The Rich Roll Podcast - Cowspiracy: How Animal Agriculture Is Destroying The Planet & What You Can Do About It

Episode Date: September 14, 2015

A little over a year ago, I shared an amazing conversation with Kip Andersen & Keegan Kuhn, the dynamic filmmaking duo behind Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. If you missed that episode, I encourage you to check it out here– it's one of my most popular episodes to date. An Inconvenient Truth meets Blackfish, Cowspiracy is an incredibly sobering and powerful (yet also funny and entertaining) documentary that takes a hard, unflinching look at the incredibly negative impact of animal agriculture on the health, well being and sustainability of our planet and it's precious, dwindling resources. Whether we are talking about carbon emissions, climate change, the blindingly rapid destruction of our rain forests, over consumption of water, species extinction, the depletion and destruction of our soil, the pollution of our rivers, lakes and oceans or the obliteration of natural wildlife habitats, you might be surprised to discover the very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth that animal agriculture is the industry by far most responsible for the global environmental catastrophe we currently face. If this is true, then why aren't we talking about it more? Cowspiracy is the rather shocking tale of what Kip and Keegan discovered trying to answer this very question. The little indie film that could, Cowspiracy is a true grassroots phenomenon. Crowd-source funded, rejected by the film festival circuit and lacking distribution, Kip and Keegan spent the last year traveling the country in a van attending independently organized, homespun screenings. Getting the word out one screen at a time, one audience at a time. Then something truly amazing happened. The film fell into the hands of Leonardo DiCaprio. The biggest movie star in the world didn't just fall in love with the movie, he came on board as Executive Producer with a mission: that Cowspiracy become required viewing for everyone and anyone who gives a slightest damn about the health of our planet. This week that mission moves towards reality. On Tuesday, September 15, Cowspiracy will premiere on Netflix worldwide. For those of you that have already seen the film, this is a new and improved cut — tighter with updated facts, it demands another view. The impact of Leonardo's name and credibility on the film's reach is astronomical and cannot be overstated. I am extremely proud to be an early supporter and associate producer on this project. I'm excited for mainstream audiences to finally discover this important film. I'm over the moon that Kip and Keegan will now be recognized on a mass level for their incredible work. But mostly I am excited for the dynamic environmental conversation that will inevitably ensue. And the positive changes to follow. Picking up where our first conversation left off, today's podcast covers a lot of ground. Enjoy! Rich

16 pounds of grain that has no saturated fat, no cholesterol, high in protein, fiber, you know, essential nutrients. You can then run that through this machine called a cow and fill it full of cholesterol, saturated fat, and you only get one pound out of it. That's Keegan Kuhn, who joins me today along with Kip Anderson to talk about their new documentary, Cowspiracy, this week on the Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, what's going on? What's happening? What's the news? I am Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. What do we do here? Each week I sit down with the outliers, the big forward thinkers across all categories of positive paradigm breaking culture change. And the goal is simple. The goal is just to help all of us unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. So thank you so much for tuning in today,

for subscribing to the show on iTunes, for giving us a review on iTunes and for always making sure to use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. The banner is right there on the podcast page doesn't cost you a cent extra on any of your purchases, just a really great simple free way to support the mission. It really does put some nice wind in our sails. So thank you so much to everybody who has made a habit or a practice out of doing that. We love you. We appreciate you. Do I sound like I'm out of breath? Like I'm winded? I feel like I am. Well, it might be because I'm coming at you from Telluride. I'm here to do a speaking gig and they tell me I'm at 9,000 feet. I can definitely feel it. I definitely felt it on this morning's run.

This altitude is no joke. So if I'm panting or breathing a little bit hard, my apologies ahead of time. I'll try to avoid it. Got Kippy Anderson and Keegan Kuhn on the show today. Really excited about this. These guys were on the show about 15 months ago, episode 91. Please check that out if you haven't already.

For those of you that are new to the podcast, Kip and Keegan are the guys behind this incredible documentary called Cowspiracy, The Sustainability Secret. And it's sort of an inconvenient truth meets blackfish. It's basically an incredibly sobering and powerful and also funny. It's a very entertaining documentary that takes a hard, unflinching look at the incredibly negative impact of animal agriculture on planetary ecology. And it's something that if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably interested in, you're probably concerned about it. So whether we're talking about carbon emissions, climate change,

the blindingly rapid destruction of our rainforest, overconsumption of water, species extinction, the depletion and destruction of our soil, the pollution of our rivers, lakes, oceans, the obliteration of natural wildlife habitats, not habits, habitats, you might be surprised to discover, and this is what the movie explores,

is that the very inconvenient and uncomfortable truth is that there is one industry that is single-handedly responsible for destroying and undermining the health and sustainability of our planet far more than any other and that is animal agriculture and the interesting thing the amazing thing the surprising thing in what the movie really kind of delves into is just why we're not really talking about this very much. Like this is news to a lot of people, right? It deserves its place in the global environmentalism conversation. And it's one of the reasons why I wanted to have Kip and Keegan back on the show. There's been a lot of development since we first spoke about 15 months ago. And at that

time, this film was about as grassroots as it gets. It was an Indiegogo funded film, rejected from the festival circuit, they had zero distribution for it. Nobody had really seen it yet. And they've been kind of going around the country in a van showing up at privately organized homespun screenings. Well, all of that's about to change because a couple really amazing things have happened over the last year. Not the least of which is a while back, a guy you might've heard of called Leonardo DiCaprio saw the movie. He was impressed by the movie. He was so impressed by the movie that he wanted to get involved. And he came on board the film as an executive producer. And now Cowspiracy is on the precipice of premiering on Netflix.

It's gonna be premiering this week, September 15th in all English speaking territories worldwide. And it's a new cut of the film. It's a better, tighter cut with some updated facts, all extremely, extremely exciting. I got a few more things to say about all this in a minute. But first, let's take care of a little business. Today's episode is brought to you by Squarespace. Look, building a website can be tough. I know I've been there. I spent years,

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build it beautiful. All right, Kip and Keegan. So I'm super proud to have gotten involved with this movie very early on. I'm really proud to have been able to give Kip and Keegan a microphone in very early stages of rolling this movie out. I'm incredibly grateful to be an associate producer on this film and have my name associated with it. I'm more excited and proud for Kip and Keegan to finally be in this place where all their hard work and their passion and their incredible advocacy is now going to be recognized and enjoyed on such a mass level. Because with Leonardo DiCaprio's name and credibility attached to the film, suddenly the reach of the movie is astronomical. And the

impact of this, it just can't be overstated. But mostly, I'm excited for the impact that this will undoubtedly have on the environmental conversation to follow. So, you guys ready to hear more about all this? Let's talk to Kip and Key again. Yeah, it's super awesome. It's such an exciting week. I'm so glad that we could like make the time your guys lives must be insane right now getting ready for the impending big release on Netflix. But super glad to reconvene after our first podcast and sit down. And I'm hoping that you guys can kind of catch me up to speed and let me know how this amazing journey has been. It's been awesome. It's just been incredible.

You know, since Cowspiracy came out, and then for anyone who hasn't seen Cowspiracy, Cowspiracy follows my co-director Kip Anderson on this journey finding out about the most destructive industry facing the planet, which is animal agriculture and leading cause of rainforest destruction, species extinction, topsoil erosion, ocean dead zones, leading cause of anthropogenic greenhouse gases. I mean, it just literally goes on and on and on. Since that film came out, people have just been around the world embracing it and just waking up to this information in this message which has been amazing um and it has just gone farther and wider than i think either of us could have ever imagined and what's so what's so great is that it has just begun you know it's a lot usually documentaries don't really hit its stride until you hit netflix or something like that and so we've got a good push before the big release yeah it really has just begun i mean it must feel like to you guys that it's been going on for a

long time but it feels like for most people you know they haven't seen it yet you know a lot of people haven't even heard about it and that's kind of the journey i want to get into a little bit and of course i want to hear a little bit more about the movie um you know you guys came on the podcast before and we talked all about the movie but that was quite a long time ago you know the audience there is grown and i'm sure there's a lot of people out there that have not yet um listened to that episode uh so um before we get into kind of the journey let's get a little bit more like granular and specific about the film itself. If you can speak to that.

It follows essentially my journey, which is, uh, a fun way to look at it, finding all this information as someone that you can relate to. Cause it's basically me a few years ago of seeing what I can do to live environmentally and ethically, uh, sound ethically sound on this planet. And so I thought I was doing everything I could to make a difference in this life, riding my bike, doing all the environmental things, taking short showers, doing this and that. And then I found out— Being a good environmentalist.

Being a good environmentalist, yeah. I think half of it was just saying that. I'm an environmentalist. That was half of it. You have the bumper stickers. Showing up to a Greenpeace event. Actually, my big thing I was proud of is I think I gave $20 or $40 a year to save the wolves from Sierra Club. Without having no idea where the wolves are going.

And then finding out this information, and that's the fun journey of finding one thing out after another. And then finding out this information, and that's the fun journey of finding one thing out after another. And the first big one was that the human-caused greenhouse gases is caused more or as much by raising animal agriculture for food than all the transportation, cars, trucks, boats, planes all combined. And that's where it just, from there, it occurs. Right. I mean, it's kind of a mind-blowing thing right so we all kind of operate on this premise that the biggest contributor to kind of greenhouse gas emissions and carbon emissions and all and the like is is basically our use of fossil fuels right like if we can solve the transportation problem then maybe we can do something good for the planet but

this un report that you come across that was published in 2008, I think the first one sort of speaks differently, right? It paints a very different picture of what's actually going on. Yeah. I mean, again, according to the United Nations food and agriculture organization, animal agriculture, raising animals and their feed crops for food is a larger contributor to greenhouse gases and the entire transportation sector, which is huge. Um, but there's actually been more research and other analysis on greenhouse

gases that actually put the figure much higher than actually, you know, 51% of all greenhouse gas emissions could potentially be coming from animal agriculture. 51%. And what, where is transportation on that? Uh, about 13%. Yeah. 51% to 13. Yeah. So it's huge. And that, and how much of that is, cause when you're talking about carbon emissions, there's all different kinds, right? Like animal agriculture, there's methane, and then there's the sort of carbon emissions that come with the transportation and the manufacturing aspect of it. So when you're saying 51%, that's that, I assume that's like an all encompassing number that takes into account the whole kind of like, um, you know, chain of production. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's the life cycle analysis. So you're looking at every aspect of animal agriculture from, you know, great raising the grains, uh,

the CO2 emissions that come from tilling soil, the methane emissions that come from the animal's waste, uh, even respiration, um, the emissions that come from transportation refrigeration and the whole life cycle of that product to get to your plate but yeah i mean carbon dioxide is the big focus that's what everyone looks at when they're talking about greenhouse gases and global warming but we have to look at all the other gases like methane which has a global warming potential 86 times greater than co2 on a 20-year time. And we make fun of that because basically it's cow farts, right? But that's a real problem. Yeah.

