The Rich Roll Podcast - David Bronner On Cosmic Engagement, Conscious Capitalism & Cultivating Unity

Episode Date: April 2, 2019

Eat local. Buy organic. Avoid GMO. Give back. Be of service. These are all great practices. Good for your health. Good for humanity. And good for the planet. But it's not enough. The health and environmental problems we currently face are global epidemics of unprecedented scope and scale. We simply cannot solve these issues with the mindset that created them. What we need, now more than ever, is a revolution of consciousness. There are few people more well suited for this conversation than David Bronner. By far the most unique ‘CEO' I have ever met, this week's guest is the Cosmic Engagement Officer of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soaps, the top-selling brand of natural soaps in North America and producer of a range of organic body care and food products. The Dr. Bronner story, which is amazing, begins in 1948 with Emanuel Bronner — a German immigrant, third-generation master soapmaker, master consciousness and generally far out dude — who used his ecological soaps to proselytize his “All One” philosophy, labeling product bottles with the key tenets of his teachings on self-realization and unity across religious and ethnic divides. Embraced by 1960's counterculture for its ecological properties and spiritual sensibility, the brand soon found it's way into most natural foods markets across the United States. David and his brother Michael eventually took stewardship of the family business, shepherding their grandfather's brand from counterculture cult status to mainstream embrace by growing revenues from $4 million in 1998 to over $111 million in 2017. Along the way, David went to great lengths to respect, protect and ultimately deepen Emanuel's vision, cultivating a thriving and truly conscious capitalistic enterprise making socially & environmentally responsible products while successfully pursuing its broader mission to create a better world for ourselves and future generations. Environmental activist. Psychonaut. Visionary.These are but a few of the words that describe David, a man who very much shares his grandfather's ‘cosmic hippie’ DNA but matches it with entrepreneurial flair, a degree from Harvard and the business savvy necessary to grow and sustain an ongoing concern at scale. Under David's stewardship, Dr. Bronner's has championed a number of causes, many of which provide the foundation for today's conversation — a free range exchange that explores David's involvement in advancing animal rights, drug policy reform, GMO regulation, regenerative organic agricultural practices, fair trade projects and practices, medicinal applications for cannabis and psychedelics, as well as wage equality, including self-imposed caps on executive pay. Backing up its mission statement, roughly a third of Dr. Bronner's profits are dedicated to charitable giving and activist causes annually. Furthermore, the company is a founding partner in the Climate Collaborative, which leverages the power of the Natural Products Industry to compel action on climate change. This is David's story. And it's sure to blow your mind. Disclaimer #1: David expounds upon his personal experience with with psychedelics and cannabis in the context of spiritual growth. Disclaimer #2: This is not a branded podcast. I have no financial relationship with Dr. Bronner’s and was not paid to host David (to be clear, I have never accepted money to host a guest, and never will). I am simply a fan of the Dr. Bronner ethos and products, have followed David’s journey with admiration for some time and have always wanted to have this conversation. Enjoy! Rich

We're wrecking the planet in a lot of different ways, but agriculture is one of our main ways of doing it. But if we do it in a correct way with regenerative organic principles, if you look at a wild ecosystem, you have no synthetic chemical inputs, no pesticides, no fertilizers. There's a sustainable balance of animal and plant life, and it's all integrated. And our farming systems need to replicate a natural ecosystem and not be dependent on synthetic chemical inputs. That's David Bronner and this is the Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey everybody, how you guys doing? What's happening? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. This is my podcast. Welcome or welcome back. I'm joined in studio right now with my man, DK, David Kahn. How are you? Good. It's good to be here. It's been a minute since you've dropped in for a little chit-chat in the intro section to the podcast.

How are you feeling? I feel good. I mean, today I feel good. So just to recap for new listeners, David joined us probably six weeks ago or something like that. Maybe 10. To talk a little bit about hashtag DKGoals, setting a focus and intention for 2019. I think that episode resulted in some good feedback for you, some stuff to think about. How are you doing with your goals?

First, let me just say the feedback was great, and I appreciate everybody's thoughtful responses. How am I doing with my goals? I feel like I started the year off pretty well, and then I feel like I hit some walls. pretty well. And then I feel like I hit some walls. There was some rain in Los Angeles. I wasn't exercising. My tennis partner was in New York for two months. My diet went off the rails. And then the inner monologue of you're not exercising enough. You're not eating well enough. You're not meditating or you're not meditating

enough. And then I just hit the off switch. I'm just like, I don't want to think about how my progress is. You shut down. Yeah, because I don't feel like I'm doing well. And a lot of the feedback was really, some of the stuff is very practical, very incremental, very useful. Just drink more water, say more kind things to yourself try to change you know make sure make conscious decision to eat one green meal a week like stuff that's super achievable and then there's like more ambitious goals and i think taking practical steps is difficult and i think looking at the end goal is easy for me oh i'd like to run a 5k or i'd like to do anything

but doing the work is where it gets hard. Like I walked around in the last two days and it feels amazing, one, to be active, two, to get out of the house and not have the isolation. And I think spending a lot of time by myself, you know, working or whatever in the last couple months and not having success, it's debilitating. So you're sort of the stand-in for the everyman and the kind of typical struggles that most people, I think, face and confront when trying to tackle a wellness challenge or just try to get, like you said, incrementally a little bit better in mind, body, and spirit. And I just know for myself that the best way for me to kind of kickstart that process is to set a goal. And in my case, I try to set goals that are just outside my comfort zone, things that I think are doable and achievable, but also scare me. So in my case, because I'm going to put myself in this conversation as well, I've decided to,

a lot of people have been asking me like, when are you going to do another race? It's been two years since I did Otillo. So I have committed by way of announcing on Chris Howell with my coach's podcast, I guessed it on his episode 100 the other day, I committed to doing this event in Qatar. It's a three-day Ultraman distance event that does the distances in reverse order and circumnavigates the peninsula of Qatar. I think it's essentially the entire country. I don't know that much about it, but Chris is doing it. One of his athletes created this event, and I agreed to do it. It's in November. It's been 10 years since I've done an Ultraman race. And in this case, the event begins with the double marathon on the first day.

The second day is a very long bike. The third day is I think like a 90 mile bike followed by a nine or 10 kilometer swim. So you finish with the swim. I've never done anything like this before. So you finish with the swim. I've never done anything like this before. And I'm a little scared, but I'm in. And what I've noticed just in the last few days since I publicly committed to that on Chris's podcast is that it brings everything in my life into focus. Suddenly, I have to be very organized and intentional and mindful about the choices that I make, the foods that I eat, the workouts that I'm going to be doing. They all suddenly have a purpose rather than some vague notion of like, well, I just want to be fit or I want to feel better. So, what I'm saying, A, in addition to publicly announcing that I'm going to be doing this thing, is that it might behoove you to identify your version of that for yourself, whether it's a 5K or what you want the scale to say, or just something that you can put out on the calendar some distance from now that you can then create a roadmap that will get you excited, that will kickstart you into some new habits and hopefully build momentum so that when you confront that morning when you wake up and

you don't feel great or it's raining and the weather isn't so good and you just don't feel like doing it, the momentum will help you override those speed bumps and get you on a new path. I agree. I do think I need to make a goal. The physical thing, I'd love to say 5K, 10K, mini, try, whatever. I just don't know physically how much my knee will hold up. I definitely can do a goal for the weight.

I think 190. I went down, I was at, started at I think 213, I got to 208, now I'm back to like 214. I think 190 seems like. Right. I haven't been 190 in 15 years.

And I can help you create the path to achieving that. And I think that's totally doable. Yeah. It's very doable. I think it is. And, you know, we can monitor the knee and all of that. And we can, we don't have to commit to anything at this moment, but maybe think about that. I feel like the weight definitely.

I mean, I was really conscious of it. And then I just kind of like felt lost, honestly. I felt like, oh, I'm not having success. You should call me in those instances. I'm here for you, brother. I know, man, but it's just, you know. All right. Well, put that in the hopper. To be continued. Everybody listening, hit DK up on Twitter at DavidDarrenKhan. Yeah. With R-R-E-N, hashtag DKGoals. And to be continued, my friend.

I appreciate all your comments, sincerely. Did I mention that today's guest is David Bronner? You know Bronner Soap, right? Yeah. So, David is a super interesting, fascinating guy. He is the CEO, which stands for Cosmic Engagement Officer, which gives you an idea of the spiritual pedigree of this dude, of Bronner Soap. And what's amazing about this is that a lot of us, myself included, like I love Bronner Soap. I've been a customer of their product line forever. If you pick up their soaps in the store, do you notice like there's these manifestos in small type on the

labels? Have you noticed that? I haven't. It's kind of incredible. Next time you're in the store and you see their soap, pick it up and just read these words. It'll blow your mind. They're like spiritual manifestos. And that's because this company was founded by David's grandfather back in 1948, this guy, Emanuel Bronner, who was a third-generation master soap maker, and he used these labels on his ecological line of soaps to really spread this message of unity across religious and ethnic divides with this kind of slogan of we are all one or none. And it's kind of inspiring and cool. David's been on my radar for a while. He's somebody I've wanted to talk to for a long time, and he definitely does not disappoint. This is a super cool conversation. And there's a lot more I want to say about David and the Bronner legacy. We're brought to you today by recovery.com.

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Life in recovery is wonderful. And recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, David Bronner. What do I want to say about this guy?

