Tim Ferriss’s "The 4-Hour Body" (feat. Peter Shamshiri)

Summary

Maintenance Phase Podcast: Tim Ferriss’s "The 4-Hour Body" (feat. Peter Shamshiri) Date: April 16, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Aubrey Gordon and Michael Hobbes welcome Peter Shamshiri (co-host of "If Books Could Kill") for a deep dive into the pseudoscience, branding ploys, and bizarre claims in Tim Ferriss’s 2010 bestseller The 4-Hour Body. Building on their previous critique of The 4-Hour Work Week, the hosts unpack Ferriss’s self-experimentation, his penchant for repackaging old diet fads, his strange obsessions with quantifying the unquantifiable, and his odd, occasionally problematic approach to health, sex, and the human body. Through fact-checks, raucous banter, and pointed skepticism, they expose how Ferriss masks average advice with a high-tech veneer—and a healthy dollop of bro science.

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Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. Tim Ferriss: Who Is He and What’s His Brand? (03:00–06:00)

• Ferriss is introduced as a "life hack guy" known for his optimization obsession, significant wealth, and inflated ego.
• Before his books, he sold Brain Quicken, a supplement that was basically caffeine plus vitamins and herbs, marketed with "sciencey" ingredient names.
  • Aubrey: “He is listing out a bunch of... very scientific names for things. He’s doing the thing of saying ascorbic acid instead of just saying vitamin C.” (03:44)
• Ferriss is often described in grandiose terms by media, e.g., "Superman of Silicon Valley" and "a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk."

2. The 4-Hour Formula: Old Wine, New Bottles (06:30–08:00)

• The 4-Hour Body recycles 1990s diet books’ concepts: South Beach, Zone Diet, etc.
• The “four hour” branding is clickbait—Ferriss never justifies the time frame, instead creating a sense of exclusivity and innovation.
  • Aubrey: “There is no mention of four hours anywhere in this... it’s pure clickbait.” (02:45)

3. The Illusion of Science: Self-Experimentation & Biohacking (09:37–14:30)

• Ferriss claims to track every variable about himself, from blood work to sleep to gadgets.
  • Michael (reading Ferriss): “I’ve recorded almost every workout I’ve done since age 18... spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade...” (10:29)
• His "data" is mostly anecdotes, N=1 experiments, and blog testimonials, not science.
• This obsession with metrics is framed as an attempt to control mortality and anxiety, common among wealthy “biohackers.”
  • Aubrey: “There is like a real core of confirmation bias happening in this book...” (11:44)
  • Peter: “They get to a point where they’re so rich...they’re like, it’s bullshit that I have to die.” (12:10)

4. The “Experimental Lifestyle” and the “War on Experts” (13:55–15:45)

• Ferriss positions his readers as smarter than doctors and institutions—a prototype for the modern anti-expert “wellness” movement.
  • Peter: “He’s saying, trust yourself and yourself is reading Tim Ferriss. I’m telling you that you are smart and then in return you just do what I tell you.” (15:19)
• The book is full of contradictions in its stance toward expertise.

5. Diet Plan: Slow-Carb, Cheat Days, and Confirmation Bias (16:42–24:50)

• The Five Food Rules:
  1. Avoid “white carbohydrates.”
  2. Eat the same few meals over and over.
  3. Don’t drink calories.
  4. Don’t eat fruit.
  5. Take one day off per week (“Cheat Day” / “Fatterday”). (20:04)
• Ferriss advances common low/slow carb myths, ties effectiveness to glycemic index (GI), and makes false claims about metabolic “resetting” on cheat days.
  • Michael: “This is just another diet being like, you should eat brown rice and broccoli and chicken breast.” (25:56)
• The science behind GI is debunked on the show:
  • 2021 meta-analysis: “Low GI diets were generally no better than high GI diets for reducing body weight or body fat...” (25:02)
• Much of Ferriss’s empirical evidence consists of short-term weight loss anecdotes, which is typical of every fad diet.

6. The Stacks, Supplements, and “Sciencey” Protocols (34:42–39:45)

• Ferriss recommends various supplement “stacks”—from banned combinations like ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin (ECA) to more benign “PAGG” (policosanol, alpha lipoic acid, garlic, green tea).
• Supplement schedules are convoluted and full of branded compound names that add mystique but often just repackage basic vitamins/powders.
  • Aubrey: “He’s giving his readers this veneer of science for things... that are totally just like take your vitamins.” (39:07)
• The “protocol” language replaces “diet,” “regimen,” and “plan,” but is still just marketing.

7. The Poop Weighing Obsession and Other Bodily Misadventures (31:04–34:42)

• Ferriss claims to “speed up gastric emptying” by doing wall squats before meals and supports these claims by weighing his feces.
  • Michael (reading Ferriss): "Rather than debate meta studies, I simply weighed my poo..." (32:19)
• The hosts mock the absurdity of this method and note there’s no scientific basis for it.
  • Aubrey: “I did not fact check the poop weighing.” (33:36)
  • Peter: “What are you, a fucking nerd? Weigh your poop.” (33:05)

8. Gadgets, Glucose Monitors, and Technobabble (40:04–42:29)

• Ferriss is obsessed with health gadgets (glucometers, pulse oximeters, blood tests), usually unnecessary for healthy individuals.
  • Aubrey: “He uses a continuous glucose monitor, a thing that is straightforwardly unnecessary for people who are not diabetic.” (41:03)

9. Sex, Weird Science, and Bro Mythology (42:31–64:00)

The “Math of Beauty” and Male Brains

• Ferriss claims male attraction to a .7 waist-to-hip ratio is “hardwired” and relates to fertility.
  • Michael (reading Ferriss): “This ratio in females appears to be hardwired into the male brain as a sign of fertility and therefore attractiveness.” (43:27)
• The hosts call out junk biology, bad citation practices, and rampant sexism.

The 15-Minute Orgasm & “Goalless Practice”

• Ferriss provides “protocols” for sex and “facilitating” female orgasms, littered with questionable expert advice and elaborate pre-sex supplement regimens.
  • Aubrey: “As a certified gay lady, his advice in this chapter is fucking nutso.” (46:43)
  • Aubrey: “He goes really hard on how much focus this will take from the dude... 15 minutes of 100% concentration on 3 square millimeters of contact. Nothing more.” (58:08)
• Bizarre stories follow, such as his quest with a 25-year-old yoga instructor and referencing the sex cult "OneTaste."
• Odd (potentially fabricated) anecdotes about porn star Nina Hartley, "Sylvester," and his mother abound, with the hosts incredulous at their inclusion.

Testosterone, Cholesterol, and "Beef Maxxing"

• Ferriss claims that a loading phase of beef increased his testosterone and made him irresistible to a CEO named Vesper.
  • Michael (reading Ferriss): “Vesper was in a sexually aggressive stupor. The bread hadn’t arrived and she was already climbing on top of me. This is not a boast.” (61:15)
• The hosts lampoon this as classic tech bro-biohacker excess.

10. Reception: Book Reviews, Medical Critique, and Tech Bro Fandom (64:07–68:09)

• Book and medical reviews universally pan Ferriss’s claims, e.g., NYT: “The Four Hour Body reads as if the New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog.” (64:15)
• The tech world laps it up, viewing every lunch and poop as a “data-driven iteration from the previous state of the art.” (TechCrunch)
  • Peter (reading TechCrunch): "Why are you writing about your lunch in a technology website? Because there's data involved, dude." (67:28)
• The hosts underscore that Ferriss’s approach is just branded self-experimentation unsupported by real evidence.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Ferriss’s life hack ethos:
  “He is rich, and that has given him the brain disease of I am rich, ergo, I must be right about everything.” — Aubrey, (02:55)

• On Ferriss’s supplement marketing:
  “He’s listing out all the scientific names for things... just obscures that what this pill is, is... a fuck ton of caffeine.” — Aubrey, (03:39) “People are like, I feel amazing on this. Absolutely.” — Michael, (04:19)

• On self experimentation:
  “Let’s get it out there off the bat. I am mentally ill.” — Peter (11:32)

• On confirmation bias:
  "If he's hearing from fans of his blog... they're obviously not going to be hearing from people it didn't work for." — Michael, (17:12)

• On the “science” of cheat days:
  "Dramatically spiking caloric intake... increases fat loss by ensuring your metabolic rate doesn't downshift."
  “Not true.” — Peter (22:41–22:49)

• On Ferriss’s wild sex advice:
  “As a certified gay lady, his advice in this chapter is fucking nutso.” — Aubrey, (46:43) “If you use the 1 o'clock trick, it will take a full 15 minutes.” — Peter, (48:07)

• On the cult anecdote:
  "They essentially are having people come in to be coached on their sex technique...sometimes a group of people watches you." — Aubrey, (52:50)

• On book reviews:
  “The Four Hour Body reads as if the New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog.” — New York Times, via Aubrey, (64:15)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro banter/cross-podcast jokes: 00:12–01:59
• Tim Ferriss background & Brain Quicken: 02:53–05:14
• Transition from 4-Hour Workweek to 4-Hour Body: 06:30–07:30
• The diet plan & glycemic index: 16:11–25:56
• Fact check: Glycemic index & diet science: 24:50–25:56
• Supplements, “stacks,” and routines: 34:42–39:45
• Weighing your poop: 31:04–33:53
• Gadgets and glucose monitors: 40:04–42:29
• Sex, beauty ratios, and cults: 42:31–53:05
• Testosterone and “beef maxxing” story: 60:15–63:20
• Mainstream reception: 64:07–67:45
• TechCrunch review & “data-driven” parody: 66:18–68:09

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Tone & Style

The episode is characterized by irreverent, expletive-laced humor, sharp skepticism, and a collaborative, convivial dynamic. The hosts’ comedic timing and mutual incredulity provide levity, while their incisive analysis highlights the underlying dangers of anti-expert “wellness” culture.

