From The Vault: Darin Olien On Fatal Conveniences

33:05And so it is absolutely reversed. So we think this is the internal fatal convenience of regulation. That in and of itself is a fatal convenience of how this is happening. It's a twilight zone of an experiment as opposed to shouldn't it be proven safe before we can blast it out to our children and put this very easy wipeable baby bib on our beautiful child when that easy wipeable baby bib is full of PFAS because it's a non-sticking, easy to wipe off. And just for context for everybody, because they should go back and listen to those other podcasts that you've mentioned. It is a grandson of Teflon, right?

34:02It's this fluorine reaction, chemical reaction that goes on and it shows up just to give a couple examples. Every time you see something saying like a wrinkle-free, run the other way. when that mascara doesn't come off, don't use it. All of these things and packaging, not that you and I partake in fast food, but that the food doesn't stick to the wrappers, PFAS. Yeah, that was the fast food wrapper one was one I didn't know. Explain that one. Yeah, so I mean, they use this, Again, they're taking what is thankfully, how many years later being banned in the coding of pans, which is the kind of the origin story of Teflon.

34:55Yeah, we all know as children of the seventies, we all remember that, the nonstick pans and all of that, that, you know, finally were banned. But they're still then they're like, well, okay, well, let's just use it in these other areas where we don't have to, no one knows about them. no one needs to talk about them. So Gore-Tex, right? So rain resistant, stain resistant carpets, food packaging. So all of these slippery kind of surfaces, they're all derivatives of this known probable, as they say, carcinogen and endocrine disruptor. So just as a context, almost everyone has it in their blood and they're doing.

35:43And also to understand that the numbers are staggering. There's 9 ,000 different forms of PFAS in our environment, 9 ,000, right? So we're getting hit unknowingly and we're not voting for that. So I go back to, okay, let's become aware of this stuff. so that we can make another choice. And that's really where all of this comes from. Like Rich, just to be straight up, I did not wanna write, I didn't wanna have to write a book like this. But when you realize the regulation bodies aren't regulating, they're just reacting to that cascade that happens that then the government has to step in but the Toxic Substance Control Act.

36:41So think about it. The Toxic Control Substance Act was initiated because of PFAS to then give permission for the regulatory bodies to then regulate. You're like, what? You didn't, what? Like everything I'm reading this, all of this stuff and it's everything's the opposite. Like you said, and this is where people going, I don't get it. So if I go into a store and if I don't know which product to choose that doesn't have these things in, you're getting exposed to not only PFOS, but BPA, BPH, PCBs, DDTs, heavy metals. And the next question is, how is that possible? And the first answer I would say, I don't know.

37:37Today's episode is brought to you by Broca. You know what's funny? We don't often think of eyewear as performance gear until it starts to get in the way. And if you're like me, somebody who has contended with eyesight impairment my entire life, it's a very real thing without a real solution for athletes. I cannot tell you how many times I've been mid-run, constantly shoving my glasses back up my nose, tripping on roots and rocks because I couldn't see them or my glasses had fogged up or what about out on the bike where the treachery is obviously far more intense? Well, this is why Roca has been a godsend for me, approaching prescription eyewear from a performance perspective first, but not at the cost of fashion, I should say, helping not only people like me, but all kinds of athletes, including Tour de France cyclists and Ironman champions with everyday frames designed for movement.

38:33Their secret is their proprietary Gecko technology, patented nose and temple pads that grip even more securely when you sweat. No slipping, no distractions, and they're insanely lightweight. Most frames weigh less than a pencil, super light, even with prescription lenses. Beyond the function, the craftsmanship is next level. Razor-sharp optics, durable construction, and a design that actually is beautiful and keeps up with you. So put them on, feel the difference, and wear without limits. unlock 20 % off your order with the code richroll at roka.com. That's R-O-K-A.com.

39:16Yeah, that was my obvious next question. Given that there are good faith actors out there trying to influence the landscape. We mentioned the environmental working group, like they do great work. People like Paul Hawken, yourself. they're out there trying to educate the public, but this seems to be really locked in. Like, what is it about our system that is so resistant to protecting the public when it comes to this kind of stuff? I mean, dude, I mean, the only place I can go is we've created a false God, right? And that false God is this prophet over the health and safety, like it's reversed.

40:03So, you know, let's just put all this stuff out. And if it's a problem, we'll deal with all of this later, you know, and so I don't understand it. I don't know why it is, but that whole thing is reversed. But, you know, I always go to the optimism of all of this stuff. The optimism is having these conversations so that you and I can amplify the message of regular people realizing that this is what it is. There is a huge amount of chemical exposure. On average, an average woman every day is getting hit with over a hundred different chemicals, all of which are some sort of form of endocrine disrupts and carcinogenic, ammonium salts to the breast tissue from deodorants.

40:53It just goes on and on and on. So this is in order for us to change, we need to face it. We need to go, okay, this is realism 101. What's happening? This is what's happening. This is why I had to hire 25 people and fact checkers and like pay them and like work my ass off to get through all of this stuff so that we can face this honestly. and then the optimism comes by the 8 billion people we have. We have the numbers. So as we wake up, as we then go, oh, okay, well, I'm not saying don't use cell phones, don't wash your hair, maybe do a little less of them, right? That we can change from not this to this, right?

41:47We have better solutions. Obviously a third of the book is littered with solutions for these things. So that's the hope, right? And I use this example, Rich, of like, you know, you and I spent a lot of time together and we know that in order to have real good relationships, you got to face not only yourself with radical honesty, you got to face people and people in your life with radical honesty and have these very healthy, but direct, truthful conversations. This is the same thing, right? I wish this wasn't the case. I wish all these chemicals weren't blasting you and me and our children with all of this stuff, but it is what we were born into.

42:40So I'm not okay with it. I saw my dad suffer firsthand and I just wanna face it honestly to then uplift, support, and create the waves of continued change so that we can celebrate the people putting lavender in as opposed to a trade secret, endocrine disrupting, carcinogenic property of a formula that they weirdly don't have to disclose because they just call it a trade secret. it like let's not reward that let's let's reward the people the the the companies that are trying to do the right thing it's better for you it's better for the people around you and in the case of colognes and perfume uh and it's ultimately better for the environment that's where i love which became very clear to me in the writing of this thing that well we are an ecosystem right so if these chemicals are severely affecting my ecosystem maybe it's changing my microbiome on my skin affecting the sebum production because i've put some sort of weird ass lotion on my body all of these things how they are created what they are from in the environmental side of things where the production side of things are also an equally destroying parts of the environment so as it hurts you it hurts the environment so you want to be an eco warrior clean this stuff up in your in yourself clean up all of these these exposures and it's not about trying to be perfect.

44:31It's just trying to make one better choice every time because that's the journey of life anyway. Yeah, sure. I love the idea of radical honesty and kind of emerging out of this state of denial. There's a sort of blissful ignorance about how we make our consumer choices, right? We've talked a lot about factory farming and the ag gag laws. It's like there's a lot of money to erect barriers to prevent the level of transparency that would connect the consumer with how our food is actually made because it's important. And if people knew, maybe they would think twice, right? So there's a lot of interest in maintaining the status quo and preventing any level of radical honesty because people like things that are convenient and they like things that are easily accessible and cheap.

45:21And that's what we have right now and just go to the mall and knock yourself out, right? And to have this conversation is to tell people like, hold on a second, you might wanna know that all these other things are happening. Some people are gonna be very resistant because to know that requires them to then have to consider their choices. And that's uncomfortable. That is like, you're asking a lot of somebody to do that. And yet here we are, in the situation we're in with global climate change and all of that, like there's never been a more urgent or better time nor a more receptive global audience to these ideas.

46:05So yes, this conversation is overdue and we're dealing with a capitalist system that's very entrenched in a certain level of status quo. They like it the way that it is. They don't want people to know that the jeans that they're wearing have a bazillion downstream negative implications, not just for the humans that are wearing them, but for the workers that are manufacturing them and for everything that ends up in the water table as a result of the dyes and the runoffs and the microplastics, et cetera. It's quite shocking to hear all of that. It is a matrix situation and it's a lot. It's overload.

