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Dec. 12, 2024 - Stay Free - Russel Brand
01:01:43
The Economics of Disease: Why the System Wants You Sick - SF513
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Thank you.
In this video, you're going to see the future.
Hello there, you awakening wonders.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
This is an extraordinary show.
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If the world of academia, politics and big food were ever to have a Justin Bieber, it would be this man.
A fresh-faced youngster that emerged seemingly from nowhere to become one of the most influential voices in American health.
I'm talking about Cali Means, whose ideas and policies changed the conversation Not only in America, but across the world.
When it comes to the economics of health and the ecology of sickness that is required to maintain control of America, American lives and American finances.
Your sickness is their profit.
In some extraordinary miracle of alchemy, in some sort of cosmic ordained event, Cali Means has moved from the periphery To the very heart of this establishment as a result of the Maha movement, the rise of Bobby Kennedy and the victory of Donald Trump in the recent election.
So Callie Means, who I used to speak to a couple of years ago, as an interesting ingenue and writer and expert.
But former employee of Big Food, he worked at Coca-Cola, is now like talking to someone who, praise God, could be integrally involved in creating a better, new, healthier America.
What an honour it is to introduce Callie Means.
Welcome, Callie.
It's great to be here, Russell.
You're too kind.
Man, like they do say to men in the position you find yourself in now, well, now the hard work begins in earnest.
What are the challenges that you imagine will be faced?
Because even though we have the near miracle of a man like Marty Makkari as head of the FDA, an outspoken opponent of the policies that the government implemented during the pandemic era, or a man like Jay Bhattacharya, One of the writers and signatories of the Great Barrington Declaration,
who was smeared and attacked at Stanford University for saying things we now know to be true, and evidently with his rise to the head of the NIH, that's the research arm of the health institutions that are responsible for American health, with these men rising into power, with men like Aaron Seary addressing some of the issues around medicines and certain near-mandated medications that you might receive in your arm, but you might find up...
Find wind up in your heart.
And most notably, I would say, yourself being in a position of influence.
How do you think the ideas and power and motivation that we all experienced in the Maha movement will be impacted by the fact that now there is access to the levers of real power?
What challenges are you experiencing and imagining that you will face coming forward?
Here's the bottom line, Russell.
When I hear you ask about that, and it is astounding complexity that's becoming very real.
I mean, this is the largest part of the U.S. economy that Bobby Kennedy is taking over.
It's the largest and fastest growing department in government.
It's actually the HHS is the highest budget for any government department of any government in world history.
I mean, it is the biggest part of our budget.
The complexity is astounding.
And listening to you kind of set that up, I think it sets up perfectly.
There's a big complicated journey ahead.
I go back to the campaign.
I mean, it's much larger than me, but You, you know, we're talking about these issues for years, the corporate capture, the incentives of our healthcare system to profit from when we're sick, just like the military-industrial complex profits from more wars.
You know, the defining issue, whether it's in Europe or whether it's in the U.S. or throughout the developed world, I think it's the defining historical issue of our time is the co-option of our institutions.
You know, the American people want to thrive.
You see it.
You were just saying the great people you're living around in Florida.
In pain that want to be, you know, in a bad situation, but that's happening to an astounding degree.
And I just go back to the campaign.
I think there was a spiritual connection that went from independent media to the top of the national conversation.
It was really a grassroots movement for people that listen to you, people that listen to Tucker, Joe Rogan, and, you know, even podcasts on the left.
They're talking about this issue, issues for years.
And what my big What I'm really thinking about right now is let's keep it simple.
What's happening with Bobby and with Jay and with Marty and with Dr. Oz, with Jim O'Neill, my friend who's going to be the Deputy Secretary, these are incredible picks and they're getting dragged into complexity.
I think evil hides the complexity.
We were just talking before we came on.
You know, in their heads, these pharma executives and the hospital executives, they don't want to profit from sick kids, but they have plausible deniability because the system is so complex and they don't have the full kind of authority to stop it.
So all of these interests are now coming to bear.
And I think what we need to do to help Bobby is keep it on that high level, aspirational, big themes that we talked about during the campaign.
And that's what we're doing.
You know, obviously, we've got to create an action plan for this 80,000 person department.
But we can't lose sight of the big things we talked about.
So let's just go through the list.
The NIH, as you said, the research arm, they dictate research and the standard of care throughout the world.
And right now, 80% of those grants have conflicts of interest.
Like literally the foundation of our care structure in the world, we transport it throughout the world in America, says that if you have heart disease, it's a statin issue.
If you have obesity, you need ozempic.
If you have depression, one size fits all, SSRIs.
They recently did a psychiatry conference with the NIH and Harvard, and they could not find a psychiatrist who wasn't paid by SSRI makers.
We have this one size fits all intervention-based system, and just get the conflicts out.
Let's just actually figure out You know, whatever you think of vaccines, what they're doing to kids.
Like, why are we hiding that research?
Why are we hiding research on more personalized mental health solutions?
So it comes a lot with the research.
You go to the FDA, get the corruption out of the FDA. 75% of it's funded by pharma.
We can start there.
Why is the FDA funded by pharma?
Then you get to Dr. Oz, this boring department called CMS. CMS has a larger budget than the defense and intelligence agencies.
It's the biggest single, you know, sub-entity of any organization.
It has a $1.4 billion budget.
