The Rich Roll Podcast - On Running Across America For A GMO-Free USA

Episode Date: January 23, 2014

What do you do when your twelve-year-old son announces he’s going to run across America? That's the dilemma Brett & Kris Wilcox faced, hoping that in time their son David would simply forget about his crazy idea — “it's a phase….he'll grow out of this fantasy eventually……right?” Well, David refused to let up. In fact, he doubled down. On the heels of becoming the fastest freshman cross country runner in his region of Alaska, David became more determined than ever to become the 2nd 15-year old ever to complete a transcontinental run. Needless to say, his parents had a decision to make – quash their son's dream, or dig deep to help make it happen. I am happy to say they chose the latter. And on January 18, 2014, David and his father — supported by his mother Kris and 13-year old sister Olivia — began their coast-to-coast attempt, launching from Huntington Beach, CA en route to Washington, D.C. David has his motivations. But in order to run alongside his son, Brett needed his own. As a Licensed Professional Counselor, Brett has spent his career helping people heal from the poison and pain they’ve endured at the hands of bullies and batterers. Now, he's turned his attention to global bullies—bullies like the giant chemical companies that poison the Earth, our political processes and our agricultural system. The author of We're Monsanto: Feeding the World Lie After Lie*, Brett knows a thing or two about GMO's, the ills of factory farming, the depletion of our soil, and the future of food. So Brett — and David — are running across America to say enough is enough. And during the course of our conversation we dig deep into these issues — what exactly these companies are doing to our food system, why we should care, and what we can do about it. It's a fascinating conversation and one I am proud to share with you. What this humble family has set out to accomplish is extraordinary. But they can't do it alone. Every great accomplishment requires the support of a great team. They need all the help they can get. So let's be that team for them. Towards that end, I implore you to visit their Indiegogo fundraising page and — if it feels right to you — consider contributing to their mission and advocacy — a cause that affects us all, irrespective of dietary preference, geographical location or political prediliction. I hope you enjoy the conversation! Rich NOTE: Unfortunately we did experience some audio quality issues with the recording. Just when I think I have this whole thing figured out! Something about my mic being too hot and the others lower. I don't know. Tyler worked really hard to clean it up, but it's not perfect. Hope it's not too distracting, and all I can say is that I will continue to try harder, learn and do better. Give Tyler a shoutout in the comments below, he's doing a great job as my producer. And all the music cues are his own original compositions.

Welcome to Episode 69 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Brett and David Wilcox. The Rich Roll Podcast. Thanks for tuning in. Thanks for coming back if you've been listening. What we do here is each week I bring to you the best and the brightest, the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting minds in health, fitness, nutrition, spirituality, entrepreneurialism, athleticism. And today we have a mishmash of all these things. I've got this really cool family who came into the podcast studio today. And what is happening is this. It's

a father-son duo. It's Brett and David Wilcox. Brett's the dad. David's the son, age 15. And these two guys with the mom and the sister crewing right along with them, are in the midst, in the early days, of a transcontinental run from Los Angeles, California, all the way to Washington, D.C. This is the harebrained idea of the son, David, who got it into his brain around age 12 or 13 that he wanted to run across the United States and wouldn't let it go.

And now it's all happening. They started last Saturday. And this is all occurring around the promotion and advocacy of a GMO-free United States and world. So the idea is that by running across the country and sort of drawing attention to their cause and meeting people along the way and stopping at farms and interviewing people and documenting all of this on film that Brett, David, and their family will be putting the message out in a big way about the perils of GMO foods and the promotion of a healthy lifestyle that is GMO-free. And when I first started looking into these guys, I thought, well, 15 years old running across the country,

he's got to be the youngest guy to ever try this. Well, it turns out that somebody else has done this at age 15, and I'll let them tell the story during the podcast, but it's pretty amazing. But they are the first, not the first father-son duo to do it, but the first father-son duo where the son was actually not an adult, I think is the idea here. So it's groundbreaking in that regard. And it's pretty cool. These people hail from Alaska. They're just average people who are uh trying to do something extraordinary uh brett is a licensed professional counselor and david is a high school student he's a freshman in high school

he happens to be uh one of the outstanding cross-country runners in his state i believe in fact he's the fastest freshman cross-country runner in his region in Alaska and loves running. And it's cool to see him take his love for running and his father's passion and interest in healthy lifestyle and merge these things, these two things together to do something compelling and something that is of service to all of us because the GMO issue is a big one. I know it's controversial, but it's something that we all need to be as educated about as possible. And I'm learning as I go.

I certainly am not the expert in this issue. So I'm all ears. I'm trying to find out as much as I can about this. And I think we all can benefit from hearing Brett talk about it. Uh, he's the author of a book called where, uh, we're Monsanto feeding the world lie after lie. So he's very well educated about what Monsanto and, uh, and, and other similar companies are doing, uh, with respect to patenting our seeds and sort of vertically integrating the pesticide industry

with the food industry, with the way that our food is harvested and delivered and all these sorts of things. And the whole system is sort of set up to prevent us from thinking too much about it or understanding it too comprehensively. So again, it's incumbent upon us to go the extra mile and learn as much as we can. So that's what we're doing today. Today's show is brought to you by my Amazon banner ad at richroll.com. If you want to support the show, best way to do that is to go to richroll.com, click on the Amazon banner ad. It's right there on the right-hand margin, to go to richroll.com, click on the Amazon banner ad. It's right there on the right-hand margin. And then it will take you to Amazon and you can buy whatever your heart desires, whatever it is that you're going to Amazon for in the first place. Amazon will not charge you one cent extra

for using the banner ad, but Amazon will kick us a little commission. So it's a win-win. You don't have to spend extra and we benefit and you support the plant power mission so we love it and thank you everybody who has been out there um supporting us in this way it's uh it's not a small thing and we appreciate it um you want to go the extra mile you can also donate to the show on a one-time basis weekly monthly subscription whatever you want it's right there on the richroll..com homepage as well you'll see the donate button we got some great products there too you can check out the cookbook the meditation program some uh athletic supplements vitamin b12 etc the t-shirts i know i know they should be up for by now. I get emails and tweets from you guys every day, and I appreciate it.

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And part and parcel with that is making the T-shirts available to you, which we have in stock and we're ready to sell them. But we just have a couple technical issues we got to resolve before it can go live. So I can't give you an exact date. It will be very soon. We're working on it uh so please be patient believe me there's nothing

more i would rather do than be able to be selling these great shirts to you guys right now and we're going to have that up for you soon so that you can proudly support the plant power mission um what else that's it uh let's just get into the interview, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, Brett and David Wilcox, here to talk about their transcontinental run attempt and their mission. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life.

And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. 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. The father-son duo running across the United States, never been done before, right? Father-teen sons never been done before. Oh, father-son duo running across the United States never been done before, right?

Father-teen-son's never been done before. Oh, father-teen-son. So father-grown-up-son, that has happened? At least once. Who was that? I don't remember the guy's names. We did see him, though. Yeah. Where do you even go to research that and figure out that stuff?

There's a group on Facebook called USA Crossers, and one of the main crossers invited us to join the group. And that's where we first learned that we were not the first father son. And we also learned that David is not the youngest. Yeah, that was, of course, going to be my next question. I found that in the in the when I was researching you guys, I figured I thought he's got to be the youngest guy to have ever tried this but somebody else who's 15 right so nobody who's 14 so you're you you essentially if you do it you've tied somebody else your age he's uh when he completed he's like as old as i'll be in like a month or two i see all right

so you're right and how long ago was that uh that was 1928 yeah 1928 yeah oh my god i'd heard these crazy stories about people that had been it goes way back this idea of running across the united states but somebody who was that young did it in 1928 yeah what was the name of that race uh the great american foot race right right what is the what is the history of that? Do you know? The organizer was his name, Pyle. I can't quite recall. There was a businessman who thought this is a great way to make a whole lot of money, so he offered a $25,000 pot. Tobias Cotton was a 15-year-old African-American kid living in L.A. His dad was a mechanic. A car fell on him. He got injured.

They were out of work. They were out of money. And the kid said, hey, I'm going to run across the country. I'm going to beat all these old guys, and we're going to get $25,000. Right. And he did it. He ran across the country. And if I understand correctly, he was like the 35th finisher. And the last of the 100, the 198 started, 35 finished.

He was last. And when he got to the finish line they were they were broke they were destitute no prize of course for 35th place and a guy named uh charles uh bojangle was that right robinson bojangle um william robinson there we go really they made names better back then. No kidding. He had a big benefit opera event or charity event. I can't remember what the event was. He made an all-black musical called The Blackbirds, I think. Was it?

I'm not wrong, but I'm pretty sure. So they put together a whole bunch of money for him, and he walked out of there with a whole bunch of money and a diamond- studded medal. And so he was successful in raising money for his family. So there's a whole community of people, and they call themselves crossers. This is news to me.

I thought I knew quite a bit about people running across the country, but I think I have a lot to learn. USA Crossers is Facebook. And so there's probably a Facebook community for these people that talk about this stuff. Yeah, they claim that there's only about 300 people in the history of the world that have ever attempted this run.

Something like 10 times as many people have summited Everest as have run across the U.S. Right, right. It is interesting. And ironically, I just had, the other week, I had Charlie Engel in here for the podcast. He did an attempt running across the country with Marshall Ulrich. A couple years ago, they made a documentary about it.

