Maintenance Phase - February 15, 2022


＂Super Size Me＂

Topics
cheeseburger bills
＂Illness Influencer＂ Belle Gibson Jordan Peterson Part 1： The Carnivore Diet

Episode Stats


Length

1 hour and 2 minutes

Words per minute

171.94

Word count

10,778

Sentence count

361

Harmful content

Misogyny

4

sentences flagged

Toxicity

158

sentences flagged

Hate speech

57

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
00:00:00.000 welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that has 30 days to fatten you up or melt you down
00:00:19.540 or whatever whatever that movie was about we're all of a sudden we're just like
00:00:25.360 the witch and hansel and gretel i know it doesn't it doesn't hold together as a metaphor
00:00:29.820 I apologize. I'm Michael Hobbs. I'm Aubrey Gordon. And if you want to support the show,
00:00:35.680 you can do that on Patreon at patreon.com slash maintenance phase. Last month's bonus Patreon
00:00:42.060 episode was a mailbag episode where we read a bunch of I'm not fat phobic, but emails and
00:00:49.980 responded to them. And that was fun. This month's bonus episode is going to be a continuation of
00:00:55.800 our bell gibson episode we got a really big response to that so we're doing a kind of
00:00:59.960 spiritual sequel where we talk about other illness influencers including one who was
00:01:05.240 friends with bell gibson yeah we talk a lot about real illnesses and this month we're talking about
00:01:10.300 fake ones i know those are the best ones those are the ones we can laugh at so it's much better
00:01:14.640 that way and today we are talking about same-sex marriage no it's the other ssm aubrey keeps
00:01:23.840 texting me about she's like i'm ready for ssm on sunday and mike just hears the opening bars of
00:01:29.500 going to the chapel no supersize me we're talking about supersize me yes which i asked you should i
00:01:40.280 watch the movie before we record this and you specifically said you wanted me fresh i do want
00:01:46.640 you fresh for this particular conversation with my aging memories so talk to me about your aging
00:01:52.360 memories did you see this movie when it came out and like just generally what do you remember about
00:01:57.480 the film and what do you remember about sort of how it was received i think i saw it in the theater
00:02:02.400 i may have seen it very quickly after it came out on vhs i mean this was something that i was
00:02:08.440 looking forward to and i was excited about because i have been obsessed with this issue for so long
00:02:12.860 and i don't like fast food companies and i don't like soda companies and it seemed like an
00:02:18.120 interesting vessel for roasting such companies yeah i mean the premise of the movie is that
00:02:24.940 he's like this ostensibly healthy dude he spends yeah i think it was 30 days eating nothing but
00:02:31.460 mcdonald's and by the end of the 30 days it's like his kidney's about to fail his like heart
00:02:38.000 is just pumping milkshakes he's just on death's door by the end of this and i think people were 0.99
00:02:44.460 like yeah these companies suck and look how bad they are it's a little bit like jackass food 0.96
00:02:50.440 systems edition yeah like punked but for fast food so what's your relationship with the movie 0.97
00:02:56.960 so i saw supersize me at the time i don't know i would have been like 21 when it came out like a
00:03:06.440 fat 21 year old and i remember watching it and thinking this makes me feel gross and bad but i
00:03:13.540 don't know why. And everyone I know seems to love it. And I didn't really give it more thought than
00:03:20.240 that. But like, truly everybody I know was like, okay, fast food is the reason that everyone is
00:03:25.960 fat. That is it. That is the core. That is the thing. And as we will see today, you know, I don't
00:03:32.940 actually think that this film illustrates a causal link. I mean, I have no idea where this episode is
00:03:39.100 going. But in general, I think that you can smuggle in a lot of really retrograde ideas if
00:03:46.260 you package them as like anti-corporate or social justice or anti-inequality. I don't know if that's
00:03:52.400 what we're going to find in this, but most of the people who eat at McDonald's are like, you know,
00:03:57.000 poor people. Yes. You can see I have a bit of a radar for where we might be going with this.
00:04:02.400 Yep. You might just have a radar for it. You might have been hosting this show with me for
00:04:07.260 a year and a half and have a sense of how these episodes tend to fucking go. It's not a blank 0.95
00:04:13.260 slate over here, unfortunately. One thing before we dive in, folks may be familiar that there was
00:04:20.460 a very unusual sort of Me Too situation with the director Morgan Spurlock a couple years ago.
00:04:27.400 So there will be discussion today of specific weights, calories, health marker numbers,
00:04:32.580 all that kind of stuff but also toward the end sexual assault sexual harassment and alcoholism 0.99
00:04:39.080 so just like take care i didn't even know he got me too'd now i'm in suspense oh my fucking god 0.98
00:04:43.480 mike if you don't know about this part we're i really don't get ready we're at this extremely 0.98
00:04:48.140 bleak cultural moment where it's like there's so many trash dudes in this particular industry
00:04:54.120 yes but it's like i lose track of like who has been exposed and who hasn't oh the way i'm going
00:05:00.320 structure most of our conversation today we're going to do a little overview of supersize me
00:05:04.260 we're going to talk about the sort of cultural response to it and then i'm just going to go in 0.53
00:05:08.760 on what i think are five major fucking problems with this movie that were knowable in 2004 when 0.85
00:05:17.260 it was released i'm excited yeah i know you like a little structure so we got a little structure 0.92
00:05:23.120 I like a little skeleton on the episode.
00:05:25.280 A little skeleton.
00:05:27.000 It's giving skeleton.
00:05:29.100 So Super Size Me was a very splashy documentary released in 2004 that was both directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock.
00:05:40.860 At the time, he had been a playwright.
00:05:43.500 He had done some stand-up comedy.
00:05:45.540 He'd worked on some sort of like gross-out kind of shows for MTV.
00:05:49.560 And this was his big sort of claim to fame.
00:05:52.620 so just to start us off we're just gonna watch the trailer together oh we're gonna have clips
00:05:58.880 today we're gonna have clips on clips on clips and after our fat camps episode there are a bunch
00:06:04.760 of like emotionally brutal moments in this and i was like you know what we don't need to do is
00:06:09.280 watch those we're only doing the light-hearted well we're just doing shit we haven't felt bad
00:06:14.400 about before on this show. 0.67
00:06:17.780 That's as good as it gets on this show.
00:06:21.800 All right.
00:06:22.440 I sent you the link.
00:06:23.540 Let me know when you're queued up, and then you can just count us down.
00:06:27.520 Hello, may I help you?
00:06:28.680 Yeah, could I get the double quarter pounder with cheese meal?
00:06:33.240 I think I'm going to have to go supersize.
00:06:38.180 It's hard for me to watch him go through this.
00:06:42.160 It seems like you're starting to get addicted to it now.
00:06:44.400 You saw these numbers, right? These numbers are outrageous.
00:06:47.840 Unfortunately, you caused some major harm to your heart, your liver, your blood.
00:06:51.200 You're going to die. You'll die. 0.99
00:06:52.560 I want more, more, more, more. 0.99
00:06:54.020 You've got to stop.
00:06:58.860 So there was, I guess, the sort of normal stuff that you can hear about how the food is addictive and he's, quote, going to die.
00:07:06.300 But then it's intercut with shots of a doll of Pennywise, the clown from It.
00:07:12.500 and it's like no no it's it's ronald mcdonald pennywise oh is that what it was supposed to be
00:07:19.620 it's a painting of ronald mcdonald as pennywise oh that's a little on the nose even for 2004
00:07:26.840 then we have the comedic music which they always put into these trailers and then we cut to a bunch
00:07:31.920 of like b-roll of like headless fat people just fat butts in sweatpants or leggings preferably
