getting mad at them.
I've had people get mad at me for telling them I'm not oppressed.
Which to me is the most bizarre thing.
I've literally been in arguments with people where they're trying to convince me I'm impressed.
I'm like, no, I'm good.
I'm very, very privileged, right?
99% of the people in the world would probably quite happily swap positions with me.
And then just having that perspective, like my family background is also from Nigeria.
In terms of just having a global perspective on things and seeing just how fortunate we are.
If you live in the UK, if you live in the US, you're in such a good position.
People like to talk about the 1%.
Most of the people talking about that are in the 1% globally.
And I just don't think a lot of people realize that and feel that sense of gratitude and perspective for where they are.
So that's something that's very much ingrained in me.
And yeah, I think that helps to shape my worldview a lot.
It's interesting.
I mean, I talk to a lot of folks on the left, obviously.
I have friends on the left, many of whom are people of color, and there is this constant conversation about systems of oppression, systemic oppression in the United States, institutional racism, the legacy of vestiges of the past, Jim Crow and slavery.
You know, I don't even like the term people of color.
I don't use it.
Because why do we need it?
Why do we need a term that just means non-white?
No, really!
I wrote this on Twitter.
It went kind of viral.
I said something like, I don't use the term people of color because you only need that delineation if you're a Klansman.
Or you're a radical leftist, right?
What's the term for people who are not black?
There isn't one.
There's no word for that.
So why would I need a word for everybody who's not white?
Because I don't see the world that way.
I have some black friends on the left who really do focus in a lot on what they believe to be the imbalances of power between white folks and black folks in the United States, primarily because they're not European.
And they talk about the disparities in terms of systemic oppression, institutional racism, and vestiges of old institutions.
So you see, for example, the New York Times in the last few weeks pushing what they call the 1619 Project, the idea that the United States was founded and steeped in racism and white supremacy and that all of the institutions are corrupted at root level by slavery and that capitalism is a vestige of slavery, that all inequality is a vestige of slavery.
My perspective has always been that, of course, these are realities, particularly in the past.
I mean, there's no way to deny the evil of slavery, nor should anybody.
No way to deny the evil of Jim Crow, nor should anybody.
It's very important to understand that stuff.
When it comes to helping people in the here and now, I'm not sure how it helps people in the here and now to tell them that the obstacles that they face in their life are vestiges of an unchangeable system that is rooted in the American or Western DNA, when it seems to me that the vast majority of Going forward, inequality is not going to be driven by systemic oppression.
It's going to be driven by individual decision-making, and people making good decisions are going to be able to rise in this society.
Where do you come down on that particular debate?
Yeah, I mean, I mostly agree with you there.
I mean, I think at some point, it's important to acknowledge history, and I think most people, regardless of their political leanings, do that, and they're like, look, in the past, human beings have done a lot of messed up stuff.
And there's no question that black Americans historically have suffered direct oppression all the way through to not so long ago.
And I don't think there's any question that there are still after effects and aftershocks of that.
So it's one of those situations where a lot of people want to be like either or and they want to view it as some binary either.
Everything is systemic and everything is institutionalized and everything has a problem with the system.
Or go completely on this other side and say everything is down to individual choices.
I think the truth is...
Both of those have elements of truth in them.
I would say that for looking ahead, looking for people who exist now, people who are in the future, nobody who exists now was ever a slave, nor were their parents, nor do they hold slaves, neither did their parents.
So I think you can acknowledge the history and say, OK, look, this is where things have come from.
But then look at, OK, what are the current problems that are happening amongst certain communities right now?
OK, if you removed racism from the heart of every American in the world with some of these problems that are facing, you could say, I don't really use the term black community because it's too broad.
But if you look at some of the problems with, you know, black Americans or the black American community, to use the terminology, are facing, I'd say a big one is has to do a lot of it stems from family.
A lot of it stems from family, fatherless homes.
It's like this big elephant in the room that a lot of people don't really want to address.
Just the way people treat each other, the way people value or don't value life.
to some degree and this is generally still talking about a very small minority of a minority but those are real problems and those are not problems that exist because of racism okay people focus on when it comes to something institutionalized or systemic a lot of people would focus on on the justice system right so
So people will say, oh, well, you know, there might be... I haven't looked at all the data on this, but I know a lot of people say that black people may get longer sentences for the same crime, or some people think that the police are kind of just going around randomly shooting black men, which I don't really think is...
I think those are the ones that get the most media attention, but if you look at the data, it doesn't really seem to fit that narrative from what I've seen.
I mean, I used to believe that, too, until I looked at the wider picture and was like, OK, well, what else is happening here that's not being reported?
And I was like, hmm, the narrative isn't quite as simple as people are saying here.
So my point is that if you removed racism completely, Those issues that I've just talked about, for the most part, would still continue to exist and persist, which would suggest to me that that's not the main issue here, right?
The issue is aspects of culture and behavior and personal responsibility.
So I think a much better message, rather than telling people that the system is out to get them or the game is rigged against them or whatnot, which you can't really do anything Firstly, I don't think it's true.
Or if it is, it's to a very light degree.
And I think most people would want to get it so that it's completely gone.
