Karen Thomson (00:00):
By how fancy you are. I mean, check all your sponsors at the bottom of the screen. Look at you.
Sevan Matossian (00:08):
The show’s killing it. Bam. We’re live. God, the show’s killing it. I’m so excited. Thank you. Oh,
Karen Thomson (00:14):
Although I’m so excited for you. You deserve all the success.
Sevan Matossian (00:17):
Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me okay?
Karen Thomson (00:24):
I can hear you okay.
Sevan Matossian (00:25):
Can you hear me? I can. I just got some new, I’ve been having some technical difficulties. And you’re the first person with some new equipment today. Oh yeah. You sound good.
Karen Thomson (00:33):
Well, I’ve been using Streamy Yard as well, and I was having awful difficulties the last couple of days.
Sevan Matossian (00:40):
Okay. You sound good now. Hey, do you have a microphone? Is that a microphone down there?
Karen Thomson (00:44):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (00:45):
Oh, I like that. Lemme see. Will you tap on it like this?
Karen Thomson (00:49):
Then it mutes.
Sevan Matossian (00:51):
Oh, now unmute it.
Karen Thomson (00:54):
I don’t know. I don’t know. Should I?
Sevan Matossian (00:57):
How about tap? Tap the side like this. Go like this. I don’t think that thing is turned on.
Karen Thomson (01:04):
Well, can I take it out?
Sevan Matossian (01:06):
No. Hold on. Second. You sound like my wife.
Karen Thomson (01:11):
Hello.
Sevan Matossian (01:13):
Hey. Click on that settings button. You see it on the bottom there? And then go up and click on audio. And then what’s it say? The microphone is set too. Oh, now you’re muted. Oh yeah, now it’s working. Okay. Unmute it. Tap it again. Tap it again. How about now?
Karen Thomson (01:35):
I feel like, okay, I feel like an old lady.
Sevan Matossian (01:38):
No, no, it’s good. It’s good.
Karen Thomson (01:42):
Thanks, Debbie. You were always so good with technology.
Sevan Matossian (01:45):
Thank you. Thank you. I’m trying. It’s good for the listeners to hear that. They try to make fun of me. Philip Kelly. Thank what? Yeah, they
Karen Thomson (01:54):
Fun of you.
Sevan Matossian (01:57):
Phillip Kelly. I can’t take it out.
(02:05):
Before we start, there’s a lot of shows where people will be like, Hey, I can’t believe that you’re talking to your guests like that, or some shit like that. You have to understand. Carn Thompson and I go way back and we were good friends when we worked at CrossFit. We were the people who after breakfast meetings, we would go on walks and we would hang out together. We did stuff besides just work. She was cool as shit, and she was always sober at the parties and we hung out a ton. But I haven’t really caught up with you. I mean, I text with you hi or celebrate. We celebrate each other’s successes, but I haven’t talked to, talked to you, talked to you in a while.
Karen Thomson (02:48):
No, it’s been a long time. I mean, you’re always the first to celebrate any success you see of mine, which I’m super grateful of. And you were always the guy that looked out for me from day one. There was no one who I could depend on to know that I had my back, who made sure I was safe. We traveled together a ton,
Sevan Matossian (03:07):
Right? Yeah, a ton,
Karen Thomson (03:08):
Various spaces. And you were for sure the person that I could depend on to just know that you made sure I was safe always. And I’m so grateful for that. Thank you. Thank you.
Sevan Matossian (03:20):
Hey, whenever someone does say some shit about asshole shit to me, like creepy shit, I’ll be like, dude, I was the first person who would walk Carne Thompson to our hotel room every night. What the fuck? Fuck you
Karen Thomson (03:35):
Walk. Whisper as well.
Sevan Matossian (03:37):
And lemme tell you, I was a good boy too. I never got creepy. Or did I ever get creepy once?
Karen Thomson (03:42):
Never ever did you ever make me feel unsafe or compromised or objectified in a way
Sevan Matossian (03:48):
That I didn’t. I wanted to, but I didn’t.
