Dhru Purohit Show - The Best and Worst Shoes for Chronic Pain with Galahad Clark

Episode Date: September 4, 2023

This episode is brought to you by Beekeepers Naturals and LMNT. Are chronic aches in your knees, back, or neck holding you back? Contrary to widespread belief, this is not a normal part of aging. Many factors contribute to chronic pain, but one unspoken area could be a part of the problem: your shoes.  Today on The Dhru Purohit Podcast, Dhru sits down with Galahad Clark to discuss how our modern-day footwear could be an overlooked area contributing to chronic pain. Dhru and Galahad discuss how conventional shoes restrict our feet's natural shape and movement, making them weaker, and how this impacts the rest of our bodies. They also discuss the environmental impact of the shoe industry and why we need a radical shift toward a more sustainable solution.  Galahad Clark is a visionary entrepreneur and sustainability advocate who is revolutionizing the footwear industry with his innovative approach to crafting eco-friendly and socially responsible shoes. Galahad inherited a deep appreciation for shoe craftsmanship and quality design as a seventh-generation shoemaker and descendant of the Clark Shoes enterprise. A degree in Anthropology matched with his family background, eventually led Galahad to create the minimalist, environmentally conscious barefoot shoe company Vivobarefoot. Vivobarefoot is on a mission to make the world healthier by designing footwear that allows our feet to function the way they were intended to. In this episode, Dhru and Galahad dive into (audio version / Apple Subscriber version): -Dhru’s experience with chronic knee pain from wearing conventional shoes (2:21 / 2:21) -How modern-day footwear contributes to knee, neck, and back pain (7:08 / 5:15) -The connection between foot and brain development (14:21 / 11:40) -Top types of shoes that contribute to chronic pain (16:44 / 13:40) -The many functions of the “great” toe (18:55 / 15:47) -Why bunions are not hereditary (22:39 / 19:15) -How barefoot shoes help strengthen the feet (27:09 / 25:25) -The benefits of walking barefoot (28:31/ 27:00) -The three areas that make Vivobarefoot shoes unique (31:18 / 28:08) -A look at how footwear has evolved throughout human history (40:14 / 37:00) -Navigating the adjustment period to barefoot shoes (44:01 / 40:54) -Galahad’s story and why he started Vivobarefoot (49:09 / 46:00) -Trends in sneakers and footwear continue to get worse (1:00:18 / 58:20) Also mentioned in this episode: -Vivobarefoot blog on the difference between normal vs. natural shoes -Made-to-order shoes: vivobarefoot.com/us/vivobiome (available in the U.K.) -Vivobarefoot online store: vivobarefoot.com For more on Vivobarefoot, follow their Instagram @vivobarefoot, Twitter @vivobarefoot, and through their website vivobarefoot.com. Go to beekeepersnaturals.com/DHRU and enter code “DHRU” to get Beekeeper’s Naturals' exclusive offer of 20% off sitewide. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to DrinkLMNT.com/DHRU today. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Ayovetic tradition, they literally prescribe people barefoot walking on the earth as a way to reduce inflammation and to feel better. And I think most people listening will probably understand that when they go to the beach, they take off their shoes, they run around barefoot for the day, they feel great. And what's happening when you're literally barefoot, there's a huge electrical charge between your feet and the earth. And the resonant frequencies all interact with one another. And you literally connect with the earth energy. and that's shown to have tremendous health benefits through the whole body. Welcome to the Drew Proet podcast. Each week we explore the inner workings of the brain and the body with one of the brightest minds in wellness, medicine, and mindset. This week's guest is Galaad Clark,

and he's here to talk to us about why 99% of all shoes on the market today are actually making our health worse. And for many people, including myself, they could be contributing to the chronic pain that so many suffer from. Now, a little bit more about Galahad. Galahad is a seventh generation shoemaker and the founder of Vivo Barefoot, which is absolutely my favorite footwear brand. Vivo Barefoot is on a radical mission

to make the world a healthier place by designing footwear that allows our feet to function in the way that they were intended to. Our feet truly are incredibly designed. They have over 26 bones, 32 joints, over 100 muscles, tendons, and ligaments. But most shoes,

get in the way of this incredible design and place our feet into a crowded box that prevents them from breathing and moving correctly. This lack of movement is associated with all sorts of issues, including potentially poor brain development and especially chronic pain. But it doesn't have to be this way. Galaad is here to remind us that by simply walking barefoot more often

and using minimalist shoes when possible, we can begin to correct the dysfunction that so many of us have. Stay tuned for a fantastic episode on all things footwear and chronic disease with Galaad Clark. Galahad, welcome to the podcast. Pleasure to have you here. You know, so many people, both young and old, and I'm in this myself, I'll share my story in a minute, suffer from chronic pain, chronic back pain, chronic neck pain, chronic even knee pain. Talk to us a little bit about how the shoes that we're wearing could be part of the equation

that people are in such pain. Well, thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here on a sunny L.A. morning. Look, the human body is basically made up of three systems, a nervous system, a skeletal system, and muscles and tendons. And the human foot is this extraordinary complex, you know, as we say, the most advanced piece of technology to ever go into a shoe is the human foot.

And the human foot houses these three systems, in a really sophisticated way. If you look at the most advanced robotic feet, they're just pathetic compared to the human foot. So 28 bones, hundreds of muscles and ligaments, and thousands of nerve endings. And the modern shoe industry basically takes those three systems and completely undermines them.

Big padding, takes away all the nervous and sensory feeling, stiff shoes and healed shoes, reduces the dynamism of the body, foot so the arch is held in place that the rest of the foot is sort of stuck in place so the foot is unable to be dynamic so the muscles and tendons are not used don't use it you lose it your feet get weak and then of course literally you know your big toe is designed to be your body's pivot and anchor and nearly every shoe takes your big toe shoves it up against the other toes suspends it in the air so you literally can't use it so if you're

feet are not working well, then you have to overcompensate for that up the kinetic chain. So you then overcompensate in your knees, in your hips. The foot is designed to take 50% of the shock absorption in every step, in every movement. So, and big shoe, padded, raised hill shoes effectively completely take that away because it allows you to move in an unnatural way. So you then have to absorb all of that extra shock up the system in your knees, in your hips, in your back. And of course, you know, if your feet are not working naturally, then the rest of your body's not working naturally. And unnatural movement, as you very well know, results in pain and

discomfort. And as you say, unfortunately, chronic pain is in the majority of people over 50 years old. It's partly to do with sedentary lifestyles, but I would posit that a lot to do with weak, deformed feet caused by the shoe industry. You know, for a lot of people, this is going to be a shock. because they look at the shoe industry and they think of the big companies that are out there, right? The Nike's, the Ditas's, the other companies that are there

and their ads make it seem like these shoes are so technology forward. So after billions of dollars and R&D and all these things, how is it that these shoes are actually not supporting us and they're actually causing more problems? Starts with kids.

and lazy shoemate and well it probably starts with horse riding so we started developing sort of pointy shoes with heels you know around the time of stirrups and things and then ceremonial shoes it became a status thing to be able to sort of elevate yourself out of the... Putting heels on shoes you mean.

