An Army of Normal Folks - The Farmlink Project: Saving Over 200 Million Pounds of Food (Pt 1)

Episode Date: April 2, 2024

The COVID pandemic led to two problems that strangely existed at the same time. Millions of Americans were going hungry and yet thousands of commercial farmers were literally dumping food when customers such as restaurants and schools shut down. This didn’t make any sense to Ben Collier, Owen Dubeck, and their ragtag group of college friends, so they decided to become the link between these two worlds. Today, The Farmlink Project has delivered over 200 million pounds of food to people who need it!Support the show: https://www.normalfolks.us/premiumSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I mean, I showed up with my camera because I'm like, I'll document this. Hey, maybe we'll end up on the local news. We can use it to help raise a bit more money or something. And I remember the guy who works at the egg ranch comes over to me and he whispers, he's like, you really shouldn't be filming this. You need a refrigerated truck. Like you can't put eggs in a U-Haul. Whoops. And I was like, oh, no. No.

Obviously, nobody told me that. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't know. I kept filming. And we put the eggs in there. And it's pretty heavy. You're not supposed to fill a U-Haul with that much weight.

And we're driving up the 405. We're in the left lane, like the fastest lane, where people drive 100 miles an hour. And we're going 10, 15 miles an hour. It's like, might not make it up the hill. But yeah, we got it to the food bank and the people there were so wonderful and lovely and grateful that we were able to bring it to them.

And we were like, if we did this again, would you want more food? And they were like, absolutely. And that gave us a lot of confirmation that we should keep going. Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney. I'm a normal guy.

I'm a husband, a father, an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in inner city Memphis. In the last part, it unintentionally led to an Oscar for the film about our team. It's called Undefeated. Guys, I believe our country's problems will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people in nice suits talking big words that nobody understands on CNN and Fox, but rather an army of normal folks. Us, just you and me deciding, hey you know what I can help. That's what Ben Collier and Owen

Duback, the voices we just heard have done. The COVID pandemic led to two problems that strangely existed at the exact same time. Millions of Americans were going hungry after losing their jobs. And yet, thousands of commercial farmers were literally dumping their food when customers such as restaurants and schools shut down. This didn't make any sense to Ben and Owen and their ragtag group of college friends. So they decided to become the link between those two worlds. Apparently, no adults were going to do it. And today, the Farm Link Project has delivered, get this, 165 million pounds of food to people who didn't have it.

I cannot wait for you to meet Ben and Owen right after these brief messages from our generous sponsors. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart, and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson, about the geniuses who change the world. Encore Jane, about creating a billion dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman, about the five basic strategies

to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Seifer. And I'm Jerry O'Shea. We spent over 30 years in the CIA, uncovering global conspiracies. Conspiracies aren't just a theory to us, which is why we started our podcast, Mission Implausible.

Everyone has questions about conspiracy theories, but with our background, we can actually answer those questions. We break open modern day conspiracies and tell you which elements may be the real deal. Like did Bill Gates use COVID vaccines to microchip us all? We all do have tracking devices. We carry them around. We spend a lot of money on them. And what's actually on Hunter Biden's laptop? You are talking to the guy that has three of Hunter Biden's laptops and cell phone. And what did the deep state build under Denver airport? Do you think there are secret bunkers?

That's just on my list of questions I have about Jesse Contura. It's our mission to get to the heart of these conspiracy theories and figure out the why, the how, and especially the if. Listen to Mission Implausible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Davis Miller, host of the new podcast, The Dow of Muhammad Ali. I met Ali back in 1988, and to my great surprise, we became friends.

His influence profoundly changed my perspective on family, spirituality, and on the purpose of life itself. I'll tell you that story and also stories of others touched by the champ, including people such as Reverend Al Sharpton and James Buster Douglas. We'll even hear from Muhammad's daughter, Rashida. Well, my dad was, he was Peter Pan. Like he never really grew up. He was very mature when it came down to social issues.

He was very in tune. He felt a responsibility to be able to share his connection to millions of people who were in need. In each of these stories, we share lessons, lessons that have meant a great deal to me and that I hope will great deal to me and that I hope will be meaningful to you. Listen to the dialogue Muhammad Ali on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Ben and Owen, welcome to Memphis. Thanks for having us. How was the flight? Not bad, got emergency row. Yeah, that's not bad, especially for a guy with long legs like you, right? A woman checking me and said, you're too tall to sit anywhere else.

I said she'd move me there for free. Everybody, Ben Collier and Owen Duback, am I saying that right? Yeah. All right. Owen Duback, am I saying that right? Yeah. All right, Owen Duback are from LA and they have a really interesting story that I first learned about in Nashville is where we met. Yeah, Nashville a few months ago at the summit.

Ironlight Labs Nashville Summit, which is basically a collection of dad gum do-gooders. Yep. And they're all telling their stories, right? Yep. And you told yours. Yeah. And I was sitting in the front row with Alex,

wondering why I was dragged to this summit of do-gooders. And once I started hearing the stories, I was so inspired. And when I specifically heard you, I turned to Alex, I said, I really wanna do a podcast on those guys. And so here we are, Ben and Owen have flown in from LA late last night here in Memphis with me. And after this, hopefully they're gonna go to the National Civil Rights Museum and see a few things

in Memphis before they bow out of here. And Ben and Owen started this thing called the Farm Link Project that we are going to get to. But first, first, where'd you grow up? Who are these guys? I grew up in Connecticut. So born and raised in the Northeast and then ended up in LA after college.

You're a Yankee. I am a Yankee. I'm a Mets fan Yankee, but yes. That's weird. Isn't that weird? I mean, I thought everybody liked the Yankees and the Mets were the other team. Yeah, it's easy to cheer for the good team.