Karen Thomson (03:52):
Oh God. Also, I mean, it was fun. We just had so much fun. Wherever you are, there’s always laughter and joy and fun.
Sevan Matossian (04:04):
I was going to say the same thing about you. I always felt free around you. I always felt like I could say anything or act the way I want. I would dance in front of you. And that’s saying a lot because I wouldn’t dance in front of anybody.
Karen Thomson (04:14):
I love that. Thanks.
Sevan Matossian (04:16):
Hey, before we start, and I want to go way back to your original duties with CrossFit. I do want to show people this. I cannot believe this lineup you have.
Karen Thomson (04:29):
I know, right? I don’t know what you’re talking about, but yes. Oh,
Sevan Matossian (04:34):
Originally, Greg, one of the reasons why Greg hired Kane is because Kane is so well connected. She has a crazy, crazy Rolodex everywhere she goes, people love her. She wrote the book Sugar-Free Revolution. She has some crazy pedigree that she comes from. Her grandfather was one of the first people, if not the first person ever, to do a heart transplant. She was
Karen Thomson (04:55):
The first person,
Sevan Matossian (04:58):
And she knows so many people. But I just want to show everyone, she’s, this isn’t her first rodeo, by the way. She’s done a ton of things like this, but she’s putting on this conference and look at these speakers. It’s crazy. This is nuts. This is nuts. That guy’s been on the show, by the way. A bunch of these people have been on the show fine. But Dr. Anthony Chaffee has been on the show and I love him. Great. Look at Sea is going to be there. This is crazy. Greg Glassman, Eids. The Eids are going to be there. Rob Wolf. This is nuts. Oh, Robert Lustig. Yeah. Sean Baker. Yeah. This is nuts. Nicole. A coin. Michael Eids. What a group. What’s the, tell me what this is What’s, what is this? Reta Fest?
Karen Thomson (05:51):
Okay, so Reta is the virtual health Summit essentially where I’m taking people over five days. We’re going through topics related to health. So we really start with a question, what is health? It sounds like a really simple thing to answer, but it’s actually not. Right? If I say to you, Hey, Sammy, what’s your definition of health? If you weren’t in the CrossFit space, it would be a lot harder for you to define, right? But I
Sevan Matossian (06:17):
See my doctor three times a year to have him stick his finger in my butt and give me a mammogram.
Karen Thomson (06:24):
So we look at what is health, and then we go into broken science and the hallmarks of health and all the stuff where we can really get a deep understanding of what health is, and that is not just the absence of disease. So we do that and then we go into various nutritional strategies, fasting, keto, carnivore, a little bit more middle ground, paleo kind of stuff. We look at exercise and fitness. We have phenomenal people in the space talking about that. And then we also go into relationships and orgasm and a whole lot of really, really fun topics.
Sevan Matossian (06:59):
Really, it goes there.
Karen Thomson (07:01):
Yeah, we’re talking about sex and relationships. And so it’s a holistic view of health, although I don’t like the word holistic. It’s a good description of what it is. It’s an overview of health in various components. And by interviewing these experts, the biggest thing that came out was that our health is so dependent, not only on our biomarkers and the food we eat and the exercise we do, but it’s so much based on community and mindset as well. And so those two factors are so important in determining not how healthy we are right now only, but how healthy we are going to be in the future. So it’s fascinating. Anyway, so it’s a five day virtual event. It’s going to be available for 90 days after all prerecorded. It’s me basically interviewing people for 20 minutes or a little bit longer, depending on how interesting they are.
(07:51):
Not saying the people who are doing 20 minutes aren’t interesting, but sometimes the conversations just kind of carry on and you don’t want to end. So that’s what it is. And the whole concept came from, so I lost my job with CrossFit, and then I was like, what the heck am I going to do? And I decided I was going to do what I knew how to do. And that was organized like a health summit, because that’s really what I love doing. Love bringing people together, love education. And then also, I’d gone to Coachella this year for the first time. Will you guys come with me next year? Oh, Debbie. It was so much fun. We danced and community and everything was just wonderful. So I have this vision of next year bringing together this component of this health education with this festival component and bringing it so medical, not the boring medical conference that everyone goes to, but having this conference where people can learn and experience and mix it with this component of this festival where everyone dances and brings together this community and making health sexy and fun again, which the crosswalk community already does, but the crosswalk community reaches a certain amount of people.
