Arizona Muse: On Taking Control of Your Life, Motherhood & Soil

0:04Hello and welcome to The Slowdown, your time to redefine success and growth on your own terms with a little inspiration from others. Today's guest here at Brazen Studios is someone who has lived multiple lives. Arizona Muse has graced more than 40 international Vogue covers and starred in campaigns for some of the world's most iconic houses. Prada, Chanel, Estee Lauder, Louis Vuitton, the list goes on. She's one of the most recognizable faces in modern fashion. But the part of Arizona's story that moves me the most is her becoming a climate activist, educator, and founder of DIRT, a charity dedicated to regenerating soil and restoring ecosystems.

0:45And she speaks passionately about biodynamic farming as one of the most powerful solutions for the climate crisis. Arizona now works as an impact consultant for brands trying to meaningfully reduce their environmental footprint and serves as an advisor and ambassador to the John Innes Center for Soil and Crop Research. She also co-founded Soil Onyx and curates Landed, the Nature-Based Solutions Investment Conference in partnership with Founders Forum. Arizona has managed to career shift, have a greater impact and slow down. She's working on something that I think is one of the most important resources we have, soil, and has beautiful routines and practices that help her and her family feel grounded, all of which I explore in this episode.

1:34Arizona it's an honor to have you here your work your clarity the way that you've turned purpose into a daily practice is exactly the kind of energy the podcast is made for I have so much I love about you and I'd like to unpack but I think it's important always to provide some context on who you are so to better understand the decisions that you've made in your life and your values. So the question I always like to start with is how and where were you raised and what was success modelled for you like when you were younger? So I was raised in Tucson, Arizona and Santa Fe, New Mexico but I was born in Tucson slightly before I was raised there though I lived in London because my mom is English and so we were living between London and Tucson when I was zero to three years old and then my brother was born and we kind of settled in Tucson, Arizona.

2:28But I started going to nursery school in London. So I must have had a British accent at one point is something I like to think of fondly because I do sound American because I do, I did grow up in that country and that has shaped a lot of me and it's shaped a lot of what I don't want to be as well. I'm really proud of myself for ejecting at age 23 and coming to live in London and Spain as well. And I've done a lot of decolonizing of myself and de-westernizing of myself, which has been a big part of my journey. And yet I'm really proud of and feel like it's important that I grew up in the desert, that I grew up with water scarcity, that I grew up with brown rice and broccoli and organic food before it was cool and shopping at a co-op in Tucson, Arizona that still exists now.

3:15And all of these things that were part of my American culture were important and were and are still part of me and did inform a lot of what came to pass in my life so far. I'm 37 now and I've spent a lot of my life, particularly my adult life, in activism and in creating impact, usually positive impact, I like to think. Although we have to admit and be honest with ourselves that if you are in a city, if you are in a western country you are having a negative impact no matter how hard you try me and my little family of four are having a far worse impact on the environment than a Sudanese family of 11 and that I think is a very important distinction to make because we can sometimes blame pollution on overpopulation and big family sizes no no no no no no it's lifestyle it's lifestyle it's how we live what we consume and what kind of plastic it was wrapped in how many flights we take all of these things I also I think I asked you this last time but the name Arizona Muse that is your actual name it's my actual name I was born Arizona in the desert of Arizona and my mom was the one who said oh we should name her Arizona and my dad who's from Tucson Arizona but hadn't been living in London and San Francisco for many many years and met my mom in London through the art world he's a an ancient art dealer and procurer my mom is a was at the time an ancient art restorer and so they met through their their careers and my mom is now she she went branched off into psychology and is now a parenting coach but she um wanted to name me Arizona and my dad growing up there said that's not a name but they did they named me Arizona Grace and my dad's last name is Muse and then I was born and I was so small and I think that what happened is they got cold feet about such a big name and they found a nickname for me so I grew up being called Zoe and that name never it's a very pretty name and it never resonated with me it even got stuck in my mouth as I tried to say it as a child and I was so insecure about my name and I also knew that I had this enormous a secret as a name which was on my passport and then I started modeling as a late teenager and I was modeling as Zoe my cards were made as Zoe and then my first flight that I needed to take through my agents they needed my passport I was like oh no I hate this whole passport situation this has always been so hard for me here's my passport cringy cringy cringy and they looked to my passport and called me and they were like uh so so what is your name I was like oh that old thing oh don't worry about that it just just yeah you'll have to book it under Arizona but it's fine we'll just not talk about this ever again they were like no this is a gold one exactly they were like well we like that name better bye and they reprinted everything didn't ask me I was like and it turns out after three weeks I got used to it and I really liked it and I'm really I really like the name Arizona.

