How To Truly Be Grateful For All That You Have Without Facing A Near Death Experience, With Tony Berardo

0:00 grateful are you for everything you have? I'm not talking about the gratitude journal where you say you're thankful for a nice home and a warm cup of coffee. I mean truly feel it in your bones grateful. Our guest today thought he knew what it meant to be grateful until a gunman opened fire at the cafe where he was working and he got out alive. about the entire time I was running, faster than the fact that there was no fucking way. that I'm dying here. So You'll hear his story and what it means to him to try to just be a little bit better every day in just a moment.

0:57 for being there. It really means a lot that you decide to spend some time with us. Zach is off today, so I brought in a special guest to help me talk about something that I still struggle with after a lot of years of practice, and it's gratitude. Not only gratitude, but what it really means to try to be a little bit better every day, what that actually looks like in practice. my little gratitude practice can feel hollow. The things I'll be writing in my journal just feel like I'm sort of going through the motions, but that can be important and we're going to talk about why. the same is true for our guests. until recently. We're joined today by Tony Berardo. He's the host of the Humanity and Hashtags podcast. a guy that's just trying to do a little bit better every day than he did the day before.

1:41 to have struggles with a gratitude practice, or he did until just the other day when a gunman opened fire at the cafe where he was working. something like that or any real rock bottom moment. shift your perspective on life and how lucky you really are not only to be alive, but to have all of the luxuries that you probably have and take for granted. connected with Tony and so in order to get to know him a little better, I actually borrowed a question from another podcast that I was on recently. basically, you're a podcaster, you're a content creator, entrepreneur, dad, all these things. Take all the labels away. Tell us who you are. that is a good question.

2:22 Yeah, that's great. Take all my labels away. You know, my answer probably would have been different a couple years ago, but I think I'm just, I'm just a person that's trying to be better every day. You know, that's like, if I had to sum up on a daily, like what I need to do, that's what it is, is I've worked really hard the last couple years to just try to be better every single day at something. So you take away my labels, that's what I am. I'm just an organism trying to figure this thing out and just be better every single day.

3:05 What does that look like for you? What does it mean to be better today than yesterday? So for me, it's pointing out all the things I messed up on. So whether that's, I'll give you an example. So today, I freaked out on my dog. Not like physically, but I caught myself to where I got, because I'm on like two hours of sleep. It was just a rough night with, yeah, it's rough. So with the dog, they don't know the difference, right? And normally, I can identify and control it, but I haven't been able to. Work out as much and I haven't been able to do my my ice plunge I usually do it every single morning, but you know you wake up You're on two hours of sleep last thing you want to do is is work out or hop in like a sauna, right?

3:49 And you know, there's all these things that pile up in the morning like my wife's getting ready for work I got to feed the baby. She's she's pumping like there's a whole you know how it is so I realized today like my my dog his name's Oliver he came up to me and he just wanted attention and I freaked out Like I go, I looked at him like he was crazy. And I said, dude, can you just... And I caught myself and I was like, he doesn't know. He has no clue. And you know, I'm 38 years old and I'm freaking out at a dog. Like I got things to improve on. So that was one thing. So I took a step back and I was like, okay, I'm going to go outside. I usually do my grounding in the morning. I skipped it today, but I went outside.

4:30 I took him for a walk and it was longer walk than normal and just... spent time with them and just kind of decompressed. I normally do my AirPods listen to a podcast. I didn't do any of that. I just, you know, let the wind hit my ears and just kind of got out of my like out of my head a little bit. And that's something I do a lot. I mean, probably more often than not, that's a big weakness of mine is I get very, especially if I don't work out, you probably know if you don't work out for like a couple of days, you're just a mean different human. It's like that's. Right? Like that's and I haven't worked out a couple days and haven't done my routine. So that's frustrating. So identify my weaknesses, what I can work on every day. And if I can't physically, it's not tangible.

