future.So tell us more about the scientific discovery, because you mentioned that there's promising research beyond, I'm guessing, these amyloid plaques.

Yeah.

I would say that it's not like the amyloid hypothesis has been invalidated, but I think it, the, our understanding of the disease, what's happened is it's become more complex.

[gentle music] And we're realizing that there's probably also a role for a different kind of protein called tau.

There may also be a role with, like, chronic inflammation.

Your vascular health, your body's ability to just pump bud- blood through your body may also be playing a role in the development of Alzheimer's disease.

And so now we're starting to see treatments that target these other things.

Weight loss, smoking, my, my poker addiction, and...

Mm.

But the thing is like i- it's not necessarily that there's like a virus or bacteria or this sort of like short term health problem that our inflammation is able to respond to and then resolve.

Instead its just this, you know, this, this miasma that we're living inside of.

That we're being exposed to all the time, and I, I do think it kinda not just agitates our immune system but it causes our immune system to go a little bit haywire.

And I mean, I think thinking about the food supply in particular may be helpful here.

To simplify a very complicated story, our food production has completely changed within the last century.

If we're talking about these long evolutionary timelines for our immune system to adjust and adapt, We have sent a shock to the system just in the last hundred years with the advent of mass agriculture and things ultra processed foods.

I mean Dylan how can sort that Out LIKE HOW CAN KNOW WHEN IT BECOMES CHRONIC INFLAMMATION ?[laughs].

Talk about the influence of, I don't know, he may be the biggest name in the history of country music.

Yeah, no, for sure.

I mean, he's definitely at the top.

It's Garth Brooks, right? And I think that's what's really cool about Louisiana.

He puts one song out called Calling Baton Rouge.

And hey, we just welcome him with open arms, you know, regardless if he's a massive artist or not.

That song right there.

And nobody's ever made it because we all know it's fleeting, but you're pretty close to having made it.

Yeah.

But I've played it for so many people now, and I've seen people literally cry.

And I remember the first time I heard s- or saw somebody cry, I'm like, "Are you crying?" But it reminded them of their kids, and they're about to leave home and go to college.

And I'm like, I've never even looked at this song from that perspective.

And I think that's what's really cool about music-

Mm-hmm.

You know, with everything going on.

And, you know, used to I could, uh...

my career.

I don't know how I got on this, but we was all on the bus and I'm watching on the TV screen, but I'm on my computer and I'm just deep diving and I'm watching all this going, man, we did this stuff.

years ago, really kind of before anybody else was doing it, you know, but not saying we were the first, I'm just saying, but we've done it for a long time.

It's really what built it.

Everybody talks about TikTok these days and how it's always helping this.

Yeah, it is.

But like it was helping back then too on YouTube.

Yeah.

Oh.

Like, this, like I said before, this is something that we have dealt with in the past.

It's, it's getting a lot more attention now, I think because of how big the outbreak has gotten.

But, like, we've dealt with cyclospora before.

And if you wanna blame anything, there's probably two things to blame.

One would be we now have this really globalized food...

Distribution system where, like, we're getting leafy greens grown all over the world and shipped to plants in the United States and being, you know, packaged into these bagged salad kits that I personally love to buy for lunch and sold all over.

... or like a, uh, you know, a leafy green farm zero, whatever it might be?

... 'cause we know you're a latecomer, but you made it with, like, like, three wall balls to go, basically.

Yeah, no, no, no, no.

I came out of the sled push and I was like, "Oh, boy.

I'm in trouble." And I was like, well, I mean, whether I'm in trouble or not, I, I said that my, I said that my race plan was go out, execute, and let, let whatever happens happen.

And I was really calm with letting whatever happen happen.

And I went out, and I faded back, and I slowly came back.

And I hit the burpees and I was like, "I'm feeling okay.

How about last night?

How do you stay in the trenches of being just relevant? Obviously, there's social media going on right now, new people coming into the music, but staying relevant in this day and age, whether it's technology, whether it's the consumer listening to the music, how do you stay relevant in country music?

Yeah, I don't, I don't know a good answer for that, to be honest with you.

I mean, I just...

I don't know.

I mean, I look around, I see what's happening.

I stay, I stay educated to what's going on and, and understand what's going on.

I mean, there's a lot...

Hell yeah.

How much do we push ourselves before World Champs today?

Um, so I mean, like, today was to go out and give a good effort.

Um, didn't back off training too much, so, like, I came in as maybe a tiny overcooked.