00:07:38.300 leggings i don't know if it's disappointing to see that in this because you've kind of primed me to 0.98
00:07:43.760 to find all the ways that this movie is trash but it's like oh yeah we were doing that we were just
00:07:49.540 doing that everywhere it was astonishing how much of that footage was in this film oh really if
00:07:55.380 there were shots where there was like a belly hanging out over pants or something they would
00:08:01.020 find that if there was like a butt with a lot of cellulite in it it felt really clear that they
00:08:06.920 were trying to use fat bodies to gross people out as part of illustrating the sort of proposed 0.97
00:08:14.580 villainy of this uh of mcdonald's on some level it's pretty fucked up that i remember this as 0.98
00:08:19.600 like a fun anti-corporate romp yeah totally it's not even worth remembering in my head that this 0.53
00:08:25.180 movie had any of those tropes i think that's also that's also indicative about like how my thinking
00:08:29.840 has changed on this issue but also just like that stuff was everywhere it was totally everywhere
00:08:35.160 so essentially the central conceit of the film is that morgan spurlock who has a girlfriend who's a
00:08:42.520 vegan chef he's very careful to emphasize that he lives in new york city so he walks a ton all the
00:08:49.180 time he is going to do this experiment where the only food that he eats for 30 days comes from
00:08:56.700 mcdonald's anytime they prompt him to supersize he supersizes which was for folks god i guess we
00:09:04.560 have to explain what supersizing was i know right so there used to be at mcdonald's in the u.s
00:09:12.200 there was you could get small medium large and then they added this category called supersize
00:09:16.720 and the whole ad campaign was like for 39 cents or for 49 cents or for some very nominal amount
00:09:23.680 you could get this gigantic container of fries and soda yes so anytime they asked him that he
00:09:30.380 would supersize. He also aims for what he says is the average amount of steps an American gets in a
00:09:37.980 day, which at that point he says was 5,000 steps. So he wears a pedometer. And when he's getting
00:09:44.040 close to 5,000 steps, he starts taking cabs. Oh, so he's, he's trying to live the average
00:09:50.280 American lifestyle. Like he's trying to recreate the car centric, no walking, all fast food
00:09:56.660 lifestyle of like the average American as conceived of by him.
00:10:00.700 He's doing that on the exercise side, but on the food side, the average American is
00:10:05.820 not eating three meals a day at McDonald's every day for a month, right?
00:10:10.480 Also, I think none of the rules say that he has to eat everything that he orders, but
00:10:15.360 he seems to do that.
00:10:16.740 None of the rules say that he has to get full sugar sodas, but he does that too, right?
00:10:21.340 So obviously he's stacking the deck so that his health markers get as bad and he gains
00:10:26.220 as much weight as possible. Yes. So the results of his experiment as the film presents them
00:10:32.040 are also really splashy. So we're going to watch this clip from the end of the film
00:10:36.920 where he sort of recaps, here's what happened to my health. I remember this.
00:10:43.420 In only 30 days of eating nothing but McDonald's, I gained 24 and a half pounds.
00:10:47.660 My liver turned to fat and my cholesterol shot up 65 points. My body fat percentage went from 11
00:10:54.300 to 18%, still below the national average of 22% for men and 30% for women. I nearly doubled my
00:11:01.100 risk of coronary heart disease, making myself twice as likely to have heart failure. I felt
00:11:05.960 depressed and exhausted most of the time, my mood swung on a dime, and my sex life was non-existent.
00:11:12.680 I craved this food more and more when I ate it and got massive headaches when I didn't.
00:11:17.940 In my final blood test, many of my body functions showed signs of improvement,
00:11:22.060 but the doctors were less than optimistic. Tell me what you think seeing it now.
00:11:28.880 I mean, now I host a podcast that debunks health junk science. So now I'm like,
00:11:34.520 I see some red flags. Tell me about the red flags. I mean, the addiction stuff seems fake.
00:11:43.280 The I get headaches when I don't eat it stuff seems fake. I doubled my risk of heart attacks
00:11:49.180 is also an interesting question because people his age are extremely unlikely to get a heart
00:11:55.580 attack. Yeah. I don't know what that actually means to say that he's twice as likely to get
00:12:00.580 heart failure. Well, and risk is prediction based in other markers. Right. You don't you don't like
00:12:08.020 go to the doctor and they don't like put a stethoscope to your heart and go, oh, you've
00:12:12.760 doubled your risk for heart disease. Like, no, they're like looking at multiple other markers
00:12:17.200 to predict that risk right it's not as hard and fast as say his cholesterol going up like that's
00:12:22.240 alarming i get that also speaking of hard and fast the stuff about sex doesn't check out to me 0.95
00:12:28.760 either there was a little circle it like circled his junk and then it said worthless next to it 0.80
00:12:33.780 which is actually pretty funny as like a visual but the idea that like fast food affects your 0.94
00:12:38.460 sex drive i don't know yeah well and also like there is some stuff in the film of his girlfriend
00:12:44.420 who as we mentioned earlier is like her chyron in the film says like healthy vegan chef okay there's
00:12:50.660 quite a bit where she talks about like we're not having good sex but there's not really an
00:12:54.760 exploration of like she talks quite a bit about being really unsettled by this project really not
00:13:01.740 into it really opposed to it and she is also like a very thin person so i don't know how much of that
00:13:09.380 is a direct result of food that is impacting his performance. And how much of that is her being
00:13:16.100 like, I'm grossed out by this dude who's eating at McDonald's, which I'm morally opposed to.
00:13:20.560 Right. Or I'm grossed out by this dude who's gaining weight. Right. It's like also a very
00:13:24.720 possible thing and is a thing that people would happily and proudly say out loud in 2004 to anyone
00:13:30.620 who would listen. Also, like they needed some tension in this movie that, you know, you have
00:13:35.160 to have some stakes in the main personal narrative yes so i mean not to say that they were faking it
00:13:40.100 or anything but it's like again they have the incentive to play up the tensions that this
00:13:44.860 created in the relationship so it's worth noting that this was like an extremely award-winning
00:13:52.280 documentary at the time yeah it won sundance's documentary directing award it won the wga award
00:14:00.380 for documentary screenplay it was nominated for an oscar for best feature length documentary
00:14:06.600 oh god i will say like i feel like i've already tipped my hand on this i'm not a fan of this film
00:14:10.500 oh oh we've reached the big surprise surprise like i said i'm like really impressed upon by
00:14:19.060 the number of like really good thoughtful people who were also like pretty far to the left and had
00:14:24.780 pretty good analysis of power and privilege and all of that kind of stuff who went so happily
00:14:30.140 into the world of this movie and went so happily along with it and so unquestioningly along with
00:14:36.440 it man i i definitely was one of those people who like unquestioningly accepted it yeah i'm not
00:14:41.820 gonna like try to get myself off the hook by saying that like well i didn't read in the new
00:14:45.260 yorker that there was any debate about this yeah but yeah i mean i just don't remember it being
00:14:50.580 the target of any kind of controversy it was just like really obvious that fast food is bad and yeah
00:14:57.100 is making us fat and sick. Yeah. I think it's really fucking hard to talk about the degree to
00:15:02.960 which particularly like white people on the left are willing to go real fucking hard on fast food, 0.97
00:15:08.340 but never articulate the class and race politics that go right to that. Right. When you are 0.98
00:15:13.420 thinking and talking about who eats at McDonald's, you're talking about poor people. You're probably 0.99
