Kratom & 7-OH Pt II

hey David how's it going hi Hayden you sound a little bit sick there buddy yeah I caught a bug oh no what kind of bug I don't know I didn't I can't talk to bugs we're doing an episode today about a drug ban here in the United States or a proposed drug ban are you a big drug user have you been a drug user in the past oh I dabble you know humans always want to alter their states in various ways you know when does the government get involved when do different agencies get involved or is it just up to the individual to police their drug taking habits well man they do quite a lot of harm I hear like the drugs but also the fighting the drugs does a lot of harm I've heard that the Mexican cartels and stuff not good they're doing some not good stuff and I am a little bit sympathetic to the argument that maybe we should regulate and police them as a health issue rather than as a criminal matter because the criminal thing seems to be not going so well uh particularly in the United States uh and here's my can I've got one final thought Dave please it's just that humans as humans we're facing the irresistible immutable reality of death and the uh the limit the sort of elimination of our being in the void and from what I've heard is that magic mushrooms can sort of take the edge off some of the dreads that accompanies that we're advocating for some magic mushies yeah like we gotta die that fucking sucks at least give us some mushrooms that like make it a bit less scary we're just like scared apes in the void and all we have to do is take some mushrooms and it's a bit less horrible and they're like no you can't take the mushrooms that take the edge off your existential dread because you might enjoy the much there's not even any side effects really like except for that you're a little bit less productive or something for a few hours you and I went to university together and we never you know we never really did the university thing and sort of dabbled in too many drugs did we I mean we barely had a beer we were quite good boys well yeah I mean you were still getting off the christian hangover and I was sort of in my less drinking era that's right you're a drug taker I love the socially approved drugs that do immeasurable harm I'm David Farrier in New Zealand accidentally marooned in America and I want to figure out what makes this country tick now Hayden and I got slightly off track there in regards to drugs but back on track after our Kratom and 708 episode a month or so ago we got a shit ton of feedback comments over on Spotify our Patreon and to our email address lots of Americans had thought and experiences with Kratom and 708 such was the volume that we thought it was worth doing something with all of it so in today's episode listeners experiences in the world of so-called gas station drugs the good the bad and the ugly and as a ban on the stuff looms I also talk to a man who sells the stuff and makes hundreds of millions of dollars from it what does he make of it all you can probably guess so get ready to get high on another great episode of this bird because this is the Kratom and 708 part 2 episode not a mouthful at all I was gonna say it rolls off the tongue it's so smooth hey David how's it going good good good I feel like I have fully recovered from our two Canadian episodes yeah how do you feel at the end of it I feel like I've been through a tumble dryer of some kind I have thoughts about it got some really wonderful feedback at the end of the episode from various people but it makes me think I'll save it for the end yes yes but it's been a whirlwind well that's been a whirlwind for a few days you are we talked about this on our bonus patreon so if you go to patreon you can get the full rundown of my my trip to Vancouver and it's kind of an unofficial part three of Canada kind of was if you want more Canada for right and wrong it's on our patreon but one of my big takeaways and most surprising things about Vancouver was the drug use there oh yeah we had a listener recommend a bunch of restaurants for me while I was there and the one I went to the first night each restaurant had a little blurb about what I can get there and then this one in particular was was um if you're coming from downtown don't walk to this restaurant right uh take an uber or a lift and this was you were staying relatively close like you could have walked with a kilometer away yeah um and being from Chicago we walk everywhere like when I'm in a city that's what I want to do is I want to go to a place where there's a lot of people I just want to go to a place where there's a lot of people I just want to go to a place where yeah I really wanted to walk and then I was like ah this is the only one that's noted don't walk here I should probably take this advice kind of like the beginning of a horror where there's like a rule yeah and they're like we're not gonna do that I can walk yeah as far so I did and I am glad I did because um I mean we drove through a couple blocks that was just insane it was tons of people just along the side of the road sidewalk um like see crack pipes saw a guy tying his arm off right um all very open people bent over people just totally passed out against a building or on the sidewalk um and like whole intersections were like very crowded busy intersection but it is all um unhoused drug users yeah yeah all over the place not just uh us issue that we're facing and trying to figure out how to solve and I'm from I'm from a major city like we have we have that yeah we have that in LA we have that in Chicago I'm not I'm not surprised by that um I was surprised that it was that bad there the scale yeah I didn't think it was a unique thing to the United States but I didn't realize it also plagued Canada so badly when I went to Vancouver I feel like five or six years ago because my friend was filming something there um and I was like oh my god I'm gonna go to Vancouver I'm gonna go to Vancouver I'm gonna go to I saw I mean she mentioned that you'll see people ODing and there's ambulances around help trying to help people or just binding bodies and stuff it's rough yeah yeah well that was what someone someone that lived up there had told me too is you hear ambulances all the time and they're like we don't really have uh gun violence up here or anything those ambulances are all people overdosing yeah um and like one of the nights we saw like Narcan teams a bunch of people in like vests the group of like 10 people going around to make sure people just trying to stop people literally from overdosing and dying and like cops were around I I will say too I didn't I didn't feel unsafe I would I probably wouldn't have loved to be walking through it um but like cops were there making sure people were okay um I don't know how true this is but um apparently there's designated blocks for it to where it is allowed right so you're less likely to get police being to you just kind of like do your thing if you're not out side the yeah right downtown and I also feel this is probably another episode at some point because I you know obviously there's rewind 10 years and I feel like you could have the idea of like having cocaine or something you weren't going to die there's a real fear now that with what it's laced with you will and that's why people uh there's active you know my Instagram feed pops up with Narcan campaigns with people saying hey you should have this on you or if you know people that are not worth using certain drugs if you're not testing them at the same time I think there probably is another episode in just where the state of drugs is in the US and how it's gotten to that point because obviously this episode is about 708 and Kratom yeah yeah which is what people are turning to in similar ways yeah but it's you know obviously that level of harm is not as high but it can still be pretty as we hear from stories from people can still be pretty terrible and it's like what are the systems in place that are around to actually help when you find yourself addicted to shit that you either didn't expect to be addicted to or didn't even know you'd be taking yeah well I mean that that was kind of why it's like a good segue into this episode is just because there's not an easy answer to any of it because um from what I read I was looking into it they had decriminalized a lot of it in Vancouver and I think they had done that in like Portland and San Francisco and you see a lot of that then on the streets but clearly that's not solving the issue I mean yes it's better than sticking them in a jail cell yeah and giving people a permanent criminal record etc but there's obviously not the infrastructure around to get people out of that use yeah and to help them get out of it and also to stay out of it because like you can