(09:03):
But we need to spread this message even further.
Sevan Matossian (09:08):
So eventually, you’re hoping this will be alive with a festive feel to it
Karen Thomson (09:16):
With music and dancing and celebration and everything.
Sevan Matossian (09:20):
And Karin, sort of a pivot, but not a pivot. You also just celebrated your 19 years of sobriety
Karen Thomson (09:26):
I did on Thursday.
Sevan Matossian (09:28):
Yeah. Congratulations. And some people might, that was kind of the trippy thing about you too, what I said about always feeling free around you, or I would dance around you because you were always sober too.
Karen Thomson (09:39):
Yeah, I was always sober. That was a hundred percent correct.
Sevan Matossian (09:43):
Yeah. Is that exciting? I could understand your first year being exciting, being sober, but at 19 years, is it still exciting?
Karen Thomson (09:54):
Yes. The greatest accomplishment of my life, without a doubt. There’s nothing that, even when you mentioned it now, I felt this. I took a breath. I was like, this is incredible. So I’m so grateful for this sober life. There’s nothing I want more.
Sevan Matossian (10:14):
And you have two sons?
Karen Thomson (10:16):
I do. I have two boys, 14 and 16 who are so much trouble at the moment, but they’re great. And they love you so much. You are always so kind to them. Oh, good. Yeah, they just look up to you.
Sevan Matossian (10:30):
Oh, good. Hey, so you got sober three years before you even had kids.
Karen Thomson (10:37):
Yeah, yeah. I was three years sober when I had Jamie.
Sevan Matossian (10:41):
Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s awesome.
Karen Thomson (10:43):
Yeah. God,
Sevan Matossian (10:45):
You’re an inspiration. And the Reta Fest is going back to your roots, which is organizing events of this nature, right?
Karen Thomson (10:59):
Well, yeah. I mean, I organized this, the low carb convention in South Africa in 20 14, 20 15. I was living there at the time, and Prof and I were doing work. We had a sugar addiction clinic together. And he was getting into a ton of trouble because he was starting to talk about low carb in the management of,
Sevan Matossian (11:18):
He had a sugar addiction clinic.
Karen Thomson (11:20):
We had an inpatient sugar addiction clinic.
Sevan Matossian (11:22):
I didn’t even know that. Okay. Yeah.
Karen Thomson (11:24):
That’s why I wrote that book, not because I wanted to write a book. I never thought I was going to write a book. The publishers asked me to write this book. But anyway, prof nos at the time was getting a ton of flack. He was being reported to the medical boards by dieticians who didn’t believe that the low carb diet was safe or people with diabetes. And now looking back, you’re like, really? How can this even be a thing? But it was, and so I felt so sorry for him that he was facing all this backlash by himself that had decided that the only way we’re going to do this was to create, to bring the world experts to South Africa, to bring the science and to show that low carb was indeed safe within this community. And so I started organizing this conference, and I remember Prof saying to me, you’re going to bankrupt us. And I was like, possibly, but I don’t think so.
(12:17):
So we organized this massive three day conference at the Cape Town Convention Center. I reached out to Gary TAs and Eric Wessman and Jay Wartman and a team and a whole lot of people. And everyone said yes, because they had never ever been in the same space together. They’d all felt like these isolated people in this landscape where they knew this truth, but no one was willing to stand together. And so when they came to Cape Town, it was the first time that many of them who’d been communicating online had come together in the same space. And so it was a phenomenal event. It was so successful. It was wonderful. And Jason Fung at that time, was an unknown person in this health space. He had just started talking about fasting and diabetes on YouTube. And I interviewed him the other day for Revist, and he was like, you know, Karin, you gave me an opportunity to be seen. It was after that conference that my career really took off. And I mean, that was the biggest compliment in the whole world. And so I’m so grateful that Jason, anytime I ask him something, he just says, yes. He’s a phenomenal human honesty. I love him.
