It is true that there are many forces in nature, almost like developed instincts that we have that drive us to try to eat foods that will make us gain weight. All right, Dr. Johnson, it's great to see you. Welcome to the podcast. And thanks so much for coming on. I've been really looking forward to this. So have I. I've been following your work for a long time and it's really been enjoyable to read your insights. And now I have the opportunity to talk to you as well. So I'm very excited. Well, you know, that title. So if I used to be fat, so I would have loved your book because that title tells me nature wants me to be fat. So thank you so much for writing that book because now I can be fat. That's not what you mean, right? Well, that isn't what I mean. I'm not saying it's good to be fat. But it is true that there are many forces in nature, almost like developed instincts that we have that drive us to try to eat foods that will make us gain weight. So there's no doubt that we have harnessed nature's, you know, nature's loss into helping us go the wrong direction. And it's a pretty interesting story. So elaborate on that. I actually wrote about that. Let me, in my first book years ago, Dr. Gundry's Diet of Evolution, I talked about how great apes, and you and I are great apes. Sorta. Great apes only gain weight during fruit season. And my editors at Random House at the time said that's ridiculous.  And this was in the early 2000s. And there's actually huge amount of literature published. Oh, absolutely. So go into that, would you? Well, yes. So just to answer, you know, to confirm you on this, orangutans are the ones that have been studied the most. And they will, during the fruit season, they will gorge on fruit. They will gorge on fruit. They don't eat one or two fruits like we do, which, and one or two fruits at a time is healthy, right?  It's sweet. And that sugar is fruit dose, which is also in table sugar. And that happens to be the primary nutrient that activates a process to try to, you know, shift the energy that we produce from active energy that we use to stored energy that is fat. And so these orangutans will, you know, there was an anthropologist, Cheryl Knott, who did these studies.   They quit making any ketones or anything like that.   You know, they can get 15, 20 percent weight gain. And so they really become a little bit plump and portly, you might say. And then during the rest of the season, where they're having to leaves and twigs and very few fruits, they actually live off their fat during those part of the year. And there are other primates that do it too. There's a lemur, fat tail lemur, who will eat a lot of fruit during the wet season. And then during the dry season, they'll actually hibernate. You know, it's not hibernation in the summer. It's actually estivation. But for all purposes, it's hibernation. They go into a hollow tree.  And they use their fat not just for energy, but also to make water. Because during the dry season, there's not a lot of water.   And some animals use fat as a way to give them water during times when there's not. So yeah, there are these primates that eat a lot of fruit. And there's an evolutionary story there. And the big part of our story was the discovery that animals want to avoid starvation. There's nothing worse. There's four great things that animals do not want at all costs. One is they don't want to starve. Starvation's bad. It leads to death. Dehydration's another one. No animal likes to be really severely dehydrated. No animal wants to run out of oxygen if it's like in a burrow. And there's not enough oxygen that no animal wants that. And no animal wants a predator. And so there's this, you know, so that we've learned, you know, in biology, we've learned the responses that animals do to these, you know, these things. But what we, you know, obviously an animal would prefer to avoid it. You know, like the old ant and the grasshopper would be nice to you know, prepare for a winter and have that food stored away rather than be the grasshopper. And suddenly it's winter and there's no food and you're going to starve. So what's happened is that there is a absolutely incredible finding that certain foods, when you eat them, actually are preparing you for a period of time when there's no food around. And this is when animals eat these foods, they activate an actual biologic switch that allows them to store fat. But it doesn't just store fat. It does a host of responses that are aimed at protecting it. And so we've actually developed tastes for these foods. And so we have an instinctual desire to eat foods that can actually help store fat for us. It was all aimed as a survival mechanism way back when food wasn't always on the table. The grocery stores weren't chock full of food. And so it's a biologic response. That's why nature wants this to be fat because there are these foods that actually trigger a biologic response to store fat. Well, all right. You've wet my appetite, so to speak. What are those foods that you know are going to activate this fat storing switch? So when we were looking at this, we realized that a lot of animals will eat fruit. And you just talked about this, not only the orangutan, but things, animals that hibernate like bears. You know, in the fall, the fruit starts to ripen. And that means it gets sweeter. And it's almost like a link with nature, because when the fruits ripen, the seeds also mature. And so that when the fruit is eaten by the animal, the fruit actually, the seeds can disperse and then be used, you know, to plant and, I mean, to grow a new fruit tree. So fruit trees seem to know in nature that if they make the fruit ripe, that's going to increase its ability to survive because more animals will eat it and then disperse the seeds. So the fruit, as the fruit ripens in the fall, the animals know, have learned that this actually helps them gain fat. And or whether or not they've learned it, it's now part of the nature's response. It happens. So they start eating the fruit.  And there's even fruit, a fish that eat fruit. And so it turns out that fruit seems to be used when it's eaten in excess to help animals gain weight. So we were studying this and we realized that fruits, you know, we consider them very healthy. But when you eat huge amounts, it seems to trigger a switch. And the main nutrient in fruit is fructose, which is a sugar, which is also in table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. And it's basically the main way we get fructose is from these added sugars, table sugar and high fructose corn syrup. It makes up the vast majority of sugar people are eating or fructose that people are eating. And so what happened was we said, okay, we're going to give fructose to an animal. And when we did it, they, you know, normally animals will keep, regulate their weight really well.  But if an animal is preparing for hibernation, they start eating this a lot of fruit, then suddenly what happens is it loses that ability to regulate its weight. They become hungry all the time. They become thirsty. They start foraging for food. This is all part of the biological response. So they, they, they actually decreased their willpower because they, they have to have the strength to go into areas that they've never been to that are maybe dangerous.  They can't, you know, they, they basically, they have to reduce their recent memory a little bit because they don't want to remember the predator that, that might be in that area too vividly. So they, they want to kind of dampen the memory. And so what they do is that they actually reduce certain area of activity in the brain that allows them to forage and they, they actually become on, they actually start increasing their foraging behavior. And they, they, not only are they hungry, normally animals regulate their weight, as I mentioned. And in the first couple of weeks where you're eating a lot of fruit dose, if you, if you give it to animals, they do regulate their weight. So although they'll, you can put fruit dose in the drinking water, they'll eat, they'll drink a lot of the water because it tastes real good, but initially they'll reduce their chow intake so that they don't gain weight. But after about two weeks, two or three weeks, suddenly they lose that ability to control their appetite and they keep eating and they, they start eating more chow, even though they're drinking all this fruit dose.  And so they're eating more and more calories, their food intake's going up. And although they're foraging, when they're not foraging, they reduce their metabolism. So they become like couch potatoes. So their, their resting energy metabolism drops, but their, but their, their, their ability to, when they're foraging is maintained. So it's like this really cool system where they're trying to conserve their energy, use it for when they need it. They use, you know, and, and so, and they become insulin resistant.  So there's less energy being spent in the muscle. So that reduces the, the requirements so that you can live off a lower level of energy. So, and then they, they do this and phenomenal thing where they, they work on those in the mito bar. They go in there and they suppress activity. It's just a general suppression of activity. And, and, and so what happens is they do it by inducing oxidative stress, not, not just the, from the mitochondria, but they actually engage in another enzyme called NADPH oxidase. No one wants to hear that. But anyway, they cause stress to the mitochondria, reduce the energy, the general amount of energy being produced. And they, and what happens is the calories then get shunted over to fat, which is the stored energy. So instead of making ATP, the energy from food is, is shunted, is transferred over to make fat. And so it's this beautiful thing where they, where it's a great way to store fat. So the animal, what's incredible is the animal starts storing fat, even though they're not, you know, they're not in a starvation state. They're, they're, they're not starving, but, but it's preparing for starvation.  