On Friday afternoon, 6/24, I was a guest on the Mike Smyth Show, where I was interviewed for a 20-minute segment on the paleo diet!
I had a great time on the show, and managed to debunk some myths (“No, meat doesn’t rot in your colon“), present the theoretical and practical foundations of paleo to a big new audience, and even throw in a few zingers. Thanks to Liza at CKNW for setting it up, and Simi for being a great host!
I’m working on getting the audio up as a download…but in the meantime, you can you can go to the CKNW audio vault and select June 24, 2 PM. I start about seven minutes in, right after the weather, and my segment is about 22 minutes long, including a commercial break.
JS
This is a bonus update: I write features once a week. Here is this week’s regular article:
The Paleo Identity Crisis: What Is The Paleo Diet, Anyway?
Have spread it to our Italian Paleo community here in Italy.
It’s today right? I’ll try to listen.
Oh, just as a suggestion, when giving the time of an event, try to give the GMT time as well. It’s not that hard to convert from other timezones but then there’s the whole DST thing. Your map was very handy tho. Anyway, Good luck there.
[…] will start about 1.5 hours from now. You can stream the radio station. See details at gnolls.org. Interview with J. Stanton on The Mike Smyth Show, CKNW 980 Radio, Vancouver - GNOLLS.ORG Reply With Quote + Reply to Thread « Previous Thread | […]
Just heard the announcement to it. I’m expecting vegan calls now 🙂
Am tuned in….!
Haha, nice. It was fast but good. I like how the woman calling said people should see a very good doctor before going vegan. Isn’t that enpught evidence that’s not what we’re supposed to eat?
And you got credited as “the author of something called the paleo diet”. :O
Your host seemed to find the paleo idea alien. A tough gig – but good effort!
paleomamma, Fmgd, Asclepius:
Thanks for tuning in! It's always good to know I've got support out there. And special thanks to Beverly, whoever she is, for calling in with her positive experiences on paleo…if you're reading this, contact me and I'll send you some stickers.
I think I represented the paleo community well: I managed to bring up most of the important issues, and I snuck a few of my zingers in there. (“Are you a bird? Are you a rodent? If not, then grains are not part of your natural diet and you should not eat them.”) I have no idea how I got credited as “the author of something called the paleo diet”…next time I'll plug gnolls.org right at the beginning!
I'm working on making a downloadable version of the audio available…meanwhile, if you're really interested, you can go to the CKNW audio vault and select June 24, 2 PM. I start at about 2:07 PM, right after the weather, and my segment is about 21:30, including a commercial break.
JS
JS,
Any chance of getting an mp3 upload of the segment? I can’t seem to access it from Australia 🙁
Yeah, the host was very cold to the idea. The points were put across well, clearly and you didn’t sound like an extremist or a nut. There was a lot of “you know”s interspersed which is difficult not to when you’re thinking on the hop, but that came across as genuine – that you were not reading from a script and it sounded from the heart, backed up by the brain.
The Q&A session was very good. All questions actually answered, none shirked and replies to criticism sounded considered and respectful of other people’s positions.
In all, a good session. It was interesting to hear the voice behind the words we read here.
As I have blogged and posted on a few forums, my introduction to the paleo diet came from considering what I would eat if I were out in the wilderness.
I first saw this concept written down by Tamir Katz and I immediately got the idea*.
Now when I describe the diet to anyone, I ask them this very question, and most people immediately ‘get it’. The answer is intuitive, they’d eat meat and seasonal vegetation/fruit.
From here it is easy for them to grasp how our ancestors must have lived and because they have come up with this answer themselves, it resonates deeply.
This approach might have been a useful technique with the interviewer last night (and future ones), as it immediately avoids that divide created when the interviewer interprets the paleo diet as ‘that caveman thing’ and classifies paleo enthusiasts as ‘re-enactors’.
*Although it took Art DeVany’s Essay on Evolutionary Fitness to blow open the whole ‘paleo’ deal for me – making me think about IF, barefooting, cold water swimming and limiting chronic light exposure year-round.
Yeah, it looked to me like she didn’t even really know what you were going to talk about. Seemed like she was only expecting an anti-vegan speech, and that may have made things a bit harder, but I liked your enphasis on research, it should make some more rational-inclined people curious.
And definitely mention your site next time 🙂
Another idea (that I posted up on Paleohacks), is simply to ask someone what their grandparents ate (assuming they themselves are at least 30 ish). The answer should be around 80% Paleo 2.0.
Keeping the message simple and making people realise that this is NOT a novel diet but actually one with a long pedigree will be the key to its success.
Josh:
Working on it.
Paul:
Thanks! This was my first time doing live radio: I know what I'll do differently next time, but on the whole, I'm pleased with my performance. I had to take the steering wheel and yank it over to “Paleo”.
If you can't get enough of my voice, you can listen to my appearance on the Latest in Paleo podcast.
Asclepius:
“What would you eat if you were in the wilderness” is a good reference point — but how many people have any idea what's in the wilderness to eat? Not disagreeing, just wondering. I'll have to try it on some people.
Similarly, “What my grandparents ate” might work for us, but for the youngest generation, it's most likely standard post-war industrial products. Again, I'll have to try it.
One of my guiding principles is “Things you could eat raw. (Even if you don't.)” We cook meat because we're worried about bacteria, not because we can't digest it. Same with vegetables, same even with potatoes. But raw grains or beans are either indigestible, non-nutritive, or overtly poisonous.