Sevan Matossian (13:25):
And if you look at the guy, he’s on the top row, second from the left, that’s Jason Fung. He also has a video where he spoke at the CrossFit Health Conference, which of course, current organized, and it is the most popular video on crossfit.com in, I don’t know, the last three, four years, five years. So you can just put them in order of most popular and you can hear him speaking. And that was a huge get for CrossFit that Karin brought him to speak at the games that year. Sorry, go ahead, Karin. I want to make sure. No, I think
Karen Thomson (13:57):
It’s one of the most, no, I interrupted you. I think it’s one of the most popular videos on CrossFit, regardless of the age. But it was recorded three, four years ago,
Sevan Matossian (14:05):
Right? Yeah, absolutely. Kind of crazy. It has nothing to do with movement. His talk is strictly the bottom of the pyramid Nutrition. Yeah,
Karen Thomson (14:16):
The base. Right.
Sevan Matossian (14:17):
So your homeboy, Tim Nokes, who Greg often refers to as the greatest, what is it? Greatest, not nutritional scientist, not fitness scientist. Sports scientist. Sports scientist to ever live on the planet. He’s worked with some of the greatest athletes in the world. He was being attacked, and he was a fantastic runner. And triathlete himself too, right? A marathoner, triathlete, and he, not
Karen Thomson (14:43):
Triathlete. Marathon. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (14:45):
Marathoner. He came down with type two diabetes, and it sent him on a journey to try to find the cure. He went low carb. And then you’re saying through that, that disturbed the status quo in South Africa, the powers that be tried to take away his medical license. And then one of the things to fight back is you brought in experts from all over the world and did a conference saying like, Hey, look at all these smart people also say low carb is the way.
Karen Thomson (15:12):
Yeah, absolutely. And we made the front page of the newspapers and we were all over the show everywhere. It was absolutely spectacular. It was really, I’m not blowing my own horn. And it wasn’t because of me. I literally was just the organizer. But it was incredible. It was, honestly, it was the best event I’ve ever done without a dog.
Sevan Matossian (15:34):
This is no exaggeration. People, and Karin, stop me where I’m off. But basically, this was a famous doctor who started telling people to stop basically eating refined carbohydrates, and the country fucking attacked him and tried to take away his fucking medical degree. And then it cost him millions of dollars in legal fees. I think I remember Greg gave him like 50 grand to fight to help with his legal fees.
Karen Thomson (15:58):
Yeah. He then had to fight his case in court as well, because dieticians then actually sued him. So the Health Professions Council of South Africa,
Sevan Matossian (16:08):
Just for saying, don’t eat refined carbohydrates.
Karen Thomson (16:11):
Well, this was from a tweet, a tweet, a breastfeeding mom had asked if it was safe for her to eat low carb while she was breastfeeding. And he had responded saying something like, yeah, eat meats and vegetables. You know what I mean? Basically the CrossFit nutrition prescription. And they went off, they went crazy, went to the Health Professions Council of South Africa. They opened a case against Rox, and this was all funded by something bigger because I had gotten and gotten approved C. So in South Africa, it’s called C P D, which is c m E in the United States. I had gotten the conference in South Africa, approved for that, and suddenly, overnight, they decided to revoke it. And I was furious. I got on the call with this lady from the Health Professions Council of South Africa who had approved that. I was like, what is going on?
(17:03):
This is bullshit. And she was like, I don’t know what to tell you. The only thing I can tell you is that there was the secret meeting with these dieticians, and we were told that under no circumstances was your conference allowed to be accredited any longer. And I was like, my lawyers will be in contact with you very shortly. And I remember turning to my husband, Steve at the time, and I was like, Steve, I don’t know how I’m going to afford this, but we’ve got to fight this. This is the right thing to do. He was like, I’ll remortgage the house. It’s okay. Let’s just do it. You do whatever you need with your husband
Sevan Matossian (17:34):
The
Karen Thomson (17:34):
Time. Yeah, you do whatever you need to do to fight this. I remember on the call with a lawyer, we worked the whole night. We got all our evidence together. We went to them and we were like, listen, you do not want to get in this legal case with, and they reinstated the points.
