[00:00:01] Luke: All right, my Ukrainian friend. What do you think about the state of masculinity in 2025? Where are we at with the villainization of men?

[00:00:18] Aleks: We are a little confused. I observe, not I think. I observe we are trying to find out what that is for each person. You look online and you see someone in a dress as a man saying that this is masculine. And you see someone that's in a gym who's on copious amounts of anabolic saying this is masculine. And you see someone who's like fixing a truck. This is masculine.

[00:00:49] I think people are missing the point, but also they don't have mentors to model masculinity off of or the discernment to go, we don't have to go all in on one mentor. We were talking about earlier about a topic where there's really good experts in one area, but then they lack it in another area. And then this guy's an expert in one area, but lacks it in all the other areas.

[00:01:16] So I'm seeing people go all in on one idea, but it's a constantly changing force that looks different in everybody to some degree. So I'm noticing that there's mostly confusion going on.

[00:01:40] Luke: Do you sense that the powers that be that move culture in different directions seem to have a vested interest in demonizing that energy and discouraging it?

[00:01:57] Aleks: Yeah. It's hard to control a man who knows who he is. It's hard to get a man to drink that doesn't drink, that knows why he doesn't drink, or he feels fulfilled if he doesn't drink. It's hard to get a man to obey an unlawful law if he knows it's unlawful. You see it in other countries of people saying, I was following orders.

[00:02:24] And it's hard to control somebody when they know who they are and they know what's right and wrong, and they know what's lawful and what's unlawful, what's just, what's unjust. And again, it's like we're changing the definitions of names, of words, of things. And we're confusing people and allowing people to name things as they are.

[00:02:46] But yet the etymology of the word still has its root context and has its root vibration and has its root emphasis of materializing whatever it is, the word that you're using, and changing the working definition, even though the actual definition of why that word was created to materialize something, either connection or disconnection, whatever it was to create, is to go, here's the word, and here's what this word means is going to happen.

[00:03:16] But when you start changing it-- you see this in law a lot. People use common words in regular language that means something totally different, legalese. And it gets people confused. I am a person, but you don't want to be a person. These words.

[00:03:31] Luke: You start looking at the legal definition of person, it'll blow your mind.

[00:03:35] Aleks: And so these kind of things that I've observed that are getting a lot of people into trouble because there's so much information that they're getting inundated with, health information, news information. Some of the things I talk about with people that are freaking out, like clients, I was like, "When's the last time you thought about--" And I name an event that happened three months ago and they're like, "I don't know." I go, "That was a pretty big thing."

[00:03:58] What happened with this thing, that happened two months ago. When's the last time you thought about that? It's like, so you're getting caught up in what's the latest thing and you're always nervous, and you're never really reflecting because you're always chasing forward. The root of anxiety is always trying to look into the future. And so anxiety is pretty big.

[00:04:17] And so if you get people anxious, who comes to save the day? Little tiny pills in little orange bottles, and they save the day for you. They calm you down or whatever it is. Or you go to the bar with your friends because you loosen up or whatever the nameless thing that I'm talking about that people can infer. The archetype of what I'm talking about that saves that problem that was created by the people who are selling you the problem.

[00:04:44] And that's going to get in the way of reflecting, and is this worth paying attention to? Turn off the news. Look at the Amish. They don't know what's going on half the time. And see how your day-to-day life goes, and reflect on how do your day-to-day life goes. That's what I've been constantly doing for, since I met Paul Chek. Focus on you. I'm all right. That's the only thing I can control. Let's do that.

[00:05:12] Luke: That's something I noticed about midway through the pandemic, because when it first started happening, I was pretty glued to social media, and I was really staying abreast as to what was unfolding because it was problematic to me. Very early in 2020, I was like, "Hmm, I've been reading about this for a long time, and now they're actually doing it."

[00:05:35] But at a certain point, I think it was in 2021-- yeah, around the time we moved here-- I had a really beautiful spiritual experience here in town. And then I went to Florida to go to a Joe Dispenza retreat, and during the course of about that two weeks, I was really turned off by my phone, so I just stopped looking at shit.

[00:05:59] Just left it alone. And it was a great lesson in what you described, because I realized that with the exception of occasionally getting on an airplane or going into certain businesses and having someone yell at me to put a face diaper on, my life objectively did not change whatsoever. You couldn't have proved in a court of law that anything was different unless I went in somewhere and someone said, "You need to wear a mask."

[00:06:29] And it was so interesting to look at that because I was pretty worked up and living in a state of anxiety a lot of the time, frankly, because I was like, "Where's this going, man?" We're watching countries like Canada and Australia that don't have a Second Amendment really becoming very authoritarian.

[00:06:47] So I had a reason to maybe be concerned or to pay attention to it, but when I stopped paying attention to it, I realized, wow, I'm so much happier. And whether I'm paying attention to it and following the current thing or not, I have no power to change the external experience. It was a really powerful lesson in changing the world by just changing myself and disconnecting from it, which only lasted for a couple of weeks.

[00:07:12] And I was like, "Wait, I got to see what's going on." But I was like, "Wow, that's so interesting." It's the way, even alternative media, not just mainstream media, but it's the way that engagement trap works, is to keep us all in that limbic system and that heightened state, because it addicts your eyes, and your eyes mean money to the algorithm.

[00:07:34] So it was really cool to see that. I want to circle back really quick. And I don't know why I asked you about the masculine thing. You're a pretty manly, man. You're very much in your body. You do a lot of physical work. And the work you do, which I've done with you some of the training and your, I don't even what you call it, manual therapy--

[00:07:54] Aleks: Yeah, it's called that.

[00:07:56] Luke: But it's interesting to me to see the villainization of the masculine archetype and for it to be portrayed in a way that I feel is not accurate, which is the roid head emotional, violent, abusive, Jarhead, gym rat kind of guy, which to me is the antithesis of masculine energy because the most masculine guys I know are very composed and more stoic and actually not very reactive and emotional.

[00:08:40] And some of the, I think most embodied masculine men I know aren't even big tough guys or anything. You wouldn't even know it. They're in control of their emotions. Which I think is one of the greatest attributes that creates that balance between the masculine and feminine.

[00:08:55] So the feminine is emotional and creative and is prone to having random storms. And if you have two parties that are both caught in your emotional storms, you're going to have a lot of drama. You have the one anchor space holder, which is not someone who loses their temper and is violent and things like that.

[00:09:14] To me, that's more an attribute of feminine energy that gets wrongly attributed to what is called in our culture, toxic masculinity. I think it's actually toxic femininity that is usually in a male body. What do you think about all that?

[00:09:29] Aleks: I was talking to my 19-year-old. She's going through some stuff, and she was like, "Ugh, I hate men." And I was like, "You hate boys." Don't confuse the two. And I've repeated it several times because she threw it out there. And again, that's the hill. It's like that's the hill I stand on.

[00:09:48] Men don't do what you're describing. Boys do. Boys who lack responsibility for their actions, for their emotions, for their thoughts, because they haven't thought through them, they act childish. And when someone stonewalls you, doesn't tell you the truth, or hurts your feelings for not truthful reasons, for your own benefit-- not for their benefit, for your benefit-- like, hey, your-- this is a self-destructive behavior.

[00:10:17] And it's like, I don't care if you get mad at me. I told you the truth. And I'm like, "You haven't met a man yet." You may have met aspects of these boys who have manly qualities they're going into, but they have not spent the time in their own bodies and their own minds.

[00:10:36] They're too busy comparing sizes of their bodies to other men and trying to size up like what my car is compared to someone else's. How are my grades? Am I going to be successful? They haven't sat in that yet. And when you said controlling your emotions, it's when you're in control to dig deeper a little bit there. You only have control when you have some level of inner standing or relation to what needs to be in control.

[00:11:09] Control could be taken, where you see a lot of people misinterpret stoicism when they're like, "Okay, I got to hold it in." Suppression is not control. And you see a samurai with a sword has control over that sword because he spent a lot of time with that sword, and he can do amazing cuts with that sword and cut through all sorts of things with one swipe. Versus you see newbies, same sword, make it through one sheet of carpet. And you see a master, nine, like butter.

[00:11:35] So control only comes when you've spent enough time really diving into what the thing that makes you lose control is. And so if it's you lose control of your emotions, what is the thing that makes you lose your composure? Oh, well I get triggered because my dad always triggered me. Okay, great. Well, how have you worked on that? What caused that?

[00:12:01] Let's say I'm using myself as an example. I would get quickly parented and then I would have no say over what it was. There was no talk, no argument. So I'm sitting there going like, "Wow, every time I get into a confrontation, I'm going to have no say. So I'm going to have to get loud because I feel disconnected from what's going to happen.

[00:12:22] And luckily, Sarah came into my life, my wife. And she's very patient. Not composed, but very patient with me. We used to go back and forth hard, and she's like, "You're not getting it." And I'm like, "What am I not getting?" Back and forth and fighting with myself, realizing I'm actually fighting with myself and not hearing what she's saying.

[00:12:45] And I'm realizing, oh, she does hear me, but my filtering mechanism doesn't allow me to hear her actual words. So now I got to go back. And then who else did that to me? I noticed my dad does that to me. I don't hear his words because his words were very sharp. And so anytime someone raises their voice, my brain goes sharp, like, I'm bigger though. I'm a man, and I'm going to say what I feel.

[00:13:09] And it's like, wait a second, I'm losing my own temper like my dad did because he didn't learn control, being an immigrant, moving to a new country, not speaking the language, trying to raise me and keep my mom afloat. With the famous, I came here with $200 in pocket and then now, look, we're okay. That kind of mentality.

[00:13:33] Luke: Can you do the whole conversation in that accent?

[00:13:36] Aleks: I can if you want. It might be nice. And so realizing that I only lost control because I never had a say. And so when I had that situation come up, I realized, I do have a say, and I'm okay. And I need to now reformulate how I say things. Because I have four different-- I used to. One went to college. I used to have four women that were five and 12 and then 16, and now they're nine, almost 16, and almost 20, and 45.

[00:14:17] And it's like, I can't talk to the same kid and adult in the same dial, in the same words. Then you hear people like, well, I shouldn't have to change the way I am for other people. And then I reflect on that situation again, reflecting, going like, "If I didn't change the way I spoke with Sarah to a three-year-old, my three-year-old would suffer. She wouldn't thrive."

[00:14:45] So then I go, then that structure of thought falls apart immediately because, well, here's an example where that's not the case. Okay. I go back into my mind. And then I actually learned that when I explain things to them, since most people are like 10-year-olds, 12-year-olds, in their mind, of explaining, when I'm explaining it to them to like a 12-year-old, I noticed even my clients benefited.

[00:15:09] Because I learned how to explain things so simply that people go, oh, I totally grasp what you're telling me. And why it's important to drink simple things like water. Because that's a big fight in the whole fitness world. My client won't drink water. Well, study why water is important, all the different aspects, and then explain it simply.

[00:15:28] And then you drink water, and then they drink water. But rolling it all back, the lack of control comes from the lack of actually looking into why you have lost this control in the first place. And it could be any reason why people lose their-- someone bumps into you and then you're like, I lose control of my temper.

[00:15:50] It's like, do you train how to physically protect yourself? Because usually the people that want to fight you can't fight. They want to talk, and they don't fight. And the people who have cauliflower ears at a bar, they're going to be the first ones like, "Hey, sorry bud." Because they know they will kill you. Basically what you're saying.

[00:16:12] And it's the same thing with economic statuses of people. I have some extremely wealthy clients that show up in flip flops and a shirt and drive whatever their daily driver, and you never know their net worth. And then meanwhile you have people who are trying so hard to fit in, and it's obvious, at the even expense of their families.

[00:16:38] They could have put that into savings. They could have paid off their house. They could have done all these other investment opportunities. They could have bought crypto, whatever it is. But no, they bought a really expensive car, or they bought a really expensive boat that takes a lot of maintenance.

[00:16:50] Or they bought a really lavish vacation to show off, to say they went on vacation. Or they bought whatever. You see what I'm kind of pointing at. It's a values thing. Warriors know what their code of conduct is. Military know who to engage, who to not to engage. What are the rules of engagement?

[00:17:10] And you can take these codes of conduct and build them into your own psyche, and then you either choose to engage or not. And now we're starting to get into what a man is and what's worth dying on a hill for? What's not worth dying on a hill for? Because for people who are going to the capitol and protesting for the jabs and things like that, it's like if that's worth dying on a hill for, I agree with you, and I commend you for doing that.

[00:17:41] I love that. At the same time, I'm like, oh, I found ways to avoid it all together. And that to me, if you know your values, if you know what you stand for, if you know what's worth dying for, if you know what's worth killing for, then that in and of itself is bringing you closer to the masculine.

[00:18:05] Because the masculine is willing to destroy itself. And what I mean by that is anything that isn't who you are as a man, as a person-- no, not a person. That's the wrong word. But anyway, who you are as a soul that you are brought here to learn, the masculine will rip that out of anybody. You can see a movie and you maybe see an abusive scene where a female gets abused and it traumatizes you and you go, "I'll never do that."

[00:18:33] That's one of my values now. Respect women. Even though it's a movie. But it could still like, ugh, I don't like seeing that. And then you see it in public and then like, this is worth dying for, standing up for someone. And then you start to build your masculine. And it's not something that you show the world.

[00:18:50] It's something, like you mentioned, you embody and then you carry it with you. And then you become composed because you know the rules of engagement. Someone cutting you in line at a grocery store, it's like, it's not worth my time. Maybe they're busy. Someone cuts you off in traffic, it's not worth my nerves to yell at someone through my windshield that I'll never see again. To ruin my day. For what?

[00:19:14] You're safe. I hit the brakes. My reaction time is spot on. And maybe their kid's in the hospital. Maybe they're late to work. Maybe they need to pick their kid up from daycare. I don't know what their life is and it's not worth ruining it. You know what I mean?

[00:19:26] So these little details, you accumulate all of these daily details and your life becomes more peaceful. And then you have more time to think about the things that you really care about. And you see girl dads getting their nails done, getting their hair done. They're tatted up. They're swole.

[00:19:45] That's masculine. To know that you could play a part for what your little girl is going to grow up and is going to model what their husband or their partner's going to look like. Like, oh, that's a man, someone who's willing to paint nails with me. Someone to put skincare on, or I'm going to pop their pimples, or I'm going to braid their hair. Whatever that is is showing up without having to say a word. And being silent carries way more weight than being vocal.

[00:20:22] Luke: Beautiful. I think you touched on the element of self-awareness, and I know throughout my life when I was unaware of the dark aspects of my personality and the shadowy, the dangerous parts, I was much more dangerous and more harmful in general. You know what I mean? And as I become more aware of those tendencies, they're self-modulating because of that.

[00:20:54] There's a witness perspective that's been developed over the years, and it's like, man, I know what I'm capable of. And because I've fearlessly looked in the nooks and crannies of my psyche and my triggers and my past and childhood and all that, I have much more agency over it than if I tried to suppress it and ignore it.

[00:21:16] I think the dangerous men out there that probably give masculinity or men in general a bad rap are those that haven't integrated the shadow aspects of themselves. Those are the dangerous. Those are the nice guys. I love the distinction between a nice guy and a good man.

[00:21:36] They sound similar, but if you really dig into that idea, there's a huge difference. Nice guy is someone who's like holding the spring down, but at any moment could be not nice. Whereas a good man has what you're talking about, that sense of character and morality and ethics, not because of other people requiring it, but because it's required of yourself.

[00:22:02] Aleks: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:02] Luke: In order for you to have peace of mind and be able to exist in your skin.

[00:22:06] Aleks: Yeah. I'm always looking at people who are overly smiley, and I'm like, let your pain out. It's all right. It's okay to be neutral and not reactive and not show everyone how happy you are. Because it's a feeling. You walk up to someone and you say hi, and then they're like, oh, hey, it's been so long I haven't seen you in a while.

[00:22:29] Versus someone who's trying to prove to you that they're happy, but it's the shadow. They're unaware. But to people who are aware and that have been there and looked in those nooks and crannies, you can immediately tell when someone is faking it. Maybe it's to impress you, but mostly to hide their own pain.

[00:22:50] And people that have looked their own pain, looked at their own pain long enough, you can recognize it anywhere. And you're like, "Oh, I know that pain. That person's hiding something about themselves." And even the law of polarity, even the good vibes, it's like law of polarity basically says that if you look into the light, you attract dark.