But he's also the guy who ran across the Sahara. And he's getting ready to try to break the world record for fastest us crossing he's starting in march nice um so i had a crosser on nice two episodes ago and then tomorrow i'm interviewing uh this couple this husband and wife uh couple that just ran the perimeter of australia raw food i forget their names, but extraordinary story. Yeah, older couple, aren't they? Yeah, older. Yeah, they're in their mid-60s or something like that.

Ran a marathon a day for 365 days in a row and essentially traversed the entire perimeter of Australia. I love older people that redefine what it means to be old. That's cool. Well, their story also is interesting because I believe, I'm probably going to butcher this story, but I believe that she or he, one of them was quite ill and then adopted a raw plant-based diet and kind of rejuvenated their life. And this is sort of a celebration of that in a way to kind of promote this message, which isn't dissimilar from your story, a little bit different. But the point being that you're part of this trifecta, me doing these podcasts of people that are running extremely long distances and trying to put a healthy message out there. So I don't know what's in the air.

Everybody now wants to run across the U.S. Well, you're in the air partly. You've done some amazing things. I haven't done that, though. You run amazing distances. When you say you're running across the U.S., people go, Wow, that is amazing. How haven't done that, though. You run amazing distances. When you say you're running across the USA, people go, wow, that is amazing. How do you do that? But the fact is, people run miles around their houses

for a year's time. We just happened to pick up where we left off the day before. Right, right. So it sounds cool, but there's a lot of people that are running distances. Well, there's also this idea that you're putting the rest of your life on hold. You know, you really are packing up and, and, you know, going on this extraordinary adventure. And it's cool that you're doing it as a family. You know, you're all,

you've all hit pause on, you know, whatever else you were doing in your life and you're going to go have this extraordinary experience and whatever happens, there's no doubt that you will remember this for the rest of your life. It's pretty cool. You always hear about ultra runners and how it's running or the family. And we thought, you know, why does it have to be either or? Why can't it be both? Right. And David, this is all your fault, right?

Yeah. This is your big idea? Mostly. All right, come on, man. So all how did how did you get this idea that you wanted to do this well i guess it really if you go all the way back it originated with my dad showing me something on the internet about a girl named jazzy jasmine and how she was running across the country at the age of 17 and she was the youngest girl to have heard about it. So when I heard about that,

I started thinking about all the great things that could happen from it, what would be fun about it, I guess. I'm pretty sure back then I didn't consider any of the hard things or the bad things that could happen just because, like, I don't know.

Sounded like a cool adventure. Yeah. How old were you when this was going on? I don't know. I'd say 12 or 13. 12 or 13, right. And had you already picked up running, or did running come after that? I had been, like, I ran my first 5K when I was somewhere in between 7 and nine but I wasn't training at that time I was

just you weren't training when you were seven okay good good that's more a uh yeah more a question more a parenting question than anything else I suppose right but uh but obviously you were keen on running from a very early age and now um and. And now you're quite the cross-country champion. I was reading like regional fastest freshman in your region or in the state of Alaska, your age group. 3A division. What does that mean, 3A? The schools are split up into 1 through 5A. Our school division is a 3a school so when you go to state you compete

against other 3a schools so the huge schools don't have a big advantage i see and but you also compete individually with other 3a people so there weren't any other freshmen in the 3a division less than me in the state but there was four or five in the larger division gotcha all right so and you just finished your you you would be a sophomore this year um i'm a freshman oh you're a freshman this semester i see and so how does this work you're you're obviously at a stop out of school are you doing a homeschool program when you guys are on the road or how are you do you have an agreement with the school or how does that work um there's this homeschooling internet based thing somewhere in a town in southeast alaska that we're just using so we

can still sort of be in the same area of schooling the same sort of ideas that are always there the superintendent of the school district uh was very supportive when he heard of the project and what we're doing and he says yeah we can make this work interesting yeah cool yeah we uh we homeschool all our kids so i'm always interested in hearing homeschooling uh stories and and you know it's it's this is why this is why you home you don't homeschool so that you sit at home. You homeschool so you can go have this extraordinary experience. As long as you're keeping up with your schoolwork, you're going to go do something that is so far afield from anything else that your peers are doing.

I mean, it's really remarkable. Yeah, yeah. The traditional classroom can really stifle creativity. And when a kid says he wants to run across the country and we support him in that that's in a that's quite a different thing than a traditional education yeah you could just say oh well that's nice well why don't you revisit that when you graduate from high school and you're old enough to make that decision you know but sorry you gotta show up at school and it's like we should be you know fanning this spark this spark of inspiration to do something exceptional and extraordinary so awesome i just read an article last night um that i posted on twitter about a 14 year old swimmer

in kansas who's like this phenomenal talent and uh and he's homeschooled and he's just he just went pro he's like the youngest swimmer to ever go pro and he had these he has some really unique crazy training techniques where all he does is swim like 20 minutes at a time. These super short, intense workouts. But he doesn't do these long training sessions that most swimmers do. But what was really more interesting about it was just about how he's not going the traditional schooling route. And this has become like a family affair for his family. And I think you're seeing more and more of that.

Are there a lot of kids in Alaska that homeschool, or what is the perception of that there? I don't know what the percentage of people would actually be. And I think it's probably the same type of people up there as down here. It's people that feel like public school really isn't in the best interest of their kids. They might be getting bullied. They might not like the curriculum. A lot of stuff going on in the public school system.

And they say, hey, these are our kids. We want to educate them the way we see fit. Right. And this is what you do for a living, right? You're a counselor. I'm a licensed professional counselor. Right. And so do you see kids or what are your clientele? Who are the kind of people that you counsel? Last seven and a half years, I've been

working in a wilderness-based experiential treatment program for teenagers. And these kids would come over all over from the state of Alaska, a lot of village kids from way up, way up north and way out in the middle of nowhere. And they'd come down to Sitka, Alaska, where we're in a town of 9,000 people. And they were thinking they were coming to a big metropolis. They would see these mountains covered in trees. And sometimes they'd get scared because of the trees, because where they've come from, they've never seen a tree before. And I had a kid once in our program,

and there was a great big beautiful green salad on the table. And he said, what's that? Amazing. And I said, it's a salad. And he is it good and i said try it and he said uh-uh he wasn't gonna do wow yeah where was he from uh a remote village is the best i can tell you now but you know in those remote villages it's really unrealistic to think that kids would be able to sit down of course fresh salads because that would cost a fortune to get that kind of food up to them. And so they have a subsistence lifestyle where they go out and just eating. They're just hunting meat and fishing and stuff like that, right? Yeah, that's what's there.

So Sitka is that southeast Alaska? Where in Alaska is that? 90 miles south of Juneau. Yeah, it's southeast Alaska. It's about halfway in between Anchorage and Seattle. Okay. We just got back from Anchorage a couple weeks ago. My wife grew up in Anchorage, and her parents live up there.

So it was actually my first experience up there. And I don't know whether they were having a warm front or whatever, but it just wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it was going to be. It was colder in Atlanta than it was in Anchorage. I think it was 34 degrees on average when we were there. But we went up skiing in Alyaska and spent some time in Anchorage. It's just extraordinary. Beautiful, beautiful country.

It is. Did you grow up there? Are you a native of Alyaska? Chris and I, my wife and I, are from northern Utah. Originally, we met in northern Utah. We got married in 89. Two weeks later we were living in Japan. We spent five and a half years in Japan. Moved back to Utah for a while and we've been in Alaska now for 13 years. Wow, interesting. What do you think about living in Alaska, David? Well, growing up there,

I like it a lot, but my dad talks about how cold it is and rainy, and he just doesn't really like the cold and rain. He wants to get back to the sun. In the program I worked in, we would go out into the middle of the Tongass National Rainforest and 40 degrees there with rain falling on you for a week at a time. And when you're built like I am, i'm just not designed for cold weather and so when i come down here to la and i feel the sun and people are talking about how hot it is i'm going oh bring it on this feels yeah it was uh it's ridiculous right now it was like 88 degrees when i was driving over here just now yeah david have you traveled

outside of alaska much or or have you seen much of the United States? Really, most of our family trips just go to Utah. About a few years ago, we took a road trip from Utah to Sitka. So you saw some stuff, right? But this is going to be a whole new thing, going all the way across the United States in slow motion, right? All right, so the run. You have this idea that you want to do this run, and you start nagging your dad about it,

who's probably thinking this will pass in a couple weeks, but you don't let it go, right? How do you go from just having this idea to you guys sitting here and actually doing this thing? sitting here and actually you know doing this thing um well i guess like my dad tells this the story about me talking about it more and bringing it up but it came down to when my mom and dad sat down and talked to each other and decided that if i could decide to be committed as fully as I could, that we would try to do this. Yeah, David was talking about it, and of course we're middle class people with middle class jobs thinking there's no way we can do this financially. But we thought, you know, we've got a kid with a

big dream, and are we going to squash that dream and say, no, we just don't have the money? Or are we going to say, we're going to make it happen no matter what? We're going to trust that God or nature or whatever is going to provide for us because we're going out and doing a good thing and that it's going to work out. And so this takes a bit of faith to do what we're doing. And we sat down and said, David, if we're doing it, we're doing it 100% because people are going to get behind us and they're going to be committed to what we're doing. And we're seeing that already just in the last couple of weeks, people have come out of the woodwork from the GMO free community and they're saying, yeah, we support you. They're saying, yeah, you're on our team and we want you to succeed. And so now it's like, it's not just a father and son running

