The Liver King (A Live Show)

Robert and Dr. Kaveh Hoda perform live at SF Sketchfest. Everything you've ever wanted to know about the Liver King and a significant number of things you did not want to know.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome, finally to the twentieth annual s F sketch Fest,
the San Francisco Comedy Festival. For tickets and show schedules,
visit us at SF Sketchfest dot com and follow us
on social media for festival news and updates. Please take
a moment to locate the nearest emergency exit, and please
silence your cell phones and refrain from texting during the performance.

(00:24):
Video and photography are strictly prohibited. Enjoy the show. Would
you all excuse me a minute, I need to make
a phone call. Hey, Sophie. Yeah, So I'm here at
the thing, you know, the award show for the sketchiest

(00:45):
man in podcasting. Well, I'm wearing my award robe and
I'm carrying my awards staff. But it's become clear to
me that this is not, in fact an award. No,
that's not what Sketch Fest means. Yeah, I know. I
was shocked to learn it too. I think they're expecting
me to perform an episode of Behind the Bastards. Yeah, yeah, yeah, No,

(01:05):
this is a real problem. This is a real problem. Thankfully,
I keep next to my heart a podcast script for
emergencies at all times, but we're gonna need a guest,
and I just don't have anyone booked. Wait a second, Sophie,
I'll talk to you later. Helloine, play along. Yeah, we

(01:28):
have a I'm here at the Gateway Theater and we've
had a horrible attack of airborne syphilis. Start moaning. Come on,
give me, give me, give me some moans. Oh yeah, no,
it's bad. You need to get a doctor down here immediately.
Can we get a doctor sent into the theater? Doctor
kave Hoda, Thank you for coming on such short notice,

(01:52):
Doctor Hoda. I heard there was an uncontrollable amount of
syphilis here. That is the case, but we can ignore
that the actual and I called nine one one was
because I have a script and I need some help
reading it. No, you view. I know it's not the
first time, and it won't be the last that I
use nine one one for my own purposes. But can

(02:14):
I take this white coat off I haven't worn this night.
It's actually quite hot up here. I'll keep the podcasting staff,
I'll keep the podcasting picture out of the knife. Yeah
you lend me. Yeah. Now I'm in my much more
normal outfit of my shoot dope. Fuck the cops hoodie,

(02:34):
which I own, mainly because wearing this hoodie through the
TSA checkpoint is quite a bit of fun. You have,
you have a different experience every time in every country. Kabe,
how are you doing today? Man? I am so glad
to be here. There's nobody and no crowd. I would
rather get an airborne disease from than you. Oh no,

(02:57):
this is of all the crowds to get an airborne
disease from, this is in the top three or four. Yeah,
that area over there is particularly questionable. Over there, I
find them. They definitely have something, and it's okay because
it's worth it. I think this is this is worth
the risk speaking of people who probably have some sort
of disease. Actually, you know, I say that I kind

(03:19):
of brought you all here on false pretenses because normally
this is a podcast about the very worst people in
all of history. But every now and then we talk
about a hero, and today we're talking about the man
who might be my hero. Do you know who Brian
Johnson is. Well, he might be better known by his
other name, the Liver King. Oh that's oh yeah, oh yeah.

(03:44):
We got a lot of videos. We got a lot
of videos cued up for you. Motherfucker's so strapping. Okay, wait, wait,
first of all, let me explain to the crowd who
may not know me, even though I am the San
Franciscan and you should fucking know me by now. But
it is a small town. It is a small town.
But I am a liver doctor. I am a jogist.

(04:05):
So the fact that some guy had the gall to
call himself the liver King when I was a fucking
round is is apollo. It is. There's a lot that
will be appalling about this episode, but we got to
get into it because time is of the understand So.
Brian Johnson, which is the Liver King's real name, was
born on April seventh, nineteen seventy seven, in San Antonio, Texas.

(04:29):
Probably basically all the information we have this guy on
this guy about his early life comes from interviews that
he gave or comments he made on various grindset influencer podcasts.
He is a professional liar, so this should all be
taken with a grain of salt. Now. Brian has claimed
that his father died when he was young, which left
him without strong male guidance for years and contributed to

(04:51):
feelings of insecurity that were exacerbated by the bullying of
other kids at his school. Yeah, that may or may
not be true. There's some speculation and on Reddit that
he had family money as the result of a furniture store,
and there is a prominent Texas, Louisiana furniture chain named Johnson,
but that's also a pretty common name. Yeah, he seems
like he'd be involved with like wood. Yeah, it seems

(05:12):
like there's what he does. He does have the skin
texture of a nice piece of cured oak. So Brian
himself makes two claims about his childhood. The first is
that he was bullied constantly. He describes his life as
a kid as a living hell, adding I was the
only one of my kind at my school. I think
that means short person, which doesn't seem likely. I made

(05:35):
matters to make matters worse for myself. I was undersized,
I look funny. I did. I looked funny. I didn't
have a single friend, and I had absolutely no concept
of self worth with Chay, I got bullied too as
a kid. That does sound rough. He got the you know,
says that he got beat up a lot, but he
also again, I don't know how much to believe this
guy's claims. But the other thing that he claimed that

(05:56):
he makes about his childhood is that he was an
entrepreneur from a very young age. He recalls as one
of his formative events going door to door to sell
newspapers with his friends, with his friend Peter. I'm gonna
quote from Brian here. I remember Peter's pitch. He would
knock on the door and go, excuse me, ma'am. You're
currently subscribed to the San Antonio Light. We would like
for you to renew your subscription. All you have to

(06:16):
do is pay for Sunday. They'd say, oh, hey, you've
called me. This isn't going to work out. We're not
going to renew. And Peter would say, ma'am, can we
come in and get a glass of water? And you
know then he'd say, ma'am, we're little kids. We're just
trying to make a buck. Do you think you could
help us out? And almost all of the time it
worked out. So there you go. Yeah, from a start,
can we stop for a second. That's a lot of
paper in your hand. It is a lot of paper.

(06:37):
Were doing all of that? No? No, I printed two
copies in case I lost one. I drink very heavily
at the airport. Oh my goodness, I got it because
I fly. Yeah, yeah, you fly. I know. It's there's
only one way to fly, and that's scammered. Yea yeah,
so uh yeah. If Brian is a reliable source on
his life and he is not, at some point in

(06:59):
his adolescence he started lifting weights. He tells a few
versions of this story, and one he was bullied, but
the fact that he was bullied was a good thing.
And this is something that he says because it acted
as a catalyst that allowed him to impose his will,
his words on his body by lifting weights. Um, which
is an odd way to describe getting in shape. But

(07:19):
I guess, you know, so he was a bully. Yeah.
My guess is that maybe some of this was turned
around in reality and he was like those other kids
by bullying them. You're not going to feel less like
that after this quote, because here's what he says about
getting jacked as a teenager. That was my right of
passage and it changed me and forged me into the
evolutionary hunter, the unrelenting fighter, the serial ancestral entrepreneur that

(07:44):
I am today. Because everyone knows the cavemen, the reason
the Cavemen beat the Neanderthals as they were better at
getting VC funding. Everyone in San Francisco knows that, yeah, obviously,
so The other, more believable version of the story is
that his mom started dating a guy who had a

(08:04):
weight set and Brian started using it and got results.
So this guy bought him a bench in some weights
and that was it. Soon Brian was jacked, and he
noticed that girls at school started paying more attention to
him instead of making fun of him, other boys were jealous.
The defining moment of his adolescence bear with me here,
was when one of his friends compared him to Mark Wahlberg,
a statement that he says, probably changed my life forever.

(08:29):
And wow, yeah, you shouldn't want to be compared to Mark. No. Look,
I'm very pro people, you know, getting bit if that's
what they want to do. But don't don't be like
Mark Wahlberg. Nobody needs Mark Wahlberg. Should be less like
Mark Wahlberg. We have one photo from him of him
from his late teens or early twenties, and he is
indeed quite swollen. The photo shows him standing beside a

(08:52):
swimming pool of what I guess is a fairly large
house in the North Texas suburbs. Savor this last photo
of him, Well, that's an likely he's in good shape,
but he doesn't look That's not like a guy who's
on the shitload of gear or anything. He's not. He's
clearly has no like hair on his body, which I
find Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean that is a little
bit odd. But I grew up in Texas too, I

(09:13):
get it. You gotta do what you gotta do to
stay cool down there. Okay, So but that's you know,
he's in very good shape, but he's a pretty normal
looking person. I would say, like obviously extremely fit, but
not as he will become someone who was very clearly
putting a car worth of steroids into his body every
single month. So after he got swoll, Brian started taking

(09:35):
school more seriously. He got into Texas Tech, a pretty
good school where he got pretty good grades. He got
a degree in biochemistry, or, as he said it in
another interview, a degree in biology and chemistry. I think
it is a biokimbs. So he got his bachelor's. He
said he was gunning for a medical degree at some point,
and in one interview with BuzzFeed, he claimed that he

(09:56):
got into a medical school but dropped out during orientation. No, no, no,
that's not a thing. That's this is journalism. We're doing
research live. You don't do that. I mean you drop
out later, but you don't drop out during orientation. You
stick around and you have the parties, and you go
through the whole thing, and you tell undergrads I'm in
medical school. And then later you drop out. But you

