The Dark Story Behind Ozempic’s $500B Business Empire

25:48Stanford Med School, 50 % of our budget touches pharma. Pharma is the number one funder of research. Pharma is the number one funder of the actual regulatory agencies. Excuse me, 75 % of the FDA is actually not funded by taxpayers. It's funded by pharma itself. And bureaucracies are built to grow. It's a revolving door. When I hear Stanford med school professor or the dean of Harvard med school, that just feels like trustworthy to me. Just me as a layman person, I feel like, well, who else am I going to trust if not the dean of Harvard Med or the Stanford professor? Are those people that you trust?

26:26Absolutely not. I think around the country in various levels, we're all losing trust in our institutions in various ways. The military, education, healthcare, I think is number one. And I think this is a really positive thing because we're the only animals with experts telling us what to eat and how to manage chronic conditions. We're the only animals that have rampant levels of metabolic dysfunction, obesity, diabetes. You don't have those among giraffes. The problem is that we're listening to the experts. And let me just take it really specific on Stanford Med School D. You're right. Nobody more trusted in the country.

27:00And working for the pharmaceutical industry in 2009, 2010, we knew that. Well, can you just explain that? You were a consultant, right? You went to Stanford, then you became a consultant, and you consulted four companies. Can you just explain that background? I went to Stanford. My sister was my best friend. she was much smarter. She was pre-med, you know, top of her Stanford med school class. I did economics and got into politics. And then right after doing some campaigns, realized, you know, everyone that after the campaign works for the two largest spenders in DC, the food industry and the pharma industry, worked for them and did consulting for a couple of years.

27:32Didn't like it, went to business school and been starting companies for the past 10 years. Did you know, getting into it, were you like, this is slimy? So I grew up in Washington, DC, good, young conservative, you know, intern at the White House, entered at the Heritage Foundation. I was the annoying conservative guy in class at Stanford pissing everyone off and really considered myself ideological. And I considered being conservative, supporting American industry. So I worked on some campaigns and then I was very proud to be working for the pharmaceutical industry and working for the food industry, these industries leading the country.

28:03And the issue in front of us was, which ties to the Stanford med school dean, was opioids. So you get in a room, I'm a junior employee, and it's like there's unnecessary regulation on opioids, these incredible innovations that are solving this scourge of the American people, which is pain. And we have to fight back against this. What are we going to do? And I had a list of doctors in front of me. And we're like, how do we get these doctors money? Let's get them some research grants. So we reached out to the Dean of Stanford Med School, who was a pain specialist. And we funded him directly with consulting payments and then made a donation to Stanford to his lab for$4 million from opioid companies to study ethics and pain management.

28:47Then we worked with our allies at the NIH, which is totally just a swamp with pharmaceutical interests. It's funded by pharma. It's a total roving door. And we helped set up a panel. So the NIH in 2011 did a panel to make recommendations on opioids. Who's the most trusted person you could possibly have on a panel to make a medical recommendation, the Dean of Stanford Med School. So the Dean of Stanford Med School, who just took a bunch of money from opioid companies, was appointed in 2011 to the Blue Ribbon Panel on Opioid Recommendations. He chose 19 other elite academics. 15 of the 19 had direct payments from opioid companies that we very strategically steered to them.

29:25And that panel in 2000, I believe it's 2011, recommended basically that this was overblown about the addiction. They basically said you know stay the course pain is a huge problem and then opioid prescriptions continue to go up that's how it works and i could just tell you i think this is something people are waking up to i think you see this in the political climate right now where there's i think the defining issue of our time is distrust of our institutions um these lobbyists these consultants they know how to rig the debate right they know people trust a study from stanford they know people trust you know what civil rights groups say that if you call someone racist that's going to shut down the debate.

30:02So that's why corporations that are basically poising the American people are the biggest funder of civil rights organizations. It's just look who people trust and funnel the money to. So let me ask you, when you funded the research for, let's say, that Stanford professor or dean or whatever it was, and you funded 15 of the 19 people that were on that panel. Now, I want to get really specific. Do you think, what do you believe? Do you believe that they genuinely believed the opioid, like that, that was their genuine conclusion after doing the research and the study was that the opioid thing is overblown and we should pay more opioids for Americans, right?

30:41Do you believe that they felt like a little conflicted? Like, hey, my gravy train shuts off if this goes down. So let's find some middle ground. Do you feel like they are intentionally misleading or that that's genuinely what they believe? Very, very good question. I I used to have trouble believing this is because how can this be so evil? So let me break this down. The genius of the healthcare system is that it takes very good people and puts them into a system with plausible deniability. So the problem is that nobody actually has full responsibility for why the outcome that the healthcare system should be solving for, which is people getting sick, why that's exploding as everyone's making money.