It enshrines every CARE standard that we have in America.
And again, it's that one-size-fits-all.
So let's have more flexibility.
There's these basic points that we can't lose sight of to transform our system.
I think that's a big focusing team right now.
Let's keep it high level.
Let's deliver wins for President Trump.
And let's not get lost in the minutiae.
You listed some pretty profound facts just there right off the bat.
80% of studies have a conflict of interest in the current setup of the NIH. The FDA gets 75% of its funding, in certain areas at least, from corporations that it's meant to regulate.
And whether it comes to matters of the head, mental illness, or the heart with the statin crisis, it seems that there's baked-in corruption across the board.
Now, for years we've become used to the legacy media, attacking Donald Trump as a misanthrope, misogynist, criminal, racist, rapist, whatever words were available to prevent his assent.
And I must confess that there were times where I was vulnerable to that pervasive propaganda.
For a moment, if we look at the case of Bobby Kennedy, who, as you've just explained, is in charge of the largest government budget, or departmental budget at least, in world history, what do you think is the significance of the way that he is treated in soft propaganda outlets like SNL,
late night talk shows, the constant mocking It's always in order to point out that he was a drug addict or That he left a dead whale
on the roof of his car.
Or the kind of trite and trivial pieces of information that are often elevated and amplified to discredit people in petitions of power.
How real is that power?
And what interests, knowingly or otherwise, are being amplified by those soft propaganda entities?
And what are the financial ties, might you imagine, Callie, that would mean that that flow of information would have the trajectory that it does?
So let me break this down.
That's a great question, Russell.
Let me take you behind the scenes.
And this is the truth.
We are having deep, you know, behind closed doors meetings about what to do with health care.
And the directive is simple from Bobby, and the mandate is simple.
How do kids get healthier in this country?
I have not witnessed one word of ideology.
I have not witnessed one word of somebody having some kind of hidden agenda that is always inferred, you know, in the New York Times.
It is truly rolling up the sleeves.
How do we figure out how to reverse this shameful chronic disease crisis, particularly among children?
This 50% of teens being obese or overweight.
Now, just reported last week, 38% of teens having prediabetes.
You know, this is a unique situation in America.
3% of kids in Japan are obese.
And that is what is being talked about.
And it is a really...
It's a heady time right now, and a really, I think, inspiring time, where Bobby is trying to summon the biggest experts in the world, people that were vehemently against him.
He's talking to everyone.
And it's truly, how do we change the incentives?
Because Americans want to be healthy.
You know, I always talk about how people live six years longer in Italy.
It's not because we're lazier than Italians.
You know many Italians.
I don't think Americans are innately lazier or more suicidal.
There's something wrong with our incentives.
So that's what's being talked about.
And I think that's the core of what connected during the campaign.
You know, 92% of deaths in America are chronic conditions, lifestyle conditions.
As we've talked about and what the book's about, right?
Heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's, which is called type 3 diabetes, highly related to metabolic dysfunction, obesity, even depression.
These are all multifaceted and tied together.
And what Bobby's talking about is why is 95% of our medical spending after people get sick on drugs and interventions to manage it and profit from it?
How do we actually, you know, take a depressed child's take?
And instead of giving them a quick SSRI and just putting them on that treadmill, figuring out if they're looking at the sun, figuring out if they're eating healthy food, figuring out if they're moving.
We can incentivize those things with our medical system.
We spend $4.5 trillion.
So here's what happens and taking it to how he's being caricatured.
Let's just take one by one.
So he's getting assaulted by Saturday Night Live and assaulted by the media.
It's very simple, right?
Their funding, you watch Saturday Night Live, you see pharma ads.
Pharma, as we've talked about time and time again, is the biggest contributor of ad dollars to corporate media.
So it's just this clubby atmosphere of, oh, this whack job is talking about how these drugs aren't effective and how he's attacking science.
And that bleeds into the coverage.
It bleeds into the narrative.
Then you've got the kind of fancy academics.
Well, let's look at those academics.
50% of Harvard Med School's budget somehow touches pharma.
You know, academic institutions and hospitals are the largest employer in the country, the hospital systems, when you add them all up, right?
So these are big businesses that just make money and are fueled by Americans continue to get sick.
So it's just fashionable to say how ridiculous it is for Bobby to be talking about these hippie concepts like healthy eating, as opposed to serious medicine like cutting people open or prescribing drugs.
And that thought just permeates all, and it goes to just financial interests.
The pharmaceutical industry is the largest funder of money to the media, to academic research, to medical organizations, to politicians themselves.
As we talked about, they fund the regulatory agencies themselves.
So it creates this immune response of the system to call Bobby a wacko for pointing out that 92% of deaths are chronic conditions.
Which is, in and of itself, at a macro level, I think very evil.
I think it's very evil.
And I think it's not working quite as well.
And we have to stay.
We all get it.
Everyone watching this, I think, felt something really important and spiritual during the campaign when Bobby talked about this.
And we just have to, he's right.
And if the people are on his side, and he continues to have our support, and frankly, President Trump, who I can tell you is hellbent on making this a legacy issue.
He is absolutely, he wants this to be in the history books.
So we just got to support them.
It's pretty extraordinary, isn't it, to imagine that something as unifying, evident and obvious as the health of children could be subject to media attacks and propaganda.
A unifying idea, if ever there was one, is the notion that our first duty is the protection of our kids.