5:12 Like I can't do it that day. Like I give you that example, then I would write it down at the end of the day. So right after work at 5 p I write everything down. You can't see it, but I have a whiteboard behind me and everything I have to do tomorrow and everything that I fucked up on today. I write that down and then hopefully I can improve tomorrow on it. So if it's a routine. or if it's something work related, hopefully I can improve tomorrow. If not, I'll try to improve this week and then every Monday I refresh it. So that's just like little things I do to try to be a better human. And usually what I found was I'm giving examples of like some work and some personal life, but no matter what your example is, typically that kind of, that oozes over into your relationships.

5:53 So of course there's negatives and things I got to work on with my relationship, but I've found that when you work on the other things, For example, snapping at the dog, not working out, maybe stressed out at work. Like if you can fix those things, your relationship naturally just gets better. And that's instead of like, because it is hard to stomach, I need to be a better husband. I need to be better at the... Typically, that's not the case. Typically, it's everything else in your life that's fucked up and it's affecting your relationship. Because most humans, when you fall in love and get married and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like... You love each other. You're good. It's because if it was just you and you had money in the bank and you had a job that you loved and you were healthy and you had good food, your life is going to be perfect.

6:43 So it's not really the two humans that are typically the issue. In my in my experience, it's normally everything else around your spouse that bothers you and that oozes into your relationship. So I figured if you if you can fix all that other bullshit, you know, everything else happens. So. all that other bullshit typically is you right like it's it's the guy you see in the mirror and you were talking about the routine and there's so much you know crap online about this routine is the routine and it's the only way and you know and all that crap but but all of it I think comes back to and this is an analogy that I'm gonna another analogy I'll steal from a guest everyone always talks about the airplane right like you got to give yourself the mask before you can help somebody else but a guest of ours said no no no the better analogy is the champagne fountain.

7:27 You've got to fill up yourself at the top and let that overflow and pour into the cups below, right? Like the more you can take care of you, the more of you there is to take care of everyone else. Where what the situation you're in where you're not sleeping, you're taking care of a very new child and a dog and a wife and all of the responsibilities. Your cup is empty a lot right now. Like so when that dog comes, you're like, I just don't have it. Don't ask me. Not now, not today. right. And so that that routine is key and I'm feeling it myself. Like I was just I was traveling for a month. I didn't go to the gym. I went to the gym once for you know in a month of just being on the road and but it was travel right. I was back. It was vacation. I felt great. I was eating real food in Europe and it was like wow this is this is this is a great trade off.

8:10 This is awesome but not moving not doing the hard thing every day that starts to creep back up and like what is my purpose? What am I doing here? Am I good at anything? Am I am I worthy? And so that's where like the routine is important. The things that fill your cup at the top so you can overflow onto everyone below. That's why it's so important. That's why we do this stuff, right? great. I love that analogy. Yeah, I haven't actually heard that before. Yeah, that is very true too, because, and you know, I think a lot of it has to do with like as we get older too, right? Like I'm 30, how old are you again? You're 47. Jesus, you don't look like you're 47. It's because you work out probably. I think as you get older, you start to identify kind of like, let me not identify, you start to become self -aware of your weaknesses.

8:58 versus like when you're younger, you're invincible, everyone else is wrong, you're not wrong, like every relationship you're in, if you get in an argument, they're in the wrong, right? Like if you cheat on your girlfriend, she's the bitch, right? Like that's how you are in your 20s. And it's all her fault. And then of course, again, she's in her 20s. If you ask her, she says the same thing. She's like, it's his fault. And you can never like be self -aware and identify those things. And I think a lot of it has to do with... Maturity for sure our brain is actually developed after 25. So that's not to do with it as well But I think it's just experience, you know I don't think there's anything that all the you mentioned like all these people online saying there's a perfect routine as perfect this per You just got to wait man.