46:42If you sat down and read this book from beginning to end, your head would explode, right? So like, how do you even begin? I mean, I guess before we go any further, maybe like give me your definition of what a fatal convenience is. We're like 40 minutes in and we haven't even like defined what we're talking about here, but I think people get it, but go ahead. Yeah, well, a fatal convenience is you're doing something. I can easily grab this water and drink it. It's convenient. to many places around the world can turn on, don't have access to clean water. So that's a convenience. The fatal side of it comes in.

47:25Here's that nasty PFOS that shows up again. Here's the nitrates that come by the runoff of the glyphosates and the fertilizers and everything else. The microplastics are now showing up in the waterways. So it's things that you're doing, living your modern day life and not realizing have kind of a punch to your system, your life that you're not realizing. You have people having more and more depressive disorders, more and more endometriosis for women, like the list cancers, all of these things, cardiovascular linked to some of these perfumes and things like that. So we can naively move forward, but we are, our biology, our chemistry, our being is being affected by these things every day, all day.

48:26And so to pretend, sure, it's shocking to people. And I think the biggest thing is it starts to rewrite your idea of reality. because if you start to really grok what we said earlier about, wait, what? That they can just put this stuff out on the market and aren't really responsible unless there's an overwhelming response, then we'll step in. That has to, many people don't get that. Many people in the world don't realize that this is an experiment and they're putting 60 to 80 ,000 chemicals in our environment every year. And of that, only about 1500 are tested and just individually tested. None, zero, zilch are tested as they interact with themselves or us.

49:29So it's an impossibility for, in some cases, to find one smoking gun, right? And another instance to really get your head around all of this exposure. And then so you go, wow, not all products, most of which in the personal care space and beauty space and clothing actually have very dangerous consequences. And it's not that you're putting on the pair of blue jeans and it's killing you tomorrow. It's this accumulative body burden, right? So the rebuttal argument to all of these chemicals and all of these products that billions of people are using every single day is that they are being delivered in such micro doses as to be neutral and not harmful.

50:24Like they're benign, they're inert because it's so tiny. So the response to that is twofold. On the one hand, it's what you just stated, this idea of allostatic load, like over the course of your lifetime. Yeah, but yeah, like in this one laundry detergent or in this bar of soap or whatever, it's so microscopic, you don't have to worry about it. But you wash your hair, you breathe soap, you do it and then you eat the cheeseburger for lunch and then you have the monster energy drink and then you put on your blue jeans, like you're basically like just constantly, you know, impulsing your body through hundreds, if not thousands of different chemical inputs every single day.

51:09So there's that load over time because a lot of these chemicals have a short half-life compared to the forever chemicals, the PFASs, right? So there's a conversation around that. And then second to that is, is, and I found this very interesting. I learned a lot about this in your book is it ignores the infinite complexity and interplay of all of these different chemicals interacting with each other, which makes it impossible to study or evaluate because you don't know what the chemical from your monster energy drink is going, what that is gonna do when it interacts with, you know, the glyphosate that found its way into your system because of the factory farms, whatever that you ate.

51:55Yeah, it is. And that's where it gets just completely crazy, right? And so you talk about these half-lives. So you've got like things like BPA and phthalates, which have sometimes just a few hours or maybe a day or so. And then that's where, oh, it's fine, right? It's fine. There was some studies on it, but that's not the real world. When you actually look at the studies showing real world, like one of the shockers was oxybenzoin, which is in most of the sunscreens. Like, yeah, they studied it, like, oh, small enough doses, but how it's applied and what shows up in the blood was somewhere between 500 times more.

52:46so it's in the real world is massively different so these people if they do do studies they it's so limited and not realistic and like i said none of them are the interaction so okay you woke up you went in a shower it wasn't filtered okay so you've got microplastics pfos you know volatile organic compounds, VOCs, all while you're showering, right? You're using a body wash, you're using a shampoo, you're using a conditioner, all of that, parabens, phthalates, fragrances, right? Then you're getting out of the shower and you're putting on a lotion, right? Right, well, first of all, you're drying off with a towel that is what, you know, like has all these dyes on it.

53:32Right, so that's full, again, you can literally - You better wait for five minutes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly, and then maybe had a glass of water that you didn't filter or whatever it is. And then, yeah, so now you're, so exposure, exposure, exposure, exposure, then you're putting on your mascara and your makeup and your, God forbid you ever use regular perfume after reading this book again. There's great, again, there's amazing choices, essential oils and things that are - And a frankincense and myrrh. Like gonna get like biblical. Yeah, I mean, like, I mean, come on, Rose and Lavender.

54:15And like, there's just a great companies that, and it's also gifting to other people around you. So the point is that, okay, some of those half-lifes of the parabens and the phthalates and maybe even the fragrances are a few hours, but you're also reinfecting yourself all throughout the day, right? And then you're putting on your deodorants and the ammonium salts are interacting and proven through carcinogenic activity of binding to the and clogging up the pores and creating all kinds of xeno activity. So all of these things, it's that, again, that overall body burden, the accumulation. and that's where just looking at it all, just think of them as stressors.

55:09Stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, stress on a cellular deep level. And I think the job is, the intention is to slowly kind of from the inside out, opening your mouth, extremely vulnerable to the world. So choose wise. you know what are you drinking what is it interacting with what are you eating what is it interacting with so what do you you know the water the you know cans aluminum chelating heavy metals what's in my food all of that stuff and then work your way out from there okay what's going on my skin because there's a lot of transdermal activity of these chemicals and they're going into your skin I just did it wasn't even the book I just did a fatal convenience because I do these on my podcast all the time.

55:59I just did one on the shaving strips. Scared the shit out of me. And I'm like, I was like, I suspect something with these. And again, there was monoethylenes in there, there's which are endocrine disrupting. There's other ammonium salts in there. Think about it. Like the glue for stripping hair off your face or your legs or whatever. Oh my God. Yeah, yeah. All of that stuff. So shaving with the strip. So that's what I mean, the strip on that lubricating. Oh, on the actual, I see what you're saying. Yeah, so on the razor itself. What a convenience, no shave burns, blah, blah, blah. But then again, you're shaving and you're also micro cutting.

56:47So all those chemicals are basically just going right into your bloodstream. So yeah, I would have never thought of that. Yeah, and this is what I mean. like the apathy because we're born into this, right? And it's all around us. The apathy that we have come accustomed to that we stopped thinking my whole - But that burden shouldn't be on us. Like it's not that we're apathetic. Like, are we supposed to go, I wonder if that strip on my thing is gonna harm me? Like we shouldn't have to go down the rabbit hole that you went down to figure out whether that's safe or not. I know, that's what I mean.

57:21I wish I never had to write this book. I do you know I have a busy life I've got a lot to do you know I took two weekends off in two years because every weekend it was less distracting and I spent just a huge amount of time on the every day all day Saturday Sunday man I have a lot to do but it's like when you read when you learn the matrix just keeps going man and it just like and you know those things where it's like with awareness and knowledge become you know you have greater responsibility as a result um and being that it was very close to home watching my father suffer Or my whole, like, it's a little, I see life in fatal conveniences now.

58:24You know, the greatest kind of inspiration for learning about fatal conveniences is leaving my environment. Yeah, where you control every minute detail. And I just go out going, oh my God, people still use that. Like I went home, I saw my mom still using Vaseline on her face, right? That's just straight up petroleum wiping on her face for the last 50 years, right? And so I see this stuff happening and I can't help myself, but to go up, you know, I'm always texting my team like, okay, this one's next for the fatal convenience. This one's next. And, you know, that's the job at this point. It's just that the book is a conversation starter about a lot of things.

59:14That could have been a volume series of 20, all based in fatal conveniences. So my hope is that people can just open it up. Obviously, I want them to read it all the way through to get the context of everything because we dedicated certain parts of the book, certainly PFAS, EMFs. You're setting things up going, okay, this is what's have personal care. all of these things you're setting up so that people have a good understanding of what you're then gonna give them specific examples to so that they can go, oh my God, here it is again. Yeah, before you go and buy a mattress or buy bed sheets or laundry detergent, maybe just find the pages in the book and refer to that first.

