The Iceman Wim Hof, it turns out, has been credibly accused of starting a cult, claims to be able to cure cancer, and has a very real amount of blood on his hands. Russell platforms this man in interviews, and having him headline the Community festival; let's see what he's all about.
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This is On Brand, a podcast where we discuss the ideas and antics of one Russell Brand.
I'm Al Worth, and each week I go through an episode of Brand's Show with my co-host, Lauren B. Hi, it's me, Lauren B., and all I know is I've been warned by text that it's terrible.
Let's go.
Yeah, that's a good summation of this week's episode, to be honest.
But first, Lauren, what is your bright spot this week?
Oh my god, so my bright spot is that we have reached our first stretch goal!
Yes, yes we have!
I'm very excited about this.
Props to every single person who has made this possible.
Oh my god, you're an angel, you're a hero, you're amazing.
I'm not kidding.
I'm deadly serious.
Certainly my hero, that's for sure.
Wowie wow wow.
Means that we have a Russell Brand Primer episode coming.
The Primer slash Primer is being worked on as we speak.
Nice.
Yeah, it's it's coming together.
It's going to be comprehensive in terms of the guy's history.
And, you know, it's going to go through all his stand up career, et cetera, to when he got fired from Channel 4.
I can't remember which channel it was now.
ITV?
I don't know.
He got fired for being a dick to Andrew Sachs.
I'll probably find a clip of the phone call actually because it was disgusting.
And yeah, we're going to go through his narratives and all of that fun stuff as well and kind of try and really nail him down in one concise episode.
So that is being worked on, which is very exciting.
Yeah, that's great.
So what's your bright spot today?
My bright spot is, so I sent a message to you saying like, ah shit, I might have to push this thing back and cover someone that Bran decided to interview, you know, just as he does, just on a whim without fucking, you know, advance notice.
So he interviewed Jordan Peterson the other day.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh no, I'm going to have to fucking deal with Jordan Peterson now.
Yeah, and what happened was, so I stopped working on this episode that we're about to do now and started listening to Jordan Peterson and thankfully it ended up being a complete nothing burger.
There was just, it was just waffle from the pair of them, like it was The most that you could really get out of it was they spent about five or ten minutes talking about Richard Dawkins because Peterson's gonna interview Richard Dawkins.
They're gonna have a debate, I think.
Shit!
Up!
I think it'll be on Dawkins' podcast and they keep talking about getting Russell to be the mediator for it as well, which I'm like, if Dawkins agrees to that, he's nuts.
He's fucking insane if he agrees to that.
But he might because of the starfuckery in the audience, right?
Which he displayed to an inappropriate tongue placement degree.
I've come on your show because I'm starting my own podcast.
I thought you might give me some advice.
So if that happens, we might have to actually cover that, potentially.
I don't know if there's anything worthwhile to discuss.
But yeah, most of that conversation was just boring, boring bullshit that didn't really go anywhere.
If anyone's interested, then they can go and listen to Jordan Peterson waffle for a while.
It occurred to me, before listening to that, I'd never actually heard the guy speak.
What?!
Yeah, yeah.
So I'd seen the things that he said written down, and seen his internet commentary and everything else, but I'd managed to avoid ever hearing him talk.
So the Kermit memes didn't make any sense.
Not really!
And then I'm like, oh, he sounds like a cartoon character.
Okay.
Yeah!
Now I get it.
Okay.
Yeah.
Especially with the amount of malice that comes out of his mouth as well, with the squeaky voice too.
You're like, oh, dude, just stop.
Yeah, they all sound like absolute wieners.
It's amazing to me that they absolutely sound ridiculous.
And like, it is crazy hearing such like, hateful stuff that's also squeaky.
And yeah, it's it's a it's alarming.
It kind of puts a chill in your spine.
And yeah, yeah, he's Yeah, it's you also the rambling and then I think his post the ordeal in Russia were like, Yeah, I was gonna say, I didn't really look into any of this.
home on a so he could kick Benzo's or something whole mess with his daughter or whatever. I know too much.
Yeah, I was gonna say I didn't really look into any of this.
Again, again, I listened to the episode first and then my research comes later. So thankfully, I didn't have to go
into any of that.
Right.
And I fucking hate the guy, so I really don't want to have to deal with him.
So I'm happy about that, that there was nothing of note.
Actually, there was one thing that is of note as to something that he's going to be doing in the future, but I'll save that for off-brand because it's not particularly relevant to what we're discussing today and it might take a minute.
Cool, we'll get to know.
But yeah, he's the only public figure, especially a man, who has been through it.
Getting hooked on any kind of medication that you don't have that much control over, like, that's scary and that's tough.
And so, I don't know why, but he's been crying a lot.
Like, whenever he talks anywhere to anyone.
Yeah.
And I can't come for that.
I can't.
As a human being.
I'm not going to come at him for being emotional, that's for sure.
I'm going to come at him for the other things he says.
But the thing is, all of this stuff that's happened to him that usually grounds you and you learn and you have introspection and you maybe become a better person out the other side, he has done zero of that.
He's kind of gone the opposite direction.
Exactly.
Right.
And so like, but he's still like having all these public feelings.
I've never seen a person get more in touch with their feelings, which I know it's not in touch with your feelings if he's like got something going on.
Yeah.
If it's performative as well.
I don't think it is.
You don't reckon?
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't think there's control on any level.
I honestly don't.
Right, so we have a show to deal with, but first we should thank some of our new patrons.
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Yeah, it's a great name.
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Thank you, Sky.
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Magnificent name again.
Thank you, Dragonfly.
Hell yeah.
Okay, everyone's name is cool.
I misspoke earlier.
I jumped the gun with Emma.
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See, those are great names.
Billiam, appreciate ya.
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That was a lot!
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This offers no additional benefits because our combined bandwidth is extremely limited at present, but I will more than happily give you another shout out for upping your donation.
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Thank you.
Maybe fully awakened.
Yeah, maybe, maybe, maybe.
Or like, there's like a third eye thing there somewhere.
He calcified your pineal gland, good job.
Yes?
And finally, we're going- You know all the Java cult stuff, that's like Niuichi bullshit, yeah.
We are still going through our members of the Invisible Hand.
So next up we have Alex Vaughn.
You are now the Invisible Hand.
Let me tell you that we love you.
There is a sort of an invisible hand guiding these events.
You are fundamentally beautiful.
Not others.
You.
I believe you are fundamentally beautiful.
I'm right wing.
Now get me some shit fuck ice cream, you pig dick!
You big sexy despot baby.
I'm right wing.
I only suggest how to think and how to vote.
Another big subject over here with us right-wing fascists.
How do you feel about past you at this point?
I don't even recognise that idiot anymore.
I'm right-wing!
Oh God!
I just had a poo and a bit of my bum fell out!
God!
It's propaganda.
Did you guess it?
Did you guess it?
I'm right-wing!
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We have what I told you over text, Lauren, would be a horrifying episode in a probably unexpected way.
And it takes place at Russell's Festival Community in my home country of Wales, which I'm still upset about, by the way.
If only Wales had the power to bar him from entry.
Sadly, we're still in the same legal system as England, so I don't think that they have that power.
This particular individual that we're going to be discussing was one of two headliners of Community, so to speak.
So Brand puts them on quite the pedestal.
And as ever, I'm going to let Russell introduce the guest.
Hello there, you Awakening Wonders!
Thank you for joining me today.
If you're watching us on YouTube, there's a link right there in the description.
Very subtly do this so the algorithm don't spot it.
Join us over on the other place where we can speak freely.
Because Wim Hof, the Iceman, is a fascinating chap, let me tell you.
Because in addition to his powerful breathwork methods and his dalliances with extreme cold. He has powerful scientific
evidence that reveals the depth to which the pharmaceutical industry are
trying to replace your own natural immunity. A phrase that until
recently you weren't able to use. You might know him because of his astonishing
feats, swimming under ice, climbing mountains in his pants. In our conversation
at Community we talked about his techniques and how they provide a meaningful
alternative to the medical industry and big pharma. Wim Hof. Does the name Wim
Hof mean anything to you Any idea who he is?
Only barely.
Because I've seen the flyer for the thing, because we were joking about attending.
Yes, yes.
Well, you know, next year, if we get enough Patreon donations, etc., then I can go.
I'll go to the community.
I get the feeling by that point they might know who we are, so I don't know how undercover I would be.
Correspondents are also always an option, they've done that before.
Yes, that is true, that is true.
I'm sure there are plenty of anonymous correspondents over here that would happily Do our bidding in service of that.
So according to Wikipedia, Wim Hof, also known as the Iceman, is a Dutch motivational speaker and extreme athlete noted for his ability to withstand low temperatures.
He previously held a Guinness World Record for swimming under ice and prolonged full body contact with ice, and he holds a record for a barefoot half marathon in ice and snow.
He attributes these feats to his Wim Hof Method, which is a combination of frequent cold exposure, breathing techniques, and meditation.
He has, of course, also been on Joe Rogan's show.
I will add that he sells online courses on the Wim Hof Method for up to $469 a pop.
...provides training for Wim Hof practitioners who then go and do the Wim Hof method with members of the public for around $100 each in a group session, and he also sells books, clothing, and music to do deep breathing to.
One journalist, Scott Carney, confirmed that in 2021, Innerfire, Wim Hof's company, was making at least a million dollars a month from the video courses alone.
So, uh, yeah.
That gives you step one be born with super like superhuman cold tolerance powers.
No, no.
No.
So yeah, um, I do also want to say real quick that I have a bit of a love affair with the Netherlands.
I've seen a lot of it been there many times have a good number of Dutch friends and love the people and the place itself.
This guy is not a good representation of his country.
I just wanted to make that Absolutely clear, even though I know it's something that no one was going to try and level at him anyway.
I do also want to sneak in my favourite Michael Caine clip from Austin Powers' Goldmember.
Alright, Goldmember.
Don't play the laughing boy.
There are only two things I can't stand in this world.
People who are intolerant of other people's cultures.
and the Dutch. Both?
Take the Pasha away!
Okay.
Dutch hater!
*laughter* *sigh*
*laughter* Extraordinarily silly films, but god I love that one.
I love that one.
I really do.
We snuck into.
I remember sneaking into those films like buying tickets for other movies and sneaking in and eating them up because I was like way into retro things when I was you know again shocker still am and so that it felt like as a as a person who was raised born and bred on Wayne's world and then also Always gonna play around in the 60s.
I'm here for it.
Oh yeah, it's fantastic.
Very stupid.
That movie.
Exceptionally dumb, but just that joke.
The delivery's fantastic.
So is this gonna get us barred from YouTube for the rest of time?
Is that what's gonna happen?
Shouldn't do.
Hopefully there won't be a fucking copyright strike for this because this clip doesn't come from anywhere official anyway.
It comes from like an off kind of thing on YouTube.
We'll see.
We'll see.
I'm willing to fight them on it just so that we can have that clip because it's definitely one of Michael Caine's best moments throughout his career.
And I say that as someone who enjoys Michael Caine.
So, in this first clip where Wim comes in, you get an immediate sense of why he's a problem.
It's lovely to be at Community at this beautiful festival, which is about, of course, individual wellness and community awakening.
How do your techniques, Wim, pose a challenge to Big Pharma, to the mentality of Big Pharma, which some people say is a sort of mentality of keeping people sick.
I don't want to be simplistic, but it seems that Big Pharma does require a certain degree of institutional sickness.
I don't know how it crept in, but Big Pharma is big because we let them.
We let them and we don't make use of our independence.
We are not built to go to a doctor in nature.
We are built to heal ourselves.
Only we are disconnected inside of our own systems.
We get into schools, into the system.
We get into a narrow consciousness.