stop people taking it for a week but the relapse on yeah so many of these drugs whether it's this harder stuff or whether it's 708 and kratom you're gonna go back to it potentially yes decriminalization works in some cases but it doesn't necessarily solve the problem yeah completely uh that needs to be much more infrastructure around solving it beyond that and at a much wider scale than and then it seems any of these places are equipped and ready for in my incredibly limited understanding of this world it feels like when they're ever trying to make a solve they just have one aspect looked at as opposed to the multitude of aspects which obviously all costs an incredible amount of money yeah which is a hard thing for people in power i guess in government to advocate for because your taxpayer is going to say why are we spending all this money on these fucking you know these people that can't even get their lives together you know they're facing that all the time yeah which which then so we're looking at that they've decriminalized this which a lot of people are for and now we're talking about kratom and 70h which yeah is maybe headed in the opposite direction where it is this uh it was a gas station this is safe yeah completely um completely free for all almost sold like a bottle of coke kind of thing like a coca-cola bottle of dr pepper a bottle don't pick a brand to associate well don't pick a brand that also is the name of a drug it gets incredibly confusing what they're selling cocaine and gas stations now in america this is crazy yeah but it's been a really interesting time and i kind of delayed this episode because essentially the entire time i was working on this documentary there's been this looming ban on kratom and 70h and you know spoiler alert it hasn't happened yet and we get a little bit into that why that is in the doc but while this kind of ban looms um we got so much feedback from listeners about this i had experiences uh later on in the episode we'll talk to friend of the show anthony green who an incredible musician who we've had on um the nest sessions before weird parallel there too um when i was in toronto i saw him our kratom episode had just come out all right so we were sitting backstage talking and uh i he was like oh yeah that i got hooked on that last time i relapsed and you're right so you're just casually kind of bringing up this episode that we're doing and we had just put out and he listened to and and his point of view yeah he had his own journey with it too which i i don't know if it's true but i think it's true i think it's true i think that was the biggest takeaway for me and i think probably you is it was this weird drug that we had not really heard much of and just i had never even seen it out in the world before that until i went to new york and took a photo of the kratom store and then zuckerberg kicked me off um social media because apparently i was like encouraging drug use i was like oh what the fuck is this like there must be a debate around this thing uh but when we put that episode just hearing the kratom story i was like oh my god i'm not gonna be able to do that i'm not gonna be able to do that all the people that had stories with it it it was eye-opening how how prevalent it is yeah that's the thing it's like one of those things you've never heard of it you just don't think of it you hear the word and you know what it is and suddenly you realize it's all around you okay so let's get into the doc the other thing i think is really interesting um that we get into is that you know we get a lot of emails from people um we get a few publicists send through ideas but this was a particularly good one where a publicist um for a man who makes a shit ton of kratom and 708 products heard the episode and their reaction was like hey you want to this guy on the show and so i ended up talking to him because i mean he's the man responsible literally for a lot of the stories that we're hearing from other people affected by this shit so i mean that's the dream is that we let's get both perspectives yeah from this yeah not let him use it as a sales pitch yes because we clearly know we know where we fall and i think even the tone of yeah both of these episodes falls oh and also i think within the podcast i think most of the time it doesn't make for um they say that like what makes a good show or a podcast or anything is conflict yes we generally agree on most stuff we'll have like little points of contention but generally we're like yeah so i think it can be good to have people on the show that is vehemently coming from a different place yes so at least we can try to understand that perspective uh yeah and then still disagree oh completely be cynical as fuck no we're not doing a rogan we're like hey this guy seems kind of cool let's hear from chad uh anyway this is the doc first up i think it's really important we check back in with michael who is basically the whole reason i got sent down this path of looking at gas station drugs if you recall he tried kratom casually back in 2012 and as he started working in construction and his body got more battered and bruised he used a lot more kratom then moved on to 708 to the point where he was completely addicted and spending thousands of dollars a week on it well since that episode things have gotten a lot better for michael hey david and rob this is michael from the kratom and 708 episode calling to give you a couple of things i'm going to share with you today i'm going to be talking about the couple of months check-in now i got him to send me a voice memo with an update preferably from somewhere quiet but well michael works in construction and he sent me a voice memo from his noisy truck fair enough first of all i wanted to thank you guys so very much for allowing me to share my story just that experience alone was very cathartic and freeing in a way since then i've been able to open up a little bit to a few people and help me recover truly a listener has reached out and working together trying to combat this stuff so far i have drastically decreased my intake and some quite crazy timing as he was quitting the stuff was getting banned it is now ban uh scheduled one emergency schedule from the fda and it is now illegal to get actually as i talked to michael in late august not quite when it comes to the 70h or kratom a lot of news stories went around indicating that the dea had banned 70h but not quite what the dea did was put out a notice of intent to temporarily schedule 70h in july figuring out whether to throw it in the same camp as heroin say with that in mind the dea also put out what's called a request for information on a threshold that would be used for that scheduling some 70h occurs naturally in kratom kratom is not being scheduled by the way the dea has to figure out at what amount it should be considered a controlled substance if it's naturally occurring so my point is as i put this piece together in early september 70h is still not banned although some states are sick of waiting around and abandoning it on a state-by-state basis anyway obviously like anything people can still find it but uh in preparation for that i started to kind of wean myself off of it and use different tactics and everything to recover so that's been going well i am down to you know i was taking anywhere from 25 to 30 tablets a day because it's such an unregulated mad space there's no knowing how much kratom and 70h that was but i think it's fair to say it was quite a bit but i've chopped it down to about six six to seven and working slowly after that as well it hasn't been the easiest but thankfully i've got a really strong support group behind me and yeah that's how i've been doing wonderful news to have and now on to some other listener experiences hey david this is dana in connecticut i would not be here recording this voice note from my closet if i hadn't found kratom dana had a positive experience with kratom but notes very clearly she was working with the leaf as in just the kratom leaf itself not the gas station tonics or the 70h compound which is like kratom on crack real quick i'm talking about the kratom plant i was an absolutely hopeless alcoholic i would have died from probably either a withdrawal induced seizure or suicide her story sounds pretty rough i went to rehab three times nothing worked opioid addicts are given suboxone and methadone to help them stay away from whatever they're using even though alcoholism is as old as people we don't have anything nearly as effective to treat it kratom works for both addictions it's helped at least tens of thousands of people it's like nature's less strong version of suboxone it's not a cure-all and it has drawbacks but so does any medication it's an incredibly helpful tool and we should be embracing