1:00:01Because a lot of the stuff, we sort of know, like, you know, whether we know processed foods, you know, factory farming, these things are, you know, things that we should avoid. There's some of the, you know, kind of more obvious stuff, but there's a lot of things in here that are non-obvious. Like I think mattresses is, you know, would be in that category or, you know, a discussion around off-gassing or, you know, some of the really what we think are just completely mundane products that we use to wash our hands or our clothes. Totally, yeah. And again, it's this invisible world that I'm trying to make more visible.

1:00:39On top of that, you talked about the oneness of our own personal ecosystems and the greater ecosystem of the planet. There's of course, the sort of chemical inputs of these products, whether they're food, clothing, personal care, cleaning products, et cetera, on our bodies, in our bodies, what that is doing to us. But then of course, as you kind of, the nesting egg expands outward, you're like, well, the packaging that it's coming in, or even if the packaging doesn't seem particularly malevolent, what's the liner inside the paper packaging? What does that look like? And where did that come from?

1:01:22And how was that made? And is that coming into contact with me? And then there's the manufacturing process itself. Like, how are these things being made? what are the inputs that are creating this? What is the carbon footprint of all of those inputs aggregated? And what is the runoff? Like what's happening to our water table? Where are all the chemicals ending up on the planet? Like how are we processing the waste, et cetera? We know this with, for example, pig farming and all the refuse and how that gets turned into fertilizer and gets sprayed into the air and people have respiratory diseases and all the like, but it's really not that different with any number of these other industries, particularly clothing, fast fashion.

1:02:11And we're really asleep at the wheel when it comes to that. That was a sleeper for me. When I really started looking at, oh my God, that's a big problem. Like it's the number two biggest polluter on the planet. You don't kind of, you can't get your head around because it's easy to demonize a water bottle because it's floating out in the river and the ocean. And then you go, okay, you can get your head around. It's gonna break down and the microplastics. Well, most of the clothes are woven with petroleum and plastics and plasticizers and formaldehydes and things like that. And that tightly formed shirt and t-shirt that you love so much, the elastic jeans.

1:02:53Yeah, anything that like stretches a little bit. Yeah. Big problem. And people are, you know, women are gonna be like, yeah, that Lycra, not a good thing, right? So that Lycra is a petroleum-based endocrine disrupting. And now you're sweating in it, you're using it. It's close to your private parts. These things, that's constant inoculation of these chemicals. And you think like one of great example is the Iconics, which has a t-shirt and blue jeans. and some of the shock came by the not only the the thousands of liters of water there's one that i couldn't verify but i'm just going to throw it out there for shock value but i was trying to verify it it was one report said that it was about two twenty five hundred liters of water from input of growing the cotton to creating one t-shirt.

1:03:59Now I dug into that a little more. It's hundreds of leaders without a doubt per t-shirt, but you have. 8 ,000, you heard that right, 8 ,000 chemicals that are there to create a t-shirt. 8 ,000 different chemicals. So you've got the chemicals and glyphosate, astrazine, huge spraying, one of the biggest polluters and uses of those pesticides on your non-organic clothing t-shirt, right? So now you're starting already there. And then they're blasting, you know, before they write, they blast now. Now it's a technique. Now they blast with more right before picking. They blast with more. And then that goes to the stripping and the spinning and all of that stuff.

1:05:07So those 8 ,000 chemicals are now what makes that T-shirt. Not to mention if you have any print on that, it's full of these things called azodyes that are not only volatile organic compounds connected to, cancer and things like that. So that's a t-shirt, man. That's fucked up. But what do you say to the person who's like, I hear you, man, but aren't you a little bit chicken little here? I've been wearing t-shirts for 50 years. Like, I feel pretty good. I'm fine. I don't have cancer. Like, what do you say to that person? Well, that's the thing. You're an alarmist. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's a great question.

1:05:47Like I'm not saying that t-shirt, put that t-shirt on today. I'm not saying it kills you tomorrow. I'm saying that t-shirt, be aware of how it was created. All of the things that are definitely in that shirt. And it's again, this growing body burden of all of this stuff. Now it's connected to the destruction of the environment. We can prove that upside down and sideways. It's more of that chemical burden that's being put on you. So I say not even getting into the horrible conditions of fast fashion, right? Right, it's a human rights issue as well. Human rights issue, the slavery that basically happens in order for you to get that cheap t-shirt.

1:06:42what i would like to say is that if you can resist getting insecure that you don't have enough clothes and maybe double down on you know one new t-shirt every year and if you can use organic and not sprayed in formaldehydes and phthalates and things like that anything so is that shampoo killing you? Is that lotion killing you tomorrow? No, but it's setting the stage for you to wake up one day and really have an issue. And the buildup of these chemicals, we are starting to see it. We see it in these numbers. So we see it in the plummeting of testosterone. We're seeing it in, like I said, the reproductive issues of women, infertilities of men, the motility, the activity of sperm is plummeting.

1:07:45Dr. Leo Trisande has a great book on endocrine disruptor. I think it's called Sicker, Fatter, Poorer. He dives deep. I've had him on my podcast. He dives deep and the endocrine disruption has got a lot of great numbers on that. But we're sprinting towards our own demise. Like literally the most primal aspect of us as humans to keep life moving, we are neutering ourselves with all of these things, right? It has been shown even with children in diapers having the plastic throwaway diapers that those kids have higher amounts of phthalates and endocrine disrupting and they don't have a choice. So my whole thing is then, why don't we go back to get those parents organic, reusable, washable diapers and just eliminate part of that exposure.

1:08:43Yeah, the diapers thing was a trip. I mean, when you imagine a newborn, a pristine newborn, and then you're immediately placing on this brand new human skin, a product that I think you said they found glyphosate in disposable diapers, formaldehyde, DBP, DEHP, hormone disruptors, like all this, like it's insane. Yeah. And that's where it's, yeah. And like, what that's going on in the world? That can be sold. And listen, if I had a wand and I could let every mama bear who loves their kids, obviously, and has instinct to pull cars off their kids, right? Want to protect, want their kids to thrive, want them to be healthy.

1:09:39And then you go, they didn't know. They weren't informed at all about these convenience that keep being sold to them. Oh, it's easier. It's convenient. It's da-da-da-da-da. pampers this and da da da da so if they knew that so let's flip on the switch of mama bears to realize that the exposures that are coming not only the food the the the talc that got alarmed uh the formula formula the heavy metals the all of these things the exposure and like Like, again, we go to how is this possible? I don't know, man. I don't know. But you and I have to continue to talk about it. And I hope that people can just continue to learn and expand and become their regulatory body of their body.

1:10:40That's what it comes down to. Yeah, you can't outsource these decisions to governmental bodies that you're relying upon for solid information. Like that's really, you know, the kind of drum that you're banging throughout this book. Like you gotta shoulder that responsibility for yourself. This is very much a message around, you know, the grassroots movement and the power of community, the power of the individual to not just have these conversations, to make better choices and to, you know, cultivate community around this so that change can come from the bottom up. we can't sit around and just wait for Washington to deal with it.

1:11:17I had Senator Cory Booker on the podcast recently. And one of the things that he says all the time is, change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington, right? Like Washington responds to these sorts of movements. So that's an added kind of responsibility to shoulder as a conscious citizen. Totally. Right? And if enough people get together and make their voices heard, there will be a response on Capitol Hill, but to sit on our hands and just wait for that to happen, it's not gonna happen. And when you kind of, when your eyes are open and you look around and you realize we can't even solve the real low hanging fruit problems, like why do we have single use plastics?

1:12:04Like why is water allowed to be in a plastic bottle anymore? Like it should be, that should be against the law. Like I think most people would agree on that. These are not partisan issues by any stretch of the imagination. And yet, we'll get all excited about straws for a minute, or we get distracted by the wrong thing when we have these real big problems with, it's not like we don't have solutions to these problems. That's the other thing too. And your very robust appendix and all the resources make clear, Like, you know, this doesn't, you don't have to be like Darren and like live in the woods and, you know, in a yurt or whatever.