Which in the end makes us able to control partially our body and mind and we get conditioned and then when something happens we don't know how to get into the depth no more because we had no control of that from the beginning because we are too much brainwashed or too much schooled in certain patterns So according to Wim Hof, we are schooled and brainwashed out of our innate ability to heal ourselves, and I am not kidding.
You look like you have some feelings.
I'm so- Oh my- Okay, I'm to the point where like I was just like bouncing my leg in anger and it was wiggling my screen around.
I can promise you that is not going to get any better throughout this episode.
Fucking sure it isn't!
And here's the thing, we've been, I think, rubbing some of our listeners the wrong way with some touchy subjects lately.
You mean UFOs?
the very same. And so, because like there's a, there's an, and I think the, the UFO thing
boils down to, we are not satisfied with the evidence.
That's really the only argument that we can make about the UFOs themselves.
I will be bringing it up.
I do touch on it a little bit later, actually.
But yeah, essentially, there's a standard of proof required that, for me, is not met by any measure whatsoever.
Right.
And that's what that boils like.
The grifting Is intentional and is they're misleading with the intention to get money.
And that can be a Kickstarter and funding and for something that they're doing.
But the premise is false, which is the issue.
Yeah.
We have it.
We have wellness industries that are billions and billions of dollars that I've been raised around my entire life that I have seen.
Just decimate people, decimate families.
My own family has been, oh, stolen from.
In the tens of thousands of dollars over my lifetime that I've seen from these like absolute just pieces of shit.
Just like lying with the intent to steal.
Because if you're not lying, then people are paying you for a service.
If you're lying and exploiting misinformation, that's fraud.
That's a fraud.
You're doing a fraud.
The thing is, is like our experience with the regular healthcare system hasn't been super duper.
So I do understand to a degree, I understand kind of more than most with my own health history, how you can fall for something that gives you hope where you don't really have any.
So I have a lot of sympathy and that makes me extra angry.
100% people that are doing this.
And I also, I take in a lot more content, I think, than your average bear on, um, MLMs that are in the wellness industry and the wellness industry in general.
I've mentioned maintenance phase before.
Um, it's fucking shocking what information will extrapolate and then just be infused in our culture as like facts.
Yeah, I will say Wim Hof specifically is a slightly complicated example, which I will get into later, because he's not completely full of shit, he's just mostly full of shit, and so it gets a little more complex.
Yeah, it's that seed of reality.
And that seed of reality that's very often ignored which is like the personal experience is ignored by the state of healthcare that is so unfortunate and it's all misattributed because if any of you actually were complaining about capitalism you would be looking- you being the health grifters if it's just a question of making money look at the people you and the people next to you who are also making a lot of money on a high markup I just get very upset.
And so I want people to know where I'm coming from up top because I'm going to be, I'm going to feel, I already feel sassy and I'm not just demonizing like there's a lot.
No, no, no.
All of this stuff is, is a big fucking problem that needs addressing.
And, and yeah, I get the feeling you're feeling sassy now.
Um, In a couple of clips I get the feeling we're going to be getting unadulterated rage.
But first... So Roger Rabbit's coming, okay.
Maybe.
So Russell asks what I think to be a key question with a key point in this next clip.
But when we say stuff like that about Big Pharma, I'm mindful that my mum's had cancer, say, eight times, and she's got well through, like, therapies like radiotherapy, chemotherapy.
You know, my mother, it might be argued, is alive because of the expertise in medicine, because of the dedication of doctors.
So, what is it you're saying, Wim, about Big Pharma that's separate from what we all understand to be areas of science and medicine that are obviously keeping people alive and are beneficial?
Where is the distinction?
Where is the line drawn?
So before we get into Wim's response, I just want to highlight how good a question that was for Russell.
Fairly concise, couched in a degree of responsibility for the subject they're discussing, slightly nuanced and with a personal touch in there too.
Bravo Russell, you can do it when you try.
Well done.
Now, I mentioned to you that this episode was the first time I'd been watching Russell's content and was forced to shout, what the fuck, out loud in my own home.
This next clip is what did it, and it's a little long because it's Wim Hof telling a story, but I kind of want you in the audience to get some of the same experience I had here, so settle in.
Let me tell you a little story to make that clear.
At a certain moment there came a mother to my home, a mother of two children, five and seven years, both with brain tumors.
And the whole society, and chemotherapists, and oncologists, and the departments, and so forth, and she went to all the doctors and they could not help her.
Because their children, both of them, had a very low developed immune system.
And she was like, maybe you can do something.
I said, I don't know what I can do, but I will go to the end with you, until they are cured.
And she broke into tears, which I feel still now, because that's real!
We cannot take care of our own children?
Then what has happened?
Is it an industry, or what is this?
The thing is, at that moment I felt a deep urge to help this woman.
Not just because of philosophy, because of an innate capacity!
Because I'm here to take care of children as a puppy.
So I did that.
She broke into tears because for the first time she met a person who was not sane.
It is impossible to treat them.
They cannot go into chemotherapy.
It's hopeless.
Sorry, we are against the wall with this.
And there you have a mother, desperate and all, Seeking answers, seeking possibilities, seeking hope.
And she found it there.
And that was me, a human response.
And then we started.
I said, yeah, crying is good.
Stop now.
And now we're going to start.
And it only took one week, or actually eight days, Because they were into being controlled by doctors on their immune cells every two weeks to see if they might be now able to get into chemotherapy.
But they were too low already for too long a time.
It only took eight days of a little bit of cold, and playfully doing the breathing, breathing exercises, and playfully going into the cold, eight days!
And their immune cells multiplied in the two children, peas on that, ten times!
Ten times!
Suddenly, from the 300 children in that oncological department, all with cancers, they were the only kids Good bear, double dose, chemo, so I'm working actually with the pharmaceuticals and I give them actually work and they were able suddenly to take double dose and still don't feel it, don't feel the chemo, because they have so much energy through the cold and through the breathing.
So this is the way I work.
I have nothing against the pharmaceuticals or nothing against nobody, but I also say we have an innate capacity which is far beyond what we think is possible.
I see.
So fair to say that was a lot.
That didn't happen.
That didn't happen.
Something may have happened that didn't.
The feeling I got from that clip upon first hearing it was, this man is saying his method cures cancer and is prevailing where actual medicine has failed.
That's certainly how it felt.
I've gone over it a couple more times since then and I can't quite make that claim based solely on that clip, but it's not far off.
He's saying his method boosted the immune system of these children so drastically that they were not only able to have chemotherapy, which was previously too risky, but were able to take a double dose of chemotherapy and not even feel it.
Something in here sounds like bullshit to me.
I can't be 100% sure which part it is, but my guess it's all the medical parts.
In any case, Wim Hof is in this interview presenting his method as the key to curing literally all diseases, and I am not exaggerating that point.
He says as much later on, repeatedly.
But first, it's time for the Sword of Damocles to drop.
Wim Hof is responsible for the deaths of at least 15 people who died undertaking the Wim Hof method.
The most common reason for this is shallow water blackout induced by practitioners hyperventilating in or around water, who then unexpectedly lose consciousness and drown.
Wim Hof's breathing techniques explicitly are hyperventilation, so taking 30 or 40 deep breaths and then on a final exhale, holding your breath for as long as possible while your lungs are empty.
If you ask Inner Fire, they'll say, hey, we've got it written down in our materials not to do that in water and not to mix the ice bath stuff with all the breathing exercise stuff, which is technically true.
The problem is you have Wim Hof himself saying the exact opposite and encouraging his students to hyperventilate while chest deep in freezing water.
There is video footage of him doing exactly this in a paid for instructional video in one of his courses.
There is currently a $67 million lawsuit filed against Inner Fire and Wim Hof in California for the death of 17-year-old Madeline Rose Metzger, who died performing the Wim Hof Method in her pool.
They're also requesting an injunction to prevent Wim Hof or his methods from being taught in the United States.
The trial date is set for January 2024, so we'll keep an eye out around then.
Suffice to say, it's difficult to believe in the curative powers of something when it's actively killing people, and those 15 are only the ones that we know about.
Right, right.
Which is incredibly difficult to prove, and incredibly difficult to track down.
Yes, absolutely.
Oh my God, okay, okay.
So I'd say number one, I am very disappointed in myself for being far less affected.
I think that you were, this is like, I wonder, because I wonder how much less you've been inundated with like quackery Just living in a different place, because I know y'all have a lot flying around.
Yeah, no, we have plenty of woo stuff.
We don't have so many people being like, oh, here, my thing cures cancer.
You know, that's because over here, that'll just get you a slap across the face, usually.
You know, and I think you specifically tend to, as you mentioned, tend to consume a lot of kind of information surrounding this subject.
So, you know, it's not surprising to me that you're perhaps a little bit more ready and aware compared to how I would be, or indeed our audience.
Yeah, that's true.
And I am trying to consider that, but I also feel like I'm very well prepared to handle this.
And I just, I've, it's a bummer how, like, I'm thinking of all the things that are infinitely
worse somehow.
But yeah, I mean, I do think that the ability to grift, it is a lot larger and I can't help but be constantly reminded what amazing work that Marsh is doing, Skeptics with a K, Marsh, you know, online skeptic magazine.
I do also want to make a point regarding what Hoff said there about being a puppy as his reason to want to heal the children.
He comes across as a loving old dad, right?
Wim Hof's wife and mother of his four children died by suicide in 1995.
According to Scott Carney, the journalist who literally wrote the book on Wim Hof, not long after Wim's wife's death, he began a relationship with a woman in another city and left his kids to live alone in a squat house in Amsterdam.
The oldest, Enam, was just 15 at the time he became the de facto dad figure for the other three younger children left alone in a house in Amsterdam in a fucking squat.
So these kids had just had their mother taken away from them in a brutal way in that she literally kissed them all and said goodbye before leaping from an eighth floor balcony in front of them while Wim Hof was working in another part of the country.
He wasn't even there.
And then, after that, he just up and leaves a group of four vulnerable children in a fucking squat house in Amsterdam, the oldest of which was 15!
Like, I can't imagine how you could live with yourself in that situation.
Whim reconciled with his kids in 2008, after not seeing them in almost 10 years, as eventually his relationship with the woman ended, and he'd also landed a €30,000 tax debt, which is apparently a good reason to find your family again.
I shan't be taking parenting advice from this man, it is safe to say.
How many of these dudes have, like, contributed to or actively murdered family members and then are still, like, successful in their career?
Yeah, I can't speak as to his ex-wife's mental health and how that was influenced by him.
Nothing you know there's nothing that could that could confirm how he affected that at all but you know he yeah certainly his actions after that point were fucking despicable.
Well something we didn't cover in the RFK episode because I didn't I didn't have it on top of top of mind and also like it was a lot um that episode was a lot we had to get through the thing um but yeah his he has an ex-wife Well, no, they were married at the time.
No, they were married at the time.
They were separated when she died, right?
She unalived herself and wrote a note explicitly detailing that his infidelity had worn on her to the point where that's why she was claiming that.
And that's someone saying something.
So, you know, you can never say, you can never attribute directly, but you can never attribute directly, which is... Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, that is, that is, that is true.
Well, and they also very much use mom, dad, family member, as we are constantly trying to discuss and expose in this show, the emotional manipulation that these people employ.
That's kind of like, Mommy and Daddy are kind of the, you know, top of the pyramid of family stories that will pull your heartstrings.
It is very palpable in this episode.
So next, Russell clarifies what Wim Hof is saying.
So this particular story you're saying, there was one child with her mother and there are two children.
Yeah.
And both of these children, they knew what their immune response was like prior to your techniques and they knew what the test... All measured.
So you're saying that we have within us, all of us, an inherent capacity to heal ourselves that we are not exploring.