6:29It's easy for me to say. It rolls off my tongue, unlike the word Zoe, which never did, even though when I say it for other people, it does. It just was when it was associated to me. Didn't feel right. Didn't feel right. So yes, that's my whole name story. So I really am very compassionate with anyone who has a stressy name story, which it turns out a lot of people do. It's not a straightforward thing having a name. Yeah, it turns out. It turns out. And it's interesting because having been a model too, usually it's the other way around. Agents are desperately trying to make your name more interesting.

7:04Well, on that topic, where and when were you scouted? What was kind of early life like? How did they then find you? Was this like a normal thing to be happening in Tucson, Arizona? Not at all. So when I was nine, I moved from Tucson, Arizona to Santa Fe, New Mexico. also not a normal thing to be happening happening in Santa Fe and I did a few test shoots as a 17 year old 18 year old then I moved to LA when I was 18 I was first of all I was kind of found or scouted by someone who became my godmother she's an amazing woman called Claudia Carrera Costa and she is um she had been a model for a long time and she said to me she met me in Santa Fe where she was living at the time and she said um would you like to start modeling I'd love to help you So she brought me to LA and met agents and she brought me to Paris and I met agents there.

7:54And, and then I, it started, my career kind of started, but not really as a 18 year old and I didn't really like it and it didn't really go very well. And I got a lot of feedback like, oh, maybe you could just lose some weight in your hips and things like that. Pretty hard stuff to be told when you're very, very, very young and didn't think there was any problem with you until then. Yeah, exactly. And then I got pregnant. So then I had my son who's now 16 and has muscles everywhere. He's so amazing. It is incredible when your child turns into an adult. Just watching that physical change is pretty extraordinary.

8:32But you were 20 at the time. I was 20 at the time. Yes. And so my career was over. I was like, okay, I'm going to be fat forever. No worries. That wasn't going very well anyway. And I said to myself, I think I want to become a farmer. and I was my plan was that I would and I did move to move in with my mom in who was living in Massachusetts at the time which is a real paradise for biodynamic farming regenerative agriculture it's just amazing the people even then even 16 years ago the people there were doing some really extraordinary things on soil and with soil regeneration which would later become a big passion of mine, but at the time I didn't even know.

9:12But I thought, okay, I'll become a farmer. And then when my son was about just about one years old, not even, less than one year old, 10 months old, I wasn't very fat at all anymore. In fact, I was thinner than I'd ever been, which happens quite often to mothers after they have a baby. You just kind of breastfeeding and everything, you just like shrink and you just shrink. And so I shrunk and I was like, well, then maybe I should try maybe I should try again so I got in touch with my old agency next and I contacted them and I was like so I've had my baby and I sent them some pictures and they were like yeah sure we'd love to resign you you can start again and I was 21 which was kind of old for a beginning of a career weirdly yeah it's like very old and uh because I really hadn't had a career before I'd never as a model I'd done a few shoots and it hadn't turned into a career I'd never done a show season and as you know a show season is makes or breaks it makes or breaks you in so many ways but it can make or break your career yeah and so I did my first show season in September 2010 and that went really really really really well and I didn't know much about the industry so I didn't even understand how well that went but looking back now that I understand more it was pretty extraordinary what happened I was offered an exclusive at the very beginning of the whole season by Balenciaga which is one of the last shows in Paris at the end of the whole fashion month and that's huge that that would mean that I wouldn't do any shows in the whole three weeks and four well four weeks leading up to the Balenciaga show and then I would be the star of the show Balenciaga so what happened is we said no to Balenciaga because I wanted to do the shows I was like I'm here I want to do them and so I said no I still opened and closed Balenciaga at the end of the season which was great and loved that show it was amazing and uh but I did I did get a semi-exclusive with Prada in Milan so I didn't do any other shows in Milan except for Prada and then what happened is I also did I opened and closed every show I did basically and how to look in the middle sometimes and then I also got an exclusive between Prada and Yves Saint Laurent for the campaign they shared me for their campaign which they had never done before if they do an exclusive on a new face they want just the new face just to themselves so that was pretty amazing and this all kind of went over my head I didn't really understand at the time which also makes me understand that the communication channel between me and my agents was very poor and very weak and I wasn't really being like the word strategy was never used with me.

