The Rich Roll Podcast - Darin Olien is Down to Earth
Episode Date: August 31, 2020Hot on the heels of Down To Earth -- the #1 hit Netflix series in which he co-stars alongside Zac Efron -- today my superfood hunting, brother-from-another-mother Darin Olien returns for his 4th... appearance on the podcast to blow minds and drop wisdom on all things nutrition, hydration, ecological preservation, longevity, and living a high-vibration life. One of my most popular guests to date, Darin’s biography reads like a Hemingway adventure novel. Devoted to advancing human health, ecological preservation and sustainability, he's spent the better part of the last 20 years embedded in remote farming communities across the Himalayas, South Pacific, Latin America and Asia, scavenging for the most nutritionally potent plants, nuts, and seeds on the planet. His most recent obsession is Barùkas (aka the baru nut) -- an incredibly nutrient-rich superfood known to the indigenous tribes of the Brazilian Cerrado for millennia, yet virtually unheard of anywhere else. This discovery led to Darin to an epiphany: he could help preserve the Cerrado (which is a tropical savanna ecoregion three times the size of Texas) by employing its indigenous communities to harvest the native baru and importing them to North America. A win-win to preserve precious environmental resources, support indigenous communities, and simultaneously introduce North America to the healthiest nut on the planet. Everything Darin has learned over the decades is laid bare on the pages of Superlife, his New York Times bestselling primer on all things health and well-being. His 121Tribe.com app will put you on a 21-day lifestyle-changing diet and exercise program. And his recently launched podcast, The Darin Olien Show, is already killing the game. Down To Earth introduced to a broad, mainstream audience what I've always known about this incredible human: A man who truly walks his talk, Darin is the real deal. Picking up where we left off two years ago in RRP 382, Darin and I discuss all things Down To Earth. The show's origins. What it was like collaborating with a global superstar. May this conversation leave you understanding why Darin is the first person I turn to for advice not just on nutrition and fitness -- but on all manner of subjects related to living my best authentic life. For those new to me and Big D, we’ve logged about 6 hours of extraordinary back catalog conversation over the years. I highly suggest you visit those archived episodes, which you can find here: RRP 382, RRP 268, and RRP 153. The visually inclined can watch our exchange on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It is with pride, love and gratitude that I share the wisdom of my friend and mentor with you today. Peace + Plants, Rich
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I think more clear than ever, people need to be healthy.
They need to stop distracting themselves and eat more plants
and figure out a program that's going to work and get healthy
because we need strong, healthy, happy people
non-judgmentally kicking ass in their life.
And I really believe that's the purpose of health,
so that you can kick ass in your life and have the fulfilling life you want so you're not miserable with a chemistry set that isn't working.
And it really comes down to two very simple things.
I care about the health of people.
person has more choices and can really kick ass in their life and not have to drag around this body and then be a kind of this victim of a body that's failing. So I believe in health of
the individual, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, and I believe in the intimate
connection and the health of the planet. That's superfood hunter Darren O'Lean,
and this is episode 542 of the
Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Greetings, wanderers, seekers, learners, listeners. This is a podcast,
the Rich Roll Podcast. I'm your host. It's time to strap in because today, today, my friends,
my superfood hunting brother from another mother, Darren O'Lean, hot on the heels of his number one
hit Netflix show, Down to Earth, in which he co-stars alongside Zac Efron, returns for his fourth appearance on the show.
He's going to blow minds.
He's going to drop wisdom on all things nutrition, hydration, ecological preservation, longevity, and many other topics, including, of course, superfoods.
OG listeners will well remember Darren,
but for those of you who are new Big D fans,
maybe you came here because of seeing Darren on the show.
You're here for the first time.
Together, Darren and I have logged about six hours
of extraordinary back catalog conversation over the years,
and you can find those conversations in
episodes 382, 268, and 153 in my archive at richroll.com. He is by far one of my most popular
guests to date. And Darren's biography kind of reads more like an adventure novel than a resume.
He kind of reads more like an adventure novel than a resume.
This is a guy who spent the better part of the last couple decades scavenging the earth for the most nutritionas, the South Pacific, Latin America,
Asia, shepherding exotic, high-quality fair trade superfoods and indigenous herbal commodities to market. His latest infatuation is barucas or the baru nut, which is this incredibly nutrient-rich,
delicious, but kind of essentially virtually unheard of superfood harvested
sustainably in partnership with the indigenous tribes of the Brazilian Cerrado.
If you watch down to earth, then you know that Big D is jacked. What you might not know is that
he is 100% plant-based. He's been so for many years. And today you're going to hear a lot about
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How to make this switch and more importantly,
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Okay, Darren.
In addition to being one of my closest best friends, Darren is legit the real deal. He's somebody that I turn to basically every single week we talk, and he gives me unbelievable guidance,
gives me unbelievable guidance,
not on simply things like nutrition, fitness,
hydration, and sustainability, but also for just good, solid life advice.
This guy is wise, he's grounded,
he's incredibly personable and giving,
he's spiritually aware,
and just bottom line, one of my favorite people.
And I think that's just about all I want to say in preface to today's conversation.
To learn more about Darren, and you're going to want to learn more about him after listening to this, check out his book, Super Life, which just hit the New York Times bestseller list for the very first time, despite coming out over three and a half, almost four years ago,
due in no small part to the smash success of his show, Down to Earth, which you can dial up on
Netflix. Darren also recently launched a podcast himself, The Darren O'Lean Show. He's already
killing the game. And he's got a new app called 121 Tribe, 121tribe.com, where he liberally shares all his copious wisdom.
Okay, enough.
This is me and the force of nature known as Darren O'Lean.
So a lot's happened since the last time that we did this.
Dude.
Your life has exploded.
It's incredible.
Yeah, amongst the other craziness, it is incredible.
Yeah.
First of all, congrats.
It's all very well earned.
I'm super proud of you.
And it's been such a delight to see America or the world
kind of embrace what I've already known for so long
and things that you've been talking about
and living like your entire life,
it's gone massively broad.
I would imagine there's a little bit of vertigo
with all of that.
I mean, the number one show on Netflix is crazy.
Yeah, it's hard to have a relationship with that.
I think that it's almost, if I can describe the experience,
it's almost like, oh, cool. That's cool. And yet you're seeing the numbers rise, you're seeing
the followers rise, and you're like, and then the book, New York Times bestseller, and the podcast,
book, New York Times bestseller and the podcast and then the show. And I think that it feels like a responsibility in a good way rather than look at me. Like it really feels like-
Well, now you have the platform to speak more broadly and potently about the things that you
care about and have always cared about. And just to recap for people that are perhaps new to you,
last time we talked,
it was on the eve of Baruchas launching to the world.
And since that moment, which was,
I don't even know when it was, a couple of years ago,
I think at this point, maybe a year and a half ago,
you have co-hosted this show down to earth with Zac Efron.
It went to number one on Netflix.
Your book, Super Life,
just hit the New York Times bestseller list.
You launched a podcast.
It went to number one in the health and fitness category
on iTunes and your Instagram, I think,
what did you have like 70,000 or something like that
before all of this?
Like mid thirties.
Oh, mid thirties.
And now you're at like 400 or something.
That is the power of Netflix.
It's unbelievable.
Yeah.
You know, the funny thing is our friend Neil Strauss said there was another show that came out similarly and a different show completely, but they were doing really well.
But the guy didn't receive a lot of
followers. And the only thing that I can attest to this is, and we can unpack a lot of this stuff as
to the culmination of the show and how my idea of the intensity of the information made its way through the production and through the understanding of the audience that I don't have.
But what I see is that through the levity, through the lightness of how we delivered the show with some information, clearly, it's somehow reached across the aisle
of other people that don't necessarily live this way, don't necessarily have the same amount of
awareness about how they are sitting in the world as it relates to their own health and the health of the planet.
So it's such a beautiful thing
to see regular people that I am, that you are,
we're no different, but that they are tagline message,
thousands of them this way saying, my life is different. I am never the same.
I'm going to do something better with my life over and over and over and over again from a nine-year-old
to a 70-year-old. That rich is worth everything. Yeah. It's a beautiful exercise in humility
as well, right? Like we talk every week. So I've been with you from the outset of this whole
experience. And I know very well that had you had your druthers, this would have been a much more
serious, intense, deep dive and issue-based and policy-based.
And you had sort of grumbled along the way, like, I don't know if this is gonna work.
Like, I want it to be like this.
It looks like it's going in this direction.
And yet to see it so well-received on the broadest level is a lesson, right?
In that, A, like, I don't know everything.
B, these producers understood something that I didn't
because if I'd had my way,
maybe it wouldn't have connected in this way, right?
A hundred percent.
Like you spot on with the struggle
because I did, you know,
the beautiful thing is we can get into the origin story
of how this even came about.
Oh, I love the origin story.
Tell the origin story.
Well, people, people, talking to you, like this, come on, this is the origin story right here, right now.
The podcast that we did, I don't think it was the first one, probably the second.
What is the second one. It was probably the second. It was the second one.
Probably, yeah.
It came by way of the show.
So we did that show.
Something about what I said, who I was, I don't know.
But Zach heard it.
And he was like, what is this guy doing?
I want to know about this person.
What is he up to?
And so he reached out to your buddy, who's now my buddy as well, Connor Dwyer, the Olympian badass swimmer.
That you guys are mutual friends with.
So Zach is friends with Connor.
You're friends with Connor.
So Zach reached out to Connor to get my number
to see if it was okay that you give Zach my number
because Zach was interested.
Who I still haven't met, by the way.
I know, that's funny.
And kind of how it crystallized,
well, one of the aspects of it,
and I told this on the podcast recently,
so forgive me if you've already heard it, but I went out riding with Connor and Zach's brother, Dylan, along with Simon Garens, who's like this incredible Tour de France rider who was visiting from overseas at the time.
And after our ride, I'm like, come on, let's go over to Darren's house.
And I took those guys over to your house pre-burning down and we're gonna get into all of that.
And you showed them your whole setup
and they were like,
Zach would just kill to be here and all of that.
So I think that trickled back to him as well
and set in motion what would become
this incredible TV show that you guys have done together.
Yeah, so when Zach finally,
it was months later, I'd forgotten, right?
So you said, yeah.