Yeah, okay. So you just dig your heels in on that. Dig my heels in with the Mets, Jets and Knicks, which. And you went to Brown. I did go to Brown, yes. So you're dumb. I'm dumb. Yeah. Only dumb people go to Brown. I did go to Brown. Yes. So you're dumb. I'm dumb. Yeah. Only dumb people go to

Brown. Well, I got in ended up playing sports, but really, I was a tennis player. No kidding. You say was you're still probably pretty good. I'm pretty good. Had a pretty big surgery right before the pandemic and farm that golf started. So not the same, but could still swing a shoulder or reconstructive leg and ankle surgery. How'd that happen? and farm that golf started. So not the same, but I could still swing a racket. Full reconstructive leg and ankle surgery. Ooh, how'd that happen? I've had this neurological thing going on with my legs since I was like 15, kept playing on it

and it just gave out junior year. So, uh. That kinda sucks. There was nothing they could do, but break it all and put it back together. Really? Oh yeah. And so you were playing college tennis and then they had to do all that to your leg.

Yeah, they just for like three or four years before this gave out, I just strapped it into a really tight ankle brace. And it was definitely on. You knew that was the trajectory it was going. I'm a three five. Could I even stay on the court with you? No. You can't even see this guy serve. I played baseball my whole life. I'd rather get hit by a 90 mile per hour fastball in the shoulder than return this guy's serve.

It's just like- Is it a kick serve or a hard clap serve? All right, if we're talking about serves, I'm here for this podcast. No, I could do all. My serve was my best part of my game. When you're this tall and this slow, you gotta have a good serve.

You know? I love it. All right, and so Owen, you are from? I'm from New York originally. So. New York. Grew up in the suburbs for a little bit. Had a somewhat normal childhood with a front yard, backyard situation.

Oh, did New York is in state or outside of the city. And then we moved into the city later on. So we able to grow up in the city. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of cool. It was like, yeah, middle school, high school in the city, which is interesting. Where 30th floor of an apartment building, like uptown. What's your parents did? My mom, my mom day traded. So she raised us and just like traded stocks all day. She's a total, total wizard.

She's like, you know, she'll text me at two in the morning and be like, sell everything. Like it's all going down. And then there'll be a text at 7 a.m. that says, don't sell it went back up. So like that's, that's what my mom was up to. And my dad, my dad was involved in finance. He just kind of did what everyone was doing in Manhattan.

But it worked all the time. That's a cool experience as a high schooler growing up in the city, I guess. Yeah, it was cool. Starting at 13, you have full independence. You can kind of build your own world, your own community. Your parents don't really know where you are. So it's like, you know, you're playing baseball

in the park at one moment, and then you're hanging out downtown with a bunch of people. And it was like, yeah, it was like a little adventure. That's pretty awesome. Okay, so then you end up at, in school at Claremont McKenna. Claremont McKenna, yeah. And that's east of LA. Yeah, so it's a-

What are you doing going all the way there from New York? Yeah, so I had surfed growing up in New York. Surfed? Yeah. In New York? He's the most California New Yorker you'll ever meet. I did not like growing up. I hated growing up in New York.

How do you surf in New York? So I took the A train two hours to South Brooklyn and there's a place called Rockaway Beach where you can surf and there's a little community there and they're actually really good waves a few days of the year. But it's in the winter, right? Yeah, but the trick is in the fall and winter,

that's when the waves are actually good. So what are you surfing in? A mink? Yeah, you look like a seal. You have the thick wetsuit, you have the hood, gloves, boots, like you don't even feel the water. We love surfing to do that. To take a train two hours and dress like a seal to surf off Brooklyn.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then in the in the summers, it would be warmer and we would go out to Long Island and that was a little easier, but I always knew I wanted to do that. So my entire college list was all California. I was like, I'm not going anywhere else. And Claremont McKenna was just this really beautiful community. It was a 300 person per class school where it seemed like they gave you a ton of agency

to pursue your passions and what you wanted to do. So yeah. And this thing is, I think you said outside Fontana. I mean, it's nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like 60 miles east of downtown. So it's- What's that big pitch they say

at all the Claremont schools, they're like, you can ski and surf in the same day. Yeah, you can ski- Yeah, because you could have gone to Big Bear and got snow skiing. Yeah, well, even closer than Big Bear, there was Mount Baldy, a tiny local mountain, 20 minutes away, you could snow skiing. Yeah, well, even closer than Big Bear, there was Mount Baldy, a tiny local mountain, 20 minutes away, you could be skiing.

You just drive straight up like the steepest canyon road, and then you could go surfing that same day and hour away. So I was sold on that pitch. So Ben, what was your first year of college? My first year of college. Oh, 2017. 2017. And Owen?

Mine was 2016. 2017. And Owen? Mine was 2016. 2016. Okay. So from that, you guys listening understand these are still young men. And they're in college about to do the college thing playing tennis, surfing, assume considering going to class fairly regularly and trying to make your grades do the right thing, and you're gonna learn and study and go be you, right? Then people in your generation

dealt with this thing called COVID. So where were you guys in school COVID time? Where in, like, were you a junior? How did it work? Oh, you wanna go first because you were still in? Yeah like, were you a junior? What, how did it work? You wanna go first because you were still in? Yeah, so I was a junior. I just had the surgery though. And so I was first couple months of 2020,

I was taking 12 per cassettes a day, still in 10 out of 10 pain. And so I was already looking ahead at the next couple of years thinking, my whole community is really getting shaken up. And then the pandemic starts and suddenly everyone else is in the exact same position. And so in a way, COVID made it almost easier for me to be where I was because I couldn't already be anywhere else.