[00:23:08] But if you look into the dark, you have to attract light. So the more you work in the dark, the more light you bring with you. And so when you reject that-- I hear a lot of stories from women about guys, "Oh, well, we didn't vibe." And like, what does that mean? Did you guys like talk about what you wanted to do with this relationship? No, it was really fun and then it became-- whether it's like not texting or-- what does it have to do with that person?

[00:23:43] That's a person. That's someone's daughter. That's someone's son, and you discarded them like garbage bag. And it's like, that's a human person. And the either NPC conversation where it's like, I can see where people are coming from that perspective and like, oh, this person's in NPC. They're like a mindless robot walking around, but someone gave birth to that person, and that's someone's-- you don't know what they're carrying, and that may be not right for you.

[00:24:11] And then you see people who are perfect for each other. But I see people in the good vibes community rejecting any hard work that relationships take and then constantly reaffirming themselves by attracting the same things and spirits like, dude, don't you get it? You have to work through this thing.

[00:24:30] And it's like the more good vibes they attract, the more shadow they attract. So that way good vibes can magnetize to that. And when you ignore the bad, you don't get more good. You get a confusion because you want this thing that's on, let's say the right, but you ignore the left and you get an unbalanced equation, and then it topples over and slides into the other side and then you get muddy, metaphorically speaking.

[00:24:57] And it is interesting to see people go through this over and over and over again. And I'm a big believer in autonomy. I let my kids fail at things before I tell them what might happen. I educate them to the best of my ability, but I also want them to fall off of something or have a weird breakup or see the sign after the fact because that's what you learn.

[00:25:28] I've made a lot of mistakes. I'm a FAFO kind of person in a way that's like, let me see if this will hurt. And like, okay, that hurt. And then I learn not to do that. And if you take that away from someone, you're also disempowering them, like alcoholic. You tell an alcoholic he has to stop drinking, he is not going to stop drinking. He's going to hide it better.

[00:25:52] And you're going to have to let people hit rock bottom, and it's really sad and troubling for the people in their family. But all the ones that hit that crisis point and go, "I want to change," are some of the greatest people I've ever met. I would leave my kids with those people over good old Sunday churchgoers almost.

[00:26:16] I would say 99 out of 100 times is like, I trust people who have hit a rock bottom, looked at themselves, looked at what they've done to the people around them and themselves, come out of this hole, drag themselves out of it because they have this will to change and live again and live and are better people. Versus someone who blindly gives faith to a thing, but then contradicts themselves constantly with no discipline, no willpower. I trust people who have gone through some things and come out the other side.

[00:26:52] Luke: Me too. My favorite kind of people. Yeah. The darker the shadow, the brighter the light.

[00:26:58] Aleks: 100%. And has proven time and time again. They're going to learn, and I don't mean this in a very negative way. I mean, it in a positive way. You're going to learn, and it's great. That's why we're here. That's why we're here to learn stuff. I like to learn quicker.

[00:27:16] I don't want to be stubbing my toes all around every time I go out somewhere. I'm picking my feet. I'm going to watch corners. I'm going to change my gait so I don't stub my toe on things because it hurts. I don't like saying things to my wife that are diminishing.

[00:27:31] I don't want my wife to hurt. I don't want my kids to hurt. But I can't stop them from hurting, but I don't want to be the cause of that unless I'm being honest and that seems to hurt them in certain aspects temporarily until they see the bigger picture. But that's where I stand. Again, the mask, that's where I stand.

[00:27:53] If it's for your benefit-- I don't benefit from this. This is your benefit. I'm telling this because it's going to make you a better person. If you hate me for a little bit, cool. I can deal with that. But the other side is really great, and a lot of people don't cross to the other side, and they live in that-- they temper the shadow and they're like, "What happens when I transcend this, and I lose all these good vibes? You don't lose good vibes. You get more good vibes. You get the best vibes because you've taken the time to go, what's keeping me from having the best vibes?

[00:28:30] Luke: Beautiful. Let's talk about meat.

[00:28:34] Aleks: Meat.

[00:28:35] Luke: So for context, when I was working with you, was it last year, a year ago or something like that? I was driving out to your compound there, and we're doing body work and all the things, which by the way, the tooth project went well largely due to your help to make sure everything was in the right place before they built a new mouth on me, which is a fucking hardcore process.

[00:29:00] I'm glad hopefully only have to do once. But we're out there, and you'd give me these jerky treats that were just basically dehydrated beef, liver, and testicles and all kinds of stuff. And I know liver's really good for you. And I've gone through phases where I go to the farmer's market and buy frozen liver, dice it up, keep it in the fridge, and just take them like pills.

[00:29:26] And I get on tangents like that, but I can never keep it going because it's just a pain in the ass and it tastes disgusting. And I don't like cooked liver. So it's one of those-- it's like the super food that is just there in the periphery. And I'm like, "Ah, I should be doing it, but I just can't get myself to be consistent with it."

[00:29:44] And somehow you managed to make liver taste good. I was like, "What?" I'm like, "Dude, you got to put this out in the world." And so now you have in the course of that time. So congratulations. Berski is the name of your brand here. We've got them on display as I like to do when people come over to talk about their stuff.

[00:30:05] So first off, congratulations. I know that this primal trend has been going for a few years now, and it's funny that you're here today because just last night I was on Netflix, like, fam, there's never anything to watch. It's all so dark and toxic and like programming your mind and all that.

[00:30:25] But I saw the Liver King documentary and I was like, "Oh, I remember that cat. He's funny and interesting." So I watched that, and whatever. Guy was on steroids. People got pissed off about it, whatever. Live and let live. But it was interesting to see how he really embraced the primal lifestyle and was the first influencer type person I ever heard that was really hammering home the organ meats.

[00:30:55] And so it was cool to go back and just see the progression of that. And then also at the same time, I was like, "Man, he may have inadvertently turned people off to the organ meats, which are really good for you because he couldn't attribute being super ripped to just eating primal."

[00:31:15] He was on the juice or whatever. And I was like, "Oh, that's too bad because you could actually become pretty fit if that's what you're into by integrating these into your life." And his kids are eating them and stuff. So I was like, "Oh, this is really cool. He's got it right."

[00:31:30] He just lost the plot there and probably lost a lot of people and maybe discredited something that's really great. It's like when you meet someone who's done a lot of plant medicine work, and they're still a train wreck, you're kind of like, "Ah, I don't know if that's my path." There's many of them out there. So yeah.

[00:31:48] So let's start over and reframe and recreate the story of organ meats, anything you know about the history, the biochemistry, why they're good for us. Something that's always been interesting to me is that predators, when they kill a prey animal, they ignore everything and just go right into the guts and eat the organs and oftentimes just leave the muscle meat for scavengers.

[00:32:14] And I think that's really telling. They're going on nature's innate wisdom, and they know where the most nutrient density is. And I think that's the idea that first got me on, like, I need to be in organ meats.

[00:32:27] So give us the spiel, and then after that, I want to get into just my own curiosity of taking an idea that just pops in your head one day to fruition where it's an actual thing that is in the marketplace. But we can get to part two after that. So how'd you get into organ meats? What do they do? What people have eaten them, and why?

[00:32:49] Aleks: So through the CHEK Institute, you learn about nutrition, and you do all these things. And then I wanted to eat organs for a while, and then my friend Mike Bledsoe comes over, teaches me how to eat raw liver, serves up some raw liver. We try it. I'm like, "Okay, it's not that bad." And that's how my whole thing got started. And then one day I brought over a testicle, and then I ran some fun studies on myself.

[00:33:15] And I'll piggyback back and forth between the Liver King and myself. I've always been terrified of taking steroids because you know the harmful side effects, ED, and my balls are going to shrink, and you got acne and then rage issues. Back then I was like, "I got plenty of those." Not rage, but I'm angry person, so I got to lift and get all this anger out, which later I had to restructure exercise and the way my relationship is with exercise.

[00:33:43] And so he brought up some testicles, and I've been hearing like, okay, well. Paul Chek's always said whatever organs you eat are going to go to that organ. And the Liver King got a bad rap for that because he said they put some radioactive dye and things, but it was actually Pottenger that did a study on his cats and he put dye into a liver and he fed it to his cats, and he found the dye ended up mostly in the liver.

[00:34:13] And then he fed some heart and then it would end up in the heart. And so he is like, "Oh, interesting. Weird little coincidence that when they eat liver, it goes to the liver. The heart goes to the heart." And even though people got lost on the message because they were focused on being deceived with the Liver King, I personally have always said that like, what a testament.

[00:34:34] When you talk to a bodybuilder and you take 2,000 units of growth hormone, they're like, it's a lot. Then you double that to 4,000 units of growth hormone, pro bodybuilders will tell you that's a lot of sauce. And he was taking 12,000 a month. It's a lot.

[00:34:56] So to be able to handle that, my original thought was, it must be so good that it could heal your body that much better. It can give your body the nutrition it needs to recover the organs that are damaged the most, which is your liver. So why not eat the very things that go to the correlated organs?

[00:35:21] Which is why even in our stick we put-- I don't like how the collagen casing is made, so I switch it to a all-beef casing. Because I'm like, why don't I eat intestines? Because it's in organ versus collagen is made from separating usually the hides of animals, and they'll pour a bleach or an alkaline solution, separate the collagen, skim it, clean it, form it, and then you get a collagen stick.

[00:35:45] And I was like, "Ugh." How do they make beef casings? Oh, well, they wash beef casings. I'm like, "Okay, that seems a lot better." And the intestines go to your intestines. Fantastic.

[00:35:56] So even though it seemed like a failed social experiment where it's like, I'm going to get rich-- you saw the documentary. It's like, I'm going to provide my family with what we need. Started a company and then people got away from it because they felt deceived by the visual aspects of it.

[00:36:13] It's like some celebrity being like, "Oh, I look so young and beautiful because of this cosmetic line." And then they're like, "Oh, you spent 100 grand in plastic surgery?" And then it's like, I don't want to buy your product line. It's like, okay, but it still might be a good product line.

[00:36:27] It could be organic or whatever it is. It tarnishes that area. I personally, again, don't get lost in how people abuse their celebrity because to me, if a idea is good, it withstands the test of time. And like you mentioned in the beginning, what do animals do? They go right to the organs. They pick off the rest and they leave the meat everywhere.

[00:36:57] So animals do this. We have done this since the beginning of time or since we can remember. We always ate those organs. And then they became unpopular. And I imagine somewhere around the food pyramid when that came out from when that cereal company started a dietician's association and told everyone to eat cereals and fortified rich foods because it's good for you. And eat tons of bread instead of meats and healthy fats.

[00:37:27] And then, hey, we have this idea. We are having a food shortage. Let's put these cattle into these little lots and then feed them basically-- the analogy was like, what if we put people in these lots and then we fed them nothing but McDonald's? Made them sit there all day. Would you eat that person?

[00:37:42] If you're a cannibal, you'd probably be like, "Ugh, I don't want that." I'm like, "I want some dude who's climbing a mountain. I'm going to go tackle him and eat his organs. He's probably very clean." And that's also the caveat between organs. It's like you don't want to eat commercial organs because that's where all the toxins are stored, but that's where also are filtered through.

[00:38:00] But that's where also all the fat soluble vitamins are stored. You have peptides in livers. And even iron for people who are anemic, it's bound to heme already. So the hemoglobin, heme and globulins. And so iron is already bound to heme, which enters your bloodstream and then also leaves your bloodstream and enters your body a lot more effectively.

[00:38:20] So I've ran my own trials, and people who are anemic become not anemic by eating organ meats, including in the sticks. But I ran it with 100% liver as well. My dad is a great example. He's had a fatty liver his whole life. So the liver that I gave you, I gave him three months of eating liver every single day.

[00:38:49] One big chunk of liver, which is about an ounce, maybe, half an ounce to an ounce, which then undried, it was like two ounces. So he had about two ounces of liver. Went back to his doctor. No more fatty liver.

[00:39:01] Luke: Really?

[00:39:01] Aleks: Really.

[00:39:02] Luke: Wow.

[00:39:03] Aleks: So it might have been the choline and the vitamin A and the iron, and his body cleaned itself out. He's a much happier, more calmer person now. And also the liver metaphysically is where you process your anger and also your joy. And so if you're an angry person, your liver gets clogged up. And then if you have angry thoughts, it gets processed in the liver. But that's also where joy is processed. And I'm taking you all over the place on medicine.

[00:39:31] Luke: That's good. No, I'm here for it, dude. Yeah, I want the whole spiel. It's something I've never covered on the show. It's a niche topic. And also, because I live in a bit of a silo, I just think, well, everyone already knows this, so why talk about it? But I realize there's still an HEB down the road. You know what I mean?

[00:39:53] I forget this sometimes. Every once in a while I'll go into a grocery store to get something, probably not food, flowers or something. I'm like, "Wait, what? What's going on here? Doesn't everyone know?" Even you go into Whole Foods, I call it Canola Foods, it's just like fucking seed oils everywhere. I'm like, "What is happening? So this is an important topic, an important conversation.

[00:40:13] Aleks: So one of the things I brought up, and if people are paying attention to this point is like I'm drifting off on different places, which is I was dehydrating liver. And so when my friend Mike Bledsoe brought me testicles, I felt like alive. So I'm like, "Hmm, testicles, Pottenger, testosterone, balls make it.

[00:40:39] Then I went and got my testosterone checked, and it was 844. So I'm like, "All right, that's a good metric." So then I ate balls for six straight months and I got retested, and I retested 900. So I'm like, "Hmm." And the thing is I didn't change nothing about my life. It had to be the same for this test to make sense.

[00:40:58] I couldn't exercise more, or I couldn't cold plunge more. I'm not going to like fix up my diet to the nth degree. It's like, no, everything has to stay the same for six months for me to test this. And all I'm going to do, eat the same, and I'm going to add one testicle a day and see what happens.

[00:41:15] Well, six months later it went up 60 points. It was almost like 10 points a month, it seems, it went up. The 844 for someone in their mid-30s is still a lot, and I already cut out the plastics and the fragrances. I don't drink out of plastics and glass.

[00:41:36] And so I cut out all the things that would impinge my testosterone already for years because I don't want to take any TRT, or I don't want to take any steroids or growth hormone, even though my body would probably love it. Because I used to be a bodybuilder. I used to be 240 pounds, and so I know you could be huge without steroids, testosterone, things like that.

[00:42:00] All you could do is train effectively. Most people don't have that connection to their mind and their muscles, and it stops them from training properly. So yeah, I ran that experiment, and I was like, "This is nice. I feel amazing. Every time I eat liver, my vision is clear. My thoughts are clear. My body feels better."

[00:42:17] I detox better. I sleep better. I'm like, "Okay, cool." I like this. And regardless of, I guess what we-- again, touching back on another point, which is the truth is going to withstand the test of time. Whether you have people convincing you that processed food is fine or drinking-- you see tons of health professionals out there be like, "Oh, artificial sweeteners are fine." [Inaudible], whatever, it's not going to kill you.

[00:42:42] It's like, there's some things that like, why are you trying to convince me that something not natural is a natural thing to do? It's like you're mixing those words again, like in the beginning of what we were talking about. Common is not normal, and some things that are common or not normal.

[00:42:54] And if it was normal, truly a set standard, then we would all be eating meats that were naturally foraged or forged properly, and we wouldn't spray chemicals on our food and we wouldn't denature our land. And it's like, that's natural and normal, but we've made things unnormal.

[00:43:18] Luke: Natural is one of those words that's been really twisted in the spell casting too. Speaking of going into a regular grocery store, some of them have a little organic section now, which even organic nowadays is dubious. But you go into these stores and you see a lot of products that are natural ingredients. You flip it around, you're like, "No."

[00:43:40] Aleks: Do you remember when McDonald's said--

[00:43:41] Luke: Cyanide is natural. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean it's good for you.

[00:43:45] Aleks: Do you remember when McDonald's said, we use now real 100% chicken? And you're like, "What the hell were you using before?

[00:43:50] Luke: Right.

[00:43:51] Aleks: I remember that when they started putting on the label. We now use 100% chicken breast or chicken. I'm like, "Ew, what were you guys doing?" Yeah, those kind of things. Natural, yes. Natural is one of those things where, if the cow is alive, it's natural. Most people don't know that every cow was grass-fed. So when you see grass fed, that means that it lived how every cow lives, is out in a pasture until it goes into a feedlot.