across the country. It's a whole bunch of people who are looking at us and saying, yeah, there they are. There are people and they're spreading the word. Right. That's great. And I think that that's really an important message, which is, I think people have this idea that big things like this, big projects, they don't launch until all the T's are crossed and the I's are dotted. And in my experience with certain things that I've taken on in my life and other people that I know that have tackled seemingly insurmountable projects like this, they just make a decision that they're doing it and it's not figured out at all. They just say, this is what I'm doing. And then, you know, the next, they just take care of what they

can take care of that day and then see what the next day brings. And, you know, fast forward six months, a year later, and it's happening because they had a belief and they move forward based on faith. And that's true. If you're a filmmaker trying to make your independent feature film and you don't have the money to do it, but you just say, I'm making my movie, it's, it's happening, you know, and you just start acting as if, right? Like just assuming that all this stuff is going to work out. And I think the more you can do that, then the universe really does conspire to support you and those people that you need will suddenly materialize it's a bizarre faith-based spiritual equation but

i've seen it happen so many times in my life and you know you're seeing it right now with this it's it's cool it's really cool yeah it was it was great at the huntington beach just on saturday we showed up there and there's people we'd never met before there was banners that had been prepared by from organizations we'd never really we didn't know any of these people but they're there they had the banners for us they're saying yeah we're behind you we're sponsoring you and and it's and it's just going to keep growing because of course yeah it's it's a beautiful thing yeah and uh does that make you just do you feel the pressure david when you see that like oh man now what have i got myself into yeah definitely like before saturday i hadn't really gotten it in my head that i had all these people that are gonna watch you yeah uh-huh like i said it's all your fault right um cool so you guys so

you guys kicked it off this past Saturday in Huntington Beach, right? And so what is the – so you've begun and you've taken time to come over here in the middle of your run. So, again, I appreciate that. But tell me what the route is. Where are you crossing? Where are you ending? We parked our trailer in Riverside. Right now our goal is to run

to our trailer and that might take us four or five days to actually get there beyond that we're taking kind of a route 66 ish nice across the southern part of the united states we're hitting flagstaff and albuquerque cut into a bit of texas a little bit of oklahoma up to wichita kansas st louis missouri we're stopping in in mans, Missouri, just on this side of St. Louis, because that's the home of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. And they have generously provided GMO-free USA seeds to us as we go, so we can distribute Pass them out. Yeah, pass them out to everybody we meet and say, this is what we're doing.

I like to think we're kind of like Johnny Appleseed, but we're planting GMO-free USA seeds as we go, and we're spreading the word, we're spreading the knowledge. From St. Louis, that's the capital of Monsanto. Right. And obviously what they're doing we don't think is very cool, and that's why we're out doing what we're doing. So you have some protest activity sort of scheduled for when you arrive there? There is a March Against Monsanto scheduled on May 24th.

That'll be the third march. The first one happened the previous year at that same time, and we think we may be there about that time. So it would be cool if we could actually march against Monsanto at Monsanto. That would be right on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, cool. And then are you going to end up in Washington, D.C.?

We are. And do you have some stuff scheduled there on the hills? Any kind of people that you can meet with or to help kind of spread this message? Nothing official yet. Right. But, yeah, by the time we get there, we'll be in contact with people. Who can put us in contact with people? Yeah, we want to go talk to a few people.

When you were trying to configure the route, did the Crosser community help? Is this like a standard, like most people take this route, or what was the reason for Route 66? I mean, it's got to be, there's a million different choices, right, how to do this? Well, part of it was the time of the year. So starting in L.A. in January just made sense.

It wouldn't make any sense to start in San Francisco. Usually, like Marshall Ulrich, I believe they started out of San Francisco, and I think that's probably the quickest way across. I think they do a San Francisco to New York route, maybe. We're going to Atlantic City, New Jersey. It made sense for us. The original Great Foot Race started out of L.A., went to New York. And there was another race starting, I think, in May out of L.A. And they do pretty much the same thing. Originally, we thought we'd go through Vegas and go up to St. George, but we just looked online, and it looked impossible to get across there safely. So we used Google Maps and said we want to do a running route and uh and it shows us the running paths to get across and route 66 looked like looked feasible

we knew people had done it and then in the midwest there's more options with all the little farming communities and farming and so in the planning of this i know that a big we're going to start talking about all the gmo stuff in a minute but a big a big part of this mission is to make sure that you're stopping at farms and interfacing with these farmers learning about what they do you know what the sort of pressures on them are whether they're trying to farm organic or feel the pressure to not be organic or kind of whatever is going on with them the kind of um commercial you know, circumstances under which they exist. Did you do a lot of outreach with these farmers?

I mean, you're going to just try to feel this out as you go, or do you have it planned, like, we're going to be in this, we're going to meet with this guy on this day? We're not that organized. We are the team. Yeah, you're the team. I know, yeah, like, there's no, you know, there's no giant entourage following you guys around.

This is a little family adventure. You guys are just doing it. Yeah, we're doing the documentary. We're doing the PR. We're setting everything up. It's ridiculous. We thought we might have a little spare time, but we're finding out that we're busier than ever just doing everything we're doing in the course of the day. There's going to be a lot of time.

When we get approaching communities, we'll say, hey, we're coming. And we expect people will come and say, yeah, we'll get something going for you. I really look forward to talking to farmers who disagree with us. I think it would be cool if we could go on their farms and they could say, look, guys, you really don't get it. You don't understand. You really need to hear what's good about GMO and why this is good. I would love to hear that stuff. I want to be open to everybody's opinion and not go out there. Obviously, we're biased, obviously, from the research we've done. We have a position on this. We have a very strong position. But we don't want to go out there and just preach to the choir

either. I want to be able to talk to everybody and be open to everybody's point of view. Right. So, you know, on the issue of GMOs, I mean, this is a very, it's kind of a new issue. It's a controversial issue. It's a lightning rod issue. And, you know, there are people shouting on both sides of it. And I think that there are some people that think that you're a crazy conspiracy theorist if you get too up in arms about this issue. I've had guests on here. I've had plenty of long conversations about GMOs on this show. And it's something that I certainly don't hold myself out to be an expert on. And I'm trying to learn.

And so what is it, you know, why did this issue come up as being the thing that you're passionate about? This is going to be the cause for this endurance feat. Well, the GMO issue is really just part of my personality. I'm a licensed professional counselor. That's all about healing. That's all about health. And eight or ten years ago, I really got into physical healing and health. And I discovered the great books out there, the plant-based books, the China study, McDougall, Esselstyn, and all the standard stuff that we get into and say, wow, wow, this is amazing.

And look at the amazing things that are happening to people when they convert to a plant-based diet. So I got into that. of a plant-based diet. So I got into that. And of course, when you start going down that road, you see the wisdom in health and healing. And then you find out that there's chemical companies out there that regularly inject bacteria into plants so that they can withstand lethal doses of pesticide, herbicide, but they don't die. And so we all end up eating this this uh bacteria infected stuff

that's been saturated with roundup and and we really don't have any protection from the fda or the usda it's uh in all virtually all the processed food out there and it does start to sound like a conspiracy but but not the crazy kind it's like like, wow, this is happening. Right. And nobody's looking out for us. Nobody's saying no. We've got GMOs are labeled in 60 other countries. They're out and out banned in a half a dozen or a dozen. I can't remember exactly, but they're banned in other countries. And we struggle.

You know, as a Californian, you saw what happened with Prop 37 over a year ago. I was sitting in Sitka, Alaska, watching that unfold, and my Facebook profile pick was yes on 37. Even as an Alaskan, I was up there and I thought, this is amazing that the people, finally, the people are going to rise up, stand up against the corporations and against the politicians that are in bed with the corporations. And they're going to say, of course, we want labeling because everybody did want labeling. Everybody does want labeling. Like 93% of the people have been polled. They say, yes, we want labeling. And I just could not believe it when it just narrowly lost. And we knew that was because

Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association, all the junk food companies, poured in millions of dollars and infected the airways with lies about how much your grocery bill would go up and how poorly it was written and all the lawsuits that would come from it. And I think the big lie was probably the increased cost in the food. And most people, you know, 99% of the people out there are probably thinking, I don't even know what a GMO is, but I sure know I don't want to spend more money when I go buy stuff at the grocery store. So when they voted no, it's not that they were voting against labeling. They were voting against the higher costs that they were told would happen if the labeling occurred. Right. Yeah, I mean, it's simple obfuscation, really. And for people that are listening that don't know what we're talking about, maybe you're new to the podcast because I talk about Prop 37 all the time, but basically it was a California ballot initiative that would require food manufacturers that were producing foods that contained GMOs in them, genetically

modified organisms, to just put a label on the product indicating as much. So it wasn't a referendum on whether we should or should not have GMOs in our food system. It was simply a right-to-know initiative that allowed the consumers to be able to look at a food product and know whether there was GMO. And it seems a no-brainer that, of course, that would pass. Who wouldn't want to know? It's a simple sort of consumer education thing. And the fact that that was defeated by the groups that you just named, by confusing people and trying to convince them that it would make their food more expensive is

abhorrent behavior. And I've used arguments like, well, we have to re, you know, you're going to have to redesign all the labels and that's going to cost money and the ink and all this sort of nonsense. Right. I mean, they're constantly changing their label. It's just it was a complete, you know, it was it was it's a lie. It's a lie, you know, and and that was really eye opening and disheartening. And I think it brings up a broader issue about our culture and our society right now, which is sort of this level of apathy that we have, or, you know, what is it going to take to get people to start to get active and about their rights? You know, we, I was interviewing just last week, Matt Resigno, who's a plant-based dietician, and we were talking about this issue.