Yeah. Burps too. Yeah. It's actually is farting and how much of it is burping. It's, it's, I think it's like 80 or 90% burping. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

Farting just gets more attention. Yeah. But you know, big thing too, it's their waste, Their waste produces nitrous oxide, which is 296 times more destructive than CO2. And then there's sulfuric oxide. There's these ammonias that come out of it. I mean, there's just so many damaging gases that come out of animal agriculture. But one of the biggest things is the fact that these animals need so much land either to graze on or to have their feed crops growing on and so they have to clear forests and forests are these natural carbon sequestering you know parts of our ecosystem and so they clear the forest to grow

grains and so now you've lost the ability to sequester carbon out of the atmosphere and that's the that's a huge huge part of the problem right i mean right now it seems like it's quite popular. Uh, you know, this idea of, of eating grass fed beef, right? Like, Oh, it's just like, I have friends that will say, you know, I understand where you're coming from, but I make sure that the, the meat that I eat is sustainably raised and it's ethically raised and it's all grass fed. And with that comes this idea that that's less deleterious to the environment. And in fact, maybe even further than that, that they're actually doing some kind of good. Right. So we talk. I want to talk more about the, you know, the movie and all of that. But I would like to like plant a flag on this issue for a moment.

Yeah, definitely. So that's the ironic thing you know i eat grass-fed beef and and ironically it's it's actually worse in a lot of ways and it's not just uh with the greenhouse gas is a big huge one that really affects me as far as personally is i really care about the wildlife it takes on average for factory farms only around i believe what two two acres per cow because it's just so efficient you can grow a huge right there's one thing that factory farming does really really well is create economies of scale right they're going to use the least amount of resources the least amount of land water food everything like

that to blow up an animal big enough to eat exactly and that's what people don't realize it's so efficient and that's what it's efficient with all the natural resources it's terrible for the cows and terrible for the animals. But for the rest of the wildlife, rather than two acres per cow, now you're talking grass-fed, you're talking anywhere between 10 acres to 50 acres. Or even higher. Which the farmer said on our film, 50 acres in Wyoming or Montana. And that's 50 acres for one single cow. Imagine going on 50 acres and the entire the only wildlife

on there's one cow you have no other wild horses no other bears no other wolves and this is why all the uh wildlife is being depleted through these past right because you can't you got to get rid of all that other wildlife in order for the cattle to safely graze and not be sort of right preyed upon and it's not only uh, but it's to compete with the resources of which few we have left for the grass and now the water. There's much you just can't have wild horses right now. There's more wild horses in captivity that gets rounded up than there are free roaming. Right.

To remove them so the cattle can graze. Right. So my understanding is that there's all this sort of state or federal controlled land that gets leased to cattle farmers so that they can, you know, sort of graze their cattle on these grasslands, even though they don't own it, you know, they lease it from the federal government, it's subsidized, so they get a great rate on it. And the federal government or the state comes in and kind of clears the land, or if there's a problem with wild horses or other predators,

they can have them come in and have them removed. Is that a fair characterization? I don't know exactly what's happening. I mean, the USDA has actually, I forget what they call it now, I think it's called the Wild Animal Services, and if a rancher has a problem with, you know, their cows being attacked by mountain lions or bears or coyotes, they can call up the USDA and say, hey, I'm having a problem. And the USDA will come out and exterminate those animals. And they do it.

I mean, they've done it in Washington. You know, cows were attacked on public lands. And the USDA in Washington completely eliminated an entire pack of wolves because, you know, one cow was attacked. So, I mean, this is one of the leading causes of species extinction and eradication in the American West is from cattle. Because, yeah, the ranchers see them as perceived threats. But it goes all the way down to, you know, ravens and, you know, ground squirrels and, you know, prairie dogs. I mean, just animals who you would never see as a threat to this industry. Well, the industry sees it as a threat.

And so, you know, they can't coexist. They've got to be eliminated. And that's grass fed. When people talk about grass fed, it's like, well, you know, the wolves being annihilated. The reason why wolves are, you know, allowed to be hunted in Idaho and Wyoming and Montana is because of the cattle industry. It's not because they're, you know, a threat to human beings. There's, there's been no reported attacks of deaths of human beings by wolves in the United States. So it's like, why are we hunting them? Right, right, right. And, and, and beyond that is the simple, obvious fact that, uh, you know, the grass-fed thing is really kind of it's not a

solution to our problem i mean we just don't there's i mean 50 what did you say 50 acres per 10 to 50 or even more yeah i mean like we don't have the land to do it it's just it's it's ridiculous there's no way that we could marshal the resources to make that available for everyone so it becomes kind of an elitist thing right like yeah that's what we had uh it's not it's not just if it's when we people talk about sustainable they really should be talking about privilegeable yeah privilegeable you know because they can afford it be that you have yeah some other resources to to be able to well big one is afford it. Yeah.

And then, yeah, what you were saying about land use, it's right now about half the United States, lower 48, is used for growing animals, whether it's growing their feed crops or their actual grazing. And again, factory farming is relatively very efficient compared to grass-fed or open-range grazing. So yeah, if we switched over and everybody wanted to do grass fed, we simply don't have the land for it. And then the other thing too, is that most of the United States land is not suited for grazing livestock. You know,

there's, there's sections in the Midwest that are, you know, native prairies that could potentially sustain what they did historically sustain large herds of herbivores. But those soils have been degraded and they're now all grown with corn and soybeans that are fed to livestock. So it's like, we don't really even have that. The American West really isn't designed for having livestock, didn't support large herds in the past. So we just, we don't live in the ecosystem. And so what they end up doing is they clear forest on the East coast and they,

you know, run animals on degraded land in the west that were never designed to have wild animals or to have large herds um and so yeah it just continues this degradation yeah and not only that i mean in the in the in the midwest sort of the bread basket of america you go oh this is well how we're feeding everybody but i don't know what percentage of those crops i I know it's very high, is not going to humans at all. It's going to feed livestock. And some of that is getting exported overseas to feed livestock in foreign countries.

Yeah. I mean, I think it's about 90% of the U.S.'s soy is fed to livestock. I think it's about 60% or 70% of the corn is fed to livestock. I mean, it's just crazy. I mean, the alfalfa in California where all the water's going, a percentage of that being exported to, what was that? Yeah, so about, it's... You see, Keegan's the ridiculous numbers guy. Right, right, right.

Now you're putting it on the spot. I think it's 100 billion gallons of water is exported out of California every year in the form of alfalfa to go to China. China, Koreaa to feed livestock in china humans don't eat alfalfa not not in large scales at least so yeah i mean we're exporting resources and we're also exporting animals too you know to other countries so it's all the resources that went into you know raising that animals are then being exported so yeah i mean it's just a huge, huge issue on the grass fed thing though. People will say, Oh, well there's better ways of running grass fed animals. Um, you know, Alan Savory, he's kind of the, the savior in the, you know, grass fed movement. And Alan Savory is a, uh, I want to call him a scientist, but what he does is in science, he was a, basically a game warden in zimbabwe um and so he was charged with you know having wild

animals for people to come and hunt and saw that the land was being degraded there and came up with this crazy idea that it was the elephants that were causing the degradation of land and so convinced the government to slaughter 40 000 elephants elephants. I think somewhere like 10,000 hippos as well. What year, when was that happening? That was in the sixties. It was over 14 years. Just think of that for 40,000 elephants right now, if you hear of, and it didn't solve the problem, that's no, it actually made it worse. Yeah. It made it worse. So, so Alan Savory has since gone on to, you know, do a very popular TED talk. And he's kind of been championed as as this guy who has these novel ideas about how we can solve our, you know, sort of soil degradation problem. And that solution comes in the form of more cattle, right? Basically, like if we increase cattle grazing on grasslands that they, through their sort of, you know, just by living there and, you know,

chewing up the grass and stepping on it and doing what they do, that this will somehow, what's the word? Like regenerate the soil and make it more arable, right? So, and there's a lot of he's got a lot of support for this idea there are a lot of people that are rallying behind this and i see this argument all the time on the internet so what's really going on you know if anything that we see as a rebuttal to the film or as a solution is alan savory and we have actually

alan savory in the film but we yeah you don't spend a lot of time you kind of refer to him and then you move on we did and we had a whole section on him we went really in deep into research the entire thing um the whole intensive holistic grazing and then the more you look into it the more logically you look on it into it it is so absurdly ridiculous that we said you know let's just tell the story of who this guy is. So to realize... To just get caught up down some rabbit hole with it. It just takes a little bit of while. So right now we're actually working on it.