it not banning it it allowed me to stay away from alcohol long enough to start connecting to people again honestly that was the only positive story we got the rest of the stories all started to sound familiar my husband has been using kratom for over eight years and i've been using it for a long time and i've been using it for a long time and i didn't even know about it for a long time because he hid it from me and when he finally told me i found out he had been trying to quit for years already the last five years has basically been a cycle of getting sober relapsing trying again then relapsing again and he's done the online support groups he's been on suboxone he's talked to his doctor so many different times looking for help but it always felt like nobody really knew much about kratom and 7-0 and he'd asked for help and they didn't realize how powerful it was and he's been trying to get powerful the addiction was. They didn't know how to help him. Weirdly, this was the lot of the experience of me researching the stuff. It's so hard to find answers about how powerful it is. Again, because it's unregulated and in gas stations, no one really knows. So a lot of those doctor's appointments didn't really end with anything helping him. And that's honestly one of the hardest parts, feeling like he wanted help, but there just wasn't anyone who understood what he was dealing with and like how to help him. Like Michael, her husband's kratom use morphed into the heavily marketed 7-0-H. He started with regular kratom and then over the last few years, he switched to 7-0. And that's when everything really started to spiral. The financial impact has been devastating, to say the least. I found out that he had relapsed because one month he couldn't send me his half of the mortgage payment. We have two kids, a mortgage. So I started digging through our finances and I was completely shocked. I found out that he had gone into about $20,000 worth of debt just trying to keep himself from going into withdrawals. $20,000 seems insane to me, but going on the feedback Flightless Bird got, it's not that crazy. And like any addiction, the lies tend to keep coming. He took out short-term loans. He eventually got so desperate that he stole cash, forged checks, and addiction completely changes the person that you know. The trust between the two of them. has been shattered and we are still working through that. Thankfully, he's been clean for a few months now since February, and I am grateful for that. But I also know that recovery isn't something that you can ever take for granted. It's a lifelong process. And I just want people to understand that this isn't some harmless supplement that people can just stop whenever they want. This is a real addiction. And it doesn't just affect the person using it. It affects their spouse, their kids, their whole family. I just hope that there will be more regulation. And I believe that they are working on banning it now or have banned it. And I have to say that I just worry that even if 7-0 goes away, even if Kratom goes away, something will just be there to replace it. So I hope people start taking this more seriously because I know that we can't be the only ones going through this. With so many of these kinds of stories, I decided to reach out to someone who makes this stuff, who formulates it, packages it, and sells it to the American public. I'm going to ask them to tell me what they think about it. the American public. Actually, I didn't reach out. They reached out to us, a publicist who works with one of America's biggest manufacturers of Kratom and 7-0-H. And so I said, yeah, sure, let's talk. I wanted to see where their head was at. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. Support for Flightless Bird comes from Cozy Earth. 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This call happened back on July 30, a few days before the DEA was due to ban it nationwide. Yeah, that's Sanders. That's my name. We make a host of natural products, literally several hundred SKUs. We're based in Kansas City, Missouri, in the middle of the U.S. His business is pretty big. I employ 500 people. I have seven factories. I found myself musing about the first human to actually try gas station Kratom, the type sold in shots, and he reckons it was him. No, so in all honesty, the very first person, probably in the world, you know, most likely it was me. I always test things first. I just like to be the guy that tests it first. If there is something going to happen bad, let it happen to me. But what I found was immediate relief of any type of body pain and a large boost in my mood. So, and some energy. And I was like, wow, this has some real potential. So then we started, you know, animal studies and getting more humans to try it and getting their feedback. So that's really how it all started. What got you into this particular scene? What got me into Kratom is in early 2000, we started getting calls from people in the Kratom world that wanted shots made. The trend then, I guess maybe still is, although Kratom's, you know, the industry's pretty devastated since 7 came around. Is that these shots and no one could really formulate, very few people could solubilize ventrogynin, virtually no one could make it taste good. And that's in our wheelhouse. So we started making shots for other people just as a, you know, contract manufacturer. And we, you know, that business picked up very rapidly. They went to market around three years ago in late July of 2023. You went from something brand new three years ago, to literally within three or four months, we were making millions of tablets a month. And millions of dollars, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, that translates to millions of dollars as well. Yeah. He's gotten rich off this stuff. And I was curious what kinds of claims he puts on the bottle. So when you sell supplements, you can't make claims, right? You can't, I can say it could court this or that, that type of language, but you can't make a claim. So you have to be very cautious with that type of thing. So, I mean, I can tell you, you, after reading at this point, probably tens of thousands of testimonials and talking to thousands of people prior to even going on the market, people are using it for everything from, you know, temporary pain management to chronic pain management, to a host of mood and, you know, just, just general malaise or, you know, feeling better. Uh, it, it will give you, it'll take a bad day to make a good day. I'll take a good day and make it a great day. You know, it is a full serotonin agonist. So it makes you feel very good, very happy, very upbeat, gives you a lot of energy. I expected him to be a salesman, but it's still sort of surreal to hear after all the awful stories I've been hearing lately. Early on, we thought this will be great for people with pain in our stores because we have our own stores. Uh, we have the main driver is pain. So we thought, wow, this fits perfectly with that. And it does, it does work very well for that. But if you spend time in a store and stop people and ask them as they're purchasing, Hey, what are you using this for? Two thirds of the people will tell you for mood enhancement and that they've replaced their SSRIs and a host of the analytics using it. So it's kind of quite interesting. You know, everything has side effects, which usually are unintended and bad. In this case, we got very fortunate. We had a really, really good side effect, really good side effects. I mean, yeah, there's a reason people take it, but also no, you know, obviously the bad side effect of all this is that people are finding it incredibly addictive as well, which is why, uh, various states are cracking down on it so strongly. Uh, was that something you knew about or was an intent there? Well, it certainly wasn't intent. Um, you know, anytime you, you have something even that is a partial agonist at, at a opioid receptor, you know, you can run that risk of abuse, right? But the vast majority of people that have used large quantities were already addicted to a lethal opioid. So they used it as you would use Suboxone to transfer from a lethal opioid like fentanyl to a safe non-lethal opioid like 70H or Suboxone. When you, when you see people abusing it, that's usually it. You also have to have people that were prior addicts in a host of ways that then tried seven. And then obviously unfortunately triggered those events and some people you know then started using again i don't know about you but to me all this feels a bit like word salad are you concerned about that side of the business because obviously you know we've got a lot of feedback since we did our first episode and largely the stories that are coming in you know we put out a call for