That's the function of all of us as parents, but as adults more broadly, not just from an emotional and sentimental perspective, but from a Gosh, even if you were to take the harshest, most evolutionary perspective imaginable, the assurance of the ongoing survival of our species would dictate that protecting children and their wellbeing would go beyond the kind of tribal dictates of contemporary politics.
And it's very heartening to hear you say, Callie, that when policy is being discussed, it's not ideological and tribal, but based on true utility and the function of the agencies that you've outlined there.
It's very curious to me, too, that Trump I have come to regard as a kind of American mystic.
That America created this creature, this mystic prophet born of free market capitalism, entrepreneurialism, real estate building.
Of course, if there were to be an American prophet born of the American imagination, he would have his name on the top of his towers.
He would play golf the whole time.
Of course, he would live on McDonald's and Coca-Cola, and like me, I'm sure you've chuckled at the image of Bobby Kennedy wolfing down sugar and salt and seed oils on that private plane flight.
But nevertheless, politics goes proper.
Politics must always go beyond the personal, and always go beyond the weaponizations of institutions, whether that's the judiciary or institutions within healthcare.
It seems like, put plainly, America has grown accustomed to the profits and politics of sickness, and the profits and politics of war, that we've created such a warped ideology, presumably through sleepwalking,
for surely no one would consciously do this, no human entity, certainly no godly entity, would deliberately create an economy That required sick children to sustain itself, yet thanks to the kind of conversations that you've started, I know that there's nothing more profitable to America than a sick child for life on a Zempick or some kind of Ritalin or whatever it is these days.
But if you have an economy...
That has two massive and powerful entities like Big Food and Big Pharma requiring sickness and the perpetuation of their products in order to succeed.
And that's before you start looking at agriculture and the agricultural requirements.
It's very difficult to implement policies that arrest that.
And my concern is, Callie, That even with the incredible mandate that Trump has enjoyed, and even with the refined arguments that Bobby Kennedy is able to articulate, and even with the excellent team assembled around him, yourself, Aaron Siri, Jim O'Neill, Marty Makari, and obviously Jay Bhattacharya, there's still a sense that...
Corporate capture could play a part.
Now what kind of, I wonder, darkness might play out?
I think I heard a story recently that the CEO of United Healthcare had possibly died under suspicious circumstances.
I'm obviously not making, conjecture or stipulated.
He was just murdered.
Right, so what's going on there?
He was just shot.
Well, it's tragic.
It's tragic.
The CEO of UnitedHealthcare was murdered.
It's on camera.
A hitman, it appears, shot him in the morning outside the Hilton Midtown in New York.
And he was actually a person that was talking about reform.
You know, we don't know any of the circumstances of this tragic story.
I think it does shed light in stepping away from that specific instance.
Healthcare is the largest and fastest growing industry in the country.
And there's something, again, I'm not implicating any one person, but there's something really, really dark about the incentives.
And I don't think anyone really denies that.
I mean, the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry, medical schools, insurance companies, all just demonstrably make more money when more Americans get sick.
And they have, just by mathematical statements of how they fund the regulatory agencies themselves and the medical schools and the politicians, they've taken over our regulatory systems.
I've met with a lot of Members of Congress and Senators, and they don't want to have sick kids, but always there's staffers slithering behind them.
And those staffers, you know, just looking at what happens, they're interviewing for their next job for the pharmaceutical industry, the hospital industry, their insurance industry.
With healthcare staffers, generally, there's just a revolving door.
And, you know, I think it's every single FDA administrator the past 20 years has gone almost directly to pharma.
I mean, this is very, very dark.
You know, being in this world, and it might not be surprising, but it's still pretty shocking.
You know, people are reaching out to me, and we're having conversations, and they're just making the direct argument that if we implement these policies that we all agree would make American children healthier, that it would be disastrous to jobs and disastrous to the economy.
And I think what you have right now is a huge problem that we need to have a sustained national conversation about, quite frankly, which is that we have healthcare and the healthcare economy.
The healthcare economy, which is the biggest part of the US economy, is completely antithetical to the health of Americans.
I think what's so important and historical about this time with Donald Trump, and I think we all agree, whether you love him or hate him, this was a monumental election in American history.
Is that, you know, we've got huge opportunity.
I mean, you've got Elon, you've got all the warriors on independent media like you.
We've got this great coalition.
I mean, going through Mar-a-Lago, it's a smarter, more impressive group of people and a more diverse group of people than any transition in American history.
Everyone's helping.
I mean, I'm blown away.
You've got Elon Musk basically living there.
I mean, just helping.
You've got just people from every single industry, the best and brightest coming to help.
There's a lot of optimism.
I think we can have a golden age, quite frankly, for pharmaceuticals and American healthcare.
I mean, there's nothing wrong, per se, with the pharmaceutical industry.
You know, we should have thriving innovation.
One thing, you know, that we're really digging in on the FDA is like, startups and innovative companies are not happy with the FDA. The FDA puts up $1 billion barriers to any type of drug approval, basically at the behest of big pharma.
The only drugs that are getting approved are You know, very non-innovative management techniques to profit from the chronic disease crisis.
We actually have an absolutely shameful lack of innovation in cancer therapies or rare disease therapies.
There's huge hurdles.
I mean, the cancer treatments that we have were created 100 years ago predominantly.