1:12:44Like you can still, you don't have to be a Luddite. Like you can live in the world and you don't have to be really all that convenienced at all. You can just make some better choices. Yeah, and that's where I'm optimistic. Number one, I want people to live a freaking great life. I want them to, I mean, ultimately the genesis of super life, the genesis of this is, hey man, like let's be aware so that you can actually live a dream that you wanna have and be in this world. And that's really where it comes from. And so we just have to face some of this stuff, be our own advocacy and flip on that switch of common sense again, that I guess, you know, maybe that's jumping a step because we just first need to become aware of the system that's not in our best interest.

1:13:35But I am optimistic every week. And I'm not even being dramatic. Every week I'm talking to an organization, a company that's doing something better, right? If it's, we talked a little bit before we started about like the Michael Works company and the mycelium leather stuff. And that, you know, people didn't realize like leather has PFAS on it, right? Because it does, you know, that's slippery stuff too. So it's like all of these things are so affected, but there's great people doing great things. And even in great companies, they're trying to do good things. No, there's tons of really cool innovation.

1:14:15So I would agree with you on that front.

1:14:24Throughout my journey, I've learned that transformation isn't about age. It's about perspective. It's about having the courage to question the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we're capable of or not, and the possibilities for our lives that lie ahead. And the guy who really gets this is my friend Chip Conley. I adore Chip. He's been on the show a bunch. And he's got this great new book out, hot off the press, called The Midlife Manifesto, which explores quite powerfully this very idea that frames this multi-decade period of life, midlife, not as a predetermined narrative of aging, not as settling down, but instead as this canvas of unprecedented potential, a time to paint it with adventure, with purpose and profound reinvention.

1:15:13But it's not just philosophical. It's an actionable roadmap with 24 propositions that challenge everything you thought you knew about this stage of life. So for anyone feeling that subtle but powerful pull towards something more meaningful, more authentic, I think this book is for you. And the best part, check this out. You can get your copy free. All you gotta do is cover the shipping. Who does that? That is insane. He's literally gifting you this incredible book. Head on over to meawisdom.com slash manifesto to check it out and claim your copy today. It's an amazing deal, free, can't do better than that.

1:15:47That's meawisdom.com slash manifesto.

1:15:57I think an added ripple of complexity to all of this that began as something well-intentioned, but now has become almost a smoke screen is the whole labeling thing, right? Like now there's all these labels on all these products and we don't really know, like, is this, what does this mean? Like, is this mean anything or was this bought and paid for? Like, I don't know which labels are important, which ones are just greenwashing. So maybe we can have just a conversation, initially just broadly about what is greenwashing, what is the extent of greenwashing and how can we as conscious consumers who do wanna make the right choice, how do we kind of interface with all the marketing and stuff that's on the packaging of the products that we're looking to buy?

1:16:48Yeah, it's a good one. I mean, greenwashing only came about because of the lexicon that's moving towards, hey man, I wanna have a better choice. A normal person, there was a great study, a normal person doesn't actually wanna drink out of a water bottle of plastic. They just don't have another choice. If you go on an airline, you're dealing with it. So the lexicon of the people, the population of people do have this awareness. They just don't have many choices. So what happens is these big organizations, doesn't even have to be big, take this kind of atmosphere and they start labeling things that are misleading and misleading without the proper backing of what they're actually saying, or they're saying natural, it's a classic one, that has no backing of what that means.

1:17:48It's plus - All natural. Yeah. Or they just put it in a green, they just, the packaging is green. Beautiful picture. Just put it, yeah. Like you have a couple different varieties of the same product. One is green. I'm just gonna take that, that one's probably better. I'm gonna get that one. Yeah, it's green. It's got a great picture and it says, this is a natural scent. Well, having 15 years, 20 years in the supplement world, I knew that there was a problem even then in the flavoring world. This is natural flavor, but then the FDA had all these loopholes to have other flow agents and things in there.

1:18:30So it's the same that exists in these kind of other areas and fragrances in the sense that, okay, you have natural scent in this example, but then you have trade secrets that could have hundreds of chemicals that are not on any label and the the phraseology you're using is just misleading the people towards this all you did is not change any formula you didn't make it better you didn't make it safe you didn't prove that it's safe you didn't prove that it was actually naturally safe but you just put a beautiful picture on it you called it something and now you're taking the the the the movement that actually does want to make that innately we do want to make good choices we don't knowingly want to hurt our kid by making a a choice of a scented candle that's it got vocs all over in it but they're calling it natural scent you know so all of these things they're taking advantage of an impossible group, large population of people that are not doing the incredible research that it would take to unpack what that actually means in that natural sense.

1:19:51And that's not okay. It's not okay at all. It would be benign if these things were benign, but they're not benign. They are hijacking our systems. They are affecting us neurologically, carcinogenic, endocrine disrupting, testicular cancers, endometriosis. The list continues and it grows with this mounting kind of loop. So the greenwashing is knowingly, and this is where it comes in. The companies are knowingly misleading people. Yeah, that's what makes it so malevolent, right? I mean, they're leveraging language and loopholes to delude the consumer into this sense that they're making a good choice for themselves when in fact it's business as usual.

1:20:48And we see this in the animal food industry with words or phrases like cage-free or free range and all of that. And it makes you think, oh, cage-free, yeah, of course. But you don't actually know what that means and the real language that polices, what's acceptable and what's not, I think would be shocking to a lot of people. And it just drives a lot of apathy is the wrong word, but I think it lulls people into a sense that they are participating in the solution when in fact they're not. And that's what makes it particularly dark, I think. And I don't know if evil is the right word, but like, not great, right?

1:21:29And so for the person who, but there are some labels that are good, right? Like if it's EWG, whatever certified, so like if somebody is going to the store and they're like, okay, now there's like 10 different little certifications on every product that is even in the range of being like, oh, this is like a natural, organic, conscious, non-GMO, whatever. What are the labels that are actually legit that people should look for? And what are the ones that are bullshit and misleading? Well, some of the ones that are misleading is recyclable. So you could put recyclable on a packaging. Like here's the product, it's in a package, recyclable.

1:22:11And you're like, great. Maybe it was a shower curtain. All of it was made out of plastic. What's recyclable? Is it the packaging that's recyclable? Is the rings of the shower curtain recyclable? Is the vinyl weird thing that you're putting, is that recyclable? You don't know. And most of it probably isn't. And then just going off on a tangent for a second on recycling, because you're, again, you're wanting to do it. You separate your things, I am being a good person. I'm recycling, I'm going to the effort. But now new reports even show it's even worse. Only 5 % of whatever you think you're recycling is recycled in any storm.

1:22:58So we failed miserably. So that's like saying, take your little blue bin, dump out 95 % of it. And that 95 % is, and I say this in the book, is there's no, let me say it this way. There's no away. Take my recycling away, go recycle it. There virtually is none. It's not virtually non-existent, only 5%. Right, when you put your refuse in the recycling bin and it comes and it gets picked up by the garbage truck, what is that? Yeah, like a very small fraction of that. 5%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which is really disheartening. So dump out 95 % and stare at it and going, could I maybe be a little better at not consuming so much that is using plastic or whatever kind of garbage it is that we think.

1:24:00And most of it, it's so layered. The sophistication at recycling centers, they can't unravel. Hell, most people don't even know that there's a plastic liner in Starbucks coffee. And I'm not picking on Starbucks, but there's a plastic liner in that, what you think is a cardboard. Oh, they're paper cups? Yeah, they're paper cups. So they say, hey, use a paper cup. It's not. It's plastic liner in it. So you can't recycle it, right? You think that you're throwing it in the cardboard and you can't recycle it because there's no ability for most of the recycling centers to break that apart and to like put it back in the cardboard circulation, put it back in the plastic.