Um, a- and it really was just go out there and try to execute a good race.

Um, I, I had some adversity, which was good.

Like, I felt like I, I got out, I got behind on the sleds.

I had to make my way back up, and then I had to just find, like, a comfort level-

... ahead of everybody.

Okay.

You know? That's-- I'm very proud of that one, 'cause I wrote it strictly about my wife, and I didn't think anybody would wanna listen to it, and here we are.

It got everything jump-started.

But there's some along the way.

I mean, Good Times Go By Too Fast and This Town's Been Too Good To Us is probably one of my favorites.

It's just an ode to the town where I grew up and those people and, you know, just those guys who helped carve who I am as a person.

Um, but I mean, honestly probably, probably one of my favorite songs I've ever written is a song, it's, uh, it's not a hit.

Hmm.

So what would you like to say for those that are in the Dillon winning the world champs camp? Like, how are we gonna catch that guy? What would you like to say about that?

Yeah.

I, I think I'll say that, like, there is a path to beating him.

Like, he's not un- he's not unbeatable.

Nobody's unbeatable.

Nobody's been unbeatable.

And also, again, like, on the day, things can always swing in a certain direction.

I thought it was lane two you didn't want.

Besides alcohol

... oh, okay, besides alcohol, uh, usually somebody trying to get to the front or somebody knocking into somebody because they didn't see them, and then it just becomes, yeah, a brawl.

Hit my girlfriend.

"You hit my girlfriend," yeah.

Ugh.

I'm not thankful for...

Yes, tiny bananas.

I'm not thankb- I'm really not thankful for Instacart, 'cause it gets too expensive.

Mm.

Technically, these kinds of arrangements have been around for decades.

Like, the first ones started back in the early 1980s.

But they, for a long time, I mean, they were really niche.

But then the Affordable Care Act passed and was this big flashpoint politically, as people well know.

Especially for, like, deeply conservative and religiously devout people, they had a lot of objections to the ACA.

Some of them had objections to, like, the provisions that required insurers to cover birth control, things like that, and so they were like, "You know what? I wanna, like, opt out of this law." And actually, the law and the way that it was written kinda gave them an out.

And how has it worked out for people who are in these ministries?

I'm looking for help.

Unfortunately, like that's one predicament that the US healthcare system puts people into if they have like a serious medical need is you might just have to like beg strangers to chip in to cover your bills.

But short of that, you also have Americans, they're li- looking for basically insurance-like products.

You know, something where it's like you pay a monthly payment and if you have medical bills, hopefully it's gonna cover you.

And there's a few different variations on that.

There's something called short-term limited duration insurance, which like ideally is supposed to be like a three-month plan that you get on when you're between jobs or something like that.

But some people are trying to go on those on a more permanent basis.

And how has it worked out for people who are in these ministries?

What is going on in the digestive tract, Dylan?

So this is maybe the most interesting thing that I learned in reporting out this study and talking to a bunch of these cancer researchers who are b- as befuddled by all of this as we are.

So it seems that your individual risk of many different type of cancers actually depends on something that's totally out of your control, which is when you were born.

(instrumental music) Like, somebody who was born in 1975 had nearly twice the chance of developing, like, an intestinal cancer compared to somebody who was born in 1955, 20 years earlier.

And likewise if we look, like, at younger people, people born in 1990, they're at even a higher risk of developing cancers than those people born in 1955 or even 1975.

A couple of things likely at work here.

Um, one does seem to be, like, the, the changes in food production and the proliferation of processed foods, um, which is obviously something that, like, basically if you eat in the modern world, you're consuming more processed foods than people used to.

(instrumental music plays) You're listening to Today Explained.

What is going on in the digestive track, Dylan?

So this is maybe the most interesting thing that I learned in reporting out this study and talking to a bunch of these cancer researchers who are as befuddled by all of this as we are.

So it seems that your individual risk of many different type of cancers actually depends on something that's totally out of your control, which is when you were born.

(instrumental music) Like somebody who was born in 1975 had nearly twice the chance of developing, like, an intestinal cancer compared to somebody who was born in 1955, 20 years earlier.

And likewise, if we look, like, at younger people, people born in 1990, they're at even a higher risk of developing cancers than those people born in 1955 or even 1975.

A couple of things likely at work here.

Um, one does seem to be, like, the, the changes in food production and the proliferation of processed foods, um, which is obviously something that, like, basically if you eat in the modern world, you're consuming more processed foods than people used to.

(instrumental music) You're listening to Today Explained.