Well, basically, he's like this interesting mashup of his grandfather's cosmic hippie sensibility merged with this savvy business-minded approach to making this Bronner Soap Company commercially successful. And I think it's fair to say he's a visionary. He's an environmental activist. He's a Harvard biology graduate. And he's really dedicated his life

to honoring his grandfather's vision while also continuing to make socially and environmentally responsible products and making it all financially successful. He partners with certified fair trade projects. Everything they produce and make is certified organic. He's also a founding partner in the Climate Collaborative, which we talk a little bit about today. He's super into animal advocacy, wage equality, and drug policy reform, all of which are subjects that we get into at length today. And I think that's all I want to say about him. Final note before we get into it, David talks a lot about psychedelics and cannabis in the context of his personal spiritual growth. And as a longtime person in recovery for substance abuse, I'm not endorsing

this method or these behaviors, but to each his own. And I find his story to be very interesting. And finally, I just want to say upfront that this is not a branded podcast. I'm not being sponsored or paid by Dr. Bronner's or David to produce this conversation. I just am a huge fan of this company and their legacy. And I followed David for quite some time, and he's a fascinating individual that I've wanted to talk to for a very long time. So, without further ado, let's get far out with David Bronner. Let's do it. Yeah, it's funny. I had some when I was a kid. I had some kind of issues. I don't know exactly what they were, but I was at the 234 interchange. It was like a hospital there. My mom had me in there doing intensive therapy. When was like a hospital there. And my mom had me in there doing intensive therapy.

When you were a kid? Yeah, it was like dyslexia, right, left confusion, balance issues, different language difficulties. They couldn't figure out what it was though? Yeah. Or did you get diagnosed? I had some, I don't know what the exact diagnosis was, but my brain had to learn new ways of doing certain things. Wow. And I still do certain letters backward.

You know, I mean, they're the right way. It's just, I don't, I do them the whatever way. Right, but not like textbook dyslexic. No, yeah. But you must've been a good student, dude. You went to Harvard, so you figured it out somehow. Yeah, no, I did. But I mostly read and just like was kind of learned on my own and could

kick a football really far I think soccer was my passion and then crossover into football and got recruited into different colleges oh wow so do you play football at Harvard yeah for two years you did yeah what you're you were the kicker yeah I kicked from nine well 91 and 92 and then but I got a little bored because soccer was my life. Right. My friends were playing rugby and having a lot more fun. It was an NCAA, and it just kind of blended more of my skill set, plus there was no drug testing for cannabis,

which was an increasingly important dimension. It's problematic for you, man. I'm like, dude, not another fall season, man. I have a hard time visualizing you in a football uniform, though. I wouldn't have thought that. That's wild. Yeah, no, it was, yeah.

And it just got less fun, like just the four-hour practices day in, day out. I hear you, brother. Yeah. It's work, right? Yeah, yeah. And I just wanted to make sure I was playing a sport I was a lot more passionate about.

I mean, I enjoyed, I played tight end in high school, but I wasn't good enough to play at that level. You're a big dude, right? Like, what are you, like six or something? Six, five? Six, four and a half. Wow, yeah, you're a tall dude. Where'd you go to high school?

Hoover High, Susan Glendale. Right. So LA native, thanks for coming back up from Encinitas to talk to me. Been looking forward to this for a long time. Lots of points of interest and stuff we can explore. I guess the first thing I wanna know as somebody who is at the vanguard,

like the activist vanguard of everything sustainable, regenerative, eco-friendly, you know, somebody who really lives in this space, like what's top of mind for you right now? What do you have, what do you like knee deep in at the moment that's most interesting? Right on. Well, we're launching with partners, including Patagonia, the clothing company, and then leading animal welfare orgs like Compassionate World Farming, leading fair labor orgs like Fair World Project, and leading soil health organizations like Rodale and Demeter. Demeter holds the biodynamic standard,

and Rodale is the heart of the organic farming movement. A single standard called regenerative organic that basically brings together the best of the soil health, animal welfare, and fair labor into a single standard, a single consumer-facing certification standard so that when you purchase food or clothes or soap, you can know that not only was it grown in a way that respects the soil, but also all the people and the farmers and the workers involved

were treated fairly, and any animals or livestock involved where it was a pasture-based system, no confined, like a whole other level of animal welfare criteria than the current organic standard. Right, like this high watermark that takes into consideration labor conditions, the way the soil is treated, and on top of that, how the long-term sustainability prospects of the manner in which the product, whether it be food or soap

or what have you, is harvested. Yeah, totally. And this, you know, we feel is feel like one third of the earth's surface is basically been terraformed under industrial agricultural mismanagement. We're wrecking the planet in a lot of different ways, but agriculture is one of our main ways of doing it. And, but if we do it in a correct way

with regenerative organic principles, if you look at a wild ecosystem, you have no synthetic chemical inputs, no pesticides, no fertilizers. There's a sustainable balance of animal and plant life, and it's all integrated. And our farming systems need to replicate a natural ecosystem and not be dependent on synthetic chemical inputs. Right. Yeah. and not be dependent on synthetic chemical inputs. Right. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, soil health is really, you know, the essential ingredient and, you know,

the long-term viability of our species and many animal species. It's a subject that's come up on this podcast many times, most recently with Dr. Zach Bush. Do you know Zach at all? Maybe. If you guys don't, you definitely should know each other because you're on the same wavelength here. But I think it would be informative for people

that perhaps aren't as steeped in this as you are to understand the difference between organic and regenerative. And on top of that, kind of what's like canvas, what's going on in this world of labeling that I think is creating as much confusion as it is clarity. Right on. Well, I mean, so what's the default right now? it's it's basically chemical agriculture mostly genetically engineered commodity crops like soy and corn that are grown for our for feed like one over one half of american agriculture now is devoted to feed crops um that are inefficiently converted in animal uh animal uh energy carbohydrates and protein um and these animals are in confined animal factory.

CAFOs. CAFOs. And so it's just, it's a horrendous situation from an animal welfare perspective. And then, but from an environmental perspective, taking the animals off the land and putting them in boxes and then growing the feed crops where they were so that their fertility is not integrated into the cropping cycle. Instead, you have these huge manure lagoons that are spewing methane into the air. We're instead bringing these crops to harvest with

more and more synthetic nitrogen and other fertilizers. Synthetic nitrogen is made in the Haber-Bosch process. It's one of the most energy intensive reactions that we do on the planet. It consumes one to 3% of the world's energy to make synthetic nitrogen. And then it destroys the soil biota, the natural life in soil. Soil is a living organism. It's a living ecosystem. And we're basically systematically destroying the life in that soil and bringing in our crops to harvest with more and more chemical inputs and treating soil like dead dirt, like an inert medium instead of the life-giving resource that it is. And we have just way too much livestock. The population is totally unsustainable. Like the population is like totally unsustainable.

So organic is like the – is a good step, a key step, which is basically removes chemical inputs. You can't use chemical fertilizers or chemical pesticides when you grow crops. But in and of itself, it doesn't have necessarily prescribe a high-level way of managing your farm. It just says what you can't do. It doesn't say what you should do. And regenerative is kind of what you should be doing. And regenerative is a set of principles where you farm in nature's image. And in a natural ecosystem, you never see bare ground. Or maybe there's a fire or something

and then quickly it's covered over. And when you see our farmlands, it's like bare and open to erosion and topsoil loss. I mean, that's ridiculous. And we need to have roots in the ground all the time. So you're always putting in your next crop or a cover crop as soon as you harvest. So you keep roots in the ground,

you keep a diverse crop rotation. Right. Which this interrupts pest cycles naturally. And then minimize the chemical inputs. And it's essentially the Joel Salatin polyphase farms model. Is that accurate? Yeah, it's in large extent.

I mean, I would my one critique of polyphase. I mean, obviously, it's outside of the factory farm model, and that's crucial. And obviously, having animals be on grass, especially ruminants, is awesome. But the feed, like he's like, so there's a difference between ruminants, which is your cattle. Right. Large herbivores. Large herbivores. So they can actually get their energy from grass. But chickens and pigs, monogastrics like ourselves, they can supplement off pasture.

I mean, they'll eat some bugs and some seeds, but the lion's share of their diet is still coming from grain that's being bought in from elsewhere. coming from grain that's being bought in from elsewhere and so joel is as of as my current understanding is still not like that grain like how that grain is grown it's going to kind of make or break the um kind of the the impact of how the earth is being treated the amount of carbon that's being sequestered sequestered one way to look at it is if we wave a magic wand and get all of our chickens and pigs out of their cages and back on the land in a kind of polyface style farm, which is obviously great from an animal welfare perspective to the extent that they're treated well

and have freedom of movement and ideally their end is humane and quick, that even if we wave a magic wand, if we don't change their feed, of movement and ideally their end is humane and quick. That even if we wave a magic wand, if we don't change their feed, like you're still for a monogastric, you still gotta feed the same amount of corn and soy as you would in a cage as on a pasture. And you're gonna have to grow that somewhere.

And you have to grow it. And so how that's grown is still matters crucially. It's kind of a hole in the Allen Savory argument, right? As well, because isn't that sort of part of the same thing? Yeah, so like one of our critiques of the Savory certification is on the ruminant side, it's solid that insofar as they're emphasizing cattle should be on grass,

they should be eating only grass on on a given land but their certification has a hole in insofar as bought in feed when you look at bought in uh you know corn or soy for your monogastrics but then even for ruminants they'll buy in hay chopped hay and cut hay and a lot of times that hay is grown like all feed crops with a whole bunch of synthetic fertility and pesticides. So like even if you're regenerating the land where your livestock are roaming, like what about the land that's growing all your feed crops? And if you're not taking responsibility for that, then-

You're not having- You don't have a comprehensive vision for- Exactly, yeah. Look, you're a long time vegan dude, like what since like 96 or something like that? Yeah, yeah. Look, you're a long time vegan dude, like what, since like 96 or something like that? Yeah, 96. All right, I've been vegan for 15 years. I would prefer to have a vegan utopia

where we all wake up and realize that we don't need to be eating these animals at all, that it's incredibly inefficient and unsustainable and cruel and all of that. And just, we all have this spiritual epiphany and we transcend to the next plane of consciousness overnight. We're working on it.

