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- [00:00]
Sarah Gibson Tuttle
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- [01:00]
Isaac Saul
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- [01:37]
Camille Foster
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- [02:12]
Isaac Saul
This is Tangle.
- [02:24]
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and today's episode is something a little special. It is a Friday edition turned into a podcast for our listeners here. For those of you who've been listening for a while, you know, if you're a podcast listener, you know that we have brought on Camille Foster as editor at large. You've probably heard him a number of times on our Sunday, soon to be Friday podcast that is as yet unnamed. Camille, I think if you've heard him come on the show, you know he is an incredibly deep thinker, a thoughtful guy who has some kind of heterodox and out there interesting alternative views on stuff and sees things with a really fascinating lens. It's one of the reasons I was so excited to hire him and bring him on to the team. As you know, if you're familiar with his work at all, one of the spaces where his views are most interesting to me at least, and certainly most controversial, I think to wider audiences, are on race and the intersection of identity politics and national politics and race. And I nudged him to make a debut piece about some of his views kind of in that lane because I know it's something that he's really well known for, it's something he's writing a book about and he did not disappoint is what I'll say. So he published a piece last week in the newsletter titled let's have an Authentic Racial Reckoning and the subhead of it was who Made Me Black and why? I don't want to say that this is some kind of manifesto for Camille's views on race, but I think it's a great starter pack to understand the way that he sees the world related to race. It's a really great piece, so we asked him to do a reading of it for the newsletter, the same way I might do a reading of a Friday edition. And of course he obliged. And so that's today's podcast. So without further ado, I'm going to pass it over to Camille to read his piece let's have an Authentic Racial Reckoning.
- [04:45]
Camille Foster
My name is Camille Foster and I am Tangle's editor at large. Just got here, and the reason I joined Tangle is probably for the same reason most of you became subscribers in the first place. I prize thoughtful, transparent and reliably curious journalism, the kind of journalism that helps one make up their own minds. I'm not out there looking for another reheated hot take. That flatters my biases, but I'm always eager to read the greatest arguments I can find from across the political landscape, especially the ones that I'm inclined to disagree with. And my sense of things is that's what is required of a well informed citizen. Tangle is obsessed with producing exactly that kind of journalism and I'm eager to help advance that effort through my contributions to the newsletter, our weekly podcast, and beyond. I'm grateful to be here, I'm grateful you're along for the ride, and I really do look forward to us getting to know each other a little better. So to that end, I suppose some sort of brief bio is in order. I'm a first generation American of Scots Jamaican ancestry. At 16, I somehow convinced the most gorgeous girl in my high school to go on a date with me. We celebrated 20 years of marriage just over a week ago, and Today we've got two extraordinary kids, Leah, 7, and Cohen, 3. I've spent most of my adult life helping to build companies in a number of different industries, and about a decade ago my eclectic entrepreneurial pursuits led me to the world of media commentary and journalism. From my new perch here at Tangle, I'll survey everything from economic and foreign policy to science and tech journalism, media criticism writ large, civil liberties in particular, all things Cormac McCarthy and various other literary interest I have Humanity's search for meaning in the cosmos is another thing that I'm very interested in. In fact, I produced a multi part documentary series which was funded by the Templeton Foundation. It's called Dispatches from the well. I'll ask someone to put a link to it in the show notes. You should really check it out. I mean, it's, I think, pretty fabulous stuff. I'm quite proud of it, but I am certainly biased. And there's a universe of other things too. But interestingly, if you're already familiar with my work, or if you've been listening to the Sunday podcast, then you probably noticed something conspicuously absent from that list of things I'm interested in and planning to cover. Over the years I've developed a bit of a reputation for my often unconventional, if always reliably well researched, commentary on various issues at the intersection of race, identity and politics. I'm even under contract to write a book about this topic for St. Martin's Press, which I'm certainly making some progress on, but it's going to take a little while and it's changed in some ways from what