February Bonus: The Diet Creeps Who Say Air Is Food
Do humans need food to survive? The answer won't surprise you! This month, Mike walks Aubrey through the dark history of self-proclaimed "breatharians" from the US, Australia and India.
You can play the episode directly through Patreon or use our RSS feed to add it to your podcast app. Here are the instructions from Patreon.
See you next month!
M&A
Comments (244)
This is so absolutely insane omg
End to end encryption killed me hahahahahahha
Mmm
I often jokingly call my outdoor time in the sunshine "photosynthesis". I now want to never say it again as a result of this podcast🤣
I heard about breatharianism thanks to Linda Goodman's books, that were at that time already translated to Czech and my bff gave one to me at like 13. Fascinating, I somehow thought more people knew about it.
As someone with a SMI, I wonder how many of these things are just someone living with an undiagnosed and untreated psychotic disorder. I felt the same while listening to the celery juice episode. It’s so real to him; Spirit and what they told him to teach the world were real to him. I hate that the media will broadcast whatever will get them the most attention with no care about its impact on anyone
She sells skyarian seminars by the seashore
True story: I'm a '70s baby and when I was 4 my favorite show was "That's Incredible!", so much so that when my parents told me they were expecting a little brother for me, I asserted that his first and middle names should be John Davidson (the host of the show), and I was pretty indignant when they refused to comply 😂
PLEASE maintenance phase vanderpump episode !!!! that is my ultimate crossover 💕
Hearing Aubrey Gordon say "bars!" was the highlight of my day 😆
😂
Chicken candles has sent me 😂😂😂
Worry is a dark room where negatives develop.
The funniest thing about the DI water is that you’re really not supposed to drink significant quantities of it because it will like reverse osmosis your cells (not ideal)
In the early 2000s I had a housemate who insisted he had been breatharian and could live on air, but stopped because liked eating.
Thank you for this! I actually resubbed just for this ep. I'm Australian and I remember Jasmaheen well. I became vegan in 1999, and because of her, many people asked me about breatharianism. Some seemed to think that's where I'd end up - veganism was as kooky to them as living on air. I got pretty tired of it, especially when the deaths caused by Jasmaheen started being used as a reason my diet was unsafe and would kill me. Hey 1990s Australians: Not eating animal products and not eating at all are different things!
An episode on “screen time” would be really interesting. I think this topic lacks nuance and the research can be misunderstood. I loved Mike & Peter’s episode of Anxious Generation. Thanks for considering :-)
I second this!!
As soon as they said the name “Jasmaheen” I knew she was going to be Australian. The fact that she was from Brisbane was just the cherry on top
I am so sorry to ask for this, but could y'all respond to the Jubilee video, Jillian Michaels vs The Body Positity Movement Surrounded?
"She didn't come from the right place" comment from the cultists about the woman who died was craaaaazy, like this isn't a confessional blurb about a contestant on The Bachelor who's "here for the wrong reasons" ... I can't
I knew one of these. I don't know what happened to her but it did end her marriage.
I'm further into the ep and hearing all the Australian stuff. I can confirm she lived in or near Chapel Hill in Brisbane, Australia. She was a wealthy, white and already thin South African who previously was obsessed with visiting Euopean mineral springs. I need to find out if she died of this.
I would love an episode on the AIP ( Autoimmune Protocol Diet)
I second this! I have several autoimmune disorders including Rheumatoid Arthritis and Celiac and fell for this one 10 years ago. Spolier alert, still sick!
I really wish you would post all your episodes here! I didn't notice the last two non-Patreon episodes until today 😭
I was listening to one of the older AD episodes in the car and Mike's "ehh" noise sounded so much like a car horn that I got startled
can we get edible chicken candles as a new maintenance phase merch opportunity please?
Makes me think about that "Love Has Won" cult...really upsetting situation where the cult leader died precisely because of this bullshit. She had "transcended" the need for sleep or food...and was an alcoholic whose followers hastened her death by having her consume insane amounts of colloïdaal silver. The whole thing was such nightmare fuel.
I would love an episode around, uh, what's happening in Hollywood at the minute. I don't know how to talk about how what I can only describe as the normalisation of starvation without discussing women's bodies and I trust you guys so much to handle it insightfully and respectfully, and be a constructive guide for the rest of us out here.