[00:44:25] So every cow is grass-fed for over half of its life. If you see grass fed, grass-finished, that means you could have given that cow pellets of grass in a feedlot. So you can still feed lot a grass-fed, grass-finished cow.

[00:44:42] Luke: Really?

[00:44:42] Aleks: Oh yeah. Whether you dump fresh grass or pelletized grass, it's all the same thing.

[00:44:48] Luke: Huh.

[00:44:48] Aleks: So that's why we put pasture-raised, because we can't have cows that have been inside more than 60 days in their whole life in an enclosed building.

[00:45:00] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:45:03] Aleks: So pasture raised, the claim by the USDA is never inside more than 60 days. And grass-fed, grass-finished, our claim is never fed grains. So our cows that we source never in their life have been fed grains, and they've never been inside more than 60 days. So these are the important caveats. And when you see organic beef, organic beef means they were fed organic feed. Could be whatever smorgasbord as long as it's labeled organic

[00:45:34] Luke: Oh, so it could be soy or corn or whatever.

[00:45:38] Aleks: Exactly.

[00:45:38] Luke: Huh, interesting.

[00:45:39] Aleks: So anytime I see organic beef, I'm like, "That's weird." They were fed something. Same thing with chickens. They were fed organic feed instead of being pastured and then picking off things in the chicken industry as a whole-- I feel bad for the chicken industry because they're stuck in these boxes of needing to grow a chicken to a certain size and you have these non GMO corn, soy, canola meal, which is the byproduct of squeezing the rapeseed and then draining all the oils out.

[00:46:10] And then you've taken all the beneficial oils out that a chicken may have used and now give them the fiber and the proteins that's left to a chicken. And then you got to grow them to a certain size. And so it's tough.

[00:46:23] Luke: Dude, I don't eat chicken just because I don't particularly like the taste. And I don't like eggs, but I eat eggs just for the benefit. Just raw eggs in smoothies and stuff. Dude, it's so confusing going to buy eggs. I'm in there for a freaking hour. It's like, okay, this one says pasture-raised.

[00:46:43] I look at the ingredients, it says vegetarian diet. I'm like, "Birds aren't vegetarians." So what vegetables are they eating? Oh, corn and soy. So I'm eating concentrated corn and soy essentially. And it's really hard to find eggs apart from a farmer's market where you can look the farmer in the eye and go, "What do you feed your chickens?"

[00:47:01] And they're like, "We don't feed them anything. They're just out in the field eating worms and grubs and shit." Okay, cool. So they're not vegetarian? Great. It's very confusing to find good, clean eggs. It's like the trickery and the labeling and marketing and companies just jumping on trends and these catchphrases and keywords. It's very deceptive and hard to navigate if you just want clean eggs.

[00:47:27] Aleks: And then people get discouraged when they find out like, ah, I thought these cows were outside on pastures all the time. And it's like, well, sorry to break it to you. And then the other fun part is whatever you-- that's why we went with the USDA label, because it has to be on there, which is why you see some USDA labels and they don't have the pasture-raise claim. But on the site, it does. On the site, you could pull whatever you want. But on your packaging, it has to be what's in there.

[00:47:55] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[00:47:55] Aleks: So our USDA processor has to label the meat and give us an affidavit of how the meat was raised. The manufacturer has to follow our recipe and what's on the ingredient label. He can't add or subtract anything or else if he gets audited, and let's say we find out, we're not liable. That's them that's liable.

[00:48:17] And then why would they want to be liable for-- they're following a recipe. And then same thing with us. Everything that's on that label has to be on that label because we can't lower our standards. We can't go and buy grass-fed, grass-finished, feedlot animals and put them in there if we can't find any of our own.

[00:48:37] And so I had to make sure I had enough sources, and as we scale, to be able to maintain I guess that quality. And the other thing is like, yeah, I don't argue with my farmers, which is why they're a little bit more expensive. So they tell me what the price of meat is and I pay for it. Because if they don't survive, then none of us will.

[00:49:01] Luke: I remember in the beginning when you were starting to think about this as a viable commercial opportunity. I was asking you about the scalability. You got a little batch of good, clean regenerative or pasture-raised liver. I'm like, "How many farmers are out there that are doing it that way?"

[00:49:21] And I think you said something like, with the organs, it's not as difficult as you might think because the public demand for organ meats is so low that the farmers are kind of like, "What are we going to do with this?" Versus your like ribeye steaks and things like that are more coveted by the public. Have you found that to be true? That the ranchers are stoked to have a market for the organ meats that they might not have as much demand for.

[00:49:46] Aleks: Some ranchers have an out, but they sell them for really, really low ball prices to restaurants and things like that. There's some organs that they would sell that they basically take out. They don't have to trim them. The restaurant will do it. Or shuck the heart or whatever, the sweet breads.

[00:50:06] And it's like for the amount of sweet breads that they could sell it for, or they can sell it for, it's almost not worth it. So then they collect it and then pass it on. And it's scalable to a degree. And what I've noticed is a lot of farmers, when I talk to them, they go, "I would love to switch my practices, but who would buy my meat?"

[00:50:30] I need someone to be able to buy these cows when I'm processing them. And if I can't, then my whole farm goes under and I'm like, "Okay, hang tight." And most farmers want to do what's right for their animals because they care about their animals. They're proud of their animals.

[00:50:47] If a farmer is grain feeding their cows, he is so proud of his meat, and he knows his market and he knows the people that like it. And again, do what you want with your body. This is me entering the market, showing a new way. And I imagine once farmers see it happening, they would be able to adopt knowing that their meat has somewhere to go and they could make money off of it.

[00:51:18] Because the cows, ultimately they grow twice the size when they're grain fed. And so twice the size, twice the meat. You can lower the price a little bit, get subsidized for food, for corn and soy and give it out fairly cheap. And then you have a business because you have all these grocery stores that will buy all the natural cows or the grass-fed cows all day.

[00:51:47] And so it will be adopted the more we give farmers a chance to see that this model works to like, "Hey, you don't have to buy feed for them anymore. Let them live outside." And we will pay a little bit more for them. It's fine. Again, once we get that swing, then I imagine more people will adopt that, because it is very troubling to know some of these farmers' finances that one bad rotation of cows can cripple their family business.

[00:52:25] And we both have an idea of who's going to come in and swoop up that lamp. So they got to do what a man has to do, and is provide for their family. Provide and honor their heritage and their cowboys and be a farmer. And they're doing within their knowingness what needs to be done.

[00:52:54] Through Paul Chek, I learned plenty of things, recapping back to you wanted to know the benefits of it. I think the biggest thing was actually doing it, because I have a textural issue. I didn't like heating testicles raw and liver raw. It was like, I didn't like the way it tasted, and never crossed my mind to freeze it and then capsule it.

[00:53:20] I was like, "Oh, this is what it is. You can't argue the results of what happens when you eat liver every day. I eat it every day, raw liver. If I have it, I'm eating it raw and when it's fresh. I eat so much freaking liver to taste samples and batches. Is this one good?

[00:53:42] Okay, great. This one's a little too hard? Okay, let's try this one. And then you have that whole vitamin A toxicity thing. You can Google how much vitamin A will give you toxicity. And they'll say 30 to 50,000 units of vitamin A, something like that. I'm pretty sure that's accurate.

[00:54:01] But then if you google how much bear liver it takes before you get sick, how much vitamin A bear liver you need, it's like 330,000 units. And that's eating almost a whole cow liver. Good luck eating a 20-pound liver in one sitting, to get that much toxicity. But bear liver is like a no-no.

[00:54:21] It's like too much vitamin A. Same thing with polar bear. Polar bear is, I think, a million units of vitamin A in the liver. So you eat a bite of it and you're probably going to die. So there's all this idea around this-- I think misinformation is maybe tossed out too much, but I don't have a better word for it right now, about scaring people away from real food.

[00:54:47] Oh, it's not sterile. It has bacteria. It's like, yeah, so does your gut. What are you doing with your probiotic pills? You're putting bacteria into your gut. Why do you eat sauerkraut? To put bacteria into your gut? Kombucha, kimchi, these are fermented foods. What are they? They're bacteria. You want to know another fun one that the USDA allows. So I think the USDA--

[00:55:09] Luke: Yeah, give me any whistle blowing inside scoop that you have.

[00:55:12] Aleks: This isn't even whistle blowing. This is on their site. They allow you to dip chicken in chlorine for, I can't remember. It's like up to seven seconds. But if it's under, if you dip under, you don't have to put it on the label.

[00:55:25] Luke: Oh wow.

[00:55:27] Aleks: But once you put air chilled, which means it was chilled out in open air, which chicken has to-- I don't know the chemical process that occurs when air interacts with chicken, but if it's not labeled air chilled, it was probably chlorine dipped under a certain amount. But if you dip it over seven or so seconds, you have to put it on the label.

[00:55:45] Luke: Oh man. That's nasty.

[00:55:46] Aleks: Yeah. So there's these little things. Then you start adding to your label like, "Oh, it's vegetarian fed and air chilled." And you're like, "Okay, great. It's air chilled, but it's fed corn and soy. Got it." So it's like legalese for the food industry. And if it does, as someone, I know you have spent a lot of time reading into how to be sovereign and had sovereign guests, I imagine on here, it's like, it does take a second.

[00:56:11] But once you piece through it, it becomes really easy. And even going local isn't always the best option. People in Montana, they're crushing the farming game. People in like East Texas, they're crushing this whole grass-fed, finished, pasture-raised thing. There are local farmers that are-- there's a farmer's market in Buda that has that. I'm like, "What do you feed your cows?"

[00:56:32] They're like, "Nothing. They roam outside, and they're fantastic." Longhorns, I wish I could remember their names so I can shout them out. But they're at the Buda farmer's market, and they're like, "Oh yeah, this is Betsy." And they have Betsy in a cooler. And then I'm like," Do you go give birth?"

[00:56:49] They're like, oh, they're easy. You walk outside, there's a calf there one day, and then now that cow grows up and then, no, they're in our land an hour and a half West. And we go over there. When it's time, it's time. And we say, goodbye to Betsy and process her and thank you and cherish her.

[00:57:05] And it's like, that's local. But then you can go to another guy who was like, "Oh yeah, this is grain-fed." And so it's going to be the best quality. You still have to ask the questions to make sure. And again, stay cool. Don't offend the farmer because that's their livelihood and that's their way of life.

[00:57:23] Luke: Don't be that guy.

[00:57:24] Aleks: Don't be that guy.

[00:57:26] Luke: I was listening to a podcast, and you're doing it wrong. What's the deal with-- lately I've been seeing murmurs of them-- they vaccinate the hell out of conventional farm to animals, but now there's talk of, which means they're probably already been doing it and been doing it for 10 years, is the mRNA vaccines in the food supply. Have you looked into that or heard anything about that?

[00:57:53] Aleks: Ours don't have it, which is great because they're their own processor. There's a small amount of processors that are in the United States. And that's actually one of the biggest problems, is there's not enough processors. So someone could be raising-- and I've talked to one of the farmers that basically I was looking at making turkey. And I was like, would you do it this way?

[00:58:16] He goes, "Absolutely." Problem though is, if you want 9,000 turkeys, I have no way to process them. You have to sign up to this processing facility. They say they'll only take 500. And you're like, "What am I going to do with 8,500 birds?" And if you process them yourself, you can't sell them nationwide.

[00:58:33] They can only be sold in the state. And he is like, "What am I going to do with 8,500 birds?" So then there's state inspected meat and there's USDA inspected meat, which is a nationwide quality control.

[00:58:42] Luke: Right, right. That's why most of the time the farmer is not the one who's actually doing the slaughtering and the processing of the animal. And that's where shenanigans can take place in between that supply chain.

[00:58:55] Aleks: So if a small farmer, for example, brings a 10-head to someone who is bringing in 1,000-head, so that 10-head has to be vaccinated, so that way that 10-head could infect the whole 1,010, and they're like, it's not worth it. And that's when you get those cross contaminations of processing.

[00:59:19] And you may have one that's completely jab free, but you don't know what you're getting because all that meat is being processed and sold. And it could be the same quality, but when they introduce new cows to other cows from different regions, they may be sick-- may, may not be sick.

[00:59:35] And so these kind of things are hard to piece together unless they're in the affidavit of the cow. But then, yeah, some processors will do it. And so you got to piece it together. Because that also could be a scare tactic. Because I'm like, "We don't have any--" This whole no hormones, we have to put it on our label, but it's illegal to give your cows hormones and [Inaudible] products.

[00:59:59] Luke: Oh, really?

[00:59:59] Aleks: Yeah.

[01:00:00] Luke: Oh.

[01:00:01] Aleks: Yeah. It's been illegal for a long time. No one really does--

[01:00:03] Luke: Interesting. I didn't know that.

[01:00:05] Aleks: Yeah. And then there's--

[01:00:07] Luke: Oh, man. That's funny because I'm always paranoid about that too.

[01:00:10] Aleks: Yeah. In our farm, because I've talked about this in our collective of farms, if an animal somehow stumbles upon grains, they get removed from the grass-fed, grass-finished aisle. So then they get moved into commercial. And it's like that's bad for farming because they could take this high quality animal and now you lose all this money on this animal.

[01:00:29] And same thing, like if a animal injures itself, gets bitten by something and it has to get antibiotics, it gets removed, and it gets put in a different aisle, which could be a more commercialized setting, maybe a fast food setting, where that meat is still legal to be sold, but not under these pretenses.

[01:00:46] So they immediately get removed, which is like the farmer tries to avoid because you spend two years raising this animal and then all of a sudden, a stupid mistake causes 4 to $8,000 in nothing.

[01:00:57] Luke: Because there's an investment in each animal because the market for really clean meat, like you guys are doing, is a smaller market, but a market that pays more.

[01:01:06] Aleks: Correct.

[01:01:07] Luke: So you ruin that cow prematurely. You spend all this time and energy to do things in the right way and then now they're like, [Inaudible], they get filtered off to the McDonald's line.

[01:01:18] Aleks: And if you're a farmer who has taken the time to regenerate a soil and rotate your cows and love on your cows, and you go out there and check on them, to then mess up your own cow, that's a heartache in and of itself. Yes, you process these cows. Yes, you harvest these cows. But every farmer I talk to, if you say, "Hey, how do you butcher your cows?"

[01:01:40] They're like, "We harvest them." They're very mindful over what language they use that is how they see their cows. Like, no, we don't kill our cows. We harvest them. That's rude. So I've learned to adopt. And some people will say, "Yeah, we kill our cows, and then we butcher them." It can tell you some things about where the mind of the farmer is.

[01:02:09] Like, oh, it's maybe more towards leading towards profit. Where I'm like, "Okay, cool." So I'm going to move over to people over here who are a little bit more, or a lot more, mindful over how they treat their animals. Because it is a sacred thing where people have lost the sacredness of the food that they're eating.

[01:02:28] Luke: That made me a vegetarian for 10 years. I learned about the atrocities of factory farming, and I was just like, "I'm out." And unfortunately, my teeth fell out, had a lot of problems. So I wasn't getting the fat-soluble vitamins. And then grass-fed and regenerative stuff started coming out, so I reintroduced meat.

[01:02:47] But that still is problematic for me morally when I travel and it's like, ah, we got to go to whatever restaurant. It's like, what am I going to eat? And I'm not going to eat pasta or something, so I'm probably going to eat something meat-related, but it's just standard meat. And so you know there's the karmic element of the suffering and mistreatment of the animal in that game.

[01:03:11] And then it becomes like, well, am I going to mistreat myself on behalf of an animal that is mistreated? There's a real moral dilemma in that. And having been hunting a couple of times and seen that process and also went out to Rome Ranch one time for a bison harvest. And you know Tim Kennedy, the ex-Marine guy. He is a sharp shooter guy, badass military dude.

[01:03:39] He was the shooter, and it's like the bison's way out there in the field. He's a great shot, and they went-- how did they do it? Oh, okay. So they took an ATV up closer. We were afar. And then Tim's up there with his gun, and they take the ATV pretty close, probably 50 yards from this bison.

[01:04:04] And the way they do it is really interesting because they've been eyeing the weakest one in the herd who is older and gets treated like shit by the young alpha males and stuff. They always get rejected by the herd and whatnot. So they're able to identify which one is the best candidate for that.