1:24:42So all of these things are infinitely complex. So even saying those words don't mean much. but it's still a greenwashing if you're negligent on what you actually mean, right? So, you know, and there's, I'm not even gonna name the company, but there is, cause it would cause me a lot of problems with people I know. There was one company that's like, hey, yeah, recyclable. And then you gotta eat this thing, this bar, and then you send it back to the company and like, who's gonna do that? Right. Oh, just take the packaging and mail it back to them? Yeah, okay, yeah, right. Okay, now you're gonna, so again, you use that as a marketing spin, but the percentage of people actually doing that is a few percent, right, if at all.

1:25:37So yeah, I forgot the second party question. I mean, the main question, and so what are the labels that are valid and can give us confidence that we are making a good choice? It's a good one. Yeah. I mean, it's a good one. I mean, this came up in Seaspiracy. Do you remember like the labeling on fish and all of that and how corrupt it was. And it's basically a pay to play thing. Yeah, yeah. So like the dolphin free was definitely not at all, basically. Dolphin safe. Yeah, dolphin safe tuna, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. So yeah, you know,

1:26:16starting from like maybe food from a low residue pesticide perspective, you can go all the way back to pick number nine on the little sticker on whole food, four and three is indicating pesticides and GMOs and stuff like that. So if there's no sign, you can look at the little sticker. The stickers that are on the produce. So you don't wanna pick nine. So that's not even, that's just a part of the, they're categorizing for the grocery store. So you can hack your way and to know at least what that is. The Environmental Working Group has a great list of the dirty dozen. If you don't have access or can't afford organic, then you wanna wash the exposed vegetables and fruit, like things like pears, strawberries, peaches, cucumbers, like those kinds of things you wanna wash really well.

1:27:16and you can eliminate a lot of the residues that way, but you don't wanna just eat those straight away. Yeah, and then of course, organic. Like you want to choose that. I would still wash those foods. And then you all go all, if you wanna keep going, farmer's markets, know your farmer, how are you growing it? Ask them questions, get to know them and then grow your own food. Let's bring back that piece because that could help a variety of things. Food security clearly could help out a lot. And we have in the late 1800s, 90 % of Americans were using their land as their food. And now 2 % of the farmers, of the people in the country are making all of our food.

1:28:24So that's a whole rabbit hole of the agricultural side. So get to know your food, grow as much as you can. But unlike for personal care products or cleaning products, is there any kind of responsible labeling going on in other kind of consumer product sectors? Um, yeah, I mean, you, you can, I mean, the, the best thing is to first indication is what kind of packaging they're using. Cause you can also see the, the, the, the, the, the, kind of the scope of what the company is trying to do. Um, if they're just standard plastic, then okay. Um, but I would turn it over, you know, it's that whole thing of like, if you can understand what you're especially like personal care and lotions and things like that if they don't have you know phthalates well you don't know they have phthalates but if they're in plastic containers they probably have phthalates in because the phthalates are the plasticizers that make plastic malleable right um so so i i think the best thing to do is make Make sure when they're, if they're saying parfum or fragrance and they're not proudly disclosing what that is for them.

1:29:46And it's like, this is lavender, this is rose essential oil. Then I would run like for sure you're gonna be getting a cocktail. So though, and fragrances are something to become aware of because they're almost in every beauty product, personal care. So if a company is proudly saying what their fragrance is, then that's probably a good indicator of a natural kind of rest of the formula. And then you wanna look for whole things that you can pronounce and understand. Yeah, the common sense aspect of it. I was just wondering whether there's like some kind of, you know, cha-ching thing like right on the, oh, I know, okay.

1:30:37But if there's not like, yes. Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. I don't know if they have a symbol. EWG does, they do great work. I was still kind of playing with the idea of doing a marketplace with a kind of verifiable vetting process. I'm actually pretty serious about it. I'm poking around and what that would actually look like. It's massive undertaking, but again, having to create something that you thought was already created by the governments and the regulations and you go, well, okay. So we as the people have to create it. Yeah, I feel like that should be the case in clothing too. Like who's ever thought of putting a label on clothing about how it was, it's like, like we don't even think about that.

1:31:34But if you watch the true cost and, you know, Livia Firth, right? Like leading the charge and trying to, bring us into reality on what's going on there. Like there's a lot of work that could be done that seems easy. And for some reason, it just takes a tremendous amount of effort to like, Like it's a Sisyphean task, right? Of pushing this boulder up the hill. Yeah, because it's a, you know, we're, again, we're given a system having in it upon birth and to now go about it. You know, again, Paul Hawken, he draw down that first book when he really spent the time realizing if you invest in it, man, it's gonna not only pay your bottom line, but it's gonna pay the bottom line of being literally regenerative along the way.

1:32:28So it's in your financial interest to get on board with this. And then his more recent book is just all solutions. Like look at all this stuff that actually already exists right now that we could be doing if we just focused on it a little bit better. And that's why we need just strong, bold people, business owners, entrepreneurial people that there is more and more capital that's being kind of a swell is definitely coming, but we need strong people to continue to open up this lane so that we can celebrate these solutions. I mean, I'm not gonna say what the project is necessarily, but working on a different television show and it's all based in celebrating the solution of some of these things that, again, highlight what is going.

1:33:20because I think that within all of this, even if everyone skipped the book and went to the last third of the book, right? And just went to like, okay, well, what's better product? Just tell me what to do. Tell me what to do, what's there, right? At least again, that's - I like how it all starts with the, each one of the sections though starts with the DIY, like make your own, here's how you make your own, whatever it is. And then, hey, if you don't wanna do that, here's five products that are pretty good. Yeah, like baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, These things are great to clean your vegetables.

1:33:52And it's super, super easy. And again, we've become delusioned to think that we need to buy this special product that the tell a vision told us to adopt. When it's like, clean your house with some white vinegar and some water and put some essential oil in it. Now it's gifting to your life and your family and your health. Yeah, and I think it's important to also point out that to your point at the outset of this conversation that these issues are extremely complex and it's not about good guys and bad guys or corporations being evil. There is a lot of really interesting innovation in the kind of startup space, but there's also some really valid and interesting sustainability programs in the Fortune 500 space.

1:34:49Like Walmart is doing interesting things. I know that you have a relationship with Visa and they're trying to really be a leader in that space. And I was reminded of this episode of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History. And I don't know if this was SponCon or something, but he did an interview. He like spent a day at Procter & Gamble with some scientist who worked for, like on Tide or whatever, their laundry detergent. And he was trying to like revise our assumptions around chemicals in cleaning products being bad by illustrating that this guy had come up with a new formula for laundry detergent that I'm sure had all kinds of chemicals in it.

1:35:36But the big thing in that space is, can you get stains out? can you clean the clothes in cold water? And through his innovation realized that, you know, his formula would reduce people's reliance on having to use hot water to clean their clothes. So even though it has chemicals in it, there is an environmental argument to support the viability of such a product, which speaks to the complexity. And I don't know if this is true or not, but like, you know, that's why it's complicated. Like, yes, you use these natural soaps and all that, but you end up having to use more hot water because they don't fucking actually work, you know, or you have to use twice as much of whatever product because it's just, even though it's not made with all of these things, it just doesn't quite do the job like the fatal convenience does.

1:36:29Yeah, and you pull the string on that. Okay, well, what's the big deal? It's hot water. Well, how did it become hot? like there was a power input to create that hot water. Right, so you're, yeah, like by using hot water, more hot water with your natural soap, you may in fact be unwittingly making the environmental problem worse, not better. Yeah, I mean, I don't know what the amount of hot water, but that is a good example of, it's just like, let's look at this stuff. clearly minimizing chemical exposure, like being transparent. Because overnight if everyone was transparent with what was actually in their products, most of these big companies, they would have to shut that stuff down because it's knowing there's trade secrets and fragrances and things like that they would have to disclose.

1:37:27It would be make Twitter files look like a little school boy, you know? So, you know, this is, again, you are buying products. You are using products in your home, in your car, in your clothing, on your body, on your children, what you're consuming, the water, the things. And you are getting nailed with these chemicals all the time. And it is, I can be absolutely clear that the accumulative body burden is absolutely affecting your body, some more than others. Yeah, I don't question you at all on that front. Can we talk about getting into the complexity of things again? Let's talk about palm oil a little bit.