And I was saying, yeah, it's crazy, you know, all this news about the NSA and what the NSA can do. They can actually, from what I understand or what I've read, you know, they can see what you're doing on your iPhone. Maybe they can even turn on the camera or the microphone and hear what you're saying without you knowing it. Like all this crazy sort of surveillance stuff that they're empowered to do. And there's articles about this. And we read that and we say, wow, that's crazy. They shouldn't be able to do that. And then we go, yeah, but I'm not getting rid of my iPhone.

And then, you know, what's on TV tonight? Like we're distracted, right? This is not the era of taking to the streets you know circa 1968 vietnam like what you know what is it going to take for us to really care enough to do something i mean you guys are doing something extraordinary but that's very much outside the norm i mean what do you what is your perspective on that well it is outside the norm and if it if it wasn't for david said he wanted to across the country, we wouldn't be doing this. So the stars kind of aligned for us and our family to align the run with the mission, the GMO for USA mission.

But we're not anything special. We're just normal people. David had a big dream, and we said, let's go do this. But that's what makes it all the more powerful in my opinion we we're kind of like standing on the shoulders of of thousands of other people we're standing on the shoulders of all the good people in cal're standing on the shoulders of all the good people in California that saw this coming down the road and who got the Prop 37 going, did all the work, all the groundwork, got out there, did the interviews and talked to the politicians and set it all up so that it could be passed. And then it didn't pass. And then we saw the same thing happen with I-522 last fall in Washington. And so it's not that what we're doing isn't

working. It's just that the opposition has a whole lot of money. And so the only way that we're going to be able to beat them is if enough people wake up to this and we reach the tipping point, as Jeffrey Smith talks about, where enough people say, no, we're not going to buy this stuff. And when that happens, it won't be a matter of having to rely on the government to pass regulations or pass labeling laws. It'll just be that the food manufacturers will say, we're not making money with GMOs. They're a losing bet. And obviously, they need to make money.

So if people say, we're not going to buy that, they're going to source their products with non-GMO sources. Right. So, all right. So assume I'm a skeptic, and I don't really know much about this issue, other than that, you know, how bad can it be? This is allowing us to make our food cheaper.

We can farm more. We don't have these pesticide problems. You know, I don't know anyone who's been sick from GMOs. Like, you know, explain to me what a GMO is and why we should care about this. The two primary types of GMO products, and it's been this way for 15 or 20 years, is the Roundup Ready products. That's where they take the bacteria that the scientists discovered, this bacteria that did not die in the presence of Roundup. And they said, cool, let's put that in our food.

not die in the presence of Roundup. And they said, cool, let's put that in our food. So they injected that into our food so that we could then saturate cropland with Roundup and then everything but the genetically modified plant would die. So the only thing that would grow would be a patented seed from Monsanto. Yes. So it just invests greater control with this corporation over our food supply they manufacture the roundup so they profit from the sale of roundup and they manufacture the seeds the seeds are patented the farmers can't save the seeds if if they do they

get sued or even if if the pollen blows over into the neighbor's farm and their crops get contaminated they get sued too and uh so you, there's all sorts of problems associated with that. As far as nobody's ever got sick, you know, what is really sickening about that concept is that the companies that produce these products aren't interested in finding out if that's true or not. They do their best to make sure that that's never verified. They don't want to do the research. They don't want to do the research. They don't want to do the science. Jeffrey Smith, again, says they've got bad science down to a science, and they're really good at the tobacco science, which is all designed to—

Explain who Jeffrey Smith is. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. I'm sorry. Jeffrey Smith's like the leading—he's been leading the charge against GMOs for a good 20 years. And any time you do a search on the internet you'll you'll see his name show up you go to institute for responsible technology and uh I think it's responsibletechnology.org that's his website and and he's got tons and tons of information about it he wrote the book seeds of deception and you read that and you go

wow this is amazing so back to back to the question about what are GMOs. We talked about the Roundup Ready. The other main crop is the BT crops. And BT is a naturally occurring bacteria. It lives in the soil. Organic farmers have been using it for years. They take the BT bacteria, they spray it onto their crops, and bugs eat it, and their stomachs explode. It's not a good thing for bugs.

So the scientists took this BT bacteria, and they injected that into the corn, the soy, or whatever, and then that became BT corn corn bt soy bt cotton and so now every cell in that crop is is a pesticide it's a it's a pesticide producing chemical factory every cell produces that pesticide so it's not like if you with the organic farmers you could buy the corn you could wash off the bt that might be there. But with the corn, the Bt corn, you buy that. You don't wash it off. It's in the corn.

The corn is a pesticide. It's one and the same. Yeah, the corn is registered with the EPA as a pesticide. And so we're eating a registered pesticide when we eat Bt corn. And the scientists scientists have all these they say all this stuff about how it only affects uh it only affects the bugs because we don't have the receptors that would be able to metabolize this this bt so it's not a problem it gets it gets diluted in the digestion process it's not there it doesn't hurt anybody but now we know that that a good share of what we are is not just we're not just human beings we are bacteria machines i mean we have the the dna bacteria is like multiple times greater than

the dna of what it means to be a human and we get all this roundup within us we get all this bt within us and so we're upsetting the natural uh back you know, I'm not a doctor. It changes the nature of the microbiology of your gastrointestinal tract. Exactly. So, you know, it's not so much we are what we eat. It's we are what we absorb. We are what we digest. And this really messes up the digestion process. Doctors that are keen to this issue talk about the leaky gut issue.

The doctors that are keen to this issue talk about the leaky gut issue. And it's not just that these bug stomachs explode, but it actually does cause damage to our stomach lining. So food gets into the blood supply before it's supposed to be there. Because your gut becomes more porous? More porous, more permeable, yeah. So you get bits of food in there. The body looks at that as an invader. And so the autoimmune system goes crazy. And people account all sorts of autoimmune disorders to the BT crops or the Roundup-ready crops, the Roundup.

And you've got the gastrointestinal problems coming on. You've got reproductive issues, sterility, infertility. Some people are posting on Facebook how Roundup should be registered as a contraceptive. Nowadays, the sperm count is way down compared to what it was back in the 1950s. People are saying this has something to do with that. Right. Interesting. Is there anybody out there who is actually outside of this corporate conglomeration who is conducting a proper study, hitting all the right parameters to be able to establish the impact? Or is it just that it hasn't been around that long enough to be able to register long-term impacts? Or what's going on? Well, the chemical companies have really tight control on who can test. They have regulations and they tell people, you cannot

do research on this because it's a patented product. We own the product. You can't do research on it. So you can't purchase it and perform research on it. That's illegal? That's my understanding. That's crazy. It's really difficult. That's like an anti-gag law almost. Yeah. Dr. Seralini

out of Scotland, I believe. I'm probably getting that wrong. But anyway, he was a European team. They put together a team, and they did a two-year study on rats testing Roundup. And they were fed Roundup, or they were fed conventional, or they were fed a mix of the two. And I forget all the exact parameters. And it was a two-year study it was a lifetime study and then they'd you know cut up on the rats and and analyze the organs and all that the rats developed great big bulging tumors over i'm sure

you've seen the tumors on the internet and uh and the quote scientific community went nuts with with the findings and he was ripped apart he was was shredded, there was a big gag order placed on him, bad things happened to him, and that was probably about two years ago, but he's come back, he's fighting back, and he recently did a big tour saying, look, we need to repeat this study, we need to do this better and bigger. What was the flaw in the original study? Well, the flaw is that he used the wrong kind of rats because these rats were prone to tumors, according to Monsanto.

Well, Monsanto used the exact same kind of rats. The other flaw was that he had used too few rats. Well, Monsanto had used the exact same number of rats. And so Monsanto comes out and says, oh, the study's all messed up because he had the wrong number of rats and too few rats, but it wasn't messed up when they did it. The only difference is that they ended the study at 90 days. Seralini took the study out for two years, and he said it was interesting that it was like in the fourth or fifth month that that's when the anomalies started to occur. That's when the problems started to occur in the rats.

Recently, Seralini's study, the journal that published Seralini's study retracted the study from the journal. They said, no, this isn't going to fly anymore. We're going to retract it. And the reason was, I believe it was, because the results were inconclusive, was what they said, which is ridiculous, because since when is science conclusive? Science always, an experiment always ends.

It's sort of an acceptable level of correlation, right, that you have to meet. Yeah, well, there was no problem with that. It was just they were saying it's inconclusive, and they might have referred to the number of rats and the wrong kind of rats. There was nothing in there about the guidelines, about if there's plagiarism or faulty science or anything like that. Those are the legitimate reasons for retracting an article, but retracting research. But just prior to it being retracted,

this journal had hired on a former Monsanto man for a key position. It's like reviewing biotechnology articles you know here's the whole conspiracy thing coming yeah yeah yeah there it is you're insane right um now that was going to be my obvious next question which is the implication being that there was somehow you know monsanto pressure on them to retract it but then when you say oh a former monsanto executive now is on the what the editorial board of this journal or something. I mean, you know, it's like, do the math. And time and time again, that's

what happened with Sarah Laney. It's happened with Dr. Ciappella and probably half a dozen other major scientists that come out and discover bad stuff with GMOs and they get, you know, they say, wow, there's a lot of bad stuff going on here and they're just attacked viciously.

It was Dr. Arpad Pustai who originally did the study out of Scotland like 20 years ago. And he was quite pro-GMO originally. He took on this BT potato study using rats again with the idea that it would be easy to to figure out what was that these things were okay so that they could get them introduced into europe and when he did the study he came out on on national tv and said i wouldn't eat this stuff yeah and it totally remember that totally threw the country into a tailspin he got fired and there was a gag order placed on him and when the gag order was lifted, he said, look, this is what happened and the research is good.