Yeah, I mean, I'm working hard towards that vision as well, but that's not happening tomorrow. And given the fact that it's not a plausible reality in the immediate future, we do have to consider better solutions for the omnivorous planet that we live on. And that involves taking into consideration how we're raising these ruminants, is there a better way for the meat eating population

while we continue to eat meat and the demand for meat continues to rise. So one of the big questions I have for you is, you know, I lodge you for pursuing this regenerative organic certification. I think it's super important, but is this, if we were to all adhere to this standard, we couldn't, we don't have enough land or resources

to feed the demand for meat as it currently stands, right? Like if all farms adhere to this standard overnight, all of a sudden- There'd be a lot less livestock. We can't do it, right? No, I mean, that's it. I mean, this method of farming depends on a much lower population, 10% of the population of livestock out of their cages, integrated back into the land. And to be clear, animals are not essential to regenerative organic system.

We can't have a totally vegan method of farming, but insofar as livestock are involved, then yeah, they need to be integrated in a pasture-based way and their population needs to be dramatically reduced. So regardless of whether we choose to eat meat or not, we have to eat much less of it and much better if we want to transition our agriculture to a truly regenerative basis. And that becomes problematic when we see the rise of the middle class in places like China and India

where the demand for meat is skyrocketing right now. So that paints a grimmer picture in terms of the plausibility of this. Oh, absolutely. And actually, so another big piece of our advocacy is on meat reduction and vegan advocacy. And we're big supporters of Good Food Institute. I mean, many of us are on that show a couple of times.

Yeah, Bruce, he's rocking. And obviously bringing in the next level meat substitutes and dairy substitutes um are key um we just obviously need to be reducing our meat consumption in the developed world but then as you say in the developing world like this is not you know we we need to skip what we did like we need to it's kind of like hopefully what they're doing with like going from no phones to you know 4g cellular like if we can just skipping the step skipping the you know skipping some coal maybe going straight to solar you know if we can skip

what we did here with these intensive factory farming culture yeah you know or at least well you know because like india right like they have mean, most of our population was and maybe still is vegetarian, although now that's starting to shift, but they still have the cultural memory of the ethics of it. So if you can bring in like, okay, so now maybe they develop a taste for, you know, lamb or whatever it is that is interfering with kind of their traditional mores like if you can bring in like a you know like a clean meat or a something that approximates that taste and texture and feel on price and everything else bruce says you know then you know maybe we can avoid right the disasters you don't have to overcome a lifetime of, a lifetime habit of eating meat in a different way.

Yeah, right. I mean, the cultural memories there and hopefully. Yeah, it's gonna be interesting because it's happening at some point. Yeah, it's, I was on a panel with the CEO of Memphis Meats. Uh-huh, Uma Valati? Yeah, it was like a few years ago.

And I think he had like, the meatballs were like 10 grand a pop at that point, but I think they're down to a grand and are about to be 10 bucks. And very soon they're gonna be 10 cents. So that'll be a whole different world. He keeps saying, because I keep bugging him to come on the podcast. He's like, I'm not ready yet. We're still working. We still got a long way to go, but it seems like it's advancing pretty quickly.

I mean, it really is just a matter of time before they hit some inflection point and the price will be able to comport with consumer demand for it. And we're gonna see some big changes. Yeah, I think increasing the availability of tasty plant-based options is, you know, a key part of the equation. And then the consciousness of, you know, why we should be thinking about, you know, what we're eating and do we really need to be killing an animal to sustain ourselves or do we, can we not do that?

And if we choose to do that, let's like really take responsibility for that and make sure that animal lived a life that wasn't going to hell and back. And that's a big other part of our advocacy is integration of cannabis and psychedelic allies to help us wake up to some of these dimensions of our kind of collective planetary being. And so we're hopeful that, you know, we're gonna be bringing these allies into the culture in a significant way

in the coming years. And as the sustainable, you know, plant-based options are more and more available and, you know, yeah. And the consciousness, the vegan movement, everything else is really hitting its stride, so. You are your grandfather's grandson. Yeah.

You are. I mean, I wanna get into the consciousness stuff because this is like amazing to me and super trippy and awesome because you're carrying a certain vibration that really is the legacy of your grandfather. And it's fascinating to see how you've taken that mantle in a very natural way.

And not only gracefully ushered it into the business that you're running with your brother, but also in this very activist way, in this very conscious capitalist way, that has made not only a social impact, but also an environmental and economic impact. Because you've grown this company from, what was it, like 4 million in revenue in 98 to like 111 last year or something like that, right? 122. Yeah, it's crazy, man. I mean, that is quite something.

But let's track it back to your grandfather, because this guy was like off the charts, like a rock star in terms of like what he was putting out into the universe at that time. Yeah. Yeah. So we're just incredibly fortunate that our founder, my granddad, Dr. Bronner, he was an amazing individual. He himself was a third generation master soap maker from a German Jewish soap making family. So by the time he came of age in the 20s, his dad and two uncles were running the family enterprise.

We had three factories, and we were supplying most of the liquid soap to public washrooms in Germany. He was clashing with his dad and uncles in more of a generational way. Um, they were pretty like, you know, they didn't want to be mixing politics and soap. And my granddad was pretty intense, um, back then he was Zionist and, and just. What do you think? Sorry, I'm going to interrupt you a couple of times. Uh, what, what, what was it about, like what made him that way?

What happened in his childhood that made him this, like, spiritual warrior from a young age? Yeah. I don't, you know, my second cousin, like, my granddad's cousin said to me once, this guy Henry Epstein, he said, like, you know what, there was always one in a generation that was kind of out there like in the heilbronners like and you know my granddad got that gene that's how he just kind of said it i definitely got the gene um in my generation and yeah you know he was just kind of born different i know he you know he got he was i remember my great aunt saying yeah that poor emo you know his dad beat him a lot try to beat that craziness out of him you know. And so he came to the States when he was 21,

more to just kind of do his own thing and kind of leave his family and forge his own life. But it was early days of the Nazi party, right? And he sort of saw it coming and was like, I'm out of here. No, I mean, it was, I mean, this is 29. So, I mean, the eventual dimensions were not clear about what was about to happen. And he did become increasingly desperate to get his family out. His two younger sisters got out, one in 36, Lottie at the age of 20.

And she ended up in a kibbutz in Israel, the Engev. And then another, Louisa got out in 38, right before they closed the border. And she became a professor of German at UMass Boston. But before that, developed waterproofing compounds for the American GI paratroopers in the Korean War, but didn't get any credit. Everyone's a chemist in your family.

Yeah. And yeah, and so, but his parents, like many of the bourgeois Jews thought they were gonna ride out the madness. They were like, don't rock the boat. Yeah, Hitler will be, everyone will forget about him. But the factory was aeronized in 1940 and they were deported and killed in 42 and 44.

So out of that, and then at the same time, my granddad had married and fathered three children in the 30s, and then his wife died, got sick and died right around the same timeframe in the mid 40s. So he was just dealing with immense tragedy in his life. But the way he dealt with it was, he felt urgently called that in a nuclear armed world that the next holocaust if we don't realize our transcendent unity across religious and ethnic

divides that the next holocaust we're gonna all die we're gonna all perish and that's when he felt called to go forth and spread his his message of unity what he called the moral ABC. And he was also selling just natural soap. I mean, he had become a consultant to the US soap industry and helped P&Gs of the world build factories and launch products. But his main thing was sort of giving these sermons, right? Yeah. Did he come right to LA from Germany?

No, he landed in Milwaukee. So he was in Milwaukee and then Chicago, which is kind of a crazy place to be that was the center of anti-semitism in the states back then that's father mclaughlin had this radio show that was super anti-semitic he was chicago based and not the best place in certain respects but um he was actually, in 1947, he was actually interned in a mental asylum against his will. Some, a guy named Fred Walker had actually crucified himself or someone obviously helped him

for Dr. Bronner's peace plan. So he'd gotten on the authorities radar screens and so they basically locked him up. Right, he got put in an asylum for a minute there yeah and during which we have he designed like a settling system for this factory across the river that was spewing waste he actually like cleaned it up for them like while he was in there like he was basically did a job institutionalized yeah and then and then he fled on his third attempt he got out of there.