And you're saying that both breathwork and exposure to the cold can awaken these techniques.
Will they work for cancer?
Will they work for heart disease?
Will they work for aging?
Anything!
Anything!
Why?
How can it be so robust?
How can it work for anything, Wim?
Because nature has provided us with these innate capacities.
Only we came into an industrialized comfort zone behavior which has alienated most of our powers and stimulation.
Now here he is insinuating we can heal ourselves from cancer and heart disease through the Wim Hof Method.
I also find it curious that apparently we all as a species used to know this but we all collectively forgot about it because of industrialization.
As though the ability to heal ourselves wouldn't be pretty fucking important to remember.
Like we just, it just, woof, it just disappeared.
See, a huge part of the historical interest that I have can be perceived as morbid when really learning about what people used to have to endure just to stay alive makes me every day appreciate my temperature, you know, like the air conditioner in my window and the ability, like the prescriptions that I take for my health.
Yeah, it's not perfect.
The system isn't perfect, but understanding what people went through before antibiotics is like a hideous... It can be very compelling and interesting, by the way.
Learning about it's like pretty neat.
I think Wim Hof should do some learning about it.
I think all of them should.
It drives me absolutely crazy to hear the, like, ahistoric Straight up, either you're lying or you're too dumb to know better, and either way, you're out.
I'm out.
I'm out.
Yeah, yeah.
It's just, it's complete bizarre revisionism.
Yeah.
So, next, Wim Hof makes a couple of medical claims.
If you go into the cold, you train the biggest organ of ours, which is our skin.
And all the electroreceptors, temperature receptors, vascular receptors, they come out in the skin.
They need stimulation.
So deep stimulation comes to millions of receptors connected to 125,000 kilometers of vascular channeling.
That is capillaries, arteries, and veins.
Yeah, it's actually 96,000 kilometers or 60,000 miles.
There is some evidence that ice baths and engaging with the cold does in fact stimulate all these things, so he's sort of right on that score, but that's one of the few medical claims he'll be getting right today.
It's also not terribly surprising that extreme temperatures would force activity in receptors in the skin.
They're probably all going, "What the fuck is happening?"
Yeah.
As would be reasonable.
So big shock.
Because the thing that the snake oil guys figured out a long time ago and is still being applied
is that if people feel something instantly, if it's like a buzz or a tingle,
or you can even place the idea of a buzz or a tingle in someone's mind.
Yeah, yeah. - That's that kind of...
of it.
Placebo response to a degree and the snake oil guys figured out that if you don't have that or a bad smell or bad taste or something that feels like medicine, then they're not pulling it off.
So yeah, like that's part of the grift when you can cause a like a dramatic physiological response that tells us something's happening.
When medicine doesn't necessarily do that.
You take pills over a long period of time, side effects might be a thing that come and go that you have to deal with, and you don't notice a marked difference necessarily.
I mean, you take antibiotics as an example, you know, most of the time, a lot of them don't work immediately.
You know, it's over a couple of weeks, and it's gradual, and it's boring, and, you know, you're like, ah, I've got to take these fucking things, and blah, blah, blah.
Vaccines are even more susceptible because you take the vaccine so you don't get as sick and you can't prove a negative.
So not being as sick or not getting sick at all, depending on the vaccine, there's nothing there to prove because it didn't happen to you, which is the point.
And that's not satisfying for people.
There's no measurable change in your own body and your own feeling, so it doesn't feel real in a way, in a tangible way.
And also, just exciting your blood vessels is a very common centuries-old remedy trope.
That has no proofness, and I- cold therapy is different, but, because I mean, there's, you know, some people have gotten benefits from it, whatever, I'm pretty dubious.
But I would love to hear any actual, like, science on cold specifically, but Well we'll get into a little bit in this episode.
So next it turns out...
Well just bringing your blood vessels to the surface, like cupping or something,
like there's no proof that that medically doesn't work.
It just makes you feel like something's happening.
Yeah, yeah.
So next it turns out that Wim actually knew how to cure COVID the whole time.
Shut up.
So when all the muscles called the endothelium, which was also the problem in COVID,
the endothelium got perforated through IL-6, IL-8, those inflammatory markers.
And I told the doctors, but nobody's listening to me because how can he have a solution?
That's not possible.
Okay, let's go from COVID and get back.
I'm going to preface this by saying I'm not a microbiologist, I'm not a doctor, and I'm not a scientist in any way.
But as far as I can gather from looking into it, the idea of the endothelium cells being perforated is ridiculous.
The endothelium is a single layer of squamous endothelial cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels and lymphatic vessels.
Endothelial cells form the barrier between vessels and tissue and control the flow of substances and fluid into and out of a tissue.
With regards to COVID-19, in April 2020, the presence of viral elements in endothelial cells of three patients who had died of COVID-19 was reported for the first time.
This is thought to be a contributor to multi-organ failure in COVID-19 patients with comorbidities such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease.
It's pretty safe to say that the medical community was aware of the endothelium being affected by COVID-19.
Interestingly, one study from Saadou et al.
2020 suggests almost as an aside that anti-malaric agents chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine have been shown to improve endothelial function and therefore might be worth looking into.
Of course, since then it's been proven to be ineffective and even potentially dangerous due to the side effects, confirmed in the commentary from Hennekens et al. 2021.
I hate that this guy is making me look into science.
Scientific papers are one of my least favorite things.
God.
Okay, so the doctors did find it.
What he's saying is the doctors are like, you don't know what you're talking about as far as a cure.
Yeah, exactly, and he's saying, oh, it's this thing happening in the endothelium, and the doctors are like, well, we're already aware of this thing, but that's not the lion's share of what we're dealing with here.
So he's getting cancelled.
He's getting medical cancelled.
Yeah, that's his narrative.
And the medical community won't take him seriously, and I wonder why.
Next, we get a stupid statement wrapped in ineffective hedging from Brand.
So, I understand what you're saying.
You're saying that we've gotten out of touch with how we were evolved to live.
The way that we're supposed to move, the way that we're supposed to eat, the way that we're supposed to be exposed to our environment, and we've become conditioned creatures that live sedentary lifestyles in various cubes and boxes, eating food that is overly processed, Taking pharmaceutical drugs that are not life-enhancing or life-saving, but are just part of this ongoing system of perpetual ill health.
You've made it very clear that you're not saying that all medicine is bad, that would be a foolish thing to say, but there is a kind of an endemic strain in our culture of keeping us sick.
What do you think it is, Wim, about these techniques that are connecting us to our deep nature?
Can anybody do this?
When I think of someone like my mum, who's in her 70s, or my dad, who's eight years old, or people that are watching this that might have conditions like diabetes, cardiovascular conditions, cancer,
all sorts of hard conditions. How can this deep breath and exposure to the
cold be good for us? And also isn't it potentially risky? I mean some people say
that you know you could hurt people doing this stuff. Yeah a wrongful practice is
bad anytime.
At least 15 deaths Wim Hof.
Brand has just said that there are pharmaceutical drugs that are not life-enhancing or life-saving, but are just part of the ongoing system of perpetual ill health.
He then couches it by saying, well, not all drugs and medicine, obviously, but the big problem here is the lack of specificity.
By not saying which drugs are just there to keep us all sick and which ones are okay, he's casting a shadow of distrust over the entirety of established medicine.
This is an incredibly dangerous thing to be doing on its own, not least of all when discussing cancer in cardiovascular patients, but it's made so much worse by having Wim Hof sat next to him saying, my method heals cancer.
At that point, it moves from just dangerous advice to outright charlatanry, pushing people away from medicine and towards giving Wim Hof money.
Oh man, you were right to text me and warn me.
And the ableism.
Ableism is hideous to listen to.
The notion that there is no medication that keeps people alive is repugnant to say.
It's also, it's like impossible, like, I'm, it's impossible to think.
There's so many people.
His mother, like, was...
Yeah, yeah, well, what I don't understand is that he's saying that there,
he's saying that there are medicines that are not life enhancing and that are not, you know, life-saving.
It's like, well, which ones?
What fucking medicine is out there that's just like, meh?
You know, it's just designed to keep you ill.
What fucking medicine is out there?
I can bet any amount of money that in the back of their minds they're both thinking about fucking antidepressants and shit like that.
I have no proof of this.
None whatsoever.
On Wim Hof's website there's a comic.
Someone made a comic detailing his life and it's a shit read to be honest.
Don't recommend.
Artwork's not bad.
But in that, there is like a little bit of railing on anti-depressants, etc, saying like, oh, none of it could save my wife, none of it works, right?
Oh, so used the wife, the previous wife, in the propaganda.
That's disgusting.
I can't guarantee that that's what they're talking about here, but it definitely feels like it.
Yeah, not thrilled.
They're complaining about capitalism.
They're complaining about capitalism.
Because yeah, throwing medication at a problem that also needs therapy and needs monitoring and needs support is inadequate.
That statement can absolutely be made.
Take it up with capitalism.
Even Russell talking about his mom getting cancer eight times.
If you're worried about this stuff, think about where you grew up.
Think about what environmental elements that we're not even considering.
There's swaths of America that are referred to as Cancer Alley and industrial waste and industrial production.
Is directly linked to cancer rates.
I just, I can't with, I can't with this.
I can't with this.
I mean, he could do that, but it's much easier to ask people to just join his locals channel.
And bitch about it.
And yeah, and make money.
And throw money at his other murder friend.
Okay, cool.
Contribute to capitalism.
Yeah.
So next, Wim tells a story.
The last time I climbed Kilimanjaro, the oldest person with whom I climbed was 76 years old.
76!
And normally the Kilimanjaro is being done between 5 and 9 days.
Fully dressed.
And then only 40% summit.
Yes?
Five to nine days, fully dressed, because it's very cold up there, and then 40% summit.
Yes?
So, now I went with this person.
He used the breathing.
He used the motivation.
Motivation is the power of intention.
That is a focused neurological connection from the mind willfully to the body.
That is now proven in science.
It's a little bit ahead of psychiatric understanding, etc.
But it is coming because we already proved it.
So I'm stopping the story here because there is actually a limited amount of evidence to suggest that cold exposure can increase the mind over body aspect of dealing with averse external stimuli, which is interesting, but the studies done so far are incredibly limited and so not conclusive.
Accordingly, it has not been proven in science as Wim Hof says it has.
Let's continue with the story.
But this person, 76 years old, no former experience in mountaineering, 76 years old, and suffering from Lyme disease.
He comes with me, uses the breathing techniques, 5 to 9 days, he did it in 31 hours, in a short.
In shorts.
He has no Lyme disease anymore.
He connected so deeply inside and it doesn't take 20 years of yogic training or something.
It's your awakening, awaken, community, awaken, victor, just awaken to your innate capacity and say all the rest is bullshit.
So he has taken a 76-year-old man with Lyme disease up Mount Kilimanjaro in his shorts in 31 hours.
Pretty sure that borders on elder abuse and is quite grossly irresponsible, to be honest.
I'm willing to believe that this is possible, as younger people have done similar things in a bit less time.
One of the obvious points is that if you're on Mount Kilimanjaro in shorts for five to nine days, you'd be dead.
Yeah.
So there is a physical necessity to do it all pretty much in one straight shot when
you're wearing shorts, right?
You just want to fucking get done, otherwise you die.
Yeah, you're gonna be dead if you don't.
The thing I really take issue with here is Wim Hof saying that this somehow cured the
man's Lyme disease.
Like, the only treatment for Lyme disease is antibiotics, so I'm absolutely calling bullshit on this one.
Well, and I'll let you know of all the things that people suggested that I have had in my chronic illness journey, Lyme disease being one.
Yes, yeah, yeah, it comes up quite often.
It's unfortunate.