And the media over in Europe just picked it up and went wild with it and the U.S. media was virtually silent. And so within just a few weeks, the food manufacturers sourced to non-GMO sources because the people said, we don't want this stuff. Right, Right. And yeah, it's, I think you're foolish

if you think that there aren't going to be top-level repercussions for speaking sideways about this stuff. One of my very first podcast guests was this guy, Hendrikus, who's a sort of soil whisperer. He was a very early pioneer in this permaculture movement and has a company that makes organic fertilizers.

And he knows a lot about how to farm properly and how to do it in a way that sustains the soil. And fascinating, amazing, amazing guy, wealth of knowledge. And before we even started the interview, he was like, I don't know if I want to talk about the Monsanto stuff. Like he was nervous, like he didn't want to do it. And he had had an experience where he gave a speech somewhere many years ago and, and he got into some trouble, you know? So I guess my question is, does that cross your mind? If you're going to, if you're, you're taking this stand, you're running across

the country, you're speaking out, do you worry that some kind of negative action could be taken against you by this vested interest that really doesn't want this kind of message getting out there? The short answer is yes. I do worry about it. I've read enough and I've seen how they've gone after the scientists who speak out against it. What I have going for me is I'm not a scientist, I'm not a doctor, and so my words don't carry the weight that those people do. I'm not part of the scientific community. But I emailed...

You're easily impeached. Yeah. You're just a guy, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can say, this guy's got nothing, he's nobody. You know, no credentials, why is he even talking about this stuff? I emailed John Robbins, and I said and I said, I am worried about this. And John, of course, he's been attacked because of his position. He went out on a plant-based position, what was it, 25 years ago,

diet for a new America. And within just a few months, the meat consumption went down considerably across the US. So obviously the meat industry did not like John Robbins. He ended up with a big pile of poop on his front door and threats and whatnot. And I said to him, John, you know, we're running across the country. That places us in vulnerable places. We're going to be sleeping in the middle of nowhere at night, and should we be worried about this? And his response was, Brett, there are too many of us. There are millions of us nowadays.

They can't go after all of us. They just can't do it. He says they're too busy suing the farmers anyway. And that was kind of reassuring. So it's not just us. We're not the only people out there saying, you know, what's happening needs to change. There were two million people marching against Monsanto last May. Two million.

So yeah, we're just small fish two or a family of very small fish among a very large ocean of people who are saying wow we need to change this right right and uh and more every day hopefully after listening to this podcast even more, right? It seems like the one place where this activism really has become a cause celeb is in Hawaii. Are you familiar with what's going on out there? I mean, really, just everybody is on top of this issue, and people are marching like crazy. And that is the topic of the day. I mean, that is one of the most important things going on there. And you couldn't quash that movement there if you, I don't know, you know,

what Monsanto could do because all that would do is is excite it even more, I think. Those people are my heroes. You know, these are people who, from what I gather, they're not people of means. They're not wealthy,

but their kids are going to the schools where the chemical companies are spraying around there three and four times a day because they're not raising crops over there. They're just doing research. So they're dumping as much poison onto the crops to see what they can handle so they can actually come out with new GMOs to market elsewhere. And so these parents, these kids, they're getting drenched in pesticides. The wind blows, the dirt gets stirred up and comes into people's houses. Little kids are getting sick. And these people are standing up against the chemical companies.

And I just love it. I think it's cool when people who are probably lower on the socioeconomic scale get together, band together, and say, look, just because you're big, just because you're rich, you don't have the right to poison our children. So I love what they're doing. Yeah, absolutely. And from what I understand, I mean, Hawaii sort of works as you said, they're primarily doing research there because it functions almost as a perfect Petri dish because it's so separated from the continental u.s so they're not you know it's not blowing this stuff's not blowing too far and you know they can actually really calibrate what's working and what's not working yeah um so one of the other things that always comes up in this discussion of gmos um and i think where you start to lose people is this idea of the chemtrails.

Are you familiar with this thing? And some people just think that that's completely wacky. And now you really are. I mean, chemtrails are the same as crop circles. And then there are other people who will adamantly tell you that these companies like Monsanto are, you know, dropping stuff out of airplanes and, and, you know, to try to sort of make the soil more acidic or make it so that it can only grow their products. I mean, do you, and I, and quite honestly, I haven't done the research. I don't know. I've talked to people on both sides of this argument, but I'm interested

in, you know, your perspective on that. I have not done the research and it'd be foolish for me to say what position I have on the air or off the air. My feeling is that our strength is to focus on the GMO issue and make it a single issue to go out there and talk about the GMO. So if people want to talk about the chemtrails, I'm all for open dialogue, whatever it is. If people are for chemtrails, I'm for the dialogue. it is you know i'm for if people are for chemtrails i'm for the dialogue if they're against it i'm for the dialogue right but for me we're going to focus on the gmo issue and talk about that right cool and what do you think some of the things what are some things about gmos that even like a semi-educated person might not be aware of just

in their daily experience or going to the shopping, you know, going to the supermarket or what have you? Well, Monsanto's biggest lie, the lie that is most dangerous is the lie that we, the people, believe in. And the biggest lie that Monsanto puts out, their number one lie, is that the population of the earth is exploding, millions of people are dying, famine's coming, and biotechnology is the only way to ward off that famine. And that lie works, because you and I don't like to get on TV and look at pictures of little African kids with their stomachs all bloated because they're dying of famine. And, you know, that bugs us.

No reasonable person wants to see that. No reasonable person wants to believe that. No reasonable person wants to believe that there are people. And it's also premised on fear, which is very effective. Yeah, fear-based, exactly. And so they spread that lie about feeding the world and so reasonable people, educated

people say, well, look, we need this stuff. We need these chemicals. I hear from people occasionally who say, Brett, if we didn't use all these chemicals, millions of people would die because we need the chemicals to kill the bugs. So we've got to keep the crop productivity going up. And sure, the chemicals may not be the best thing, but it's better than not using them because we're going to lose all the production. So that's the argument. So that's their most effective lie. You mentioned the word lie earlier when it came to Prop 37. And when Prop 37 was happening, I started to see blogs on the Internet about eight top Monsanto lies or ten lies.

And I said to my wife, you know, there's a theme going on here. There's a real big theme. And so I wrote a book called We're Monsanto, Feeding the World Lie After Lie. And that came out just last October. a book called We're Monsanto, Feeding the World Lie After Lie. And that came out just last October. In the five days prior to the March Against Monsanto in October, more than 3,000 people downloaded the free Kindle version of the book. And I was pleased to see that get out there really fast.

I mean, for an unknown author. No, it's great. And I'll put a link up in the show notes to the book and to all your stuff, too, that we're going to talk about in a little bit. But yeah, fantastic. Yeah, it was a good experience. And it gave me some foundation to say, wow, look at the lies and look at how far they spread. It's not just about health. It's not just about Prop 37. It goes across the gamut and it covers the whole globe. That's a big issue.

And so what are some of those top five lies? Well, the name of the book is Where Monsanto Feeding the World Lie After Lie. So the first one I tackle is, is the lie that GMOs are necessary to feed the world? Because there's a lot of people out there that say that, no, that's not the case. And in fact, from my research, what I found is that it's that monoculture style of agriculture where we do one crop for miles and miles and miles and miles. That's a setup for famine because you know like what happened to the potatoes farmers back in back in irons you got one crop it only takes one virus to come in and wipe everything out and and you're in a world of hurt besides that when you do the monocropping in the midwest it's a it's a terribly water intensive uh system of agriculture the ogallala aquifer is going dry. Some people are saying

in 30 or 40 years, they will no longer be able to draw the water out of the earth to keep up with the system of agriculture. That style of agriculture compacts the earth. When you saturate the soil with Roundup, you're killing the bacteria in the soil. You need the bacteria to keep everything alive. You know, real farmers, they grow soil. And once you grow soil, you can grow crops. It's all about the soil. Yeah.

And when you kill the soil. If you deplete the soil, then there's no nutrients in there for the food. Exactly. And so you have to apply the synthetic chemicals to get anything to grow after that. You have to apply the synthetic chemicals to get anything to grow after that, which, of course, is another example of when every Monsanto failure results in more Monsanto profit. They kill the soil, and so they get to sell you more chemicals. Right. It's completely vertically integrated from top to bottom. It blows me away. You know, they have super weeds, and so their solution is more Roundup. You know, they have super weeds, and so their solution is more Roundup.