I think everyone's on the same page on that.
You can control yourself.
It's a lot easier to control yourself than to control the whole system.
You want to overthrow capitalism.
You want to get rid of this.
Most people don't have the power to do that.
You've got a country of 300 and something million people.
It's the way it is, and there's a lot of opportunity in this country.
It comes back to that perspective and gratitude thing, right?
There's so much opportunity.
Even if you're not coming from a great place, even if you're not coming from, you know, the top, even if you're in the bottom quartile to begin with, over the course of time, several decades, I know you've talked about this a lot, right?
If people make good decisions and avoid, not even just make good decisions, but avoid making really bad decisions, then I do believe that most people
Can not most people I do believe that all people can succeed to some degree and be happy and be content and whatever and not just be angry at all the time and not be getting more divided and falling back more more into tribal identity and all that I mean it's just sad for me to see that happen because again I'm obsessed with the idea of potential so when I'm I kind of see potential and it's not being fulfilled or people are
Running around just doing and saying things that aren't helpful, then I find it personally quite frustrating.
So, obviously you're not American, you've spent some time in America, but what is the perspective from abroad on President Trump, upon whose shoulders apparently all of world peace rests?
What's your take on Trump?
Okay, I can't speak for the rest of the world, I can speak for myself personally.
I'm not going to try to give the whole UK view or the whole abroad view.
I think the UK view as a whole is Mostly negative, but not as negative as the press would probably like to make people believe there are a lot of Trump supporters or people who think he's generally doing a good job in the UK.
My personal view is that I think he's doing a pretty good job in terms of what he's actually doing.
I've been familiar with Donald Trump for decades, so a lot of people are acting like he's somebody just brand new who's out there.
He's always been brash.
He's always been abrasive.
He's always been pretty funny.
He's always just been, you know, the larger-than-life character, and he's continued to do that as the president.
I mean, personally, I think he's very funny.
I think he's very, very funny.
Do I agree with absolutely everything he says?
No.
But do I think it's good that someone's in there kind of breaking the matrix, in a way?
Yeah, I do think it's good and in terms of his policies and the way the country seems to be going in terms of the economy and jobs and stuff like that.
Seems to be doing a decent job to me.
Hasn't started any super crazy, new crazy wars that I know a lot of people were worried about.
You know, I do remember in 2016 when it happened and people were saying, oh gosh, this is going to lead to World War III and it's going to be nuking North Korea and we're going to be in all these fights and battles and all that.
And I don't see it happening.
I don't see it happening.
And in terms of the opposition, They seem to be struggling to get somebody who is better than him.
So as far as I'm saying, you know, even if people don't like his personality or don't like some of the things that he said or whatever, it's kind of like, well, who's better?
Who's better?
If he's that bad, that should be a really easy question to answer.
And do you think that he's a racist?
I mean, he's obviously made racially insensitive statements.
He's said things that I've criticized on racial issues as at the very least blind to the meaning of what he's saying.
The media are obviously all in on this, that he's a white supremacist, that he's a racist.
What do you make of that?
Yeah, but the media thinks everyone's...
That is fair.
I don't think that Donald Trump is a racist.
I don't know the man personally.
I know people who have met him.
I don't believe he's a racist, and the fact that he only suddenly became racist to people in 2015, 2016, despite being in the public eye for many decades, is really suspicious to me.
In the world of hip-hop, Donald Trump was extremely popular.
I don't know how aware you are of this.
Not at all, obviously.
A lot of rappers, a lot of rappers, bigged up Donald Trump in the night.
You should go back and listen to hip hop from, from the nineties and the thousands.
Donald Trump was the guy, right?
He was the aspirational figure for a lot of these rappers who are entrepreneurial minded, business minded, wanted to go out, hustle, get that money, you know, be the, be the ghetto version of Trump or whatever.
And that's a, you know, I think Jay-Z has a lyric, you know, I'm the hood's equivalent of Trump or something like that.
Right.
And then in again, in 2015, 2016, all this suddenly changed very, very quickly.
And I think a lot of that was was media driven.
So when it comes to that, I don't think he's a racist.
I don't think he's a white supremacist.
I think that he says dumb, insensitive stuff sometimes that can certainly be It certainly gives his opponents and people who already don't like him in the media a way to take something he said and give it a racial sort of twist even when there wasn't.
A great example would be, I don't know, like the thing he said about Baltimore being rat infested.
To me, that has zero racial connotations at all.
If someone says a place is rat infested, I'm just like, okay, it's a rat infested, right?
But then people were saying, oh, he used the word infested.
That somehow implies, I mean, that's a pretty racist interpretation of it.
If you're saying, oh, he said that because, I was like, my brain didn't even go, you know what I mean?
My brain didn't even go that way.
So I think sometimes they, you know, that he's had like maybe one or two statements where it's been like, mm, that was borderline.
But I don't think, I think it's more, I think he's been occasionally insensitive.
He's insensitive in a lot of ways.
He can be insensitive towards women or towards minority demographics or anything.
I just think he's an equal opportunities offender.
I don't think it's targeted.
Okay, we're going to go after that group of people or that group of people or anything like that.
I just think he says a lot of stuff.