(10:17):
don't like to do it during orientation. That's well a
ways a serial liar. Um, and he does. He claims that.
So at age twenty one, he says he started working
for the pharmaceutical industry as a sales rep. He says
they scouted him. Um, this is all questionable. Um, I
don't know, but you know, he says his career as

(10:39):
a pharmaceutical sales rep quickly led to a lucrative six
figure salary, which is possible. And if it's possible, there's
only one product. I think he was probably pushing in
those years. Given the time. For sure, this guy was
selling pills. Oh dick pills. I was gonna say opiates.
Oh yeah, yeah, No, for sure he did that too. Yep, yeah, yep, yep, yeah. Um,
we can I ask you a question, real quick episode,

(10:59):
So he came from would you say modest means or
would you say I think he came from like an
upper middle class to like rich background, but it is unclear. Okay,
just real early photos of him, like wait, I'm sorry,
hold on, there's a bingo? Did you? Did? You? Guys

(11:19):
bring your card? Unbelievable slackers, weak fans. The liver King
would never hold on a second, someone born on third
pretending their self made. Sorry, I'm just checking that off
right now because I feel like that one, it's gonna
go down. Yeah. Having come from a similar area to
where this photo was taken, that's not a tiny house

(11:42):
back yard, Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, sorry, those are
more common in Texas. But yeah, I'm gonna guess up
for medal class at least um. So Brian meets Barbara,
his future wife, in two thousand and four, maybe he's
gonna lie a lot about the year two thousand and four,
So keep that in your head now. He says he
was a pretty aimless guy at this point. He was
snowballing and surfing and by his own admission, refusing to

(12:03):
flush toilets in public restrooms. I don't know why he
gives that detail. I don't know why he gives that detail,
but he does because there's a drought. Because he was
ever acted as if there's a drought. That is not
something we do that. I can remember the last summer
I was there, it didn't rain for eighty days and
had like more than one hundred and fifteen degree temperatures

(12:24):
for each of those days, and everyone's lawn was green.
Some of them were on fire, but they were green. So, yeah,
he meets this He meets this broad Barbara in maybe
around two thousand and four, and he says that this
is what convinced him to get more serious about his life.
And I do think she had an influence on him.
Most sources will note that she was a dentist, which

(12:45):
is kind of true, but not all the way true,
because what she actually is is a holistic dentist. Yeah,
that's the good stuff. Everybody's tasting that, getting that flavor in.
Huh Yeah. Yeah. So they open a practice together. He's
her business manager and she handled the dentistry. Now, Cobb, it,
I know what you're wondering right now. What is a

(13:07):
holistic dentist? Yeah? I absolutely am It means treating your
patient's teeth and gums with a whole body approach, viewing
their overall physical and psychological state, rather than just keeping
your eyes on their mouth. Now, that could be a thing. Yeah,
it might be a thing. There's stuff where like tooth
pain like can be a sign of a heart attack

(13:28):
or something. It can be referred right, like, that's a thing.
I learned that on Frasier. Are you gonna tell me
that that? Niles Crane Like, to me, you're thinking like
left arm pain not usually is like cavity like not what?
That's not what? Season five A Frasier said, Well, I
mean I'm not going to go against Freck and Frasier

(13:49):
fucking guys. So this this might make casual sense, um,
but no, a holistic dentistry is more or less nonsense.
So here's the thing. A holistic dentist is not an
actual professional medical term. It is a term any dentists
can choose to call themselves without any additional formal training.
Most holistic dentists suppose the use of fluoridated toothpaste, which

(14:11):
is dumb and unscientific. They also have a tendency to
urge patients to replace cavity fillings made with amalgam on
the logic that that contains mercury and is unhealthy. Now,
amalgam has been replaced by a lot of dentists with
better options, but all dentists will agree that if you
have perfectly good fillings, it is an ethical for someone
to tell you to take those out and put in

(14:32):
new ones for no reason, which is what holistic dentists
do a lot. It's not great. Now. More fucked up
is the fact that holistic dentists tend to obsess over
stuff like detoxification, which is not a thing, and urge
their patients to take up weird, bespoke diets to fix
their teeth. Traditionally, vegan diets were advised, which is at
least probably not unhealthy. You can have a perfectly healthy

(14:54):
vegan diet, but nowadays a lot of them have gone
for the carnivore diet, which is a little bit more problematic.
Let me just real quick, hold on, I wasn't expecting
to get to this so early in the episode. Okay, okay, okay,
what are we hitting? Unqualified medical advice and I I'm

(15:16):
just gonna just get this one out of the way now.
Makes cove sad. Yeah. Oh, this next one's gonna make
you a lot sadder, because I want to quote from
an article on holistic dentistry by McGill University. You guys
might remember from the CIA episodes. Um, that's exactly right,
that's where all those horrible experiments were held. Good here,

(15:37):
whoever that was, you're you're jetting this if we're hitting
them all today. Baby, These practitioners don't believe in doing
root canals, alleging serious health risk by sealing bacteria at
root end while opting for ineffective therapy or extraction. Some
recommend removing perfectly functional, asymptomatic teeth with root canals and
replacing them with more biocompatible and costly implants. No, that's problematic. Now.

(16:03):
I don't know precisely what kind of wushit Barbara got into,
but based on the information we have, I kind of
suspect that Brian's interest in alternative medicine starts when they
get married, because she is professionally into it, and he's
going to get increasingly into it as he grows older. Now,
about five years in Brian and Barbara owned the building

(16:23):
that their practice was in and they were making, by
Brian's claims, about five million a year in revenue from
this and a couple of other businesses that Brian had started.
We don't know what all of those businesses were, but
by the late oughts he had started selling nutritional supplements.
Now that's an industry that never causes bastards, right, the
supplement industry. It's well regulated, it's not entirely a con

(16:47):
run by the State of Utah. It's all good stuff. Sarcasm,
that sarcasm. I know. Brian's primary business was ancestral supplements,
and it seems to have started in twenty sixteen, although
the first way back machine capture of it's in twenty
seventeen and lensk There we go, can we get that

(17:08):
picture up? There we go? So this is what they're selling.
These are pills of grass fed beef organs now from
New Zealand. Well, of course, the best cows come from
New Zealand, and the best organs come from the best cows.
And the best way to eat organs is in a pill.
That's how I eat my organs. So this product was

(17:31):
built as a way to get the massive health benefits
of eating organ meat without showing down on all of
those pesky organs. Here is how the website described the
benefits of eating organs. Traditional people's, Native Americans and early
ancestral healers knew that eating the organs from a healthy
animal would strengthen and support the health of the corresponding
organ of the individual. For instance, the traditional way of

(17:52):
treating a person with a weak heart was to feed
the person the heart of a healthy animal. Similarly, eating
the kidneys of a healthy animal was believed to support
urine ailments and overall kidney health. Pancreas was fed to
people with digestive problems, and spleen was fed to people
with immune and blood deficiencies. What so, people, how many

(18:16):
organs should I be eating every day? Is my question?
This is where I'm gonna for a moment, if I
could have a real moment with you, for a little
education on something. Whenever you hear a medical type thing,
whether it's like Gwyneth Paltrow or the Liver King, and
they use the words ancestral or ancient and they're trying

(18:37):
to sell you something, it is automatically known to be bullshit.
It is like the top tower Tower isn't ancestral. It
is not ancestral. It's not it's not. I mean, that
is a selling point that drives me fucking crazy every
time I hear it. Yeah, the reality like organ meets
have a lot of valuable nutrients send them um, But

(18:59):
also eating a ton of meat has a lot of
health consequences to you as well. That's correct. Yeah, in like, well,
I'm sure we're going to get into this. Yeah, fucking
ad nauseum. But like, well, all meat diet is not
what I would have amend you say that. But I
have a quote here about how all of this nourishing
tradition is backed by science. And this is a very

(19:19):
science e quote. Radioisotopic labeling studies and animals have shown
conclusively that when eaton organs and glands selectively travel to
the corresponding organs and glands and high concentrations now covet.
This research done at the University of Scotland and Edinburgh,
lends credence to the ancient practice of eating animal organs
to help ensure health and once corresponding organs. And that's

(19:41):
from doctor Ron Schmidt. Indeed, never heard of him. It's
absolute horror. Do not know what an India is like,
I've heard of it and you're making me so sad, yeah,
so angry, and it's just you know, I swear it's
not all I mean. I could have made so much
more money. You could. You could have made a lot

(20:02):
more We both could have made a lot more money.
My retirement plan is to just say I've been canceled
and start working for I don't know, Stephen Crowder or somebody. So,
um comment, would it help you out to know that
doctor Ron Schmidt was a natural path and militant raw
milk activists. I found his obituary from twenty seventeen and

(20:25):
it notes he covered in depth the difficult history of
raw milk in the US, arguing that even though raw
milk was responsible for many illnesses during the eighteen hundreds
and early nineteen hundreds, it was also unfairly savaged by
the emerging pasteurized milk industry. To eliminate raw milk is
a competitive threat. Ye. Look, yes, thousands of babies shot

(20:47):
themselves to death, but but what about the pasteurized milk industry?
What about big milk? So the first version of the
ancestral Supplement's website doesn't make a huge deal about liver,
but it does call it the body super food and
Nature's this is funny only meaningful source of vitamin A.