With chemotherapy, the book Emperor of All Maladies goes into this.
We spend $300 billion a year on cancer treatments, and cancer rates are going up.
They're at all-time highs this year.
So there's actually this road to deregulate, to work with Ilan and Vivek at the Government Efficiency Office and get the red tape out of the way.
To have innovation in pharma, and then flexibility where our healthcare dollars go, where it can absolutely go to drugs, but, you know, can Americans, if they are pre-diabetic, choose potentially to go to a food intervention to get a diet coach?
They would do this.
If Americans are incentivized to the right thing, they'll do it.
So I think there's this real optimistic, but, like, vision ahead, but it's...
It's gonna be a national conversation.
This has to be.
We have to change the business model of the healthcare industry to stop profiting from when people are sick and start rewarding American thriving and health.
We are going to cease to exist if that doesn't happen.
Kali, sorry to interrupt you there.
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When occasionally a shaft of light penetrates the dark and sticky fugue that appears to have enveloped these agencies and institutions, there is a moment where you recognise that through legislation and redirection there could be an optimistic We're good to
And therefore it is economically biased, the entire industry, towards the creation of vaccines and the near-mandating of vaccines and the scheduling of vaccines.
And because in this one area there is not the requirement for clinical trialling that is as intrepid or as thorough as in the drug research.
And when you say, like, Americans can be incentivized to live healthily, then in a proper and common sense version of American institutions and regulation, it will be possible for the same inspiration and same motivation to be applied at scale.
Making America healthy.
American Pharmaceutical Research being, as you have said, Callie, deployed in areas of pioneering expertise in order to look into new realms of oncology, new realms of heart disease, new realms of health.
What has to happen in order for that to take place is sort of pretty clear.
So what prevents, do you suppose, Callie, on day one of A banning of advertising of big pharma companies on legacy media channels, a banning of clinical trials being funded in the way that they are, a banning of food using the kind of ingredients that you've basically taught the world we shouldn't be having in the kind of densities and in the normalized way that we have been up to now.
Where does the opposition come from?
You refer to kind of slithering backstage interest behind folks in the Senate and in Congress.
What is the locust and location of these dark powers, and how does this new and emergent America attack it?
So, I'll go to the previous how it worked, and I think Bobby and President Trump and their mandate can change this, but imagine FDA in a previous administration.
If they even thought about touching or reviewing one chemical, these 10,000 chemicals in our food that aren't legal in any other country, they would be absolutely berated with letters from members of Congress saying, this is crazy, this is an attack on innovation, this is an attack on the farmers in my district.
So that's where the fact that there's five pharma lobbyists and three food lobbyists for every single member of Congress comes in.
They pay them.
They get the letters.
And that bureaucrat who's reviewing those standards at the FDA just gets pounded, pounded.
The president's getting a bunch of Calls from members of Congress and senators saying this is crazy.
And they play really, really aggressive because it's literally, if they did one small thing, it was just pound, pound, pound.
So that, oh gosh, the bureaucrats.
Oh, I'm getting bombarded by Congress.
We've got to slow down.
So that's one.
That's one.
Another way things get delayed.
Is just bureaucratic the blob?
So you can say you do something, but then the lawyers who are interviewed for their next job at Pharma inevitably deepen the administrations.
And I believe, frankly, and this is obviously clear, there's corrupt incentives and people being paid within the department itself.
It's okay.
The directive just gets kicked around, and then nine months later, oh, well, we're still looking at that.
So there's bureaucratic inviting people.
This is where I think the Doge and the Elon philosophy comes in.
I mean, I'm an Elon fanboy.
I'll admit it.
I think Elon's the most important.
I think Elon and Trump are the two Americans, two people in the world right now people are going to remember in history books in 50, 100 years.
Nobody's going to remember us.
They're the two seminal figures.
And the whole Elon philosophy of radical change, of firing 80% in the company, working better, of moving fast, I think in a weird way, actually thinking big might be better because we can have holistic conversations instead of getting the paper cuts on every single regulation.
What I'm hoping can happen is that when you talk to the food industry, for instance, you ask them behind closed doors, are you happy?
Do you think it's a good thing that demonstrably you make products that are less healthy in America, the exact same product you formulate for Europe?
Is that a good thing that demonstrably we all agree it's less healthy in America?
They're like, no, that's not good.
We asked them, is it good that we have so many chemicals in our food that we are not able to import a lot of our agriculture to Europe, which is the world's second largest market?
Is that a good thing?
Like, literally, that's true, right?
We can't even export most of our food.
No, that's not good.
So everyone kind of agrees that there's a problem.
And I think potentially with Trump and RFK bringing light to this and bringing big thinking, You know, I'm optimistic we can get stakeholders together and actually figure out how to unwind some of this.
And I will say, you know, this isn't on the food front.
It's not just the food industry.
I mean, this is, they've held their hands with government to create a totally corrupt subsidy system, where right now, our third, excuse me, our fourth largest entitlement program goes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and then SNAP. We'd spend $150 billion for, you know, food sustenance for lower-income Americans, 15% of Americans depend on this program.
You know, it's a government failure too that 18% of that money, it's 18% now go to sugary drinks and that money is basically funding poison for lower income Americans to drive up healthcare costs and destroy the human capital of our population.
You know, unwinding these structures Isn't just punitive to the food industry.