He tweets a lot of stuff.
Some of it is dumb.
But like I said, I don't know the man personally.
But given what I do know, I don't think that's what's in his heart.
So you mentioned rap, so now we have to talk about it.
Let's do it.
The elephant in the room is that I have tweeted many times about how much I hate rap.
So my view of this is shaped by the fact that I have the cultural profile of a Bond villain.
Meaning that if I drank alcohol, it would be brandy from a snifter.
I've played classical violin since I was five years old.
I own a nice violin.
My dad is a professional pianist.
We play Brahms together.
I grew up listening to classical music almost entirely, some Broadway, maybe, well, not maybe, so a lot of classic jazz like Oscar Peterson.
But apparently, number one, do you think that it's racist not to like rap?
Because I've been told that if I do not like rap, then this is because I do not like black people, which I find shocking since I particularly like jazz, which is a black art form.
So can we just assuage my fears here that I'm not a racist for not liking rap?
And then you can convince me that I'm actually wrong about rap.
Yeah, no, I think you're wrong.
I definitely don't think it's racist.
Uh, no.
This is the thing.
People say such crazy stuff.
I don't get how someone can jump... Also, Twitter has changed in radical ways.
Like, it used to be that 10 years ago you could make a joke about rap not being music, and you're stupid if you disagree, and people were like, ah, that's a joke.
And now it's like, no, you meant that you hate black people.
It's like, whoa, where did that come from?
People really read non-existent malice and non-existent interpretations into things people say.
It's just a weird trend, which I do hope goes away, because it's really annoying.
And also, it makes it difficult to take those words seriously, okay?
If someone, you know, you're an Orthodox Jew, if someone says that you're a Nazi, or you're a white supremacist, or I've been called a white supremacist, if someone, you know, calls everything racist, everything sexist, then it really dilutes those terms to the point where I don't even know what these things mean anymore.
Everybody's been called far right.
Everybody's been called all right.
If someone actually is legitimately far right or a legitimate neo-nazi, I'd like to know who that person is.
But if you're just going to call everybody that, then you're just providing cover for the real bad guys.
So I do wish people would kind of chill on that kind of rhetoric.
Okay, so my case against rap is, I have the musical case against rap, and then I'll get to the cultural case.
So the musical case against rap is that, in my view, and the view of my music theorist father who went to music school, there are three elements to music.
There is harmony, there is melody, and there is rhythm.
And rap only fulfills one of these, the rhythm section.
There's not a lot of melody, and there's not a lot of harmony.
And thus it is basically effectively spoken rhythm.
And so it's not actually a form of music.
It's a form of rhythmic speaking.
And so beyond the subjectivity of me just not enjoying rap all that much, what I've said before is it's not music.
So tell me why I'm wrong.
Well there's certainly melody in the beats and even some rappers rapping slash singing certainly has a melody.
I'm not a particularly melodic rapper myself there are artists who sort of sing rap a lot more but I'd certainly say in terms of the the production there's a lot of Harmony and melody in there.
In terms of rapping itself, obviously rapping is a different art from singing, so the focus is on the rhythm rather than on the melodies and the harmonies by intention, otherwise you'd be singing.
I'm not too great at harmony and melody, and people don't want to, nobody would pay to see me on stage singing.
But in terms of the lyricism and the rhythm, that's really where the skill lies.
So as an art form, it's a really unique form of music in a lot of ways.
One, I think, is that you've just got the space to express yourself.
And in hip-hop, you can really rap about anything.
You can make a song about absolutely anything.
You can make a political rap song.
You can make a rap song about love or romance.
Any topic.
Lots of genres of music.
You're somewhat restricted.
In terms of what you can talk about and express lyrically.
Whereas in hip-hop, that's just totally wide open.
And as I'm sure you know, people use that for a whole bunch of different things.
You've got your gangster rap.
You've got your positive sort of conscious rap.
You've got your deep stuff.
You can tell life stories.
You can just share opinions on pretty much anything.
And so it's really, really unique in that sense.
And yeah, I think it's a little bit like They're very different music forms, but I think it's a little bit like country in that regard, in the way that you can kind of make a song about anything, and the people who write the lyrics tend to be the same people who perform them.
Whereas in genres like pop and even rock, it's not uncommon to have a separate songwriter who then provides that to the person who sings it.
So with hip-hop, what you're really getting is the artist's own expression.
So I can go away, I could write a song, and what someone's listening to is really just The mind of Zuby, just like they can listen to this conversation, this interview, and they're getting what's going on in my mind.
It's the same if they go and they listen to the lyrics of my songs.
They know, okay, this is the story he's telling.
This is where he's coming from.
That's where his heart is.
In terms of the music aspects to it, whether or not you like that and it vibes with you and you're feeling with that that's that's that's totally subjective so my other kind of artistic criticism of rap is maybe a stereotype about how rap is written
so i have this this kind of theory and it holds true across all musical form which is that art and craft are not in opposition but very often they seem to be placed in opposition meaning there's a and this leads to my criticism of rock along the same lines as my criticism of rap which was that rock was an actual degradation of skill for for music from jazz which was actually a degradation of skill from classical.