(21:11):
You can't get it anywhere else if you're not eating liver. Now, Tomatoes,
kail eggs, cantle, open fish oils, that's all have a
lot of vitamin A in them. Carrots have betakerotene, which
is which is a precursor to vitamin A. More to
the point, vitamin A deficiency is a serious health condition,
but it pretty much doesn't exist in the United States

(21:32):
outside of weirdos who have weird diets. Um not all
weirds some people. Obviously there's actual health conditions, but it's
extremely important. It's more of a thing in like parts
of the world that have less access to a good
food supply and people are like legitimately starving. I don't
like it when you know medicine like that. Well, I know,
I know lots of medicine. I feel uncomfortable when you're

(21:54):
like right about I'm I'm I'm stuff. I'm an expert
on all sorts of medicine. Stuff I hate too hates sorry.
I am a reverend doctor Jersey, I am an actual
doctor who is or why Universal Life Church I am
a reverend doctor. This guy is it's a fucking podcaster. Well,

(22:15):
I will just say, have Coves sign an autograph for
you after the show, and then just write vicot and
on that fucker and you're good to go. He found
the loophole. That's probably how it works, right yeah. Um anyway,
so uh yeah, Obviously vitamin a efficiency is serious when

(22:36):
it exists, but it basically doesn't exist in the United States.
That said, eating too much vitamin a can cause horrible
health problems. This is almost impossible to do if you
are a person who eats a diet that is vaguely
recognizable as a normal diet. Um. Again, if you're getting
your vitamin a the place most people get it from
fruits and vegetables and like eggs and stuff, you're not

(22:57):
gonna get too much vitamina him in a like. Overdoses
occur exclusively in people who take too many supplements, and
symptoms can include migraines, blurred vision, nausea, dizziness, and a
lack of coordination because your nervous system starts to kill itself. Ish,
that's broadly accurate. That's a board question. Good. So, despite

(23:18):
all this, Brian's business was a huge success. He entered
the supplement game just at the height of Alex Jones's business,
and he seems to have taken some moods. Sorry, I'm sorry.
Oh yeah, Like I said, we're hitting them all. Baby.
I don't want him to see, but you guys can
see it. I don't know if you guys can see.
And for people listening at home, I'm sorry. You know what,

(23:41):
I also want to stay. You know, normally we'll be
obviously putting this up on the podcast feed. Normally we
do ad breaks, and this is where the ad break
will go. But since y'all aren't going to hear an ad,
I'm going to give you an ad. I wasn't paid
for for a product that I this is just for
a thing I think people should buy. So this is
called a flipper zero. Has anybody ever heard of these

(24:03):
motherfucking things. So this is a device that lets you
that lets you basically like scan and replicate infrared and
other kind of different like signals that like remotes and
stuff you. So one thing you can do with this
is a say or at cees and say you are
harassing the irrepresentatives at their booth. You can from your

(24:23):
pocket repeatedly turn off all of their televisions. Theoretically someone
could do this. Another thing you can theoretically do with
a flipper zero available now on Amazon dot com. Can
I Tell You is open the charging ports of every
on every street you walk back. That's what he does.
You can theoretically do with a flipper zero. That's what
he uses it for. Fuck with my car. People have

(24:45):
also figured out how to use him to shut off
those robot dogs. So they're pretty cool and they're not
going to be legal forever. Pick one up if you can.
Back to the show. So Brian's business is a huge hit.

(25:07):
And yeah, one of the key things about if you're
selling these kind of health products is you have to
either terrify people into believing that your products are the
only thing that will stop their body from falling apart,
or you have to convince them that you alone can
give them the body of their dreams. Now, Brian knew
that if he wanted to take his business to the
next level, he was going to have to do one
of these things, so he decided to do both. In

(25:28):
early twenty twenty one thereabouts, Brian contacted one DS Collective,
which is a social media marketing firm for influencers. Now,
because these are some of the worst people on planet Earth.
They describe their business as quote a collective of global
creatives who specialize in social snackable media. Does anyone else
get like a visceral gut reaction when you hear snackable media?

(25:52):
It's unreal, Great folks, it was from this collaboration that
the idea of the liver would be born. One BuzzFeed
article explains, he approached us because he wanted guidance, said
Sam Parham, a director at influencer marketing and management agency
one DS Collective, which specializes in video production and brand

(26:13):
management for social media. One DS began filming the brand
of liver King, creating short form video content to capture
Johnson's extreme lifestyle. Johnson and DS have maintained that their
primary goal in building a liver King social media brand
was to spread the ancestral message rather than to sell
Johnson's products. One DS called Johnson the leader of the
ship and solely responsible for his likeness in brand, which

(26:36):
is a good legal idea. Now, the ancestral message here
was that people needed to eat hoof to tail. This
is fine, like look I raise in slaughter livestock. If
you're going to be doing that, you should, in fact
use every single part of that animal. That's a fine
idea in practice. But what Brian is doing is just
trying to get people to buy supplements made from ground

(26:56):
up organs. He bought cast off from cattle somewhere. The
stroke of brilliance that one DS had was to convince
people organ meat was good for them by having a
massively jacked dude eat raw liver and guts on camera
repeatedly and then credit that for his giant muscles. Now again,
organ meats perfectly healthy. There's a lot of good reasons
to eat it, but it doesn't work that. It doesn't

(27:17):
just magically make you jack. There is nothing that is
particularly healthy about it. Brian had up to this point
built his physique the way most muscular men do. He
had eaten huge amounts of way protein and lean meat
while working out right and you know, careful about his diet,
not drinking all that good stuff. But one DS decided
if Brian, the thing to do was to have Brian

(27:37):
chow down on raw organs, and that would make people
want to copy him. Right, But eating raw organs sucks,
So when they couldn't do that, then they would buy
his supplements. That's the business plan, right. It is unclear
who came up with the name liver King. There's evidence
that Brian had used the name in emails for a
couple of years, so probably him. But the folks at
one DS figured out everything else, including naming his fandom

(27:59):
before it existed, as this case study from their website
makes clear. Can we get the next image? Oh yeah,
oh yeah. Now, now I'm gonna point something out. If
y'all aren't real steroid heads, what you got going on
there in the belly region is what they call bubble gut,
and it's a mix of taking human growth hormone with
usually insulin. It's a thing bodybuilders do. It helps them

(28:21):
like pump up and stuff. But it's not a thing
that just happens normally. But those are not normal. If
their abs look like they are smuggling Boa constrictors under
their skin, what would you call those like areas right
there on the exterior of his six packs? Well, those
are normally your obliques. Okay, yeah, what else do people
call those? Oh, on the other side of his abs? No,

(28:44):
Like that area right there that deep area in which
there could pool fluid, for example, what would you call that?
I don't know. Comma, what come gutters? Thank you for
fuck say? I can't believe it. I can't believe it.
I'm sorry. He wasn't a guy playing a guitar and

(29:05):
a weird I only recognize cum gutters if they make
me want to come. So that's obviously David Koresh. I'm
going to tell you guys right now, I don't want
you to look like that. I don't know. That's not normal.
This is not anyway. Look, so I think it's interesting
to look at the way they talk about this here,
Like they name what he's going to call his fan

(29:27):
base is primals, because he's doing this whole like back
to nature, caveman eating things, So that's what he's going
to call his people. The way in which this is
all laid out, if you want to really lose your
faith or just get angry at humanity, go to the
one DS website and look at their whole plan for
making the Liver King a brand phenomenon. Because we'll talk
about this more, but part of what they're doing here

(29:49):
is everybody's agreeing to make money by having this man
destroy his heart, which is I don't feel that sympathetic
for Brian, but that is what's happening here. So one
DS does not rag about this on their website. But
one of the things that Brian had to set up
before he became the Liver King was a backstory as
fraudulent as it was convincing to the kind of people
who make healthcare decisions based on what a large man

(30:11):
with a TikTok tells them. So he decided to do
this by claiming his sons had suffered largely unspecified health problems.
He claims that they started having allergies around two thousand
and four. Now this is odd because his oldest son,
Striker with a Why oh Jess, wait, Jess Waite, you
haven't had heard a son's name yet. His oldest son's

(30:35):
Striker is fifteen, and his youngest son, Rad is thirteen.
He would only be better if one of his kids
was named like Killer. Look, look, I gotta say it
right now. This is San Francisco, so it's appropriate to
do it. I am taking away Elon's Musk's worst at

(30:55):
naming a baby trophy. I would rather have whatever we're
fucking there we go, Oh, we're okay, we're on there too.
I would rather be named whatever a weird equation his
kid is named than Striker or rat unbelievable rad. So
again he's lying about this because he says that, like

(31:16):
they started having allergies when they were like in around
two thousand and four Strikers fifteen. This would mean that like, uh, yeah,
his oldest son wasn't. Yeah, None of the timeline actually
like works out here, And the fact that he lies
about the timeline is consistent with the fact that he
lies about everything. He doesn't meet his wife until two
thousand and four, so there's no way he would have
had a kid old enough that he was noticing this

(31:37):
problem anyway. As he claims, Striker spelled like the Armored
Personnel Carrier had serious health problems as a young kid
that Brian attributed to do you know what Panda's is?
Pa n das? Oh boy, god damn, you're making me
go way back into pediatrics. I don't. Yeah, it's this easily,
remember it. We're going to try not to get too

(31:57):
much into the weeds here. It is an ailment that
may or may not exist a pediatric The symptoms definitely exist.
There's a debate as to whether or not it should
be categorized in the way that some people categorize it.
A pediatrician first described PANDUS clinically in nineteen ninety eight,
and it was an attempt to explain that there seems
to be an association between strep throat OCD and tipped