[01:04:25] And then it gets into sights. You hear a crack, and this big animal goes down. And when we went out there to see the bison, people are like, "Whoa." Because you're shook. It's like if you're not used to that sort of thing, it's fucking heavy to watch, especially a really big, powerful animal die.

[01:04:44] And he explained to us that the shot was right through, I think, right through the forehead. And he said, "By the time you guys heard the round, it was already brain dead." That's how fast. He's shooting a 308 or whatever it is. It's like 4,000 feet a second or some shit. You know what I mean?

[01:05:01] And so it's like we hear, boom. It's already over. And so it's like the suffering that that animal experienced was literally zero. And if you think about how animals die in the wild, through predation, etc., they have a lot more suffering throughout their life. So I've seen there is a way to raise livestock that involves less suffering than the natural world where they're being torn apart by wolves and cougars and shit. You know what I mean?

[01:05:32] And just tormented. Or they get injured and then they're just wandering around for six months with a broken leg until they die. And the scavengers come and eat them or whatever.

[01:05:41] So there is, I think, a way to infuse your body with animal products that involves little to no cruelty, but the confusion in between and the lack of immediate contact and knowledge of how that's actually going down as you describe these different processes with the supply chain, you have to be very discerning and really on top of it to know you're hopefully not involved in that unnecessary suffering and cruelty, which I don't think any sane, rational, normal person wants to participate in any animal suffering when it's not necessary to do it that way.

[01:06:24] Aleks: One of the interesting things is that people get a misconception over lions-- is they're like, "Oh, they kill whatever." But they actually don't. Exactly the process you described is they thin the herd. Who's the weakest. Even they eat the babies that can't keep up. And it's like, you don't need to breed, so we're going to take you out.

[01:06:43] And if you can't escape us, then good. And you see the mothers like, "Ah." And then move, rejoin the herd. They mourn in their own way. But yeah, they're not frivolously killing alphas of herds. It's like, no, that's the complete opposite-- is they kill the elderly, the sicker, the weaker, and people who can't keep up. And that naturally won't thrive because if they kill the alphas, then they're killing their own food source, basically.

[01:07:14] Luke: Right. That's interesting. That's interesting. So in nature's wisdom, the predators are actually ensuring a more effective evolution for that species of prey. And specifically of that herd or little pot of them. It's like actually, in a way, as brutal as it is, by killing the elderly and the young and the injured and so on, they're actually helping the fortitude of that particular herd. That's interesting. I never thought about that.

[01:07:45] Aleks: I think humans are the only species that have the luxury of dying in our own bed.

[01:07:51] Luke: Right.

[01:07:52] Aleks: Everything else gets torn apart in nature.

[01:07:53] Luke: Yeah.

[01:07:55] Aleks: We've evolved past that, which is pretty cool.

[01:07:57] Luke: My friend, Daniel Vitalis, used to be big in the raw food and vegan movement and stuff, and went out of that. And now he is a full hunter gatherer. He's got a really great show. Shout out to Daniel. It's called WildFed. And it's just all about foraging wild foods and hunting and fishing and stuff.

[01:08:13] And we were talking about our past as vegetarians and just how we were trying to reconcile that morally. He's the one that really turned me on to the fact that prey animals in the wild just live brutal lives. They're just tortured 24/7. That's why their eyes are where they are and the way their ears work. They've evolved to be under constant threat of predation. And when they do get killed, it's brutal. It's not a 308 round to the head, an instant harmonious death. They're getting ripped apart while they're still alive.

[01:08:49] Aleks: It takes a lot to kill a wild animal. It takes a lot. You see guts spilling out, and they're walking around eating. You'll see hunters post pictures and like, "Oh, there's a buck with an arrow that broke three ribs, went through, calcified over the rib." Thing still lived on for that long to calcify over the arrow. It's like they do live really intense lives in constant fight or flight and checking their backs 24/7.

[01:09:18] And it's like, yeah, it's quite interesting. Something I did want to share that I learned from Paul that has helped a lot of people, and I want to bring it up again, which is, when you go out to a restaurant and you know that you're about to eat something that has been potentially treated poorly, commercialized, I tend to hesitate to tell certain people this without context because it's like the enzyme whole thing.

[01:09:47] It's like, oh yeah, take these enzymes, and it'll help you with your gluten intolerance. And then they're like, "Great. I can eat gluten now." And you're like, "No, don't." I'm like, "Great. I can buy cheap meat and pray over it?" Yes, but your dollar funds that industry.

[01:10:02] And it's like if you vote with your ballot, it has less impact than when you vote with your dollar. Whatever you put your money into is going to grow. So if you're putting money into better quality meat and better farming practices, that industry has more to expand.

[01:10:22] Luke: It's also going to make things more affordable. This thing a lot of people aren't in a position to buy expensive supplements and biohacking technologies and shit like that. I'm just like, you need more wealthy people to buy all that shit to create the demand so that it becomes scalable and the manufacturing of said things become cheaper." And then all of a sudden, it's like that's what everyone can afford.

[01:10:43] It just becomes standardized. Years ago, organic food was exponentially more expensive than poisonous food. And now it's a little more, but not as much as it used to be. The scales have balanced a bit now in those ways, and it's just because more people are aware and the demand goes up.

[01:11:03] Aleks: So one of the things that you do is, depending on how involved you want to get, especially at a restaurant, is you put your hands over the food and you relax and you feel the warmth. It's different than heat warmth. You feel. Let your body relax into it, and you're going to feel maybe some tingling over your hands.

[01:11:24] That's the vibration off of your food. If you try to do that over some processed food, you're not going to feel anything. It's going to feel dead. And I've done some experiments where I have people close their eyes and I go, "Okay." I wave their hand over some dead pasta and they're not going to feel anything.

[01:11:39] And I put it over a watermelon and they're like,
oh, I feel some tingles. And I go, take off the blindfold. Because I set this up with blindfold, they don't know what they have in front of them. And they're like, that's alive. That's dead. Now you know how to tell the difference.

[01:11:53] And so you put your hands over it, and you relax your shoulders, relax your neck, and you feel for the tingles, where you feel the vibration of the food coming in. And people pray over their food all the time. And so you pray to the animal and you say something along the lines of whatever's honest for you.

[01:12:11] Like, hey, I feel a lot of sorrow for what you went through. I know that your body is going to be used for good, and I'll make sure that-- I am in this restaurant and participating in whatever it is, but I want to make sure that you know that your body is going to be used for something beneficial in this world. And so that way other cows or other species are going to be treated more fairly. This is the circumstance I'm in.

[01:12:43] And the body will be received, the food will be received a lot better. And you're going to notice you're going to have less bloating, less indigestion, burping, things like that because you're harmonizing it with your intention. And again, not a call to do that with all food, but even let's say someone who is at a lower economic status that, let's say, truly can't afford really high-quality food. That can still be practiced.

[01:13:10] Knowing that I'm doing my best. You're acknowledging the animal that gave it life because it's still alive. You could feel life. When you eat, you have enzymatic activity, and that's why you eat-- is like, do you eat for the enzymes and the live food? Which is why you need to take enzymes when you eat something that's dead.

[01:13:27] Because when you eat something that's alive, including liver and heart an kidneys, and if you can get a hold of pancreas. Spleen, I have not figured out how to eat. Someone can teach me how to eat spleen. Holy smokes. Shout out to all the people that dust all that stuff because that's--

[01:13:43] Luke: Dude, have you ever-- side tangent. And I love this concept too. I'm sure you have, but when I was out at Rome Ranch, and they harvested that bison, they're just opened it up, pull out the harp, pull out the liver, and they start serving it to us. And one of the ways they served, I think it was liver, was they would take some bile and cover it in bile. It's so hardcore, man. It's nice because it takes the gamey flavor out of it, but bile is some hardcore stuff. It's like freaking battery acid. Have you ever had like fresh bile?

[01:14:20] Aleks: No, I heard--

[01:14:22] Luke: It's a trip. Talk about life force, a bite of an organ meat that's soaked in bile is just like, whoa. It lights your brain up. It's crazy.

[01:14:32] Aleks: I don't know if this is true. I heard it was the Native Americans playing a joke on Americans or on the people who came here and they're like, "Oh yeah, put it on the--" And then they're like, "Oh."

[01:14:42] Luke: It could be. Yeah. So the Americans are like, "Oh, we don't want to eat that anymore. It's all you."

[01:14:46] Aleks: Interesting. Yeah. That might be the case, but I could be wrong. Because if you feel like good life force out of it, then might as well eat it. But the interesting thing is how the digestive system works as you chew. You have enzymes in your mouth. It goes in your stomach. If you don't have enough hydrochloric acid to acidify your stomach-- so when people drink water or beer or drinks with their food, they're basically diluting this--

[01:15:10] Luke: Or alkaline water.

[01:15:11] Aleks: Or alkaline water. Exactly. 30 minutes before, 30 minutes after, it's good. But while you're eating, you're basically neutralizing your stomach acid. You're going to get a heartburn and digestion. You're not going to digest your food. It's going to go into your stomach, and it's going to rot-- or your intestines. It's going to rot and it's going to ferment because it's not digested. And so when your stomach contents need to be acidic enough, so if people are feeling heartburn symptoms, they go get some HCl

[01:15:38] Luke: Dude, that's so funny you mentioned that. I had heartburn for years and years. Maybe 10 years or something. And some of it was due to just eating gluten and shit that I didn't know about at that time. But I learned about hydrochloric acid, the HCl pills, and I started taking those with meals.

[01:15:57] It took me, I don't know, three months. I never had heartburn again. And now I don't use them. It's crazy. It's so counterintuitive to eat a really potent acid, a really low pH substance when it feels like you have too much of that. It's so counterintuitive that you actually have too little. And I fix myself.

[01:16:18] Aleks: They say that the liver can make bile, but it's not enough. So anyone with a missing gallbladder that is finding out about this now and it's already too late, has to take it. I've had so many clients that came with missing gallbladders because bad food choices, whatever it is.

[01:16:37] I'm like, "Well, you're on HCl the rest of your life and bile." They're like, "For how long?" I'm like, "Every meal. You don't have a gallbladder." And so what ends up happening, when your stomach is acidic enough, goes into your small intestine, your intestines go, "Yo, this is way too acidic."

[01:16:55] Releases bile. If your stomach is not acidic enough and it goes into your small intestine, because you've drank water and neutralized the acid, your body doesn't release the bile. And so then the bile also is what helps kill the parasites all over your food. And so when people eat raw meat and let their body digest and let the bile come out, and if your liver and gallbladder aren't working properly, because they're already backed up, and then you're trying to do this fresh, then you were told that liver cleanses don't work and might as well not even do it, it's like, even if it doesn't work, try it. You'll get a huge benefit.

[01:17:35] I accidentally cleaned my gallbladder once. I fasted for four days. I made my dog food, so I put a bunch of chicken in for the dogs, and it made a whole bunch of bone broth. And so I'm like, "All right, I'm going to break my fast with this." Go to sleep. Threw some butter, some cayenne, some salt. And I got up and it was like a 50 cal on a helicopter, one of those, do, do, do. And I looked down and I was--

[01:18:00] Luke: The gallstones?

[01:18:01] Aleks: Yeah. And it was the most painful thing. I was like, "Am I going to die?" But then I'm like, "Oh, everything's brighter." I could see better. What the hell have I been doing? And I looked down and I was like, why is the toilet green? And then I pieced it together. And it's important when you're switching a lifestyle from unhealthy to healthy, to letting your body adjust to the new. Because as you're putting new things in your body, people don't notice that their body's cleaning out the old. It takes time.

[01:18:32] It's like you can hire a cleaning crew, come in and make your house look spotless. But with your body, it takes some time. Your intestines have to clean up and open up. And when your intestines open up, you have all the bacteria that are trapped in there, and you're going to feel worse.

[01:18:45] And don't let that confuse you if you're doing the right things. Don't let it confuse you as like you're going backwards. Nope, you're moving forwards. Detox is not fun. And give time. Your poop will get worse, then it gets better, and then you do the next thing and it gets worse. And then it gets better.

[01:19:00] And then you look at things that are objectively true, like your skin gets better. You notice that your energy levels, your thought process, your emotions get more steady. And it does take a lot of time for that to occur. So if people are going to be taking the HCl, getting the bile, give it a second for that to work.

[01:19:21] Luke: The liver and gallbladder cleansing is so powerful. It's one of those things that's not sexy, so it goes in and out of trend. But I know it's real because it was probably at least 25 years ago, I did my first couple, and I had that experience of all the green pebbles coming out.

[01:19:39] It's like, what the hell? And then, I don't know. It's not that fun and convenient to do. So I did it a couple of times and then forgot about it for 25 years, however long. And then maybe a year ago I was like, "Eh, it's probably time to do it again." And I've done a few of them since then. And now I don't get any of the stones anymore.

[01:19:57] And I thought at first it was like, ah, maybe it's my liver's so clogged up that I'm just I got to do a few of them. But every time I do it, I don't get any, I still do it because it still has a lot of benefits. But when I first did it, it was not that-- it was a little challenging and I didn't feel great because I was so backed up. And now I do it and it's like, oh my God, I just feel amazing. It's not difficult at all other than you got to follow a regimen for a few days. But yeah, I agree that all of that kind of detox work and--

[01:20:25] Aleks: Parasite cleansing.

[01:20:26] Luke: Yeah. Making those changes. Yeah, you got me on a parasite cleanser when I was working for you. All that stuff gets easier and easier because the toxic load over time goes down. If you keep at it, it's not so overwhelming and it doesn't knock you back like it does in the beginning.

[01:20:39] Aleks: Yeah. And you're not feeding other things. You're not feeding fungus. You're not feeding parasites. Because most of the time you're feeding the critters that are in your gut. I can't remember what the book is called. It's called the Parasite Epidemic. It's a small book, but most people have hook worms.

[01:20:57] Most people have round worms. You have pets. You got to cleanse yourself. You're going to pick it up walking out outside. And the more unhealthy you get, because parasites are there to decompose dead matter. And so the more inflamed people get, the hotter they get, and insects see in infrared.

[01:21:12] So if you light up on an infrared, all hot, extra hot, they're like, "Oh, cool. Decomposing matter. I'm going to go eat the skin. I'm going to go eat gut." But if you walk by a berry bush and you don't see red berries, you might walk right by this bush and you're like, "Oh, okay, there's nothing on here."

[01:21:27] But if you're hungry and you walk by and you're like, "Ooh, red berries," you're like, "These look familiar. These look like raspberries." And you are going to start eating them. Or they're blackberries, whatever they are. You're like, oh, I recognize that shape, that size, that color.

[01:21:38] I'm going to eat this. But if it's not present, you're going to walk right by it. Real blackberries look like poison ivy. So you can walk easily walk by this plant. And so that needs to be also done. And there's plenty of cleanses, and it's not like a three-day juice fast.

[01:21:56] It's like, no, there's some herbs you got to take, and you clean your colon out, and you got to remove food out of your system. It's actually better because you're saving tons of money on food because literally your budget is like--

[01:22:09] Luke: Fasting is cheap.

[01:22:10] Aleks: Yeah, fasting is so cheap, and it works. And you hit that fourth day and your body starts using up what it has lacked the energy to clean up. It will tighten up skin, and it'll eat up dead tissue, and your body will use that as fuel and burn it all up. And yeah, you create autophagy in your system. It's fantastic.

[01:22:32] Luke: I wanted to talk about deficiencies going back to you speaking on retinol. And I'm not convinced about this vitamin A toxicity thing. I think it's like clickbait. But to be fair, I haven't looked that much into it. What I know is this, is that most of us that grew up in a Western country eating from grocery stores and fast food chains, we're not getting our vitamin A. We're not getting the retinol. We're not getting these fat soluble vitamins, vitamin E.

[01:23:01] These things are fundamental to biology. And so if we're growing up on Pop-Tarts and donuts and cereal and whatever, say the first 25, 30, 40 years of our life, and then we start feeling shitty, so we get into health, to me it's like, I'm into mega dosing all the things that I didn't get earlier in life because you're talking about decades of deficiencies.

[01:23:25] So even whatever the standard recommended dose is-- I love cod liver oil for it's vitamin A. I've never once thought about, oh, I'm going to be vitamin A toxic. It's like my body's starving for vitamin A. Same thing with liver. So I just personally am just like, if you look at the ratio of what is inherent to a natural human diet, a wild hunter-gatherer person, they would've from ingestation in their mom's belly would've been getting just loaded with all these nutrients.