And if that doesn't work, then you go to 2,4-D, which, of course, is half of the chemical composition of Agent Orange. And the USDA is right on the edge of—they're poised to approve 2,4-D corn. And so we're going back to using a chemical that we saw the horrific effects of in Vietnam. So, yeah, there is this presumption that if you are going to farm the land organically or biodynamically by rotating crops or using the chicken and the cattle dung to re-energize the soil and you're doing this rotation kind of like um i forget his name the farmer in food is it food inc that documentary who's the guy who's sort of the maverick organic farmer who's getting incredible yields and from his from his fields i forget his name of course i'll remember it after we're done here but but anyway, there really is this resurgence of people that are interested in this way of sustainable agriculture. There's a presumption that there's no way we can feed the planet doing this, that this is a mom and pop thing versus we need these factory farms if we're

going to produce the amount of food that we need for everybody everybody and so what you're saying is that that is that's not the case eventually that system will fail and you know back 50 years ago one out of every two americans was a farmer and now it's like one out of a hundred and the fact is the way we live nowadays we're not interested in getting out in the dirt and spending that much time to to farm but that was a system but i would i will say there are young people that are like studying this in college and are interested in this and are going into this field of permaculture and sustainable agriculture and when i was in college no one was studying that so this is a new thing so i think it is the pendulum is swinging back yeah absolutely we

went to a hydroponic farm saturday evening after our first run and watched a guy talk about all the cool things that he was doing with with this hydroponic system there were people there interviewing him and it was exciting to see how much yield they could get what they could get from a from a fifth of an acre in a greenhouse the way they're growing the creative ways they're growing and it was all organic it was all safe there was no chemicals involved and and uh you know the we we really have been fed a line when it comes to our our uh industrial system of agriculture we've we we tend to think that that yield per acre is is the marker that we need to be going for vandana shiva point talks about how we need to go for health per acre and and we need to uh oh she had another phrase for it i've forgotten it but anyway vandana Shiva talks about how we need to go for health per acre. And we need to, oh, she had another phrase for it, and I've forgotten it.

But anyway, Vandana Shiva is another great name out there. Yeah, it's a good name. I love anything she says. But we talk about how the GMO crops are cheap, or they're cheaper so people can afford them. And that's really not even true either. That's all heavily subsidized from start to finish. Most of the corn, most of the soy, never even makes it onto the human plate at all. It's not designed to be eaten by humans. We feed it to our agricultural animals, and we feed it to our cars in the form of biofuel.

And of course, poor people, the people that Monsanto says they're out to feed, they can't afford the meat and they don't drive the cars. And so it's just a subsidized system to allow us to get, for these chemical companies, to sell tons and tons and tons of their stuff and make tons and tons of profit. The biofuel industry really is environmentally destructive. It's wasteful. It consumes more energy than it takes to make the stuff. And so it's really kind of a big scam.

And we know the factory farms are a disaster environmentally. We know that the greenhouse gases connected to factory farms are bigger than all the gases produced by the transportation industry around the world. So the whole system is messed up. It's all designed to put money in the pockets of the chemical companies and, of course, the politicians that support these chemical companies. They get money put in their pockets as well, which helps them keep their jobs and maintain their power. Well, the tentacles of it, I mean, from the K Street lobbyists to the legislators on the Hill to the corporate boardroom to the FDA to the USDA, I mean, it's, you know, it's, as a consumer, you look at that and you say,

this is hopeless, how could you possibly combat something that is so integral? Like, it's not just Monsanto it is you know that the that sort of interest is has found its its way across every platform that has a say or has any involvement in how our food is produced and delivered yeah right so it's easy to just say, forget it. What's on TV? Yeah, and I kind of wish I could do that. Yeah, you can. Actually, that would be nice to be able to sit down at night and watch TV.

I can't remember thing that is implicit in this whole thing is a certain arrogance, which is to say that we can control nature, right? Whether it's Roundup or whether it's this modified seed that is pestilent, resistant. All of these things you can make an argument for being worthy kind of objectives. But inherent in that is this idea that we can get the upper hand with this thing. And it's never the case,

whether it's a flu vaccination or what have you. Nature finds a way. So you design what you believe to be the ultimate fertilizer or pesticide, and guaranteed nature's going to find a way around that. And then you're going to have to increase the volume on that. Chemical treadmill. And the level of toxicity just gets ratcheted up and up and up.

Yeah, chemical treadmill. And along with that has to come laws that will allow these companies to do... I mean, it's like the company can't continue to grow and exist unless that's the case. And this is the natural course. This is the gestalt of nature, right? So this is coming to a head and it is time that we do something. And what we do have power over is what we put in our mouths and where we spend our dollar. And we have to get more conscious about that.

Yeah, we do. I mean, I think, you know, I'm more conscious of what I eat than most people on the planet. But I'm also a human being and I'm not perfect. And, you know, before I came here, I was checking emails at a Starbucks and trying to catch up on some stuff. And I was hungry and realized I hadn't eaten enough after I worked out this morning. And I, and I'm like, all right, well, what am I going to eat? I'm late. I got to get over there. And at Starbucks they have bananas, right? So I ate a couple of bananas and I'm

eating them knowing I go, these are, these are GMO bananas. They must be right. I don't know. They're not labeled. Otherwise they don't have to label them otherwise. I'm presuming that they are. And yet, you know, I'm like, well, you know, I'm hungry. I got to eat this. You're okay when it comes to bananas. Is it? Am I okay? So far, but they are working on genetically modified bananas. They're trying to introduce that. Now I feel better. I feel a little bit better, at least. The only genetically modified fruit on the market is the papaya out of Hawaii. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Well, at least there's that. But I'm sort of of the belief that, I mean, is it even possible to get corn that is non-GMO? If it says organic on the package, you're getting non-GM corn. If it doesn't say it, it's probably GM. Yeah. I would think so.

Like, unless they go out of their way i mean if some if it's non-gmo then whoever's manufacturing that is going to make sure that the consumer knows that yeah because that's their only market advantage because they're going to have to charge more for that right yeah so the the main foods what are the main things that the consumer needs to avoid like when they go to the supermarket and they want to know what's up, what are the things that they should be looking out for? Corn, canola, soy, cottonseed oil, and sugar from sugar beets are the main crops. And when you cover that, you've got to... Because, yeah, that stuff's in everything. Yeah, virtually any processed food.

You know, high-fuctose corn syrup gmo so and the beet and the the the beet sugar is in what what kind of products well we're talking just we're just talking regular sugar anything that says sugar on it if it doesn't say say cane sugar then it's beet sugar and it's very likely gm. Right. Corn, what are grains? Monsanto is working on wheat. Again, they were working on that 10 or 15 years ago, and we had the big fiasco just last spring, it was, when a farmer in Oregon, I believe,

discovered Monsanto's genetically modified wheat in his farm, and they came out and tested it, and sure enough, there it was. And it was illegal. It was never approved for production. But, you know, Mother Nature can't read regulations. Mother Nature doesn't know whether something's approved or not. If they plant it in the open air, bees and pollinators come along, and this stuff causes contamination. Right.

So, you know know they talk about how gm products are safe i had someone critique me the other day and say brett you just haven't done enough research i'm all i'm a plant breeder and i'm all about safe gmos well you know for the organic farmer there is no such thing as a safe gmo because gmos contaminate because mother nature spreads that's that she does that very well i mean your crops are designed to grow and spread just you know that's that's the way they're designed and so there's no such thing as a safe gmo if they could ever come up with one that could be self-contained that wouldn't contaminate mother nature yeah maybe there could be an argument for safe but

right now that isn't the case so we had that big contamination issue with wheat japan and south korea said immediately no, thank you. Not just to the wheat that came from that guy's farm, but to the wheat across all of America. Same thing happened with rice. Like a dozen years ago, they were testing some sort of rice. I think it might have been Liberty Link. I think I might have that name right. Contamination.

They ended up paying a billion dollars or so in compensation to the rice farmers because the market shut down uh you know the gm corn uh we we only sell that to the you know the pig farmers the cattle farmers and the end of the car the biofuel industry because nobody in europe wants it and so for me every time the usda or the fda or whoever approves something new it's like oh there's another there's another crop that we've just destroyed and economically we've destroyed it because we've limited the market at the united states because there's so many other countries that say no right we're not gonna right right right on and uh even if you're trying to avoid this you know for example gm corn if you're eating the meat you're eating the livestock you're eating what they ate if you're eating the livestock, you're eating what they ate.

So you're still getting that in your system. Yeah, and there was the whole RBST or bovine growth hormone right now. BGH. RBGH. Yeah, there he is. IGF-1 was the big hormone that got elevated because of the RBGH. Yeah, there he is. product again, another genetically modified product that caused mastitis and a host of other problems in the cows and elevated blood content level in their blood and pus in the milk.

And it was nasty. And Canada said no, Europe said no. And, you know, there's a big scandal in Canada when some of the research or some of the Monsanto salespeople attempted to bribe canadian health officials and you know just just the old shenanigans it's uh you know we have this centrist idea of maybe it's different in alaska but but living here you know down in the lower 48 of uh you know we're on the cutting edge of everything we're the united states of america we you know we have the world's best interest at heart and we

know we have the best scientists and we, you know, like we're lead, we're the leaders, right? And then you see the rest of the world kind of looking at what we're doing with this specific issue and saying, no, thank you. You know, like you guys are crazy. Like we're not having this. We don't want this. We don't want what you're doing. You're destroying your food supply. You're harming the environment. You're harming human health. And it brings up another issue that is a global issue uh that you referenced earlier pollination and the bees like what is going on with what is the impact of gmos on the population are you do you have uh have you done a little bit of yeah digging on this i have done digging on it the the biggest uh you know firmly correlated connection with GMOs right now is that neonicotinoids, which is not the GMO issue itself.

It's the particular type of pesticide that is now connected to the colony collapse disorder. And Europe said no way to neonicotinoids like a year ago. And now I think it's Syngenta that's suing europe because they're cutting into their profits and the u.s the u.s government regulators have not said no to neonicotinoids and a lot of the seeds that are produced anymore uh if they're not organic they're they're dipped in this uh neonicotinoid poison that has seeds and they maintain a certain level of toxicity and and you know one seed can can kill a songbird so that they're not they're nasty critters yeah the neonic neonic as they call them neonic and this is the practical application of that is

what is this pesticide is this what they is this what they're spraying on the bees the beekeepers use? Well, they spray it on the crops or they spray it on the seeds to keep the harmful insects away. But, you know, Mother Nature doesn't know which insects. I see. Okay, I understand. So the bees come along and they eat the pollen. They take the pollen. Butterflies come along and so they get disoriented or they get messed up. I got you.