And then he came straight to- He escaped? Yeah, he escaped and came to LA. Oh, my God. So that's- And then set up shop in Pershing Square. He was in a tenement hotel, mixing up his family soaps and sermonizing on the Moral ABC. And-

All one. All one God faith. Which is kind of like, does it derive from the teachings of the Essenes? Yeah, so he saw himself as an Essene rabbi. Right. But he basically drew from all faith traditions. His attitude is that all spiritual giants,

whether it's Gadama or Moses or Lao Tzu or Socrates, that they all were astronomer prophets. They're all inspired, witnessing the majesty of the heavens, the cosmic rhythms. And that all of them were basically saying the same thing, that get over yourselves, realize your transcendent unity. We're all children of the same divine source. So for him, the labels were a way of showing the commonality across the different faith traditions and that um you know that

that fundamentalism was the enemy not not religion per se right um have you ever been to rancho la puerta yeah in mexico yeah totally do you know the story of Edmund Zekaly? Yeah, I think he's saying- Because he sounds like a very similar guy to your grandfather. Yeah, totally, man. Amazing dude who was like fruitarian in the jungles and had met Deborah's family when she was like a child bride

and he creates this center. It's a whole long story of him being Jewish and not being able to settle in America or being able to go back to Europe and finding this piece of land in Mexico and becoming like the first pioneer of wellness and fitness in the same era in which your grandfather was living. But he was-

An area almost. Exactly, yeah. And being totally into the Essenes, he wrote all these super trippy books and it was all about healthy lifestyle and living this ascetic life based on the tradition of those Palestinian Jews. I almost went and bought,

built myself a biogenic dwelling and was doing the grass for a little bit. I mean, yeah, he's... Did they know each other? They must have. They must other? They must have. They must have. They must have. Because like Aldous Huxley and people like that

were going down to Rancho La Puerta at the time. And Edmund must have, he was probably around your grandfather's age. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, my granddad had his scene book of life. I mean, I was definitely totally marked up. And so I'm sure there was some direct communication and obviously on the same wavelength.

And they were bringing in meditation and Pilates and raw foods. Like way before anybody. That was the first place also where, because Edmund was Hungarian and a lot of below the line workers in Hollywood, people lighting, camera, people like that were Hungarian as well and it was a small community.

They all knew each other. So that part of Hollywood kind of knew what Edmund was doing down in Mexico. And so when a starlet needed to like lose weight or dry out or, you know, some actor or whatever, they would send them down to Rancho La Puerta. And that was the first, that was the beginning of like, you know, what we all know,

like when Hollywood people like go to detox or whatever, but they were doing it back in like the 40s and 50s before any of, you you know this stuff that we kind of you know see everywhere happening now yeah no right on man and and i guess i mean i actually just got the full download there in the last year and a half i finally went and visited and i guess he you know he was pretty radical you know he didn't like you know he didn't quite like how the spa kind of was gentrifying or whatever i mean he was like pretty you know it's pretty acidic and wanted you know people to be on this pretty strict raw food you know yogic path and

yeah i guess clashed a little bit but um but deborah's really made something wonderful happen there and she's amazing i mean she's got gotta be like 95 now or something like that. And she's still rocking it. And she's still kicking it. Anyway, we got off track a little bit, but there's so many similarities there. I couldn't help but like talk about that. But the thing is, I mean, so your grandfather,

he's giving these sermons in Pershing Square, which for people who don't know is like this square right in the center of like downtown los angeles yeah preacher man but then people are more interested in the soap than what's coming out of his mouth right so the soap becomes a vehicle for him to deliver his message right he realizes that many people are um just coming to sermons to get the soap he's selling on the side and not sticking around to hear what he has to say or paying attention. So he puts what he's saying on the labels of our soap. And the soap always has been more of the vehicle for the label than the labels there to promote the soap. I remember the first time that I actually took a, like I saw the soap in the store

and I took a moment to actually read what was on it. And I was like, this is fucking insane. Like how do they even get away with having this like on a consumer product in a store? Like if you ever actually sat and read what's on this, it's completely mind blowing. And it's almost like it's just slips under the radar. Like, I don't know how many people

like don't even pay attention to that, but like it's super intense. Yeah, it's right there in plain sight. It's right on the soap. Yeah, I think like my granddad went, he blames on the shock treatments he received when he was interned against his will. But he basically lost his vision and was completely blind by 1970.

And I don't think he realized just how busy the labels were getting as he was downloading more and more of the full truth. He's just channeling this, right? And so now we've got 3,000 000 words on on a on a core label and um and it's intense as you say but it's also like very interesting textural kind of backdrop and when you look at it it's got this old apothecary feel and look and i think um yeah i mean ideally people spend time and and grok the message but it's kind of just kind of conveys you know kind of old time authenticity and simplicity and yeah it has that kind of vintage vibe that now is is like hipster modern

i suppose yeah i mean it violates every design principle you know but it works you know has it always had that same look and feel has it evolved at all or have you stayed true to what it looked like when he was doing it? Yeah, well, he evolved it himself. Like there's a funny quote in Esquire that interviewed him in like 1973 and the reporter's like, you know, hey, what happened to Freud and Young?

You know, and my granddad was like, you know, Freud and Young, important, but no longer relevant to uniting the great spaceship earth. You know, so he was yeah so break down his his uh you know his like psychonaut philosophy of you know unity of consciousness for the betterment of humanity yeah i you know i mean he it was within an overall you know judaic i i think um context but um you know he saw that the creator and creation were one we're all one we're at in our essence one with one another and our separateness is illusory. And, yeah, so he just advocated a simple living close to the earth.

He conducted most of his business on the sun deck in a Leopard Prince Speedo. And, you know. Oh, my God. It's like a movie. Yeah. No, he was amazing. You know, just really liberated cat. But really intense, you movie. Yeah. No, he was amazing. You know, just really liberated cat. But really intense, you know.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, he was kind of on the, coming from the mountaintop. And at the time, I mean, we can look back on it now and laud him and see him as this visionary. But how was he received, you know, when he was around? Yeah. Well, I mean, I think the rise of the counterculture really resonated.

It was like perfect timing. I mean, here's this guy talking about peace and love and living in harmony with the earth with a soap that's concentrated, versatile. You can wash your hair, your dog, the dishes by the side of the river. It's like the famous 18 uses or whatever it is. Yeah, and just really resonated to the time.

Yeah, which we now have toothpaste and we say brushing with Bronner's just got a lot better. So yeah. Actually haven't tried to brush my teeth with like the Castile soap. Yeah, it works. It's like, don't recommend it. So yeah, so with that, like beat culture and then 60s counterculture, he had his little niche within that.

Yeah. And I think he was frustrated that his audience wasn't, you know, planetary wide. And he wanted to unite the spaceship instantly. And, you know, it was, I guess, maybe disappointed it wasn't happening on the timetable that he was hoping. But I think we're appreciating all of his incredible gifts, but also some of the flaws in his character. And my granddad was not a good dad. And my granddad basically went to go save the world and abandon his family more or less. So my dad and uncle—

That's what happens with guys like this. Yeah. That's the other side of the whole thing. Yeah, and he had to oven to the Holocaust behind him. I mean, there's just a lot of generational tragedy coming through the generations. tragedy coming through the generations but my dad really compensated and made sure that our family like the families was first and and wanted nothing to do with all one vision or religion in general mm-hmm he was just all about family and community and so me and my brother and sister you know came up in

this incredible household in Glendale Reaganite suburban right stable stable and just beautiful. And my dad was like the most moral guy. I mean, he would just stand up for whoever and just volunteer his time. And so we blend his kind of focus on pragmatic. What can you do for your brother right here, right now? With my granddad's more cosmic trip.

Yeah, utopian idealism. Because he set the company up originally as like a non-profit religious organization and would just funnel all the profits back into you know into causes right yeah it's like not i mean that there's conscious capitalism and then there's just you know an unsound business practice in terms of like longevity right yeah and the irs disagreed with his tax exempt this is not a religious organization yeah it's a soap company right yeah so so and actually my dad stepped in one of my mom and uncle in the late 80s to

um basically get our the company out of bankruptcy My granddad was owed crap tons of back taxes on basically not having paid them. But I was surrounded by a bunch of bad advisors as well. And so my dad and mom and uncle, dad especially really righted the ship. And my dad had come up and was working for a chemical specialty firm as the head of operations in Atwater area, where I came up and developed, among other things, firefighting foam for forest and structure fires. It's now standard and modified a version for Hollywood as a fake snow.

So we grew up blasting foam on trees for Alka-Seltzer. And this is still the same stuff that they use, right? Did he patent that and like it's his, that's the industry standard? Yeah, Warner Brothers is a master distributor. But yeah, so he, you know, so the firefighting foam is owned by some Tel Aviv-based chemical conglomerate at this point. So when you're growing up in essentially the Pasadena area, Glendale, you must have been a popular kid. Like, let's go over to your house and you can blow foam all over the place. Yeah, it was incredible.

And yeah, I mean, when you blast foam in the world, I mean, it just transforms. We're all one under foam. You can't be in a bad mood. Yeah, it just transfigures the world. I mean, whatever's going on is over. Now it's foam time and it's just this ecstatic, liberatory space. in a bad mood. Yeah, it just transfigures the world. I mean, whatever's going on is over. It's now it's foam time and it's just this ecstatic liberatory space.

And now Bronner's, you guys have like a truck that drives around and sprays foam at people's private parties and stuff. Yeah, so kind of blending my granddad and dad. So we take Dr. Bronner's soap, which is at this point made, it's the same simple recipe as for five generations. But now with regenerative organic, our olive oil is coming from Palestine and Israel.

Olive oil, coconut oil is coming from Sri Lanka out of a tsunami relief project. And palm oil in this super sustainable way out of Ghana in this smallholder projects. oil in this super sustainable way out of Ghana in this small holder projects but we run that through the compressed air foam system and and and blast basically Dr. Bronner's soap soap in like a in a firefighting foam form and we have a fire truck that in honor of my dad my dad's power animal is an eagle so we have this huge blazing like fire pho Phoenix on the front with Tibetan fire on the fire truck. And then big plexiglass trailers that we shower trailers with glass foam into for pride. Do you take that to Burning Man? Yeah.