31:22You know, the doctors can say it's the food companies fault. The food companies can say it's personal responsibility. The med schools can say, we can't control what Americans do. We're just going to keep growing and making money. The pharma companies rally about making stands and curing the sick patients in front of them. So everyone, the systemic design of the healthcare industry is actually genius because it can allow people actually almost a virtue signal about doing the right thing while producing, well, not necessarily evil. It's evil, but it's producing what the system's designed to do, which is growth.

31:53So that's one dynamic with the healthcare system. If you go down to your question, Sean and I've really, Casey's been exploring this. We talk about this in our book. I have to put some culpability on people in the system. And I think it's breaking through. One statistic that's alarming, doctors have the highest suicide rate and highest rate of burnout of any profession in America. I think what's happening is you get a lot of well-meaning people. There's easier ways to make a buck than the nine years of training you have to do. You know, people, we actually are a magnet for the best and brightest into the medical system.

32:23And then they eventually realize, and if they're not, they don't realize this, they're just not paying attention, that they're complicit in a system that is profiting from people being sick and they're not making people better. So you actually have a dynamic where a lot of people feel trapped. My sister, after leaving, kind of bravely leaving the medical system after a decade of training, got people senior at Stanford, senior at Harvard, senior medical leaders, kind of talking to her off the record saying, you are much braver than me. Everyone knows the system is going to run the country off a cliff.

32:53So there is a knowledge. And I think what leads to this depression, suicide, burnout among doctors is they don't quite know what to do. They feel really trapped in this system with really perverse incentives. But we all know people that work at pharma that are doctors. A lot of my friends from Harvard Business School, they go into work at Pepsi, work at pharma, work at these companies. It takes good people. But more and more, I do think we need to kind of Elon Musk energy. He said, fuck it. I don't care if I lose money. I'm going to do what's right. We need more of that leadership from the healthcare system because we're truly creating, and I'm not even joking, right?

33:31A fat, depressed, infertile population. I mean, infertility is skyrocketing right now. Our bodies are screaming out for help. Right. Well, before we go to infertility, I want to just tie back to the history thing. so you had said something I think in one of your blog posts that the first chronic condition that pharmaceutical ever that became a pharmaceutical product was birth control I think this was in the 1950s and you said this is the first pill in American history that people just didn't stop taking and you know if you're a company and you see this is a beautiful business model here's a pill they're going to take every single month you know on an ongoing basis and it's not you know it's not a cure it's a treatment it's a chronic thing that you're going to continue to do and um i think there's some documentaries now on the sackler family and all this but uh you know basically they worked for pfizer they started thinking you know how can we create more chronic issues and they is it true that they also owned the medical journals at the time yes so let me yeah let me try to take that to today and what kind of the business problem and the opportunity is so you're right um the medical system was at its height of trust after world war ii the invention of antibiotics was credited as a chief reason we won the war you know but antibiotics were founded by you know uh basically somebody digging in dirt and doing some like very rudimentary experiments that cost no money right it's it's like this wasn't actually a huge industry um and literally the sack of family they said okay this is very strategic let's take the trust engendered post-World War II.

35:04Let's learn the lesson from the birth control pill and let's get Americans on more and more pills. So they actually, with owning the medical journals, they actually created new diagnosis codes and created this idea of anxiety and created new mental health code categories. And their first big blockbuster, one of them, was Valium, a benzos, very addictive, very harmful. And the Time Magazine cover, late 1960s, early 1970s was Valium Nation. 30 % of women were on this drug, very addictive. They were called Mommy's Little Helper, and that was their advertising. And then you just go down the list, the entire thrust of medicine has then been to take that Flexner report, take what Rockefeller set up and put it on Hyperdrive, segment the body, segment medical specialties deeper, deeper, deeper and then create pills just for biomarkers, right?

36:00Stadden for cholesterol, right? The metformin for blood sugar. We've been pilling ourselves on all these little biomarkers that we can kind of manipulate with one pill, completely ignoring that everyone's getting sicker at the same time. That is by the design, right? It's very profitable. I think we talked about this on Twitter, just as a statement of economic fact, there's nothing more profitable than a child that gets sick early and gets on these drugs and doesn't learn metabolically healthy habits, doesn't learn the basics of why their blood sugar is high, why their cholesterol is high. They're told the savings is a pill and they're inevitably going to get more and more and more and more comorbidities.

36:43The genius of chronic disease, which the Sacklers understood, is that those patients suffer, those kids suffer, right? You're four times more likely to be suicidal or depressed if you have diabetes as a kid. You're going to have a lot more issues like infertility, but you don't die right away. You're a patient who goes in the system often paid for by taxpayers. So this was understood. This is directly understood when the Sacklers and other allies saw the birth control pill. And that takes us to today where I'll call out even the entrepreneurial community and venture capitalists, right? Investment and good business opportunities in the system still are predicated on this existing model.