It might only be six minutes, but six minutes in a 95-minute film to focus on something that's so absurd. That was the most thing. It's like, should we even address this? Because this guy just did one TED Talk. But, you know, looking looking back maybe we could have done it more um addressed it but we're going to do a follow-up 10 minute uh to address to address that in a funny entertaining way um but basically a huge issue of what it comes down to is water

that's a huge thing water and then the other thing is that his method of intensive grazing is that it's to mimic what it was when the bison roamed and when wildlife used to roam, when the soil was regenerative. And here's the big thing that's left out of this theory is that back then it was a complete loop cycle. You had your bears, you had your wolves, you had your predators. They die naturally. You didn't have humans then. So what happened is they would live, they would your wolves, you had your predators. They die naturally. You didn't have humans then. So what happened is they would live, they would trample, they would eat all, you know, the resources and then give it back nutrients sucking up uh the nutrients from the soil sucking up all the water at a ridiculous rate and then you remove it from from of where it's supposed to be generated now you just sucked out thousands millions of gallons of water all the nutrients from the soil and you're putting on someone's plate in la or you

know california right so it's no longer a closed loop because you're removing the animal the animal isn't dying on the land it's being removed so that it becomes food yeah exactly so it's a like a plumbing problem and all of a sudden you stick a huge hole into it and then the water just gushes out and so and that's the that's the big one yeah i mean it's it's essentially strip mining soil and it's like any other form of agriculture people would say though oh well there's examples where it does work it's like okay well form of agriculture people would say though oh well there's examples where it does work it's like okay well where are those places that it works and they'll say it'll be probably coastal areas that have a lot of rainfall and so it's like oh well coastal areas have a lot

of rainfall actually grow forests and we want to regenerate an ecosystem allow the native forest to come back that's a carpet it sequesters carbon so much better than grasslands doesn't produce methane in you know in the race that livestock do but as kip said it really just comes down to the resources i mean there's this whole regenerative movement and um they say oh well we can regenerate you know lands that have been degraded using this method but again they have to look at what resources they're bringing into the equation they're bringing in millions of gallons of water, whether they're pumping it out of the ground or they're trucking it in. And they're also bringing in feed. Well, my background's in organic agriculture. I spent close to 10 years developing organic farms. And so most of the time when you start a farm,

you're importing in truckloads full of nutrients, whether it's in the form of animal manures, or if you're going veganic, you know, vegetable compost like alfalfa meal or soybean meal or kelp meal. But you're importing resources from somewhere else where they really should belong. So with this holistic management grazing, they're bringing in water. So it's a cow's drinking 30 to 40 gallons a day and you've got 400 cows on there. So you're dealing with, you know, thousands of gallons of water. And so you want to regenerate an area take all that water instead of running cattle just irrigate the land watch how amazing it regenerates oh well look at that you brought in water so so this whole idea

that oh the cows are bringing in some magical aspect of this no you're you're running you're actually wasting water you're running it through the cows and then the cows are urinating and so there's now the land is being irrigated and now it's getting fertilizer it's like take all those resources that in because every time you run nutrients through uh an animal or plant it lose about 25 percent so you're losing 25 to 50 percent of all the nutrients that you just brought into this system by running through an animal just put it on the land or even better just leave the land alone and there's been you know dozens and dozens of actual scientific research where they've taken an acre or five acres or 50 acres or 500 acres of degraded land fenced it off removed all the cattle and it bounces back the biodiversity goes up the wildlife comes back i mean it's just incredible

just on even just one acre and you have the surrounding area you know that's grazed by livestock it's totally degraded so that's like a whole other movie you could do oh it is i mean literally so has uh has alan savory seen the movie as he as he reacted to it or responded i was just gonna say i think uh the funny one of the funnest parts of the whole film tour we did a film tour over a year ago yeah last summer and we went to new albuquerque new mexico and we always do q and a's after and this really old guy stood up like oh wow you know so i mean really old guy like normally our crowds are pretty young like oh that's so great he comes up all of a sudden comes out of the mouth this english accent and did like,

yeah, Rhodesian technically did a triple take. It's Alan savory and only, and there's only 70 people is the smallest ones that we had a screening. Alan savory. And he stays, stands up stoically faces the audience. He says, I am Alan savory.

I'm the one who they just kicked under the bus or something like that. Um, and then he went on to say, I would like everyone to invite everyone over to my place tomorrow. It turns out he lives in Albuquerque. Um, and we will do another interview cause these people did not want to interview us.

And we tried so hard to interview him. So next thing you know, he didn't respond or what did he decline? Yeah. His Institute. Cause he has the Allen Savory Institute. They never got back to us and sent me probably 10 emails so we show up we do it we go we say awesome he thought we'd say no we said absolutely we'll come over tomorrow sure enough tomorrow morning invited the entire theater only two other people showed up um and we went to

his house and we did an interview and it was the most twilight zone interview we've we've ever done and that's saying something because we've had some if you watch the movie got some bizarre interviews and the whole would not answer the question where do you get the water because you know here he is in in albuquerque new mexico i think albuquerque has perfect place has about eight inches or or even less of rain per year um perfect place for his method and so can you take us to you live here can you take us to one of your farms i mean this is your backyard you should just have them all over new mexico should just be flourishing could not take us to one and then the one example that he showed and he was so excited to show it said once again well where do you get the water and feed oh that gets what is it they brought it in well then there you go we talked to one of his one of the people who they said oh look you know they have this uh this uh you know the old uh airstrip in albuquerque and they're you know it's

just degraded land it's just terrible and we've gotquerque, and it's just degraded land, it's just terrible, and we've got livestock out there, and it's just coming back, it's amazing, you should see it. And he said, yeah, when I was out there last time feeding the cows, I said, whoa, you were feeding the cows and the land's coming back. Imagine that. You had to bring in food.

And so what she means is- Right, which is counter to the whole principle of the whole thing, which is to leave it be, right? It was funny, even if he didn't, the whole principle of the whole thing, which is to leave it be. Right. It was funny. Even if he didn't, the pictures he showed was, you know, maybe three inches of grass along an old stripway of asphalt. Like, wow, that's impressive. You know, thinking that it's.

Yeah. So what did you guys do with this interview? We haven't done anything with it because. What's the plan? It was, I don't know. I mean, it was so bizarre that. And he just tells these stories of Zimbabwe he would always go back to zimbabwe i'd tell him one thing next thing you know he's such a great storyteller that's why his and his accent if he had an accent if he had just

a normal american accent it would that that ted talk would have boston accent yeah yeah exactly it's that accent i swear in the way he's he's a magical storyteller and that's how he's gotten people to do what he does he's an incredible marketer but it's through his storytelling so all of a sudden he'd wander you off next thing you know we're in Zimbabwe 50 years ago and he's talking about um just old store random stories and then I you know and he would just talk and talk and talk finally if I would have to interrupt him can we get back to the holistic grazing please say where you get the water and exactly how it works and the interesting thing is and he said it to us and he said in a lot of other interviews is that um the scientific method can't be used with holistic management grazing because people have tried to replicate his studies and no one's been

able to do it or they they do it but they won't be able to get the same results. And, and he always says, Oh, well, you know, the scientific method, all the variables. Yeah. It's too complex. And, and you know,

the scientific method doesn't work for this. And, and he also actually said in an interview, the scientific method has never proven anything. This guy's supposed to be a scientist. And he says the scientific method has never proven it. What does he, what was the point he was trying to make?

It's just that, you know, every single situation, you have to come at it from a more of a holistic idea. And basically, that you can't replicate his results. And the reason why you can't replicate his results, and people, again, I'm sure some of your listeners will say, well, I know a farm in Hawaii that does this. Or I know a farm in coastal California or Virginia or wherever it is that does this and it works. Well, really look at it. See what kind of imports they're bringing in.

See what kind of water resources. See what their soils are really doing. See what the carbon sequestering abilities of their soils really are. Because that's where I think the big selling point is that, oh, well, we could, you know, reverse climate change with holistic management grazing. We know how we can reverse climate change is to actually allow native forests to come back. That's the best thing we could possibly do. We don't have to worry about feeding the world like, you know, oh, this is how we'll feed the world and save the planet. We're growing enough food to feed 10 billion people on the planet right now. We don't

have to worry about feeding the world. What we need to do is start to regenerate forests. I mean, there's some preliminary research coming out right now from two researchers, one of them from the University of Illinois. And the preliminary research is saying that if we were to take all grasslands that were formerly forests that are now being grazed by cattle and take the cattle off and allow those forests to regenerate, that we would be able to sequester more carbon than we've emitted into the atmosphere since the industrial era has started which is massive we're not talking about like you know get rid of all animal agriculture just get rid of animals on areas that used to be forested land which is a you know the leading cause of desertification and degradation of land is from deforestation and the leading cause of deforestation is raising cattle um so again it's like for people who really want to help the planet, we have to stop livestock. That's, that's the first and foremost. Yeah. And just to kind of, you know, tie a bow on the whole Alan Savory kind of thing. I mean, even, even if it did like, let's, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say, all right,

this method has some merit. Let's do it. Uh, let's play that out to its logical conclusion. Like if we're going to feed the planet, or let's just say we're going to feed Americans. So let's just open up, you know, all of our land and let cattle graze freely everywhere. Like, first of all, there isn't enough land to create to host enough cattle to make that a sustainable or viable solution to feed people. And there would just have to be sort of cows every, I mean, it would become like India times a thousand, right. In order for that to be workable, like it's just not a solution. Right. And the solution that's so obvious when you watch this film is if we can

eradicate or start to limit, you know, cattle production and put a cap on and ultimately work towards, uh, you know, the obsolescence of animal agriculture as our primary way of feeding the planet. This is the most effective and most expeditious way to, uh, you know, uh, implement a curative solution that's, that will solve our environmental ills. Absolutely. People are, so people are so passionate about monoculture of, of,

you know, just certain greatly soy and corn when, when most of that goes to feeding, feeding livestock, but then also a mono, would you call it a mono animal habitat? It would be one cow. And is this your ideal of,

you know, the utopia is just a world full of just cows and grass. Is this really the best we can do? And that's a best-case scenario. And that doesn't even work. That's a funny one. Right, right, right. And that's the, again, just going towards a plant-based society

is that it has benefits on every level. It benefits the wildlife. It benefits water. It benefits soil. It benefits the climate. I benefits, you know, water benefits, soil benefits, the, you know, climate. I mean, literally everything, it has no drawbacks. There, there are no drawbacks. It's the craziest thing ever. I mean, once I kind of, you know, made the switch and was able to perform better than ever as an athlete. And, and I, you have this kind of dawning realization, like we're not obligate omnivores. Like this is a choice. Like

this is an option. I mean, we don't have to like, once you really free yourself from the stranglehold of this idea that, you know, is embedded into, you know, our minds at a very early age that we must have these products in order to live and be healthy. Once you break free of that and you're like, wait a minute, then you're like, hold on. I can like kill it as an athlete i can uh take preventive measures to prevent myself from having all these lifestyle illnesses that are that's killing everybody i can actually reverse some of these conditions if i already have them i can have my skin clear i can do all these amazing health benefits and it's doing all this amazing stuff for the planet and it's protecting all of these helpless animals that are being led

to slaughter, like, every box gets checked, right? And you're like, well, this is the biggest no brainer ever, right? Like, why wouldn't I do this? And then I think that's why a lot of, you know, vegans and vegan activists get so frustrated, because they're like, can't you see what I'm seeing? Right? But it's, it's a hard road for a lot of people to kind of, you know, grapple with that mentally to get to that place. I mean, everybody has to kind of go on their own journey to have that realization, I think. And I think that's what people really like about the film is they follow my journey of, of, of ignorance. Really. I, when I went vegan and, you know, through the process kind of telling the, the, the, uh, end of the story of the film,

but, um, I was was so naive just like you said that i i truly because i was vegetarian for a while but i really did not think you could go without animal products i would actually when i went vegetarian i would eat about two times more eggs and cheese to make up for the meat you know to make up whatever that was and when it hit me of all these things that and all the ethical reasons really hit me too. When I watched some of these, a few of these films, I made a,

you know, it was pretty instant that I said, I do not, even if I die within a month and I was literally, I thought I was that naive. You're willing to sacrifice your health. Yeah. I would rather,

I don't want to trail that there would be a negative. I felt like Godzilla with the trail of blood and destruction behind me. And just even if I die in a month, at least, you know, at least have that trail be gone for a little bit. One month, you know, maybe I'll last two. And then to find out within one month of clearing, because I had a lot of cheese, clearing the dairy out was the most amazing thing. cheese, clearing the dairy out was the most amazing thing. I'm chills just like thinking about it now because the, how good I felt and I could literally feel the blood running through my veins. I never had the ups and downs. And within one month I felt about 10 years younger. And to this day, I mean, it was a hands down the best I've ever felt in the best decision ever.

