The Flow, the Magic & the Poetry

Summary

Armstrong & Getty On Demand

Episode: The Flow, the Magic & the Poetry
Date: July 8, 2026
Host(s): Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty
Notable Guest: Mike Lyons, Military Analyst

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Episode Overview

This episode opens with breaking news and analysis about the renewed U.S.-Iran hostilities in the Strait of Hormuz, featuring military analyst Mike Lyons' expert commentary. The hosts later shift to lighter topics like the drama and excitement of the World Cup, the cultural nuances of global soccer fandom, and a well-grounded look at sleep and exercise studies. The show’s distinctive mix of current events, practical life advice, and humorous cultural observations is on full display.

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Key Segments & Insights

1. U.S. Strikes in Iran & Escalation Analysis

[02:10 - 12:21]

• Breaking News: The U.S. has conducted substantial strikes on Iranian targets in response to attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, with reported hits on 60 Revolutionary Guards small boats and military infrastructure.

  • “We hit Iran pretty hard. I guess we'll find out how hard when we ask Mike Lyons here in a second.” (B, 03:10)

• Expert Military Analysis (with Mike Lyons):

  • Not Proportional Anymore:
    • "This is not a proportional response back. ...That’s a good sign.” (E, 04:05)
  • Target Selection:
    • "Iranian air defense systems, command and control networks, the coastal radar sites, those are so key. ...Target rich environment from a military perspective." (E, 04:13)
  • Strategy of ‘Repairable Deterrence’:
    • "I'm for this, you know, this repairable deterrence...set them back when it comes to raising revenue." (E, 04:57)
  • NATO Relations:
    • Lyons discusses the role of NATO allies, highlighting “Trump whisperer” Mark Rutte’s effective diplomatic approach.
      • “Rutte cracks the code. He validates him publicly ... lets Trump be Trump.” (E, 06:54)

• Potential for Further Escalation:

  • Trump is reportedly considering a renewed blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
  • Lyons critiques the U.S. campaign’s length and ambiguity:
    • "Those in the military, we felt that it really wasn't finished. ...It should have gone on at least 45, even 60 days." (E, 08:05)
  • Risks & Worst Cases:
    • The biggest risk is an internal Iranian humanitarian crisis, potentially blamed on the US, and outside intervention from China. (09:14)

• Regional Complexity:

  • There’s skepticism about surrounding Gulf states joining the conflict, with a brief primer on the Sunni-Shia divide shaping Middle East politics.
    • "Middle Eastern politics...a lot of it has to do with that, the Shia, Sunni divide." (E, 11:23)

Notable Quotes

• “They're scum... They're led by sick people. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over.”
  — Armstrong, quoting Trump on Iran (B/E, 12:42–12:46)

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2. World Cup Drama & Soccer Culture

[16:44 - 21:50]

• Argentina vs. Egypt – “The Poetry of the Game”

  • Armstrong recaps the epic comeback by Argentina, led by Messi, and marvels at the emotional intensity of the Spanish-language commentators.
    • “Is it because they don't have other sports they care about in these countries that they get so excited? Messi was just bawling like a child, just crying his eyes out.” (B, 17:09)
  • Noting the contrast between American sports culture and the global soccer passion.
    • “I still contend that if we cared about soccer and our best players played soccer, we would dominate soccer around the world.” (B, 18:17)
  • Commentary on the oft-touted “magic and poetry” of soccer:
    • “I just haven't been able to get into the flow of the magic of the poetry of the game or whatever. It just looks to me like hockey on grass.” (B, 21:04)

• Viewership Boom and Demographic Jokes

  • “Maybe the 33 million people watching soccer is a true barometer of how many people came into the country illegally when Biden was in charge.” (Listener text, 19:54)

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3. Sleep, Exercise, and Statistical Studies: Debunking Myths

[23:06 - 35:07]

• Sleep Study Insights

  • Meta-analyses show that:
    • Highest mortality rates: 9–11 hours of sleep/night.
    • No danger in 6.5–8 hours for most adults; “Seven is more of a magic number than eight.”
      • “Risk doesn't really rise much below eight until you get down to below six... But six and a half hours of sleep a night, perfectly okay.” (B, 24:17)
  • The dangers of overinterpreting headlines:
    • “It’s really easy to tell any kind of story you want to tell with statistics.” (B, 24:07)

• Exercise & Misleading Headlines

  • Exercise lowers mortality risk by 13%; not as high as hoped, but significant.
  • Critique of media reports on swimming vs. running benefits, noting confounding factors like higher smoking rates among swimmers.
    • “Twice as many swimmers smoke as runners. Right there, you're gonna have a major difference.” (B, 27:52)
  • Advocacy for short bursts of energy and weight training for both brain and body health.
  • General life advice:
    • “If you've been out of the groove for a while, it's really, really hard to get started. But I can tell you once you get started, once you get going, it's going to be so much easier.” (B, 34:18)