(32:19):
disorders like Tourette syndrome. Doctors have for a very long
time recognized some connection between streptococcal infection and tremors or convulsions.
This is what people Saint Vitus's dance was like. This
is a thing that has been recognized for a while,
and some parents notice it occurring alongside a rapid change
in personality on behalf of the child. Doctors who are

(32:40):
skeptical of PANDUS as a diagnosis will note that stuff
like OCD can seem like it comes on suddenly and
changes a kid's personality, and that since kids get strep
throat like crazy, the fact that some of these kids
have strep diagnoses recently doesn't mean there's a causitive relation.
This is all heavily debated. I'm not taking aside on
this one. Where Yeather, there's a legitimate debate. Here you

(33:01):
can find science, scientists and doctors talking on both side
of this. But the problem occurs because a group of
activist parents have kind of latched onto pandas as a
way to explain any behavior they find problematic in their
kid in various naturopathic websites and discussion forums. The list
of triggers for pandas has grown from STREPP, which is

(33:21):
the thing that there's some evidence for, to lyme disease,
mono and herpies. They've also added anorexia, autism, and ADHD
to the list of illnesses it causes, and there's no
scientific basis for this. These parents are well known for
embracing bizarre cult remedies. Some of them give their kids
uh rituximab, which is an immunosuppressant mostly used for cancer patients.

(33:42):
And you probably shouldn't give your kid just because they
have like a tick. The whole thing Togeah, probably shouldn't
just be handing that to kids. This can kill children
and has in the past. More often. The prescriptions are
just ridiculous. One Oklahoma based company sells donkey milk as
a PANDAS treat that makes sense, which is Okay, I'm
fine with that. Give your kids docky milk. That's that's

(34:03):
all right. I mean that's like the least awful thing. Yeah,
probably not going to do any harm. Yeah, give him
some docky milk, they'll be okay. So Brian claims that
his son's pant strikers panda's eventually got so bad that
he walked up to his dad with a baseball bat
and said he wanted to bash his brains in rather
than deal with intrusive thoughts. Now that like, that's a

(34:24):
that's a serious thing. I have a loved one who
has intrusive thoughts as a result of OCD, and this
specific anecdote is the closest to a thing Brian has
said that I believe like that is a thing that occurs.
That doesn't mean that it's caused by pandas or whatever,
and it doesn't mean that the rest of what he
says is true, but that is a thing that happens
in videos made since he became the liver King. Brian

(34:44):
claims this is what prompted him to reevaluate everything he
knew about nutrition. He was feeding his kids a normal
American diet, but when he switched there in the family's
diet to primal foods, most mostly a mix of raw
organ's bone, marrow and maple syrup. All of there. Why
that's not what are you guys ee? The maple serve
helps to go down and this is where things get

(35:07):
problematic for Brian. He says all of their health problems start,
and his children started to have a personality, which is
kind of an offensive way to refer to somebody who
has OCD. Like now, this leaves us with one of
two possibilities. The first is that Striker had an actual
health problem and it's a little party. It's rough, it hurts.

(35:31):
The first is that this kid had an actual serious
health problem and that his dad is choosing to use
it for propaganda, which is bad. The second is that
he made all of this up um and that I
don't know if that's worse. I guess it's better because
the kid's not dealing with the thing, but also it's
kind of worse morally, right if I don't know, I
actually have no idea this. That's one for the philosophers. Um. So,

(35:55):
if we assume Striker had to be at least eight
or nine to express something like the complex emotion he
expressed to his dad, and that anecdote. The earliest realistically
this could have happened is twenty fourteen or fifteen. The
last real thing Brian Johnson had to do after coming
up with this probably lie about his children was the simplest,
which was to get a gigantic barbarian warrior body. Now,

(36:17):
as you guys saw, he's a pretty fit dude. That's
a that's a swoll swoll fella right there. But normal
guy muscular does not look impressive today in a world
with you know, Wayne the Rock Johnson. Right. It is
one of those if you want to look at how
body image standards for male action stars and movies have changed,
watch This is a problematic movie in a number of ways.

(36:38):
But watch the second Indiana Jones movie if you look
at them, if you listen to the behind the seats commentary,
Harrison Ford spent months getting in shape for that and
was like one of the swollest men, Hollywood, are you
talking about the which one is the super racists? Super racist? Yeah,
there is a super racist one, okay, that is that

(36:58):
is the one is supposed to be jacked in the
Obviously he became the sex symbol for generations of men
and women. Um, but today, if you were casting a
guy with that body type in a Hollywood movie, he
would be like the engineer. He'd be like the nerdy
guy on the Comsuter seven times his body way, the
old Superman was a guy who had like just basically

(37:20):
kind of a barrel like body. Dude. Yeah, it's things
have changed over time. We'll be talking about this more later.
So Brian could not simply be a fit guy and
tell people to eat raw organs. That's not going to work.
So he starts using the millions of dollars. He has
to find one of the many friendly steroid doctors who
would prescribe him a dizzy and cocktail of peptides and hormones. Now,

(37:43):
I want to note this is not an illegal process.
He has a prescription for everything that he gets, and
this is not a haphazard process. He's getting his blood tested,
He's getting like all sorts of different constantly. He is
paying millions of dollars over time for this. You don't
get this without looking going through him. Yeah, Like there's
a whole machine behind you get this ridiculous body. Yeah,

(38:05):
and we know exactly what he took and did because
he sent a list of his workout regimen, of his
steroid regimen, and his blood tests to several experts he
didn't wind up working with, and one of them later
published it. Because if you're trying to okay, yeah, he's like,
my kidney's all right, look at this? Are you okay
with this? His problem was more than he didn't think

(38:25):
he was big enough. That's great. Um. So obviously this
is not a hipA violation because if you just email
your steroid history to a dude with a bodybuilding YouTube,
HIPPA does not cover that. The dude with the YouTube
is well within his rights to post that shit. Um.
Because of this, we know that the bill for his

(38:46):
HGH alone was eleven thousand dollars a month. Now that's
a lot of hghum. He spent about fifteen thousand dollars
a month in total on his steroids preparing to become
the Liver King. But when he and one DS finally
revealed the Liver King to the world, my god, it

(39:07):
was glorious and I want to roll a video for you,
you beautiful people. When you realize that people are suffering
and struggling and that there's a simple, elegant solution, a
return to ancestral living. That's really why my purpose is
now stop a hot job. There's this really simple way

(39:39):
of living. It's ancestral living. It's the way that we've
lived for millions of years. It's accessible, it's something you
can literally do right now today, and you can have
an impact in terms your life tomorrow. This is why
my life's work is my mission, it is my purpose.
It's putting back in what the modern world left up now.

(40:02):
A lot of people don't know this, but in the
ruins of go Begley Teppi, where some of the earliest
human civilization was found, the largest building in the center
of that town was a steroid factory. There's nothing more
ancestral than spending fifteen thousand dollars a month on a
mix of peptides and human growth hormone, just like our ancestors,

(40:24):
Just like our ancestors. Did you know our ancestors looked
nothing like that, right. They were thin, and they were frail,
and they were sickly, and they were like lived to
twenty This is like, this is you don't want to
get what our ancestors have. You want what we have.
Now you don't want what our ancestors have. It was bad,

(40:45):
it was bad. I don't know. I want that one
plant that the Romans had that like makes you not
able to make babies that they then fucked to death.
Oh yeah, yeah, that's a thing Romans had access to,
a perfect you'll know that. It's one of my favorite
son just ru in this one island and if you
eat it then you're not fertile temporarily. It was a

(41:05):
perfect contraceptive and they fucked it to death. Who amazing
shit this is. Yeah, it's good stuff. It's good stuff.
I think it's a Finnel relative. Actually, um, don't quote
me on that one though. So I know a lot
of shit. I learned a lot of shit in medical school.
I did not learn that. I did not learn that.