Putting heels, partly horse riding and then status in society so it became a sort of posh thing to have a horse, posh thing to them prance around in healed shoes. And one thing led to another and we found ourselves in the 20th century where most people were wearing quite stiff, healed shoes. So Nike came along in the 60s and they started off quite barefoot shoes. The first Nike's had nothing underfoot. They were very flat, almost like track spikes. And Bill Barrowman was a big believer in natural movement and allowing the foot to move naturally. But they know and but they were encouraging a lot of people to get out

there and jog and run. They started the jogging revolution in the in the 60s and 70s. But they noticed lots of people were getting injured and they brought in a bunch of doctors and the doctors said, well, look, the problem is everyone's prancing around in heeled, pointy shoes. So the transition from those shoes to track spikes effectively is too much. So you need to design your shoes to mimic the sort of healed dress shoe. So they started putting technology. into the shoes to support, you know, the already deformed weak foot. So all the technology in shoes that we see in the modern shoe industry is there to correct problems caused by shoes in the first place. It's wild and just a little personal story. You know, I was an avid fan of all these shoe

companies that are out there. I wouldn't call myself a sneaker head, but I'd wear the new balances. I'd wear the Nikes, just like other people, even though I'm not like a regular runner. I run occasionally. And I remember around like 35-ish, roughly around there, I started really feeling that this tiny little crick that I had in my knee started developing into like a regular pain that was there. And it was persistent on a weekly basis, but then it really elevated when I would go to a wedding and I'd be dancing all night in sort of dress shoes. And I'd feel like, oh my gosh, I really freaking hate wearing dress shoes. But you have to, you know, your date, your wife. And They won't let you wear other shoes that are there at the time.

And then a dear friend of mine, who's one of your guys's top ambassadors, was visiting me from London, my dear friend, Dr. Rungan Chatterjee. And one day I was sitting in my living room and he was visiting here at my place in Santa Monica at the time. And I was saying, you know, I was massaging my knee. He's like, hey, man, what's going on? You know, like what's going on with your knee? And I said, ah, dude, it's so weird. Like I've just had this persistent sort of chronic knee thing that's been happening, especially in my right side. I feel a little bit at my left. He's like, okay, let me take a look at your shoes. So I showed

him my shoes that I was wearing, which were just like a regular nice pair of like new balances. He took a look at a couple others. He's like, I don't know if this is 100% the case for you, but let me tell you why I've switched to these shoes and he talked about Vivo Barefoot. And I remember at the time being like, I had for a while tried another barefoot shoe long ago. And I liked him. They're the ones where like your toes were spread a little bit, but I didn't feel that between combination of look and also a couple other structural things. I actually felt like I would prefer barefoot walking compared to wearing those shoes with the toes all like spread out individually. It was not very comfortable. No comment for me. Yes. So then I ordered my first pair and I ordered it and I think

they shipped it from England and I switched to those and I haven't looked back since and that chronic knee pain has never come back. So that's just my own personal account and testimony of even for somebody like me in the wellness world, I had no idea that shoes made that much of a difference, even though I had had this sort of like boiling frog situation happening over years, where it would just get worse and worse and worse. I can imagine you probably hear a version of that story all the time. This episode is brought to you by beekeepers naturals. So we're getting into the fall now, which means that kids are headed back to school and life is moving indoors. This inevitably brings more germs and more opportunities to start feeling under the weather.

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And this time of year, especially because my sisters have kids, what they'll do is they'll stock up on the liposomal vitamin C plus propolis to supercharge their family's immune system even more as their kids are getting ready for school. So this fall, this school season, stay protected for the entire family, use beekeepers natural propolis throat spray and the liposomal vitamin C plus propolis. Go to beekeepers naturals.com slash drew and enter the code Drew, D-H-R-U, to get DIPAW vitamin C plus propolis. Go to get Beekeepers Natural's exclusive offer for 20% off site wide. This episode is brought to you by Element, LMNT. Element is an electrolyte mix that's on par with everything that I look for in a high-quality electrolyte supplement. Number one, super clean ingredients.

Number two, free from added sugars. Number three, zero artificial sweeteners. I love using Element first thing in the morning before I hit the gym for an intense workout, and I'm a big fan of using it before my sauna sessions, too, because I lose a ton of electrolytes in my sweating sessions. And as we've heard from many past podcast guests, replenishing with electrolytes is the key to keeping your brain and body hydrated for optimal performance. That's why I'm so big on my morning hydration protocol, which you guys have heard me talk about on this podcast before. What I love about Element is that each of their eight flavors are loaded with sodium,

potassium and magnesium in ratios that are backed by science. My personal favorite flavor is watermelon, but honestly, all of their flavors are super delicious. Right now, Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase, so you can try all eight of their flavors and pick your favorite. Or you can share them with a friend or a loved one. Head over to drink element.com slash Drew. that's drink, D-R-I-N-K, element, L-M-N-T dot com slash D-H-R-U to claim this offer from my community today. Yeah, and look, it's a shame because obviously people only experience the negative effects.

The body is incredibly adaptable, and a young body can cope with all kinds of extraordinary, unhealthy habits, shall we say. But then obviously, you know, you start to pay for them later in life. And look, it starts with kids. The child's foot is not fully formed. The bones are not fully calcified in a child's foot until the teenage years. So they're extremely malleable, extremely plastic. And, you know, if you look now, the average five-year-old is put in little raised sneakers that are not foot-shaped at all. So they're literally deforming the child's foot.

So the bones are literally not able to grow naturally into the natural shape. they're not using the foot in its natural ways. So all the muscles like we spoke about just now are not being used properly. So I would posit that the average Western child is arriving in adulthood with weak deformed feet. It's akin to giving them cigarettes or something. It's like, you know, the children is literally damaging children. They're arriving in adulthood seriously compromised in like one of the most healthy, in one of the most important health aspects, which is movement.

Yeah, and it's not just like to prevent chronic pain in the future. The way that our feet develop actually seems to have some deep connection to how our brain develops too. One thing I learned from you on a previous episode that you did with another podcaster is that our brain is used to getting so much information from our feet. Our feet are so sensitive, the amount of nerve endings inside. And balance is not just about balance. Balance is actually about the formation of the brain.

And that we have all these biomechanics that if they're stunted early, our brain cannot develop to the full capacity. Which is why I will say the one positive thing is even here in America, I think the main children's pediatric association is recommending to parents like, look, delay shoes. Now, they're not telling them to put better shoes, but they're saying delay shoes, don't put on shoes too early. It can be something that can affect childhood development and motor function, but also potentially brain development. No one can argue with allowing a child to develop naturally and a child's foot to develop naturally. And, you know, like you say, a huge part of the brain is dedicated to movement. And there's lots of studies that show where children are moving more and moving better. they also learn better, they study better.

You know, the part of the brain that gets information from the feet is the same size as the part of the brain that gets information from the hands. So, you know, if you're putting big slabs of foam under your feet, then your brain's getting garbled information from the feet, so then ends up making bad movement decisions. And, you know, worse than that, They show that walking around in padded shoes in a concrete world, because you're not using that part of the brain as you might, the vitality starts to diminish.

Not only that, but that part of the brain starts to atrophy literally. And they link that ultimately then to brain degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Yeah, at a sedentary lifestyle, as you mentioned earlier, out of bad diet, at all these things. and it's a perfect recipe for, you know, chronic disease and neurodegenerative diseases. Yeah. And it's work done by a guy called Dr. Mezzanich, who's just up the road here in California. Well, maybe we'll get them on the podcast. You should, yeah.