37:30I talked to a lot of esteemed healthcare VCs and they think innovation is putting a millennial pink package on Viagra and shipping it to people more conveniently. They think that innovation is like better UX on medical records. You look down the list on these thought leaders of venture capital talking about medical innovation. It's all just better wrappers on the same existing system. There's very little disruption. Now, that's a moral problem, but I actually think it's an economic problem because I don't think people fully understand. I've talked to a lot of the wise people in the health space.

38:06If we have an unsustainable situation, if we truly do believe that, if we truly do believe we're on a bad path with our mental health, with our physical health, with our obesity rates, we're not going to drug our way out of that problem. We're not going to be doing more and more of the same to solve that problem. I think that's self-evident. And I think there's an economic opportunity there for people who realize it because we're going to have to shift the incentives of the system. Hey, so I don't want to change the world when it comes to food. That's up to guys like you. I just want to do the 80-20 where I mostly do things great so I feel good and I look good and my family is safe and feels good as well.

38:42Can you tell me what you eat and where you get your food on a daily basis and just what that 80-20 is? What can I do? What can our listeners do? What can Sean do to just be mostly great? Yeah. The core thesis of this book I wrote with my sister is that things are more complicated by design. The biggest lie in healthcare is that the reasons we're getting sick are complicated. And the second biggest lie is that these things can't be changed quickly. They can. So when it comes to food, I believe we should fire every single person in the government and academia who works in nutrition we should replace it with this one rule which is which answers your question and one principle reduce ultra processed food consumption we are 70 if you look at what your kids are eating or what we're eating it's ultra processed food so what what did you what did you eat for breakfast and what are you gonna eat for lunch no matter what dietary philosophy you are i try to eat whole foods i had eggs right pasture raised so look look into the quality so So the first step is to reduce ultra food consumption.

39:47That's the thing I'd say first and foremost, that is what most people are not doing. Even if you don't get into the types of food you're eating, that's the first step. I guarantee you, if you are on the hunt to rid your fridge of ultra processed food, being on the hunt for those three, those unholy trendy of three ingredients, added sugar, processed grains, and seed oils, you're going to get to the next level of the quality of the food. The first thing to do is ultra processed food. So, which basically just means mostly plants and animals that are not processed a ton. If we simply made that our nutrition policy, we'd be a transformed human capital.

40:23The second thing is, as you alluded to, is if you get there and most people are not there, is to get into the quality of food, to really understand and be curious and be in that path of what's being done to our food. The genetic makeup of a grass-fed cow versus a grain-fed cow is entirely different. It's a reversed ratio of omega-3 or omega-6. The grain-fed, which cows are not made to eat, which is totally a new phenomenon, are predominantly omega-6 fatty acids, which are inflammatory, which causes inflammation in our body. A grass-fed cow, which is how they've been raised forever, which is now a luxury, is omega-3 anti-inflammatory.

41:00So if you just hunt for animals, hunt for vegetables that were made in the way we're biologically made to eat them, that's the second bar. Well, all right. So I'm hungry. Do you go to a chain grocery store ever, or do you only go to butchers? Where do you shop for groceries? I go to Sprouts. I go to Whole Foods. I look for deliveries of meat that's pasture-raised of farmers that I trust. but truly um just going to your supermarket and not getting ultra processed food and looking with the eggs pasture raised with the meat ideally grass-fed pasture raised um with the vegetables organic not sprayed with a bunch of glyphosate and pesticides like it's simple it's it's the things we all talk about but if you if you truly just follow that um and we incentivize that as a country more, we'll be on a much better path.

42:00What are your vices? When's the last time you had a Dorito? Yeah. Or like, just like, like, do you have a bowl of ice cream once a week? I am like, everyone that knows me, I am like, I've been on a journey here, guys. Like, you know, two years ago, I mean, I was running a wedding dress company with my wife, a direct consumer wedding dress company during COVID. We raised venture money. We had a large team struggle a bit during COVID. It's called Anomaly. So we made custom dresses. We had a really innovative supply chain. But I've been running startups, direct-to-consumer companies for the past decade.

42:37And I wasn't the helliest person. And during COVID, a couple of things happened. One is my sister, Casey Means, who I wrote the book with, as I mentioned a bunch, she started Levels Health. She left the medical system. She's become a big advocate. I thought she was an idiot when she left medical school or left residency. I, as I said, grew up trusting the medical system, thinking it was just crazy that she would leave this path she's on of all these credentials. That's how we were raised. It's like, get the best schools, grow up the traditional systems. So I thought she was crazy, but she really radicalized me with these ideas that the answers are much simpler than they seem.