And to think that I had no idea. So when a lot of people say this, even though they see these ethical and these environmental reasons, but they don't, I understand because you just don't some, a lot of people just don't realize that it's even that possible. Right. There's this idea. And I think even, you know, in the wake of people seeing conspiracy saying, I'm so moved by these environmental issues, I'm going to take this leap. And, you know, I'm scared because I'm worried I'm going to be sacrificing my health and doing it, you know, but I'm willing to do it anyway, which is almost makes it more courageous. And then, you know,

the message that I want everyone to hear is like, you're not taking some crazy risk with your health. You're actually doing something very good for your health, you know? And so anyway so much to talk about, but anyway, I mean, uh, I want to get back to the movie and, and, uh, you know, one of the things that I think, uh, makes it so compelling is because we're having this emotional connection with your journey, Kip, right? Like it's a very kind of, um, you know, firsthand experience in a, in a vein of a, you know, Morgan Spurlock supersized me,

where you're like, here's what's going on in my life. Like come on this road with me and let's learn together. And, you know, when it opens, you're, you're doing all these environmental things and, you know, being the good quote unquote, like good environmentalist guy, you come across this UN report, which blows your mind because you'd never knew that animal agriculture was sort of having this kind of impact. And then the film, you know, the remainder of the film is you kind of visiting these charitable organizations, these NGOs that we've entrusted to, you know, sort of protect us and inform us as consumers about what we need to know about what's going on with the environment and sort of petitioning them for answers about why this problem isn't being discussed or or properly addressed and then and that was the inspiration to make the film almost more the fact

that i learned this information about what this industry is doing to the planet it's when i when i saw i started researching well what what's Sierra Club doing about this? They must be talking about this. I don't go on Sierra Club's website. I give them donations every now and then. What's Greenpeace doing? How about, you know, I wanted to join a Greenpeace rally about this. I was all excited to join this whole movement.

I started going on one after another to realize they're not talking about this. And then I went on, you know, Rainforest Action Network and the Amazon, Amazon Watch, 91, up to 91% of the entire Amazon that's destroyed is due to, in some way or others, due to livestock. Right, like one to two acres a second or a minute? It's a second. Up to a second. Yeah. And that fluctuates between a second to a minute. But, yeah, when you really just stop and think of that, you know, an acres around a football field and every second to every minute, are you kidding

me? And then for them to not have this on their website. I mean, if you find it, it would take you 10 minutes to find this on there. And that's when I was just blown away. And now, and in the film, you see that I was shocked, but it was probably times 10 because i just could not believe it and so it was non-stop non-stop calling them emailing them anybody should be up on this and talking about it and informing us and up in arms about it it would be that organization right and i thought there would be rallies the very next weekend or you know things i could do or places i could join and help out and then to find nothing say hey i want to do this for you guys. How about I start this? Cause you're not doing it. No reply emails, nothing back. And

this was in the film, it says months, but it was actually a few years. And that's, was the impetus of, okay, something has to be done. And that's where the movie really decided, you know, it took a while to make the film, but this needs to be told. And that's what makes the film actually exciting is when we go visit these organizations and have these fun interviews with them. And that's where the... Yeah, there's definitely some uncomfortable, interesting moments in these interviews where you're like, how come you guys aren't talking about this? And they hem and haw and try to, you know, come up with answers. And I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to spoil the movie.

Everybody who hasn't seen it should definitely see it. And it's pretty compelling kind of what comes out of it and shocking, really. Shocking and humorous. And as I say, it would be so much more. It's entertaining. It's not like. It's a tragic comedy. It would be so humorous if you didn't realize how scary this is that they're not.

Because the interviews are, and it ranges from pure ignorance to straight up concealing. I don't know if I'll necessarily name the organizations that we knew. The more you see these interviews, that's what some people say when we do Q&As. Oh, you guys manipulated the editing, that's what some people say. And when we do Q and A's, Oh, you guys manipulated the editing, you know, which a lot of people do. And we say,

eventually we're going to come out with longer versions of these interviews, the longer edits, because the more you see them, the more revealing how, how they're covering it up, how they'll be elusive of the questions and the answers. and that it's just scary that they're, they're not doing this, but they know they should be and um it's just it's unbelievable yeah i mean it is it's a funny it's

again it's it's a very serious topic but it is a funny film i mean it's like we you know we've gone to dozens and dozens of screenings and you know just listening to audiences crack up um and so there's definitely a high level of comic relief throughout the whole film which was we you know we knew was going to be important because it is it's a serious heavy subject but it's it's very entertaining and and ultimately it's uplifting i think and you don't really feel you don't really realize most people the first time you watch it you're just blown away you're literally blown away and say you don't watch it the second time because the second time you watch it you're just blown away you're literally blown away and say you know watch it the second time because the second time you can actually enjoy uh enjoy the humor and the bizarre part because you don't really get what's going on the first time because you don't know all the information and then the second time we have so many little edits there we

really fine-tune the editing to make it as bizarre and kind of funny and you don't really see it till the second or third time so it's a fun movie to watch twice. Yeah, I think your barrier really is that some people, like they see the title of the movie, Cowspiracy, they see this picture of the cow and they're like, this is going to be a heavy ride, right? And so they're like, yeah, I should see it. I want to see it. But like, they just, they can't get over the hump.

You know, they're like, I'm not in the mood right now. Or like, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to handle it. Like, they feel like they're going to get, like, you know, they're like, I'm not in the mood right now. Or like, I just don't know if I'm going to be able to handle it. Like, they feel like they're going to get like, you know, it's going to be so heavy that it's just too much, you know, look, I worked hard, you know, I just want to like check out for an hour and watch a movie and have fun and go to sleep. You know what I mean? So I think that, you know, for you guys is the thing that you got to help people kind of get over. And, and I think it is important for people to understand that it is entertaining, you know, like you're definitely engaged in the way, you would be watching morgan spurlock like

he's you know you're like it's it's informative but also you know there is levity as well and that was the whole goal of it from the very start when keegan and i were working on it is let's let's make this humorous and keegan was like what, what? Yeah, I had no idea. I mean, there's just... Keegan the punk rocker. He was like, oh, we got to go hardcore. It was the most bizarre thing. You could see the look in his eyes like, this is not funny whatsoever.

It's like, you know what? There's humor in this because it's so bizarre. It's humorous. Like we're living in a parallel world, in this crazy world, and to do, just to show it in the reality of what it is, but in that bizarre weirdo kind of way, the human really comes out. Yeah. I mean, that's, and Kip was absolutely correct. I mean, it's like, it works so well because it's completely bizarre. You know,

it's the, you know, the 70 billion animals in the room that no one wants to talk about that, you know, and again, climate change is such a huge issue it's like gosh here's here's a huge component to climate change and you know no one's talking about it let's let's like break it down water uh 600 gallons of water to produce a quarter pound patty of beef 2500 gallons for a pound of beef. And dairy is not much better, 1,000 gallons of water to produce a gallon of milk. It's crazy. One to two acres of rainforest being destroyed per second. species extinction water pollution from runoff right creating these like uh giant algal blooms and dead zones where they're so oxygen deprived like nothing can live uh the animal abuse i mean

you just go down the line like in every category like it's just a huge catastrophe yeah i mean it just it's it literally touches any issue you could care about it animal agriculture plays a role whether it's environmental issues or humanitarian issues of, you know, starvation, a resource depletion. Yeah. Animal cruelty means like healthcare costs.

I mean, that's a whole nother ballgame talk. It literally has a hand in everything. So one of the amazing things for me too, was to also like understand like, yeah, but we got to feed everyone like, okay,

so this is what it is, but we got to eat. Right. And then to understand like, actually, yeah, but we got to feed everyone. Okay, so this is what it is, but we got to eat, right? And then to understand, actually, starvation is not a problem of bounty. We're producing enough food to feed 10 billion people already, right? So it's more of a distribution and allocation issue because all the food that we're growing is going to feed right? So it's more of a distribution and allocation issue because all the food that we're growing is going to feed livestock. So it's this secondhand sort of thing, right? Where we're getting the food from the food. It's this incredibly inefficient system. We have to pour all these resources into these animals to then eat them. Why don't we just eat, eat lower on the food chain, cut the middleman out, and we can solve so many problems.

And what's funny is the middleman is this processing system that turns incredibly healthy food into incredibly unhealthy food. You can take these. Kip, there's a lot of money to be made. 16 pounds of grain that has no saturated fat, no cholesterol, high in protein, fiber, you know, essential nutrients. You can then run that through this machine called a cow and fill it full of cholesterol, saturated fat, and you only get one pound out of it.

And antibiotics and hormones and pesticides and everything else. So, yeah, I mean, it's the total inefficient. I mean, yes, the other thing, too, is that, you know, going back to land use is that you can grow 15 times more protein on any given area of land with plants than you can with animals so people say oh well this area you know if the world can only grow you know can only raise cows or goats which isn't true it's like you know take the resources that are you're putting into those animals and put it into vegetable reduction you're going to produce 15 times more even if it's degraded land um yeah I mean there's so many facts in the movie and also at cowspiracy.com in the facts section,

like you just scroll down forever and there's just all these amazing facts. But there was one, I can't remember exactly what it was, but it was like one acre of land can feed a certain number of omnivores and that same parcel of land could feed like some incredibly disproportionate number of plant-based.

