Diabetics Doing Interviews with Podcast Legends with Vinnie Tortorich

[00:00:07] Rob Howe: Welcome to the Diabetics Doing Things Podcast. We've been telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics all across the world since 2015, and we have over a thousand years of living with T1D on the podcast. The interviews range from incredible feats to everyday victories, and we celebrate them all just the same. Thanks for listening, and if you want to get involved even further, just send me an email at rob.diabeticsdoingthings.com. Welcome back to Diabetics Doing Things. We are telling the amazing and often crazy stories of type 1 diabetics and the things that they do all across the world. Today, my very special guest is not a type 1 diabetic, but we are looking to add value on the show to people living with type 1 diabetes. So, please welcome my very special guest, Mr. Vinnie Tortorich. Vinnie, welcome.

[00:01:05] Vinnie Tortorich: Rob, thanks for having me on, man. This is great.

[00:01:08] Rob Howe: Yeah, thank you so much for taking the time. For those of you who are not familiar with Vinnie, Vinnie is Hollywood's go-to guy for health and fitness. and let me see if I can try to list your accomplishments here and please correct me if I lose anything or miss something. I'm hoping you get some of them wrong

[00:01:22] Vinnie Tortorich: and it might sound better than what you have.

[00:01:26] Rob Howe: Well, here's what I got. Let's see if we can maybe make some up on the fly even. So you're the host of the hit podcast Fitness Confidential. You're a public speaker, best-selling author of Fitness Confidential, Adventures in the Weight Loss Game. And one of my favorites is you're known as America's Angriest Trainer. I think that's definitely my favorite. And you've been a personal trainer for 30 years. So how's that for a start?

[00:01:49] Vinnie Tortorich: That's pretty close. We've backed away from calling me America's Angriest Trainer a few years ago. And I've been training people for 36 years. But you're right in there. I guess if you go to Wikipedia or something, it might have been 30 years, but it was probably written six years ago. So who knows when people put that in I don't even know how that stuff is curated, to be honest. And the angriest trainer thing is funny. That came around when I first started messing around with the computer and the Internet and doing this. And we were trying to come up with kind of a catchphrase. So I said, you know, I'm going to call myself America's trainer because I'm trying to help the people of America. right and my better half uh serena said you should call yourself america's angriest trainer and i said but i'm not angry and she goes but you're not angry at people you're angry for people because they've been you know fed a load of bull and i said okay uh i'm america's angriest trainer and and lo and behold that worked really fine but then my show got bigger and bigger and bigger And when that happened, I started doing television shows. You know, people started inviting me onto national shows and national radio shows and what have you. And the first question out of their mouth was, you don't seem so angry. Why are you telling us? And I was like, I'm spending half my interviews explaining this America's, as I'm doing right now, by the way.

[00:03:26] Rob Howe: Right. Yeah. Consequence for your own success, I guess.

[00:03:29] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah. So we backed away from it. It was called The Angriest Trainer Podcast. We gave it the same name as the book, Fitness Confidential Podcast, so that when you're branding stuff, it should all kind of match, I guess.

[00:03:43] Rob Howe: Yeah, totally agree.

[00:03:45] Vinnie Tortorich: I don't know anything about branding, but I said, let's just call everything the same thing and then people can find me.

[00:03:52] Rob Howe: Well, something in that same branding conversation that I really believe in is the best branding is great content. you know so obviously you're delivering on that so whether you're the angriest trainer or fitness confidential obviously you know you add a ton of value and and and are clearly an expert and authority in your field so today you know as we talk about you know and I will talk a little bit about my background as an athlete later on but how do you you know what the things that make you angry, the bowl that you said that people are fed on a daily basis? What are those things that make you the most, get you the most riled up to try to help people?

[00:04:38] Vinnie Tortorich: Well, just the perpetuation of certain theories that are just hammered away as truths that have nothing to do with being healthy or losing weight or being in shape. One being that sugar has no fat in it, therefore it can't make you fat. When in fact, sugars are what makes you fat. And the other one is fat will make you fat. And in fact, fat, eating fat will not make you fat. So, you know, just those kinds of things where it's exactly the opposite of what people are saying, you know. And, you know, there's a lot of propaganda out there, you know, that there's religions when it comes to diet. You know, there's the paleo guys on one side and there's the vegans on the other side. You can almost it's almost as if it's left wing and white wing politics.

[00:05:33] Rob Howe: Right. It's like a bipartisan food groups. Yeah. And I'm kind of caught in the middle because I'm

[00:05:39] Vinnie Tortorich: saying let's all eat whole foods. And then people try to lump me into one group or the other. Well, you hate vegans. Well, when did I say that? Well, you talk about eating meat. Therefore, for you must hate vegan. No, no, did not say that. I work with a lot of vegans, you know. So that kind of stuff happens all day long. And I like I said, you know, I find myself defending things more than helping people. And I guess that frustrates me more than anything else.

[00:06:08] Rob Howe: Right. Because it takes you away from like your not only your calling, but like you're

[00:06:12] Vinnie Tortorich: where you can be the most effective. Yeah. You know, it's like let's get away from the minutiae. Let's walk away from all of this just chatter. Let's break through the chatter and let's talk about the truth. Wow. I haven't thought about this in a couple of years, but this is a diabetes podcast, so I might as well talk about it here. I got into big trouble with the

[00:06:40] Rob Howe: type 1 diabetes crowd. Did you know about that? No, I could not find anything about that.

[00:06:44] Vinnie Tortorich: oh wow uh well it went away really fast when they realized that i wasn't who they thought i was but it just goes to show you how quickly something can happen online um it was a saturday night a couple of years ago and uh serena and i went out for dinner and i'm not a guy that brings my phone with me everywhere i got back from dinner and my my telephone was lighting up you know my smartphone and I turned on my computer and emails from everyone around me and my organization's like, oh my God, you need to go to Twitter. There's a fire you need to put out. I'm like, what? I just left Twitter an hour and a half ago and I had a couple of vodkas in me and I'm back home. I'm reading this and I'm like, what just happened? And why is the type 1 diabetes people coming after me. I didn't know what was going on, right? Because the diabetes people I'm always in good shape with, you know, type 2. I'm the guy that was always explaining that type 1 and type 2 diabetes have nothing to do with each other. One you cause and the other one you're born with, child, you know, juvenile diabetes, type 1 diabetes, you know, and I've always been the guy educating people on that and trying to explain what that is. And all of a sudden, you know, These people, I mean, and they were vicious. I don't know if you know this, but the diabetes people are vicious.