Ok I just watched something about how Nikola Tesla's eating habits and wellness beliefs and it's kinda wild and fascinating. Some of it sounds like wellness fads now (and indeed, there is uptick of interest lately in people trying to advocate these things).
Would love an episode or part of an episode on the Salt Path. Fascinating story and expose around the couple.
literally begging for a bonus episode on the new netflix documentary "the ozempic effect" it's so incredibly infuriating...and i'm only ten minutes in
“Michaelllllll!!! I’m despairingggggggg!!!” has not stopped playing in my head since this episode. It’s the new “We live in hell.”
I would buy the fuck out of a shirt that had "Michaellll! I'm despairingggg!" on one side and "Oh Michaellll! It's dumbfuck bullshiiit!" on the other.
Episode ideas - can we do more episodes on quackery / old timey wellness health scams? Also, a george santos scamster bonus episode?
All I could think about was that Florence Pugh movie The Wonder about a little girl in 19th century Ireland who was supposedly living on “mana from Heaven” 👀
So curious about that. Is it worth watching?
All I can think of is the episode of Spongebob where he doesn't want to leave his house, so to keep from growing hungry he starts "filter feeding" by breathing really hard?
man cannot live on chicken candles alone 😭😂
Is calling someone "nuttier than a fruitcake" considered over-the-line if they don't believe in food? Asking for a friend.
THE BRAINUTER 🌚
The strangest part to me is their claim that they don’t drink water. It’s pretty obvious that you will die if you don’t have water after 5 days max. It’s not like you need a long experiment to prove that.
There's water in the AIR, of course! And it's definitely enough to live on, just like all those airborne nutrients! :P
His liquid air can make me think of that scene in Spaceballs.
'Beans' took me the hell out 💀 God I love this pod
Shortly topped by the gold that was: 'Michael, I'm despairing!'
I have so much to say. First my immediate snarkiness can't help but think that RFK may recommend it as way to combat the high cost of food. On a much sadder note, I know people who survive on 500 calories or less, and have done so for years, and are still considered obese. I definitely can see people living off of sleeve starch. And personally I would love if I didn't have to eat more than once a week, like a snake. I just find the whole process really annoying and time consuming. However I hate he feeling of hunger more than I am annoyed by the process of feeding myself.
The entire episode I was just pacing my living room going "what? No!"
Hearing Aubrey sing the Seinfeld theme was priceless. Cannot be unheard ✨
Have you guys thought of doing an episode on The Plant Paradox? I keep getting ads from this Dr. Sundry dude saying I shouldn't eat pistachios. 😆
Would you guys consider reacting to the Netflix show Apple Cider Vinegar as a bonus episode? I'd be really interested in your take after the Belle Gibson episode
They covered Belle Gibson either last year or the year before. Check the archives.
Can we get “yellow foods, both!!” on a tote bag please??
Absolutely incredible, bestie and I listen together, though I am in US and she is aboard, this is fave Way to stay connected
I love reading this comment thread and see what made people laugh out loud. For me it was, eating non-yellow foods causes human combustion.
Such a good one. I also would love to hear a bonus ep on TB12! I want non-football people to talk about it.
Was the church Good Shepard Lutheran on 162nd? They always have good signs lol
I need some sort of merch with "you're afraid of sunflowers." It kills me every time
Seconding this!
It’s stunning that nobody interviewing these people push back on the statements that scientists don’t study this-there are many horrible studies that came out of nazi germany on starvation. And I acknowledge very strongly that to call them scientists is an egregious affront but there was a ton of data that came from them and the ethical debate is do you use it to better society so those people didn’t die in vain or not because of the absolute horrors associated with the data. This is fairly common knowledge to people over a certain age-like how are they not stopping her in the midst of her bullshit claim? In a much less well known fact outside of the medical community-we have to give IV lipids to people who can’t eat (beyond just glucose) or they die-the data is there!!
This is sad and also hilarious. Well done!
Miiichael! I’m despairing!
I actually remember that episode & fully believed it (I think I was probably 6). Decades later, someone told me before surgery they were a breatharian & I believed it. 🤦🏼♀️ My charge nurse was like, darlin'... He's pulling your leg & complaining about being NPO.