So it's a, it's an amazing set of responses. And we call it the metabolic syndrome. We call it, hey, you know, this, this is abnormal. This is pathologic. We shouldn't, you know, insulin resistance leads to diabetes and, and it also like it raises blood pressure a little bit. And that can lead to hypertension. And so we think of it as, as bad. And it is bad for us, because it, when you keep activating the switch, it does shift from insulin resistance to diabetes. And it does move from elevated blood pressure to hypertension. And it does move from temporary fat stories to help you during periods of stress to, to suddenly it continuing, the fat continues to grow. And so the problem is, is continued activation of the switch. And we're doing it because we're not just eating fruit, a lot of fruit in the fall when, when the trees are, you know, when the fruit's ripening, we go to the store and we can eat sugar all year round. And, and, you know, we've, we developed it, you know, we have a taste for sweet and we have a taste for this. And so, so we pick out these foods and, and, you know, that taste is actually, you know, was what developed, we think, to, to so that you couldn't find these foods. And, you know, in the days when things were, were, were tougher, you know, this was, it was an advantage to be able to find those foods that are sweet and that contain fruit does. So what you mentioned that most animals, they'll do fine for about two weeks.  What, what's taking place? Is it the insulin resistance that drives it? Or what do your studies show? Yes.  And leptin is produced by the fat. And normally people, you know, leptin is the hormone that it's linked with insulin, just as you say. But when you eat, leptin communicates to the brain when, when you've eaten enough. And so leptin is the hormone that tells you you're full. But it's been known for a long time that people who are overweight don't are resistant to leptin. The leptin levels go up, but they'll still eat. You can, if you have an animal that's leptin resistant, you can prove it, you know, by injecting leptin. So if you, and then monitoring how much food they eat. So, you know, normally an animal is eating food, and if I inject it with leptin, it's going to reduce its food intake immediately. Within 24 hours, the food intake is down. But if an animal has what we call leptin resistance, they'll keep eating. And if I inject it with leptin, it still keeps eating. It doesn't change. And what we found was that fructose causes leptin resistance. But it takes several weeks. And we even did a, we did a whole series of studies on this, you know, is they're sort of really interesting. So if you take an animal and you give it fructose until it becomes leptin resistant, you can take the sugar away. And, and, but it will continue to eat more calories than it wants for at least two to three weeks. So that leptin resistance will persist when you stop fructose. And here's a really interesting thing. Fructose itself, you know, it does cause, you know, it will lead to weight gain just by itself, but it's not, it's not huge. What really causes the weight gain is the eating a high fat diet with fructose. So the fructose makes you leptin resistant. But then the fat really accelerates the weight gain because it's so energy dense. So it turns out that weight gain, when we did studies, like we've done all these very careful studies, what drives weight gain is this combination of leptin resistance plus too many calories, you know, food. If you, if you make an animal leptin resistant, but you don't give it extra food, it will gain a tiny bit away from the drop in resting energy metabolism. But basically, it will not gain much weight. And, but if you give, and so if you do like isocalloric diets, like the sugar industry will do studies where they, we do, they put everyone on the same number of calories, and then they say, well, sugar doesn't cause weight gain. And the answer is yes, sugar doesn't cause weight gain when it's isocalloric. The way sugar causes weight gain is that the fructose makes you want to eat more. And then when you eat more, that's what causes the weight gain. But what's interesting, Steve, is that if you give sugar and make it isocalloric or even a hypochloric, where they're on a diet, in other words, if you, if I put you on a caloric restriction, but your diet is really high in sugar, you're not going to gain weight because you're on a caloric restriction. But you're going to, you could still get diabetes and you could still get fatty liver and you still could get hypertension. When we did it to animals, we found that we could induce diabetes, high blood pressure, out fatty liver, even on a diet where the animals are eating less than they normally eat, provided they're eating a high fructose diet. So the fructose is working two ways. It's working through, you know, through an energy, classic energy balance story, where it's making you eat more and that's driving weight gain. But it also has a direct metabolic effect that is independent of excess calories. And that's what's driving diabetes and all those things. And so it's sort of interesting that it unites the two major, two of the major theories out there, the energy balance, people who say everything is just calories. And also the low carb people who point out how low carb diets are so much better in so many ways. And so it does kind of unite those.  And I've, and these, this has not been written by physicians, by the way, but by PhDs, and that's okay. But I have had several of my diabetic patients read this book and try it. And what you observed is what I observed is that this is one of the best ways to cause diabetes, worsen the hemoglobin A1c, exactly because of the mechanisms you mentioned. Any thoughts on that? Yeah, no, I agree with you. So the fruit story is an important story to understand because the, the natural, you know, as you know, as you're like a world expert on, fruits contain a lot of polyphenols and really wonderful compounds that, that block fruit dose. So natural fruits like can have vitamin C. I'm actually a fan of vitamin C. We've done some work on it. We can show that it blocks fruit dose effects to some extent. You know, it contains epichatechin and quercetin and all these wonderful flavonols that can also block fruit dose effects. It has lots of fiber and it has potassium. And so in general, small amounts of fruit are great because you get all these flavonols and vitamin C and fiber. And I'm a big fan of, of natural fruit and small amounts. And also the, a natural fruit may have four or five grams of fruit dose. Some of them, like an apple, may have a little bit more. You know, when you get up around eight to 10 grams, they start getting a little nervous. But, but, you know, definitely in that four, a lot of fruits are in the four, three to six gram range. And, and my friend, Joshua Benowitz, who's a doctor at Princeton has done this really wonderful work. And he's shown that, you know, the first three or four grams of fruit dose that you eat get inactivated in the intestine. And so it's the fruit dose that gets to the liver that's the problem. And so when you just eat one or two fruit, a lot of that fruit dose is not, is being inactivated. You're getting relatively little to the liver and yet you're getting all these other good things.  And now you're getting this large amount of fruit dose because you're combining it with all the fruit and you're, you're drinking it really fast. So it's going to overwhelm the intestines, going to get to the liver. And now, and there's not, you've taken out the pulp and the fiber and a lot of the good things. And now you're going to get it, you know. So I've had, just like you, I had patients come to see me where they were having trouble losing weight. And it turns out they're eating, drinking fruit smoothies after every run and all these things. And you can overdo the fruit.  And one group also had to eliminate fruits. And the other group got to add back fruits so that they could eat a certain number of fruits. And it turned out that adding back fruits did not block the ability of the low sugar diet to work. So we had success in the patients losing weight, improving their metabolic syndrome. But adding back some fruits, you know. So I think that one or two fruit with a meal is probably very good. It has a lot of good things. But if you're eating large amounts of fruit, if you're eating that bowl of grapes that while you're watching TV, or you're, you know, so I agree with you on every set. Yeah, you know, I used to tell my patients, look, let's go down to the San Diego Zoo and look in all the cages. Nobody's got a juicer. We've just manipulated ways to, you know, mainline of fructose. Exactly. And the other thing is, you know, we never had 747s bringing fruit from Chile and Argentina to Colorado in February. And, you know, I grew up in Nebraska and there's no fruit in Nebraska in the winter. And we did not have access to these things. Yeah, so all this, all this is important. You know, we did, we also, another aspect of fruit juice, why I don't like it is we did a study with apple juice. And apple juice is but a sweetest soft drink. So it has as much fructose as a soft drink. And we knew that the, so the way the fructose works is it's not working through its calories so much as it's working by dropping the energy in the cells. Where I mentioned it causes the mitle bar. It reduces the energy produced in the mitle bar. Yeah. And the amount of ATP coming out is reduced. And it shifts it to an archaic ancient system called glycolysis where, you know, that makes just small amounts of ATP. So ATP levels fall on the cell, which when you, when you have fructose. So