• Memorable Moment: On overcoming inertia with exercise

  • “Just like all kinds of other stuff we have to make ourselves do regularly. ... Exercise has certainly worked that way for a lot of people.” (B, 34:22)

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4. Gym Culture, Aging, and Humor

[35:07 - 37:48]

• Relatable Gym Stories:
  • Co-host discusses injuring himself simply sitting on gym equipment; hosts exchange authentic, funny takes on changing fitness routines as you age.
    • “So basically just the activity of sitting down, you hurt yourself? Yes. You weren’t even to the lifting weights?” (B/C, 35:25)
  • Observations about “super studs” at the gym and the etiquette (or lack thereof) of tank-top-wearing, screaming, weight-dropping types:
    • “He walks by and it's just a cloud of odor. Screaming, dropping weights and you smell horrible. ... I'll skip today or come back tomorrow.” (B, 36:17–36:50)

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5. Wikipedia Co-Founder Banned & Bias in Institutions

[41:58 - 45:45]

• Wikipedia Founder's Lifetime Ban:
  • The show's hosts share that Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, has been banned for life after criticizing the platform's increasing leftward ideological bias.
    • “Any organization not specifically designed to be conservative drifts leftward over time. ... Even ones that were specifically designed to be conservative in some cases drift leftward over time.” (B, 43:21)
  • Reflect on Internet culture and information control; personal notes on switching to chatbots instead of Wikipedia.

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Military Analyst Mike Lyons on U.S. Response

  • “This is not a proportional response back. ...That’s a good sign.” (04:05, E)
  • “He [Rutte] validates [Trump] publicly. ... He’s kind of a Trump whisperer when it comes to that.” (06:54, E)

• On World Cup Soccer

  • “It just looks to me like hockey on grass. ... I need a little more out of my sport.” (21:04, B)
  • “Messi was just bawling like a child... They act like their life's on the line.” (17:09, B)

• Debunking Health Headlines

  • “It’s really easy to tell any kind of story you want to tell with statistics.” (24:07, B)
  • “Six and a half hours of sleep a night, perfectly okay. ... Seven is more of a magic number than eight.” (24:17, B)

• Cultural Reflection

  • “Any organization not specifically designed to be conservative drifts leftward over time.” (43:21, B, quoting Tim Sandifer)

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Structure

• Opening: Breaking coverage of U.S.-Iran escalation and expert military analysis.
• Current Events to Culture: Soccer’s deep meaning elsewhere vs. U.S. indifference, interlaced with dry, witty observations.
• Lifestyle & Health: Practical mythbusting on sleep and exercise, with application to everyday life.
• Humor & Relatability: Aging, gym culture, and funny workout mishaps.
• Media & Societal Trends: Exploring Wikipedia’s trajectory and the broader implications for truth and institutions.

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For First-Time Listeners

This episode is a quintessential Armstrong & Getty blend of timely global affairs, practical science, and wry social commentary. Even if you missed the show, you’ll walk away with a clearer view of U.S.-Iran tensions, helpful (and myth-busting) health advice, and a good dose of laughter about life's weird little details—from gym fails to the quirks of modern information filters.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Broadcasting live from the Abraham Lincoln Radio Studio at the George Washington Broadcast Center, Jack Armstrong and Joe Getty. Armstrong and Getty. And now here's Armstrong and Getty. The US response has increased intensity. Eight times as many targets were hit compared to the last time the US responded to Iran firing on ships in the Strait. The targets include some 60 Revolutionary Guards small boats. CENTCOM also says the strikes included defense systems, Command and control networks, coastal radar sites and anti ship capabilities. And we have video of the US strikes and hitting in Bandar Abbas. Iran responded by firing into their neighbors Kuwait and Bahrain, the official Iranian news agency claims to have hit some 85 targets in those countries. Details on the number of targets are not confirmed by other sources, but sirens Sounded in Kuwait and Bahrain. No, this isn't a rerun. We aren't still on vacation. You're listening to old shows. We are back and this is new. We are back at war with Iran. It would seem Iran struck several ships in the strait, violating the mou. According to Trump, which he says is now dead, we hit Iran pretty hard. I guess we'll find out how hard when we ask Mike Lyons here in a second. And then Iran struck the countries around them as they like to do. Where it goes from now, I do not know. Welcome Mike Lyons to the Armstrong and Getty show again. Mike served with various military organizations in both the United States and Europe throughout his career. Got his degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point. Hey Mike, what'd you think of this? How big a deal was this? How hard a strike was this? Just a little love tap, a let you know we're still paying attention or did we hit them hard?

[E]

Yeah, thanks for having me back. I've always thought that this has been the end of escalation management from the very beginning. So I published an article in Wall Street Journal about that. And centcom is reporting 80 targets hit with precision munitions. So this is not a proportional response back. This is not a tit for tat what we had been doing in the past. And so I think that that's a good sign. I do believe now it just gets back to, you know, what are those targets? It looks like Iranian air defense systems command and control networks, the coastal radar sites, those are so key. It looks like some of their anti ship missile capabilities now are more out in the open. And Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps, I mean the small boats, you know, it just shows you the target rich environment it is from a military perspective when we stop, probably stops too soon. And it looks like our response back is disproport.