00:15:18.680 imagining people of color. Right. All of that unchecked, weird classism and racism and all 1.00
00:15:24.000 that kind of stuff rears its head and sort of is like rocket fuel to like you know powering these
00:15:30.480 you know disdain with mcdonald's which is also a great deal of disdain at like who eats at 0.99
00:15:36.480 mcdonald's right yeah it's so annoying because mcdonald's really is trash it's shitty it's a 0.99
00:15:41.960 shitty corporation google mcdonald's labor practices like if you want to get really depressed 0.99
00:15:48.100 I am uninterested in defending the corporate practices of McDonald's.
00:15:53.620 I know. 0.98
00:15:54.200 Cat-a-fucking-grickly. 0.97
00:15:56.340 But I'm also uninterested in allowing critiques of McDonald's by people who don't eat at McDonald's 0.98
00:16:03.940 to power the stigma and judgment of people who do.
00:16:08.360 What I'm taking away from this so far is that the only entities that you have defended on the show
00:16:13.580 are Angela Lansbury and McDonald's Corporation.
00:16:16.040 Yes.
00:16:18.100 unproblematic faves so should we dig into the five things that i think this gets wrong yes debunk me
00:16:25.300 put me put me in the debunk bed debunk beds yeah so the first thing that i think is not right is
00:16:33.740 that it misrepresents key facts and it does so repeatedly okay so the first one this is like a
00:16:39.980 gimme in maintenance phase world it uncritically and repeatedly uses the 300 000 deaths each year
00:16:46.080 from obesity number. Oh, old friend on the show. Mortality estimates are really hard to get to
00:16:54.700 in terms of like isolating a single cause for someone's death. Right. And that 300,000 deaths
00:17:01.000 number came from we assume that every fat person who died died of being fat. Right. So either
00:17:07.360 Morgan Spurlock and the sort of team that made this film were not looking at the primary sources
00:17:13.300 or they didn't care to talk about it or they're just looking at popular media and reporting out
00:17:19.880 the numbers that are in popular media and all three of those do not speak highly to the research
00:17:24.700 of the film right i mean they needed the biggest number to establish the stakes of their documentary
00:17:28.880 there is another really fucking important key fact that he misrepresents here and that the media
00:17:35.140 widely misrepresented here he said that the inspiration for making this film was a 2002 0.80
00:17:40.880 lawsuit filed against mcdonald's called pelman v mcdonald's is this the woman who was suing
00:17:48.480 mcdonald's because she was fat basically yeah i mean you totally nailed like that was the thing
00:17:52.960 was like oh my god can you believe how absurd and how self-important and how uninformed people can
00:18:01.560 be that they would sue mcdonald's because they said they were surprised that it made them fat
00:18:05.280 so two things one this wasn't like some lady suing mcdonald's these were two black teenagers 0.98
00:18:12.000 from the bronx and there was a huge fucking pile on from white media yeah but also that's not what 0.97
00:18:19.360 the fucking lawsuit was it never is so i looked up all of the original fucking court filings 0.98
00:18:25.440 and a bunch of like legal analysis of this case oh yeah like let's roll so this was 0.99
00:18:33.300 designed as the first case in a wave of impact litigation right impact litigation is lawsuits
00:18:39.200 that are designed to sort of change laws or practices or regulations or jurisprudence right
00:18:45.160 the goal of this suit largely as far as most of the legal analysis that i read found was
00:18:50.580 to engage in discovery and reveal publicly a bunch of internal documents about mcdonald's 0.68
00:18:59.020 shitty corporate practices. So the grounds for this suit was that McDonald's was engaging in
00:19:06.500 false advertising and that it knew that its product was dangerous and did not disclose that
00:19:13.260 danger to consumers. So the framework that they're using here is essentially the same kind of
00:19:17.920 framework that gets us surgeon general's warnings on packs of cigarettes. That's the thing that
00:19:23.460 they're aiming at. Not that it makes people fat per se, although that is absolutely part of it
00:19:28.900 and it's garbage rhetoric, but much more that like the issue here is this company is producing
00:19:33.900 a product that they know is dangerous and they're not warning consumers. And we have a precedent for 0.86
00:19:39.400 these companies being expected to warn consumers of the dangers of their products and they're not
00:19:44.400 doing that. That lawsuit was, it dragged on for fucking ever. It was dismissed without prejudice 0.99
00:19:50.060 a couple of years after it was filed by the judge. And it wasn't until 2010 that it was finally
00:19:56.060 denied class action status. Ah, okay. I am going to send you a quote from a really helpful piece
00:20:04.080 of analysis from Bloomberg Law. Okay. It says, it will be extraordinarily difficult for any
00:20:09.980 plaintiff, individually or as part of a class, to hold a single food or beverage manufacturer
00:20:14.920 liable for obesity-related injuries. In order to prevail on any theory of liability requiring
00:20:20.360 proof of medical causation, a plaintiff must prove that the manufacturer's product
00:20:24.940 was a substantial cause of her injury, not just one of a number of contributing causes.
00:20:30.720 The problem of obesity in America has no single cause. That's what I was going to say is like,
00:20:35.580 it's really hard to draw a straight line from McDonald's to food-related illness in America.
00:20:42.340 I mean, you can say the fast food industry, maybe, or the food system, maybe, but kind of
00:20:47.480 the problem is that you can't really pull any specific actor out. Yeah. I want to be clear.
00:20:54.000 like so i have like deeply fucking mixed feelings about this shit i think corporations should be 0.98
00:20:59.760 able to be held accountable and should be able to face litigation and all kinds of stuff right 0.98
00:21:04.600 right but i also think the grounds of this argument being like mcdonald's is why people 0.92
00:21:09.040 are fat like you can't actually fucking prove that it is almost 20 years later and we still
00:21:14.520 don't know why most people are fat or how they got that way in a scientifically incontrovertible 0.99
00:21:21.180 kind of tested narrative right right so like the idea that 20 years ago with the data we had then
00:21:26.860 we could say the reason people are fat as mcdonald's just reeks of we're looking for someone
00:21:33.680 to blame yeah in this film he talks about this lawsuit a little tiny bit and then he interviews
00:21:39.460 the attorney lead plaintiff's representation in this lawsuit and he asks him okay so uh why did
00:21:48.300 you why were you interested in this case and the guy kind of smiles and he goes you mean aside from
00:21:52.260 financial incentives oh and that's the only clip he shows of the lawyer nice so he's pretty much
00:21:59.920 just like oh this is just a bunch of greedy lawyers doing frivolous lawsuits blah blah blah
00:22:04.700 blah and he doesn't really get into like actually this lawsuit is trying to prove the same point
00:22:10.400 that you are i think you're both incorrect or at least not getting the complete picture here
00:22:15.320 yeah it's weird i don't know man it the whole thing just skeeves me out so hard because like
00:22:19.720 i don't think that the grounds for this lawsuit or the argument for this lawsuit is like a good one
00:22:24.200 but i also don't think that the way that it was portrayed was accurate right and also i mean if
00:22:30.720 they had gotten to the discovery phase they probably would have gotten some really good 0.53
00:22:33.460 stuff honestly they totally fucking would have like i have no fucking doubt that there are like 0.95
00:22:39.820 straight up skeletor memos yeah coming out of fucking mcdonald's corporate hq yeah okay thing 0.96
00:22:47.220 two this is where we get into some smoking gun territory oh supersize me withholds important 0.92
00:22:55.480 information about its experiment i've been waiting for this because he must have been twisting these
00:23:02.660 like medical numbers and his routines and everything like on its face that stuff doesn't