[00:08:15] Rob Howe: You know, it's actually something that I'm pretty proud of, honestly, because there aren't that many type 1 diabetes, like type 1 diabetics, especially just in the U.S. There's only like 1.5 million at the most, so pretty small group. But you stir the pot a little bit, and the vipers will come out, and they'll take you down. I know UnitedHealthcare made a huge mistake a couple months ago denying a little boy a continuous glucose monitor from his insurance and like 50,000 signatures in about two hours and emails to the CEO of UnitedHealthcare. So, yeah, I'm a little bit proud of the vitriol that they can spew out. So you get back, you get it on Twitter. What did you find?

[00:09:01] Vinnie Tortorich: um well they were saying boycott this guy don't go to his website go he's got a book go write bad reviews for his book you know i'm like what what did i do what did i oh my god what what is this you know because i i always have a good relationship right with type 1 diabetes and so i go back through all these tweets you know hundreds of tweets and all that i try to find the beginning of it and uh it started um it was when they put out an american girl doll you know with for you know with the little pump and the whole thing yep you know you remember that whole thing which which was a good thing and someone had tweeted at me and here's the irony to all of this serena said to me serena's my better half she said look um you try to do everything yourself. Your assistant basically sits there and polishes her nails and you won't let her do anything. Why don't you start delegating because you're killing yourself. So I said to Wendy, I said, look, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to get on my spinner. I have a spinner in my office. I'm going to try to exercise for half an hour. Read my tweets to me and I will tell you what to answer. Right? Right. That was mistake number one, two, three. So started off pretty innocent. Just a little delegation. And by the way, this is the first time I'm trying this, by the way. So Wendy, I bet you never thought this podcast was going to go this way, right?

[00:10:34] Rob Howe: Hey, I love the direction it goes no matter what direction it is. So this is great. I'm loving this.

[00:10:39] Vinnie Tortorich: yeah well you know Wendy is sitting at my desk and she's tweeting and she goes okay so and so says this and this and this and I went okay um tell them this and she would write it down and send a tweet off and she goes someone is asking about this American girl doll and I went what it what is an American girl doll I don't know what that is and right she googled it and she's showing it to me while I'm on the spinner and she's like oh look it's cute oh my god look at this cute cute little thing these dolls and all things she goes yeah my girlfriend's kids i think you know they love these things and on and on and on and they're doing one with uh for type 1 diabetes for kids with diabetes showing them that it's not shameful to have a pump uh and all this different kinds of stuff right and i said to wendy that's great so say oh my god that's great and then i said now send out a second tweet that says, I wish American girls dolls would put out a thing with your showing little girls with tennis shoes, maybe a jump rope or something. Now, Wendy conflated those two tweets. Got it. And you can only imagine what came out.

[00:11:53] Rob Howe: Right. Because I think nothing upsets a type 1 diabetic more than somebody confusing it with type

[00:12:00] Vinnie Tortorich: two diabetes or saying that a kid should just go get a jump rope right or whatever i said like that or tennis shoes or whatever which was not what i said at all and so now i'm looking at this and these people are calling for my head literally i should die i you know you know everyone needs to boycott whatever i'm doing go figure it out he's dumb he doesn't know he's talking i went on his website he's such a dumb ass trainer and all this stuff and i'm like oh my god but throughout the whole thing i didn't get mad at one tweet because i know people with kids that have diabetes and i know that these people worry that they're going to wake up every day and their kid is going to be dead you know i know what parents go through and so i didn't jump on any of these people i just kept trying to say to him hey let me get to the bottom of this uh i'm sorry i it was a missed tweet and the whole thing and literally they weren't giving up oh sure you're saying that now because it's going to hurt your pocketbook and so on and so forth as people do when they get upset right right and i was like no no no as and so i found the two or three big culprits like the big guys that that was kind of leading this whole charge and i wrote to him privately on twitter that night and said, you know, it's now like four in the morning. I didn't go to bed that night. And I said, look, I would love to have you guys on my podcast so we can discuss this. Let's have a real conversation. Obviously, that was a missed tweet and they came on and a lot of good came out of it. That's why you can't find anything about it, because we put it to rest. And they understood that I understood the difference between type 1, type 2, and so on and so forth. But that night,

[00:13:46] Rob Howe: No one understood that. Does that make sense? It does. I am not surprised that people say mean things on Twitter. I think living today, it seems like every day there's a new, somebody's calling for someone's head and it gets out of control. The viral nature of people's

[00:14:04] Vinnie Tortorich: passions, I think, easily can spill out of control. Yeah. And I'm glad in a weird sort of way, a lot of good came out of it and i became friends with those two people on you know online i'm not friends with them in real life uh because they live somewhere else in the world one one woman was from uh england and the other guy was from the east coast and i had them both on and we we had a long we hasted out we talked about it we they understood that i understood which is all anyone wants to do around this right i mean you just want people to understand what it is and how

[00:14:40] Rob Howe: how tragic it can be. And I'm definitely going to include a link to that podcast in the show notes just to give everybody kind of a peek behind the curtain. And I think a big thing that type 1 diabetics struggle with parents to parents of type ones, it's just awareness, right? Because you don't have, especially with chronic illness, unless it affects you or your family or somebody close to you, I mean, you're living your life day to day and you're not thinking about what somebody else is going through, what the differences between the two diseases are, right? So when you're a type 1 diabetic, like you said earlier, talking about the American girl doll, you want to know that you don't have to be ashamed of who you are and what you have to do to survive. And I think when that becomes threatened, our first reaction as people, I think it's just to get defensive. I know myself personally, when people would ask me questions, even just curious about giving shots or testing my blood sugar, I'm thinking back to a specific incident when I was in college. One of the upper class on my college basketball team was just asking me, and I got really mad at him when I cursed at him. And then I still think about it today. He was like the nicest guy. He was just asking me about it. But it's just a defensive kind of soft spot for people. So, you know, when you feel like someone doesn't understand you, and I think like you said, the end game, the goal was just to say, hey, I understand you and I know that you know the difference now. And that's all that most people want.

[00:16:10] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, you know, I think you're absolutely right about that. There's nowhere near the type of education in and around it that there needs to be, which is sad. And you are right. People don't sit around, you know, when you have your health, you have everything. And, you know, when you're diabetic, I mean, every day you have to pump insulin or equal out sugar. And that can be challenging at best. I mean, and then when you think about kids, you know, you're sending your kid off to school. I mean, what was that like for you as a kid? Did you develop it when you were one or two or were you a bit older or what was the deal?