So it's killing off the bees, yeah. I see. And the bee population has plummeted drastically, right? Drastically, yeah. The colony collapse disorder, we're talking like a fraction of what it used to be with the bee population. Now they're having to ship their bees all across the country. They had to ship them across to help with the almond industry here in California recently.

And it's very, very frightening the way things are going. We could lose bees. And, of course, the implications for that are colossal. It's devastating beyond imagination, I would imagine. All right, well, i want to get back a little bit into the running and the and the diet stuff a little bit so you several years ago you have this you read these books and you decide you're gonna adopt this plant-based diet right yeah and and and let me let me be be clear here and totally honest i was living in alaska at the

time like we are now it was about, and I read all this stuff. And I grew up with the regular meat and potatoes type of family. And I announced to the family that I was going to give up meat. And for me, I was able to give up anything that came out of the grocery store. That's not exactly true. I was still eating eggs up until over a year ago. And then I was still eating eggs up until over a year ago, and then I was still eating fish. And I have to say, I love wild Alaskan salmon.

There's something in it that I just love to eat. So I was eating that. I was eating the eggs and the fish up until about a year and a half ago. And then I was reading some books when I was out on an expedition with these teenagers, and I just thought, you know, I'm going to give this a shot and see if i can go all the way with this so it was a year ago in june and i i decided to go totally plant-based and so since then i've i've probably had had a animal products uh no i'm 99 plant-based yeah you're essentially there so yeah i mean my question really was you know making this work in alaska you know it's not not it's not los angeles not new york city, you know, making this work in Alaska, you know, it's not Los Angeles,

it's not New York City, it's, you know, having just visited there and visiting, you know, a big city in Alaska, it posed its own unique challenges. So I would imagine that it's not, you know, there isn't a huge community of people that are doing this and trying to make that work there has got to have some challenges uh some challenges i would say overall it's a very accepting community uh up there people say cool you know i'm glad that works for you and they they go off and go deer hunting or fishing or whatever and i have i really don't have any issues with with people that do that i think if you're going to eat meat uh taking wild game is it's the way it needs to be if you're going to eat meat, taking wild game is the way it needs to be. If you're going to eat fish, you should be catching your own fish. And I, there are people, it doesn't

make sense to say that people up in normal Alaska are going to be eating salads. Right. It's just not feasible. It's not, it can't work across the spectrum. So I'm, I'm, I'm not, I'm not really a hardliner when it comes to that issue. Living in Alaska, if I'm in a circumstance and someone offers me some whale and there's some ceremonial significance to the event and to the meeting, I'm going to have a piece. I'm not going to say no to them. Even though I wouldn't go kill a whale myself, and yes, by eating it I'm partaking in that, I'm well aware of that.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I understand that. That makes sense. So, David, when your dad comes home and says, I'm going to do this plant-based diet thing, how does that go over with the rest of the family? Well, as far as I can remember, my dad has been the closest to a health nut our family is. Well, he really is. He's always been paying attention to his health and what's good for us. A while ago, we started buying a lot less cheese, a lot less dairy.

We don't drink any milk. This is all because of Dad. Right. So are you angry about this? No. You can be honest with me i'm not no i i guess i could be but i started at a young enough age that uh-huh i don't really see the point in going back right so it was cool this last year when david went from being a kid who liked running to becoming a champion runner he adopted the diet very strictly.

And when the coaches were saying, yeah, one day a week you get a cheat day, was that the word they used? Go out and eat what you want once a week. And I think you said something like, well, why would I do that if I want to be a champion? Why wouldn't I want to be a champion every day? Right?

I like that. I'm going to steal that line. Is that all right? And what did they say? Can't argue with that. I'm going to steal that line. Is that all right? And what did they say? Can't argue with that. They didn't have much response to it. They knew I was a committed runner, so I guess they almost expected that.

Right. Some of the other runners on the team, they don't go all out cheat day like McDonald's and stuff, but they'll have some stuff that they usually wouldn't have. It's hard to argue with it with a winner's time you know that is better than anybody right i mean the actions speak louder than the words so when you're winning the races or you're leading the charge um you don't really have to say too much else i would imagine but at the same time i mean yeah how do

the other the kids on the team do they think it's weird what you eat or not or they don't care um well some this only happened once a few other people on the team they came up to me and they asked me what sort of diet they should be on as someone who's been almost vegetarian his whole life you can sort of expect that that's going to come out right so they'll kind of come to you quietly and say what do you what are you eating like i want to be fast like you um not usually well it wasn't really quietly but it wasn't right uh-huh and so how are you how are you um fueling yourselves for this run like what walk me through a day in the life of what you guys are eating and what the plan is to kind of get you guys from the west coast to the east coast nutritionally intact can i speak to that just a little bit it's terrible so far yeah oh really we've been so

busy trying to get her you thought like all i have to do is just run every day oh you're like fall asleep i gotta sorry um all i have to do is just run every day. Oh, you're, like, fall asleep? I got it. Sorry. All I have to do is run every day, right? That's it? And now you're, like, you're in podcast studio. We're so busy. Back home, you know, we get a decent breakfast.

I'd have a huge salad for lunch, and we'd take time to get a decent dinner going on. And here, I'm not sure we, it's really hard to say we sit down and eat a meal together because, you know, we barely finished our run this morning. We jump in the car to get here on time. We're going to an event this evening and I don't think we'll have a sit down meal before that. Right. So there's, there's really great irony in the fact that we're out there promoting a health, healthful lifestyle. And it's hard to even say we're eating healthy. Well, I mean, it's not like you have this giant entourage of people that are taking care of your needs, which brings me to the Indiegogo campaign that you guys have launched that I want to help you guys support.

I think it's most worthy. And essentially, Indiegogo, which for people that are not familiar, is a fundraising website. And I'll put the link up to your page in the show notes to this podcast episode. But you're trying to raise money and solicit donations to help support you guys in this mission of running across the U.S. mission of running across the u.s and being able to best put out this healthy message and to create as much energy and activity around this advocacy as possible right so you want to speak to the campaign a little bit yeah we have a good friend in sitka alaska owen kindig i just love the man he uh when i i was doing some march Against Monsanto movie nights last May, and Owen and Beth came in, and they are close friends.

Bless you. Sorry. You okay? Yeah. This desert warm air, you know, gets you back to Alaska. Eight months. Yeah, okay. Now Chris can say she participated in the interview with Rich Roll.

We can have them all up here. I didn't know. We could have had two more microphones up here. We'll get you on the podcast. All right. So anyway, I met these great people, and Owen Kendig has a history of making professional videos for colleges, and he works for a college in Sitka.

And when we announced that we were going to work on this campaign, he was just natural. He was there. He said, Brett, what are we going to do? How are we going to do this? And he helped us put together a really great little video to explain what we were doing. And we told him what the deadline was. And even the day before the deadline, when we needed this campaign to launch, he was saying, brett we need to shoot this scene we need to shoot that scene we got to get this right because this is really important yeah it's all about the video on these things yeah yeah so he helped tell a really good story and did it effectively and uh uh the campaign is drawing to a close now it draws it ends january 30th and we've received a lot of donations from

a lot of people but it's not close to what we need to actually finance the run. And so we still need a lot of help from a lot of people. If you go to Indiegogo.com, the name of the campaign is Running for a GMO-Free USA. Or if that's too long, you can just type GMO into the Indiegogo search bar, and that will take you to our campaign. So we love everybody who's shared. You know, if it's $10, that's great. If it's $500, that's great, too. We wouldn't say no to $5,000.

Right, right, right. Yeah, I mean, this is a great cause. And like we said, there's a lot of interest in doing something about this, but there's that sense of powerlessness, too. Like, what could I possibly do that would have any impact? And here's an opportunity to get involved and to, you know, support this mission. First father slash teenage son team to run across the country and not doing it for ego purposes, but really doing it to learn and expound on, you know, what is arguably one of the most important issues that face all of us

as consumers today. We all eat food. We all buy food. We all have to make decisions about what to eat and what not to eat. And this is something that has profound health implications, environmental implications, not just for Americans, but for the world. not just for Americans, but for the world. Yeah, absolutely. It's a worldwide issue, a global issue. I love the fact that David is 15 years old. And you mentioned the not for an ego issue.

If you knew David, as you're getting to know him now on the podcast, this kid is not the super jock persona. The ego's not there, the I'm cool type of thing, the I'm going to be better than you. It's just plain not there. And the more time I spend with David, the more I think, wow, how did I miss out on this when I was a kid? How come I wasn't that cool when I was 15? And how come I'm not that cool now? And so it's fun running with David, running next to him and just seeing where his mind goes. He goes off in fun places with his mind and talks about this, talks about that. And I'm kind of driven in my personality. And I just think, you know, there's a little bit of Eckhart Tolle naturally in David.