I pitched. That said, I was a little reluctant to tread some of that same ground in my inaugural contribution for Tangle. I just kind of wanted to mix it up a bit. But with some encouragement from Isaac, and considering we are at the five year anniversary of this uniquely consequential moment in American history, the 2020 RA racial reckoning, it seemed appropriate to weigh in on this a bit. So that's what we're here to talk about. Today, and that's the piece that I'm going to read for you. I followed the evolution of racial justice activism since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in around 2013, after the death of Trayvon Martin. I anchored live broadcast during the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after the death of Michael Brown. But the extraordinary expansion of that movement in the summer of 2020, what some described as the fastest growing political movement in US History, was unlike anything that preceded it. In the midst of a global pandemic, American politics, media, and culture were swept up by a phenomenon whose legacy remains deeply misunderstood. Even after countless retrospectives, many of which were published in the past few months by the most prominent media outlets in the we've yet to fully appreciate what the movement achieved. Most of the analysis focuses on what didn't materialize. People expected sweeping legislative victories or lasting institutional reforms. Others highlight the unintended consequence of overstating the danger posed by policing, which in some instances led to something like the Ferguson Effect is what it was called during the 2014 Black Lives Matter movement, where there's this kind of spike in violent crime associated with these waves of activism. But as the Black squares took over Instagram back in 2020 and scores of corporate equity pledges were published online, I began to suspect that the most enduring legacy of the moment was bound to be philosophical in nature. In the end, the racial reckoning really reshaped the way that we talk to each other and talk about ourselves. It changed the way that we think about justice and the way that we encourage our children to see the world. A reckoning implies a confrontation with the truth, but this was something else, a kind of race monomania, less a moment of moral clarity than a refurbishing of the essentialism that crudely obscures our collective similarities and exaggerates our differences. Race during this period became the quintessential lens for political and moral analysis, not just the feature of our identities, but a framework for interpreting nearly everything. Hey, Black child. Almost two years after the pandemic drove us from Brooklyn, and just a month before the birth of our second child, my family relocated back to the east coast from California. There are a thousand small things to manage during a cross country move like that, but one particularly large thing emerged on a February morning when I was shuttling our 5 year old daughter to her first day at a new school. On her best days, Leah is the most gregarious and talkative person in our household. That morning she was all contemplation and single word replies. In a few minutes she'd be dropped into an already formed monastery class just a week after saying emotional goodbyes to her former classmates and a teacher she absolutely adored. I did my best to try to keep her spirits up, but I was preoccupied with my own ruminations about Leah's big day. I hoped she'd make new friends right away, that she'd forge an instant connection with her new teacher, and that the Chernobyl scale meltdown that would almost certainly unfold on the threshold of her new classroom, that it wouldn't last more than 10 or 15 minutes. We were a bit of a mess that morning, but as we drove into the parking garage and exited the car, the atmosphere felt noticeably lighter. The maelstrom of morning drop offs had ended at least an hour earlier. Showing up a little late was a good call. The elevator arrived immediately and we stepped aboard, still holding one another's hands. The ride up was quick, but just long enough to let a modicum of relief take hold. We stepped out of the elevator and into the school's reception area. Leah was scanning the room and gave my hand a quick squeeze. Then something caught my eye. Near the entrance stood a credenza and a bulletin board covered with a haphazard assemblage of Black History Month material, books on small plastic stands, postcards and flyers, and at the center, nearly the focal point of all of it, was a half letter sized, staple bound children's book with a glossy cover that barked its title in oversized block letters hey, Black Child. No doubt the display was conceived with the best of intentions, an effort to be inclusive. But I stopped imagining Leah greeting me at the end of the day with a wide smile because things worked out much better than I expected, and started wondering what assumptions her new teachers might already be holding the moment they meet her. Would they see Leah the way we do at home, as a singularly curious and deeply imaginative