Sevan Matossian (17:52):
Oh, they did?
Karen Thomson (17:53):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (17:55):
Hey, if I wanted to put on a conference that said, eating sugar is healthy, it is the way, it is, the only way to my father in the heavens and to blah, blah, blah, could I do that? And no one would stop.
Karen Thomson (18:07):
I think those conferences exist already.
Sevan Matossian (18:10):
No one would stop me, right?
Karen Thomson (18:12):
No, no one would stop me. They’d be like, yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. In fact, Coca-Cola, it’s a sponsor and any of the junk food brands, you would make so much money.
Sevan Matossian (18:21):
Seriously, if I did a conference that said, Hey, I want you to eat Top Ramen and Honey Nut Cheerios for every single meal, no one would stop me.
Karen Thomson (18:33):
No, because you know what? The dietary guidelines state that That’s exactly what you should be doing.
Sevan Matossian (18:39):
Hey, did you hear that? YouTube is now making it that if a American Medical Association and World Health Organization, if you go against them,
Karen Thomson (18:48):
Yeah, I did. And even saw Thomas Delau Instagram post yesterday that was like, they’re even, I think owning the term sunlight. So you need to get a doctor’s sign off in order to expose yourself to sunlight. I mean, this is Luna crazy. Here’s the thing. This is the stuff that Greg was always fighting against that I don’t think many people understood. The censorship is taking away our freedom of speech. It’s taking away, it’s like his CrossFit health model, or let’s start with the truth. It’s taking away that we are no longer allowed to start with the truth.
Sevan Matossian (19:31):
I’m kind of surprised to be honest with you, that Thomas is speaking up against this.
Karen Thomson (19:38):
Why?
Sevan Matossian (19:39):
Because I know he makes his living in this area, and I’m sure, I’m guessing he’s concerned that they would shut him down for speaking the truth.
Karen Thomson (19:52):
I mean, his post was kind of mild, right?
Sevan Matossian (19:54):
Wait, which one? Which one? Oh, oh, here it is. Oh, okay. Well, he did. He went for it. Under the new YouTube guidelines for health information, they’ve categorized sunlight in the medical category. This means that only content from doctors and approved sources can have videos on sunlight, be visible sunlight. Really? Houston, we have a problem. Good on you, Thomas.
Karen Thomson (20:12):
Yeah, totally. And I mean, Thomas is always one that kind of is very measured in his approach to addressing things. And so when he speaks up, there’s an issue,
Sevan Matossian (20:29):
I need to like this post. How do I do that?
Karen Thomson (20:33):
Well, you just banned from YouTube again. What did you do?
Sevan Matossian (20:36):
Oh, this morning, you know what happened this morning is I was just told Instagram told me they’re giving a 24 hour timeout. You know what actually happened though, is I was typing something on a friend of mine’s Instagram account. What’s his name? Pedro. He has a podcast called Coffee Pods and Wads Coffee Pods. And I kept posting Yes. And it would say it didn’t post. So I posted again. Yes. And then he texted me on the side. He goes, dude, you’ve posted yes nine times on my account already. I’m like, oh, it’s telling me it’s not sticking. And then so I think the next time I posted, they’re like, Hey, dude, we’re giving you timeout. But it’s funny because on the next one that I posted, I posted, I told someone that they were mentally ill, and that was the one that got me.
Karen Thomson (21:20):
Wow.
Sevan Matossian (21:21):
That’s the one that got me out there.
Karen Thomson (21:22):
You’re
Sevan Matossian (21:23):
That’s the one that got me. Joe Wesland. Ask Karin about GB Bone. Who’s GB Bone?