[01:23:55] They would've been breastfed getting all those nutrients. And many of us don't have that experience. It's like a multi-generational deficiency, especially now where we are in terms of generations. So the question there is, as the organ meats have come back into popularity, at least in our little microcosm of health, a lot of companies sell these desiccated capsules. And I think that's great for those of us that find it inconvenient or just not tasty to get the organ meats.

[01:24:28] I don't feel like you can get enough from the capsules. It's like to get one of your bars here-- I don't know how much liver's in one of these.

[01:24:38] Aleks: I can tell you.

[01:24:39] Luke: Oh, okay. I'm sure you can.

[01:24:40] Aleks: I already did the math.

[01:24:40] Luke: But I'm like, if I eat one of your bars or I eat a chunk of raw liver, I feel like that's 57 of those capsules or something. So I keep the capsules around. I eat them sometimes, but it's like I'm taking so many pills on a daily basis. Generally, I just don't have the stamina to add in tons more.

[01:25:01] So what's your take on getting organ meats in the form of capsules that are desiccated or freeze dried or whatever, versus the way you're doing it, which is actually part of food that you actually eat as part of your diet?

[01:25:16] Aleks: When you desiccate, you lose some of the nutritional value. Some say will be like 40 to 60% when you desiccate something. Also, the good news is I mentioned spleen is hard to eat. And the fact that they put all these organs that are really hard to eat in there, I think that's a benefit.

[01:25:34] 25% of the stick is all liver, and it's whole, and so we put it in whole. And same thing with the heart. We take the whole liver and the whole heart and we chunk it in in the proper ratios. And you're getting the peptide chains intact. When you freeze dry something or desiccate something, you break all that up into dust and all those chains start to break apart as well.

[01:25:56] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[01:25:57] Aleks: I was talking to one of my doctor friends, Nathan Riley. I don't know if you--

[01:26:01] Luke: Yeah, I know Nathan. He's been on the show.

[01:26:04] Aleks: I play curious with him, and I'm like, "What did doctors say about digestion? Because I'm trying to get more information that macronutrients aren't the solution to your problem. It's not the law of thermodynamics. I've seen people who don't eat and gain weight. Make that make sense.

[01:26:22] How does someone gain weight perpetually eating less? And people who eat a whole mountain lean up. So I'd ask him like, "Okay, in the medical system, does everything break down to proteins, fats, and carbs?" And he goes, "No, 10% of it does. The rest goes into peptide chains, amino chains. And then your body will transfer the whole thing to where it's needed." Thank you, Nathan.

[01:26:50] And then so when I look up the pills and you look at the liver and the heart content, if you eat one of our sticks, that's like taking a week's worth of liver pills.

[01:27:02] Luke: I knew it. That's the feeling I had.

[01:27:07] Aleks: One stick. Yeah. So basically a whole bottle.

[01:27:08] Luke: And they're hella expensive too. I get the convenience of them. Let's face it. I don't know if-- I was going to say few people. I don't know if I've ever met anyone that's like, "I love liver, especially raw." You know what I mean? It's like you got to be psycho or a true caveman.

[01:27:26] So I get that with the pills. And I can travel with them and things like that, whatever. But yeah, I've just always felt like you're not getting a big enough dose to really move the needle, especially if you have some chronic issues going on. It's one thing just to have a baseline of bioavailable minerals and these fat soluble vitamins and stuff that are so prevalent in organs.

[01:27:48] But if you have some problems going on and you're trying to heal and recover from something, to me that means, and this is not medical advice, but in my case, that means I need to go way above and beyond and be mega dosing way more than what four little capsules of liver are going to give me.

[01:28:02] Aleks: Plus they're fat soluble vitamins, so they get stored in your fat, used later. And if your body is deficient, then it's going to use it. On top of that, kids gravitate to the product a lot, and so one of the things is like, I can't release a product knowing that it's not healthy for people because I won't be able to sleep at night.

[01:28:22] And you'll see, won't mention names, but whoever created that device that has a little Apple logo on it and they're like, "Oh yeah, I don't let my kids go on those things." And it's like, so the producers of a product won't let their family consume the product openly. And yet, like, all my kids take this to school. The one in college comes home, I give her a bunch of sticks.

[01:28:50] Luke: This is a great solution for kids because you don't even have to tell them. It's like when I was a kid, my mom would make me eat-- thank God she was well intentioned, but I wasn't getting Captain Crunch. It was granola. I wasn't getting Wonder Bread. I was getting like whole wheat sprouted bread and whatever.

[01:29:07] It's like it sucked because it didn't taste as good, a, I'll admit. But a lot of it was just like, "No, I want what the other kids are having." So it's like if your kid is having a Berski bar, this looks and feels exactly like a freaking slim gym from the gas station. But unbeknownst to your kid, they're getting mega dose with all these incredible nutrients that is probably lacking from their diet and needs to be there for them to develop in a healthy way.

[01:29:36] Aleks: So my youngest--

[01:29:37] Luke: It's like a Trojan horse for the superfoods, basically.

[01:29:39] Aleks: Yeah. And my youngest, she eats the liver and the heart. She's a champ. She loves it, and she gives it to all the friends that come over. Oh my God, she's so proud of me. It's the cutest thing ever. And brings me so much joy. When she like runs up, you got to try my dad's jerky.

[01:29:53] She'll rip open the bags that I gave you, the old version, pure liver. And then you see a bunch of 6, 7, 8-year-olds gnawing on liver walking around. And I'm like, "That's so cool." What I've noticed is when you give this to kids and you give them a big one, they'll chew, chew, chew, chew, chew.

[01:30:09] And they'll be like, "I've had enough." Their bodies know when they've had enough essential organs because it's still a live product. It's still a live meat stick that you may notice that you eat one, and you're like, "Hmm." And then I always say, "Eat five." After five, your palate changes, then your body starts craving it.

[01:30:30] And then you'll find yourself, like you're saying macro dosing. You may eat 5, 6, 7 sticks until you're like, "I think I got what my body needed." And then you start eating it when you're like, oh, I'm hungry. And the other thing is you're actually getting real protein and fat.

[01:30:49] So back to that macronutrient thing, you're actually getting substance in your system on top of massive amounts of nutrients. And when you're in a coma, you don't need essentially macronutrients. You need minerals and vitamins to stay alive. And this is [Inaudible].

[01:31:06] Luke: Well, that's an important distinction too in the organ meats, is the minerals, bioavailable minerals. I talk about minerals all the time because I just think they're like the unsung heroes of health and biohacking. Minerals are kind of boring to people.

[01:31:21] They're not give you tons of energy. You don't get the discernible immediate effect from them. But it's literally what runs our entire biochemical and bioelectric system. Most people are so either out of balance with minerals or deficient. So we think, oh cool, so I'll go buy these like powdered pills, most of which are not bioavailable. They're inorganic minerals.

[01:31:45] Or you drink mineral water, which is inorganic minerals that you can't assimilate. The minerals in organs are so fucking powerful because they were minerals that were rocks. Plants turned them into bioavailable minerals that ruminants can eat. But then the ruminant animals eat them, concentrate all those former rocks into incredibly bioavailable alive spark plugs that you can then eat.

[01:32:13] To me, that's such an important part because I think we think about the vitamin A and things like that, but where else are you going to get copper in your diet? Where are you going to get adequate levels of zinc? These are minerals that are just crucial to health, and it's very difficult to get them in a way that your body recognizes and uses when you're talking about just powdered supplements and stuff.

[01:32:34] Aleks: Yeah. Carl Young talks about when you eat food, you have to kill the consciousness of the animal, or else your body turns into the animal. Because if you have LEGOs and you remember the box and you rebuild it as the box, you're like, "Oh, you're going to get whatever your picture is." So your body has to break it down until it forgets that that thing was a cow, which is like peptide chains, amino chains, glucose.

[01:32:57] Luke: That's interesting.

[01:32:57] Aleks: Yeah. Or else your body can't rebuild it, or else you turn into a goat.

[01:33:01] Luke: That's funny.

[01:33:02] Aleks: Yeah. And so it's already assimilated in a live creature. Your body recognizes that this was a natural substance bound to another natural substance that your body knows what to do with.

[01:33:16] When you start talking about artificial dyes and colors and sweeteners, your body doesn't know what to do with, and you're hoping your body detoxes it. You're hoping. But what most of the time it accumulates. And that's the biggest problem, is not the eating of it, is the accumulation of it. Because then, again, back to the whole health space that's like, drink Diet Coke. It's good for you. It won't kill you. It's like without. That's a great argument.

[01:33:47] But when you have things like sucralose and aspartame in one product, but then it's also in your protein bar and then it's also in the fountain drink and then it's also in your snacks that you're eating and that your kids are eating with dyes, it's like you are getting 10 doses of it, maybe 15 doses of it accumulated throughout the day, depending on what you're eating or drinking.

[01:34:12] Then you take some water flavoring drops into your water and then you have another dose of that. And so you do accumulate these toxins. And since we're talking about people's livers not detoxing because they need to be on a liver cleanse and a gallbladder cleanse, which is the organ that detoxes you and the kidneys that detox all your liquids, it's like if those are backed up and those have their own processes physically, emotionally, mentally, that they need to process, so if they get congested, why do people have their stomach locks up and they're like, "Oh, I can't think straight?" And their stomach hurts.

[01:34:45] You digest your thoughts and your intestines. Anxiety is processed in your stomach. That's what people get butterflies. When they're thinking about someone, it turns into butterflies or it's anxiety. It's like, oh, I'm really anxious right now. And they feel it usually in their stomach.

[01:34:59] And so then when people are anxious, they usually don't eat, or they eat too much. So it's like they mask their anxiety by either not eating or eating too much until the point where the stomach stretches and they go, "I can't even think about anxiety right now. I can't think about anything because I'm so full."

[01:35:18] So when you bring real nutrition back in, kids, they'll eat exactly what they need. And I've seen two-year-olds eat a whole 15-gram protein stick, almost two ounces. And so undried, I don't know, it's close to three ounces of meat. And you're like, "Are you okay?" Poop's still good, energy's great. Kids are a great metric.

[01:35:43] Luke: I'm going to order a box of your Berski and send them to my little brother, Cody. He's got two babies because they're really into the primal stuff. I'm so curious to see how his kids react. Because they're already eating a lot of healthy stuff. I don't know if they're eating raw liver and whatnot, but they're definitely not eating Cheerios and McDonald's and shit.

[01:36:01] But it'd be interesting to see-- I don't know, I like the idea of kids and watching them take to something. Because you know that they're still closer to nature. Their taste buzz, their digestive system, they haven't been as long divorced from the natural life way of a wild human.

[01:36:20] They're as close as you can get to wild before they come domesticated by the system and grocery stores and all the things. It's a good just an observational thing to see what they gravitate toward. I do that with our dog sometimes. I'll try a different-- I give them the BEAM minerals and put it in this food and not in that one and see which one they go for and shit. Just to try and learn from the wisdom of animals.

[01:36:44] I think kids have that same kind of wisdom. There's a lot to learn from them and the way that they, like you said, they eat half a bar and they know they're full, because they don't have the mental programming to go for food to satiate an emotional deficit or something like that. Right?

[01:37:02] Aleks: Yeah. You see a box, and no one's ever frowning on a cereal box. They're always smiling and the kids are smiling and they're like, "If they're smiling, I'm smiling, and I'm eating this thing and I'm smiling." And maybe 30 minutes later I feel terrible and I have a stomach ache and I'm bloated, and they don't associate it.

[01:37:16] But that's what the parents' role is for, is to look after your kid. And again, there is no shame or judgment towards people that are doing their best. And then when they learn these things-- I have clients that are 70 years old that are repairing their bodies and getting healthy again.

[01:37:36] Even my father-in-law now lives at our house, and after 80 something years, dude doesn't drink water. He moves in, he's drinking now water. He's going on walks. It's the environment that you create that breeds people wanting the best versions of themselves. And from a man's perspective, this is where I stand.

[01:38:00] Like, "Hey, do you want a margarita?" "No, I don't want one." "Do you want a drink with us?" "No, I'm good." "Oh, that's weird." "Is it? Okay. That's weird to you. That's fine. I know where I stand."

[01:38:11] Luke: That's like me when I go to a restaurant. I'm like, would you like some water? Eventually I just learned to be like, "Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'd love a glass of tap water." And then it just sits there. Because you tell them no, it's like their head explodes. I'm going to be the weird guy that's doesn't drink the-- I don't even drink good water with my meals for the reasons you described earlier of just digestion and stuff.

[01:38:31] But hell no, man. I'm not going to touch that tap water that's been in someone's butt a few months ago. And if you're in a city, it's been reprocessed and purified and now you're taking on all kinds of weird energy.

[01:38:42] Aleks: Then it has ice in it. And you've seen all the things when they break open an ice machine and you're like, "Ooh." If you haven't seen it, look it up. Or don't, whatever.

[01:38:50] Luke: Yeah.

[01:38:51] Aleks: I think they measured ice in fast food chains is dirtier than the toilet water.

[01:38:58] Luke: Oh damn.

[01:38:59] Aleks: Yeah, because it's fresh water coming in every time.

[01:39:01] Luke: That's funny. I just think about the mold. If you look at your HVAC system, how they're so prone to growing mold on the coils to the point we had to put a UV light on our shit to stop it from making mold because the condensation. How do you think ice machines make ice? It's the same thing as a-- it's a mini-HVAC. Hella mold in those things.

[01:39:21] Aleks: Yeah.

[01:39:21] Luke: I want to let people know, before I forget, if they want to try your Berski bars, here's what you do. Go to eatberski.com/luke. And if you use the code LUKE, it'll save 10%. We'll put that in the show notes, but the spelling is E-A-T-B-E-R-S-K-I. Berski. eatberski.com/luke.

[01:39:47] Oh, by the way, before I forget, kudos on making your shit taste really good. Because even when you were giving me your early prototypes before it was even a brand or a product for commercial sale, like I said, you managed to make a liver taste really good to the point where I would look forward to getting those strips when I come by to see you.

[01:40:08] And then you'd have your new, this one was Cajun. This one salt and pepper, whatever. They all tasted really good. These are freaking better than the shitty versions that are totally toxic in the store. And audience, you have my word that I'm telling the truth more so than just hooking you up with some sales. They're really good.

[01:40:28] But what I want to ask you about, we talked about a little before we recorded, is going back to identifying things to look for in terms of ingredients. Because when it comes to packaged foods that need to have a shelf life, there's a lot of shady shit that goes on in there.

[01:40:49] And I can understand from a manufacturer's point of view, you're going to use preservatives because if you sell 10 crates of said product to a chain store, and they all go bad before they sell, someone's losing money. So I get it. Foods need preservatives. But when it comes to cured meats and bacon and stuff, there's a lot of weird shit with nitrates.

[01:41:11] The thing that always bugs me is MSG. Most of us know that monosodium glutamate is really, really bad for your brain and your body, and it makes you hungrier and fatter. It's just the devil. Maybe that, and aspartame. There's a few of the really bad ones. But these companies that make meat products like yours can use MSG and they somehow lobbied the USDA or FDA or whatever, where they can call it spices or yeast extract.

[01:41:40] You can go online. There's a list of 150 freaking terms that are in so many of the foods we eat, and it's actually MSG. And then you have the citric acid that's derived from black mold. There's all kinds of shit that you read on the label and you're like, oh, that sounds good.

[01:41:55] Citric acid, they probably squeeze some orange peel in there. It's like, well, natural flavors, natural sweetener, natural colors. There's so much trickery going on. And knowing your integrity by just knowing you personally and what you will put in your body and what you won't, I know is going to dictate what you would sell.

[01:42:16] Unpack for us some of the labeling nuances and things, not just that you've done it right with your stuff, but just what do people want to look for that are some of the harder to identify things that are actually toxic, even in "health foods."

[01:42:33] Aleks: Where do I start?

[01:42:36] Luke: Start with the preservatives. I think when you're talking about cured meats, that's the one that is tricky, because it's probably really hard to preserve meat that could go bad. But there's better and--

[01:42:47] Aleks: But once you preserve it-- so the USDA works on water activity levels. Once you drop a past a certain water activity levels, it is deemed safe for bacteria not to breed.