And just being present, just enjoying the moment and enjoying life. And I watch how he's growing up and living and think, wow, I've got to do better. Just relax and enjoy the present moment i thought this is a cool experience for for a dad to oh my goodness i mean beautifully put and yeah i was just that's exactly what i was thinking which is what an amazing uh experience for a father and a son to have together very unique and and and special so yeah very cool um and another thing that you kind of explain in the on the indiegogo page is uh or maybe it was on your your website which is um running the country.com where you kind of talk about your work uh you know in counseling people and and and kind of

helping people through uh you know abuse scenarios or dealing with bullies, you know, the emotional kind of the emotional bully or maybe the physical bully. And here you are, you know, drawing this parallel to this mission that you're on now, which is really taking to task this corporate bully and the bullying that is taking place over the American population. Yeah, no, it's the same work. It's just at a different level. Right. And what do you find, like when you, you know, sort of deal with people, I guess what I'm asking is, you know, what, how do you find the best way to kind of communicate

a message to somebody so that it resonates? Because it's clear just from speaking to you that you're not coming from a place of judgment. You have a very open mind. You're very accepting of different ideas. And you have strong ideas and opinions, but you have a very relaxed demeanor about how you try to relate your position to other people. meaner about how you try to relate your position to other people. And I think that this is something that is kind of endemic in whether it's the vegan community or the whatever community is, whatever team you're on, that they tend to sort of stand up on a platform or a podium and speak down to people. And there's a condescension to it and a judgment to it that I don't get from you

at all. And I have a sense that that kind of comes from your professional from your vocation some of it from the vocation some of just my spiritual my spiritual my sense of spirituality and and just how we are brothers and sisters we are uh and we're brothers and sisters with the environment with the animals and you know that sounds cheesy but the idea that that we need to love each other, we need to take care of each other, all of those things resonate as truth. And so when you see bullies pushing on other people, that does create a little bit of like, oh boy, that doesn't feel right. like, oh boy, that doesn't feel right, and really I need to do something about that, whether it's a woman who's being abused by the husband, or whether it's a chemical company that's refusing to disclose what pesticides they're spraying in Hawaii, all of those things,

it's the same issue. And so it fits naturally in my persona. When I was doing batterers intervention programs, I would sit with a group of men, most of them court-ordered, occasionally wife-ordered, to be there under the treatment. And they would share their stories. And I found myself just quite naturally being the therapist or the advocate for the wife. So I wasn't there to be there as the counselor for the husband. I would say, well, you know, maybe we should look about, look at what your wife's experience might be. And, and, and found that a lot of men, when they went there, they could say,

yeah, well, I've never considered that. Maybe I'll try that. And they would come back the next, the next week and say, wow, Brad, that, that made a huge difference. And so really I'm, I'm just going out there now and saying, saying to the big chemical companies, you know, maybe we should look at what the experiences of the Hawaiian people who are being poisoned. Let's look at the experience of the Argentinian mothers who are holding their malformed babies and say, you know, maybe there's something there that we should look at. Looking at the cotton farmers in in in india that are committing suicide by the thousands by the tens of thousands and say you know that that doesn't

seem right doesn't there must be something wrong here we've got to do better so it's just you know it's just trying to going out there and say let's let's love and do a little better at everything that we profess to believe in. Let's actually do it. Right. Actually take action on that. Yeah. Beautiful.

And so how many miles a day are you guys planning on running? In theory or in reality? In theory. Yeah. So you're a couple days into this, right? You're a little over a week into it. Well, Saturday, nine miles. miles. Sunday, a rest day. And today. A rest day after the exhausting first day of nine miles.

Well, there's more truth to that than you might imagine. We arrived at the launch of our own event. We got there a half hour before it started. And David was coming off of being sick. And I got three hours of sleep as we drove down from Utah. So lousy food, lack of sleep, coming off of a sickness. So nine miles that first day felt like plenty because it was more like a first week when we finally hit that first day. Sunday, we were so exhausted. We missed some events that we really should have been to. And we felt felt awful about it but we were just wiped out so today we're better rested we're we're after we finish the podcast here we're going to another event and right and i feel like we've got a little more gas in the tank but anyway it's gonna it's gonna have to be 15 to 18 miles a day if we're gonna finish by the end of july right that's when

we like otherwise it's gonna be a much longer adventure yeah right well a couple things on that on that subject i mean the the first thing is that what you don't realize or what maybe the the general person the general person looking at what you're doing they just want to know how many miles you're gonna run every day and they think that's that's the tiring part of the day and they don't factor in all those things that you were just saying and speaking to which is it's really it's not just the the actual running or the endurance aspect of it it's all all the actual running or the endurance aspect of it. It's all the logistics and all the kind of getting from point A to point B

and where are we going to eat and where are we sleeping and what's happening. That stuff is what runs you down and can bury you. And when I did Epic Five, it was only five days. It was complicated because there were airplanes involved and things like that. But it was really, it really all that logistical stuff. And we had help. We had lots of people helping us, and it was still very daunting and difficult and resulted in sleep deprivation, which undermined our ability to complete this thing timely.

And all that kind of stuff really becomes super paramount. When I had Charlie Engel in here the other day, and he's kind of speaking to getting ready to try to break this record fastest guy to run across the U.S. And he said the first two weeks are the most critical. And you have to, he goes, one of the things I learned when I did it with Marshall is that this time I really have to be much more conservative in those first couple weeks and let the body acclimate to this thing that it's doing because it doesn't know what's ahead you know physically your physical body doesn't know what what it's in for and you have to allow it to kind of get used to that and if you push too hard or too aggressive in those first couple weeks you can really you know dig a hole that you're not

going to be able to dig out from underneath so i think it's smart to be really cautious and conservative in this early part, and then you'll figure it out. I mean, all these sort of things you're trying to figure out, a couple weeks from now, it will be like a smooth system, I would imagine. Yeah, we're hoping for that. And it's good to hear that. It almost sounds like we're being systematic and methodical, but it's just that we're so

cramped for time that we had to call it short today so we could come here. Right, right. So we'd planned to go 15 today, and we got about nine. So here we are. Tomorrow's a new day, and we'll see what happens. You'll get it. All right. Well, I appreciate you coming.

And I'll get you out of here. We've been going for almost an hour and a half, which is great. So time to let you guys get back and attend to all that stuff so you can get your rest and get running again, right? Yep. All right, cool. it's been so much fun we we you mentioned uh indiegogo you mentioned running the country we've also got a facebook group and a facebook page called running the country right like the page join the group or whatever we'd love to keep you updated that way as well yeah absolutely so uh indiegogo.com and then search running for a GMO free USA. And again, all these links I'll put in the show notes. Um, the website is running

the country.com. You're on Twitter at running the USA. That's right. But then you also have Wilcox works. Is that, is that a different Wilcox works is, is the name of my, my, my company. Oh, it's your company. Okay. LLC. And we're and we're we're uh we did the book under the llc name the right side of feeding the world lie after lie right right right okay so so but people should follow running the usa right running the country.com running the i'm sorry running the country.com and the book we're monsanto feeding the world lie after lie um and i'll put a link up for people that want to check that out as well. Right?

And I'll put links up to the Facebook page and all that good stuff. So let's get some people paying attention to what you're doing. You guys are documenting this on film, right? We are. All right, good. So you'll be able to interview these farmers, and we'll be able to experience what you guys are going through day by day. Yeah, we want to come out with a nice documentary.

Very cool. It'll be a mom-and-pop operation again, but that's okay. Of course. That's good, man. So, David, what are you most concerned about? Is there anything you're worried about or stuff that keeps you up at night? Or you're completely power of now, Eckhart Tolle, you're in the moment. It's all good. Well, I'm not as good as Dad said.

I can't say I'm as good as he described me but um you worried about anything oh yeah um well the homeschooling we haven't as of now gotten our like uh internet set up so it's hard to do an internet-based homeschooling and that's really one thing that i'm worried about i don't want to end up a semester behind in school gotcha right i understand i thought he was going to say something like i don't want to get injured or hurt my Achilles, but he's so responsible that he's worried about school. Yeah, he's a good student. You're a good boy. What do your friends think in school about what's going on?

Are they jealous or do they think you're crazy? Since maybe third grade, people have been saying I'm crazy because i actually like to run and well i didn't really run that much back then but that word crazy is always lots of people just is that um the crazy people change the world though right i guess yeah but um what was i gonna say i forgot whether your Yeah. But, um... What was I going to say? I forgot again. What do your friends think? Oh, yeah. Well, when I first introduced the idea, the word crazy came up again, and that's pretty much something that's happened a lot,

That's pretty much something that's happened a lot. But I guess they are getting more used to the fact that I'm this, like their idea, so many people at my school just think of me as David the runner. Like that's what I do. And so running the country, they think, wow. But then they think, oh, yeah, it's David. So of course, right? That's what David does. Of course, that makes sense, right?

What a beautiful reputation. Yeah, cool. Great. Well, listen, you guys, I wish you the best of luck. And everybody who's listening, I appreciate you supporting the podcast. But let's support these guys. Go to the Indiegogo page and show these guys some support and love. This is a cause I think that we can all rally behind. I'm excited for the adventure that you guys are going on.

I'm a little bit jealous. I've wanted to do something like this myself, so I'm with you guys in spirit. Hopefully, you'll come back and tell me all about it when you get to the other side. We'd love to do that. All right. Cool. All right. Well, thanks so much, and best of luck.

What's your run tomorrow? We're on the Santa Ana River Trail, where we finished up today, and we'll try to get pushing back to where our trailer is in Riverside. Yeah. Cool. Well, make sure that on Twitter and on Facebook you post where you're running every day and people can go there and check it out.

I would assume that you'd like it if people showed up and ran with you guys, right? We would. It'd be a lot of fun. Cool. We're not encouraging masses of people to run with us, but if you want to come run with us for a day or two, by all means, we'd love to get together, run, and have a nice conversation. Great. All right, guys. Thanks so much.

Thank you, Rich. All right. Peace. Plants.