positive stories that people have had on it and negative and primarily a lot of the stories are incredibly negative which you'll be aware of you know people going down a rabbit hole not being able to get off the stuff withdrawals being awful coming in from a world some of them without any history of substance abuse how do you factor that into what you do well i guess you usually get what you ask for so if you ask for negative comments obviously you've got them i could direct you to a host of sites where you'll find tens of thousands of just the opposite if you went to change.org and looked the don't bow on it bill you'll see roughly sixty thousand signatures right now saying don't bow on it and you'll see thousands of testimonials of how it's dramatically changed people's lives but these are decisions adults have to make every day with our lives um yeah i wish it was simple i wish everything was black and white this is good that's bad but that's just not reality you know life is shades of gray um god you know if i could make it to where it was perfect for all 10 out of 10 i'd certainly do it but i don't know if i could make it to where it was perfect for all 10 out of 10 but but at this point i'm not sure how to do that but i don't feel in a quote free country where you should have sovereignty of at least of your own body and as an adult 21 plus that i want to live in a nanny state that tells me what i can i can't do with my own body the idea of having such a powerful substance served um at a gas station or a convenience store you know it's one thing being able to buy a bottle of coca-cola or an ice cream to get a sugar high um but it's getting what is essentially a substance that has incredibly strong opioid like qualities without any kind of advice from a medical professional it does seem like it's right for abuse and for people to go down a rabbit hole they're particularly not expecting to go on overall i would agree with you however these same stores sell alcohol and cigarettes things that are you know half a million people a year die from alcohol related reasons and about half that many die from tobacco related reasons zero people have ever died from alcohol related reasons and so i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good idea to be careful about that and i think it's a good bit of potentially harming yourself or doing things that are probably not very wise. Unfortunately, they're going to do that. He's good at this, right? And on some of his points, I agree, like this bit. Prohibition doesn't work. We've learned that for a century. If alcohol didn't work, drugs haven't worked. The problem is when you prohibit it, what happens is now you have no control. It's in the black market. It's too strong. It's too weak. Who knows what you're robbed or you're trying to buy it. It's a bad, bad situation. The only way you can hope to control something is education and regulation. And that's what we advocate. I would love it. Which brings us to the DEA ban, Vince's nightmare. When I spoke to him, the ban was meant to be imminent, but like all things in America, it's dragging out. But when we spoke, it was meant to be less than a week away. How worried are you about the next five days? This is a big decision. We're very worried, right? I mean, how could we not be? Federal government's a pretty powerful group. So obviously, I couldn't be more worried. And this DEA thing came out of nowhere. I mean, we knew it had been working, but everything we understood was that the DEA did not think it should be banned. And then suddenly, without warning, we got this 30-day notice. So hopefully, we'll look at all the tens of thousands of letters that have been written to them and make a wise decision. Those tens of thousands of letters? I mean, do people even write letters anymore? We're a research company. We have a half dozen PhDs on staff. We work with several universities that have schools of pharmacy. We have tens of millions of dollars worth of science equipment here. So we're always doing R&D. So there's all kinds, kinds of alternatives, potentially. But what you don't know at the end of the day is after long-term use, is this a safe substance? 70H, after three years and literally billions of doses being consumed, has proven 100% hands down, this is a safe, safe product. What comes next, you're back to a whole vetting process. How do you look back on something like seven that millions of people have taken billions of doses of very successfully without any dust attached to it and say, well, that needs to go, but let's just clear the deck and open the market for something worse. And who would be there making that something worse? I'm not entirely convinced it wouldn't be someone like Vince. You mentioned the three years and having a pretty good track record. I'm wondering, what's the next step? What's the next step? I'm wondering, you know, just colloquially, the stories I've gotten in indicate not a far from perfect track record. And I'm wondering if you've tracked any of your users or done any big research into people's results from using the product. You know, we had a lot of participation or, you know, got a lot of information from a John Hopkins study that was done about a year, 18 months ago now, as well as some other studies that we've pulled information from. Have you ever tracked your product, though, the results from people using? Have I personally? Or, yeah, your company. Like, have you ever tracked what your users, how they're responding to it and where they've ended up? You can call and, you know, we have a 24-hour day. You can call anytime. But we have yet to have anyone call with an issue after all this time. But you're not seeking out, you haven't commissioned any studies of your own to sort of monitor what your users are doing? That is correct. Yeah. I mean, literally, the money early on was spent. Spent on good studies. We did a CELTOX, two rodent and a beagle study. And we're working our way to a human trial. But when this became such a hot potato. So, no human trials yet at all? No human. Well, obviously, there has been human trials. Well, yeah, in the wild. Not done in a lab. Yeah. I mean, does that worry you at all when you have such a big industry and, you know, after three years, you genuinely don't have data besides some colloquial things, that are going on? Well, I would say they're more than colloquial. I mean, when millions of people have tried billions of doses. I mean, it's addictive. They're going to use it, right? It's highly addictive stuff. That's not. But wait a minute, wait a minute. Everybody using 7-OH isn't addicted, if that's what you think. I think a lot of them are. No, no, no, no. You've got that wrong. How do you know this if there's been no study? I have personally talked to thousands of people that successfully use it on a daily basis. I have an idea that. Most people that use it are addicted is beyond off-track. Just in case. I mean, I think you've gotten way off there. Vince comes back to numbers seemingly pulled out of thin air. I have no question that 95 plus percent of what we're doing with 7-OH is for the greater good. In fact, the few people that weren't on a substance and got on addicted, I think, would be such a small percentage. The vast majority of people that have developed addiction already had addiction issues. Okay. And you're basing that on what? Basing that on me talking to countless people and reading on, you know, I spend hundreds of hours online reading, you know, everything from Reddit to posts that people just make on social media. Hundreds of hours of online reading, Reddit, social media posts. That's what he's basing his this is safe message on. I don't know, eh? Back to some of our listener feedback. I'll pick people who seemed representative over all of the feedback we got. This listener was from Providence, Rhode Island. I was a little disappointed to hear your guests talk about Suboxone as trading one addiction for another. Suboxone is the treatment for opiate use disorder or opiate addiction. And while it does cause physical dependency, I think there's a lot of confusion about that not being the same as a treatment for opiate use disorder or opiate addiction. So sure, when you take that medication, your body is physically dependent on it. But addiction, by definition, are the behaviors around a person's substance use. So spending tons of money, the cravings, the urges, stealing, the effects it has on your family and the relationships and how it overcomes your mind. Suboxone doesn't cause that. Sure, your body's physically dependent on it, but Suboxone helps stabilize you to a degree that it doesn't cause that. So I think that's a really good point. To address those other behaviors. A perfectly reasonable point. Full disclosure, I work