Like, here's the thing.
I don't even Google anymore.
I don't need Google trying to sell me insane shit.
So, like, I don't Google.
Like, I don't Google as far as, like, health concerns or- it's very fraught for me because I've been going through this since I was 12 and let me tell ya, it was way more batshit when I was 12.
I could tell y'all some stories that are insane and stupid and weird.
Lyme disease is one of those, because we know where it comes from.
But even ascribing, what I have been shocked by is grifters that claim to cure cancer, they first diagnose cancer in one of their, quote unquote, patients, one of their clients.
Over the phone or via Zoom.
They're like, oh, you must have cancer.
And then whenever they go get checked for cancer after they do the treatment, they're like, oh, no, cancer.
Like, no, there never was cancer.
I am shocked.
That's so much more common than I realized.
Thank you, Marsh.
Thank you, Skeptics.
Yeah.
This is my question with the old man with Lyme disease.
Did he have Lyme disease?
Because it's perfectly possible that at the end of it there was none of it.
If he never had it to begin with.
That is definitely possible.
But next Russell starts out down a similar path to me.
Were I having this discussion with Wim Hof?
So, in a way, it's like what you're describing to us is a dormant capacity that we've always thought of as the domain of magic.
And when you hear a story like, oh, there was a man who's 76 with Lyme's disease who climbed Kilimanjaro in 31 hours, I almost want to like, right, give me that footage.
I want to see a before test and an after test that shows the pros, the presence of Lyme's and then the absence of Lyme's.
We've got it all.
Because we've been good.
Okay, I'd almost want to see the evidence of this because it sounds like you're full of shit.
The difference here is that when Wim Hof says, oh yeah, we've got it all, Russell just goes, good, and moves on.
Whereas I would definitely push to actually see this evidence.
As it stands, no scientific materials have ever been released on this guy, so there's no evidence to substantiate any of what Wim Hof is saying, even if he says, oh, we have the evidence.
This harks back to our UFO episode.
The standard of proof is higher than just being able to say, ah, we have evidence.
Show it to the world or fuck off.
That's my position.
Do they not even have it on their website or anything?
Did you see like... No, no, no, nothing.
Okay.
Nothing.
No, of course not.
He does this repeatedly.
He keeps saying, oh, we have this, we have this, we'll send you this, we have this, never gets produced.
He's feeling very Leo the Lion on Be Reasonable, which like, I can't stomach Be Reasonable very much.
Marge's other podcast where he talks to, he lets just folks talk, and it's incredibly powerful.
Mike listens to it all the time.
Like, it's too upsetting for me.
It takes a very specific kind of constitution to be able to, almost like a Louis Theroux-esque, like, you know, kind of separation to what it is they're dealing with.
Which, like, I don't have that.
I don't have that buffer that makes me feel okay.
Me either.
Me either.
As far as, like, medical stuff especially.
I don't have that.
But I am so grateful for folks who do.
For folks who can deal with it and folks who monitor it, that is invaluable.
It's so important to And it's not that hard to learn how these people talk, learn how these, like, learn these tricks.
It's not that difficult, but you have to, you have, there are certain parts of your emotional, like, your innate human response that they are playing on that you have to really suppress because they're really good at this game.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So anyway, from here, Russell makes a pivot to education.
really anti-institutional. And being anti-institutional is not anti-education.
But I'm starting to feel, as I have young children myself, that I want my children to be educated where I can see them.
I want them to learn about nature, I want them to learn about literature, I want them to learn about mathematics,
I want them to learn about science and medicine, I want them to learn whatever they're interested in and become who
they are.
But even at schools that present themselves as progressive, I can see that primarily what they're teaching children
is how to be controlled. They're closing children down.
Do this.
When I ring the bell, everyone put their hand over their mouth.
Like even a quite progressive school.
You know, they look like prisons.
Fences, bells, whistles.
Like the conformity is the default of our society.
Whether it's with health or whether it's with education or whether it's with the arts or music.
It feels like everything is becoming commodified to an extraordinary degree.
How fabulously stupid.
It sounds like what he's after is one of these Montessori schools, you know, where kids just get to roam about doing whatever they want and are never told off for anything.
I've looked into them and they're fucking bananas.
Yeah, and the guy that came up with that shit too is a fucking problem!
Yeah.
Anyway, so schools are prisons now, so there we go.
I guess I've got to wrestle with that moral quandary in a couple of years when April's old enough.
I have to ask myself, should I send my daughter to prison?
Right, well my, yeah, am I willing to make my daughter an inmate today?
Right, exactly.
That's edgy, edgy, current Pink Floyd's the wall politicking.
Yeah, I would say they're a lot better than they were back then, back in fucking, you know.
Oh shit.
When Roger Waters existed.
Well, I mean, existed as a child.
He still exists as a person.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Fucking hell.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's like, that's I mean, but also like, There's a complaint that's like, fine, obvious, sure, but then your Montessori school isn't better?
Also?
So what's your solution?
It's just like, yeah, I mean, how do you expect to kind of teach people how to function in
a society?
Like, how else is that going to work?
And ultimately, these teachers have to corral between 15 and 30 children into the same lesson,
into learning the same shit at the same time.
How else do you think that's going to be possible without at least a modicum of discipline?
Um, especially when you've got people like Russell as the parents, you know, I can't imagine, you know, if this is his perspective on schools, what the fuck is he like as a dad?
Like, do you think he ever tells his kids off?
Do you think that's ever a thing that he would do?
No, not a fucking chance.
No, I think it's probably like his, um, you know, his, he's probably passive aggressive and insulting and pretends he's being funny.
I don't know.
Or just, I mean, he's famous.
I don't know how much people see these in their kids.
Could have a nanny.
I think his wife does a lot of the legwork, to be honest.
Shocking.
That's my guess, anyway.
Well, he's got interviews to spring on us with Jordan Peterson.
How dare you?
Yeah, he's busy.
He insists that he parents.
That's not fair.
Grifting for millions every year.
He's awesome to his dog.
We see that.
I don't know about them kids.
Yeah, yeah, he's nice to his dog.
Yeah, I don't know about the children.
So in this next clip, Wim Hof makes an obviously incorrect statement about diseases.
Have you experienced anything like people criticizing you, any kind of backlash, people saying that your claims are not true?
I get backlash already for the last 10 years, and even more since 2007.
In 2007, I showed in New York very clearly how to control and influence the vagus nerve in the Feinstein Institute in Manhattan, New York, under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Tracy, who's in the board of the jury for Nobel Prize winners in medical achievement.
Yeah, he was supervising this and he took me and nobody was able to get into the vagus nerve and how to stimulate it.
And then I came and I did it.
I did it, not a little bit, a big time.
And if you are able to get into the vagus nerve willfully, then that means the vagus nerve is directly related.
If you are able to suppress the activity of the vagus nerve, then you are suppressing inflammation.
And inflammation is the cause and effect of any disease.
I thought what happened in the vagus nerve stays in the vagus nerve.
No?
Terrible.
You're going to tell me what the word actually is, but I just heard vagus.
Yeah, no, I'll explain the vagus nerve in a second.
But yeah, I'm not a doctor, but I can say with reasonable certainty that the cause and effect of every disease is not just inflammation.
He's also talking bollocks about the vagus nerve here.
So the vagus nerve is the longest and most complex nerve in the human body that deals with sensory feelings from the throat, heart, lungs, and abdomen.
It provides taste sensation behind the tongue.
It provides movement functions for the muscles in the neck responsible for swallowing and speech, as well as being responsible for the digestive tract, respiration, and heart rate functioning.
So it does a lot, right?
The medical community has been able to affect this nerve for years, and currently provides vagal nerve stimulation as treatments for epilepsy and mental illnesses.
So he's making a much bigger deal out of these findings than is reasonable.
However, at this stage, I am compelled to state that the Wim Hof method is not total nonsense, right?
Which is to say, Deep breathing and cold exposure are not total nonsense, though I'm not convinced how much of that can be attributed solely to Wim Hof.
These techniques did in fact exist before he did.
It's funny that he says something about you don't have to do yogi training with the old guy on Kilimanjaro.
Then how did you find out about breathwork?
This is it, right?
Yeah.
So this 2007 examination at the Feinstein Institute didn't have much to do with the vagus nerve specifically, but it did show that Wim could influence his own autonomic nervous system via breathing exercises, suppressing inflammatory bodies in his bloodstream which are usually associated with chronic illnesses.
There was later a study in the Netherlands in 2014, so Dr. Matthias Cox and physician Peter Pickers injected 24 healthy people, half of whom had been taught the Wim Hof method with an endotoxin known to cause fevers, chills and headaches.
So 12 who were trained under supervision of the study as well in Wim Hof's techniques and the control group of 12 who hadn't.
Those who were trained by Wim were able to mostly reject the bacteria and for the most part avoid the symptoms, while those who were not trained were unable to do so and were quite unwell.
So all evidence suggests that there is something to these specific techniques of deep breathing and cold exposure, and I dare say it does seem like something which benefits people's overall health.
The issue is, these techniques are nowhere near as miraculous as Wim Hof claims they are.
Like, they don't cure cancer, they don't fix everything, they can't remedy every disease.
And that's an extremely small experimental group.
Exactly.
That also you have to take into account the self-selection of people that are already trained in the Wim Hof Method.
So this wasn't people who were already trained, these were just people who were willing to be trained.
I see.
Okay.
A small selection of people who are willing to do that.
So they were trained specifically for the experiment is what you're saying.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
If you, if you look it up, there is, there is footage of them doing it as well.
Um, you know, so, so in, in the actual study, they, they provide, um, like a video file, et cetera, which I've got somewhere on my laptop.
Um, yeah, you know, and, and I dunno, it's, it's 11 young white men and one young white woman.
Um, and, and, and yeah, so, so, um, Not particularly extensive, let's put it that way.
But you know, it seems like there is something to it, just not what he's saying, basically.
So yeah, I wouldn't blame anyone for, you know, engaging in deep breathing.
Of course deep breathing is good for you.
That's very well demonstrated.
Meditation, same thing.
And yeah, cold exposure.
Like, people have been having cold showers for I don't know how fucking long, right?
And saunas and, yeah, alternating between a sauna and that, yeah.
I've done it, it's kind of neat, it feels good.
So the mind-body connection between tolerating cold, I would say the most fun example I've ever seen, Is there is I think maybe Stephen Fry did a documentary on swearing and how like if you stick there's that test where you stick your hand in like ice water and you swear then you can that allows you to tolerate the cold longer.
And Brian Blessed, I think, was on the documentary.
Oh, did he do it?
It was transcendent.
I love Brian Blessed.
That might be an off brand.
Yeah, I might have to find that.
That sounds great.
It was delightful.
So yes, there is a degree, like, it can sharpen your kind of mental state and allow you to There's, there's, there's, there is a mind-body connection with breathing.
There is a mind-body connection if you're getting cold.
That all makes sense.
Yeah.
Oxygenating your, your body, et cetera, et cetera.
Like, yeah, sure.
It's inducing a response.
Like sure.
Something will happen.
Possibly something positive.
Um, yeah, yeah.
The, the, um, Yeah, the actual kind of... the studies done thus far on this kind of thing are mixed, but, you know, it seems like there's something to it, probably.
Well, the studies aren't on sick people.
The studies are on healthy people.
There is that as well!
So, next, Wim is pissed that the scientific community aren't taking him seriously enough.
So, that should have been an alarm bell of, hey, we found it!
Eureka!
Eureka!
Right?
No, nothing.
And this is this world.
There is an arrogance.
There is a complex going on, and it's within the psychology, settled down, and it's well-rooted in our brains.