[01:43:02] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:43:03] Aleks: Because you need water to breed.

[01:43:04] Luke: Like the idea with jerky. I love the survival shows, and so when they get a big animal, the first thing to do is smoke all the meats, cure it to get the moisture out so that it doesn't attract bacteria, flies, etc.

[01:43:16] Aleks: Correct. Because bacteria can't reproduce.

[01:43:18] Luke: I'm going to eat one of these right now. Do you mind?

[01:43:19] Aleks: No, I don't mind at all.

[01:43:21] Luke: Talking about them, I got really hungry. So I'm just going to roll. So you keep doing the talking while I'm chewing.

[01:43:27] Aleks: Perfect. Where was I at before you take a bite?

[01:43:30] Luke: Preservatives and the water content in meat. The USDA in terms of their rules of what's going to encourage bacteria growth.

[01:43:39] Aleks: So based on their standards, they recommend a water activity level under certain amounts based on how you're going to package it. If it's going to be packaged in a loose bag, then it has to be under a certain amount, like under 0.75, 0.7, which to the audience may not mean anything, but it means it's dried to a certain point where if it's put in a bag with a moisture absorber, it'll last a year.

[01:44:04] If you're going to have a-- that's why we went with a vacuum seal option. And so it's cooked, and it can get to that below 0.85, which is naturally not going to breed bacteria based on the USDA standards that they found. But then we vacuum seal it and removed all the air out of it so that way they can continue that process.

[01:44:26] Luke: It doesn't oxidize either.

[01:44:27] Aleks: Correct.

[01:44:29] Luke: Which will ruin your fat soluble vitamins.

[01:44:31] Aleks: Correct. It's a great, great distinction.

[01:44:36] Luke: And also you could still technically market the fat soluble vitamin content and not tell your customers and potential customers that because there's air in there and it's oxidizing, you just ruined it. And in the final product, it's not really going to exist anymore because it's been adulterated. Yeah. These are so freaking good, dude.

[01:45:00] Aleks: Thank you.

[01:45:01] Luke: Kudos. Thank you for bringing me a huge box of them.

[01:45:04] Aleks: You're welcome. By the time this comes out, we will have salt and pepper up and launched.

[01:45:07] Luke: What is this flavor?

[01:45:08] Aleks: This is only salt.

[01:45:09] Luke: Oh, okay.

[01:45:10] Aleks: Yeah. So we released the salt one only because that was the first one we wanted to release, because it was the one that no one could object to eating because there's no nightshades. It has salt. It has celery. And then it has beef, liver, and their heart in there. But the pepper's a nightshades, so some people don't do nightshades. So I'm like, what can everyone say yes to including--

[01:45:30] Luke: Are people really that sensitive to nightshades where a trace amount in a bar or in a stick like this--

[01:45:36] Aleks: Some people.

[01:45:37] Luke: Really?

[01:45:37] Aleks: Yeah. Some people will break out around their lips and they'll get bloated. Their skin will get irritated.

[01:45:43] Luke: Wow.

[01:45:44] Aleks: Yeah. Most people don't even know they're allergic. They're eating healthy and they can't fix their symptoms. And then let's say they're mold intolerant and they have citric acid. Citric acid and then a little fallacy between squeeze a lemon peel on there.

[01:45:57] Well, that's not how the manufacturing industry does it. And this is what we're talking about, which it's derived from a black mold culture into sugar. And then it creates this chemical reaction, and then there's a nine-step process to remove the citric acid from that reaction it creates.

[01:46:13] So then there's like a, I think it's eight to nine steps before you get citric acid. And then when you introduce it into the meat industry, first of all, 80% of all citric acid is used in the food industry. And it's made by three companies, three big companies. They can buy them in drums and barrels and things like that. And you can't use the stuff that you get from, you know citrus because the chemistry doesn't work in the manufacturing process.

[01:46:40] Luke: For meat products.

[01:46:41] Aleks: For meat products. Because it won't acidify the meat. You're using citric acid to keep the moisture by acidifying the meat to a bacteria level that is non reproducible. So you keep water content, but you acidify the meat. So that way it kills the acidity, kills the bacteria, and you got to pull it in a certain time or else it becomes too acidic and it ruins the flavor of it.

[01:47:05] And if you put it in right in the beginning, then it essentially acidifies the meat and it's not cooked. So what they do when you see encapsulated? Because remember, three companies make this encapsulated citric acid product. What are they encapsulated with? A vegetable oil.

[01:47:23] Luke: Oh really?

[01:47:24] Aleks: Because vegetable oil melts at between 130, 150 degrees. So from the very start, it has to be encapsulated because they mix it all together, all the spices in the big tumblers, and then they put them in the casings, then they put them in the smokehouses, the ovens, whatever people use.

[01:47:40] There's different mechanisms of dehydrating and smoking meats. And so when the internal temperature gets to about 130 to 150, you have that release and the melting of that citric acid or the fats, which exposes the meat to citric acid. And then they have a timer between when they have to pull that meat out, when it's properly acidic and doesn't taste too acidic, and the meat is also cooked, but also not fully dehydrated. So now you have vegetable oil in a potentially clean product.

[01:48:17] Luke: Interesting.

[01:48:19] Aleks: That you're consuming.

[01:48:20] Luke: Just when I think I know the worst of the worst, I talk to people again. I'm like, "Ah, it's actually worse than I thought."

[01:48:26] Aleks: And the interesting thing is-- so then you have lactic acid. Lactic acid, people are like, "Oh, I make it in my muscles." You can make lactic acid with rice. You can put rice in the water, strain out the water, leave the water exposed to air for three weeks, and you have lactic acid on top of it. Creates the little foam and stuff like that. Again, you can't use that in the industry of manufacturing meats. So you have to--

[01:48:56] Luke: You picked a hard industry, it sounds like.

[01:48:58] Aleks: Yeah. Because I'm looking at all these dehydrated products. Because again, it's like when you're taking pills or you're taking products that are dehydrated, you also have to account that your body has to rehydrate them.

[01:49:10] And so if you're eating protein powders, which is, let's say a 30-gram scoop of protein, your body has to rehydrate that protein completely. Whether it's in the bottle or inside your body, it has to completely rehydrate. Where's that water coming from? It's coming from you. And that's when people get constipated and things like that.

[01:49:29] So when you're on the run or a post-workout, you have to account for that much water. And everyone knows what happens when you leave protein powder in a bottle too long. You have to throw the bottle away because it's disgusting. And to rehydrate that 30 gram scoop is going to take a lot of water, at least 60 grams of water to rehydrate that scoop. Try it out, 40 grams of water, whatever.

[01:49:57] Luke: Interesting.

[01:49:58] Aleks: Yeah. So that's why it's like, hey, it's not fully mixing. It's like you got to put more water in there and then you got to fully reconstitute it. So lactic acid, it comes from the Streptococcus [Inaudible]. When you're younger, you get strep throat when you're a kid. Same bacteria that they put onto sugar, and it creates that scenario.

[01:50:19] And then you have the other ones that they put it onto non-GMO things, but it's a stain bacteria that they put onto healthier substrates that create that lactic acid fermentation process. And then they extract the lactic acid from that and they make it for the meat industry.

[01:50:39] So again, it's like, even though it's inert, it's dead, when you put that into your body, your body still reacts to it. And you can go on lactic acid forums and people are like, "Man, I get the same dairy allergies when I eat something with lactic acid." Found out lactic acid mirrors the same as dairy inside someone's body.

[01:50:57] But really it's these dead bacterias that they put into your system that your body is also now reacting to. So now your body is trying to assimilate meat while fight off of potential infection that it doesn't know whether it's alive or dead. So it still has to treat it the same.

[01:51:15] Luke: So someone, for example, that has a really strong lactose intolerance is probably going to react to the lactic acid that's in their meat stick and have no idea that that's why they're getting the reaction from it.

[01:51:31] Aleks: That's what a lot of these forms are talking about. So I looked into these things and I'm like, what about citric acid allergies, lactic acid allergies? And there's forms out there of people are like, "I'm glad I found these forms because I thought I was going crazy." And now it's this. And it's like, I already cut out dairy and gluten and all the other things.

[01:51:51] I don't eat eggs either. And most of the other stuff is like, most people use whey. And whey was a discarded product back in the day. And then they started dehydrating and giving it to animals and then they started giving it to people. And now it's like this huge commodity thing.

[01:52:09] Luke: But you're not down with whey.

[01:52:10] Aleks: I can't eat dairy. Yeah. It messes me really bad.

[01:52:12] Luke: Yeah. I remember talking to you about that because I was drinking a bunch of raw milk when I was coming to you. And I still wasn't fully convinced because I really like it, but that raw milk made me hella fat, dude. I didn't realize how many calories I was getting.

[01:52:29] I was like, "Oh, raw milk. Weston Price. Go." And then I was chugging a gallon of that a week or something, and I was like, Michelin man. It was brutal. But on the whey protein, I've sought out, I don't know, I think it's like the whey isolate is the better one. Kion makes a great one, grass-fed, pasture clean, all that stuff. Probably does great for a lot of people. But I've AB tested whey protein gives me a lot of gas.

[01:52:59] I am like a freaking motorboat. And actually, Alyson was the first one to notice. She's like, "How weird. You're now blowing up the house today. What'd you eat?" And I'm like, "I don't know. Nothing." She's like, "Did you eat one of those smoothies?" I'm like, "No." She goes, "Okay." Takes note.

[01:53:13] Started to see a pattern there. If I have that whey protein, it's going to happen. We're going to be blowing it up. So I had to stop. It feels good to be full and it's really fast, but I don't get that when I eat your bars, which probably has-- well, this is 15 grams of protein, but I'm getting all these minerals, these fat-soluble vitamins, I'm getting, I'm assuming some collagen.

[01:53:34] Aleks: And how much of this are you actually digesting versus how much are you digesting of the 30 grams of protein? How much are you assimilating into your system?

[01:53:42] Luke: Right.

[01:53:43] Aleks: And a lot of the times, I recommend, because I'm also a health professional and practitioner, I recommend protein powders for people that have very weak digestion. Because it doesn't take much to digest it and dissolve it and get it into your system.

[01:53:55] So before we go on the cleansing and go through all that, it's like, no, keep drinking that. It's a great on the go thing. You can put powder in a bottle. You can get water pretty much anywhere now and fill it up. Worst case you don't have access to a Berski, whatever it is.

[01:54:15] You have protein powder that you want to go through at home. There's uses for it. But when it comes to my values is like, I'd rather eat real food that is close to the actual real natural format, not the adulterated natural that we're accustomed to hearing.

[01:54:36] Luke: What about collagen protein and gelatin protein?

[01:54:43] Aleks: Collagen and gelatin, I don't see a problem with it. Again, it's only the dehydration factors of it. It has to be reconstituted. I think it's great when you take into account that most people don't eat ligaments and tendons and it's gross and the silver skin on things. They don't chew. Our last podcast we're talking about teeth. People don't have the teeth to chew through these things and--

[01:55:06] Luke: Totally.

[01:55:07] Aleks: They don't make pho like the Vietnamese do with tendons, and they're not eating this stuff, or bone broths. Bone broth is a craze kind of now, which is great. People are getting collagen into their system and it's like, "Oh my God, I didn't know that when I drank basically bone juice, all that good stuff that my grandmother's been making me when I'm sick is actually good for me."

[01:55:31] Luke: You're hip to the food sensitivities. What do you think about the histamine issue with bone broth? Have you found that to be problematic with yourself or with clients at all? Because some people react to it like they would sauerkraut or something like that.

[01:55:44] Aleks: Interesting. What kind of bones are they using? There's also a thing, like how are they cooking it? If anyone makes bone broth at home, the first thing they notice is the impurities that come off of the bones. If you don't skim all that white foam off the top, it basically gets too hot and it breaks down and goes back into the bone broth.

[01:56:03] Luke: Oh.

[01:56:04] Aleks: So when people make bone broth in a pressure cooker, you're not skimming off the impurities. It's pressurizing it so much. For example, if I was making bone broth in a pressure cooker, I would first boil the bones and then wait for the impurities to come off. Your house stinks when you're cook in it.

[01:56:22] And you got to skim it all off. The water almost won't boil unless you skim it. But the moment you skim it all off, then all of a sudden, the water starts boiling and you see it boiling through. Turn it off, pressure cooker, instead of keeping it on the stove for two days.

[01:56:34] Because beef bones, like the best format is two days. And so then you throw it into pressure cooker. And then I'd be curious to see people who do it that way, if they do have histamine reactions, assuming they get good quality bones, assuming they don't use any-- some people are allergic to garlic, like we're talking about nightshades, pepper.

[01:56:50] They put pepper in there, cayenne. Maybe it's a gut irritant and then they get a reaction from it. Or they're using unrefined salt, whatever. But I'd be curious if they were using all the best ingredients to scoop off all those impurities that come off the top if they still would have those reactions.

[01:57:05] Luke: I wonder if that would help-- it seems like lead wouldn't float, but from what I understand, lead can be a problem because it accumulates in the bones and you have animals that are drinking irrigation water and sniffing chemtrails and whatever. They end up really huge animals like that with big ass bones end up over time bio-accumulating a lot of lead. I haven't tested any bone broth, but it's a theory I've heard floated, so I wonder if doing that skimming would help with that impurity too.

[01:57:38] Aleks: It'd be fun to test what you're skimming.

[01:57:41] Luke: Yeah. What's in it? You probably don't want to know.

[01:57:44] Aleks: Yeah. I am still very curious. Because what you're describing, I've never had an experience with. And I also do heavy metal cleansings, so maybe that's another reason why I don't accumulate too many heavy metals. And parasite cleansing and heavy metal cleansing pair very well together.

[01:57:59] Because when parasites die, they release heavy metals. So that's why some people attribute it to die off. But it also could be heavy metal toxicity. I can't remember the statistic. I think it's like they hold 10,000 times their weight a parasite and heavy metals. So when it dies and gets released, the parasite dies in your system.

[01:58:19] I always picture Sonic the Hedgehog landing on spike and then all the rings come out. Now that's what you're getting sick by. And so when you pair-- if you've never done one, you have to ease into it, because it'll light you up. It can make you-- what's the word for it? Chelate. Chelate.

[01:58:40] When it chelates you too quickly and then it has to be pulled out of your system, it's a lot for your body to process. So honestly looking at, okay, where's my health? Maybe looking at some other people that you've deemed are healthy. Paul Chek, he's a great person to look, how healthy am I under that?

[01:58:59] And then you can go down the list of your favorite influencers and then go like, okay, where do I line up? Am I not even close? Am I on this new guy's journey? Maybe I should start with the lowest dose. People often forget that they have to live the rest of their lives in their body and they want it right now because that's what we've been trained.

[01:59:15] You go to school to get a education now. You go to a job to get money now. That's why people don't start their own business, because they want money now. They don't like to invest their own money because it's like they want to invest other people's money.

[01:59:24] They want it now. And again, these are all leveraging tools, but we have also been trained by Instagram to get our dopamine now. We get our food now from a restaurant, from a fast-food joint. We hardly cook anymore. I was blessed being Ukrainian. My mom cooks. They literally left yesterday and she's like, "I made you all this food. Here you go."

[01:59:44] And I'm like, "Oh, this is so awesome." This is what I grew up with, home-cooked meals. Where I trashed myself is outside of the house. I'd be like, "Oh my God, is that a hot dog? Is that pizza? Oh my God, can I finish that?" People wouldn't finish their food. That's where I trashed myself, is outside of the house, not inside the house.

[02:00:00] Because my parents are generally healthy eaters, and I had to train them of like, no, no, no, no, no. This wheat is not Ukrainian wheat. No, no, no, no. This is not a bun. This is all these additives and preservatives and things that they hide in the spices. Which is public information. You can go onto the USDA's website, and they will tell you what is allowed inside of the word spices.

[02:00:25] Luke: Oh man, that one's the one that gets me, especially with jerky and meat products. Whenever I see that, I'm just like, "Not today, Satan." Not that I typically eat at a gas station, but I don't know. There's times you're in the little airport market and you're like, "I need some protein and some fat." And you look at the jerky. It's like, eh, it looks okay. Spices. I'm out.