1:38:22You went deep on palm oil. Palm oil is in lots of things, food products and other products. And there really is no valid argument to support the continued ingestion of this product given what it does to the planet. Yeah, I mean, this is just, it goes back to the superfood hunting side of things a bit when you realize that the massive work that goes into the production chain of stuff And out of sight, out of mind for people when you are destroying rainforests and habitats, the symbol of that orangutan, I don't know if I've ever told you the orangutan story. I don't think so. The cell phone story of my orangutan that stole it.

1:39:24Maybe I'll save it, but - I don't know, now I feel like I need to hear that story. Yeah, so I mean, just to button up palm oil, there's no real benefit to ingesting it. And it is one of those things, unless you literally are fair traded and you have an organization that can validate the fair trade of that said palm oil, that would be the only reason to use the palm oil. But anyway, it's a funny story with our friend, what's his name? The microbiologist. Compton Rom. Compton Rom. I was gonna lightly chastise you for not including ascended health in your syllabus of products. Because he makes amazing shit.

1:40:18I forgot kind of all about it in a sense. His I am beautiful oil is like, I use it every day. I love it. I've got it. And he's got amazing toothpaste. He's got all kinds of, and they're like, his toothpaste is like a probiotic. Like it's not just not bad for you. It's actually benefiting your microbiome by using it. So Compton, sorry you weren't in the book, but I have big props to you right now, Ascended Health. He's the one who originally introduced us. Do you remember that? Yeah, that's right. So he and I were in Cambodia and we were hunting. He came with, cause he was like, I wanna get the microbes of what you're like.

1:40:58I'm gonna get the microbes. You'll get the fruit or the veggie. You're the superfood hunter. He's the microbe hunter. Yeah, yeah. He literally has traveled the world and just he'll like talk for hours about the soil of wherever he visited. He goes, get me. And he was in constant, I was in the Philippines. Get me the soil. No, no, no, no, no. It's always interesting. when you're coming from the customs agent, have you been in contact with soil? I'm like, no. When you fill out the card. No. Livestock. Yeah, livestock and so on. So just a quick story, but it's, so we were in Cambodia looking for a bunch of super foods and the high level minister of agriculture, there was flooding at the time.

1:41:48So he kept setting up meetings, but then had to leave and jump on a helicopter and blah, blah, blah. So he said, hey, just go to my farm. So I'm like, okay. So gave it directions. We go to this farm, this big gate and kind of what seemed to be a dilapidated zoo. And so we're on his farm with all these, you know, mangosteen and moringa and all of these things. and we're looking around and we're like there's literally caged animals here that were saved from zoos from who knows where so compton is he goes i hear him laughing he goes come here and he's there was a an orangutan in a cage and number one i hate all animals in cages i i just it hurts me to my core, but I never saw an orangutan before.

1:42:41So I run over there and no sooner did I pull up my cell phone to take a picture of this guy. This big seven foot wingspan orangutan slapped the cell phone out of my hand. It fell down in between the fence I was behind and the cage and he grabbed and he grabbed it before I could grab it and he pulled it in the cage. And so now I'm going, oh my God, he has my cell phone. And I see him, all of the activity in his eyes and then he was gonna bite it. And so I started making noises. I didn't know what to do. Compton's laughing his ass off the entire time because it happened so fast. And so anyway, I cut to a guy, a little worker that was there went in the cage and he got on the back of this big male orangutan and he was wrestling with it.

1:43:37And the cell phone fell. He took it and just flung it out of the cage. I got it. He ran out of the cage and there was another worker that was still in there. And it was a little tricky for him to get out. He didn't get hurt. And they saved my cell phone and it was stolen by an orangutan in Cambodia. In some kind of weird Cambodian Tiger King situation. I don't know how we got to that. What were we talking about? Palm oil. Right. Orangutans. Yeah. So, I mean, palm oil, no bueno. No bueno. Basically. If there is a controversial section in this book, aside from telling people not to eat meat, you're gonna get some people pushing back on that probably because this is not like a plant-based manifesto.

1:44:29I know you and I know where you stand on nutrition. There probably will be some people who are like totally on board and then they get to that and they're like, whoa, hold on a second. We can table that though, because we've talked through that. Yeah, normal eating of meat, that full of chemicals, you know that growth hormone, antibiotic resistant activity. I actually gave good solutions for people who wanna eat meat in that section. So I swallowed my pride and said, hey, I'm under no delusion that everyone's gonna go plant-based tomorrow. So in that instance, you have a section where I've vetted some companies so you can go and have a better choice.

1:45:15Second to that is the section on electromagnetic radiation. So let's spend a couple of minutes kind of exploring that. This is really the invisible elephant, the truly invisible elephant here. And it's a topic that I admit, I don't know very much about. I know that there's a certain kind of conspiracy minded camp that will go to great lengths to make sure that they are in an environment where there is no EMR or whatever, Faraday tents and all the like. So walk me through like a very basic understanding of what we're talking about here when we're talking about EMRs, EMFs, Wi-Fi, microwaves, the differences in these various forms of radiation that we expose ourselves to, whether it's through x-rays or when we're at the airport going through scanning, what should we truly be concerned about?

1:46:18What is safe? What isn't safe? because I think in addition to there just not being a lot of education around this, there's a lack of understanding. There is a sense like, yeah, I don't, this probably isn't so good, but like this is the way we do things and we're just gonna have to live with it. And then there's, you know, some more kind of radical thoughts around 5G, et cetera. I mean, that's a topic that is radioactive, you know, in its own right to even talk about because it got co-opted during COVID and it made just having any kind of reasonable conversation about it impossible. So, let me just, I'm just gonna throw that radioactive isotope over to you.

1:47:00And you tell me what's what. Well, the first thing is without a doubt, it's a perfect fatal convenience, right? And we absolutely need more studies. Absolutely. There's enough data to show that there's a problem from my perspective. Just brain imaging of a cell phone up to a child's head showing the radiation going all the way through the skull because not only the skull thickness, but the immune system as well. So you're really talking about, you know just i mean this is infinitely complex but you're talking about so ionizing radiation so if there's a spectrum of frequency ionizing radiation is x-rays uh radioactive isotopes uh uranium it will rip your dna apart electrons and you're it will affect you and epidemiologically it will affect you, right?

1:48:12That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about non-ionizing. The assumption that sets this up, I think from a bad trajectory is assuming that as long as it's not ionizing, it's safe because we're not seeing it directly ripping apart the DNA. there was a lot of research that was that and you're right it gets so wacky when it comes to looking at this it's just like oh my god why is it like literally looks like a weird lady talking about area 51 but when you really start digging and I believe me this was my probably my longest chapter because I had to get through. I had to reach out to researchers to point me into different directions.

1:49:14The Invisible Rainbow was a good research, a good book by a doctor that I could at least go, okay, that's, you know, even starting the look at the history of just electricity. So I had to think about the consumption of information. Let's start with Edison and light bulbs and go from there. Yeah, but it's important to go, I'll just make it short, but it's important to realize that there was data to show when we put up the first telegraph that that was causing harm in migratory patterns. and then as we continued uh uh uh uh uh and things like that in the in the in the frequency generation and radio frequency they saw that that there was some pretty direct correlations to extincting uh the red sparrow and there was even some anecdotal evidence to show that even tracking devices were messing with migratory patterns of cats, of other mammals and things like that.

1:50:27So every time you have electricity, you have also a magnetic field and we are magnetic, right? So we can, easy one is the heartbeat, right? And so diagnostically, we know this and we use that. So we are sensitive. And just to add another aspect to it, my dad, chemical sensitivity, 20 years ago, I meet a doctor, Dr. Mohsen Hermanish, who changed kind of the way I looked at nutrition, came from sixth generation herb farmers. And then he was a mathematician as well as a master in understanding nutrition on a cellular level. He was the first, he gave me the term fatal convenience. He was the first person 25 years ago to say, electrically, our DNA is sending signals through the RNA, right?