Yeah, it didn't happen quickly.
No, so you said,
apparently Zach Efron wants to reach out to you.
Is it okay that I give Connor the number to give to Zach?
And I was like, sure, whatever, that's fine.
And so I forgot about it.
And then I remember the moment where I got this
cold, when I mean cold, I didn't know the number, text. And it was like, hey, Darren, this is Zac
Efron. I really enjoyed, I heard the podcast. I really connect with what you're doing, like a very
sweet. And I ran up by my, Eliza, my then wife. And she was like,
wow, that sounds really genuine. Cool. So I was like, dude, let's have lunch then.
And so we ate at this great vegan restaurant, Golden Mean. And we sat upstairs away from
everybody and sat there for a minimum of two hours. And he was largely just asking about what I was up to.
And then it was kind of at the very end where we walked out.
He said, so what else are you doing?
I said, well, for 10 years,
people have been asking me to do this superfood hunting show,
but I really wanted to broaden it
because superfood hunting has woken me up
to environmental issues because I've seen a lot
and I've connected to a lot of
people. So I want to do the show, longevity principles, health, food systems, agriculture,
water. I want to get... And he was like, wait a minute. So you travel, you go to all these places?
I'm like, yeah, of course. So he got so fired up. And then we kind of said bye, we'll stay in touch.
Then he called me two hours later. He basically said, you know, I have this existing deal with
Netflix in a topic that I just am not that excited about. It was travel. It was with other celebrities
eating in countries of origin that these celebrities were connected to.
Like feeding Phil or that Phil Rosenthal show.
Yeah.
So it was like going to those countries, eating that authentic food, and a couple of celebrities hanging out.
And they shot the pilot.
No one was really, from what I hear, no one was really that jazzed about it, nor was Zach.
So he asked his team and the production, could we kind of bring these concepts together and basically do what Darren was suggesting?
And I'll be damned.
He walked that in.
Everyone kind of, I'm putting words on it reluctantly, but I think they trusted
something. And then over time I got into pre-production and we spent a lot of time
ironing out the show and the production team was jazzed because they're like, oh wow, meaningful,
powerful content. Well, typically in a situation like this,
the producers would be shouldering the burden of trying to find the locations and who are the
people we're going to meet with and what are the themes we're going to explore. But you brought
this lifetime of experience and relationships to this. I suspect, and I want to hear more about
this, that most of the places you went to, you've been to
before, these are people you already know who are in your life. As a result of you being this
superfood hunter for all these years, you've traveled the world and you already knew like,
oh, here are the places where we can explore these themes. And I already have these relationships
intact. Yeah, indeed. There was a lot of things. And then some course corrections on the fly too,
like Iceland was like almost a last minute thing.
And I actually off camera, I did some foraging with some herbalists and stuff.
And so really enjoyed the opportunity.
But yeah, it was again like I had lists of colleagues in every episode, like heavy, right?
To your point before, like if it was up to me,
it would have been-
You would have gone down the academic rabbit hole.
A little heavier, indeed.
And the thing about me when I travel,
obviously I'm having fun.
And so a little bit of the candor from the show,
they grabbed a little more
than I probably am comfortable with, but that's me.
So when I'm out and I'm on a mission, I also have the levity and the lightness about it,
but I'm absolutely committed. So I had all of these experts on every episode and we're
going to interview these people and that people and Dr. Pollack and these water scientists and Blumenthal from American Botanical
Council. And we had Andreas, who's a head of biopiracy that got cut out. So there was a lot
more rigor of intensity of information. And it was hard, to be honest with you.
The first actual episode we shot was Puerto Rico.
And that was kind of flying to Puerto Rico and realizing I have nobody on my side.
That's what it felt like because I didn't really – yes, I got to know a lot of the producers beforehand.
But then I'm like, this is Zach and he's a famous person.
And there's intensity around that.
And then realizing that like, oh, this may not be getting all of the information
I want out. And it was hard. It was back in the hotel after a couple of days of shooting. And I
was like, I don't know if I made the right decision. Well, it looks like, it feels like
you went into this thinking,
I'm gonna be the straight man and Zach's the entertainment and I'm the educator here.
But the way that it feels when I watch it
is almost like Zach's the straight man
and you're the one who's spinning a crazy yarn
and he's kind of breaking the fourth wall
and looking at the camera like,
is this for real with this guy?
Like he's the skeptic, he's traveling in the boots
of the typical audience member
who's never been exposed to these ideas.
And I think what makes it work is
there is a bit of a vloggy kind of YouTube sensibility.
Like there's a comedians in cars aspect to this
where a lot of it is just you guys in the car
driving around, right?
And then it's laced with these beautiful drone shots and incredible cinematography and these
montages. And it picks its moments where it gets serious, but it's always interspersed with these
moments of levity to make it, quote unquote, like entertaining. Yeah. And here's the thing
all I will also say. Over the years, people have said, well, if
you want to do a show, you got to get a celebrity. And I was like, no, I don't want to do it
bad enough. I don't want to have to do that to make my topics what I believe relevant,
relevant. So when I met Zach and he, and this is very important because this hit me and this changed everything.
This was when he said, hey, I have all these people that follow me.
I'm an actor, but I want to do something with my platform.
I want to make a difference.
I really want to, you don't see me hawking things on my platform.
You don't see me selling stuff.
That's for a reason.
And so I wanna do something that's gonna move the needle
on health, on the planet,
on moving towards a better,
sustainable, regenerative outcome for our existence here.
And when he said it, I believed it, right?
And that changed it all for me,
meaning that, number one, it came this way.
He reached out to me,
so it wasn't me trying to find some celebrity
to sell my show to.
It was this innocent and powerful way
that he wanted to contribute
based on where he is in his life. And he does care.
He's a very sweet, empathetic person that does care and maybe just didn't know how to do it
until he saw a feather or a line or a string in this connection for us to be able to start turning that corner to actually
make a difference. And I think it's a great start because for me, it's never, you've known
what I'm about. It's never been about a show. It's about a movement. It's about a mission.
It's about collaboration. It's about really doing something that will make a lasting impact. And I don't
necessarily know how to do that, but I'm learning and I'm learning from people what they're asking
for. So yeah, I'm connected to a lot of how this unfolds because I do not take it lightly
that something has sparked this audience, has entertained them, has dropped their defenses of being talked to about another agenda-filled documentary.
And listen, there's been a lot of documentaries that have,
it's hard, even though the subject matter you and I can agree with,
but it's sometimes hard to take because you know we can listen to it,
but it's not going gonna reach over the aisle
and grab the other people.
Yeah, the show is a very deft, gentle hand.
And I think the coolest part
is how it's connecting with really young people.
Like, are you really gonna save the dude that's our age
who's set in his ways and has his worldview at this point.
But if you can reach that nine year old or that 12 year old
and get them thinking about these things at that age,
when they're malleable and they're just forming
their opinions about stuff, it's incredibly powerful.
So, I just think it's cool.
And I think, to speak to Zach a little bit,
it's laudable that he would want to use this massive platform and his, you
know, fame and celebrity for a good purpose. And you and I can't fathom what it must be like to be
a guy like that, who's been just insanely famous for as long as he can possibly remember. And
when you're in that position, A, like how do you even interface with the world in a healthy way?
And B, like to the extent that like you want to use it for good, like, you know, it's a really cool thing.
Like I just, I can't imagine what his day-to-day life existence is like.
Yeah.
I mean, you got a glimpse of it traveling all over the world with him.
Yeah, you get a glimpse of it and it is intense.
I mean, any country, any city.
And he doesn't seem to want any part of that.
He's brilliantly gifted at what he does, but it's not about that for him.
Yeah, it's an interesting relationship for sure.
Because on the one hand, any celebrity will say, of course, there's some great things about being a celebrity. But man, there is something about it on the intensity scale in terms of population and what people want from you and that kind of energy that's you and I can walk around and be okay. But when that's always almost anywhere
on the globe like that. And how do you trust anybody?
Yeah. Because everybody who rolls up on you
has some kind of weird agenda. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, listen, we had a few moments in the car where – and that's the cool thing about the show.
Eventually, for me, I just didn't care that the cameras were on to try to be something.
We just – they were always on and then we always just had these great moments.
And there was a couple of times when I was driving from New York to the Angry Orchard Apple situation.
and from New York to the Angry Orchard Apple situation,
it was just this beautiful moment where we just almost were having our own moment and our own little podcast in a sense and talking about his life
and talking about that intensity.
And, yeah, it's not easy.
But I think through – Zach's not afraid to dig in and to look at where he has his issues and where he struggles.
And we all need to do that.
Yeah, of course.
I'm grateful for him to open himself up in a personal way and not being a character, not being a actor.
And largely, he was not that comfortable in the beginning of just like, oh, there's no- There's no script.
No, it's just us.
Yeah. Well, when you're an actor you're
inhabiting somebody else yeah in this he has to be himself yeah and you know me turn the camera
I got shit to say right you know even though they took a lot of the weird moments but uh
you know but but I think it's it's it's great to also see the different parts of people because it also makes it real.
Because I can get very serious about these subject matters.
And I have both sides where I can go in and I have strong opinions and everything else.
At the same time, in order for me to keep myself balanced, I have those fun moments that I learned when I traveled. I've seen a lot of things in the middle of nowhere that are horrible.
Like when people, you know, when kids are dying, you're looking at these children getting water, for example, in Africa.
And it's feces
ridden water. And you're like, that's their life every day. And they're dying of waterborne
diseases. And I'm sitting there talking to this village over here about Baobab in Western Africa,
about how we can get that to a bunch of people buying these supplements, for example.
Up in Point to them.
Yeah, it's a struggle,
but how I remedy that is I take that very seriously.
I've always taken that seriously
and how I remedy that and wrestle with that is,
well, how can I benefit these people?
How can I, and we've talked about this several times
in terms of how to look at
kind of trying to create some sort of, you know, whatever terminology you use, circular economy,
fair trade, all of this stuff. For me, it's just the moral compass of this. Like,
I see something wrong or not correct or not optimal. How can I, in my own way, how can I help this situation?