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Summary

This episode exposes The 4-Hour Body as a slickly marketed compendium of recycled diet tips, self-absorbed data collection, and performative masculinity, all disguised in tech bro pseudo-scientific language. From supplement “stacks” to weighing one’s own feces and orchestrating sexual “protocols,” the book’s gimmicks are shown to be at best, unoriginal—and at worst, misleading or potentially harmful. Despite Ferriss’s self-branding as a maverick scientist, his advice is little more than calorie restriction, bro lore, and lifestyle “hacks” dressed up for the Silicon Valley crowd. The hosts conclude that while some basic health tips are sound (eat more beans, skip the sugar), most of the book’s elaborate routines reflect Ferriss’s personal anxieties—and are best left in the era of airport bookstores.

Transcript

[Michael Hobbs]

Should we have Peter do it?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Whoa.

[Michael Hobbs]

Peter's never listened to our show, so he doesn't know the format.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I do, I do. Sort of. It's like, wait, what's your. What's your tagline? What's your tagline format? I've heard it a hundred times and now I can't remember the format because I'm just confusing it with hours in my head.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We could do a little bit. Peter, what do you know about the four Hour Body?

[Michael Hobbs]

Peter's head's unconvinced decline.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's your podcast. You can, if you want to degrade it by using our lazy format.

[Michael Hobbs]

Well, do one then.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Peter, you're trying to, like, figure out a way where it's my responsibility to come up with a tagline.

[Michael Hobbs]

100%.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Mike is eternally trying to weasel his way out of doing the tagline.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What if we made you a part of this, Peter? What if we.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Peter, I want you to feel like you have some real ownership here.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay? Does this. This probably doesn't work. Welcome to Maintenance Phase, the podcast that has 36 hours left every week for face because it's the four hour body. But you have like 36 hours left in the work week.

[Peter Shamsheri]

No, sick. Thank you.

[Michael Hobbs]

Thank you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm Aubrey Gordon.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm Michael Hobbs.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I'm Peter Shamsheri.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you would like to support the show, you can do [e-mail] maintenancephase or you can subscribe on Apple Podcast. It's the same audio content. Michael, Peter, Aubrey. So for those of you who are unfamiliar, Peter is Michael's co host on if Books Could Kill Other podcasts. Peter is joining us today for a sort of like a very delayed follow up to your Tim Ferriss four Hour Workweek episode.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Incredible cross promo. The only podcast I could appear on where there's absolutely no new fans being brought on.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So today we are talking about Tim Ferriss follow up to the four Hour Work Week. It's called the four Hour Body.

[Michael Hobbs]

Body by Tim.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Peter, do you recall it has been a minute. Do you recall any of the sort of high points from the four Hour Work Week?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Broadly speaking, Tim had this idea where if you like create passive streams of income and then automate all of your work, you can bring your work week down to four hours and basically do nothing.

[Michael Hobbs]

This doesn't work as well with Body because you can't like hire people in India to do sit ups for you.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right. Also, four hour work week is like, oh, great, I'm losing 36 hours of my work week four hour body is like, yeah, that's a good amount of working out.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, that's actually. That's like a normal amount of working out.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, yeah. It will comfort you both to learn that there is no mention of four hours anywhere in this. There's no like justification for four hours.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's all branding.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's pure clickbait. Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So for folks who are unfamiliar, Tim Ferriss primary sort of claims to fame are his long running podcast and this previous book, the Four Hour Workweek. He's like a life hack guy and an optimization guy. He's also sort of by trade a tech guy and an investor. And like many tech guys and investors, he is rich. And that has given him the brain disease of I am rich, ergo, I must be right about everything.

[Michael Hobbs]

And also I must be a wellness influencer. I feel like all these fucking guys want to be like gurus.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Before the four Hour work week, he sold a supplement called Brain Quicken.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, the Four Hour Brain.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I looked into the active ingredients and it feels like very like trademark Tim Ferriss that he is listing out a bunch of like very scientific names for things. He's doing the thing of saying ascorbic acid instead of just saying vitamin C. Okay. He's saying niacinamide instead of vitamin B. So it sort of obscures that what this pill is, is like there's some adaptogenic mushrooms in it, there's some B vitamins, there's some amino acids, there's some ginkgo, there's some ginseng and there's a fuck ton of caffeine.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So like it was largely a caffeine pill.

[Michael Hobbs]

People are like, I feel amazing on this. Absolutely.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's like all of the comments on all of the Reddits are like, does anybody know where to find this? Nothing worked this well. And it was like 200 milligrams of caffeine.

[Michael Hobbs]

Starbucks. You can find it at Starbuck.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, you can find it in the Panera Lemonade. Please enjoy. Since selling Brain Quicken, Tim Ferriss has mostly been an investor for tech companies like TaskRabbit and a bunch of others. He's a Forbes 40 under 40 guy, he's a Princeton graduate and he has quite an ego. On his own website he has two pull quotes that are blown up. One is from Wired magazine calling him the Superman of Silicon Valley. And another one is from the New York Times calling him, quote, a cross between Jack Welch and a Buddhist monk.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What the fuck?

[Aubrey Gordon]

I just want everyone to just think through like, what would that even be

[Peter Shamsheri]

also, he's never accomplished anything in business. He's just a scam artist. He just wrote a stupid fucking book.

[Michael Hobbs]

And the core message of the book, if I recall correctly, is, like, how to scam other people. Like, how to start doing seminars and stuff.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, he was like, the best way to create passive income is to do a scam like the one I'm doing on you right now by writing this book.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So you all have provided me with the perfect segue. He did publish the four hour workweek in 2007. It is, on its face like a life hack manual to just work less. It's a rebrand of work Smarter, not harder. Among other things, he advises readers to hire people to outsource large parts of your job, as you mentioned, so that you can do less. But he also advises things like, hey, you could become an expert in something. Go buy the top two or three most popular books on the subject, schedule a free seminar, Invite people to the free seminar and give them, like, a talk about what you learned from the books, basically, and then book a bunch of paid speaking gigs off of that free seminal.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm almost nostalgic for this because now it would be like, well, just get chatgpt to read the two most popular books, and you wouldn't even have to absorb the information if you're like, hey,

[Aubrey Gordon]

did his next book include or use any of those tips? Yes, it did. Three years later, in 2010, Tim Ferriss follows up with the Four Hour Body. The diet part of his book, which is a pretty commanding majority of it, is fully just reheating the nachos of the Zone and the south beach diet.

[Michael Hobbs]

At least he's consistent. And he's like, I told you what I was gonna do, and then I did it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They are two diets from the mid-90s that at this point had already achieved, like, really major popularity. These were books that were being sold in airports, had, like, massive uptake. I remember seeing them at the Costco book table.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like, basically low carb, but not, like, as extreme as Atkins. Isn't that what the Zone and South beach are?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's not quite low carb. It's something that they call slow carb.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, it's like a glycemic index thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes, totally. And we'll get into the glycemic index of it all.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. Okay.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Just checking in. I understand all of this by the.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So the core idea behind the Four Hour Body is that you can lose weight and get shredded with what he refers to. As the quote unquote, minimum effective dose. So that means he's big on, like, high intensity interval training where you do, like, really intense workouts for short periods of time. He's big on, like, creating little formulas for meals. And, like, he has a whole section where he's like, I love Diet Coke. And I've found that as long as I keep my consumption to under 16 ounces a day, it doesn't interrupt my fat loss.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, it sort of just assumes that, like, eating healthy and exercising are just chores that nobody would want to do deliberately. Right. It's like, what's the least amount of tennis that I can play to, like, be shredded? But, like, surely the actual advice would be like, find something you like doing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, because he specifically says about both the diet and the exercise, you should not enjoy it. He has a whole section where he's like, don't confuse recreation with exercise. Hell yeah. You don't like exercise. You do like recreation. And the sort of implication is like, if you're enjoying it, then it's not exercise, which is, man, pretty directly counter to all of the research that we have that is like, if people like it, then they do it regularly. And doing it regularly is the thing that matters the most.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I love the idea that he's innovating by just talking about high intensity workouts for shorter periods of time. He's just like, I have an idea for fucking run faster. Just haul ass on that treadmill.