The amount of talent and work, mostly work, that you have to put into mastering a classical instrument is a lot higher than the amount of talent and work you'd have to put into playing three chords in a rock song.
And so when it comes to the lyrics in rap, maybe, I'm sure, part of it is because I just don't have a lot of experience.
to love rap but it seems like that there's a lot of praise that's put out for particular rappers who it seems to me are doing something that doesn't seem innately very difficult it doesn't seem like the the lyrics have exact rhyme i have this criticism of even i mean in musical theater this is one of my criticisms of lemmanuel miranda actually is that he doesn't use exact rhyme enough he uses near rhymes and he and he uses sort of easier forms of rhyme very often and stacks lyrics in order to make things sound more complex than they are and then you watch movies about rap
and it seems like somebody just gets up on the mic and they just go and it's and how much work actually goes into crafting a rap lyric how much time has to go into figuring out the rhythmic scheme and the rhyme scheme because i think that would change my opinion somewhat on how rap is constructed Sure, this really depends on the rapper, to be totally honest with you.
There are rappers who, I would totally agree, do not spend much time or thought or energy in crafting what they're saying.
They just put something together and it's a very basic rhyme scheme and they just go there and it'll be quite repetitive.
In terms of the content, there's not really any decent message in there.
They're not telling any story.
They're not using any clever wordplay or anything like that.
So to me, that's what makes a bad rapper.
If you were to take a great rapper, I don't know, Nas, Eminem, Jay-Z, someone like that, whose lyrics are a lot more complex and in-depth than, you know, I'd like to, or myself, of course, I'd like to think, a lot of thought goes, a lot goes into it.
A lot goes into it in terms of the rhythmic patterns and what you'd call the flow, which is essentially how you, how you ride the beat.
So if you've got a beat that's faster tempo, you might rap at double, double the speed and have your, you're, you're, you're essentially using your voice kind of like a percussive instrument.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
It might be more comparable to drumming, say, than to...
In terms of the delivery, but then in terms of the actual lyrical content, for me, for a great artist, that's where the real thought comes in.
And again, when it comes to hip-hop, if you're making a hip-hop song, average rap song probably has eight to ten times the amount of lyrics, if not more, as pretty much any other genre.
So you've got a lot of stuff.
Typically you'll have three 16-bar verses, so you've got a lot of space to say a lot of stuff if you want to.
Some artists don't say much.
I like to think, you know, in all my songs, I put a lot of thought into what I'm saying and the message I'm trying to communicate out there.
And there's a lot of wordplay and a lot of metaphors and similes and just trying to do clever stuff with the writing.
So, again, I think that the real answer to that is it depends on the rapper.
Just like you could have somebody who does a very basic form of dance or playing an instrument and they're just, okay, I'm going to just play the piano like that.
Yeah, like that versus someone who's a proper virtuoso.
You do get the same thing in hip-hop and with rap.
It's funny, with my parents, my parents used to be a little bit disparaging of rap and hip-hop until I started doing it.
And they saw me performing and were like, how is he doing that?
That's where they're really like, okay, that's a talent.
Okay, so let's talk about the cultural critique of hip-hop and rap.
So, for a long time in the United States, there's been criticism, and I think some of it is well-founded, about the messages that are purveyed by hip-hop and rap.
And, you know, there are folks like Candace Owens on the right who have critiqued my critique of hip-hop.
They've said that I'm not really seeing a lot of the deeper messages in hip-hop.
She particularly likes to talk about the value of capitalism and success in hip-hop.
She says that, to cite the Trump example, the emulation of success in hip hop is really strong, and she sees that as a strong positive.
From the outside, when I listen to hip hop, I don't hear a lot of family-oriented messages.
In fact, I hear a lot of messages that are degrading to women.
I hear messages that push violence, that are disparaging to the police.
I hear messages very often that seem to treat relationships between men and women as something disposable or glorify mistreatment of women.
And that's not a criticism of your art, because obviously I want to discuss your messages in a second.
But the art form overall, which obviously has a major impact, not just on black young people, but is disproportionately listened to actually by white young people.
I don't particularly like a lot of the messages that I hear in hip hop.
By the way, I've made similar criticisms of pop music, which I think does a lot of the same things.
What do you make of that particular critique?
You're not going to get a lot of pushback from me on that one because I think you're correct.
Especially in terms of the popular mainstream stuff that gets pushed out there hard.
A lot of the stuff that gets the promotion that people will hear on the radio or in nightclubs and stuff like that.
A lot of it does have a lot of negative messaging.
Part of that is the reason why from the very beginning of my music career I was like, I'm going to do the opposite of that.
Because it's something that's there.
I think that I think it's a truth in entertainment in general.
I don't think that's something that is, I think compared to other genres, you might get more of that in the hip-hop art form.
And I think a lot of that is down to the artists and where they're coming from and whatnot.
But a lot of it is also what people want to, it's a weird supply and demand thing as well.
This is something I've questioned myself for a very long time, is how much of this is what people are demanding, and so artists are just continuing to supply it because it works.
People might say, oh, we don't like the misogynistic messages, we don't like the drugs, we don't like the violence, but people are dancing to it and buying it and purchasing it.
People are going to keep on making it.