43:18In 2021, as we were selling our direct consumer company, my mom had a pain in her stomach and went in to get a scan at Stanford Hospital. And she was perfectly healthy, we thought, but they told her it was stage four pancreatic cancer. And she called us, said she's going to die in a couple of weeks. And we rushed to her side. What that experience for me, so this is relatively new, this is 2021. What that experience to me showed is really a microcosm of how the system is broken. Because my mom was on five medications. over 40 years. She, you know, 30 years ago had high cholesterol, statin, that's normal, high blood sugar, metformin, that's normal.

43:58So she was the typical American patient. She was 70 and actually told by her doctor a couple weeks before that she was actually healthy because she was on less medications than an average 70-year-old. Because those issues that most Americans deal with weren't identified as a core, you know, metabolic issue, just take a pill. She wasn't set on that path of exploring her food, of understanding how sedentary life can eventually give you cancer down the road. That led to her getting cancer. This year, cancer rates are at an all-time high. They're particularly at an all-time high around kids. Every single chronic disease you can name is at an all-time high this year.

44:33It's because we're ignoring the warning signs. We ignored those with my mom. So she abruptly died and that kind of radicalized me to my previous experience working for the food and pharma industry. Right around that time, I took a blood test and the doctor said, oh, your blood is fine. You're fine. I showed my sister. She's like, no, no, this represents metabolic dysfunction. I asked the doctor again, what happened? They're like, no, no, no, you're not treatable yet. You're not quite at the statin rate. But yeah, yeah, it's not good. But we don't have anything to do for you yet. So that kind of these experiences, it doesn't come from a passion for nutrition.

45:12it comes through a passion really for American competitiveness. We are poisoning our population. And the average American is on a path like my mom, kind of the system hand-waving these small things, and then they eventually lead to a big thing. So that led me, I mean, I'm not a model in any way. And frankly, I don't have any interest in lecturing anyone listening. I think a lot of people listening are on probably a path right now. My main passion and what Justin and I are really working on, Justin Mayers, my partner at Trumeb, is I think a lot of your listeners are on this path. I think they're looking at pasture-raised beef.

45:50I think they're trying. What I'm saying, and where my experience comes in from working for these industries, is that we can't lie to ourselves though. We are not going to get out of this if the largest industry in the country is incentivized for us to be sick. And I think startups, companies, other people, we need to actually talk about the top-down incentives too. So, you know, I'm absolutely on a path. We've written about tactical tips on our book, but where I'm spending most of my time is like, how do we change the incentives? Because I don't think the Japanese kids are, you know, just much less lazy and less suicidal than Americans at a 3%.

46:25You know, they have a 3 % obesity rate. We have a child at obesity rate, like 25%. There's something happening with the What is the answer there? What is the leading theory on why in Japan they're at, you look at this chart, we're at 40%. Yeah, America, we're number one, 40 % obesity rate. And then Japan's at the bottom 4%. What are they doing differently? What is it? You know, genetic might be a hypothesis. What are the real hypotheses? No, did anyone that said genetics, they say our obesity crisis is genetics when it's just exploded in the past 40 years and was not an issue at all. They say, they say that diabetes is genetics when you didn't have kids as diabetic 40 years ago sean it is so simple it is follow the money it is that simple it is i'm just going to say this again our most prominent industry makes money when we're sick and loses money when we're healthy what does japan do yeah so they spend three times less per capita uh on health care and double the amount mostly on food.

47:24So per capita. So they actually put food into their healthcare budget. So I'll say that again. They spend two times more per capita on food. We spend almost like on all developed countries per capita, we spend the least amount on food and three times more than the average. Are you saying the government spends two times more? As a country. As a country. And a lot of the healthcare budget actually goes to incentivizing the food system and food interventions. Nine out of 10 killers of Americans are foodborne illnesses. I mean, we can dance around it. It's just that simple. You would wipe out heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, respiratory illness, COVID deaths even, if you got our country metabolically more healthy, which is many factors, but food is the number one.

48:06Other countries understand that and they dramatically rein in the incentives that pay doctors more when you get sicker for a longer period of time, fundamentally the structure. Now, a lot of these countries, I don't even have systems we fully agree with, like, you know, socialism or whatever have you. In the US, we have much worse than socialism. We have a kleptocracy where the system's just totally been rigged and every single impulse is for people to get sick, be fed into the system, and then stay sick to be treated. That's every single impulse in the system. Sean, have you ever... I don't think you've been to Europe recently, but when you go to Europe, it's pretty crazy.

48:44I went down this little path where I remember going to Europe and I felt like I ate poorly, like I was on vacation. And I ate pretty bad, but I was walking a lot. But I felt awesome. And I went to the store and I bought a pack of Skittles. I wanted to look at the ingredients. And then when you compare the amount of ingredients that are in a Skittle or a Kit Kat or normal junk food compared to American food, it's like the list of ingredients it's like two or three times as long i've seen this on twitter right same brand of bread or whatever it is same brand of cracker but then in europe there's three ingredients and in the u.s there's 17 ingredients that you don't recognize the names that's what you're talking about yeah and there's this other thing where if you look at mcdonald's so mcdonald's up until like 1985 or 1990 they used beef fat i believe to fry their fries tallow.