But yeah, I was back home by the end of March or early April, or I think maybe even before that. And this is 2019? This is 2020. 2020. Yeah. All right. And Owen?

Yeah, I had just graduated from college. So I'm a little bit older than Ben and most of the people at Farmlink. And I was working as a documentary filmmaker in LA doing like all the grunt work for these bigger projects, which means starving to death, not making any money, just like still surfing, filming weird commercials, like whatever will come my way to pay the bills. And all of a sudden COVID hits, all the work dries up.

And a few of my friends call me with a big idea. And you know, I was itching to get outside. I was itching to talk to people, have community, same kind of thing. And we're all locked up. We're all locked up. I mean, I remember it too. Everybody has their own COVID reality story.

But I mean, I remember the board games. I remember creating things to do at home. And I cannot imagine being a junior in college or a recent graduate trying to start off life and the world shut down on you. My son, my third child, first son, Will, was about to be a senior at Ole Miss. And, you know, I mean, this is people died and everything.

So this is small. But, you know, his formal was robbed from him. Kids, high school football games were robbed from him. It we need to be reminded for a year and a half shut down the world. And it we need to be reminded for a year and a half shut down the world. And for for kids that hadn't finished college or just getting out of college or in high school, it really had a profound effect because at the most social time of your lives, you were now told you cannot be social. So that's kind of your reality and your generation experienced that reality, right? And who was it that was first watching TV, hearing about hungry people?

Yeah. So, you know, we were all, you know, I'll relate this back to my mom. My mom had always said, it's in moment of crisis that there's the most opportunity for growth, for learning, with her stocks that she's investing in, like all that stuff. It's like, when everyone is- A day trader would understand. Right. When everyone is fearful, that is the time you want to look around and do your own research and see like where there's opportunity. And it felt like as a documentary filmmaker, this was a similar situation.

Normalcy, there's not much interesting nuance or people's personal stories in a normal day. But when all the rules of the world change, that's fascinating. How do people react? How do people shift their lives? And so in the beginning of the pandemic, that's really what we were looking towards. It was like, what can we do to help other people? What's here that's missing? Where's this major gap? And I started calling James and Aidan, who you see in the film, and then they called Ben and we were all spitballing ideas.

Like, what can we do here? Can I ask a question? Yeah. Why? Why? Go ahead. I think because, you know, for me, my why was I was working on a documentary on an undocumented kid,

my age, who was living in San Francisco. And I saw everyone get a relief check except for him. And I saw him lose his apartment. And I was like, that's messed up. And there are millions of people in this situation right now and I'm privileged enough that I'm gonna be okay. I have a little money saved up from college.

I can go a little while without income. And let's be candid, you have parents that could support you if you fall back on them. If it all goes to shit, they can give me a couple thousand dollars to get through that month's rent. And I have that safety net and I'm so lucky for that. And I want to use every ounce of that privilege to help other people because we can. There's so much that we can do.

And even though we hadn't built anything that actually worked before, there's always been this feeling amongst our friends that like we can actually make a big impact here. And we want wanna start something and we wanna think of these bigger, it's fun to think of these big ideas and what if this worked, what if that worked? And yeah, I threw around some ideas that were pretty bad in hindsight

and were never gonna work. Yeah. And then I don't think that- But that's a luxury, isn't it? Being young, stupid and broke. Right, totally. So what if you mess up? Yeah. You're still young, stupid and broke. Right. Totally. So what if you mess up? Yeah. Still young, stupid, broke at that point, right? Totally. Yeah. You can fall back on us.

But you're saying you just felt a call to do something. You felt an urge or a sense that there's, we're in a crisis. There's got to be a way we can do something. There's this feeling of restlessness. I mean, no, that's interesting. I think when you you acknowledge once that privilege of safety is there, we're home, we're locked up in many ways. Things aren't going to change. I think you had hundreds and thousands of students

and young people who, for the first time in their lives, had no outlet to direct that. Whether their previous outlet was something social or productive or academic or entrepreneurial or just Drinking like there was almost none of that and so I think It was all of these different experiences that were leading So many students to the similar place of I will pour myself into something if given the opportunity Just give me something today. I mean restlessness. That's interesting to me.

Well at the start of the pandemic you're like this is a vacation and then you and then after a couple weeks this sucks. My mom to tie it back to our moms, my mom saw all this PPE shortage and she just started taking all of our old T-shirts and sewing them into masks. And so, at the same time... Again, restlessness. Do something. Do something. Do anything. And she would see all these articles, because right at the beginning of the pandemic, they highlighted these food shortages quite a lot.

Farmers facing huge surpluses as the commercial food industry shut down, and then food banks facing these long lines as school lunch programs and so many other things became less accessible. My mom would cut these out and just leave them outside of me and my brother's door. We joke like some humanitarian serial killer just with these ransom notes but we'd wake up and we'd just read, we'd read these articles and read, we'd read these articles and I think that it wasn't one student, I mean everybody was seeing this and so when we started to come together and think, all right, let's just learn more, let's just do a little more, one step more, I think that was all that was really needed for us to then get that ball rolling.

for us to then get that ball rolling. And now a few messages from our generous sponsors, but first, I hope you'll consider becoming a premium member of the Army at NormalFolks.us. By becoming one for 10 bucks a month or $1,000 a year, you can get access to cool benefits like bonus episodes, a yearly group call, and even a one-on-one call with me. Frankly, guys, Premium Memberships also help us to grow this army that our country desperately needs right now. So I hope you'll think about it. We'll be right back. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart, and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal, with more entrepreneurs, more trailblazers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you.