And so within that world of seeing this,
it's easy to get overwhelmed
with the amount of intensity we have
with what we're not doing great as humans,
what we absolutely can improve
and what we absolutely can improve in a great way that doesn't have to be
detrimental on so many of these other directions from an environment, from a health perspective,
there's no separation between our inner ecosystems and our outer ecosystems. And
our great friend, Zach Bush, speaks wonderfully about that interaction.
And so, and I think we need to, as global citizens, we just literally have to start thinking that way.
And I also challenge companies to start thinking that way.
Like, what is the end product of your container?
Like, shouldn't you be responsible for what that's doing?
That single-use plastic?
That's here for a thousand years.
Maybe you should be responsible for that.
And maybe there's a currency that we need to tack onto or adjust or, you know.
So anyway, I'm going down those rabbit holes.
But that's the view of even the impetus of this show was like, listen, there is a massive amount of stuff
that we can bring light to.
How do you even start?
And the only way is like, well, let's start here
and my life's not over and I have a lot more to give
and maybe we get a second season,
maybe we get a third, maybe we just keep going
and maybe it proliferates into bringing attention
to a lot of other things that aren't having the right attention. And just one little thing on
that too, like global warming, even having that word or words, that becomes now political.
That becomes black and white. I don't even like to use those words.
I just wanna go back to,
okay, well, if you can provide clean power
to a group of Aboriginal people
in the middle of Australia,
and I'm using that example
because we're working on some projects there,
and it doesn't cost the government
$6.2 billion to provide unsustainable fuel for their generators that are always breaking down.
This is year by year by year by year by year. But if we can provide water, food, power cleanly,
why wouldn't we do it? Yeah, shouldn't we be doing that? I mean, I think that, again, the show is successful because it doesn't take some kind of partisan perspective,
but there is a subtle challenge to American exceptionalism throughout the show, because
you go to these other places that we as Americans might think are underdeveloped in comparison to
kind of the technology that we produce for the world.
And yet they're so much more advanced than we are
in terms of how they're approaching
these very important subjects.
A perfect example is going to Paris
and seeing what they're doing with the water
and with the water fountains
and how water is available to everybody.
And that episode ends with the statistics
on single-use plastics for water bottles
and it's staggering, right?
And it makes you think like,
that's something very basic
that we could and should be doing here and we're not.
And I think the more of those experiences
that you shine a light on,
it makes us reflect on our own flawed perception
of exceptionalism as Americans, right?
Yeah.
And I think that's a very powerful thing
that some people who may not have gotten to travel
and don't get to see part of the world,
they're seeing these amazing people
doing some incredible things
that we have gotten this delusion of US
as some sort of superior superpower when, yeah, there might be things that we do have without a doubt.
But there's also fatal flaws that we are still doing in the face of profit-centered economy.
And that will always bite you in the ass.
And so, you know, as simple as just pulling the rug out
from under this single-use bottle.
I mean, of the 300 metric tons of plastic
being created every year,
half of it is literally single-use plastic.
Yeah, it's just-
And mostly water bottles.
It's insane.
So we can absolutely start, we need to turn off that faucet of that insane idea because
not one bit of the plastic that's ever been created on earth is gone.
It's still here and that's up to 9.2 billion metric tons.
Of all the places that you went for the, what was your favorite episode or location?
I've only watched the first three, so. Oh man.
You're going to cry. That last episode, you're going to cry.
Is that the one where your house burns down? Yeah. I cried both on the show and off when I watch again.
But it's hard to know because they each had this own special place.
I think, I mean, Iceland, just from a personal perspective, I wanted to just explore infinitely more.
That certainly was.
And then you go to Sardinia and you see the true village life, centuries old, this simple way of living, which is flying right in the face of everything that we've grown up with.
And yet we're trying to reach back to it
to give us the gems so that we can live long.
Yeah, everybody in the village dating back 500 years
can be traced to just five families, I think, right?
Yeah, yeah.
And we both got to, one got cut out,
but I interviewed this hundred-year-old lady too, and I literally could sit there all day.
The wisdom, just pouring out of these people.
Not that they are eloquently giving you the meaning of life, but there's these simple, it's almost like powerful contentment that you just don't feel from
anybody it's just this i haven't left my village i have this one lady that i interviewed
that wasn't on the show she's never been married and really? You just, I didn't think about it.
What do you mean you didn't think about it?
She was like, I just was living my life.
And I didn't think about it.
I didn't feel like I needed a man.
And so it just never happened.
And I was like, wow.
Like she didn't buy into anything
because her village was also not impressed upon these made up ideologies.
It was, this is the simple way of living.
I'm content in such a degree.
I'm blowing apart things that we think we need to accomplish.
Yeah.
And what is the half-life on those experiences?
Right, like you've had many of these
over the course of your life, but then you come home,
how much of that sits with you
and changes how you live on a daily basis
versus, you know, fading away?
Like that's the trick, right?
You go and you're like, we got it all wrong.
Look at what these people are doing. And then we go back and then we just do what we always do. Yeah. Yeah. I
think that's a great point. I mean, largely I've, I mean, you know, I'm pretty, I'm pretty content
in my, in my now yurt that I had to construct after the fire and on the land and under the trees.
So in one respect, all and every trip that I've taken has influenced me into the kind of life that I want.
I am pulled and drawn to contribute and leave something behind, whether it's education, inspiration, connecting things and making certain things possible to contribute to things that I think we need to on a bigger scale, whether that's health, whether that's the environment.
That's the wrestle. So I have a huge desire to contribute in that way. I wouldn't say I'm content with that because it's driving me,
but I'm content in saying yes to it. It fuels me through, you know, going back to like the, the population of people loving the show.
I look at it as like, yes, keep coming, keep coming to what I'm doing. Keep coming. There
are things that I'm creating that I can't reveal yet, but I am not stopping and I'm not okay with sitting in Swayalo in Sardinia becoming 100 years old.
Right.
That's not going to work for you.
No.
That's not your blueprint anyway.
It's not my blueprint of the blue zones.
Right.
But I think that's also the contentment of finding you, finding me, finding what drives me, not from an ego perspective, but from the heart of everything I want to do. And it really comes down to two very simple things.
I care about the health of people. I believe a healthy person has more choices and can really kick ass in their life and not have to drag around this body and then be kind of this victim of a body that's failing. So I believe in health of the individual,
mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually.
And I believe in the intimate connection
and the health of the planet.
So if we can contribute in those ways,
anything else, you know me, anything else,
I just don't care.
And those two things are interconnected, of course.
100%.
And I think the show does a good job of establishing that
and helping people to understand that connection. And I think the only does a good job of establishing that and helping people to understand that connection.
And I think the only other thing that I've gotten from this, such a great question, Rich, is the only, not the only other thing, another thing that I've gotten from the travels is not only learning more about myself from the reflection of countless different people
around the world, and that is a boundary to what works for me and being completely cool with saying
no. And this flies in the face of being a kid from Minnesota. I don't want to let anyone down.
I know you well enough to know that you like to say yes,
and you got a lot of stuff.
Over the years, you've got a lot of stuff flung in your direction,
and perhaps you've said yes a little too often to certain things.
And now the volume is at 11, I would suspect, with what's coming at you.
So you got to definitely hone in your no engine.
Exactly. Yeah. And stay focused rather than getting distracted, chasing things that seem cool because everything is going to look
like an awesome thing to do, right? And you can't do it all. So it just makes it more important that
you really keep going back to what your core mission is, what your mission statement is,
what your intention is.
Exactly.
I mean, putting it through those two cylinders helps, meaning the health of people, health of the planet.
But then there's also what I'm just really grateful for.
I've learned a lot from people reaching out, a lot of people doing incredible things to make the world,
people doing incredible things to make the world, not only on the show itself, to see CO2 sequestering in Iceland where they're injecting the CO2 back in the ground and then
it's creating rock and stone and that's a great way to sequester some of it.
Yeah, I'd like to also support CO2 sequestering from regenerative agriculture.
That makes the most sense and something that we can do right now.
And, you know, Zach Bush is doing great stuff with Farmer's Footprint and all of those things.
Those are the kinds of things that I want to continue to support. company called Footprint that is about a billion dollar business that no one knows about that is
supplying non-plastic for single-use plastic alternatives to the big boys. ConAgra, Pepsi,
McDonald's, they're scheduled to put out billions of single-use items replacing single-use plastic.
of single-use items replacing single-use plastic.
That to me, those kind of relationships from the show,
that fits with my mission to align, support,
be ambassador for, and there's another 25 of them that I'm trying to do diligence on and all of that stuff.
So yeah, it takes a lot and it's hard to say no
with things like that, for sure.
We got to talk about Lourdes.
Yeah.
That was a trip.
Yeah.
You go to Lourdes and you're gonna figure out
what's going on with the water there and the healing.
And that episode opens up with a very tricky exchange
with the chief medical doctor.
I don't know what his title is, right?
Yeah.
That got off to a rocky start.
And it looked like he thought you were gonna make fun of him
or something like what was happening there
and like walk me through that.
Cause then ultimately it gets back on track
and that was kind of a mind blowing thing
that he communicated.
Yeah, so that was a interesting,
like there was so many different directions
to go down with water from my scientist guys, which would have been a little dry.
And so I said, well, let's go to Lourdes because I want to actually study the water.
And there was a whole part where I was looking at the water and we cut it out.
And then I sent the water to Dr. Gerald Pollack for him to do.
And he wrote the book, The Fifth Phase of Water.
He was an incredible, he's an incredible researcher on water.
He's got a foundation.
They're doing extensive research.
He puts a program out every year and the top scientists in the world.
So number one, I wanted to learn about what the hell's going on with this water.
And so we ended up at Lourdes and I knew the medical doctor existed, but I didn't want to meet him ahead of time.
And so the people that I didn't know, I didn't want to meet before the cameras were on because I wanted to be completely authentic.
And I don't want to throw anyone under the bus.
So the producers had set the meeting up.
Obviously, we had to have an
official meeting. And so this is what we're going to do. We're going to film this. And,
you know, one person's an actor, the other person is kind of the facilitator here of
water expert himself, which they said. And so we met him on camera. And instantly when I met him, I'm like, oh, I know that kind of guy.
Like he's a brilliant, wonderful, very articulate and very proud person.
And very, like I said, underscore very intelligent.