1:51:32And chemically too, but electrically those things are happening. And so the instructions of the proteins going to replace maybe senescent cells are a part of the process always millions and millions and billions of times a day. And he started pointing 25 years ago, he started pointing me to research to go, this is the electric field of a cell phone is affecting that DNA. And now I was looking at many studies showing that the gylomas where you'd have a cell phone up to your head was creating these tumor-like, not even like, but these tumors. So then multiple studies showing that. So you're like, okay, well, let's study it some more instead of blowing it off.

1:52:28So these kinds of things started to show up. Now, the other areas, which was weirdly similar to a chemical exposure of a phthalate or something, that it would show radical oxygen species, like free radicals. The mechanism of cellular metabolism was being thwarted and stressed. And then you would see things that really scared me that I didn't know. and there was one study that showed that this protein albumin that is not supposed to be in the brain showed that by the exposure of a cell phone frequency opened up the blood brain barrier to allow that albumin to show up in the brain which had a cascade of problems in the brain So similar to the exposure, I saw stress.

1:53:32I saw free radical oxygen species. I saw stress of the immune system. And these things, and then obviously the blood-brain barrier, which is a really bad scenario to open up. And those came back in many studies and my fact checkers checked them again. And I was like, oh my God, this is like a chemical exposure. And the other part of it was lowering sperm counts. So this exposure of a cell phone, and then you're going, wow, the proximity is an issue here. So the proximity of this device in your head, on your laps, in your pockets, and the workout mama who's putting the cell phone in her sports bra, these are problems.

1:54:28And these are proximal problems. And again, this was, dude, this was a rabbit hole, right? And I had to conclude, I had to stop some of this stuff because I couldn't find enough information. But the history started me on this path, the telecommunity, I'll say it here. I believe that the telecommunications business knows about this stuff. They know about these studies. Something interesting happened. I didn't really talk about it in the book, but in 1993, the EPA, which I think was right in terms of it was their responsibility to study the electromagnetic fields of cell towers and cell phones that they had their guy study this and found many of the things that I explained to you and said, okay, you guys hired me.

1:55:32We need to tell the consumer. And overnight it was shifted to the FCC and the EPA's funding dried up. So now - What year was that? How long ago was that? 94. And there's documentation on this? Yeah. I read countless articles. I even read an old fax that was this guy's report. So now the FCC holds it. So now the FCC is 20 years behind the technology and they're only basically saying things are safe based on thermal reaction. If it burns you, then it's not safe. they're not taking into the account the frequency waves, the one, two, three G, four G, five G, all of these things and the magnetic fields that come with all of this stuff.

1:56:28They're not including that. They don't even mention any of it when it was showing up in the initial study. So yeah, man, this is crazy that all of this stuff, but the thing that kept coming up over and over again is without a doubt, there's real data to show that a child's immune system is compromised. It is affected and you are stressed out. You are stressed out. I'm stressed out on a molecular level. Not from what you're looking at on the device, but from the device itself. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, do you have a sense of ongoing research and studies that are occurring now around this? are people like, I guess what I'm saying is, or my thought is certainly we should be studying this.

1:57:19This is ubiquitous. We all use these things. I know what it's like. I used to hold the thing to my ear. And if you're on a long phone call, like not only does it start to get hot there, like it doesn't feel like I start to get a headache. Like I'm like that, I know that that's not right. You know, I don't know what's going on, but you know, I don't do that anymore, right? But I use Bluetooth and I use wifi and we run our studio with tons of electronic equipment and there's all kinds of waves and frequencies pinging around constantly. And we just, this is part of what it is to be a modern human being in the developed world.

1:57:57And look, I listened to the radio when I was a kid and I had a TV like you did with the antenna and that's coming through the air and I'm okay. So is there really anything to worry about here? And if you wanna talk about 5G, then you might as well put your tinfoil hat on and go talk to David Icke and you guys can chat about the lizard people, right? Like you can't, it's, but we have to be able to talk, we have to be able to like have a rational evidence-based science backed conversation about this thing that is in the hands of billions of people all over the world. 100%. And unfortunately through all of that, it got co-opted into all these other side conversations about i i just wanted to bring it down to what is it doing and there's multiple studies showing that it's causing an immune response the blood brain barrier freaked me out uh the the the lower immune system that's not kind of up to par yet as a child is is is they're much more affected.

1:59:05It is causing stress. And so it definitely needs more studies and it definitely needs the attention that it deserves. And the FCC has to update their understanding, not even their understanding, but their health measures. Right, I mean, the FCC, sorry to step on your words, but the FCC, its mandate is to regulate the communications industry. It's not set up to look out for the health considerations of what these communications companies are doing. That's the Department of Health and the Environmental Protection. There are other organizations that it sounds like, based on what you said, were divested of their authority to kind of police and regulate that.

1:59:59Is that the case? Yeah, it's weird. I mean, I don't know what really happened, but I just know that that switch happened, that the EPA definitely was studying telecommunications kind of through the funding, I think, of the telecommunications companies. And then when the researcher, I forget his name off the top of my head, Carlos something. And then he came out with, hey man, this is what I found. And he was wanting to share it. And then let's tell everybody. And again, I know this sounds weird, but if I wasn't reading it, I'd be like, what the hell? Like, again, what the hell shows up in a lot of these things in the book?

2:00:45Like, what the hell is the PFAS doing on my child's diaper? And my, like, why is elastane in my clothes? It's causing me stress. So this one was a massive one. I'm just, I'm worried because obviously one, two, three, 4G, 5G, they're all here. It doesn't, it's just because we're switching to 5G and it's a little different millimeter wave. It doesn't travel as far. So they have to put up more towers. And that means just more electrical pollution. And then on top of it, about 40 to 50 ,000 satellites, these micro satellites that they wanna blanket the earth so that we can quote unquote, use this facetiously smartify the world.

2:01:39Hey man, like let's study this stuff. I don't want the electrical pollution of things that I'm seeing strong indicators that we at least let's freaking study it. Like, so again, let's have a conversation. I'm not the expert in it. I don't know, but I've read a huge amount that says, this is not... Clean. There's some dangers present here. There's this Swedish study that you talk about in the book that describes this thing they call the microwave syndrome in which in this study, there was a couple living in an apartment that began to suffer from a long list of symptoms like fatigue and they couldn't sleep, nosebleeds, tinnitus, skin problems, dizziness, concentration issues, heart palpitations, all of which decreased or disappeared within a day after they moved to another home with significantly lower radiation.

2:02:45All the conditions they suffered under exposure to 5G radio waves are identical to those first described more than 50 years ago by people who received whole body microwave radiation. Now, is that a study if it's a couple of like, it's almost anecdotal. Like, I don't know that you can really extract from that anything all that meaningful from a scientific perspective, but from an anecdotal perspective, like, okay, well, that's sort of concerning. Yeah, yeah. And again, I gave those examples simply because it's happening to many people, similar to my father, like two great tech wellness companies.

2:03:27One's literally called Tech Wellness. Another company out of the UK is called Conscious Spaces. is both of those women who started those companies were electrosensitive. So they started minimizing companies. We're not talking about the famous sticker to put on you. We're talking about blocking devices. We're talking about plugging back in, turning off wifi, turning off at night. And that's the thing. If people like one of the minimal things that you can do is turn off your wifi at night, right? That's a stress that you don't need and you're not using. So, and cause we go on to talk about the multiple mice studies that start to show up around the blood brain barrier, the immune response and things like that.

2:04:15So yeah, there's a anecdotal, there's tons. Yeah. Similar to my father. It's a trip, man. Did you think when you were putting this book together, like maybe I should just leave the whole 5G thing out of it? For sure. Yeah. Yeah. But there's too much compelling information to just leave it. It's like the 5G side of it is we are, think about the theme here. All of these fatal conveniences that we're talking about, they haven't done the proper studies to deem them safe. And it's the same playbook. they haven't proven that 1g 2g 3g 4g 5g are completely safe so i'm just raising my hand going hey man before we're blasting us all the time 24 7 and we don't have a choice let's dig into it tell me that it's safe not just you know of course it's safe and uh you know no we need double bind control trials to show me, to prove that, please disprove the research studies that I read.