[B]

Well, Trump just said a few minutes ago we're probably going to hit him hard again tonight. So you're saying there's plenty of stuff to hit?

[E]

Yeah, no question. And I think, you know, we were, he's got to figure out a way still to, you know, make sure that it's, it's not completely destroyed when the country's, you know, when we finally move this thing forward. And so I'm for this, you know, this repairable deterrence going after some of their revenue capabilities but not necessarily destroying, you know, entire oil fields and entire things. But they're quasi military targets that would make them very easy to repair when the time comes, but set them back when it comes to trying to raise revenue and things like that. So there's still many military targets to hit, many to go after, and we're at the cleanup phase of that now, I think.

[B]

So There was some reporting over the weekend that Trump had decided a while back we were going to use our military and force that straight back open, and Saudi Arabia talked him out of it. So I guess that still might be on the table if Iran's not willing to stop firing on ships.

[E]

Yeah, that would really ramp up with our off tempo. The pace that our military is working. We'd have to bring maybe some more destroyers and cruisers into the region. Even though we have three carrier strike groups right now, they're more focused on the aircraft and the carrier themselves. But that's a mission that we could do. It could take months, but it means really softening up any of the coastal batteries that seem to exist that are there. The fact that they can get off any shots whatsoever, either using drones or any kind of precision munitions, just shows they still have this capability.

[B]

Well, Trump's over there talking to all the NATO leaders. The big NATO meeting and the NATO Secretary General said this morning that what the United States did was perfectly appropriate, had to be done. I mean, and that's not the way NATO's really been talking about this whole Iran operation the whole time. So is there any chance we get any help from any of our NATO allies on this at this point?

[E]

Yeah. Mark Pertay's influence on Trump, to me, is a masterclass on how to manage him. Right. All these other NATO leaders just can't manage Trump. Right. Macron thinks he's smarter than him. The Germans try to be more technical. Let's say Keir Starmer, he failed miserably. But I think Rutte cracks the code. He validates them publicly. As soon as Trump got on with that, the MOU is over. Rute couldn't say it any quicker. I'm with you in the same breath. Right. So very clearly he's kind of a Trump whisperer when it comes to that. Now, the downside is that he's really only managing him. He's not maybe not advising him, but he at least speaks his language. He's not trying to be Macron. He's not trying to be some other leader that's trying to be Trump's peer. He lets kind of Trump be Trump. And I think from what we are right now, I think that's still a good thing. I think it's a good thing for NATO. I think it's going to Keep well inside of NATO. Yeah.

[B]

Trump's talking as we're talking to you. So he's saying more things like we may put the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz back in place. So we might be back, right back to where we were two and a half weeks ago by the end of tonight.

[E]

Yeah. The whip song is challenging for the military going back and forth again. The blockade just means repositioning some of those ships. I think most of the military community that I had spoken to didn't think we had finished the job, so to speak. We gave the President enough leverage to start the talk. I think he needed that for making sure that oil prices didn't go crazy and he was keeping one eye on the politics of this. But I think those in the military, we felt that it really wasn't finished. That this campaign should have gone on longer than 37 days is really what it went on for. It should have went on at least 45, even 60. It should have had a better logical conclusion with a clear sign of U.S. victory.

[B]

Well, the Wall Street Journal is reporting today is that they were making no progress whatsoever, like zero on the whole details around nuclear weapons, which was what the whole war was about. So. Yeah, which doesn't surprise me in the least. So what's the worst case scenario? Worst case scenario, obviously, is that Iran gets a nuclear weapon, but we prosecute this war, we continue to go forward and put pressure on us. What, what should we watch out for that could go wrong?

[E]

Well, you know, they had some kind of internal revolution and you have this humanitarian crisis that exists inside because the country, because it implodes. The United States gets blamed for that or something. I don't think we have to worry about. You know, there's potentially going to hit some of our military targets, but there's not a situation that I can see that we're in trouble now. Unless the Chinese decide to enter the picture, if they decide, which I think should have been part of the MOU anyway, I think that we should have made sure that no other countries were going to come in and assist Iran. That MOU is all front loaded for the Iranians. All the United States activities were on the backside of it. And we don't want the Chinese in there, we don't want any other countries in there. And we also need stronger Gulf states to make sure that they're focused on making sure we take this to the end. But, but what goes wrong? I think the real, the real challenge would be more inside of Iran, humanitarian crisis, 90 million people. It's a lot to feed and keep water. And if the Iranian government collapses, you know, how do they do that?

[B]

Yeah, that's a good point. So also, part of the Wall Street Journal reporting today was that Iran has gotten back a fair amount of their capability. Was that with the help of China and Russia, that they rebuilt all that stuff.