49:35And it was, I think it was just salt and a potato for a long time. Now, if you look at the ingredients of a French fry, it's a McDonald's French fry. It's got like 10 other things. Is there, and I think that someone said it best where they said in Europe, the rules around food are, it's a default to, we say no to everything. Here's the ingredients we allow you to put in. Whereas in America, it was like, here's the handful of things we don't allow. Callie, you're rolling your eyes. Is that inaccurate to look at it? Because I've noticed that when I go overseas, I oftentimes I feel better, but I don't think I'm eating better.

50:09No, no, I think you're hitting it on this head, Sam. I'm just anticipating what I would be thinking a couple of years ago, what some people might be thinking is there's this argument when you talk about this in the US that it's over-regulation. And again, I'm like a free market guy. I don't like regulation. And as working for these companies, whenever anyone mentioned about changing food degrees in the US, it's like the US food system is great. Let's not have the nanny state. The problem is that the nanny state is the fact that food companies have lobbied and rigged the system to have thousands, literally thousands of ingredients that aren't legal in Europe are allowed in the United States.

50:43The USD Nutrition Guidelines Committee, which basically approves and recommends various foods, 95 % of it is funded by, 95 % of the panels are directly funded by food companies or pharma companies. So this idea that we allow these ingredients isn't under regulation. It's actually completely and utterly rigged. And Justin Mares and I, we have a company that is trying to change these incentives. But because we've been pounding this mission, we've been looped into a number of advocacy efforts. One thing we're doing, we're working with a guy named Jason Karp and a bunch of health leaders. We've done a legal action against Kellogg's.

51:25Kellogg's is a stark example, but their ingredient list, they changed completely for the American kids versus just across the border in Canada. um it has addictive ingredients it has the colorings that make it really bright that are linked to adhd um and other developmental issues um we're literally through a rigged system you know our our free formulating ingredients for american kids that's what europe frankly realizes more i mean what europe and other countries are doing is it's not really even health care policy it's uh let's not poison our population as much policy well guys when it comes to banking the only time i feel truly happy is when i'm using mercury and that's today's sponsor for the show that is the banking product i use for not one not two but actually eight of my businesses i have eight mercury accounts i just went and counted i use it for every one of my companies it's an absolute no-brainer over 200 000 other fast-growing ambitious companies use mercury it's one place you can go where not only you can of course have your money there, but you can send invoices, you can pay bills, you can create reimbursements for your team, pretty much all of your financial needs can be housed under Mercury.

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53:05Kelly, I want to shift gears real quick. We ask people before they come on the pod, we say, what were some of the big either philosophies, turning points in your life, things that really shaped you and shaped the way you think about the world? You said something that the most formative experience was at HBS class. So Harvard Business School class where a professor said that the most depressed group of people he ever studied was HBS people 10 years after graduation. What is that story and why would Harvard Business School grads 10 years later be the most depressed group of people? Yeah, it kind of made me think about the Scott Galloway interview you guys did where he's like, you know, don't chase your passions.

53:43I just, I really don't think that's the right advice. I don't think we have an epidemic of people, you know, not, you know, fully, I don't think we have an epidemic of people chasing their passions too much. Um, you know, what I've generally seen, um, is a lot of our trauma and expectations for society, you know, throwing really good human capital into suboptimal roads. Um, and yeah, so at HBS, and it's just one microcosm, you know, but, but just something I saw, everyone writes their application essay about, you know, transforming and disrupting the world, disrupting healthcare, disrupting, you know, energy, big industries having a big impact.

54:22And then like many things, you get into that room of, you know, of a thousand people of kind of, you know, A-type people and it's a conformity factory. So 85 to 90 % of people by the end of the two years end up going into traditional industries, into finance, into energy. You know, my friend personally wrote an essay about transforming healthcare went to McKinsey and, you know, I was on the team that helped prescribe more opioids on their side that recently had to settle lawsuits. So you have this dynamic. I think this happens at many layers throughout the country where based on various fears that are ingrained in us by society, I think frankly, the gears of one of the negative gears of capitalism to just kind of, as John D.

55:06Rockefeller said, we need workers, we don't need thinkers. That's what a lot of our institutions do. And this study, this professor, he surveyed white, blue collar workers, different socioeconomic classes, different professions, like 30 different cohorts. The most depressed group was these graduates 10 years out. And again, the reason is because they go in with dreams, they end up conforming and settling. Their lifestyle gets to the point where they don't have really flexibility to take that stab, to take that dream. They feel professionally unfulfilled, but trapped. And then, you know, 10 years out, they really have a lot of regrets, at least professionally, but that maybe bleeds into other areas.