[00:16:52] Rob Howe: So I was diagnosed when I was 16. So I was really independent. And my mother is a nutritionist and owned a Curves for 12 years. So was very hands on and like preparing me and was instrumental in my success as a type 1. But my first big hurdle in terms of, you know, parents and relationships with their kids and letting them go was going to school because I went to school out of state and I was hell bent on doing that. I wanted to go kind of experience the world a little bit. And, you know, there were some phone conversations, you know, with my parents where we were yelling at each other about blood sugars and about numbers and about going out drinking with friends. And I think, you know, like you said, every parent's worst nightmare is that their kid's not going to wake up one day because of improper blood sugar management or something goes wrong with a pump or technology. And, you know, those those are heavy emotional things. And, you know, like you said, now I volunteer and talk to newly diagnosed families at one of the hospitals here in Texas. and just like the the reassurance that seeing someone who has grown up with type 1 diabetes and is you know i get up there and i look pretty normal uh i have a pump on and that's about it but i'm a fit guy i'm a handsome devil and they're like oh okay my kid's gonna be okay um and i think you know that's what you know that you're as a parent you're you deal with the day-to-day and you know some uh some people even call them type 3 diabetics because they have to think about every carb that they put in the kid's body and all the insulin ratios and testing the blood sugar so they basically have the disease as well and i think it's a constant fear in the back of their mind that you know that they've done something wrong or that they that you know their kid is going to be unhealthy because of a decision they made and you know like you know and and has been said over and over on many other podcasts other than yours and mine, like fear, living your life on a fear base is, you know, just a recipe for disaster.

[00:18:57] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, you're right about that. And, you know, I, you know, my thing, my whole thing is no sugars, no grains, you know, because, you know, I find that there's so much sugar in everything that we're just killing people in society with all of this sugar. And because of that, there's a Facebook group with my name on it. I don't know if you know about this, but there's a Facebook group that's actually called Vinnie Tortorich's No Sugars, No Grains. Now, you would think that I own that group, but I don't. I'm a member of that group like everyone else. and I see some type 1 diabetics in there and they talk about being very low carb just so that they don't have to pump extra insulin. Do you come across people like that or what's your thoughts

[00:19:47] Rob Howe: on that? Yeah, because I do a whole 30 diet nutrition plan and so it's very, very similar. No sugar added, no grains for 30 days at a time and then I live my day-to-day life about 80-20 of that with like a nice balance. But I thought the biggest thing, the biggest challenge that I run into are the many questions that I get about living a, you know, lower carb, low, no sugar, no grain diet, um, is treating low blood sugars. So when you're, um, you've eaten so few carbs and taken more insulin than, uh, than you've eaten. And then how do you correct quickly enough? Because without eating sugar, um, you know, it's, you'd have to eat four apples, you know, back to back to back to back. And that's not always the most convenient option, right? So something that I do, I have a, there's a cold press juice company here in Dallas that I really like because it's, there's no sugar added and I can still get, you know, 30 to 40 grams of sugar in a bottle pretty quickly if I need it. Because I think there is so much of a benefit to taking less insulin if you can. And I'm, again, I'm not a doctor, I'm not a nutritionist, but just personal experience, I feel better the less insulin that I can live with, with my blood sugars in proper healthy range, just because insulin is a depressant. And I think that's where I get a lot of my anxiety, depression, or, you know, types of thoughts, because it's unnatural, and, you know, my body's out of whack. So I try to live as low glycemic index of a life as I can. Yeah, it seems like it

[00:21:26] Vinnie Tortorich: would make sense um yeah you know what i preach is exactly um it's exactly you know not not exactly a whole 30 the problem i have is whole 30 is what do you do after 30 days and that's kind of where i jump in and and say well now you got this that and the other thing you know you have you have more than the whole 30 you have the whole lifetime right uh if you um but yeah that kind of protocol all works um in case people don't want to follow nsng that you know atkins um is good you know the original atkins not all this atkins crap that you can eat and i used to say that paleo was good but paleo has become i don't know what paleo has become but people are going well honey was around back in a paleolithic era so you can just honey on everything right okay well that's not going to work, tell it to your liver, you know? Uh, so I don't know. It's, uh, it's all very interesting

[00:22:27] Rob Howe: what people think and how they think it, you know? Yeah. And I think I'm trying to think of the way to structure this question. Like, is it, is it as simple as, you know, if you have the discipline to, uh, to commit to something and stick with it, like you're going to pay off. And if not, you know, how do you, how do you keep that balance? Like what, what's your, you know, on the, on an emotional level, because so many people's relationship with food is emotional and we love good tasting food. Um, and breaking sugar addiction can be very difficult, especially for somebody who is unknowingly lived their entire life consuming large amounts of sugar. Um, you know, what's the hardest part for people do you think, or what's your, what's your advice to them?

[00:23:08] Vinnie Tortorich: Um, you know, adopting that lifestyle. Well, you know, literally the hardest part for almost anyone is letting go of beliefs, if that makes any sense at all. You know, you've been living with this belief that fat is bad for you, you know, saturated fat. Oh, my God, that's the absolute worst. I mean, you know, and so you have to let go of those kinds of beliefs. And once you can do that, you can literally move away from the rest of this, right? um i i had a doctor on the other day and he he he gave this example and i'm gonna i'm i'm thinking about i'm gonna start using this as my own i think because uh you know but i you know i should give him credit i can't remember which doctor said this but um if there was a guy let's say there was a guy who went to jail and he was in jail for 30 years and there was a big story on television He was, you know, he was raping and murdering 12 year old girls. Right. And this went on and he was in jail. It was a big story and the whole thing. He was locked away. 30 years later, they find out that unequivocally it wasn't him. You know, DNA evidence was able to release him. Not only that, but other DNA evidence found the correct guy and they finally have the correct guy in jail and this guy is set free and he's exonerated right the question becomes would you let that guy babysit your 12 year old daughter you know in our minds i know when my daughter was 12 years old there was no way in hell that guy's coming over to babysit yeah you know you know what i mean it's like well he was an innocent guy all along but in our minds there had to be some smoke or fire or something around this guy right even though we know he's DNA evidence has now cleared this guy 1,000%. So we do that same thing with diet. Well, for years we heard saturated fats are bad for you. Well, there's got to be some truth behind that. And in fact, there's absolutely no truth behind it. Saturated fat has never caused heart disease for anyone. Trans fats will. but people somehow say trans fat and saturated fat in the same sentence and it doesn't deserve that and then you'll have these really kind of you know left-wing wing vegans who are you know not your normal vegans but the ones that will lie because they think it's good for the greater cause and they'll say fat is bad for you and then a guy like me will say well no it's not and they'll say oh so you're telling everybody to go eat french fries right no i didn't i didn't say that either. You're putting those words in my mouth. Well, and I think you mentioned earlier,