So I don't know how much of it is just that versus how much is, you know, record companies and people in power in the entertainment industry and whatnot wanting those to be the messages that get the push out there, because there's a lot of positive hip-hop out there.
There's a lot of positive hip-hop that's not degrading at all, that's non-violent, that's not profane, but a lot of the time it doesn't get the same push, it doesn't get the same shine, it's not being embraced by all these mainstream channels, and that's something that For twenty years, I've been looking at it and thinking, hmm, that's interesting.
Why is that?
So I don't really know how much of it is artist-driven versus fan-driven.
Beyond hip-hop, like I said, I think it's an issue in entertainment in general, whether you're talking all forms of music, certainly pop music as well, like you said, video games, movies, TV.
There's a lot of stuff that's put out there which is certainly questionable.
And it's a funny one for me because to some degree I'm like, it's just entertainment.
And you know, the truth is, for whatever reason, we humans, I think especially guys, do like To some degree, we do like violence.
We do like sex.
We do like all that.
We do like gangster movies where you're kind of rooting for the bad guy and whatnot, which that doesn't mean you go out there in real life and that's the way.
You go out there and you behave that way.
You see this thing where people are saying, oh, do violent video games cause people to commit violence and stuff.
The evidence doesn't seem to show that's the case, but I'll do stuff in a video game that I wouldn't dream of.
I wouldn't dream of doing it in real life.
I mean, I don't even swear.
I don't even swear.
I've been listening to profane hip-hop for the best part of my life, and I don't even cuss.
And I get people who are like, how can you listen to all this?
And I'm like, it doesn't affect me.
It's just entertainment to me.
It gets me pumped up to do my workouts in the gym or whatever.
So I know myself personally, I'm certainly able to separate that.
Can everybody do it?
I don't know, really.
How much effect does it have on people?
I don't know, really.
I do wonder whether rap does, just as an art form, because it is verbally based.
You can listen to a pop song and you can sing the pop song without knowing any of the lyrics, whereas it would be impossible to do that with a rap song because, obviously, the lyrics are the entirety of the song, or at least the vast majority of the song.
I wonder if the verbalization and the identification with the words is stronger in hip-hop than it would be with other genres, for example.
It could be.
It could be.
I mean, the way I look at it, to be totally honest, is I make positive, inspirational, motivational hip-hop music.
And I've had people tell me, in real life and online, that they've been directly influenced or inspired in a positive way by my music.
So if that can exist, It must be possible that the opposite can also exist and that there can be negative influences and impacts from certain messages being put out there in hip hop and other forms of art.
So can you talk about one of the, because I'm sure most of my listeners and most of the people who are watching this haven't heard any of your stuff.
So can you talk about some of the messages that you include in some of your songs?
Yeah, sure thing.
So the overarching theme of my music really is about, um, Individuality.
Authenticity.
Honesty.
Pursuing your dreams.
Overcoming obstacles.
I like to share my own story.
So every album is sort of a snapshot of where I was at that particular stage of my life and my career and trying to express that.
Every single song is different.
I've got some songs where the message is Quite light, and it's not, obviously, this is like a super positive, inspirational song, but I've got some where I think it's a lot clearer, and certainly if you listen to the entire body of work, the full album, I think most people would come away thinking, okay, that was an inspirational, positive thing.
I mean, the truth is, in life, you've got good and bad, you've got positive and negative, not everything is happy-go-lucky, you know?
Yeah, so you've gotta have that, that balance and that side of things.
Sometimes you are feeling mad.
Sometimes you are feeling aggressive.
Sometimes you're feeling upset and you can go and express that in a song.
But at the times, cool, like something great has happened.
I wanna celebrate, I'm feeling triumphant.
I just wanna be, sometimes in hip hop you even just wanna big yourself up.
You just wanna be like, you know what?
I'm doing something great.
I'm the best.
I'm dope.
You get that as well.
You just get that braggadocious kind of rap where it's just like, yeah, I'm awesome.
In hip hop, you can just make a whole song about how cool you are.
Most rappers have several of these.
Yeah, it could be deemed like a little bit cocky or arrogant or whatever, but it does also pump people up, right?
It makes people listen to that, whether they're going to work or they're in the gym or whatever, and it motivates and it inspires them when you're hearing the story, especially with, you know, some of these rappers' stories.
I think it's always interesting to look at A lot of times, and even what we've been doing is focusing on the words, because a lot of people ask about rappers and, I guess, other public figures as role models.
You know, what's the degree of responsibility?
Should a rapper be a role model?
That kind of thing.
And to me, I mean, my biggest role models are my parents.
God bless them.
But in terms of rappers, there are a lot of rappers I am inspired by.
Some of them, not so much by their lyrics, but by what they've actually done in their life.
And I do sometimes wish that they themselves, and even the media, sort of focused on that a little bit more.
I mean, I sort of feel this way about Jay-Z and Beyonce, honestly.
Like, I look at them, they're unbelievably successful.
They're married, they have kids together.
They seem like they're living a pretty traditional lifestyle, but when I listen to any of their music, that is not exactly what I'm getting from their music.
Yeah, I mean, the guy literally went from selling drugs in the streets of New York to becoming, he's a billionaire now.