fructose can decrease the energy in the cell. And that is how the fructose activates this big switch. It's not from the calories. It's from this unique ability of it to reduce the energy in the cell. And so, so that's a very important point. So what we did is we realized that if we gave apple juice to people, that if we gave the apple juice in a large amount over a short period of time, that it would drop the energy in the cell very rapidly because the concentration of fructose that hits the liver would be high because it's both the amount and the speed that makes up the concentration. Whereas if we gave the same amount of apple juice but gave it over like an hour and a half delayed how long we gave it, that it would kind of trickle in and it wouldn't have the same effect to activate the switch. So in other words, how you eat your food could make a difference. And what we found was it was exactly true. If you drank it and you drank it fast, you could really activate this biologic switch to gain fat. Whereas if you could drag it out over a long period of time, it was like a calorie. It lost its ability to activate the switch. And so it really relates to that. The kid who drinks that guzzles down the soft drink when they're thirsty out on the heat. They're activating the switch big time that way. And that's why liquid sugars are so dangerous because we tend to drink soft drinks and power drinks and energy drinks. We tend to drink them fast. And adding sugars to coffee and tea is not good when you add sugar to it. I went to this place in eastern Russia, I mean, I'm sorry, western China, right on the edge. And it was a remote area where the Chinese actually look like Russian people. It's really interesting. They're speaking Chinese, they're part of China, but they're actually not your typical Chinese. And these people would drink this tea. Steve, I saw this guy come in and he was very overweight and he pulled out a little bag of sugar. And he put like three bags of sugar, little tiny bags, into one cup of tea. I mean, I shouldn't have been staring. That was kind of rude of me, but I couldn't believe it. It was like half of the tea was sugar. Half of that, you know, it was like this, how could you drink that? And the poor guy was very, very overweight. But it turned out that that was the custom in that little town to have a lot of sugar in your tea. But anyway, so I'm sorry I digress, but anyway. Well, that's like our custom of having a Frappuccino. Exactly. And we wonder why. Well, so you brought up an interesting point. Where's your take on a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and it's calories in and calories out. I know your take, but tell everybody else. Yes. Well, it isn't that simple. I wish it were. When it comes to calorie, calories are what primarily drive weight gain. So it is true. Calories are primarily what drive weight gain. But why you eat more calories is because you've you get left in resistance and and that you're getting from sugar. We actually did studies. If you give fat to an animal, it will not develop left in resistance. You give sugar to an animal at will. And it's the sugar that triggers, that really makes an animal want to eat more. So, but the the fructose in sugar is also what drives all the metabolic effects like pre diabetes, like fatty liver, like elevated fats in your blood, like high blood pressure. And those are driven independently of excess calories that can occur on low calorie calories, if you're eating a lot of fructose. And so so it's it's a little bit of both. But in general, I would say that is it's more important food selection is more important in in the treatment in treating and trying to get to weight loss. And I think your idea of, you know, developing healthy ketosis and mitochondrial and coupling. And this is a wonderful way to lose weight. And equally important probably is to avoid eating foods that make you want to eat more calories.  But if we can also and you're you of course recommend pretty much a lot a lot of along the same lines of what I love what we discovered with our research. But you know, sugar and fructose are one of the key drivers that that activate the switch to gain weight. And and what really expanded our story. And we we need to go there is this discovery that it isn't just the fructose we eat. That's the problem. It's the fructose that we can make. And our body can make fructose and it does it only one way. And it does it from make it makes it from glucose. And when when there's too much glucose around the, you know, the body starts converting that to fructose. And this is the problem of high carb diets that are just rich in in starch and these these foods like white flour, bread, rice, potatoes, cereals, chips, potato chips. And these these are starchy foods that release a lot of glucose. And so the body senses that extra glucose. And not only does it stimulate insulin to help move that glucose into the tissues. But what it's doing is it starts to convert some of that glucose to fructose.  You can get it from when you make fructose.  They're really an amazing animal, they don't get fat, they don't get hypertension, they're protected from fatty liver.  And we can talk about that. But it's a very healthy fat in this. Well, it's not healthy fat, but they don't have fatty liver and they don't get diabetic and so forth. But anyway, with these animals, we were able to show that if you feed glucose, you can also block the, you know, the glucose gets converted to fructose, and these animals are protected from obesity. But I can make animals get obesity and activate the switch just from things like bread and rice and glucose. So it turns out that there's two, you know, it's not just the fructose we eat, but but certain carbs, not all carbs. There's a lot of great carbs, a lot of great plant carbs, you know, but there are a lot of carbs that are good, but the carbs that are really starchy, that increase the glucose levels in our blood, they get converted to fructose and they're just as bad as sugar. So if you're eating a lot of white bread and rice and potatoes here, you're, you're, you can get into trouble. And so that was the kind of a big discovery. And then we discovered that there were other foods that could activate the switch, too. I don't know if you want me to go into all those. Yeah, let's go into that. Although I want to stop you for a second because you're right, I have a number of people that swear that they do not eat any sugar. And yet, you know, their insulin resistance, their overweight, and then we start looking at their diet and it's a very high starch diet. And sometimes they're quote, you know, good starches like sweet potatoes or and when we take those starches away from them, that's when things, you know, start turning around for these individuals. So your observation is great that we, just by eating a lot of glucose, which is starch, you know, combined with lots of glucoses, you can convert fructose and flip the switch. That's a great observation. Yes, it was, it was really exciting because, you know, originally I had thought it was just the fructose we eat.  Yeah, Jimmy Moore, wonderful person. And, and I was talking about low fructose diets.  And I had a lot of people who responded to my diet, you know, this was my first book way back when 2008.  And I, and now I know why, because it isn't that you need to reduce all carbs, it's just you need to reduce the bad carbs. And these high glycemic carbs, which we call, you know, like starching foods, they can activate the switch as well. Now we had another discovery. So once I knew that the body could make fructose, I started studying the this, you know, what regulates that. And it turns out that it's turned on by low oxygen states by low, low blood flow, you know, all the things that those first four things I told you that animals try to avoid like low oxygen, you know, nutrient, low, like ischemia, you can actually activate when you have a, if you have a heart attack, your heart will start making fructose. And there's, you know, papers in nature showing that when that happens, the fructose is meant to be a to help. But what happens is it's just, in humans, the reaction is just so over too much. And it actually can cause cardiac disease. And in the kidney, it can cause problems. And in the brain, it can cause problems. But so it turns out that this fructose can be produced in the body whenever there's stressful situations that kind of threaten make the organ feel threatened. Then it starts to be produced. And if it's produced too much, it's a problem. So that was one thing. But the other thing was I was thinking about diet. And I realized that what really stimulates this reaction to convert glucose to fructose is what is anything that raises the salt concentrations in the blood.   But it turns out that the sodium concentration can control this reaction.  