I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson, about the geniuses who changed the world. Encore Jane, about creating a billion dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman, about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant, about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the

iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm John Seifer. And I'm Jerry O'Shea. We spent over 30 years in the CIA, uncovering global conspiracies. Conspiracies aren't just a theory to us, which is why we started our podcast Mission Implausible. Everyone has questions about conspiracy theories, but with our background, we can actually answer those questions.

We break open modern day conspiracies and tell you which elements may be the real deal. Like did Bill Gates use COVID vaccines to microchip us all? We all do have tracking devices. We carry them around. We spend a lot of money on them. And what's actually on Hunter Biden's laptop? You are talking to the guy that has three of Hunter Biden's laptops and cell phone. And what did the deep state build under Denver airport?

Do you think there are secret bunkers? That's just on my list of questions I have about Jesse Contura. It's our mission to get to the heart of these conspiracy theories and figure out the why, the how, and especially the if. Listen to Mission Implausible on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Davis Miller, host of the new podcast, The Dow of Muhammad Ali. I met Ali back in 1988, and to my great surprise, we became friends.

His influence profoundly changed my perspective on family, spirituality, and on the purpose of life itself. I'll tell you that story and also stories of others touched by the champ, including people such as Reverend Al Sharpton and James Buster Douglas. We'll even hear from Muhammad's daughter, Rashida. Well, my dad was, he was Peter Pan. Like, he never really grew up. He was very mature when it came down to social issues. He was very in tune. He felt a responsibility to be able to share his

connection to millions of people who were in need. In each of these stories, we share lessons, lessons that have meant a great deal to me and that I hope will be meaningful to you. Listen to the dial up Muhammad Ali on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I think a little background for our listeners on some things I really didn't consider or

think about, but do you know, I think you probably know the numbers, but how many kids in the United States are fed lunch by a school that if they weren't in school would not eat? Do you know that number? I don't know the exact numbers, but I think, do you know the exact number? I know about one in five kids has inadequate food access in this country. Say that again.

About one in five kids has inadequate food access. That's 20% of the United States. 20% of the kids in the United States have inadequate food access. So I think the number I've read is 7 million kids in the country, if they did not have school provided lunch, would go hungry that day. Oftentimes, that is the meal. And in some districts, they get breakfast and lunch.

And without those meals, they would not eat. Well, COVID happens, and these kids aren't in school. So where do they eat? That's one of the things that struck me when I really thought about your guys story is we literally had kids starving. They weren't dying of COVID, but they were hungry and restless and hungry.

I think what struck us too was how slow, you know, there are billion dollar organizations in this space. There are massive government programs. They're supposed to be working on this and they weren't agile enough to anticipate that quickly. I've heard you say that before. I think it might've been on the documentary. I'm not sure I agree with that. I think maybe they weren't creative enough.

It'd be too. I think maybe it took a 21, 22, 20 year old mind to say, why not? And can't we do it differently? That question is something we talk about a lot. We just revisited our values. You know, what are the things that really drive us? And that question of why or why not is everything at the beginning. I think that you talk about creativity. So many times we asked questions at those beginning months

because we knew nothing. And why was the leading question? And wherever someone said, that's the way it's always been, those were the areas where we were able to do something, the most innovative or creative. Do you know the final words of a dying organization? Because that's the way we've all done it.

You have to constantly ask why, you have to constantly reinvent, and you have to constantly find why you have to constantly reinvent and you have to constantly find creativity in any organization. I own a business that I started in 2001 and every couple of years I create a crisis. And what I mean by that is I don't actually go into my own company and destroy anything. But we get together as a leadership team, and we say, what if this happened, what would our response be? And if we can't come up with an adequate response

to that crisis, we have work to do. Because we haven't asked the why's and we haven't been creative. And I think nobody asked the question in our country among these large organizations that you talk about. What happens if a pandemic happens? What will our response be? You're right, government has tons of organizations, tons of money, there's all these large NGOs, but as you guys learned and pointed out that you're now gonna share with our audience,

we had millions upon millions of food being thrown away while we had millions upon millions of kids and families starving. And there was no organization to figure out how to quote, link them, which is what a bunch of college kids with some creativity, some initiative, some restlessness, some time on their hands ultimately figured out.

So tell me about Pittsburgh and tell me about how it happened. Yeah. So Pittsburgh was on the news. There was this visual, it's a helicopter shot of a mile long line for food banks, a bunch of cars honking at each other. Literally on the interstate. Literally on the interstate. They couldn't even get off the off ramp.

It was backed up that far. Oh my God, it's overflowing, and people were waiting in line for 12 hours only to get to the front and the food bank to tell them we just ran out of food. I could not imagine having two, three kids in the car in the United States and not being able to get that, to get that food assistance.

So I think when we saw that became more personal, like you felt it in your stomach. And I remember James said to me, let's just do one small thing to help. Let's do one delivery. We're not gonna solve this whole crisis. There was no thought of an organization or a documentary or anything like that.

It was, let's call as many farms as we can. Let's find one and let's drive it to our local food bank where we're seeing similar things happen. Because also on the news, you're also seeing these pictures of these farms that now that restaurants are shut down and schools are shut down, they have nowhere to sell their food.

So they're literally throwing food away, right? Billions of pounds of bananas being thrown in the dump, watermelons being smashed, there's milk being poured in drains, like there's beautiful edible food being thrown away all over the country. Because there's no way, no outlet for the farmers to go with it again, because the schools are shut down. So we don't need school lunches and all the restaurants are shut down. And so you guys say, let's help our food bank because all we got to do now is call these farmers are throwing the food away and get it to them. That's what your thought is.