So we met, cameras are rolling, we shook hands and he started, you know, he sat
back in his chair, super excited to tell us a story. You know, he had the platform. And so he
started on the story and he was a great orator and it was going to be a story. And one of the producers, as he started, kind of stepped in and said,
hey, could you get to the part where blah, blah, blah? And oh my God, he was insulted.
Yeah.
And I can understand both sides. I can understand. He just started and we set this up.
And so he went from – I love the guy, by the way.
And I don't hold any of that against him because of a variety of things.
And he just went from zero to about a nine and a half being upset.
And so I'm like, we're done.
Meaning he thought that you were taking him seriously and this might be some kind of weird hit piece or...
Yeah, he was starting in to really tell us a story and he was interrupted.
And then it just all triggered like, what am I doing?
I am legit.
I have a position that's real.
I am a medically trained doctor.
And he hadn't got to the point of how this actually works, right?
And how this actually works was he, with all of his medical training and a whole research, their job is to figure out if a miracle comes to them or someone thinking that this spontaneously miracle happened, his job was to figure out, did it have the criteria that they could debunk, that they could figure out, well, it wasn't spontaneous and it didn't completely go under remission.
It didn't change.
And there's all of our medical reasons that didn't add up to this miracle.
So the science is heavy and it's long.
And so as he was describing, he was trying to get there and he got interrupted and
sure enough, he was pissed. And then I realized in a nanosecond that this guy's out. He's out.
And Zach was like a deer in headlights. And so he was like, holy shit. And everybody was.
And the producers were in the other room. It was just us and the camera guys. And so I just go, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't care about the camera. I was like,
and it was a little longer than what we actually cut it to be. And I was just like, let me back up.
This is who I am. I care about everything that you're saying. And I want to learn,
that you're saying and I want to learn.
Screw the cameras.
Please tell me your story.
And so I just reeled it back and I said,
this is Zach, this is me.
I've spent my lifetime in this space of learning and exploring.
And I want to know what's going on here at Lourdes
and I want to know what your position is
on all of this stuff.
And then he sat back, calmed down, bam.
Right.
And that changed everything.
And the producers were like,
we don't know how you did that, but thank you.
Yeah.
And it became, and then of course in the episode,
they showed the x-rays, the mirror.
It's-
Right, and just to recap for people
that are watching or listening,
Lourdes is this place in France
where people have been going for hundreds of years
to bathe themselves and imbibe this water
that's lauded for its healing properties,
dating back to Bernadette having this vision
of the Mother Mary and being compelled to dig up this,
essentially like underground spring. of the mother Mary and being compelled to dig up this,
essentially like underground spring. And for, when was that?
What year was that when she did that?
Do you remember?
1800s or was it older than that?
I think it was 1825 or so maybe.
And so over the years,
there are all these documented cases of people going there
and being healed.
So you go there and say,
explain to me what's going on here.
You meet with this doctor
and he's showing you x-rays and MRIs
of cases that he has vetted over the years
where there's no legitimate scientific explanation
for how these people have healed themselves
other than the fact that they have come to Lourdes
and participated in this ritual of bathing in this water.
Yeah, yeah.
And yeah, this spring has been flowing ever since
and people drink it, they bathe in it, they come.
Clearly there's an energy there.
It feels like a sacred place.
I mean, it's just-
And that guy had like,
had a massive cancer growth in his hip, right? That
just ate away his entire hip bone. Yeah. So that was the one that he showed us that was one of the
latest miracles. They had decades of research, a stack of research papers trying to figure out how
this happened. The guy himself apparently didn't believe in the miracle or anything,
but he bathed in it and started tingling all over.
And his hip was mush.
There was nothing but ligaments holding his hip together
because the cancer just had eaten his right side of the hip completely.
And it all regenerated. And there was zero scientific evidence for them to explain it.
And so what happens is once they've hit these certain criteria, then they're like,
we can't explain it in any way in our modern medicine,
from every angle, from all the researchers, we can't explain it. So then they pass it
to the parish, to the church, and they're like, it's now up to you whether you... So it's not
the doctor's decision. His job is to try to debunk it. He runs it through this calculus of these criteria.
One of which is that it has to stand the test of time, right?
Like, so they look, they continue to like study these people
for like a decade after they visit Lourdes.
And they have to dismiss any other rationale
for why this person was healed and all those other things.
Can't ever come back.
Right.
Yeah. It's so crazy come back. Right. Yeah.
It's so crazy, man.
Yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, so Lourdes was this place we could go to to start the conversation that many, many,
I've met hundreds of scientists
that have dedicated their lives
to understanding this mystery, this mystery of water.
And it has so many properties.
We talked about water.
Yeah, we did like a whole podcast on water.
Yeah, and it goes deeper and like pun intended,
it goes deeper and deeper and deeper and deeper.
So Lourdes was this opportunity for us to go, there is a form, a structure, a quantum expression, a chemical expression, a biological expression, an influence that water has and receives and transmits and transports and everything from conduction of voltage,
which we live on, which our cells are needed,
a certain voltage we need in order to have healthy cells.
And you're thinking about, okay, well, all cells are through an osmotic flow
of intertissual water and extratissual water. So there's an osmotic flow of intertissual water
and extra tissue water.
So there's a osmotic flow.
And then when you talk about,
I mean, just touching on this again,
because it's so fascinating when you talk about,
which is why I love Dr. Gerald Pollack's work,
when that water touches a hydrophilic surface,
like the cell membrane,
it creates energy from coming up against that surface
by exchanging protons and electrons,
by pushing them out,
creating that what's called an exclusion zone,
a little thin layer in between the membrane
and the water itself.
And you're like, what?
It's creating voltage.
It's creating energy just by the water coming up against the surface.
So that exploration is a continuous, you know this about me, it's a continuous exploration of what the hell is water and how it's structured and how it can be influenced and how it can hold ridiculous amounts of memory, physical memory, like a hard drive, a computer.
It can transmit information.
It can receive information. So Lourdes, going back to the show, Lourdes was dipping our toe in a little bit of what potentially water can kind of be.
And you took that water and you had it studied.
That didn't make it into the show, but what were the results of that?
Well, I mean, it's so hard to, so I tested it from total dissolved solids. So it had a great medium mineral content. You don't
want too much. So there wasn't anything profound. There wasn't any toxins that I saw. There wasn't
heavy metals. There wasn't environmental issues um and exposure
from our modern day world there wasn't a lot so it was a spring it was clean it wasn't
you know so there wasn't that negative side of it there was a slightly positive ph to it so it
wasn't acidic so it was benefiting so when you at pH, you're also looking at voltage.
So when you have a negative voltage, you have electron giving situation.
If you have a acidic situation, you have, call it a free radical.
You have a scavenger trying to take from in the body.
And when you have a negative voltage, you have an antioxidant essentially. So that's a very quick version. So from the pH perspective,
it was like, okay, that makes sense. It's balanced. It's got electrolytes. And then I sent
it off to Dr. Pollack. Unfortunately, I put it in a stainless steel jug, I sent it through,
but it's so hard because it's now being influenced
by all the other frequencies, by the airline trip.
And so he looked at it, we didn't get conclusive evidence,
whether it had a lot of these hydrophilic properties or so, you know.
There wasn't anything that immediately jumped out to you that said, this is different than any other
water I've ever seen. And there's some kind of alien entity. Yeah. But that being said,
this was a very crude way of looking at it. There was a lot of, there's a lot more science you could
look into
that from- You think Pollack would go right to the source and test it there?
He has over the years been in touch with this doctor. So there's been a lot of the top scientists
and from their perspective, there is something going on with the water. I don't know what that
is yet, but there has to be some sort of control of it.
It's not gonna work by me putting in a thing
and sending it off to Dr. Pollack
and having some super molecule that is in there.
But it begs the question,
there is without a doubt coming from the earth in aquifer
that is still flowing naturally from the source,
from the earth itself, it's obviously a better water, period.
But the miraculousness, I would love to find out in my lifetime how that actually occurs.
Yeah.
Well, it's crazy times.
You got UFOs being legitimized and all
kinds of stuff. So who knows, man? Let's talk about your house burning down. I mean, I think
if memory serves me, when we last did the podcast, you had just recently acquired the property and
moved in, I think, on the timeline. Yeah. so you bought this incredible little hunting lodge
that had been there, when was it built?
1933.
Yeah, on this pristine, beautiful patch of untouched land,
deep in the hills outside of Malibu.
And this was like a dream, right?
To come into this place.
And while you were shooting the show,
the Woolsey fire happens.
And just, I mean, you were right in the thick of it,
like right where the brunt of the fire
just rushed right over your property
and everything was scorched.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Finishing the last episode,
you know, right. So I was in the Amazon finishing this show and I knew that the,
I knew that the fire had started and then
we were on the Amazon and we had no cell reception. So I was just like, well, my house has been around for a while.
I'm betting on longevity.
So you had heard, were you completely out of touch
or you had heard that a fire had started?
Yeah, so I-
That there was a fire in Malibu.
Yeah, so I had heard from my neighbors
and from other people in Malibu, hey, there's a fire.
And I was like, okay,
I'm sending good vibes, man. My house is okay. Just the ultimate lesson in powerlessness.
Completely. And a little naive because I'm like, I don't know how big it is. I don't really know
much about it, but I'm like know fire in malibu unfortunately is
kind of common yeah so i was off uh we were in the amazon we had a lot of exploring to do and
largely just when i think about it i just send good vibes and and then we were
done in the amazon the funny thing is when you do the timeline, if people are watching the show, the last episode, there's a point where we as like a sage ceremony where it's cleansing your aura and negative energies.
And it was a very powerful moment.
And when we looked at the timeline, pretty much exactly the time that that was going on and I was being smoked out is when my house was burning.
How crazy is that? I just didn't know it. So on some level, I'm being smoked out, getting to this incredible, beautiful,
meditative place while almost exactly my house is literally scorched and burning. So we leave and jump back on the boat, going down the Amazon River.
And next thing I know, we get back to Iquitos, the boat ramp.