And it is holding us from feeling empowered, like Mother Nature wants us to be, to be just happy, and strong, and healthy, and weak in control.
So Wim Hof thinks this should have been a eureka moment, evidently, and all it serves to show is the importance he wants to confer onto his own method, while the medical and scientific communities are generally more interested in actual medicines.
Again, I'm not saying it's impossible that these techniques would help in some way, but one could understand why it would take a backseat to, say, cancer research, right?
Like...
Yeah.
Also, if Mother Nature wanted us to be alive and happy, all those Survivor Man shows and naked and afraid and alone, they wouldn't be really fun to watch.
Yeah, that'd be really boring.
They'd just be there like, they're just wandering into the forest alone like, I am fantastic.
I am healthy.
There we go.
And all the trees are just like, yeah, they turn into little dancing, you know, like a little conga line of like, we're so glad you're here.
Here's some food, here's some shelter, here's some warmth, done!
Ask any person that's been on Naked and Afraid how much Mother Nature loves and adores them and wants them to be happy.
Except for the one guy.
Next time you go on Rogue and ask how people did in Survivor, right?
There you go.
Yeah, fear factor is a great reason, yeah.
Yeah!
There was one guy that, like, kicked ass and took names in, like, an Alabama swamp.
I wouldn't ask him.
That guy was legit.
He, like, made a house, ate a whole alligator.
I'm not kidding.
It was everybody else?
Well, also, guess what?
He was stoked when they came to get him.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like, oh, thank God.
I don't have to live in a fucking shithouse in the swamp.
Yeah, watch people try to drink water on these shows and the next shot is them in intensive care and tell me how much Mother Nature wants to help us and blah, blah, blah.
Okay.
Yeah, if that were the case, things like cholera and typhoids wouldn't exist.
Whim.
And ocean water would be drinkable.
Anyway...
We'll kill you.
We'll kill you.
That's nature, Wim Hof.
Fuck's sake.
Next, he talks his method up a little bit more.
It seems that you're saying that we can intercede with and direct these natural healing and regenerative processes.
Is that what you're saying, Wim?
Yes, it's called interoceptive healing.
Focus.
You've got the sixth sense.
Everybody knows about the sixth sense.
Intuition.
I see dead people.
I see alive people.
Make jokes all the time.
And then you've got the seventh sense.
It's a neurological network called the proprioception.
And then you got the eighth neurological network called interoception.
And interoception was thought of, you cannot willfully control that top-down regulating, you know, with your will, the body.
But now I showed very clearly to do so!
That was in Detroit.
In Detroit, I showed interoceptive focus.
That means top-down regulation, psychology over physiology.
It's there!
We are the healers!
And this professor, Professor Muzik, is saying, Wim Hof has found the secret of placebo.
So, here he's conflating the study showing mind over body in dealing with cold exposure, so through training, getting his body to respond to extreme cold in a specific way, with being able to tell his body what to heal and when just by thinking about it.
One does not mean the other, Wim Hof, in case that wasn't colossally fucking obvious.
Being able to train your body to respond in a certain way to certain conditions is not the same thing as being able to heal yourself with the power of thought.
His scientific talk confuses the matter, and he's been accused by scientists of weaponizing scientific speech by using it to, in fact, talk utter bollocks, which, and then he can pretty much just make up what he wants because anyone who isn't a microbiologist has to take him at his word.
You know, like, oh, that sounds fancy.
Probably right, especially in an interview setting like this one.
How are you supposed to push back on that unless you have a background?
He gave us three new senses?
So, I looked into those.
Those are real things that he's mentioning.
They don't work in the way that he says they do.
That's what I imagined to be true.
Yeah, but they are real things.
If you look up the seventh and eighth sense, etc., the things he said will come up.
They just don't work the way he says that they do.
Shocking.
So are those other bodily monitoring systems that aren't necessarily conscious?
I can't remember the word he just said, but the focus one that he just said is basically the way the body in its entirety sends signals to the brain of like, you know, I'm tired, I'm hungry, etc.
It's that.
Yeah, I do love that I made a joke earlier about decalcifying your pineal gland.
And yeah, it just doesn't work in the way that he says it does.
Yeah, I do love that I made a joke earlier about the decalcifying your pineal gland.
I love that for me.
I love that I did that.
I'm thrilled with myself.
Give yourself a little pat.
I have.
I have done.
I just, I knew it.
I knew it.
I knew it.
My intuition told me all about it.
Ah, there we go.
It's tough because- Your discernment.
Yeah, right.
Discernment's a real thing.
Okay, anyway.
I know, not the way they use it, though.
I know, I'm like, these words have definitions.
Yeah, yeah, no, these are real words.
They just blow them to smithereens.
They just don't work in it.
Nothing works the way these people says that it works.
Nothing.
Right, right.
It is a little weird to hear, because he is a bit of a throwback for me.
Like, To a pre-internet kind of, like, we just would get pamphlets in the mail and self-published books and stuff that were batshittery.
He's kind of giving me that, you know?
Like a Dr. Bronner's bottle kind of tirade degree.
It's kind of that taken to the next level.
Because he's still around.
Yeah, and he's kind of formed his own little His own little thing here, which we're going to get into in a little bit, because it gets worse.
The Orm Fae, a little bit of an alt-k?
Is that what we're... There's smatterings of that in there.
Anyway, this next clip made me nearly do a spit take, and I think it's something you specifically will enjoy, Lauren.
So placebo is what we thought, hey, maybe he's saying, oh, this is a pill and it's going to work.
No, we don't need that anymore.
We don't need suggestive powers or any trickery of that kind.
It is our willfully controlled power to heal ourselves, which is an A network.
But we have never learned how to connect that psychology over physiology, that neurological network, which is physical, like this, inside.
And that makes us able to go up to the cell, past time and space, into ancestral trauma, into the DNA.
You can all see it!
Wim Hof is into ancestral memory shit.
That's another one of the grifter bingos.
So apparently the Wim Hof method allows us to apparently transcend time and space and go into ancestral memories.
I tell you what, if it did that, I'd be far more fucking interested in taking part, that's for sure.
But yeah, he's quite obviously talking bollocks here.
There's nothing to it!
There's absolutely nothing.
Just, oh yeah, we can go into our ancestral memories by breathing.
Well, what sucks is like, there is a growing understanding, like a scientific understanding of like, Trauma, like a genetic impact of trauma.
Yeah, I've seen the thing in mice, the studies they did in mice of that, and that's as far as it's come.
Right, right, right, right.
So yeah, there is research, but it's so easy to make it sound like something that, oh, we've heard that in the science news, and then...
This is a whole other bag, but it can, like, that's, I'm, again, like, one of the, one of my rubrics that I've developed for listening to the pod is, like, being critical of what my brain is filling in for these people that's not being said, and even coming from a totally different, like, I'm like, oh, I, I see where they're exploiting some information here that is not actually the same, but it just sounds familiar if you're, you know, a casual news consumer.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Ancestral memory in this specific way has been long debunked many, many, many, many times, and doesn't really deserve going into.
The mice thing is interesting, if anyone wants to look that up.
But yeah, so next, apparently no one's taking on the Wim Hof Method.
Apparently it's not a thing that anyone's taking on because it doesn't make money.
And that the people are not taking it on is because it doesn't make this, but it brings health, it brings happiness, it brings strength, it brings trauma release, it brings the soul.
It brings the light.
That is interoceptive focus.
And we found the key.
And we are handing it over to you, to you, to everybody who is watching this.
He is giving me platform for this.
But I do the signs all the time.
And just, I saw it.
Yeah, we're giving you the key for a price.
Again, this guy is making at least a million a month from his videos alone.
Combine that with the practitioner training fees and the winter and summer travel expeditions where a hundred people pay about three grand each to spend six days with Hoff in person, plus his own workshops and personal sessions, books,
clothing, music. It's fair to estimate his company's income in the multiple tens of millions per
year easy, but supposedly no one's taking it seriously in the medical community because there's
no money to be made. Fuck off.
That's insane.
Absolutely.
How do they get to say this?
If there's no money to be made, if there's no money to be made, show me Inner Fire's books, Wim Hof, and we'll fucking see, shall we?
Yeah, where's your foundation that's giving it away for free if it's on?
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
So I have to ask, have you ever seen the movie Limitless?
You know, Bradley Cooper takes a drug, suddenly lets him use- No, I haven't, no.
Right, so it's Bradley Cooper, Robert De Niro as well, decent film actually, gets given a brand new nutraceutical, you know, the unregulated thing we were just talking about, and it allows him to use the other 90% of his brain, because obviously, you know, humans can only use 10% of their brain, and apparently, apparently, the Wim Hof Method does the same thing.
I showed very recently in a new study how to control the subcortical higher functioning of the brain, which means whatever is narrow-minded in our brain, now we are able to go out of that loop into all of our brain.
Imagine if we could do that.
Wouldn't that be amazing?
Now, that's happening.
It's here, the threshold of the unlimited power of the mind.
It's not me, it's physical, and it's there.
This is just so profoundly stupid.
I'm going to quote neurologist Barry Gordon to say, we use virtually every part of the brain, and most of the brain is active almost all the time.
So, so far, the Wim Hof Method can heal cancer and heart disease, it can transcend time and space, and it can provide limitless power to the degree of being superhuman.
So, um, that's where we're at.
I would be skeptical of any health, like the thing is, is when the health claims are too big, like you could do the Wim Hof, or you could do, again, like you could do yoga, you could selectively place magnets all over your body, or drink colloidal silver, or the MMR bleach, drink your own pee, all of these things are packaged and sold.
Love that one.
Two people.
It's bananas.
That's a rabbit hole.
That's an Instagram rabbit hole.
Pee drinking.
Yeah, like, like, hyper, like.
Yeah, there are people who are really into that.
Really into that!
Yeah, fitness couples drinking B. It's a lot.
And, yeah, I mean, it's OK.
So this is the thing with a lot of influencers that bugs me out, but specifically with those people is like their entire house is white and gray.
It looks like their houses are clean and nice for for content.
But to me, it looks like a cell in an insane asylum.
That, to me, looks like you're in prison.
I think we've established by now, Lauren, that you are not into minimalism.
I think that's fair.
That's true.
That's true.
I question it.
You know what?
That's the background that really makes the P stand out.
And that's what I'm specifically thinking of this crazy couple we found and we like made ourselves crazy when like Saturday morning just watching all their content.
But it's like all the same health claims are being made.
That's not possible.
It's just not possible.
I mean, a lot of what he's saying is literally not possible.
As in, it's not possible on this plane of reality.
Not just even the medical claim.
So next, Russell brings forward a bizarre comparison.
Interceptive healing then is perhaps something that's been around for a very long time.
Do you think that there is a lot of forgotten wisdom?
Do you think that when we're talking about healing traditions and yogis and even, if I may venture, a controversial example, Christ and the example of miracles, that it is possible perhaps to access energy sources and inner resources that we have forgotten and allowed to lay waste?
So he just compared Wim Hof to Jesus.
Sacrilegious as fuck, Russell.
That is most certainly blasphemy.
I've mentioned journalist Scott Carney as the guy who wrote the book on Wim Hof a couple of times.
Carney is one of the reasons Wim Hof is as big as he is.
As Carney was sent by Playboy to expose Hoff as a charlatan.
Only when he got there, he was taken in by Hoff's charisma and there being something to the techniques.
And so the article and subsequent book turned into puff pieces instead.
Carney has since realized the dangers of Wim Hof specifically and has turned into one of his greatest detractors.
In a text message exchange, Carney asked Hof about the various deaths caused by the Wim Hof method, and he responded firstly by stating that 28,000 people die every year and you're blaming me for all of them, which is false.
It's 280,000, but maybe he missed a zero out.