[02:00:44] Aleks: Yeah. There's another misconception with monosodium glutamate. It's a sodium chain. Comes out of sea salt. It's in sea salt. But it's a cluster of all of the available bonds that make sodium. Sodium nitrate. You get sodium bicarbonate. That's baking soda.

[02:01:03] You can take sodium chains and turn them into things. And when you isolate MSG, it creates problems in the system. When you isolate and concentrate sodium, nitrates, it creates problems in the system. But when you have a sea salt that comes out of a seabed that once sustained life, that's a fun one.

[02:01:25] If you take sea salt, put it in fish tank, will it sustain sea life? Probably. If you take some iodine salt and you mix the concentration to like, whatever fish need, 3% salt to water ratio or whatnot-- sorry to all the sea life experts. I don't know. They probably won't sustain life.

[02:01:45] The bonds in that salt won't bind to oxygen. They won't sustain life for the fish inside of that water. So you have to have sea salt that was once in the sea. And that's why Himalayan salt won't sustain sea life. And it's like, those are different chains of sodiums and different complexes that are bound together over many, many, many years.

[02:02:07] And so when you take salt out as unrefined sea salt, bed dried out, now they're shoveling all these salts and drying them out in the sun, people are worried about all the heavy metals inside of it. That's the earth. Your body can process earthly materials. There's a guy on Instagram who tests everything lead.

[02:02:27] And he'll go to some kind of like hobby shop and he'd be like, "Oh, let's test out these ceramic cups." And you'll like spray liquid, lead. Ceramic plates, lead. And it's like, that's where the big problem is. It's not like the salt that you're eating, and your body could process that. Remember the big craze about there's arsenic in the chocolate?

[02:02:48] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[02:02:49] Aleks: There's arsenic in your apples. In high concentrations, it's bad. Putting stress on what you're eating, especially if it's good quality, your body will process that. It's the other thing. It's like have you seen like the people testing the bottom of their Stanleys, lead?

[02:03:07] Luke: Really?

[02:03:09] Aleks: Yeah. You take a dye. You could buy it on Amazon, swab it, and then you spray this liquid, swab, spray the swab, and boom, lights up pink or something like that. And you could test everything in your house. What has lead, what doesn't.

[02:03:20] So you're getting leaching effects constantly from other things and blaming it on something else, which to me, again, it's like you go get dirty. What are we told? What are we told? Go play in the mud, drink out of the hose. I'm not concerned with things that are found in nature.

[02:03:34] Obviously, if you're near like a mining shaft and you're near a fracking zone, where it's like-- and same thing with even fluoride. It's a sodium fluoride. It's found in salt. But when you frack it and you concentrate a certain type of fluoride and then you introduce it to the water, that shouldn't be there, it creates problems because fluoride also binds to your pineal gland in place of iodine.

[02:03:59] So iodine is good for your pineal gland, but fluoride and iodine are very similar compounds. And so since your pineal gland is magnetic, it'll attract things to it, including the water that you drink since there's osmosis that happens.

[02:04:14] So there's no barrier or lock and key. It gets magnetized right to there, and people have calcium. Like when you got your 3D mouth scanned. The first time I got it five years ago, I was like, "What the hell is that little dot in my head? And my dentist made a joke.

[02:04:27] She was like, "Oh yeah, your pineal gland's calcified." So I was like, "No, I'm going to get rid of this". So in comes the Shilajit. In comes the Irish sea moss. And then the last scan I had, I had no little dot in the center of my forehead.

[02:04:40] Luke: Really?

[02:04:40] Aleks: Yeah. I was really excited about that.

[02:04:42] Luke: That's cool. I didn't even see that on mine.

[02:04:44] Aleks: That's a great sign.

[02:04:46] Luke: Yeah, maybe I just didn't notice it.

[02:04:47] Aleks: You do way more of the biohacking stuff to clean your system out than I do. For me, I like to see what works, and so I need to keep as little factors in my body as possible. Like when I cut out fungus out of my system, so I had like fungus all over my feet. And in theory, I knew that you can get rid of it through diet. It took me two years to kill the fungus in my feet, of like no sugar, zero. Meats, vegetables.

[02:05:19] I followed the Doug Kaufmann diet, like green apples, berries every now and then. Took two years to get rid of that with no antibiotics or parasitics, cleaning that out. I wanted it to see how long it would take. And that's the experiment I held on myself. So the fact that you're doing probably a lot more therapies than to keep your body--

[02:05:36] Luke: I've been megadosing Shilajit for a lot of years. Just intuitively. Even before it was trending, I did a little research. I'm like, "Fulvic acid, humic acid, bioavailable minerals, micronutrients, micro minerals." There's probably shit in Shilajit, it's not even on the periodic table.

[02:05:57] Ormus and just spooky stuff like that that's really good for you. On the pineal gland, and then I want to ask you something, because we forgot to talk about how you solved the preservative issues, so I want to go back to that. But first on the pineal gland--

[02:06:11] Aleks: Hopefully, I answered all the sneaky ingredients.

[02:06:12] Luke: Yeah, you did. You did. Yeah. I always wondered if that was just-- things get thrown out into the thought sphere, ideas about, oh, fluoride calcifies the pineal gland, for example. And I'm like, "I don't know." You hear people say that, but sometimes someone just says something and you hear it repeated. I saw a friend of mine on Instagram last night saying that if you take exogenous melatonin, that it downregulates your body's production, which I used to believe.

[02:06:41] Turns out that's not true. The world's foremost expert on melatonin has proven in a lab that that's not the case. My friend is well-meaning, but that's just one of those things that gets thrown out on a podcast or on social media. And we go, "Oh yeah, I heard that." And then it's just true, but it's not.

[02:06:57] So I had a neurosurgeon named Dr. Jack Kruse on the show, who's been on a few times over the years. He's way overdue for another one. And he's a brain surgeon. He cuts open brains all day long. I was like, "Finally someone's give me the real deal." And I'm like, "Jack--" And this would've been on one of our prior episodes if you want to hear it from the horse's mouth.

[02:07:15] I forget the number offhand. It was in 2017 or something. I said, "Is it true that drinking fluoridated water and so on calcify the pineal gland? Because you've cut a bunch of brains open?" He is like, "Oh, 100%." And I asked him, I said, "Oh, so is it like when you get limescale in your sink or your shower? It's that hard calcium deposit?"

[02:07:37]He goes, "No, it's not like that at all." It's mushy. It's a white doughy substance. And the older someone is generally, the thicker it is. But you could literally just scrape it off. It doesn't actually calcify in the way that we think of calcify.

[02:07:53] Aleks: Like coats.

[02:07:54] Luke: Yeah. But it does. It's this thick, milky doughy substance. And over time, you do bioaccumulate it. And there's probably all sorts of detrimental things in your experience. The spiritual side is one thing, but I don't know. The organ's there for a reason. It's not meant to magnetize all of this fluoride because you're not supposed to be eating fucking fluoride your whole life.

[02:08:18] So I can say conclusively from someone that cuts brains open, the calcified pineal gland is the real deal. But I don't think I asked and was like, "Okay, great. How do we fix it?" Which we know Shilajit and different things like that are said to improve it. You have some empirical evidence of having one of those scans and you see a little dot there and then you apply a protocol and it's gone. That's pretty cool.

[02:08:39] Aleks: I think the only thing I did, I take Shilajit every day, and I don't know what you consider a mega dose, but every time it tells me--

[02:08:47] Luke: I take about a gram a day.

[02:08:48] Aleks: Yeah. I dip the stick, half a gram and turn it. Whatever glob comes up. Like a paint brush, no, no. I'm like, dip to about half and then I scoop and then goes right into the mouth.

[02:09:00] Luke: Yeah. I got lazy. I used to buy it bulk, by the kilo from some woman in, I think she was in Siberia. She showed me the lab testing and stuff, metals and mold and stuff. It seemed legit. But when it was hot out, it would turn into that tar that was really hard to dose. And then if it got cold, it would turn into a rock.

[02:09:20] So I was like, “This is such a pain in the ass.” There's a company, I don't know if you know, Manna. They make these little packets, and they've liquified really pure Shilajit with ormus minerals from the Dead Sea. It's epic. It's the most convenient way to do it. But I've also found there's a company, Mitolife, that makes little tablets, and you just pop them out of the thing. You pop five of those out.

[02:09:42] I think five of them is a gram or something, and they're really good for travel. They don't melt. So I love Shilajit but when it's in the form you're describing, it's not that user friendly.

[02:09:50] Aleks: No. Or like when it sits sideways and someone tips it over and then you open, you are like, "It's like tar coming off."

[02:09:57] Luke: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Before we wrap it up, tell me how you solved the preservative issue in your meat sticks. Because now we talked about all the things that you looked into and we're like, "I'm not doing that." So you managed to do it in a really short period of time. Maybe it was a year, year and a half ago when you first had this idea, or am I-- my sense of time sucks.

[02:10:20] Aleks: I think it was three years.

[02:10:22] Luke: No way. When I was coming to see you?

[02:10:24] Aleks: It's three years ago.

[02:10:25] Luke: No way.

[02:10:26] Aleks: Yeah, because we've been working--

[02:10:26] Luke: That is not even possible. I would swear on a Bible, it was no more than a year and a half ago.

[02:10:32] Aleks: I know it's over a year and a half because I had to renew my GS1 codes, and I was like, "No way. Has it been a year already?" And that was in April. And I know I stewed because I want to give you credit.

[02:10:45] You're the one who tried it, and you were the one who was like, "You need to do this." And I kicked the can down the road for at least six months, making it, making it. And that's when my business partner Ricard, who is a family owner of Eleiko, the weightlifting company.

[02:11:02] And he came in with this idea to start a protein bar company. And I was like, "No, I don't like protein bars." And he is like, "Think of something and get back to me." So then I gave him some liver and he came back to me and goes, "If we can make this palatable, then we got something." And that was like three years ago.

[02:11:23] Luke: Oh shit.

[02:11:24] Aleks: So I know we started doing it around--

[02:11:26] Luke: So I was very impressed you did all this so fast. That it still is fast, but in my warped perception of time, I was like, "The dude just thought of this a few months ago and now it's here." So what was the process of doing your research and finding out, oh, I don't want to use this? I don't want to use that. To get the things that are toxic or unhealthy out. What was the process like of trying to find a way to do it that you felt really good about in your own integrity?

[02:11:53] Aleks: Research is life. So you get a product and you're like, "Oh, it's grass-fed, grass-finished. Maybe it says regenerative on the website, regenerative, and then you're like, 'Preservatives, damn it.'" Then you find something with no preservatives and you're like, "No, it's not grass-fed. It's feedlot." So back and forth all these things that nothing ever lined up.

[02:12:13] Luke: This is me every time a brand emails me and is like, "Hey, promote our stuff." It's like I go right to the website, zoom in on the ingredients. I'm like, "No, 90% of them are just garbage."

[02:12:25] Aleks: I think the worst thing we have is the celery, which has-- celery in general has an abundance of nitrates in them, sodium nitrates. The good news is they have the full spectrum of sodium. So you're getting the clusters of salt molecules, where the higher concentrations of sodium nitrates can be processed.

[02:12:52] So that was the worst devil that I could deal with. When I gave you those sticks, I could make them 100% preservative free. And you can't say preservative free because salt is a preservative. So there's nuance in that.

[02:13:05] Luke: Oh, interesting.

[02:13:06] Aleks: Yeah. So anything that you put salt on, you can't say it's preservative free. So we do use preservatives, which is salt, is considered one. And people forget. You can literally salt crust something, and it'll dehydrate it over time, and then you crack the salt, and salt will dry it out and kill the bacteria all by itself. It's fantastic.

[02:13:32] And so when I found about-- I think it was Paul that says, "Look into some of these things." So I'm like, "All right, I knew about the MSG. I don't want to use that. That's like, I feel gross when I eat that." And I can't stop eating when I eat that. And then potassium sorbate. What the hell is that? Why does that need to be in there?

[02:13:52] Or titanium dioxide. Why does that need to be in there? To preserve color or whatever they use it for. Why? Why do I'm putting titanium? I don't want to do that. So it was like going through these things and I'm like, "You know what? Call the manufacturer."

[02:14:07] When I was doing strips, before I go back into calling all these manufacturers, this product without the casing on it is jerky. If you slap a casing, the same product, and you take the stuff that I originally gave you in a strip and you stuff it in a casing, it's considered a sausage or a meat stick. It's not really jerky.

[02:14:28] Luke: Huh.

[02:14:29] Aleks: So I know you loosely use the word jerky, but it's actually a snack stick or a beef stick or a meat stick or a sausage. The moment you put a casing on it, there's a whole new branch of the USDA that it comes in contact with different regulations. So it's either you have to dry it out so much that it's hard to chew.

[02:14:50] And I'm like, "Okay." So then basically I scoured the USDA's website and found water acidifier. And I looked up all the acidifier and I was like, "Okay, citric acid." Can we find a citric acid that's made from citrus? No. Can we find lactic acid that's not made from streptococcus? No. So then I was like, "Okay, what can we do? Can we up the salt content? No, it's too salty.

[02:15:16] So then I'm talking to manufacturers because the strips became too laborious to make, and we would've had to invest a million dollars in machinery when they were like, "Why don't you make the sticks?" And we're like, "I don't know if I want to make the sticks. I can't find a way to make it good."

[02:15:34] And he is like, "We can try celery." And I was like, "Hmm. So what would we have to do to make celery?" And this is the 30th manufacturer I've talked to. And everyone's like, "No, that's not how we do it." They always quote the Wisconsin study. And the Wisconsin study says you have to cook it at 170 degrees, which at 160 the enzymes start denaturing. And so then the absorption goes down.

[02:15:56] So we cook ours under 160 degrees to preserve the enzymatic activity. So you don't denature. You cook eggs too hot. What happens? We all know it denatures the proteins and the egg white. Okay, how does Gordon Ramsey teach us how to do it? Gordon Ramsey? Yeah. That slow cook method. On and off, on and off.

[02:16:15] Cook it so that way it stays fluffy. And it's like, okay, that's heat. Remove heat. Keep them from overheating and the pan getting too hot. When I ate eggs, that was my favorite way to cook them. And so I'm like, "Okay, what are we going to do about this?"

[02:16:29] And so the 30th manufacturer played ball and he was like, "Okay, we could add this, and we have to find--" And so we found organic celery juice, and they're like, "No, that's not how it works." I'm like, "Then we have this." "No, no, no. That's not how it works." "We found these powders."

[02:16:43] "No, no, no. We have to use celery juice for manufacturing. And we're like, "Okay, let's try it." So then he made us a batch, and it took-- I think I nailed it on the first shot when I was like, 25% liver, 5% heart, the rest meat. He made them, and I was like, "These are great. This is perfect consistency. Whatever you're doing, that's the recipe."

[02:17:07] So then I tried them on some of my clients who have immune problems, oxalate problems. They react digestively. Before I even moved forward with having celery being one of the things, and I was like, "Try it. Tell me if you react." Histamine reactions, forgot about that one.

[02:17:27] And I was like, "Try it, try it, try it." And they're like, "Yeah, no histamine reactions, no problems." So I'm like, "Okay." So then I tried it on my family. Obviously, we're all eating it, and other people, they're eating it. I'm like, "You get any weird--" And they're like, "No, I feel great. I feel like I get no bloating."

[02:17:42] And I'm like, "Okay, I can live with this for now." And so that's the preservative that we chose to use because after about seven, eight months of running it through so many people, it became closer to a proven thing that people aren't reacting to it. Because again, I wouldn't be able to sleep at night knowing people are reacting to it.

[02:18:05] Luke: Epic dude. Well played.

[02:18:07] Aleks: Yeah.

[02:18:08] Luke: Let you be an example for anyone that wants to start a food or supplement product. I get it. People like to make a buck. I understand. Different people have different motives. But I know people listening to this show are the elite class of discernment.

[02:18:27] And I can tell by the messages I get. Because I'll, I don't know, promote something that has citric acid and I'm like, "Yeah, I get it." My metric is, do I use it and eat it, drink it, whatever. If it's good enough for me, then it's good enough for other people, even if it's imperfect. But some of the stuff out there, even in the health space, is just garbage.

[02:18:48] Because it's bottom line. People raise a bunch of money. They got shareholders they got to make happy. Even if the founder has ideals and principles they want to live by, it's like at the end of the day, funny gets cut off. There goes said company. So I'm sure it's a lot harder when you're actually the one in the driver's seat than the armchair expert, me sitting here. You need to do it right. But it's just fucking awesome when someone does it right.