We need to figure out a different subsidy system.
We need to actually take responsibility, I think, for the government of what we've done with this broken subsidy system nobody likes.
So I think if you can really actually have stakeholders, and the stakeholders like AG and like the food industry can actually see this as an opportunity to basically be dragged reluctantly to some change, but also behind closed doors, figure out a new system that actually works for stakeholders.
I'm optimistic, Russell.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough how the independent media spotlight...
I've always said this.
I said this is why President Trump, who I... I was not on the train for President Trump in 2016, right?
I think his election was the most important election in my lifetime by far.
I think he's the most important figure in my lifetime because I've always said this.
The executive spotlight on this issue, calling out the FDA or calling out these slithering people who try to sneak these regulations in, we just didn't have light on it before.
So with the light President Trump and Bobby can show and these smart people that are being picked, we got to be strategic.
But I think we can get them done.
The last thing I'll say, Russell, as we're thinking about this, Is you made some, you just made some, these are unimpeachable arguments.
Like, should research be transparent?
Like, without even talking about vaccine, should we have data available on what the trials are or know if there haven't been trials?
Should we, can we be able to generally support vaccines while also saying that it's a terrible incentive, as Aaron Siri points out, that there's complete immunity protection, and the second you get on the vaccine schedule, you have mandated government payments for this drug.
For every American and enforcement for the government for them to take them.
I mean, you can have two things at once and bringing these things in the open, they're unimpeachable arguments that I think are winning arguments.
You can see how the simple economic arguments that might motivate getting people to join a gym in January so they pay their membership perpetually playing out at scale create a kind of chaos that if people are mandated or if it's just scheduled that they take certain vaccines it becomes kind of habitualized.
If there is no clinical trial data available because of a lack of transparency That creates extraordinary systems.
And I spoke to Jim O'Neill recently, not on air, and he's told me a couple of things I'd love to talk through with you.
One, we touched on what you just briefly mentioned, 18% of the food stamp revenue ultimately going on sugary drinks.
To him, do you feel that even if you were to take...
Imagine if you were self-functioning in life, you know, Callie and Jim O'Neill and even me, if we were to sort of address that.
Wow.
18% gets spent on sugary drinks.
Well, wouldn't you want...
You know, you don't want to deny people that cannot feed themselves access to means and nutrition.
But surely what would be better is if they were eating...
food, even that one idea, the impact that has on firstly powerful food lobbyists, big agriculture, you know, the kind of interest that ensure that the information you get on diabetes is somehow funded by the kind of people that put sugar and various the kind of interest that ensure that the information you get on diabetes is That's...
Just that one issue would start to break apart the building blocks of centralised...
The economy of American sickness would receive like an arrow to the heart.
Just with that one relatively small adjustment.
If it was like, instead of sugary drinks, 20% is going to be spent on locally reared or grown food.
Grown in, I don't know, a 20 mile radius of where they're eating it.
That has to change the whole economy, that idea.
I see you've got something to say, Cali, please.
No, no, no.
Sorry, Russell.
Yeah, I think that's the example of the type of initiatives we need to focus on, and not necessarily that exact issue, but we've got to focus on unimpeachable arguments.
But even just the politics of what you just described, let's think about that.
So let's think about if SNAP, say there was a deal with Democrats, we actually increased the funding a little bit, and we say that, you know, it's a free country, you can buy cigarettes, buy Coke.
Buy all these things, but we're going to have healthy food on Snap.
And instead of getting everyone obese and then sending $1,600 a month to Novo Nordics in Denmark, we're going to invest in American farmers.
But even with the politics there, you've got probably the farmers on board, actually.
You can probably pick off some of that.
If you change the incentive structure for food companies, they can live within those rules if there's certainty.
It's a winning argument.
Nobody's disagreeing with that.
I think there's this really dark force from pharma that actually doesn't want people to thrive and be healthy.
You know, pharma is not actively lobbying for food stamps, but there's this really weird kind of force against anything for Americans to be healthy.
So there will be dark, but like, that's an issue.
We've got to focus on big issues like that.
And I call it changing consciousness.
If we can get a couple of wins in the next couple of years on transformative programs like that, to changing the paradigm that we should not be poisoning Americans and subsidizing that poison and then profiting from when they're sick, I think we really...
We really win.
But you hit on an important issue.
I mean, who disagrees with this?
Why are we writing the check?
And I just can't emphasize that enough.
We are a free country.
I'm a libertarian.
I think more drugs should be legal.
We should have beer, cigarettes.
I think drugs.
As long as we have transparency and as long as we're not subsidizing and recommending harmful things.
The problem with a Coca-Cola By the government guidelines for two-year-olds, it's actually recommended.
Coca-Cola for a two-year-old falls under the government guidelines.
The USDA, which says added sugar for kids is healthy for two-year-olds.
And it's subsidized billions of dollars by the government through food stamps.
Let's just get that one.
Let's just stop that.
I was just thinking, Coca-Cola should have given you a pay rise and kept you in the tent.
You've been nothing but trouble to that organisation.
The other thing that Jim O'Neill said, I'm assuming it's something you're familiar with, was when the challenge of organic When organic fruit and vegetables emerged 20 years or so ago, Stanford funded a clinical trial, and it had to produce favorable results.
And Jim O'Neill explained to me that the way they did that was to set up a clinical trial that compared organic versus non-organic fruit, but for the marker of nutrition, not for the impact of pesticides.