Talk to us about shoes in our modern world, which are the worst offenders, right? What are the worst offenders of shoes that people regularly wear? And obviously there's a big gender component because there's certain shoes that typically women will wear. heels and there's other you know men have their version of heels but they're typically not as high what are the worst possible shoes that if somebody is wearing them every single day and has to and listen my heart goes out to people that are in jobs and positions and other things where there's a standard and they're trying to navigate around it we'll talk about that in a little bit but what are the worst offenders when it comes to the shoes well obviously um the further away from the natural

condition, I would say the less good. So the higher the stiletto and the pointier the stiletto, less good. The more padding and the more constricted and the greater the heel raise in a sneaker, the less good. I won't name any names, but we live in a world where suddenly a lot of the shoe industry and the visual shoe industry that you see in all the shops, we're in this kind a maximalist moment, right, where people are buying thicker and thicker shoes. But just before we go there, one of the interesting things is, and a challenge for us is to get more women to wear more barefoot shoes because a lot of women don't like wearing flat, wide shoes. It's not considered And for those that are watching on YouTube, I'm wearing Vivo shoes right now. What are the name of

these right here? GeoCort. The GEOCort. And then I have like a bunch. I have probably like six, seven pairs. And then I also have these are the ones that I work out in. They're called the Primus Light knit. Yeah. So people can look at it and we'll also put us, you know, on the screen as well too. But describe for our audience, when you're talking about what makes this shoe unique,

before we get into like what are the unique challenges of getting, especially women and having better designed shoes for them, what makes this shoe unique and more naturally aligned with how we were designed to walk? So we'll go back to the three systems. Yeah. Right. So starting with the big toe, the skeletal system. So the big toe is four times as thick and four times as dense as the other toes.

Yeah. So being able to get energy into the big toe in movement and where the big toe is literally the body's pivot and anchor. So the foot is designed that all the energy in movement goes through the big toe. It's designed to be abused. I call it the great toe. And so a shoe needs to be warm. wide enough and flat enough to allow that to happen. So width is super important.

And that's usually the first thing that people notice when they look at these shoes is that there's a wider front area. What's this area called? The toe box. The toe box. So the toe box is wider. People don't realize how much their toes are squished together from standard typical shoes that you're wearing.

And just imagine an entire life of that. It's almost like keeping your foot in a cast its entire life. Imagine if I said, hey, to protect your arm from bumps and scrapes and mosquito bites, we're going to put it in a cast. And yeah, you'll have some mobility, but you'll not be able to move it beyond, let's say, a certain amount of degrees. But we're going to keep it that way the entire life, right? Anybody who has a cast that has worn it for a while knows that even in a short period

of time of six to eight weeks, one arm is so much. smaller and less developed than the other arm in just six to eight weeks. Now imagine an entire life of doing that with typical shoes. It's the last part of the body that is, you know, like back in the day, people might have worn magnificent hats that literally sort of, you know, the, you know, big flowery hats that literally probably constricted all the blood flow to the head wore bone corsets that sucked in the belly and, you know, wailed. bone sort of things to prance around in to literally deform the middle part of the body. All that's gone, but still feet are still literally being deformed by modern, by really modern

footwear, which is unbelievable, right? There's also in history, there's this, I don't know if you know this story, in, I believe it was China. There was this period of time where one of the empresses brought into fashion this idea of intentional foot deformation at a young age. Do you know about this? Lotus shoes, yeah. Yeah, Lotus shoes, right?

Was that in China? Yeah, yeah. It was China, yeah. It was China. And if you look at it, you can see how a society, now I'm sure whatever ideas they had and everything, I'm not trying to knock on any culture, but you see, Tesla, can we look this up, Lotus shoe so that we can bring it up on YouTube for those that are looking at it?

If you can look at the feet of the women, yep, Chinese foot binding, the foot of individuals who were wearing these shoes. Shows how malleable the first. It shows how malleable is. And it also shows you that you can literally, because of fashion-style culture, anything can be done to the foot. Like if for those that are listening, the foot literally looks like a heel. It has a carved heel.

And the toes are wrapped underneath the foot. And we are doing a mild version of that today with our shoes. Yeah. And, you know, dare I say it, the, Obviously, the high heel is the closest thing to that, the stiletto. Yeah, which is a reason why, like, so many women have bunions, have to have foot surgery, have chronic knee pain. My wife.

Here's a bit of a newsflash. Like a lot of people go, oh, bunions are hereditary. My mom had them, so I got them. Yeah. They're not hereditary. Bunyons are not hereditary. Bunyons are, you know, are gain. Tell us why bunions are not hereditary.

If you have bunions, what the hell is going on with your feet? I would posit that every bunion is caused by inappropriate footwear, deforming the feet. You literally are deforming your feet. Nobody inherited a bunion. And the biggest offenders, of course, and my heart goes out to them. It's a bigger societal issue, everything like that, is women who have to wear stilettos and high heels on a regular basis. My wife was in investment banking, right? She'd have to walk to work in those shoes.

Luckily, enough people have the right frame of mind that they switch to other shoes when they're in the office. They pull out their sneakers and that. But years of that, it will really fuck up your feet. And dare I say it, like what we notice with our shoe sales in places like Scandinavia and Germany, where, you know, women is the women's emancipation movement is perhaps slightly more advanced or the slightly less misogynistic societies, where women are generally wearing, you know, quite unisex products, shall we say, and almost nobody walks around in heels anymore. We see our sales much higher,

but we struggle actually in places like America where there's still this expectation on women to sort of wear pencil skirts and heels to work. Less and less so, and COVID arguably helped that. We struggle more. The almost more misogynistic as society is to sell barefoot shoes to women And then so it's almost parallel to the level of misogyny and emancipation in a society. Well, I was telling you that because there's, you know, one of the beauty of podcasts like this and other podcasts are out there is that there's no longer the gatekeeping that prevents these dialogues from happening.

And there's so many people, you know, you guys don't advertise in America. And yet I was chit chatting with you beforehand. I go to my chiropractor's office here in Los Angeles. It's called the Life Center. Shout out to Dr. Jeremy Brooke. He's amazing. Almost 60% of the shoes that are set up on the shoe rack that he has inside. Anytime I go in and people are in the different patient rooms, I look, it's all Vivo's.

It's all Vivo barefoot shoes. Because people come in, they come in because they have back pain. They talk to Dr. Brooke and they learn from the staff and they see, what are you wearing? What shoes are better? So I think people are finally, and I know L.A. is a little bit of a la-la. land bubble, but people are waking up and realizing that nothing looks as good as being healthy feels. And there's so many people, including close friends of mine, that whether they're in their gym or whether they're going to their chiropractor or their doctor or anything, and they're like,

I cannot live this life anymore of this chronic pain. To this date, I cannot wear other shoes. I am in situations sometimes where I might, I don't, I want to be careful with the word have to, but let's say the occasion calls for something like a wedding where maybe there's photos or other stuff and I want to be respectful. It's not my wedding, but I'm playing a crucial part in it or I'm arm candy to my wife. So I will wear that. And then as soon as we're at a place where like people are busy and cocktail hours kind of done and we're all like in the reception hall, I always bring a bag that has VVos in it. And I almost always strike up a conversation and convince a few other people that they have to give this shoe a try because every single person is in

dire pain that night with their heels. One good trend. I'm on a little monologue right now. One good trend, at least that I've seen in weddings, is that they're very good at getting sandals and other things out there earlier and encouraging people to switch to sneakers where maybe 10 years ago, people would, you know, weather the storm the whole night. So I am seeing that, which is a beautiful thing. It's, you know, like you say, chronic pain is is endemic in society and that is a real problem, I think, on many levels, because when people are in pain and they make less good decisions by everything and they get sort of, you know, they're agitated and annoyed and the way they do their work and their jobs and their family. Yeah, we don't want people. No one, no one wins from

on any level. And if we can play a little part in getting people's feet back to healthy status, what the research shows is that just by walking around in barefoot shoes for six months, no special exercises, and obviously it would work if you're fully barefoot, be even better. Kids in there, the study was done on quite young people, between 25 and 35 years old, just by walking around for six months, their feet got 60% stronger. Wow.

So it's not to say that barefoot shoes make your feet stronger. The point is that the average person is walking around with very weak deformed feet. And just by walking, just by using your feet again, to use the cast analogy, just by using your arm again, the muscles all reactivate, the foot reactivates, and the shape changes a lot. You probably experience it. You find it harder and harder to get back into those dress shoes, right? As your feet get stronger, the muscles get stronger. Absolutely.

And obviously, you've got strong. healthy feet, then, of course, up the kinetic chain benefits no matter what you're doing. And even when you are dancing at a wedding, you know, and you are in your high heels or your Cuban heels or whatever you're wearing, having strong feet will be better for that. Right. Right. I mean, although my tolerance is a lot less, so I'll fling them off a lot earlier. You know, I think one important point here is that, yes, you're a founder of a company.

We'll talk a little about your origin story. but really you're on a mission to get people to walk and use their feet more naturally. And one takeaway that everybody can do today is just literally walk barefoot more often. Strengthen your feet, walk barefoot more often. And Rungan mentioned this in the podcast that you guys did together. You know, I'm an Indian background. A lot of Asian families, South Asian Indian families, they have a general rule like shoes come off in the house. And so from a young age, I had pretty much lived my life barefoot.

In fact, I used to try to convince my soccer coach when I was younger, can I just play barefoot? Because I feel like I'm faster. I can kick better. He was like, no, it's a liability. If somebody steps on your foot with cleats, which obviously he's right, you can't do that. But any opportunity I would get to be barefoot, I would prefer that. I actually felt genuinely, no pun intended, I felt more grounded when I was barefoot. And it was a big part of how I grew up.

And shoes were always like if I have to wear shoes, right? If I have to wear shoes. So yeah, so one takeaway is you're not just here to have people buy your shoes. You really want to educate people that if you can walk more oftenly barefoot, your life is going to get better. Is that accurate? 100%. And you know, in the Ayovetic tradition, they literally prescribe people barefoot,

barefoot walking on the earth as a way to reduce inflammation. to feel better. And I think everybody, most people listening will probably understand that when they go to the beach, they take off their shoes, they run around barefoot for the day, they feel great. That's why people love beach holidays. Yeah. And what's happening when you're literally barefoot and you are literally grounding yourself, there's a huge electrical charge between your feet and the earth and the resonant frequencies all interact with one another. And you literally connect with the earth energy, and that's shown to have tremendous health benefits through the whole body. Yeah, the whole earthing movement, which a lot of people are fans of. Yeah, if I can have it stack,

I don't always get a chance to do, I use earthing sheets at night. Yep. So that those are helpful, they kind of go into a grounding wire. But in the morning, because I live in a condo, I can't immediately kind of get outside once we, you know, switch to a house and have a family and everything. Would love to have a backyard, you know, get your morning sunlight, have a little bit of your coffee, right, do a little bit of breathing, get, you know, set that circadian rhythm for the day and also get some earthing in, right? That's like the best half of the feet on the soil, then, yeah. And especially after flying, really important to, because you can get all the electrons can really get stuck in your body after a flight. Yeah. So one of the best things to do after flight is just

get barefoot on the soil somewhere, as quick as possible. Well, let's go back to this idea of what you guys design your shoe to be. And it was really those three points, supporting. those three areas. You talked about the big toe. Great toe. The great toe. And how important it is to have a wide shoe box that's there. And especially straight on the inside so the big toe can engage with the ground, right? Yep. That's the first point. The pivot point. Second point is super thin sole, so which allows the nerve endings to feel the ground. So, you know, when you're moving too fast or too unnaturally, you're If the nerves are sensing that, then it can send information to the brain to readjust movement.

And so your body is making thousands and thousands of micro movements and corrections depending on what terrain it's on. And if your nerve endings are not feeling that, then the body's having to guess, right? The brain's having to guess. So super thin. So wide toebox, super thin soul. And then the third thing is simple. It's zero drop and flexible. and that just allows the foot to splay and contract.

The arch is designed to be super dynamic. It's not designed to be held in place. It's not meant to be very rigid. It's not meant to be very rigid. The toes are designed to splay and contract and the ankle's designed to have incredible movement. Yeah, anybody's looking on YouTube or if you're listening on audio, I'm literally bending the shoe in half.

And it's almost like the way I describe it to friends is there's just enough support. I'll go one step further than that, like you. can you can yeah you're literally folding up the entire shoe shoe rolling it into as little shoe as possible yeah as little shoe as possible so you want enough support and of course there's the whole style piece where they have to look good that's the society that we live in and definitely even from the time that i started wearing vvos which was probably about five years ago to now i really want to give it up to your team like the designs have come a long way right in the beginning it was pretty like okay, hey, you're, you're, you're sort of function first, right?

And then the design is sort of, is sort of secondary for a lot of my friends that were involved in. I'm not saying it was kind of your approach. But recently, there's been some styles, even this version of this, uh, premise light that I think you have for women. Yeah. It's the one shoe that I've been able to get my wife to wear, right? And so she's on the train.

She wears it whenever we walk, other stuff. She is a little bit of a sneaker head. So she pulls out her other shoes. But every so often, I try not to have a husband, I told you so a moment. But every so often, she'll say, oh, you know, my feet are hurting a little bit. It's so weird. My hip hurts. So, oh, babe, you know, why don't we just try like your vivos tomorrow instead?

Right? Let's try your vivos instead. Let's walk around. She's like, are you sure? Is that really going to make a difference? Is that really going to make a difference? And the next day, she doesn't complain. And the best thing that I do is I don't say shit.

Right? I've not, I told you so, husband. I just let her sort of figuring it out organically on her own. but yeah the styles have come a long way so hands up we got you know we're working really hard on improving the women's offering yeah and um you know we're this you know it's an important part of it's the final cog in the women's emancipation layer right yeah totally well I will say from the women in my life that love them and wear them the thing that I've noticed is that

the first place it usually starts off with is that like you know my friends that regularly walk, like that's a great place, right? If they have concerns about wearing it during the day and styles and, you know, because of work, they have to wear certain shoes. The next place, or usually in tandem with that, is exercise. My gym is full of men and women who have all switched over to Vivo. And like, that's incredible because people genuinely feel like they have better stability. You're doing a deadlift now and you can actually feel the ground and you can grip the ground in your shoes in so much of a better way than the shoes that people were wearing previously, that improves this mind-body connection and you genuinely feel like you have better control.

So that's another thing that I've seen. The studies show that just by being barefoot or wearing barefoot shoes improves balance by 40% compared to normal shoes, right? And, you know, the study was done particularly in regards to older people. And in the UK alone, we spend three billion pounds. a year in elderly people falling. In America is probably 30 billion.

You know, if you could just reduce that by 10% and just give people better stability and better balance, you know, obviously let alone in the gym and weight lifting and things. But those numbers of 60% improved strength, 40% improve stability and balance.

You know, they're stunning numbers. And it just shows how far modern normal shoes are from our natural base layer, they're playing miles away. Like, you know, you hear about 10% increase. This is 60% and 40%. That's crazy. That's crazy.

To being a human being, walking is so critical. And the thing that you look at it is... It's only upright bipedal creatures on Earth. Right. And it's a big part of, you know, if people read the books like Born to Run and other books that are out there, or even some of the work of Yvall, you know, Nora Harari and talking about the importance of walking and migration as part of our species on top of other things like cooking. It's made us who we are. And so if you look around and you see people, yes,

largely it's a sedentary lifestyle. But it's a chicken and egg. You see older people who are regularly tripping and falling, right? And I think shoes are a big part of that because they're so clunky, especially these custom shoes that are so padded with these like custom orthotics that people get that they're so roundabout ways that I see and they have less control so when a grandparent or an elderly parent is like trying to turn or in the kitchen or taking it right. I've seen so many people just trip over their own shoes because it doesn't have that sort of binding power to the feet to allow them to what they do naturally. And then the other component is that just the buildup of chronic pain that one thing leads to the next. And the chicken and egg situation is

when you wear shoes that are shitty, you get more pain. When you get more pain, you're less likely to walk to exercise, you know, to run in some instances, although you have different thoughts about, you know, running and what shoes people should wear. And that leads you to a place where you're even more sedentary and then the circle just continues and continues. I mean, I know you know all this, but my audience hasn't had a chance for me to kind of deep dive and chat about this. And it's a very unfortunate thing. But, you know, the orthotics industry is a big part of the problem. Talk about that.

What's the problem? So, you know, if you're a podiatrist and, you know, I'm going to piss off some podiatrist now, it's having someone come in, being able to prescribe them a pair of orthotics and see them on their way, half an hour, 500 bucks, often covered by insurance, unbelievably profitable. endeavor, right? Where the alternative is like, oh, actually, you don't need an orthotic. You just need to, you know,

here's some simple exercises or just walk around with less shoes on and your feet will get, you know, regain their natural strength and balance and you'll be fine in a week or so, right? Terrible business model. Yeah, I will say in defense of a diatrist, the younger ones are really waking up. And I know a few here in Los Angeles. They are, absolutely.

And they are recommending things like V-Vey, though. Yeah, they are. And that's true. There is a natural podiatry movement happening. Yes. But it's still a tiny proportion of the total thing. And it's just what you were saying earlier that the pain is there. The orthotics get prescribed and the orthotics are sort of basically to the earlier conversation, more or less binding the foot in a sort of relatively comfortable spot. Better than the alternative that they had before, which was just like wearing these non-custom fit shoes. And a lot of people do feel relief, but it's usually not enough to get to the issue. So, you know, it's, it is the, is the transition out of that, you know, I would say that

95% of people that are in orthotics don't need orthotics. I had orthotics when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, it's like the child orthotic movement is a thing, right? We're putting kids' feet. Kids are wearing loads of orthotic, huge industry. 95% of those people do not need orthotics. And there is just a natural, healthy transition back to just a, allowing the foot to do its natural thing. And it's not popular because it's not really that patentable. You know, we're making shoes the same way humans fundamentally made shoes 100,000 years ago.

Right? We, on the plains of Africa, we don't have hooves or trotters. We have these sensitive, sold feet. So, you know, antelope sandals or kudu, you know, I think Eland is the biggest antelope, and they make the original sand. in Africa out of Eland skin. And it would be in protection from the heat and the camel thorns when we were, and as you say, like part of our evolutionary history is the persistence hunting and being able to move all day and sweat and track and be able to run down animals to the point where we were able to massively increase our calorie intake and our brain started to grow and yada yada. And then we started to move out of Africa and we moved up up the Nile and over the mountains and then we needed to.

needed different types of protection and we were using different types of animals around us. So all the way up to the Arctic where the Sami people make their reindeer, make their shoes out of reindeer skin, make beautiful reindeer moccasins. They hang out in minus 40 degrees temperature wearing amazing reindeer moccasins that keep their feet warm all day. And they're just one thin layer of reindeer skin. Right. Even though they're super protective against the cold, they're very flexible.

And they're completely all barefoot shoes. allow the foot to do the natural thing. Same for the first peoples in America, making shoes out of bison skin or in India, maybe it would have been buffaloes or even just in the rainforests around the world where they take things like papyrus and make little woven sandals.

So, you know, humans have been making shoes all over the world for thousands of years, but they would have always let the foot do the natural thing. And obviously, they didn't seem to, you know, human if humans were in chronic pain in those societies for all those years, then they wouldn't have made it. Of course. Yeah. Our species wouldn't have been around as long as long as it's So it all worked pretty well. And actually there's a lovely story in the Arctic and the Sami people. They wear these reindeer moccasins. They're made from the skin below the knee of a reindeer,

which is the part of the reindeer that's obviously in the snow all the time. So it's evolved to be particularly warm and the hair follicles are particularly hollow. So it creates this lofty. But anyway, they're amazing products. They don't waste an inch of the pattern, and they're amazing shoes. And all that they wear them bare feet with just a little bit of hay inside for insulation. But those people in the Arctic are very well looked after by the Scandinavian South societies, right? They're very conscious, and they send a lot of money and equipment and tools to them and things. One of the things they send is posh southern boots.

and I was lucky enough to go up there recently and there's a sort of rumor almost that because most of them are now wearing the posh southern boots but they're starting for the first time to experience knee and hip and back pain. Wow. And so there's a sort of almost old wives tale has developed so like when your knees and your back start hurting just go back to wearing the traditional reindeer moccasins

and you'll feel better. And so it's like this fascinating little microcosm of exactly what we're talking about. People happily running around all day long in barefoot shoes in extreme conditions, then suddenly putting on modern shoes and going, oh, hold on a minute, I feel shit, my back's hurting, my knees are hurting. So get your bloody barefoot reindeer boots on and you'll be fine again. And it's just, you know, that's a lovely. And that happens in societies all over the world.

Yeah, I love that story. I love that story. There is a situation that sometimes people's feet, especially if they've been wearing a lot of these heels and dress shoes and other stuff, are so kind of out of whack that there's a little bit of an adjustment period of switching over to barefoot shoes. Can you talk about that? Well, it's exactly, as you said, if you've got your arm in a cast and you take the cast off, the muscles will have atrophied. You'll have lost some of the skillful, natural movement of it. So walk before you run. Just take it easy.

If your foot is 60% below its natural strength base layer and it's 40% off its natural balance ability, then it happens quick within months. I mean, and it will be different. Look, younger, more athletic, lighter people can transition much quicker than older, heavier people. So you just you know you have to sense into that to some degree But just take your time walk before you run

And part of the whole problem with the whole barefoot shoe movement in America Like you said with the toe shoes is that everyone thought Oh this is a silver bullet I'm going to be able to run like the Tarahumara Right? And be able to do ultra marathons You know kind of they're they're basically cousins of the Aztec Or Mayans something like that In the Copic Kenyons

long distance running in like Mexico region. Correct. And so yeah, the problem with that is... And obviously people got injured, right? When you do too much too soon and you sort of carry on going about things in the way you were doing things before. So running is something to build up to.

Well, I was wearing these and, you know, respect for anybody that's working on this in any kind of capacity, even if it's maybe not what I'm using now. but I think that they were called the Vibrum Five Fingers. And I was like such a proponent. I read the book, Born to Run, and I was like, oh, I'm going to do everything in these shoes. I'm not a regular runner, but I would play basketball. I play tennis.

And I just found that because of a combination of things and the way that the fingers were sort of laid out, like your toes are all individually separated. People can look it up online. They could see it. I got injured the second time I wore them, you know, playing basketball. And I was like, okay, maybe I'm not supposed to wear these. And I kind of went back to wearing normal shoes. But when I was wearing them and sort of like a daily basis, not doing anything kind of crazy,

you know, generally they felt a lot better than other shoes that were there. Yeah. Right. I got a lot of weird looks. I got a lot of comments about them that the design wasn't the best. I don't know if the company still exists or doesn't exist. It does still exist. And they make a lot of, I mean, their main business is selling souls and they make really good,

rather souls. Oh, really? Oh, amazing. But yes, since having discovered Vivo and on the recommendation of my buddy Rungan, you know, I feel like I got the best of both worlds. I got the style and I got the, but that's also a little bit unnatural, right, is to, because you're, you're sort of by forcing your feet into those pockets, the toes into those pockets, then you're almost sort of deforming them back into, you know, what is ultimately a natural shape. But that has a transition back to that shape. Right. So to sort of go from a squash foot to suddenly splayed out. It should happen on its own is what you're saying. When your toes have room, they'll naturally start to spread out a little. Exactly. And getting all that proprioception and sensory feedback between the toes, all the toes,

it's also not that natural. So that's also a sort of overload of information into the brain. Yeah. So in many ways, people wearing those shoes too quickly too soon. And I would say that they're probably pretty good if you've got big, wide, natural feet, but you kind of got to get there first. But then you see people and they get, they're tense. Because, you know, the movement, important thing about movement is it's in your animal brain state, right? So it's relaxed and needs to be in flow, which is obviously a big part of the movement revolution, the animal flow thing.

But that's true. You need to be relaxed to be, have healthy natural movement. And what a lot of those shoes did to people, if they're tensed up and you see people in them and their feet are sort of tensed. And it's the same thing with movement in general. When you see people running and they're sort of tense and they're grinding it out and every part of their body's intention where they're sort of doing their, you know, clumping through the park. It's the opposite of healthy natural movement, which is a springy natural, quick cadence, sort of happy flow. And you know, you watch the East Africans move and

run. There's a reason why, you know, they're able to run further and faster than anybody. They just have that natural springy motion. And obviously, they also do a lot of training at altitude. Yeah, and they don't get in the way of their natural. And they're going to the way of it. Which is what we're doing over here. While we have you here, let's chat a little bit origin story. You know, how did you get into this world? You know, I know your background, but talk to our audience. You know, you come from seven generations of cobblers and you come from a very prominent family in the world of shoemaking. And then where did the shift come that you started to go in a different direction? Yeah, so like you say, my family had been making shoes since 1825.

We're sheep farmers in the southwest of England and the first shoe was a sheepskin slipper. There's a Quaker family. and Quakers back in the day were not allowed to go to university, and they were not allowed to participate in a lot of mainstream society because they were ultimately protesting against too much power and control being held by the church. And you had to swear oaths to do any of those things. So quite a lot of Quaker communities built up in England where there was no priests, to no church. They met in meeting. They recognized the divine in everybody.

Yeah, it's a beautiful culture. And they built these beautiful communities and they had to kind of set up shop themselves to ultimately survive. And a lot of great British businesses were built in the 18th and 19th century by Quaker communities. Cadbury's being another famous one. And then there were quite a lot of the early British banks and things. And Clark's was, you know, built an amazing business starting in 18th. 1825 and for the next 150 or so years built this really beautiful Quaker business. And actually, you know, in the 19th century, some of my forefathers were making shoes that were talking about getting back to a more natural shape and allowing children's feet to develop

naturally. But unfortunately, like a lot of the world in the 20th century, everybody got slightly dazzled by technology and this effort to emancipate us. from nature and create patents and, you know, it goes back to the story of talking about Nike and Clarks were part of got carried away in that whole thing. And, you know, it was obviously happening in agriculture and in medicine and in energy. And I would say big shoe as well, kind of lost its way. So, you know, here we are in the 21st century, nearly 200 years after, you know, my forefathers made that first sheepskin slipper.

And I started making shoes. Are they a pair of wallabies that you're wearing? There are a pair of wallabies, aren't they? A pair of Clark's wallabies. Ask your team over here, Patrick, who's wearing some wallabies. So I was at university in America. And like every middle class white boy, I was really into Wu-Tang and hip-hop, right? And I was kind of determined, in a way, coming to America was to say,

I'm going to have nothing to do with the shoe industry. and I'm going to go and forge my own life in the land of the free. Not very free feet, as we know, but mostly free. And Wutang were wearing wallabies. Oh, wow, I didn't know that. And there was an album that they came out with called Iron Man, where Ghostface was literally in a shoe factory, sort of doctoring up wallabies and coloring them in extraordinary colors

and putting their monikas on it. Okay, this is my chance. That's the cover art of the album. And a little video. Oh, amazing. So I was like, wow, this is, you know, shameless sort of opportunity to go and meet Wutang at the height of their powers. It is like, you know, 1999, early 2000.

And the first thing I tried to do is get Clarks to just do the Wutang collaboration. And that was one of the worst meetings I ever had in my life. You can imagine these kind of Wutang guys that thought they were as big of the Beatles. sitting in a Boston office with the most waspy sort of Bostonians you can ever imagine. Didn't, let's just say the meeting didn't go well. One thing led to another. I ended up helping them, or at least making a bunch of prototypes and samples of Wu-shoes. They cut a long story short, it didn't work.

So here we are 25 years later, and they've just done the collaboration. Oh, wow. Clark's originals and woo-wear. Wow. 25 years later. That's wild. So anyway, so 25, so literally just happened in the last year or two. That's just cool.

There's a nice poetic sort of circularity there. And is your family still involved? Did they sell the business? The family still own half the business. Okay. And they haven't been involved in managing the business for 30 years. Yeah. So I kind of got the bug a little bit.

Those are the first shoes I personally directly made, as it were, where I went to the original factory in Ireland. And we made a whole bunch of prototypes with the sort of woo-wear style kind of motifs and colors and things. Anyway, long story short, business obviously was a tremendous failure. 9-11 happened. I got out of America. I actually moved to Asia for a bit. And then one thing led to another, I kind of got the shoemaking bug. and I started another shoe business.

Also did a business called Worn Again, which was a upcycling shoe business, literally making shoes out of rubbish. And then it was a childhood friend of mine that came to me with a Nike Hirachi, cut the soul off, stitched on a tennis racket cover on the bottom, literally made a sort of moccasin out of a Nike and said, this is how shoes should be made.

Wow. And this friend, were they like a runner? Were they somebody that was like very into this sort of? So he was a tennis player. Okay. And he was at the Royal College of Art. He was an industrial designer. And he realized he kept on getting injured playing sport and wearing his normal shoes and rolling his ankles.

And his dad was an Alexander technique teacher. Have you heard of that sort of postural alignment? Yep. And it was through that and through his own negative experiences that he realized there must be a better way. And a lot of Alexander technique is taught barefoot. Yeah. A lot of people here in. I do it because of acting.

Exactly. A lot of musicians and actors. Actors is a good friend of mine, Adam Cobb in my men's group, who has been training with them for a little while. There you go. So that's where it came from. Incredible. And I just instinctively loved the idea.

And then we went on this crazy journey to say, and it's incredible. Like we went to these to develop the shoes. And it was, you know, I think of it now. And back in the days, the old shoemakers, well, that's not how you do it. You don't do it like that. you know like this because we were young and naive in many levels and and it was and all good things

come from that where it's just young naive people going well why are you doing it like that yeah i don't know we've always done it like that or maybe we don't shouldn't do it like that and it was literally like that there was a moment in clerks when i went to the clark's children's department and a last is the plastic um foot-shaped thing that you make a shoe on right so it's a looks like a plastic foot basically or should look like a plastic foot and had all the different sizes laid out so from from newborn kids toddlers all the way up to teenagers and when you look at these lasts the plastic foot shape they look like feet all the way up to sort of toddlers and then suddenly get to about age four or five and they suddenly look like don't look like feet they

look like shoes wow so it's and that was a huge sort of, you know. The models that they're using to shape the foot is all of a sudden they look like feet, look like feet, and now they look like shoes because the shoes have deformed the kids' feet. And they start to suddenly become fashionable at the age of five, right? And they look nothingless. So you're putting the kid's foot into a shape that doesn't look like a foot. And you can literally see it from one size to the other.

And anyone has kids. toddlers shoes are actually quite good barefoot shoes. They're just sort of soft little foot shape things. And then you get your first pair of shoes when you first go to school. And it's like something like, they're not malleable. They're super on trend. And you go around to these old shoemakers and say, why are you doing like that?

And they're just like, well, I don't know. It's just the way we've always done it. Yeah. And it's this sort of just mindset and this mass manufacturing mindset of fashion, and what the consumer wants. I went around and spoke. We tried to sell, you know, I said, this is a bigger idea than we can ever do. So we went to Under Armour, tried to get clerks to do it,

tried to get a number of different businesses, big shoe companies to do it. And the executives would always say, like, I get it. I kind of believe in it, but the consumer isn't ready. They're not going to want to buy these shoes. They want to buy these shoes. They look silly. They're wide. You know, and so we thought, fuck it, we've got to do it ourselves.

Yeah. And, you know, that was... And that was what year? What year did you guys? That was two... Well, so we were in gestation, shall we say, for quite a few years, but then we launched Vivo as a standalone brand in 2012. 2012. Yeah.

That was when we sort of gave up trying to get other companies involved and sell it. And so just over 10 years ago, we were all in, almost immediately went bankrupt. Because we knew about this research coming out of Harvard. We thought was, and it basically showed the moving barefoot was a lot less injurious, twice as less injurious, and 10% more efficient than moving in modern shoes. It's exciting research, and we thought, well, boom, this is it. Let's call up 60 seconds. Call up panorama. This is the, you know, it's going to bring the towers of Babel, big shoe down. And, of course, didn't get the light of day. And nobody picked it up. So we bought you order, overproduced.

loads of stock and so this is it and we were sort of gung-ho and so spent the next few years in survival mode sort of just you know saving the business basically and yeah and we've seen it coming back now in a really big way and it's an interesting moment in America where I like call it the second barefoot revolution since the one you experienced right had a negative experience and it's much more considered, much more gentle. It's led by chiropractors and osteopaths and trainers that are then guiding people into this in a much more conscious way and careful way, less of the toe shoes, more of the allowing the foot to do its natural thing. And it's really happening, right? It's, people are rediscovering it. But the amazing thing is when you go out into the shoe stores around

America. The shoe du jour are big maximalist trainers, right? Crazy than they've ever been almost. Totally. So you've got this weird juxtaposition of what's kind of in all the shoe store windows is the opposite of actually what a lot of people are wearing and actually rediscovering natural movement. So we've still got a long, long way to go. There's a long way to go, but I always believe in the power of word of mouth. When somebody feels... feels like their life is significantly improved from an authentic recommendation from often another friend in the case for me. Rungen told me, I switched the shoes.

Obviously, there's not a time that I'm not flying. There's not a time that I'm flying. There's not a time that I'm sort of in a more public area where I'm exposed to other people, even sitting at the coffee shop down the street. And if my feet are kind of sticking out, I'm being kind of lazy a little bit, somebody will say, dude, what are those shoes, right? It's a conversation piece. And then you tell somebody and they see the genuine enthusiasm.

And I'm not like a paid ambassador of the company. These are just genuinely things that have made a difference for me. And then, you know, every so often somebody's like, I have that same thing. I need to, unfortunately right now, outside of the training environment and the chiropractor, I still see that a lot of people are drawing towards them out of pain. But every year as also the designs improve, I see more people saying like, oh, I just want to wear that independently. Okay, I get that idea. I'm not in pain.

I'm young. I'm not there yet. Knock on wood. but I just want to get there ahead of time because I believe in the concept and idea. It's another preventative thing for me to do, just like I might chop organic or, you know, do other things that are there. Yeah, people either come to us through desperation or inspiration. Yeah, desperation or inspiration.

We've got to do a better job with the inspiration. Make better, like you say, better designs and inspire people to make them move. You're getting there. I genuinely like the shoes better than the other shoes that I have. and I haven't even touched their shoes in years. I probably, they probably don't even fit anymore. In fact, one of my favorite stories from an old employee at my last company that I had was when he was young, he decided that he really wanted, he was inspired by, you know, the Emerson's of the world and, you know, the naturist. And he said, I'm going to hike the Appalachian Trail.

So everybody that he talked to in his preparation, they told him, you know, look, do not get fancy shoes like hiking. boots. It's it's not going to work. But they didn't go into detail about it. They didn't go into detail about why. So he ended up getting fancy shoes, right? He wanted all the gear, all the equipment. And as he got almost about three weeks in, he saw that he had so much pain. And these shoes were so tough for him. So he still decided to wear these shoes a little bit longer. And then finally hit the point, I think a month into it. So it was like a week or two later where his shoes didn't actually, feet didn't fit into those shoes. And he talked to a few friends. They said, listen, your shoe size will grow that much walking. Every day you're walking however many miles, 20, 30, 40 miles a day

on the Appalachian Trail. Your feet are going to grow, right? They're going to be bigger and they were artificially constricted. So switch to, even though it sounds crazy, switch to, because there was no barefoot shoes at the time, switched to just like moderately sort of involved sandals, very thin ones that are there. And he hiked the rest of the Appalachian. trail over the next four months just on those sandals and felt fantastic. You know, the hiking shoe industry is almost worse than the running shoe industry along the lines of what we've been talking about because, you know, those fancy hiking boots, you know, first of all, they're like a lot of money.

And second of all, they're stiffer, bigger, more, you know, they're literally like putting your foot in a cast. Yeah. And we actually make a lot of hiking boots that are the opposite. And I get, you know, some of the shoe industry people coming to me saying it's it's irresponsible for you to be making hiking boots without a big, thick, stiff soul and lots and lots of support and ankle support. But as we know, humans seem to conquer wrong word. Travel all over the world without big stiff hiking boots for millennia. Yeah, we made it. We made it. We made it. Yeah. This has been great. You know, I know you're here. here in LA, you have a bunch of meetings, you have to get on to your next thing. But I'm so glad

to be able to talk to you in person, get to meet you in person. Thank you for making an impact in my life and so many of my friends' lives as well, too. Any final messages you want to leave our audience with when it comes to this whole world that might be super new for a lot of people, which is going back to the way that our feet were designed to be. Yeah, I mean, I would just, just a rag a little bit more on the shoe industry at large. Please, go for it. I got all the time in the world. Guess how many shoes get made every year?

Oh my gosh. Every year get made in population-wise, I don't know, billion shoes? No. 24 billion. 24 billion shoes get made. Right. The average American buys six pairs of shoes a year. Crazy.

globally, you know, the average person buys about three pairs of shoes a year. I mean, when it's all averaged out, so, you know, 8 billion people, you know, so 24 billion pairs of shoes get produced every year on mass production lines. Most of them don't fit, for sure. Most of them will end up in landfill. Most of them are made from petrochemical foams and plastics. A lot of them made from leather that is then tanned using heavy metals, terrible carcinogenic problem. So the shoe industry as it exists, big shoe as it exists, is a devastating impact on not any planetary health, but human health.

And so, you know, there has to be a better way that we have to reevaluate the whole system. And so one of the things that we're working on is what we call Vivo Bayam and my cousin, who's my partner and the creative lead in Vivo, who's with me on this trip. you're actually at Patagonia today hanging out with their sustainability team who is one of the only and that's actually one of the other things I feel really passionate about is businesses with nature

at the top of the hierarchy staying independent and scaling we need hundreds of them right we need thousands of businesses to not sell out to private equity to not sell out to big banks to not get absorbed into big court stay independent

keep nature at the top of the hierarchy and scale, right? The society needs those businesses. But the point is that that whole system is broken, right? It's the opposite of a regenerative system and a lot of people using the word sustainability, a lot of people are using the word regenerative. But, you know, they're making shoes that are degenerative to human health, unsustainable to human health, let alone the planetary health. So we believe there's a future in the shoe industry where we go back to making shoes the way we did thousands of years ago, where we make them person by person, foot by foot, again, and we can use modern technology to do that. So everybody's mobile phone basically has a scanner in it.

So you scan your feet, so you get, rather than drawing around a piece of old bison hide and me, then cobbling a piece of shoes, a pair of shoes together for you. Like you scan your foot and then with 3D printing, we're able to make a bespoke pair of shoes for you. Now, we just launched this in Europe. And the plan will be to come to the US next year. But the point is there's a better way to make shoes. And it's person by person, foot by foot,

made from the local sustainable materials that allows your foot to move naturally. So, you know, and I just hope that, you know, the getting back to, you know, because we always talk about the sort of progressivism in society and a lot of businesses need to make progress, progress, progress, but actually getting back to the old natural ways and using the old natural principles, we hope that many other businesses and many other industries join the movement, right, join the rebel alliance. And of course, in your world, it's ultimately just getting back to basic natural health.

Yeah, which of course, feet is a part of. In our case, it starts with feet, but it obviously doesn't end there. Absolutely. That's a beautiful message. We do have some European listeners that are there. So is this through the Vivo brand? So they go to the website? Yeah, VVoBium, yeah.

Tesla, can we click on that just so that we can see where it is? So you go to the Vivo website and then... It's in beta form. Vision for a radical scanned, print, circular barefootwear system that reimagines how footwear is designed and made. Amazing. So it's available in Europe, and then eventually it'll come to America. With most of our audience being here, I know you guys sell on Amazon as well, too.

Is that you or is that other people? No, we sell a little bit on Amazon. It's a sort of Faustian pact that we make. But it's mainly direct-to-consumer. And actually, one of the reasons we're doing this big family, Wolliday, part work, part-holiday, not very productive. not a very relaxing holiday, is we're looking for new retail spots

so we're going to start to open up some retail centers. And are there retail shops in the US right now for Vivo? No. There's none. I've been to the one in London. Oh, yeah. It's really nice. It's a very friendly team.

That's where when I was there in April I bought like, you know, because I was just there, I got like seven, eight different pairs of shoes. So where would you say if we were going to open, choose? I mean, ultimately I think we, you know, they're probably all relevant, but we need to choose a starting point between New York, Colorado, and L.A. Yeah, you know, I've lived in New York and obviously I live in L.A. now for 10 years. There's something really unique about L.A. where you have both sort of like the business and high-tech energy, but then you have like the whole like influencer space and people who are very passionate about fitness,

health and wellness, other stuff, people who love to make content. people who regularly come to LA and are in media, acting, other stuff. And I feel like that's where a lot of the people who have the chance to amplify this, you know, I'm always like for a business like yours where you guys literally have grown so much through word of mouth, I'm always asking, how do we support the infrastructure for word of mouth? And if so many of those people naturally have that potential here in LA and just what I've seen from different gyms of people organically wearing Vivo, I don't know.

I think I'm a little biased for Los Angeles. Okay. Yeah, that's my pitch for your team. I must admit, when I was sort of trotting up the beach this morning, I was getting pretty biased towards Los Angeles as well. Yeah, yeah, there's so many great things. And obviously you guys can visit a little bit more with the family and everything. But yeah, there is something really nice about.

Also, too, Los Angeles has like, you know, you pretty much have a year-round hiking, right? From these little walks and hikes and other things that are there. You have a generally like a culture around fitness, you know. And it's not so industry-focused and, like investment banking in suits and ties like New York where you kind of have, you know, your shoes that are for you and then the shoes that you have to wear for work. Pretty much whatever shoes people are going to wear in the morning, they're going to wear the entire day.

So between that and the training movement, L.A. is the hub of health and wellness. It just feels like there's a natural alignment. Well, I'm going to go and visit a couple of stores this afternoon. Okay. So wish me luck and hopefully we'll bring that to live. life really soon. Amazing. Well, again, Galaad, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast. Thanks for having me. Thank you for you and your team for doing the incredible work that you do. There's so many people that I meet all the time who feel like their life has made that much

better because they've switched their shoes, which who would have ever thought, but now we know why. And the point is it's not the shoes, right? The magic is you. Yes, the magic is you. All you're doing is allowing you. It's you're getting back to how you were designed to walk. So thank you for educating us on that journey and supporting us on the journey. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast.

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