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--:-- Noel King: We are going to extreme lengths to get more protein these days.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The powders, the shakes, the cottage cheese, the oatmeal, the peanut butter, and everything, and the chicken smoothie.
--:-- Noel King: I went to the store, got like some chicken breast, boiled it, blended it in a blender. It was like, added a splash of water, and then it smelled like... I was just like, dude, I'm making soup here. This is so weird.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So then I added like every berry, every frozen banana, like everything I could basically find in my freezer, and to make it a little bit more tolerable.
--:-- Noel King: Have you tried the chicken smoothie?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then my wife tried it, too. And she was like, oh, yeah, you could definitely feel the chicken on that.
--:-- Noel King: And so I had this like, you know, venti-sized chicken smoothie that I had to drink all myself because I can't waste anything in my house.
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--:-- Noel King: Coming up on Today Explained, protein madness.
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--:-- Noel King: You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You and me and everyone we know is going to the gym lately.
--:-- Noel King: And so is writer Chris Gayomali.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Chris publishes the health and wellness newsletter, Heavies, and he recently wrote a big piece about protein for Grub Street that started with his path to protein obsession.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: This actually started a few years ago. Here in New York, once lockdown restrictions sort of eased up, the gyms were kind of the first thing to open.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so mostly out of boredom, I started going to my Muay Thai gym like five or six days a week and got really, really fit.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Around that same time, I started listening to health podcasts like Huberman Lab.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: When I heard this, I thought, there's no way this is true, which was making sure that you get 30 or so grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I was constantly getting all these messages that you're not getting enough protein in your diet.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so that sort of triggered my fall down this trap door towards the protein event horizon.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: People think it's crazy that I've eaten 200 grams of protein for almost 20 straight years every single day.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Biggest lie that you're telling yourself is that you can't hit your protein goals.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Stop overcomplicating it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I blend chicken twice a day to be an open pro bodybuilder.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Chug that baby down.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Somebody get this person's protein!
--:-- Noel King: I myself do listen to Huberman, and I have gotten the message too.
--:-- Noel King: I think a lot more about protein than I ever thought I would think about protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Same here.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Me of 36 months ago would not recognize this person.
--:-- Noel King: Tell me where protein mania begins. Is this a recent phenomenon?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So it actually really starts with whey protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And for that, you have to go back to right after World War II.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The Japanese have accepted our terms fully. That is the word we have just received from the White House in Washington.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I didn't expect to hear a celebration here in our newsroom in New York, but you can hear one going on behind me.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: A lot of farming became really industrialized.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And around that time, we really saw dairy production really start to ratchet up here in the United States.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Milk is one of our most wholesome foods.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Now, where are the milk cows and the dairy farms of the United States located?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: In an area commonly called the Dairy Belt.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There was just like so much cheese that they were making, especially in Vermont and Wisconsin.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Cheese, a more concentrated food, is more valuable per pound than milk.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: When you make cheese, its liquid byproduct is whey, which has historically been treated as a refuse that was like either dumped in the rivers or fed to pigs and cattle.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Once the whey is discarded, at least, it kind of has nowhere to go.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And there was one cheese plant in 1942 that actually used to dump all its whey product into an old drinking well.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The substance produced so much gas that at one point the well's cover blew off.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Things really started to change in the 1970s when a couple of things started happening in tandem.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The big one was there was kind of this swell of environmental legislation that came out that sort of just made dumping whey, not the move.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: All these manufacturers had to find a use for this stuff that was essentially garbage.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And meanwhile, there were technological breakthroughs in fields like microfiltration which made it easier to transform the whey into a powder that you could actually mix with water and drink down.