[E]

I think they just basically took it out of the mountains and they had a lot to begin with. And again, from a scale perspective, they still can't deploy hundreds at a time. But when you have a lot, when you sneak, take a thousand rockets, let's say, or a thousand missiles and hide them in the mountains and hide them in places. If you look at the geography of Iran, easy to do. And all that they're doing now is just deploying those that are out there. So that's where they're more targets for us to kind of go after. I think that's really what happened. There's no industrial capability to fix anything. That's not really on. On the table. It's the fact that just shows you the level of ballistic missile capability. They always had tens of thousands of missiles that they had read that had built and been ready for this fight.

[B]

Are any of those countries surrounding Iran that keep getting hit by the Iranians gonna finally, like, really join us in this battle?

[E]

Well, that's another great question. And it just shows you how Middle Eastern politics are more, in some ways based on religion. A lot of it has to do with that, the Shia, Sunni divide that exists in that part of the world. And so you can't change the geography. Right. I mean, Qatar and the UAE are doing what they can to avoid the straits. They're building tunnels and things like that, but they should have been building them before. The Saudis already did that. They've got a pipeline going to the Red Sea. But the politics are just not what we're used to. And they have to. They recognize that there are what they are.

[B]

Well, I have a feeling there's a chance we might be talking to you again later this week after a couple of more rounds of strikes in Iran. Mike Lyons, military analyst. You can follow him on Twitter. AJ Is in Major at Major M A J. Mike Lyons. I go there whenever something happens to see what you thought about it. Thanks, Mike.

[E]

Thanks for having me.

[B]

The war's back on, I think. Clearly. Well, let's play this just because we got a moment. Find my sheet here.

[D]

Play,

[B]

play. 42 to me. I think it's over.

[E]

I don't want to deal with them anymore.

[B]

They're scum.

[E]

You know what?

[B]

Scummies.

[E]

They're scum.

[B]

They're sick people. They're led by sick people. There's something wrong with them. They're cuckoo. As far as I'm concerned, it's over that he was asked about the MoU, the memorandum of understanding that, you know, brought about the 60 day ceasefire and they get their money back before we start the nuclear talks, which never happened. Shock, shock, shock. Trump saying, it's over. They're cuckoo. It's over. I hope he means it because he says this sort of stuff about Putin or the mullahs or the irgc and then, you know, by the end of the day he'll say no. He talked to do a guy and he sounds like he's a. It's really exciting. JD Vance will come out and say, you know what's really cool is they, they, they now understand that they've been doing, doing the wrong thing all these years, which was just the lamest thing that has ever come out of J.D. vance's mouth. Oh, anyway, does Trump change his tune on this? I do not know if we'll have more on this topic a little bit later, partially because Trump's talking about it as we speak. So we got other stuff on the way. I wanna get to, um. We didn't play enough of the Momdani fourth of July address. I've got some stuff on exercise, a little more on that sleep study that I wanted to get to. So stick around, please.

[A]

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I don't even know if it's a game or a match. Do you call it a soccer game or a soccer match or do you. Can you use both? Anyway, a number of people are calling it one of the best of those that's ever occurred in the World Cup. Yesterday, Argentina, the defending World cup champ, was down two nothing at like the 80 minute mark. They play 90 minutes, which is way too many minutes for me. So I had heard that Argentina made a comeback in the last 10 minutes, which they did. They came back and they won 3, 2, including their star player, Lionel Messi, who's considered by many people to be the greatest soccer player of all time. And he's old now and he's this would be his last World Cup. So he scores one of the games. So I did watch in real time the last 10 or so minutes of the dang thing. And it was very, very exciting. It was two nothing Egypt.

[D]

It was good.

[B]

About to pull off one of the great upsets in World cup history. And Argentina comes back. But I got a couple of goal calls here for you. They're both in Spanish. This one is from. I don't remember what channel from. This is From. But this is on one of the goals. Is it because they don't have other sports they care about in these countries that they get so excited? I mean, Messi was just bawling like a child, just crying his eyes out because it would have been the end of his World cup career had they lost. And it looked like they were going to lose and they came back and won. And we just, we have so many sports and year round and move from this and that. I mean, I get excited too, but man, they, they act like their life's on the line for these things. And I still contend that if we cared about soccer and our best players played soccer, we would dominate soccer around the world. Can you imagine if Steph Curry had played soccer? Anyway, that's ugly American talk right there. I heard this one. I like this one from Telemundo. Cuz the guy gets so excited he just runs out of gas.

[E]

Go.