Karen Thomson (21:30):
I love Joe. I don’t know. Joe takes me. Who’s G? Refresh my memory here.
Sevan Matossian (21:37):
Joe Westerland, plumbers and electricians. Now significantly more know more about carpentry than medical professionals know about diet and exercise and health. Totally. Same with mechanics. Same with automobile.
Karen Thomson (21:48):
Totally.
Sevan Matossian (21:49):
It’s crazy. Don’t get me wrong. There are good doctors out there. There are,
Karen Thomson (21:55):
But I
Sevan Matossian (21:55):
Don’t think the majority of them. But I went to Kaiser the other day and the doctor gave me a list of things to do to be healthy. And number one was always cook with canola oil.
Karen Thomson (22:06):
Here’s the thing though, it’s our healthcare system that’s fucked up. Doctors are not allowed to speak the truth. They will be penalized. They will lose their jobs as well. But I’m sure this guy just doesn’t know
Sevan Matossian (22:19):
Karin, he didn’t know what autophagy was. I go, what do you think about autophagy? He goes, I don’t know what that is. I go, what do you think about fasting? He goes, do not fool around with fasting.
Karen Thomson (22:28):
Oh my gosh. Okay. Why did you go there, by the way, just curious.
Sevan Matossian (22:34):
What did I go there for? Had a bump on. I had a bump on my gum, and I just want him to look at it. And he said, so he goes, oh, my boss is here today. He’s a teeth, nose and throat, whatever specialist. So he looked at it too, and they’re like, oh, it’s fine. It’s nothing. And I came home and my mom’s like, you need a third and fourth opinion. You know what I mean?
Karen Thomson (23:02):
Good for her. I love Rose Marie. How is she?
Sevan Matossian (23:05):
I’m like, great. She’s great. She’s great.
Karen Thomson (23:09):
Wait, so is your gum okay? Did you get more opinions?
Sevan Matossian (23:12):
No, I didn’t. It’s fine. It’s fine. It’s totally, but I started flashing back. I started flashing back to when I was chewing tobacco. I didn’t chew tobacco very long for six months. And I was like, fuck. I wonder if I went straight to I have cancer and I’m dying.
Karen Thomson (23:27):
Yeah, I know that feeling. It happens in the middle of the night.
Sevan Matossian (23:30):
Yeah. Girls live in that space. Women live in that space. Totally. Google fuck women up.
Karen Thomson (23:37):
Oh my God. That’s the worst. What is
Sevan Matossian (23:39):
This? I need to have this diagnosed.
(23:44):
Hey, I want to go back in time to when you first came to CrossFit, and I want to tell you in three sentences what I remember, and then you kind of add to it if you want. Greg had this pet project that was very serious, and he started a whole new department in the company about it, and it was called CrossFit Health. And very quickly it turned into exposing the ills of modern medicine, meaning the things that medicine was doing that were actually hurting people or the corruptness in it. And quickly, I saw in your interview with Greg, everywhere he looked, he found it. It wasn’t like he had to search for it. It was like every rock you looked up, there was fucking corruption, everything. And you were, I think, the first and only director of that program. Basically you came on and that became your program.
(24:47):
And then when Greg sold the company, because of the title, I don’t blame people for misunderstanding because of the title. When the company was bought, the people who bought the company thought CrossFit Health meant had nothing to do with the ills of modern medicine. It was about selling shit. It was about the healthcare space, like, Hey, let’s bring doctors into the gyms and let’s make sure people can get easy prescriptions at their gym. It became kind of the opposite of what Greg was trying to push, is the way I took it. Greg was trying to bring doctors in to educate them about CrossFit, and then when the company was sold, it became, Hey, let’s let doctors educate CrossFitters. The script got flipped.
Karen Thomson (25:29):
Yeah, it did.
Sevan Matossian (25:32):
Can you go back? How did you first meet Greg? Can you tell me that?