Exactly. And it was just, there's one spot with so much food, nowhere to go. That's what your thought is. Exactly. And it was just, there's one spot with so much food, nowhere to go. There's another spot that can't possibly get enough food through its doors. Why? And what is going to connect those two? So you started calling farmers. No problem, right? We've said, let's find every farmer that has been written about in local news, national news. Where are we right now? Where in, or in April, like this beginning. Where logistically, where's the food bank are we right now? We're in April. No, no, no. Where logistically? Where's the food bank are going to help? Well, I think we, the intention was Los Angeles from James and Aidan and Owen being over there. We're calling people everywhere and call.

But the idea was we're going to help our one food bank and that one food bank was a food bank in LA. Yeah. Is that right? Yeah.. And but very quickly it proved difficult. We weren't getting the reception from farmers that we expected. It was dozens of rounds of rejection. It was like, this is a scam. I don't believe you. You're in college. Hang up. Like, there's a pandemic going on. What do you expect? These guys are getting called by people that admit at the jump. We don't know anything about this. We're just trying to help. They're like, well, we got bigger fish to fry right now. So there was this rejection.

So how many farmers do you think you called that first week or whatever? I think it was like 200. And all of them were just like, leave me alone. Well, there's a lot of voicemails because we're not even going to get through to begin with and those we did get through with, we couldn't speak the language at the time. And so yeah, it was, it was a whole lot of rejection. So and eventually we landed on we landed on two farms. There was one farm in right outside of L.A.

It was like an egg ranch and an egg ranch. An egg ranch. These kinds of farms are having to euthanize their chickens. They literally couldn't possibly figure out where to get all of this. These eggs that they were creating, they were euthanizing their chickens. I mean, this was happening all over the country. Yeah. How about you find an egg ranch? Egg ranch. That's what they were calling it. It's Trapacana Egg Ranch is what it's called. It's north of LA somewhere. North of LA, like in the valley, not that far away. And this guy answers your call. He answers our call. He says,

sure, you can pick up these eggs and transport them to the food bank. How many eggs did we talk about? It was like 40,000 eggs, 40,000 pounds of eggs. 40,000 pounds of eggs. We picked up 11,000 of them to put that into perspective. It filled a U-Haul. That's how we got it.

So you rent a U-Haul. So we rented a U-Haul and I remember- So not coached. Everybody needs to get this picture. So we rented a U-Haul and I remember. So not coached. Everybody needs to get this picture. These college kids, restless, asking why, seeing stuff on the news, decide, we're gonna help our food bank.

And you call all over the place, you get told no, and you finally find Happy Egg Farmer who gives you 11,000 eggs and you like, how are we gonna get them there? Rent a U-Haul. How do you move your, how we gonna get them there? Rent a U-Haul. How do you move your, how do your college dorm? You rent a U-Haul. So you go, you show up at an egg ranch in a U-Haul

and you leave with 11,000 eggs piled in a U-Haul? Yeah, so I, yeah. So I remember, I mean, I showed up with my camera cause I'm like, I'll document this. Hey, maybe we'll end up on the local news. We can use it to help raise a bit more money or something. And I remember the guy works at the egg ranch, comes over to me and he whispers, he's like,

you really shouldn't be filming this. You need a refrigerated truck. Like you can't put eggs in a U-Haul. Yeah. Whoops. And I was like, oh, no. Obviously nobody told me that. Yeah. Yeah.

So I don't know. I kept, I kept filming and we put the, we put the eggs in there and you know, it's pretty heavy. You're not supposed to fill a U-Haul with that much weight. And we're driving up the 405. We're in the left lane, like the fastest lane where people drive like a hundred

miles an hour and we're going 10, 15 miles an hour. It's like, might not make it up the hill. And like, I had met Aiden once before, like we weren't close friends, I was close friends with James. So Aiden and I are like meeting for the first time and bonding over this shared experience of like, trying not to blow it with all these eggs in the back. But yeah, we got it to the food bank

and the people there were so wonderful and lovely and grateful that we were able to bring it to them. And we were like, if we did this again, would you want more food? And they were like, absolutely. And that gave us a lot of confirmation that we should keep going. Oh, and the other thing which needs to be said is that James had the idea to paint a banner that said Farmlink and strap it to the side of the U-Haul, like a bed sheet, like an eight foot long bed sheet taped to

the U-Haul. And Aiden was like, this is a horrible idea. It's going to fly off. It's going to hit someone's windshield. They're going to crash. This whole thing's going to be done. They're going to hurt someone. The name of the thing we're starting just directly implicating us. But it turned out to be the most important element because a bunch of kids standing in front of that banner looked like the beginnings of a movement. And that's what new local news and eventually national news gravitated towards. And I think that's what people all over the country saw as a symbol of hope. And was that I never could have thought of that.

It's the banner. The banner. And I never could have thought of that. It's the bed sheet. It's the banner. It was the banner. It was not this professionally printed out thing. It was this painted, like slanted thing that said farm link with a bunch of kids standing in front of a rented U-Haul filled with food. It felt like this.

Filled with 11,000 eggs. Filled with 11,000 eggs. It felt like the scrappiness that, I don't know, in some ways provided hope for the country felt like we needed at that time. There's two disclaimers to share. The first is the eggs arrived in good condition and they were well received.

And the second is that we don't have kids drive our fruit around in U-Hauls anymore. So both of those things- We can get to that later. There were some more U-Haul work. Well, the second, these truckloads were happening at the same time, but right when these guys were going to pick up these eggs, we'd also spoken with this onion farmer.

His name was Shay, and he had a much larger onion operation in Idaho. And he had just been written about in the New York Times for having a pile of millions of pounds of onions with nowhere to go. And it was at the point where he was literally digging a ditch in his farm and just burying millions of onions.