[00:26:09] Rob Howe: like the use of propaganda in like mass media, like right now, I'm sure how many shows have you

[00:26:14] Vinnie Tortorich: been on to discuss what the health? Oh, yeah. I mean, on my show alone, we've discussed it three times, you know, and I've brought people on people smarter than me, Nicole Racine, Nina Teicholz of the best-selling book, Big Fat Surprise, who's an investigative journalist and does research up to yin-yang. And you're able to shoot holes into that movie 20 different ways. Yet, Netflix is running it and no problem. People are watching it and you have people like Dr. Greger yelling, oh, if you eat a piece of fat, your body will get pus, literally pus. Well, where is this pus? You talk about this pus. I eat meat every day. Where's all of my pus? Right. You know what I mean? It's like you just made that up. That's a wholesale lie. I'm trying to think of other things they say. Oh, they had one doctor on. He was an African-American vegan doctor. And he somehow linked meat to, oh, I'm sorry, dairy to institutional racism. and you're sitting there going, wait a minute, was this movie done by The Onion? Is this meant as a joke? Because he said, look, some black people, a nice percentage of black people, Asian people, and Mexican people, when they drink milk, they are allergic to it. They're allergic to lactose. So the government is telling you to drink milk is right on the pyramid. so that's equal to institutionalized racism really we you're making that leap right that leap yeah so you look at that and you go well this is all just a big lie and netflix has no

[00:28:08] Rob Howe: problem putting it out there sure because every time we talk about it they get more more people

[00:28:14] Vinnie Tortorich: to watch it right right i mean people are going to go out tonight and oh wait a minute they were talking about what the hell there must be something there think about it if i put together a documentary or if you put together where you wouldn't do it but let's say i did it i don't have uh diabetes i don't have any type 1 type 2 type uh 1.5 i don't have any version of diabetes right but if i went out and did a diabetes film and got a bunch of doctors on camera to say type 1 and type 2 is exactly the same thing and these people caused it to themselves there would be outrage right right okay but that's kind of what these people are doing and

[00:28:53] Rob Howe: getting away with it right because it's just within a within a context that you know has i guess people feel strongly enough about on both sides maybe and then you know back to that sort of bipartisan relationship you know they can spark outrage from both sides and generate more

[00:29:14] Vinnie Tortorich: conversations. Right. And then it becomes, what are we talking about? Right. You know, we have a lot of that going on right now with the media, with, you know, our current administration. I'm not political and I don't talk politics, but I find it very interesting to watch, you know, how one side says one thing and another side says nothing. Then we call it fake news. And then what's fake news? And everyone is out there lying and saying whatever they want. Well, how's the general public supposed to ever get the truth? Right. You know, and kind of in that same vein

[00:29:49] Rob Howe: of, you know, finding the truth for you personally, I kind of maybe outside of the the lactose and institutional racism example. What's your, I guess, most amusing sort of conspiracy theory that you hear around food? Because there's been a lot, especially in recent years, as you know, people are utilizing these food sort of documentaries as entertainment. Um, what's one that just gets you, you know, shaking, shaking your head and riled up and like, really?

[00:30:18] Vinnie Tortorich: Um, God, to come up with one is the tough part. Um, um, one of the things, and it's not even a documentary, but when we took, uh, I think it was during, uh, president, um, it was before Obama. It was before, it was, um, Clinton. Clinton made a big thing about taking soda out of schools. Big deal. No more soda in schools. But the interesting thing is they didn't remove the soda machines. They replaced soda with fruit juices. And everybody went, oh my God, fruit juice is so much healthier. No, it's not. It's the same amount of sugar, if not more, in a liquid that's going right to your liver, which is causing a spike, which is causing a problem. You've done zero. As a matter of fact, I can make the argument that you made the problem worse. Right. But, you know, when you hear that, oh, drink fruit juice. No, no. Eat fruit. You know, eating fruit is a lot better than, you know, from a diabetic standpoint. If you ate a piece of fruit, an apple, you're a lot better off than if you drank apple juice. Apple juice is straight sugar. Right. If you eat an apple, you're getting the water from it, you're getting mixed with the fiber, and the release of sugar to your liver will be a lot more even. You won't get just that one big giant spike all at once.

[00:31:51] Rob Howe: It's really interesting that you bring that up because it's in a way that I've never thought about it before, which is cool because for me, when my blood sugar is low, so below 80, I typically feel you know you hear people talk about feeling like drunk or slower or a little bit loopy sort of out of touch and if I were to eat an apple I would have to eat three or four full like you know Granny Smith style apples potentially to move my blood sugar say say 40 units so say if my blood sugar is 50 and I want to get it to maybe 90 100 I would have to eat that many apples to do that in an amount of time where I felt better relatively quickly. I'd have to do that. If you have to do that fast, which is not, you know, that's a lot of apples at once. So if I was to drink maybe six, eight ounces of juice, it would do the exact same thing. Just that in that quick instant. So like there's a small, you know, micro example, very small sample size, but you know, you see the difference of the actual absorption and the sugar spike that you get to actually see, you can literally see on a chart as I, you know, in real time. Yeah. You know,

[00:33:04] Vinnie Tortorich: it is that instant. And, you know, whenever you take in any kind of liquid sugar, it's going right to the liver. It's passing go. It's collecting $200 and it's moving on. And people just don't realize that. And I'll have parents tell me, well, what am I supposed to give my kid to drink? Well, okay. Well, there's something called water. You know, have we gone past water? you know water is what every other animal drinks period right you know we're the only animal that goes what am i supposed to drink if you don't want me to have gatorade and and neutre this and that about that and vital water and you know any other kind of sugary treat whatever happened to water you know when i was a kid there was basically when i was a kid uh there was basically two liquids that we consumed. I grew up in the country and one was water and the other was milk. Now, too much milk after your childhood is not actually a good thing either, but water and milk. And if you want a treat, well, there's stuff like coffee and tea, right both containing no sugar so the only thing of those four drinks is lactose and milk everything else is devoid of sugar as it should be i mean i'm 55 i'm gonna be 55 in a month when i was a kid i drank i could tell you what i drank i drank about 70 maybe 77 ounces of coca-cola per year Now, you're saying to yourself, come on, how did you keep track of that? That's impossible. How would you know? You were a kid. You were seven. How are you keeping track of that? My dad would allow me to have a Coke every time I got my hair cut at Frank DeNino's barbershop in the country. um and i wasn't as interested in drinking the coke as i was putting the nickel of the dime into the machine pressing the button and watching the coke come out of the bottom uh oddly enough back then cokes came in seven ounce bottles did you know that you're too young to know that i did not know that yeah seven ounce bottles uh coca-cola came in that and that's what i drank and my brother got one and i'm pretty sure i did not ever finish one of those cokes so if i got 12 haircuts per year if i was drinking on average uh five or six ounces of coke i drank about seven 70 ounces of coke per year uh as you know that is now a serving if you go get a big gulp right uh and some of those big gulps are bigger than 64 ounces and that and people and they're free refills and and so on and so forth. And we're sitting around and we can't figure out why there's fatty liver disease, why there's sleep apnea, why there's all of these problems, why people are getting type 2 diabetes. I mean, type 2 diabetes used to only be for alcoholics in the throes of alcoholism like there was no tomorrow, right? Now people get type 2 diabetes by the time they're 12.