People who don't drink a lot of water will have a higher serum sodium and they'll have a higher risk for obesity. And if they have a lower serum sodium, even in the normal range, they'll be more likely to be skinny. And these data have now been published. We've actually looked at it as well. And, you know, it's phenomenal that that the sodium concentration, which is governed a little bit by the, how much salt and water we're having. So when I, when I eat salt, if I eat salty food, the salt concentration goes up and it helps convert the glucose in my body to fructose. And that's why the French fry is so bad. That's why potato chips are so bad because the salt actually stimulates the conversion of the glucose to the fructose. Oh man. So you mean, I can't put some Himalayan salt on my raw pistachios anymore to make them really tasty? I think you can, but there's a trick. So let me tell you the trick. I did this study. So I gave people salty soup. I did this. I mean, I say, I, I'm a co-author, but it was done in Turkey by my colleague, Mehmet Candy. So we wanted to see the power of salt. So what we did is we gave soup and you can mask the amount of salt and soup. So, you know, we added the salt to me. The soup was quite salty. And when they, not super salty, but, you know, when the people drank the bowl of soup, the salt concentration, we could measure it in their blood, goes up within minutes, and it just went up. It stayed in the normal range. It just went up like two points. So it went like from 138 to 140, you know, still in the normal range. But when it did that, it activated the switch. We could show that with special blood tests and also the blood pressure went up. So the salt was activating the switch, right? And, but then we gave one group. This was all done blinded. One group got water with it. And so they had to drink this water. And when they drank the water, even though they had the soup, now they prevented that salt concentration from going up because they neutralized it with the water. And the, and the switch wasn't turned on.  But what you want to do is drink water before to drop the serum sodium. You don't want to get, as soon as you feel thirsty, you've activated the switch, basically.  So stay well hydrated. So we even did a study with animals where we gave them sugar and food. And believe it or not, when you give sugar, it also increases the salt concentration of the blood. It's sort of interesting that moves, moves the water into the cell and makes the water concentration or the salt concentration of the blood go up. So even soft drinks, they're dehydrating. We all knew this, you know, everyone knows that if you drink a soft drink, it does not hydrate you well. In fact, your serum sodium, yeah, it makes you thirsty and your serum sodium goes up. It's exactly right. And it activates that, it's activating that process to make more fructose from the food you're drinking from the soft drink. So it, you know, so if you drink, we gave soft drinks to animals on regular diet, just regular chow or on Western diet, and we could really increase their weight gain through this salt mechanism. Actually, we also just did studies where we increased salt. We gave animals just a high salt diet. And it takes a longer time than with sugar. It takes like three or four months instead of three or four weeks. But suddenly, the animals became hugely fat. And if we gave them water, we could suppress the development of obesity. We could give them extra water. And we did that by putting water in the, in the chow. We injected water into the chow. And by doing that, they ate the same amount of chow. Actually, they started controlling their chow intake. So they're eating less chow because they became more leptin sensitive. But anyway, what happened is we could, we could treat obesity just by increasing water intake. All right. Since we're talking about fructose, let's talk about uric acid. Oh, yes. So what, so what's the deal with uric acid? A lot of people think about uric acid, they heard about it with gout. Some people have heard about it with high blood pressure, kidney issues, one of your specialties. How, how is all this tied in? Okay. So, so uric acid is a substance that's, you know, got a lot of nitrogen and it's basically a breakdown product. It's that we have in our blood and it's, it's broken down from the DNA, from the nuclear material in our, in the, in the food we eat. So when we're eating protein and carbs and fat, we're also eating, you know, the nuclei of the, of the plant or the, you know, the, the thing that carries the DNA and RNA. And when those things get broken down in our body, they're converted to uric acid.  Okay. And then we excrete it primarily through the intestines and the kidneys. And so normally, we have a low, a relatively low level of uric acid. It's actually higher than most other animals, but for us that, you know, it, and it doesn't bother us. So we have this substance in our blood. No one really cared about it, right? Because it's not a problem unless the levels get high. But if we're eating foods that can produce uric acid, then the uric acid can go up in our blood. And one of the foods that does that is sugar. So fructose, when fructose is metabolized, there's, there's basically fructose is broken down to carbon dioxide in water. So fructose is like a sugar, it's broken down. But there's this side reaction that occurs where fructose causes the ATP levels to fall. Remember the energy levels. And when that energy level falls, uric acid is generated. And the uric acid actually helps maintain the energy level at a low state. Because the uric acid actually is what is responsible for stunning the mitochondria, stunning the energy factories to keep the energy levels low. And so the uric acid that's produced actually has a biologic role inside the cell to kind of keep the energy level low. And that is associated with this activation of the switch. So we actually, to our surprise many years ago, when we were studying fructose, we found that the uric acid in the fructose was what was responsible for driving the switch. And, and so it, and so that the switch is not driven by the calories of fructose, it's driven by the side chain reaction. So what's happened is we've discovered that foods that raise uric acid also can, can cause obesity. So, so right now we have, think about, we have five tastes. We have the sweet taste, which is there to help us find fructose. And we have the salt taste, that's to help us find salty foods, which will help us make fructose. Then we have bitter and sour, which are these tastes to help us avoid eating foods, because they might contain toxins and so forth. And then there's a fifth taste called the savory taste or the umami taste. And this is the food taste that many of us love. It's like the taste for Caesar salads. And beer, for example, has this savory flavor, umami flavor from the yeast that's in the, in the beer. And, you know, there's a lot of foods that we, we like, the rich meaty extracts, you know, where you kind of simmer and you get that rich sauce. And, and it's been shown that what umami is, is it's actually consists of two things. It consists of glutamate, which is an amino acid. And it also consists of a breakdown product from, of these RNA and ATP. It's, you know, breakdown products, which are part of this pathway that activate the switch. And what we found sadly was that these umami flavors actually also activate the switch and, and they even glutamate gets converted to uric acid partly of it, part of it is. And so what happens is they can activate the switch. Now the good goes, Steve, is that by far the biggest thing that's driving the switch is sugar intake. It's we're eating 75 grams of that a day. Salt, we're eating maybe seven grams of salt a day, eight grams. And that is obviously helping to drive the switch. And umami, we're eating only like two to four grams of glutamate in a day. We're not eating, so we're eating much, much less. So it's much, much less important in that sense. But umami becomes a problem. And like certain rich meaty foods, proteins, especially, you know, like organ meats, liver, they're very high in umami. So plant proteins have much less of the, of the umami than animal proteins. And so plant proteins are superior in some respects. And the animal proteins, um, it also varies. So like processed red meats have a lot more umami than just regular red meat. And um, but, but it's true this puts a slightly negative light on super high protein diets, because high protein diets can contain a fair amount of umami. So um, and the umami can activate this switch. Now interestingly, the main way the switch is working is by the conversion of glucose to fructose. So if you're on a low carb diet, you're not getting a lot of glucose or fructose. And so even if you want to convert the glucose to fructose, if you're on an extreme low carb diet, there's not a lot of glucose around and there's not a lot of fructose around. And so a low carb diet will is a very good diet into the sense that it helps to protect. And of course you've brought up the benefits of ketosis as well for energy burning.  What did you learn after writing this book that you can share with our readers? Anything? What happened? Well, soft drinks and any kind of liquid sugar is absolutely something to avoid.  But when it comes to soft drinks and liquid sugar, it's really wise to try to avoid it because it is by far the easiest way to activate this switch. So the second thing is the power of of salt and water. We know so many diets don't talk about this enough. And what we've learned is that when you're eating a lot of salt in it and the and if you're you feel get thirsty from it that you could be activating the switch. And so trying to cut back on salt and drinking more water and I recommend a glass of water with each meal and a glass of water between meals. Don't have to drink gallons of water. I'm not telling you that. In fact, it's dangerous to drink huge amounts of water, but a glass of water with each meal, glass of water between meals, glass of water at bedtime.   I love intermittent fasting. We didn't talk about that. But time restricted fasting is a great move for all the benefits that you've written about. And and basically, exercise, we haven't talked about that. But, you know, it's important to exercise. They're good. It's good to help heal the mitochondria, these energy factories. And over time, these energy factories do get damaged. And so it's really important to try to help help them recover with with the techniques that you've proposed and exercise and all these all these things. So that's my main message, Steve. Make sure to check out the next one here. If you look at blue zones, if you look at other areas with super old people, one of the things that jumps out at you is they're not gym rats. They're not spending time in the gym.