And independently, he created his own company, put out his own records, created his own clothing line, beverage brands, all these sponsorship deals.
He's done all this crazy stuff.
He owns a basketball team.
Yeah, exactly.
That's super inspiring.
Like, in that sense, that's totally a role model.
If you're going to go and listen to, you know, Big Pimpin' and go through, come through the lyrics of that and try to find, like, somebody, then yeah, maybe not.
So, you know, even guys like 50 Cent, you know, in terms of being a businessman and an entrepreneur and really going from rags to riches, something to nothing, super duper inspiring.
In a way, I wish they'd put more of that directly in their music, because I kind of feel there's two ways to look at them.
You can focus on the lyrics and some of the words and some of the things they're saying and be like, ooh, that's a terrible role model.
But you could also look at what they've actually done and their life story and be like, oh wow, this person is...
I mean, I've heard the same thing.
I feel the same way about Snoop Dogg, frankly.
I mean, the guy has been incredibly successful.
He's got a really close relationship with his kids, as far as I'm aware.
And again, you listen to the music and it's something completely different.
And I wish that every successful person follows a similar path, which is you work hard and you keep your head down and you do something you're good at and people want you to do.
And then when it comes to the messages that are purveyed, it's almost In many cases, the complete opposite of that.
It's rebel against the system.
The system is the problem.
It's like, well, it was within the system that you became the owner of an NBA team.
So I'm pretty sure that the system is probably you should just encourage people to do what you did, which is to work hard and make creative decisions and invest in yourself.
Yeah, like I said, I wish, I don't know all these guys personally, I wish they would make that more explicit and prominent in their music and their messaging, because sometimes you'll watch an interview with them, and you'll listen to the songs, and it's almost like quite a different person.
In the interviews, you're really getting that story and that positive vibe, but then sometimes in the music, not all the time.
Lots of these guys do have some positive songs here and there and whatnot.
Yeah, it's a tricky one.
At the end of the day, like we've been saying, I can only control what I do and the content that I put out there.
I can't police everybody else, nor what I really want to be able to.
But I think there's a lot of positive and inspiration that can be gleaned if you sort of look at it the right way, or you look at it a certain way.
I don't mean to put you on the spot or make you do a show for us or anything, but what's your favorite song that you've written and what's your favorite lyric?
Wow.
One of my favorite songs, there's a few of them, one of my favorite songs I've written lyrically is called Ill.
And the second verse of that is definitely one of my favorites.
I'm going to see if I can... I'm not in like rap mode right now.
Exactly.
I'm putting you on the spot.
I'll whip out my violin.
Or even the first verse.
I've got a lot to give, so I can't live with trial later.
Life's got a lot to live in, so I give to die major.
I moonwalk through the fire, laugh now, cry later.
I've got pupils to inspire, so I hope to die later.
A couple words can turn a total stranger to a neighbor, like a little thought can turn a tiny building to a scraper.
I wonder if the biggest trees have got the biggest haters, like we started out from seeds, now we're the source of all this paper.
So yeah, I've got a lot of stuff like that.
It's so weird for me to shift from talking mode into rap mode.
It's really weird.
It's like a different part of my brain I'm trying to access.
So yeah, that's one of my favorites, Ill.
I've got another song called Remember the Name, which is one of my favorites.
Another song called Glory.
So those are probably three of my favorite ones out there.
I've put out a lot of music, so it's hard to...
How are your parents dealing with the fact that you decided not to be a management consultant and be a rapper instead?
Well, they were at my last show, so they're definitely supportive.
They're very, very supportive of what I do.
And yeah, they trust me.
They believe in me.
They know what my message is as well.
And they're genuine fans of the music itself.
And they like what I do.
They know the message I'm putting out there.
They've seen how it impacts people and how it's had a positive impact on young people and whatnot.
So they're truly supportive.
And I'm very, very grateful for it.
Especially as Nigerian parents, I know that it's quite rare for, you know, to have a son who went to Oxford and then have him go and pursue something as artistic and creative as music.
But they're behind me 100%.
My family really supports me, which is a huge blessing, because if they didn't, I think things would be a lot more difficult.
Okay, so I like to fancy myself, you know, a man with the body of a Greek god.
I work out every day.
And then I meet somebody like you, and I feel like a fat ass, frankly.
So how does your exercise routine work?
Yeah.
I lift a lot of heavy weights, a lot of compound exercises, deadlifts, bench press, squat, overhead press, pull-ups, stuff like that.
That's what 80, 90% of my workouts consist of.
And then the diet, depending on what I'm trying to do, whether I'm trying to build or gain or just maintain.
These last several years, it's really been more about maintenance and then occasionally going on a cut to shed some body fat if I've put on a few pounds over the winter, like most people naturally do.
So it's fairly simple, but the thing that's really key is consistency.
Just like with everything else, both with training and with diet, it's really about consistency.
I mean, I've been going to the gym now for about 16 or 17 years.
I started really early.
I didn't really know what I was doing in my mid-teens, but I used to play rugby.
So I started because I wanted to get a little more buff for rugby so I could deal the damage rather than sustain it.