11:50Never used with me. Until I'd been modeling for 10 years. Right. It was shocking to me. It was like, what's your brand? Like, where do you want to be? How do you want to be managed? None of this. None of that. None of this. Just super control into the hands of the agents. Very little information trickled down to me. I had no idea what to expect. And I didn't feel like I was engineering a career at all. And that was the point I was trying to make by telling you all of this about that first season or second, whatever it was, is that it made me feel, and every single season after that, made me feel so disempowered and so unwell eventually.

12:25And this is how I got into activism, is I was on the floor with this career that was up in the air, skyrocketing, like labeled an icon of models in the industry and on models.com, on all the lists of models.com, like just going up and up and up and up. really fast and yet I was spiraling down really really fast in myself in my mothering in the rest of my life and I just want to raise awareness about that like we have an industry slash society that allows people to become very very very very successful and very congratulated and yet we don't check in with them how do you feel also very young at a very young age I mean acting modeling it's also like kind of beyond your control it's also happening it's being orchestrated and puppeted by by a lot of other people who are booking and doing these contracts and you're sort of very much oblivious to it my biggest contract I ever had was with Estee Lauder amazing contract so much money so much prowess it was the it's the biggest contract that every model wants to have is what I was told.

13:35And the contract for that was like 12 centimeters thick of one sheet after another of paper. And I was 22 years old and I had, my agent said, oh, well, you need a lawyer on your side to review the contract. So we've set up a meeting with a lawyer for you to be on your team to review the contract. The meeting was super intimidating. I went into the office with my agent, breathing down my neck. The whole contract was set on the table in front of me and kind of flipped through by the lawyer who said we reviewed all of it and it looks really great like zero oh how do you feel about that we've looked at this clause and like we wonder if maybe does that make you feel comfortable like there are clauses in these contracts about what your body looks like and it would be so nice if models were if models had chat gpt back then or somebody behaving as if they really cared about your needs and your well-being and it will actually lead to more success like the reason that my career that I had to kind of move away from my career and step back a bit is because I felt so unwell because I felt so disempowered if I'd felt more empowered sooner I probably would have continued on modeling in the way that I was for longer which eventually makes more money for the agent so that's what they want and so I really encourage all agencies see this see that when a model is feeling great about herself she will look her best she will do the work to be her best she will be the best version of herself and therefore want to continue on with her career for the longest possible earning the most possible for longest which was a decision I decided I didn't want to do and I went into activism and started a charity and let me tell you that wasn't the way to make the most money yeah i want to talk about this which is like what is the way to money versus other things that you gain from from that but yeah i mean it's interesting the term booker as opposed to manager like i think people see themselves as mother agents or bookers but when i speak to my friends who actually have talent management in the kind of modern sense of the term um they're talking to me about, oh, at the top of every year, we have a meeting, we sit down, we say, what would you like to achieve in this year?

15:51What are your goals? My eyes are wide and my mouth is dropping. Do you want to do this? I'm like, never. No one ever. Never. It was just like, you're doing this job or you're not doing this job. You're one of 50 other people that we manage. There's no consideration of what might you want to do because the idea that you speak is not part of the role. No, no, no, don't speak at all. yeah it just doesn't speak at all I remember um being in LA and not not booking jobs and I was like what's going on and I called my agent I was like any sort of feedback anything you can give me and they were like you know if you could stop sort of telling people that you have a university degree and I just graduated from UCL and I was stoked I was proud and they were like oh yeah what if you know they asked a few basic questions like oh you know what what have you been doing recently and I was like I just got a degree in history from UCL and they were like maybe don't say that I didn't have that problem I never went to university well to conclude that that part on agencies it's it is possible to do it right and I feel like now I've got it right and with DNA New York next in London and we management in Paris and I also in the past worked with climate PR agencies that was really pivotal for me to be like oh I can be represented by someone who really feels like they work for me and they did have those strategy conversations with me and they did sit down with me and go, what do we want to achieve together?