child, A child that's becoming more herself every single day? Or would they see a systematically disadvantaged minority, seared by struggle, in need of special handling and extra care? At five years old, Leah loved stargazing, had a budding interest in photography and physics and kind of philosophy as well. I can remember her asking me once, daddy, is infinity invisible? It's a weirdly profound question. Leah also has this diverse musical taste, which I perhaps helped cultivate a little bit. She loved Donny Hathaway and Michael Jackson, at least Jackson 5, Michael Jackson, James Taylor, and Lana Del Rey. She had, and still has, a rich inner world and an appetite for not quite age appropriate narrative fiction, which I'VE always been happy to indulge. I think, you know, reading Call of the Wild with the five year olds is a little ambitious, but she was super interested and we skipped the part towards the end where the raid on John Thornton's camp happens. She didn't need that detail to understand the substance of the story and seemed to enjoy it pretty well. But Leah had no conception of herself as a member of a racial group at that time, or as a black person in particular. And why should she? I was still wrestling with those thoughts when we found our way to Leah's classroom, and we were still holding hands when Leah's new teacher came out to greet us in the hall. This woman was a stranger to us and not at all like Leah's former teacher. She was noticeably younger, a woman with a much more quiet demeanor than her former teacher. But as she bent to meet Leah at eye level, greeting her by name and just about to open her mouth to say more, Leah slipped her hand out of mine and threw her arms around her new teacher in a desperate hug. I can't recall if Leah looked back as they entered the classroom together, but I certainly recall her teacher shooting me another confident grin. I was relieved to see Leah make an immediate connection with her new teacher. In that moment, I might have been contemplating a recent headline I'd read in the New York Times professing the importance of children sharing the race of their teacher. While that segregationist prescription would apparently satisfy both the concerns of Jim Crow era bigots and modern racial justice activists, the lack of any obvious ethnic or phenotypic similarities clearly didn't make much of a difference to Leah and her teacher. That morning, months before Leah was born, I interviewed historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. Via Skype. He was short on time, and our exchange was brief, but over the course of the call, we discussed various things James Baldwin, whom we both adore, and the subjective and artistic dimensions of doing history. And towards the end of our conversation, Dr. Gates offered an observation I'd heard paraphrased numerous times before. There are 42 million African Americans, he explained, that means there are 42 million ways to be black. This adage is something that he imparts to his students in his Harvard classroom at the end of each semester, and the idea resonated deeply with me. So deeply, in fact, that upon first encountering it, I had a thought. In fact, I asked myself a question. If there are as many ways to be black as there are black people, what exactly is blackness, and why should I bother with it at all? As the conversation was wrapping, I decided to share what may be my most controversial and for others, my most confounding and unconventional belief. I don't self identify as black and I can't imagine a valid reason to do so. Gates response to this was polite, brief and frankly a bit perplexing. He said, though you might see yourself as simply a human being when you walk in a room, very few Americans see you that way and that means that you inherit, whether you want to or not, all these stereotypes and connotations that are just part and parcel of being a black male. And you have to know that. And if you have a child, your child has to know that it's a form of self protection. Sooner or later you're going to encounter anti black racism and woe to the person who doesn't know that history. As I think back on it now, it remains frustrating to me that even when talking to a person who acknowledges the crude, nuance, flattening qualities of race, I still encounter resistance when insisting on full autonomy for myself. And that I would need to make a similar request on behalf of my daughter or son heightens the register of that frustration substantially. I've tracked the strange winds, both culturally and politically, that have helped to bring us to a point where such requests feel obligatory for me. I've spent a lifetime advocating for my own autonomy, but having to request amnesty for my daughter and son from having a racial identity imposed on them. That's a potent reminder of the odd and somewhat newly ascendant philosophy of racial equity. A James Baldwin quote comes to mind for the sake of one's children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion and the value placed on the color of the skin is always and everywhere and forever a delusion.