My programming is pretty simple.
It's not super complicated.
In my book, I keep things pretty simple.
I don't want to make it really complex and in-depth.
I don't like to throw out stuff that people don't need and won't necessarily understand.
But yeah, primarily compound lifts.
Decently high intensity in terms of the weights, not doing too much, not doing too many what I call fluff exercises.
So just little things that won't get you much bang for your buck.
Just focusing on the big, heavy, hard stuff.
What are the fluff exercises?
Fluff exercises like tricep kickbacks and I don't know, wrist curls and yeah, just anything involving pink dumbbells.
So yeah, I focus on that and then just keep the diet on point.
What's your diet like?
Um, quite flexible.
Quite flexible.
I kind of follow a little bit of an 80-20 rule, which is that as long as 80% of what I'm eating is nutritious and good, then the other 20 can be not super amazing.
If I'm trying to lean down, then I'll dial it in a little bit just to, you know, bring my calories down and whatnot.
Well, what's normal caloric intake?
For me, to maintain my weight, about 3,300, 3,400 a day.
If I want to diet, I bring it down to like 2,900, 3,000.
How many hours a day are you working out?
How do I get into this?
Because seriously, I'm working out like an hour a day and then I'm looking at my app and it's like, you have 1,400 calories or you will gain weight.
It's like, what the hell?
So I can have an apple and a banana and like an almond.
No, that's not a thing that's going to happen.
Another great thing is intermittent fasting.
I don't know if you've ever tried that.
I mean, I'm Jewish.
That's just part of our religion.
But yeah, I mean, how often is an intermittent fast?
So I normally have about an eight hour eating window.
So I normally fast for about 16 hours a day.
And then I'll eat all my calories normally between 10 and 6 or 11 and 7, something like that.
And then outside of that, I don't eat or drink heavy meat diet or more vegetables.
I eat a good amount of protein, probably about two Roughly a gram per pound of body weight in terms of protein.
And then I kind of just fill up the rest of my caloric intake with primarily carbs and some fats.
I find that the ratio of those doesn't impact me too much.
I need more tips.
I need to read your entire book.
This sounds fantastic to me, frankly, because I keep hearing I have to eat nothing but vegetables.
And I'll be honest, I've given up on the six pack.
I just figure it's never going to happen.
I'm going to blame it on my body type and my genetics, even though that's probably just giving up on life.
Yeah, so it does really what I've tried to lay out in the book is to show that it's not super duper complex and you don't need to eat just rabbit food.
You can actually enjoy foods that you like whilst still hitting your numbers and reaching your targets and not to the detriment of your performance and the way you feel and perform and everything like that.
So, depending on how big somebody is generally is going to determine how many calories they can have in total along with their activity level.
So, if you're bigger and more active, you can kind of get away with eating more naturally and you don't need to be quite as precise and strict as someone who's got only 2,000 calories to work with might.
Yeah, the foods themselves are important from a nutritional standpoint, but in terms of just macronutrients and protein, carb, fat breakdown, there's a whole lot of flexibility you can have in there.
There's a couple of key rules that matter, and then everything outside of that is sort of details.
People get bogged down in the details.
People say, what time of the day should I go to the gym?
How many meals a day should I eat?
How big should I eat?
That stuff doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
to the gym, when you can get to the gym, in terms of how many meals you eat, that's up to you.
Some people prefer six, some people prefer two.
I know people who only eat one meal a day.
And as long as you're getting the nutrients in there and you're hitting the numbers that you need to be hitting, then you'll be all right.
Some people will just feel better with different frequencies of meals.
And depending on one's lifestyle, that'll also determine it as well.
What do you make of the various fitness crazes?
So I know that my trainer has sort of gotten into CrossFit and has me doing some of the CrossFit exercises.
It sounds like, I mean, you've been saying that you're picking up very heavy weights.
I've always been fearful that if I pick up heavy weights, I'm going to totally injure myself and rack myself up.
What do you make of that?
CrossFit.
There's a lot of CrossFit jokes out there.
I'm sure I'll show you.
I'm sure.
I'm sure you've heard a few of them.
Well, you have to brag about it, right?
Within five seconds of being in a social setting, you have to say that you need a crossfit.
It's like being a vegan.
Exactly.
Pit level vegan.
We'll only eat things that don't cast a shadow.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think ultimately anything that gets people active and going and exercising, as far as I'm concerned, is a good thing.
In terms of the way I train, like I said, I keep it kind of fairly simple, old school.
Meat and potatoes.
Lift heavy objects.
Put them down.
And that primarily works.
But in terms of the crazes, again, it's...
I don't know.
I don't want to be too critical, because if something works and people enjoy it, then keep doing it.
Lots of my training is powerlifting based, and powerlifting is only based around squatting, deadlifting, and bench pressing, which I understand for a lot of people will get boring really, really quickly.
And if you're not competing in those lifts, then you Don't need to just limit yourself to those ones.
In terms of lifting heavy though, I mean, heavy is firstly a relative thing.
So I recommend people lifting relatively heavy to what they're capable of.
So that could be anywhere from 70 to 85% of their one rep maximum, for example.
And you might do that for three reps or five reps or six reps or something like that.