(41:26):
That video does feature a man who was very obviously
on a lot of steroids. Unlike a used car per
month of a nice used car berk, you can be
getting like a fucking Highlander with like eighty thousand miles
on it every month for that much steroids. Specific I
love that. I'm looking for a new pay anyway. Oh,

(41:47):
I love that, But it doesn't do much to lay
into the name liver King. Mostly At the start, Brian
was posting workout videos and his ancestral tenants, which he
claims are crucial lessons about health and wellness from ancient men.
Most of them are like pretty reasonable, like it's good
to walk around barefoot in the grass, it's nice to
spend time with your family. There is a crazy one
about how um electromagnetic waves from your WiFi are going

(42:10):
to destroy you. We could get into that more. I
think he legitimately believes it, so we won't harp on
the matter. So, yeah, it's not fun. If he believes it,
it's not as much fun. Yeah, so um he started.
So it started out just kind of being like, yeah,
here's his workouts. Here's him talking about like, yeah, you
should spend time with your family, it's good to to

(42:32):
to exercise. But then none of that stuff goes super viral,
like he's not really making a big impact on social media,
and then he starts posting his meals, which inevitably included
weird things like raw testicles and ground up organs. Here's
the very first food TikTok he puts out, Oh yeah
for Tuesday dinner, we got ten ounces of fresh ground organs,

(42:56):
liberal heart, pancras playing, and some muscle meat. We've got
a couple ounces of some heart, some left over a beer,
comports sausage, and a couple houses of raw testicle that
consints when I'm having a dinner tonight. So I've I've
watched a lot of the liver King, and the argument
he will make is that if you're trying to support

(43:17):
your testicles, vegetables won't do it because vegetables are not
made of testicles. If you want to support your testicles,
you have to eat testicles. It's all the only thing
that will do. I mean, the math is pretty strong science.
It's hard to deny. Yeah, so this stuff starts to
get traction. But you will notice that, like that video,

(43:37):
which is from September of twenty twenty one, that's weird,
but that's not an abnormal quantity of food, especially not
for a man of that size. That's a pretty normal
sized meal, right. The people at one ds knew right away. Look,
people like the raw organs, but just eating an amount
of raw organs that's vaguely reasonable, that's not going to
do it for us. So here's a video he posted

(43:59):
nine months later. The summer of twenty twenty two, primal
primal primals. What the day it has been? I can't
wait to share all about it. This maybe perhaps the
most important conversation that I ever have had. And it's
named not after a day of the week, but it's
something similar. But a king has got to eat. So
you already know we're gonna start with liver, with breakfast, lunch,

(44:20):
and dinner, because liver is king. We've got a couple
of pieces of bone marrow right here. We're gonna scoop
the puremeral right out of it. And look at these
dino shanks. I said, look, look at these dino shanks.
We got some bone marrow to brissoto at the bottom.
And why would you the vegetable when you could get
down and devour this testicle? And we've got some cards.
Why would you eat a vegetable when you could devour

(44:42):
these testicles? That's catchy? Wait, wait, hold on, hold on.
Is he doing this because he knows nobody wants to
eat balls and so they'll buy his pills? Or is like,
first off, they can be okay if you cook him right.
It could be a little bit like bacon. Rocky Mountains yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
but that said, yes, the idea is that they will

(45:03):
people will see his body and they'll see him eating
this raw meat, and they'll probably try it and then
be like, you know what sucks is eating huge quantities
of raw organs. We'll take your pill. I'll take these pills, right,
That is the business plan. Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, And
people like share videos of him looking like a maniac
eating all of this stuff. And from this video things
start to get gradually more unhinged, which is probably this

(45:26):
video of the liver King. I don't need you know what.
I'm not even gonna describe it. Let's just play this
motherfucker what liver King always earns what he eats. This
is called earning it. Wait should I explain? Let him

(45:54):
just take this one in right here, and this is
a prime testicle. Wait for nah, let go, Hey, everybody,

(46:21):
Robert here speaking from a couple of months after this
was recorded in a live show. Obviously we didn't need
to describe this, but I feel the need to describe
the video to you listening at home. In the podcast version,
it is video of the liver King sitting in like
a pool tube type deal or a tire I think
it is, and he's pulling his truck towards him. I

(46:42):
think they've got it in neutrol. And he's got like
a big rope pulling it towards him, and hanging underneath
the truck is a set of what are technically truck nuts,
but they're just the actual severed testicles of like a
bowl or some other kind of large mammal. Now look
on my bingo, on my bingo card, I just want
to cross mix cove sad. Yeah again a couple of times,

(47:03):
I just want to black it all out. Hold on
sec I'm just gonna draw the whole thing in. I'm
a fair man. That is legitimately funny. That's not a
bad bit. I'm sorry, it's not. It's gross, Yes, unsettling,
bad health advice, all of those things. Not a bad bit.
Those are giant balls. They're very well, they're about normal.

(47:26):
What were they. I mean, just a couple of days ago,
we slaughtered a black ram over in my place and
it had testicles about that big. Yeah, they get huge.
So if you've got like a steer, or you've got
like a goat or a ram of any kind, all
they are is a testicle delivery machine. So the balls
are massive. You are a fascinating man like just you

(47:48):
just can't not notice it. They got huge. Even my
little sweet little baby pigmy or whatever miniature I don't
know what would go little bitty guy, I forget the
name of his species, but he has massive balls. He's
like the size of a small dog. But his testicles
are as big as a cat. Of cats, but a cat.
Goats were domesticated in Iran. My goats are angoras from Ankawa. Fantastically, sorry, yeah,

(48:13):
that's where the name Angora comes from. Is Ankawa is Iranian?
In the audience, he proved with that, so that was
a fun little derailment there. The liver king is almost
as obsessed with testicles as he is with liver and yeah,
actually I got to that about him fueling your balls,
nonsense or not. His following exploded the more gross, weird

(48:34):
raw organs he eats and the more off putting workouts
he filmed himself doing his TikTok goes from basically nothing
because he didn't have or yeah he didn't have one too,
about four million followers in less than a year. His
YouTube hits more than a quarter of a million subscribers,
which is you know, okay, he had like a million
and a half followers on Instagram and in no time

(48:54):
at all, he's a bona fide et celebrity. That's about
a combined sevenish million followers in the space of a year,
which is pretty rare, very rarely does somebody get that
big that quickly. He continued to involve the whole family
in his videos, calling his wife Liver Queen and naming
oh oh, oh, honey, You're gonna change your tune on
that one in a second, because he calls Rat and

(49:16):
Striker the Liver Boys. Not that's a lateral move from
their original names, I will say that. Unfortunately, he also
chose to have them style their hair like Hitler youth cadets,
and he put them in Oh I'm sorry, hold on,
hold on, oh good, oh good, oh good, we got
another one. I don't even know how to describe this

(49:39):
video to you. I'm just going to have them play it.
Probably want to know if the little boys, Well, here's
your answer. Okay, hold on, hey everyone, Robert again, just
gonna describe this video for you as well. We see

(50:00):
the Liver King and the Liver queen walking towards their
swimming pool in the heat of the day, where the
liver boys have like a table thing floating over the
pool filled with gigantic raw like probably twenty pounds worth
of raw organs, and they're in the swimming pool in
their swimming suits and nothing else, just like tearing into
it with their teeth. It's profoundly unsettling. Hold on, that's

(50:25):
gotta be child abuse legally, right, Like, thank you, deeply
unsettling child abuse. Yeah, we are so close that game bingo,
you can you can't. It's not good for you to
eat raw organs that are sin He is in a
swimming pool, it's got to be like a hundred and

(50:45):
tin right now. It's that's not hygienic. It is not okay.
And like the whole of this whole concept of like
how he speaks, it sounds like he's struggling when he
talks exhausting. Normally he's doing an Alex Jones and the
same way that Alex Jones is doing a rush limball.
It's actually kind of a there's a fascinating story there

(51:08):
and how all of these accents have descended from the limball.
That's like the original like right wing influencer, and they
all just kind of yeah, amazing stuff. So he starts
that video if you couldn't hear it, by promising to
provide proof that his boys eat like the Liver King.
But thanks to those leaked emails, we know that the
Liver King himself did not actually eat that way. As

(51:28):
part of the intake process with one of these consultants,
he gave his schedule in diet, and it is certainly
not like what most people eat as a diet, but
it's also not particularly weird. Nearly all of the food
he consumes comes in the form of protein shakes and yogurt,
with some eggs and reasonable portions of cooked red meat.
He does eat two to four ounces of raw liver

(51:49):
per day and a dose of raw bone marrow every day,
which is a little bit odd, but he claimed in
his interviews with these influencers that he was eating a
pound of raw liver every day, which is an amount
that would make you sick. That's too much vitam and
a it's bad for you. Do not eat a pound
of raw liver. Don't eat two to three ounces of
raw liver. Livers the lovely food to eat cooked. I

(52:09):
study liver. I love liver as an organ. I would
never eat anything close to that amount of love. That
is a shame, because I did bring a pound of
raw liver. So obviously the whole liver king persona is
a lie. Um eating the way that this guy pretended
he eats would if not kill you, seriously injure you.

(52:32):
In a very short period of time. His entire persona
was fake and a lot of people picked up on this,
and from the jump there were people in his comments
suggesting that he was obviously on gear right like he
is on a hell of a lot of steroids. Here's
just one video of him denying that he takes performance
enhancing drugs or peeds on the I'm So sorry Barstool

(52:53):
Sports podcast. Again, very sorry all these ridiculous accusations. People
say I take PDS, people say have ABM plants. Wait wait, wait,
wait wait wait, can we be honest like you you
definitely take pds. You know what, fuck I'm gonna be
off for the I'll here takes prioritize, execute every every

(53:14):
every fucking morning, every more. Buts I pray every day.
I love so we both take the whole world I'm
on windstraw. I don't know much a whole lot about that,
but people say the same thing, I got ABM plants
right or ab I got you can get plants. Looking
at ABM plants right now, they look they look pretty good.