9:43 You got to write it out. You got to go through trial and error You got to figure out what's best for you because there's so many people out there's 330 million people in the US like not everyone not one person is gonna have the right answer And there's no way we could do a clinical study on 330 million people. So you kind of have to figure out what's best for you and what's best for your routine. Because I do my research, I'm sure you do as well. I know what to do right. I know what supplements to take. I know when to do my grounding and when the sun needs to hit my face and when I need to turn off my device at night, blah, blah, like all that bullshit I know it's written down. And in a perfect world, I'd be able to do all that every single day.

10:23 And it's that perfect routine. But. I feel like you need the chaos, you need the wrench to just screw up everything because I think you learn from that stuff. And that's what's so great about just waiting. Like if you're in your 20s or in your even 30s and you're just listening to this and you're like, I don't figure it out, like my job sucks, my wife sucks, like what? Like just wait, just take your time, do the right things and just wait because like when you get... You're never going to have it figured out, but I can guarantee you as you get older, especially in your 40s, you're going to get closer to figuring it out. And if you continue to watch online and watch these perfect formulas and compare yourself to that, it's stressful.

11:07 Right. It's stressful to wake up seven days a week like Garrett Brecker, right? Like I love him, but he always says, I'm in Miami and I go downstairs and I do my grounding and then I do my ice plunge and my sauna and I train. Yeah, bro, because all you do is get paid to speak and you have thousands in the bank and there's, I'm sure he has stresses, but 20 years ago, he wasn't doing that routine. So it's like, if you try to compare yourself to that, that's asinine. You're going to lose your mind because there's no way that's sustainable. So I think you just have to kind of like take everything with a grain of salt and just figure out what's best for you and try to do the right things. And then, you know, hopefully it'll happen. And I think something that I've experienced anyways, I think it came late in my 30s and early 40s is the ability to look in the mirror and realize that I am the cause of insolution solution to pretty much all of my problems.

12:00 Like, like we already talked about, like, it's not her, it's not the job, it's not the mortgage, it's not it. It's the things you're not doing to take care of them. And I spent most of my life running away from the hard thing, running away from the obstacle, running away from the challenging thing. And it was honestly like talking to Ryan Holiday and reading his books and literally the title, The Obstacle is the Way, completely changed my life. And I was like, I've been doing this completely backwards. Like anytime something's hard, anytime something's scary, my MO was run the other way as fast as possible. Do not accept responsibility. This is for other people. But now I know on the other side of that is the reward. On the other side of that is the benefit and everything I'm looking for. looking for. So yes, wait, like life will figure a way out.

12:42 But also like stop looking at everyone else and everything else as the problem and start looking in the mirror. And you know, you can you can only control you can control right. It's one of my favorite favorite sayings and my wife hates it because I say it all the time. You know, but not to get too dark or off topic, but just you know, today's Thursday, the 11th. So I'm in Tampa and on Tuesday, the 9th, there was a shooting at a place called Armature Works and I was there. And I was probably. I mean, I saw it all go down. I was maybe, I don't know, 20 yards away from the pops and the shooting. And at the time, I didn't know exactly where it was, but later on I found out, I mean, I was, you know, I could throw a rock and hit the shooter.

13:31 And I was by myself, I was working on some content for a client. And obviously there's a lot that I could say about that. But the one thing that I took away from it was like, I did everything right, you know, like I've... Right? Like we have raised our daughter, I think, great, and she's doing great, and I'm working out, and I'm eating right, like I'm doing everything right. And then I'm working with this client that's great, and I'm going to help her grow her social media for her business. She loves it, right? I'm getting paid for it, so it's what I love to do. We're capturing some content. I'm videoing on my phone. And then literally shots break out.

14:14 Out of my control. In that moment if a gun ricocheted or I mean there was four people that got injured not one person was a perpetrator It was all innocent bystanders that just you know bullets ricocheted or it missed it wasn't even aimed at these people But these were the innocent by so it could have been me It could have been anybody could have been my business partner and it's just like the reason I bring it up is because a it happened recently but B it's like Just you can't you could do everything perfect but there is no perfect. Like life is gonna throw you some shit all the time. And it seems like, and especially I reflect a lot on some of the things that happened last couple years with me, but that in particular really hit me hard, where you reflect on a lot of things.