55:52And, um, you know, I, I, I generally feel like, like grateful, honestly, like, like I, in a weird way, my mom's death was always what I'd feared most in life that happening. And in a way, kind of cementing the finiteness of life and, um, and, and a mission into my head. Um, I feel really like grateful for, and, um, yeah, I, I think people not chasing their passions, not fully self-actualizing themselves is a much bigger problem than, uh, than too many people following their passions. You also said that, uh, taking mushrooms, um, was like one of the most impactful things. Did you tell Callie your, your almost mushrooms story?

56:30one of my favorite stories listen to this so you know i i i have issues that i'm always working out i had some i had some trauma i was working out and i and i went to this i went to this meeting of this woman who she called herself a shaman was gonna lead me along with my wife through a mdma or something like that therapy session i go to the dinner and the meet and greet and she starts saying things like we need to give this medicine for free to everyone and i was like yeah yeah, but I'm paying like five grand to do this. Can I have it for free? She didn't like that. And then she was like, she asked where I was from.

57:06I said Missouri. And she goes, ah, flyover country. And I was like, all right, that's strike two. And then I start asking her a little bit more. And she starts talking about capitalism and how it's ruined medicine and capitalism is horrible and all this stuff. I'm like, well, lady, again, I'm paying you five grand to be here. And I was like, so what were you doing before this? she goes I used to work at Lehman Brothers and when it collapsed I left and started doing this and I was like I'm out lady I'm out and she texted me and she was like I don't think this is a good fit and I was like I agree this is a round pig in a square hole this is not a good fit didn't you tell her you're like I can't do drugs with you yeah I was like look I was already on the fence about taking drugs and if I'm going to take drugs it ain't going to be with you and you said that taking uh psilocybin was was awesome sean have you ever done this stuff by the way and would you ever do it i've only done it like recreationally like 15 years ago i have never done it i don't want to say i would never do it but it's never been something that's called me but you know i hear these stories and i want to hear your story kelly because the people who advocate for are people i like for people i respect and they're people who they advocate for in such a strong way that it does make me curious like wow what what one of the things i I've learned in life is that some of the most valuable things are the things you don't know how to value.

58:26Meaning you've never traveled, so you don't get the big deal about travel. You've never done this. You don't understand what you're missing out on. And those are some of the most valuable things. And when somebody is stuck in one of those mindsets, you just want to shake them and be like, dude, you don't know. Trust me. Like whatever. I don't know if this is one of those things, but I've heard about it enough where it's made me curious. Yeah. Yeah. So for Sam, I think you made the right decision. Set and setting is very important. I think that encouragement of therapeutic psilocybin use for anyone that feels called, Sean, I think you make a great, for anyone that feels called is the most important single thing we can do in America, period.

59:07I actually believe that. I think we are truly losing our minds a bit in the country through all this change that's happening. the highest leverage area we can do work on is our brains. And this isn't everything, but it is a blunt force, extremely powerful tool to help rewire our brains. Can you tell us your experience? Let me give my experience. So my mom dies. I'm kind of at an existential moment on kind of thinking about what I want to do. Our company was cranking before COVID. I had a hundred employees, was struggling because the whole market was cut off. And I, again, conservative guy, never super stigmatized view, never thought about these things.

59:50Yeah, can you imagine you, like 12-year-old you, wearing your Brooks Brothers khakis, being like, one day you're going to be advocating for psychedelics. I still got the Brooks. No, I could have never. I still got the sports coat, still got the Brooks Brothers. I try to wear that when I talk about this because I think it's a very important thing. Actually, you cross the aisle. Everyone needs to wake up to. And I do talk to a lot of Republicans about this who are waking up. But yeah, so a friend who is a scientist said, let's do this. Therapeutic session, blindfold, high dose, music, four hours, introspective, alone.

1:00:25And I'll give a couple examples of what I saw. It's really hard to describe, but I was working with my wife. And we were running a startup, stressful. We would quibble a lot. And I saw myself kind of getting angry at her. And then my brain like zoomed up and I saw the expanse of the whole like world, like it's like zoomed out of the whole galaxy. And I'm like, it just put this simple inside of my head. Like, I'm so fucking stupid to get mad at my amazing wife about these stupid things in the expanse of like how lucky I am. It's a simple insight. We can all say that, like to be grateful that you shouldn't sweat the small stuff.

1:01:02I'm not perfect by any means but I think about that like every hour like with her like it's totally it's like a car crash like submitted to my head of how grateful and lucky I am with her how stupid it is to get like angry over small things completely transformed my thought on that I saw my mom and she gave me a hug and I like had this idea that she still lived within me and that I could carry her legacy forward by like working with my sister on the book and various um you know, this mission to kind of try to, um, carry her, her story forward. I truly like have that imprinted in my head. I've never been upset about my mom dying.