[00:36:16] Rob Howe: and we talked a little bit about an education problem earlier regarding like awareness of of chronic disease but the information is out there right is it so so you know at this point i would say everyone knows that drinking a coke is not good for you um yet we look at all these problems is it just is do people just not care what is the is there just no connection being made, what they're doing to their bodies. Just help me kind of understand your perspective on the general population's relationship with sugar. A lot of cognitive dissonance around things like

[00:36:55] Vinnie Tortorich: Coke. We think of it as a quote-unquote soft drink. It can't be that bad for you. You see coke ads you see a lot of you know young men with um ripped up abs and chicks in bikinis playing volleyball while they're drinking coke at the beach you know this sort of thing so it looks athletic um uh if you watch any football game a lot of football players on the sideline uh drinking coke because you know it's fast energy you know um and i always say this about marathons you know I've trained a lot of people who they came to me after they ran their first marathon because the only reason they ran a marathon was because they wanted to get some weight off. And in some cases, they got to the starting line 15 or 20 pounds heavier than when they started training. And you would say, well, how can that be? Well, the myth of calorie in, calorie out when you were asking me about all the different things that can go wrong. Right. The myth of calorie in, calorie out. uh well okay um why did this person who was expending all of these calories to run a marathon how did that person get fat well the day you decided to run a marathon uh you bought a runner's world magazine and they sell two things they sell shoes and they they sell sugar they sell sugar in the form of uh soft drinks cokes uh what have you um uh there's gatorade there's uh sports aid there's all these different kind of sugary drinks uh you have uh goo uh there's a product called goo it's just gooey sugar right you know and a cellophane there's a power bars cliff bars uh goo chomps where you can have your goo gelled up uh and you can go on and on and on and every bit of the way these people are looking at it going oh this is obviously what the runners use. So therefore, I will use it. And you end up with a real problem. Right. By the time you get to your race, they give you a bag, a swag bag that comes with your entry fee full of more candy and treats in the form of sports drinks and what have you. If not a, you know, bottomless like beer

[00:39:11] Rob Howe: happy hour at the end of it. Right. With. Oh, yeah. Foods and all that. And pizza. Look,

[00:39:17] Vinnie Tortorich: Some marathons will have pizza stops in the middle of a marathon. I'm not being funny right now. That's a fact. And I can make an even bigger case against grains than I could for sugar.

[00:39:32] Rob Howe: Well, yeah, and I would love to, and I think maybe I'll link to another one of your shows on grains in the show notes. I want to be conscious of your time and kind of get to a little bit of what we talked about earlier in terms of athletic performance of a different kind. And you were telling me that when I contacted you, I buried the lead of that. I was once a Washington general playing foil to the Harlem Globetrotters.

[00:39:57] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah. You know, like growing up a kid, I mean, whenever they came to the LSU Pete Maravich Assembly Center, it wasn't called that when I was a kid. It was just in the LSU Assembly Center. We looked at my dad and went, don't even think about not getting tickets because we are going. and loved it. You know, even though, you know, the Washington generals are a fake team and the whole thing, you know, there's such goofballs and the whole thing. And I've often said you guys were the Ginger Rogers. I mean, I wasn't this prolific when I was nine. But, you know, as I got older, these guys are literally the Ginger Rogers of basketball because they have to do everything that Fred Astaire is doing, except they have to do it backwards with heels on. Is there any truth behind that?

[00:40:43] Rob Howe: uh yeah there is a little bit i think um the uh the general's motto i'll say uh in the and i typically don't i try not to use language on this podcast but the general's motto behind the scenes is don't fuck the money up uh and and what that means is just like the people are there for the globetrotters so don't mess up their stuff make sure that you're hitting all your marks make sure that you're hitting all your shots because it's a much better show when we're playing well uh and then just like enjoy what you're doing you know so like you said it's doing it backwards and in heels there is literally one of my favorite um one of my favorite moments in every globetrotter show where we do an entire play in reverse and then do it again in slow motion and i think uh you know getting to see you know it's it's a tough travel schedule and it's hard to get beat by those guys all the time and they're so universally loved but you know seeing all these kids run out on the floor before the fourth quarter doing the ymca having the time of their lives in city after city

[00:41:41] Vinnie Tortorich: after city all over the world. Pretty awesome. How often do you guys practice together to get

[00:41:47] Rob Howe: the choreographed right? Uh, so at the beginning of every tour, you know, about 10 days, uh, and then, you know, there's a, there's a walkthrough every day. So we spend a lot of time together, a lot of time getting it right. Uh, I think for me, I have a newfound respect for people who are on tour so whether that be a performing artist like a like a musician um on a big tour because those people like no matter how tired you are they don't care where you came from they don't care that you played two shows the day before they bought their ticket for that show and you got to be on 100 and so getting to see that type of experience behind the scenes and like knowing how important it was that every little thing was just right every little detail uh yeah we it's

[00:42:34] Vinnie Tortorich: it's a it's an extensive operation now you you know look i've worked with a lot of rock stars and and of course they're all still on tour uh over the years um i love interviewing someone else on their show um but now i feel like i'm doing my show because i'm interviewing you you know i've worked with a lot of uh rock stars and what have you i have uh two of them on tour right now and um they're getting older and they're still rocking out uh one of them is both of them are my age or just a year or two older and um you are a guy with type 1 diabetes uh i'm assuming you have a pump hooked up or do you just inject daily how does that play in to the fact that you're out there on the road, you're on tour city after city, and you got to keep this shit together. I mean, I mean, let me add to the question. Let me double it up here. You obviously had to be a really good basketball player to even get to that level with type 1 diabetes. And you got it, you said when you were 16. So how does all of that work? Give me a big picture.