And there's this visual of more onions than I have ever could ever possibly imagine. And we get on the phone with him and he says, well, if you get a truck here, you can take whatever you can. And so as these- How do onions ride in a U-Haul? Well, those went in a 40 foot long truck

that fit 40,000 pounds of onions. And so just as these eggs are being picked up, we have the world's biggest omelet coming together. And that was... Are you taking these onions to the LA thing still? The one... Yeah, I think they went to, we sent one truck to San Francisco

and we sent one truck to LA. I'm pretty sure. How'd you get the money for the truck? That was our first fundraise. I mean, to this day trucks are the main expense we have. But we just said, All right, we need $900. Let's just reach out to whoever we can just some friends and family. And that was that was the proof of concept. That was how we got started. And I think that New York Times article is particularly important because

now we've moved 11000 eggs, a full truckload of tens of thousands of pounds of onions. We still don't really know what we're trying to do. And one of our early teammates, Jordy, reaches back out to that New York Times writer who just written this article and says, Hey, we're a bunch of college students. Here's what we did with this. Just so you know, they wrote a follow-up piece. And so three weeks into Farmlink, we barely even have a website. And suddenly we're featured in the New York Times. And that accelerated the trajectory that we were on immediately. That's unbelievable. We'll be right back.

We'll be right back. lasers, more live events, more Martha, and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who change the world. Encore Jane about creating a billion dollar startup. Dr. Elisa Pressman about the five basic strategies to help parents raise good humans. Florence Fabricant about the authenticity in the world of food writing. Be sure to tune in to season two of the Martha Stewart podcast. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart radioio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm John Seifer. And I'm Jerry O'Shea. We spent over 30 years in the CIA, uncovering global conspiracies. Conspiracies aren't just a theory to us, which is why we started our podcast, Mission Implausible. Everyone has questions about conspiracy theories, but with our background, we can actually answer those questions. We break open modern day conspiracies and tell you which elements may be the real deal. Like did Bill Gates use COVID vaccines to microchip us all? We all do have tracking devices. We carry them around.

We spend a lot of money on them. And what's actually on Hunter Biden's laptop? You are talking to the guy that has three of hundred Biden's laptops and cell phone. And what did the deep state build under Denver Airport? Do you think there are secret bunkers? That's just on my list of questions I have about Jesse Contura. It's our mission to get to the heart of these conspiracy

theories and figure out the why, the how, and especially the if. Listen to Mission Implausible on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Davis Miller, host of the new podcast, The Dow of Muhammad Ali. I met Ali back in 1988, and to my great surprise, we became friends. His influence profoundly changed my perspective on family, spirituality, and on the purpose of life itself. I'll tell you that story and also stories of others touched by the champ, including

people such as Reverend Al Sharpton and James Buster Douglas. We'll even hear from Muhammad's daughter, Rashida. Well, my dad was, he was Peter Pan. Like, he never really grew up. He was very mature when it came down to social issues. He was very in tune. He felt a responsibility to be able to share his connection to millions of people who were in need.

In each of these stories, we share lessons, lessons that have meant a great deal to me and that I hope will be meaningful to you. Listen to the dialogue Muhammad Ali on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. I got to tell you a quick story. You might find it funny. There's these supplements called juice plus. All right, your parents may have taken them.

I bet your parents know what they are, but they're little pills than ones of fruit and ones of vegetable supplement and they're good supplements. They've got all the vitamins and stuff. It's what people, old people like me say. Is this an ad? Is this an ad? Is it an ad? No.

It's funny though. Should be. Jay Martin, the owner of Juice Plus, you need to reach out to me because this is free advertising. It's a podcast. It's like us in U-Haul. Oddly, it was the reason I know about it was started here,

but it's sold worldwide and they're little green pharmaceutical looking containers that you've seen them. Like if you go to GNC or whatever supplements, vitamins, right? Juice Plus. Well, it was getting off the ground here in Memphis and the folks were trying to figure out Juice Plus. We need a spokesman,

we need to really get this nationwide and everything else. And they thought, Juice, OJ Simpson. So they brought OJ to Memphis, went to LA, signed a deal with them, were about to pay him to be their spokesman. And three days later, he's driving down the interstate in the white Bronco. And we rested, go back to the picture,

he's pulled out of the Bronco and he's wearing Juice Plus t-shirt. And Juice Plus went nuts and they never had to pay him because now he's a convict. So anyway, what I'm saying is, when I hear your story about the sheet on the side of the truck, it's phenomenal. The right picture of the right thing

at the right time can do for you. And it's amazing to me that in four weeks, you guys are, you have a janky website, you deliver some eggs and some onions, but you're being put into the New York Times. I've never in four years of Farmlink been compared to OJ Simpson. Well, the juice, it should be,

there's a connection there, it's more link. It's more leak. Thank you. So when that thing happens, I remember reading somewhere, there was a GoFundMe or something, and you woke up and you're like, hold it, we got a lot of money.

Yeah, so I was driving back from Idaho. I had gone there to take photos of all the potat- the five million potatoes in the silo. We hadn't heard about the potatoes, maybe I- That was the Doug Hess project. Oh yeah, so- Yeah, go ahead. No, go for it.

Right after these onions and these eggs, we get on a call and we think, all right, we need to split into two groups. One group needs to focus on the farms. One group needs to focus on fundraising and storytelling because if we're gonna keep doing this, we need money. And so- By the way, I'm sorry to interrupt you.

The storytelling part of this is so integral because not only were you doing work, to do the work you have to do fundraising and do fundraising, people have to hear about you. And the fact that you guys had the foresight, the creativity, or maybe just the restlessness with the right amount of skillset from each individual person involved in this

to have not only the work going around with the storytelling in this to have not only the work going around with the storytelling in order to build, I think is part of the secret. I mean, James and Aidan are great storytellers. Oh, and is the the keystone of that, though. And so to have people from the start, I'll sing your praises. I mean, it just it positioned us to be something that I think is, I mean, storytelling is such a necessary ingredient for systemic change.