in the addiction field. And so I guess I listened and felt a little defensive for all the people I know who have really turned their lives around and started treatment and then been able to become a better partner or parent or friend, get back to steady employment because they gave treatment a chance. And this includes people who are really close to me who, if it weren't for Suboxone, I'd wake up every morning hoping they're still alive. And so I just wanted to share that perspective. I think a lot of people who reached out to Flightless Bird would probably disagree with Vince's earlier statements about how positive this drug is. Mary's husband, not her real name, started taking Kratom in the 2010s to get in a buzzy mood for concerts. So he was just taking the same dose for years and years and years and years. He would either put it in pills or he would make this really nasty looking like green gross tea and drink that. Like, don't drink that. Double fist that with hot chocolate. And anyway, it really just kind of zonked him out. It made him a not ideal version of himself and it made him disinterested in things in his life and particularly in sex, which ended up being really problematic for us, obviously, in our relationship. But also, I would talk to him about it and say, hey, do you think this Kratom is an issue? And he would say, no, it's just natural. It's natural. It just helps me with anxiety. And all these things. So it sounded very promising, but I just was feeling very, very gaslit because I was like, this does not feel right. But since he was telling me that it was fine and natural, I just assumed he didn't want to have sex with me because of me. So I had had two babies and then I'd had a really horrible abdominal surgery in the last maybe five or six years while he was on Kratom. And my body, I felt like totally outside of my body. I was totally fucked up. And so I was just like, of course. Of course he doesn't want to have sex with me anymore. But it did actually turn out to be the Kratom. Her husband's been Kratom free for six years now. Then there was Dee from West Sonoma County in California. I was addicted to it for three years. Having never tried or done an opioid before, I fell into the trap of it being legal and thinking that it was OK and that it doesn't get you very high. Made me feel a little bit better when I quit drinking. Nine years ago. So after three years, I realized I had a really big problem. I would go into withdrawals pretty much immediately by that point. So I tried to taper and it was excruciating, but I had to get it down to a manageable point so that I could quit. And then one day I knew I had to surrender to it. And I was about to move in with my dad and my stepmom and live in their garage apartment. And so I just told them what was happening. And they were very confused. And my dad's a physician who actually did some drug addiction work when he was. He's a med student and he's also an addict himself. And so he and my stepmother were extremely supportive and nonjudgmental. And I went through 11 days of hell. Needless to say, Dee is not a fan. She wishes she'd never encountered the gas station drug. It is an insidious drug. No warning. You don't know what's going to come at you. And the ramifications, they lasted a long time. It took me about nine months. I lost all strength for. Quite a while. And my brain didn't quite function for a long time. I couldn't walk very well. I'm a school teacher. I had to go back to school thinking that 11 days would be enough to kick. And it was not. Yeah, you just feel like your skin crawls all the time and you can't sleep. And it's different than heroin from my hair. You don't get sick. But I felt like I wanted to die. Her overall thought and why she was thankful for our first Kratom episode was this. I just remember at the time wishing to God that the public knew more about this. And with that in mind, it feels appropriate to circle back to Michael and end on him. He's still driving that truck. Again, this has been a very cathartic experience. I really appreciate you guys allowing me to come on here and just yap, but I wanted to, again, reiterate that I'm here for anyone. Feel free to share my information if anyone needs someone to talk to. You know, I'm not perfect. I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert by any means, but I've gone through it. I'm going through it currently. So if there's anyone out there who needs someone, I'm here. This stuff can isolate you and make you feel lonely. And I know that firsthand. So the first step is reaching out and getting a support system behind you. So thank you again. And I hope everyone the best. For more flightless bird, we'll be right back after a word from our sponsors. The best holiday finds aren't always the ones you went looking for at Ross. Discover unexpected gifts, fashion, decor, and plenty of reasons to keep looking. Yeah, Michael, loveliest human alive. Very glad he's down. Very glad he's down. Which still sounds outrageous. Down to six tablets a day, but down a lot. The interesting thing was he mentioned this early on in that doc, but essentially another flightless bird listener reached out who's dealt with dealing with people coming off drugs. I connected them and they actually ended up really getting on helping each other, which is insane. So I think that's why Michael was like, if I can help anyone, put them in touch. So if you do want to talk to Michael, I mean, I'll gatekeep it a little bit, but flightlessbirdchat at gmail.com. Just write with what is going on in your life, and I have no problem passing that on to him. As he drives his truck, he will read the email and see what he thinks. I mean, that seems to be the best part of what came out of this. And one of the hardest parts of the addiction with it is that it is such a new weird thing. Finding anyone that can even relate to what you're dealing with. Even the fact that someone went to their doctor and the doctor didn't even really know how to deal with it or what to offer. Yeah, so being able to connect people that have these similar stories. I mean, the fact, though, that Vince said they have customers using it on a daily basis that aren't addicted. I mean, that's a bit of an oxymoron. Vince was interesting. I mean, I like that he spoke to us. He was also on a complete. I mean, I hope that listening to that, you can kind of see how the PR train worked. Where he's just like spitting numbers and positivity at you continuously. I push back a little bit towards the end. But, you know, essentially, in his mind, and I guess I was trying to put myself in his shoes, right? He's like, before this, he was working with weed, right? He actually had a whole other life in that before this came along. But, you know, he's someone that is doing very well off it. He's probably got a family. He has a good life. You have to probably justify it to yourself at some point. And I wonder how much he believes the lines that, you know, everyone is having a pretty great time. People having a bad time are an extreme minimum. I mean, you're going to get positive stories of it, too. Of course, people are high out of their minds. He's selling millions and millions of tablets, too. Like, thousands of positives. If I went on 7-0-H for a month, I reckon I'd have a fucking great time on it. I have no doubt that that. That particular drug would do. I mean, I've taken tramadol for pain a few times. And I love tramadol. And I've had to sort of tell myself, no, don't take more tramadol because it's not great for you. I think I would get on great on this shit. And I would say I'm having a wonderful time. Reality check. I'm not having a wonderful time. It's like long-term horrific issues for me getting off it. People have turned to it for much more extreme reasons. And it has helped them. That's one thing. But that's not what most of these stories are about. It's people. It's people that have gotten hooked on it. Well, stumbling into it in a gas station and wanting to feel a bit buzzed before a concert instead of sinking three beers. You know, they have a couple of. They have a shot and they feel great. That's what it is. It's also just because it's a newer thing. And like you said, doctors don't know anything about it yet. It just makes me wonder if there are other substances that people are using on a daily basis. I mean, clearly it's not anything. No. Equal. Like, you can see the extreme addiction to that. Completely. But like, coffee or matcha? Once you know what that matcha is doing. Find out. You have two of those a day? Two of those a day. I mean, I would say I'm addicted to it. Yeah. I'd be curious if there were any headaches or body changes if you went off it. Oh, I definitely get like. But I get. It's a caffeine headache. Which is a