[Michael Hobbs]

My understanding is that high intensity interval training is fine, but also it was kind of a fad at the time.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

A lot of these guys just fall for fads, basically exercise fads, and they repackage them as if they're some sort of like, deep insight. Like, I can't get over, you know, Brian Johnson, this guy, like the reverse aging millionaire guy who just does intermittent fasting, which is again, just like a trend that everybody's hopped onto.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Well, doesn't he also transfer his child's blood into himself or something that's less trendy?

[Michael Hobbs]

But that's because not everybody has a son.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah. And your son has to be cool. Your son has to be like, all right, yeah, sure, dad.

[Aubrey Gordon]

One of the things that sort of shows up in the four hour body is that Tim Ferriss is like, we've got so much science to prove so many things. But overwhelmingly, the science that he refers to is either quote, unquote, research that he's just done on himself.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Or firsthand accounts from people who read his blog or rat studies.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I am going to send a

[Michael Hobbs]

quote, make Peter do it. Make Peter do it?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Are you kidding me? Do it. I'm just like a vent for you to do less work.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm outsourcing my work to Peter.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Mike is four hour work weeking, right?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, I know. He's. He's like, playing video games and you ask him a question, he's like, peter, you.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I am sending this to Michael to fucking read.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay, fine, I'll read it. I'll read it. I've recorded almost every workout I've done since age 18. I've had more than 1,000 blood tests performed since 2004, sometimes as often as every two weeks, tracking everything from complete lipid panels, insulin and hemoglobin A1C to IGF1, and free testosterone. I've had stem cell growth factors imported from Israel to reverse, quote, permanent injuries. And I've flown to rural tea farmers in China to discuss pu' erh tea's effects on fat loss. All said and done, I've spent more than $250,000 on testing and tweaking over the last decade. I am a huge fucking sucker. I just want to announce that right off the bat, just as some people have avant garde furniture or artwork to decorate their homes, I have pulse oximeters, ultrasound machines, and medical devices for measuring everything from galvanic skin response to REM sleep. The kitchen and bathroom look like an error. If you think that's craziness, you're right. Fortunately, you don't need to be a guinea pig to benefit from one.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Let's get it out there off the bat. I am mentally ill. Yeah. Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Also, there's just, like, not really any compelling medical reason to have that many blood tests. He thinks he's finding out a ton of things.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I don't trust, having read this entire book, that he knows enough to know what is sort of worth measuring here. And I think that he is, like, there is, like, a real core of confirmation bias happening in this book where the stuff that he prioritizes is the stuff that sort of upends expectations. Right, Right. But also a bunch of. It really is just sort of a wealth flex.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I feel like a lot of these guys get to a point where they're so rich that they're like, it's bullshit that I have to die.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's like, my life rules in all of these ways. My life is better than the average person. But, like, there is this one great unifying element, and that's that I'm going to die. And I think that is nonsense. And I'm going to. I'm gonna try to get out ahead of it.

[Michael Hobbs]

$250,000 is so embarrassing. It's really stunning because it feels like at the end of the day, it's gonna be like, yeah, do exercise and, like, try to eat a balanced diet of, like, fruits and vegetables. But it's like, these guys want this sort of one weird trick kind of thing or some sort of shortcut. But it's not clear to me that, like, all of this data about yourself really offers that much to your health.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, I mean, I will also say, like, a bunch of these sorts of devices end up, like, I recently had a family member who had lung cancer and was using a pulse oximeter, like, all the time. That became sort of a source of, like, fixation and anxiety. And the healthcare providers that I talked to sort of in the process of all of this were, like, that's actually like, really common, particularly for men to get especially hung up on, like, what is this measurably doing? Not as a way of, like, discerning information about themselves, but as a way of, like, discharging anxiety that they're having about their health.

[Michael Hobbs]

He feels like he's taking back control because he's measuring something. Cause, like, yeah, why are you getting an ultrasound?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not only why are you getting an ultrasound, why do you own an ultrasound machine? So he has sort of a little thesis for the book and sort of like a little bit of a rallying cry for, like, what he thinks this is all about. I am sending another quote to the chat, Peter. Okay, you guys can trade off. How about that?

[Peter Shamsheri]

I just want to. This is unpaid work I'm doing. I view 4HB as a manifesto, a call to arms for a new mental model of living the experimental lifestyle. It's up to you, not your doctor, not the newspaper, to learn what you best respond to. If you understand politics well enough to vote for a president, or if you have ever filed taxes, you can learn the few, most important scientific rules for redesigning your body. These rules will become your friends. 100% reliable and trusted. This changes everything. There is no high priesthood. There is cause and effect. Welcome to the director's chair.

[Michael Hobbs]

This annoys the shit out of me. Shut up.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Why are there so many metaphors going on here?

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like, we're talking about, like, diet and exercise, right? You're not redesigning your body, dude.

[Aubrey Gordon]

If you can vote for president has not aged well.

[Peter Shamsheri]

If your dumb ass has ever clicked Next 20 times on TurboTax then you can do this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Part of what I find interesting about this is that it's sort of like a prototype of what has become a real sort of core ethos of the Maha movement. Right. Which is just like, fuck experts. Nobody gets to decide but you what's good for you.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's not your doctor, it's not the newspaper, but it is an airport book. He's like, don't trust them. But you're also just some random person.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Trust the guy who sells Brain Quicken, I feel like.

[Peter Shamsheri]

But he's saying, trust yourself and yourself is reading Tim Ferriss. Right. I'm telling you that you are smart and then in return you just do what I tell you. Right. But it's sort of listening to yourself in a way. We're in this together, rejecting the experts.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, that's right. And I think like specifically saying it's not up to your doctor is the part where I'm like, that's a wild approach to take.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right. Who's your doctor to tell you what your blood pressure is?

[Aubrey Gordon]

So on top of his sort of n of one stuff, he says that he has, quote, tracked the progress of hundreds of readers of his blog and touts that, quote, many of them lost 20 pounds in the first few weeks and sort of makes those kinds of claims. Most of his claims about weight loss throughout the book are about what happened in the first two to four weeks.

[Michael Hobbs]

So it's like, tell me you've never read a diet book before without telling me you've never read a diet book before.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right. Like every diet under the sun follows the same pattern, which is like rapid weight loss for the first like one to maybe six months, three to six months and then a long plateau and then a weight regain. That is how it goes. So when folks are sort of cherry picking, like we're just gonna talk about the first month, like, yeah, dude, you're picking your best numbers. Absolutely. I'm only gonna talk about my sales at Christmas time.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah. You can go to almost any diet and lose weight in the first month.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes, absolutely. The interesting thing is he is presenting like a series of these kind of n of 1 findings, quote, unquote findings. Right. It is very far from any kind of like randomized controlled trial. It's very far from any kind of scientific method. There is massive confirmation bias. If he's hearing from fans of his blog who want to tell him why his shit works and why they like

[Michael Hobbs]

him because you're obviously not going to be hearing from people that it didn't work. For. Cause they would probably just, like, not be on the blog anymore. They'd find something else.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely. He has like a whole segment where he's like, if you want to know how to lose 20 pounds in two weeks, just ask the founder of WordPress, who lost a bunch of weight from just chewing every mouthful of food 20 times, where you're like, okay, Come on, man.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's literally like an 1800s diet. That's like one of the first diets.

[Peter Shamsheri]

That's what happens when you make WordPress money. You're like, what's next? Now to turn my thoughts inward, I will triple the amount of bites that I'm taking of every sandwich.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The Four Hour Body has a couple of good points. I do want to do, like, a little bit of credit where credit is due.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ooh.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he cautions readers against falling for, like, marketing terms. So he's like, if someone's telling you about toning, cellulite, firming, shaping, like, these are all marketing words.