Well, first off, you look really cool when you do it, so that's got to count for something. But that's not the main reason, okay? Now, a lot of you have been in this position. Let's say you're on the, you're, that's some kind of Linux form.   And there's always that one guy, at least one guy, sometimes more. But there's always that one guy, usually an arch user. He posts his desktop in everything's terminals, all right? Music in the terminal, visualizer in the terminal. He has a terminal file browser, terminal web browser sometimes.  And you were probably looking at that, wondering, what is wrong with this guy? Why is he doing this to himself? Is he, is he some kind of hipster? Is he trying to torture himself, make it difficult, you know, to do basic things? Why do you have to do things in the terminal? Now, I just wanted to say, there might be people out there who are, want to be technology hipsters and want to do things in the terminal, but doing things in the terminal is better in terms of customizability, in terms of getting what you want. Now, for most users, using a GUI program is totally fine. If you want to use Thunar, Nemo, Nautilus for your file browser, that's great, okay? But if you really want a customizable workflow, using a terminal browser like ViFM or Ranger is a great, a great move to make. Now, why is that so? Now, just generally, why terminal applications are usually better, is because they are, they follow the UNIX philosophy better, right? So, the idea is, the UNIX philosophy is like, do one thing and do one thing well, and then allow for the customization that the user might want to change things the way they want to manipulate text in different ways. And when you have a lower order program, that's usually what you get. So, if I go to my Ranger, I have a video on my Ranger file browser, I can customize every single shortcut, every key press is mapped to something. Like, I can move files all around my computer just by, you know, a couple key presses. I can modify images with a couple shortcuts. I've customized all those to my liking, okay? I can't do that on Thunar. I can't do that on Nemo. There might be some very indirect way of doing it, or, you know, loading my own options into the menu bar, but even that would take a lot of clicks, okay? So, terminal applications are great because they are so lower level. You can do all these great things with them. Same thing with my music player, like, so I have music on console player. I can give it whatever kind of shortcuts I want it to use, and I can do the specific actions that me and only me is going to want to do on my music or, you know, on my files or no matter whatever else I'm using, okay? Now, the corollary of that of the terminal programs is also you are moving from the medium of the keyboard and the mouse to just the keyboard, and what's nice about that is, well, first off, ergonomics. Your fingers are all in one place at one time, so that's really nice. You won't even realize how much more efficient you are until you do it. So that's great, and a lot of people will get confused by terminal applications. They're like, oh, God, it's so hard because we don't have a menu bar. I'd like to have that, but when you think about it, your keyboard becomes your menu bar, and you get to choose what every single key does, what every single key press is, and that's the great thing about terminal applications. Again, because they are lower level, because they are simple, not only are they loading faster, not only are you getting what you want faster than you would with a GUI application, but you can start customizing them to do whatever you want, specifically what you want, and that's why everyone has configs that do all the stuff that they want, because what I do with my files might be different from what you do, and having terminal applications is great for each individual person to have their own stuff. Now, so that's the argument. I will say a lot of you might have seen my distro video, and I'm going to recapitulate the same philosophy here. Now, for most people, using terminal applications isn't necessarily the solution. It might be easier for them to use GUI things. They just need to be able to copy and paste. Maybe that's fine with you. So not everyone might want to get into terminal applications, but those of you who do want to do very specific things, or those of you who just want to be able to customize or do things efficiently, terminal applications are always the way to go, because they're really, because they are so extensible, you can just do whatever you want with them. So anyway, that's just the case. You can be a hipster. You do get comments when you're in class or something, and some girl's like, wow, you look really smart. You must know about computers, and I'll just be like, yeah, no, baby, I'm just faking it, but I fake it pretty well. There is an appeal to using terminals. It does look cool, but it's really about efficiency. If I could not get what I get done as efficiently as I do now, there's no reason I shouldn't be using Ubuntu Unity, which is a fine desktop. Every desktop is fine. They're all great. But anyway, so that's the case. That's the case for terminals. If you want to customize workflow, try them out. I'm going to put some in the video description and you can check out my other videos. But anyway, so that's it. I'll catch you today. All right, have a good one.


If I were to have contemplated where I wanted myself to be in 10 years, 10 years ago, I don't think that the word entrepreneur would ever have come into my vocabulary. I'm Linda Miller Nicholson with Salty Seattle, and I create colorful pasta using vegetables, herbs, and superfoods. I've been making pasta my entire life since I was four years old.  I make it all the time for him. I'm just gonna amp up my vegetable pasta. He didn't know what he was eating at the time, then once he figured out, oh, I can't actually taste the beets. Okay, this isn't bad. He was sort of that initial catalyst for but can you make blue, but can you make purple? All of a sudden I'm weaving 25 different colors together into these amazing, beautiful, patterned pieces of art, you could say. It eventually sort of took off like wildfire and I'm able to spread the joy of my art through social media platforms but that doesn't necessarily translate to dollars. For me personally, I'd never wanted to lose that artistic aspect to what I was doing but at a certain point, if I'm spending 80 hours a week doing this, there needs to be a return on that time investment.  We are in the pasta studio and I've got to make a couple of different pasta dough colors. This is kind of just a sampling of some of the things that I use. I like to use a bunch of different greens for pasta making, seasonally watch kind of how the pigment is darker or lighter. So you can see right away that just adding a few beets completely impacts and changes the vibrancy. I started to realize that this was a concept that I absolutely needed to take from passion into actual career. Around the same time I signed my book deal, I had a lot of second guessing and questions and my editor said, you probably should do it or your idea is gonna be out there without you. So I almost felt like I was sort of running after my own concept, you know, realizing that if I didn't put out there what I wanted to put out there that someone else would have done it. All right, now for the fun part, I am going to take my beautiful rainbow palette of pasta dough and I think I'll do a little bit of shaping freestyle. One of my deepest loves is to be able to teach other people how to make pasta and during the pandemic it's actually been really cool because I used to teach only in person classes and the pandemic has opened this up where now I can be piped into anybody's kitchen all over the, I've had students from every continent except for Antarctica. I'm working on it. Life goals there. Luckily with GoDaddy I was able to create an entire virtual class workshop page because of my complete lack of technical proficiency I really needed a solution that was very swag and play and so far GoDaddy website builder has been that for me. It's been very eye-opening. I feel like I have gotten an ancillary business degree over the last several years of just sort of creating this small business and watching it flourish and thrive. GoDaddy had kind of the functionality that I was able to do a variety of different things with it. Hi. Hi, Linda. How's it going? Great. Being here in your space, in your dough, Joe. Mike, did you say dough, Joe? And is that spelled D-O-U-G-A? It is now. Okay, it is. Everything is bright. You are colorful. I think going to a lighter color palette, filling it in, you know, with little accents here and there that, again, really reflect who you are, the blog would be perfect for this website. Even if you're not actively posting, if you can get each blog post sort of jam-packed with those key words that people would go on the web looking for you, that will help you immensely with your search engine optimization. You're kind of going at this upward trajectory and every time you say yes to a project, you're no longer going up, you kind of go outward from there and you have to figure out where you're willing to stop going up. It's how I determine whether or not I'm going to add a new sort of aspect to my business. If I can do this and then it can kind of become sort of a source of passive income, then maybe that's a good idea. Maybe I will invest the time. As a female entrepreneur, we kind of have it a little bit more ingrained that if a job comes into my purview, you know, okay, I better take the job, no matter if the feeling isn't right and now I'm starting to learn to be a little bit more selective and then the jobs that do land in my lap are the ones that I truly want to take on and it helps me to be a little bit more excited about it. Success is sort of a nebulous concept that means something different for everyone but for me, always making sure that there is a meaning and a message and some joy behind what I do and always be thinking about what's next.