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So that's kind of how we got to this point where you're able to drink whey protein as we know it today.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then the other thing that happened was in 1977 there was this big documentary that came out called Pumping Iron.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And now we come to the heavyweights over 200 pounds.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The greatest feeling you can get in a gym, or the most satisfying feeling you can get in a gym, is the pump.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It was kind of a mind-blowing thing at the time.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Like, this guy came out of nowhere and had biceps on top of his biceps.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Blood is rushing into your muscles, and that's what we call the pump.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Your muscles get a really tight feeling, like your skin is going to explode any minute.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It kind of kicked off a real bodybuilding boom, and from there people just really wanted protein and to look like the Terminator.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I'll be back.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Whey protein, like that kind of set the model for a lot of different plant proteins.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It was basically the same model where it was like, you know, we have all this excess trash and mush, like especially from the soybean oil industry.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And they were like, hey, we have all this soy mush left over from, you know, extracting oil.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: What should we do with it?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then they figured out that you can really transform this stuff into soluble powders.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And it's actually pretty nutrient dense, too.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But what's really funny about it is this whole protein boom is like people just figured out that you can take existing garbage, essentially, and sell it to people.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so that's how we got to where we are today.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But more recently, you know, they're sort of synthesizing all sorts of plants.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There's soy, there's pea, there's algae, there's hemp, there's rice.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah, all sorts of stuff that they sort of mushing up and extracting protein from and turning it into powders that they can jam into all sorts of wacky snacks which I tasted a lot of during this journey.
--:-- Noel King: You also tasted a protein soda.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Oh my gosh. So when I came across the existence of this protein soda called Feisty, I was like, protein soda? That's so wild.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But then I talked to the founder.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah. Hi, my name's V. I'm the founder of Feisty.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And she's a former designer at Louis Vuitton based in London.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And she actually had her own interesting journey with protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: She had like a gnarly knee injury not too long ago.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And her PT was basically like, you should get into lifting.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I gave it a go.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I've never been sporty my whole life.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I never had this feeling of like an endorphins hit before.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I was like, wow, this is so incredible.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And just like fell in love with like all things fitness.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And from the lifting, she kind of fell in love with the sport and then started researching how to create her own drink that wasn't as heavy, not like a shake that you would have to guzzle down.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so she landed on this idea for a fizzy protein soda.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I heard of this like hydrolyzed pea protein, which is like a pea protein which dissolves in water as clear.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I was like, why has no one put this in a soda? This is cool.
--:-- Noel King: Did you talk to some plant protein scientists?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah, I did talk to some plant protein scientists.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: My name's David Julian McClemmonson.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: I'm a distinguished professor in the Department of Food Science at the University of Massachusetts.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: And I do a lot of work on protein fortification of plant-based foods.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: First of all, ridiculous that that exists.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: I love it.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: So we're trying to make plant-based alternatives.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: The most common way is you just basically take the plant, you grind it up into a powder, then you put it in water, and then you make it very alkaline, and that causes the proteins to dissolve, and then you collect them, and then you change the pH again, and they all come out of solution, and you get this big curd that you can take and dry and use as a protein isolate.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: So we've made sort of plant-based scallops.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I admittedly, like, I get a little bit squeamish around, like, fake meats like that.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: Plant-based chicken and plant-based eggs that are fortified with proteins and other healthy ingredients.