[Michael Hobbs]

He just said, redesigning your body, though, that's also a fucking marketing term.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's not reshaping. That's not reshaping.

[Peter Shamsheri]

4 HB is different than a marketing term.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's a protocol is what he keeps saying. It's a protocol.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Protocol itself, not a marketing term. Don't get confused.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also cautions readers, he's like, look, you're going to be doing a bunch of self experimentation. That means that you're going to have to challenge your own ideas about correlation and causation. Right? And he gives them some, like, actually quite good questions to challenge. Like, is this causal relationship moving the way you think it is? One is like, is it possible that what he calls the arrow of causality is reversed? So, like, is it possible not that this person ran and therefore got a quote, unquote, runner's build, but rather that they kind of looked like someone who could do well at running? So they did.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm eating Brussels sprouts because I'm farting, actually, if you think about it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He asks if you're mixing up absence and presence. So, for example, like, is a vegetarian diet healthier or perceived to be healthier because of the lack of meat or because of the increased presence of vegetables? Okay, Right. Like, it's just like basic, good, probing kinds of questions. At one point he does say, quote, is it possible that you tested a specific demographic, that other variables are responsible for the difference? For example, if the claim is that yoga improves cardiac health and the experimental group comprises upper class folk, is it possible that they Are therefore more likely than a control group to eat better food. You bet your downward dog posing ass.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, got him a little spice in the sentence.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Nice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So this is like straightforwardly good advice that he then proceeds to ignore for

[Michael Hobbs]

the rest of the round. You're reading a book by a. A rich guy who got blood tests a thousand times, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's like, don't confuse what's happening with rich people with what's happening with you. Confuse what's happening with me with a single rich guy. The diet itself is pretty straightforward. There are five core rules. One is avoid, quote, unquote white carbohydrates. So that's like bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, that kind of stuff. Two is, quote, eat the same few meals over and over again, especially for breakfast and lunch. You already do this. You're just picking out new default meals. This is where he gets into, like, you should not enjoy it. And also he does talk about. He's like, here are some good meals to have on the diet. One of my favorites is canned tuna packed in water mixed with lentils and chopped onions. What?

[Michael Hobbs]

Just like in a bowl?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yep.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude, no mayo, no lemon juice, nothing.

[Peter Shamsheri]

You gotta get that mercury up. You wanna be able to see it through your skin like a thermometer.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Rule number three is don't drink calories. That's a pretty common one. Rule number four is don't eat fruit.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's part of the, like, slow carb thing, right? Of just, like, there's not a ton of fiber. There is a lot of sugar.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's not true, but whatever, whatever.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Rule number five is take one day off per week and quote, go nuts. I recommend Saturday, often nicknamed fatter day by followers.

[Michael Hobbs]

But this is also like, he's just telling you to, like, do something you hate all the time, and then one day a week you get to do something you like.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Like, surely you can find a happy medium, right? Yeah, Throw a little bit of mustard in the tuna and maybe take, take it easy on Saturdays.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's also funny cause, like, none of these guys have kind of been steeped in, like, fad diet world the way I think a lot of women have. Like, a lot of women by their 30s are like, oh, I've heard this advice a million fucking times. It's not gonna work for me. But these guys are, like, basically discovering, like, fad diet stuff.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's like, look, maxing stuff for men where, like, we've gone a little too far. And like, 19 year olds are, like, wearing shoulder pads and shit, right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Microdosing Meth.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I will say on the cheat day stuff, he comes up with sort of a scientific rationale for the cheat day where he's like, no, it's actually like good and important.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Like psychologically important?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, like physically, metabolically important.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Quote, paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate doesn't downshift from extended caloric restriction.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Not true.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's not true.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's totally not true.

[Michael Hobbs]

I know. He's like, oh, don't trust your. Your doctor, the science. But like, you should trust the science, bro. That's not true at all.

[Peter Shamsheri]

You want to get your body right on the verge of starvation mode and then boom, an entire pizza.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Remember like the P90X muscle confusion thing? You're doing that. But for your metabolism, you can't let

[Michael Hobbs]

it get too comfortable.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The formula for meals for this is pretty straightforward, very standard diet advice. He says for every meal, you should pick one item from each of his sort of prioritized food groups. That's lean protein, vegetables that are either low carb and or high fiber. And the third group is legumes, is a bean diet, Baby beans at every meal.

[Michael Hobbs]

So you're gonna fully endorse this book now?

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love it. I'm blurbing it. It's gonna be great.

[Peter Shamsheri]

The only diet that works.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, he's honing in here on this idea of whole grains and quote, unquote, slow carbs that was popular at the time. The underlying idea here is that so called fast carbs, so things with like white flour, white sugar, whatever else, are big drivers of people getting fat. And that so called, quote, unquote, slow carbs like whole grains and fiber rich vegetables would be less likely to lead to weight gain and would, like, help with weight management. This is based on the glycemic index, which we've talked about before on the show. The glycemic index is a way of. It's sort of presented as a way of measuring the impact of various foods on like, humans blood sugar. But the way that they determined it is in groups of between five and 15 people. Since then, in the. In the years since the development of the glycemic index, we have found that it is like almost useless for individual guidance because different people's bodies have like such wildly different responses to the same foods going in them. Right. That for some folks, white rice might be like a major issue for their blood sugar. And for other folks, it like, doesn't really do much Right.

[Michael Hobbs]

But what if a rich guy who wrote an airport book already did all the research and told me what works for him?

[Aubrey Gordon]

What if a wealthy man said it with confidence?

[Michael Hobbs]

What if a guy wearing an aura ring told me that I should eat sweet potatoes?

[Aubrey Gordon]

A 2021 meta analysis in the journal Advances in Nutrition looked at 43 studies with samples totaling just under 2 million adults. And they were looking at, like, when we're advising people to have a low glycemic index diet. What are the actual results of that? What they found was, quote, results of 30 meta analyses of RCTs from eight publications demonstrated that low GI diets were generally no better than high GI diets for reducing body weight or body fat. While carbohydrate quality, including glycemic index, impacts many health outcomes, GI as a measure of carbohydrate quality appears to be relatively unimportant as a determinant of BMI or diet induced weight loss.

[Michael Hobbs]

That makes sense, Right?

[Aubrey Gordon]

So, like, have your slow carbs. They're good for you for a lot of reasons. They're not going to make you thin.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, this is just like yet another diet basically being like, you should eat brown rice and broccoli and chicken breast.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But those diets are marketed to ladies, not nerds who want to be wealthy.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, well, I wonder what he would have come up with if it's wasn't for his research with the ultrasound machines. I spent $250,000 and here's what I've come up with.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like brown rice, eat some beans.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I'm also now just imagining Tim Ferriss with, like, a pulse oximeter clipped to every finger.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Just eating tuna out of a bowl like a dog, just with his face.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So his main chapter or sort of section about weight loss is called Subtracting Fat. He has subtracting fat, he has adding muscle, and he has improving sex.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Don't listen to gimmicky little taglines, folks. People are gonna tell you that you can, quote, lose weight. You can't. You can subtract fat.

[Aubrey Gordon]

However, also, like, don't listen to marketing language, but the first header in the first chapter about weight loss is, quote, how to lose £20 in 30 days without exercise.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Ay.

[Michael Hobbs]

No one's ever said this before. No one's ever promised that this is

[Peter Shamsheri]

how, like, tech guys talk, where they try to, like, throw in what feels a little more like computer language into, like, everyday shit.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right?

[Peter Shamsheri]

So they, they talked. They talk about optimizing all the time. And it's just it's so tedious and annoying.

[Michael Hobbs]

Here's how to pivot to being a skinny person. The other thing, did you guys see this article that they're. They're now recommending, you know, this whole thing of like, a stack. You have a stack of, like, the caffeine that you do.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're gonna talk so fucking much about stacks.

[Michael Hobbs]

Tech bros are recommending that you add nicotine patches.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah.

[Michael Hobbs]

To your stack.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, hell yeah, dude.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, they're talking about nicotine and caffeine both as being nootropics, which is a wild way to rebrand those things because

[Michael Hobbs]

that's also a made up term. So, like, yeah, they're nootropics. Like Lucky Charms nootropics. Why not? Like, whatever.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It does feel like we're gonna circle back to just like, you can smoke

[Michael Hobbs]

and they're gonna rebrand it as, like, drag maxing, right? Like, burn, smashing. And then you're all gonna be fucking smoking again.