00:23:06.940 really hold up so throughout the film morgan spurlock and whose nutritionist both say that
00:23:12.260 he was eating about 5 000 calories a day they say it several times a number of other filmmakers so
00:23:20.120 there were like rebuttal documentaries to supersize me at the time okay a number of those
00:23:25.600 documentarians some reporters and other folks like science teachers tried to figure out how to
00:23:32.400 make this happen based on the McDonald's menu at the time. And they could not get to 5,000 calories
00:23:39.440 per day. Wait, but I don't understand how you can't get to 5,000 calories. Can't you just go
00:23:43.760 in there and buy like 12 milkshakes? I mean, what they were saying is one breakfast meal,
00:23:49.260 one lunch meal, one dinner meal, and even desserts with lunch and dinner, they were still like,
00:23:55.340 can't get there. So if you do like a Big Mac extra value meal for lunch and dinner,
00:23:59.780 and then the like breakfast meal for breakfast that doesn't get you anywhere close to 5 000
00:24:04.220 calories and even if you add mcflurries or whatever wow to lunch and dinner it still
00:24:10.680 didn't get folks to 5 000 calories he should have done it at the cheesecake factory that place
00:24:16.020 you do that in like one dish yeah wait let me clickety click here i'm actually really curious
00:24:22.940 now. Big Mac calories. I'm sure it's changed since 2004. I'm sure it has too. But yeah,
00:24:30.900 so a Big Mac itself is 563 calories today. Yep. You'd have to eat nine Big Macs in a day to get
00:24:38.100 you to 5,000 calories, which is like a lot. Totally. You know, again, it feels like just
00:24:43.000 a little nudge in the direction of like, it seems like this is being sensationalized. It seems like
00:24:48.300 things are being overstated a little bit. Some folks tried to replicate the health effects of
00:24:53.760 his experiment and no one has been able to. The health stuff. I mean, I'm sure that in 30 days,
00:24:58.960 you could affect your health markers. I don't know if you can get them to like near death.
00:25:03.760 Okay. Okay. You're like primed. I'm so fucking ready. You're coiled up like a little leopard
00:25:12.100 right now yes so i am so deeply ready to fucking pounce 1.00
00:25:19.020 so two things one in the trailer we've got this clip of the doctor being like you're going to die 0.96
00:25:26.200 you would die yeah that's in response to a question that spurlock asks where he says like
00:25:30.680 if i continued this for months or years what would happen oh so it's in response to hypothetical 0.86
00:25:35.820 it's not him saying you're gonna die i'm saying you're going to die in the space of this 30 days
00:25:41.780 Right. But more than that, one of the biggest sort of smoking gun things that this film presents
00:25:49.740 is that Spurlock had significant liver damage. Right. From 30 days, just one month of eating
00:25:56.740 this way. And he's like, oh, my God, look what happened to my liver. So the film doesn't offer
00:26:01.060 us any explanation for that liver damage other than 30 days of McDonald's. In 2017, Morgan Spurlock
00:26:08.460 disclosed that he was an alcoholic and said that he had been drinking every week. He had not been
00:26:14.240 sober for a week since he was 13. Oh, right. Decades and decades of hard drinking. And then
00:26:23.020 at the end of this film, they're like, Oh my God, look at the liver damage you sustained just from
00:26:27.180 one month of McDonald's is sort of what you're meant to conclude from that. Yeah. So they didn't
00:26:31.760 take a baseline. They, if they did, it is not, they do not specifically talk about the state
00:26:37.720 of his liver at the beginning of that film so it's like me going to the doctor and they're like
00:26:42.000 you're five foot six and i'm like after 30 days of this diet yes yes you've been five foot six 0.98
00:26:49.680 for a while yes so like alcoholism is a fucking beast it's terrible i have no desire to like 0.99
00:26:57.240 dunk on somebody who's like in the thick of their alcoholism and at the same time this is a 0.98
00:27:03.900 self-funded movie where he is the director he is making the decisions about how the film is
00:27:09.560 structured and he has decided to make his body the site of an experiment about the health effects of 0.99
00:27:15.400 something and he's withholding a major fucking piece of information right it doesn't fucking 0.98
00:27:21.540 hold water that you can be like oh my god one month of mcdonald's and his liver was fried it's 0.98
00:27:26.120 like no fucking 20 years of drinking and his liver was fried yeah i actually i mean i remember that 0.73
00:27:32.020 being a huge part of why the movie was so convincing yes this topic is heavily heavily 0.68
00:27:38.460 requested for us a lot a lot a lot of people have asked about supersize me most of them have been
00:27:45.440 younger than you and i and the reason that they have requested it is and i talked to a friend of
00:27:50.280 mine who said that he watched this film in health class every year for years so this is like a major
00:27:59.100 part to this day of health curricula in schools man right okay are you ready for thing three oh
00:28:06.940 give me thing three okay thing three that is the trouble with supersize me it doesn't really
00:28:11.580 identify problems or propose meaningful solutions okay it sort of points the finger at mcdonald's
00:28:17.440 but it also makes fun of people who eat at mcdonald's he talks in the film about what
00:28:21.560 mcdonald's calls its heavy users right those are people who eat there about three times a week
00:28:26.660 that's what mcdonald's considers a heavy user he does a little animation while he's talking about
00:28:32.700 this and he animates all of these heavy users as people my size or larger i kept looking for 0.98
00:28:39.700 other ways around this and it was just like man this guy really fucking does not like fat people 0.88
00:28:44.560 yeah he interviews he does a bunch of man on the street interviews with people who eat at 0.98
00:28:48.260 mcdonald's and you're sort of supposed to laugh at them you're sort of supposed to judge them
00:28:52.200 it is as damning of the consumers as it is of the corporation, but it doesn't really give either
00:28:59.860 actual paths to change aside from like, you have a choice of where to eat. Don't eat here
00:29:04.340 is sort of as far as he goes. Right. It's, it's really weird to demonize this corporation,
00:29:11.980 but also demonize the people who buy the products from the corporation without really interrogating.
00:29:17.760 well why do people why do people eat there yeah i mean i think this is part of the challenge here
00:29:23.300 is that it doesn't engage at all with anything related to access to health care it doesn't
00:29:28.940 engage with the built environment he says a couple of times sort of throughout the film he's like you
00:29:34.260 know it'd be nice if they got rid of super sizes but he doesn't go here's what mcdonald's actually 1.00
00:29:38.720 needs to fucking do right he's just like mcdonald's fucking sucks and people who eat there fucking 1.00
00:29:43.000 suck. It uses the language of corporate responsibility, but at its core, it's pushing 1.00
00:29:48.540 for personal responsibility. It's all clicking into place now. Why I liked this in my early
00:29:52.820 twenties. This was my entire ideology in my early twenties was just like, this thing sucks. 0.99
00:30:02.420 Without any actual political philosophy or any deeper understanding. It's just like, 0.95
00:30:08.660 yeah cars suck but also traffic sucks and finding a parking spot sucks climate change sucks but like 0.95
00:30:15.100 i wasn't putting those together into like any theory of like how should we address cars under 0.96
00:30:19.760 climate change it was just like this is the thing that i hate today the politics of like boom
00:30:24.820 okay it's also not clear to me that fast food is actually uniquely bad for people yeah i mean i
00:30:33.300 think if you look up the ingredients of most fast food they're not that different than the
00:30:37.280 ingredients of like a loaf of bread that you buy at the grocery store. Yeah. To me, it's like