It's about eight. Plant-based diet uses about one eighteenth of the amount of land that a American omnivore uses. So even just, yeah, just land use. It's about one sixth of an acre to feed a vegan for a year. And then that's, again, it's just because of efficiency. You know, you can, on one and a half acres, you can raise about 375 pounds of meat, or you could raise on one and a half acres, you know. 37,000 pounds of plant food, right? That was the one, yeah, I couldn't remember.

I mean, it's just astronomical. So, yeah, I mean, you know, food shortages and starvation issues are exactly, it's an issue of allocation. And, you know, a lot of that has political but you know when you look at you know ethiopia during its massive famine in the 90s was still exporting grain and animals to life to europe to feed them is that right there yeah it's like you have populations who are starving but because there's such a high demand for meat and dairy products in the developed world that you know literally you literally, you know, third world children are starving because there's money to be made off animal agriculture.

And that's not to say that animal agriculture is causing starvation, but I mean, the simple fact that we're allocating these massive amount of resources to feed non-human animals is a major, major issue. Amazing. All right. Well, let's talk about the movie. It's like the journey that you guys have been on with this movie, because I almost feel like it's like a, it should be a case study taught in film schools.

It's so unique and such an amazing story, right? Like I first found out about the film before really anybody had seen it. You had an Indiegogo and you were trying to just raise like a tiny bit, tiny bit of money to like finish it. It was basically done. to just raise like a tiny bit, tiny bit of money to like finish it. It was basically done. Um, and then in the wake of that, it's really been a truly like truly grassroots thing, right? You didn't have any distribution. You four went the whole films, a film festival circuit. Like, did you even submit to the sun dances of the world and get rejected? Or did you just

bypass that altogether? No, altogether we we submitted to a few of them um really crossing our fingers but now looking back knowing how we were pretty ignorant on how sundance and the big ones work you you have to have a name somewhere involved you know now if we if we submitted we it's ironic because it's supposed to be the opposite yeah it was maybe 20 years ago so we did for a while, then all of a sudden, we started getting rejection after rejection. We said, let's just skip this. And what's interesting, the kicker was we submitted to a festival,

okay, maybe it's something to do with how controversial the film is. So we said, here's going to be the litmus test. We're going to submit it to the San Francisco Green Festival. They have their own Bay Area. Maybe if you're a Bay Area filmmaker, you're a lock to get in, let alone, you know, you can probably win it. And we had people come to our screening that worked with them. So now you guys are going to for sure win the San Francisco Green Festival, not only get in, but win it. So the time came, we submitted it.

And sure enough, we got rejected from the san francisco little green festival and that's when we said okay there's there's more than one thing going on there's some there's some political and ties to to how controversial you know to their the film industry and how controversial this film is even sundance you know robert redford and whole cattle and the background of that industry who knows if i don't we didn't have a name back then but um once we didn't get into the san francisco green festival that's when we said okay we need to change our game plan and that's when we did our own tour and we organized our own tour and did a real grassroots our facebook following got bigger and it is a case study on

on how to on how just two people can not only make a film, but let it grow with a grassroots way of engaging other people around so everybody can take a part of it. All Keegan and I did is make this film, and now it's everyone's film. People say, oh, you guys are brave to make the film and to show it around. We say, you know, the people who are really brave

are the people who are doing screenings in Idaho. They're the ones risking, you know, we're not there in Idaho and Utah, these ag-gag laws that are showing it this this organization of 20 brave people are showing the film and uh and that's what the film really grew to at a level where it's at now is it's it's everyone's film and you did it without any distribution i mean literally it was like you guys in a van driving around from screening to screening and leveraging the internet by virtue of like tug.com, right? T-U-G-G.com, which allows individuals to host their own screenings.

They can four wall a theater if they can get a certain number of people to commit to show up, which allowed people to very, you know, it was like, that's really cool because who, who like knows how to like book a film in a theater in their town? Like that's kind of a barrier, right? But this site allowed people to make that more facile and accessible. So that I think played into your favor, but the fact that so many people were hosting screenings wherever they live that there, I mean, how many tug screenings were there? I mean, I don't know the exact number. We've definitely done at least two or three, over 300 in the U S. And yeah, tug is awesome.

There were all these overseas. You guys went to Australia, right? Yeah. I mean, Kip went to Australia and the biggest, the biggest crowd ever was in Australia at a two tiered, seemed like an opera house or where you'd see big bands. And it was around 800 people on both, on the bottom and top level filled up. How did that happen? And that's when I was like, wow,

we got something special going on here. Exactly. How did this happen? Was that associated with that? Who's that big businessman who spoke out? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Was he involved in that? He was on the Q&A with me, but he wasn't actually.

It was... Emerald Liberation Victoria, I think. Yeah, they're an incredible group. And Sydney, Sydney had a really powerful group. It's just one of those things. I feel when you have extremes like such as US is and Australia is a perfect example when you have such a far lack of better words,

political right. And then you have such extreme of that because in Australia there's a lot of intense things happening. You have just a polar opposition and it's almost the more you have, the more passionate of an opposition. And that's what's happening there. You have incredible activists in Australia that are really, really fighting for their country

and fighting for the future and that was a big part of it and i had no idea i was blown away interesting i mean we really we just tried to use every avenue that the internet had to give us um yeah we used a crowdfunding with indiegogo which was you know an amazing i mean just blew us away at the amount of support we got we were actually one of the top 25 highest funded films in Indiegogo history, which is huge. And then, yeah, we teamed up with Tug and Tug does these platforms. It's basically crowdsourced theater, theatrical distribution. So people all across the country, and we had, I think, two or three screenings in Fargo. You know, it's like no distribution company would ever take the film to Fargo. It's like, but because there was people there who wanted to see it yeah and so how are they finding

out about like how are they even how do people in fargo even know what's happening exactly that's the amazing thing right yeah i mean so it's not like you're in time magazine or you know it's like yeah i know right we're gonna get to that all. You know, so that's what I mean when I say like truly like a grassroots thing, like a real populist movement around this movie where suddenly in, you know, a relatively short period of time, people are talking about it. It's water cooler talk. People are aware of it. They know what's going on. And yet still no distribution. Right. But then a couple couple really interesting things have occurred and this is where it gets super exciting and leading us to this week um i'm not sure exactly how it happened but somehow was it through lisa lange at pita got the film to darren aronofsky the film director behind noah and requiem for a dream and all those amazing who happens to be i don't think we knew at the time it's both of our favorite top three to five favorite directors of all time.

Yeah, me too. I mean, the guy's unbelievable and a very passionate environmentalist. I think there was a lot of press about how he ran his set in Noah, right? I think it was all sustainable. I don't know if you... Yeah, I think they did primarily plant-based. I mean, yeah. So as far as I know,

that's the story that has been relayed to me is that, yeah, Lisa gave a copy to Darren and then Darren gave a copy to... Darren tweeted it. Darren sent a tweet out. What happened? Then we heard what the real story was, the story was even more detailed

is that Darren was watching it and halfway during the film he called leo and he says you have to watch this film leonardo dicaprio leonardo your pal leo right uh-huh that's how the lore goes that's uh that's how and he called leonardo and said you have to watch this film and i can't remember if he somehow gave him the link or whatever and i think they're on a plane they're they're working on a documentary i believe together together they are they're obviously good good friends and that is how that connection that's how it got into leonardo dicaprio's hands right and so then what then what happens we got a call from uh someone who works with him and said

hey you know leo's interested in the film And then we sent another link to hold on. Yeah. Yeah. Hold on a second. Cause that was, that was, yeah, it wasn't just,

yeah, you're acting all casual about this. Like what happens when you get that phone call? We totally thought, I mean, I, cause I was driving on my way over to Kip's and, and,

and I just kind of laughed about it. And I was like, yeah, I don't know if this is like real and Kip. And then we look and then we, and we probably not. From Appian Way, his company.

It wasn't Appian Way. It was some random, it was a name. It was a person who wasn't connected. It was a few steps away. So we looked them up and nothing really came up. Oh really? Did you think it was like,

someone who wanted a free copy? Someone who, cause we get that sometimes. Someone who wanted a free copy. I work with so and so. And really didn't think so. We laughed about it. Yeah. We laughed about it. Yeah, we laughed about it.

But so it sent a link anyway. Oh, you sent a link. Yeah, we just said, yeah, no worries. And then I think it was about a week later, I got a call from Jennifer Davison, who's one of Leonardo's producers, and she's a producer of half a dozen films. She said, hey, Leo saw the film, absolutely loves it.

He's been talking about it nonstop. He's basically obsessed with it. And he called up, he's so excited about the film, he called up the heads of Netflix himself, which normally he wouldn't do. He would have one of us do. And he said, you guys have to take this film. This is amazing.

The heads of Netflix all watched it. They're super excited about it and they want to talk to you guys about taking on the film uh-huh so that was one of those kind of this was and you're like is your jaw dropping or like i was i was silent laughing like hysteria on the phone because it's just you know how ridiculous that's such a surreal like totally surreal i mean like the the biggest name in hollywood sees our film loves it and is already shopping it around for us without even talking to us not only that right he's like i don't need permission i'm just gonna call them and tell yeah like and not only that is our dream for the film was someday if it could be on netflix

because we at that time so here's the thing you tried prior to that was there we didn't even know where to even start we didn't even know where to start that's how that's you guys in a van exactly fargo and everyone said you guys be up to cnn netflix and we'd always say well can you connect us to someone because we have no idea right and this this was almost exactly a year ago this was not something people probably think this happened a couple months ago yeah an entire year ago and i got the i wish i don't think i have the text but the the text from Keegan was, I didn't have cell reception. I was away camping in a festival or something, and it was all caps. You will not believe this.

And Keegan's so low-key. And I said, whoa, this is huge. And he wouldn't say what it was. And I purposely waited a whole day just to ponder in my mind and play with games on what this could be. Run fantasies? Yeah, and I did. So I did all the fantas play with games on what this could be. Run fantasies? Yeah. And I did. So I did all the fantasies and it turned out to be. Are you,

and Keegan, are you like, why isn't he calling me back? I, yeah, a little bit, but I was also, I mean,

I just couldn't wait. I mean, it's just, it was, it was still super exciting. I mean, it's like, I'm still so excited about this because yeah,

I mean, it's, I mean, what a unbelievable dream, you know? I mean, for any filmmaker, but then to like, we have a, it's not like that we're just telling a story.