known thing. I'm not going to go through like crazy withdrawals. I've also. No, you'll cope. I'm like sick. I will do hot tea instead of matcha. Yeah. I think you're okay. And I'll survive. I think you're okay. Yeah, I don't get. I think you're okay. I don't get like shakes. But you know, it is an interesting thing because I mean, the companies that make this stuff, they are chemists. And if a certain thing gets banned, there's nothing stopping them from going back to the lab, tweaking some of the chemicals and like the chemical makeup of those compounds. And then boom, suddenly this is legal because it's a new thing. Yeah. And he said, that to me on the phone. So if it's essentially, if it's banned, yeah, we've got, we're two other things. formula you know it's not the end of the world but you know i called him back i think four or five times so this basically thinking the ban was because what i wanted in this episode was for the ban to land for the dea to essentially say in the entirety of the united states you cannot sell 70h and i wanted to present that to him yeah but it hasn't happened it's just like consultation is dragging on and on and on keep calling him back and he's like david stop and he takes he does take my calls like credit to the guy like he knows i'm not in his side but he takes the call so that he stood me up once which is annoying but he was probably fucking in the lab making some more shit um the other thing i thought was interesting it was the last comment in that doc about um suboxone i didn't even clock it but in the first kratom episode i think someone had sort of talked about that in a pretty negative way whereas obviously for a lot of people it's still a really good thing to get on together right i mean that was kind of my point i was trying to make with 70h of there there may be cases uh in extreme circumstances where that is a beneficial thing a better option than what people were on but then it's like what do you do post that the like casual nature of it being sold to anyone at a gas station checkout line yeah is really where i see this differs quite a bit from that and maybe this is where we should go to the interview we did with anthony not too long ago because he surprised me in that he yeah he had a very specific take on this as well and he this is someone that has i don't speak for him but i understand he's used like a lot of drugs he's had addiction issues like he knows drug he's not like us who are just like blabbing on about it like we know but we've barely tried anything and he also didn't just stumble into kratom at a gas station because no he approached it with like with an intent and so let's um let's throw to that my name is anthony green i'm a singer songwriter uh and our guy what uh is your involvement with either kratom or 70h like what do you want to talk to i just heard of it as kratom when i first started doing and this was years ago and when i was struggling with heroin and fentanyl i i can remember trying to kick on my own and having a friend or you know a fellow user suggests this stuff and i you know i didn't know where to get it i didn't know all this stuff and when i first tried it it was for to like it was for my withdrawals my memory isn't great but when i recall this memory from the very first time using it for withdrawals it it was like it went from you know pain from nine to like four and eventually i overused it and built a experience to it and i think that it didn't help me with the withdrawals anymore and this last time that i went out on fentanyl i was i'd gotten out of rehab i was clean for a while and i was going to outpatient groups and one day because i could like because i was like oh this is something that i can just get at the gas station and and i can do it as like a quick thing and it won't become like you know your brain is just you know at that point you're you're used to lying to yourself i became a thing where every day after i would come out of outpatient i would go to the gas station i would get this little bottle and it was disgusting and then you know like eventually i was taking like 30 capsules at a time four or five times a day with the shots and there was a time where i was like clean from fentanyl but i was doing kratom and i was still hiding it and like you're still addicted and you're fighting withdrawals more than ever and the withdrawals aren't as intense in my opinion uh like coming off of both having dealt with both things the fentanyl is probably the fentanyl and xanax are like the worst things i've ever experienced but i had this you know feeling with kratom and i was like oh my god i'm gonna die and i'm gonna die and i'm gonna die and i'm gonna die and i'm like it was like this terrible thing it was terrible and i misused it and all this stuff and um it's it's strange because it it is being used to you know get people addicted and all this stuff but there's also this world where i feel like it could be something that helps people too and it's almost been disqualified from the helping thing because of how it was introduced and how companies are treating it if there was a sense of helping people through addiction with any of this stuff really like and not just creating some kind of maintenance or some kind of alternative like really helping people get free of the compulsion um there could be that could be a tool you know but it's it's i don't think it's ever going to be in that category the way it's been introduced and you know it doesn't even seem like you know pharmaceutical companies are interested in trying to actually like help people through addiction if we ever do see 70h or mitragynine or whatever like in mainstream pharmaceutical you know getting it's going to be something that is like probably just as bad as all that other shit that is supposed supposed to help people it just keeps you addicted do you feel like it helped you in any way at all when you're trying to get off that stuff that was harder and much less legal i actually kicked a few times using kratom and then tapered with the kratom okay and because i didn't have an infrastructure of support network and uh like alternative habits people go to the gym whatever i didn't have that set up so i was priming myself for the with the the relapse but i did find it incredibly useful when i was trying to kick and had i you know had i been in the right environment been able to maybe had to help clinical help like with the tapering and all that stuff it it would have been a less painful less agonizing withdrawal and then to clarify you went back to it later anyway yeah because you wanted something yes it was at the gas station you know and you could take out 20 bucks and you didn't have to hit up a sketchy person or go down to kensington or get almost murdered what do you think about the idea i know the dea at the moment is looking into it and i think it's a good idea to do that i think it's a good idea to go into it sort of on a federal level if this stuff just gets completely pulled do you think that is net good or bad i lean toward the banning of things completely being bad i don't have like the answers as far as like you know how regulations should go so that but i i know that um banning bad i tend to agree i tend to agree i tend to agree banning bad uh research study that's good how did you find the difference between kratom and 708 did you get a feeling for the difference because it's so difficult because every product is so different it is so different i was on the forums i would go online and i was watching videos and i was there's people online that make their whole identity this stuff and you know had i been able to like go get heroin at the grocery store and it was like something that some people were okay was putting in your bag and you know i might have made that my identity too i don't really know but um i think that the capsules of kratom that i were taking i was taking affected me different and the the 708 was like faster acting and definitely more of a euphoric heart pounding i don't actually have a lot of experience with some of the newer stuff too because it's changing so quickly it changes a lot so the stuff i it was just like four or five years ago that i you know had my last experience with it um but it's scary to me it's scary to me in a in a way because it's always right there you know there's a lot of barriers between me and fentanyl that i put up but like i go to the 7-eleven all the time and like as much as i think i know my own constitution like we're human beings and like i also am aware that is addiction is a cunning thing so it's always trying to figure out ways of getting back you know getting you back into some kind of like you know loop and uh it's scary i got kids you know it's like any you don't want that to be the thing