[Peter Shamsheri]

You know, like the, the famous Mad Men ad campaign where they're like, they're toasted, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

They're gonna start doing that. Sh.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Um, so he does use this header of like, how to lose £20 in 30 days without exercise. And then his example for himself is that he lost £15 in six weeks.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, nice. Okay, so do more than I did.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also has some before and after pictures that are fascinating. They are almost a complete recreation of like a very popular style of like 2010s body positivity. Instagram post hell yeah. Where like a thin woman would take a picture of herself slouching so that she would, like, have some rolls and then would take another picture of herself standing up straight. And the caption would be like, it's the same body. He like, has like a quote unquote before picture that is him leaning forward and weighing, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 pounds more. And then the next picture is him shirtless and ripped and standing off to the side.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's like the, the Alex Jones picture where. Where he's just slightly more red in the after photo.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The initial diet that we talk through sounds pretty straightforward. Like, focus on protein and fiber, eat from certain food groups, get some exercise, that kind of thing. But then he gets to a section where he talks about, like, common mistakes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And now it's getting real complicated. Mistake number one, not eating within one hour of waking, preferably within 30 minutes.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's all metabolism confus. At the end of the day, his

[Aubrey Gordon]

argument is that you should. He's like, I eat one tablespoon of almond butter and four Brazil nuts upon waking.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, I keep it next to my bed. Just a spoon.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right before my first cigarette of the day. Absolutely.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He says that mistake number two is not getting enough protein per meal. Mistake number three is not drinking enough water. But he doesn't really define enough. Mistake number four, he says, is believing that you'll cook, especially if you're a bachelor.

[Michael Hobbs]

What the fuck is that? What's wrong? What?

[Peter Shamsheri]

What?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Throughout this book, he is assuming that the reader is him. And he's like, I don't cook. So they don't cook.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I feel like learn to cook would also be like reasonable advice for a book like this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He has a whole mistake just about mistiming weighings with your menstrual cycle. And then in parentheses he writes, not a problem for bachelors. Nice for married men.

[Michael Hobbs]

However.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Tell him.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He talks about how Cheat Day is like a really important part of the diet, not just for adherence to the diet, but for its actual effectiveness. He says that the big issue that Cheat Day helps with is to minimize your release of insulin, which triggers your body to store fat metabolism.

[Michael Hobbs]

Spoofing. That's the insulin. Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he has a whole thing where he's like, you have to increase the speed of gastric emptying or how quickly food exits the stomach.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, he's doing like a poop speed run. Like, you want to get from food to poop in like 35 minutes.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Your body should not be absorbing the nutrients from the food. It should be blasting through you at full speed.

[Michael Hobbs]

Actual food should be coming out of you at the end.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Just a full slice of pizza coming out your ass.

[Michael Hobbs]

But can people even do anything about that? Could you manipulate how fast you're pooping and like processing food?

[Peter Shamsheri]

There are ways that you can line your pipes to, like in your house. I imagine if you implement the same method so that you. You can sort of create a slide where the food cannot actually enter your stomach in any meaningful way.

[Michael Hobbs]

You're just drinking a bottle of lube. Slide through like a slip and slide.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Almond butter and astroglide.

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're gonna read what Tim says you can do.

[Michael Hobbs]

I consume 100 to 200 milligrams of caffeine or 16 ounces of cooled yerba mate at the most crap laden meals. My favorite green supplement, Athletic Greens, mentioned in the schedule doesn't contain caffeine, but will also help. Does this really work? Taking the goodies from taste buds to toilet without much storage in between? More than a few people have told me it's Pure science fiction. Too much information. Warning. I disagree. And for good reason. Rather than debate meta studies, I simply weighed my poo.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.

[Michael Hobbs]

Hell yeah.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Fuck a meta study, dude. Shit on

[Michael Hobbs]

identical volumes of food on and off. The protocol on protocol equals much more poo. Mass equals less absorption, equals fewer chocolate croissants that take up residence on my abs. Simple but effective. Perhaps good to leave out of a first date conversation. Definitely.

[Peter Shamsheri]

He's doing the work. You know, this is what, before we had meta analyses, right? Before we had these studies to analyze, guys were just shitting on scales, right? This is what Isaac Newton would have done.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I love that he's like, I'm not gonna get into these meta studies. Instead, I weighed my shit.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What are you, a fucking nerd? Weigh your poop.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm like, squatting over a bathroom scale.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's so absurd. And it really feels like he presents this in a way that is very much like, guys, I cracked the code.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In the meantime, you are, I guess, fishing poop out of your toilet bowl and weighing it. Like, what are we doing here?

[Michael Hobbs]

Was there. Is there any basis to this at all, Michael?

[Peter Shamsheri]

I like. I like how you're at. You're like. So, Aubrey, did you look into this or.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, I would.

[Aubrey Gordon]

What?

[Michael Hobbs]

The medicine.

[Peter Shamsheri]

This guy. This guy is shitting on a scale, Michael. All right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, I fact checked a lot of things for this episode. I did not fact check the poop weighing.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Also, it's like good to leave out of a first date conversation, dude. Good to leave out of your book. No one wants to hear about this. I would rather. I would rather you like fraudulently create a your reviewed study. Then tell me about this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He says that there is a third principle which is engaging in brief muscular contractions throughout your binge.

[Michael Hobbs]

Kegels. Like butt kegels?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Like intestinal Kegels?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, he's doing like wall squats. Like, he does like a wall sit. He does. He says wall Tricep extensions and 60 to 120 seconds of total air squats immediately prior to eating main courses on his binge day.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, my God, dude.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he's like going to fucking Pizza Hut,

[Michael Hobbs]

ordering him just like squatting down next to the booth.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. And then like getting up to do fucking calisthenics for two minutes before he like eats a whole pizza. Like it's. It's extremely odd.

[Peter Shamsheri]

So not only is, like the food miserable to eat six days a week. Cause he refuses to allow for seasoning or whatever, but you have to do Wall squats.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. In public, on your binge day.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Because you might enjoy it. Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Don't get caught enjoying your food.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I'm at the Buffalo Wild Wings. Holding. Holding a wall squat for three minutes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So he has a whole argument here about how doing these sort of brief exercises and muscle contractions brings glucose transporters to the surface of muscle cells, opening more gates for the calories to flow into.

[Michael Hobbs]

Where is he getting this shit? He's just making. He's using big words to make it sound real. But, like, what is he talking about, Michael?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's not making it up. It's based on one Japanese rat study.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, great.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Okay. Come on, Brie. Just because someone reads his blog does not make them a Japanese rat.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So earlier, Mike, you mentioned stacks.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Tim Ferriss experiments on himself on which ones he thinks are most effective for weight loss. He talks about one of his most effective stacks being the quote unquote, classic ECA stack. And I was like, what the fuck is an ECA stack? Ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He talks about having done this ECA stack. Ephedrine, caffeine and aspirin. Ephedrine now banned because so many people died from using it and also because you can use it to make meth.

[Peter Shamsheri]

My stack of chlorine and bleach.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So his current preferred stack is now the Pagg stack. It consists of pcp, garlic extract, bath salt, green tea, and an antioxidant that naturally exists in meat and some vegetables. Like, I googled it, it's alpha lipoic acid. And I was like, what the fuck is this? And they're like, it's in broccoli and steak. And I was like, oh, well, have some broccoli and a steak.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Sounds less cool when you're like, I eat some broccoli and drink tea.

[Michael Hobbs]

These guys are constantly bragging about how easy are to dupe, right? Because they're like, ooh, this supplement changes everything. But, like, they're just falling for like marketing claims.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Ultimately, take a fucking one a day. Like, yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Part of what makes it complicated is the supplements themselves. Part of it is the schedule. I am sending the schedule. This one has a bunch of sciencey names, so apologies in advance to whoever.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, Peter, all right, I'll do it. How did I do it? I followed a simple supplement regimen. Morning. No explode. 11. Two scoops.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's like an anti diarrhea medication.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah. No explode.

[Michael Hobbs]

No explode.

[Peter Shamsheri]

If you, you mix that with the diarrheales that he takes and just let

[Michael Hobbs]

him fight it out inside of you.

[Peter Shamsheri]

That's intestinal confusion. May the best man win. All right, no explode 11. Two scoops. Sloaniacin or timed release niacinamide. 500 milligrams each meal. Chromate, pre workout body quick post workout miscellion prior to bed. Polycosanol. Polycosanol, sure. Chromate again, Alpha lipoic acid and slo niacin.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is like a lot of steps to take each day. And he's using these names like no explode and sloaniacin and chromate and that kind of stuff. Most of these are pretty common things. No Explode 11 is just a pre workout.

[Peter Shamsheri]

So he's, he's taking a pre workout fresh out of bed.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's right.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah. My workout is the entire day. So I take a pre workout right when I wake up.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Like it's just caffeine and creatine. This man is caffeinated to the fucking max.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, dude.