It's like, wait, this is a very powerful, you know, motivated film to try and save the world. It's a culture changing, you know, film. It has that power to like impact consumer choice and really change people, the way that people live their lives and the habits. What feels so fortunate is that it's authentic and that when I've been wanting to make the film for a while and then finally when Keegan and I teamed up making it, I saved quite a bit of money to make the film. I mean, not that much to make the film. We lost our funding. I never expected to even make it back. It was that this message has to be told.

I never wanted to even be in the film. I wanted to be behind the camera working with Keegan. We tried to, we tried searching for someone to essentially play someone who, cause at that time already knew most of the things. And so this really had nothing to do with Keegan or I had to do with the message that was way bigger than us. And that's what felt so good is that this whole film has nothing to do with us. And the joy that we feel isn't, it's nice to be filmmakers to have a film on Netflix is that the message is, is getting out there and it's,

and it's actually doing what our wildest dreams are. And then some, yeah, well people can feel, I mean that comes across, right? Like you, you can tell,

like it's not about you and your ego. Like the story is bigger than that. Like, and I think people are connecting with that. Like they get that right. Um, the other funny story though that i i want to i want to hear about from you guys is uh is what happened in toronto i think it was exactly a year ago right like i think toronto film festival is about to start is it not like you guys were in toronto i was in toronto for last year because the veg fest coincides with tiff They're going on at the same time. And you guys went out to the VegFest to show the film. And I was,

and I was there and I was at this really, I think it's places actually called seed. This awesome. I've been there. Yeah, that's great. And my friend was wearing Cal's piracy shirt and I went to the bathroom and I come back and he's, he's an organic farmer from Montreal. He hasn't seen a movie or as TV has no idea who he's talking to. And then I started walking by, and he says, well, if you love the film, tell him. He's the one who made it. And he was right in front of my face,

turned to my face. Like some guy had rolled up on the table. Yeah, and it's Mark Ruffalo. And I don't know if people know him, but I grew to love him because all the films he made in about two years just blew me away. He became one of my favorite actors and he looked at me and I'd never had any, whatever

you call celebrity moment of meeting really any, anybody in my life. That's what's funny. I live in San Francisco and here's a guy who then two nights before I saw, I don't know if anyone's seen that film that he played a role where it's, it's the very, very, very beginning of AIDS of the AIDS epidemic it happened in New York really interesting film and it swept the Emmys every one I believe every single thing and I watched it two nights before and he said I love your film and I the first thing I said is I love your film I was impressed thank you so much and he said which

one because he had another film there and it was just the most surreal thing is this mark ruffalo and then the nicest guy you could ever imagine you can picture who he is on the screen and hear him talking times out by 10 i mean the absolute nicest guy and saying the nicest things and then what he said was i said finally how how did you watch the film he said well leo uh leo and was going to invite us over because we're working on this environmental project and he said hey you guys are going to come over to my house next week but first you all have to watch this film and we had to watch the film before he came and visited and so they did and he loved the film and then they had a meeting and he said well the first half of the of the meeting we talked we talked about our, what our project.

And then the second half, the entire time was talking about Cal conspiracy. And that's, that's what it was. It became chills because we didn't really know if this whole Leonardo thing was going to happen. But at that point it verified, wow,

he really is excited. Yeah. Yeah. You can like his producer can say he loves it, but like, yeah, that's Hollywood talk, man.

Like, ah, we love you. And like, you know, look, I's Hollywood talk, man. Like, ah, we love you. And like, you know, look, I've been around this town. Like the people just blow smoke up your butt like all the time.

Right. But to hear it from Mark, you're like, Oh wow. Like that kind of vets that whole story. It's amazing. Yeah. It's surreal.

Very surreal. Yeah. It's totally surreal. And so here we are today, September 15th, the film is finally going to uh premiere on netflix and it's going to be how what is it how does it go is it going to be like presented by leonardo dicaprio executive produced by leonardo like what is that association and what

is that you know like what does that look like yeah so since he saw the film um he stepped in as the executive producer and we re-edited the film. We updated it. The film has new facts and new information. It's super solid. What were the changes that you made? We basically just updated new science has come out that has shown that animal agriculture is even worse than we even thought. And we went very conservative with all the stats in the film.

And again, if you go to Cowspiracy.com and you click the facts page, you can see all the facts that we, all the studies that we referenced in the film. And you can see that, that we were very conservative. Um, and so we just put more studies into the film and just bulked it up. And really the big thing was the big thing why it took a year is to bulk up our sources. We need multiple sources for every single fact. And that takes a long time because some of these studies only have one scientist that did it. And at the first, you know, three to four months, we said, is this ever going to happen? This is a lot of work. And then the more working on it, we're so thankful because now it is so rock solid, the facts page and the sources

page that it's stronger than ever. That's great because you know, once this thing goes live, you know, people are going to come at you, right. And you have to have it locked down so that you can defend everything that you say in the movie. Yeah. And again, I mean, anyone who questions the stats in the film, we encourage it, do more research, look into it more and you'll, you'll find that there's so much research out there that not only supports, but shows the, you know, people will say, oh, well, your numbers are off and say,

yeah, you know, we say it takes 2,500 gallons of water to produce a pound of beef. And that number is off because there's studies that say in California takes 8,000 gallons of water. So it's like, yeah, we're off by, you know, several thousand gallons of water. We're, yeah, again, we really encourage people to do as much research as they can because we've done a ton and we just think there's more, there's more information out there. And so that's what the new edit is. And it's just, the film's just tighter. I think it's just a stronger, powerful, more powerful film than even the first version. And I, yeah, again, being executive produced by Leonardo Caprio, you know, there's a standard, you know, it's's like he's a phenomenal actor. Just to have the name associated with your movie, with his credibility in the environmental movement,

let alone the entertainment industry, is just, you can't, I mean, what else would you want? You know what I mean? It's like it's unbelievable, right? And I just have to say how much I respect Leonardo DiCaprio for making this move.

It's incredibly courageous and ballsy on his part because I think it's fair to characterize him as somebody who is part of the sort of green establishment. In other words, he's sort of fully entrenched in kind of the mainstream philanthropic community with respect to environmental conservation. Like he's on the board of like a whole bunch of these, you know, giant, you know, NGOs and non and nonprofits, some of which are the ones that are kind of getting called to the mat in the movie, right? So he is actually taking a very personal risk by associating himself with this movie,

because he's saying, i mean i don't know how much money did he give last year to environmental organizations in the many many millions right through his own foundation uh and you know his name is aligned with some of these organizations and and and and in cowspiracy some of these are are called into question right and so for him to i mean it would be more predictable for somebody like that to back away from a movie like this, because it's threatening to kind of the status quo and, you know, how he sort of fits into that community. But for him to like, go straight in and say, no, we need to talk about this, we need to look at this, I think is incredibly courageous. And I

just couldn't have more respect for him making this move. It's just such a hero. It's, it's, you just can't downplay the, the courage of, of, of doing that, you know, of, of realizing that this, this movie must be shown.

This, this message must be told and putting it, putting that message above himself. Right. You know, people think all these actors and even people in the environmental groups of everyone who we interview, they're putting their own organization.

As we say, they put the profits over the planet, their own organization over what really needs to be done. And here's this person with incredible influence knowing this is the right thing to do. People need to know that. And he's a true hero. Yeah, it really is incredible. I think you said it quite well.

He's setting aside his ego for a larger cause. And it's easy to take pot shots at an actor who becomes an activist, but like he's a real deal, man, you know, through and through. Yeah. He's definitely the real deal. I mean, we have just, you know, the utmost respect and just deep, deep respect for Leonardo. Um, and, and he really, I mean, he, he's not like a celebrity who like tax his name onto something, you know, to, for PR it's like,

he's a full on environmentalist. Like this is, I think probably more important to him than even acting. It's like, this is, he's, he's really cares deeply about these issues. Um,

and he's, he's genuine. And we only had just minor communication with them. Not too much. Obviously you guys hanging out. Like where are you? He's got to go run out of here and go meet him. Thing is he is he's got an exciting year because he's doing a huge film called the revenant and that might be the one that he's going to finally seen the trailer for that i

watched i read the book i recommend it is the most gripping film trailer i think i've ever seen it's insane it's exciting too if you ever read the book it's a quick book to read it's based on a true story and it's this true story that sure over time because it's set in the. If you ever read the book, it's a quick book to read. It's based on a true story. And it's this true story that, sure, over time, because it's set in the 1800s, you know, folklore goes. This story grows a little bit. But at the core level, it's a true story. And they say this is the one, finally, that's going to win him the Oscar. And he's had a rough year. It's Ilaratu, right?

Directed it. Yeah. And the way he directs is he puts you out on real locations. So they were there for like nine months or something like that something half the crew either quit or even you know threatened to be sued because they are in hardcore environment so he's been gone most of this year but the what i was gonna say is when we the the few conversation we had with them just all about the environment you know it wasn't about anything else but necessarily about oh i'm making this movie or what else are you guys doing talking about one

environmental issue after another another project truly passionate and uh you know true true true passion about the environment is he gonna be do you know if he's gonna do i mean i know he's tweeted he he tweeted the the recent article that was kind of the press release about you know this whole thing happening uh do you know if he's going to do any press around the movie i don't know i mean he he was just talking with his publicist i mean he's just unbelievably busy right um i think there will be some you know i think really the this the film and the film story sells itself though and that i don't even know how much press is really needed from his end just because it's,

well, he's got to do the podcast. There we go. Right. That was our first question. He wants to say, Hey, uh,

Leo, would you do a ritual podcast? He said, he'll get back to you. All right, good. Yeah. I'm waiting.

Maybe, maybe he's calling right now. My phone's turned off. We'll see. So exciting. So, yeah, I'm going to post this podcast like Sunday night. So is it Monday when it goes? Yeah, Monday.

And it's worldwide, right? So if people are listening in Australia or Europe. Everywhere in the English-speaking world, it should be up on the 15th. There's been some issues I think with some subtitling, but it'll be everywhere that Netflix is within a month. So they're in 50 countries I think right now, and it's continuing to grow. We had the film dubbed into Spanish, Brazilian, Portuguese, and German. So people can listen and watch the film in their native language. It's, you know,

subtitled into 20 plus languages. I mean, it's, it's hitting a global audience. I mean, I don't even remember what Netflix is membership is. I mean, it's in the tens of millions. I don't really disclose that stuff. I believe over 50 million. Wow. Yeah.