15:01 And I think that the one thing that I learned from that was you cannot have everything together, ever. Like, and when you think you do, shit's gonna happen. And I don't think it's because like there's this magical aura around you and then right when things go, because everyone thinks that right? Like, I don't get it, like job was great and this and that and then I got fired. Like I don't understand why is the life out to get me? I don't think it's life. I just think that's just how shit is. We just can't control anything. Like we're on this rock floating in infinite space. Even NASA and astronomers have no idea.

15:45 30 % of what happens with our universe. Like, it's all theories and get like, no one knows. Like all this stuff, the camera that I'm using is called a Canon and we made up this technology. Like it's all made up. We're all inventing things and we're just figuring new things out every day. Like we don't know anything. Doctors are learning new information all the time. In the 50s, they used to tell people, smoke cigarettes, cause it's good for you. Like we're stupid. Okay, we're humans. We're going to make mistakes. So the fact that you think things are gonna go your way, that's just irresponsible. And when you can put that guard down, there's a little bit of a relief to it, I think. There's a little bit of like, this doesn't mean go streaking around a public school or anything.

16:29 It just means, you know, do what you can and you're probably gonna have a shitty day more often than not, but you're alive and that's just fantastic. Like. It's just a different way of looking at things that just this week I've kind of thought about a little bit. I'm sure there's a guy that I worked with for a while that he always used to say that, you know, the trick with life is we were white knuckled on the steering wheel all the time trying to control it, trying to drive it the way we want it to. And the more we let go of the steering wheel, the more hands open up to receive. And I just always thought that was such a beautiful analogy to just be like, we are, we're just like, we're just clenched.

17:09 Like, why don't I have, why can't I, I just, if I could only, and then in a situation like you had. where you're like, it could all be gone because I just went to the wrong coffee shop today. I had a similar, somewhat similar experience, not nearly as on the scene, but I was literally in the parking lot of a place where there was a shooting hours later the same day, about a year ago. And man, there's just something about those moments where... It's the bus that was a little too close on the sidewalk, the shooter that you just happened to miss or who had just happened to miss you. Those are the wake up moments where you realize all this stuff that we worry about, all the stuff that gets us down, that grinds us.

17:51 It's all bullshit. None of it matters. that's so true. Yeah, and it's, you know, it's, I think it's called the burnt toast theory. Have you heard of this? The name of it's familiar, but I forget what the context is. so hopefully listeners won't hold me to this, but it has something to do with when you burn your toast for breakfast and you're on your way to work, there's two ways you can look at it, right? Like you burnt your toe, shit, I gotta make a new piece. And the whole idea, the theory is that five minutes that it took you to make a new piece of toast, you could have gotten a car accident on the way.

18:32 Maybe there was a massive accident that you would have been on. Maybe... you missed your flight because you ended up making that piece of toast and the flight ended up going down. And that's kind of the whole point of the theory is like, you don't know what's going to happen. So everything that does happen, good or bad, you kind of have to take it like whatever comes forward is going to happen. There's just there's nothing you can do to control it. You could set everything in motion, but things are going to happen. It's going to happen like that's it's out of your control. But when something negative does happen, don't look at it like you've missed an opportunity because you might have gotten saved by something.

19:14 And that's kind of the whole idea of the burnt theory is like you look at the burnt toast like your day's ruined, right? Like, my God, I'm going to be late to work. Little do you know that burnt toast just saved your life because you know, you could have gotten a car accident. So that's kind of the idea of the whole theory. And I've been thinking about that a lot more recently, especially with our newborn, because as you know, there's so many moments like that where. You kind of look at it and you're like, I cannot believe I had to do this and I missed this deadline or, you know, we forgot to do this and then this happened. It's a lot of cause and effect. And more often than not, it's negative. Typically is the result. But then I also kind of looked at it like.