[B]

Are you all right? Are you okay, sir? See how emotional they get about this? It's a bigger deal to them than it is to us. For whatever reason, Guy. It was exciting. Like I said though, I, I'm understanding it more and I'm able to watch it a little more. Oh, I'm. I, I did say earlier. So 33 million people tuned in to USA Belgium, which we lost. We looked horrible. Biggest US crowd for soccer ever in the history of the sport. 33 million people. We got this text. Maybe the 33 million people watching the soccer is a true barometer of how many people came into the country illegally when Biden was in charge. You might be right about that. Maybe that's just because we let in so many people from other countries where they care about soccer. I can't imagine myself watching the full 90 minutes. So it's just I, I'm trying to buy into what I see about the poetry of the game and the rhythm that you get used to of the moving the ball up and down the field and then the rare scoring moments being so much more important than in our stupid American sports where you score every two minutes and scores don't matter. Using their words, not mine. And. But I just haven't been able to get into the. The flow of the magic of the poetry of the game or whatever. It just looks to me like hockey on hockey on grass. Where. So Argentina, the defending world champs, so they scored two goals last night and I think they've had 10 World cup games in a row where they've scored two goals or more, which is the all time record two goals in an hour and a half is just not enough action for me. I don't know. And I'm not part of the TikTok generation. It's just I need a little more out of my sport. But anyway, that one was exciting and I watched it. And how many people are going to watch now that the United States is out? I don't know if the ratings will drop. I don't know if I'll watch anymore. I suppose I will, or maybe I won't. Or maybe I'll catch the highlights. So I want to finish up on the sleep study they had in the New York Times combined with an exercise thing that they've got. This is all the latest information meta studies with many, many thousands of people. I really think this is valuable information worth hearing.

[A]

Coming up Armstrong and Getty Summer is here, which means we all want to look and feel our best. A GLP1 may be right for you. Visit orderlymeds.com to learn more about which GLP1 you could be eligible for. Getting started is fast, easy, and happens virtually through telemedicine from licensed professionals. Check it out for yourself. Go to orderlymeds.com podcast that's orderlymeds.com podcast taking care of yourself feels great. Compounded medications are not FDA approved. Eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

[C]

The best skaters, BMX riders and moto athletes in the world don't compete in leagues until now. The X Games League Championship is live From New Orleans, July 24 through 26. Three days of elite action sports, plus performances from Metro, Boomin, Jid Subtronics and bunt watch on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 stream on the ESPN app, Roku Kick, Amazon and X Games YouTube. The inaugural champion gets crowned this July.

[D]

I'm Glenn Washington, host of Snap Judgment from kqed. Every week, snap drops you inside someone's biggest decision. The kind of decision you can only make once. With everything on the line, what do you believe? What do you want? And what would you risk to get it? Find out Snap Judgment New episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts.

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[B]