17:07Here's our deliverables that we need to deliver to you. And that was really transformative. That was Browning Environmental. And now I feel like I'm in an amazing place. I'm super happy with my agents. I feel like they really understand me. They don't push me to do things I don't want to do. They're responsive when I ask them to do things that I do want to do. And it's, that is a good relationship. And it's just, I wish I'd had that sooner. I so wish I'd had that sooner. So I really recommend to anyone who's modeling or has any kind of representation for whatever they're doing if you're not happy and if you don't feel glowing about it go and look elsewhere because there are there is the possibility to have a glowing relationship and so just keep going until you find it is is a piece of advice and I think the advice for agencies is take every person talent model actor whatever it might be on your books seriously like have these serious conversations because I think especially in my agency where there was this notion of there was the models and then all of a sudden there was like an influencer talent division they had those conversations with them but not with us and I would have liked to have been treated in the same way because together if we work together to your point if I'm feeling great I want to make whatever content I want to do to my platform could grow to whatever these other people have but if I'm not being treated the same way you know it was like a sort of different caliber of job for us yeah so anyway sort of small diversion on agencies but there was also something else I wanted to pick up on there you mentioned after you had your baby that you wanted to move back in with your mother is that because you single-parented I did start single parenting when Nico was seven months old and I on and off single-parented until he was three and then I completely single-parented until he was six and then very sadly when he was 10 his original father passed away and he has now as a father my husband who is an amazing dad for Nico it's been absolutely beautiful they met when Nico was five so well before his original father passed away and it's been really beautiful to witness what an adoption can look like and what a real family relationship and connection can look like even when blood relations aren't there these two even look alike their mannerisms are alike they they have become each other and that is just so it's it's extraordinary to witness and I'm so grateful on behalf of my son I'm so grateful for me and I'm so grateful to my husband for doing this with how he did it was just love he approached Nico with love he didn't think oh I wonder if this is gonna work out oh I wonder if he's gonna like me oh what if I do oh I didn't like what he did.

19:55He wasn't, he was clearly not having that narrative as he met Nico. He just approached him with love and fun and open arms and open heart. And I think that is the way to approach children in any circumstance, but particularly if you're dating someone and if they already have a child or children, of course it's a complex situation. But what I like to think about is like, you wouldn't, what I like to think about when I'm thinking about the concept of, um, if you are a single parent and you're wondering whether or not to introduce your child to your partners I encourage you to introduce them you wouldn't not introduce your child to a friend would you yeah on the basis that maybe your friend won't be your friend for the rest of your life like that would be crazy of course another person it's just another person it's just another person and children are very um so so resilient and they're so at ease actually and it's our disease that creates dis-ease, not disease as in unwellness, but dis-ease as in uneasiness in children.

20:57So my recommendation around single parenting, which I guess I have a lot of recommendations, but this one is just invite other people into your children's life and make sure it's safe and happy and fun. But I wouldn't keep partners away from children on the basis that they may not last forever. I agree with that. Thank you for that digression and clarification. Another one. We might do a few. Continuing the trajectory of your modeling career, as you're feeling this kind of mental paradox of these two things, was there a tipping point that you felt this is now I'm feeling the spiral has hit its bottom and I need to change something?

21:36yeah there were so many and I wanted some kind of crazy thing to happen that would make me have to stop like I wanted to have a mental breakdown or I wanted to get hit by a car or I wanted to I wanted something external to come and save me from this place that was so uncomfortable and in this downward spiral and I realized at some point nothing was going to do that why did you feel like you couldn't live oh because of because of feeling like I had no other options had no degree had no time had no skills had I felt like there was no where to go I also was my mental health was really suffering so I didn't feel confident I didn't feel secure I felt really low self-esteem wise and so I didn't believe in anything that I could do and I also turning away from modeling is very hard because you can earn a lot of money in a very short amount of time and those options come in and the option is one day and a lot of money and you're like oh my god I hate this but can I really turn it down my friend calls it the golden handcuffs yes totally golden handcuffs and eventually my body reacted and I began to look less like a model and I got chubbier and that was horrible at the time I mean I hated myself so much and I felt it was one of the things that contributed to me feeling out of control and it turned a lot of self-loathing onto me and a lot of just noise mental noise about not eating eating not eating eating exercising not exercising all of this through the exhaustion and overwhelm of being in something that I didn't like and being a single parent and these two things really fighting against each other all the time when I did things that were great for my career they were not great for my son when I was being great for my son it was not great for my career so I was in this constant dilemma and feeling very alone and it was very very at the time it felt totally impossible to step away from modeling but then my body helped me by receiving negative feedback from my agents and so that was a that's a funny thing to look back on and be like hated that at the time but in hindsight and now I'm feeling and looking the hottest I've ever looked in terms of like figure and just my balance with eating and exercise feels so natural I don't have noise in my head anymore and yet I look in the mirror and I'm like, I'm pleased with that.