(53:36):
I might have to get Wait. The third image result
on ABM plants is you wait, hold on, that's so
fucking good. It's so smart. What he did was he
was like, people say I did X, which is a
little bit weird, but and then they also say I
did why, which is super duper weird. Like that was

(53:57):
so smart for him to throw in ab implants, like
just to throw like everyone off the sense to be
like this is like, it's distracting. It throws people off
like the main trail. It's a he's a clever guy,
He's I mean, you don't. You don't get to where
the liver King got without having a little bit of cunning.
Fucking it took my title. Yeah, yeah, he sure did.
He earned it. He earned it. Look so um yeah,

(54:20):
that's that's that's pretty fun. Um. Now. One of the
first people to call him out in a major public
way was actually Joe Rogan. And look, normally, if we
are talking about health on this show and Joe Rogan
comes up. He is not a good guy, but in
this case, look, I will say one thing for the man.
He's an expert at knowing who's on steroids. If Joe

(54:41):
Rogan says a dude is on fucking gear, he's probably right.
I trust Rogan. I'm so sorry he is not in
the wrong. He called the Liver King out immediately, and
it's very funny because when you when you watch videos
of the Liver King responding to Joe Rogan saying he's
definitely I think Joe's exact words where he has an

(55:02):
ass full of steroids. When someone interviewed the Liver King
about it, his response was almost unrestrained glee. He didn't
care that Rogan said he was a fraud. What mattered
was that Joe had mentioned him. And that's sensible because right,
his entire business is I want to get in as
many people as possible, Right, I want everyone looking at

(55:23):
my ship and some number of them are going to
buy my weird organ supplements and that's what actually matters.
So through late twenty twenty two, the Liver King escalated
his stunts, traveling to a series of exotic locations to
hunt with native tribes. This is always what he calls.
This is if you want to appropriate some culture. The

(55:44):
liber King is the king of cultural I've never seen
it done this well, and by well, I mean very badly.
So he posts these little twenty minute YouTube videos and
I think he was hoping they were going to be
like a backdoor pilot to getting a TV show deal, right,
and he was going to go travel the world, eating
with native tribes, as he calls it. The problem is,
I don't think the liver King actually knows how to hunt,

(56:06):
and all of these videos are supposed to be him
hunting with people. Now I'm basing the fact that I
don't think he knows on the hunt how to hunt.
On the video Sacred Hunt, which the Liver King film
on his own five hundred acre ranch in Texas. The
video shows him hunting a deer with rad or striker,
I forget which one. But the kind of hunting they're
doing is the kind that you can do when you

(56:27):
have five So if you have a bunch of land
right in a large parts of the country, including Texas
where he lives, whitetail deer in particular, overpopulated, and so
you can kind of just hunt as many deer as
you want on your own land. And one way that
people particularly, I knew a lot of folks who were poor,
but they had like family land or something, and a
big way they would supplement their diet is by hunting deer.
And you just like leave out some apples or something

(56:48):
like that and you shoot him. It's not particularly sporting,
but they are a species. We've killed their native predators
and whatnot. You know, it's the thing that said it
is not what most people would call hunting, right. Um,
what he does is even less hunting than that, because
he is on his own land and he has three
guides who are there to help him find the deer

(57:09):
and flush it out so he can shoot it at
long range with a rifle. Now, look that's not really hunting,
but okay, Um, to make things grosser, the guide that
he hired is I actually don't know if the guide
is an indigenous person. Um, they don't make that claim.
I don't know much about this person. I wasn't able
to find much, but I'm gonna play this clip. It

(57:31):
is rough. This is this is bad. Hold on here,
pissed would be like no. I mean, the one thing,
if you're actually if you're hunting to the point where

(57:53):
you have to like stalk an animal, you don't want
to smell like stuff like for example, burning sage. Um.
First of all, I like that the dude looked like
he was Middle Eastern, Like, I don't know, I'm not
gonna make it clear, like Kadio is just like he's
one of my people, just like out there just being like,

(58:14):
here's some ful offel. He's making money. You're ready to go,
and now go. Hi. The deer the way they hunt,
they're just like walking through the woods. And then the
guy stops him and he says, I'm going to send
one of my guys to flush the deer out, and
you shoot it when the deer runs out, and it's
again not Look, that's a perfectly reasonable way to get meat.

(58:37):
It's not necessarily hunting. Grills would do better than that. Yeah,
that's the bare minimum. I agree. So obviously this is
all very very fun. Um. Now, it's also kind of
worth noting that that guide you could see it in
some of the clips, is a lot taller than him.
The liver king usually doesn't let himself be filmed next

(58:59):
to other men who are taller. But the truth is
he's five foot seven, which is fine. But it's really
funny that he's he puts. When you watch thirty hours
of his videos like I have, there's like two or
three times where he's next to a dude because he
doesn't want people to see that. This really highlights how
much I worry about you sometimes that I'm gonna say.

(59:21):
Here's what I'm gonna say. See, if you really want
to be the liver king, then be a short liver king. Yeah,
be a short king. There's nothing wrong with king, perfectly
honorable short kings. Anyway, there's some out of you out there.
I know it. So after this video, he goes all
over Africa and South America to film himself watching other
people hunt and then eating organ meat, often meat that

(59:41):
like they don't have enough of because they're like, yeah,
it's kind of it's growdy. M In one interview with BuzzFeed,
here's how he described the experience when you hang out
with primitive culture tribes. That's his words. Look, that's his words.
I know it's bad. Who don't know how to open
a bottle of water or even know what a phone
is you as I know, it's rough. You are seeing

(01:00:03):
people laugh more than you ever have in your life.
In the Amazon, my cameraman was hit with an arrow
at his chest during a hunt. He wasn't injured, but
you know how hard those hunters laughed. They laughed at everything.
Everything's so hilarious to them. They were trying to kill you, Brian,
because you're a dick. Also, they know how to open

(01:00:24):
bottles of water. And I'm gonna guess most of them
have smartphones. I've been doing like every refugee camp I have,
people have phones. It's not uncommon. We'll talk about that
more in a little bit. Johnson remained evasive when asked
how he was able to enter indigenous communities. It takes
some finessing to let us come in, but you know
how it is, so I don't Brian, Yeah, tell us. Well,

(01:00:50):
I'm gonna tell you so. This is all very racist.
It's also untrue. All of the tribes that Liver King
visited have access to water bottles and again, smartphones. BuzzFeed
seemed to miss to fight at how he arranged these inbeds,
but like thirty seconds of googling made it obvious it
turns out that a lot of people who are members
of like hunter gathered tribes and in these parts of
the world are desperately poor in modern terms, and you

(01:01:12):
can sometimes pay money to go hunt with them because
they need money to survive, and so this is a
thing that you can just kind of buy your way
into doing. This is the case with the Hadza tribe
who he visited last year. I want to play you
a segment from that video. First, the Hudsa, the wild bushman.
They don't cultivate anything. Oh yeah, so this is what

(01:01:34):
we're doing now because we are going to hang out
with the Hudsa. No, he does not wear shirts. He
never had a shirt. Talk but does how many times
he puts his hand on a fucking tree? There's like
four in this video. You're gonna do it again in

(01:01:55):
just a second there, I guess pret So for several

(01:02:17):
minutes Google that is rough. Several minutes Googling found two
different companies that offer travel experiences with the Hadza, starting
at two to three thousand dollars per person to go
out and hunt with them, and again nothing again. Like again,
They're trying to survive in a world that is incredibly difficult,
and that has made their lives a lot harder, and
is consistently encroaching on the land that they used to

(01:02:38):
hunt on. That's polluting it, That's making it a lot
harder for them to live the way that they used
to live. You know, get what you can out of
guys like the Liver King. I'm just trying to say,
there's nothing mysterious about how he arranged these inbeds. This
is a thing that tourists to actually all the time.
I found a twenty twenty account from a guy named
Max Waugh who paid for the same experience as the

(01:02:58):
Liver King. Here's what he afterwards. In the moments following
our departure from the Hadzabe camp in the sub and
in the subsequent months and years, I've re examined our
experience with the tribe and sometimes questioned what we saw,
how much of it was a genuine experience, how much
was staged. Before we left, they tried to sell us
their bows, arrows and bead trinkets. Tempting, but I wasn't
sure if we'd be able to get a bow and

(01:03:18):
arrow set through customs. The next day, as we drove
through a nearby town, we saw two of the boys
walking around in T shirts. The day before, the men
had all been decked out in ragged shorts and little else,
maybe some beads and animal hides, but no shirts. Had
they dressed down for our visit. Even today, I wonder
if we were getting a genuine look at the hods
Away of life, or if most traces of Western influence
were carefully tucked away when Turrists were around and like, yeah, man,

(01:03:41):
like that's why you paid three thousand dollars to hang
out with them for a day. It's it's like it's
a business. Yeah, they put on a show for you.
That's what they're supposed to do. Yeah, that's that's how
they're making a living right now. Yeah, And the liver
King is pretending that like they're living the way, the
ancestral way that he did. And one of the things
you might notice is that because he goes and he
hunts with them, and then they all eat organ meat together,

(01:04:01):
and if the thing that he was doing work the
way he says it is, there would not be a
gigantic size discrepancy between all of them and him. You
might notice none of them look like the liver King,
because they do not have fifteen thousand dollars a month
to spend shooting HGH into their assholes. They look healthy
because they have like a normal diet they have. They
look like people who eat like humans vegetables. Yeah no,

(01:04:25):
they're not their body weight in human growth hormones. Yes
so um yeah. Despite being clearly fraudulent, the Liver King's
pr blitz worked. By some reports, his ancestral supplements business
swored to nearly one hundred million dollars a year. He
continued to escalate the weird stunts, doing stuff like showing
up shirtless outside the queen's funeral to do bicep curls,

(01:04:48):
which I actually I'm entirely supportive of that. Fat's based
as hell. I'm just gonna say it. That's pretty rad.
I got I got nothing against him for that one. Yeah,
until in December of twenty twenty two, a bodybuilding influencer
called more Plates More Dates published an expose on I