And then he said, quote, Look into baptism and the real meaning of it.
You might learn something.
I know what I do.
Baptism, the real one, is shutting down our over-controlling mind and activate deep healing mechanisms in the body.
Not gonna explain this physiologically.
Not into competition in sports here, which is entertainment since the Roman Empire who killed an innocent man called Jesus.
It would seem that Wim Hof would agree with being compared to Jesus.
Lord!
Lord have mercy!
That's amazing!
Whim have mercy!
That's bananas!
That's bananas!
I do love an exposed text.
That's what I'm saying.
There's some monitoring that is modern that I'm motherfucking here for.
Scott Carney is doing some good work on this stuff, I have to admit.
In the next clip, Wim makes his Jesus connection a little bit clearer.
And then I get so many examples of so many anecdotal evidence, means real people coming to me with cancers and with all kinds of motor or motorical diseases, even ALS, and working with people with ALS.
Let me tell you, I eat monsters for breakfast.
Okay, give me cancer, give me ALS, give me pacemakers, give me this, give me that.
I take it on because I believe.
I got faith.
I got a faith which is my right to exercise since I was 12 years old.
Anecdotal evidence means unprovable evidence, so don't try and repackage it as, oh, this is real people, while insinuating that scientific evidence doesn't in fact involve real people.
Also, I eat monsters for breakfast.
It's nothing short of a disgusting display of making extreme medical claims in order to make money.
That's all he's doing here.
Give me all the diseases.
Give me all of them.
I'll fix them all.
Fuck me.
I'm grossed out.
Yeah.
I'm just... That was pretty much my feeling going through this.
In the next clip, for lack of a better phrasing, Wim Hof drives the final nail into the idea of him being Jesus.
And long before, in the time of Christ, and Buddha, and Zarathustra, and whatever, all these beautiful people, they tried to revive what is ours, and that is the power of healing, and to be holy!
Because we are not born half, we are born to be holy, and to get there!
Consciously.
And so all these great civilizations of before, 15,000, it's all trash.
We have to break this narrative that we should be dependent on industries, healthy economies based on sick people.
That doesn't make sense!
But still we are in it and we are so over mesmerized because they control us through the wrong schooling by which we do not exercise our powers.
We are powerless.
So he just compared himself to Buddha, Jesus, and Zarathustra.
He's literally compared himself and the Wim Hof Method to the work of actual prophets.
What's fun about that is that there have been several accusations of Inafire becoming a cult.
In order to train to become an instructor, you must have, quote, commitment to the principles of Inner Fire and to the Wim Hof Method, unquote, and agree to the Wim Hof Method Manifesto.
Thankfully, Scott Carney just released a copy of this manifesto the other day.
You have to pay 500 euros a year to be able to be a Wim Hof Method practitioner.
So it's a license that is renewable every year.
And even after that, you must tithe 10% of your gross earnings back to Inner Fire.
That's gross earnings as well.
Oh wow, okay.
And they track the... okay, alright, yeah.
Oh yeah.
All the while, the Wim Hof Method instructors are considered as self-employed individuals or freelancers.
And despite that, there is a 12-month non-compete clause built into the manifesto should you choose to leave.
Right?
There are three levels of Wim Hof Method Instructor and the third level gets a bit fucking weird.
I'm going to quote directly from the manifesto here.
Instructors who showed great success in their teaching, renewed their license for a second time, and are an ambassador for the brand can be personally selected by Inner Fire to become a Level 3 Instructor.
This is a dynamic level and can always be revoked if one of the above terms is not met.
A level 3 instructor directly assists Wim Hof as part of events organized by Inner Fire at least once per year, and they're expected to offer their Wim Hof Method activities also on the Wim Hof Method platform.
That sounds like being handpicked for a cult to me.
More than that... Very Scientology.
I'm getting very Scientological More than that, there are also plenty of videos of large groups of people gathering around Wim Hof in the center of a body of freezing water and laying hands on him like he's giving some kind of blessing.
Yeah, it's a little bit, little bit culty, just a little bit.
I mean, and that's the thing that I'm I'm incredibly grateful.
And you know what?
There's a lot of true crime that's exploitative.
And if the story is interesting, you know, it can be skewed to some degree through documentaries and through reporting, but there's plenty of very real Shockingly consistent, similar stories that are constantly, like the guy that did hot yoga, constantly being debunked.
And it can be a small group, it can be a big group.
When you add in capitalism, there's a whole other level because all these people's income that are practitioners get tied into his pyramid scheme. And the insidious nature of the
exploitation runs so deep.
And this stuff is easy to suss out.
Mason: Yep. Yeah, and I mean, with this, you've got the 500 euro fee just for being a practitioner,
So you've already got a cost.
And people are very susceptible to the sunk cost fallacy, let alone the cost of the training itself, right?
Because it costs money to be trained in this shit.
So you're spending thousands before you even get in at the ground floor.
Yeah, and I don't know what professional licensing is, and obviously it's graduated professional licensing, but like... It's not a professional license, it's a license that they grant.
Yeah, it's arbitrary.
But like, I've had to be professionally licensed for my job.
Right, right, right.
And nowhere near $500.
No, no.
And they provide training too, like bloodborne pathogen training, you know, like for when I was tattooing.
And it's regulated, you know.
OSHA training, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Whereas this, a little bit less so.
In the next clip, Wim Hof seems on board with Russell's self-governing mini-states idea.
Wim Hof, of course if we do these things, if you teach people that they can, to a significant degree, to a very significant degree, heal themselves, if you teach people to a very significant degree there is no need for mediating power structures like the state, there is no need for corporate structures, there is a need for organisation, there is a need for communication, there is a need There's a need for media, there's a need for medicine, there's a need for travel, there's a need for technology, but the framing of these institutions could be radically altered if a significant number of the population were to become aware, present and activated.
If this message becomes conveyed to a large degree, I figure that there will be significant and powerful opposition.
Oh yes, but what I say, if the governments are not doing what, not representing the good of the people, then we have to learn to govern ourselves.
And this is what I bring.
And this is good for the carpenter, the doctor, for the road worker, for the pharmaceutical director or employee.
It's good for anybody.
My message is love.
It's a universal power, which is good for everybody.
And therein is autonomy.
Isn't it funny how every single cult leader in the history of time has said they're all about love while having blood on their hands?
And insisting that the answer is love if you do everything exactly how I say, and then I can probably figure out something you did wrong that's your fault, which is why it didn't work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's just great.
Great.
I just I also just love love Russell's.
You know, there's a need for this.
There's a need for there's a need for cats.
There's a need for dogs.
There's a need for the sky.
There's a need.
But also what he's saying has very little to do with the end question, which is, do you think you'll find pushback here?
Like, could you load your question more?
We need a guide car with a big Keep the siren on it and we need one of them oversized load little banners to stick on and we need to make sure that you've got all your little flags to let everybody know how loaded your questions are.
Yeah, he's got a few of those in this.
Arguing with him about little shit is probably awful.
Oh god, you can't imagine.
Can't imagine.
Fucking hell.
Can you imagine just trying to be like, oh could you not do this thing?
And he would spend ten minutes just going off on fucking tangents about things.
It would be unbearable.
So in the next clip, I was curious how Russell was taking a lot of this information and these claims, like what he thought, and the next clip demonstrates it perfectly.
So we have shown how to regain control over the autonomic nervous system, but also over the autonomous processes in the brain.
So we have shown that in science, it's there, and that is autonomy.
If you are able willfully to control that what makes you sick, to prevent, to feel powerful, happy and strong, to have a control over the endocrine system, over the cardiovascular system, lymphatic system, all the systems, to go into the depth any time when you need revision, you are like a garage in your car.
The auto is Greek for you, yourself.
Yeah, that's the auto.
Auto is not outside, it's inside.
It's our vehicle.
That'd be a good ride, man!
This is life!
Yeah!
It's good!
Yeah, you're right about all of this stuff.
Yeah, you're right about all this stuff.
Our bodies are just like cars, and we're the mechanics who can heal ourselves.
Fuck me, I hope that Russell's- Famously, cars that heal themselves, right?
Yeah, right?
Yeah.
I hope that Russell's mum doesn't watch this and get any ideas about her next potential bout of cancer, let's put it that way.
Like, fucking hell, man.
It's just, it's so gross.
Well, and just again, like the ableism is just hitting me in the face of like, these are dudes who have won the genetic lottery and they've won the social lottery and they're just circle jerking each other about how great their life has turned out.
Guess how much you get to decide if something's wrong with you?
You don't.
Yep.
The implication that you're deciding to allow yourself to get sick is wildly fucking offensive.
It makes me so mad I'm quiet.
That's a new level.
That's a legendary level in my life of like when Lauren gets quiet and polite, that's a problem.
Like that's when you know.
Silently seething.
I'm upset.
Yeah, yeah.
That was like a running joke for, I mean like, not helpful for a podcast to play that right now.
It's like so offensive, like you've got so much money Oh yeah, both of these are multi-multi-millionaires.
multi multi-billionaires yeah yeah and there's stresses in your life i'm sure i'm sure you get
a sniffle now and then but like it's just the erasure of the well apparently apparently wim
By his standard, I think he's going to live forever.
So in the next clip, Brand wants to get into globalism and corporatism, which he loves to talk about.
But instead, Wim decides to pull a Russell.
People watching us, they ask this a lot.
I think a lot of people now are aware of what we're talking about.
The power of the individual to self-heal.
The power of the individual to self-govern.
They recognize how hypocritical and corrupt our institutions have become.
How out of control corporatism has become.
How there is a march towards globalism and centralized power.
People can see that it's happening.
I got him!
I got him!
It's great that you are creating the premise, because recently I showed how to control, for the first time in neuroscience, Just completely ignored him and goes back to his self-aggrandizing bullshit, which is something that Russell does all the time to his guests, so I'm happy to see it done back to him.
But still, dick move, Wim.
Dick move.
I'm glad you're talking about that, but let's talk about me for a second, right?
Globalism can wait, alright?
I did this thing in science, did you know?
Well, and also, like, understanding a little bit of where your bread is buttered?
Yeah, you killed a girl in California.
You couldn't have done that without globalism.
You'd just have to murder people in your neighborhood.
Yeah, exactly.
That's true.
His reach would be much, much smaller.
So, thus far we've managed to get you to the point of being silent with rage, but this next clip is going to upset you.
And together with this, the last thing for implementing into schools, very important, globally, is a control for children through a universal technique that works within a half hour.
That enabled every child in the world, in schools, to perform a lot better, and to have much more power of regulation over their mood.
No more shootings in the schools, and pestering, because children get into control of their own mood.
Wouldn't that be interesting?
Governments, are you listening?
Or... Again?
So the Wim Hof Method also solves the problem of school shootings, apparently.
Oh my god!
What?
Yeah.
That's a new one.
What?
I mean, but this is the thing, is like, I've heard these stupid claims over and over for different things.
I hate that it's like old hat at this point for me, like, realizing how desensitized I am.
I've never heard it about school shootings before.
I've never heard someone, you know, try and sell it that way.
Well, all the SSRI demonization, that's all where it's coming from.
It's like, I don't want y'all to take medication anymore, I want you to take my medication of whatever I've decided works better.
When mindfulness and breathing does help kids focus.
So there's that kernel of truth that he can exploit.
Yeah, there's the aspect of that.
He elaborates on this a little bit more in the next clip.
I'll just play him.
If you get long-term stress, it's detrimental.
Yeah?
To the quality of life.
You begin to pester.
You have no control over your brain anymore.
Then you get the shootings and all that shit.
You get over there because of stress.
Too much stress.
You have no normal life.
It's like you get into a system and you have to endure stress all the time.
It's like somebody is pestering you.
And at a certain moment, you had just enough!