00:30:40.760 there's this much bigger systemic problem with the way that food is inspected, the way that food is
00:30:46.000 produced. I think that McDonald's is bad, but it's not clear to me that they're worse than any other
00:30:51.480 restaurant. Again, as you noted, the fucking Cheesecake Factory, man. Dude, Applebee's has 1.00
00:30:57.780 a lot to answer for. Sure. Fast Casual is, if anything, worse than fast food because your guard
00:31:03.520 isn't up i mean i think a lot of this media around demonizing fast food a lot of it really
00:31:10.600 seems to presume that either no one is consuming that media who eats at that restaurant right or
00:31:18.940 there are people eating that food from that restaurant who are consuming this media as well 1.00
00:31:24.820 and they just need to be told the straight shit which is their dummies for eating this fucking 1.00
00:31:29.300 terrible food and everybody knows it's bad for you and why would you make such a bad decision 0.99
00:31:33.680 right anyway we're getting further into not great territory here i am going to send you
00:31:43.180 a clip that we're gonna watch for our first item in thing four which is that supersize me
00:31:51.500 proudly and incuriously drives stigma.
00:31:55.980 Oh.
00:31:56.680 So I'm going to send you a clip from the film.
00:31:59.760 Mm-hmm. 0.84
00:32:02.540 Left unabated, obesity would overtake smoking
00:32:07.560 as a leading preventable cause of death in this country.
00:32:10.880 I was at this meal,
00:32:12.860 and it came up that one of the people was a smoker.
00:32:15.600 And somebody else at the table started hectoring them about,
00:32:18.200 what's the matter with you?
00:32:19.180 Don't you know how bad it is for you?
00:32:21.380 It'll do this, that, and the other thing to you,
00:32:23.340 and you really should stop. 1.00
00:32:24.420 And the smoker, rather than saying, fuck you, 1.00
00:32:26.720 which, you know, is like, mind your own business, 1.00
00:32:28.560 which I think is the appropriate response,
00:32:30.360 was abashed and defensive.
00:32:33.200 Like, oh, I tried to quit, and yeah, I'm going to try again,
00:32:35.640 and you're right, you're right, and so on. 0.98
00:32:37.360 At that same table, there was a quite large woman.
00:32:40.200 And I was wondering, what if this guy,
00:32:42.060 instead of confronting the smoker,
00:32:43.900 had said to the large woman, 1.00
00:32:45.880 what's the matter with you, you fat pig? 1.00
00:32:48.120 Don't you know how dangerous it is to be so overweight? 1.00
00:32:50.960 Stop eating, for God's sake.
00:32:52.220 And don't you dare get dessert.
00:32:53.340 And what's the matter with you, right?
00:32:55.200 Same logic.
00:32:56.220 I'd be hard-pressed to find a distinction between those two examples.
00:33:00.980 Okay, so one is now socially acceptable to Hector smokers,
00:33:05.280 but the other one isn't quite yet.
00:33:08.020 So the question is, at what point will it become acceptable
00:33:10.920 to publicly Hector fat people
00:33:13.800 uh in the way that that the smokers are publicly hectored
00:33:18.140 i love that we're at the point of the documentary where it's like let's talk to a random libertarian
00:33:25.920 like the guy that they were just interviewing is like a random writer for reason magazine
00:33:31.780 yep like he's not even like a health beat reporter it's just like a random libertarian 0.99
00:33:37.500 who's not fat who's like why doesn't anybody give fat people shit and i'm like you should 0.99
00:33:41.760 have asked a fat person about whether or not we're getting shit and he also he does the thing 0.99
00:33:47.280 where it's like oh so it's socially acceptable to yell at a smoker but it's not socially acceptable 0.99
00:33:55.100 to yell at a fat person and it's like it's extremely socially acceptable to yell at a fat
00:33:59.760 person yes that's not some like forbidden truth that like right that like fat people are like bad
00:34:07.000 you can't even say it in america anymore no that's the consensus position of every institution of 0.99
00:34:14.360 american life you are not a bold truth teller right it's not edgy to be like oh fat people suck 1.00
00:34:21.100 that's the fucking status quo any doctor any politician anyone with any societal power 0.99
00:34:27.240 will tell you exactly what you just said it is not is the least forbidden edgy thing to be saying 0.98
00:34:33.440 in American life. And also like, hey, fucko, we actually know now this is a 2022 looking back on 0.89
00:34:40.840 2004 moment, but we like now have quite a bit of data showing that increased stigma and 0.98
00:34:46.000 internalization of weight stigma by fat people makes us fucking fatter, not thinner. Right. 0.98
00:34:51.720 So this is only about making thin people feel better that they are allowed to yell at people
00:34:57.780 who don't look like they look. It's really clear that this film wants to stigmatize fat people and
00:35:04.860 does not particularly want to give fat people a voice. There are a couple of fat people that it
00:35:08.940 talks to, but it really only talks to fat people who sort of confirm Morgan Spurlock's hypothesis
00:35:15.900 here. One of the people, one of the fat people that it talks to is a type two diabetic who
00:35:21.900 drinks large amounts of soda and he's interviewed while he is in a hospital bed getting ready to go
00:35:28.540 in for weight loss surgery okay the other currently fat person that it talks to is a fat teen in an
00:35:37.640 extremely painful scene i would say for me this teen's mom is talking to a guest speaker who came
00:35:46.360 to her school who came to talk about like weight loss stuff and this mom is speaking for her child
00:35:54.740 and is saying things like she's really trying to lose weight and you're an inspiration to her
00:35:58.620 and you watch this fat teenager look at the camera while her mom is talking about everything
00:36:05.620 she's doing to manage her weight it's so gross and so uncomfortable so the film offers up one 0.99
00:36:12.020 sort of quote unquote success story fat person and that story did not fucking age well okay 0.96
00:36:19.660 would you like to know who the guest speaker was at that fat teens high school early 2000s 0.99
00:36:24.820 weight loss icon jared fogel oh oh fuck oh fuck yeah oh my god yeah 0.96
00:36:34.760 do you want to give a rundown of who jared fogle is i mean i think we'll probably end up doing a 0.98
00:36:42.560 whole episode at some point but he was a guy who was in an ad campaign for subway originally
00:36:48.220 talking about how he used to weigh some large amount and then he lost half his body weight
00:36:54.160 or something these generic success stories by eating subway he would have their like veggie
00:36:58.940 sub or something and then he he kind of became like a cultural figure he would show up in like
00:37:04.120 various other weight loss media stuff as like a spokesman and then uh yeah he was eventually
00:37:10.580 arrested for i believe having child pornography on his computer yeah it's uh worse than that
00:37:17.580 oh is it yes so he was a spokesperson for subway sandwiches they lifted up his story because
00:37:23.340 he said that he had lost 250 pounds by getting up every day walking to subway and having subway
00:37:30.940 sandwiches basically like twice a day, essentially as like a meal replacement plan. He was a
00:37:36.680 spokesperson for them for like 15 years, like a really long time. Oh, wow. In 2015, Jared Fogle
00:37:45.740 pled guilty in federal court to distribution and possession of child pornography and to traveling
00:37:51.020 to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. God, I remember noping out of that story like
00:37:57.960 very early you were correct to do so i was like this is super dark i don't want to know anything
00:38:04.020 else jesus christ yeah so two details one his defense team genuinely argued they had a forensic
00:38:13.440 psychologist who said that the reason for the sexual abuse was the weight loss oh what so they
00:38:22.420 argued that he replaced compulsive eating with what they called hypersexuality oh in the form 1.00
00:38:29.180 of child porn and child sex abuse which i say fucking nope get the fuck out of here that's 1.00
00:38:36.500 fucked up i'm speechless i don't know if i've been speechless on the show before it's astonishing oh 1.00