I’m pretty sure I saw a Donahue episode with Wiley in the 80s. Being a Breatharian became a running joke in our house as a result. This episode? So. Much. Cackling!
i’m pretty sure chicken cinnamon was the flavor of my cat’s ringworm medicine
I distinctly remember stumbling upon the first grifter on the internet when I was 12. It didn't feel right but I decided to try it anyway cuz it was 2007 and eating disorders where IN! I lived on celery and cucumbers for three days before I realized I was "too weak" to do it.
What's their policy on water? 32 minutes in and I haven't really heard, but they did just mention an IV drip
My ears perked up at Chapel Hill but twasnt North Carolina
I came across someone on a dating app last year who identified as a breatharian 😩😩
1) When I was little That’s Incredible! was appointment viewing. I remember its being basically wholesome, quirky stories. I don’t remember which came first, but it was similar to Real People, which was on a competing network. 2) I first heard of breatharians from the 2005 FX series, Starved, which was about a group of friends who all have various eating disorders. I thought the plot line about breatharians was satire. I was today years old when I learned it was a real thing.
I really want to listen to this but I have a bad chest cold and I'm afraid I'll start laughing and have a bad coughing fit. Help!
This whole episode reminded me of "The Wonder," whose ending I will not spoil except that Mike talked about at ~56:30. :p
Came here to say this!! GrREAT read
The ‘cows don’t count as food because they’re 5d beings’ reminds me of an old boss of mine who was staunchly vegetarian ‘except for gravy’. And a guy in a cafe who I heard order a full vegan breakfast ‘with butter’.
As a fellow vegetarian the ‘except for gravy’ guy makes sense to me — when it comes to things made from byproducts eg gravy and stock I just don’t ask questions. If animal products are being used I think it’s preferable if they’re used to their full potential and don’t go to waste.
I wonder if Jasmuheen stole the idea of sustaining on qi from Chinese mythology...
That whole monologue had VERY strong "I am not going to bother understanding this tradition that isn't mine, but I AM going to treat it as exotic magic" energy. It could be in textbooks on that topic, I swear.
I want to “eat the sun” but in an ancient warrior goddess way. Ya know, to spite my enemies 😂
I don't think eating is a burden, but I do wish I didn't have to decide what to eat and prepare and/or obtain those foods 3x a day every day until I die.
I just spat out my drink at, “Man cannot live on chicken candles alone”
Thank you for calling out the Darwin awards. In high school, my Bio teacher would read from the Darwin awards to lighten the mood before a test. Everyone else thought it was funny and I mean it would be… if this were Looney Tunes and not real life. “Somebody died!! Fuck you from my house to yours” I think cured me of something
Any other 80s/90s kids remember that middle grade novel about the kid who turned themselves into a plant for their science fair project? That’s all I could think of during this episode
I remember a novel probably more like elementary School about a kid who was kind of a screw up and a failure, so he gets advice from this wise guy who, eventually, convinces him to sit alone in a room drinking weak tea and not doing anything and he's miserable and the guy says congratulations, you're perfect now The lesson was that it's messy being human and that perfection takes away everything that make you human
That pronunciation moment was truly Mike's Revenge.
My friend went to college with someone who claimed to have been a Breatharian for 6 months. However by the time I met him he had already started eating food again because he was allegedly "not enlightened enough." I was so confused by this that I interrogated him quite a bit on different days and I eventually got him to admit that he did eat broth several times a week during the six months. Interestingly, a couple years later he became a super devotee of Bikram yoga. I suppose that was better since they actually allowed eating.
I laughed out lout at Michael's "big food!" comment.
Where can I get the chicken candles?
🤣🤣🤣
Breatharianism is something that would probably exist in Night Vale
Cecil would have none of it!
All I can think about are the UNH students catching slugs in the estuary and finding out they can steal the ability to photo synthesize from infected algae. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01982-4
I remember the scottish case when I was a teenager here in the UK. For whatever reason it really stuck with me and since then I've noticed, as Michael says, that the whole thing seems to rear its head every decade or so. Long enough for the media to forget then rediscover it?
Come on, why the doubt? We all saw David Blaine not eating in a glass box. Although I did think there was actually some trick involved there and it seems to be more disappointing than that.
I do also remember Jasmaheen and it's so funny to hear Jeremy Paxman telling her it's nonsense.
I think this horse hockey goes back many decades. Did you see History with Amy’s post about Victorian Fasting Girls? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DUz8XrXiLpg/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Further back, I believe there were some saints/ aspiring saints who claimed to survive on only the body and blood of Christ/ i.e. what they got at communion. It’s been a part of many ascetic traditions going back centuries.