[Aubrey Gordon]

By the way, slow niacin is niacinamide. It's just a B vitamin.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Timed release B vitamin.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Right. And all of this is just like you could get all of these as nature made supplements at Target or whatever. Right. These are not hard things to find. But when he lists the ah, yes, I'm using 23 milligrams of polycosanol. It gives the whole thing sort of a mystique of being much more like stem oriented than it is. Right. He's giving his readers this veneer of science for things. Things that are totally just like take your vitamins.

[Michael Hobbs]

Also, I'm trying to like count up how many pills he's taking.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's a lot, Rex.

[Michael Hobbs]

If he's doing this in the morning, at each meal, before workout, after workout, and prior to bed, you're just like pumping your body with like these weird powders when like you don't need even like the pre workout, post workout stuff is like fake. You don't need this shit. Like have a banana.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also is careful to note that you only follow the schedule six days a week and you take one day off each week from your stacks.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, what?

[Aubrey Gordon]

And then you also take one week off every two months. And quote, this week off is critical.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yes. You gotta keep your metabolism guessing. Don't let your metabolism fucking rest on its laurels.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, you wanna be constantly switching between constipation and diarrhea at a rate that baffles the intestines.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Unsurprisingly, he's also a cold plunge guy.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Unsurprisingly, he's also like, generally a health gadget guy. So he at his indicates using a glucometer, which is a monitor that you install on your body to continually monitor your blood sugar levels.

[Michael Hobbs]

Does he have the poop camera?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Not to my knowledge, but this book was written before the existence of poop Cam.

[Michael Hobbs]

Peter. This is an actual thing that exists. You can get something that attaches to the side of your toilet, the Kohler

[Aubrey Gordon]

decoder that films your toilet bowl.

[Michael Hobbs]

And like, there's an app that gives you like, quote, unquote insights, but the insights are like, how many times did you poop yesterday?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Was your poop well hydrated or not well hydrated?

[Peter Shamsheri]

No, I like that. Why should I have to look? You know, I just. I want an app to just. Every time I take a shit, I don't look. I mean, I just stand right up. And then it. It sends me a notification that says, gross.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He uses a continuous glucose monitor, a thing that is straightforwardly unnecessary for people who are not diabetic. I looked up the glucose monitor that he recommends. It's the Dexcom 7. It lasts for two weeks on your body and it costs $120 per monitor.

[Michael Hobbs]

And it's more just him being a rube. It's like, this is not meaningful data that you really need.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah. He has this belief that if you keep your blood sugar under 100 that you will sustain fat loss for longer. He also writes, quote, don't want to become diabetic. Want to curb things like eating sweets, which can lead to adult onset diabetes. Try using a glucometer for 24 hours.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, he like, recommends this?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Essentially, the argument that he's making is like, do you not want to become diabetic? Start living like you have diabetes.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Watch everything you eat, exercise in really specific ways, wear a glucometer and, you know, maybe take some diabetes meds. Right. As a bunch of biohackers suggest taking, like, metformin and stuff like that. Right. Like, so it is this really odd thing where I'm like, I just try mapping that onto other illnesses. Like, it would be really weird if someone was like, I don't want to get cancer, so I'm going to do preemptive chemo.

[Michael Hobbs]

Or like, if you want to avoid chlamydia, just wear a condom at all times, no matter what you're doing.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Wake up. Almond butter Z Pack.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Before we dig in on the last chapter that we're really going to focus in on, on, we have a little interval that I have just titled in my notes. Tim Ferriss is weird about women. There's one section that he calls the math of beauty.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh no.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Are we. Are we doing like symmetry, Symmetry stuff?

[Aubrey Gordon]

We're not leaning away from phrenology. I will say that. Michael, you are up.

[Michael Hobbs]

What do Marilyn Monroe, Safi La ren and Elle McPherson have in common? The number 0.7 and the letters WHR. If you measured the waist and hip circumference of these three women, you'd find that their waists are 7, 10 the size of their hips. That makes their waist to hip ratio 0.7. And this ratio in females appears to be hardwired into the male brain as a sign of fertility and therefore attractiveness. The wider your waist is, the higher this ratio goes toward the apple shaped 1.0. Which correlates in scientific studies with decreased estrogen levels, increased disease risk, increased birth complications and lower fertility rates. Working toward a more slender waist has been shown to have a greater effect on attractiveness than reducing hip size. If your waist to hip ratio is high, dropping it even a little bit will increase your power, health and hotness to attract a male partner.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Nice.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, Peter, go ahead. I know you think about this all the time. This is how you talk to your boys when you're like, you're not a mean oberator.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Look, I don't get bogged down by the numbers. I know it when I see it. No, like if you think about this often enough, you won't need to do the measurements. You'll be able to just shout them out as a woman passes.

[Michael Hobbs]

The advice here seems to be you should work toward a more slender waist rather than working toward smaller hips. But like, women, like people cannot do this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

You can't really control the build of your body. And also he's doing this bizarre sort of scientific laundering of like, ah, yes, this is hardwired into the male brain.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He's sort of reverse engineering like this is what I am attracted to. And this is like a contemporary beauty standard. Ergo, it's like a biological imperative.

[Michael Hobbs]

The women that I'm attracted to are like super healthy and like super fertile.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's big. No fatties energy for sure.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's not for me, like the need to sort of make these things quantifiable is so fucking bizarre.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, why can't you just be like, they're hot.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's so fucking weird.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What do Marilyn Monroe, Sophia Loren and Ellen McPherson have in common? They're fucking hot, dude. Just hot babes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And there's also no point that involves, like, asking women what they like, because

[Michael Hobbs]

I want to know what ratio they like in men.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What's the healthiest? Like, dick to chin ratio?

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, exactly.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Okay, so the ratio is shoulder to waist. How dare you.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, wait, is it actually in there?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He does include that.

[Michael Hobbs]

Wait, what is it?

[Aubrey Gordon]

I think it's eight. Shoulder to to waist to shoulder ratio. So your waist should be.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I saw that on, like, masculinemen.tumblr.com dad,

[Michael Hobbs]

you made the same fucking joke. I recently heard of a podcaster who was included on a Tumblr that has exactly that ratio. It's interesting to me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Notably, those ratios both come from studies of men. They're asking men what they think is the right ratio for men to have. They're not asking women.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, because if you ask men, they'll talk about how big his shoulder should be. But if you ask women, they'll talk about how big his heart should be. What's the dick to heart ratio? That's what they want to know.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So that was sort of the beginnings of him getting weird about women. He does have a whole chapter called Improving Sex.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm gonna let Peter take it from here. Peter.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And that is where shit gets the weirdest. If you are listening to this podcast, as some people do with your kids, and you would rather not have, like, a more explicit discussion of sex and

[Peter Shamsheri]

genitals, you're an hour into the podcast episode about shit, and you're like, you know what? No, this isn't okay. You're about to hear about intercourse.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Course the chapter title is the 15 minute female orgasm. It's how long it lasts, how long it takes.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What happened to four?

[Aubrey Gordon]

He gets very sort of granular in his advice here. And as a certified gay lady, his advice in this chapter is fucking nutso.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Okay?

[Aubrey Gordon]

At one point, he just tosses out that he's like, I talked to a number of experts about this.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, it's my buddy Jimmy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

To his credit, the quote, unquote experts that he cites are all women.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Okay, okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So at one point, he just tosses out that he had this conversation with a quote, unquote specialist in female ejaculation.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, you gotta weigh it. You gotta weigh it.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He doesn't say anything about, like, what does that mean? Right? He just says, ah, yes, my friend Tallulah, a specialist in female ejaculation. What Tallulah tells him is that for most women, there is a most sensitive part of the clitoris. And she's like, if you're imagining a clock face and you are Facing a woman's vagina and her clitoris, it would be at about 1 o'. Clock.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What? It's off center.

[Michael Hobbs]

Aubrey, I'm a gay man and Peter's never given a woman an orgasm. You're gonna have to slowly. You're gonna explain this very slowly.

[Peter Shamsheri]

I just do the Alphabet. Like a gentleman.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I, like, called a bunch of other gay lady friends, being like, like, hey, am I high or Is this nothing?

[Peter Shamsheri]

1:00 clock in a vagina is crazy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That's nuts.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's like, it's like just off the clitoris.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like he's next to it.

[Peter Shamsheri]

It's just a little. You're just like slightly missing the clitoris.

[Michael Hobbs]

That's how you know it works.

[Peter Shamsheri]

If you use the 1 o' clock trick, it will take a full 15 minutes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

In addition to his, his sort of fat loss stacks that he takes, he also has a pre sex protocol.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What?