19:54 It's not really negative because the cause and effect, even though the effect of whatever happened might have been negative, maybe we're late to work as an example, but I got to spend an extra five minutes with my daughter. And when you start looking at things like that, where that's the important stuff, like your perception of the actual incident needs to change a little bit. And when you can like start thinking like that, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of practice, and I'm not even there yet, but when you could start kind of putting plans in motion to think more like that, a lot of stuff doesn't bother you anymore because you look at things differently, right? It's all the stories you tell yourself when you put that toast in you weren't thinking, this is going to burn.

20:36 You were thinking I'm going to grab this and I'm going to go. And when it doesn't go your way, the story is all life. And and even in your situation where you went to go do work with that client, you weren't thinking I'm there's probably going to be a shooting today like you were so like you're psyched. But either way, the story we tell ourselves about the way this is going to turn out is never the way that it turns out. So the more that you can stop living in the future and worrying about and trying to control or stop regretting and thinking about and feeling terrible about the thing you said to me when you were 12 and just be where you are right now. There's a lot of peace right here kind of kind of no bat no matter how bad it gets. I would argue maybe in that coffee shop last Tuesday probably not a lot of peace.

21:20 However, you know, the the guru in me like the the Zen Buddhist in me would want to be able to say in that moment I was thinking I'm not shot right now. I'm okay. I'm not shot right now. I'm okay because you were okay, even though it was an incredibly dangerous situation. and it's weird being in that situation because I I mean as I was running and you know the people I was with we We try to do we could to stay together, but it's so hectic. You don't necessarily worry about everyone else and you know, we kept yelling on active shooter active shooter and and You had to go inside and kind of cut through this corridor to go to the parking lot that we were in So like inside you don't know if there's like we didn't know if there's like five shooters surrounding the place We didn't know so we're like as you're going in you're kind of creeping and you're doing these things And when I tell you, bro, like I've been working out for a long time and I've done some hardcore marathons and some Spartan races and I've, I've worked out, I've done kettlebell, like I do hardcore fitness training.

22:17 I, my heart hurt when it was beating and I've never felt that before. I'm 30 years old. It was to the point where even on the old driving home, it was like this pain that I was like, like I thought something was wrong with my heart, but. It was pumping so fast, like it never has the adrenaline's going through you. And the only thing I could think about the entire time I was running, faster than anybody, I will say, at Armature Works. I did a video about this on Instagram. People made fun of me. But I'll stand by it. I'll even put it on your podcast to where I'll say there was people that, if I wasn't vigilant, would have held us back from leaving certain places because they were out of shape.

23:00 Or just incompetent, like they just wanted to take a photo or do something stupid. Because you know, you don't know what it is, right? Like you don't know if a couple pops could be dishes breaking or something, like you don't know. So, but I knew, I knew because I have guns. So I'm aware that it wasn't an AR, but it was definitely a pistol and it was two of them because the exchange was, it was noticeable. So I bolted and a lot of people just in the comments are lighting me up saying, Well, I can't believe you did that. Like, what if it was nothing? Okay, then what's the worst that happens? Everyone goes to their car. Right? But if you don't react like that, and it was something, now you got 15 people on the ground.

23:44 Shot. So, it's like it's better to be over -prepared with that type of stuff. And the only time I was running when I was sprinting and I was getting out of that was all I could think about was my daughter and the fact that there was no fucking way. that I'm dying here. So I've never ran that fast in my life. You know, after I checked in with my coworker to make sure they had a place to go. But yeah, it's just, you know, you're right. You can't really control those things. And then there is some gratefulness. But I think you kind of have to... I thought I was grateful, like on a daily basis. You know, you wake up and you always tell yourself, I'm so happy I have my kids and my job. But we kind of like pretend to do this thing.