And I literally turned on my phone and I had hundreds of messages. And then within about
five minutes I realized, and there was pictures from my neighbor and I mean, it was an incredibly
challenging thing. Like we just had been in the middle of the jungle. We just had all of these
things going on. And then not five minutes, I wasn't even off the boat and I'm sitting there
stunned. And then I literally, we get in the car and I'm like, my house just burned down. I'm
shocked. And I called my neighbor was the first person I said, and they picked up. And I was like,
and as soon as they answered, they said, I'm so sorry. And I was like, yeah, but
what was there? What? I'm so sorry. What happened? I'm so sorry. What happened?
I'm so sorry, everything.
What do you mean everything?
I'm so sorry.
All of my house, my car, my everything, I'm so sorry.
You need to call your insurance company.
And then they sent pictures that they had walked down and taken and I saw.
And then they sent pictures that they had walked down and taken and I saw.
And that moment was just, you can't understand it in that moment.
I mean, only your fireplace remained and your truck just literally melted.
Yeah.
And motorcycles and barns. Right.
Melted.
Yeah.
And motorcycles and barns.
And so I received pictures and then I was in the middle of just devastation.
Like I didn't.
And then hearing all these messages.
My mom left messages.
My ex-wife left messages. All these people leaving.
I'm so sorry.
And I'm trying to process like what do you mean
i just lost everything like and then and then i told the crew and then a few hours later they
said listen we totally understand if you want to leave and go deal with this stuff and i just sat
there and i was like well what am i going to do what am i going to do? What am I going to do now?
And so I just said, well, why do you think I'm here?
I'm here on this mission that may look partially like a TV show.
But there was a moment in Puerto Rico that didn't make the show there was
a point when the when I said that was the first place we shot when I was
looking around at the devastation that happened in Puerto Rico from the
hurricanes and I looked and they're putting up you know they're putting up
the same infrastructure that's gonna get get wiped out again, without a doubt. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out.
And I'm like, you guys might have power after a year and a half, but you're as vulnerable.
There's no difference.
And then I was like, I'm looking around going, that's the same infrastructure we have everywhere.
We're all vulnerable.
It could happen to all of us, any of us.
And that was literally conscious thought from Puerto Rico. And then it literally happened to me.
I lost everything from a disaster like this. And so that resolve of why I'm here
became very clear, very quick, even though I'm grieving and I'm sad and I'm upset and I'm shocked.
And I was like, I'm not leaving.
I'm finishing this fucking show.
Because I know at least a glimpse more of why I'm doing this, why I'm even here.
And so I didn't leave and we continued with the show. And then I came back and then dealt with just waves and waves and waves of grief.
I reached out to Dylan and asked him, I said, Darren's coming on the podcast. What are some
things that happened during the filming of the show? Because Dylan was on the production team
that I might not know about
that would be interesting to explore.
And he said, he gave me a lot of input,
but basically one of the things he said was,
definitely when his house burned down,
when you guys were in Iquitos,
he said that was so tragic,
but somehow Darren kept his head on his shoulders
and filmed and stayed positive.
He was a rock the whole shoot,
always a morale booster for the exhausted crew.
We definitely looked up to his work ethic,
his early morning workouts
and constant positivity and knowledge bombs.
And the fact that like you just lost everything that you own,
like your relationship to the material world
was completely rocked
while you're being saged in this place where people have nothing and your ability to maintain your composure, of course, amidst of emotional landmines of that
and the very practical material landmines of that.
And very quickly you went from,
anybody would be horribly upset at this happening,
but you were able to reset really quickly
and reframe the entire thing as an opportunity.
And you were able to let it go,
like not just give it lip service,
but to like really like let it all go.
So like walk me through that like journey,
you know, when you come back
and you have to see what has happened
to the point of like, this is awesome.
Now I get to like build the house that I want. I think that grief is not something that comes easy for anybody.
so intense that I think the practice of challenges helped prepare me for that moment. And the only other thing I could relate to that was more intense than that was the loss of my father.
could relate to that was more intense than that was the loss of my father. And when my father passed away, it was so incredibly intense that I just told myself, let it all happen.
Let the emotions happen. Don't try to do anything. I don't know where that voice came from.
So I did. I let all of that emotion go and process through me. And the same thing
with the house. I can't hold this tsunami of emotions back. It physically hurts to try to
intellectualize what just happened. So let it happen. Let it all express itself. And it was weird, Rich. It was
tricky because the whole community got hammered, friends of mine and friends of yours. And so when
I was grieving through it and realizing that I have friends, I have relationships, I have love, that was the
first thing that came rushing through. And the support and the love and the hands reaching out
to me was from every direction. That was like, well, this is what it's all about this is life right here and so receiving that was a gift and and then
through that grief and allowing it to happen it was just like well
it may feel like this happened to me
but something shifted and i was like, no, this happened for me.
And then once that clicked, I got so elated.
It was freaky.
I know.
It was weird because you were legitimately like thrilled.
I was like, what is going on?
I know.
You're like, this is incredible.
I know.
And you guys were looking at me like an alien.
But it clicked into, there's gonna be a lot of work ahead.
Yeah.
I wasn't, that wasn't.
I mean, you're in the yurt now.
You've been in the yurt for longer than I thought you would be in the yurt.
Like I thought this new house project
would be further along than it is.
I don't know what the status is, but.
It's still in permit hell. But I went, this is happening to me. No, this is happening for me. Yes.
And the thing that it did was the glimpse that I got into my resolve when I thought I was
passionate about contributing to the world
and contributing to people and contributing to helping the planet, I paled in comparison to what
this deepened inside of me. So that gift alone, I could not take that back. I would not want to take that back because it gave me, I don't know what to even
call it, this sense of commitment, love, respect, resolve, passion, all of that deepened in a way
that there's no way I would want to give that back.
So I wouldn't want that experience not to have happened because of the gift that I was starting
to receive and waves and waves and waves. And you guys and you seeing some of that stuff, I was like,
stuff, I was like, I'm freaking stoked, man, because I see something now. I see through the grief and I see a world that I want to contribute to. And I know that I can
kick some ass and give it a go and use this as an opportunity to raise attention about a different way of decentralizing power, for example.
There's people I know that can create clean power
in a powerful way, build differently,
that can protect against fire
and seismic activity of earthquakes,
that we can regenerate through permaculture
and understanding food and food systems
and growing through our connectedness
of this earth are the way we're living and the way we're not living and their health and vitality.
Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. All of that stuff was rushing in in a way that I thought I knew,
but was coming in so powerfully that changed my life and I'm grateful for it. So living in the yurt, no problem.
Yeah.
Still going for it.
It's more you anyway than a hunting lodge. You know what I mean? You're living in this yurt,
so you have this sort of minimalistic lifestyle. And at the same time, the project of re-imagining and reconstructing a domicile for you is like a project and a symbol
and a means for you to bring your values into greater alignment with your actions, right?
Like you can create this structure that reflects everything about who you are, being off the grid
and with the water and with the power and all that kind of stuff. But you're also butting up against the status quo in a big way. Like I know you've this
battle that you're waging right now, just to try to create something that is off grid is something
no one wants to hear about, right? Like you're like, I don't want to use the power from the
pole. I'm going to do it this way. And they're like, well, you can't, right? Like the systemic nature of how we live is so powerful
that it almost doesn't permit you to do things a better way.
Yeah, and quote unquote,
the normal person has no other options.
Cause we haven't invested into our world that way.
We have been reliant upon these monolithic monopolies that are like,
okay, if I build a house, I got to use this company Edison or PG&E or these other big monopolies.
And they put up these god awful poles and they string these lines and it clicks to our house.
And then we have a smart meter that blasts us with EMF,
and blah, blah, blah, it goes on and on and on.
And I was like, number one,
these freaking guys didn't give me temporary power.
They had me jumping through all these freaking hoops.
So I just said, screw you guys.
I'm not taking your power.
I'm going to build a yurt.
I'm going to get it off grid,
and I'm going to use solar panel.
I'm going to use some battery systems, and I'm going to have everything I need. I'm going to get it off grid. I'm going to use solar panel. I'm going to use some battery systems and I'm going to have everything I need.
I'm not living without air conditioning
and beautiful bathroom and kitchen.
It's a nice yurt.
Yeah.
I'm going to live and I'm going to also explore
that we don't have to live,
not that there's anything wrong with it,
like we're living just in a tent
without these beautiful parts of our modern day world
where it's comfortable and clean and all of that stuff.
I wanna put attention that we can decentralize this power
because I'm not taking power from any monopoly ever again.
I'm not taking.
So when I build the beautiful, sustainable house,
the one that's gorgeous and looks like a piece of art
and has all of this stuff in it,
I'm not living in a tent.
I'm living in a beautiful structure.
I'm never taking power again.
So there's other ways, and it's way beyond solar.
And this is a whole nother conversation
that you and I will have
when I start really getting into these power systems
that will blow people's minds.
Again, that people are doing that we don't know about.
A little bit on this show,
like you realize there's some great people
and countries doing incredible things.
If we knew more about that stuff, we could, as a populace, invest and understand and educate
ourselves around that and not have these monopolies largely being the result of this fire,
right? For example, that changed our community forever. So no, I'm gonna spend time, energy,
and resources into decentralizing.
Decentralize our food so it can be food sovereignty.
Decentralize our power so we can have power sovereignty.
And start to figure out different ways
to cultivate water, right?
And there's ways, believe me, there's ways
that you can cultivate from 2% humidity and you can create drinkable water right now. There's a
lot of different things that we can do to create freedoms back again, because I don't know about
you, but there's some freedoms for some good reasons for right now and some not good reasons that are going on as we speak that are not promoting our freedom.
So I don't need to be-
But it's the subtle ones that we're not even consciously aware of that are the ones that are more problematic that we need to pay more attention to.
And I think that the power thing
is a great example of that.
I mean, I remember I came down to your house to visit you
maybe a year ago or something like that.
And it was an ongoing frustration
because they wouldn't give you temporary power, right?
Like, I don't know what was going on there,
but I go to your house, you don't have temporary power,
but it was either, I think it was Edison
had brought all its trucks down
and they're like trimming the trees around the poles
where the wires were.
And you were like, I was like,
what are these guys doing here?
You're like, hey, you went out there and you were livid.
You're like, I don't even have power here.
I don't want your power.
What are you doing here cutting my trees?
Like get off my property.
You remember that?
I remember that. The timing of you, you were like behind. Totally. You remember that? I remember that.