that anybody does but to me the weirdest thing about it is still that blows my mind is that it's at a gas station like good or bad it's really a powerful and it's just mad to me that it's so really available it's the oddest thing you can get i think there's like a probably a lot of things to blame for that but like have we not be such a hyper focused profit driven society i think we would see more of the effect that things like this have in the community and less of like how big this company can get or whatever like how rich you can get oh people are getting so rich i spoke to a guy that manufactures it and sells it in his company they make hundreds of millions of dollars and i sort of raise some of the uh less positive effects of the stuff and he's just like oh i haven't heard about that yeah you know i just so clearly full of shit just won't acknowledge the bad yeah banning bad but regulation good anthony green friend of the show wise if you haven't seen him perform um i was introduced to him through you rob yeah it's fucking great um it's surreal when you hear him you know hear him mixing fentanyl in conversation with kratom it's like and it kind of sums up it's in the same camp of how people are working with this stuff yeah you know also um he mentioned xanax uh that's something since i've been in la i've become more and more aware of it seems something that's incredibly easily prescribed but also like so rife for abuse in this country as well maybe that's a whole separate topic i think ketamine too is another big one the kids are here on ketamine the kids are on ketamine i have tried once in my life didn't enjoy it twice i got given ketamine the scar i in uh where was i turkmenistan for dark tourist um i needed stitches and they gave me ketamine and went in a k-hole i've tried it one other time i won't go into details because i don't know if it's legal i took it in a place where it was legal it's fine didn't enjoy it but the kids are apparently all on yeah yeah but yeah i mean i think also anthony's case is a much more extreme situation too in which he's um well obviously it helped him get off something that was incredibly damaging and life-threatening and then he managed to tailor off that as well off the kratom entirely um but i also feel like he's someone what he said that was interesting was that there was no barrier of entry to kratom like that's what alarmed him about it like with with fentanyl there's like a number of barriers to getting that stuff whereas walking to a 7-eleven kratom's right there in summary i think the theme that i take away from these two kratom episodes is don't just casually go and use this fun shot that you find in your local um it's a lot more serious than you think it is and you also have no idea how strong it is or what is in there and there's certainly no warning about how addictive the shit can be yeah and i think i tend to fall more along anthony's perspective of outright banning is not always the solution but some sort of um research regulation and figuring out how it can properly properly be used because i mean like michael there are people that are also uh addicted to this right now and yeah and really struggling to get a massive the withdrawals are from it if that ban goes into effect um hopefully there's some sort of support for those people and i imagine i mean i like to think that's why the dea is delaying all of this realizing that if they outright ban it there's going to be a number of people out there using it who are good humans that have stumbled onto this thing and they'll just be completely fucked well and hopefully it doesn't result in them trying to turn to something else to really something worse to regulate yeah what is missing from there still blows my mind that this is sold in gas stations yeah on to something more important canada feedback no there's a bit of feedback here um if you have any feedback about anything in this episode it's always flightless bird chat at gmail.com it's always great to hear from you i love that our listeners um do you just want to say a little bit about what you're doing just write really good emails and it's always good to receive them so mainly the episode about canada the cool thing was a million future episodes ideas for when we go back to canada which is great um an example of that aaron wrote in saying two friends and i make maple syrup on my farm in western quebec um it's a terrific way to usher in the spring friends come over we hang out by the tree rain or shine we're by the tree we watch the sap boil and become delicious golden maple syrup i fucking love maple syrup i do too and i would love to stand by aaron's tree as that syrup gushes out it's just like a nozzle you put on a tree right and flip it um i did bring um bring the boys back some maple syrup lollipops from vancouver had they tried maple syrup before yes yeah i mean we can get it here yeah we have here david yeah um so aaron has invited you and i rob to uh their corner of quebec um and i like to think that one day we will take you up on that i'm up i'm up for that yeah the whole episode will just be the noises of maple syrup coming out of a nozzle and you're like my lips smacking um rosie says i wanted to write to you last week after listening to the canada episode but missed by chance um i'm listening to part two and i had to say something oh sounds bad no just a crazy coincidence first of all as another american who has immigrated to become a drama therapist after being a clown performer like what how is that possible we have we have multiple clown therapy performers we do listen to the show it's fucking insane um this episode meant everything to me i was incredibly moved to hear about therapeutic clowns and drama therapy getting a little more representation as they're still relatively unknown but they're an incredibly powerful aspect of creative arts therapies it was totally awesome secondly i have to say that i'm not an american who moved to canada 15 years ago i'm still struggling to obtain permanent residency in canada while we don't yet have anything like ice canadian immigration do face many similar barrier canadian immigrants sorry do face many similar barriers to those in the states my personal experience has included many applications for various temporary permits often scrambling to find alternative ways to stay even now my husband and i face significant hurdles in our sponsorship applications all to say rosie is saying canada it's got some issues too seems like you've had a gripe i don't have any gripe with canada i love canada especially their feedback sheena wrote in about the next sessions uh which is the monthly episode the bonus episode we put out with musicians who do a little broken down music set in our studio so sheena wrote as the other sperm donor kid you talked to earlier this year so we did a sperm donor episode she was part of that um i just wanted to share how awesome and a little unsettling the medium build episode was so weird and cool to hear him talk about finding out about his sperm donor at 22 i found out at 20 and how his mom came from a big family of six kids mine came from seven i also grew up in the evangelical church world and felt a lot of the same emotions he described after finding out i was already stoked when you're doing a medium build episode because i'm a huge fan i didn't expect there to be so many uncanny similarities i've had a kinship to his music without a specific reason why and maybe this is it anyway i'm now determined to bring some siblings to a medium build show so our clans can converge my group is now up to 92 siblings wow i would love um for medium build shows to just kind of turn into sperm donor conventions of um just like tons of sperm donor siblings just giant groups of them groups of 90 yes at each concert god it's good like 100 groups of 90 it makes me so happy this could be melding at medium builds way to um just grow exponentially yeah if i by specifically going into this donor crowd really lean into the crowd because then you immediately you just got 70 new fans because this donor is going to tell all of her sperm sperm donor siblings sheena hears she's bringing 92 people to the next show yeah you can thank us medium built yeah it's like a street team but god it's funny you know when you see a group of people and you're sort of like are you um a family or are you like in a business together do you work at the same place yeah with sperm donors uh emily says um i'm listening to your canada part two episode and i want to apologize for the rude feedback from my fellow canadians personally i love that you go wherever the documentary takes you and i thought the clown twist was so weird and fun thank god for you emily the one of you that like the twist the second one the second one of