Dolly Parton musical apparently. Is it going to be on Broadway? About her life. I've always liked Dolly Parton since I was a little kid, but I feel like enough with Dolly Parton already. Just, I don't know, she's the new Betty White. She's an old person that we're all supposed to just be enthralled with constantly. Yeah, I'm not hating on Dolly Parton just enough with Dolly Parton already. So I took a graduate statistics class many years ago in college and luckily I had a very, very good teacher who hammered the point home all of the time. He would, he would hit you with a number. New study says, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, let's think about that for a second. And he would delve into all of the reasons why the stat that came out of this particular study may be incredibly misleading. And he did that with everything. And that was like his main thing, which I think was good because Joe always quotes the, the, the famous Mark Twain saying about statistics. There's three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics. Because it's really easy to tell any kind of story you want to tell with statistics for all the reasons we're about to get into here. But. So I like doing that and I think it's helpful. And the media does a terrible job of that. Part of it is the clickonomics world. So that if you have a study that says, and we talked about this a couple of months back because it was a New York Times article, swimming much less beneficial as an exercise than running. Way more people die doing swimming as an exercise is running. Incredibly misleading headline. But that's all the further you get with most mainstream media coverage. They give you a 30 second version and then they move on and you're incredibly misinformed. You'd have been better off if you hadn't heard the story at all. We'll get into that particular thing here in just a little bit. But I started on the sleep thing last hour and I wanted to pay that off. I like meta analysis. And this is what they are doing in the New York Times with this doctor over the weekend. That's when you look at lots of different studies or lots of different big studies and you put it all together and you kind of go from there as opposed to one PhD did a small study at a university somewhere and they can't replicate it, which is the sort of thing that gets repeated in the media. All the time. That stuff is practically worthless. These are meta studies. And with these meta studies they found that the highest mortality rates were with people who sleep nine to 11 hours a night. Eight hours is not the magic number. Risk doesn't really rise much below eight until you get down to below six. You have to get less than six hours of sleep before you start to match the death rate of people. Mortality risk, health risk of people who sleep nine to 11 hours. So between like six and a half and nine, it's all about the same. And it just depends on different people have different amounts they need. And this was good news to me because I get between six and a half, seven. That's about what I live with, that's what I feel best with. And it says here that's perfectly fine. But when you're getting into the stuff I'm talking about on how you can be misled about these sorts of things is why do people in the 9 to 11 hours a night category have worse health outcomes? Well, there's all kinds of different reasons. Perhaps if you're sleeping that much, it's because you're depressed. Perhaps if you're sleeping that much, it's because you've got some sort of injury or sickness that causes you to sleep that much. That has nothing to do with how much you sleep. It's just it keeps you in bed a lot more. You know, it's pretty easy to imagine these sorts of things, but six and a half hours of sleep a night, perfectly okay. There was one other number I wanted to hit you with in here. Studies show an association between sleep duration and mortality. Often find that the lowest risk of mortality clusters around seven hours. So seven is more of a magic number than eight, according this method analysis. I don't know where it came from originally. It's been around my whole life. I don't know who religion really decided that, but we really should throw around the number seven as the number that most of us need. You know, some where on either side of that I need a little less. Joey talks about he needs a little more, but it's, it's not eight. That's a little higher than we need. Now to the exercise stuff, which I thought was really, really interesting. A review of a whole bunch of different tests averaged together many tens of thousands of people found that exercise lowered mortality risk by 13%. I'm a little disappointed that it's not more than that. I wanted it to be more than that. 13% ain't nothing, but it ain't as high as I wanted. But we talked about that swimming study that came out a while back that found that swimming didn't lower mortality rates, but running did. And that was the headline everybody ran with. And then they went about a half inch deep and no more. As it says here, by this doctor doing the meta analysis and using their brain to think about this, does that mean that swimming isn't effective as an exercise? No, it does not. When you look more closely at the data in the appendix of the study, which you know the CBS Evening News isn't going to do, they're just going to tell you swimming actually does not lower your mortality rate. Isn't that interesting? In other news, Taylor Swift's wedding. When you look at the appendix of the study, which media outlets don't apparently have time to do, swimmers were more, much more likely to not engage in other positive health behaviors for a variety of reasons. Swimmers don't do the other good things you should be doing to lower your risk of death that runners do. For instance, only about 5% of frequent runners smoke. It doubles for swimmers. Twice as many swimmers smoke his runners right there. You're gonna have a major difference. I was kind of struck by the fact that people that are regular runners, 5% out of them smoke 1 out of 20 regular runners smokes. It's kind of surprising to me. For swimmers, it's 1 out of 10. Swimmers were also more likely to have high blood pressure way more and to have a family history of cancer. One explanation is that doctors may recommend swimming as a low impact activity for people who are overweight or have other health problems. It's easier to do better for your joints and all that sort of stuff than running. So that's people that are less healthy to start with, so their risk of mortality goes up. That's just a for instance. And I would encourage y', all, whenever you hear any of these statistics, first of all, if they give you the 30 to 45 second version of any statistic about anything, you gotta dig into it because you almost certainly were missing a whole bunch of context. I mean, I don't remember a time whenever I've dug into a headline story with a big shocking statistic where it doesn't turn out there's some explanation for it. Oh, okay. Swimmers smoke twice as much as runners or whatever it is. Same with the sleep thing. Oh, okay. You don't. Sleeping 10 hours a day or 9 hours a day isn't gonna kill me. It's that people that sleep that much tend to have other problems. And see what I'M talking about. So. So I'm gonna continue to sleep my six and a half to seven hours and I'm gonna continue to exercise. Oh, just in general. They have found. We've talked about this a lot. Found that exercises that include short bursts of energy are really, really good for us for some reason. I guess that's the way we're designed. You know, you're walking across the Serengeti as a caveman and all of a sudden you see an antelope and you have to run really, really fast to hope to hit it with this beer. That's what we're kind of built for. So those short bursts of energy are really, really good for you and all kinds of stuff around weight training, which I love doing, but weight training is so good for your brain, not just your body, but really, really good for your brain and sends some sort of signals apparently to your brain that we're still alive, we're still needed. Muscles and brain are still needed. We're still doing something. I'm not still doing something, but it tricks my brain into thinking so. So it'll stave off dementia and keep you in better shape. Any I hope that was of some use to you. Have a bunch of other stuff I need to get to. I can't wait to read this thing Elon Musk said the other day about why America is exceptional. Pushing back against Mayor Mamdani and his speech that he gave over 4th of July that America is not exceptional. If we are exceptional, we're exceptional in bad ways. So we'll get to a pushback on that at some point. That I thought was really green, really good. Speaking of health outcomes, how about what you eat? That matters a lot and it's true for your dog too. And that's why we want you to try rough greens. Sprinkle it on your dog's food. You do not have to change your dog's food. You can if you want, but that's not got anything to do with this here commercial. We want you to try rough greens and sprinkle it on top of your current dog's food. Because this supplement, the number one dog supplement in America, is packed with live probiotics, enzymes, omega oils, over 20 vitamins and minerals, all natural, made in the USA. And it's not going to cost you anything to try it. Just cover the shipping. Get a free Jump Start trial bag today. Go to roughgreens.com and use the discount code Armstrong. That's R U f f greens.com discount code ARMSTRONG. Rough greens make Any dog food better. I will say this as a guy who currently exercises regularly and I've never really had a time where I was sedentary of my life, but I've had periods where I didn't exercise as much as I did now. And I know how hard it is to get started. If you, if you've been out of the groove for a while, it's really, really hard to get started. But I can tell you once you get started, once you get going, it's going to be so much easier. You just got to make yourself do it. Just like all kinds of other stuff we have to make ourselves do regularly. Clean the house, whatever it is. I'm on a writing kick right now where I'm trying to write every single day and I'm trying to make myself do it and I don't want to do it. And I'm hoping that if I make myself do it every day, it'll finally come naturally. Exercise has certainly worked that way for a lot of people. Enough of my preaching about that.