[Michael Hobbs]

Vitamins. He's like, stop, honey. He's like scooping powder into a cup frantically. And she's like, naked in the bedroom

[Peter Shamsheri]

slapping on my nicotine patch.

[Aubrey Gordon]

24 to 48 hours before you want to have incredible sex. As he puts it.

[Michael Hobbs]

48 hours. When you get the Gmail calendar invite

[Aubrey Gordon]

for sex, you should quote, eat at least 800 milligrams of cholesterol within three hours of bedtime the night before you want to have incredible sex.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, my God. It's bottoming advice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Why before bed? Testosterone is derived from cholesterol, which is primarily produced at night during sleep.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What? Ladies, if a guy ever goes nuts at the one o' clock on your vagina the night before, he was loading up on cholesterol, right?

[Michael Hobbs]

His defense, he's had seven eggs in the last 15 minutes.

[Peter Shamsheri]

He's like, scarfing hard boiled eggs, just eating half a pound of shrimp, being like one o', clock, one o', clock, one o'.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Clock. So that's 24 hours before. He also has a protocol for four hours prior to sex.

[Michael Hobbs]

Sex should not be a spontaneous thing.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Sex is all about protocols.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This part of it does feel very Brian Johnson in that I'm like, oh, you're not comfortable with human relationships and feeling shit out with people. So, like, you gotta come up with a whole song and dance to like, make it okay and to sort of like, assuage your nervousness about, like, having sex with someone.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What if you're gonna hook up the next day and then she, like, calls you or she like, texts you? She's like, I'm so horny. Let's Just do it tonight. And you're, you're like five eggs deep.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Well, if you have four hours of notice, then you eat four Brazil nuts, 20 raw almonds, and, and two capsules of fermented cod liver oil and butter.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is like an avoidance strategy when you're like, so afraid of women. You're like, I can't. I haven't had my Brazil nuts.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He really seems like a dude who is uncomfortable with women telling a bunch of stories with a bunch of bravado.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Tim uses this sort of quote unquote information to set himself on a quest to, quote, facilitate female orgasms with as many partners as he could.

[Michael Hobbs]

Again, why is this in your, like, diet and exercise book?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Because he wants to tell the boys how good he is with the ladies.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Because he had 120 pages and they were like, we need 60 more.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He talks about, like, he tells little stories about several of the women that he includes in this quest. The first one he describes as, quote, a 25 year old female yoga instructor fresh from the Midwest, where you're just like, fresh. And in his telling of the story, she unprompted volunteers to him that she has never had an orgasm. And he's like, well, I'm the guy.

[Michael Hobbs]

All right, just had my Brazil nuts. We got 15 minutes before they wear off.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Give me a dozen eggs in 24 hours, honey.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He writes, quote, my quest for the elusive female O had begun. The outcome four weeks later was better than I ever could have imagined.

[Peter Shamsheri]

The four week orgasm.

[Aubrey Gordon]

I was able to facilitate orgasm. The word facilitate will be explained later in every woman who acted as a test subject.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, God. What the fuck is going on?

[Aubrey Gordon]

The results, Those who'd never experienced manual only orgasm were able to do so. And those who'd never experienced penetration only orgasm were also able to do so. The success rate was 100%.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude. Whenever I write a self help book, like any nonfiction book, I'm including a chapter about how good at sex I am.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That one woman then introduces him to an organization. You two may or may not have heard of it, called One Taste. Have either of you heard of Onetaste?

[Peter Shamsheri]

No.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's a Bay Area organization that has been accused of being a cult. It has paid a lot of former employee settlements for labor law violations, sexual abuse. They have a Netflix documentary about how fucking dark One Taste is. And that is where he goes to learn that this quote unquote, 15 minute orgasm business. Right?

[Peter Shamsheri]

That's kind of the kind of shit that a cult leader would tell you. There's a Secret clit. It's just to the right of the regular one.

[Michael Hobbs]

What is this organization, though? Like, officially?

[Aubrey Gordon]

They essentially are having people come in to get coached on their sex technique. So they come in with a partner. There is a coach who watches you, sometimes a group of people who watches you. And then you get, like, notes and direction.

[Michael Hobbs]

It's like a sex Kumon learning center.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They do have this sort of framework that they use where they talk about, quote, unquote, orgasmic meditation. They sort of have this sort of construction built in that is like whether you have an orgasm or not is immaterial because you are participating in orgasmic meditation.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, I've been telling women that for years. Yeah, we are. We're like, sort of spiritually participating in a cosmic orgasm. So whether or not not you are coming in the real world is irrelevant.

[Michael Hobbs]

And I am coming just so we're all clear. But you talk like a spiritual thing.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He also consults another expert named Nina Hartley. Are either of you familiar with Nina Hartley?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Is it porn?

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yep. So Nina Hartley is sort of in the, like, Ron Jeremy, Jenna Jameson vein of, like, a porn actor who sort of crossed over into more pop culture notoriety. Right. In the book, Tim Ferriss writes that other porn actors have said that Nina Hartley was, quote, the best sex of their life. And he says, so does my friend Sylvester.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, would that be Stallone?

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, he just says he has a friend named Sylvester.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, what? Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Who had sex with Nina Hartley.

[Michael Hobbs]

Cool.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yo. You know, Nina Hartley, my friend hooked up with me.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is the most for the fucking boys anecdote that we will read in this entire.

[Michael Hobbs]

All right, Peter's doing it. Peter's doing it.

[Peter Shamsheri]

All right. Sylvester's mom attended a group dinner in Berkeley, California, that Nina also happened to be attending. And the two ended up seated next to each other. Mrs. Norwood came home and said to then 22 year old Sylvester, guess who I was at dinner with? A famous porn star, Nina Hart Hartley. Have you ever heard of her? Sylvester nearly choked in his secret double life. He had a huge collection of videos featuring Nina, his personal snow leopard.

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Peter Shamsheri]

What? I don't know, Mom. I have to meet her. If I never do anything again in this life, I must meet Nina Hartley. Three days of insistent begging and nagging later, Sylvester's mom raised a hand and picked up the phone. Hi, Nina, it's Mrs. Norwood. I had such a nu. I had such a wonderful time meeting

[Aubrey Gordon]

you at the party.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Listen, I have a question for you. Do you ever make love to younger men?

[Michael Hobbs]

What?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yep, Nina's Answer why? Yes, I love breaking in younger men, but only once. And so it happened.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Summary.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Coolest mom ever.

[Michael Hobbs]

Dude. There's like progressive parents and then there's like, when progressive parents go too far. This is like too much sex with positivity in the family.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Thankfully, this is fake.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But the best case scenario here is that Sylvester made this up to impress his friend Tim.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Imagine you make up this crazy bullshit story about fucking a porn star and then like your friend puts it in a best selling book. Yeah, I didn't realize the stakes were so high when I was lying to you about having sex with Nina Hartley.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Do you guys remember there was an ad for like, it was like Coors or something in the 90s. It was like, I like beer with my friends. Watching football with my. And twins.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, do you guys remember that? Of course. And twins.

[Aubrey Gordon]

That coolest mom ever. Feels like it comes straight out of the Ant twins era of like, just like we're just being so fucking horny in public all the time.

[Peter Shamsheri]

This is like very presumptuous. Like the. It's nuts to be like, hey, you're. You're kind of professionally. You have professional sex. Will you. Doesn't this make you kind of a slut? Will you just fuck my son?

[Michael Hobbs]

You have no standards. So do you want to fuck my son?

[Peter Shamsheri]

She's not even like, yeah, like, is he cute? Is he nice?

[Michael Hobbs]

When I was in high school, all my friends were straight dudes. And so as people turned 18 on their 18th birthday, we would all go to the local strip club, which was like right next to my high school. And so I went to like strip clubs a decent amount like my final year of high school because I turned 18 first. And one of the things you saw fairly regularly at strip clubs was, was like a dad and a son would like go there together. And I remember very vividly two, like a man and a son getting like lap dances next to each other. And then the dad just goes up for a high five and like high fives his son.

[Peter Shamsheri]

What on earth?

[Michael Hobbs]

And I think all of us were like, oh, what are we doing?

[Peter Shamsheri]

Upsetting stuff. Also, this is not like, it's not a cool story.

[Aubrey Gordon]

No, it's really not.

[Peter Shamsheri]

If my friend told me this story about themselves, I'd be weirded out. Right? But the fact that he's telling it to us about his friend thinking that it's cool. It's almost. It's so weird. Like, nothing about it is cool. The mom doesn't seem cool.

[Michael Hobbs]

No.