I was reminded of this song from this episode: https://youtu.be/jQnIL-XPerQ?si=OfGIniAIO5UQ1lia
The "you're afraid of sunflowers" deep cut 🌻 😨
That one lives rent-free in my head at all times
Mynec, my back, my ~ you know what, nevermind
"They either die or eat" 🤣
Idk if anyone has said it but now that the “is it cake?” thing has taken off I wouldn’t be surprised if they hid food by making it look like end tables or something. 🤣
Imagine you’re observing the study and walk in to see the subject chowing down on a table leg
"I have a sandwich between my thighs" is not a sentence I ever expected to hear from Michael
Also, chicken candles made me lol so hard - thanks for making this pretty depressing ep bearable with your brilliant sense of humour 🥹
Honestly - while perhaps unethical, it is satisfying to see 60 min tell this woman to stand on business.
It’s Australian 60 Minutes in the 90s. I doubt ethics even crossed their minds. She was calling their bluff. They thought they’d catch her eating so all she had to do was wait them out. It was a game of chicken.
Great episode again!! 🎞️🫘 Keep on doing what you’re doing.
Michael.....I'm despairing.....
this is going to become a new catchphrase, I can feel it 😂
This reminds me of the Parks and Rec episode where the guys go to a weirdo bar and get a vapor martini, flash of light vodka and lotion whiskey 🙃
“Sir, there’s no wrong way to consume alcohol” “This is the wrong way to consume alcohol”
The lady referencing Lu Tze puts me in mind of Terry Pratchett’s history monks.
Now I can't stop thinking about this 10-year-old Brian Jordan Alvarez sketch: https://youtu.be/oTlg44jPWxc?si=rTM9Be0VH1bXdpCa
IVE BEEN WAITIN ON YALL TO MAKE THIS EPISODE TY TY TY
hira was almost onto something because my initials are smh and like. yeah he definitely made me initiate my smh protocol
Omg Jeremy Paxman is brutal when he’s being nice.
Happy to report I ate snacks while listening to this! A side note, I don’t love the language of “she goes by Jasmohyn but her real name is Ellen” Let us complicate what it means for a name to be real.
Eh... It kind of sounded like Jasmiheen was a stage name or a name she adopted specifically in her role as a grifter/cult leader. If you have a nickname or you go by your middle name or you legally changed your name, etc, then yeah, people should respect that. If you make up or adopt a name purely for the purposes of grifting people, I gotta be honest, I don't care overly much if people don't take your grifter name seriously.
I'm starting to suspect you two are in the pocket of Big Food
This episode was so funny, then so wild, then extremely fucking dire and depressing... Then ended a bit funny again.
This makes me think of Paddington hiding marmalade sandwiches under his hat.
Laughed so hard at “why would I know that, Michael?” That I walked into a wall
That Australian interviewer reminds me of Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch.
Whoa - this episode was so good (and to me, the most disturbing)! Do you think you could drop it on your regular podcast as a Bonus episode so we could share it? Maybe you'd get even more supporter$ too.
Great episode, as always! How I love listening to the two of you 😍
I’m the type to be jussst curious enough about this sort of thing. I want my 7 year old to be smarter than that. So I him about the ep and asked what he would think if someone told him that they had learned to live without food for 411 days. Zero hesitation: “I’d think they’re just making stuff up for attention.” Ding ding!!! Hooray for progress.
I feel better knowing you and your kid are out there ❤️❤️❤️
Listening to this in the morning when I have to fast for a blood test was such an Experience. I've not eaten breakfast and I'm already wilting but suuuure you didn't have any food for four hundred days. I could totally go for some candle chicken right now though tbh
Did you sustain your spirit by eating gods light instead? 🤭
So wild.
Collective Cow Consciousness band name i called it
The diet works best if they are rich and you get them in their weakened state to sign over power of attorney (Starvation Heights, Gregg Olsen)
Oh, wow. I hadn't thought about the Darwin Awards in years. I had several of their books as a kid/teen and never really gave them much thought because they were framed as comedy. Actually thinking about it for a second now, and yeah, they're pretty deeply messed up and I'm a little bit ashamed that it never occurred to me. Thanks for the reframing and push toward looking at the media I consume with conscious thought and at the people behind it with empathy.