[C]

I hurt myself exercising though.

[B]

Always or just recently?

[C]

Just recently. Two days ago, I go to sit down in like a chest press machine and I sat down on the chair and I'm about ready to lift the weight and I just pulled my head back. All of a sudden I feel this pop and pulled like a neck muscle or something.

[B]

So basically just the activity of sitting down, you hurt yourself? Yes. You weren't even to the lifting weights?

[C]

No, no, I had to get up and leave.

[B]

I think you need to start slower if just sitting down is hurting you.

[D]

Yeah.

[B]

Did you crack your head against the machine or.

[C]

No, I was just getting it into, you know, proper position and I did something with my neck.

[B]

Uh huh.

[C]

But it's just, I guess part of being older.

[B]

But what kind of gym do you go to?

[C]

I would say it's sort of a family gym. I mean, you know, people of all ages.

[B]

Yeah, I, I go to a gym where there aren't that many super studs there just every once in a while.

[C]

Yeah, me too.

[B]

I don't need that kind of gym at this point in my life. It's just, it's too much grunting, too many dropping weights.

[C]

I can't stand that.

[B]

Yeah, the guy that needs to show

[C]

off for the whole gym.

[D]

God.

[B]

There's one guy that comes to my gym and luckily I don't cross paths with him very often, but he has to just scream everything he does. All right, we get it. You're lifting a lot of weight. Good for you. But come on, dude. I mean, it's just. It's comedic. It's like, it's a Saturday Night Live bit. It's so over the top. And then he always has to drop the weights. He can't set them down. Clang, bang, boom. And good for you. He's one of the guys that wears the tank tops with the, like, the holes are really big on the side of the tank top, so it's like you're basically shirtless. He's one of those guys too. Good for you. And he smells horrible. You can just. He walks by and it's just a cloud of odor. Screaming, dropping weights and you smell horrible. I have gone before where he's there and I think I'll. I'll skip today or I'll come back tomorrow. I can't do it. Oh, I just saw something on the TV about Caitlin Clark, the basketball player. Read an interesting piece in the National Review. I got to get to an hour three. That league is making such a mistake. Best thing that ever happened to the WNBA ever is Caitlin Clark. They voted for players, voted the other day for All Star. They voted her as the 11th best guard. She might be the best player ever in the WNBA history. They voted her currently as the 11th best guard in the league because they all hate her because she's white and she's straight. Really interesting story. Maybe we'll get to that now or three lots on the way. Stay here.

[A]

Armstrong and Getty. Summer is here at Orderly Meds. We know this time is a reminder that life is full of new beginnings. Whether you're celebrating the nice weather, starting a new chapter, planning a vacation, or simply looking ahead to what's next, this season can be the perfect time to invest in yourself and your health. If you've struggled with weight loss and are curious about GLP1 medications, orderly meds can help you learn about your options. Through a simple virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether treatment may be appropriate for you. Getting started is fast, convenient, and happens online from the comfort of home. This summer, consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com podcast to learn more. That's orderlymeds.com podcast orderlymeds.com podcast because every new season is an opportunity to take the next step forward. Compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

[C]

The first ever X Games League championship is going down live and New Orleans has the call. Three days of elite action sports. A season's worth of competition coming down to one final weekend. Watch July 24th through 26th on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, or stream on the ESPN app, X Games, YouTube, Kick, Roku sports channel and Amazon. The championship starts July 24th. Don't miss the moment it becomes history.

[D]

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[B]

Hi, Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Are you looking for a beach read this summer? May I suggest your big wireless bill? It's got some suspense, mystery, a slightly flat emotional arc, and a shocking twist where you realize you've been overpaying the entire time. Fortunately, though, Mint Story is better. Every plan $15 a month. Even unlimited. That's it. Happy ending, zero tears. Give it a [e-mail] Switch upfront payment

[A]

$45 for three months, $90 for six months or $180 for a 12 month plan. Required $15 per month equivalent taxes and fees. Extra initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy.

[E]

See terms Tower, we just had a firework hit our plane. Delta 1076. We're continuing. Delta 1076. Can you tell me if you had to I guess any further information about the fireworks? 200ft AGL 2250 AGL. But we just heard the bang on the plane, so we'll have to take a look at it once we get to the gate. And we're just hoping it was just the mortar that went off underneath, but definitely felt a big bang. There have been multiple reports as you can imagine. The city's aware. They said they would notify the Chicago police, but you know, I don't know what they'll do.