And you begin to wildly shoot your own friends!
You don't recognize your soul, your being, your empathy, nothing anymore!
Yes?
Okay.
Now, we got 100 people.
And then, the people who weren't doing the techniques, they were into a lot of grey area of stress while doing the task performance.
Long term of that, detrimental.
Unfortunately, evidence of this study that was apparently carried out can't be found anywhere, at least not by me, but I feel like the obvious point he's missing out here is the fact that a good number of school shootings happen because of serious mental illness, or worse, he's saying that actually his breathing technique heals or cures said mental illnesses, which, given everything he's said so far, would not surprise me.
It's shocking to hear, especially because he is identifying the problem to a degree that constant stress does affect people and can put someone in a situation where they feel desperate, which is what, like, mass shootings, there's, like, it's an extreme measure, right?
So he's identifying stress as the problem, but not the cause of the stress that would motivate someone to make that choice.
So let's identify the causes of the stress.
So as to mitigate the issue, which is providing support and is going to be like a long, difficult social change that he does, it can't make him money.
Well, I mean, you could do that, or you could do some deep breaths and have a cold shower.
Uh-huh.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, and give him some money as well while you're at it.
He can teach you how to breathe and take a cold shower.
Oh yeah, you need instruction in that.
God knows you can't figure out breathing on your own, Jesus.
And we know that mass shooters are so ready for mindfulness training.
Oh, yes.
And all kinds of wellness.
They're really into that.
All of the various manifestos that exist, they all say the same thing, like, yeah, I was really open to change.
Yeah, super effective.
Yeah, my mind could be changed at any point by some breathing exercises.
That's reprehensible.
It's a reprehensible thing to say.
I think you've just summed up this guy in his entirety.
He doesn't look like a nice old man to me.
He looks like a problem.
He sets off alarm bells in my soul, my spirit.
I don't like it.
For me, it's the more I've learned about him, the more I look at him and I'm like, oh no.
It could be where the video's paused.
He looks slick.
I don't know.
Yeah, no, it's true.
Where it is at the moment, I'm just like, no, I don't know.
In this next clip we get a little bit of what feels like stoner talk to me.
me. I just realised I'm on two teeth.
It's like we've got like an ATM, a cash machine inside ourselves and no one's using it.
No one's using it.
Everyone's trying to take things from outside of themselves when it's available inside.
Money was the representation of your energy.
What?
If you do the breathing and believing, you get infinite amount of energy It's sinking.
It means even the cryptocurrency and... What?
Yeah, energy.
Money.
Did he hear me?
It's in there.
Happy man doesn't go to war.
Unconditional love.
Let's talk unconditional love.
That's the way we... That's our intrinsic natural nature of ours.
Meditation should be there when you sit.
The chatterbox gone.
That is the new control going to be.
We are the future.
We are coming to you, not for you, to you, to give love, unconditional power over yourselves.
Amen.
It was always there.
You could have stopped like a while ago.
Awaken.
Yeah man, we all have an ATM inside ourselves, money is a representation of energy, and if you do the Wim Hof technique you get infinite energy which therefore means infinite money apparently?
And cryptocurrency is unconditional love?
Awaken and give me money.
Did he identify another scam?
A little exchange?
Maybe.
Maybe.
Hoffbucks.
Incoming.
Yeah, I don't know.
There's something.
That was a lot.
Okay.
I would love to know where his thoughts are going with each thing that he's saying, because I guarantee the thing that he's thinking is not the thing that's coming out of his mouth.
Yeah, totally!
So I'm just like, I would love to be able to track what the fuck was going through his head.
Well, he's also doing a cult thing, like a cult leader tactic, which I mean, again, like what's tricky is a lot of these tactics are not always tactics.
It's just behaviors that are kind of amped up to be useful.
And his like his prolonged intense eye contact.
is very indicative and he's got it like bad he does a lot of like staring straight down the barrel of the camera during this whole thing like he barely fucking looks at Russell which is no he's looking it's he knows which camera is his yeah he's boring a hole through it with his eyeballs A hundred percent.
For me, it doesn't make me feel better about it.
I'm just like, oh, no, don't look at me.
Just stop that.
I don't like it either.
I had a reaction that was a clear physical, like, oh, I don't like that.
I can be intense.
I'm not trying to be, you know, I don't like, Criticizing someone for something that I have a tendency to do sometimes, but yeah, not that much, right?
In person, when I'm better focused, I can be worse, but like, I have to catch myself and say like, okay, you're looking crazy right now.
Pump the brakes.
There is a certain amount of acceptable, consistent eye contact, and this man just throws that out the fucking window.
It's a little bit uncomfortable.
Yeah, if he was an X-Man, his body count would be a lot higher.
Yeah, right.
Now, this wouldn't be Stay Free with Russell Brand without bringing up the pandemic, so let's see what Wim Hof has to say about it after an obviously leading question from Brand.
Do you think in the pandemic period, Wim Hof, we were trained that there was nothing we could do to heal ourselves?
We were trained that the solutions lay outside of ourselves, and in particular in the hands of Big Pharma.
Do you think that this was something that was pushed very heavily?
Because a lot of things we were told during that time have had to be re-examined.
Do you think that there is an interest in keeping people disconnected from our own ability to heal?
And do you think that happened in particular during the pandemic period and that the pharmaceutical industry benefited from that?
Yes, I got on Instagram a little film.
What other answer is there?
I have one and a half million views on that.
Which I do normally, not her, but I just shot it right into the target.
Hey, they paralyzed our society, they paralyzed our families, they paralyzed ourselves with fear.
Government, lockdowns, etc.
So yeah, I've got some bad news for you, Wim.
If you don't like fear, that's pretty much the entire underlying basis of Bran's show and how he makes money.
Yeah.
Oh, he does too.
They both do.
Yes, yes.
Mother and poppy and whatnot.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, so that's great.
They paralyzed our society with fear.
Yeah, okay, buddy.
All right.
We got into plenty of that in our Laura Dodsworth episode, The Politics of Fear.
The next clip I think gives us an insight into Wim Hof's pathology and why he is the way he is.
All this doesn't need to happen.
We could take this as an opportunity to get back to ourselves instead of this abstracted world where we have become so dependent.
We want to go to the restaurant, to the film.
Suddenly we cannot go to the restaurant anymore, to the film and to this and to that.
Man, a good yogi, a good monk, or a good person rules himself, over himself.
It's an old Dutch saying, maybe in English too.
A good kid rules itself.
You know?
It is able to contain itself.
A good kid rules themselves.
I do wonder how specifically this message was instilled into Wim Hof, because he seems to have taken that concept and run with it to the most extreme and absurd place possible.
It also serves as yet another reason why I'm not taking parenting advice from the guy, because the idea of a child being fully in control of their thoughts and emotions is fucking crazy!
Like, my kid is having trouble at the moment dealing with, like, feeling overwhelmed, right?
She doesn't know what to do with it, doesn't know how to deal with that.
But she's not even three years old yet.
She's not being bad, she's just not equipped to deal with that, because her brain literally hasn't developed enough in the right spots to be able to do so.
Yet.
And then, when you get into teenage years, like, teenagers are basically a concoction of hormones and chemicals that, when combined, are ready to explode at any minute.
I remember being a teenager, and in many ways, it sucked.
But that doesn't make these children bad for not being able to deal with it sometimes.
And also, in terms of him saying, oh, the pandemic, oh, you can't go to the restaurants and the movies, like, Fuck you, man.
Fuck you.
That completely just goes against every kind of bit of mental health suffering that everyone, everyone, we as a society collectively went through during the pandemic.
Fuck you for belittling everyone for not coping with it particularly well.
It was very like, a good yogi doesn't need friends, which I think is wrong.
I think it's like, we can look at it on its face as like, Pretty fucking wrong and wacky to say and also like the argument even like he's not going to say that community is bad isn't the name of the event community?
Wasn't the point of the event to celebrate community?
Socialization like being able to go out and see people Collecting in a place?
I say that as a fucking introvert, right?
I am generally fine on my own in my house for long periods of time, you know, and I struggled.
So, yeah, just fuck this guy in so, so many ways.
Finally, we've got one last clip.
We sign off the interview with one last bullshit medical claim from Wim Hof.
So whatever, in a pandemic, I get a lot of people with myocarditis and long-term COVID and we heal them.
Amazing, eh?
Oh, what are you saying?
I say, you motherfuckers, it's okay.
I love you.
Just try it out.
If it doesn't work, blame me.
But first, try it out.
Begin your breathing exercises.
Begin exposing yourself to the cold.
Stay free.
You're awakening wonders.
Thank you, Wim Hof, for joining me.
That was an amazing conversation.
Can I give you a big cuddle?
Yeah, so, you know, try it out, and if it doesn't work, blame me, or, you know, maybe I can blame you because you just didn't do it right, so you need to give me money so that, you know, I can train you how to do it properly.
Yeah, I also find the big cuddle to end the show a bit weird.
I mean, I'd have loved to see him hug Tucker at the end of their interview, or Dawkins.
Can you imagine how Dawkins would have responded?
It does, it's telling because it's like, it's telling of the connection they have and the wavelength that they're on.
Yeah, 100%.
The Wim Hof Method heals myocarditis and long COVID as well, apparently.
So to sum up, by deep breathing and cold exposure, and by directing your body to heal itself using only your mind, the Wim Hof Technique supposedly heals cancer, heart conditions, diabetes, mental illnesses, myocarditis, prevents school shootings, and heals long COVID while also transcending space and time, and can provide limitless power and money and turn you into a superhuman.
And Wim Hof is also a prophet, apparently.
So now we know, I guess.
I feel informed.
I feel informed after this episode is what I'm getting at.
There was so much I didn't know.
It's so gross and awful and, oh man, and so common.
This is so pedestrian at this point.
It's such a drag.
Like, that's the part that hurts for me today is how mundane this same old stupid-ass, like, routine that's also, like, so insulting to regular people's intelligence and to, like, just regular people in general.
And it's such a transparent money grab.
And they're trying to demonize Big Pharma for making money!
Yeah, all the while making millions a piece.
Yeah!
Yeah.
Like, I don't know where to even... What?
What do we do?
Yeah.
Do you know, I was mostly kind of unaware of what this guy was up to, to be honest.
I saw that he was one of the headliners of Community, and I thought that was a bit weird.
I was like, okay, strange.
I vaguely knew of him being something to do with, you know, swimming underwater in ice conditions.
That's kind of the most that was in my head.
I think I mostly knew him for the Guinness World Records stuff.
Sure!
And so I was like, huh, a bit strange.
Okay.
And then I saw a video of him dancing, interestingly, at Community.
Okay, fine.
How interesting!
That might have to go off-brand.
Yeah, yeah.
Maybe, maybe.
It's, it's not, yeah, it's, it's, yeah.
Our small little technical difficulties today have allowed me to find that Brian Blessed YouTube.
We might have an assortment to after show about.
Cool.
Okay.
Excited about that.
Yeah, but yeah, and then I actually, you know, I didn't know what to expect from this episode at all.
And then I'm like, Oh, okay.
He's a prophet.
Okay, right.
This has gone a different direction to what I was expecting.
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
The second I heard the story about the kids with cancer, I was like, oh no.
No, no, no, you don't.
You just don't bring up children with cancer.
Just don't.
Just leave that.
Just leave that alone.
Little kids with brain tumors?
What's more awful to think about, especially as a parent?
That's horrible.
And it seems difficult for us regular people with shame and empathy to think, how could someone even lie about that or misrepresent it in any way?
It seems so vile.
I can tell you, dear listener, I've heard it enough to where it is believable.
It's shocking!
It's shocking!