The Falcons audible presented by AT&T is back. We're gonna recap week two in the National Football League. We've got action on the field. We'll talk about the Falcons and some other things around the NFL. I'm gonna be your host for the next call at 20 to 30 minutes. I'm Derek Rackley. I'm along with my guys Dave Archer and DJ Shockley. And hopefully if you've been tuning in to our podcast, by now you know these guys. So we can go ahead and just surpass the introductions because these guys are chomping at the bit to get into some discussion about the Falcons. And of course the entire NFL. So before we get into that, let me give you a quick rundown of what we're gonna cover in this episode of the Falcons audible. Of course, quick reactions to the game last weekend. What did it all mean? We're gonna try to make sense of this game between Atlanta and Tampa Bay. We'll take a step away, talk about one of the teams in the division in the James Winston in the New Orleans Saints. Kind of still seems odd saying not without saying degrees at the Saints. And then we'll recount and we got two quarterbacks on the show. There's a chance for them to recount the best and maybe worst throws that they've ever made in competition. And then we'll look ahead for the next couple of minutes for the Atlanta Falcons. So that's kind of the rundown of the show. But DJ, I'm gonna start with you. We're gonna go with quick reactions here, okay? All right. I want you to tell us number one, if you're encouraged or discouraged by what you saw in the Atlanta Tampa game. And I want you to follow that up with your support. But here's the caveat, okay? Okay. What are two sentences and that's it, okay? So you gotta keep it short and sweet. What do they say to five Bs? B, brief, my brother, B, brief. All right, you're up. You made that up. What if he got like run on sentences? Run on sentences? Don't work dude, I guess not. All right. I am encouraged. Obviously in that ball game you're down 28-10. You find a way to claw and fight back and you're within three and things don't go your way. Some uncanny things happen, but I'm encouraged by what happened. This team fought back and I was excited about that. How was that? All right, Dave, what you got? Yeah, I guess I'll go counterpoint. I'm discouraged, but I think, because I thought this team got off to a slow start and then fought their way back ultimately to let it bleed away on some screwy plays. So I'm kind of encouraged, but I'm discouraged too. Sorry, Rack, I just, I think there's a lot of good things on both sides. Stop nailing me down, man. Rack, Rack, be the equalizer and tell us, are you encouraged or discouraged? Somebody's gotta break the tie and this thing, right? Okay, I'm gonna lean towards Archie and I'm gonna say that I'm discouraged because I expect in the NFL teams to be competitive with the amount of talent, meaning even though that the Atlanta Falcons are in a new regime, I still expect them to be competitive even if it is the defending world champs, but I'm discouraged how the way the second half and specifically the fourth quarter ended up going. One of the biggest things that we always learned and are preached about is finishing in the NFL. And as we all know, the Atlanta Falcons did not finish in their game against Tampa. And by the way, if you wanna get more podcast action and more breakdowns of the game, feel free to join our Atlanta Falcons Insiders, Scott Bair, Tori McElaney and Chris Rim on the Falcons final whistle as they get right into it after the games. You can find that information on all these same outlets to get some more podcast action of the breakdown. All right, so let's break it down a little bit more. Arch, I'm gonna come back to you. What does this mean? Because you guys kind of summarized it as far as Falcons in pretty good shape, it was a really good game after three quarters. And then for some reason, the wheels just fell off and things snowballed really fast. So what does this all mean? Kind of break down this game and what it means to you, Arch. Well, it means you're inconsistent. And I think that that probably is what you saw in week one. This one was a better version of that, but it's still inconsistency, right? You still lost the football game. You get off to a bit of a slow start defensively and then you make a play defensively. So again, a kind of back and forth type scenario, you get down 28 to 10, you claw your way back in the game and then it gets away from you again. I think that that is probably the word that sticks out to me is inconsistent. There's not a solid play, work of play on the offensive line. They're solid for a little bit and then there's inconsistency. All of a sudden we leak on protections. We leak on some of the types of, some of the stunts that come and force Matt Ryan to get the ball out too early. You can't throw the ball down field because can't quite hold it long enough. Yet we wore them out with that short passing attack underneath. So the inconsistency, I guess, is probably going back to your original question, Rack, is what kind of brings on the discouragement, if you will, is where is that consistency? Does it have, will it develop? I think it can and certainly it has to develop pretty quickly if you want to maintain some kind of competitive balance here inside the division. And DJ, what stuck out to you? Because, you know, we've watched these games. Obviously Dave's calling it. So he's right there for every single snap. You're watching this game as you got a vested interest in the team and covering them. But what sticks out to you? Because, yeah, there are things to be encouraged, but at the end of the day, DJ, you and Dave know that like, we're not in the business to be encouraged, right? The NFL is a business of winning. So how did you make this game, at least how it shook out in the end? I think ultimately you look at, you're doing things in this ball game that shouldn't have gone the way it did. I mean, let's be point blank.  Now, you only give up 82 rushing yards. You were, you know, you held them to four of 12 on third down, but when they score five touchdowns in a ball game and the quarterback does that, that obviously means there are some other areas they're doing what's really good on. Maybe it's first and second down. You're not even getting the third down at times. Maybe there are things in the ball game. You look back and say, we had our opportunities, but I also am encouraged about how well you did in the red zone. There were times where you needed to score touchdowns in this game. As much as they were scoring touchdowns, you needed to have that a part of your arsenal in this ball game and be able to do it. I thought quarterback Patterson showed a lot of versatility in this ball game. I think he is starting to become one of those guys that you know you can depend on. Arsha talked about there are some of the things that are very inconsistent without this team. Well, there are some guys who are starting to be consistent and you know coming to a ball game, you can depend on it. You heard Arthur Smith talk about, I know I have some guys I can depend on now. And I think even though we're discouraged about the outcome, we're discouraged about being 0-2, I think Arthur Smith knows now exactly who is in that locker room with him. And a lot of times when you go into a new season with a new staff and a new regimen, that everybody's trying to learn each other. Well, I think now he's starting to understand the guys that he can depend on in certain spots and guys that can do certain things. And I think quarterback Patterson is one of those guys you see you're starting to depend on. We saw Kyle Pitts emerging this ball game. You've heard him talk about I understand the coverage is a little bit better in this ball game. Things slowed down a little bit more for him. So there's things that obviously we all want to see improved. We want them to be more consistent but there's also things that you can see where this team is starting to grow in this ball game. How about Matt Ryan on the zone, read Arsha. I mean jumping in the end zone. I mean, I know Arsha's yelling at that point when he went airborne to get into the zone.  And those are things that you can absolutely build on. And like I said, like you mentioned, there's still a lot to improve on. We don't want to be in the encouraging business but there's still a lot of things that we can be excited about. Yeah, and I agree with you guys. And one of my college coaches, Glenn Mason, used to always tell us that the point in the game there will be four to five plays that will make a difference in swaying it either direction. And as I'm watching every game, whether I'm scouting a game for that, I'm gonna be calling or I'm watching Atlanta kind of see like how is this getting gonna unfold. You see the stop in the third quarter defensively, the punt, they get the ball back. First down play, what is it? They pick up eight yards to leave a second and two and then it's come up short on second down, stuffed on third down, bad punt and then everything just went downhill from that point on, right? And that was the point where it was like, there's your three to four plays in the game that are potentially gonna make a difference and sure enough, it ended up doing that. I mean, Dave, did you kind of see that as your columnist? You're like, oh goodness, here we go. Like this was the opportunity. All we gotta do is pick up a first down and maybe it changes the complexion of the fourth quarter. I thought there were a couple of plays like that rack and I'll even take it back further, opening drive of the second half.  Remember kind of an excuse me field goal right at the end of the first half to draw the score to 21-10 and you're gonna start the second half with the football. Now you get backed up, you get a bad penalty. Remember, Avi Williams catches that short kick and drives it and returns it all the way out over the 50-yard line. You're gonna start in plus territory. You get an illegal block, backs you back up to your 10-yard line. Okay, we still have the football, let's get started. Ryan on a short pass, he's got Russell Gage wide open for a little zone beater for about a five or six-yard gain. Ball's tipped in the air by Vita Vaya. Shaq Barrett picks it off. Two plays later, they throw a touchdown pass. Well, or three plays later, they throw a touchdown pass.  