1:01:39And I truly feel like viscerally that she lives inside us and lives inside this mission lives inside the book we wrote. Again, it's a simple, the best way to describe it is the neuroplasticity. You can talk about a car crash or you can get in a car crash. And it's like, when something really traumatic happens, your brain like wires and it's like deep rooted in your brain. What it does is it, it helps you kind of get out of the um uh trauma and thought processes and fears that we're inevitably ingrained with and helps um cement in a really solid way uh some of these potentially new uh frameworks um that that sound trite but are like have the seriousness of a long-term thing and then the other thing i'd said i think a lot of people talk about this and again sean it's only i just share my story, it's only, you know, as you're called, but I think it is important to hear these stories.

1:02:30I think it's really dumb and kind of not correct to talk about as some kind of like corporate or executive, you know, hack, because it's much deeper than that. But for me, it's the most profound and important professional thing I've ever done. I mean, like the whole kind of growing up in DC, trying to chase up the ladder, go to the good schools, the HBS, you know, conformity, it definitely is like, you know, definitely I think consistently gives you this idea of how these stupid games were playing just don't matter. And definitely solidified in my head hopefully some fearlessness on pushing a mission forward.

1:03:06And it led to what I'm doing now. And I'd like to think that's ingrained in the company. From my perspective, having a mission that's sincere, that Justin and I have, and it's been a differentiator in recruiting like-minded people and customers and merchants. It's not a panacea for everything. I think a lot of people get to this place through prayer, through meditation, through other routes. It's not like a shortcut, but it definitely is a way, brute force, to get out of your traps that are holding you back. That's pretty damn convincing, Sean. I think you... I'd like to make an appointment. Yeah, I think you're going to have your busy next weekend.

1:03:45I think you're going to have to mark some time off your calendar. I don't know, man. When I hear that, I think blindfolded with headphones on. I find that to be incredibly intimidating. I find I want the I want the result. I don't know if I can go. Did you do it one time or have you done it more since? Is it like a regular thing or? Yeah, no, I think it's like giving childbirth that, you know, it was a profound experience. So I want to do right away again. It's it's a really but but I've done it a couple more times. I mean, to be to be totally honest, Sam, it's all about I will promise you this.

1:04:16And frankly, this is my perspective, but if anyone feels called, if you are called and you're doing it in a good setting without somebody ranting about politics to you before and where you feel safe and you walk towards the, and this is what the clinical research says, quite frankly, but if you walk towards your fears, if you go into it a way to explore and walk towards your issues, whatever that means to you, it's going to be, I've never personally met someone that's done it in a, responsible therapeutic way who hasn't said it's been the most impactful experience of their lives i actually don't know anyone that hasn't said that it's not like a a club or anything but it truly is if you're called to do it i i would say this to people if this resonates i would try to do it like urgently like like i think your life is really like i i many people i know and for me it's like kind of before and after um uh is this legal uh like can you google like like silas alone retreat near me yeah yeah so i i i i did it in a this legal in some countries um there's a phase three fda approval in the united states um to make it legal which we're just i are actually advocating a lot on too i think it fits into the whole root cause health thing that we're trying to push forward there's so religious exemptions there's uh state by state um decriminalization so i'm not going to give legal advice i would i would urge people to find a responsible legal uh way uh to do it therapeutically in a trusted safe setting um and um yeah and sam it's it's just it's just about what whenever you you feel called but uh but it's four hours it's exploring your you know your uh it's holding us all back right there's different narratives and stuff i mean i think you guys are amazing how openly you talk about kind of your mental models and stuff.

1:06:10It's just a way to like zoom out and re-explore those. Yeah, I think it's awesome. I'm totally in favor of it. I just, it's not, I'm, I'm a little intimidated still. Well, one of my favorite phrases is, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. And I think, you know, you're saying when you're called to something, I've always felt this way, which is that things happen at the right time. And you, you know, intuitively you'll, you'll know when the right time is for certain things, or if it's for you. There's a great YouTube video I watched of Tim Ferriss talking about psychedelics. Tim Ferriss is a big advocate for psychedelics.

1:06:43I think he has a nonprofit that he started that's funding research. But what I liked about his video was that he wasn't trying to convince you at all to do it. In fact, he started by essentially convincing you all the reasons you shouldn't do it and was very measured and responsible in the way that he talked about it. So if anybody's curious, if this made you curious, I would watch that video because I thought that was very helpful in framing it. I won't try to summarize his points because I thought he did a good job, but just try to Google or YouTube for Tim Ferriss talking about it. It's like a five minute clip or something.

1:07:12I completely agree with that. It's not like an endorsement, but it is criminal. And I think one of the biggest issues in the country that we don't make this tool available, just last week, the FDA actually threw a wrench into the approval process for MDMA. Again, Justin and I see TrueMed as an advocacy organization. We're lobbying and have a relationship with 100 members of Congress, both sides of the aisle. We're actually working with presidential candidates too and members of Congress to brief them about this issue. The FDA does not like these treatments because instead of long-term kind of numbing your symptoms, it actually does help you get into the cause and unpacking the trauma that we all have and the mental models that we all have.