00:38:44.080 that's bleak it's so bleak so even in the context of the film he's not fucking helping well like 0.99
00:38:51.860 What is what is why is he even there? 0.93
00:38:53.820 He he lost a bunch of weight, but he he doesn't have anything to do with McDonald's.
00:38:57.500 Well, this is sort of the thing about this film is that there's sort of a narrative,
00:39:01.720 but it's sort of a collage of moments and attitudes toward fatness and fat people and
00:39:08.440 McDonald's and fast food and all of this sort of stuff. 0.99
00:39:11.020 And it just throws shit in like the guy being like, when do we get to start hectoring fat 1.00
00:39:15.440 people in public? 1.00
00:39:16.420 And then it doesn't fucking say anything about it. 0.99
00:39:18.560 Right. 0.99
00:39:18.800 And it does the same thing with Jared. 0.99
00:39:20.040 they show a shot of him standing on stage at a fucking high school holding up his old pants that 0.97
00:39:25.780 he wore when he was at his fattest and i'm like i was just watching it being like why is he here 0.97
00:39:30.640 what is this about yeah so here's i would like to show you a little clip of we're not going to
00:39:34.880 watch jared we don't need that in our lives um but we are going to watch that same fat teen
00:39:40.280 then speaks directly to the camera here is what that fat teen has to say about what jared had to
00:39:47.740 say to her. I guess it's kind of cool to know somebody or be able to listen to somebody talk
00:39:54.640 about actually being where I am right now. And it's kind of hard because I can't afford to like
00:40:00.420 go there every single day and buy a sandwich like two times a day. And that's what he's talking
00:40:06.780 about. Like that's the only solution. Like that's what he said that like works the best, but I can't
00:40:12.320 do that and i've tried other ways and it's kind of hurt my body from doing other ways that i've
00:40:18.580 tried to do and it's kind of hard to like look at someone who said hey i've done it so you can do it
00:40:27.560 but it's not that easy tell me your thoughts i mean that's more bleak than the jared fogel stuff
00:40:34.360 oh no i'm so sorry i was like this will be the lighter part i mean that's i'm being slightly
00:40:41.260 hyperbolic but like she's basically i mean she's near to tears and she's saying like yeah i've i've
00:40:47.500 tried this and i've hurt my body yeah it's hurt my body and i can't afford this so basically like
00:40:53.580 what you're offering me is garbage this is not remotely workable for me this isn't a thing that
00:41:00.060 functions for me yeah right this is totally irrelevant to me and like yeah i wish i wish 0.85
00:41:06.460 you would like listen to me when i say like that doesn't work for me yeah like i wish someone would
00:41:11.980 kind of take that seriously i'm like telling you in very clear terms but oh guess uh you're just
00:41:18.340 gonna tell me the same thing that you tell everybody and just keep telling me i gotta do
00:41:22.360 it again great thank you right it doesn't offer anything on that front it just sort of drops that 0.94
00:41:28.600 in and then is like anyway moving on right and then their next fucking story is about this dude
00:41:33.300 who worked for Baskin Robbins and got real sick okay so it just goes right back to like stigmatizing 0.99
00:41:39.240 shit right this fat teenager who is ostensibly who you are talking about in this film is like 0.97
00:41:45.740 I'm telling you that your approach doesn't work for me and it's like anyway on to the next here's 1.00
00:41:50.160 another yeah anyway fat person who died because they were too dumb to stop eating right like is 0.91
00:41:54.360 sort of the vibe and it's just like yeah this is unhelpful if only she had listened to the infamous 0.99
00:41:59.520 pedophile she'd be doing better jesus fucking christ can i tell you what the so at the end of 0.97
00:42:04.260 this film it does a whole thing that's like uh like where are they now oh no like where are all 0.99
00:42:09.340 these people and the closing title card says jared fogel continues to inspire millions with
00:42:15.720 his willpower and giant pants that's so dark it's not funny but i'm like this is my emotional
00:42:24.520 reaction it's well laughter is a way of discharging discomfort right like that's a way of like getting
00:42:30.220 it out of you i get you that's also one of my primary responses yeah i don't want to do too 0.91
00:42:34.700 much of the 2022 looking back on 2004 but like boy oh boy that is some real fucking damning 0.87
00:42:40.860 like that is rough in retrospect to be like he's inspiring millions and i'm like
00:42:47.080 again this this documentary is still being shown in schools yes what did they do when the kids are 0.75
00:42:57.600 like who's that guy it's so well fucked let me tell you a story about this particular guest star 0.80
00:43:05.720 uh i told you before this episode i was like i'm gonna be a little less swears-y this time i think 0.98
00:43:10.240 but maybe not and like this is the shit where i'm like i can't yeah i can't not swear about
00:43:15.960 jared vogel so okay can we move on to the fifth thing fifth thing okay the fifth thing is when 0.91
00:43:23.040 people talk about supersize me they talk about like it actually created a bunch of good change
00:43:28.380 in the world and my fifth thing is the change that it created wasn't good and in many cases
00:43:33.280 it wasn't change right well i mean they got rid of the supersizes i guess that was the big headline
00:43:39.760 yeah so mcdonald's proudly announced that they stopped supersizing portions you can't get
00:43:44.740 supersize fries anymore at mcdonald's but when you start to look at what was a supersize
00:43:50.740 and sort of some of the reporting at the time it gets a little murkier okay a supersize drink was 0.63
00:43:56.800 42 ounces that is a lot of fucking soda the largest size now is 32 ounces so significantly 0.71
00:44:05.200 less right about a quarter less except a couple of reporters at the time when this announcement 0.98
00:44:11.580 came out that they were like not going to supersize anymore they were like well let's 0.98
00:44:14.800 see what the difference is so there was this fucking reporter and i was like god bless this 0.97
00:44:19.420 person for being like what am i going to do with my day today i'm going to do this i'm going to get 0.99
00:44:23.360 a supersized coke and a large coke and i'm going to strain out the ice and measure how much soda
00:44:28.380 it is in each one the guerrilla journalism we need and it was the same amount of soda nice
00:44:33.800 they were putting more ice in the supersized ones and they checked from like a couple of
00:44:38.720 different places and blah, blah, blah, blah. A supersized fry was seven ounces. Now they only
00:44:44.300 have a large and a large is 6.2 ounces. So basically the same. Basically the supersized
00:44:50.200 fry had two more fries than a large fry. And like at the same time, like they've taken these,
00:44:56.360 the names of supersized stuff off of the menu, but they've also added all of their McCafe
00:45:02.160 coffees, which are like, you know, if you get, I did look up a plain iced coffee and it has 40
00:45:08.640 grams of sugar for a plain iced coffee what really yeah oh four grams is a teaspoon of sugar
00:45:15.780 so that's 10 teaspoons of sugar right so there's this belief that it like pushed mcdonald's in
00:45:21.420 the right direction but it's not as if mcdonald's food is like less caloric or healthier or any of
00:45:30.240 that kind of stuff as a result it just means they change the names of their sizes right and they
00:45:35.380 offer less slightly less product and like maybe less product it's it's hard to read that as
00:45:41.900 anything other than like a pr move well yeah i mean the the parallel with subway is instructive
00:45:47.100 because subway was not a weight loss healthy food restaurant they did this as a pr move yes to cast
00:45:53.340 themselves as a weight loss company because americans were interested in weight loss nobody
00:45:58.940 wanted to glorify large sizes at that time they wanted to glorify health yes so i mean this was
00:46:05.060 the same time when KFC was changing its name because they didn't want the word fried on the
00:46:09.880 signs. So part of me feels like just like you don't want to be marketing something that's like