Actually, the original foam unit was, I built it. So when my dad, my grandma died in 97, then my dad died in 98. And I had a whole complex journey to embrace. We're going to get there. We're going to get into that. But go ahead. But, yeah, so we had to shut down. My dad started the foam business, basically, and focus on the soap business.

It was just this overwhelming time. And, like, 10 years later, I remember I was just like, you know, Pop, how did you do it? How did you raise a family and run a business and, you know, just going through a tough time and just remembering like, wow, how much fun we had with the foam. And so I went and built a foam unit from one of his late designs and brought it to Burning Man in 2009. And just, you know, hey, this will be fun. And like, sure enough, man, we were clearing out blocks of people like, what? You know, and like, just? And we were just blasting them.

So it was basically born at Burning Man or reborn at Burning Man. But the foam kind of, in many ways, is what saves the soap company. It was like what sustained your family and allowed your dad like some stable income in order to right the ship with the soap company? Is that fair? Oh yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, saved in more ways than one, really.

I mean, it was my dad's independent role for my granddad who was just kind of super intense and overbearing. And so it was a way for my dad to just kind of, he oversaw the soap production for my granddad his whole life, but just had his own business and focus in life. And then, yeah, and then as far as income, right. I mean, our soap company was in bankruptcy.

So absolutely, the phone business was what we had. So when you were a kid, what was your perspective on your grandfather? You know, he was intense. And especially, I think, for his his grandkids he just thought it was extra important for us to download the moral abc and so it was just kind of non-stop but was your dad like pissed off my dad would he was protective of us you know i think because my grand i mean it was fine it was just you know my god i was like you know we must unite to spaceship earth you know and like you know what's the 13thhip Earth? You weren't even here for your event.

You couldn't even stick around to raise me. Yeah. It was a little triggering for my dad. For me, it was just kind of sailing over my head. But he would say, we expected us to memorize the moral ABC. But luckily, he was blind, so we could pick up a bottle. And he said, what's the 13th? And I was like, oh, very good, very good.

But yeah, it wasn't until later that I really appreciated what my gran was all about. So I gather that you were a fairly traditional kid growing up, I mean, playing football and soccer. Yeah. You weren't like the hippie Grateful Dead kid? No, I mean, we're mischievous, but we're not, yeah, it took a little while to really understand

that dimension of society and business. Right, so you're traditional, you go to Harvard, you study biology, you're playing sports, you're all American kid in many ways, but then life brings you to Amsterdam and then things begin to shift. Is that accurate? Yeah, college was where the shift began.

Definitely like being exposed to cannabis and psychedelics initially within college context and a lot of free thinking and different ideas. And, you know, biology, I was, you know, I was never like the most academically inclined kid. And these non-interactive large lecture formats were like, you know, what am I doing here? This is wasting my time. I'll just copy the notes before the final, know like this is an interactive learning and um and just spent a lot of time just with friends and and especially cannabis was a big sacrament and kind of retired from alcohol culture and and in some ways my at least my athletic

identity wrapped up within NCAA football and played rugby which was a more club sport, way looser, kind of a black sheep of the athletic program, but a lot of fun. But in some of those early experiences, and then with mushrooms and psychedelics, an early mushroom experience was, I just remember looking down at my arm, like, you know, what does it mean at a quantum level? I'm not different.

Like, my body's not different from the world. And when I eat and I poop, the world's pouring into me and through me, and I'm just one with it. in a super overwhelming way, but just really starting to realize the limitations of the materialistic scientific worldview that would explain human consciousness and being just as a narrow adaptive trait that in a certain sense, sure, but was completely inadequate

to the level of the mystery of our existence. And so I was, you know, rejecting. And I had earlier rejected Christianity. I was raised Protestant, actually. My dad wanted nothing to do with anything. My mom was Protestant. And then, but when I was 12, I was like, well, if God loved the world so much, why didn't he send his one and only son to just here? What about the Chinese?

And, you know, and just had rejected Christianity kind of on its own terms. But then was really having a problem with this materialistic kind of science worldview. And so graduated Harvard with, you know, the fair amount of questions. I mean, I was still pretty apolitical, but had started to have some important questions and experiences. But then, yeah, Amsterdam is where the fuel kind of got poured on me. I mean, what led you to Amsterdam? Just to deepen that inkling that was initiated at Harvard? Yeah.

inkling that was initiated at Harvard? Yeah. And, and I mean, at the time, I mean, I mean, I saw us within the cannabis experience, like something really important, like that there was, you know, that we were, this was a sacrament worth appreciating. Like, I mean, I knew I had not maybe the healthiest relationship at that point, but enough to know that what we're doing right here is way more important than what a lot of people are doing around us right now. And like just being with each other and listening to music and laughing and being awesome. And so of course, Amsterdam at the time was the Mecca of cannabis culture.

And this is before Prop 215 is 95. So a lot of the American growers were over in Amsterdam. And so I happened to be intersect, well, I had a year-round pass. I mean, technically I was gonna go see Europe, but got to Amsterdam and it was the eighth annual High Times Cup, Cannabis Cup. No more train rides, you're just there.

Yeah, well, I went into the squat, you know, this incredible squat scene there, this activist artistic squat scene, the whole, you know, so international and interesting. And I'm just like, what? This is amazing. I don't, I'll go somewhere else later. I'm going to stay here. And just ended up having some huge experiences, some really massive psychedelic experiences and was in a squat with multi-generational people coming out of the counterculture. And in particular,

there was a church in Arkansas of all places that had formed with cannabis as its sacrament in 93, our church it was called. And sure enough, the feds busted it up and church members were on the run facing 10 years of life and a couple of them were in my squat and that was in the context of me of these really massive psychedelic experiences that really exposed me to the to the fact that somehow love and light is at the heart of this existence is absurd and tragic and hard as it can be that that is our ground of being. And, you know, meeting these people, like just really waking up to America and that, wow, these beautiful people, if they step back foot here are going to be arrested and they're thrown away. And the sacrament that helps us wake up. The drug war is an important respect of religious war on the sacrament that helps us wake up. The drug war is an important respect,

the religious war on the sacrament of my people. And so really waking up to that dimension and Sam actually also was vegetarian. So that was my first, like, I remember him just, I was wide open, you know, and people were coming at me and like, he was like, yeah, you know, why are you eating meat? You know, and I just remember like, just kind of going on a cannabis meditation,

like just like, yeah, okay, I got a knife, I'm in the store, I can, you know, kill that cow or I can just chop down some lettuce and you know, I think I'll just let the cow alone. And that was it. And that was it, you know, just like a real easy kind of, you know, I mean, it was, you know, not super easy, but it was like, you know, like, okay, it's pretty clear that.

And that's kind of in a way like these allies can help us when we use them intentionally collapse distances and barriers. So anyways, it was just reorganizing my life in a huge way, going through these huge shifts and waking up, well, what else is wrong in the world? And just waking up to the collective disaster of Western consumption on the planet, not just in terms of meat and animal products, but just in general, our rapacious rape of nature to fuel our material economy

and just the total lack of consciousness. I mean, that's quite a spiritual epiphany. Yeah. And I don't have direct experiences with psychedelics. I'm like, I'm a recovering alcoholic. I've been in recovery for a long time and I never experimented with psychedelics. And now I feel that privilege has been taken away from me.

So I won't have that experience, but I can't deny that I know a number of people like yourself who've had very profound experiences with these substances. Yeah. And it's been not just life-changing, but like determinative of the trajectory that you then choose to pursue for the rest of your life.

Like those experiences inform in many ways, because at that time, it wasn't like you were going into the soap business, right? You didn't want anything to do with that. Yeah, in fact, my relevant realization over there was like, I don't have to to do with that yeah in fact my relevant realization over there was like i don't have to do anything as far as my family or anything i can grow plants and and live you know and just fight this cause and that's what i did i came back sold all my stuff and announced to my parents that i'm going to get to amsterdam to grow plants i mean everyone

needs to stand up against this unjust you know know, religious war and I'm vegan, which they were like way more upset about than the- Oh really? Yeah, yeah. They're like what? Oh wow. This is crazy. But it's amazing you like tapped,

you tapped a vein that, you know, your grandfather was dialed into, right? It's almost like you opened yourself up to a level of consciousness that was vibrating, you know, where he happened to be sitting. And you have this like all, you know, all one awareness, this unity consciousness that kind of overcomes you. And you have this sense of connectedness that then like protracting out into everything that you've done since infuses everything. Like sustainability is about connectedness. It's about a holistic perspective of the impact

that we're having on the soil and the downstream, you know, implications of all of these decisions that we make. It's not just organic or vegan or non-vegan. Like we have to broaden that aperture and realize the cascading implications of how all of these things are interrelated in a broader and more holistic way.

And that sensibility, like the experience you related about, you know, pooping in the world kind of going through you is like a micro example of the macro being the sustainability implications of how, you know, we raise food to feed humans on planet earth. Yeah, no, absolutely. Right, and just like how that, yeah. And then taking responsibility for your plate as a farm

is your section of the garden out in the world. You know, what does it look like? And when you're being unconscious about what you're eating, you know, you're just creating a disaster, you know, just animals being treated abysmally and being fed crops grown in a completely unsustainable way. But when you like- By workers who are being unfairly treated. Yeah, man, it's just totally. And then, but the solution's right there too. I mean, if you just are conscious about it and like, okay okay i want to know who's growing my food and

is it being done right and if i'm going to eat an animal product is it from a pasture-based system with an animal lived a life worth living you know and um you know you can start to make a shift by taking responsibility with your food choice yeah and embodying your grandfather's ethos and sensibility of using commerce as a form of activism. Like soap to him was a means of delivering a message. And you've really done the same thing, but just done it in a more fiscally responsible way. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it is.