[B]

So did the plane actually get hit by fireworks?

[C]

Yeah, they think of it by a mortar they heard bang on the plane. I think like a mortar hit it.

[B]

Do they teach you at pilot school to be just extra monotone no matter what's going on? Is that and I'm not even trying to be jokey or sarcastic here, I wonder if that's to deal with a crisis easier that that no matter what happens, go with the Somebody's shooting explosives at us. Roger Tower. We'd like you to know that if we could stop the explosives that are hitting the plane we'd appreciate that. Click. Just to keep things calm. They're always so monotone. No matter. It's like the guy we had a couple of weeks ago who actually is a friend of a friend of mine. Talking about we have a family that was exposed to Ebola on the plane and just want to let you know we need to test them for Ebola as soon as we land. I guess they're just supposed to stay calm. I want to talk about the workplace violence training I took. Have you taken that yet, Michael?

[C]

Yeah, I took that one.

[B]

That's why you're not violent. Yeah, that's why you're so calm. I want to talk about that workplace violent training that I found quite hilarious. First this, we should talk to this guy. I co founded Wikipedia. Now I'm banned for life. This guy, Larry Sanger, he and another guy started wikipedia back in 2001 with the admirable game changing goal of democratizing information. It's known as the world's greatest encyclopedia that has ever existed. Wikipedia. I know a lot of you have troubles with Wikipedia. I used to use it every day prior to chat GPT and GROK and Claude and all that sort of stuff. I used Wikipedia every day. I don't think I've used it since I started using chatbots. And we also knew it got biased, which is what this co founder Larry Sanger says he started in 2001. They wanted to democratize information, have all of it be out there and anybody could get it for free. But after Sanger left Wikipedia, he watched in dismay. He says I'm quoting him. As the site I'd created began to drift from its founding mission, ideological bias took hold. Pages were whitewashed, left leaning outlets came to dominate, sourcing and a small group of administrators grew beholden more to each other than any constitutional framework. This is from one of the guys who invented and started Wikipedia who noticed that it started to slide left and they became all about trying to please each other rather than have, you know, straight down the middle, factual information. It reminds me of that saying and I don't remember where it came from. I know our friend Tim Sandifer has said it before. Any organization not specifically designed to be conservative drifts leftward over time. And I would say based on watching things, even ones that were specifically designed to be conservative in some cases drift leftward over time. It's got something to do with the iron law, bureaucracy and, and just whatever it is, everything drifts leftward. Last week this co original co founder of Wikipedia launched an effort to reform Wikipedia from within, only to be met with a coordinated effort to ridicule, discredit and undermine him, culminating in a lifetime ban on Monday. The guy who started Wikipedia with another dude got banned for life from Wikipedia, and he says, I knew Wikipedia's disciplinary processes were bad, but I had never experienced them myself. He he goes on to talk about how one of the miracles of the Internet age has abandoned truth and evolved into an emblem of our censorious age, and what his band reveals about the culture that allowed it. Guy who started Wikipedia now says it's so off the rails that he tried to reform it. He got banned for life. So well, you know, I wasn't using Wikipedia anymore. Like I said, I use chatbots for everything and I'm pretty happy with it most of the time. But how long until they drift so far left word that they're unusable like Wikipedia did? How much time I got, Michael?

[C]

30 seconds?

[B]

No, I don't have much time. I'll have to talk about my violence training, which makes me very, very angry later makes me want to punch a co worker. The fact that I have to put this off until hour three. But we'll also get to that the way the WNBA is handling the best thing that ever happened to them, Caitlin Clark and this is not a sports story. This is a cultural politics story. It's pretty darn interesting if you miss that for some reason. Get the podcast Armstrong and Getty on Demand

[A]

Armstrong and Getty Summer is here at Orderly Meds. We know this time is a reminder that life is full of new beginnings. Whether you're celebrating the nice weather, starting a new chapter, planning a vacation, or simply looking ahead to what's next, this season can be the perfect time to invest in yourself and your health. If you've struggled with weight loss and are curious about GLP1 medications, orderly meds can help you learn about your options. Through a simple virtual process, you can connect with licensed medical professionals who can determine whether treatment may be appropriate for you. Getting started is fast, convenient, and happens online from the comfort of home. This summer, consider a new approach to feeling your best. Visit orderlymeds.com podcast to learn more. That's orderlymeds.com podcast quarterly medicine because every new season is an opportunity to take the next step forward. Compounded medications are not FDA approved, eligibility required and determined by a licensed provider. Individual results may vary. See website for details.

[B]

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[C]

The first ever X Games League championship is going down live, and New Orleans has the call. Three days of elite action sports. A season's worth of competition coming down to one final weekend. Watch July 24 through 26 on ABC, ESPN and ESPN2, or stream on the ESPN app, X Games, YouTube, Kick Roku sports channel and Amazon. The championship starts July 24. Don't miss the moment it becomes history.

[B]

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