Fabian Moreau drops an interception. They've got an interception to flip the script. Two-yard on it. There's just two sequences right there that started the second half that would have changed the potential of the complexion of the game. Have to make the plays when you have an opportunity. We saw Ball batted in the air. Shaq Barrett caught it, set him up in field position. We had an opportunity for Fabian Moreau to intercept it and flip the script. We didn't make the play. They scored a touchdown on Mike Evans' touchdown pass.  When you scratched and clawed to get so close to really getting over the hump and maybe going down to Tampa and stealing away a game from the defending world champs and then you miss the couple plays that you're talking about, it's gonna be extremely difficult to beat that team. All right, guys, let's take a step back from this one because there's some other action and there's some fun things that I wanna get to. But there was a game as far as the Saints playing the Panthers, right? Obviously we're in this new generation, if you will, of a quarterback for the New Orleans Saints, not named Drew Brees. James Winston gets off to a great start a week ago and some would say he kinda came back to James Winston this past week, throwing a couple of bad interceptions. And I just wanna ask this question, DJ, I'm gonna start with you. You saw week one, you got a chance to see week two. Do you think the Saints are a contender in this division with James being the starting quarterback or do you think they don't have any lasting power? I'm gonna be honest, I don't. And I say that because of what happened, you just mentioned, what happened in week one and then what happens in week two. This is the same James Winston that we saw in Tampa. We'll go out and throw 30 touchdowns but also throw 30 plus interceptions. And in this league, you have to be consistent. I mean, Archie just talked about it with the Falcons. Consistency is key. And when you have quarterbacks in this league that can go out week in and week out and not turn the football over and can be the reason why you win games, those are the teams that are going to win ball games. Those are the teams that are gonna win divisions. They're gonna win, they're gonna be buying for it every single year. And that's the reason why Drew Brees is so beloved in that city and beloved as a quarterback because he didn't lose a game for you. He did everything to help you. Yeah, he had games where he threw interceptions to but he was consistent in his play. And over the years, that's been the mantra of James Winston is he has not been consistent with his play week in and week out. So when you come into a ball game, you're not sure which James you're gonna get.  This is the same guy we're used to seeing. So until he becomes the consistent player and does it week in and week out, I don't trust James Winston and I don't trust him to lead this Saints team to where ultimately they wanna be. But consistency is all for me and I ain't seen it out of James. Arch, what about you? Over the course of a now 17 game regular season with what you've seen from James Winston buying or selling them in the NFC South. I'm buying, I'm buying Sean Payton. I'm buying the talent around James Winston. I'm buying their defense. They're legit on the defensive side of the football. And I think there's enough playmakers around James that he can make some plays. I would say that with Alvin Camero back on the field, those kind of guys can make plays for him. James Winston also has Sean Payton to kind of rein him in. Was it a bad throw? There's no question about it. But I can go back to look at numbers. James Winston is a Tampa Bay buck quarterback against the Atlanta Falcons. He was three to one touchdowns the interception ratio. He has the ability to do it. And there's been some other guys. Now I don't wanna compare him to a Brett Favre who's a Hall of Famers. There's guys that try to shove it into coverage.  There's no question about it. It cost his football team. But I do think that he has the ability and there's enough ability around them on that team. There's a winning culture there. I would not bet against the Saints with James Winston playing quarterback. It's interesting that you bring up Sean Payton and I would, I mean, granted, look, James is not a rookie, right? He's been around the league, but it seems like if Sean Payton can somehow, some way get through his head that we don't need the disaster throw, right? Like you never wanna compare two quarterbacks, especially a guy in Drew Brees that's gonna be a first ball at Hall of Famer. But I couldn't help but think when James made that bad throw, getting pressure falling over into double, if not triple coverage, that Drew Brees is not gonna make that mistake, right? He's not gonna throw that ball in the middle of the field and let somebody else catch it. So if Sean Payton can somehow, some way get him away from throwing that catastrophic interception, maybe they're competitive, but right now I'm selling it with DJ. I just don't know if I see it so far. Go ahead, Shock. I wanna add this. Did you just raise your hand? I absolutely raised my hand because I did not wanna interact in his soliloquy right there. I did not want to interrupt it. Who does that? But here's the thing I wanna pose to you Archie. You say he's got Sean Payton. This is not James' first year with the Saints. But it's his first year as a starter. It don't matter. He in his system though. He's been in it for a year. That's fine to be sitting behind a desk as I raised my hand to ask a question. That's fine to be sitting behind a desk and listen to Drew Brees answer all the questions. He's not a rookie either. Now you're on the field. But he's not a rookie. He wasn't on the field. He played last year. What in mop up duty? Here, come in, we're ahead. Come on man, you can't compare that. I'm just saying. He's been in the system. I get what you're saying. He's been around Payton. Like he should not be making these same decisions and bad decisions when he has that guy around him. I guarantee you Sean Payton, then he didn't go a whole year and tell James, hey look, wait till next year, we'll coach you and we'll make sure you don't make his decision. No, but I do think though saying it to a guy and having him go through it physically are two different things. So the only way you get that out of you is to go play through it. He didn't get a chance to do that. Sure, he had a guy saying, hey, don't make that throw. See this throw on tape? Don't make that throw, we can't have that. But he physically has to go through that process. You and I were talking before we came on. Quarterback decision making is in a split second. And so that's not something that just immediately goes out, it takes you a little while. You have to make some of those mistakes before you can get through it in that system. So I get it, I know what you're saying. He's made those mistakes before. This is the first time he's making those mistakes with Sean Payton sitting there who's gonna evaluate him after the game. All right, Arch, so you talk about making mistakes and learning from them. Let's have a little fun here. You guys are both quarterbacks. Arch, let's start with you. Tell us about the worst throw that you've ever made, maybe one that you made a bad throw and you learned from the mistake because it was so bad. Well, this is one that all quarterbacks and shocks made this throw too, so don't let him kid you. He made this throw as well. We're playing the San Francisco 49ers right here in Atlanta in Old Fulton County Stadium. And here's young Dave Archer and he's, I can run around, I can make plays. I got the arm to make that throw. I'm on the dead run to the right. I'm headed towards the 49ers sideline and I'm thinking, don't make that throw back over the middle, but it's like your body doesn't listen to your brain. And I go, ah, to throw it on the dead run. And what's the one throw a quarterback can't make? Back in the middle. Late over the middle. I was as late as can be. The bus had already left. I was off. They had left and I'm throwing it over the middle, picked off in the red zone, not, not in the middle of field, not in my end. I took points off the board, much like James did this weekend. Horrible decision, horrible throw. I'd like to say learn from it, Rack, but I'm not sure I did. I think I made the throw again another couple of times in my career, but that was the worst when it sticks in my mind. Here we got a chance to beat Joe Montana in the 49ers and I throw a yank over the middle of field with a chance to put points on the board. That's tough. Listen, I've known you for probably about 15 years, okay? And I've always seen you as a pretty confident guy, meeting confident with yourself, maybe with your athletic ability. And we know you can run, right? You use those legs. So tell us about one of the worst decisions you've ever made throw on the football. All right, so we're gonna go back to college year and we're gonna go to on the road my senior year. So this means I've been around for a minute. I played in a bunch of games and I understand certain throws you just can't make. We were, me and Archer's just talking about, he's talking about Jeff George making this unbelievable throw from one hash to the other. So we're playing against Tennessee on the road. I done completed probably four of these out routes from one hash to the other hash. I snapped the foot. We go play action to the left. We're on the right hash. We play action to the left. We're throwing an out route. I done completed the same out route on the same corner, at least three times in the game. I hit my back foot and soon as I let it go, I instantly, when I say instantly, I instantly took an angle to go make the tackle. Because before I even let it go, I knew it was picked off. And guess what?  I ended up hitting the guy like the two yard line. So saving the pick six, but it was my dumb self that said, okay, I done completed this pass four times in this game on this same dude, he been off and he was off on this particular play, but as soon as I hit my back foot and I go to let it go, he is planted. I mean, he ain't moved and he drives on it and I instantly take the angle because I got to go make a tackle. So terrible throw, terrible decision. And I was just glad I was able to make the play. Look, DJ, that defensive back over there said, this quarterback is not completing that same pass on me again.  