2:05:32Please disprove them. Show me. Like we need this kind of action and actionable things. And the awareness that I hope everyone starts to understand is there are things that are going on in this world that unfortunately have greater motivations than the health of us and our environment. And we need to hold more accountability for some of these people so that we can, again, we have numbers on our side. So let's turn on that common sense and just ask questions, man. Like let's ask for these things for change and ask these questions so that we can like, Go, okay, prove to me they're safe and I'm good.

2:06:20So I, in the meantime, I use blocking safe sleeve on it. I use these other companies. I plug back in, by the way, plugging in a lot faster. And - Yeah, just ethernet it. And you do, you're like, oh, here are some cases you can use and here's some other thing. You can go all the way to the extreme using the Faraday temp to like really block it out and go full Ben Greenfield on the whole thing. but there are very simple fixes that are not that inconvenient. 100%. Which is the case for all the categories throughout the book. So again, in the appendices, all sorts of suggestions, products that you vetted, et cetera.

2:07:02But I think to kind of close this out and bring this to some level of finality for today, there is a sense that I have that one could read this and be like overwhelmed. Like, okay, well, like, okay, you only have to change one thing, which is basically everything. Like every single product in your house, every appliance that you have, the paint on your walls and you gotta strip out the carpets and throw your mattress out and like get rid of all your clothes. Like it's a lot, dude, right? So if somebody is embarking on this journey and they're like, okay, well, I gotta start somewhere. Like what are the, you know, the things that are the most important to address first, maybe paired with the easiest changes or most convenient changes to make to launch somebody on their own version of your journey?

2:07:50Yeah, great question, Rich. I mean, I think of it in this way, go in to out. So the vulnerability of opening your mouth and consuming a liquid or water or food, start there because there's plenty. So probably the easiest one is filter your water because we know that that's affecting 98 % of many parts of the country in PFAS and microplastics. So filter your water, an RO system, distillation, RO is super easy. RO is reverse osmosis. Yep, reverse osmosis. And again, like I've said many times before, add some unrefined salt. And also not all Himalayan salt is created equal. Not all salt is, it can be microplastics and that stuff too.

2:08:41But so go to places like real salt. There's a mine in Utah or the original Himalayan salt. It's got a long, great track record, things like that. So add the stuff back in. And then, you know, what else are you consuming? So looking at your food, containers wrapping your food. hot and hot food wrapped in plastic is a perfect prescription for uh uh phthalates pfos uh microplastics estrogens all of that stuff so minimize that right and then minimize ultra processed food because everything from heavy metals and PFAS and other bisphenols are showing up also in that. So food is a good water beverage food.

2:09:38And then longer things that you're putting on your body. So what I mean by that is lotions that are staying on your body. These things you You should be looking for natural products, many of which I've vetted in there that are clean and healthy for your skin and doesn't disrupt that precious microbiome. And then things like shampoos and conditioners, they're not staying on the largest portions of your body as much. But then again, just think of it, keep going out, improve your bathroom situation. I have this great company that I like called Bite, Bite Toothpaste. Yeah, they sent me some of their products.

2:10:23They're incredible. They're like tablets for brushing your teeth, right? Yeah, so you throw a tablet in, you bite down, you just brush normally. And then it's all compostable, refillable glass jars. You're eliminating the harsh chemicals, then stabilizers and things in your toothpaste because that's a chemical soup. So again, that's going in your mouth, dental floss. That was a big one too. So that was slippery little sliding. Guess what that is? PFAS, man, don't put that in your mouth. That's crazy. So, you know, what I do is I get a bamboo charcoal dental floss, I just wet it and it's basically as good.

2:11:06So just wet it first, boom. You don't have to put PFAS in your mouth ever again. I'm disappointed that you don't make your own dental floss though. Weaving it in the back 40. Sorry, Rich. I'm running late to the podcast. I got this yucca. Yucca plant would be good. Actually pull that apart. That would actually work. I'm going to do a reel on Instagram just for you. All right, good. And then, you know, work your way out. Work your way out to your clothing and be more responsible like that. Work your way out to your home. what kind of cleaning products, things like that. And just keep moving forward.

2:11:46You don't have to be perfect, but you're just moving forward to clean up your environment so that you can have the best life ever. Right on, man. I love you, buddy. You did a great job with this book. It's a real act of public service. And I think it's gonna do really well, man. Can't wait for it to be out in the world and start impacting people so we can change the world. Thanks dude. Yeah, it's like a guide. I think that I hope that people can just open it up and learn a little something every day and I've started applying it. So that was a big lift for sure. Yeah, and anything else up on the horizon that you wanna talk about?

2:12:28Yeah, I've got a lot of shit going on. We could spend five more hours talking about all the projects you got your muddy paws in. Yeah, I mean, you know, down to earth, you know. Season three? It doesn't look like it's going to happen. There's some challenges with many different things, but I'm not going to divulge it, but I hinted at it. I am working on some really cool other television projects that I'm stoked about. And again, all solution-based moving forward, still working to build out my house. Yeah, still in the year working on getting the sustainable housing project up on its feet. Yeah, and I got a new partner with Baruka's with Steve Fabos and we cleaned up a lot of things.

2:13:20So I'm so excited for that business and that nut to get out, putting my formulator hat back on. So I'm formulating some stuff with the nut and other super foods and stuff. So that I'm stoked about. And then, you know, working in the clean energy space with my crazy friends in the science community and clean energy tech. So that's some of the stuff that people don't know much about because it's not public, but we're working with governments around the world and New Zealand, Australia, Mexico, and here in the States too of creating clean power. and that's a whole other thing, but it just helps to, we're here.

2:14:06And so I just wanna give it my best. Right on, man. Yeah, well, maybe you can come back and we can do a whole clean energy conversation. In the meantime, Baruka's, we didn't even mention Baruka's until the very end here, but is it available nationwide? Can people overseas get it? If people wanna, you gotta check out Baruka's Nod. Oh man. Go listen to our other podcast about it, but a delicious, super nutritious, super food nut product that is your company. Yeah, it's the greatest nut ever. I mean, it literally checks all the boxes and meaning that we had a, which maybe you didn't know, we had a third party Swiss company do an audit of our process of how we collect the nut, how we work with the nut, how we deliver the nut, and the whole process of fair trade and planting trees and supporting the biome and the Saharu.

2:15:03And we rated higher than any company that they've ever tested. So we're a carbon sink by us literally just being in business today. And we're still improving on that process. So yeah, people can get the product nationwide. I really hope that the UK and other places open up soon. But it's delicious. is my passion and it kind of represents the superfood side of me because it gets to support the people there, help a biome that's being hurt with deforestation. And the customers get to not only have the micronutrients of a wild food, but they get to enjoy it as well. And all your guests now will be - Yeah, you gotta keep us stocked over here.

2:15:51I will. I will happily pawn them off on every guest that walks in here. So I assume it's in, I know it's in a variety of supermarkets here, but should people try to buy it online or should they look for it in their like natural foods market? Well, you can certainly help us out by asking for your local grocer to carry it. And then we're gonna do some bigger campaigns, but you can get it online. And most people don't know we have an amazing butter and we have the chocolate covered because in the early days we would be stocked up and then we didn't have the mechanism sorted out. So we would be start and stop.

2:16:27So now we're guns blazing. Baruchas.com. Baruchas.com, baby. All right. In the meantime, pick up Fatal Conveniences and just sit quietly at home and await Darren's next appearance on the podcast whenever that might be. All right. Like I said, I love you, buddy. Love you too, man. And I'm here to support you. Love you. Thank you, brother. Cheers. Peace. Peace. Plants.

2:17:01That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at mealplanner.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment.

2:17:39And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. This show just wouldn't be possible without the help of our amazing sponsors who keep this podcast running wild and free. To check out all their amazing offers, head to richroll.com slash sponsors. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis and Morgan McRae with assistance from our creative director, Dan Drake.

2:18:21Content management by Shana Savoy, copywriting by Ben Pryor. And of course, our theme music was created all the way back in 2012 by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste.

2:18:48Thank you.