The timing of you, you were like behind the truck or something.
I was stuck.
Like, cause you have this tiny little winding,
I mean, to get to where you live is like a whole ordeal, right?
And there isn't room for a car to pass another car
on your winding long driveway.
That was a funny moment.
That, because that was the culmination of them not giving me power when I desperately needed to be back on my property.
So everything that LA County and Malibu County basically said they were going to do, they weren't doing.
So I'm fighting with going, wow, they're not going to give me temporary property.
I can't inhabit my own property.
So I'm jumping through hoop after hoop.
They want this now.
They want this now.
They want this now.
They're making me do all these things.
I'm like, give me fucking temporary power.
I want to be back on my property.
I want my dog back who's displaced and can't be with me right now.
Give me my life back.
And bureaucratically, they didn't care.
So that moment was a funny moment when you showed up and I'm like, they just rolled into my property, didn't tell me, and started cutting down sacred oak trees for wires that weren't even turned on.
Right. So I raced back. I called them
immediately saying, tell me that these wires don't have power. Okay, hold on. We'll get back to you.
They don't have power. Yes, they don't have power. They're not turned on. Okay, great.
Take your power lines down. I've never told you it's okay. Get them
off my property. And also these people are cutting my trees down. Get them out of here.
So I think we all can relate to that. We all have this beautiful, convenient world,
but there's, you know, I use this term all the time, there's fatal conveniences.
In this respect, if my power goes out, I have no power sovereignty if I rely on these things.
Monopolies and these systems that are failing, they failed Puerto Rico.
They failed me.
They failed our community.
We have to do something different we have to do everything we can pun intended to get our power back our individual power we need to invest into these
other systems that do not have it all intertwined with one or two people making decisions for everybody.
Yeah, power being more than just electricity,
but a symbol of personal agency in our lives.
Yeah, yeah.
How has the age of COVID and coronavirus affected your daily routine?
Walk me through the Darren O'Lean day in the life of hydration and nutrition and fitness.
Well, I mean, obviously the intensity of the moment doesn't escape us, but my daily life is largely not different.
You're as socially distant from other people as anybody I know.
Yeah.
I mean, just geographically where you live.
Yeah, and it's also part of understanding how I work powerfully in the world.
I do need nature. I do need nature.
I do need to repower myself up.
I do need to step away in order for me to then step in and kick some butt.
But yeah, so I'm grateful I've cultivated a life where I'm not next to people in buildings and Wi-Fi signals and that intensity.
So my heart goes out to people in this challenging time where you're like stuck.
I'm not.
And with that, I don't look at that lightly.
I'm trying to do, I'm as busy as I've ever been.
I'm as structured and as scheduled as I've ever been.
And because I want to contribute, I want to continue to help people live a healthy life.
So I wake up, I wake up early.
You're on the eight to four program still.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.
So I get my water action.
I start –
He's got some show and tell.
I got my blue bottle.
So this is a great company.
This is where glass bottles get away from single-use plastic.
I filter my water like crazy.
All the water filters into my house.
This is a cool company because of the frequency of the blue.
The light passing through the blue does what to the water?
Helps structures the water in a way
that's a similar frequency as a healthy cell.
So healthy cell is between negative 25 and 35 microvolts.
Right, so that light passing through helps to structure that water. negative 25 and 35 microvolts, right?
So that light passing through helps to structure that water.
It creates a energetic signature that is similar to that, which is a healthy cell, okay? When you get injured, the body uses more energy to ramp up the voltage, literally,
so that the healing can happen.
When you're acidic and not eating well and not eating enough plants,
your voltage literally drops, right?
Eighth grade class took two voltage meters in a potato
and you turn a light on.
That's as simple as it is, right?
So boom, drink my water.
I've got some On Demand hydrogen water.
What's the name of that bottle?
This is a company called Blue Bottle Love.
And I happen to have love on the bottle.
So this works with Dr. Emoto.
Masuriyo Moto, right?
Yeah, exactly.
So he did a lot of research around the structure of water.
And this was just his way of showing
that their water is informed, right?
So he wrote the love and hate and all of this stuff and realize
that the water is structured by that influence. So, Hey, whether you believe it or not, it feels
good to look down and drink water. That's filled, you know, that's, that's bathing in love. And then
I also have, uh, you know, so I have a lot of technology around, uh, water, but then, um,
what is your particular water filtration system that you use? Yeah. So I filter all around water, but then- What is your particular water filtration system that you use?
Yeah, so I filter all the water coming into the house. So every bit of water goes through
three phase filters and then it vortates. So the great work of Schauberger back in the early 1900s, he was an observer and researcher of nature and he realized that water vortates.
It's healthy when it structures itself.
It doesn't move in a straight line nor is it good when it's stagnant.
So, my water is filtered and then it goes through a vortator.
So, it structures the water as it's coming into the house.
So, then it's just a
nice little RO system, so reverse osmosis. So it's taking out pharmaceuticals, taking out fluorides
and chlorines and volatile compounds that interact with those things. And then my final filter system,
it goes into an on-demand hydrogen creating machine. So hydrogen is one
of the great antioxidants, stabilizers of free radicals in nature. So that's pretty much what
this is. And then it's in a glass bottle. So it's literally like a three-stage,
four-stage process where you have multiple filtration systems before the water ends up
in that blue bottle. Yeah. Plus I have a well too. So what well is pretty. And you get all the water
from the well. Yeah. Right. And so yeah, it's pretty. So my whole. For people that are into
digging into that more, do you have links for the particular types of filters that you use that we
could put in the show notes? We're devising a FAQ because that's a big-
Well, after your water episode on the show,
I'm sure a lot of people wanna know more about that.
We'll get that to you.
And if people are overwhelmed with just hearing that,
I mean, you basically just a reverse osmosis,
couple hundred bucks. Is that the most important of all of these?
Like if somebody wants to just start, like where's the focus?
Yeah, because the RO is a particular size of filter
that won't allow those particulates to go through the dangerous ones,
the pharmaceuticals and the things that are ending up in our water.
So it filters out that.
Or you can also distill the water.
So distillation through evaporation and then recondensing,
clearly that's a good one.
But your water sommelier in the show said no bueno to that.
Yeah, so that's where him and I conflict a bit.
And we weren't able to have a discussion enough
that would make it in the show.
But he's not wrong.
There's just some nuance to it.
Not everyone can buy a bottle water from who knows where.
But some of those high.
Catalonia.
So let's define TDS again, total dissolved solids.
In our modern day world, there's a lot of junk as a total dissolved solids. In our modern day world,
there's a lot of junk as a total dissolved solid.
There's pharmaceuticals, there's chlorine, there's fluorides,
there's volatile nitrates, there's a bunch of stuff.
So the TDS number alone is not a valid indicator
because it doesn't calibrate the quality of the TDS.
Right, exactly.
It's just a total.
If in nature, it was just TDS,
it would just be mainly minerals, right?
Unless some dirt was in there.
So TDS is important,
but it's important not to have the volatile compounds.
If you turn on your tap,
you're having many of those volatile compounds.
Now, the good thing about the modern day world,
you're putting chlorine in there
so it can make it all the way to you
and not have bacteria that literally is gonna kill you.
So there's nothing wrong with what we've done,
but it hasn't got out everything.
And by exposing yourself to those chemicals
and those interactive volatile compounds,
those are what you need to strip out.
So that's the distinction difference between TDS.
So super high TDS that he obviously showed on the show, that is not a sustainable way of getting hydration. incredible kind of almost medicinal sides of water that are just there to facilitate
something and be exposed to, but not on a long-term way to be hydrated. Definitely not.
So for the most part, none of us have free exposure to clean spring water. Number one,
if you have clean tested spring water,
number one choice, without a doubt.
But most of us don't, which is why I then go,
well, you have to deconstruct that water.
You gotta get rid of that crap
so that you can build it back up again,
which is why I say distill your water and reverse osmosis.
And then-
You can like remineralize it.
So then you can remineralize it
and a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt does what?
It adds the minerals and the electrolytes again, for what?
So voltage can happen because that is how you hydrate
and that is how you maintain healthy cells.
So again, you go back to voltage, you go back to frequency.
If you have distilled water, has no voltage, right?
So that's just where that little pinch.
So that's the easy thing for people do,
RO, distill, add a pinch of Himalayan crystal salt.
And then if you wanna start exploring,
stay away from single use plastic,
start to get maybe a little into the
structuring side of the water, help to influence that water a little bit, shake it up, maybe get
a little more oxygenation in there. Water doesn't like to be just sitting around. So yeah, so that's
a little bit on what to do. So anyway, it always seems to be the long part
of my morning routine is water.
Well, hydration is your whole thing.
I mean, the point being like we're under hydrated.
If people truly understood the power, the potency,
the importance of hydration,
it could really revolutionize your health.
Yeah, I mean, one of the number one cause of fatigue,
retention, brain loss, the dementia and Alzheimer's definitely have a dehydrative
component to that. When you look at the stats, I even mentioned this in my book,
7% of 300 million people don't even drink an ounce of water a day, Rich. That's like, how is that
possible? I know. Because what's happened, what I believe is happening, when you wake up, your body
has used that water, it's trying to repair the brain and the central nervous system and get out
the toxins. You wake up, you're fatigued, you're tired. You reach for what you think you need
energy for. So you reach for your coffee, your stimulants and everything else.
And then you're in that cycle, but you're not actually reaching for water.
And so the brain and the being is so powerful that it will shut off that signal of just intense thirst so that you can actually have enough mental capacity to primally try to find water again, but we're not. We're grabbing
for the other stimulants again. So it's a crazy thing that the body's so adaptive that we literally
will pass on dehydrated blueprints epidemiologically to your children. Because if you have trained yourself that this is a desert,
I'm not drinking any water,
then your body has to shut down certain systems.
The skin's definitely gonna start to fail your eyesight.
Your brain activity is gonna be less.
You're gonna be fatigued.
And if you've been doing that,
you're gonna pass that on to your children.
Like an epigenetic way, you mean?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, if you take one thing away from this podcast,
it's start your day with a liter of water.
100%.
Yeah.
So then, from there, I just play a lot of elixirs
and adaptogens and things like that.
And then I have my morning routine and I get very clear on what I want to do
and my passions and alignments and meditative places.