(01:05:09):
fucking hate all these people. They're all the worst when
you have to spend hours watching the because you have
part of like a lot of the reporting on the
Liver King was done by bodybuilding, and they're all they're
all terrible, but some of them are honest, like the
guy who exposed him as a guy who's like, yeah,
if you want to be a professional bodybuilder, you have

(01:05:31):
to do steroids. I'm just so worried about you for
the amount of time you spent watching bodybuilding videos, Like, well,
there's some part of me. Am I spending eleven thousand
dollars a month on HGH now of course horse no. Um.
So this guy more Plates More Dates publishes an expose

(01:05:54):
on YouTube and Deceber twenty twenty two that reveals the
King's steroid abuse. The liver King had sent him an
email like, here's all off the steroids. I'm on what
else should I be taking? And this guy, eventually, after
months of the liver Kings saying I'm not on steroids
at all, was like, well, this guy's a liar. I'm
going to expose any other steroids. That is what he's doing.
And it's it's actually if you watch the video, it's

(01:06:16):
interesting because this guy is a steroid influencer, but he
knows his shit, um, and he talks about like why
he's doing what he's doing. It is kind I did
find it kind of interesting. Um, but yeah, right, After
this comes out, everybody's making fun of the liver King.
He goes viral for being a gigantic fraud, and immediately thereafter,
the liver King puts out a video confessing that he'd

(01:06:36):
lied about taking peeds and he had a justification that
I might call peculiar. Oh boy, y'all aren't ready for
this shit trial. I'm making this video to apologize this
guy because I'm embarrassing, ashamed because I lied and I

(01:07:00):
misled a lot of people. I've stated that this is
a complicated as fuck topic, at least to me. It
is because before social media, I was rich and anonymous,
and after social media I'm still rich, but no longer anonymous,
and I never expected this kind of exposure in the
public eye. It's been tricky as fuck to navigate. Well,

(01:07:26):
clearly I did it wrong, and I'm here now to
set the record straight. Yes I've done steroids, and yes
I'm on steroids monitored and managed by a trained hormone clinician.
Liver King the public figure was an experiment to spread
the message, to bring awareness to the four thousand people

(01:07:50):
a day who killed themselves. That eighty thousand people a
day that pride to kill themselves. Are people are hurting
at record rates with depression, autoimmune anxiety, fertility, low ambition
in life. Fuck you, man, so that's pretty right. Fuck
you for bringing him into my life. That's why he's

(01:08:12):
a bastard. The whole I had to spend fifteen thousand
dollars a month on steroids because people are killing themselves.
I had to teach you. He's Jesus hold on, would
you call that persecution complex? Yeah? Oh yeah, okay, yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah. I do love his argument that like if only,

(01:08:34):
if only all of those suicide victims were eating more
raw organ meat, I was trying to save lives. I'm
so upset. It's pretty offensive. Rights, that's pretty evil. Like
that's actually the first thing he's done that's really upset me.
Really really to build to it, but that's legitimately evil.

(01:08:57):
Damn him. He's he's a pretty bad person. So this
is why I've declared him a bastard. The other stuff
is gross and weird and kind of funny, but the
reality and obviously I don't I don't actually have like
an issue with people using steroids. Again, I think that
performance enhancing and drugs, drugs should be completely legal in
sports because it's more fun to watch. Look, they're already

(01:09:19):
mortgaging their bodies for money. It's already fucked up on
an ethical level. Just not lying about it isn't any
worse anyway, people checking my medical record right now. Yeah,
I know I don't agree with you above statements. I do,
I do. I mean, look, there's two kinds of world
class professional athletes. There's the ones who are on steroids

(01:09:40):
and the ones who are on steroids. We don't know
how to catch with your analysis tests yet Russians. Yeah, yeah,
but yeah, this is what's actually evil, right is the
whole thing that he's trying to claim that like I
am doing this because I think that the health advice
I have will stop people from killing themselves, when as
we're about to talk about, the reality is he is

(01:10:01):
contributing to the suicide epidemic and everything that he's doing.
And this is where we have to get kind of
serious for a minute, because suicidal ideation is hugely correlated
with body dysmorphia disorder, something I've dealt with, something that
a lot of men and a lot of women deal with,
the rate of completed suicide among sufferers of BDD is
what one clinical journal that I read described as markedly high.

(01:10:26):
And guess what. The percentage of American men dissatisfied with
their own appearance has tripled in the last twenty five years.
By some accounts, BDD is as common now among men
as it is among women. One twenty twenty two studies
show that fifty four percent of men in the United
States have signs of BDD, compared with forty nine percent
of women. The soaring rates of body dysmorphia disorder among

(01:10:47):
young men have a body count, and it has a
lot to do with why male suicide rates in the
United States are at an all time high. The explosion
of BDD among men is not solely caused by the
fact that every single male movie, action star and influencer
seems to take steroids and spend millions on personal training
to look in humanly jacked, but it is not a

(01:11:07):
non factor in that it does play a part in
those deaths and in this problem. In twenty thirteen, one
expert estimated twenty percent of Hollywood leading men used peds
like the Liver King, and today the number is substantially higher.
Some male actors have spoken up about this Channing Tatum,
on an episode of The Kelly Clarkson Show, rejected praise
for a topless picture of himself in The Magic Mic Movies,

(01:11:30):
saying the routine that had given them him that body
had been made possible because it was unhealthy. Zac Efron,
who got into movie star shaped for the twenty seventeen
Baywatch movie, has admitted the suffering from severe depression due
to body image issues afterwards. Those guys played their role
in the problem, too, but they've also clearly made an
effort to grapple with what is happening to them and

(01:11:50):
what happens to young men as a result of Hollywood's
relentless need to serve us male role models who are
not muscular in a way that human beings can become naturally.
The Liver King, knowing all of this, made inspiring a
generation of eating disorder victims his business, and so did
the sick fucks at the one DS Collective. Now, I
could go on a lot more of a rant here,

(01:12:11):
but this is a nice time night and we don't
need to do that. So instead, I'm going to close
from a clip from last year's Liver King Christmas video,
and I need to explain what's happening in this video
to you, because it's going to look like unhinged nonsense otherwise. So,
the liver King has a chef, and since he mostly
eats raw organs, I don't know how much chefing is involved,

(01:12:31):
but he does have a chef who seems to live
on his compound in Austin with him, and for the
holiday one year, this chef created a Christmas tree of
raw organ meats and other raw meats, which it's very
funny the whole like that it was set up that
he's going to have friends over. We're doing this dinner.
I'm gonna like heat the center of this Christmas tree

(01:12:52):
of raw organs and cook it for everybody. But it
becomes grosser and grosser over time, and without saying so,
they give up. And it makes like after the point
that we watch, you guys are going to see this
fucking thing, it disappears from the video and they just
pretend it was never there. He serves them a normal
meal and just watch and keep an eye on this
fucking chef's face to our Christmas tree. You want to

(01:13:18):
make sure not to overcrowd your Christmas tree whenever you're
putting on ornaments, so you want to kind of spread
these out evenly. Also use the ornaments as an opportunity
to hide any bought spots that may or may not
be on your tree. Fucking back, Batman is dead inside.

(01:13:47):
Oh that's the liver king. That's fucking horrible. Man so good,
it's so good, except for all of the bad stuff,
it's pretty good. Is he still like a finger? Yeah,
he's doing videos. I've watched his most. He's claiming now
that he's like two weeks clean from steroids, and it's
like posting his body. No, of course not, he's like
like it. But it also one of the things that's

(01:14:10):
really funny because he got exposed by like these grindset
influencer bodybuilding YouTube channels, and they all were really critical
of him. But they all are critical him because they're like, well,
his message is really good, and it's like, well, no,
it's not. His message is nonsense. Yeah, his message is
like you should eat raw meat and work out five

(01:14:30):
hours a day, which is like not a thing that
people can do. So so I'm sorry, just what is
So his connection was to those pills he made clearly
that's where he makes his money. He makes his money. Yeah,
like is he is he from from what we know?
Like wealthy because of it? Yes, he's made a shitload
of money. This guy's made so much more money than

(01:14:51):
than I don't know, let's say any er doctor you'll
ever meet that's not saying much? Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah
ye Are there any year a doctor's in here? Good?
Because they suck? Fuck, I'm just kidding. I love you
our doctors, um, but it does frustrate me on such
a deep level. Then like I could use this, we
could listen, we could make a lot of money. We

(01:15:13):
just talk right now for real business, real quickly between
my gi hypatology background, your understanding of how bastards work.
We can make a shit ton of money with some
sort of supplement, like like it would be like a
ram dick or something. Yeah, we have to use some
sort of thing that's like cheap because it gets thrown away,

(01:15:35):
and we can just convince people to take horse piss
horse piss. Horses are pissing all the time and nobody's
monetizing that. Have you see how strong horses are? Do
you want to run faster? Do you want horses run
faster than you? I'm sorry, they do, but that power
can be yours if you drink their piss fucking horsepiss, yeah,

(01:15:58):
or gatorade. We'll just call gatorine or something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
fuck it's beautiful. I'll go hunt with somebody and then
pretend that it's I killed the animal because I drank
enough piss for great for for fun. Just before we
close up, if you like music, right, I like music?
You like music? No? No? Like? Uh? Like like Andrew
Tate and uh and the Amazon guy. I've never understood