JS
JS – yeah, I guess there is no one-size fits all approach and I just figured I'd throw a couple of ideas out there. The 'raw' example is one I listed myself in a post on healthy eating in ten steps – but again, mention 'raw' to most people and they may well glaze over.
Selling the paleo approach is further confounded by the familiarity of modern foods.
For example many people simply find it incredulous that cereal can be anything other than good for you – and certainly not harmful, despite often being loaded with salt and sugar. There is also a great trust in authority that makes people think that if a foodstuff was harmful, “they wouldn't sell it to us”.
Questioning this trust in authoritarian organisations and trusted brands (who spend a lot on cultivating their image), along with any notion of 'caveman', makes the paleo crowd look like crazies!
Asclepius:
Those are good ideas, and I'm going to try them out. If there was one description that worked best in every situation, we'd already know what it is!
As far as “crazies”, I'm long since used to being outside the mainstream, so it doesn't bother me. And I don't think it bothers you, either.
JS
“the author of something called the paleo diet”
LOL, That’s so funny (and sad)! I assumed, given the fact that the paleo community is already that big, the media would at least know about the paleo concept or just the word itself. But it seems she had no clue at all.
It’s sad how dumb the majority of people is, journalists included. It was very important to her and a listener what your credentials are and they wonder why they should believe you if you aren’t a doctor. But that’s the point, they don’t want to know, they want to believe what a person of authority told them. If you don’t have that degree you can tell what you want, the most people won’t think about it.
Am I the only one who thinks most people never grew up? It’s a child like behavior to just believe authoritarians without thinking. It’s like a child crying to be fed by her mother. And then someone comes along and says “No, this mush is not what you are supposed to eat”. The answer, while doubtful looking up to the authority: “But she said it’s good for me, who are you to talk about what is healthy?”
Sad.
Anyway, your part of the interview was great. You really managed to get most of the necessary stuff into this few minutes. But I think the interviewer didn’t really get the seed jokes 😀 She was still busy to handle the thought that even one single person on this planet thinks read meat and fat is actually good.
primordial49:
It's easy to feel like everyone ought to know about the paleo diet, given how strong the presence is on the Internet…but that's just because every third paleo dieter starts a blog. We're still insignificant relative to the general population.
The point of talk radio is to cause a controversy, so I was mentally prepared to have my credentials questioned. Frankly, I was surprised it wasn't more confrontational…but I think I did a good job of defusing the attempts to bait me into vegetarian-bashing.
As far as authority figures, I'm pretty sure that “civilization” has selected us for obeying them. Anyone who doesn't bite their tongue when the lord (or his tax collector) comes by and takes half their stuff tends to get beheaded — or at least thrown in jail. We must reclaim some of our evolutionary heritage as independent, self-sufficient hunters if we're going to escape Orwell's “boot stomping on a human face, forever”.
Not incidentally, these are some of the subjects I address in The Gnoll Credo.
JS
I see. I am from Europe and we have literally no paleo community here. I thought, since for example Cordain sold more than 100.000 books, the concept is already well-known in the english-spoken world. I also saw the “cavemen” diet being discussed on some big tv shows in the US.
Just checked out what “talk radio” is. Interesting, we don't have that in Germany. Wish I could find some “controversy” on radio here which consists only of pointless small talk, news, mainstream music and the wheather.
I think even more devastating is todays parenting and education methods. Maybe there is a tendency in selection for those who obey but in general we see people thriving when parented in harmony whith evolutionary laws (see “The Continuum Concept”, J. Liedloff) and get educated without any compulsion (homeschooling, unschooling). If you force someone to learn facts they don't care about you kill there desire for true understanding of the world.
Every child is curious but civilisation destroys this, beginning with early childhood and ending with graduation, marking their beginning of a life in a prison. It is self-chosen one but seldom are people able to brake free. Only those who are willed to face their inner demons, their traumatic past are eventually able to find happiness in life. Honestly, I am not sure at the moment if it is possible at all to overcome most influences of civilisation and become independend and self-sufficient if one has gone through this.
I think our eating habits is one part of a lifestyle which notices that everything in society now is diametral to our health and evolutionary heritage – be it food, nurture or education which is reflected in every part of our society – in politics, media, relationships, etc.
Your book looks interesting. Is it written in plain english?
primordial49:
Three minutes on one episode of 60 Minutes (about the “caveman diet”) is far less than the average commercial for Axe body spray is seen in one single day. Paleo is still treated as a marginal phenomenon: here's my take on why.
As far as talk radio, it's mostly fake controversy. I was pleasantly surprised to be allowed to generate some real controversy.
I agree with your points about education and parenting: the way we raise children is just as evolutionarily discordant as our diet, with even more disastrous results.
If you can follow my articles here at gnolls.org, you should have no trouble following The Gnoll Credo. You can test this by downloading and reading the first 20 pages from the publisher.
JS
Hi J,
Keep providing your valued perspective, it is appreciated.
And if you ever find yourself in the Primal North, I got some great snowshoing you are sure to enjoy.
Danny:
Much appreciated, and I love being outside in winter! But I'll probably either bring or rent some XC touring skis. Walking in snowshoes makes me feel like a zombie.
JS
You can always pretend to be neolithic which ascending in snow shoes …
GRAAAAAINNNSSSS!!!!!!