So they could say, we've done a study of organic fruit, And it's just the same as non-organic pesticide.
They don't test for the negative impact of pesticides, which would be an entirely different set of results.
So I suppose that shows that the way that clinical trials are organised, the way that clinical trials are funded, the way that academia has relationships with whatever interests it was that funded that particular clinical trial, actually formulates and shapes reality.
When you add to that We're good to go.
One thing you've alluded to a couple of times, Callie, is weird dark power.
You're probably aware of how Tucker Carlson and a few people in this space now are starting to clearly, and I would include myself in this, allow our conversations to be informed by spiritual values.
I know that you are Christian yourself, and every so often...
Callie, I'm like looking at this stuff, whether it's to do with war or big pharmaceuticals or agriculture, and sometimes I sort of buttress up against something that doesn't make sense materially.
I'm like, why would they do this?
What is it that gets people over the line to agitate for things that are bad for human beings?
It can't just be greed, even though greed, one might argue from a theological perspective, is itself somehow tethered in evil, temptation, the devil, Satan.
And again and again, I'm seeing, again, in the sort of around the topics that we're already discussing, a kind of something that's beyond rationalism.
And I would pack into that almost everything that we've touched upon.
Like, why are SNL, that used to be an edgy show, or Jimmy Kimmel, who I know is like a good guy, somehow invested in, like, attacking Bobby Kennedy and saying that he's, you know, like, when, if you meet and talk to Bobby Kennedy, you recognise you're talking to a man of integrity, with principles, who's flawed.
I wonder what kind of set of values must have taken hold in order for there to be a sort of an...
Institutional, antithetical, anti-life flow that seems to govern not only policy and the direction of economics, but also the public discourse.
It does seem evil in the same way that lying about escalating a war between Ukraine and Russia and its potential consequences seems evil.
Do you ever get sort of like chilling revelations that there is something darker than the syrup at the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle that's motivating all of this?
Okay, well, I'll start with disputing the premise a little bit, even though I agree with it, for a little bit of optimism.
I will say we have a complicated world, and there is a lot of darkness around this whole transformation agenda of Bobby Kennedy's.
But, you know, Tim Ryan, a leading Democrat, just wrote a great op-ed.
Cory Booker has been posting stuff about this.
I think it's actually a positive thing that if you actually close your eyes at a Trump-RFK rally, you know, during the campaign, you wouldn't know whether you win a A hippie commune at Berkeley or a Trump campaign, really.
They were talking about regenerative farming and getting the toxins out of our food, getting kids healthy.
I mean, the things conservatives are talking about are indistinguishable, right, from what hippies were talking about just five years ago.
So I think there is like this broad-based almost agreement.
And I think, obviously, and it's, you know, deep, deep forces at play.
We have just an incredibly toxic political environment.
And I think, you know, something happened with COVID where for some reason it's become a political virtue on the left.
To blindly trust experts, to blindly trust pharmaceutical companies, to blindly trust food companies.
You'll have to unpack that one for me, but for some reason, particularly on the left, there's a fetish for the experts.
The experts have demonstrably let us down.
I think it's tapping into a fear-based mindset that people inevitably can be drawn to, and it's a really weak thing for leaders to do, is appeal to fear.
And I think that's what happened during COVID. I mean, I think we're going to be assessing the psychological impacts from COVID for the next generation.
I think it was the most important public policy and societal event that's happened in the past 50 years.
You know, and I think it did show that you can appeal to fear, you know, in a very powerful way, in a very destructive way.
And that's, you know, for whatever reason, people, particularly on the left, are doing.
So that's a lot to unpack.
Just when it gets to like why this happens, why everyone's been psyoped, why Jimmy Kimmel and SNL and all the news, you know, I think it actually gets to what you said about the studies, about the human randomized control studies in organic food.
I think, in a way, and Casey talks about this so eloquently, Is that I think the science has actually detached us from our spirit.
And I think we're born with this innate sense of common sense and an innate sense of what's good for us.
I mean, throughout all of human history, we knew natural food was good.
We knew being in the sun was good.
We knew movement was good.
You know, we knew, you know, almost like mindfulness was good.
And I think modern society has systematically hijacked these Basically factors that our cells innately need.
We have chronic stress all day with our phones and with trillions of dollars of incentives that attack our attention.
You know, I was just with a friend who has chickens and a chicken coop, and just turning the light on inside a chicken coop all day produces two times more eggs.
Their hormones change so much just with the light on that they produce two times more eggs.
I mean, we have so many stimuli around us with, you know, light.
And with what's happening in our circadian rhythm and with all the toxins in the air, I don't think we fully realize how much these things are like changing our hormones.
So anyway, these are all common sense things.
But then we get hit over the head with the studies in the NIH. There's literally a study and an academic disagreement questioning whether microplastics are bad for Americans.
That's literally a scientific debate happening at the NIH. Right now, 0.5% of a child's brain is made of plastic.
0.5% because there's so much microplastics.
And there is literally at the NIH an argument on whether there's enough human randomized controlled trials to study whether that's a good thing.
There's an argument right now with the NIH of whether crude oil, these food colorings in our food, Are appropriate or not for kids?
These are banned in every other country and are linked to ADHD. And there's a discussion of whether there's enough human randomized control study trials.