[00:43:47] Rob Howe: So it's all about preparation. I always talk about that type 1 diabetes just means that you have to add one or two steps to every single thing that you do for the rest of your life. So whether that's eating, exercise, traveling. But a tour is something – it's all of that rolled into one because you're eating terrible food because you're on the road. and you stop every day at shopping malls in middle America where the best thing you got on the menu is Chinese food. I didn't tell them that I had type 1 diabetes because at that level of professional basketball, any little thing will get you moved to the bottom of the pile because everybody's skill sets are relatively the same. Once you drop below the NBA, everybody's about the same with the exception of a few hundred guys in Europe. so I was trying to give them every and no reason to single me out or give me extra attention so I had to prepare extra some days we'd have four or five hour practices and I'd have to go sneak over get a little dose from my pump come back or go grab a little bit of Gatorade I had to keep Gatorade with me just in case I was on the bus at 2 a.m. a Washington general cannot stop the bus because the Globetrotters are on the other bus and the buses travel together so for no reason except for death will a Washington general be helped. So I was always, you know, I always had to have extra snacks and be prepared and have, you know, water and extra insulin and supplies on me. I figured out this rigged up this bag where I could have about a month and a half of supplies in my backpack with me wherever I needed it all the time. And so yeah, I think I just being really diligent with my health trying to prepare because basketball is a high stress activity. And you're right. You have to be very good. All my teammates and including the Globetrotters are all very good. So you got to be on, you got to be ready to go. Um, and yeah, so it was, it was a challenge. Um, and one that I'm glad I did and I'm glad I experienced because, you know, now if I need to go on the road for a week or 10 days, I know exactly what to do. I just fall back in my old routines, put the same stuff in the grab bag and then hit the road. What was there? A real sense of

[00:46:00] Vinnie Tortorich: man, that Rob really loves his Gatorade, man. He hugged that bottle. Did anyone ever pick up on that? Or did you eventually tell them you had a problem? Or how does that work?

[00:46:11] Rob Howe: So I would tell a few of my teammates, never any of the brass. So a few of my teammates knew because the generals had to share hotel rooms. So we were doubling up. So my roommate, Chris, he's like, man, why do you always have two Gatorades in your duffel bag? And I would always be like, hey, don't drink this Gatorade. And he's like, man, you really love your Gatorade. So, yeah, that's exactly what he picked up on. And also, you know, I'd prick my finger every now and then. People would be like, hmm, I wonder what that is. But they just assumed that everybody else knew. So, you know, my teammates were great guys, and they were just more curious than anything else.

[00:46:47] Vinnie Tortorich: Cool. Yeah, you know, now this podcast is about to take a change for the racists, but when I was a kid, all of the Harlem Globetrotters were black, and all of the Washington generals were white. Is there any mix where there are any white guys on the Globetrotters and any black guys on the generals?

[00:47:07] Rob Howe: Yeah, yes to both. There's less white guys on the Globetrotters, I think, for good reason. White basketball players just don't do as many cool things, I think. But, yeah, a lot of my teammates on the generals were black as well.

[00:47:25] Vinnie Tortorich: okay i was wondering how they were working out these days it's like are they still beating up on a bunch of white guys or well you know because it was the most when you think about it in today's world we didn't think about it in 1972 when i was going to it but now you look at it that's the most racist thing in the world right now a bunch of black guys beating up on a bunch of white guys that can't play basketball or make it look like they can't play basketball you know well and i

[00:47:50] Rob Howe: think now you know they build the generals as this like elite bunch of uh of guys from all over the world who are this these great basketball players you know even kids know that a team full of white guys no one's going to buy that that's a group of elite basketball players so uh you know it's a uh

[00:48:07] Vinnie Tortorich: it's an interesting balance but isn't it funny how we can do that yet that that's not considered it racist you know it's it's really a form of racism when you look at it the fact that a bunch of kids you know these kids are innocent kids and they can go there's no way a group of white guys gonna ever beat a group of black guys and they know that that's not me saying that you know you

[00:48:32] Rob Howe: guys know you can't sell that right yeah i don't know i think it's uh it's one of those really weird uh you know gaffes that's like almost too true so you can't you know i don't know if it's as much uh that we're raising kids to be good general managers of basketball teams or if it's or if it's subtle racism i really don't know that's an interesting question yeah but you know but

[00:48:57] Vinnie Tortorich: when you think about it we let it we we rock it that way you know it's like if you did it the other way around you know you know lewis farrakhan would come out of the woodworks and people are Oh, my God, you can't do that. But you could do it the other way. And kids are going to be kids. They're going to go, of course, they've got to have black guys on generals. Of course, we've got to bill it as these are the best basketball players on the planet. And we've got to throw a bunch of black guys in there or it won't look real.

[00:49:25] Rob Howe: Right. Because, I mean, and it wouldn't. It would look strange for sure.

[00:49:30] Vinnie Tortorich: You know, when I was a kid, I'm happy to say I knew him before he died. But is your generation even familiar with Pistol Pete Maravich?

[00:49:39] Rob Howe: I think the diehards are. I grew up on Pistol Pete. I had like the dribbling tapes. And my family is from Louisiana. So I actually didn't know that about you. But, yeah, my family is from Alexandria, Baton Rouge, New Orleans area. So I was, you know, Pistol Pete was gospel in my house. So I think today's generation, the kids probably have no idea who he is unless they're a diehard basketball historian.

[00:50:07] Vinnie Tortorich: Oh, it's funny because I was, I want to say it was about 20 years ago. I was in Beverly Hills and these kids were playing some pickup basketball and I walked on the court and I started messing around with them and I suck at basketball. I was good. I made it on my high school team because I was good at defense and I was good at ball handling. I just couldn't shoot. I couldn't hit the broad side of a barn. Um, but I was good enough at causing assists, you know, getting the ball to the guy that could shoot and a lot of defense. And, and I knew how to handle the ball because pistol taught me a few moves, you know, a few of his signature moves. And, uh, I was showing these kids this move and they were like, wow, how did you even think of that? I said, I learned this from, and this is before Google or anything. We're talking in 92. And I said, I learned this from the great pistol, Pete Maravich. and they were like are you making that name up uh no that was really a guy and they're like there's no way there was a guy named pistol pete Maravich and there's no way and no he was the pistol you know i just couldn't sell it and the reason i even bring pistol up uh again is he was supposed to be the first white globe trotter did you know that right i did know Yeah, and for whatever reason, he didn't do it. But, yeah.

[00:51:35] Rob Howe: Yeah, and I mean, he really was a Harlem Globetrotter-style player. He was flashy. He had all the passes. He had all the moves. And he could score like nobody else. He was incredible.

[00:51:49] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, his ball-handling skills. Folks, if you go and watch this, I'm sure you can find it on YouTube. people in a lot of cases still have not caught up with pistol Pete today you know is that kind of crazy or would you agree with that I mean you're around you were around ball handlers yeah

[00:52:08] Rob Howe: I think pistol Pete could play in today's NBA 100 and I don't think that that's true for a lot of the people who played during his time but he was the type of athlete the type of ball handler had the vision and ability. He could play and be the same type of player in today's NBA.