So it's, I mean, it's just phenomenal. We're so excited about it and yeah, it'll be people around the world can be able to stream it instantly from netflix it's pretty cool what has been um like the sort of other than like the story we just told about leo and all of that like the most sort of surprising thing about you know the last year of kind of journeying around with this movie that you you would not have predicted i mean i mean there's everything about it right yeah so much i mean we have just gotten just an unbelievable outpouring of support from people around the world i mean one of the most special

things just happened i believe it was yesterday after an entire it was a been a year and a half and it just yesterday it's a good good question it just hit me is who was Brown and fun for Louie, Louie Cole. Yeah. I've never heard of them before, but, uh, they both within a week, both watch the film and they're so personal with their emotions and everything. I've, they watched the film and then one of them, they taped themselves while they were, they were watching it. while they were, they were watching it. And both of them had such a profound impact and you could see it in their eyes. And he says, I basically I'm blown away and I'm processing it on. And I've never seen someone like that show their emotion while they've

watched the film. We do all these Q and A's, but they're asking us questions after and say, Oh, love your film. But something about that, I guess that's why they're so popular. They,

they show their, their emotions as in real life as they're happening these these are daily vloggers yeah so right right so so ben brown who goes by mr ben brown on youtube and louis cole who goes by fun for louis on youtube they're both daily vloggers with massive followings i think they each have like a million and a half subscribers something like that they're contemporariesaries of Casey Neistat. They've been on each other's vlogs and all that kind of stuff. And if you listen to this podcast, you know I've had Casey on three times.

So you probably know who Ben and Louie are. And I've been following these guys for a while. I was introduced to them via Casey. And I think it was two days ago, Ben, who is a former two-time world champion in kayaking, who now, like, lives video and then immediately just looks into camera and shares his thoughts in real time reacting to what he's just seen and you can see the emotion you can see he's sort of struggling with these ideas and coming to this realization like uh you know if i really want to walk my walk as an environmentalist i'm going to have to change the way you you know, my relationship to food. And he basically says, I'm going vegan, you know, and he's like, you could see he's a little bit scared about it. He's not sure,

you know. And then the following day, Louie, who's his friend and vlogger, like says, well, Ben watched this movie, I need to watch it. And the exact same thing happens. And it's quite amazing. And so I've actually been going back and forth with Ben, by email, I'm sending him some books and some resources, I'm trying to help him, I'm gonna have him on the podcast to have him share, you know, what this is all about, in addition to just his amazing life. But, you know, when you see, you know, when we look at your movie, and you're like, like well this is a grassroots kind of viral thing uh you know these guys are are you know this is what's happening now like they're not on television but they have followings that would rival any network television show and these are the people

that young people look up to um that they're emotionally connected to and when and they're very influential right on the in the internet so when those two guys like are like this is what we're doing you know that's that's a big deal man that's a big deal it's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out but thanks for giving the background of the story i'm assuming sometimes i forget we're just talking with each other no no no it's cool well just i just want to make sure anybody who's listening kind of understand you know can place it in context a little bit but but um but it was really unique to see that like instantaneous reaction in the wake of seeing the movie and you

can see how they're like they're they're they're kind of grappling with the ideas and wrestling with themselves about like what this means and and how this is going to impact how they're going to live their life going forward it does and i was having a rough day too at the time and to watch that and really it's something about it just really hit me. The raw emotion of see their whole persona and their whole reality just literally transform in front of your eyes and they're actually filming themselves while it's happening. And that's why I guess that's why they're so popular.

Yeah, it's cool, man. So what kind of what's going to go on for for you like this upcoming week with the release is there press commitments for you guys or this just goes live and that's it or what's happening priority was the rich world podcast no joke on that yeah no i mean this is our favorite podcast yeah kip and i've become you're just saying no really it's not really yeah we're kind of out of the loop that That's why I feel we heard about these other vloggers. Are we the only ones who don't know about all these things? Because the listeners are pretty much yours and maybe one or two others.

No, I mean, we're super busy. We're working on a new project, a couple of new projects. Unfortunately, we can't really talk about, but really exciting. I mean, mean like so exciting i can't right i can't help how excited i am about these new projects that we're working on i can't convince you to say anything about it no no but other than it'll be i love how you're like super cryptic on your instagram account you're just like uh like it's just pictures of cameras you know so i was like well he's making something but he won't talk about what it is so infuriating

which is what we did with conspiracy too we didn't we didn't do any you know so i was like well he's making something but he won't talk about what it is so infuriating which is what we did with cowspiracy too we didn't we didn't do any you know press about it we didn't do a website or anything until the film was done because we we don't want to get shut down on what we're working on but i think this next film for people who like cowspiracy they're going to love this new film i mean it is just yeah i want you're such a tease so but we've got we've got some super exciting stuff happening um do you have a timeline on that when can you when are you gonna be able to talk about it probably next couple months next couple months yeah because we're it's gonna be something next probably spring summer we're gonna're going to release something, another thing. And something that's happening within a month is very exciting, is we have the Cowspiracy book.

And it's called The Sustainability Secret. And we're really excited about that. We've been working on that for a while with a couple of amazing authors. And essentially creating the book and adding a lot of things. You only have 90 minutes in a film that we can expand on in a book. And that's why people love books is you can go a little bit deeper into all the facts. We can go deeper in that Alan Savory, some of the interviews that we had, personal reflection. And that's coming out in October.

Oh, wow. That's super exciting. That's a great idea, you know, to be able to like, all right, let's camp out on this argument and just go you know it's in that movie you have to keep it moving you know you can only spend so much time on each one of these issues there's so much ground to cover so to be able to kind of speak to that in detail is that's fantastic yeah people can actually pre order the book now already through amazon the the book's called the sustainability secret it's coming out um through earthware and i believe Edition is also, I don't know. Is it up on Amazon to pre-order already and all that kind of stuff?

Yes, you can pre-order it. Or on your website? We don't have it on the website yet, but you can pre-order it on Amazon. And then we'll be doing a big announcement about that. This is actually the first time we've mentioned the book. Oh, cool. We can mention the other. We're actually doing another book that is more personal on a fun level we want to do some fun counterpart to the the books the

sustainability secret it's a little more serious so we have we don't have the name for it yet but essentially it's going to be a fun cookbook with some ridiculously simple recipes and fun one page. Each chapter has a different topic of what you see in the film and written in a really fun, funny way with a bunch of infographs, little factoids. And it's just essentially a fun little cookbook that makes a great present that will help. That's great.

And that's actually, that's been a really fun book. We teamed up with the author, Laura Beck, who's just brilliantly funny. Just, you know, she used to write for VegNews. She has, she runs or did run VeganSaurus, I think it's the website. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So funny. I mean, just, she's just over the top, ridiculously funny. And so she's authoring the book. We did the recipes and then we had a really talented photographer do the photos, food photos. And that hopefully will be coming out in the next few months. We still have to finalize the layout, but like killing it, rocking out all kinds of products.

That's cool. Crazy. I mean, that was going to be one of my questions. Like, you know, when we first sat down, you know, when, when the movie was just beginning, um, I think I, I remember pretty sure at that time, like I'd go to your website and there was like barely anything there. And like now it's so robust with all the facts and there's so much information there. But, you know, if somebody watches the movie and they're, they're, they're impacted enough to want to, you know, take their learning to the next level and, you know, change

not only their dietary habits, but, you know, feel compelled to get, um, involved in the environmental movement, you know, besides going to read the facts at cowspiracy.com, like where are you suggesting that people can, you know, further their education while they're waiting for your book to come out? I feel a huge one, regardless, even with the book is a lot of it is what can I do? And a big thing is obviously go plant-based or more plant-based as you can. And your book plant power is an incredible way because you go really in depth of, of how can you not only, uh, how can you not only sustain yourself, but how to thrive and literally how to do it in a detailed way. So we refer people to watch forks over knives, read books like plant power way,

and just, and just research essentially the same advice you give when people ask you. And I think a big part is actually nutrition because that's one of the biggest things people just don't know about. And so on that, we're actually, we're launching hopefully this week, really excited getting people to sign up for the 30-Day Vegan Challenge.

Wow, with PCRM? No, this is Colleen Patrick-Grudeau. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. She's an author um great speaker and she's great and so she has uh and we're working with her on a 30-day online program you sign up for it you get daily uh videos or emails from her and it's basically just like she literally holds your hand through for an entire month answers every single question you've got on how to transition to a plant-based diet. And we're super excited about that. So people,

um, well, by the time they're hearing this should be able to go to conspiracy.com, click the 30 day vegan challenge and sign up. And, and we think that's a big thing because people write us, they say, I saw the film, I'm amazed, but how do I do it? Right. And so, you know, between that and we're, we're actually going to have the plant power way on our website. And so, you know, between that and we're actually going to have the Plant Powered Way on our website. We're super excited for. And that 30-Day Vegan Challenge, normally you can buy it right now. But she was so kind to actually give it away for free, which is really awesome.

Oh, that's amazing. Thousands of people has really, she's helped thousands and thousands of people help out to transition to that transformation to a plant-based diet. Very cool. And what about, uh, on the environmental front? Like if people are, you know, people that are interested in, in giving or getting actively involved in some of these nonprofits, like the movie makes you kind of say, well, I need to rethink this. I mean, where, where can you go to get, you know, reliable information that could help drive, you know, where you can invest your advocacy? You know, I think the big thing is that for everyone who's a member of Greenpeace or Sierra Club or NRDC is to let them know that they need to talk about animal agriculture. You know, if you're a member of any of these organizations, write them and say,

as a member, I'm demanding that you talk about animal agriculture. Because if Greenpeace gets enough emails from their members, people, their supporters that demanding they talk about this issue, they're going to have to, because I mean, I think the biggest thing for a lot of these organizations, they're afraid of, you know, scaring off their donor base. So if their donor base says, we demand you talk about this, that'll be huge. And if any of these organizations talk about it, it would be just amazing. But to properly address it and not to give these pseudo solutions like grass fed or local, like really talk about real solutions. But even if they don't even talk about solutions just to address the issue. And another easy, easy, powerful way that a lot of people tell us they do is go on,

say Greenpeace or Sarah Club or Oceana, Amazon watches on their Facebook page. And anytime they have a topic, which they do sometimes what twice, three times a day, somehow that can relate to animal agriculture so you can just put a little tag hey here's a factoid and then you can refer them to say cal conspiracy or the cal conspiracy dot facts page because those are the people those are the members and that's the the target community we really want to message that what's going on is the people who are environmentalists which is some people, up to 75% of Americans consider themselves environmentalists to inform them, not only the organizations themselves,

but to inform the fans and the supporters of them. So the easy way is to go on the Facebook page and start posting. And then there are some organizations that are talking about the issue. Center for Biological Diversity has a campaign called Take Extinction Off Your Plate, which is awesome. They're promoting people to lower or eliminate animal products from their diet to help biodiversity, which is huge.