- [19:00]
Isaac Saul
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- [21:17]
Camille Foster
A moment that promised clarity but deliberate confusion In June of 2020, scores of Americans bucked pandemic restrictions to join mass demonstrations and demand racial justice under the banner of the Black Lives Matter movement. National media coverage was saturated with stories about systemic racism, primers on anti racism, and demands for racial equity. Public discourse was overtaken by a sense of moral urgency that seemed to leave little room for nuance. While most demonstrations were in fact peaceful, significant violence and property destruction occurred, resulting in record breaking losses for property owners and insurance providers. All of this left lasting, durable scars on our society, and five years later, the legacy of the movement remains complicated, contentious and deeply disappointing. Debates over policy wins and losses often distract from the deeper philosophical error at the heart of the reckoning the assumption that race is a meaningful and explanatory factor of God damn it. Debates over policy wins and losses often distract from the deeper philosophical error at the heart of the reckoning the assumption that race is a meaningful and explanatory feature of human identity. This assumption didn't just shape individual programs or camps. It's reshaped our moral compass. It's encouraged us to treat racial categories as real causal forces rather than as social fictions. Doing so deepens divisions, warps our understanding of justice, and provides growing ideological backlash. One of the clearest signs of this shift is the movement away from equality towards equity. For generations, racial equality was something that most Americans understood intuitively. It is this notion that individuals are judged fairly, equivalently, without regard to their race. Equity, by contrast, makes race central. Its goal is not equal treatment for individuals, but equal outcomes between racial groups. Though often presented as a more sophisticated or compassionate approach, equity oriented thinking replaces individual dignity with demographic accounting. It treats statistical disparities as proof of injustice regardless of context or cause. In doing so, it reduces people to representatives of their groups and reframes justice as the balancing of categories rather than the honoring of persons. This change may have been well intentioned, but its long term effects are to reify race and subordinate the individual. A conversation centered on racial equity isn't just centered on equity, it is definitionally centered on race. Enforcing the concept of racial equity. The movement required all participants to commit to race as an essential characteristic of individuals. The commitment to this race essentialism has been bipartisan. On the left, equity driven thinking created a fixation on racial outcomes. Despite good intentions, policies inspired by this kind of thinking often reinforced race essentialism, fostering divisions, resentment, and polarization. Reflecting again on Leah's first day, I'm reminded how subtly these ideological presumptions creep into so much of our everyday experience and interactions. How many well intentioned efforts at instilling racial pride or awareness inadvertently reinforce divisions they're ostensibly seeking to bridge. When we prioritize symbolic racial representation over genuine individual particularity, what lessons are we teaching our children? Are we genuinely preparing them for a complex, diverse world or merely reinforcing inherited divisions? Let me offer an anecdote. My skin has a particular melanin content that you might be tempted to regard as black. Or at least someone might imagine for a moment that I walk into a jewelry store or some such establishment and find myself being followed by a salesperson, or at least believing I might be being followed. The racial reckoning taught me, or tried to teach me anyways, to recognize this as a microaggression of some sort of as a person making the assumption that I look a kind of way and perhaps I look like the kind of person who might steal. Now imagine I come into the same jewelry store and this time the salesperson looks at me, sees me, and largely ignores me. The philosophy of the racial reckoning all but insists I recognize this as a microaggression as well as a person making the assumption that I look like the kind of person who perhaps has no real money to spend and can't afford to find jewelry in the stores. The trap is set. There's no escape. Whether someone speaks to me or I'm ignored. The presumption here is that there is something about me, something innate about my racial identity that is perhaps creating a circumstance where I'm encountering racism all the time. This kind of stuff, circular fatalist perspective that presumes that racism and race are the most fundamental thing about our experience of the world. There's no way I want that kind of circular reasoning operating in my own head, and I don't want my kids to inherit a paradigm like that either. Foreign.