I go to breathing routines.
It may seem like a lot, but it isn't.
It's very efficient.
And then it's just getting clear on what I want to do.
And then I work out and that's a lot of-
By the time you finished the morning workout,
you've lived an entire day.
You get up at four, this process begins.
And by 10 a.m. you're ready to start your day,
but you've already had a whole day.
Yeah, so that's when I'll take,
like maybe make a ridiculously huge bowl of like fruit and smoothie and throw a ton of barucas on top.
And that's when I'll have my first meal after I've done all that.
And you live alone with Chaga, your dog.
So you have the ability to control your environment in a way that a lot of people don't.
How was it when you were doing the show and you had to go to all these crazy places?
Like I gathered from at least in Iceland,
trying to eat plant-based there,
looked like it might've been a little bit of a challenge.
Yeah, I mean, you do realize throughout,
all of these traveling around,
you realize that certain cultures it's a lot more difficult.
But luckily the word was out.
So all these people and chefs
and they made sure that it wasn't challenging.
But yeah, I mean, I don't make it a big deal
when people wanna eat whatever they want, that's on them.
I thought it was interesting in the show.
The point is made like, oh, you're vegan,
but it's not belabored.
It's not about that.
And you're not like trying to make that at the forefront
of what the show is about specifically.
Yeah, I mean, listen, I've talked,
I just want to lead by an example
and also demystify that you can live a healthy, strong life eating plants.
Yeah.
I mean, it's ridiculous that that is not perceived even
that you can get all the nutrients you want
from an infinitely more.
So I don't like to hammer that in people, but I still kick ass
and love it. Well, you out sprinted Zach out in the field in France.
Yeah. Yeah. And this team's- How did the plant-based diet rub off on him?
Listen, he's been in and out of that for a while. I think it's just,
you got to commit, man. You got to commit to anything. And being an, this isn't a Zach
comment per se, but I've been around a lot of actors and you go in and out of these micro worlds
and it can be draining. If you don't prepare and plan in and out of this intensity, then you can flip and flop all the time.
I saw it in my wife too, my ex-wife as an actress.
So he believes in plants and medicinal plants for sure.
And he largely has been eating a lot of plants and mostly plants.
But I think for the show, he felt a little pressure too to like,
well, these chefs and they're gonna make us all this stuff.
So I should-
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What else you got in your show and tell down there?
You got some barucas?
Oh my God, dude.
So this isn't even the right bag.
Notice I put cacao.
I'm gonna have you eat this.
You wrote it in pen.
So this is-
So last time you were on the podcast,
this company had essentially recently launched.
Barucas, the Baru Nut Company
that are these incredibly delicious, nutritious nuts
that you've sourced from the Cerrado in Brazil.
And these things are unbelievably delicious.
Yeah.
You can't believe how good they taste.
And then when you look at their nutritional profile,
it's insane.
It's insane.
So this dude.
Is that your butter?
This is the new butter.
So we put a wild cashew with barucas before
and I told them, listen, give me some time.
Let me make a butter.
I want you to try that.
Yeah, slide that over. I want you to try that. Yeah, slide that over.
I want you to try that.
That is the best.
So that's coming out.
That is a Baruca butter with a little coconut oil.
Coconut oil.
Cinnamon?
No, it's got the fruit of the Barucas in there.
That's the crunchy stuff.
And then a little bit of lo hangau, which is called monk fruit.
So it adds a little extra sweet to it.
So that's coming out very soon, probably when this launches.
Yeah.
And then this one.
Oh, my God.
So you're going to mass produce this.
Yeah.
Those are from the factory in Brazil.
That's so much better than peanut butter or almond butter.
from the factory in brazil i made so much better than peanut butter or almond butter coconut oil burruna and the fruit and the and the fruit of the barucas right it's like
wow perfect combo so this dude try some of those so now this is fair trade cacao covered
oh my barucas so these are this is the superfood equivalent of chocolate-covered peanuts.
Oh, yeah, man.
And it tastes infinitely better.
Wow.
Those are crazy.
So for anyone who doesn't know, the barucas is one of those companies where I found this nut.
It was basically offered to me and said,
do you know about it?
No, I don't.
I looked into it.
I explored it.
I saw the nutritional profile.
I actually didn't believe it because it was so superior
than any nut that's ever been tested.
So we tested it, got our own nutritional data,
blew all the nuts away, complete protein,
three times more fiber, 400% more antioxidants than almonds.
It's a wild food.
It's very rare to be eating wild food these days, right?
So it's naturally collected throughout the Sahara, supporting all these indigenous foragers.
Not just supporting them, but basically creating a buffer, like a preventative zone to compete against the encroaching cattle ranchers who want to clear this land.
Yeah.
the encroaching cattle ranchers who wanna clear this land.
Yeah, and also going back to the cattle ranchers that also have it going, hey, we'll give you trees
to plant some of these back
so that you have shade for your cattle.
And so we're starting to those conversations.
So it supports the people,
it supports people by eating it
because it's so nutrient dense and it's delicious.
And we're planting trees and also other biodiverse plants
in the Sahara again, because the Sahara people don't realize
it's being destroyed faster than any landmass on the planet.
So for unsustainable-
We don't hear a lot about the Sahara,
we hear about the Amazon.
I know.
But the Sahara is like a, it's more,
it's a dryer kind of is like a, it's more, it's a drier kind of plane-like
environment, right? Yeah. So most of the plant-
The biomass is underground. The biomass is underground. So you have
the Badozeta tree has got a very deep taproot and that's where the beruka comes from and it taps the aquifer below. So it doesn't
need this auxiliary water. So this is all, again, it's wild. There's no pesticides, herbicides,
there's no irrigation inputs. It's from the wild. And so we're getting to support that natural biome
and then actually help planting the trees. So our basic motto is every five pounds we sell, we plant a tree.
And so we're super proud of that and getting this out.
And again, this is again a no-brainer.
We had to create our business model this way.
And this is where we all have to go,
in supporting the people, supporting the environment,
and supporting the customers that are getting a nutrient-dense food.
The trick with these things is they come encased
in a massive shell, like the fruit, right?
It's unbelievably hard.
And you have to like, essentially, historically, they've done
this one by one, right? By hand. And the trick is trying to figure out a way to scale this so that
you can like devise some kind of machine to do it or what's going on with that?
Yeah. So we're still, I mean, we've made progress, but we're still trying to continue to develop better and better mechanisms
to crack that shell. You can't use existing nut cracking because different sizes, different kind
of shell, we're shaving the fruit from the outside and using the fruit. But historically,
they used to, thousands of years ago, they'd take the whole fruit.
So when I say the whole fruit, it's got the fruit layer, it's got the shell, it's got one seed.
Right, one per thing, yeah.
Yeah, and you can't-
It's unbelievably labor intensive for one seed.
And you can't pick it early.
It has to fall because it doesn't actually develop the seed until at the very end.
It has to fall because it doesn't actually develop the seed until at the very end.
And so they pick it up and typically they put it around a fire.
And then on the outside of the fire, it would roast it overnight.
And then it was easier to break open.
Then they would eat it.
But when we showed up, they were like hitting them with rocks and machetes and things like that.
So we've started to automate using hydraulics and other things like that.
So we're continuing to develop.
But yeah, it's creating an economy that was largely these doors were being lost.
I mean, these people are shutting their doors to this even within the country. So we're super proud that we have allowed for this indigenous plant to still be around and then to develop it in the country itself because we're very happy that we're starting to distribute all throughout Brazil too.
It's not just bring it here and sell it.
We're selling it all throughout.
What about the trail mix?
Did you bring any of that?
Oh, I didn't.
The trail mix.
That stuff is so good.
Yeah, sorry.
So the trail mix-
It's also like an amazing breakfast cereal.
It's unbelievable.
100%.
So the trail mix for everyone listening is the nut with the fruit layer that's dried
and we add it together and it's just a ridiculous combination.
This is basically like direct to consumer right now.
I mean, it's in some retail outlets, right?
Yeah, we're following.
You can just go to the website and find it.
Yeah, the website's there, barucas.com.
And then you've got a promo code and a discount code, I think.
I think so.
What is it?
I should know that.
Yeah.
I don't know.
It's probably barucas.com slash richroll, I suspect, but I'll put it in the show notes.
Yeah.
So, and we love your customers because they care.
They care about the environment.
They care about their nutrition.
And they care about the way we're sustainably working with this important,
not only business model,
but this sacred nut that we've got to support.
It's cool.
Yeah.
So how's the podcast journey been for you?
Oh, man.
How many episodes have you done now?
I think by us talking here,
I think it's 13 or 14 episodes.
Welcome to the club.
Thank you.
Yeah, it was great timing.
I mean, I have a-
I mean, for you to launch it, essentially just have like,
how many episodes did you have out when the show launched?
I don't know, maybe eight, nine.
I mean, I know that it wasn't,
that timing wasn't by design, but it was brilliant.
Yeah.
That you did those things together.
Yeah, I was working on the podcast for a while,
as you know, and just figuring it out,
I had this great company, Amplify, out of Australia,
who's the engineers behind it.
So they took off that burden and that labor.
And so I just started getting used to just interviewing people and doing that stuff.
And so I had a bunch in the can.
And again, the TV show was supposed to come out a year ago.
Right.
And so it was just by divine plan that this all just lined up together.
I launched the 121 Tribe app, which is some recipes and functional training and information and water tracking and the podcast.
It all just – and then we got the – I didn't know when Netflix was going to launch it.
We all didn't know.
And then all of a sudden, the last minute, they give us this date.
And I'm like, wow, okay.
People think that you have control over those things.
No, no.
You had no idea.
Which is why I was like, well, okay.
So I'm potentially developing another TV show.
I'm staying focused on the podcast.
I'm going to get that out. I'm going to stay focused
on this one-to-one tribe app. I'm just going to keep creating because I am dedicated to what I'm
doing. And then I'm working on the sustainable stuff on the side, not really on the side,
but on the forefront. But it takes a long time to develop some of these energy tech solutions
with these groups. And so I just creating and just happened.
Well, it's a great example of luck
and hard work meets opportunity and luck, right?
Like you just were plowing ahead,
not waiting, sitting around waiting
for the Netflix show to come out.