(01:16:21):
the power of him, the Amazon guy Okay, got his
name briefly, Like you like? But you like different genres
of music. If you were to make this like epic
into like a musical song, what kind of music would
it be? Would it be? Well, there's actually only one genre.
I think it's really music. It's Scott But thank you

(01:16:43):
fucking oh did I get you? Who wants it now? Anyone?
And when I threw that is everyone? Okay, Okay, thank you?
We got We got a couple of minutes left. We
got a couple of minutes left. And this is our
first live show since I don't know, a couple of

(01:17:04):
things went wrong since the start of twenty twenty when
I was last in here. M this is our first
live show in a while. We're not live in the
studio anymore, and so there's a couple of bits that
are beloved among the fans that we haven't gotten to
do for a while, but we have that opportunity. Could
somebody please bring their bagels up to here? Oh wow, yeah,

(01:17:30):
yes please? Oh thank you? Perfect. So, first off, we
have this is just one of my favorite machetes. It's
a crk T machete. One of the best batoning machetes
you're ever going to have. Really good for splitting wood,

(01:17:50):
good for waving when you're drunk to not even that sharp,
so it'll just make a rough gas really sure, come on, okay?
And then this is my so I have a story
with this knife. It's amazing. Look at that American flag
fake Jim's perfect, perfect knife. So I got this. This
is a bud k original. Some of you know how

(01:18:12):
special that is. Original one a hero. I'm watching you, man,
I get block. I get packages from fans from time
to time, and about a year ago, two years ago,
I got a package that was like thirty of the
worst knives you've ever seen. In your life and a
note where someone was like, hey, Robert, big fan of

(01:18:35):
the pod, liked you for years. My dad started to
lose his mind a couple of years ago, and I
don't know why, but the thing he did was repeatedly
ordered knives from the bud k catalet. There was a
huge room full of these terrible knives when he died,
and we, you know, we sold the ones that we
could to help pay for the funeral. I have given

(01:18:56):
you all of the ones we couldn't sell. Now, my
favorite knife in this bunch is, you know, like a
normal folding pocket knife. Everyone's familiar with the broad shape.
It's that, but it's a foot long and it weighs
four pounds and it is My friends and I we
call it the big titted Angel knife because there's a
drawing of an angel with very large breasts on it.
Now I would have taken it here, but it cannot

(01:19:18):
fly because you can't really close it. It is terribly dangerous.
The blades are just swinging around. But this knife was
reasonably safe to fly with. So Covin, why don't you
take the good machette and I'll take the too sharp
for safety and America knife again, Bud k original everybody.

(01:19:39):
All right, covin, are you familiar with the rules. It's
like normal tennis, which I don't know. All right, Love
Serving zero? Wow? That was that one? Better than that?
All right? Hit mate? Okay, that's one though for me, terrible, terrible, unbelievable. Okay,

(01:20:08):
that one did some damage. All right, all right, all right, okay,
we'll get one more of these and then we won't
do anymore because I don't want to cause too many
problems for quick. If you fucking stab me with this knife,
I'm gonna be so obsessed stab someone with a knife.
All right, Love Serving Knife, I got you right in

(01:20:34):
the startup? Good yeah, yeah, all right, all right, all right,
I think I won. All Right, let's all let's all
get a round of applause for the cleanup crew. We'll

(01:20:55):
try to deal with as much as this as possible.
Thank you. I'm so sorry. All right. Now, we've got
four minutes, so I think we have time to answer
one or two questions. Oh, you want me to do
my Boston accent? Could you put it in the form
of a question? Though? What does my Boston accent sound like?
Is that the question? I heard well boy even reforced

(01:21:21):
and nim. Sophie loves this accent. I send all of
my work messages to her. Sophie. We're getting sued by
the liver king. Wait wait, can you do did you
ever watch the Leprechn when you were younger? Of course?
Can you do? No? Please, that's cultural appropriation. I will

(01:21:44):
not be a part of it, specifically Leprechn. What's up?
Oh the child sex island? Can you really own blue aprons? Child? Second? Well,
it's not even it's not even say it's it's for eating. Um, yeah, hunting,

(01:22:04):
which is ethical. Um. I mean there are a couple
of child sex islands. But you know, look, if you
are hunting children for sport and you don't, it's again,
it's nose to tail, right, Like that's the ethical thing
to do. So you you want to get especially since
as I understand that stem cells have medical properties and

(01:22:25):
kids are full of stems. Seems mostly focused on how
different your crowd is than my crowd. Well, my crowd's
really interested in good healthcare advice. Yeah, so what it's
it's I mean, it's it's blue apron. I don't know.

(01:22:46):
I think it's going to be deep out in the
Pretty soon we're gonna find there's got There's got to
be at least like one or two other Epstein islands
out there. Oh my god, there's like a whole art
Pedula archipelago. Every time I say Archipella, people yell all, yeah, yeah,
right right, which you're all being pedants, but I think
you're correct. Covin, Yeah, it's from Heroin mart So this

(01:23:13):
is it's a good hoodie. This is like a drug
users collective somewhere in Canada. Um. And this was a
part of a fundraiser, and I got it because I
it's it's fun to wear in the TSA line. But
also I'm broadly supportive of the message after everything going

(01:23:33):
on in Atlanta right now, in particular, um, speaking of
which our own Garrison Davis has been on the ground,
and it's pretty fucked up night in Atlanta. So if
you if you've got cash to burn their bail fund,
I'm sure is going to be looking for some of it. Um,
because all of those people are getting charged with domestic terrorism,
which is yeah, it's a real problem. It's ugly as shit. Um.

(01:23:55):
Nothing says terrorism like breaking a bank window. For those listening,
for those lists isis guys were shooting at me, thinking, boy,
this is almost as scary as seeing a bank window
get broken for those listening at home. His hoodie is
a bright yellow hoodie and there's a smiley face on it,

(01:24:17):
and that's there. That's all there is to it. So
I don't know. That's just in case an incredible bit um. Okay,
one more question, but make it a really crude one.
We only have like thirty seconds. Oh boy, I'm more
worried about his heart. Although he does take in ac

(01:24:41):
so hopefully his liver is fine. That's probably good, right, No,
his liver is a fucking mess. Yea. His actual liver
is a fucking wreck. His kidneys too, are probably a wreck. Yeah,
cock is fine. Well no, I don't know about that. Cot.
I'm just saying it's probably fine. Rad Johnson and Striker Johnson?

(01:25:04):
Which of those is sillier? Seriously? Which is a silly
sillier name? Striker? All right? You know what show a
hands everybody hands up? Is Rad the sillier name. I'm
seeing a lot of rads. I'm seeing a lot of rads.
Now let's see Striker. Oh the strikers have it. I agree,

(01:25:26):
Rad is a cool name. Rad is a good name
for a kid. Team Team Striker. Very proud of you
all for showing up. Team Rad. You gotta get out
the vote. You gotta register more people next time. All right,
this has more or less been a podcast. Um, thank
you all for showing up. And uh yeah, have a

(01:25:46):
have a have a liver king full night. Remember his teachings,
you know, eat eat, eat Christmas trees by organ meat,
take fifteen thousand dollars of steroids every month or hear
me out. Okay, eat mostly a plant based diet with
some meat and cheese and stuff to ornament it and

(01:26:09):
and enjoy your life. Comment I have a fucking machete.
Who the fuck said that? Who booed me? You know,
I know it's the guy over there who had that? Guy?
I fucking I got you. Like, I'm gonna say, thirty
five hundred dollars a month, that's a normal amount of steroids.

(01:26:34):
That's healthy. Yeah, that's healthy, right, that's what most doctors
will advise. Uh no, I mean, I'm actually gonna guess
lads was in speaking of which Lance and I actually
have a lot in common. He's another plan. Oh boy. Um,
one of the things I always appreciated about Lance Armstrong
outside of the problematic aspects of his career, is that

(01:26:57):
he called my hometown a soulless pit, which is true,
not in an accurate way. And it's it's one of
those things. There's basically three famous people from Plano. Um
there's on the lower level me and then on the
higher level there's Lance Armstrong and Alan tutik Aka washed
from Firefly. Yeah, one of us was not a monster,

(01:27:18):
not a great record for Plano K nine from Rogue one.
That's fucking that's that's that's it. That's yeah, that's less
of a touchstone fire I assume he did other things
and that's okay. Yeah, just those two. All right, well

(01:27:38):
you got it. You can't stay here, but you gotta
go home something like that. Um, thank you all for coming.
This has been a This has actually been a really
nice experience. UM. I have missed being able to do
the live show. So it's lovely that we got to
to all get back together. Um. And it's it's nice

(01:28:01):
every time we hear that, like a show has you
sold out? That always makes everybody feel better. It is
kind of a weird job, like just reading about terrible
people and then damaging someone's mental health over a zoom call.
So getting to see that I'm also harming all of
your health is what makes it all worthwhile. So please

(01:28:21):
continue having whatever problem leads you to listen to this
podcast every single week. But seriously, thank you all so much.
You've been a lovely audience. And yeah, all I can
say is eat as much raw liver as humanly possible.
Don't do that. Kava and I are now going to
try to clean up some of the bagel shrapnels that
we cause as little of a problem as possible for

(01:28:42):
the nice people at this at this theater. Thank you all.
Behind the Bastards is a production of Coolzone Media. For
more from Coolzonemedia, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, or

(01:29:07):
check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.