00:46:14.100 bragging about how large it is. Yes. So like shortly after this happens, sort of Wendy's and
00:46:20.420 other chains follow suit. Wendy's announces that it's eliminating its biggie size. Do you remember
00:46:25.660 biggie size at Wendy's? No, we didn't have any Wendy's near my house. I was a Taco Bell kid.
00:46:30.300 gotcha all taco bell all the time they did they remove their eighth layer of the
00:46:34.980 taco bell so wendy says they're eliminating their biggie size what they don't say is that they're
00:46:41.760 changing the name of the biggie size to a large they're changing the name of a large to a medium 0.93
00:46:47.320 and they're changing the name of a medium to a small right it's just fucking optics right right
00:46:52.620 this is also around the same time that candy companies phased out king size like we don't 0.90
00:46:58.080 have king size candy bars anymore quote unquote is that true yeah so they were like we're doing
00:47:02.460 away with king size we've heard you the health concerns are real blah blah and then like a few
00:47:06.980 months later things start showing up on shelves that are king size but they're labeled sharing
00:47:11.340 size nice like they'll share it with other people you can't say we didn't tell you to share it
00:47:16.700 it's so cynical it's so obvious and so cynical it's so cynical wait can i tell you there were 0.64
00:47:25.320 a number of rebuttal projects to supersize me and they were also fucking unhelpful even those 0.87
00:47:32.600 rebuttal projects were about going to mcdonald's and the focus of most of them was i'm gonna go 0.83
00:47:36.880 to mcdonald's and i'm gonna lose weight are you ready to have your mind blown yeah i remember
00:47:42.280 these there was like there was a guy that was yeah tried to eat healthy at mcdonald's and there
00:47:48.400 was some professor who went on like the twinkie diet yes to show that you could eat nothing but
00:47:54.860 junk food and still lose weight calories in calories out so i watched a couple of those
00:48:00.180 rebuttal documentaries and they were basically like going even harder on personal responsibility
00:48:06.240 because they're like you can go to mcdonald's and you can order better things and then you'll lose
00:48:10.180 weight right i love that people saw this and were like this isn't libertarian enough
00:48:15.140 even more pen and teller ass version of the same movie i think it's worth noting that like all of
00:48:22.600 these fucking rebuttal projects didn't do anything to challenge any of the bias that existed in 0.96
00:48:30.920 supersize me it was all white middle class people replicating the experiment but also the biases of 0.99
00:48:39.480 another white middle class and now just straight up wealthy white person i feel like it's very you
00:48:46.020 that you're livid about the movie that's like mcdonald's is terrible but you're also livid
00:48:51.240 about the movies that are like, McDonald's isn't that bad. You're like, actually, you're both
00:48:57.060 trash. Well, so here's an example of this, right? There was quite a bit of media about a science 1.00
00:49:04.180 teacher who did a six month McDonald's experiment. He says he lost 60 pounds. And he says this at
00:49:14.740 the time in the media, I'm going to send you a quote from this science teacher. He says,
00:49:19.300 I thought my biggest adversaries were going to be nutritionists, dietitians, and doctors,
00:49:23.940 but those ended up being my biggest backers because they realized this guy is right. I'm
00:49:28.480 not pushing McDonald's. I'm not pushing fast food. I'm pushing taking accountability and making the
00:49:34.100 right choice for you individually. Oh, we're back in, we're back in libertarianville.
00:49:39.860 And then McDonald's signed him on to be a corporate ambassador.
00:49:43.420 Oh, really? That was his tryout?
00:49:46.980 I'm not pushing fast food.
00:49:49.160 I'm fully working for McDonald's. 1.00
00:49:52.160 Like, fuck, man. 1.00
00:49:53.960 I mean, it's kind of a shallow point, but any weird regimen of restriction, you're probably 1.00
00:50:00.880 going to lose weight in the short term.
00:50:03.320 And so eating only at McDonald's is a regimen of restriction.
00:50:07.360 Totally.
00:50:07.680 And then you can't stick with it because it's really, really boring.
00:50:10.640 And it's probably very inconvenient as well because there's not like that many McDonald's
00:50:14.380 in the world and you want to go to friends' houses for dinner.
00:50:16.980 So you can't maintain it and then you gain all the weight back.
00:50:19.900 Yes, totally.
00:50:21.640 Here's the last thing that I would say in terms of the change that Supersize Me created
00:50:28.800 and helped to sort of power is that it contributes to the passage of tons and tons of what are
00:50:35.620 called cheeseburger bills.
00:50:37.600 Okay.
00:50:37.920 According to The Lancet, here is what those cheeseburger bills did.
00:50:44.240 It says the U.S. House of Representatives voted 276 to 139 in favor of a bill that would prohibit lawsuits filed by obese Americans seeking to blame the food industry for their weight problems.
00:50:57.100 Cheeseburger bills or common sense consumption acts were spearheaded by the National Restaurant Association, as well as the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC and have been enacted in 26 states.
00:51:08.260 These are ALEC bills. So like for folks who are unfamiliar, ALEC is this like evil empire
00:51:15.600 of like far right policy priorities that will like they advocate for things like privatizing
00:51:23.140 prisons. But these were bills that passed in plenty of solidly blue states, states that are
00:51:31.600 known to be sort of left of center. Like Oregon has a fucking cheeseburger bill. 0.99
00:51:36.360 Oh, yeah. But so does Arizona. So does Maine. So does Michigan. So does North Dakota. So does Wisconsin. So does Illinois. 26 states passed these with support from Democrats and Republicans. It was sort of this like battle royale between the moral panics, the dual moral panics about frivolous litigation and the obesity epidemic. 1.00
00:51:57.180 and ultimately while this film wants you to think that it is holding McDonald's accountable 0.76
00:52:03.920 part of the change that it gave way to like following this film is when a fuck ton of these
00:52:09.560 passed and a fuck ton of them cited supersize me in their like actual arguments in favor of
00:52:16.960 these bills right ultimately what it did is just shield fast food restaurants from any kind of 0.77
00:52:23.140 fucking accountability i mean it's really telling that that's what people took away from it or that's
00:52:28.680 what the effect of it was because if you believe the ostensible premise of the movie you should 0.98
00:52:35.900 want people to sue mcdonald's because mcdonald's is poisoning people right if your belief is this 0.81
00:52:41.340 is really fucking terrible for people and if they eat it they're gonna die absolutely you should
00:52:46.300 want more accountability for mcdonald's but again that's not actually what the film is doing right 0.97
00:52:51.740 That's not what the project was. Even though it looked like corporate accountability at the time,
00:52:56.800 it actually ended up entrenching this narrative of like, it's too easy to sue corporations in
00:53:01.720 America, which is still hilarious. Anyone, I mean, aside from these anecdotes, it's just a laughable
00:53:07.660 idea. Yeah. So that's supersize me. It is difficult to talk about this film or any of
00:53:14.860 Morgan Spurlock's work at this point without talking about his sort of 2017 revelations
00:53:20.920 about sexual assault and harassment this was during the big wave of sort of me too stuff 0.95
00:53:28.220 right the thing that makes morgan spurlock's different i can't fucking believe that you 0.86
00:53:33.140 this did not cross your path he publicly admitted to it without any prompting oh was this the one 0.76
00:53:39.960 where like me too was happening and he just like put it out there like this is gonna come out about
00:53:44.940 me yep on december 13th 2017 morgan spurlock issued a me too statement on twitter called i am
00:53:53.360 part of the problem okay he discloses in this statement that he had quote been unfaithful to