24:15And that's so different than how it used to be. I used to be, I hated mirrors. I hated what I would see every time I exercised to punish myself and I exercised to reward myself and I ate to punish myself or I didn't eat to punish myself and I ate to reward myself. It was all wrong. It was just all wrong. And it was all done out of self-loathing. and I was my own predator and I was my own worst enemy and no amount of nutritional knowledge can save you from that I knew everything about how to do it right and yet that's not the key this the psychosis is beyond that but I think what some people I think might struggle to comprehend which I'm sure you've had is they go but you were a supermodel like objectively and according to everybody else you're beautiful and so I think is there like more of a concrete example that you can give on how how those two feelings can coexist like what is something that someone would say that might trigger you or that might because I think people forget that when you're in that industry you're then being compared to other models in that industry you're not being compared to the average person on the street I was comparing myself to absolutely everyone all the time whether they were models or not and I did this thing in my head where I would make an assumption that everyone else was fine all the time and I was not which made me feel so different from everyone else and I would look at pictures of me in huge campaigns billboards Louis Vuitton all the all the most amazing like supermodel stuff and I wouldn't see nice things isn't that sad you always see that but the worst critics right and but do you think that's all because of the nature of the industry and the way that it operates or was that or was it also something in you and your own mental state regardless of modeling hard to know and I've wondered this would I have had disordered eating and had body dysmorphia slash self-loathing had I not been a model I don't know obviously because I've never not been a model but I have managed to get through it in a way that it no longer is up to here in my head.

26:28I'm no longer suffocating in it. I'm no longer drowning in it. It is one of those things that I think many people agree. It's, it never leaves you. It's a bit like a dormant virus. It can always, it can always be reignited and always be reawoken. But the point is to bring enough into my head that I can focus on that's so much more interesting. And so then I branched out just my mental space into things that I was interested in learning. And that was for me the real savior once i realized i was interested in biodiversity and i was interested in the earth then i started lapping up books and data and documentaries on this subject oh i the noise quieted oh i could focus on something else other than just myself and the way i looked it was really healing and that is so amazing to know that learning something can be the thing that brings you out of whatever it is you're obsessed with that's unhealthy, whether that's an addiction or body issues.

27:28Learning is such a key to happiness. It really is. As you started to learn more about farming, biodiversity, regenerative farm, the things that were interesting you, you were also still modeling. What point did you start to realize how wasteful the fashion industry was and start to think about the products that you were wearing and start to create that dissonance? Very early on. So my first step into this new learning path was when a friend of mine took me to a lunch that was a charity lunch, so super normal activity for me, but this one was a biodiversity charity. And that word biodiversity wasn't being used around me commonly at the time when I was 25, 26.

28:09And I was just overtaken with excitement about this. And I met the founder, Jessica Swaden, who's been a wonderful mentor to me throughout this career in activism. And she very quickly said, Oh, well, you're in fashion, you should meet my friend Nina Morenzi, who has the sustainable angle. And so I sat down with Nina Morenzi. And she became an amazing mentor of mine as well. And together, those two women put the dots together that were like, you could do something about this, you could connect fashion and biodiversity. Nina showed me all the fibers that we are growing to make our clothes are being grown essentially the same way as food is being grown.

28:48They're either being grown organically, biodynamically, regeneratively, or they're being grown with a whole host of toxic chemicals. The issue is that fashion items are not meant to be eaten. So they've even lower regulations on toxic chemical usage, and they have even higher absorption levels of toxic chemicals in the soil, therefore in the water, therefore on the field, because chemicals don't just stay in soil. They run off the field in the water and they get into the lakes and the rivers and eventually the oceans. And we are just absolutely drowning our planet in toxic chemicals from agriculture.

29:21And all the people who are working on ocean regeneration are dealing with water toxicity, mostly from chemicals from land. As well as overfishing being a massive problem in the ocean, it's chemical pollution from mining and from fashion. Fashion is one of the biggest polluters of water. And we all wear clothes. So even if you don't think of yourself as being a part of the fashion industry, because maybe you don't work in fashion, you do wear clothes and you wear them every single day. Did you feel when you were told all of that information, oh, my God, I'm supporting this industry by being a model.