[02:19:15] Aleks: Yeah.

[02:19:16] Luke: Congratulations and thank you.

[02:19:17] Aleks: Thank you.

[02:19:19] Luke: Yeah, man.

[02:19:19] Aleks: I think a good message to even say out loud is, if you're doing all the right things and then you have something that has citric acid in it, that one minimized exposure may not be a problem. If someone, let's say they're recovering from mold toxicity, might be a problem.

[02:19:39] So it's like everything is nuanced. CHEK practitioners get a bad name for being zealots. You live by this holistic bible and it's like, yes, but you have to-- some people can get into the cold plunge right away at the coldest temperature in Norway in the winter. And some people, you have to graduate and slowly every day turn the jacuzzi into a coal tub. And it's like--

[02:20:08] Luke: You start at 65 degrees. When I was in Indiana, I went swimming in the lake because it was still quite cold out. It was in the 50s. Got in the lake, and I was like, "Ah man, this ain't shit. It wasn't cold. And then I just thought, I wonder how cold it is.

[02:20:25] And I didn't have a thermometer, So I looked it up online. It was 61 degrees. And I was like, "That's cool man that 61 degrees is not shit to me." I'm not trying to be tough. It's just years of 35, 38 degrees daily, sometimes multiple times a day cold plunging. It was a congratulatory feeling toward myself for just building up my resilience as someone who hates cold weather. I hate snow. I don't like being cold at all.

[02:20:51] Aleks: Congratulations. Your body has mastered your body regulation temperature, and it can keep your body regulated in cold weather. And that's something that's the whole point of why people cold plunge, is not to stress out their sympathetic nervous system. One of the big things is to be able to regulate your own internal body temperature because if it gets too low, you stop functioning. If it gets too high, you stop functioning. Congratulations.

[02:21:20] Luke: You know what's funny with the cold plunging? I hear people say that, you're going to fry your adrenals and you're full of cortisol and whatever. I don't know. I'm sure that's true for some people. And I think the rules of engagement are quite different for females and cold plunging than males, just for a number of different reasons.

[02:21:38] And thankfully people are starting to understand that and having different expectations of female bodied people. My wife is not getting the cold plunge. It totally stresses her out. It feels like shit. Dude, cold plunging to me is the thing that calms me down more than anything.

[02:21:54] If I have anxiety for any reason, I'm nervous about something, poor sleep, whatever, took too many fucking stimulants or nootropics and I'm freaking out, ice bath. Boom, instant calm.

[02:22:04] Aleks: Mm-hmm.

[02:22:05] Luke: That seems to have the opposite effect on me. I don't find it like stimulating at all.

[02:22:10] Aleks: One of the biggest gifts that I learned-- and you're like, "Oh." Because I stopped using a cold plunge for quite a little bit. I started getting sick, and I was like, "You know what? I think that's the break time." So I stopped taking, and people are like, "Oh, you have two BlueCubes at home. Why aren't you using them? They're sitting there unused."

[02:22:27] Almost in a you are not practicing what you're preaching type of thing, and I was like, "Listen, the biggest gift I got from cold plunging is back to the very beginning of this conversation of the masculine mind." When you first get into a cold plunge, your mind goes crazy, first and foremost. Tells you to get out, leave, jump out. You're going to die. You can't control your breath.

[02:22:51] And the moment you can get past that first minute and you can push yourself past that first minute and sit in there and your body's fully sympathetic, adrenals are getting burned out, whatever people are saying, but once you get your breath under control and then you recognize that you're in pain and things hurt, but it's okay and you're breathing through it and you're safe, the biggest gift I got is I take the coal tub everywhere. So if I'm in a stressful environment and someone's telling me to put a diaper on my face, back in the day, there's the coal tub.

[02:23:25] Luke: Totally. Yeah, because it's the same process of self-regulation and taking agency over the nervous system and what it wants to do, which many of us are controlled by the nervous system and we don't even know it. And then we do something stupid and we go, "Why did I do that?" Well, your nervous system did it. You didn't even do it. You just didn't have the agency.

[02:23:44] You just reminded me, a couple of weeks ago, we had a friend of ours visiting who's Russian, Ksenia, and we were out at Aubrey's ranch out in Lockhart, and they have a couple coal plunges there. And I was in and out of it every day.

[02:23:58] We were there for a week and that was like, oh my God. It was hot as shit. So it was beautiful. It's out in the sun, and it's the perfect setup. And one morning I was getting in there and she's like, "I haven't done this in a really long time. I'm nervous, but I kind of want to try it. Will you kind of coach me through it?"

[02:24:14] And the first thing I told her is like, "Hey, man, this isn't an ego thing. Listen to your body. You might just get in, take a dunk, jump out. That's beautiful. This isn't a contest." She's like, "Okay, okay." And I said, "But I'll walk you through it." Anyway, coached her just on the breath.

[02:24:32] For me, you share the same perspective. It's not even about the physical benefits. It's a psychospiritual practice to see how quickly you can calm down because of the effects, as you described, that spread out into your life and you find yourself able to stay steady in the eye of a storm.

[02:24:52] So anyway, I gave her this whole spiel. She gets in. I'm just guiding her through breath. She's a little, whew, a little tough first couple minutes. Next thing I know, she's just chilling. Breathing's totally steady, normal. We didn't time it, but she's probably in there for three or four minutes. Totally calm.

[02:25:12] Maybe it's because she's Russian. You guys are built different. I was telling you, I got stung by a scorpion. I go outside and I'm peeing on it. I'm freaking out. I think I'm going to die because I don't understand scorpion stings in Texas. Turns out they're not big of a deal. So I'm outside. I'm actually soaking my pinky in a glass of pee.

[02:25:33] She's like, "What are you doing, dude?" I said, "Ah, I got stung. I'm just trying a little folk remedy. Just intuitively seemed like a good idea." She's like, "Oh, interesting. You got somebody scorpion?" I said, "Yeah." She goes, "Yeah, I think I did too." She had a big welt on the side of her face. She's just chilling unfazed. I told her, man, Russians are built different. But anyway.

[02:25:55] Aleks: Use the sauna.

[02:25:56] Luke: What's that? Use the sauna if you get--

[02:25:58] Aleks: Bee stings, ant bites.

[02:26:01] Luke: Oh.

[02:26:02] Aleks: I have bees. And so one stung me in the face, and after three days, I looked like I did one of the Jenner challenges. My lips were like this big.

[02:26:10] Luke: Really?

[02:26:10] Aleks: Yeah. And I was like, "You know what? I haven't used the sauna. I thought I was going to make it worse. I got in the sauna, and it came out. It was back to normal. I was like, "No kidding."

[02:26:17] Luke: Good to know, friend.

[02:26:17] Aleks: Yeah.

[02:26:18] Luke: So props to Ksenia for getting in that ice bath, but I think that generally speaking, most women I know have a harder time with it. But yeah, it was so cool just to see someone go, "You know what? Mind over matter. I'm going to do this." And she wasn't trying to impress anyone except herself, just challenging herself, and she adapted right away. And I think it's just because she has a really strong mindset. And she was just like, "No, I feel like I can do this, therefore I can."

[02:26:46] Aleks: Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons why for women, their hormones undulate more often and they experience-- they dissipate cortisol three times slower than men do. And so as we can dissipate cortisol faster, our rhythms can dissipate in minutes. Theirs could be hours. So if they--

[02:27:07] Luke: This is why it never works out well when you tell your woman to calm down when she's upset.

[02:27:11] Aleks: Yeah, yeah. And some masculine people are yet to figure that out.

[02:27:18] Luke: Yeah. That's the second worst thing you can say to a woman who's having an emotionally charged reaction.

[02:27:23] Aleks: Mm-hmm.

[02:27:24] Luke: I won't say what the first one is, but it has to do with the time of the month, which I would never say either of those things, but yeah.

[02:27:31] Aleks: No, because you're wise.

[02:27:34] Luke: Dude, going back to the masculine thing, you learn when you learn, but I could have saved myself so much trouble in life and relationships by just learning how to actively listen and shut my freaking mouth and not try to fix, or control or defend or whatever.

[02:27:53] It's really one of the most powerful tools in my marriage, is just to be able to sit and keep my body language open, my heart open, breathe, and truly listen and shut out any meaning that I'm creating over what I'm hearing, and just being completely curious and receptive to whatever the emotional experience is that needs to get shared. And nine times out of 10, it's solved just by listening and just being loving and compassionate. It's just crazy.

[02:28:25] Aleks: I think if--

[02:28:25] Luke: And it's counterintuitive to us, to the male mind. It's like, if I present you with a problem, if I don't tell you I don't want advice, you're going to give me advice to fix it. You start telling me, "Oh man, my ankle hurts." I'm like, "Oh, dude, have you tried so and so." I'm going to try and fix it. It's in our nature. But it doesn't work that way with the other polarity.

[02:28:44] Aleks: No. I wish I learned this even sooner. I learned it a long time ago, but if I learned it even sooner, it would save me a lot of headache and heartache, that women come to you because they trust you to share the problems with you, not because they need to solve it.

[02:29:01] And when you try to solve their problem, you are basically telling them they're too stupid to solve their own problems. And so they're like, "No, I already solved this problem, and I'm sharing with you because I love you, and I want to connect with you, and I want to off gas all this energy it took to solve this problem." And it's exactly what you're saying. All you have to do is not say anything and then so much better.

[02:29:22] Luke: For the men or masculine embodied people that have a feminine person in your life, I'm telling you, man, it's the master key. And it's not like a trick to get them to stop having their experience. It turns out it's the most loving and compassionate thing you can do, even though it's very counterintuitive.

[02:29:42] Aleks: Can I share one thing about that with you?

[02:29:44] Luke: Yeah, yeah.

[02:29:44] Aleks: So I want to share a tool that I learned, and I wish I can credit who this is. Hopefully, they'll reach out to me. I don't know where I heard this. I learned that when you're emotionally charged-- I don't like that word. But someone who is--

[02:30:01] Luke: You could say moving energy.

[02:30:04] Aleks: Moving energy. Yeah.

[02:30:05] Luke: That's really all it is. Energy in motion is emotion.

[02:30:08] Aleks: When my kids or my wife come to me, and I see them like, oh, I'm like, "Do you need to vent or do you need advice?" If they say vent, I sit back and I'm like, "Yeah, Becky, she's a horrible person. I know, right?" I chitchat back and forth. It's like whatever they're saying, we're venting. We're getting all of it out.

[02:30:28] And I amplify it, get it out. But if they need advice, then I'm like, "All right, Becky shouldn't have done that. And then Steve shouldn't have reacted that way. Okay, I see where you went wrong. Okay, got it. So after all the off gassing, I'm like, "Here's what I see is the problem." And then they're like, "Cool, thank you."

[02:30:48] Luke: Yeah, yeah. I used a very similar communication practice with Alyson. I could tell at this point because we've been together for a while. If she just needs to move some energy, then I'm receptive to that and available for that most of the time, unless it's early in the morning, which I'm not available for anything.

[02:31:07] But yeah, she'll be sharing whatever's going on. I say, "Do you want some feedback?" And she will tell me, "Not yet. I need to talk more." I go, "Cool, keep going." At the end, when I think it's the end-- I learned this from John Gray, great guy that I interviewed a few times over the years.

[02:31:27] When I think it's my time to maybe offer a perspective, I'll say, "What else? Is there more?" She'll be like, "No, I'm done. That's it. That's all I needed to say." And I go, "Are you sure there isn't more?" It's like nine times out of 10, there's two or three rounds of more.

[02:31:42] It's a joke we have between us now, but eventually she's like, "No, dude, I'm really done." Then I'll say, "Do you want an input, or are you good?" And most times she'll say, "Yeah, I'll take your input." And it may be good or not useful input, but these kind of things, I think, are so crucial because it's like how many of our relationships get destroyed just because we just don't understand each other because we're different?

[02:32:07] So it's hard for me to put myself in her mindset. If I'm like having an emotional moment with you, my bro, maybe I need to talk about it for a minute, but I'll actually get more stress out the longer I talk about it. I just need to say what's going on and then we can dialogue and you can maybe talk me down from the ledge using logic. You know what I mean?

[02:32:28] It's like, that's what I need. Otherwise I'll get caught in the emotional spiral. And then it's like, whoa, now I'm not even in reality. So we could understand that about each other, but if we don't understand one another, it's impossible to fulfill the other person's needs. Because their needs are different than ours.

[02:32:48] So if we apply what we think we would need in that situation, it's the exact opposite of what they need, and it's only going to inflame the situation that they're having and then also create conflict between you. And you weren't even evolved originally. It's not even about you half the time, right?

[02:33:05] Aleks: Yeah.

[02:33:06] Luke: These are such great life codes, man, that I'm sure to some people are like, "Yeah, duh. But there was decades of my life I had no clue about any of this. And just looking back, I go, "Man, God, with a couple of nuggets of applied wisdom could have had a much easier time."

[02:33:23] Aleks: Yeah. Have you heard the saying people yell at each other because they don't feel close?

[02:33:28] Luke: Ooh, that's good.

[02:33:30] Aleks: That stuck with me, again.

[02:33:31] Luke: Wow. That's good. That's a tweetable or an Xable.

[02:33:36] Aleks: Yeah. I can say it, but I want to give credit whenever I find it. But when I heard that, I was like, [Inaudible] and I sat down in reflection and go, "Yeah. Every time I yell, I don't feel understood, or I don't feel heard, or I don't feel connected to." And I'm like, I have to yell to maybe get my point across because they feel so far away from me. Sarah feels so far away, or the kids feel so far away that they're not getting it.

[02:34:00] I want to love them, but they're not getting my love. And it's like, oh, I'm not expressing it properly. And then I have to go-- anytime that gets to that heightened state, I'm like, "Oh, we're not close." And then I'll get close. And even though Sarah might be agitated, we do like belly to belly. We'll pull our shirts up and touch our bellies to get skin to skin. That's what they do with babies first thing, skin to skin.

[02:34:23] And so it seems mechanical, but the more you do it and trust each other with these simple things, harmonize again, and you apply some of these things that we're mentioning to the relationship instead of being like, "They don't get me. I'm leaving." It's like, you could have left your person. And you could have sabotaged--

[02:34:41] Luke: And then the surprise is you're going to find a new person who is exactly like the person you just had problems getting along with because you haven't fixed the shit within yourself.

[02:34:52] Aleks: Yeah. And if you want a so-called code, if you find yourself going, "Oh my God, I keep attracting the same thing." It might be you that needs to change something. And I say might be, but yeah, it's you that needs to change.

[02:35:03] Luke: That's been my experience.

[02:35:05] Aleks: Yeah. Every time.

[02:35:06] Luke: I talk about these things too, just so the people listening know I am speaking from experience on you. As someone who's gotten a lot of shit wrong throughout my life, when I find something that works, I'm like, "Yes." So I want to share it.

[02:35:18] All right, dude. I want to remind people to go to eatberski.com/luke. Use the code LUKE to save 10% off. And give me some feedback, folks. You try these out, swap out some of those slim gyms your kids are eating, and put some Berskis in front of them. Let me know how it goes.

[02:35:36] I'm so curious to see how people respond to eating a snackable convenient food that's actually good for you, which is one of the hardest things to do, because convenient food is shitty, generally speaking. So looking forward to people getting on board with that. And thank you again for coming by today. It's nice to see you.

[02:35:57] Aleks: Nice to see you too. Thanks for having me.

[02:35:58] Luke: It's always cool when I get to see people and spend a couple hours catching up, especially people I don't see that often because you live in freaking Timbuktu.

[02:36:06] Aleks: Yeah.

[02:36:07] Luke: Or maybe I do. I live in Timbuktu relative to you.

[02:36:10] Aleks: I think we live in separate  Timbuktus because there's a South Austin  Timbuktu and then Northwest Austin Timbuktu. But at least it's one highway trip.

[02:36:19] Luke: Yeah. I can't complain about driving in Texas because I'm from LA. So I have surrendered my right to whine about traffic because it literally doesn't exist here comparatively.

[02:36:29] Aleks: No, it's only distance.

[02:36:30] Luke: Yeah. All right, dude. Congratulations. Thanks for coming by.

[02:36:32] Aleks: Thank you. Of course. Anytime.