24:26 I think a lot of us for maybe we want our friends and family and people on social media to think that we're good people. So we, you know, exude gratitude in a way that we feel is authentic. I don't know about everyone, but not me. I was I was grateful, but I was like grateful, like behind the scenes. I really of course I am grateful. But, you know, behind the scenes, I'm like there's little hidden things where I'm like, I can't believe this and I can't. And there was kind of some negative devil talking. And I don't think a lot of people like to admit that. After that incident though, I could tell you no question, there is not an ounce of me that is not grateful for life.

25:07 Because I think when you have any type of situation, whether it's that or health issue, there's a different, there's a switch. And that's gratefulness. So if you can get there without having the, yeah, then that's. Yeah, that's ideal. hear Gary Vee and all these gurus talk about it. And you're like, yeah, yeah, I do that. I do that. You don't. no, it's for for most of us. It's going through the motions. It's it's lifting the dumbbell, right? Like I'm not passionate about lifting this dumbbell, but it's going to build that muscle so that eventually one day I'll be able to go. I am strong enough. I am grateful enough for this moment.

25:48 But yeah, when I when I'm looking at that piece of paper every day and going like, I don't know, I guess coffee again. I'm grateful for the coffee. That'll do. Check the box. I did my gratitude to my gratitude practice. It's very much just. just doing it for the sake of the practice and the routine and trying to get better at it. think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. Again, going back to self -awareness, if you can identify it and realize there's other things that you should be grateful for more. And I think putting things in different boxes, too, like, am I grateful for a job? Sure. But I think gratitude needs to be like, I woke up today. Other people didn't.

26:29 I got food. I got. Yeah. lot of people didn't. more people realistically probably have less food than you do in the world even in the US. I mean there's you know people on food stamps. They're not even like you are so like you need to be grateful if you go to a restaurant and spend a hundred hours like that's gratefulness. So I think like just looking at it like that to where we get so comfortable with the new iPhone and you know all the cool shit. that's out there and the fact that you can just take a really dope picture from your phone and you can listen to music on Spotify through your car with a click of a button.

27:12 Like we get so comfortable and so quickly too. Right. Like I mean you know you're you're in your 40s. I remember like I don't even know. I feel like it's been going on for only 10 years and we have this AI fucking we're going to Mars by 2025. It's like what. Right. Yeah. it felt like the other day that I was chewing on bubble gum cigarettes and I had a beeper. Yeah, and internet, what's that? What's this new email thing? Like, yeah, trust me, I was on the other side of this whole switch. I was having this conversation with a buddy of mine too, and he goes, he said he was struggling with patience, and he was my age.

27:55 And I go, patience? I go, bro, do you remember Napster and LimeWire? Patience? Dude, we used to, right. waiting for the cassette to come out at the store? To drive to the store? If your mom would drive you to the store to buy the cassette. Come on, are you kidding me? motherfucker. You just don't do it. Like, what do you mean patient? It's only because in the past 10, 20 years, we've gotten so spoiled where, like, I even catch myself occasionally too, like, have you ever, like, been on your phone and then, like, Instagram doesn't load, it takes a couple seconds? And you're like, what the fuck? Is Instagram down? Dude, it's been five seconds. Relax. It has to communicate to a satellite outside of our fucking...

28:39 outside of earth and then come back down to Silicon Valley and then it goes to your like relax bro like it's spoiled. If the food isn't at my door in 10 minutes that I pushed a button to get that I, you know, use a credit card to pay for, we are so spoiled and it just makes us softer for it. Yeah, that's another thing to the food and everything and I think that's why like if you're involved in some sort of physical activity whether it's fitness or running or you know, whatever it is Or even doing like plunging or sounds like contrast therapy if you're if you do something like that, it really does humble you You know, and I think that's why to your point earlier when you don't work out and you're gone for a month on vacation you feel like a piece of shit because You know, it's not necessarily a lot of is out of the routine but It's so important to your health to do these types of things.

