#1744 - Derek from More Plates More Dates

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience.

Hello, Derek. Nice to meet you in real life.

Derek (0:14)

Yeah.

Joe Rogan (0:15)

I've seen, man, ______ dozens of your videos. So it's cool meeting you in person.

Derek (0:21)

No, yeah, long overdue.

Joe Rogan (0:22)

How did you get started?

Derek (0:25)

For me, I've always sort of just been like a nerd about pharmacology and biology, endocrinology, stuff like that. And I've always just researched online about random stuff. And eventually, I was encouraged by a few people to start posting online. And I was...

I just started writing out blog articles on a WordPress site, maybe like five and a half years ago or something at this point. And eventually, it got to the point where, I guess YouTube was already big, but it wasn't that what it is now. And I was just asking people in the, I don't know, like male self-improvement niche that I was friends with, do you think I should be posting videos too, instead of just writing these articles? And they said, yeah, it's a no-brainer. You should be. So I just started basically reiterating my articles in video format too. And then eventually, the YouTube sort of outpaced the WordPress site. And that's why it's always, you know, Derek from moreplaytomorrades.com, that website was where I originally wrote my articles.

And that eventually got to the point where it wasn't very time-efficient to write, unfortunately. So I kind of like moved disproportionately towards video format, because I can just fire off a video in, I don't know, 15 minutes that otherwise that in written format would take five plus hours to write out, if not longer.

Joe Rogan (1:42)

Well, I'd love the fact that you have like, your production is very minimalist. You have an air conditioner behind you, wood panel wall.

It's like there's no attempt at all to like glitz and glamour, but it's just good content. I mean, you just hit a million subscribers. So obviously something, it's working, you know, it's working well.

But it's what you're doing is just you have a unique ability to pull information out of the air. Like you remember stuff like how things work and how things, you know, like how, especially when you were talking about catching people that are doing steroids. Yeah, like when like there's been many times you've gone over people's blood work and it's very educational. I learned a lot about it, especially like before I watched your videos, I thought, oh, you saw that like there's no way anybody can cheat with you saw that around. And then I watched some of your videos. I'm like, oh my god, they're cheating.

Derek (2:39)

Yeah, it's not like they make it obvious where their shortcomings are and where the loopholes are because they would obviously prefer people to not know what they're doing current research on to tighten up. But yeah, there's definitely leeway still or else they would not still be in the lab trying to figure out ways to bulletproof it essentially.

Joe Rogan (2:56)

Well, there's one gym that I know of that at one point in time, I don't know how they do it now, but at one point in time, they had like literally full-time scientists that were working with the athletes.

Derek (3:09)

No, yeah, I think a lot of athletes have maybe not like a full team, but there's always there's usually some sort of chemistry chemistry slash pharmacology guy in the back end who they're deferring to, or even just their bro who's experienced enough.

Joe Rogan (3:24)

Yeah, but the bros is what how people get caught.

Bro, you just gotta do this. You gotta test clean, trust me, and then you test positive, and that guy's fucked, and you know.

Derek (3:35)

Yeah, I think usually there's a some sort of I don't know deferral to figure out like even people who anybody at a top level is trying to figure out what kind of edge they can get regardless if it's through straight supplementation dietary practice manipulations, lifestyle interventions, etc. And obviously, the conversation at some point comes up is like what's not on the list that I could get away with, right? Or is there a way to get around or what are the other people in my sport doing that I don't know about? And if other people are doing something you're going to, you know, it's not as dramatic as the Lance Armstrong case where everyone's doing it.

Joe Rogan (4:09)

Right.

Derek (4:09)

So you're pretty much forced to do it to be competitive. But, you know, people are thinking in that same way.

Joe Rogan (4:15)

The Lance Armstrong one is the most ridiculous to me because they took his jerseys away, supposedly. But he still has them. You know, he's like, there's a photo of him. It's a hilarious photo of him on his couch, like with his feet up and behind him is all these framed jerseys of him winning the Tour de France.