this episode that you fought your out david yeah i mean i am responsible for picking the feedback uh i might bias it towards myself occasionally um i wanted to share a fun canadian fact with you i live in the province of bc that's british columbia yeah and that's where vancouver is and we have a provincial legislation and i don't know if she's joking here but it's probably true we have a provincial legislation called the apology act which says that saying i'm sorry does not constitute an admission of liability or fault in any matter so essentially if i crash my car into you and i get out and say i'm sorry that doesn't actually make me liable this is fucking amazing because it's like the law is built in assuming that canadians will just apologize whether they're at fault or not god it's good i think most provinces have similar legislation that feels uniquely canadian i just want to say emily thank you for writing in with that that's the good shit that's wiles um i will say speaking of emily's and the canada part two episode a lot of people did connect the dots that emily that we played a video from it's emily hampshire from schitt's creek she plays stevie um she's going to be in season two of heated rivalry part of show on tv yes hello show under wonderful wonderful human getting into your brain as co-host of the show and producer of the show what was your thought and not heavily because i think most podcasts would go oh my god guess who we've got coming up next star of shit's great you didn't do that what's your thinking a genuine question just because she's a friend and it was more um yeah we weren't we weren't having her on as a star of a tv show or an actress it was that approach i love that approach so much more this was just my friend emily and and i want to have her perspective on canada because i know she's a very proud canadian it's also so good for fans of her and her shows because it's like an easter egg like if you get it you get it and you're delighted by it i really like your approach trev short for trevor i assume i've lived in southern canada california for my entire life in fifth and sixth grade how old is that that is like 10 calvin's in fourth grade he's nine okay so 10 11 10 11 12 can't do math fourth fifth comes after fourth and then six comes after that so one to two years older than calvin right now so fuck you my school switched from cardboard cartons of milk to small plastic bags so this is around 98 99 they did supply a straw but if you didn't do it at exactly the correct angle when inserting it you'd punch through the other side and spill milk everywhere so like liz's classmate most of us would rip off a corner with our teeth and squirt it into our mouth i haven't seen bagged milk since then but i definitely felt seen when she was talking about it i would imagine i mean because there's also a whole thing on microplastics now too that whole thing being that we are full of them yeah they were consuming a ton of microplastics so avoid plastic containers they're in my sperm right now my testicles there's microplastics in there where i and but i don't think there's been a ton of long-term studies on how bad it is no i mean there is correlation and are you saying that canada's bagged milk is contributing to our microplastics problem no i'm saying it's probably not helping their microplastic problem does it explain why it's not helping their microplastics why canadians are so angry at us because their brains are full of plastic no i find them being angry at us very amusing or at you it's mostly because they're angry at you yeah i'm amusing because it's so counter everything i know about canadians uh is that they're very polite and nice yes i that was also my impression until but very i'm learning they're very proud and um yeah want to stand up for themselves if they feel wronged by a certain documentary yeah journalist my neighbor who's canadian she's the um i inject her cat with insulin when she's away um has diabetes um she texted me she doesn't have diabetes we're just running an experiment she leaves she says feed my cat i do something extra i take some needles in there uh she texted me and she never texted me she texted me and i'm like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so but she just texted me saying oh my god the canadian episode feedback and um she pointed out that canada is in a very passionate place at the moment where they're feeling they really have to stand up for their nationhood for that country which i understand as america looms over right i guess that was i think we've been caught in the crossfire i yeah i think that was one thing we underestimated um was the impact i i think because we're here and we don't feel like we're represented by the current administration by your president leader um so i think everything he does to us is just uh yeah yeah we it's not symbolic of how we feel or like a weird alien force in our world um so when he is acting as president to other countries i think we are discrediting how then that's feels um yes to people on the other side of that because we're like hey we don't want this either this is not this is not what we're saying completely so maybe maybe you could have been more delicate i think i could have been i i do want to say it how defensive canadians have gotten i will say does um run another parallel to you as a new zealander yeah because i i do think the politeness falls with canadians to our i do think the politeness falls to new zealanders as well i think i would use that to describe new zealanders but i have seen you turn into a grumpy little defensive um what was there a boy um no i i think there is an astute observation where i think i think certainly me as a new zealander and i think canadians are polite and reserved but there's a certain moment where i think we're not going to be able to do that because we're not going to be able to do that because we're not going to be able to do that because we're not going to be able to do that i think we snap a little bit and something comes out where we sort of go yeah it was like oh now i feel taken advantage of yeah and fuck you you know so i feel like it's a little bit of of that i've witnessed from you feels a little bit like the feedback you've definitely gotten a bit of that from me a lot of that from me at times no i think that's a really astute observation um and i understand it what i'd say is canada we're on your side yes we are on your side i love canada i've been there you okay finally grace says hi david and rob i'm a hydrid baby as david would say my mother is from detroit and my dad is canadian and i live in leamington ontario it has the most southern tip in canada which is point plea on the 42nd parallel sometimes when i'm reading feedback the words just all i don't know what did i just read i think it makes sense you pick this out right just a bit of feedback on canada part two your guest claimed i just i like any on something a bit catty your guest claimed people from quebec are nicer it is common knowledge that they're actually rude and stuck up and looked down on by the rest of canada this is a wild this is a act of war french is our second language and optional but in quebec they speak english as a second language liz however is right about ketchup tips chips they are next to each other so i'm not going to go into too much detail about this but i'm going to go into too much detail about this but i'm going to go into too much detail about this but i'm going to go into too much detail about this liz however is right about ketchup tips chips they are next level growing up as a kid my american relatives used to have us bring the ketchup chips and butter tarts whenever we went down south she dropped butter tarts like that's just a very normal thing i don't even fucking know what a butter tart is me neither you know yep i mean grace i loved your um act of war in your email i also love that you drop something like butter tarts just assuming that the rest of us know what the fuck that is if you have feedback flightless bird chat at gmail.com every thursday we drop a bonus episode on patreon which is patreon.com slash flightless bird if you listen on spotify we've got less ads and we've got video uh and also we are on youtube so you can watch us on your 70 inch tv yeah help us become uh youtubers we want to be like um logan and jake hall so we get invited to the white house to the pentagon to the pentagon okay i don't want that okay i don't want that come to youtube so that you can enjoy the show not for any of those things flightless bird chat at gmail.com see you next week the best holiday finds aren't always the ones you went looking for at ross you discover unexpected gifts fashion decor and plenty of reasons to keep looking ross expect the unexpected