29:30 It's in our nature. Like, you know, we're primates. We're supposed to fucking throw things around and, you know, lift up women above our heads so we can cross a lake. You know, like, we're supposed to be able to do this type of stuff. So when you can't do that, your body's like, okay, power down. Like it just shuts down. So I... And every time every time you do successfully do a hard thing that is safe, like getting in the cold water or going to the gym lifting something heavy, you take that to the time when it is hard, like life really is hard. And you can mentally go back to well, if I can do that. This is nothing. And I mean, that's the whole point. That's why we do it. thing you're going to do in the morning.

30:11 That's why I always try to do in the morning. You know, I hop in fricking 55 degrees for at least five minutes and I just fucking power through and I do my breath work and the sun's hit me and man, it's just you get out, you do your grounding, you touch the earth, you get dirty, you know, and even if it's rainy, it doesn't matter. Like I just get out and I do it and then, you know, this is 9 a I'm done with everything. The rest of the day is smooth sailing. That's beautiful. Yeah, a guy cuts me off in the car. It's all good. Have at it, bro. You got to take a shit? You want to rush? Go ahead. It's all good. Yeah, I'm good. Way more important. I got nothing on what am I going to go to a job?

30:53 Who cares? You know, like, it's all good, man. Yeah, so it's, yeah, I think people do need to get involved in it, which is exciting that, you know, You have this podcast where it's all about fitness and, and, I listened to the one where you talking about Italy and going overseas and that's fascinating too. Were you only in Italy for the month? I spent a week in Barcelona, but the rest of the about 12 days or so was in Italy. Northern Italy, we were in, we spent some time at Lake Como and then a little bit of time in Milan and then down to Reggio Calabria and then over to Rome. Yeah, it was amazing. And man, I heard you talking about this on your show with one of your guests about just the food difference, right?

31:35 Like. the, the, it, to be in a place where there is literally government regulation and law enforcement that makes sure that the food is of the highest quality, where here the, the, the enforcement is, it better be the highest profit possible, right? Like you can, you can feel the difference when, when they're like all the rules were out the window and no supplements, not really work. I mean, walking a ton, but like not working out, not really paying attention to any sort of macros or calories or anything. just eating whatever we wanted whenever we wanted. And I felt awesome. Gain no weight, like felt totally fine. And then I come home and try to simulate it, but like the store bought bread versus like the baked fresh in the bakery that day bread, like all the differences.

32:23 It's incredible how much like even when you think you're doing well here, trying to do your best, it's still just some manufactured process thing that just wrecks your body. mean, you know, it's scary too, especially as a father. It's hard to fathom 50 years, what it looks like, because, you know, if you really think about it, like, let's pretend the world started in the, you know, 2000 years ago plus, you know, start a way before that. But let's just say it even started in 1776, okay? Declaration was signed. Let's say we had good nutrition back then and somewhere along the line, it's only been 300 years, some not even, somewhere along the line, we completely destroyed everything there is to do with food and drink.

33:18 Even our water isn't real water and it's wrapped up in plastic and it's sitting in trucks. And those plastics have been proven, literally proven, where microplastics go into the water and we ingest it and the average person has millions of pieces of microplastics in their bloodstream. That's been 300 years. Which really is probably closer to 150 because, I mean, we didn't even have electricity. So it's like we didn't even have windshield wipers in our cars until, you know, a couple people ago. So we really fucked this thing up. And it's... Yeah.

33:58 I mean, our grandparents ate better than we do, even if we tried to eat what they ate. it's probably 100 years we fucked this up. And I think it all started with good intentions. I think, you know, it was like, we need to feed the people, right? How can we figure out a way to get more out of this potato, more out of the strawberry more? And then eventually they realized if we cut corners, now we can actually make more money. And then they're like, well, what are they going to do? Not eat? They're going to eat. And then even if they die, who cares? Because in America, it's like every 10 seconds a baby's born. So there's this constant turnover like a restaurant where they're not worried about going out of business.