1:07:55So actually, this gets into what we were talking about earlier. I consider this a root cause treatment, right? Anything that gets to the root with mental health, it's obviously the mental models holding us back with metabolic conditions. It's food and lifestyle habits. What's interesting is, you know, when you first started talking about this, I was almost chuckling a little bit to myself, like, oh, you know, first he was kind of railing against prescribing a drug to solve the problem. And then here he's saying the drug solves the problem for me, or it was a great intervention. But what actually what you're saying is that in both cases, it's the cleaning of the fish tank.

1:08:27So in the first case, the thing that was making you sick was the food. In the second case, the thing that was making you sick in the head was your own story and perspective on things. And this was a way to change the narrative in your head, the perspective and the story that you were telling yourself every day. So I think in both cases, you're actually advocating for cleaning the tank. Yeah. As my wife and Justin and people that know me will tell you, I have a long way to go. The biggest room in my house is the room for improvement. But for me, this uh you know what i did what a bumper what i did this a couple times and i haven't done it a long time sean because it just it jams for me of like it's the basics it's like be a good person try to exercise eat healthy meditate you know like like like the key to life is that like that was a big thing for me it's just like the having the nirvada experience of what the world is with this is one thing but like the the implementation for me is like so that that was my message from it and i think it's like it was a good message for me it's like i think that's what most people that do this in a therapeutic way get it's like i need to be a better person things are connected um so yeah it's not like like you take it and it's a panacea it's like it's like a tool it is a like nuclear weapon uh like blood force instrument to like jam some truths um and it is you know not to get too trippy but it is a natural substance um uh you know the oldest living organism that we basically derive from this fungus um so you know yeah it's a good question but um it's not to me it's not anti-pharma pro-pharma it's what is a root cause cure um what actually helps us you know get to the get to the problem and i think most modalities that help us actually cure things are pushed back against and drugs that are basically help numb and are recurring are incentivized.

1:10:23Do you ever take it like just have fun, like recreationally or only medicinally? I mean, I've taken it recreationally. I thought it was awesome. Yeah, high level, I'd say like it's impossible to even like articulate and like I don't have the English words to articulate how different like a like taking something at a concert is versus a therapeutic experience it's like it's like a different stratosphere like i truly think if people are called for doing a therapeutic high dose way it's gonna be one of the most impactful uh experience of their lives um so it's just say it's very very very different the set and setting and dose uh but high level i think when you just compare the science on things like alcohol and other drugs that we take versus um versus what these drugs do which are actually brain regenerative in many ways and very low side effects i think even how we think about recreational drug use is you know our government you know we prescribe 15 of high schoolers basically meth you know adderall which is which is literally like one molecule away from meth we you know caffeine's pretty powerful alcohol is very harmful um you know i i think we totally have it backwards on what's appropriate for recreational years and i think it's i think it's just fine personally just from a medical perspective from a scientific leadership perspective even from like a spiritual perspective it's like you know people taking low doses of psychedelics and talking about their feelings talking about their lives getting deep i mean it's kind of like where did this like deep where did like i was watching this thing from the 80s where they were talking about mdma and it's like too many people are going dancing and feeling together and loving to each other it's like it's It's like, it's like, you watch like the fear mongering.

1:12:05It's like, is that a bad thing? Like, and then there's like very little side effects. So on the end, you make fraud. They do those commercials. This is like, they're like, this is your brain on drugs. And it's just a flower. It's nice. There's no problem with it. You know, I wanted to say thank you for coming on. I appreciate your kind of your openness. And I don't know, your contrarian opinions. Because I'll be honest with you. A lot of times when you were talking, I was thinking, is this a conspiracy? theory or is this a fact? At the same time, I was thinking, he sounds crazy, but my eyes verify what he's saying.

1:12:41Meaning, I look at the food we eat and we're sold. I look at the people around me. I look at the health conditions and you're not wrong about that. And so I thought this is one of the more interesting episodes. It's one of the few episodes I would say is an important episode. We do a lot of fun episodes, interesting episodes, but this is one of the few that I could say is important. And yeah, I just appreciate you coming on, man. This is a good time. I appreciate you guys so much. And my big pitch, anyone listening that resonates, there's a lot of economic opportunity if you agree with this thesis, because it has to change.

1:13:14And we need more entrepreneurs, need more people thinking about changing healthcare steps because it has to move in that direction. I appreciate you guys so much. Listen to the podcast every episode and just awesome to talk shop with you guys. You're the man. We appreciate you. Thank you. All right. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off on the road. Let's travel. Never looking back.

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