Do we need human randomized control study trials to know whether glyphosate, which requires a hazmat suit to spray and kills every organism in sight by design, whether that ingesting into our kids' bodies at a massive scale is good?
Do we need a human randomized control trial on whether crude oil food colorings are good?
We've kind of lost the plot, and I think, Russell, it's kind of taken us away from nature, from the sense of the cycles of how our soil and environment connects to our health.
I truly do think this, and this is the type of concepts we're talking about, we don't need a multi- You know, step, 20-page nutritional guidelines.
You know, we need to talk about getting back to nature, getting back to whole food, you know, avoiding processed crap.
If we just have that type of leadership, that type of common sense leadership from our scientific authorities, I think we could be transformed.
But at the end of the day, this is something you talk about so eloquently.
It's getting more in touch with nature.
It's like, it's actually, you know, understanding basic, innate, common sense.
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The false markers of technological ascent and medical expertise in certain areas has perhaps distracted us from the fact that when it comes to eternity, humankind evolves, changes, grows, depends on your theology, at a different pace.
And we've been sort of led to believe that we're at some kind of apex as a result of the ingenuity of a handful of people that have brought about innovation in the areas that I just outlined, whether medical or Or technological.
When you talk about the left's kind of, it'd be difficult not to regard it as demonic, but it's certainly materialist abandon of personal autonomy, personal authority in favour of technocracy.
The elevation of expertise and science, but not science itself.
With the objectivity and imperialism, excuse me, empiricism, that we are accustomed to, but science as a subset of certain economic imperatives, meaning certain clinical trials will never be undertaken lest the data produced be unfavourable,
has meant that we've entered into this kind of inert and parasitical zombie era, where people, through rationalism and through reason, ironically, have led themselves to an Irrational perspective.
That irrational perspective being that objectivity can be achieved without clarity and transparency.
That the word science itself is sufficient to navigate the obvious interests that masquerade and manoeuvre behind the results we see and the results that we don't see.
And like you, I share some optimism around Elon Musk because...
Because as well as being an obvious genius, he's a kind of trickster figure that is willing to engage in territories that are potentially quite explosive, novel and innovative.
Whilst I am aware of the kind of attacks that he may receive when it comes to a subject like transhumanism, i.e.
Neuralink being kind of When you isolate the issue of free speech, it's pretty plain that in the same way that Trump disrupted and created a kind of havoc at bare minimum within the political establishment because of his novel approach to communication and his utilisation of social media,
Musk, too, whatever else you say about him, the people with the kind of power that leads to the economics of sick children being a priority and baked into the American economy.
The mentality that requires perpetual war for the American economy to be sustained, and then you just have to reverse engineer the reason for these wars.
Oh, well, you know, Putin's a criminal, or China are doing this, or this is happening.
You know, they are brilliant.
At justifying the monsters they've created, and in fact denying that they're monsters, claiming in fact that they are saviours.
So what I see is when you kill God in the sort of famous Nietzschean edict, and replace that God with a kind of a human power, whether that's human power expressed through governmental or commercial institutions, That has a tendency towards what, from a theological perspective, could be regarded as demonic or even evil outcomes, because you've extracted the universal principles upon which God relies, i.e.
we are here to love one another, sacrifice ourselves for the betterment of one another.
If you live in a rationalist and materialist purview, then you are the summit and apex of your own life, and your pleasure and the avoidance of fear are Are the priorities just from a sort of a biological and instinctual perspective, which is frankly all that's left if you remove invisible spiritual power.
You can concoct morality from that.
You can concoct a new morality that curiously often is against the taxonomies and categories of God.
Like there's no such thing as man or woman.
There's no such thing as a child.
There's no such thing as healthy food versus not healthy food.
There's no such thing as an unnecessary war.
All of these categories melt away and fall away in the bewilderment that their godlessness has engendered.
And the state, having displaced God, lays claim to the powers of that God.
You are bad.
You should be killed.
You're allowed to live.
You're not allowed to live.
You are elevated.
You are destroyed.
The state, which is just a sort of a conundrum and collective of humans, becomes all-powerful.
And as I suppose we've been talking around, perhaps it's not just human.
It's that which is fallen within humans.
That which is, when light, a kind of false light, and which, when it's dark, is a darkness that leads to a requirement for your children to eat poison in order for your economy to flourish.
Can you write a book on that thesis?
I think you've just summed up in my head.
It's impossible for me to articulate, but I think why people feel so optimistic right now.
I think in a weird way, this person you talked about, this icon, Donald Trump, this unexpected prophet, It's batting away at this orthodoxy that's going to destroy the country.
I think we have lost God.
I think we've lost our connection to nature.
I think we've lost common sense.
I think there's, without assigning motives, there's this unrelenting assault.
I mean, look at what's happening in the Supreme Court today.
They're literally arguing that a two-year-old can decide their gender and that there's just no kind of To difference there.
I mean, you have true, true evil things happening and trying to be normalized.
And I think the Donald Trump election was like a primal scream enough.
And I'll tell you, right?
And I think we all see this.
There's not The agenda is just to do a lot, I think.
It's the Elon kind of, let's do a lot.
Let's have the premise of free speech.
We're going to ask questions about these things.
We're going to expose them.
We're going to have rough and tumble conversations.
And then let's get people in there that see things clearly, that love their institutions, that they're taking over.