Me too, for all of that. If it helps, I think the reason we should keep that shit away from kids is because they don't have enough life experience to really get how horrible it is... so don't feel bad. You didn't know any better, and probably couldn't have
Chicken candles, yum!
You guys make me so happy. I really needed this today. Thank you so much. ❤️
Great job as always!
I watched the movie Inedia (2024) thinking the cult was just a clever metaphor for the internal monologue of a person with an eating disorder. Mind blown to discover it was a depiction of a real type of cult that exists.
The cognitive dissonance of breatharians makes perfect sense to veg*ns because we are constantly told by people that they are “basically vegetarian” even though we only ever see them eating meat.
I like to imagine that these people just sleep walk and eat in their sleep and just don't realize it, lol.
“Chemists believe” is egregious, what editor let that through.
"Miiiichaelllllllll, I'm DESPAIRING!!!" absolutely SENT me 😭
I was on a massage therapy course and our teacher said she had a breatharian staying with her for a few days and she just wanted to follow him around tempting him with tasty food. She didn't see how someone would want to give up food but she totally bought into it as an option. That's the first I heard of breatharians and I've been so curious how people could even manage faking it for very long. Now I'm imaging this guy going to bed in her guest room and pulling a sandwich out from under his pillow. Or maybe nibbling on his some chicken candles. I'm so glad you did this episode, it was fascinating!
I'll never not be delighted by examples of nominative determinism, so of course I was pleased to hear about a neuroscientist named George Brainard
And a grifter named Wiley.
The amount I laughed at "you collect beans" 🫘😂😂
And personality: beans. And well I do have a Honda…
Highly recommend the novel The Wonder. Very similar themes (religious side) and so well-written.
😆😆😆 This episode is cracking me up
"Give it a couple more years and ~~we'll have the next resurgence of this.~~" "...RFK Jr will adopt it as a solution to rising grocery costs." Fixed. You're welcome, Michael.
Several laugh out loud moments for this one. Diet Coke through the nose.
New Twinkie defense just dropped.
I don't want to be insensitive, but the idea of finding a body in the wilderness holding a book on how not to eat is reminding me a lot of that wizard from Morrowind who accidentally dies by making a scroll that sets his Jump skill to 99999999. (I highly recomend using the scroll yourself, but make sure you save first because you will suffer a similar fate.) [It also may crash your computer.]
It also sounds like something RFK jr would do
In the height of my ED I came across this online somewhere and I was both aware it was ridiculous and using it as proof that my own starvation wasn’t dangerous. It’s that classic eating disorder double think where you can be laughing at this insane idea and also feeling ashamed of your own reliance on food. I really wonder on that front how damaging the media coverage of this was, not just for people who became true believers but for people with food issues generally. I could see it being a lot more pervasive in that indirect kind of way
Shame that “Airian” sounds just like a truly evil group
Um, not everything weird has to be discussed. This feels like an episode that could have been skipped. Or greatly abbreviated by the first and second laws of thermodynamics
Person I know mentioned on Maintenance Phase!! I know George Brainard! He helped NASA figure out how to get astronauts to sleep in space where it's never dark. I cannot imagine he found much credibility in Manek's claims.
I know him too 💙
I feel like Brooke’s should have perhaps listened to the Doubting Thomas’s a bit more 😂
The atrocity guide video about breatharianism is a really good companion watch to this ep!
What is this facination with foregoing something that can bring joy and satisfaction? I love food! I love eating! I wish I didn't have mental baggage around either.
My biology teacher in high school believed in a version of this. (Yes, my biology teacher) He also believed that the Japanese breathe differently and that’s why their average life span is longer. And he was an anti-vaxer before it was cool.
I remember when my Mom started becoming more religious. One day she just randomly said "I'm not so sure I believe in evolution anymore 🤔" I just said "Mom. Aren't you a TEACHER? 🤦♂️"
Yessss!!! George Lakoff/Don't Think of an Elephant shout out! Love it. 🤘🏼
Yay a new one dropped! Let me take a deep breath (and an assortment of snacks because this is going to be fun/horrible)
I remember reading Michelle Pfeiffer was a breatharian in like, people magazine or something when I was a kid. I'm glad we didn't have the Internet then, because that was all of the information I ever got on it until this episode
The weird church marquee I'll never forget said, "Jesus Is Coming Back for His Bride--Not A Date" and that one will haunt me forever
As a Christian . . . I have no fucking idea what that sign is trying to say.