34:40 I mean, it's America, of course. What, are people going to stop coming here? Are people ever going to leave? They know. They're not stupid. And they'd rather soak this in, which is why companies like FDA I talk about all the time. And it's just these massive corporations that are just literally taking our tax dollars and killing us. I mean, because if you look at like even strawberries, you know, we talk about the food, even strawberries, there was an interesting study where they took a basket of strawberries, like just a regular basket for like seven bucks at the store, and they squeezed out all the strawberry juices, completely drained it, and then crystallized it. Turns out there's enough pesticides in that batch of strawberries to spray throughout an entire strawberry field.

35:23 So that means these assholes are not even just spraying pesticides, they're spraying so much that you can actually take a batch of strawberries and respray the field, which means maybe do less pesticides. But no, no, you can't do that, right? Because we have to make these things juicy and they have to grow faster. And it's just like... Yeah. And it's got to look perfect in the store or nobody's going to buy it. And then the store is going to lose money and then we're going to lose money. And it's all profit. It's all money. Yeah. that just came out the other day? No. Just look it up if you have time, dude. Look up Lunchables lead study. And yeah, there was, you know, because Lunchables are required for the school curriculums, most of them anyway, where they're part of the lunch program, if you're kids in the lunch program.

36:13 So, but Lunchables turns out that they have, I think it's, I don't want to misquote, but I think it's over 40 % of the allowed limit for lead. But this is approved by the FDA. And in order to get more protein, right, because they have to kind of like gauge this because the kids need more protein. So they added more meat, which is processed meat, turkey and all that stuff in Lunchables. They added more of that in the packaging. So to offset that statistic, they just added more protein to lessen the amount. But really, you're just adding process. It's not like it's real chicken. You're just adding process bullshit. So now these kids are ingesting all this process.

36:54 And then we look at like, OK. So all this food that came out and then you look at like the spike in, you know, autism, disease, cancer, and all these poor kids, you know, even in our generation. I mean, you know, this is really when it started. You add that plus the fact that social media, right, came about. This like pyramid of just everything is rising and everything's getting worse and worse. And then when you get these poor kids up to the top and they're like all messed up in the head, what do the parents do? let's give them Adderall. Yeah, they're 10 years old. Let's just pop them on Adderall. They'll be able to focus. It's just like dude. It's crazy, man. It's a dangerous spiral, dangerous spiral we're on.

37:36 Man, this has been a great conversation. You have similar conversations on your show. Tell us about humanity and hashtags. just a show I started a few years ago where, like yourself, I wanted to just talk about different things like wellness, productivity, social media. And I just wanted to have good objective conversations with fellow humans. And yeah, that's what we do. So I put out episodes every week. You could find it everywhere. Just search humanity and hashtags on all platforms. And I put everything on YouTube as well. So if you don't watch it there. But yeah, we're going good, man. Episode a week, and we're having a blast. awesome we'll have the links to that in our show notes for this episode thank you so much for your time anything key here that we did not touch on you and make sure we mentioned Jeremy, the only thing I would say is if if you don't already to subscribe to Jeremy show you need to because there's some great content and you do a good job.

38:26 So just keep doing what you're doing. And the more we talk about fitness and get people active and get people thinking that there is grass that's greener on the other side and you are better to take care of yourself. You just got to do the research and it's going to take a little time and a little effort, maybe a little money. But you only get one life, man. So don't fuck it up. to Tony Berardo. He's the host of the Humanity and Hashtags podcast. You can find the link to that show and to him show notes for this episode at thefitmas .com. shared really helped you to shift your perspective on all that you have to be grateful for. And I hope that... that he shares about his day -to -day struggle to be a little bit better can help you find a path to do the same.

39:10 a lot to us that you spend time with us like this every week. If you've gotten any value out of this conversation and you know someone else who might benefit from this conversation, please do share it with them so that we can goal of helping as many people as possible that share the same kind of struggles that you and I do. and come back and join us again next week at thefitmass .com. Thanks for listening.