[00:52:26] Vinnie Tortorich: That's interesting that you would say that. Let's go through a couple of them. Larry Bird, could he play today?

[00:52:32] Rob Howe: Yeah, 100%.

[00:52:33] Vinnie Tortorich: Of course, Magic Johnson.

[00:52:35] Rob Howe: Yeah, of course.

[00:52:37] Vinnie Tortorich: Havlicek.

[00:52:39] Rob Howe: Hondo was big enough, but I don't know. That's the toss-up for me.

[00:52:45] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, you know what? I'm agreeing with you on that. Who are we leaving out? Oh, Julius Irving.

[00:52:51] Rob Howe: Yeah, 100%. Today's world. And I think now, you know, there's just more Julius Irving caliber athletes, you know, guys that are tall and long and have that skill. I think when I think of players who, and it's interesting, because I'm close friends with the Stockton family, so I get to hear conversations from John Stockton a lot about how much luck played into luck and timing played into his career, he believes, because, you know, at the end of the day, he's a 6'1", 6'2", white guy, and, you know, doesn't look like an NBA player, and this is the guy who's all-time leader in assists and steals in the NBA, so, you know, when you look at guys, you know, and I don't necessarily buy into all of his self-deprecation, but, you know, I think of guys who were you know big stiff guys that played in the nba years ago in the 80s and 90s and i don't think that they even even at their size would be able to fit on a roster today i think a guy's like my man bill wennington i don't know if you remember him uh i do but i don't know much about him that's the problem yeah and i think just guys that were you know 10-year nba veterans who were just big guys that took up a lot of space and were good players but i just don't think that that would translate as much to today's game and today's athlete.

[00:54:14] Vinnie Tortorich: All right. Well, let's throw another one out there.

[00:54:16] Rob Howe: All right.

[00:54:17] Vinnie Tortorich: Bill Walton.

[00:54:19] Rob Howe: You know what? Bill Walton could pass. He's like the best big man passer, one of the best big man passers of all time. And if he wasn't injured all the time and didn't have those bad feet, he could play in today's game. He was long and athletic. He was an athlete.

[00:54:35] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, he was. You know, I've had the pleasure of meeting him a couple of times. The guy is just behemoth. Huge guy. Yeah. But a really interesting guy. How far did you get in basketball? Obviously, you had to play D1 at least.

[00:54:50] Rob Howe: I played D2. So I was a little bit of a late bloomer. But I played, I was a top player on my Division II team. And then was just really willing to kind of mix it up. And I went to these camps after college. and I had a better motor than a lot of those D1 guys at my position and just played right at the right time and kind of developed into my own game my junior and senior year of college and then on into the first couple years after I was done.

[00:55:23] Vinnie Tortorich: Cool. Are you shocked that I know this much about basketball?

[00:55:27] Rob Howe: No, but this is the most I've ever talked about basketball on my podcast, so it's kind of great. I love it.

[00:55:31] Vinnie Tortorich: But, you know, look, you have an interesting story. Not everyone gets to be a Washington general. let's call it what it is you know and uh people look i don't know if you've ever heard my podcast but um some some days we don't even get to fitness you know um because it's got it you got to keep it fun and interesting and um you know you get the message out there you have people who are uh you know they know what the the the uh diabetes the type 1 diabetes message is all about, but it's good to sometimes, I think, you know, mix it up a bit. Yeah, I think so as well.

[00:56:08] Rob Howe: And, you know, I tell people, people talk to me all the time. They're like, oh, I feel like I was rambling. But that's gold to me whenever somebody is really, you know, speaking from the heart and kind of unplanned what they, you know, got deviated from whatever their script was going to be, because, you know, what makes my interview different from all the other interviews that they've done? And I think, you know, when I was looking at you and preparing for this interview, That's what I wanted. I wanted it to be not your everyday Vinnie Tortorich interview. So, you know, I'm glad we were able to to talk a little bit of basketball.

[00:56:40] Vinnie Tortorich: That was a lot of fun. It is, you know, and I you know, I love basketball and I was good friends with a guy named Joe Dean who made Converse Tennis Shoes where it was back in the day. He was the guy that that came up with the idea of connecting a player. We talked about Julius Erving. That's how I met Julius, by the way, was through Joe Dean. he decided to hook a shoe to a player and make it you know and that became a thing they did that with larry bird they did it with uh magic they did it with of course the most famous of all of them um joe's biggest regret was he let michael jordan go to nike out of college um and the only reason jordan didn't want to go to converse at the time was because they had bird and magic and Dr. J was still on the roster and so on and so forth. And he was like, I'm going to get lost here. And Joe said to him, look, you need to do what you got to do. And he went to Nike and look what happened. You know, Air Jordans and Air, you know, good move on his part. But yeah, you know, that's how I kind of know a little bit about this was because the guy who became the athletic director at LSU eventually was a close friend of mine. We just we buried him about two years ago. Very sad.

[00:57:59] Rob Howe: Well, yeah. And I think, you know, I hope your buddy Joe Dean, I'm sure he did, but I hope he didn't lose too much sleep over telling 20 year old Michael Jordan to do what he had to do. And then, you know, obviously he became who he became.

[00:58:15] Vinnie Tortorich: Well, no, he didn't because that's who Joe is. You know, Joe knew that this guy might get lost at Converse. It's hard to believe now because Converse doesn't even make a court shoe anymore. They're selling Chuck Taylors to young Asian girls. They're not even doing what they did when Joe was there. But he never had a problem with telling Michael to go over to Nike because he was that kind of guy. I would like to think that I'm a little bit like him in life. there's no way any of us can be like Joe Dean but i would like to think that i even mentioned him in my book fitness confidential you know he we i talked about him and how he would talk to me about failure quotient you know the number of times doesn't matter how many times you succeed in life it's the number of times you can fail and come back you know your fq and i had to include that in my book you know because um how can you not if you have an opportunity to write a book How can you not let other people know that that message?

[00:59:23] Rob Howe: Well, yeah. And I want to know since we're on the topic, I think like failure quotient is so essential to and I don't know if I've ever heard it called that, which I really like. It's so essential to life as a diabetic, because, you know, like you said earlier, you understand that every single day you're dealing with the same, you know, tests, dosing insulin, counting carbs, you know, thinking one, you know, adding extra steps. to travel, to exercise, and you are going to fail. And I think there's this idea perpetuated by social media that there are these people who only have perfect blood sugars all the time. So you tend to look at yourself very harshly when you have a reading that's outside of range. And, you know, a lot of people, I think, struggle with that. But at the same time, you know, being able to embrace the failures and accept and celebrate the successes is, you know, essential.