They're an organization that actually is talking about it. Factory Farm Awareness Coalition is a group that's doing a lot for education in schools. They're talking about the environmental issues of animal agriculture. And then there's AUM Films, which is KIPP's nonprofit that funded Cowspiracy. And people can make a donation through AUMfilms.org. And that helps to promote the film and to create more films like it.

So there's definitely places you can do. But then really, I mean, there's grassroots people. There's a group in Southern California called Truth or Drought, and they're doing a ton of stuff on addressing the drought in California. California's in unprecedented drought right now, and everyone's talking about almonds when 47% of California's water footprint is in animal agriculture. Right, that was another question that I had. Suddenly, out of the blue, it's all about how almonds use so much water, which is a distraction from the elephant in the room, right? The animal agriculture. And suddenly it's like, well, I got to curtail my almond consumption. I did a talk up

in Bakersfield and it was attended by a bunch of like, you know, high profile farmers, like mega farmers. And one of the guys was one of the biggest almond producers in the United States. And he said, yeah, there's a lot of like misinformation out there. He's like, yeah, it uses water. You know, it certainly does. I'm not going to say it doesn't use quite a bit of water, but it's been overly inflated. And he feels like, you know, like what I just said, which is it's a, it's a, it's an argument used to distract you from the real issue. It's a total scapegoat. I mean, almonds do use a lot of water. California produces about 90% of the world's almonds. So it produces 90% of the world's almonds. Scape nut. So it produces 90% of the world's almonds but only uses 8% of the state's water

which is still a lot of water. Alfalfa on the other hand uses 15% of the state's water. It's the largest water draw out of the entire state. It's a crop that's not fed to human beings. It's entirely fed to livestock. I mean a tiny percentage is fed to humans but the vast majority is fed to dairy cows and beef cows,

and then some to horses. But we're talking about 15% of the state's water. And I think it's an important thing for people to remember is there's a difference between water shortage and drought. Right now we're in a drought, which means that there's less rainfall falling than average. But we're always, California's constantly in a water shortage because we're pulling more water.

We're always using more than we get. We're in a deficit for it. And so we're pulling more water out of the ground than we get in the rainfall. And the vast majority of it is going to, the largest share is going to animal agriculture. And again, we're exporting 100 billion gallons of water every year out of the state,

just in the form of alfalfa. And then you look at, there's this huge campaign against Nestle for bottled water. They're exporting a hundred million gallons of water, uh, out of California in the form of bottled water. And everyone's outraged about that. And rightfully so, you know, that's pretty ridiculous. A hundred million versus a hundred billion. I mean, that's just, that's just Asia. Well, and then add on top of that, the infuriating kind of public service announcements that we're on the receiving end of here in california where it's all about consumer water use you know you can't mow your lawn uh you know cut your showers down and all of that and when you watch cal conspiracy and it dawns on you and you're

made you're made aware of the fact that consumer water use is what is it 15 four percent or four yeah i was gonna find me i couldn't remember what was 15 but for california it's about four percent four percent of how much of water goes to animal agriculture 47 of california's water footprint but not one message says hey maybe you should rethink that hamburger yeah right and and but no you better take a shorter shower like how many uh like one hamburger equates to how many showers in terms of waters about two months that's what it's like what are we doing what are we talking about it is complete insanity people can go to skip showers for beef.com yeah oh that's the most brilliant thing ever i forgot about that thank you for reminding us showers for

beef so you can you can continue to eat beef in California. You can help the drought. Just all you have to do is give up showering entirely. Right. Right. It's a very funny, like, funny or die. Like, is it a series of videos? There's a couple edits to it. There's two, yeah. Where guys go around petitioning people to not...

It's very funny. And they're giving tips on how to not smell so bad. And basically, and if you don't shower for two months, you can have an entire hamburger. You can still have it. And they have celebrity, like Moby is part of it. And they're very deadpan. They're super serious about this. I'll put links to all this stuff up in the show notes, including all the organizations that you listed.

Are those organizations listed on your site as well? No, we're actually going to put up a champions page. And for any organization that comes around and starts talking about it, we're going to champion anyone who talks about the issue. As long as you include this podcast on that champions page. Definitely. Another celebrity and another organization who's incredible is James Cameron. He is the real, real, real deal.

Big time. He's been working on his new Avatar films. But his organization's called avatar Alliance and they are going to be a big player here coming up. So big, big fan of him. For sure. Our girls go to their school. Oh yeah. Well, lucky. So Susie has been, uh, yeah, she's been amazing with us and what they're doing is, is truly incredible work and talk about somebody who's really just, you know, putting his money where his mouth is. And he's just begun. I mean, it's, it's crazy. The amount of, uh, impact and advocacy that the cameras are involved in. So it's exciting stuff,

man. It's a really cool time. Yeah. We're super excited. I mean, again, film comes out September 15th on Netflix, definitely to get people to watch it, share it, talk about it. Um, and it just let it grow from there. I mean, because it's really just gonna, it's just the beginning. I have so many more questions for you, but I think this is a good place to call it, you know, we'll keep it, we'll keep the quality higher. Right. Um, I will say this though, uh, it's been an honor and a privilege to, uh, get to know you guys and to, to have, you know, some level of association with this movie. Um, it's been, honor and a privilege to, uh, get to know you guys and to, to have, you know, some level of association with this movie. Um, it's been, you know,

an extraordinary experience to be able to attend some of these screenings, to be able to gauge the audience reaction and to be a champion of, of not only the film, but, um, you know, the message that is being conveyed by, by virtue of this film. And I have nothing but crazy mad respect for you. that is being conveyed by virtue of this film. And I have nothing but crazy mad respect for you. I'm not surprised that it's garnering the attention that it is.

And I think it's only gonna be a mushroom cloud from here on out. And it's gonna be super exciting to see how it plays out. And I can tell you that it's permanently changed how I think about these issues and how I speak about them. And now when I go and I give talks, I've included

a lot of the information that's contained in this movie has now found its way into like, you know, the keynotes that I give. And, you know, I just think it's so important that everybody really kind of look into this, do their own investigation, watch this movie and ask yourself and the people around you these hard questions. You know, our planet's health is at stake. And if we want to do what we can to, you know, preserve this planet's precious resources, not only just for ourselves, but for our children, future generations, you know, we got to make some changes, man. And so I'm proud of you guys for calling it out and taking the stand that you have. And I just can't wait to see what's next with you guys. calling it out and taking the stand that you have and uh i just uh i can't wait to see what's next with you guys thanks rich we're we're so deeply appreciative of all your support

i mean you you supported the film um and then you talk about it all the time it's like i'm really right the first time we're on the podcast is it's almost that was the spark yes kind of when it started taking off is really the catalyst first time we did the uh podcast which was when was out was it a year over a year i think it was over a year ago yeah yeah what about a year and a half ago yeah and and so we're just we're so so appreciative of all your support and my pleasure yeah i mean it's huge and again kip and i are big fans of the show it's like and i was just cracking i was listening to the mishka shabali interview just a couple of days ago. And just,

I mean, I just love the show. I love the show. So it's, it's super exciting for us to be on the show. Yeah. Thanks you guys. Come back anytime.

Well, when you can break public on your new stuff, there's always a chair for you guys on the show. So awesome. Awesome. All right, man. Well,

congrats on everything. And everybody out there, 915 September 15, that goes live, log into Netflix, watch the movie right away. Let's send Netflix a loud, clear message that this is a movie that we want to see. I think the more people that kind of bum rush Netflix on day one, will send a very loud and clear message to Netflix that this is a movie to pay pay attention to and to marshal resources behind if we can do that then they'll put money behind the marketing and you'll see more awareness of this very important issue so it's really critical

even if you've watched the movie it's a new cut even if you don't care about that log on and let it play anyway you can leave the room just let it play so that it's logging views for Netflix so that they're, uh, they're aware that there is a lot of interest out there. Um, if you want to find out more about the film, go to cowspiracy.com at cowspiracy on Twitter, uh,

Instagram, all those, all that kind of stuff. Right. It's pretty simple. Good. Cool. Awesome.

Anything else you guys want to say? I think that's it for now. Did we do it? We did it. All right, man. Thanks so much, you guys. Thank you. All right, peace.

Plants. All right, I hope you guys enjoyed that. If you have not yet listened to episode 91 of the podcast with those guys, go ahead and check that out. It should fill in the gaps on any questions you might have about who they are. Just big love to them. I'm so proud of those guys, what they've done and everything that they stand for. If you have not yet seen Cowspiracy starting on September 15th, it's available everywhere in the world. They speak English, I'm told. So dial it up.

Let's bum rush Netflix on that date. If you have seen it, see it again. It's a brand new cut. Tell your friends. Spread the word. You get the idea. This isn't just a movie. It's a mission.

It's a message. It's a movement. It's a movement I'm proud to support and be a part of. And I think you should, too. Let me know what you think in the comments section on the episode page at richroll.com. And for all your plant power needs, visit richroll.com. Check out our new cookbook and lifestyle guide, The Plant Power Way.

We got signed copies of Finding Ultra. We got Julie's Guided Meditation Program, which has been a hot item lately. We got nutritional products, 100% organic cotton garments, plant power tech teas, piece and plant sticker packs. We have fine art prints, temporary tattoos, all kinds of cool stuff. Basically, everything you need to take your health and your life to the next level. We got your bases covered at richroll.com.

I have a couple online courses at mindbodygreen.com if you're into that kind of thing. The Ultimate Guide to Plant-Based Nutrition, which is a good sort of compatriot piece to the Plant Power Way. And also a course on goal setting and achieving called The Art of Living with Purpose. Both are multiple hours of streaming video content, online communities, really proud of them, very affordably priced. Check them out at mindbodygreen.com. Click on Video Courses in the upper left-hand side on the menu, and you can learn more. Thanks for all the support, you guys, on the show. Keep telling your friends, sharing it on social media. I really appreciate it. Thank you for using the Amazon banner ad

at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. See you guys in a few days. Make it a great week, everyone. Talk to you soon. Peace. Plants. Seek out spiercy.