--:-- David Julian McClemmonson: So things like potatoes or peas or soybeans or nettles.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There's no way I should be eating this burger that is designed to taste like a cow but isn't a cow, I'm kind of like, just be yourself, Burger.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So there's two parallel tracks here.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And one is we are able to just make more kinds of proteins and put them into more types of foods.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Exactly.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then sell them to people.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And the other is people want them, right?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: People are also buying the stuff.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: What came first, the chicken or the egg?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Or is this just a nice confluence of what the customer wants, the industry is prepared now to provide?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: In my reporting, I sort of found that, you know, of all the macronutrients, the big three are fat, carbohydrates, and protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Protein is kind of the only one that's never really been demonized by marketers and like pop scientists and Atkins and like all that stuff.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's like you think of carbohydrates. It was like that was verboten at one point.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's a great diet debate. Low carb or low fat?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You probably have had some friends or family members or yourself trying the no carb or low carb diets.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Fat, definitely verboten at one point.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The analogy I like to use is protein is kind of like the Dolly Parton of macronutrients.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Like we can all agree that she's pretty great regardless of your identity or like political affiliation.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: My hopes for the new year is a little more kindness, a little more love.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So speaking of Dolly, and also speaking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I love Arnold, but as like a woman, I don't aspire to look like Arnold.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But the algorithm has found me anyway.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Like I go on Instagram and the ladies are serving me protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Most women are not eating enough protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Oh my God, you're looking for a high protein breakfast option that takes less than 10 minutes to make and it's 65 grams of protein?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah, buddy.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I know. That's what you wanted.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I'm a giver. I'm a lover.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: How did we go from this is kind of male-dominated muscles on muscles on muscles to a lot of female health influencers are evangelizing it also?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: When does that turn happen?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It has to do with the sort of normalizing of fitness culture, which you have also fallen into in the past couple of months.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I work out all the time.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I can bench you, bro.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And it's addicting, right?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I think part of it is like, you know, post pandemic, we were just so concerned about our mortality and watching death sort of surround us in a real way that a lot of people decided to get healthy kind of at the same time.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But also, you know, your point about influencers is really interesting.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: One of the big ones is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: She's a part of the sort of Huberman cinematic universe.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There is not one macronutrient more important to an aging individual than protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Really compelling figure in her mid-50s, I think.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And she looks like she could deadlift like a Miata if she needed to.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But she's argued that women, especially as they enter menopause, need to be lifting weights and eating way more protein to stay healthy.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Protein for dummies.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Source. Meat, which include pork, beef, lamb.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: She's so turbo, but I think she's on to something.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I think that's really like hitting a note with a lot of people across all stripes.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The other big cultural moment that we're in is the moment of Ozempic and Munjaro and other GLP-1s.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Those also affect how much protein we want or need.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, retailers like Walmart especially are like sort of already stocking their shelves with foods that are a little bit more nutrient dense and high in protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Nestle just announced a new frozen food brand that it says is intended to be a companion for GLP-1 weight loss medication users and consumers focused on weight management.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: The makers of Kit Kat are coming out with some food items that you'll be able to find on your local grocery shelves soon.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And these foods will be geared towards you and me, users of GLP-1 medications.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Let's take a look at what they are.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Mostly because these kind of drugs are so popular right now and they really do limit the amount of food you can eat.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So if you can't eat as much food, the thinking goes that you need stuff that's just packed with more nutrients in order to feel okay and good and healthy.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So it's kind of really shaping the industry in a very real way right now.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: What I eat in a day on misozempi.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I always start my day with some Greek yogurt.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Chobani is my favorite.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Today is the day that we take our ozempic shot, so you already know what that means.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: We need to get in a good high-protein meal before doing so.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Let's make a protein coffee while I talk about the importance of protein while on a GLP-1 medication.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I was like shopping for breakfast cereals for my three-year-old, just like looking around.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I noticed this svelte new box of Wheaties protein which like advertised 20 something grams of protein on the cover.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There was no old Wheaties like this.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It had been replaced seemingly overnight by this very buff new insurgent I guess.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so I was kind of like I was like huh.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so in the course of this, I hit up General Mills, which owns this big portfolio of food products and Wheaties especially.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Ben asked if I could come out and check out what they're doing over there.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And weirdly enough, they said yes.
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--:-- Noel King: Coming up, Chris goes behind the veil at General Mills.