There are some pre-Wiley waves of breatharianism, so there's room for another episode like "Air is Food 0: the Origins" if you want. Dick Gregory did get into it in the 1960's. (He, and some of these other people, commonly were like "While you're working your way up to breatharianism you can be a fruitarian" which seems considerably less lethal) Anyway I wanted to know where Gregory got this, so I started searching Google Books. The first big wave I stumbled over was in the 1950's with names like Hilton Hotema (many books) and Henry S Tanner "The Fasting Story" in the mix. The latter is like a gold mine btw. I like where he laboriously points out that trees photosynthesize so "it is logical to assume that the body's laboratory is completent [sic] to transform air and sunshine into blood, bone and flesh." (How about other animals, Henry? Can wolves do this?)
That's at page 68. Google Books gives a 77 page preview. This book is apparently a typed document actually. There is a callback to friend of the pod Bernarr McFadden btw
Hard to pick out my favorite Aubrey quote from this one lmao
It was hard for me to pick to but I settled on "from my house to yours, fuck you" LOL
“BREATHFAST” girl its thirty seconds in and i’m giggling 🤌🏻
We need more reporters like that guy. Not this "both sides have very good people" bullshit that our media does.
I nearly did a spit take with my coffee listening to this. Thanks for starting my morning off with laughs.
*update - the lols were in part 1. Part 2 is devastating
Right now there’s a couple of noble oak trees making a podcast debunking the idea that they’re really meant to get their nutrition from burgers.
I THOUGHT THE WAR ON PROTEIN WAS OVERRRR 😭😭😭😭
Ive been waiting for this episode… i had a boyfriend who was convinced of this kind of fasting… Dr.sebi adjacent type shit. Ive been told he now drinks water that has been passed through a device that realigns the water molecules to match the water that has gone down a waterfall. I feel nuts even typing that sentence…
🤦♀️
My darlings, you've made me feel so old! "That's Incredible!" And "Real People" were on on the same evening, and I watched them all the time.
Yes! John Davison and Cathy Lee Crosby!
Me listening to Mike and Aubrey laugh about claims that eating is arduous and unpleasant when I have Arfid: Haha so true... eating is soooooo pleasant and fun right guys? 😅
Dude same. I wish for us both a future where food can be pleasure <3
Whenever my IBS gets bad, I get mad that we can’t photosynthesize. But the fact remains that, despite this, we simply cannot.
I'm a biology teacher and I whine to my classes about this every semester. Evolution did us dirty by not making us photosynthetic
A novel was written about the Dutch case by Gerda Blees, translated into English as ‘we are light’. I recommend the book.
The whole time listening to this I kept thinking of the alien civilization in the Three Body Problem who can dehydrate themselves and hibernate without food until a more stable era arrives…
I remember watching That's Incredible! as a kid in the 80's. It was not a game show, just a show where they talked about and showed amazing claims.
If Books Could Kill, but literally 😕
Check us all out in the 'oh god, no' extended universe 💜
If you’re interested in the historical context around this, read Holy Feast and Holy Fast by Caroline Walker Bynum. Catholic saints, specifically female saints, have said they could live only on the eucharist. It’s a fascinating book that really relevant to current ideas of wellness and women’s bodies.
Yes! Was seeing if someone else would mention this book. Holy Anorexia by Rudolph Bell is another good one on this topic.
“A chef named Bacon” I am dead ☠️ 😂
Can y’all do an episode on homeopathics? And/or ‘Tibetan medicine?’
It's giving Frank eating only "blue" on Always Sunny 😂
Aubrey’s “WHY ISN’T SUN FOOD?!” cracked me up, lol.
Aubrey is on fire this ep overall.
At least the yellow food diet lets you eat cheese 🤣 Will you all do an episode on peptides? I feel like that’s all I hear about now
Jasmuheen sounds like the person you don’t invite to parties because she won’t stop talking about her MLM and how rich it’s making her.
Oh my god! Over a decade ago, a friend had a coworker at Whole Foods who thought he could photsynthesize and would stare at the sun on his lunch break. I have ruthlessly made fun of this guy I never met every year that I’ve taught middle schoolers photosynthesis and cellular respiration.