- [27:19]
Isaac Saul
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- [28:24]
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- [29:02]
Camille Foster
Towards an authentic racial reckoning. The outpouring of race focused discourse course that took place in 2020 faltered not because it was overly ambitious, but because it rested on the misguided assumption that race itself is fundamentally meaningful and explanatory. Its failure obscured true justice, deepening social divisions and intensified polarization. We deserve an authentic racial reckoning, one that prioritizes individual dignity, human equality, and the moral seriousness we rightly demand when genuine justice is at stake. Like in a courtroom. This reckoning requires honestly confronting the philosophical incoherence of race and explicitly acknowledging the harm of our modern obsession with race. There's nothing essential, biological, cultural, experiential, or moral that all members of any socially constructed racial group have in common. No trait, no belief, no history or fate. A category that can't tell us what is included or excluded is not merely imprecise, it's incoherent. Race pretends to name something concrete, but it is an imagined substance, persistently elusive. It seems to offer shifting generalizations that collapse under scrutiny. What happens when you elevate an incoherent conceptual placeholder like race into a defining feature of personhood, policy, and moral life? In the first case, you settle for confusion instead of clarity. In the second, you prioritize group avatars over actual persons. And finally, you create systems, institutions, and other frameworks that orbit a divisive fiction, but behaves as if abstractions were inviolable facts. You get policy and activism rooted in hysteria and myth. For example, in fall of 2020, the American Medical association followed the lead of many organizations and formally declared racism a public health emergency. But they also went further. In the same press release, the AMA rightly rejected the use of biological race essentialism in a medical context, warning that it undermines individual patient care. Paradoxically, however, the AMA simultaneously adopted an equity driven policy, and those policies were explicitly grounded in racial categories. Logically, assessing racial medical risk implies either that race has a biological reality and that risk is tied to essential racial traits, something immutable and biological, or that race is a social reality and that there are shared social conditions that produce consistent outcomes within a racial group, effectively essentializing them. In practice, the AMA explicitly rejected biological essentialism. Yet for some reason it decided to embrace social essentialism. This replicates precisely the problem they sought to avoid, subordinating individual care to general categories associated with race. If my personal medical history and lifestyle do not indicate elevated risk, why should anyone presume otherwise based on the racial category they assign me to? Progressives are not reinforcing race essentialism all on their own. Conservative critics, though, rightly skeptical of equity frameworks also reinforce race essentialism, albeit differently. While most conservative critics do not explicitly engage in race realism, its troubling resurgence in some conservative circles merits concern. Similarly, conservatives and liberal fixate on racial disparities in crime and incarceration, and they suffer from a conceptual confusion. Empirical evidence demonstrates these disparities are complex and exaggerated when interpreted solely through a racial lens. Far more predictive factors such as family structure, community stability, and socioeconomic conditions better explain complex social outcomes. Our cultural obsession with racial explanations obscures clear understanding of reality. More distant history offers rich examples as well. Between the 17th and 19th century, colonial Latin America categorized individuals into racial hierarchies known as the Costa system, defined by fractional ancestry. These categories included mulatto 1 European parent, 1 African parent, Morisco 1 European parent, 1 mulatto parent, Quadroon 1/4 African ancestry and octoroon 1/8 African ancestry. Today we recognize these classifications as absurd. Yet contemporary racial categories like black, white, and Asian are as unsophisticated and commit precisely the same conceptual error, imposing arbitrary distinctions onto the fluid and overlapping spectrum of human biodiversity. When race is your moral compass, you're bound to lose your way. And when race or gender or sexuality or even religion is proffered as an identity, are we not trading the soul for a silhouette beyond the dream? Much of what I've outlined here is at sharp odds with newly fashionable ideas that rose to prominence in conjunction with this mislabeled racial reckoning, which has ironically led many people to unwittingly embrace beliefs and political prescriptions that bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those of 1960s segregationists. That's a jarring assertion to make, but it's not overwrought, and I they don't intend it as a smear. Relatedly, when many critics on the right have responded to these misguided racial proclivities on the left, and when they are openly reactionary themselves, they often serve up their own disappointing appeals to authority. They defer to black conservatives or invoke familiar quotations of historical figures like mlk. The first move only imitates the error of their political rivals, attributing authority to individuals not on the basis of merit but on the basis of their identity. The second often requires regrettable oversimplification of views of historical figures, but it also betrays a failure of imagination. The answer to our current problems don't lie in the past. We don't only need a restatement of old ideas. King's Dream was wonderful for its time, but Must it be the height of our moral ambitions? I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today. King's potent sentiment still speaks to us today, but I can imagine something much better than black and white children playing together. I aspire to a world where no one would dare risk overlooking the dignity of any