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--:-- Noel King: Today Explained is back with me, Noel from work, and Chris Gayomali.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Now, as you've skittered around the aisles of your local grocery store, you have likely wondered at some point, how are they getting the protein into all this stuff?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Chris had the same thought, and then he scored an invitation.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So last November, I landed in Minneapolis and took an Uber out to General Mills headquarters.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And it's this beautiful, picturesque campus just outside of Minneapolis.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: They have like this sculpture garden outside.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's just this beautiful campus with duck ponds and there was like foliage everywhere.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then I'm inside this building where they make all these snack products.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: General Mills, they began looking into, you know, jamming protein into a lot of their products maybe a little over 10 years ago.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: They had this Nature Valley bar that they had like jammed a little bit more protein in.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then once they started selling it, they realized they could make a lot of money off of this stuff.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I think it did like $100 million in its first year or something like that.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So they were like, okay, maybe there's other products we can put protein into that would make us a ton of money.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so Wheaties being, you know, their flagship sort of cereal product that like, you know, has Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Serena Williams and all those people on the cover.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Better eat your Wheaties.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I better eat my Wheaties.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: They realized Wheaties would be a good test for this stuff.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so they went out to their roster of like fitness enthusiasts.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And the information they were hearing back was, you know, a Wheaties protein product would ideally have at least 15 grams of protein preserving, which is kind of a lot.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, the challenge for them was preserving the fidelity of the flake because Wheaties eaters are surprisingly hardcore about what a Wheaties should taste like and how hard it should be, like how crunchy it should be.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So it was actually wheat germ and soy protein isolate that they had to combine and make it somehow taste like the old version of Wheaties.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And they went through 40 different iterations over it, over a multi-year R&D period.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And it was kind of funny because they rolled out all these different versions over the years in little glass containers, kind of like little, I don't know, like Jurassic Park embryos or something.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I asked them to take a picture of it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then they were just like, oh, no, we can't do that.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It was like Illuminati levels of secrecy for all these cereal shapes.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Speaking of Jurassic Park, I was trying to picture how do you get protein into food?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Because it's not just Wheaties.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's also Cheerios.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's also, like you said, it's granola bars.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's everything.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And all I can imagine is a person with like a big needle.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Somehow the needle has liquid protein.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: They're just like plunging the needle into a Wheatie flake.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I'm guessing no.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But how does it work?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Like how do they get the protein in there?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah, it isn't too far off from Jurassic Park as I understand it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You're altering the DNA of whatever the food is on a very granular level.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, it's like they'll take the wheat germ that they were using for Wheaties, for example, put in some protein and then they have like all these calculations about like how much liquid to use.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And they're just calibrating that until they get something that sort of resembles the traditional product but is maybe just a little bit off.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then on top of that, they'll try to mask it with, you know, nut clusters and all this other stuff to sort of like take your eye off the ball a little bit that this isn't the old one you're eating.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But it's a little bit different, but it can't be too different.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And I think that's kind of the trick towards all these new protein food products, honestly.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, you pointing at something here.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Listeners will know I am obsessed with ultra-processed foods and what they may be doing to us.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I drank a protein shake the other day and I was like, oh my God, none of this is stuff that I could find in my own kitchen.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so a thing I wonder is, are we just eating junk food?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Is all the high protein stuff crap?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, where I sort of landed and this flip flops every day, if you ask me the same question tomorrow, I might have a different answer for you.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But it's still junk, but it's kind of a lesser evil situation to my mind.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: A lot of the researchers I talked to, there was this one guy named Alan Aragon, who's sort of like been at the forefront of a lot of protein and fitness research over these past couple decades.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: He made the point that really kind of shocked me that this stuff is actually really useful for people who are maybe a little bit older.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And they're dealing with age-related muscle loss.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And it's just so much easier for them to eat a bowl of cereal versus like a huge sirloin steak that a carnivore diet influencer would like make for themselves and eat off a cutting board or something like that.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's maybe not ideal.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Maybe we should be getting our protein from whole sources like, you know, fish and like grass-fed meat and tofu and stuff like that.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But you know, we don't live in a sort of ideal world.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: We're always on the move and like need convenience when we can.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So I'll occasionally indulge in like a protein thing that tastes like a Pop-Tart and feel not too bad about it if I can help it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There's a thing that happens.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It has certainly happened to me, probably most people, where you realize that like you're not getting enough calcium, right, or enough iron.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then suddenly you are slamming iron tablets and spinach and steak.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And then you read something that's like, oh, you should only actually be getting such and such milligrams every day.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: We are, as a culture, really obsessed with protein right now.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Has anyone dug into whether we are getting too much?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So in terms of how much protein a person might need, the RDA works out to basically 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: That's a lot of math.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But more recent research suggests that it should be probably closer to 1.6, which is double what the old RDA was.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Most people probably aren't getting enough, especially if you work out.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And, you know, protein is a source of our cellular, like, healing and all that stuff.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So, yeah, we're probably all not eating enough, honestly.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: We've all learned to be suspicious of big food companies, right?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There are a lot of problems with the American diet, and we're all aware of it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There are a lot of chronic conditions that stem from the American diet.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: When you think about what the story of protein and its rise and then continued rise tells us about ourselves, what do you think is the story behind the story here?