[Peter Shamsheri]

And now you're telling me the story as if it's cool, it's weird. The whole thing's bizarre.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This all exists in this how to section on the 15 minute orgasm. He does have some steps to follow. Step one. One. Quote. Explain to your partner that it is a goalless practice. This is 100% critical. There is no objective. Just focus on a single point of contact. The phrasing should emphasize this and remove all expectations and pressure. Quote, I'm going to touch you for 15 minutes. You don't need to do anything and you don't need. You don't have to do anything afterward. There's nowhere to get to. Nothing to make happen. Just focus on the single point of contact. Contact. It's an exercise.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is you just like, poking the one o' clock mark.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But also like, this strikes me as like, he's not saying this to her, he's saying this to himself.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aubrey Gordon]

This is a goalless practice, guys. We didn't say we're gonna get anywhere. We didn't say anything was gonna get accomplished.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Eat an egg, take a deep breath and get in there.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He goes really hard on how much focus this will take from the dude. He writes, quote, this technique requires 15 minutes of 100% concentration on approximately 3 square millimeters of contact. Nothing more.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke, poke.

[Peter Shamsheri]

That's too slow, Michael. It should be like a hummingbird. You shouldn't even, you know.

[Michael Hobbs]

Woodpecker.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, I love that. He's like, this will be incredibly difficult. There is no goal. Like, he's doing this. Like the kung fu master montage from Kill Bill.

[Aubrey Gordon]

He does tell you to get a kitchen timer and set it for 15 minutes to take the pressure.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, no, that'll take the pressure. That ticking sound. Yeah, we're in this. Calculus is like, what is this woman thinking?

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's really strange to me the kinds of gymnastics that he goes through to avoid, like, just being vulnerable with a partner.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right, right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And being like, here's what I want. What do you want? Right? And like, actually just fucking negotiating it on some level or like, talking it through. He talks us through this whole how to. And then he gives us an example of like, guys, here's how fucking well this shit works. Get ready. The next chapter is called sex machine 1. Adventures in tripling Testosterone.

[Michael Hobbs]

Oh, no.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And he opens with an anecdote about a CEO that he sometimes hooks up with named Vesper.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh. What?

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay.

[Aubrey Gordon]

It's really amazing to me how many anecdotes he include. Includes of people that he knows and includes Their first and last name. Sylvester Norwood.

[Michael Hobbs]

Right.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Nina Hartley. At his mom's arranging.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, yeah. I didn't realize that you could just piece together Sylvester's full name from this.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Oh, yeah.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Also, it's hilarious that his mom, according to this transcript, said, Hi, Nina, it's Mrs. Norwood. Also, like, how many CEOs named Vesper are there?

[Michael Hobbs]

I will read the passage, Peter, you Google Vesper CEO.

[Aubrey Gordon]

All right, Mike, I believe you're up.

[Michael Hobbs]

Okay. The last time we met, I had just taken my total testosterone from 244.8 to 653.3 nanograms per deciliter while cutting my estrogen in half. I just returned from Nicaragua where I ate grass fed beef three times a day for 21 days. I had protein loaded for the last three days, eating two to three pounds of fatty organic grass fed beef per day day, including at least 400 grams just before bed. Dude, this guy smells like a fucking Barn. The result, 15 minutes after we sat down, Vesper was in a sexually aggressive stupor. The bread hadn't arrived and she was already climbing on top of me. This is not a boast. This is not Penthouse Forum. It's a statement of pure confusion. She's a CEO, and this is not typical public CEO behavior.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Oh, so it's a public company too? He's just like, giving us breadcrumbs here.

[Michael Hobbs]

The whole spectacle was surreal. She was literally intoxicated on pheromones. Oh, he's saying the beef made her smell him and then she went bananas.

[Peter Shamsheri]

This is like if Jordan Peterson was horny.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, no, he's saying that he has been cholesterol maxing to allow him to increase testosterone production. Right. This is his previous sort of thinking about this. Like, eat a bunch of cholesterol so your body can convert it into testosterone. Testosterone. And he's saying not only did it work, it worked so much that it was like Invasion of the fucking Body Snatchers for this lady.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Right?

[Michael Hobbs]

When she saw the beef tallow coming out of my pores, she couldn't resist.

[Peter Shamsheri]

She can smell a clogged artery.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Absolutely. I was like, man, he has been eating beef three times a day, dude, for 21 days. And he's also saying, yes, I have all this medical equipment at my house and I get blood work done all the time. And I. Three weeks of beef for every meal is gonna show up in your blood work in ways other than testosterone.

[Michael Hobbs]

This is. Why is every rich guy the same.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Kind of weird, at some point, they all start beef maxing.

[Michael Hobbs]

Yeah, it's crazy.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Although this was also like, 2010 is early to beef maxing. But it's also closer to the generation of men who did literally just only eat beef, just as a matter of practice and principle.

[Aubrey Gordon]

The whole thing is kind of fucking nuts. I think it also also makes more sense when you consider, like, how close in time this is to the premiere of like VH1's the Pickup Artist and like the Rules and that kind of stuff, right? That you're like, he's trying to do like a sciency version of like a shitty misogynist sort of dating book, right?

[Peter Shamsheri]

You're doing card tricks. I'm eating beef.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, eating more beef and doing things from like a third party instructor rather than asking your partner she likes. Right.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Hummingbird speed, karate chops on the 1 o'.

[Michael Hobbs]

Clock.

[Aubrey Gordon]

One of the last things that I find really fascinating about this diet book is how it is received in different sort of corners of media. Book reviews are straightforwardly like, this is bullshit. The New York Times Book Reviews writes, quote, the Four Hour Body reads as if the New England Journal of Medicine had been hijacked by the editors of the SkyMall catalog.

[Michael Hobbs]

Ooh, nice.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Some of this junk might actually work, but you're going to be embarrassed doing it or admitting to your friends that you're trying it. This is a man who, after all, weighs his own feces, likes bloodletting as a life extension strategy, and aims a Phillips go light at his body in place of ingesting caffeine.

[Michael Hobbs]

I love that you skipped the bloodletting. I did feel like there's too much in the episode I did.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Another one is medical reviews like actual doctors reviewing the book.

[Peter Shamsheri]

And what did they say about the bloodletting?

[Aubrey Gordon]

One of them comes from Psychology Today. The title of the review is, quote, how to Not Become Superhuman.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Psychology Today.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Yeah, it's not great.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Sort of on the outskirts. The outskirts of what I would consider reputable. But even they are like Psychology Today

[Aubrey Gordon]

in their review from this MD Write. So why does this good guy, industry insider and potent scientific self experimenter write immediately after the title page, Please don't be stupid and kill yourself. It would make both of us quite unhappy. And then says, you should, quote, consult a doctor before doing anything in this book. Why is the publisher writing that they and the author, quote, expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the user application of the information contained in this book?

[Peter Shamsheri]

There's a full, like, legal liability release at the end of the book.

[Michael Hobbs]

To buy it, you have to, like, sign a waiver.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So, like book reviews? No. Ostensibly scientific sources, no. TechCrunch? Yes. TechCrunch likes it.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yes.

[Aubrey Gordon]

They wrote a review in 2011 called the Four Hour. The real app you are working on is the app called Yourself.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Yeah, yeah, I'm in.

[Michael Hobbs]

I'm listening.

[Peter Shamsheri]

And that's just a clean, succinct headline.

[Aubrey Gordon]

So I just sent a little quote from the TechCrunch Peter review for whoever.

[Peter Shamsheri]

When I boarded the four hour train, our fancy schmancy scale reported that I weighed 197.6 pounds. Ten days later, after morning coffee and protein 187. For calibration, I'm 6:1. I assume most of the difference is water weight, but still, that part actually seems to work as advertised.

[Aubrey Gordon]

But still,

[Peter Shamsheri]

he says, I expected no less, given the data that drove it. I know, I know. Why are you writing about your lunch on TechCrunch? Because my lunch is a data driven iteration from the previous state of the art. In other words, a technical innovation. Look beyond the Valley and you'll find that approach can and will pay dividends almost anywhere.

[Michael Hobbs]

He's like, you may think this is silly, but it's a science based approach. You're literally just listening to some guy.

[Peter Shamsheri]

Why are you. Why are you writing about your lunch in a technology website? Because there's data involved, dude.

[Aubrey Gordon]

And like, the data, such as it is, is Tim Ferriss tried some stuff on Tim Ferriss and then some people read his blog and emailed him about the stuff that they tried.

[Peter Shamsheri]

The scale that you weigh your poop on is technology smart guy.

[Aubrey Gordon]

Sam.