It is all cycles of energy. And our soaps, like food on a plate, it's all cycles of energy and just in our soaps like food on a plate, it's all agricultural based and like us taking responsibility for our supply chains and making sure all the farmers are being paid a fair price and are growing our coconuts and olives and totally righteous ways, palm is a real important one. Yeah, when you say palm oil, like alarm bells go off

because it's the real important yeah when you say palm oil like alarm bells go off because it's the it's the number one offender when it comes to rapacious you know rainforest you know de-evolution yeah so um you know we also use hemp seed oil and um you know hemp has this reputation as being like the wonder crop that'll save humanity and palm has the reputation is like you know the evil most vile crop that'll take us you know right off the cliff edge and the reality is is that it's that the the issue is how do we grow our crops whether it's palm or hemp it's the method of how we do it it's not what the crop is and palm is actually the highest per acre yielding oil crop and can be done in a totally regenerative, organic, sustainable way. Unfortunately, what's happening is a lot of our commodity crops are clear-cutting rainforests, ripping up wetlands, dislocating communities, eliminating orangutan habitat in Borneo and Indonesia especially.

But soy plantations are ripping up the you know Amazon and so it's just in either case like you know how do we grow these crops in a regenerative way and so with palm oil like we're like in like every company ever we're we were buying from brokers and we had no visibility we were buying on the commodity market it's like who's got the cheapest coconut oil that meets our spec? And that's how everyone buys it. You don't even know where it comes from.

You have no idea, right? And so that's the problem. You just have this race to the bottom in the world. So we said, okay, we want to know who the farming communities are and just make sure that they're doing it correctly and then go to market in partnership with them. So in the case of palm oil,

we identified a really cool project in Ghana where smallholder farmers not farming more than two to five acres each are growing palm and are intercropping with banana and cassava and kind of a rich farm ecosystem. And there's plenty of wild biodiverse habitat for wildlife. and there's plenty of wild biodiversity habitat for wildlife. So yeah, so the palm is an especially important one, obviously given the concern with when it's not done that way

it's generally done in the worst possible way. And they're able to meet your demand and do it in a predictable way that allows you to basically run your business fluidly? Yeah. So at this point, yes, but it's been a whole adventure getting there. And we do have some kind of next best suppliers that are doing a really good job. There's Agropalma is a really good entity in Brazil, and they're doing a really good job.

It's not smallholder, but they're doing a pretty good job as far as when it comes to palm. There's another project in Ecuador called Natural Habitats and they're doing a pretty good job. But I mean, we do the best job. And so we're basically at this point supplying all of our own demand. Right, and you're getting your olive oil

from both Palestine and Israel? Yeah, so 90% from the West Bank, from Palestinian farmers in the West Bank who are basically farming regeneratively by default and have been facing really difficult circumstances bringing their olive oil to market, even local markets for a while there, just under the occupation.

circumstances bringing their olive oil to market even local markets for a while there just under the occupation um and so we i did a google search for fair trade olive oil and the only thing that came up was kanon and the west bank and i was like wow okay that's intense yeah but uh but they're beautiful beautiful project founded by this guy nasu ab Aboufara, who was a professor of anthropology at University of Wisconsin at Madison, had a coffee house, kind of folk singing, center for the arts kind of vibe, and took the fair trade idea that emerged out of coffee and cocoa and applied it to olives to its farmers back home. And then, so we partnered with him, but then to be clear, we're not being anti-Israel about that. We do 10% from the Israeli side,

half from a Jewish family farm that happens to be related to us like five generations back. And then half from a Christian Arab Israeli project in the Nazareth region. So our olive oil is Muslim Jewish Christian in the Dr. Brown. Which perfectly fuses with your grandfather's vision and the spiritual principles that underpin the whole enterprise. Yeah.

It's like amazing. No, it's pretty beautiful, yeah. Yeah. So how do you, well, two things. as somebody for whom sustainability is top of mind and a huge priority, I have to ask the question, if you're importing all of these products from all over the world, there's a carbon implication to that.

Do you try to offset that or how do you think about or manage that aspect of the business? Yeah, so in the case of soap, especially for liquid soap, we're limited to using what's called hyaluronic oils and these are shorter chain saturated fats. So all fats and oils are chemically triglycerides. So whether it's beef fat or coconut oil, it's all a glycerin backbone with three fatty acids.

And how long those fatty acids are and how many double bonds are in them makes the different characteristics of different fats and oils. So in the case of soap, your high lather, good hard water soap comes from shorter saturated oils. And that basically means coconut and palm kernel oil.

Those are the main main sources so we're we need to be involved in the tropics for those raw materials and then olive oil obviously we could be sourcing here from california um but you know i think you know in the hierarchy of value we're just super psyched by the fair trade project going on in Palestine and Israel and the Holy Land. So we're going to continue with that. But we are embarked right now on a scope three emission audit, basically taking responsibility for all the emissions involved at every aspect of our business, all the freight, all the everything. And then instead of investing in offsets, we're pioneering this movement called insetting, which within our own supply chains, within our

own agricultural supply chains, regenerative organic methods like composting and returning biomass to the soil, you actually can sequester carbon in the soil. And in fact, soil is the largest land-based carbon sink. And if we were to adopt regenerative organic methods at global scale, we could mitigate and bring down something like a third of excess atmospheric carbon back into the soil. A lot of the carbon up in the atmosphere is from mismanaged soils. It's from all the life that's been destroyed and killed, has been oxidized the atmosphere. But when you bring that soil back to life and are enriching it with carbon rich compost and inputs,

you can start to build that carbon back up, bring that life back and that carbon. So we're basically insetting our carbon through these practices in our own agricultural supply chains. Wow, that's super cool. And meanwhile, you guys are solar powered. Yeah, we're solar. Yeah, and that's it.

I mean, we need to decarbonize our economy and go green. But we have this huge legacy load of excess atmosphere, carbon dioxide. And that's where the regenerative organic is like the soil. I mean, obviously there's all these high-tech solutions taking carbon out of air, but I mean, if we just farm correctly, we can put a lot of it back into the soil. Well, there's a lot of lip service given to the idea of conscious capitalism, but this is bred into the very DNA of everything that you guys do. And I'm wondering whether at some point along this journey, when you start to take things like fair trade and making sure that you're sourcing from these regen farms,

I would imagine that's driving your price point up. There had to be people saying, you're insane. Like you're gonna go out of business. If you try to adhere to this level of integrity, you're gonna price yourself just right out of the market. And there's no way, like if you're interested in sustainability, we should make sure the business is sustainable first.

Absolutely, I mean that, you know know without generating profits and healthy margins we're nowhere and we're in hand support any of the other causes and you know and we do cap our family salaries at five to one and all right how long you've been doing that since 20 years no 15 years 15 years so basically the highest paid person at the company can't make more than five times the amount of salary the lowest paid. Yeah, and we could see early on kind of what was happening and I was like, I felt, well, within that five to one,

we can have a lot of fun. And then just as like a good, just a good cutoff. Right, and in a world of CEO, you know, compensation packages that are completely insane and out of whack, that's a refreshing breath of fresh air. Yeah, and that, you know, you can just do so much good with, you know, not that much money if you're really focused on deploying it correctly and know the people,

you know, like closely involved in the causes like we are. I mean, we really care about them. They're not cause marketing for us. Like we really want to shift the world. That's the differentiator. You know, I feel like there's so many companies out there now who know they have to play in this sandbox a little bit, especially with the coming of age of millennials who are concerned about these sorts of, you know, save the world type issues. They want to patronize companies that are doing good and giving back. But most, the vast majority of companies who are quote unquote giving back are doing it in a very perfunctory way. Like, oh, we'll give you 1% to this or whatever, but it's not really part of the identity.

Or like I said earlier, like the fabric, the DNA of the company, there's a difference. Like this is what you guys do. Like the company exists so that you can support these causes. I feel like. That's right. And that was when I came in and decided that I did want to run Bronner's and had gone through an evolution of like, wow, I finally understand what my

granddad's all about. We didn't even get to the part of you coming back from Amsterdam and deciding you're going to be a soap dude. Yeah. But you kind of got it with like, okay, I got to the plane of where my granddad was and totally, whoa, you're right on it. You're 100% correct. We do live in a spiritual mystery. There is love and light at the heart of all these faith traditions. And if they don't take themselves literally and make idols out of their beliefs and symbols and let them be open and fluid, like, yeah, they're all pointing at this kind of mystery. And finally understood what my granddad was all about. that mystery and, and, and finally understood what my granddad was all about and took a little while to fully embrace coming back to work for my dad. But became a mental health counselor in

the Boston area for a while and was, did paranoid schizophrenic counseling. And, but in the course of this, did a lot of journaling and just realized if a company like Dr. Bronner's were to offer me a job, I'd go for it in a second. This is incredible. And was your brother working for the company at the time? No. He, in a similar way, he graduated Brown and went to teach English in Japan. And he didn't. So I let my dad know shortly after.

Dr. Bronner died March 7th of 97, on the same day our daughter Maya was born. So this is a very intense thing. Wait, hold on a second. Yeah. Your daughter was born on the same day your grandfather died. Yeah, same exact day, March 7th of 97. Holy shit. And I was reading a book by this guy, Rudyard,

Rudyard, I forget his last name, but he's- Kipling? No. He was like an astrologer, kind of young astrologer cat. And he wrote this book

called The Planetarization of Consciousness. And I just remember that was the book I was reading, you know, and-

On that day. On that day. And, you know, which was my granddad's whole- What was going on astrologically on that day? I don't know, man. Some kind of conversions of, you know, celestial bodies.

Yeah, yeah, you know, and for me, you know, I don't, yeah, I don't put like a literalness into like necessarily any given constellation context, but I think in general as a symbolic language of the soul and deeper currents that we live and breathe in, I like respected and yeah, but that was a big, huge day. And shortly thereafter, let my dad know I was ready to come into the company. And then shortly after that, he was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer

and given six months to live. Wow. But which he lived for 12 months. He lived to see his daughter married to my brother-in-law, Michael, who's now our chief of operations. My sister, Lisa's rad. She's got a blog called Going Green with a Bronner Mom.

And our dad just really downloaded the ropes. Trained you up. Yeah, and we had to shut down his foam company to just concentrate on the soap. But I then, within the next couple years, convinced my brother, like, hey, Mike, you got to come back, dude. This is nuts, and I'm not like I was. He had the same blocks I did working for my dad as working with his brother, and I had to assure him I'm not like I was. He had the same blocks I did working for my dad as working with his brother.

And I had to assure him like I'm way better. Yeah. I've seen the light, man. Yeah. The all-in-one vision, it's happening. Yeah. No, he's like, what? No, no.

Yeah, so he, and he's now, we're now- So he kind of handles the business end of it, right? And you're like, you you can be the cosmic engagement officer. Yeah. Like my brother would say, we're 85%, 90% the same. We share a lot of the similar passions and inclinations. But yeah, he's a bit more more pragmatic i'm a little more cosmic um and i definitely geared at the activist side of the of the enterprise and he's really especially

focused internationally he's really built us out you know internationally but um he's now president and we're 50 50 in the company um and Cool. And, yeah, just total partners. So what's the future, man? What's the future for Bronner's? What's the future for – what is the forecast for planet Earth from your perspective? Yeah. Well, you know, I'm optimistic that, you know, that the different strategies in place, like if we dramatically reduce the amount of meat we're eating,

if we shift our agriculture and 1.3 to 0 surface to a sustainable regenerative organic management, if we decarbonize the economy, integrate these psychedelic allies. And to your point, that there's there's ways to misuse these allies and all that they often are but in a medicine practice to look at okay we've got a meditation practice and then a medicine practice that albert hoffman who discovered lsd he saw lsd as an adjunct to meditative practice and and um and the founder of aa bill wilson saw famously dabbled in lsd yeah you know as potential ways of interrupting habitual forms of thought and patterns of behavior and um so anyway so so i'm optimistic with all these things um well i would just just to interject

um i don't want to interrupt your fluidity of thought, but what's interesting about you is that you're somebody who's been ahead of the curve, much like your grandfather. I mean, your grandfather was way ahead of things, right? You're like slightly ahead of things because you, I mean, you're, are you the person who was behind the initiative at Bronner's to be the first company to really start working with hemp? Like as soon as it became, well, you kind of were doing it before it was quote, like technically legal, right? And there was lawsuits. Oh yeah, totally.

Yeah, it was an activist. Now it's all good. But like to have hemp in your product was kind of a radical thing. Yeah. Not that long ago. Yeah. Right?

So you were kind of initiated that whole thing. And also you were talking about like micro dosing and things like that, like before it became like a Silicon Valley, you know, hipster thing to do. Yeah. No, absolutely, man. Yeah.

And the grandfather's legacy forward. Yeah. Well, and that's, yeah, right on, man. I mean, that's when I came into the company, and that's, yeah, right on, man. I mean, that's when I came into the company, it was like, we're gonna run this like my granddad did. This is an activist engine to make the world better. And that's what we're mostly here to do.

It's crazy what's going on with hemp now. Yeah, so, you know, it was such a long, hard slog there for 20 years, and now the tide has finally turned. And, you know know back in the day like when we first put into hemp seed oil in our soaps yeah it was a huge deal right people thought they were going to test positive at work and all kinds of stuff yeah yeah and you all you've been in a bunch of lawsuits over similar kinds of spats right with the usda and yeah so so first we went to the mat with DEA. After Bush came in and 9-11, the DOJ went nuts, Department of Justice went nuts on medical marijuana, industrial hemp,

and Oregon's euthanasia law, which is interesting because there's a ballot measure in Oregon to legalize medical therapeutic use of mushrooms. And definitely psilocybin the active ingredient has been found to be really beneficial for end-of-life anxiety like that's one of the big breakthrough areas like just helping people reconcile to the dying process as part of a larger life you know mystery and and um and but anyways like the doJ was going nuts on all these different kind of progressive movements. And so we got in a big fight to preserve industrial hemp seed oil imports back in 2001, which we ultimately won in 2004. And then fast forward to today, Kentucky was really the big shift with tobacco going down the tubes.

And it's been the historical hemp heartland. Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, has been our number one champion in Congress for the last four years. That's so weird. Yeah. And like John Boehner works for a cannabis company now. Yeah. What kind of weird, bizarre universe do we live in? Yeah.

Those things are happening. No, totally. And that's, yeah, I mean, it's incredible. So, yeah, so I think it's just, so I was just in DC celebrating our big victory and it's awesome, but we're moving on. And like one of the joke, I would never answer a journalist

who would call me 20 years ago, like, oh, isn't hemp a stalking horse for marijuana? Like, aren't you just opening up cultural space to reform cannabis generally and of course the answer was always like no like we're focused on on industrial hemp for seed and fiber and omega-3s lacking in the american diet and you know hemp fibers it's amazing for textiles and clothing and and it's an amazing sustainable crop grows like a weed you don't need a lot of synthetic pesticides and fertility but uh the joke was like no get it right this is about lsd you know so the the end game you know that's what you're angling for yeah you know just just integration of all these allies into into the culture and and to help us care about and give a shit in the first place about the problems

and care enough to engage and solve them. Yeah, well, I think we're at an inflection point with all of these issues. The historical trajectory of hemp is so we could do a whole podcast on that alone with everything that William Randolph Hearst did to prevent that from being a staple of American daily life because of his investments in paper

and Henry Ford and his hemp car. Like there's a whole bunch of amazing stories that come out of that, but we're kind of past that now. We've overcome that hurdle. And then we have people like Michael Pollan writing books about psychedelic experiences. We have Johns Hopkins and various other organizations pouring a lot of money into scientific research

on the implications of whether it's microdosing or psilocybin or other psychoactive compounds on everything from depression to all manner of mental health, PTSD, et cetera. So it's very interesting times. And you've forecasted a lot of this. We're now living in this, we're kind of in this in between phase, I think,

but I think it's inevitable that we're heading in the direction that you foresee. When it comes to food and agriculture and soil, I too am optimistic, but, and I've said this before, I feel like there is an arms race afoot. Like we have people like yourselves and there is a massive grassroots movement and a growing population of activist consumers

who are concerned about these things and the future of the planet for ourselves and future generations who are patronizing companies that are trying to do good like yours, but that's butting up against, like we said earlier, the growing populations across the planet, not just in America and this massive increasing demand for the products of animal agriculture

and the rapacious practices that go into producing those. So who is gonna win? Are we gonna be able to significantly elevate our collective consciousness to the point that we can combat what ails us or is the dark force gonna prevail? Yeah, no, yeah, man, totally. It's Star Wars, man,'s what it is yeah no absolutely man

and actually i was in an ibogaine experience with a buddy um and ibogaine is um has great promise for opiate addiction in particular it's it's this really powerful african root um prince of psychedelic and in uh black panther they kind of allude to of allude to it a little bit, the medicine in that movie where you hit the ancestral plane. That's not ayahuasca? No, it's an iboga. So iboga. So it's another, arguably even more intense plant psychedelic ally.

But within this vision, I saw my granite over here and the planet Earth and all the life artists and activists fighting the machine and Trump and all the, are we going to win? And feeling like forces, other dimensional forces plugging in to help from who knows what. And then at a certain point, golden light breaks out on the Earth. It was peace on Earth. And everything peace on earth, packs and beautiful. So I will adopt, I will hold that energy frequency for the future of humanity and the planet, man. Yeah, hopefully, man. Yeah.

Good. Well, I think that's a good place to close it down, dude. Yeah. How do you feel? Yeah, I think so. That was awesome, man. Thank you so much. I love that, dude. Thank you. Yeah. How do you feel? Yeah, I think so. That was awesome, man. Thank you so much. I love that, dude. Thank you. Yeah. Very cool. I would say, I say with a fair amount of certitude

that after listening to this podcast, when you go to the store and you see that Dr. Bronner soap, you're going to look at it differently for the rest of your life after hearing this conversation you're always gonna think back to what we talked about what yeah dude that's even crazier than i thought i know man so uh what's what's what's uh what's up with you like you do you ever like um i always like to close it down like with people connect with your message is there how do they best connect with you? Do you ever do public talks? I know you go to Washington and you do protests and all this activist stuff. If somebody wants to get on your wavelength, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah. Well, I guess I could give out my email. Oh, careful. Sure you want to do that? No, I don't know. I don't know if you should do that, i don't know i don't know oh yeah dude oh the legendary rich roll fan weirdos you might get a few emails that's all nice people oh i know um yeah um well i am often i guess speaking at different regenerative organic

farming conferences and cannabis we're launching um uh brother David's, or I should be very clear, this has nothing to do with Dr. Bronner's, my family, but Brother David's regenerative cannabis flower line and be hitting a lot of the cannabis trade shows. And that's to promote the small family farmed, outdoor, correctly grown medicine. And it's a nonprofit venture, totally all profits back to benefit. Not because cannabis, unfortunately,

there's these huge corporate indoor grows that are dominating very energy and chemical intensive. So yeah, I guess I'm out and about at different trade shows and talking. But you can call up the number on Dr. Bronner's and you can totally reach me by email. I won't give out my personal number. But yeah, like-

So if somebody's determined to get in touch with you, it's not that hard. No, I will totally personally answer any sincere, sweet note. And here's something I think- Even if it's not sweet, if it's got good points. All right, man. So you could do that.

And as a final kind of thing, as a takeaway for people that are listening to this, I feel like even if you're the most well-intentioned and fairly adequately informed consumer, when you go to the grocery store, the market, whatever, you see all of these labels on various products and it's confusing for the most intelligent among us. Like what do these labels really mean?

Does organic really mean what I think it means? What does cage-free mean? What does grass-fed mean? Does that really mean that these cows are having amazing lives? There's so many labels and I know for myself, I've lost confidence in the idea that, you know, they actually live up to the sort of, you know, promise. And I know in many ways they don't, but you're somebody who's really looked at this.

So for somebody who is listening to this, like what are the labels they really need to pay attention to? And what should they know about like truth versus fiction when it comes to these? Yeah, well, and you alluded to some of our litigation. I mean, we did litigate against a lot of what we called organic cheater brands in the personal care space. Right, like, yeah, because that it been so commodified and watered down.

Yeah, and it was meaningless. You could buy your way into it essentially. Totally, so the more I would say meaningful certifications, well, first and foremost is regenerative organic certified. It's not yet in the market. We're in our pilot phase this year. But if you go to regenerganic.com, you can kind of learn more about what the standard is.

Do they have a list of products there that adhere to that standard? Unfortunately, there's not yet at this point in the market, but you can get on the mailing list. But what we did with Regenerganic is take, okay, what are the top animal welfare pasture-based standards? So that would be your GAP4, so Global Animal Partnership. That's got that ranking in Whole Foods.

So 1, 2, 3 are pretty not super meaningful, but at GAP4 four that's when it gets pretty meaningful so for if you are going to choose the meat or or dairy um look for gap four or above um and then animal welfare approved is pretty much the highest animal welfare certification um certified humane pasture certified humane in and of itself is a little not as strong but if it if there's a pasture claim with certified humane certification that's pretty meaningful um on the fair labor side um fair for life that's our certifier um we're we believe that's got a lot of integrity yeah fair for life. Yeah, fair for life. And there's other-

That ensures fair wages, adequate working conditions. Yeah, gender equity. And we actually pay into a fair trade fund on materials and labor that helps with community development projects. So sanitation, like clean water wells or school books for kids or defibrillator for the hospital and

so the so fair trade certification is good and um i mean the big the big one here is fair trade usa and i have my issues there but you know there's a lot of really good products and brands certified by them and then on soil health, obviously biodynamic, Indemnitor is really good. And organic, USDA organic, I mean, you just got to know your brand. There's a big spectrum in there. And that's what we're hoping to do with regenerative organic. It's just really, here's your single trustworthy seal

that on all these ones you can just trust. And what are the barriers that you're facing in terms of just adoption? Well, it's going to be obviously consumer education and breaking through all the noise. But we have partners like Patagonia, and I think we've got a good list roster of brands. And I think ultimately, you've got to kind of do the research on a given brand.

But, you know, like the Guay, like Guayqui is a big ally for us and they do Yerba Mate. Yeah. And, you know, and that's like, do you research them? You're like, wow, this couldn't be more awesome, you know? And they're helping preserve rainforest and supporting the Guayqui tribe. And that certification could apply to cotton garments and the like, right? Yeah, and so Patagonia's got some pretty good stuff. They're similar in that they've got certified cotton,

certified rubber for their wetsuits. They're doing some really deep work into their supply chains. And I think that's part of what is is knowing the brands and you can see in our pilot like we do have guayaqui and numi and some really good brands that are really going that extra mile and i would say that yeah certification is um is um is good to look for but ultimately you need to do your research on the brand and just figure out, really get a feel for them. And how committed are they?

Is it okay they got one or two Fairtrade products, but the rest of their portfolio or product or brand portfolio is weak versus complete commitment? How do you know when you're looking at these products and trying to evaluate them when you're getting fucked with? Because I'm sure there's a lot of marketing double speak and obfuscation. You try to make people think that they're buying something

that is environmentally comports with all the things you're talking about but doesn't actually. Yeah, I mean, reading ingredient decks is key. And you know, simple language you can pronounce on a cosmetic, obviously, if you can't pronounce it, it's probably doesn't belong on your skin. And, you know, obviously that'll contradict whatever green claims are being made.

If you're like, what's the seven syllable chemical name? It's like, well, yeah, that's a big flag. Yeah. Well, I think there's this sense that if you're buying something at the store, that it must be fine. I'm friends with this woman, Greg Renfrew, who has a company called Beauty Counter. She created this, basically this gigantic company, cosmetics company initially for women with beauty products that are all like legitimately all natural without all the chemicals

because she was horrified to discover that all these products that she thought were natural, quote unquote natural really weren't. Yeah, no, there's no regular. Cause you just think like, well, it must be okay. I got it at the nice, at the Sephora or whatever. And you realize like, yeah, it's very far from the case. Oh yeah, there's no regulations.

The onus is on you as the consumer to really be educated about these things. Yeah, it's buyer beware basically. And that, but yeah, reading an ingredient deck, it should look like a food, like you're putting food on your skin. And if it reads different, then that's a problem. The biggest organ on your body, man.

Yeah, totally. So what's your favorite use of your product other than as a typical soap? Of all the uses. Well, firefighting foam. Well, full blasting foam in people's faces. So what do I have to do to get the foam truck to come to my house? Oh, no, well, next time we're around,

we'll just come by and do it. All right. Yeah, throw a really big party. Okay, good. Cool, man. Thank you so much. Next time you have some big initiative or something going on, come back and talk to me, man.

I really enjoyed this. Yeah, right on. Thank you for having me. And this has been awesome. I appreciate what you're doing. And I think it's proof that you can run a company with this higher sense of purpose and this call to service

and do it in a financially, not just viable way, but in a profitable way. The manner in which you have grown this company to prominence is, I mean, they should be teaching this at Harvard Business School. It's incredible what you guys have built and you've done it on principle with integrity and that's to be commended. And I hope more companies out there can model their DNA off what you guys have established and created. Yeah, right on. Thank you. And there are other companies that have inspired us,

like the Guayakis of the world. And hopefully it's a virtuous cycle and others will in turn be inspired. Yeah, man. It's the all one vision, brother. Bam. Unity of love. All right, man. Yeah. It's the all one vision, brother. Bam. Unity of love. All right, man.

Peace. Peace. Let's. Bam. That David Bronner is a trip, isn't he? Hope you enjoyed that journey down the spiritual, psychedelic, and organic rabbit hole. If you want to learn more about Dr. Bronner's soap, go to drbronner.com, drbronner.com. about Dr. Bronner's soap, go to drbronner.com, drbronner.com. You can hit David up on Twitter or Instagram at drbronner. And I wanted to make a quick announcement about this really cool

documentary that these guys just created. It's called Journey to Pavatramenth. I think that's how you say it. And it's this beautiful look at organic, regenerative farming practices in rural India, the farms that actually supply Dr. Bronner with the organic mint oil that they use in their peppermint soaps. It's all about soil fertility. It's about climate change. I really implore everybody to check it out. And you can find it at drbronner.com forward slash journey. Quick announcement that there's still time to take advantage of our sale on our Plant Power Meal Planner, $20 off an annual subscription when you use the code POWER20 at checkout through April 13. When you sign up at meals.richroll.com, you'll get access to thousands of nutritious,

easy to prepare, totally customized plant-based recipes. You get unlimited grocery lists, you get grocery delivery in most metropolitan areas, and you get access to a team of expert nutrition coaches on the ready seven days a week to answer all of your questions. To learn more and to sign up, go to meals.richroll.com or click on Meal Planner on the top menu on my website. If you'd like to support the work we do here on the podcast, there are a couple of simple ways to do just that. Just tell your friends about it when you're at a dinner party or just across the breakfast table. Take a screen grab of the episode you're listening to, share it on social media. I love that. Tag me so I can share it myself.

Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on YouTube, on Spotify, wherever you listen to your fine podcast content. Leave a review on Apple Podcasts, and you can support us on Patreon at richroll.com forward slash donate. I want to thank everybody who helped put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music, put on the show today. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes, interstitial music. Blake Curtis and Margo Lubin for their magic, creating the video version of the podcast and editing it for YouTube. Jessica Miranda for her beautiful graphics. DK, David Kahn, my man, hashtag DKGoals for advertiser relationships and theme music, as always, by Analema. Thank you for the love, you guys. I don't take your attention for

granted. I really appreciate your listenership. And I'll see you back here in a couple days with an amazing conversation with Kevin Smith. Yes, that Kevin Smith, the silent Bob guy, the clerks guy, the mall rats guy, that Kevin Smith is stopping by to share his transformation experience in the wake of suffering a near fatal heart attack. It's an amazing story. You're not going to want to miss it. Until then, remember, we are all one. Unity, people.

Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.