29:58I'm the face of these campaigns. People are buying products. I'm doing it. I want to throw everything in the bin. And I can't believe I'm doing this. or were you immediately like I can really see how I can marry these two things together and support brands that are doing it right or shine a light on brands that aren't doing it right both definitely both this was shocking to me that I didn't grow up with this awareness because I did grow up with an awareness around food as I said I grew up in brown rice and broccoli and co-ops in Tucson like my family was very aware of food and food and nutritional health and farming health in that sense but we hadn't made that we hadn't jumped that gap across to the fashion industry and what we wore and so I was really surprised and I'm actually lucky that at the time I didn't turn a huge amount of blame on myself I always already was blaming myself for everything so it was great that I didn't blame myself again for this and instead I went how could you not have told me and I blamed to the industry and that was nice that was nice because it put me into action actually it spurred me into movement and change rather than self-loathing again once again was this your first active feeling of activism i suppose yeah absolutely action motion yeah yeah and the activism didn't start immediately it was first a lot of education and learning and seeking out information and knowledge and finding obscure pieces of knowledge i was really interested in learning more than what the mainstream narrative was, which at the time was great because there was hardly a mainstream narrative at all.

31:34And if I had stopped at a mainstream narrative, it wouldn't have led me very far in that quest to understand the fashion supply chain. And it turns out I'm super nerdy about supply chains. I love them. I want to know every single link along them, who's doing what, what chemicals are used, what impact do those chemicals have on the garment, on on the piece of wood on the whatever it is that is being made but also on the environment what happens when those chemicals are breathed in by the factory workers how do i feel about that ah do i suddenly care about factory workers that i didn't even know existed like that's a that's a big one how can we tease away at these relationships with people that we don't have relationships with because that's really important we must fictionalize a relationship with the people that we don't know who live along these supply chains because let me tell you we will not make a change in our lives because it's a little bit hard because it's inconvenient because we don't care enough because we're busy because of all these reasons if we don't love that person so you have to make yourself fall in love with the farmer in india who grew the cotton with the garment worker in bangladesh who sewed it together you must do that it's our responsibility as people who wear clothes to form relationships with the people who made them for us even if we're never going to meet them.

32:58I made a commitment to being transparent about the making of this podcast right from the start so here's a quick update of the financial side. Season four of The Slowdown does not currently have a sponsor. I really want this podcast to bring to light people, stories and approaches to life that I admire and don't often see in mainstream media so I'm taking on the studio editing and making costs of this season myself. If you're a brand or if you know a brand that cares about bringing honest and applicable career advice to people at all stages of their journey, please reach out. I'm eager to find the right partner, hopefully long term, to help fund and continue the show so that it can keep growing.

33:37In the meantime, your comments, reviews and shares of this episode are so important. If you're not already, hit subscribe, share this episode with a friend, drop a comment on Spotify and a review on Apple. It really does make a difference and continues to inspire the change that we're hoping to make in slowing down. Thank you so much for your support. After all the learning, what was the first bit of action or activism that you took? Was it deciding more consciously the brands that you worked with? Was it public speaking? Like, where did you go first? So Nina Marenzi invited me to speak on a panel that she was organizing on my birthday, September 18th.

34:19And I was absolutely terrible. I was a really awful public speaker. I was super shy. My voice was a mousy voice and I didn't really feel worthy of speaking. And so that was a, an interesting experience. And what was amazing about it was that I wanted to do it again. and I wanted to do it again badly I was like passionate about doing it again and every single time I did it I got so much better and the learning curve was so steep in such a great way that I started to feel good about myself like oh oh this is a nice feeling gosh I never felt that before turns out purpose is one hell of a drug turns out and I'm so grateful to all those people who had me on panels when I was not a very good public speaker at all.

35:09And I did take some public speaking lessons. And I watched a lot of public speakers. I love TED talks. I love, I love watching speakers. I love going to panels and listening to speakers, particularly scientists. I really love listening to scientists on panels. That's a real like niche for me that is just amazing. And, and I got better and better at public speaking. And I really, really, really love it. and I went in waves like I can remembering my now 11 years of public speaking I there was a moment where I was like very into being very professional and every sentence I said was super well designed and came to a conclusion and then I would start again and this and that was fun for a while and then I was like let's shake it up let's not speak like that all the time and so there have been these learning curves and waves and and just realizing that you can go so many places with public speaking and it's really fun and it's it's I really invite everyone to do it and you don't need to do it on panels you can do it at birthday parties you can do it any at dinners you can do it at any time you get the opportunity and just dabble realize that this is something that everyone has the right to be doing is to just get the get the the adrenaline that you get when you stand up in front of a big group of people or a small group of people or on a podcast whatever it is like you it makes you speak differently you think really taking up space right it's about this knowledge of my what i'm saying is worthy and people will listen and i think that does a lot for any sense of self-loathing well i also just wanted to finish my sort of train of thought on on fashion and activism which is practical tips for people now how do you choose what clothes you buy i am super careful and the reason is that i just don't want things that have caused harm i just don't want them so in big factories there's a there's a big gender issue and the gender issue is that that often the supervisor is male and every single garment worker is female and the supervisor has an office with a closed door and there are stories many stories not just one story of how the supervisor finds it really normal to go and choose a woman on his lunch break from the factory floor bring her into his office and rape her and send her back out to finish her afternoon of work like whoa this is as I said this is normal this is not one story once that someone heard this is normal is that what you want when you wear your clothes?