individual child by indulging in casual race generalizations. In America, the enduring achievement of racism as an ideology has little to do with vulgar assertions about any group's biological inferiority or superiority. Its most frustrating and consequential legacy is having seduced most of the world into simultaneously rejecting the notion of biological racial inferiority while uncritically accepting the taxonomy of human races as valid, not only accepting it, but inculcating it into nearly every aspect of their lives. If you've ever completed a form that inquired about your race and you proceeded to voluntarily identify as white, black, Asian, or Latino rather than write in the word human, then you've fallen under the spell too. And whether you're committed to the cause of racial justice and anti racism or segregation and white supremacy or even colorblindness, I'd argue that you've casually endorsed the same retrograde presumptions about the corporality of race and the nature of human difference. Race is America's most pervasive and consequential conspiracy theory, and as a country, we very nearly sanctified the concept of race while systematically ignoring the philosophical compromise and intellectual inconsistencies it demands. We need to deliberately define the world we want to live in, to set aspirations that build on the profound achievements that preceded them. And once we've done that, we'll be better positioned to draw inspiration from the past and face our most urgent political and civilization challenges today. Black Lives Matter activists ought to consult the example of Memphis sanitation workers who in 1968 didn't obscure their demand for dignity by making appeals on behalf of race. They rested their claims on the incontrovertible fact of their shared humanity. The difference in moral postures is not trivial. The Memphis sanitation workers held signs that read I am a man, a declaration of individuals grounded in their co equal humanity. That claim is personal, universally applicable, and morally unassailable. By contrast, Black Lives Matter couches its appeals in the language of race solidarity. Its moral force is mediated through group identity rather than individual personhood. That shift from asserting I am to insisting We Matter marks a philosophical retreat, a retrogression in support of a taxonomical scheme suitable only for the dustbin of history. This is the unfinished work of the racial reckoning not better management of racial categories or symbolic gestures of inclusion, but the principal dismantling of race ideology. Only then can we create a society where justice is measured by tangible improvements in individual lives rather than abstract demographic categories. Lia, along with every child, deserves to grow up in a world that sees them fully as themselves, not as avatars of particular racial groups, but as individuals whose dignity and worship worth are unquestioned and inviolable. All right, that is it for Editor at large Camille Foster's first piece for Tangle. I just want to say congratulations on a beautifully vulnerable and deeply introspective piece and looking forward to more of your writing and contributions to Tangle. So glad to have you on the team. I'm sure many of you have thoughts, questions and comments, so whether you have concerns or positive feedback, please feel free to reach out to us@staffeadtangle.com.
- [40:21]
Isaac Saul
Thank you for listening to this Tangle Media Production. Our Executive Editor and Founder is me, Isaac Saul and our Executive Producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lal. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will K. Back and Associate Editors Hunter Casperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsay Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by John Lal. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.
- [41:17]
There'S nothing better than treating yourself except maybe treating yourself to high end top quality pieces at half the cost. That's what Quince is all about. From European linen apparel starting at just $30 to handbags crafted from the finest Italian leather, Quince can elevate an everyday outfit at a fraction of the price. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middlemen, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the markup. Go to quinte's.com style for everyday, affordable luxuries with free shipping and 365 day returns. If your dog could talk, they'd beg for Ollie. The full body tail wag, the excited little hops, the big goofy grin. That's the Ollie effect. Ollie delivers clean, fresh nutrition in five drool worthy flavors even for the pickiest eaters. Made in US Kitchens with high quality human grade ingredients, Ollie's food contains no fillers, no preservatives, just real food. Just fill out Ollie's 30 second quiz and they'll create a customized meal plan based on your pup's weight, activity level and other health info. Dogs deserve the best, and that means fresh, healthy food. Head to ollie.com healthypup Tell them about your dog and use code HEALTHYP off your welcome kit when you subscribe today. Plus, they offer a happiness guarantee on the first box, so if you're not completely satisfied, you'll get your money back. That's O L L I e.com HealthyPup and enter code HealthyPup to get 60% off your first box.
- [42:42]
Christian Dropo
Have you ever wondered how your body naturally repairs and rejuvenates itself? It all comes down to your stem cells. Your body's built in repair system that renews tissue, restores balance and helps you feel your best. But by age 30, you have up to 90% fewer stem cells in circulation. That's where Stem Regen comes in. Founded by stem cell scientist and health pioneer Christian Dropo, Stemregen products are designed to support your body's natural repair system by using science backed plant based extracts, just two capsules of STEM regen releases an average of 10 million of your own stem cells into your body. No injections, just two capsules empower your body to rejuvenate from within. Whether you're focused on recovery, longevity or just over, Regen can help release more of your health, more life and more of the best version of you. Try it now at Stemregen Co and use code POD15 for 15% off your first order. That's STEM REGEN CODEPOD15.