[01:00:17] Vinnie Tortorich: I think you're right and I think it's important and I think what you're doing over there is literally you know God's work and I'm glad there are guys like you out there doing it are there very many diabetes podcasts?

[01:00:34] Rob Howe: There are a few, I mean there are four or five but yeah it's not a very populated space diabetes especially type 1 is sort of coming into its own in the media and having a voice and these communities are sprouting up. But yeah, it's not a very crowded space. So I've got one. There's one called the Juicebox podcast. There's one called the Beta Cell podcast. And we all kind of have our own different audiences within type 1 diabetes. One's more for parents. One's more on the research side. Mine's more lifestyle and telling the stories of people.

[01:01:15] Vinnie Tortorich: uh i'll do this on air so you can't tell me no okay but you could cut it out because this is your show i'm not taping it uh would you be interested in coming on my podcast to promote your podcast and talk about type 1 diabetes because ever since i had that problem way back when where we opened up the conversation about diabetes we haven't really gone back to it a whole lot. We talk about type 2 all the time. We never talk about type 1. And I promise to continue to do that. Would you would you come on to my show, which I think can help your show? You know, you can find some audience there. Absolutely. I would love to. Cool. Good. Well, we will make that and we could do 20 minutes of Washington General's talk. Yeah, please. I'll have to get out. I have

[01:02:02] Rob Howe: to brush up on all my Globetrotters history. I'd love to do that. Hey, I got it. I got to go on

[01:02:08] Vinnie Tortorich: the second because I was supposed to be done at four and then I tweeted, I texted the guy and said, can you give me a few more minutes of talking about the Harlem Globetrotters? And he's probably wondering what that meant. But do they still, last question for you, because I'm still excited about these Globetrotters. Do they use the same names like Curly and all that or do they go with different names now? So they have different names because

[01:02:33] Rob Howe: Curly is still around. He may have passed away a year or so ago. I'm not sure. I want to say he's still alive. He will come as an ambassador and show up and the crowd goes nuts. He'll spin the ball on his finger and wave and smile. They all have different names now, but they do pick nicknames.

[01:02:54] Vinnie Tortorich: Do any of them use the old names or is it all... Because Curly was so iconic, so I shouldn't have used him.

[01:03:02] Rob Howe: um i'm sure that there are some like you know tomahawk or like you know uh i'm sure that there are names that get used over and over that are more less sort of timeless than you know a curly or a Meadowlark Lemon yeah um there there i will give you this one tidbit though uh because you know i don't work for them anymore i can tell you whatever i want um if you ever go to a globetrotter show and you see a Globetrotter named Crash, he will be what's called a contract player. So he's a guy that they'll just call up. He won't travel with the team 100% of the time. So he typically only does like one crazy trick. But a guy named Crash is a guy who's trying to make a Globetrotter roster, but he's sort of like a training camp guy. And is there just one main team or is there different teams going around now uh there are three teams throughout the globe at any time

[01:03:58] Vinnie Tortorich: wow so there's three washington generals three globetrotters three of everything yep

[01:04:04] Rob Howe: wow did not know that yeah they do i think 500 or so shows a year worldwide

[01:04:13] Vinnie Tortorich: wow that that organization has to be worth billions right uh i think it was purchased

[01:04:19] Rob Howe: by a private equity firm a few years ago. And I think they're struggling in the age of social media because it's, you know, the secret, the magic of a Globetrotter show is sort of out there, right? So kids can Google stuff and they're like, oh, well, these generals guys always lose. So I think there's a little bit of adjustment that they're doing there, a little bit of tweaking. But, you know, globally, it's most people's first impression live of above the rim basketball, of professional basketball. And I think it's been so instrumental in growing the game globally like that, you know, the NBA has done of late, but really of the last 50 years, you know, I think Dirk Nowitzki talks about, you know, the first time he ever saw an American play basketball was the Globetrotters. And, you know, he's the fifth leading scorer in NBA history now, right? So we're talking about years and generations of people who have loved and seen the Globetrotters. Wow. It's pretty incredible.

[01:05:21] Vinnie Tortorich: That's just amazing.

[01:05:24] Rob Howe: Okay, and I know you got to go. So I got to ask you the one question I ask everybody who's ever been on my podcast. So for you, it might be a little bit different. You got time for one more?

[01:05:34] Vinnie Tortorich: Yeah, yeah. If the guy calls, I'll just call him back. I'm loving this way too much.

[01:05:41] Rob Howe: Okay, great. I'm enjoying it as well. So the question is that I always ask is like, you got to take the context into effect here. So you're in an airport. They're going to close the door to your gate in 30 seconds and you can't miss the flight. It's a can't miss. You got to be on the ground at the other end. But you run into somebody who has either been recently diagnosed or is struggling with living with type 1 diabetes. So for people who have type 1 diabetes, it's a little bit more close to their heart. But for you, what's the one thing that you say to that person before you got to jump on the flight and get out of there?

[01:06:18] Vinnie Tortorich: Wow. See, my head is already somewhere else. And I've done this kind of – I know this is going to make me sound like the world's biggest douchebag. But that person just found out and I'm getting on a flight. unless i'm a pallbearer in my mom's funeral i'm not getting on the flight i'm just i'm not going to do it um i have this thing in life and i know this is going to sound crazy and it's i think it's why my popularity has grown on the internet um i care about people too much um i don't have any religion i grew up in a roman catholic family and uh i denounced that after the nuns beat me to death um but my religion is to take care of your fellow man to do what you can to help other people around you and i know this makes me sound like the world's biggest douchebag but unless i mean i could be the best man in the wedding i will probably stay there with that person and talk to them so it wouldn't be there is no one word you could say to someone who just found out that they have a problem like that does that make sense oh yeah totally I love it. And I have done things like that where I've missed vacations and missed, you know, where I went, no, I got to go do this. And does it drive my family up one wall and down another? Yes, it does. It absolutely does. But it's just who I am. I'm, you know, and I'm sorry, I just sounded like the world's biggest douchebag.

[01:07:52] Rob Howe: But there you have it. No, no, no. I you know, it is who you are, Vinnie. And I'm really glad that we got to talk. and thank you for taking the time and for pushing back your other call as well. Man, I'm looking forward to our next conversation.

[01:08:07] Vinnie Tortorich: Well, it will happen soon. Let's cut the mics off so we can schedule this before I let you go.

[01:08:12] Rob Howe: Let's do it.