Scott Carney Investigates

A year ago I exposed the criminal past of the founder of AG1. Now we're going to talk about the science.Check out Alexis Léveillé's instagram post:https://www.instagram.com/p/DJ7SWK6vmyU/?img_index=1And subscribe to  @nobullshitphysio  https://www.instagram.com/nobullshitphysio/Athletic Greens is a green supplement powder that claims to meet “all your nutritional needs” with a daily $3 slurry of vitamins and adaptogenic buzzwords. If you’ve listened to just about any health-forward podcast in the last ten years, you’ve no doubt heard of it. And, if you’ve been following this channel for a while you probably also know that last year I exposed the criminal past of the founder who founded the company after we fled New Zealand for running a real estate scam. A few months after that report came out Chris Ashenden stepped down from his role as CEO. I also heard through the grapevine that they lost $45 million in subscription revenue because of my report.Even so, AG1 continues to be one of the most prominent financial backers of grifty podcasters — from Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia to Rich Roll and Tim Ferris. They offer lucrative sponsorship opportunities to anyone who is willing to repeat their health claims with a straight face.Part of their pitch is that unlike other supplement powders, they have actual science backing them up. While my earlier report posited the idea that you can judge the character of a company by the character of its founder, many people wrote to me that all they really cared about was whether or not AG1 actually works. They wanted to hear the science.Last week Alexis Maxence Léveillé (who goes by NoBullshitPhysio in Instagram) reached out to me saying that he had a scoop about AG1’s scientific integrity and asked me to collaborate. We have spent the last few days combing through scientific studies, interviewing scientists and talking with representatives over at AG1.And, I have to say, we sort of found a bombshell hidden in plain sight in their academic research.In the video above we examine AG1’s claims up close and report that they knowingly use an active placebo called maltodextrin as the baseline to determine if AG1 actually works. It’s true that many microbiome studies also have used maltodextrin in the past, research that they cite from 2022 proves that maltodextrin actually harms gut health. While they could have simply used inert water as a baseline, they specifically chose to use a placebo that would inherently make their supplement line look better.Even with their home-team advantage, the only published study on humans they have in their lineup actually showed no substantial difference between maltodextrin and AG1. In other words: despite claiming great things on their website, it was pretty much a wash.But wait, it gets even weirder.Once I reached out to AG1’s PR team and their entire slate of scientists, the research page began to morph in real time. They started posting about upcoming publications that haven’t been peer reviewed or published, and vastly expanded their section on research ethics.There’s a lot more to the story, but I don’t want to ruin your enjoyment of the video I have posted above.Get Early Access on Substackhttps://sgcarney.substack.com/

Over the last few months a theory around the assassination attempt on Trump's life has circulated across the internet suggesting that the whole thing might have been faked in order to gain sympathy and turn the election to his favor. Let's look at the facts. Get Early Access on Substackhttps://sgcarney.substack.com/

A few weeks ago Andrew Huberman announced that he had partnered with the sports and eyewear company Roka. Together they’ve put out a specially branded blue-blocking glasses that are designed to help you wind down and get better sleep at night. If that sounds weird to you, you’re not alone. Over the years Huberman, who a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology, has repeatedly said that that he didn’t believe that blue blocking classes did all that much. Was it possible that a giant financial windfall could have changed his mind on settled science? It’s not totally surprising that leading influencers might themselves be influenced by tidal wave amounts of cash. As  @TaylorLorenz  mentions, we’ve always doctors on industry payrolls shilling everything from sugar to cigarettes. What’s new is that social media engenders para-social relationships with specific influencers whose own opinions, protocols and prognostications tend towards cult-like power over their followers. With more than 15 million combined followers across his social media accounts, Andrew Huberman is likely the most powerful scientific voice on the planet. So when he says something is settled science and then changes his mind for a cash grab, it undermines the public faith in information writ-large.It’s just one small step from trusting to untrusting Huberman to someone trusting and then untrusting scientific explanations from anyone. (Incidentally, Benn Jordan just did a great piece on misinformation and explicit propaganda that shows how global powers capitalize on the general distrust of authorities).The thing that I find hardest to understand about Huberman’s most recent grift is now that it happened, but why he would need money at all. What motivates his endless greed when it comes at the expense of his integrity? Stanford professors of his caliber make about $250,000 according to Glassdoor.com. That’s a pretty solid amount of money all on its own. YouTube ads run automatically and pay about $5.50 per thousand views with what amounts to a strict firewall between his editorial content and the sponsor’s demands. (THIS NEXT SENTENCE CONTAINS AN ERROR, PLEASE SEE THE FOLLOWING PARAGRAPH) Given that he has 365 million views on his channel, it’s a simple calculation to figure out that he is bringing in about $7M a year from adsense alone. That means he’s already making 28 times his ordinary salary without the need for any ethical compromises on his part. All told, the Huberman Lab podcast has generated at least $20 million over the course of its three year run to date. (CORRECTION THIS PREVIOUS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS AN ERROR: @hubermanlab I calculated that Huberman made $20M on YouTube ads based on his 365M combined views which make around $5.50 CPM. My math was seriously off. The true total would have been only $2M from ad sense. So instead of making 28x the standard Stanford salary, he only was making 3x. I regret the error and will issue a video correction)That’s an unfathomable, wasteful and frankly obscene, amount of money from my perspective. Even so, Huberman didn’t think that it was enough. The Roka deal will likely give Huberman a sizable payment of $1-2 million over its lifetime. Meanwhile, He has a further 13 paid sponsors on his show which, we can guess net him another $6 million (actually, just $600,000) or so a year. That mindset is what’s fundamentally broken with the information universe we live in. Instead of being an upstanding credible vehicle for science, Huberman made the, probably unconscious, decision that money was the most important metric for success. The only silver lining here is that at least we can document exactly when and where he changed his mind on science.I hope that you enjoy the video.

A deep dive into all the ways that Mel Robbins and Jay Shetty manipulate you into promoting their content. It's both diabolical and awe inspiring.

You already know something about the relationship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. The story has come your way in countless short clips, tweets, social media posts and YouTube videos. There’s so much information about the two of them that it’s easy to lose the big picture in the onslaught of constant updates. So, over the last two weeks I combed over hundreds of documents and videos and put together a comprehensive dossier on the President’s relationship with the most notorious sex trafficker in history. #epsteincase #epsteinlist #trump