Your friend's coworker was unwell. It's sad that you choose to "ruthlessly" make fun of him to children who are learning from your behavior.
should be known that Michael is currently smearing and lying about a disabled woman who rightfully pointed out the limitations of a vaccine-only strategy to reducing COVID infections and transmission, advocating for more action on COVID prevention, not less. he is blocking or ignoring dissenters, including actual medical experts (which he is not) and spreading misinformation about COVID and the vaccine. I have cancelled my subscription (sorry, I love you Aubrey and you're what brought me to the show) but unfortunately i got a year long sub this Jan after being a long time listener of the show.
If you want to make accusations like this, it is common courtesy to provide some links that document that behavior.
Absolutely delighted by 5D cows at 21:30 😃😮💨👌👌👌
Came here to say this!
"Why would I know that, Michael?"
'Eat the sun' movie is all about human photosynthesis, and not eating. https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1424769/
So crazy 😆
So glad this episode came out on the day my rancho gordo bean club order arrives 😂
Ranch Gordo beans have absolutely converted me into a bean head. I’ve been trying so many new kinds. I made cassoulet. I made the bougiest beanie weenie you’ve ever seen. Ridiculously lush baked beans. Ham and beans. Curried chickpeas. So few things in our world live up to the hype like those beans.
Only a few mins in, but does anyone remember the Wife Swap episode from the 90s with the woman who ate the sun?
No but I need to know how to find this
“Classic bitch ex-girlfriend” made me laugh so hard I sent my contact case (and lenses) sailing across the bathroom 🤣🤣🤣
Turns out we’re air plants?
Love when yall drop at unhinged hours and I wake up to a little treat
Aubrey's "if you'd like to support the show, you're already doing it" bit gets me every time.
I kept waiting for someone to refer to him as Mr Coyote 😂
There’s a creepy ad that’s been coming up when I play phone games about a diet that looks like it involves Jello (?). Has anyone seen that ad? Definitely not legit
I haven't but I do remember Margaret Cho recounting her time as an actress, when she lived on diet Jello and diet Coke and went into kidney failure
It's all fun and games now but I would've breathed this up when I was 14
Been making jokes like this for years whenever I buy a scented candle that smells like dessert. “New diet plan is just smelling food instead of eating it. Light a candle and take a deep breath. Best part is you can have all the air you want!”
I have friends like love to buy each other the most candle you want to eat the most (not even thru smell)
this is one of those Patreon bonus eps where i just want it released to the wide world so I can share it with people who need to hear it. but also tbh that's all of them
I remember that Scottish death, it got some serious coverage in the UK press at the time. I *hadn't* wondered what had happened to breatharianism in the meantime, so thanks for that.
Cry-laughing at spontaneous combustion
I swear that moral panic was, like, a three day phenomenon 😅
51:00 Ok as a plant person, saying plants only rely on light to live is a MYTH. The roots also take in nutrients and minerals in the soil (which is one of the reasons most plants in pots need their soil changed every so often), and also WATER. There are some plants that actually don't need soil to 'eat' and 'drink', these are funnily enough called Air Plants, but they are primarily found in extremely humid environments and tend to be quite slow growing, from what I understand these plants take in the nutrients and water they need literally from the air by having specialised roots. Anyone who says shit like 'plants just need light to survive' has clearly never looked after a plant lmao.
Somehow comedian and social commentator Dick Gregory got really into this and called it Breathanairianism 🙄. Oh well, I guess even famously funny folk lay a bad egg sometimes
Dick Gregory turned into a real fatphobic nutball
Me as a vegetarian with a Hyundai who does Warhammer: 😬😬😬
Had to think of Emma Donoghue’s heartbreaking novel The Wonder.
A request for coverage of Freelee The Bananagirl and Frugivores.
Seconding this as someone who fell for this insane diet and was buying CASES of bananas from the grocery store. Produce guy asked me what i was planning to do with a whole case of bananas, to which i said, “eat them.”
I'm sorry, but this is... natural selection in action.
The Brainuter!! 🤣🤣 You both bring me so much joy. 😍
A delightfully Paxman heavy episode 😂
I was just wondering is it Paxman! Back in his heyday
😳 Oh my...
You sneaky mother-truckers
Seeing the notification: oh yaaay! Seeing the title: oh.. oh no