I was really surprised when I first learned about Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, not only because I was only eleven when he retired from the Supreme Court and was not apprised of contemporary politics as an eleven year old, but that someone as progressive as Justice Marshall and the progressive act of appointing a black man to the court had happened before I was even born.
Read MoreA few days ago I was shopping at a grocery store that doesn’t carry my preferred products, and browsing the butter section I was disappointed to find no other obvious options. Frustrated, I grabbed a butter from a brand I recognized, and finished shopping.
Read MoreI sometimes (surprisingly rare, actually) get criticized for the amount of sex in my books. One homophobic person wrote an Amazon review in which they hilariously said there was “disturbing homosexual erotica,” (my book is NOT sold on Amazon) as if my book was some Fifty Shades of Grey and not retellings of my relationship and coming of age experiences.
Read MoreGrowing up in Utah I didn’t actually ever witness very many explicit examples of racism. In fact, because the Mormon church romanticizes some other cultures like Pacific Islanders and Central Americans in their religious texts, some others with different skin colors were often regarded with admiration, and so I always assumed that Mormons weren’t racist.
Read MoreThere are a lot of characteristics which make human beings unique in the animal kingdom—we walk upright, have very large brains in proportion to our body size, and can cook food using fire. But one of our most overlooked characteristics (by the general population) is our hairlessness. It is actually quite unique for mammals to be naturally without near-total fur or hair covering their bodies.
Read MoreThe evidence that face masks are not effective in stopping the coronavirus pandemic has now led to new regulations in the operating room, where surgeons and their support teams will no longer be required to wear face masks.
“They just get in the way,” is a common complaint among medical professionals…
Read MoreLast year I had been spending some time with my parents. They are conservative and consume conservative media, and I have not had much of a relationship at all with them ever since they kicked me out of the house at eighteen years of age for being gay, after which I attempted suicide and afterward struggled with depression and alcoholism for many years (the main story of my book, Fuck Portion Control).
Read MoreSeveral years ago when I was active in online forums trying to help people, an insane lady yelled at me when I talked about how the amino acid tryptophan in milk converts in the human body either to niacin or serotonin, depending on certain metabolic conditions in the human body, where niacin promotes metabolic activity and serotonin alternatively slows down the metabolism, both regulatory branches which help to run human biology.
Read MoreA natural extension of my work has been an increased interest and preoccupation with agriculture, farming, and food production. One of the most noble professions, growing food is actually one of the most precarious foundations of human society, with the great majority of us taking for granted that a constant food supply is an easy feat to achieve.
Read MoreIn 1984 when I was four years old my family lived on the island of Oahu in the town of Kailua. My father’s sister was nannying for us, and my grandparents visited during Christmas. One of my very first memories (if not the first) is looking up with joy from my newly opened Christmas present—a large, Caribbean-blue, plush My Little Pony…
Read MoreIn the mid-90’s when I was in elementary school in Utah we had, each year, a visit from the local police department and volunteer teenagers from the D.A.R.E program to come into our classrooms to shame and scare us away from using drugs. As a direct consequence of their involvement when I became an adult and was addicted to alcohol it took 15 years and serious consequences of my addiction to finally bring me awareness of my problem.
Read MoreDuring the course of some research I was doing on the role of vitamin D in the course of tuberculosis infection, which used to be a major cause of mortality in the world and would frequently take half the members of entire families, I came across a surprising fact about polio which I had not known before, which was that while the effects of polio could be extremely devastating and result in lifelong debilitation…
Read MoreSocial media can be really great for a lot of reason, but it’s impossible to peruse instagram, tik tok, and other outlets without seeing a nauseating volume of garbage about changing your mindset to find happiness, practicing discipline and self deprivation for goals, or setting intention to change your fate and the function of the universe.
Read MoreMy family has a home video of me at nine years of age taken on Christmas Eve in which I tell one of my sisters they are going to be in big trouble if they don’t behave. I had a heavy lisp as a kid, and the clip is a serious source of laughter and has become somewhat of a catchphrase whenever memories of our childhoods are revisited.
Read MoreI have been doing academic research on human biology for the last six years, nearly every single day of my life since I started has been spent reading studies, taking notes, cross referencing, and then using that data in my personal life and to further my research. In my notes on gut health and microbial pathogens alone I have 717 studies. I have used more than 1,500 in the course of writing my books.
Read MoreWhen I was a young man and savaged by depression, having grown up in a notoriously bigoted and homophobic community of Mormons, my Dad said to me during an argument that nobody admirable in history had been gay.
Read MoreWhen my Dad was a young man he fell off a roof while working a construction job and herniated a vertebral disc. Thinking it wasn’t serious he had my other walk on his back in an attempt to pop or fix whatever was wrong, and the pain was so great it nearly paralyzed him.
Read MoreWhat is it by which you define success? Do you desire money, to build a large home and fill it with things? Do you wish to be a healthy young person blessed with virility and unburdened by illness? Do you want a family, or for your own family to grow up and realize their hopes and dreams?
Read MoreSalad has become such a polarizing food these days it can’t be discussed without also discussing various health and dietary ideologies along with it. Often used as a substitute for other foods when people on are restrictive diets, salad is (or can be) a very useful and delicious way to get the healthy nutrition we require as human beings.
Read MoreAlcoholism and addiction are a devastating disease which have been poorly understood until my work on it. In reality it is pretty simple to understand and treat, and I’ve put together a simple guide for recovery from alcoholism and addiction. Please refer anyone you know who is struggling with this condition. It’s free
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