We didn't even know that at the time. We just knew this is a part of who we are and how we think this needs to be operated. Yeah, and what I'll say about that is, so I was working for two guys who make social impact documentaries, and they had raised $90 million for Syrian refugees and people living in poverty through

their stories. And for the last two and a half, three years, I had seen their work. I had seen every step of how they put their stories together, how they run impact campaigns. They fully took me under their wing and mentored me, which I'm so grateful for. So by the time Farmlink started, I was ready to hit the ground running. I was like, I know how to do this. I'm young. I haven't done this before, but I've seen it work. And that's what we tried to replicate. I was like, this is a time where everyone's at home. Every news story is as negative as it's ever been. Let's give people hope. Let's only storytell

from the perspective of hope. And so you separated into groups, fundraising, storytelling, and actual production. And we're calling hundreds of farmers same deal. Now we have a little bit of credibility. You know, we did this with the onions. Here's what we did in the New York Times. We still aren't having much success, but we get through to this potato farmer and he's growing potatoes that are seed potatoes. So they're not historically sold at stores.

They're used to grow more potatoes, but they're completely nutritious. And he says, I just have potatoes in a pile. And Owen, you went and saw it. It's how many feet tall was that mountain of potatoes? It was like a 50 foot tall pile of potatoes. Millions of potatoes. And he says, and they store them.

That's how they store them. They can last for a year like that. Do they, are they like under a shed? Yeah, it's like a shed. Some temperature regulation. It's like an airplane hanger full of potatoes. No kidding. And he says, I don't have packaging, but if you guys figure that out, you can have them. And so this was the first time we really figured out all of the logistics of making this work.

We had a local Idaho packaging company donate boxes that they brought to the farm. Then we said food banks that we knew we could receive the potatoes. Then we had to coordinate the trucks to go pick up the potatoes, the bins to be filled, and then all of those to be moved. It was our first time doing all of those logistics.

And it was pretty clunky, but I mean, it was a way for us to learn. And those potatoes were, I think, proof for me that this wasn't just a fluke. And this guy was a fifth generation potato farmer. He said, no one in my life has ever experienced something like this pandemic. The closest thing I can think of is,

what was it, like the Spanish flu? It was like his great grandfather during the Spanish flu. And was like his great grandfather during like the Spanish flu. And he said, so he's like, we farmers, we know everything about this industry. We don't know what's going on right now. And he told us, he said, the saddest day in a farmer's life

is the day all of the food you spend your entire livelihood growing is going to waste. And we've tried to figure out how to make FarmLink the most financially viable solution for farmers. But that was when it also clicked that the real reason they wanted to be a part of this at the at the jump was this is what they're here for. They're here to feed people. And especially in a moment where so many people were hungry. That was what drove them to respond to Farmlink more than anything else, because we didn't have a perfect solution or experience behind us. But I think that hope piece

really resonated with the farmers too. So how many trucks of potatoes did you load up? At that time, I think we recovered about 150,000 pounds of potatoes. And so you're looking at like four truckloads, which now we're doing deals where we're moving. And we're talking truckload, we're talking a semi truckload.

A truckload, when we say a truckload, we're talking- A 52 foot truck, it fits 22 pallets in there 40,000 pounds is our unit of measurement for a truckload. So 40,000 pounds is enough to fill a large room With six feet tall of produce to tie it back to what you're saying before I was driving back from that visit of the potatoes and I was driving back from that visit of the potatoes and we got a call that ABC world news wanted to feature us. They had seen like the ABC world news tonight, like the 530 real news.

David Meir. That's bigger than the New York Times. And they were like, yeah, they had seen the two sentences we were featured in in the New York Times. And they were like, can five of you send videos saying, Hey, David, I'm here on the potato farm. Hey, David, I'm here receiving the potatoes at the food bank. And I plugged my laptop into the outside of a Dairy Queen takeout window and started,

uh, started getting, yeah, there's a photo of it and it started sending them all the videos like quickly. Cause the news was going on in in two and a half hours. It was like they didn't have any- They say, can you do this? We want to go live with it in two hours. That's all you get. If this is going to happen, it's going to happen now.

They were like, can you get it to me? I have like nine emails from the producer. There's no text in the body of the email. It's all caps in the subject line. That's how they communicate. And I was like, oh my God, I'm gonna have a panic attack. I got to start stop with the dairy queen. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately, again, yeah, this doesn't happen. Had you not understood the power of storytelling while you're doing this, because if you hadn't had those files on you and already

canned and ready to go, you can send them content. Your stories never told. Right. We had the first delivery and with the banner and the U-Haul. And then we had, this is starting to happen on a much bigger scale. So people could understand what was happening there. And I mean, I've never seen, I mean, we raised like $120,000 in 10 minutes. And after, right when it aired.

Right when it, like as it aired, like as it was still playing, it was like our PayPal account got shut down for suspicious activity because we had so many donations coming in and it wasn't people donating a thousand dollars. It was, Hey, I got $10 here, $20 here, $30 here. And these long, long messages about what this meant to them and how they want their kids to participate. And it was people from all over the country. There was no. And it's during a pandemic. So during the pandemic, everyone's at home and it's the

only positive news story of a nine hour negative news cycle. It was right place. Literally overnight, you went from raising a little bit of money to you, a hundred thousand. In our friend's bank account. And suddenly we're thinking this needs to change. It's like the PayPal was, I just dumped it in his checking account. Credit to one of our co-founders, Max Goldman, who did not run away that morning.