37:43Is that what you want to happen in the world? No, no, it's not. So it's important to do the research behind your clothes. It's important to buy from brands who are choosing to do things in a way that they understand the full supply chain. So they have transparency. That's very important. And I would just say about certifiers, B Corp is one of them. You need to understand what the certifier is certifying because they're all different. Just having a stamp on a product doesn't mean that it's the same as all the other stamps. And I'm intimately aware of certifiers now because I work with one of them called Demeter, an agricultural certifier.

38:19They're the ones that have the highest standard in certifying of agriculture and they do food and wine. Great job there. At Dirt Charity, which we will talk about, we're bringing Demeter into textiles. Demeter textile standard is what we're creating. Because there are, there's actually a multitude of certifiers in fashion, but no one's doing the entire value chain and doing it to the highest standards. So we have several certifiers that are working maybe just on chemicals or just on cotton or just on little individual pieces. And the brands are overwhelmed with needing multiple certifications, needing to pay for multiple certifications and not really understand.

38:58Sorry, they may understand because it does say, but it's complex to understand. And it takes time to understand what each of the certifications really means and how to obtain it. So this is why one of the reasons why we're working with Demeter to create this new garment standard that is for all textiles to the highest standard of sustainability, regeneration, both for environment and for people for the entire life cycle of the garment. So also these garments are compostable. The only good place for a garment to end up is on a compost pile. Should not end up in a landfill. Toxic. should not end up in a waste pile in the Atacama Desert in Chile, which is unfortunately where millions of pieces of garments have ended up and they're mostly made of synthetic materials, so they don't decompose and they just leach toxic chemicals and they fall apart into smaller pieces over time.

39:51It's urgent that we only produce new garments made of natural materials that are not dyed with synthetic dyes because when you look at the label of your garment it usually doesn't tell you about the dye why not i ask why not the dye is one of the most important materials in the fashion industry because the whole dye element of the supply chain is one of the most negatively impactful parts of the fashion industry so why does that not appear on our garment label that's craziness the most useful thing to do with our money right now is to invest into the suppliers that are doing it right by changing suppliers or asking your supplier as a brand to change there's a wealth of information so the sustainable angle which is nina morenzi has a beautiful fabric expose every year in london in june so go to the sustainable angle future fabrics expo you will learn whether whether you make clothes or not if you wear clothes go lots of people go just to learn about there's panels all day long you can touch so many materials you can understand what it is to make things sustainably even to the energy because of course every factory uses energy is it solar is it where's the factory located all these practices excuse me that make a really big difference in the final kind of net positivity of the whole garment so it's really complicated and that's what I love about it and that's what we can all love about it fashion is not simple.

41:23It's not as simple as just going out and buying something and getting in a little endorphin rush. Like the real endorphin rush comes from when you know and comes from when you're doing something about it. So I really invite everyone in to activism and fashion because we all wear clothes. We all are valid here. Our opinions do matter. Talk to the businesses from which you buy clothes. Get involved in your government, your local government. Talk to them about how sustainability matters to you. Right now is a really important time to do that because there are a lot of other really terrible things happening in the world right now that are taking a lot of attention away from climate and sustainability.

42:02And what's interesting to understand is that often conflicts are created by climate pressures. So if we can make sure that everyone in the world has access to a future where they're not facing ecosystem breakdown, they have access to a future that's going to be less violent. And reducing the toxic chemicals that we're spraying into nature, there will be fewer wars. This is a fact. Where in that timeline then did dirt come into the picture? Why did you want to start a charity and why did you want that to be the focus? I wanted to start a charity because I thought that it would be a useful tool for people to give lots and lots and lots and lots of money to soil regeneration, which is one of the most important climate solutions that we have.