In terms of injury risk, it's not huge as long as you lift correctly.
A lot of the injuries come from people just not doing the lift the right way.
So that's not a problem with the weights or lifting in general.
Did you work with a trainer for a while to make sure that you were lifting correctly?
Or you just sort of figured it out?
At the very, very early stage, I would talk to the gym instructors and just make sure I was doing stuff right, but it's largely self-taught for me.
It's largely self-taught, and I've done it for so long now.
I mean, I've also done a personal training qualification, so I'm actually qualified to train other people.
I've just spent, I've done my 10,000.
I've put in my 10,000 hours.
So for me at this point, it's kind of like simple.
This is how you do a squat.
This is how you do a deadlift.
This is how you do a bench press and whatnot.
But I think a lot of people don't do the exercises correctly.
And you get a lot of people who want to lift with the ego rather than with the muscles.
So they'll rack up 50% more weight than they should probably have on the bar.
And then they'll start bringing their back into it and lifting, arching their back on a bench press and doing all this crazy stuff.
doing these quarter squats instead of actually going all the way down.
There's a lot of things that people do, and it's best to, again, strip it back to the basics and just learn to do the movements properly.
And then once you've got that down, then you can start sort of cranking it up.
I mean, as somebody who's obviously very health-oriented, what do you make of the body positivity movement?
So this has obviously become a big thing lately, right?
You've got all these people who are basically saying, however you look, that's fine and it's good, and any critique of anybody along any lines is a bad idea.
And, I mean, frankly, I found that it is feeling fat that has gotten me to go to the gym.
That feeling out of shape and feeling like I don't look good is a bigger moment.
Whenever people say, well, you want to work out so that you feel healthy.
And it's like, well, but you don't know what it's like to feel healthy until you actually feel healthy, especially when you start working out.
It feels like garbage, right?
I mean, when you first start, it just feels awful.
And then later, it actually starts to feel really good.
And you always hear that from people, but that's not much of a motivator.
It feels like for a lot of folks, looking good is actually kind of an important thing.
And as we get rid of those standards, it may not be a great thing for the health of the society.
Yeah, it's weird.
I think society in general is trying to get rid of standards for sort of anything, and I think the body positivity thing is just another symptom of that, sort of another branch of the, let's just do away with aspiring to anything.
Doesn't matter what you look like, doesn't matter how much you weigh, you can still be healthy.
It's like, that's not actually true.
So firstly, my first condemnation of it is that that's just not It's not correct.
You can't actually be healthy at any size.
That's not true.
Like if you are morbidly obese, you're not healthy.
You're putting yourself at risk of a lot of diseases, different types of cancers, diabetes, all that kind of stuff.
So encouraging or I don't want to say allowing is not the right word.
Encouraging.
Encouraging or condoning that is not good for individuals, let alone the people outside of them.
I live in the UK.
You've got the NHS.
You've got subsidized medical health care.
So actually someone being morbidly obese, that does actually affect other people too, right?
Because it costs tens of billions of pounds to the NHS every year.
So I don't think that's what you want to be encouraging.
Like a lot of these things, I think that A kernel of it comes from a good place of sympathy and kindness and saying, "Yeah, I'm not in favor of bullying people.
I don't think you should find someone who's overweight and be pointing at them and saying they're mean or being mean to them or anything like that." But as someone who was previously fat, A lot of people don't know this.
As someone who was previously fat, I'm quite glad that I felt a little bit of shame and I wasn't totally happy with how I looked and that was the first thing.
It's not what necessarily kept me in the gym, but it's what got me going in the first place of being like, man, I can do better.
I can look better.
I can feel better.
And then it got me started.
I started seeing some results and it was like, okay, cool.
Just became a habit and kept going with that.
I think you should give yourself a reason to be body positive, not just because you exist and you breathe air, but because you've put in some semblance of effort to, you know, you don't need to maximize your appearance and your health, but at least take care of it.
You only get one body, and you've got to live with it for the rest of your life.
So even if it's not about the aesthetics and what you look like and looking hot and sexy, it's just about actually being healthy and having a working heart that keeps going and your liver and your kidneys and all that stuff, then yeah, do it.
Especially if you've got a family or a spouse or whatever, it's even more important because you should want to live a good life, not just for yourself, live a good long life for yourself and your children as well.
So in a second, I want to ask you about your religious worldview, which we haven't touched on at all.
But first, if you want to hear Zuby's answer, you have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
To subscribe, head on over to dailywire.com, click subscribe, you can hear the end of our conversation over there.
Well, Zuby, I really want to thank you for stopping by.
Everybody should go check out Zuby's book, Strong Advice, Zuby's guide to fitness for everybody.
He's got a podcast as well, Real Talk with Zuby, and listen to his music on Spotify and Apple Music.
I'll be giving it a try.
Zuby, thanks so much.
Really appreciate your time.
I appreciate it, Ben.
That's all.
Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is directed by Mathis Glover and produced by Jonathan Hay.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boren.
Associate producer, Colton Haas.
Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.
Post-production is supervised by Alex Zingaro.
Editing by Donovan Fowler.
Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.
Hair and makeup is by Jesua Olvera.
Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
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