He got all that to the quarter million dollars. Did it really happen like that quick? It was that quick. Yeah, because after the news airs, like an hour later, it's all gone. Like if you didn't donate by then, you forgot about it, you watched the next thing. So it all happened at once.

That's unbelievable. So now you've delivered 11,000 eggs, you've delivered two truckloads of onions, four truckloads of potatoes. You've got a story in the New York Times. You've got your world news tonight. At this point, you're a few months old, I assume. Less than, we're less than a month.

A month old and you've got now how much money in whose account was it? Call it $150,000 in whose account was it? Max's bank. Max's and Max's bank. You realize how ridiculous it is? It's crazy. It's very ridiculous.

So in a month, you've delivered onions, potatoes, eggs. A great omelet. Been a great omelet, been on New York Times, been on World News Tonight, and Max wakes up to 150 grand and y'all got a U-Haul truck and a bed sheet. Yep. That's a good catalog of all the assets we have.

That does not happen without some college kids with some creativity and some restlessness going, why not? And we didn't know what we couldn't do. So there was this optimism and this naivete that just led it all. And I think when we woke up, when that money was there, we thought, okay, there is a level of responsibility. And we were already so locked in and motivated by this, but there was a level of responsibility to push from there where we thought, okay,

this needs to become a step more intentional. What, what's going to happen from here. And so that's when we just continue to ramp it up, posting on our social media. I hope the first thing you did was actually open a farm link bank account. We did, well we started to. Yeah, Max was pretty integral for getting all that legitimacy lined up. I think he was kind of scared. This is gonna be too much money. You're gonna go to jail.

Um, but. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. That's a, where was Max in school at the time? He was one of my classmates at Brown. I got it. And I actually didn't even really know Max. So many of these people were coming together in a way where. It was happening so quickly. He was one of my classmates at Brown. I got it. And I actually didn't even really know Max. So many of these people were coming together in a way where.

It was happening so quickly. It was happening so quickly. And I think this is when we started to really learn that next month about. Can't help but laugh at you two guys. I'm seeing these two college kids wanting to do something good, getting involved in doing all this, picking up some paperwork left outside your bedroom

door by your mom and a dude who likes to surf from New York. And you put a sheet on a U-Haul and only a month late. I mean, it had to have been surreal for you really. I'm trying to get in your minds, but a month into this, it had to have been exciting, but you had to be looking at each other going, what? Well, we got dunked on so hard right after that because we're thinking, all right, we have this article coming out where the talk of the town, surely we must be moving into a center position in this industry.

And I, uh, I'm going to tell this cucumber story real quick. I mean, we then speak with a cucumber farmer in Florida. This is all happening within the same couple of weeks. He has 30 truckloads of cucumbers with nowhere to go. And he's a guy who grows cucumbers to turn them into pickles. If your audience doesn't know, pickles are cucumbers. Yeah, they are, they are.

I actually think a lot of us didn't know that, but- That's ridiculous. Nobody was pickling anything in May of 2020. And so he had 1.2 million pounds of cucumbers. And we think, perfect, we can get these to 20 different food banks. And a local food bank calls, and they say, this is our territory, you need to back off. And this is something we'd, we didn't know existed. And they said, this is our farmer, we're going to take five of these truckloads of cucumbers,

but you're going to mess this whole thing up. You need to, you can give us money or you can get out of here. And we're like, well, what about the other 25 truckloads? The million pounds of cucumbers, we can find homes for them. And they called the farmer with me on the phone and said, these kids are scamming you and hung up. And the farmer didn't work with us. And a million pounds of cucumbers went to waste.

And so now we're sitting here, not really sure what to do at all because we know this food is there. We're starting to talk to more and more people who have it, but maybe this industry that we're trying to support doesn't actually want us there to begin with. And so that kicked off, I think, a lot of learning and asking of questions for us. And that is not a reflection of food banking as a whole. But what we started to learn was there are hundreds of food banks, and each one is set up to support their local community. And they see those people shown up every

single day needing them. And so it's really easy to just focus on preserving and supporting your slice of the pie. And what we realized was there are all these food banks, hundreds of them around the country, that in a weird way are not incentivized to support each other. And so that became a layer of this that we started to realize, if we're going to make some progress at a large scale here, we need to address that too. And so I think that between the David Meir and all this money showing up and then starting to have these conversations with these folks in the industry, realizing this is so much more nuanced than we maybe gave it credit credit for when we started out. And that concludes part one of my conversation with Ben Collier and Owen Duback.

And you do not wanna miss part two, that's now available to listen to, as their fight to link these two worlds is just getting started. Together guys, we can change the country, but it starts with you. I'll see you in part two. Hi, I'm Martha Stewart and we're back with a new season of my podcast. This season will be even more revealing and more personal with more entrepreneurs, more

live events and more questions from you. I'm talking to my cosmetic dermatologist, Dr. Dan Belkin, about the secrets behind my skincare. Encore Jane about creating a billion dollar startup. Walter Isaacson about the geniuses who change the world. Listen and subscribe to the Martha Stewart podcast on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Solea Mosin, and I've covered economic policy for years and reported on how it impacts people across the United States. In 2016, I saw how voters were leaning towards Trump and how so many Americans felt misunderstood by Washington. So I started The Big Take DC.

We dig into how money, politics, and power shape government and the consequences for voters. With new episodes every Thursday, you can listen to The Big Take DC on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Jo Piazza Every family has an origin story, one passed down through the generations. Mine happens to be a mystery involving my great-great-grandmother left behind in Sicily. I'm Jo Piazza and my new podcast will transport you to the gorgeous island of Sicily as I trace my roots back through a whodunit for the ages. Listen to The Sicilian Inheritance on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts.