The Highwire with Del Bigtree - EPISODE 369: GROUND RULES

Episode Date: April 26, 2024

‘Common Ground’ Film Seeks to Revolutionize Farming; Jefferey Jaxen Reports on a Massive Blood Scandal In the UK, and new reports of SSRIs causing permanent sexual dysfunction; Sopranos star and Emmy Award Winning actress never bent the knee to Hollywood;Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-highwire-with-del-bigtree--3620606/support.

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Yeah. Action. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. Wherever you are out there in the world, it's time for us all to step out onto the high wire. And sometimes I'm asking us all to do this together, which even, it makes that wire even more precarious when you put all of that weight on it. I say that because I want to start out this conversation today with a topic that I'm sure is going to trigger someone in this audience. And it happens every time we try to deal with something that revolves around the idea of our environment and then growing and food and farming. So I want to ask the audience today because I've watched a few times as we're getting into these controversial topics that sometimes, you know, the, the, the,

The trigger is, I want to say something right away. I know where this is going, and I know that the feed and all the comments get rolling, but then I feel like some of you really miss the nuance of what we're discussing. So I'm all about judgment. I think that you should be skeptical, and I've told you I'm not here to tell you what to think. I'm just trying to tell you how to think, where your information should come from, where you look, how you prove a point. And so I'm open to any's criticism.

But can we try to at least listen first and then criticize after? The reason I say all this is because today we're going to be talking about farming. And for me personally, I want all the pesticides and herbicides off of all of my food. I eat organic. I make sure that my family eats organic. I'm tired of reading about 260 chemicals in the umbilical cord of pregnant women. Those types of things really bother me. Now, for some in our audience, we, you know, want to have.

you know, a booming economy and we think, well, if there's regulatory agencies that get in the way, then you're going to hurt the economy and hurt America. And I understand all of that. But does that mean that every industry then should just be poisoning us? And we should just watch our quality of life disappear. We now have chronic illness, skyrocketing, neurological disorder, skyrocketing. We're well over, you know, 50 percent. Some think it's more like 60 percent of American children and adults now have a chronic illness, meaning they're sick, their entire lives. Something needs to change. How are we going to change it if we fight, number one, for freedom of industry to do whatever

it wants and make as much money as it can while also trying to fight to do the right things for our earth and ourselves? So get ready, because the name of the film we're going to talk about is exactly what we all need to work on. This is Common Ground. To tell you, it is a matter of life and death. If the soil dies, we die.

The facts have been proven. Groundup does cause cancer. If you burrow deeply enough, there is a pipeline of money from the pesticide industry into those universities. They're getting the kind of science that money

can buy. Nature is the mother us all and if mama ain't happy we're f***. But there's a way to save our precious soils. It's called regeneration. Regeneration is not just restoring the land to the state that we found it at but actually making it better. We have added over 96 tons of carbon per acres into our soil. Can we mitigate climate change?

Absolutely. We're going to check the underwear and the regenerative versus the conventional soybean field and see if we can tell a difference between the microbial activity we've eliminated insecticides pesticides pesticides we are savings upwards of $400 an acre it works out to be about $2 million a year in savings that is serious cash I forgot my suit I feel like I'm underdressed but if you are the people who can make a change Well, it's high time to finally get regenerative agriculture. Let's prioritize the farmer.

It's a connection to the land. It's a connection to those that came before us and those that are going to come after us. We can change everything. There's hope. I said this letter is a warning, but it's also a promise. So I'm going to fight like hell to save your future. My children. Because I love you.

Let's get together. Film Common Ground has just released, and I'm joined now by two of the producers, the founders of Kiss the Ground, Finian Make Peace, and Ryland Englehart. It's really great to have you guys here, Finian. Ryland, thanks for coming in. Yeah, thank you so much.

You know, so this is film number two, a journey that you're on. First of all, regenerative farming. How did you guys get into this? Like, where does this whole thing start? Beautiful. Yeah, happy to.

So, I come from hospitality, and actually from hospitality that was specifically around vegan plant-based diets. Okay. My family actually brought a restaurant called Cafe Gratitude and Gracious Madre to the world. I just ate a cafe gratitude like a week ago. When I go through California, it's one of the things I was like, you know, get a nice veggie meal. It's cool.

Organic ingredients. Yeah. Yeah, so that was my life was serving. I thought veganism, plant-based, whole foods was the way, the truth, the answer. And we were doing that in Los Angeles, San Francisco and then Los Angeles. That led me to, you know, obviously getting interested in health and wellness. I was evangelizing the plant-based world and sustainable business. And that brought me to New Zealand, where I was speaking at a conference.

And basically I found myself sitting in an audience of a panel discussion called, can human beings sustain life on planet Earth? And five of the six experts said, we're degrading the ecosystem in ways that ultimately we're heading into the Anthropocene, and it's pretty much too late. And the last person who spoke was a guy by the name of Graham Seat, and he said, what we don't see is that we are part of nature, and if we see ourselves as separate, we don't see how we could actually work with nature to heal the damage that we've done. And that's through a process of regeneration, starting with our soil and then everything above

that soil. And here I am sitting somewhat as an arrogant California vegan, running the most sustainable business, doing all the right things. And I'm seeing a conversation for the first time that connects the dots that shows me that, we can't just sustain a broken system or a broken soil or a broken degraded coral reef or ocean system, that needs to be regenerated until we can sustain something. And it was a complete epiphany to really understand that the way photosynthesizing plants work with soil microorganisms is a perfect technology.

that is nature which is self-healing, self-correcting, and self-balancing. Just like our bodies, which is something we talk about. Finney, and you guys go way back. Yeah, Rylan and I go way back. We grew up in Ithaca, New York, together. Our parents were friends, both activists as well. But, yeah, as Rylund was in the industry. So, like what, like hippie parents type thing?

Like, you know. Make peace is his last name, Englehart. Yeah, we go way back. And so for Rylan, I was always the activist policy knowing. guy would be like, all right, what are we doing? Both of us kind of activators in our own right. And he came back from New Zealand just lit up like, look, I really need you to get this. And it just so happens, I convinced the guy who was talking to come to L.A. to talk with us. So the two of us set up an auditorium. I brought my sound equipment. I was in music.

And in four hours, this guy just lays down this argument of what can happen when we work with farming regeneratively. When we, instead of degrading or even trying to sustain what little we have left, We actually rebuild the soil by helping plants pump carbon into the soil, and it rebuild it. It helps the water cycle, helps biodiversity, helps the nutrient uptake of plants. So this gets laid out, and it was that same night we go back to Rylan's house, and I was like, if this is all true, this is literally the biggest solution. Because everything up until that point was how do we go off the cliff slower? That was it. That's what we most of us have still.

That's all it seems like is, yes, everyone's like, okay, yes, but we're all just going to go a little slow. lower and this was the only solution that was taking us to say we can regenerate and it didn't mean all going back and living in caves or anything it's like no with these practical solution with these leaders so we hit the books in ryan's garage i lived right down the street and we just dove all the way and we said if this is true we have to dedicate our lives because there's nothing more prolific than this solution right now and within a year and a half we met the directors josh and rebecca and convince them to make the film kiss the ground with us and and the rest is really history it was Yeah, I mean, the miracle truth of it, and really, I'm going to say it is a miracle.

Yeah. And it's been a miracle path of how it has happened in that I moved into a little apartment in Venice to Open Cafe Gratitude. And that apartment was Josh and Rebecca's apartment that they had built a film studio in the garage, and they were moving to Ohio. I moved in, started building a nonprofit, and then that garage that was their film studio became the nonprofit, then collaborated to then having these films be made. And if I can add just one thing is for us, you know, I was in music touring as an activist and very active in a lot of ways, Rihiland in restaurants, but we were basically like, we're not the scientists, we're not the farmers, and we're not the indigenous leaders who know this stuff, but we can and we are champions.

And so we really saw, instead of just being like, oh, be on the bleachers and say yay to what they're doing, we could make sure that this idea becomes something that the world gets access to. And we said, look, if it happened to us, it can happen to anybody. And that's where really, I think the strength that Kiss the Ground, the organization has been, is we're saying we're going to help to make the story available. We're going to help make the education available to the world. And that's what we've been doing for almost 13 years. And it's because we said, you know, we're not going to make this exclusive.

We're willing to talk to anybody and get them to connect it to this because like Rylan, like he's gone on a complete trajectory change of like, wow, animals are a part of this healing. Well, explain that to me because, I mean, you were saying I was a vegan and then had this aha moment. How does, why does regenerative farming affect your perspective of being vegan? Because, I mean, it seems like you're growing plants. Plants are vegan. So what is it? Well, that's actually not true. No?

Okay. So vegetables aren't vegan in many cases. Okay. So the way that soil gets created is in the greatest capacity around the world is in the collaboration and the symbiotic relationship between grass-eating animals, bovines, and perennial grasses. So whether it's in the center of this country or in the savannah in Africa, where there's, you know, large amounts of soil organic matter, healthy soil, which is ultimately, what become agricultural lands that can produce a lot of food. It is through that partnership of

grass-eating animals, grazing, pooping and peeing, and then moving away for a year that ultimately is adding financial organic matter capital into that bank account that then has the capacity to grow life, grow plants, grow food. And animals are essentially the perfect technology to make that rotational movement on land such that land can get continuously healthy. And I just want to say, it was inconvenient for me as a decade-long restaurateur family that was running vegan restaurants in Los Angeles,

serving millions of vegan meals, to then realize, you know, as we started to, well, the big idea was, well, it's gross and vegetables for our vegan restaurants. My dad started to do that, and as he did that, he realized, wow, to get these vegetables to grow, I need to add things like cow manure that's coming from a CAFO feedlot. Right. Right. I need blood meal, bone meal, fish emulsion, even calcium supplement.

Calcium supplement. Calcium is only alchemized through the body of a biological being. So if we're getting calcium, it's actually alchemized by something living that then does. died and then became something that our body could uptake. And I want to, as someone who hasn't been a vegan nearly as much as Rylan, I wanted to make a quick observation. The people who are doing that are very justifiably trying to help and doing something that's not very easy to do. I agree. To make a lifestyle change.

And all the credit to that. I think the important thing is to look at progression in any sense to say, wait a minute. We're looking at a solution here that is both economically viable and both such a big ecological, change and as Ryan is talking about grasslands cover half of the world and most of the grasslands are what are turning to desert very quickly it's because those environments are brittle it just so happens grasslands make brittle environments where it doesn't rain it's not very moist habitable that's what adapted there that's what evolved there that's not where trees naturally evolved so you have to say in in regenerative agriculture it's context context context yes in some areas

in south america and even the united states you can have places where agriculture ecology systems work without many animals involved. Can they help? Yes, but it doesn't have to be large-scale grazing operations. The point is, are you trying to create regeneration, the system that is currently broken, not functioning, regaining its functionality, getting better over time? And to do that, lots of times animals are super important. Other times they're less necessary as an agroforestry system can show. But the big point is you can't be siloed in your thinking. You have to be able to look at your context and your environment and say, where are we? What is this land asking us to do? And what does the water system want to do?

What does all these things want to do? And then you're enhancing that ability to function at its highest level. And I just want to say one more thing, which is that we oftentimes think, oh, we just need to plant some trees, right? That's kind of the go-to environmental thing, plant trees. Much of the planet doesn't have the rainfall to actually sustain tree canopy. So grassland Savannah is what is its primary healthy balanced ecosystem and to just fence that off and say that's going to be conservation rewild without the grass-eating animal partnership it actually will continue to degrade to some of what we're seeing in the Netherlands and I want to get in that a minute where it's like well

no this has got to go back to being forest it's not farmland or whatever and having government step in which is something that you know I'm really struggling with but before I get into that what really sort of led me to this conversation was I interviewed Zach Bush a couple of years ago, and he really like sort of woke up my perspective because I was really struggling with the fact that I've always called myself an environmentalist, but I'm not down with authoritarian carbon credit scoring, you know, world economic forum rules that are going to govern how we all move through this world. And he sort of tied this together in a way that I thought really crossed all sort of barriers in

Just take a look. This is a little piece from that interview. The lungs of the planet is the soil. Yes, trees, yes that, but you don't get trees respirating if you don't have the microbiome and the mycelium in the soil doing its work. And so what happened in the 1970s when we started to poison the microbiome of the soil systems and create dirt on a scale that is now, again, back then, unbelievable.

But the current estimates are that 97% of the arable farmland in the world, in the world has now been depleted or severely depleted, which means 97% of the lungs of the earth are now in its end stage of emphysema. There is no surface area left. There you go. So one of the points that he was making there that I found interesting is he got into, you know, when we talk about CO2 causing climate change, global warming, whatever you're saying about it, you know, he said that wouldn't even be a problem, you know, sure trees, take in so many gigatons and the ocean absorbs so many gigatons, but the vast amount of CO2 is really absorbed by the earth, which is something that we are, you know, when I talk,

we talk about medicine all the time, we talk about vaccines, all these issues, the gut biome being now becoming more and more important, right? We are recognizing that, you know, there's all sorts of products in every grocery store now to try and get more of a stronger gut by them going, you know, bacteria in my stomach. The dirt is the same. And so when, you know, when we want balance, there's these microbes that are eating and absorbing CO2, that that's what they work on. That's how they feed the plants, right? On what Zach was saying, I think a super important thing for anybody watching today is go to Google Earth and check out the world and see for yourself how much land is in agriculture. It's pretty obvious. There's usually little squares

and different things. But you look at that, and then you look at a little closer, and you see these fenced off areas that are obviously no longer in farm production because they're too degraded to use anymore. Those used to be, if they were fenced off grazing land. No one's going to fence off the desert and graze land because that would be pointless. The point is it used to be grazing land. And turn it in the desert.

In area, 30 million acres a year, the size of England, become too degraded to farm anymore, even propping them up. with chemicals like phosphorus and nitrogen, they're just too degraded. So that's the rate of loss of fertile land that we have. Now, what makes land fertile is when it is full of soil organic matter. So organic matter happens to be 50% carbon. So what Zach is saying is so true,

if we're going to balance the climate, we have to look at the land as where's the carbon gonna go. Now, so much of my frustration with the climate conversation and the obvious reason why people reject it often is that it's basically putting all the blame onto CO2 in the atmosphere. Yes, technically-carbon. Connell vision.

Carbon up there does create a thermal blanket. Yeah, cool. But when we look at the problems we're facing from that, we have to say, wait a minute, if the land is broken, if you say, oh, Syria's drought and flooding is all because of CO2 in the atmosphere. You'd be like, hold the pause for a minute. That doesn't make any sense. In the 1960s, the nationalized the land, a bunch of people who've never farmed before degraded

the land in a decade, turned it to desert. Now it doesn't work anymore. They flooded into the cities, and the land is completely degenerating by itself now. And you're like, there's no trees, there's no grass, there's nothing covering the land. Wait, now it floods, and the rain hits a solid block of dirt. That water runs off into the rivers and streams

completely muddy, taking usually five tons of topsoil per acre per year out to sea. And so you're like, oh, we had a big rain. It was great, we had a big rain. None of it infiltrates into the ground. The soil sponge is broken. What used to happen is it hits a plant, trickles into the soil sponge,

and regenerates your water supplies. All of your springs and your aquifers are being recharged. Now, when you have 90% of the land degraded, most of that water is quickly running off into the oceans within a couple days of a big storm. You're back to a drought. So many of these places in Africa, in western United States, we say,

we finally got a big rain. California, I'm talking. Like, God, we must be landing on cement and just roll away into the ocean. We might as well be landing on cement. And then you take on to add on to that, all that bare ground when the sun hits it is heat island. We say, oh, yeah, the cities, the cement, that makes sense that it's heat island. But no one's counting the heat that is radiating up from the surface of millions and millions and millions of acres. Then you say, wait a minute, where's all the water?

If a half an inch, sorry, if an acre of land that Gabe Brown, one of the guys from the film, has can now hold 100,000 gallons more of water, one acre, because he's built the soil back. Yeah. So he's built the soil sponge. Yeah. You're basically saying, well, all that water that used to be in the degraded land, where is it now? And we know water vapor is one of the biggest contributors to climate catastrophes as well as heating. It's not being absorbed. So we're just not counting enough. When we talk about the climate equation, we're just like degraded land, heat island effect, plus the water, where is it? If we start talking like that in the climate, I think a lot more people would be like, yeah, let's fix it.

Well, I would say, I mean, in many ways, I would say you could really just say that we're talking, the climate problem is really just the blood coming out of a wound, right? Let's fix the wound. Like, it really isn't an issue. All it is is showing we have a symptomatic, you know, a symptom based on a lack of balance with how this earth is supposed to be alive. It'd be like, someone's, you know, fifth degree, third degree burns on the, on the hospital bed with all these inputs going in, we're like, let's keep that alive.

That's what we're doing right now. Instead of like, what if this person fully heals so they function again? Right. That's regeneration. That's our land analogy. I mean, I think to just weave it back to the Zach Bush thing, the soil is the microbiome of the earth. Yeah. And we know that we can be doctoring all over the body.

But if we-patching it, patching it, taking drugs, vaccines, like everything we can. If we don't have the system that can actually balance and is supporting the immune function of the body, we're ultimately just going to be doing patchwork drawing on the mirror versus actually addressing the patient and the problem. So right now the soil, as I think he said, 97% has been degraded. So it's very difficult to create balance if the microbiome, again, if we're on the human health, to get balance, we have to heal that part and then we can start to heal the larger piece. And one other thing is that when plants came on land and started, creating soil and the skin of the earth became green, there was a nine, again, this is

a fact that I believe that someone said, so I'm just, you know, stated that way, you know, it was a reduction of about 80 to 90 percent of carbon or greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that came down to create this beautiful, you know, climate and livable ecology that we have been seeing over the last 10,000 years when human beings have been in existence. So that was the technology of photosynthesizing plants, trees and grasses, pulling and creating that carbon to come down and create a livable system. We say it has 500 million years of research and development at its back. Well, that's what's so annoying is what, you know, when I look at Bill Gates, who's

now like sort of like now an environmentalist, I guess, and the entire answer, like you're saying is let's just leave the burn victim alone. The answer is like chemicals. Like let's go ahead make bake meats, bake this, bake this, bake that. growing them inside hydroponics inside light inside of buildings instead of wait a minute what you know what about all the farmland as someone who cares about health and especially our rural communities that are so impacted by health on farmland as well as human health when you're looking at it it's still who wins with all

these systems that are being put out by the global elites let's call them for a second you're like wait a minute who really wins here because when people are healthy they don't need as much pharmaceuticals etc they're not going into debt with their hospital When the farmland is healthy, it doesn't need. And so you look at the farmer debt, for example, how much they're taking out every year just to prop themselves up, the chemicals, the inputs, etc.

And then their health using all those chemicals. And you're like, with regeneration, we are seeing it. I have been there. Rhineland has been there. We know these leaders. You guys actually have some great footage. Why don't we take a look at the farmer? You guys just splice.

Take a look at this. This is how this entire farming process works for just one farmer. Rick Clark is one of the first farmers to crack the code of long code of large-scale, no-till regenerative organic agriculture. To do this, Rick uses two special machines. The best tool we bought was a roller crumper. This is our roller crimper. This is what I call my baby.

A roller crumper is like a steam roller. It smashes the cover crop down. The dead cover crop protects against weeds and becomes food for the microbes. That's our mat to suppress weeds so we no longer need to spray roundup. The other machine called an air cedar, aka no-till drill, plants the seeds without tilling the soil. Industrial agriculture uses expensive chemicals to fertilize crops and kill weeds. But regenerative agriculture uses free microbes and cover crops to bring nutrients into the soil.

Right now where we're standing in Midwest America, there's thousands of pounds of phosphorus and potassium right below our feet. We just need to get the cover crops out there, unlock them, bring them to the surface, and regenerate them. We've got biomass covering the soil. Biomass is the layer of cover crops protecting the soil. We've got the microbial biome working in high geese. The microbial biome is the life in the soil.

We've got aggregate stability that's eight inches deep. Aggregates are how the microbes build soil. We've got 1.5 million earthworms per acre. Earthworms turn plant matter into soil. The more earthworms, the healthier your soil. We've got water infiltration rates of 20 inches an hour. And infiltration is how much water the soil can hold instead of running off.

The deeper the soil organic matter, and thus the more carbon that soil has, the more water the soil will hold. We've eliminated seed treatments. We've eliminated insecticides. We've eliminated pesticides, herbicides. We are savings upwards of $400 an acre on input costs. It works out to be about $2 million a year in savings. That is serious cash.

All right. The film is called Common Ground, super fascinating, and I get when I'm looking at this. So one of the things that I want to talk about is I'm concerned. I'm concerned about doing topics like this because we see what happened in Sri Lanka, where the government decides we're going to be the greenest, you know, country in the world and all farmers,

or getting rid of all the fertilizers and things that this guy just said, I don't have to use any of that stuff. But they just take it away and say, good luck with that. And farmers are starving, ultimately started killing themselves because it couldn't grow anything. So how do we do this on a large scale? How do we move without the government coming in, ultimately just destroying farms, not teaching anyone how to actually farm this? How do we do this at a scale that it could actually make a difference?

Awesome question, and I'm so glad you asked it. And when we look at these phenomenon that are, essentially taking a crisis and then having people who aren't asking the right other people how to solve the problem. And I think the same thing happens similar in the U.S. One of the reasons I had Rick Clark, who you just saw there, testify at the first ever hearing at the House Ag Committee on regenerative agriculture, is because he's showing up and saying, I've been on this trajectory, and I know what it takes, and I know how to get there. But you have so many people who are out there training, undergrad's coming, going into USDA, getting jobs, but don't have enough evidence themselves,

don't have enough experience to be actually giving the ideas. So Gabe Brown, who's also featured in this film Common Ground, has a company called Understanding Ag. And they are currently helping transition 34 million acres in the US alone. Wow. So they are leaders. It just gives that some perspective on scale.

So the organic agriculture sector, which has been probably 60, 70 years of development, is still less than 1% of American agriculture. ag land whereas that number 34 million acres is somewhere between four and five percent okay that has actually scaled and last six years in the last six years so we're looking at an option where we're saying wait a minute pause and check in so in these scenarios around the world we were saying oh this is bad here's the solution any of these regenerative experts and again we are the champions we

are not the experts ourselves but we work day in and day out with these folks different sides of the spectrum on so many the issues but we work together in common ground on the soil stuff. And they're saying, yeah, if you're gonna get off nitrogen, it's a drug. You can't just cut off, you have to have a rehabilitation process, and you have to get expertise from people of how to do that quickly.

Now, what used to take eight or 10 years, or 20 years sometimes, because of the expertise that's come together over the last decade or 20 years, we can do what we used to do in 20 years in three to four. So the pace is getting much better. It does look much better for farmers and ranchers. That's why they're coming to this in droves now, because they're saying, I can actually get off the drip faster.

I'm not going to cut nitrogen in my first year. I'm not going to cut these herbicides necessarily my first year. But they see a practical, economically viable pathway that isn't 20 years long, which takes a heck of a lot of dedication. It is two or three or four years that they're able to go on this trajectory and save 30% on their input cost year. I mean, that seems like that's where, like, it always comes down to finances. It comes down to money.

I was on a, you know, I was doing a tour on the vaccine issue with Vax. And I remember I did a phone, you know, interview on a radio show. And the guy was with me, like, you know, he's conservative, loved everything. Yeah, we should have a right to, you know, control goes into our body. And they said, it's just like glyphosate, they're spreading 90 percent, you know, glyphosates on 90 percent of our crops. He's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, I don't know, like we're, I think we're in Iowa or Ohio, wherever he says, like, I'm in the middle of farmland here, man.

And, you know, that doesn't go over well here. We love our glyphosate. We don't want someone just destroy. Well, there's no proof that that's toxic. And, you know, farmers need to make living. That's how they make living. And I really got something I had not thought about, which is when we talk about issues like this, there are the people that are going to have to ship the farmers, who, by the way,

they're great, great grandparents for probably doing it just like this. But they're so far away now. It's like I'm sure they feel like you're about to blindfold me, tie my hands behind my back. And then tell me, yeah. I mean, it's their communities, it's the peer thing, which has been, when I've gone to these events, these conferences in the middle of the country and many other places, they're saying, you know, we need more support from people who are willing to take this jump because they're communities, their friends, their uncles, like, oh, their uncle's the chemical sales. And I'm going to be like, well, you're not going to buy my chemicals. But I just wanted to set something here.

As someone who's left and working with someone like Rick Clark all the time, he's on the right, you know, things. But that's what's so cool about this movement is you have people who are no pardon. We'll beep it. They're saying, look, let's put these ideologies aside. And Rick isn't saying, you've got to cut this today immediately and isn't fanatical. And many of us are saying this is a practical solution. First and foremost, it's economics. Second, it's resilience.

Third, it's water. Fourth, it's biodiversity. Fifth, six, six. Maybe climate is seventh or eighth in the topic of what it's doing. But that's not what we're starting with. And that's not the reason it's being picked up. an exciting, a huge generation of farmers right now to say, I can do this and it doesn't matter what side of the political spectrum I'm on. I can believe in this because the leaders who are being

pointed to are practical thinkers, and they're not doing that silo just because they're saying, there's a way to get here, I'm not forcing you to do it now, but I can show you how to do it and how to make it economically viable. And I think what's really exciting is that this is being a farmer-led movement, whereas organic with someone, a business, CPG company driven marketing campaign, and it's even classified, organics classified as like a marketing term, whereas regenerative agriculture, I think, really speaks to the DNA of the farmer culture of America, which is more sovereignty. More self-sufficient.

I don't need to be buying everything from outside. I can get my own land regenerating itself. That's right. And when they see, when they actually see how they can actually do that and make more money doing it, all the, you know, the other things of the letting go of the chemicals, on some level, they are doing that because they feel like their hands are tied in many cases. And so, yeah, it ultimately gives a vision of hope. And, you know, seeing over the last six years this huge insurgents of adoption and participation

in this movement is very exciting. It just figures wise for economics. We're talking about like for grow crop, at least 80%, 78 to 80% more profits for farmers doing this in row. Wow. 350% more for ranchers who are doing regenerative. So I mean, the economics just speak for themselves and that's part of the big reason. Amazing. You have a ton of celebrities in this documentary.

It feels like, you know, we just listening to Laura Dern, you know, was putting the V-O-on- there, Woody Harrelson. Why are celebrities, why were they attracted to this? I mean, is it just, did you pitch it as an environmental issue, or is it different for each person that you got involved in the film? I mean, I would say it's, there's obviously some variation between all those that are participating, but I would say, you know, the energy of our infectious, passionate, enthusiastic optimism. Yeah. And showing them something that they hadn't, you know, everybody wants to be a champion of something good. You know? And I think there's a lot of disenchantment in the good solutions that we've been bought and sold on. And soil and nature being a system that is inherently healing and how do we support that system is, I think, a compelling idea at the philosophical, spiritual, and human level.

So, you know, Woody Harrelson, I've known him 20 years. He got married in my mom's house in Kippahulu and Maui. And, you know, he's a staunch vegan. Yeah. And I think when he said yes to me, he didn't know what he was saying yes to. Yeah. But I think he trusts over our 20-year relationship that what I'm passionate about, you know, that we're hopefully evolving and growing and willing to shift our understanding of things. And he got it.

And he was able to, he said, okay, wow, this, the upside is more powerful than my sort of of dogmatic stance and he was willing to come to the table and you know jump in on this common ground well he did he did kiss the ground he narrated kiss the ground by himself yes the first movie which is available on Netflix common grounds coming to streaming in September by the way for folks out there right but I think it was important when when we worked with Woody the first time was a big thing that we noticed and we had a powwow about it before the final narration which was like Woody Harrelson as much as he's been a really amazing activist all his life

was sitting in a state of the same state I was in. Wait a minute, we're all just going to go off the cliff slower. And so when he caught on to the regenerative solution, it did give him hope. And that was something that for all of us, we got moved. And we're like, we've got to put that on camera and have him expressing that change in him that happened with. This is actually hope versus just a little less bad.

And the other... He said to me personally, I've been an activist for 40 years, and I mostly think it was, you know, it was inconsequential. And my participation in Kiss the Ground actually is one of the first things that has me feel like, wow, I'm doing something that is, you know, moving and contributing. You know, he told me he was like, I had a surreal moment where King Charles met him, and he said, Kiss the Ground, that's one of my favorite movie.

I've sent that to a thousand people. And he's like, out of all the things I've done, this is actually something. Look, I mean, of all the things that I'm. done like one of my you know we've gone a couple times to Joel Salatin's farm I got to like dig my hands down into the dirt there very much like you see in that film and he'll show you I mean and honestly like right across the dirt road at the neighboring farm it is desolate there's like it's it looks like a dust storm blowing by and the cows are just like I'm like what are they eating over there and over here it's like Fern Golly you know like every

like you can feel the water in the dirt that's still there and I just thought, why isn't everyone doing this? This is the kicker. I have a little short film I made with Dr. Alan Williams, who's one of my favorite. He works with Gabe Brown, who's one of the stars of both movies. But he was basically expressing, like, people have the assumption that farmers and ranchers just know this inherently. And we want that because we respect people in all professions.

But the same way you probably, like, be like assumed doctors, but no, no, no, they don't know. Right. So it's good, good. But we have to assume on the side of like, wait, maybe people don't know. And when we tried that on 13 years ago, like, I didn't know. I was a no at all environmentalist when I was 29. And I had zero idea.

So we'd be like, well, probably, maybe Al Gore doesn't know. Rylan got Al Gore to turn on this. We went out with that very clear thing. And when I'm in the Senate, when I'm in the House, when I'm talking with these people, they've been on the Ag Committee for 15 years. Everyone would assume they know. They don't know.

The farmers don't know. So this is a cool idea, both for the actors we work with who are environmentalists, aside from Woody, a lot of amazing environmentalist people who've been doing great work. They didn't know either. So we always start from like, we didn't know, probably people don't know. It turns out we learned from the experts farmers and ranchers don't know. So that's the beauty of this.

It isn't an aged old, tired, revolutionary solution that no one's been listening to. It's actually something that people actually don't get. And once they get it, I just watched a clip of Gabe Brown from another little piece. He was basically saying when they're training farmers, they have zero go back. So when they're taking, you know, I said 34 million acres, they're helping transition. Anyone who goes through their stuff, they don't go backwards. They don't say, eh, four years in, I'm going back. None of them go back.

Because they get that this is a trajectory that helps. And I wanted to mention one thing that really hits my heart. When I went through ranching, and it's 350% more profitable, right, for ranching. But the number one reason ranchers are asking for assistance from folks like Gabe Brown and these other rock stars is for the birds. They used to have birds 30, 40 years ago. The birds are gone, and they want their birds back. Wow. And you're like, it's not just money.

It's like, where are my streams, where my fish, where my birds? And that's something that's like... It's huge. Huge for everybody. Yeah. It's going to require that we keep stepping up to the plate in bigger arena. So one of the reasons we had Regenerate America was a campaign we run for last two years. From Kiss the Ground, we have 135 organizations working with us, farm groups,

and businesses, but we've been going to DC because if you don't show up and you don't get the audience with these folks and you don't click their brains or their staffers' brains into this idea, they are being not controlled, but they are being super influenced by the people who've been super influencing them for a very long time. And they're starting to play the chum chum game. Oh, yeah, we're going to be on regenerative sides. You have them going to the D.C. also talking about this. And that's where if you don't show up, if you don't bring the farmers and ranchers along

with you to speak that reality to the power, you're ultimately going to just get squashed. So we have been pushing forward. So people, if they want to sign the petition for regenerate America, it's at kiss theground.com or regenerateamerica.com if you just put that in, if it's easier. But this is a way for you to say, I want regenerative ag in the farm bill. The farm bill's been delayed, as a lot of people know,

and hopefully will pass this year. But we have to demand it. We've made huge progress, lots of marker bills involved, and had a lot of champions inside the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle. but we're still ultimately knowing that we weren't gonna win against Big Ag today. Maybe we gotta keep going though.

So this is where we have to keep pushing all of us. Well, look, I'm so psyched to be supporting this film. I'm psyched to be supporting this movement. To me, this really is, it's one of those solutions that when Zach first introduced it to me, I think this actually brings both sides, left and right together. This is our food.

This is what we're eating. This is what's going into our children's bodies. And instead of, and one of the things, Can you imagine a country where if all of our farmers move in this direction, then it's not just the elitists that can afford the organic food aisle at Whole Foods. Everybody is eating this way. I mean, we really need to start dreaming into that future. And to hear that, you know, more and more farmers are moving in this direction. You can move, you know, tens of millions of acres and get it done in a few years.

It's really, really something that I think is probably the most exciting piece of, you know, of, of, of, of, of, you know, of. of the food world, of getting big ag out of there, getting big chemical out of there, and let's get back to doing what we do best. I mean, hallelujah. I mean, really, that's why, that's why, you know, some new age hippie guys from California have spent the last decade championing agriculture,

because really it was like, wow, that, and it also speaks to that we, there is a place in all of us wants to love and wants to be an expression of love and what are the mechanisms to express our love and regeneration physically and spiritually is everything that we want to be participating in and it gives us a framework and a pathway and you have to be inclusive because as you regenerate your ecosystem capacity increases so instead of being like I'm gonna kill that thing now that thing that thing's in my enemy of like you you have to inherently look holistically and be

inclusive and so you have this perpetual direction of understanding that everything is connected, understanding that it's all there. And I think it's so remarkable. Everyone I talked to in this movement is just awestruck by how much common ground really is. And that's why I love the name of the movie Common Ground because it's so genuine. This is not just a couple guys who were on the West Coast started this up. This is so much a unified party of people from very different political, religious backgrounds, whatever, races, that are coming together and being like, no, no, this is it. Sorry those folks. This is what's happening in front of us.

And it's so practical, scalable, economic, and it's real and it's happening. Where do people see Common Ground? Right now in theaters. Check commongroundfilm.org or kiss the ground.com is the organization. You can find the schedules there. We just did a huge Earth Day showing last week. 75 theaters. across the country, but check it out.

Kiss the Ground is still on Netflix, but streaming for Common Ground is gonna happen in September. And yeah, we're just, we just also wanted to give a big shout out to Josh and Rebecca Takel, the directors who really made this happen at the end of the day. We've been a huge part of the production, bringing all these faces and people into it, but they at the end of the day made this terrific phenomenal film that really moves people. And so it's exciting. We're now working the last one called Groundspell, which is the international focus of the regenerative agriculture movement,

which will be coming out in a couple years. Kiss the ground.com, is that the best way to sort of follow the work that you guys are doing? Do you have Twitter or anything like that? I mean, they're all kissed the ground, except for Facebook's Kiss the Ground, CA, because we started in California. All right. Well, keep up the good work. Thank you so much. Thank you for making the trip out here. Yeah, thank you so much. Hey, everybody get out there. I mean, this is how we support, right?

We vote with our dollars. Do you want this to be your future? Do you want, you know, regenerative farming? Do you want a biome that's going into your plants and therefore into your body? Less drugs, less chemicals. That's what we're all about here at the HighWRest. So definitely support this film, get out there, take your friends and family, and let's start this revolution in food.

All right, it's that time of the day, the Jackson Report. All right, Jeffrey, coming into this, you know, with a lot of hope, got hope for farming, so what else is going on in the world? Yeah, it's wonderful to see those solutions out there in the mix of this conversation, because that's really where we need to go. And I'm going to switch to a different conversation here,

but it's a similar idea. We can take some steps right now, very simple steps, to avoid making an already bad crisis worse. And what am I talking about? Well, it's hard to turn on any news report nowadays or listen to any podcasts without the subject matter sounding like this. Take a listen.

All right. First of its kind, new report by the peer review journal, The Lancet, says mental health issues were magnified by the pandemic. Data shows rates of depression and anxiety and young people rose by more than 50% in studies from 2010 to 2019. Nearly one out of every three American adults reported

having symptoms of anxiety or depression this summer. An additional 53 million cases of major depressive disorder and 76 million cases of anxiety disorders were caused by COVID. We have seen increased reports of distress, increased reports of stress, increased reports of individuals feeling overwhelmed. A new study by the American

American Academy of Pediatrics finds a 64% increase in antidepressants being prescribed to young people since just 2020. And it's even higher for girls between the ages of 12 and 17, which saw a 130% increase since March of 2020. Pharmaceutical companies worldwide are reporting spikes in the most commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs from 10% in Australia to as high as 34% in the U.S. While the rise in numbers is alarming antidepressants, they can actually be life-saving. They say to keep an eye on your child's behavior and mood changes. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those I told you so. As we saw that happening with the COVID pandemic, you're going to destroy the lives of these kids and people

and lock them down, take their jobs, and here we are. And so the question is, can people be helped in a different way? Can we do stuff to not make this any worse? And let's focus on, in that report, it talks about the widespread use of antidepressants. And this is one of the big tools in the toolbox for psychiatry. It's perhaps one of the biggest. They're SSRIs.

These are for mood disorders. These are for depression, bipolar disorders. And we look at some of the data surrounding this medicine, almost three decades now of use for this drug, basically, this drug class. And here's a study because people are becoming long-term users of these drugs now. This isn't just 30 days to get my life straight. this is something you're on for two, five years and counting. So here's a study out of the year. I swear everyone I have met that, you know,

is involved with this process of taking these drugs is finding that they're never off of them. I mean, it just seems to me like you're on this for life. Like, where do they go? If I needed it now, why do I suddenly no longer need it? Right. And so it just seems like they're on these things forever. Right. And so what's some of the data showing?

Because you'll hear a lot of the positives about this, but there's a study out of the year. UK, and it looked at over 220,000 people. They looked at the primary care records for them. They went back in and looked at this, looking at long-term treatment of antidepressants and adverse outcomes. And where do they conclude? The authors concluded our findings indicate an association between long-term antidepressant

usage and elevated risks of CHDS coronary heart disease, cerebral vascular disease, CBD mortality and all-cause mortality. This is not a good thing if you're talking about. long-term usage. And let's look at one of these, one of the popular ones, SSRIs, this is selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors. This is Zoloft. Let's just look at the package insert of Zoloft right at the top. You don't even have to search for this. It's on the first page. Warning, suicidal thoughts and behaviors, all in capital letters, the black box warning. Antidepressants increased the risk of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in pediatric and young adult patients. So, I mean, this is always

something that perplexes me because you're taking this to kind of avoid that in some people. And it literally is causing the thing you're trying to avoid. And these things are given to some of these drugs are given to people as young as eight. So this is what we're talking about here. And we've talked about it before and I'm going to put it out there. And I know it's super controversial. But while we're discussing all the school shootings in these issues that are taking place in this nation like we're seeing nowhere else in the world, this has certainly got to be on the table. I mean, I know a lot of people say you can't blame those drugs, but when you see that label, what happens? You know, suicidal thoughts, suicidal ideation.

And then when you look at most of the manifestos by these, you know, kids that go and do these atrocities, it's just this I don't want to live anymore. And I don't care if anyone else does. And we're giving this product that enhances that. I mean, this is where we've got to get into these regulatory agencies. Will we, can we do some studies on just the psychological effects? Is it possible? This is what we're seeing. Is it kids that were on these that are shooting up to schools? Or they just came off of it? I mean, things that we've got to be looking at. Put it all on the table as we have these conversations. And this class of drugs, SSRIs, they, last year, and we've reported on this, there was a lightning bolt that shot through this idea of changing and playing around with these brain chemicals.

And this is the study here. It was in nature. It's titled The Serotonin Theory of Depression, and it was a systematic umbrella review of the evidence. So they looked at 17 studies. Most of these studies were meta-analysis and systemic reviews. And just for the viewers out there, those are some of the strongest forms of evidence you can possibly find. So if you think of like a pyramid, the weakest would be a case study, look at maybe one person and say, well, it did something for one person.

But the meta-analysis, the systemic reviews, that looks at just bundles of studies. So this is what this study was dealing with. And what did they conclude? They wrote this. Our comprehensive review of the major strands of research on serotonin shows there is no convincing evidence that depression is associated with are caused by lower serotonin concentrations or activity. This review suggests that the huge research effort based on the serotonin hypothesis has not produced convincing evidence of a biochemical basis to depression. This is consistent with research on many other biological markers. We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated.

This is huge. I mean, that's amazing. I just want to put my bias in here. The pharmaceutical industry is really good at crafting their studies, and those are usually the only studies being done worldwide. All the studies that you have funded yourself to prove that this works end up leading to that result, which is we just don't see that the serotonin seems to be affecting depression at all. That's probably in a mountain of funding to try and make studies show that it actually is connected. So what would happen if unbiased research was taking place to be like this is the biggest scam in the history of the world? Right.

And so let's get to the heart of this conversation, this story here. So as people are coming off these drugs, they're finding, again, 30 years of usage of these drugs, and they're finding still new side effects for people withdrawing from these drugs. One of them is called, you're not going to believe this, it's called brain zaps. And this is actually written up here. It says in SSRI withdrawal, brain zaps go from overlook symptom to center stage. And it says physicians were initially unaware or dismissive of brain zaps due to limited information and a focus on downplaying the addictive nature of antidepressants.

So the doctors who are so interested on saying these aren't addictive, you can come off these any time. And they're saying it's rare. So we've heard that before. But this is basically electrical shot that goes through people's brains. They feel it inside their brains. It's actually reading about it. It's on the surface of the brain.

But you feel inside your brain. It's obviously very disturbing. Some people say it's like my brain has to stop and reboot when it happens. It itself causes anxiety, cognitive issues. And so this is something that's happening that doctors are just now paying attention to. So why are we bringing up all this information? Well, it's because of this article in stat news, which just knocked me off my seat. The time has come for over-the-counter antidepressants.

Now, you're ready for this. Now, what are they talking about here? They're just talking about doing these things out like candy. and do you have to, a new license has to be given for that to become over the counter. So you think, okay, great, well, maybe they can start incorporating some of these new side effects, do some new research on this. The serotonin theory is in question. Maybe we can finally get to the root of this. But you go into this article and it talks about this new licensing to get this done. It says, this process would primarily involve studies to prove that consumers can understand

and follow the medication label, not new clinical trials, because more than three decades of evidence shows that SSRI anti-presence are safe and effective. We need to really pump breaks here as a society because anybody knows common sense, these aren't safe, there's risk to them, and five seconds of research will prove that. And for people to go out and say- I just want to make a call for the team right here

because it just as I read that, I just reflect on Aldous Huxley, who wrote Brave New World at the center of that was this idea of Soma. Everyone's gonna be taking a drug to be made happy. And I remember, You know, there's a famous interview he did back in like the beginning of television, I believe, with Mike Wallace early, early in his career, where he predicts that we're all going to be taking a drug to accept the world that we shouldn't be accepting. Take a look at this.

In this book, which you mentioned, this book of mine, Brave New World, I postulated a substance called Sumer, which was a very versatile drug. It would make people feel happy in small doses. It would make them see visions in medium doses, and it would send them to sleep in large doses. Well, I don't think such a drug exists now, nor do I think it will ever exist. But we do have drugs which will do some of these things, and I think it's quite on the cards that we may have drugs,

which will profoundly change our mental state without doing us any harm. I mean, this is the pharmacological revolution which has taken place, that we have now powerful mind-changing drugs, which physiologically speaking are almost cost. I mean, they are not like opium or like cocaine, which do change the state of mind, but to leave terrible results physiologically and morally. I mean, how shocking is that? It's like the guy is like taking a time capsule from the moment we live in, going back into like, you know, 1950, 1960 early, you know, and then saying you're all going to be taking drugs.

And here we are. Here's the moment it's happening where suddenly I can just walk in and just drug myself, drug my kid. Oh, they're misbehaving. Let me just drug them. Let the school just drug them. With a product that, as you pointed out, doesn't even do its job. And we don't have to go down this road.

This will say something about society that we may not be able to reverse at that point. And what we're finding too, this is New York Times, that antidepressants are addictive. People can't get off them. So this is something obviously that wasn't, you know, wasn't at the beginning. They weren't really studying this when they started doling these out Prozac by the millions of doses. And this is, you know, obviously another issue in a laundry list of issues. But here is another one. This one has just come about. about in the last, I would say, about five years, again, what was considered rare, doctors

weren't listening to their patients because they thought this was just a side effect of depression itself. We're talking about sexual dysfunction, not during the drug while you're on it after you stop taking the drug. Here's one of the headlines. They're calling it an epidemic, the hidden epidemic of sexual dysfunction, which experts blame on SSRI antidepressants. And let's just go in here, because it will unpack this a little bit, because a lot

of people are hearing this for the first time. It says the symptoms they describe, these are the patients, are strikingly similar. Genital numbness, a total lack of sensation around the growing, and for men, erectile dysfunction. Many report they no longer experience sexual or romantic attraction at all and have been left with an emotional numbness. Most have seen relationships collapse as a result, while others have missed out on the chance to have children. Some have never experienced pleasure during sex called anahedonia, and worry they never will. Significantly, all have found their symptoms repeatedly dismissed by medical professionals who insisted they are linked to their underlying depression and not the pills. Dr. Joanna Moncrief, professor

of critical and social psychiatry at the University College London, says, the majority of people taking SSRIs will get some form of sexual dysfunction. There's no doubt about that. They're prescribed to sex offenders to curb the libido, so it isn't a huge stretch to imagine that symptoms persist. She adds, the other thing that makes it convincing is all the evidence about prolonged withdrawal symptoms from SSRIs. If you take drugs for a long time, they alter the brain in ways that may be permanent or at least take a long time to normalize.

Wait a minute. So it just said that they actually prescribe these things to sex offenders because it knows. They know that it inhibits, you know, your sexual desire. And so, I mean, again, like we talk about, you know, we should be looking at school shootings. When we, this other conversation,

we've been having a lot on this desire, this confusion, this, you know, body dysmorphia, the transgender thing in children. Maybe these children feeling like they're in the wrong body as we've talked to those that are trying to detransition saying I was depressed. I, you know, I was on antidepressants. My psychiatrist said maybe I'm in the wrong body. I decided to get a sex change operation. Well, now doesn't that sort of at least potentially bring in a cause of why

so many kids are saying that they just feel like they're in the wrong body. I mean, if you've got numbness and you've got no attraction to, you know, based on gender or sexuality, I mean, what a mess they're making with this whole thing. It seems like that would be a common sense approach to perhaps start some studies, but absolutely. And in 2019, the European Medicines Agency actually added their own black box warning specifically for this. And this is it right here. You can look at it. It's talking sexual dysfunction, selective serotonin uptake inhibitors.

And it says there have been reports of long-lasting sexual dysfunction where the symptoms have continued despite discontinuation of SSRIs and SNRIs. So they're calling it really is post-SSRI sexual dysfunction. So this is actually a term now. And so we're reporting on all of this. And it's a lot to take in. Obviously, there's a direction here. We're following the evidence.

It's important to understand that you can't just quit these medications. There are safe ways to do this and correct ways to do this. And they talk about the medical community does something called tapering. They do cross-tapering. They manage the symptoms as you're coming off this. It's a very delicate process. So in fact, the Cleveland Clinic actually put out a complete review of some of these issues in their medical journal, discontinuing antidepressants, perils, and pitfalls. And it goes through all of, you know, some of the strategies, all of the things that may happen to look out for. But It's interesting it says in there, one of the sentences or paragraphs, it says, who is most at risk of discontinuation symptoms?

You think that would be an important question for the medical community? It says, despite extensive literature on ADS, that's antidepressant discontinuation syndrome, again, there's a term for it, there is still little known about the patient characteristics that pose the most risk. No one's ever looked. Nevertheless, though the risk of ADS cannot be eliminated, it can be reduced through awareness of known risk factors. So that's where we're at right now.

Amazing. We just need to have awareness of this. But you know, the takeaway- Let me just make that caveat too, to everyone in the audience, for those of you that maybe are using SSRIs, we mean no judgment on the show. We are simply showing what we find.

We're on an investigation, showing the side effects. I'm sure there's people that, you know, have had their lives saved by these products. But if you watch a show like this to decide, I need to get off of those drugs, definitely please consult a professional in doing that. We want to make sure that everybody is safe and healthy

and there's the right way to do things and clearly based on those warnings the wrong way. Right, it is very important. And what we're also trying to do here with the over-the-counter idea, that's the first time I've seen that idea really start floating in mainstream. We're trying to avoid a scandal, a crisis here. Yeah.

To go further down this hole. And there's actually a scandal that is coming, it has unfolded and is coming to an end now. And it's happening in the UK. An American audiences probably don't hear about it or understand it, really, because it's such a big deal over there, but it hasn't crossed over to the reporting here. So if you haven't seen anything on this,

take a look at some of these clips. It is a scandal that has already claimed thousands of lives. Tens of thousands of people were infected by contaminated blood transfusions. It was hailed as a miracle treatment. But for many, it was a death sentence. As many as 30,000 people in the UK were given blood treatments infected with HIV and hepatitis C. That was between the 1970s and 1991. The United Kingdom was short of blood clotting treatments.

And this was particularly acute for thousands of hemophiliacs. And the National Health Service turned to a product called Factor 8. Factor 8 made from blood plasma was imported in the world. the 1970s and 80s, much of it from the United States, where it was collected from prisoners, sex workers and drug users who were paid for their blood. 1,250 people with bleeding disorders in the UK got HIV and hepatitis C as a result of this. 380 children, 2 thirds later died of AIDS-related illnesses. I was given some contaminated blood products from the government and with that I got HIV

hepatitis C, VCJD and the hepatitis AMB. So with that, my life's been kind of turned upside down. These individuals are people that have been fighting for answers for almost 50 years. And despite years of campaigning, the government only announced a full inquiry in 2017. Around 2,900 people are thought to have died from this. An inquiry into the scandal is said to conclude in May. Hopefully there's some fiery will give us some justice and some peace. Wow. So, you know, we're reporting on this to, for several reasons, one to hold the people that

are responsible to feed to the fire, to get justice, obviously, for the people that are still alive that, that, and their families. But also to show, there's a common stream in the conversation of, well, you know, things like the Tuskegee Medical Experiments, that happened, you know, 80 years ago. The medical community doesn't do that stuff anymore. We're much more conscious now about what we're doing. So let's look how this really came down. So in 2017, after decades of trying to get justice here, you had this inquiry started in the

UK. And it gained steam pretty quickly. This was the Lancet. UK government announces contaminated blood inquiry. By 2020, ministers have committed publicly to supporting the completion of this and getting compensation for the victims. But at the center of this is there's a a lot of people, but one of them is Jason Evans, and he's a director, but he's also lost his

father to the infected blood scandal. And he was the lead claimant, and he tried to sue in high court to get justice. And that was before this inquiry started, then it kind of got just wrapped up into this whole thing. And he actually made a documentary called In Cold Blood to just just look at this entire situation, Factor 8 is what is called. So how do we get here? What really happened? You can get an idea from that reporting, but when you dig into it, it really paints a picture that I think everyone needs to look at.

So there was a company named Immuno-A-G, and they supplied a lot of the factor 8, the plasma, the kind of the key components for this clotting drug to the UK, to the to their medical community there from the 70s to all the way to 91. And in their documents, now this has been released because of this public inquiry. So that's why this is so interesting. We really can't turn our backs on government ever because this is, they can, they're, the keys are in the ignition there. If you start it, they will do some deep dive research, make these things public,

make this a big issue, which it has become in the UK. So we look at some of these internal documents and this company, it was out of Austria, And they had collection places in Austria, in Germany, where people were donating plasma. And they called it cryobulin. That was the product name. It says cryobulin 2 will be significantly cheaper than cryobulin 1 because the British market will accept a higher risk of hepatitis for a lower price product. In the long-term cryobulin 1 will disappear from the British market. So what are they talking about there? Well, cryobulin 1 was basically given from free donations by people in Austria and in Germany.

Cryobulin, too, because it's significantly cheaper, is because it was taken from prisoners in the U.S. This was a U.S.-based product. It was sex workers, homeless people, and so there was a higher risk of contamination there. And you can see that was in 1974, 75, these documents are. So right at the beginning of that, of this factor rate, it was starting. But you can see in more internal documents here, we'll go into this. Where were they being collected? It says, and this was to one of the heads of the company.

It says, for your personal information at the moment, our plasma pharisa stations are located in New York, Baltimore, Birmingham, Alabama, Philadelphia, and Knoxville. Well, it's commonly known that somewhere between the mid to late 70s, AIDS was starting in New York, San Francisco. So literally, their blood collection, the plasma collection station, was in New York at the heart of the AIDS, epidemic and the way it's really important to understand the way they make this factor

a product is they pool they get these shipments in and they pool all of this plasma this this these blood products into one vat so even if you get even if you get 10 people that aren't infected with anything with AIDS with with hepatitis C and you get one or two that are it affects the whole product line so huge problem there how big how like how many would they put together at one time you know how many different blood samples I've read up this I've read a 60,000 was high-end. 60,000 all at one time. So you're making it, in fact, impossible to avoid having a blood infection that's contaminating

everything. Wow. Right, right. And so there were people, there were doctors looking at this and going, hey, there are hepatitis. We're seeing a lot of hepatitis cases. We're starting to see AIDS cases in these transfusions. We really need to look into this.

So doctors started to, while still giving. giving this factor A, they didn't stop giving it. They started to do studies. And these studies were, patients were not given informed consent. So this is a second layer upon this scandal. So this is a BBC headline and it reads, infected blood scandal. Children were used as guinea pigs in clinical trials. And let's really go through this for a second.

Luke O'Shea Phillips, 42, has mild hemophilia, a blood clotting disorder that means he bruises and bleeds more easily than most. he caught the potentially lethal viral infection hepatitis C while being treated at the Middlesex Hospital in central London, which was administered because of a small cut to his mouth aged three in 1985. Documents seen by the BBC suggest he was deliberately given the blood product, which as Dr. New might have been infected, so he could be enrolled in a clinical trial. The doctor wanted to find out how likely patients were to catch diseases from a new version of heat-treated factor 8. Though he had never been treated for his condition before,

was given heat-treated factor 8 to stop his mouth bleeding. A letter from Luke's doctor, Samuel Macon, to another expert in hemophilia, was submitted in evidence to the public inquiry into the infected blood scandal, writing to Peter Kernoff at London's Royal Free Hospital, Dr. Macon, detailed the treatment of Luke and another boy asking, quote, I hope that it will be suitable for your heat-treated trial. Documents reveal doctors knew Luke had contracted hepatitis C as early as is 1993, but he was not told until 1997. One medical record states a positive test result and says have not discussed with patient or family. So what these medical doctors in this community was trying to do, they were testing out if treating this factor A, he treating it, would kill

some of the hepatitis, would lessen this viral burden for these transfusions. And so these people were put in these trials. There's so many documents to show that these trials were going on. This is just one of them I grab, but people can read all of these on their own. But there's also a compensation scheme that was suggested. Now, this is the important part of this because the government, a lot of people in the government and ex-government officials like Boris Johnson, they're behind compensation to get compensation to these people as fast as possible. Typically, this is unlike most governments that do this. Rishi Sunnick is where this stands. It's the buck stops with him. So far, he has denied any

type of scheme to be green lit. But the amount of pressure he's getting is enormous by the public and politicians in general. So we look at this compensation scheme, and this was in the public inquiry. This is their second report. And they outlined, and it's really interesting here to see this, because you have the person here, the person affected, and you have all different types. You have literally five types of different awards that could be possible for them, or all five on top of that. So, you know, we think of the, we think of other award systems. It's just this flat award or, you know, we'll just pay your medical costs. They're talking about the cost of their social life, the cost that took them away from their families. So this is a really thorough compensation scheme.

So it would be really interesting if this thing gets green lit because it could set a precedent for future harms. And this is the latest headline here. You have 180 more than 180 politicians demand immediate financial compensation for infected blood scandal victims. So this is, you're seeing the government come together in a very rare way to address this controversy and this scandal to get the victims the compensation they need. So I think this is a glimmer of hope and a story that's just heartbreaking. You know, I think as we look at this, what you're watching is in real time now, how governments, you know, modern democracies or republics, whatever you want to call them, go out of their way to hide the mistake. And this is human nature. This is where anyone that just believes in government

agencies right now just believes your dog. My doctor would tell me if they knew, you see it time and time again. This is an issue that comes from the 1970s through the 90s. It's complained about, I'm sure, in the middle of it, yet doctors in the middle of it recognizing, geez, we're giving, you know, hemophiliacs AIDS and hepatitis C, and we're talking to each other about it. No one's bringing a case there. And then only when someone, you know, finally either they're affluent enough or, you know, I don't know, intense enough to demand an investigation, 2017, it starts happening. And then only like seven years later, after I'm sure every government agency's tried to shut it down, tried to hold it back, it finally sees the light of day, which begs us all to ask the

question, how many things right now are contaminating people and killing them as we know it, that we won't hear about for 50 freaking years, and especially the COVID vaccine. This is something that I've said. Do you really believe that the FDA or the CDC will ever admit that they forced a product told the President of the United States to take away your job if you don't take it?

Now that we're seeing heart attacks across the world, we're seeing turbo cancers. Do you really think government agencies are going to go out of the way to say, ah, our bad, that's on us, really sorry. President Biden said, I'm sorry, I told you all to get it, that you couldn't go to your job if you didn't get it because as it turns out,

I forced you in a situation where you're not at a very heightened risk of turbo cancers and heart attacks and heart disease. It's never going to happen. It's never going to happen. And this is the problem when governments are making decisions for our body. So I don't care where you're at on the issue of vaccines or any of this. I'm against government mandates of anything that affects my body, period. You want to do your research?

I get to do mine. We get to decide how we are going to treat. our bodies, our children, and let the chips fall where they may. But I do not trust governments making these decisions. And now every time I see one of these stories, I never, ever, ever will trust that governments make the better decisions for us than we make for ourselves. And that's where I'm at. It's why I've jumped off the ship.

Government doesn't know best. You know, we've got to get them out of our lives so that we're making our own decisions. I don't, I'm getting heated because it's just so infuriating to hear of just how many of these stories have happened. And I think one of the morals of the story is just because your government doesn't acknowledge something does not mean it doesn't exist. And to keep pushing, to keep doing the research, to keep getting the word out there in any way you can because at some point, you may be helping someone else. At some point, your government may acknowledge it. And there may be a compensation and there may be a homecoming for some of this information and finally putting

it to rest. So great point, Del. And believe me, for everyone out there, you know, People have said walk away from the autism issue, Dell. There's so many other things you can prove we will never walk away. The high wire will never walk away. The informed consent action network is never going to walk away. We recognize the injuries that are happening out there in the world to those that are receiving vaccines. Maybe not everybody. And I'm not here to talk about who it worked for.

We are focused on who it's not working for. It's not working for a vast group of children and parents that are suffering. And we will make sure that one day, hopefully sooner than later that in the courts of law and in the governments around the world, they will have to atone for what they've done wrong. They will have to reimburse as this what's happening here in the UK. They will have to pay to take care of these children and these injuries and these families that have been so completely disrupted by one of the greatest lies ever told.

So we're committed to it, never going to walk away from it. I don't care what anyone says about me. I don't care what the New York Times, the Washington Post, or any hands, headline you want to bring the science is now there more science needs to be done and god willing it will be done you know immediately Jeffrey thank you for that report thank you for giving me so like fired up okay I'll see you next thank you well I mean this is obviously I'm passionate about this so these are the things that I care about I these are you know these are God's children that were just lied to and destroyed and hurt for no reason for

a bottom line so that you could get a cheaper blood product. Like the governance, well, let's go ahead and just spend another $100 billion on somebody else's war, on somebody else's border. But let's like save a couple nickels on a blood product we're giving to our own citizens. This insanity in the world has got to stop and the high wire is going to point it out as long as we are here. One of the big things we're pointing out, as I've said, is this stupid, terrible COVID vaccine that was rushed on the market. by crony capitalism and some agenda, God knows how deep it goes. But now the repercussions are happening and the world would not really know about it.

There would be no facts to really sink your teeth into. I mean, how do we know? We're not going to wait 50 years. The high wire's not wait 50 years. You know what we got? We got air in Siri today. Not 50 years from now immediately. The moment this vaccine was released, we put our legal team on it.

We said you have tracking systems. We know you do, and you're not going to hold them back for. I think it was 75 years the FDA wanted to hold back the data on the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine. They wanted to hold back the V-Safe data. Well, guess what? For those of you that are donating the high wire, you made it possible for us to not have to wait a half a century. And this is where we're at right now. As many of you are aware, on behalf of I can, we have been suing the CDC for well over two years with

regards to their V-safe data. This is the safety system they said would assure that COVID-19 vaccines are safe and that they're tracking their safety. When we finally got that data, it showed that over 7.7% of the users reported needing medical attention. And on average, two to three times after getting a COVID-19 vaccine, and over 70% of those were emergency room, urgent care, or hospitalized situations. So serious stuff, and it shows why the CDC didn't want to release it to the public.

Well, there was one other set of data that the CDC didn't release, and that was the free text fields, basically boxes, where people could type in typically up to 250 characters, just any information about their symptoms that they wanted. Well, CDC fought vigorously to also hide that data, and as many of you already know, a judge thankfully ordered that it be released. In February, the CDC released 390,000. of those entries and another 390,000 released last month as well. We covered some of the disturbing findings from the first batch and what we can tell you

is that many of those disturbing findings from the first batch for 390,000 entries, we also see in the second batch so there is a consistency so far. Some of the very disturbing conditions that we saw at an alarming rate, including things like fellas palsy, shingles, tinnitus, heart palpitations, the CDC, should have been very concerned about this data, it probably was, and that's probably precisely why it fought so hard to hide it from the public. We still have 10 more batches to go with an increasing number

that is going to be produced every month. And as they come in, I'm sure I can't report to you exactly what was found. I know many of you are tracking these document dumps very closely that Aaron's series team has been able to fight for and deliver. This data, the Pfizer data, the Moderna data, the VSAFE data, is currently being used in lawsuits all across the world. All across the world.

Not lawsuits just by the informed consent action network, but by everybody because of our open platform, because we are presenting it to the world, which is the only thing we want to do. We just wanted to make sure that they were as transparent as they promised they would be, that the government of the United States of America that did most of the testing on this was involved in. said, we'll be totally transparent. We recognize we're rushing this out onto you, but then when it came to releasing the data, oh, actually, we need 75 years to be able to deliver that. We said, oh, hell no. Oh, hell no, you're going to deliver it right away, and they are. We are spending millions in courtrooms to make sure that our government is transparent so that the world can see

what's going on here. And that is only made possible, only made possible by you, by your $1 donation, your $5 a month, your $25 a month is making sure that we don't wait for 50 years to save people's lives. We get to do it immediately. So please, there is so much work that needs to be done. There's so many lawsuits we do need to bring. And there's other products that are being made that we need to stop immediately. We need investigations on and we're held up. Look, we're doing an amazing work and you're all making it possible.

But should we have any limits? The only limit is how many of you decide that this is important. to you. That's the only limit we have right now because we can keep hiring more brilliant lawyers that want to save the world. We can keep doing investigations across the world to find out wherever there's a stone that needs to be unturned. Our only limit is how many of you watching, the millions of you watching right now, that are thinking, I don't know if it's worth my dollar. I don't know what it's going to take, but I hope today watching what's going down in the UK knowing it has to be happening right now. There's probably something we're giving

our children right now that is going to lead to health issues in the future that had I can be funded well enough to do all the best investigations we want to do, we would have known about it. So why don't you take it upon yourself right now to say, you know what? They do have an incredible track record. It's amazing how many lawsuits they win when everyone else is just talking about it. So why don't you become a part of the informed consent action network? We have a match right now for all the legal work that we're doing. one of our sponsors has put up $500,000 if we can match it.

Last week, we'd hit $55,000 have been raised, which means that's $110,000 towards this work. This week where are we at, we've now hit $100,000. So we're moving up the ladder. We've almost doubled from where we were last week, so thank you for everybody that got involved, but I want to be really clear. This isn't just any donation.

You need to scan that QR code. Use this QR code or that Bitley slash ICAN legal match. because that's how we're tracking this. This is exactly what's happening. So if you were ever considering of getting involved in the work that we're doing here, this is the perfect time to do it. Every dollar you give will be doubled. It will be matched.

Please become a recurring donor. It helps us have, you know, be able to look into the future and schedule how many things we can actually get involved in. We want to do it all. We want to do it all. Not just for you, for me, for my kids, for every one of us that works here. We're passionate about trying to make the world a better place for our children. I want to be proud of what I left my kids.

I'm working so hard to make that happen. You too can make that happen by becoming a recurring donor. And thank you for everyone that's made everything we've done so far possible. You know, it takes courage. And one of these things we talk about donating, you don't even have to have courage to do that. It's not like you're like standing in the middle of your office space saying, hey, guess what, everybody, I'm donating to ICAN. it's totally private, is totally quiet.

But the more of us that would stand up, the more of us that would just shout from the mountaintop, you know what, I'm mad as hell, I'm not going to take it anymore. This is ridiculous. The more we would see change, the faster we would wake up, the faster this movement would grow. And then there's some that, you know, have pulpits and they have cameras on them and microphones,

and they tend to even be more afraid, especially actors. Imagine being an actor. I mean, I know several of them, many of them support me quietly. I'm like, come on, will you please step forward? You know what it would do. If you would just save the world, I know you've been watching all my movies. I know you follow all my television shows.

As it turns out, I'm not getting the vaccine. You know what they would do? And they're like, yeah, for like the week before it ruins my career, that's what's going on with a lot of actors. And I get it. You know, it is just a giant popularity contest. If Hollywood turns on you, there's not much you can do after that. But every time an actor does step up, I want to celebrate him.

There's a hero we're going to talk to today, and here she is. And the Emmy goes to Dreia de Mateo. Please welcome Dreia Day Mateo! Dreia de Mateo's playing the iconic Adrara La Cereyna and the Sopranos. Almost got killed, Christopher. Christopher! Oh my God! When I went in for the audition, I didn't know it was a mafia drama.

I thought it was about opera singers. Why don't you just forget about working and be with me? Oh, yeah. And be one of those wives like a Carmelis soprano. You're so well known for your Emmy-winning role as Adriana and the Sopranos. Do people still come up to you and quote your lines? Yes, they do. If it would have been Christopher alone in a car with a woman,

I would have killed him. People come up to me all the time. You know, when you're on TV, people think that they're best friends with you. If I were a movie star, people would have. would leave me alone, never talk to me, they'd be intimidated, especially with these big, mean eyebrows all the time. I want to marry you.

Got your ring and everything. Don't listen to a maid. He's been jerking you around for three years. You're wasting your whole youth. This is the first Emmy nomination and win for Trey to McTale who plays Adriana on the Sopranos. There are so many people that are responsible for this. But if I even try to thank any of them right now,

I might pupe, choke, cry, or die. You've already seen me do that. So I'm just going to say thank you and go have 10 Now she's starring in this season's highest rated new sitcom Joey. That's what a tramp. That's a mirror, Gina. Damn it, that is me. Had you done a sitcom before?

No, I still don't know what I'm doing, but I'm trying. I'm not used to seeing myself not getting strangled. When I did Sons, that was another situation where there was no role written. Oh, wow. They asked me to do the pilot as a favor. It's going to be different this time. This time I have my baby to live for. live for. When FX heard that they got me to do it, they were like, well, would she stay?

And they asked me if I'd stay, and I said, of course I'll stay. But is there a role? I mean, what are you going to do with me? I just died. They brought her back to life. I think Wendy's power lies in the fact that she's Abel's mom. She's not a manipulator. She's not there to get over on anybody. It's not going to betray people. There's a line. I can't believe if they did this. But they've done this on a couple of shows. Be careful or all Adriana you. It's a good reference. Doing the one thing I swore I never do.

Saying yes to a reality show. What's the meeting behind the name? I mean, obviously you're a mom. I guess that much. Yes, I'm a mom. And my house is sort of like a commune for gypsies and crazies. So everybody always says that my house is either The Vortex, which I guess would not be the better name for the show

with kids running around, the Vortex. Right. So it's kind of the mothership. Okay. Yeah, and you know, we're kind of out there in space a little bit. Today on the motherfucking mothership, I am going to be cracking the whip on my musician boyfriend to finish some songs that he's been working on.

There's no filters. I don't even know if you'll understand half of what I'm saying, because I'm sure it's just that's enough reason to watch it. That's enough reason to watch it. My Super Mom Award. My father. If I have a fucking heart attack today, will you please take care of my kids?

The only way for me to work right now is an independent film because I haven't complied to all the rules that it takes to work in TV these days. The censorship is astounding to me. I cannot believe the censorship that's happening in the world right now. No one is paying attention. I lost everything because I held out. I consumed information as much as I could about what was going on.

It didn't sit right with me. I felt like the whole thing was, it was just all very suspect. What would you say to your audience? Always follow the truth. Well, it's my honor and pleasure to be. joined right now by Drea de Mateo. Drea, what an honor it is to have you on the high wire. Thanks for joining us. I am so excited. I don't think you understand that for the last three years, I was just religiously on the high wire watching and listening to everything you were saying

because there was no getting me to pay attention to mainstream media at that point. Wow, that's amazing. Well, it's probably, I mean, look, I don't know how you made it out there in Los Angeles. We had just run, you know, I moved my whole studio out of there and just before COVID happened, but I just had a sense California was losing its mind. I spent my career working in Paramount Studios there on CBS Talks for the Doctors. But so many of my friends, I mean, what a difficult time to be in Hollywood. First of all, did you have friends that like at least were aligned with you as you went through this process? No. I don't think that even one of my friends was aligned with me. I was very quiet about it,

especially once, you know, everybody was lining up to get vaccinated. But I was surprised that they cared that I wasn't. My friends didn't really say much about it. But I remember my brother was like, you know, I really think that you need to protect your family. And I was just like, wow, we're going to play that card, like not protecting my children. I thought I was protecting my children by doing the research before I, you know, they tell you when you're a kid, you're going to follow your friends and jump off a bridge. Right. Say, I need to research this, you know, I need to understand things a little better.

Man, people were real condescending at that time, and everybody was a scientist, and I have doctors in my family, and there was just such a, it was so arrogant. It wasn't even, and I was humble about my decision of what I wasn't arrogant about it. Everybody had this arrogance about them. And I was like, but based on what? It was such a wild mental flip. Yeah. Especially for like, you know, we consider ourselves like hippies and liberals and all that.

Where did all my liberal friends go? Yeah. I was like, you're tyrants now. Yeah, it was really a trip. I mean, so much of it, you know, yoga studios that were not allowing you in if you hadn't been vaccinated. You know, just like, how does this fit into A-R-Veta and all of, you mean, all of this hippie, like I was the same way, I was raised, I'm a hippie kid, you know, I was raised by hippies. We were the ones that, you know, ate organic food and, you know, had these crazy diets. None of the kids in my school could understand. and, you know, and certainly were vitamins before pharma,

and then it just sort of this whole thing shifted. And, you know, when we think about, what's so funny about imagining you go through it is because, you know, you tend to play these really intense balls out characters that have no problem stating, you know, who they are, where they're at. You know, when you're in Hollywood, as you were saying, you were, like, very quiet about it.

Is that more your nature? Is it, I mean, do you sort of show us something different in film than when you walk down the street, or was it just a situation that had you keeping it on the lowdown? I mean, I'm generally a really shy, shy person. I, even like the character I played on Sopranos actually was a victim. She might have had her moments, you know, of like cursing it, Christopher or whatever, but she was a super victim. I felt like, I felt super,

I didn't feel like a victim during the pandemic. I felt, I mean, look, you mentioned vitamins. I'm jumping around here, but when I realized that they were going to get rid of, like things that I lived by, like NAC or, there was just all this talk of, you know, in Canada, too, just getting rid of all of these supplements. Yeah.

Now I'm like, wait, minute now I really need to understand this further this is way beyond anything that we're hearing in the mainstream media it just and then when the mandates happened I was petrified of losing everything I was petrified of losing my home my bank account everything because I was hearing all of this sort of the rumbling of you don't comply you die basically and I don't mean by the the actual virus I mean, by your government, kind of, I mean, listening to all of the propaganda

and our own president talking about it, the winter of death, you know, all that sort of stuff. I just started really following the money, I guess. And then once you see all the connections and all of the, the, the veins, the, the arteries and you just kind of can't unsee it and it was hard to talk to anybody in Hollywood about any of it. I don't really know anybody in Hollywood, to be honest with you, I've never really been a part

of my own industry anyhow. So it wasn't a loss for me, but what was a huge loss was not having my potential to earn. And the mandate stopped that in its tracks, my agent dropped me. It just was, you know, I'm already a 50 actor in my 50s. It's also not the easiest place to be. But I always maintained and was able to take care of my family. I never cared about being a part of the industry and being like a big time actor. I just wanted to do my job, make as much money as I need to raise my children because

I'm single mom and then goodbye. That was complex. So I never saved. I never saved money. Right. You know, the minute it hits, I'm like, holy . . so it was not just that and it was the strikes and i'm like all of this and it was all the same all the same shareholders for the streamers and the the mandates and the vaccines and the

medicinals and the medicine they want us to take as opposed to the medicine that i preferred to take and those things were under scrutiny and under attack by other actors like I can't believe there were actors coming out on vitamins and, you know, drugs like Ivermectin. Yeah. That was rough, man. And it's just, yeah, I don't know. Like me, you're probably a Neil Young fan. I mean, and then you just have like, keep on rocking the free world, just turned into like the, you know, the biggest, most uptight censor anybody that speaks out.

I mean, that blew my mind. You felt you're living a cartoon. I am sitting next, first of all, behind me, you can't see it. There's Crosby Still's Nash and Young. And then right next to me is this insane picture that I love of Neil Young and his piano, and I have it covered with a picture of myself now. He, I can't let, I won't listen to his music. You know, and I'm not one of, I don't like to judge people,

and I don't like to make assumptions and, and just, spew any kind of hatred about anything ever. I always want to understand where somebody's coming from before they make a statement or a choice, but I felt as though, well, maybe he did have, maybe he was very informed. I really just, I could not believe that he would do that. And I also couldn't believe that he would do that while the trucker's convoy in Canada's happening. And he's a Canadian. And this is your chance, man. Do what you used to do. Fight, fight for the working class. Fight for your people. Yeah. And you don't step out. I mean, I was at that mandate rally in California. I think you were there.

Yeah, defeat the mandates. Sure. Someone came up to me there, an actor who was a screen actor's Guild, and I didn't want to be seen. I couldn't believe I was even going. I was so nervous to even be out, but I had to go. I felt that I had to be there. And I've never stepped out for anything. and some actress recognized me and I broke down crying. I was so moved by what was happening and at the same time so appalled that nobody was there and that nobody cared. But everybody would be fine going in the streets and destroying neighborhoods, but we won't come here and peacefully protest this whole concept of inclusivity that was dead. all of a sudden just completely dead.

I don't know how they promote. It's the hypocrisy behind all of it. And all I cared about at that time were the frontline workers that were, you know, heroes. And then all of a sudden there were zeros. Yeah. And I was like, I'll be able to sell my house and I'll be able to support myself if I sell my home.

But I was like, what are these people going to do? You know? Right. So, yeah, now all we care about is. is that four-letter word freedom that if you mention it on Instagram or YouTube you're going to have a possible flag just for saying that word that's a weird something. It really is a weird time. I mean you were

being offered work but they were how did it work? Would they just saying you have to be vaccinated if you're going to take this job? Yeah, I got offered a few things during that time and you know my agent would say but you're not vaccinated and I you know one time my my daughter was listening and I said to her no I am just don't worry go ahead and get the job and I'm thinking I'm about to have nothing left because I took a forbearance I did all of the things the government told us to do at that time I was I believed everything and then they I got thrown into foreclosure um after I called the mortgage company over and over again and

they were like no you're not going into foreclosure those are just silly letters don't worry about it It's all you're going to be fine. We're telling you you're fine. Don't worry about it. And then before I knew it, the house was one day before I started to realize that it was real. I had to hire a lawyer. We have no money left. My mom was dying at the time.

I had to deal with that. There was just so much happening at once. And I wouldn't bring her to hospital because I knew they were just going to put her on a ventilator and goodbye. So we kept her home. And I took care of her until she passed. here in my arms but the I was never canceled I just said no my daughter heard that I said yeah yeah yeah just go get me that job she looked at me and she's like are you gonna use vaccine corn because I you know we got a couple of

them to go to dinner yeah to take a dinner so they would feel like normal human beings but don't don't be wrong we went out for dinner or even I took them to the theater so they could feel I felt like we all felt like we were the most evil people in the world. We felt like we were hurting everybody. And just by lying, because we don't lie here, I mean, at all. And my daughter was like, you've taught us to live by this certain code. And I was like, well, guys, I think I'm going to have to start teaching you guys how to not tell truth at this point.

Because I don't know what this government's. coming to and I can't believe that that we're going to have to be on the hustle just to get by like we never had to do that we always lived a really honest lifestyle um so that was hard that's hard that was a hard mental twist with the kids you know but she asked me not to do it she said don't do it and I said I'm not going to do it I was like you're not going to go because they were separating the kids at school you know um she close contact and they put her in a, she couldn't go to school if she was near someone who had COVID.

And the kids who weren't vaccinated had to be masks the whole time in the LAUSD. Finally, my kids asked to be taken out of the LAUSD. My daughter was seventh grade, and my son was in third grade. And now they're big kids, and they have their own political views without me even touching them.

And I can't believe that they're just not following the LA code of insanity. Well, because they watched you. I mean, I think the most important thing we do is parents is represent. We can say all we want. But I've been saying on this show, you know, your kids are watching it. They're watching how you're handling this. They're watching if you're going to try to comply your way out of authoritarianism. And, you know, but your kids were similar to mine.

they're old enough to know what was going on. And I found myself having the same conversations. And I would sit with my wife, Lee, and say, I feel like we have to teach them that there actually is a time and a place where it's okay to lie. That, you know, and we didn't know how bad it was going to get. I mean, I was thinking about that. What if someone kicks in the door? What if we were racing through an airport?

We're trying to get out. And I just need you to know there are moments. I may ask you to say things that aren't true, which is, I think for you, I mean, my life is based on truth and transparency, but, you know, how far is this go? How far does it go the next time? I mean, if there's another pandemic, if they, you know, these people are out of their minds. And I think the hardest thing about the industry you're in is the fact that it's the heart of it. It's the propaganda machine. You know, even watching how many times they were putting get your vaccine inside of a show or make it about a vaccine.

You know, that it was just like in this programming that was going on and to watch that happening to art, it's really just defiling the most beautiful part of life. That's why we are artists. How many actors out there? I mean, were there a bunch that were like, I'm not getting it, but, you know, we're using sort of fake vaccine cards to get by? I mean, I don't know too many actors, which is crazy. I really don't. the ones that I met that I worked with in between the man like before the mandates happened,

I could already tell that there were a lot, you'd be surprised how many people were over the BS and they were moving out of state. But then there's a whole other, you know, I think the, I think the majority, they're going to stay quiet. I haven't really seen any other actor. speak out about it, only a couple, only a few, maybe, maybe a handful. Yeah. Which I think is, I didn't anticipate speaking out ever because I'm such, I've always been private and I've never, you know, I just don't, I'm just not a social, like, I was never social media, just none of it.

I just was always kind of anonymous and just blended into the, into the walls, you know. But when I think I made that crazy move where I had to start an only fan's page to save my house, which is something I did. I was like, I never did social media, really. I never posted a selfie, so I'm going to go post some selfies over here. We're actually really starting a podcast on OnlyFans. That was the truth. Politics. And that I was going to put it behind a paywall and start talking all kinds of crap about what I thought was happening.

and I put a picture up to placehold, and the page went, the page went kind of viral, and I was like, oh, my God, so I just need to keep putting pictures up because I can save my house right now. So I did that. And when I did that, I had to mitigate it in the press. And when I did that, it came out that I hadn't gotten vaccinated. And that was kind of the storm that started the whole thing. And I was like, you know what? I know this sounds so crazy, but when I started the OnlyFans thing, I was like,

I have to get comfortable being uncomfortable because everything has become very uncomfortable. So I have to do things that I never thought I would ever do to save everybody here. And one of them was posting selfies of myself, which really that's what my page is, like a fan page, you know? Yeah. And then I had to talk to the press. And I was always very uncomfortable doing that. So I started getting very comfortable being uncomfortable, talking about.

talking about this stuff and now I feel like it's all I'm talking about and you know of course then that's when I started a clothing line called ultra free because I know I can't sustain the only fans thing yeah and I figure let me move into something that's important and I didn't really care if we sold any t-shirt I cared that I would have the opportunity to continue talking about what's been going on because I think that So many of my friends and so much of society is so focused on a lot of these social issues right now that are not really important in comparison to what's happening behind them. And the social issues are dividing everybody.

Yeah. They want to talk about abortion all day and they want to talk about race and they want to talk about sex. And I'm like, guys, who cares? You're not even going to have the freedom to talk about these things at some point if you don't focus on what's really happening. happening. And I think it starts with this pandemic for us right now, the people that have, you know, once you see a world that gets shut down, the entire world is shut down. How do you not ask questions

about that? And that's where I'm at with ultra-free is, there's, you know, our whole thing is left and right, come together. There is no left. There is no right. Forget about your pronouns, forget about your labels, all of that stuff. We're one. Like, we are, we the people. They can't divide us anymore. They're just going to try to conquer us that way. And there's so many really evil things going on that no one's really aware of. And we need to get back to being ultra-free. And that starts by shaking hands with your neighbor and agreeing to disagree on who the president should be or whatever it is, but that we need to stand together for when bigger things come at us. Well, when you look at things like, I mean, I, you know, you know, you know, you

you know, the WHO treater, this idea that the next pandemic, they can just somehow think that they can affect the sovereignty of the nation. There's a lot of double speak and wordsmithing. Oh, it doesn't really mean that. But is that the type of thing that concerns you? You know, when you see, to me, it's the outside authorities, international authorities, actually dictating ideas that we see here inside of the United States of America. I mean, when I think of freedom, I mean, when I think of freedom, I think America's like, yeah, we do this our way. We don't take our marching orders from anyone else in the world, yet it just feels like more and more it's becoming acceptable.

Joe Biden, you know, in his presidency is, or even when he was running, you know, the whole great reset stuff and build back better. These were slogans by globalist groups, not American politicians. No. I think the WHO treaty actually was, for me the it was like the tipping point and when I started to learn about that

Ultra Free kind of was born out of that too because I was like I don't know how I know a lot of people that are tuning into you are people that know that you're going to deliver this

kind of information like my friends my liberal friends in New York who are still reading the New York Times Yeah. They're not going to tune it. But I don't know how to turn people around. I feel like, okay, so I show up as this total liberal hippie, which is what I am, you know,

you try to convince people that certain Breitbart or any of these people, they were once the same way. You know, they started out the same way we did. And then all of a sudden they woke up and something clicked and they were like, wait a minute, there's so much going on here. that's not okay even with our own American amazing government not amazing government i'm sorry i love american people yeah right now the government's been totally hijacked and when we talk about that treaty it's like i try to explain it to my friends and it's like no one wants to know they don't want to know until danger is on their doorstep right um a lot of people with that treaty are like well i'll comply. You know, I got vaccinated already. I'm going to continue to do that. And it's not just

that. I don't think they understand that the treaty spans so many things and that you're giving up sovereignty of, I mean, that's why I sort of feel like a lot of the state sovereignty right now is super important, but I don't think that a lot of my friends would understand that. Yeah. I don't know if the state sovereignty is going to make a difference once you give up that control to unelected officials like that with the WHO treaty. I really hope that treaty never really get signed off on. But I don't know. I think we're in such a poly crisis right now that there's so many things happening at once that no one knows where to focus.

I think that's by design, you know, by these guys who are behind Joe Biden. I don't even know if I don't think that Joe Biden does anything really. Yeah, you tell that to your friends. Yeah. I'm like, no. Has it changed? Has the energy, I mean, because there's one thing to be quietly going through and saying, I'm not going to comply to the way you're seeing it.

And we are through COVID, but are you getting pushback? Is it weird walking down the street? Is it weird going into jobs now that you're sort of very public? Has that changed? Has it made your life any more difficult? Or is it the same? How has that been affecting your life? My life's totally different now.

I don't know. I'm not in. I was never really in Hollywood. I would take my jobs as I needed them. So I'm definitely completely out now. I have no agent. I, you know, I don't really speak to anybody within the industry at all. I don't, there's no jobs.

I don't think anybody who would want to deal with me if they think I'm such a rebel. They might think I'm difficult on set, which I'm not. But I'm actually, I've been doing this. I've been promoting ultra-free. And like I said, if we sell some t-shirts, great. And if we don't, fine as long as we reach a few people that might have, you know, maybe some people

who are still afraid to speak out, maybe they will, whether they have a platform or not. if I can share a tiny bit of wisdom with somebody about all of the research that people like you and myself, I'm not like you, you, I mean, I remember when I was going through the whole T-DAP thing with my son. Oh yeah.

And I found your episode. And I was like, thank God, I'm not crazy. I thought I was crazy because my kids have, they're over vaccinated. My kids are over vaccinated because they, between New York and LA. And sometimes I be like, did I get that? Did I get it here?

It's not on the card. And so, yeah, I was never like some psycho-antibaxer. I didn't like vaccines, but my ex-1 is vaccinated, and it was easier to just to do it. And I didn't really think much of it. I just did them all really late in life. Like I vaccinated then when they were like 10. But he's- So you're one of these people that COVID really pushed you into a different perspective.

on vaccines in general? Are you now like looking at them all and saying, you know, I'm not so sure about that? No. I mean, my godchild was just born and you don't, do not put anything in that baby's body, especially now knowing that they are trying to use the same technology as the particular. I just knew that that was not for me at that time without learning about it first. I mean, the same way you get three opinions before going into surgery, you know, I want to know more. That's all. I still don't feel like I know enough. I wish more people were interested in not in trying to know more when they felt like they didn't know enough without just doing stuff blindly, you know?

Yeah, well, I think that that's what's changing. And I think there's hope. I mean, I really am hopeful that, you know, 30% of the country didn't get the vaccine under a really powerful propaganda. assault. I think the fact that, you know, 90% of people that are now due for their boosters aren't getting it, you know, at least there's some question about whether I should be listening to these people anymore. And I think every day that someone like you steps up and starts speaking, you know, you're right. I mean, I think it's a handful of people. Rob Schneider has been very outspoken, a couple of people like that. Few and far between for sure. You're out there much

louder than they are, but there is this sense that a lot of, not a lot, a minority of very talented, powerful actors are saying, I'm not sure I buy this whole woke thing. Can we have another way that we make films and that we can look at other scripts and maybe tell a different story? It seems like there's going to be a revolution a bit inside of media and art. I don't know how successful it will be, but those are the things that happen when people like you step out and and start speaking out. Does anyone come up to you, actress saying, man, I wish I could do it. I wish I was brave or they sit there quietly? I think that some of the ex-actresses out there, some girls that have like Samara Armstrong,

Chiva Rose, girls like that will send me messages like, you know, right on, right on. But they were out there way before me. So every time they give me a right on, I'm like, man, I'm just following you guys. I just got thrown to the wolves with that OnlyFans page. I said to my kids when we were doing the OnlyFans thing, I was like, you know, this is nothing. What's about to happen if I continue talking about what we just went through, that's going to be something.

Like, Mommy's more exposed talking about freedom than I am in a, you know, in underwear on OnlyFans. Right. It's crazy. But, you know, it's porn in politics, man. That's my life now. I joke around about it. I do this talk about porn politics, even though it's not porn.

But anyway, it's amazing the journeys we find ourselves on. When, you know, so tell me just, just ultra-free. How do we buy the T-shirts? How do we get to the, you know, the clothing line that you're doing? Ultra-free.com. Okay. Ultra-free is one word. It looks, oh.

Oh, we got the website. They're at their ultra-free is an anti-bullsh, underground, hands-on, family-operated company focused on the streetware and artist's integrity. Your voice could make the difference, use it wisely, become a member of the ultra-free militia today. I love it. That's Robbie. That's all my boyfriend. He does all the designs. Oh, yeah. Ultra-free is about being, it's, I can't even stand up, that's all.

But anyhow, it's, you know, he's a rock and roll. is a drummer and a rock band, this band, All Them Witches and UVWAs, and it's about making freedom cool again. Now if we talk about freedom, everyone's like, oh, I'm sorry, you're a white nationalist. It's like, no, we are the generation of being free and being cool and getting back to some form of innocence. And everybody's so savage right now.

And there is, innocence has been completely lost. And I do think that if we can get back, to at least being friends and understanding each other and to stop torturing each other, especially the people that are claiming peace and harmony and then they're the very ones being judgmental and not having any compassion. I love your line that you've said a while ago about weaponizing compassion. Yeah. And I feel like all of the social issues and most of all the mandates, you know, all of that.

It's everything's weaponized now. Everything. I mean, if you just talking about something as innocent as being free, that that becomes somehow a racist comment is, I don't understand that thinking. It's indoctrination. It's mind control. It's bizarre. Yeah.

And I think people to put their power in love. and loving each other, not all of this government approval validation all day long. I think the validation has to come from each other, you know? I agree. There are so many actors out there that I know. They come up to me. They watch the show. I'll say, will you pass?

Is there any way we could get you public? Could I put you with a group of other actors and the terror inside of them? And it's something I've tried to understand, I guess, because technically, I mean, there's a talent to acting, but it's such a popularity contest. It's just designed on, are you popular to the public or not? And if you're on the wrong side of that, then you never work again. It's a very, I can see it in their eyes. It's terrifying this idea of speaking out because I will never work again. And I don't know what else I would do. So to meet people like you, those, I don't think people really recognize how different it is to meet an actor or someone

that that has stepped out the way you have. It's a, it's a massive statement of courage. And you really are rare. And it's just fantastic to be talking to you. And I think, I think it'll be awesome for all of your friends that are maybe, maybe quietly watching you to see the success that I believe you'll have out of this. I mean, I will say many, many of our mutual friends are now, have all moved to Texas because they've just had it.

with the Los Angeles. But everyone's doing really well. Everybody that speaks their truth. It's one of the things I really want. I try to get through to people as I speak on stages. They'll come up. You're so brave. I wouldn't know how to, you know, speak my truth like that.

I was like, I don't know how you don't. You're going to die a cancer. It's going to eat you inside out. And frankly, this idea is like, well, thank you for your sacrifice. I think it's not a sacrifice to be able to speak your mind, to speak your truth and be a walking, living human being. And I think most importantly, what you've said is what are our children?

I mean, the future of this planet depends on children that are not just going to comply and roll over. Then we have let go of the American dream. We killed it. Our generation could potentially be responsible for having just let the American dream disappear. Or we're going to stand up and fight for it. I think that's the question right now at hand. Yeah. I think also the way a lot of kids are being raised these days is just not what we, it's not how we were raised.

Yeah. I really appreciate what you just said because that it wasn't easy to come out and start talking about this stuff. But I will say that I really feel like I feel supported by, I feel supported by God. I know that sounds probably a little. So do I. my friends and stuff, but I have faith that I, that I'm supposed to do this right now. I don't know, I don't know what else to do at this point. I feel like I'm, I got pushed into it because like I said, I'm a very shy, nervous person

and I would never speak publicly. I couldn't speak on stage. I can hide behind a character. I can't even play a character who speaks on a stage, actually, like who's publicly speaking. But the fact that I'm doing this and I don't have any nerves. when I'm doing it anymore is weird and it doesn't feel like it's me. It feels like some other person has taken over and I don't know how to explain it really, but I was listening to was it, Brett Weinstein. Yeah. Yeah. I loved him in the first couple of years of the pandemic, like really,

I was really paying attention to him closely and he said something of the people that have held out are here for this really important time. And I feel, for all the actors that want to speak out, I feel so much more comfortable and proud to be aligned with you. I was paying attention to you during the pandemic. I was paying attention to a handful of other people. And I found solace. To me, you were my hero.

Like, you were one of the heroes out there. So right back at you, but people like you, you know, I feel like I'm, I feel like I'm in the right place. Do I feel worthy? Maybe not, but I do feel like I'm on the right path to doing the right thing and not being quiet. I've always hated actors who talk about politics. Hated it. I thought it was the stupidest thing ever. I love Team America, watching them make fun of, you know, all the actors talking about politics.

And here I am now. I don't feel like I'm an actor anymore. So that's what happens when they get you out of your job and you have nothing left to do but stay home and research things. Or it's what happens, I think, when you find you are sort of given a divine purpose. And I think that, you know, that part of what you're saying, I say the same thing. And so many people that I meet that are finding themselves doing things they never would have dreamed. Find a courage you can't explain. It comes from something bigger than yourself.

And I hope that many, many, many more people just heard what you said there in our audience, our friends around Hollywood and all across the country and all across the world. We're needed now. There's something really big going on. We're only vessels for God, for greater intelligence, for the future, for our children. and so welcome, welcome to the family. I mean, it's great to have you and just nothing but blessings come in your way. I know it.

And it really is so exciting to watch you going through this journey. So I want to thank you for taking the time to join us here and just be so open and honest and know that there's so many people supporting you. And keep up the great work, Drea. All right. Thank you, too, man. All right. I'll see you soon.

Bye. Okay. Well, no doubt, you know, Drea DeMateau just showed you how she highwires. The question is, how do you highwire? Hey, Highwire Insiders. Do you walk down the street and get recognized for your highwire gear? Oh, my God. You watch the Highwire?

Love it. Do you sport your High Wire T-shirt in public to start a meaningful conversation? Get vaccinated. Don't you mean get vaccinated? No, I mean vaccinated. Let me tell you why. If you like to wear your Be Brave ball cap around town or sip your organic iced matalete

from the new High Wire Cork Tumblr, send us a quick video rocking your favorite highwire look and explain what it means to you to support the work we do by stepping out on the High Wire of Life in our merch. Be Brave. Hey, Del. We love wearing our High Wire gear because every time we do, we know where to find our tribe.

Email us your video at How I Highwire at the highwire.com and join the thousands of highwire insiders who find their tribe simply by being brave. Hashtag how I highwire. You know, there's several awesome things that happen when you highwire like that, when you wear your t-shirt. One of my favorite things is going through airports. You see a high-wire t-shirt. You immediately know who your community is. Or it's a great conversation starter, right?

It's not even offensive. People don't even know what you're talking about. They say, well, what's that about? Oh, you haven't watched the highway you should. I watch it every single week. When you do that, you help us expand a message that's important for the entire world to know. Can you imagine if everyone you knew was watching the high wire? Can you imagine what we could do?

I mean, so much truth. You know what would happen to our government, the United States of America? You know how many politicians would actually have to start shifting as we're talking about with the kiss the ground and common ground that, you know, you meet with politicians only a handful that even understand what regenerative farming is? Well, that wouldn't be the case if everyone was watching the high. highwire and it's a simple thing to do. And for all of you that share these videos with your friends, I just want to repeat, this is the informed consent action network. This is a new experiment in

media. We don't advertise. We're not getting advertising. We're not on some channel. We're not in a TV guide anymore. It's only made possible by that grassroots effort, which is all of you that are watching. You were a part of the network. In a way, you're our blockchain, right? You're that person they can't control that just shares the information. They may try to stop my feed. They may try to shut down my Twitter, so I can't share this video out very far. But when the millions of you that have it, share it with five friends, there's five million people that now have the high wire in their hands that are waking up all around the world. We want to keep spreading this message. There's so many different ways that you can become a part of change. I'm not telling anyone of you

to risk your job and put it all in the line and start shouting in the middle of your office space like we just saw Andrea DeMateo did in the middle of Hollywood. But you'll also know when your time is right. You'll know when you're guided that this is that important moment. Prior to that, you can do quiet things like donating to the things that you care about. You make these things possible. I'm not just talking about the high water. You're probably watching a lot of other people you trust and want to support.

Your support matters. You're sharing these things matters. Those make a really big difference in the world of what we are trying to do here. Those of us that are shouting from the mountaintops, help us elevate that voice. Help us elevate the people. And please keep listening to that intuition inside of you. I know you want to make a difference. So many of you come up to me and say, I just don't know what to do.

It's just steps. One step after the next. And slowly you'll recognize the empowerment, the power you've, feel of living and honest, true and transparent life. And remember, your children are watching you. That's what I think about all the time. What do I want to believe my children are in the future? Do I want them to be courageous? Do I want them venturing into new careers, maybe looking into new ways of farming? That's the population of the future. We're a part of that. We don't do that by teaching. We do that by representing. It's time to represent the best.

best of who we are. Start taking those baby steps. Start finding your voice. Let that voice grow inside of you. By the way, if you're suppressing that voice, there's nothing we can teach you with all the health in the world. That's where sickness comes from. It's a part of, you know, you want a healthy gut biome. It's not just what you're putting in your body. It's what you're holding in your body. And when you hold back the truth, when you suppress who you really are, you're not actually living. Join the living. Make a difference.

Join the Drea de Mateo's and those that speak out and make a difference. Trust me. And you'll hear every one of them that sits on this show and I'm going to tell you the best decision I ever made

was, you know, jumping in both feet and saying, I'm here to make a difference in the world. And people point out, thank you for your sacrifice, leaving that television show

and CBS behind. I didn't leave anything behind. I have more viewers, right now in the work that I'm doing than any of the shows I worked on at CBS. Okay, that's what happens. Let that beauty, let that light force come into your life. We're representing right now. We need an army of light workers.

We need an army of truth tellers. Be a part of that army. Join it. Raise up your hands. Fight for it. And I'll see you next week.