Karen Thomson (25:36):
Yeah. I don’t know if you were there. I think Jimmy was there. I was doing a talk on sugar addiction at a conference in San Diego, actually with Gary TAs and all that whole crew. And I did my talk and I left the stage and I went to the song guy at the back to give my mic back, and this guy stopped me and he was like, Hey, I loved your talk. And I was like, oh, thank you so much. And I was like, what’s your name? And he said, my name’s Greg. And I was like, oh, okay. What do you do? And he said to me, I’m the founder of CrossFit. And I was like, whatever. CrossFit doesn’t have a founder. I was doing CrossFit in South Africa at that time. Oh shit. We didn’t What? Yeah, in my son’s school at a place called CrossFit py.
(26:22):
So I would drop the boys at school and then walk across the parking lot to this little CrossFit box school, CrossFit mp. It was fricking amazing. But we didn’t have, wherever the games were screamed, we didn’t have access to those TV networks. I had no idea CrossFit had a founder. I thought CrossFit was a sport, football and cricket. I never questioned where came from. I just did it because I loved it and I was so effective. And the community was so great. And so I’ve been doing CrossFit. We didn’t have access to the games or anything. I didn’t know it existed. I don’t think I was on Instagram much at all during that time. I had small kids. And so when Greg came up to me at this conference and told me that he was at the founder of Crossland, I was like, yeah, whatever. And also because my grandfather had done the first heart transplant, I was so used to people bullshitting being, oh yeah, I was on the first heart transplant. I was like, I never believe anything anyone says until they prove it to me. You
Sevan Matossian (27:16):
Told him that he must have flipped?
Karen Thomson (27:18):
No, I didn’t. I just kept quiet. I just was like, oh, okay. And so I texted my brother, I was like, Hey, there’s this guy. He says his name’s Greg Glassman and that he’s the founder of CrossFit. Is that true? And Tiana came back to me meeting, he was like, yes, absolutely. Please get his autograph. I am obsessed with him. Ti had introduced me to CrossFit. He’d been living in London and was obsessed. So anyway, so Greg and I became friends and we hung out, and then I invited him to South Africa to do a conference there with Prof Oaks, and I was moving to the US anyway, we wanted to get our kids out of South Africa. It had become so dangerous and there really wasn’t much opportunity for two little boys there
Sevan Matossian (28:03):
We did you introduce Greg to Tim Nos. He had never met Tim Nos until you introduced
Karen Thomson (28:06):
Him. I’d never met Tim Nos. He said Tim Noss never really responded to him. And so I think Greg was so grateful for the opportunity to meet Prof and then to speak with him. And
Sevan Matossian (28:20):
Now they’re good friends. Now they’re close friends now. They’re great
Karen Thomson (28:23):
Now. Yeah. Prof Noss is so grateful to Greg. I mean, prof, no’s CrossFit journey is phenomenal. This man I interviewed him for by affairs, and once again, he just mentioned how CrossFit’s changed his life. His trainer is one of the most inspirational people in his life, and his body’s different. His whole family’s during CrossFit, and this is a man who’s in his late seventies who takes his shirt off during workouts. He’s super conservative, but he’s blasting out and living this free, wonderful existence. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (28:57):
This is a powerhouse of a man. He’s very, very close to Karin. So Karin just throws his name around as if it’s just like a dear friend. It is a dear friend to Karin, but if you haven’t read anything by Professor Noakes, you should at least go to his wiki page and learn who he is and his contribution to sports medicine. Okay, cool. Okay, so that’s how you met him. And then you stayed in, how long before you worked for CrossFit after you met Greg, and how did that happen? CrossFit Health didn’t exist when he met you, right?
Karen Thomson (29:30):
No, no, no, no. It was just a concept. So then I moved to the us, moved to Palm Springs, we were going to set up this obesity center here. And then as I arrived here, Greg called me up and he was like, Hey, I really want you to come work with me and set up this new division or whatever called CrossFit Health. And I was like, okay, yeah, that sounds amazing. There’s nothing I want to do more than be part of this big mission that you’re obviously so passionate about. And the stuff that Greg had been doing was so impressive. The N S C A.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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