But this is why I go out of my way to learn about this stuff, because specifically Medical Grift has had, like, I've had a very long and shitty, miserable history with it.
Which, also not great with the medical establishment, neither have been awesome, but... No!
But one has a very real fucking body count attached to it, you know?
The medical establishment, especially in your country, fucking sucks, but at least the underlying core of it is still trying to help, whereas the same cannot be said for the medical grifters.
They're trying to make money.
Yeah, well, and the issue with our medical system is there's stuff that's wrong with me and that runs in my family that they just don't really know how to fix it yet.
And that's some things still can't be fixed.
What really drives me crazy is the fact that there are so many medical problems that we absolutely can fix.
And I think about the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people, millions and millions and billions of human beings That would have given anything, would have done anything for penicillin, for the polio vaccine, you know, like a smallpox vaccine.
Like, it's such a gift.
We look that gift horse straight in the mouth and it's just, that's a big part of what like, I get out of learning about history and why I think it's so fascinating is because like they're, you know, humans have been, um, humans have been talking about their experiences kind of the whole time.
And it's really interesting to hear what they actually say versus like what these like narratives, like these people, these grifters, like experience the world through like TV and movies creating reality.
Yeah.
Which is fucking ironic that that dude took like a pot shot at movies and going out to restaurants when like...
Are you not doing that?
Are you telling me you're not going out and doing shit and that makes you healthier?
He's saying that his method basically, you know, is the plot to Limitless, you know, except instead of a pill, it's what the fuck he's doing.
Right.
So, you know, it's, yeah, it's just complete fucking horseshit.
I just can't help but think about people that were, like, they're recounting You know, there's a history, I think there's one like, you know, we get Italian ambassadors that, you know, have to report back to their given monarchy or whatever, ambassadors from other countries, and they have to describe in like painful, grueling detail what effects that plague or cholera or something will have on
It's not that we don't know, we do know!
No, we have an acute awareness.
So this whole notion of our bodies used to fix ourselves, No, they've never done that!
Otherwise we would be an immortal species!
It doesn't make any sense!
So much of history is just people dying alone in a forest because they ate the wrong berry or they got their their foot caught on a thing and that gave it an infection
and that was it, game over.
Because we didn't have a fucking choice at that point.
Well, the rest of us are like, "Oh shit, where did Bruce eat last week?
Let's do our best to avoid where Bruce went."
You know, like it's just, it's so like, it's, oh my God, it's just the ahistoric nature of it.
Like, I mean, shocker, that's what I'm upset about.
But like, it just, it's.
(laughing)
Which- - Yeah.
At least he didn't come for architectures.
Let's say that.
Well, Rob's got me covered there, which I appreciate.
Yeah, true.
Yeah, I don't, this stuff makes me so mad.
It makes me so mad.
Rightly so, rightly so.
Right, I mean...
I think in terms of potential harm and body count, this is one of the worst people we've had to deal with yet.
Which says a lot.
It really does say a lot.
I'm interested to find out what the body count is and the articles.
I'm going to look some of those up and I think and post them.
Yeah, yeah.
I recommend looking up that journalist that I mentioned, Scott.
Crap, I forgot.
We'll get it.
We'll get it.
It's not Crawley.
It's something else.
Scott something.
I didn't write it down.
So the man has never existed until I Google it again.
You'll find him on Wim Hof's Wikipedia in any case, because yeah, like I said, he literally wrote the book.
And he's got YouTube videos and stuff that are quite interesting.
He's got like an hour long kind of documentary thing that he's put together.
I think by his tally, the number's up to 17, I think, but I think those last two are unconfirmed as of yet.
The fact that they can trace it!
Is shocking and is like is way more than you usually get with this type of medical grifter.
It's really tough because their influence is so disparate.
Yeah, no, it's it's it's very, very fortunate in that respect alone.
But yeah, I mean, fortunate, unfortunate.
Yeah, it's it's because, yeah, they yeah.
OK, well, so I don't know what else to say.
Yeah, it feels off brandy.
So let's do so.
We do have some announcement.
Yeah, yeah.
I think we're going to save them till now.
Go for it.
So we can start.
All right, so I guess I did mention that I will be adding links and references.
I'm going to try to put them everywhere that I can.
Our mod has requested that I, one of our mods has requested that I start sharing some links in the sub, so they'll be there.
The subreddit?
Yep.
The stuff that we talk, right, subreddit, thank you, that we talk about.
I want to like supercharge our show notes to like Just the Voltron, the Optimus Prime of like, y'all will never need to look for a thing.
I've got you.
Because it's also kind of fun to revisit.
I've been going through the off-brand episodes, and so we'll put all that stuff on.
Let's see what's going on on Twitter.
I have it on subreddit.
I'll try to put it.
Maybe pin a comment.
Yeah, pin a comment on YouTube and then also just sharing everything wherever I can to figure it out for now because that's kind of the point of our show and this type of show that has taken a lot of iterations that is useful because I think that it's worth mentioning or the question is worth asking like, well, you aren't experts.
Why should I listen to you guys?
You're not experts.
Well, I think that it's like a fair, it's a fair postulation that I'd like to answer that this stuff doesn't need, you don't need like specialist expertise.
Now you can get your information from the specialist, but like, you know, we're regular people and we can figure this stuff out.
So if we can figure it out, then we can convey it in a way that is accessible.
Like this information is accessible, but the cesspool of information is quite fraught.
So I think bringing our human experience, you know, all that kind of stuff, like, and also just the experience of being a person, but like, you don't have to be an expert in every field that you're talking about.
Because, yeah, I want to empower other people to, you know, folks that are listening to use the same tools.
Yeah, and I think as to why to listen to us, the difference between us and the grifters that we cover is that we come correct, right?
Anything that I say, I am willing to back up.
If you've got a problem with it, fucking let me know and I will fire resources at you.
I was having an argument with some dickhead the other day as to whether Graham Hancock was racist or not.
Yes, Graham Hancock is provably racist.
There we go.
Sent him a link and eventually he shut the fuck up.
This kind of stuff doesn't necessarily require expertise, it just requires a bit of dedication.
The areas where I would like an expert is the health claims that we're looking into, because that's so much more of a technical area.
We can maybe do like a medical roundup with a guest or something at some point because that would be helpful.
Oh no, that's not cool.
I think that's very cool.
But there's so much that regular folks have access to and I feel like empowerment is a big thing for me.
Most of the stuff that we deal with does not require that kind of educational background.
And, you know, the two areas where I'd want that is probably the biological stuff, any of fucking RFK's claims or this guy's claims, for instance.
Just someone who can be like, Just absolutely no, that's fucking horseshit.
Because it's harder for me because that's, you know, I don't have a degree in that.
And also the legal stuff.
I think it'd be fun to have some legal analysis at some point.
We might have an opportunity to focus on that in the future.
From law-talking people.
Fingers crossed.
Definitely will in the case of Wim Hof anyway, hopefully.
January 2024, we'll see some kind of reckoning that will be quite nice.
And we'll definitely keep an eye on that.
Yeah, we'll pay attention.
I'll be looking out for whatever the fuck is going on in that show.
Yeah, well, so let's see.
The other stuff that I wanted to go over and just get folks clued in on, if you don't listen to Off-Brand, because what I really, really hate is when podcasts will reference information or something we talked about like behind the
paywall and the paywall is a block.
So I think that's like if you if you want to just go and listen, awesome. But you don't have to.
That's kind of that's another one of the things that we're like pretty serious about is keeping
like the relevant information. Yeah. Yeah. And any of the any of the actual debunking stuff will
will never be behind a paywall because it's it's it's too important for that to be frank.
Right, but I can share just to keep folks that maybe don't listen to off-brand, I don't necessarily want to keep y'all out of the conversation because you're listening and you're here and I appreciate you.
So the things that we've been talking about in off-brand Um, are deciding on if we can make like additional content stuff that we have decided, you know, we're just like kind of spitballing and figuring it out.
And I have mentioned some history stuff on the main feed, but I get way more into it and off brand.
And if y'all want to hear more of that, or if that's the kind of content that would be useful, fun, exciting to you, or maybe even just when it's mentioned on our main feed, I can kind of look into it and do a little History book report, like, well, here's what's wrong about this.
And here's what makes me mad.
And here's why I like Tucker Carlson trying to reference the, you know, the the peasant peasant revolt, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And that or let's see, I found Mike's pants that I've been the masterpiece of the pants, the sisterhood of the mending pants.
Yeah, and this is like, when it's just for us, it's kind of quick and dirty.
It's not super clean looking because I just have to get it done because he's got to go to work with the pants on.
But yeah, I know how to fix a lot of stuff and that's kind of tied in with my values as well.
I'm down to do that.
If that sounds interesting, great.
I found those Halloween posts that we talked about in Offbrand.
Ah, cool.
Turns out I was Jerry only, but I think it's because I have long hair for the devil lock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Then Mike was pretty jealous of that, which like is fair.
That makes sense.
But you know, that was, so we've got like little things that are buzzing around there that I don't want to necessarily keep folks out of the loop.
Yeah, I mean, we get into a lot of stuff off-brand.
It can be whimsical fucking music suggestions or whatever, or we're talking about Kevin Spacey and shit that's a bit heavier.
It really varies.
Some important stuff, some less important stuff.
But either way, it's a great conversation.
Yeah, we'd love to have some of you join in, you know, come and.
Right.
And so let's see.
Plugs.
Do you have any plugs that you can think of?
Yeah.
Cool.
So I do.
Art launch.
Art launch.
And we'll have like a website where I can also post all these links and everything.
That's one central location instead of on socials.
That's going to be August 26th.
And if you're in Chicago, Beverly Art Walk is Saturday, September 23rd.
I finally have kind of like our calendar for the fall.
And then UFOs over Lubbock.
Again, I love UFO stuff.
The event is called, we drive to Lubbock freaking Texas because it's so fun.
The old guys, they dress up in these like costumes.
They have a whole thing.
And it's the first Friday.
So it's the first Friday of October at Charles Adams Arts.
And I think it starts at 6 p.m.
Right.
And so UFO over Lubbock is going to be awesome.
And any recommendations?
We will be going to Roswell on this trip.
I am more than happy to crowdsource my recommendations.
I did see one in our email, actually.
I don't know if you saw that one in our email.
I didn't!
There is at least one recommendation.
Okay, go have a look.
That rules!
Okay, cool.
And then, yeah, so I'm still working on stuff.
We have our first listener commissioned art Oh, cool!
I know, I'm really excited!
It's going to be magpie themed.
Magpies are awesome.
So, yeah, I just wanted to shout out and enjoy and like, you know, that's extremely cool and fun.
So, those are the plugs.
That's what we're doing.
Very cool.
All right.
That's it.
And if you want to support us on Patreon, go to patreon.com slash onbrand.
If you want to drop us an email or send us a voice message or whatever, it's theonbrandpod at gmail.com.
We are also the on-brand pod on most social media.
You can also join our subreddit which is onbrand underscore pod and our personal socials I'm on most things at alworthofficial and Lauren is at made.by.lauren.b and I think that's it?
I think I think that's our show.
Hopefully fewer spurious prophets next week.
Fingers crossed.
We'll see who we have to deal with.
I don't know.
I would like to get back to… I would like to get back to just a Russell and Gareth show, because those are a bit more Russell content.
Just see where he's at, that kind of thing.
But we'll see what comes up, because you never fucking know with this guy.
Well, and peering into the event that he put his name on, and putting that person In the forefront of that event, I'd say that's a problem that was worth addressing.
Yeah, the other one was a woman called Vandana Shiva, and I've not looked into her properly yet.
Very anti-Bill Gates, very talking about agriculture and shit like that.
I don't know how much of what she says is bollocks and how much is accurate or whatever.