And I guess sometimes defensive players have to guess right. Well, it sounds like he ended up guessing right on that one. I like that, fellas. Sometimes you got to get a little vulnerable, right? Like, hey, yeah, I was playing the NFL. I was, you know, big time SEC quarterback, but guess what? I made mistakes as well. Have you ever two, three bounce one back there to the punter? I mean, you have to have one. We're snapping a game back in a game. No, not two, three. But when I was in college, I did snap one over a guy's head when I was in college. And you know what? Talk about learning from a mistake. It was this was my red shirt freshman year. It was the first year that I started long snapping at Minnesota. I never forget I was at Purdue, right? And I got excited like there was a rush coming at me. So I had to snap it and get up right away to try to protect. And all of a sudden I hear the roar of the crowd. Right? When the puns going on, like, and you never heard the football hit a foot, and then you hear a crowd roar, it's like, uh-oh. Oh, no.  Well, Rack, at least you didn't hit the up back like the 49, or like the Ram guy did this weekend. Ram snapper snaps it right into the up back, and it goes sideways and costs the Rams a touchdown. Oh, man. It just might have been a little bit off target. All right, so I always like the story time stuff. That's good. Let's write it back in here before we close it out, guys. Let's look ahead now. We talked about the game.  Let's look ahead for the Atlanta Falcons. Giants, Washington, and the New York Jets next on the schedule for them. Let's just talk about, in arch, I'm going to start with you. If you're the head coach, if you're a player on this team, going into this stretch, which maybe you would say is more manageable, what's the emphasis? What's your goal in this stretch upcoming? Well, first of all, not think about three games. I'm thinking about one game. I'm thinking about the Giants. And I know that that sounds like the old adage, but it is. You've got to get better today, the next day, and all that kind of stuff. That's where this team is. They're not good enough to think about a stretch of games. The Giants are certainly a team you can go beat. You can also lose to the Giants. This is a team that's got a quarterback that can run. They've got Zone Reed. They've got Saquon Barkley, who's back off an injuries and outstanding player. They've got three guys on the perimeter. They can go back plays. They've got two really good tight ends, and Ingram and Kyle Rudolph, who comes over from the Vikings. And yeah, they've got some guys on the other side of the ball that can rush you. So I think that the number one scenario is, let's just get one. Let's go get a win. Let's win this quarter. Let's win this quarter. And let's put four quarters together. The inconsistency, let's get that out. And let's play four quarters of football where we win each quarter. And if we can win each quarter, hey, I think we're going to like what it looks like at the end. All four quarters. And then we'll worry about the Washington team. Because I think they create two different problems. Washington, we're going to the NFC East here. Get the Giants first. And then we get Washington back here in Atlanta. Washington's a different team to me than where New York is. And New York's scrambling too now. They're hearing it. That's the New York media up there. They've lost too straight. They lost the game where they made a stupid mistake at the end of the Washington game where they jumped offside on the field goal, gave them a chance to re-rack it, how about that and kick it through? It's off the cuff right there. Look at it. That's off the cuff. And kick it through. So they get the win. And so you're leaving. We should have won that game and you lost. So they're hearing it up there. So they're hearing the same thing our guys are hearing down there. So I think it's just a matter about focusing on this moment and trying to win each quarter-rack. Yeah, I mean, us players, that's what we're going to do. We're going to focus on one game. So DJ, I'll throw it back to you if we're going to talk about winning the next game. Give me one scenario or situation that the Falcons have to do better or win for them to win the game against the Giants. For me, it's kind of obvious. And it happened in the first two ball games. I think you have to win special teams. Obviously, that's a big part of the game. And I mean, our just talked about it where you have a sequence in a game where some plays don't happen and you have a bad pun or you have a bad situation where you don't change field position. That's the quickest way for a team to gain momentum. That's the quickest way for a team to feel good about this is, hey, we got great field position. Let's go get some points. Let's go put stress on another team. You expect your offense and defense to play up to the standard in which they're supposed to play. They're going to make plays. Things are going to happen. You get, obviously, you get 60, 70 plays in a ball game on offense or defense, special teams. You may get four or five a game. And, Rack, you talked about it. There are always three or four plays in a game that sometimes determine an outcome. And let's just say you don't have the right field position or you can change field position with a punt or get somebody within the 10-yard line. You talk them on kick return and you get inside the 15. Whatever it may be, make a team go full field. If you can win special teams, that gives you a chance to win the ball game. So I'm expecting this team to play a lot better in the special teams part of the ball game because we saw offense come on. We saw defense have some good moments in the last couple ball games. Now let's see the third phase come in as well and pick up that slack and also have a big part of helping the team win. Yeah, I agree with that, DJ. And I will just add on top of it, I would like to see, we talked a little bit about consistency or maybe more inconsistencies. I would like to see some more consistency on the offensive line. And I think we'll see a more consistent performance of the offense being able to move the chains and everything. If we can get things cleaned up a little bit in front of Matt when he's trying to sort things out defensively down the field. So let's go to wrap it up, guys.  I think I might enjoy you guys talking about the bad parts of your career, maybe more than your analysis. Oh, man. So the guys that are helping us put the show together, let's make sure that we have more things where DJ and Arch can talk about what they did poorly with their careers. As it turns out, that might be the predominant part of what I would be talking about, unfortunately. What is it in baseball? You hit 300, you fail seven out of 10 times, but you're considered a great player. OK, completions. What, Shaq, we got a complete six out of 10. So you fail four times. Pretty good, yeah, right back. Maybe mine might have been the other way around. I don't know. Maybe like four out of 10. Plenty of average days. That have no problem taking a little shoulder of their mistakes. I enjoy it. OK, on behalf of DJ Shockley and Dave Archer, that is the Falcons Audible presented by AT&T. I'm Derek Rackley, enjoying you. One more time, we'll be back next week to recap Atlanta's game against the New York Giants. And we will try to find some time to have a little bit of fun in there. Thanks so much for joining us, everybody. Once again, this is the Falcons Audible presented by AT&T. Enjoy your week.


It's time that the church has made up its mind. In this hour, the Holy Spirit is calling for a remnant. In this hour, the Holy Spirit is calling for a church that will obey the Word of God in the face of a culture that despises the Word of God. If you cannot see the persecution coming against the church, you're spiritually blind. And you can't discern the hour. But today, the Holy Spirit has begun to work in the people in this room and those of you watching all over the world. The truth of the matter is that though they may try, the world cannot silence the church of the living God. Though they may try, this culture cannot cancel the gospel. Though they may put pressure against the church, there will always be a greater power within the church. And any demonic spirit that rises against the people of God will bow before the Lordship of Jesus. Because no matter what spirit comes against us, there's a greater spirit who lives in us than the one that is in the world. And he is the one. Let them persecute you. Your family may turn against you. Your friends may turn against you. But I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ. For he is the power of God unto salvation. I care what some governor says. I know what I've decided. I care what some lukewarm church leader says. I know I have decided. I don't care about the clever sounding arguments that would try to persuade me to disobey the Word of God because I know what I have decided. I've decided to follow Jesus. Though none go with me. Though none go with me. There is no turning back. You know what Jesus said. He said that if you put your hand to the plow and you look back, you're not fit for the work. Calls for discernment. The hour calls for boldness. The hour calls for Jesus. The hour calls for loyalty to his Lordship and his Lordship. This is the hour of the remnant rising. This is the hour of the church in power. I care what anybody says. This nation belongs to the church. I don't care what anybody says. The nations of the world belong to the church. And there's nobody that's going to convince me otherwise. Because when you have the discernment of the Holy Spirit and the truth of the Word of God, you're unshakable. You're unshakable. And so tonight as we lift our hands and as we raise our voices, I want this not just to be a song. I want you to let it be a declaration. A declaration of your faith. An affirmation that you have been founded within that faith. An affirmation that there's nothing and no one that can convince you.  So with hands lifted and voices raised, make it your declaration.