Like you created all this other stuff
and divine timing kind of coincided
to have these things all percolate
right around the same time and sort of feed each other.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's cool.
Yeah.
But the podcast, you seem like you're having fun with it.
I love it.
You know, listen, dude, I mean, you know, being here with you,
like just us talking and getting into stuff about things we care about,
I love it.
And there's voices that haven't been heard
and there's stories within every person.
Using this microphone as a conscious collaborator
and ear to our conversation is fantastic.
And I love it.
And I'm learning, as you know,
so much and exploring and my entrepreneurial brain and DNA is just like, oh my God, let's
do more stuff with all of these great people. So yeah, I'm enjoying it a lot.
I think what you can bring to this that I haven't seen yet is shining a light on some of these amazing people that you know because of all the travels that you've gone on and people that no one's ever heard of who are like doing incredible things super obscurely.
And you can be like, tell everyone about this, right?
Yeah.
I mean, if people want to check out like a perfect example of that is episode number two with my buddy Chris Patton.
You can't even Google search him.
Nothing will show up.
And this guy's been dedicated to the planet and clean energy tech for 20 years.
And his life is centered around the civil unrest in Western Africa in the 90s when it blew up.
And he was stabbed and he was shot and he lost all his friends and he survived it.
Is this the Blood Diamond guy?
This is the Blood Diamond guy.
So he sold his rights of part of that journey into what was now the Blood Diamond movie with Leonardo DiCaprio.
And yeah, they took some liberties and made it into a blood diamond situation,
but that wasn't what he was doing.
But it was that,
and then he spent the next 20 years
dedicating his life to figuring out
what energy systems
from underground Russian scientists
to obscure Tesla technology
and his own science team
and working directly with NASA
and developing technology of lunar habitat, power systems.
From what we know now,
it's the only power systems that they've signed off on.
So this guy, and I've known him for 17 years,
and we resonate in this way of commitment, I think.
He's utterly committed to not having this planet fall apart in our hands to create better uses of non-nuclear, no emissions, no waste power systems.
And he's done it.
And I can't wait to scream from the highest mountaintops
on what he's doing and what we're involved with.
Yeah, more guys like that, right?
Yeah.
Cool.
Well, I can't let you go without leaving people
with a couple of things that they can take with them.
The show did such a great job of talking about a lot of the stuff that you care about in a very macro sense.
Like we go to Iceland and we see how they're generating sustainable power, but it's like, all right, well, what can I do?
How do I translate that into something actionable in my day-to-day life. So I think it would be great through the lens of
sustainability and personal health to leave people with a couple simple practices that they could
think about and perhaps integrate into their lives that would help them.
Well, I think that's more clear. Thank you. And I think more clear than ever, people need to
be healthy. They need to stop distracting themselves
and eat more plants and figure out a program
that's gonna work and get healthy
because we need strong people to do that.
Give me a little vegan bicep flex right now.
There you go.
Come on, dude.
So we need strong, healthy, happy people,
non-judgmentally kicking ass in their life.
And I really believe that's the purpose of health
so that you can kick ass in your life
and have the fulfilling life you want
so you're not miserable with a chemistry set
that isn't working.
So find a different way.
If it's your app, if it's my app, the one1 Tribe, if it's finding a group of people, even online or whatever that you can move and explore and just find recipes that work, eat better, hydrate yourself.
That's the easiest one. I think environmentally, and it may feel like people have heard this before, but single-use plastic, my God, we need to stop. Quit buying cartons and containers and water bottles that you're literally just use pyrolysis and break down the plastic and turning into fuel for your Tesla,
which actually exists.
So I'm mentioning it for a reason.
Unless you have that technology,
stop using the single-use plastic.
Do everything you can.
And this goes hand in hand to that is start being aware
of the unsustainable business practices of companies and big companies
and support and maybe pay a little extra money for your food, for your conveniences, to support
companies that are doing things right, supporting companies that are being transparent with what
they're doing and what they're offering. And that is absolutely
something you can do right now and demand that. Support those small, of course right now,
support the small businesses right now. And if anything, I know so many more from all of them
reaching out from the show that there's great people doing incredible things
that people don't know about.
So look at your dental floss,
that glide dental floss that is creating,
putting toxins in your liver
by this chemicals of PGAs and all of this other,
stop using that company
because that company doesn't give a shit about you.
Use a bamboo string or whatever.
That's literally what I'm saying.
Stop the toxic exposure to yourself and your life and support companies that are actually giving a shit about you. to put attention on what needs attention
and stop putting your hard-earned money
and attention on companies that don't care
and have never cared.
People are busy.
They don't want to, or they don't have the bandwidth
to devote the energy and time to trying to figure out
who's doing things right and who isn't.
Are there any resources that you rely on
to figure that out?
Like, where do you go to learn?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Actually, I'm trying to mobilize
and use a sub part of the app as that,
kind of a wellness warrior ambassador program.
I don't know the name yet,
but we have started an outline
to create attention towards brands that are doing things right, create current events and charities and organizations that are doing things right.
So I'm just now starting that.
I'm starting that with the Generation Z kids so that they can mobilize themselves in that direction.
But no, I don't know. And this is something that we all
need to know a little bit more about, not being preached to, but replacing those things that we're
doing on a daily basis, because we're using single-use plastic way too much and we can stop that. And we're also just not aware of,
that's why I do a segment on the podcast called Fatal Conveniences, where I reveal
some of these things that you don't even realize you're doing to then have this chemical that
you're being exposed to, but then have a solution for it. So we do need to
move in that direction. And all the listeners, please reach out to me and reach out to Rich
and give us suggestions because I definitely want to support that movement. Yeah. I watched
this movie the other night called An American Pickle with Seth Rogen. It premiered on HBO.
And the young Seth Rogen plays two characters,
plays his great grandfather and great grandson at the same time. And the great grandson is like
this kid living in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He's an app developer and he's working on this app
that he came up with that is that very thing where you hold your phone up, the camera on your phone,
and you hold it up to a product. and then it runs it through some calculus and database
and comes up with a score and gives you
its environmental footprint and impact
and ingredients and toxins and all of that.
And I was like, we should have that.
That should be a thing that exists in the world.
Absolutely.
You know? Let's do it.
Maybe there's some version of that out there.
If somebody knows, let me know, because I would like to know. Let's do it. And maybe's some version of that out there. If somebody knows, let me know,
because I would like to know.
Let's do it. Maybe you should build that, Darren.
Maybe we should build it.
Maybe you should call Seth Rogen,
see how he did it.
Okay, I'll call Seth Rogen.
I know, I can get to him.
Yeah, okay.
Good man.
I love you, brother.
Thank you so much for doing this.
I'm so proud of you.
Your success is so overdue and well-earned. I mean, what year
did Superlife come out? Like four or five years ago? Yeah, the end of 15.
Have there been, how many other books came out and then made the New York Times bestseller list
like five years later? I don't know. I mean, that's the funny thing.
It's so cool. And thank you.
And, you know, I think you remember,
I chose to just take an organic route with the book.
Just like, just let it out and let it have its own.
I didn't wanna, you know, there's a weird world.
It happened because it was supposed to happen,
not because you forced it.
Yeah.
You know, and there's a beautiful lesson in that, I think.
Yeah.
Yeah, man.
But I thank you and this full circle of the show kind of being birthed by our conversation here because of Zach heard something that you allowed me to share from and the space that you provide,
I see your opening and your ability to constantly have incredible conversations with people.
And I'm proud of you because I know also that you've stretched yourself to have the success and had vulnerability in order to expand to this level.
I remember those conversations and I'm equally proud of you.
Yeah, thanks, brother.
It's been a journey.
Yeah.
Proud to take it and blaze it with you.
Yeah, man.
So you're welcome here anytime.
Proud to be your friend and keep rocking it, man.
I plan on it.
So if you wanna connect with Darren,
at Darren O'Lean on his Instagram,
it's blowing up like crazy.
The book is Super Life.
Baruchas, baruchas.com, some kind of promo code maybe.
I'll let you guys know.
And what else, man?
The 121 Tribe app, which is pretty cool.
121tribe.com.
Yep, people can go there.
There's three free days.
You can get some movement, plants, some breathing stuff,
and you can check it out.
You can buy it if you want, but it's free.
And down to earth on Netflix.
Down to earth.
And I was gonna ask you, what do you have coming up?
But that's like another three hour podcast.
Yep.
So just an excuse to have you come back.
A hundred percent.
All right.
Peace, brother.
Love you.
Peace.
Love you too.
Glance.
Killer human,
that Darren O'Lean.
Hope you guys enjoyed that.
I just love that guy.
Be sure to give him a follow on the socials.
He's at underscore Darren O'Lean on Instagram
where he's exploding.
He's also at Darren O'Lean on Twitter,
but Instagram is really his jam.
Check out his books, Super Life, his podcast,
The Darren O'Lean Show, 121tribe.com
and visit barucas.com slash richroll to receive 15% off
one of the tastiest superfoods and also the most
nutritious I've ever tried in my life. And as always, visit the show notes on the episode page
at richroll.com to dive deeper into Darren's world and all the amazing subjects we discussed today.
If you'd like to support the work we do here on the show, subscribe, rate, and comment on the
program. You can do that on Apple Podcasts. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Hit that little bell, that notification bell on YouTube, so you can be alerted when one of our
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richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show.
Jason Camiello for audio engineering, production, show notes, and interstitial music.
Blake Curtis for videoing today's show and creating all the video clips we share on social media.
Jessica Miranda for graphics.
Davey Greenberg for his amazing portraits.
And that's the DK for advertiser relationships and theme music by Tyler Trapper and Hari, my boys. Thanks for the love,
you guys. See you back here in how long? A couple of days, I think. Well, we have another roll-on
scheduled, but Adam Skolnick's wife is about to go into labor at any minute. So we'll see what
happens. If he's having a baby, there might not be a podcast and we'll have to figure out what to do.
In any event, hopefully we will be on schedule and on time.
If not, we'll figure out something else to do.
Until then, treat yourselves right.
Get outside, nourish yourselves, love one another.
Expand, be empathetic,
share what you've learned along the way. And be grateful.
Peace.
Plants.
Namaste. Thank you.