All these cabinet appointees, you know, Bobby Kennedy wants people to be healthy and wants the American healthcare system to thrive, but he's got a skeptical eye of the institution.
So I think you've just articulated the almost spiritual promise and opportunity of a Trump presidency.
There's going to be many, many pitfalls and many, many challenges, but I think we should hold to that optimism.
Kali, thanks man.
Thank you very much for...
I feel genuinely heartened when I see what's happening in your life.
The optimism that you've referred to alongside its shadow is nourished in me by just by sort of allowing myself to think, wait a minute...
If Callie Means and Casey Means are in a position of influence, things can't be the same as they were before under the duplicitous proclamations of the previous administration.
Because this is someone I've spoke to, who I've felt educate in me, and I've seen educate in others.
And every time I speak to him, I come away knowing, oh, 80% of the NIH funding comes with this, 75%.
0.5% microplastics.
You know, I think, like, when I was doing the podcast, you know, like, and, you know, which I'm still doing, like, one of the recurrent things was, like, wait, like, there are good people, it's just these good people are marginal and often maligned, and what has to happen...
Clearly, it's like, you know, Marty Makari and Jay Bhattacharya and Kali Means and Casey Meade.
If all these people are suddenly in positions where they're making decisions that direct the American, whatever this beast is that lives on sickness and eats cancer, lubricated by processed seed oil, if this beast is a confronted, tamed, slain, you're going to have a different America.
That's like, that's not even hyperbole other than The image system I used was pretty bold.
It's simple common sense.
Thank you.
Well, in my head, when you say that, Russell, I appreciate that so much.
I think the defining aspect of this election was independent media.
Like, I truly think what you are doing and the voices you brought to the forefront is changing the world.
And I think, you know, people say this dismissively, the podcast kind of impacted policy.
I think it's one of the most important developments.
You know, in American history.
I think the fact that you brought the microphone to this and you have a lot of influence and our friends in the independent media space, it's a huge, huge thing because the side of light, the side of truth, not necessarily the side that's right, but the side that's even asking the questions has the power right now.
Yeah, I think the other thing I just say is what's going to transform American health more than any single policy.
It's just everyone that's connected with this message.
I mean, it's just been like on my micro level, just been like unbelievable hearing from people like reading our book that seen me and my sister on your podcast and Tucker's and others.
And I just think, like, just little microchanges we make in our lives, like, that's where almost the spiritual element kicks.
If, like, enough people see the system for what it is and get outside of it and think about homeschooling or think about, you know, going against orthodoxies on medicine and food, that does level up.
And I think You know, this is raw politics, and I think why this Maha movement has such an opportunity is because politicians see voters really care about it.
I mean, that's what happened and why I'm optimistic, is I think you're going to see Democrats try to take this mantle and out Maha.
That's a good thing.
There's real voters behind this.
And I think we both have so many people, particularly moms, who are just fired up about what's happening to kids and our audiences.
Just keep that up.
That's my big hope, seeing a little bit on the inside.
If people can just not forget this optimism and just keep making changes in their own lives, that impacts politics.
Yeah, that's pretty powerful.
Yeah, thank you for that.
I see your book in a lot of places, you and your sister's book, and I see that and I think, wow, it's reaching people.
People are being changed.
And if 0.5% of microplastics in a child's brain...
Could be considered to be a negative influence.
Perhaps if we can influence their mind, even to that degree, it will create a change of direction.
I do feel really heartened, because what it is, even if it were like...
I guess the fear is that it gets reduced to a tactic.
It's like, you know, because by keeping that over-teen window so tight, people will be like...
Surely if someone comes on and says, we're going to make your children healthier, everyone's going to want that, right?
Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or a Libertarian or Ku Klux Klan or a Communist, if the pledge is, we want your children to live longer and to be happier...
You're going to turn your head and awaken from your ideological haze and go, oh yeah, that's more important.
And the only way that wasn't an influential factor up to now is because the entire political space was captured to some degree because when you have a less fluid media, you can strangle these conversations in the crib.
And maybe 30 years ago, Callie, you would have been like, oh, did you ever read that book by that guy?
Oh yeah, yeah, that was interesting.
That was ahead of its time.
But now it's like, Bobby Kennedy's running the massive HHS and this dude's got his ear.
It's like the technology, as it always does, affects temporality, affects cadence, affects rhythm.
And as a result of that, it's like something's got fast-tracked.
It could have been when you were 70 years old.
And finally, Cali Means was able to run a small farm based on his ideas.
And now it's like, what?
This guy's telling Johnson& Johnson and Kraft where they can stick it.
Well, it's day by day.
It's day by day.
It's great.
We're feeling great here.
There's dark forces, but...
It is so heartening to see people like Jay Bhattacharya, Marty McCary, Jim O'Neill, Dr. Oz.
I mean, these are really, really good people.
And you're right.
Like, good, good people are in charge.
People that really want to do the right thing.
And it's really, really heartening to see.
Kali Means, you are first among them.
Thank you so much for everything you've done.
Thank you for joining us today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
Thank you, sir.
Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Callie Means as much as I did, and you're filled with the kind of optimism that one feels when you know it's possible to change the world, and that you are a participant in that, not a spectator.
That it is your glory that will light the way.
That you matter.
That your life is important.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
We will be back soon, not with more of the same, but with more of the different.
Until then, if you can, stay free.
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