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I feel like we're just getting so much smarter about nutrition now.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I always think back to my youth when the, you know, the food pyramid and the bottom of it was like your foundation of a healthy diet is like six to 11 daily breads or something.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: That's so many carbs.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: That's so much bread.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: It's so weird because some of this stuff gets really rigid really fast.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: But then research is also moving fast.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so it's kind of weird because you have to balance some conspiratorial thinking with all these podcasters and people, randos on TikTok, who are making like really strong health recommendations not founded in any sort of like real science with sort of what sounds about right.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And so it's kind of like a personal calculation is where I've kind of landed on it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: You know, if like eating a little bit more protein helps you feel good, then by all means do it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I've personally sort of started eating double the amount that I was eating prior to reporting this story.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Then I feel pretty good and not too terrible with myself.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: So that's where I've landed with all of that.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: And your muscles got bigger.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: Yeah, my muscles are so brolic right now, dude.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There you go.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: There you go.
--:-- Noel King: That is it. That is why we do it.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: I know.
--:-- Chris Gayomali: All right.
--:-- Noel King: Chris Gayomali. Check him out at Heavies on Substack.
--:-- Noel King: Gabrielle Berbet produced today's show.
--:-- Noel King: Amina El-Sadi edited.
--:-- Noel King: Matthew Billy and Andrea Kristinsdottir engineered.
--:-- Noel King: And Laura Bullard checks the facts.
--:-- Noel King: Heidi Mawagdi, Amanda Llewellyn, Devin Schwartz, Victoria Chamberlain, Travis Larchuk, Miles Bryan, and Avishai Artsy produced today, Explained.
--:-- Noel King: Miranda Kennedy is our EP, and Jolie Myers is our deputy EP.
--:-- Noel King: Sean Ramos-Firm is taking an airplane to South by Southwest this week to ask Minnesota Governor Tim Walz about all those J.D. Vance memes.
--:-- Noel King: If you're in Austin, stop by.
--:-- Noel King: The Vox Media Podcast stage is presented by Smartsheet.
--:-- Noel King: And this Sunday, right here in this feed, you're going to find our new weekend show, Explain It to Me, hosted by Jonquil and Hill.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, so this week on the show, we're going to go on a journey to help a man in the love department.
--:-- Jonquil: You know, Noelle, we've talked about this.
--:-- Noel King: Dating is changing, and it's changing very quickly.
--:-- Jonquil: A lot of guys feel like they've been left behind.
--:-- Noel King: So I talked to a listener who told me he's never tried to approach a woman in person because he's worried about coming off creepy.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, it's rough out here.
--:-- Jonquil: I fell for them.
--:-- Noel King: But we hit a men's group at a bar in Austin, Texas, and found some inspiration from a bunch of guys that get together to help each other with stuff like this.
--:-- Jonquil: You can hear that show on Sunday morning in the Today Explained feed.
--:-- Noel King: And people can call you if they have a question