00:53:59.820 every wife and girlfriend i have ever had okay he says that he was sexually abused in his childhood
00:54:06.260 and teen years he discloses that his father left when he was young that he this is where he said
00:54:12.160 he'd been consistently drinking since the age of 13. And it seems pretty clear in the reading of
00:54:18.420 the statement that he really thinks he's like doing a good thing. So we're going to read a
00:54:23.260 couple of excerpts from his statement. So here's quote number one. So he says, I'm part of the
00:54:29.720 problem. Over my life, there have been many instances that parallel what we see every day
00:54:34.240 in the news. When I was in college, a girl who I hooked up with on a one night stand accused me of
00:54:39.300 rape. Not outright. There were no charges or investigations, but she wrote about the instance
00:54:44.120 in a short story writing class and called me by name. A female friend who was in the class told
00:54:49.020 me about it afterwards. I was floored. That's not what happened, I told her. This wasn't how I
00:54:54.400 remembered it at all. In my mind, we'd been drinking all night and went back to my room.
00:54:58.900 We began fooling around, she pushed me off, then we laid in the bed and talked and laughed some more,
00:55:03.960 then began fooling around again. We took off our clothes. She said she didn't want to have sex,
00:55:08.780 So we laid together and talked and kissed and laughed. 0.96
00:55:11.060 And then we started having sex. 0.70
00:55:12.960 And then she started to cry. 0.54
00:55:14.980 I didn't know what to do.
00:55:16.280 We stopped having sex and I rolled beside her.
00:55:18.300 I tried to comfort her to make her feel better.
00:55:21.260 I thought I was doing okay.
00:55:22.700 I believe she was feeling better.
00:55:24.400 She believed she was raped.
00:55:26.280 So, okay, this is my like little radar is going off because this is a man saying that
00:55:34.280 he was accused of sexual assault when actually it was just an honest misunderstanding.
00:55:38.780 It's not every one of these cases, but in a lot of these cases, when you hear from the dude and
00:55:45.020 he describes it as a harmless, misunderstanding, honest mistake thing, you need to also hear from
00:55:51.880 the woman. Yep. And I will say, I didn't find anything where we hear from this particular
00:55:57.420 woman. In one interview, he said he, quote unquote, hadn't heard from her. He describes
00:56:03.000 this thing and he goes, oh, I was trying to make her feel better. I was trying to comfort her.
00:56:06.160 But he's also describing a woman who is crying and telling him she does not want to have sex. 0.58
00:56:12.160 And then he's like, and then we started having sex. 0.63
00:56:14.660 Yeah.
00:56:14.960 He's describing this as if he is being a good guy.
00:56:18.080 And there's also a reading of what he reports on here that is extremely not him being a good guy.
00:56:23.960 Yeah.
00:56:24.240 So here is the other instance that he describes where, again, this feels like very unreliable narrator territory to me.
00:56:33.360 He says,
00:57:03.360 it was the last thing i wanted so of course i paid i paid for peace of mind i paid for her
00:57:09.260 silence and cooperation most of all i paid so i could remain who i was i am part of the problem
00:57:15.640 yeah this also this also feels like getting ahead of somebody saying like oh he's he's paid out a
00:57:22.400 settlement which probably has an nda attached so it's like him getting ahead of it so like
00:57:26.960 before you learn that piece of information you learn this thing yeah it's impossible to read
00:57:32.140 these stories of things that could be some sort of honest misunderstanding without reading them 0.96
00:57:39.840 in the context of like every fucking guy who's accused of sexual harassment who's like there 0.96
00:57:45.020 was an honest misunderstanding it always turns out to be a lie yes this is literally the least 0.98
00:57:50.940 objectionable reason you would have paid out a sexual harassment lawsuit yes if you were designing
00:57:57.340 in a lab yes there's a sexual harassment lawsuit against me but and then you have some like nice
00:58:02.660 explanations this is exactly the explanation that you'd come up with well and even still
00:58:07.580 he's painting this as essentially she was blackmailing him she said if i didn't pay her
00:58:13.740 off she'd tell everybody and i being the good guy that i am that wasn't being who i was it was the
00:58:20.100 last thing i wanted so of course i paid right like he's casting aspersions on the person he says he's
00:58:25.440 owning up to treating poorly. Yeah. So on the heels of his statement and his sort of couple
00:58:32.960 of confessions that are from an unreliable narrator, Jezebel does some in-depth reporting
00:58:40.080 about the experiences of women who worked for his production company. The title of this story is
00:58:47.680 former employees say Morgan Spurlock's production company was quote fratty boys club. Yeah. Surprise.
00:58:55.440 twist multiple employees talked to them about how quote the scotch came out at 4 p.m in the office
00:59:01.940 when he and his partner had meetings with women that they found attractive they would say oh she
00:59:08.420 gave good meeting if they didn't find those like women that they met with attractive according to
00:59:14.800 jezebel one of the former employees said that they would just outright say i wish she was more
00:59:18.380 attractive yeah you mentioned it seems like he's trying to get out ahead of something yeah he
00:59:23.760 releases the statement on december 13th 2017 the jezebel piece comes out on december 19th 2017
00:59:31.460 okay i feel like there's like a very real possibility that he caught wind of this story
00:59:36.840 or that someone tipped him off or that jezebel called him for comment or whatever and then he
00:59:42.080 issues the statement to be like here's what i did yeah so the fallout for him was within a matter of
00:59:49.000 days. He goes into rehab for alcoholism. He loses his distribution deal with Super Size Me Too.
00:59:58.340 Oh, wow. He's dropped from a bunch of projects. He's got a TNT
01:00:01.780 series that he was creating with Sarah Jessica Parker about women's issues.
01:00:10.460 He says later in the media that he lost his staff of 65 people working for him.
01:00:16.280 I don't know if we've had another self-cancellation like this.
01:00:21.020 Yeah.
01:00:21.260 Because it's actually fascinating.
01:00:22.300 We haven't heard from the women at all.
01:00:23.660 There's no specific victim.
01:00:26.740 Yes.
01:00:27.500 They are absent from this public conversation, which is they're right if it's their choice.
01:00:32.300 I don't know if it's their choice.
01:00:33.760 I don't know.
01:00:34.220 Like, I'm guessing, as you said, that there's an NDA.
01:00:37.000 But the anchor point for these conversations about sexual assault and harassment have to
01:00:41.140 be the survivors of that sexual assault and harassment.
01:00:43.800 and i think that's also frankly part of the problem with supersize me it is like the example
01:00:50.000 of a conversation about fat people without meaningful participation from any fat people 0.97
01:00:55.260 and a bunch of fucking thin people sitting around going like when do we get to start publicly 0.99
01:00:59.900 hectoring fat people right like it essentially only engages with fat people who prove his point 0.99
01:01:06.460 and we talk about this fucking fat high schooler who's like jared fogel's advice was not helpful 0.98
01:01:12.560 to me, which I'm like, yeah, yeah. So it sort of introduces all of this logic that is extremely 0.99
01:01:20.760 reductive, right? It reduces fat people to fast food eaters. It reduces regular fast food eaters
01:01:27.560 to every day, every meal, fast food eaters. It reduces those meals that of fast food that people
01:01:35.200 eat to perceived poor decision-making. And it's sort of hiding the ball on a bunch of the sort
01:01:41.080 its splashiest conclusions, right? 0.99
01:01:43.420 Hiding the balls. 1.00
01:01:45.400 Oh, God damn it, Michael! 1.00
01:01:46.820 An effect of eating McDonald's. 1.00
01:01:48.340 Michael, you're fired!
01:01:50.480 I hate this!
01:01:52.160 I quit!
01:01:52.860 I quit!
01:02:11.080 Thank you.