42:51What I've learned over the last four years of dirt is that people don't want to give a lot and lot of money to soil regeneration. They find it boring and irrelevant. So I'm still working on that, as are all the other wonderful organizations working on soil regeneration too. It's not the easiest sell. There are no directly correlated starving children who pictures of starving children raise a lot of money and there are no directly correlated fuzzy animal pictures that we can show either and fuzzy animals raise a lot of money animal sanctuaries find it really easy to make money to raise money for some reason so does cancer because cancer has really emotional stories that make people cry all the time and so as soil we really struggle i tell stories about microorganisms i tell stories about undergrowth and under stories and how a canopy no matter how tall it is can protect the surface of the earth and keep it 15 degrees cooler.

43:46Like, cool, but doesn't make you pull your wallet out in the same way that these other competitors, for lack of a better word, not that I feel like I'm personally competing against any other charities at all. But soil is as a stakeholder when it comes to philanthropic choices out there. So I've learned a lot about the philanthropic world. And it's a it's a really tricky one. It's a really tricky sell. It really is to convince people that they should just give dirt presents. People want something in return. And speaking of wanting something in return, this is part of the reason why I'm starting my new company, which is an investment vehicle to accept money into soil regeneration.

44:33So pretty much the same impact, but a very different vehicle. And this one is a cryptocurrency backed by the real world asset of soil. and it's called Soilonic and I'm so excited about it. We are raising investment right now. The coin of the cryptocurrency called Soilo will go live in March, in March 21st, 2026, which means that anyone can buy and sell our cryptocurrency called Soilo. And when you do that, you are directly investing into farmers who are regenerating soil, which is a great feeling and something really, really, really useful to the future. So anyone can invest. This is an opportunity that's available to an 18 year old who may be making their first climate investment ever, which means a lot to me because I felt very intimidated by climate investing.

45:26It's not easy. You have to be, have a certain amount of wealth. You have to feel confident enough to knock at the doors of wealth managers. It's really not easy. Even if you're like, but I'm a person who lives on this planet and I should be able to invest into the future of it being healthy, right? no it's not that simple it turns out but also in the same vehicle we can accept 150 million dollar investments from institutions who are private equity firms or pension managers and that feels super cool we're making accessible and democratizing climate investment i love that about soylonic and the end all goal is that we all actually invest in in order to grow wealth together both in the soil but also in everyone's wallets crypto wallets so this is a really exciting project for me also because it feels so different the response i'm getting yeah well the interesting thing about supporting regenerative farmers is you think why do we need to support them and and is it because and this is sort of naive guessing that we have reduced the price so much of of food and most farmers are using pesticides in order to produce more and they've created a system where you're incentivized as a farmer to use pesticides and and do it in this way mass agriculture whereas in order to encourage them to shift in their practices to to the theme of this podcast slow down in in the process to go with the seasons to protect the soil more to be able to have a more regenerative approach it's more expensive for them in terms of time in terms of how much produce they actually get and so on so it has to be supplemented or subsidized so much wealth in what you just said um i'll start by speaking to the is it more expensive to be a regenerative farmer question which is actually a myth and it's a really dangerous myth because it is the word on the street that it costs a lot more to be a regenerative farmer which is what is the obstacle that is stopping most farmers becoming regenerative farmers and actually regenerative farmers tend to have higher profit margins than conventional farmers because they're selling organic foods at the end or the reason is because they don't buy the two most expensive things of the inputs that the conventional farmers are buying which are chemicals and heavy duty machinery to work with crops that are genetically modified and the machinery has been designed alongside the crops so wheat has been bred as as it's genetically modified to all come to this exactly the same height and then the tractor has been built to be the height to harvest the wheat that grows all to that one height that isn't how regenerative farmers work when you're growing ancient grain varieties of wheat the einkorn for example those conventional wheats by the way you plant one wheat berry and you get about 20 wheats from it seems like a good return until you get to einkorn wheat where you plant one berry you get 200 but the problem is they come at all different levels so it's much more difficult to harvest them so that was when industry went let's breed that out let's breed in uniform wheat so that it can be harvested by a massive tractor oh and then we'll offer the tractor to the farmers and we'll finance it so they're in debt and then we'll be making loads of money on the financing as well as the sale of the tractor so the farmer buys the tractor because they've bought the genetically modified grain seed that they're growing.